ANDREWS A partnership of Waste Control Specialists and Orano USA appears stymied in its ambition to store large amounts of high-level radioactive waste near the low-level WCS repository that’s been operating 30 miles west of here since 2012.
The company, Interim Storage Partners, touched off a firestorm when it announced the plan early last year.
State Rep. Brooks Landgraf, R-Odessa, Republican Congressman August Pfuger and Gov. Greg Abbott excoriated it, saying the waste could end up contaminating the Permian Basin’s groundwater and oil and natural gas reserves.
On July 30, 2021, the Andrews County Commissioners Court passed a resolution opposing the plan.
Soon afterward, the Texas House of Representatives passed Landgraf’s House Bill 7, which was calculated to stop it just before the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission issued ISP a license to proceed.
Now the State of Texas is arguing a petition in the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans to negate the NRC’s license. ISP did not respond to a request for comment this week.
Pfluger said Wednesday night from Washington, D.C., that he “will continue working to make sure the Permian Basin is not a temporary dumping ground for high-level nuclear waste while the federal government drags its feet in finding a permanent repository.
“The interim storage of nuclear waste in our nation’s most productive oilfield poses a significant energy and national security threat and I am proud to be working alongside my colleagues at the state and federal levels to ensure that this does not become a reality for West Texas.”
Landgraf said Tuesday that he “will always stand with the people of Andrews when it comes to anything related to the low-level radioactive waste disposal facility located in Andrews County.
“There is only one such facility in our state and the folks who live closest to it should have the loudest voice concerning its operation,” the chairman of the Texas House Environmental Regulation Committee in Austin said.
Referring to his 81st District having lost Andrews County to redistricting, he said, “While I’m sad that I will no longer be the state representative for Andrews County when the 2023 legislative session begins, the people of Andrews will always have a special place in my heart and they will always have my ear when it comes to matters pertaining to radioactive waste disposal in our great state.”
In calling the Legislature’s second special session last year, Abbott said a bill should be passed “reforming the laws governing radioactive waste to protect the safety of Texans, including by further limiting the ability to store and transport high-level radioactive materials in this state.”
Abbott joined Texas’ petition last Feb. 8 to urge the 5th Circuit to vacate the NRC’s license.
“I will not let Texas become America’s dumping ground for deadly radioactive waste,” he said. “That is why I signed House Bill 7 at a special session to ban the disposal or storage of high-level radioactive waste in Texas.
“And it is why I am suing the Nuclear Regulatory Commission over its illegal licensing decision in this case. I will continue pursuing every legal avenue to protect the Permian Basin, which is crucial to America’s energy security, and to keep all Texans safe from nuclear waste.”
Interim Storage Partners would have to build a facility to store the waste from around the state and nation and HB 7 prohibits the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality from issuing the necessary permits. Orano USA is an affiliate of a French company.
Awaiting a permanent repository, 90,000 metric tons of spent fuel rods and other waste are being stored where they were generated at some 80 nuclear plants and research sites around the nation. Yucca Mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, Nev., was considered till political opposition eliminated it in 2010.
High-level nuclear waste is being stored on-site on the campuses of Texas A&M University in College Station and the University of Texas at Austin, the Reliant-NRG STP Nuclear Project adjacent to Matagorda Bay on the Gulf Coast and near Glen Rose 40 miles southwest of Fort Worth at the Comanche Peak Nuclear Power Plant.
HB 7 says, “With the exception of a permit for a facility located at the site of currently or formerly operating nuclear power reactors and currently or formerly operating nuclear research and test reactors operated by a university, the commission may not under the authority given to it under the Texas Clean Water Act issue a general construction permit or approve a storm water pollution prevention plan or issue a permit under the Texas Pollutant Discharge Elimination System Program for the construction or operation of a facility that is licensed for the storage of high-level radioactive waste by the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission.”
