By Michaela Urban, Communications Intern
Editor's Note: The comment deadline for the proposal has been extended by one month to Nov. 19, 2018. Submit your comment today!
About a week ago, I wrote about a proposal to bring 40,000 tons of radioactive waste from around the country to Andrews County, Texas. The waste would stay in Texas presumably until a “long-term” repository site becomes available. Unfortunately, if history is any guide, that’s many, many decades away.
If approved by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), this waste will travel through major Texas cities like Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio, placing the numerous hospitals, schools, and businesses located next to Texas railroads in harm’s way.
Here are some important points you could consider making:
- The proposed site is geological complex, with numerous fissures, fault lines, sinkholes, aquifers and other features that make the site ill-suited for the disposal of long-lasting high-level radioactive waste;
- Texans don’t want dangerous high-level radioactive waste, but the NRC has not heard the voices of many concerned Texans. There has not been a single public meeting on the revised application. Public meetings should be held and the intervention deadline and public comment deadlines should be extended until at least 180 days after license application and scoping and intervention materials are made available in Spanish;
- The inadequate WCS Environmental Report must thoroughly examine:
- Risks to groundwater, including the Dockhum and Ogallala Aquifer, which lies beneath eight states, providing drinking water, and water for agriculture, ranching and wildlife.
- The impacts of temperature extremes, wildfires, flooding, earthquakes, tornadoes, lightning, and shifting ground (as reported in recent Southern Methodist University studies) on radioactive waste casks and canisters.
- The competing economic interests and land uses in the area, including oil and gas development, solar development, ranching, livestock and agriculture.
- The environmental injustice of dumping high-level radioactive waste on the largely Hispanic West Texas region
- The adequacy of financial assurances, the stability of the new WCS owner, an equity firm that buys and sells companies, and the ties of partner Orano (with a 51%, share) to the French government.
- Monitoring, security and worker protections, as well as an adequate emergency plan
Storage of high-level nuclear waste, which causes cancer, threatens public health and safety, and transporting the waste comes with added risks: Just one catastrophic train accident or terrorist attack would result in dangerous levels of (odorless and colorless) radioactive exposure for Texas communities, billions of dollars of municipal cleanup costs, and irreparable damage to our life-sustaining environment.
The proposal to bring all of these fuel rods from nuclear power plants across the country to West Texas comes from our old nemesis, Waste Control Specialists. WCS promised the Texas Legislature that it was only interested in “low-level waste,” only to break those promises, teaming up with a French company to form “Interim Storage Partners (ISP) LLC” and attempting to corner the market on “interim” disposal of high-level waste. This is the same company that initially said it would only take care of Texas and other states’ waste, only to ask the legislature to allow for imports of both waste and depleted uranium from other states.
Now, Texans from diverse backgrounds are mobilizing in opposition to this proposal from ISP, and Karen Hadden from SEED Coalition has been working alongside other organizations like Public Citizen in the “Protect Texas from Radioactive Waste Tour” to raise awareness and block the proposal. Hauling a life-sized mock transport cask, her tour passed through major Texas cities, rallying communities to take action in protection of their health and safety. The tour received press coverage from the Texas Tribune to El Paso times, as well as news organizations focused specifically on energy and the environment, like E&E News. Politically diverse entities like Midland County, Bexar County and the City of Denton have passed resolutions against the proposal to bring high-level waste through our cities and towns.
Making comments on the NRC’s website is an important way for Texans like you to show your strong opposition to the threats this proposal poses to your community.
Take a minute to save the years of damage this waste could bring to Texas!