Small Texas town rolls out welcome mat for nuclear waste
Opponents warn locals of hazardous material project’s consequences
ANDREWS — Not many American towns would welcome thousands of tons of high-level nuclear waste. Fewer still would see its leaders spend three decades trying to bring it there.
In Andrews, a hardworking oil town of 18,000 on the empty, flat plains of the Permian Basin, a company wants the potentially deadly radioactive leftovers that nuclear power plants and other facilities would rather get rid of.
For a price, Waste Control Specialists would take this waste from across the country and store it above ground for 40 to 100 years until the federal government can find a permanent resting place, something that has eluded it for more than 30 years.
The players in the game include the Department of Energy, Congress, the commercial nuclear industry, town residents, anti-nuclear activists, the independent Nuclear Regulatory Commission and, most important, WCS, which already owns a 14,000-acre storage and disposal facility 30 miles from Andrews, close to the Texas-New Mexico border. 29 years of waste
In the U.S., roughly 70,000 metric tons of highly radioactive spent nuclear fuel are now being “temporarily” stored at more than 62 operating or closed nuclear power plants. That includes 29 years’ worth of waste now being stored at the South Texas Project, a nuclear plant jointly owned by San Antonio’s CPS Energy, Austin Energy and NRG Energy.
Recently, a “consentbased siting process” for the waste became a mantra of the DOE, which has the most responsibility over the material itself.
Earlier this month, the NRC, which regulates both nuclear power plants and sites like WCS, held a meeting in Andrews that drew 300 people. The crowd seemed roughly evenly divided, though many people came from the nearby cities of Midland and Odessa and even farther afield. The NRC also held meetings Feb. 13 in Hobbs, N.M., and at its Maryland headquarters Thursday.
Andrews’ business leaders and elected officials mostly support the project. It employs 170 people, about half of whom live on the Texas side, and the county receives a 5 percent tax on disposal fees. Still, anti-nuclear activists from hundreds or thousands of miles away have found traction with some locals learning about an important issue for the first time.
“People are not aware of the consequences this could bring to our town,” said Elizabeth Padilla, 28, a housewife and mother of three who spoke against WCS’ plans at the NRC hearing.
Andrews is not the only affected town. Just 5 miles west of the WCS site over the New Mexico line is Eunice, a town of 2,500. The rail spur that delivers waste shipments to WCS goes through Eunice, not Andrews.
“If it was a good idea, then everybody would be on board wanting this stuff,” said Rose Gardner, a Eunice resident who has spoken out about WCS for years. Donations to Perry
Looming over the process is the involvement of former Gov. Rick Perry, who is awaiting Senate confirmation as secretary of the DOE, an agency whose name he famously forgot in a 2011 presidential debate. Perry wrote a letter in favor of Texas accepting high-level waste in 2014.
Dallas billionaire Harold Simmons, who until his death in 2013 controlled WCS’ parent company, Valhi, donated more than $1.1 million to Perry’s governor campaigns. Watchdogs say that amount made Simmons Perry’s secondbiggest donor.
Though it already accepts hazardous waste and low-level radioactive waste, generally from hos- pitals, research centers and power plants, WCS wants to add spent nuclear fuel, or what remains of a nuclear fuel rod after it has been used in a reactor to generate electricity. This waste is one of the significant downsides of zerocarbon nuclear power. Remains radioactive
Ten years after the fuel becomes too thermally cool to efficiently generate electricity, it still emits enough radiation to kill a person standing next to it without a shield. The waste remains dangerously radioactive for tens of thousands of years. Last week, Bexar County commissioners passed a resolution against any of the waste being shipped through the county on its way to Andrews, if it goes there.
In the 1980s, some of the town’s leaders got together and decided that Andrews was the perfect place to put it.
“We actually got recruited to the area,” said WCS President and CEO Rod Baltzer, the company’s former CFO.