State nuke waste site still faces legal fight
WASHINGTON — The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has approved the creation of a temporary nuclear waste storage site in West Texas that was the brainchild of the late Dallas billionaire Harold Simmons.
In an order issued Monday, the federal commission said a joint venture between Simmons’ former company Waste Control Specialists and the French nuclear giant Orana Group could store up to 5,000 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel for 40 years at a site in Andrews County, about 40 miles northwest of Midland. The decision marked the end a yearslong federal review process, leaving the courts to decide whether the project moves ahead.
The interim storage facility would be the first of its kind in the United States and be used until a permanent solution is found for the stockpiles of nuclear waste scattered at power plants around the country. But there is stiff oppo
sition in Texas, with Gov. Greg Abbott signing a bill last week that aims to block the project.
“The proposed (storage) facility imperils America’s energy security because it would be a prime target for attacks by terrorists, saboteurs, and other enemies,” Abbott wrote to the NRC last November. “This location could not be worse for storing ultra-hazardous radioactive waste.”
Abbott’s office did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday. A spokesman for Waste Control Specialists, which was purchased by the New York private equity firm J.F. Lehman & Co. after Simmons died in 2013, also declined to comment.
The proposal to store nuclear waste in West Texas’ wide-open spaces has long divided Texans. While former governor and U.S. energy secretary Rick Perry backed the project, an unlikely coalition of environmentalists, ranchers and some in the oil industry, argued the plan was not worth the risk of radiation exposure en route to, or at, the storage site.
Under the NRC order, spent nuclear rods from around the country would be placed in specially designed casks and shipped by train to the site in Andrews County, potentially along rail routes running through major metropolitan areas like Houston and Dallas. In addition to the nuclear fuel, the site is authorized to store up to 231
metric tons of low-level radioactive waste, such as tools and equipment used at nuclear power plants.
The joint venture plans to potentially expand the site to hold 40,000 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel, but that expansion also would need to be approved by the NRC. Holtec International, a Florida company, is also awaiting approval
from the NRC on a similar temporary waste storage facility in New Mexico.
Environmental groups including the Sierra Club and the Austinbased Sustainable Energy and Economic Development Coalition, as well as the Fasken family, which controls vast swaths of land in West Texas, have already filed federal lawsuits seeking to block
the Andrews County project and are awaiting a hearing in the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.
“The message should be loud and clear: Texas doesn’t want the nation’s deadliest nuclear waste and does not consent to being a dumping ground,” said Karen Hadden, executive director of the SEED Coalition.
The order by the NRC marks a milestone in a decadeslong political battle.
In 1987 Congress designated a ridge in the Nevada desert about 90 miles north of Las Vegas called Yucca Mountain to be the nation’s repository. But decades of political opposition led by Nevada Democrat and former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid kept the project from moving forward. In 2010, President Barack Obama scrapped the plan, and the Biden administration opposes it as well.
Instead, the administration plans to work with Congress and states to reach consent on storing nuclear waste, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm told Congress earlier this year.
But if the government cannot come to an agreement on a permanent storage site in the next 40 years, finding a new home for the nuclear waste that ends up in West Texas, New Mexico or other temporary sites could be difficult.
“The NRC never should have even considered these applications,” said Diane Curran, an attorney for Beyond Nuclear, one of the environmental groups suing to block the projects. “Licensing the (Texas and New Mexico) facilities would defeat Congress’ purpose of ensuring that nuclear waste generated by U.S. reactors will go to a deep geologic repository, rather than to vulnerable surface facilities that may become permanent nuclear waste dumps.”