WASHINGTON, D.C. – The federal government’s conclusion that Waste Control Specialists’ (WCS) omitted key safety and security information from its license application for a high-level radioactive waste dump at its Andrews County site in Texas highlights the dangers of the proposal, Public Citizen and SEED Coalition said today.

WCS seeks to expand its existing low-level waste site to take high-level radioactive waste from across the country. If approved, spent fuel rods from nuclear reactors around the country would be transported to Texas and stored for 40 years or longer, risking the possibility of creating a de-facto permanent disposal facility.

Read full press release…
 

Related Content: WCS Application for CISF License

• NRC’s Review Letter to WCS Advising of Insufficient Technical Information on Application
  NRC Letter Screenshot – 6/22/16
• Non-Proprietary Request For Supplemental Information And Observations
  WCS CISF Docket No. 72-1050
• Analysis of NRC’s Requests for Supplemental Information and Observations Regarding the WCS Application for a CISF License – Consolidated Interim Storage Facility – for High-Level Radioactive Waste Storage
  Key points summarized by SEED Coalition

• Halting High-Level Radioactive Waste Threats
  July 2016 Powerpoint Presentation
  by SEED Coalition – Karen Hadden, karendhadden(at)gmail.com
  Public Citizen – Tom “Smitty” Smith, smitty(at)citizen.org
  Former State Representative Lon Burnam, lonburnam(at)gmail.com
  NoNuclearWasteAqui.org

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• Highlevel Nuke Contacts – We Do Not Consent

What if these trains had been high-level dangerous radioactive waste?

• License application for Andrews nuclear waste site missing key safety, security details
  KXXV News 6/30/16
• Two Train Crew Members Found Dead After Texas Crash
  Amarillo Globe-News /Associated Press 6/29/16

April 28, 2016

For immediate Release
April 28, 2016
Contacts:
Karen Hadden, SEED Coalition, 512-797-8481
Tom "Smitty" Smith, Public Citizen, 512-797-8468

(Austin) A high-level consolidated radioactive waste storage site has been proposed for Andrews County, Texas, by Waste Control Specialists (WCS). The company expects to submit a license application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) this week and to have licensing and construction completed by the end of 2020.

"This plan is all risk, not only for the states of Texas and New Mexico, but for the whole country and it should be halted immediately," said Tom "Smitty" Smith, director of Public Citizen’s Texas Office. "Why is our region being targeted to become the nation’s dumping ground for high-risk high-level radioactive waste? Putting this waste on our highways and railways invites disaster. Radioactive waste moving through highly populated cities across the country could be targeted for sabotage by terrorists." A state report, the Assessment of Texas’ High-Level Radioactive Waste Storage Options, says that "spent nuclear fuel is more vulnerable to sabotage or accidents during transport than in storage because there are fewer security guards and engineered barriers, and that the consequences could be higher since the waste could travel through large cities." Read the full press release….

People who care about the land, air and water of West Texas and New Mexico, and the health and safety of people here and along
radioactive waste transport routes

"We do not consent to radioactive waste being dumped on our land or to transporting nuclear waste across the country."

High-level radioactive waste is the most dangerous of all radioactive materials. Contamination resulting from Fukushima meltdown disaster came from this same source – irradiated fuel from nuclear reactors.

High-level radioactive waste is mainly irradiated fuel rods from nuclear reactors that contain uranium and plutonium, which known to result in cancer if inhaled.

The fuel rods are still radioactively "hot," even after being in the reactor fuel pool for 5 – 10 years. An unshielded person 3 feet away from spent fuel rods would be immediately incapacitated and die within a week – according the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.

Radiation exposure can damage a person’s DNA, leading to birth defects, and cause many kinds of cancers, radiation sickness and death.

Nevada fought burial of high-level radioactive waste at the Yucca Mountain site for decades. Other states have fought as well. Even Texas. Deaf Smith County in the Texas Panhandle was considered as a permanent repository site before Yucca Mountain was chosen, but ranchers and farmers fought hard due to concerns about radioactive water contamination.

Centralized (Consolidated) Storage is unwise and is NOT needed. The least risky option is to remove irradiated fuel from reactor fuel pools and let it continue to cool in dry casks at the site where it was generated. Reactors are being licensed to store waste for 60 years past decommissioning, and the sites will remain guarded anyway.

Shipping this dangerous waste by rail or truck introduces risks of terrorism, as well as accidents. No permanent repository is available to dispose of wastes. Why ship it at all?

• Two West Texas counties, Andrews and Culberson, are proposed as potential sites for the centralized storage of dangerous high-level radioactive waste from nuclear reactors around the country, by Waste Control Specialists (WCS) and Advanced Fuel Cycle Initiative (AFCI) could later be considered for permanent disposal as well.
• Importing high-level radioactive waste imperils our health and lives with risks of accidents, radiation releases, leaks or terrorist actions.
• High-level radioactive waste is so dangerous that it must remain isolated from living things for thousands of years. It is mainly irradiated (spent) fuel rods from nuclear reactors, which still contain most of their original uranium, as well as with radioactive strontium, cesium and plutonium, which are created during the reactor fission process. Some of these materials have long half-lives, and remain dangerous for long periods of time. For example, plutonium remains dangerous for over a quarter of a million years. Inhaling it is a sure way to get cancer.
• There will be about 100,000 metric tons of irradiated fuel generated by existing U.S. reactors by the time they cease operating, with roughly 1000 metric tons of plutonium. If separated, there would be enough plutonium for 120,000 nuclear bombs. If diluted uniformly, the strontium-90 in would be enough the contaminate the entire fresh water supply of the world to about 60 times the U.S. drinking water standard.
• TCEQ acknowledges the vulnerability of radioactive waste to sabotage during transport, and that " consequences due to sabotage or accidents are also higher during transport since the waste may be near population centers."
• Centralized (consolidated) Interim Storage of the nation’s high-level waste at a single location would increase risks by creating an additional site that must be secured.
• DOE calculated an accident rate of 1 in 1000. If radioactive waste is shipped to a storage site, and then to a final repository, there would be more truck shipments and the number of likely accidents would also increase. Transport could be by rail as well, although tracks might have to be improved.
• A DOE contractor reported that a severe accident involving one radioactive waste cask that released only a small amount of waste would contaminate a 42 square mile area, with cleanup costs exceeding $620 million in a rural area. Clean up in an urban area would be more time consuming and it could cost up to $9.5 billion to raze and rebuild the most heavily contaminated square mile.
• Importing high-level radioactive waste might benefit a few corporations, but millions of Texans and others along transport routes in other states would bear the financial and health risks of accidents or sabotage.

1. Managing Spent Fuel and High-Level Waste: Strategic Considerations, Oct. 4, 2014, Presentation at Earth, Wind and Fire Summit, Dallas, Texas. Dr. Arjun Makhijani, President of Institute for Energy and Environmental Research
2. TCEQ’s Assessment of Texas’s High Level Radioactive Waste Storage Options, March 2014, Page 30. http://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1100389-tceq-assessment-of-texas-high-level-radioactive.html
3. Managing Spent Fuel and High-Level Waste: Strategic Considerations, Oct. 4, 2014, Presentation at Earth, Wind and Fire Summit, Dallas, Texas. Dr. Arjun Makhijani, President of Institute for Energy and Environmental Research
4. Fact sheet. Transportation of Spent Nuclear Fuel and High-Level Radioactive Waste to a Repository, Section 4. http://www.state.nv.us/nucwaste/yucca/trfact01.htm