The South Texas Project nuclear power facility in Bay City, Texas could be under extreme threat from historic flood waters, groups warned on Tuesday. (Photo: STP)
As record-breaking rainfall and unprecedented flooding continue to batter the greater Houston area and along the Gulf coast on Tuesday, energy watchdogs groups are warning of "a credible threat of a severe accident" at two nuclear reactors still operating at full capacity in nearby Bay City, Texas.
Three groups—Beyond Nuclear, South Texas Association for Responsible Energy, and the SEED Coalition—are calling for the immediate shutdown of the South Texas Project (STP) which sits behind an embankment they say could be overwhelmed by the raging flood waters and torrential rains caused by Hurricane Harvey.
"With anticipated flooding of the Colorado River, the nuclear reactors should be shut down now to ensure safety."
—Karen Hadden, SEED Coalition "Both the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the STP operator have previously recognized a credible threat of a severe accident initiated by a breach of the embankment wall that surrounds the 7,000-acre reactor cooling water reservoir," said Paul Gunter, director of the Beyond Nuclear’s Reactor Oversight Project, in a statement by the coalition on Tuesday.
The groups warn that as Harvey—which on Tuesday was declared the most intense rain event in U.S. history—continues to dump water on the area, a breach of the embankment wall surrounding the twin reactors would create "an external flood potentially impacting the electrical supply from the switchyard to the reactor safety systems." In turn, the water has the potential to "cause high-energy electrical fires and other cascading events initiating a severe accident leading to core damage." Even worse, they added, "any significant loss of cooling water inventory in the Main Cooling Reservoir would reduce cooling capacity to the still operating reactors that could result in a meltdown."
With the nearby Colorado River already cresting at extremely high levels and flowing at 70 times the normal rate, Karen Hadden, director of SEED Coalition, warned that the continue rainfall might create flooding that could reach the reactors. "There is plenty of reserve capacity on our electric grid," she said, "so we don’t have to run the reactors in order to keep the lights on. With anticipated flooding of the Colorado River, the nuclear reactors should be shut down now to ensure safety."
Last week, the STP operators said that safety for their workers and local residents was their top concern, but that they would keep the plant operating despite the approaching storm.
Susan Dancer, president of the South Texas Association for Responsible Energy, said that as residents in Bay City—herself included—were being forced to leave their homes under manadatory evacaution orders, it makes no sense to keep the nuclear plant online.
"Our 911 system is down, no emergency services are available, and yet the nuclear reactors are still running. Where is the concern for employees and their families? Where is the concern for public safety? This is an outrageous and irresponsible decision," declared Dancer. "This storm and flood is absolutely without precedent even before adding the possibility of a nuclear accident that could further imperil millions of people who are already battling for their lives."
As Harvey hovers over the coastal region, heavy rains are expected to persist for days even as the storm system creeps toward to Louisiana in the east.
But no matter how remote the possibility, said Gunter, "it’s simply prudent that the operator put this reactor into its safest condition, cold shutdown."
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AUSTIN, Texas: Texas is trying to take the federal government to task for failing to find a permanent disposal site for thousands of metric tons of radioactive waste piling up at nuclear reactor sites across the country.
In a lawsuit filed Tuesday night, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton accuses U.S. agencies of violating federal law by failing to license a nuclear waste repository in Nevada — a plan delayed for decades amid a highly politicized fight.
Paxton’s petition asks the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit to force the Nuclear Regulatory Committee to cast an up-or-down vote on the Yucca Mountain plan. It also seeks to prevent the federal Department of Energy from spending billions of dollars in fees collected from utilities on efforts to find another disposal site before such a vote.
“For decades, the federal government has ignored our growing problem of nuclear waste,” Paxton said in a statement Wednesday. “The NRC’s inaction on licensing Yucca Mountain subjects the public and the environment to potential dangerous risks from radioactive waste. We do not intend to sit quietly anymore.”
Paxton filed the lawsuit just two weeks after former Texas Gov. Rick Perry was sworn in as the agency’s leader. And it comes as Texas’ only radioactive waste site — run by Waste Control Specialists in Andrews County — is asking the NRC to let it temporarily store the nation’s spent nuclear fuel.
About 78,000 metric tons of spent uranium rods are stored at operating or closed reactor sites throughout the country, with 2,610 metric tons in Texas. Those sites, mostly meant to be temporary, are filling up.
Though the nuclear energy industry insists that temporary waste disposal — either in pools or sealed in dry casks of metal or concrete — is safe and environmentally sound, it has long agreed that sealing the waste in geologic formations deep underground boosts protection against terrorist attacks and natural disasters, such as the earthquake and tsunami that rocked Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station in 2011.
For more than 20 years, Washington saw Yucca Mountain as the solution, and the federal government spent tens of millions of dollars preparing it to accept the waste. But Nevada’s congressional delegation — led by now-retired U.S. Sen. Harry Reid, a Democrat — has thwarted the project. And, facing significant political pressure, President Barack Obama’s administration abandoned the Yucca Mountain plans by failing to fund an NRC review.
“The NRC was never able to carry out its task to determine whether that site was safe,” said Dale Klein, associate vice chancellor for research at the University of Texas at Austin and a former NRC chairman under George W. Bush and Obama. “It was really frustrating that we were not able to do our job because of political reasons.”
Since 1983, utility ratepayers across the country chipped in billions of dollars to fund a waste repository — including $815 million collected from Texans. With interest, Texans have contributed $1.5 billion to the fund, managed by the Department of Energy.
A 2013 federal appeals court ruling halted the collections, and the fund now has an unspent balance of $40 billion, according to Paxton’s lawsuit, which opens with a comment from Perry during his confirmation hearing as energy secretary:
“My hope of this committee and administration is that we, finally after 35 years of kicking the can for whatever reason, we can start … moving to temporary or permanent siting of this nuclear waste.”
A Perry spokesman did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment.
During Perry’s tenure as governor, Texas became home to one of the nation’s few facilities that accept low-level nuclear waste. Since 2012, Waste Control Specialists, a company formerly owned by the late Dallas billionaire and Republican donor Harold Simmons, has disposed of contaminated tools, building materials and protective clothing, among other items, from shuttered reactors and hospitals.
That site in Andrews County grew rapidly during Perry’s final years in office. Over the objection of environmental groups, the company is seeking a licenseto temporarily store spent reactor fuel — high-level nuclear waste.
If Paxton’s suit does not force President Donald Drumpf’s administration to restart the Yucca Mountain plans, some observers say the federal government might more closely eye the Andrews County site — a move that would require Congress to change that 1987 law naming Yucca Mountain as the nation’s repository.
Asked whether Paxton’s lawsuit had anything to do with Waste Control Specialists’ expansion plans, Kayleigh Lovvorn, his spokeswoman, said her office had no comment.
Chuck McDonald, a spokesman for Waste Control Specialists, said the company had not yet read the lawsuit, “therefore, we don’t know if it will have an impact on our project or not.”
But he added: “WCS has always been supportive of a permanent repository, and we believe a consolidated interim storage facility is needed as part of an integrated waste management system in the U.S.”
Karen Hadden, executive director of the Sustainable Energy and Economic Development Coalition, a group fighting the Andrews County site’s expansion, agreed with Paxton’s criticism of the Yucca Mountain process — “a waste of money,” she said. But Hadden worries that the lawsuit could force the government to permit a site ill-equipped to protect public health and safety.
“It’s really important that we get a permanent repository in place that will isolate this waste so we don’t have cancer effects or deaths from contamination today or into the future,” Hadden said. “My concern is that [Paxton] has another Texas permanent disposal site in mind.”
Disclosure: The Harold Simmons Foundation and the University of Texas at Austin have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune. A complete list of Tribune donors and sponsors can be viewed here.
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A rendering of a temporary storage facility that would consolidate the country’s spent fuel rods at a site roughly 15 miles north of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant. The waste would be stored from 23 to three feet below the surface, and filled with as many as 87 spent fuel assemblies each, made up of thousands of fuel rods. Only the canisters’ lids — heavy, 4-ton steel rectangles running in perfect rows — would be visible on the surface. Courtesy Holtec InternationalAll radioactive waste generated by the nation’s nuclear power plants could be shipped to southeastern New Mexico as soon as 2022 and stored for decades just below ground, on the dry plains near Carlsbad, if a federal agency gives its approval.
On Friday, Holtec International, a nuclear fuel manufacturing and management company based in Florida, filed an application with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to create a temporary storage facility that would consolidate spent fuel rods from across the U.S. at a single site about 15 miles north of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant.
The project already has gained wide support from a number of state lawmakers, top state and county officials and New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez.
In a statement issued Friday, Holtec said the state government and local communities "have provided unwavering support for the program."
If the federal regulatory agency approves the plan, a process expected to take two years, the company could break ground on the nearly 1,000-acre parcel by 2019, with waste shipments starting in 2022. Company officials said they expect the project to generate up to 350 construction jobs and several hundred permanent jobs, including on-site security personnel, after the site opens.
The site would be licensed for 40 years by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and then it would be subject to a license renewal process.
Currently, there are 61 operating nuclear power plants, and 27 that are retired or in the process of being decommissioned, across 30 states, all with casks of above-ground nuclear waste. The largest of them, the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station in Arizona, which supplies power to New Mexico through the Public Service Company of New Mexico, has roughly 120 concrete casks of waste sitting on site.
Nuclear power plants run on nuclear fuel — composed of radioactive uranium compacted into thin rods, 15 inches long and the width of a pinky finger. The rods are stacked into a rack and used to generate nuclear power through fission. After about six years, the rods are cooled in ponds on plant property and then stored above ground in concrete casks.
But a number of states worry about the vulnerability of these materials — either from an accident that could compromise the environment or public health, or from an attack. Nuclear power plants are considered a potential security threat, in part because the radioactive materials they hold could be used to create crude nuclear bombs.
In 2012, the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future identified temporary consolidated storage as a feasible solution.
The Holtec site would have the capacity for 10,000 canisters of spent nuclear fuel, more than enough to hold all the spent rods generated in the U.S. so far, according to company officials.
They said the facility would emit a radiation dose of "virtually zero."
At the site, a mile from N.M. 62, nearly equidistant from Hobbs and Carlsbad, a wide pit would be dug 30 feet into the earth and divided by hundreds of cylindrical carbon steel vessels. The waste would be stored from 3 to 23 feet below the surface. Each vessel would be filled with as many as 89 spent fuel assemblies, each made up of thousands of fuel rods.
The waste field would have the appearance of a graveyard. Only the canister lids — 4-ton steel squares placed in perfect rows — would be visible from the surface.
Joy Russell, a spokeswoman for Holtec International, said underground storage not only protects the environment but guards the material from terrorists, missile attacks or aircraft collisions.
It would be the fourth underground facility of this nature designed by Holtec in the U.S. A second proposed site, commissioned by Dallas-based Waste Control Specialists, is a year into the application process for regulatory approval. Located in Andrews, Texas, just east of the New Mexico border, the project has generated protest and mixed support from the surrounding communities. The two sites are fewer than 50 miles apart.
Russell said community support for the proposed New Mexico facility was a key factor in its location. "The general population in the southeast New Mexico area is very knowledgeable about nuclear," she said, "and is very welcoming to nuclear-based industry for its industry growth."
In fact, the Eddy-Lea Energy Alliance, a coalition of officials from the two counties and several cities in them, first approached Holtec about the project in 2012. The alliance had previously purchased the land north of WIPP in 2007, hoping to convert spent nuclear fuel into regenerated fuel, according to alliance vice chairman John Heaton.
But that project never materialized. In 2012, when the Blue Ribbon Commission recommended a consolidation site, the alliance saw another use for the land.
"We thought this was an ideal location," Heaton said.
The area is close to a four-lane highway and a railroad line, and is 25 miles from the closest community. Although, there is a ranch home a few miles from the site, as well as potash, and oil and gas operations nearby.
"The people here have a very good and deep understanding of nuclear materials and what the risks are and what they aren’t," Heaton said.
He said the project could be a $2.4 billion investment in capital for the state, although company officials declined to discuss cost estimates Friday.
Carlsbad has had an intimate relationship with nuclear waste since WIPP began accepting low-level transuranic waste — largely contaminated soil, tools and rags — in 1999. The plant closed down for nearly three years — only reopening in January — after an underground fire and a radiation leak in 2014, caused by an improperly packaged waste drum that burst underground. Parts of the salt mine and its ventilation system were contaminated.
Still, it seems that support for nuclear waste projects has not waned in the region.
The area is also home to the Urenco USA uranium enrichment factory in Eunice, which provides the materials used at the core of fuel rods.
Holtec says it has received support from six local legislators and Mayor Dale Janway of Carlsbad, Mayor Sam Cobb of Hobbs, commissioners in Eddy and Lea counties, state Environment Secretary Butch Tongate and Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Secretary Ken McQueen.
Gov. Martinez expressed her support for the project in 2015, writing a letter to then-U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz.
"I support the [Eddy-Lea Energy Alliance] and its member cities and counties in their effort to establish a consolidated interim storage facility in southeastern New Mexico that will be regulated by the high safety and technical standards of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission," the governor wrote.
"We desperately need jobs," said Rep. James Townsend, R-Artesia. "There is not a single thing that would solve our fiscal situation quicker than more goods jobs. This industry provides good jobs and has a good track record.
"I don’t believe the community or the state will allow something to occur that they don’t believe is safe," he continued. "Look at WIPP’s track record. Overall, we have had a very good track record, and I believe this facility will perform equally."
Eddy County Commission Chairwoman Stella Davis also said the project would be an important job creator and voiced support for the nuclear industry.
Even if the temporary consolidation project moves forward, there is currently no permanent place for the waste to go. That could leave New Mexico with the burden without an end in sight.
U.S. Sen. Tom Udall, D-N.M., said in an email that he "won’t support an interim disposal site without a plan for permanent disposal — whether the site is in southeastern New Mexico or anywhere else in the country — because that nuclear waste could be orphaned there indefinitely."
In 1987, Congress designated Yucca Mountain in Nevada as the place to permanently dispose of high-level waste. Billions of dollars were invested in the project despite public and political outcry in the state. When former President Barack Obama took office, he halted the project and sought to withdraw its license application from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
But President Donald Drumpf appears to have other ideas. A draft budget released in March outlines $120 million for Yucca Mountain and interim storage over the coming fiscal year, with few further details on the plan. Nevada lawmakers said in March that they would reject any restart of the Yucca Mountain waste site project.
Udall, meanwhile, said WIPP already has served as New Mexico’s contribution to the nation’s waste storage problem.
"Any future nuclear waste mission in New Mexico would need broad support throughout the state, as well as an independent scientific analysis ensuring its safety before I would consider supporting it," he said.
Contact Rebecca Moss at 505-986-3011 or rmoss(at)sfnewmexican.com.
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Jeff Mosier, Environmental Writer
Dallas Morning News
Andrews County is a five-hour drive to the west, but a proposed project there is worrying some Dallas County officials.
Waste Control Specialists has an application pending to store tons of used fuel from nuclear power plants in sparsely populated West Texas. That radioactive waste could potentially pass through Texas’ major cities — including ones in the Dallas area — by train.
Dallas County commissioners are scheduled to vote Tuesday on a resolution opposing any effort to transport "high level" radioactive waste through this area.
"The public health of Dallas County residents must be protected. Just because the railroad goes through the county does not mean that the population of a large urban area should be put in peril," Commissioner Theresa Daniel said in a written statement.
Daniel asked that the resolution be placed on the agenda. The proposed waste site would hold spent fuel from nuclear power plants, where the waste is now housed as it awaits a long-term dump site.
County Commissioner Theresa Daniel plans to introduce a resolution Tuesday opposing the transportation of nuclear waste through Dallas County. (Nathan Hunsinger/The Dallas Morning News Staff Photographer)
Bexar County commissioners have already expressed their opposition, and San Antonio city officials are considering weighing in on the issue.
"The transportation of spent nuclear fuel takes place safely every day, of every week, of every year in the United States," said Waste Control spokesman Chuck McDonald. "There’s never been a single accident that resulted in the release of any radioactive material of any kind."
He said a recent Department of Energy report confirmed that.
The first phase of Waste Control’s plan would take spent fuel from plants that had been closed and decommissioned, McDonald said.
The Department of Energy, now led by former Gov. Rick Perry, has not yet created a transportation plan for the Waste Control proposal. But some possible routes lead through heavily populated areas.
The Waste Control plan calls for the waste to arrive by rail. Trucks would only be used if the plant didn’t have direct access to a rail line.
Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins said he’s not taking a stance on the Waste Control application and acknowledged that the nuclear "waste has to go somewhere."
"The metroplex has 7 million people, and I am responsible for the safety of 2.6 million here in Dallas County," he said. "We simply don’t want radioactive waste to come through our area. There are ways to route those trains around."
Andrews County, where the dump would be located, is one of the least populated areas in Texas. It had about 18,000 residents in 2015.
Environmental activists are rounding up support from local governments in an effort to halt the proposal to store the waste along the Texas border with New Mexico. Waste Control, a firm started by the late Dallas billionaire Harold Simmons, has submitted its application but this is likely to be a long process.
One other company, Holtec International, submitted an application last month. That site is in a county adjacent to Andrews, just across the New Mexico border.
McDonald called these efforts by environmental groups "premature" and "publicity stunts." He said there would be further public hearings. And local government along the transportation routes would have input.
Tom "Smitty" Smith, outgoing director of Public Citizen’s Texas office, said the transportation plan will be finalized after the permit is issued. He said this is the time for local governments and individuals to have their say.
Critics — including Public Citizen and the Sustainable and Economic Development Coalition — have pointed to many reasons why they oppose the plan. They are concerned the site could taint the Ogallala aquifer or that it’s not sufficiently secure.
On Monday, Public Citizen pointed to the danger of a terrorist attack or accident while a train and its waste pass through populated areas.
"… Current nuclear waste transport casks have not been subjected to full-scale testing," Smith said in a written statement. "For example, the casks are only required to withstand an engulfing fire at 1475 degrees Fahrenheit for 30 minutes, while materials that share the railways burn at much hotter temperatures, like diesel, which burns at 1800º F and for longer than 30 minutes."
Critics also worry the Andrews County facility could turn into a permanent — rather than temporary — storage site.
The federal government previously decided to permanently house its high-level nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository in Nevada. After years of political fights and questions about its suitability, the project was essentially shelved during President Barack Obama’s administration.
But there are efforts by President Donald Drumpf’s administration to revive the Yucca Mountain project. Drumpf’s 2018 budget included $120 million for repository construction, which is opposed by Nevada politicians. And Perry made a surprise visit to the site Monday.
There’s also pressure from the state of Texas in support of the project. Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit against Perry, as energy secretary, over Yucca Mountain. The litigation demands that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission take an official vote on the project.
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A Midland geologist told the Midland City Council that public hearings are needed for Midlanders to decide on having high-level nuclear waste travel through the city.
David Rosen, who is also the chairman for the Midland County Democratic Party, told the council Tuesday it should pass a resolution similar to the one passed last month by Bexar County Commissioners. The resolution, according to the San Antonio Express-News, opposes shipments of thousands of pounds of spent nuclear fuel rods from more than 62 sites across the U.S. to a waste site in Andrews County.
"This poison will be coming through on our railroad tracks," Rosen said.
Rosen said the waste doesn’t need to go through Midland County because "things break," and when cleanup costs associated with such nuclear waste can rise into the billions, it is better to have it travel elsewhere.
Rosen and another geologist, Bridget Houston Hyde, said there were reasons to oppose H.R. 474, the Interim Consolidated Storage Act. That bill seeks to amend the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 "to authorize the Secretary of Energy to enter into contracts for the storage of certain high-level radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel, take title to certain high-level radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel, and make certain expenditures from the Nuclear Waste Fund."
Rosen said waste will be "left out in the open" and be visible by Google Earth maps, making the Waste Control Specialists facility in Andrews County a target for potential terrorism. He also said there have been earthquakes in the region, including a magnitude 4.7 quake that hit Andrews in 1992.
Hyde spoke to the legislation supported by U.S. Congressman Mike Conaway of Midland. The legislation allows up to 40,000 metric tons of high-level waste to be stored in Andrews. She said there are example of private companies taking over high-level radioactive waste sites and some of those are "Superfund sites." She said Texas is better to avoid the billions of dollars in cleanup that would have to take place if there was a problem in Andrews County.
"As a Texan, I cannot see how this serves as our state," Hyde said. "Cities along the route will be put at risk."
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