A new buyer for Waste Control Specialists is expected to be announced in October, four months after a federal judge blocked a prior acquisition attempt, President and CEO Rod Baltzer said Monday.
Baltzer mentioned the timeline during a presentation at the Nuclear Decommissioning and Used Fuel Strategy Summit in Charlotte, N.C., according to multiple industry representatives who were in attendance. The conference was closed to RadWaste Monitor.
While Baltzer did not discuss details of the anticipated deal, one source at the conference said the buyer is rumored to be New York City-based nuclear decommissioning specialist NorthStar Group Services.
Waste Control Specialists did not respond to multiple requests for comment this week, while a representative for NorthStar was not able to immediately answer questions on the matter.
The Dallas-based radioactive waste storage provider is owned by holding company Valhi Inc., which in November 2015 announced it would sell the subsidiary for $367 million to one of its rivals, nuclear services firm EnergySolutions, of Salt Lake City. The deal would have made EnergySolutions the owner of three of the four U.S. disposal sites for low-level radioactive waste and freed Valhi of a financial drain that has lost millions of dollars in recent years.
The U.S. Justice Department sued in November 2016 to block the sale on antitrust grounds, arguing it would undercut competition by merging the top providers of low-level radioactive waste disposal in 36 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. U.S. District Judge Sue Robinson in June rule in favor of the federal case following a 10-day trial.
The companies abandoned the merger rather than appealing the court decision, and Valhi said in its latest 10-Q filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that it was “actively pursuing other third parties” for another deal. An industry source at the time said energy technology company Holtec International and French waste management company Veolia had been mentioned as potentially being interested in picking up Waste Control Specialists.
Waste Control Specialists’ primary asset is its 1,338-acre disposal complex in Andrews County, Texas, which is licensed for storage of various waste types, including LLRW.
The company in September received a $19.3 million task order from the Department of Energy for continued storage of several hundred containers of transuranic and Greater-Than-Class-C wastes that originated at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in neighboring New Mexico. The waste was shipped to WCS in 2014 after DOE’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M., was closed following a radiation release from a container from Los Alamos. Waste Control Specialists has shipped some containers to WIPP since its reopening last December, but must work with DOE to process 113 drums that cannot yet be transported because they hold a combustive waste mixture like the one that caused the 2014 WIPP incident.
In an effort to increase WCS’ competitiveness, the Texas Legislature this year reduced the fees on entities that ship radiological waste to the company’s West Texas site.
In his presentation, Baltzer reportedly indicated the company’s hopes to move forward with plans for a consolidated storage site for U.S. commercial nuclear reactor fuel. Waste Control Specialists in April 2016 filed a license application with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission for a facility that could hold up to 40,000 metric tons of used fuel on an interim basis until the Energy Department meets its legal requirement to build a permanent repository for the waste. However, the company last April asked the NRC to suspend review of the application pending conclusion of its merger with EnergySolutions. An agency spokesman this week said there was no update on the license.
If NorthStar does intend to buy WCS, it would be another move to increase its footprint in the nuclear cleanup business. The company earlier this year joined with AREVA Nuclear Materials to form Accelerated Decommissioning Partners, which intends to buy closed nuclear power plants for decommissioning and site restoration.
