Waste Control Specialists CEO and President Rod Baltzer is defending the prospect for shipping nuclear waste to the company’s planned interim storage site in West Texas, pointing to clean safety records and extreme tests that ensure the durability of transportation casks.
Transportation has been a highly contentious topic in WCS’ proposal to build and operate a consolidated interim spent fuel storage site in Andrews County, near the Texas border with New Mexico. The company is seeking a 40-year license for a facility with a capacity to store 40,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel, about half the inventory of material that is now stranded at American reactor sites. The WCS site — and a planned Holtec International storage facility in New Mexico — are intended as interim measures until the Department of Energy builds a permanent repository for the material.
Leaders in the Dallas County, Bexar County, and San Antonio have all in recent weeks approved resolutions opposing potential transportation routes for nuclear waste through their Texas communities. Meanwhile, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission as of Tuesday had received about 16,000 comments as it considers WCS’ license application, many voicing concern for the transport of spent nuclear fuel through Texas.
Among the public comments to the NRC is a joint letter signed by hundreds of residents in and around Andrews County, all expressing “great concern” about the impact of the project on children and future generations in the area. Organizer Humberto Acosta said his group has had “overwhelming success” in gathering signatures and would have significantly more names if it had more time to discuss the project with residents.
“[W]e have also found that many of the people do not speak English fluently and are ignorant of the facts, and thus an ignorant public can be taken advantage of very easily,” Acosta said, adding that there are fears that the site will become a permanent dumping ground. “We suspect that once the casks arrive in Andrews County, the pressure to move the waste any further would be off and they will be here ‘forever.’”
Local residents have also raised their concerns before the Midland County Commissioners Court in Texas, and Baltzer on Saturday published a commentary in the Midland Reporter-Telegram. In the article, he noted that there has never been a U.S. transportation accident resulting in radioactive release that led to injury or death. He also pointed out that there have been 20 million shipments of radioactive material across the world via highway, railway and, waterway. WCS’ plans involve rail shipments only.
Baltzer said that after one recent presentation on the proposal, an attendee asked him what would happen if a terrorist targeted the waste storage casks using a rocket launcher.
“I explained to him that U.S. and European governments have been conducting tests on these transportation casks for decades,” Baltzer wrote. “They’ve fired missiles at them, run trains into them, dropped them into flaming infernos, dropped them from heights into rock and submersed them in water. The good news is that it’s all online now and publicly available.”
Waste Control Specialists submitted its license application for the spent fuel storage facility in April 2016. It hopes to begin operations in 2021.
With strict oversight from the Departments of Energy, Transportation, and Homeland Security, Baltzer said there will be a multitude of protocols in place before the spent fuel arrives at Andrews.
“But when it does arrive, you can rest assured that it will have been transported safely and securely to its interim destination,” Baltzer said.
