By John Stang
Transportation, potential terrorism and environmental justice were among the concerns voiced Thrusday at web-based public hearing on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s draft environmental impact statement on Interim Storage Partners’ proposal to build a spent nuclear fuel storage site in western Texas.
“We don’t want high-level radioactive wastes dumped in our home,” said Karen Hadden, executive director of Texas’ Sustainable Energy and Economic Development Coalition.
“The NRC [Nuclear Regulatory Commission] has done a very thorough evaluation,” countered Steve Nesbit, vice president of the Illinois-based American Nuclear Society.
This was the third of four webinars on the draft environmental impact statement. The fourth is scheduled for 11 a.m. Eastern time on Thursday, Oct. 15. The NRC will receive public comments until Nov. 3 with a final environmental impact statement expected in July 2021, the NRC said Friday.
“We believe we have provided ample opportunity for the public to comment, in writing and in person through our virtual public meetings,” NRC spokesperson David McIntyre said, adding that the comment period, which ends on Nov. 3, has already been extended once.
Interim Storage Partners (ISP), a joint venture of Orano and Waste Control Specialists, wants to build a facility in Andrews County, Texas next to the New Mexico border. Holtec International is trying to build a similar facility just across the border in Lea County, N.M. ISP hopes to obtain an initial 40-year NRC license in 2021 or 2022 for its site, which would start with a 5,000-metric-ton capacity that could be expanded in phases to 40,000 metric tons.
The draft environmental impact statement concluded that both the first and expanded versions of ISP’s 330-acre facility would have small impacts on the area’s land use, roads and railroads, groundwater, air quality, geology and public health. The draft said the project would not have a disproportionately harmful high effect on the area’s poor and people of color.
About 60 new workers are expected to be permanently employed with an additional 50 present during construction. The nearest home is four miles away. The biggest earthquake in the area occurred 18 miles away in 1992, and was a 5 on the Richter scale. That translates to tremors felt by everyone, while damaging poorly constructed buildings.
Canisters of used nuclear fuel are expected to be shipped from around the nation to Andrews County by rail, under ISP’s plan. The environmental impact statement estimates that the initial 5,000 metric tons would require 425 train trips to Andrews County, while the 40,000-metric-ton scenario would translate to 3,400 train trips.
On Thursday, someone from the Houston area, and three others from non-Texas locations, wanted the NRC to delay decisions on licensing the ISP and Holtec sites until their communities are studied for the impacts of railcars holding spent fuel going through their localities.
The draft environmental impact statement found that a person sitting 30 meters from the rail line the fuel is transported on would receive a dose of 1.9 mrem from 3,400 shipments. No accidental release of canistered fuel under the most severe impacts studied was detected.
Nesbit said that no radioactivity has ever escaped from a spent fuel canister — even those that had been in accidents — while being transported. He noted that spent fuel is a solid, which is less likely to escape and disperse than a liquid or gas. However, Sandra Soria of Fort Worth argued that the ISP and Holtec sites will dramatically increase the rail traffic of used fuel to increase the likelihood of a radiation-leaking accident.
At least three people said the draft environmental impact statement did not seriously consider the threat of terrorism. Cynthia Wheeler of New Mexico argued that a terrorism threat is not far-fetched, noting a just-foiled extremist plot to storm Michigan’s Capitol building and to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.
In another issue, attorney Terry Large said that the ISP site will likely receive different types fuel canisters that will have to be repacked into standard casks to be sent to a future permanent repository — meaning the transfer of fuel between casks in Andrews County is an activity that has not been seriously considered as a safety matter.
A permanent repository has been proposed for Yucca Mountain, Nevada, but Congress — led by lawmakers from Nevada — has stalled funding for the project since 2010, putting it in an indefinite limbo. The Obama administration shelved DOE’s application to license Yucca with the NRC, and the Trump administration gave up on a push to resume the licensing process as the President’s reelection campaign was gearing up in earnest last year.
Meanwhile, an attorney in attendance said she had “great concerns” about environmental justice: the issue of poor communities or communities of people of color being targeted as the host of industries that could harm their environments and health. The National Environmental Protection Act requires federal agencies to consider the issue in environmental reviews.
“This is another industrial burden you’re asking for these communities to bear,” Caroline Crowe, an attorney for the Lone Star Legal Fund, said Thursday evening.
Sixty-five percent of Lea County’s population of 71,000 consists of people of color, which most are Latinos. Similarly, 60 percent of Andrews County’s almost 19,000 residents are people of color, again mostly Hispanics.
The NRC’s draft statement found groundwater will not be impacted by the facility, and the only notable sociological impact would be an increase in population and economy in the proposed area of the site. All impact was detected as “small” or “moderate.”
Clare Roth contributed from Washington.
