The members of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) voted 3-0 Wednesday to reduce a charge for disposal of radioactive waste at a state-owned facility operated by Waste Control Specialists.
With little discussion during the teleconference, the three commissioners said they had no major objections to the company’s request to cut the curie inventory charge from $0.40 per millicurie (1/1000th of a curie) to $0.05 per millicurie for material shipped to the Texas Low-Level Radioactive Waste Disposal Compact facility in Andrews County.
However, the commissioners noted that questions regarding adding surcharges and fees on imported radioactive materials are likely to develop going forward, as more waste shipments arrive in Texas from nuclear decommissioning projects and other sources in states that are not members of the compact.
“There is still plenty to go on in this discussion,” said Commissioner Bobby Janecka, who previously worked as radioactive materials licensing section manager at TCEQ.
On Wednesday, WCS President and Chief Operating Officer David Carlson repeated what he told the commission at a hearing two weeks ago — that the company won’t be able to compete with other low-level radioactive waste facilities without the drop in the curie inventory charge. He contended the reduction would lead to greater volumes shipped to the Andrews County site, thus generating greater revenue for Texas.
Since its inception in 2012, the facility has received 185,578 cubic feet and 482,222 curies decayed of waste, which are respectively 2.1% and 12.4% of its licensed capacity, Carlson said at a separate July 9 meeting of the Texas Low-Level Radioactive Waste Disposal Compact Commission.
In 2019, WCS said the Compact Waste Facility was running an annual $10 million loss, collecting $24 million in yearly revenue against $34 million in operating costs. Revenue is derived solely from fees and charges for waste shipments. Reductions in certain fees and charges approved by the Texas Legislature in 2017 expired last September, and Gov. Greg Abbott (R) vetoed legislation that would have extended them into 2021.
The Compact Waste Facility is one of four disposal operations on the WCS property in Andrews County, along the state border with New Mexico. It is licensed to take the three official classes of low-level waste: Class A, B, and C, which can cover anything from debris from nuclear decommissioning jobs, to contaminated protective gear, to residues.
There are three other commercial facilities around the United States licensed for disposal of low-level waste: EnergySolutions’ sites in Clive, Utah, and Barnwell, S.C., and a US Ecology operation at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state.
A portion of revenue from the Compact Waste Facility goes to the state and to Andrews County. Texas’ share of the site’s revenue is deposited into the state’s Environmental Radiation and Perpetual Care Account. The TCEQ can only access funds appropriated by the state Legislature from this account.
In total over nearly a decade, Waste Control Specialists has made $58 million in payments to the state and $13 million to Andrews County, Carlson said last week.
Critics contended Wednesday, though, that the reduced curie fee will untimely trim revenue to Texas.
“To reduce the fee by a factor of eight, that would mean an eight-fold in importation (in received radioactive wastes),” said Adrian Shelley, director of Public Citizen-Texas.
Added Karen Hadden, executive director of the Austin-based SEED Coalition: “If more wastes come to the site, the more liability there will be at the end, when the state takes over (on closing the site).”
One caller raised the question of the close corporate relationship between Waste Control Specialists and one of its customers, NorthStar Group Services. Both companies are owned by private equity firm J.F. Lehman & Co., and they share the same chief executive officer and chief financial officer. The curie inventory charge reduction means NorthStar could get a break on material shipped for disposal at the Compact Waste Facility from its ongoing decommissioning of the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant.
“This is completely inappropriate,” said David Rosen, of Midland, Texas.
Vermont and Texas are the only members of the Texas Low-Level Radioactive Waste Disposal Compact, but up to 34 other states can ship waste to the facility for disposal following approval by the compact commission. The set curie charge is the most that can be placed on members of the compact and the least that must be paid by all other states.
Two weeks ago, Carlson said WCS and NorthStar are distinct corporations and that the surcharge reduction would affect the maximum that the landfill could charge NorthStar. He said WCS needs the reduced curie charge in Texas be competitive with EnergySolutions.
Texas owns and is the licensor for the compact facility, with WCS the operator and licensee.
Compact Facility Contingency Plan
Meanwhile, the Texas Low-Level Radioactive Waste Disposal Compact Commission is preparing a mandatory contingency plan for the potential closure of the facility.
The requirement is set in the 1998 federal law that established the Texas Low-Level Radioactive Waste Disposal Compact, to “Prepare, adopt, and implement contingency plans for the disposal and management of low-level radioactive waste in the event that the compact facility should be closed.”
The commission administers the provisions of the compact, including approving imports and exports of low-level waste. Four of its members – Chairman Brandon Hurley and Commissioners Linda Morris, Jeff Mundy, and Peter Bradford – began work on the contingency early this year, as the COVID-19 pandemic began spreading around the nation.
“I don’t know that we’re done yet by any means, but I want to commend everybody for all the work they’ve put in,” Hurley said during the commission’s July 9 virtual meeting. “I think this is an important issue and one that’s clearly been put on our plate by our statute, so it’s important that we address it.”
Details of the schedule for completion of the plan, and its contents, were not available at deadline Friday for RadWaste Monitor.
There was some discussion last week, though, of what is not in the document.
An early concept was to study the contingency plans developed by other regional low-level waste disposal compacts and effectively copy that approach, Mundy said. The compacts would then “perhaps work out an agreement where everybody will backstop each other. So if one compact goes down, for whatever reason … the other one would pick up the slack on an interim basis,” he said.
The problem is that the other compacts did not have contingency plans for the facilities they use for waste disposal, and their commissions showed little interest in a backstopping approach, Mundy added.
A follow-up idea involved having the state manage the facility on a temporary or permanent basis. But, as Texas looks to cut costs, asking it to spend up to tens of millions of dollars to run the facility was “a political nonstarter,” according to Mundy. The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality was also not prepared to take over management of the facility.
If the facility is forced to close, this situation suggests it would not reopen, Mundy said: “If a closure occurs, then it should be viewed as a permanent closure. It’s not something where you could go put a lid on it, come back in a year or two and flip the switch, start it back up.”
In that scenario, the commission would become more liberal with permits authorizing export of low-level radioactive waste to the other licensed disposal facilities around the nation.
Texas’ nuclear power plants have made strides in reducing their volumes of Class B and C waste, and by law can store that material on-site for up to two years. But other lower-level waste generators in the medical, academic, and other fields might be pressed to offload their low-level waste.
During the meeting, Carlson and commission members played down the potential for Waste Control Specialists to be forced to shutter operations at the facility.
“I am pleased to state that we do not anticipate that the contingency plan will ever need to be implemented, Carlson said. “Let me go one step farther than that and say we’re ready, if other facilities around the country that may or may not have their own financial issues, if they were to cease operations or to close, we would be ready to take on that as well.”
Hurley in recent months has held discussions with representatives of other regional low-level waste compacts about potential means of support they could provide for the Texas facility. Those discussions are ongoing, he said on July 9.
