Dallas County on Tuesday became the latest Texas jurisdiction to wade into the debate over plans to store up to 40,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel in the far west of the state.
The county Commissioners Court approved a resolution expressing opposition to transportation of high-level waste, including used reactor fuel, by rail or road though Dallas County on its way to interim or permanent storage in Texas. Instead, the waste should be kept at its points of origin around the nation until a permanent repository is built, according to the resolution, backed unanimously by the four commissioners present at the morning meeting.
The action follows approval of similar resolutions by leaders in Bexar County and the city of San Antonio.
Waste Control Specialists last April filed for a Nuclear Regulatory Commission license to build and operate a consolidated interim spent fuel storage facility in Andrews County, right along the Texas border with New Mexico. If everything goes right for the Dallas-based company, the site would begin operations in 2021 and stay open at least until the Department of Energy establishes a final resting place for the waste.
Commissioner Theresa Daniel said the county panel would oppose interim storage until there is clarity on the transportation routes for the spent fuel and the potential risk posed by the material. “Since the transportation study isn’t due to be completed until 2022, this is our only opportunity to raise this issue before WCS license is decided,” Daniel, who introduced the resolution, said by email after the vote.
“I have known about the transport of the waste for many years and am now even more acutely aware due to the potential impact on citizens in the county I have direct responsibility for,” Daniel told RadWaste Monitor.
It was not immediately clear what study Daniel was referring to.
There is currently more than 75,000 metric tons of spent reactor fuel stored on-site at nuclear plants in 35 states, and the stockpile is growing by about 2,000 metric tons per year. Congress in 1982 demanded that the Department of Energy permanently deal with the nation’s holdings of commercial and defense waste, and five years later directed that a repository be built at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. The Obama administration canceled the project, but the Trump administration appears set on reviving it – starting with resuming licensing activities in the upcoming budget year.
In the meantime, there is broad consensus on the need to consolidate the material for a few decades. That’s where Waste Control Specialists comes in – along with Holtec International, which last week filed its own NRC license application for a storage site in southeastern New Mexico that could hold up to 120,000 metric tons of spent fuel.
The Bexar County Commissioners Court on Feb. 21 approved a resolution saying it would not “support or consent to” radioactive waste in Texas or neighboring New Mexico, as well as transport of the waste by highway or railway through the county to storage in those states.
The City Council of San Antonio, which is in Bexar County, on March 30 unanimously approved a resolution that only opposes transport through the city of high-level radioactive waste. “We’re not opposed to the facility,” said Chris Stewart, chief of staff to Council Member Ron Nirenberg, who introduced the resolution. The city owns CPS Energy, which has a 40 percent stake in the South Texas Project nuclear power plant.
WCS spokesman Chuck McDonald noted Monday that neither the company nor anyone else knows what the transportation routes would be. Those decisions would be made after the license is secured, which would take another two years from now, he said.
However, spent fuel from nuclear plants spread around the nation is likely to pass through Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio as it rolls by train toward the Waste Control Specialists, according to a map of major commercial rail lines in Texas published on Feb. 4 by the San Antonio Express-News.
“As this license application moves forward, WCS will be doing plenty of public outreach in all potentially impacted areas which would include those counties that would be along any potential transportation routes,” McDonald said by email. “We do still have some time to discuss routes, work with DOE and first responders in those communities along any potential transportation corridors. That’s exactly what we have done with low level radioactive and we will be ready for the safe and secure shipment and storage of this high level material.”
Stewart acknowledged that San Antonio officials can’t yet be sure that would happen, but their worry lies in the city’s location, in south-central Texas, relative to the nuclear plants and WCS storage site.
The Texas community resolutions have emphasized the danger posed by the radioactive waste. Dallas County cited a 1985 DOE study that found that even a small amount of radioactive material could contaminate a 42-square-mile area. The same study projected it could cost $620 million to clean up a rural area after an incident, and $9.5 billion to remediate the most heavily contaminated square mile in an urban area.
Waste Control Specialists has emphasized the safety record of nuclear waste transport. CEO Rod Baltzer said in a recent blog post that no container of highly radioactive waste has been breached in roughly 7,000 spent nuclear fuel shipments globally dating to 1971.
The Department of Energy would take title to the spent fuel and work with the Department of Transportation to ensure safe transport of the material under federal regulations, Baltzer said. Subcommittees of DOE’s National Transportation Stakeholders Forum are already working on developing rail routes for transport, as well as emergency response and inspection protocols for the shipments, he added.
“With an understanding of all the federal and state coordination that is underway, I am confident that both DOE and DOT will have an approved SNF transportation plan, along with the necessary equipment and infrastructure, well in advance of the first shipment to a Consolidated Interim Storage Facility,” Baltzer wrote. “We certainly will not open for operation until all the required elements are in place.”
