Next week, a committee of the Texas state House of Representatives will consider a bill that would ban storage of high-level nuclear waste, including spent fuel from power plants, in the Lone Star state.
H.B. 2692, proposed earlier this month by state Rep. Brooks Landgraf (R), will hear debate in the state’s House Environmental Regulation committee on March 22, according to a scheduling note published Wednesday. Landgraf chairs the committee.
The proposed measure prohibits the storage of high-level radioactive waste within Texas borders unless it’s stored onsite at a civilian power plant or university reactor. Low-level compact waste from the state’s agreement with Vermont would still be legal if the bill passes.
All this after the president of Waste Control Specialists (WCS), which is waiting for the federal go-ahead to build an interim storage facility for spent nuclear fuel in Andrews County, Texas, told the environment committee last week that the company wouldn’t build the proposed site without approval from Gov. Greg Abbott.
Abbott, for his part, opposes the proposed WCS site and made his opinion known in a letter to the White House last year.
WCS’ proposed interim storage facility is currently undergoing a federal environmental impact review, which the Nuclear Regulatory Commission expects it will finish up by the summer.
