Wrap Up:WCS faces 2024 permit renewal; experts study nuke war’s enviro impact; DOE awards $2M grant to Paducah chamber
Waste Control Specialists, the commercial radioactive waste storage and disposal site in Andrews County, Texas, will be up for permit renewal later this year, a state regulator told Exchange Monitor’s Radwaste Summit 2.0 last week in Summerlin, Nev.
The license Waste Control Specialists (WCS) was issued in 2009 will expire Sept. 10, meaning a renewal application must be filed by then, Ashley Forbes, a deputy director for the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, said in her June 6 slide presentation. Afterward, she said more details will be available from the state closer to the due date.
According to her presentation, WCS has both a Compact Waste Facility opened in 2012 with 9 million cubic feet of licensed volume available for the Texas Low-Level Radioactive Waste Disposal Compact Commission. It also has a Federal Waste Facility opened in 2013 with 26 million cubic feet of license volume serving the Department of Energy. WCS employs about 100 people, according to its website.
A National Academies-backed study is updating research on the effects of nuclear war on the environment, and will hold hybrid information gathering meetings next week, June 22-23.
“Studies of the potential climate effects of nuclear war in the 1980s focused on northern hemisphere, large-scale nuclear conflicts, and predicted more extreme global ‘nuclear winter’ scenarios,” the Nuclear and Radiation Studies Board and the Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate announced Friday. The “Independent Study on Potential Environmental Effects of Nuclear War” will explore scenarios ranging from “small-scale regional nuclear exchanges to large-scale exchanges between major powers.”
The first unclassified meeting will occur next Thursday at 1 p.m. Eastern Time. Details, including registration information, can be found here.
The Paducah Area Chamber of Commerce, which takes an active interest in the Department of Energy’s Paducah Site in McCracken County, Ky., has been awarded a $2-million grant to study future use of the agency’s gaseous diffusion plant.
The $2-million financial assistance act, consistent with the fiscal 2023 federal budget, will go toward community studies and analysis, site mapping and development strategies for the property, according to a June 6 DOE Office of Environmental Management press release.
The grant runs for a three-year period, from June 5, 2023 through December 31, 2025, according to the press release. Until operations ceased in 2013, Paducah produced enriched uranium for military and later commercial nuclear energy purposes. Cleanup of the 3,500-acre property is overseen by DOE’s Portsmouth/Paducah Project Office.
