AUSTIN, Texas -- One of the nation's most aggressive efforts to create a low-level radioactive-waste dump has failed in the Texas legislature, underlining the hurdles the Bush administration faces in gaining broader acceptance of nuclear energy.
The legislature adjourned Monday without passing a bill that would have allowed a privately operated dump to be opened in the west Texas town of Andrews, about 60 miles northwest of Midland. The dump, proposed by a company whose principal owner is Dallas billionaire Harold Simmons, would have disposed of such low-level waste as contaminated water-purification filters, tools and work clothes.
While disposal of such waste doesn't get the attention of high-level waste such as spent fuel rods, industry officials say it is an important issue to address if the nation is to embrace President Bush's call for renewed development of nuclear power to meet the nation's energy needs. Low-level waste accounts for about 85% of a nuclear-power plant's waste by volume, but only 1% by radioactivity.
Low-level waste disposal, now performed at only three facilities in the U.S., remains "one of those nagging issues on the periphery" of the nuclear-power debate, says Paul Genoa, radioactive-waste project manager with the Nuclear Energy Institute, a Washington industry trade group.
Eric Peus, president and chief executive officer of Andrews-based Waste Control Specialists LLC, which would have operated the dump, put it in stronger terms. "This was the only chance in the country to create something" to dispose of low-level waste, he says, citing a combination of local political support and favorable geological conditions. The company may seek to get the bill passed again, he says, but the next legislative session isn't scheduled until 2003.
Waste Control invested $77 million to build the Andrews facility, on legal fees and in operating losses since 1995, says Mr. Peus. The company has spent an additional $400,000 lobbying to pass the bill.
State Sen. Robert Duncan, the bill's author, says the failure to approve the legislation shows how tough it will be to start a nuclear-energy building program. "Environmental groups are interested in stopping nuclear power, and one way to do that is thwart responsible efforts to dispose or manage that waste," says Mr. Duncan, a Republican.
Originally, the Texas bill would have allowed Waste Control to accept radioactive material only from Texas, Maine and Vermont. But the company pushed for an amendment so it could accept waste from the U.S. Energy Department, which would have meant a more consistent and larger stream of waste. When the amendment was added this month, the prospect of turning the facility into a national home for low-level waste stirred more opposition.
A Texas agency tried for more than a decade to develop a low-level waste dump, but state environmental regulators denied their proposed site a license in 1998. The following year, the state cut funding for the agency and lawmakers began considering allowing a private company to develop and operate a dump.
Texas is the only state seeking to create a competitive situation in which private companies vie to get their waste sites licensed, says Susan Jablonski, a specialist with the Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission. Under federal law, the state would have to own the land, but the company would hold the license and charge fees for disposal.
Of the three low-level waste dumps now in operation in the U.S., only the one in Barnwell, S.C., accepts all types of low-level waste generated nationally. But it will stop accepting waste from all but a handful of states in 2008. (Under a 1980 federal law intended to encourage development of more waste dumps, states were allowed to form compacts with other states and refuse waste from outside the compact.)
A facility in Richland, Wash., accepts waste from only a few Western states. The third dump is a commercial disposal facility in Clive, Utah, operated by Envirocare of Utah Inc. It is licensed to take waste with the lowest concentration and shortest period before the unstable radioactive material breaks down and becomes harmless.
|
If you have come to this page from an outside location click here to get back to mindfully.org |