Texas Dump Might Get Other States’ Radioactive Waste

By: Asher Price/Statesman.com

A commission run jointly by Texas and Vermont, with a membership made up mostly of Gov. Rick Perry’s appointees, could decide this summer to make Texas the potential resting place for radioactive waste from 36 states.

The decision would benefit a single company, Waste Control Specialists, which is owned by one of Perry’s chief donors and has assembled an impressive lobbying roster.

The Low-Level Radioactive Waste Disposal Compact Commission will meet, probably next month, to decide whether Texas can import radioactive waste from outside Texas and Vermont. In a political and geographical peculiarity, the two states are the sole members of the compact, which grew out of federal laws encouraging agreements between states to dispose of the low-level waste.

The commission consists of six Texans, all named by Perry, and two Vermonters.

Low-level waste does not include spent nuclear fuel, waste from nuclear weapons, tailings related to uranium mining and naturally occurring radioactive material.

Most of it is material or hardware from nuclear power plants or syringes, protective clothing, glassware and rags from hospitals and academic labs. The vast majority of it, if sealed in a drum, would be safe enough to sit atop and will lose its radioactivity within a century.

Disposal of the waste could be worth billions, and Waste Control Specialists, which operates a hazardous waste dump in Andrews County in far West Texas, is the sole company licensed by the Texas environmental agency to accept it. But none of the waste has been buried in Andrews as the company finishes overcoming hurdles at the state environmental agency to get full authority to bury it.

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