Nuclear waste dump push will likely put Texas back in federal sights

Which brings us back to West Texas.

If the feds opt for multiple dump locations, the site of the first new low-level radioactive waste dump in decades will likely come under scrutiny. Dallas-based Waste Control Specialists fought hard for and won permits (not without some prominent protest resignations within the TCEQ) for the first new low-level radioactive waste pit approved in years — and with strong local "consensus." Unfortunately, when the talk is of deadly material that will outlive us all, we should be surveying as far as the wind blows and water flows. As bad as the hurricane-prone Gulf Coast is for spent fuel, the highway or rail line is worse, statistically speaking. Despite all this uncertainty, CPS Energy Doyle Beneby told the Express-News two months ago that he expects the nuke industry to get back on track in "three to four years," at which point we could see the City-owned utility to start shopping for nuclear partners again. So this point is for him, too. The problem with the Blue Ribbon report released last week is its failure to consider what Kevin Kamps, a radioactive waste specialist at the D.C.-based advocacy organization Beyond Nuclear, calls the "one essential recommendation" on radioactive waste: "to stop making any more of it." •

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