Update: John Dillon of Vermont Public Radio reported on Dec. 27 that Vermont’s two representatives for the Texas Low-Level Radioactive Waste Disposal Compact Commission will attend an important meeting on Jan. 4, called just two days before the inauguration of Gov.-elect Peter Shumlin. The two Vermont commissioners, who are members of the Douglas administration, previously voted to support proposed rules that would open the nuclear waste landfill to material from other states. Shumlin requested that the Vermont commissioners not attend the meeting; they are planning to go anyway. Read the whole story.
A Texas-Vermont commission will consider action on Jan. 4 on a controversial proposal for a nuclear waste facility, two days before Vermont’s Gov.-elect Peter Shumlin takes office.
At issue is whether the Texas site will begin accepting other states’ low-level nuclear waste, in addition to Vermont Yankee’s, once the Vermont nuclear plant is closed. Vermont currently has rights to a 20 percent share of the Texas site for low-level waste storage.
Vermont Yankee is scheduled to shut down in March 2012, unless the Vermont Legislature reverses its decision to block a 20-year license extension for the plant, owned by Entergy Corp. of Louisiana.
Vermont and Texas are the exclusive members of a two-state compact that was formed in 1998 to develop a nuclear waste dump. Late next year, the waste facility, owned by the corporation Waste Control Specialists, is slated to open in Andrews, Texas.
That exclusivity may no longer hold if new rules are promulgated next week. Two days before Shumlin is inaugurated, the Texas Low-Level Radioactive Waste Compact Commission will consider taking a final vote on new rules that would allow 36 other states access to the facility.
The proposed rules were promulgated on Nov. 26; the 30-day public comment period ended Dec. 26.
Read the original VTDigger.org story.
Members of the Texas Low-Level Radioactive Waste Disposal Compact Commission, including two Douglas administration officials, Uldis Vanags and Stephen Wark, representing Vermont, gave preliminary approval to procedures that would allow the commission to accept applications for permits from corporations and entities in other states to dump waste at the site.
Critics question why the decision is being made before Shumlin and members of the Vermont and Texas legislatures are sworn in.
Reached en route to his home in Putney on Christmas Eve, Shumlin said he doesn’t oppose the new rules if there is a guarantee that Vermont’s 20 percent share of the landfill is protected, but he would “prefer for our commissioners to vote after Jan. 6.”
“It seems unusual to announce a meeting on Christmas Eve Day that has to take place the following week,” Shumlin said. “The obvious question is, what’s the rush?
“Our commissioner (designee) didn’t even know about it yesterday,” Shumlin said. “My administration would like to have the opportunity to look at the agreement more closely to make sure it has all the guarantees Vermont needs to have 20 percent of the space at the site.”
On Friday, Vanags, the state’s nuclear engineer, had not yet decided whether he would attend the Jan. 4 meeting. In an interview, Vanags said, “It’s too early to tell.”
“I have no flight arrangements at this point, (let’s) put it that way,” Vanags said.
Michael Ford, chairman of the Compact Commission, says, “There has been no rush.”
He said the commission has given adequate consideration of the rules. The commission held seven public meetings on the rules, which have been published in the Texas Register.
“These rules have been under intense scrutiny and revision for sixteen months by the public, stakeholders, the Commission and other interested parties,” Ford wrote in a comment to VTDigger.org. “The Texas Compact Commission has gone well beyond the statutory requirements and customary
time tables for the development of any state rule and has done an exemplary job in considering these rules in the most transparent and inclusive way possible.”
Six Texas representatives implored the commission to take up the matter before the Texas legislative session starts on Jan. 11; two others asked the commission to delay its decision until after the Legislature has a chance to review the proposed rules.
Read the letters from Texas representatives.
Texas lawmakers petition Compact Commission
Texas lawmakers ask Commission to delay rule approval
Opponents of the change say the new rules could transform the landfill into a national repository for low-level nuclear waste and that it could fill up quickly because demand for landfill space could be high.
Thirty-six states are not currently part of a radioactive waste disposal compact. If the Compact Commission approves the proposed rules, the West Texas facility would be the only site of its type licensed to accept waste from anywhere in the country, according to the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, an anti-nuclear group based in Maryland.
Chairman Ford rejects this assertion. In a comment to VTDigger.org, he wrote: “The Compact Commission will vigorously protect the interests of our sole and loyal partner, Vermont, in the Compact and assure that their disposal needs are well known and fully accounted for.”
Shumlin said he is concerned that Vermont’s space will be given to non-compact entities from around the country.
“We all know when you open it up, when push comes to shove, the first in the hole is going to be the first served,” Shumlin said. “I want to make absolutely certain the 20 percent allocation is preserved regardless of the queue for space.”
Shumlin said he anticipates that as more than 100 plants nationwide are kept running beyond their engineered operating time frames more facilities will hit “snags.”
“It’s my judgment we’re going to see many more of those plants decommissioned or brought out of service from systems failures than the 20-year licensing process suggests,” Shumlin said. “We all know this nation has done an abysmal job of planning for what to do with our higher-level and lower-level nuclear waste. Vermont and Texas have a solution for the low-level nuclear waste that the other states weren’t forward-thinking enough to develop.”
Entergy Corp. has proposed keeping the materials on the Vernon site in a system called SAFSTOR for a period of six decades.
Another alternative would be a more accelerated decommissioning process, in which the waste would be sent to the West Texas landfill, according to Arnie Gundersen, a nuclear engineer who is a legislative consultant via Fairewinds Associates, Inc. to the Vermont Legislature’s Joint Fiscal Committee.
The compact legally entitles Vermont to 20 percent, or 462,000 cubic feet, of the 2.3 million cubic feet, which will be made available at the nuclear waste dump in the first 15 years of operation.
Requests for waste “importation” from non-compact companies would be vetted on a case-by-case basis, according to the published rules.
In 2009, the Compact Commission determined that Vermont and Texas together need a total of 6 million cubic feet of capacity for the amount of radioactive waste generated by both states.
The rationale for opening the facility to all comers
The facility, which is designed to take radioactive materials such as contaminated clothing, glass, metal, reactor components and sludge needs a certain amount of waste to cover the fixed costs associated with construction.
John C. White, vice chair of the commission and a radiation safety officer for the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, said allowing material from other states into the landfill would lower the operating costs for the compact members tenfold.
Vanags said opening up the site to more entities will keep disposal fees at the site reasonable for Texas and Vermont. The commission hasn’t set fees for “imports,” but so far it hasn’t imposed up-front contributions from noncompact waste generators. Vermont Yankee will pay $25 million to support construction of the site this year.
“The way to reduce cost per cubic foot is to increase your capacity,” Vanags said in contending the only way the commission would consider “imports” would be if there is surplus capacity.
Vanags said before the commission would accept applications, it would conduct an updated study to determine how much capacity would be needed by the two compact states.
Last week, Texans for Public Justice reported that the owner of Waste Control Specialists, Harold Simmons, had donated $1.12 million to Texas Gov. Rick Perry over the last nine years. Simmons’ total contributions to Texas politicians were $4.88 million since 2005; in that same period, he gave $379,000 to politicians in 21 other states.
“Whenever you see the amount of campaign contributions by the site owner that have been made over the last year it gives you pause,” Shumlin said.
Read the Texans for Public Justice report.
Texans for Public Justice report on Simmons’ campaign contributions
Read the agenda for the Jan. 4 meeting Texas Low-Level Radioactive Waste Compact Commission.
The proposed rule:
§675.23. Importation of Waste from a Non-Compact Generator for Disposal.
(a) It is the policy of the Commission that any savings generated by importation accrue to the benefit of the party states. It is also the policy of the Commission that it will not accept the importation of low-level radioactive waste of international origin.
(b) Disposal capacity is reserved for Texas and Vermont calculated by total estimated, as-disposed volume and total activity, and neither shall be reduced by non-Compact waste. Such disposal capacity shall be established at least every 5 years by a report of the Commission. The Commission’s report shall be informed by the annual report by the host State on the status of the facility, including projections of the facility’s anticipated future capacity.
(c) No petition for an agreement to import low-level radioactive waste for disposal shall be granted by the Commission unless the Compact Facility operator has provided to the Commission a recommended total annual volume to be imported for disposal to the Compact Facility and certify that the disposal of imported waste will not reduce capacity for Party State-generated waste, based on the currently licensed volume and activity. The recommendation shall become final after Commission approval.
The approval shall be based on timely renewal of the Compact Facility License by the licensee, assigns, or successors.”