Conference Proceedings

27 April, 2002 Lake Whitney State Park

On Saturday, April 27, 2002, approximately 45 people from across Texas gathered at Lake Whitney State Park to educate themselves about national, state, and local nuclear energy and nuclear waste issues. Conference participants spent the afternoon strategizing on ways of stopping future nuclear waste dumps in Texas and phasing out nuclear power and replacing it with clean, sustainable energy sources. We also put together a steering committee charged with finding ways to structure a more permanent network, and to host another gathering in September. Banjos, guitars, and accordions played through the night, accompanied by much singing and dancing.

Since the conference, a new funding source has developed for the September gathering: Bonnie Raitt will be donating the ticket sales from 10 front (or near front) row seats from three of her Texas shows to our network (via the Lone Star Sierra Club)!

The nuclear power industry is not pollution free--it produces nuclear waste at every step, starting with uranium mining.

The mining and processing of uranium are shared by both the nuclear power and nuclear weapons industries. Uranium mining waste is classified as Naturally Occurring Radioactive Material (NORM). There is also NORM waste associated with fossil fuel energy production. Waste from uranium mining and milling comprises the largest volume of radioactive waste--measuring in the range of hundreds of million tons. Uranium milling alone produces 2220 metric tons of waste, not all of which is in the US since we are importing the ore. Thus our need for energy is polluting other countries. Most of the uranium ore that is dug out of the earth winds up as depleted uranium waste piles (about 600,000 metric tons) with a radioactivity of 300 nanocuries/gram (nCi/g). This is more radioactivity per gram than transuranic waste, which is waste with greater than 100 nCi/g of radioactivity. However, transuranic waste is deemed dangerous enough to be required to be disposed of in a geologic depository. The main danger to public health from uranium mining and processing is water contamination which leads to ingestion of cancer-causing materials.

Ninety-five percent (95%) of all the high level radioactive waste in the United States is in the form of irradiated fuel. The rest exists in liquid form in tanks or has been vitrified (about 600 million curies). These tanks are located at the Hanford (177), Savannah River (51), and Idaho National labs (few) sites. There is a commitment by the US government to empty, vitrify, and store this waste in a geologic repository. However, now there is a move to mix the tank contents with cement and pour into trenches or leave it in place. The current irradiated fuel storage at the power plant sites is vulnerable and can result in meltdown accidents.

The transuranic waste is military and is being sent to the Carlsbad, NM Waste Isolation Pilot Program site. However there is buried highly contaminated waste (about 200 bombs worth of plutonium) in cardboard boxes in shallow trenches in Idaho.

The National Energy bill recently passed by the US Congress has provisions to build new reactors by year 2010 on federal lands and extend the Price-Anderson act (limits energy industry to liability to $9-10 billion for accident clean-up) to these new reactors. Thus the US taxpayers would end up continuing to pay no matter who is guilty of causing an accident.

President Bush has declared that Yucca Mountain, Nevada will be the site for high level waste disposal. Between now and mid-July we have time to work on convincing the Senate to back Nevada’s April 8th veto of the decision to make Yucca Mountain the dumping ground for the country’s irradiated fuel rods. It is likely that the US House will vote with President Bush to over-ride Nevada’s veto. (editor’s note: the House did vote to over-ride the Nevada veto on May 8—306 to 117.) The scientific evidence shows Yucca Mountain will not be able to isolate the waste for as long as is necessary. Earthquake, hydrologic, and volcanic activity at the Yucca Mountain site over the next 10,000 years is a probability. There will be 30,000 to 100,000 shipments of waste across the country to Yucca Mountain over the next 30 years. The number of shipments will be greater if there is more shipped by truck than rail. Each high level waste shipment cask will contain more radioactivity than the Hiroshima bomb. The shipment casks are designed to meet inadequate design criteria. For example, a shipment cask is designed to withstand a fire at 1475 F for half an hour, but in the real world gasoline and hydrocarbon fuels burn at an average of 1850 degrees F. Concern about the preparedness of the emergency personnel along the transportation routes has yet to be addressed adequately. Even if no accidents occur, think about a waste truck being stuck in traffic and the cars sitting near by--what is their exposure?

For transportation routes go to www.atomicroadshow.org, click on the photo and then choose your state. These are the routes projected in the department of Energy’s final Environmental Impact Statement for Yucca Mountain.

The so-called "low-level" radioactive waste includes everything but irradiated fuel and it is currently disposed of at dumps in Hanford, Washington, Barnwell, South Carolina, and in Tooele, Utah at the Envirocare site. These sites all have problems—one of the factors leading to the big push for developing another "low level" radioactive waste disposal site. Currently some uranium mills are accepting radioactive waste from nuclear power plants and "processing" it. The problem is that the waste from this "processing" is then being dumped at the milling sites. The White Mesa Mill in Blanding, Utah is one known site where this is happening.

Another problem is that some of the radioactive metallic waste is finding its way into the metal stream. A positive note is that the steel industry is very concerned about radioactive contamination here in the US and is checking all incoming materials before processing. [This is not always the case for overseas plants.] Sealed sources are a particular problem for metal smelters and recyclers because melting them can result in hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage and contamination. Waste from the Department of Energy (DOE) weapons complexes, such as contaminated soil and concrete, are being allowed out into normal trash and into regular commerce and recycling.

There is an enormous volume of potentially radioactive building materials. The DOE waste is not as well characterized, is often both mixed radioactive and hazardous, and has the potential to be problematic.

Problems have arisen from the international NAFTA, GATT, and WTO agreements and with the United Nations’ allegiance to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), an anti-democratic nuclear promoter. The problem with international trade agreements is that they attempt to supercede local, state, and national laws and regulations that cost corporations money. We need to extend our vigilance to the international level and challenge international, as well as national, state, and local regulations. Unfortunately, we must now focus attention on the corporations, corporate charters, and laws allowing corporations to exist.

The most recent UN and IAEA nuclear transportation regulations have been proposed for adoption into US Department of Transportation and Nuclear Regulatory Commission regulations.

One of the major effects these transportation regulations will have if adopted is to deregulate radioactive wastes—that is, they exempt concentration and quantity levels for radioactive materials. In essence, radioactive materials are redefined as not radioactive, thus not needing labeling, tracking, or other transport regulations.

The low level radioactive waste compacts were a result of the 1980 and 1985 Low Level Waste Policy Act and its amendments. These laws make states responsible for the management of so-called "low level" radioactive waste generated within their borders. They allow congressionally approved compacts to be exempt from the interstate commerce clause of the US Constitution, which prevents interference in movement of goods and services across state lines. The compacts have control over the waste coming in and going out of the member states. The compacts are made up of governors’ appointed compact commissioners, in most cases completely beholden to the nuclear power industry and often funded by the nuclear power industry.

The compact commissioners do not generally have any accountability to the public in the states they represent so cannot necessarily be trusted to exclude out-of-compact waste from being brought into the state or compact. That’s why legislatively plugging the loophole allowing the Texas Compact Commissioners to accept waste from outside the compact is essential. Since such control is given to the compact commissioners, there is a strong need to be very careful about any legislation written about the compact.

Maine has withdrawn from Texas compact and it is only Vermont and Texas now. However, no other compact has opened a disposal site, therefore there could be other states or companies out there eyeing the Texas-Vermont compact, particularly Entergy.

Texas Overview

by Erin Rogers, Mavis Belisle, Molly Rooke, Julia Marsden

In Texas there are three agencies involved in the control of radioactive materials: Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission (TNRCC; to become Texas Commission on Environmental Quality by 2004)—which is in charge of radioactive waste disposal, Texas Department of Health—which is in charge of radioactive waste storage and processing, and Railroad Commission—which is in charge of NORM waste from oil and gas drilling. For more information start with the TNRCC site at www.tnrcc.tx.state.us.

Uranium mining has taken place since the 1960s from San Antonio to Corpus Christi and was originally strip mining but is now in-situ. In-situ mining involves the injection of chemicals into an aquifer to leach or exact the uranium. This has led to aquifer contamination due to water contaminated with hazardous chemicals being pumped back into the aquifer after most of the uranium has been filtered out. Nuclear power is not a "green power" or solution to global warming because the enrichment of uranium is a very carbon dioxide-intensive process.

There are two nuclear power plants in Texas: 1) Comanche Peak-- owned by TXU and supplies 16% of Dallas’s power and 2) South Texas Nuclear Project—run by Reliant Energy and supplies electricity to Austin, Houston, and Corpus Christi. According to 1980 figures from the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) an accident at Comanche Peak would result in 1,200 deaths and 18,000 deaths at the South Texas plant. New figures show that 20 days after shutting a nuclear plant down, the number of cancer deaths resulting from a terrorist attack or serious accident would be reduced by 50% and acute deaths by 81%. This is due to the fact that within 20 days of shut-down, a large amount of the radioactive isotopes at the plant have decayed down to background levels.

According to the recently completed Sierra Club review of low level radioactive waste in Texas, 96% of the waste by volume is generated by the two nuclear power plants. Medical waste accounts for only 1.4% of the total amount of waste generated in Texas. There are 46 sites in Texas that generate radioactive waste, and 53 that store waste on-site. This is a far cry from the "thousands" of storage sites claimed to be in existence by pro-dump advocates.

There are 103 nuclear power plants in US and no compact dump sites. Envirocare in Utah and Chem Nuclear (now Duratech) in South Carolina (which is scheduled to close in 2008) are the only currently operating sites for waste. Waste Control Specialists (WCS) has been trying to change the law to establish a private low level radioactive waste disposal site in Andrews County in Texas for nearly 10 years. The owner of the company, Harold Simmons, is a big contributor to political campaigns in Texas—in fact, he is Gov. Rick Perry’s third largest donor. WCS’s idea is to use the 2 million cubic feet of Texas and Vermont low level radioactive waste from the compact as the reason to establish the site and then be permitted to accept 93 million cubic feet of DOE low level radioactive waste.

We already have a problem site concerning radioactive waste in Texas...it is Pantex--the only assembly/disassembly site in the US for nuclear weapons. Pantex, a project of the US Department of Energy (DOE), has been operating since the early 1950's as a nuclear weapons plant. Previously it was a conventional weapons plant. Originally, plutonium from disassembled weapons was returned to the Rocky Flats DOE facility in Colorado; however, when Rocky Flats closed in 1989 the plutonium was stranded at Pantex. There are approximately 13,000 plutonium pits at Pantex now: about 50% of them are considered to be "national security assets" and 50% are slated for disposition as mixed oxide (MOX) fuel for nuclear reactors.

Since 1991, no new weapons have "technically" been built, but old weapons have been modified and turned into new weapons, such as the B-61 which is for hardened targets, a weapon better known as bunker busters. Nuclear weapons research continues at the national labs and the results of that research is implemented at Pantex; i.e., the modification of the B-61 as an earth penetrating weapon was designed at the labs, then the necessary changes to the weapon to meet the new design were made at Pantex. In the 2003 budget of the President there is money for upgrades on three weapon systems with the work to occur at Oakridge in Tennessee and Pantex. There is also money for new plutonium pit production at Savannah River with warheads for Trident submarine missiles to be the first produced.

High explosives that were used in bomb-making years ago remains a problem at Pantex. Currently there is contamination of a perched water table associated with the Ogallala with

hexavalent cromium, solvents, and high explosives. In addition solvents have been found in the main Ogallala within 1 mile of the Amarillo drinking water source.

By Maria Santelli and Janet Greenwald of Citizens for Alternatives to Radioactive Dumping

New Mexico is dealing with the consequences of the federal nuclear weapons industry’s long-time work the state, beginning with the Manhattan Project. New Mexico has three main sites: Los Alamos national laboratory, Sandia national laboratory, and the Waste Isolation Pilot Project (WIPP). One of Citizens for Alternatives to Radioactive Dumping’s (CARD) programs focuses on education, as the US Department of Energy (DOE) is actively recruiting kids in New Mexico schools, and especially at their Albuquerque-based magnate school. CARD’s approach is to educate the children, particularly high school age, about the nuclear industry in New Mexico, the consequences of having this industry, and alternatives to this industry.

There has been open pit uranium mining in New Mexico and there are plans for in-situ mining. From 1972-1993 New Mexico Tech was involved in testing depleted uranium weapons, which are currently being used in Afghanistan and other countries. In 1999 the WIPP site opened. WIPP is a geologic dump for weapons-generated nuclear waste. The US EPA permits the

radioactive waste and the state of New Mexico permits the mixed waste (hazardous mixed with

radioactive waste). CARD has recently produced a new report on the hydrology of the WIPP site and DOE’s use of false science in the siting the facility. WIPP is up for EPA recertification in 2003.

CARD is planning a bi-national teachers' conference as an opportunity to share curriculum materials on how to teach the nuclear issue in schools in the fall of 2003 and a youth festival with the theme ‘Alternative Futures" in the fall of 2002. CARD works in coalition with other groups in the Southwest who face similar issues of nuclear production and dumping, as well as communities on both sides of the Mexico/US border who face the same struggles.

by Representative Lon Burnam

General Elections: November 2002

Legislative Session begins: January 14, 2003

Legislative Session ends: May 30, 2003

The Texas Legislature meets for 140 days every 2 years.

During the last legislative session (January-June 2001), Waste Control Specialists (WCS) was nearly able to pass a bill allowing private companies to own and operate radioactive waste dumps in Texas. The bill would have allowed the private company to obtain a license and import unlimited amounts of waste from contaminated nuclear weapons projects around the country. (Current law allows only a PUBLIC entity to obtain a radioactive waste disposal license.) The bill passed the Senate and the House Environmental Regulations committee but was killed by the House Calendars committee before it was able to get to the House floor for a final vote. The bill was sponsored by Senator Duncan and Representative Chisum. For a full account of radioactive waste legislation from the 77^th Legislature, go to www.texassierraclub.org and click on "Actions and Decisions of the 77^th Legislative Session; An Environmental Impact Statement."

Because of redistricting, next year’s legislature will be completely different than last session. There is a chance that Rep. Laney (a Democrat) will no longer be speaker and that a right-wing Republican may become speaker. This could change the committee chairs and makeup of all the committees in the House. In the Senate, several of the Senators who have been environmental advocates will be gone next session, including Sen. Truan and Sen. Bernsen.

Next legislative session Sen. Duncan (R-NW Texas) will probably carry the main low level radioactive waste bill. WCS is expected to attempt to hijack the bill again to turn their site in Andrews County into a national nuclear dumping ground for nuclear weapons waste. WCS also has options to buy land in Loving and Ward counties.

We should plan to use the rest of the interim (from now until January 2003) to introduce ourselves to our legislators and educate them on the problems and potential solutions regarding radioactive waste in Texas. The next session begins January 14, 2003.

Conference participants spent the afternoon strategizing on ways to stop legislation creating national nuclear waste dumps in Texas, and how to begin to phase out nuclear power and while increasing the use of sustainable energy in Texas. The group formed a steering committee and plans to hold another gathering in September.

For more information on how you can get involved, contact the Lone Star Sierra Club at 512-477-1729.