{"id":34701,"date":"2014-02-27T11:37:47","date_gmt":"2014-02-27T17:37:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/?p=34701"},"modified":"2014-02-27T11:37:47","modified_gmt":"2014-02-27T17:37:47","slug":"high-level-nuclear-waste-could-one-day-come-to-texas-but-its-a-long-road","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/2014\/02\/27\/high-level-nuclear-waste-could-one-day-come-to-texas-but-its-a-long-road\/","title":{"rendered":"High-Level Nuclear Waste Could One Day Come to Texas, But It’s a Long Road"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Cooling<\/a>

Frank Map DPA\/Landov<\/p>

Cooling towers of a nuclear power plant in Grohnde, Germany. An interim charge for the Texas legislature could change the United States' management of nuclear waste.<\/p><\/div>\n

The United States\u2019 total high-level radioactive waste could fit inside a football stadium with room to spare. Right now, it\u2019s distributed between the country\u2019s 100 commercial nuclear power plants and stored on site. But all that waste could be headed to Texas in the coming years.<\/p>\n

One of Texas House Speaker Joe Straus\u2019\u00a0interim charges<\/a> for the 83rd<\/sup> legislature (basically study material that could come in handy during the next session when it comes time to file legislation) has exactly that goal in mind.<\/p>\n

The charge, addressed to the House Committee on Environmental Regulation<\/a>, says to \u201cmake specific recommendations on the state and federal actions necessary to\u00a0permit a high-level radioactive waste disposal or interim storage facility in Texas.\u201d While Texas already allows low-level radioactive waste storage<\/a>, this new suggestion has drawn its fair share of controversy, intrigue and confusion. So let’s take a look at the ins and outs of nuclear waste storage, and how it could pan out in the Lone Star State.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

What is High-Level Radioactive Waste Exactly?<\/b><\/h4>\n

Simply put, high-level radioactive waste<\/a> is spent fuel from commercial nuclear power plants. It has a much longer half-life and is far more concentrated than low-level waste\u2014medical equipment or contaminated clothes and tools used in nuclear power plants, for example\u2014so it needs to be handled in a very careful, specific way.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhenever you\u2019re giving off radiation, that radiation will deposit somewhere and create a little bit of heat. If you are producing heat, you have to remove the heat,\u201d Steven Biegalski<\/a>, Director of the Nuclear Engineering Teaching Laboratory at the University of Texas, says. \u201cIf you don\u2019t remove even just a little bit of heat, temperatures can rise and then there\u2019s issues. It\u2019s not that these issues are insurmountable \u2026 when you\u2019re doing it, you\u2019re looking at thousands and thousands of years for the time we would expect things to be contained in a high-level waste repository.\u201d<\/p>\n

One widely-accepted solution<\/a> for dealing with the waste involves burying it deep underground or recyling it\u2014but putting it on a rocket and sending it into the sun<\/a>\u00a0has also been tossed around.<\/p>\n

The directive from Straus asks the legislature to look into two types of high-level radioactive waste storage in Texas: a central interim storage site and a permanent, long-term national repository.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe big fear we have about a long-term storage is that a private company will come in, make all the gain, and leave Texas with all the pain of having to maintain this site for millennia,\u201d Tom \u201cSmitty\u201d Smith, director of Public Citizen\u2019s<\/a> Texas office, says.<\/p>\n

Why Texas and Why Now?<\/b><\/h4>\n

An ideal site for storing high-level radioactive waste, according to Biegalski, would need to be dry, geologically stable, and away from dense population centers, making areas like western Texas and much of Nevada perfect candidates. But there is currently no plan for a national repository.<\/p>\n

In 2002, Congress approved<\/a> a site within Yucca Mountain, in Nevada, to be a long-term storage site, but the Obama Administration ended funding<\/a> for the site in 2010 after years of pressure<\/a> from state officials and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. There was no backup plan, yet nuclear power plants have still been paying a tax to fund a permanent storage site.<\/p>\n

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