Waste Control Specialists is looking to make money off low-level radioactive waste from three dozen states by offering to store it in a remote area along the Texas and New Mexico border. But the proposed storage has upset activists in Texas and the governor of Vermont, who says his state has an exclusive deal for burying nuclear waste in the Lone Star state.

 

Sixteen years ago, officials from Vermont and Texas signed an agreement giving Vermont up to 20% of the space at any low-level nuclear waste dump built in Texas. That guarantee is now in jeopardy, Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin says, if Waste Control Specialists is allowed to import waste from 36 states into a new dump site near Andrews, Texas.

 

Shumlin has threatened to immediately close down his state’s reactor, Vermont Yankee, for fear that if they wait too long, the available space in Texas will be gone by the time Vermont is ready to ship its contaminated leftovers.

 

Activists with Nuke Free Texas are fighting the proposed Andrews site, saying their state “is at risk of becoming the nation’s radioactive dumping ground.”

-Noel Brinkerhoff

 

Texas Proposal Spurs Race to Dispose of Nuclear Waste (by Matthew Wald, New York Times)

Take Action! Stop Texas from Becoming the Nation’s Radioactive Waste Dump! (Nuke Free Texas)

Facts Sheets and Reports (Nuke Free Texas)