Federal Report Backs Storing High-Level Nuclear Waste In West Texas
Even as much of American life has been on pause over the past few months, a plan to move radioactive nuclear waste to West Texas continues forward, with the support of the federal government. The proposal for a facility at a remote part of the Texas-New Mexico border has been up in the air for years, but a new federal report says it should be approved because environmental risks are low.
An existing site in Andrews County has housed low-level nuclear waste for years. That includes contaminated items from labs where nuclear technology is used, bu not spent nuclear fuel or other waste generated by power plants.
Travis Bubenik is West Texas-based reporter for Courthouse News Service. He told Texas Standard host David Brown that developers of the new project want to upgrade the existing facility to handle nuclear fuel and other highly radioactive materials.
“They call it a temporary storage solution,” Bubenik said. “What that means is they would store this high-level nuclear waste for potentially decades – maybe up to 100 years or more – until the United States can figure out where do we actually dispose of this stuff.”
Read more: https://www.texasstandard.org/stories/federal-report-backs-storing-high-level-nuclear-waste-in-west-texas/
