Dear editor:
The legislature’s Minerals Committee will meet this Tuesday to consider a bill to streamline regulations so a private facility can transport to and store in Wyoming highly radioactive waste from the nation’s nuclear reactors. (This is the stuff originally slated for deep geologic disposal in Yucca Mt., NV for 10,000 years.)
Regardless of the fact that Wyoming people have rejected nuclear waste storage proposals many times – our legislature still wants to risk a dance with the feds in the regulatory dysfunction that has plagued our nation’s handling of nuclear waste for over half a century.
The history of nuclear waste storage in our country is fraught with broken promises by our federal government, including missed timelines, changing scientific guidelines, shifting strategies, political interference, congressional defunding and disregard of states’ rights.
Tennessee, New Mexico, Washington, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Utah, Georgia, Maine, Minnesota, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming – have all ferociously opposed “interim” storage of these wastes in their states, because they know this.
As a recent target for this federal overreach and policy failure, Governor Greg Abbott of Texas declared in 2020: “I will not let Texas become a nuclear waste ground.”
The Committee is pitching this as a way for the state to make money. Supposedly, we could reap billions of dollars in federal or private fees for taking the waste.
The scheme has been recently tried in two other states: Texas and New Mexico. But both those efforts were shot down in the courts, even though they received Nuclear Regulatory Commission licenses.
The courts found that the Atomic Energy Act and Nuclear Waste Policy Act do not allow the agency to license such private, away-from-reactor facilities.
If you’re confused to hear that a federal agency – the NRC – tried to authorize nuclear facilities that later are determined to be not in compliance with federal law, well – welcome to the dysfunction.
And even if these private “interim” facilities were deemed legal, a third site in Wyoming would not be needed.
The Texas & New Mexico sites are a decade ahead in siting and permitting and combined, would take care of all the anticipated high level radioactive waste generated at nuclear reactors. (They could take upwards of over 210,000 metric tons – more than enough capacity into the future.)
So there is no money obtainable in this effort since there is no legal way to build these facilities. And even if these were legal, a Wyoming facility is not needed. Again, no prospect for money.
The legislature should not waste its time with this draft bill.
And we haven’t even mentioned here the hugely glaring problems with transportation safety, the impossibility of a “temporary” site (it will become de facto permanent), nor the stigma of such waste as bad for our state’s image, tourism & agriculture economies.
But of course, you know all that – because Wyoming people have repeatedly said NO to this idea in the past! We’re not stupid.
Sincerely,
Jill Morrison, Story
Steff Kessler, Lander
