Despite being on the menu for a special session this weekend, the Texas legislature hasn’t yet heard debate on legislation to address a proposed interim storage site for spent nuclear fuel in the state.
Saturday’s special session of the state Senate ended without discussion on Interim Storage Partners’ (ISP) proposed interim storage facility in Andrews County, Texas. Gov. Greg Abbott (R) said in a statement released Thursday that the chamber would address “[l]egislation reforming the laws governing radioactive waste to protect the safety of Texans, including by further limiting the ability to store and transport high-level radioactive materials in this state.”
The special session, scheduled to last a week, next meets Monday. Saturday’s session was the first time the legislature gaveled in since the end of May. After this special meeting concludes, delegates won’t return to Austin until 2023.
Debate on radioactive waste storage would come after a failed attempt to broach the subject in the state legislature’s regular session, when a bill proposed by state Rep. Brooks Landgraf (R) failed to advance to the governor’s desk after a procedural concern in the state House in May.
Abbott himself has long been an opponent of ISP’s proposed site, penning a letter to then-president Donald Trump in October asking the White House to take action to prevent the Nuclear Regulatory Commission from granting the site a license.
The governor’s table-pounding appears to be in vain so far. On July 29, as part of an environmental review, NRC staff recommended granting a license to ISP, a joint venture between Dallas-based Waste Control Specialists (WCS) and nuclear services company Orano for an interim storage site at WCS’s existing low-level waste facility in Andrews.
NRC has said that a final licensing decision on the Texas site will come down in September.
ISP’s site is one of two proposed commercial locations for interim spent fuel storage. The other, owned by Holtec International, would be built in southeastern New Mexico. NRC has said that a final decision on that site would be ready in January.
Opponents of commercial interim storage sites have lately pressed the argument that federal law prohibits construction of such a facility before the federal government opens up a permanent repository for spent fuel — such as the moribund Yucca Mountain project in Nye County, Nev. A nuclear industry group has said that law applies only to federally owned interim storage facilities.
