The Texas Commission of Environmental Quality yesterday unanimously approved the license amendment requests proposed by Waste Control Specialists that would expand the types of waste it can accept for disposal and size of the facility. The license amendments approximately triple the size of the facility by upping the amount of waste the facility can store from 2.31 million to 9 million cubic feet while also allowing the disposal of depleted uranium TCEQ also approved the request to reduce the funds needed to cover the costs of closing the site in the future. According to some of the commissioners, the total was initially determined with an overly-conservative approach, but annual adjustments are performed every year to make sure there will be enough funding available for the cleanup.
For WCS, the license amendments enable the company to dispose of more waste. “The passage of this amendment – coming a little more than two years after full-scale disposal operations began in earnest at the WCS site – does an excellent job of syncing up the WCS license with the reality of the disposal operations now underway in Andrews County,” WCS spokesman Chuck McDonald said. “This amendment provides the Department of Energy (DOE) with a disposal option for the more than 700,000 metric tons of converted depleted uranium oxide that came from the production of nuclear fuels and weapons. We believe it will also provide the Department of Defense (DOD) a disposal option for its entire stockpiled DU related backlog. WCS is pleased to be in a position to provide a solution for this orphaned waste. We have been working closely with state and federal regulators to ensure that this disposal is done in the safest and most secure way possible.”
