These activists think they have the solution to Texas' nuclear waste problem

Activists met with Midland leaders in an attempt to persuade them with facts about the dangers of storing high-level nuclear waste in West Texas. Some of these activists include Fasken Oil and Ranch, County Commissioner Randy Prude, and U.S. Representative Pfluger. 

The federal government’s Nuclear Regulatory Commission is currently on the verge of granting Waste Control Specialists in Andrews County a license to store spent nuclear fuel above ground on the New Mexico Texas border. 

Beyond Nuclear and Public Citizen leaders are pressuring the NRC to halt their licensing and focus on hardened onesite storage at nuclear reactor sites (where most of the nuclear waste in America currently resides). These two groups were paramount in blocking Representative Brooks Landgraf’s HB2692 in the last Texas Legislature session. The bill did not fully ban HLW in Texas because that decision is made at a federal level, not a state level.

The best way to store nuclear waste until a permanent deep geological repository is established in the United State, according to activists, is to keep the nuclear waste as close to reactor sites as possible. Not transport them cross-country to an area like the Permian Basin that has seen an uptick in earthquake activity.