WCS Won’t Move Nuclear Waste to Permian Basin Until Approved

CBS 7 News reports that the Waste Control Specialist President said before the Texas Senate that the company will not pursue bringing high-level nuclear waste into the state unless Governor Abbott approves. 

Waste Control Specialists’ facility, located in Andrews County on the border with Eunice, New Mexico, houses low-level nuclear waste as of now. That included used medical equipment, syringes, animal carcasses from research labs, and some debris from decommissioned nuclear power plants. 

But WCS wants to bring high-level nuclear waste to their facility, radioactive waste that won’t decay for hundreds of thousands of years. Representatives Brooks Landgraf claims that he wrote a bill that prevents any of this waste from coming to West Texas. The bill has flawed language though, and does nothing to override the federal government’s involvement in the future.

While residents in Andrews, Texas might already be aware that nuclear waste is stored nearby, they probably haven’t been fully informed on the radioactivity level of high-level waste that WCS wants to bring in. Republicans and Democrats in the Permian Basin both agree that this project is not a positive change for Andrews.