Beyond Nuclear - Centralized Storage

Please note: The March 13th deadline has been extended till April 28th! However, it is still important to get public comments rolling into NRC ASAP. If you have time, please comment more than once -- addressing multiple of the many facets of this issue!

Public comments are needed in opposition to Waste Control Specialists (WCS) in West Texas, which seeks to open a de facto permanent parking lot dump for up to half the commercial high-level radioactive waste in the U.S., upstream of the Ogallala Aquifer, vital drinking and irrigation water supply for numerous High Plains states, from Texas to South Dakota.

The region around WCS has a high proportion of low income, Latin American residents, and is already heavily burdened with nuclear activities (radioactive waste dumping, uranium enrichment, etc.) and dirty fossil fuel industries (widespread, heavily polluting oil extraction and natural gas fracking). WCS would launch unprecedented numbers of high-risk irradiated nuclear fuel train (and even barge) shipments through many states.

Sample comments you can use to write your own:

(Beyond Nuclear sample comments on a variety of inter-related subject matter)

Mobile Chernobyl Shipping Risks (see here for WCS's own map, from its construction and operating licence application to NRC, showing the main line railways nation-wide that would be used to transport irradiated nuclear fuel from atomic reactors to West TX; see here for another map, made by SEED Coalition, which includes some Interstate highway routing that could also be used, if NRC were to rubber-stamp a license amendment by WCS to allow Legal Weight Truck shipments);

Risks of Routine or Incident-Free Shipments Nonetheless Being Like Mobile X-ray Machines That Can't Be Turned Off, and Risks of Externally Contaminated Shipments;

Risks of De Facto Permanent Parking Lot Dump at WCS;

Risks of Loss of Institutional Control if De Facto Permanent Parking Lot Dumps are Abandoned, Containers Fail, and Release Catastrophic Amounts of Hazardous Radioactivity into the Environment;

Why Are These Risks Being Taken?;

SEED Coalition & Public Citizen's Texas Office have prepared sample comments you can use to write your own for submission to NRC by the March 13, 2017 deadline;

Public comments previously submitted to the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) for a proceeding re: Private Initiatives to carry out centralized interim storage can now also be used -- "recycled," so to speak! -- to prepare comments to NRC re: WCS's scheme (the comments to DOE were due Jan. 27, 2017);

Link to instructions on HOW (snail mail, email, as well as online web form) to submit your public comments to NRC by the March 13 deadline [per note above, the deadline has been extended till April 28th]

Please see entries below on Beyond Nuclear's Centralized Interim Storage website section, for more information.