Just Pile it On
The dangerous consequences of having WCS in their community soon became evident when, earlier this year, hundreds of radioactive nuclear waste barrels from New Mexico's Los Alamos National Laboratories (LANL) appeared. They had been shipped to WCS under what were called emergency conditions. (WCS is licensed by the TCEQ to accept the temporary storage of any waste in an emergency.)
According to a Department of Energy (DOE) study, those barrels -- which contained a highly inflammable mix of nuclear waste and organic kitty litter -- were at risk of spontaneous explosion. And indeed one barrel did ignite, causing extensive damage.
A spokesperson for the New Mexico Environment Department, Allison Majure, told ThisCantBeHappening! that 109 waste barrels containing the explosive nuke waste/organic kitty litter mixture from LANL remain in isolation at WCS.
But environmentalists and local residents say that WCS shouldn't be trusted to hold the potentially explosive containers.
'Where is the specific plan for exploding waste?'
Emergency response procedures for WCS -- supplied to ThisCantBeHappening! in response to a Texas open records request -- are woefully inadequate, according to Karen Hadden, executive director of the Texas-based environmental watchdog Sustainable Energy and Economic Development, or SEED Coalition.
"It's as if the state hadn't thought about the magnitude of the emergency," she said. "Where is the specific plan for exploding waste?" Hadden asks, referring to the 2014 accident at the New Mexico plant.
LANL, which improperly packed the waste, must now figure out a method to deal with the potentially explosive barrels and make them safe for transport. According to Majure, that method could then be passed along to WCS.
Privatized nuclear operations have been suspect since 1989 when the FBI raided a nuclear weapons facility run by what was then the nation's largest defense contractor, Rockwell International. The company paid a fine of nearly $20 million for dumping plutonium -- a man-made product of nuclear fission that does not occur in nature -- into the environment.
WCS is the only private company in the United States licensed to import class "B" and "C" low level waste from other states. The term "low level" is a catch-all classification that does not mean it's safer or less dangerous; it simply means it's radioactive waste that can't be classified as spent fuel from reactors, which is often termed "high level" waste. Another waste source called "greater than class C" is a more highly radioactive version that must be kept away from human contact for many thousands of years.
Sordid History
Harold C. Simmons was a hedge fund investor with a reputation for taking over technology companies while claiming to be a "builder" and not a "destroyer" of the companies he bought -- companies which included WCS, Halliburton, and National Lead.
Among the leaders of these companies were powerful figures in the Republican party. These included Gale Norton -- former Secretary of the Interior under George W. Bush and an attorney who defended National Lead against charges of lead paint poisoning of schoolchildren -- and Dick Cheney, head of Halliburton in the 1990s. Halliburton reportedly received $40 billion dollars in government contracts during the Iraq war.
Kent Hance, former chancellor of Texas Tech, and a former congressman and lobbyist, had initially approached Simmons with a proposition to buy WCS. But some details had to be worked out if WCS was going to be profitable. The company not only needed the state of Texas to allow the dump; it also needed permission to store waste from other states. Hance, made famous in Oliver Stone's Bush biopic "W" as the only person who ever beat George W. Bush in an election, became a partner in WCS and the serious politicking began.
Bright Future for Dumping, Grim Future for the Public
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