Forty Years of NO

Nuclear waste dumps in Texas

Forty Years of No refers to the consistent answer to the Federal Department Of Energy’s request to park toxic nuclear waste in Texas for the next 10,000 years.  The DOE promises jobs. They promise nothing will go wrong.  They promise a radioactive toxic dump won’t pollute the land, won’t pollute the water and won’t destroy people’s lungs.

Texas for forty years has said NO.

Resistance to nuclear energy and the toxic waste it produces goes back in history even further back than 40 years.

In the 1970s, environmental activists fought the proliferation of nuclear plants.  Activists tried to prevent the construction of the South Texas Nuclear Plant and the Comanche Peak Plant.  They failed.  Both nuclear plants were finally constructed, but only after taking years longer than promised and costing 2-3 times the estimated cost.  

But, the oppositional effort derailed the construction of newer plants so that when the Three Mile Island accident and then the Chernobyl meltdown effectively killed the nuclear industry, Texas only had 4 plants to deal with.

In those days, the anti-nuclear activists mostly talked about problems with the supply chain.  Nuclear power plants are clean, assuming they don’t blow up.  And nuclear power certainly is carbon free, which is a big plus.  But the real problem was, and still is, the supply chain.

Uranium has to be mined to produce the pellets that create the fuel rods that generate the heat the creates the electricity.  The mining of uranium creates huge radioactive waste spills. There is one near Panna Maria in Karnes County that now sports the biggest waste spill in the country.  It is still radioactive and a Geiger counter 300 yards away hits the danger zone. See the PHIT substack on this.

At the other end of the supply chain, plutonium and its isotopes can remain radioactive for 10,000 years or so.  Some claim it is only dangerous for a tenth of that time.  But is still a long time to isolate it. Uranium chills out a lot quicker, but still can cause problems.

So…the big question is…

Where in the world are the utility corporations to put it?

The government wanted to encourage nuclear power and so in the Carter administration, the government said it would take care of that.

Where in the world will the government put it?

Why Texas of course.  Lots of wide open spaces.  “It’s like the moon.”  Depopulated, desolate, treeless.  Nothing going on there.  Right. Texas should be happy to take on this burden and the government will pay Texans handsomely for the privilege.

But Texas keeps saying No.

The first attempt was in Deaf Smith.  Today, PHIT is offering a short documentary that was produced to document the successful opposition back in the 1980s.

We do this because we think folks might have forgotten and need to remember.

The fellow at the end of the documentary is Boyd Foster.  He was director of Arrowhead Mills, the biggest organic producer of grain in the country at the time.  

Oops.  Texas is not quite as moonlike as the Department of Energy thought.

To repeat, Arrowhead Mills is the biggest organic producer of grain

Even the hint of being tainted by radioactive would be the absolute destruction of the company and all the jobs that were created.

They community rose up and they received support from the Hightower and the Texas Department of Agriculture.  Hightower saw it as a populist struggle against corporations and abusive government regulators.

The supply chains are dirty. The corporations are not trustworthy.  And the regulators are inept if not outright corrupt.

Hightower, the populist Commissioner of Agriculture, had a fundamental belief of what elected state leaders should do. 

“It’s not enough to be for the farmers, or the consumers, or the environment.  You’ve got to be willing to be against the powers that come down against them, coming down to crush them.

Boyd Foster had some advice to DOE and he said it in Texas plain language.

”Leave and Don’t Come Back.”