DALLAS -Gov. Rick Perry is urging state legislative leaders to consider a Texas repository for high-level nuclear waste from power plants, according to a report in the Austin American-Statesman.
Perry in a letter to state House Speaker Joe Straus and Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, presiding officer of the state Senate, said that U.S. citizens have been "betrayed by the federal government" in its failure to establish a viable disposal site.
He warned that Texas was in danger of losing the waste site to New Mexico 50 miles from the Texas border and said bringing the site to Texas would protect Texas citizens, Perry said.
"We have no choice but to begin looking for a safe and secure solution for HLW (High-Level Waste) in Texas - a solution that would allow the citizens of Texas to recoup some of the more than $700 million they have paid toward addressing this issue."
He was referring to the federal government's now mothballed efforts to build a storage site at Yucca Mountain, Nev.
Perry and the legislative leaders were instrumental in passing legislation that created the first low-level radioactive waste dump in Texas on behalf of the late Dallas billionaire Harold Simmons. Residents of Andrews County voted in 2010 to issue taxable general obligation bonds when Simmons was unable to arrange private financing for the waste dump.
"Since the U.S. Congress enacted the Nuclear Waste Policy Act in 1982, each state, including Texas, has been assured that the federal government would take possession and provide a disposal solution for any HLW generated within its borders," Perry wrote. "Early in 2013, the U.S. Department of Energy announced that it was developing a new plan to replace Yucca Mountain - estimating that an HLW disposal solution would not be available until 2048," he wrote.
"I believe it is time for Texas to act, particularly since New Mexico is seeking to be federally designated for HLW disposal," Perry wrote.
