Texas nuclear power plants have empty warehouses ready to store five years worth of low-level waste. And the University of Texas System maintains a warehouse in Fort Stockton for radioactive material. It opened in 1993 and is about 90 percent empty, system Executive Vice Chancellor Dan Burck said. Utility officials said they need a guaranteed disposal facility and do not want to depend on Barnwell. It closed for 12 months in 1994 and 1995.
Utilities fear being at the whim of the South Carolina Legislature, which ordered the closure.
They could shut us out. The purported threat to medical research is a scare tactic, said Bill Addington , a Sierra Blanca store owner and leading dump opponent. The governor is pushing the project forward, he said, because utility executives want it to open. These are the unseen players who make policy in Texas. We have to change that.