Jane Sanders reported earnings of $4,900 in 2014 for serving as an alternate commissioner for the Texas Low-Level Radioactive Waste Disposal Compact Commission. The Texas Compact disposes of waste near Andrews Texas in a facility owned by Waste Control Systems. Vermont is one of the states in the Texas compact so the selection of Jane Sanders as an alternate commissioner of the commission that oversees the Andrews Texas facility is reasonable and appropriate. The most important aspect of her job is to ensure that sufficient space is allowed for the disposal of waste from Vermont. Because WCS is taking waste from 30 non-compact states the Vermont representative must ensure that enough space will be available for Vermont’s waste.
Richard Saudek, one of Vermont’s two commissioners, said in an interview that the commission spends most of its time ruling on whether the site should allow shipments, called imports. Commissioners are fixated on protecting space for Texas and Vermont generators to store this waste.
“Our main concern is that there be sufficient capacity to handle the in-compact waste,” he said. “We see ourselves as advocates for the compact generators.”
A supporter of Hillary Clinton has written that Jane Sanders is profiting from a nuclear waste dump in south Texas. That is a blatant lie. The is not and never was a nuclear waste dump in south Texas. The Andrews Texas facility is the only new facility licensed by the USNRC in the past 30 years to handle class A, B and C radioactive waste. The Andrews facility received its operating license in 2009. The first shipments of Vermont’s low level waste came to Andrews in September, 2012. Andrews is located in the dry lands of west Texas near the New Mexico border.
The first shipment of radioactive material from Vermont arrived in Texas earlier this month, but it wasn’t from Yankee. The first container came from Fletcher Allen Health Care in Burlington.
Fletcher Allen spokesman Mike Noble said that the state’s largest medical facility shipped 29 units of cesium-137 in a 55-gallon concrete drum. The radioactive material, which was previously used to treat cancer patients before it was rendered obsolete, had been stored at the facility for roughly 20 years.
Vermont Yankee also sent its first shipment of radioactive resin earlier this month. The nuclear facility’s waste will account for more than 90 percent of all waste coming from Vermont, said Vermont Yankee representatives on Wednesday.
Vermont’s commissioners and alternate commissioners are being paid for successfully overseeing the disposal of Vermont’s low level medical and nuclear reactor waste in Andrews, Texas.