K: My name is Karen Hadden.I'm the Director of the SEED Coalition, that stands for Sustainable Energy and Economic Development Coalition.We work statewide in Texas for clean air and clean energy and we include in our work looking at nuclear reactors and the radioactive waste and also the health protections that go with that.

 O: May I ask you to the position of your organization on the situation when you have a site that accumulates radioactive waste from out of state?Could you explain?

K: Our organization has been strongly opposed to bringing in radioactive waste from around the country.Originally the Compact Commission you've heard about was set up for three states.It was Texas, Maine, and Vermont, and eventually Maine left and it was just Texas and Vermont.But it was not long after that before the company who had this facility was going to the legislature and saying, oh no, no, we have to have waste from all over the country.They had started out saying, by having just these few states that would protect us against from having waste from the whole country, and that very quickly changed and we felt that the legislature was told a series of, let's call them, representations.I'll be generous.

 O: What is your position, and basis of your position?

K: Well, we don't like nuclear power at all to begin with.We think there are better way to generate electricity that are safer and cleaner and don't have security risks, don't risk our water, so certainly health impacts and concerns about our water supply.We have opposed additional nuclear reactors that were potentially going to be built in Texas, at the Comanche Peak reactor site, and at South Texas project site.And right now it doesn't look like those will get built, though the decisions are not finalized.We also are very concerned about transportation of this waste across the state and the risk of accidents.And we get a lot of assurances from our state environmental agency and from the NRC that nothing can ever go wrong.But when we look at their math, we don't see that it always adds up.There's some very creative mathematics in how the dose risks are calculated and they would tell us that there is no risk to anyone, anywhere, ever.And that's just not how things work. In reality, it's the things they didn't count on, the things they didn't put into the formula. And then all of a sudden you have an accident of a huge magnitude and everyone's asking themselves why. And here's an example. Just recently at the WIPP site in New Mexico (Waste Isolation Pilot Plant).It's been 15 years, almost, since that started taking waste, they take transuranic waste and the site was supposed to be the safest anywhere.It was the gold standard. They brought in visitors and showed them how safe it was.And probably safety culture was in place for a little while.But apparently it started to erode and then became less enforced over time, for whatever reason, I can't tell you why. But that seems to have been happening.And just this year in February when they had a fire underground in a big salt-hauling truck. Those trucks were 29 years old, there was grease and old all over the place, and inspections had not been what they should be.No one was following up on what inspections found out.When they had this accident, the alarm systems didn't work.The breathing equipment failed in many cases.They had 13 people that suffered smoke inhalation and it took 45 minutes to get them out of this place underground.So here's what happened at a site that is supposed to last 10,000 years.And so we're very, very concerned.

And then of course nine days later they had a major radioactive release that included plutonium that got detected as much as 26 miles away.So this is at our best, most solid, site with our best science?So we have a lot of concerns and right now Waste Control Specialists tells everybody that this is the best site ever.This is all going to be fine.But what's happening behind the scenes, as we speak, is that out at the State Environmental Agency, they are weakening the license with amendments, that just one after another, hundreds of changes.The protections that used to be in place are going away. So we have concerns that stem from Day One.

When they licensed this plant, this facility, there were eight people on the staff of the radioactive waste division at our environmental agency, TCEQ (Texas Commission on Environmental Quality). And every single one of them unanimously said that the license should be denied. They said they were very, very worried about the presence of water. That it was too close to where the radioactive waste would be stored. As much as 14 feet away, and that is too close. Well, that didn't stop it. The license got issued.

The governor's office weighs in, no doubt. We have three commissioners at the top, they licensed it anyway.There were three people on the staff who actually quit, they resigned their positions in protest. They did not want their names on this decision. And I've never seen that happen on any other decision in this agency in about 20 years of history.So they were really, truly, concerned.

When you look at the data, you can see that there is reason.They've had monitoring wells at the site.They had to do them as a result of this concern. It turns out that about 40% of the wells in October of 2012 had water in them. And that is not acceptable.

And there used to be something called a dry line, that the site would stay dry up until this place. Well, all of a sudden, the dry went away in all of the documents, and all of a sudden that didn't matter. And then came a license amendment where they said, you can bury waste in the site, even if there is water nearby, as long as it's not exactly where you are putting the container.

And so we have a very, very serious concern that there's going to be water contamination of whatever water body. And things move underground. Radiation can move through the waterways.

We think that right next to this site, if not under, that there is a huge aquifer.It's called the Ogallala.It goes underneath eight states in the middle of the United States. And the company says this is 6 miles away. And that none of this radiation could ever reach this body of water.Well, the maps that were the state, let me see if I can find, if I can remember, the state department, I've got the name wrong. It's the water agency. The state water maps showed that the aquifer was under the site in the 1990s. And then later the map got changed to where the aquifer was not under the site any longer. So there's a big question in my mind.

There's also a lot of hydraulic fracturing, what's also called fracking, all around the side of where they're drilling.And some places that leads to things like earthquakes.So we wonder if the area is having that problem.There are tornados.There are wildfires. And then when it does rain, it's often drought conditions, but when it does rain, it can be massive rains with flooding. So there's a lot of problems at the site itself.

We certainly want reactors to be able to put their wastes in a safe place. We want them to be able to close, but we think it's really important that the right site get chosen.And that some community doesn't get dumped on.

A lot of times people say, oh, everyone in Andrews County wanted this site. That's not actually true. A lot of them were people who couldn't afford to raise their voices because they'd lose their jobs. They would have environmental impacts, they would get dumped on. They would be hurt. And so there's a big power structure in place that keeps those voices quiet. They need the income from their jobs so they don't always dare to speak out.

 O: Are you satisfied with the possibilities to impact the decision-making process?How to increase the role of civil society? Could you explain?

K: We have tried to work with the state legislature to put in place laws that are more protective, but in general, those have not been able to get out of committees here at the Texas legislature. They get blocked. The company that is involved, Waste Control Specialists, donates a lot of money to political campaigns, mainly republican campaigns, there's Governor Perry's number two donor for all time, that's a huge amount of money there.They also donate to the democratic office holders as well and candidates. And they actually donate to campaigns around the whole country.They have donated to the campaigns of the state supreme court at the upper levels.And so they cover all of their bases.And it's been very difficult.We come to these meetings, we often speak out, we write comments to document what we think is wrong, we try to make things better. But it's been extremely difficult and a lot of times you can say all that you want, but nothing changes, nothing gets better.I don't know quite how we're ever going to get this changed. I hope that it's not that we wait until there's a major accident.