The company — the only company licensed to handle radioactive waste in Texas — applied in June to the Texas Department of State Health Services. The company is seeking to dispose of uranium mill tailings, the term used to describe the finely ground contaminated sand left over from the chemical process to extract uranium.

If approved, the Fernald waste — and perhaps radioactive waste from other storage sites — could be buried on 29 acres on the Waste Control site, records show.

It likely will take more than a year to process the company's application, said Richard Ratliff, the state's radiation program office in the state capital of Austin.

The state has already determined that the company's 4,000-page application lacks required data on the impact of potential accidents and information on the socioeconomic makeup of the area.

In addition to the uranium waste, Waste Control has applied to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality for a permit to dispose of low-level radioactive waste at the Andrews County facility.

"This process is going to essentially guarantee that we will become the nation's nuclear waste dump," stat Rep. Lon Burnam, D-Fort Worth, said.

Clarke voiced similar concerns.

"I think that most Texans don't know anything about this," she said. "They don't know that truckloads of nuclear waste are going to be on our highways from all over the country coming to West Texas.

"I don't think the average Texan wants the state to become a dump site for everyone else's most dangerous garbage."