Low-level waste controversy.

• Author: Gordon, Dianna

Some relief may be in sight for 35 states that are scrambling to come up with low-level waste disposal facilities. The federal government is finally letting go of rebate money that can be used to build new sites.

Medical instruments, ash, dirty gloves, contaminated equipment, radioactive machine parts and other mildly radioactive types of trash are now being stored in over half of the United States by the same people who create that kind of waste.

Storage responsibilities started for waste generators July 1 when the South Carolina General Assembly closed the gates of the Barnwell low-level radioactive waste disposal facility to states outside the southeastern region. Legislators said the folks of South Carolina were tired of their state being a dumping ground for low-level waste.

Up until that time, 35 states dumped low-level waste under the clay soil of Barnwell County. Now, only Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia will be allowed to continue using the site--leaving 28 other states to cope with the problem of no disposal facilities at all.

"We've been telling our generators for years that Barnwell was going to close," says Gregg Larson, executive director of the Midwest Low-Level Radioactive Disposal Compact, a coalition that includes Indiana, Iowa, Missouri, Ohio and Wisconsin. "The question has never been what do we do if it closes; it's always been what are we going to do when it closes."

The Midwest compact is telling generators to either store the waste on site until a disposal facility can be built or contract with private vendors for safe storage. A regional facility won't open until 1999 at the earliest, since Ohio is just beginning the process of finding a location for one. Five other compacts are requiring on-site storage as they work toward building new disposal sites.

There will be few if any health or safety problems arising from on-site storage, according to Marc Tenan, executive director of the Appalachian compact, composed of Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania and West Virginia. He adds that most of the low-level waste generators in the region, such as power plants, industry, government agencies, hospitals and universities, have a "reasonable amount of storage space" sufficient for several years if necessary or have contracted for storage areas. On-site storage should end in the Appalachian region when a new disposal facility opens in the late 1990s in Pennsylvania.

The Barnwell...