Congress may consider new nuke waste sites

Benjamin Grove

Friday, Oct. 1, 2004 | 9:34 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- Congress next year may consider legislation that would establish new federal government sites for low-level radioactive waste.

Nevada officials plan to keep an eye on the proposal because the state, with its abundance of public lands, might be considered a good location for such a project.

The federal government already has a low-level waste repository at the Nevada Test Site, for its own waste generated by the Department of Energy.

Nevada is also the proposed site for the nation's high-level radioactive waste dump at Yucca Mountain.

State officials would not support another dump site, Bob Loux, Nevada Nuclear Project Office executive director, said.

"Nevada has done its share in this arena," Loux said.

The nation's three commercial low-level waste dump sites in South Carolina, Utah and Washington may not be enough to meet national needs, according to a recent report by the General Accounting Office. The South Carolina site could close its doors in 2008 to 34 states outside of its regional compact area.

So lawmakers could consider opening new government storage sites. Sens. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee chairman, and Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., are interested in pursuing legislation next year, aides said.

"While not an immediate problem, we must now pay close attention to prevent a potential future crisis," Domenici said in a prepared statement for a Thursday hearing on the low-level waste storage issue.

The low-level waste under discussion includes radioactively contaminated materials such as clothing, tools, machinery and laboratory equipment from industry and research sites. It includes hospital waste from nuclear medicine.

Low-level waste is different from the high-level waste that comes out of nuclear reactors at power plants. That highly radioactive material, now stored at the plants, is the waste that would be bound for the proposed repository at Yucca Mountain.