Group items tagged

Since last summer, 36 states have had nowhere to dump the radioactively tainted metal, material and products that have come to light within their borders. In July, a waste site in Barnwell, S.C. -- which served two-thirds of the country as the burial place for material contaminated with low-level radioactivity -- shut its doors after battling neighborhood opposition for years. With no disposal site for most states -- including California, Texas, Florida and New York -- castoff radioactive material is piling up at factories and, in turn, increasingly getting lost, said John Williamson, administrator of Florida's Bureau of Radiation Control.

In February, hundreds of government regulators and businesspeople gathered in Phoenix for "Waste Management '08," the annual radioactive waste industry confab. Amid the swag and schmoozing, industry insiders appraised the state of their business. The good news: The nuclear industry appears to be rebounding in the United States, providing potentially huge new radioactive waste streams as planned reactors come online. The bad news: The number of landfills for burying low-level radioactive waste is dwindling. One of the oldest sites, in Barnwell, South Carolina, will close to all but a handful of states on July 1. That will leave 36 states, including Texas, with no place to send the radioactive waste generated by their nuclear power plants, universities, hospitals, and companies.

Most of the nation has nowhere to send its low-level nuclear waste. It can't stop producing this waste. It's necessary for diagnosing and treating cancer and other diseases and for research. But because there is nowhere to send the waste, it piles up in hospitals, other medical facilities and research centers.