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LAS VEGAS - The nuclear waste industry is preoccupied with one big question these days: What to do with trainloads of low-level nuclear waste that soon won't have anywhere to go.
"This is a national problem, requiring a national solution," said Alan Pasternak, technical director for utilities, academic institutions and other low-level waste generators in California.
And it was a problem that got lots of attention last week at a conference of regulators and contractors in the business of arranging for disposal of radioactive rubbish from reactors, medical tests and procedures and research - not the highly contaminated spent fuel rods.
Utah finds itself at the center of the discussion.
One reason is Salt Lake City-based EnergySolutions, the country's biggest nuclear waste company and operator of a South Carolina nuclear waste site that is being phased out.
Another reason is that EnergySolutions operates the busiest of the nation's three commercial landfills for radioactive waste, in Tooele County, about 80 miles west of Salt Lake City.
EnergySolutions dropped plans to take hotter Class B and C waste in Utah four years ago. Two years after that, the Legislature outlawed the stuff altogether and dashed the hopes of a solution for the storage of low-level radioactive waste from nuclear plants, hospitals, universities and other users of hazardous radioactive material in 36 states.
Those waste generators need new options to dispose of Class B waste, which is composed of leftovers from medical tests and nuclear operations that is gauged to be largely harmless after about 300 years, under the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission's classification program. They also want an alternative for Class C waste, which loses its hazard potential after about 500 years.
Under a national system that has been in place nearly two decades, radiologically hazardous Class B and C materials can't go to ordinary landfills but only certified ones - and access to those landfills is tightly limited. No new ones have been constructed since the Tooele County facility, back in 1988.
But the EnergySolutions landfill is not eligible to take the B and C waste. Following a public outcry, the Legislature two years ago outlawed radioactive waste that hazardous, although less dangerous Class A waste is allowed. (Its risk is negligible after 100 years, according to the NRC.)
A disposal site at the old Hanford atomic weapons complex in Washington state also is off-limits to B and C waste from the 36 states because of a federal law that requires waste to be managed within regions. It sets up a kind of fence that provides disposal for radioactive waste generated within region boundaries and serves as a barrier to block waste generated outside the regional fence from coming in.
South Carolina raised hundreds of millions of dollars for its schools by opening its gates to radioactive waste from outside its region. However, with the landfill filling up fast, the state decided several years ago to close it to all but three states in its regional group by June 30.
EnergySolutions petitioned South Carolina lawmakers last spring to keep Barnwell open to outside states but failed.
"We will not be seeking to extend the deadline in South Carolina for accepting out-of-compact waste at the Barnwell facility," said company spokesman Greg Hopkins.
This year, about 35,000 cubic feet of A, B and C waste is headed to Barnwell. Universities, government cleanups, hospitals and reactors are scrambling to find a place for their waste beginning next summer.
The organizations that serve, regulate and represent them swapped ideas here last week for dealing with the disposal crunch in presentations at the RadWaste Summit hosted by Exchange Monitor Publications, which publishes newsletters for the nuclear cleanup industry.
Hopkins said it's important for the nuclear industry to solve the problem in the long run. "It is an issue that the industry is going to have to work together on to resolve," he said.
Some of the options discussed last week in Las Vegas include:
* Storing B and C waste where it is until a disposal alternative is found. A new facility is expected to open in Texas in a few years, and a change in that state's law could make disposal available to the stranded 36 states.
* Minimizing waste by processing it at treatment plants.
* Blending Class B and C waste with less contaminated material to lower its hazard rating to A, so it can go to the Tooele County site.
* Allowing states with federally operated sites to accept some B and C waste from sites with federal ties.
Thomas Laetz, a senior policy analyst with the General Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, told the group the nation could end the gridlock caused by the current multistate, multiagency approach with a comprehensive program for dealing with low-level waste. About one dozen countries rely on them to track volumes and disposal needs, among other management factors, he said.
But Christine Gelles, director of disposal operations for the U.S. Energy Department's environmental management office, questioned if there would be support for changing the current management scheme. She noted that Washington had not taken any actions on the GAO's suggestions about improving radioactive waste management.
She concluded, "It's gonna take the will of Congress."