For architects of the waste-management system, the numbers amount to failure. They spoke about it here this week at the 20th annual Low-level Radioactive Waste Decisionmakers' Forum.

Ralph Disibio said he didn't realize a national approach was needed until he got a call one day saying a truck filled with radioactive waste had caught fire at Beatty, Nev. Then head of Nevada's health department, he had no idea that there was a radioactive waste landfill in the state, let alone that his agency was responsible for it.

Eventually, he organized the governors of the two other states with sites to push for a national law that groups states into 10 regions, each of which was responsible for developing a site to serve member states.

"In our minds, it was so simple," said Disibio, retired after a career managing the nation's biggest radioactive waste sites for private contractors. But, in the end, the so-called regional compact system unraveled as some states resisted responsibility - even for waste generated within their own borders.

"It became self-interest and not a regional issue," he said.

Fast-forward to 2005. Governors in Nebraska killed a site planned for central states' waste. Political pressures drove the federal government to block a land purchase needed for a proposed California site. Legislators in Texas twice rejected plans for a site in that state.

At one time, northeastern states talked about buying the ghost town of Delle, Utah, about 70 miles west of Salt Lake City, for their site.

Beatty closed in 1993 because of leaks. That left two low-level disposal sites in the compact system: Barnwell, S.C., and in Richland, Wash.

Envirocare of Utah became a third facility in 1988. Privately owned and operated, unlike the South Carolina and Washington sites, Envirocare gained an exemption from the compacts at the behest of a state regulator who was taking money, valuable coins and real estate from Envirocare's former owner.

As the Barnwell site prepares to close to all but a few states in 2008, Envirocare remains the only disposal site for low-level waste from more than 30 states. And, thanks to a ban on "hotter," or more radioactive, waste types in Utah, some hospitals, universities and nuclear plants will have no disposal for some waste in a few years.

The regional compacts "failed because political leaders in some states were opposed to it happening," said Ed Helminski, whose trade newsletter hosted the meeting.

He said all eyes are on Barnwell as new alternatives are being explored. Waste could go to federal land already contaminated with radioactive waste from defense programs, to Nevada, a proposed Texas facility or even Envirocare, if waste limits were to be lifted.

And maybe federal regulators will loosen regulations so that some waste can go to hazardous waste landfills.

"A lot of what-ifs," he said. "A lot of wishing going on."

But not everyone is so pessimistic.

"We feel like we can work with the current system," said Envirocare Senior Vice President Tim Barney. "And we can work with a new system, depending on how it was structured."

fahys@sltrib.com