6 Jan, 2011, Thursday, Nuclear news: Ameren still searching for nuclear waste site

StltodayL the #1 St. Louis Website: Ameren still searching for nuclear waste site

BY JEFFREY TOMICH
Posted: Thursday, January 6, 2011 1:19 pm

Font Size: Default font size Larger font size Share Since 2008, St. Louis-based Ameren Missouri has been without a permenant storage location for some of its low-level nuclear waste, requiring its Callaway nuclear plant to stash the material on site.

That could soon change with a new approval for a West Texas site to accept waste from other states. While Ameren spokesman Mike Cleary said the utility has no current plans to use the Texas site, he said the utility is actively looking for a permanent solution.

Longer term, Cleary said expanded access to the Texas storage could be meaningful not only for nuclear power plant operators such as Ameren, but also hospitals and research facilities that generate low-level waste.

"It would certainly be preferable to have a central facility for it than storing it in numerous sites all over the country," he said.

Until such a facility can be secured, he said, Ameren is working to make additional space available for low-level waste at Callaway. Ameren lost access to its disposal site in 2008 when a facility Barnwell, S.C., stopped accepting such material from all but two outside states: New Jersey and Connecticut.

The Texas Low-Level Radioactive Waste Disposal Compact Commission voted Tuesday to allow shipments of low-level nuclear waste from 36 other states, including Missouri, to a 1,300-acre disposal site near the Texas-New Mexico border.

There are three levels of low-level nuclear waste. Only the most radioactive 5 percent, known as types B and C waste, is being stored at the Callaway site.

The rest is Type A waste, items such as paper towels, swabs, disposable clothing and other items that are mildly contaminated from working with radioactive material, Cleary said. Those items continue to be sent to a disposal facility in Clive, Utah.

Low-level waste is stored in sealed drums. That's much different than spent nuclear fuel, the high-level waste that's kept under water in stainless steel-lined pool.