Nov 12 - McClatchy-Tribune Regional News - Allan Turner Houston Chronicle

In 1987, scavengers in the Brazilian city of Goiania broke open an abandoned medical machine to discover an intriguing, seemingly supernatural glowing blue powder. Some residents rubbed it into their skin.

The substance was cesium-137, a radioactive cancer-causing isotope that was released in the Soviet Union's 1986 Chernobyl reactor disaster. In Goiania, four people died; hundreds were exposed to radiation.

For decades, Texas and 38 other states have shipped materials with small amounts of cesium-137 and other nuclear fission products to a landfill in Barnwell County, S.C.

But July 1, the dump will close to all but South Carolina and two other states.

That development has left Texas clients scrambling to find ways to manage low-level waste until a proposed disposal site opens in West Texas' Andrews County, possibly in three years.

The Barnwell County site, which sprawls across 235 acres on the South Carolina-Georgia border, is one of only two such facilities in the nation that accept the nastier low-level offscourings of the atomic industry.

It is the only site that accepts such shipments from Texas and a broad range of other states.

Chiefly affected in Texas are the state's two nuclear power plants -- Bay City's South Texas Project, which serves Houston, Austin, Corpus Christi and San Antonio; and Glen Rose's Comanche Peak, which serves the Dallas area.

Together, they last year sent the South Carolina dump about 220 cubic feet of low-level waste.

While that load represented a tiny portion of the total 15,000-plus cubic feet of low-level waste generated in Texas, it was among the most radioactive, accounting for about 750 curies of the total 774 generated. Curies are a basic unit of measure for radiation.

Handling growing amounts of such waste will present unique challenges to the South Texas and Comanche Peak power plants.

Storing on-site

Spokesmen for both said plans call for storing the waste on-site until better options come along. At the Bay City power plant, said spokesman Ed Conaway, contaminated items will be placed in a container designed to last 300 years.

That container will be placed in a second receptacle with 10-inch-thick walls of reinforced concrete. The whole package then will be stored in a warehouse.

Comanche Peak will adopt a similar plan and will continue to send its less-contaminated refuse to a dump in Clive, Utah.

Conaway noted that the South Texas Project has stored its high-level waste, primarily spent fuel assemblies, on site since the first of its twin reactors began operation in March 1988. Comanche Peak does the same. The U.S. Department of Energy's planned Yucca Mountain nuclear repository in Nevada -- the only dump for high-level waste in the nation -- isn't expected to open until 2020.

Three waste classes

Low-level waste, said the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission's David McIntyre, is divided into three classes -- A, B and C -- with the latter categories the most radioactive.

Class A accounts for the lion's share of such waste and includes items such as contaminated protective clothing, soil, tools and filters. Such items typically are held on-site until their radioactivity equals that which normally occurs in the environment and they are thrown into the trash. In some cases, items are sent for disposal at the Utah dump.

Class B and C waste often originates at power plants and includes items such as piping and reactor vessels.

Hospitals and universities are among the biggest generators of Class A waste.

At the Baylor College of Medicine, environmental safety director Paul Muraca said isotopes with radioactivity that dissipates in hours or days are stored in secured lab areas. Those that remain dangerous for months are held at a site off campus. Radioactive elements in discarded equipment are returned to the manufacturer.

At the University of Texas Health Science Center, researchers have been encouraged to use, when possible, non-radioactive materials or those with shorter half-lives.

"We don't have enough to fill a 55-gallon barrel," said Bob Emery, assistant vice president for safety. UT last used the South Carolina dump about five years ago.

Cyrus Reed, policy consultant with the Sierra Club's Lone Star Chapter, which encompasses most of the state, said his organization opposes nuclear power plants in principle.

But faced with the reality of the plants, he said waste materials should be stored on-site rather than "burying them and hoping for the best."

Still, Reed expressed concern about the security level at sites that store low-level waste.

Safeguards

The NRC reports that an average of 300 radioactive items a year disappeared nationally between 1996 and 2001. Only 44 percent were found.

Richard Ratliff, radiation program officer for the Texas Department of State Health Services, said the loss of radioactive items in Texas is rare.

Ratliff said terrorist groups might find "dirty bombs" containing low-level waste useful in creating panic, but such devices would likely not be very deadly.

Bombs spreading more heavily contaminated wastes could be more dangerous, but Ratliff said storage of such materials, which his office oversees, is secure.

At the South Texas Project, Conaway said, security includes fencing, motion sensors and "prevention devices."

Additionally, he said, heavily armed paramilitary security guards patrol the grounds 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

allan.turner@chron.com