In addition to the nuclear waste stored on site at U.S. nuclear reactors and depositories such as the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant for nuclear weapons waste, there are other sites where less radioactive materials are dumped into landfills. In North Dakota, the radioactive filters from fracking operations are being illegally dumped in landfills because they exceed the allowed levels of radioactivity. In Texas, there is a commercial waste disposal operation that is lobbying for the legal right to accept more radioactivity in waste than it currently has while questions are being raised about the safety of what they are storing now. While citizens might balk at the thought of a radioactive landfill near their homes, there are municipal and state governments that are working on attracting nuclear waste business to their jurisdictions.
There is an old landfill near Barnwell, South Carolina operated by Chem-Nuclear, a subsidiary of Energy Solutions. This landfill is one of the few in the U.S. that accept low-level nuclear waste. This fifty year old landfill is currently losing money and has been leaking radioactive tritium into the Savannah River which is the water supply for two hundred thousand people. Chem-Nuclear has been actively lobbying the state legislature for decades to allow much more nuclear waste that is more radioactive to be disposed of in the landfill. One enticement is the offer by Chem-Nuclear to pay a special fee for the privilege of taking the more dangerous waste. State leaders in turn lobbied the U.S. Congress to allow a group of states to come together in an agreement that would allow them to bury dangerous nuclear waste in one of the participating states while not taking any such waste from a non-participating states. This effort was successful in 1986.
Opponents of nuclear waste dumps in S.C. spent fifteen years trying to get the Barnwell dump closed while also trying to join with some other states in one of the Congress approved associations. Their hope was to have another state take their waste but that attempt was unsuccessful. In 2000, S.C. finally managed to make a deal with Connecticut and New Jersey to take a small amount of their nuclear waste at the Barnwell dump. This deal went into effect in 2008.
Now Chen-Nuclear is lobbying to scrap that arrangement and take waste from other states again. One of their arguments is that they are losing money. That is ironic because the deal that was struck to have Barnwell accept some waste from only two states was deliberately structured to be a money losing proposition exactly to prevent more waste coming to S.C. Sadly, the landfill is losing so much money that unless more money comes in soon, the landfill will have to be closed and the taxpayers of S.C. will wind up paying to maintain the dump. Now there are bills being proposed in the S.C. legislature to open up the dump to more radioactive waste from other states. So the choice seems to be either the S.C. taxpayers take over the cost of the existing dump or S.C. becomes one of the main dumping grounds for nuclear waste from all over the U.S. I am sure that many in S.C. would prefer a third alternative.
Barnwell landfill:
