Virginia generates lots of low-level radioactive waste – more so than 37 other states last year.

And much of this material – stemming from nuclear power plants, shipyards that work on nuclear Navy warships, and from medical research labs and hospitals – has gone to a South Carolina landfill since the 1980s.

But on July 1, the landfill in Barnwell County, S.C., will close its doors to Virginia and other partner states.

Which prompts a dicey question: What is Virginia going to do with all this radioactive stuff?

Because no such special landfill exists in Virginia today, nor is one planned, state environmental officials are leaving that crucial answer to companies and institutions that

create low-level wastes, as well as to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

“It just hasn’t risen on the radar screen yet,” said Rick Weeks, an administrator with the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality. The department wants to set up a meeting with involved parties but has not done so yet, Weeks said.

The trash in question includes protective clothing, gloves, tools, cleaning rags, lab equipment, industrial devices, and spent materials used to treat cancer patients with radiation therapy.

It typically has been bagged, stored in 55-gallon drums, picked up by a hazardous-waste specialist, and carried to South Carolina for burial in deep, lined trenches.

Low-level radioactive waste is separated into three categories, based on its health and safety hazards if exposed to unprotected people and the environment – Class A, Class B and Class C.

Class C is the riskiest, A the least risky; B is somewhere in between.

One of the largest generators of all three types is Dominion Virginia Power. The state’s largest utility, Dominion operates two nuclear power plants: in Surry, on the James River west of Norfolk; and at North Anna, on Lake Anna northwest of Richmond.

Richard Zuercher, a Dominion spokesman, said the company is eyeing two main strategies: transporting much of its Class A material to a landfill in Utah, and storing the rest on site in secured buildings.

Knowing for years that Barnwell’s future has been in doubt, Dominion has spent considerable effort recently in minimizing its low-level wastes – “by just working smarter, really,” Zuercher said.

Like other waste generators, Dominion is counting on American ingenuity to provide future alternatives.

Full Story: http://content.hamptonroads.com/story.cfm?story=137544&ran=93033