Subject: The Nuke dump is back!!!! Date: Fri, 22 Aug 1997 13:00:16 GMT From: sasghk@bat.unx.sas.com (Gary Hutchison) Organization: SAS Institute Inc. Newsgroups: triangle.general Nuclear waste project gets fund infusion From Staff and Wire Reports Over the objections of North Carolina's two delegates, a regional commission approved a financing plan Thursday that could breathe new life into a troubled radioactive waste repository slated for southwestern Wake County. Under the plan, utilities in the Southeast will lend about $7 million for continued studies of the Wake site. In exchange, the power companies will get cheaper disposal rates. Supporters say the plan will help the North Carolina project avoid a looming funding crisis. The project has consumed more than $102 million to date -- mainly in geological studies of the site -- and is slowly running out of money. "It will be a way for various parties to share the risk, rather than having all the risk fall on one party," said Kathryn Haynes, director of the Southeast Compact Commission, a seven-state group that is trying to finance the region's next low-level radioactive waste disposal site. North Carolina's compact delegates, however, voted against the plan and environmentalists are urging Gov. Jim Hunt to carefully scrutinize the proposal's fine print. "It could be a way to trap North Carolina into signing a contract that could force the state to produce a site,'' said Mary MacDowell, who has long questioned the safety of the proposed site, which is near the Chatham County line. Congress chartered the compact commission in the early 1980s to oversee development of low-level radioactive waste disposal in the Southeast. Such waste ranges from lightly contaminated clothing to material that will remain hazardous for hundreds of years. Most of it comes from nuclear power plants. North Carolina reluctantly agreed to build a regional disposal site in 1986, but lawsuits and questions about a suitable site have resulted in several missed deadlines. During Thursday's meeting, MacDowell said, one of North Carolina's top environmental officials, Richard Whisnant, told the delegates that the site's chances for a license had not improved recently. Despite that report, compact commissioners voted to go ahead with more money for the Wake site, with state Rep. George Miller and William Briner of North Carolina dissenting. In a telephone interview, Miller said the plan was originally touted as a nonbinding agreement. But recent changes in the proposal, he said, could lead to a binding contract that would require North Carolina to pay for legal fees and cover other costs for the Wake site. It's a deviation of what Gov. Hunt originally approved," said Miller, a Democrat from Durham.