The Central Interstate Low Level Radioactive Waste Compact is made up of the states of Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Kansas. The compact was established by the "Compact Law" and the "Low-Level Radioactive Waste Policy Amendments of the 1985."
The Central Interstate Low Level Radioactive Waste Compact and US Ecology purchased land 2 miles west of Butte, Nebraska in the early 1990s with the intention of placing a dump site there. There was extensive controversy and the dump site was eventually removed from consideration.
Citizens and factions throughout Boyd County, where Butte is located, fought for over 15 years over the placement of a disposal site in this area. Nebraska governors Kay Orr and Ben Nelson were heavily involved on different sides of the issue.
Nebraska was officially removed from the compact after a series of long court battles that ended in 2004. The state of Nebraska had to pay a settlement and there have been attempts made to sell the compact's land just outside Butte. [1]
Radioactive waste is a type of hazardous waste that contains radioactive material. Radioactive waste is a result of many activities, including nuclear medicine, nuclear research, nuclear power generation, nuclear decommissioning, rare-earth mining, and nuclear weapons reprocessing. The storage and disposal of radioactive waste is regulated by government agencies in order to protect human health and the environment.
Butte is a village in, and the county seat of, Boyd County, Nebraska, United States. Its population was 286 according to the 2020 census, down from 326 in 2010.
Sierra Blanca is an unincorporated area in Hudspeth County, Texas, United States. It is also the county seat of the county and the namesake of a census-designated place (CDP) in which it is located. The town is part of the Trans-Pecos region of far West Texas, is located northeast of the Mexican border and is within the Mountain Time Zone. As of the 2020 census, its population was 315.
In the United States, an interstate compact is a pact or agreement between two or more states, or between states and any foreign sub-national government. Most early interstate compacts resolved boundary disputes, but since the early 20th century, compacts have increasingly been used as a tool of state cooperation on infrastructure, services and professional licensing, often to ease administrative barriers and reduce costs. In some cases, an agreement will create a new multi-state governmental agency which is responsible for administering or improving some shared resource such as a seaport or public transportation infrastructure.
The Mayak Production Association is one of the largest nuclear facilities in the Russian Federation, housing a reprocessing plant. The closest settlements are Ozyorsk to the northwest and Novogornyi to the south.
Drigg is a village situated in the civil parish of Drigg and Carleton on the West Cumbria coast of the Irish Sea and on the boundary of the Lake District National Park in the Borough of Copeland in the county of Cumbria, England.
The River Keekle is a river running through the English county of Cumbria.
The Maxey Flats low-level radioactive waste (LLRW) disposal site is a Superfund site in Kentucky which served as a disposal site for low-level nuclear waste from 1963 to 1977. Investigations by the Environmental Protection Agency, among others, determined that plutonium stored at the site had migrated beyond the site's trenches, and the site was closed in 1977.
Nuclear Nebraska: The Remarkable Story of the Little County That Couldn't Be Bought is a 2007 book by Susan Cragin which follows the controversy about a proposed low level nuclear waste dump, which was planned for Boyd County, Nebraska.
The Port of Omaha was a port in the United States with facilities on the west side of the Missouri River in Omaha, Nebraska. The Port was formally sanctioned by the U.S. Congress in 1888.
The Kyshtym disaster, sometimes referred to as the Mayak disaster or Ozyorsk disaster in newer sources, was a radioactive contamination accident that occurred on 29 September 1957 at Mayak, a plutonium production site for nuclear weapons and nuclear fuel reprocessing plant located in the closed city of Chelyabinsk-40 in Chelyabinsk Oblast, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union.
Muckaty Station, also known as Warlmanpa, is a 2,380-square-kilometre (920 sq mi) Aboriginal freehold landholding in Australia's Northern Territory, 110 kilometres (68 mi) north of Tennant Creek, and approximately 800 kilometres (500 mi) south of Darwin. Originally under traditional Indigenous Australian ownership, the area became a pastoral lease in the late 19th century and for many years operated as a cattle station. It is traversed by the Stuart Highway, built in the 1940s along the route of the service track for the Australian Overland Telegraph Line. It is also crossed by the Amadeus Gas Pipeline built in the mid-1980s, and the Adelaide–Darwin railway, completed in early 2004. Muckaty Station was returned to its Indigenous custodians in 1999.
Radioactive waste is generated from the nuclear weapons program, commercial nuclear power, medical applications, and corporate and university-based research programs. Some of the materials LLW consists of are: "gloves and other protective clothing, glass and plastic laboratory supplies, machine parts and tools, and disposable medical items that have come in contact with radioactive materials". Waste is generally categorized as high level waste (HLW) and low-level waste (LLW). LLW contains materials such as irradiated tools, lab clothing, ion exchanger resins, animal carcasses, and trash from defense, commercial nuclear power, medical, and research activities. These materials usually have radioactivity that have short half lives—from ranges of multiple days to several hundred years. In 1990, 1.1 million cubic feet of LLW was produced. Currently, U.S. reactors generate about 40,000 cubic meters of low-level radioactive waste per year, including contaminated components and materials resulting from reactor decommissioning.
Environmental issues in Russia include pollution and erosion, and have impacts on people, wildlife and ecosystems.
From 1946 through 1993, thirteen countries used ocean disposal or ocean dumping as a method to dispose of nuclear/radioactive waste with an approximation of 200,000 tons sourcing mainly from the medical, research and nuclear industry.
Shpack Landfill is a hazardous waste site in Norton, Massachusetts. After assessment by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) it was added to the National Priorities List in October 1986 for long-term remedial action. The site cleanup is directed by the federal Superfund program. The Superfund site covers 9.4 acres, mostly within Norton, with 3.4 acres in the adjoining city of Attleboro. The Norton site was operated as a landfill dump accepting domestic and industrial wastes, including low-level radioactive waste, between 1946 and 1965. The source of most of the radioactive waste, consisting of uranium and radium, was Metals and Controls Inc. which made enriched uranium fuel elements for the U.S. Navy under contract with the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission. Metals and Controls merged with Texas Instruments in 1959. The Shpack landfill operation was shut down by a court order in 1965.
In the 1990 Nebraska gubernatorial election, Democratic challenger Ben Nelson narrowly defeated first-term Republican incumbent Kay Orr for the governorship of the state of Nebraska.
The Environmental Restoration Disposal Facility (ERDF) is a waste disposal facility located at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Richland, Washington, U.S.. Built in 1996, ERDF collects low-level waste, mixed waste, and other hazardous materials that are generated at Hanford. It does not collect any radioactive waste or other hazardous materials from other sites or the public. The hazardous waste dump was designed to be expanded as needed. The main storage facilities consist of single layer tanks that hold in all more than 17 million tons of nuclear waste. As of 2011, two new super tanks which hold double the amount of the single layer tanks were installed, providing safer levels of radioactivity in the surrounding ground areas and water sheds. Liners were previously installed to collect liquid released by the tanks or rain water that may seep in. The ERDF does not accept liquid waste, but water that seeps into the landfill is treated to keep the surrounding environment safe.
Lake Torrens Station is a rural locality in central South Australia. Lake Torrens Station is located between the Lake Torrens foreshore and The Ghan railway line.
Alabama v. North Carolina, 560 U.S. 330 (2010), was an original jurisdiction United States Supreme Court case. It arose from a disagreement between the state of North Carolina and the other members of the Southeast Interstate Low-Level Radioactive Waste Management Compact over the funding for a joint project. Eight states had formed the compact in 1983 to manage low-level radioactive waste in the southeastern United States. In 1986, North Carolina was chosen as the location for the regional waste facility, and it asked the other states for funding to help with the project. The project stalled and was eventually shut down, despite North Carolina receiving $80 million from the other states. After the project's demise, the other states demanded their money back, but North Carolina refused to repay them, leading to this case.