LLRW generators feel Barnwell's closure

When the Barnwell, South Carolina low-level radioactive waste storage facility closed its doors to generators outside the Southeast Compact states on July 1, 1994 many of those generators, including nuclear medicine departments, felt the effects of no access to disposal. States of the Northwest and Rocky Mountain compacts still have the disposal access, but much of the nation is left in a bind. Although there have not been reports of negative affects on clinical nuclear medicine from the closing, research of all kinds has to face new decisions about how much radioactive materials to use in light of growing limits on expensive on-site storage. Many facilities foresaw and planned for the Barnwell closing well in advance but admit that no amount of planning could forestall the problems of having no recourse to permanent disposal