Group Concerned High-Lever Radioactive Waste May Be Stuck At SRS

Aiken County, SC—Nuclear materials are not new at SRS, but the idea that high-level waste could be housed there, permanently, is now getting the attention of a group of local activists.

This group is concerned, because the place this waste, was to be shipped, might be shutting down? The government is looking to halt construction at Yucca Mountain, in the Nevada desert.

Yucca Mountain was the place that was supposed to be where the nation’s high-level nuclear waste was to be stored…permanently.

Members from the group known as the SRS Community Reuse Organization, or SRS-CRO, say there is no “plan b” for the waste, which means, at this point, it stays right here at the Savannah River Site.

U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) studied sites across the nation, when they searched for a place to permanently put away this radioactive waste. Yucca Mountain is about 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas…but recently, an outcry from some in Congress put a stop to construction…and that currently leaves nowhere for the waste to go.

Rick McLeod, executive director, SRS-CRO: “We don’t want to be known as the dumping ground of the Southeast. That could impact our economic development from bringing in industry, don’t want to be associated with the community, in that same sense…“

SRS-CRO will hold a community meeting this Monday, in Augusta, where they will talk more, in detail, about the Yucca Mountain decision, and the impact they say, it could have on the community.