The University has formed an organization for the advancement of safe and effective low-level radioactive waste disposal and management.

The Appalachian Compact Users of Radioactive Isotopes (ACURI) was conceived after a meeting last April at the University's Hershey Medical Center. The attendees of the meeting expressed the need for an ACURI organization, said John Vincenti, program director.

After the meeting, the University contacted Appalachian Compact nuclear-fueled electric utilities to discuss the possible formation of a users' group organization. ACURI received unrestricted grants from five of these utilities and receives further funding through membership fees.

The Appalachian Compact, consisting of Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania and West Virginia, was created to help meet the milestones the federal government has set up requiring all states to have operating storage facilities for low-level radioactive waste (LLRW) within their boundaries by 1992. If a state does not comply by 1996, said Vincenti, it must take full responsibility for the waste.

The ACURI program was created to provide a forum for radioactive isotope users to discuss matters that concern them and to analyze and distribute information about LLRW to its members

ACURI members include utilities, research, medical, industrial and academic facilities which use radioactive isotopes. According to John Vincenti, director of the ACURI program, there are 1,400 licensees and permit-holders in the compact states but only five are nuclear power plants. Of the four compact states, Pennsylvania produces the most LLRW.

Currently, LLRW is sent to one of the three disposal sites in the country that are located in Washington, South Carolina and Nevada. However, two of the sites will be closed at the end of 1992. Pennsylvania now sends most of its waste to South Carolina.

The University has been interested in LLRW disposal for about the past five or six years, according to Ray Eyerly of the University's Environmental Resources Research Institute. The University owns the Hershey Medical Center, over 200 laboratories which use radioactive isotopes and a research reactor, all of which make it a producer of LLRW. These factors, according to Vincenti, make the University a reasonable choice for sponsoring the ACURI program.

The ACURI program is run by the program staff but is overseen by a University-wide steering committee made up of professors or department heads from the different colleges. The ACURI program works to transfer information about LLRW to its members and the public, said Vincenti. He said he believes the University can provide a valuable function by providing meaningful technology to the public.

Vincenti stressed that creating a safe and effective disposal site is a process of learning from past problems.