Three years after the state limited nuclear waste shipments to a Barnwell County landfill, the site’s operator wants to accept more refuse than state law now allows.

Chem-Nuclear Systems LLC says its idea could bring the state an extra $19 million in fees during a time of dwindling revenues. But critics say South Carolina has taken more than its share of the nation’s nuclear waste.

At issue is a 2000 state law that gradually reduces the amount of low-level waste that can be sent from out of state to the landfill. Beginning in 2008, only South Carolina, Connecticut and New Jersey can use the site.

But Chem-Nuclear did not take in all the waste allowed in the first three years after the law passed, spokeswoman Deborah Ogilvie said.

So the company wants to make up the difference before 2008, she said. That would require the S.C. General Assembly to change the law to allow Chem-Nuclear to recoup its losses.

Chem-Nuclear and the state split profits from waste disposal fees at the landfill. Last year, the landfill provided about $30 million to South Carolina, Ogilvie said. The state applies the money to education.

The waste dump accepts only low-level waste, which includes lightly radioactive clothing from hospitals and more heavily contaminated materials, such as nuclear reactor parts.

“I would say to the state of South Carolina, that if you need money, we have found $19 million,” Ogilvie said.

She said allowing her company to make up for capacity it hasn’t used won’t increase the overall amount of refuse allowed at the landfill — only restore what was originally agreed upon.

The 2000 law, for instance, allowed the landfill to take in 160,000 cubic feet of refuse in 2001. But the landfill brought in less than 126,000 cubic feet, Ogilvie said.

State Rep. Roland Smith, R-Aiken, said he was approached Wednesday by a Chem-Nuclear representative about the idea. Smith said the proposal was floated during an informal “off-the-cuff” conversation, but he was receptive to the idea.

Smith chairs a House budget subcommittee that examines public education, which he said needs money.

“We’re not to that point” of introducing a bill, Smith said. “If it reaches that point, I’d be interested in looking at this because of education.”

A nuclear advisory panel to Gov. Mark Sanford is examining the proposal and other issues surrounding the Barnwell dump, said his spokesman, Will Folks.

Ogilvie said the returns to her company would be modest —- no more than a few million dollars. The landfill’s parent company, Duratek Inc., reported revenue of more than $200 million for the first nine months of 2003.

But some legislators and environmentalists were skeptical of the proposal.

The state has debated for more than a decade whether to reduce the flow of waste to the low-level waste landfill, the only one of its kind open to the nation. State Sen. Phil Leventis and representatives of the S.C. Sierra Club, Greenpeace and the S.C. Wildlife Federation said the state should stick to the 2000 law.

“Sophisticated people who make decisions for industry see this state as less than-sophisticated and short-sighted,” Leventis, D-Sumter, said. “I hope we don’t do this. It hasn’t saved our economy yet.”

Tom Clements, a Greenpeace activist who tracks nuclear issues, said allowing additional capacity at the landfill would make it easier for more of the nation’s old nuclear reactor components to be buried there.

In recent years, nuclear power plants have begun sending decommissioned reactors to the Barnwell site for burial. The latest proposal is to send one from Southern California.

South Carolina in 1995 planned to shutter the dump to the nation, but the General Assembly ditched that plan after heavy lobbying by Chem-Nuclear. Legislators decided that fees from the dump would go toward education.

Reach Fretwell at (803) 771-8537 or sfretwell@thestate.com.