Chronology: Costs kept growing, but construction never began

198O: Congress passes the Low-Level Radioactive Waste Policy Act, requiring states to assume responsibility for disposal of all their radioactive trash aside from used nuclear fuel.

1983: Southeast Compact Commission formed; consists of North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Florida and Virginia. Each would take 20-year turns as the Southeast's waste repository.

1986: The compact chooses North Carolina as the first state to build a new landfill.

1987: The General Assembly creates the N.C. Low-Level Radioactive Waste Management Authority to steer the process of finding, building, operating and closing the site.

1988: Search for radioactive waste site begins.

1989: Chem-Nuclear Systems Inc. wins the contract to develop and operate the facility. Total estimated cost of licensing, construction: $42 million. Date of opening: Jan. 1, 1993.

JULY 1990: Authority announces that delays in hiring a contractor and identifying a site mean the dump won't open in time. Wake site -- one of two under consideration -- is discovered to have thousands of tiny fractures underneath it, complicating engineering studies. Cost of licensing alone doubles to $45.8 million.

SEPT. 1992: Chem-Nuclear says it will need $54 million to obtain a license. One subcontractor, Law Engineering & Environmental Services, needs $460,000 for nine months of work by four employees. Said authority member Warren Corgan: "What we are seeing here is the same process by which the Department of Defense bought $6,000 toilet seats."

DEC. 1993: Wake site, which was favored by legislators, Gov. Jim Martin and public relations consultants, is chosen by the authority.

march 1994: Estimated total cost rises to $150 million.

AUGUST 1994: Opening delayed until mid-1997 because of regulators' concerns about whether the ground underneath is too fractured and complex to guarantee public safety.

OCTOBER-NOVEMBER 1994: Spending tops $75 million. "Continuing to fund and pursue such a futile effort would be absurd," Wake County commissioners write to the authority.

APRIL 1995: A new consultant hired by the authority, Harding Lawson Associates, criticizes research by Chem-Nuclear and Law Engineering.

JULY 1995: South Carolina announces Chem-Nuclear's Barnwell dump will stay open, withdraws from the compact and forbids North Carolina from sending its waste to Barnwell.

NOVEMBER 1995: State regulators say the authority is no closer to getting a license than one year previously, despite spending $16 million studying groundwater. Compact freezes funds.

JUNE-JULY 1996: Authority replaces Chem-Nuclear with Harding Lawson. Total cost of licensing and construction now estimated at $180 million. Compact again freezes funds. Executive director John Mac Millan resigns, writing: "I am deeply disappointed, frustrated and saddened by the lack of progress and the magnitude of the expenditures which have been invested in this project."

NOVEMBER 1996: Project restarts after compact authorizes more funding. Opening date pushed to 2002.

APRIL 1997: Total cost now estimated at more than $210 million. Rep. George Miller Jr., a Durham Democrat: "Fifteen years ago, we got into a mindset, and now we can't seem to get out of that mindset. ... It's time we urge a whole new reconsideration of this issue."

DECEMBER 1997: Compact cuts off funds a third time after Gov. Jim Hunt rejects a long-term funding plan. Despite progress in working with regulators, the authority mothballs the project. A Nebraska researcher questions whether any new low-level waste sites are even necessary, arguing that the amount of waste has fallen 90 percent since 1980.

JANUARY 1998: Authority member Mike Jones: "Whose responsibility is it in fact to fund the project? ... I guess the courts will ultimately have to decide that."