From staff and wire reports

From staff and wire reports

BUCKINGHAM — The executive director of the Virginia Solid Waste Commission has dismissed a rumor that the state has been picked to host a nuclear waste dump.

Barbara W. Wrenn said the confusion over the rumor has hurt efforts to get participation in site selection.

Her comments came Friday at a news conference in Buckingham County after county supervisors adopted a resolution opposing any such dump for their locality.

Ms. Wrenn said Virginia “is not attempting to locate a facility and is not considering the potential suitability of any locations within Virginia for low-level waste disposal.”

The rumor apparently began when several environmentalists were quoted in a recent newspaper article as saying they had been led to believe at a meeting with the chief Washington lobbyist of the Southeast Compact Commission that Virginia already had been chosen as host state.

The compact lobbyist, Wright H. Andrews, afterward wrote one of the environmentalists a letter denying that he ever intimated that Virginia was the choice.

The compact was formed in 1983 to choose a new disposal site for the region’s low-level radioactive waste. Compact members include North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi and Tennessee, in addition to Virginia.

Much of the region’s low-level waste is taken by truck to a facility at Barnwell, S.C., where it is buried in shallow trenches.

But South Carolina officials have said they will close the Barnwell site in 1992, and the compact is scheduled to choose a state to replace South Carolina next year.

Killer gets probation

LYNCHBURG — A woman’s claim that she stabbed her terminally ill husband with an ice pick out of mercy played no part in a plea bargain in which the