AIKEN - State environmental officials and the U.S. Department of Energy have settled a months-long dispute over the burial of nuclear waste at Savannah River Site.

The South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control issued a modified draft Tuesday of a permit DOE needs to bury radioactive waste at the nuclear reservation.

The DOE originally said it wanted the permit issued in March so that it could move forward with work in July. But DHEC held out until now, forcing the federal agency to fortify its commitment to empty tanks that hold Cold War nuclear waste in a timely and thorough fashion.

State officials say the draft permit, which is open to public input, includes three important requirements of DOE that stand out from others:

- The federal agency must keep DHEC abreast of funding for the Salt Waste Processing Facility, which is key to waste removal and burial. This includes regular updates during budget negotiations with Congress.

- DOE must issue quarterly progress reports on the facility's construction, which is supposed to be completed by 2011, and empty the tanks by agreed-upon dates or face fines.

- The agency can bury between 1.4 million and 2.3 million curies of radioactivity at SRS. The DOE originally told Congress it expected to bury between 3 million and 5 million curies.

Debate over the permit included multiple rounds of negotiation and letters between Gov. Mark Sanford and Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman. Representatives for the state and DOE said Wednesday that they are happy with the resolution.

"We always wanted to minimize residual amounts of radioactivity," said Shelly Sherritt, a DHEC liaison to SRS. "We're very pleased to have that as one of our draft conditions."

Karen Patterson, the chairwoman of the SRS Citizens Advisory Board, is among those who urged the state and DOE to resolve the issue.

"The Citizens Advisory Board is thrilled that they've gotten this far, and we hope the permit review process is fairly speedy and sometime in the near future we can start getting waste out of the tanks," she said. "... that's still the most important issue."