It is a typical spring day here on Millstone Point. The wind is whipping across this jut of land into Long Island Sound. But inside the Dominion Millstone Power Station, engineers are working to solve a problem fast approaching.

One of the two remaining nuclear reactors still in operation at Millstone - there are three altogether - is running out of space to store its dangerous, radioactive spent fuel.

Yucca Mountain is a big part of the reason.

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The federal government was supposed to have opened a national nuclear waste dump by 1998. But that dump - in the hollowed-out core of Yucca, in the desert between Las Vegas and Death Valley - is at least eight years away. This means all the spent fuel at Millstone, and at dozens of other plants nationwide, will have to remain on their sites for many more years.

The issue for these plants is very different from the one that has so many Nevadans riled up - whether to move nuclear waste to Yucca. The issue for the plants is how soon they can move the waste and how to cope in the meantime.

The byproduct of splitting atoms for electric power - the used fuel rods - are so highly radioactive that standard procedure is to cool them underwater for at least five years after they are removed from a reactor.

The spent-fuel pool at Millstone Unit 2 will reach optimal capacity by 2005. The complex's new owner, Virginia-based Dominion Resources, and other plant operators had hoped their waste would be headed to Yucca by then.

But the bogged-down approval process for Yucca means that, for the time being, some 44,000 metric tons of waste produced nationwide since commercial plants first went on line, and the roughly 20 metric tons each plant produces yearly, are likely to remain at 72 reactor sites and dozens of other locations in more than three dozen states.

In Connecticut, at Waterford and at Haddam, home to the closed Connecticut Yankee plant, fuel rods will stay in the pools or in huge concrete and steel canisters, known as dry cask storage, even though Connecticut ratepayers already have paid $785 million toward the Yucca project.

The issue of what to do with the spent fuel has gained more urgency since Sept. 11, with the fear of an attack on the storage sites.

Waterford First Selectman Paul Eccard said his town of 19,000 residents is generally supportive of nuclear power. Many are veterans of the nuclear Navy, employees of Electric Boat or people whose livelihoods have come from the Millstone plants.

"But that doesn't mean they're blase about it," Eccard said of how spent fuel is stored. He said there is greater concern since Sept. 11. "They fully expect and demand that we be careful about this."

The nuclear industry says about 60 of the nation's 103 operating reactors will run out of storage space in their pools by 2006. That number jumps to 78 by 2010. Most plants are now using or planning for dry cask storage - Connecticut Yankee is among the latter.

The storage conundrum, both on the national and local levels, has re-energized the debate over nuclear power. In Connecticut, town leaders say long-term storage wasn't part of the original deal. The waste - some 1,600 metric tons is now stored in the state - was supposed to be shipped out periodically, either for reprocessing or to the long-planned repository. Only the newest spent fuel was to be on site.

The Ford and Carter administrations put an end in the 1970s to reprocessing the fuel because of the cost and because of concern that its byproduct, plutonium, might end up in the hands of adversaries seeking nuclear weapons.

Now, the options are few.

Keith Ainsworth, a Haddam selectman, said the fight over how to store the waste at Connecticut Yankee "has really torn our community apart." Ainsworth has been criticized for his willingness to work with managers of the decommissioning plan, which calls for storing the spent fuel in nearby woods and eventually dismantling the plant.

"We have no choice," Ainsworth said. "We have to make the most pragmatic decisions we can for the town, regardless of whether we want to make these decisions."

In Haddam, that has meant an out-of-court settlement that gave Connecticut Yankee a town permit to build a $40 million dry-cask facility three quarters of a mile from its closed plant. The plan is to put 43 16-foot-tall canisters above ground on a hockey rink-sized concrete pad. The containers would be used for shipping once Yucca is ready.