The nuclear-waste compact among Texas, Maine and Vermont, signed this week by President Clinton, provides only a partial answer to the huge question of nuclear waste. But it is a small relief that the low-level waste in these states will be moving out of some of the ad hoc storage facilities currently being used to more permanent storage.

In exchange for $25 million and 13 years of political energy, Maine now knows that it will soon ship its low-level nuclear waste to the Lone Star State. Low-level waste is everything but a power plant’s fuel rods — the gloves and gowns, bricks and pipes, steel and stanchions used, in this case, at Maine Yankee.

Part of the reason the deal took so long to craft was that some opponents did not want to see an agreement of any sort for low-level waste because of its health dangers. Granted, there is no particularly good place to put nuclear waste, but it is unproductive to pretend that the nation can simply wish the waste away by opposing its storage. Likewise, leaving the waste in the dozen spots it currently occupies greatly increases the number of places where something could go wrong.

Texas, which needed partners under a 1980 law that urged waste consolidation, became a waste receiver because it was unlikely to find another state to take its high volume of waste. It found desirable partners in the relatively low-volume Maine and Vermont. Texas benefits by having Maine and Vermont pay for most of the cost of building the storage site. Maine benefits by having a safe place to store its waste — no small thing considering the years of acrimony a search committee here endured while it studied Maine’s geology and water tables, seeking in vain an acceptable local site. The Texas agreement, which also includes storage of medical and research low-level waste, is the 11th compact formed, bringing the number of states involved in these partnerships to 44.

Where, exectly, the Texas site will be has yet to be determined. The proposal to store it in the Sierra Blanca region, not far from the Mexican border, has attracted all sorts of criticism. It could well be that the site is a poor choice for geological, environmental and diplomatic reasons. The compact does not specify a site; only that Texas must accept the waste.

Nor does the compact address the more difficult issue what to do with high-level waste. It was not designed to; that was supposed to be the job of the Department of Energy. The DOE’s failure to construct a site leaves the waste in limbo, eventually raises the cost of the project and further imperils the future of the nuclear-power industry.

The Texas compact at least holds open the possibility of a providing a rational means to safely store this dangerous material. Perhaps it could also serve as a model for finding a solution to finding a place to store high-level waste.