The Maine Yankee Community Advisory Panel (CAP) is seeking the strength and safety of numbers: strength, in the form of a bigger voice by reaching out to similar panels around New England; and safety, if the waste from former nuclear power plants in Wiscasset and elsewhere could be stored together.

A consolidated site would be easier to keep secure from ill-intended parties than the numerous individual sites there are now, Maine District 13 Sen. Chris Johnson, D-Somerville, said Monday. Johnson and fellow Maine Yankee CAP members talked strategy at the panel’s annual meeting at Taste of Maine in Woolwich.

Officials and panel members eyed the latest prospects on the federal level for getting the spent fuel out of Wiscasset. And they deliberated on how to get across the message that more progress needs to be made toward that end.

A couple of companies are looking at applying for the government’s OK to store waste at facilities in Texas and New Mexico, Maine Yankee spokesman Eric Howes said.

Those sites will only come to fruition with local, state and federal support, Chairman Don Hudson said. “That’s the ultimate lesson of Yucca Mountain,” he said about failed federal efforts toward a Nevada storage site.

A challenge remains to try to get the U.S House of Representatives and Senate to agree on waste management reform, participants said. “We’ve made some progress, but how do you get those two bodies together,” Howes said.

Members honed in on the security issue Johnson raised and an idea that they have expressed support for before, a small pilot project where waste from Wiscasset and some other sites could be moved. They decided to write a new letter to Maine’s Congressional delegation and, in hopes of expanding the dialogue, invite key staff of the delegation’s members to the panel’s 2016 meeting.

When members began talking about a letter, Hudson questioned the point when, he said, the panel’s 2014 one that hit on several points didn’t garner much of a response. “Should we bother write another letter this year,” he asked Howes.

“I don’t know. There isn’t really much going on with this issue right now,” Howes said.

Hudson and other members went on to support writing a one-page letter focused on security and the pilot project. Howes said he would draft it. Members also made plans to invite other CAP panels in New England to join them on the letter.

Kate O’Connor, attending from the Vermont Nuclear Decommissioning Citizens Advisory Panel, predicted the panel would be interested in the Maine Yankee CAP’s offer.

A new measure, a new concern

Maine Yankee is installing about 3,500 feet of eight-foot-tall, chain-link fencing topped with barbed wire along its property on Old Ferry Road, officials said. The fence is aimed at deterring hunters’ trespassing, a nuisance that has been occurring for years, site manager J. Stanley Brown said.

Trespassing is one of the activities Maine Yankee reports to law enforcement and regulatory agencies.

A new security issue that has begun to occur involves recreational use of drones. Maine Yankee recently notified authorities of a drone that security staff heard and saw hovering over the site. Nothing suspicious was found on the road nearby, Brown said.

Johnson said drone use may be going to pick up quickly. He asked Brown if Maine Yankee had plans to respond to the problem. There are no plans other than to get the various agencies involved when the reports occur, Brown said.

“Is that expensive,” Johnson asked.

“Not really,” Brown answered.

Panel member Ralph Keyes, a science teacher at Wiscasset Middle High School where a class on drones is under way, told the panel he would share the information with the school.

Also Monday, member Lewis Curtis of Boothbay Harbor announced he was leaving the panel. Fellow members thanked him for his service that dates to 1997.

“Age and living in Texas most of the year prohibit me from being an effective member of the CAP,” Curtis writes in a Sept. 21 letter to Hudson. “I have enjoyed being able to participate and (was) humbled that I was selected ... I have deep respect for the members and wish you every success in the coming years,” the letter concludes.