What's in a name? Plenty, if it has anything to do with the nuclear power industry. Homeowners in the shadow of power-plant cooling towers may benefit from low property taxes. But nuclear waste dump sites don't have the same popular appeal.

So one firm operating low-level radioactive waste and chemical disposal sites in four states has come up with an answer for this image problem -- a new name.

The former Nuclear Engineering Company of Louisville, Ky., now is . . . US Ecology Inc.m