PORTLAND (AP) – Maine Yankee has vowed to act swiftly to move 26 rail cars carrying low-level radioactive waste after Topsham residents said they didn’t want them parked near their homes.

The rail cars arrived recently, en route to the former nuclear power plant in Wiscasset.

“When it pulled up, the kids were excited and said, oh, look a train,”‘ said Dorothy Simpson.

Simpson had heard about rail cars returning to Maine Yankee with contaminated soil but said she didn’t think these could be the same ones at first.

“I just figured they would ship it out in the middle of nowhere until they figured out what to do with it, and here it is sitting in my backyard,” she said.

Topsham’s emergency management coordinator, Mike Labbe, took a radioactivity measuring device to the tracks and said his measurements confirmed what Maine Yankee and state officials had said – the rail cars did not contain enough radiation to pose a public hazard.

“There was no increase” in radiation around the cars, Labbe said. “I wanted to be 100 percent sure.”

Maine Yankee told Labbe and residents of the neighborhood on Friday that the 26 cars loaded with soil would be removed within days.

The 26 rail cars are among 48 that Maine Yankee has called back from various parts of the country. The loads of soil were removed from the former reactor site and bound for a secure landfill in Utah. They were turned around last month after the landfill operator said previous shipments from Maine Yankee were too wet to bury.

The 26 cars were being stored on a side rail in Topsham until Maine Yankee had room to bring them to Wiscasset.

Town officials in Topsham are planning to hold a meeting at 7 p.m. Monday in the Topsham Public Library to answer questions and ease any fears about the rail cars, Labbe said.