Waste Management

By Richard Woodbury/Denver

The first tractor-trailer load of nuclear garbage finally rumbled up to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in the New Mexico desert last week. Protests, lawsuits and bureaucratic snafus had delayed for 11 years the opening of the nation's first permanent deep-rock nuclear repository and turned the project into a black hole of costs: the $1 billion price tag eventually got to $19 billion. Even so, the plant will operate at barely 40% of capacity until state regulators grant certification. "Radioactive wastes will be a lot safer here than sitting around at old bomb plants," said ROBERT NEILL, director of the Environmental Evaluation Group, a watchdog organization. The debris, mostly plutonium-tainted clothing, tools and sludge, will be lowered a distance equal to the height of two World Trade Centers into a rock tomb hollowed from a salt formation. Gradually the walls will collapse, burying the refuse snugly, the EPA hopes, for 10,000 years. That's less than the radioactive half-life of plutonium, so elaborate barriers with Stonehenge-like giant granite monuments are planned.

--By Richard Woodbury/Denver