|
|
|
|
|
|
Resources |
|
|
|
Why WIPP Is the Wrong Solution
| Article
# : |
15274 |
|
|
Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
|
| Issue
Date : |
8 / 1989 |
3,019 Words |
| Author
: |
Daniel Gibson
Daniel Gibson writes from Santa Fe, New Mexico, about issues
related to science and the environment. |
Just over four decades ago the world's first atom bomb was detonated in the southern deserts of New Mexico in a region called the Jornado del Muerto (Journey of Death). Since that time, the United States has been continually designing and manufacturing nuclear weapons at a string of bomb factories across the nation. Now, the chicken New Mexico let fly may be coming home to roost.
Since 1981, the Department of Energy (DOE) has been constructing an underground facility in New Mexico designed to serve as the disposal site for the extremely long-lived and lethal waste by-products of nuclear weapons production. The complex of surface buildings and miles of underground shafts, tunnels, and waste disposal rooms is knows as the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP).
The wastes slated for WIPP are currently being held at DOE facilities scattered across the nation from Hanford, Washington, to Savannah River, South Carolina. Over the past year, Congress and the American public have discovered that these facilities have massively contaminated local air, water, and soils with radioactive and hazardous substances.
At facilities like the Rocky Flats Plant outside Denver, local cancer rates greatly exceed regional averages. At the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory (INEL), radioactive contamination has penetrated the Snake River aquifer, central to the State's agriculture and urban drinking water supplies. A congressional watchdog entity, the General Accounting Office, estimates it will cost $100-200 billion to clean up these sites--if it can be done at
... (1904 of 17976 Characters)
Read Full Article
|
|
