Several times each month gleaming white trucks wind their way across Tennessee with grim cargo, the poisonous remnants of the Cold War arms race. In the past year, the U.S. Department of Energy has quietly been turning Oak Ridge into a national hub for burning the unwanted toxic wastes of Cold War bomb production. With our state's approval, nearly 1.4 million pounds of poison waste from five other states was trucked to Oak Ridge. This year, wastes are scheduled to arrive from another three states, including Nevada and New Mexico. Two more, including California, have asked for permission to send their wastes.
Most loads are mildly radioactive.
All are too poisonous to be buried. So these wastes are instead sent to an Oak Ridge incinerator owned by the federal government the only one in the country allowed to burn this combination of wastes. And some legislators are mad as hell about it. The incinerator may pose new threats to the environment. Dozens of people who work on the government reservation near the incinerator have reported a series of similar and unexplained illnesses in recent years.