Some environmentalists propose casing plutonium in glass, a method now being tested at Department of Energy's Savannah River South Carolina plant for treating highly radioactive liquid wastes. Eventually, all high-level waste was marked for delivery to a national permanent waste dump in Yucca Flats, Nevada. But that project is a decade behind schedule and political battles have postponed further congressional action until 1997. Nevadans argue that Yucca Flats is geologically and hydrologically active and complex. They say the project would not only harm the economy of Nevada, but it would be dangerous, as large-scale radioactive releases could occur from the volcanos, earthquakes or hydrothermal activity at the site itself.
Transportation is also an issue.
Nobody wants trucks of nuclear waste passing near their homes. Residents in Colorado are fighting the Yucca Flats proposal because the dangerous materials would have to travel through their state. Tom Carpenter , the head of the Government Accountability Project, and Jim Werner , the Director of Planning and Analysis of the Environmental Management Program at the Department of Energy.