Lethal Garbage

When science hatched the atomic age, moralists and politicians were handed some frightful problems. A different sort of problem is now nagging the scientists themselves: what to do with the deadly radioactive waste products turned out by all the chain-reacting piles? Last week Dr. Karl Z. Morgan, an Oak Ridge physicist, admitted that the problem of this lethal garbage has become serious.

Some of the dangerous isotopes are now being stored in concrete boxes until they can be dumped far out at sea. Others are buried deep under deserts. Others are slowly and carefully being dissipated in the atmosphere. At Oak Ridge, some of the hot stuff is periodically dumped into White Oak Creek. Part of it sinks to a swamp bottom; the rest, much diluted, goes into the Clinch River--with the hope that radioactive fish will not get loose.

With more atomic piles at work, such put-it-off-till-tomorrow methods may have to be abandoned. Dr. Morgan, keeping a fairly straight face, mentioned a definitive solution: why not concentrate the deadly isotopes into one big lot, load them into high-powered rockets, and--aiming at no particular friendly planet--shoot them off the earth into space?

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