Environment

By Richard Woodbury/Denver

For 10 years, the Department of Energy's half-mile-deep subterranean nuclear-waste repository in New Mexico has been ready for business, but legal challenges and bureaucratic rigmarole have prevented the WIPP site (for Waste Isolation Pilot Plant) from opening. Now, with the EPA about to bestow its blessing, the DOE is gearing up to begin receiving plutonium refuse from the nation's mothballed bomb factories. With activists vowing legal action, that's no sure thing. Though officials insist that concerns about everything from fractures to flooding have been addressed, opponents still question the safety of shipping millions of pounds of radioactive waste along the interstates on flatbed trucks. "There are going to be accidents," says TOM MARSHALL, director of the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center. "Who knows how well the containers will hold up?" If court maneuvers fail, protests along the routes are likely.

--By Richard Woodbury/Denver