Tens of thousands of tons of potentially lethal radioactive waste have been piling up across the nation for more than a generation, but the federal government has yet to decide how to get rid of it permanently.
After axing a multibillion-dollar plan to bury the waste beneath Yucca Mountain, Nev., President Barack Obama has asked an expert panel to recommend alternatives.
But the panel's report isn't due until January 2012. And the group's recommendations aren't binding on the White House or Congress.
In short, the country's political leaders are no closer to a safe, permanent disposal plan for nuclear waste than they were a generation ago, when nuclear power became widespread and the Cold War was in full swing.
The nation's accumulated 70,000 tons of extremely radioactive, "high level" waste — uranium and plutonium — has sat in "temporary" storage in 35 states since at least the 1950s.
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