Radioactive waste and Tennessee

All Americans - and, indeed, the whole world - were surprised in August 1945 when the first nuclear bombs were dropped from U.S. B-29 Superfortress bombers on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, bringing U.S. victory and the end of World War II.

Many Tennesseans were surprised to discover that the new city of Oak Ridge, not far from Knoxville, had played a huge part in the dawning of "the atomic age."

It was only later that most people began to understand that there are big problems about what to do with radioactive nuclear waste, not only from manufacturing weapons, but also from our nuclear plants that generate electricity.

There is argument about storing nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, Nev. - and about getting it there safely.

Tennessee's state Senate Environment Committee just this week approved a bill designed to keep a lot of waste from nuclear power plants from ending up in Tennessee. State Sen. Andy Berke, D-Chattanooga, said the bill will prevent 20,000 tons of foreign nuclear waste from being dumped in Tennessee.

Obviously, what to do with nuclear waste from many sources still has to be settled in ways that we can be confident are really safe and reasonable.

We haven't agreed on acceptable solutions yet.

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