Background information on civilian low level nuclear waste and defense
waste. (Adapted from http://www.tso.org/govlwv.2.html)

From The Nuclear Waste Primer: A Handbook for Citizens
The League of Women Voters Education Fund,
Lyons & Burford Publishers 1993

"Chapter 4 Civilian Low-level Waste

Civilian low-level radioactive waste results from the use of
radioactive materials in such diverse activities as generating power
by nuclear reactors, conducting medical or biotechnological research,
performing medical examinations and treatment, producing radioactive
chemicals for use in nuclear medicine and research, and controlling
the quality of products being manufactured. Its various forms include
contaminated filters, liquid filter resins, wiping rags, protective
clothing, hand tools, vials, needles, test tubes, animal carcasses,
lab equipment, luminous dials, sealed radiation sources, and internal
components from reactors.

Until the early 1960's, commercial low-level waste was disposed of in
federal disposal facilities. When the federal government closed its
facilities to commercial waste, private companies opened and operated
disposal facilities, some of which encountered problems and closed.
By the late 1970's all low-level waste in the United States was being
shipped for disposal to only three states: Nevada, South Carolina, and
Washington. Pressured to make other states share the disposal burden,
Congress passed the Low-Level Radioactive Waste Policy Act in 1980,
making each state responsible for providing disposal capacity for the
commercial Low-Level waste generated within its borders. Congress
amended the act in 1985 to give states more time, but progress still
has been slow. As of the end of 1994, no state or regional group of
states had actually sited, licensed, and constructed a Low-Level waste
disposal facility, though some have tried very hard to do so.

Chapter 6 Defense Waste

For more than 40 years, the U.S. government has designed, produced,
maintained, and dismantled nuclear weapons in a huge industrial
complex of factories and laboratories built mainly in the 1940s and
1950s. Almost all of these aging facilities and their sites are now
contaminated with radioactive and other hazardous wastes. In 1989 DOE
began developing plans to make the weapons complex smaller and more
efficient by closing some facilities, consolidating activities at a
few facilities, and modernizing those few. The department also
initiated a 30 year program to alleviate the health, safety, and
environmental hazards resulting from years of weapons production."