What to do with the heaps and bundles of radioactive wastes?
THE CRADLE of nuclear power is beginning to rock with the waste of its no longer infant industry. Illinois, after nearly four decades in the vanguard of the atomic age, faces difficult decisions in what to do with the heaps and bundles of lethal radioactive wastes swelling within its borders. The solutions have been elusive, and at times seemingly unattainable, in large measure because waste from nuclear energy is a predicament of national proportions. The separate states have neither the technology nor the tenacity to provide a burial ground for materials that may remain radioactive for a million years. And the problem has been treated by the federal government much the way nuclear waste is handled put aside to be dealt with another year. An ominous situation was posed late last year when Gov. James R. Thompson announced that interruption of nuclear plant operation and medical treatment using radioactive materials was less than two months away because of the national shortage of low-l
