September 6, 2011 at 06:12 PM
Environmentalists fear the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) recent approval of a Department of Energy (DOE) plan to relax storage requirements at the country's only nuclear waste repository could ultimately lead to commercial power plant waste coming to the New Mexico facility, which is currently only permitted to accept defense-related waste. EPA's Office of Radiation & Indoor Air (ORIA) on Aug. 8 approved the plan, under which DOE would be able to store nuclear waste normally considered too radioactive to be handled directly by DOE workers in specially designed shielded containers