The view from the top of Yucca Mountain in Nevada sweeps down past hillsides tangled with creosote bush to the rocky, sun-baked desert floor, with Las Vegas about 90 miles to the southeast. The proximity to that city is a problem for Nevadans--and perhaps for the future of nuclear power in this country--because the Federal Government wants to bury inside Yucca Mountain the most toxic garbage that humankind has produced: 77,000 tons of highly radioactive waste generated by America's 103 nuclear power plants. A thousand feet below the mountain's peak, a tunneling machine called the "Yucca Mucker" has bored a 25-ft.-wide...
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