Science: Hideaways for Nuclear Waste

Salt domes are considered as crypts for radioactive debris

They are great underground mountains of salt, some of them six miles deep and three miles across. They were formed tens of millions of years ago—some even before the age of the dinosaurs—by the evaporation of ancient saline seas. Layer upon layer of sediment piled atop the dried-up ocean beds. Gradually, columns of the lighter salt were forced upward by the pressure, like putty squeezed through the fingers of a slowly clenching fist. In the U.S. alone, there are more than 500 such salt domes,...

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