Let it Be.(management of nuclear waste sites)(Brief Article)

Let It Be Robert H. Nelson, From Waste to Wilderness: Maintaining Biodiversity on Nuclear-Bomb-Building Sites. Competitive Enterprise Institute, 1001 Connecticut Avenue N.W. #1250, Washington, D.C. 20036.

Nelson, a public policy professor at the University of Maryland, sees problems with the Department of Energy's (DOE) $6 billion a year efforts to clean up America's nuclear waste sites. He believes these radioactive areas--which encompass 2.1 million acres, an area greater than Rhode Island and Delaware--would recover more quickly if they were left alone.

During the Cold War, many of these government-run nuclear production facilities committed flagrant environmental abuses. In 1989, FBI agents raided the Rocky Flats facility near Denver and seized files showing mismanagement. In response, the DOE in 1990 started its Environmental Management program, and promised to protect the nation from the nuclear waste produced in these facilities over the past 45 years.

But the Environmental Management program has turned into a giant pork barrel. For instance, while there were never more than 6,000 people producing nuclear weapons at the DOE's Hanford facility in ...