DNA Evidence at WIPP Indicates Billion Year- Life Span for Nuclear Waste

摘要

250 million-year-old DNA has been recovered intact from a nuclear waste disposal site in New Mexico and provides ample evidence that the waste will be imprisoned for life, but likely prison time will top a billion years. Forensic teams of scientists working over a decade in laboratories at University of North Carolina, Los Alamos National Laboratory, New Mexico State University and West Chester University, carefully culled the evidence from original fluid inclusions in the massive salt rock that hosts America's only operating deep underground nuclear waste repository, the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad, New Mexico.