Scientific experiments that require a low-radiation environment may seem unlikely bedfellows with long-lived transuranic waste from nuclear weapons, but in the US Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, New Mexico, the relationship appears to be mutually beneficial. Some 655 meters down in a salt formation, the background radiation level is much lower than at the surface, and the DOE can point to the sensitive experiments WIPP hosts as evidence that the controversial waste repository poses no hazard to the public.

For science, says Norbert Rempe, WIPP’s liaison for researchers, “the big advantage we have is the nature of the host rock. Radiologically, it is extremely quiet. Salt has practically no thorium or uranium, and the level of potassium is minute.” WIPP is host to the Enriched Xenon Observatory–200, a prototype double beta decay detector (see the story on page 20); clean-room and other R&D facilities used...

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