The United States, Texas, and high-level radioactive waste disposal

Abstract

There are three broad reasons which explain why the topic of nuclear waste is a neglected historical field. First, even though radioactive waste has been accumulating since the Manhattan Project, its relative danger seemed inconsequential until the early 1970s. The atomic blasts that ended World War II left the United States, according to Edward R. Murrow, in a state of "uncertainty and fear" and with a sense "that the future is obscure and survival is not assured." This fearful uncertainty led the United States and the Soviet Union into the Cold War in which both combatants concentrated on the construction of nuclear weapons. During the decades long struggle, the possibility of a nuclear war overshadowed the dangers associated with the radioactive waste.