Science: Lethal Garbage

When science hatched the atomic age, moralists and politicians were handed some frightful problems. A different sort of problem is now nagging the scientists themselves: what to do with the deadly radioactive waste products turned out by all the chain-reacting piles? Last week Dr. Karl Z. Morgan, an Oak Ridge physicist, admitted that the problem of this lethal garbage has become serious.

Some of the dangerous isotopes are now being stored in concrete boxes until they can be dumped far out at sea. Others are buried deep under deserts. Others are slowly and carefully being dissipated in the atmosphere. At Oak Ridge,...