Hello Folks,

It really is real. It is soaking in now. After a marathon of activity, over 48 hours of cooperation and coordination with the best folks in the world, the first waste shipment to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) moved from Los Alamos, New Mexico, the birth place of the world's first nuclear weapon to the WIPP facility. Nuclear waste generated from the nuclear weapons production of the United States is, after over 50 years, going to be removed from the accessible environment. We are putting it 2,150 feet underground in a repository mined out of salt.

Many of you know that I am the U.S. Department of Energy Security Manager of the WIPP Carlsbad Area Office. We have opened the first designed for the purpose, from plans to implementation, permanent repository for nuclear waste in the United States. I came here to WIPP in 1984 to work at the facility for it's scheduled opening in 1988. We were physically ready in 1988, but the paperwork was not done. Laws changed. Law suits were filed. Promises were made, promises were broken. We could have opened in October 1988 under budget ($435 Million) and on schedule and been safer than any other waste disposal facility in the world. On Thursday, March 25th, 1999, almost 11 years late and at a total cost of $1.8 BILLION dollars to date, the heads that had to go up and down did.

The Department of Energy had the cooperation and coordination of over 100 Law Enforcement Officers and emergency response personnel to make this happen. Police and Fire Departments from Carlsbad to Los Alamos were involved. Sheriff's Officers from all the counties were involved. The FBI participated in various functions along the route. Bureau of Land Management, Border Patrol and U.S. Marshals Officers participated. The DOE provided it's own Officers to assure the facility and process was protected. Various Indian Tribes along the route helped support us. I am sure there are others I have failed to mention.

Yes, there were adversaries and we will be hearing from them for years. People protested in civil action demonstrations. People tried to block the truck hauling the waste. People laid down in the road only to be hauled off to jail. A car was run at a State Police patrol car in front of the truck. In the end, they had to back off because of the police support. I plan to keep as a souvenir a printout of a satellite transmitted message from the truck driver. " 9:42 PM. C-2 stopped, protesters". " 9:46 PM truck rolling." The New Mexico State Police cleared the road in 4 minutes flat. WOW!!

The anti-nukes have failed to stop the WIPP. Please do not call them environmentalist. I am an environmentalist. Their activities are not to improve the environment of the world. Their actions are intended to stop any nuclear material activities. I do not fully understand why. I was an Environmentalist, by profession, for the State of New Mexico Environmental Improvement Agency for four years. That was back in the days when our name indicated that we intended to IMPROVE the environment. I was an Environmentalist when I first decided to try to get a job at WIPP because it was the right thing to do. It took me 6 1/2 years to get the job. It has taken me almost 15 years to help this fantastic group get the job done. Not that you can ever consider we are now done.

"They" have called plutonium, one of the man made elements nuclear weapons are made of, the most deadly substance known. Plutonium is at it's deadliest when it is in a functioning thermonuclear device known as an "atomic bomb"! Millions can die in seconds. Someone has jokingly said that you could eat elemental plutonium and you MIGHT die of cancer in 30 years. That doesn't sound very deadly to me. I would like to see my adversaries eat a spoonful of cyanide granules and see how long they last. "They" should redefine "deadly". I have been without sleep, humor me. That was a joke, sort of. Maybe.

Want to know something really ironic? I consider myself an anti -nuclear activist. I truly believe the United States and the world doesn't need any more nuclear weapons. I know we now need a few weapons to maintain a nuclear deterrent. I don't believe we need as many weapons as we have. We really are, as a department and as a nation, disassembling nuclear weapons that we don't need and never needed in the first place. We used to be the department of making nuclear weapons. For many years now we have been the department of taking nuclear weapons apart! The harsh realization is that we don't need the weapons and/or plutonium, but we cannot let anybody else have them either. Ask Saddam Hussein how serious we are about non proliferation of nuclear weapons. Worth and a price tag are meaningless.

Much of the waste coming to WIPP could be reprocessed and refined into pure elemental plutonium for nuclear weapons. All you would have to do is throw more billions of dollars, time and science at it and we could recover more plutonium. We don't need the plutonium and that makes it waste, but we cannot let anybody else have it! I believe 2,150 feet underground at WIPP is the best place in the world to put it. And leave it. Always.

We cannot change the past, but we can change the future. I will spend what is left of my career helping put every microgram, gram and metric ton of transuranic waste and potential nuclear weapon material out of the accessible environment. After all, I am an environmentalist and anti-nuclear activist. I just work at fixing the situation instead of complaining about it. Kind of like back in the old days when I worked in the New Mexico Environmental Improvement Agency.

Best of all, I work with the greatest group of guys and gals in the world that believe the same way I do. Hurrah!

J.R. (Jere) Galle

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