Eleven years and myriad delays later, WIPP opens.

• Position: Waste Isolation Pilot Plant

The contrast could not have been more stark. As a truck carrying radioactive waste rolled out of the Los Alamos (New Mexico) National Laboratory this spring, people along the transportation route showed very different emotions.

This initial truckload headed for the nation's first permanent waste repository - the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in southeastern New Mexico - encountered cheering people who held signs that read "Weicome Finally" and "It's About Time."

The truck also met protesters, including two women who sat down in the road and a man who tried to block the highway with his car.

What the truck carried caused the conflict. The end of the Cold War left behind thousands of barrels filled with protective clothing, tools, rags and machine parts - all used in the production of nuclear weapons and all radioactive.

These items are classified by the U.S. Department of Energy as transuranic (TRU) waste and will remain radioactive for thousands of years. WIPP will permanently store them in an enormous, excavated network of salt-bed tunnels, almost a half-mile underground. Presently, 99 percent of the nation's transuranic waste is stored temporarily in drums at nuclear defense sites in 10 states.

Once the plant is fully operational, this waste will be transported to WIPP via interstate highways in 30 states.

Many legislators, especially those from Colorado, Idaho, South Carolina, Tennessee and Washington - five states where waste is currently stored - want to see the beginning of shipments from their facilities to WIPP.

"I don't have a worry about the containers or a nuclear disaster. I just don't see a problem there," says Idaho Senator Mel Richardson, a long-time member of the NCSL task force that studies waste disposal and transportation. Richardson said the issue has been enmeshed in New Mexico politics and is contentious because the word "nuclear" is involved. "You say the word nuclear, and they [environmentalists] go into orbit," he said.

In WIPP's own state there are conflicting views over its opening. "It's long overdue," believes New Mexico Senator Don Kidd. He stresses, "It's an important event for the country. This is the...