Manhattan Project waste leaving Tennessee for New Mexico

OAK RIDGE, Tenn. Motorists across the South, including Arkansas, could soon be sharing the highway with nuclear waste generated decades ago in developing the first atomic bomb.

Tons of this so-called "transuranic waste" have been waiting for years to leave what is now the Oak Ridge National Laboratory for a final home in New Mexico, where the government has built a permanent vault in a salt mine a half-mile deep.

The material includes clothes, lab equipment, tools and scrap. Most can be handled by hand, but some requires special equipment and plenty of shielding.

The Department of Energy estimates it will take 60 to 120 shipments a year for three years to move all the material from Oak Ridge to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant covering a 1,400-mile highway route from Chattanooga to Birmingham, Ala., across Mississippi and Arkansas to Pecos, Texas and north to Carlsbad.