toxic waste

While the fate of America's Yucca Mountain appears to be sealed, Finnish company Posiva is moving forward with a cutting-edge nuclear waste storage facility that it claims will safely store radioactive waste in drums deep in the ground for 100,000 years. While challenges abound, a green light from the Finnish government expected by 2012 will make the site on Finland's Olkiluoto Island the first permanent nuclear waste repository in the world, opening the door for more to follow.

To scope out a suspected Mafia shipwreck that may hold nuclear material, Italian authorities sent in the robot.

A remote-controlled sub began filming a sunken vessel off Italy's southern coast over the weekend. That shipwreck may represent just one of 30 ships deliberately sunk in a rather sociopathic act of nuclear waste dumping.

Scrubbing sites of radiation is no easy task, not to mention costly. Aside from all the technical hurdles, the potential health hazards drive up the cost further, making it feasible in only the most necessary of cases. But researchers at the University of Missouri have found a work force that may be willing to clean up our radioactive messes on the cheap.