So here’s part of what I’ve been so busy with:

World War II was raging when, shrouded in secrecy, the U.S. government built a pair of chemical plants on a barren plain along a bend in the Columbia River in Washington state.

“B-Plant” and “T-Plant” were identical copies, spaced far enough apart that a Japanese bomber could not destroy both plants on a single bombing run.

Their job – to process the plutonium for America’s first atom bombs.

Sixty years later, the witches’ brew of radioactive waste from those plants is at the center of a bitter dispute between the Department of Energy and the state of New Mexico. The question is whether some of it can be disposed of in New Mexico.

Read the full story and the sidebar.