Just beyond the surreal glow of Las Vegas’ neon lights, there is a 3-mile tunnel buried beneath a mountain. In the future it could house thousands of tons of nuclear waste, in an attempt to isolate the radioactive toxins from the biosphere for the next 10,000 years. Filmmaker John Sorensen takes the viewer on a road trip from Chicago to Las Vegas, along one of the potential waste shipment routes through the heartland of America. He talks with residents who live along the route, as well as state officials who would respond to any radiological accidents. Department of Energy experts take us on a guided tour above and below the mountain, and discuss the scientific and social controversies surrounding this politically complex proposal. Sorensen exhibits the controversy over this questionable answer to the disposal of nuclear waste that will have a major impact on the earth for centuries, and perhaps millennia, to come. Directed by John Sorenson, USA, 2001, 54 min.

Shown with 2001: A Waste Odyssey (Cameron A. Straughan, USA, 2001, 3 min) Inspired by the real-life events leading up to the Adams Mine waste-disposal controversy, in which the city of Toronto considered dumping its garbage into an abandoned mine that had become a manmade lake, this short is a comic take on the idea that what we throw away will come back to haunt us.

Cosponsored with the Department of American Studies and the Department of Rural Sociology