March/April 2004, Volume 60, No. 2, pp. 12-13
Nuclear Waste: Showdown at Scanzano
By Linda Clare Gunter
For 15 days in November, the small southern town of Scanzano Jonico, population 7,000, was the most famous place in Italy.
On November 13, 2003, the country's center-right coalition government, led by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, signed an "emergency decree" naming Scanzano as the site for a national nuclear waste repository. The government insisted the choice was "technical, not political," based on Scanzano's deep salt rock deposits beneath hundreds of feet of clay. The community saw the decision as a death sentence.
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