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Opinion of White, J.
rather congressional sanction of interstate compromises they had reached.
The two signal events in 1979 that precipitated movement toward legislation were the temporary closing of the Nevada disposal site in July 1979, after several serious transportation-related incidents, and the temporary shutting of the Washington disposal site because of similar transportation and packaging problems in October 1979. At that time the facility in Barnwell, South Carolina, received approximately three-quarters of the Nation's low-level radioactive waste, and the Governor ordered a 50 percent reduction in the amount his State's plant would accept for disposal. National Governors' Association Task Force on Low-Level Radioactive Waste Disposal, Low-Level Waste: A Program for Action 3 (Nov. 1980) (lodged with the Clerk of this Court) (hereinafter A Program for Action). The Governor of Washington threatened to shut down the Hanford, Washington, facility entirely by 1982 unless "some meaningful progress occurs toward" development of regional solutions to the waste disposal problem. Id., at 4, n. Only three sites existed in the country for the disposal of low-level radioactive waste, and the "sited" States confronted the undesirable alternatives either of continuing to be the dumping grounds for the entire Nation's low-level waste or of eliminating or reducing in a constitutional manner the amount of waste accepted for disposal.
The imminence of a crisis in low-level radioactive waste management cannot be overstated. In December 1979, the National Governors' Association convened an eight-member task force to coordinate policy proposals on behalf of the States. See Status of Interstate Compacts for the Disposal of Low-Level Radioactive Waste: Hearing before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, 98th Cong., 1st Sess., 8 (1983). In May 1980, the State Planning Council on Radioactive Waste Management submitted the following unanimous recommendation to President Carter:
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