At the time of the Arkansas creation trial in December 1981 I
had been at the Laboratory as a guest scientist for twelve and a
half years. It was a most cordial and productive arrangement.
During this period I had published research papers in
collaboration with my colleagues at ORNL, and had undertaken
cooperative research projects with scientists at other
laboratories and universities, some of them overseas. Yet by the
summer of 1981, my main purpose of coming to the
Laboratory—finding superheavy elements—still had not been
accomplished. One final year was given me to do this. My
superheavy search involved several different experimental
approaches; all of them were quite time-consuming. Along with
these investigations I turned some of my attention to a new
research project: the long-term storage of nuclear wastes in
granite. Two months prior to the Arkansas trial some colleagues
and I had already obtained definitive experimental results
concerning waste storage in those rocks. I hoped that the
discovery of t