Washington has reached rock bottom in its five-year search for an underground site to store spent fuel from nuclear reactors.

Today the underground site is used for telephone cabling.

So far this year, the United States has announced a dozen nuclear tests at its underground site in Nevada.

Eight months later, an American inspection team visited the underground site to find that American intelligence was dead wrong.

The underground site was created naturally around 20,000 years ago when the area of what is now northwestern Oklahoma was covered by an inland sea.

People would have to go to underground sites with enclosed ventilation systems and some life support to have any chance at all.

The academy proposed various underground sites around the country.

Problems: Last year's planned opening of the underground site has been delayed because of a water leak and questions about design.

Among the security concerns are the suspected underground nuclear site and the North's missile capabilities.

In 1998, the Clinton administration demanded access to a huge underground site that a military intelligence agency believed was a nuclear reactor.