In an article about SRS waste in Defense Waste Processing Facility logs ("Waste piles up amid wait for new home," March 14), you say that "the glass logs of SRS waste might take a back seat ... ."

This would be counter to the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 (NWPA-82) passed in late December that year. It specifies that the oldest waste would go into the underground repository first.

The first nuclear electric power plant (Dresden 1 in Illinois) started in 1960. Hanford, Idaho and Savannah River Plant - all U.S. Department of Energy plants - all started much earlier (1944, 1950 and 1953, respectively). Hanford and Idaho waste is not ready for disposal in a repository yet. But certainly SRS waste is. And it should go first because of the NWPA-82 law.

Peter Gray, Aiken, S.C.

(Editor's note: The writer had worked on projects at the Savannah River Plant, Savannah River Laboratory and Savannah River Site dating to 1952.)