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Despite fears of the unknown, a deep underground repository in southeastern New Mexico being used for the disposal of plutonium-contaminated nuclear waste from the defense program has been up and running for almost a decade and is demonstrating great benefits -- short-term and possibly long-term -- to the public.

Completed seven years ago, the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) is the world's first underground repository for the permanent disposal of nuclear waste. So far, more than 81,000 containers of long-lived transuranic waste have been placed in the facility.

Some of the waste has been shipped more than 1,000 miles by truck from government defense installations in South Carolina, Idaho and Washington state, demonstrating that highly radioactive materials can be transported long distances safely and placed in an underground facility without harm to the public.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) manages WIPP, and its successful operation after years of litigation by anti-nuclear groups and efforts by the state government of New Mexico to halt construction of the repository, show that DOE is perfectly capable of handling another controversial project -- the storage of spent fuel from nuclear power plants at the Yucca Mountain geologic repository in Nevada.

DOE's experience with WIPP is not unlike the one it is having with the Yucca Mountain project.

Back in the 1980s, anti-nuclear groups claimed that shipping containers of plutonium-contaminated waste along interstate highways was unsafe. But so far there have been more than 5,000 shipments to WIPP without a radioactive incident, and they are proceeding at the rate of about 25 a week.

It's a record that matches the safe shipment of spent fuel in the United States -- about 3,000 shipments by truck and railroad without a single release of radiation.

The WIPP repository is a network of tunnels and chambers carved out of a salt cavern deep beneath the New Mexico desert about 25 miles from Carlsbad. The last shipments of transuranic waste to WIPP are scheduled to be completed in about 30 years, and then the repository will be closed.

The Yucca Mountain repository, on the other hand, won't be sealed for many years. Plans call for the Nevada facility to remain open for at least 300 years, so that scientists and engineers can study the environmental effects of the heat emanating from spent-fuel canisters to make certain the facility operates safely.

Another reason to keep the repository open for storage -- and not immediate disposal -- is that someday we will want to retrieve the spent fuel for recycling.

It contains valuable nuclear materials that can be reprocessed into new fuel for use at nuclear power plants to produce electricity. Such reprocessing is currently being done by France, Great Britain and several other countries.

Another of its major benefits is to greatly reduce the amount of high-level radioactive waste that must be placed in a repository for permanent disposal.

It is estimated there will be 70,000 metric tons of spent fuel from nuclear power plants when the Yucca Mountain repository opens in 2017, which is the maximum amount of spent fuel that Congress designated to be stored in the facility when it passed the Nuclear Waste Policy Act more than a decade ago.

Congress needs to raise the ceiling to 120,000 metric tons, so there will be additional space for spent fuel resulting from the continued operation of today's nuclear plants and any more plants that might be built.

Congress also should authorize construction of an interim storage facility to hold spent fuel near the Yucca Mountain site until construction of the repository is completed.

The nuclear waste program needs to be removed from the annual appropriations process so that money collected from utility ratepayers and going into the Nuclear Waste Fund is used for its intended purpose and not be diverted to pay for other government programs.

The safe storage of spent fuel in an underground repository at Yucca Mountain could have a major impact on facilitating the use of nuclear power to meet the growing need for electricity in the world.

That could be the real legacy of the experience gained from the WIPP project.

Forrest Remick is professor of nuclear engineering emeritus at Penn State and retired member of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The opinion of the columnist does not necessarily reflect the viewpoint of the university.