The Department of Energy's office of civilian Radioactive Waste Management is involved in activities that will lead to the construction of underground facilities for approximately 1400 to 3400 feet underground and involving a substantial expense of horizontal drifts. The current OCRWM program will be evaluating the suitability of three different sites, in bedded salt, tuff and basalt to determine suitability for use as a repository for spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste. One of the sites evaluated may subsequently be developed in an operating repository.