Found only in the small salt-producing regions off France's west coast, fleur de sel is skimmed off the top of the salt beds like cream from milk.
22.
WIPP planners expect to fill 56 such rooms in the salt bed, which they say has remained remarkably stable since it was formed 225 million years ago.
23.
The salt bed was thick at a depth of below the surface, but it proved too costly to mine conventionally because of continual flooding, and mining was abandoned.
24.
In Carlsbad, by contrast, the containers will be buried in caverns carved out of a thick salt bed that, federal scientists say, has been stable for 250 million years.
25.
Transported in huge stainless steel containers, the barrels of plutonium waste are to be placed in chambers carved from an ancient salt bed, nearly half a mile below ground.
26.
Arches are part of a natural weathering process that started along the Moab Fault after a salt bed, thousands of feet thick in places, was deposited 300 million years ago.
27.
The national park lies atop an underground evaporite layer or salt bed, which is the main cause of the formation of the arches, spires, balanced rocks, sandstone Uncompahgre Uplift to the northeast.
28.
In the afternoons, when the wind is light and the sun and the water are all in agreement, a white paper-thin film forms on top of the water in the salt beds.
29.
Once at WIPP, the disposal process calls for workers to remove the drums from their protective containers, then transport them via elevator into the salt beds about 2, 150 feet below ground.
30.
Although there was no charge for the brine itself, the State set the price of salt and required that salt be stored for a fee in government warehouses until it was sold.
