POWER May 2010 - 30

Nuclear Power
position from U.S. Representative Joe Skubitz,
who represented a Kansas district that did not
include Lyons, and Governor Robert Docking.
What followed was a barrage of criticism, and,
despite the agency's best efforts, protests asserting
that the AEC was tramping on state interests
took hold in the public mind.
As an example of the political discourse
at the time, Skubitz inquired why the Kansas
salt fields were selected instead of a site in the
Salina Basin, which would have been closer to
the operating and planned reprocessing plants
in New York, Illinois, and South Carolina.
The agency responded by saying the Kansas
site possessed geologic characteristics more
favorable than those of the salt in the Salina
Basin. The AEC furthermore justified the long
transport routes to Kansas by suggesting a reprocessing
plant would be built in California,
thus making the Lyons site centrally located.
In retrospect, the AEC was tone deaf when
responding to the nontechnical factors, relying
on its highly technical justifications for the
Lyons site. Furthermore, it is believed that the
Kansas salt mine was chosen because of prior
local acceptance of Project Salt Vault and because
the AEC did not have the resources to
investigate other locations, nor did it wish to
spend two years studying other sites.
By August 1971, the controversy escalated
to the level of involving both Kansas senators,
Robert Dole and James Pearson, who sponsored
an amendment to the AEC's authorizing
legislation. The amendment prohibited buying
land or burying waste materials at Lyons until
such time as an independent advisory council,
appointed by the president, reported to Congress
that the establishment of a repository
and burial of waste could be carried out safely.
Thus, the AEC's inability to satisfy concerns of
state officials resulted in its losing considerable
autonomy in implementing a major policy.
In September 1971, newly discovered techThe
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nical difficulties would severely threaten the
project's future. Roughly 20 oil and gas boreholes
in the area were found to be impossible
to plug, and the unexpected disappearance of
water from a nearby solution mining operation
raised many questions about the geologic
integrity of the salt domes for storing liquid
nuclear waste. In February 1972 the AEC
withdrew from further operations at the Lyons
site, citing technical uncertainties and problems
with political and public acceptance.
In the 1980s, Kansas refused to issue a
permit for low-level nuclear waste to a new
contractor. The shaft was permanently sealed
in December 1994. (Though this article does
not concern waste from the DOE defense
program, it should be noted that transuranic
radioactive waste from that program (and
from nuclear power generation) has been
transported to and stored at the Waste Isolation
Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M., since
March 1999. That geological repository is in
the Permian Salt Basin.)
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The Retrievable Surface
Storage Facility
The AEC announced plans (circa May/June
1972) to construct an engineered, at-grade Retrievable
Surface Storage Facility (RSSF) to be
used until a permanent geological repository
would be available. The plan was to locate the
RSSF at an AEC or federal site in the western
U.S. However, the environmental impact statement
(EIS) issued by the AEC in support of the
RSSF concept drew intense criticism from the
public and the Environmental Protection Agency
(EPA). Both criticized the plan because of
the possibility that economic factors could later
dictate using the facility as a permanent repository,
contrary to the planned interim use of the
RSSF. In this instance, it was unacceptable to
proceed with an interim storage system unless
there were unambiguous assurances that a permanent
repository would be developed.
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POWER May 2010

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