In its Fiscal Year (FY) 2010 budget request, the Obama administration stated that finding a solution to the nation’s spent nuclear fuel and high-level waste “must be based on sound science and capable of securing broad support, including support from those who live in areas that might be affected” and proposed to eliminate the Yucca Mountain repository program.Footnote 1 In its FY 2011 budget request, the administration did precisely that, declaring Yucca “not a workable option” and eliminating all funding.Footnote 2 The president created a Blue Ribbon Commission to comprehensively review policies for “managing used nuclear fuel and other aspects of the back end of the nuclear fuel cycle,” and on March 3, the Department of Energy (DOE) filed a motion with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to withdraw the Yucca Mountain license application with prejudice.Footnote 3 This fulfilled a campaign promise and ostensibly brought to an end several decades and more than $14 billion of research in the Nevada desert.Footnote 4
Given the vocal hostility of the Nevada congressional delegation and a succession of Nevada governors,Footnote 5 it is tempting to infer that Silver State opposition to a nuclear waste repository has been perpetual; that would be wrong. On May 21, 1975, a Nevada Assembly Joint Resolution 15 (A.J.R.15) “strongly” urging the Energy Research and Development Administration (ERDA)Footnote 6 to “choose the Nevada Test Site for the storage and processing of nuclear material” was approved by the governor.Footnote 7 A.J.R. 15 also urged ERDA to co-locate the nuclear waste storage site with a national solar energy research and development program, as mandated in the Solar Energy Research, Development and Demonstration Act of 1974.Footnote 8 In its justification, the legislature provided a detailed rationale:
1. The former Atomic Energy Commission’s (AEC) demonstrated “outstanding concern for nuclear safety” and “outstanding safety record” at the Test Site
2. Southern Nevadans’ confidence in the Test Site’s safety record and the staff’s ability to maintain such safety in handling nuclear materials
3. Clark County’s unemployment rate, “20.7 percent higher than the disturbingly high” average
4. The “serious anxieties and doubts” of people and leaders in many states being considered for the storage and processing of nuclear material
5. Southern Nevada’s ideal environment for exploring the potential of solar energy
6. The existing facilities, support infrastructure, and years of experience in nuclear material handling are “a tremendous existing resource” and are well suited to nuclear material storage/processing, solar energy research, and other scientific research with minimal capital investment relative to other locations
7. National energy independence and a clean environment are dependent upon tapping non-fossil-fuel sources of energy.Footnote 9
The current state of the U.S. economy and the federal energy debate bear striking similarities to the conditions that existed in 1975.Footnote 10 Yet there has been very little in-depth research on A.J.R. 15; it does not even register as a footnote in most histories of U.S. nuclear waste policy. This article does two things: first, it provides a rigorous account of how this unique invitation to the federal government came about, an invitation that has not previously been explored in detail; and second, it offers recommendations based on the A.J.R. 15 experience, as well as lessons drawn from the landmark repository programs in Sweden and Finland, for future efforts to site a repository. To be sure, the applicability of this case study to the present must be tempered. The resolution is, in part, the product of a particular moment in time that reflected Nevada’s nuclear history and preceded decisions that ERDA’s successor, DOE, and the U.S. Congress made in the 1980s, which effectively poisoned federal-state relations, but lessons can be learned nonetheless.
Nevada’s accommodating approach stands in stark contrast to other states identified by the AEC as potential sites for storing high-level waste and the 1975 resolution was the first, and most important, broadly debated crystallization of a trend of support for considering nuclear waste storage in Nevada that continued well into the 1980s. This article explores how this strong state support for nuclear waste disposal coalesced.
A note on acronyms: “CL” denotes Clark County in southern Nevada; the county seat is Las Vegas. “WA” denotes Washoe County in northern Nevada; the county seat is Reno.
False Start in the Sunflower State
The AEC’s first attempt to site a repository was nothing short of a debacle. The National Academy of Sciences’ Committee on Waste Disposal had expressed a preference for salt formations in 1957 and had identified four potentially suitable regions: the salt domes of the Gulf Coastal Plain in Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi; bedded salt in the Paradox Basin of Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico; bedded salt in the Permian Basin of Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, and New Mexico; and bedded salt in the Appalachian Basins of Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York. Kansas was considered particularly attractive because of the size, thickness, and depth of its salt formations. From 1959 to 1961, Oak Ridge National Laboratory conducted a series of experiments with nonradioactive simulation liquids at the Carey Salt Co. mine in Hutchinson. In 1963, the abandoned Carey Salt Mine at Lyons was selected for a follow-on series of tests dubbed Project Salt Vault.Footnote 11 The experiments ran from November 1965 to January 1968 and involved placing waste-simulating electrically heated canisters as well as fuel elements from the National Reactor Testing Station at Idaho National Laboratory in bored holes to determine the behavior of the salt and the canisters.Footnote 12
By 1970, based on successful tests at those sites, the AEC determined that the abandoned Lyons mine and a 1,000-acre adjoining site were suitable for development as a proposed high-level waste repository. Former Kansas Geological Survey director William Hambleton has listed several other reasons: the seismic stability of central Kansas; 800 feet of rock containing impermeable shale that overlay a 300-foot section of salt; the flat-bedded character of the salt; and the hospitality of the people of Lyons. Indeed, the AEC was so confident that Milton Shaw, director of the Division of Reactor Development, testified before the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy that the site was “equal or superior to the others” in the country and asked for the entire $25 million facility appropriation rather than just funding for FY 1972.Footnote 13
However, contrary to the AEC’s claims, the site turned out to be “a bit like a piece of Swiss cheese.”Footnote 14 The Kansas Geological Survey, backed by state officials, mounted a strong campaign against the site based on several geological factors they believed were either not addressed or not studied sufficiently by the AEC.Footnote 15 These included: the existence of a pressure sink on the water surface of a major aquifer, suggesting vertical water circulation; the uncertain location of some of the hundreds of abandoned and producing oil and gas wells; the fact that the American Salt Corporation could not account for the sudden disappearance of approximately 180,000 gallons of fresh water injected into a hydraulic mining operation nearby that had been producing brine for five days previously; evidence of a major fault within the Arbuckle rock; heat transfer from the waste to the salt; and radiation damage in the mine.Footnote 16 The plan was officially abandoned in February 1972, to the “great embarrassment” of the AEC, and the search for a repository site began anew.Footnote 17
Interest in the Silver State
In May 1972, U.S. Senator Howard Cannon (D-Nev.) wrote AEC Chairman James Schlesinger making the case for a national radioactive waste repository to be located at the Nevada Test Site (NTS). Noting that there had been “violent objection” to the AEC’s siting effort in Kansas, Cannon maintained that, “with its miles of tunneling and extensive drillings,” NTS was “probably one of the best known and understood geological areas in the country.” Contamination from previous and current AEC activities meant that “the area may never return to open use in the public domain” and the infrastructure was already in place to accommodate an “additional function.” Cannon also suggested that isolation and the availability of roads, power and water systems, and support structures made the site an “ideal location” for chemical reprocessing of radioactive wastes when feasible.Footnote 18 The same arguments would be marshaled in support of A.J.R. 15 three years later.
On September 1, 1974, the AEC released a draft impact statement on the environmental consequences of developing a retrievable surface storage facility and evaluating sites for the permanent disposal of high-level waste, often simply referred to as WASH-1539.Footnote 19 WASH-1539 explained that, based on ten selection criteria (and one consideration), a preliminary list of nearly one hundred potential sites was reduced to sixteen, then narrowed further to three: the NTS, Idaho’s National Reactor Testing Station (NRTS) and the Hanford Site in Washington State.Footnote 20 It was no coincidence that all already hosted federal nuclear facilities. However, it was likely infuriating to Senator Frank Church and his fellow Idahoans, who had been assured by then-AEC chairman Glenn Seaborg in 1970 that nuclear waste would be leaving the Gem State.Footnote 21 Much had changed in four years; in particular, Seaborg left the AEC in 1971 and the Lyons repository was ignominiously cancelled in 1972.
On September 20, 1974, Nevada Governor Donal Neil “Mike” O’Callaghan, a conservative Democrat, appointed a panel, the Nevada Radioactive Materials Storage Advisory Committee (NRMSAC), to conduct a four-week study of WASH-1539. Chaired by chancellor of the University of Nevada System Dr. Neil Humphrey and vice-chaired by Norman Glaser of the State Environmental Commission, the NRMSAC was comprised of sixteen members: state legislators and officials, scientists and academics, business leaders (including the president of Caesar’s Palace), and a teamster, a television news director, and two members of the public. When asked to chair the NRMSAC, Dr. Humphrey suggested that he was a poor candidate because he knew nothing about the subject. O’Callaghan responded that this was by design; the governor was sure the committee was evenly split between supporters and opponents and he wanted a neutral chairman to assure that all arguments were explored and a conclusion was reached. After holding a series of meetings with experts pro and con, the committee reported back on October 18.Footnote 22 Of particular interest are two findings and five recommendations. The NRMSAC found that
• while WASH-1539 “does not provide sufficient data to recommend for or against the facility, the AEC should be encouraged to continue to consider Nevada as a possible storage site”;
• the governor should have veto power over a siting decision.
The NRMSAC recommended that
• the facility be air-cooled;
• rail transportation to the site avoid the Las Vegas metro area;
• appropriate state agencies and local governments contribute to the environmental impact statement (EIS);
• it is satisfactorily demonstrated that adequate radiation safeguards for transportation and storage will be implemented;Footnote 23
• the Governor appoint a technical advisory committee, which would include at least two members of the public, to provide input to the site-specific EIS.
O’Callaghan endorsed the findings and forwarded them to the AEC on October 28, 1974.
On December 12, 1974, the AEC held a public hearing, chaired by George Frampton (University of Illinois College of Law), Dr. Thomas Parkinson (chairman of nuclear engineering, University of Missouri), and Joseph Coates (Office of Technology Assessment), in Salt Lake City to elicit comments from Nevada, Idaho, and Washington on WASH-1539. The Utah capital was chosen for its geographic proximity to the three states under consideration. According to contemporaneous newspaper reports: Washington’s director of nuclear energy development Fred Adair appealed for more public hearings before a siting decision was made; a representative of Governor Cecil Andrus explained that if the AEC could identify “a location not above the [Snake River Plain] aquifer or some other site in Idaho on federal land away from the aquifer . . . we would be willing to listen to any proposal”; and Nevada State Planning Coordinator Bruce Arkell read a statement on behalf of Governor O’Callaghan requesting that further hearings be held in Nevada and the state retain a final veto over site selection.Footnote 24
Arkell’s “neutral” statement indicated that the Silver State would allow the AEC to construct a nuclear-waste storage facility should NTS prove to be the most suitable site, but he was not particularly enthusiastic about the idea. Arkell’s remarks included concerns about transportation risks that were inserted by Noel Clark, chairman of the Public Service Commission, and handed to Arkell as he was boarding the aircraft to fly to Salt Lake City.Footnote 25 Mining engineer William Flangas, representing the Greater Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce, also attended the hearing and emphasized that Nevadans were “used to nuclear tests and have complete confidence in the AEC” and suggested that NTS could be used as a permanent site.Footnote 26
Assembly Joint Resolution 15
On February 26, 1975, Assemblyman Lloyd Mann (D-CL) introduced Assembly Joint Resolution 15 with twenty cosponsors, out of a total of forty Assembly members. A.J.R. 15 was referred concurrently to the Assembly’s Commerce and Environment and Public Resources (EPR) Committees, where it had powerful patrons; Commerce Committee chairman Dr. Bob Robinson (D-CL) was a cosponsor and Environment and Public Resources Committee chairman Roger Bremner (D-CL), while not a cosponsor, was supportive of the bill because of its economic impact on southern Nevada.Footnote 27
Money and Jobs
Former Governor Bob List has explained that the nuclear waste debate must be seen in the context of the Nevada Test Site as a major employer and economic driver in the state.Footnote 28 Much of the land in the south of the state was “regarded for more than a century as waste.”Footnote 29 This changed during World War II, when the Army Air Corps established a gunnery range to the northwest of Las Vegas. The geographic qualities that attracted the Army Air Corps to the area—chiefly desolation and “general uninhabitableness”—led the Truman administration to the same conclusion when searching for a continental nuclear test site. In December 1950, a tightly held decision was made to utilize 1,375 square miles of federal land in the southern part of the Great Basin 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas for just this purpose. The first test, “Able,” was conducted on January 27, 1951 at Frenchman Flat.Footnote 30 Despite the secrecy surrounding the siting choice, former head of the Oral History Project at the University of Nevada, Mary Ellen Glass, has written that most southern Nevadans welcomed the infusion of government money and a constant payroll into a small economy.Footnote 31 The economic importance of the Test Site would endure for decades: according to Mary Manning of The Las Vegas Sun, NTS “was the second largest employer in Nevada during the peak years of the late 1970s and early 1980s, behind the mining industry. . . . The casino industry came in a distant third.”Footnote 32
For thirty years, Nevada also hosted a low-level radioactive waste disposal facility a short drive west from NTS. In 1959, the Atomic Energy Act (1954) was amended to authorize the AEC to enter into agreement with the governor of any state to transfer regulatory authority for “byproduct materials,” “source materials,” and “special nuclear materials in quantities not sufficient to form a critical mass.” This led to the creation of commercial low-level radioactive waste disposal facilities across the country.Footnote 33 The Nuclear Engineering Company of Pleasanton, California, was granted approval to operate the first of these sites near Beatty in 1962; the state concurred with the AEC licensing decision and leased land to the company.Footnote 34 Beatty opened in September 1962, accepting low-level waste from the Rocky Mountain Low Level Waste Compact—Colorado, New Mexico, and Nevada. According to NRC historian J. Samuel Walker: “The initiative would have come from the company, which had experience with low-level waste disposal from its ocean disposal operations (which the AEC suspended in 1960). The AEC, in consultation with Nevada, issued a license for Beatty. The requirements for a low-level disposal site at that time were rudimentary.”Footnote 35 Several accidents occurred at the facility—1979 was a particularly bad year—and Beatty was closed permanently in December 1992.Footnote 36 Two closed valleys at the Nevada Test Site have also been used for military low-level waste disposal: Yucca Flat for the burial of bulky items such as tower debris and military vehicles from nuclear tests; and Frenchman Flat for surface storage and burial of material from the weapons labs and production facilities.Footnote 37
Money and jobs were uppermost in the minds of many legislators, who were still smarting from a weak economy caused, in part, by the OPEC oil embargo. The EPR Committee held its first meeting on March 7. Mahlon Gates of ERDA’s Nevada Operations Office estimated that the total thirty–forty year program cost would be $1.5 billion with $100 million for construction; energy producers would be levied to pay for the facility. Jack Jeffrey (D-CL) asked Gates to estimate how much in-state R&D would be necessary and how many maintenance and support people would be employed if the disposal site was built. Gates responded that there were four thousand employees at the Test Site at that time and hundreds would be required for operation after construction.Footnote 38 Lloyd Mann provided the most unvarnished plea: ‘What’s important to us is the dollars spent in the next forty years and that this may help us diversify the activities in the State.” Explaining that 14 percent of his constituents were employed at the NTS and two thousand had been laid off in the past five years, Mann said he would support A.J.R. 15 with or without the solar energy R&D program: “I want that $1-1/2 billion for Southern Nevada.” Mann also sought to reassure his colleagues that the facility would not have an adverse impact on human health (reportedly commenting at the time: “I’ve got six kids and one due in June. I want that [facility] as safe as anyone else”) or traditional sources of state revenue, noting that a dedicated railroad to the site would bypass “Las Vegas, warehouses, etc.”Footnote 39
The unions supported the resolution for the same reason. AFL-CIO representative Lou Paley said it would help reduce the building-trade unemployment rate, then at more than 20 percent, and was comforted by the knowledge that there was no time limit for workers’ compensation claims relating to radiation injuries. Southern Nevada Building Trades Union business agent Jim Arnold said his members respected rather than feared nuclear waste and that the union had sent many letters to the federal government “and others” requesting a nuclear-waste storage facility be developed. Southern Nevada carpenters business agent Shelley Kent chipped in that the underground tests were far more dangerous than the A.J.R 15 proposal and the NTS was very safe. The Nevada Labor Council also expressed its support.Footnote 40
Southern Nevada’s biggest counties and the business community were just as supportive; indeed these groups had made their position clear well before A.J.R. 15 was introduced. Between November 5 and December 11, 1974, the Clark County Board of County Commissioners, the City of Las Vegas Board of City Commissioners, the Nye and Lincoln County Boards of Commissioners, and the Greater Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce all passed resolutions supporting the designation of NTS as the location for a nuclear-waste storage site.Footnote 41
The resolution’s supporters were also being kept up to date on the economics of nuclear energy. Amendment 4594 to A.J.R. 15, introduced by Lloyd Mann, changed the original “disposal of nuclear wastes” to “the storage and processing of nuclear material.”Footnote 42 It is not entirely clear where the language change originated, but the motivation is clear; the price of uranium was at an all-time high and ERDA was in serious discussions with Allied-General, ARCO, Exxon, Westinghouse, and other companies in the spent-fuel reprocessing and plutonium fuel-fabrication business.Footnote 43
Some legislators were skeptical of the promised economic benefits. Senator Bill Raggio (R-WA) felt storing waste was simply not worthwhile and productive, and Nevada already had the Beatty low-level waste-disposal site.Footnote 44 Senator Mary Gojack (D-WA) described A.J.R. 15’s promise of jobs and money to relieve southern Nevada’s immediate economic distress as “a cruel hoax,” given that the cost analysis required before any money could be released would not be ready for several years and it would be 1985 before any waste would be ready for shipment. Citing credibility problems with ERDA’s safety record, particularly in light of recent experiences at Hanford and Idaho, Gojack asked: “Shouldn’t we think about the potential harm to the ranching economy . . . as well as the tourist economy if we get the image of a ‘nuclear garbage dump’?”Footnote 45 In 2002, Sue Wagner (R-WA) recalled: “I understood the rationale of the people from Clark County, because it would mean more jobs. That’s the kind of issue used on the floor of the Assembly to get all of us to support it.”Footnote 46 Senator Richard Bryan (D-CL) recalls that A.J.R. 15 was pushed by organized labor as a jobs program. And Steven Miller of the Nevada Policy Research Institute described A.J.R. 15 simply as the “pursuit of federal pork.”Footnote 47
The Nevada League of Women Voters feared that a repository might actually make southern Nevada’s unemployment problems worse by attracting construction workers to NTS for jobs that would only be short-term.Footnote 48 Several residents in attendance at an EPR Committee meeting on March 10 were also unconvinced by the trade-off. Katharine Gardner Hale of Reno felt the resolution was “tantamount to a bribe. Our economic appetites are being tempted by $1-1/2 billion for 40 years and by the solar research plum in a giant poison cake.” Similarly, Bonita Brown of Silver City remarked: “The only testimony I have heard here on the resolution favoring the waste storage are people who will directly gain from it monitarily [sic] . . . more jobs are needed, but I feel that very few Nevadans given a fair knowledge of this proposition would consider the potential economic boost the facility may give to Las Vegas worth the inherent and irreversible danger that come [sic] with the site.”Footnote 49
Site Suitability
Into the mid-1970s, there was no major organized opposition to NTS; the attitude was essentially “full speed ahead with all things nuclear.”Footnote 50 Nevada’s experience in handling nuclear material and the AEC’s safety record were often mentioned as reasons why the Silver State would make an ideal waste storage site. A December 12, 1974, editorial in the Valley Times claimed that “Southern Nevadans have never shown any great apprehension about . . . the possible dangers from fallout or radiation leakage” and that “for many long years, since underground nuclear testing first began, substantial radioactive wastes have been locked away deep underground at the Nevada Test Site.”Footnote 51 A Las Vegas Sun editorial on the same day, citing findings from a 1974 AEC Reactor Safety Study, argued: “Atomic energy is our one best hope for overcoming the limitations on the world’s supply of fossil fuels. What threatens us is not so much the tremendous power it represents, but the danger that fear will prevent us from harnessing it in time.”Footnote 52 The next day, the Sun ran another editorial that extensively referenced Nevada Public Works board chairman William Flangas, who had spoken at the AEC’s Salt Lake City hearing.Footnote 53 Flangas listed six reasons why the NTS was suitable and advantageous for nuclear-waste storage: availability of professional and craft skills; appropriate geography, topography and climate; possibilities for permanent geologic storage; geological and hydrological suitability; availability of facilities; and public acceptance.Footnote 54
On November 5, 1974, Nye County district attorney William Beko wrote a strongly worded letter to the AEC urging favorable consideration of the NTS: “It seems completely illogical to consider any site other than the Nevada Test Site, for the future storage of nuclear wastes when we have a location, already contaminated, already capably staffed and protected, in an area previously determined to be the best adapted for such purposes.” In their comment to the AEC on WASH-1539, the Nye County Board of Commissioners adopted Beko’s letter as “a representative attitude of the residents of the County of Nye.”Footnote 55 And on April 24, 1975, the Nevada Department of Conservation and Natural Resources endorsed the NRMSAC’s findings and urged favorable consideration of A.J.R. 15.Footnote 56
To be sure, not everyone was so enamored of the idea. Speaking before the Commerce Committee on March 14, 1975, Environment and Public Resources Committee chairman Bremner provided rather equivocal support, stating that storing nuclear waste “might not be completely safe anywhere but the way it is presently stored is not safe at all.”Footnote 57 He noted that Nevada did not have the hydrology problems of other potential sites, although “earthquake potential” existed.Footnote 58 Going further, Mary Gojack pronounced the site “one of the most seismologically and geologically active areas in the country.”Footnote 59 Susan Orr of the environmental advocacy group Foresta Institute argued that ERDA “readily admit they don’t know how to permanently store this persistently toxic debris.”Footnote 60 Sue Wagner, who had consulted with her husband, an associate research professor at the Desert Research Institute, decided that the safety of the proposed facility was questionable. But more fundamentally, Wagner simply did not believe the AEC’s “propaganda” that nothing would leak.Footnote 61 Assemblywoman Jean Ford (R-CL) reiterated Wagner’s concerns and explained that she had attended a seminar on waste and came away concerned about the possible harm that could result. Ford recommended deleting the nuclear-waste references in A.J.R. 15 and emphasizing solar energy R&D.Footnote 62
Ford was, however, a minority of one in the Assembly among her Clark County colleagues. James Banner (D-CL) felt that if some risks weren’t taken, nothing would ever get done. Bob Price (D-CL) said that Nevada was perfect from a hydrological perspective and because of the considerable radioactivity present from past nuclear testing. Jack Jeffrey emphasized the experiential differences between southern and northern Nevadans: Clark County residents “have lived with it [nuclear activity] since 1951 where thousands of people are employed” and while educational programs have allayed many fears, everyone is aware of the safety hazards and lives with them.Footnote 63 It was certainly no accident that the second paragraph of A.J.R. 15 read as follows: “The people of Southern Nevada have confidence in the safety record of the Nevada Test Site.”Footnote 64
Indeed, there was more than a simple cost-benefit analysis at work. There was also a strong sense of pride in the Test Site’s activities and Nevada’s contribution to national defense.Footnote 65 In 1974, at the AEC’s Salt Lake City hearing, William Flangas asserted that southern Nevada had “a local population acclimated to nuclear activity. We are proud of our contribution to the Nation’s security. . . . There is no doubt in my mind that our preeminence in nuclear activities has been the keystone of maintaining the world peace.” And resolution cosponsor Republican Jake Jacobsen, observing that the nuclear-waste problem was nationwide, argued that every effort should be made to “try to find solutions (to problems), not by-pass them.”Footnote 66
Security and proliferation issues were only touched on briefly. For example, Mary Gojack discussed the terrorist threat to nuclear material processing facilities and nuclear waste in transport.Footnote 67 The Nevada League of Women Voters and the Consumers League of Nevada also warned of the sabotage, theft/hijacking, terrorism, and blackmail risks associated with transport and storage, and Assemblyman Robert Heaney (D-WA) raised questions about the danger of explosions and sabotage at the proposed facility.Footnote 68 But none of these points appeared to elicit much discussion.
State Veto
The official DOE history of the NTS explains that the AEC’s publicity campaign prior to the first nuclear test on January 27, 1951, consisted of issuing a press release on January 11, with advance briefings for Nevada County and city officials, and flying a special AEC delegation to Carson City to inform Governor Charles Russell that his state had been chosen to host nuclear tests.Footnote 69 During the 1950s, NTS officials “performed well in the public relations field,” assuring residents that “the economic advantages of the new government base . . . probably outweighed any possible minor danger.” Not that Nevadans had much of a say in matters, at least in the early years. Governor Russell described the State’s powerlessness as follows: “The Federal government did not request permission to use the public domain in Nevada for the atom bomb tests. You must realize that the area set aside by the government is, and always was, Federal land . . . there is nothing that I as Governor . . . can do to halt such tests.”Footnote 70
The governor’s observation highlights a very important and enduring aspect of federal-state relations: roughly 85 percent of the land in Nevada is federally owned, and this creates “friction.”Footnote 71 The federal government is viewed as an “absentee landlord” that “manages” ranching, mining, and other activities (including recreational activities such as hunting, fishing, and hiking), constraining what would otherwise be much faster growth.Footnote 72 An acute manifestation of Nevada’s frustration was the Sagebrush Rebellion; the 1979 assertion of title over Bureau of Land Management–administered land within the state.Footnote 73 Bob List described the rebellion as Nevadans telling the Feds to “back off.” More broadly and more colorfully, former Governor Grant Sawyer (1959–67) declared in 1993 that Washington “affects a certain snotty superiority, even today. There’s something about Nevada: the whole composite of divorce, gambling, prostitution, and the years of dealing with the presence of the mob. . . . If you were from Nevada, you were thought to be not quite respectable, and the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear dump is part of that legacy: Nevada is a wasteland, and if we have some vile project that nobody else will tolerate, put it in Nevada!”Footnote 74
This tension between the state’s rights and federal preemption was apparent as the legislature wrestled with the issue of attaching a veto to A.J.R. 15. In his letter to the AEC endorsing NRMSAC’s report, Mike O’Callaghan emphasized the committee’s finding that the governor “must be afforded the power to veto location of the facility, in the event he has strong objection to the use of a specific site; and that the AEC should recognize the right of the State to terminate further consideration of Nevada as a specific site if such action appears to the State to be reasonable.”Footnote 75
Assemblyman Steven Coulter asked Mahlon Gates what would happen if all three states refused to host the facility. Gates responded that this would present quite a problem and ERDA would have to look elsewhere. Lloyd Mann believed that a gubernatorial veto should be a part of the resolution he introduced. Senator Hilbrecht and Assemblyman Thomas Hickey (D-CL.) both favored the inclusion of a veto, although Hickey believed that the governor had the authority to intervene regardless.Footnote 76 But the final say came from 606 Mountain Street, Carson City. Assembly Speaker Keith Ashworth (D-CL) explained that the governor felt explicit veto power could jeopardize a waste facility being built in Nevada, despite insisting on precisely this in his October 28, 1974, letter to the AEC and later maintaining that he worked unsuccessfully with Ashworth to insert language giving voters the ability to approve or reject the repository.Footnote 77 Hilbrecht stated that it was his understanding that O’Callaghan declined a veto “as being inappropriate in view of the written data that he has from ERDA indicating that in any event that would be the situation,” and while reluctant to give his support without the “safety valve” of a state veto, he was willing to settle for public hearings and an ERDA assurance that no action would be taken prior to the next legislative session.Footnote 78 While it sounds quaint now, ERDA’s word may well have been good enough at the time. According to former executive director of the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects Bob Loux, historically Nevada trusted the federal government. Officials were willing to let site selection play out and, if Nevada was chosen in a process deemed scientific and fair, would find it hard to say no.Footnote 79
Ultimately, compromise language was agreed upon. Amendment 4594 was adopted, in part, to ensure that “appropriate state agencies and local governments can cooperate in, and contribute to, the development of . . . [ERDA’s] site-specific environmental impact statement,” and Amendment 9043 was adopted to ensure public hearings “in at least four counties in the state prior to choosing a specific site for the facility.”Footnote 80
Roll Call
The votes on A.J.R. 15 provide the clearest evidence of the “nuclear” north-south divide in Nevada.Footnote 81 In the Assembly, there were thirty-two yeas and eight nays on March 18, 1975. Of the eight nays, seven represented Washoe County in the state’s northwest: Democrats Robert Barengo, Steven Coulter, Robert Heaney, Patrick Murphy, and Albert Wittenberg, and Republicans Sue Wagner and Robert Weise.Footnote 82 The eighth was liberal Republican Jean Ford from Clark County. In the Senate, there were twelve yeas, six nays, and two senators were absent on May 16, 1975.Footnote 83 Senator (and future state attorney general, governor, and U.S. senator) Richard Bryan supported A.J.R. 15; he would later describe that vote as “the biggest political mistake of my life.”Footnote 84 Of the six nays, five represented Washoe County: still sitting Republican Senator Bill Raggio, Republican Cliff Young, and Democrats Margie Foote, Mary Gojack, and Thomas Wilson; Democrat and rancher Floyd Lamb was the lone senator from Clark County.Footnote 85
Senator Norman Hilbrecht (D-CL) admitted to initial reservations about the resolution but concluded after the hearings and numerous conferences with the resolution’s sponsors that “proponents had by far the better of the evidence” and “by and large the opposition was a visceral reaction” to storing nuclear waste in Nevada.Footnote 86 However, not all legislators shared Senator Hilbrecht’s satisfaction with the debate. Mary Gojack had recommended tabling the resolution and studying the problem further with the assistance of organizations such as the Desert Research Institute and UNLV in order to produce a series of reports by November 1976.Footnote 87 Sue Wagner believed that the resolution had been “railroaded” through the Assembly and required more study. Speaking recently, former Senator Thomas Wilson remarked that the debate was rushed, noting that no one had done the homework on groundwater contamination and seismic activity as well as the safety and security implications and transport risks.Footnote 88
On May 21, within twenty-four hours of the resolution arriving on his desk, Governor O’Callaghan gave his approval. Much later, O’Callaghan said that he signed A.J.R. 15—which “at that time . . . was not that big of an issue”—only because governors cannot veto resolutions.Footnote 89 Providing a quite different perspective, Bob Stewart, press secretary and administrative assistant to Governor O’Callaghan, explained that O’Callaghan didn’t hesitate to sign the resolution because the issue was not a priority for the governor and the resolution’s sponsors and supporters were the state’s powerbrokers.Footnote 90
Shortly after passage of A.J.R. 15, ERDA established the National Waste Terminal Storage Program (NWTSP), which proposed surveying underground geologic formations in thirty-six states in an effort to move beyond reliance on salt as a repository medium. In January 1978, concept development began for Spent Fuel Test-Climax (SFT-C), as part of NWTSP’s Nevada Nuclear Waste Storage Investigations Project.Footnote 91 Between April and May 1980, eleven spent-fuel canisters from Turkey Point Unit 3 in Florida and six electrical simulators were placed in holes in the floor of the Climax Mine (roughly 1,400 feet down) in the north of NTS to measure heat transfer from the fuel to the surrounding granite. The canisters were retrieved and the thermal sources de-energized between March and April 1983. There were no protests and Test Site officials regularly organized tours. According to a report by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, SFT-C’s technical director, “some 10,000 people” from the U.S. and twenty-two foreign countries visited the facility during the test phase. “Most went away with a more objective view of nuclear waste disposal than when they arrived.”Footnote 92
Conclusions
1. A.J.R. 15 and 1970s Nevada
Former governors O’Callaghan and Bryan have downplayed the significance of A.J.R. 15, saying that resolutions are simply expressions of opinion that carry no legislative weight and don’t attract the same sort of attention as bills.Footnote 93 But this claim rings a little hollow.Footnote 94 First, more than half of the Assembly cosponsored the resolution (exactly half if Robert Heaney is not counted – see endnote 82), and more than three-quarters voted in favor. Senator Bill Raggio felt the resolution was “quite important at the time” and recalled that it was “pushed vigorously.” Former Assemblywoman and Lieutenant Governor Sue Wagner described A.J.R. 15 as “very significant.” And former Senator Thomas Wilson argued that joint resolutions are important because they define public policy/government intent and chart a course forward.Footnote 95 All voted against the resolution.
Second, A.J.R. 15 should not be viewed in isolation. The resolution came after twenty-four years of generally popular and economically vital AEC nuclear activity in the state, three years after Senator Cannon’s letter to James Schlesinger recommending NTS as the location for a national repository and only a few months after State Planning Coordinator Bruce Arkell had indicated in Salt Lake City that the governor’s office was willing to accede, conditionally, should NTS be deemed the best site. In the mid- to late 1980s, the legislature passed bills establishing an advisory agency on nuclear projects, coordinating all levels of government so the state could speak with “one voice,” and creating a new political entity surrounding the proposed repository site endowed with the highest property tax rate allowed.Footnote 96 All of these laws were designed to enable the state to negotiate more effectively or improve Nevada’s negotiating position with DOE, but A.J.R. 15, as the only invitation to store nuclear waste ever proffered by a state legislature, remains Nevada’s most important statement of intent.
It has also been argued that A.J.R. 15 was all about economics. Steven Miller of the Nevada Policy Research Institute has written that the Democrats “swept the boards” in the 1974 election and arrived in Carson City determined to create jobs. When they found out that the AEC was looking to site a nuclear-waste storage facility, “party leaders quickly concluded they had their ‘jobs program.’”Footnote 97 Clearly this is correct—Clark County’s economic woes are explicitly mentioned in the resolution and southern Nevada had precious few large-scale competing industries—but it is not the whole story. Support for nuclear activities in southern Nevada had been strong since the 1950s. This is in part a function of the economic benefits the host and surrounding counties received, but it also reflects differing perceptions of risk.Footnote 98 Assemblyman Jack Jeffrey’s observation that everyone is aware of the safety hazards and lives with them is representative of the prevailing view at the time.
The depth and breadth of opposition in other parts of the country that would become apparent eighteen months after the passage of A.J.R. 15 make Nevada’s actions even more significant. In November 1976, ERDA Administrator Robert Seamans wrote to state officials to inform them of the decision to widen the siting search. Seamans offered to work with the states and committed to terminating a project “if the State raises issues . . . connected with [technical] criteria and their application that are not resolved through mutually accepted procedures.”Footnote 99 But the response took ERDA somewhat by surprise. Several states, including South Carolina, Kansas, Michigan, and Wisconsin, disinvited ERDA from conducting exploratory work; some, including New York, Missouri, and Colorado, wanted further studies completed first; while others—including Oklahoma, Mississippi, and Louisiana—agreed to work toward developing ground rules for exploration. Yet no one “evinced much enthusiasm and . . . [the new initiative] soon got mired down in the reluctance of State officials even to contemplate a facility on their soil.”Footnote 100 In light of these reactions and Nevada’s apparent enthusiasm, DOE’s inclination to focus increasingly on the Silver State is understandable. It is certainly noteworthy in this context that ERDA’s decision to shift the focus of its search from retrievable surface storage to a geologic repository right at the time A.J.R. 15 was being debated had no noticeable effect on Nevada officials’ views—the words “storage” and “disposal” were used interchangeably.
From 1972 until well into the 1980s, Nevada officials gave every indication that a repository stood a good chance of finding a home in the Silver State, and A.J.R. 15 is very important in this context. It was strongly supported in the legislature and provided a general guide to how the siting process would need to be conducted in order to address the state’s concerns. Throughout this period, a series of incidents at nuclear facilities were attracting national attention, including a major fire at the Rocky Flats plutonium processing facility in 1969, a 115,000-gallon high-level waste leak from a tank at the Hanford Site in 1973, and the closure in 1976 of Nuclear Fuel Services’ reprocessing facility at West Valley, New York, after operating from 1966 to 1972 at about 18 percent capacity with a record of worker exposures to high doses of radiation, which Science described as “almost without precedent in a major nuclear facility.”Footnote 101 Most troubling of all was the accident at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania in March 1979, which Senator Richard Bryan described as a “big jolt.”Footnote 102 The same year, former Arizona Congressman and Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall began representing “downwinders”—people who lived near the NTS during atmospheric testing and were exposed to fallout. In addition, several groundbreaking cases of leukemia linked to atmospheric nuclear testing received substantial publicity during the 1970s.Footnote 103 Senator Bryan, who with Senator Harry Reid would spearhead opposition to Yucca Mountain, recalled: “All of a sudden, we saw nuclear as something exceedingly dangerous. There was a shattering of innocence. People became less trusting of government. That may be the legacy of Vietnam.”Footnote 104 The antinuclear movement was also making its presence felt, aided in part by “a series of governmental reforms from the late 1960s to the mid 1970s that democratized the policy process and made Congress as well as federal agencies far more receptive to the new political forces.”Footnote 105 Despite all of this, it was only after DOE terminated the search for a second repository and the U.S. Congress directed DOE to discontinue site characterization work in Texas and Washington and limit its study to Yucca Mountain (the so-called Screw Nevada bill of 1987) that most of that goodwill was destroyed and legislation was passed in Nevada prohibiting high-level waste storage.Footnote 106
The dynamics at work here are more complex than simply money/jobs and nuclear naïveté. Officials were willing to keep an open mind about storing high-level nuclear waste and spent fuel; in return, they asked for a fair and rigorous site-selection process as well as co-location of the federal solar energy R&D project (the Solar Energy Research Institute would in fact begin operation in 1977 in Golden, Colorado). While there is no guarantee that things would have turned out differently had the Nuclear Waste Policy Act not been amended in 1987, nuclear-waste storage was not always the third rail of Nevada politics.
2. Nevada and Northern Europe: Lessons from Sweden and Finland
The United States is not much closer to siting a spent nuclear fuel and high-level waste repository than it was sixty years ago. In contrast, in about half the time, both Sweden and Finland have managed to demonstrate a workable waste-management solution and select sites—Östhammar and Eurajoki, respectively—based on overwhelming local support. In addition, the Swedish and Finnish consortia responsible for the repository programs in each country have taken the lead in coordinating a “technology platform” for the development of a common European approach to spent fuel and long-lived radioactive waste-management and disposal.Footnote 107 So why the progress in the Nordic countries (and potentially other European Union members) but gridlock in Nevada?
Sweden’s Östhammar and Oskarshamn, the two municipalities that competed to host the repository, are analogous to mid-1970s southern Nevada in important ways. Both municipalities were “acclimated” to nuclear activity: Östhammar hosts three reactors and a repository for short-lived radioactive waste; Oskarshamn hosts three reactors, an interim spent-fuel storage facility (Clab), a Canister Laboratory (to demonstrate methods for encapsulating spent fuel for final disposal), and the Äspö Hard Rock Laboratory.Footnote 108 Similarly, two of the four sites selected for detailed characterization in Finland (Eurajoki and Loviisa) host nuclear plants as well as low/intermediate-level radioactive waste and spent-fuel storage facilities.Footnote 109
Just as the AEC identified three brownfield sites—the Nevada Test Site, Idaho’s National Reactor Testing Station, and the Hanford Site in Washington State—as the most suitable for characterization in 1974, by 1994 SKB (the Swedish utility consortium managing the repository program) had expressed a clear preference for the nation’s nuclear communities as “potentially ready-made local stakeholders,” and it has been suggested that part of the appeal for the Finnish municipalities was that a repository would lower the preexisting risk of “the waste storage pools already familiar to” the local communities.Footnote 110 But there is a critical difference—Nevada’s brownfield sites are military; the state does not and never has produced nuclear power commercially. This may not have been such a big problem had the siting process played out competitively. But for many Nevadans, the prospect of a repository for spent reactor fuel was viewed as a large burden foisted upon a politically weak state rather than as a lucrative complement to existing activities; and Nevada’s thirty-year experience with civilian low-level radioactive waste disposal at Beatty was less than encouraging.Footnote 111
SKB’s decision to stress the importance of engineered barriers in its repository design—the KBS-3 concept—was clearly and effectively articulated.Footnote 112 So, when confrontations between SKB and local communities “served to curtail the continuation of a geology-led siting policy,” SKB recalibrated its approach to focus on technology.Footnote 113 Completed in 1995, the Äspö Hard Rock Laboratory is a full-scale experimental facility designed to study changing conditions in different final repositories and provide data to construct repository barriers.Footnote 114 By demonstrating different technical solutions, SKB was/is effectively “unshackling . . . the concept from geology . . . making it possible to find many sites in Sweden that are suitable for the construction of a final repository.”Footnote 115 Based on the Swedish experience, Finland adopted SKB’s technical approach.
In Nevada, opponents have contemptuously described engineered barriers (such as titanium drip shields) as “ever-more-exotic engineering ‘fixes’” and offered them up as proof that the geological science is flawed.Footnote 116 In fact, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and DOE had been underscoring the importance of multiple engineered barriers as part of a “defense-in-depth” approach for many years, but, in order to justify the decision to terminate activities at all other sites and single out Yucca Mountain in 1987, DOE has been forced to emphasize the unique suitability of Nevada’s geology.Footnote 117 As Elam and Sundqvist have presciently observed: “By concentrating on upholding the Swedish nuclear industry’s ability to demonstratively confirm the attainability of their waste management solution, the KBS Programme has been drawn into valuing mutability, while by prioritizing the actual finalization of a non-negotiable solution, the Yucca Mountain Project has been drawn into over-investing in immutability.”Footnote 118
Not surprisingly, money and jobs are an essential part of the equation. In 2009, the mayors of Östhammar and Oskarshamn agreed to split a £162 million winner’s pot 75 to 25 with the loser getting the larger percentage, and SKB has committed to investing in infrastructure, business development, and education in both municipalities over the next fifteen years.Footnote 119 Similarly, economic and social benefits were identified by Eurajoki Municipality Council member Altti Lucander as one of several key reasons for Eurajoki’s acceptance.Footnote 120 Local pride also plays an important role just as it did in Nevada—hosting a cutting-edge technology facility and making a major contribution to solving a pressing national problem.Footnote 121
Unlike in the United States, SKB asked for volunteers and two Swedish municipalities competed to host the facility. In Finland, five locations were chosen for preliminary site characterization based on geology, geography, infrastructure, and proposed land use. Three of these were short-listed and Loviisa was added when Posiva Oy was created (see endnote 111). All were crystalline rock and none was determined to be significantly safer than any other.Footnote 122 The search was then narrowed in consultation with local communities and the selection of Eurajoki was based largely on community acceptance.Footnote 123 In contrast, when Congress amended the Nuclear Waste Policy Act in 1987, the “competition” (Deaf Smith County, Texas, and Hanford, Washington) was eliminated before DOE completed site characterization in those states. Allison Macfarlane has observed: “Though Congress had asked DOE to simply decide if Yucca Mountain were a reasonable site, by selecting just one site Congress put enormous political pressure on the DOE to find that the site was adequate.”Footnote 124
In the United States, government (DOE and its forerunners) has been charged with siting a repository; in Sweden, the industry consortium SKB is the responsible agency, and in Finland the industry consortium Posiva Oy is the responsible agency. DOE has been hampered by a substantial trust deficit, some of which it inherited from the AEC. SKB and Posiva Oy have carried far less baggage, which is largely a function of historical development and good safety records. Östhammar and Oskarshamn were both assured veto power in the event that they objected, and in Finland, municipal veto power can only be changed through an extended legislative process.Footnote 125 Neither country experienced a “Screw Nevada” moment.
Not coincidently, the strengths of the Nordic approach—a siting process that generated trust over time, a federal guarantee that a “no” vote by a potential host municipality would be respected, and a disposal technology that would be effective in suitable, but not necessarily perfect, geology—have all proved corrosive in the context of Yucca Mountain. Ultimately, the goodwill that existed in Nevada at the time of A.J.R. 15 was squandered by congressional fiat and a siting agency beset by credibility problems.
Recommendations
The world is a different place today than it was in 1975. Public confidence in the government’s ability to manage nuclear matters safely and to be a reliable partner is far lower today. Publics and politicians have learned from the many failures and changes of direction in managing nuclear wastes of the last several decades. Nevertheless, the A.J.R. 15 experience offers lessons that will need to be considered as the nation searches for a new approach and a new site for disposing of nuclear waste. Four key recommendations emerge from the preceding case study. First, confidence in the organization proposing to build and operate the facility, based on an extended record of cooperation, is essential. This is perhaps the most problematic of the recommendations to act upon in the short term given DOE’s deteriorating reputation in the wake of revelations that a host of nuclear operations were not as safe as the public had been led to believe and its two-decade battle with Nevada over Yucca Mountain. During the 1970s, Nevadans had high confidence in the AEC and its successors, based on the perceived good experience with the test site and the large number of Nevadans employed there or employed at businesses supporting the people employed there. But by 1993, a taskforce on radioactive waste management created by then-Secretary of Energy James Watkins reported: “By any conceivable indicator, the Department [of Energy] rouses little trust and confidence from any sector of the public. Even parties that generally agree with the agency’s policy choices express a deep concern about how reliable a partner it has been or will likely be.”Footnote 126 This perception, which persists today, will take time and effort to overcome, although it is encouraging that a consultant to the Clark County Nuclear Waste Division recently noted that during Ward Sproat’s tenure (2006–8) as director of the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, there was “genuine recognition of the critical role of state and local governments in the siting process.”Footnote 127 An alternative proposed by the Nuclear Energy Institute would transfer responsibility to a new entity with a management and financing structure and empowered to act on behalf of the federal government.Footnote 128 As discussed, Sweden and Finland have recently had success selecting repository sites by emphasizing local acceptability and demonstrating the feasibility of integrating engineered waste storage barriers with suitable geology; in both cases, entities created by the utilities were responsible for project management and the communities selected to host the repositories had extensive experience with nuclear activities, particularly nuclear power generation. It should be noted that this is not a quick fix; SKB and Posiva Oy built trust over many years.
Second, and closely linked to the first point, the siting process must be perceived as fair and equitable. This will likely include local/state input into site characterization and environmental impact statements, as well as site characterizations at locations in multiple states. The search must not be limited simply to brownfield sites, although, like other DOE military facilities around the country, the fact that the NTS is federal land already contaminated by nuclear activity made—and will continue to make—Nevada an attractive potential candidate.
Third, inclusion of a governor’s veto is necessary to give the community and the state confidence that the facility will not be built if technical problems arise. As discussed above, while an explicit veto was not included in the final version of A.J.R. 15, officials were of the belief that veto power was implicit. Today, given DOE’s trust deficit, it is doubtful any potential host state or county would proceed without explicit veto power.
Fourth, the provision of substantial economic benefits is vital, particularly long-term jobs (not just construction jobs during the construction phase) utilizing “local labor and industry to the maximum extent possible.”Footnote 129 The inclusion of a more desirable project, such as the solar facility that was mentioned in A.J.R. 15, will also be an important incentive. Given the debate over long-term management of spent-fuel and high-level nuclear waste has been going on for more than half a century, has cost many billions of dollars, and appears not much closer to resolution than when it started, the provision of massive financial incentives to a host state/county should be seriously considered. However, care must be taken to ensure such an inducement does not give the impression of bribery in lieu of safety.
Speaking before the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future, executive director of the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects Bruce Breslow explained: “A repository cannot be a federal project. It must be a community project.”Footnote 130 A.J.R. 15 grew out of a shared sense of community in southern Nevada; nuclear power plants have developed a similar level of support among local residents.Footnote 131 The challenge now is to relegitimize the waste repository site search. Understanding the only instance of a state legislature asking the federal government to store nuclear material within its borders is a good place to start that process.
