Following the Atomic Energy Commission’s public embarrassment at Lyons, Kansas in 1972, the search for a geologic repository took many twists and turns until the field was narrowed, in 1987, to a single candidate – Yucca Mountain. In the intervening decade and a half, the federal government searched in vain for what Daniel A. Dreyfus quipped was a “technically appropriate subsurface with a politically compliant Governor on top.” Dreyfus, then staff director for the Senate energy committee, was later to take charge of the Yucca Mountain project – where a politically compliant Governor was certainly not to be found.

In 1970, nuclear power plants provided the Nation with less energy than it derived from firewood. Only a dozen or so reactors of modest size were operating. This would soon change. During the middle and late 1960s, the AEC had authorized the building of nearly a hundred large reactors. Practically overnight, a major construction boom had begun.