Minnesota State Planning Agency

The federal Nuclear Waste Policy Act (NWPA) of 1982 was a compromise between Western and Eastern states. While not explicitly ordering it, the Act called for construction of two underground nuclear waste repositories, one to open in the West in 1990 and one in the East several years later.

Potential sites for the first repository were identified in the states of Louisiana, Mississippi, Nevada, Texas, Utah, and Washington. Draft environmental assessments, issued in December 1984, proposed three sites for further investigation. These sites were Yucca Mountain, Nevada; Deaf Smith County, Texas; and Hanford, Washington.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) conducted studies in crystalline rock formations in 17 states for a possible location for the second repository. Sites in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, and 14 New England and Atlantic seaboard states were included in these studies.

In response, Minnesota Governor Rudy Perpich, through executive order 83-22 of April 26, 1983, designated the Minnesota Environmental Quality Board as the agency that would coordinate and prepare state responses to studies, proposed rules, findings, or other actions taken by the federal government in the nuclear waste repository siting process. The Governor's Task Force on High Level Radioactive Waste, which would advise the EQB, the Governor, and the Legislature on all nuclear waste issues, also was established. In 1985 this task force was reorganized as the Governor's Council on Nuclear Waste, and the EQB was dropped from this project. The State Planning Agency, through its High-Level Radioactive Waste Program headed by Greg Larson, assumed much of the EQB's functions.

In May of 1986, the DOE announced it was going to suspend the search for the second repository, largely because it was felt that the Western site could handle all of the nation's nuclear waste through the year 2020. Western states cried foul and claimed the decision was meant to help Republican political candidates back East. Since the DOE had suspended work on a crystalline rock site, however temporarily, the High-Level Radioactive Waste Program suspended work in 1988.

From the guide to the High-level radioactive waste program records, 1957-1988., (Minnesota Historical Society)