LYONS ? Bill Hambleton was dealing with a different type of nuclear fallout.

It was 1971, and Hambleton, director of the Kansas Geological Survey, was in town to explain why a nearby salt mine wouldn’t make a good storage vault for tons of high-level nuclear waste.

He was greeted at the airport by a mob of Lyons residents angry with his determination. They saw the waste storage as a way to save the economy of their central Kansas town, which had taken a hit with the closing of a commercial salt mine.

One resident was holding a noose.

“They were being funny, and I took it that way,” Hambleton recalled last week. “They thought this was a good deal, a good economic program for the city, and here was this guy opposing it. It was more to prove a point.”

Thirty-one years later, the issue of where to store spent rods from nuclear power plants and byproducts from making nuclear weapons remains unresolved and contentious.

As the federal government moves closer to selecting Yucca Mountain in southern Nevada as its nuclear repository, residents of Lyons are reflecting on an era that divided their small town, pitting “not-in-my-back-yard” arguments against fears of a dying community.

Salt option

Lyons, population 3,700 and located 30 miles northwest of Hutchinson, always has been dependent on the salt formations that surround the city.

So when a Carey Salt Co. mine on the north end of town closed in the early 1960s, Lyons then with a population of about 4,500 took a big hit.

That’s why city leaders perked up when officials from the federal Atomic Energy Commission came to town.

The idea to store nuclear waste in salt originated in 1955 with a report by the National Academy of Sciences. Geologists thought and most still do that salt would be an ideal storage facility because it flows to heal its own fractures, and will absorb heat.

The Lyons site also was attractive because it was seismically stable and relatively flat.

In 1970, the Atomic Energy Commission tentatively selected Lyons as its deposit site and pegged it for further geological tests.

Then the debate began.

The way Joe Fink saw it, the nuclear waste was a good way to make lemonade out of lemons. He was a board member of the Lyons Chamber of Commerce at the time.

The site would have employed between 30 and 40 people, but chamber officials also planned to take advantage of the traffic coming into the facility with hotels and truck stops.

Local disagreement

“Initially, as far as the chamber, it was good,” Fink said of the plan. “We said, ‘Let’s get some activity down there at the mine.’ Of course, what we knew about atomic energy could be put in a thimble.”

Not everyone was sold on the idea.

“I’d say if it had ever been voted on, the majority would’ve voted it down,” said A.L. “Link” Branson, who had attempted to secure a trucking contract tied to the nuclear site. “Yet the minority talked strongly for it. I’m quite sure it would’ve changed a lot of the town.”

The Atomic Energy Commission which disbanded in 1974 and gave its responsibilities to three other federal agencies conducted a public relations blitz in Lyons, trying to ease the fears of some residents. Rex Buchanan, who now is the Kansas Geological Survey’s associate director, grew up in rural Rice County and remembers taking a commission-organized field trip through the mine.

“They were trying to encourage local support,” he said. “They wanted people to know what was going on down there and to be comfortable about the project.”

But little was known about the geology of the 1,000-acre site.

The Kansas University-based geological survey began testing there in August 1970. Ernie Angino, a former Lawrence mayor who was associate director of the survey, was in charge of the on-site testing in Lyons.

‘A pin cushion’

It quickly became apparent, Angino recalled, that the Lyons site would never work for nuclear storage. Hundreds of undocumented holes from oil wells on the land would allow water to seep in and let the radiation spread from the storage facility 800 feet below the surface.

“I don’t think (the Atomic Energy Commission) realized how many holes had been drilled in this thing,” Angino said. “This state’s like a pin cushion.”

Geologists ran into similar problems of uncertainty last year in Hutchinson, when gas escaped from undocumented salt brine wells, causing two explosions that killed two people.

The geological survey submitted its preliminary findings to the energy commission in March 1971. It officially dropped the Lyons site from consideration in 1972.

But the debate over radioactivity in Lyons was far from over. The Rickano Corp. purchased the salt mine in the late 1970s and made plans to store low-level nuclear waste such as medical equipment there.

Though not tied to the government’s nuclear waste, the plan brought opposition similar to that for the earlier plan. Steve Woydziak, a hardware store owner, led the fight against the waste. He resigned his position on the chamber of commerce to protest support from local businesses.

“We have telephone poles blown over in the wind,” Woydziak said. “How would you like barrels of radioactive waste sitting around? We’d have had semis coming from all four directions.”

He said families would have moved away from Lyons, negating any economic benefit.

“There would’ve been a massive loss,” he said. “Everybody I talked to who had children said they wouldn’t stay. People were scared to death.”

Eventually, the bad publicity and lack of local support convinced Rickano Corp. officials to drop consideration of the site.

Continuing debate

It’s been 47 years since the National Academy of Sciences first recommended the government find long-term storage for the nation’s nuclear waste.

Congress has approved Yucca Mountain in southern Nevada, a site supported by President Bush. Plans call for as much as 77,000 metric tons of waste to be stored there beginning in 2010.

But those familiar with the process say the courts will ultimately decide whether any radioactive waste makes its way to Yucca Mountain. Until then, the waste is in temporary storage at the nation’s 103 nuclear power plants.

“This whole process has been so long,” said Hambleton, the former survey director. “I think the reason it finally passed was because everybody’s so sick of it.”

Added former associate director Angino: “You mention radioactivity and people go nuts. Even if you’re a person who wants nothing to do with nuclear power, you have to decide what to do with the waste that’s already been accumulated. You can’t wave a wand and solve the problem.”

Lyons residents now say they’re glad it’s somebody else’s problem.

“It caused a hell of an uproar,” said Paul Jones, editor of the Lyons Daily News. “It disrupted the town for quite a while.”