Environmental Assessment Overview: Richton Dome Site, Mississippi

The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 (the Act) established a process for the selection of sites for the disposal of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste in geologic repositories. The first steps in this process were the identification of potentially acceptable sites and the development of general guidelines for siting repositories. In February 1983, the DOE identified nine sites in six States as potentially acceptable for the first repository. The Richton Dome site in Perry County, Mississippi, was identified as one of those sites. The general guidelines were issued in November 1984 as Title 10 of the Code of Federal Regulations, Part 960. The DOE is now proceeding with the next step in the site-selection process for the first repository: the nomination of at least five of the nine potentially acceptable sites as suitable for site characterization, which is a program of detailed studies.