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Project Rio Blanco, as the May blast is called, is actually the third in a series of "nuclear wells." It follows the 1967 Project Gasbuggy, a 26-kiloton explosion in New Mexico, and the 40-kiloton Project Rulison in Colorado in 1969. The AEC has claimed that both of these previous tests were successful, since they proved the feasibility of nuclear drilling...
...would be worth only $1.5 million-if it were uncontaminated and of high quality. Unfortunately, the gas released by Rulison is chemically inferior to gas from conventional wells in the same field and contains excessive amounts of radioactive byproducts like tritium. The cheapest way to correct those faults, the AEC says, would be to mix one unit of the contaminated Rulison gas with up to 50 units of high-quality nonradioactive gas. But to do so would require an abundance of uncontaminated natural gas, which is what the nuclear program was supposed to provide in the first place...
...AEC officials insist that Rulison was worth the effort; it was an experiment conducted to refine the technique of nuclear drilling. As for radioactivity levels in the gas, the AEC says that improvements in bomb design will minimize the problem in future blasts. Those improvements would presumably be incorporated into both the Rio Blanco devices and Project Wagon Wheel, a five-bomb, 500-kiloton underground explosion scheduled...
Although the AEC'S assurance has not slowed the heated objections of environmentalists and local politicians, the chances of stopping the next two blasts are slim. But opponents are now trying to ensure that Wagon Wheel's five bombs sound the death rattle of the nuclear-drilling program. The idea of 140 more subterranean nuclear explosions is "absolutely out of the question," says U.S. Senator Floyd Haskell of Colorado, who along with others is concerned about triggering earthquakes. "I just don't know what would happen seismically after you've wracked the earth 140 times," says...
...have access to it are growing at a disturbing rate. A spokesman for the Atomic Energy Commission pointed out that the construction of even the most rudimentary device would require a team of highly trained technicians. Still, the slightest possibility of backyard A-bombs is so fearful that the AEC is spending several million dollars a year to provide extra protection for fissionable material...