[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 35 (Friday, February 24, 1995)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E429-E430]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


            THE INTEGRATED SPENT FUEL MANAGEMENT ACT OF 1995

                                 ______


                            HON. FRED UPTON

                              of michigan

                    in the house of representatives

                        Friday, February 24, 1995
  Mr. UPTON. Mr. Speaker, yesterday I introduced the Integrated Spent 
Nuclear Fuel Management Act of 1995. This is comprehensive legislation 
designed to address our national problem with high-level nuclear waste 
by providing workable solutions for managing used nuclear fuel from 
America's commercial nuclear powerplants.
  Nuclear powerplants currently provide more than 20 percent of 
America's electricity. They do so by harnessing the heat from uranium 
filled fuel rods to produce steam that turns electric turbines. When 
the energy in these fuel rods is depleted, the rods are removed from 
the reactor's core and placed in pools of water.
  Where they go next is the focus of this legislation. In Sweden, used 
fuel rods will eventually go directly to underground storage. In 
France, the rods are chopped up; the radioactive materials within them 
are separated and then reprocessed into new fuel rods. These completely 
different approaches meet both the energy and the environmental needs 
of their respective countries.
  In America, spent fuel rods go nowhere because there is nowhere for 
them to go. This eliptical sentence accurately describes the nexus of 
our peculiar problem with nuclear waste: We have been producing 
thousands of tons of post-reactor wastes over a period of decades 
without providing a place for their ultimate disposal. The wastes from 
over 100 nuclear powerplants have accumulated and continue accumulating 
at 70 sites in more than 30 States.
  Nuclear wastes didn't come as a surprise problem like DDT or ozone 
depleting compounds. We have known from the earliest days of the 
nuclear era that spent fuel and other nuclear wastes would need the 
most careful attention. In those early days, however, 
[[Page E430]] planners foresaw a different nuclear cycle or system than 
the one we now have. They envisioned many more nuclear power plants 
than exist today, enough to warrant an enormous reprocessing system 
similar to but larger than the system currently operating in France.
  For reasons that I won't go into today, this reprocessing sector did 
not develop in this country. Rather than following the French 
reprocessing model, we are now pursuing the once through Swedish 
approach. This means a home must be found for thousands and thousands 
of highly radioactive fuel rods.
  It was assumed from the outset that the Federal Government would be 
responsible for these wastes and that some Federal entity would 
construct and operate the facilities this obligation would require. 
This assumption became law 13 years ago, with passage of the Nuclear 
Waste Policy Act of 1982.
  The 1982 act set up a nuclear waste trust fund which was and is 
funded from a special fee on nuclear generated electricity. The fund 
was established to pay for a Federal nuclear waste repository. The 
Department of Energy was to begin accepting nuclear waste by January 
31, 1998.
  Despite the passage of the 1982 act and significant amendments to it 
in 1987 and the passage of 13 years, the Department of Energy has made 
little progress toward construction of a repository. The Department 
announced last year that it could not foresee completion of a 
repository any earlier than 2010, 16 years hence. Thus, Mr. Speaker, 
the repository that was 16 years away in 1982 is still 16 years away 
and half the $10 billion paid into the nuclear waste fund by 
electricity consumers has been spent.
  We have talked at length in this Congress about unfunded mandates, 
but this is a prime example of a funded mandate that the Federal 
Government has not honored. Small wonder that the Department's 
announcement generated great consternation among public utilities
 and utility regulators and two separate lawsuits against the Secretary 
of Energy. Consumers and electric utilities have upheld their end of 
the 1982 agreement. It's time for the Government to honor its side of 
the bargain.

  Much time has been lost. Much criticism has been directed at the 
Department of Energy for its failure to achieve the 1982 act's 
objectives. I will not add to this criticism. As is so often the case 
in ambitious Federal programs, we have asked good people to do 
something or to build something that has never been done or built 
before.
  As much as we may appreciate the difficulty of the task, however, I 
cannot accept the Department's assertion that it ``does not have a 
clear legal obligation under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act to accept 
spent nuclear fuel absent an operational repository or other 
facility.'' This may represent a lawyer's narrow interpretation of 
statutory language, but it is not what the act's sponsors said in first 
presenting it to the Congress on this floor in the fall of 1982:

       The primary objective of this legislation is development of 
     licensed facilities to be constructed deep underground for 
     the permanent disposal of high level nuclear waste. * * * We 
     have put into place the most thoughtfully planned out roadmap 
     for what will be a 15-year site investigation and 
     construction program that we could devise.

  On the strength of such unambiguous public commitments, scores of 
electric utilities entered into contracts with the Department. As in 
all contracts, one party agreed to do certain things if the other party 
or parties agreed to do certain other things.
  In this case, the utilities agreed to collect special fees from 
electricity consumers and to remit those fees to the Department. The 
Department's reciprocal responsibility, in the words of the standard 
contract signed by all, was ``To accept title to all spent nuclear fuel 
and/or high level wastes, of domestic origin, generated by the civilian 
power reactors. * * *''
  The Department's lawyers may quibble, as lawyers do, about the 
precise nature of DOE's obligations and responsibilities. They
 are even free to argue that no inescapable legal obligation exists, 
but they cannot argue that no moral obligation or expectation exists 
about the Department's responsibilities. The bill I am introducing 
today makes unambiguously clear what we expect to be done and, most 
important, when we expect it to be done.

  My interest in this stems from our experience in western Michigan. 
The Palisades nuclearpower plant, owned and operated by Consumers 
Power, ran out of storage space in its pools. Because there is nowhere 
to send the spent fuel rods, Consumers has had to use so-called dry 
cask storage in 130-ton concrete and steel containers a stone's throw 
from Lake Michigan. The four other nuclear powerplants in Michigan and 
more than 100 in other States will ultimately have to follow suit if 
the Federal Government doesn't live up to its responsibilities.
  Both dry cask and pool storage are safe but there can be no question 
that centralized storage in one or several remote areas is better than 
leaving wastes at 70 sites sprinkled across the American continent. I 
am also concerned that the Federal Government's continued failure to 
honor this commitment undermines the Government's standing in the eyes 
of its own citizens.


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