[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 41 (Monday, March 6, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3489-S3493]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
NUCLEAR WASTE DEBATE AT LOS ALAMOS
Mr. BRYAN. Mr. President, I want to focus my colleagues' attention on
a subject that has consumed a good bit of my energy now for more than a
decade. It is the subject of a high-level nuclear waste repository and
an ill-conceived proposal by the nuclear power industry that Yucca
Mountain in Nevada is the ideal place to do that.
I want to further call to my colleagues' attention the front page
article in the New York Times yesterday which, in my judgment, says it
all. I have had it blown up here. ``Scientists Fear Atomic Explosion of
Buried Waste, Debate by Researchers, Argument Strikes New Blow Against
a Proposal for a Repository in Nevada.''
That does pretty well sum it up, because for the past 13 years, there
has been an unremitting, relentless effort to locate a high-level
nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain, assuring us in Nevada that it is
perfectly safe, nothing to worry about. This article reveals that,
since last summer, Department of Energy scientists at Los Alamos
National Laboratory, one of the most distinguished laboratories in
America, have been studying a premise advanced by one of their
colleagues that nuclear waste stored in a geologic repository in
volcanic tuff risks ``going critical.'' That is nuclear jargon--``going
critical.'' To those of us who are laymen, it means an explosion, a
detonation, in which radioactive material would be scattered for miles
and miles.
Needless to say, the consequences of a spontaneous nuclear explosion
90 miles from the city of Las Vegas would have a devastating impact. I
must say, Mr. President, I continue to be shocked and outraged that the
Department of Energy and the nuclear power industry continue to force
the acceptance of a dump on Nevada when it appears that their own
scientists cannot reach consensus on the most fundamental safety
questions related to nuclear waste.
As the New York Times article points out, ``even if scientists can
debunk the new argument that buried
[[Page S3490]] waste at Yucca Mountain might eventually explode, the
existence of so serious a dispute so late in the planning process might
cripple the plan or even kill it.''
Nevadans are no strangers to the uncertainties of science when it
comes to nuclear matters. I must say, the distinguished occupant of the
chair and the great State that he represents are no strangers to this
issue either. It has been 41 years since the first atmospheric
detonation occurred at the Nevada test site outside of Las Vegas.
Nevadans, Utahans, and Americans alike were assured there was
absolutely no risk, no safety hazard, nothing to be concerned about.
Let us in the scientific community reassure you that you have nothing
to be concerned about.
Mr. President, I have used this opportunity on the floor to share my
own reaction. I was initially in the eighth grade at that time. Our
science teachers had us go out and, using a scientific calculation
after seeing that flash that was embellished in the early morning dawn
and feeling the seismic impact, you could actually ascertain the
distance from ground zero to where that flash was being received. We
were pretty excited about it. I was 13 at the time. By the time we were
in high school, it had become such a part of the southern Nevada
culture that businesses, wishing to demonstrate their own patriotism,
were renaming business establishments atomic this and atomic that. Some
may recall there was a fashion in America, an atomic hair-do. We who
were students of Las Vegas High School were so enthralled by the
experience that the cover of our annual, the Wildcat Echo, had the
nuclear mushroom cloud on it. We thought we were part of something that
was very exciting and important to the country and that it contained no
risk for us.
The constituents of the distinguished occupant of the chair were told
this as well. We know, decades later, that the people who were
downwind--most of them, fortunately for us in Nevada, were not in
Nevada; unfortunately for our sister State to the east, they were in
Utah. They suffered the genetic effects, the cancer and the other
serious illnesses because we were all told, and as good Americans we
believed, there is absolutely no risk to health or safety.
Well, fast forward, Mr. President. We are now told that burying high-
level nuclear waste is absolutely safe. As I have indicated, there is a
relentless drumbeat of pressure and publicity, coordinated, if you
will, between the Department of Energy, which on this issue simply
serves as a surrogate of a nuclear power industry.
But why are the public officials in Nevada opposed to this, because
is it really safe? Is it just a matter of science and nothing to be
concerned about?
Mr. President, if I am appearing a bit cynical, it is because that
has, sadly, been my experience. My senior colleague and I, Senator
Reid, have lived in southern Nevada. This has been part of our
experience from the time of our youth until the time we entered public
life, and now as we have service together in the U.S. Senate.
Last Thursday, before this story broke, the Senate Energy Committee
held a hearing. May I say to the new chairman, the distinguished
chairman from Alaska, it was a very fair hearing. We in Nevada had a
chance to express our view, and the Secretary of Energy and the
civilian radioactive waste manager, Mr. Dreyfus, was there, and those
in the nuclear power industry were there. This was last Thursday.
Let me put this in context. In this debate in the scientific
community in which there are three teams comprised of 10 scientists--
that is 30 scientists--they have been unable to rebut the assertion
that there is genuine fear that an explosion can occur in a geologic
repository. This discussion has been going on for months and months and
months.
I knew nothing about this discussion. Like Senator Reid, I have
meetings at least monthly, probably more frequently, asking, ``What is
the latest?'' ``What is happening?'' ``What are you going to do?'' My
point is that as recently as this past Thursday, the nuclear power
industry and its advocates repeatedly assert that there is no
scientific or engineering basis holding back progress at Yucca
Mountain, that all of the opposition to Yucca Mountain is purely
political.
Bunk. These people that have formulated this premise, which has been
unable to be rebutted, are not people that have been hired by Senator
Reid, myself, the Governor of Nevada, or antinuclear activists. These
are people within the Department of Energy's own distinguished
laboratory at Los Alamos. Not a word of this was shared with us. We
learned it, as did millions of Americans, by becoming aware of the
story yesterday in the New York Times and in subsequent news accounts
that have followed.
For 13 years, blindly they have proceeded on the premise that it has
to be a deep geological burial and Yucca Mountain is the only place it
has to be. I must say that some public officials from my own State came
to the hearing last Thursday to say, look, maybe we ought to cop out,
sell out for a few bucks and see what we can get--the so-called
benefits argument.
That is to their disgrace, Mr. President. There can be no compromise
with the health and safety of the citizens of our State. And I must say
that the nuclear power industry, in its cynicism, continues to advocate
``just negotiate for benefits; just negotiate for benefits.''
Well, the newest proposal now is that we have to have an interim
storage facility; not a permanent, but an interim is what we need. And,
you guessed it, the interim storage proposal, well, that should go to
Nevada, too. And the premise for that is because Yucca Mountain is
going to be a permanent repository, let us just have them all next
door. That will require a statutory legislative change to the Nuclear
Waste Policy Act. And, I must say, in light of this concern here, I do
not know how any fair-minded Member of the U.S. Senate cannot take a
look and say, ``Maybe we ought to take a little time out and take a
pulse on this.''
Even before this revelation, the testimony before the committee on
Thursday was that there is about a 50-50 chance of the permanent
repository at Yucca Mountain ever being licensed. As I say, this most
recent revelation should put that into further context.
Senator Reid and I for some time, joined by our government and
district political officeholders, Democrat and Republican alike, in our
State, have called for an independent review, an independent review. We
have been joined by the GAO, the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board
and many, many others in the community.
Secretary O'Leary has simply refused our request. We waste billions
on the program--proponents of the dump and opponents of the dump agree
on that--more than $4 billion. And now, Mr. President, it is time to
insist upon this independent review.
I do not expect Secretary O'Leary will change her position, but it
will be my purpose to introduce an independent review process by
legislation later this week.
I thank my distinguished colleague, the senior Senator from Nevada.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the Sunday
New York Times article be printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
[From the New York Times, Mar. 5, 1995]
Scientists Fear Atomic Explosion of Buried Waste; Debate by Researchers
(By William J. Broad)
Debate has broken out among Federal scientists over whether
the planned underground dump for the nation's high-level
atomic wastes in Nevada might erupt in a nuclear explosion,
scattering radioactivity to the winds or into ground water or
both.
The debate, set off by scientists at the Los Alamos
National Laboratory in New Mexico, is the latest blow to the
planned repository deep below Yucca Mountain in the desert
about 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas. Opponents of nuclear
power and Nevada officials have long assailed the project as
ill-conceived and ill-managed, and it has encountered
numerous delays.
Even if scientists can debunk the new argument that buried
waste at Yucca Mountain might eventually explode, the
existence of so serious a dispute so late in the planning
process might cripple the plan or even kill it. Planning for
the repository began eight years ago and studies of its
feasibility have so far cost more than $1.7 billion. The
Federal Government wants to open the repository in 2010 as a
permanent solution to the problem of disposing of wastes from
nuclear power plants and from the production of nuclear
warheads.
[[Page S3491]] The possibility that buried wastes might
detonate in a nuclear explosion was raised privately last
year by Dr. Charles D. Bowman and Dr. Francesco Venneri, both
physicists at Los Alamos, the birthplace of the atomic bomb.
In response, lab managers formed three teams with a total of
30 scientsts to investigate the idea and, if possible,
disprove it.
While uncovering many problems with the thesis, the teams
were unable to lay it to rest, laboratory officials say. So
the lab is now making the dispute public in scientific papers
and is considering having it aired at large scientific
meetings as well.
``If we knew how to put the stake through it's heart, we'd
do it,'' Dr. John C. Browne, head of energy research at the
lab, said in an interview. Going further, some panel members
said they felt that the new thesis had been refuted.
Dr. Bowman, the idea's chief advocate, said the internal
debate had changed some elements of the thesis but over all
had left it honed and strenghened.
``We think there's a generic problem with putting fissile
materials underground,'' he said in an interview, referring
to substances that fission, or split part, in a nuclear chain
reaction.
The few scientists outside the laboratory who have become
aware of the debate say the explosion thesis is provocative
and probably wrong. Nonetheless, they say, the stakes are too
high to sweep the idea under the rug.
``It is important to see whether it has anything to do with
the situation that might arise in an actual repository,''
said Dr. Richard L. Garwin, a prominent physicist at the
International Business Machines Corporation who has long
advised the Federal Government on nuclear arms and their
dismantlement.
Highly radioactive wastes are the main orphan of the
nuclear era, having found no permanent home over the decades.
In theory, if the Yucca plan wins approval after a careful
study of the area's geology, a labyrinth of bunkers carved
beneath the mountain would hold thousands of steel canisters
for 10,000 years, until radioactive decay rendered the wastes
less hazardous.
The spent fuel from nuclear reactors is permeated with
plutonium, which is a main ingredient used in making nuclear
bombs.
Since plutonium 239 has a half-life of 24,360 years,
significant amounts of it would remain active for more than
50,000 years, long after the steel canisters that once held
the radioactive material had dissolved. (A radioactive
substance's half-life is the period required for the
disintegration of half of its atoms.)
With the end of the cold war, the Nevada site has
increasingly been studied for a possible added role as a
repository for the plutonium from scrapped nuclear arms. In
January 1994, the National Academy of Sciences, which advises
the Federal Government, suggested that the plutonium be mixed
with highly radioactive wastes and buried, or burned in
reactors and then buried. In either case, some plutonium
would end up going underground.
On Wednesday, President Clinton, trying to win a permanent
global ban on the spread of nuclear arms, ordered substantial
cuts in American stockpiles of weapons plutonium but did not
say what would become of the deadly substance. Officials said
it would remain in temporary storage above ground until a
decision was made on its ultimate disposition.
The scientist leading the charge against the burial of
fissile materials, Dr. Bowman, has an alternative plan in
which particle accelerators would, by a kind of nuclear
alchemy, transmute radioactive wastes, as well as plutonium,
into more benign elements before they were buried. Dr. Bowman
is the head of the planning effort for the proposed project.
Although that gives him a personal stake in the explosion
argument, experts say that such situations are common in
science and that ideas must be judged on their merits.
Last summer and fall, Dr. Bowman began talking of the
dangers of underground storage and was urged to set them down
in an internal Los Alamos report, which he did by November.
The crux of his argument was that serious dangers would arise
thousands of years from now after the steel canisters
dissolved and plutonium slowly began to disperse into
surrounding rock.
The rocky material, he said, could aid the start of a chain
reaction by slowing down speeding subatomic particles known
as neutrons that fly out of plutonium atoms undergoing
spontaneous decay. Neutrons of a certain speed can act like
bullets to split atoms in two in a burst of nuclear energy.
Under some circumstances, Dr. Bowman theorized, the slowing
of the neutrons could make an individual pile of plutonium
explode in a nuclear blast equal in force to about a thousand
tons of high explosive, setting off other blasts throughout
the vast repository.
The team assembled to review the thesis concluded that it
held serious flaws, said Dr. Browne of Los Alamos. First,
dispersal of plutonium, if it happened at all, would take
much longer than envisioned--so long that the plutonium would
have mostly decayed.
Second, the review team felt that if a plutonium pile did
begin to heat up, the reaction would automatically slow down
and stop as the heat made the pile expand.
Third, the team felt that any reaction would be too slow to
cause an explosion and that, at worst, a pile would simply
heat up like a reactor.
``The burden of proof rests on Charlie,'' said Dr. Browne,
referring to Dr. Bowman. ``He's hypothesized some scenarios
that, if correct, are clearly very important. In spite of the
fact that there is a sizable amount of opposition to
Charlie's paper, our feeling is that the subject is so
important that it deserves additional peer review outside the
laboratory, since we could not resolve the disagreement
internally.''
Dr. Bowman says the explosion thesis is alive and well. On
Friday he finished an 11-page draft paper thick with graphs
and equations that lays it out in new detail.
The team criticisms, he said in an interview, repeatedly
fall flat. For instance, dispersal could happen relatively
quickly, especially if water percolated through the dump.
Even if slow, plutonium 239 decays into uranium 235, which
harbors the same explosive risks but requires millions of
years to decay into less dangerous elements.
So too with the other criticisms, he says. Water could aid
the slowing of neutrons and make sure the reaction went
forward rather than automatically slowing down. And a pile
could explode, he insists, while conceding that the blast
from a single one might have a force of a few hundred tons of
high explosive rather than the thousand or more originally
envisioned.
On the other hand, his new paper says plutonium in amounts
as small as one kilogram, or 2.2 pounds, could be dangerous.
``We got some helpful criticism and that, combined with
additional work, has made our thesis even stronger,'' he
said.
The most basic solution, Dr. Bowman said, would be removing
all fissionable material from nuclear waste in a process
known as reprocessing or by transmuting it in his proposed
accelerator. Other possible steps would include making steel
canisters smaller and spreading them out over larger areas in
underground galleries--expensive steps in a project already
expected to cost $15 billion or more.
A different precaution, Dr. Bowman said, would be to
abandon the Yucca site, where the volcanic ground is
relatively soluble. Instead, the deep repository might be dug
in granite, where migration of materials would be slower and
more difficult.
Cathy Roche, vice president for communications of the
Nuclear Energy Institute, a nuclear industry trade group
based in Washington, said the debate suggested the need for
more study of the Yucca site, not less.
``We're concerned that this not be used as an excuse by the
opponents of waste solutions to stop the scientific analysis
of the mountain,'' she said.
Dr. Daniel A. Dreyfus, the head of civilian radioactive
waste management at the Energy Department in Washington,
which runs Los Alamos and the Yucca Mountain studies, said he
was keeping an open mind on whether Dr. Bowman's thesis might
trigger an overhaul of the project.
``The characterization work has any number of
uncertainties,'' he said in an interview. ``Criticality is
clearly a major consideration when you put a whole bunch of
high-level waste anywhere. Whether Yucca Mountain is the
right site, I don't know.
``Maybe there's no good solution,'' he added. ``But walking
away from the problem is no solution either. We better keep
trying, because we already made the decision to have the
wastes in the first place.''
Mr. BRYAN. Mr. President, I yield back any time I may have remaining.
(Mr. GORTON assumed the chair.)
Mr. REID. Mr. President, I extend my appreciation publicly, as I have
done privately on a number of occasions, for the leadership of Richard
Bryan on this issue. And I say Richard Bryan, because his leadership on
this issue started long before he became a Member of the U.S. Senate.
During his tenure as Governor of the State of Nevada, he was a leader
in recognizing the fallacy of attempting to geologically bury nuclear
waste next to the No. 1 destination resort of the world--Las Vegas.
Mr. President, I, like my friend, the junior Senator from Nevada, as
a little boy used to watch the flashes in the morning sky. I lived
about 60 miles from Las Vegas, 60 miles farther away from the explosion
than did Senator Bryan. We would get up--it would be dark--a bunch of
little kids, and we would see that flash in the sky. Sometimes in
Searchlight, where I was born and raised, we would hear the explosion,
because by the time it got to Searchlight, a lot of times the sound
would bounce clear over Searchlight.
But, as I told many people, we were the lucky ones, because the winds
did not blow toward Searchlight. The winds blew toward St. George, they
blew toward Enterprise in Utah, and those young men and women who
watched the night sky explode got diseases and some died. I have talked
to parents, I have talked to children, sons and daughters. And, of
course, there are the stories that have been written about sheep,
people herding sheep. Herders would get up in the morning and the wool
would just come off their
[[Page S3492]] animals, even though they were still alive.
So, Mr. President, this is a serious matter, and I know everyone
recognizes it is a serious matter.
But for those of us who have lived with this since 1982, to see this
headline in the New York Times yesterday says it all. ``Scientists Fear
Atomic Explosion of Buried Waste''; just like on Senator Bryan's chart,
his visual aid, on the front page of the New York Times.
And what troubles me so much is this has been going on for months and
months. It is easy for the people in charge of the program, when
somebody says, ``Oh, don't worry about it.'' They come and testify.
They write papers. But when there is evidence by a scientific community
that says an explosion could occur, we do not hear about it.
How many congressional hearings have we had since this took place?
Several. How many public gatherings have we had where Department of
Energy officials have come forward? Numerous.
The Secretary of Energy, I say to my friend from Nevada, has recently
said that this is a priority with her to get nuclear waste in Nevada. I
wonder if there would be a sting of conscience that would say, ``I
wonder if we should be worried about this atomic explosion.''
And, Mr. President, it is not as if it has not happened before. In
the former Soviet Union, they had an explosion from nuclear waste.
The article is frightening, to say the least. ``Debate has broken
out''--I am reading directly from this article-- ``among Federal
scientists whether the planned underground dump for the Nation's high-
level atomic wastes in Nevada might erupt in a nuclear explosion,
scattering radioactivity to the winds or ground water or both.''
This is not sensationalism that the Senators from Nevada has created.
This is a newspaper article and it comes from the scientific community.
We have been called everything--``unpatriotic'' was one of the better
terms we have been called--because we have stood in the road to try to
stop this thing from happening.
``The debate, set off by scientists at the Los Alamos National
Laboratory in New Mexico''-- one of the finest scientific institutions
in the world--``is the latest blow to the planned repository.''
I wish I believed that.
It says, ``Even if scientists can debunk the new argument that buried
waste at Yucca Mountain might eventually explode, the existence of so
serious a dispute so late in the planning process might cripple the
plan or even kill it.''
I hope so, because, as I say, Mr. President, rather than do as they
do with all the so-called good news that comes in relation to the
repository, they hid this. This has been hidden. And they did it by
saying, ``We do not believe it is possible.'' And here we are going to
have 30 scientists prove this wrong. They have tried to prove that it
is wrong for almost 10 months. They cannot. They admit this. The
scientists, the three teams, were not told to go prove how it could
happen, I say to my friend from Nevada, they were asked to prove how it
could not happen, and they could not do it.
The possibility that buried wastes might detonate in a
nuclear explosion was raised privately last year by Dr.
Charles D. Bowman and Dr. Francesco Venneri, both physicists
at Los Alamos * * * the teams were unable to lay it to rest *
* *.
Dr. Bowman, among other things, said, ``We think there's a generic
problem with putting fissile materials underground.'' That is an
understatement, reading the rest of this stuff.
Highly radioactive wastes are the main orphan of the
nuclear era, having found no permanent home over the decades.
The spent fuel from nuclear reactors is permeated with
plutonium, which is a main ingredient used in making nuclear
bombs.
``Since plutonium 239,'' listen to this, ``has a half-life of 24,360
years, significant amounts of it would remain active,'' to say the
least.
Should we not stop and just relax a little bit and not be driven by
the nuclear power industry? Sure, they have invested a lot of money in
nuclear waste disposal in Nevada. That is the only place they have cast
their lot.
Should we not stop and let common sense dictate proper policy? We are
not talking here about storing wheat. We are not talking about storing
tires that may burn for a little while. We are talking about storing
nuclear waste that will explode like an atomic bomb that occurred at
Nagasaki and Hiroshima. And hundreds of times they have been exploded
in the deserts of Nevada.
I have heard many times people say, ``Well, what is the
alternative?'' There are a lot of alternatives. The No. 1 alternative
has been created, again, by scientists. During this period of 13 years
they have been trying to figure out a way we can transport nuclear
waste, and scientists came up with an idea that might work pretty well.
That is a dry cast storage container.
But why transport it? If it is safe to haul in a truck, why do we not
leave it where it is, and then it is really safe. Now, this is not
something that Harry Reid, who has a very inadequate scientific
background, came up with. Scientists came up with this. And they have
said leave it where it is.
It is really time to step back, think, and study this issue. It is
time to do some scientific investigation, to look at other
technologies, to look at other sites. It is time to drop the efforts to
amend the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, to drop efforts to speed the
process up. It is premature to change our strategy, to accelerate our
strategy, to think about moving nuclear waste anywhere else.
In this newspaper article one of the scientists said, I think you
better give up on Nevada and start looking someplace else. Mr.
President, I do not want to create this problem for somebody else. We
have to know what we are going to do before we start talking about
burying geological waste. One scientist here said we better look to
granite formation because the water will not come through and water
could help accelerate the process that could lead to an explosion.
There are some who say that there is another crisis that exists. Our
cooling ponds are filled. I say, leave them filled. Move the spent fuel
rods out and put them into dry cast storage containers at the reactor
sites. We have time. It is perfectly safe to store the waste where it
is.
Why the rush? The rush is because the nuclear waste power industry is
fixated on this. It is like an obsession. They do not want to be proven
that they may have been wrong and spent billions of dollars of the
ratepayers money wrongly. That is what it amounts to.
Mr. President, I am happy this came out, even if it was through the
newspaper. I think it would have been more appropriate had people from
the Department of Energy at the hearing that was held the other day
testified that we have another problem that has come up: Scientists
fear atomic explosion of buried waste.
I do not know how the newspaper got this information. There is
nothing in the article to indicate how or where they got it. I do not
know if they got it from the Department of Energy. However they got it,
this is not an appropriate way to do business when we are dealing with
the most poisonous substance known to man, namely, plutonium.
It gives me pause about the Department of Energy. I have called
publicly for doing away with the Department of Energy. This certainly
does not distract from my initial goal. I think it adds to it. I think
the functions of the Department of Energy should be spread out among
other agencies, some to the Department of Defense, some to Interior,
some to the EPA.
I am very disappointed in my Government, especially the Department of
Energy. I yield the floor.
Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The Senator from Texas.
Mrs. HUTCHISON. I thank the Chair.
(The remarks of Mrs. Hutchison pertaining to the introduction of S.
498 are located in today's Record under
[[Page S3493]] ``Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint
Resolutions.'')
____________________