[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 61 (Monday, May 6, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4698-S4703]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




           LOW-LEVEL RADIOACTIVE WASTE STORAGE IN CALIFORNIA

  Mr. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I wish you a good morning. I ask you to 
imagine the following situation: You are stricken with bone cancer. 
Unfortunately, your doctor informs you that radiation therapy is no 
longer an option because it creates low-level radioactive waste and 
they simply cannot store any more.
  Or another one: A loved one tests HIV positive. Sadly, we learn that 
breakthrough research using radioactive materials to find a cure for 
AIDS is being suspended. Why? Because we cannot store any more waste.
  Finally, imagine this: You are the parent of a student at the 
University of California. You're informed that a fire occurred in a 
radioactive storage waste building on campus and exposed your son or 
daughter to radiation released by the fire.
  These are not farfetched situations, Mr. President. In fact, 
radioactive waste is piling up on college campuses, hospitals, and 
businesses at some 800 sites in California alone.
  This chart tries to depict the distribution of low-level radioactive 
waste that is stored today in California. The current situation shows 
that it is virtually all over--in the bay area, the Sacramento area, 
southern California, Los Angeles, San Diego, and so forth. There are 
2,254 material licensees who store waste at some 800 sites in populated 
areas, endangered by the threat of fires, earthquakes, and floods. It 
is an extraordinary expense and duplication of effort.
  Over 2,000 colleges, hospitals, and businesses in California alone 
are licensed to use radioactive materials. I have a list of them. There 
are radioactive materials or waste in San Francisco, as a matter of 
fact, at the Golden Gate Park in San Francisco; in Chinatown, at 845 
Jackson Street, to be specific; the University of San Francisco at 2130 
Fulton Street; in Santa Monica at 2200 Santa Monica Boulevard; in 
Beverly Hills at 9400 Brighton Way.
  These are just a few of the research centers, the hospitals, the 
biotechnical firms, and the cancer treatment centers that use 
radioactive materials. These materials are needed and used to improve 
and prolong our lives.
  But we endanger our opportunity to enjoy these benefits when we do 
not allow the State of California to carry out the radioactive trash 
for proper disposal. That is exactly what is happening today because 
our Interior Secretary, Bruce Babbitt, will not allow the State of 
California to dispose of its low-level waste at Ward Valley, which is 
the site California has licensed for this waste.
  Mr. President, let me show you the second chart. This is California 
without those 800-plus sites, with 1 site designated as a repository 
for low-level waste, 1 site in a remote area away from the populated 
areas, away from the area of southern California, away from the bay 
area. This was a site selected after a 7-year process of scientific 
study and public input. It is a site secure from fires, earthquakes, 
and floods. It is carefully monitored and regulated, meeting all 
Federal and State health and safety protection standards.
  Is it not better, Mr. President, to just have 1 site for low-level 
radioactivity instead of over 800 sites? Certainly it is. Soon we could 
reach a point where advanced medical treatment for cancers and other 
medical research will be curtailed or even halted due to a failure to 
deal with the waste problem.
  Is this a sane situation? Certainly not. Unfortunately, many of the 
temporary sites used for storage of radioactive waste across California 
are vulnerable to exposure such as fires, earthquakes, or floods, which 
could cause an accidental release of radioactivity in urban or suburban 
neighborhoods. Doctors are worried that the storage problem will 
impact, if you will, future cancer treatment. Researchers are worried 
that it will impact medical research. Educators are wondering how they 
will explain to the parents of students that their children live on 
campus that stores low-level radioactive waste.
  Clearly, Mr. President, California has an environmental problem. But 
to California's credit, California has acted in good faith to address 
this problem.
  Mr. President, as chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources 
Committee, which has the oversight for this matter of both low-level 
and high-level radioactive waste, I commend the Governor and the State 
of California for the manner in which they have attempted to live under 
the Federal law which has given the States the authority to address 
low-level waste.
  Acting in accordance with the Low Level Radioactive Waste Policy Act 
and all applicable environmental laws and regulations, California has 
found a solution. California wants this radioactive waste, used, again, 
by more than 2,200 licensees in California, they want it to be removed 
from those 800 suburban and urban locations to a safe, licensed 
monitoring location at Ward Valley in the Mojave Desert, which I have 
shown on the chart here.
  Let us go back and look at a little of the history. After an 8-year 
effort under the NRC guidelines, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission 
guidelines, and the expenditure of over $45 million, the California 
Department of Health Services issued a license for a low-level waste 
site at Ward Valley. The California Department of Health had the 
authority to issue the license. The Federal Government gave them the 
authority. They issued it.
  But even with that license in hand, the operator of the site has been 
unable to begin construction and operation because radical antinuclear 
activists have launched a crusade to stop Ward Valley. Those activists 
have used every conceivable method. They have sued. They have 
demonstrated. They have occupied the site. They have made outrageous 
and scientifically indefensible claims.

  But these groups are wrong. They have been proven wrong. All of their 
radical lawsuits challenging the licenses have been heard, and they 
have been dismissed. Their legal challenges have been exhausted.
  Two environmental impact statements have shown their radical claims 
about Ward Valley's environmental impacts to be absolutely inaccurate, 
just plain wrong. The two biological opinions from the Endangered 
Species Act have shown their radical claims about Ward Valley's impact 
on the desert tortoise are simply wrong. They have reached out under 
every conceivable avenue in an attempt to find an excuse to stop going 
ahead with Ward Valley.
  In a special scientific report which was prepared for Secretary of 
the Interior Babbitt, the National Academy of Sciences concluded, on 
the issue of ground water contamination which was certainly a 
legitimate consideration, that there is a highly unlikely prospect of 
any potential threat of ground water contamination in this area with so 
little rainfall out in the Mojave Desert.
  They further stated that there is no health threat posed to Colorado 
River drinking water as some of the radical opponents continue to 
erroneously claim. They claim that somehow this is going to seep down 
into the ground water and get into the Colorado River. They will reach 
out and conclude almost anything, Mr. President.
  As the chairman of the National Academy's committee recently wrote:


[[Page S4699]]


       . . . none of the data reviewed by the Committee support 
     further delay or opposition to construction of this facility, 
     provided the oversight and monitoring recommendations of the 
     Committee are in place.

  On the merits, the radical antinuclear activists have been slam-
dunked. But merits are not enough in this process, Mr. President, as we 
both know. As the Senator from Wyoming and myself, the Senator from 
Alaska, have seen time and time again, you can win on the merits and 
you can lose on the emotional arguments.
  But on this issue, the activists have lost every battle. They have 
been proven wrong again and again and again.
  But the BLM land for the Ward Valley site has not been transferred to 
the State of California. This is BLM, Bureau of Land Management, land 
in California. It has not been transferred. Why? The waste still sits 
in the neighborhoods, still sits in the schools, still sits in the 
hospitals.
  Why has it not been done? It has not been done because the 
antinuclear activists have convinced the Interior Department to stand 
in the way of the transfer. At each opportunity they present a new 
twist, a new obstacle. The latest twist involves the discovery of 
elevated levels of tritium gas at an old low-level waste site in 
Beatty, NV. Opponents of Ward Valley claim that this somehow proves 
that the same thing will happen at Ward Valley. The Interior Department 
is now using this as an excuse for further delay at Ward Valley.
  It is interesting to note what Secretary Babbitt's own Director of 
the U.S. Geological Survey, in a memorandum dated February 14, had to 
say about the supposed links between the Beatty site and Ward Valley:

       . . . the observed tritium distribution at Beatty is 
     probably the result of the burial of liquid wastes and the 
     fact that some disposal trenches at Beatty were left open for 
     years until filled, allowing accumulation and infiltration of 
     precipitation. . . . The [Ward Valley] license does not 
     permit disposal of radioactive waste in liquid form and 
     requires that only the minimum amount of open trench 
     necessary for the safe and efficient operation shall be 
     excavated at any one time. Because of the differences in 
     waste burial practices at the Beatty site compared to those 
     intended for the Ward Valley site . . . extrapolations of the 
     results from Beatty to Ward Valley are too trenuous to have 
     much scientific value.

  The day after receiving this memo, the Deputy Secretary of the 
Interior called for further tests, further delays, even though the 
scientific advice he received was to the contrary.
  Now, what you have here is a rather interesting situation. You have 
the State of California, who has gone through a process of expending 
over $40 million on the evaluation, the application, and the licensing. 
Who has a greater responsibility to the health and welfare of the 
people of California than the Governor and the California Department of 
Health that have approved this site? They are certainly competent in 
determining whether or not the recommendations by the scientific 
community are carried out, all Federal and State laws are mandated in 
compliance with regulations. The Secretary somehow seems to dismiss 
this.
  Why would the Interior Department want to take this attitude? Some 
suggest they made a political calculation that Ward Valley can yet be 
another environment issue that can be shaped to make perhaps Congress 
look bad with respect to protecting the environment.
  I am here to say that their political calculation is wrong, Mr. 
President. On the issue of Ward Valley, the radical and antinuclear 
activists and their friends in the administration have simply gone too 
far. I think they have crossed the line, because they are jeopardizing 
the environment, because they are jeopardizing human health and safety, 
because they evidently would rather keep radioactive waste near the 
schools and the neighborhoods than at a licensed site in the remote 
desert, a remote area where people are far away, where children do not 
play and people do not work.
  Put simply, they have gone too far because their radicalism has 
reached the point where it will start harming the safety of the people. 
They think they can get away with that, because they believe Ward 
Valley can be spun as an issue where the so-called environmentalists 
are keeping Congress from thrashing the environment. Sooner or later, 
even in this town, even with the media perception being what it is with 
respect to radioactivity, I have to believe that the plain and simple 
truth will eventually defeat this misinformation.
  The plain and simple truth is this, Mr. President: We have an 
obligation to protect the environment. We want to protect the 
environment. If you want to maintain important medical research, 
advance treatment, and so forth, if you want to get stored 
radioactivity waste out of schools, hospitals, and neighborhoods to a 
site that the National Academy of Sciences and the State of California 
says is best, opening Ward Valley is the right thing to do.
  Just do not take my word for it, Mr. President. Take the word of the 
National Association of Cancer Patients; the Association of American 
Medical Colleges; the American College of Nuclear Physicians; the 
California Medical Association; the American Medical Association; the 
Southwestern Low-Level Radioactivity Waste Commission, representing 
California, Arizona, North Dakota, and South Dakota; the Southeast 
Compact Commission, representing Alabama, Florida, Georgia, 
Mississippi, North Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia; the Midwest 
Interstate Low-Level radioactivity Waste Commission, representing 
Indiana, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Iowa, Wisconsin; the Northwest 
Interstate Low-Level Radioactivity Commission, representing Alaska, 
Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming; the 
State of California Department of Health; University of California at 
Los Angeles, UCLA; University of Southern California; Stanford 
University--and more, Mr. President, too numerous to name, who all 
support Ward Valley.
  Mr. President, this should not be a partisan issue. We have not 
sought to make it a partisan issue. Senate bill 1596, a bill to 
transfer the land to the Ward Valley site, was introduced by both a 
Democrat and Republican. It was voted out of committee by bipartisan 
voice vote.
  Let me warn those who attempt to make this a partisan issue. If you 
oppose the bill for partisan political purposes, you are on the wrong 
side of science. You will be on the wrong side of the environment. You 
will be on the wrong side of human health and safety. You will endanger 
the viability of the Low-Level Radioactivity Waste Policy Act. The 
result of that might mean that the next low-level waste will be in your 
State. I invite any and all my colleagues to join me in cosponsoring 
Senate bill 1596.
  Mr. President, the point I want to make here--and I think it is very 
important--this is an issue that is in the interest not just of the 
State of California but of the entire Nation. It is going to set the 
threshold for just what we do with low-level waste, whether we 
continue, like the ostrich, to bury our head in the sand and simply 
ignore it.
  We have seen, in this chart, in the State of California we have over 
800 sites. If those critics propose no other alternative, or whether we 
have one site that is approved by the State, supported by the Governor, 
addressed by the National Academy of Science, then we can proceed with 
this. That will set, if you will, policy in other States where we have 
the same set of circumstances, perhaps not as acute in California. I 
suggest New York and other areas where we have a concentration of 
population and advanced medical and technical experiments going on. It 
is not a partisan issue.
  It is an environmental issue. It is a responsible environmental 
issue. And this administration and this Secretary of the Interior by 
not coming up with an alternative that is better than that proposed by 
the State of California after the Federal Government has given the 
States the authority to proceed with disposing the low-level waste is 
acting irresponsibly.
  What has happened here? I do not criticize President Clinton. But I 
criticize the bad advice that he has been given by Secretary Babbitt 
because the White House, in following the advice of the Secretary of 
the Interior, has made this a partisan political issue, and they should 
not have done so. The issue is science. Science is on our side. The 
public health and the safety arguments are on our side.
  Ward Valley is the legitimate site. If we are going to give the 
States the responsibility, as we have done, and then

[[Page S4700]]

turn around and not let them exercise that responsibility, then the 
enemy, as is often the case, is us.
  We have an opportunity to do something about it, Mr. President. 
Senate bill 1596 is just that. It would legislate because the Secretary 
of the Interior refuses to proceed the land exchange mandating that the 
Federal Government make this site available to the State of California.
  Mr. President, I could not be more outspoken in my frustration, and 
joining with the State of California in a matter in which this issue--
which affects the health and the welfare, and sets the precedent for 
the manner in which we are going to address the eventual disposition of 
low-level nuclear waste--is to be addressed.
  How can we, Mr. President, think we will resolve the issue of 
managing the high-level radioactive waste that has been generated 
around this country by our national defense facilities as well as our 
nuclear powerplants if we cannot even agree on what to do with low-
level waste? That is the situation we are facing today.
  We have a proposal before this body to designate the Nevada test site 
as the site for a temporary high-level nuclear waste storage facility. 
What is this all about, Mr. President?
  What we have done over the last 15 years or so is expend over $5 
billion to investigate the suitability of Yucca Mountain, NV, as a site 
for a permanent geologic repository for high-level nuclear waste. Yucca 
Mountain is adjacent to the Nevada test site, which, for the last 50 
years or so, has been used for a series of above and below ground tests 
of atomic bombs. The Nevada test site is an area of Nevada that is 
still off limits to the public because of the activities that have 
taken place there. I have been there. I have been in the tunnel that is 
being dug into Yucca Mountain to evaluate the permanent repository 
site. Currently the test tunnel is nearly 3 miles long. However, the 
prospect of the geologic repository being the answer to our immediate 
high-level waste storage problem is fraught with the same bureaucratic 
inefficiencies associated with the Ward Valley low-level waste facility 
that I just discussed.
  The crux of the current situation is that we have waste stored 
throughout the Nation adjacent to our nuclear powerplants. About 20 
percent of our country's power generation comes from nuclear 
powerplants. This waste is stored at the plant sites. On-site storage 
is licensed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. But the fact is that 
the Federal Government made a contractual commitment to take that waste 
away from the reactor sites by the year 1998. Under those contracts, 
the Federal Government has collected about $11 billion from America's 
ratepayers to pay for a government facility to store the nuclear fuel. 
Under the existing program, we are not going to be able to meet the 
Government's commitment to take waste in 1998 or anytime in the near 
future. Already, there are lawsuits that have been filed against the 
Federal Government for nonperformance.
  So here we sit, with a program that is continuing to pursue a 
permanent geologic repository with no other alternatives in sight. We 
will spend perhaps another $4 to $5 billion before the Department of 
Energy will make a decision as to whether or not it should apply for a 
license for Yucca Mountain for use as a permanent repository. Then we 
have to actually get it licensed. Although the odds on the site being 
found suitable by the Department of Energy have been set at 80 percent, 
the odds on actually getting a license from the Nuclear Regulatory 
Commission have been set at 50-50. This gives you some idea of the 
gamble we are taking with the ratepayer's money.

  So what many of us have proposed is that the Nevada test site be used 
for an interim storage site for spent nuclear fuel until there is a 
determination of whether or not Yucca Mountain can be licensed for 
permanent storage.
  There are some interesting things going on in the area of nuclear 
waste disposal. Japan, France, and England operate under an entirely 
different theory. Legitimate concerns over nuclear weapons 
proliferation arise because nuclear reactors generate small amounts of 
plutonium mixed into their spent nuclear fuel. It is a policy in the 
United States that we take this high-level waste and bury it. In France 
and Japan the practice is to recover it, and through a MOx fuel 
process, put it back into the nuclear reactors, burn it, and thereby 
reduce the proliferation risk. Each country's ultimate disposition of 
its high-level waste is an interesting comparison, to say the least. 
The French and the Japanese, of course, have the theory of burning 
plutonium by injecting it into the reactor with depleted uranium. This 
disposes of the proliferation threat because the high-level waste that 
result does not contain plutonium. You have a residue that is a glass-
like substance. The point is that this kind of material cannot be 
reprocessed and an explosive device made out of it.
  So while it is a rather complex concept, Mr. President, the theory is 
that you can either choose to bury your high-level waste permanently in 
the belief that you can build a site that can be proven to withstand 
earthquakes, that will withstand flooding, if it ever should occur, or 
some other natural event that might interfere with the storage site, or 
whether you use an advanced technical process and burn the plutonium 
and, therefore, eliminate the threat of proliferation.
  Although other countries have chosen this different approach, I would 
like to point out that, in S. 1271, we are proposing that a temporary 
storage site be built in Nevada, and that the plan to build a permanent 
repository facility continue. Why Nevada, Mr. President? As I have 
said, the site would be in that portion of Nevada that has been used 
for tests of atomic bombs over the last 50 years. It is a site that 
obviously carries a great deal of experience with radioactive materials 
and seems to meet--at least as far as we can tell after 5 billion 
dollars' worth of research--the test as a viable site for a permanent 
repository. Having one interim storage facility would remove this 
material from the areas where it is currently stored near the nuclear 
power stations in some 41 States. We have over 80 storage areas in 
those 41 States. Illinois, for example, has several in their State. 
Centralizing all of that spent fuel in one location is really what we 
are talking about in designating the Nevada test site as a temporary 
storage site.
  My good friends from Nevada are opposed to this. Why are they opposed 
to this? Well, unfortunately, we only have 50 States, Mr. President. 
You have to put nuclear waste somewhere. Where is the best place to put 
it? Well, in my mind, it seems to me that Nevada is the best place 
because the Nevada test site, used for nuclear materials testing for so 
long, is remote and is because of its use in the past, must be secured 
by the Government for the foreseeable future.
  So why not use this site as a temporary repository until we can 
determine where our permanent repository will be? If the permanent 
repository site at Yucca Mountain is found to be suitable and the 
Department of Energy decides to go forward to try to get a license, we 
will need an interim storage facility at that site. Even after a 
suitability decision is made, we are going to have to spend another 
$4.5 or $5 billion to determine whether that site meets our licensing 
requirements for a permanent repository. That decision will be years 
down the line.
  There is another activity going on here that I want to point out to 
my colleagues. Some groups see this as a way to terminate, if you will, 
the operations of many of our nuclear power generating reactors around 
the country because the spent fuel storage at those sites is almost 
filled to capacity. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission licenses them to 
a specific capacity, and when they are filled, why, obviously, they 
cannot add more spent fuel without violating their license. Building 
additional on-site storage requires State approval. Because the Federal 
Government is not able to fulfill its promise to take the fuel away, 
getting that approval usually becomes a very contentious process.
  Of course, the utilities' plans to store spent nuclear fuel on-site 
were dependent on the Federal Government meeting its commitment to take 
that high-level nuclear waste from the power generators at those sites 
by the year 1998. However, we do not have the ability to meet that 
commitment; we do not have a permanent site licensed or

[[Page S4701]]

built. So temporary storage is an interim alternative that makes a lot 
of sense.
  My colleagues from Nevada have suggested that interim storage is an 
impractical alternative because you are moving spent nuclear fuel from 
areas around the country where it is currently stored to one site in 
the State of Nevada. They have suggested that if it is decided that the 
permanent storage site will be somewhere else, you will have to move it 
again.
  That is a bit presumptuous, because the site at Yucca Mountain is the 
best site that we have been able to come up with so far in all the 50 
States. There is every reason to believe that ultimately Yucca Mountain 
will be determined the permanent site. In any case, we must move the 
spent nuclear fuel out of the other 80 sites where it is stored now and 
put it in one concentrated area until such time as a final decision is 
made about a permanent site. The Nevada test site is the best site. It 
will go across the country in casks that are engineered in such a way 
as to withstand any imaginable accident, including railroad 
derailments. These are very highly engineered containers. A great deal 
of expertise has gone into their design. So the exposure to the public 
from the standpoint of transportation is virtually nil. The risk can be 
almost eliminated. We can, therefore, safely take this waste that is in 
the 41 affected States, move it to Nevada, and temporarily store it 
until we have a permanent repository. That is what the legislation is 
all about.
  As time goes on, I will urge the leadership to take up the 
legislation designating the Nevada test site as the site for a 
temporary storage facility, and I will proceed with extensive floor 
statements describing the sites around the United States where we have 
nuclear powerplants, the concentration of nuclear waste that is stored, 
and the merits of why the Nevada test site is the most logical and 
practical site and why we should do it now.
  As I indicated earlier with my discussion of the Ward Valley low-
level waste situation, this is yet another serious environmental issue 
where we are being urged by some to put our head in the sand rather 
than address a critical problem. This waste already exists. Further, we 
need the 20-percent electricity that is generated by the nuclear power 
industry. If we are to shut down those reactors, what are we going to 
replace it with? Are we going to replace it with coal or oil? That 
energy must come from some other source.
  We need the nuclear power generating industry and its contribution to 
the electric supply of the United States. We cannot do without it. But 
whether or not we continue to have nuclear power, the question is how 
we can responsibly relieve the existing spent nuclear fuel that has 
accumulated over an extended period of time. How can we meet the 
Federal Government's obligation? The Federal Government has been paid 
$11 billion by ratepayers to take this waste by 1998, and we will not 
able to do it under the existing program.
  The only responsible alternative is to proceed and designate the 
Nevada test site as a temporary repository site until such time as a 
permanent repository can be licensed. So it is my hope we can schedule 
this legislation in the not too distant future and proceed with 
legislation that presents a responsible alternative to the current 
irresponsible policy of simply avoiding a decision on this critical 
issue.
  Mr. President, I have editorials from newspapers including the Oregon 
Statesman Journal, the Washington Post, the Denver Post, the St. 
Joseph, MO Herald Palladium, and the Harrisburg, PA Patriot-News, as 
well as many others, in support of naming Yucca Mountain a temporary 
repository for nuclear waste. I ask unanimous consent that a sample of 
these editorials be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the editorials were ordered to be printed 
in the Record, as follows:

                 [From the Patriot-News, Jan. 26, 1996]

High-Level Risk: Federal Foot-Dragging Leaves N-Plants No Option But To 
                          Store Waste on-Site

       Two of the three nuclear power stations along the 
     Susquehanna River may soon begin storing highly radioactive 
     spent fuel in steel-and-concrete casks in on-site facilities 
     specially built for the purpose.
       This nuclear material, one of the most dangerous substances 
     known to science, was never intended to be stored on a long-
     term basis at nuclear power plants. Under a law passed in 
     1982 by Congress, the Federal Government was assigned 
     responsibility to take permanent custody of spent fuel from 
     commercial nuclear reactors.
       A long-term storage facility for the waste was to be opened 
     by 1988, by the Energy Department, still conducting studies 
     of the proposed Yucca Mountain site in Nevada, says it 
     doesn't expect the facility to be ready until at least 2010.
       This high-level radioactive waste is so lethal that it must 
     be stored in a manner that will shield it from the 
     environment for thousands of years, a period longer than 
     mankind's recorded history. Not surprisingly, no state wants 
     to serve as permanent host for the waste, but the end result 
     of the failure of the government to move decisively to build 
     a storage facility is that nuclear power stations around the 
     country are fulfilling that role by default.
       Under ordinary circumstances, spent fuel is removed from 
     the reactor and held in nearby pools of water for several 
     months to cool and to allow some of the radiation to 
     dissipate. Utilities have gone to great lengths to devise 
     ways to increase the capacity of the cooling ponds, but a 
     growing number have run out of options and are moving to 
     construct new facilities in which the waste is stored in 
     dry steel-and-concrete canisters.
       Pennsylvania Power & Light Co. plans to begin construction 
     this year of a $10 million on-site spent-fuel storage 
     facility at its Susquehanna nuclear power station at Berwick. 
     PECO Energy Co. is contemplating a similar move at its Peach 
     Bottom nuclear power facility in York County.
       Three Mile Island is expected to have sufficient storage 
     capacity to last through the expected life of that nuclear 
     plant, according to owner GPU Nuclear Corp.
       A lawsuit, in which GPU, other utilities and the state 
     Public Utility Commission are participants, is seeking to 
     force the federal government to speed up the process of 
     establishing a high-level radioactive waste repository. A 
     federal appeals court in Washington recently heard arguments 
     in the case.
       Meanwhile, there is legislation in Congress to establish an 
     interim storage site near Yucca Mountain until a permanent 
     facility is completed. In our view, this offers the most 
     sensible answer to the nuclear-storage dilemma.
       The country is courting catastrophe by permitting this 
     highly dangerous waste to be stored in dozens of areas of the 
     country, usually along waterways, and unnecessarily creating 
     more radioactive-conaminated facilities, as well as expense 
     for ratepayers.
       Congress needs to end its dithering on this serious issue 
     and move to bring this waste under federal control in a 
     single facility until a permanent one can be built.
                                                                    ____


              [From the Statesman Journal, Feb. 11, 1996]

                    Congress Stalls on Nuclear Waste

       Congress seems to be stalled on a bill to find a home for 
     tons of waste from the nation's nuclear power plants.
       Measures to establish a temporary nuclear repository at 
     Yucca Mountain in Nevada have had strong support in both 
     chambers, but nothing has happened. House Resolution 1020 
     needs to be enacted promptly.
       It will rectify two financial problems. It will give 
     residential and business customers of power generated by 
     nuclear power plants something for their money. Oregonians 
     and others have paid nearly $12 billion into a fund to build 
     a repository for nuclear waste. The money has done nothing 
     but help the government make the budget deficit look a little 
     smaller.
       And it will save utilities from having to build temporary 
     storage facilities at their nuclear power plants to hold 
     spent fuel rods that by now should have found a permanent 
     national repository. At the now-closed Trojan plant, the rods 
     are kept in pools of water. But dry storage will have to be 
     built--at ratepayers' expense--if the Yucca Mountain site is 
     not approved. Other nuclear power plants are running out of 
     storage space. They either will shut down or, more likely, 
     build expensive temporary storage.
       The measure also will move the nation toward a permanent 
     repository in Yucca Mountain. The temporary site will hold 
     nuclear wastes until the final scientific studies of Yucca 
     are completed.
       Although the measures have strong support, controversy 
     remains. Some in Nevada and elsewhere are not convinced the 
     Yucca Mountain site is safe for centuries-long storage of 
     radioactive wastes. Reputable scientific studies discount the 
     risk.
       Other people worry about transporting nuclear fuel rods to 
     Nevada from throughout the country. This, too, is a needless 
     worry. The casks that would hold the wastes were engineered--
     and tested--to withstand a head-on train crash and the 
     hottest fires.
       This country must take the decisive step and finally 
     provide--after 13 years of political indecision--a safe place 
     for its nuclear wastes.
                                                                    ____


               [From the Washington Post, Jan. 12, 1996]

                  The One Best Place for Nuclear Waste

                           (By Luther Carter)

       Despite continuing controversy and hand-wringing analysis, 
     the nuclear waste problem has for early two decades grown as 
     a political issue while seeming every more confused and 
     opaque. Curt Suplee's recent article in The Post [Dec. 31] 
     ably described the quagmire in which the waste issue is 
     stuck.

[[Page S4702]]

       But political consensus won't come on this issue until we 
     begin looking at the waste problem as actually one of the 
     more manageable aspects of a far larger question. With the 
     Cold War and nuclear arms race of a bipolar world now behind 
     us, we can address what to do about the entire atomic legacy 
     we began creating more than a half-century ago.
       This awesome issue raises two questions: What to do about 
     nuclear weapons, and what to do about nuclear power?
       It's time now for a national and global debate about the 
     weapons and the elaborate industrial complexes established to 
     produce them. The nuclear forces and production 
     establishments of the nuclear weapons states were created 
     through great human ingenuity and national sacrifice. So 
     whether over the next generation we might summon the will and 
     ingenuity to abolish all (or nearly all-- these weapons and 
     complexes is not a possibility to be ignored and decided by 
     inaction or default.
       It's time, too, for a debate about whether we wish to rid 
     ourselves of civil nuclear power or, if we think it might be 
     needed, to give this politically besieged enterprise a fair 
     chance to rise or fall on its merits.
       But however these larger questions ultimately might be 
     decided, there will be no escaping the need for a solution to 
     the nuclear waste problem, and this almost inescapably means 
     establishing a national storage center at the Nevada Test 
     Site (NTS).
       Coming to this conclusion does not require sophisticated 
     research and analysis. The country needs such a storage 
     center for four surprisingly diverse reasons:
       Relief for the electric utilities. The center would relieve 
     the utilities' growing fear that the federal government will 
     be unable to honor its obligation, effective three years 
     hence, to begin accepting the spent fuel now accumulating at 
     more than 100 power reactors in 34 states. This grievance is 
     particularly rancorous in light of the billions in federal 
     nuclear waste funds already collected by utility companies 
     from their rate-payers.
       Reactor decommissioning. The center would support the safe 
     decommissioning of nuclear reactors that utilities shut down 
     either for financial or safety reasons or in response to 
     public mandate. Without such a national center, spent fuel 
     must remain indefinitely in storage pools and dry vaults at 
     reactor sites.
       Cleaning up the nuclear weapons production complex. The 
     center would offer a timely and needed place to send high-
     level waste and spent naval reactor fuel from Savannah River 
     and the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory, and ultimately 
     the high-level waste from the Hanford reservation in 
     Washington state.
       Strengthening the nuclear nonproliferation regime. The 
     center, if placed under International Atomic Energy Agency 
     inspection, could become a model of close accountability for 
     large amounts of weapons-usable plutonium.
       Most of this plutonium would come to the NTS in commercial 
     spent fuel from routine reactor operations. But some of it 
     would be plutonium recovered from weapons production sites 
     and dismantled warheads, and (for security reasons) made 
     highly radioactive either by mixing with high-level waste or 
     burning in specially designated reactors. Secure 
     but retrievable storage of plutonium could continue 
     indefinitely at the center, given the chance that this 
     fissionable material might eventually be recovered for its 
     energy value.
       There simply is no place other than the Nevada Test site to 
     store all these various radioactive and proliferation-
     sensitive nuclear materials. The NTS is uniquely fitted for 
     this role by its remoteness, its tradition of tight security 
     from four decades of nuclear weapons testing, and its very 
     real (though much disputed) potential for safe storage and 
     disposal--a potential based on the exceptionally dry climate, 
     great depth to the water table and location inside a closed 
     desert basin that drains to Death Valley. The ongoing 
     investigation of Yucca Mountain for a geologic repository 
     shows promise but is now hampered by severe budget cuts.
       The state of Nevada is, for its part, opposed to any 
     national waste repository or storage center coming to the 
     NTS. But that state alone could not prevent broad acceptance 
     of a national waste policy that rests on long-term interim 
     and possibly permanent storage at the test site.
       Nevada's main hope at the moment may lie with the Clinton 
     White House, where the president's senior advisers have 
     favored a veto of any legislation calling for interim storage 
     of spent fuel at a specific site. They would have the site 
     determined by ``scientific analyses.'' But the reality is 
     that while technically, just about any site is acceptable for 
     interim surface storage, politically the affected state, 
     whatever it is, will be opposed.
       Antinuclear activists and many environmental groups back 
     Nevada's contention that spent fuel can safely remain on site 
     at the reactors for up to a century. But this view obscures 
     larger environmental concerns and the need now, without more 
     years of delay, to start facing up to the dangerous legacy 
     from a half-century of use and misuse of the atom.
                                                                    ____


               [From the Herald-Palladium, Nov. 28, 1995]

                 Getting Closer to Nuke Waste Solution

       The lethal nuclear waste sitting in Southwest Michigan and 
     dozens of other sites across the United States may be headed 
     to a new--and safer--home.
       A bill sponsored by U.S. Rep. Fred Upton, R-St. Joseph, 
     would open up a temporary storage site in the Nevada desert 
     and would push the opening of a permanent site deep beneath 
     the desert surface.
       We're glad to see that his bill, approved earlier this year 
     by committee, is headed for a House vote. We urge its 
     passage. A similar bill is expected to come up for a Senate 
     vote next year.
       The question of what to do with high-level nuclear waste 
     has been looming ever since the first nuclear power plant 
     opened in this country three decades ago. From the beginning, 
     the federal government committed itself to the eventual 
     disposal of the waste. It recognized the danger in having 
     high-level nuclear waste disposal sites scattered in various 
     places across the country near populated areas.
       In 1982, Congress tried to light a fire under the feet of 
     the Department of Energy by passing a bill requiring the 
     government to have a waste site ready by 1998. There's no 
     chance now of meeting that deadline. The earliest a waste 
     site will be ready is 2010, and even that won't happen at 
     the current pace of development.
       That's why Upton's bill is so important. It not only pushes 
     DOE into selecting a waste site--probably at Yucca Mountain, 
     Nevada--but also allows the government to store the waste 
     temporarily above ground in an unpopulated desert location.
       The chief opponents of Upton's bill--besides Nevada 
     residents who don't want the waste site in their back yard, 
     even though the remote desert isn't really anybody's yard--
     are people who are opposed to nuclear power in general. They 
     know that settling the waste issue will open the door for the 
     construction of more nuclear power plants and allow those 
     that are running out of storage room to keep operating.
       But closing down the nation's nuclear power plants not only 
     would have a devastating effect on the energy production--and 
     therefore, the economy--but would do nothing to solve the 
     problem of nuclear waste disposal.
       Upton's bill moves the process forward, and we hope 
     Congress approves it.
                                                                    ____


                  [From the Denver Post, May 1, 1996]

              Politics, Not Science, Delays Yucca Mountain

                           (By Linda Seebach)

       The question of what to do with America's spent nuclear 
     fuel and other detritus from the atomic era is more political 
     than scientific. Progress toward the permanent storage 
     facility proposed for Yucca Mountain, Nev., is slowed by 
     endless debate about all the things that could possibly go 
     wrong centuries from now.
       I was inside Yucca Mountain last week. The Valley Study 
     Group, an organization of people in and around Livermore, 
     Calif., who are interested in the activities of Lawrence 
     Livermore and Sandia national laboratories, organized a tour 
     to the site, which is on the western edge of the Nevada Test 
     Site about 80 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
       As part of the years-long process to determine whether the 
     site is suitable for keeping nuclear waste isolated from the 
     environment for millennia, the project is boring a 5-mile 
     tunnel in a loop inside the mountain. They're about 3 miles 
     along now, and our group put on hard hats and safety belts 
     and hiked along in for a few hundred meters to see how the 
     tunnel is constructed and where the scientific studies are 
     done. Project scientists sample the rock, air and water 
     because the crucial fact that determines how long the storage 
     is safe is whether water percolating through the rock will 
     eventually corrode the canisters containing the wastes, and 
     then (even more eventually) carry radionuclides through the 
     rock to ground water.
       Yucca Mountain was chosen as a potential site because there 
     isn't much water anywhere near it, and in particular because 
     the groundwater level is hundreds of meters below where the 
     waste canisters would be placed.
       Seeing the site and the tunnel doesn't imply anything about 
     the quality of the science, but I already knew about that, 
     having been reading about this project for years. Being there 
     did impress me simultaneously with the huge sale of the 
     project in human terms, and its insignificance in the vast 
     and desolate landscape around Yucca Mountain.
       Even the desert tortoise, a threatened species that is 
     treated with respectful deference by tortoise-trained 
     personnel, is at much greater risk from ravens who think 
     soft-shell tortoise is a treat than from anything humans are 
     doing around the project site.
       The safety expectations for Yucca Mountain, or any other 
     potential site if that one turns out to be unsatisfactory, 
     are unreasonable, not so much because they can't be met but 
     because they are more stringent than those applied to the 
     alternatives. At present, spent fuel is stored in cooling 
     ponds near the plants that used it. There's no evidence it's 
     unsafe there now, but for the next 10,000 years? That's 
     longer than humanity's written history.
       Non-nuclear alternatives aren't clearly better. Extracting 
     and burning coal and oil is not environmentally benign, 
     though the effects can be mitigated, but we can't plan on 
     doing it for millennia. There's not that much to burn.
       Freezing in the dark is not healthy for children and other 
     living things, either.

[[Page S4703]]

       It's true that radioactive material takes a long time to 
     decay, but the consequences of deforesting a continent are 
     pretty permanent, too. It makes sense to store spent nuclear 
     fuel in the safest place available, rather than leaving it 
     where it is, but trying to plan for thousands of years in the 
     future is wasted energy.
       A civilization that maintains our current modest level of 
     technology should have no more difficulty coping with the 
     consequences of using nuclear energy than it does with any 
     other kind. And without that much technology, the human 
     species will have far more serious things to worry about than 
     what its forebears buried deep under a mountain in Nevada.

  Mr. MURKOWSKI. I thank the Chair. I thank you for the time allotted 
to me and wish you a good day.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Grassley). The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. GRASSLEY addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Thomas). The Senator from Iowa.
  Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for 12 
minutes as in morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

                          ____________________