[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 115 (Wednesday, July 31, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Pages S9216-S9265]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    NUCLEAR WASTE POLICY ACT OF 1996

  The Senate continued with the consideration of the bill.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I yield such time as the Senator from 
Minnesota, Senator Wellstone, may use up to one-half hour.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Minnesota is recognized for 
up to one-half hour.


                           Amendment No. 5037

  (Purpose: To protect the taxpayer by ensuring that the Secretary of 
  Energy does not accept title to high-level nuclear waste and spent 
   nuclear fuel unless protection of public safety or health or the 
                        environment so require)

  Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I call up amendment 5037.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
  The legislative clerk read as follows:

       The Senator from Minnesota (Mr. Wellstone) proposes an 
     amendment numbered 5037.

  Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of 
the amendment be dispensed with.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The amendment is as follows:

       On page 85 of the bill, strike lines 13 through 15 and 
     insert in lieu thereof the following:
       ``(a) Notwithstanding any other provision of this Act 
     (except subsection (b) of this section) or contract as 
     defined in section 2 of this Act, the Secretary shall not 
     accept title to spent nuclear fuel or high-level nuclear 
     waste generated by a commercial nuclear power reactor unless 
     the Secretary determines that accepting title to the fuel or 
     waste is necessary to enable the Secretary to protect 
     adequately the public health or safety, or the environment. 
     To the extent that the federal government is responsible for 
     personal or property damages arising from such fuel or waste 
     while in the federal government's possession, such liability 
     shall be borne by the federal government.''

  Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, most of the time that I am on the floor 
I do not really use notes, or at least I do not use notes extensively. 
I think today what I want to try to do is read what I think is a kind 
of brief that I want to argue for this amendment.
  Most of the debate on S. 1936 will be about the environmental policy 
ramifications of the bill. I know we will learn a great deal about that 
today. While these are important points--I view them as very important 
points--there is another very significant part of this debate. I am 
referring to the implications of this bill for the taxpayers, 
particularly future taxpayers.
  I hope that if my colleagues are not able to listen to the statement, 
that their staffs will and that these words will be given serious 
consideration.
  As you will soon see, this bill would perpetuate a flawed policy that 
has set up the future taxpayers of America, I fear, for a potentially 
infinite liability.
  Mr. President, section 302 of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, 
subsection (a), paragraph 4, states what has long been accepted as 
nuclear waste policy, that nuclear utilities shall pay a fee into a 
fund to ``ensure full cost recovery'' for costs associated with the 
nuclear waste program. Indeed, an earlier version of this very bill, 
introduced as S. 1271, recited in its findings section the same basic 
premise: ``While the Federal Government has the responsibility to 
provide for the centralized interim storage and permanent disposal of 
spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste to protect the 
public health and safety and the environment''--I agree with that--
``the cost of such storage and disposal should be the responsibility of 
the generators and owners of such waste and spent fuels.''
  Mr. President, once you understand that simple basic and longstanding 
premise, you cannot help but be confused by the policy we have been 
pursuing for years and which is strengthened in the bill before us. 
That policy is to provide for the transfer of title to high-level 
nuclear waste from the utility to the taxpayer.
  Mr. President, could I have order in the Chamber? I would appreciate 
it if you would ask the discussion to be off the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. All discussions will be taken into the 
cloakroom.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, let me explain. As I have already 
described, the full cost of the waste disposal program is to be borne 
by the generators of that waste. To implement this idea, Congress 
created the nuclear waste fund in the Treasury. The nuclear waste fund 
is supplied by a fee paid by the nuclear utilities, which is really the 
ratepayer. That fee is specified in the 1982 act to be equal to ``one 
mill,'' which is one-tenth of one cent per kilowatt-hour of electricity 
generated.
  The 1982 act further gave the Secretary of Energy the authority to 
adjust the fee if she or he found it necessary to ``ensure full cost 
recovery.'' As you can readily see, when a commercial nuclear 
powerplant ceases to generate electricity, it ceases to pay into the 
nuclear waste fund. In the next 15 to 20 years, as our current nuclear 
plants age, more and more of these plants will stop generating power, 
and the flow of money into the nuclear waste fund will begin to dry up. 
When no more money is flowing into the fund in the form of fees, we 
will know how much money we will have to pay for the full cost of the 
disposal program.

  Now, we must ask the question: Will we have enough money? Will all 
those fees aggregated in the nuclear waste fund, plus interest paid out 
as necessary to meet the actual progress of the program, be sufficient 
to cover all the actual costs of storing high-level nuclear waste until 
it is no longer a threat to public health and safety and the 
environment, perhaps as long as 10,000 years? Are we going to be able 
to cover the cost?
  I will share with you the opinions of the experts on that question in 
a moment, but first let me tell you who is stuck with the tab if the 
nuclear waste fund is not sufficient. Because our nuclear waste policy 
provides for title to the waste to transfer from the utility to the 
Federal Government, which translates into taxpayers--it is you and me, 
or at least our families in the future--who are going to be stuck with

[[Page S9217]]

the bill. You see, it is the transfer of the tab which the nuclear 
utilities are really working for.
  Moving the waste in Nevada is important to them, but I am not sure 
that is the real prize. What they really want is to be free and clear 
of the stuff because they know that there is a fair chance that 
disposal costs will be greater than what they are currently saying it 
will be. When their plants are shut down and they no longer pay the fee 
into the fund, they want to make sure that the taxpayer cannot come 
back to them to pony up some more. If the Department of Energy holds 
title, the waste is no longer the utility's problem, but it is the 
taxpayers' problem, and it is a potentially huge one.
  Let us see if this is a real problem. After all, Mr. President, if 
everybody agrees that the fund will be adequate, then there will not be 
any taxpayer liability to worry about.
  Mr. President, could I have order, please, on the floor, and could I 
ask my colleagues to please cease discussion?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senate will be in order.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, the question then becomes whether there 
will be a real problem. After all, if everybody agrees that the fund 
will be adequate, the question is whether there is going to be any 
taxpayer liability to worry about. The Nuclear Waste Technical Review 
Board in its March 1996 report to the Congress states:

       In a discussion of costs, however, the board believes a 
     more important question is whether the nuclear waste fund is 
     adequate to pay the cost of disposal as well as previously 
     unanticipated long-term storage. Although the Department of 
     Energy has not yet made a new formal determination of the 
     fund's adequacy, in a presentation before this board, 
     analysts who conducted an independent function and management 
     review of the Yucca Mountain project suggested that the 
     nuclear waste fund as currently projected would be deficient 
     by $3 to $5 billion.

  In a June 1990 report, the General Accounting Office estimated, 
depending on varying inflation rates and numbers of repositories 
needed, a potentially huge shortfall--up to $77 billion. The report 
states:

       Unless careful attention is given to its financial 
     condition, the nuclear waste program is susceptible to future 
     budget shortfalls. Without a fee increase, the civilian waste 
     part of the program may already be underfunded by at least 
     $2.4 billion in discounted 1998 dollars.

  That is the GAO report of 1990.
  Now, Mr. President, in fairness--and I am trying to present a 
rigorous analysis for my colleagues--there is no consensus on whether 
the fund will be adequate. The Department of Energy believes that it 
will be. The nuclear industry likewise is quite adamant that the fund 
will be sufficient. But, of course, estimating fund adequacy is a very 
complicated matter, and reasonable people can have different views.
  There are two basic elements to determine if the fund will be 
adequate. First, there is a total lifetime cost estimate for the 
disposal program. Depending on how far out you wish to run it, this 
could require making estimates for thousands of years. DOE's latest 
life cycle cost estimate--this is September 1995 --estimates costs for 
only 88 years, from the beginning of the program in 1983 through the 
expected end year of the program, which is 2071, when the repository is 
decommissioned. This, of course, assumes that the repository is built, 
loaded, and closed on schedule, I might add, a very questionable 
assumption.
  Cost estimates also depend on the elements of the program, including 
whether there will be both an interim facility and a permanent 
repository. In the Department of Energy's 1995 estimate, it is assumed 
that the program will only include a permanent repository. They were 
not even talking about the interim storage facility.
  The second element to determine fund sufficiency has to do with the 
supply side of the question: how much money will be put into the fund 
through fees. Because the fees are based on generation of electricity, 
this estimate is inextricably tied up with the life expectancies of 
existent nuclear powerplants and their level of electricity generation. 
What if the plants do not get relicensed? What if they shut down 
prematurely because of economic considerations or safety issues 
associated with aging reactors? So far, no plant has lasted to the end 
of its license. That is a point worth emphasizing. What if the plants 
have long outages and thus generate less power? The Department of 
Energy assumes all plants operate for their full 40-year license with 
no renewal and that their generating efficiency improves over time.
  In the end, Mr. President, I think we all have to realize that any 
estimate of fund adequacy is tentative at best. As Daniel Dreyfus, 
Director of the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management of DOE, 
put it last April, addressing the adequacy of the fee to ensure a 
sufficient fund:

       Any such fee adequacy analysis must, of course, be based 
     upon a number of assumptions about the near and long term 
     future. Some of the most important are the projected rate of 
     expenditure from the fund which in turn impacts the interest 
     credits accruing from the unspent balance, the assumed future 
     rates of interest and inflation, and the assumed number of 
     kilowatts of nuclear power still to be generated and sold. 
     Significant deviations from these could result in errors in 
     either direction that would warrant changes in the fee.

  Mr. President, what my amendment would do--we now have established 
that the fund, which is the utility companies' fund, may not be 
sufficient, and some believe we are headed for a significant shortfall. 
The evidence is irrefutable on that point.
  Here is where we get to the crux of my amendment. If there is a 
shortfall, who is going to pay for it? The answer is that the owner of 
the waste, the title holder, will pay for the shortfall. If title 
transfers to the Department of Energy, the taxpayers in this country 
are going to be on the hook. It is the taxpayers who are going to end 
up having to pay the costs.
  The amendment I offer today would protect the taxpayer from such an 
uncertain fate. My amendment would simply prevent the Department of 
Energy from accepting title to the waste unless accepting title was 
necessary to protect the public health and safety and the environment. 
For people concerned about liability for damage from an accident caused 
by DOE once the waste is in the Government's possession, my amendment 
would ensure that the DOE is, indeed, liable for such damages.
  All this amendment does is protect taxpayers from shouldering the 
burden of waste disposal costs after the fund runs out. That burden 
should remain with the utilities. That was the intention and that is 
the way it ought to be. We do not know the cost over 10,000 years, and 
this transfer of title through the sleight of hand transfers a huge 
potential unfunded liability to taxpayers in this country.
  I have heard my colleagues argue that ratepayers and taxpayers are 
indistinguishable. That is not true. In other words, some folks seem to 
believe that changing the law to make sure that the utilities pay for 
the outyear liability is pretty much the same as if the taxpayer is 
directly on the hook for it as current law and this bill would have it.
  That is simply not so. Ratepayers are people who currently use 
nuclear-generated power. Taxpayers are everybody. All ratepayers are 
taxpayers but not all taxpayers currently use nuclear-generated power. 
Ratepayers are a subset of taxpayers. Ask people in northern Minnesota 
whether they ought to be held as liable for a fund shortfall as, for 
example, somebody in the Twin Cities. Ask somebody in Montana if they 
feel they should pay as much for waste disposal as somebody in a more 
heavily nuclear State.
  Mr. President, this bill, as I have stated already, would provide for 
title to transfer to the taxpayer. That is what this bill is about. I 
think that is a very flawed premise in this bill. While that is also 
part of the current law, the bill throws in a new twist. Under S. 1936, 
title transfers even sooner than under current law. Current law has 
title transferring when DOE accepts the waste for permanent disposal. 
In other words, title does not transfer until we actually have 
a permanent place to put it. S. 1936, however, does not wait. This bill 
puts the taxpayer on the hook as soon as the Department of Energy takes 
it off the utility's hands for interim storage.

  That is what this is about. As I have already indicated, the level of 
the fee is integral to any estimate of fund sufficiency. Current law 
allows the Secretary of Energy to adjust that fee, if necessary, to 
ensure fund sufficiency.

[[Page S9218]]

 Despite the General Accounting Office and other estimates, this bill 
would remove that authority, effectively freezing the one-mill fee, 
which has never been changed or pegged to inflation in statutory 
language. Thus, even if the Department of Energy does ultimately 
estimate that the fund will experience a shortfall, the Secretary 
cannot even act to prevent it to protect taxpayers from accepting the 
liability.
  Finally, Mr. President, this bill would require a significant up-
front expenditure from the fund to pay for construction of an interim 
storage facility, something that was not considered by the DOE in its 
latest assessments of fund sufficiency. As has already been explained, 
interest buildup from the unspent fund balances is a key component 
ensuring fund sufficiency. With large early expenditures, there will 
obviously be less interest accumulated and the fund will be less able 
to cover long-term costs.

  This amendment is all about responsibility. It is all about making 
sure that costs are allocated to those who should bear them. It is all 
about deciding who should be on the hook when shaky estimates of costs 
well into the next century and beyond prove, as they invariably do, to 
be off the mark. We do not know what the costs are going to be. The 
estimates are very shaky. Yet what we are doing through this bill is 
essentially transferring all of the liability to taxpayers in this 
country.
  Less than a month ago, in discussing this issue on the floor of the 
Senate, one of the chief sponsors of the bill, the Senator from Idaho, 
said, ``It is irresponsible to shirk our responsibility to protect the 
environment and the future for our children and grandchildren.'' I 
could not agree with him more. But protecting our children and 
grandchildren also means protecting their wallets, as I am sure he 
would agree. We have spent an enormous amount of time and effort in the 
past few years cutting the deficit and moving toward a balanced budget, 
in large part to protect future generations. Let us have some 
consistency. Let us keep that goal in mind. Let us not stick future 
generations of taxpayers with a potentially enormous liability. Let the 
title to nuclear waste stay with those who generate it. That is what 
this amendment says.
  It is simple. It is straightforward.
  Mr. President, how much time do I have left?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has 12 minutes and 11 seconds.


                    Amendment No. 5037, as Modified

  Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I may reserve the remainder of my time 
but, before I do, if I could, I ask my amendment be modified to effect 
the changes in page and line at the desk, necessary because of the 
adoption of the amendment of Senator Murkowski.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The amendment (No. 5037), as modified, as follows:

       On page 52 of the bill, as amended by Murkowski amendment 
     No. 5055, strike lines 15 through 16 and insert in lieu 
     thereof the following:
       ``(a) Notwithstanding any other provision of this Act 
     (except subsection (b) of this section) or contract as 
     defined in section 2 of this Act, the Secretary shall not 
     accept title to spent nuclear fuel or high-level nuclear 
     waste generated by a commercial nuclear power reactor unless 
     the Secretary determines that accepting title to the fuel or 
     waste is necessary to enable the Secretary to protect 
     adequately the public health or safety, or the environment. 
     To the extent that the Federal Government is responsible for 
     personal or property damages arising from such fuel or waste 
     while in the Federal Government's possession, such liability 
     shall be borne by the Federal Government.''

  Mr. MURKOWSKI. I believe we have a half hour on our side, Mr. 
President?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. That is correct.
  Mr. MURKOWSKI. It is my intention to yield to the distinguished 
Senator from Louisiana 15 minutes and the Senator from Minnesota 5, the 
Senator from Idaho 5, and I will use the other 5 at the conclusion. And 
that takes care of our side.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Louisiana.
  Mr. JOHNSTON. Mr. President, the amendment of the Senator from 
Minnesota is based upon two profoundly wrong assumptions. The first 
assumption is that the Federal Government, acting through this 
Congress, has the right to take away vested rights of American citizens 
or American corporations. It is such an item of Hornbook law--and I 
might add fundamental fairness--that vested rights are enforceable in 
the courts, that it hardly seems worthwhile to argue that. 
Nevertheless, having said it is not worthwhile to argue it, let me just 
quote from the Winstar decision of the U.S. Supreme Court, decided July 
1, 1996, in which it says:

       The Federal Government, as sovereign, has the power to 
     enter contracts that confer vested rights, and the 
     concomitant duty to honor those rights. . ..
       If we allowed the government to break its contractual 
     promises without having to pay compensation, such a policy 
     would come at a high cost in terms of increased default 
     premiums in future government contracts and increased 
     disenchantment with the government generally.

  I could quote other equally persuasive language from this decision.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. Will the Senator yield just for a moment?
  Mr. JOHNSTON. Yes.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. First of all, if the industry and DOE are correct, and 
the fund is sufficient, there would be no shortfall and there would be 
no damages; is that correct? The estimates of the industry is that the 
fund is sufficient, and if that is the case, there would be no 
shortfall and therefore there would be no damages.
  If, in fact, there were damages--let me just ask the Senator to 
respond to the first question.
  Mr. JOHNSTON. No, the Senator is wrong. First of all, damages would 
not be paid from the nuclear waste fund. Damages would have to be paid 
from the judgment fund, provided elsewhere.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. But Senator, by the very estimates you have made, by 
the very estimates that the utility companies have made, there would be 
no damages because you have said that the fund is sufficient. So there 
would be no damages.
  Mr. JOHNSTON. I have not said the fund is sufficient. DOE has said 
the fund is sufficient. And many nuclear utilities do not believe it is 
sufficient. But the sufficiency of the fund has nothing to do with the 
damages to which a utility would be entitled. The fund could be more 
than sufficient and a utility would be entitled to damages based upon 
whether the Government had violated a vested right.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. I thank the Senator.
  Mr. JOHNSTON. Would the Senator agree with me, first of all, the 
Government has no right to violate a vested right of the utilities?
  Mr. WELLSTONE. My response would be, if it was decided by the courts 
that this amendment improperly breaches preexisting contracts, then 
presumably the utilities would be able to recover damages from the 
Government. However, I want to point out one more time that if the 
industry and the DOE are correct, that the fund is sufficient, there 
would be no shortfall and therefore there would be no damages. That 
would be up to the courts to decide.
  Mr. JOHNSTON. Let us take this one at a time. You agree with me the 
Government has no right to take away vested rights, and would be liable 
for the violation?
  Mr. WELLSTONE. I have said, unless they pay damages. But I have also 
made it clear the courts would decide that and I have also made it 
clear that by the very estimates of the utility industry, this is the 
very question that is in doubt, that there would be no damages because 
there would be no shortfall.
  Mr. JOHNSTON. Mr. President, the Senator has answered my first 
question, which I think there is only one answer to, and that is the 
Government cannot violate contractual rights.
  The second question is what is the duty of the Federal Government 
with respect to nuclear waste? It so happens that the Court of Appeals 
for the District of Columbia has decided that very question 
definitively and clearly on July 23, 1996. Here is what they have said. 
I hope the Senator from Minnesota will not leave. What the decision 
said, and it is very clear:

       Thus we hold that section 302(a)(5)(B) creates an 
     obligation in DOE, reciprocal to the utilities' obligation to 
     pay, to start disposing of spent nuclear fuel no later than 
     January 31, 1998.

  Let me repeat that:

       . . . we hold that the Nuclear Waste Policy Act creates an 
     obligation in DOE . . . to start disposing of the spent 
     nuclear fuel no later than January 31, 1998.


[[Page S9219]]


  What the decision does is delineates between the duty of the Federal 
Government to accept title, which the court clearly says is dependent 
upon the completion of a nuclear repository, and the duty to dispose of 
the spent nuclear fuel on January 31, 1998, which is an absolute duty.
  So, come January 31, 1998, the Federal Government must dispose of 
this nuclear waste, whether or not the facility is complete. And, if 
the amendment of the Senator from Minnesota were agreed to, it would 
have nothing to do with the obligation of the Federal Government to pay 
damages. The obligation of the Federal Government to pay damages and 
the sufficiency of the nuclear waste fund are two separate things. If, 
on January 31, 1998, the repository is not complete, and it will not be 
complete, and there are utilities which must build their own dry cask 
storage at their own expense, I believe it is clear, based on this 
decision of the court of appeals, that the Federal Government would 
have to pay damages. Where they would pay the damages from--I believe 
it would have to come from the damage fund and not from this, the 
nuclear waste fund, but that would be a separate item for the court to 
decide.
  But the point is, it is very clear that this amendment cannot succeed 
in doing what the Senator from Minnesota says. The Senator from 
Minnesota says that this amendment takes the burden off the taxpayers--
off the ratepayers, and puts it on the utilities.
  Mr. President, that cannot be. The utilities have vested rights, 
recognized by the Supreme Court as late as July of this year. This very 
month, the Supreme Court has reiterated a very longstanding principle 
of law, which is that vested rights cannot be taken away by this 
Congress or by the courts. The utilities have a vested right to have 
the Federal Government dispose of their waste by January 31, 1998. You 
simply cannot take away that duty.
  I ask the distinguished Senator from Minnesota if he agrees with my 
interpretation of the court of appeals' decision rendered last week in 
that the Federal Government has an unqualified duty ``to start 
disposing of the spent nuclear fuel no later than January 31, 1998"? 
Does the Senator agree with that?
  Mr. WELLSTONE. The court decision only deals with the statute, and we 
are changing law. I was out during part of the Senator's presentation, 
and I think the part of the finding of the court that you did not read 
I will read when I have time. So I will come back to it.
  Mr. JOHNSTON. I am reading right here:

       Thus, we hold that the Nuclear Waste Policy Act creates an 
     obligation in DOE to start disposing of the spent nuclear 
     fuel no later than January 31, 1998.

  Is there any disagreement with what I read in the decision?
  Mr. WELLSTONE. I don't disagree with that.
  Mr. JOHNSTON. And the Senator would not disagree you can't take away 
that right legislatively, can you?
  Mr. WELLSTONE. This doesn't take away this right legislatively.
  Mr. JOHNSTON. Then how in the world can the Senator say they are 
transferring the duty of disposing of nuclear waste from the Federal 
Government or the taxpayers and giving that to the utilities?
  Mr. WELLSTONE. There is a basic distinction. You are talking about 
possession, and I am talking about title. I did not say there wasn't a 
commitment to change this in terms of possession. I read the findings 
of the original legislation, and I am telling you that when we had the 
original findings, the original bill, it was made very clear that, in 
fact, when it comes to title and when it comes to the actual liability 
of paying for this, this should be paid for by people who benefit from 
nuclear power, not by taxpayers across the country. Period.
  Mr. JOHNSTON. The decision of the court of appeals makes clear that 
they have a vested right to the title passing as of the time that the 
nuclear repository is built and not until that time, but they have the 
duty to dispose of the waste January 31, 1998.
  Is the Senator saying that their duty to dispose of the waste does 
not involve any responsibility, any duty to pay damages?
  Mr. WELLSTONE. Let me just read from the decision to put this to rest 
and the part you did not read:

       In addition, contrary to DOE's assertions, it is not 
     illogical for DOE to begin to dispose of SNF by the 1998 
     deadline and, yet, not take title to the SNF until a later 
     date.

  Mr. JOHNSTON. What is the difference in liability between having the 
duty to dispose of and in taking title?
  Mr. WELLSTONE. Dispose of has to do with possession, and title has to 
do with who pays for it. As a matter of fact, let me read for you, as 
long as this is on your time and not on my time, let me read for you--
  Mr. JOHNSTON. Well, I don't want--
  Mr. WELLSTONE. The original findings of the bill that you wrote.
  Mr. JOHNSTON. I have limited time remaining. Mr. President, what the 
Senator is saying is so illogical. We have established that the Federal 
Government has the duty to dispose of spent nuclear fuel, and the 
Senator is saying that that duty carries with it no responsibility to 
pay damages, no financial responsibility; that that somehow stays with 
the title.
  Mr. President, that is just not so. What the court said in the court 
of appeals' decision is that they are withholding the remedy until 
January 31, 1998, because the Federal Government would not have 
defaulted until that time. That is when the duty of the Federal 
Government to dispose of the waste ripens, January 31, 1998.
  We cannot come in here and say, ``Well, we're going to pass that duty 
on to the utilities because they are somehow at fault.'' Mr. President, 
that is just so clearly not the law. I believe that it is simply not an 
argument that bears any weight at all.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. Will the Senator yield 1 minute?
  Mr. JOHNSTON. I will yield on your time.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. I appreciate it.
  Mr. JOHNSTON. On your time?
  Mr. WELLSTONE. That is right, for 1 minute. This does not say the 
Federal Government does not have the responsibility to take the waste. 
That is not this amendment. The Senator mischaracterizes this 
amendment. That is a straw-man or straw-person argument. This amendment 
deals with the whole question of liability.
  Mr. JOHNSTON. No; it does not----
  Mr. WELLSTONE. In the very court decision the Senator cited, the 
court did not find this to be illogical; they made that distinction. I 
am not arguing the Federal Government should not take responsibility. I 
believe we should live up to that responsibility. This is a question of 
whether or not taxpayers should have to pay for the liability of it.
  Mr. JOHNSTON. First of all, the Senator's amendment does not mention 
liability.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. This is not on my time.
  Mr. JOHNSTON. Or the taxpayers. It simply says who has title and the 
fact that title and responsibility are not the same thing. I reserve 
the remainder of my time.
  Mr. MURKOWSKI addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Thomas). The Senator from Alaska.
  Mr. MURKOWSKI. I yield 5 minutes to Senator Grams from Minnesota.
  Mr. GRAMS. Mr. President, I want to follow up on what the Senator 
from Louisiana was saying.
  Just last week, the courts reaffirmed what the Congress and also the 
Nation's taxpayers have known since 1982 when this contract, this 
agreement was worked out, and that is, the Department of Energy has the 
legal obligation to begin accepting nuclear waste by January 31, 1998.
  This ruling by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, the second highest 
court in the land, marked a historic transformation in the nuclear 
waste debate. We are no longer discussing whether or not DOE has a 
responsibility to accept the waste, but how quickly we can move toward 
the final disposal solution.

  As my colleagues know, the roadblocks have not been environmental or 
technological, only political. After nearly 15 years, and at a cost to 
the Nation's electric consumers of $12 billion, the courts appear to 
have finally cleared that path.
  So why are some of our colleagues still trying to raise new 
obstacles? Is it because they are opposed to finding a real resolution 
to this environmental crisis?

[[Page S9220]]

  I cannot believe anyone would want to see nuclear waste continue to 
pile up in some 35 States, 41 if you include waste produced by the 
Government. Many of those States' utility commissioners argue that the 
ratepayer had paid for the waste to be removed and stored at a single 
permanent site. It was the DOE's failure to live up to its end of the 
bargain that led to the highly publicized lawsuit against DOE.
  The three circuit court judges concurred with the States' opinion and 
rejected the DOE's attempt to ``rewrite the law.'' Even so, some of our 
colleagues want to rewrite that law today. Such amendments reject the 
mandatory obligation of the DOE to take title to the spent fuel in 
1998. They are merely an attempt to rewrite the law under the guise 
that somehow ratepayers are different than taxpayers.
  By vilifying those customers who are served by nuclear power 
facilities, the opponents of nuclear power hope to refocus the debate. 
Hiding behind the cloak of so-called taxpayer protection, they refuse 
to acknowledge the fact that moving forward with a permanent disposable 
program is the best way to avoid a taxpayer bailout.
  In fact, entities as diverse as the National Association of 
Regulatory Utility Commissioners and the utilities themselves have 
calculated that enactment of S. 1936 would save $5 billion to $10 
billion to the U.S. taxpayers/ratepayers.
  What I find most disturbing is this false differentiation of electric 
customers served by nuclear utilities from the rest of the public. The 
idea that somehow these Americans reaped the benefit of low-cost power 
for years and are now somehow trying to get out of their obligation to 
pay for the waste is an affront to the citizens of this country.
  Over the last decade and a half, Minnesotans have paid nearly $250 
million in exchange for the unmet promises that the DOE would 
permanently store our State's nuclear waste. Again, the Nation has paid 
$12 billion, nationwide, into the nuclear waste trust fund. I believe 
the ratepayers have now lived up to their end of the bargain and met 
their financial obligation. It is the DOE that has not.
  But what about those who have benefited indirectly from nuclear 
power? I am referring to the customers served by utilities that 
themselves do not own nuclear generating stations but that from time to 
time do purchase the low-cost nuclear power. Aren't these the same 
taxpayers that opponents of this bill are seeking to protect? Yet don't 
these individuals share some of the responsibility? This issue is 
clearly explained in the letter that I received from Minnesota 
Department of Public Service Commissioner Kris Sanda. Commissioner 
Sanda wrote:

       For reliability reasons, our Nation's electrical grid is 
     divided into several regional power pools. The Mid-Continent 
     Power Pool serves our home state [of Minnesota, as well as] 
     North and South Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa, portions of Montana 
     and Wisconsin . . .
       In addition to ensuring the reliable delivery of electrical 
     energy, MAPP [as it is called] serves as a clearinghouse for 
     spot and intermediate term market for energy and capacity 
     transactions . . .
       There are certain times of day and seasons of the year when 
     energy from those plants is sold by [a nuclear generating 
     facility] to other utilities in MAPP . . .

  So in other words, other areas of the country receive this power.

       It is without question . . . that all Minnesotans benefit 
     from [NSP's] nuclear facilities, regardless of which utility 
     provides their power . . .
       The same is true for virtually all consumers across the 
     country, even those whose primary utility does not use 
     nuclear fuel to generate electricity.

  Therefore, responsibility for funding a permanent storage site is 
clearly shared by all of the Nation's power consumers. And Congress has 
the responsibility for ensuring that DOE builds an environmentally 
sound facility.
  Finally, Mr. President, I think it is important that our vote to 
reject this amendment will send a clear message that we reject these 
attempts by the antinuclear forces to portray as villains the electric 
consumers served by nuclear generating stations. I urge my colleagues 
to support final passage of S. 1936.
  Mr. MURKOWSKI. How much time do we have?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has 11 minutes.
  Mr. MURKOWSKI. Does the Senator from Minnesota wish to----
  Mr. WELLSTONE. A quick response to the Senator from Minnesota.
  Mr. MURKOWSKI. This is on the time of the Senator from Minnesota.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. That is correct. I will take my 11 minutes now, if it 
is all right.
  First, a quick response. This amendment has nothing to do with the 
Federal Government living up to its commitment to take the waste. I am 
in favor of that. This amendment has to do with who pays the cost over 
10,000 years; it has to do with tax liability. You cannot mix apples 
and oranges.

  Let me just yield to the Senator from Nevada for 1 minute, please.
  Mr. BRYAN. I thank the Senator.
  I call my colleagues' attention to this. Under the Nuclear Waste 
Policy Act, the Department of Energy and the utilities entered into a 
contract. It is the contractual liability that becomes the issue as a 
result of the court's decision that the senior Senator from Louisiana 
referenced.
  Under the contract provision, the remedy is spelled out. If the 
delays are unavoidable, there is no liability in a financial sense. The 
schedule for receiving shipment is adjusted accordingly. If it is 
determined that the Department of Energy has been responsible for the 
delay, an adjustment is made with respect to the fees that are paid 
into the nuclear waste trust fund. So those are the remedies that are 
provided. I thank the Senator from Minnesota for yielding me time.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. How much time is remaining for this Senator?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has 2 minutes.
  Mr. MURKOWSKI. I yield 5 minutes to the Senator from Idaho, Senator 
Craig.
  Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, I thank my chairman for yielding, and let 
me thank him for the work he has done on this legislation and the 
effort that has been put forth by the senior Senator from the State of 
Louisiana, to bring us to where we are at this moment.
  I do not oftentimes do this, but I think it is time to speak to the 
citizens of Minnesota, because their Senator has produced an amendment 
that in my opinion reverses a longstanding Government policy. This 
amendment purports to release the Government from its obligation to 
take the waste.
  The Senator from Minnesota calls this a taxpayers' protection 
amendment. What he does not tell us is that it would nail the 
ratepayer, the ratepayers of his State. For instance, it would force 
the people of Minnesota who have already paid over $229 million into 
the waste fund to pay millions more to build more storage sites at 
their reactors. Minnesotans have already paid twice. I believe the 
Wellstone amendment, if the courts upheld it, would force Minnesotans, 
who get 31 percent of their electricity from nuclear power, to pay 
again and again and again.
  Last week, the U.S. Court of Appeals ruled that DOE has an 
obligation, and that has been thoroughly debated by the Senator from 
Minnesota and the Senator from Louisiana. It is very clear what the 
court said. The obligation exists. We will decide when the time comes 
that you have the responsibility to take it how you will take it.
  This amendment, in my opinion, is unfair and it changes the rules in 
the middle of the game. It damages tremendously the citizens of the 
State of Minnesota who have already invested heavily in what they 
believed was the Government's role in taking care of this waste issue. 
In fact, the courts held that the Congress cannot change the 
contractual obligations of the Government, precisely because it would 
not be fair. If we were to be able to do something like this, no one 
would ever sign a contract with the Federal Government. Let me repeat: 
No one would ever sign a contract with the Federal Government if the 
Congress could come along, willy-nilly after the fact, and change the 
rules.
  This amendment is little more than an effort to kill the bill--I do 
not think there is any doubt about it--that is the source of 22 percent 
of our Nation's electrical power and 31 percent of the electrical power 
for the State of Minnesota. That would be, in my opinion, one of the 
worst environmental votes we could make.

[[Page S9221]]

  Minnesota nuclear power plants have reduced Minnesota's carbon 
dioxide emissions by 3 million metric tons in 1995, and by 55 million 
metric tons from 1973 to today. Last year, nuclear power in Minnesota 
displaced 118,000 tons of sulfur dioxide and 53,000 tons of nitrogen 
oxide.
  Following Senator Wellstone's prescription, if that is what the 
Congress chooses to do and what becomes law, could result in more 
emissions of acid rain and more carbon emissions than the climate could 
tolerate.
  Somehow we have to also talk about the tremendous advantage the 
citizens of Minnesota have received from the clean source of power, 31 
percent of their power, the electrical power. Now, today, we are 
insisting by this legislation, a process that allows us to adhere to 
what the courts have said is our contractual relationship with the 
ratepayers of our country who receive the benefits of nuclear power, 
and to do something positive for the environment, to do something that 
will say this country is going to be responsible in the management of 
high-level nuclear waste in a way that is optimum science, in a way 
that maximizes our pledge and our responsibility to the citizens of 
this country.

  I hope my colleagues will vote with me in tabling the Wellstone 
amendment. We need not kill the process. We need not stick the citizens 
of Minnesota with additional millions and millions of dollars where 
they are going to be forced to either build additional storage 
facilities or turn their lights out.
  I yield back the balance of my time.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I speak, too, to the people of 
Minnesota, but will speak first of all to the Senator from Idaho.
  Mr. MURKOWSKI. How much time is left on the other side?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Minnesota has 2 minutes, the 
Senator from Alaska has 6\1/2\ minutes.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. I will take 1 minute to respond.
  The Senator wants it both ways. First he says the utility companies 
are absolutely right, the fund is sufficient to cover the costs. Now he 
is saying the ratepayers of Minnesota will have to pay all this 
additional money with his scare stories.
  First the utility companies say this fund is sufficient to pay the 
cost. So, if that is the case, Senator, there will be no additional 
cost. But if the fund is not sufficient, over 10,000 years, then, Mr. 
President, the question is, who pays the costs? People in Minnesota 
believe that, as a matter of fact, the people who benefit pay the cost.
  I come from a State with a standard of fairness. Nobody wants to see 
an unfunded liability transferred by sleight of hand to taxpayers 
everywhere all across this country, period.
  As far as the environment is concerned, Senator, since you were a bit 
personal and I will not be too personal, I would be pleased to match my 
environmental record with your environmental record for the citizens of 
Minnesota to look at any day.
  I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. JOHNSTON. Will the Senator yield 1 minute?
  Mr. MURKOWSKI. I yield 1 minute to the Senator from Louisiana and 1 
minute to the Senator from Idaho.
  Mr. JOHNSTON. Mr. President, I think the Senator from Minnesota has 
another fundamental misconception and that is the question of the 
sufficiency of the fund.
  DOE has said they believe the fund is sufficient to build the 
repository. To quote them, ``The preliminary assessment which is still 
under management review, indicates the fee is adequate to ensure total 
cost recovery.'' That means for building the repository. That is what 
DOE says. I, frankly, think it is probably not going to be sufficient, 
in my own view, but that is what they say.
  No one has said that the fund is sufficient to cover both the cost of 
damages to Northern States of power and other utilities all around the 
country and to also build the repository. That is paying twice--paying 
to the utilities for their own, what we call dry cask storage, and also 
building the repository at Yucca Mountain or wherever in the country 
they decide to build it.

  That is the fundamental misconception, Mr. President. If you have 
these damages caused by the delay that Congress puts in, then clearly 
the fund will not be sufficient to pay for that.
  Mr. MURKOWSKI. I yield to the Senator from Idaho.
  How much time is remaining?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Five minutes remains.
  Mr. MURKOWSKI. I yield 2 minutes.
  Mr. CRAIG. I thank my chairman for yielding.
  This is not a question of whether the fund is sufficient. I agree 
with the Senator from Louisiana. I have spent an awful lot of time 
studying, and when push comes to shove, obviously the amendment that 
the Senator from Minnesota would inject into it, the question becomes, 
is it sufficient or not?
  What I am talking about are utilities in Minnesota who no longer have 
storage facilities and had relied on the Government to take the high-
level waste that they were paying for. My guess is that if this 
Senator's amendment passes, that comes into question.
  Do you turn the power off or do you build additional storage 
facility?
  Mr. WELLSTONE. Will the Senator yield?
  Mr. CRAIG. No, I will not yield. The Senator has his own time.
  My point is simply this: If you have changed the contractual 
relationship, then you have changed the obligations. If you do that, 
somebody else has to pay. Who has been paying in Minnesota? The 
ratepayers. Who would pay under the amendment of the Senator from 
Minnesota? The ratepayers. That is what I believe thorough study of 
this amendment would cause if it were to become law.
  Mr. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I think it is important to recognize we 
had a very clear understanding. A deal was made, the ratepayers would 
pay a fee and the Government would take title of the waste, period. 
That was the arrangement.
  We cannot and we should not at this time revisit this decision in an 
attempt to retroactively change the deal. That is basically the basis 
for the amendment from my friend from Minnesota.
  Mr. President, the decision that the Government would undertake the 
obligation to take title was made in a previous Nuclear Waste Policy 
Act and is part of the contract. The utility ratepayers have paid the 
fees under the contract, and again the Government simply has to live up 
to its end of the bargain.
  The Government already has title to large amounts, large amounts of 
spent fuel and waste that will be stored in these facilities. As a 
practical matter, the Government will be the deep pocket for liability 
for these facilities, even if did not take title to civilian fuel.
  We have competition and the realization that competition brings 
increased uncertainty to the electrical industry. That is just a fact 
of business. The utilities are the corporate entities and they cease to 
exist. That is the reason why the Government agreed, wanted and felt 
compelled to take title to spent fuel in the first place. The 
Government will own and operate these facilities. It is unfair now for 
the utility ratepayers to be on the hook for a liability for facilities 
that they have simply no control over.

  So I, again, suggest to the Senator from Minnesota that the Minnesota 
ratepayers have already paid twice. The Wellstone amendment, if the 
Court upheld it, would force Minnesotans who get, I might add, 31 
percent of their electric energy from nuclear power, to pay again and 
again and again.
  If Minnesota were to lose its dependence on nuclear energy, what 
would be the alternative? I think the Senator from Idaho indicated 
that, last year, nuclear power in Minnesota displaced 118,000 tons of 
sulfur dioxide, 53,000 tons of nitrogen oxide, and there is simply no 
other alternative, if Minnesota were to lose its dependence on nuclear 
energy, other than to generate power from fossil fuel.
  It is fair to say that, again, Minnesota nuclear power plants have 
reduced Minnesota's carbon dioxide emissions by 3 million metric tons 
by 1995 and, I think, 55 million metric tons since 1973. What is the 
alternative to this if we don't have the nuclear capability that so 
many--roughly a third--Minnesota residents depend on?
  Mr. President, has all time expired on the amendment?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator's time has expired. The Senator

[[Page S9222]]

from Minnesota has 1 minute remaining.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. Has the Senator completed his remarks?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Yes.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, this amendment has nothing to do with 
the Government's obligation to take possession of the waste. I think 
the Government should. But if the fund is insufficient, somebody will 
have to pay for that shortfall, and that somebody is the person who 
holds title to the waste. DOE will have possession under my amendment, 
but the utilities will retain the title.
  My colleagues have confused this. Of course, DOE will have 
possession. But the utilities will pay the title. This is not, 
Minnesotans and all the people across the country, about turning the 
lights off. That is not what this amendment is about, and my colleagues 
know it. It is about making sure that taxpayers don't get stuck with 
this unfunded liability.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. All time has expired.
  Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I move to table the pending amendment 
and ask for the yeas and nays.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
  There is a sufficient second.
  The yeas and nays were ordered.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is on agreeing to the motion to 
table the amendment of the Senator from Minnesota [Mr. Wellstone].
  The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk called the roll.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Ashcroft). Are there any other Senators in 
the Chamber desiring to vote?
  The result was announced--yeas 83, nays 17, as follows:

                      [Rollcall Vote No. 257 Leg.]

                                YEAS--83

     Abraham
     Ashcroft
     Bennett
     Biden
     Bingaman
     Bond
     Bradley
     Breaux
     Brown
     Bumpers
     Burns
     Campbell
     Chafee
     Coats
     Cochran
     Cohen
     Conrad
     Coverdell
     Craig
     D'Amato
     DeWine
     Dodd
     Domenici
     Dorgan
     Faircloth
     Feinstein
     Ford
     Frahm
     Frist
     Glenn
     Gorton
     Graham
     Gramm
     Grams
     Grassley
     Gregg
     Hatch
     Hatfield
     Heflin
     Helms
     Hollings
     Hutchison
     Inhofe
     Inouye
     Jeffords
     Johnston
     Kassebaum
     Kempthorne
     Kennedy
     Kerrey
     Kerry
     Kohl
     Kyl
     Lautenberg
     Levin
     Lieberman
     Lott
     Lugar
     Mack
     McCain
     McConnell
     Mikulski
     Moseley-Braun
     Murkowski
     Nickles
     Nunn
     Pressler
     Pryor
     Robb
     Roth
     Santorum
     Sarbanes
     Shelby
     Simon
     Simpson
     Smith
     Snowe
     Specter
     Stevens
     Thomas
     Thompson
     Thurmond
     Warner

                                NAYS--17

     Akaka
     Baucus
     Boxer
     Bryan
     Byrd
     Daschle
     Exon
     Feingold
     Harkin
     Leahy
     Moynihan
     Murray
     Pell
     Reid
     Rockefeller
     Wellstone
     Wyden
  The motion to lay on the table the amendment (No. 5037) was agreed 
to.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alaska is recognized.
  Mr. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote.
  Mr. THURMOND. I move to lay that motion on the table.
  The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.


                           Amendment No. 5051

  Mr. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I call up an amendment, No. 5051, which 
is at the desk. I ask it be stated.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
  The legislative clerk read as follows:

       The Senator from Alaska [Mr. Murkowski] proposes an 
     amendment numbered 5051.

  Mr. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of 
the amendment be dispensed with.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The amendment is as follows:

       Strike section 501 and insert in lieu thereof the 
     following:

     ``SEC. 501. COMPLIANCE WITH OTHER LAWS.

       ``If the requirements of any Federal, State, or local law 
     (including a requirement imposed by regulation or by any 
     other means under such a law) are inconsistent with or 
     duplicative of the requirements of the Atomic Energy Act of 
     1954 (42 U.S.C. 2011 et seq.) or of this Act, the Secretary 
     shall comply only with the requirements of the Atomic Energy 
     Act of 1954 and of this Act in implementing the integrated 
     management system.''.

  Mr. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, this amendment contains the language 
previously filed by Senator Chafee as amendment No. 4834. This 
amendment originally suggested by Senator Chafee would soften the 
existing preemption language in the bill to clarify that only when 
another Federal, State, or local law is inconsistent, that is, when 
another Federal, State, or local law is inconsistent or duplicative 
with this act, then this act will govern. Otherwise, all previous 
applications of both State and Federal environmental or safety statutes 
continue to apply.
  What we have attempted to do here is craft an amendment to ensure 
that there will be adequate oversight of all Federal and State and 
local laws, unless they are an obstacle to carrying out the act, 
because the act itself stipulates that there shall be an interim 
storage site at Yucca Mountain under specific conditions. Some have 
expressed concern that this language could be interpreted to provide 
preemption of other laws in cases where complying with those laws were 
simply inconvenient or impractical. That is not the case, and it does, 
I think, strain the interpretation of the bill.
  However, in order to address these questions, we are offering this 
amendment that was suggested by Senator Chafee. This language provides 
the Department of Energy must comply--they must comply--again, with all 
Federal, State, and local laws unless those laws are inconsistent with 
or duplicative of the requirements of S. 1936. There is an effort to, 
if you will, disguise by generalities the intent of this bill. But it 
mandates compliance, again, with all Federal, State, and local laws 
unless they are inconsistent or duplicative, duplicate the 
requirements.
  The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1996 contains a carefully crafted 
regulatory scheme that applies to this one unique nuclear waste storage 
facility. Think about that: This is consistent because there is no 
other such facility in the country. So the policy act contains words 
crafted relative to the regulatory proposal that applies to only this 
one, unique, nuclear waste storage facility. Since we have no other, 
this is designed specifically for this facility. So there is no 
applicability to any other facility.
  Our general Federal, State and local laws are intended to apply to 
every situation generically. So it is only appropriate that we clarify 
that where those general laws conflict with this very specific law that 
we are designing for this interim storage site, that we have carefully 
drafted, with the input of many concerned people, the provisions of 
this law, of this act, will control the process.
  The vast majority of other laws will certainly not be subject to 
being superseded and will be complied with. A suggestion that the 
Department of Energy should be forced to attempt to comply with laws 
that conflict with this act will simply open it up to spending years of 
litigation on which provisions apply and is simply a recipe, Mr. 
President, for unnecessary delays at the ratepayers' and taxpayers' 
expense and I think would provide full employment for a significant 
number of lawyers in this country.
  So I think as we attempt to address the merits of this amendment, we 
recognize that this is designed to address concerns that somehow this 
legislation, as crafted, will not cover adequately all Federal, State 
and local laws of an environmental nature that are, obviously, designed 
for the protection of the public.
  Mr. President, I retain the remainder of my time and ask if my good 
friends from Nevada would like to have some time running. If there is 
any other Senator here who would like to be heard on this amendment, I 
would appreciate it if they will advise the staff, and we will attempt 
to accommodate them on time.
  Mr. BRYAN addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Nevada.
  Mr. BRYAN. Mr. President, I yield myself 15 minutes.
  Mr. President, I believe it will be helpful for our colleagues and 
staffs listening in, because these two amendments have been described 
in the abstract. I acknowledge and confess that it has been a number of 
years since I attended law school, but I must say,

[[Page S9223]]

not even a flyspeck lawyer could make a meaningful distinction between 
these two provisions.
  Let me read them, because they are quite simple. Under the language 
of the amendment that was offered earlier today and was approved by the 
body, section 501 deals with compliance with other laws. So here is the 
present state of the legislation as we debate it. It is only a couple 
of paragraphs, so I think it important it be understood:

       If the requirements of any law are inconsistent with or 
     duplicative of the requirements of the Atomic Energy Act and 
     this Act, the Secretary shall comply only with the 
     requirements of the Atomic Energy Act and this Act in 
     implementing the integrated management system.
       Any requirement of a State or political subdivision of a 
     State is preempted (1) if complying with such requirement and 
     a requirement of this Act is impossible; (2) that such 
     requirement, as applied or enforced, is an obstacle to 
     accomplishing or carrying out this Act or regulation under 
     this Act.

  So, in effect, what the bill currently does is it bifurcates, it 
makes reference to Federal laws and then it talks about State 
preemption. But the operative language with respect to Federal law 
under the current state of the bill is that if any requirement of any 
law is inconsistent with the provisions of this act, it shall not 
apply.
  By any plain reading of the language that is contained, 
any reasonable interpretation, that is, in point of fact, a Federal 
preemption.

  The second part of the existing bill deals specifically with State 
preemption and has those two provisions. If it is impossible, then you 
don't have to comply with it and, second, if it is an obstacle to 
accomplishing or carrying out the act, you don't have to comply with 
it.
  Here is the so-called amendment that changes all of that, that solves 
it that deals with the issue. Section 501, which is the amendment 
offered by our friend from Alaska, says as follows:

       If the requirement of any Federal, State or local law, 
     including a requirement imposed by regulation or by any other 
     means under such law, are inconsistent with or duplicative to 
     the requirements of the Atomic Energy Act or of this Act, the 
     Secretary shall comply only with the requirements of the 
     Atomic Energy Act of 1954 and this Act in implementing the 
     integrated management system.

  Mr. President, I say to my colleagues, it could not be clearer. One 
does not have to go to law school to understand that if any other 
provision of the law is inconsistent with this bill, it does not apply.
  What provisions are we talking about? We are talking about the entire 
framework of the environmental laws in America that have been enacted 
since the early 1970's. And lest this debate be deemed to be of a 
partisan nature--and I assure my colleagues it is not--many of those 
provisions were enacted under the Presidency of Richard Nixon.
  Here is what we wipe out: If, for example, the Clean Air Act is 
inconsistent with the bill that we are going to be asked to vote on for 
final passage later on today, the entire Clean Air Act does not apply.
  If the Clean Water Act has any provision that is inconsistent with 
the provisions of this act, it does not apply.
  If the Superfund law has any provision inconsistent with the 
provisions of the bill that we are being asked to vote on, it does not 
apply.
  If the National Environmental Policy Act contains any provision that 
is inconsistent with the provisions of the bill that we are going to be 
asked to vote on, it does not apply.
  If FLPMA, the Federal Land Policy and Management Act, has any 
provision inconsistent with this bill, it does not apply.
  Think about that for a moment. This is truly a nuclear utility's 
dream. In effect, these provisions that are the framework of our 
environmental policy in America, most of which have been enacted over 
the past two decades, that none of these, not a one, not one has any 
force of law whatsoever if it is deemed to be in conflict with the 
provisions of this act.
  I know that a number of my colleagues have been persuaded, and I 
regret that fact, that there is a great urgency and imperative to move 
nuclear waste. This is all, in my opinion, part of a fabricated, as the 
Washington Post concluded, contrived argument. They have been at this 
now for 16 years.
  If we were looking at the Congressional Record of this very week in 
1980, my colleagues, I think, would be surprised, because the thrust of 
the argument is identical: ``Hey, we've got to have this, we've got to 
have it right away. Waive the acts, waive the laws, we have to get this 
going.''
  In point of fact, I call this to my colleagues' attention. 
Congressional Record, July 28, 1980, 16 years ago:
       Mr. President, this bill deals comprehensively with the 
     problem of civilian nuclear waste.

  That sounds familiar.

       It is an urgent problem--

  That kind of sounds familiar, too, doesn't it?

     Mr. President, for this Nation. It is urgent, first, because 
     we are running out of reactor space at reactors for storage 
     of the fuel, and if we do not build what we call away-from-
     reactor storage--

  That is a little different. We call it interim storage now, but away-
from-reactor storage is the same basic concept--

     and begin that soon, we could begin shutting down civilian 
     nuclear reactors in this country as soon as 1983, those 
     predictions coming from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and 
     the Department of Energy.

  That is 1980.
  As of 1983, 13 years ago, not a single nuclear utility in America has 
shut down because it has run out of space. So when we use ``contrived'' 
and ``fabricated,'' that is precisely the language to describe it.
  That is why every environmental organization in America that I am 
aware of has examined the preemption sections and have concluded that 
it would be bad, bad public policy. From the Sierra Club to public-
interest groups to Citizen Awareness to the League of Conservation 
Voters, and many, many more.
  So I hear my colleagues often talk about this, the proponents of this 
bill, that this is an important piece of environmental legislation. Let 
me be clear. This is an important piece of environmental legislation, 
yes, because it would be a disaster repealing, by implication and by 
expressed language, all of the provisions that have been enacted for 
more than a quarter of a century as it relates to this process.
  So that is why in a letter that has been sent to the Democratic 
leader, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, Ms. 
Browner, has specifically referenced the fact that this would be a 
preemption.
  I quote her letter when she indicates:

       EPA is also concerned with provisions of S. 1936 and the 
     substitute amendments--

  The one that we are addressing right now--

       which preempt the environmental protections provided by 
     other environmental statutes. Section 501 in the bill and 
     amendment preempts all Federal, state, and local 
     environmental laws applicable to the Yucca Mountain facility 
     if they are inconsistent with or duplicative of the [specific 
     piece of legislation we are talking about].

  So I think that the colleagues who want to say to themselves, well, 
in this debate who has more credibility with respect to whether or not 
this is preemption? The agency under the law, the Environmental 
Protection Agency's Administrator has been very clear. It is clearly a 
preemption. The environmental organizations in America who have looked 
at this all have concluded that it is a preemption and, for that 
reason, would be an environmental disaster.
  But may I say, just plain ordinary English, just read it. It could 
not be clearer. ``If the requirements of any Federal, State, or local 
law (including a requirement imposed by regulation or by any other 
means under such a law) are inconsistent with or duplicative of the 
requirements of the Atomic Energy Act * * * or of this Act, the 
Secretary shall comply only''--only--``with the requirements of the 
Atomic Energy Act * * * and of this Act * * *.''
  So, Mr. President, I think it is beyond refutation, beyond argument. 
Why is that important? My colleague from Nevada, in a moment, will 
expand upon one aspect of that, and that is the transportation issue.
  Let me just say, to give a little flavor of this, that it is 
contemplated, under this piece of legislation that would create an 
interim storage facility, that 85,000 metric tons of fuel would be 
shipped from existing commercial reactors and transported to the Nevada 
test site in Nevada. That is about 6,200 shipments by truck, about 
9,400 by rail. Some have indicated those numbers understate the amount.

[[Page S9224]]

  Each truck cask weighs 25 tons, each rail cask up to 125 tons. Each 
rail cask--that is the one that is 125 tons--contains the radiological 
equivalent, in terms of long-life radiation, of 200 Hiroshima bombs. So 
when we refer to this as a ``mobile Chernobyl,'' this nuclear waste is 
rolling through your community. My colleague will address that in more 
detail. Fifty-one million Americans live within 1 mile of one of the 
rail or highway transportation routes that would be involved in the 
transshipment of these 85,000 metric tons.

  I may say that my friend from a previous life--the distinguished 
occupant of the chair--his State knows well the circumstance because 
his predecessors, in the aftermath of Three Mile Island, were very much 
involved in a debate because much of that waste would have gone through 
the St. Louis metropolitan area.
  I just say that the transportation route which I know my friend fully 
understands contemplates 6,000 shipments that will move through St. 
Louis, just to cite one particular State and a large metropolitan area 
that would be exposed to this risk. Let me just repeat, before yielding 
to my colleague, that each one of those rail casks, 125 tons, with the 
radioactive equivalent of 200 Hiroshima-sized bombs--now, admittedly, 
the truck casks are slightly different; they are 25 tons--so let us say 
that each one of those shipments roughly would contain the equivalent 
of 40 Hiroshima-sized bombs in terms of the amount of long-lived 
nuclear radiation that would be involved.
  So when we are talking about preempting all of these laws, this is 
not just a law school or academic or esoteric issue. This is something 
that has been designed by Democrats and Republicans alike over a 
quarter of a century and is designed to protect Americans everywhere--
everywhere. We are talking about 43 States that would be involved in 
this transportation route. So I know that many of our colleagues have 
heard our arguments and are perhaps weary of them.
  But let me urge them to look at these preemption provisions. They are 
antienvironment. They are opposed by every environmental organization 
in America. We are not just talking about some technical, abstract 
proposition. We are talking about the full panoply of environmental 
laws designed to protect all Americans. Very clearly, what the 
amendment offered by the Senator from Alaska would do, it would do the 
same, in my view, as the language in the present bill and simply say 
that, if any of these provisions conflict in any way with the 
provisions of this act, they simply are to be ignored and set aside.
  I reserve the remainder of my time, and yield the floor.
  Mr. MURKOWSKI. We have one-half hour remaining. Senator Johnston has 
indicated that he would like to respond very briefly for 2 minutes, and 
then I intend to recognize the Senator from North Carolina for 
approximately 5 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has 24 minutes remaining.
  Mr. JOHNSTON. I thank my colleague for yielding.
  I want to briefly reply to a statement that was made a little earlier 
by the Senator from Nevada, quoting me a few years back saying that 
nuclear powerplants were running out of space. The fact of the matter 
is, that statement was true.
  What has happened since that time is two things. First, there has 
been a regulatory and technological change in allowing what is called 
reracking or a greater density of nuclear rods in the swimming pools, 
using more boron and a change in licensing.
  The change in licensing, obviously, was not under the control of the 
utilities, and they have allowed that. I might say that is now at its 
maximum. Some would say that the NRC is flirting with the safety 
question by allowing such density of reracking.
  But, in addition to that, Mr. President, some utilities have been 
forced to buy their own dry cask storage at great expense. The Surry VA 
nuclear plant has been required to do so, the Calvert Cliffs plant in 
Maryland has been required to do so, and Northern States Power in 
Minnesota has been required to do so.
  As mentioned earlier, according to the decision just rendered by the 
D.C. Court of Appeals, that will become, on January 31, 1998, the 
responsibility of the Federal Government to pay for. That is really 
what is at issue here in the interim storage. That is, if we do not 
build interim storage, then the Federal Government is going to have to 
pay for the dry cask storage on site for a host of utilities, not just 
the three which have it now, but for a host of utilities all around the 
country.
  So, ratepayers and taxpayers will be paying twice, first, with the 
nuclear waste fee, and, second, with the damages which will be assessed 
to the Federal Government to pay for the dry cask storage. That $5 
billion additional fee for damages to the Federal Government can and 
should be avoided. That is what we seek to do in this legislation. I 
thank my colleague.

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Carolina is recognized.
  Mr. FAIRCLOTH. Mr. President, if ever we have had a commonsense 
solution to a complex problem come through the Senate, it is S. 1936. 
It is a sensible way to deal with the high-level radioactive waste that 
has been accumulating in 110 commercial nuclear units throughout the 
country.
  Regrettably, Mr. President, this bill has been met with wave after 
wave of opposition based on emotion and ulterior motives rather than 
the true scientific facts of what we are dealing with.
  It is now time for this Senate to stand up and make workable 
decisions using the facts, those facts that we know and have been 
proven, and ignoring the conflicting rhetoric, no matter how loudly it 
is expressed.
  As chairman of the Subcommittee on Clean Air, Wetlands, Private 
Property and Nuclear Safety, I am fully confident S. 1936 is a proper 
approach that will ensure the storage, disposal, and transportation of 
spent nuclear fuel and will be accomplished under all necessary safety 
requirements.
  Mr. President, it has been brought up that safety is not really the 
issue here. Opponents wish to use safety as a stalking horse, because 
by keeping spent fuel in a state of uncertainty, they can argue that no 
more nuclear plants should be built and current plants should be 
closed.
  The strategy is very simple: Confuse the debate when you do not have 
a legitimate argument. This is really not about disposal of spent fuel. 
What we are really talking about here is the future of nuclear energy 
as a generator of power in this Nation. The Federal Government has a 
legal responsibility to take the utilities' spent fuel. This is a legal 
responsibility.
  Last week, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia 
cited the Department of Energy must begin accepting this waste by 
January 1, 1998, an obvious ruling considering the clear requirements 
of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982. It seems that just about 
everybody understands this except the Department of Energy.
  Taxpayers are not paying for spent fuel disposal. Fulfilling their 
part of the bargain, electric utility customers have contributed $12 
billion into the nuclear waste fund, $344 million from North Carolina 
alone. Now, it is time for the Federal Government to live up to its 
part of the bargain.
  Utilities do not have enough onsite spent fuel storage space to 
permit electrical production to continue for the entire life of their 
plants, which is 40 years, and possibly many, many more. The Federal 
Government has to fulfill its responsibility and start taking the spent 
fuel.
  If we continue to accept delays, inexcusable delays that have plagued 
this program, the same utility customers will be forced to pay twice 
and finance the expansion of new construction at existing plants to 
store spent fuel. Those who advocate delaying centralized storage 
believe it is better, instead, to store spent fuel at 110 nuclear units 
around the country than in one area. If ever there was a false idea as 
to the safety of storing it, it is to have it in 110 different 
locations.
  Mr. President, let me address the concern that has been raised about 
the transportation of nuclear fuel. The Federal Government currently 
transports spent fuel from foreign research reactors in the name of 
reducing the risk of proliferation. We do it very well. The Navy moves 
spent fuel for temporary storage in Idaho, and utilities transport fuel 
between stations. Transporting and storing fuel is one of the few 
things we do very well.

[[Page S9225]]

  There is absolutely no reason for any further delay, and there are 
many compelling reasons to move forward. There is absolutely no reason 
to delay any further. There are many compelling reasons we need to move 
forward. We must pass S. 1936 to demonstrate fiscal responsibility and 
to fulfill the promises made by the U.S. Government on which, in good 
faith, the Nation's electrical utility customers have relied.
  Once again, let me repeat, this is not about the waste. It is not 
about the disposal of nuclear waste. It is about the future of nuclear 
energy in this country. That is what the opposition is fighting.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Idaho controls 15 minutes and 
45 seconds, and the other side has 15 minutes.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, if anyone has any question about where the 
money is on this issue, where the big lobbyists stand, all we need to 
do is walk out this set of doors to my right prior to the next vote 
being called and you will find a sea of lobbyists. This is one of the 
heaviest lobbying jobs we have ever seen.
  There are always promises about this bill, through the various 
incarnations of the legislation, that it is going to get better. Mr. 
President, 1271 was introduced. They said it was not quite good enough 
and tried to make it better. Thereafter, 1936 was introduced and they 
said it was a better bill. Now we have a number of substitutes that 
allegedly will make it better. None of them make it better.
  I have been a member of the Environment and Public Works Committee my 
entire time in the Senate. I love working on that committee. I have 
served as chairman of the subcommittee that dealt with chemicals and 
pesticides. We held significant hearings on a drug called Alar, put on 
apples, grapes, cherries, to prolong their lifetime. It was poisonous. 
It made people sick, we believed, and is no longer used. We had 
hearings on lawn chemicals, fungicides.
  Mr. President, I am, almost for lack of a better word, offended by 
someone saying that this amendment will ease the environmental laws. 
The environmental laws are preempted. They take away all the Federal 
laws, laws we have worked on. I cannot imagine, for example, the 
chairman of the full committee thinking that legislation like this is 
good, legislation that I know he has fought for on a bipartisan basis, 
including the Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act, Safe Drinking Water Act, 
Superfund--these laws are all preempted by S.1936.
  My colleague, the Senator from Nevada, did a good job of explaining 
why this does not answer the problems. It is as bad with this amendment 
as without the amendment.
  We have talked about this legislation being unnecessary, and it is 
unnecessary. The Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board is not biased 
toward either side. A group of 12 scientists, eminent scientists, said 
that transportation of nuclear waste at this time is unnecessary and 
wrong. Their conclusions were driven by careful and objective 
examinations of all the issues. They concluded that centralization of 
spent nuclear fuel, high-level nuclear waste, makes no technical sense, 
no safety sense, or financial sense.

  They found that there is no need for off-site interim storage. They 
also decided that transportation under this bill is extremely risky. 
Why do they say that? They say it because it doesn't permit what is 
absolutely necessary--that is, planning and preparation to make sure 
that the public health and safety is protected during this massive 
undertaking.
  Mr. President, we are not talking only about the people of Nevada, we 
are talking about the residents of 43 States. Nobody ever responds to 
the transportation issue. People are concerned in this Chamber about 
garbage being hauled across State lines. I don't know how many sponsors 
there are on the legislation, but I am one of those that think there 
should be some rules about transporting garbage. Well, this is real 
garbage. This is real garbage. This is worse than any plastics, or 
paper, or hazardous waste that you might throw in the garbage. This is 
real garbage.
  In the past, we have had roughly 100 shipments per year of nuclear 
waste, but they have gone short distances, and most of these were 
between various places in the eastern part of the United States in 
reprocessing facilities.
  Mr. President, this legislation is a concern to people all over the 
country. I received in my office a letter from someone in St. Louis, 
MO. I did not ask for the letter. I got it in the mail. A resident of 
St. Louis, MO, sent to me in the mail a newspaper from St. Louis. It is 
dated the middle of June. This newspaper is the Riverfront Times. One 
of the lead stories in this publication is ``Gateway to the Waste, Not 
to the West.''
  This article says a number of things. One of the things it says is 
this:

       No matter how slim the odds of an accident, the potential 
     consequences of such a move are cataclysmic. Under the plan, 
     tons of radioactive materials would likely pass through the 
     St. Louis area by either truck or rail a few times a week for 
     the next 30 years.

  We guess about 6,000 truck and train loads would pass through this 
site.
  The article goes on to say:

       Each cask would contain the radiological equivalent of 200 
     Hiroshima bombs. Altogether, the nuclear dunnage would be 
     enough to kill everybody on earth.

  That is why people all over the country are concerned about this 
nuclear poison. ``Safety last'' is the hallmark of this legislation. 
This is not a Nevada issue; it is a national issue. Why? It is a 
national issue because we have train wrecks that have occurred all over 
the United States.
  Look at these pictures. Here is one in Ledger, MT. If you want to 
talk about a wreck, this is a real wreck. This is a mutilated train 
outside Ledger, MT. We also had one thousands of miles away, a recent 
train wreck that occurred in Corona, CA. This closed down I-15 for 
about 4 days, off and on, which is the main road between Los Angeles, 
CA, and Las Vegas, NV. Fire burned for a long period of time.
  Also, Mr. President, we had a train wreck that occurred in Alabama a 
little over a year ago. Some of the people watching this will remember. 
A barge, in effect, nicked this train trestle, and the next time the 
train went through, it did not go all the way through. It dumped people 
in the river, killed people.
  People are concerned about transportation, and they should be 
concerned about transportation, because we have been told by those who 
know that we should not be transporting nuclear waste. There is no need 
to do it. The Nuclear Technical Review Board said there is no reason to 
do it. They are 12 nonpartisan scientists who are trying to do the best 
thing for the country.
  Mr. President, this spent nuclear fuel--we talk about Nevada, but it 
originates someplace. We have here a chart that we will talk about 
later. It shows the funnel effect of transportation. Thousands, tens of 
thousands of loads of spent nuclear fuel will be shipped and eventually 
wind up in a tiny spot in Nevada. But in the process of getting there, 
these thousands of shipments will go into 43 different States.

  Mr. President, these shipments start somewhere. They don't start in 
Nevada. We don't have nuclear fuel. This is a risk to all States of the 
United States, not just Nevada. The industry and the sponsors of this 
bill would like you to believe that transportation is risk free. Well, 
it isn't. There have been truck and train accidents involving all kinds 
of things, including nuclear waste. We have been fortunate that there 
has not been a great dispersion of this nuclear poison. There will be 
more accidents because there will be tens of thousands of more loads of 
this.
  The industry will tell you that the probability of an accident is not 
great. Well, probabilities have an inevitable result, and if you push 
them long enough, the adverse will occur. The day before Chernobyl, the 
probability of such an accident was extremely low. The accident 
happened and the consequences were enormous. Now, the probability of 
another one is much more significant than it was. The same potential 
exists here.
  Mr. President, under this legislation, as the Nuclear Technical 
Review Board said, we have not made the necessary investments to assure 
capable responses to accidents. I talked about a few of these train 
wrecks. We know that if they are moved, they are subject to terrible 
violation. We know that the casks have been developed to be protective 
of fire. Yes, fire for 30 minutes.

[[Page S9226]]

  We know that recently--in fact, last year--we had a train that burned 
for 4 days. What will a cask do that is safe for 30 minutes of exposure 
to fire at temperatures of 1475 degrees? Well, it is pretty tough to 
understand that when we know that diesel fuel burns at an average 
temperature of 1800 degrees.
  Most of the trucks and trains use diesel fuel. Diesel fuel has had 
occurrences where the heat was 3200 degrees Fahrenheit. So why only 30 
minutes? Why 1475 degrees? It simply will not protect us, Mr. 
President. They also say, well, you can get in a wreck--they have a 
little film in the industry, which they will show you. You will see 
this truck firing down and the cask shoots off of it. Well, the casks 
are safe if the accident occurs if you are only going 30 miles an hour. 
If you are going faster, you have big problems. The cask will break, 
and you are in trouble.
  I don't know how many would think that this train accident here 
occurred when the train was going 30 miles an hour. The damage to this 
vehicle had to have occurred at more than 30 miles an hour. We all 
know--because we have watched trains go by--that trains do go 30 miles 
an hour once in a while, but not very often. So having protection at 30 
miles an hour simply doesn't do the trick.
  We have residents, Mr. President, along this route--over 50 million 
of them--within a mile of where this poison is going to be carried. The 
term ``mobile Chernobyl'' has been coined for this legislation, and 
rightfully so. A trainload of waste may not contain the potential that 
Chernobyl provided--with death and destruction in its wake, and people 
are still dying from that --but the risk is still there.
  People know the risk of this poison. This is something that we have 
talked about early on, about people waiting after one of these 
accidents to find out what dreaded disease they are going to get. The 
odds are that they will get something. We have had that experience in 
Nevada. We know that the above-ground nuclear tests made a lot of 
people sick, Mr. President. Most of the downwinders were in east-
central Nevada and southern Utah. They got real sick. So transportation 
is something that has not been answered, it has not been responded to, 
and it should, because transportation of nuclear waste is something 
that we simply do not know how to do yet.
  Mr. CRAIG addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Idaho, [Mr. Craig] is 
recognized. The Senator from Idaho has 15 minutes 16 seconds.
  Mr. CRAIG. What remains on the other side?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Nevada has 2 minutes 11 
seconds remaining.
  Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, will you signal me when I have spoken for 
10 minutes?
  Mr. President, we have heard a series of statements by my colleague 
from Nevada that I think the least you could say about is that they 
were subtly inflammatory. The worst you can say about them is that they 
are shocking; alarming. The only problem is, if they were true, they 
might be that. But they are not true. Science argues it, the law argues 
it, and the facts argue it. There is nothing worse than a picture of a 
train wreck which my colleague from Nevada has put forth; very 
dramatic.
  If there had been a cask of spent nuclear fuel in the middle of that 
train wreck, it would still be there and it would be whole and it would 
be unbreached. That is the evidence. While my colleague from Nevada 
would argue that these tests are at 30 miles an hour, what it shows is 
that, in speeds in excess of 150 miles an hour, there might be a 
potential of breach. My colleague from Nevada is right. You rarely see 
a train that moves less than 30, although I have never seen one moving 
at 150.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, will the Senator yield for a question?
  Mr. CRAIG. I am happy to yield for a question; a question, not a 
statement, or I will take my time back. Thank you.
  Mr. REID. Will the Senator inform me and the rest of the Senate where 
the 150 miles an hour information comes from?
  Mr. CRAIG. The 150 miles an hour we talk about in relation to the 
science that was developed to an ``unyielding surface.'' I believe that 
is the term that is used in the test. That was the result of the 
calculation which was a product of Sandia National Laboratory, so, I 
guess I could say, from the best engineers in the country who know how 
to look at the science and the engineering involved and come up with 
those calculations.
  The most I can say--and I think my colleagues deserve to hear this--
is that the language that has been offered and the statements that have 
been offered this afternoon by my colleague from Nevada as it relates 
to transportation are simply misleading.
  By the way, when you talk of Chernobyl or you talk of Hiroshima and 
you talk of explosions, casks do not explode, period. There is no one 
in the scientific field today who would make that argument. If they 
were breached, they would release radioactivity, but they do not 
explode, and it is unfair to in any way paint the verbal picture that 
that kind of risk would be involved.
  What the paper from Missouri did not say was that waste now traffics 
through St. Louis, MO, and it has for a good number of years in its 
route across the country to the State of Idaho, or to other States 
where the waste ultimately finds a temporary storage destination.
  So for this to be something new in the city of St. Louis is not true. 
What is important to say about it is that in all the years that it has 
been trafficked by our Federal Government, there have been no accidents 
that resulted in any radioactive spill. That is what is important to 
understand here. I think that is the issue that is so critical as we 
debate this.

  The amendment we have before us is very clear. It says that DOE must 
comply with all Federal, State, and local laws unless they are 
inconsistent, or duplicative with the requirements of S. 1936.
  My colleagues from Nevada could list all of the Federal laws in the 
country; every one of them. You can just pick and pull. The point is 
that, if they are duplicative, then we have already met the test. Why 
ask somebody to repeat and repeat again only for the exercise, the 
futility, if you have already made the determination? Would we list all 
of the defense laws in the country? Pick any law you want. That is not 
the issue.
  The issue is the question of compliance being responsible, being 
environmentally safe, and humanly safe. I must say that, based on the 
record that we have already demonstrated in this country by the 
transporting of the high-level waste of the Defense Department, we have 
a spotless record.
  So it is impossible to argue unless you really wish to only 
characterize this for the purposes of a motion.
  Mr. BRYAN. Will the Senator yield?
  Mr. CRAIG. I have no more time to yield. Thank you.
  In this issue, emotion sometimes works and scare sometimes works, and 
I understand that. I have no concern about that. The citizens of my 
State are very frustrated, as I know the citizens of the State of 
Nevada are. But what the citizens of Idaho have to admit is that in the 
years that nuclear waste has been transported to Idaho or through Idaho 
there has never been a spill. It has been transported safely. Idaho has 
been concerned about it and has repeatedly checked on it, and as a 
result of all of that, it has been done in a very safe way.
  The Hazardous Materials Transportation Act that S. 1936 complies to, 
the responsibility that States and authorities have under that act and 
that the local communities have under that act to assure the safest of 
transportation, is exactly what we are achieving here. It is my intent, 
and it is the intent of the Senator from Alaska and the Senator from 
Louisiana, to assure this Senate that within the capacity of the law 
and in the capacity of science and engineering today, this is safe. 
History proves it to be safe. There is no way to argue an example where 
it has failed or has been unsafe.
  At this time, I would like to yield 1 minute to my colleague from 
Louisiana.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Louisiana.
  Mr. JOHNSTON. I thank my colleague for yielding, Mr. President.
  I simply wanted to quote from the Nuclear Waste Technical Review 
Board

[[Page S9227]]

of March 1996 on the question of transportation risk. The Technical 
Review Board has been quoted by both sides here today, but this bears 
directly on the question. It says:

       The Nation has more than three decades of experience 
     transporting both civilian and DOE-owned spent fuel. In 1997, 
     471 shipments were made, 444 of which were by truck. In the 
     1980's, 100 to 200 such shipments were typically made each 
     year. Numerous analyses have been performed in recent years 
     concerning the transportation risks associated with shipping 
     spent fuel. The result of these analyses all show very low 
     levels of risk under both normal and accident conditions. The 
     safety record has been very good and corroborates the low 
     risks estimated analytically. In fact, during the decades 
     that spent fuel has been shipped, no accident has caused a 
     radioactive release.

  Again, from the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board of March 1996.
  Mr. MURKOWSKI. How much time is remaining?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alaska has 6 minutes, and the 
other side has 1 minute left.
  Mr. MURKOWSKI. I will make a relatively short statement.
  Mr. President, again I would like to refer specifically to what this 
amendment does and what it does not do.
  The amendment simply states that if there are provisions of law that 
are inconsistent with specific terms of this bill, then this bill is 
applicable. This bill will govern.
  Now, the Senators from Nevada would ask that the Department of Energy 
attempt to comply with inconsistent laws.
  I can only assume that they ask this because they know it is 
impossible to do. That is a catch-22. That is simply a recipe for 
delay, a recipe for additional expense, a recipe for additional 
litigation and full employment for a lot of lawyers. Instead, we offer 
a responsible provision which clarifies that while the Department of 
Energy will comply with this act, if any Federal, State, or local law 
is not in conflict with this act, those laws will be complied with.
  I reiterate--this is a unique, one-of-a-kind facility. That is why we 
are here today. We are designing laws to fit this facility. That is why 
we are debating this legislation. It is not designed to do anything 
more than address this facility. Other laws are designed for a broad 
breadth of activities. This is unique. It contains a carefully crafted 
regulatory program, as I have said, governing this facility only. The 
position of the Senators from Nevada, I think, results in confusion and 
attempts to thwart the will of Congress as expressed in this very 
unique piece of legislation designed for one thing.
  Let me just mention the transportation aspect because I have had an 
opportunity to observe transportation of high-level nuclear waste in 
Great Britain, in France, and Sweden. To suggest that American 
technology cannot safely develop a system and casks necessary to 
transport this waste is simply unrealistic. It is moving by rail in 
France. One can go into a nuclear plant and see cars on the sidings 
that were designed to carry the casks. It is moved in Scandinavia by 
special ships that have been built that traverse the shores of Sweden 
unescorted. They are in casks. They are specially crewed from the 
standpoint of the training, but it is not Government employees, it is a 
shipping line, and they have a proven record of safety.
  We have seen this high-level nuclear waste moved in Europe by highway 
in casks with appropriate measures. If Members will recall, there was a 
thought given a few years ago to the utilization of a Boeing 747-400 to 
move high-level waste from the Orient to Europe, primarily because the 
Japanese were interested in bringing their waste back to France for 
reprocessing. So you would be basically moving waste that contains 
plutonium. The question quite legitimately came up, can you design a 
cask to withstand a free fall at 30,000 feet? And the answer was, yes, 
it can be done. It will cost a good deal of money.
  What we are talking about here is a realization that we have moved 
this material for an extended period of time throughout Europe. We have 
moved it in the United States to a lesser degree. But if we adopt this 
legislation and if Yucca is the interim site for a repository, to 
suggest that we cannot move it safely defies realism, defies the 
experience that other countries have had, and I think it sells American 
technology short.
  I see no other Senator at this time who desires to speak, and I 
reserve the remainder of my time pending the disposition of the pending 
amendment.
  Mr. BRYAN addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Campbell). The Senator from Nevada [Mr. 
Bryan] is recognized.
  Mr. BRYAN. I thank the Senator.
  Let me respond briefly. The Senator from Idaho was unable to respond 
to my question because of time limitations, but he was going on at some 
length as to why the Senators from Nevada would insist that there, in 
effect, be a duplicative experience when the law already covered it.
  A point I want to make very emphatically is the Senator from Idaho is 
quoting from only a part of the preemption language. The preemption 
language, in effect, says that if the requirements of any Federal, 
State, or local law are inconsistent with--inconsistent with--or 
duplicative. So the point I made, I think, is a telling one and one 
that is irrefutable, in my opinion, namely that all of these 
environmental laws that we talked about, if there is a conflict, do not 
apply.

  I must say that in terms of public policy, putting aside one's view 
for the moment of how you feel about nuclear waste and any urgency that 
may or may not be present, what a disastrous public policy it is to 
wipe out the environmental laws, and that is why every environmental 
organization has opposed this language and that is why the 
Environmental Protection Agency has strongly resisted it.
  Let me talk a moment about the casks, and we will talk a lot more 
about transportation later on in this debate. The senior Senator from 
Louisiana cites the numbers that have been shipped around the country. 
I am sure he is absolutely accurate. But we are talking about something 
of a scale and dimension unprecedented anywhere in the world--85,000 
metric tons, 16,000 shipments. We are not talking about 100. We are 
talking about 16,000 shipments. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission 
claims that the cask design will fail in 6 of every 1,000 rail 
accidents. Built into this, the laws of probability tell us that with 
the heightened and elevated volume, you are going to have an accident 
and a failure.
  Finally, I would just like to say with respect to the casks, what has 
driven this entire debate about nuclear waste over the years is how to 
do it cheaper, how to do it faster. That is where the nuclear utilities 
are coming from. And so the new casks that are going to be used to 
store this have not yet been designed and they will be less expensive 
and subject to less rigorous standards.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senators' time has expired.
  The Senator from Alaska has 1 minute and 6 seconds.
  Mr. MURKOWSKI. Has all time expired?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. All time of the Senators from Nevada has 
expired.
  Mr. MURKOWSKI. I say to my friend relative to his reference to an 
unprecedented scale which he suggests will occur, that factually is 
just not so. As a matter of fact, the French alone have moved 30,000 
metric tons of spent fuel--that is spent nuclear fuel. This is the same 
amount we currently have, or approximately the same amount we have in 
the United States today.
  I remind my colleagues of one other thing. While it is true we do not 
have support from the environmental movement in this country, the 
reality is that most of those groups are opposed to the generation of 
power by nuclear energy. What they do not do is recognize the 
obligation that since we are nearly 22 percent dependent on nuclear 
energy, we are going to have to meet the demand with something else. 
Nuclear power opponents want to terminate the industry, by not allowing 
the States to have the availability of storage under State licenses. So 
when one looks at the environmental concern, you have to recognize the 
environmentalists are not really meeting their obligation, and that is 
to come up with an alternative.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator's time has expired.
  All time has expired.
  Mr. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, it would be my intention to ask for a 
voice vote on this amendment unless there is an objection.

[[Page S9228]]

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there an objection? If not, the question 
occurs on agreeing to Murkowski amendment No. 5051.
  The amendment (No. 5051) was agreed to.
  Mr. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote.
  Mr. JOHNSTON. I move to lay that motion on the table.
  The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.


                           Amendment No. 5048

  Mr. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I call up amendment numbered 5048 which 
is at the desk and ask that it be stated.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the amendment.
  The bill clerk read as follows:

       The Senator from Alaska [Mr.Murkowski] proposes an 
     amendment numbered 5048.

  Mr. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of 
the amendment be dispensed with.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The amendment is as follows:

       Strike subsections (h) through (i) of section 201 and 
     insert in lieu thereof the following--
       ``(h) Benefits Agreement.--
       ``(1) In general.--The Secretary shall offer to enter into 
     an agreement with the City of Caliente and Lincoln County, 
     Nevada concerning the integrated management system.
       ``(2) Agreement content.--Any agreement shall contain such 
     terms and conditions, including such financial and 
     institutional arrangements, as the Secretary and agreement 
     entity determine to be reasonable and appropriate and shall 
     contain such provisions as are necessary to preserve any 
     right to participation or compensation of the City of 
     Caliente and Lincoln County, Nevada.
       ``(3) Amendment.--An agreement entered into under this 
     subsection may be amended only with the mutual consent of the 
     parties to the amendment and terminated only in accordance 
     with paragraph (4).
       ``(4) Termination.--The Secretary shall terminate the 
     agreement under this subsection if any major element of the 
     integrated management system may not be completed.
       ``(5) Limitation.--Only 1 agreement may be in effect at any 
     one time.
       ``(6) Judicial review.--Decisions of the Secretary under 
     this section are not subject to judicial review.
       ``(i) Content of Agreement.--
       ``(1) Schedule.--In addition to the benefits to which the 
     City of Caliente and Lincoln County is entitled to under this 
     title, the Secretary shall make payments under the benefits 
     agreement in accordance with the following schedule:

                            BENEFITS SCHEDULE                           
                          [Amounts in millions]                         
------------------------------------------------------------------------
                            Event                               Payment 
------------------------------------------------------------------------
(A) Annual payments prior to first receipt of spent fuel.....       $2.5
(B) Annual payments beginning upon first spent fuel receipt..          5
(C) Payment upon closure of the intermodal transfer facility.          5
------------------------------------------------------------------------

       ``(2) Definitions.--For purposes of this section, the 
     term--
       ``(A) `spent fuel' means high-level radioactive waste or 
     spent nuclear fuel; and
       ``(B) `first spent fuel receipt' does not include receipt 
     of spent fuel or high-level radioactive waste for purposes of 
     testing or operational demonstration.
       ``(3) Annual payments.--Annual payments prior to first 
     spent fuel receipt under paragraph (1)(A) shall be made on 
     the date of execution of the benefits agreement and 
     thereafter on the anniversary date of such execution. Annual 
     payments after the first spent fuel receipt until closure of 
     the facility under paragraph (1)(C) shall be made on the 
     anniversary date of such first spent fuel receipt.
       ``(4) Reduction.--If the first spent fuel payment under 
     paragraph (1)(B) is made within 6 months after the last 
     annual payment prior to the receipt of spent fuel under 
     paragraph (1)(A), such first spent fuel payment under 
     paragraph (1)(B) shall be reduced by an amount equal to \1/
     12\ of such annual payment under paragraph (1)(A) for each 
     full month less than 6 that has not elapsed since the last 
     annual payment under paragraph (1)(A).
       ``(5) Restrictions.--The Secretary may not restrict the 
     purposes for which the payments under this section may be 
     used.
       ``(6) Dispute.--In the event of a dispute concerning such 
     agreement, the Secretary shall resolve such dispute, 
     consistent with this Act and applicable State law.
       ``(7) Construction.--The signature of the Secretary on a 
     valid benefits agreement under this section shall constitute 
     a commitment by the United States to make payments in 
     accordance with such agreement under section 401(c)(2).''.

  Mr. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, this amendment is an effort to clarify 
the issue of consideration to be provided to Lincoln County, NV. 
Specifically, it clarifies that assistance money provided to Lincoln 
County, NV, may be provided to the city of Caliente, NV. Caliente is 
within Lincoln County and is the actual site of the intermodal transfer 
facility authorized by the bill. The intermodal transfer facility is 
where the cask containing spent nuclear fuel would be offloaded from 
the trains and placed upon the heavy-haul trucks for the final leg of 
transport to the interim storage facility at the Nevada site. These can 
be the off highway type, heavy rigs that operate on very, very large 
tires and make virtually no footprint. That technology is well known. 
That equipment, off highway, is used in large mineral excavations and 
various other large commercial earth moving activities that are of an 
off-highway nature.
  Caliente is northeast of the Nevada test site. The reason for it 
being selected as the intermodal transfer is that point avoids the 
transportation of casks through the Las Vegas area.
  The elected officials of the city of Caliente, in Lincoln County, 
have taken what I consider to be a very reasonable, very practical 
approach, a conservative approach to the storage of this nuclear waste 
in Nevada. I think they recognize the inevitability. In spite of the 
difficulty with our concerns of our friends from Nevada, this waste has 
to go somewhere. You just cannot throw it up in the air and expect it 
to stay there. Nevada is the preferred site, it is a site where we have 
had over 50 years of nuclear testing of various types, where it has 
been expressed on this floor we have had test nuclear explosions that 
have taken place actually below the water table. So clearly, as we look 
at the alternative, the Nevada test site is the logical site for the 
interim repository.
  So I think what we see here is that Lincoln County, the city of 
Caliente, has recognized the inevitability of this and they have simply 
attempted to ensure that the interests of their citizens are protected, 
and I think that is an obligation that we have. They have maintained, 
throughout the process, that disposition, despite a series of legal 
attacks, some rather harsh, on their right to represent their citizens 
and their freedom of speech by the State of Nevada.
  I ask unanimous consent the text of a petition, signed by 286 
citizens of the city of Caliente, Lincoln County, supporting this 
position be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the text of the petition was ordered to be 
printed in the Record, as follows:

       We the undersigned, support recommendations for maximizing 
     benefits and minimizing risks as outlined in the City of 
     Caliente/Lincoln County Nevada Joint Resolution 1-95. As 
     residents of the State of Nevada, the United States 
     Constitution provides that if the Nuclear Waste Policy Act is 
     going to be amended to allow transportation of spent fuel 
     rods through Lincoln County and the City of Caliente, we are 
     entitled to provide input to any such proposals. Such input 
     would request oversight of safety issues and receipt of 
     benefits that may be associated to any transportation and/or 
     storage facilities located within Lincoln County.

  Mr. MURKOWSKI. I was going to read, ``We the undersigned support 
recommendations'' and the rest of the statement, but it is cut off by 
the Xerox machine, so we will try to get that and enter it into the 
Record. I appreciate the President's willingness to have that printed 
in the Record.
  In conclusion, I certainly commend the citizens of Caliente and 
Lincoln County as a whole. I urge the pending amendment be adopted. I 
reserve the remainder of my time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time? The Senator from Nevada [Mr. 
Bryan] is recognized.
  Mr. BRYAN. Mr. President, I yield myself 2 minutes.
  Mr. President, let me respond. It is true some citizens of Caliente 
embraced this. From the time of the Old Testament, there are some who 
are prepared to forfeit their birthright for a pottage of lentils. I 
must say, I believe my friends and neighbors in Caliente, those who 
have advocated this project, are misled and misadvised.
  I simply point out if 286 becomes the standard, I am sure we could 
get 286 Alaskans or Louisianians or others to embrace this. It is part 
of the nuclear energy industry's attempt to, in effect, buy it. 
Caliente is a wonderful community. It has endured tremendous hardship 
in recent years. When I was Governor they wanted to have an incinerator 
and import hazardous wastes to be incinerated. These are folks who are

[[Page S9229]]

absolutely desperate. I vetoed that legislation. The present Governor 
has done similarly.
  I understand and sympathize with the economic plight of my fellow 
Nevadans who live in Caliente, but I must say they have been used and 
badly used by the nuclear industry with this promise about putting a 
little money out. For my senior colleague and I, this is not about 
money, this is about public health and safety of 1.8 million people, 
and there can be no compromise on that issue. That represents the broad 
public view in Nevada.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Nevada [Mr. Reid] is 
recognized.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board, in 
March 1996, recognized the problems with transportation. They 
recognized, as the senior Senator from Louisiana indicated, that there 
have been small loads of nuclear waste that traveled very short 
distances. But they go on to say--and that is the whole point, that 
they are in effect legislated out of business, because they said, ``the 
Board sees no technical or safety reason to move spent fuel to a 
centralized storage facility.''
  Caliente of course means hot. It is not because it is hot weather. It 
is because they have hot water in the ground there. That is how this 
town got its name. The city of Caliente represents 0.05 percent of the 
people of the State of Nevada, 0.05 percent. They are desperate. We 
have 17 counties in Nevada. There is no county that is in more 
desperate economic condition.
  Their mineral abilities are gone. Their agricultural interests are 
very sparse. A lot of land is owned by the Federal Government. And they 
have really struggled. Caliente was a railroad town. The railroad, in 
effect, has moved out on them. It does not stop there anymore. People 
who used to work for the railroads do not work there anymore. It is in 
deep, deep economic depression.
  Senator Bryan talked about one thing they wanted. They also wanted to 
start a cyanide plant there. They will take anything, I am sorry to 
say, they are so desperate for money.
  Caliente represents, I think, a subject we want to talk about here. 
Caliente is remote. It is about 150 miles from Las Vegas. Nevada is, 
surprisingly, the most urban State in America. Mr. President, 90 
percent of the people, approximately, live in urban areas, the Reno-Las 
Vegas areas. Only about 10 percent of the people live in rural Nevada, 
as we remember it. We have a lot of areas in Nevada that are lonely.
  We have the loneliest road in America in Nevada. But Nevada is not 
the only place that has remote areas. Utah, eastern Utah is extremely 
remote. I have driven through parts of Colorado that are as remote as 
any place in Nevada ever was, as are parts of Arizona and New Mexico. 
The reason I mention that is we need to understand that not only is 
transportation a problem for the safety of carrying these canisters--
and I say to my friend from Idaho, the 150 mile an hour--they may have 
run a test at 150 miles an hour, I do not know about that. But I do 
know the canisters have been certified by the Nuclear Regulatory 
Commission to this point for 30 miles an hour and for burning for 30 
minutes. That is fact. So the 150 miles an hour, I do not know where 
that came from. They may have run some tests. But certification is for 
burning at 1,475 degrees for 30 minutes and speeds of 30 miles an hour.
  We are concerned about unforeseeable accidents. We have pictures of 
train wrecks, Ledger, MT, Vernon, CA, Alabama. All over the country 
they have about 600 train wrecks a year. Most of them, thank Heavens, 
are not bad, but some are disastrous, like the one that burned for 4 
days last year, like the one that closed the freeway between Las Vegas 
and Los Angeles for 4 days. So we have bad train wrecks.
  I am not talking about what I am going to say in just a few minutes, 
because of what took place with TWA, and what took place in Atlanta 
with the bomb.
  I talked about this 3 weeks ago prior to these horrible incidents. I 
want the Record to show I spoke earlier about these and other threats 
before these tragic event at the Olympics and TWA incident off the 
coast of New York.
  No one wants to exploit the pain, the suffering, and the anguish of 
those people. Those of us who serve in the Congress, especially serve 
the western part of the United States, we seemingly live on airplanes. 
So, when these accidents happen, we all look inward.
  But I must speak to the threat of terrorism, because the nationwide 
transport of spent nuclear fuel will provide targets of inconceivable 
attraction to terrorists, both foreign and, I am sorry to say, 
domestic; we have people who are terrorists within our own country, as 
indicated in the Oklahoma City bombing and probably in the Atlanta 
Olympic bombing.
  We have enemies and they are not all outside the boundaries of this 
country. For whatever reason, though, these enemies detest parts of our 
country, and the foreign operations detest what our country stands for 
and its values. Our very freedoms are threatened. They dwell on hitting 
points of interest to the American public. That is why the White House 
is such a target. That is why this building is such a target. That is 
why we have a police force of almost 2,000 men and women who protect 
the people who work in these buildings and the tourists who come to 
this Capitol complex. That is why the Capitol Police have animals that 
sniff out explosives, animals that are around at all times looking at 
cars that come in and out, sniffing to find out if there are 
explosives. We have bomb detection units. We have bomb disassembly 
units. All over this Capitol complex, there are plainclothes officers 
protecting the people who come into this building.
  There are people who would do anything to cause terror to this 
country. So, Mr. President, we have to eliminate whatever we can that 
allows them targets.
  There are many clandestine foreign interests. We know that. Some are 
led by leaders of countries. They want to publicize their existence and 
promote their goals through outrageous acts of blatant terror and 
destruction. What better stage could be set for any of these enemies of 
our country than a trainload or a truckload of the most hazardous 
substance known to man, clearly and predictably moving through our free 
and open society?
  You cannot move a 125-ton object on a train that is full of nuclear 
waste without having it marked and without notifying people it is 
coming through. These shipments, of necessity, must pass through our 
most populated centers, which provides opportunity for a successful 
attack for a terrorist to strike terror and public confidence in our 
form of Government.
  Earlier today, I talked about something I received in the mail from 
St. Louis. It is a newspaper called Gateway to the Waste. It talks 
about how in St. Louis they are afraid of nuclear shipments there.
  Each cask would contain a radiological equivalent of 200 Hiroshima 
bombs. All together the nuclear tonnage would be enough to kill 
everybody on Earth. These shipments would not only pass through 
populated centers but through remote and inaccessible territory. 
Remember, I say to my colleagues of the Senate, that the accident that 
occurred in Arizona occurred in a very remote area. A person went out 
there undetected and simply took some tools and took the track apart. 
When the train came over, the tracks spread and death and destruction 
was in its wake.
  The opportunity to inflict widespread contamination to engender real 
health risk to millions of Americans is apparent. And people say, ``Oh, 
no one would do that.''
  What happened in Japan? Sarin gas was collected and dispersed. They 
did not do a very good job. They only wound up killing dozens of people 
and causing respiratory problems and other forms of illness to hundreds 
and hundreds of people. That was a failure, even though they caused 
death and destruction to that many people. If they had done it right, 
it would have killed thousands.

  We must prepare for the realities accompanying a massive 
transportation campaign that would be required to consolidate nuclear 
waste at a repository site. We must deter our enemies through readiness 
and competent response before we undertake this dangerous program.
  One of the things the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board said is we 
are

[[Page S9230]]

not ready for this. The Governors' Association hired some people to 
conduct a test to see how the State of Nevada--this was not done by the 
State of Nevada, but the Governors' Association did it to find out how 
Nevada is prepared--now remember, Nevada has dealt with things nuclear 
before with aboveground and underground nuclear testing--how we would 
deal with nuclear waste transportation through Nevada if something went 
wrong. We are not ready, not even close. If we are not ready, you can 
imagine how other States are. We must assure our citizens we only have 
to undertake this dangerous venture once. It is paramount we do it 
right the first time.
  There is a growing danger in this country from both domestic and 
international terrorism. Exposure of this substance can lead to 
immediate sickness. It is much worse than sarin gas. Early death, and 
for less acute exposure, to years of anxiety and uncertainty as the 
exposed populations wait helplessly for the first onset of thyroid 
cancer, bone cancer, leukemia, liver and kidney cancer, and on and on.
  We know that we must be prepared, and we are not prepared. The 
comprehensive assessment of its capacity to respond and manage a 
radiological incident in Nevada did not work out well. That is the way 
it is all over the country.
  Mr. President, why are we concerned about terrorist incidents? We 
have weapons that are almost unbelievable. Most of us in this Chamber 
have gone shooting with a shotgun. We know how big a shotgun shell is.
  Here we have a shell not even double the size of a shotgun shell, and 
this is a shaped charge warhead terrorist tool. it is 1\1/2\ inches in 
diameter and 4 inches long and, as described by scientists, it kind of 
works like a watermelon. When you squeeze the seed of a watermelon it 
squeezes the liner material and squirts out. This will pierce 5 inches 
of steel. That is what this chart shows.
  Mr. President, if the Presiding Officer wanted to buy a weapon to 
spread terrorism around the United States, he could do it. It might 
take you a week, 2 weeks, but if you have money, you can buy from an 
arms dealer. I have pictured one weapon. We have lots of other weapons 
we can show, but this one weapon is a Russian version of a portable 
antitank weapon. This weapon is pretty accurate. At 330 yards, you can 
hit a target the size of my fingers here. It weighs 15 pounds. That is 
all it weighs. This weapon is a little more powerful than the one I 
just showed you, because this will fire 330 yards. It will go through 
16 inches of steel.
  The typical rail canister of nuclear waste is about 4 inches of steel 
plus some lead and some water. A piece of cake for this weapon that I 
just showed you.

  But, Mr. President, weapons are all over, easy to pick up and 
purchase, weapons weighing 16 pounds, 22 pounds, penetrating up to 3 
feet of steel.
  You might say, no one could afford this. These weapons you can buy 
for $5,000, $10,000. That is all they cost. Buy a few shells with them. 
These are antiarmor weapons.
  The reason, Mr. President, we should be concerned about this is that 
all nuclear waste is funneled into one small part of our country. It 
starts out this big with tens of thousands of shipments, but the more 
it goes, by the time it gets to Colorado, the circle is that big, and 
all through these parts of the country, Mr. President, you keep 
narrowing the scope. It is becoming easier and easier the farther west 
you go, the more remote it becomes, and the more concentrated volume of 
nuclear waste will be shipped there.
  If I were a terrorist organization, this would be a piece of cake. 
These weapons will fire up to 300 to 400 yards. They are in very remote 
areas. You can go places in Nevada, Arizona, and Colorado where people 
do not go for days. Along those railroad tracks, you can be out there, 
camp, and all you are going to be interrupted by are the trains coming 
by. That is why they have been unable to catch the person in Arizona 
because he could have been gone for a day before the tracks separated, 
or longer.
  So what are we going to do? I think what we should do is do what the 
Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board did and say, let us not subject 
the world and the country to the spread of this nuclear poison. We have 
not invested in the transportation planning. And the preparations are 
absolutely necessary for the safe transportation of this dangerous 
material through our heartland.
  We have not addressed the spectrum of threats to safe transportation 
and not developed a transportation process that guards against these 
threats and are not ready to meet the emergencies that could develop 
because of a nuclear accident or a terrorist act. The Nuclear Waste 
Technical Review Board recognizes our lack of readiness. That is one of 
the reasons they argued against the transportation program proposed by 
this legislation. The lack of readiness, preparedness and careful 
planning is one of the main reasons I urge my colleagues to vote 
against this ill-conceived, unnecessary and premature approach to 
managing nuclear waste for our country.
  Mr. President, we are talking about a substance that is the most 
poisonous substance known to man. We have been told by preeminent 
scientists, Dr. John E. Cantlon, Michigan State University; Dr. 
Clarence R. Allen, California Institute of Technology; John Arendt, of 
Arendt Associates; Dr. Gary Brewer, University of Michigan; Dr. Jared 
Cohon, Yale University; Dr. Edward Cording, University of Illinois, and 
on and on.
  These people, 12 in number, are eminent scientists with no political 
agenda, scientists saying we are not ready to move this stuff. It is 
safe to leave it where it is. Leave it where it is. So we should leave 
it where it is.
  This legislation is unnecessary. It is being pushed by the nuclear 
lobby. That is why it is being done, to save the nuclear industry money 
and pass the expense off to American taxpayers.
  They are always in a rush--always in a rush. It took us many years 
before the permanent repository. We got it where science would control 
what went on. Lawsuits had to be filed. Legislation had to be passed. 
But that is not fast enough for them. Now they do not want to wait for 
science, which will come back and tell us in 1998 how the Yucca site is 
going to be. They are unwilling to wait for that because they want to 
save a buck.
  They want to save a buck by passing the responsibility off to the 
Federal Government way ahead of time and, in the process, making this 
country vulnerable to accident by rail or car, and opening our country 
to more terrorist acts. The terror we have known in the past pales any 
time we think about what could happen if a terrorist was able to 
penetrate one of these nuclear shipments.

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time?
  Mr. MURKOWSKI addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alaska is recognized.
  Mr. MURKOWSKI. I thank the Chair.
  I would like to comment about the remarks made by my good friend from 
Nevada relative to the concern we all have, the legitimate concern we 
have over terrorism. He makes the case that, you know, there is a 
terrorist threat and therefore we ought to leave it where it is.
  Let us look at where it is, Mr. President. The chart behind me shows 
it is in 41 States. There are 81 sites out there. Is it logical to 
assume that we are better off to leave it there where it is exposed in 
41 States at 81 sites or put it in one place--one place--out in the 
Nevada desert, where we have had over a period of some 50 years 
extensive nuclear tests, time and time again, an area where it is 
concentrated and can be supervised and guarded, namely, the one site in 
Nevada?
  It just does not make sense if you are going to argue the merits of 
terrorism to have it all over the country, as I have indicated on this 
chart--41 States, 81 sites--or put it in one place where you can 
monitor, you can control it, you can guard it. You can take the 
necessary steps to ensure that the threat from terrorism is at a 
minimum.
  I do not know an awful lot about ballistics, Mr. President, but I 
know something about a shotgun because I hunt ducks. I cannot 
comprehend a type of a shotgun that can go 300 yards and pierce through 
5 inches of steel. What I do know is what the Department of Energy has 
supplied us with. They have done eight sabotage studies.
  One of those included a 4,000-pound ammonium nitrate bomb that was

[[Page S9231]]

similar in size, same makeup of what was used in the Oklahoma Federal 
building. They placed it in a container to see if they could pierce the 
cask. It was not breached, Mr. President.
  Another test--unfortunately, they are not able to disclose this type 
of technology because it is a black program, but they stated that this 
device was 30 times larger than an antitank weapon. Although this 
weapon made a small hole in the container, there was no significant 
release of radioactivity. Make no mistake about it, if there is a 
puncture, it is not going to blow up.
  The suggestion was made, you are going to have the equivalent of so 
many times of Hiroshima; if you are going to penetrate that cask, the 
radioactive material can come out. But it is very, very heavy. As a 
consequence, its tendency is to remain in the immediate area. But the 
point is, these casks are designed to withstand, if you will, the 
exposures associated with an accident, whether it be a railroad, 
whether it be a ship, or whether it be a highway.
  I would like to turn a little bit to attitudes prevailing in Nevada. 
As I indicated earlier, we have some 268 signatures from Caliente. I 
have been able to obtain the completed Xerox of the one that I started 
on earlier, Mr. President, and was cut off. I think it is important to 
read what these people said, and that has been inserted in the Record.

       We the undersigned, support recommendations for maximizing 
     benefits and minimizing risks as outlined in the city of 
     Caliente/Lincoln County Nevada joint resolution 1-95. As 
     residents of the State of Nevada, the United States 
     Constitution provides that, if the Nuclear Waste Policy Act 
     is going to be amended to allow transportation of spent fuel 
     rods through Lincoln County and the city of Caliente, we are 
     entitled to provide input to any such proposals. Such input 
     would request oversight of safety issues and receipt of 
     benefits that may be associated to any transportation and/or 
     storage facility located within Lincoln County.

  That is the point of this amendment, Mr. President, to provide that 
assistance.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that a letter from the 
International Association of Fire Chiefs, dated July 26, be printed in 
the Record.
  There being no objection, the letter was ordered to be printed in the 
Record, as follows:

                                      International Association of


                                                  Fire Chiefs,

                                       Fairfax, VA, July 26, 1996.
     Hon. Frank H. Murkowski,
     Chairman, Energy and Natural Resources Committee, U.S. 
         Senate, Washington, DC.
       Dear Chairman Murkowski: The International Association of 
     Fire Chiefs (IAFC) fully supports S. 1936 and urges its 
     prompt passage.
       Nuclear fuel has been accumulating and temporarily 
     stockpiled since 1982 at numerous staging locations 
     throughout the United States. The stockpiling of nuclear 
     waste in so many removed locales renders them most vulnerable 
     to potential sabotage and terrorist attacks. A plan to remove 
     this nuclear fuel and coordinate its transport to a single 
     secure designated interim storage facility at Yucca Flat, NV, 
     in accordance with prudent planning, training, and 
     preparation can be a safe, logical and acceptable 
     alternative.
       S. 1936 offers a plan to remove this spent fuel and 
     coordinate its transport to a single secure interim storage 
     facility. With proper planning, training and preparation, 
     this spent fuel can be transported safely and efficiently 
     over the nation's railways and highways.
       We appreciate your leadership on this difficult but 
     important issue.
           Very truly yours,
                                                    Alan Caldwell,
                                   Director, Government Relations.

  Mr. MURKOWSKI. It states:.

       Dear Chairman Murkowski: The International Association of 
     Fire Chiefs (IAFC) fully supports S. 1936 and urges its 
     prompt passage.
       Nuclear fuel has been accumulating and temporarily 
     stockpiled since 1982 at numerous staging locations 
     throughout the United States. The stockpiling of nuclear 
     waste in so many removed locales renders them most vulnerable 
     to potential sabotage and terrorist attacks.

  That is what I said before. Do you want it over here in the 41 States 
in over 80 sites? The fire chiefs say, no, put it in one site.

       A plan [they further say] to remove this nuclear fuel and 
     coordinate its transport to a single secure designated 
     interim storage facility at Yucca Flat, NV, in accordance 
     with prudent planning, training, and preparation can be a 
     safe, logical and acceptable alternative. Senate bill 1936 
     offers a plan to remove this spent fuel, coordinate its 
     transport to a single secure interim storage facility. With 
     proper planning, training and preparation, this spent fuel 
     can be transported safely and efficiently over the Nation's 
     railways and highways.

  It is signed by Alan Caldwell, director, government relations, from 
the International Association of Fire Chiefs.
  Here is a petition, Mr. President, to the President of the United 
States, signed by 600 workers associated with the Nevada test site. I 
previously entered the specific petition and narrative in the Record, 
but let me read what it says. This is signed by over 600 workers at the 
Nevada test site.

       We who have signed this petition live in the State of 
     Nevada. Many of us work at the Nevada Test Site. Some of us 
     work on the Yucca Mountain project.
       The [Nevada Test Site], an area larger than the State of 
     Rhode Island, was chosen as a nuclear weapons testing site by 
     President Truman. Its dry climate and remote location made it 
     ideal for weapons testing 45 years ago. Those same factors 
     make the NTS ideal for storing high level nuclear waste and 
     spent nuclear fuel. There is now, in southern Nevada, a 
     resident work force that is well trained and experienced in 
     dealing with nuclear materials. We, who are part of that work 
     force, believe the NTS presents a solution for the United 
     States for the temporary and permanent storage of high level 
     nuclear waste and spent nuclear fuel. It is a well secured 
     site, it is remote, it has already been utilized for nuclear 
     purposes, it has an experienced and well-trained work force 
     and we as Nevada workers, want it.
       We urge you to work with Congress to make the NTS the 
     solution to this Nation's nuclear waste dilemma.

  There you have it, Mr. President.
  How much time is remaining?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alaska has 17 minutes 8 
seconds.
  Mr. MURKOWSKI. I read the following letter from the Southern Nevada 
Building & Construction Trade Council, dated July 23, a letter to 
Senator Carl Levin.
       Dear Senator Levin: I am writing to thank you for your 
     support of Senate Bill 1936 and I urge you to continue that 
     support.
       I am a representative of the many working men and women of 
     Nevada who strongly support the passage of S. 1936.
       Although we more often than not support the positions of 
     Senator Harry Reid and Senator Richard Bryan, our views on 
     this particular issue differ significantly from theirs. On 
     behalf of my members I urge you to continue your support of 
     S. 1936, as reflected by your recent vote in favor of 
     cloture. We sincerely thank you for your position.
       As way of introduction, I am President of the Southern 
     Nevada Building and Construction Trades Council, Vice 
     President of the Nevada AFL-CIO, and serve as an appointee of 
     Nevada Governor Bob Miller to the Nevada Commission on 
     Nuclear Projects. I have followed the nuclear waste issue in 
     Nevada for many years. My years of experience at the Nevada 
     Test Site goes back to a time when Nevada elected officials 
     actually sought the opportunity to store high-level waste at 
     the Test Site.
       The 18,000 craftsmen that I represent, as well as over 
     100,000 members of the Nevada AFL-CIO, feel strongly that the 
     Yucca Mountain Project is safe and can be good for Nevada. We 
     recognize, perhaps better than most, the importance of health 
     and safety in dealing with high-level waste and nuclear 
     materials. We have dealt with it for many years and as the 
     workers handling this material we have the most to lose if 
     this program is not safely run. Based upon our past 
     experience in Nevada, we have a great deal of confidence that 
     this facility will be safe.
       Nevadans are pragmatic people and I believe that, contrary 
     to statements made by some Nevada officials, many if not most 
     Nevadans would not contest the location of this facility in 
     Nevada. Remember that we have tested over 900 nuclear devices 
     in the Nevada desert with little local opposition. Like the 
     nuclear weapons testing program the nuclear waste program is 
     essentially a non-issue among rank and file Nevadans. We find 
     it extremely difficult to imagine that you could possibly 
     find a more willing political climate anywhere else in the 
     United States for this type of facility.
       We understand that you may have been asked, by members of 
     the Nevada delegation, to oppose legislative efforts to move 
     the nuclear material storage program forward. An immense 
     amount of scientific study has been conducted at Yucca 
     Mountain and it has conclusively found the location to be a 
     superior one for this type of facility. Some officials from 
     Nevada have made a concerted effort, using every conceivable 
     means, to thwart this scientific and environmental program.
       Enclosed you will find petitions signed by many Nevadans 
     who support passage of this legislation. We intend to meet 
     with the White House shortly to express our position and to 
     transmit the petitions. Our message to the President will be: 
     Move this program forward--do not allow partisan politics to 
     stand in the way of a solution to this problem. Any other 
     approach would be both bad politics and bad public policy.
       As a fellow American, a fellow Democrat, and as a 
     representative of the working men and women of Nevada, I urge 
     your continued support of S. 1936.


[[Page S9232]]


  It is signed by Frank Caine, president of the Southern Nevada 
Building Construction & Trade Council.
  Mr. CONRAD. Will the Senator yield?
  Mr. MURKOWSKI. I do not attempt to speak, obviously, for the people 
in Nevada. That is the job of the Senators from Nevada. I do think it 
represents a significant voice to be heard and to be brought to the 
floor.
  I yield on the Senator's time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Dakota has no time.
  Mr. MURKOWSKI. I yield very briefly for a question if it is on my 
time because we are running short.
  Mr. CONRAD. I have been increasingly concerned about the notion of 
the terrorist threat, and I am very interested in the answer of the 
Senator from Alaska.
  It strikes this Senator, when you are talking about 100 different 
locations in the shipment of nuclear fuel from around the country to a 
single spot, that the risk of a terrorist threat increases 
dramatically; I just ask the Senator from Alaska, in talking to 
security people--in fact, I talked to Secret Service people about when 
the President is most vulnerable, and they told me they believe the 
President or anybody that they are guarding is most vulnerable when 
they are in transit. In fact, they feel they are most vulnerable when 
they are getting in or out of the vehicle.
  I was thinking how that relates to the circumstances we face here. We 
saw that with President Reagan and the assassination attempt when he 
was getting into a vehicle. Rabin was assassinated when he was getting 
into a limousine, because you know where a person is, you know where 
they will be, that is when they are most vulnerable.
  It strikes me that the same thing may be the case with respect to the 
transporting of these materials, and I am interested in the reaction of 
the Senator from Alaska to that.
  Mr. MURKOWSKI. If I may respond to the Senator from North Dakota, 
that is the very point we are talking about. Terrorism is a threat, but 
we have this currently in 41 States at 81 sites, and the ability to 
secure those sites from terrorism in its current form is much more 
difficult than having it in one central spot, because that is where it 
will be permanently stored, either until Yucca Mountain has a permanent 
repository or, during the interim, until the permanent repository is 
set.
  What we are looking at here is one site, one storage capability, one 
set of experienced personnel to guard against terrorist activity, as 
opposed to the chart, which I will again leave for the Senator to view, 
41 States and 81 sites.
  It just simply makes sense. The Senator from North Dakota was not 
here when I entered into the Record a letter from the International 
Association of Fire Chiefs which simply says:

       . . . so many removed locales renders them most vulnerable 
     to potential sabotage and terrorists attacks. A plan to 
     remove this nuclear fuel and coordinate its transport to a 
     single secure designated interim storage facility at Yucca 
     Flat, NV, in accordance with prudent planning, training, and 
     preparation can be a safe, logical and acceptable 
     alternative.

  So this is the very concern we are talking about. Obviously, you are 
not going to store in these sites forever. That is a given. You have to 
take it out of these sites at some point in time. The Federal 
Government has collected almost $12 billion from the ratepayers. It has 
entered into a contractual agreement. We are talking about reneging on 
the agreement, basically, if we don't go ahead with it, and leaving it 
where it is for an undetermined period of time until then you decide to 
move it. It is inevitable that you are going to move it. We are talking 
about here--once you move it, the threat of terrorist activities 
associated with it are much reduced because you don't have that number 
of sites in that exposure in the 41 States.
  So the logic, I think, speaks for itself. I think, from the 
standpoint of terrorism, exposure is less dramatic if you have it at 
one site where it is easier to secure.
  I think my time has about expired.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Snowe). The Senator has 8 minutes 
remaining.
  Mr. CONRAD. Might I ask my colleague to yield me some time so I might 
pursue this?
  Mr. BRYAN. How much time does my friend require?
  Mr. CONRAD. A couple of minutes.
  Mr. MURKOWSKI. How much time remains on the other side?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. There are 9 minutes 50 seconds remaining.
  Mr. BRYAN. I yield 3 minutes to the Senator from North Dakota.
  Mr. CONRAD. Madam President, I can understand, with respect to a 
terrorist threat, that if you had it at one site, it is easier to guard 
and secure than at 81 sites. What really raises questions, at least in 
my mind, is when this material is in transit, because now you are not 
talking about 81 sites, you are talking about an infinite number of 
places where you are vulnerable to some kind of terrorist threat. So, 
to me, it is not a question of 81 sites versus 1 site, it is a question 
of being in transit from 81 sites to 1 known place. If I were trying to 
put myself in the position of a terrorist, and I knew that all this 
material has to go through a series of locations to arrive at one 
destination, that makes it very vulnerable to a terrorist attack. So 
the question I really have is, aren't you most vulnerable when this 
material is in transit?
  Mr. MURKOWSKI. I respond by asking my friend from North Dakota, is it 
not inevitable that at some point in time, in order to meet the 
contractual commitment, you are going to have to move this anyway?
  Mr. CONRAD. Yes.
  Mr. MURKOWSKI. So it is still going to be vulnerable to terrorist 
attacks.
  Mr. CONRAD. I think, without question, my own view is that, 
obviously, this material is going to have to be moved at some point. 
But, on the other hand, perhaps the technology will be developed that 
would allow you to deal with this material at those locations and not 
have to be transporting it to a single site in one place in the 
country, where you are vulnerable. It would seem that it would be easy 
for a terrorist to look at the map and say, ``Here are the sites it is 
coming from, and here is the one place on the map it is going to.'' You 
could draw a series of sequential rings and, with a high degree of 
confidence, know this material is going to pass through there, and you 
are, in that way, highly vulnerable to a terrorist threat.
  Mr. MURKOWSKI. Madam President, the Senator from----
  Mr. BRYAN. On whose time is the Senator from Alaska responding?
  Mr. MURKOWSKI. On my own time. First of all, the Senator from North 
Dakota is suggesting that we dispose of it on-site somehow through 
advanced technology. That suggests reprocessing, which we don't allow. 
So that is basically a nonalternative. Some people suggest that is 
somewhat unfortunate because, in France, they do reprocess, reinject. 
They don't bury the plutonium like we do. They put it back in the 
reactors and burn it.

  Now, the inevitability of the question of whether or not you leave it 
where it is and subject yourself to the potential terrorist exposure in 
41 States and 81 sites--that suggests that you are not going to have 
the same degree of security and experience in all these sites because 
you cannot possibly cover that many sites. So you put it at the one 
site in Nevada where you can provide the security. So the terrorism 
exposure in Nevada is, for all practical purposes, eliminated. Your 
exposure is shipping them, granted. That is why the casks are designed 
as they are designed.
  As I said in an earlier statement, the Army has tested a device 30 
times larger than an antitank weapon, and although it made a small hole 
in the cask, there was no release of radioactivity. So you can't 
eliminate the entire risk, but you can eliminate, to a large degree, 
the technical design--this is a heavy thing; the terrorists are not 
going to run off with it. They have to do something very significant. 
Obviously, there is going to be security associated with the movement. 
I think we are talking about 10,000 casks. I defer to the Senator from 
Louisiana who, I think, wants to address the Senate.
  Mr. JOHNSTON. Madam President, I appreciate my colleague yielding to 
me. They have done studies on these shippings, and what they have found 
is that upward of 10,000 to 20,000 shipments have already been made. 
They say numerous analyses have been performed in recent years 
concerning transportation risks associated with shipping spent fuel. 
The results of

[[Page S9233]]

these analyses all show very little risk under both normal and accident 
conditions. The safety record has been very good in corroboration of 
the low-risk estimate analytically. In fact, during the decades that 
spent fuel has been shipped, no accident has caused a radioactive 
release. What they have done is they have made models both on the 
computer and they have done actual tests. For example, there was a 
chart up there that showed that they hit a cask at 80 miles an hour 
with a train, and they dropped them from buildings and all that. In 
none of these was there a risk.
  I might add that we ship nuclear warheads all the time. We don't ship 
those actually in these kind of casks. Frankly, I don't know how they 
ship them, but they are not sealed off as these casks are. They have 
gone to the extent--in one instance, they said a shipping cask has been 
subjected to attack by explosives to evaluate the cask and spent fuel 
response to a device 30 times larger than an antitank weapon. They 
attacked one of these with a weapon 30 times larger than an antitank 
weapon. The device would carve approximately a 3-inch diameter hole 
through the cask wall that contained spent fuel, and it was estimated 
to cause a release of about one-third of an ounce. ``No 
transportation''--this is a quote--``can be identified that would 
impose anywhere near the energy per unit volume caused by this 
explosive attack.''
  So even if you get a weapon 30 times larger than an antitank weapon 
and attack the cask with it, all it does is have a release of about 
one-third of an ounce. So I submit to my colleague that, I guess you 
can postulate some accident where some meteorite might come down and 
happen to hit a railroad train in just the right way and somehow that 
could harm somebody. But they have postulated about every conceivable 
risk, including a weapon 30 times larger than an antitank weapon, and 
they postulate only one-third of an ounce of release--that, plus the 
fact that there has never been a release of radioactivity in 4 decades 
of these transportations, from 10,000 to 20,000 shipments in this 
country alone, not to mention those around the world.
  I would say there are things to worry about. But I honestly do not 
believe that transportation is one of them.
  Mr. CONRAD. Let me ask my colleague.
  Mr. REID. Madam President, I would be happy to yield to my friend, 
but I want to respond directly to the statements made by the Senator 
from Louisiana.
  This is pure doubletalk. The fact of the matter is that the weapon 
that they used to test was a device designed to destroy reinforced 
concrete pillars and piers. The weapon was not designed to destroy a 
structure like a nuclear waste canister. In fact, the weapon used for 
testing performed its military mission so poorly that our military 
forces abandoned this device for a better design. The weapon used, even 
though it was not much good, did perforate the canister. The hole is 
small, and there was leakage, but it was not a great deal of leakage.
  But everyone looking at this knows that the weapon that has been 
used--any of the weapons that I have on this chart are manufactured all 
over the world--would perforate this thing like that--16 inches of 
steel, 36 inches of steel, 28 inches of steel.
  This is, in all due respect to the Senator from Louisiana, who is a 
tremendous advocate for the nuclear industry, part of their doubletalk. 
They have not been willing to test these canisters the way they should 
be tested, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has said to this point 
that all they have to do is to be able to withstand a maximum of 30 
miles an hour and a fire for 30 minutes. That is totally inadequate not 
only for accidents, but for terrorist activities.
  I yield now to my friend from North Dakota.
  Mr. CONRAD. Madam President, I thank my friend from Nevada.
  I just go back to this question. It does strike me, given the rise of 
terrorist activity not only in this country but around the world, that 
when you put in motion from 80 different sites around the country, from 
41 States, thousands of these casks headed for one location, that if 
you were a terrorist organization--it would take very little 
calculation to figure out where this is most vulnerable--you would have 
the potential here for a terrorist organization when this stuff is most 
vulnerable, when it is in motion, when it is in transit, to attack 
either a train or a truck and get possession of this material and 
thereby be able to threaten dozens of cities in America.
  I must say, when I have talked to security people--again, I talked to 
a person who was in the Secret Service--with respect to when they think 
something that they are guarding is most vulnerable, they said without 
question it is when it is in transit, when it is on the move. That is 
when it is the most vulnerable.
  Mr. JOHNSTON. Madam President, will the Senator yield?
  Mr. CONRAD. Yes.
  Mr. JOHNSTON. Is the Senator suggesting that we leave it permanently 
at the 70-plus sites around the country?
  Mr. CONRAD. No. This Senator is suggesting that maybe we ought to 
revisit the question of reprocessing in this country. That is an 
alternative. Maybe we ought to consider various other technological 
alternatives that may present themselves. I am just raising the 
question. With what is going on in terms of terrorist threats abroad 
and in this country, are we doing a wise thing by setting up a 
circumstance in which this material starts to move from 80 sites around 
the country to one defined location in America? That troubles me.
  I really am struggling myself with the question of how to respond to 
that. I must say it has made me rethink the whole question of 
reprocessing. I wonder sometimes if we have made wise choices in this 
country.
  Mr. JOHNSTON. If I may answer that, because the Senator is a very 
thoughtful Senator and it is a fair question.
  First of all, let me say, on the issue of reprocessing, you would 
need a central facility for reprocessing anyway. So that does not solve 
the transportation problem.
  Second, I would say to my friend that the studies that have been 
done--and you have four decades of experience with transportation of 
this fuel with never a radioactive release, plus you have a lot of 
postulated accidents. For example, they have taken actual accidents and 
made the studies of what that would have done to nuclear waste had it 
been involved. In one, in April 1982, there was a three-vehicle 
collision involving a gasoline truck trailer, a bus, and an automobile 
which occurred in a tunnel in which 88,000 gallons of gasoline caught 
fire and burned for 2 hours and 42 minutes. For 40 minutes the fire was 
at 1,900 degrees Fahrenheit. If a nuclear waste canister had been 
involved in this accident, it would have suffered no significant impact 
damage, and the fire would not have breached the canister. There would 
have been no radiological hazard. The spent fuel in the canister would 
not have reached temperatures high enough to cause fuel cladding to 
fail.

  We go on here to other postulated accidents. A train containing both 
vinyl chloride and petroleum--the tanker cars derailed and caught fire. 
The fire burned for several days and moved over a large area. There 
were two explosions. Had nuclear waste canisters been on the train, 
they would not have sustained any damage from the explosion. They might 
have been exposed to the petroleum fire for a period ranging from 82 
hours to 4 days. Even so, the canisters themselves would not have been 
breached.
  Mr. CONRAD. Will the Senator yield?
  Mr. BRYAN. Madam President, we have just a little time left.
  Mr. CONRAD. I would like to conclude with this question.
  My understanding is that those are accident scenarios. What concerns 
this Senator is a terrorist scenario when terrorists launch an attack 
on these materials when they are in transit and most vulnerable. I must 
say that I think it is something that we have to be concerned about.
  Mr. JOHNSTON. The point is this, though: They have tested it with 
weapons 30 times bigger than antitank weapons with direct hits. That 
caused a breach. Only a third of an ounce comes out. There are many, 
many much more lucrative targets, by orders of magnitude more lucrative 
for terrorists, everything from chemicals that travel throughout the 
country every day, from LP gas to others which are many, many times 
easier to breach and

[[Page S9234]]

would cause a much bigger problem. The essential thing is that nuclear 
waste is not a volatile matter.
  Mr. BRYAN. Madam President, I say to my colleague that this is on my 
time.
  How much time is left?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Approximately 2 minutes.
  Mr. BRYAN. If the Senator uses his own time, I have no problem with 
it. But I am not prepared to yield any more time.
  Mr. JOHNSTON. I would be finished in just a moment.
  Mr. MURKOWSKI. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the 
other side have 2 more minutes total and that we may have 1 minute on 
this side.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. JOHNSTON. Madam President, nuclear waste traveling the country 
is, first of all, solid in form. It is sealed in a cask that, as I say, 
if you get a direct hit by something 30 times more powerful than an 
antitank weapon, what do you get? You get a third of an ounce of 
release. What does that do? It does not explode. It is not gaseous. It 
does not get down to the water supply. It is, as these matters go, 
relatively benign. And, even so, you cannot imagine a situation other 
than a terrorist attack where there is any release at all.
  So I submit that there are a lot of things to worry about, but 
transportation is not one of them.
  Mr. MURKOWSKI. If I may, Madam President, take the last 30 seconds in 
response to the Senator from North Dakota, we have seen in Europe the 
movement of over 30,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste in countries 
that are exposed to terrorism at a far greater theoretical sense than 
the United States. There has never been one instance of a terrorist 
activity associated with movement by rail, highway, or ship. Terrorists 
are not going to necessarily look at terrorizing a shipment when they 
can move into nerve gas and weapons disposals that are moving across 
this country--all types of material that are associated with weapons --
where they can create an incident of tremendous annihilation on a 
population.
  This is very difficult because it is secure, in a cask; it is 
guarded; and it has been proven it has moved through other countries, 
particularly Great Britain, France, in Scandinavia, and to some extent 
starting in Japan. So there is a risk associated with everything. But 
we have not had terrorist activity in this area because there are other 
more suitable sites.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator's time has expired.
  Mr. BRYAN addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Nevada.
  Mr. BRYAN. I thank the Chair.
  Mr. President, I appreciate the statement of the senior Senator from 
North Dakota, his expression of concern about the vulnerability that we 
have to terrorism. It is a fact of life in 20th century America. All of 
us apprehend, lament, and regret it, but it is a very real fact. I must 
say, just as the bad guys in the Old West always knew where the 
stagecoach was most vulnerable--it was not when it was at the office; 
it was not when it was being unloaded at the bank--it was out on the 
road, so too when we are talking about thousands and thousands of miles 
of rail and highway shipments. There are so many places that a 
terrorist could find a point of vulnerability. The concerns that my 
colleague from North Dakota mentioned I believe are very real and very 
genuine, so I thank him very much for his explanation.
  Let me just make one other point here. It is something we constantly 
hear about, that this bill will result automatically in not 109 sites 
but 1 site. Mr. President, that is just absolutely false, absolutely 
false. Each of the nuclear reactors that are currently generating power 
have spent fuel rods contained in the pools. They remain there at least 
for 5 years. If we assume that every reactor in the country is going to 
close, which is certainly not the predicate of the Nuclear Regulatory 
Commission, under the current existing licenses some nuclear utilities 
would remain open at least until the year 2033. So all this bill would 
do in terms of concentrating storage would add not 109 but you would 
have 110 sites, namely the new facility that they have proposed to 
construct at the Nevada test site for interim storage.
  So this ad, I know, the nuclear utilities love. They spend millions 
of dollars in advertisements in magazines and publications that give 
one the impression, wow, if we just opened up this facility at the 
Nevada test site there will not be nuclear waste stored any place in 
the country.
  That is wrong.
  May I inquire as to how much more time the Senator from Nevada has?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Helms). All time has expired.
  Mr. MURKOWSKI addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alaska.
  Mr. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I ask for a voice vote on the 
amendment.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question occurs on agreeing to amendment 
No. 5048 offered by the Senator from Alaska.
  The amendment (No. 5048) was agreed to.
  Mr. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote.
  Mr. JOHNSTON. I move to lay that motion on the table.
  The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Are there further amendments to the bill?
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, if I could just confer for a few minutes 
with my friend from Alaska and inform the rest of the Senate, what we 
are trying to work out now--and we do not know we can do it, but we are 
trying to--on this side we have three amendments. We want to vote on 
one of those amendments, a recorded vote. We would like that, if it is 
OK--we have a Democratic conference that is starting at 4. We would 
like to do that at 3:30 and then have final passage at approximately 5 
o'clock and dispose of the other amendments in the interim by voice 
vote.
  I have spoken to the Senator from Alaska. I know he has to confer 
with others to see if that can be worked out. Otherwise, we can do 
something else. In the meantime, we will go ahead and offer an 
amendment.
  Mr. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I conferred with the Senator from 
Nevada and my colleague, Senator Johnston, and I want to check with our 
leadership.
  It is my understanding the next amendment will be offered by the 
Senators from Nevada, and they would want a rollcall vote on that 
amendment?
  Mr. REID. No, the next amendment, we will offer and talk about it a 
little bit and have a voice vote.
  Mr. MURKOWSKI. Voice vote. The one after that you would like--
  Mr. REID. The one after that we would--
  Mr. MURKOWSKI. Might I ask whether the Senators intend to use their 
full 30 minutes?
  Mr. REID. We would be willing to work out something after this so the 
time is equally balanced.
  Mr. MURKOWSKI. I will entertain then the amendment that is about to 
be offered that would require simply a voice vote, and that will give 
me an opportunity to check with the leadership on this side and then 
respond to the Senators concerning their proposal.
  I thank the Chair and yield to my colleague from Nevada.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator is recognized.
  Mr. BRYAN. I thank the Chair.


                           Amendment No. 5075

  (Purpose: To specify contractual obligations between DOE and waste 
                              generators)

  Mr. BRYAN. I send an amendment numbered 5075 to the desk and ask for 
its immediate consideration.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
  Mr. MURKOWSKI. If I may interrupt, I assume there is acknowledgement 
that the Senators contemplate a voice vote prevailing on our side?
  Mr. BRYAN. That is correct. We are not requesting that a rollcall 
vote occur with respect to amendment 5075.

  Mr. MURKOWSKI. The voice vote that the Senators are proposing, they 
are assuming we would prevail?
  Mr. REID. I would say to my friend from Alaska, he has not heard the 
argument yet. He may be persuaded.
  Mr. MURKOWSKI. I will take my chances.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.

[[Page S9235]]

  The legislative clerk read as follows:

       The Senator from Nevada [Mr. Bryan] proposes an amendment 
     numbered 5075.

  Mr. BRYAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of the 
amendment be dispensed with.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The amendment is as follows:

       At the appropriate place in the bill, insert the following 
     new section:

     ``SEC.   . CONTRACT DELAYS.

       ``(a) Unavoidable Delays by Contract Holder or 
     Department.--Notwithstanding any other provision of this Act, 
     neither the Department nor the contract holder shall be 
     liable under a contract executed under Section 302(a) of the 
     Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 for damages caused by 
     failure to perform its obligations thereunder, if such 
     failure arises out of causes beyond the control and without 
     the fault or negligence of the party failing to perform. In 
     the event circumstances beyond the reasonable control of the 
     contract holder or the Department--such as acts of God, or of 
     the public enemy, acts of Government in either its sovereign 
     or contractual capacity, fires, floods, epidemics, quarantine 
     restrictions, strikes, freight embargoes and unusually severe 
     weather--cause delay in scheduled delivery, acceptance or 
     transport of spent nuclear fuel and/or high-level radioactive 
     waste, the party experiencing the delay will notify the other 
     party as soon as possible after such delay is ascertained and 
     the parties will readjust their schedules, as appropriate, to 
     accommodate such delay.
       ``(b) Avoidable Delays by Contract Holder or Department.--
     Notwithstanding any other provision of this Act, in the event 
     of any delay in the delivery, acceptance or transport of 
     spent nuclear fuel and/or high-level nuclear waste to or by 
     the Department under contracts executed under Section 302(a) 
     of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 caused by 
     circumstances within the reasonable control of either the 
     contract holder or the Department or their respective 
     contractors or suppliers, the charges and schedules specified 
     by this contract will be equitably adjusted to reflect any 
     estimated additional costs incurred by the party not 
     responsible for or contributing to the delay.
       ``(c) Remedy.--Notwithstanding any other provision of this 
     Act, the provisions of subsections (a) and (b) of this 
     Section shall constitute the only remedy available to 
     contract holders or the Department for failure to perform 
     under a contract executed under Section 302(a) of the Nuclear 
     Waste Policy Act of 1982.

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Nevada.
  Mr. BRYAN. I thank the Chair.
  Mr. President, let me just take a moment because this deals with a 
provision that we believe clarifies the situation in light of the court 
decision over which most comment has been had.
  What this amendment does is simply incorporate into the bill 
provisions that exist in the contract. My colleagues will recall that 
under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, the Department of Energy 
was directed to enter into contracts with the various utilities that 
were involved in generating high-level nuclear waste, and so what we 
have done, my colleague and I from Nevada, is to have incorporated 
verbatim other than perhaps in the context there may be some 
grammatical changes, but verbatim the remedies that are provided in 
those contracts. They are found in article 9 of the contract, and the 
contract provides what occurs if a delay, referring to the delay of the 
opening of the repository, is unavoidable delay, and subparagraph (b) 
deals with avoidable delays.
  So there has been talk that somehow this court case now casts a 
different light on everything, and as the Secretary of Energy indicated 
in her letter to each of us, that case absolutely has no impact on the 
debate. It is true that the court indicated there was an obligation on 
the Department of Energy but refrained from determining what the remedy 
was, and it is our view that the remedy is contained in the contract 
that the parties entered into. So we offer the amendment in that 
spirit.
  I must say that I believe one of the biggest scams being perpetrated 
upon us in this bill is the provision which deals with the shifting of 
liability from the utilities to the general taxpayer. Mr. President, 
1982 is the genesis of our current nuclear waste policy. It was 
absolutely clear at the time that law was enacted that the financial 
responsibility for the disposal of nuclear waste rested upon the 
utilities, those that generated it. ``Generators, owners of high-level 
radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel have the primary 
responsibility to provide for and the responsibility to pay the costs 
of interim storage of such waste and spent fuel until such time as the 
fuel is accepted by the Secretary of Energy.'' And then it goes on to 
talk about a number of instances throughout this particular act that it 
is the primary responsibility of the industry, the utilities.
  Mr. President, this bill that has been introduced turns that concept 
upside down, totally upside down. Here is what is done under section 
501 of the amendment that we are debating currently. It says that until 
the year 2002--I beg your pardon. I misquoted. I cited 501. It is 
section 401. It says until the year 2002, the maximum that can be 
assessed against the utilities, which is done on the basis of kilowatt-
hours generated --one mill currently is the assessment for each 
kilowatt-hour. It says under this bill by statute now the maximum that 
can be levied against utilities is one mill. The General Accounting 
Office and others have concluded that even if no interim storage is 
added to the agenda or the responsibility of the Department of Energy, 
we are currently underfunded to the extent of about $4 billion a year.
  In plain and simple terms, that means the American taxpayer is going 
to pick up that liability, that responsibility, and that is 
fundamentally wrong. However you feel about nuclear energy, however you 
feel about how nuclear waste ought to be disposed of, it ought not to 
be cast upon the American taxpayer. These utilities are private sector 
utilities. They make a substantial amount of money. That is their 
right. But it ought not to be shifted on us. So I think that needs to 
be pointed out, No. 1.

  No. 2, it gets even more clever. After the year 2002, the only amount 
that can be assessed against each utility is whatever their 
proportionate cost is, to the total amount of money that is 
appropriated by the Congress for nuclear waste. If we use the current 
year, for example, we would be talking about a third of a mill. That is 
something that is just, in my view, unconscionable. Not only has the 
General Accounting Office concluded there is a shortfall, but in a 
recent study that was commissioned by the Department called A Special 
Management and Financial Review, a report that came out in 1995, they 
point out that there is a shortfall, depending on whether you take a 
conservative or more expansive view, of anywhere from $4 to $15 
billion.
  So what is being done here is changing fundamentally who pays for 
this disposal of nuclear waste. Is it the utilities? That was the 
original premise of the law in 1982. These are private utilities, 
generating profits for their investors and shareholders. Or is that 
liability now to be shifted to the general taxpayer? That is what this 
bill does, it shifts that liability because it is clear, even if you 
take the length of time without renewal at all, these utilities will 
ultimately, by the year 2033, if the licenses are not extended, those 
utilities will cease generating electrical power. Therefore they will 
cease contributing into the fund. But the problem of the storage of 
high-level nuclear waste continues.
  It is, to some extent, a crude analogy to the situation we have with 
our Social Security fund. Currently, more money is coming into that 
fund than is necessary to pay the recipients of Social Security. We all 
know sometime after the turn of the century, because of changing 
demographics, that changes rather dramatically. So, too, with this 
nuclear waste fund because, as these utilities go off line, some of 
them are scheduled, if they do not get an extension of their license, 
to cease operation in the year 2000, others in the year 2006 and, 
intermediately to the year 2033--but the waste just does not disappear. 
It becomes a financial responsibility for someone and that is why it is 
necessary to generate surpluses in the nuclear waste fund in order to 
deal with the storage problem later on. So I think my colleagues need 
to look at the budget implications of this. Because, in effect, we 
create an unfunded liability for the Federal taxpayers the way this 
bill is currently drafted.
  Let me return to the specifics of the amendment just one more time 
before reserving my time and yielding whatever time my colleague may 
take to comment on this issue. That is to say, what we are saying 
amplifies the decision of the court, simply specifying what the remedy 
is. The remedy is that the delay is unavoidable. They simply have to 
reschedule the shipments. If

[[Page S9236]]

the delay is deemed avoidable, that is if there is some culpability, 
then there is readjustment on the amount of fees the nuclear utilities 
pay into the trust fund. I must say I believe that is fair.
  My colleague and I, from Nevada, have long recognized that, indeed, 
if the high-level nuclear waste repository is not available by the year 
1998, if additional on-site storage is necessitated, then, indeed, the 
utilities would be entitled to a credit against any additional costs 
for interim storage that they would incur, and that is the thrust of 
this amendment.

  I reserve the remainder of my time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Grams). The Senator from Louisiana.
  Mr. JOHNSTON. Mr. President, on behalf of Senator Murkowski I yield 
myself 5 minutes.
  This is sort of a version 2 of the Wellstone amendment, in that it 
seeks to take the rights of utilities and, secondarily, the rights of 
ratepayers of utilities, and abolish those by legislative fiat--which 
simply cannot be done. The rights of utilities and, indeed, the rights 
of the ratepayers of those utilities, have been fixed by the Nuclear 
Waste Policy Act of 1982 as amended by amendments in 1987 and by 
contracts between the utilities and the Department of Energy. The 
contracts between the utilities and the Department of Energy contain 
two provisions in article IX which relate to delays: A, involve 
unavoidable delay by purchaser or DOE, and, B, involve avoidable delays 
by purchaser or DOE. And those sections, A, and B, are part of the 
contracts between the utilities and DOE, set out, in part, the relative 
rights in the event of those delays.
  What the Senator from Nevada would attempt to do is take those two 
existing provisions of contracts and state that those are the exclusive 
remedies, thereby leaving out another provision of those same 
contracts. Another provision of those same contracts in article XI 
says:

       Nothing in this contract shall be construed to preclude 
     either party from asserting its rights and remedies under the 
     contract or at law.

  In other words, the present contracts in article XI state that 
nothing precludes the assertion of the rights both under the contract 
and at law. What they would do is take that provision out and say that 
those sections, A and B, that I just read, are the exclusive remedies.
  Mr. President, that is clever, but what the court has said last week 
is that ``We hold that the Nuclear Waste Policy Act creates an 
obligation in DOE to start disposing of the spent nuclear fuel no later 
than January 31, 1998.''
  That is the law, decided only last week. And what the Senator from 
Nevada would say, that notwithstanding what the court has said we are 
going to write that out of this, and the exclusive remedy is that which 
he has just stated in his amendment, which is only part of what the 
contract says, I repeat--it is absolutely settled law that this 
Congress, under our Constitution, may not take away vested rights. When 
someone has a right under the law, the Congress cannot come in and take 
it away without subjecting themselves to damages.
  Again, quoting from the Winstar case, and this is from July 1996, 
this very month, the Supreme Court says:

       Congress may not simply abrogate a statutory provision 
     obligating performance without breaching the contract and 
     rendering itself liable for damages. Damages are always the 
     default remedy for breach of contract.

  They go on to quote in a footnote:

       Every breach of contract gives the injured party a right to 
     damages against the party in breach unless the parties by 
     agreement vary the rules. The award of damages is the common 
     form of relief for breach of contract. Virtually any breach 
     gives the injured party a claim for damages.

  Mr. President, this is not a surprising new precedent of the Court. 
It is a principle of law as old as John Marshall and the Supreme Court 
and the Constitution. So for my friends from Nevada to come along and 
say the exclusive remedy is subsections (A) and (B) of his amendment, I 
will not say it is ludicrous, Mr. President, out of respect for my 
colleagues, but let's say that the argument does not have any weight 
and is totally contrary to that which is settled law of the U.S. 
Supreme Court.
  Mr. President, at this time, I yield 5 minutes, or such time as the 
Senator from Washington requires.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington.
  Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, there are some occasions in this body in 
which a bit of institutional memory is truly of value. And, in my case, 
I have a memory which has been reinforced by reading the Congressional 
Record of the creation of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982.
  Interestingly enough, the managers on both sides of the party aisle 
here were Members of that Congress. But the distinguished Senator from 
Louisiana, I believe, was perhaps the most knowledgeable Member of the 
body at that time, as he is today, on this particular subject.
  More than 14 years ago, in April 1982 when this bill was being 
debated, this is what the Senator from Louisiana said:

       The bill before the Senate today requires the Federal 
     Government to undertake definitive and specific actions to 
     assume the responsibility for nuclear waste disposal which 
     existing law reserves to it. We can attempt to avoid this 
     responsibility in the context of this particular Congress, 
     but we will never finally escape the necessity of enacting 
     legislation very similar to this bill. It is a task that no 
     one but Congress can perform.

  The Senator from Louisiana went on to say:

       The aim of this bill is to provide congressional support 
     which will force the executive branch to place before 
     Congress and the public real solutions to our nuclear waste 
     management problems. A schedule for Federal actions which 
     could lead to a site specific application for a license for 
     the disposition of nuclear waste in deep geologic formations 
     is established in title IV.

  The Senator from Louisiana was, obviously, an optimist at that point, 
as were all of those who overwhelmingly supported him in passing that 
bill, this Senator included.
  I cannot imagine that the Senator from Louisiana, whose bill included 
this deadline referred to by the District of Columbia Circuit Court of 
Appeals last week ``beginning not later than January 31, 1998, the 
Federal Government will dispose of the high-level radioactive waste or 
spent nuclear fuel involved,'' I cannot imagine the Senator from 
Louisiana anticipated that we would have made so little progress by the 
date upon which we are debating this bill. He was convinced, and we 
were convinced, that by this year, we would certainly know what we were 
going to do with this nuclear waste on a temporary basis and be much 
further along the road to finding a long-term solution for the problem.

  As a consequence of an overoptimistic view of what might happen then, 
we have collected from utilities of the United States some $12 billion. 
We have spent close to $6 billion of that attempting to characterize a 
permanent nuclear waste repository in Nevada, but we are certainly 
nowhere near as close to reaching a conclusion to this challenge as we 
expected to be in 1982 when we passed this bill, and we spent more 
money on it, money that comes out of the pockets of American citizens 
in their utility bills.
  Given that degree of frustration, given the almost infinite ability 
of those who oppose any major decision of this nature to delay that 
decision through bureaucratic requirements, through court tests and the 
like, we now have been faced with the necessity of finding at least a 
temporary repository for this nuclear waste to meet the very 
requirements that we laid down in 1982. That, obviously, is what this 
bill is designed to do.
  In fact, by saying that we ought to begin by December 31 of 1998, 
even the sponsors of the bill already have let some time slip by. But, 
Mr. President, at this point, with the failure to meet the schedule 
that we wanted to meet in 1982, with the expenditure of literally 
billions of dollars, with this nuclear waste piling up in various 
plants in 34 States, with the real challenge of what to do with our 
defense nuclear waste, it is simply time to reach at least an interim 
decision.
  I expect that the Senators from Nevada, and many other Senators as 
well, are firm in the belief that wherever the temporary storage site 
is located will end up being the permanent storage site. I suspect that 
may very well be true, but I do believe that we are far enough along 
this road that it is appropriate for the Congress to make that decision 
and to make that decision now.

[[Page S9237]]

  The waste is there, the environmental threat is there, the physical 
dangers are there, the necessity to gather it together in one place is 
there. We know enough now about the policy to be able to make that 
decision to be there. We are simply carrying out under the leadership 
of the Senator from Alaska and the Senator from Louisiana the very 
policies that this Congress and a former President of the United States 
felt to be appropriate policies in 1982, and in doing so, we will save 
the taxpayers money, we will help the environment, we will help our 
overall safety, and we will, one hopes, allow the Senator from 
Louisiana to retire, as he has regrettably chosen to do, from the 
Senate knowing that he has completed the job that he started in 1982 or 
earlier.
  Mr. MURKOWSKI addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alaska.
  Mr. MURKOWSKI. How much time remains on both sides?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alaska has control of 17 
minutes; the Senators from Nevada have control of 20 minutes, 39 
seconds.
  Mr. REID. I am wondering if we could have a vote on this amendment 
and go to something else?
  Mr. MURKOWSKI. I would be very pleased to. Is that the wish of the 
Senator from Nevada?
  Mr. REID. Yes.
  Mr. MURKOWSKI. I yield back the remainder of our time.
  Mr. REID. That is, on this amendment that is true.
  Mr. MURKOWSKI. Both sides are willing to yield back the remainder of 
their time and ask for a voice vote.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. With all time being yielded back on the 
amendment, the question now is on agreeing to the amendment.
  The amendment (No. 5075) was rejected.
  Mr. JOHNSTON. I move to reconsider the vote.
  Mr. MURKOWSKI. I move to lay that motion on the table.
  The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I wonder if the Senator from Alaska has the 
unanimous consent agreement that was being typed up for our submission?
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. MURKOWSKI. 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 Alaska.
  Mr. MURKOWSKI. On behalf of the leader, I ask unanimous consent that 
the vote occur on or in relation to the amendment number 5073 at 3:30 
p.m. today, and notwithstanding the agreement of July 24, the vote 
occur on final passage of S. 1936 at 4:55, and that paragraph 4 of rule 
XII be waived.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. MURKOWSKI. I thank my colleagues from Nevada for expediting the 
process.
  Mr. REID. I say to my friend from Alaska, I think it would be 
appropriate the time would be equally divided between now and 3:30 on 
the amendment offered by the Senators from Nevada. I ask unanimous 
consent that that be the case.
  Mr. MURKOWSKI. That is agreeable.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. BRYAN addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Nevada.
  Mr. BRYAN. I thank the Chair.


                           Amendment No. 5073

  (Purpose: To specify contractual obligations between DOE and waste 
                              generators)

  Mr. BRYAN. Mr. President, I send amendment No. 5073 to the desk and 
ask for its consideration.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
  The bill clerk read as follows:

       The Senator from Nevada [Mr. Bryan] proposes amendment 
     numbered 5073.

  Mr. BRYAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that further 
reading of the amendment be dispensed with.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The amendment is as follows:

       At the appropriate place in the bill, insert the following 
     new provisions:

     ``SEC.   . COMPLIANCE WITH OTHER LAWS.

       ``Notwithstanding any other provision of this Act, the 
     Secretary shall comply with all Federal laws and regulations 
     in developing and implementing the integrated management 
     system.

     ``SEC.   . COMPLIANCE WITH NATIONAL ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY ACT.

       ``(a) National Environmental Policy Act of 1969.--
     Notwithstanding any other provision of this Act, the 
     Secretary shall comply with all requirements of the National 
     Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (42 U.S.C. 4321 et seq.) in 
     developing and implementing the integrated management system.
       ``(b) Judicial Review.--Notwithstanding any other provision 
     of this Act, any agency action relating to the development or 
     implementation of the integrated management system shall be 
     subject to judicial review.''

  Mr. BRYAN. Mr. President, much has been said over the past few hours 
today and earlier during the course of our discussion of S. 1936 about 
what I consider one of the most serious defects of this piece of 
legislation in that it emasculates the environmental protections that 
have been drafted for more than a quarter of a century, most of which 
with bipartisan support and in effect says with respect to this 
particular issue they shall not apply.
  So what we are doing is we are giving people an opportunity, our 
colleagues an opportunity, to express themselves on the environmental 
issue, very, very simple.
  The first part of this amendment says:

       Notwithstanding any other provision of this Act, the 
     Secretary shall comply with all Federal laws and regulations 
     in developing and implementing the integrated management 
     system.

  My colleagues will recall the section 501 under the current 
provisions, as amended, is very convoluted and says:

       If the requirements of any Federal, State, or local law 
     (including a requirement imposed by regulation or by any 
     other means under such a law) are inconsistent with or 
     duplicative of the requirements of the Atomic Energy Act . . 
     . or of this Act, the Secretary shall comply only with the 
     requirements of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 and of this 
     Act. . . .

  This Mr. President, makes it very, very clear. If you do not want all 
of these environmental laws preempted, this is the way to correct it. 
Straightforward, no ifs, ands, or buts: Notwithstanding any other 
provision of this act, the Secretary shall comply with all Federal laws 
and regulations in developing and implementing the integrated 
management system.
  I note for my colleagues, because the two Senators from Nevada have 
been involved in this issue now for the last 14 years, we made a policy 
judgment not to include State law so it could not be asserted that this 
was an indirect effort to allow the Nevada legislature to implement 
some type of barrier that would make this impossible.
  So this is straightforward. It does not get any cleaner, it does not 
get any clearer, and does not get any easier to understand. If you are 
truly opposed to preempting all of these laws, this is the amendment 
that does it.
  If you also believe that there is a purpose in America for the 
National Environmental Policy Act, this amendment provides for the full 
application and judicial review. Under the current bill the provisions 
say on the one hand that the Environmental Policy Act will apply, and 
then go on to say at some considerable length, but it shall not apply 
to the various citing alternatives. I will provide that.
  Section 204, subsection (f) says the National Environmental Policy 
Act shall apply. Then you get down into subsection (B).

       Such Environmental Impact Statement shall not consider --
       (i) the need for interim storage. . .
       (ii) the time of the initial availability of the interim 
     storage. . .
       (iii) any alternatives to the storage of [nuclear waste].

                           *   *   *   *   *

       (v) any alternatives to the design criteria. . .
       (vi) the environmental impacts of the storage [beyond the 
     period of initial licensure].

  You will recall the National Academy of Sciences said those should 
consider 10,000 years and beyond.
  This bill would limit it to just the period of time of the initial 
licensure. And so, Mr. President, this is a clean, straightforward 
attempt to say that the full array of provisions under the National 
Environmental Policy Act shall apply.

[[Page S9238]]

  Let me just say that the Council on Environmental Quality--that is 
the council that was established when Congress passed the National 
Environmental Policy Act in 1969-- went on to say--and I quote from the 
letter. ``S. 1936''--that is essentially what we are dealing with:

       S. 1936 renders the NEPA process meaningless by precluding 
     the incorporation of NEPA's core values which are necessary 
     for making informed and timely decisions essential for 
     protecting public health, safety and environmental quality. 
     Consequently, the bill all but locks into place both interim 
     and permanent storage sites by giving decisionmakers no 
     reasonable options * * *

  It is that same rationale that has caused the Administrator of the 
Environmental Protection Agency, to point out that in effect we do not 
have the provisions of the National Environmental Policy Act under the 
provisions of the bill as now constituted.
  So, Mr. President, I think we can make this very clear and very 
simple. If Senators want these environmental laws to apply, if they 
believe that the Environmental Policy Act ought to be applicable to 
this very critical decision, in which we all agree that we are dealing 
with material that is not just kind of messy, kind of unpleasant, to be 
a little bit difficult and inconvenient to clean up, we are talking 
about stuff that is deadly for tens of thousands of years, the highest 
kind of risk to public health and safety. Yet, the nuclear industry, 
and its supporters, have the audacity to emasculate the application of 
the environmental laws and in effect try to reduce the impact of the 
National Environmental Policy Act to a hollow and pale facsimile of 
what the law provides in terms of protections for various policy 
initiatives, et cetera. Mr. President, I reserve the remainder of my 
time and yield the floor.
  Mr. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, we now have how much time?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has 16\1/2\ minutes.
  Mr. MURKOWSKI. It is my intention to speak for about 4 minutes and 
give the Senator from Louisiana about 8 minutes, and then reserve the 
balance of my time.
  Mr. President, this is another innocuous-sounding amendment which, in 
reality, is a bonanza for lawyers, and there are a lot of lawyers in 
this country. We have general laws in this country to cover situations 
that Congress did not specifically consider. The courts understand 
that. So when there is a conflict between a general law and a specific 
law enacted with a particular facility or purpose in mind, the court 
follows the specific law.
  With this act we are considering, the specific conditions to apply to 
specific nuclear waste repositories--an interim repository and a 
permanent repository. What the amendment of the Senator from Nevada 
attempts to do is to provide broadly written, general laws with the 
same standing as the specific directions we are providing in this bill. 
Theirs is an amendment, Mr. President, carefully crafted to confuse the 
courts, confound the legal process, and enrich the lawyers.
  This amendment is going to delay the process leading to a responsible 
solution to the nuclear waste problem. I implore my colleagues to avoid 
this trap. That is what it is. This is an antienvironmental amendment.
  Let me repeat that, Mr. President. This is an antienvironmental 
amendment. It does not address, obviously, the problem we have with the 
nuclear waste. If you want to solve a huge environmental problem in 
this country, you want to oppose this amendment.
  If this amendment prevails, Mr. President, the Department of Energy 
is going to be mired in litigation. It will be mired in red tape. It 
will be mired in delay. We are simply not going to be able to get there 
from here with a responsible answer to this problem. Taxpayer dollars 
are going to be squandered in litigation if this amendment is adopted. 
The problem of nuclear waste will continue to persist, and, as a 
consequence, we will be right back to zero.
  I retain the balance of my time and yield 7 or 8 minutes to the 
Senator from Louisiana.
  Mr. JOHNSTON. Mr. President, I thank my colleague for yielding. Mr. 
President, if you want to frustrate any ability to have a nuclear waste 
repository, vote for this amendment, because, to be sure, this would 
make it impossible to build.
  Now, Mr. President, this has been advertised as an attempt only to 
make this subject to the same environmental laws that every other 
process has. Not so, Mr. President. Under the present Administrative 
Procedures Act, there is an appeal to the courts only for a final 
agency action. That is section 704 of the Administrative Procedures 
Act.
  What this amendment would do is to say that any agency action related 
to the development or implementation of the management system shall be 
subject to judicial review--any agency action.
  So, Mr. President, I guess anything that the agency does, whether it 
is a major Federal action or not, whether it is a final agency action, 
would be subject to judicial review. They would be able to go to court. 
If you wake up in the morning and purchase a cup of coffee, I guess 
that is some kind of agency action, not final, but subject to judicial 
review. It would mean it would be impossible to do anything under this 
system.
  Mr. President, much has been made of the fact that environmental 
impact statements have been waived here. The fact of the matter is, Mr. 
President, existing legislation presently calls for a waiver of 
virtually every provision already contained herein. For example, Mr. 
President, we state that such environmental impact statement shall not 
consider any alternatives to the storage of spent nuclear fuel at the 
interim storage facility.
  Now, why did we put that in the initial legislation back in 1982? Why 
did we bring it forward in 1987? And why do we have it here? Because, 
Mr. President, there are endless alternatives to storage of spent 
nuclear fuel.

  You can shoot it into space and into the sun. That has been seriously 
suggested. You can send it down to the ocean bottom and bury it in the 
deep mud down there. You can have detonation underground in caverns. 
You can reprocess in light-water reactors, you can reprocess in liquid 
light-water reactors, you can have other space launches, deep bore 
holes in the Earth. Mr. President, all of these alternatives. But this 
language would have to be evaluated under the National Environmental 
Policy Act, notwithstanding the fact that Congress has spoken very 
clearly on the need for a nuclear waste repository.
  Mr. President, this would endlessly delay this matter by having to do 
very expensive studies on matters which have already been rejected by 
the Congress. Another provision on which the law already provides no 
need for a NEPA statement is an alternative to the site of the facility 
as designated by the Secretary. The site here is Yucca Mountain.
  Now, the Congress has clearly spoken in naming Yucca Mountain. That 
is why we have said in previous legislation that you did not need to do 
an alternative NEPA statement to examine, for example, the granite in 
Maine or the different kind of geologic formations in Washington, for 
example, or the salt domes in Mississippi. There are potential sites 
all over this country and, but for the waiver of a NEPA statement, you 
would have to go and revisit each of these facilities all over the 
country, each of these locations. That is, in each of these cases, the 
law already provides for a waiver of the NEPA statement to consider 
these various alternatives.
  The same is true for the alternatives to the design. The same is true 
for the need for the interim storage facility.
  Mr. President, rather than bring forward some new series of waivers, 
we are really bringing forward what existing law provides and has 
already been waived as part of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act.
  Mr. President, it is not too much to say that if we adopted this 
amendment you would never be able to build a repository in the United 
States or an interim facility because you would put on endless 
requirements for NEPA statements on matters to examine sites all over 
the United States, to examine alternatives to repository disposal and 
interim disposal, on matters that would be very expensive to 
investigate and very difficult to prove, and would take many, many 
years to determine.
  Most especially, Mr. President, by providing that there would be 
appeal from any agency action as opposed to

[[Page S9239]]

final agency action, final agency action appeals are provided in this 
legislation, but interim agency actions are not. If you made all agency 
actions appealable, it would simply be impossible to have a repository.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Coverdell). The time of the Senator has 
expired.
  Mr. REID. Would the Chair advise the Senator from Nevada how much 
time we have.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator's side has 12 minutes, and the 
other side has 8 minutes.
  Mr. REID. I want to yield to my friend from California, but prior to 
that, I want to discuss a number of things.
  First, this is a good deal for the proponents of this bill. They want 
to waive all the environmental laws, and they are saying the reason is 
because people might want to appeal, they might be protecting their 
rights, which is what you can do in this country.
  That is why we have NEPA. That is why we have all the laws set forth 
in the chart behind us.
  I also want to drop back a few minutes, Mr. President. The senior 
Senator from North Dakota was here. He was concerned about terrorism, 
but because we were running out of time on an amendment, we could not 
respond to his concern. I want to take a few minutes to respond to him. 
I hope if the Senator is not listening, his staff is, because this is, 
I think, extremely important to the question he asked.
  We have here a letter from the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense 
League. Among other things, they say in this letter, dated July 29, 
1996--what they are basically explaining is that nuclear waste is 
dangerous and terrorists will get to the nuclear shipments, and they 
proved it.

       Two shipments arrived at the Military Ocean Terminal at 
     Sunny Point in North Carolina, were loaded onto rail cars, 
     and then transported overland to SRS. We were able to track 
     both of these shipments from their ports of origin in 
     Denmark, Greece, France, and Sweden across the Atlantic to 
     North Carolina to SRS.

  These shipments cannot be kept secret so long as we live in a free 
society.

       Our actions were peaceful, but we proved that determined 
     individuals, on a shoestring budget, can precisely track 
     international and domestic shipments of strategic materials. 
     In the wake of Oklahoma City and Atlanta, the dangers posed 
     by domestic or international terrorists armed with explosives 
     makes the transport of highly radioactive spent nuclear fuel 
     too dangerous to contemplate for the foreseeable future.

  I ask unanimous consent that the letter dated July 29 from the Blue 
Ridge Environmental Defense League be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the letter was ordered to be printed in the 
Record, as follows:

                                          Blue Ridge Environmental


                                               Defense League,

                                      Marshall, NC, July 29, 1996.
     U.S. Senate,
     Washington, DC.
       Dear Senator: The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1996 (S. 
     1936) would place in jeopardy the lives of millions of 
     American citizens by transporting 15,638 casks of highly 
     radioactive material over railways and highways of this 
     nation. This attempt at a quick-fix for the nuclear waste 
     dilemma would cause more problems than it attempts to solve. 
     The people who would bear the greatest burden would be the 
     172 million Americans who live nearest the transportation 
     corridors. S. 1936 is a legislative short-circuit that will 
     make us less secure as a nation and which will dump the costs 
     of emergency response on the states and local governments.
       The Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League began in 1984: 
     our work takes us throughout the southeast. Since 1994 we 
     have observed the international shipments of spent nuclear 
     fuel (SNF) from foreign research reactors (FRR) to a disposal 
     site at the Savannah River Site (SRS) in South Carolina. Two 
     shipments arrived at the Military Ocean Terminal at Sunny 
     Point (MOTSU) in North Carolina, were loaded onto rail cars, 
     and then transported overland to SRS. We were able to track 
     both of these shipments from their ports of origin in 
     Denmark, Greece, France, and Sweden across the Atlantic to 
     North Carolina to SRS. We observed the fuel shipment when 
     they arrived at MOTSU. We watched the SNF transfer from ship 
     to train and followed it through the countryside of coastal 
     North and South Carolina. Our reason for doing this was to 
     alert people along the transport route about the shipments 
     through their communities. We rented a light plane and flew 
     out over the SNF ships when they reached the three-mile 
     limit. Television news cameras accompanied us and transmitted 
     pictures for broadcast on the evening news. If we can track 
     such shipments, anyone can. These shipments cannot be kept 
     secret so long as we live in a free society. Our actions were 
     peaceful but we proved that determined individuals on a 
     shoestring budget can precisely track international and 
     domestic shipments of strategic materials. In the wake of 
     Oklahoma City and Atlanta the dangers posed by domestic or 
     international terrorists armed with explosives make the 
     transport of highly radioactive spent nuclear fuel too 
     dangerous to contemplate for the foreseeable future.
       Our work in North Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia takes 
     us to many rural communities. Emergency management personnel 
     in these areas are dedicated volunteers, but they are 
     unprepared for nuclear waste. Volunteer fire departments in 
     rural counties are very good at putting out house fires and 
     brush fires. While serving as a volunteer fire fighter in 
     Madison County, NC, I had the privilege of working with these 
     men and women. We took special training to handle propane 
     tank emergencies utilizing locally-built water pumper trucks. 
     More sophisticated training or equipment was prohibitively 
     expensive and beyond our financial means. Traffic control is 
     a consideration at an emergency scene. Any fire or accident 
     tends to draw a crowd. Onlookers arrive as soon as the fire 
     department--sometimes sooner in remote areas. There are 
     always traffic jams reducing traffic flow to a one-lane crawl 
     day or night, fair weather or foul. The remote river valleys 
     and steep grades of Appalachia are legendary. At Saluda, NC 
     the steepest standard gauge mainline railroad grade in the 
     United States drops 253 feet/mile (4.8% grade). The CSX and 
     Norfolk Southern lines trace the French Broad River Valley 
     and the Nolichucky Gorge west through the Appalachian 
     Mountains along remote stretches of rivers famous among 
     whitewater rafters for their steep drops and their distance 
     from civilization. The Norfolk Southern RR crosses the French 
     Broad River at Deep Water Bridge where the mountains rise 
     2,200 feet above the river. These are the transport routes 
     through western North Carolina that will be used for high 
     level nuclear waste transport as soon as 1998 according to S. 
     1936.
       County emergency management personnel are entrusted with 
     early response to hazards to the public in western North 
     Carolina communities. When we asked about their readiness to 
     respond to a nuclear transport accident, they answered 
     professionally saying, ``We'll just go out there and keep 
     people away until state or federal officials arrive.'' This 
     may be the best that can be done while a fire burns or 
     radiation leaks from a damaged cask. In a recent interview, 
     one western NC emergency coordinator said, ``There is no 
     response team anywhere in this part of the state and, for the 
     foreseeable future, there is no money in local budgets to 
     equip us with any first response to radioactive spills.''
       The concerns of local officials reflect their on-the-scene 
     responsibility while state officials, faced with limited 
     budgets and staff, make plans based on current bureaucratic 
     realities. The Nuclear Waste Policy Act and Amendments of 
     1982 and 1987 place large-scale nuclear transportation 
     scenarios decades in the future. This fact and the limited 
     resources of existing emergency planning departments make the 
     timeline for preparation for nuclear accident response 
     completely inadequate for shipments beginning as soon as 
     1998. In North Carolina's Division of Emergency Management, 
     the lead REP planner has four staffers and a whole state to 
     cover. It is not possible under these circumstances, to be 
     ready with credible emergency response plans, training, and 
     equipment in two years.
       I am asking you to oppose this expensive and dangerous 
     legislation which would place an unfair and unnecessary 
     financial burden on communities and which would place at risk 
     the health and safety of millions of American citizens.
           Respectfully,

                                                   Louis Zeller.  

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, we also know that they are running roughshod 
over environmental laws in this country--``they'' being the proponents 
of this legislation. We have here a statement from Public Citizen, 
which says, ``If you believe in environmental standards, don't vote for 
S. 1936. S. 1936 severely weakens environmental standards by carving 
loopholes in the National Environmental Policy Act''--that is what we 
call NEPA--``eliminating licensing standards, forbidding the EPA from 
raising radiation release standards.''
  Mr. President, we received from the President of the United States 
office late last night a reiteration of why he believes this 
legislation is bad and why it should be voted down. Among other things 
said in this letter from John Hilly, assistant to the President of the 
United States, it says:

       The bill undermines environmental laws and processes. 
     Americans deserve full public health protection. Yet, this 
     bill renders the National Environmental Policy Act 
     meaningless, undermines EPA and the Nuclear Regulatory 
     Commission regulatory process for public protection from 
     radiation exposure.


[[Page S9240]]


  It is a good deal the proponents have--just wipe out the 
environmental laws and say we have to get rid of nuclear waste. The 
powerful nuclear lobby has been willing to run roughshod over the lives 
of Americans for too many years. It is time we stopped it. There is a 
permanent repository being characterized in Nevada. The only reason 
they want to go with the interim storage is to save money. It is not 
going fast enough for them. They don't care about environmental laws. 
They care about the bottom line, the dollar amount. They are making 
tons of money.
  Mr. President, on this chart are the companies pushing this. Look, 
Mr. President, at the percent of net income relative to revenue: 20 
percent of their revenues come from nuclear power. Here is 17.25 
percent, 17.7 percent, 20.5 percent, 22.75 percent, and 25 percent. 
They are raking in the money. But it is not enough. They want to make 
more. They don't care about the rights and liberties of Americans that 
are protected with the laws called Clean Air, Clean Water, Superfund, 
and other such laws.
  I understand my friend from California has a question.
  Mrs. BOXER. I do. I would like to address a couple of questions. 
First, I want to thank both of you for your courage. I think Senator 
Reid has shown us that there is a lot of power behind this particular 
bill--economic power--and it is always difficult to stand up against 
that. So my thanks to you for doing that. That is why we need people 
like you in the U.S. Senate. Your team leadership has been noticed by 
many throughout this great country.
  I want to also thank Senator Conrad and Senator Reid for talking 
about the issue of terrorism, because having to close our eyes to the 
terrorist threat after what we have been through is--I can't even 
fathom it. I think Senator Conrad was correct to bring this up. The 
answer from Senator Reid, I found, to be very illuminating.
  This is my basic question: Did we not have in this Senate, over many 
years, a lot of struggles and fights to win passage of the very 
legislation that would be waived in this act, and wasn't that struggle 
and that fight a bipartisan one, where we came together, from different 
parties sometimes, and sometimes with different viewpoints, to pass the 
Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act?
  Mr. REID. I respond to my friend from California that most of this 
legislation began during the period of Richard Nixon.
  Mrs. BOXER. That is correct.
  Mr. REID. Take clean water. The reason the Clean Water Act was 
initiated is because the Cuyahoga River in Ohio caught fire, not once, 
but three times. After the third fire, people around the country 
started saying, ``Maybe we should do something about this.'' I respond 
to my friend from California that when the Clean Water Act was 
initiated, 80 percent of the rivers and streams in America were 
polluted. Now, some 25 years later, those numbers have almost reversed. 
Approximately 80 percent of the streams and rivers in America--you can 
swim in them and drink out of them. They are in pretty good shape. It 
is not perfect. We have a long way to go, but we have done pretty well.

  Mrs. BOXER. Let me say that I have the honor and privilege of serving 
with my friend, Senator Reid, on the Environment Committee, and that is 
what brought me to the floor today.
  I ask Senator Bryan this question: Is it not true that the waste that 
will be moved throughout this country and placed in this repository is 
dangerous waste that could last between thousands of years to even a 
million years or millions of years?
  Mr. BRYAN. The Senator from California is correct. This is among the 
most dangerous material on the face of the Earth. We are talking not 
about something that would be a problem for 5, 10, 15, 20 years, even 2 
or 3 lifetimes. The whole thrust of the bill that is before us is to 
cut corners, try to save a few bucks here, to impose artificial 
deadlines that can never be met, all to the disadvantage of public 
health and safety.
  Very seldom do you hear the nuclear utilities talk about doing 
something to protect public health and safety. It is always, ``This 
costs too much,'' ``Delay this a little bit,'' ``It would be 
inconvenient or difficult.'' The whole thrust of these laws is a 
balancing of public health and safety, and the fact that it may take a 
little longer, it may be a little more difficult, was a bipartisan 
consensus, as my senior colleague pointed out, during the term of 
Richard Nixon. NEPA was enacted in 1969, the first year he served as 
President. It was a bipartisan consensus in America. This legislation 
would shatter that and subject those who would be affected by this 
decision--at least 51 million people along the transportation routes--
to a lower standard of protection for public health and safety.
  Mrs. BOXER. The point of my question is that here we have the most 
dangerous elements known to humankind. And of all the things we should 
be doing, it seems to me, when we decide on a repository, is to make 
sure that every one of those acts is complied with--Clean Air, Clean 
Water, National Environmental Policy Act, Community Right to Know, Safe 
Drinking Water Act--and that is why I am so strongly supportive of the 
Senators' amendment.
  All of the response about being duplicative and inconsistent--I 
respect my friends on the other side of the debate, but we have a 
difference in the way we view the public interest. I have nothing but 
respect for those who hold a different view. But I say this: If it is 
duplicative and there is even one question about it, why not vote for 
this amendment and be doubly sure, if you will, that our people are 
protected from the most harmful elements known to humankind? I thank my 
colleague for yielding, and I yield back my time to him.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair advises that all the time of the 
Senator from Nevada has expired. There are 8 minutes remaining on the 
other side.
  The Chair recognizes the Senator from Alaska.
  Mr. MURKOWSKI. I thank the Chair. I observe, for the benefit of my 
friend from California, for whom I have the utmost and fondest regard, 
that accepting this amendment means her State gets considered as a 
possible alternative for interim storage. The State of California 
currently has approximately 1,319 metric tons of high-level nuclear 
waste that is stored in California. It is estimated that, by the year 
2010, there will be 2,639 metric tons.
  So the point is, if we leave it where it is, which is what we will do 
with the amendment offered by my friends from Nevada, waste is simply 
going to stay where it is. As a consequence, at some point in time 
somebody will have to do something with it. To do something with it 
implies you have to move it. We have heard fear, fear, fear. We move 
money in armored cars. We used to move it in stagecoaches. We protected 
it. We protect it in armored cars. We will protect waste, if you will, 
in casks. This movement is not just helter-skelter.
  They have moved, in Europe, 30,000 metric tons of high-level nuclear 
waste. They moved it safely. That does not mean an accident could not 
happen or that a terrorist activity could not happen. But they have 
moved it. It has not been designed, if you will, to be easily lifted. 
It is very, very heavy and very difficult. The containers are built to 
maintain a degree of security unknown in any other type of engineering 
device.
  So while there is a risk associated with all aspects of this, there 
is also a reality of inconsistency in this amendment because the 
Senator from Nevada indicated that by permitting one repository in 
Nevada as a permanent repository, he has acknowledged that the material 
has to get there somehow.
  So you have the potential risk, if you will, if you simply say we are 
going for a permanent repository and we are not going to consider an 
interim repository. The stuff has to move anyhow. There is a risk 
associated with movement.
  Mrs. BOXER. Will the Senator yield?
  Mr. MURKOWSKI. I am sorry. I have a limited time, in all due respect 
to my friend from California.
  Adopting a NEPA process open to alternatives opens up new areas for 
consideration.
  There is behind us the map showing all of the places other than a 
Nevada test site that could be used for an interim central storage 
facility. You can

[[Page S9241]]

see them. They are all over the country.
  If you say yes to this amendment, you may be saying yes to nuclear 
waste storage in your State or near your State. The possibilities 
include New York, Hawaii, Connecticut, Washington, Maine, Iowa, 
California, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Arkansas, Wisconsin, 
Oregon, and others. There are potential locations in 40 other States of 
about 605,000 square miles; 20 percent of the continental United 
States. You have to put it somewhere.
  So what we have here is an effort by the Senators from Nevada that 
may sound reasonable at first glance but it sets this whole process 
back 15 or 20 years. It allows all the decisions we are making today to 
be reconsidered. It allows them all to be challenged in the courts. It 
guarantees further delay, further gridlock, further stalemate, and it 
will, therefore, force the ratepayers in all of these States not to pay 
once but to pay twice, to continue to pay into the nuclear waste fund 
and to build new interim reactor storage sites because some of them are 
full at this time.
  This is a giant loophole for the Government to use in avoiding its 
promise to store and handle waste. It is an effort to derail the 
process.
  Senate bill 1936 does not--and I emphasize ``does not''--exempt the 
establishment of an interim or final repository for NEPA. Instead, it 
requires an EIS for both the interim and permanent repository. We 
require it.
  Furthermore, S. 1936 is consistent with NEPA and the Executive Order 
12114 which implements NEPA. NEPA and the Executive order clearly 
anticipates the situation we have here. There are some decisions of 
policy that are within the agency's power to affect. There are others 
that are not. Congress may properly reserve some decisions for itself 
and allow other decisions to be considered in the NEPA process. 
Otherwise, we would never get anything done around here.
  Senate bill 1936 identifies six decisions that are appropriate for 
congressional consideration only. These six decisions involve whether 
we need a repository, when we need a repository, and where the 
repository should be built. So it is whether, when, and where. These 
are fundamental decisions of policy.
  I say to my colleagues that there are some things that we have the 
responsibility to decide and decisions that we are paid to make. These 
are some policies that we alone must determine, and that is our job.
  If we adopt this amendment, we are being irresponsible because it 
will simply put off the process, put into the courts and delay beyond 
this administration to sometime in the future, and we will never 
address it.
  What this amendment would do is to throw all of the cards back up in 
the air again as if to say Congress has made the tough decisions and 
cast the tough votes, but we are going to ignore all of that and 
revisit all of these decisions that we have already made.
  Mr. President, if we are going to allow the agencies to revisit all 
of the decisions of Congress, either through NEPA or some other means, 
then there is no need for us to be here. We might as well go home 
because there is nothing for us to do.
  So do not be fooled by this amendment. This is an amendment designed 
to derail responsible action to address nuclear waste in a repository. 
It looks reasonable at first glance, but it merely is a means to upset 
the applecart and put us back to where we were in 1980.
  Mr. President, I yield all of my remaining time.
  I move to table the pending amendment and ask for the yeas and nays.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
  There is a sufficient second.
  The yeas and nays were ordered.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is on agreeing to the motion of 
the Senator from Alaska to lay on the table the amendment of the 
Senator from Nevada. On this question, the yeas and nays have been 
ordered, and the clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk called the roll.
  The result was announced--yeas 73, nays 27, as follows:

                      [Rollcall Vote No. 258 Leg.]

                                YEAS--73

     Abraham
     Ashcroft
     Bennett
     Biden
     Bingaman
     Bond
     Brown
     Burns
     Byrd
     Campbell
     Coats
     Cochran
     Cohen
     Conrad
     Coverdell
     Craig
     D'Amato
     DeWine
     Dodd
     Domenici
     Dorgan
     Exon
     Faircloth
     Frahm
     Frist
     Gorton
     Graham
     Gramm
     Grams
     Grassley
     Gregg
     Hatch
     Hatfield
     Heflin
     Helms
     Hollings
     Hutchison
     Inhofe
     Inouye
     Jeffords
     Johnston
     Kassebaum
     Kempthorne
     Kerrey
     Kerry
     Kyl
     Leahy
     Levin
     Lott
     Lugar
     Mack
     McCain
     McConnell
     Mikulski
     Moseley-Braun
     Murkowski
     Nickles
     Nunn
     Pressler
     Robb
     Roth
     Santorum
     Shelby
     Simon
     Simpson
     Smith
     Snowe
     Specter
     Stevens
     Thomas
     Thompson
     Thurmond
     Warner

                                NAYS--27

     Akaka
     Baucus
     Boxer
     Bradley
     Breaux
     Bryan
     Bumpers
     Chafee
     Daschle
     Feingold
     Feinstein
     Ford
     Glenn
     Harkin
     Kennedy
     Kohl
     Lautenberg
     Lieberman
     Moynihan
     Murray
     Pell
     Pryor
     Reid
     Rockefeller
     Sarbanes
     Wellstone
     Wyden
  The motion to lay on the table the amendment (No. 5073) was agreed 
to.
  Mr. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote by which 
the motion was agreed to.
  Mr. JOHNSTON. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to 
lay on the table was agreed to.
  Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I supported the motion to table the Bryan 
amendment to S. 1936 not because it included a requirement that the 
Department of Energy comply with the National Environmental Policy Act 
[NEPA] in the establishment of an interim storage facility at the 
Nevada nuclear test site--language which I support--but because it also 
included unjustifiably sweeping judicial review language. While I 
support judicial review of all final agency actions, this provision 
goes well beyond final rulemakings and would be unnecessarily 
burdensome and costly to both the Federal Government and the private 
sector. In my judgment, should this bill become law over my objections, 
this judicial review could cause the entire process of establishing the 
repository to grind to a halt.
  Congress passed NEPA in 1969 to ensure that Federal agencies 
integrate environmental values--as well as social, economic, and 
technical factors--in the decisionmaking process. Section 102 of NEPA 
requires environmental impact statements [EIS] for proposed major 
Federal actions which would significantly affect the quality of the 
human environment. The EIS process includes alternatives analysis in 
which reasonable alternatives to the proposed action are explored in an 
effort to present clear choices to decisionmakers and the public, and 
to ensure that the most environmentally sound course of action is 
taken.
  S. 1936 limits or eliminates the application of a number of NEPA's 
health and environmental standards with respect to the establishment of 
a temporary waste repository. For example, in order to expedite the 
interim repository's opening it waives any regulations for the 
protection of public health and the environment if the regulations 
would delay or affect the development, licensing, construction or 
operation of the interim storage facility.
  I strongly believe that any facility in the United States designed to 
store spent nuclear fuel should be required to comply with NEPA. 
Therefore, I wholeheartedly support the first half of the Bryan 
amendment which instructs the Secretary of Energy to comply with all 
NEPA requirements.
  My concern with the Bryan amendment stems from its language which 
would add sweeping judicial review provisions to this bill. It would 
subject to judicial review any agency action relating to the 
development or implementation of the integrated management system. I 
firmly support judicial review for all final agency actions. However, I 
am concerned that including any and all agency actions, not just final 
actions, may produce innumerable interlocutory judgments.
  The cost to taxpayers likely would be very high, and the repository 
to be established under the terms of this bill likely would be drowned 
in a sea of redtape. That is not in our Nation's best interests despite 
the capable efforts of the Senators from Nevada to do everything in 
their power to prevent or

[[Page S9242]]

delay the establishment and operation of a repository in their State. 
Once our Government makes a decision to establish a repository for 
nuclear wastes which is badly needed--although I do not believe we are 
ready to make that decision with the confidence we should have for a 
step of this consequence--we should not deliberately set up the effort 
to fail by tying it in legal and procedural knots.

  It appears unlikely that any additional amendments to this bill will 
be offered or approved that would restore the applicability of NEPA 
provisions. Therefore, because the legislation exempts the repository 
establishment process from the application of NEPA and other 
environmental statutes, I will oppose final passage of S. 1936. I am 
hopeful this bill in its current form will not be enacted. The 
President has said he will veto it in this form, and I would urge him 
to do so.
  But, Mr. President, I wish to emphasize that I do not take this 
stance with enthusiasm. Our Nation needs a repository for nuclear 
waste. We should not continue ad infinitum to store it temporarily at 
the sites where it has been produced. That is neither safe nor prudent. 
Our Government needs to redouble its efforts to reach a conclusion 
about the establishment of a permanent repository, and it needs to do 
that with alacrity.
  Unfortunately, this legislation to create a temporary repository is 
not the answer. Establishing a temporary facility necessarily brings 
difficult problems that would not be present with a permanent facility. 
Exempting the facility and the process of establishing it from 
environmental laws and safeguards is unacceptable.
  It is not inconceivable, even if quite unlikely, that these problems 
can be remedied this year in a way that would permit me to support this 
legislation. The first requirement is that the process be subjected to 
compliance with environmental laws and regulations. This could be 
accomplished in a conference committee. If it is not, I will continue 
to oppose it.
  But if its flaws are not adequately repaired, and the bill either is 
not finally passed by the Congress or is vetoed by the President, the 
105th Congress needs to begin grappling early and seriously with this 
matter. I hope when it does so, Mr. President, that it will take a 
different and more responsible course than has been taken in the 
current Congress.


                             Section 101(g)

  Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, at page 9, lines 20-23 of the manager's 
substitute amendment, section 101(g) provides that ``subject to 
subsection (f), nothing in this Act shall be construed to subject the 
United States to financial liability for the Secretary's failure to 
meet any deadline for the acceptance or emplacement of spent nuclear 
fuel or high-level radioactive waste. * * *'' Is it the manager's 
intention that this language prevent contract holders from recovering 
damages or other financial relief from the Government on account of 
DOE's failure to comply with the 1998 deadline established in section 
302(a) of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982?
  Mr. MURKOWSKI. It is not the manager's intention that section 101(g) 
limit in any way the rights of contract holders, their ratepayers, or 
those agencies of the State governments that represent ratepayers, from 
enforcing any right they might have, including the right to hold the 
Federal Government liable financially, under the 1982 act and the 
contracts executed pursuant thereto. Section 101(g) is expressly 
subject to section 101(f), which makes clear that rights conferred by 
section 302(a) of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 or by the 
contracts executed thereunder are not affected by this bill, including 
section 101(g). To the extent that act or the contracts established a 
1998 deadline and the DOE fails to meet that deadline, it is not the 
manager's intent that the substitute amendment in any way restrict the 
relief available to those damaged by the failure to meet the deadline.
  Mr. LEVIN. Is it correct then that the manager does not intend that 
the amendment would restrict the scope of remedies available to the 
plaintiffs in the litigation in which the Court of Appeals of the 
District of Columbia has recently held that the 1998 deadline is a 
binding obligation of the Federal Government?
  Mr. MURKOWSKI. That is correct. It is not the manager's intent that 
the language of section 101(g) proscribe the court of appeals or any 
other court from awarding monetary relief or other financial remedies 
to those who have paid fees to the Government under the 1982 act and 
the contracts, or those who will incur additional expense on account of 
the DOE's failure to comply with any right conferred by 1982 act or the 
contracts.
  Mr. LEVIN. If a deadline were imposed by the Nuclear Waste Policy Act 
of 1996, as reflected by the substitute amendment, as well as by the 
Nuclear Waste Policy of 1982 or the contracts executed thereunder, is 
it the manager's intention that section 101(g) would proscribe 
financial liability for failure to meet the deadline to the extent it 
is imposed by the 1982 act? For instance, if DOE were to fail to 
commence the acceptance and emplacement of spent nuclear fuel and high 
level radioactive waste by November 30, 1999 or thereafter, would the 
amendment proscribe a court from imposing financial liability on DOE if 
a court ruled that DOE's inaction constituted a failure to comply with 
the deadline established in section 302(a) of the Nuclear Waste Policy 
Act of 1982 and the contracts?

  Mr. MURKOWSKI. It is not the manager's intention that section 101(g) 
limit the rights or remedies available under the Nuclear Waste Policy 
Act of 1982 or the contracts executed thereunder. If a failure by DOE 
to comply with any deadline established in the amendment also 
constituted a failure to comply with a deadline established by the 1982 
act or a contract under that act, it is not the manager's intent that 
section 101(g) modify the right of any contract holder to seek any and 
all remedies otherwise available for the violation of the 1982 act or 
for breach of the contract. It is the manager's intention that section 
101(f) preserve all of those rights, regardless of whether the same or 
a similar obligation is expressed in the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 
1996.
  Mr. LEVIN. With respect to a deadline imposed for the first time in 
the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1996, is it the manager's intention 
that section 101(g) proscribe a court order that the Secretary of 
Energy comply with such deadline, or granting relief other than money 
damages to contract holders?
  Mr. MURKOWSKI. It is not the manager's intent that section 101(g) 
proscribe anything other than financial liability for failure to meet a 
deadline imposed by the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1996. To the extent 
other forms of relief are available for the government's failure to 
comply with a deadline imposed by the amendment, the manager does not 
intend that such a remedy be prohibited.
  Mr. LEVIN. Is it the manager's intention that section 101(g) limit 
the liability of the United States for anything other than a failure to 
meet a deadline? For instance, if the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1996 
imposes an obligation which is not a deadline, such as the requirement 
to reimburse contract holders for transportable storage systems if DOE 
uses such systems as part of the integrated management system, is it 
the manager's intention that that obligation not constitute a financial 
liability of the United States?
  Mr. MURKOWSKI. It is not the manager's intention that section 101(g) 
limit the liability of the Federal Government for anything other than a 
deadline. The manager does not intend that any other obligation imposed 
by the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1996 be affected by section 101(g).
  Mr. GLENN. Mr. President, when I first saw the Nuclear Waste Policy 
Act, S. 1271, I was very surprised at its apparent disregard to the 
rights of citizens and the protection of the environment. It appeared 
to me that proponents of that bill wanted to ignore those issues, all 
in the name of removing a burden from the nuclear industry. I can 
understand the desire to make the Federal Government live up to its 
promises, but not at the expense of the environment or citizen's 
rights.
  The bill, as originally written, contained provisions for prohibiting 
the Environmental Protection Agency from performing its legislatively 
mandated function of defining standards for radiation releases from the 
permanent or interim radioactive waste repository. Congress established 
what appeared to be a limit which disregarded

[[Page S9243]]

scientific and public input on appropriate limits. Particularly galling 
was the prohibition of public input and EPA involvement in standard 
setting.
  Other issues of concern included: First, opening the door to 
reprocessing, called conditioning in the original bill; second, running 
rough-shod over the citizens of States through which the radioactive 
waste would be transported; and third, gutting Civil Service laws for a 
particular DOE office.
  I filed several amendments, in an attempt to correct provisions of 
the bill that in my view would result in unfair treatment or inadequate 
protection of citizens and the environment. Several of those provisions 
have been corrected, or at least modified. I am pleased to see that, in 
the latest version of the bill, the EPA and the NRC have been brought 
back into the process, albeit somewhat awkwardly. These two agencies 
are charged with responsibilities for setting standards for protection 
of the public, workers, and the environment from produced radioactive 
materials, which includes those found in nuclear reactors or 
radioactive waste repositories.
  I am very disturbed, however, with the legislatively imposed standard 
of 100 mrem per year to the average person in the vicinity of Yucca 
Mountain. I understood that EPA and NRC have the responsibility and 
authority to establish radiation dose limits and standards. I certainly 
would not substitute my limited knowledge on the effects of exposure to 
radioactive materials, for that of the EPA and NRC. I doubt if there 
are any others in this Chamber who would be qualified to do that, 
either. We should leave it to the experts, at EPA and NRC, as well as 
to the public, instead of imposing an arbitrary standard of our own. It 
is claimed that EPA and NRC have veto rights in this bill. However, the 
bill's wording is such, that instead of giving the agencies the 
responsibility for establishing a standard, they are required to adhere 
to our standard, unless they determine that our standard constitutes an 
``unreasonable risk to health and safety.'' What constitutes 
``unreasonable risk''? How will EPA or NRC determine what is 
``reasonable'' and what isn't in terms of risk? That is a subjective 
judgment, and it is an invitation to extensive litigation on that 
judgment. At the same time, the bill limits judicial review of 
rulemaking based on the 100 mrem standard.

  I am also concerned that our limit is significantly higher than 
limits imposed for other nuclear activities. Why is this so? Is it 
because someone has been told that we can't design a repository to 
tougher standards? Is this what health and safety regulation has come 
to? Don't set a standard that the National Academy of Sciences suggests 
you should set--their report suggests a much lower number than 100 
mrem/yr. for exposure--instead let's pick one that the engineers say 
they can easily meet today--despite the fact that the repository will 
be around, maybe, for thousands of years.
  I understand that there is disagreement among scientists about the 
effects of low-level radiation. The EPA sets a limit of 25 mrem, and 
the NRC has historically set 25 mrem around nuclear power plants. 
International standards setting bodies have also allowed dose limits 
for waste storage of 15 to 25 percent of the 100 mrem total limit.
  The EPA has also opposed the legislatively mandated limit, in letters 
to Senate Committees and individual Senators. I have also been informed 
that EPA is going to issue their dose limits in the very near future. 
[Draft within a month.] I want to know what they say in this regard 
before I set a congressionally imposed limit, which may or may not meet 
our best scientific judgment.
  Beyond this, Mr. President, the philosophy behind this bill is one 
that is seriously questionable. The bill presumes that a permanent deep 
geologic burial site of nuclear waste is the most suitable solution to 
the waste problem and then sets up a structure that will inevitably 
lead to pressures to make the interim site the site of the permanent 
facility, and with legislated safety standards for the permanent 
repository.
  I simply do not believe that we now have the technology or 
engineering knowledge to credibly design and construct a permanent 
repository that can meet acceptable safety standards for tens of 
thousands of years. If we did have this ability and understanding, then 
it would not be necessary to contort our environmental laws and 
regulatory oversight as this bill does. Until we get closer to being 
able to design and construct a repository with appropriate safety 
standards, there is no reason why we cannot continue to have monitored 
retrievable surface storage of these dangerous materials. The level of 
risk is not greater than that posed by the construction of a central 
interim facility requiring continuing transportation of radioactive 
materials from all over the country. Accordingly, Mr. President, I am 
opposed to the passage of this bill.
  Mr. KERREY. Mr. President, I would like to take this opportunity to 
explain my opposition to S. 1936. We can, and we must, seek a 
responsible and permanent solution to the important problem of high-
level nuclear waste storage. In that light, I have supported, and will 
continue to support, a permanent geologic repository. What I do not 
support is designating the location of an interim storage site before 
we have determined the viability of the Yucca Mountain permanent 
repository. I have three major objections to that policy.
  First, it exerts a growing pressure to name Yucca Mountain as a 
permanent repository. The pressure to move nuclear waste to Yucca 
Mountain continues to increase. The premature decision to authorize the 
storage of tens of thousands of metric tons of nuclear waste at the 
site only adds to the pressure to push blindly down this course. The 
American people need to be confident that the final decisions regarding 
the permanent repository are based on sound science and not political 
expediency. The American people deserve a credible, deliberative 
policymaking process. They must have faith that the location of the 
permanent repository is based on a fair and balanced consideration of 
environmental, health and safety issues. Mandating the location of a 
interim site at this time undermines the public confidence in this 
process.
  My second concern is that the interim site may become the de facto 
permanent site. If for either scientific or political reasons, the work 
on the construction of the permanent repository stops, who will be 
motivated to move the waste from temporary storage in Nevada to a 
permanent repository in another State? The nuclear waste at the interim 
site will, at that point, be of concern to very few. Those who were 
responsible for generating that waste will have no moral, legal, or 
financial responsibility for that waste. I submit that the policy 
options available at that time will be rather limited.
  This brings me to my third, and most important, concern. If, despite 
the inertia at work, another site for a permanent repository were 
named, it would set up an unacceptable situation. We would have moved 
the waste from Yucca Mountain to another, yet to be named, location. 
Nebraska is a major corridor to Yucca Mountain. Under no circumstances 
will I vote for a bill that sets up the possibility of the Nation's 
nuclear waste passing though my State twice. Simply stated, it is 
unnecessary to subject the public to the risk and expense of 
transporting this waste twice.
  That summarizes the irony of S. 1936, regardless of what the final 
deposition of the permanent repository at Yucca Mountain, we have 
errored. If Yucca Mountain is found to be a viable location, we have 
unnecessarily undermined the credibility of the scientific studies. If 
Yucca Mountain is not a viable site, we are given a no-win situation. 
We either allow the interim site to become the de facto permanent site 
or we once again move high-level nuclear waste to another location.
  Why does the Senate chose this road with no winning outcomes? Are we 
reacting to a crisis that does not exist? For years the operators of 
commercial nuclear power plants have stated that on-site storage was 
safe. All evidence supports this position, and I believe them. Current 
on-site storage is not a permanent solution, but by the same token, it 
does not present a crisis.
  The alternative to the no-win course outlined in S. 1936 is quite 
simple. We wait until the completion of the viability study at Yucca 
Mountain in 1998. At that time we can consider the policy options 
available based on sound

[[Page S9244]]

science and hard evidence. We will not have locked ourselves into 
narrow policy options or have undermined the credibility of the process 
through premature decision making. The geologic repository will be 
designed to store high-level nuclear waste for 10,000 years. Yet, this 
body can not wait 2 years to base public policy decisions on sound 
science and a credible process.
  Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I intend to support S. 1936, as amended. 
However, I would also like to express my reservations about portions of 
this bill.
  I supported cloture and I appreciate my colleagues from Nevada 
agreeing to allow this bill to move forward. It is critical that we 
proceed with the business we have to complete prior to adjournment; 
namely, 13 appropriations bills. I hold no grudges against my sincere 
colleagues from Nevada for their use of Senate rules to delay this 
bill. Were I in their shoes, I too would likely use every parliamentary 
device available to me to prevent enactment of this bill.
  It is because I do not want to be in their shoes that I support this 
bill. I, and many of my constituents, are concerned that there may be a 
renewed effort to place either an interim or a permanent nuclear waste 
repository in Washington, at Hanford, adjacent to the Columbia River. 
As many who have dealt with this issue over the years know, Hanford, a 
Texas site, and Yucca Mountain were the winners in the permanent 
repository selection process. So, for the health of my constituents, I 
support development of Yucca Mountain.
  Conversely, it is also that fear for my constituents that makes me 
most nervous about S. 1936. While I appreciate the improvements made 
about Environmental Protection Agency authority regarding radiation 
release and exposure standards, I am worried about the bill's easing of 
some environmental and health standards. It is not unlikely that 
someday we in Washington may have the rest of the Nation decide that 
Hanford radiation standards could be lessened in order to foist some 
new batch of nuclear waste upon us. So, I am leery of such provisions 
in this bill and am pleased that the authors continue to make 
improvements.
  I also am frustrated that the U.S. Government has made a commitment 
to some of its citizens, to ratepayers, to the nuclear industry, to 
store nuclear waste by 1998. Maybe we should not have made such a 
commitment or collected fees to follow through on that commitment. But 
we did. It is time to act on that commitment--even if it means so doing 
with this imperfect vehicle.
  Mr. President, this is a very difficult issue for me. I care about my 
State, I care about the ratepayers' money being spent on this never-
ending project to get nuclear waste in a permanent geologic repository, 
I care about the health of all people, including Nevadans, and I care 
about fairness. I agree with many of the arguments made by my 
colleagues, Senators Bryan and Reid. Therefore, I will support any 
amendments that address my concerns. In the end though, I will support 
S. 1936 in its final form.
  Ms. MOSELEY-BRAUN. Mr. President, on balance, I support S. 1936. It 
is not a perfect bill, but it is a reasonable bill, and I do not 
believe that the United States can afford further, indefinite delays.
  The decision before the Senate is, in part, about the suitability of 
Yucca Mountain, the risks associated with the transportation of spent 
nuclear fuel, and the legacy of spent nuclear fuel created by our 
nuclear industry.
  The issues that flow from a decision to open an interim facility near 
Yucca Mountain, however, are as important as the site decision itself. 
My own State of Illinois, with 13 reactors, has more nuclear plants 
than any other State. For 36 years, waste has been building up, and the 
volume continues to grow. With our excellent network of highways and 
railways, Illinois also faces issues associated with interstate 
shipments of spent fuel destined for a permanent repository.
  There will never be a perfect disposal site for spent nuclear fuel. 
The fuel is dangerously radioactive, and remains so for hundreds of 
thousands of years. Whether it is placed in deep geologic storage, sunk 
beneath the ocean, drilled far into the earth, or shot it into space, 
every approach poses risks to humans and the environment, and none will 
ever completely eliminate the dangers of this substance.
  Without a perfect solution, however, we are forced to choose the next 
best option: A location where the waste will have the least potential 
adverse impact on human health. Ideally, such a site is in an 
unpopulated area, away from threats to underground water, away from 
animal habitats, and in a place where it poses the least environmental 
risk and where we are assured of maximum security protection.
  Illinois, home to over 11 million people, is not such a site. Yet, 
over 5,000 tons of spent fuel are housed at temporary locations 
scattered throughout my State. Most of these locations are in northern 
Illinois, near great concentrations of people. The fuel rods are stored 
in underwater pools, a method never meant to be permanent. While the 
pools pose no imminent risk, and will likely remain safe for the 
foreseeable future, they do not ensure complete safety, maximum 
security, or long-term protection of the environment. And the volume of 
waste at these sites will continue to accumulate as spent fuel is 
removed from nuclear plants.
  For Illinois, there are no perfect answers, there are only options, 
and each option has its problems. If a Western waste disposal site is 
opened, Illinois, because of its key role in our national 
transportation system, faces a future of literally thousands of 
shipments of nuclear waste across the State. The other alternative is 
even less palatable--keeping large amounts of deadly waste at Illinois 
nuclear power plans for perhaps 100 years and beyond, in facilities 
never designed for long-term safety and security, located too close to 
people, too close to groundwater, and quite frankly, too close for 
comfort.

  My conclusion is that spent nuclear fuel cannot remain in Illinois. 
Illinois is not suitable for the medium and long-term storage of 
nuclear waste, and should not have to risk inadvertently becoming a de 
facto permanent site because Congress fails to act.
  Congress has debated this issue for 14 years. Illinois ratepayers 
have paid more than $1.5 billion to help finance the construction of a 
permanent disposal site in Yucca Mountain. Despite the billions 
received, the Federal Government has made little progress, and Yucca 
Mountain is not expected to open until 2010 or later. Meanwhile, space 
runs out in Illinois beginning in 2001. If Congress fails to act, 
utilities will be required to build additional storage space at reactor 
sites, and ratepayers will foot the bill, essentially paying twice for 
the storage of this waste.
  I am concerned about transportation. While I have been assured by the 
city of Chicago and the Illinois Department of Nuclear Safety, both of 
which have excellent hazardous waste transportation programs, that 
spent fuel shipments pose no risk to the general public, we must remain 
as vigilant as possible on this issue.
  These fuel shipments must be handled in a manner that meets the 
highest safety standards and does not put Illinoisans or other 
Americans at risk. That's why I offered an amendment to this bill that 
would hold the Department of Energy and the Department of 
Transportation accountable for these shipments, and directs the 
Department of Energy to select routes that avoid heavily populated 
areas and environmentally sensitive areas. I thank the chairman and 
ranking member of the committee for accepting these amendments. I do 
believe, however, that more should be done to further improve 
transportation safety, and I hope Congress will revisit this issue in 
the very near future.
  It is worth remembering that if this bill is enacted this year, there 
will be no immediate cross-country exodus of spent fuel. The Nuclear 
Waste Technical Review Board recognizes that ``even if passed into law 
now, none of the proposals before Congress would enable the operations 
of a centralized facility before 2002.'' Additionally, the process of 
licensing and developing a large interim facility, and the 
transportation infrastrucutre that goes with it, has been estimated to 
take 5 to 7 years. Furthermore, it is not expected that the Department 
of Energy will meet several deadlines in this bill.

[[Page S9245]]

  Even if S. 1936 is promptly enacted, spent fuel will remain where it 
is for quite some time. Each decade of delay, however, adds 20,000 
metric tons to storage capacity. Beyond 2020, nearly 85,000 metric tons 
of spent fuel will have been generated. And that is exactly why the 
Nuclear Waste Techical Review Board recommends that action must begin 
now on a Federal facility, so that full scale operations can begin by 
2010 when reactors begin shutting down in large numbers.
  Mr. President, this debate is not about whether nuclear power should 
ever have been pursued as an energy option. That has long since been 
decided. We cannot wave the magic wand, nor turn back the clock. 
Nuclear power is here, and nuclear waste must be dealt with.
  Our decision on dealing with nuclear waste will never be perfect, 
because it cannot be perfect. But, it is a decision that must be made. 
If we fail to act, Congress will send a message to the American people 
that the nuclear waste problems created by our generation are best 
resolved, and best financed, by our children and our grandchildren. 
That is neither right, nor fair, and that is why I am voting in favor 
of S 1936. I urge my colleagues to do likewise.


                      Nuclear Waste and the Budget

  Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I want to take a moment to congratulate 
the senior senator from Idaho, the chairman and ranking minority member 
of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee and the majority 
leader on this bill. All of these Senators deserve a great deal of 
credit for getting this controversial bill pulled together and 
scheduled for Senate action in a year when the calendar is working 
against us. I also want to congratulate the Senators from Nevada. This 
is a difficult issue. I may disagree with them, but I respect the 
effort and vigor they have put into their opposition to this bill.
  The Nuclear Waste Policy Act required electric utilities to contract 
with the Department of Energy to take title and ultimately dispose of 
nuclear waste generated by these utilities in exchange for a fee on 
nuclear-generated electricity. The Department of Energy's view is that 
they do not have obligation to take this waste until the development of 
an operational interim storage facility or a permanent repository.
  The Clinton administration has shown incredible bad faith on its part 
to honor these contracts. While the administration has argued that 
there is no obligation to take the waste in 1998, it continues to 
collect fees from electric utilities pursuant to its contracts with 
these utilities. The Clinton administration has threatened to veto 
legislation, last year during consideration of the Energy and Water 
Development Appropriations bill and this year during consideration of 
this legislation, providing an interim storage facility that would 
provide DOE with the means to meets its contractual responsibilities 
while a permanent repository is being developed. Although the 
administration has professed support for development of a permanent 
repository, the President has not provided the leadership necessary to 
gain the funding or the changes in the law that will be necessary to 
ensure an operational disposal facility will be developed. For example, 
in his most recent budget request, the President proposed to reduce 
spending for the nuclear waste program over the next 6 years.
  When DOE indicated it would not accept responsibility for the 
utilities' nuclear waste in 1998, the electric utility industry took 
them to court. The United States Federal Court of Appeals for the D.C. 
Circuit recently sided with the utilities on the question of the 
Federal Government's obligation and concluded that the Federal 
Government has an obligation to accept title for this waste in 1998 
that is reciprocal to the utilities' obligation to pay. The court 
clearly rejected DOE's argument that its obligation was contingent on 
the development of an interim or permanent repository.
  S. 1936 will allow the Federal Government to honor that commitment. 
It provides for an interim storage facility to meet the Federal 
Government's commitment to take this waste and sets forth a process 
that will allow the Federal Government to study, evaluate, and develop 
a safe and environmentally-sound permanent repository for nuclear 
waste.
  Earlier versions of this legislation included provisions that would 
have violated the Budget Act. Senators Craig, Murkowski, and Johnston 
have written a bill that does not violate the Budget Act. It is fully 
paid for over the 10-year period as required by the Act. The bill, 
however, will result in a $600 million annual increase in direct 
spending and the deficit beginning in 2003. This direct spending would 
be available to fund program management, interim storage, 
transportation, and development of a permanent repository. It pays for 
this increased spending over the 10-year period by accelerating the 
payment of fees by electric utilities. Although the bill does not 
technically violate the pay-as-you-go rule over the 10-year period, it 
meets this requirement by shifting future payments by utilities into 
the 10-year budget window.

  This bill provides direct spending authority that will be available 
to fund all aspects of the nuclear waste disposal program. I understand 
the very strong arguments for this spending authority, but as Budget 
Committee chairman I am constantly confronted with very compelling 
arguments on why we should increase spending for numerous programs.
  In this instance, particularly considering the Appeals Court's 
decision, clearly the Federal Government has an obligation to take 
title to this waste in 1998. DOE's argument was that it had no 
obligation because no disposal facility was available. The Court 
discarded this view and interpreted disposal to be a very broad term 
that included temporary storage of nuclear waste.
  Viewing the tremendous effort that went into getting an agreement for 
consideration of this bill, I decided not to pursue an amendment that 
would have limited the increase in direct spending to what is needed to 
develop an interim storage facility. If this legislation is not 
enacted, I intend to pursue modifications to this legislation to limit 
the increase in direct spending to what is necessary to provide for the 
interim storage of this waste. I think a very strong case can be made 
that the Government has a binding contractual obligation to provide for 
the interim storage of this waste and that is clearly supported by the 
court's opinion.
  Mr. ROCKEFELLER. Mr. President, I oppose the Nuclear Waste Policy 
Act, and I would like to share some of my reasons with my colleagues.
  First, the Senate should not be ramming through a bill to designate 
an interim storage site just when a comprehensive, sophisticated 
process is well underway to come up with a permanent site or solution. 
This legislation basically says the Senate knows better--it says the 
Senate should take the place of scientists and experts, choosing Nevada 
as the so-called interim site and presumably paving the way for the 
same location to be used forever.
  I do not think this is the time whatsoever for the Senate to make 
this decision--it's a misuse of power, it contradicts other policies 
that Congress has put on the books, and it could trigger all kinds of 
unfortunate consequences, including the possibility of a very serious 
accident.
  This bill, S. 1936, violates current law, the 1987 Nuclear Waste 
Policy Act amendments. Under the 1987 law, DOE is not allowed to begin 
construction of an interim storage facility until the NRC has granted a 
construction license for the permanent site. Also, that law stated that 
no more than 10,000 metric tons of waste could be stored at the interim 
site before the permanent site began operating, and no more than 15,000 
metric tons after that. But S. 1936 authorizes an interim site storage 
capacity far greater than either of these levels--40,000 metric tons 
after phase two, which will be increased to 60,000 metric tons if Yucca 
Mountain falls behind schedule.
  In 1987, Congress was saying that it would be unwise to ship nuclear 
waste across the country to a temporary above-ground storage site until 
a permanent site gets built. The same is true now. It still isn't 
smart. But, under this bill, the waste would be shipped to the Nevada 
interim storage site anyway, before the studies have been completed to 
certify whether or not Yucca Mountain is the place to be a permanent 
repository of nuclear waste.

[[Page S9246]]

  Some say this isn't true, that there is a safeguard in the bill. But, 
while the bill requires DOE to stop construction on the interim site if 
the President determines that Yucca Mountain is unsuitable as the 
permanent repository, there's a catch. If Yucca Mountain isn't found 
suitable, the bill will require that the interim site be built in 
Nevada anyway unless the President picks an alternative site within 18 
months. This alternate site must then also be approved by Congress 
within 2 years after that. Leaving aside the idea that we should 
designate nuclear waste sites on objective criteria rather than strict 
timetables, does anybody believe another site will be found in 18 
months? Or that Congress will approve another site 2 years after that? 
I'm not betting on it.

  Why all this pressure to act on the bill before us, S. 1936? From 
everything I have seen, there is no overwhelming case, for safety or 
related reasons, to force the transportation and placement of this 
waste into an interim site. The nonpartisan Nuclear Waste Technical 
Review Board issued a report saying that there is no compelling 
technical or safety reason to move spent fuel to a centralized facility 
for the next few years. And the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has said 
that the waste could safely remain at the current sites for far longer 
than that in dry cask storage facilities. In short, this waste doesn't 
have to be moved now.
  In fact, it is even conceivable that science may ultimately lead to 
the rejection of a single repository, because of the dangers of 
transporting waste and progress being made in developing alternatives. 
The Senate should not be intervening, singling out Nevada, and short-
circuiting what could be a safer, sounder, and less costly solution.
  And there are a number of safety concerns that argue against this 
bill. Experts have raised concerns about the radiation exposure 
standard in this bill, and I think we should question the preemption of 
several key environmental laws, such as the Clean Water Act and the 
National Environmental Policy Act.
  Transportation of this waste also is a major concern, and reason 
enough to reject this legislation. If the plan in this bill goes 
forward, we will see the transport of up to 60,000 tons of nuclear 
waste by road and rail from nuclear facilities around the Nation to 
this interim storage site. These mobile nuclear waste sites will travel 
through West Virginia and 42 other States. I have been told that 50 
million people live within 1 mile of the proposed transportation routes 
that would be used.
  In West Virginia, we have no nuclear facilities. We have no spent 
fuel. We have no nuclear waste. And we have no storage problem. But, 
under this bill, West Virginians will have nuclear waste being shipped 
through the State. I do not want to be alarmist, but I do have concerns 
that West Virginia and the other 42 States have not had adequate time 
to develop the necessary transportation safety plans, and are not ready 
to handle the possible accidents that may occur. I don't know how many 
of my colleagues have spent time in southern West Virginia, but the 
mountains and roads there will not be friendly to rescue efforts if one 
of these trains goes off the tracks. Under this bill, the zeal of some 
to force this premature interim storage facility into Nevada may raise 
risks for protecting the people and the environment in places like West 
Virginia.
  Mr. President, this is an unnecessary bill that forces Nevada to 
prematurely take the Nation's nuclear waste and become America's so-
called interim storage site. It looks like a set-up to becoming the 
permanent storage facility, not as a result of the promised objective 
and scientific process, but as a result of political pressure and an 
eagerness to dump a problem onto a lone State. It uses a radiation 
exposure standard that looks questionable and undermines environmental 
laws in ways that could be dangerous. It threatens to expose millions 
of Americans to the risks of transporting and storing this waste.
  The Senate has no business passing this bill. The President has made 
it clear he will veto the bill, wisely insisting on the completion of 
the kind of process that should be used to make decisions as monumental 
as where, when, and how to transport and locate nuclear waste. The 
Senate should defer to that process as well, and resist this idea of 
singling out one State in such an insensitive and heavy-handed manner.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Louisiana.
  Mr. JOHNSTON. Mr. President, I wonder if my colleague from Alaska and 
my colleagues from Nevada will listen to a question, which is, as I 
understand it, the plan now is to go to third reading immediately and 
vote on final passage at 4:55?
  Mr. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, in response to my colleague from 
Louisiana, that is the plan that has been agreed to.
  Mr. REID. It is my understanding there will be general debate until 
that time, that we each have an amendment left, and it is my 
understanding neither the proponents of the legislation nor the 
opponents of the legislation are going to offer the last amendments 
they have in order, and that the time will be evenly divided between 
now and 4:55 for general debate on the legislation.
  Mr. MURKOWSKI. That is my understanding, Mr. President.
  Mr. JOHNSTON. I wonder if we can advance that by unanimous consent.
  Mr. President, if it is in order and agreeable with my colleague from 
Alaska, I ask unanimous consent that we move immediately to third 
reading, and that the time between now and 4:55 for final passage be 
equally divided between the Senator from Alaska and the senior Senator 
from Nevada.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. MURKOWSKI. I thank the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is on the engrossment and third 
reading of the bill.
  The bill was ordered to be engrossed for a third reading and was read 
the third time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time?
  Mr. MURKOWSKI addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alaska.
  Mr. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I wonder if I may have the Chair 
identify the time that will be divided on either side.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alaska has 30 minutes; the 
Senator from Nevada 31 minutes.
  Mr. BRYAN. Mr. President, the Senate is not in order. I did not hear 
the inquiry of the Senator from Alaska.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator is correct. The Senate will come 
to order. I ask that all audible conversations be removed to the 
Cloakroom.
  The Chair recognizes the Senator from Alaska.
  Mr. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, as I understand it--I was distracted as 
well--we have about 30 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alaska has just over 30 
minutes.
  Mr. MURKOWSKI. I thank the Chair. I inquire among Senators on this 
side as to how much time they need. I think the Senator from Wyoming 
requests time. How much time does he need?
  Mr. SIMPSON. Mr. President, I think 5 to 7 minutes will be quite 
adequate.
  Mr. MURKOWSKI. The Senator from Idaho, I know, is going to request 
time, 10 or 15. The Senator from Louisiana. I am going to yield myself 
5 minutes at this time, and I will attempt to accommodate--why don't I 
just go ahead with the Senator from Wyoming now and allot him 5 
minutes. I yield 5 minutes to my good friend, the Senator from Wyoming, 
who, unfortunately, will be departing this body at some point in time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wyoming.
  Mr. SIMPSON. Mr. President, I do richly commend my friend, Senator 
Murkowski. I have watched him doggedly work in this area. There are 
many who have done so much in this area over the years: Senator 
Johnston from Louisiana; I was involved with it as chairman of the 
Subcommittee on Nuclear Regulations; Senator Gary Hart, and back 
through the years.
  The problem with nuclear waste storage is a most serious and complex 
one. I cannot tell you how tired I am of the people on both sides who 
are extremists in the area; those who are the ``Hell, no, we won't 
glow'' group and the ``nobody's ever been killed'' group.

[[Page S9247]]

 Somewhere between those two groups is sanity.
  I think we are finally on the track of doing something sensible. The 
mere mention of nuclear waste sends shivers up the spine of many 
people. I discovered that when I came to the Senate and joined the 
Nuclear Regulatory Subcommittee. That is what happens when one utters, 
``All right, I'll take an assignment no one else wants.'' I did that a 
couple of times, and I got Immigration and Nuclear Regulations and 
Veterans Affairs, so cursed with business three times in some ways. I 
have enjoyed those issues, but they are filled with emotion, fear, 
guilt and racism, all three of them.
  So here we have this entire issue that has been a continuing victim 
of gross misinformation, reprehensible scare tactics, particularly in 
the 17 years since Three Mile Island, and certainly people deserve to 
know more of exactly what we are dealing with.
  The waste products resulting from many good and beneficial uses of 
nuclear elements are not just going to go away. It is a little late for 
protesters just to run around the streets with signs saying, ``Don't 
put it here, don't put it there.''
  Wastes of varying levels of activities are piling up at thousands of 
sites across this country from sources like universities, nuclear 
powerplants, vital medical procedures conducted at hospitals and even 
dismantled Soviet missiles. Much of this waste is sitting--sitting--in 
or near highly populated areas which face potential threats with regard 
to earthquake, tornado, and hurricanes.
  The specific problem the bill addresses is the disposal of high-level 
nuclear waste from powerplants, the spent-fuel rods that are left over 
after years of generating electricity. Back in 1982--incidentally, the 
same year Cal Ripken's playing streak started--Congress passed the law. 
I was involved in that. In essence, it said we will make a deal with 
the nuclear power consumers in this country. We said the Federal 
Government would provide a place for storing the spent-fuel rods, but 
the consumers had to pay for it.
  Since that law has passed, those fees, plus interest, have provided 
$11 billion; $6 billion has already been spent, some of it for 
unrelated purposes, and still construction of the disposal site has not 
even started.
  We are running out of time. No more time for placards, no more time 
for running through the streets, no more time for standing out on the 
highway, because here is where we are: There are 109 active commercial 
powerplants in 35 States providing 20 percent of the country's 
electricity. For the most part, the spent-fuel rods produced in those 
facilities are there on site in pools under 30 feet of demineralized 
water. If the water were to drain away for any reason because of some 
structural defect from natural disaster, the rods would reheat and 
eventually melt down. These pools were never designed for long-term 
storage. Yet, because of the strength of the political opposition to a 
permanent site--I can understand all the reasons--we run the risk of 
jeopardizing the health of millions of Americans. A typical nuclear 
powerplant produces 30 tons of spent fuel.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair advises the Senator that his 5 
minutes have expired.
  Mr. SIMPSON. I ask for an additional 2 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator will proceed.
  Mr. SIMPSON. A typical nuclear powerplant produces 30 tons of spent 
fuel every year. Right now more than 30,000 metric tons of spent fuel 
are being stored at 75 sites across this country. And 23 reactors will 
run out of room in their storage pools by 1998. By 2010, a total of 78 
reactors will be out of storage space for their spent fuel and have 
about 45,000 tons of metric tons of spent fuel.
  It is very important we get the waste out of these inappropriate and 
unsafe locations into a technologically sound, permanent storage site. 
It is also very important for every person in this country to realize 
that it is perfectly possible and technically feasible to transport and 
store this waste with very little risk to human health or the 
environment.
  I point out the Department of Energy has been transporting nuclear 
waste from the weapons facilities under its jurisdictions for 30 years 
without a single incident of environmental or human harm.
  It is crucial to get on with the business and get on with the work of 
an efficient and safe system for civilian nuclear waste before the 
risks we have been dodging with our current haphazard setups catch up 
with us.
  I applaud the work of Senators Murkowski and Craig and Johnston, 
their bipartisan effort through the years. They have a realistic piece 
of legislation which finally allows the Federal Government to live up 
to its commitment to provide a safe, secure, and centralized location 
for the storage of the most radioactive of the nuclear waste. It also 
provides the money and Federal assistance for training State and local 
personnel in safety and emergency procedures. It is a very important 
bill and a good compromise, and good work all around. I am very pleased 
to support it and encourage my colleagues to do the same. I thank very 
much the Senator from Alaska.
  Mr. MURKOWSKI. Madam President, I believe the other side wants to 
speak. I retain the remainder of our time.
  Mr. BRYAN addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. Frahm). The Senator from Nevada.
  Mr. BRYAN. Madam President, how much time remains under the control 
of the Senator from Nevada?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Nevada has 30 minutes.
  Mr. BRYAN. I thank the Chair. I, at this point, will allocate myself 
10 minutes of that time and ask the Chair to inform me when I have used 
that.
  Madam President, it has been a number of weeks we have been 
discussing the high-level nuclear waste issue. And I think it is time 
to put this into some perspective.
  In 1980, some 16 years ago, debate on the floor of the Senate 
indicated that there was a great urgency and immediacy to take action, 
that there was a crisis, that indeed, if nothing were done, if we did 
not get the interim storage, what was called MRS storage, nuclear 
reactors around the country would have to shut down by 1983.
  I offer that interesting piece of history as a footnote because the 
debate today is in almost identical respect the same debate that 
occurred this very week on July 28, 1980. This is a contrived and 
fabricated crisis.
  Let me begin by pointing out what the Nuclear Waste Technical Review 
Board--this is a board that was created by act of Congress in 1987. And 
the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board has concluded that there is no 
need for interim storage at this time. And that is a conclusion which 
they have endorsed. Anyone who has any question about it, this is the 
document. So all of this debate is at best premature and in our view 
totally unnecessary.

  When you look at the substance of the legislation, what is occurring 
is an absolute travesty. The major environmental provisions that 
protected Americans with bipartisan support for more than 2 decades are 
simply wiped out, simply wiped out. We have just had a debate. The 
National Environmental Policy Act, designed to apply to circumstances 
such as this, for all intents and purposes, has been eviscerated by the 
nuclear utilities in their zeal to get interim storage.
  Let me just cite two specific references. Among the things that the 
Environmental Policy Act would ordinarily consider would be the 
environmental impacts of the storage of spent fuel and high-level 
radioactive waste for the period of foreseeable danger --thousands of 
years. This piece of legislation would restrict the application of 
NEPA, the Environmental Policy Act, to the initial term of licensure of 
about 30 years.
  Nothing has occurred to date that would establish a design criteria 
for such facility. Ordinarily the Environmental Policy Act would 
consider the alternatives to the design criteria. That is now wiped 
out. NEPA cannot consider design criteria, cannot consider the 
application for longer periods of time of health hazards. So we have a 
major piece of environmental legislation wiped out.
  Preemption. The amendment offered by our friends from the other side 
has put us in the situation in which all Federal laws that are 
inconsistent with this act are wiped out. And we have gone through a 
whole litany of them.
  We have the National Environmental Policy Act, FLPMA, clean air, 
clean

[[Page S9248]]

water, all of those, if they are inconsistent, they do not apply. So 
forget environmental laws when it comes to siting an interim storage. 
That is simply an outrage, Madam President, no matter how one feels 
about nuclear energy or whether one believes there ought to be some 
type of interim storage.
  With respect to standards, nowhere in the world--nowhere --is a 
radioactive standard of 100 millirems established by statute--nowhere. 
And 100 millirems would be at least 24 times the standard for the safe 
drinking water, would be at least six times-plus the standard set for 
the WIPP facility. I must say, this is all laid out right here. So, 100 
millirems.
  Why in God's name, for the most dangerous stuff on the face of the 
Earth, would we mandate by statute a 100-millirem standard, and then 
say to the EPA, well, you know, if you can prove that that is unsafe, 
then you can change it. We do not do that. I mean, if this were a 
straight-up deal, if this were not some contrived wish list by the 
nuclear utilities, the EPA would be designated as finding a standard 
and establishing it. No other place in the world.
  The National Academy of Sciences was asked in a piece of legislation 
approved in 1992--the energy bill--was asked to come back and make a 
report with respect to a standard. And what they said is that the 
safety standard, in terms of radioactive exposure--this is the 
``Technical Bases For Yucca Mountain Standards.'' This is the product 
of the National Academy of Sciences. And what they said is, it should 
be somewhere between 10 and 30 millirems.

  How can you justify it? How can you justify that? And indeed when you 
look at the Environmental Protection Agency, here is what our 
Administrator tells us.

       S. 1936 and the substitute amendments establish a 
     Congressionally set overall performance standard of 100 
     millirems a year to the average person in the general 
     vicinity of Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository for 1000 
     years. Although the substitute amendments allow EPA to 
     challenge the 100 millirem a year standard, EPA believes the 
     standard is inappropriate because it is less protective than 
     other U.S. standards and international advisory board 
     recommendations for a single source. Furthermore . . . the 
     actual risk to public health and the environment will occur 
     well after 1,000 years. . . .

  And the limitation that is imposed in this legislation applies only 
to 1,000 years.
  So again, public health and safety be dammed. Anything that helps the 
nuclear utilities, that is what we are going to buy into.
  Madam President, that is just an absolutely indefensible matter of 
public policy. I must say that no other place in the world establishes 
such a standard. We are frequently cited to the international 
sanctioning bodies. And although 100 millirems is referenced in those 
standards, never is it referenced for single source.
  It indicates here that most other countries have endorsed the 
principle of apportionment of the total allowed radiation dose. So no--
no--standards that exist in the world, to the best of our knowledge, 
would propose 100 millirems from a single source.
  Finally, on the standards issue, I must say, clearly what drives that 
decision, as well as every provision in this bill, is to make it easier 
to lower public health and safety standards, to make it less costly. 
And the public health, and the consequences of those persons, would be 
effectively by and large ignored.
  My colleague is going to talk a good bit about transportation, but we 
are talking about 85,000 metric tons. We are talking about 16,000 
shipments or more, traveling across the rail corridors in America, as 
well as our highway system, and 51 million Americans live within 1 mile 
of that. Each of those railroad casks weigh 125 tons, and the 
consequence of the hazardous cargo in terms of radioactivity would be 
the equivalent of 200 bombs dropped at Hiroshima. We are not just 
talking about Nevadans at risk. If you ship it by way of cask and 
highway cargo, you are talking about the equivalent of 40 bombs.
  Finally, and we have tried to make this point albeit it is a 
difficult thing to explain, in effect this is a financial bailout of 
the nuclear power industry. Since the very enactment of the Nuclear 
Waste Policy Act of 1982, its fundamental premise has been that the 
utilities are the ones that get the profit, they are the ones that 
generate the waste, they have the financial responsibility. Through a 
series of significant changes, albeit somewhat subtle, a cap or a 
ceiling or a limitation is placed on the amount that the utilities will 
be required to contribute.
  Now, to the year 2002, it is 1 mill based upon each kilowatt of power 
generated. After the year 2002, it will become no more than the amount 
of the appropriation each year. In 2003, we would be talking one-third 
of a mill, the balance all left to the taxpayer to pick up.
  Madam President, I simply say, No. 1, this debate is unnecessary, 
this bill is unnecessary, and that comes from a body of eminent 
scientists impaneled as a result of legislation enacted by this body. 
The National Environmental Policy Act is, in effect, gutted as a 
consequence of the restrictions placed upon it. All other Federal 
environmental laws are preempted. The standards that are set are so 
high as to constitute a clear and present danger to public health and 
safety. The Environmental Protection Agency agrees, as do others.
  Ultimately the taxpayer, not the utility, will pick up the bill if 
this bill becomes law.
  I reserve the remainder of my time.
  Mr. MURKOWSKI. I yield 6 minutes to my friend from Louisiana.
  Mr. JOHNSTON. Mr. President, in the original form of our bill, we 
provided for 100 millirem radioactivity limit from the repository. 
However, because our friends from Nevada stated the EPA should have a 
role here, we amended that. The present bill now on third reading 
provides, if EPA finds that the 100 millirem would not be consistent 
with health or safety, they may set it at another level and, indeed, 
whatever they would set under the Administrative Procedure Act would be 
final unless that level is arbitrary and capricious.
  Madam President, we have provided here for the role of EPA to make 
the health and safety determination. Why did we set it at 100 millirems 
to begin with? Because that is the level set by the International 
Commission on Radiological Protection, the National Council on 
Radiation Protection and Measurements, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory 
Commission, and indeed the EPA in its radiation protection guidance for 
exposure of the general public, 1994, as well as the International 
Atomic Agency.
  Beyond that, the 100 millirems is a commonsense level because there 
is more than 100 millirems difference in the natural exposure of 
someone in Washington, DC, which is about 345 millirems, and Montana, 
Wyoming, or Colorado, where the average exposure exceeds 450 millirems, 
so that if you live in an average place in the United States or if you 
live in Washington, DC, you would get a higher exposure by flying to 
Denver, CO, or Butte, MT, Cody, WY, or you name it, and living there 
than living here.

  I remind my colleagues, Madam President, there has never been the 
slightest warning of EPA or of any nuclear radiation body to say it is 
dangerous to live in one of those mountain States where the millirem 
activity per year exceeds what we provide in this bill. If EPA should 
so decide, they may set the standard elsewhere.
  Madam President, Nevada is the right choice. Nevada is one of the 
most remote places on Earth, Yucca Mountain. It is one of the driest 
places on Earth, and, Madam President, that area has been polluted by 
over 500 nuclear tests which have been not sealed off from the 
environment. Those nuclear tests have provided all of the radiation 
byproducts that are contained in nuclear waste, including cesium 137, 
iodine 131, strontium 90, americium 243, technicium 99, plutonium 241. 
You name it, if it is in nuclear waste, it is contained already in the 
Nevada test site.
  Need I remind my colleagues that our two colleagues from Nevada have 
been steadfast in wanting not less tests but more tests at the Nevada 
test site. Those tests have not been sealed off from the environment. 
Indeed, some of those tests have been right in the water table.
  What is the defense of my colleague from Nevada when we say, how 
could you on the one hand want nuclear bomb tests and on the other hand 
not want these rods which are in canisters,

[[Page S9249]]

and those canisters are nonleak canisters that I believe would be valid 
and provide protection for 10,000 years? The answer is, well, they are 
only 1 ton. I guess that is somewhere between 2,000 and, if you use a 
long ton, 2,200 pounds of nuclear material.
  Now, Madam President, a ton of radioactive material not sealed off 
from the environment is many thousands of times what you would expect 
in any leakage which might occur thousands of years from now from one 
of these containers. The containers designed to hold these nuclear 
waste rods are designed to last hundreds and thousands of years. We 
would imagine they would last, frankly, 10,000 years. That has not been 
proved. I do not state that as a fact. That is what we speculate. But, 
certainly, hundreds of years without any leakage whatever. Yet the 
Nevada test site now already has 1 ton of all these radioactive 
products which are not sealed off from the water supply, not sealed off 
from the ground around it, but where unprotected blasts took place in 
the ground.
  Madam President, if there is ever a place in the country to store the 
nuclear waste, it is adjacent to that Nevada test site. That is why, 
Madam President, the Congress chose in 1987 Yucca Mountain. That is why 
it is the right place to store this waste today.
  Mr. MURKOWSKI. Madam President, how much time is remaining on this 
side?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has 16 minutes, and the other side 
has 19 minutes.
  Mr. REID. Madam President, the Senator from Louisiana is a brilliant 
man. He knows all the procedures here. He certainly knows basic 
mathematics. Basic mathematics indicates that 1 ton in the ground, 
spread out over a significant distance under the ground, is certainly 
much different than 70,000 tons stacked on top of the ground--
significantly different. So we need to hear no more, I believe, about 
the Nevada test site.
  Madam President, S. 1936 guts the existing law of its environmental 
safety provisions and forces the Federal Government to take 
responsibility for the waste and liabilities of the nuclear power 
industry. The nuclear power industry has been extremely clever in 
spending their money to generate this argument, because they recognize 
that the nuclear power facilities don't last forever. In fact, most are 
being phased out right now. They want no responsibility for the garbage 
they have generated. They want to shift the ball to the Federal 
Government. That is what this legislation is about. It is also about 
corporate welfare at its very, very worst. It will needlessly expose 
people across America to the risk of nuclear accidents.
  S. 1936 is proposed because the nuclear industry wants to transfer 
the risk and responsibilities and their legitimate business expenses to 
the American taxpayer. The interim storage facility is not needed. In 
accordance with the charter of the Nuclear Waste Technical Review 
Board, in March of this year, I repeat, it found no compelling safety 
or technical reason to accelerate the centralization of spent nuclear 
fuel. Implementation of dry cask storage at generator sites is 
feasible, cheap, and relatively safe.
  We have talked at great length, and will talk some more, about how 
unsafe it is to transport this product around the country. There is no 
need to do that; it is safe where it is. It will be even safer with dry 
cask storage. If it is properly implemented--and that is fairly easy to 
do--the investment will double its return by storing the material in 
certified multipurpose canisters so the material is ready for shipment 
at some later time.
  Operating costs for onsite dry cask storage, according to Mr. 
Dreyfuss' office, amounts to only about $1 million per year per site. 
Capital costs for onsite storage include preparation of placement site 
and canisterization of spent fuel. Storing spent fuel in multipurpose 
canisters means that the marginal onsite capitalization costs are only 
a few million dollars. Implementing onsite storage at all sites needing 
some additional storage space, would require less than $60 million for 
capitalization and less than $30 million per year for their operation. 
This is compared to the multibillions of dollars they are talking about 
for interim storage. So onsite storage could be maintained for about 40 
years before equalling the construction cost of interim storage at the 
test site, as estimated by the sponsors of this bill. There is simply 
no compelling need to rush into centralized interim storage. It is 
simply wrong.
  Madam President, we have talked about terrorism. We talked about it 
because it is something we should talk about. I referred, briefly, at 
the end of the last amendment that was offered, to a statement that we 
received, without solicitation, from the Blue Ridge Environmental 
Defense League, located in North Carolina. The letter says a number of 
things. We have admitted it into the Record. Let me refer specifically 
to some of the things contained in this extremely important 
communication.
  These shipments of nuclear waste cannot be kept secret so long as we 
live in a free society. And we do.

       Our actions were peaceful--

  Peaceful following around these nuclear waste shipments.

       --but we proved that determined individuals on a shoestring 
     budget--

  Not paid for by terrorists with huge amounts of money, because some 
terrorist groups are supported by foreign governments.

       --can precisely track international and domestic shipments 
     of strategic materials. In the wake of Oklahoma City 
     and Atlanta, the dangers posed by domestic or 
     international terrorists armed with explosives make the 
     transport of highly radioactive spent nuclear fuel too 
     dangerous to contemplate for the foreseeable future.

  They go on to say that their work is in North Carolina, Tennessee, 
and Virginia. They have determined that the emergency management 
personnel in these areas are dedicated volunteers, but they are 
unprepared for nuclear waste.

       Volunteer fire departments in rural counties are very good 
     at putting out house fires and brush fires--

  And the person writing this letter knows that because he has worked 
in these volunteer fire departments. They say, among other things:

       The remote river valleys and steep grades of Appalachia are 
     legendary. In Saluda, North Carolina, the steepest standard 
     gauge mainline railroad grade in the United States drops 253 
     feet per mile, 4.8 percent grade. The CSX and Norfolk 
     Southern Lines trace the French Broad River Valley and the 
     Nolchucky Gorge west through the Appalachian Mountains along 
     remote stretches of rivers famous among whitewater rafters 
     for their steep drops and their distance from civilization. 
     The Norfolk Southern Railroad crosses the French Broad River 
     at Deep Water Bridge where the mountains rise 2,200 feet 
     above the river. These are the transport routes through 
     western North Carolina that will be used for high-level 
     nuclear waste as soon as 1998 according to S. 1936.

  They say:

       When we asked [the emergency response teams in North 
     Carolina about their readiness to respond to a nuclear 
     transport accident, they answered professionally, saying, 
     ``We'll just go out there and keep people away until State or 
     Federal officials arrive.''

  Well, another western North Carolina coordinator said:

       There is no response team anywhere in this part of the 
     State, and, for the foreseeable future, there is no money in 
     local budgets to equip us with any first response to 
     radioactive spills.

  In closing, Louis Zeller tells us:

       I am asking you to oppose this expensive and dangerous 
     legislation which would place an unfair and unnecessary 
     financial burden on communities and which would place at risk 
     the health and safety of millions of American citizens.

  Madam President, this legislation is unnecessary. It opens the doors 
to added terrorism, and it only further frightens our communities. 
Madam President, the President of the United States and others in the 
Federal Government have stated they oppose this legislation. We have a 
letter from the Director of the Department of Energy, a Cabinet-level 
officer. She should know about nuclear waste; she worked in the nuclear 
industry previously. She says, without equivocation, that this is bad 
legislation. ``The bill does not solve,'' she says, ``a fundamental 
problem posed by the Indiana-Michigan Power Company case, namely, that 
the Department must begin to dispose of nuclear waste. Instead, the 
bill threatens to repeat the same mistakes made in the past.'' She goes 
on to say other things, but basically that this is bad legislation.
  Hazel O'Leary and I have not always been on the same side of the 
debates.

[[Page S9250]]

 She is someone who is head of the Department of Energy, a Cabinet-
level officer, formerly in the nuclear industry, and she says this is 
bad legislation. Also, our head of the department that oversees 
environmental laws, Carol Browner, has written a letter dated last 
night saying, ``I am writing to inform you that the Environmental 
Protection Agency opposes this legislation, S. 1936, and all the 
amendments. S. 1936 and the substitute amendment are a concern to the 
EPA because they limit consideration of public health and environmental 
standards in order to expedite the repository's opening. EPA is also 
concerned about the preemption. It takes away Federal laws.''
  Madam President, this legislation is a travesty. It has big bucks 
behind it. We have not had the opportunity to have people in chauffeur-
driven limousines come and lobby Members of the Senate. We have not had 
the opportunity to have people stand in the halls and lobby against 
this legislation. We have a grassroots organization, like the people 
from the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League, who stand up for what 
is right in this country.
  What is right in this country is to oppose this legislation. It would 
curtail a broad range of health and safety laws, it would quadruple the 
allowable radiation standards for waste storage, and it would 
exacerbate the risk of transporting nuclear waste throughout the 
country. For these and many other reasons, I call upon my colleagues--I 
beg my colleagues--to vote against this legislation. It is the most 
antienvironmental legislation in this Congress, and to say that, you 
say it all.
  I reserve the remainder of our time.
  Mr. MURKOWSKI. It is our understanding that we have 16 minutes.
  Mr. PRESSLER. Mr. President, I rise today to express my support for 
S. 1936, the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, and to congratulate my 
colleagues Senator Frank Murkowski, chairman of the Committee on Energy 
and Natural Resources, and Senator Larry Craig, vice-chairman of the 
Subcommittee on Energy Research and Development, for all their hard 
work on this bill. I am proud to be a cosponsor of this legislation.
  As chairman of the Committee on Commerce, Science, and 
Transportation, I have a particular interest in the transportation 
aspect of this legislation. Clearly, we will need a special 
transportation system to safely transfer nuclear waste to a centralized 
storage facility as mandated by S. 1936.
  Already, there are some tough laws in place. Shipments of spent 
nuclear fuel and other commercial or defense-related high level 
radioactive waste must adhere to very strict standards before the waste 
can move on America's highways or railroads. S. 1936 will strengthen 
these standards.
  It's important to point out that under the current regulation 
monitoring process, the Federal Government and the nuclear industry 
have transported thousands of shipments of nuclear waste without any 
release of radioactive material. That's an impeccable safety record. 
This legislation takes additional steps to maintain an already safe 
environment for the transportation and storage of spent nuclear fuel.
  Let me set the record straight even further. As part of the Nuclear 
Waste Policy Act, the Department of Energy promised to begin 
transporting commercial spent fuel to a Federal management facility in 
1998. To solidify this promise, contracts were signed between the 
Federal Government and utilities that own the Nation's nuclear power 
plants. S. 1936 reaffirms that commitment.
  S. 1936 would not weaken current law--it improves it. Spent fuel 
shipments would still be regulated by the Hazardous Materials 
Transportation Act and other transportation regulations that have 
protected us for the past 30 years.
  To ensure safety in every step of the transportation network, the 
Nuclear Regulatory Commission [NRC] already has established demanding 
regulations on the packaging and transportation of radioactive 
materials.
  Spent nuclear fuel rods are transported in heavy steel containers. 
Before these can be approved by the NRC, manufacturers must demonstrate 
that each container design can withstand a number of hypothetical 
accident conditions, including being dropped from 30 feet onto a flat, 
unyielding surface; falling onto a vertical steel spike; being engulfed 
in a 1,475 degree Fahrenheit fire for 30 minutes; and being submerged 
under 3 feet of water for 8 hours. The same container also must 
withstand a separate immersion test in 50 feet of water for 8 hours.
  Mr. President, I challenge any other transportation container to 
measure up to these rigorous tests. Again, these are the tests required 
under existing law. The containers that meet these tests are some of 
the most rugged on Earth, and rightfully so.
  The Department of Transportation also has responsibility for 
regulating many aspects of radioactive waste shipments. Shippers are 
required to file a written route plan that includes the origin and 
destination of each shipment, preapproved routes to be used, estimated 
arrival times and emergency telephone numbers in each State a shipment 
will enter. The principal intent of DOT routing guidelines is to reduce 
the time in transit.
  The agency requires tractor-trailer shipments to use preferred 
highway routes, such as interstate highways and bypasses that divert 
them away from highly populated areas. States also may propose 
alternate routes to the interstate highway system. In fact, at least 10 
States already have established alternate routes. Potentially affected 
States and localities must be consulted in the process of designating 
alternate routes.
  The Transportation Department also requires that shippers notify the 
Governor 7 days in advance of material being transported through the 
State. To ensure the safety of these shipments, the Department of 
Energy has developed a satellite-based system that allows continuous 
tracking and communications with all DOE shipments.
  Mr. President, recent shipments of foreign research reactor fuel from 
Sunny Point, NC to the Savannah River site in South Carolina provide a 
perfect example of the safeguards which are in place for spent fuel 
transportation. In moving this fuel, the Energy Department worked 
closely with State and local officials on training and planning. They 
practiced everything--from preparing routine shipping procedures to 
testing emergency response systems. The Nuclear Waste Policy Act would 
require DOE to provide similar funding and technical assistance for 
State, tribal and local training and planning activities in advance of 
any actual commercial spent fuel shipments.
  Mr. President, there is no disputing that transportation is one of 
the most important issues in our consideration of S. 1936. It is an 
essential component of an integrated nuclear waste management program.
  Clearly, as I have outlined today, nuclear waste can be transported 
safely and efficiently. A comprehensive plan already is in place to 
ensure this. To maximize safety, the plan directs shipments away from 
metropolitan areas whenever possible. It allows for the selection of 
the most direct and safest routes. It provides training to national, 
State and local officials so that they are ready to respond in the 
event of an emergency.
  We know that accidents happen, Mr. President. That is why S. 1936 
builds on the existing regulatory framework that, to date, has 
protected this Nation during more than 2,400 shipments of commercial 
spent nuclear fuel.
  I urge my colleagues to take a close look at this program. Many of my 
constituents have expressed their interest in nuclear waste 
transportation. Fortunately, there is good news to report to them. We 
have a safe, well-coordinated system. It ensures the safety of nuclear 
waste transportation by relying on the expertise of the Nuclear 
Regulatory Commission, the Department of Transportation and the 
Department of Energy, as well as the State and local governments. S. 
1936 builds on the system to enhance protection of our citizens and our 
environment.
  I urge my colleagues to support this legislation. By passing S. 1936, 
we can take the final steps towards ensuring that nuclear waste is 
managed in the safest possible manner.


                              Section 203

  Mr. President, I see the distinguished chairman of the Energy and 
Natural Resources Committee on the floor. My colleague has been very 
helpful in addressing a concern I had with certain

[[Page S9251]]

provisions in Section 203 of S. 1936. I appreciate Chairman Murkowski's 
attention to this matter.
  Mr. MURKOWSKI. I thank the Senator from South Dakota. The Senator has 
raised some understandable concerns regarding requirements for the 
transportation of spent nuclear fuel.
  Mr. PRESSLER. I would like to further question my colleague regarding 
the transportation training standards addressed in this bill. In 
particular, section 203 (g) would require the Secretary of 
Transportation to issue regulations establishing training standards 
applicable to workers directly involved in the removal and 
transportation of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste. 
New language, as proposed by the chairman on my behalf, would also 
require that an employer possess evidence of satisfaction of these 
training standards before an individual could be employed in such 
activity. As chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and 
Transportation, I believe this provision is consistent with existing 
law, as set forth in Section 5107 of title 49 of the United States Code 
(49 U.S.C. 5107), which details requirements for the training of 
employees engaged in hazardous materials transportation. I would ask 
the chairman if this interpretation is correct?
  Mr. MURKOWSKI. The Senator from South Dakota is correct. I defer to 
my colleague's judgement and expertise, as chairman of the committee 
with jurisdiction over the transportation of hazardous materials. I 
might also add that this provision is not meant to prejudice in any way 
the means by which the training requirements are satisfied.
  Mr. PRESSLER. I thank the Senator from Alaska for clarifying this 
matter for me. Again, I greatly appreciate his willingness to work with 
me to resolve this matter. I urge my colleagues to support final 
passage of S. 1936.
  Mr. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, when the Senate debated the motion to 
proceed. I suggested that S. 1936 was the answer to nuclear waste and 
that the editorial page of the Washington Post was the answer to 
parakeet waste.
  I would not insult parakeets by suggesting that would be a good use 
of the letter from the Administrator of the EPA or the Chair of the 
CEQ.
  The statements made in these letters are inaccurate and simply the 
shrill hysteria of those who believe that if you repeat a lie often 
enough, someone might believe you.
  The administration, sadly, has demonstrated that they are incapable 
or unwilling to address this issue, and have now resorted to 
misstatement, mischaracterization, and distortion to prevent Congress 
from exercising the leadership the administration has abandoned.
  Far from being an assault on our environmental laws, this legislation 
reaffirms our commitment to the environment, and the health and safety 
of the American people.
  Now, turning specifically to the letters--EPA says we preempt laws in 
S. 1936:

       The substitute the Senate just overwhelmingly adopted does 
     not preempt environmental statutes. EIS requirements are 
     consolidated, but a full EIS is required.

  EPA says section 204(i) of our bill prevents the NRC from issuing 
regulations to protect public health under certain circumstances. This 
is inflammatory and misleading:

       Section 204(i) simply says that the storage of commercial 
     spent fuel, that the NRC will regulate under our bill, does 
     not need to wait while the NRC writes regulations for other 
     forms of nuclear wastes including naval reactor and defense 
     wastes.

  EPA says section 205(d)(3)(C) prevents NRC from making important 
determinations:

       All our bill says is that the NRC is not required to assume 
     that the records of waste disposal, security measures, and 
     the natural and engineered barriers will be insufficient to 
     prevent future human intrusion. Without this provision, DOE 
     would have to prove a negative.

  Turning now to the letter from CEQ:
  The CEQ's letter asserts S. 1936 ``Dismantles the EIS process under 
NEPA,'' by removing the requirement that DOE conduct an ``alternatives 
analysis'' on the selection of an interim storage site.
  The CEQ's letter entirely misses the point:

       This legislation requires an EIS to be prepared by the NRC 
     as part of its licensing process because Congress is today 
     rendering its judgment about the need for interim storage and 
     the location of the site, we say that these decisions need 
     not be duplicated in the NRO process.
       I would add that our legislation does not preclude the 
     President from performing an alternatives analysis in 
     selecting an interim storage site other than Nevada, if he 
     determines that the permanent repository at Yucca Mountain is 
     not viable.
       There is an EIS. It can be challenged in court, and public 
     safety and the environment is protected.

  The EPA letter says the 100 millirem standard is inappropriate:

       EPA is given the authority to change the 100 millirem 
     standard if it determines it constitutes an unreasonable risk 
     to public health/saftey. What are they complaining about?
       There are no valid scientific studies which suggest a 
     release of 100 millirem per year poses any health risk. The 
     probability of adverse health consequences has not been shown 
     to be any less from a zero dose than from a 100 millirem 
     dose.
       There is at least a 100 millirem difference between a 
     person living on the east coast and Western States. If you 
     move from Washington to Denver, you would receive 100 or more 
     additional millirem from natural sources. EPA doesn't have a 
     problem with that.
       You get 100 extra millirem by living in the White House, a 
     stone building with natural radiation. Is EPA saying the 
     White House is unsafe for the President?
  Madam President, I think it is appropriate to note that these letters 
simply represent an action by the administration to delay what has been 
delayed for 15 years. There are no positive recommendations in spite of 
the fact that the committee and myself personally have requested in 
three letters to the President that if he opposes specific portions of 
this legislation, he come up with alternatives. Those letters, for all 
practical purposes, have been ignored. Clearly, this administration 
simply wishes to put this off to somebody else's watch, and that is 
irresponsible for the administration. It is irresponsible to duck the 
issue at this time.
  I yield 5 minutes to my friend from Idaho and retain the remainder of 
my time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Idaho.
  Mr. CRAIG. Madam President, let me thank the chairman for the time 
and thank my colleague, the senior Senator from Louisiana, who has 
worked so closely with us in the last year to produce and bring to the 
floor this legislation.
  I first introduced this legislation in September of 1995 as S. 1271. 
We worked our way through the process with hearings held, of course, 
before the Energy and Natural Resources Committee in December with 
additional hearings in March and in May.
  Finally, we have been able to craft and bring to the floor what I 
believe and what I call--because I think it is fair to call it that--
probably one of the most comprehensive environmental bills that has 
come before the Congress this year.
  Our Nation's high-level nuclear waste has an answer now that is 
responsible, fair, and environmentally friendly and is supported by a 
very large majority of this body and the U.S. House of Representatives.
  Today, high-level nuclear waste and highly radioactive used nuclear 
fuel is accumulating in over 80 sites in 41 States. You have heard our 
colleagues come to the floor and talk about their concern and the 
seriousness that this accumulation brings to these individual States.
  Today, we stand before you responsible to our country and to our 
Government in assuring that we will be able to comply with the Nuclear 
Waste Policy Act of 1982 to meet the court examinations and to be able 
to do what our country expected us to do to facilitate this 
legislation. We have all worked closely together in a strong bipartisan 
way to assure that we could produce the ultimate legislation that would 
pass. However, in doing all of this, S. 1936 contains many important 
clarifications and changes that deal with concerns raised regarding the 
details of the legislation amongst most of our Members. As a result of 
that, I think we can hopefully today produce a vote and a work product 
that the U.S. House of Representatives will take as we reconvene in 
September.
  The issue is clear, and the proposal we have before you is direct. It 
does not violate any environmental laws, and yet directs our country to 
move responsibly and decisively to resolve an issue that has plagued 
our country for well over two decades. I hope that

[[Page S9252]]

today our colleagues in a final vote on this issue will vote in very 
large numbers to assure that we move forward on this issue.
  Let me cover one other detailed topic. It is frustrating to me as the 
two Senators from Nevada have come to the floor on several occasions 
over the last week and a half to talk about the reality of a 100-
millirem test and how, for some reason, this in some way questioned the 
integrity of a site and the development of a deep geological repository 
at Yucca Mountain. Let me quote from the Nevada Administrative Code, 
section 459.335. This is the code that governs 153 facilities in the 
State of Nevada. It says this: ``The total effective dose equivalent to 
any member of the public from its licensed and registered operation 
does not exceed 100 millirems per year, not including contribution from 
the disposal by the licensee of radioactive material in sanitary 
sewage,'' and so on and so forth.
  The point I am making here--and this chart clearly spells it out--is 
that the standards that we have established, the standards that come 
from the GAO audit, the standards that the State of Nevada, the very 
State the two Senators are from and arguing today, argues this. It 
argues right here that 153 facilities in the State of Nevada that use 
radioactive material cannot exceed the very standard that we are saying 
Yucca Mountain cannot exceed.
  I hope, once and for all, that we do not shake the scare tree, that 
we look at the facts and we look at the statistics, and they are very 
clear. Whether it is proposed EPA guidance of 1995, whether it is the 
Nuclear Regulatory Commission limit, whether it is the proposed DOE 
limit, whether it is the State of Nevada, or whether it is Yucca 
Mountain, what we are talking about here is an international standard 
well accepted by all of the professionals in the field and accepted by 
the State of Nevada, by the State government of Nevada and, obviously, 
by State politicians in Nevada.
  Why do they arrive at that standard? Because that is the national 
standard. That is the international standard that clearly says this is 
an acceptable level.
  Madam President, I recognize my time is up.
  Mr. MURKOWSKI. Let me yield time to the Senator from Idaho to 
conclude his remarks.
  Mr. CRAIG. I thank my chairman for yielding to me.
  Let me close with this thought. It has been a long, hard effort. It 
took an awful lot of very talented people involved.
  Let me thank Karen Hunsicker, David Garman, Gary Ellsworth, and Jim 
Beirne of the Energy and Natural Resources staff for the tremendous 
work that they have done and for the expertise they themselves have 
developed, the cooperative effort they have had in working with all of 
the staffs in a bipartisan manner.
  Let me thank once again our chairman, Frank Murkowski, and also the 
senior Senator from the State of Louisiana, Bennett Johnston, for his 
dedicated effort over several decades to assure that there would be a 
safe and responsible solution to the management of high-level nuclear 
waste, and we are clearly on the threshold of allowing that to happen.
  I hope in the end once this makes it to our President's desk that he 
will read the bill--read the bill--and look at the changes we have 
made. I think in doing so this President will say that we have been 
responsible to our country and to the State of Nevada in promulgating 
legislation that can deal with a very important national issue.
  Mr. JOHNSTON. Madam President, will the Senator yield to me for a 
quick comment to endorse what he has said about the good staff work.
  Let me add to that great staff work Sam Fowler, Bob Simon, and Ben 
Cooper on our side, who have really done an outstanding job as well.
  Mr. MURKOWSKI. Madam President, how much time is remaining on our 
side?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Eight minutes.
  Mr. MURKOWSKI. I yield to the Senator from Wyoming 3 minutes that he 
requested.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wyoming.
  Mr. THOMAS. Thank you very much.
  Madam President, I wanted to rise in support of this bill before it 
is voted on. I have been involved in it for some time not only here but 
in Wyoming, and I just wanted to kind of generally share some thoughts 
that I have. We have talked about it a great deal. We probably have 
talked about it more than we really needed to.
  Nevertheless, there has been a great deal of detail naturally, as 
there should be. But it seems to me that there are some basic things 
that most of us do understand and most of us accept, and I think that 
is where we are.
  First, we have nuclear waste. We have to do something about it. It is 
there. It is stored all over the country in a number of sites--I think 
80. Clearly, it is more difficult to ensure safety that way than it is 
if we put it in a place that we can ensure safety. We are going to have 
more. We need to be prepared for that.
  The ratepayers have paid to do something about it. They have paid, I 
think, somewhere near $12 billion. We spent $5 billion already in 
preparing this spot. There is not much to show for that. Yet, we need 
to make sure that there is. It makes sense, it seems to me, to move to 
the permanent site with an intermediate site that we have for 
storage. We have been through that intermediate storage thing for 
several years. We have been unsuccessful in doing it.

  Transportation is, in fact, something that is the highest of 
scientific study and I think as safe as anything can be. There are 
always risks.
  I have been disappointed this whole time of dealing with the storage 
of nuclear waste. Opponents in the press talk about nuclear waste 
dumps. They are not dumps. They are high-tech storage, as high tech as 
we can be.
  It is also true that the Government has agreed to storage in 1998. 
Let us do it.
  So even though that is very nontechnical, Madam President, I think 
those are about the basic ideas we have to understand. Most of us know 
we have to do something about it. This bill gives us the opportunity to 
live up to the challenges we have and to do the things we have to do.
  I thank the Senator for the time.
  Mr. MURKOWSKI. Madam President, how much time is remaining on our 
side?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has 5 minutes.
  Mr. MURKOWSKI. I thank the Chair.
  Mr. BRYAN. May I inquire of the Chair how much time we have on our 
side?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Nevada has 9 minutes.
  Mr. BRYAN. Madam President, I yield myself 4 minutes.
  I have tried purposely to keep the focus on the issues, but I must 
say that my friend from Idaho has spoken and my friend from Wyoming has 
just spoken, and they obviously reach a different conclusion as to the 
urgency of the need than does the scientific community, which has 
specifically rejected the need.
  Let me say with great respect to them, if they disagree, they have 
the right under the law to volunteer their States as sites for interim 
storage. That is permissible.
  I find some irony in the fact they are eager to have it come to us in 
Nevada and yet suggest that their own State would not be available.
  There is another irony. Late last week, another letter was circulated 
that raised some concerns about the interstate shipment of trash, and 
this letter goes on to say, in part:

       It is important that Congress pass interstate legislation 
     this year. Cities and towns all across the Nation are being 
     forced to take trash from other States. Many States have 
     tried to restrict the shipments.

  The letter goes on to say:

       But every time they do, they have been challenged in court 
     and their laws have been overturned as a violation of the 
     commerce clause of the Constitution. It is clear that States 
     cannot protect themselves, their residents or their land from 
     being spoiled by out-of-State waste. We need Federal 
     legislation to empower States and communities with the 
     authority to manage solid waste within their borders. Without 
     legislation, they will have to continue to accept unwanted 
     trash.

  Does anybody see a disconnect or an inconsistency? Here they are 
talking about trash, and many of my colleagues who have ventured forth 
in the Chamber and who have expressed support for this legislation have 
gotten greatly exercised about the trash issue. You cannot have it both 
ways. My colleague and I have signed on to this letter because we 
understand the concerns. You can be concerned about

[[Page S9253]]

trash but not the most dangerous, lethal trash known to mankind, high-
level nuclear waste.
  Finally, let me just say that we have talked about the standards ad 
nauseam. I think it just one more time needs to be pointed out that the 
National Academy of Sciences--these are the scientists which this body 
asked to make recommendations about standards--reported and concluded 
that the standards in terms of radioactive exposure should be from 10 
to 30 millirems.
  That is their view. They are scientists. Nobody--I repeat, nobody--in 
the world has set a 100-millirem standard, and to point out that those 
who are charged under our law with the responsibility of enforcing and 
administering the environmental laws, the Environmental Protection 
Agency, through Carol Browner, the Council on Environmental Quality, 
the President of the United States, the Department of Energy, all have 
urged a no vote on this piece of legislation.

  Now, I guess what they do not have in common with some of the 
advocates is that they are not supporting the view of the nuclear 
industry. This is special interest legislation at its worst. There is 
no groundswell for this legislation. The nuclear industry and its 
phalanx of lobbyists who ply these halls every day with enormous 
amounts of money and power and influence, they are the ones who are 
driving this debate by creating a contrived and fabricated crisis that 
purports to call out for a legislative response.
  That is simply not the case. There is no need. The damage that we do 
to our Nation's environmental laws and to people across America that 
can be affected by this is unconscionable--unconscionable. No 
environmental organization in America--none--supports this legislation. 
All oppose the irreparable damage it would do to our environmental 
laws. And no agency charged by law at the Federal level to enforce the 
environmental standards supports this legislation. All have concluded 
that to do so would be irreparable, do irreversible damage to our 
environment.
  I reserve the remainder of my time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time?
  The Senator from Alaska.
  Mr. CRAIG addressed the Chair.
  Mr. MURKOWSKI. I would ask at the conclusion of the debate time for 
the yeas and nays on final passage.
  Mr. CRAIG. Will the Senator yield to me one moment?
  Mr. MURKOWSKI. I yield to my friend from Idaho.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Idaho.
  Mr. CRAIG. I thank my chairman for yielding.
  I apologize. Some of the people who work the most closely with us we 
often forget. I want the Record to show that Nils Johnson on my staff, 
who has worked on this issue for a good number of years with me and the 
staff of the committee, was a tremendous asset through all of this 
debate.
  I thank the Senator very much.
  Mr. MURKOWSKI. Again, Madam President, may I ask for the yeas and 
nays on final passage.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
  There appears to be.
  The yeas and nays were ordered.
  Mr. MURKOWSKI. I thank the Chair.
  Madam President, as we approach the final minutes prior to voting, I 
would like to very briefly refute some of the specific claims that have 
been made in the Chamber in the debate. These claims, of course, have 
had to do with transportation, safety, cask integrity, radiation, the 
application of environmental laws, and, of course, finally, the issue 
of just who benefits from this legislation.
  The issue of transportation and safety and cask integrity is 
important, and there has been every effort to describe that the 
transportation of used fuel is something that has a risk. But the 
opponents of this legislation talk about it as if it represents some 
novel and untested approach, and these statements are not true.
  We have been moving spent fuel both in the United States and around 
the world for decades. There have been over 20,000 movements of spent 
fuel around the world over the last 40 years; 30,000 tons have been 
moved in France alone. That is equal to what we have in storage. So it 
can be moved, and it can be moved safely because it is designed to be 
moved safely.
  This bill, S. 1936, includes new measures, new training and new 
assistance to make the movement even safer. The fact is nuclear 
materials will be transported with or without the passage of this bill. 
Spent fuel, foreign research reactor fuel, naval fuel, and other 
radioactive materials are being transported every day in the United 
States.

  Another example is we build submarines on the east coast in 
Connecticut, but when the sub has served its useful life, the fuel is 
removed and taken to Idaho. The sub is cut up. The reactor compartment 
is buried in Hanford, WA. So we all have an interest in this, and we 
must address responsibly a solution.
  Another claim I want to refute has to do with the generalization that 
has been made on the floor of the Senate that somehow we are waiving 
the application of environmental laws that are needed to protect the 
public health and safety. S. 1936 requires the NRC to prepare 
environmental impact statements, or EIS's, as part of a decision to 
license a central interim storage facility, and the EIS's must include 
the impact of transporting the used fuel to the interim storage 
facility.
  There is also judicial review. S. 1936 requires the DOE to submit an 
EIS on construction and operation of the repository.
  It is clear, Madam President, S. 1936 does not trample environmental 
laws as has been charged on this floor. This is a unique facility. None 
like it has ever been developed anywhere in the world.
  So the regulatory licensing program for a permanent facility 
contained in S. 1936 is designed to protect public health and safety 
without reliance upon other laws.
  With respect to NEPA, we recognize Congress has decided that we will 
build an interim site in Nevada, and we do not let the NEPA process 
revisit the decision that Congress has already made. That is what we 
are saying. NEPA applies. We are simply saying NEPA does not have to 
revisit the decision of policy that we are making here today.
  The last claim I am compelled to refute is on the issue of timing. 
Opponents say S. 1936 claims that there is no need to tackle the issue 
now, that it is a waste of time.
  That does not sound like anything other than Washington bureaucracy: 
Let's defer the decision. Let's not take action. Let's keep spending 
money without results. Let's maintain the status quo. Let's promote the 
stalemate. Let's maintain the gridlock.''
  For 15 years we have collected billions of dollars. We have expended 
$6 billion and we go nowhere. We have a chance to go somewhere today.
  But the Washington bureaucracy wants to say: ``Let's keep taking the 
consumers' money, but not provide them with nuclear waste removal 
services we promised them in return. Let's ignore the recent court 
cases and let us stick it to the taxpayers who will have to pay the 
damages.''
  Our opponents would have you believe the Government has no 
responsibility. But the recent court decision has blown our opponents' 
arguments out of the water. The Federal Government has a 
responsibility. Failure to live up to that responsibility will have 
significant consequences, so said the court. And it said so 
unanimously.
  Finally, the fifth issue I must refute is the issue of just who 
benefits from the legislation. The other side has tried to paint this 
bill as one of exclusively benefiting the nuclear power lobby. But I 
have letters from 23 States, written by Governors and attorneys 
general, urging the Congress to pass and the President to sign the 
bill. We have letters from Governors, Governor Lawton Chiles of Florida 
and others, relative to that matter.
  We have broad support for this bill across the political spectrum. 
Ours is a bipartisan effort, Democrats, Republicans, liberals, 
conservatives. We are supported by unions as well, the Electrical 
Workers Union, Utility Workers, AFL-CIO, Joiners and Carpenters. The 
fire chiefs in Nevada have indicated support of this. As have many 
Nevadans--I have already entered that in the Record.
  Our constituents should not have to pay twice for nuclear waste 
services. We do not have to create 80 waste

[[Page S9254]]

dumps, including some in populated areas or sitting just outside 
national parks, when one will do. We do not have to settle for further 
delay, further stalemate and further gridlock. We can avoid 
multibillion-dollar damages against the taxpayer for the Government's 
failure to address a problem that a recent court case says is 
Government's responsibility. We can do that. It is the right thing to 
do for the consumers and electric ratepayers, for the environment, for 
public health and safety, and I urge we pass Senate bill 1936.
  Madam President, at this time I would like to thank my dear friend 
and colleague, Senator Johnston, who has been involved in this much 
longer than I, for his steadfast commitment to what is responsible and 
what is right for the country, to finally address our responsibility. I 
thank my friend, Larry Craig, who introduced this legislation 
initially, and Senator Domenici, Senator Gramm, Senator Thurmond, 
Senator Simpson, Senator Faircloth, Senator Gorton. I recognize Senator 
Thomas, as well as my two colleagues, Senator Bryan and Senator Reid. I 
know what a tough thing this is for your State.
  Mr. REID addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The time of the Senator has expired.
  Mr. MURKOWSKI. Let me thank the staff as well. I would like to thank 
the Energy Committee staff, including Gregg Renkes, Gary Ellsworth, Jim 
Beirne, Karen Hunsicker, David Garman, David Fish and Betty Nevitt, as 
well as Nils Johnson from Senator Craig's office, and the minority 
staff, Ben Cooper, Sam Fowler and Bob Simon.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. REID. Madam President, I apologize for being rude but we have a 
Member who needs to vote and that is why we need to stick with the 
program.
  If anyone believes in environmental standards, you must vote against 
this bill. This bill will ultimately open the door for the greatest 
nuclear waste transportation project in human history, sending 
thousands and thousands of tons of the Nation's radioactive waste onto 
the roads and rails. Last year we had 2,500 accidents on rail that only 
involved trains, and 6,000 accidents at railroad crossings over the 
last year.

  Madam President, in the last 10 years, 26,354 accidents occurred with 
damage to track, structure or equipment in excess of $6,300 dollars. 
There were 60,553 accidents at railroad crossings.
  This bill is bad, bad, bad, if you support environmental standards. 
If you oppose corporate welfare, vote against this. The court decision 
helps our cause. That is why we offered an amendment to that effect. 
They keep coming back saying it was a unanimous opinion. We agree. 
Three judges said they have to follow the contract they entered into. 
We agree with that.
  Hazel O'Leary is not only the Secretary of the Department of Energy, 
she is also a corporate lawyer. She said that decision does not affect 
what the DOE is going to do. In fact, she says, if this bill passes it 
will, again, harm what the decision did.
  So, Madam President, if you believe in returning authority to the 
States, vote against this bill. If you oppose Government taking private 
property, vote against this bill. Homeowners along transportation 
routes may well find their property values reduced as a result of 
nuclear waste trains and trucks passing by, and that is an 
understatement. No mechanism exists in S. 1936 to compensate homeowners 
in such a circumstance. If you believe in public participation in 
regulatory proceedings, vote against this bill. If you believe in a 
rational nuclear waste policy, vote against this bill.
  If you believe that the nuclear industry is entitled to lavish 
taxpayer-financed benefits from the Federal Government at the expense 
of public health and safety, then you should vote for this legislation.
  We ask Senators to vote against this legislation. This is the most 
anti-environmental legislation of this Congress and that says a great 
deal because this is known as the most anti-environmental Congress in 
the history of this country.
  Mr. MURKOWSKI. Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, the clerk will call the 
roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. MURKOWSKI. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the 
order for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. MURKOWSKI. I ask we proceed with the vote. The yeas and nays have 
been ordered.
  I ask for the regular order.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senators from Nevada yield back their 
time?
  Mr. REID. We will. We have. We do.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. All time having been yielded back, the 
question is, Shall the bill pass?
  The yeas and nays have been ordered. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk called the roll.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Abraham). Are there any other Senators in 
the Chamber who desire to vote?
  The result was announced--yeas 63, nays 37, as follows:

                      [Rollcall Vote No. 259 Leg.]

                                YEAS--63

     Abraham
     Ashcroft
     Bennett
     Bond
     Brown
     Burns
     Cochran
     Cohen
     Coverdell
     Craig
     D'Amato
     DeWine
     Domenici
     Faircloth
     Frahm
     Frist
     Gorton
     Graham
     Gramm
     Grams
     Grassley
     Gregg
     Harkin
     Hatch
     Hatfield
     Heflin
     Helms
     Hollings
     Hutchison
     Inhofe
     Jeffords
     Johnston
     Kassebaum
     Kempthorne
     Kohl
     Kyl
     Leahy
     Levin
     Lott
     Lugar
     Mack
     McCain
     McConnell
     Moseley-Braun
     Murkowski
     Murray
     Nickles
     Nunn
     Pressler
     Robb
     Roth
     Santorum
     Shelby
     Simon
     Simpson
     Smith
     Snowe
     Specter
     Stevens
     Thomas
     Thompson
     Thurmond
     Warner

                                NAYS--37

     Akaka
     Baucus
     Biden
     Bingaman
     Boxer
     Bradley
     Breaux
     Bryan
     Bumpers
     Byrd
     Campbell
     Chafee
     Coats
     Conrad
     Daschle
     Dodd
     Dorgan
     Exon
     Feingold
     Feinstein
     Ford
     Glenn
     Inouye
     Kennedy
     Kerrey
     Kerry
     Lautenberg
     Lieberman
     Mikulski
     Moynihan
     Pell
     Pryor
     Reid
     Rockefeller
     Sarbanes
     Wellstone
     Wyden
  The bill (S. 1936), as amended, was passed, as follows:

                                S. 1936

       Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of 
     the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the 
     Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 is amended to read as 
     follows:

     ``SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE AND TABLE OF CONTENTS.

       ``(a) Short Title.--This Act may be cited as the `Nuclear 
     Waste Policy Act of 1996'.
       ``(b) Table of Contents.--

``Sec. 1. Short title and table of contents.
``Sec. 2. Definitions.

                         ``TITLE I--OBLIGATIONS

``Sec. 101. Obligations of the Secretary of Energy.

                ``TITLE II--INTEGRATED MANAGEMENT SYSTEM

``Sec. 201. Intermodal transfer.
``Sec. 202. Transportation planning.
``Sec. 203. Transportation requirements.
``Sec. 204. Interim storage.
``Sec. 205. Permanent repository.
``Sec. 206. Land withdrawal.

                      ``TITLE III--LOCAL RELATIONS

``Sec. 301. Financial assistance.
``Sec. 302. On-site representative.
``Sec. 303. Acceptance of benefits.
``Sec. 304. Restrictions on use of funds.
``Sec. 305. Land conveyances.

                  ``TITLE IV--FUNDING AND ORGANIZATION

``Sec. 401. Program funding.
``Sec. 402. Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management.
``Sec. 403. Federal contribution.

            ``TITLE V--GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS PROVISIONS

``Sec. 501. Compliance with other laws.
``Sec. 502. Judicial review of agency actions.
``Sec. 503. Licensing of facility expansions and transshipments.
``Sec. 504. Siting a second repository.
``Sec. 505. Financial arrangements for low-level radioactive waste site 
              closure.
``Sec. 506. Nuclear Regulatory Commission training authorization.
``Sec. 507. Emplacement schedule.
``Sec. 508. Transfer of title.
``Sec. 509. Decommissioning pilot program.
``Sec. 510. Water rights.

            ``TITLE VI--NUCLEAR WASTE TECHNICAL REVIEW BOARD

``Sec. 601. Definitions.
``Sec. 602. Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board.
``Sec. 603. Functions.

[[Page S9255]]

``Sec. 604. Investigatory powers.
``Sec. 605. Compensation of members.
``Sec. 606. Staff.
``Sec. 607. Support services.
``Sec. 608. Report.
``Sec. 609. Authorization of appropriations.
``Sec. 610. Termination of the board.

                     ``TITLE VII--MANAGEMENT REFORM

``Sec. 701. Management reform initiatives.
``Sec. 702. Reporting.
``Sec. 703. Effective date.

     ``SEC. 2. DEFINITIONS.

       ``For purposes of this Act:
       ``(1) Accept, acceptance.--The terms `accept' and 
     `acceptance' mean the Secretary's act of taking possession of 
     spent nuclear fuel or high-level radioactive waste.
       ``(2) Affected indian tribe.--The term `affected Indian 
     tribe' means any Indian tribe--
       ``(A) whose reservation is surrounded by or borders an 
     affected unit of local government, or
       ``(B) whose federally defined possessory or usage rights to 
     other lands outside of the reservation's boundaries arising 
     out of congressionally ratified treaties may be substantially 
     and adversely affected by the locating of an interim storage 
     facility or a repository if the Secretary of the Interior 
     finds, upon the petition of the appropriate governmental 
     officials of the tribe, that such effects are both 
     substantial and adverse to the tribe.
       ``(3) Affected unit of local government.--The term 
     `affected unit of local government' means the unit of local 
     government with jurisdiction over the site of a repository or 
     interim storage facility. Such term may, at the discretion of 
     the Secretary, include other units of local government that 
     are contiguous with such unit.
       ``(4) Atomic energy defense activity.--The term `atomic 
     energy defense activity' means any activity of the Secretary 
     performed in whole or in part in carrying out any of the 
     following functions:
       ``(A) Naval reactors development.
       ``(B) Weapons activities including defense inertial 
     confinement fusion.
       ``(C) Verification and control technology.
       ``(D) Defense nuclear materials production.
       ``(E) Defense nuclear waste and materials byproducts 
     management.
       ``(F) Defense nuclear materials security and safeguards and 
     security investigations.
       ``(G) Defense research and development.
       ``(5) Civilian nuclear power reactor.--The term `civilian 
     nuclear power reactor' means a civilian nuclear power plant 
     required to be licensed under section 103 or 104 b. of the 
     Atomic Energy Act of 1954 (42 U.S.C. 2133, 2134(b)).
       ``(6) Commission.--The term `Commission' means the Nuclear 
     Regulatory Commission.
       ``(7) Contracts.--The term `contracts' means the contracts, 
     executed prior to the date of enactment of the Nuclear Waste 
     Policy Act of 1996, under section 302(a) of the Nuclear Waste 
     Policy Act of 1982, by the Secretary and any person who 
     generates or holds title to spent nuclear fuel or high-level 
     radioactive waste of domestic origin for acceptance of such 
     waste or fuel by the Secretary and the payment of fees to 
     offset the Secretary's expenditures, and any subsequent 
     contracts executed by the Secretary pursuant to section 
     401(a) of this Act.
       ``(8) Contract holders.--The term `contract holders' means 
     parties (other than the Secretary) to contracts.
       ``(9) Department.--The term `Department' means the 
     Department of Energy.
       ``(10) Disposal.--The term `disposal' means the emplacement 
     in a repository of spent nuclear fuel, high-level radioactive 
     waste, or other highly radioactive material with no 
     foreseeable intent of recovery, whether or not such 
     emplacement permits recovery of such material for any future 
     purpose.
       ``(11) Disposal system.--The term `disposal system' means 
     all natural barriers and engineered barriers, and engineered 
     systems and components, that prevent the release of 
     radionuclides from the repository.
       ``(12) Emplacement schedule.--The term `emplacement 
     schedule' means the schedule established by the Secretary in 
     accordance with section 507(a) for emplacement of spent 
     nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste at the interim 
     storage facility.
       ``(13) Engineered barriers and engineered systems and 
     components.--The terms `engineered barriers' and `engineered 
     systems and components', mean man-made components of a 
     disposal system. These terms include the spent nuclear fuel 
     or high-level radioactive waste form, spent nuclear fuel 
     package or high-level radioactive waste package, and other 
     materials placed over and around such packages.
       ``(14) High-level radioactive waste.--The term `high-level 
     radioactive waste' means--
       ``(A) the highly radioactive material resulting from the 
     reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel, including liquid waste 
     produced directly in reprocessing and any solid material 
     derived from such liquid waste that contains fission products 
     in sufficient concentrations; and
       ``(B) other highly radioactive material that the 
     Commission, consistent with existing law, determines by rule 
     requires permanent isolation, which includes any low-level 
     radioactive waste with concentrations of radionuclides that 
     exceed the limits established by the Commission for class C 
     radioactive waste, as defined by section 61.55 of title 10, 
     Code of Federal Regulations, as in effect on January 26, 
     1983.
       ``(15) Federal agency.--The term `Federal agency' means any 
     Executive agency, as defined in section 105 of title 5, 
     United States Code.
       ``(16) Indian tribe.--The term `Indian tribe' means any 
     Indian tribe, band, nation, or other organized group or 
     community of Indians recognized as eligible for the services 
     provided to Indians by the Secretary of the Interior because 
     of their status as Indians including any Alaska Native 
     village, as defined in section 3(c) of the Alaska Native 
     Claims Settlement Act (43 U.S.C. 1602(c)).
       ``(17) Integrated management system.--The term `integrated 
     management system' means the system developed by the 
     Secretary for the acceptance, transportation, storage, and 
     disposal of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive 
     waste under title II of this Act.
       ``(18) Interim storage facility.--The term `interim storage 
     facility' means a facility designed and constructed for the 
     receipt, handling, possession, safeguarding, and storage of 
     spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste in 
     accordance with title II of this Act.
       ``(19) Interim storage facility site.--The term `interim 
     storage facility site' means the specific site within area 25 
     of the Nevada test site that is designated by the Secretary 
     and withdrawn and reserved in accordance with this Act for 
     the location of the interim storage facility.
       ``(20) Low-level radioactive waste.--The term `low-level 
     radioactive waste' means radioactive material that--
       ``(A) is not spent nuclear fuel, high-level radioactive 
     waste, transuranic waste, or byproduct material as defined in 
     section 11 e.(2) of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 (42 U.S.C. 
     2014(e)(2)); and
       ``(B) the Commission, consistent with existing law, 
     classifies as low-level radioactive waste.
       ``(21) Metric tons uranium.--The terms `metric tons 
     uranium' and `MTU' mean the amount of uranium in the original 
     unirradiated fuel element whether or not the spent nuclear 
     fuel has been reprocessed.
       ``(22) Nuclear waste fund.--The terms `Nuclear Waste Fund' 
     and `waste fund' mean the nuclear waste fund established in 
     the United States Treasury prior to the date of enactment of 
     this Act under section 302(c) of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act 
     of 1982.
       ``(23) Office.--The term `Office' means the Office of 
     Civilian Radioactive Waste Management established within the 
     Department prior to the date of enactment of this Act under 
     the provisions of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982.
       ``(24) Program approach.--The term `program approach' means 
     the Civilian Radioactive Waste Management Program Plan, dated 
     May 6, 1996, as modified by this Act, and as amended from 
     time to time by the Secretary in accordance with this Act.
       ``(25) Repository.--The term `repository' means a system 
     designed and constructed under title II of this Act for the 
     geologic disposal of spent nuclear fuel and high-level 
     radioactive waste, including both surface and subsurface 
     areas at which spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive 
     waste receipt, handling, possession, safeguarding, and 
     storage are conducted.
       ``(26) Secretary.--The term `Secretary' means the Secretary 
     of Energy.
       ``(27) Site characterization.--The term `site 
     characterization' means activities, whether in a laboratory 
     or in the field, undertaken to establish the geologic 
     condition and the ranges of the parameters of a candidate 
     site relevant to the location of a repository, including 
     borings, surface excavations, excavations of exploratory 
     facilities, limited subsurface lateral excavations and 
     borings, and in situ testing needed to evaluate the 
     licensability of a candidate site for the location of a 
     repository, but not including preliminary borings and 
     geophysical testing needed to assess whether site 
     characterization should be undertaken.
       ``(28) Spent nuclear fuel.--The term `spent nuclear fuel' 
     means fuel that has been withdrawn from a nuclear reactor 
     following irradiation, the constituent elements of which have 
     not been separated by reprocessing.
       ``(29) Storage.--The term `storage' means retention of 
     spent nuclear fuel or high-level radioactive waste with the 
     intent to recover such waste or fuel for subsequent use, 
     processing, or disposal.
       ``(30) Withdrawal.--The term `withdrawal' has the same 
     definition as that set forth in section 103(j) of the Federal 
     Land Policy and Management Act of 1976 (43 U.S.C. 1702(j)).
       ``(31) Yucca mountain site.--The term `Yucca Mountain site' 
     means the area in the State of Nevada that is withdrawn and 
     reserved in accordance with this Act for the location of a 
     respository.

                         ``TITLE I--OBLIGATIONS

     ``SEC. 101. OBLIGATIONS OF THE SECRETARY OF ENERGY.

       ``(a) Disposal.--The Secretary shall develop and operate an 
     integrated management system for the storage and permanent 
     disposal of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive 
     waste.
       ``(b) Interim Storage.--The Secretary shall store spent 
     nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste from facilities 
     designated by contract holders at an interim storage facility 
     pursuant to section 204 in accordance with the emplacement 
     schedule, beginning not later than November 30, 1999.
       ``(c) Transportation.--The Secretary shall provide for the 
     transportation of spent nuclear fuel and high-level 
     radioactive waste

[[Page S9256]]

     accepted by the Secretary. The Secretary shall procure all 
     systems and components necessary to transport spent nuclear 
     fuel and high-level radioactive waste from facilities 
     designated by contract holders to and among facilities 
     comprising the Integrated Management System. Consistent with 
     the Buy American Act (41 U.S.C. 10a-10c), unless the 
     Secretary shall determine it to be inconsistent with the 
     public interest, or the cost to be unreasonable, all such 
     systems and components procured by the Secretary shall be 
     manufactured in the United States, with the exception of any 
     transportable storage systems purchased by contract holders 
     prior to the effective date of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act 
     of 1996 and procured by the Secretary from such contract 
     holders for use in the integrated management system.
       ``(d) Integrated Management System.--The Secretary shall 
     expeditiously pursue the development of each component of the 
     integrated management system, and in so doing shall seek to 
     utilize effective private sector management and contracting 
     practices.
       ``(e) Private Sector Participation.--In administering the 
     Integrated Management System, the Secretary shall, to the 
     maximum extent possible, utilize, employ, procure and 
     contract with, the private sector to fulfill the Secretary's 
     obligations and requirements under this Act.
       ``(f) Pre-Existing Rights.--Nothing in this Act is intended 
     to or shall be construed to modify--
       ``(1) any right of a contract holder under section 302(a) 
     of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, or under a contract 
     executed prior to the date of enactment of this Act under 
     that section; or
       ``(2) obligations imposed upon the Federal Government by 
     the United States District Court of Idaho in an order entered 
     on October 17, 1995 in United States v. Batt (No. 91-0054-S-
     EJL).
       ``(g) Liability.--Subject to subsection (f), nothing in 
     this Act shall be construed to subject the United States to 
     financial liability for the Secretary's failure to meet any 
     deadline for the acceptance or emplacement of spent nuclear 
     fuel or high-level radioactive waste for storage or disposal 
     under this Act.

                ``TITLE II--INTEGRATED MANAGEMENT SYSTEM

     ``SEC. 201. INTERMODAL TRANSFER.

       ``(a) Access.--The Secretary shall utilize heavy-haul truck 
     transport to move spent nuclear fuel and high-level 
     radioactive waste from the mainline rail line at Caliente, 
     Nevada, to the interim storage facility site.
       ``(b) Capability Date.--The Secretary shall develop the 
     capability to commence rail to truck intermodal transfer at 
     Caliente, Nevada, no later than November 30, 1999. Intermodal 
     transfer and related activities are incidental to the 
     interstate transportation of spent nuclear fuel and high-
     level radioactive waste.
       ``(c) Acquisitions.--The Secretary shall acquire lands and 
     rights-of-way necessary to commence intermodal transfer at 
     Caliente, Nevada.
       ``(d) Replacements.--The Secretary shall acquire and 
     develop on behalf of, and dedicate to, the City of Caliente, 
     Nevada, parcels of land and right-of-way within Lincoln 
     County, Nevada, as required to facilitate replacement of land 
     and city wastewater disposal facilities necessary to commence 
     intermodal transfer pursuant to this Act. Replacement of land 
     and city wastewater disposal activities shall occur no later 
     than November 30, 1999.
       ``(e) Notice and Map.--Within 6 months of the date of 
     enactment of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1996, the 
     Secretary shall--
       ``(1) publish in the Federal Register a notice containing a 
     legal description of the sites and rights-of-way to be 
     acquired under this subsection; and
       ``(2) file copies of a map of such sites and rights-of-way 
     with the Congress, the Secretary of the Interior, the State 
     of Nevada, the Archivist of the United States, the Board of 
     Lincoln County Commissioners, the Board of Nye County 
     Commissioners, and the Caliente City Council.
     Such map and legal description shall have the same force and 
     effect as if they were included in this Act. The Secretary 
     may correct clerical and typographical errors and legal 
     descriptions and make minor adjustments in the boundaries.
       ``(f) Improvements.--The Secretary shall make improvements 
     to existing roadways selected for heavy-haul truck transport 
     between Caliente, Nevada, and the interim storage facility 
     site as necessary to facilitate year-round safe transport of 
     spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste.
       ``(g) Local Government Involvement.--The Commission shall 
     enter into a Memorandum of Understanding with the City of 
     Caliente and Lincoln County, Nevada, to provide advice to the 
     Commission regarding intermodal transfer and to facilitate 
     on-site representation. Reasonable expenses of such 
     representation shall be paid by the Secretary.
       ``(h) Benefits Agreement.--
       ``(1) In general.--The Secretary shall offer to enter into 
     an agreement with the City of Caliente and Lincoln County, 
     Nevada concerning the integrated management system.
       ``(2) Agreement content.--Any agreement shall contain such 
     terms and conditions, including such financial and 
     institutional arrangements, as the Secretary and agreement 
     entity determine to be reasonable and appropriate and shall 
     contain such provisions as are necessary to preserve any 
     right to participation or compensation of the City of 
     Caliente and Lincoln County, Nevada.
       ``(3) Amendment.--An agreement entered into under this 
     subsection may be amended only with the mutual consent of the 
     parties to the amendment and terminated only in accordance 
     with paragraph (4).
       ``(4) Termination.--The Secretary shall terminate the 
     agreement under this subsection if any major element of the 
     integrated management system may not be completed.
       ``(5) Limitation.--Only one agreement may be in effect at 
     any one time.
       ``(6) Judicial review.--Decisions of the Secretary under 
     this section are not subject to judicial review.
       ``(i) Content of Agreement.--
       ``(1) Schedule.--In addition to the benefits to which the 
     City of Caliente and Lincoln County is entitled to under this 
     title, the Secretary shall make payments under the benefits 
     agreement in accordance with the following schedule:

                          ``Benefits Schedule

                        ``(Amounts in millions)

``Event                                                         Payment
  ``(A) Annual payments prior to first receipt of spent fuel.......$2.5
  ``(B) Annual payments beginning upon first spent fuel receipt.....5  
  ``(C) Payment upon closure of the intermodal transfer facility....5  

       ``(2) Definitions.--For purposes of this section, the 
     term--
       ``(A) `spent fuel' means high-level radioactive waste or 
     spent nuclear fuel; and
       ``(B) `first spent fuel receipt' does not include receipt 
     of spent fuel or high-level radioactive waste for purposes of 
     testing or operational demonstration.
       ``(3) Annual payments.--Annual payments prior to first 
     spent fuel receipt under paragraph (1)(A) shall be made on 
     the date of execution of the benefits agreement and 
     thereafter on the anniversary date of such execution. Annual 
     payments after the first spent fuel receipt until closure of 
     the facility under paragraph (1)(C) shall be made on the 
     anniversary date of such first spent fuel receipt.
       ``(4) Reduction.--If the first spent fuel payment under 
     paragraph (1)(B) is made within 6 months after the last 
     annual payment prior to the receipt of spent fuel under 
     paragraph (1)(A), such first spent fuel payment under 
     paragraph (1)(B) shall be reduced by an amount equal to \1/
     12\ of such annual payment under paragraph (1)(A) for each 
     full month less than six that has not elapsed since the last 
     annual payment under paragraph (1)(A).
       ``(5) Restrictions.--The Secretary may not restrict the 
     purposes for which the payments under this section may be 
     used.
       ``(6) Dispute.--In the event of a dispute concerning such 
     agreement, the Secretary shall resolve such dispute, 
     consistent with this Act and applicable State law.
       ``(7) Construction.--The signature of the Secretary on a 
     valid benefits agreement under this section shall constitute 
     a commitment by the United States to make payments in 
     accordance with such agreement under section 401(c)(2).
       ``(j) Initial Land Conveyances.--
       ``(1) Conveyances of public lands.--One hundred and twenty 
     days after enactment of this Act, all right, title and 
     interest of the United States in the property described in 
     paragraph (2), and improvements thereon, together with all 
     necessary easements for utilities and ingress and egress to 
     such property, including, but not limited to, the right to 
     improve those easements, are conveyed by operation of law to 
     the County of Lincoln, Nevada, unless the county notifies the 
     Secretary of the Interior or the head of such other 
     appropriate agency in writing within 60 days of such date of 
     enactment that it elects not to take title to all or any part 
     of the property, except that any lands conveyed to the County 
     of Lincoln under this subsection that are subject to a 
     Federal grazing permit or lease or a similar federally 
     granted permit or lease shall be conveyed between 60 and 120 
     days of the earliest time the Federal agency administering or 
     granting the permit or lease would be able to legally 
     terminate such right under the statutes and regulations 
     existing at the date of enactment of this Act, unless Lincoln 
     County and the affected holder of the permit or lease 
     negotiate an agreement that allows for an earlier conveyance.
       ``(2) Special conveyances.--Notwithstanding any other law, 
     the following public lands depicted on the maps and legal 
     descriptions dated October 11, 1995, shall be conveyed under 
     paragraph (1) to the County of Lincoln, Nevada:
       Map 10; Lincoln County, parcel M, industrial park site.
       Map 11; Lincoln County, parcel F, mixed use industrial 
     site.
       Map 13; Lincoln County, parcel J, mixed use, Alamo 
     Community Expansion Area.
       Map 14; Lincoln County, parcel E, mixed use, Pioche 
     Community Expansion Area.
       Map 15; Lincoln County, parcel B, landfill expansion site.
       ``(3) Construction.--The maps and legal descriptions 
     special conveyances referred to in paragraph (2) shall have 
     the same force and effect as if they were included in this 
     Act. The Secretary may correct clerical and typographical 
     errors in the maps and legal descriptions and make minor 
     adjustments in the boundaries of the sites.

[[Page S9257]]

       ``(4) Evidence of title transfer.--Upon the request of the 
     County of Lincoln, Nevada, the Secretary of the Interior 
     shall provide evidence of title transfer.

     ``SEC. 202. TRANSPORTATION PLANNING.

       ``(a) Transportation Readiness.--The Secretary shall take 
     those actions that are necessary and appropriate to ensure 
     that the Secretary is able to transport safely spent nuclear 
     fuel and high-level radioactive waste from sites designated 
     by the contract holders to mainline transportation 
     facilities, using routes that minimize, to the maximum 
     practicable extent consistent with Federal requirements 
     governing transportation of hazardous materials, 
     transportation of spent nuclear fuel and high-level 
     radioactive waste through populated areas, beginning not 
     later than November 30, 1999, and, by that date, shall, in 
     consultation with the Secretary of Transportation, develop 
     and implement a comprehensive management plan that ensures 
     that safe transportation of spent nuclear fuel and high-level 
     radioactive waste from the sites designated by the contract 
     holders to the interim storage facility site beginning not 
     later than November 30, 1999.
       ``(b) Transportation Planning.--In conjunction with the 
     development of the logistical plan in accordance with 
     subsection (a), the Secretary shall update and modify, as 
     necessary, the Secretary's transportation institutional plans 
     to ensure that institutional issues are addressed and 
     resolved on a schedule to support the commencement of 
     transportation of spent nuclear fuel and high-level 
     radioactive waste to the interim storage facility no later 
     than November 30, 1999. Among other things, such planning 
     shall provide a schedule and process for addressing and 
     implementing as necessary, transportation routing plans, 
     transportation contracting plans, transportation training in 
     accordance with section 203, and public education regarding 
     transportation of spent nuclear fuel and high-level 
     radioactive waste, and transportation tracking programs.

     ``SEC. 203. TRANSPORTATION REQUIREMENTS.

       ``(a) Package Certification.--No spent nuclear fuel or 
     high-level radioactive waste may be transported by or for the 
     Secretary under this Act except in packages that have been 
     certified for such purposes by the Commission.
       ``(b) State Notification.--The Secretary shall abide by 
     regulations of the Commission regarding advance notification 
     of State and local governments prior to transportation of 
     spent nuclear fuel or high-level radioactive waste under this 
     Act.
       ``(c) Technical Assistance.--The Secretary shall provide 
     technical assistance and funds to States, units of local 
     government, and Indian tribes through whose jurisdiction the 
     Secretary plans to transport substantial amounts of spent 
     nuclear fuel or high-level radioactive waste for training for 
     public safety officials of appropriate units of local 
     government. The Secretary shall also provide technical 
     assistance and funds for training directly to national 
     nonprofit employee organizations which demonstrate experience 
     in implementing and operating worker health and safety 
     training and education programs and demonstrate the ability 
     to reach and involve in training programs target populations 
     of workers who are or will be directly engaged in the 
     transportation of spent nuclear fuel and high-level 
     radioactive waste, or emergency response or post-emergency 
     response with respect to such transportation. Training shall 
     cover procedures required for safe routine transportation of 
     these materials, as well as procedures for dealing with 
     emergency response situations, and shall be consistent with 
     any training standards established by the Secretary of 
     Transportation in accordance with subsection (g). The 
     Secretary's duty to provide technical and financial 
     assistance under this subsection shall be limited to amounts 
     specified in annual appropriations.
       ``(d) Public Education.--The Secretary shall conduct a 
     program to educate the public regarding the transportation of 
     spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste, with an 
     emphasis upon those States, units of local government, and 
     Indian tribes through whose jurisdiction the Secretary plans 
     to transport substantial amounts of spent nuclear fuel or 
     high-level radioactive waste.
       ``(e) Compliance With Transportation Regulations.--Any 
     person that transports spent nuclear fuel or high-level 
     radioactive waste under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1986, 
     pursuant to a contract with the Secretary, shall comply with 
     all requirements governing such transportation issued by the 
     Federal, State and local governments, and Indian tribes, in 
     the same way and to the same extent that any person engaging 
     in that transportation that is in or affects interstate 
     commerce must comply with such requirements, as required by 
     section 5126 of title 49, United States Code.
       ``(f) Employee Protection.--Any person engaged in the 
     interstate commerce of spent nuclear fuel or high-level 
     radioactive waste under contract to the Secretary pursuant to 
     this Act shall be subject to and comply fully with the 
     employee protection provisions of 49 United States Code 20109 
     and 49 United States Code 31105.
       ``(g) Training Standard.--(1) No later than 12 months after 
     the date of enactment of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 
     1996, the Secretary of Transportation, pursuant to authority 
     under other provisions of law, in consultation with the 
     Secretary of Labor and the Commission, shall promulgate a 
     regulation establishing training standards applicable to 
     workers directly involved in the removal and transportation 
     of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste. The 
     regulation shall specify minimum training standards 
     applicable to workers, including managerial personnel. The 
     regulation shall require that the employer possess evidence 
     of satisfaction of the applicable training standard before 
     any individual may be employed in the removal and 
     transportation of spent nuclear fuel and high-level 
     radioactive waste.
       ``(2) If the Secretary of Transportation determines, in 
     promulgating the regulation required by paragraph (1), that 
     regulations promulgated by the Commission establish adequate 
     training standards for workers, then the Secretary of 
     Transportation can refrain from promulgating additional 
     regulations with respect to worker training in such 
     activities. The Secretary of Transportation and the 
     Commission shall work through their Memorandum of 
     Understanding to ensure coordination of worker training 
     standards and to avoid duplicative regulation.
       ``(3) The training standards required to be promulgated 
     under paragraph (1) shall, among other things deemed 
     necessary and appropriate by the Secretary of Transportation, 
     include the following provisions--
       ``(A) a specified minimum number of hours of initial off 
     site instruction and actual field experience under the direct 
     supervision of a trained, experienced supervisor;
       ``(B) a requirement that onsite managerial personnel 
     receive the same training as workers, and a minimum number of 
     additional hours of specialized training pertinent to their 
     managerial responsibilities; and
       ``(C) a training program applicable to persons responsible 
     for responding to and cleaning up emergency situations 
     occurring during the removal and transportation of spent 
     nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste.
       ``(4) There is authorized to be appropriated to the 
     Secretary of Transportation, from general revenues, such sums 
     as may be necessary to perform his duties under this 
     subsection.

     ``SEC. 204. INTERIM STORAGE.

       ``(a) Authorization.--The Secretary shall design, 
     construct, and operate a facility for the interim storage of 
     spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste at the 
     interim storage facility site. The interim storage facility 
     shall be subject to licensing pursuant to the Atomic Energy 
     Act of 1954 in accordance with the Commission's regulations 
     governing the licensing of independent spent fuel storage 
     installations, which regulations shall be amended by the 
     Commission as necessary to implement the provisions of this 
     Act. The interim storage facility shall commence operation in 
     phases in accordance with subsection (b).
       ``(b) Schedule.--(1) The Secretary shall proceed forthwith 
     and without further delay with all activities necessary to 
     begin storing spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive 
     waste at the interim storage facility at the interim storage 
     facility site by November 30, 1999, except that:
       ``(A) The Secretary shall not begin any construction 
     activities at the interim storage facility site before 
     December 31, 1998.
       ``(B) The Secretary shall cease all activities (except 
     necessary termination activities) at the Yucca Mountain site 
     if the President determines, in his discretion, on or before 
     December 31, 1998, based on a preponderance of the 
     information available at such time, that the Yucca Mountain 
     site is unsuitable for development as a repository, including 
     geologic and engineered barriers, because of a substantial 
     likelihood that a repository of useful size, cannot be 
     designed, licensed, and constructed at the Yucca Mountain 
     site.
       ``(C) No later than June 30, 1998, the Secretary shall 
     provide to the President and to the Congress a viability 
     assessment of the Yucca Mountain site. The viability 
     assessment shall include--
       ``(i) the preliminary design concept for the critical 
     elements of the repository and waste package,
       ``(ii) a total system performance assessment, based upon 
     the design concept and the scientific data and analysis 
     available by June 30, 1998, describing the probable behavior 
     of the respository in the Yucca Mountain geologic setting 
     relative to the overall system performance standard set forth 
     in section 205(d) of this Act,
       ``(iii) a plan and cost estimate for the remaining work 
     required to complete a license application, and
       ``(iv) an estimate of the costs to construct and operate 
     the repository in accordance with the design concept.
       ``(D) Within 18 months of a determination by the President 
     that the Yucca Mountain site is unsuitable for development as 
     a repository under subparagraph (B), the President shall 
     designate a site for the construction of an interim storage 
     facility. If the President does not designate a site for the 
     construction of an interim storage facility, or the 
     construction of an interim storage facility at the designated 
     site is not approved by law within 24 months of the 
     President's determination that the Yucca Mountain site is not 
     suitable for development as a repository, the Secretary shall 
     begin construction of an interim storage facility at the 
     interim storage facility site as defined in section 2(19) of 
     this Act. The interim storage facility site as defined in 
     section 2(19) of this Act shall be deemed to be approved by 
     law for purposes of this section.
       ``(2) Upon the designation of an interim storage facility 
     site by the President under

[[Page S9258]]

     paragraph (1)(D), the Secretary shall proceed forthwith and 
     without further delay with all activities necessary to begin 
     storing spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste 
     at an interim storage facility at the designated site, except 
     that the Secretary shall not begin any construction 
     activities at the designated interim storage facility site 
     before the designated interim storage facility site is 
     approved by law.
       ``(c) Design.--
       ``(1) The interim storage facility shall be designed in two 
     phases in order to commence operations no later than November 
     30, 1999. The design of the interim storage facility shall 
     provide for the use of storage technologies, licensed, 
     approved, or certified by the Commission for use at the 
     interim storage facility as necessary to ensure compatibility 
     between the interim storage facility and contract holders' 
     spent nuclear fuel and facilities, and to facilitate the 
     Secretary's ability to meet the Secretary's obligations under 
     this Act.
       ``(2) The Secretary shall consent to an amendment to the 
     contracts to provide for reimbursement to contract holders 
     for transportable storage systems purchased by contract 
     holders if the Secretary determines that it is cost effective 
     to use such transportable storage systems as part of the 
     integrated management system, provided that the Secretary 
     shall not be required to expend any funds to modify contract 
     holders' storage or transport systems or to seek additional 
     regulatory approvals in order to use such systems.
       ``(d) Licensing.--
       ``(1) Phases.--The interim storage facility shall be 
     licensed by the Commission in two phases in order to commerce 
     operations no later than November 30, 1999.
       ``(2) First phase.--No later than 12 months after the date 
     of enactment of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1996, the 
     Secretary shall submit to the Commission an application for a 
     license for the first phase of the interim storage facility. 
     The Environmental Report and Safety Analysis Report submitted 
     in support of such license application shall be consistent 
     with the scope of authority requested in the license 
     application. The license issued for the first phase of the 
     interim storage facility shall have a term of 20 years. The 
     interim storage facility licensed in the first phase shall 
     have a capacity of not more than 15,000 MTU. The Commission 
     shall issue a final decision granting or denying the 
     application for the first phase license no later than 16 
     months from the date of the submittal of the application for 
     such license.
       ``(3) Second phase.--No later than 30 months after the date 
     of enactment of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1996, the 
     Secretary shall submit to the Commission an application for a 
     license for the second phase interim storage facility. The 
     license for the second phase facility shall authorize a 
     storage capacity of 40,000 MTU. If the Secretary does not 
     submit the license application for construction of a 
     respository by February 1, 2002, or does not begin full spent 
     nuclear fuel receipt operations at a repository by January 
     17, 2010, the license shall authorize a storage capacity of 
     60,000 MTU. The license application shall be submitted such 
     that the license can be issued to permit the second phase 
     facility to begin full spent nuclear fuel receipt operations 
     no later than December 31, 2002. The license for the second 
     phase shall have an initial term of up to 100 years, and 
     shall be renewable for additional terms upon application of 
     the Secretary.
       ``(e) Additional Authority.--
       ``(1) Construction.--For purposes of complying with this 
     section, the Secretary may commence site preparation for the 
     interim storage facility as soon as practicable after the 
     date of enactment of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1996 and 
     shall commence construction of each phase of the interim 
     storage facility subsequent to submittal of the license 
     application for such phase except that the Commission shall 
     issue an order suspending such construction at any time if 
     the Commission determines that such construction poses an 
     unreasonable risk to public health and safety or the 
     environment. The Commission shall terminate all or part of 
     such order upon a determination that the Secretary has taken 
     appropriate action to eliminate such risk.
       ``(2) Facility use.--Notwithstanding any otherwise 
     applicable licensing requirement, the Secretary may utilize 
     any facility owned by the Federal Government on the date of 
     enactment of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1996 within the 
     boundaries of the interim storage facility site, in 
     connection with an imminent and substantial endangerment to 
     public health and safety at the interim storage facility 
     prior to commencement of operations during the second phase.
       ``(3) Emplacement of fuel and waste.--Subject to subsection 
     (i), once the Secretary has achieved the annual acceptance 
     rate for spent nuclear fuel from civilian nuclear power 
     reactors established pursuant to the contracts executed prior 
     to the date of enactment of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 
     1996, as set forth in the Secretary's annual capacity report 
     dated March, 1995 (DOE/RW-0457), the Secretary shall accept, 
     in an amount not less than 25 percent of the difference 
     between the contractual acceptance rate and the annual 
     emplacement rate for spent nuclear fuel from civilian nuclear 
     power reactors established under section 507(a), the 
     following radioactive materials--
       ``(A) spent nuclear fuel or high-level radioactive waste of 
     domestic origin from civilian nuclear power reactors that 
     have permanently ceased operation on or before the date of 
     enactment of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1996;
       ``(B) spent nuclear fuel from foreign research reactors, as 
     necessary to promote non-proliferation objectives; and
       ``(C) spent nuclear fuel, including spent nuclear fuel from 
     naval reactors, and high-level radioactive waste from atomic 
     energy defense activities.
       ``(f) National Environmental Policy Act of 1969.--
       ``(1) Preliminary decisionmaking activities.--The 
     Secretary's and President's activities under this section, 
     including, but not limited to, the selection of a site for 
     the interim storage facility, assessments, determinations and 
     designations made under section 204(b), the preparation and 
     submittal of a license application and supporting 
     documentation, the construction of a facility under paragraph 
     (e)(1) of this section, and facility use pursuant to 
     paragraph (e)(2) of this section shall be considered 
     preliminary decisionmaking activities for purposes of 
     judicial review. The Secretary shall not prepare an 
     environmental impact statement under section 102(2)(C) of the 
     National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (42 U.S.C. 
     4332(2)(C)) or any environmental review under subparagraph 
     (E) or (F) of such Act before conducting these activities.
       ``(2) Environmental impact statement.--
       ``(A) Final decision.--A final decision by the Commission 
     to grant or deny a license application for the first or 
     second phase of the interim storage facility shall be 
     accompanied by an Environmental Impact Statement prepared 
     under section 102(2)(C) of the National Environmental Policy 
     Act of 1969 (42 U.S.C. 4332(2)(C)). In preparing such 
     Environmental Impact Statement, the Commission--
       ``(i) shall ensure that the scope of the Environmental 
     Impact Statement is consistent with the scope of the 
     licensing action; and
       ``(ii) shall analyze the impacts of the transportation of 
     spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste to the 
     interim storage facility in a generic manner.
       ``(B) Considerations.--Such Environmental Impact Statement 
     shall not consider--
       ``(i) the need for the interim storage facility, including 
     any individual component thereof;
       ``(ii) the time of the initial availability of the interim 
     storage facility;
       ``(iii) any alternatives to the storage of spent nuclear 
     fuel and high-level radioactive waste at the interim storage 
     facility;
       ``(iv) any alternatives to the site of the facility as 
     designated by the Secretary in accordance with subsection 
     (a);
       ``(v) any alternatives to the design criteria for such 
     facility or any individual component thereof, as specified by 
     the Secretary in the license application; or
       ``(vi) the environmental impacts of the storage of spent 
     nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste at the interim 
     storage facility beyond the initial term of the license or 
     the term of the renewal period for which a license renewal 
     application is made.
       ``(g) Judicial Review.--Judicial review of the Commission's 
     environmental impact statement under the National 
     Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (42 U.S.C. 4321 et seq.) 
     shall be consolidated with judicial review of the 
     Commission's licensing decision. No court shall have 
     jurisdiction to enjoin the construction or operation of the 
     interim storage facility prior to its final decision on 
     review of the Commission's licensing action.
       ``(h) Waste Confidence.--The Secretary's obligation to 
     construct and operate the interim storage facility in 
     accordance with this section and the Secretary's obligation 
     to develop an integrated management system in accordance with 
     the provisions of this Act, shall provide sufficient and 
     independent grounds for any further findings by the 
     Commission of reasonable assurance that spent nuclear fuel 
     and high-level radioactive waste will be disposed of safely 
     and on a timely basis for purposes of the Commission's 
     decision to grant or amend any license to operate any 
     civilian nuclear power reactor under the Atomic Energy Act of 
     1954 (42 U.S.C. 2011 et seq.).
       ``(i) Storage of Other Spent Nuclear Fuel and High-Level 
     Radioactive Waste.--No later than 18 months following the 
     date of enactment of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1996, 
     the Commission shall, by rule, establish criteria for the 
     storage in the interim storage facility of fuel and waste 
     listed in subparagraph (e)(3) (A) through (C), to the extent 
     such criteria are not included in regulations issued by the 
     Commission and existing on the date of enactment of the 
     Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1996. Following establishment of 
     such criteria, the Secretary shall seek authority, as 
     necessary, to store fuel and waste listed in subparagraph 
     (e)(3) (A) through (C) at the interim storage facility. None 
     of the activities carried out pursuant to this subsection 
     shall delay, or otherwise affect, the development, 
     construction, licensing, or operation of the interim storage 
     facility.
       ``(j) Savings Clause.--The Commission shall, by rule, 
     establish procedures for the licensing of any technology for 
     the dry storage of spent nuclear fuel by rule and without, to 
     the maximum extent possible, the need for site-specific 
     approvals by the Commission. Nothing in this Act shall affect 
     any such procedures, or any licenses or approvals issued 
     pursuant to such procedures in effect on the date of 
     enactment.

[[Page S9259]]

     ``SEC. 205. PERMANENT REPOSITORY.

       ``(a) Repository Characterization.--
       ``(1) Guidelines.--The guidelines promulgated by the 
     Secretary and published at part 960 of title 10, Code of 
     Federal Regulations are annulled and revoked and the 
     Secretary shall make no assumptions or conclusions about the 
     licensability of the Yucca Mountain site as a repository by 
     reference to such guidelines.
       ``(2) Site characterization activities.--The Secretary 
     shall carry out appropriate site characterization activities 
     at the Yucca Mountain site in accordance with the Secretary's 
     program approach to site characterization. The Secretary 
     shall modify or eliminate those site characterization 
     activities designed only to demonstrate the suitability of 
     the site under the guidelines referenced in paragraph (1).
       ``(3) Schedule date.--Consistent with the schedule set 
     forth in the program approach, as modified to be consistent 
     with the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1996, no later than 
     February 1, 2002, the Secretary shall apply to the Commission 
     for authorization to construct a repository. If, at any time 
     prior to the filing of such application, the Secretary 
     determines that the Yucca Mountain site cannot satisfy the 
     Commission's regulations applicable to the licensing of a 
     geologic repository, the Secretary shall terminate site 
     characterization activities at the site, notify Congress and 
     the State of Nevada of the Secretary's determination and the 
     reasons therefor, and recommend to Congress not later than 6 
     months after such determination, further actions, including 
     the enactment of legislation, that may be needed to manage 
     the Nation's spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive 
     waste.
       ``(4) Maximizing capacity.--In developing an application 
     for authorization to construct the repository, the Secretary 
     shall seek to maximize the capacity of the repository, in the 
     most cost-effective manner, consistent with the need for 
     disposal capacity.
       ``(b) Repository Licensing.--Upon the completion of any 
     licensing proceeding for the first phase of the interim 
     storage facility, the Commission shall amend its regulations 
     governing the disposal of spent nuclear fuel and high-level 
     radioactive waste in geologic repositories to the extent 
     necessary to comply with this Act. Subject to subsection (c), 
     such regulations shall provide for the licensing of the 
     repository according to the following procedures:
       ``(1) Construction authorization.--The Commission shall 
     grant the Secretary a construction authorization for the 
     repository upon determining that there is reasonable 
     assurance that spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive 
     waste can be disposed of in the repository--
       ``(A) in conformity with the Secretary's application, the 
     provisions of this Act, and the regulations of the 
     Commission;
       ``(B) without unreasonable risk to the health and safety of 
     the public; and
       ``(C) consistent with the common defense and security.
       ``(2) License.--Following substantial completion of 
     construction and the filing of any additional information 
     needed to complete the license application, the Commission 
     shall issue a license to dispose of spent nuclear fuel and 
     high-level radioactive waste in the repository if the 
     Commission determines that the repository has been 
     constructed and will operate--
       ``(A) in conformity with the Secretary's application, the 
     provisions of this Act, and the regulations of the 
     Commission;
       ``(B) without unreasonable risk to the health and safety of 
     the public; and
       ``(C) consistent with the common defense and security.
       ``(3) Closure.--After emplacing spent nuclear fuel and 
     high-level radioactive waste in the repository and collecting 
     sufficient confirmatory data on repository performance to 
     reasonably confirm the basis for repository closure 
     consistent with the Commission's regulations applicable to 
     the licensing of a repository, as modified in accordance with 
     this Act, the Secretary shall apply to the Commission to 
     amend the license to permit permanent closure of the 
     repository. The Commission shall grant such license amendment 
     upon finding that there is reasonable assurance that the 
     repository can be permanently closed--
       ``(A) in conformity with the Secretary's application to 
     amend the license, the provisions of this Act, and the 
     regulations of the Commission;
       ``(B) without unreasonable risk to the health and safety of 
     the public; and
       ``(C) consistent with the common defense and security.
       ``(4) Post-closure.--The Secretary shall take those actions 
     necessary and appropriate at the Yucca Mountain site to 
     prevent any activity at the site subsequent to repository 
     closure that poses an unreasonable risk of--
       ``(A) breaching the repository's engineered or geologic 
     barriers; or
       ``(B) increasing the exposure of individual members of the 
     public to radiation beyond the release standard established 
     in subsection (d)(1).
       ``(c) Modification of Repository Licensing Procedure.--The 
     Commission's regulations shall provide for the modification 
     of the repository licensing procedure, as appropriate, in the 
     event that the Secretary seeks a license to permit the 
     emplacement in the repository, on a retrievable basis, of 
     spent nuclear fuel or high-level radioactive waste as is 
     necessary to provide the Secretary with sufficient 
     confirmatory data on repository performance to reasonably 
     confirm the basis for repository closure consistent with 
     applicable regulations.
       ``(d) Repository Licensing Standards.--The Administrator of 
     the Environmental Protection Agency shall, pursuant to 
     authority under other provisions of law, issue generally 
     applicable standards for the protection of the public from 
     releases of radioactive materials or radioactivity from the 
     repository. Such standards shall be consistent with the 
     overall system performance standard established by this 
     subsection unless the Administrator determines by rule that 
     the overall system performance standard would constitute an 
     unreasonable risk to health and safety. The Commission's 
     repository licensing determinations for the protection of the 
     public shall be based solely on a finding whether the 
     repository can be operated in conformance with the overall 
     system performance standard established in paragraph (1), 
     applied in accordance with the provisions of paragraph (2), 
     and the Administrator's radiation protection standards. The 
     Commission shall amend its regulations in accordance with 
     subsection (b) to incorporate each of the following licensing 
     standards:
       ``(1) Establishment of overall system performance 
     standard.--The standard for protection of the public from 
     release of radioactive material or radioactivity from the 
     repository shall prohibit releases that would expose an 
     average member of the general population in the vicinity of 
     the Yucca Mountain site to an annual dose in excess of 100 
     millirems unless the Commission determines by rule that such 
     standard would constitute an unreasonable risk to health and 
     safety and establishes by rule another standard which will 
     protect health and safety. Such standard shall constitute an 
     overall system performance standard.
       ``(2) Application of overall system performance standard.--
     The Commission shall issue the license if it finds reasonable 
     assurance that for the first 1,000 years following the 
     commencement of repository operations, the overall system 
     performance standard will be met based on a probabilistic 
     evaluation, as appropriate, of compliance with the overall 
     system performance standard in paragraph (1).
       ``(3) Factors.--For purposes of making the finding in 
     paragraph (2)--
       ``(A) the Commission shall not consider catastrophic events 
     where the health consequences of individual events themselves 
     can be reasonably assumed to exceed the health consequences 
     due to the impact of the events on repository performance;
       ``(B) for the purpose of this section, an average member of 
     the general population in the vicinity of the Yucca Mountain 
     site means a person whose physiology, age, general health, 
     agricultural practices, eating habits, and social behavior 
     represent the average for persons living in the vicinity of 
     the site. Extremes in social behavior, eating habits, or 
     other relevant practices or characteristics shall not be 
     considered; and
       ``(C) the Commission shall assume that, following 
     repository closure, the inclusion of engineered barriers and 
     the Secretary's post-closure actions at the Yucca Mountain 
     site, in accordance with subsection (b)(4), shall be 
     sufficient to--
       ``(i) prevent any human activity at the site that poses an 
     unreasonable risk of breaching the repository's engineered or 
     geologic barriers; and
       ``(ii) prevent any increase in the exposure of individual 
     members of the public to radiation beyond the allowable 
     limits specified in paragraph (1).
       ``(4) Additional analysis.--The Commission shall analyze 
     the overall system performance through the use of 
     probabilistic evaluations that use best estimate assumptions, 
     data, and methods for the period commencing after the first 
     1,000 years of operation of the repository and terminating at 
     10,000 years after the commencement of operation of the 
     repository.
       ``(e) National Environmental Policy Act.--
       ``(1) Submission of statement.--Construction and operation 
     of the repository shall be considered a major Federal action 
     significantly affecting the quality of the human environment 
     for purposes of the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 
     (42 U.S.C. 4321 et seq.). The Secretary shall submit an 
     environmental impact statement on the construction and 
     operation of the repository to the Commission with the 
     license application and shall supplement such environmental 
     impact statement as appropriate.
       ``(2) Considerations.--For purposes of complying with the 
     requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 
     and this section, the Secretary shall not consider in the 
     environmental impact statement the need for the repository, 
     or alternative sites or designs for the repository.
       ``(3) Adoption by commission.--The Secretary's 
     environmental impact statement and any supplements thereto 
     shall, to the extent practicable, be adopted by the 
     Commission in connection with the issuance by the Commission 
     of a construction authorization under subsection (b)(1), a 
     license under subsection (b)(2), or a license amendment under 
     subsection (b)(3). To the extent such statement or supplement 
     is adopted by the Commission, such adoption shall be deemed 
     to also satisfy the responsibilities of the Commission under 
     the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, and no further 
     consideration shall be required, except that nothing

[[Page S9260]]

     in this subsection shall affect any independent 
     responsibilities of the Commission to protect the public 
     health and safety under the Atomic Energy Act of 1954. In any 
     such statement or supplement prepared with respect to the 
     repository, the Commission shall not consider the need for a 
     repository, or alternate sites or designs for the repository.
       ``(f) Judicial Review.--No court shall have jurisdiction to 
     enjoin issuance of the Commission repository licensing 
     regulations prior to its final decision on review of such 
     regulations.

     ``SEC. 206. LAND WITHDRAWAL.

       ``(a) Withdrawal and Reservation.--
       ``(1) Withdrawal.--Subject to valid existing rights, the 
     interim storage facility site and the Yucca Mountain site, as 
     described in subsection (b), are withdrawn from all forms of 
     entry, appropriation, and disposal under the public land 
     laws, including the mineral leasing laws, the geothermal 
     leasing laws, the material sale laws, and the mining laws.
       ``(2) Jurisdiction.--Jurisdiction of any land within the 
     interim storage facility site and the Yucca Mountain site 
     managed by the Secretary of the Interior or any other Federal 
     officer is transferred to the Secretary.
       ``(3) Reservation.--The interim storage facility site and 
     the Yucca Mountain site are reserved for the use of the 
     Secretary for the construction and operation, respectively, 
     of the interim storage facility and the repository and 
     activities associated with the purposes of this title.
       ``(b) Land Description.--
       ``(1) Boundaries.--The boundaries depicted on the map 
     entitled `Interim Storage Facility Site Withdrawal Map', 
     dated March 13, 1996, and on file with the Secretary, are 
     established as the boundaries of the Interim Storage Facility 
     site.
       ``(2) Boundaries.--The boundaries depicted on the map 
     entitled `Yucca Mountain Site Withdrawal Map', dated July 9, 
     1996, and on file with the Secretary, are established as the 
     boundaries of the Yucca Mountain site.
       ``(3) Notice and maps.--Within 6 months of the date of the 
     enactment of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1996, the 
     Secretary shall--
       ``(A) publish in the Federal Register a notice containing a 
     legal description of the interim storage facility site; and
       ``(B) file copies of the maps described in paragraph (1), 
     and the legal description of the interim storage facility 
     site with the Congress, the Secretary of the Interior, the 
     Governor of Nevada, and the Archivist of the United States.
       ``(4) Notice and maps.--Concurrent with the Secretary's 
     application to the Commission for authority to construct the 
     repository, the Secretary shall--
       ``(A) publish in the Federal Register a notice containing a 
     legal description of the Yucca Mountain site; and
       ``(B) file copies of the maps described in paragraph (2), 
     and the legal description of the Yucca Mountain site with the 
     Congress, the Secretary of the Interior, the Governor of 
     Nevada, and the Archivist of the United States.
       ``(5) Construction.--The maps and legal descriptions of the 
     interim storage facility site and the Yucca Mountain site 
     referred to in this subsection shall have the same force and 
     effect as if they were included in this Act. The Secretary 
     may correct clerical and typographical errors in the maps and 
     legal descriptions and make minor adjustments in the 
     boundaries of the sites.

                      ``TITLE III--LOCAL RELATIONS

     ``SEC. 301. FINANCIAL ASSISTANCE.

       ``(a) Grants.--The Secretary is authorized to make grants 
     to any affected Indian tribe or affected unit of local 
     government for purposes of enabling the affected Indian tribe 
     or affected unit of local government--
       ``(1) to review activities taken with respect to the Yucca 
     Mountain site for purposes of determining any potential 
     economic, social, public health and safety, and environmental 
     impacts of the integrated management system on the affected 
     Indian tribe or the affected unit of local government and its 
     residents;
       ``(2) to develop a request for impact assistance under 
     subsection (c);
       ``(3) to engage in any monitoring, testing, or evaluation 
     activities with regard to such site;
       ``(4) to provide information to residents regarding any 
     activities of the Secretary, or the Commission with respect 
     to such site; and
       ``(5) to request information from, and make comments and 
     recommendations to, the Secretary regarding any activities 
     taken with respect to such site.
       ``(b) Salary and Travel Expenses.--Any salary or travel 
     expense that would ordinarily be incurred by any affected 
     Indian tribe or affected unit of local government may not be 
     considered eligible for funding under this section.
       ``(c) Financial and Technical Assistance.--
       ``(1) Assistance requests.--The Secretary is authorized to 
     offer to provide financial and technical assistance to any 
     affected Indian tribe or affected unit of local government 
     requesting such assistance. Such assistance shall be designed 
     to mitigate the impact on the affected Indian tribe or 
     affected unit of local government of the development of the 
     integrated management system.
       ``(2) Report.--Any affected Indian tribe or affected unit 
     of local government may request assistance under this section 
     by preparing and submitting to the Secretary a report on the 
     economic, social, public health and safety, and environmental 
     impacts that are likely to result from activities of the 
     integrated management system.
       ``(d) Other Assistance.--
       ``(1) Taxable amounts.--In addition to financial assistance 
     provided under this subsection, the Secretary is authorized 
     to grant to any affected Indian tribe or affected unit of 
     local government an amount each fiscal year equal to the 
     amount such affected Indian tribe or affected unit of local 
     government, respectively, would receive if authorized to tax 
     integrated management system activities, as such affected 
     Indian tribe or affected unit of local government taxes the 
     non-Federal real property and industrial activities occurring 
     within such affected unit of local government.
       ``(2) Termination.--Such grants shall continue until such 
     time as all such activities, development, and operations are 
     terminated at such site.
       ``(3) Assistance to indian tribes and units of local 
     government.--
       ``(A) Period.--Any affected Indian tribe or affected unit 
     of local government may not receive any grant under paragraph 
     (1) after the expiration of the 1-year period following the 
     date on which the Secretary notifies the affected Indian 
     tribe or affected unit of local government of the termination 
     of the operation of the integrated management system.
       ``(B) Activities.--Any affected Indian tribe or affected 
     unit of local government may not receive any further 
     assistance under this section if the integrated management 
     system activities at such site are terminated by the 
     Secretary or if such activities are permanently enjoined by 
     any court.

     ``SEC. 302. ON-SITE REPRESENTATIVE.

       ``The Secretary shall offer to the unit of local government 
     within whose jurisdiction a site for an interim storage 
     facility or repository is located under this Act an 
     opportunity to designate a representative to conduct onsite 
     oversight activities at such site. The Secretary is 
     authorized to pay the reasonable expenses of such 
     representative.

     ``SEC. 303. ACCEPTANCE OF BENEFITS.

       ``(a) Consent.--The acceptance or use of any of the 
     benefits provided under this title by any affected Indian 
     tribe or affected unit of local government shall not be 
     deemed to be an expression of consent, express, or implied, 
     either under the Constitution of the State or any law 
     thereof, to the siting of an interim storage facility or 
     repository in the State of Nevada, any provision of such 
     Constitution or laws to the contrary notwithstanding.
       ``(b) Arguments.--Neither the United States nor any other 
     entity may assert any argument based on legal or equitable 
     estoppel, or acquiescence, or waiver, or consensual 
     involvement, in response to any decision by the State to 
     oppose the siting in Nevada of an interim storage facility or 
     repository premised upon or related to the acceptance or use 
     of benefits under this title.
       ``(c) Liability.--No liability of any nature shall accrue 
     to be asserted against any official of any governmental unit 
     of Nevada premised solely upon the acceptance or use of 
     benefits under this title.

     ``SEC. 304. RESTRICTIONS ON USE OF FUNDS.

       ``None of the funding provided under this title may be 
     used--
       ``(1) directly or indirectly to influence legislative 
     action on any matter pending before Congress or a State 
     legislature or for any lobbying activity as provided in 
     section 1913 of title 18, United States Code;
       ``(2) for litigation purposes; and
       ``(3) to support multistate efforts or other coalition-
     building activities inconsistent with the purposes of this 
     Act.

     ``SEC. 305. LAND CONVEYANCES.

       ``(a) Conveyances of Public Lands.--One hundred and twenty 
     days after enactment of this Act, all right, title and 
     interest of the United States in the property described in 
     subsection (b), and improvements thereon, together with all 
     necessary easements for utilities and ingress and egress to 
     such property, including, but not limited to, the right to 
     improve those easements, are conveyed by operation of law to 
     the County of Nye, Nevada, unless the county notifies the 
     Secretary of Interior or the head of such other appropriate 
     agency in writing within 60 days of such date of enactment 
     that it elects not to take title to all or any part of the 
     property, except that any lands conveyed to the County of Nye 
     under this subsection that are subject to a Federal grazing 
     permit or lease or a similar federally granted permit or 
     lease shall be conveyed between 60 and 120 days of the 
     earliest time the Federal agency administering or granting 
     the permit or lease would be able to legally terminate such 
     right under the statutes and regulations existing at the date 
     of enactment of this Act, unless Nye County and the affected 
     holder of the permit or lease negotiate an agreement that 
     allows for an earlier conveyance.
       ``(b) Special Conveyances.--Notwithstanding any other law, 
     the following public lands depicted on the maps and legal 
     descriptions dated October 11, 1995, and on file with the 
     Secretary shall be conveyed under subsection (a) to the 
     County of Nye, Nevada:
       Map 1: Proposed Pahrump industrial park site.
       Map 2: Proposed Lathrop Wells (gate 510) industrial park 
     site.
       Map 3: Pahrump landfill sites.

[[Page S9261]]

       Map 4: Amargosa Valley Regional Landfill site.
       Map 5: Amargosa Valley Municipal Landfill site.
       Map 6: Beatty Landfill/Transfer Station site.
       Map 7: Round Mountain Landfill site.
       Map 8: Tonopah Landfill site.
       Map 9: Gabbs Landfill site.
       ``(c) Construction.--The maps and legal descriptions of 
     special conveyances referred to in subsection (b) shall have 
     the same force and effect as if they were included in this 
     Act. The Secretary may correct clerical and typographical 
     errors in the maps and legal descriptions and make minor 
     adjustments in the boundaries of the sites.
       ``(d) Evidence of Title Transfer.--Upon the request of the 
     County of Nye, Nevada, the Secretary of the Interior shall 
     provide evidence of title transfer.

                  ``TITLE IV--FUNDING AND ORGANIZATION

     ``SEC. 401. PROGRAM FUNDING.

       ``(a) Contracts.--
       ``(1) Authority of secretary.--In the performance of the 
     Secretary's functions under this Act, the Secretary is 
     authorized to enter into contracts with any person who 
     generates or holds title to spent nuclear fuel or high-level 
     radioactive waste of domestic origin for the acceptance of 
     title and possession, transportation, interim storage, and 
     disposal of such waste or spent fuel. Such contracts shall 
     provide for payment of annual fees to the Secretary in the 
     amounts set by the Secretary pursuant to paragraphs (2) and 
     (3). Except as provided in paragraph (3), fees assessed 
     pursuant to this paragraph shall be paid to the Treasury of 
     the United States and shall be available for use by the 
     Secretary pursuant to this section until expended. Subsequent 
     to the date of enactment of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 
     1996, the contracts executed under section 302(a) of the 
     Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 shall continue in effect 
     under this Act: Provided, That the Secretary shall consent to 
     an amendment to such contracts as necessary to implement the 
     provisions of this Act.
       ``(2) Annual fees.--
       ``(A) for electricity generated by civilian nuclear power 
     reactors and sold between January 7, 1983, and September 30, 
     2002, the fee under paragraph (1) shall be equal to 1.0 mill 
     per kilowatt-hour generated and sold. For electricity 
     generated by civilian nuclear power reactors and sold on or 
     after October 1, 2002, the aggregate amount of fees collected 
     during each fiscal year shall be no greater than the annual 
     level of appropriations for expenditures on those activities 
     consistent with subsection (d) for that fiscal year, minus--
       ``(i) any unobligated balance collected pursuant to this 
     section during the previous fiscal year; and
       ``(ii) the percentage of such appropriation required to be 
     funded by the Federal Government pursuant to section 403,

     .The Secretary shall determine the level of the annual fee 
     for each civilian nuclear power reactor based on the amount 
     of electricity generated and sold, except that the annual fee 
     collected under this subparagraph shall not exceed 1.0 mill 
     per kilowatt-hour generated and sold.
       ``(B) Expenditures if shortfall.--If, during any fiscal 
     year on or after October 1, 2002, the aggregate amount of 
     fees assessed pursuant to subparagraph (A) is less than the 
     annual level of appropriations for expenditures on those 
     activities specified in subsection (d) for that fiscal year, 
     minus--
       ``(i) any unobligated balance collected pursuant to this 
     section during the previous fiscal year; and
       ``(ii) the percentage of such appropriations required to be 
     funded by the Federal Government pursuant to section 403,

     the Secretary may make expenditures from the Nuclear Waste 
     Fund up to the level of the fees assessed.
       ``(C) Rules.--The Secretary shall, by rule, establish 
     procedures necessary to implement this paragraph.
       ``(3) One-time fee.--For spent nuclear fuel or solidified 
     high-level radioactive waste derived from spent nuclear fuel, 
     which fuel was used to generate electricity in a civilian 
     nuclear power reactor prior to January 7, 1983, the fee shall 
     be in an amount equivalent to an average charge of 1.0 mill 
     per kilowatt-hour for electricity generated by such spent 
     nuclear fuel, or such solidified high-level waste derived 
     therefrom. Payment of such one-time fee prior to the date of 
     enactment of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1996 shall 
     satisfy the obligation imposed under this paragraph. Any one-
     time fee paid and collected subsequent to the date of 
     enactment of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1996 pursuant to 
     the contracts, including any interest due pursuant to such 
     contracts, shall be paid to the Nuclear Waste Fund no later 
     than September 30, 2002. The Commission shall suspend the 
     license of any licensee who fails or refuses to pay the full 
     amount of the fee referred to in this paragraph on or before 
     September 30, 2002, and the license shall remain suspended 
     until the full amount of the fee referred to in this 
     paragraph is paid. The person paying the fee under this 
     paragraph to the Secretary shall have no further financial 
     obligation to the Federal Government for the long-term 
     storage and permanent disposal of spent fuel or high-level 
     radioactive waste derived from spent nuclear fuel used to 
     generate electricity in a civilian power reactor prior to 
     January 7, 1983.
       ``(4) Adjustments to fee.--The Secretary shall annually 
     review the amount of the fees established by paragraphs (2) 
     and (3), together with the existing balance of the Nuclear 
     Waste Fund on the date of enactment of the Nuclear Waste 
     Policy Act of 1996, to evaluate whether collection of the fee 
     will provide sufficient revenues to offset the costs as 
     defined in subsection (c)(2). In the event the Secretary 
     determines that the revenues being collected are either 
     insufficient or excessive to recover the costs incurred by 
     the Federal Government that are specified in subsection 
     (c)(2), the Secretary shall propose an adjustment to the fee 
     in subsection (c)(2) to ensure full cost recovery. The 
     Secretary shall immediately transmit the proposal for such an 
     adjustment to both houses of Congress.
       ``(b) Advance Contracting Requirement.--
       ``(1) In general.--
       ``(A) License issuance and renewal.--The Commission shall 
     not issue or renew a license to any person to use a 
     utilization or production facility under the authority of 
     section 103 or 104 of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 (42 
     U.S.C. 2133, 2134) unless--
       ``(i) such person has entered into a contract under 
     subsection (a) with the Secretary; or
       ``(ii) the Secretary affirms in writing that such person is 
     actively and in good faith negotiating with the Secretary for 
     a contract under this section.
       ``(B) Precondition.--The Commission, as it deems necessary 
     or appropriate, may require as a precondition to the issuance 
     or renewal of a license under section 103 or 104 of the 
     Atomic Energy Act of 1954 (42 U.S.C. 2133, 2134) that the 
     applicant for such license shall have entered into an 
     agreement with the Secretary for the disposal of spent 
     nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste that may result 
     from the use of such license.
       ``(2) Disposal in repository.--Except as provided in 
     paragraph (1), no spent nuclear fuel or high-level 
     radioactive waste generated or owned by any person (other 
     than a department of the United States referred to in section 
     101 or 102 of title 5, United States Code) may be disposed of 
     by the Secretary in the repository unless the generator or 
     owner of such spent fuel or waste has entered into a contract 
     under subsection (a) with the Secretary by not later than the 
     date on which such generator or owner commences generation 
     of, or takes title to, such spent fuel or waste.
       ``(3) Assignment.--The rights and duties of contract 
     holders are assignable.
       ``(c) Nuclear Waste Fund.--
        ``(1) In general.--The Nuclear Waste Fund established in 
     the Treasury of the United States under section 302(c) of the 
     Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 shall continue in effect 
     under this Act and shall consist of--
        ``(A) the existing balance in the Nuclear Waste Fund on 
     the date of enactment of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 
     1996; and
       ``(B) all receipts, proceeds, and recoveries realized under 
     subsections (a), and (c)(3) subsequent to the date of 
     enactment of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1996, which 
     shall be deposited in the Nuclear Waste Fund immediately upon 
     their realization.
       ``(2) Use.--The Secretary may make expenditures from the 
     Nuclear Waste Fund, subject to subsections (d) and (e), only 
     for purposes of the integrated management system.
       ``(3) Administration of nuclear waste fund.--
       (A) In general.--The Secretary of the Treasury shall hold 
     the Nuclear Waste Fund and, after consultation with the 
     Secretary, annually report to the Congress on the financial 
     condition and operations of the Nuclear Waste Fund during the 
     preceding fiscal year.
       ``(B) Amounts in excess of current needs.--If the Secretary 
     determines that the Nuclear Waste Fund contains at any time 
     amounts in excess of current needs, the Secretary may request 
     the Secretary of the Treasury to invest such amounts, or any 
     portion of such amounts as the Secretary determines to be 
     appropriate, in obligations of the United States--
       ``(i) having maturities determined by the Secretary of the 
     Treasury to be appropriate to the needs of the Nuclear Waste 
     Fund; and
       ``(ii) bearing interest at rates determined to be 
     appropriate by the Secretary of the Treasury, taking into 
     consideration the current average market yield on outstanding 
     marketable obligations of the United States with remaining 
     periods to maturity comparable to the maturities of such 
     investments, except that the interest rate on such 
     investments shall not exceed the average interest rate 
     applicable to existing borrowings.
       ``(C) Exemption.--Receipts, proceeds, and recoveries 
     realized by the Secretary under this section, and 
     expenditures of amounts from the Nuclear Waste Fund, shall be 
     exempt from annual apportionment under the provisions of 
     subchapter II of chapter 15 of title 31, United States Code.
       ``(d) Budget.--The Secretary shall submit the budget for 
     implementation of the Secretary's responsibilities under this 
     Act to the Office of Management and Budget annually along 
     with the budget of the Department of Energy submitted at such 
     time in accordance with chapter 11 of title 31, United States 
     Code. The budget shall consist of the estimates made by the 
     Secretary of expenditures under this Act and other relevant 
     financial matters for the succeeding 3 fiscal years, and 
     shall be included in the budget of the United States 
     Government.
       ``(e) Appropriations.--The Secretary may make expenditures 
     from the Nuclear Waste

[[Page S9262]]

     Fund, subject to appropriations, which shall remain available 
     until expended.

     ``SEC. 402. OFFICE OF CIVILIAN RADIOACTIVE WASTE MANAGEMENT.

       ``(a) Establishment.--There hereby is established within 
     the Department of Energy an Office of Civilian Radioactive 
     Waste Management. The Office shall be headed by a Director, 
     who shall be appointed by the President, by and with the 
     advice and consent of the Senate, and who shall be 
     compensated at the rate payable for level IV of the Executive 
     Schedule under section 5315 of title 5, United States Code.
       ``(b) Functions of Director.--The Director of the Office 
     shall be responsible for carrying out the functions of the 
     Secretary under this Act, subject to the general supervision 
     of the Secretary. The Director of the Office shall be 
     directly responsible to the Secretary.

     ``SEC. 403. FEDERAL CONTRIBUTION.

       ``(a) Allocation.--No later than one year from the date of 
     enactment of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1996, acting 
     pursuant to section 553 of title 5, United States Code, the 
     Secretary shall issue a final rule establishing the 
     appropriate portion of the costs of managing spent nuclear 
     fuel and high-level radioactive waste under this Act 
     allocable to the interim storage or permanent disposal of 
     spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste from 
     atomic energy defense activities and spent nuclear fuel from 
     foreign research reactors. The share of costs allocable to 
     the management of spent nuclear fuel and high-level 
     radioactive waste from atomic energy defense activities and 
     spent nuclear fuel from foreign research reactors shall 
     include--
       ``(1) an appropriate portion of the costs associated with 
     research and development activities with respect to 
     development of an interim storage facility and repository; 
     and
       ``(2) as appropriate, interest on the principal amounts due 
     calculated by reference to the appropriate Treasury bill rate 
     as if the payments were made at a point in time consistent 
     with the payment dates for spent nuclear fuel and high-level 
     radioactive waste under the contracts.
       ``(b) Appropriation Request.--In addition to any request 
     for an appropriation from the Nuclear Waste Fund, the 
     Secretary shall request annual appropriations from general 
     revenues in amounts sufficient to pay the costs of the 
     management of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive 
     waste from atomic energy defense activities and spent nuclear 
     fuel from foreign research reactors, as established under 
     subsection (a).
       ``(c) Report.--In conjunction with the annual report 
     submitted to Congress under section 702, the Secretary shall 
     advise the Congress annually of the amount of spent nuclear 
     fuel and high-level radioactive waste from atomic energy 
     activities and spent nuclear fuel from foreign research 
     reactors, requiring management in the integrated management 
     system.
       ``(d) Authorization.--There is authorized to be 
     appropriated to the Secretary, from general revenues, for 
     carrying out the purposes of this Act, such sums as may be 
     necessary to pay the costs of the management of spent nuclear 
     fuel and high-level radioactive waste from atomic energy 
     defense activities and spent nuclear fuel from foreign 
     research reactors, as established under subsection (a).

            ``TITLE V--GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS PROVISIONS

     ``SEC. 501. COMPLIANCE WITH OTHER LAWS.

       ``If the requirements of any Federal, State, or local law 
     (including a requirement imposed by regulation or by any 
     other means under such a law) are inconsistent with or 
     duplicative of the requirements of the Atomic Energy Act of 
     1954 (42 U.S.C. 2011 et seq.) or of this Act, the Secretary 
     shall comply only with the requirements of the Atomic Energy 
     Act of 1954 and of this Act in implementing the integrated 
     management system.

     ``SEC. 502. JUDICIAL REVIEW OF AGENCY ACTIONS.

       ``(a) Jurisdiction of the United States Courts of 
     Appeals.--
       ``(1) Original and exclusive jurisdiction.--Except for 
     review in the Supreme Court of the United States, and except 
     as otherwise provided in this Act, the United States courts 
     of appeals shall have original and exclusive jurisdiction 
     over any civil action--
       ``(A) for review of any final decision or action of the 
     Secretary, the President, or the Commission under this Act;
       ``(B) alleging the failure of the Secretary, the President, 
     or the Commission to make any decision, or take any action, 
     required under this Act;
       ``(C) challenging the constitutionality of any decision 
     made, or action taken, under any provision of this Act; or
       ``(D) for review of any environmental impact statement 
     prepared or environmental assessment pursuant to the National 
     Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (42 U.S.C. 4321 et seq.) 
     with respect to any action under this Act or alleging a 
     failure to prepare such statement with respect to any such 
     action.
       ``(2) Venue.--The venue of any proceeding under this 
     section shall be in the judicial circuit in which the 
     petitioner involved resides or has its principal office, or 
     in the United States Court of Appeals for the District of 
     Columbia Circuit.
       (b) Deadline for Commencing Action.--A civil action for 
     judicial review described under subsection (a)(1) may be 
     brought no later than 180 days after the date of the decision 
     or action or failure to act involved, as the case may be, 
     except that if a party shows that he did not know of the 
     decision or action complained of (or of the failure to act), 
     and that a reasonable person acting under the circumstances 
     would not have known, such party may bring a civil action no 
     later than 180 days after the date such party acquired actual 
     or constructive knowledge or such decision, action, or 
     failure to act.
       ``(c) Application of Other Law.--The provisions of this 
     section relating to any matter shall apply in lieu of the 
     provisions of any other Act relating to the same matter.

     ``SEC. 503. LICENSING OF FACILITY EXPANSIONS AND 
                   TRANSSHIPMENTS.

       ``(a) Oral Argument.--In any Commission hearing under 
     section 189 of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 (42 U.S.C. 2239) 
     on an application for a license, or for an amendment to an 
     existing license, filed after January 7, 1983, to expand the 
     spent nuclear fuel storage capacity at the site of a civilian 
     nuclear power reactor, through the use of high-density fuel 
     storage racks, fuel rod compaction, the transshipment of 
     spent nuclear fuel to another civilian nuclear power reactor 
     within the same utility system, the construction of 
     additional spent nuclear fuel pool capacity or dry storage 
     capacity, or by other means, the Commission shall, at the 
     request of any party, provide an opportunity for oral 
     argument with respect to any matter which the Commission 
     determines to be in controversy among the parties. The oral 
     argument shall be preceded by such discovery procedures as 
     the rules of the Commission shall provide. The Commission 
     shall require each party, including the Commission staff, to 
     submit in written form, at the time of the oral argument, a 
     summary of the facts, data, and arguments upon which such 
     party proposes to rely that are known at such time to such 
     party. Only facts and data in the form of sworn testimony or 
     written submission may be relied upon by the parties during 
     oral argument. Of the materials that may be submitted by the 
     parties during oral argument, the Commission shall only 
     consider those facts and data that are submitted in the form 
     of sworn testimony or written submission.
       ``(b) Adjudicatory Hearing.--
       ``(1) Designation.--At the conclusion of any oral argument 
     under subsection (a), the Commission shall designate any 
     disputed question of fact, together with any remaining 
     questions of law, for resolution in an adjudicatory hearing 
     only if it determines that--
       ``(A) there is a genuine and substantial dispute of fact 
     which can only be resolved with sufficient accuracy by the 
     introduction of evidence in an adjudicatory hearing; and
       ``(B) the decision of the Commission is likely to depend in 
     whole or in part on the resolution of such dispute.
       ``(2) Determination.--In making a determination under this 
     subsection, the Commission--
       ``(A) shall designate in writing the specific facts that 
     are in genuine and substantial dispute, the reason why the 
     decision of the agency is likely to depend on the resolution 
     of such facts, and the reason why an adjudicatory hearing is 
     likely to resolve the dispute; and
       ``(B) shall not consider--
       ``(i) any issue relating to the design, construction, or 
     operation of any civilian nuclear power reactor already 
     licensed to operate at such site, or any civilian nuclear 
     power reactor to which a construction permit has been granted 
     at such site, unless the Commission determines that any such 
     issue substantially affects the design, construction, or 
     operation of the facility or activity for which such license 
     application, authorization, or amendment is being considered; 
     or
       ``(ii) any siting or design issue fully considered and 
     decided by the Commission in connection with the issuance of 
     a construction permit or operating license for a civilian 
     nuclear power reactor at such site, unless--

       ``(I) such issue results from any revision of siting or 
     design criteria by the Commission following such decision; 
     and
       ``(II) the Commission determines that such issue 
     substantially affects the design, construction, or operation 
     of the facility or activity for which such license 
     application, authorization, or amendment is being considered.

       ``(3) Application.--The provisions of paragraph (2)(B) 
     shall apply only with respect to licenses, authorizations, or 
     amendments to licenses or authorizations, applied for under 
     the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 (42 U.S.C. 2011 et seq.) before 
     December 31, 2005.
       ``(4) Construction.--The provisions of this section shall 
     not apply to the first application for a license or license 
     amendment received by the Commission to expand onsite spent 
     fuel storage capacity by the use of a new technology not 
     previously approved for use at any nuclear power plant by the 
     Commission.
       ``(c) Judicial Review.--No court shall hold unlawful or set 
     aside a decision of the Commission in any proceeding 
     described in subsection (a) because of a failure by the 
     Commission to use a particular procedure pursuant to this 
     section unless--
       ``(1) an objection to the procedure used was presented to 
     the Commission in a timely fashion or there are extraordinary 
     circumstances that excuse the failure to present a timely 
     objection; and
       ``(2) the court finds that such failure has precluded a 
     fair consideration and informed resolution of a significant 
     issue of the proceeding taken as a whole.

[[Page S9263]]

     ``SEC. 504. SITING A SECOND REPOSITORY.

       ``(a) Congressional Action Required.--The Secretary may not 
     conduct site-specific activities with respect to a second 
     repository unless Congress has specifically authorized and 
     appropriated funds for such activities.
       ``(b) Report.--The Secretary shall report to the President 
     and to Congress on or after January 1, 2007, but not later 
     than January 1, 2010, on the need for a second repository.

     ``SEC. 505. FINANCIAL ARRANGEMENTS FOR LOW-LEVEL RADIOACTIVE 
                   WASTE SITE CLOSURE.

       ``(a) Financial Arrangements.--
       ``(1) Standards and instructions.--The Commission shall 
     establish by rule, regulation, or order, after public notice, 
     and in accordance with section 181 of the Atomic Energy Act 
     of 1954 (42 U.S.C. 2231), such standards and instructions as 
     the Commission may deem necessary or desirable to ensure in 
     the case of each license for the disposal of low-level 
     radioactive waste that an adequate bond, surety, or other 
     financial arrangement (as determined by the Commission) will 
     be provided by a licensee to permit completion of all 
     requirements established by the Commission for the 
     decontamination, decommissioning, site closure, and 
     reclamation of sites, structures, and equipment used in 
     conjunction with such low-level radioactive waste. Such 
     financial arrangements shall be provided and approved by the 
     Commission, or, in the case of sites within the boundaries of 
     any agreement State under section 274 of the Atomic Energy 
     Act of 1954 (42 U.S.C. 2021), by the appropriate State or 
     State entity, prior to issuance of licenses for low-level 
     radioactive waste disposal or, in the case of licenses in 
     effect on January 7, 1983, prior to termination of such 
     licenses.
       ``(2) Bonding, surety or other financial arrangements.--If 
     the Commission determines that any long-term maintenance or 
     monitoring, or both, will be necessary at a site described in 
     paragraph (1), the Commission shall ensure before termination 
     of the license involved that the licensee has made available 
     such bonding, surety, or other financial arrangements as may 
     be necessary to ensure that any necessary long-term 
     maintenance or monitoring needed for such site will be 
     carried out by the person having title and custody for such 
     site following license termination.
       ``(b) Title and Custody.--
       ``(1) Authority of secretary.--The Secretary shall have 
     authority to assume title and custody of low-level 
     radioactive waste and the land on which such waste is 
     disposed of, upon request of the owner of such waste and land 
     and following termination of the license issued by the 
     Commission for such disposal, if the Commission determines 
     that--
       ``(A) the requirements of the Commission for site closure, 
     decommissioning, and decontamination have been met by the 
     licensee involved and that such licensee is in compliance 
     with the provisions of subsection (a);
       ``(B) such title and custody will be transferred to the 
     Secretary without cost to the Federal Government; and
       ``(C) Federal ownership and management of such site is 
     necessary or desirable in order to protect the public health 
     and safety, and the environment.
       ``(2) Protection.--If the Secretary assumes title and 
     custody of any such waste and land under this subsection, the 
     Secretary shall maintain such waste and land in a manner that 
     will protect the public health and safety, and the 
     environment.
       ``(c) Special Sites.--If the low-level radioactive waste 
     involved is the result of a licensed activity to recover 
     zirconium, hafnium, and rare earths from source material, the 
     Secretary, upon request of the owner of the site involved, 
     shall assume title and custody of such waste and the land on 
     which it is disposed when such site has been decontaminated 
     and stabilized in accordance with the requirements 
     established by the Commission and when such owner has made 
     adequate financial arrangements approved by the Commission 
     for the long-term maintenance and monitoring of such site.

     ``SEC. 506. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION TRAINING 
                   AUTHORIZATION.

       ``The Commission is authorized and directed to promulgate 
     regulations, or other appropriate regulatory guidance, for 
     the training and qualifications of civilian nuclear power 
     plant operators, supervisors, technicians, and other 
     appropriate operating personnel. Such regulations or guidance 
     shall establish simulator training requirements for 
     applicants for civilian nuclear power plant operator licenses 
     and for operator requalification programs; requirements 
     governing Commission administration of requalification 
     examinations; requirements for operating tests at civilian 
     nuclear power plant simulators, and instructional 
     requirements for civilian nuclear power plant licensee 
     personnel training programs.

     ``SEC. 507. EMPLACEMENT SCHEDULE.

       ``(a) The emplacement schedule shall be implemented in 
     accordance with the following:
       ``(1) Emplacement priority ranking shall be determined by 
     the Department's annual `Acceptance Priority Ranking' report.
       ``(2) The Secretary's spent fuel emplacement rate shall be 
     no less than the following: 1,200 MTU in fiscal year 2000 and 
     1,200 MTU in fiscal year 2001; 2,000 MTU in fiscal year 2002 
     and 2,000 MTU in fiscal year 2003; 2,700 MTU in fiscal year 
     2004; and 3,000 MTU annually thereafter.
       ``(b) If the Secretary is unable to begin emplacement by 
     November 30, 1999 at the rates specified in subsection (a), 
     or if the cumulative amount emplaced in any year thereafter 
     is less than that which would have been accepted under the 
     emplacement rate specified in subsection (a), the Secretary 
     shall, as a mitigation measure, adjust the emplacement 
     schedule upward such that within 5 years of the start of 
     emplacement by the Secretary,
       ``(1) the total quantity accepted by the Secretary is 
     consistent with the total quantity that the Secretary would 
     have accepted if the Secretary had began emplacement in 
     fiscal year 2000, and
       ``(2) thereafter the emplacement rate is equivalent to the 
     rate that would be in place pursuant to subsection (a) above 
     if the Secretary had commenced emplacement in fiscal year 
     2000.

     ``SEC. 508. TRANSFER OF TITLE.

       ``(a) Acceptance by the Secretary of any spent nuclear fuel 
     or high-level radioactive waste shall constitute a transfer 
     of title to the Secretary.
       ``(b) No later than 6 months following the date of 
     enactment of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1996, the 
     Secretary is authorized to accept all spent nuclear fuel 
     withdrawn from Dairyland Power Cooperative's La Crosse 
     Reactor and, upon acceptance, shall provide Dairyland Power 
     Cooperative with evidence of the title transfer. Immediately 
     upon the Secretary's acceptance of such spent nuclear fuel, 
     the Secretary shall assume all responsibility and liability 
     for the interim storage and permanent disposal thereof and is 
     authorized to compensate Dairyland Power Cooperative for any 
     costs related to operating and maintaining facilities 
     necessary for such storage from the date of acceptance until 
     the Secretary removes the spent nuclear fuel from the La 
     Crosse Reactor site.

     ``SEC. 509. DECOMMISSIONING PILOT PROGRAM.

       ``(a) Authorization.--The Secretary is authorized to 
     establish a Decommissioning Pilot Program to decommission and 
     decontaminate the sodium-cooled fast breeder experimental 
     test-site reactor located in northwest Arkansas.
       ``(b) Funding.--No funds from the Nuclear Waste Fund may be 
     used for the Decommissioning Pilot Program.

     ``SEC. 510. WATER RIGHTS.

       ``(a) No Federal Reservation.--Nothing in this Act or any 
     other Act of Congress shall constitute or be construed to 
     constitute either an express or implied Federal reservation 
     of water or water rights for any purpose arising under this 
     Act.
       ``(b) Acquisition and Exercise of Water Rights Under Nevada 
     Law.--The United States may acquire and exercise such water 
     rights as it deems necessary to carry out its 
     responsibilities under this Act pursuant to the substantive 
     and procedural requirements of the State of Nevada. Nothing 
     in this Act shall be construed to authorize the use of 
     eminent domain by the United States to acquire water rights 
     for such lands.
       ``(c) Exercise of Water Rights Generally Under Nevada 
     Laws.--Nothing in this Act shall be construed to limit the 
     exercise of water rights as provided under Nevada State laws.

            ``TITLE VI--NUCLEAR WASTE TECHNICAL REVIEW BOARD

     ``SEC. 601. DEFINITIONS.

       ``For purposes of this title--
       ``(1) Chairman.--The term `Chairman' means the Chairman of 
     the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board.
       ``(2) Board.--The term `Board' means the Nuclear Waste 
     Technical Review Board continued under section 602.

     ``SEC. 602. NUCLEAR WASTE TECHNICAL REVIEW BOARD.

       ``(a) Continuation of the Nuclear Waste Technical Review 
     Board.--The Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board, established 
     under section 502(a) of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 
     as constituted prior to the date of enactment of the Nuclear 
     Waste Policy Act of 1996, shall continue in effect subsequent 
     to the date of enactment of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 
     1996.
       ``(b) Members.--
       ``(1) Number.--The Board shall consist of 11 members who 
     shall be appointed by the President not later than 90 days 
     after December 22, 1987, from among persons nominated by the 
     National Academy of Sciences in accordance with paragraph 
     (3).
       ``(2) Chair.--The President shall designate a member of the 
     Board to serve as Chairman.
       ``(3) National academy of sciences.--
       ``(A) Nominations.--The National Academy of Sciences shall, 
     not later than 90 days after December 22, 1987, nominate not 
     less than 22 persons for appointment to the Board from among 
     persons who meet the qualifications described in subparagraph 
     (C).
       ``(B) Vacancies.--The National Academy of Sciences shall 
     nominate not less than 2 persons to fill any vacancy on the 
     Board from among persons who meet the qualifications 
     described in subparagraph (C).
       ``(C) Nominees.--
       ``(i) Each person nominated for appointment to the Board 
     shall be--

       ``(I) eminent in a field of science or engineering, 
     including environmental sciences; and
       ``(II) selected solely on the basis of established records 
     of distinguished service.

       ``(ii) The membership of the Board shall be representatives 
     of the broad range of scientific and engineering disciplines 
     related to activities under this title.
       ``(iii) No person shall be nominated for appointment to the 
     Board who is an employee of--

       ``(I) the Department of Energy;

[[Page S9264]]

       ``(II) a national laboratory under contract with the 
     Department of Energy; or
       ``(III) an entity performing spent nuclear fuel or high-
     level radioactive waste activities under contract with the 
     Department of Energy.

       ``(4) Vacancies.--Any vacancy on the Board shall be filled 
     by the nomination and appointment process described in 
     paragraphs (1) and (3).
       ``(5) Terms.--Members of the Board shall be appointed for 
     terms of 4 years, each such term to commence 120 days after 
     December 22, 1987, except that of the 11 members first 
     appointed to the Board, 5 shall serve for 2 years and 6 shall 
     serve for 4 years, to be designated by the President at the 
     time of appointment, except that a member of the Board whose 
     term has expired may continue to serve as a member of the 
     Board until such member's successor has taken office.

     ``SEC. 603. FUNCTIONS.

       ``The Board shall limit its evaluations to the technical 
     and scientific validity solely of the following activities 
     undertaken directly by the Secretary after December 22, 
     1987--
       ``(1) site characterization activities; and
       ``(2) activities of the Secretary relating to the packaging 
     or transportation of spent nuclear fuel or high-level 
     radioactive waste.

     ``SEC. 604. INVESTIGATORY POWERS.

       ``(a) Hearings.--Upon request of the Chairman or a majority 
     of the members of the Board, the Board may hold such 
     hearings, sit and act at such times and places, take such 
     testimony, and receive such evidence, as the Board considers 
     appropriate. Any member of the Board may administer oaths or 
     affirmations to witnesses appearing before the Board. The 
     Secretary or the Secretary's designee or designees shall not 
     be required to appear before the Board or any element of the 
     Board for more than twelve working days per calendar year.
       ``(b) Production of Documents.--
       ``(1) Response to inquires.--Upon the request of the 
     Chairman or a majority of the members of the Board, and 
     subject to existing law, the Secretary (or any contractor of 
     the Secretary) shall provide the Board with such records, 
     files, papers, data, or information that is generally 
     available to the public as may be necessary to respond to any 
     inquiry of the Board under this title.
       ``(2) Extent.--Subject to existing law, information 
     obtainable under paragraph (1) may include drafts of products 
     and documentation of work in progress.

     ``SEC. 605. COMPENSATION OF MEMBERS.

       ``(a) In General.--Each member of the Board shall be paid 
     at the rate of pay payable for level III of the Executive 
     Schedule for each day (including travel time) such member is 
     engaged in the work of the Board.
       ``(b) Travel Expenses.--Each member of the Board may 
     receive travel expenses, including per diem in lieu of 
     subsistence, in the same manner as is permitted under 
     sections 5702 and 5703 of title 5, United States Code.

     ``SEC. 606. STAFF.

       ``(a) Clerical Staff.--
       ``(1) Authority of chairman.--Subject to paragraph (2), the 
     Chairman may appoint and fix the compensation of such 
     clerical staff as may be necessary to discharge the 
     responsibilities of the Board.
       ``(2) Provisions of title 5.--Clerical staff shall be 
     appointed subject to the provisions of title 5, United States 
     Code, governing appointments in the competitive service, and 
     shall be paid in accordance with the provisions of chapter 51 
     and subchapter III of chapter 3 of such title relating to 
     classification and General Schedule pay rates.
       ``(b) Professional Staff.--
       ``(1) Authority of chairman.--Subject to paragraphs (2) and 
     (3), the Chairman may appoint and fix the compensation of 
     such professional staff as may be necessary to discharge the 
     responsibilities of the Board.
       ``(2) Number.--Not more than 10 professional staff members 
     may be appointed under this subsection.
       ``(3) Title 5.--Professional staff members may be appointed 
     without regard to the provisions of title 5, United States 
     Code, governing appointments in the competitive service, and 
     may be paid without regard to the provisions of chapter 51 
     and subchapter III of chapter 53 of such title relating to 
     classification and General Schedule pay rates, except that no 
     individual so appointed may receive pay in excess of the 
     annual rate of basic pay payable for GS-18 of the General 
     Schedule.

     ``SEC. 607. SUPPORT SERVICES.

       ``(a) General Services.--To the extent permitted by law and 
     requested by the Chairman, the Administrator of General 
     Services shall provide the Board with necessary 
     administrative services, facilities, and support on a 
     reimbursable basis.
       ``(b) Accounting, Research, and Technology Assessment 
     Services.--The Comptroller General and the Librarian of 
     Congress shall, to the extent permitted by law and subject to 
     the availability of funds, provide the Board with such 
     facilities, support, funds and services, including staff, as 
     may be necessary for the effective performance of the 
     functions of the Board.
       ``(c) Additional Support.--Upon the request of the 
     Chairman, the Board may secure directly from the head of any 
     department or agency of the United States information 
     necessary to enable it to carry out this title.
       ``(d) Mails.--The Board may use the United States mails in 
     the same manner and under the same conditions as other 
     departments and agencies of the United States.
       ``(e) Experts and Consultants.--Subject to such rules as 
     may be prescribed by the Board, the Chairman may procure 
     temporary and intermittent services under section 3109(b) of 
     title 5 of the United States Code, but at rates for 
     individuals not to exceed the daily equivalent of the maximum 
     annual rate of basic pay payable for GS-18 of the General 
     Schedule.

     ``SEC. 608. REPORT.

       ``The Board shall report not less than two times per year 
     to Congress and the Secretary its findings, conclusions, and 
     recommendations.

     ``SEC. 609. AUTHORIZATION OF APPROPRIATIONS.

       ``There are authorized to be appropriated for expenditures 
     such sums as may be necessary to carry out the provisions of 
     this title.

     ``SEC. 610. TERMINATION OF THE BOARD.

       ``The Board shall cease to exist not later than one year 
     after the date on which the Secretary begins disposal of 
     spent nuclear fuel or high-level radioactive waste in the 
     repository.

                     ``TITLE VII--MANAGEMENT REFORM

     ``SEC. 701. MANAGEMENT REFORM INITIATIVES.

       ``(a) In General.--The Secretary is directed to take 
     actions as necessary to improve the management of the 
     civilian radioactive waste management program to ensure that 
     the program is operated, to the maximum extent practicable, 
     in like manner as a private business.
       ``(b) Audits.--
       ``(1) Standard.--The Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste 
     Management, its contractors, and subcontractors at all tiers, 
     shall conduct, or have conducted, audits and examinations of 
     their operations in accordance with the usual and customary 
     practices of private corporations engaged in large nuclear 
     construction projects consistent with its role in the 
     program.
       ``(2) Time.--The management practices and performances of 
     the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management shall be 
     audited every 5 years by an independent management consulting 
     firm with significant experience in similar audits of private 
     corporations, engaged in large nuclear construction projects. 
     The first such audit shall be conducted 5 years after the 
     enactment of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1996.
       ``(3) Comptroller general.--The Comptroller General of the 
     United States shall annually make an audit of the Office, in 
     accordance with such regulations as the Comptroller General 
     may prescribe. The Comptroller General shall have access to 
     such books, records, accounts, and other materials of the 
     Office as the Comptroller General determines to be necessary 
     for the preparation of such audit. The Comptroller General 
     shall submit to the Congress a report on the results of each 
     audit conducted under this section.
       ``(4) Time.--No audit contemplated by this subsection shall 
     take longer than 30 days to conduct. An audit report shall be 
     issued in final form no longer than 60 days after the audit 
     is commenced.
       ``(5) Public documents.--All audit reports shall be public 
     documents and available to any individual upon request.
       ``(c) Value Engineering.--The Secretary shall create a 
     value engineering function within the Office of Civilian 
     Radioactive Waste Management that reports directly to the 
     Director, which shall carry out value engineering functions 
     in accordance with the usual and customary practices of 
     private corporations engaged in large nuclear construction 
     projects.
       ``(d) Site Characterization.--The Secretary shall employ, 
     on an on-going basis, integrated performance modeling to 
     identify appropriate parameters for the remaining site 
     characterization effort and to eliminate studies of 
     parameters that are shown not to affect long-term repository 
     performance.

     ``SEC. 702. REPORTING.

       ``(a) Initial Report.--Within 180 days of enactment of this 
     section, the Secretary shall report to Congress on its 
     planned actions for implementing the provisions of this Act, 
     including the development of the Integrated Waste Management 
     System. Such report shall include--
       ``(1) an analysis of the Secretary's progress in meeting 
     its statutory and contractual obligation to accept title to, 
     possession of, and delivery of spent nuclear fuel and high-
     level radioactive waste beginning no later than November 30, 
     1999, and in accordance with the acceptance schedule;
       ``(2) a detailed schedule and timeline showing each action 
     that the Secretary intends to take to meet the Secretary's 
     obligation under this Act and the contracts;
       ``(3) a detailed description of the Secretary's contingency 
     plans in the event that the Secretary is unable to meet the 
     planned schedule and timeline; and
       ``(4) an analysis by the Secretary of its funding needs for 
     fiscal years 1996 through 2001.
       ``(b) Annual Reports.--On each anniversary of the submittal 
     of the report required by subsection (a), the Secretary shall 
     make annual reports to the Congress for the purpose of 
     updating the information contained in such report. The annul 
     reports shall be brief and shall notify the Congress of--
       ``(1) any modifications to the Secretary's schedule and 
     timeline for meeting its obligations under this Act;
       ``(2) the reasons for such modifications, and the status of 
     the implementation of any of the Secretary's contingency 
     plans; and
       ``(3) the Secretary's analysis of its funding needs for the 
     ensuing 5 fiscal years.

[[Page S9265]]

     ``SEC. 703. EFFECTIVE DATE.

       ``This Act shall become effective one day after 
     enactment.''.

  Mr. MURKOWSKI. I move to reconsider the vote.
  Mr. BRYAN. I move to lay that motion on the table.
  The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

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