[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 39 (Monday, April 7, 1997)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2766-S2779]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




         NUCLEAR WASTE POLICY ACT AMENDMENTS--MOTION TO PROCEED

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is on the motion to proceed.
  The Senate resumed consideration of the motion to proceed.
  Mr. MURKOWSKI addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alaska.
  Mr. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the vote 
on the motion to invoke cloture on Senate bill 104, the Nuclear Waste 
Act, occur at 5:15 on Tuesday, with the time between 2:15 and 5:15 
equally divided between the proponents and opponents.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I thank the Chair. I wish the occupant 
of the chair a good afternoon.
  The Senate proceeded to consider the motion to proceed.
  Mr. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I am going to be speaking this 
afternoon at some length on Senate bill 104. This is a bill that 
provides a comprehensive plan for the Federal Government to meet its 
obligations to provide a safe place to store spent nuclear fuel and 
nuclear waste.
  Mr. President, I think it is important to reflect on some of the 
background associated with nuclear waste and the status of our 
continued dependence on nuclear energy.
  First of all, let me refer to an article by Bertram Wolfe. Mr. Wolfe 
is a consultant at Monte Sereno, CA, and a former president of the 
American Nuclear Society. He suggests that by midcentury, the Third 
World population on this Earth will double from 4 billion to 8 billion 
people while the population of the industrial world will grow by about 
20 percent, to 1.2 billion. He further suggests that unless we expect 
to see the majority of the world's people living indefinitely in dire 
poverty, we should be prepared for per capita energy use to rise 
rapidly with economic progress. Even if the Third World per capita 
energy use rises to only one-third of the United States level, that 
increase, in combination with the expected population growth, will 
result in a threefold increase in world energy use by the year 2050.
  He further suggests that if fossil fuels are used to supply these 
increased energy needs, we can expect serious deterioration of air 
quality and possibly environmental disaster from global climate change 
due to the greenhouse effect. In addition, increased demand for fossil 
fuels, combined with the dwindling supply, undoubtedly will lead to 
higher prices, slower economic growth, and the likelihood of energy-
related global conflicts.
  I wonder if anyone in this Chamber would doubt that Kuwait's oil 
resources were a major factor in the United States willingness to take 
military action against Iraq. Unfortunately, alternatives to this 
scenario are few. Perhaps the future world energy use can be stabilized 
at a level much less than a third of present U.S. per capita use. Of 
course, that demand could be much higher. Perhaps solar or wind power 
will become practical on a larger scale. Perhaps fusion, or even cold 
fusion, will be developed. But as we enter the world's energy needs in 
the 21st century, we have to focus on one area that currently provides 
us with nearly 21 percent of our electricity in the United States, and 
that is nuclear power. Even conventional nuclear powerplants will face 
fuel supply problems in the next century if their use expands 
significantly, which is why we ought to consider the use of the 
advanced liquid metal reactor which can produce more than 100 times as 
much energy per pound of uranium as conventional reactors.

[[Page S2767]]

  The United States, as we know, has been a leader in the development 
of nuclear power technology and in the adoption of stringent safety 
standards. It is important to note that not a single member of the 
public has been harmed by the operation of any of the world's nuclear 
plants that meet U.S. standards. The Chernobyl reactor, which lacked a 
containment structure, did not meet U.S. standards.
  But the future of nuclear energy in the United States is now very 
much in question. Since 1973, all nuclear energy plant orders 
have subsequently been canceled. In 1993, U.S. utilities shut down 
three nuclear energy plants rather than invest in needed repairs. Of 
the 110 presently operating U.S. nuclear energy plants, 45 will reach 
the end of their planned 40-year lifetime in the next two decades.

  Mr. President, this is the wrong time for the Nation, and for the 
world, for that matter, to ignore nuclear power. Demand for energy will 
grow. Our options are limited. Ironically, environmentalists who have 
opposed nuclear power since the 1970's should have the strongest 
rationale for promoting nuclear energy. Like all large endeavors, 
nuclear power has its problems and it has its risks. But the problems 
of nuclear power do not look so bad when compared with air pollution, 
global warming, and the supply limitations associated with fossil 
fuels. Besides, the major drawbacks of nuclear power from cost to waste 
disposal are due more to institutional impediments than to 
technological difficulties. Considering the growth in energy demand and 
the risks associated with other energy sources, the benefit-risk ratio 
for nuclear power is very attractive.
  We recall that peaceful nuclear power development started slowly in 
the 1950's. But by the mid to late 1960's, commercial nuclear 
powerplant orders began to take off. And by the 1970's, 30 to 40 
nuclear plants were being ordered each year. This outlook resulted from 
several factors. The first was that electric use was growing at a rate 
of about 7 percent per year, leading to a need for doubling of electric 
capacity every 10 years.
  Responding to some very negative public reactions to his company and 
the company's announcement that it would be starting up a new coal-
fired plant in 1961, McChesney Martin, chairman of Florida Power and 
Light, promised never to build another coal plant. Shortly thereafter, 
Florida Power and Light submitted a plan to build a nuclear station in 
the mid-1960's.
  Mr. President, the Sierra Club became the major supporter of the 
Diablo Canyon nuclear plant in California. This period of rapid nuclear 
expansion and environmental support of nuclear power ended in 1973 
after the Arab oil embargo and the boycott. As a consequence of that, 
the rate of growth fell dramatically. As the years went by and the 
costs of crude oil continued to increase, we found a change in 
attitude. The surplus of oil distorted the Nation's perspective on 
energy in general and nuclear energy in particular.
  A number of environmental organizations, such as Greenpeace and the 
Sierra Club, insisted that the Nation should hold out for ideal or 
risk-free sources, such as energy conservation, solar power, and wind 
energy. No one suffered from a shortage of electricity as the 
construction time for nuclear powerplants expanded a full 6 years--to 
10 or 15 years, or even longer. These extended construction times have 
been ascribed to an even more complicated and inefficient regulatory 
system, and court delays resulting from suits brought by those opposed 
to nuclear power. In Japan and France, for example, where demand for 
electric energy continued to grow rapidly, new nuclear energy plants of 
U.S. design are today still being licensed and built in 4 to 6 years.
  First, I personally would question whether Congress would have 
tolerated the delays if the new electricity were truly needed. One of 
the results of the delays, however, was that the cost of building a 
nuclear plant in the United States increased dramatically, making 
nuclear power uncompetitive and unattractive to many investors. But 
let's look at the benefits.
  Although the rate of growth of electricity use declined after 1973, 
demand increased, as the economy expanded, to U.S. electric use, 
increasing 70 percent between 1973 and 1994. Coal generation doubled 
between 1973 and 1994, and today coal provides over 50 percent of U.S. 
electricity. The 74 nuclear energy plants that came on line in this 
period increased the nuclear share of electric generation from 4 
percent in 1973 to more than 20 percent today, second only to coal.
  The other sources, for the benefit of the Members, are natural gas at 
4 percent, hydropower at 9 percent, wood, wind, and solar 3 percent, 
and oil 3 percent.
  The added nuclear capacity allowed for the shutdown of oil-fired 
plants and permitted the utilities to reduce oil imports by some 100 
million barrels per year. The substitution of nuclear or fossil fuel 
plants has reduced the present CO2 atmospheric emissions by 
140 million metric tons of carbon per year--roughly 10 percent of the 
total U.S. CO2 production. Nevertheless, the United States 
still needs to reduce carbon production by an additional 10 percent to 
reach its goal of returning to the 1990 production level. In addition, 
replacement of fossil fuel plants with nuclear power has reduced nitric 
oxide emissions to the air by over 2 million tons annually, meeting the 
goal set by the Clean Air Act for the year 2000, and has reduced sulfur 
dioxide emissions by almost 5 million tons per year, half the goal for 
the year 2000.

  The dilemma that we are in is a real one, because we are not able to 
store our waste that has accumulated as a consequence of our nuclear 
powerplants. As a consequence of that, we have not been able to move 
from a temporary storage to a safe, permanent storage. We have the 
temporary storage in the areas, in the pools, next to our reactors. 
But, as a consequence of that, we seem to face the situation where 
environmental Neros fiddle while Rome burns. The current generation of 
U.S. nuclear powerplants has performed remarkably well and an even 
better generation of new designs is ready. General Electric, in a 
partnership with Hitachi and Toshiba, has developed the advanced 
boiling water reactor. Construction of this reactor began in Japan in 
1991, and the plant is already operating at full power. The ability to 
build and begin operation of a new design in less than 5 years is a 
testament to the quality of the firms that stand behind this.
  Experience with the U.S. licensing and court review procedures 
suggest that today it can take 2 to 4 times as long to construct a 
nuclear plant in the United States as it does abroad, with the 
exorbitant cost increases.
  Mr. President, this brings me to the point in the debate where I 
think it is appropriate to reflect on history. I am referring to an 
article that appeared in Scientific American in July 1976.
  Mr. President, let me just read an excerpt from that particular 
article, because I think it reflects on something that has been 
overlooked. That is the natural element of nuclear fission as we know 
it today.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, will my friend yield for a unanimous-consent 
request that will just take a second? I just want to get staff in here, 
is all.
  Mr. MURKOWSKI. Sure.


                         Privilege Of The Floor

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Bob Perret, a 
professional fellow, be granted the privilege of the floor during the 
pendency of this bill.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I think it will be of interest for my 
colleagues to note that a high level radioactive waste experiment 
occurred some 1.8 million years ago in west Africa, in what is now the 
nation of Gabon, at a place called Oklo. The French were prospecting in 
their former colony for uranium for their developing nuclear program. 
Some 2 billion years ago, all the uranium on Earth contained some 3 to 
4 percent uranium 235, and the rest is the normal level of uranium 238. 
But, because of natural radiation decay, all U-238 today contains only 
about 0.7 percent of U-235. U-235 is fissionable, and at about 3 
percent enrichment can sustain a chain reaction. That means it can 
undergo fission. That is just what happened to the uranium in Oklo, 
approximately 1.8 million years ago. Some water seeped into the vein 
and began a slow chain reaction which continued for some several 
hundred thousand years, generating some 10 tons of radioactive waste, 
including almost a

[[Page S2768]]

ton of plutonium. The reactor became dormant and scientists have now 
measured all the minerals at that site and they have shown that all the 
plutonium created at the site has decayed and that all the original 
radiation decay products of fission were recovered, close to the 
original natural fission reactor. This, altogether, released only a few 
feet from the surface.
  It is interesting to note the plutonium did not migrate away, even 
though there were no engineered barriers to prevent transport of the 
waste product. This natural experiment shows that it is difficult, if 
not impossible, for such waste to enter the biosphere. It clearly 
demonstrates that geological repositories can successfully isolate 
radioactive waste from the biosphere. There is nothing unique about the 
geology of Oklo. That occurred, as I have indicated, some 1.8 million 
years ago.

  As we enter the debate on a comprehensive plan for the Federal 
Government to meet its obligation to provide a safe place to store 
spent nuclear waste and nuclear fuel, I think it is important to refer 
to the historical natural occurrence that took place in Africa some 1.8 
million years ago because it represents a phenomenon, if you will, that 
shows, indeed, a natural experimentation that resulted in no 
unfavorable outfall associated with the process.
  Getting back to where we are today, our Government entered into a 
contractual commitment to take the waste generated from our nuclear 
powerplants and provide a safe storage and disposition of that waste. 
That was some years ago. That contract is now due, for the Government 
to initiate performance, in 1998. As a consequence of the recognition 
of the inability of the Government to take that waste, on March 13 my 
committee on Energy and Natural Resources reported Senate bill S. 104 
on a bipartisan vote of 15 to 5.
  As you will recall, last year a similar bill passed the Senate by a 
bipartisan vote of 63 to 37. The bill would provide one safe, central, 
temporary storage site at the Nevada test site or, if the Nevada test 
site is found to be inadequate, another chosen by the President. At the 
same time, S. 104 reaffirms our Nation's commitment to development of a 
permanent repository for nuclear waste. Why the Nevada site? We have 
been conducting nuclear detonations related to the weapons testing 
program in the Nevada desert for some 50 years. One can fairly conclude 
that the area has radioactivity. The area has been, time and time 
again, subject to underground explosions of various types. The area is 
well established with an adequate security capability and an 
experienced work force.
  Furthermore, when we get right down to this issue, we have to come to 
the conclusion that nobody wants the waste--not one of the 50 States. 
But clearly the experience in Nevada at the test site suggests that it 
is the best site that has been examined so far, and as a consequence we 
are committed to proceed with the effort to establish a permanent 
repository there.
  What S. 104 further attempts to do is to reaffirm our Nation's 
commitment to development of a permanent repository for nuclear waste, 
which is our ongoing objective. Over the past several weeks I have 
worked with many of my colleagues, notably Senator Bingaman from New 
Mexico, to address concerns that he has with the bill and other 
concerns. As a result of these discussions, I am prepared to offer an 
amendment that makes significant changes to S. 104.
  Let me comment a little further on this bill, because while this bill 
was resolved with a tremendous amount of work by the staff, what it 
really is is an effort to meet our obligation to take our nuclear waste 
in a timely manner and reduce the associated liability that is going to 
come from suits brought to the Federal Government for nonperformance of 
the contract. If someone has a better idea for this bill, or a better 
proposal to address the problem now, why, this Senator is certainly 
willing to listen and very likely accommodate it.
  But let me explain the amendment. The amendment, first of all, 
extends the schedule for siting and licensing an interim facility, 
specifically siting and licensing an interim facility. This means we 
can start the process that we have had underway for a long, long time. 
Further, this allows even more time for the progress at Yucca Mountain 
to be taken into account in siting the interim facility. It would 
provide that the interim facility will be licensed by existing NRC 
regulations with no exceptions. It shortens the licensing term of the 
interim facility to 40 years, so it puts a limit on how long it can be 
used, and provides that its capacity will only be that needed to 
fulfill the Government's obligation until a permanent repository is 
available. And it preempts only State laws that are inconsistent with 
the provisions of the act. This language is virtually identical to that 
in the Hazardous Waste Materials Transportation Act.

  These changes are significant, but do not harm the ability to reach 
the ultimate goal. The ultimate goal is safe, central storage; safe, 
central storage of our Nation's spent nuclear fuels and waste. High 
level nuclear waste and highly radioactive used nuclear fuel is, today, 
continuing to pile up. It is piling up in 41 States at some 80 sites, 
and it is stored in areas that are populated; near neighborhoods, areas 
where schools are not too far away--you might say in the back yards of 
people across America. One example that comes to mind is the Palisades 
plant in Michigan, which is within 100 feet of Lake Michigan. Another 
is the Haddam Neck plant in Connecticut. My colleague from that State 
has observed that he can see the plant from his home.
  I refer to an editorial from the Hartford Courant that observes, 
``With the closing of the Connecticut Yankee plant at Haddam Neck, the 
issue of what to do with the State's high level nuclear waste has moved 
from the theoretical to the here and now. Experts say that Connecticut 
Yankee spent fuel could be stored at Haddam Neck for another 30 years, 
``another 30 years, Mr. President'' if Congress fails to approve a 
temporary facility. Unfortunately, the hands of the clock cannot be 
turned back to a time when nuclear waste didn't exist. In terms of its 
disposal, a remote desert site in Nevada is simply the lesser of two 
evils.''
  (Mr. ENZI assumed the chair.)
  Mr. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, the waste was supposed to have been 
taken by the Federal Government for safe, central storage by, as I said 
earlier, 1998. Will that happen, Mr. President? The answer is clearly 
no. No, because we have not addressed the problem; we simply put it 
off.
  Even though this $12 billion collection from American ratepayers to 
pay for this storage has gone into the Federal coffers, and even though 
a Federal court has reaffirmed that the Government has a legal 
obligation to take the waste by 1998, still, today, there is no plan 
for action.
  By 1998, 23 reactors in 14 States are going to be full. What are we 
going to do then? Are we going to shift over to some other power? We 
are going to have to do something.
  By the year 2010, 65 reactors in 29 States will be full. What are we 
going to do then?
  The conservative estimate is that 25 percent of our nuclear plants 
will not be able to build onsite storage and will be forced to shut 
down. That would mean the loss of over 5 percent of our Nation's 
electric generating capacity. When is Yucca Mountain going to be ready 
for a permanent repository? Not until at least the year 2015. What do 
we do in the meantime? Simply leave it there? Let the litigation mount 
up for our inability to honor a contractual commitment? How good is a 
Government contract if the Government can simply ignore it? Therefore, 
in the mind of this Senator, what this Nation needs and what S. 104 is 
all about is a temporary solution.
  When S. 104 passed the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, it 
passed with a solid bipartisan vote of 15 to 5. Almost half of the 
members and all majority members voted in favor of the bill. Americans 
have waited too long for a solution to this environmental and public 
safety challenge, and there is absolutely no purpose to be served by 
waiting any longer.
  I am, of course, sensitive to the concerns of my colleagues from 
Nevada, but this is a legacy of our generation, and we have an 
obligation to address that legacy. To put it off to somebody else's 
watch, another Presidential administration, simply puts off a 
responsibility and an obligation that we have.

[[Page S2769]]

 We have an obligation to act, and to act in a timely manner, because 
we are going to be in breach of our contract next year. So there is a 
critical need to construct a safe, central storage facility to 
eliminate the growing threat to the environment and to the American 
people.
  As I said earlier, I worked with Members on both sides of the aisle 
to attempt to solve the problems that they have with this bill. In the 
markup, we accepted several amendments from the Democratic side, and I 
am ready to work with other Senators on amendments they may have to 
improve the bill, because our goal is a responsible one. It is safe, 
central storage as soon as reasonably possible after 1998. We have 
offered, time and time again, to work with the new Secretary of Energy, 
Secretary Pena, and the staff at the Energy Department. During his 
confirmation, we pressed the White House to ensure that the Secretary 
has the portfolio to respond to this pressing problem, and they 
indicated that he did have that portfolio.
  Over the recess, the committee staff has worked on a proposed 
compromise. Senator Bingaman's staff has been very constructive in this 
regard. Much of what Senator Bingaman has proposed appears acceptable. 
However, the bottom line is the need for a predictable path, with 
certainty, to interim and permanent waste storage. We simply cannot 
leave trap doors that allow central storage to be delayed for decades.
  I want to refer to a chart to identify just what we are talking about 
relative to spent fuel and radioactive waste that is destined for 
geologic disposal. This chart on my right shows the United States, and 
for some reason or another they left Hawaii and Alaska off, but that is 
not uncommon around here. The brown areas show commercial reactors, and 
they are primarily in the Midwest--Illinois, Minnesota--and on the 
eastern seaboard. Those are some 80 sites where we are generating 
nuclear power at the present time.

  One of the things we have to keep in mind is, unless we find a way to 
take care of this waste--we are still going to have reactors, some of 
which have already shut down and have spent fuel in onsite storage--we 
will simply be storing spent fuel in shutdown reactors. Currently, we 
have, designated by the blue little pyramids, a number of shutdown 
reactors in Oregon, California, and a few in the Midwest.
  The next little block we have are the commercial spent nuclear fuel 
storage facilities. We have fewer of those. We have a couple of them in 
the Midwest. We have non-Department of Energy research reactors 
scattered all throughout the country, in blue. We have naval reactor 
fuel in Idaho, Washington, New Mexico, Georgia, and we have the 
Department of Energy spent fuel and high-level radioactive waste. I 
could go on and on with a description of this chart.
  One can quickly recognize that we have nuclear waste all over the 
country, and I am sure those in opposition to this bill will suggest 
that the best thing we can do is simply leave it there. I do not know, 
Mr. President, if that makes sense to you. It does not to me. Do we 
want this scattered all over the country when it simply makes sense to 
put it in one area where we have had testing for some 50 years, where 
we have an experienced work force, a security capability and the 
knowledge that we are proceeding with a permanent repository in that 
area of Yucca Mountain in Nevada?
  The fact is, as we proceed with Yucca Mountain in Nevada and the 
realization that might be completed by the year 2015, or thereabouts, 
the question is, why not move it, move it now, transport it now to a 
interim repository adjacent to the permanent site?
  Then one might say, ``What happens if the permanent site does not 
become suitable?'' Let me tell you a couple things about that permanent 
site, Mr. President. We have expended some $6 billion so far. It is 
estimated to cost some $30 billion by the time it is completed. So we 
are well on our way, assuming it is licensable and assuming that it 
receives the certification necessary.
  So you are going to hear the argument, if you move it out there and 
it is not suitable, then what are you going to do? Then you obviously 
are going to have to find someplace else to take it, and that is not 
going to be easy. By the same token, it has to go somewhere. There are 
48 States on that map. It has to go somewhere.
  We have another chart that I want to bring up which shows what S. 104 
is all about. If we look over at the lower left-hand corner, we find 
that in 1998, if we accept the status quo, we have 81 sites in 40 
States. If we look over at the red arrow and find that Yucca Mountain 
is viable for a permanent repository, then we have achieved our 
objective, we have one safe, central storage site.
  What are we going to do if Yucca Mountain is not viable for a 
permanent repository? We are going to address our obligation. We are 
going to take that blue arrow right up to the top, and if Yucca 
Mountain is not a viable site for a permanent repository, then it 
requires the President to pick an alternate site. If the President 
refuses, we are not going to let the President off the hook. The 
President still has an obligation. If the President does not select an 
alternate site, the site defaults back to the Nevada test site. If the 
President picks an alternate site and Congress ratifies the site, then 
we have one safe, central storage site.
  The point of this chart is to show where we are trying to go with 
this bill, which is to address our responsibility and resolve this 
situation. This Senator, the chairman of this committee, is not going 
to accept amendments that penetrate the objective of this legislation, 
which is to address it and resolve it and do it now. So we have 
alternatives framed in this debate.
  The alternatives are a little more complicated, but we have the 
status quo, 81 sites in 40 States. That is a given. The red line says 
Yucca Mountain is viable for a permanent repository. If that is fine, 
we have one safe, central storage site. If the license application for 
Yucca Mountain is not filed, then we go back, if you will, and take the 
blue line--Yucca Mountain is not viable for a permanent repository--the 
Secretary picks an alternative storage site. If no site is chosen, it 
goes back to one central storage site.

  So what we have attempted to do here is address concerns of Members 
and still get the job done, because if we do not get the job done, we 
are going to waste several hours in debate and find ourselves not 
addressing the obligation we have to take this waste under the 
contractual commitment that we have.
  I am willing to be flexible in the shape of either one of these 
boxes, but the result must always be the same. We now have an 
opportunity for bipartisan action, and I think that we must seize that 
opportunity. I know that my friends from Nevada will object to the 
bill. They consider it probably a political necessity to oppose it. I 
can understand that. If it were not for Nevada, I am sure it might be 
Vermont where they have a lot of marble, or it might be Montana, where 
they have a lot of rock. The point is it has to go somewhere.
  There are going to be allegations that there is some bad science 
here. There are going to be efforts to try to scare us with references 
to ``mobile Chernobyl.'' That is an irresponsible statement, Mr. 
President. Everybody who has looked at Chernobyl knows it was not poor 
reactor design and human error that resulted in the accident. There was 
no containment building. The design was flawed, and not to United 
States or western standards. The technicians bypassed the safety 
systems, the reactor went critical, and we had a terrible accident.
  But to suggest that our bill is mobile Chernobyl is just simply 
irresponsible. What we are trying to do is accept an obligation, a 
legacy of our generation, and that is to properly dispose of this 
waste, and properly disposing of it does not suggest leaving it where 
it is. Those nuclear reactors and those pools that are being filled now 
were not designed for extended storage. They are reaching their 
capacity.
  Many in the environmental community see this as an opportunity to 
shut down a portion of the industry because any additional storage, 
once the storage is filled, will require additional licensing. Some of 
that licensing is going to be controlled by States. The States will 
attempt to block it by using various concerns, little of which have any 
scientific foundation. But nevertheless, they see this as a way to 
substantially reduce the contribution of nuclear energy to generate 
power in this country.

[[Page S2770]]

  Some will imply if this bill does not pass, nuclear waste will not be 
transported through this country. Well, let us take a little look at 
that.
  I have another chart here, because if one looks at the record, there 
have been 2,500 shipments of used fuel across this country in the last 
20 years. It is just not history, Mr. President, it is happening today. 
The Department of Energy is transporting spent fuel from nuclear 
reactors all over the world into the United States virtually as we 
speak, by truck, by train, by barge, by boat.
  If you do not hear about this from the other side, there is probably 
a reason. And that reason is because these shipments have been and 
continue to be completely uneventful. They are shipped in casks that 
have been designed to address the emergencies forecast. In short, these 
spent fuel shipments, history shows, are safe. As a consequence, Mr. 
President, they are not news anymore.
  At our hearing in February, all four members of the Nevada delegation 
acknowledged there was no process and no level of scientific proof that 
would decrease their opposition. I understand that, Mr. President. I 
appreciate that. I know where they are coming from. They are coming 
from the reality that regardless of what State we are talking about, 
there would be an objection. But we have a responsibility, Mr. 
President. The objections are based on politics, not science.
  One of the Nevada Senators was in favor of sending high-level 
materials to the Nevada test site as a State legislator. He voted for 
A.J.R. 15 which was signed by the Nevada Governor in May 1975, which 
asked, in my opinion, the Federal Government to simply do just that. I 
think he was right the first time. It is safer, smarter, and cheaper to 
contain these materials at one location in the remote Nevada desert.
  The Nevada test site was used, as stated, for decades to explore 
testing of nuclear bombs and it helped win the cold war. And now it can 
help us win the war on radioactive waste disposal.
  High-level nuclear waste, as I have stated time and time again, Mr. 
President, is our legacy, and it is our obligation to dispose of it. It 
is irresponsible to let this situation continue. It is unsafe to let 
dangerous radioactive materials pile up. Pile up where, Mr. President? 
Back in the 80 sites in 41 States. It is unwise to block safe storage 
in a remote area when the alternative is to simply leave it in the 41 
States.
  Mr. President, this is a national problem. It requires a national 
solution. We need to pass Senate bill 104.
  I should comment briefly on the administration's attitude toward 
nuclear waste storage because it has been a rather interesting one. 
They have been content to simply ignore the problem as though they did 
not have one, as though there was no obligation to take the waste, and 
simply disregard the Government's contractual obligations. The American 
people, I think, deserve better.
  Safe nuclear storage should not be a political issue. It is a 
scientific and legitimately environmental issue. We need a solution 
now. And why I do not know, but the administration has again turned a 
blind eye and a deaf ear.
  In addition to threats in the environment and safety, 22 percent of 
our electric capacity is at risk now by not taking decisive action on 
what to do with the waste generated by our nuclear powerplants.
  Mr. President, starting in January 1998, taxpayers throughout the 
Nation, whether you use nuclear power or not, are going to be subjected 
to claims of billions of dollars in liability payments because our 
Government has not met its obligation to take that waste.

  There is a contractual commitment outstanding, Mr. President. The 
estimate of taxpayers' liability under a recent lawsuit blocked by 
States are estimated to run as high as $80 billion. How much is that 
per family, Mr. President? That is about $1,300 per family. You may 
say, what do you mean? Why are we subjected to liability if the 
Government does not take the waste?
  There was a contractual commitment, Mr. President, to take the waste 
beginning in 1998. The Government is not going to be able to take that 
waste, so there are going to be claims filed and there is going to be 
interest accrued. If they have to relocate it or expand facilities, 
there are additional costs. The last estimate I saw was about $59.9 
billion. The estimate, as I indicated, could run as high as $80 
billion.
  The cost of storage of spent nuclear fuel: That is about $19 to $20 
billion. Return of nuclear waste fees: About $8.5 billion. Interest on 
nuclear waste fees: $15 to $27 billion. Of course, depending on the 
interest rate used. Remember the interest rate in December 1980? The 
prime rate was 20.5 percent. A lot of people have forgotten that, Mr. 
President. Consequential damages for shutdown of 25 percent of the 
nuclear plants due to insufficient storage, power replacement costs: 
Some $24 billion. I do not know what it is, but it is going to be full 
employment for all the lawyers certainly.
  Inaction is not an option. Inaction is simply irresponsible. That is 
why we have attempted to craft this legislation to address a reality 
that we are not going to be able to take the waste in a permanent 
repository until the year 2015. So this allows a temporary action to 
move the waste out so it is retrievable for disposition when a 
permanent repository is constructed.
  Mr. President, many of the opponents' claims, I think, have little 
foundation. If we look back, interim storage at the Nevada test site 
will not delay construction at Yucca Mountain. The type of construction 
we anticipate would be a concrete pad with a cask designed to hold the 
waste until a permanent repository is at hand. There will be a 
viability assessment that will occur before the interim site is built. 
The President will have a choice of interim sites after the viability 
assessment.
  This Nation faces a major decision, Mr. President: Either continue 
storing high-level radioactive waste materials at these 80 locations in 
41 States indefinitely, for the next administration, for the next 
Congress, or the next Congress, and pay the claims and subject the 
taxpayers to more litigation, or more safely contain them in one 
centralized facility.
  I am indeed sorry that facility has to be in one State, but it simply 
has to be. So the option is clear and safer. It is safer and cheaper. 
And the time for action is now.
  Mr. President, I would like to refer to another chart relative to a 
misnomer that has been brought up time and time again. And it is a 
legitimate concern but it escapes a reality, and that is the issue of 
transportation.
  There has been 2,500 shipments of used nuclear fuel over the past 20 
years. There has been no fatality, no injury, or no recorded 
environmental damage that has ever occurred because of radioactive 
cargo. I have a map here behind me that shows the routes for 
transferring used fuel. And this took place from 1979 to 1995, the 
routes used for 2,400 shipments.
  They cover from Washington down through Oregon, close to California, 
Montana, Idaho, Salt Lake, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, 
Wyoming, North Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, up and down 
the entire east coast seaboard, Minneapolis, and Milwaukee. I could go 
on and on but, Mr. President, I am sure that you will agree it is a 
pretty impressive transportation route. The map shows roads, rail 
lines.
  Some would say that they did not know these shipments took place. 
Maybe that is why they have become uneventful. There has been an 
accident with a truck carrying a cask, but the cask that contained the 
nuclear materials performed as designed. They have not broken open. 
They were designed for an accident of that nature.

  We currently have about 30,000 metric tons of spent fuel in the 
United States. The French alone have shipped that amount of spent fuel 
all over Europe, all over the world. The Japanese are moving spent fuel 
from Japan to France for reprocessing until they build their own 
reprocessing plant.
  This is not history, Mr. President. This is happening today all over 
our country and all over the world. There seems to be somewhat of a 
double standard why the Department of Energy claims it cannot possibly 
fulfill its obligation to the U.S. electric ratepayers and the 
obligation to take spent nuclear fuel. The Department of Energy is 
doing exactly that for foreign countries.

[[Page S2771]]

  Let me show you another map. Here are foreign research reactors 
throughout the world--Canada, South America, Africa, Europe, Asia, 
Australia.
  They may ask why American taxpayers are paying for the Department of 
Energy to transport, store nuclear waste from foreign countries while 
American ratepayers are subjected to a Government that refuses to honor 
its contractual commitments, refuses to take the waste.
  All the countries in color ship fuel to the United States for storage 
at the Department of Energy facilities. It seems to be a mystery. There 
are a lot of mysteries around here. If they support taking fuel waste 
from overseas, then you wonder if the issue of safety is really an 
issue.
  How can it be safe for the Department of Energy to ship spent fuel 
halfway across the world but not across some of our States? Well, let 
us take a little closer look because this is going to be the crux of a 
lot of the arguments. Let us look at what the Department of Energy does 
to transport nuclear waste across the United States.
  This map, Mr. President, shows America's research reactors. They are 
all over the place--all the red lines. Idaho National Engineering Lab 
in Idaho; University of Missouri, Missouri; University of Missouri, 
Columbia; Iowa State University; Purdue University; the University of 
Michigan; Ohio State University; Massachusetts, MIT; University of 
Lowell, Maine; Rhode Island Nuclear Science Center; Brookhaven National 
Labs; University of Virginia; University of Florida; Georgia Institute 
of Technology; Oak Ridge; Sandia National Laboratory; Los Alamos, and 
on and on and on, Mr. President. They are scattered all across the 
country. They move all over the country.

  What we have here is a double standard. Why does the Department of 
Energy pay to transport and store nuclear waste from foreign countries 
but will not do its duty for U.S. power reactors that have paid for the 
service? They do it for research reactors. The Department of Energy 
says they may take foreign fuel to help with nonproliferation. That 
perhaps is all well and good, but spent nuclear fuel is spent nuclear 
fuel wherever it is. If transportation storage is safe for some, why 
should it not be safe for all?
  I think this proves my point that I mentioned earlier. The obstacles 
to moving our Nation's spent nuclear fuel are political; they are not 
technical. Senate bill 104 provides the authority to coordinate a 
systematic, safe transportation network that requires the Department of 
Energy to use NRC-certified transportation containers to transport fuel 
along special routes. That transportation cannot occur until the 
Department of Energy has provided specific technical assistance to 
funding, to States, and to Indian tribes for emergency response 
planning across the transportation routes. The language builds on what 
is already a set system for spent fuel in the country.
  It is further interesting to note with this volume of traffic, some 
2,400 shipments, the problem has never been exposure to radiation from 
spent fuel cargo, even in the fuel accidents between 1971 and 1989. The 
Department of Transportation tells us that only seven accidents 
occurred involving trucks carrying nuclear waste. There was no 
radioactivity released in any of these accidents. Why? Because 
transportation containers were designed to maintain their integrity. At 
one time they were designing transportation casks, and the objective 
was to have it so they would withstand a free fall from 40,000 feet, 
assuming there was an accident, and they were anticipating moving it by 
airplane, and the engineers claimed they could do that.
  Mr. President, we will have an extended debate on this issue in the 
coming days. As a manager of the bill, I will be sharing time with my 
colleagues on various statements, accommodating amendments and pursuing 
the debate with my colleagues from the other side. I think it is 
important as we reflect on reality that there is no excuse for 
continuing to delay this obligation any further.
  I have gone over the liability of the taxpayers. I have gone over the 
transportation that is in existence where we have moved nuclear waste 
around this country safely. And to suggest that we are somehow going to 
gain some significant benefit by putting off the decision is not 
supported by any logic or rationalization that would convince this 
Senator that there is any other action than moving forward on Senate 
bill 104, accommodating Members' amendments, with the idea of getting 
the job done.
  Getting the job done now is a responsibility for all of us for the 
future of nuclear energy in this country and the world. We simply 
cannot move forward in this regard, we cannot address our concerns over 
greenhouse gasses, which are increasing, without looking toward relief. 
Nuclear energy offers us that relief. We have the technology. We are 
seeing that technology move over to France and Japan. The bottom line 
is, unless we address the issue of a repository for waste that has been 
generated by the nuclear powerplants, we simply are going to be unable 
to meet our responsibility in this body relative to that contractual 
commitment that we made several years ago. This bill provides a 
responsible alternative. The time to do it clearly is now.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the Senator from Nebraska [Mr. 
Hagel] and the Senator from Michigan [Mr. Levin] be added as cosponsors 
on Senate bill 104, to amend the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The Senator from Nevada.
  Mr. BRYAN. I thank the Chair.
  Let me say as we begin this debate in this Congress, it reminds me 
that we are talking about old wine in a new bottle. These arguments 
have been advanced for decades now, and the prime mover is the nuclear 
utility industry.
  The fatal flaw in S. 104 is that it is unnecessary, unneeded, and bad 
policy. That is not just the Senator from Nevada making that statement. 
Let me review for the record some of the statements made by various 
boards and commissions created by the Congress in terms of their 
response.
  We have the 1989 MRS Commission review. The commission report found 
no safety advantage to centralizing the storage of spent fuel. In 1996, 
the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board analyzed the issue of interim 
storage and concluded that there is no urgent technical need for 
centralized storage of commercial spent fuel--no need, no compelling 
necessity, no safety advantage to be achieved. That was 1996. Now, the 
Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board underwent a change in the 
composition of the chairmanship, so in effect there was an opportunity 
for essentially a new board composed of new members to review whether 
or not they would agree with the position taken by their predecessors 
in 1996. In testimony offered on February 5, 1997, by Dr. Jared L. 
Cohen, the chairman of the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board, Dr. 
Cohen simply reaffirmed the position taken by his predecessors, that 
there is no need, either for technical or safety reasons, to move spent 
fuel to a centralized storage facility for the next few years. He 
further maintains that to maintain the credibility of the site 
collection process, any decision with respect to interim storage should 
be deferred until a technologically defensible site-suitability 
determination can be made at Yucca Mountain.
  Mr. President, that is what the scientists, the people who the 
Congress, through a series of legislative enactments, have asked to 
take a look at that, that is what they say--no need, no safety reasons, 
no compelling necessity, bad policy. That is what the scientific 
community says.
  I said at the beginning this is old wine in new bottles. Indeed, Mr. 
President, it is very, very old wine. The driving policy here is not 
science; it is the nuclear utilities. It is not a new car. If one looks 
back nearly two decades ago, on July 28, 1980, this issue was before 
the Congress. This Senator was not a Member of the body at the time, 
but the Congressional Record reflects debate on a proposed away-from-
reactor concept, which is akin, if you will, to this interim nuclear 
waste proposal.
  At that time, the distinguished Senator from Louisiana, Mr. Johnston, 
addressed himself to the issue, referring again to this need to move 
this nuclear waste away from the reactor sites--the same issue, 
identical to what is being debated today. This is what the Senator from 
Louisiana said nearly 17 years ago: ``Mr. President, this bill

[[Page S2772]]

deals comprehensively with the problem of civilian nuclear waste. It is 
an urgent problem.'' Sound familiar? Urgent problem. Urgent problem. 
``Mr. President, for this Nation, it is urgent, first, because we are 
running out of reactor space at reactors for the storage of the fuel, 
and if we do not build what we call away-from-reactor storage and begin 
that soon, we could begin shutting down civilian nuclear reactors in 
this country as soon as 1983.'' That was 14 years ago. Not a single 
nuclear reactor in America has been closed or been forced to close 
because of this issue. Some have closed because of overriding safety 
concerns about their operation and maintenance. That, Mr. President, is 
a separate issue.
  So here again we have the nuclear utility industry sounding the 
drumbeat, issuing a clarion call, generating hysteria, that indeed 
there will be brownouts across the country and reactors will have to 
close unless we pass S. 104, the modern day equivalent to the 
legislation that was before the Senate of the United States some 17 
years ago. The answer today is the same as the answer then. There is no 
compelling necessity, no need, no rational policy to do so, and no 
safety issue that makes that a compelling issue.
  So we come back to a policy that is driven by the nuclear utilities 
and their desire, insatiable as it may be, to move the reactor storage 
from site, somewhere, anywhere, but in this particular piece of 
legislation to a place at the Nevada Test Site or so-called interim 
storage.
  I want to take just a few minutes, Mr. President, and we will have an 
opportunity to debate this at some length, as the distinguished 
chairman indicated, but let me review the bill, because it is flawed 
not only in its premise; it is flawed in its content. I want to talk 
first of all about the National Environmental Policy Act. The National 
Environmental Policy Act was enacted in 1969, enacted by bipartisan 
actions of this Congress, signed by a Republican President, and it was 
designed to do many things. But it was designed, first, to have an 
environmental impact addressed before, not after, the decisions are 
made.
  Now, what this legislation does--and I must give the nuclear 
utilities credit; their handsomely paid lawyers, legislative advocates, 
have been skillful, if somewhat deceptive, in terms of what they have 
crafted here. They say the National Environmental Policy Act, yes, it 
is applicable. But the Secretary--referring to the Secretary of 
Energy--shall not prepare an environmental impact statement under this 
section before conducting the activities that are authorized and 
commanded by the bill. Yes, the act exists, but you may take no action 
on it at this earlier phase. And then it goes on to say that the impact 
statement of the commission, in terms of what it may not address, shall 
not consider the need for interim storage.
  Mr. President, this is the total antithesis of the underlying 
predicate of an environmental impact statement. In effect, this ties 
one hand behind the back of those who would conduct such an 
environmental impact statement and, on the other hand, writes the 
script as to its conclusion before any study is undertaken.
  So the first thing they cannot do--Heaven forbid that they should 
examine the need for interim storage. They can't do that. No, they 
can't examine the time of the initial availability. They may not, 
Heaven forbid, consider any alternatives to the storage of spent 
nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste in an interim storage. 
Heaven forbid that they would be able to consider any alternatives to 
the site of the facility, or any alternatives to the design criteria, 
or the environmental impacts of storage of spent nuclear fuel at a 
high-level radioactive waste at the interim storage beyond the initial 
term of the license.
  Now, this is very good lawyering, but disastrous public policy, 
because the initial application calls for a licensure period of 20 
years. But when you look at the fine print, that can be extended for 
another 100 years and can be renewed for 100 years thereafter. So any 
environmental impact evaluation would be limited to the initial term of 
the license, 20 years. Why is that particularly significant? Mr. 
President, what we are dealing with is high-level nuclear waste. It is 
deadly, not for 20 years, 100 years, or a thousand years, but for more 
than 10,000 years. The National Academy of Sciences and other 
distinguished groups that have looked at this have indicated that 
indeed the impacts must be considered, and they must be considered even 
beyond the 10,000 years, they argue. This would say limit it to the 
first period of the initial term of the license, which is 10 years. 
And, oh, yes, we don't want to have the courts review what may happen. 
No, that would certainly be contrary to our tradition, our history, our 
society, and our culture to have any kind of a timely judicial review. 
This limits judicial review only to the time of licensing. So the 
impacts, such as they may be, must be considered only at the time that 
the commission makes a decision on licensing. ``No court shall have 
jurisdiction''--we are talking about Federal court, not a State court. 
``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.''
  It makes a mockery of the National Environmental Policy Act, an 
absolute mockery. So indeed, that is the first thing it does that would 
destroy a carefully framed set of legislative policies enacted by 
Members of both political parties and a Republican President in 1969.
  Now, let me also talk for a moment about a preemption section. This 
was a subject of considerable debate in the last session of Congress 
when this virtually identical bill--now, the chairman made some 
reference to this fact--and I have not seen the language--that there 
may be some changes in this section. But because we don't have them, 
let me indicate that the bill as processed by the committee, in section 
501, reads as follows: ``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''--this 
specific legislation--``the Secretary shall comply only with the 
requirements of this act and the Atomic Energy Act.''

  Mr. President, make no mistake as to what that means. That wipes out 
virtually every environmental law passed in the last 25 years by this 
Congress--clean air, safe drinking water--it wipes them all out. That 
was the posture of the bill when it was presented and acted upon in the 
last Congress--preemption. That language remains in the committee 
draft. If there are changes in that, we will comment at a later time.
  Let me talk also about the standards. One may agree or disagree that 
nuclear energy is good or bad national policy. That is something that 
is reasonable to debate. But I want to speak specifically here to the 
standards that are referenced in the act. Now, why are the standards--
and the distinguished occupant of the chair is very much aware of the 
fact that our States are Western States with vast expanses of land, but 
we are as concerned about the health and safety of our citizens as 
those of our urban brethren who live along the eastern seaboard. So let 
us talk about what this legislation does with respect to the standards 
issue.
  The first thing that it does is it seeks to impose a limitation on 
the Environmental Protection Agency. Surely, one would agree that if we 
are to have a facility to store nuclear waste, we ought to have a safe 
standard. Can there be any fundamental disagreement with that? Well, 
the answer might appear to be yes. But, clearly, the legislative 
wordsmiths who have crafted this piece of legislation, much as they did 
in the last legislative session, have sought to handcuff and limit the 
Environmental Protection Agency's ability to establish standards. It is 
cleverly done. Give a gold star for that. But here is what it says: 
``Such standards shall be consistent with the overall system 
performance 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.'' Clearly, it 
shifts the burden of proof. It mandates a legislative standard, greatly 
diminished, unless the Environmental Protection Agency can prove to the 
contrary, that it would constitute an unreasonable risk to health and 
safety.

[[Page S2773]]

  Now, why would it be unreasonable to say, look, if you are going to 
establish this unnecessary, costly and, in my judgment, foolhardy 
venture, at least provide health and safety standards for the people 
who are going to have to live with that for 10,000 years. It doesn't 
mean that that is unreasonable. It is not narrow or parochial. One 
would think that every Member of this institution would feel that way. 
But not here. Let me just say that that has been debated before in the 
context of the WIPP facility and with respect to the WIPP facility, the 
two able Senators from New Mexico took the floor and, at great length, 
advocated very effectively that the standard for health and safety 
should be the toughest standard possible. That occurred in debate in 
this very Chamber in June 1996. The distinguished senior Senator, Mr. 
Domenici, said, ``What is most important to us and what is most 
important to the people of New Mexico is that, as this underground 
facility * * *''--they were talking about the WIPP facility--``proceeds 
to the point where it may be opened, that it be subject to the 
Environmental Protection Agency's most strict requirements with 
reference to health and safety. As a matter of fact, they must certify 
it before it can be opened.''
  I applaud the senior Senator from New Mexico for his concern for his 
constituents. I agree with him. I hope my colleague from Nevada and I 
will be provided the same benefit that would be afforded to the New 
Mexico Senators, as they expressed it. Mr. Bingaman expressed himself 
eloquently to the issue on that same day, the foremost concern that I 
have. What the junior Senator from New Mexico said is, ``Our concern 
from the beginning is whether or not we are adequately protecting the 
health and safety of our citizens.''
  Mr. President, we may not agree on everything in terms of public 
policy. There is certainly ample room for policy debate on a whole host 
of issues. I acknowledge that. But believe me, it seems to me that we 
ought to be able to agree that health and safety is the most important 
thing that we ought to be about.

  I want to return to the subject of additional standards, because what 
this legislation does is quite manipulative. It limits the ability of 
those that we have vested with the responsibility of protecting our 
health and safety, in my view, in a very, very sinister way. First of 
all, it establishes, by legislative fiat, a 100 millirem standard. We 
are talking about radioactive emission exposure. I freely acknowledge, 
Mr. President, that I could not define a millirem with any degree of 
specificity. But I do know that it is the scientific unit that is 
accepted as the standard by which emissions are to be measured. I 
invite the attention of the body to the fact that for safe drinking 
water, it is a four millirem standard. We have other standards that are 
set, such as the WIPP standards, which the distinguished Senators from 
New Mexico addressed so eloquently last year as they were concerned 
about the health and safety of New Mexicans, just as Senator Reid and I 
are concerned about the health and safety of Nevadans.
  Let me suggest--it's perhaps wildly idealistic--shouldn't we all be 
concerned about the health and safety of Americans? We are one country, 
one nation. As I will point out in a minute, this is not just a Nevada 
issue. This affects tens of millions of people who would be affected by 
the policy implications of this bill. Let me go on and say that if you 
are from the Nordic countries, it is 10 millirems. The upper range 
Yucca Mountain study is 30 millirems. I cite this because it is so 
blatant. 100 millirems. That is a standard that is fixed not by 
science--oh, no, the utility lawyers put that one in there for us to 
contend with.
  Now, the National Academy of Sciences is a highly respected body. 
What they have indicated would be appropriate is a risk-based standard. 
It seems reasonable to me. I hasten to emphasize, Mr. President, there 
are no Nevadans that are on the National Academy of Sciences. They were 
not selected by the Nevada delegation, Nevada's Governor, or the Nevada 
Legislature. They were created by an act of Congress--the National 
Academy of Sciences. That is what they have recommended. Who is to be 
protected? This gets a little technical. Under S. 104, the standard of 
protection is greatly reduced. It is done in almost an arcane 
expression, but, in effect, 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--
the ``vicinity of the site''; we do not know what that means--extremes 
in social behavior, eating habits, or other relevant practices or 
characteristics, shall not be considered.
  Has the National Academy of Sciences agreed with that standard? They 
have not. They believe that it ought to be a critical group, a small, 
relatively homogeneous group whose location and habits are 
representative of those expected to receive the highest doses. Those 
expected to receive the highest doses makes sense to me.
  One of the other provisions in here is the application. In other 
words, for what period of time must health and safety be considered? We 
are talking about an interim facility that could, under the terms of 
this legislation, last for thousands and thousands and thousands of 
years. There is a limitation again because the utilities don't want a 
scientific standard. They want something that they can lobby through 
the Congress and get what they want.
  So this legislation tells us that the commission shall issue the 
license--referring to the license to operate the interim facility--if 
it feels or finds reasonable assurance that for the first 1,000 years 
following the commencement of the repository operations--1,000 years; 
the recommendation by the National Academy of Sciences is that the 
repository should be required to meet a standard during a period of 
greatest risk and that there is no scientific basis for limiting the 
time period to 10,000 years, or any other value. I hasten to note that 
they believe that the standard should be considered even beyond the 
10,000 years.
  There is another provision in here that again is arcane but 
particularly significant. That is that the commission is mandated to 
assume no human intrusion--that is to say, in the next 10,000 years--if 
no human intrusion would be possible. The National Academy of Sciences 
conclude that there is no scientific basis for assuming there would be 
no human intrusion.

       The performance of the repository . . . should be assessed 
     using the same analytical methods and assumptions, including 
     those by the biosphere, the critical groups used in the 
     assessment of the performance for the undisturbed case.

  The National Academy of Sciences also recommends another very 
important provision. That is, that because these involve important 
policy issues, opportunities for rulemaking necessitates wide-ranging 
inputs from all interested parties.
  That simply means giving people an opportunity to be heard, to 
express themselves, to offer their own insights, and to allow those 
with the technical background to offer the technical analyses. That 
should be a matter of record before a decision. But not S. 104; these 
are set by statute with no public comment period allowed.
  So, Mr. President, we have something that is fatally flawed because 
it is not needed. It makes no sense. We have something that currently 
preempts the environmental laws of this country, emasculates the 
National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, and establishes standards 
which are arbitrary and not predicated upon science.
  We will hear, as we have heard in previous debates, that this is all 
about science, to let science prevail. This legislation makes a mockery 
of the scientific process. It seeks to impose by legislative fiat a 
policy and a parameter limitation that is inconsistent with science.
  So let no one take the floor and argue that this is science that is 
speaking. This is nuclear utility politics speaking. That is the only 
thing that is being responded to.
  We have all agreed--the White House, the Congress, Democrats and 
Republicans--that we are going to balance the budget in the next 5 
years. I want to specifically reference some of the language as it 
relates to the funding.
  The General Accounting Office has indicated in a report that the 
current fiscal condition of the nuclear waste fund will experience a 
shortfall of some $4 to $8 billion. That is to say that under its 
current construction, without the changes that this legislation

[[Page S2774]]

makes, there would be a shortfall of $4 billion to $8 billion. I think 
many of my colleagues are aware that the nuclear waste trust fund is 
funded by a mill tax, a mill tax that is assessed on each kilowatt-hour 
that is generated. If we are currently underfunded, as the General 
Accounting Office has indicated, let me show you that the real 
significance of this legislation from a financial point of view is to 
shield the nuclear utilities from the liabilities that they agreed to 
undertake at the time the Nuclear Waste Policy Act was entered into and 
the agreements were signed and to shift their responsibility in the 
financial sense to the American taxpayer.

  This legislation provides that until the year 2002 the current 1 mill 
per kilowatt-hour will get capped. That is the maximum that can be 
collected from the utilities. That is a cap, contrary to the existing 
law which presents no such cap.
  In addition, this legislation provides that from the year 2003 the 
aggregate amount of fees--I will read the specific language. Although 
it is written in bill-drafting legalese, I think it will be clear to 
all. ``The aggregate amount of fees collected during each fiscal year, 
or thereafter, shall be no greater than the annual level of 
appropriations for expenditures on those activities.''
  If we put that in the context of what is being spent this year, it 
would be roughly one-third of the mill, which would be the most that 
could be assessed.
  Why is that significant? That is significant because the last reactor 
license will expire sometime around the year 2033, and the 
responsibility for maintaining a repository would go on, in an active 
sense, for at least, say, roughly another 40 years. So that means that 
that kind of funded liability will be shifted from the nuclear 
utilities to the American taxpayer.
  I say to my friends--and I was supportive of a constitutional 
amendment to balance the budget, and I think that makes sense--that I 
believe one of the great legacies this Congress could leave to the 
American people is to get our fiscal house in order, to do some 
responsible things for the budget, and to reach that balanced budget 
goal by the year 2002. But, Mr. President, there is no way that you can 
give the utilities a bailout, a subsidy, if you will, a new corporate 
entitlement, to elevate corporate welfare to a high art form as this 
piece of legislation does. It caps their liability and says we will 
take care of the rest contrary to existing law. Existing law does not 
contemplate that that be true.
  Moreover, this legislation, S. 104, contemplates that that would be 
an interim storage. That would still fund the site characterization and 
the study activities of the permanent repository. But the estimate for 
funding interim storage, as this bill constitutes--and that comes from 
the Congressional Budget Office--in the first 5 years is $2.3 billion. 
If you add that to the cost of what we are currently expending, an 
amount of about $380 million a year--that is the total we are spending 
right now--in the next couple of years you are going to have to have $1 
billion by the fiscal year 1999--that is $1 billion--to fund the 
current operation of an interim storage facility and the high-level 
nuclear waste repository proposed at Yucca Mountain.
  It is pretty clear what this is all about. This is an interim 
storage. This is a thinly disguised attempt to establish a permanent 
high-level dump without any of the safeguards that are provided in the 
current legislation form for a permanent repository.
  Mr. President, my colleague from Nevada has joined me. If I might 
inquire of him, I know that he might care to speak extensively on the 
transportation issue. I am prepared to do so if he cares to address 
another aspect of that. But I will invite his response.
  Mr. REID. I say to my friend from Nevada that I appreciate that. I 
have a few things to say. But I will not speak at length about the 
transportation aspect. If my friend would allow me to speak for a few 
minutes at a time which he feels appropriate.
  Mr. BRYAN. I yield to the senior Senator from Nevada.
  Mr. REID addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair recognizes the senior Senator from 
Nevada.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, we need to understand what this debate is 
all about, and that is how powerful the nuclear lobby is. We 
acknowledge that it is pretty strong. They have gotten more out of a 
worthless piece of legislation than I could ever imagine. They 
continually are allowed to bring this up and continually talk about it.
  Mr. President, my friend, the junior Senator from Alaska, said that 
nuclear waste is all over, that we need to put it in one spot. Nuclear 
waste is all over, and it will stay all over for years to come no 
matter what happens with this legislation; no matter what happens with 
the legislation as it relates to the permanent repository, where my 
friend is absolutely wrong. Nuclear waste is not in some States. 
Commercial nuclear waste is not in Nevada. We don't manufacture nuclear 
waste. It is not in the Dakotas. It is not in Montana and a number of 
other States. So the statement was a little wrong.
  Mr. President, this legislation, I repeat, is being driven by the 
nuclear lobby. As shown in the chart that the junior Senator from 
Alaska had, there are a number of nuclear generating plants around the 
country; a little over 100 generating facilities. The average lifespan 
of those facilities is about 15 years. Some will last 25 years. Some 
will be out of business in 5 years.
  The point is that nuclear waste manufactured by power companies 
generating electricity is in our lifetime going to be a thing of the 
past. It is not going to happen in the future. Generating electricity 
by nuclear power is no longer going to happen. It has been determined 
that the environmental concerns are too much and the American public 
simply won't stand for another nuclear power facility being built in 
this country at any time.
  The powerful nuclear lobby recognizes that they are going to be out 
of the business of generating electricity by nuclear power. So they 
want to wash their hands of the mess they have created and shift the 
responsibility to the Federal Government now. They don't want to wait, 
as the law now indicates, until someday a permanent repository is 
constructed. They want to short-circuit the system. They want to change 
the law, which now says you can't have a permanent repository and a 
temporary repository in the same State. They want to eliminate that. 
They want to also do an end run around all environmental law.
  Mr. President, my friend, the junior Senator from Alaska, said that 
they were working on amendments with the junior Senator from New 
Mexico. Well, I would just alert everyone. Be very careful about the 
amendments because, as we learned last year, amendments in name are not 
amendments in fact. The fact is that they cannot make changes in this 
legislation to any standard that will allow them to go forward with 
this legislation. They are talking about changes in this legislation by 
amendments just like they did last year. But when the facts come down, 
you will find that their amendments mean virtually nothing. You had 
better read the amendments very carefully.
  Mr. President, I think it is important to note that from 1982 to 
today, the scientific community has been working on methods of 
transportation, as indicated on the chart that my friend, the Senator 
from Nevada had, showing the transportation routes around the country--
they, the scientists, have been working on a way to transport nuclear 
waste. They have been working on it, now, for 15-plus years. 
Interestingly enough, they have not found a way to safely transport 
nuclear waste. The best they have been able to come up with is 
something called a dry-cask storage container, which is a canister, and 
in it would be placed spent fuel assemblies.
  What they have come up with to this point is a dry-cask storage 
container that is safe unless it is immersed in a fire that burns at 
more than 1,400 degrees. Diesel fuel burns at 1,800 degrees. So these 
dry-cask storage containers are not safe because, of course, fires that 
are going to occur on a train or a truck are going to be of diesel 
fuel. These casks cannot withstand the intense heat of a diesel fire.
  Second, the dry-cask storage containers have been made safe only to 
transport nuclear waste if an accident occurs at less than 30 miles an 
hour. Trains and trucks in this modern day and age rarely travel less 
than 30 miles

[[Page S2775]]

an hour. So a dry-cask storage container is basically worthless for 
transporting nuclear waste around this country. Remember, most of the 
nuclear waste is produced in the eastern and southern parts of the 
United States. It would have to be hauled, sometimes, more than 3,000 
miles to an interim site at the Nevada test site. You cannot carry it 
safely because the dry-cask storage containment does not allow it; 
because accidents occur at more than 30 miles an hour and fires occur 
at more than 1,400 degrees. In effect, that is why a number of 
entities, including entities in the State of Colorado, have said we 
want no part of nuclear waste. And that is why the senior Senator from 
Colorado has spoken out in committee on our behalf, saying interim 
storage is not important and not necessary at this stage.
  Yucca Mountain is being evaluated--it will be determined if that is a 
site that can safely store nuclear waste for up to 10,000 years--
remember, they are digging a hole inside that mountain. The cavern they 
are digging is more than 25 feet in diameter. It is a huge hole. You 
can take a train through it easily. But I think it is interesting, and 
that the taxpayers should know, that hole, piercing that mountain, is 
costing $60,000 a foot. The cost now is approaching $2 billion. What 
this legislation would do is say we will forget about that, the 
billions of dollars spent there. We want to short circuit the system, 
pour a big cement pad out there and dump the waste on top of the 
ground.
  Anyone who thinks that is temporary is temporarily insane. The 
purpose of that is to store it permanently at the so-called interim 
site.
  My friend, the junior Senator from Alaska said, and I was surprised 
to hear him say this, it is so absolutely true--he said this 
legislation is little about science and a lot about politics. I could 
not say it better myself. I agree with the junior Senator from Alaska. 
This legislation deals totally with politics, nuclear politics. The 
powerful nuclear lobby is driving this legislation. They want to wash 
their hands of this. It appears that we are about to repeat last year's 
wasteful mistake. They tried all last year to get S. 1936 passed. What 
was learned at that time was that the President was going to veto that. 
We had enough votes at that time to sustain the President's veto. We 
still have the same votes. Everyone knows that. This is a gesture in 
nuclear politics, to show the nuclear power lobby: ``We are doing 
everything we can to satisfy you. Please, accept our offering, that is 
the taxpayers' time, energy and money, in this Senate Chamber. Do not 
be upset with us, utilities. We are doing the best we can, even though 
we all recognize this legislation is going down to defeat.''
  Nothing has changed from last year that would make S. 104 any more 
attractive than S. 1936 was at the conclusion of the 104th Congress. In 
fact, we have another year of progress toward understanding the 
suitability of Yucca Mountain. Hundreds of millions of dollars have 
been spent in this past year in Nevada, characterizing Yucca Mountain. 
I have been there within the past 2 months. I took a ride through that 
huge hole that is being dug. They are trying--in fact, within weeks 
they should be able to cut through the side of the mountain a tunnel 5 
miles long, $60,000 dollars, and after they do that they will start 
running shafts, adits and cross-cuts and drifts from that, for purposes 
of determining the suitability of this site.

  We need to find out if Yucca Mountain is suitable. The interim 
storage would vitiate all the time, energy, effort and money spent on 
that facility. The President and this administration remain committed 
to the present law that prohibits siting an interim storage facility at 
a site undergoing evaluation for permanent disposal of nuclear fuel or 
other high-level nuclear waste. This commitment is not political 
posturing, it is good government. And mostly, good science. It is only 
proper and responsible, given the importance and difficulty of managing 
the most dangerous substance known to man, plutonium and nuclear waste 
in general.
  As I have indicated, this Nation has already spent billions of 
dollars--I said $2 billion, it is approaching $3 billion--on the Yucca 
Mountain evaluation. We have dug a very large tunnel through the 
mountain, as I have indicated. It is huge. It is more than 2 stories 
high. It is not easy or cheap to do these things, because something 
like this has never been done before. Yet the proponents of this 
legislation are saying we want to do it the easy way. We want to do it 
the cheap way. We want to pour a cement pad out in the middle of the 
desert and dump this stuff on top of the ground. That's it.
  We all know, no matter what verbiage the junior Senator from Alaska 
uses--``we are going to limit the time to 40 years''--it doesn't matter 
if you limit the time to 20 years or 80 years, this interim site will 
be the permanent site. That is why they want to change the law to say 
you can have a permanent repository and a temporary repository in the 
same place.
  Time is what the proponents of S. 104 would take away from the 
science. The scientists have said we are doing the best we can to make 
a scientific determination as to whether geological burial at Yucca 
Mountain is appropriate. Much of the money necessary to resolve 
critical uncertainties would be spent unnecessarily on interim storage 
at Yucca Mountain and the money spent on the permanent repository would 
be wasted, totally wasted.
  We have heard talk here, by everyone, last year and this year, about 
the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board. They are a group of 
scientists chosen because they are scientists, first of all. The 
chairman of the board is a dean from Yale University. I do not think we 
can quibble with his qualifications. But his expertise is only one of 
the qualifications these scientists have. These are some of the most 
brilliant scientists in the world, on the Nuclear Waste Technical 
Review Board.
  They have told us a number of things. No. 1, what they told us is 
``Don't have an interim storage site.'' They have also said that:

       The civilian radioactive waste management program will have 
     to sustain the support of the general public and the 
     scientific and technical community for generations. Such 
     support may be more difficult to maintain if the 
     determination of site suitability, perhaps the most critical 
     step in the entire process of developing a repository, is not 
     viewed as a technically objective evaluation by a very broad 
     segment of the population.

  The Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board opposes this S. 104. It is 
wrong. And for the reason, among others that I have just read, that it 
is not viewed as technically objective.
  The board chairman went on to say, at a hearing on S. 104, Professor 
Cohen:

       Predicting the performance of a repository for thousands of 
     years involves inherently large uncertainties. The Board 
     believes that scientists and regulators can evaluate those 
     uncertainties. Ultimately, however, the public and its 
     representatives must have confidence that technical 
     analyses count; if the analyses are viewed as facades 
     serving only to justify foregone conclusions, public 
     confidence cannot be achieved.
       A premature decision to store spent nuclear fuel near the 
     Yucca Mountain site could contribute to the perception that 
     the suitability of the site for development as a repository 
     has been prejudged and that the reviews by scientists and 
     regulators are meaningless.

  I say to my friend, the junior Senator from Nevada, that Nuclear 
Waste Technical Review Board--would you acknowledge that they are some 
of the greatest scientists we have in America today?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Collins). The Senator from Nevada.
  Mr. BRYAN. They are. They are not motivated by any political, 
geographic, sectional, or partisan bias. They are chosen because they 
have the preeminent qualifications. I believe the senior Senator was 
off the floor when I made the observation, we have had two successive 
technical review boards --the one that made its report in 1996, which 
the Senator will recall was part of our debate. But a new board, 
constituted under the distinguished chairmanship of the dean, as you 
just referenced, they have looked at the issue and have reached the 
same conclusion.
  So, here you have a board of preeminent scientists examining the 
issue in 1996 and they reached the conclusion which you have just 
declared, namely that it is unnecessary, there is no advantage to it, 
indeed it is bad public policy. And, now the 1997 board, essentially 
consisting of new members, but equally eminent and distinguished 
scientists, has reached the same conclusion.
  Mr. REID. I would also say to my friend, and ask his response to 
this--

[[Page S2776]]

would you agree with the board, the technical review board, that one of 
the most important things to do, as it relates to nuclear waste, is 
have public confidence?
  Mr. BRYAN. I think that is absolutely essential. And that is one 
thing that has beleaguered this legislation, dating back to the 1982 
act.
  As the Senator from Nevada knows, because of the nuclear utilities' 
constant driving, pushing, insisting upon unrealistic deadlines, trying 
to shortcut science, this act has faced a considerable series of 
failures. And, as the board has pointed out from time to time, this is 
not something that you can rush. Indeed, it is something that needs to 
be very carefully reviewed. And because there is this constant pressure 
by the nuclear lobby to constrict the timelines, to shorten all of the 
opportunities for public comment, this legislation, and S. 104, would 
certainly fit within the same category--is not going to enjoy public 
confidence.
  Indeed, the very point that the Senator has made on many occasions on 
the floor is true, that the 1998 timeframe, which has been invoked by 
the proponents of S. 104 as if it were a date carved in stone, attested 
to by all of the deities, is, in fact, a deadline which the scientific 
community urged not to be placed in the legislation for the very reason 
the Senator inquired of the junior Senator from Nevada, the timeline 
was unrealistic.
  So, now, in effect they are using their argument of 1998 to, in 
effect, bootstrap their argument that 1998 will come and there will be 
no permanent resolution to it, and, therefore, we need this ill-
conceived proposal that is before us.
  Mr. REID. I ask my friend another question. Eminent scientists have 
said S. 104 is bad. You agree?
  Mr. BRYAN. Absolutely true.
  Mr. REID. Can you think of a single environmental organization in the 
world--well, let us limit it to the United States. Can you think of a 
single environmental organization, for-profit or nonprofit, that 
supports this legislation?
  Mr. BRYAN. I cannot, and, in point of fact, every nationally 
recognized environmental group that I can think of has indicated its 
strong opposition to this legislation as being unsound environmental 
policy. I think the point that the Senator from Nevada makes is a good 
point. Frequently, in what I would refer to most respectfully and 
charitably as convoluted logic, I have heard S. 104 characterized as an 
important piece of environmental legislation. That would give new 
meaning to environmental legislation. No environmental organization, as 
the senior Senator points out, supports this legislation and, again, 
for the basic reason that it is unnecessary and it is bad policy. It 
simply is not good policy.
  Mr. REID. If we change our course now, Madam President, there is no 
doubt in my mind that a permanent repository will never be built and 
all the effort and all the money will just go down the drain as 
misguided nuclear politics.
  The work done at Yucca Mountain is an essential part of the program 
that was promised to guarantee public health and safety at any site 
selected for a permanent repository. This guarantee was done in 1982 by 
Chairman Udall and others who were prominent in pushing this 
legislation through, the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act.
  Without their assurance, the Congress would never have supported the 
policy amendment, would never have supported the underlying legislation 
and the policy amendment that designated Yucca Mountain in 1987 as the 
only site to be characterized. The arguments then were, ``We'll do such 
a grand job of scientific study and evaluation that there will be no 
question about Yucca Mountain suitability, reliability; we will never 
compromise on safety, not where the American public is concerned; we 
will do everything necessary to identify and resolve any concerns that 
Yucca Mountain might not be a suitable repository site; we guarantee 
Yucca Mountain will not become a storage site before all concerns have 
been satisfied.''
  Madam President, that was then, and this is now. Then was a time for 
promises that they hope everybody has forgotten. Now is a time for 
political expediency and smoothing the ruffled feathers of the powerful 
nuclear power-generating lobby. Now is the time for pushing the waste 
into Nevada before anything is ready, even without a repository site, 
even though the scientific community says no, even though the 
environmental community says no. Never mind repository reliability and 
permanent isolation from the environment. If anything happens, it will 
happen on someone else's watch, in someone else's backyard. That, Madam 
President, is bait and switch if I ever saw it. It is a well known, but 
not a highly respected way of doing business, and it should not be done 
here.
  I have talked about the independent reviews by competent Government-
chartered experts. We have talked about the Nuclear Waste Technical 
Review Board. Here is a direct quote that you will hear from the two 
Senators from Nevada of what the chairman of the Nuclear Waste 
Technical Review Board said:

       . . . because there are no compelling technical or safety 
     reasons to move spent fuel to a centralized storage facility 
     for the next few years, siting a centralized facility near 
     Yucca Mountain can be deferred until a technically defensible 
     site-suitability determination is made. . . . Deferring the 
     siting of a storage facility until that time will help 
     maintain the credibility of the site-suitability decision.

  Madam President, I hear people and I know my friend from Nevada has 
heard the same thing, ``Well, what are you going to do with the 
waste?''
  If I can call upon my friend from Nevada again for a question, he 
will recall last year in the debate there were dire urgings that if 
something did not happen last year, powerplants would close down last 
year. Do you recall in the early eighties statements similar to this 
being made?
  Mr. BRYAN. I do, indeed. It was made in 1980. Neither the senior 
Senator from Nevada nor the junior Senator from Nevada were Members of 
this body or of the other one at that time. But then, as now, the 
nuclear utilities were urging the Congress to adopt interim storage, 
they then were called away from reactor storage. The statements were 
made during the floor debate that if this were, in fact, not done, that 
within the next 3 years, by 1983, nuclear utilities would have to close 
down and there would be brownouts.

  As the senior Senator from Nevada knows, that was 1980. In a sense, 
if you took the date off that legislation and inserted the words 
``interim storage'' for ``AFR,'' it would be identical to the context 
of the debate.
  If the senior Senator from Nevada will indulge me for a moment, this 
is what was said by the then chairman of the Energy Committee, Mr. 
Johnston, the distinguished Senator from Louisiana:

       Mr. President, this bill--

  Referring to the AFR legislation--

     deals comprehensively with the problem of civilian nuclear 
     waste. It is an urgent problem--

  Sounds somewhat familiar, does it not?

     Mr. President, for this Nation. It is urgent, first, because 
     we are running out of reactor space at reactors for the 
     storage of the fuel, and if we do not build what we call 
     away-from-reactor storage and begin that soon, we could begin 
     shutting down civilian nuclear reactors in this country as 
     soon as 1983. . . .

  I say to my friend from Nevada, that is, in essence, the debate that 
we heard in 1996. Just substitute a date and put it 3 or 4 years into 
the future. Those are the opening comments made by the chairman of the 
Energy Committee that we just heard. This is the nuclear utility 
refrain. It has become kind of a mantra, their Holy Grail, and, in 
point of fact, as the senior Senator from Nevada well knows, that is 
simply not the case. That is scare tactics; that is hysteria.
  Mr. REID. I say also to my friend from Nevada, we established with 
the dry cask storage containers I spoke of earlier that if they burn 
from diesel fuel, that is bad. If you are in an accident because of 
going fast, that is bad. I say to my friend from Nevada, we 
acknowledged what some of the scientists are saying: Leave it where it 
is. Put these spent-fuel rods in dry cask storage containers in onsite 
storage. It would be safe, you would not have a diesel fire or accident 
from going fast. It would be safe and cheap. It would cost hardly 
anything to do that. There are utilities doing that right now, is that 
not true?
  Mr. BRYAN. That is absolutely correct. There are a number of 
utilities

[[Page S2777]]

that do it. One is just about 40 miles from the Nation's Capital. It is 
authorized by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. So this is not a 
proposal that originates from those of us in this body, it is a 
scientifically accepted alternative that is available onsite storage 
which provides a 100-year storage option without, as the senior Senator 
from Nevada correctly points out, the risk involved in transportation 
and handling.
  I might just add parenthetically, with all the talk about the casks 
that are going to be used to be shipped across the country, those casks 
have not yet been designed and licensed.
  Mr. REID. Even if they were, with the standards they have now been 
able to establish, it would be unsafe to transport them.
  Mr. BRYAN. Absolutely.
  Mr. REID. ``Deferring the siting of a storage facility until that 
time will help to maintain the credibility of the site-suitability 
decision.''
  That is what was said by the chairman of the Nuclear Waste Technical 
Review Board, among other things.
  These same reviews have cited the steady and productive progress 
toward the objective--and I underline and underscore ``objective''--of 
determining Yucca Mountain's suitability for siting the Nation's 
repository for spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste.
  The powerful, aggressive, obsessive nuclear power lobby is not 
willing to wait. They are not willing to wait. They do not care about 
the credibility of the site-suitability decision. They are only 
interested in getting it out of their pockets, out of their backyards 
and putting it someplace else. Their arguments, I say, are mindless and 
reckless. Their arguments are specious.

  As we have indicated, spent fuel is safe right where it is. My 
friend, the senior Senator from Colorado, stated during the committee 
hearing that if the waste is safe enough to ship, it is safe enough to 
leave in place. That says it all.
  The arguments for consolidation are without substance because an 
interim storage facility at Yucca Mountain will not reduce the number 
of storage sites. On the contrary, it will increase their number. This 
is fact, it is not supposition, it is not presumptive, it is not 
vulnerable to contradiction. Continuing operations will require onsite 
storage of spent fuel in cooling ponds or in an onsite interim facility 
for transportation staging.
  Nuclear waste will always be stored temporarily at operating nuclear 
power-generating sites. For those generating sites that either have 
terminated operations or will terminate operations, preparation for 
transportation will take far more time than is required for the 1998 
viability decision for Yucca Mountain. They know that. Preparations to 
ship this waste material across the country have hardly begun, and that 
is an understatement.
  In his arguments against S. 104, the chairman of the Nuclear Waste 
Technical Review Board pointed out:

       The country currently has a capacity to transport only a 
     few hundred metric tons of spent fuel a year.

  And, I might say as an aside, some people would agree we cannot even 
haul that much. He went on to say:

       Developing a transportation infrastructure necessary to 
     move significant amounts of waste, including the 
     transportation of casks and enhanced safety capabilities 
     along the routes, will take a few years longer than will be 
     needed to develop the simple centralized storage facility 
     currently envisioned by DOE. A site-suitability decision 
     could be made beginning the interim storage facility with no 
     lost time.

  If transportation performance is not improved, there will be at least 
50 accidents involving spent fuel or high-level radioactive waste on 
our railroads and highways here. That is what the average would be 
under the present statistics--50 accidents involving spent fuel or 
high-level nuclear waste. That is a lot of accidents, I must say.
  Madam President, I want to close this part of my statement by 
reminding everyone why we are here. We are here because of the nuclear 
power lobby. There is no other reason. The President has said he is 
going to veto this legislation. The legislation will be vetoed. The 
President's veto will be sustained. There is no reason that we are 
doing this other than because of the nuclear power lobby, and some are 
trying to satisfy this lobby. We would be better off by dealing with 
the budget, which, I say to my friend from Nevada, as I understand the 
law, were we not to have completed a budget before the April break when 
we went home for Easter? Isn't that the law?
  Mr. BRYAN. That is my understanding, that we are obligated to do so, 
but we have not yet done so.
  Mr. REID. I will also state that if we do not have a budget, we 
cannot deal with the 13 appropriations bills. I am a member of the 
Appropriations Committee, and we have done nothing, basically, on our 
appropriations legislation because we have not gotten our marks from 
the Budget Committee. Thirteen appropriations bills and not a single 
one has been marked up.
  We are absolutely going nowhere. But what are we doing here? We are 
spending a week on legislation that the President said he is going to 
veto, which failed last year because of that. If there were ever a 
colossal waste of legislative time, which means taxpayers' time, this 
is it. I yield the floor.
  Mr. BRYAN addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Nevada is recognized.
  Mr. BRYAN. Madam President, the junior Senator from Nevada has been 
criticized and taken to task somewhat because he has referred to this 
legislation as a ``mobile Chernobyl.'' In that criticism, it has been 
said, ``Look, what happened at Chernobyl is a different situation 
entirely. There you had a reactor explode. This is not going to 
explode.'' I concede that there are differences in terms of causation, 
but the results are equally devastating.
  We are talking about the shipment of 85,000 metric tons of nuclear 
waste. That would involve, as has been estimated, about 15,638 
shipments--6,217 by truck, roughly 9,421 by rail. So we are looking at 
about 15,638 to roughly 17,000 shipments.

  Each of those truck casks would weigh 25 tons. Each rail cask would 
weigh 125 tons. One rail cask--one rail cask--carries the long-lived 
radiological equivalent of 200 Hiroshima bombs--200.
  So when I use the ``mobile Chernobyl'' analogy, the risk to Nevadans, 
the risk to Americans, if indeed a rail cask ruptured as a result of an 
accident and radiation was released, it would be a mobile Chernobyl 
because the spread of radioactivity and the resultant contamination 
that results as a consequence could be widespread.
  I would simply point out to those who are so sanguine about 
transportation that we are daily reminded that human error--the 
chairman of the Energy Committee pointed out that Chernobyl was a 
product of human error. Indeed, Madam President, I suspect that a great 
many of our accidents, maybe even a majority of them, are a product of 
human error. We see that every time there is a major rail collision or 
a train that is derailed as a consequence of some neglect in trackage. 
We have certainly seen it in the context of terrorist activities of 
late.
  But the National Environmental Law Center provides that EPA data 
analysis shows that 7,959 accidents occurred during the transportation 
of toxic chemicals from 1988 to 1992. The American Petroleum Institute 
tells us that heavy truck accidents occur approximately six times for 
each million miles traveled with thousands of truck shipments. This 
means that at least 15 such accidents could be expected each year.
  So the risks are considerable in terms of this transportation, all of 
which are unnecessary. It is not necessary or advisable or prudent or 
sound policy to do so.
  This is frequently characterized as a Nevada battle. But let me just 
say, fairly recently there has been a proposal to move the nuclear 
waste from a port in Oakland through Nevada and into Idaho. It has 
generated a considerable amount of controversy, not only in my own 
State, but in California. I believe that those who are watching across 
the Nation should be aware of the fact that Nevadans are not the only 
ones who are placed at risk by this ill-conceived proposal.
  The shipment routes involve 43 different States, and 51 million 
Americans live within 1 mile of either the rail or highway corridor 
routes.
  On this chart that we are exhibiting, the highway corridors are 
depicted in red, the rail routes are depicted in blue. With the kinds 
of massive shipments we are talking about--125 tons

[[Page S2778]]

by rail, 25 tons by each truck cask--you could only use the major 
corridor routes. You would not use some back road or unimproved 
surface. You would need a full-scale transportation route.
  With all the potential for accident, with all the potential for some 
serious, unintended, unavoidable consequence, we risk the lives of 51 
million Americans to satisfy the request of a single industry in 
America--the nuclear utility industry. They are the only ones that 
bring us to the floor to debate this issue today. As my senior 
colleague pointed out, they were the ones in 1980 that brought it to 
the floor. They were the ones that brought it to the floor in 1996. And 
if we are successful, as I believe that we will be in 1997 in 
preventing this legislation from being enacted into law, based upon a 
carefully considered Presidential position that he will veto such 
legislation, I would predict that they will be back here in 1998, 1999, 
and the year 2000 because this is something that they covet and that is 
a priority for them.
  So the transportation issue, of which we will comment more during the 
course of the debate tomorrow, is a consideration that affects 51 
million Americans in 43 different States. As they say, you cannot get 
there from here. You have to take that lethal waste across the heart of 
America. Most of this waste--most of this waste--being east of the 
Mississippi River will involve transportation over literally thousands 
of rail or highway miles.
  Let me briefly comment on a couple of other points. The chairman of 
the Energy Committee pointed out that there is a lawsuit that was 
filed. He said, as others have said, that it requires that the 
Department of Energy must take possession of nuclear waste that is 
stored throughout the reactor sites by 1998 and, if we do not do so, 
that all kinds of horrendous consequences will occur.

  First, let me point out that the lawsuit was decided last year prior 
to the vote that we took on S. 1936, which is the predecessor to S. 104 
and essentially in the significant aspects is virtually identical. So 
this is not a new development.
  But I think it is important to comment because the utilities have 
sought to obfuscate the issue and have given the impression that, 
indeed, in 1998 there will be a series of Department of Energy trucks 
or vans or rail cars that must back up to every reactor site in America 
and begin to load those on board and that, lo and behold, if they do 
not have an interim storage facility, these vehicles will be traveling 
endlessly for all time and in perpetuity.
  Nonsense. The lawsuit did conclude that the Department of Energy has 
an obligation, a legal responsibility. And you look to what the remedy 
is in the contracts.
  In 1982, the Nuclear Waste Policy Act was enacted by the Congress, 
signed into law by President Reagan. In that act it required utilities 
to enter into contracts with the Department of Energy. And all the 
utilities that are part of this debate have done so.
  When you look at the contract, there are two provisions, two 
provisions that specifically deal with this issue.
  I again remind my friends that 1998 was not a date sanctified by the 
scientific community. That was a date the utilities insisted upon. The 
Department of Energy and others argued that that date was unrealistic. 
``We're not going to be able to reach that date,'' they said. But the 
utilities said, ``No. 1998, we want that.'' That is what the law 
reflected.
  But in the contract that was required to be entered into with each of 
the utilities with the Department of Energy, there were two provisions. 
Both of these provisions are contained in article 9.
  What it said is this: In anticipation that the 1998 date may not be 
fulfilled, it indicated that if the delays were unavoidable by the 
Department of Energy, that is, if the delays were beyond their control, 
that there was no culpability. Then the remedy that was provided was 
simply to reschedule the delivery dates. It makes some sense.
  The other provision that is applicable--and I am sure the utilities 
will urge this point of view--is, indeed, there is culpability on the 
part of the Department of Energy. As a result of their culpability, it 
would be classified under the provisions of the contract as an 
``avoidable'' delay. That, too, is part of article 9, section B.
  The contract remedy is, in the event of any delay in the delivery, 
acceptance or transport caused by circumstances within the reasonable 
control of the Department of Energy or their respective contractors or 
suppliers, the charges and schedules specified by this contract will be 
equitably adjusted to reflect any estimated additional cost. That 
strikes me as being reasonable.
  I had occasion in many years past to practice law, not nuclear 
utility law or environmental law, but what this says is that, look, if 
the Department of Energy is found to have been negligent in moving the 
process forward, the utility is entitled to an adjustment of what they 
are paying into the nuclear waste trust fund based upon additional 
costs that are being incurred. Indeed, that is not a novel concept.
  When this Senator first came to the Senate in 1989, and in each 
session thereafter, joined by my senior colleague from Nevada, we have 
offered legislation that does indeed provide that the utilities would 
be entitled to an offset or compensation for the additional expense 
that they may incur as a result of this 1998 deadline being 
unattainable.

  So there is no great mystery about the lawsuit. It changes nothing in 
the debate that we have, nothing whatsoever, and should not be used as 
a basis for supporting the legislation that is currently before us.
  Finally, let me make just one additional comment that the senior 
Senator from Nevada addressed. That is that this legislation is not 
going to become law.
  The President of the United States, as he did in 1996, indicated that 
this is bad policy, and following the advice and counsel of the 
scientific community--the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board 
concluded that it was unnecessary, unwise, and indeed there is no 
necessity for this, no safety is to be gained by this massive shipment 
of 85,000 metric tons of waste. This is a scientific body that 
concluded that in 1996, and although the board is newly constituted 
with a new chairman and many new members, it reached the same 
conclusion in 1997, this very year, in testimony that verified that 
interim storage is not necessary. So the President, following the wise 
counsel of those who have examined this from a scientific and objective 
point of view, has indicated, as shown in testimony before the Senate 
Energy Committee, that this legislation will be vetoed if indeed it 
should reach his desk.
  We will have much more to say about this issue as we debate it during 
the course of the next week or so. We will point out with greater 
particularity a number of the issues that we have touched upon lightly 
today. I just hope, for my colleagues who are watching and their 
staffs, that we not be misled. This is legislation that is a carbon 
copy of the legislation that was debated in S. 1936 in the last session 
of the Congress.
  I yield the floor.
  Madam President, I see no one else is on the floor seeking 
recognition. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. DASCHLE. 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. DASCHLE. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in 
morning business for a period of about 10 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. DASCHLE. I thank the Presiding Officer.
  Madam President, let me begin by complimenting my distinguished 
colleagues for their statements on the floor this afternoon. My 
intention is not necessarily to speak on that issue, but as I have in 
the past, I am supportive of their efforts and commend them once more 
for their concerted effort to bring some fairness to the issue that 
they have addressed. This is a matter of great import to the State of 
Nevada. No one has been more articulate, more aggressively persuasive 
on the issue than have the two distinguished colleagues from Nevada. I 
commend them and urge our colleagues to listen carefully to their 
counsel and support their

[[Page S2779]]

efforts as we proceed for the remainder of this week on this very 
important issue.

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