[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 145 (Friday, October 24, 1997)]
[House]
[Pages H9549-H9552]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
THE HAZARDS OF NUCLEAR WASTE TRANSPORT
The SPEAKER pro tempore [Mr. Pease]. Under the Speaker's announced
policy of January 7, 1997, the gentleman from Nevada [Mr. Gibbons] is
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
Mr. GIBBONS. Mr. Speaker, I believe it was H.G. Wells who was once
quoted as saying, ``Human history becomes more and more a race between
education and catastrophe.'' Right now, Mr. Speaker, this Congress is
in a race and we must not let catastrophe win.
In examining both the education and catastrophe spectrum here, I
would first like to do my part in educating the ladies and gentlemen of
America, Mr. Speaker, on the facts concerning H.R. 1270, the Nuclear
Waste Policy Act of 1997. This legislation will mandate transportation
of high-level radioactive nuclear waste by way of our national highways
and railways.
This deadly waste will traverse 43 States to a nuclear waste dump at
Yucca Mountain, NV, that is right, through 43 States out of 50,
traveling right alongside of you during your commute to work or on your
weekend outing, or with your family over bridges that traverse your
community's source of water, near schools where your sons and daughters
are attending their education. On these routes will be nuclear,
radioactive waste from 109 of our country's nuclear reactors.
American citizens from Los Angeles to New York, from Atlanta to
Denver, from Pittsburgh to Dallas, St. Louis to Tucson, Kansas City to
Baton Rouge, Jacksonville to Chicago, and from here in Washington, DC,
to Cleveland, are all in harm's way. That is exactly why it is
important for us to educate Members on H.R. 1270.
Mr. ENSIGN. Mr. Speaker, would the gentleman yield?
Mr. GIBBONS. I am happy to yield to my colleague from district 1.
Mr. ENSIGN. Mr. Speaker, I would ask, is the gentleman aware that in
the transport of this nuclear waste across the country, that the most
highly dangerous substance ever produced by mankind is an environmental
problem, is a health and safety problem? This high-level nuclear waste
on these routes of transportation will be going near even elementary
schools, day care centers, and the like across the country?
Is the gentleman aware that we tried to offer and tried to get
approved in order an amendment just to make nuclear waste not go within
1 mile of schools, and that the leadership, the Republican leadership,
did not allow this amendment to be in order? Is the gentleman aware of
that?
Mr. GIBBONS. I thank the gentleman from Nevada for reminding me of
that fateful day when we proposed those amendments, and certainly were
told that we could not offer those amendments; an amendment which
would, in essence, protect children from transportation and the
exposure to the transportation of nuclear waste by their schools. I am
aware of that.
Mr. Speaker, we would like to point out to everyone just exactly
where the proposed railway and highway routes are going to be. Imagine,
if you will, that 75 percent of all the nuclear waste in America is
generated east of the Mississippi, and it is all coming right here to
southern Nevada. Seventy-five percent of those 109 reactors are going
to have to funnel their waste through what could be regular hub and
spoke communities. For example, if we took St. Louis, MO, where I-70
passes through St. Louis, MO, crosses over the Mississippi River, an
accident in St. Louis, MO, could have catastrophic results.
As we recall, earlier, I would remind the gentleman today that we
heard earlier about a train accident in West Virginia, a terrible
catastrophe. In fact, there were two train accidents in the last
several days in West Virginia: a head-on, two trains colliding head on,
and a train intersecting or a train intersection where it impacted a
truck.
Mr. ENSIGN. If the gentleman will continue to yield, Mr. Speaker,
from what I understand from hearing the gentleman from West Virginia
this morning, or this afternoon, he talked about this train collision
happening, and he even said, luckily, only by God's grace, was the
explosive material on one of the trains taken off just before these
trains collided.
Mr. GIBBONS. If the gentleman will yield for point of correction, I
think he said that that was a truck that was at an intersection that
was loaded with explosives, or previously loaded with explosives, just
hours before.
Mr. ENSIGN. Yes. If the gentleman will yield further, let us take,
for instance, if we had nuclear waste in these tri-cask cannisters,
which are supposed to, based on the testing, if I am correct on this,
they are supposed to be able to withstand temperatures of up to 1,500
degrees.
Mr. GIBBONS. One thousand five hundred, that is correct.
Mr. ENSIGN. Explosive materials could lead to a fire. Diesel fuel,
what does diesel fuel, if the gentleman would answer, being a geologist
and a scientist, what does diesel fuel burn at?
Mr. GIBBONS. Diesel fuel burns at 1,830 degrees, but in addition to
that, if cooked long enough, the metal surrounding structures will burn
in excess of 3,000 degrees, sometimes.
So the problem we have here is twofold. We have natural hazards,
diesel fuel from trains and trucks and the metal surrounding it, the
incendiary position of the metal; as well as the explosives, if the
accident had occurred with a trainload of nuclear fuel and this truck,
loaded with explosives; or a terrorist act.
[[Page H9550]]
Not too long ago in Arizona it was reported that a terrorist blew a
bridge out in Arizona and a train derailed. The exposure of hazard to
this material in transportation across America exposes a great risk.
But it is a fact that these casks are dangerous.
I would tell the Members, Mr. Speaker, just what is in one of these
casks. That is the critical part. These concrete and steel casks
contain 24 nuclear fuel rods, spent nuclear fuel rods. Each one of
these casks contains 10 times the nuclear radioactive fallout as the
bomb we dropped on Hiroshima in the Second World War. That is 10 times
that in one cask, in one cask; and we have nearly 80,000 tons of this
material being transported primarily from the East Coast over to the
West.
Mr. ENSIGN. If the gentleman will continue to yield, Mr. Speaker,
from what I am understanding, based on the scenario that the gentleman
has painted, based on this hot metal burning and causing one of these
casks to come apart, looking at the gentleman's map down there and
looking at St. Louis, looking at Denver, CO, right through the center
of Denver, CO, looking at Los Angeles, CA, looking at potentially
coming across Hoover Dam, which is, from Arizona coming into Nevada, if
one of these transport mechanisms, say, was on Hoover Dam, had a crash,
went over the side of Hoover Dam, which is about 450 feet down onto a
concrete slab, and we had a fire down there, one of these casks broke
open, what State would be most affected, besides the State of Nevada,
which is sitting right there, and the State of Arizona? What is the No.
1 State that would be affected by this radiation fallout?
Mr. GIBBONS. First, let me address the issue that the gentleman has
talking about, dropping these casks. These casks are certified to be
fracture-resistent when dropped from a height of 30 feet. It is a lot
different from dropping a cask from the top of the Hoover Dam to the
bottom, 450 feet.
Only 2 months ago we had an 18-wheel tractor-trailer rig in an
accident, spun out on the top of that dam, and the back end was hanging
over the edge of the dam. It can happen. It is not a farfetched idea.
{time} 1500
But, what you present is one of the greatest environmental
catastrophes for the most populated State in the United States and the
most populated community that gets a lot of its drinking water and
agricultural water from the Colorado River, and that is Los Angeles,
CA. All of those millions and millions of people, the lives along the
southern Colorado River would be in danger of jeopardy from a nuclear
contamination spill just off of that one roadway.
Mr. ENSIGN. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman would yield, people say if
we cannot bring it to Nevada in an interim storage facility or a
permanent repository that Congress is talking about, they ask me,
``What is the answer?''
Correct me if I am wrong on this. When they were developing the
transport mechanism, these things they say are safe, the Committee on
Commerce says they are safe, but when they were developing this--and I
had a conversation today with the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Upton],
the lead sponsor of the bill from the Committee on Commerce, and I
asked him when they were developing the transport mechanism they
developed these dry casks to store them. I asked him, are these dry
casks safe for up to 100 years? And he said, yes, they are safe for up
to 100 years. And I said why not leave them right where they are
instead of transporting them and talking about the potential accidents?
Mr. Speaker, I would ask the gentleman from Nevada if he sees any
reason at all for transporting this dangerous waste through cities like
St. Louis and Denver and Los Angeles and many other cities like Atlanta
across the country?
Mr. GIBBONS. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time again, that is exactly
what the problem is here that we are facing today. It is a poor policy
developed in the 1980's in order to provide an industry with an escape
mechanism for something which we should have changed when we allowed
them to build these nuclear reactors. Notwithstanding the issue of the
nuclear reactor, what we are talking about is what should the policy of
this country be with regard to the storage of nuclear waste?
Current technology today indicates that these dry cask storage
mechanisms that are on site at the nuclear powerplants are indeed safe
for the next 25 to 75 years, if not a longer period of time for the
storage of nuclear waste. During that time we have talked to a number
of physicists from MIT to Brigham Young University regarding how we
could better handle the nuclear waste; rather than just burying it in
the ground to an uncertain fate or transporting it across this country
with an exposure of danger to all the American people in its path, and
that is twofold. One is recycling and reprocessing the material to be
used by the reactors that are still in existence or, No. 2, developing
the research and the technology that will allow us to change the
radioactive hazard of the material.
One physicist that I talked to, a professor from a university in
Utah, indicated that he has just recently developed technology that
will allow this material, the radioactive waste, to be converted
through his process into titanium and copper, to relatively inert but
precious metals that we can use in the industries around this country.
But it is a far better policy to convert the nonuseful, very dangerous,
very deadly toxic substance of nuclear waste into a rather inert
valuable metal of titanium and copper. That is the policy that this
country ought to be developing rather than the dangerous transportation
and uncertain burial.
Mr. ENSIGN. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman would yield further, could
the gentleman possibly address what seems to be happening in the
Congress? We have talked about many different parts of the science,
whether it be on site, dry cask storage being the best storage up to 50
years. Second, the gentleman mentioned some type of recycling,
reprocessing this waste. Even if the new technologies the gentleman
talked about are not developed, there are older technologies currently
in the works in Great Britain, in France, and in Sweden, and they are
doing it very safely and they have obviously a much better nuclear
power industry in those countries.
So when we are looking at what is driving this policy in this
country, I believe and the gentleman's comments on this would be
appreciated, from my perspective I see several things happening. First
of all, Members of Congress that have nuclear reactors in their
districts, they want to get the wastes out of their State. But
probably, and most significantly, the driving force behind this is the
nuclear power industry, because the nuclear power industry right now
only has nuclear powerplants that are going to last 20 to 30 years from
now. After that, if we left it where it is, they would be responsible
for storing this waste and paying for that storage.
If the Yucca Mountain or the interim storage facility is built in
Nevada, would the case not be that ratepayers and the nuclear power
industry no longer would have to pay the bill, but now the taxpayers
from across the country, even in those States which do not have any
nuclear reactors, all of those States and the taxpayers in those States
would be left holding the bill? So not only do people have to have this
stuff transported through their State when they never had nuclear power
in their State, but they are also going to have to foot the bill to pay
for the storage of this stuff for thousands of years.
Mr. GIBBONS. Mr. Speaker, again reclaiming my time, I would like to
point out something specifically. The gentleman raised absolutely an
important question that fails to be asked and answered publicly, and I
am glad he brought the subject up.
Yes, indeed, what we see today, for example let us take the State of
Connecticut. It has four nuclear reactors and for the problem of safety
they have shut those nuclear reactors down. They are not generating
nuclear waste anymore, but they have it sitting in this dry cask
storage or on site. They want to get it out of their backyard because
the nuclear power company sees a serious problem and it is called a
``stranded capital'' problem. It will ultimately have to be responsible
for the nuclear waste that that industry, that powerplants generated,
unless it transfers that to the gullible taxpayer to take care of it.
And that is what is driving this.
[[Page H9551]]
If we look here, this chart provides a very insightful window on what
is taking place in the nuclear industry. As the gentleman said, every
powerplant that is in America today, due to its shelf life or operating
life, is scheduled to shut down within the next 20 years or so. This
nuclear waste takes 10,000 years to at least get through a half-life of
most of it. They have been charging their customers a mill rate on the
electricity generated to store this. And it has generated a trust fund.
This indicates the balance by the mill rate paid by the end user of the
electricity for that storage of about $600 million.
But if we take the time from 1995 and spread it out, as those
powerplants shut down the mill rate drops off. In other words, the fund
balance goes to zero because expenses are still taking place. Well,
it is that timeframe out there when the power plants are no longer
producing electricity and those powerplants are no longer bringing in
that revenue that that fund balance is zero. Well, guess who gets to
pick up that fund difference for the storage, the monitoring, and the
handling of that nuclear waste? The taxpayer.
If I may say so, the cost of storage on site today has been told to
us by the nuclear contractors who are capable in this field and have
the knowledge of this field, but the cost of securing that material on
site, where it is at even for the next 100, 75 to 100 years is about
$300 million. And giving them the benefit of the doubt, add another
$100 million in it, $400 million, even if they were wrong, the cost of
shipping it, just shipping it across this country from the east coast
to Yucca Mountain, is not $300 million, but $2.3 billion. Well, there
is no way $2.3 billion is going to come out of this waste fund. So who
picks that tab up? The taxpayers.
Mr. Speaker, this is an unfunded mandate by a nuclear power industry
that wants the taxpayers to pick up the tab.
Mr. ENSIGN. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman would yield, speaking of
what the taxpayer is going to end up holding the bag on, the Committee
on Commerce in its infinite wisdom, Republicans and Democrats alike in
the Committee on Commerce, and correct me if I am wrong on this, from
what I understand in reading the bill, and we checked with many sources
that agree with this, if we had a driver of one of these trucks that
was going through, say, Denver, CO, the driver of the truck happens to
be drunk, happens to be coming through during the evening one time
barreling down and ends up crashing through an apartment building
killing x amount of children and adults, even though that person should
be held totally responsible and that company should be held totally
responsible, not only do we have the loss of life but we have an
incredible environmental disaster.
Mr. Speaker, I have heard that this company, because of what the
Committee on Commerce did, that this company will not be held liable,
that the financial end of this will fully be picked up by the taxpayer.
Mr. Speaker, I would ask the gentleman, is that correct?
Mr. GIBBONS. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman is correct. It is absolutely
mind boggling and the answer to his question is yes. Under the current
law, and the laws that they want to pass with regard to this, we are
indemnifying the transportation companies. They are going to haul this
stuff clear across America and what do they have for responsibility or
accountability? Zero, zip, nada, nothing.
There is nothing that says they cannot go out and hire somebody who
has never driven a truck before to haul this stuff around. If they
crash off one of these bridges or leave the truck in the middle of a
railway and they create a nuclear accident, that company that hired
them, who should have known better, who had responsibility to do that,
who had accountability for any other accident at any other department
or any other material in America for any damage or environmental
problem would be liable for that.
Mr. ENSIGN. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman would yield, I heard the
gentleman from Nevada speak this morning in front of the Committee on
Rules on the cost of the potential cleanup if we had one of these
accidents with leakage in an area. Could the gentleman address the cost
of cleaning up one of those environmental disasters?
Mr. GIBBONS. Mr. Speaker, this is a Freeland, MI, picture of a train
accident. Just say this accident occurred somewhere near one of those
communities. Say it was Denver, CO; Kansas City; St. Louis, just name
the place the stuff is going to go.
Mr. ENSIGN. Salt Lake City.
Mr. GIBBONS. You bet. An accident like this, if it even allowed a
fraction of the radioactive material out of these casks, would
contaminate an area that they estimate would be as large as 4 square
miles. Cleanup of that 4-square-mile area would cost nearly $19
billion. That is billion with a ``B'' dollars. Because every structure
on it in that 4 square miles would have to be razed. The soil,
depending upon the penetration of the cesium and other parts of the
nuclear reactor content, if they penetrated the soil would also have to
be removed. And it would be years before they could actually certify
that they have cleaned up that area.
Put that in downtown Denver, put that in downtown Cleveland, and put
that in downtown St. Louis on the Mississippi River and guess what we
have got? We have a national catastrophe within which the Superfund
that we have created to handle environmental cleanup would never be
able to even address in its wildest, richest moments, let alone the
fighting and the attorneys that would take the money.
Mr. ENSIGN. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman would yield, this possibly
could be why every major environmental group in the United States
opposes this legislation.
I have heard Newt Gingrich lately talk about that he wants to be
friendly to the environment. I think that Newt, the Committee on
Commerce, and the rest of the people supporting this bill, both
Republicans and Democrats alike, because make no mistake about it, this
has been a bipartisan effort to bring nuclear waste, transporting it
across so many different communities and across this country, across 43
States, that they have to look themselves in the mirror and say, ``Why
is every major environmental group opposing this legislation?''
Mr. Speaker, I think that we have heard the answers today. It is
because it can be such a potentially damaging incident to our
environment if we end up with an accident occurring during the
transporting of this waste.
I thank my friend from Nevada. I have to go catch a plane back to our
lovely State. I thank the gentleman for allowing me to participate in
this special order.
{time} 1515
Mr. GIBBONS. I thank the gentleman from Nevada for joining me in this
dialog here with regard to the hazards of H.R. 1270. I appreciate his
support. I appreciate his eloquence and his delivery of this
information.
I would like to continue the rest of my time to help educate the
American public a little more about the hazards about what is taking
place. I know many of my colleagues today, on their way in to work,
might have driven down 395, taken the House or Senate exit here over to
the Capitol, and could have noticed one of those big red signs that
say, no hazardous material transported here. That is because it is not
in my backyard are we going to have them transport this material. That
is because they do not want it here. It is the classic NIMBY syndrome.
But if you look at the transportation of nuclear waste in Maryland,
guess what? To those people who do not want nuclear waste in our
Nation's Capital, it is actually going to go right through the Nation's
Capital, in fact, right through the center of the Nation's Capital;
that is, Union Station, just down the street, part of the railway
transportation scheme for transportation of nuclear waste on this
route.
In addition to that, let me talk a little more about what was brought
up about hazards of this material and why the American public is being
duped in this regard. If we want to take standards and use sound
scientific evidence to establish hazards of materials, then all we have
to look at is some of our previous experience in the legislative
history of this material and come up with a basis of what is taking
place.
First of all, the Environmental Protection Agency has established the
number of millirems per year that is allowable in drinking water. And
that
[[Page H9552]]
is 4, 4 millirems per year is available to be safe in drinking water in
our country. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission says, well, we will up
it a little bit, for a low-level nuclear waste site, you can be exposed
to 25 millirems a year and still be healthy.
EPA again, under the waste isolation pilot project plant in New
Mexico, where they are taking high level nuclear waste and treating it
in storage there as a pilot project, they have got a whopping 15
millirems per year. An independent spent nuclear storage facility is
estimated to have 25 millirems per year, and the interim storage
exposure range is about 10.3.
Under 1270, H.R. 1270, all of those standards, the EPA standards do
not have to be met. All of the safety guarantees that we have got
environmentally around this country do not have to be met. In fact,
they guarantee that they will exceed 100 millirems per year in the
transportation of nuclear waste.
Mr. Speaker, absolutely incredible that we could have the American
public be duped by the nuclear power industry into accepting this
material.
Now, we have heard a lot recently about the site or the location
where this material is going to be placed, in a mountain in southern
Nevada. Theoretically it is dry, no problem with storing it there.
After all, people only live miles away.
Mr. Speaker, let me tell you, from a scientific basis, after all, I
think I am qualified inasmuch as I have a degree in mining geology, I
have studied it. I have a master's degree. I understand some of the
hazards with regard to geologic settings.
Yucca Mountain did not become a safe storage site unless you take the
standards and you keep changing and reducing the bar and the acceptable
level downward and downward and downward. Yucca Mountain did not get to
be Yucca Mountain because of a stable geotectonic event. It became
Yucca Mountain due to faulting and geologic volcanic activity which is
currently active today. Numerous faulting in the area exists and has
continued even today with 621 seismic events of a magnitude greater
than 2.5 within a 50-mile radius over the last year. That is
incredible. There are at least 33 known earthquake faults in Yucca
Mountain itself, this little piece of land that they want to put this.
A National Science Foundation study showed that previous testing at
the Nevada test site, located 20 miles away, had released plutonium
into the surrounding dry rock during one of the underground testings.
As a result, they wanted to study that plutonium, very dangerous, half-
life much longer than uranium, enriched uranium, to see what the
migration into the groundwater would be. Thinking that it would not
have gone anywhere in the last 20 years, it has gone nearly a mile. It
has migrated a mile. That is 5,000 feet.
Well, 10,000 feet below that is the water aquifer, a huge aquifer for
all of the Southwest, including Las Vegas, a city of 1.2 million
people, as well as other surrounding communities in the area.
This tells us one thing, that the standards by which they are judging
Yucca Mountain are wrong. It is not geologically safe. It is not
geologically stable. The transportation and migration of radioactive
nuclides through the rock, through the soil and into the groundwater is
more than just an expectation. It is an inevitability. It will occur.
We have today probably one of the greatest opportunities to stop this
nuisance, to stop this nonsense, to change the policy of this country,
to change the idea of sticking it in the ground and walking away from
it.
As we talked earlier, the cost of transportation, seven times more
expensive than storage on site where it is at. You pick the difference
up. You pick up that $2.3 billion. It comes out of your pocket, takes
away from your children's education, takes away from your highways,
takes away from anything, the defense of this Nation. That is $2.3
billion out of your pocket just to move it versus 300 million that the
industry itself could pay to store it for the next 100 years while
technology is developed to change the hazard of this material so that
we do not have to bury it.
They say they have built a storage site that will last. I defy them
to answer me how they know that. We in this country have never built
anything to last longer than 1,000 years. We have never been in
existence for 1,000 years. The Egyptians built the pyramids 3,500 years
ago. They are not lasting. What is it that they expect to see, 1,000,
2,000 or 5,000 years from now when they come across this cavernous
Yucca Mountain site where they have buried this nuclear waste?
Who knows what we will find at that point in time, if it is
accessible, if it has not erupted or some cataclysmic activity
destroyed or changed the site itself. I wonder what the warnings will
look like 1,000 years from now that say, do not dig here. We buried
high-level nuclear waste.
What sort of paint will they put on the sign that will last for 1,000
years? Will they chisel it in stone and place it at the entry? Will
1,000 years or 2,000 years from now allow us to have that warning
available to those people, if there are people, who may stumble upon
that area? We do not know. And that is the question of the day. What do
we know? We do not know what it will be like. We do know we have the
ability to change the policy today, to ask that we go forward with
research and development, that we go forward with science to change the
hazard of this material.
H.R. 1270 is the transportation of nuclear waste across America. We
talked earlier about the odds of an accident. River Front Times, June
12 through the 14, 1996 said it very clearly: No matter how slim the
odds of an accident, the potential consequences of such a move are
cataclysmic. Under the plan, tons of radioactive material would likely
pass through the St. Louis area by either truck or rail a few times a
week for the next 30 years. Each cask would contain the radiological
equivalent of 200 Hiroshima bombs. Altogether, the nuclear dunnage
would be enough to kill everybody on Earth.
Maybe a little bit eccentric, maybe a little bit exaggerative in
terms of the cataclysmic event that might occur, but certainly not
impossible, not farfetched.
Whether it is a terrorist act on the railway transportation of this
material or a simple accident along the highway or railway with this
material, you, the Americans, are both at risk economically,
environmentally, personally.
I think it is up to America to advise their representatives in
Congress of their opposition to H.R. 1270, the Nuclear Waste Policy Act
of 1997. We have a chance today to educate our Members through your
phone calls, through your letters, requesting that they oppose H.R.
1270. Do not let this opportunity, do not let this time go by without
taking advantage of that opportunity because your future, your
children's future and the future of this country depend on your ability
to see through the nuclear wool that the nuclear industry wants to pull
over the eyes of America.
____________________