[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 24 (Wednesday, February 10, 1999)]
[House]
[Pages H577-H578]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                  NEVADA IS TARGET FOR NUCLEAR PAYLOAD

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Pease). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 6, 1999, the gentlewoman from Nevada (Ms. Berkley) is 
recognized for 10 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Ms. BERKLEY. Mr. Speaker, I come before my colleagues to give voice 
to the well-founded fears and concerns of the citizens of the Las Vegas 
Valley, which is my home district, and the citizens of the entire State 
of Nevada.
  Over one and a half million Nevadans live within an hour or so drive 
from the so-called temporary high level nuclear dump proposed in H.R. 
45. This bill would dump over 70,000 tons of an incredibly lethal 
substance at one location in southern Nevada. Those Nevadans, mothers 
like myself, fathers, sons, daughters and grandparents, deserve the 
same health and safety protections as every American.
  H.R. 45 would deny equal protection under the law to the citizens of 
Nevada and to future Nevada generations. But I will also discuss how 
this bill places Americans in all parts of this country at risk.
  When one lives in a State that has been singled out as the target for 
a nuclear payload, he gives close attention to the issue. Nevadans know 
just how toxic, how dangerous, how menacing high-level nuclear waste 
really is. To give my colleagues some idea, a person standing next to 
an unshielded spent nuclear fuel assembly would get a fatal dose of 
radiation within three minutes.
  Under H.R. 45, the concentrated level of deadly radiation in one 
place in my home State staggers the imagination. H.R. 45 would force 
all of the Nation's high-level waste on the people of one State, a 
State where there is not even one nuclear reactor.
  For nearly two decades the nuclear industry and the Department of 
Energy have tried to convince Nevadans that high-level nuclear waste 
transportation and storage is safe. Their argument basically is, we 
will just stuff this stuff right into metal cans, screw the lids on 
tight, and there is nothing to worry about.
  Well, what is wrong with this picture? Well, if those cans of nuclear 
waste are so safe, why do they have to be shipped from all parts of the 
United States into the State of Nevada? That question has haunted 
Nevadans for years, and our concerns have intensified with H.R. 45.
  This bill would unleash high-level nuclear waste onto the Nation's 
highways and rail lines. It is this issue, the transportation of high-
level nuclear waste, that binds Nevadans with all Americans as 
potential victims of H.R. 45.
  Americans from all parts of the country would be exposed to 
unacceptable and unnecessary risk because they live near highways and 
railroads where nuke trucks and trains would roll. Moving nuclear waste 
to Nevada would require well over 100,000 long-haul shipments. Nuclear 
waste will be speeding around the clock every day for nearly 30 years 
on our roads and rails. This should sound a national alarm.
  The deadly cargo will intrude on 43 States and hundreds of cities and 
towns across our nation. Fifty million Americans live within just a 
mile and a half of shipping routes. The waste will rumble through 
Birmingham, Alabama; Laramie, Wyoming; Portland, Maine; and the suburbs 
of Los Angeles; Miami, Florida; Kansas City; and St. Louis, Missouri. 
In short, nuclear waste will be on the move all over the country all 
the time for 30 years.
  The Department of Transportation counted more than 99,000 incidents 
in which hazardous materials were released from trucks and trains from 
1987 to 1996, causing 356 major injuries and 114 deaths. The Department 
of Energy has described a plausible crash scenario involving high 
impact and fire that would contaminate an area of 42 square miles with 
radioactive debris. It is truly horrifying to picture this happening in 
a populated area.
  We have been repeatedly told that shipping nuclear waste across the 
country and stashing it at a dump site is safe. But let us take a brief 
look at the history of how the Federal Government has handled nuclear 
projects. The lands around nuclear installations at Hanford, 
Washington, Rocky Flats, Colorado, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, Fernald, Ohio, 
are contaminated. The GAO concluded that 124 of our 127 nuclear sites 
have been mismanaged by the DOE.
  Nevadans do not buy this ``don't worry, be happy'' attitude towards 
radiation, and for good reason. I grew up in Nevada. Nevadans were 
proud to volunteer for the patriotic chore of playing host to above- 
and below-ground nuclear weapons testing, but the Federal Government 
never leveled with us about the risks.
  In the 1950s the Government produced films advising that if people 
just stayed indoors as clouds of fallout drifted through communities, 
everyone would be safe. As a safety measure, the Government suggested 
that a quick car wash would eliminate any pesky radioactive 
contamination.
  It seems harmless enough if it were not for the evidence of a 
disturbing increase in cancer that later traumatized these same 
communities. Harmless? Perhaps, if above-ground testing did not spread 
radioactive elements across the country.
  Supposedly safe above-ground nuclear tests were stopped when it was 
proved that radiation was winding up in the bodies of American children 
through the milk they were drinking. Underground testing was supposed 
to be the safe answer, or so the Government said. The radioactivity 
would be trapped underground, never to get out, except that some of the 
underground shafts burst open, spewing radiation into the air. Now 
scientists are finding that plutonium thought to be trapped in these 
test shafts is moving through the groundwater at alarming speed.

                              {time}  1515

  So I have a healthy skepticism about Federal nuclear programs. My 
healthy skepticism persuades me that H.R. 45 is, in fact, a Trojan 
horse for permanently dumping high level nuclear waste in Nevada.
  Make no mistake, there is nothing temporary about H.R. 45. This bill 
is a political vehicle to get the waste to Nevada, to be conveniently 
parked next door to Yucca Mountain, the site of a failing effort to 
justify a permanent dump.
  The past year has been marked by a quickening pace of scientific 
evidence that clearly eliminates Yucca Mountain as a safe place for 
nuclear waste. Water will saturate the dump. Those who thought Yucca 
Mountain would be dry for 10,000 years are stunned to discover that 
water is filtering through at an alarming rate. Yucca Mountain has 
been, is and always will be jolted by earthquakes. In recent days 
seismologists described swarms of earthquakes that rocked the area. To 
visit Yucca Mountain is to feel the earth move.
  A growing number of scientists fear that a Yucca Mountain dump 
intended to isolate deadly radioactivity forever may well explode into 
an environmental apocalypse of volcanic eruptions. It is not nice to 
fool Mother Nature. Where earthquakes, water and

[[Page H578]]

volcanic activity are permanent dangers, we must not build a high level 
nuclear dump.
  The nuclear power industry should immediately cancel the Yucca 
Mountain project. The billions of dollars coming from ratepayers would 
be better spent finding a sensible and safe solution to nuclear 
disposal. Instead we have H.R. 45. This bill exists because the nuclear 
power industry sees that the only way to keep the Yucca Mountain 
project alive is to build a temporary dump next door. With the waste 
site up at the temporary dump near Yucca Mountain, there would be a 
powerful motivation to make Yucca Mountain work out somehow.
  Under those circumstances I fear that the health and safety of 
current and future generations would be jeopardized for the sake of 
expediency. As the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board has clearly 
stated, a temporary facility at the Nevada test site could prejudice 
later decisions about the suitability of Yucca Mountain.
  H.R. 45 has its roots in expediency over public health and welfare. 
H.R. 45 throws out existing radiation safety standards and replaces 
them with dangerous levels of radiation exposure that would be, quote, 
acceptable. The temporary dump cannot meet the current standards, so 
H.R. 45 permits Nevadans to be exposed to four to six times the amount 
of radiation allowed at any other waste site. H.R. 45 allows exposure 
25 times the level set by the Safe Drinking Water Act.
  EPA administrator Carol Browner said H.R. 45 would authorize 
exposures to future generations of Nevadans which are much higher than 
those allowed for other Americans and citizens of other countries. 
Congress in 1982 called for nine potential nuclear storage sites to be 
assessed. By 1987, due to political considerations, not scientific 
findings, Yucca Mountain alone was targeted for site characterization.
  As it became increasingly clear Yucca Mountain is not suitable under 
stringent and responsible law that Congress passed in 1982, the rules 
have been repeatedly relaxed in favor of Yucca Mountain and against 
health and safety. And now comes H.R. 45, a bill which achieves nothing 
but risks the health and safety of current and future generations of 
Nevadans.
  The Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board advises that there are no 
compelling reasons to move the nuclear waste in short term. H.R. 45 
would be a terrible and needless mistake. If passed, it would be fought 
in courts by Americans across this country. I would stand with them in 
court or on the roads and rails if necessary to stop this disastrous 
policy.

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