[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 51 (Wednesday, April 14, 1999)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3673-S3676]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             NUCLEAR WASTE

  Mr. BRYAN. Mr. President, in the House Commerce Committee today, the 
Subcommittee on Energy and Power took the first step in what is fast 
becoming a futile ritual here in Congress.
  The subcommittee reported to the full committee a revised version of 
H.R. 45--the latest in a long string of legislative efforts to single 
the State of Nevada out as the dumping ground for the nuclear power 
industry's toxic high-level waste.
  The bill approved by the subcommittee today consists of a now 
familiar assault on the environment and the health and safety of 
millions of Americans, both in Nevada and along transportation routes 
throughout the Nation.
  It requires the expenditure of billions of taxpayer dollars on a 
completely unnecessary and misguided ``interim storage'' facility in 
Nevada.
  It makes a mockery of the National Environmental Policy Act process, 
and preempts every local, State, and Federal statute or regulation that 
interferes with the nuclear power industry's crusade to move high-level 
waste to Nevada, no matter what the costs or consequences may be.
  The bill is an unprecedented power grab by the nuclear power 
industry, trampling on the most fundamental states' rights.
  The bill overrides years of work by the Environmental Protection 
Agency in establishing a science based radiation standard, and 
substitutes by legislative fiat a standard more than six times less 
protective than generally accepted for citizens anywhere else in the 
United States.
  By shipping waste to Nevada in advance of determining the suitability 
or licensibility of the Yucca Mountain site, the bill also irreversibly 
prejudices the scientific work at the site.
  Any hope for an objective evaluation of Yucca Mountain will be lost.
  The bill approved by the subcommittee today is an environmental and 
public health travesty.
  Fortunately, as in the past two Congresses, the bill stands no chance 
of enactment into law.
  President Clinton continues to oppose the nuclear power  industry's 
special interest legislation, and will veto the bill should it ever 
reach him.

  Even the industry knows there is absolutely no doubt of the firmness 
of the President's veto threat.
  Congress will vote to sustain the President's veto, and we will have 
once again wasted years of time and effort on a useless battle of 
wills, when we could have be working together towards an equitable, 
reasonable, and safe resolution of any legitimate grievances the 
nuclear power industry has with the federal high-level nuclear waste 
program.
  The nuclear power industry's obsession with moving its waste to off-
site, no matter what the consequences, defies all logic.
  The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the Nuclear Waste Technical Review 
Board, and the industry itself agree that the waste can be stored 
safely on site for the foreseeable future.
  Somehow, though, moving waste off-site has become the ``holy grail'' 
of the industry.
  Taking the liability for the industry's environmental travesty has 
been their only rallying cry.
  Unfortunately for the industry, commercial nuclear power's problems 
cannot be solved by waste legislation, or anything else we may do here 
in Congress.
  Nuclear power is a declining industry, unable to compete in an 
increasingly competitive electricity marketplace.
  An industry once touted as a technological marvel--one which we were 
told could produce power ``too cheap to meter'' at thousands of reactor 
sites--has turned into an aged collection of ``white elephants,'' 
struggling to keep operating.
  As the electricity marketplace moves away from the regulated 
environment, an environment which virtually guaranteed full cost 
recovery for utilities huge investments in nuclear plants, the cost of 
nuclear power continues to rise, due to increasingly expensive 
maintenance and retrofit costs to keep the plants in operation.
  While the industry likes to portray what they describe as ``radical 
environmentalists'' for its inability to compete, the true cause for 
nuclear power's demise is simple economics.
  The value of nuclear power plants in today's electricity marketplace 
has plummeted.
  Nuclear plants that do sell barely fetch any price in today's 
markets, and 21 reactors have simply been allowed to shut down.
  As the thoughtful newspaper article that I will insert in the Record 
makes pretty clear, nuclear power is an industry with no future.
  Unfortunately, the industry's last gasp, its last in a long series of 
strategic miscalculations, appears to be to

[[Page S3674]]

deposit its legacy of high-level waste in Nevada.
  Since its very inception, the nuclear power industry has shown a 
totally irresponsible lack of foresight in dealing with its highly 
toxic waste stream.
  For decades, the industry has shut its eyes to its growing volume of 
high-level waste, and continued to generate waste with absolutely no 
rational plan to manage it.
  The end result of this irresponsible lack of planning--or maybe the 
real plan all along--has been simply a demand that the commercial 
utilities be permitted to shove the waste problem off on the American 
public.
  In 1982, the industry convinced Congress to accept responsibility for 
disposing of the waste, and, ever since then, the industry's demands on 
the Federal Government, and the Treasury, have only increased.
  The nuclear power industry's surreal sense of entitlement got a jolt 
of reality last week.
  For years, the industry has saturated Congress with frightening 
scenarios of tens or hundreds of billions of dollars in supposed 
damages at the expense of the American taxpayer resulting from delays 
in the Federal Government's high-level waste program.
  Last week, the U.S. Court of Claims dismissed one of the utilities 
self-serving billion-dollar lawsuits.
  The Court told Northern States Power, which had filed a claim for 
over $1 billion, to return to DOE, and seek appropriate adjustments 
under the contract the utility had signed in the early 1980s.
  More dismissals of utilities outrageous damage claims are sure to 
follow.
  While the math leading to the industry's claims of $80-$100 billion 
in damages was always very mysterious and suspect, last week's decision 
by the Court of Claims should lay this outrageous scare tactic to rest 
for good.
  The nuclear power industry, or, more accurately, its ratepayers, do 
have some legitimate grievances with the DOE.
  Since 1990, I have introduced legislation to help the Department of 
Energy and the industry address problems created by the Department's 
inability to meet the 1998 waste acceptance deadline.
  Under this legislation, utilities would be allowed credits against 
Nuclear Waste Fund payments for the costs associated with storage of 
waste the DOE was scheduled to accept.
  Recently, numerous proposals have surfaced which call into question 
the fundamental approach of legislation such as H.R. 45 and its 
predecessors.
  On the House side, legislation has been introduced, based upon a 
previous DOE proposal, which would allow utilities to escrow Nuclear 
Waste Fund payments, and use some of the investment income from these 
escrow accounts to pay the costs of on-site storage.
  In the Senate, a proposal is being developed to seek at least a 
partial technological solution to the high-level waste problem, through 
research and development of transmutation technology.
  This week, the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research 
released a proposal which would store high-level waste on reactor 
sites, under the stewardship of a federally chartered non-profit 
corporation.
  The Secretary of Energy has his own very generous proposal to the 
utilities to address any inequities created by the DOE's failure to 
meet the 1998 deadline.
  As a settlement offer to the many utilities filing lawsuits against 
the Department, the Secretary has offered to take title to the waste at 
reactor sites.
  Under the Secretary's proposal, utilities would be relieved of both 
financial and legal responsibility for the waste, leaving full 
responsibility for the waste in the hands of the federal government.
  The Secretary's offer is more than generous. The modest adjustments 
in fees available to the utilities under the Standard Contract would be 
adequately addressed, in my view, by the Secretary's proposal.
  Several utilities, including Commonwealth Edison, one of the largest 
nuclear utilities in the nation, recognizing the futility of the 
nuclear power lobby's continued insistence on interim storage in 
Nevada, have indicated an interest in accepting the proposal.
  As the details of the proposal continue to develop, and as the 
prospects for interim storage in Nevada continue to decline, other 
utilities are sure to follow.
  In fact, for most utilities, the interim storage proposals currently 
before Congress provide little or no actual relief.
  For many utilities, even the overly optimistic 2003 deadline for the 
start of operation of an interim storage facility is too little, too 
late.
  By that time, many nuclear utilities intending to continue to operate 
nuclear plants will have already had to invest in additional on-site 
storage.
  For any of these utilities, the Secretary's offer of taking title 
provides far greater opportunity for relief than the pending 
legislation--even if the legislation had any chance of passage.
  Any utility CEO who refuses to consider the Secretary's offer to take 
title would be doing the utility's shareholders, and ratepayers, a 
grave disservice.
  Until the nuclear power industry can recognize that the tired, futile 
approach they have adopted for more than 5 years is going nowhere, and 
is merely setting a course for yet another legislation train wreck, 
Congress cannot address in any reasonable fashion whatever legitimate 
issues the industry may raise.
  It is well past the time that the industry should abandon its 
pipedream of interim storage in Nevada, and come to the table to 
negotiate an equitable financial and legal solution to its dispute with 
the federal government over its high-level waste.
  In case there is any question of the prospects for enactment for the 
bill marked up today by the Energy and Power Subcommittee, I will have 
printed in the Record a letter from the Secretary of Energy, dated 
yesterday, which puts the committee on notice that any legislation 
establishing interim storage in Nevada will be vetoed by the President.
  I ask unanimous consent that the letter from the Secretary of Energy, 
dated April 13, 1999, be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the letter was ordered to be printed in the 
Record, as follows:

                                      The Secretary of Energy,

                                   Washington, DC, April 13, 1999.
     Hon. Joe Barton,
     Chairman, Subcommittee on Energy and Power, Commerce 
         Committee, House of Representatives, Washington, DC.
       Dear Mr. Chairman: I was disappointed to learn that your 
     subcommittee will hold a markup tomorrow on interim storage 
     legislation, H.R. 45, the Nuclear Waste Policy Act Amendments 
     of 1999. I understand that there have been some discussions 
     between the Department's staff and your staff about my 
     alternative proposal to take title to spent fuel from 
     utilities at reactor sites, and I had hoped that some 
     agreement could be reached on this alternative prior to the 
     subcommittee taking action on legislation. I continue to 
     believe that taking title to spent fuel at reactor sites 
     could provide a basis for resolving many of the utilities' 
     concerns, particularly in light of the recent decision by the 
     U.S. Court of Federal Claims that the standard contract 
     provides an adequate remedy.
       I appreciate the fact that your substitute includes 
     authority for the Department of Energy to take title to spent 
     fuel at reactor sites and provisions intended to minimize the 
     potential for continued litigation over the Department's 
     contracts with utilities. The Department has not done a 
     detailed analysis of these provisions of your substitute, but 
     they appear to address many of the Department's concerns 
     raised when I appeared before your subcommittee on March 12, 
     1999.
       Let me reiterate, however, the Administration's opposition 
     to any legislation that would make a decision to place 
     interim storage in Nevada prior to completion of the 
     scientific and technical work necessary to determine where a 
     final repository will be located.
       As you are well aware, the Department has completed 
     considerable technical work at Yucca Mountain and submitted 
     its viability assessment to the Congress and the President in 
     December 1998. While the viability assessment found no 
     technical showstoppers at Yucca Mountain, it identified a 
     number of scientific issues that remain to be addressed 
     before the Department will be able to make a judgment on the 
     suitability and licensability of the site. Making a decision 
     now to place interim storage in Nevada, in advance of 
     completion of the scientific and technical work at Yucca 
     Mountain, would prejudge the scientific work, would undermine 
     public confidence that a repository evaluation will be 
     objective and technically sound, and would jeopardize the 
     credibility of any future decisions related to Yucca 
     Mountain. It also does not make sense to transport spent fuel 
     across the country until we know where the final repository 
     will be.

[[Page S3675]]

       As we have discussed, both the Administration and the 
     Congress have been aware for some time that the overall 
     constraints of the federal budget process have the potential 
     to limit the availability of funding for the nuclear waste 
     program in the out-years. The Administration strongly opposes 
     provisions that would take the Nuclear Waste Fund off-budget 
     without fully paying for it, and that would exempt this 
     action from the pay-as-you-go provisions of the Balanced 
     Budget Act. However, I would like to continue to work with 
     you to assure that the repository program continues to be 
     adequately funded and that the revenues raised by the nuclear 
     waste fee remain available to complete the job of safe 
     management and disposal of nuclear waste.
       Finally, the Administration also strongly objects to 
     provisions of the bill that would weaken existing 
     environmental standards by preemption of Federal, State, and 
     local laws.
       For the reasons stated above, the Administration remains 
     opposed to the proposed interim storage legislation, and I 
     would recommend a veto if legislation containing these 
     provisions were presented to the President.
       The Department has been discussing my alternative proposal 
     to take title to spent fuel at reactor sites with a number of 
     utilities and other interested parties, and we will continue 
     to do so. In the very near future, I hope to have a meeting 
     with a group of utility executives whose companies have 
     indicated an interest in discussing the proposal further. I 
     will keep you informed of our continued efforts to reach 
     agreement with the utilities on my proposal, and I look 
     forward to working with you on these issues.
           Yours sincerely,
                                                  Bill Richardson.

  Mr. BRYAN. In addition, the letter outlines numerous other 
environmental and fiscal concerns that the administration has with the 
revised version of H.R. 45 and makes it absolutely clear that the bill 
moving through the House in no way removes the administration's strong 
objection to this legislation. I will also have printed for the Record 
a letter from President Clinton earlier this year which repeats his 
veto threat in very clear and uncertain terms. Mr. President, I ask 
unanimous consent that letter to this Senator, dated February 16, 1999, 
and signed by the President of the United States, be printed in the 
Record.
  There being no objection, the letter was ordered to be printed in the 
Record, as follows:

                                              The White House,

                                Washington, DC, February 16, 1999.
     Hon. Richard H. Bryan,
     U.S. Senate, Washington, DC.
       Dear Dick: Thank you for your letter requesting a 
     restatement of my Administration's position on legislation 
     siting a centralized interim high-level nuclear waste storage 
     facility in Nevada.
       As we have stated repeatedly in the past, if legislation 
     such as that passed by the Senate or the House in the 105th 
     Congress were presented to me, I would veto it. Such 
     legislation would undermine the credibility of our nuclear 
     waste disposal program, by, in effect, designating a 
     specified site for an interim storage facility before 
     adequate scientific information regarding the suitability of 
     that site as a permanent geological repository is available.
       Thank you again for your interest in this important issue.
           Sincerely,
                                                             Bill.

  Mr. BRYAN. Mr. President, the bill approved by the House Energy and 
Power Subcommittee today is an environmental and fiscal travesty with 
absolutely no chance of enactment.
  I urge Congress to once again reject this misguided and dangerous 
legislation.
  I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record an article that 
appeared in the Las Vegas Review-Journal dated March 28, 1999, which 
outlines the dreadful prospect that the nuclear power industry has for 
any future, based upon the economics as I outlined in my statement.
  There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                Cost, Not Safety, Imperils Nuclear Power

                             (By Jeff Donn)

       SAN ONOFRE, Calif.--Surfers have been riding the thundering 
     breakers of this beach since the days of the steam 
     automobile, long before anyone cracked an atom to make 
     electricity.
       Joe Higgs adopted this beach as his second home even before 
     bulldozers scraped away 1.5 million cubic yards of sandstone 
     bluff for the first of three nuclear reactors. He and the San 
     Onofre nuclear plant are uneasy neighbors to this day, 
     peering at each other through barbed-wire fencing.
       ``I've learned to live with that. I love surfing, and I 
     love the ocean so much,'' he said, looking up at the plant's 
     three protective domes designed to seal in radioactivity 
     during an accident.
       But then he added: ``I wish it wasn't here, to be 
     truthful.''
       The way the nuclear industry is declining, his wish might 
     yet come true.
       Since the Three Mile Island accident in Middletown, PA, 20 
     years ago today, American attitudes toward nuclear power have 
     been characterized by paralyzing ambivalence and mood swings. 
     Under public pressure, the industry and government have 
     profoundly reworked safeguards at tremendous effort and cost. 
     Warily, the public has watched 51 commercial reactors hum to 
     life in the years since the accident. All of them had been 
     planned before Three Mile Island; none has been ordered 
     since.
       Virtually no one in the industry can imagine building a 
     plant in the foreseeable future.
       It is not runaway chain reactions but exploding costs that 
     have jeopardized this $43 billion a year business. With 
     barely a whimper, the nation has let 21 atomic reactors shut 
     down. That's 17 percent of its total of 125. They are victims 
     of the intertwined costs of safety changes and heavy 
     staffing, building debt, and mounting expense to replace 
     parts, clean up abandoned sites, and store radioactive waste.
       Cranking up pressure, some states are making nuclear power 
     stand on its own as they drop guaranteed electric rates for 
     power monopolies to inject competition into energy 
     production.
       The nuclear industry still supplies about one-fifth of the 
     country's power--second only to coal. But the U.S. Department 
     of Energy predicts it could wither away almost entirely 
     during the next 20 years. By just about any standard of 
     policy or politics, atomic power is looking like a lesson in 
     energy wasted.
       ``We over-promised and under-delivered. We created fears 
     that are not appropriate, and the industry handled it all in 
     a very defensive, closed way,'' said consultant Roger Gale, 
     president of the Washington International Energy Group. ``We 
     took a good technology, and we blew it.''
       It's a remarkable turnaround for a technology that began 
     with such hope. When the lights flickered on at Moorpark Nov. 
     12, 1957, the country was electrified.
       CBS television captured the moment for history. The town of 
     1,146 people went black when it was cut off from Southern 
     California Edison Co.'s conventional power grid. A few 
     seconds later, thanks to the company's little atomic reactor 
     in the Santa Susana Mountains, Moorpark and the nation awoke 
     to the age of atoms for peace.
       National leaders were eager to redeem the research and 
     destructive power of the atom bomb. They promoted and helped 
     finance the first round of nuclear energy plants and dreamed 
     aloud of electricity so cheap it would hardly be worth 
     metering, maybe 1,000 reactors by the year 2000.
       In the 1970s, public worries about air pollution, the Arab 
     oil embargo and the limits of fossil fuel supplies boosted 
     the inherent high-tech appeal of nuclear power.
       The backbone of the new industry's work force came from the 
     ranks of the nuclear Navy--a gung-ho breed that later proved 
     inept at dealing with a doubting public.
       Decades of environmental and economic bruises have 
     thoroughly rubbed off the veneer of atomic technology as the 
     wonder boy of energy.
       Public support for nuclear energy has slipped 70 percent 
     before Three Mile Island to 43 percent in 1997, according to 
     Roper Starch Worldwide, the polling company. Though some 
     still view the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission as too cozy 
     with the industry, the agency sees itself primarily as a 
     safety enforcer, not a booster.
       ``Nobody is going to order a new nuclear plant: too much 
     political pressure and environmental pressure, and your 
     capital is at risk for so long,'' said Chris Neil, an 
     industry consultant with Resource Data International. 
     ``Nobody wants to take that risk.''
       Southern California Edison is deciding whether to sell its 
     two big 1,100-megawatt reactors still active at San Onofre 
     south of Los Angeles. California's 30 million people draw 
     about one-quarter of their electricity from atomic plants, 
     more than any other state. But that could change as 
     California regulators complete the transition to competitive 
     energy making.
       ``I don't think nuclear has changed that much. I think the 
     world around it has changed,'' said Harold Ray, the utility's 
     chief of generation.
       Kara Thorndike, 14, sprawled in shorts on a blanket at San 
     Onofre beach, busy with homework and oblivious to the atomic 
     plant just a few hundred yards away.
       ``They have to be safe,'' she said. ``If they weren't, I 
     don't think they'd put it in a public place.''
       Even strong critics say the industry has greatly bolstered 
     safety since the partial meltdown of a reactor core at Three 
     Mile Island.
       The nation's worst nuclear accident released little 
     radioactivity into the environment, but it exposed dangers 
     that shook government regulators into ordering expanded 
     training of nuclear operators. Plants were redesigned to give 
     operators better information on the state of reactors. 
     Training control rooms were built identical to the real ones, 
     down to the carpeting. Emergency command centers sprang up 
     and connected to hot lines at the Nuclear Regulatory 
     Commission.

[[Page S3676]]

       While basically on target, the government's reaction might 
     have at times been overzealous, according to William Travers, 
     the new director of the watchdog agency, who oversaw the 
     Three Mile Island cleanup through much of the 1980s.
       Today, he said, the agency is ``looking to reduce the 
     unnecessary burden.''
       Regulators are stripping back some rules, saying they do 
     not really bear on safety. Using downgraded risk predictions, 
     the agency allows more limited testing of some plant 
     materials and has a fast track for re-licensing old plants to 
     help the industry compete.
       In reaction, critics are again fretting over safety. A 
     January report by the General Accounting Office, the 
     investigative arm of Congress, said ``safety margins may be 
     compromised'' as markets turn competitive.
       Marybeth Howard, who markets computer hardware, was sunning 
     herself at San Onofre beach and basking in thoughts of 
     abundant electricity.
       ``I've got the lights on all the time,'' she said. ``I've 
     got the stero cranked. I've got the microwave and the 
     dishwasher on. Everything! I don't care how much the bill is! 
     I don't even really pay attention.''
       Her nonchalance sounds quaint in a world where ``energy 
     efficient'' and ``energy conservation'' long ago entered 
     common speech.
       In the 1970s, the national appetite for power grew about 7 
     percent annually, but the growth rate has shrunk to about 2 
     percent a year--even with the strong economy. That makes it 
     harder for utilities to pay off nuclear construction debts.
       In some cases, big debt paid for little but frustration. 
     The $5.5 billion Shoreham plant in Long Island, crippled by 
     safety fears, never opened.
       Only two operating plants so far have asked to renew their 
     40-year licenses. The licenses of 56 reactors expire in the 
     next 20 years, but industry officials acknowledge some likely 
     will close long before.
       For one thing, it often takes more than twice as many 
     workers to run a nuclear plant as an equivalent one with 
     fossil fuel.
       For another, aging nuclear plants increasingly need big-
     ticket replacement of generators, turbines and even reactor 
     cores made brittle by decades of neutron bombardment.
       San Onofre has been installing new turbines for its two 
     active units at about $30 million each. Owners of Yankee Rowe 
     in Massachusetts, the granddaddy of plants, shut down in 1992 
     after 32 years instead of buying a new $23 million reactor 
     vessel to cradle its radioactive core.
       Meanwhile, in states such as Pennsylvania, regulators are 
     expected to bar utilities from recovering much of their 
     nuclear construction debt through consumer rates during the 
     changeover to competitive markets.
       Some in the industry embrace two plant sales in the works 
     as a sign of hope. An international partnership has even 
     arranged to buy the Three Mile Island reactor that did not 
     melt down and later came back on line.
       But it is going for just $23 million. It was built for $400 
     million.
       ``It appears to me the way to sell a nuclear plant is to 
     pay someone to take it off your hands,'' said Kennedy Maize, 
     editor of the Electricity Daily trade newspaper.
       The General Accounting Office says up to 26 plants appear 
     vulnerable to shutdown simply because their production costs 
     are higher than the projected price of electricity.
       The industry is banking heavily on an expanding market for 
     U.S. nuclear technology in Japan, Taiwan and other Asian 
     countries during the next 20 years. France depends on nuclear 
     plants for 78 percent of its power.
       Environmental distaste, though, has dimmed nuclear 
     prospects in Germany, Sweden and Italy.
       Much of the future growth is predicted in developing 
     nations without the centralized grids of power lines to 
     accommodate big nuclear plants. Fear of spreading material 
     and know-how for nuclear weapons is also braking nuclear 
     energy to other lands.
       ``It's one of those things that seems to be good for a 
     while, and then something else comes along,'' said nuclear 
     physicist Thomas Johansson, who oversees international energy 
     development at the United Nations.
       Many analysts say the nation could weather a slow death of 
     nuclear power fairly well.
       They say natural gas, which supplies about 10 percent of 
     power, can and will do much more. Dozens of gas generators 
     are under construction.
       But renewable resources, such as solar and wind power, have 
     progressed slowly.
       Backers of nuclear power say the nation can't attain 
     international limits on greenhouse gases without atomic 
     energy.
       James Hewlett, an economist with the Energy Department says 
     coal might be needed to pick up some slack. But Daniel 
     Becker, an energy expert at the Sierra Club environmental 
     group, says that's like ``giving up smoking and taking up 
     crack.''
       Maybe nuclear power was fundamentally flawed: steeped in 
     danger and, as environmentalists sometimes suggest, the most 
     expensive way ever devised to boil water. Maybe nuclear 
     plants are just too big and centralized to thrive in an era 
     of smaller-is-better.
       But others say a potentially enduring technology was simply 
     mishandled.

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, will the Senator yield for a question?
  Mr. BRYAN. Yes, I am happy to yield for a question.
  Mr. REID. I am very happy, I say to my friend from Nevada, that I was 
here on the floor when he came to bring us the bad news. But the 
question I direct to my friend from Nevada--and there is no one who has 
worked harder on this issue than he has--is that it is my understanding 
that there is a consensus being developed by the administration and the 
Secretary of Energy, a number of the large utilities and somewhat 
smaller utilities around the country, and Members of Congress who have 
never been on this issue who are thinking that maybe the best thing to 
do is have the United States assume ownership of the nuclear waste and, 
in effect, take care of it on-site until there is a permanent 
depository. Is it true that there is an intensive development around 
here in that regard?
  Mr. BRYAN. The Senator from Nevada is absolutely correct. I think 
there is a shaft of light at the end of the tunnel, if I may use that 
metaphor, in which a number of thoughtful Members of Congress, working 
together with the administration and some responsible nuclear 
utilities, have come to recognize the futility of the process that my 
friend, our senior colleague, knows only too well, and to try to work 
out something that addresses the legitimate concerns of ratepayers in 
States where nuclear reactors exist and yet does not devastate our 
environmental laws and create a situation that is costly and dangerous 
to the American public.
  Mr. REID. The last question I direct to my friend is this: Is it also 
true that this is being done outside of the auspices and outside of the 
control and direction of the two Senators from Nevada?
  Mr. BRYAN. The Senator is correct again. These are suggestions that 
have been generated by thoughtful Members in the Senate, and in the 
House, by the administration, and increasingly the dialog has indicated 
that, again, what I would call responsible and reasonable nuclear 
utilities are engaged in a dialog. And I am hopeful, as I know my 
senior colleague is, that we can avoid this train wreck that occurs 
annually in the Congress and work out something that deals responsibly 
and legitimately with the concerns that ratepayers have in States with 
these reactors, but does not involve this incredibly foolish effort to 
transport 77,000 metric tons of high-level nuclear waste to the State 
of Nevada unnecessarily. And, as the Senator from Nevada knows, that is 
simply not going to happen, because the administration and the 
Department of Energy's Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board all agree 
that such an approach is unnecessary and unwise.
  I thank my colleague for his thoughtful and insightful questions, and 
I look forward to working with him in developing a responsible approach 
to resolving this issue.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Voinovich). The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Gregg). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, am I correct the pending business is the 
conference on the budget for the year 2000?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The conference has not been called up yet.


              unanimous-consent agreement--h. con. res. 68

  Mr. DOMENICI. I ask unanimous consent the Senate now proceed to the 
conference report to accompany the budget resolution and, when the 
Senate reconvenes on Thursday, there be 5 hours remaining for debate as 
provided under the statute. This has been cleared on the other side.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

                          ____________________