[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 142 (Wednesday, November 1, 2000)]
[Senate]
[Pages S11477-S11478]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      NUCLEAR WASTE IN CALIFORNIA

  Mr. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, let me remind those of you who have 
followed the issue of energy in this country and the contribution of 
the nuclear industry of 20 percent of the electricity that is generated 
in this Nation, with an observation that I made some time ago, and that 
is this industry is strangling on its waste as a consequence of the 
inability of the Federal Government to honor the sanctity of a contract 
made some years ago--that the Government would take that waste 
beginning in 1998. The ratepayers, over the last decades, have extended 
about $11 billion to the Federal Government to ensure that the Federal 
Government would be financially able to take the waste.
  The bottom line is that 1998 has come and gone, and the Federal 
Government is in violation of its contractual commitment. As a 
consequence, litigation is pending for this breach of contract, 
subjecting the taxpayers to somewhere between $40 billion and $60 
billion in liability.
  Now, I stated some time ago on this issue that if you throw the waste 
up in the air, it has to come down somewhere. Nobody wants it. I was 
wrong on that. It was thrown up in the air and now it is coming down. 
Where is it coming down? Well, it is coming down in California, in a 
place called San Onofre. That is near La Jolla, north of San Diego. It 
is on the California coast where there are decommissioned and operating 
nuclear plants.
  I ask unanimous consent that an article from the Los Angeles Times of 
today, November 1, be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

               [From the Los Angeles Times, Nov. 1, 2000]

                Approval of Nuclear Waste Plan Advocated

                            (By Seema Mehta)

       Staff at the state's top coastal agency recommended 
     approval this week of Southern California Edison's plans to 
     store thousands of spent nuclear fuel rods at San Onofre 
     nuclear power plant, at least until 2050.
       Environmentalists say the California Coastal Commission 
     will be approving the creation of a coastal nuclear waste 
     dump just south of the Orange County border, but the agency's 
     staff says it has no choice under federal law.
       ``The state of California is preempted from imposing upon 
     nuclear power plant operators any regulatory requirements 
     concerning radiation hazards and nuclear safety,'' the staff 
     for the coastal commission emphasized in bold letters in its 
     report.
       A federal official said that there was no risk from the 
     closely monitored nuclear waste, and that environmentalists 
     were needlessly sounding alarms.
       ``There's a lot of fear among people who really don't 
     understand the nature of the material,'' said Breck 
     Henderson, a spokesman with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory 
     Commission. ``Everyone thinks nuclear waste is 55-gallon 
     drums full of green golb that we're going to throw in a hole 
     in the ground. They think the drums will rust away and, 
     pretty soon, the water in their tap glows green when it comes 
     out. That's just not the way it is.''
       The plant's two remaining operating reactors, which provide 
     energy for 2.5 million homes from Santa Barbara to San Diego, 
     are due to shut down by 2022. A smaller reactor was shut down 
     in 1992. By law, the U.S. Department of Energy must safely 
     dispose of all the site's fuel rods, which contain spent 
     uranium and will be radioactive for thousands of years.
       But no high-level radioactive dump exists yet, and 
     controversial plans for a possible site in the Yucca 
     Mountains in Nevada are moving at a snail's pace. Feasibility 
     studies and other technical evaluations of the remote Nevada 
     site, 237 miles northeast of Los Angeles and 90 miles 
     northwest of Las Vegas, have been so delayed that activists 
     worry that temporary storage facilities at San Onofre will 
     become a de facto permanent, West Coast repository for 
     nuclear waste.
       ``Nothing about storing nuclear waste is temporary,'' said 
     Mark Massara, Sierra Club's coastal programs director. 
     ``Without any planning oversight or review, we're 
     establishing a nuclear waste dump on one of most heavily 
     visited beaches in all of Southern California.''
       Henderson of the nuclear commission conceded that Yucca 
     Mountain is a ``political football, I don't know too many 
     people who expect to start shipping fuel there [soon].''
       However, he insisted that the federal government has to 
     take responsibility for the fuel, and it will eventually. But 
     with a long line of utilities across the country waiting to 
     get rid of nuclear waste, all sides agree there will be 
     nuclear waste at San Onofre for a good half-century.
       Spent nuclear fuel is stored in metal containers under 
     water in cooling pools at the plant. They will be wrapped in 
     two layers of steel and moved to reinforced concrete casks, 
     said Ray Golden, spokesman for San Onofre.
       This method, known as dry casking, is considered safer than 
     the cooling pools because it requires less maintenance, 
     leaving less room for error, Henderson said.
       But activists worry that the casks will be housed next to 
     working reactors, and could be vulnerable to terrorist 
     attack.
       Henderson said antinuclear groups often use such scare 
     tactics. He said his agency would never allow on-site storage 
     if it were unsafe. The casks will weigh more than 100 tons, 
     and could withstand shots from antitank weapons.
       ``You'd have to hug it for a year to get the same radiation 
     as an X-ray,'' he said.
       State coastal commissioners can't debate any of these 
     issues.
       ``The commission would have liked the ability to look at 
     it, to review whether this was appropriate,'' said commission 
     Chairwoman Sam Wan. ``But we didn't have the legal right to 
     do so.''

  Mr. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, this article explains that ``The 
California Coastal Commission will be approving the creation of a 
coastal nuclear waste dump just south of the Orange County border.''
  The repository will be at the San Onofre Nuclear Power Plant, and 
thousands of spent nuclear fuel rods would be stored there by Southern 
California Edison until the year 2050. That is 50 years, Mr. President. 
Isn't it interesting that the State of California, which has refused to 
site even a low-level nuclear waste storage facility in the Mojave 
Desert is now going to be home to a high-level nuclear waste dump near 
the beaches of southern California?
  Referring briefly to the proposed Ward Valley waste facility, which 
would handle medical waste and other low-level waste--the Secretary of 
the Interior, Bruce Babbitt, stopped this site from becoming a reality. 
As a consequence, that waste is currently stored in hospitals and 
research facilities and universities--generally, anywhere near where 
the waste is created. A lot of it is medical waste and other low-level 
waste associated with diagnostic tests, cancer treatment and other 
types of medical and scientific research. But it is all over the place. 
It is in places that weren't designed to store that waste long-term.
  However, national environmental groups and Hollywood activists made 
Ward Valley a rally cry, claiming water would be contaminated by the 
waste and seep through the desert and ultimately into the Colorado 
River. This is low-level material that we are talking about. It 
involves clothing, like gloves and coveralls from utility workers, 
material from medical research and any other items that have come into 
contact with radioactive materials. This low-level waste is produced at 
hospitals, powerplants, and research facilities that store this waste 
and periodically transfer it to waste facilities in South Carolina or 
Utah.
  However, these same groups apparently are powerless to stop the San 
Onofre storage. Why? Because the responsibility to regulate high-level 
waste belongs to the Federal Government, not the State. And since the 
Federal Government has not done its job, the bottom line is that there 
is no Federal repository for high-level nuclear waste, as promised by 
the U.S. Government. It is an obligation that has been unfulfilled by 
the eight years of the Clinton-Gore administration,

[[Page S11478]]

who has chosen to ignore the contract, hoping they can get out of town 
and the election will be over before this issue comes up.
  How ironic that this issue of the failure of the Federal Government 
to honor its contract should come up just a little less than a week 
before the election. As I have stated, that repository was supposed to 
open in 1998. Failure to do so left the States to come up with their 
own solutions and subjects the taxpayers to billions of dollars in 
liability. High-level waste includes spent fuel rods removed from 
nuclear reactors. This Senator from Alaska introduced S. 1287 in this 
Congress to allow the high-level nuclear waste to go to the proposed 
Yucca Mountain high-level storage facility in Nevada for temporary 
storage as soon as the facility was licensed in 2006.
  The California delegation voted against that bill and the Clinton 
administration vetoed the bill. We are one vote short of a veto 
override. One of the arguments made was that there was a possibility 
that the nuclear waste could seep into the water table and move into 
California. Imagine that. Now I don't believe that is possible, nor do 
a great number of respected scientist. However, isn't it ironic that 
Californians will now have to cope with those fears in their own 
backyard because Yucca is still not opened? Rather than worry about 
waste in Nevada, they get to worry about waste in California. The site 
at San Onofre has operational nuclear plants as well as a shut down 
research reactor. Unfortunately, once shut down begins, they have no 
place to take the waste, so the waste stays there on the area adjacent 
to the Pacific Ocean, an area not designed for long-term storage of 
waste. Nevertheless, there is no alternative because the Federal 
Government has failed to fulfill its obligation to take spent fuel 
beginning in 1998.

  Let me make it clear, I don't believe there is any danger from the 
dry casks that will be stored at San Onofre, any more than there was a 
danger from the low-level waste that would have been effectively stored 
in the Mojave Desert that could not safely be stored at the Ward Valley 
site. This California solution--if it is a solution--simply confirms 
what we have been saying all along: No one wants this waste, but it has 
to go somewhere. It has finally come down and landed in San Onofre. If 
the waste isn't ultimately shipped to the temporary facility at Yucca 
Mountain, it is going to be stored at 80 sites throughout the United 
States. California now may have its own central repository, at least 
for Southern California Edison.
  Mr. President, this solution is not a solution. And what people need 
to realize is this situation is really just the tip of the iceberg. 
While it is applicable to California today, there are over 80 sites 
throughout this country that will become de facto Yucca Mountains. That 
is the consequence of not opening up a permanent storage site. And many 
other states are in the same situation as California--waste to store 
and no place to store it. To give you some idea, in Florida, 16 percent 
of the electricity comes from nuclear plants, 5 nuclear power reactors, 
and almost 2,000 metric tons of waste is in storage. In Michigan, 24 
percent of the electricity comes from 4 nuclear power reactors, with 
1,500 metric tons of waste on hand there.

  In Ohio, 11 percent of electricity is generated from nuclear energy 
by two nuclear plants with 520 tons of waste.
  In Washington State, 6 percent of the electricity comes from nuclear, 
and there is about 300 tons of research reactor fuel.
  In Pennsylvania, 38 percent of its power comes from nine nuclear 
reactors with 3,000 metric tons of waste.
  This situation in California just proves what I have been saying all 
along. If we don't take responsible action now to solve our high-level 
waste problems by siting a repository in the Nevada desert, we will end 
up with somewhere in the area of 80 to 100 sites throughout the Nation 
storing this waste in environments that are not approved environments 
for long-term storage. What is happening in California today will 
happen all over the nation. They will now have, in California, their 
very own mini-Yucca Mountain for the next 50 years.
  The voters in California, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, 
Florida, and Illinois need to understand who bears the responsibility 
for this lack, if you will, of a conscientious effort to take the waste 
at the time it was contracted for in 1998.
  I can only assume that Vice President Gore wants to keep this waste 
in the States near schools, and hospitals--wherever it is temporarily 
stored. And the reality of what happened in California today at San 
Onofre is simply the tip of the iceberg.
  This administration has been totally inept in meeting its 
responsibilities to the nuclear industry; It has breached a contract, 
it has ignored the contribution of the nuclear industry and its 
contribution to providing 20 percent of the clean, emissions-free power 
generated in this country; and, totally ignored the reality that with 
that clean power comes the responsibility of determining how to handle 
the waste.
  They have handled it all right. They set it in concrete in California 
in the new site, as I have indicated, at San Onofre, north of San Diego 
near La Jolla, CA.
  Imagine creating a coastal nuclear waste just south of Orange County.

                          ____________________