[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 57 (Wednesday, May 8, 2002)]
[House]
[Pages H2180-H2205]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




              YUCCA MOUNTAIN REPOSITORY SITE APPROVAL ACT

  Mr. TAUZIN. Madam Speaker, pursuant to section 115(e)(4) of the 
Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, I call up the joint resolution (H.J. 
Res. 87) approving the site at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, for the 
development of a repository for the disposal of high-level radioactive 
waste and spent nuclear fuel, pursuant to the Nuclear Waste Policy Act 
of 1982.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Clerk will report the joint resolution.
  The Clerk read the joint resolution, as follows:

                              H.J. Res. 87

       Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the 
     United States of America in Congress assembled, That there 
     hereby is approved the site at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, for a 
     repository, with respect to which a notice of disapproval was 
     submitted by the Governor of the State of Nevada on April 8, 
     2002.


                    Unfunded Mandates Point of Order

  Mr. GIBBONS. Madam Speaker, I rise to make a point of order against 
consideration of H.J. Res. 87.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman will state his point of order.
  Mr. GIBBONS. Madam Speaker, pursuant to section 425 of the 
Congressional Budget Act and Impoundment Control Act of 1974, I make a 
point of order against consideration of H.J. Res. 87.
  Section 425 states that a point of order lies against legislation 
which either imposes an unfunded mandate in excess of $58 million 
against State and local governments or when the committee chairman does 
not publish, prior to floor consideration, a CBO cost mandate of any 
unfunded mandate in excess of $58 million against State and local 
entities.
  H.J. Res. 87 will in effect set the Nuclear Waste Policy Act as 
amended in 1987 into action. The bill reads in part, ``Resolved by the 
Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in 
Congress assembled, that there hereby is approved the site at Yucca 
Mountain, Nevada for a repository.''
  In other words, Madam Speaker, passage of this resolution will green-
light the Yucca Mountain project, thus allowing for shipment of high 
level nuclear waste beginning in the year 2010 and continuing for the 
next 38 years. Thus, passage of H.J. Res. 87 clearly places an unfunded 
mandate on our taxpayers.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from Nevada (Mr. Gibbons) 
makes a point of order that the joint resolution violates section 
425(a) of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974.
  In accordance with section 426(b)(2) of the Act, the gentleman has 
met his threshold burden to identify the specific language in the joint 
resolution on which he predicates the point of order.
  Under section 426(b)(4) of the Act, the gentleman from Nevada (Mr. 
Gibbons) and a Member opposed each will control 10 minutes of debate on 
the question of consideration.
  Pursuant to section 426(b)(3) of the Act, after that debate the Chair 
will put the question of consideration, to wit: ``Will the House now 
consider the joint resolution?"
  The gentleman from Nevada (Mr. Gibbons) will be recognized for 10 
minutes and the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Tauzin) will be 
recognized for 10 minutes.
  The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Nevada (Mr. Gibbons).
  Mr. GIBBONS. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may 
consume.
  Madam Speaker, passage of H.J. Res. 87 will undoubtedly put a process 
in place that will exceed the $58 million threshold outlined in section 
425 of the act. Instead of looking at what the CBO score tells us, let 
us look at what it does not tell us. What the CBO is unable to tell us 
is how much it will cost our local community to implement the Nuclear 
Waste Management Act, as far as preparing our State and local 
governments for the enormous cost of safety monitoring these tens of 
thousands of high level nuclear waste shipments that are going to occur 
throughout our community.
  Madam Speaker, by the CBO's inability to score the total cost of this 
project, again a project receives a green light upon passage of the 
legislation currently before us, there might as well not even be a CBO 
score. The chairman of the committee has fulfilled his obligation to 
publish a cost estimate for H.J. Res. 87; however, the CBO cost only 
gives the House the recommended 5-year cost projection. As we know, 
under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, shipments of high level nuclear 
waste to Nevada will not even begin until the year 2010, about 8 years 
from now. With the CBO unable to give a cost estimate on the Yucca 
Mountain project's total price tag, passage of H.J. Res. 87 provides 
the Federal government a blank check to proceed with this project.
  In the end, the Federal Government will demand that our State and 
local governments spend billions of dollars over the next four decades 
to prepare for those shipments that will traverse their respective 
States and districts. Neither the Department of Energy nor Congress has 
anticipated or provided for the massive costs that will be incurred by 
States and local governments if we pass this legislation.
  The paltry $17 million budgeted by the Department of Energy in its 
fiscal year 2003 budget will not come close to covering these costs. 
States and local governments will be left with billions of dollars in 
unfunded expenses which would not be incurred except for the Federal 
high level radioactive waste program. Some may counter this argument by 
saying that we can recommend on the Nuclear Waste Fund, established by 
Congress, to pay for the cost of Yucca Mountain.
  Well, consider this argument: Current estimates put the Nuclear Waste 
Fund at about $17 billion. That balance pales in the comparison to the 
total construction and compliance costs at Yucca Mountain of almost $60 
billion.
  What is more, the nuclear power industry faces an uncertain economic 
future. Let me point out a few of the problems facing the industry. The 
industry is supposed to be responsible for paying the costs associated 
with the nuclear waste disposal. No nuclear power plants have been 
built since 1978. More than 100 reactors have been canceled, including 
all ordered after 1973. The nuclear power industry's troubles include 
nuclear high power plant construction costs, relatively low costs for 
competing fuel, public concern about nuclear safety and waste disposal, 
as well as regulatory compliance costs.
  Electric utility restructuring, which is currently under way in 
several States, could also increase the competition faced by existing 
nuclear plants.
  High operating costs have resulted during the past decades in the 
shutdown of nearly 20 U.S. commercial reactors before the completion of 
their 40-year license operating period.
  Madam Speaker, the viability of the Nuclear Waste Fund is directly 
related to the continued viability of the nuclear utility industry. 
Taxpayers are not supposed to fund the program. The program is supposed 
to be funded by the nuclear energy industry and the ratepayers who 
purchase and benefit from their electricity.
  The price tag of this project will be tremendous. Not in the next 5 
years, as outlined by the CBO score, but in 8 years, and the subsequent 
4 decades beyond that.
  Madam Speaker, 8 years from now the Department of Energy will begin 
filling your roads and highways and railways with high level nuclear 
waste. The cost to even begin preparing our first responders will be 
staggering, let alone the cost of any clean-up associated with one of 
400 accidents the Department of Energy tells us that we are to prepare 
for when they begin these shipments.
  I ask that delegates call their State governors and ask does room 
exist in their budget to meet these needs and these expensive costs? 
Ask your local

[[Page H2181]]

county commissioners can they afford the increased costs of protecting 
these shipments? Ask city council members in your district will they 
have room to budget in their budget for these increased costs? Ask your 
local fire fighters, police officers, State troopers, your emergency 
response teams, EMTs and haz-mat crews, will they be able to afford 
such costs?
  Again, the DOE tells us that accidents happen. This is not spilled 
milk. An accident involving shipments of high level nuclear waste 
requires more than a mop and bucket of water to clean up. Imagine the 
cost of the training just to prepare for a potential response to one of 
these accidents.
  Madam Speaker, H.J. Res. 87 is an unfunded mandate. The CBO cannot 
tell us whether or not carrying out the Nuclear Waste Policy Act by 
passing this resolution will exceed the $58 million threshold. And 
because CBO cannot give us this information, we must assume that the 
threshold can and will be exceeded.
  Now some tell us not to worry, that DOE and Congress will ensure the 
necessary funding will be provided at the right time. If this is the 
case, Madam Speaker, where are we going to get the money? What programs 
will have to be cut to pay for this irresponsible policy? Will we cut 
the Department of Defense budget as we carry out this long, protracted 
war against terrorism? Will we cut out Medicare or any possibility of 
implementing a prescription drug benefit for our seniors? Or will we 
allow ourselves to drive the Social Security trust fund at the same 
time our baby boomer generation sits on the brink of retirement?
  Assuming the DOE begins shipment in 2010 as planned, Congress would 
have to budget $3.6 billion per year beginning with this year's budget 
in order to provide adequate funding for States. The fact is, Madam 
Speaker, as with every other issue we debate in this body, the money 
has to come from somewhere and somewhere always leads to the taxpayers 
in this great country.
  Madam Speaker, I urge my colleagues to vote against this unfunded 
mandate and support the point of order I just made.
  Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Tauzin) 
opposed to the point of order?
  Mr. TAUZIN. Yes, Madam Speaker, I am.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Louisiana for 10 minutes.
  Mr. TAUZIN. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. 
I rise in strong opposition to this effort to block consideration of 
this very bipartisan consideration.
  Madam Speaker, I know the gentleman well and he is my friend and I 
know his intentions are good. He is doing everything that he thinks is 
in the best interest of his State. And I think we all can respect that. 
But, very frankly, this point of order is completely without foundation 
and it is clearly just an effort to obstruct consideration of House 
Joint Resolution 87, a resolution that was reported out of the 
Committee on Energy and Commerce by a vote of 41 to 6, an incredibly 
bipartisan vote.
  When my committee filed its report on House Joint Resolution 87, it 
included a cost estimate from the Congressional Budget Office. This is 
it here. And the Congressional Budget Office report literally satisfies 
one of the requirements under the Unfunded Mandate Reform Act. This CBO 
cost estimate thoroughly reviewed the budget impacts of this 
resolution, and it did not identify any new mandates in this resolution 
that would fall under the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act.
  The CBO cost estimate, in fact, further clarified that even if some 
minor costs of State and local governments did fall under the Unfunded 
Mandates Reform Act, these costs would not exceed the thresholds 
established under UMRA.
  Let me quote from the CBO estimate directly: ``H.J. Res. 87 could 
increase the costs that Nevada and some local governments would incur 
to comply with certain existing Federal requirements. The Unfunded 
Mandate Reform Act, UMRA, is unclear about whether such costs would 
count as new mandates under UMRA. In any event, CBO estimates that the 
annual direct costs incurred by State and local governments over the 
next 5 years would total significantly less than the threshold 
established in the law ($58 million in 2002, adjusted annually for 
inflation).''

                              {time}  1215

  In other words, CBO is saying we are not sure we even count those 
costs; but if we did, they do not meet the threshold of the Unfunded 
Mandates Reform Act.
  Finally, CBO notes that H.J. Res. 87 contains no new private sector 
mandates as defined in the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act. Madam Speaker, 
the CBO report speaks for itself. It is very, very clear.
  We may hear that the real costs that should be considered are those 
that occur after the 5-year period that CBO has looked at. Well, for 
better or worse, whether we like it or not, whether we think the law 
ought to be different, our rules only require CBO to look at 5 years 
and not into the indefinite future; and what CBO has told us in this 
report is that there are simply no costs that cross the Unfunded 
Mandates Reform Act limits, the thresholds for those 5 years.
  The law is satisfied. Our rules are satisfied. We ought to proceed 
with the consideration of this important resolution.
  The Chair will put the question when this debate is over on this 
point of order, and the question will be whether we should proceed or 
not. I will ask all Members who support this resolution to vote 
``yes.'' We should proceed because this point of order is completely 
without foundation.
  Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. GIBBONS. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may 
consume.
  I will remind my good friend and colleague, the chairman of the 
committee, that shipments will not begin until 8 years from today, not 
the 5 years as recommended in the CBO score.
  Madam Speaker, I yield the balance of my time to the gentlewoman from 
Nevada (Ms. Berkley).
  Ms. BERKLEY. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Nevada (Mr. 
Gibbons) for yielding me the time.
  I find it very ironic that this Congress is willing to put nuclear 
waste in a hole in the Nevada desert for 10,000 years, yet we are 
talking about a 5-year unfunded mandate.
  I rise in strong support of the gentleman's point of order. It is bad 
enough that we are set to vote on a resolution that will approve the 
Yucca Mountain project that has costs ranging from $56 billion to $308 
billion. Nobody knows exactly how much this project will cost. This 
money is supposed to come from the nuclear waste fund, but the fund 
only has $17 billion in it. Where is the rest of this money going to 
come from? Are the proponents of this foolhardy project proposing to 
raise taxes, dip into the Social Security trust fund? This proposal 
only gets worse.
  If we approve Yucca Mountain, more than 108,000 shipments of deadly 
nuclear waste will be rolling across our Nation's highways and 
railroads, through 43 States for the next 38 years on its way to Yucca 
Mountain. As it passes through each of the 703 counties along the 
proposed transportation routes, local law enforcement and first 
responders must be prepared for the worst. And if the worst happens, 
where is the money going to come from to clean up the mess, the 
destruction, the devastation?
  I see no provision in the budget to cover these enormous costs. This 
is an unfunded mandate to our local governments. We know from the DOE's 
own assessment that we can expect anywhere from 50 to over 300 
accidents. Our firefighters and first responders must be specially 
trained to deal with these nuclear waste shipments and the accidents 
that will occur.
  The nuclear waste fund does not have the money to pay for this, so 
the unknown costs are going to have to be made up by local government 
and the American taxpayers. We will be asking citizens who have no part 
in creating nuclear waste and have no benefits from nuclear energy to 
fund the nuclear industry so they can move dangerous nuclear waste 
through their own backyards.
  If we approve this resolution, the American taxpayer will once again 
be

[[Page H2182]]

asked to foot the bill for nuclear energy. There is not enough money in 
the nuclear waste fund to cover the costs. So sometime in the next 10 
years we will be either cutting corners when it comes to safety, 
raising taxes, or raiding Social Security.
  None of these alternatives are acceptable to me, and I doubt outside 
the nuclear industry and the nuclear industry's friends here in the 
United States Congress that these alternatives would not be acceptable 
to anyone else in our country.
  Yucca Mountain is a financial boondoggle that flies in the face of 
fiscal responsibility. I urge my colleagues to support this point of 
order.
  Mr. TAUZIN. Madam Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the 
gentleman from Texas (Mr. Barton), the chairman of the Subcommittee on 
Energy and Air Quality.
  (Mr. BARTON of Texas asked and was given permission to revise and 
extend his remarks.)
  Mr. BARTON of Texas. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from 
Louisiana (Mr. Tauzin) for yielding me the time.
  Obviously, I rise against this point of order of my good friend from 
Nevada. I am shocked, shocked and amazed, that he would think that the 
gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Boucher) and I would present a bill on the 
floor that had an unfunded mandate.
  I am one of the most conservative Members of this body, and I am 
joined by one of the most distinguished conservative Members, he would 
say moderate, progressive, Members on the other side of the aisle; and 
for us to bring forward an unfunded, an unfunded mandate is just beyond 
the pale.
  I would point out that since we passed a Nuclear Waste Policy Act in 
1982, we have collected over $15 billion in the nuclear waste fund. 
Every time a nuclear plant generates a kilowatt of electricity, one 
mil, which is \1/10\ of a cent, goes into this fund; and we are 
collecting about $750 million a year as we speak into this fund. So 
this is far from being an unfunded mandate. This is the most 
overfunded, unmet, unobligated, unconstructed thing that we could have 
ever done in Federal Government.
  I would also point out, as my good friend, the full committee 
chairman, has already pointed out, that when we passed this resolution 
on a bipartisan basis out of the committee, we sent it to the 
Congressional Budget Office; and they have given us the requisite 
report that the chairman has a copy of that says quite clearly that the 
costs of this for the next 5 years are well under the threshold of the 
Unfunded Mandate Act.
  There are a number of reasons for people to be opposed to the 
underlying resolution. My good friend from Nevada is certainly entitled 
to oppose it, but there is no reason to support the point of order that 
it is an unfunded mandate. Nothing, Madam Speaker, could be further 
from the truth.
  When it comes to the end of the debate, I certainly hope that the 
Speaker will throw out this scurrilous point of order so that we can 
get on with the debate, have a debate on the underlying bill and then 
hopefully support the underlying bill that the gentleman from Virginia 
(Mr. Boucher) and myself have put to the body.
  Mr. TAUZIN. Madam Speaker, I yield myself the remaining time and ask 
that we put the question with the request that all Members who support 
this resolution vote ``yes'' when the Speaker puts the question.
  Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mrs. Biggert). The question is: Will the 
House now consider House Joint Resolution 87.
  The question was taken; and the Speaker pro tempore announced that 
the ayes appeared to have it.
  Mr. GIBBONS. Madam Speaker, I object to the vote on the ground that a 
quorum is not present and make the point of order that a quorum is not 
present.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Evidently a quorum is not present.
  The Sergeant at Arms will notify absent Members.
  The vote was taken by electronic device, and there were--yeas 308, 
nays 105, not voting 21, as follows:

                             [Roll No. 132]

                               YEAS--308

     Aderholt
     Akin
     Allen
     Andrews
     Armey
     Bachus
     Baird
     Baker
     Baldacci
     Ballenger
     Barcia
     Barr
     Barrett
     Bartlett
     Barton
     Bass
     Bentsen
     Bereuter
     Berry
     Biggert
     Bilirakis
     Bishop
     Blagojevich
     Blunt
     Boehlert
     Bonilla
     Bono
     Boozman
     Borski
     Boucher
     Boyd
     Brady (PA)
     Brady (TX)
     Brown (FL)
     Brown (OH)
     Brown (SC)
     Bryant
     Burr
     Callahan
     Calvert
     Camp
     Cannon
     Cantor
     Capito
     Cardin
     Carson (OK)
     Castle
     Chabot
     Chambliss
     Clay
     Clayton
     Clement
     Clyburn
     Coble
     Collins
     Combest
     Cooksey
     Costello
     Cox
     Cramer
     Crenshaw
     Crowley
     Cubin
     Culberson
     Cummings
     Cunningham
     Davis (FL)
     Davis (IL)
     Davis, Jo Ann
     Deal
     Delahunt
     DeLay
     DeMint
     Deutsch
     Dicks
     Dingell
     Dooley
     Doolittle
     Doyle
     Dreier
     Duncan
     Dunn
     Edwards
     Ehlers
     Ehrlich
     Emerson
     Engel
     English
     Etheridge
     Evans
     Everett
     Fattah
     Ferguson
     Flake
     Fletcher
     Foley
     Forbes
     Ford
     Fossella
     Frank
     Frelinghuysen
     Frost
     Ganske
     Gekas
     Gillmor
     Gilman
     Goode
     Goodlatte
     Gordon
     Goss
     Graham
     Granger
     Graves
     Green (TX)
     Green (WI)
     Greenwood
     Grucci
     Gutierrez
     Gutknecht
     Hall (TX)
     Hansen
     Hart
     Hastings (FL)
     Hastings (WA)
     Hayes
     Hayworth
     Hefley
     Herger
     Hill
     Hilleary
     Hilliard
     Hinojosa
     Hobson
     Hoeffel
     Hoekstra
     Holden
     Horn
     Hostettler
     Houghton
     Hoyer
     Hulshof
     Hunter
     Hyde
     Isakson
     Issa
     Istook
     Jefferson
     Jenkins
     John
     Johnson (CT)
     Johnson (IL)
     Johnson, E. B.
     Johnson, Sam
     Kanjorski
     Kaptur
     Keller
     Kennedy (MN)
     Kerns
     Kildee
     Kilpatrick
     King (NY)
     Kingston
     Kirk
     Knollenberg
     Kolbe
     LaFalce
     LaHood
     Lampson
     Larsen (WA)
     Larson (CT)
     Latham
     LaTourette
     Leach
     Levin
     Lewis (CA)
     Lewis (KY)
     Linder
     Lipinski
     LoBiondo
     Lucas (KY)
     Lucas (OK)
     Maloney (CT)
     Manzullo
     Mascara
     McCarthy (NY)
     McCrery
     McHugh
     McInnis
     McIntyre
     McKeon
     Meek (FL)
     Meeks (NY)
     Mica
     Miller, Dan
     Miller, Gary
     Miller, Jeff
     Mollohan
     Moran (KS)
     Morella
     Murtha
     Myrick
     Neal
     Nethercutt
     Ney
     Northup
     Norwood
     Nussle
     Obey
     Olver
     Osborne
     Otter
     Oxley
     Pascrell
     Pastor
     Paul
     Payne
     Peterson (MN)
     Peterson (PA)
     Petri
     Phelps
     Pickering
     Pitts
     Platts
     Pomeroy
     Portman
     Price (NC)
     Pryce (OH)
     Putnam
     Quinn
     Ramstad
     Regula
     Rehberg
     Reynolds
     Rogers (KY)
     Rogers (MI)
     Rohrabacher
     Ros-Lehtinen
     Ross
     Roukema
     Royce
     Rush
     Ryan (WI)
     Ryun (KS)
     Sandlin
     Saxton
     Schaffer
     Schrock
     Scott
     Sensenbrenner
     Sessions
     Shadegg
     Shaw
     Shays
     Sherwood
     Shimkus
     Shows
     Shuster
     Simmons
     Skeen
     Skelton
     Smith (MI)
     Smith (NJ)
     Snyder
     Spratt
     Stearns
     Stenholm
     Strickland
     Stump
     Sullivan
     Sununu
     Sweeney
     Tancredo
     Tanner
     Tauscher
     Tauzin
     Taylor (MS)
     Taylor (NC)
     Terry
     Thomas
     Thornberry
     Thune
     Thurman
     Tiahrt
     Tiberi
     Toomey
     Towns
     Turner
     Upton
     Visclosky
     Vitter
     Walden
     Walsh
     Wamp
     Watkins (OK)
     Watt (NC)
     Watts (OK)
     Weldon (FL)
     Weldon (PA)
     Weller
     Wexler
     Whitfield
     Wicker
     Wilson (NM)
     Wilson (SC)
     Wolf
     Wu
     Wynn
     Young (FL)

                               NAYS--105

     Abercrombie
     Ackerman
     Baca
     Baldwin
     Becerra
     Berkley
     Berman
     Blumenauer
     Bonior
     Boswell
     Capps
     Capuano
     Condit
     Conyers
     Davis (CA)
     Davis, Tom
     DeFazio
     DeGette
     DeLauro
     Diaz-Balart
     Doggett
     Eshoo
     Farr
     Filner
     Gallegly
     Gephardt
     Gibbons
     Gilchrest
     Gonzalez
     Harman
     Hinchey
     Holt
     Honda
     Hooley
     Inslee
     Israel
     Jackson (IL)
     Jackson-Lee (TX)
     Jones (NC)
     Kelly
     Kennedy (RI)
     Kucinich
     Langevin
     Lantos
     Lee
     Lewis (GA)
     Lofgren
     Lowey
     Luther
     Lynch
     Maloney (NY)
     Markey
     Matheson
     Matsui
     McCarthy (MO)
     McCollum
     McDermott
     McGovern
     McKinney
     McNulty
     Meehan
     Menendez
     Millender-McDonald
     Miller, George
     Mink
     Moore
     Napolitano
     Oberstar
     Ortiz
     Owens
     Pallone
     Pelosi
     Pence
     Pombo
     Radanovich
     Rahall
     Rangel
     Reyes
     Rivers
     Rodriguez
     Roemer
     Rothman
     Roybal-Allard
     Sabo
     Sanchez
     Sanders
     Schiff
     Serrano
     Sherman
     Slaughter
     Smith (WA)
     Solis
     Souder
     Stark
     Thompson (CA)
     Thompson (MS)
     Tierney
     Udall (CO)
     Udall (NM)
     Velazquez
     Waters
     Watson (CA)
     Weiner
     Woolsey
     Young (AK)

                             NOT VOTING--21

     Boehner
     Burton
     Buyer
     Carson (IN)
     Coyne
     Crane
     Hall (OH)
     Jones (OH)
     Kind (WI)

[[Page H2183]]


     Kleczka
     Moran (VA)
     Nadler
     Ose
     Riley
     Sawyer
     Schakowsky
     Simpson
     Smith (TX)
     Stupak
     Traficant
     Waxman

                              {time}  1247

  Messrs. McNULTY, GALLEGLY, KUCINICH, INSLEE, UDALL of Colorado, 
STARK, Ms. JACKSON-LEE of Texas, and Mrs. KELLY changed their vote from 
``yea'' to ``nay.''
  Messrs. CALVERT, HINOJOSA, and HERGER changed their vote from ``nay'' 
to ``yea.''
  So the question of consideration was decided in the affirmative.
  The result of the vote was announced as above recorded.
  A motion to reconsider was laid on the table.


                     Request to Table H.J. Res. 87

  Ms. BERKLEY. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that H.J. Res. 87, 
the Yucca Mountain Repository Site Approval Act, be tabled.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Hastings of Washington). Is there 
objection to the request of the gentlewoman from Nevada?
  Mr. TAUZIN. Reserving the right to object, Mr. Speaker, I yield to 
the gentlewoman under my reservation to explain her unanimous consent 
request.
  Ms. BERKLEY. Mr. Speaker, the General Accounting Office, the 
independent investigative arm of Congress, recently recommended that 
the Yucca Mountain project not be approved at this time. The GAO 
recommended that the government solve 293 outstanding scientific 
problems before the project be approved. After careful examination of 
these scientific problems, the GAO estimated that the Department of 
Energy would need at least 4 more years, until 2006, to resolve these 
problems. The report concluded, ``We question the prudence and 
practicality of making such a recommendation at this time given the 
express statutory time frames for a license application and the 
significant amount of work remaining to be done.''
  In addition, there are still enormous and serious questions regarding 
the transportation of nuclear waste. The casks that will transport the 
waste have not yet even been created, and no cask has been tested full 
scale. In light of 9/11, several government agencies have begun a 
review of the safety and security of nuclear waste transport. The 
result of these reviews is not yet complete. It is clear that we are 
moving ahead on this resolution prematurely. It is not in the best 
interest of the public, and it does not reflect sound public policy.
  Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that the Yucca Mountain 
Repository Site Approval Act be tabled until 2006 when the scientific 
studies are completed.
  Mr. TAUZIN. Mr. Speaker, I insist on my objection.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Objection is heard.
  Pursuant to section 15(e)(4) of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, 
the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Tauzin) and a Member opposed each 
will control 1 hour.
  Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Speaker, I claim the time in opposition.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is the gentleman opposed?
  Mr. MARKEY. Yes, Mr. Speaker.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from Massachusetts will 
control 1 hour.
  The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Tauzin) for 1 
hour.
  Mr. TAUZIN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  Mr. Speaker, today the Chair will consider one of the most important 
public health and safety issues facing the Nation, the development of a 
centralized and permanent geologic disposal site for our country's 
nuclear waste, wastes that are laying around all over the country in 
temporary storage at nuclear facilities.
  At present, high level nuclear wastes are stored in 77 sites in more 
than 30 States in every region of the country. Most of these waste 
sites are located near a nuclear power plant where spent nuclear fuel 
is carefully stored, and nuclear waste storage sites are also located 
at former DOE weapons production facilities like the Hanford site, 
where liquid radioactive waste is stored in tanks.
  Every one of these waste sites shares one common aspect: They were 
all designed for temporary storage of these dangerous wastes, not for 
long-term storage.
  The Yucca Mountain site is located 90 miles away from Las Vegas. It 
is isolated on remote Federal land of the Nevada test site, 14 miles 
away from the closest residence, and it is safe and secure. The waste 
will be stored more than 600 feet underground, and more than 500 feet 
above the water table. The waste will be held in steel containers, and 
the containers will be placed under a titanium shield.
  Further, not only is the air space around Yucca already restricted, 
but an existing security force at the Nevada test site will protect the 
area. This is a comprehensive defense-in-depth approach.
  The Committee on Energy and Commerce held an exhaustive hearing on 
this issue last month. We heard from witnesses representing all sides 
of the Yucca Mountain debate, including scientists, politicians, 
regulators, and public interest groups. Not a single witness identified 
a significant scientific or technical reason not to move forward with 
this important project.
  They also gave me an opportunity to clarify some of the concerns 
frequently expressed by the opponents of the Yucca Mountain site, and 
the hearing was very good for that purpose. For example, opponents of 
Yucca Mountain want us to stop this important project because the 
Nuclear Regulatory Commission has identified certain unresolved 
technical issues. However, the NRC had testified and the DOE has agreed 
that the DOE is on a path toward resolving every single one of those 
technical issues, and the Secretary of Energy committed to answer every 
one before licensing is possibly complete or approved. In fact, 60 of 
those issues should be resolved this year.
  Further, the NRC will not approve the construction license for Yucca 
Mountain unless every single one of those issues are thoroughly and 
properly addressed. The opponents of Yucca Mountain will argue that we 
should stop the project because the Nuclear Waste Technical Review 
Board believes the science of Yucca Mountain is weak to moderate. 
However, at the hearing the board pointed out that no individual 
technical issue would automatically eliminate Yucca Mountain. The 
Nuclear Waste Board also testified that confidence in DOE science 
estimates can be increased.
  I understand that this issue is of great concern to the elected 
leaders of Nevada, and I sympathize with their plight. I hope that the 
debate today can focus on a discussion of the facts rather than an 
effort to manufacture unrealistic and implausible fears in the minds of 
the public regarding this project.
  A vote in favor of H.J. Res. 87 will simply move the Yucca Mountain 
project forward to the next stage of review; but even with 
congressional approval of this resolution today, construction will not 
proceed at Yucca Mountain unless it passes strict health and safety 
requirements set up by EPA and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
  On February 15, 2002, the President recommended on the advice of DOE 
Secretary Spencer Abraham that Congress approve the Yucca Mountain site 
even if the State of Nevada disapproves. Based upon our review and 
understanding of DOE's extensive scientific work, I am prepared to 
support this important policy decision, and I hope Members do, too.
  Mr. Speaker, I commend the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Barton), the 
chairman of the subcommittee, for his extraordinary work on this, and 
the ranking member, the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Boucher) for their 
cooperation, and the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Dingell) for his 
support for our effort. I want all Members of this House to know this 
bill came out of our committee by a 41-6 bipartisan vote. It is 
sponsored and cosponsored in a bipartisan way. It is supported in a 
bipartisan way.
  This is the right thing for America. And we stand as Americans united 
to get this important resolution passed so that we can set our nuclear 
industry back on a current safe path; and, indeed, make room for future 
improvements in the nuclear industry in this country, as well as the 
environmental cleanup of sites that demand early rather than late 
attention.

[[Page H2184]]

  Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to yield 20 minutes to the 
gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Boucher), the ranking member of the 
Subcommittee on Energy and Air Quality for purposes of control.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the 
gentleman from Louisiana?
  There was no objection.
  Mr. TAUZIN. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 4 minutes.
  Mr. Speaker, this is a historic occasion. Twenty years ago on this 
floor we passed the Nuclear Waste Policy Act. In that bill there was a 
decision made by Congress that there would be 5 geologic repositories 
that would be studied, and ultimately 2 would be selected, 1 on the 
east of the Mississippi and 1 to the west of the Mississippi.
  But between 1982 and 1987, two factors raised their heads: One, 
parochialism. The States of Texas, of Washington, of Louisiana, of 
Tennessee, of New Hampshire, in other words, all of the States that 
were being considered that had powerful political delegations, said 
take our States off the list. And the search was begun by this body to 
find one State that had just two Members of Congress and two Senators 
because that is the way ultimately in 1987 when the Congress revisited 
the issue that it was resolved; not on scientific grounds, not on the 
basis of finding the best geologic repositories east and west of the 
Mississippi, but rather selecting the smallest State with the smallest 
number of elected representatives, and that turns out to be the State 
of Nevada, which was delivered the nuclear queen of spades by every 
other State that did not want it in their State.
  Now, what happens? Well, then ultimately any Member who opposes 
science being trumped by politics is called anti-nuclear by the States 
that do not want it in their States, even though in most of those 
States they have nuclear power plants. We wind up in this Alice-in-
Wonderland debate where the poor State of Nevada is here now raising 
the point that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has identified the 
fact that there are still 293 unresolved environmental health and 
safety issues, and asking the Congress and asking the administration to 
wait until those issues are resolved until any movement forward is made 
on the issue.
  But because of a second major issue, special interest, that is the 
nuclear power industry, the Congress, as they did in 1982, as they did 
in 1987, says no, we cannot wait. We must now continue forward. It is 
this indifference to the very legitimate concerns that are being raised 
by the State of Nevada which should be most troubling to Members here 
today.
  The nuclear power industry may want this. Other States that could 
have been considered for the repository, and might have been better 
long term 10,000-year locations for the waste, may want this. States 
that have 6 or 8 nuclear reactors in them but do not want the nuclear 
repository and want the waste out of their State may want this, but it 
is wrong for us to move forward today when we can move forward next 
year or the year after if the 293 environmental health and safety 
questions have not been resolved, because the decision we make today 
creates an inexorable pressure on investments already made, decisions 
already made that will buy us those environmental health and safety 
decisions over the next 2 and 3 years, and ultimately bad decisions 
will be made that will compromise the environment.

                              {time}  1300

  Mr. BOUCHER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  (Mr. BOUCHER asked and was given permission to revise and extend his 
remarks.)
  Mr. BOUCHER. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of the pending measure 
and urge its approval by the House. The legislation takes the next 
necessary step in a statutorily prescribed process for establishing a 
site for the permanent disposal of high level nuclear waste. I want to 
begin these remarks by commending Chairman Tauzin of the full Committee 
on Energy and Commerce, subcommittee Chairman Barton, and also the 
gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Dingell), the ranking member of our full 
committee, for their diligence and their persistence in taking this 
necessary step. I am a cosponsor with them of the legislation which is 
pending that will move the process forward.
  A permanent secure site for the disposal of high level waste must be 
established. Forty-five thousand metric tons of waste now reside on-
site at nuclear reactors in 72 locations across the Nation. This 
temporary siting of spent fuel at reactor sites poses both a security 
threat and an environmental threat. In my view, arguments that 
previously had been made that the permanent disposal of waste in dry 
cask storage at these 72 reactor sites as an alternative to the 
establishment of a secure central repository for the waste hold far 
less credence today after September 11 than they did before. I think we 
really have no alternative to the development of a central, secure 
disposal site. The passage of the measure that is now before the House 
is essential to the development of that site.
  While arguments will be made that more could be learned about the 
proposed Yucca Mountain site, I would note that the recommendation of 
the Secretary of Energy in January of this year that Yucca Mountain be 
chosen for permanent waste disposal is based on fully 20 years of 
scientific investigation. The site characterization work required under 
section 113 of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act has been carried out. The 
public hearings focusing on the Yucca Mountain site required by section 
114 of the act have been held. If Congress passes the legislation now 
pending before the House, which overrides the disapproval of the 
President's site designation that was issued by Governor Guinn of 
Nevada on April 8, construction activities could not commence at the 
site until the Nuclear Regulatory Commission completes a full technical 
and scientific review of the site and also a review of the proposed 
disposal methods at the site and then issues a license for site 
construction.
  No site will ever be found to be perfect for the disposal of high 
level nuclear waste, but I am persuaded that the studies which have 
already been conducted and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission review 
that is still to come provides sufficient assurances that the 
appropriate nature of the Yucca Mountain site has been established and 
will justify approval of the legislation now before us.
  Mr. Speaker, I also want to take this opportunity to note that the 
Committee on Energy and Commerce has a long tradition of addressing 
many of our Nation's most important public policy challenges in a 
thoughtful and a bipartisan manner. With the Subcommittee on Energy and 
Air Quality having approved this resolution by a vote of 24-2 and the 
full Committee on Energy and Commerce having approved it by a majority 
of 41-6, nowhere has our committee's bipartisan tradition and 
cooperation been more in evidence than in our efforts to resolve the 
Nation's nuclear waste disposal problems. For that bipartisan 
cooperation, I again want to commend the committee's leadership on both 
sides of the aisle for moving expeditiously on this matter.
  Mr. Speaker, I urge approval of this resolution by the House.
  Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 7 minutes to the gentlewoman from 
Nevada (Ms. Berkley).
  Ms. BERKLEY. Mr. Speaker, let me begin by expressing the outrage felt 
throughout Nevada about this ill-advised proposal. Eighty-three percent 
of the people I represent vehemently oppose Yucca Mountain. Nevada does 
not use nuclear energy. Nevada does not produce one ounce of nuclear 
waste. Yet Nevada is being asked to carry the weight of a burden we 
have had no part in creating.
  I grew up in Las Vegas. Long before I came to serve in Congress, I 
have been fighting against this proposal to transport 77,000 tons of 
toxic nuclear waste across 43 States to be stored for 10,000 years in a 
hole in the Nevada desert.
  The original Nuclear Waste Policy Act charged the Department of 
Energy with the task of studying multiple potential repository sites to 
determine which would be the best to provide geologic containment of 
nuclear waste.

[[Page H2185]]

But in 1987, without the benefit of any completed scientific study, 
Congress passed the so-called ``Screw Nevada'' bill which made the most 
political of decisions. It singled out Yucca Mountain, Nevada as the 
only site to be studied. There was no science, there was no reason, 
except that Nevada was a small State with a small congressional 
delegation.
  Almost immediately, it became apparent that Yucca Mountain could not 
contain the waste by natural geologic barriers as required by law, so 
the DOE simply changed the rules. The waste would be stored in man-made 
canisters for 10,000 years. Then it was discovered that those canisters 
would quickly corrode, so they added titanium drip shields. Even with 
all of these man-made barriers, there still had to be gerrymandering 
groundwater regulations to set up contamination zones.
  We have deviated so far from the original intent of the proposal. We 
have allowed the DOE and the EPA to set standards that endanger the 
environment and human health. Yet no one seems to be willing to pull 
the plug on this foolhardy idea.
  This Nation has a serious waste problem. Every year our reactors 
create 2,000 tons of toxic nuclear waste. The only method of disposal 
this country has ever seriously studied is shipping the waste across 
the country and dumping it 90 miles outside of my hometown of Las 
Vegas, the fastest growing city in the country.
  But there are major problems with this plan. A central repository 
would not mean, let me emphasize, not mean that reactor sites around 
the country would be cleaned out. That is a myth. According to the 
government's shipping plans, in the year 2036, when Yucca Mountain is 
filled to capacity, there would still be 44,000 tons of nuclear waste 
stored at the reactor sites. That means that after 38 years of shipping 
high level waste through our cities and our towns, we will have reduced 
on-site storage of nuclear waste by a mere 4 percent. Why would we want 
to risk shipping nuclear waste across 43 States for 38 years if it 
makes no difference in the amount of waste stored on-site throughout 
the country?
  There are also very serious scientific concerns with the proposed 
dump. Yucca Mountain is located in an earthquake and volcanic eruption 
zone. Studies have shown that groundwater can travel through fissures 
in the mountain in a very short time frame, dissolve the waste and 
contaminate groundwater supplies, releasing deadly toxins into the 
environment of the Southwest. Recently an independent investigation by 
the General Accounting Office found that there were 293 unresolved 
scientific questions that the government had failed to address, and the 
Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board expressed limited confidence in 
the DOE's work, calling it ``weak to moderate.''
  Would any of us get on an airplane if the FAA said it had only 
limited confidence in the pilot's ability to take off and land? Would 
any of us drive across a bridge if its structure was described as weak 
to moderate? Would any of us take medication if the FDA said there were 
still 293 unresolved questions about its safety? The answer is obvious. 
The answer is no. Yet with Yucca Mountain, that is exactly what we are 
going to do. The nerve of this administration to pretend that this 
decision is based on sound science.
  If Congress approves this project, as many as 108,000 shipments of 
nuclear waste will travel through 43 States en route to Yucca Mountain. 
The government's own statistical models show that we can expect between 
50 and 300 accidents involving nuclear waste. People make mistakes. 
Accidents happen. But an accident involving nuclear waste would be 
catastrophic, exposing whole communities to radiation and destroying 
the environment for thousands of years. The cost of evacuation and 
remediation would be astronomic, not to mention the unspeakable cost of 
human suffering.
  An even more devastating scenario would be a terrorist attack. We 
already know that al Qaeda and other terrorist groups are looking for 
the material to go in a dirty bomb. These waste transports are exactly 
the type of target rich environment they are looking for. In the wake 
of 9/11, we cannot afford to be naive and believe that we are safe from 
people who would give up their own lives to end ours.
  Yucca Mountain will do nothing to fix the nuclear waste problem in 
our country. It will greatly exacerbate our vulnerabilities to 
terrorist attacks. With every truck, rail and barge shipment, our 
homeland security becomes more and more difficult to defend. The Yucca 
Mountain project will put us all at risk by transporting ``mobile 
Chernobyls'' through our communities, small towns and cities. If we 
cannot move the waste safely, then we should not be moving it at all.
  Many of my colleagues ask if there is an alternative. The PECO 
utility in Philadelphia has reached an agreement with the government in 
which the Department of Energy will take title to the waste, allowing 
the government to protect it in reinforced secure facilities without 
moving it around the country, and at the same time allowing the utility 
to lower its tax payments and its bottom line.
  In the long term, our country needs to invest its resources into 
emerging technologies seeking solutions to reduce volume, toxicity and 
half-life of nuclear waste. We also need to develop alternative 
renewable energy sources to relieve our dependence on foreign oil and 
nuclear power.

  Almost 50 years ago, the Department of Energy came to Nevada and 
asked us to bear the brunt of atomic testing. They assured Nevada test 
site workers and other citizens in my State that sound science 
demonstrated these tests were not harmful. Many of these workers are 
now dead, their families devastated, and this government can never 
clean up that legacy. Now the Department of Energy is coming to Nevada 
yet again and asking us to put trust in them like they did our parents 
and our grandparents. Well, this Congresswoman and mother of two is 
going to stand up to the Federal Government and say, no, I will not let 
my children become the cancerous legacy of the DOE's disingenuous 
promise of safety and sound science.
  I urge Members to vote ``no'' on this resolution. It is a bad one. It 
is a bad one for our families. It is a bad one for our country.
  Mr. TAUZIN. Mr. Speaker, I am honored to yield 3 minutes to the 
gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Shimkus), a distinguished member of our 
committee and a lieutenant colonel of the Army Reserves.
  (Mr. SHIMKUS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his 
remarks.)
  Mr. SHIMKUS. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of this joint 
resolution. I am also proud to be an original cosponsor of this 
legislation. The vote that Congress will be taking today says that 
after 20 years of exhaustive scientific analysis the government is 
ready to designate Yucca Mountain--a barren, windswept desert ridge 90 
miles northwest of Las Vegas--a safe site and move to the licensing 
phase for the development of an underground disposal facility. The 
industry, environmental, labor, consumer and business groups have 
applauded the President and Secretary Abraham for making this decision 
on sound science.
  The administration is acting responsibly to fulfill the Federal 
Government's longstanding obligation to the American people to safely 
isolate and dispose of used nuclear fuel and defense waste. Now 
Congress must act to affirm President Bush's decision and advance the 
Nation's energy, economic and environmental security.
  There has been and will be a lot of discussion today on transporting 
of nuclear waste. Numerous Members have come before this body and have 
expressed concerns about the safety of transporting spent nuclear fuel. 
The truth is their concerns are misguided. You cannot argue with the 
fact that almost 3,000 safe shipments of used nuclear fuel have taken 
place without any release of radioactive material. That is right. On 
some 3,000 occasions, used fuel has traveled by truck or rail across 
the country, including almost 500 in my home State of Illinois. The 
reason you probably have not heard about this is because not one of 
these shipments has threatened the environment or public safety.
  States like Illinois, which currently has 11 nuclear reactors and 
gets almost half of our electricity from nuclear power, have gone to 
great lengths to set up a system that will ensure safe transportation 
of nuclear waste through the State and across State lines.

[[Page H2186]]

                              {time}  1315

  They inspect the trucks and trains; they inspect the roads, the rail 
lines. They have set up emergency response systems with local 
governments. They coordinate all routes with the Federal Government; 
and most of all, they ensure that the citizens of Illinois remain safe.
  Transporting spent nuclear material is safe. It has been proven to be 
safe, and there is no reason to doubt that it will remain safe.
  The State of Nevada has a tremendous nuclear legacy, as identified by 
this recently approved Nevada State license plate. The State of Nevada 
can again fulfill their nuclear legacy and continue to aid this Nation 
and our citizens by safely storing high-level nuclear waste for our 
country. I ask all of my colleagues to support this legislation.
  Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio 
(Mr. Kucinich).
  Mr. KUCINICH. Mr. Speaker, the transportation of this waste will 
require over 96,000 truck shipments over 4 decades. Almost every major 
east-west interstate highway and mainland railroad in the country will 
experience high-level waste shipments. More highly-radioactive waste 
will be shipped in the first full year of repository operations than 
has been transported in the entire 5-decade history of spent fuel 
shipments in the United States.
  The Department of Energy proposes to directly impact 44 States and 
many of the major metropolitan areas in the Nation. At least 109 cities 
with populations exceeding 100,000, including my constituents in 
Cleveland, Ohio, will be subjected to repeated shipments with minimal 
safeguards. Highway shipments alone will impact at least 703 counties 
with a combined population of 123 million people. Nationally, 11 
million people reside within one-half mile of a truck or rail route.
  This never-before-attempted radioactive materials transportation 
effort will bring with it many risks, including potentially serious 
economic damage and property value losses in cities and communities 
along shipping routes. The poorly tested transportation casks may be 
vulnerable to highway accidents and security breaches.
  Because of a lack of rail facilities to several reactors, the 
Department of Energy will use barge shipments to move this waste to a 
port capable of transferring the 120-ton cask to a train. Some of these 
shipments will occur on the Great Lakes, the world's largest source of 
fresh water. Over 35 million people living in the Great Lakes basin use 
it for drinking water.
  The Federal Government must radically improve the safety and security 
of these shipments, and that is the purpose of the Nuclear Waste 
Transportation Protection Amendments Act of 2002 which I have 
introduced.
  Mr. Speaker, this legislation would, one, require comprehensive 
nuclear waste transportation safety programs; two, protect populated 
communities; three, establish that the oldest fuel first should be 
shipped; four, require full-scale cask testing; five, require State and 
local route consultations; six, private carrier prohibitions; seven, 
advanced notification; and, eight, safety precautions.
  Vote against this legislation.
  Mr. WYNN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  Let me begin by recognizing the outstanding efforts the gentleman 
from Louisiana (Mr. Tauzin), our committee chairman; the gentleman from 
Michigan (Mr. Dingell), our ranking member; the gentleman from Texas 
(Mr. Barton), our subcommittee chairman; and the gentleman from 
Virginia (Mr. Boucher), our ranking subcommittee member. They have done 
an excellent job on a very important piece of legislation.
  As an original cosponsor, I rise to wholeheartedly support this 
legislation. As we discuss energy self-sufficiency and national 
security, we must keep in mind that nuclear energy is an important part 
of a balanced energy portfolio. This Nation has 103 reactors that have 
a unique ability to power economic growth without polluting our air. 
This is the only expandable, large-scale electricity source that avoids 
emissions. Nuclear power is reliable and affordable, with production 
costs lower than coal and natural gas plants.
  Today, nuclear energy produces 20 percent of our electricity and is 
essential to our national security. However, it is important to 
recognize that there must be permanent disposal of nuclear waste. This 
is a reality which must be addressed and which we are trying to deal 
with here today.
  Electricity consumers under the National Nuclear Waste Policy Act 
have committed $18 billion since 1983 to pay for the disposal and 
storage of nuclear waste. The Federal Government has spent $7 billion 
in this same period to study Yucca Mountain, and we are right now 
overdue in fulfilling our commitment to electricity consumers. In my 
own State of Maryland, consumers have paid $237 million into the 
Nuclear Waste Disposal Fund since 1983. We in the State of Maryland are 
expecting the Federal Government to reach a conclusion. I believe the 
rest of the country feels the same.
  Yucca Mountain is a safe site for all Americans. Currently, spent 
nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste is temporarily stored in 
131 above-ground facilities in 39 States. Mr. Speaker, 161 million 
Americans live within 75 miles of these sites. One central site 
provides more protection for this material than do the existing 131 
sites. After 20 years of research, billions of dollars of carefully 
planned and reviewed scientific field work, the Department of Energy 
has concluded that the repository at Yucca Mountain brings together the 
location, the natural barriers, and the design elements most likely to 
protect the health and safety of the public, including those Americans 
living in the immediate vicinity.
  Used nuclear fuel storage in current power plants is safe, but 
nuclear power plants are not designed for long-term disposal. Permanent 
disposal, permanent long-term disposal will be managed by the Federal 
Government under this bill. The fuel will be stored 1,000 feet 
underground where it will be more secure.
  Now, many people today have talked about transportation issues. We 
have empirical experience. After 45 years of experience and 3,000 
shipments of used nuclear fuel by rail and by truck, no radiation 
releases, no fatalities, injuries or environmental damage have occurred 
because of the radioactivity of the cargo. The Department of Energy 
will coordinate transportation routes with local and State officials so 
local communities will not be excluded from this process. When 
operational, there will only be one or two shipments per day.
  This is the reality. This is the challenge that Congress has been 
asked to address. With 20 percent of our electricity produced by 
nuclear power plants, how do we dispose of it? We have studied it for 
20 years. The American taxpayers have paid billions of dollars to have 
it disposed of. We have a site and we have sound science. I urge us to 
pass this resolution and dispose of nuclear waste.
  Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from 
Michigan (Ms. Rivers).
  (Ms. RIVERS asked and was given permission to revise and extend her 
remarks.)
  Ms. RIVERS. Mr. Speaker, I stand in opposition to this proposal. 
Under this particular plan, over 100,000 train, truck, and barge 
shipments, each carrying deadly, high-level nuclear waste, would have 
to go through 45 States, over 300 congressional districts, and hundreds 
of cities and towns; and 77,000 tons of nuclear waste would have to be 
relocated, which would require up to 108,000, 108,000 truck, rail, and 
barge shipments over 38 years.
  Based on the Department of Energy estimates, a nuclear waste shipment 
would have to leave a site somewhere in the United States every 4 hours 
for 24 years. Three thousand barge shipments may be necessary, 
including shipments on the world's largest fresh water source, the 
Great Lakes, which surround my beautiful State, to reach this plant.
  So far, over 16 million Americans would be projected to live within a 
half mile of proposed nuclear transportation routes. The shipping 
containers now available cannot resist explosives or fires associated 
with truck and rail accidents.
  Proponents speak with a confidence belied by actual experience. The 
entire history of nuclear shipments to date

[[Page H2187]]

comprised less than 1 percent of the total to be shipped to Yucca 
Mountain. This waste is so radioactive that direct exposure quickly 
causes death and even a minute particle ingested or inhaled will cause 
cancer.
  We will hear from other speakers that legitimate doubts exist as to 
the safety of the proposed site and that even if approved, the Yucca 
Mountain solution does not come close to solving the Nation's nuclear 
waste problem. After 30 to 40 years of continuous shipping of nuclear 
waste through our cities and towns, so much more waste will have been 
produced, but there will be hardly a dent in today's problem.
  Additionally, the cost of the Yucca Mountain project is spiraling out 
of control. A few years ago, the Energy Department said it would cost 
hundreds of millions of dollars. Now they say it is $56 billion. 
Independent estimates of the costs soar into the hundreds of billions, 
some up to $309 billion. The nuclear waste trust fund has only $11 
billion in it. Where is the money going to come from? More taxes? 
Social Security? How will we pay the cost of this proposal?
  Taxpayers should not end up footing the bill for the power industry's 
spent fuel. ``No'' is the right vote.
  Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 6 minutes.
  (Mr. BARTON of Texas asked and was given permission to revise and 
extend his remarks.)
  Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, before I begin my prepared remarks, 
I want to apologize to the gentleman from Nevada (Mr. Gibbons). In the 
motion on the point of order, I was trying to be humorous and if I 
offended the gentleman in any way, I am prepared to ask that my own 
words be taken down, because the last thing in the world I want this 
body or the country to feel is that I do not have the utmost and total 
respect for the gentleman from Nevada and the fine work that he has 
done on behalf of his constituents.
  Mr. GIBBONS. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. BARTON of Texas. I yield to the gentleman from Nevada.
  Mr. GIBBONS. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman for the 
opportunity. Certainly I appreciate the gentleman's remarks and his 
words are very serious to me. I want the gentleman to know that we take 
this debate very seriously. I appreciate the gentleman's concern and 
his remarks, and certainly no offense was taken.
  Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, we are here today to move a 
resolution that would move forward the process that would ultimately 
result in a site being selected to store high-level nuclear waste that 
has been generated primarily by our civilian nuclear reactors in this 
country. Those reactors have been generating electricity for the 
American people for the last approximately 40 years. Today, 20 percent 
of our Nation's electricity is generated by nuclear power generators. 
At the time those power plants were put into operation, there was not a 
plan on where to store the high-level nuclear waste, because at that 
time it was assumed that the Congress and the industry and the various 
advocacy and stakeholder groups would mutually agree on a plan and a 
site, or sites. That has not happened for a number of reasons.
  Nuclear power has become very controversial. The issue of where to 
store the waste has been used as a surrogate on whether one was for or 
against nuclear power, which brings us to today. In 1987, we passed a 
series of amendments in an appropriations bill that said we are going 
to store this waste at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. Since that time, we 
have spent approximately $7 billion trying to determine whether, in 
fact, that was a wise decision. There have been hundreds of thousands 
of studies, hundreds of thousands of man-hours spent conducting 
studies, costing hundreds of millions of dollars, to determine whether 
it is safe to store the high-level nuclear waste out at Yucca Mountain.
  The Department of Energy submitted a recommendation to the President; 
the recommendation to the President said that they think it is safe. 
The outside policy review board that has the watchdog opportunity has 
said that that recommendation is weak to moderate, but the technical 
issues that are outstanding can be resolved in the next several years.
  So this resolution simply says the Governor's objection to that 
decision, the Governor of Nevada, the State in which the repository 
would be located, not withstanding that the Congress goes on record 
telling the Department of Energy that it can go ahead and go forward 
with the licensing application process to the Nuclear Regulatory 
Commission.
  Now, I would point out that there is nothing absolutely certain in 
life except death. We are all going to die. In the interim, we want to 
make our lives as positive and as constructive as possible; and in the 
modern era we want energy sources that are safe and efficient and 
reliable to make our lives as constructive as possible. Those that 
oppose the repository at Yucca Mountain because it is not 100 percent 
certain that over the next 400,000 years there is absolutely no way 
that something wrong can go wrong are asking for the impossible.

                              {time}  1330

  I cannot guarantee that when I walk out of this Chamber to go back to 
my office, if I cross the street, that a car will not hit me. I do not 
think it will, but I cannot guarantee that I will not have some sort of 
an accident just walking from here back to the Rayburn Office Building. 
The probabilities are that I will not.
  If we look at all the scientific evidence that has been prepared on 
Yucca Mountain, it shows that to the degree that men and women can 
provide certainty, we are certain that for the next 10,000 years the 
repository at Yucca Mountain will be safe.
  So I would ask when it comes time to have this vote that we vote to 
send this resolution to the other body and we say that we believe that 
we need to make a decision to have a repository, and that repository 
should be at Yucca Mountain. Then we will work together in a bipartisan 
fashion to guarantee the transportation issues, to guarantee the safety 
and scientific issues so that the repository can be built and 
maintained in a safe and effective fashion.
  Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from 
Texas (Mr. Doggett).
  Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Speaker, I have to admit, the first time I heard 
about the concept of placing this waste at Yucca Mountain a few years 
ago, I thought it was a very good idea. I thought so for one reason: 
Nevada is not Texas. I think that is the main reason why so many people 
approve of the Yucca Mountain site today, because Nevada is not South 
Carolina, it is not Maine, and it is not California.
  But as one of my neighbors, Molly Ivins, pointed out recently in a 
column, ``putting the nuclear waste in Yucca Mountain is Nevada's 
problem. Getting it there is ours.'' These transportation routes will 
affect not just Nevada, but families in most every State in the 
country.
  Indeed, one of the routes the Energy Department had on its list until 
recently, consistent with some of the comments that we do not need to 
worry about transportation, was within sight of the United States 
Capitol. They were proposing to run this nuclear waste through 
Washington.
  To the gentleman who came and said that we have never had a problem 
hauling nuclear waste, I submit that his statement is about as 
persuasive as someone who stood on this floor last year and said an 
airplane has never been used as a bomb. Things are different after 
September 11, and are we increasing the risk to the American people, 
increasing the exposure, by having these ``mobile Chernobyls'' crossing 
the country back and forth, affecting millions and millions of United 
States citizens. Or would we be better off looking for alternatives to 
nuclear power and looking for long-term alternatives to Yucca Mountain?
  The truth of the matter is that if we really recognize how long this 
waste is going to be dangerous, the NIMBY approach, not in my backyard, 
one needs to recognize that Nevada is in the backyard of everyone in 
this country. It cannot be isolated from everyone else.
  The other big issue is not just the length of the time, the question 
is whether we want to have an incentive for more and more of this waste 
to be generated. They say, ``If you build it

[[Page H2188]]

they will come.'' But this isn't a ``Field of Dreams,'' it is a 
``mountain of nightmares.'' If this facility is established, there will 
be more and more nuclear waste generated.
  Finally, I have to say that I particularly want to applaud the 
leadership of the gentlewoman from Nevada (Ms. Berkley). She has been 
unceasing in bringing to our attention all of the implications of this 
very serious mistake that has been proposed.
  I know there is some bipartisan support for it, but it is troubling 
that a Republican President and a House Republican leadership would so 
aggressively promote this unfortunate resolution, and that we would be 
told by Republican leaders during debate that this is ``Nevada's 
legacy.'' It is a legacy we will all be stuck with if this measure is 
approved.
  Mr. WYNN. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Texas 
(Mr. Stenholm).
  (Mr. STENHOLM asked and was given permission to revise and extend his 
remarks.)
  Mr. STENHOLM. Mr. Speaker, few issues could be more important to the 
future security of the United States than passage of House Joint 
Resolution 87. For over two decades, scientists have subjected the 
suitability of Yucca Mountain to intense scrutiny, at a cost of more 
than $7 billion. It has been concluded that radioactive material can be 
safely stored deep underground in this area.
  Today, this material is located at 131 different sites around the 
country in temporary above-ground storage. As a result, almost 162 
million people live within 75 miles of one of these temporary storage 
facilities. Consolidating this material in one safe, secure underground 
location is the rational answer to the waste disposal question.
  Furthermore, by moving excess waste from commercial and 
decommissioned plants, we will remove 131 targets from a potential 
terrorist attack.
  Some would make an issue of transportation. The Department of 
Transportation, in conjunction with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, 
has ensured that many precautions are taken when transporting nuclear 
materials relating to routing, security, tracking of progress via 
satellite on a 24-hour basis, and coordination with State officials. To 
date, we have transported more than 2,700 shipments of spent nuclear 
fuel over the last 30 years, traveling over 1.6 million miles without 
any harmful release of radiation.
  Preliminary route selection and detailed planning will begin at least 
5 years before the first shipment takes place.
  Nothing is perfect, but I would say, as a rural electric cooperative 
manager, I worked to promote alternative energy sources 9 years before 
coming to Congress. Our membership thought it important to invest in 
alternative energy sources such as nuclear as a means to balance our 
energy budget. This was in 1970.
  The 103 operating nuclear power plants in the United States are 
providing 20 percent of the Nation's electricity. In fact, nuclear 
power supplies 10 percent of the electricity generated in Texas, 
including that produced by TXU's Comanche Peak plant in my district.
  Please join me in supporting the Federal Government's commitment to 
safely store nuclear fuel by voting for House Joint Resolution 87.
  Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the 
distinguished gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Upton), chairman of the 
Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet of the Committee on 
Energy and Commerce.
  Mr. UPTON. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding time to 
me.
  I, too, would like to compliment my friends and colleagues, the 
gentleman from Nevada (Mr. Gibbons) and the gentleman from 
Massachusetts (Mr. Markey). They have been good adversaries on this 
issue from the start.
  Let me read the President's signing statement when he signed the 
Nuclear Waste Policy Act:
  ``The Nuclear Waste Policy Act which I am signing today provides the 
long overdue assurance that we now have a safe and effective solution 
to the nuclear waste problem. It allows the Federal Government to 
fulfill its responsibilities concerning nuclear waste in a timely and 
responsible manner.'' The President was Ronald Reagan. The date was 
January 7, 1983, nearly 20 years ago.
  The other side, the opponents of this legislation, say that we have 
not had enough study. We have not spent enough money. Well, we have 
spent nearly $15 billion getting this site ready, decades in time.
  Where is this site, Yucca Mountain? Well, it is on Federal land. It 
is close, if not contiguous, to where we have done nuclear testing for 
decades. It will never be a vacation spot.
  Many of the detractors that have spoken today and will speak have 
always been against nuclear power, which, by the way, provides nearly 
20 percent of our Nation's power. Mr. Speaker, I do not know where the 
gentleman was when the nuclear power decision was made. I do know where 
I was, elementary school, a long, long time ago.
  When the decision was made, the Federal Government said it would take 
care of the long-term safety and storage of high-level nuclear waste. 
This was confirmed by the courts.
  For my district we have two nuclear plants, both on the shores of 
Lake Michigan. These two are among 103 throughout the country. Every 
single one of these facilities is an environmentally sensitive area. 
Many have run out of room for the storage of high-level nuclear waste. 
I have seen the lead-lined cement silos in the dunes of Lake Michigan. 
Yes, they are safe for now, but I do not know that they are safe for 
1,000 years, let alone 10,000 years, as will be certified in Nevada 
before it will accept nuclear waste, still more than a decade away.
  The process for safe storage started nearly 40 years ago. We need to 
finish the job today. Safe storage and safe transportation of high-
level nuclear waste in one safe place is essential, particularly with 
the events of 9/11. We have shipped more than 1,700 shipments of high-
level nuclear waste more than 1 million miles across this country 
without a single release of radioactivity.
  I know that that track record can continue. I would urge all of my 
colleagues to support this legislation and send it to the other body.
  Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, could I ask how much time remains 
controlled by the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Tauzin)?
  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Isakson). Twenty-four and one-half 
minutes.
  Mr. MARKEY. Would it be possible, Mr. Speaker, for us to get a review 
of the time that each of us has at this point?
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. 
Markey) has 42\1/2\ minutes.
  Mr. MARKEY. And the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Wynn)?
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from Maryland has 9\1/2\ 
minutes.
  Mr. MARKEY. I think it would be appropriate, if the gentleman would 
not mind, for me to recognize a few of our Members right now so that 
the time would come down.
  Mr. BARTON of Texas. Did the Speaker say that the gentleman from 
Massachusetts (Mr. Markey) had 42\1/2\ minutes?
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. That is what the Chair was advised. That is 
correct.


                         parliamentary inquiry

  Mr. BARTON of Texas. Parliamentary inquiry, Mr. Speaker. When the 
total time was only 40 minutes, how does he get 42\1/2\ minutes?
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. No, the time controlled originally was 1 
hour on each side, 2 hours total between proponents and opponents.
  There is 24\1/2\ minutes remaining for the gentleman from Texas (Mr. 
Barton), 42\1/2\ minutes for the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. 
Markey), and 9\1/2\ minutes for the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Wynn).
  Mr. MARKEY. If I may at this point, there was an hour divided evenly 
between opponents and proponents, and generously, the majority has 
relinquished 20 of its 60 minutes to the minority that shares the same 
views in support of Yucca Mountain.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Does the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Barton) 
object to the gentleman from Massachusetts' suggestion to have two or 
three speakers in sequence due to the imbalance?
  Mr. BARTON of Texas. I am sorry, I did not know that he had a pending 
request. What was the request?

[[Page H2189]]

  Mr. MARKEY. The request was that I be allowed to recognize----
  Mr. BARTON of Texas. I would generously allow the gentleman from 
Massachusetts be allowed to recognize two or three of his speakers in 
sequence.
  Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Utah 
(Mr. Matheson).
  Mr. MATHESON. Mr. Speaker, I am from the West. This is not the first 
time the West has been asked to shoulder the nuclear burden of our 
country. Dozens of atom bombs were detonated at the Nevada test site 
between 1951 and 1963. The West was chosen because as long as the winds 
were blowing east, the fallout avoided big cities and traveled over 
sparsely populated Nevada and Utah towns.
  I remember my father telling me how people in southern Utah would 
watch the sky light up, and how southern Utahans supported the program 
because they were strong patriots who believed in their country and 
they trusted their government.
  In the 1970s, my father, then the Governor of Utah, was puzzled over 
an alarming number of cancer deaths among our family and friends in 
southern Utah. Over and over he read ``cancer'' on death certificates 
of family members, more than 50 aunts, uncles, and cousins.
  The Federal Government told us we were safe, but the Federal 
Government knew we were at risk. On October 7, 1990, my father died at 
age 61 from a cancer called multiple myeloma. Thousands of citizens 
throughout the West continue to get sick and die from radiation 
exposure-caused illnesses.
  We saw a picture of a license plate talking about the nuclear legacy 
of Nevada. That is a legacy of which we should be ashamed.
  Why are we moving this waste at this time? We are not running out of 
storage space at existing sites, and in the coming years, technological 
advancements in reprocessing and recycling may very well take care of 
much of the waste.
  That brings us to the real fallacy of this entire exercise. If 
Members think a vote for Yucca Mountain gets rid of the waste in 
Members' backyards, they are wrong. As long as power plants are 
operating, new waste will need to stay put on-site for up to 10 years 
to cool down before it can be shipped.
  I can tell the Members as son of a downwinder and a Congressman who 
represents thousands of sick, dying, and widowed victims of our nuclear 
testing that the Federal record on this issue has been appalling. Our 
Nation is one of shared responsibility. By opposing the 
transcontinental shipment of nuclear waste, we take care of all those 
millions of people who live along the roads and tracks to Yucca 
Mountain. We protect their future from what is an unfortunate legacy of 
my own State.
  Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from 
Texas (Ms. Jackson-Lee).
  Ms. JACKSON-LEE of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from 
Massachusetts for his kindness in yielding me time.
  I think the very passionate words of our good friend, the gentleman 
from Utah, should really speak to the concerns that we bring to the 
floor of the House today.
  Let me acknowledge the leadership of the gentlewoman from Nevada (Ms. 
Berkeley) for the passion that she has given to this issue. But I 
really think that we are here today to begin a discussion on whether or 
not nuclear energy should be at the forefront of the policies of the 
United States of America, whether or not we need to begin looking at 
conservation and other issues, because let me tell the Members what is 
bad about this particular proposal: It is bad science.
  As a member of the Committee on Science, let me tell the Members that 
we are not complying with the Nuclear Waste Policy Act passed by this 
Congress 20 years ago. We are not adhering to good science.
  Just recently, the General Accounting Office found 293 defects in the 
research and advised the Bush administration to hold off on passing 
this resolution until 2006. If my math serves me right, I believe we 
are in 2002. This is the concern that those of us who live in 
communities who have nuclear waste and have nuclear power plants have.
  I would imagine those individuals are now looking at the gentlewoman 
from Texas (Ms. Jackson-Lee) on the floor of the House and asking, why 
are you speaking against your own neighborhood?

                              {time}  1345

  I am speaking for America and what is going to happen to the 
thousands of neighborhoods and schools which this waste will be 
traveling by and endangering the lives of those who are seeking only to 
live in this country with a great quality of life. My friend from Utah 
(Mr. Matheson) said it all. People are dying of cancer. People are 
dying because they have been exposed to radiation with no good science.
  Let us not make the same mistakes. Let us implement a process of good 
science. Let us wait until 2006. Let us get rid of 293 defects. Let us 
not have the children of America looking outside their window, and 
rather than saying hello to the choo-choo train, they are looking at a 
deadly disaster that may happen in their neighborhoods.
  I do not mind standing up with the few and the brave, recognizing 
that someone has to speak out. We have to change our attitude, and I 
would say we have to reject $40 million in lobbying for the Yucca 
Mountain. I oppose H.J. Res. 87 and I ask my colleagues to do so.
  Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from 
California (Mr. Baca).
  (Mr. BACA asked and was given permission to revise and extend his 
remarks.)
  Mr. BACA. Mr. Speaker, I stand in opposition to H.J. Res. 87. We need 
a coherent national strategy dealing with nuclear waste, but this 
decision is about local control. It is inappropriate for us to be 
micromanaging Nevada on something that is so important. We should allow 
the governor to do his job. He has decided that the Yucca Mountain 
proposal is too dangerous to pursue any further and we should not 
intervene in what is a State and local decision.
  I am also concerned about the issue, not just about the Members of 
Congress, but as neighbors of hundreds of thousands of people who could 
be harmed by the transportation of this through an accident that could 
occur. The Department of Energy may be way too tightlipped about the 
transportation routes that waste would travel across the country on its 
way to Yucca Mountain, but two things are certain. One, a very large 
percentage of the waste would travel through my district, the Inland 
Empire. Two, accidents will happen while transporting the spent nuclear 
fuel.
  If you look at the map, virtually all the rails and routes would be 
used through San Bernardino County, California, my home. Half of the 
country saw Spiderman this weekend. Well, we are in the center of a 
nuclear transportation web. The thought of it makes me angry. The 
thought of it scares me, and it should scare my colleagues on both 
sides of the aisle from the Inland Empire. I call on all the Members 
from Inland Empire and Southern California to come together and oppose 
Yucca Mountain.
  Why should our constituents be forced to face so much more of a risk 
of danger and other activities that may affect them?
  Even the most conservative Energy Department studies say that many 
accidents will occur and it is more likely it will occur in 
transportation hubs like my district where we had recently a derailment 
of a train that caused a lot of the homes in the areas to start burning 
in the immediate area.
  With this proposal, we will create thousands of moving targets for 
terrorists. We know what happened on September 11 with the airplanes 
crashing in the World Trade Center. Terrorists would not need a dirty 
bomb because we will have thousands of them crawling across the Nation 
just waiting for a fuse to ignite them, killing hundreds and thousands 
of people.
  People are already living in fear. We do not need to put additional 
people in fear. I ask all Members to oppose this resolution.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair will recognize one additional 
speaker of the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Markey) and then will 
go back to the rotation.
  Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from 
Washington (Mr. McDermott).

[[Page H2190]]

  (Mr. McDERMOTT asked and was given permission to revise and extend 
his remarks.)
  Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I feel a little like Yogi Berra when he 
said, ``This is deja vu all over again.''
  I was in the State of Washington in 1980 when we had exactly this, 
they were going to put all this in Hanford. We had a governor who said, 
bring it all in. Bring it all in. Dixie Lee Ray. And we got an 
initiative. We have collected the signatures and 75 percent of the 
people in the State voted no, we do not want to accept all the waste 
from the country. And she was defeated. I knocked her out in the 
primary of that election.
  Now, what you are looking at is this old business about NIMBY. It is 
not in my back yard. Throw it over the fence. Well, you cannot throw 
nuclear waste over the fence. And if you try, you will be putting it in 
trucks and railroads all over this country. And if you did not see what 
happened in Baltimore just a couple weeks ago where they had a train 
wreck in that tunnel and two Amtrak train wrecks in the last month, 
think about what happens in your neighborhoods if that happens.
  Now, all Members who are voting yes are thinking thank God it is not 
going to be in my neighborhood. But the fact is it is going to be in 
your neighborhood. It is going to be on the roads. It is going to be on 
the trains. It is going to be going past schools and hospitals. And 
when that issue comes to you, as it did in the State of Washington, 
suddenly all of the county sheriffs are saying, we do not know what we 
are going to do with all these trucks coming by and we do not know if 
there is a fire. We will need more money.
  You will wind up giving yourself one headache because this is being 
rushed through for one reason: The President has got the September 11 
flag and he is waving it around and wrapping himself in it and saying, 
We got to have nuclear power, and if we do not get rid of the nuclear 
waste, we cannot have nuclear power. So he sees his chance. He wants to 
ram this through in spite of the fact that the GAO says there are 293 
problems. How can you go home and defend to your people that you just 
ignored those problems? Vote no.
  Mr. BOUCHER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from 
Michigan (Mr. Dingell), the distinguished ranking member of the 
Committee on Energy and Commerce.
  (Mr. DINGELL asked and was given permission to revise and extend his 
remarks.)
  Mr. DINGELL. Mr. Speaker, I have heard a lot of misunderstanding 
today. I have heard a lot of Members making some rather terrifying 
speeches. I have heard a lot of important statements, and some of them 
have been factual. I would ask that you listen to me because I want to 
tell you what is going on.
  First of all, this is not about putting nuclear waste anywhere.
  Second of all, it is not about moving nuclear waste anywhere or 
moving it down any particular road. It is just about a step in a 
process to move forward to decide ultimately where and how we are going 
to put all this nuclear waste.
  Are there problems with it at this stage? Of course. Somebody said 
293. There may be that. There may be more. But we spent $7 billion to 
characterize Yucca Mountain as a site. Nothing is going to happen when 
we pass this bill except that about 2 years down the road the NRC is 
going to commence a licensing process to license a permanent storage 
repository to receive the nuclear waste. That will be an open process. 
Everybody will be permitted to have their say. Members of Congress here 
who are complaining, all of their constituents, any industry, you name 
it, can all have their say in that process. It is going to be a 
thoroughly open process.
  Now, there are going to be environmental problems whatever course we 
take. We can leave this nuclear waste where it is. It is in pools. It 
is in neighborhoods in your districts and mine. We can leave it there, 
and it is going to create a lot of nuclear problems. We can set up some 
other alternatives such as dry cask storage, and that is going to make 
nuclear problems, and they are going to remain in your neighborhoods 
and in my neighborhood.
  Now, I am not an advocate of putting this anywhere. I am not an 
advocate of putting it in Yucca Mountain or not putting it in Yucca 
Mountain. I am simply an advocate of this Congress functioning 
responsibly, to come to a decision on a major problem which we have, a 
major energy problem, a major environmental problem, a major land use 
problem, a major concern to the people of this country. We are 
producing nuclear waste at nuclear power plants and we are producing it 
in connection with our defense activities. That nuclear waste is going 
to go somewhere. Right now it is scattered around the country in all 
kinds of places, and it is a hazard to your constituents and mine.
  We have got to have some resolution to this problem of nuclear waste 
storage, and it has got to be reasonable, intelligent, and we have got 
to come to the best solution we can.
  I mentioned we have already spent $7 billion to characterize this 
site, and we will have to spend a lot more. I do not know what the 
licensing process is going to cost, but it is going to be plenty. As I 
mentioned, it is going to be open. Ultimately, we have to address the 
problem.
  Whatever we do is going to create environmental difficulties. It will 
be the responsibility of the Committee on Energy and Commerce and of 
this Congress and of NRC, of the executive department of government, of 
EPA and all of the other agencies, to see that the process is conducted 
in a way which is safe, which creates a minimum of hazard, to see that 
the transportation is done as safely as it can be done with as little 
risk as possible to the community and the people through which it 
passes.
  It will also be our responsibility to see to it that all of the 
questions which remain to be answered are answered. That will be a part 
of the licensing process, which is going to go on for something like 4 
to 6 years after we conclude this. The probabilities are that the 
decision will not be made until some time around 2010 or perhaps even 
later.
  I think it makes good sense that this body should exercise ordinary 
responsibility. We have a duty to the people to resolve this question. 
We are setting about taking another step towards the conclusion of an 
open process to arrive at a decision, followed by the licensing process 
which will take place at NRC and, as I mentioned, that will be fully 
open. EPA will be participating in that. Every other citizen who has a 
concern will.
  My advice to this body is proceed. We are simply taking a step 
forward. Let us take that step forward and make the process work in an 
open fashion for the benefit of all us. Let us resolve the question 
today. Vote aye.
  Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman 
from Georgia (Mr. Norwood), a member of the committee, who is 
sartorially resplendent.
  Mr. NORWOOD. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me time.
  Mr. Speaker, as an original co-sponsor of this, I rise in very, very 
strong support of this resolution. The selection of Yucca Mountain as a 
permanent nuclear waste repository is probably one of the most 
important questions that can face this Congress and for years to come. 
As we all know, and it has been said over and over again, over 45,000 
metric tons of spent nuclear fuel are currently scattered across the 
country in some 70-plus sites across our Nation. Clearly, clearly, it 
is in the American public's best interest to construct one permanent, 
highly secured repository for this waste. And, hopefully, one day a lot 
less of the waste as we get our mixed oxide fuel plants built and we 
can reduce the volume of this waste, which is where I hope we are 
going.
  Twenty years ago the Nuclear Waste Policy Act set a policy in motion. 
Twenty years ago. The DOE has now spent over $6.7 billion on 
characterization and development activities at Yucca Mountain. Now, 
part of this debate really ought to be why in the world has it taken 20 
years to solve this problem after spending $7 billion, not to speak of 
the millions of dollars that ratepayers have spent?
  Having been to Yucca Mountain, I believe the dollars spent have 
yielded credible research and pretty sound science that justifies this 
Congress moving to the next step. The vote today does not lock us in 
forever and

[[Page H2191]]

we are not committed forever to Yucca Mountain, as the gentleman from 
Michigan (Mr. Dingell) pointed out. Even the Washington Post and the 
New York Times actually agree with me that now is not the time to jump 
ship. Granted, that gave me some second thoughts, but they are right. 
Now is not the time to jump ship.

                              {time}  1400

  The development of a permanent, secure repository for spent nuclear 
fuel is imperative for this country. It is important to my constituents 
at both the Savannah River site and Plant Vogle, but it is absolutely 
vital to the national energy policy and to our homeland security.
  I urge our Members, vote ``yes'' on this today.
  Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from 
Colorado (Ms. DeGette).
  Ms. DeGETTE. Mr. Speaker, I oppose authorizing Yucca Mountain as the 
permanent site for our Nation's nuclear waste at this point, and I will 
tell my colleagues why. Politics are driving this process and not 
science. I realize that the proponents of this site say that the 
nuclear industry and the Department of Energy have already studied the 
issue; but frankly, it is the final grade that matters, not how much we 
study, and at this point, Yucca Mountain still gets a failing grade for 
many in the scientific community.
  Scientists both at the GAO and elsewhere have stated, we have heard 
that, that there are still issues to be addressed. There are still 
serious issues at the site, the seismic activity and ground water 
migration. The studies on those issues will not be completed till 2006. 
That does not mean that Yucca will never achieve a passing grade. Maybe 
future studies will determine this is the best and only place for 
America's nuclear waste, but this is supposed to be the site where we 
put our Nation's radioactive waste for the next 10,000 years.
  I do not oppose Yucca Mountain as a potential site outright. I just 
do not think that the designation is timely. How about completing the 
scientific studies first? Seems like a no-brainer to me.
  I also, frankly, have grave concerns about transporting the waste. A 
few years ago in Denver, Colorado, where I-70, the major east-west 
highway, and I-25, the major north-south highway, intersect, a truck 
with a big missile on it fell over, and I shudder to think what would 
happen if a truck containing radioactive waste fell over in the Mouse 
Trap in Denver, Colorado, during rush hour. I do not care how safe 
people say that is.
  So let us make sure that we have the science. Let us make sure that 
we have real transportation assurances and that local governments are 
working with us. Let us have that in place before we do this. It only 
makes sense. Vote ``no'' on the Yucca Mountain resolution.
  Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from 
American Samoa (Mr. Faleomavaega).
  (Mr. FALEOMAVAEGA asked and was given permission to revise and extend 
his remarks.)
  Mr. FALEOMAVAEGA. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman from 
Massachusetts (Mr. Markey) and the gentlewoman from Nevada (Ms. 
Berkley) for their leadership roles in this debate.
  Mr. Speaker, why are we so bent on storing nuclear waste at Yucca 
Mountain? Is it because the U.S. has already conducted more than 1,000 
underground nuclear bombs in the deserts of Nevada? How fair is it to 
ask the good people of Nevada to also be the sole keeper of our 
Nation's highly radioactive nuclear waste? How fair is it to transport 
nuclear waste across America's farm lands, which are easier targets for 
terrorists to attack?
  The fact of the matter is the largest concentration of nuclear 
reactors lies east of the Mississippi, and the risk of transporting 
highly radioactive spent fuel from these nuclear plants is a risk this 
Nation just cannot afford to take.
  Mr. Speaker, highly radioactive spent fuel or nuclear waste is one of 
the most toxic and dangerous substances known to mankind. For 10,000 
years, highly radioactive spent fuel is dangerous to human life. Visit 
the Marshall Islands if my colleagues want to see the residual effects 
of some 66 nuclear bombs that were exploded in Micronesia. The reason 
why we discontinued testing in the Marshalls is because we found 
strontium 90 in milk products in Minnesota and Wisconsin.
  Visit the islands of Moruroa and Fangataufa in the South Pacific and 
ask the French Government if after detonating 220 nuclear bombs, that 
nuclear contamination is now leaking into the ocean in the Pacific 
Ocean, despite assurances from the French Government officials that 
this process is okay and is good for 1,000 years. Give me a break, Mr. 
Speaker.
  I fear the good people of Nevada are going to experience the same 
thing. If the Congress approves this project, the Department of Energy 
suggests there will be as many 108,500 surface shipments of nuclear 
waste making its way across the heartland of America. Another 3,000 
shipments will make their way by barge across our waters.
  Mr. Speaker, whether we spend $1 or $100 billion to clean up our 
Nation's nuclear waste, any amount of money can never be equal to the 
life of any human being.
  Mr. BOUCHER. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 3 minutes to the 
gentleman from Texas (Mr. Hall).
  (Mr. HALL of Texas asked and was given permission to revise and 
extend his remarks.)
  Mr. HALL of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I rise today, of course, in support 
of H.J. Res. 87, a bill, as all of my colleagues know, that provides 
for the development of Yucca Mountain as a permanent repository.
  I think, though, first a word to those who oppose this resolution. 
They have done so honorably, steadfastly, and to be Texas plain with 
them, they have done so doggedly and working and speaking for the care 
of their constituents' will. For that, I admire and respect them. To 
paraphrase Reverend Billy Graham, I hate sin but I love the sinner. I 
hate the absence of a permanent repository, but I love and respect 
those who oppose this bill. I simply differ with them, and I differ 
with them for these reasons:
  I think, first, that it has an unparalleled safety record in 
transporting nuclear fuel. That is necessary. That is first; and, 
second, the long open public licensing process. More than 45 years of 
experience and 3,000 successful shipments of used nuclear fuel within 
the United States demonstrates that this material can be safely 
transported to Yucca Mountain by rail and/or by truck. No radiation 
release, no fatalities, no injuries or environmental damage has 
occurred because of the radioactivity of the cargo.
  The containers used to ship nuclear fuel are specially designed, 
robust steel containers that have undergone rigorous testing and can 
withstand extreme conditions including long-lasting fires, high-speed 
crashes, even submersion in water. The maintained integrity of the 
containers ensures the health and safety of the public and environment 
during transportation of spent nuclear fuel.
  Mr. Speaker, upon site approval, a three step nuclear regulatory 
commission licensing process will test and verify DOE's scientific work 
in a highly rigorous public process. The scientific work will continue 
throughout the licensing period and operation of the repository so that 
the government will always be governed by the most recent science.
  Again, I admire and respect those who defend their constituents. I 
urge my colleagues, however though, to support H.J. Res. 87. Let us 
move this bill on and get it behind us.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Isakson). The gentleman from Virginia 
(Mr. Boucher) has 2 minutes remaining. The gentleman from Massachusetts 
(Mr. Markey) has 30 minutes remaining. The gentleman from Louisiana 
(Mr. Tauzin) has 22\1/2\ minutes remaining.
  Mr. TAUZIN. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 2 minutes to the 
distinguished gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Burr), the vice 
chairman of the Committee on Energy and Commerce.
  (Mr. BURR of North Carolina asked and was given permission to revise 
and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. BURR of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman of the 
full committee for yielding me the time.
  I was struck earlier when the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Dingell) 
got up to speak because all of the sudden, after my lunch partner today 
who

[[Page H2192]]

was our former colleague, ranking member on the Commerce Committee, Jim 
Broyhill, I began to realize that between the gentleman from Michigan 
(Mr. Dingell) and Mr. Broyhill and our current chairman, they were here 
in 1985 when the energy policy act was, in fact, passed; and they 
shepherded it through, and it really did start the process rolling.
  For 20 years from then we are now here today trying to make sure that 
a process continues to move forward, and I found it striking that 
Senator Broyhill looked at me and said we envisioned that this would 
only take 10 years. Well, it has taken 20 now; and the question, as the 
gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Dingell) so appropriately raised, are we 
going to allow it to go to the next step?
  This is not about shipping waste tomorrow. This is about allowing a 
process to go to the next step where in the licensing phase we may 
learn more. To stand up and suggest that science has not been applied 
to this project is only to say that under the definition in Webster's 
there is one area that we have not covered, whether it is applicable or 
not, but every study that people have suggested has been done on this 
site.
  The gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Dingell) strongly worded across this 
country today we store in our communities, in our backyards waste 
today, waste that eventually we are committed, as the Federal 
Government and as stewards of the trust fund with the rate payer money, 
to make sure that it has been used in a way that is effective long 
term.
  To my colleagues today I would urge them, this has been studied and 
we will continue to study it; but the way to continue to study it is 
not to stop the process. It is to let the process go forward. It is to 
make sure, in fact, that we are a little further down the road in the 
licensing process as well as our understanding of the transportation 
challenges that we will be faced with.
  I am confident that the 400 trillion Btus that North Carolina 
receives in low-cost energy from nuclear is something we have to have 
in the future. Do not cut this out by making sure nuclear is cut out 
because we have nowhere to store it. I urge passage.
  Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from 
California (Mrs. Capps).
  Mrs. CAPPS. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong opposition to this bill. 
The environmental questions surrounding the Yucca Mountain site have 
not been adequately answered and a decision with a 1,000-year impact 
should not be made with questions hanging.
  Our Nevada colleagues and the constituents they represent have spoken 
about the hundreds of questions regarding the safety of a site which is 
in their backyard. They deserve an answer to these questions.
  Of course, Yucca's supporters claim that if the licensing process 
indicates that testing and environmental problems may occur, plans 
could be changed or reevaluated; but we all know this is Washington, 
and a project like Yucca takes on a life of its own, and I have grave 
concerns about transportation plans for all this nuclear waste.
  The recent terrorist attacks raise questions about security at 
nuclear power plants and DOE facilities across the country. In my 
district, local power plant officials and the nuclear regulatory 
commission spent days issuing conflicting statements about how 
vulnerable Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant is to an attack. My 
constituents were understandably unsettled by the obvious lack of 
coordination and planning for this facility in their own backyard.
  Against this backdrop we add the problem of protecting shipments of 
dangerous nuclear waste. This scenario of thousands of nuclear waste-
laden trucks and barges careening across our roads and waterways should 
give us all pause. In my district, DOE wants to load tons of nuclear 
waste on barges and bring the barges through the Santa Barbara Channel, 
but I question some of the planning here. Let me cite just one example.
  The dry cask storage containers that will carry this waste are tested 
to withstand submersion in water, but I do not believe there has been 
submersion tests for these casks at anything like the depths found in 
the Santa Barbara Channel. So what happens if there is an accident and 
a number of these concrete containers end up at the bottom of the 
channel? Will they be able to withstand the extreme depths? Can we 
retrieve them?
  If the answer is no to either of these questions, what then happens 
to the fishing industry, the other ships that use the channel? How safe 
does this channel and the surrounding area then become?
  In closing, I do not believe we should pass this bill. I do not have 
faith that the studies behind Yucca are safe and complete, and I do not 
have faith that the project can be carried out safely and effectively.
  Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from West 
Virginia (Mr. Rahall), the ranking member of the Committee on 
Resources.
  Mr. RAHALL. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Massachusetts 
(Mr. Markey) for yielding me the time.
  I want to commend the leadership of two of our colleagues from the 
State of Nevada on this important issue, the gentleman from Nevada (Mr. 
Gibbons), a member of our Committee on Resources, and the gentlewoman 
from Nevada (Ms. Berkley), who is a very valuable member of our 
Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure.
  There are a number of reasons, Mr. Speaker, for opposing the pending 
resolution, but it boils down to this. There is no rock-ribbed, iron-
clad, copper-riveted guarantee that the interment of high-level nuclear 
waste at Yucca Mountain would be the safest course of action over both 
the near- and long-term.
  It is no secret that there is a multitude of scientific questions 
regarding this site, and I am sure all those questions have been gone 
into by previous speakers, but the GAO report noted that there are 
about 300 such questions and concluded that this site approval is 
premature.

                              {time}  1415

  There is one very important reason that I would like to mention that 
I do not believe has been mentioned thus far in this debate as an 
additional reason for opposing the pending resolution, and that is that 
Yucca Mountain is located within the aboriginal area of the western 
Shoshone Indian Nation. The mountain is sacred to them and it holds a 
powerful spiritual energy for two Indian tribes in particular.
  In fact, the Ruby Valley Treaty of 1863 explicitly stated that this 
area belonged to the Shoshone. Yet in arrogance, and that is what it 
is, arrogance, this administration has determined that this particular 
sacred site is a pretty good place to put a nuclear waste repository. 
That is desecration, plain and simple. It is desecration to the 
Shoshone Indian Nation. Whether or not my colleagues understand the 
religion of these people, whether or not my colleagues subscribe to it, 
know this: Dumping nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain is akin to dumping 
nuclear waste at your own house of worship.
  I urge the defeat of the pending resolution.
  Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume to 
just tell the gentleman that that was a beautiful statement.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from the State of 
California (Ms. Lee).
  Ms. LEE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this 
time, and I also want to commend the gentleman from Massachusetts for 
his leadership, as well as the gentlewoman from Nevada for really 
raising the very dangerous implications of what we are doing today, and 
I rise in strong opposition to H. J. Res. 87.
  Now, this resolution, as we have heard today, would send 77 tons of 
nuclear waste across our Nation's highways, through our streets, and 
past our homes. Every hour of every day for the next three decades, 
trucks and railcars full of radioactive waste would be rolling past. 
Every mile along the way they would be exposed to the risk of both 
terrorists and simple accidents. This is very, very scary. This cannot 
be the answer.
  We must seek out scientifically sound mechanisms to store and treat 
existing nuclear waste and we must shift to a safer energy technology. 
We cannot keep producing nuclear waste that we clearly cannot manage 
safely.

[[Page H2193]]

Nuclear waste cannot continue to proliferate. Transporting tons of 
waste to Yucca Mountain will not eliminate the piles of waste sitting 
at reactor sites across the country. It will barely make a dent in them 
for years to come. Instead, it will expand our risk every mile 
traveled.
  Finally, transportation aside, Yucca Mountain is not the solution. 
With threats of earthquakes and groundwater contamination, it is an 
environmental disaster waiting to happen. I urge my colleagues to 
oppose this resolution.
  I want to again thank the gentleman from Massachusetts and the 
gentlewoman from Nevada for making sure that we are fully aware of the 
implications of what we are doing today.
  Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from 
Minnesota (Mr. Oberstar).
  (Mr. OBERSTAR asked and was given permission to revise and extend his 
remarks.)
  Mr. OBERSTAR. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this 
time, and I rise in opposition to the Yucca Mountain Repository Site 
Approval Act.
  Our Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure just recently had 
a hearing on this issue. It was clear from the hearing there are too 
many uncertainties, too many unresolved issues, and the risks are too 
high for us to support this resolution.
  This is not the first time, this is the second time around on this 
issue of transporting nuclear waste. And our committee addressed this 
issue in 1982 during the consideration of the surface transportation 
bill when there was an amendment to prohibit the transportation of 
nuclear waste through major urban areas. What about the folks in the 
rural areas? They should be exposed because people in the urban areas 
should not be? We defeated the measure.
  In 1987, the same group that is telling us that Yucca Mountain is a 
great place came to us in northern Minnesota saying it was a great 
place to locate nuclear waste at the headwaters of the Great Lakes. 
One-fifth of all the fresh water on the face of the Earth, and they 
wanted to deposit this most toxic substance known to mankind right 
there so we could poison one-fifth of the water. It was the worst 
possible place then, and Yucca Mountain is the second worst possible 
place.
  The General Accounting Office submitted to our committee a report 
showing that there are 293 scientific issues and technical questions 
not yet resolved that have to be answered before the DOE could even 
apply for a license. This is not the time. We have plenty of time. It 
will not be until 2006 before they are even ready to submit an 
application. Let us defeat this now and give it more substantive 
consideration.
  Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to H.J. Res. 84, the Yucca Mountain 
Repository Site Approval Act, which authorizes the development of a 
nuclear waste depository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. As was made clear 
during a joint hearing of the Subcommittees on Railroads and Highways 
and Transit of the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, 
there are too many uncertainties, too many unresolved issues--and the 
risks are simply too high--for me to support this resolution.
  At the hearing, we heard a great deal of evidence about the failures 
of the Yucca Mountain proposal. We learned that the Department of 
Energy (``DOE''), which was supposed to study the environmental effects 
of transporting nuclear waste from 131 sites around the country, 
included only 77 sites in its final environmental impact statement for 
Yucca Mountain. In other words, DOE omitted any evaluation of 54 
nuclear waste sites--or 41 percent of the nuclear waste sites it was 
supposed to study--from its analysis.
  In addition, the General Accounting Office issued a report just this 
past December that noted 293 outstanding scientific and technical 
questions that must be resolved before DOE can even apply for a license 
for the Yucca Mountain site. Bechtel, DOE's own contractor, has stated 
that DOE would not be in a position to submit a license application for 
Yucca Mountain until 2006.
  Some of the most troubling aspects of the Yucca Mountain project are 
the uncertainties surrounding the transportation of nuclear waste 
across the country. The method and routes for transporting all this 
spent fuel from 131 sites around the country have not yet been 
determined. There are proposals; there are ideas about how to best ship 
the spent nuclear fuel, but there is no definitive plan for its 
transportation. What we do know is that this highly toxic material will 
be shipped over our Nation's highways, railways, and waterways, and 
will most likely travel through more than 40 states and the District of 
Columbia. And we know that, regardless of the specific routes 
ultimately chosen, this nuclear waste will be shipped through our 
communities in close proximity to millions of people.
  Yet, we are told simply to accept the fact that by the time this fuel 
is ready to be shipped, the Administration will have figured out an 
acceptable plan for shipping it. Mr. Speaker, I submit that such 
important issues should be explored and decided before we chose a 
nuclear waste depository--before we agree to ship nuclear waste through 
out cities and towns and across our lakes and rivers.
  Proponents of the Yucca Mountain site point to the safety record in 
transporting nuclear waste over the past 35 years. But what they don't 
say is that there have been, on average, just over 90 such shipments 
each year, mostly by truck. If we were to transport the 46,000 tons of 
materials now being stored around the Nation, as well as some of the 
additional nuclear waste that will be generated before the Yucca 
Mountain site reaches capacity, it would require approximately 2,800 
cross-country truck movements each year for 38 years.
  The Administration envisions that most of the shipments will be by 
rail. But there is currently no railroad to the Yucca Mountain site. 
Further, many of the nuclear sites where waste is currently stored are 
not directly connected to a railroad. In addition, there are no federal 
regulations that govern the routing of these shipments by rail.
  Tellingly, the railroads disagree with DOE over the safest way to 
ship this spent nuclear fuel. The railroads believe that dedicated 
trains are the safest way to move this material. First, dedicated 
trains do not require any switching of the railcars. Switching 
increases the handling of railcars and thereby increases the risk of an 
accident. Second, the disparity between the weight in the railcars 
carrying the nuclear waste and the railcars carrying other freight in a 
mixed freight train may cause instabilities that could lead to a 
derailment. Third, dedicated trains are necessary for the train to be 
equipped with electronically controlled pneumatic brakes. These brakes 
provide greater safety through advanced braking capabilities and an 
advanced communications system that alerts the crew of the condition of 
the train's wheels.
  DOE's regulations, however, call for spent fuel casks to be shipped 
in mixed general freight trains. Unfortunately, DOE's regulations 
appear to be ``market driven'' in that mixed freight trains are cheaper 
than dedicated trains. I would submit that the safe transportation of 
these highly toxic materials should take precedence over making a buck.
  At the subcommittee hearing, many of my colleagues on the 
Transportation Committee voiced a great deal of concern over the 
possibility of a train accident similar to the one in the Baltimore 
rail tunnel last July that burned for three days with temperatures 
rising above 1,500 degrees F. That is higher than the temperature that 
the spent fuel casks are designed to withstand. If a single rail cask 
with spent nuclear fuel had been on-board that train, it could have 
released enough radiation to contaminate a 32 square mile area. It 
would have cost nearly $14 billion to clean up such a catastrophic 
accident if it had involved nuclear waste. What is shocking is that the 
Nuclear Regulatory Commission (``NRC'') has not done any tests on the 
stability of the casks in a similar scenario. The tests they have done 
assumed a fire burning at 1,475 degrees F for 30 minutes. We now know 
first-hand that fires from such a train accident can extend far beyond 
the NRC's assumptions.
  Terrorism also poses a significant threat to any safe transportation 
of spent nuclear fuel. Whether transported by truck, rail, or barge, 
these shipments will be slow moving and could potentially be the target 
of a terrorist attack. We simply cannot afford to short-change the real 
and pressing security concerns inherent with the transportation of this 
fuel. While the casks are designed to withstand a great deal of damage, 
some of the sophisticated weapons available today could penetrate them.
  The subcommittee hearing brought to light a whole host of issues 
surrounding the transportation of nuclear waste material that should be 
addressed before we accept any plan to ship spent nuclear fuel across 
the country. Unfortunately, the Administration has elected to force the 
issue before all these concerns can be sufficiently addressed. The 
Nuclear Waste Policy Act states that the President's recommendation 
starts a process that leads ultimately to the Congress having to accept 
or override a veto by the Governor of the State of Nevada. I believe we 
should sustain Governor Guinn's veto.
  It may be hard to accept the consequences of sustaining the veto, but 
not as hard as making the wrong decision on this critical national 
security and transportation safety issue.
  I urge my colleagues to oppose H.J. Res. 84.

[[Page H2194]]

  Mr. BOUCHER. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. TAUZIN. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from 
Michigan (Mr. Knollenberg).
  Mr. KNOLLENBERG. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me 
this time, and I rise in very strong support of H.J. Res. 87, a 
resolution to approve the site of Yucca Mountain, Nevada.
  I am pleased we are finally at this step in this long process. We 
know that something must be done with the thousands of tons of 
radioactive fuel currently sitting in spent fuel pools across the 
country. Billions of dollars and multiple studies later, we know Yucca 
Mountain is the place to put it. It is safe and suitable.
  It is a simple fact that to get nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain we 
are going to have to move it, move it from many nuclear power plants 
across the country. Opponents to Yucca Mountain have spun tall tales of 
the dangers of sending nuclear waste through our hometowns on the way 
to Nevada. Mr. Speaker, these arguments are nothing but a red herring.
  A wise man once said everyone was entitled to their own opinion but 
that everyone was entitled to only one set of facts, and, Mr. Speaker, 
we have the facts on our side. Let me assure my colleagues that the 
transport of spent fuel along the Nation's highways and railways is 
safe. Over the last 30 years, as we have heard, more than 2,700 
shipments of spent nuclear fuel have taken place, traveling more than 
1.7 million miles, and they have taken place without a single release 
of radioactive material harmful to the public or the environment.
  The Federal Government takes numerous precautions when transporting 
nuclear materials, such as routing, security, tracking of progress, 
coordination with State officials, and any emergency preparedness 
training that is needed for State and local responders. The details of 
these precautions, most of which are highly classified, are very 
impressive.
  Certainly, shipping nuclear waste has the inherent risk of accident 
or attack, but that risk was there for the last 30 years as well and it 
will be there as long as we ship any nuclear waste. The far greater 
risk, in my mind, is to leave that waste in our backyards, on our lake 
shores, and in our communities in the 39 States where it currently is 
stored.
  For years, I have worked with my colleagues in the House to ensure we 
address the issue of nuclear waste in an honest and professional way. 
It is honest to say we can ship the waste safely because we have done 
it and will continue to do it. In fact, shipments are likely taking 
place right now as we speak. Our record on transporting nuclear waste 
is not an argument against Yucca Mountain, indeed it speaks strongly in 
favor of it.
  Mr. Speaker, the facts back it up. I strongly urge all my colleagues 
to vote for a permanent repository for high level radioactive waste and 
spent nuclear fuel. Support, I repeat, support this move.
  Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 3\1/2\ minutes.
  A congressional expert is an oxymoron. There is no such thing. 
Congressmen are only experts compared to other Congressmen. They are 
not experts compared to real experts in any field.
  Here, what we have is a decision made by congressional experts, us, 
to pick Nevada because they have the smallest delegation. That is why 
it happened. And now, unsurprisingly, there are 293 unresolved 
environmental issues related to a group of Congressmen picking the site 
to bury all nuclear waste in the United States for the next 10,000 
years. Now, Members of Congress are different in many ways, but one of 
the things they pretty much share in common is a very limited 
scientific background, and so it is no surprise that all of these 
issues remain unresolved.
  Now, what do we have on our hands, then? We have a thermonuclear 
Ponzi game. The generation that in fact enjoyed the benefits of nuclear 
power, and by the way there has not been a new nuclear power plant 
ordered successfully in the United States since 1974, we are coming up 
to the 30th anniversary, wants to pass on the risks to the next 
generation. It's a Ponzi game. We are dumping it on the next 
generation. Let them figure out what the environmental health and 
safety problems are. We are getting it off our hands right now. We are 
congressional experts.
  Now, what is the complication? Well, since September 11, in addition 
to all those environmental issues, we have the problem now of al Qaeda. 
Now, what have we learned in the caves and the computers of 
Afghanistan? What we have learned is that al Qaeda has placed nuclear 
at the very top of their terrorist targets. And so what we know is that 
the security that is going to have to be placed around the 
transportation of all of this nuclear waste must be much higher than 
anyone anticipated before September 11.
  Have we had the hearings on that subject? Have we determined what the 
cost of that might be?
  Here is what we also know. There have been two major rail accidents 
in the United States over the last 3 weeks. Now, what if it was a 
nuclear waste shipment? And what if the train was deliberately derailed 
by al Qaeda in some small town or city across the United States; and 
then, with conventional weapons attached to the nuclear waste, a dirty 
bomb was exploded? Is that possible? Well, post September 11, we know 
that they arrive in very large numbers, 20; they are very technically 
sophisticated; they are suicidal, and they have the technical capacity 
to be able to execute little drills like that.
  So it seems to me before we begin the process of putting a trainload 
or a truckload of nuclear waste on the road every 4 hours for the next 
24 years, that we have a responsibility to answer these questions. But 
because the nuclear industry and a pro-nuclear Bush administration just 
wants this issue to move so fast down the track that these questions do 
not get answered. We will not have that debate here in Congress. And 
that is as wrong as abandoning the intergenerational responsibility 
that we have to the next generation of Americans that did not create 
this nuclear waste but will run the risk of all of the dangers inherent 
in storing it in Nevada and transporting it on the roads and railways 
of this country.
  Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. TAUZIN. Mr. Speaker, I am honored to yield 3 minutes to the 
gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Callahan), the distinguished cardinal from 
the Committee on Appropriations, the chairman of the Subcommittee on 
Energy and Water Development, who, unfortunately for all of us, has 
announced his retirement from Congress this year and whom we will all 
sorely miss.
  (Mr. CALLAHAN asked and was given permission to revise and extend his 
remarks.)
  Mr. CALLAHAN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this 
time and for his kind words.
  And to the gentleman from Massachusetts, let me tell him that we all 
know he is one of the most eloquent Members of this House. He always 
makes his points and makes them so eloquently. But I would like to 
remind him that the Ponzi scheme started in Massachusetts.
  Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. CALLAHAN. I yield to the gentleman from Massachusetts.
  Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Speaker, I would advise the gentleman that it started 
in my district, which is why I am an expert.
  Mr. CALLAHAN. Reclaiming my time, Mr. Speaker, I understand that.
  And the gentleman also mentioned earlier in the well of the House 
today that one of the reasons we are here debating this issue today is 
because of the ineffectiveness and the smallness of the Nevada 
delegation. The gentleman from Nevada (Mr. Gibbons) and the gentlewoman 
from Nevada (Ms. Berkley) are two of the most articulate, effective 
Members of this body. And the very fact that they are short in numbers 
does not at all forgive the fact that they are very effective and 
outstanding Members of this body.
  I would also like to remind the gentleman from Massachusetts that the 
last time I checked this same issue passed the Senate of the United 
States. And if I am not mistaken, the State of Massachusetts has two 
Senators and the people from Nevada have two Senators, an exact parity, 
at least in the Senate.

[[Page H2195]]

                              {time}  1430

  So the fact that this project wound up in Nevada had nothing to do 
with either the ineffectiveness or the smallness of the delegation, but 
rather out of scientific knowledge that this was the right direction to 
go.
  The Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development has already 
appropriated over the last 12 years nearly $8 billion to ensure that 
this site is the safest site in the world in which to perform this 
storage. So there is no doubt in my mind, and I have visited the 
facility and I encourage the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Markey) 
to visit and see for himself that these products are going to be stored 
in such a safe manner that we are not talking about any danger to the 
citizens of Nevada, or anywhere else.
  It is going to be a safe facility because of the $8 billion we have 
already spent. Besides that, we are probably going to have to spend 
another $8 billion in the next 5 years to make further absolutely 
certain that it is safe with respect to the deficiency of the 293 
indications that the gentleman says we have last year. And I would like 
to secure the gentleman's commitment this year, if the gentleman will 
vote for an appropriation, I will give them the money to do these 293 
studies. But, instead, last year when President Bush sent the request 
over for the additional money to do the additional studies, when it got 
to the Senate, a member of the Senate from Nevada reduced the 
appropriation, negating the possibility that we would be able to 
fulfill all of the new studies.
  Mr. Speaker, I encourage all Members to join with me this year in 
appropriating a sufficient amount of money to make absolutely sure that 
all of the studies are going to be fulfilled. I am certain that the 
studies will prove that we are right, and this resolution, in my 
opinion, should pass.
  Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 11 minutes to the gentleman from 
Nevada (Mr. Gibbons).
  Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman 
from Nevada (Mr. Gibbons).
  Mr. GIBBONS. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlemen for yielding me this 
time.
  Mr. Speaker, I come to this body to speak on the floor to make one 
final plea that we consider a safer, more cost-effective solution to 
the disposal of our Nation's high level nuclear waste than simply 
burying it in a hole in the high desert mountains in the State of 
Nevada, my home district.
  Just last year, I urged Members and the public to review a GAO report 
which called the Department of Energy's Yucca Mountain project ``a 
failed scientific process.'' The GAO's independent, highly critical 
study of the Yucca Mountain project should be enough to shine the light 
even through the thickest nuclear industry smoke screen. And now, 
almost 5.5 years after I brought this issue to our attention, I implore 
this body and the DOE to abandon this misguided Yucca Mountain project.
  Consider the following: Is Yucca Mountain suitable for storage? Just 
listen to the proponents of the Yucca Mountain project. Time and again 
they will tell us the number of years and the billions of dollars that 
they have spent by this government to move this process forward is 
suitable for making this decision. We will hear it throughout today's 
debate, and we have heard it throughout today's debate. But this 
argument is flawed, as is the DOE policy. Spend all we want, we cannot 
make a volcanic, seismically active mountain geologically sound. 
Whether it is $8 billion, $10 billion, $20 billion, $100 billion, there 
will be earthquakes, water will percolate through the mountain, and 
corrosion of these casks will occur.
  Where is our sense of fiscal discipline in this body? Where is our 
restraint? Why are we willing to just throw our arms up in the air and 
conclude, well, we have already spent billions of dollars, so I guess 
we should just proceed? Where are my colleagues who are advocates for 
States' rights, local control and fiscal discipline?
  Nevada is currently fighting the DOE in Federal court to protect our 
water rights. That may not mean much to Members east of the 
Mississippi, but out West, water is very hard to come by.
  For local control, what are our governors going to do the first day 
rigs and railcars start traveling through Members' States carrying 
thousands of tons of high level nuclear waste? I think I have a pretty 
good idea. Ask the governor of the State of South Carolina.
  The DOE and the nuclear industry tells us that bringing up accidents 
is simply a scare tactic. But wait, it was not Nevada, it was the DOE 
that said we should expect somewhere around 400 accidents during the 38 
years of transportation that this waste must cross America. We did not 
bring it up. Nevada did not bring it up. We did not arbitrarily come up 
with those numbers; the DOE did.
  What will a State trooper, an off-duty fireman, an EMT do when they 
are required to be the first to respond to a nuclear waste accident? 
Before Members vote today, perhaps they should talk to them. Ask them, 
and they will probably say they do not know because nobody is trained 
or prepared to deal with an accident on a highway dealing with this 
high level nuclear waste.
  The DOE begs us to consider the fact that they have safely 
transported waste in the past without incident. Well, maybe there have 
been no major accidents where radioactive materials were released, at 
least not yet. But add up every single shipment of waste thus far, and 
we do not even come up to within 1 percent of the total amount of waste 
shipments that will be put on our streets, near our homes and 
communities, and probably through the communities of our constituents 
in the years to come.
  If the waste is not coming through our population centers by truck, 
it will come by train. Let me remind Members of some of the recent 
stories involving train accidents around this country. We can see Los 
Angeles Times, 260 People Injured, 2 Dead; Baltimore, Toxic Cargo Shuts 
the City Down, Firefighters Stymied, on and on the stories continue.
  I ask Members to look at page A8 in today's Los Angeles Times which 
indicates that storage of waste at Yucca Mountain is not safe. It will 
leak. What does this policy that we have before us today as a Nation 
say? It would lead us to believe that the world has no innovation and 
no technology, and that we do not have scientific and medical 
achievements capable of dealing with nuclear waste. We find ourselves 
cemented by a DOE policy that tells us the best our Nation can do or 
that our Nation has to offer for high level nuclear waste storage is 
simply to dig a hole and bury it in the ground and walk away. This, 
while nations across the world are advancing technologies in processing 
and recycling this waste.
  We have the ability in this country to reduce the amount of waste, to 
lower its toxicity, to eliminate plutonium, and make the waste 
completely nonproliferative, but not with this current policy. All we 
want to do, according to this policy, is hollow out a mountain, fill it 
with waste and walk away. I am totally unimpressed.
  Another question. What problem do we solve by moving forward with the 
Yucca Mountain project? The answer, none. As a matter of fact, we 
create one. If we look at this chart, there are 131 locations of 
nuclear waste around this country. Moving forward when we create Yucca 
Mountain with this policy, what are we going to have? We are going to 
have 132 sites in this country where nuclear waste is stored, one 
additional one in southern Nevada. That is right. Look at this map. 
There are 132 sites for nuclear waste. We do not, we will not, we 
cannot remove the waste from all of these States.
  Mr. Speaker, spent fuel rods have by requirement to sit in a cooling 
pond for a minimum of 5 years before they can be shipped. The DOE myth 
is that we are relieving these reactors of on-site storage, and we are 
somehow preventing the possibility of a terrorist attack on one of 
these 131 sites. That logic does not fly. All we are doing is going 
from 131 project sites to 132.
  Mr. Speaker, let us assume for a moment that there would be no 
accidents, no train derailments, no tracks to jackknife over a bridge 
or some waterway, not one accident to occur in 38 years. Not likely, 
but we will pretend, anyway, that it may happen. What about the 
terrorists? Are we not currently preparing ourselves to spend billions 
of dollars on homeland defense? Are we not briefed every day by Federal 
officials as to the potential threats

[[Page H2196]]

we face within our borders? Americans are getting a civics lesson every 
day in what a credible threat means.
  The chairman of the Senate Committee on Intelligence spoke out about 
terrorist threats within the United States. He said the terrorists are 
here in high numbers and ready and capable of attacking the United 
States. That begs the question, what next? What exactly is the al Qaeda 
craving next? According to CIA Director George Tenet, it is a low tech 
nuclear device or what has been deemed a dirty bomb. I quote from Mr. 
Tenet: ``We believe that bin Laden was seeking to acquire or develop a 
nuclear device. Al Qaeda may be pursuing a radioactive dispersal 
device, what some call a dirty bomb.''
  Just last month CNN reported that Abu Zubaydah, the most senior al 
Qaeda leader in the United States, has told investigators that 
terrorists were producing a radiological weapon, a dirty bomb, and know 
how to use it.
  Mr. Speaker, what we are talking about today is placing tens of 
thousands of dirty bombs on our roads and railways through 703 counties 
in 44 States. This map shows where the routes are going to go through 
the various States. If a Member's State is not one of the three, 
Montana, North Dakota and South Dakota, then that Member's State is 
going to be affected by the transportation of nuclear waste.
  There are terrorists in this country; and tragically, we have 
witnessed the amount of destruction they are willing to bring. Yet we 
are to believe that every one of these nuclear shipments will be safe 
for the next 4 decades, that they will be completely safe from any 
potential foreign or domestic terrorist attack.
  Mr. Speaker, I certainly hope so. After all, one does not have to be 
a trained terrorist to jump a train carrying high level nuclear waste. 
Just a few weeks ago a train carrying high level nuclear waste was 
boarded by one or two escaped inmates from a North Carolina prison who 
were trying to escape from an inmate work program. Well, imagine if 
these train jumpers happen to be more than common day criminals trying 
to evade their captors. What if they were terrorists and had explosives 
with them? Yet even though this did occur and it can and will occur 
again, we are charged with this bill's proponents of presenting nothing 
but scare tactics.

  Just as the DOE cannot spend Yucca Mountain into making it 
geologically sound, the nuclear energy industry cannot spin the facts 
into a myth. The nuclear power industry has contributed $13.8 million 
to Federal candidates during the 2000 election cycle. They have spent 
$25 million in just 1 year lobbying Congress on this issue, although 
many minds may not change, nor will the facts. According to DOE, on-
site dry cask storage can continue for the next 100 years.
  The Nuclear Waste Policy Act demands that the Yucca Mountain be 
deemed geologically suitable. As someone who holds a master's degree in 
geology, let me say that it is not, it cannot, and it never will be 
geologically suitable as required by the act, no matter how many 
billions we try to put into it.
  If Members do not take my word for it or Nevada's word for it, take 
their word for it and consider what the other side has said. The DOE, 
the NRC, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Congressional 
Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board have all said that the technical 
basis for projecting the long-term performance and the project's base 
case repository design has critical weaknesses.

                              {time}  1445

  They further said that the DOE has not presented a clear and 
persuasive rationale for going forward with the site recommendation.
  We have numerous statements that support this concept about the 
weakness of their case. Mr. Speaker, we can and we could do much better 
than this. We can and we should offer a more viable and safe and cost 
efficient solution to this problem. We can and we should continue to 
support nuclear power as an alternative to fossil fuels. But you do not 
need one just to have the other. Yucca Mountain is not safe.
  I, Mr. Speaker, in conclusion would say that many of my colleagues 
have never looked their constituents in the eye on this issue. But I 
represent the dairy farmer in the Armagosa Valley that is near Yucca 
Mountain, and I represent the alfalfa farmers that are there as well. 
They are watching today. I want them to know that we are fighting for 
them against this Yucca Mountain project.


                Announcement by the Speaker Pro Tempore

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Isakson). The Chair must remind Members 
to avoid improper references to the Senate, such as quotations of 
Members of the Senate other than in actual legislative history on the 
pending measure.
  Mr. BOUCHER. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I include for the Record a letter 
from Edward C. Sullivan, the President of the Building and Construction 
Trades Department of the AFL-CIO, in support of H.J. Res. 87.

         Building and Construction Trades Department, American 
           Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial 
           Organizations,
                                      Washington, DC, May 6, 2002.
       Dear Representative: On behalf of the Building and 
     Construction Trades Department and our affiliated unions, I 
     am writing to ask you to support House Joint Resolution 87, 
     the Yucca Mountain Resolution, because it is in the best 
     interest of our nation, our citizens and our workers.
       Our Nation needs a safe, stable and scientifically feasible 
     program for storing used nuclear fuel. The Yucca Mountain 
     location has been thoroughly examined for over 20 years at a 
     cost of $7 billion and has met or exceeded all environmental 
     and scientific standards for storage. It is located on 
     federal land in a remote, secure area.
       Nuclear energy has proven to be a clean, safe and reliable 
     source of electricity for nearly half a century. Today, one 
     of every five homes, businesses and farms receives 
     electricity generated by a nuclear plant.
       Since the 1970's growth in the use of nuclear energy has 
     reduced the need for foreign oil in the electricity sector 
     and saved consumers $81 billion in payments for imported oil. 
     But, unless we can begin the process of safe storage of spent 
     nuclear fuel, the future of nuclear energy is uncertain. 
     Yucca Mountain provides a unique public-private partnership 
     with the federal government appropriately shouldering the 
     obligation to manage used material while electricity 
     consumers have provided the $18 billion cost to pay for this 
     program.
       Finally, this issue is a very important jobs issue. Many 
     highly skilled Building Trades members in your state will 
     benefit from passage of this resolution. If the process set 
     forward by the passage of this resolution was to stop, many 
     good family wage jobs would disappear and a great number of 
     jobs would never be created.
       I urge you to support this resolution and permit this 
     process to go forward.
           Sincerely,
                                               Edward C. Sullivan,
                                                        President.

  Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the 
distinguished gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Kirk).
  Mr. KIRK. Mr. Speaker, as chair of the Nuclear Fuel Safety Caucus 
here in the Congress, I would remind everyone that in the shuttered 
Zion nuclear power plant just 100 yards from Lake Michigan lies a 
thousand tons of highly radioactive nuclear waste stored next to Lake 
Michigan. This is not unique to my district. The Great Lakes have 
another 31 coastline sites where nuclear waste is stored.
  Twenty percent of the world's fresh water is found in the Great 
Lakes. Thirty million Americans depend on the Great Lakes for fresh 
water. Not one scientist or scientific study claims that storing 
nuclear waste next to the world's largest supply of fresh water is 
environmentally sound. Moving nuclear waste from 131 temporary storage 
sites around the Nation to one secure location where America has 
already tested dozens of nuclear weapons is the goal of the Nuclear 
Fuel Safety Caucus. We must move nuclear waste from the Great Lakes.
  Why Yucca Mountain? Because without Yucca Mountain, we would have to 
construct 131 permanent storage facilities for nuclear waste in 39 
different States. These storage facilities are close to groundwater, 
earthquake zones and in close proximity to major cities, including San 
Francisco, Boston, New York and Chicago. Without Yucca Mountain, 161 
million Americans would have to live their entire lives within 75 miles 
of a nuclear waste site.
  And then there is the cost. According to the government's own study, 
the cost of building 131 permanent storage sites would be over $61 
billion. To cover this, the Federal Government would have to borrow 
from Social Security or raise taxes. Perhaps we could reinstitute the 
death tax, but we would

[[Page H2197]]

have to double it to pay for the cost. And that would not cover the 
lawsuits which would total over $56 billion for reneging on the promise 
to provide a nuclear waste storage site.
  A vote for this resolution is a vote to protect our Nation from 
further terrorist attacks. Removing nuclear waste from 131 sites to a 
single repository buried deep inside a mountain range 100 miles from a 
population center is much safer from sabotage or terrorism.
  I urge the adoption of this resolution. Let us wipe clean the 
terrorist shooting gallery of 131 sites located around the country and 
vote for this resolution for a secure environmental future.
  Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentlewoman from 
Nevada (Ms. Berkley).
  Ms. BERKLEY. I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time.
  Mr. Speaker, I have listened very carefully to the debate and I have 
to say that I was appalled when one of the speakers said that if we 
passed this resolution, Nevada will be able to continue its nuclear 
legacy. Nuclear legacy? Nevada does not have a nuclear legacy.
  Let me tell you what transpired in the 1950s in the State of Nevada 
when there were less than 100,000 people in the entire State. The 
Federal Government came to us and said that it was going to do above 
ground atomic testing of atomic bombs but that it would be perfectly 
safe and that you could watch it, bring your families there, work there 
safely. All you had to do was go home and take a shower. So thousands 
of people went to work at the Nevada test site. I must say I have 
friends that share with me the times that their parents took them up to 
the Nevada test site with a picnic lunch and they watched the atomic 
bombs going off in the Nevada atmosphere.
  Let me tell you what has happened to those Nevada test site workers, 
those brave souls who thought that they were doing their duty for their 
country, but safely, at the promises and assurances of the Federal 
Government. Those Nevada test site workers, if they are not dead, they 
are dying. Those people that observed those tests and watched as they 
ate their bologna sandwiches, they are dying, too. They are all dying 
of unexplained cancers. Those downwinders in Utah and in Nevada who 
happened to be caught living downwind of these atomic tests, they are 
all dead, too.
  It is very difficult for me, after having lived through those 
experiences, to believe the Federal Government now when they tell us 
that the transportation and storage of 77,000 tons of toxic nuclear 
waste in a hole in the Nevada desert is safe. It was not safe then and 
it is not safe now.
  In addition, we keep hearing about the $7 billion that has already 
been spent on site characterization. But if you spend 7 cents or $70 
billion, it does not make that site any safer. We are talking about an 
area of our country that has seismic activity, volcanic activity. It 
has groundwater problems.
  If I could direct your attention to a Los Angeles Times article that 
appeared today, this is the headline: ``Nuclear Dump Site Will Leak, 
Scientists Say.'' The little message underneath the picture says, 
``Despite the dry appearance of the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear 
dump in the Nevada desert, there is water in its environment. 
Scientists say that that vulnerability will eventually allow 
radioactive material to leak. At issue is only how long.''
  Then they point out paragraph after paragraph. The government 
officials point out, and I am quoting, two other nuclear sites that 
officials--these are government officials--once said would be leak-free 
for hundreds or thousands of years: In Pocatello, Idaho and the Hanford 
site in eastern Washington. Quote, both are leaking already, and 
radioactive material could make its way into groundwater in just 10 
years. That is according to a report by the National Research Council.
  You are telling me this is sound science? This is what appeared today 
in the L.A. Times. It talks about Yucca Mountain.
  ``About 12.3 million gallons of water flow through the disposal area 
per year. Traces of chlorine 36, which is produced only by nuclear 
bombs, was recently discovered inside Yucca Mountain.'' That means that 
through the groundwater, radioactive material gets into the rocks and 
into the groundwater in as little as 40 years. And you are telling me 
there is sound science? I do not think so.
  I have also heard some of my colleagues say this is really not a 
Yucca Mountain vote, this is not a transportation vote, that this is 
not really a vote on shipping nuclear waste. Let me beg to differ. This 
is the only time we will have to vote on this issue. So do not tell me 
this is not a vote on the transportation of nuclear waste across our 
country. It is the vote.
  I have listened to this debate. There is no doubt, on both sides of 
the aisle, we have huge problems. We have a huge problem with nuclear 
waste. We have an energy source in this country, nuclear energy, that 
produces a dangerous by-product, nuclear waste. This Nation has never 
figured out what to do with it. Not any alternative that I have heard 
is good enough for the people that I represent and good enough for the 
people you represent, too. If we go ahead with this foolhardy plan, we 
will never, ever figure out what to do with nuclear waste, because once 
Yucca Mountain is filled up, we will still have the exact same problem. 
It is time that we take care of that problem and let us take care of it 
today.
  Mr. Speaker, I include the L.A. Times article for the Record.
  The material referred to is as follows:

            [From the Los Angeles Times, Wed., May 8, 2002]

              Nuclear Dump Site Will Leak, Scientists Say

                          (By Gary Polankovic)

       Yucca Mountain, Nev.--As the Bush administration prepares 
     its push to win congressional approval for the Yucca Mountain 
     nuclear waste burial site, scientists agree on one key 
     conclusion: Yucca Mountain will leak. The question is how 
     long it will take.
       Rising one mile from the desert floor, the mountain looks 
     as plain and parched as much of the rest of southern Nevada's 
     ranges.
       Despite the arid appearance there is water here, and even 
     the scientists who have designed the repository concede that 
     the mountain's vulnerability to moisture will allow 
     radioactive material to eventually lead into the environment.
       Time is the key. Highly radioactive nuclear waste remains 
     dangerous for hundreds of thousands of years. Half of the 
     plutonium stored in the mountain, for example, will still be 
     radioactive 380 million years from now.
       Just one-millionth of an once of plutonium is enough to 
     virtually assure cancer in someone who comes in contact with 
     it.
       As Congress considers whether to override Nevada's 
     opposition to housing nuclear waste here, opponents of the 
     waste site argue that the Bush administration is pushing 
     through a flawed solution that will create radioactivity 
     risks for thousands of years.
       Government officials say they have designed a burial site 
     that will be free of leaks for at least 10,000 years. 
     Critics, armed with a raft of scientific studies, say that 
     can't be guaranteed. They point to two other nuclear sites 
     that officials once had said would be leak-free for hundreds 
     or thousands of years: the Idaho National Engineering and 
     Environmental Laboratory near Pocatello and the Hanford Site 
     in eastern Washington. Both are leaking already, and 
     radioactive material could make its way into groundwater in 
     just 10 years, according to a report by the National Research 
     Council, an arm of the National Academy of Sciences.
       Even if a 10,000-year leak-free promise could be 
     guaranteed, critics of Yucca Mountain say society has a 
     responsibility to civilizations far in the future not to 
     expose them to lethal waste that we generate.
       But the alternative to putting nuclear waste here is to 
     leave it accumulating in 131 different places in 39 states, 
     much closer to people and potentially vulnerable to terrorist 
     attack, the Department of Energy warns.
       The waste piled up around the country comes from nuclear 
     aircraft carriers and electrical plants, bomb factories and 
     university labs. Over time, it will emit thousands of times 
     more radioactivity than was released at Chernobyl and 
     millions of times more than the Hiroshima bomb.
       ``There is no more [storage] space, there are deteriorating 
     storage conditions, and you have the challenge that so much 
     of it is located near population centers and waterways,'' 
     said Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham. ``No one believes 
     you can bring in David Copperfield, wave a wand and it all 
     goes away.''
       ``We've tried to take into account as many uncertainties of 
     the future as can be assessed,'' Abraham said. ``I am 
     convinced that the site is scientifically suitable--in a 
     word, safe.''
       Yucca Mountain is not a done deal yet, but converting this 
     forlorn peak into the world's first high-level nuclear waste 
     dump is closer to happening than ever.
       President Bush has chosen the site, but Nevada challenged 
     that decision. Congress is

[[Page H2198]]

     considering whether to overturn Nevada's veto, and opponents 
     of the dump acknowledge they probably do not have the votes 
     to stop it. (A House vote might occur as early as today.) If 
     the Yucca Mountain plan survives Congress, the Nuclear 
     Regulatory Commission will consider issuing a license, and 
     the dump could open by 2012.
       Experts long ago recognized the need for deep, geological 
     disposal of radioactive waste, yet it is unknown whether any 
     system can be devised that could keep highly radioactive 
     waste isolated for such an immensely long period.
       ``We nuclear people have made a Faustian bargain with 
     society,'' said Alvin Weinberg, former director of the Oak 
     Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, where plutonium was 
     tested for one of the nuclear bombs dropped on Japan. ``We 
     offer an inexhaustible and nonpolluting source of energy, but 
     we require a level of detail and discipline that we're 
     unaccustomed to in handling the waste.
       ``Nobody really knows if we can do this. Trying to project 
     what's going to happen in thousands of years, tens of 
     thousands of years, is quite ridiculous,'' Weinberg said.
       Today, Yucca Mountain is an island in a desert. It is 
     surrounded by the Nevada Test Site, where the government once 
     tested nuclear bombs.
       ``If you can't put it here, then where can you put it?'' 
     asked Michael D. Voegele, chief scientist for Bechtel-SAIC 
     Co., the Energy Department's contractor for building the 
     repository at Yucca Mountain.
       But who can say what will be here millions of years from 
     now when plutonium and other deadly wastes still pack a 
     wallop? Will it still be a desert? Glaciers advanced and 
     receded across the planet a dozen times in the last 2 million 
     years. An inland sea called Lake Bonneville covered much of 
     Nevada and Utah 12,000 years ago, when humans first arrived.
       These technologies are forcing us to address the issue of 
     how they will affect future generations. This is not an issue 
     we've faced on this scale before,'' said Lester R. Brown, 
     president of the Earth Policy Institute. ``We're doing things 
     with consequences we don't understand.''
       Government engineers and scientists have been studying 
     Yucca Mountain for over 20 years--twice as long as it took to 
     plan and complete the moon landing--at a cost of $7 billion. 
     During that time, government officials have changed their 
     arguments about Yucca Mountain's safety.
       Problems began to emerge years ago when tunnels bored deep 
     into the rock revealed conditions inside were wetter, and the 
     geology more complex, than initially thought. Those 
     discoveries are at the center of the controversy today.
       Originally, the volcanic ash where the waste would be 
     entombed was believed to be so tightly compressed that 
     rainfall could not penetrate. Secretary Abraham said in 
     February that rainfall would take 1,000 years to make the 
     800-foot journey through rock to the disposal zone and longer 
     still before radioactivity could be carried to groundwater. 
     He does not believe leaks are a significant concern.
       Yet inside the mountain, government studies have found that 
     the rock is laced with fissures, some that move water the way 
     capillaries carry blood, some that flow like a garden hose. 
     About 12.3 million gallons of water flow through the 2,500-
     acre disposal area per year, government studies show.
       Traces of chlorine 36, which is produced only by nuclear 
     bombs, were recently discovered inside Yucca Mountain. Since 
     the last nuclear bombs were detonated above ground at the 
     Nevada Test Site in 1962, the finding indicates rainfall can 
     carry radioactive material deep into the rock in as little as 
     40 years.
       Once the presence of water was established, the government 
     changed plans. The plans now call for double-layer disposal 
     containers of stainless steel and a nickel-based material 
     called Alloy 22 to keep the waste isolated. The canisters 
     will be covered with titanium ``drip shields'' to keep waste 
     dry. Canisters could be packed close together too, so heat 
     would boil water and drive away steam.
       But engineers do not know yet know how to build a container 
     that outlasts radioactive waste.
       Materials like Alloy 22 haven't been around long enough for 
     experts to be able to assess how they will perform over 
     centuries.
       Given all of the uncertainties, some of the nation's 
     leading experts say President Bush's decision to proceed with 
     Yucca Mountain is premature.
       ``There are a lot of issues that remain unresolved that 
     could affect the safety of humans and the environment,'' said 
     Allison Macfarlane, a geologist and the director of the Yucca 
     Mountain project at MIT. ``We should not be in a rush.''
       Carnegie Mellon University President Jared L. Cohon said he 
     is concerned about the integrity of disposal canisters and 
     how water moves inside the mountain. Cohon chairs the Nuclear 
     Waste Technical Review Board, an 11-member panel of 
     independent experts appointed by Congress to review the 
     Energy Department's work at Yucca Mountain.
       That panel concluded in January that the government's 
     technical case for Yucca Mountain is ``weak to moderate.''

  Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds.
  Mr. Speaker, I want to point out that the gentlewoman from Nevada's 
statement about people dying of cancers because of exposure to tests in 
Nevada, above ground testing in the fifties and the sixties, there is 
not one scientific study that shows that there is any greater incidence 
of cancer in Nevada than anywhere else in this country. That may be an 
anecdotal tale, but there is no scientific validity to it.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. 
Frelinghuysen).
  Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time.
  Today, Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of this joint resolution 
which endorses the Department of Energy and the President's finding 
that Yucca Mountain is the best choice for a national nuclear waste 
depository. As we know, Yucca Mountain is on a Federal nuclear test 
site in the Nevada desert that encompasses almost 1,300 square miles, 
or an area bigger than the State of Rhode Island. Like Chairman 
Callahan and other Members in this House, I have visited this site. I 
have been inside the mountain, five miles into it. I have seen it 
firsthand.
  From a New Jersey perspective, this siting decision is long overdue. 
We live in the most densely populated State in the Nation with 49 
percent of our power generated by nuclear energy. For many years now, 
those wastes have been stored on the grounds of our two nuclear reactor 
sites, supposedly on a temporary basis. The time has come for the waste 
to be sent to a single national repository as was promised in the 
Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 and for which New Jersey taxpayers 
have contributed millions of dollars in their energy bills.
  Mr. Speaker, I strongly support this resolution. I urge my colleagues 
to do so as well.
  Mr. TAUZIN. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 2 minutes to the 
distinguished gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Wamp).
  (Mr. WAMP asked and was given permission to revise and extend his 
remarks.)
  Mr. WAMP. Mr. Speaker, I thank the distinguished chairman for 
yielding me this time, and I want to bring a little bit of common sense 
from the South to this issue. We heard from New Jersey. In the 
southeastern United States in the Tennessee Valley region, we are 
heavily dependent on coal-fired plants. I share the environmentalists' 
goal of trying to reduce the emissions of these fossil-fired plants. We 
also have in the Tennessee Valley Authority region five nuclear 
reactors on-line. They happen to be the most economically efficient 
generators of electricity in the TVA system. They are the most 
environmentally responsible and clean sources of electricity in the 
region. There is only one hurdle in our way of having a clean, safe 
alternative to the fossil-fired problem, and that is this waste issue.
  This administration, to its credit, has the guts to step up and do 
what is necessary to provide the alternative. I would say to my friends 
who protest dirty air and then protest Yucca Mountain, you cannot have 
it both ways. You cannot eliminate the alternative and then complain 
about fossil emissions. You cannot do it unless you want our country to 
be totally dependent on the rest of the world for our energy sources, 
and we know that sacrifices our freedom.
  Mr. Speaker, we have got to do the right thing. I appreciate the 
parochial eloquence, defending your own turf, but for the good of our 
Nation we have got to place this nuclear waste in a safe repository. My 
master's is in common sense. Common sense says you have got to do this 
in order to have clean air and clean water into the future and energy 
independence for the United States of America. National security hangs 
on this decision. This is an important decision and one that is not 
easy to make because we respect our friends in Nevada.

                              {time}  1500

  We respect our friends in opposition. But this is the right thing to 
do for the United States of America for many years to come.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Isakson). The gentleman from Louisiana 
(Mr. Tauzin) has 8 minutes remaining and the right to close; the 
gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr.

[[Page H2199]]

Markey) has 3 minutes remaining; and the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. 
Boucher) has 2 minutes remaining.
  Mr. TAUZIN. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 1 minute to the 
distinguished gentleman from the great State of California (Mr. Issa).
  Mr. ISSA. Mr. Speaker, there has been a lot of discussion here today 
on a lot of science and a lot of what-ifs, and I am not going to try to 
address what has already been said. Rather, what I would like to do is 
take what has been said by many of the Members from Nevada and clarify 
it.
  They say they are putting it here because we have very little 
population. Well, for a moment I will agree with that, because over 
one-half of all Americans live within 75 miles of high-level nuclear 
waste, most of it above ground, none of it ever tested to take a 757 
crashing into it. I rise in strong support of the basic concept that we 
will get these wastes into an area that will survive that attack and 
more. I rise because every day in my district over 200,000 men and 
women drive within a few hundred yards of San Onofre Nuclear Power 
Plant, not designed as a permanent-storage facility. I ask my 
colleagues to consider whether the 10 million people who live within 
the downwind hazard of that nuclear facility should be granted some 
final relief.
  Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 1 minute.
  Mr. Speaker, just so we get the record straight here, this facility 
which is being contemplated will only hold 60 percent of all of the 
nuclear waste in the United States, military or civilian. It does not 
solve the problem.
  In addition, all nuclear waste generated at all nuclear power plants 
has to sit next to the plant for 5 years anyway in each one of the 
States to cool down, so it does not solve that problem either.
  In addition, we also have the question of the casks into which they 
are going to place the waste. The Department of Energy only has 2 years 
of corrosion data to extrapolate out for 10,000 years.
  Mr. Speaker, Neil Young used to have a song, ``Rust Never Sleeps.'' 
And again, we are pushing the envelope, with congressional experts 
deciding that we have the answer to where all of this nuclear waste is 
going to be stored, in corrodible material and could ultimately leach 
out into the mountain, out into the aquifers. Finally, the Mobile 
Chernobyl issue, with terrorism now rearing its head, we have not 
answered those questions yet. How much will it cost? How safe can we 
make the railways, the highways, the byways of our country?
  Mr. TAUZIN. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 2 minutes to the 
gentleman from Texas (Mr. Barton), the distinguished chairman of the 
Subcommittee on Energy and Air Quality of the Committee on Energy and 
Commerce.
  (Mr. BARTON of Texas asked and was given permission to revise and 
extend his remarks.)
  Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, in 1981 and 1982, I was a White 
House Fellow in the Department of Energy and served at a very low level 
on the task force that developed the recommendations that later became 
the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982.
  Today, I stand on the floor as one of the chief sponsors of this 
resolution, along with the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Boucher), my 
good friend. If the Lord shines upon me, I may be fortunate enough to 
live long enough to be alive the day we ship the first shipment of 
high-level nuclear waste to the repository, which will probably be 
sometime in the year 2015 to 2022. If that happens, I will have spent 
almost 40 years of my adult life in some way or the other addressing 
this issue.
  I think it is time to send this resolution to the floor of the other 
body for a vote so that we can let the Nuclear Regulatory Commission 
receive an application from the Department of Energy in the next 2 
years about this license application.
  The money has been put into the trust fund. The resolution does not 
deal with any of the transportation issues; we will deal with those 
later. There is absolutely tremendous bipartisan support. The time has 
come to stop talking about this and to vote on it. I hope that we vote 
in the affirmative at the appropriate time.
  Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from 
Missouri (Mr. Gephardt), the leader of the Democratic Party of the 
House.
  (Mr. GEPHARDT asked and was given permission to revise and extend his 
remarks.)
  Mr. GEPHARDT. Mr. Speaker, I rise to urge a vote against the Yucca 
Mountain approval resolution. I hope this resolution will be turned 
down.
  I commend the courageous people fighting against it, lead by the 
gentlewoman from Nevada (Ms. Berkley) and Dario Herrera. I am sorry 
that the Bush administration went back on its word approving this 
untested, dangerous measure.
  Whether or not to allow storage and transportation of waste is a 
decision with important consequences for people in my district and 
across America. It is a fact that scientists are still debating whether 
Yucca Mountain is safe. The General Accounting Office a few months ago 
said that storing waste at Yucca could infect water supplies and 
release deadly toxins into the surrounding air. It cited 293 scientific 
questions for which the Federal Government has no answers. Even if we 
begin shipping this waste today, we will still have nuclear waste 
stored all over this country decades from now.
  But my biggest concern is that it makes no sense to have all of this 
material traveling across the country by truck and rail. We have seen 
just in the last month a number of tragic rail accidents. Even the 
Energy Department says that inevitably there will be derailments of 
trains headed to Yucca Mountain. I had a train derailment in my 
district a year ago in Webster Groves, Missouri, where a whole train 
turned over. Luckily, it was only coal; but it was coal that was 
spilled a few feet from homes and schools in Webster Groves, Missouri. 
The people in Webster Groves in the days since then have said to me, 
what if it had not been coal, but nuclear waste? We have no plan, we 
have no resources, we have no training for dealing with such a 
derailment in St. Louis. We have only one hospital bed in the entire 
metropolitan area to treat severe radiation exposure.
  This is not a question about isolating the risks. Yucca Mountain, in 
reality, simply spreads it around.
  I know there is no perfect solution, but we can begin now to invest 
in better ways to store waste at the sites we currently use. 
Authorities in Pennsylvania have an approach that puts an emphasis on 
technology and innovation, an approach that avoids having to cart and 
haul this waste all the way across the United States. It puts the waste 
in reinforced facilities. It benefits people in Pennsylvania, and it 
benefits all Americans.
  I simply think, in conclusion, that science and logic is on the side 
of leaving this hazardous material on site until we find a better 
solution. I hope Yucca Mountain will be rejected.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Tauzin) 
has 5\1/2\ minutes remaining; the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. 
Markey) has 1 minute remaining; and the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. 
Boucher) has 2 minutes remaining.
  Mr. BOUCHER. Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of closing on our side, I 
yield myself the 2 remaining minutes.
  Mr. Speaker, the measure before us moves the process forward and 
enables the taking of the next step in evaluating the Yucca Mountain 
site. We have no realistic alternative to a secure, central repository 
for the permanent storage of high-level nuclear waste. The waste is now 
stored at 72 dispersed reactor sites around the Nation. Leaving the 
waste in its current storage poses threats, both to the environment and 
to national security. Permanent dry-cask storage at these 72 sites is 
not a realistic alternative to a central storage facility.
  The resolution before the House enables the taking of the next 
essential step in achieving the secure central storage, which is the 
best option before the country at this time. After the resolution 
passes, construction at the site could not begin until the Nuclear 
Regulatory Commission conducts a thorough scientific and technical 
analysis and issues a construction license.
  I urge that the resolution before the House be approved so that the 
NRC can begin its work, so that the scientific and technical studies 
can go forward, and so that the Nation's best option, a

[[Page H2200]]

secure, central repository for high-level nuclear waste, can be 
pursued.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
  Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of the time to 
once again state that we are at a historic juncture, that we should not 
be making this decision with 293 unresolved environmental issues. We 
owe the American public, we owe the next generation a higher standard 
of care than rushing to this decision today.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield the final time remaining to the gentlewoman from 
Nevada (Ms. Berkley), the heroine who has been championing this issue 
to protect her people.
  Ms. BERKLEY. Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the gentleman from 
Massachusetts (Mr. Markey) for having done a stellar job over the last 
20 years to protect the people, not only in my own home State, but in 
the entire United States of America.
  I have been profoundly involved with this issue for the last 20 
years, ever since it was passed in 1982. This is a horrible piece of 
legislation. It is a horrible idea. Even if Yucca Mountain is passed, 
we still will not have solved a very serious problem in our Nation, and 
that is what we will do with the nuclear waste for generations to come.
  Mr. Speaker, I urge us, before we spend billions of dollars more, to 
take this money, put it into research and development for renewable 
energy sources. Let us harness the sun, let us harness the wind, 
hydrocells, geothermal; and let us truly become energy independent, 
away from foreign oil sources and away from an energy source that 
produces a by-product that is so deadly that none of us, none of us 
want it in our backyard.
  Mr. TAUZIN. Mr. Speaker, with the consent of my colleagues, I would 
like to do what I think is the fair thing to do at this point, and that 
is to yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Nevada (Mr. Gibbons), 
our friend, for an opportunity to close his arguments on behalf of the 
State that he loves so dearly and represents here in the Congress.
  Mr. GIBBONS. Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman for his generous use 
of time and for allowing me to make a few final remarks as we close 
this debate on one of the most important issues that the State of 
Nevada has faced over 20 years.
  Mr. Speaker, there are no nuclear generating facilities in Nevada. If 
we looked at all of the debris as a result of the nuclear testing that 
Nevada contributed as its share of obligation to this country, the 
national security of this country for 20 years or decades, it is less 
than 4 tons. We are going to be sending 77,000 tons of the most deadly, 
toxic substance known to man to be stored in the State of Nevada for 
thousands of years, and we have yet to approve the science that says 
that Yucca Mountain is either qualified or suitable to store this 
nuclear waste in Yucca Mountain.
  We have talked about the science. We have talked about the dangers. 
We have talked about the continual expenditure of billions of dollars 
trying to make that square peg fit a round hole. Mr. Speaker, it is not 
going to happen. There is no way that the geology of Yucca Mountain 
will ever meet the requirements of the law that was passed in 1982 and 
amended in 1987.

                              {time}  1515

  We have taken our science and shown that Yucca Mountain is not 
suitable. They are required now to have engineered barriers just so 
they can make the excuse, well, if the geology does not work, we will 
engineer it to be safe. If that is the case, they can engineer it to be 
safe in any place in this country.
  Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong opposition to this resolution, and urge 
all of my colleagues to oppose it.
  Mr. TAUZIN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.
  Mr. Speaker, I respect my friends, the gentleman from Nevada (Mr. 
Gibbons) and the gentlewoman from Nevada (Ms. Berkley), and I 
appreciate the fight they are making on the floor today. I understand 
their concerns for their home State and for this decision. Outside of 
that, the opposition to this resolution basically comes from those who 
oppose nuclear energy.
  When we ask those Members what other energy would they support, we 
get some strange answers. If we suggest coal, they say, oh, coal can be 
pretty dirty, you know. You have to scrub it. Even if you scrub it, it 
produces CO2 and that may contribute to global warming, and 
golly, we had better not burn coal in America, even though 40 percent 
of our electricity comes from coal.
  Or we might say, would you support oil and gas development? And they 
say, no, wait a minute, the land is too pristine, and certainly not off 
my coast. Go do it in Louisiana, maybe, but do not do it anywhere else, 
please. Certainly do not do it in my State, off my coast or in my 
national wildlife preserve, even though you are willing to do it in 
your national wildlife preserves in Louisiana with no consequences, 
and, in fact, with good consequences. They do not like that. They do 
not like oil and gas.
  We ask, what about refineries for gasoline, for electric generation 
facilities? The answer is, not in my backyard. If you are ready to do 
it in somebody else's backyard, hopefully out of this country somewhere 
else and ship it in over here, but for heaven's sake do not build a 
plant in America, not where I live. We would rather run out. We would 
rather go through a California crisis than authorize another refinery 
or another electric generation plant in our backyard.
  So we ask them about nuclear. We say, well, nuclear is pretty clean. 
Nuclear plants produce 20 percent of the Nation's electricity, a 
critical component of the Nation's energy supplies. It is pretty clean, 
you know. It does not produce all the emissions we are concerned about 
with global warming, or the emissions we have to regulate with coal-
fired plants, or gas, or even oil-fired plants. What about nuclear?
  They say, oh, but wait, you do not have a plan to deal with the 
waste, so do not build any more nuclear plants until you settle that 
waste issue. That is the tail wagging the dog. Unless you settle that 
waste issue, do not dare license another nuclear plant, and certainly 
not in my backyard, by the way.
  So we wonder what kind of energy supplies do these Members support. I 
think the answer is pretty clear. They would like us to get it all from 
the sun, I suppose, or they would like us to get it from winds, 
provided we do not hurt any birds in the context of getting wind power 
going.
  And they certainly would like us to get it from somebody else, 
because that is what is happening in America. Sixty percent, 60 percent 
now of every gallon of gasoline we burn in this country comes from some 
other country. And check the countries, check where it is coming from.
  Forty percent of the reformulated gas comes from Venezuela right now, 
where there is a pretty bad problem going on; Venezuela, which rescued 
us from the last oil embargo, where there are some pretty bad problems 
going on.
  Check where else it is coming from, countries like Iran, Iraq, 
countries which are teaching their children to hate us and to come to 
this country and take our planes and crash them into our buildings in 
suicide attempts. Those are reliable friends. Those are reliable 
sources for energy in America. Boy, that is real national security.
  So after 20 years, after 20 years of an effort that started in 1982, 
after billions of dollars of expenditure, after scientific research 
that even tested the effects of a glaciated age in Nevada to make sure 
that this was the proper site to bring those nuclear wastes to 
permanent storage, we come to this point where we are about near the 
end.
  If we can push this process one more step, if the scientists can 
answer the last questions that remain, we can settle the waste issue. 
Guess what, all these folks say, for heaven's sakes, do not settle the 
waste issue. Mr. Speaker, today is a chance to move it one inch closer 
to the final line where we settle the waste issue and we help secure 
America. It is time to vote yes for this country for a change.
  Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to House Joint 
Resolution 87. President Bush's decision to ship 77,000 tons of nuclear 
waste to Yucca Mountain in Nevada is wrong. This attempt to force 
Congress to adopt an ill-conceived, premature proposal is irresponsible 
and dangerous. It is our duty to protect those we serve from a proposal 
that will surely threaten our national security and the lives of 
American families in their own homes and communities.
  At a time of heightened security and terrorist threats, this 
Administration is proposing to ship

[[Page H2201]]

tens and thousands of highly radioactive and deadly materials through 
our towns and neighborhood. And as fast as they get the waste out of 
the plants, nuclear facilities will ramp up production, create more 
waste and start shipping it to Nevada--right through our towns once 
again. If Congress passes this resolution and overrides the authority 
of Nevada's governor, millions of American lives will be in danger. The 
President's Yucca Mountain proposal would ship radioactive waste to 
Yucca Mountain from nuclear power plants through 43 states. Nearly 161 
million people live within 75 miles of those routes. I find it 
unconscionable that the Bush Administration would hastily force us to 
accept this proposed solution. The fact is that we need more time, not 
only to find a safe place to store the waste, but time to figure out 
ways to treat it and make it less dangerous.
  I believe we should implement a plan that would remove fuel from 
reactors without the safety and security risks of thousands of nuclear 
transports traveling on our highways, railways, and waterways. There 
are currently plans that would increase security and safety at current 
sites, provide storage for up to 100 years, and provide time to find 
better alternatives. Widely implementing these kinds of plans would 
eliminate the security concerns surrounding the potential 108,500 
shipments of spent nuclear fuel across the country.
  The Yucca Mountain proposal is deceitful from its core because it 
promises to remove above-ground nuclear waste storage facilities. The 
truth is that, although the proposal will fill our highways and 
railways with nuclear HAZMATS, nuclear power plants will be enabled to 
produce a greater amount of waste, which will be stored above ground 
until it is scheduled for shipment. The Yucca Mountain repository will 
not be capable of receiving waste until, at the earliest, 2010. At a 
rate of 2,000 tons per year, there will be 62,000 tons of waste by 2010 
still sitting in storage facilities in the nuclear power plants around 
the country. The Yucca repository will reach its capacity of 77,000 
tons in the middle of this century; the amount remaining in storage at 
nuclear plants will be almost exactly what it is today. The proposal 
will fail to meet its intended purpose.
  Congress should reject this proposal. It is an unfunded mandate--
Congress has not worked out the transportation funding, cost of 
security measures, and other logistical issues to make this a realistic 
project. The time, effort, money and energy required for this project 
could be better spent investing in securing nuclear energy plants and 
implementing contingency plans for surrounding communities in the event 
of an emergency.
  Congress should recognize the dangers that will be posed to all 
Americans as a result of nuclear HAZMAT trucks and trains streaking 
across our highways/rails and through the neighborhoods of my 
constituents and millions of people across the country. With the horror 
of September 11th still fresh in our minds, we have pledged to the 
American people that we will secure their safety--that our way of life 
will not be altered by the evil deeds of a hateful few. But this 
proposal threatens that promise.
  We know that the threat of terror on American soil is real. We should 
take time to ensure that those who want to harm this nation would not 
have an opportunity. Today, the President is proposing to litter 
American highways and railways with slow moving targets. We are setting 
the stage for potential disasters. Congress is faced with a choice 
between supporting a hastily conceived proposal, or protecting our 
constituents. I urge my colleagues to vote no on this resolution and 
vote to guarantee the safety and security of the American people.
  Mr. GEKAS. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in strong support of H.J. Res. 
87 and urge my colleagues to support this important piece of 
legislation as well.
  While I understand the concern and the opposition from the Nevada 
delegation I do believe that the nuclear waste repository at Yucca 
Mountain will be a safe and effective means for the management of 
nuclear waste for many years to come, in compliance with the Nuclear 
Waste Policy Act of 1982. The work of the United States since the dawn 
of the nuclear age has assured that the very best site for the disposal 
of nuclear waste would be chosen. As early as 1957 the National Academy 
of Sciences suggested burying radioactive waste in geologic formations 
to the Atomic Energy Commission. Beginning in the 1970's the world 
began to contemplate how best to dispose of and manage nuclear waste. 
Indeed, many proposals were put forward, like deep seabed disposal, 
disposal on polar ice sheets, transmutation, and even rocketing the 
material to the surface of the sun. After analyzing and giving credence 
to all options, disposal in a mined geologic repository emerged as the 
preferred long-term environmental solution for the management of these 
wastes.
  Almost 25 years ago the United States began to study Yucca Mountain. 
Even before the passage of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 the 
Department of Energy recognized the importance of finding a site to 
deposit nuclear waste and began to study areas that might have 
potential for holding such waste. When the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 
1982 was eventually passed, the Department of Energy was already 
studying 25 sites around the country as potential repositories. The Act 
provided for the siting and development of two; Yucca Mountain was one 
of nine sites under consideration for the first repository program.
  In 1986, Secretary of Energy John S. Herrington found three of these 
sites suitable for site characterization, and recommended these three, 
including Yucca Mountain, to President Reagan for detailed site 
characterization. The very next year Congress then amended the Nuclear 
Waste Policy Act of 1982 making Yucca Mountain the single site to be 
characterized. Since this time Yucca Mountain has been developed and 
tested in accordance with both the provisions of the Nuclear Waste 
Policy Act of 1982 and in accordance with sound scientific principles.
  Mr. Speaker, as a Member of Congress who represents an area with the 
Three Mile Island nuclear facility in my district, I have followed the 
development of Yucca Mountain closely for quite some time. 
Pennsylvanians get 36 percent of their electricity from nuclear power 
from five sites around the state. I believe that nuclear power is a 
reliable source of clean energy and has served the Commonwealth of 
Pennsylvania and the United States well over the years. However, 
consumers of this electricity have been paying for the development of a 
nuclear waste depository every time they flip the switch. We now have 
to assure them that the nuclear waste produced while generating needed 
power is put somewhere it will be safe and out of harms way for 
thousands of years to come. Mr. Speaker, Yucca Mountain is this site. 
Currently 162 million Americans live within 75 miles of nuclear waste, 
many of them in Pennsylvania and in my district. This is completely 
unnecessary. With the technical and scientific genius possessed by the 
United States, the United States Congress should not disallow science 
from doing the necessary work of finding a safe depository for nuclear 
waste.
  Mr. Speaker, I support H.J. Res. 87 and wish the dedicated scientists 
and workers at Yucca Mountain and the Department of Energy all the best 
in their pursuit of a safe and effective nuclear waste repository. I 
ask my colleagues to join me in support of H.J. Res. 87.
  Mr. NETHERCUTT. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to offer my support for 
H.J. Res. 87, the Yucca Mountain Repository Site Approval Act.
  This is an important vote for Washington State. If we do not relocate 
our nuclear waste to the Yucca Mountain repository, the Department of 
Energy will be forced to reconsider other sites previously discussed. 
One of those previously considered sites is Hanford, Washington. 
Without passage of H.J. Res. 87, 42,000 metric tons of spent nuclear 
fuel will remain stored at Hanford. This is unacceptable, and would be 
disastrous for the environmental health of my state of Washington.
  If we fail to move high-level nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain, we 
will have 161 million people in this country living within 75 miles of 
one or more nuclear waste sites--all of which were intended to be 
temporary. Without Yucca Mountain we will continue the current system 
of storing nuclear waste on the shores of the Great Lakes, Pacific 
Ocean, and the Gulf of Mexico. Without Yucca Mountain, we will continue 
to store nuclear waste near 20 major waterways that supply household 
water for more than 30 million Americans.
  Opponents of H.J. Res. 87 have tried to scare the American people 
into believing that transporting nuclear waste is not safe. The facts 
paint a different picture. Since 1967, there have been 3,000 safe 
shipments of spent nuclear fuel. Those shipments have covered 1.7 
million miles without one single accident occurring. For those who say 
safety is their top concern, let them consider this: Our nuclear sites 
are safe, but it would be safer yet to consolidate this waste from 
widely dispersed, above-ground sites into a remote, deep underground 
location that can be better protected for thousands of years.
  So I urge my colleagues, put safety first. Put the safety of our 
environment first. Put the safety of our nuclear sites first. Put the 
safety of the people living near nuclear sites first. It is time to act 
to provide for safe, permanent storage of our nuclear waste at Yucca 
Mountain, Nevada. This is best for our country and best for the people 
of Washington state.
  Mr. COSTELLO. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of H.J. Res. 87, 
the Yucca Mountain Repository Site Approval Act. Currently, 45,000 
metric tons of spent nuclear fuel is stored in 131 sites in 39 states. 
Most of these storage sites are temporary and near large population 
centers and water supplies. There is a risk that leaks and damages from 
current storage facilities could impact up to 161 million Americans. 
Scientists agree that it is unsafe to

[[Page H2202]]

permanently store nuclear waste on the shores of the Great Lakes, the 
Long Island Sound, the Atlantic Ocean, the Pacific Ocean, the Gulf of 
Mexico, or any other body of water. The Yucca Mountain site will 
minimize these risks. I believe that creating a permanent repository 
for spent nuclear fuel is the right thing to do, and that is why I will 
vote yes today.
  The vote today is another step in what has been a 20-year process. 
Supporting this resolution allows the Department of Energy to file an 
application for a license at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). 
It is up to the NRC to determine that the site will adequately protect 
public health and safety, and to make a decision to grant an operating 
license for the facility. The licensing process will take many years, 
will require many additional scientific studies, and will continue to 
provide for public input at every step along the way. Transportation 
plans will continue to be updated during this process and the earliest 
shipments would not start for Yucca Mountain until 2010.
  I understand that the transportation of spent nuclear fuel is a 
concern, and we must address this issue thoroughly. There is no 
question we will need to ensure that there is a well-trained and 
certified workforce to handle and transport waste. For decades now, 
spent nuclear waste has been shipped in small quantities with no 
obvious harm to the public. If it becomes apparent that the waste 
cannot be transported safety and effectively, I would support revising 
the status of the Yucca Mountain repository.
  Mr. Speaker, by voting yes today we are taking a prudent step for the 
future of this country. For all of these reasons, I support H.J. Res. 
87.
  Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of the Yucca 
Mountain Repository Site Approval Act (H.J. Res. 87).
  I believe that Americans must come to grips with their obsessive fear 
of nuclear energy. Nuclear power supplies 20 percent of our nation's 
electricity, but no nuclear power plant has been built in the U.S. in 
approximately 30 years. That means our generation of electricity is 
increasingly dependent on fossil fuels. By contrast, France uses 
nuclear power for most of its electricity requirements. Even Japan, the 
only nation to be attacked with nuclear weapons, uses nuclear power for 
more of its energy needs than the United States. Greater reliance on 
nuclear power--and I believe it is safe--would free us from our 
dependence on OPEC products.
  However, we must also address the safe transportation and disposal of 
nuclear waste. The Yucca Mountain Repository Site Approval Act approves 
the site at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, for the development of a repository 
for the disposal of high-level radioactive waste and spent nuclear 
fuel. We need to have a single, consolidated site that can be 
appropriately secured.
  Currently, temporary nuclear waste sites are scattered all over the 
country. More than 161 million people currently live within 75 miles of 
a temporary nuclear waste site, and these sites are near major 
waterway. In addition, 40 percent of the U.S. Navy's ships and 
submarines are nuclear powered. We simply need to bring all this 
nuclear waste into one repository that is designed to permanently store 
this material safely for thousands of years. The site at Yucca Mountain 
is designed to do just that.
  I urge Members to support this joint resolution.
  Mr. LEVIN. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of the resolution.
  Today the House is confronted with the unpalatable choice of whether 
to take the next step in a process that could ultimately ship tons of 
hazardous nuclear waste across the country and bury it at the Yucca 
Mountain repository, or leave the waste where it is at more than 130 
sites around the country. In truth, the question of what to do with the 
nuclear waste is an issue we've been avoiding since the dawn of the 
nuclear era more than half a century ago. We can't keep putting off 
this decision.
  In justice to those who oppose this resolution, moving 70,000 tons of 
nuclear waste across the length and breadth of the United States and 
burying it in Nevada is by no means a perfect solution. Yucca Mountain 
has a number of desirable attributes. It is isolated in an arid 
location, far from population centers, and the proposed repository is 
protected by natural geological barriers. All that said, claims that 
the natural and engineered barriers in place at Yucca Mountain 
guarantee that the waste will remain isolated from the environment for 
more than 10,000 years have to be viewed with skepticism. In addition, 
the issues surrounding the transportation of so much hazardous waste 
require additional work.
  At the same time, leaving the waste where it is at more than 130 
locations in 39 states is not a viable option. None of these sites were 
intended or designed for long-term storage of high-level radioactive 
waste, and most are located near population centers adjacent to rivers, 
lakes and seacoasts. The nuclear waste doesn't go away or become any 
less of a problem if we ignore it.
  My understanding is that the repository at Yucca Mountain can be kept 
open for as long as 300 years, allowing the Department of Energy to 
monitor the underground storage areas and even retrieve the waste 
packages. When one considers the amazing scientific breakthroughs of 
the last three centuries, there are good grounds for optimism that over 
the next 300 years we will develop the technological means to engineer 
a better solution to this problem. In the meantime, we shouldn't put 
off the decision on whether to move forward with the process of 
consolidating the waste at Yucca Mountain. Even if we start today, and 
all the remaining technical issues are resolved during the licensing 
process, it will still be at least ten year before the repository is 
ready.
  Yogi Berra once observed, ``When you come to a fork in the road, take 
it.'' For more than 50 years, the United States has put off making a 
decision about what to do about the nuclear waste. At long last, it's 
time to face up to this problem and move forward.
  Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Speaker, this debate has become far more 
political than technical. The bottom line is that the Federal 
Government made yet another commitment it cannot keep. Following 
decades of rosy predictions and assurances to the public, we explicitly 
promised to properly dispose of the nation's nuclear waste. Twenty 
years and $8 billion dollars later, we are still not prepared to do so. 
This is not acceptable. We need to keep our promise to communities 
across the country that are temporarily storing waste in sites that are 
vulnerable to terrorist attacks and natural disasters.
  We are not ready to open the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository. 
There are too many unresolved questions, even as the Administration 
agrees that the current storage system can reasonably remain for many 
years. The low standards and inadequate science that the Department of 
Energy has shown at Hanford in the Pacific Northwest for decades are 
apparent at Yucca Mountain as well.
  Even if we do go forward with this proposal, by the time that the 
Yucca Mountain site is ready to actually accept waste underground, we 
will have already exceeded its capacity. By the year 2035, the waste 
from just commercial power plants currently in operation is expected to 
be at least 90,000 tons. Yucca Mountain can only hold 77,000 tons. By 
law, in order to expand the capacity at Yucca, a second site must be 
named. Since Hanford, Washington was examined as one of the potential 
sites up until 1987, we have every reason to believe that the 
Department of Energy will look to Hanford as a second site once Yucca 
is full.
  The approval of Yucca Mountain will set a dangerous precedent for 
other potential sites such as Hanford. When Yucca Mountain failed to 
meet repository guidelines, the Department of Energy rewrote those 
guidelines to avoid disqualifying the site. I don't want this same low 
standard to be applied to Hanford or any of the other potential sites.
  The Bush Administration is pushing approval of Yucca Mountain now 
because nuclear energy is a large part of its national energy policy. 
Yucca is not now a viable long-term solution. It may never be. It makes 
no sense to rely on an energy source that produces a deadly waste for 
which we have no safe or long-term solution for clean up or storage. As 
long as we continue to produce at least a fifth of our energy from 
nuclear power plants, we are going to have a nuclear waste problem. 
Yucca will not solve that.
  I don't pretend to know the answers to our nuclear waste problem. I'm 
convinced that transporting the waste across the country in casks that 
have not been properly tested and burying it under a mountain whose 
geological features are not what we once thought they were is not the 
answer.
  While some may sound confident, I'm not sure anyone has a good 
roadmap in hand. This is precisely why we should not implement a policy 
that is going to make the situation worse. Approving Yucca Mountain as 
a repository site will be giving the nuclear industry a green light to 
produce more waste, despite the industry's inability to clean up after 
itself or even pay for its own insurance. Until we find a real solution 
to the nuclear waste problem, we should not encourage more of it.
  Ms. MINK of Hawaii. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong opposition to H.J. 
Res. 87 and am shocked that it is even on the calendar. The people of 
Nevada have spoken! Governor Guinn of Nevada has vetoed the site as 
allowed under the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1987 (PL 100-
203). This should be the end of it. Congress put this veto provision 
into law to respect the State of Nevada's rights.
  Mr. Speaker, every Member of the Nevada delegation is opposed to this 
Resolution and opposed to the Yucca Mountain site. They do not believe 
that the Department of Energy's recommendation was based on sound 
science and neither do I. The Congress created the

[[Page H2203]]

Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board to provide oversight to the 
Department of Energy (DOE) to ensure that the Yucca site would be based 
on sound science. This Board is made up of nationally recognized 
scientists. A recent review of the DOE's scientific review was graded 
an ``F'' by the Board.
  There has not been enough scientific research on issues relating to 
the storage of nuclear waste. The Congress acted hastily in 1987 by 
limiting the consideration of potential sites to only Yucca Mountain. 
This way, no matter what science said or what potential health risks 
should arise, Yucca Mountain was going to be the site of the 
repository. This is a State's Rights issue. The people of Nevada do not 
want the nuclear waste and the Congress should not force the waste upon 
them. I urge my colleague to vote ``no'' on H.J. Res. 87.
  Mr. SIMMONS. Mr. Speaker, since coming to Congress in January 2001, 
protecting the environment has been one of my top priorities. I am 
proud to have authored the law granting federal ``wild and scenic'' 
status to Connecticut's Eightmile River; proud of my pro-environment 
votes, including voting against weakening our nation's arsenic 
standards; and proud of my appointment as Co-Chair of the Long Island 
Sound Caucus.
  Out of all of my efforts to protect Connecticut's environment, 
nothing is more important than today's vote to establish a permanent 
high-level nuclear water storage facility at Yucca Mountain, in the 
Nevada desert.
  Eastern Connecticut is home to four nuclear power plants--Millstone 
1, 2 and 3 and Connecticut Yankee. The Millstone nuclear power plant in 
Waterford sits on Long Island Sound. On Millstone's 500 acres sits tons 
radioactive waste. Just north of Millstone, on the banks of the 
Connecticut River, is the Connecticut Yankee nuclear power plant on 
Haddam Neck. There, 22 years of spent nuclear fuel sits in a cooling 
pool waiting to be removed. All told, there is more than 1,500 metric 
tons of spent nuclear fuel at those two sites.
  Establishing Yucca Mountain will begin the process of removing 
nuclear waste from these two facilities. Why is that important? Imagine 
an accident involving the spent fuel pools at Millstone in Waterford. 
Imagine nuclear water seeping into the Long Island Sound. What would 
happen? Connecticut's shellfish industry--decimated; Water skiing and 
recreation in the Sound--forget about it. The entire Long Island Sound 
ecosystem would be destroyed for generations. This is why a vote for 
Yucca Mountain is a vote to protect Connecticut's environment.
  What about an accident at Connecticut Yankee? what would happen to 
the Connecticut River if spent fuel spilled into it? Connecticut's 
largest fresh water river--contaminated; Salmon and shad, which are 
just beginning to replenish the river waters--gone and never coming 
back. And all of this flowing south past Interstate 95 and the Amtrak 
Northeast Corridor into Long Island Sound.
  Nuclear waste dumped into the Connecticut River would destroy New 
England's largest river ecosystem and one of the Nation's first 
American Heritage Rivers. This is why a vote for Yucca Mountain is a 
vote to protect Connecticut's environment.
  Mr. Speaker, clearly, establishing Yucca Mountain is critical to 
Connecticut's environmental needs. But if you have another reason to 
support H.J. Res. 87, let's look at the issue from a national security 
perspective.
  Make no mistake--spent fuel in a permanent repository for storage is 
less susceptible to terrorist attacks than spent fuel in temporary 
sites, especially when the Yucca site is isolated and the temporary 
storage facilities are often close to population centers and waterways.
  In fact, today more than 161 million people currently live within 75 
miles of one or more nuclear waste sites, all of which were intended to 
be temporary. These sites are also located near 20 major waterways that 
supply water to more than 30 million Americans. Highly radioactive 
nuclear waste is currently stored in more than 131 sites in 39 states. 
A coordinated attack, similar to those on September 11, on two or more 
of these sites would be catastrophic.
  There is no question that keeping this hazardous waste in miles of 
tunnels beneath solid rock in the arid desert provides better security 
for storage and monitoring than leaving it along our undefended rivers 
and watercourses.
  Access to the Yucca site is already restricted due to its proximity 
to the Nevada Test Site and Nellis Air Force Range surrounds the site 
on three sides, providing an effective rapid-response security force.
  Establishing one spent fuel site will protect our environment and 
strengthen our national security. Yucca Mountain is one of the few 
issues that brings together environmentalists and defense hawks. Any 
issue that can do that is worthy of this body's support. I urge my 
colleagues to join me in support of H.J. Res. 87.
  Mr. UDALL of New Mexico. Mr. Speaker, nuclear utilities intend to 
keep producing nuclear waste, and with talk about creating new reactors 
this would only add to the growing waste problem.
  The Bush Energy Plan calls for doubling the number of nuclear 
reactors in the U.S. by 2040. Yucca Mountain is only designed to 
contain the waste from existing reactors.
  The GAO report concludes it would be premature for the Secretary of 
Energy to recommend Yucca Mountain as the nation's nuclear waste 
repository for 77,000 metric tons of radioactive waste because many 
technical issues remain unresolved. Energy Secretary Abraham 
recommended the site anyway.
  The report said the Department of Energy (DOE) is unlikely to achieve 
its goal of opening a repository at Yucca Mountain by 2010 and 
currently does not have a reliable estimate of when, and at what cost, 
such a repository can be opened.
  Two hundred ninety-three unfinished scientific and technical issues 
have yet to be resolved before the site can be opened. For example, 
additional study is needed on how water would flow through the 
repository area to the underlying groundwater and on the durability of 
waste containers which are needed to last tens of thousands of years.
  We should use sound science to solve these unresolved issues to 
determine if Yucca Mountain is really ready to receive nuclear waste.
  Ms. PELOSI. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak in strong opposition 
to this resolution.
  But first, I must thank our colleague, the Gentlelady from Nevada, 
for her outstanding leadership on Yucca Mountain.
  She is a champion for her state. She has said she would lay herself 
down on the railroad tracks to prevent nuclear waste from coming into 
her state, and I know she would do it.
  Mr. Speaker, every day, the President and the Republican leadership 
claim that they want to keep the federal government out of people's 
lives and empower states with the flexibility to govern themselves.
  Yet today we are going to override the veto of a governor and go 
against the express wishes of the people of Nevada.
  The President has broken his promise to the people of Nevada. Before 
his election, he promised that the decision whether to store nuclear 
waste at Yucca Mountain would be based on sound science.
  The science is not sound.
  The GAO has identified more than 250 significant technical issues 
that still need to be resolved before going ahead with Yucca Mountain.
  Mr. Speaker, many Yucca Mountain supporters say: ``We have to put 
this waste somewhere. Get it out of my neighborhood and put it 
somewhere else.''
  I want to remind my colleagues that moving it out of your 
neighborhood won't solve the problem.
  As long as your local nuclear power plant is running, there will 
always be nuclear waste in your neighborhood--the hottest and most 
dangerous waste, the waste that just came out of the reactor core.
  And transporting the waste puts many more communities at risk of 
accidents and terrorist attacks.
  Nor does Yucca Mountain solve our long-term waste storage problem. By 
the time the repository opens, we will have enough waste to fill it up, 
and we'll have to start over again, looking for another site.
  We need to choose a different path. We need to develop clean, 
renewable energy sources that do not produce lethal waste that will 
endure for hundreds of thousands of years.
  Mr. Speaker, when we make this decision today, we should associate 
ourselves with the aspirations of a state, protect the environment of 
our country, and do the right thing, and vote against this resolution.
  Mr. ISSA. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of H. J. Res. 87, the 
Yucca Mountain Repository Site Approval Act. I am happy to join my 
colleagues as we approach the end of this 20 year journey to find an 
appropriate repository for spent nuclear fuel.
  Common sense dictates that nuclear waste belongs in a secure and 
remote location, not the coast of Southern California. Today, this 
House will vote to support one of President Bush's national security 
objectives: the construction of the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste 
storage facility.
  Congressional approval for the President's plan to build the Yucca 
Mountain facility will be a step toward resolving California's power 
crisis and will protect our communities from the unnecessary risk to 
storing nuclear waste. Centralizing the storage of hazardous nuclear 
waste at the remote Yucca Mountain facility clearly makes more sense 
than the current system of storing nuclear waste at 131 different 
storage sites including San Onofre, a nuclear power plant located in my 
district.

[[Page H2204]]

  Today 161 million Americans live within 75 miles of at least one of 
these 131 storage facilities. The future security, efficiency and 
environmental advantages of storing spent nuclear fuel at the completed 
Yucca Mountain facility surpass those of any other viable alternative, 
including the continuation of the current system.
  Consider the advantages of the proposed Yucca Mountain facility. 
Located on remote federal land, it would be more than 90 miles away 
from any major population center. In terms of security, the facility 
would be buried 1,000 feet below the desert surface, the site is 
surrounded on three sides by the Nellis Air Force Range, the airspace 
above Yucca Mountain is restricted and the facility would have its own 
elite rapid-response security force.
  Scientific studies conducted by the Department of Energy have, since 
1982, evaluated the risks to the site posed by volcanoes, earthquakes, 
underground water, human intrusion and many other potential threats; 
after carefully considering these factors scientists have concluded 
that the risk to the Yucca Mountain site over the next 10,000 years are 
minimal.
  The centralization of spent nuclear fuel at the Yucca Mountain 
facility will allow a more efficient allocation of resources to manage 
and safeguard nuclear waste than is possible under the current system 
or any other current proposal for the future. When the technology that 
recycles spent nuclear fuel becomes a reality, the concentration of 
resource at Yucca Mountain will speed efforts to reduce or eliminate 
nuclear waste.
  Environmentally, even if no additional nuclear power plants are 
built, the need to securely store existing spent nuclear fuel will 
continue. Nuclear power is environmentally friendly, economical and 
safe. Yucca Mountain will open the door to the possibility of building 
new nuclear power plants, instead of more coal and oil plants, to meet 
California's energy needs and to avert a future power crisis like the 
one experienced last summer. Storing spent nuclear fuel in a central, 
secure and remote location that minimizes the threat of contaminating 
water sources, the atmosphere and our nation's wildlife is the most 
environmentally responsible policy possible under given conditions. The 
proposal to build a single storage site at Yucca Mountain will protect 
the environment and public safety better than building and maintaining 
several smaller storage facilities throughout the United States.
  The arguments of those who oppose the Yucca Mountain project revolve 
around the fear of uncertainty. These arguments point to the 
possibility that the scientific assessments of the Yucca Mountain site 
could be flawed. They note that despite all planned precautions and the 
extensive experience our nation already has in transporting spent 
nuclear fuel, an accident could occur in transport. Finally, they hold 
out the hope that American ingenuity will develop new technologies that 
can easily recycle spent nuclear fuel or even eliminate the need for 
nuclear power through advances in solar, wind and other energies--thus 
eliminating the need for new spent nuclear fuel storage facilities. 
While these points cannot and should not be ignored, they are 
themselves uncertainties.
  Uncertaintly, in fact, is a major reason why the Yucca Mountain 
facility should be built. Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham has noted 
that existing nuclear waste storage facilities, like the one at San 
Onofre, ``should be able to withstand current terrorist threats, but 
that may not remain the case in the future.''
  Any uncertainty involving spent nuclear fuel is better addressed 
1,000 feet below the surface of the desert and 90 miles away from any 
major population center than in the middle of highly populated places 
like Southern California. The construction of the Yucca Mountain 
facility is a national security issue. I intend to support President 
Bush's decision to build the facility and hope that my colleagues in 
Congress also will back the President.
  Mr. Speaker, our journey is about to be completed regarding Yucca 
Mountain. I ask that my colleagues support passage of the resolution.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Isakson). All time has expired.
  Pursuant to section 115(e)(4) of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 
1982, the previous question is ordered.
  The question is on the engrossment and third reading of the joint 
resolution.
  The joint resolution was ordered to be engrossed and read a third 
time, and was read the third time.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The question is on the passage of the joint 
resolution.
  The question was taken; and the Speaker pro tempore announced that 
the ayes appeared to have it.
  Ms. BERKLEY. Mr. Speaker, I object to the vote on the ground that a 
quorum is not present and make the point of order that a quorum is not 
present.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Evidently a quorum is not present.
  The Sergeant at Arms will notify absent Members.
  The vote was taken by electronic device, and there were--yeas 306, 
nays 117, not voting 12, as follows:

                             [Roll No. 133]

                               YEAS--306

     Aderholt
     Akin
     Allen
     Andrews
     Armey
     Bachus
     Baird
     Baker
     Baldacci
     Ballenger
     Barcia
     Barr
     Barrett
     Bartlett
     Barton
     Bass
     Bentsen
     Bereuter
     Berry
     Biggert
     Bilirakis
     Bishop
     Blagojevich
     Blunt
     Boehlert
     Boehner
     Bonilla
     Bono
     Boozman
     Borski
     Boucher
     Boyd
     Brady (PA)
     Brady (TX)
     Brown (FL)
     Brown (OH)
     Brown (SC)
     Bryant
     Burr
     Buyer
     Callahan
     Calvert
     Camp
     Cannon
     Cantor
     Capito
     Cardin
     Carson (OK)
     Castle
     Chabot
     Chambliss
     Clay
     Clayton
     Clement
     Clyburn
     Coble
     Collins
     Combest
     Cooksey
     Costello
     Cox
     Cramer
     Crenshaw
     Cubin
     Culberson
     Cummings
     Cunningham
     Davis (FL)
     Davis (IL)
     Davis, Jo Ann
     Deal
     Delahunt
     DeLay
     DeMint
     Deutsch
     Diaz-Balart
     Dicks
     Dingell
     Dooley
     Doolittle
     Doyle
     Dreier
     Duncan
     Dunn
     Edwards
     Ehlers
     Ehrlich
     Emerson
     Engel
     English
     Etheridge
     Everett
     Fattah
     Ferguson
     Flake
     Fletcher
     Foley
     Forbes
     Ford
     Fossella
     Frelinghuysen
     Ganske
     Gekas
     Gilchrest
     Gillmor
     Gilman
     Goode
     Goodlatte
     Gordon
     Goss
     Graham
     Granger
     Graves
     Green (TX)
     Green (WI)
     Greenwood
     Grucci
     Gutierrez
     Gutknecht
     Hall (TX)
     Hansen
     Hart
     Hastert
     Hastings (FL)
     Hastings (WA)
     Hayes
     Hayworth
     Hefley
     Herger
     Hill
     Hilleary
     Hilliard
     Hobson
     Hoeffel
     Hoekstra
     Holden
     Horn
     Hostettler
     Houghton
     Hoyer
     Hulshof
     Hunter
     Inslee
     Isakson
     Issa
     Istook
     Jefferson
     Jenkins
     John
     Johnson (CT)
     Johnson (IL)
     Johnson, E. B.
     Johnson, Sam
     Jones (NC)
     Jones (OH)
     Kanjorski
     Keller
     Kennedy (MN)
     Kerns
     Kildee
     Kilpatrick
     King (NY)
     Kingston
     Kirk
     Knollenberg
     Kolbe
     LaHood
     Lampson
     Larsen (WA)
     Larson (CT)
     Latham
     LaTourette
     Leach
     Levin
     Lewis (KY)
     Linder
     Lipinski
     LoBiondo
     Lucas (KY)
     Lucas (OK)
     Maloney (CT)
     Manzullo
     Mascara
     McCarthy (NY)
     McCrery
     McHugh
     McInnis
     McIntyre
     Meek (FL)
     Meeks (NY)
     Mica
     Miller, Dan
     Miller, Gary
     Miller, Jeff
     Mollohan
     Moran (KS)
     Moran (VA)
     Morella
     Murtha
     Myrick
     Neal
     Nethercutt
     Ney
     Northup
     Norwood
     Nussle
     Obey
     Olver
     Osborne
     Otter
     Oxley
     Pascrell
     Pastor
     Payne
     Peterson (MN)
     Peterson (PA)
     Petri
     Phelps
     Pickering
     Pitts
     Platts
     Pomeroy
     Portman
     Price (NC)
     Pryce (OH)
     Putnam
     Quinn
     Ramstad
     Regula
     Rehberg
     Reynolds
     Rogers (KY)
     Rogers (MI)
     Rohrabacher
     Ros-Lehtinen
     Ross
     Roukema
     Royce
     Rush
     Ryan (WI)
     Ryun (KS)
     Sandlin
     Sawyer
     Saxton
     Schaffer
     Schrock
     Sensenbrenner
     Sessions
     Shadegg
     Shaw
     Shays
     Sherwood
     Shimkus
     Shows
     Shuster
     Simmons
     Simpson
     Skeen
     Skelton
     Smith (MI)
     Smith (NJ)
     Smith (TX)
     Snyder
     Spratt
     Stearns
     Stenholm
     Strickland
     Stump
     Stupak
     Sullivan
     Sununu
     Sweeney
     Tancredo
     Tanner
     Tauscher
     Tauzin
     Taylor (MS)
     Taylor (NC)
     Terry
     Thomas
     Thompson (MS)
     Thornberry
     Thune
     Thurman
     Tiahrt
     Tiberi
     Toomey
     Towns
     Turner
     Upton
     Visclosky
     Vitter
     Walden
     Walsh
     Wamp
     Watt (NC)
     Watts (OK)
     Weldon (FL)
     Weller
     Whitfield
     Wicker
     Wilson (NM)
     Wilson (SC)
     Wolf
     Wynn
     Young (FL)

                               NAYS--117

     Abercrombie
     Ackerman
     Baca
     Baldwin
     Becerra
     Berkley
     Berman
     Blumenauer
     Bonior
     Boswell
     Capps
     Capuano
     Carson (IN)
     Condit
     Conyers
     Coyne
     Crowley
     Davis (CA)
     Davis, Tom
     DeFazio
     DeGette
     DeLauro
     Doggett
     Eshoo
     Evans
     Farr
     Filner
     Frank
     Frost
     Gallegly
     Gephardt
     Gibbons
     Gonzalez
     Harman
     Hinchey
     Hinojosa
     Holt
     Honda
     Hooley
     Israel
     Jackson (IL)
     Jackson-Lee (TX)
     Kaptur
     Kelly
     Kennedy (RI)
     Kleczka
     Kucinich
     LaFalce
     Langevin
     Lantos
     Lee
     Lewis (CA)
     Lewis (GA)
     Lofgren
     Lowey
     Luther
     Lynch
     Maloney (NY)
     Markey
     Matheson
     Matsui
     McCarthy (MO)
     McCollum
     McDermott
     McGovern
     McKeon
     McKinney
     McNulty
     Meehan
     Menendez
     Millender-McDonald
     Miller, George
     Mink
     Moore
     Napolitano
     Oberstar
     Ortiz
     Owens
     Pallone
     Paul
     Pelosi
     Pence
     Pombo
     Radanovich
     Rahall

[[Page H2205]]


     Rangel
     Reyes
     Rivers
     Rodriguez
     Roemer
     Rothman
     Roybal-Allard
     Sabo
     Sanchez
     Sanders
     Schakowsky
     Schiff
     Serrano
     Sherman
     Slaughter
     Smith (WA)
     Solis
     Souder
     Stark
     Thompson (CA)
     Tierney
     Udall (CO)
     Udall (NM)
     Velazquez
     Waters
     Watkins (OK)
     Watson (CA)
     Weiner
     Wexler
     Woolsey
     Wu
     Young (AK)

                             NOT VOTING--12

     Burton
     Crane
     Hall (OH)
     Hyde
     Kind (WI)
     Nadler
     Ose
     Riley
     Scott
     Traficant
     Waxman
     Weldon (PA)

                              {time}  1545

  Mrs. KELLY changed her vote from ``yea'' to ``nay.''
  So the joint resolution was passed.
  The result of the vote was announced as above recorded.

                          ____________________