[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 59 (Friday, May 10, 2002)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E757-E758]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




              YUCCA MOUNTAIN REPOSITORY SITE APPROVAL ACT

                                 ______
                                 

                               speech of

                            HON. MARK UDALL

                              of colorado

                    in the house of representatives

                         Wednesday, May 8, 2002

  Mr. UDALL of Colorado. Mr. Speaker, after careful consideration, I 
have decided that I cannot support this resolution.
  The resolution would approve the site at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, for 
a high-level nuclear waste repository. This is the site with which the 
Governor of Nevada has submitted a notice of disapproval under the 
Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, as amended. Congressional approval of 
the joint resolution would override the governor's objections and would 
endorse the decision of the President approving the site. Under the 
law, the Energy Department would then be required to request the 
Nuclear Regulatory Commission to issue a construction license for the 
repository.
  In my opinion, to vote for the resolution would mean voting to make a 
premature decision, based on incomplete science and without adequate 
consideration of all the important factors involved. I do not think 
that would be a responsible course or in the public interest.
  The President's decision evidently was based on the recommendation of 
Energy Secretary Abraham, who said that he was convinced that sound 
science supports the Yucca Mountain site.
  In reaching that conclusion the Secretary evidently relied on the 
Energy Department's comprehensive performance assessment. However, in 
recent months three other agencies have issued reports that cast 
serious doubt on that conclusion.
  Last September, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Advisory 
Committee on Nuclear Waste reported that, among other things, the 
system-performance assessment used assumptions that ``mask a realistic 
assessment of risk'' and that its analyses were ``assumption-based, not 
evidence-supported.''
  Then, in December, the General Accounting Office identified more than 
290 relevant issues, including such matters as the geologic integrity 
of the site and the flow of water through the site, and concluded that 
``DOE will not be able to submit an acceptable application [to the 
Nuclear Regulatory Commission] within the express statutory time frame 
for several years because it will take that long to resolve many 
technical issues.''
  In January of this year, the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board 
reported that it had ``limited confidence in current performance 
estimates'' underlying the Energy Department's recommendation and that 
it considered the technical bases for those estimates to be ``weak to 
moderate''--far from a ringing endorsement, especially for a project of 
such scope and importance.
  Those are not the only analyses that give me pause. Another appeared 
just last month in a Science magazine article by Rodney C. Ewing, a 
faculty member at the University of Michigan, and Allison McFarlane, 
who is in the Security Studies Program at MIT. In the article, Dr. 
Ewing and Dr. McFarlane note that ``the passive properties of the 
[Yucca Mountain] repository site do not provide a long-term barrier to 
radionuclide release.'' That means there will be a need to rely on 
other things--engineering fixes--to prevent such releases. They say 
that the choice of Yucca Mountain as a repository site ``is based on an 
unsound engineering strategy and poor use of present understanding of 
the properties of spent nuclear fuel,'' and that ``there are other 
unresolved technical issues,'' including ``the continuing controversy 
over the frequency and impact of volcanic activity'' at Yucca Mountain.
  And they conclude that ``a project of this importance, which has gone 
on for 20 years, should not go forward until the relevant scientific 
issues have been thoughtfully addressed . . . To move ahead without 
first addressing the outstanding scientific issues will only continue 
to marginalize the role of science and detract from the credibility of 
the DOE effort.''
  I agree with that conclusion, which is why I am troubled by what 
seems to be a rush to judgment on the part of the Administration.
  I do think that there are very important considerations that argue in 
favor of establishing a repository for the kind of high-level nuclear 
wastes that are at issue here, particularly the potential role of such 
a repository for disposition of military wastes such as spent fuel from 
our Navy's nuclear-powered vessels and in connection with our efforts 
to avoid proliferation of nuclear weapons.
  However, I think questions about Yucca Mountain in the context of 
homeland security are not clear-cut.
  On the one hand, the Administration points to the fact that more than 
161 million Americans now live within 75 miles of a site where highly 
radioactive materials are stored and that while these facilities 
``should be able to withstand current terrorist threats . . . that may 
not remain the case in the future,'' as Secretary Abraham wrote in his 
February 14th letter to the President, and would be ``better secured . 
. . at Yucca Mountain, on federal land, far from population centers, 
that can withstand an attack well beyond any that is reasonably 
conceivable.''
  On the other hand, there is something to be said for the argument 
that transporting large quantities of such materials over long 
distances would multiply the current opportunities for terrorist 
attacks because the vehicles doing the transporting would be attractive 
targets that could not always be totally concealed.
  Further, I am not convinced that the Administration has adequately 
made the case that Yucca Mountain is the right site for such a 
repository or that ``a repository at Yucca Mountain is indispensable'' 
for our energy security, as Secretary Abraham also claims in his 
February 14th letter to the President.

[[Page E758]]

  So, as things now stand, I am not persuaded that the case has been 
made for selection of the Yucca Mountain site, and I therefore am not 
ready to override the Governor's objections by voting for this 
resolution.

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