[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 83 (Thursday, June 20, 2002)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5798-S5799]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             YUCCA MOUNTAIN

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I have heard my friend, the distinguished 
junior Senator from Alaska speak, as I have heard the Senator from 
Idaho speak on several occasions during the last few days. I have 
chosen not to respond because what my friends have spoken about we have 
heard many times.
  We have a situation on which the American people are now focusing. 
The focus for many years has been whether Yucca Mountain is a suitable 
site for a nuclear waste depository. Scientifically, that has fallen 
apart for many reasons. One is that under the statute, Yucca Mountain 
and/or any other site was supposed to be a facility that would 
geologically protect the American people from nuclear waste. Yucca 
Mountain didn't work. They have learned that geologically it can't do 
that because of the fault lines, because of the water tables, and 
because of many other facts. They decided to use Yucca Mountain anyway. 
But they would build an encasement and put it down in the hole. They 
would have the waste in containers in Yucca Mountain.
  The point is that now people are no longer focusing on Yucca 
Mountain. They are not focusing on Yucca Mountain because they have 
come to the realization they have to get it there some way. You are not 
going to wake up one morning and suddenly find thousands of tons of 
nuclear waste from around the country from different reactors there. 
No. You will have to haul it there. We have learned they are going to 
haul it by water, by train, and by truck. They can haul all they want. 
But the waste is always going to be at these reactor sites. You can't 
get rid of it. You are producing it all of the time.
  When they take a spent fuel rod out, it has to stay onsite for 5 
years before they can touch it. Then they have to determine how to move 
it.
  We have known since September 11 that we have a lot of difficulty 
moving anything dangerous on the highways of this country. The most 
poisonous substances known to man are in these spent fuel rods.
  There is a Web site--www.mapscience.org. It has been up since last 
Tuesday. You can punch in an address--whether it is Georgia, whether it 
is Nevada, Virginia, Maryland, or Rhode Island. You will find 
instantaneously how close nuclear waste will travel to your home 
address or any other address you enter.
  Since Tuesday, we have had about 100,000 people who have focused on 
that and who have made hits on that site. People from all over this 
country are now realizing that nuclear waste is not a Nevada problem, 
it is their problem.
  My friends from Alaska and Idaho can come here and talk all they 
want. But the people who are eminent scientists and who have enough 
experience dealing with transportation--for example, the former head of 
the National Transportation Safety Board--agree that this is a bad 
idea. Jim Hall, the former head of the National Transportation Safety 
Board has done editorial boards, and he is an expert on transportation 
safety. He said you shouldn't do it. You can't do it. People say: OK, 
big shot. What do you want to do with it? That is very easy to answer. 
Leave it where it is, where there are storage containers, where you can 
encase and cover them with cement. There are all kinds of ways to 
protect them onsite, but you can't do those things when you haul the 
waste. The casks become too heavy.
  The majority leader is absolutely right. He does not like this. He 
thinks it is wrong headed. People have been wined and dined by the 
nuclear power industry for 20 years. One of the great trips they take 
is to Las Vegas. They say: Come on. We will show you Yucca Mountain.

  They whip them out to the mountain for a few hours and put them up in 
fancy hotels in Las Vegas for a weekend or so. They have had hundreds 
of staff out there to look at this. We know how powerful staff is. They 
come back and say there is a great repository out there.
  I acknowledge that my job is easier than my friend, the junior 
Senator from Nevada. My job is easier because this battle has been 
going on for a while. President Clinton vetoed a proposal to change 
environmental standards at Yucca Mountain. That veto was upheld by a 
vote of the Senate--33 Democrats and 2 Republicans.
  They also tried to establish Yucca Mountain as a temporary place--an 
interim storage site. President Clinton interceded. That was soundly 
defeated.
  My job is easier than my friend from Nevada. I am working with people 
who have not voted against this in the past, and who have voted for my 
position in the past. We had a President who, even though he had a 
nuclear plant in Arkansas, understood.
  But my friends on this side of the aisle must do the right thing. I 
don't say this negatively. I get campaign contributions also. Even 
though I get campaign contributions, that isn't how I have to vote. 
They give me that money because they think I am an honorable person 
trying to do the right thing.
  The fact that for 20-odd years millions of dollars have been given to 
campaigns around this country, people have to set that aside and do the 
right thing. It is not easy to do. But they have to do the right thing. 
I am not in any way trying to demagog the issue other than to say there 
are occasions when people have to do the right thing.
  For my friend, John Ensign, and for the people of this country, my 
friends on the other side of the aisle must do what is fair and 
understand that the transportation of nuclear waste is not safe.
  The Chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said last week if 
this bill does not go forward and the veto of the Governor of Nevada is 
upheld, that it is no big deal. We can and will leave the nuclear waste 
where it is. That is what the Chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory 
Mission said last week.
  The former member of the NRC, Dr. Victor Gilinsky, said at an Energy 
Committee hearing: I don't understand what the rush is. They can't 
transport the stuff in Europe. They have tried. This week they had a 
big demonstration where people chained themselves to the railroad 
tracks. Basically, they stopped the trains from hauling it. Germany has 
given up on it.
  The mad rush is because the nuclear power lobby is extremely 
powerful. But for the good of the people of this country, whether they 
have a nuclear reactor in their State or not, you can't haul it safely. 
It is better left where it is until we find the right technological 
solution.
  I guess the reason I came down is that I have just kind of had it up 
to here on all of these speeches about what a righteous thing they are 
doing by bringing this forward. It is the wrong thing to do. It is not 
a Nevada issue. It is an issue that affects everybody in this country.
  For anyone to even suggest or intimate that this matter should now be

[[Page S5799]]

reported to the Senate in a matter of a minute or two, and the Defense 
authorization bill should be set aside to take it up--we are talking 
about giving our men and women in the military additional resources to 
fight the war on terror and to make this country secure. To even think 
we would set this aside for that is, to me, distasteful.

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