[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 84 (Friday, June 21, 2002)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5893-S5894]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             YUCCA MOUNTAIN

  Mr. REID. Madam President, I have been sparing in my comments the 
last several months about the Yucca Mountain situation. Everyone 
acknowledges that a Republican will bring this up in the next several 
weeks. We have had a series of people coming to the floor talking about 
nuclear waste. The Republican leader talked about it today. We have had 
Senator Craig and Senator Murkowski speak about it several times this 
week.
  My colleague from Alaska, for example, this morning discussed the 
issue of nuclear waste and transportation. I can remember Senator Bryan 
and I, when we had the pleasure of serving together in the Senate, 
traveled to St. Louis. The whole purpose of our trip was to meet with 
local officials about the transportation of nuclear waste. We did.
  We went to the governing body of St. Louis. We talked to them. We had 
a very nice visit. We visited an editorial board. We were on a radio 
station or two there.
  As a result, the people who run the city of St. Louis passed a 
resolution saying: We don't want nuclear waste transported through St. 
Louis.
  If you can explain the issue to people, they recognize quickly it is 
not a good idea. So that is why I want to respond to some of the points 
raised by my friend from Alaska. He discussed, for example, the 
shipments of waste to the WIPP facility, the waste isolation project in 
New Mexico. Comparing those shipments to the proposed spent fuel 
shipment at Yucca is like comparing a squirt gun to the most modern 
tank in America. They are just completely different substances. The 
items being shipped to WIPP are things such as rags, tools, and 
laboratory equipment. These are not spent fuel rods, which would give 
you a lethal dose of radiation in less than 3 minutes if you stood near 
them. You could be exposed to it for a matter of seconds and get sick.
  With the news of terrorists pursuing radioactive materials and 
weapons of mass destruction, now more than ever we need to be vigilant 
in protecting the welfare of the American people. The decision to 
approve or reject the Yucca Mountain site is the most important 
transportation decision of this new century. This decision could bring 
as much as 100,000 shipments of high-level nuclear waste by truck 
through our towns and communities, as many as 20,000 train loads. This 
year we learned they may ship some of it by barge - the most poisonous 
substance known to man -- traveling by our schools, our homes, our 
churches, our places of business.
  It doesn't make sense to ship this waste and allow terrorists to use 
any one of these shipments as the ultimate ``dirty'' bomb. A successful 
attack on a spent nuclear fuel shipping cask would be extremely 
dangerous. Each truck cask would contain up to 2 tons of deadly 
material and each rail cask up to 11 tons.
  These casks are packed full of the most dangerous high-level nuclear 
waste known to man. They contain Cesium-137, Strontium-90, and 
Plutonium-239. A release of less than 1 percent will affect tens of 
thousands of citizens, resulting in hundreds of long-term cancer 
deaths. This could shut down an entire city.
  My friend, Senator Conrad, was told by an expert that a ``dirty'' 
bomb would make Washington, DC, uninhabitable for 400 years.
  Spent fuel shipments to Yucca Mountain would create a target-rich 
environment. DOE would make daily shipments by barge, truck, and train, 
all going to the same place. There would be as many as six to eight 
shipments each day. There are very few targets now. There would be 
hundreds of targets, thousands of targets if we go forward. According 
to the NRC, there have only been at most one or two shipments per week 
in the entire country over the past 10 years. Current shipments are 
harder to attack because they go to many different destinations.
  For the DOE to say ``we have never had an accident'' isn't true. If 
you pin them down, they will say we have had no ``reported'' releases. 
Again, DOE has proposed putting tens of thousands of these casks out on 
the roads, waterways, and railways without a transportation plan. It 
would not be as bad if they had a plan they had let the Congress and 
the American people scrub, and if they had done an environmental impact 
statement, but they have not even done that. They have not done an 
environmental assessment.
  Don't take my word for it; look at what the Secretary of Energy said 
on the subject:

       The DOE is just beginning to formulate its preliminary 
     thoughts about a transportation plan.

  After 9-11, proceeding with Yucca Mountain without a transportation 
plan is reckless and irresponsible. The Congress has the responsibility 
to hold the Department accountable. That can only come from rejecting 
this reckless resolution.
  I mentioned on the floor recently that there is a Web site which was 
started to educate the American people about these shipments. It is 
www.mapscience.org. Anybody within the sound of my voice, go to your 
computer and try this out. All you have to do is put in your address. 
It doesn't matter where it is in the United States. You put your 
address in and it will tell you where the nearest nuclear reactor is 
and where they are going to ship the waste--how close it will come to 
your home. We know that in at least 43 States, more than 60 million 
people will be within a mile of the possible routes. Everyone should 
try this Web site.
  This Web site is telling the American people what the Department of 
Energy doesn't want them to know: These proposed shipments will go 
right by their homes, right by the places they work, right by the 
places where their kids go to school. There has been a big response 
from the American people. This Web site has been up for 10 days, and 
there have been well over 100,000 hits.
  There is no rush to move forward. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission 
Chairman has stated that if this Yucca Mountain project did not go 
forward today, it would be no big deal. He said it can be kept safely 
on site for decades.
  More important, Yucca Mountain will never eliminate the waste that is 
stored around the country. Everybody within the sound of my voice 
should understand the big lie the DOE and the nuclear power industry is 
projecting. The big lie is that the 131 sites where we have waste now 
will be reduced to one site. Well, the fact is, that will never happen. 
It will never happen because there are 46,000 tons there now. They can 
move 3,000 tons a year, but they produce 2,000 tons a year. So do the 
math. You will fill Yucca Mountain before it ever opens.

  Remember, when you take out a spent fuel rod, 95 percent of the heat, 
the radioactivity is still in it. It is so hot the only thing they can 
do with it is stick it in water for 5 years to cool it off. After 5 
years, they can put it into a dry cask storage container. So this 
statement that they will only have one site is not true. It is a big 
lie. There will always be 131 sites, plus Yucca Mountain, plus all the 
trucks and trains. So instead of having one site, we are going to have 
hundreds of thousands of sites.
  So when my friends march down here and say this is nothing, it is 
like moving the stuff to New Mexico, I repeat my analogy of a squirt 
gun compared to the most modern tank in America; that is the 
comparison. The American people need to understand that the millions 
and millions of dollars spent by the nuclear power industry is money 
that has been spent to deceive and mislead the American people.
  I hope my friends on the other side of the aisle will do the right 
thing and vote for the good of their constituents, not for the good of 
the big lobbying effort that has been conducted in Washington over the 
last 20 years, and not go the way of the many fundraisers or the way of 
the vacations that have been paid for by the Nuclear Energy Institute, 
where they send people to Las Vegas for a week so they can look at the 
hole in the mountain. I hope they will vote in their constituents' best 
interests.
  Jim Hall is a member of the National Academy of Engineering Committee 
on Combating Terrorism and was Chairman of the National Transportation

[[Page S5894]]

Safety Board from 1994 to 2001. This article appeared in the New York 
Times the day before yesterday. Among other things, he said:

       Secretary Abraham has said there is plenty of time to 
     create a transportation plan before Yucca Mountain begins 
     receiving nuclear waste eight years from now. But safety 
     issues will almost certainly get short shrift if they are not 
     addressed before the repository site is approved. Congress 
     needs to force the Department of Energy to reassess the 
     dangers of transporting high-level nuclear waste and develop 
     a secure plan before proceeding with the Yucca Mountain 
     project.

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