[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 188 (Thursday, December 8, 2011)]
[House]
[Pages H8302-H8306]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1510
                             YUCCA MOUNTAIN

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 5, 2011, the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Shimkus) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. SHIMKUS. Mr. Speaker, it's great to get a chance to come back 
down to the floor to visit with my colleagues and talk about an issue 
that I've been raising seven or eight weeks in a row. I'll have a 
little more extended time to go over what has transpired over the past 
6 to 7 months, and that's that this country really needs to address 
this high-level nuclear waste problem in this country.
  I'm glad to be joined with some of my colleagues who I'll yield to in 
a couple of minutes.
  But just to start in a synopsis, based upon the parts of the country 
that we visited, for us to move past the logjam that's in the other 
body, we have to find 60 Senators who will vote to move forward what we 
know is Federal law. The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 recognized 
and determined that Yucca Mountain would be the national repository for 
high-level nuclear waste.
  I think a lot of folks would say, well, so if it's a law, why aren't 
we there? Well, the reason we're not there now is because the majority 
leader of the Senate has blocked it, along with the President of the 
United States.
  This time is being spent to help educate the American public, Mr. 
Speaker, on where is the high level nuclear waste, what communities, 
what States are affected, and what Senators should be held somewhat 
accountable for the positions they take as far as high-level nuclear 
waste?
  On the chart to my far left, throughout this last half a year, we 
need 60 votes. We've got at least 27 Senators who we know already 
support this based upon votes or public statements. We have eight that 
really have not had a chance to address this by a vote or haven't made 
a public statement on it yet. And we have seven ``nays'' or seven 
``no'' votes.
  With that, just because I appreciate my colleagues taking time out, I 
would like to first yield to my colleague from the State of Illinois, 
no disrespect to my colleague from the State of Georgia, to go into a 
discussion about one of the areas that we addressed, one of the first 
sites we talked about. I figured I'd better come forward and talk about 
my own State. If I'm going to talk about other States, I better talk 
about my own State, the State of Illinois.
  In the State of Illinois, 50 percent of our electricity is generated 
by nuclear power. We're one of the biggest nuclear power States in the 
country. We picked a facility that's actually closed, which is Zion 
Power Plant.
  With that, I'd yield to my colleague, Mr. Dold, to kind of talk about 
Zion, the State of Illinois, and its location.
  Mr. DOLD. I want to thank the gentleman for yielding and certainly 
for taking this issue up, which I think is so very, very critical not 
only for just the State of Illinois but for facilities all across the 
country as we look at how we can best store the used material from the 
nuclear facilities--the spent fuel rods, more specifically.
  If you'll notice here in Zion, which is just north of the district 
but certainly affects the district just north of Chicago and the 10th 
district which I represent, it's right on the shores of Lake Michigan. 
The Great Lakes, 95 percent of all fresh surface water in the United 
States is from the Great Lakes.
  When we look at the amount of drinking water that the State of 
Illinois uses, it's an enormous percentage. It's coming from the Great 
Lakes. Yet, in our infinite wisdom we've decided that we want to store 
the fuel rods just a sheer several hundred feet from the shores of Lake 
Michigan, 5 feet above the water table.
  If we take a look at Yucca Mountain, the reason why Yucca Mountain 
was chosen was Yucca Mountain is uniquely suited as the premier place. 
If we were to store any place spent fuel rods, this would be the ideal 
location. A thousand feet below the ground. A thousand feet above the 
water table. A very dry, arid environment. And correct me if I'm wrong: 
Where are the nearest inhabitants of Yucca Mountain? Is it 100 miles?
  Mr. SHIMKUS. The city of Las Vegas, which is the major metropolitan 
area, is a hundred miles from Yucca Mountain.
  What people have a hard time understanding about the nuclear test 
area, this is where the nuclear test site was. The Federal Government 
owns numerous parcels of land around Yucca Mountain. The communities 
right outside the reservation--and I think the whole test site area is 
like the size of New Hampshire--but the communities, what's interesting 
about this debate, the communities right outside the gate are fully 
supportive of Yucca Mountain being the repository for high-level 
nuclear waste. And why do I know that? Because I visited them. I've 
been in their communities. I went to the community center. They 
welcomed me, and we talked about how this was important for the country 
and their local communities.
  Mr. DOLD. This is absolutely critical for the country. When we look 
at just the State of Illinois, the State of Illinois has got 13 
commercial reactors at seven sites across the State of Illinois. Our 
neighbors to the north have three commercial reactors operating on two 
different sites, both of those on Lake Michigan.
  So when we look at the 8.5 million people that rely on the drinking 
water, much less the recreation, the fishing, all of the different 
forms of commerce that happen on our Great Lakes, this is something 
that I think is critical.
  The Senators from both the State of Illinois and the State of 
Wisconsin have all been in favor of trying to utilize this facility out 
at Yucca Mountain, and it just makes sense.
  Why would we want to store, Mr. Speaker, over a thousand metric tons 
of nuclear waste hundreds of feet away from the greatest source of 
fresh surface water in our Nation? It is indeed the jewel of our 
ecosystem. This is something that we need to protect, something that we 
need to have a long-term vision for.

  Yet what we don't need to do is have scattered sites all across our 
country of nuclear waste that has a greater potential for disasters to 
happen. They're being stored right now in casks that are about 5 feet 
above the ground water, above the water table, and what we'd like to do 
is take it a thousand feet above the water table, a thousand feet below 
ground.
  This is something that makes absolutely perfect sense, and I welcome 
the gentleman's colloquy in terms of talking about not only this site, 
and I thank you for bringing it up week after week, trying to make sure 
that we try and get through to our colleagues on the other side of the 
building to make sure they can move this commonsense piece of 
legislation forward.
  How much have we spent already at Yucca Mountain? I think it's in the 
$14 billion range.
  Mr. SHIMKUS. My colleague is correct. We've already spent about $14.5 
billion dollars in the research, the development, the exploration, the 
testing. A lot of money, time, effort, and some of our greatest minds 
have been involved.
  I don't really think you have to be one of the greatest minds. The 
point I always say is, common sense says in the desert underneath a 
mountain. Isn't that where you would want high-level nuclear waste 
versus right off the shore of Lake Michigan?
  Mr. DOLD. It seems certainly like common sense to me, and I certainly 
applaud the gentleman's efforts and thank you for giving me the time. I 
just want to make sure that this isn't just important for the folks in 
the State in Illinois and the folks in Wisconsin, and the people in 
Michigan that are surrounding the Great Lakes, and specifically Lake 
Michigan; it's all the Great Lakes. And it's not just in Illinois. 
There are nuclear power facilities all across the country.
  We need to have a safe, secure way to be able to store these spent 
fuel rods, and I think Yucca Mountain has been

[[Page H8303]]

proven to be the place to do it. And I think we should move forward on 
it.
  Mr. SHIMKUS. Can you tell me the disposition of what's going on with 
the Zion Power Plant? What's going on there right now?
  Mr. DOLD. The Zion Power Plant has actually been decommissioned at 
this point in time. So right now they are putting it in mothballs, they 
are taking the spent fuel rods, they're in casks, they are being 
transported to a location that's on the site. It's just literally a few 
hundred feet away from the beaches there, and probably about 20 to 30 
miles north of the city of Chicago.
  This is not the place that we want to be storing spent fuel rods.
  Zion was a great source of electricity for the people around the area 
and has been decommissioned over the last 2 years. So it is now sitting 
idle, and they're trying to go through the process of dismantling it.

                              {time}  1520

  Mr. SHIMKUS. Yes. I think I briefly tried to show this article from 
The Salt Lake Tribune, dated December 8, which talks about some of the 
reactor parts that are going to go out to Utah.
  What the article ends up saying is:
  The site will not, however, take the Illinois plant's used fuel rods. 
The United States currently has no site to dispose of spent fuel from 
commercial reactors, a form of high-level nuclear waste.
  So if we don't have a location, where is that high-level nuclear 
waste, the spent fuel, going to remain?
  MR. DOLD. It's going to remain, seriously, right in the middle of a 
high-population area and hundreds of feet away from the jewel of our 
ecosystem--in the Great Lakes, in Lake Michigan. It's the wrong place 
for it to be. Common sense would say to move it out to a place, to a 
location, just like Yucca Mountain; $14 billion of research and dollars 
have gone into the site. Let's put it 1,000 feet below the ground, 
1,000 feet above the water table, in an arid environment. It's 
absolutely perfect for it. It's something that we should move forward 
on. It's in the best interest and safety of the American public to do 
something along these lines.
  Mr. SHIMKUS. I'm told that Zion is, what, 40 miles from downtown 
Chicago.
  Mr. DOLD. It's 40 miles from downtown Chicago. So, obviously, in the 
greater Chicago area, you probably have about 6.5 to 7 million people. 
It's certainly not what we want to have in terms of this nuclear waste 
disposal.
  Mr. SHIMKUS. The reason this is important is, unfortunately, due to 
Fukushima Daiichi in Japan, which is a great tragedy. A lot of people 
think about the containment issue, which has always been the fear. Part 
of the Fukushima Daiichi problem was the spent fuel in the pools, which 
might be a bigger environmental disaster based upon things that cannot 
be planned. That's why we continue to push this.
  I appreciate my colleague for coming down.
  Mr. DOLD. I thank the gentleman for allowing me to have some time 
with you today and, again, for talking about this very important issue.
  Mr. SHIMKUS. Now I'm going to turn to my colleague from Georgia, who 
also serves with me on the Energy and Commerce Committee. We have 
jurisdiction over this. My subcommittee is the Environment and the 
Economy. I deal with a lot of these waste disposal issues, nuclear 
waste being one of those.
  My colleague from Georgia has followed this issue as long as I have. 
The last time I came to the floor, I mentioned a couple facilities in 
Georgia, but the one that I have highlighted is the Savannah River. As 
I finish, I'll get this picture up to my colleague.
  But the point we're trying to make today is that here you have Yucca 
Mountain, which is a mountain in a desert. Then you have nuclear waste 
all over this country. Look at this one. It's right next to the 
Savannah River. At Yucca Mountain, we have no nuclear waste on site. At 
the Savannah River, there are 6,300 canisters of waste on site. The 
waste would be stored, as my colleague Bob Dold said, 1,000 feet 
underground; whereas, at the Savannah River, it's stored right below 
the ground. At Yucca Mountain, it's 1,000 feet above the water table. 
At the Savannah River, it would be zero to 160 feet above the water 
table. The waste at Yucca Mountain is 100 miles from the Colorado 
River. Well, you can see that it's adjacent to the Savannah River.
  So I appreciate the gentleman from Georgia, Congressman Gingrey, for 
joining me; and I yield to him to enter into the colloquy.
  Mr. GINGREY of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, I am glad to join my colleague 
from Illinois, the chairman of the Environment and the Economy 
Subcommittee on the Committee of Energy and Commerce, on this very 
important subject.
  Our colleagues from Illinois specifically pointed out the existing 
situation in their State in regard to these nuclear reactor sites in 
Illinois and what they do with spent nuclear fuel.
  The poster that the gentleman has presented in regard to my great 
State and my neighboring State of South Carolina as to what we're faced 
with is equally as telling. I think it might be instructive, Mr. 
Speaker, if I go back and take a walk down memory lane just a little 
bit in regard to my background.
  When I was growing up in North Augusta, South Carolina, this central 
Savannah River area, which includes the southern part, if you will, or 
the western part of South Carolina and the eastern part of Georgia, is 
separated by the Savannah River. There was a facility built on the 
South Carolina side in a town called Ellington, South Carolina, back in 
1950. I hate to tell my age, but I was 7 or 8 at the time. Mr. Speaker, 
my parents owned a little motel on the river, and they very 
insightfully named the mom-and-pop, 25-unit motel the Riviera Motel.
  During the construction of this nuclear plant, there were 50,000 
construction workers involved in constructing that facility for 3 
years. Every evening when the Sun went down, I can't tell you how happy 
my parents were to turn on that ``no vacancy'' sign at the Riviera 
Motel, because all of these workers stayed with us. We didn't get rich; 
they were only paying $8 a night. It's just to point out the importance 
of jobs in the nuclear industry and the capability of expanding our 
employment sector in this particular lane of energy.
  In this country right now, today, I'm told that we produce about 20 
percent of our electricity from nuclear power. In the State of Georgia, 
it's 24 percent. It's not much higher. We have two sites and four 
reactors. We're in the process of adding two more right on the Savannah 
River, as the gentleman from Illinois points out, at Plant Vogtle; and, 
hopefully, we'll get that done.
  The problem, which the gentleman is bringing before all of our 
colleagues--and hopefully to a lot of other folks who are viewing or 
listening--is: Why is it for the last 30 years we have had no new 
nuclear sites? We've literally had a moratorium. You have about 103 
across the country--those in Illinois, those in Georgia--and what are 
they doing with this spent nuclear fuel? It is either shallow, 
underground in pool tanks, not very much above the water table or--even 
worse--it's aboveground in these concrete and steel containers. Talk 
about the risk of a terrorist attack in a radiation release.
  So the gentleman was so generous to ask me to join him in this 
colloquy about the issue. I'm looking forward to continuing, as I yield 
back to him, to discuss the real problem here of what to do with that 
spent fuel.
  Mr. SHIMKUS. Again, I appreciate your joining me today.
  I want to quote from a Chicago Tribune editorial of March 19. I'll 
just read three short paragraphs:
  ``Here's why that is potentially a bigger problem than a meltdown: In 
the Japanese reactors, as in many U.S. reactors, the spent fuel is 
housed in large water-filled pools in the reactor building but outside 
the concrete-and-steel fortress that surrounds the reactor core.
  ``If the core melts down, any radiation released is likely to be 
partly bottled up by the containment vessel.
  ``Not so for the spent fuel pools, which often contain far more 
radioactive material than in the reactor. If the water that keeps those 
rods cool drains or boils away, the used fuel can catch fire. Result: A 
dangerous plume of extremely high radioactivity spewed into the air.
  ``Obvious question: Why do nuclear plants store spent fuel that way?
  ``Obvious answer in the U.S.: Yucca Mountain isn't open. In the 
1980s, the

[[Page H8304]]

Federal Government launched plans to ship nuclear waste to a storage 
lair carved into the mountain in Nevada and let it slowly and 
harmlessly decay.''
  So there are benefits to nuclear power. If you're a climate change 
person and if you don't want carbon dioxide and if you still want a lot 
of electricity for us to use in all of our new technology, you'll have 
to have a generator. Yet, in this case, it's the used fuel. It is 
properly stored, but it would be better stored in a single repository 
underneath a mountain in the desert for all of those reasons.

                              {time}  1530

  You're talking about four reactors right now in Georgia; two more 
coming online, that's six; Illinois has 11. There are over 104 across 
this whole country and, of course, we spent our time talking about the 
used nuclear fuel from the industry.
  But when I started this debate about what do we do with high-level 
nuclear waste, I started with a DOE facility that goes back to World 
War II and the development of the nuclear bomb and the Fat Man bomb, 
which was built at Hanford, Washington. And all that waste, going all 
the way back to World War II, is in Hanford. And there are 53 million 
gallons of nuclear waste on site, buried right off the surface of the 
ground in tanks that are 750,000 to a million gallons each. Only about 
40 of them--there is over 100. Only about 40 of them are double-lined. 
That means the rest are not. Some are leaking.
  Mr. GINGREY of Georgia. Will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. SHIMKUS. I yield to the gentleman.
  Mr. GINGREY of Georgia. And the question of who is responsible in 
Hanford or Barnwell, South Carolina, or New Ellington to guard and 
protect, a tremendous burden on the States. But even if the Department 
of Homeland Security--maybe they do some oversight and protection of 
these sites. But 103 different sites across the country, how much 
simpler, how much safer, how much cheaper if they had one site to 
protect, that being 100 miles from Las Vegas at Yucca Mountain?
  Mr. SHIMKUS. Continuing to speak on this issue of just looking at it, 
to kind of get away from just the nuclear generating profit sector, to 
address our responsibility as stewards of a program that was developed 
to stop World War II and then eventually remedy these environments that 
had an environmental impact.
  Yucca Mountain, the waste storage plan for Hanford--and I've just 
toured it this year. The plan to gather up, deliquify, reprocess, put 
it in these canisters is designed to go to one location. Do you know 
what that location is? That location is Yucca Mountain.
  So our failure to move forward, or our failure--actually, the other 
Chamber's failure, the leader of the Senate's failure, the President of 
the United States' failure, just tells Washington State what? Guess 
what. You've got this high-level nuclear waste that's leaking, that's 
close to the Columbia River, and just deal with it. Just deal with it.
  I find that unacceptable after, as my colleague from Illinois said, 
$14.5 billion we've spent to prepare this site at Yucca Mountain only 
to have it stopped for political purposes.
  Mr. GINGREY of Georgia. Well, if the gentleman will yield to me 
again, and I appreciate the opportunity to discuss this, because what 
year did we commission a group to study--and there were a number of 
potential sites for permanent storage from all these 103 facilities--
one unified central site?
  I'm relatively sure--the gentleman could correct me if I am wrong, 
but it was at least a 5-year process before it was settled in 1987 and 
Congress at that time designated Yucca Mountain as the sole site for 
permanent high-level nuclear waste repository after years of 
contentious applications.
  So this is set in law, is it not?
  Mr. SHIMKUS. The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 established Yucca 
Mountain as the national repository for high-level nuclear waste. And, 
again, for the educational purposes, Mr. Speaker, that is spent fuel. 
Sometimes it's spent nuclear waste from our Department of Defense, now 
controlled by the Department of Energy sites like Hanford.
  Our argument is: Let's consolidate this waste safely, securely at one 
location so that, as my colleague from Georgia says, we can more 
safely, I think, effectively, I think, efficiently, I think, cost 
effectively manage, protect, and eventually try to remediate some of 
the damage that's been done over decades because of this high-level 
nuclear waste being located all over the country.
  I yield to the gentleman.
  Mr. GINGREY of Georgia. I have had the opportunity, as a Member of 
Congress, and particularly as a member of the Energy and Commerce 
Committee, Mr. Speaker, to travel to France and Scandinavia recently to 
look at their nuclear facility but, in particular, their ability to 
reprocess in France and their ability to store in Scandinavia.
  We have described a little bit about the physiognomy, if you will, of 
the Yucca Mountain area, the nuclear test site, that arid desert of 
northern Nevada; and they have, in Scandinavia, developed a laboratory. 
I think they call it The Clad. But it is literally 1,400 meters below 
ground in bedrock, and you could drive 18-wheel trucks down to 
something like 2 miles deep in the ground where their spent nuclear 
fuel is stored. And that's the model, and that's really what we are 
looking at and planning for at Yucca Mountain. Nothing, really, nothing 
could be safer in regard to storage.
  The other thing is, while we were in France, we looked at a facility 
where they take that spent fuel, Mr. Speaker, and they reprocess it. So 
at some point in the future, we decide and we have the technology to do 
that, that source of spent nuclear fuel that's stored in Yucca Mountain 
could be used to recycle and to get more energy out of this spent 
nuclear fuel.
  It's beyond me how a President, by Executive order, can stop the will 
of Congress. And maybe we ought to talk about that in regard to things 
like the Keystone energy pipeline and expand this discussion a little 
further.
  Mr. SHIMKUS. Again, I thank my friend from Georgia for helping out on 
the Special Order and just addressing the issue of recycling. What do 
we do? Because those of us who follow the nuclear fuel cycle, most 
people want it closed. And how do you get it closed? You get it closed 
by getting as much energy out of the fuel rods as you can. You do that 
by reprocessing. But it would make sense that if there was someone who 
is going to attempt to do that, that the nuclear fuel would be close 
by.
  There's probably some discussions about if we were going to have a 
reprocessing facility sometime in this country like France, where would 
you locate it? Where would it be situated? I mean, I am just a layman 
in this debate, but I think you would want it close by where the 
nuclear material is, the material that you want to use to reprocess, to 
create fuel.
  I can't speak for the entire body. I do know that the House spoke on 
Yucca Mountain and bringing a finality to this--297 Members voted to 
ensure that we had the final dollars to do the final scientific study 
to move this process forward. And in that debate, it just showed that 
the will of the House was supportive and this is bipartisan. I mean, we 
don't have 297--or whatever the number is--Members who are just 
Republicans. We have 242. That means we brought a lot of our colleagues 
from the other side on this debate. Some of those really believe that 
the future is reprocessing and that we ought to be exploring that, and 
it's much better to have them located where you can recover that 
material.

                              {time}  1540

  If my colleague from Georgia wouldn't mind, we are joined by another 
colleague from Illinois. People wonder why we take up this cause. It's 
because we're a big nuclear State. It's about 50 percent of our 
electricity generation. I do a lot of coal. Coal is very important to 
me, but we are a nuclear power State which means we have a lot of 
sites, a lot of reactors, and we have a lot of nuclear waste.
  So I yield to my colleague and thank him for coming down.
  Mr. KINZINGER of Illinois. I thank my colleague from Illinois. I just 
want to say thank you for your leadership on this issue, among many 
other things. This is an issue that is very important. It is important 
not just for the country. It is important for my State, and

[[Page H8305]]

it's important for my district. The 11th District of Illinois is kind 
of north central Illinois. It's a beautiful place. Come spend money 
there sometime.
  But we have three nuclear power plants there. In fact, at each 
nuclear power plant of course there is stored nuclear waste on site. 
And then we also have an area that was intended to be early on, the 
original site of what was going to be nuclear reprocessing in this 
country, and now it is really just a pool with stored nuclear waste in 
it.
  So in one district--I think there's 131 locations across the country 
where we are storing this nuclear waste, and in my district alone we 
have four of those. So this is an issue that is very important not just 
to the people of Illinois, the people of the 11th District, but mainly 
to the people of this country.
  I mean, Yucca Mountain, the fund was created for this sole purpose of 
finding a place, a safe place, a safe alternative to store nuclear 
waste.
  Now, going back to the very beginning part of the debate as to why do 
we need nuclear power, I think we have addressed that. I think most 
Americans are on board with the understanding that it is good, clean 
power. It provides a lot of great jobs. I have toured some of the 
plants in my district, and I can tell you they are good, high-paying 
American jobs. They take us on that road to energy independence. So 
understanding then that we need nuclear power and understanding that 
nuclear power plays an important role, we have to talk about the 
unfortunate side of it, which is the storage.
  Yucca Mountain has been, or was being, created until it was zeroed 
out for the purpose of storing all of this waste; and it just makes 
sense. You know, regardless of whether we build the nuclear reactors or 
reprocess them, we have to store this somewhere. Now here's the 
question, though. If Yucca Mountain is technologically unable to store 
this fuel, then I would think the NRC, the Nuclear Regulatory 
Commission, needs to come out and tell us it's technologically 
insufficient and show us why.
  But they're not doing that because the truth is technologically it's 
almost perfect, as far as something like this would go. But the 
chairman of the NRC has turned this into not necessarily what's the 
right thing to do for the industry, what's the right thing to do for 
the country, but what's the political thing to do, and turned the 
commission into a political commission.
  When you talk about this and when you talk about the safety of our 
country, I think for something very basic like this, and I think it is 
very evident, I think we should take politics out of that. And I would 
think all of my colleagues joining me today would agree this doesn't 
need to be a political issue. We need to have the NRC free of the 
political manipulations; and only President Obama, frankly, can 
determine the fate of the chairman. I hope he takes that into account. 
I hope he takes into account what's the right thing to do for this 
country in the long run.
  So we have great jobs here. We have a need for nuclear power. Let's 
just complete the puzzle, and let's put this stuff at Yucca Mountain.
  Mr. SHIMKUS. If my colleague would continue to discuss this for a few 
minutes, you mentioned a fund in your kind of opening statement. For 
the benefit of the Speaker, could you explain where this fund comes 
from and who is paying into it and what is it designed to do and what's 
going on with it right now.
  Mr. KINZINGER of Illinois. Look, if you pay for any kind of nuclear 
power, ratepayers pay for this fund.
  Mr. SHIMKUS. So you have constituents who have been paying into this 
fund?
  Mr. KINZINGER of Illinois. Sure. And paying for a long time. Let me 
add, for every year we delay opening--Yucca Mountain is not going away; 
it doesn't disappear off the face of the Earth--for every year we 
delay, it's costing us half a billion dollars more than what it's 
ultimately going to cost.
  So my constituents, your constituents, anybody who uses any aspect of 
nuclear power, which is almost everybody, has been paying for this. 
This isn't some giant expenditure we're going to have to make out of 
the general fund when we don't have any money. This is already being 
funded. It's already being paid for. It only makes sense. I think the 
colleagues that are joining me here today will say the same thing: this 
just makes sense.
  Mr. SHIMKUS. And part of this debate about the nuclear waste and 
where it's stored and the nuclear waste fund has been litigated in 
Federal court, and the courts have said it is the responsibility of the 
national government to take this waste as part of the law, complying 
with the law. Obviously, we have no place to take it. So we end up 
having the utility store the high-level nuclear waste on site; and some 
of them, some have not asked us yet, some of them we are actually 
paying to hold the waste that we're supposed to be holding.
  Mr. KINZINGER of Illinois. If my colleague wouldn't mind, and you 
mentioned it just a few minutes ago, this idea passed this body with a 
large majority. That to me seems like this is the will of the American 
people. It's not just some agenda or some crazy pie-in-the-sky idea. 
This is the will of the American people, and it's the responsibility of 
us to ensure that we're being safe. I mean, it just seems very basic to 
me, and so I'm having a hard time figuring out how and why politics has 
come into play on this. I think this is a debate we solved decades ago. 
But nonetheless, out in Washington, D.C., nothing surprises me in the 
10 months I've been out here.

  Mr. GINGREY of Georgia. If the subcommittee chair from Illinois would 
yield to me, if the gentleman from the 11th of Illinois lets the 
gentleman from the 11th of Georgia be somewhat instructive in regard to 
the politics, because that pure and simple is what it is. Of course 
comments were made in regard to the chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory 
Commission.
  But the fact is that it is the Secretary of Energy, it's the 
Secretary of Energy. This Secretary of Energy, a Nobel Laureate in 
nuclear physics who was essentially told by this administration to tell 
the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that he was requesting that the 
license application for Yucca Mountain be withdrawn from the NRC, taken 
out of their hands, the licensing process stopped with prejudice.
  Now, I'm not a lawyer, but if there are any lawyers in the body, they 
understand when you withdraw something with prejudice, that means you 
can't bring it back up. So this $14 billion that has been taken out of 
the ratepayers from the 50 States, or at least where these 103 reactors 
exist, they are paying for this. And yet this political pressure on a 
gentleman who's got to be much, much smarter than any of us, a Nobel 
Laureate in nuclear physics; if I were him, as soon as that word came 
down to me and I got the memo from the White House, I would immediately 
resign over righteous indignation.
  Mr. KINZINGER of Illinois. If I can just say quickly on that point, 
Aby Mohseni, acting director for licensing and inspections at the NRC, 
made this remark: ``Some senior managers contributed to the 
manipulation of the budget process and information to apparently make 
sure that the Yucca Mountain project would be left unfunded even if the 
license application was still before the NRC. We were unprepared for 
the political pressures and manipulations of our scientific and 
licensing processes that would come with the appointment of Chairman 
Jaczko in 2009.''
  Mr. GINGREY of Georgia. But, fortunately, if I might interject, the 
board of the NRC rejected that, rejected what he recommended.
  Mr. SHIMKUS. Reclaiming my time, I would kind of close this circle, 
Mr. Speaker, reminding folks that the chairman of the NRC, Mr. Jaczko, 
used to work for now-majority leader in the Senate, Harry Reid. And 
it's the majority leader in the Senate that is blocking the funding for 
the final scientific analysis, and it is the chairman of the NRC who 
used to work for the majority leader who is complicit in this plan to 
shut down an investment of this country of $14.5 billion to comply with 
Federal law that we passed in 1982.
  Now, in 1982 I was serving my country as an Army lieutenant in West 
Germany before the Wall came down. That's a long time ago. This has 
been the policy of this country for decades. And to have one man, one 
majority leader of the Senate, put a halt to that,

[[Page H8306]]

that's why we're down here, because he has raised this to a political 
debate, not a scientific debate.

                              {time}  1550

  And because it's a political debate, what I'm attempting to do over a 
series of weeks is go around the country and just identify where is 
high-level nuclear waste stored, and would it be better for that waste 
to be stored underneath a mountain in a desert, the most investigated 
piece of property on the history of this Earth. There is no piece of 
property that has been more studied than Yucca Mountain anywhere on the 
face of this Earth.
  So I know this is hard for some folks to see. We're doing a tally as 
we go around the country to look at, where are the votes? And we have 
27 people, bipartisan, who have said this is where it should go from 
Washington State; of course, Illinois and Wisconsin, Georgia, South 
Carolina, Arizona, Idaho, Utah, Wyoming, Maine, Vermont, Florida, 
Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. We have new Senators who have not 
had an opportunity to publicly either make a statement on it or cast a 
vote. They're in the middle. We have 27 ``yes,'' 8 unknown. We're going 
to give them the benefit of the doubt. Merkley. Feinstein was a ``no'' 
but Fukushima Daiichi and the two nuclear power plants that are on the 
Pacific Ocean in California and the high-level nuclear waste that's 
stored in ponds have her in a quandary based upon the representation of 
that State.
  Tester of Montana, unknown; Lee of Utah; Brown of Massachusetts; 
Ayotte of New Hampshire; Shaheen of New Hampshire; Wicker of 
Mississippi.
  Bona fide ``noes'': Reid of Nevada, Heller of Nevada, Cantwell of 
Washington, Boxer of California, Baucus of Montana, Kerry of 
Massachusetts, and Sanders of Vermont.
  So it's a chance to use the bully pulpit and my position as chairman 
of the subcommittee to help educate not only the floor, my colleagues, 
the Speaker, those who are following us, that there's got to be a 
better way to store high-level nuclear waste than in pools next to Lake 
Michigan, next to the Savannah River, next to the Pacific Ocean. 
Surely, there's a better place. And we know there is.
  Thirty years of study and research--Federal law says Yucca Mountain 
in the desert underneath a mountain is probably as good a place as 
you're going to find, at least in the United States.
  Mr. KINZINGER of Illinois. If the gentleman would grant me just a 
moment. When you said there's a mountain in the desert, or there's I 
think 131 locations as it exists today, I can tell you I have four of 
those locations in the 11th District in Illinois. I believe nuclear 
power is safe, effective, cheap, efficient. But right now there's four 
nuclear storage waste facilities in the district. That's by the Midewin 
Tallgrass Prairie. That's by populated areas and towns.
  There are a lot of big issues going on in Washington, and this 
probably isn't at the top of people's priorities, but I would encourage 
anybody that's watching us right now who sees their senator's name on 
that board you had up earlier and says, Hey, my senator is a ``yea,'' 
call and say, Thank you. Encourage that senator if they're unsure. If 
they have the three yellow question marks, probably call that senator 
and say, Hey, I really would like to get you onboard with safe nuclear 
storage. And if they're a ``nay,'' please call them twice. Because we 
react to what we hear. And if the American people want safe storage--
and I know they do--then this is the right alternative.
  Mr. SHIMKUS. I appreciate, again, my colleague for coming down for 
this hour of discussion on really what should be the national policy on 
high-level nuclear waste in this country.
  I didn't get a chance to go through all the areas but I'm going to 
end with Yucca Mountain versus the San Onofre Nuclear Generation 
Station between L.A. and San Diego. This is one of the ones I'm talking 
about. How much nuclear waste is in the desert underneath the mountain? 
None. How much is on the Pacific Ocean right on the coastline? There's 
the photo. That's 2,300 waste rods on site. The waste would be stored a 
thousand feet underground at Yucca. The waste is stored above the 
ground in pools right on the shoreline of the Pacific Ocean. The waste 
would be a thousand feet above the water table here. Of course, as you 
can see from the photo, the waste is right next to the Pacific Ocean. 
The waste at Yucca Mountain would be a hundred miles from the Colorado 
River. Again, you can see the waves breaking almost right up to the 
nuclear generating station between LA and San Diego.
  I've gone to Massachusetts. I should have talked about Florida today. 
I've talked about Illinois. DOE locations like Washington State. 
There's a lot of nuclear waste defined differently all over this 
country. Let's do the correct public policy and get it at a single 
repository in the desert underneath a mountain.
  With that, Mr. Speaker, I appreciate your diligence, and I yield back 
the balance of my time.

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