[Congressional Record Volume 158, Number 6 (Wednesday, January 18, 2012)]
[House]
[Page H32]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   NUCLEAR WASTE STORAGE IN TENNESSEE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Illinois (Mr. Shimkus) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. SHIMKUS. Mr. Speaker, it's great to be back down on the floor, 
back to being in Washington, DC, to continue with what I spent most of 
my time last year doing, which was addressing the high-level nuclear 
waste issues in this country.
  Today, we go to the great State of Tennessee, and identify a location 
where there is presently high-level nuclear waste stored and compare 
that to the site that was picked and that is in Federal law right now, 
which is the high-level nuclear waste depository scheduled to occur in 
Yucca Mountain.
  First of all, this is Sequoyah in Tennessee, where there are over 
1,094 MTU of spent nuclear fuel onsite. At Yucca Mountain, which is in 
the desert in Nevada, there is currently no nuclear waste onsite. At 
Sequoyah, the waste is stored above the ground in pools and dry casks. 
If we were to put it in Yucca Mountain, where it is supposed to go, the 
waste would be stored 1,000 feet underground--underneath, in essence, a 
mountain. At Sequoyah, the waste is 25 feet from the groundwater table. 
At Yucca Mountain, it would be 1,000 feet above the water table, and 
Yucca Mountain is 100 miles from the Colorado River. Sequoyah is 14 
miles from the city of Chattanooga and 14 miles from Chickamauga Lake.
  So why do I highlight these issues? Because of what happened in Japan 
with Fukushima Daiichi and the high-level nuclear waste.
  A lot of the nuclear exposure was because pools had dried up. The 
nuclear waste heated up, and then you had almost a worldwide 
catastrophe right next to the ocean. If we were doing what was public 
policy in Federal law in collecting our high-level nuclear waste and 
taking it to a desert underneath a mountain, that would be a much more 
secure location than around our major municipalities, our streams, and 
our groundwater locations. But, no, because of this administration and 
some political promises made in the last election cycle, they have 
defunded and pulled off the table Yucca Mountain from consideration.
  In 1982, the Nuclear Waste Policy Act made the Federal Government 
responsible for checking waste. Since that time, $9 billion and 20 
years was spent studying for a suitable location. That study ended in 
Yucca Mountain.

                              {time}  1010

  In 1987 Congress named Yucca Mountain the sole candidate site for a 
permanent repository, and then in '94 DOE published scientific results 
demonstrating Yucca as capable of protecting public health and safety; 
in '98, the statutory deadline for DOE to commence disposal of spent 
nuclear fuel.
  So we pay these nuclear utilities money to hold their own waste that 
we should be collecting based upon Federal law.
  In 2002 we voted here, and the President and Congress approved Yucca 
as the site repository. DOE issued a license application in 2008, and 
then in 2009 President Obama announced plans to terminate Yucca 
Mountain after $15 billion spent in studying this site.
  And I'll close with this: Would you rather have nuclear waste 14 
miles from a major metropolitan area next to a lake or would you rather 
have high-level nuclear waste hundreds of miles from the major, largest 
city, 100 miles from a river, underneath a mountain, in the desert?
  Public policy, good public policy demands that we move forward on 
Yucca Mountain.

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