[Congressional Record Volume 158, Number 61 (Thursday, April 26, 2012)]
[House]
[Page H2138]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             YUCCA MOUNTAIN

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Illinois (Mr. Shimkus) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. SHIMKUS. Mr. Speaker, I come to the floor again, as I have in the 
past 2 years, to talk about the location of high-level nuclear waste 
around this country and compare and contrast it with where we have 
high-level nuclear waste, mostly spent nuclear fuel, but other types 
defined as waste, and compare it to where it should be based upon a 
1982 law, the Nuclear Waste Policy Act and the 1987 amendment to that 
law which identified Yucca Mountain as the location where we should be 
storing high-level nuclear waste.
  Today we go to the Pennsylvania and West Virginia areas, and we 
compare Yucca Mountain with a nuclear power plant called Limerick. At 
Yucca Mountain, currently there is no nuclear waste on site. At 
Limerick, there are 1,143 metric tons of uranium spent nuclear fuel on 
the site. At Yucca Mountain, the waste would be stored, if it's there, 
a thousand feet underground. At Limerick, you can see waste is stored 
aboveground in pools and casks. That's above ground.
  If it was stored in Yucca Mountain, it would be a thousand feet above 
the water table. Why is that? Well, Yucca Mountain is in a desert, so 
that's why the water table is very, very low. Well, at Limerick, the 
waste is stored 20 feet above the groundwater.
  Finally, Yucca Mountain is 100 miles from the Colorado River. 
Limerick is on the Schuylkill River 40 miles from Philadelphia. Yucca 
is about 100 miles from Las Vegas, Nevada. The importance of this is 
just to address with Fukushima Daiichi, and nuclear waste, and some 
difficulties we've had, and public policy being as defined by law. The 
question is, why do we still have nuclear waste in Pennsylvania right 
outside Philadelphia, and why don't we have it underneath a mountain in 
a desert?
  The answer is--I know it would shock people--politics here in 
Washington, especially in the other Chamber, not complying with the 
law, along with an administration that is in league with those who have 
blocked a final scientific study for Yucca Mountain. What I have been 
doing is going around and looking at the senators from the States 
around the nuclear power plants that I have been addressing.
  Where do they stand individually? Well, Senator Casey, a relatively 
new Senator, has really been silent on that, although he has said, as a 
Senator from a State with 9 commercial reactors and 10 million people 
living within 50 miles of those reactors, I can tell you that nuclear 
security is extremely important to Pennsylvanians. Obviously the 
nuclear waste is not that important to him since he has been silent on 
Yucca Mountain.
  Senator Toomey is quoted as saying the alternative is what we have 
now, highly active radio waste located at 131 sites in 39 States, 
including nuclear power plants close to the Lehigh Valley. That cannot 
be as safe and secure as burying the waste deep in Yucca Mountain. I 
would agree with the Senator.
  Senator Manchin from West Virginia, who is relatively new, has been 
silent on what we should do with the high-level nuclear waste. Part of 
this process is to identify that and hopefully have him come out in a 
statement. Senator Rockefeller voted ``no.'' His statement is, nuclear 
energy is touted by its proponents as a carbon-free option that should 
have its share of the Nation's electricity generation expanded.

                              {time}  1010

  Yet we have never figured out what to do about the permanent storage 
and human health and safety concerns regarding high radioactive waste 
with a half-life measured in tens of thousands of years. That's where I 
very much disagree with the Senator, because the Federal Government has 
spent 20 years and $9 billion studying Yucca Mountain. Unprecedented 
100 million-year projections were completed showing Yucca's safety. 
There is no safer place in the entire United States for nuclear waste 
than Yucca Mountain.
  So, then, I've been doing a tally across the country of the Senators 
and where they stand as of today. We have 48 who support Yucca Mountain 
and high-level nuclear waste; 18, we don't know. Hopefully, they'll get 
a chance to cast a vote. And we have 20 who are ``no.'' In the 
filibuster world that operates in the other Chamber, you know we really 
need 60. We're very close. In fact, if 12 of these 18 undecideds are 
``yes,'' there should be no reason why we would allow Senator Reid and 
the President of the United States to block further development and 
movement to take all of our high-level nuclear waste and store it 
safely in a mountain in a desert.

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