[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 5]
[House]
[Page 7269]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                YUCCA MOUNTAIN AND SCIENTIFIC INTEGRITY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Illinois (Mr. Shimkus) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. SHIMKUS. Mr. Speaker, there's good news in our pursuit of a 
repository to hold our Nation's spent nuclear fuel and nuclear waste, 
although it went largely unreported.
  Officials from both the Department of Energy and the Nuclear 
Regulatory Commission have publicly admitted that neither agency has 
identified any technical issues that would prevent us from being able 
to develop a safe repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. This 
admission came during a recent hearing before the Energy and Water 
Appropriations Subcommittee in response to a question from my friend 
and colleague, Mr. Frelinghuysen, the subcommittee chairman.
  To stakeholders in the nuclear waste debate, this fact should come as 
no surprise. Why else would Greg Jaczko, Senator Reid's former staffer, 
abuse his authority as NRC chairman and deceive his Commission 
colleagues to scuttle publication of the agency's safety review?
  If Yucca Mountain were as scientifically flawed as Senator Reid says 
it is, then he would have benefited by having the agency's conclusions 
released publicly. Instead, Senator Reid got a promise from President 
Obama to shut down the program.
  President Obama obliged, with no basis other than the cryptic 
statements about Yucca Mountain being ``unworkable.'' Meanwhile, 
Senator Reid's protege, Mr. Jaczko, made sure the NRC's independent 
technical conclusions never saw the light of day.
  These actions have been challenged in court. The State attorneys 
general for both Washington and South Carolina, together with the 
National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners, Aiken County, 
South Carolina, and Nye County, Nevada, have all alleged that the NRC 
has violated the Nuclear Waste Policy Act by ceasing its review of the 
Yucca Mountain license application, which is mandated under the law. 
The case is currently before the District of Columbia Circuit Court of 
Appeals.
  When President Obama took office, he said that this administration 
would ``restore scientific integrity in government decisionmaking.''
  Shortly after taking office, he issued a Presidential Memorandum 
stating:

       Political officials should not suppress or alter scientific 
     or technological findings and conclusions. If scientific and 
     technological information is developed and used by the 
     Federal Government, it should ordinarily be made available to 
     the public.
       Except for information that is properly restricted from 
     disclosure, each agency should make available to the public 
     the scientific and technical findings or conclusions 
     considered or relied upon in policy decisions.
       The public must be confident that public officials will not 
     conceal or distort the scientific findings that are relevant 
     to policy choices.

  He reaffirmed these statements recently when addressing the National 
Academies of Science:

       In all the sciences, we've got to make sure that we are 
     supporting the idea that they're not subject to politics, 
     that they're not skewed by an agenda, that, as I said before, 
     we make sure that we go where the evidence leads us.

  Mr. Speaker, I find it very difficult to reconcile these 
pronouncements with the Yucca Mountain situation as it stands today. 
Electricity consumers and taxpayers have invested $15 billion to find a 
safe disposal site for our Nation's civilian spent fuel and the nuclear 
waste left over from the Cold War. After investing 30 years and $15 
billion in Yucca Mountain, they deserve, at a minimum, for the 
independent nuclear safety regulator, the NRC, to release its 
conclusions on whether the site is safe or not.
  Given the admissions from these DOE and NRC officials, it appears we 
have found a safe solution to our Nation's nuclear waste problem: Yucca 
Mountain. The bad news is that this administration would rather play 
politics than solve the problem. Transparency and scientific integrity 
should not be debased into political buzz words easily cast aside for 
the sake of political favors.
  Mr. Speaker, the American people deserve better. They deserve to know 
the truth about Yucca Mountain. It's outrageous that they must go to 
court to get it.

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