104th
Congress: Democratic Perspectives 103rd-107th
Congress Committee Activity H.R. 1020 may respond to the short-term economic and public relations needs of the nuclear utility industry, but it does a disservice to our obligation to the American people to find real solutions to the nuclear waste dilemma.
Over the last fifty years, our nation has generated tens of thousands of tons of plutonium, enriched uranium, and other highly-radioactive nuclear materials and wastes. There is no problem as grave as finding a solution to the disposal of these deadly wastes. The need to do so in the safest and most responsible fashion is obvious--the failure to do so will subject future generations to possible lethal exposures for tens of thousands of years to come.
Sadly, the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 has all too frequently fallen short of meeting these objectives, in both its conception and execution. During the 1980s, I became intimately acquainted with the bad starts, false starts and mis-starts that racked DOE's management of this program. Congress then added insult to injury with enactment of the 1987 amendments to the Waste Policy Act, which abandoned any pretense of exploring multiple sites to ensure selection of a permanent waste repository would be based on the soundest scientific footing, after a full-scale review of all the options and all the available data on safety, environmental, and public health concerns. Instead, we made a political decision to limit the search for a permanent nuclear waste dump to the Yucca Mountain site--thereby taking the remaining 98 Senators and 433 Representatives off the hook and handing the nuclear Queen of Spades to the State of Nevada. We then instructed DOE and the NRC to go forth and determine whether our political decision was technically supportable.
Since Secretary O'Leary's arrival, the Department of Energy has finally begun to get moving on site characterization efforts that would provide an answer to the technical question of Yucca Mountain's suitability. This legislation would undermine that effort by reviving plans to store nuclear waste above ground in a so-called `interim' storage facility. It would repeal the legal limitations currently placed on interim storage that were intended to prevent interim storage from becoming permanent storage and would eliminate critical environmental and public health and safety protections.
Interim storage was a bad idea in 1982, a bad idea in 1987, and it remains a bad idea in 1995. Why? Because an above-round interim storage facility is really a dagger poised at the heart of the underground permanent waste repository. If we fund such a facility in Nevada, we run the risk that budget and political pressures will delay or terminate the search for a permanent solution, or so taint the integrity of the decision-making process that politics--not science--will drive DOE's and NRC's final decision on Yucca Mountain's suitability.
We are already seeing evidence of the tension between funding interim storage and a permanent repository in the Energy and Water Appropriations bill. The House-passed Appropriations bill proposed to downgrade, suspend or terminate efforts to complete work on Yucca Mountain and instead fund an interim storage facility. Ironically, when I tried to offer an amendment to restore full funding for DOE and NRC site characterization activities at Yucca Mountain, the nuclear industry came out and lobbied to defeat amendment. In light of their opposition, I really must seriously question the sincerity of the nuclear industry's commitment to fully fund a permanent repository if an interim storage facility is constructed.
I also have come to the conclusion that this bill fails to provide the minimal level of protection needed to assure the integrity of the site selection process and protect public health, safety, and the environment. While I commend my Democratic colleagues for their efforts to improve this legislation, I regretfully cannot support the product of their efforts.
During the Commerce Committee's Subcommittee and full Committee markups of H.R. 1020, I offered a series of amendments which were intended to correct some of the most glaring deficiencies in this legislation, as follows:
Motion to strike the bill's provisions that: (1) bar EPA from setting high-level radiation protection standards for the permanent repository; (2) establish an arbitrary statutory radiation standard of 100 millirems; and (3) require the NRC to assume no human intrusion into the repository will be possible for 1,000 years. [Defeated 5-32]
Motion to strike the bill's provisions that provide for various exemptions for National Environmental Policy Act requirements that an environmental impact statement (EIS) be prepared for the transportation, interim storage, and permanent waste repository. [Defeated 4-33]
An en bloc amendment which would:
Require DOE and NRC to undertake a risk assessment and cost-benefit analysis in connection with the transportation, interim storage site, or a permanent disposal of radioactive waste in a repository, and require that the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board undertake a peer review of such risk assessments and cost-benefit analyses.
A takings amendment which would require the Nuclear Waste Disposal fund to pay for any reduction of private property values of more than 20% caused by the transportation, interim storage, or permanent disposal of nuclear waste, and to otherwise apply the provisions of the House-passed takings bill to the Act.
An unfunded mandate amendment requiring the waste disposal fund to pay for state or local governmental public health and safety activities made necessary as the result of transportation, storage, or disposal of nuclear waste. [Defeated 3-32]
Motion to reinstate the provisions of current law which restrict an interim facility from being located in Nevada and limit its size and schedule in order to link its construction to completion of the permanent repository. [Defeated by voice vote]
Amendment to specify that all high-level radioactive defense nuclear waste must be disposed of in the permanent repository, and that the repository be large enough to accommodate all of the waste generated by defense programs and by all civilian power plants licensed as of the date of enactment of this Act. [Defeated by voice vote]
Bar relicensing of existing nuclear reactors unless DOE certifies that either the permanent repository can accommodate the waste from the reactor or that DOE has begun site selection and characterization for a second repository to take the additional waste produced by the reactor [Defeated by voice vote]
Amendment to require nuclear waste from decommissioned nuclear reactors to be given priority for disposal [Defeated by voice vote]
In light of the Committee's rejection of these amendments, I cannot support passage of H.R. 1020. In its present form, the bill endangers public health, safety, and the environment, and does not merit adoption by the House. I respectfully dissent.
EDWARD J. MARKEY.
104th
Congress: Democratic Perspectives
103rd-107th
Congress Committee Activity