Hearing of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee - Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Project

Interview

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SEN. CLINTON: Well, I want to begin by thanking Chairman Boxer for holding this hearing. I think it is particularly timely because we are nearing a critical stage of the process, which is the June 2008 date when the Department of Energy plans to submit a license application for Yucca Mountain to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. So I think it's important that we use this hearing to get the administration on record in response to some important unanswered questions about how this process will work.

I want to start by stating what the available scientific evidence makes clear. Yucca Mountain is not a safe place to store spent fuel from our nation's nuclear reactors. First off, Yucca Mountain is located in an area of considerable seismic activity. There are 32 known active faults at or near Yucca Mountain. There have been more than 600 seismic events registering above 2.5 on the Richter scale within a 50-mile radius of Yucca Mountain in the last 30 years. In 1992, an earthquake registering 5.6 on the Richter scale occurred just eight miles away. And just last month, it was reported that the Department of Energy had to alter plans at the site after rock samples unexpectedly revealed a fault line underneath the proposed location of the concrete pads where waste would cool before going into the repository.

Looking forward, scientists have predicted that an earthquake registering 6 or more on the Richter scale is likely to occur in the next 10,000 years given that Nevada is the third most earthquake-prone state in the country after California and Alaska. An even greater potential risk at the site is its history of volcanic activity. As an MIT geologist testified to this committee last year, and I quote, "Though the likelihood of an explosive volcano erupting directly beneath the repository is remote, the outcome would be devastating, spewing radioactive material directly into the atmosphere," end quote. In addition, the rock at the site has proven to be more porous than the Department of Energy once thought, raising major concerns about contamination of scarce ground water less than 100 miles from Las Vegas.

In recent years, scientists discovered that radiation from nuclear tests done in the 1950s had migrated downward with rainwater to more than 600 feet below ground, rates far faster than predicted by the Department of Energy. This poses the threat of corrosion of the containers in which the waste would be stored as well as the potential for much more rapid spread of contamination in ground water. Because of these many flaws in the geology of the site, the DOE has turned to what it calls engineered controls to try to contain the waste. In other words, the containers that the waste would be stored in are to be trusted to resist rusting for hundred of thousands of years under intense heat and the presence of humidity. Given these problems, it's not surprising that the administration has been so opaque about the licensing process. As the testimony of Nevada's attorney general makes clear, the licensing process puts the cart before the horse. EPA has yet to finalize the radiation standards that DOD must prove it will be able to meet in order to license the repository. And the NRC has stated they will accept the application even if EPA standards are not in place when it is filed.

Madam Chairman, does this make any sense at all? Is this site and this process really the best we can do? I know that some believe that Yucca Mountain is a referendum on the future of nuclear power or that the waste accumulating across the country is imperative enough to override the clear problems with the site. I strongly disagree. That's why I voted against the resolution overriding Nevada's veto of Yucca Mountain in July of 2002 and that's why I remain opposed today. We do need to find a long-term storage solution for our nation's nuclear waste. But Yucca Mountain is not the answer. It's time to step back and take a deep breath. The 25 years since the Nuclear Waste Policy Act passed seems like a long time ago, but this is a decision that future generations will live with for hundreds of thousands of years, longer than any of us can imagine. So we need to get it right. It's time to move on from Yucca Mountain. I believe we should start over and assemble our best scientific minds to identify alternatives.

In the meantime, we need to make sure we are storing waste safely and securely at the reactors sites where it's located today, and we need to do better thinking about the massive challenge of transporting waste safely and securely from reactor sites to a permanent repository. What we should not do is to push an incomplete application for a flawed site through a rushed and incoherent process. But unfortunately it's clear from the written testimony submitted by our witnesses representing the administration that that is precisely the course of action that this administration intends to pursue. I think we can do better and I hope that we will get the chance to do that.

And Madam Chairman, again, thank you for holding this critical hearing.

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SEN. HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON (D-NY): Thank you very much, Senator Carper.

And thank you, gentlemen, for being here.

I must say that your respective testimony raises a lot of confusing questions. You know, if the EPA standards and NRC licensing regulations are not yet final, it's sort of hard on the matter of just logic to understand whether the NRC can properly docket and begin a substantive review of DOE's license application.

As you all noted in your testimony, EPA's radiation standard is still not final. Yet, DOE continues to prepare an application to meet this unknown standard. And the NRC indicates that they will begin to process the license, even if EPA has not finalized the radiation standard when it is received. I do not believe that this comports with the process that the Congress set out. And it certainly seems to be putting the cart before the horse.

In a few minutes, we will hear from Nevada's attorney general. And her testimony makes clear that this kind of, you know, unclear process puts Nevada at a great disadvantage. And the Nevada attorney general contends that the NRC should be prohibited from accepting DOE's license application for review until final EPA and NRC regulatory requirements are in place. That seems obvious to me.

So I have several questions about the process and about your testimony, and I want to lay them all out and go through them quickly. First, if I could, let me turn to Mr. Meyers. When will EPA finalize the radiation standards?

MR. MEYERS: (Off mike.) In my written testimony --

SEN. CLINTON: Can you open your mike, please?

MR. MEYERS: Excuse me, Senator. In my written testimony, I indicated it was our hope to get that done soon.

SEN. CLINTON: And what does soon mean?

MR. MEYERS: Soon means probably the normal meaning of the term is that it's our intent to continue to work on this and to get this done soon.

SEN. CLINTON: (Laughs.) That's very enlightening Mr. Meyers, I must confess. Now, when you get it soon, will soon be before the NRC has to act?

MR. MEYERS: We are focused on our process, Senator Clinton, and completing our process.

SEN. CLINTON: Well, that's the problem. You know, your final EPA standard is certainly key to any NRC action, because if the standard is not finished soon by the time the NRC acts, then the NRC will be acting without the standard. Do you agree with that?

MR. MEYERS: That could be hypothetically correct, but we intend to proceed with our standard and finish it.

SEN. CLINTON: Well, secondly, let me ask you, Mr. Sproat, why is the Department of Energy rushing to finalize the license application by June of next year in the absence of a final EPA standard?

MR. SPROAT: That's a good question, Senator. I just want to make clear, in terms of the NRC regulations that govern the licensing and the design requirements for Yucca Mountain, those regulations have been in place for almost a decade. There are literally hundreds of pages of those regulations. And our license application needs to address all of those. One very small piece is the last piece that says, what is the long-term radioactive release exposure rates that are potentially to emanate from Yucca Mountain out to 1 million years? That's the one last piece of literally hundreds of pages of regulation that isn't done yet.

For us, in preparing our license application, we need to do the calculations to determine how the repository will actually work. And we are doing that. As a matter of fact, we published our preliminary results in our supplemental environmental impact statement that we released three weeks ago. And it shows that the peak dose from Yucca Mountain, projected peak dose, will be, in about 200,000 years from now, maybe less than 5 millirams which is the combined exposure of a roundtrip air trip between New York and Los Angeles.

SEN. CLINTON: But you know, Mr. Sproat, what is suggested to me by the delay of the EPA's final standard is that perhaps the EPA doesn't agree with that.

You know, clearly this has been put on a fast track for this administration, and if the EPA had a sense of urgency about it and if Mr. Meyers were not put in awkward position of having to play semantic games in trying to respond to my question, there would already be a radiation standard.

So what I'm picking up is that there's a disagreement here, and that DOE is going full-fledged ahead and EPA is dragging its feet because EPA doesn't want to be on the record of either contradicting DOE or having to once again mangle science in order to get to some preconceived outcome that will suit those who wish to move forward on this.

But finally, let me ask Mr. Weber, why won't the NRC refuse to accept the application until after the EPA radiation standard and your own standards are complete? Because not only don't we have the EPA radiation standard, we also don't have your standards, either.

MR. WEBER: Clearly, Senator, our preference would be to have the EPA's final standard and NRC's requirements in place before the receipt of the application. Congress addressed this in addressing the legislation, and we cannot make our licensing finding on the construction authorization until such time as we have in fact received the EPA standard and conformed our regulations. Because the finding that the Congress charged the NRC to make is that among all the requirements that Mr. Sproat referred to, one of them is that the EPA standard has been satisfied.

SEN. CLINTON: Well, does that mean then that you will delay accepting the application, or you will delay acting on the application?

MR. WEBER: If we receive the application, we will commence our review. We cannot complete that review and reach our regulatory decision until such time as we have the requirements in place.

SEN. CLINTON: Thank you very much. And Senator Carper, I will be submitting additional questions for the record.

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