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

Statement

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

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SEN. JOHN BARASSO (R-WY): Thank you very much, Madame Chairman. I look forward to becoming more informed today and educated for the licensing process for the Yucca Mountain repository and the concerns that we are hearing about.

As a newcomer to this forum, it seems from the submitted testimony that the issue of a long term nuclear waste storage has been discussed for some three decades. My fundamental concern is for the continuation of a fair, objective, and informed process, a process that respects the advice of our best scientists, a process that allows a fair hearing of those most closely impacted, and finally a process that demonstrates accountability to both our taxpayers and our ratepayers' hard earned money.

As policymakers we do owe it to our constituents this careful review. This is true whether those constituents live near a nuclear facility with temporary onsite storage, whether they live near a transportation corridor between a nuclear facility and a permanent repository, or if they live near a permanent waste repository.

Oversight of this process is appropriate as the environmental and domestic security stakes are high.

With that background I feel compelled to point out a more immediate and pressing observation, and that's as a member of both the Senate Energy and the Senate Environment committees I'm increasingly struck by the policies that are presently being debated. I ask myself are the policies properly harmonized between affordable, secure, domestic energy sources and preservation of our natural -- of our natural resources.

I -- I note that we debate aggressive carbon limitations while simultaneously we struggle to adequately deal with the long term storage of nuclear waste as nuclear power is an energy source that doesn't emit carbon.

I notice we discuss energy policy, we often limit rather than expand domestic exploration, production, generation and development opportunities.

Quoting from a recent Energy Information Administration report assessing one of the cap-and-trade bills that was introduced earlier this year, it states, new nuclear plants are a key technology the power sector is projected to rely on to reduce greenhouse emissions.

This Energy Information Administration report projects that an estimated 145 gigawatts of new nuclear capacity will be added to 2030.

My point in these discussions regarding energy and the environment is that we need to explore and properly plan for all energy sources, because we as a nation are going to need all the energy sources. We need investment in technology for renewable sources, technology for cleaner fossil fuel uses, and yes, technology and a predictable regulatory framework for nuclear energy and its accompanying waste.

I ask myself, from where will we get the energy we need tomorrow. Currently fossil fuels and nuclear energy account for approximately 93 percent of our energy consumption. We will not be able to change that statistic overnight. In the meantime it is our obligation to carefully and cautiously execute a national policy on long term storage of nuclear waste. We should not saddle future generations with a strategy left unexecuted.

A major component of that is a long term well developed strategy to deal with our existing and our future nuclear waste in an environmentally and domestically secure fashion.

Thank you, Madame Chairman, for holding these hearings.

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