Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2006
AGRICULTURE, RURAL DEVELOPMENT, FOOD AND DRUG ADMINISTRATION, AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2006--Continued -- (Senate - September 20, 2005)
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Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, one of the issues that has occupied this Chamber for some time and had a particular impact on those of us in the Western States is the issue of the storage of nuclear waste. The question of where nuclear waste should be stored has been before various administrations and various Congresses literally for decades.
The original policy decision made by administrations past and Congresses past was that there should be a single repository for nuclear waste. After a study by the National Academy of Sciences and others, the decision was made to put that repository in Nevada, in Yucca Mountain. Ever since that time, construction has gone forward at the Yucca Mountain facility.
All of that happened before I came to Congress. When I got here, the debate was going on, and we had a particular point where we had to vote, once again, on whether to put nuclear waste in Yucca Mountain.
At that time, as I looked at the various alternatives, I decided that the best scientific answer to the question of what to do with nuclear waste was to leave it where it was. I was assured by the scientists that it was safe in the dry cask storage that had been prepared for its transportation, and that it could be safely transported across the country to Yucca Mountain.
My reaction to that was, if it is safe where it is and if it is safe to transport, why transport it at all? Why not leave it where it is?
It was very clear that the Congress was not going to accept that position, that the President was not going to accept that position, and that we were going to go ahead as a matter of public policy and have a single repository for nuclear waste.
So I said: If we are going to have a single repository for nuclear waste, the most logical place for that is Yucca Mountain. And I voted in favor of Yucca Mountain.
Looking back on it, the keyword in that sentence is the word ``if.'' If we are going to have a single repository for nuclear waste, it appeared that the logical place to put it was Yucca Mountain.
It is now clear that we are not going to have a single repository for nuclear waste. Yucca Mountain has been challenged on scientific grounds. Yucca Mountain has been challenged in the court on legal grounds. And as we look at the present state of our need for energy, Yucca Mountain will be challenged on practical grounds because it is very clear that we are going to need more, not less, nuclear power.
Nuclear power is here to stay. The nuclear plants that we have are going to be recommissioned and relicensed, and Yucca Mountain will be full if we go ahead with the existing plans to send nuclear waste there. We will still need storage in place even if Yucca Mountain opens. It doesn't make sense from a practical point of view to move the material all across the country, store it in Yucca Mountain for the purpose of ending storage in place, and then have storage in place come back.
Those who saw this in advance--Senator Reid and Senator Ensign--have the right to tell the rest of us, ``I told you so,'' as it now becomes clear that scientifically, legally, and practically, Yucca Mountain is not going to become the single repository for nuclear waste. And we need to start thinking about new strategies and new places to deal with this issue.
I want to make it very clear that I am not opposed to nuclear power. Indeed, I am a strong supporter of nuclear power. I have supported Senator Domenici in his efforts in crafting the Energy bill to craft the bill in such a way as to encourage America to build new nuclear powerplants. We are behind the rest of the world on this issue. Go to Europe and you will find
the French have something like 80 percent of their power generated by nuclear power. The British have large amounts of nuclear power.
With the price of natural gas going as high as it is, it becomes increasingly economically unwise for us to continue to build gas-powered electric plants. Nuclear power is something in which we should get involved in a big way in the future, and the Energy bill we passed prior to the August recess laid the groundwork for that.
The question is, of course, if we go in that direction, what do we do with the nuclear waste? If Yucca Mountain is not going to be available--and I am now convinced that it will not be--where should it be put? There is a proposal that it should be put in the State of Utah at an interim storage site that has just recently been licensed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
I put stress on the word ``interim'' because the whole idea behind the proposed facility in Utah, in a place called Skull Valley, was that it would simply be a stopover for the waste on its way to Yucca Mountain, and so it has been designed and it has been licensed as an interim storage facility.
If it does not make sense for us to take this nuclear waste and put it in a permanent repository, which is what Yucca Mountain is, why does it make sense to put it in an interim repository that does not have the safeguards that are built into Yucca Mountain?
Yucca Mountain would put the waste below ground. It would put the waste in vaults that have been prepared for it. The interim facility in Skull Valley would leave the waste above ground. It would leave the waste in the dry cask receptacles that were built for transportation. Why ship it from its present site aboveground to another site aboveground to say, well, this is an interim storage site until we put it in permanent storage?
The reality is, if you do that, you are creating a permanent storage site because there will be no place to put it after it has been transported to the interim storage site.
There are those who say: You just don't want it in Utah. And that is true, I don't want it in Utah. But there is another factor that drives the reason I don't want it in Utah. This particular interim storage site is at the portal to the Utah Test and Training Range. Even most people in Utah have never heard of the Utah Test and Training Range, and they have no idea what it is. It is the largest land range for bombing practice in the United States. It goes all the way back to the Second World War. The crew that flew the mission over Hiroshima in the Enola Gay trained at the Utah Test and Training Range.
Today, it is still in use. F-16s from Hill Air Force Base fly over the Utah Test and Training Range and practice their bombing runs with live ordinance. I have flown over the Utah Test and Training Range in a helicopter and have been told: We have to get out of here because the F-16s are coming, and they are going to start bombing.
It clearly does not make sense to have an interim storage facility for nuclear waste in an area where F-16s with live ordinance are going to be flying.
There are those who say: The F-16s can change their flight pattern; they can go around this area; they don't need to pay attention to it.
One of the things we have learned from spending time with the BRAC process in determining which military facilities will be retained and which will not is that more military facilities have been closed by encroachment than have been closed by BRAC--encroachment being development or other activities that come close to the gate of the military base that make it impossible for the people on the base to do their job, and they ultimately say: When we built this base, it was surrounded by open spaces. Now activity has come in, development has come in, encroachment has happened, and we are going to have to close this base.
I do not want to see encroachment take away the last remaining large, land-based test and training range in the United States. We need to rethink this whole thing.
So, Mr. President, I am now making it clear that my support for Yucca Mountain, however well intended it was at the time, in my opinion does no longer hold in the situation in which we find ourselves.
I also believe the proposal that was made at the time we approved Yucca Mountain the last time, that of leaving the material in place until we can work out the economics and the technology of reprocessing it, is the right approach. That is what the future holds.
Right now people say: Reprocessing it is too expensive. But we know from past experience that technology will find a way around that. It will become cheaper and cheaper the more we do it. We are already involved in reprocessing warheads from the former Soviet Union as we go through the process of reducing nuclear weapons and nuclear stockpiles around the world. As that reprocessing activity goes forward, we will learn how to do it faster, we will learn how to do it cheaper, and reprocessing will be available for the nuclear waste that is currently being developed by our nuclear power facilities.
At that time, it would make sense for the nuclear waste that is stored onsite to be shipped to a reprocessing center, not to an interim storage facility.
There is one other factor that needs to be stressed. At the present time, the contract to take the nuclear waste and ship it to the interim storage facility in Utah--which, by the way, has not been built; there is still $1 billion worth of investment that will have to go into that--the process by which that will go forward will be under the ownership of the utilities that run the nuclear plants.
The main difference between an interim storage facility and a permanent storage facility in the law has to do with titles. In the interim storage facility, the utility that created the waste and ran the nuclear plant retains title to the waste. While it is being packaged, while it is being shipped, and while it is in interim storage, it is owned by the utility. Under the Yucca Mountain proposal, the Federal Government would take title to the waste the minute Yucca Mountain would open so the Federal Government would be responsible for packaging it, the Federal Government would be responsible for protecting it while transporting it, and the Federal Government would be responsible for the security on the site where it would be located. If we leave it where it is while we work on the issue of reprocessing, title remains with the utility that produced it, but the security that the utility has already built into its plant is already there. It is not exposed to any terrorist attack while it is moving so that utility does not have to bear the expense of extra security in moving waste to which they retain title.
Then when we get to the point where we can move it to a reprocessing plant, once again the Federal Government may take title to it.
The Federal Government can provide the security during transportation. The Federal Government can see that it is kept safe from terrorist attack and bring it to the reprocessing facility.
One last point. One of the reasons we want to be sure the Federal Government is in charge of all of the reprocessing is that the end product after reprocessing is not only additional energy created by the process, but the residue that is left is weapons-grade plutonium. We do not want to run the risk of having weapons-grade plutonium in the hands of private entities. We want to be sure that the Government controls it.
What I think we need to do--``we'' being the collective word for the administration and the Congress, generally--is to adopt some fundamental principles and then rethink the whole issue to come up with the appropriate details. The fundamental principles that I would recommend and that I embrace are, No. 1, we are in favor of nuclear power. We want more nuclear power in this country for all of the environmental reasons dealing with greenhouse gases, for all of the demand reasons dealing with the increased necessity for electric power, and for all of the legal reasons having to do with the control of the ownership of these facilities. So the No. 1 principle, I am in favor of nuclear power. No. 2, I am in favor of reprocessing. I think we should work toward that technical solution for the question of waste. And No. 3, while we are in the process of building new nuclear plants and working toward reprocessing of the waste, we should leave the waste where it is. If, indeed, as I say, it is safe to transport and it is safe to store in an interim facility someplace else, by definition, it is equally safe to store it where it is. That is cheaper, that is equally as safe, and that sets us up for the solution of our problem. I believe that if we rethink the whole issue as to how we are going to handle it and what we are going to do, there may very well be a useful purpose for Yucca Mountain. We have spent, as a nation, billions of dollars preparing that facility. We should review the facility and what it offers and see how it might be used at some particular point in the future and see how we might retain some of the investment we have made there.
I am not one who thinks we ought to fill Yucca Mountain up with dirt and walk away and leave it. There can be a win-win situation for all. Nevada can get some value out of the investment that has been made in Yucca Mountain if we think it through carefully. The Nation can get additional power without the greenhouse gas effect that comes from fossil fuels, and we can ultimately solve the problem of nuclear waste with reprocessing.
I have discussed this in general terms with Senator Domenici, who is the chairman of the Energy Committee as well as the chairman of the energy and water subcommittee of the Appropriations Committee, and I commend him for his original thinking of moving in directions that will make sense for the future. However, much as the idea of a single repository may have made sense decades ago, it is now clear, as I say, that it does not make sense, and we need to move in some future direction. To the degree that Senator Domenici will allow me to participate in trying to find logical solutions under the three principles I have described, I will be more than happy to cooperate with him. To those who had the vision long ago who, as I say, have earned the right to say to the rest of us, ``I told you so,'' I say I will be happy to join with you, too, in seeing how we can think this thing through and get the best solution for our Nation and all of those who live in it.
With that, Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
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