Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions

Floor Speech

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Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Mr. President, I rise today to join my colleagues in
introducing the Nuclear Waste Administration Act, a bill to establish a
national nuclear waste policy.

This bipartisan legislation, which has been years in the making, is
also cosponsored by Senators Maria Cantwell, Lisa Murkowski, and Lamar
Alexander.

This legislation represents our best attempt to establish a workable,
long term nuclear waste policy for the United States, something our
Nation lacks today. It does so by implementing the unanimous
recommendations of the Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear
Future.

First, the bill would create a new independent entity, the Nuclear
Waste Administration, with the sole purpose of managing nuclear waste.

Second, the bill would authorize the siting and construction of two
types of waste facilities: permanent repositories for disposal and
interim facilities for storage, including a pilot facility prioritizing
waste from shut down reactors.

Third, the bill creates a consent-based siting process for both
storage facilities and repositories, based on other countries'
successful efforts.

The legislation requires that local, tribal, and State governments
must consent to host waste facilities by signing incentive agreements,
assuring that waste is only stored in the States and communities that
want and welcome it.

Fourth, the bill would resume collection of the nuclear waste
management fees from nuclear power ratepayers at a rate of \1/10\ of a
cent per kilowatt-hour, or about $750 million annually, and would
rededicate these revenues to the Nuclear Waste Administration to fund
construction of waste facilities.

Finally, the legislation ensures the Nuclear Waste Administration
will be held accountable for meeting Federal responsibilities and
stewarding Federal dollars.

The Nuclear Waste Administrator will be appointed by the president
and confirmed by the Senate. The administration will be overseen by a
five-member Nuclear Waste Oversight Board, modeled on the Defense
Nuclear Facilities Safety Board and will have an Inspector General. The
administration will collect fees from nuclear utilities to pay for the
development of storage and disposal facilities; those fees will be
immediately available without appropriation, unless otherwise limited
in an appropriations or authorization act. The current balance of the
Nuclear Waste Fund, now valued at $32 billion, will be available by
appropriation only. Finally, if the agency fails to open a nuclear
waste facility by 2025, fees paid by utilities will cease to be
collected.

The United States has 99 operating commercial nuclear power reactors
that supply \1/5\ of our electricity and \3/5\ of our emissions-free
power.

However, production of this nuclear power has a significant downside:
it produces nuclear waste that will take hundreds of thousands of years
to decay. Unlike most nuclear nations, the United States has no program
to consolidate waste in centralized facilities.

Instead, we leave the waste next to operating and shut down reactors
sitting in pools of water or in cement and steel dry casks. Today,
nearly 74,000 metric tons of nuclear waste is stored at commercial
reactor sites. This total grows by about 2,000 metric tons each year.

In addition to commercial nuclear waste, we must also address waste
generated from having created our nuclear weapons stockpile and from
powering our Navy.

The byproducts of nuclear energy represent some of the nation's most
hazardous materials, but for decades we have failed to find a solution
for their safe storage and permanent disposal. Most experts agree that
this failure is not a scientific problem or an engineering
impossibility; it is a failure of government.

Although the Federal Government signed contracts committing to pick
up commercial waste beginning in 1998, this waste program has failed to
take possession of a single fuel assembly.

Our government has not honored its contractual obligations. We are
routinely sued, and we routinely lose. So today, the taxpayer is paying
power plants to store the waste at reactor sites all over the Nation.
This has cost us $4.5 billion so far, and our liability continues to
grow each day. The lack of action is estimated to cost taxpayers
another $22.6 billion between now and 2065 if the government can start
taking possession of waste in 2021. Further delays will only increase
these costs.

We simply cannot tolerate continued inaction.

In January 2012, the Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear
Future completed a 2-year comprehensive study and published unanimous
recommendations for fixing our Nation's broken nuclear waste management
program.

The commission found that the only long-term, technically feasible
solution for this waste is to dispose of it in a permanent underground
repository. Until such a facility is opened, which will take many
decades, spent nuclear fuel will continue to be an expensive, dangerous
burden.

That is why the commission also recommended that we establish an
interim storage facility program to begin consolidating this dangerous
waste, in addition to working on a permanent repository.

Finally, after studying the experience of all nuclear nations, the
commission found that siting these facilities is most likely to succeed
if the host States and communities are welcome and willing partners,
not adversaries. The commission recommended that we adopt a consent
based nuclear facility siting process.

Senators Alexander, Murkowski, Cantwell, and I introduce this
legislation in order to begin implementing those recommendations,
putting us on a dual track toward interim and permanent storage
facilities. The bipartisan bill is the product of thoughtful
collaboration, building on our work last Congress with Senator Wyden
and before that with former Senator Bingaman in the 112th Congress.

In my view, one of the most important provisions in this legislation
is the pilot program to immediately begin consolidating nuclear waste
at safer, more cost-efficient centralized facilities on an interim
basis. The legislation will facilitate interim storage of nuclear waste
in above-ground canisters called dry casks. These facilities would be
located in willing communities, away from population centers, and on
thoroughly assessed sites.

Some members of Congress argue that we should ignore the need for
interim storage sites and instead push forward with a plan to open
Yucca Mountain as a permanent storage site.

Others argue that we should push forward only with repository plans
in new locations.

But the debate over Yucca Mountain, a controversial waste repository
proposed in the Nevada desert, which lacks State approval, is unlikely
to be settled any time soon.

I believe the debate over a permanent repository does not need to be
settled in order to recognize the need for interim storage. Even if
Congress and a future president reverse course and move forward with
Yucca Mountain, interim storage facilities would still be an essential
component of a badly needed national nuclear waste strategy.

By creating interim storage sites, a top recommendation of the Blue
Ribbon Commission, we would begin reducing the federal liability while
providing breathing room to site and build a permanent repository.

Interim storage facilities are of particular importance for the sites
of decommissioned power plants that are maintained solely to store the
spent nuclear fuel. In the last fourteen months alone, four nuclear
power plants have been taken out of service: the Crystal River plant in
Florida, the Kewaunee plant in Wisconsin, the San Onofre plant in
California, and the Vermont Yankee plant in Vermont.

Until there is an interim storage facility for this waste, these
sites will join the likes of Rancho Seco and Humboldt Bay, which
stopped operating in the 1980s but continue to store spent nuclear
fuel. All told, there are more than 6,500 metric tons of nuclear waste
stored at sites that no longer have operating reactors.

Interim storage facilities could also provide alternative storage
locations in emergency situations, if spent nuclear fuel ever needs to
be moved quickly from a reactor site.

Both short- and long-term storage programs are vital.

Because of the long timeline for permanent facilities, interim
storage facilities allow us to achieve significant cost savings for
taxpayers and utility ratepayers and finally start the process of
securing waste from decommissioned plants by finally removing waste
from the sites of decommissioned power plants.

One thing is certain: inaction is the most costly and least safe
option.

Our longstanding stalemate is costly to taxpayers, utility ratepayers
and communities that are involuntarily saddled with waste after local
nuclear power plants have shut down.

It leaves nuclear waste all over the country, stored in all different
ways.

It is long overdue for the government to honor its obligation to
safely dispose of the nation's nuclear waste--and this bipartisan bill
is the way to do that.

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