Copyright 1999 Federal News Service, Inc.
Federal News Service
FEBRUARY 10, 1999, WEDNESDAY
SECTION: IN THE NEWS
LENGTH:
2975 words
HEADLINE: PREPARED STATEMENT OF
JOAN
CLAYBROOK
PRESIDENT, PUBLIC CITIZEN
ON BEHALF OF NUCLEAR INFORMATION AND
RESOURCE SERVICE
AND SIERRA CLUB
BEFORE THE HOUSE
COMMERCE COMMITTEE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND POWER
SUBJECT - H.R. 445
AND
CIVILIAN HIGH-LEVEL RADIOACTIVE WASTE DANGERS
BODY:
Thank you for the opportunity to present
Public Citizen's view on civilian high-level radioactive waste. Public Citizen
is a non-profit, non-partisan, consumer research and advocacy organization with
150,000 members nationwide. We accept no funding from corporations, governments,
or trade associations.
Because of the long-term potent threat to public
health, safety and the environment, over the past 25 years Public Citizen has
been actively engaged in the public policy debate about the responsible
disposition of nuclear waste.
The highly irradiated nuclear fuel from
commercial reactors is one of the most toxic substances known to man. No nation
has found the long- term answer to the problem of isolating this extremely
dangerous waste from humans and the environment for the 1000 millennia during
which it remains highly toxic and hazardous. The decisions made today about the
disposition of waste will have ramifications for the next 30,000 generations to
come. In the past, policy makers have not heeded the warnings of the public
interest community about nuclear waste policy. As a result, fateful decisions
concerning nuclear waste policy were made. Listen to our warnings over the
years:
In the 1970s, when new nuclear plants were still being planned, we
cautioned policy makers about the inadvisability of relying on an energy source
with an intractable waste problem. In the late 1970s, when citizens who lived
near nuclear power plants became extremely apprehensive about nuclear waste
disposal, national organizations and citizen's groups educated policy makers,
the media, and the public about the enormous dangers, ramifications and costs.
Prior to the passage of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, policy makers were
warned by Public Citizen and other environmental organizations that the
scientific knowledge necessary for locating and evaluating permanent site
locations based on a geological evaluation did not yet exist. Then when the 1982
law was amended in 1987 to make Yucca Mountain the only
candidate site for a permanent repository, we told policy makers repeatedly that
the decision was wrong because it was based on politics, not science.
In
retrospect, had policy makers listened to the warnings concerning nuclear waste
and the laws pertaining to it, we would not have had the string of public policy
failures related to nuclear waste. At a minimum, the DOE would not be spending
taxpayer money to defend the government's inability to meet impossible
deadlines. Instead of wasting tax dollars, millions of dollars in public funds
could have been devoted to scientific research to search for an acceptable
disposition of nuclear waste.
Today, I must report that the "solution" has
still not been discovered and that the nuclear industry, richer and more
powerful than ever, is still lobbying for a legislated mandate to take the
highly toxic waste it created off its hands. Hastily passed legislation
mandating a massive transportation scheme to an inappropriate site would be yet
another wrong decision to be regretted in the future. The evidence is
compelling. The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1999, H.R. 45, mandates a premature
and false solution to the nuclear waste problem that would have many
consequences for future generations. Let us examine the evidence.
First, we
should be clear, no emergency exists that requires the immediate removal of
nuclear waste from its current storage facilities at commercial reactors. For
almost two decades, the nuclear industry has lobbied policy makers in an attempt
to solve its public relations problems in communities where reactors are located
and to reduce its liability risks.
In reality, centralizing interim storage,
as mandated by H.R. 45, would increase the risks to public health and safety.
Although high- level waste should not stay at the point of generation forever,
in the short-term it creates less risk than moving it. While we should never
belittle the risks of on-site storage: the risks posed by operating nuclear
reactors dwarfs the risks posed by the nuclear waste stored next to the
reactor.Even though the nuclear industry claims that declining space in reactor
fuel pools is a major crisis, utilities are able to expand their on-site storage
capacity with dry casks, and many have already done so. Although we believe that
dry-cask storage on site is the least unsafe method of storing nuclear waste,
this does not mean that we endorse either the particular ways in which this
technology is being implemented or the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's (NRC) lax
oversight of casks. While we do not believe that high-level waste should stay at
the point of generation forever, we have not seen any evidence that we should
rush to move the waste to an inadequate and unsafe interim storage facility.
Storing the waste on-site for the interim will allow the scientific community to
continue researching for better options.
Second, the risk posed by moving
100,000 shipments of highly irradiated nuclear waste on the roads and rails of
43 states and 320 congressional districts, over the next 30 years, is immense.
The mandate in H.R. 45 for hauling waste to an interim storage facility
represents a massive 4350% increase in nuclear waste shipments, exposing 50
million American citizens who live within a half-mile of the transport route to
untold and grotesque risks.
Crashes will happen. In reviewing the Department
of Transportation (DOT) data on hazardous material crashes, we found that 99,490
crashes caused the release of hazardous material into the environment over a
10-year period, from 1986 to 1996. The result of these crashes was not only $317
million in damages, but 114 deaths, 356 major injuries, and 4305 minor injuries.
Based upon DOE assumptions about the nuclear waste shipments, we can project
210 to 354 crashes will occur in the next 30 years if H.R. 45 becomes law.
Furthermore, testing procedures for nuclear waste transport casks are inadequate
and will likely lead to horrible injuries and contamination from nuclear waste
crashes. A conservative DOE crash scenario of a crash in a rural area suggests
massive cleanup efforts would be necessary, costing $620 million,requiring 460
days to detoxify the estimated 42 square miles. Urban crashes would be even more
severe in terms of horrible injuries and an increased likelihood of radiation
exposure to innocent victims.
Last week, we had a preview of the types of
crashes we can expect to see if H.R. 45 becomes law. In Chicago, a truck
improperly shipping empty nuclear material canisters struck an overpass,
knocking canisters off the truck and on to other cars. Fortunately the canisters
were empty. Even so, the highway, a major Chicago thoroughfare was shut down for
several hours. The potential damage from crashes involving highly radioactive
nuclear waste could be devastating. The public recognizes the potential
problems. A recent poll found that 82% of those surveyed do not want to live
near a nuclear waste transport route. As a result, members of Congress who vote
for legislation mandating this transportation will have to explain their vote on
H.R. 45 to constituents who overwhelmingly and adamantly oppose its provisions.
It should be remembered that passage of H.R. 45 will result in waste
transportation through 320 congressional districts.
Third, the Viability
Assessment (VA), the DOE's report on the Yucca Mountain site,
provides conclusive evidence that the Yucca Mountain dump
should never be built, based on DOE's own guidelines. A key piece of evidence is
the data showing that water travel time from the repository to the accessible
environment is only about 500 years. This is indeed shocking. It indicates that
serious health hazards will be present at and around the Yucca
Mountain site over the long term because nuclear waste remains highly
toxic.
A report in the January 7, 1999 issue of Nature provides further
evidence that migration of radioactive material through groundwater occurs at a
much faster rate than previously understood. Plutonium from an underground
nuclear weapons test, conducted 30 years ago at the Nevada Test Site, has been
detected in a test well located nearly a mile from the blast site. Further
evidence can be gleaned from a report issued in December 1998 by the Institute
for Energy and Environmental Research. Recent geological sampling indicates that
warm groundwater has flooded the region where the proposed repository is to be
located.
The Viability Assessment and the other scientific documentation
provides dramatic proof of the lack of certainty surrounding predictions of how
long radionuclides can be isolated. This compelling information should make the
Yucca Mountain site ineligible for a waste dump according to
DOE's disqualifying conditions in their own guidelines.
Related to this,
H.R. 45 does not protect the public from dangerous levels of radiation in
groundwater. Not only does H.R. 45 preempt the Safe Drinking Water act, it fails
to provide any protection for groundwater, the key pathway of exposure to
radiation.
Fourth, the Viability Assessment contains estimates of radiation
exposure indicating that a large increase in cancer rates may occur in the area
around Yucca Mountain. The exposure models demonstrate that the
amount of radiation that the population living near the site will be exposed to
will peak at 300 millirems over a period of 300,000 years. This almost doubles
current background radiation at Yucca Mountain. It will result
in a dose 20 times larger than the amount allowed by standards applied to other
waste dumps. DOE falsely asserts that since the national average for background
radiation is 360 millirem per year, that a 300 millirem increase per year is not
an issue. However, science dictates that additional exposure to radiation causes
additional cancer. Therefore, any increase, no matter how small, in background
levels of radiation is intolerable, and doubling the local exposure is
absolutely immoral.
Unfortunately, DOE and the nuclear industry will not
admit that the Yucca Mountain site is inappropriate. And, the
nuclear industry continues to try to convince lawmakers to reduce the protective
standards for radiation exposure. By legislating a weaker level of protection
than recommended by the National Academy of Sciences, the bill establishes a
standard that fails to protect children, pregnant women and other vulnerable
populations.
Fifth, the bill does further damage by preempting federal,
state and local laws that are more protective than H.R. 45. The overly broad
language ensures that local and state governments cannot require extra
protections for their citizens. These laws are preempted automatically if they
pose any obstacle to implementing the law. It is truly amazing that in Congress
whose leaders claim to revere the 10th Amendment and states rights, legislation
such as this dealing literally with life and death, contains some of the most
extreme preemption of state law ever proposed. Instead of setting a national
floor for safety that states can enhance, it prohibits states from being able to
protect its citizens.
The bill also severely curtails the National
Environmental Protection Act (NEPA), one of the most important environmental
laws ever enacted. This means that a legitimate review of environmental issues
at the Yucca Mountain site can not take place today or ever. It
excludes from any consideration of several key factors, including the need for
the facility and alternatives to the site. Thus without any crisis or
justification, this extremely hazardous facility would be exempted from the
basic provisions for environmental review that are required for federal actions
that have significant impacts on the environment.
Not only are all federal
laws preempted if they are inconsistent with H.R. 45, it would also prohibit EPA
from setting a radiation protection standard. As mentioned above, a ground water
standard is absolutely essential to protecting public health and safety. We
challenge the idea that Congress has more scientific experience in setting
radiation standards than EPA.
Sixth, H.R. 45 completely ignores new
scientific evidence about earthquakes. In January of 1999, hundreds of
earthquakes struck the Nevada Test Site near the proposed interim storage
facility, the largest of which registered a magnitude of 4.7 on the Richter
scale. From 1976 to 1996, 621 earthquakes with a magnitude of 2.5 or greater
occurred within 50 miles of Yucca Mountain. In 1992, a 5.6
magnitude earthquake struck on a previously unmapped fault, 8 miles from
Yucca Mountain, causing hundreds of thousands of dollars in
damages to a local DOE building. The threat is highlighted in a report in the
March 27, 1998 issue of Science. Scientists from Harvard and the California
Institute of Technology, using a network of satellites, recalculated the
geological expansion rate at Yucca Mountain. They found the
rate of expansion to be 10 times greater than DOE assumptions, thus raising
significant questions about the frequency of large earthquakes and volcanic
activity at Yucca Mountain. So much for safe disposition of
high-level nuclear waste than delivers a lethal dose of radiation in 3 minutes.
Seventh, the bill forces taxpayers, as well as the industry, to pay for the
ever-increasing cost of disposition. An independent cost assessment from
February 1998, reviewed by KPMG Peat Marwick, warns of the ever-widening
shortfall in funding for the site. The $25 billion shortfall is a result of the
escalating costs for the permanent repository and the additional costs of
building the proposed interim storage facility. A more recent report by Synapse
Energy, Stranded Nuclear Waste, projects that the shortfall could rise to $45
billion if nuclear power plant retirement continues as a result of regulation.
The situation surrounding these plants strongly suggest that the fees
ultimately placed on ratepayers will have to be increased to prevent taxpayers
from further subsidizing nuclear waste disposition. The funding mechanism in
H.R. 45 will cause an even greater shortfall than the mechanism in the nuclear
waste legislation from the 105th Congress, H.R. 1270. It further reduces the
amount of money the industry must pay for the nuclear waste program, while
increasing the cost of it. This is unacceptable.Eighth, H.R. 45 is likely to
cost taxpayers more money from litigation because it continues the trend in
nuclear waste policy of setting irrational deadlines. The on-going litigation
against DOE by the nuclear utilities is the result of the foolish deadlines
established in the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982. Several federal agencies
testified that the 1998 deadline was unreasonably short. The industry lobbied
for the deadlines and they are using DOE's failure to meet them as a reason to
sue.
The utility estimates for potential damages are outrageous and the
courts have yet to assign any damage amounts. In response to the litigation, DOE
is making a good faith effort to settle the issues raised by the utilities by
providing a cash settlement. While we do not endorse this payment, we question
the motivations of the utilities in rejecting it. It seems that they wish to
keep the lawsuit going because it serves their political agenda.
The
industry's claim that the on-going litigation is proof that H.R. 45 is necessary
is completely false. If passed into law, the legislation will create the same
problem that previous nuclear waste legislation has created--more impractical
deadlines and lawsuits. This has been a costly mistake in the past and it should
not be a mistake that is repeated. If passed, H.R. 45 may result in more
lawsuits against the government that must be paid for by taxpayer.
In
conclusion, H.R. 45 is bad public policy. Rushing to move waste to an interim
storage facility in Nevada violates the public's trust that their health, safety
and pocketbooks will be protected by their Representatives and the Department of
Energy. Rather than solving the nuclear waste problem, H.R. 45 will worsen it.
The scientific evidence is mounting that Yucca Mountain cannot
be the site for the permanent storage of high-level waste. As a result of the
evidence, 219 environmental organizations petitioned the DOE to disqualify
Yucca Mountain. The petition established both legal and
scientific grounds for the disqualification. The environmental community is
united in opposing H.R. 45, not only because of the inherent dangers I have
described today, but because the concept of "interim" storage is really a
charade.
We see only two options if the legislation passes and waste is
shipped to an interim storage facility at the Yucca Mountain
site. The first scenario is that under severe industry pressure the so-called
interim storage facility would in fact become permanent, without any of the
necessary safeguards. The other possibility is that the waste would have to be
moved once again, needlessly increasing the risks of crashes involving
radioactive waste.
We urge members of this Committee to carefully consider
the full and real implications of H.R. 45. The nuclear industry is extremely
powerful and it has used its political and financial muscle to force bad public
policy decisions in the past. In the 1998 election cycle, Members of the House
of Representatives have accepted $8.7 million in PAC contributions from the
lobbying arm of the nuclear industry, the Nuclear Energy Institute and its
members. In addition, members of NEI contributed over $3.7 million in soft money
contributions to the national political parties in the 1998 election cycle. We
hope that the Members of this Subcommittee on Energy and Power can look past the
money and reject H.R 45 as ill-conceived and dangerous legislation.
END
LOAD-DATE: February 11, 1999
