Copyright 1999 Federal News Service, Inc.
Federal News Service
FEBRUARY 10, 1999, WEDNESDAY
SECTION: IN THE NEWS
LENGTH:
1210 words
HEADLINE: PREPARED TESTIMONY BY
THE HON.
JAMES A. GIBBONS
THE SECOND DISTRICT OF NEVADA
BEFORE THE
HOUSE COMMERCE COMMITTEE
ENERGY AND POWER SUBCOMMITTEE
BODY:
Mr. Chairman:
(Ask for unanimous
consent to include Senator Reid's statement in the record.)
The issue is
safety! H.G. Wells once said that human history becomes more and more a race
between education and catastrophe. Nothing in the history of mankind has
withstood the test of 10,000 years.
What was state of the art technology and
engineered as safe even as late as 1970, has proven not to be a safe solution
today. Let's not-- allow short term safety issues to become serious, long term
problems hundreds of years from now.
Let me begin by saying, on behalf of
myself and the constituents of Nevada, that I appreciate the opportunity to
testify before your subcommittee this morning. Few, if any problems have become
more challenging in recent years than the disposal of nuclear waste.
I
believe that certain standards based on sound along with the protection and
welfare of this nation's citizens, should be the fundamental threshold when we
address nuclear waste storage.
H.R. 45, the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of
1999, will mandate upon the state of Nevada and this nation, the transportation
of high level waste while failing to address the issues of safety and general
well- being of its citizens.
H.R. 45 will open the door to nuclear waste
transportation on a scale unprecedented in history.
The deadliest materials
ever created would hit the nation's roads and rails, bringing with them the
risks of transportation accidents of the most lethal proportions.
Cask
safety standards fail to address the full range of trauma to which a cask may be
exposed in an accident, and regulations do not even require testing of
full-scale models to ensure compliance.
The bill only mandates that shipping
begin no later than June 30, 2003 and that packages have been certified for such
purposes by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Nevada has long been targeted
as the nation's nuclear testing and dumping ground, although it has no nuclear
reactors of its own, and more than three quarters of the nation's reactors are
east of the Mississippi River.
However, I don't believe that this is just a
Nevada issue. Many states will be directly affected by the rail and tracking
transportation routes.
A high speed accident, near any one of your
districts'communities, could unseat a valve or damage a seal, releasing
radioactive particulates into the environment. Each rail cask holds up to 24
fuel assemblies.
In terms of radioactivity, each fuel assembly contains 10
times the long-lived radioactivity released by the Hiroshima bomb.
H.R. 45
also creates several environmental concerns. First, it shortcuts the ongoing
studies that are currently taking place at Yucca Mountain.
Specifically, by revoking regulations that establish sound scientific
guidelines for determining site suitability, such as groundwater movement,
climatic stability and geological stability.
Not to mention, H.R. 45
preempts the National Environmental Policy Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act and
any federal, state, or local law that is currently inconsistent with the bill.
Beyond the circumvention of this nations environmental laws, Yucca
Mountain must be disqualified for at least three other very important
reasons.
One being that rainwater, less than 50 years old, has been detected
in the underground site.
The Nuclear Waste Policy Act states that the
groundwater travel time to the repository must take more than 1000 years, or the
site will be disqualified. Now I'm not a mathematician but I think you can see
my point.
The second reason for disqualification is the geologic barriers of
Yucca Mountain will not limit radionuclide releases, thereby
polluting groundwater supplies in the region.
This again meets the
conditions for disqualification and is a true show stopper.Lastly, since the
beginning of this year, a little over one month ago, there have been 13
earthquakes, and seven of those earthquakes with a magnitude of 3 or higher,
near Yucca Mountain.
This shouldn't be a surprise though,
because Yucca Mountain, get it -- MOUNTAIN -- is not
geologically sound. It's a MOUNTAIN and it's MOVING!
Realize that you don't
store nuclear waste in a area that ranks third in the country for seismic
activity; an area that has had over 621 earthquakes in the last 20 years; and an
area that has had 13 earthquakes in less than 30 days!
It is important -- in
fact it is very important -- to point out that the scientific merit of these
facts are extremely credible.
Now it becomes my Congressional responsibility
to ensure that Congress and the Department of Energy does not ignore these facts
or attempt to alter their regulations.
This scientific approach dictates
that DOE disqualify the site, and not the regulations.
I would ask this
Committee and Congress to look past the emotional idea that, "We have to do
something with nuclear waste," because as the bill states, spent fuel can be
safely stored at reactor sites.
We must be united in this common sense
fight, We must demand sound, credible science!
The art of political
persuasion has no place in this fight. Members of Congress and the DOE must look
at the hard, scientific evidence that proves the site is unsuitable. H.R. 45
will also establish a single performance standard regarding the amount of annual
radiation exposure the surrounding population can be exposed to.
It will
also allow the general population in the vicinity of the Yucca
Mountain site to be exposed to an annual dose of up to 100 millirems
annually, a level four times the amount of exposure allowed at current storage
facilities.
The International Commission on Radiological Protection and the
Nuclear Regulatory Commission, stated that this exposure level is associated
with a lifetime risk of one excess cancer death for every 286 exposed
individuals.
As the Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Carol
Browner wrote, an annual dose of 100 millirems would allow radiation "exposures
of future generations of Nevadans which are much higher than those allowed for
other Americans and citizens of other countries." This is a death sentence that
Nevada cannot live with.
Lastly, as you may know, The Nuclear Waste
Technical Review Board, an organization created by Congress to provide technical
and scientific evaluation of nuclear waste storage concluded, in the March 1996
report, that spent fuel to a central facility, and this holds true today.
If
this nonpartisan Review Board, whose purpose was to look at irrefutable unbiased
science, made this determination, then I believe there is no justifiable reason
to move nuclear waste from onsite storage.
It becomes evident that several
environmental and safety concerns must be addressed before we, as federal
legislators, and many times the guardians of citizen safety and well-being, move
forward and mandate an unsafe permanent or interim nuclear waste storage
facility-2 Yucca Mountain.
Again, Mr. Chairman I would like
to thank you for the opportunity to testify before the Energy and Power
Subcommittee, and would request that you include some additional written
information to be added in the record as part of my testimony.
If I can be
of any assistance to you or any other member of the Subcommittee, please let me
know.
END
LOAD-DATE: February 17, 1999
