Congresswoman Shelley Berkley - Legislation: Press Releases 2000

Madam Speaker, I thank the distinguished gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Dingell) for yielding me the time.

Madam Speaker, at the close of debate I will offer a motion to commit S. 1287 to committee. I oppose S. 1287 because it would irresponsibly ship nuclear wastes to Yucca Mountain, a location that scientific evidence has established cannot safely contain the massive heat and radioactivity generated by 100,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste.

After more than 15 years of study, it is clear that Yucca Mountain is not what Congress had in mind when it set high standards for finding a nuclear waste disposal site. A nuclear waste site must be free of groundwater contamination for many, many centuries to come; but Yucca Mountain is now known to be at high risk for water contamination that will speed the release of radioactivity into the water supplies over a vast area of the Nevada desert.

A nuclear waste site must be free of earthquakes, but Yucca Mountain is in one of the more active earthquake zones in the country. It has been shaken repeatedly, even over the past year, by severe earthquake jolts. And a nuclear waste site must be free of volcanic activity, but scientific findings show that Yucca Mountain is subject to potential eruptions deep within the earth that could cause a catastrophe of unimaginable proportions.

I offer this damaging assessment of Yucca Mountain as a backdrop to the many flaws identified with S. 1287. Bills like S. 1287 only exist because they offer a political, not a scientific, approach to the Nation nuclear waste problem.

S. 1287 is the latest ploy in a long line of actions that have been taken to undermine the tough standards for a nuclear repository that Congress established 18 years ago. S. 1287 constrains the Environmental Protection Agency from implementing their final rule for radiation standards, at the same time this bill opens up the door to making radiation standards a political exercise in the hope that a new administration would shift its policies away from strong radiation standards towards more lax limits on radiation exposure.

S. 1287 also takes a dangerous and arbitrary position by mandating that high-level nuclear waste would be shipped to Nevada beginning in the year 2006, years before testing and construction at Yucca Mountain could possibly be completed.

There is absolutely no logic to sending high-level nuclear wastes to Nevada, the most dangerous substance known to mankind, to a place that it is not safe to begin with and certainly would not be ready to safely accept this toxic garbage.

It is an outrage that the Republican leadership is even considering this legislation. Common sense should dictate that in the light of a promised presidential veto and the ability for the Senate to sustain that veto, that we waste not one more moment of our precious time with this issue.

Let us focus our time and energy on fighting for prescription medication for our seniors, a Patients' Bill of Rights, finding ways to protect Social Security and Medicare, and other important issues confronting this great Nation.