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A Review of the President's Recommendation to Develop a Nuclear Waste Repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada
Subcommittee on Energy and Air Quality
The Honorable Shelley Berkley
I
would like to thank chairman Barton and Ranking Member Boucher for offering me
the opportunity to testify today. Let
me begin by expressing the outrage felt throughout Nevada about this ill-advised
project. Over 83 % of the people I
represent vehemently oppose Yucca Mountain.
We don't want the dump, and our country does not need this dump.
Yucca mountain is not the solution to what is the problem of disposal of
the bi-product of nuclear energy....nuclear waste. There
is a myth that the approval of Yucca Mountain as a high-level nuclear waste
repository will solve the problems of on-site storage.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
Yucca mountain's former acting director lake Barrett recently testified
that nuclear waste will always be stored at, or near, reactor sites.
The u.s. currently produces 2,000 tons of nuclear waste a year.
By the time a repository opened (somewhere between 2010 and 2016) there
will be 62,000 tons of nuclear waste stored at on-site reactors around the
country. The maximum amount of
transport per year will be 3,000 tons. At
sites where waste is produced, there will be as much waste there 50 years from
now as there is today. The
claims that Yucca Mountain reduces the threat of terrorism by eliminating waste
at 131 sites in favor of one site is completely untrue.
Yucca mountain will not reduce the threat of terrorism at operating
reactors. It adds one more site to
protect. The
real dirty secret that the DOE has tried desperately to ignore is the immense
vulnerability of nuclear waste transports.
Of the 33 members of this committee, the DOE plan calls for transport of
nuclear waste through 30 of your districts.
According to the DOE, Ohio will have more then 12,000 shipments, with 13
of the 19 congressional districts affected.
According to experts who have analyzed the doe's transportation data,
more than 123 million people live in the 703 counties traversed by doe's
proposed highway routes, and 106 million live in counties along doe's rail
routes. DOE predicts that between 10 and 16 million people will live within just
one-half mile of a transportation route in 2035.
Given the frequency of these shipments, even routine radiation from the
casks, given off while passing on the highway, or stuck at a red light, would be
a health concern for people living and working in the vicinity of the
transportation routes -- roughly 16 millions Americans who own homes, and go to
school, and go to houses of worship in the communities immediately alongside the
routes. Of
even greater concern is the threat of an accident -- or even worse, a terrorist
attack. If Yucca Mountain is
approved there could be more then 108,000 cross-country truck shipments of spent
nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste over 38 years.
There will be between 957 and 2,855 shipments per year over 38 years,
depending on whether and how much rail access is developed. For comparison, over
the past 40 years, there have been less than 100 shipments per year in the
united states. A
terrorist attack or accident would release radioactive materials from the cask
that would prove disastrous to the environment and human health, and cost
billions of dollars to try to clean up. The
DOE acknowledges in the environmental impact statement that we can expect
anywhere from 50 to over 300 accidents. Additionally,
two separate tests, one done at Sandier National Laboratory and the other at Aberdeen
Proving Grounds, demonstrate that readily available munitions can breach a
nuclear waste canister. Currently,
casks are only licensed through a combination of scale-model testing and
computer simulations. Do we really
think it is good policy to ship 108,500 shipments in casks that have never
actually been tested? According
to independent studies, the risks of transportation could result in massive
economic costs for communities along transportation routes. Even without an
accident or incident, property values near routes could decline by 3% or more.
And in the event of an accident or terrorist attack, residential property values
along shipping routes could decline between 8% and 34 %, depending upon the
severity of the accident. The
DOE does not publicize the transportation routes or the transportation problems
related with the project because they know that if members know how much waste
is going to be transported through their districts, we would be more likely to
oppose the project. More
significant, when our constituents find out that they live along the
transportation routes, they will demand that we oppose this project.
Make no mistake about it, this is our last chance to vote on the Yucca Mountain
issue. If we learn a few years from
now that our district is a transportation hub, our hands are tied.
We will not be able to unring this bell. an
honest evaluation of the Yucca Mountain project suggests that the rewards simply
don't match the risks. Yucca does
nothing to alleviate the on-site storage problems across the country, and
created a tremendous amount of concern for national security. The
projected cost of this boondoggle is any where from $56 billion to $309 billion.
The nuclear waste fund has $11 billion.
How are we going to pay for this? Raise
taxes? Dip into the social security trust fund?
And once Yucca Mountain is full, what then do we do?
After spending hundreds of billions of dollars we will still be exactly
where we are today. A
recent GAO report concluded that there are 293 unfinished scientific and
technical studies that cannot be concluded until 2006.
The nuclear waste technical review board, a congressionally mandated
scientific oversight board said, "when the doe's technical and scientific
work is taken as a whole, the board's view is that the technical basis for the
doe's repository performance estimates is weak to moderate."
and that because of "gaps in data and basic understanding...the
board has limited confidence in current performance estimates generated by the
doe's performance assessment model" As
early as 1987, representative Morris Udall, one of the main architects of the
original 1982 nuclear waste policy act said, "the public and many of us in
congress have lost all faith in the integrity of the process."
that was the case in 1987, and it remains the case today. Yucca mountain is a political solution to a problem that
requires real science. We should
empower our nation's scientific community to find real solutions to this serious
problem, and give them the resources and political freedom they need to discover
the safest, most effective way of solving our nuclear dilemma.
Nevadans
were promised that sound science and not politics would drive this process. Sound science? While
293 scientific studies have not been concluded?
Sound science? When we still
can't guarantee the safe transport of nuclear waste? Sound science? When
the canisters needed to transport the nuclear waste have yet to be invented? I
ask you to join the state of Nevada and vote to protect your own constituents by
opposing Yucca Mountain.
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