 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
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 Laura Chappelle
Summary
Mr.
Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee: Good
Morning. My name is Laura Chappelle.
I am the Chairman of the Michigan Public Service Commission.
I am here today on behalf of the National Association of Regulatory
Utility Commissioners, commonly known as NARUC, and the Michigan Public Service
Commission. I greatly appreciate
the opportunity to appear before the Subcommittee on Energy and Air Quality and
I respectfully request that NARUC's written statement be included in today's
hearing record as if fully read. NARUC is a
quasi-governmental, nonprofit organization founded in 1889.
Its membership includes the State public utility commissions for all
States and territories. NARUC's
mission is to serve the public interest by improving the quality and
effectiveness of public utility regulation. NARUC's members regulate the retail
rates and services of electric, gas, water and telephone utilities.
Each State Commission and my Commission have the obligation under State
law to ensure the establishment and maintenance of such energy utility services
as may be required by the public convenience and necessity, and to ensure that
such services are provided at rates and conditions that are just, reasonable and
nondiscriminatory for all consumers. NARUC
has had a direct stakeholder interest in the civilian radioactive waste
management program ever since the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 (NWPA)
established that the federal government is responsible for safe, permanent
disposal of high-level radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel from commercial
nuclear reactors, as well as making certain that the utilities pay their share
of these disposal costs. The
primary reason for NARUC's interest is that the fees paid by nuclear utilities
to the Nuclear Waste Fund (NWF) are passed along to ratepayers through their
electric bills. We would submit
that passing the costs of the NWF on to the ratepayers has been the only aspect
of the NWPA to begin on schedule. We
strongly support the President's decision to approve the site at Yucca
Mountain for the geologic repository. It
is a historic milestone for this troubled program and it is legally and
scientifically sound. I
say "troubled" because, as the Subcommittee members know well, there have
been a series of technical, political, legal and financial hurdles that have had
the cumulative effect of delay to the point where, even under the most
optimistic schedule, nuclear waste will not begin to be emplaced in the
repository until 2010 - twelve years after the mandate set in the NWPA. The
Department of Energy (DOE) has spent over four billion dollars studying the site
at Yucca Mountain for suitability for repository use, in what I have heard
described as the most studied piece of real estate on earth.
On behalf of NARUC and the State of Michigan, we praise the dedication
and professionalism of the inter-disciplinary public and private sector team of
scientists who have worked on this unprecedented venture and upon whose analytic
investigations the President can rely upon with confidence. The
science is right. Analyses by the DOE team show that a repository at Yucca
Mountain can be designed, built, operated, monitored and eventually sealed while
meeting all statutory and regulatory requirements to protect public health and
the environment. Principle among
those requirements is the radiation standards established by the Environmental
Protection Agency. While the
scientific research about Yucca Mountain continues, more than enough is known at
this point to support the site designation today. The
time is right. Yucca Mountain is
the right place. While we can
never have perfect information, it is hard to imagine a better site. We know there are questions that remain to be addressed to
the fullest extent required to support a license approval by the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission, but extensive findings support the President's decision
to advance toward that next step. Secretary
of Energy Abraham put it in the right context in his site recommendation when he
observed that Yucca Mountain has been studied for a longer amount of time than
it took to plan and complete the moon landing.
Let us move on. First
and foremost, let us continue to focus on sound scientific facts surrounding the
site designation, not the fear campaign being conducted in particular, on the
subject of nuclear waste transportation. It
ignores the excellent safety record of transportation of nuclear materials over
the past 30 years. Each of those
shipments, and all future shipments to Yucca Mountain, are and will be carefully
planned and conducted under NRC, as well as other federal and State agency
regulatory oversight. The public is
largely unaware of that record, however, and is often predisposed to believe the
worst about anything nuclear. The
public may not realize, that despite claims of "100,000 shipments through 43
States and many large cities over 40 years," DOE has yet to choose either the
mode (truck or rail) of shipments or any of the routes.
In the Final Environmental Impact Statement for Yucca Mountain, DOE
states a "preference for the mostly rail scenario," which would involve more
like 11,000 shipments over 24 years. If
the "mostly truck" alternative is more feasible, it would involve 53,300
shipments over the same period. We
join others in urging that DOE consult with federal, State, tribal and local
governments - as DOE has said it will - to coordinate these important
decisions so that all will be prepared to ensure that the past safety record is
sustained or exceeded. DOE is
working today with the transuranic shipments to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant
(WIPP) in New Mexico and we believe that States and local governments, with the
assistance to public safety officials provided for in Section 180 of the NWPA,
can be prepared so that waste can be safely moved to Yucca Mountain. In
Michigan, we have been preparing for the eventual shipment of spent nuclear fuel
from the plant sites for a number of years, and we believe that this material
can be safely shipped, beginning tomorrow, if the opportunity arose. The
Secretary of Energy's Site Recommendation to the President is compelling. While NARUC did not join the flurry of press releases that
were unleashed the day the report was out, because we chose to read the
recommendation first, we did issue a release praising the recommendation and the
President's acceptance of it the following Monday.
The Secretary carefully examined the statutory and regulatory
requirements and summarized the analyses, derived from a plethora of supporting
technical documents. As a result of
this exhaustive examination of the data, the Secretary presented the conclusion
that the scientific basis exists to meet the requirements.
Additionally, he developed and added the five "compelling national
interests" that are found in the recommendation.
It is often lost in the discussions of this subject, for example, that a
geologic repository would still be needed for defense-related materials even if
there never were nuclear power plants. Secretary
Abraham is to be commended for the diligence with which he applied his own
evaluation of the site qualifications and need, including addressing the
arguments against recommending the site. We
support the President's decision to accept the recommendation.
He is aware of the likely criticism and expected reactions from those who
either oppose anything to do with nuclear energy or the actions taken by
Congress in 1987 to designate a single site to examine for suitability.
In our opinion, President Bush has the sound science basis to support the
decision he has made. I
would like to return to what I mentioned at the outset of my remarks.
NARUC and its members have a direct interest in the disposal of spent
fuel from commercial power plants for two reasons: 1. Unless the government finds a way
to dispose of spent nuclear fuel, some nuclear plants may need to shut down if
they are unable to meet their license requirements to store used fuel in pool or
dry storage. That will have heavy financial, environmental or energy supply
consequences - probably all three. And it likely rules out any utility being
willing to invest in a new nuclear plant. 2.
Most importantly, we represent ratepayers in 41 States who have, in good
faith, paid over $19 billion into the Nuclear Waste Fund (including interest)
and have little to show for it. The
$19 billion consists of $17 billion that has been paid by the utilities into
Federal Nuclear Waste Fund, and a little more than $2 billion in debt to the
Fund that some utilities have elected to hold until a future date.
Under any circumstances, the utility ratepayers that are represented by
NARUC's members have paid the fees required to pay for this program.
Worse, they have also had to pay utilities that had to bear additional
on-site waste storage expenses when DOE missed the 1998 date to begin removing
the fuel. In my State of Michigan,
ratepayers have paid over $430 million into the Fund and I have to explain to
them that it will be at least another eight years before they see any return on
that investment. In fact, among the States, we often ask, "Why, after DOE
failed to meet its contracted 1998 deadline, are we still paying that fee?" Therefore,
it is a matter of equity to those who are paying for this program that we move
forward to the next step. Let the technical and legal experts of the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission make the decision that really counts, whether to issue a
construction license for the repository. That is the role the NWPA assigns to
the independent Commission which bears the mission to protect the public health,
safety, and the environment for all nuclear activities in this country, in a
rigorous and adjudicative public process. The
equity is pretty simple. When you
make an obligation, you honor it or you face the consequences.
Since the Nuclear Waste Policy Act set the policy that the disposal of
the Nation's high-level radioactive waste must be the Federal Government's
responsibility, the utilities can hardly switch to another removal agent.
Similarly, the electric utility ratepayers or consumers have upheld their
part of the deal. The money has been paid to the utilities to pay the Federal
Government to pay for the program. Given
the sound scientific basis for the Secretary and President's decisions to
recommend the site, it is now time for the U.S. Congress to do the right thing,
honor its commitment and move this program to the next step of the license
application process. A
final issue I would like to address is the so-called "PECO Alternative." In his notice of disapproval for the repository, Nevada
Governor Kenny Guinn asserts that there is a "viable alternative to Yucca
Mountain" by which he refers to the example of a settlement agreement reached
between PECO Energy and the Department of Energy (DOE) over expenses already
incurred by PECO at its Peach Bottom Nuclear Plant.
Those expenses have already been incurred and were due solely to DOE's
failure to meet the NWPA mandate to begin accepting commercial spent nuclear
fuel in 1998 and as contractually bound with PECO. Governor Guinn has misinterpreted the stopgap measure to
recover costs of waste acceptance delay as a substitute for geologic disposal.
In short the "PECO Alternative" is not an alternative at all. The
Nuclear Waste Policy Act sets national policy for geologic disposal as the
permanent solution for all high-level radioactive waste disposal.
It does not allow for temporary on-site storage costs to be paid from the
Nuclear Waste Fund, which is why several utilities are suing DOE over the Peach
Bottom settlement. The settlement
agreement basically allows the utility to forgo required payments to the Nuclear
Waste Fund up until the amount agreed in the settlement.
This has the effect of diverting NWF payments that are intended for
permanent disposal to cover on-site storage costs that are due solely to the
government's ongoing failure to begin waste acceptance.
If all utilities were to enter into similar settlements, there would be
no revenue flowing to the NWF and the repository could never be built.
Moreover, for those plants already shut down there are no payments to
credit against the storage costs. Leaving
spent fuel at current commercial and government storage sites indefinitely is
not the solution to the waste disposal problem that the NWPA contemplated, over
twenty years ago, by geologic disposal at a suitable site. The PECO settlement does not provide for geologic disposal
nor has the Peach Bottom site or any of the other 71 reactor locations been
studied for suitability for indefinite storage.
The Yucca Mountain Environmental Impact Statement did a comparison of
leaving nuclear waste at 77 commercial and government sites for the same 10,000
year period of isolation from the human environment as the geologic repository
and found that two variations of the "No Action" approach were either going
to cost $5 trillion dollars or have intolerable human and environmental
consequences, depending on what assumptions were made about regulatory
compliance for the sites once the reactors reach the end of their productive
operating lives. There is no need
for Congress to "explore" the PECO approach: the Environmental Impact
Statement has already done that and the financial or environmental consequences
are simply unacceptable. In
conclusion, NARUC has been frustrated in the past with all the delays, but we
are encouraged that the President has recommended that the program move forward
and we urge the Congress to enable that. Thank you for this opportunity to present our views. We would like to come back at a future point to lend our support to the goal that the Subcommittee tried to achieve through H.R. 4 last year, to reform the Nuclear Waste Fund so it is fully available for its intended purpose. Without such reform the repository may never be built, even if approved.
|
|||||||||||
|
