[Page: S2824]

Mr. MURKOWSKI. I thank the Chair. Mr. President, I yield to my colleague at this time.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time?

Mr. BRYAN. Mr. President, I yield myself 20 minutes.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Nevada is recognized.

Mr. BRYAN. Mr. President, I want to return to what I think is the fundamental flaw in this legislation, and that is that it is unneeded, unwise, and unsafe. When you ask who wants this legislation, the only one that is really pushing it, the driving force, is the nuclear utilities. That is where this all comes from. Every environmental organization in the country has expressed its opposition. The scientific community--the Congress established the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board. I will repeat for the benefit of my colleagues, in 1989 a commission was part of the review process. They said there was no safety advantage to interim storage. In 1996, we have a report from the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board that said there is no urgent technical need for centralized storage of commercial spent fuel. There is no safety factor to consider. And the same technical review board, constituted with new members in 1997, has offered testimony to the effect that it would be a very unwise decision because it would interfere with the permanent siting process.

That was testimony that was given on February 5. So, if we are asking about science and the scientific community, they have expressed themselves. They said this is not a good idea. If you are asking about the environmental community, where they are coming from, they are saying it is not a good idea.

Yesterday, I spent a few moments talking about the specifics of the bill. Let me just very briefly retrace some of those issues for us. In effect, what this legislation does is to gut a process that was a bipartisan piece of legislation, the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969. If you look at page 47, and you

go through a number of the specific provisions there--and we will debate this, I suspect, at greater length during the course of the week--but the act virtually emasculates the provisions of the National Environmental Policy Act. It says, yes, there will be an environmental impact statement, but the statement may not consider the need for interim storage, the time of initial availability, any alternatives to spent fuel storage, any alternatives to the site of the facility, any alternatives to the design, the environmental impact of the storage beyond the initial term of the license, which is 20 years. This makes an absolute mockery of any kind of profession that this follows NEPA, the National Environmental Policy Act, of 1969.

There are other provisions as well that refer to the preemption of all Federal environmental laws. That is section 501. We have talked about that extensively during the course of the debate. There are standards which are compromised in this provision. For example, there is a statutory provision that occurs on page 56 that indicates, rather than the Environmental Protection Agency having the ability, independent and unfettered, to make a judgment as to what the correct standard would be in terms of radioactive emission exposure, it sets a 100 millirem standard by statute and requires the EPA to affirmatively prove that the overall system performance standard would constitute an unreasonable risk to health and safety.

We did not do that anyplace else in terms of the WIPP facility which was debated last year. The two able Senators from New Mexico made forceful statements that they believed, because the WIPP facility was going to be operational in their State, they had the expectation that EPA would establish the highest possible standards to protect the health and safety of New Mexicans. Who among us could disagree with that? But that is not the standard for us here in Nevada. The EPA is constrained and limited, in terms of what it can do, and here is an example of 100 millirems of radiation, S. 104. There is safe drinking water, other low-level-waste facilities--the WIPP facility, which I just mentioned, has a standard of 15 millirems during the course of a year. So this thing is absolutely so phony in terms of any kind of protection for health and safety, it ought to be something of concern to any legislator, irrespective of where the final destination may be.