Any way you look at it, H.R. 1270 is a bad idea... H.R. 1270, the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1997, would radically alter the nation's high-level waste policy by requiring the construction of an "interim" storage facility for commercial irradiated fuel at the Nevada Test Site, which is adjacent to Yucca Mountain, the only candidate site for a permanent repository. Current law prohibits such storage until a repository license has been issued, and forbids placing such storage in the state of Nevada. H.R. 1270's approach is both fiscally and environmentally unsound and offends the values of diverse constituencies. If you believe that high-level nuclear waste should be buried in an underground repository like the one proposed at Yucca Mountain... Current law forbids the opening of an interim storage facility until a license has been issued for a permanent repository. This prohibition guards against the possibility of an interim storage site's becoming a de facto repository. H.R. 1270, however, would rush to place interim storage at the Nevada Test Site before studies are complete at Yucca Mountain. Given prevailing fiscal constraints, Congress is unlikely to fully fund both interim storage and ongoing research at Yucca Mountain. The FY '97 appropriation of $380 million for interim storage and repository activities is down from $522 million in FY '95. The Congressional Budget Office projected that H.R. 1020, introduced in 1995, would have required spending $990 million in FY '98. S. 104, a similar bill passed by the Senate this year, would require spending $1 billion in FY' 99. Given the current fiscal climate, the notion that both projects can receive full funding appears fanciful. H.R. 1270 directs the interim storage facility to be open in 2000, leaving Yucca Mountain scientific research likely to be shortchanged. If you believe in honest studies at Yucca Mountain... Current law also prohibits the location of an interim storage facility in the state of Nevada. This provision is important to maintaining the integrity of the Department of Energy's study of Yucca Mountain's suitability as a repository. The honesty of the DOE's efforts has been called into question in the past. The provision barring co-location of the interim facility and the permanent site ensures that research will not be influenced by the fact that high-level waste is already stored nearby. If you believe in environmental standards... H.R. 1270 severely weakens environmental standards for nuclear waste disposal by carving loopholes in the National Environmental Policy Act, eliminating licensing standards for a permanent repository, and forbidding the Environmental Protection Agency from issuing radiation release standards. To receive a license under the bill, a repository need only meet a radiation exposure standard that poses a lifetime risk of one cancer death for every 286 exposed individuals. In addition, the Safe Drinking Water Act is preempted by precluding the EPA from setting a groundwater standard. The bill would also open the door to the greatest nuclear waste transportation project in human history, sending 95 percent of the nation's waste radioactivity onto the roads and rails. Cask safety standards fail to incorporate the full range of trauma to which a container may be exposed in an accident. For example, standards for temperature tolerance are lower than the temperatures that a cask might experience in fire resulting from an accident. Regulations do not even require compliance testing of full-scale models. Even accident-free transportation causes radiation exposures, as casks are unable to fully contain gamma radiation. Forty-three states are likely to face the risks of transportation to Nevada. Preparing emergency responders to cope with potential accidents will require time and money, yet H.R. 1270 directs transportation to commence in early 2000, and no funds have yet been appropriated to prepare affected states and localities. If you believe in balancing the budget... The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) calculated that H.R. 1020's "estimated net impact on discretionary spending would be an increase of $1.3 billion" over the 1996-2000 period. The CBO has since estimated that the similar bill S. 104 would cost $4 billion over the 1997-2002 period, including $2.3 billion for centralized interim storage. In comparison, continued at-reactor storage in dry casks will cost only $224 to $330 million through 2010 (Public Citizen calculation) or $366 million through 2007 (DOE estimate) Clearly, H.R. 1270 is a budget buster that we cannot afford. If you oppose corporate welfare... Although the current Nuclear Waste Policy Act anticipated that a repository would be available in 1998, no one disputes that this capacity will be unavailable. Nevertheless, the nuclear industry wants taxpayers to begin taking title to its garbage in 1998. Premature title transfer will burden taxpayers with a liability of an undetermined size. The high-level waste program is supported by the Nuclear Waste Fund, which is funded by a tenth of a cent per kilowatt hour fee on nuclear-generated electricity that is assessed to utilities and passed to ratepayers. Because the fee has not been indexed to inflation, it has lost 40 percent of its value since 1982. At the same time, an independent financial review has estimated a $3 to $5 billion shortfall in the Waste Fund. The Waste Fund is therefore likely to be inadequate for the task of fully funding a repository program, leaving taxpayers at risk. Now the industry wants to add the costs of interim storage to an already overburdened fund, shifting interim as well as long-term storage costs to the taxpayer. If you believe in returning authority to the states... In addition to stripping Nevada of its right, under the current Nuclear Waste Policy Act, to veto location of a dump within its borders, H.R. 1270 would grant the federal government broad license to preempt state and local laws. As a result, states and localities wishing to protect their citizens from the risks of transportation may find themselves unable to do so. If you oppose the "War on the West"... If H.R. 1270 passes, the West would be forced to take out the East's garbage. Over three quarters of the nation's reactors are east of the Mississippi River, yet the designated location is in Nevada, a state without reactors. There is no technical reason to favor Nevada as the site for an interim facility. The state's distance from the majority of the nation's reactors only increases the risk of a transportation accident. Six of eight states that will likely see the most waste shipments, Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, Nebraska, Iowa, and Arizona, are west of the Mississippi River. Of the states earmarked for most of the casks, Nevada, Utah, Wyoming and Indiana do not even have commercial reactors. Three other western states with no nuclear power plants _ Idaho, New Mexico, and Oklahoma _ would also see highly toxic irradiated fuel pass through their borders. If you oppose government "takings" of private property... Homeowners along transportation routes may well find their property values reduced as a result of nuclear waste trains and trucks passing by. The potential for loss of equity is especially high in states with routes that are likely to see thousands of shipments. No mechanism exists in H.R. 1270 to compensate homeowners in such a circumstance. If you believe in public participation in regulatory proceedings... The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has testified that it would be unable to license an interim storage facility in the 16 months demanded by the legislation and still allow a public hearing for the process. If you believe in a rational nuclear waste policy... By any measure, radioactive waste policy in the U.S. has been a failure. Irrational classifications and unrealistic timetables have left the public without confidence in the current system. Many of the problems in the high-level waste program can be traced to Congress' political, not scientific, decision in 1987 to single out Yucca Mountain as the only candidate for a high-level waste repository. Since then, site characterization has been beset by poor management, cost overruns, vigorous state opposition, and mounting evidence that the site may be unsuitable. These problems display the result of proceeding in a manner dictated by political expediency rather than sound science and citizen participation. No scientific case has been made for the Nevada Test Site as an interim storage location or for centralized interim storage in general _ in fact, the NRC has stated that irradiated fuel can remain on site for up to 100 years _ nor has any scientific determination been made on the suitability of the Yucca Mountain site. In face of these uncertainties, H.R. 1270 commands transportation to begin in early 2000, placing the legislation squarely in the tradition of political fixes that proceed without regard to citizen concerns or scientific findings and pay heed only to the needs of the nuclear industry. If you believe that the nuclear industry is entitled to lavish taxpayer-financed benefits from the federal government at the expense of public health and safety... Well, from that perspective H.R. 1270 is a pretty good idea. For more information, contact Bill Magavern or Auke Piersma: 202-546-4996; email apiersma@citizen.org. The Critical Mass Homepage is located at http://www.essential.org/CMEP.