NUCLEAR WASTE POLICY ACT (Senate - July 10, 1996)

Mr. REID. The Senator's question is directly to the point. It is absolutely true. It is now beyond the planning stage. Dry cask storage containers work. They work better when you leave them on-site. Then you do not encounter the problems, as I indicated, with train wrecks and truck wrecks and firings and those kinds of things. So the Senator is absolutely right. The current law has health, safety and environmental safeguards to protect our citizenry from risks involved in moving and disposing of high-level nuclear waste .

S. 1936 would effectively end the work on a permanent repository and abandon the health, safety and environmental protection our citizens deserve. I am not talking about just Nevada citizens; I am talking about citizens of this country. It would create an unneeded and costly interim storage facility. It would expose the Government and its citizens to needless financial risk.

So, Mr. President, why are we here addressing this issue instead of issues that need attention, actions that will improve the condition of the average American, instead of this bill, which will only improve the bottom line of the nuclear power industry, at best?

We are here because the nuclear industry wants to transfer

their risks, their responsibilities, and their legitimate business expenses to the American taxpayer. This has been their agenda for almost two decades. They think that now is the time to close the deal. They want the nuclear waste out of their backyard and into someone else's backyard. They do not care what the risks are.

The bill is not in the best interest of the people of this country. It should not become law. Because of Bill Clinton, it will not become law. The President will veto this. If we do not have the foresight, Mr. President, to kill it here and now, the President will veto it.

S. 1936 is not just bad, it is dangerous legislation. It tramples due process and it gives the lie to the claims of support for self-determination and local control, made with great piety by some of our membership. It legislates technical guidelines for public health and safety, arrogantly assuming the mantle of `the Government knows best,' when in actual fact this branch of Government knows virtually nothing about these technical issues. It mandates a level of risk to citizens of this country and the citizens of Nevada that is at least four times the level permissible at any other radioactive waste facility.

Mr. President, let me go over this chart again that I did with my colleague from North Dakota. There is no exposure level--there is no exposure level--any place in the country, anyplace in the world, that has laws like this.

The EPA safe drinking water, 4 millirems per year; NRC Low-Level Nuclear Waste Site, 25 millirems per year; the EPA WIPP facility in New Mexico, 15 millirems per year; the Independent Spent Nuclear Fuel Storage Facility, 25 millirems; the International Exposure Range, 10 to 30.

What do we have in S. 1936? One hundred millirems. I mean, look at it. Why would we allow radiation exposure levels to individuals that have anything to do with nuclear waste in Nevada 4 times, 10 times, 20 times what it is in other places, other agencies? It just simply is wrong.

Mr. BRYAN. Will the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. REID. I will be happy to yield to my colleague for a question.

Mr. BRYAN. If I understand what the Senator is saying, this is absolutely astounding. Is the Senator suggesting that the EPA has said, as a safe drinking standard for America, 4 millirems? That is per year?

Mr. REID. Four millirems is the correct answer.

Mr. BRYAN. As the Senator well knows, the WIPP is a facility in New Mexico designed to receive transuranic nuclear waste . Is the Senator indicating for the good citizens of New Mexico, 15 millirems?

Mr. REID. The Senator is correct.

Mr. BRYAN. And that the citizens in the State of Nevada--we were admitted to the Union, if I recall, before the good State of New Mexico--but somehow for the rest of America, they have a 4-millirem standard for safe drinking water, at another nuclear storage area in our country they are proposing 15 millirems, but in the State of Nevada from a sole source, a single source, they are suggesting that Nevadans would have to accept a standard of 100 millirems from one source on an annual basis? Is that what they are suggesting?