The Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS) today asked the Senate Energy Committee to reject S. 104, best known as the "Mobile Chernobyl" bill.
"This bill attempts to address a radioactive waste disposition 'crisis' that simply does not exist," said NIRS' executive director Michael Mariotte, in testimony before the Energy Committee. "It would do so by running roughshod over public health and safety standards and existing law intended to protect both our democracy and the environment. It would increase the number of existing radioactive waste sites in our nation by one, and decrease the number by zero," Mariotte said.
S. 104 (Craig, R-Idaho) would establish an "interim" storage site for high-level radioactive waste near Yucca Mountain, Nevada–the site currently being studied as a possible permanent repository for nuclear waste. A decision on whether Yucca Mountain can meet safety requirements and be licensed as a permanent site is some years away. The bill would set into motion the unprecedented transportation of radioactive waste through 43 states and the District of Columbia, including through major cities such as New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Jacksonville, and others and across America's agricultural heartland. Mariotte said that a transportation accident could create a "Mobile Chernobyl" and that the U.S. does not have a trained and supplied transportation infrastructure to respond to even minor accidents. He noted that yesterday's derailment of a nuclear waste train on the French-German border is an indication that "accidents can and will happen. We are unprepared to cope with such accidents and even less prepared to handle large releases of radioactivity."
Mariotte also pointed out that a July 1996 federal court decision has been misrepresented as requiring the Department of Energy to take the nation's nuclear waste by 1998. "In fact," said Mariotte, "all the Court said is that if DOE cannot begin disposing of the waste by 1998, then certain unspecified remedies may be instituted."
Mariotte said that setting a 1998 deadline for DOE to take the waste was a blunder in the first place. "S. 104 would exacerbate the problems of the past, by setting yet another arbitrary deadline, this time for 'interim' waste storage. If there is one lesson to be learned from this muddled nuclear waste program, it is that whenever political will bumps up against scientific reality, science will overcome politics every time. For better or worse, the basic unyielding laws of science are far stronger than the laws of man."
NIRS also pointed out that the radioactive waste storage "crisis" alleged by some nuclear utilities has been greatly overstated, and provided specifics on several reactors (St. Lucie, Dresden, and Millstone) for which re-calculations of their remaining fuel pool space indicates that they have from two to seven years more space than they claimed in submissions to DOE.
The nuclear industry has claimed in national advertisements that its ratepayers have paid $12 Billion into the Nuclear Waste Fund, but still does not have a radioactive waste facility. NIRS said, however, that "The Nuclear Waste Fund is clearly targeted for permanent, not temporary, storage. Furthermore, the Nuclear Waste Fund is woefully inadequate to meet projected costs of a permanent storage site; diversion of funds for 'interim' storage would further delay progress on a permanent program and increase the costs of the program." Mariotte pointed out that current cost projections for a permanent facility are now $34 Billion and over its lifetime the Nuclear Waste Fund is projected to bring in only $22 Billion–a shortfall of $12 Billion that could become even larger over the next several years.
NIRS criticized the bill further, saying that there is no safety advantage to centralized "interim" storage as opposed to on-site storage, since both use the same dry cask technology, but that centralized storage increases risks associated with radioactive waste transportation. NIRS also said that S. 104 would set unconscionably high radiation standards, would weaken Environmental Impact Statement regulations, would provide a dangerous precedent of pre-emption of state authority, and that an "interim" storage facility at Yucca Mountain probably could not be licensed under current Nuclear Regulatory Commission safety regulations.
NIRS noted that numerous religious, environmental and consumer organizations are on record against the bill, and that several cities and counties (including Los Angeles, Denver, St. Louis, Philadelphia, Santa Barbara, Ventura and many more) have passed resolutions against last year's "Mobile Chernobyl" bill (S. 1936, which is identical to S. 104).
S. 1936 last year passed the Senate on a vote of 63-37, an insufficient margin to override a promised Presidential veto. The issue was not voted on in the House. To date, a House companion bill to S. 104 has not been introduced.
Copies of Mariotte's testimony are available from NIRS and on NIRS' website: www.nirs.org.