Matheson: No to Dangerous Nuke Waste Moving through Utah to Nevada

Washington, D.C.—Congressman Jim Matheson today said today public health and safety, science and budget constraints all support his contention that spent nuclear fuel should stay where it is and not be moved on Utah’s roads and rails to Yucca Mountain, Nevada. Matheson is a member of the Energy and Air Quality subcommittee which scheduled today’s hearing on the status of a permanent nuclear waste disposal site in this country.

“The West is not the dumping ground for the planet’s most lethal radioactive waste.  Transporting it across the country to a site where politics has trumped science creates more safety problems than leaving it where it is,” Matheson said.

Matheson said that proposed transportation routes would send 95% of the waste to Yucca through Utah, if it’s moved by rail and 87% if it’s trucked. Nationally, 50 million Americans would be exposed to the risk of an accident from high level radioactive waste transport.

Matheson, together with the Utah and Nevada Congressional delegations, has introduced a bill –HR 4062—that amends the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982.  Matheson’s bill requires commercial nuclear utilities to transfer nuclear waste from spent nuclear fuel pools into dry storage casks; requires the Department of Energy (DOE) to take title of all spent nuclear fuel stored in dry casks on-site and requires such storage to comply the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s safety regulations.

Nevada Congresswoman Shelley Berkley, who led off the panel of witnesses at today’s hearing, said the bloated price tag, together with a long list of technical and scientific problems, should prompt the government to terminate Yucca Mountain.

“Nuclear waste can be safely stored on-site for the next 100 years.  This solution costs a small fraction of the price tag for dumping this toxic garbage in Nevada and avoids the danger of an accident or terrorist incident involving shipments of radioactive waste,” said Berkley.  “I thank my colleague Jim Matheson for his support on this issue of shared importance to our two states and I echo his call for a plan that will secure nuclear waste on-site—keeping these dangerous radioactive materials off of our roads and railways and out of the hands of terrorists.”

Matheson noted that nuclear waste is already stored at the nuclear power plants where it is created and technical experts say that can occur safely for at least 100 years. Even if Yucca Mountain opened tomorrow, it wouldn’t have enough room for existing spent nuclear fuel and even DOE concedes that between $1.2 and $1.9 billion per year is needed to construct and begin operation of Yucca Mountain by the scheduled opening in 2020.

Last month, DOE submitted a long-overdue licensing application for Yucca Mountain to the NRC and that agency has begun processing it.

Matheson quoted from a letter written by one engineering firm that recently withdrew from bidding on part of the Yucca contract.  The letter said that the contract amounts to a “mission impossible” due to the bouncing and rolling action that would occur at Yucca in the event of a major earthquake.  “Pigs will fly before the storage casks will stay put” during such an event, the letter concluded.

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