Providing for Consideration of H.R. Energy and Water Development and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2017
Floor Speech
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Ms. TITUS. Mr. Speaker, I am here to discuss provisions in the underlying bill that relate to the State of Nevada--provisions that are identical to language in last year's bill to try and restart the failed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump just outside my Congressional District.
First, with all due respect, let me correct my friend across the aisle. Yucca Mountain is not a defense repository. It is a commercial nuclear power plant repository. Let's be clear about that.
Second, a recent Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement by the NRC confirmed what we in Nevada have known for decades: Yucca Mountain is not a secure repository that would seal dangerous waste safely for a million years. It is, instead, a proposal based on bad science and faulty assumptions.
Specifically, the NRC confirmed that the site is not secure, that it will leak, and that radiation will travel for miles through underground water sources to farming communities in the Amargosa Valley on its way to Death Valley National Park.
But before the radioactive material can leak out of the ground, it first has to be shipped, using untested procedures by truck and by rail through nearly every State and every Congressional District in the lower 48. These shipments will occur for decades, passing homes and schools, parks and hospitals, churches and farms. They will pass through the heart of my Congressional District, along the famed Las Vegas strip where 42 million people come every year to work and play.
We need to stop the Yucca Mountain boondoggle once and for all, and turn, instead, to recommendations from the Blue Ribbon Commission on Nuclear Waste, including my legislation, the Nuclear Waste Informed Consent Act.
Congress must either accept this reality and work towards actual solutions, or we can continue this charade every appropriations season, whereby language to fund Yucca shows up in bills so politicians can continue to collect checks from the nuclear energy industry.
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