Fixing Our Broken Nuclear Waste Management Program

Floor Speech

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Mr. McNERNEY. Mr. Speaker, I thank Mr. Shimkus for yielding. We work together on nuclear waste. I have been to the Yucca Mountain site, and I have seen the work that has gone on there.

But, first of all, I just want to say there are a lot of issues out there that we are dealing with here in Congress; so how important is nuclear waste? I mean, we have got the gun issue; we have climate change; we have the economy; we want to create jobs; trade. I mean, there are a lot of issues; so how important is nuclear waste? I mean, it has been festering for decades--for decades--so how urgent is it?

You know, we haven't had a major accident yet, but there are tens of thousands of tons of high-level nuclear waste sitting in relatively exposed conditions, so what could possibly go wrong? I mean, high-level nuclear waste is so radioactive that it emits heat. It emits an immense amount of heat. So we could--I will give you a couple of things that could go wrong.

The waste could be commandeered and then made into weapons. It doesn't have to be made into a nuclear fission bomb. It could be made into a dirty bomb. Just put a bunch of nuclear waste with explosive material in some city and that city would be uninhabitable for the rest of our lifetimes, for sure.

There also could be waste leakage. We have nuclear waste sitting on the banks of the Missouri River. We have nuclear waste, tons and tons of nuclear waste, high-level nuclear waste, sitting a quarter mile from the Columbia River, and this is pretty serious stuff. And my friend from Illinois, my colleague from Illinois, I am sure, will tell us about nuclear waste that is on the Great Lakes ready to go. So we have a problem. We have been pretty darn lucky so far.

You know, I worked as a graduate student. I was a graduate student in mathematics. I worked for an engineering professor to study the nuclear waste project at WIPP, a waste isolation pilot project near Carlsbad, New Mexico, and I can tell you the technical solutions are there. Nuclear waste can be safely engineered for tens of thousands of years, as long as it needs to be stored. Transportation can be done safely. I have seen train cars that are designed to hold high-level nuclear waste slammed into concrete walls with no damage to the interior of the car.

This stuff can be done. It is not an engineering problem. I mean, the engineering and the geological solutions are there if we put our minds to making it happen. It can be done in engineering.

However, nuclear waste is a political problem, and it hasn't been managed so far. The politics of the Yucca Mountain waste project were very badly managed from the very beginning. A successful nuclear waste storage project will need complete transparency from the very beginning with the local community. There will always be some amount of opposition, but without local buy-in, the project is going to fail. Local buy-in is absolutely essential. This can be done if there is complete transparency, if the local people understand what the risks are and what the benefits are. This can be done.

Mr. Speaker, we need to devote the resources to finding a permanent solution to nuclear waste. Meanwhile, H.R. 3053, the Nuclear Waste Policy Amendments Act of 2017 is a step, a very important step in the right direction.

I want to thank my colleague from Illinois (Mr. Shimkus) who has worked on this tirelessly for year after year. I know that some people think that he has gone too far in Nevada, but, nonetheless, if we work together and can become transparent, maybe Nevada will never accept nuclear waste, but we have to find a permanent storage solution that can be done. This is a step in the right direction, and I urge my colleagues to support H.R. 3053 and give this legislation fair and honest consideration.

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