Nomination of Christopher Hanson

Floor Speech

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Ms. ROSEN. Mr. President, I rise in opposition to the nomination of David Wright to be a member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for 5 more years. Amidst a global pandemic that has caused the greatest public health crisis in a century and the worst economic catastrophe since the Great Depression, we are spending our time in the United States voting on a nominee for the NRC who will likely take actions that put the lives and livelihoods of Nevadans at even further risk.

David Wright has a long history of working to advance the failed and fiscally irresponsible proposal to dump our Nation's nuclear waste at the Yucca Mountain site. In his previous work as chairman of the Public Service Commission of South Carolina, he supported continuing licensing of Yucca Mountain. Additionally, in 2005 he founded the Yucca Mountain Task Force and criticized local opposition to the project, calling it ``myopic resistance.'' That is how he characterizes the people of Nevada fighting back against the injustice of having no say in whether or not we are to become the Nation's nuclear dumping ground.

For these reasons, in August 2018, the State of Nevada filed a formal petition with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit challenging now-Commissioner Wright's refusal to disqualify himself from participating in NRC Yucca Mountain licensing decisions. According to the State of Nevada at the time, Wright's participation in any licensing decisions would violate Nevada's constitutional right to unbiased decision makers at the NRC.

Numerous studies have since shown that Yucca Mountain, only 90 miles from Las Vegas, is a physically unsuitable site that would threaten the health and safety of Nevadans and would take half a century to complete. Notably, Yucca Mountain is located above an aquifer in an area of moderate to high seismic activity and is subject to oxidizing and corrosive elements. In fact, just this week, only days before we have been asked to vote on this pro-Yucca nominee, two earthquakes--one of which was of 6.5 magnitude--struck Nevada less than 150 miles from Yucca Mountain and less than a dozen miles from one of the proposed transportation routes for shipping nuclear waste to Yucca. In addition to threatening the health and safety of Nevadans, transporting all of our Nation's nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain would threaten our national security, as the site is directly adjacent to the Nevada Test and Training Range, NTTR, the largest air and ground military training space in the contiguous United States. Establishing a nuclear waste repository in such close proximity to NTTR could therefore directly jeopardize the readiness of our Air Force.

Most importantly, Nevadans have never consented to storing other States' waste at Yucca Mountain. With thousands of Nevadans dying of COVID-19 and jobless claims in the State at unprecedented levels, today, among the numerous actions this Senate could have chosen to take, we are voting on the confirmation of an individual who wants to add insult to injury by proceeding with an ill-advised plan for nuclear waste storage that ignores the voices of Nevadans.

I will not stand for this. I, therefore, cast my vote against the nomination of David Wright to serve on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

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