Energy and Water Development and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2014

Floor Speech

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Ms. TITUS. Mr. Chairman, I rise this evening to speak on a serious issue that affects my constituents. I've been investigating it since it was brought to my attention several months ago through our local media.

The Department of Energy is in the process of moving dangerous radioactive waste thousands of miles across the country from east Tennessee to southern Nevada. This waste is destined for the Nevada Nuclear Security Site, formally known as the Nevada Test Site. This is a totally separate issue now from the proposed Yucca Mountain storage site debate that we have heard earlier today.

If you're unaware that this radioactive waste is traveling through your backyard, I'm not surprised. The DOE has failed to properly inform Congress about this activity.

The project involves the transport of hundreds of canisters containing high-concentration fissile materials from the Consolidated Edison Uranium Solidification Project in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, to be dumped in my State of Nevada. The materials are so radioactive that they have a half life of more than 160,000 years.

I want to be clear that this is not the kind of low-level waste that the Nevada Test Site has been accepting for years. In fact, just weeks ago, I learned that the Department of Energy had reworked the waste acceptance criteria for the security site to allow storage of materials that have radioactive concentrations more than 40 times higher than anything that has ever been brought to the site for disposal before.

That revision to the WAC, or waste acceptance criteria, was signed off on by the DOE the very same day that agency officials met with my staff and State and local officials, yet DOE didn't think it was necessary or important to inform any of us about this change. As a matter of fact, it took an Internet search days later to discover that DOE had actually reworked the playbook for the site without any public input.

Mr. Chairman, there are far too many questions about what DOE is doing and plans to do at the Nevada Test Site, questions that so far have gone unanswered.

Nevadans have had a lot of experience dealing with Federal officials throughout the days of atomic testing and during the Cold War. We're not going to just turn aside now and let the DOE run roughshod over our communities.

And I can tell you that I'm not alone in expressing my concerns about the DOE's activities. Our Republican governor, Brian Sandoval, has also publicly stated his opposition to the shipments of this radioactive waste. In a letter to the Energy Secretary, our Governor stated that classifying ``this material as low-level waste sets a dangerous precedent.'' I will be submitting the letter from Governor Sandoval for the Record.

Mr. Chairman, my district sits just 65 miles southeast of the Nevada Test Site. The Las Vegas metropolitan area is home to nearly 2 million residents and more than 40 million visitors annually. Any plan to transport waste through the heart of the Las Vegas Valley would be extremely risky and incredibly irresponsible. The stakes are just too high to gamble on District One's safety.

The DOE has refused to cooperate with repeated attempts to gather additional information so we can have appropriate oversight. It's unthinkable that DOE is moving forward with this program without properly briefing Members of Congress. If we are being kept in the dark, who is overseeing the DOE's plans? It's critical that DOE be forthright about how and why the WAC was changed, how the changes relate to the proposed shipment, and how these changes will affect the safety and security of southern Nevada and communities across the country in the path of this transportation.

I'd like to thank the chairman and especially the ranking member for allowing me to bring this to the attention of the House, and I would ask them to work with me to ensure that there's proper congressional oversight of DOE and that the people of Nevada and beyond get the answers that they deserve.

With that, I yield back the balance of my time.

OFFICE OF THE GOVERNOR,

Las Vegas, NV, June 20, 2013.
Re Planned Shipment of Wastes from Oak Ridge to Nevada National Security Site

Hon. DR. ERNEST MONIZ,
Secretary, U.S. Department of Energy,
Washington, DC.

DEAR SECRETARY MONIZ: I'm writing to inform you that after long and serious consideration, I have decided to oppose the Department of Energy's plan to ship the Consolidated Edison Uranium Solidification Project (CEUSP) canisters containing dangerous and long-lived radioactive waste for disposal at Area 5 of the Nevada National Security Site (NNSS).

I am aware that DOE believes that these canisters qualify for disposal as low-level radioactive waste (LLW). My advisors have independently evaluated all of the important technical and regulatory issues. They have concluded that the CEUSP canisters are not commonplace LLW; even if these canisters meet a legalistic definition of LLW, they are not suitable for shallow land burial at the NNSS. Nevada is also not satisfied with the overall process that DOE has followed in developing its disposal and transportation plans, including failure to appropriately address the concerns of affected local governments and Native American Tribes.

The CEUSP canisters can only be considered LLW because they do not meet the legal definition of high-level radioactive waste, spent nuclear fuel, transuranic waste, or uranium mill tailings. Using this logic, DOE is attempting to exploit a gap in current regulations. This dangerous waste should be managed in the same manner as remote-handled transuranic waste, which DOE currently ships to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant for permanent deep-geologic disposal. The canisters contain a high concentration of fissile material (Uranium 235 and Uranium 233), uranium isotopes that are extremely long-lived (half lives of more than 160,000 years), and have a relatively high surface dose rate (300 rem per hour), which makes them dangerous to workers and a potential source of ``dirty bomb'' material. Moreover, qualifying this material as LLW sets a dangerous precedent for the classification of potential future waste streams that exist across the nation.

Both Nevada and DOE have a mutual interest in the long-term and safe management of NNSS. Over the past two decades, the Nevada Division of Environmental Protection has worked successfully with DOE on a broad range of environmental assessment and remediation activities at NNSS. I believe that this provides a basis for shared planning for future uses of DOE facilities at NNSS.

I request a meeting with you at your earliest convenience to discuss in a cooperative manner Nevada's views on the future of operations at the NNSS. Timely matters for discussion include the recently completed Site-wide Environmental Impact Statement and pending issuance of the associated Record of Decision, troubling revisions to the NNSS Waste Acceptance Criteria, and the unsatisfactory manner in which DOE and National Nuclear Security Administration have dealt with affected local governments and Native American Tribes in Nevada.

The State of Nevada is committed to a long-term cooperative relationship with your Department, based on mutual respect, sound science, protection of the environment, and public health and safety. I look forward to meeting with you at your earliest convenience.

Sincere regards,

Brian Sandoval,
Governor.

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