Yucca Mountain

Floor Speech

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Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman from Illinois' indulgence in allowing me to speak on this important subject this evening.

Mr. Speaker, located in my central Washington district is the Hanford site, which has played a pivotal role in our Nation's security and defense for decades. As part of the Manhattan Project, the Hanford site produced plutonium for the bomb that eventually brought an end to World War II, and continued work at the site was critical during the cold war.

However, this work also resulted in massive amounts of nuclear defense waste. Today, Hanford is the world's largest and most complex nuclear cleanup site, with over 56 million gallons of radioactive and chemical waste in 177 temporary underground storage tanks.

The Federal Government has a legal and a moral obligation to clean up this waste. The importance of Yucca Mountain cannot be overstated. Hanford is scheduled to send more nuclear defense waste to Yucca Mountain than anywhere else in the Nation.

The high-level defense waste at Hanford will be treated at the waste treatment plant, which is currently being constructed, to turn this waste into glass that can then be sent to Yucca.

The waste treatment plant is over 70 percent complete, and the glass produced will meet the geological specifications of Yucca Mountain; yet the Obama administration has moved the goalpost by illegally shutting down Yucca, which will take us back to square one and harm the already challenging Hanford cleanup.

Mr. Speaker, the Federal Government has spent decades and billions of taxpayer dollars studying the right place for the repository. The conclusion was Yucca Mountain, the subject of one of the most thorough and extensive reviews of a major government project ever conducted.

It is the lawful repository for nuclear waste, and Congress has reaffirmed this fact many times over. There is no scientific reason why Yucca cannot and should not move forward.

Earlier this month, I visited Yucca Mountain and was impressed by the substantial work that has already been completed. The development of the site has taken decades and has come at great taxpayer expense, costing Americans over $15 billion.

Because DOE has failed to begin accepting used nuclear fuel, as required by contracts signed with the electric utilities that own the reactors, liability and settlement estimates now range from $13 billion to $50 billion--a blow to taxpayers and ratepayers--all due to the failure of the President to move forward with the legal repository.

Simply put, Mr. Speaker, we do not have the time or the resources to just start over. Doing so would change Yucca from being the Nation's most secure national repository into a monument of government waste and all in violation of the law. After getting a firsthand look at Yucca, I can see why it was selected as the best place for our Nation's defense waste and commercial spent nuclear fuel.

I am disappointed the administration has continued efforts to push ahead with its plan to circumvent Yucca, as well as the repeated affirmations by Congress that Yucca is the lawful repository. I look forward to working with my colleagues here in Congress--especially the members of the Nevada delegation--to ensure that the law is upheld and Yucca Mountain moves forward.

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