Congress is busy working on nuclear waste legislation. Bills have been voted out of committee in both the House and Senate. There have been substantial changes from previous versions of this legislation, but both House and Senate proposals are anti-public health and safety, anti-environment, anti-democracy, and simply versions of the same old story of serving the needs of the nuclear power industry. Status and next expected action:

House: HR 45 (Upton, R-MI and Townes D-NY) was modified by Representative Barton, Chair of the Subcommitee on Energy and Power and voted out of the full Commerce Committee in April. House Leadership has announced that they will wait to bring the House bill to the Floor until after the Senate takes action.

Senate: A bill which still has not yet been introduced was passed out of the Senate Energy Committee last week (ain't it amazing how congress works!). We will post the bill number in an upcoming Action Alert. For now, it is the Nuclear Waste Policy Amendments Act of 1999 sponsored by Murkowski (R-AK), Chair of the Senate Energy Committee. The bill is a departure from Murkowski's previous S 608, but still split almost evenly on party lines. The Senate has for the past 4 years provided the margin of votes to sustain the veto which President Clinton has threatened each year. It is rumored that this bill will go to the Senate Floor soon.

DISCUSSION: Murkowski's "Compromise" is still not responsible nuclear waste policy

The Senate Energy Committee reported out a bill which would implement interim storage of high-level nuclear waste at reactor sites where the waste is produced, with the federal government (DOE) taking title and liability including all storage costs. This is offered in exchange for complete settlement of current utility legal challenges over the DOE default on the contracts to start taking the waste away to a repository in 1998. The "relief" would be available at the time that the nuclear waste would have been picked up under the original contracts. Alternately, the DOE might compensate utilities for their storage costs if the utility prefers to retain title and handle the storage.

One way to look at this is that we have basically won on the issue of centralized interim storage. This is because the soonest a parking-lot style nuclear waste dump could be operational is 2003. When we all took up this fight in 1994, the date for operation of a "temporary" dump next to Yucca Mountain was 1998. This 5 year delay, given that the projected opening date for a permanent repository at Yucca Mountain is 2010, has made centralized interim storage an expensive accessory…unless of course it is the vestibule for the permanent repository.

Murkowski has done just that. He "canceled" the interim site. However, he provides that the waste can move as soon as there is a construction permit on a below-ground dump at Yucca. Murkowski would also remove virtually ALL of the barriers to Yucca's approval. The bill would:

· Remove EPA from any regulation of the permanent repository. Under today's law, EPA is mandated to establish public protection standards which the Nuclear Regulatory Commission then requires the DOE to meet. Murkowski would not only ban EPA and put NRC in the standard setting role, but he also instructs NRC as to what the risk of fatal cancer should be: 1 in 1000, to an AVERAGE person at 20 km from the site, in the first 10,000 years (peak doses are expected later). Traditionally radiation standards are set for some hypothetical "maximally exposed individual" who is not an averaged over a larger group. Superfund risk limits are set between I in a million and 1 in 10,000 fatal cancers.

· Expressly prohibit NRC from establishing radionuclide release limits, such as those found in the EPA rule that Yucca Mountain was originally required to meet, and which currently applies to the WIPP site in New Mexico . Release limits are an important component of limiting the overall release to the environment, whereas risk applies only to an individual.

· Murkowsi would not implement a ground water protection standard, and also prohibits consideration of climate change scenarios that do not reflect the climate range at the site for the last 100,000 years. What about global warming impacts?

· Discard the objective criteria that are in current law and regulations to define what characteristics a repository site must have in order to be acceptable. Murkowski would substitute a total system performance assessment - which is effectively a series of computer models that are based on data which even DOE admits is spotty and lacking key elements, such as the impact of heat from the waste on the rock of Yucca Mountain and the resolution of evidence suggesting the presence of a magma pocket below the Mountain. The only criteria to decide whether to proceed with Yucca repository will be whether these models can be made to show that the waste will kill only .9 average people or less per 1000 at 20 kilometers from the site. There will be no other question to answer.

Taken together, Murkowski's provisions roll back the few remaining protections in today's law that might prevent the mistake of putting the vast majority of our nuclear waste in a leaking hole at Yucca Mountain. This is not responsible nuclear waste policy.

Last December 219 environmental advocacy groups petitioned DOE to drop the Yucca repository project since the site violates DOE's guidelines. DOE denied the petition on the grounds that they need to keep studying the site in order to get the information to refute us. They did not say we were wrong. Yucca Mountain is going to leak.

DISCUSSION: In the House HR 45 is a rocking boat

HR 45 has many of the same provisions discussed above, though in Barton's new version, a buffet of options is offered to the nuclear utilities, again in exchange for dropping their legal challenge to DOE. Take-title on-site, or at private sites coverage of costs and also centralized interim storage at Yucca Mountain are the options that a reactor owner may choose from.

The House bill sets the Yucca standard at 100 millirems to the average person. This corresponds to a 1 in 286 risk of cancer over a lifetime.

Perhaps most controversial is removing the waste program from the budget. Currently only the Post Office and Social Security enjoy this special status of exemption from budget caps and complex rules. Fiscal conservative members of the House oppose this.

Watch for upcoming ACTION ALERT --- Mary Olson

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