[House Hearing, 116 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
EXAMINING AMERICA'S
NUCLEAR WASTE MANAGEMENT
STORAGE, AND THE NEED FOR SOLUTIONS
FIELD HEARING
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON ENVIRONMENT
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT
AND REFORM
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED SIXTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
JUNE 7, 2019
__________
Serial No. 116-34
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Oversight and Reform
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COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND REFORM
ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland, Chairman
Carolyn B. Maloney, New York Jim Jordan, Ohio, Ranking Minority
Eleanor Holmes Norton, District of Member
Columbia Justin Amash, Michigan
Wm. Lacy Clay, Missouri Paul A. Gosar, Arizona
Stephen F. Lynch, Massachusetts Virginia Foxx, North Carolina
Jim Cooper, Tennessee Thomas Massie, Kentucky
Gerald E. Connolly, Virginia Mark Meadows, North Carolina
Raja Krishnamoorthi, Illinois Jody B. Hice, Georgia
Jamie Raskin, Maryland Glenn Grothman, Wisconsin
Harley Rouda, California James Comer, Kentucky
Katie Hill, California Michael Cloud, Texas
Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Florida Bob Gibbs, Ohio
John P. Sarbanes, Maryland Ralph Norman, South Carolina
Peter Welch, Vermont Clay Higgins, Louisiana
Jackie Speier, California Chip Roy, Texas
Robin L. Kelly, Illinois Carol D. Miller, West Virginia
Mark DeSaulnier, California Mark E. Green, Tennessee
Brenda L. Lawrence, Michigan Kelly Armstrong, North Dakota
Stacey E. Plaskett, Virgin Islands W. Gregory Steube, Florida
Ro Khanna, California
Jimmy Gomez, California
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, New York
Ayanna Pressley, Massachusetts
Rashida Tlaib, Michigan
David Rapallo, Staff Director
Britteny Jenkins, Subcommittee Staff Director
Amy Stratton, Clerk
Christopher Hixon, Minority Staff Director
Contact Number: 202-225-5051
------
Subcommittee on Environment
Harley Rouda, California, Chairman
Katie Hill, California James Comer, Kentucky, Ranking
Rashida Tlaib, Michigan Minority Member
Raja Krishnamoorthi, Illinois Paul Gosar, Arizona
Jackie Speier, California Bob Gibbs, Ohio
Jimmy Gomez, California Clay Higgins, Louisiana
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, New York Kelly Armstrong, North Dakota
C O N T E N T S
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Page
Hearing held on June 7, 2019..................................... 1
Witnesses
The Honorable Darrell E. Issa,Former Chairman, Committee on
Oversight and Government Reform
Oral Statement................................................... 6
Mr. Don Hancock, Director and Administrator, Nuclear Waste Safety
Program, on behalf of Southwest Research and Information Center
Oral Statement................................................... 8
Mr. Daniel Stetson, Vice Chairman, SONGS Community Engagement
Panel
Oral Statement................................................... 9
Mr. Tom Isaacs, Former Lead Advisor, Blue Ribbon Commission on
America's Nuclear Future
Oral Statement................................................... 11
Mr. Scott Morris, Region IV Administrator, U.S. Nuclear
Regulatory Commission, Region IV
Oral Statement................................................... 13
*Written opening statements and statements for the witnesses are
available on the U.S. House of Representatives Document
Repository at: https://docs.house.gov.
INDEX OF DOCUMENTS
----------
The documents entered into the record are listed below/available
at: https://docs.house.gov.
* Letter from Orange County Board of Supervisors; submitted by
former Rep. Darrell E. Issa.
* Communty Engagement Panel Letter to Southern California
Edison; submitted by Rep. Levin.
* Holtec's Letter to the Community Engagement Panel in
response; submitted by Rep. Levin.
EXAMINING AMERICA'S
NUCLEAR WASTE MANAGEMENT, STORAGE,
AND THE NEED FOR SOLUTIONS
FIELD HEARING
----------
Friday, June 7, 2019
House of Representatives
Subcommittee on Environment
Committee on Oversight and Reform
Washington, D.C.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 11:28 a.m., in
Chet Holifield Federal Building, 2400 Avila Road, Laguna, CA,
Hon. Harley Rouda presiding.
Present: Representatives Rouda and Comer.
Also present: Representative Levin.
Mr. Rouda. The subcommittee will come to order.
I am actually going to take a page from Vince Lombardi, who
always started his meetings a few minutes early. So since we
are all here, if there is no objection, we will begin.
Without objection, the Chair is authorized to declare a
recess of the committee at any time.
Without objection, the gentleman from California, Mr.
Levin, is authorized to participate in today's hearing.
This subcommittee is convening to examine the management of
spent nuclear fuel, concerns related to the storage of nuclear
waste, and the need for long-term solutions.
I now recognize myself for five minutes to give an opening
statement.
I am proud that we have been able to bring a little bit of
D.C. here to OC as we convene this hearing in Laguna Niguel to
examine the management and storage of our Nation's nuclear
waste and the need for Congress to take action to find long-
term solutions.
Questions related to the long-term safety of America's
storage of nuclear waste are not new. The first commercial
nuclear power plant in the United States was opened by
President Dwight Eisenhower in 1958. Twenty-five years later,
President Ronald Reagan signed into law the Nuclear Waste
Policy Act of 1982, which dictated that the Federal Government
would identify a permanent geological repository and begin
transferring waste from nuclear power plants by 1998.
As we sit here today, it has been over two decades since
that 1998 deadline and over 50 years since the opening of this
Nation's first nuclear power plant, and the Federal Government
has failed, and continues to fail, to find a solution to our
country's nuclear waste problem.
Without a permanent repository, there are now approximately
100 sites across at least 34 states currently storing high-
level nuclear waste. Americans' exposure to the risks
associated with having nuclear waste in our communities does
not fall along any partisan or demographic lines. Approximately
one in every three Americans now live within 50 miles of
nuclear waste. Nuclear reactors and spent nuclear fuel sites
sit in congressional districts represented by both Democrats
and Republicans. The serious challenges at hand affect
communities across our country.
One of these sites, the San Onofre Nuclear Generating
Station--SONGS--is less than 20 miles from where we sit right
now.
Let's put that into context. After the Fukushima nuclear
disaster in 2011, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission--NRC--
recommended that Americans in Japan evacuate 50 miles away from
that site.
Currently, an estimated 8.4 million Americans live within a
50-mile radius of the SONGS plant that is 20 miles from here.
That includes residents of Los Angeles, San Diego, Orange,
Riverside, and San Bernardino counties.
As a resident of Laguna Beach, my family and I live just 30
miles from the SONGS site. I hear the concerns of my
constituents and those of Southern California. I, too, am
concerned about the long-term risk associated with storing 3.6
million pounds of nuclear waste at SONGS. This nuclear waste is
just about 100 feet from the shoreline, sits adjacent to one of
the Nation's busiest highways, and near to seismic fault lines.
Since the promise fueled by the first wave of nuclear
reactors in the 1950's, we have seen highly publicized
meltdowns at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl and waste
management challenges around the globe. It is clear that
nuclear power and waste are not without significant risk.
Commercial nuclear power production in the United States
has created over 160 million pounds of spent nuclear fuel, and
an additional 28 million pounds of nuclear waste has been
created by nuclear weapons production and other defense-related
activities. And it is estimated that we will be adding another
120 million pounds in the next several decades. That will be a
total of 280 million pounds of nuclear waste with no home and
risking the homes and lives of over 100 million Americans.
As Chairman of this subcommittee, the protection of public
health and safety are among my top priorities. I am committed
to focusing the Federal Government's attention on its
obligation to protect the public from nuclear hazards and
advocate for the environment, and to work to hold the
appropriate agencies accountable.
If we take steps now to fully recognize the magnitude of
our country's nuclear waste problem, and if we reach across the
aisle to develop bipartisan legislation, the United States can
pursue workable solutions. But we do not have any more time to
waste; the clock is ticking. In fact, because of the challenges
and logistics involved with moving and housing nuclear waste
with a long-term viable solution, the best-case scenarios, if
we act now with purpose and expediency, is approximately 10
years out.
My hope is that we can all agree that our current and past
failed efforts to both develop and implement a plan has not led
to a viable or safe, long-term solution. Our government owes
the American people an effective plan to address our nuclear
waste storage problem, a plan that securely stores this waste
without presenting health and safety concerns for local
communities across the country.
The radioactive material at the core of this challenge will
outlast everyone in this room and all humans currently alive.
It is estimated that all of our Nation's nuclear waste will
remain radioactive for somewhere between 100,000 and 1 million
years.
I hope that my statements adequately portray the
seriousness of this dilemma. My thoughts and feelings are
informed by the fact that our action or inaction will have a
direct impact on the lives of our children, grandchildren, and
hundreds of future generations.
I thank all of you for joining us today, and I appreciate
all of our witnesses for both their ongoing work on this
important issue and for taking the time to join us today. I
know that many of you have traveled considerable distances to
be here and have prepared thoughtful testimony to present.
With that, the Chair now recognizes the Ranking Member, Mr.
Comer of Kentucky, for five minutes for an opening statement.
Mr. Comer. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman, for convening
this field hearing. I also want to thank the local community
for hosting us today.
This hearing is a continuation of the fact-finding we have
done in Washington and will do elsewhere around the country to
find policy solutions. When we think about the Federal
Government's involvement in energy policy, it has an important
role to play in ensuring the safety of our nuclear power plants
and the safe storage of nuclear waste.
There are approximately 90,000 metric tons of nuclear waste
in the United States that requires safe disposal. And the level
of nuclear waste in the United States is expected to increase
to 140,000 metric tons over the next few decades.
Yet there is still no permanent disposal site that has been
fully approved by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission or the
Department of Energy. Anyone serious about tackling these
challenges knows that to address the United States' capacity to
responsibly manage and store nuclear waste, we must commit to
fund the completion of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's
review of the Yucca Mountain licensing application. While it
may be politically expedient to say otherwise, the reality is
that Congress must take action to ensure that proper funding is
distributed to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the
Department of Energy so that the Yucca Mountain licensing
application may be fully reviewed and completed.
Let me be clear: nuclear energy has an important role to
play in our Nation's energy needs. It emits zero carbon
emissions and is incredibly efficient. But we must solve the
problem of where to put nuclear waste.
The nuclear waste at San Onofre has sat here for too long,
and this community deserves resolution.
I want to thank the witnesses appearing here today,
including the former Chairman of this committee, Darrell Issa,
who represented this area for 18 years. Despite no longer being
a Member of Congress, Mr. Issa clearly cares deeply about this
issue, this community, and finding a resolution to the problem.
I want to note that his testimony supports bipartisan solutions
to this problem, and I am optimistic that one of those
solutions can make its way to the President's desk this
Congress.
I look forward to the discussion today, and I yield back,
Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Rouda. Thank you, Ranking Member Comer.
At this time I would like to yield five minutes to
Congressman Levin. Before I turn the microphone over to him, I
want to applaud Congressman Levin for his unbelievable
commitment to addressing this issue. As you know, SONGS lies in
the district he represents, and with his leadership I am
confident we can hopefully get to a bipartisan solution.
So, Mike, the floor is yours.
[Applause.]
Mr. Levin. Thank you.
Mr. Issa. Don't they let you speak first?
[Laughter.]
Mr. Levin. Thank you, Chairman Rouda. Thank you to our
Ranking Member as well. I appreciate the opportunity to
participate in today's field hearing.
The spent nuclear fuel in San Onofre in my district has
been a central focus and will remain a central focus of my
service. I regularly hear the same question all across our
district, from Dana Point to Oceanside and San Clemente to Del
Mar: When are you going to get the nuclear waste off our beach?
And together we have made it a bipartisan priority in
Washington to fight for solutions to the challenges at SONGS
and at spent nuclear fuel sites all across the country.
Unfortunately, these aren't challenges that are going to be
solved in a few months or even a few years, but I strongly
believe it is long past time they receive the attention they
deserve, especially given the risk that nuclear waste poses to
the communities in our district and elsewhere in Southern
California.
I look at the issues associated with the spent fuel at
SONGS on two tracks. First, it is our job as Members of
Congress to ensure that the Federal Government is providing
robust oversight for the decommissioning activities at SONGS.
And second, we must work with our colleagues in Washington to
find solutions that result in the removal of spent nuclear fuel
from San Onofre. This is particularly important given the
environmental factors that make SONGS a higher-risk site than
most nuclear sites across the country.
I am pleased that today's hearing focuses on solutions and
continues to shine a spotlight on all the work we have ahead of
us. I am pleased to report that we have accomplished a lot in
the last five months. First, I have convened a SONGS task force
co-chaired by Rear Admiral Len Hering, a former Navy mayor of
San Diego, and Greg Jaczko, a former chair of the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission. Admiral Herring, Mr. Jaczko, and their
partners on the task force are analyzing issues regarding the
onsite management of spent nuclear fuel at SONGS and working to
help identify a path forward that fully protects the community
and environment around the plant.
At the same time, I have been fighting to make Southern
California Edison and its contractor at SONGS, Holtec, more
transparent with our communities. They must make all decisions
with a focus on safety rather than maximizing profits. I have
been concerned about some recent events. At the end of March,
the Nuclear Regulatory Commission assessed Edison with two
high-level violations and a $116,000 fine for an incident last
year during which a spent fuel canister nearly dropped 18 feet,
and then was not properly reported. And in April, the NRC
issued two more violations to Holtec because of design changes
to canisters at SONGS. The changes resulted in loose pins at
the bottom of the canisters that hold tons of nuclear waste.
Given the multiple incidents and violations that have taken
place at SONGS, I believe the NRC must exercise its full
authority to enforce safe practices at the site, which
unfortunately has a history of inadequate transparency. That is
why I have called on the NRC to assign a full-time inspector to
SONGS. Senators Feinstein and Harris, as well as
Representatives Rouda, Peters, Vargas and Davis, joined me in
making that demand.
Nearly two months after we sent a formal letter to the NRC
on the subject, we have yet to receive a response. I hope that
is an issue we can explore further during the questioning
portion of the hearing.
On top of these SONGS oversight activities, I have been
working with my colleagues in Congress to create a pathway to
get the spent fuel off the beach at San Onofre. Next week, my
legislation that makes SONGS one of the highest-priority sites
in the Nation for spent fuel removal is receiving a hearing
before the House Energy and Commerce Committee. The bill,
called the Spent Fuel Prioritization Act, ensures fuel from
decommissioned nuclear sites in areas with larger populations
and higher seismic risk, such as ours, is removed first. This
concept has broad bipartisan support.
However, in order to prioritize removing the spent nuclear
fuel off the beach at San Onofre, we must have somewhere to
move it to. Due to a request I led with my colleagues, the
spending bill the House is set to consider next week includes
$25 million for a consent-based interim storage program at the
Department of Energy. Similar requests have been made for the
past five years, and I am proud that this is the first year
that it was adopted into the House spending bill.
Interim storage is not a comprehensive solution to the
spent fuel challenge, and it certainly must proceed with a
consent-based process. But it is currently the most viable
pathway to move spent nuclear fuel away from the rising Pacific
Ocean, off of active fault lines, and further from population
centers in Orange and San Diego Counties.
It is also a solution that both the House and Senate have
expressed bipartisan support for, so it has a real chance to
move forward.
Spent fuel storage and disposal are complex and challenging
issues. In fact, my own thinking has evolved as I met with our
military and civilian leadership and received a number of
briefings on the safest option for our communities. With that
in mind, I look forward to hearing from today's witnesses and
receiving additional input from a variety of technical experts.
I also want to take a moment to acknowledge my predecessor
who is here to testify. I appreciate his past efforts and his
continued interest in this issue. I believe it is an area where
we can work together on a bipartisan basis for the benefit of
those in our district and for all of Southern California.
And with that, Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
Mr. Rouda. Thank you, Congressman Levin.
For those in the audience, thank you for coming and thank
you for your passion and commitment to helping us address a
very important issue. But I would also respectfully ask that
you not wave signs while you are here. That would be more
consistent with the protocol of these committee meetings both
in D.C. and in the field.
Now I would want to welcome our witnesses.
Scott Morris, Region IV Administrator with the U.S. Nuclear
Regulatory Commission, Region IV.
Tom Isaacs, former Lead Advisor, Blue Ribbon Commission on
America's Nuclear Future.
Daniel T. Stetson, Vice Chairman, SONGS Community
Engagement Panel.
Don Hancock, Nuclear Waste Program Director, Southwest
Research and Information Center.
Darrell Issa, former Member of Congress.
Please stand and raise your right hands, and I will begin
swearing you in.
Do you swear or affirm that the testimony you are about to
give is the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you
God?
Let the record show that the witnesses answered in the
affirmative.
Thank you; please be seated.
I will note that the microphones tend to be a little bit
sensitive, so please make sure that they are close to you and
that you speak directly into them. Without objection, your
written statements will be made part of the record.
With that, Mr. Issa, you are now recognized to give a five-
minute oral presentation of your testimony.
STATEMENT OF HON. DARRELL E. ISSA, FORMER CHAIRMAN, COMMITTEE
ON OVERSIGHT AND GOVERNMENT REFORM
Mr. Issa. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member, and my
successor, Mr. Levin.
I would like to ask unanimous consent that a letter
addressed to the Chairman in support of this hearing and the
projects that are being considered in Congress from the Orange
County Board of Supervisors be placed in the record.
Mr. Rouda. So moved, without objection.
Mr. Issa. Thank you.
With my opening statement in the record, I will try to use
the five minutes as well as any of us who have served.
As Congressman Levin said, this is not a partisan issue,
but it is a regional issue that is going to take members like
the gentleman from Kentucky and the two gentlemen from
California working together to push for a solution.
The fact that Yucca is not currently the repository is a
political decision made based on both Republicans and Democrats
in a state that chose not to want the product. That will be
true of some people in every state in which you will propose
shipping it.
When I came to Congress 19 years ago, one of the first
things I became aware of is we didn't have a low-level
repository because people decided that they couldn't find a
place in California. So we were shipping basically nuclear
waste, much of it from cancer treatments and the like, to--and
I apologize, I think it was Kentucky, but it could have been
Tennessee, to the repository back there which had been
produced, essentially paying to offload our responsibility
across the country in freight cars at some incremental risk,
and certainly while shirking our responsibility.
In the case of the National Repository, it's not California
shirking its responsibility, as other witnesses will say. We
did have sites considered. But California, in spite of its
great size and some remote areas, does sit on an earthquake
fault, does have some other challenges, and it was not by
anyone's definition the best place.
I think the one thing that everyone should come away from
this hearing with is a recognition that no matter what Southern
California Edison does, they will never have as safe a storage
place as long as it lies between the ocean and I-5 as a myriad
of other locations, in New Mexico, in Texas, in Nevada, and, to
be honest, in an awful lot of other places we could find.
Some decade ago, I went to Area 51, as it sometimes gets
called, or the Nevada test site. This is not Yucca. And I
witnessed firsthand as we flew over those mounds. People can
see it on Google Earth. It's not a big secret. The mounds were
produced by underground nuclear testing.
The fact is we have vast areas that you and I will not be
able to go to and walk around for the rest of our lives and
lives well beyond our great-great-great-great-grandchildren.
So when we look at where we are today and where we were 18-
plus years ago when I came to Congress and first began looking
at SONGS, and 18 years before that when Congressman Ron Packard
came, and he knew in 1982 that they needed to deal with nuclear
power residue and he voted as a freshman to empower a solution,
in those 36-plus years, what we've always known is that there
are safer places than all 100 sites that currently house spent
nuclear rods and like material.
I would say today for the record that if we cannot agree on
Yucca or another site, an interim site--and when I say
``interim,'' interim is 10,000 years. If we tell ourselves that
interim is a matter of months or years, we fail to meet the
responsibility of what might happen. If we do not do that, then
we will have 100 sites. And although we may be by many people's
estimation one of the worst, if it is in your backyard anywhere
in the country, including my home state and the Chairman's home
state of Ohio, if you're up there on Lake Erie and the largest
body of fresh water and you've got spent rods that if there
were a disaster would take about one-fifth of the world's fresh
water and contaminate it, then you have a similar view to what
all of us do here in Southern California, and I think it's
particularly positive that we have a Chairman who knows both
the Great Lakes dilemma with its nuclear plants and
California's.
So I want to thank you for inviting me here. I want to make
sure that we understand here today that what we have to do is
get Congress to move. It is not a question of Republican or
Democrat. It is a question of a will to move 21 years after the
deadline set by my predecessor in 1982.
And I yield back.
Mr. Rouda. Thank you, Mr. Issa.
At this time I yield five minutes to Mr. Hancock for an
opening statement.
STATEMENT OF DON HANCOCK, DIRECTOR AND ADMINISTRATOR, NUCLEAR
WASTE SAFETY PROGRAM, ON BEHALF OF SOUTHWEST RESEARCH AND
INFORMATION CENTER
Mr. Hancock. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the
subcommittee. I appreciate the opportunity to be here to
present my organization's views on this important, complex, and
difficult subject. We very much appreciate your leadership in
looking for solutions that Congress can take.
My name is Don Hancock. I'm with Southwest Research and
Information Center, which is a private, non-profit organization
incorporated in New Mexico. For the last 48 years we've worked
on a wide variety of environmental justice and health issues,
including nuclear waste.
So, there's been some discussion already of the history. I
want to spend briefly looking at five lessons that we take from
some of that history.
First, commercial spent fuel has always been generated
without the essential scientifically sound, publicly accepted
program for safe disposal of large amounts of very radioactive,
very long-lived nuclear waste. Since 1971, even before--the
first proposed repository was in 1971. So for all of these
years we've had technically problematic sites being proposed
which engender a lot of public opposition and don't get
operated or built, so we don't have repositories.
Second, there's no consensus about health and safety
standards, including whether commercial spent fuel is safe
where it is. If it is safe where it is, why move it? If it's
not safe where it is, how can it be safe to transport through
many other communities to someplace else?
Third, in our Federal system, storage and disposal
facilities require consent. No state has volunteered for a
spent fuel repository or monitored retrievable storage sites,
even though they have been proposed, as we just described, for
decades.
Further, many states have specifically not consented to
hosting such facilities. Nevada has made very clear that its
technical and legal opposition to Yucca Mountain will prevent
that site from ever receiving spent fuel. Congress should
formally repeal the selection of Yucca Mountain as a repository
site.
Fourth, without a repository program, spent fuel will
continue to stay at or near reactor sites for decades,
including at closed reactors, unless the nuclear industry is
willing to volunteer its own reactor storage sites. Thus,
improved storage measures are needed to better protect public
health and the environment, which is what my organization and
hundreds of other non-profit organizations have been advocating
for many years. I've attached to my testimony ``Principles for
Safeguarding Nuclear Waste at Reactors,'' which represents
those principles.
So, for example, at San Onofre, which appropriately all the
people in this room are particularly concerned about, the fuel
needs to be moved away from the ocean to higher ground for
storage and robust atmospherically controlled building.
Fifth, New Mexico has some history in all of this, too. The
first important point to recognize is New Mexico is and has
always been majority population people of color. The state has
disproportionately borne the negative impacts of the nuclear
fuel chain, including contamination and resulting health
effects from the first nuclear bomb, which was not in
Hiroshima, it was at the Trinity site in New Mexico. We have
continuing victims from that all these years later, again
mostly people of color who have not been recognized,
compensated, or cared for.
Uranium mining and processing started 70 years ago. A huge
amount of the uranium that fueled the cold war came from New
Mexico and the Navajo Nation. We have more than 1,000 abandoned
sites that have not been cleaned up that continue to be health
problems, again primarily for indigenous people in our state.
Third, Los Alamos National Lab, which was created during
World War II to build the first bomb and test the bomb, is
there, and it continues to be a source, a long-term source of
contamination.
Fourth, New Mexico also has the Nation's only operating
geologic repository, the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, which is
for defense transuranic or plutonium contaminated waste.
New Mexico, however, has never had commercial spent fuel.
No reactors, no commercial fuel. That doesn't mean it hasn't
been discussed. When it's been proposed we have said no. We
have been promised no. The WIPP Land Withdrawal Act Federal law
says no. But yet there are still proposals, one in the `90's
from the Mescalero Apaches, which we said no to, and a current
one from Holtec International, which we are also saying no to.
There are ways forward. But continuing targeting New Mexico
is not scientifically sound, is not publicly accepted, and is
an environmental injustice. Thank you.
Mr. Rouda. Thank you.
Mr. Stetson, I now yield five minutes to you for your
opening statement.
STATEMENT OF DANIEL STETSON, VICE CHAIRMAN, SONGS COMMUNITY
ENGAGEMENT PANEL
Mr. Stetson. Good morning, Mr. Chairman and members of the
subcommittee. Can you hear me okay?
Mr. Rouda. Yes, thank you.
Mr. Stetson. Thank you for the opportunity to appear and
testify at today's meeting. My name is Dan Stetson, and I serve
as Vice Chairman of the Community Engagement Panel, or ``CEP'',
for the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, or ``SONGS'' for
short.
I was invited here today to serve as a representative of
the SONGS CEP. The CEP was formed in early 2014 after the
retirement of SONGS in 2013. The purpose of the CEP is to serve
as a bridge and conduit between SCE and the local community.
The 18 members of the CEP represent a range of
stakeholders, from environmental NGO's and Native American
tribes to business and organized labor. More than half are
local elected officials, from Oceanside to Dana Point, sworn to
represent the best interests of their constituents. All of us
are volunteers.
The three officers--including Chairman Dr. David Victor of
UCSD; myself, Vice Chairman; and Jerry Kern, immediate past
city council member from Oceanside--provide input to SCE on
agenda topics and public engagement. We hold quarterly meetings
and periodic workshops. All are open to the public for
transparency. Meetings are webcast live, and video recordings
are posted online. We provide at least one full hour at every
meeting for public input.
Over the past five years, the CEP has addressed a wide
range of issues that are important to the local communities.
But I have learned that they really boil down to two. The first
one is safely managing the spent fuel that's onsite, and No. 2
is safely removing the spent fuel from the site.
Let me first address onsite storage, and more specifically
dry cask storage. This is what we on the CEP have come to call
defense-in-depth for dry cask storage. Defense-in-depth means
looking at the full complement of means to support safe onsite
storage of spent fuel. This starts with the design and
fabrication of the spent fuel canisters, while also considering
operation, maintenance, and security, as well as canister
inspections and, if needed, remediation of a compromised
canister.
Over the past five years we've had 21 meetings, many
workshops, and dry cask storage has been the topic or has been
included in every single one of those meetings. As a result of
these meetings, SCE has taken concrete steps to address areas
of concern of the general public. One such step is laser
peening the welds of the new canisters to minimize the risk of
chloride-induced stress corrosion cracking of the canister
shells. They have also agreed to provide radiation monitoring
as long as the fuel is onsite.
The second important issue is safely moving the spent fuel
offsite. Over the years, most but not all members of the local
community have expressed an interest in moving the spent fuel
offsite from San Onofre to a federally licensed storage or
disposal facility. Off-site storage has also been addressed at
every single CEP meeting.
The ongoing costs are also a very important consideration
as the schedule for the Department of Energy to remove spent
fuel continues to slip. The 2018 audit report of the Office of
the Inspector General estimates the slippage cost to the
American taxpayer of over $35 billion. This translates to over
$2.2 million per day that we don't move the fuel.
To address offsite storage, in 2017 Chairman David Victor
delivered testimony before the House Oversight and Government
Reform Subcommittee on Interior, Energy, and Environment.
David, Jerry, and I, and other CEP members, have met and
continue to meet with members of the California congressional
delegation to advance Federal legislation for spent fuel.
Congressional outreach is part of a broader effort to try to
effect changes to the Nuclear Waste Policy Act and enable solid
interim storage and permanent disposal.
I sincerely appreciate the requests by Representatives
Rouda, Levin, and others for $25 million in the Energy and
Water Appropriations bill to help fund CIS, transportation, and
infrastructure.
On behalf of the SONGS Community Engagement Panel, let me
close by thanking you for making this a top priority of your
administrations. We look forward to congressional action to
safely remove the spent fuel from San Onofre.
With the passage of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982,
Congress made a solemn promise to the American people. To date,
that promise remains unfulfilled. We are counting on you to
keep this promise and solve this seemingly intractable problem
once and for all. Thank you.
Mr. Rouda. Thank you, Mr. Stetson.
Now I recognize you, Mr. Isaacs, for five minutes for your
opening statement.
STATEMENT OF TOM ISAACS, FORMER LEAD ADVISOR, BLUE RIBBON
COMMISSION ON AMERICA'S NUCLEAR FUTURE
Mr. Isaacs. Thank you very much. Thank you for the
opportunity to testify, and I am pleased that you and other
Members of Congress are focusing on this important issue.
In 2010, the Administration halted the extensive yet
controversial work on Yucca Mountain, calling the program
``unworkable.'' The Secretary of Energy was directed by the
President to establish a Blue Ribbon Commission, or BRC. The
BRC was co-chaired by General Brent Scowcroft, a Republican and
national security adviser to two U.S. presidents, and
Congressman Lee Hamilton, a Democrat and 17-term member of the
U.S. House of Representatives and Vice-Chair of the 9/11
Commission.
After two years of work by the 16 distinguished
commissioners on the BRC, we produced a report entitled ``Blue
Ribbon Commission Report on America's Nuclear Future.'' The
report put forward eight fundamental recommendations. I will
not describe all of them here as the report is readily
available online, but four stand out.
The first recommendation was that the program should move
forward with consent-based siting; that is, new facilities
dedicated to the storage and disposal of spent nuclear fuel
should be sited in locations where there would be adequate
consent by those who would be affected.
The second recommendation was that the program be moved
from the Department of Energy and established as a stand-alone
organization focused solely on this challenge. This was not so
much a criticism of DOE as a recognition that to establish the
requisite program stability, trust, and confidence required a
dedicated program over decades and a degree of buffering from
short-term political considerations.
The third and fourth recommendations called for prompt
actions dedicated to siting and building both interim storage
and final disposal facilities for spent nuclear fuel.
I believe that the Nation owes all of us a pragmatic and
timely solution to nuclear waste management. There are a number
of compelling reasons that spent nuclear fuel should be moved
from reactor sites everywhere, but particularly where reactors
have been shut down. These arguments include economics,
national security, and environmental considerations, and the
BRC report describes them in detail.
Disposal in a deep, stable, underground repository is the
preferred solution for every country that is addressing this
issue, and this has been the case for decades. There is an
international consensus and confidence that such repositories
can be licensed, constructed, operated, and then closed,
permanently isolating the waste from the accessible
environment.
The U.S. Government has been liable for the delays which
are costing taxpayers billions of dollars, and the liabilities
continue to grow. Shut-down sites should have their spent fuel
removed to allow for full decommissioning of the sites and
their return to productive use. The central reason I believe
that waste must be removed is simple: it is the right thing to
do. When communities, regions, and states accepted the siting
of nuclear power plants in their vicinity, they did not sign up
to be the host of these waste facilities located on the surface
forever. We should not leave a legacy to our children and our
children's children to clean up after us because we did not
have the political will to meet our responsibilities.
So what are we going to do? The first problem, in my view,
is the mistaken view that there is little or no crisis here,
and since any solution is politically charged, the easiest path
at any point in time is to do nothing. As I have stated, we owe
it to ourselves, future generations, and the rest of the world
who look to us for leadership to solve this highly solvable
problem.
Second, we need to understand and respect that there are
differing views by responsible people who truly want to solve
this issue. We are unlikely to get there as long as this is
viewed as a win-lose situation.
Third, we need to establish a national waste program that
has the requisite talent, stability, flexibility, and access to
the required funding to do the job and work every day to earn
the trust and confidence of affected parties.
Fourth, we need a vibrant program to demonstrate our
commitment to success and to reassert our international
leadership and lead by example to ensure that safety, nuclear
security, non-proliferation, and counterterrorism remain
effective across the globe.
Let me conclude by quoting from the Blue Ribbon Commission
report. ``The problem of nuclear waste may be unique in the
sense that there is wide agreement about the outlines of the
solution. Simply put, we know what we have to do, we know we
have to do it, and we even know how to do it. Experience in the
United States and abroad has shown that suitable sites for deep
geologic repositories can be identified and developed. The
knowledge and experience we need are in hand, and the necessary
funds have been collected. Rather, the core difficulty remains
what it has always been, finding a way to site these inherently
controversial facilities and to conduct the waste management
program in a manner that allows all stakeholders, but most
especially host states, tribes, and communities, to conclude
that their interests have been adequately protected and their
well-being enhanced, not merely sacrificed or overridden by the
interests of the country as a whole. An informed and empowered
public, a national waste program dedicated to excellence and
engagement, and a Congress and Administration that sees the
solution as a fundamental responsibility are among the key next
steps for our shared success.''
Mr. Rouda. Thank you, Mr. Isaacs.
Mr. Morris, the Chair now recognizes you for five minutes
for an opening statement.
STATEMENT OF SCOTT MORRIS, REGION IV ADMINISTRATOR, U.S.
NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION, REGION IV
Mr. Morris. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good afternoon,
Chairman Rouda, Ranking Member Comer, Congressman Levin. My
name is Scott Morris, and I am the Administrator for the U.S.
Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Region IV Office based in
Arlington, Texas. I am a 26-year veteran of the agency and a
retired U.S. Navy nuclear submarine officer.
I appreciate the opportunity to testify before you today to
discuss the NRC's role and responsibilities associated with the
oversight of high-level radioactive waste. I will also provide
the status on licensing a permanent deep geologic repository
and an overview of the NRC's reviews associated with two
proposed interim spent fuel storage facilities. Finally, I will
describe the NRC's oversight of the handling and storage of
high-level radioactive waste at the Nation's current and former
commercial power reactor sites.
The NRC was designated by statute as the independent
regulator for overseeing the design, construction, operation,
and eventual closure of a geologic repository for the permanent
disposal of high-level radioactive waste at Yucca Mountain,
Nevada. In 2008, the NRC received a license application from
the U.S. Department of Energy, which is responsible for siting,
constructing, and operating the repository. The NRC completed
its safety evaluation report for the application in January
2015 and supplement to DOE's final environmental impact
statement in 2016.
With two exceptions related to land and water use, the NRC
staff concluded in its safety evaluation report that DOE's
application met all applicable requirements for issuance of the
construction authorization. However, the final decision on
whether to authorize construction cannot be made until an
adjudicatory hearing is completed and the Commission completes
its review of contested and uncontested issues. The
adjudicatory hearing associated with the application was
suspended in 2011.
Over the past three years, the NRC has received two
applications for consolidated interim storage facilities, one
from the Interim Storage Partners for a facility in Texas, and
a second from Holtec International for a facility in New
Mexico. The NRC staff had anticipated completing its review and
issuing final licensing decisions for both applications in the
summer of 2020. However, the schedule for both applications is
expected to change based on the completeness and the timeliness
of answers to staff questions on the applications and whether
or not evidentiary hearings will be held.
So until a permanent repository or a consolidated interim
storage facility is licensed and operational, NRC licensees may
store spent fuel in spent fuel pools or in dry storage casks.
The NRC has determined that both methods of storage are
adequate to protect public health and safety and the
environment. Dry storage casks can be arranged in vertical,
horizontal, or underground systems at the plant site, known as
independent spent fuel storage installations, or simply ISFSIs.
The NRC reviews all spent fuel storage cask system designs
before they are certified for use to ensure that they can
protect against natural phenomenon such as seismic events,
tornadoes, flooding, and can also withstand the potential
impacts from airborne debris or accidental drops of storage and
handling equipment.
NRC regulations do not specify a maximum time for storing
spent fuel. The Commission has determined that spent fuel can
be stored safely in a pool or dry storage cask for at least 120
years. Dry storage casks are licensed or certified for up to 40
years, with possible renewals of up to 40 years.
In conclusion, NRC licensees are safely handling and
storing spent fuel, and the agency will continue to provide
oversight to ensure adequate protection of the public health
and safety and the environment.
Chairman Rouda, Ranking Member Comer, Congressman Levin,
this concludes my prepared remarks. Thank you for the
opportunity today, and I will be pleased to respond to your
questions.
Mr. Rouda. Thank you, Mr. Morris.
Thanks to all of you for your opening comments.
I am going to reserve my opening five minutes of questions
and yield to the distinguished member from Kentucky, the
Ranking Member, Mr. Comer, for five minutes of questions.
Mr. Comer. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. Again, I thank
the witnesses for their testimony.
Before I ask a couple of questions, I just want to make
certain here that the entire panel agrees that the current
business model to store nuclear waste is unsustainable;
correct? Everyone agrees with that.
Mr. Isaacs, one of the things that wasn't really touched
upon in the testimony was the potential threat of terrorist
attacks, the homeland security risk. Do you believe that most
commercial nuclear power plants where nuclear fuel is stored
are safe from potential terrorist attacks?
Mr. Isaacs. I believe that this has been looked at quite
closely by the NRC, and they have found that when you look at
credible potential incidents, that these facilities have been
adequately designed and implemented to be protective. But I
would ask my colleague to perhaps talk more about that.
Mr. Comer. Mr. Morris?
Mr. Morris. Yes, thank you. We do have a robust regulatory
regime in place to ensure adequate protection of the spent fuel
in either type of installation. In addition to ensuring their
compliance through the licensing process, we also provide
robust and routine oversight to ensure that those measures
continue to remain in place and are reliable.
Mr. Comer. What about the transportation process and the
risks of terrorist threats? If you are transporting--if we can
get to a consensus on, for example, Yucca Mountain, what is the
potential threat there? I am sure that is something that has
been studied thoroughly, as well.
Mr. Morris. It has, and with respect to transporting high-
level radioactive waste, there really are at least two Federal
entities that are actively involved. Of course, the NRC,
because we are the ones that approve the designs for transfer
casks, and I will just note for the record that the type of
design and the testing that those transfer casks have to endure
are pretty robust and involve extreme temperatures, impacts,
full submersion, et cetera.
So we regulate, the NRC regulates the transport mechanism
itself and how the licensee loads the fuel into those. The
Department of Transportation is responsible for the driver,
whatever vehicle is used to transport the cask, and we work
with the Department of Transportation to identify and approve
prior to shipment secure transport paths.
Mr. Comer. Before I yield back, I just want to say that I
look forward to working with you, Mr. Chairman, to try to come
up with a solution, a sustainable solution. In my district in
Kentucky, we have a uranium enrichment site that is being
deactivated. It is right on the Ohio River, I mean literally
right on the Ohio River, and I think this is an issue that
everyone has mentioned is bipartisan, and it is an issue that
affects probably a majority of Members of Congress, and it is
something that I appreciate the purpose of this hearing and
look forward to finding a solution.
With that, I yield back, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Rouda. Thank you.
At this time, I recognize Congressman Levin for five
minutes of questions.
Mr. Levin. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Morris, thank you for generally being available, for
taking the time to brief me on a number of occasions. I look
forward to our continued opportunities to work together.
Mr. Morris. You are welcome.
Mr. Levin. I want to begin. I want to get through quite a
few questions with you. I wanted to start with some basic yes-
or-no questions.
Is it true that the NRC found that the near-miss incident
at SONGS was caused by deficiencies in Southern California
Edison's training, equipment, procedures, and oversight?
Mr. Morris. Yes.
Mr. Levin. Did the NRC find that Southern California
Edison's staff at SONGS were not properly trained, certified,
and supervised?
Mr. Morris. Yes.
Mr. Levin. Is it true that Southern California Edison
failed to formally report the near-miss incident within the
timeframe required by the NRC?
Mr. Morris. Yes.
Mr. Levin. And is it true that a similar event had
previously taken place at SONGS but Southern California Edison
didn't take corrective action to ensure it wouldn't happen
again?
Mr. Morris. Yes.
Mr. Levin. With these findings in mind--and this is not a
yes-or-no question--can you please explain to us why the NRC
fined Southern California Edison $116,000 earlier this year?
Mr. Morris. Absolutely, and I will try to be brief. Once we
became aware of the incident, we constituted a special
inspection team, a team of experts that we sent from our
Arlington Office who spent a week onsite. They worked closely
to understand the circumstances around the incident, and in
subsequent weeks and months continued to work with Edison to
fully understand the root causes of their event, and I think it
is fair to say that we provided a lot of input into that
process to ensure that their causal analysis was comprehensive.
We then looked at the corrective actions that they
developed to address those issues, and we ultimately satisfied
ourselves that the corrective actions that they initiated were
appropriate and robust. Of course, we will continue to inspect
and assure going forward that they are maintained. But the
enforcement action, the two key elements of that were that
Edison, the licensee, failed to operate the system in
accordance with its license design approved by the NRC, and
they failed to report it in a timely manner, and those two
factors alone were the basis for our enforcement.
Mr. Levin. Thank you, Mr. Morris. Along with the fine,
Edison was assessed Level 2 and 3 violations, which the NRC
refers to as escalated violations and significant enforcement
actions. Is it common for NRC licensees to receive Level 2
violations?
Mr. Morris. It is quite uncommon. The incident at Edison
was unprecedented in terms of the level of significance.
Mr. Levin. So as I mentioned in my opening statement, my
colleagues and I wrote to the NRC and Region IV urging you to
assign a full-time inspector to SONGS. We haven't received a
response from the chair, but Region IV has told our staff that
instead of a full-time inspector, you will have ``unannounced
inspections on a frequent basis.''
Do you have the authority to assign a full-time inspector
to SONGS?
Mr. Morris. It is actually a matter of policy. We implement
the policy, and----
Mr. Levin. But you have the legal authority.
Mr. Morris. Oh, yes. The Commission certainly does.
Mr. Levin. So I again strongly urge you to do so. Your
testimony today has illustrated the unique situation at SONGS
and the urgency, and the site's disappointing track record with
regard to transparency and reporting, which I think warrants
this unusual measure.
With the time that I have--and I have more questions for a
second round. So, Mr. Chairman, we will hopefully get to that.
Mr. Isaacs, I wanted to thank you for bringing your
expertise and experience to today's hearing. Do you think that
a commercial reactor site located near an active fault is less
safe than one located in an area without any earthquake hazard?
Mr. Isaacs. Sure.
Mr. Levin. And do you think larger populations near
commercial reactor sites increase the risk associated with the
site?
Mr. Isaacs. In general, yes.
Mr. Levin. So the Blue Ribbon Commission report that you
referred to discussed a new approach to prioritizing the
transfer of spent fuel from reactor sites and said the
prioritization policy, and I quote, ``should be driven first by
safety and risk considerations.'' The Blue Ribbon Commission
also found that there is significant cost savings associated
with accepting spent fuel from decommissioned sites first. As I
discussed earlier, I have introduced a bill that would
prioritize the removal of spent fuel from decommissioned
nuclear reactor sites in areas with larger populations and
higher seismic risk. Do you agree that we should be considering
environmental externalities when we prioritize spent fuel for
removal?
Mr. Isaacs. Yes. I think we should do a very careful and
thorough systems study to look at all of the potential benefits
and risks of various schemes for picking up spent fuel when it
is possible to do so, and prioritize the pick-up of the spent
fuel, the actual operation based on optimizing in terms of
cost, environmental concerns, safety concerns.
Mr. Levin. Thank you, Mr. Isaacs.
I am out of time, for now. I hope we have another round,
Mr. Chairman. Thank you.
Mr. Rouda. Thank you, Congressman Levin. You raised an
interesting point.
This is going to be a little less formal than a typical
committee meeting in the sense that I am going to enter into
some questions shortly, and at the conclusion of my five
minutes I am going to allow the three of us to really ask
questions of all of you and hopefully have a more open
narrative than the structure of a typical committee meeting.
And I am also hopeful at the end that we might have--if there
are any important final comments any of you would like to get
out before we break up, that would be welcome. We will also
have some questions that I have received from people around the
country who want to ask questions, so there will be a few
questions there as well.
One housekeeping. I would like to recognize that Supervisor
Bartlett and Mayor Jennings from Laguna Niguel, and current
Council member and former Mayor Toni Iseman from Laguna Beach
are here, and we appreciate having their support and presence
here as well.
So I am going to yield myself five minutes for questions.
Mr. Isaacs, I am going to start with you because we sat
next to each other at a meeting at SONGS I guess maybe six
weeks ago or so, and if I recall correctly you shared with me
at that meeting that part of the issue as to why we have not
had a long-term solution was because initially when we started
building nuclear power plants, the first one in 1958 and many
more in the `60's, we never thought we were going to have any
nuclear waste that needed to be stored. Did I recall that
correctly?
Mr. Isaacs. Almost. What I sort of said and I think is true
is when I started my career in those days, a stock answer to
the question of why don't we build a repository was largely if
we built one, it would stand empty. And the reason for that was
there was every expectation at that point in time that there
would be a massive growth of nuclear power plants. In fact, the
standard planning objectives in those times were 1,000 reactors
by the year 2000. We fell short, of course, by 900 reactors.
The expectation at that point in time was if we have that
many reactors, at some point we are going to start running out
of uranium. It is going to get scarce, and it is going to get
very expensive. So what we should do is prepare to reprocess
that spent fuel to extract out the unused uranium and probably
the plutonium that is produced and recycle it back into
reactors. And the truth is, if we went to these advanced
reactors, which is where I started my career, designing them,
you wouldn't have to mine another pound of uranium for
centuries. The uranium that is already mined is there. So it
was very appealing in that sense.
So if you were going to reprocess the spent fuel, which we
wound up not doing because the nuclear industry did not
continue to grow the way we anticipated, then we found
ourselves in a situation which I think was unfortunate, and we
should have built one. Where we had an expectation that we were
going to be reprocessing, we would then take the spent fuel,
extract the waste, and then we would put the waste only into a
repository, so that would be the time to build it.
Mr. Rouda. So, in essence, the continued supply of uranium
has not created the market demand for the reprocessing of spent
nuclear fuel?
Mr. Isaacs. I would say in most cases that is true. There
are a couple of countries that have invested in reprocessing,
France being the most notable case. They have reprocessed fuel.
They have put the unused parts of that back into reactors. That
doesn't avoid the need for a repository, whether you reprocess
or not. That is the part I want to make clear. As I think I
told Congressman Levin, there is no magic machine out there
that is going to avoid the need for an ultimate permanent
disposal.
Mr. Rouda. And, Mr. Morris, that confirms the conversation
we had earlier too, that even if we did reprocess/recycle, we
would never get to a zero amount of spent nuclear fuel that
would have to be deposited somewhere.
Mr. Morris. That is correct.
Mr. Rouda. Okay, thank you.
Mr. Hancock, we talked a little bit earlier too about the
standards for the long-term entombment of spent nuclear waste,
and there is a debate about what those standards should be. But
my guess is that the standards are within a window as to what
the experts believe they should be, and I guess my question is
couldn't we as a country right now be identifying multiple
sites in the United States that are within the parameters of
the potential standards being set forth by various experts and
begin a market-based process to determine multiple sites,
rather than putting all of our efforts into one egg in the
basket, which was Yucca Mountain?
Mr. Hancock. Well, as I have said, I think Yucca Mountain
should be stopped, and I think that is, frankly, a crucial
first step, because to have this program that you are talking
about with standards and looking at multiple sites, that
hopefully is also going to have a consent basis to it and have
multiple sites. People need to be confident that Congress means
what it says about consent. Nevada has said no, will continue
to say no. You can't say you are doing a consent program and
have the first repository in a non-consenting state.
Mr. Rouda. So assume consent is there by the appropriate
jurisdictions, and the geologic conditions are favorable to the
agreed upon standards, and that the economics are also
agreeable to the local municipality, as well as the state
municipality. Does it make sense, with a market-based approach,
to have multiple sites?
Mr. Hancock. Yes, there would have to be multiple sites,
technically as well as whatever market incentives that you put
in, because people have to understand that this is a shared
responsibility.
Mr. Rouda. Okay. Simultaneously with identifying sites that
work--and I am going to turn to you now, Mr. Stetson--is making
sure that we have the appropriate transportation system in
effect to be able to move the waste, and maybe there are others
who want to weigh in on this as well. But that is certainly one
of the issues that goes along with where we house it, how do we
get it there.
I do know the United States Department of Defense is
transferring spent nuclear fuel on a daily basis around the
country; am I correct? Maybe not a daily basis, but on a
regular basis. So this isn't something that we have no
experience doing. We have experience transporting spent nuclear
fuel. But is it unique with the reactor spent fuel? Does it
require additional logistics, additional safety concerns?
Please elaborate on that, if you would.
Mr. Stetson. Actually, I think Mr. Morris or Mr. Isaacs
would be better prepared than I would to answer those
questions.
Mr. Rouda. Thank you.
Mr. Morris. The transportation issue obviously is a key
issue, and the casks, the transport casks that we have licensed
and certified are extremely robust. I mentioned that they have
to endure pretty violent tests--in succession, I might add--of
a violent impact, excessive heat for extended periods of time,
and then full submersion, in sequence. So these are extremely
robust transfer casks.
The issue of the safe transport of the cask itself--and, by
the way, the fuel itself, as such, the fuel inside the transfer
cask will remain safe under those circumstances. The transport
vehicle itself is something that the Department of
Transportation is actively pursuing. But the third leg of that
stool is the transportation route that is used to ensure that
it is not only a safe route but a secure one as well.
Mr. Rouda. Then one other question before I open it up to
my colleagues here to continue asking questions, and I am going
to use SONGS as an example.
So if SONGS, if somehow the existing dry storage was
breached, breached by terrorist attack from the outside,
terrorist attack from somebody on the inside, a potential
earthquake that could cause a spill, a significant spill, what
would be the protocol at that point as far as addressing the
spill and addressing the 8.1 million people living within 50
miles?
Mr. Morris. I guess I will start. So we do have, in fact, a
very comprehensive, as I mentioned earlier, security aspect to
ensure that the onsite security force can repel a very
substantial adversary force, and it includes--I can't get into
details, but vehicle bombs and armed adversaries, insiders, the
whole bit, for the fuel that is in the pool.
For the fuel that is in the dry casks, the nature of the
storage makes it such that it is very self-protecting and
doesn't require as much security infrastructure to protect.
That being said, if there were some sort of breach, we have
also got very robust requirements associated with emergency
planning and incident response.
But, frankly, the radiological risks associated with a
shutdown reactor, particularly when the fuel has had the
opportunity to cool for many years, simply aren't as
significant from a hazard standpoint, particularly an offsite
hazard standpoint, than would be for an operating reactor. And
as such, our requirements reflect that.
Mr. Rouda. But just to push a little bit further, if there
was a breach and there was a spill, what would the protocol be?
Mr. Morris. Well, the NRC--initially the licensee would
report the incident. They are obligated to report that incident
within 15 minutes to the state and local authorities. They are
obligated to report that to us in the Federal Government within
an hour. And at that point the entirety of the national
response framework would be engaged, which involves a large
array of not only Federal entities but they would be in support
of the state and local entities. The county emergency
supervisor and the local emergency services directors have
worked together to ensure that, particularly for an operating
reactor, they understand the protocols. They have worked
together, they have practiced together, they know each other
well and can quickly and efficiently respond under those
circumstances.
So on a shutdown, decommissioned reactor, the plan changes
slightly. The offsite emergency planning licensees can ask for
an exemption for that, which we have typically granted, simply
because the radiological hazard is not as significant as it
once was in the operating reactor. And as such, offsite state
and local response agencies defer to what is called an all-
hazards plan. So there is a standard plan for responding to
emergencies, the all-hazards plan, and this would fall within
that, and they would come to the aid of Edison to the extent it
was needed.
Mr. Rouda. Yes, Mr. Issa?
Mr. Issa. Sometimes it pays to be a former government
official. A little piece of history.
During the operation of SONGS, and during that period of
time--and I am going to be brief and less accurate than some of
these folks could be--the operating plan both for a failure of
the pooled storage and a possible catastrophic failure of one
of the active reactors included a pretty massive withdrawal of
more than a million people from the surrounding area. It
included the backup facility of the Marines at Camp Pendleton
to provide safety. It included the shutdown of Interstate 5
and, quite frankly, impacted the operation of the new State 15,
meaning there was effectively no north-south route for over 10
million Californians to take, and, for that matter, all the
international traffic.
So the reason I bring it up is that as they finally get the
last of the liquid storage into dry casks, that does change,
and I think the experts would agree that it reduces. What
doesn't reduce, though, is that if your catastrophic example of
a terrorist attack were to cause a breach of these massive
concrete casks such that you would have exposed high-level
radioactive material, if, for example, those casks were
sitting--and I am going to use the example that the two
Californians brought up because I think it is a good one. If it
was sitting right at the corner of Fort Irwin, 29 Palms and
Andrews, if it were sitting out in the California desert 70
miles from the nearest town, then the answer would be that you
would have to bring people in in HAZMAT suits and do the
repair.
Clearly, as the former representative of this district, if
it were to happen where they currently are, it would clearly
shut down Interstate 5. It would impact the operation of the
base, of ocean traffic, of air traffic for a protracted period
of time, and I think that is the important question you deserve
an answer for. As long as these are there, as remote as the
possibility is, your example of a deliberate attack leading to
a breach is dramatically different if it is here versus the
desert, even of California.
Mr. Rouda. Thank you for that clarification, because I had
the opportunity to tour the Port of Long Beach last week. When
you take the Port of Long Beach and the Port of L.A. into
account together, 40 percent of the goods that come into our
country via ship come in through those ports, which would be
within that radius we talked about earlier.
With that, I will open it up to the other members here to
ask additional questions.
Mr. Levin. Mr. Stetson, a few questions for you.
On May 15, the Orange County Register published an article
entitled ``Moving Nuclear Waste at San Onofre Sparks War of
Words Between Contractor and Community Panel.'' You are the
Vice Chair of that panel. Dr. Victor is not here, so I am going
to direct these to you.
The article describes a letter that you and Community
Engagement Panel leadership sent to Southern California Edison
that outlines concerns with Holtec's management of canister
downloading at SONGS, as well as its corporate governance.
Holtec responded to you by describing your letter as,
quote, ``irresponsible claptrap.''
Chair Rouda, I ask unanimous consent that the Community
Engagement Panel letter to Southern California Edison and
Holtec's letter to the Community Engagement Panel in response
are included in the hearing record.
Mr. Rouda. Without objection, so ordered.
[The information referred to follows:]
Mr. Levin. Mr. Stetson, can you please describe for us the
concerns that you and Dr. Victor and others on the CEP have
with Holtec, the company's governance, and its actions at
SONGS?
Mr. Stetson. Certainly. As you know, there were four
instances during the transfer of spent fuel that came to our
attention. No. 1 were the shims. No. 2 was the incident in
August. There was also some concern about a seismic restraint,
and also some scratches. We felt that Holtec, while addressing
them afterwards, that those events should never have happened.
So on the basis of those events, we wrote the letter to
Southern California Edison pointing out that we thought that
there should be some additional concern and oversight with
reference to what Holtec was doing. Southern California
responded.
Also, of course, there was the NRC investigation over all
of those things.
So we felt that the intent of the letter met our concerns
and the response from Southern California Edison was
appropriate for what happened.
Mr. Levin. And how about Holtec's letter to Dr. Victor?
What was your response to that, or your reaction to that?
Mr. Stetson. Well, I have to say that we were a little
surprised by the letter itself. We can understand their
concerns, but we felt that it was appropriate primarily to
address it since Southern California Edison is the one that is
the primary party involved, that really our efforts should be
directed with Southern California Edison and we should not get
back and forth in any sort of duel with Holtec.
Mr. Levin. Well, I hope that members of the public that
haven't had the opportunity to read the letter from Holtec to
my friend David Victor, who is a volunteer Chair of the
Community Engagement Panel and a professor at UC San Diego with
whom I work on a number of issues, I hope you have a chance to
read this letter because I find it concerning, particularly
from a company that is not just responsible for the canisters
at San Onofre but also for roughly half of our Nation's spent
nuclear fuel across the country. In fact, they are one of the
two applicants for a consolidated interim storage site in New
Mexico. So I think this is something that everyone needs to
realize.
Mr. Morris, last week the NRC announced that it had given
Edison permission to resume loading canisters at SONGS. We had
a meeting subsequent to that, and the NRC has since told the
public and Congress that it could take Edison multiple weeks
before it is physically prepared to resume loading, and that
Edison will tell you, the NRC, before it does so.
My question for you is very simple, another yes-or-no. Will
you commit to informing Orange County and San Diego area
Members of Congress, like me and Chair Rouda and others in the
San Diego delegation, and the Orange County delegation,
immediately after Edison informs you of their intent to resume
loading?
Mr. Morris. Absolutely.
Mr. Levin. Thank you.
Mr. Isaacs, in your testimony you mentioned a number of
countries--Finland, Sweden, France, Canada--all of whom have
national nuclear waste programs that are making progress. When
we met recently you also discussed a term that I hadn't heard
but that I was definitely impressed by, ``adaptive phased
management,'' which I understand is a long-term spent fuel
management strategy in Canada, one that you pointed to as a
gold standard.
Could you describe adaptive phased management and how we
should apply it to San Onofre?
Mr. Isaacs. Sure. So, adaptive phased management--I might,
if it is all right, take a step back and say that the Canadian
program was run technically very, very well early on. When I
was in the government, we used to collaborate with them. And
then the program was stopped by an independent panel who said
that from a scientific and technical point of view, the program
was very well run. From what they called the social license
point of view, it was not. And so the program was taken away.
Canada passed a new law in 2002 and created a new
organization called the Nuclear Waste Management Organization
to take responsibility for that. They came up with a dual
approach to how to approach this issue. Canada has a lot of
spent nuclear fuel. They have a scientific and technical
method, which is very similar to what we want to do, which is
to ultimately dispose of it in a deep geological repository,
and a management approach, so science and management.
The management approach is called adaptive phased
management. What that says is you keep your eye on the ultimate
goal. The ultimate goal is safe, permanent isolation of this
waste from the accessible environment. But we know that these
programs take a very, very long time, generations, to
implement, even if you are on schedule, generations.
So every once in a while, as you reach a certain point, it
makes sense to sort of pause and ask yourself I know what my
goal is, but are there things that have happened in the
intervening time that might make it prudent to revisit certain
aspects of the program? Maybe science and technology has
advanced. Maybe politics have changed. Maybe the value system
in the country has changed, or in the region has changed, and
ask yourself am I still making the prudent decisions going
forward, or can I improve.
One of the aspects of effective management is continuous
improvement. You shouldn't rest on what you have. You should
always ask yourself can I do better. That is, in essence, what
adaptive phased management is, and I think as it might apply to
Southern California Edison or any other utility in a similar
circumstance, it would be a prudent thing to every once in a
while take a pause at an appropriate time and ask yourself are
there things that I might learn and do to improve the program.
Mr. Levin. So I would offer in that spirit that this is
exactly the time for Southern California Edison and the NRC to
do that, to look at the practices that are occurring onsite,
the selection of the Holtec canisters, the procedures that have
led to the scratching and gouging of canisters, that may lead
to unnecessary public risk, and to assess and to take the time
to be prudent and cautious to assess whether these are the
safest practices moving forward. I can tell you that I believe
the San Diego and Orange County delegation in Congress insists
that you do that.
And I will yield back to the Chair.
[Applause.]
Mr. Rouda. I am going to start with Mr. Isaacs. But again,
anybody can jump in if you have additional input. But I do want
to dig in deeper on market-based solutions, and I also want to
look at that from a midterm and a long-term solution. There was
also another variable or another option in there, and I don't
recall what it was called, but instead of having nuclear waste
go into long-term underground repositories, I believe I read
somewhere about the idea of a midterm situation where it can
provide a solution for maybe a couple of hundred years, but
then there is another continued effort to move it into another
spot.
I just want you to elaborate on all of this because we have
to start identifying solutions and moving the existing 100
sites to midterm/long-term solutions. So if you could help us
and these folks here understand a little bit more.
Mr. Isaacs. First of all, I think you have done a very nice
job just now explaining the situation. It is my view, and it
was the view of the Blue Ribbon Commission, that--there has
been this view for quite some time, by the way--that we need
both interim storage, centralized or regional interim storage,
and we need an ultimate final repository for permanent
disposal.
This waste, as has been mentioned by you, is hazardous
potentially for very long periods of time, geologic time
periods. So the consensus is that while we can store the waste
safely for decades, generations, it requires active
administrative control to assure that, and if you stored it
long enough, ultimately those containers would have to be
unloaded, and the waste would have to be loaded into new
containers, and that seems to be, to everyone who has looked at
it in this country and abroad, not a very pragmatic solution.
So the answer was we should come up with a solution that
allows for but doesn't require active administrative control,
and as early as 1957 our National Academy of Sciences wrote a
report saying we think the best preferred solution is to find a
deep, stable geologic formation, make sure that it is operating
the way we think it is, put the waste in there, watch it for a
period of time, a few decades, and if it is working well, put
the plug on.
And now you can watch it, monitor it if you want, but you
don't have to worry about 1,000 years, 10,000, 100,000 years of
safety. The geology and the engineering that you do in there
should do the job.
So that is the general approach. But building a repository
takes a long, long time, as we have seen. Even if we got the
program restarted, it is going to take decades. And it seems
prudent to me and to others that we should find one or more
places that are dedicated to managing spent fuel. These reactor
sites, San Onofre and elsewhere, when they were developed, part
of the bargain was not, oh, and by the way, you are going to
have this waste forever, so you need to plan on managing it
forever.
So there ought to be places put together in appropriate
locations for management, temporary storage, ``temporary''
meaning in nuclear waste terms--decades, generations--to
transfer that waste in an orderly fashion from the reactors,
particularly from shut-down reactors, so that you can offload
the spent fuel, decommission those reactors that are shut down,
and put that land again into useful use in the locations where
they are located.
Mr. Rouda. But from a regulatory framework--and, Mr.
Hancock, perhaps you can take this; and, Mr. Morris, you as
well--from a regulatory framework, is it easier to site spent
nuclear fuel in a regional facility that is more short term
than long term? Or are we jumping through the same hurdles and
hoops and timeframes?
Mr. Morris. Is it easier? I don't know----
Mr. Rouda. That is a very relative term.
Mr. Morris. Yes. I don't know that it is easier. I mean,
when it comes to----
Mr. Rouda. Let me ask you this: Is it a shorter timeframe?
Mr. Morris. To do the interim storage?
Mr. Rouda. Yes.
Mr. Morris. Well, based on the current track we are on, I
expect that we will be in a position to make a final licensing
decision on the New Mexico and Texas applications in the next
two years. I mean, the original plan, as I said, was 2020. That
has been delayed a bit for the reasons I mentioned. Certainly,
when the contentions get resolved, that may result in hearings,
et cetera. But it is likelier on a faster path than where we
are at currently with Yucca Mountain.
Mr. Rouda. Okay.
Mr. Hancock. So, two points. NRC has only talked about the
sites underway. It already licensed a consolidated interim
storage site for 40,000 metric tons of fuel at private fuel
storage in Utah. That was done in 2006. So a site exists, but
it hasn't been used, and it won't be used for a couple of
reasons.
One, there is strong opposition in Utah to it, another
state, by the way, without reactors. Why are we only looking at
states without reactors for either interim or long-term
disposal? So that is one point.
The other point that I think is important to remember is
that more than 90 percent of that spent fuel that you talked
about in your opening statement, Mr. Chairman, is east of the
100th meridian, quite a ways away from where we are. So there
has got to be responsibility, management and otherwise, taken
by folks in that eastern part of the country for interim
storage. That is where it is. They are going to have to take
responsibility. Many of these plants are planning to be open
for 40 more years, so they are going to be storing more waste
at those sites for this period of time.
As I mentioned, if you really want to think about
incentives, the people who currently have the best incentives
to keep spent fuel safe are the people who have the spent fuel
because they don't want accidents for liability, and operating
power plants can't operate if they are having accidents.
So I would really encourage some discussion with the
nuclear industry about what kind of incentives they need in
order to talk about one or more, probably multiple,
consolidated storage sites.
Mr. Rouda. And, Mike, I will get back to you here in a
moment.
Another question that came up I think somewhat--Mr. Morris,
you perhaps flagged this for me to ask--is what are other
countries doing? What is our concern with other countries
around the world? I recognize that France and many of our
European allies probably have sophisticated ways to manage this
process, including Canada. Are there any countries that we are
concerned about? Because I think what you are alluding to, when
you start looking at 100 years out, 200 years out, 300 years
out, the financial viability of any country at that time, which
we do not know what it will be, their ability to manage a
nuclear waste issue that is going to be around for tens of
thousands of years, what is already the potential concern we
are seeing in other countries' ability or inability to
adequately address spent nuclear fuel?
Mr. Morris. Well, I don't know that I am prepared to answer
the question about what the status of other countries is.
Perhaps Mr. Isaacs or somebody else on the panel would be
better suited.
Mr. Isaacs. I would be happy to help respond to that.
Mr. Rouda. Please. You may want to move the microphone a
little bit closer.
Mr. Isaacs. Sure. First, as you suggest, there are several
countries that have made substantial progress in solving this
problem. The leading countries in the world right now are
probably Finland and Sweden, followed closely by France, and
right now Canada is in a very interesting stage where they had
a consent-based approach. They had a number of sites that
expressed some interest, and they are in the process of
narrowing down to the preferred site, which will probably occur
in the next five years or so. That is an active program. It is
not guaranteed success, but it seems to be going quite well.
At the other extreme, there are a number of countries that
are in very difficult circumstances. For example, South Korea,
Taiwan and Japan, all three of which have had extensive nuclear
power, relied on nuclear power greatly for large percentages of
their electricity, but they are small countries with limited
geographical or topographical opportunities to site these
facilities because they are very mountainous, and where they
are not mountainous they are very highly populated.
I actually work on this issue through a grant that I
participate in with senior managers in several of these
countries, the Pacific Rim countries, to share best practices,
lessons learned, and ways in which we can help each other
better succeed with this.
They are in tough circumstances. They are running out of
room at the reactor sites. They have the same kinds of
political issues, maybe even more difficult, siting temporary
storage and a repository for both population reasons and
geographic reasons, which has led several countries to look at
prospects which I won't go into now, unless you goad me, for
multinational facilities where countries would come together
and cooperate on one or more facilities that they could share.
The obvious question that immediately pops up is they are all
for it, they just don't want it to be in their country.
Mr. Rouda. Similar to Mr. Hancock, what you are talking
about with some of the utilities working together in a
concerted effort.
Representative Issa?
Mr. Issa. You know, one of the limitations of being a
former member is unless you ask a question like that, I am in a
non-lobby one-year freeze, so thank you for asking the
question.
As a Member of Congress, you have the most freedom to
explore all the solutions to the problems that we are talking
about today and to push for solutions, and particularly
economic solutions. I will tick off a couple.
First of all, the answer to your earlier question is Russia
is a poster child for a country that ran out of money, let
nuclear submarines sit with hot fuel on them, in some cases
sink. If not for the U.S. initiative, Kazakhstan would still
have all of its spent plutonium, or its unspent plutonium. We
actually harvested it and returned it to Mother Russia.
By the way, bear in mind that the Russians have never given
up one ounce of plutonium. They were happy to have us spend the
money to make Kazakhstan safer, but they took back that high-
level valuable cargo.
So when we look at countries running out of money, that is
a very valid concern, and I think that should be a global
concern that Congress should lead on.
The second thing is that there are a number of solutions
that have been talked about here today that exist, but they do
require congressional action. For example, in Congressman
Levin's district, you have General Atomic. They have been a
leader on a number of solutions, including the ability to
actually turn plutonium into energy in the reprocessing area,
additionally in some other creative areas. Those solutions
would require Congress to empower DOE to go further than just
the studies, and in some cases it might be what the late Mark
McCormick, a business fellow--you probably have looked at his
books over the years--said. The difference between a problem
and a business decision is a problem can't be solved by money;
a business decision is a decision to spend money.
So another example is that today there are not enough
vehicles, if we had repositories, to quickly, safely move spent
rods. So one of the things Congress could do is it could
sponsor the development of next-generation rail and production
of them so that they would be available when we reach that
surge opportunity, whether it is one or more sites.
Today we are looking at, when SONGS becomes available, you
are still going to be standing in line for years waiting for a
train to come in to take, one at a time, these casks. That
could be something that you could do today.
So reprocessing, obviously the next-generation reactors
that could actually do that.
The last one is the one we have been talking around. If, in
fact, the gentleman from New Mexico is correct and over their
dead and bleeding body they will ever accept; if, in fact, that
is true, then Congress could look and say each state or region
must develop a regional solution. We did this in low-level
radiation, radioactive material, and it worked somewhat well. I
mentioned in my opening statement it didn't work as well for
California, but we bought our way out of our limitations.
When I mentioned the deserts of California, if we look at
Humble Bay, Diablo Canyon, and SONGS, it would be unreasonable
if we could not get to a site by 2030, when all of our rods
will be ready for transportation, the last of them will be
ready. If we would not at least, as Californians, recognize
that these three facilities all would benefit by at least going
to a regional facility that, quite frankly, Congress and this
state would put a priority on, nobody can tell the state of
California that if the solution doesn't come federally, that
California is empowered to do something at least to help the
citizens of these highly populated areas.
All of those are areas that you could be working on. I
recommend that you work on all of those as though you are never
going to have these other two sites or Yucca, that you work on
these other solutions, because if you fail to do so, then 10
years from now a very senior Congressman Levin will be where I
was at the end of my 18 years, no real progress, simply older
concrete casks sitting on the edge of the Pacific Ocean.
Mr. Rouda. Thank you.
Congressman Levin?
Mr. Levin. In 10 years I will be a little grayer, a little
older. Hopefully we will make some progress, but I appreciate
that.
A few more questions, Mr. Morris. What is the annual budget
of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission?
Mr. Morris. It has been declining. I believe the Fiscal
Year 2019 budget is approximately $900 million.
Mr. Levin. So about $900 million. What do you think the
cost of a full-time inspector would be per year?
Mr. Morris. Our budget model assumes roughly $420,000 per
annum.
Mr. Levin. Per year. So what is the cost of inspecting the
canisters, as you did? You inspected, along with Edison's help,
eight of the 29 canisters, is my understanding. What was the
cost of doing that?
Mr. Morris. I don't know exactly, but, I mean, it----
Mr. Levin. Estimate.
Mr. Morris. Twenty thousand.
Mr. Levin. Twenty thousand dollars.
Mr. Morris. Just to do--you said the eight canisters.
Mr. Levin. The eight canisters.
Mr. Morris. If you factor in travel and salary and
benefits. I mean, that is probably high.
Mr. Levin. What would the incremental cost have been of
inspecting all 29 of those canisters?
Mr. Morris. I think--I would have to defer to Edison. I
don't know what amount of resources they spent to actually do
the inspections they did.
Mr. Levin. Is it a significant incremental cost? Is it a
small incremental cost?
Mr. Morris. Again, I would be guessing. I have heard
numbers in the couple of hundred thousand dollars per canister,
but I don't know that that is----
Mr. Levin. Just to inspect them?
Mr. Morris. Just to pull the lid off the vault, they
employed a contractor to use robotic vehicles, and they covered
the vast majority of the surface area of----
Mr. Levin. But I thought a second ago you said to inspect
the eight was only $20,000?
Mr. Morris. I was referring to the cost of our inspection.
Mr. Levin. To the NRC.
Mr. Morris. Yes.
Mr. Levin. Okay. So the cost to Edison is higher.
Mr. Morris. Oh, absolutely. We don't purchase the equipment
and----
Mr. Levin. There would be no incremental cost to the NRC.
What do you estimate the incremental cost would be to Edison?
Maybe a few million dollars?
Mr. Morris. To do the remaining 21 canisters?
Mr. Levin. Twenty-two, yes. Or 21.
Mr. Morris. Again, it would be absolute guesswork on my
part. But if it was a couple, $300,000 per canister times 20,
so a couple of million.
Mr. Levin. Okay. Do you think that is worth the money?
Mr. Morris. I believe that the analysis that the Edison
folks did--and, by the way, we witnessed the collection of the
data on those eight canisters, seven of the eight canisters. We
witnessed that data. They performed a detailed analysis on
their own that incorporated not only the real data they
collected but made a number of assumptions about worst-case
effects of manufacturing defects, and even what additional
scratching might be incurred upon withdrawal of the canister,
not simply the insertion, and they concluded that they would be
within oil and pressure standards. We did an independent review
of that and similarly concluded that their analysis was robust
and sufficient.
We also did our own evaluation of the data, and again that
provided the confidence that we had that worst-case scratching,
even for the remaining 40-some-odd canisters, would be within
the limits of the code standard. So I----
Mr. Levin. Just for the public's awareness, there were 29
canisters, of which two canisters had issues, number 22 and
number 29. Number 29 was the one that was almost dropped 18
feet, yet Edison and the NRC decided to inspect only eight of
those canisters on the premise that it was 95 percent certain
that an inspection of eight of the 29 would be sufficient.
I would say with something this significant, where again
you have over 8 million people within a 50-mile radius, where
you have active earthquake faults and the rest, and
particularly when you have behavior from an actor like Holtec
and the regard that they have treated the Community Engagement
Panel, I would encourage that you spend the extra money and you
inspect the rest of the canisters.
A couple more questions on the canisters.
Mr. Morris. Sure.
Mr. Levin. To your knowledge, the best of your knowledge,
do they have real-time monitoring for radioactivity?
Mr. Morris. My understand is it is not real time. They are
required by NRC regulations to do routine radiation surface----
Mr. Levin. But they do not have any real-time monitoring?
Mr. Morris. Currently, no. But they have made a commitment
to the local community, is my understanding. Maybe Dan could
comment on that. They made a commitment with respect--they
described it at the panel meeting the other night.
Mr. Stetson. That is correct. Edison has promised to have
full-time radiation monitoring as long as the spent fuel is
onsite.
Mr. Levin. Hopefully we can followup with Edison. They are
not here to pick on this morning, but I would like to followup
to understand the specific date by which they will have real-
time radiation monitoring in place.
Also, to the best of your knowledge, do they have real-time
humidity monitoring, given that this is a coastal area with
very high salinity? There is a lot of scientific dispute over
whether or not the humidity in the area could impact the
canisters negatively.
Mr. Morris. I actually don't know the answer to that. I
mean, I could go----
Mr. Levin. So they don't, they don't.
Mr. Morris. Okay.
Mr. Levin. But I would recommend that that be part of the
adaptive phased management, thinking through whether these
canisters make the most sense and what type of monitoring is
needed to ensure that they do.
With that, I have a few closing remarks, but I appreciate
your willingness to engage, and I mean that sincerely, and more
to come.
Mr. Rouda. As I mentioned earlier, we are going to do this
a little bit informal. So I would like to take a moment for
each of you--and, Representative Issa, I will have you start
off--if there is anything we did not ask or that you wish we
had asked or something that you feel has to be said, I really
appreciate your comments from just a few minutes ago. I thought
they were very helpful. But if there is anything else you would
like to add, now is your chance.
Mr. Issa. Well, I think that the most important thing that
Members of Congress have to do is to recognize--and I am going
to use a few terms, but I will just use one that everyone
knows. There will always be NIMBYs. There will always be people
who want things out of their backyard, Okay? And I am sitting
next to a gentleman who is self-described as I don't want it in
my backyard, and the audience today is filled with people who,
for good reason, believe that it is time for it to begin moving
out of their backyard.
Those people need to be listened to and appropriately their
concerns, those who need it out of their backyard, those who do
not inherently want it in their backyard.
What I would ask you to do is push aside what I have
observed over my decades of service, and I am sure everyone on
the panel has, and that is the people who subliminally, between
those two, will tell you they don't want it in anyone's
backyard. Those who simply would like to have the problem
continue because it is part of the anti-nuclear, if you will,
agenda must be pushed aside in favor of people who want a
solution to the problem. You can be anti-nuclear and still
recognize that there has to be a place for these, that there
have to be solutions.
So what I found over the years is I had people who told me
that even though it wasn't their backyard that it was in, even
though it wasn't their backyard it was going to, that any
transportation would be impossible, that any movement would be
impossible, and that any place it was or would go to would be
dangerous.
Now, I have no problem with that all being right, but
solutions require that you do better than leave it where it is
if there are better places to move it to, and that sort of a
responsibility falls to you to divine, if you will, the
concerns that are legitimate of the ``froms'' and the ``tos''
and push aside those who want to tell you that all solutions
won't work, therefore the status quo is where you are going to
be, and it becomes a political issue that, quite frankly, it is
time that we end it. It is time that we do what responsible
countries are doing, which is find real solutions to reduce the
threat to our communities of not just these but of all nuclear
waste.
Let's bear in mind that none of us want to fail to have
cancer cured with what is, in fact, deadly poison if it is left
sitting around the hospital. So it is not just what we are
talking about today. It is all the things we know we are going
to still have in the way of radioactive isotopes.
Thank you.
Mr. Rouda. Thank you.
Mr. Hancock?
Mr. Hancock. Thank you very much for engaging and taking on
this difficult task. I very much appreciate that, and it is a
long process, and there are lots of people who must be
involved, and I include stakeholders in various states.
Also, one of the difficulties as you think about how
consent would work--and I think that is its own interesting
subject that is going to have to be looked on--is what are the
roles of transportation and adjacent folks in dealing with
that.
Even though you have done a good job getting started, and
it is going to be a long process, I want to also, in your role
in the oversight committees, suggest another thing that you
might want to look at that is related. You have some serious
problems unrelated to spent fuel, including in California at
the Santa Susana site, and there are significant issues with
waste handling not related to commercial sites but related to
Department of Energy sites that is also, I think, due some
additional oversight. You are doing so well that I want to give
you a little more to do.
[Laughter.]
Mr. Hancock. Thank you.
Mr. Rouda. Mr. Stetson?
Mr. Stetson. Well, once again I want to thank you for the
opportunity to come and speak with you today, and I really want
to end with something that I learned from my colleague here,
Mr. Isaacs, that what we are really looking forward to on
behalf of the community is trust. We really want to trust you.
We really want to trust everyone involved in the process.
But, No. 1, that means that those who are involved have to
be competent in what they are doing. No. 2, they have to be
making decisions with the public's interest at heart, making
decisions that are best for the general public. And No. 3, that
it is an open process that encourages dialog from all parties.
And I want to thank you, Tom, for teaching me that.
Mr. Isaacs. Not only did I teach you that, you just stole
my concluding remarks.
[Laughter.]
Mr. Isaacs. So I will change subjects.
I just want to make one perspective comment based on this,
and this has to do with this issue of trust and confidence.
There is a balance, a very hard and delicate balance to be
drawn between making sure you rigorously look at all dangers,
risks, and threats, and making sure that all of the systems
that are a potential effect of that are handled properly so
that the public and the environment are protected.
It is too easy in an atmosphere where there is a lack of
trust and confidence to lapse over into sensationalism and to
start making decisions that are probably not in the best
interests of all the parties, because people don't trust the
people because they lack the kinds of things that Dan just
mentioned.
You know, we talk about the dangers if something goes wrong
here. If we over-sell the dangers and then we say, by the way,
we want to send it to you instead, we don't want it anymore, it
is too dangerous, you take it, what do you think their reaction
is going to be?
So, No. 1, you have to be very prudent and sensible about
how you balance the need between making sure that you are
protected, that the community is protected, that the
environment is protected, and sending a message that goes to
the place where it is no longer based on science and prudent
decision-making but is based on atmospherics.
You know, it is interesting to me, you mentioned the 50-
mile evacuation zone for Fukushima. First of all, Fukushima, a
complete disaster, no question about it, but it was an
operating reactor. It was not a spent fuel pool passively
storing the waste. Fifteen thousand people died from the
tsunami itself, 15,000 people died. Very, very little direct
health consequences came as a result of that catastrophe. But
it had immense public consequences, immense social
consequences, immense economic consequences.
The evacuation itself disrupted the lives of untold
thousands of people, completely destroyed their lives, but had
nothing to do with the radiation. The fact that there were
conflicting rules coming out or guidance coming out about how
far to evacuate made things much more difficult and counter-
productive than they might have been otherwise.
So I simply want to leave with the message that,
absolutely, we need to make sure that the public is protected
at all points in time, the workers at the site are protected,
the environment is protected, and that we make decisions based
on the best scientific and engineering judgment and based on an
engaged public who gets to ask and have answered all of their
concerns. Thank you.
Mr. Morris. And I would just like to end with that I
believe and I think most of the 3,000 colleagues I have within
the NRC are absolutely committed to public health and safety.
Our regulatory requirements are based on extensive research. We
have very robust regulations in place that all applicants and
licensees have to meet. They are subject to a detailed and
rigorous licensing process. All of the decisions that we make
are a matter of public record. And then once the license is
issued, we begin a very important and robust oversight program
that includes enforcement opportunities when there is bad
behavior involved.
I believe that any policy that is raised with respect to
the ultimate or interim disposition of high-level radioactive
waste will not succeed unless there is a strong, credible
regulatory body in place to ensure that the safety and security
of the American people is protected.
So again, I will emphasize what we consider our critical
principles as a Federal regulator over this material. We strive
every day to maximize our independence, the clarity around the
work we do, our openness and transparency, our reliability, the
consistency with which we make our decisions, and efficiency as
well, that we are using the dollars that we receive in the most
efficient and effective way possible. Thank you.
Mr. Rouda. Thank you, Mr. Morris.
At this time, I would like to yield to Congressman Mr.
Levin to make his final comments.
Mr. Levin. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
As I mentioned earlier, the issues surrounding spent
nuclear fuel and our nuclear industry are complex and
challenging. I have had the opportunity now to meet a number of
times with the military leadership at Camp Pendleton, as well
as the Nuclear Regulatory Commission San Onofre and
stakeholders from around the country, and I have learned more
that informs my thinking about the best path forward for our
district and our region.
Yucca Mountain, as we have said, has been stuck now for
more than a decade, and I think it is really important that we
focus on a consent-based interim storage program. That is why
we fought so hard for the $25 million in the House
appropriations package, and I was excited we got that done.
It is really important that consent and safety are the two
keys to ensuring interim storage is acceptable and worthwhile,
and I think Harley and I are in Congress to deliver solutions.
That is what this is about, and this really should be a
bipartisan issue focused on solutions.
I think it is worth mentioning the timetable here so that
the public understands. By Edison's own timetable, we wouldn't
even begin moving the canisters offsite until 2035, and that
wouldn't commence until 2050. I don't know about you, but I
would actually like to be alive by the time all this is done.
With funds for siting, permitting, and licensing an interim
site, as well as prioritizing those sites across the country
that have the highest population density and the greatest
seismic risk, we could trim 10 to 15 years off of that
timetable. I think it is a very worthwhile endeavor, and I hope
you will continue to be engaged and continue to support those
efforts.
I just want to close by thanking again the Chairman for his
organizing this hearing, as well as all of you in the public,
including those on the task force, the elected officials who
are here. I share your concern, and we are going to focus on
this. It will continue to be a core element of my service for
as long as I am honored to have the opportunity to serve as
your representative. Thank you.
[Applause.]
Mr. Rouda. Thank you, Congressman Levin. And thank you,
witnesses, for participating today. Thank you, public members,
for coming to this hearing, this incredibly important hearing.
Obviously, as you have heard today, we have a long way to
go, and we do not have a clear path. And that is going to be
the challenge for Congressman Levin, myself, this committee,
this subcommittee, Congress as a whole, and many of these
communities across the country who are so directly affected by
having spent nuclear waste too close to their homes and their
families.
But as Congressman Levin said, we are committed to fighting
hard to find the solution in a timely manner, as quickly as
possible, and bringing to closure what should have been done
decades before. With your help, we will hopefully get there in
a timeframe as quickly as possible.
I would like to thank our witnesses for testifying today.
Without objection, all members will have five legislative days
within which to submit additional written questions for the
witnesses, to the Chair, which will be forwarded to the
witnesses for their response. I ask that our witnesses please
respond as quickly as you are able.
Without anything further, this hearing is hereby adjourned.
Thank you.
[Whereupon, at 1:18 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
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