John Ensign

Mr. ENSIGN

Mr. ENSIGN. I yield to the gentleman from New York.

Mr. ENSIGN

Mr. ENSIGN. If the gentleman will continue to yield, Mr. Speaker, the other thing about this bill is this bill does ignore private property rights and ignores States' rights. The 10th amendment reserves the power to the States and people that it does not specifically grant to the Federal Government in the Constitution. The State of Nevada never had nuclear waste produced in its State. This is not a national security issue, this is about commercial nuclear waste trying to be shipped by other States to the State of Nevada. The gentleman from Idaho has good moral arguments because their State has had nuclear waste shoved down their throats. That is why he wants this bill, to get it out of his State, but it is no more right to send it to his State or to my State. This is wrong. It ignores private property rights as well as States' rights. I urge a ``yes'' vote on the motion to recommit, and a ``no'' vote on H.R. 1270.

Mr. ENSIGN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding to me. Mr. Speaker, H.R. 1270 does in fact assume that Congress and the Members here are experts, not the scientists. H.R. 1270 says that we are going to ignore what the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board said, that there is no hurry, there is no urgency. As a matter of fact, if we put interim storage, and by the way, this bill is not about Yucca Mountain, this bill is about interim storage of nuclear waste at the Nevada test site. If we put interim storage at the Nevada test site, we will hurt the characterization process of Yucca Mountain. This bill is not about science, this is about politics. This is about all of us thinking that we are experts, over the geologists and all the scientists at the Nuclear Waste Technical Board and the like.

Mr. ENSIGN

Mr. ENSIGN. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time.

Mr. ENSIGN. Mr. Chairman, before yielding to the gentleman from Nevada, I would like to just ask jokingly for unanimous consent to build a statue for the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Markey] in the State of Nevada, as he has fought so hard for our State. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Nevada [Mr. Gibbons].

Mr. ENSIGN. Mr. Chairman, I include for the Record this letter from the President of the United States indicating that he would veto H.R. 1270.

Mr. ENSIGN. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 2 minutes. Mr. Chairman, we have heard several things from the proponents of the bill. I just want to say first of all, on the issue of urgency, a 1989 MRS Commission review found no safety advantage to centralizing the storage of spent fuel, taking it from all of these sites to one. In 1996, the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board analyzed the issue of interim storage and concluded there is no urgent need, no urgent need, for centralized storage of commercial spent fuel. No need, no compelling necessity, no safety advantage to be achieved. That was 1996. Now the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board underwent a change in the composition of the chairmanship. So, in effect, there was an opportunity for a new board composed of new members to review whether or not they would agree with the position taken by the predecessors in 1996. In testimony on February 5, 1997, Dr. Gerard L. Cohen, the chairman of the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board, Dr. Cohen simply reaffirmed the position taken by his predecessors that there is no need, either for technical or safety reasons, to move spent fuel to a centralized storage facility for the next few years. He further maintains that to maintain credibility of the site selection process, any decision with respect to interim storage should be deferred until a technological site suitability decision can be made about Yucca Mountain. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. ENSIGN. Mr. Chairman, nearly 14 years ago a Senator from Louisiana, who was the chief proponent in the Senate, said, ``Mr. President, this bill deals comprehensively with the problem of civilian nuclear waste. It is an urgent problem,'' does this sound familiar, ``urgent problem. Mr. President, for this Nation it is urgent, first because we are running out of reactor space and reactors for the storage of fuel, and if we do not build what we call away-from-reactor storage space and begin that soon, we could begin shutting down civilian nuclear reactors in this country as soon as 1983.'' That was 14 years ago. Not a single nuclear reactor in America has been closed or been forced to close because of the issue of running out of space. Some have closed because of overriding safety concerns about operation and maintenance, but none because they have run out of space to store nuclear waste. Mr. Chairman, Congress has decided this issue, not the scientists. This would be similar, what Congress is doing in this bill, is saying with Yucca Mountain and with the temporary storage site at the Nevada test site, ``I do not care what any of the scientists say, it is going to be the site, and it is going to be suitable, and we are going to lower the standards until it is suitable.'' This would be like Congress saying to the medical community, ``There is a disease out there that we want you to find a cure for. By the way, here is what the cure is going to be. Regardless of what the science shows, here is what the cure is going to be. I do not care what any of the rest of the science says, if there are other alternatives to treat this disease.'' I know we are all experts here, we are all scientists, and that is why we are making these decisions. We are taking away that decision on nuclear waste, just as we would be taking it away from the medical community, say on breast cancer, by telling them it is going to be the answer out there, and not letting the scientists and the experts in the medical community make this decision. The other myth is that we are taking this from all these other States and going to put it in one site. The fact is that nuclear waste is going to remain in these other States, in these 41 States. Because even as we are shipping nuclear waste, and there will be nuclear waste going to Nevada, Members will still end up with nuclear waste at all of these other reactors around the country. It has even been said to me that this is a national security interest, that nuclear waste at these facilities is dangerous to a terrorist. If that is the case, we should never have built the nuclear power plants in the first place. The other thing is that Yucca Mountain and the temporary storage facility is not going to solve a national security interest problem, because there is still going to be nuclear waste at these facilities. The other thing is that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has said that dry cask storage is good for 100 years. When they were designing the casks to transport this waste they designed a perfect solution. It is the cheapest solution. It only costs about $300 million to actually store this waste on-site in dry casks for up to 100 years. To transport this waste it costs about $2.3 billion. For all of us budget hawks around here, we should be thinking about how much does it cost to transport versus store. I would urge a strong ``no'' vote. Do not vote with the nuclear power interests.

Mr. ENSIGN. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. ENSIGN. Mr. Chairman, I offer amendment No. 6.

Mr. ENSIGN. Mr. Chairman, I think it is important to point out that we are more concerned about people's lives, where they are more concerned about the process that goes on here in the Congress. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Nevada [Mr. Gibbons].

Mr. ENSIGN. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. First we had environmental protections. They nixed those. Next safety, public safety, discarded. Next, States rights, 10th amendment, ignored. Also private property rights. They would not even allow us to have an amendment on this floor to debate private property rights. Gotten rid of. Lastly, Mr. Chairman, we have to at least support the taxpayer. Of anybody we have got to be concerned about on here, should we at least not be supportive of the taxpayer? For crying out loud, what this bill does is says that when these nuclear power plants shut down, and they are going to shut down, and there will not be ratepayers to pay the bills to keep nuclear waste stored and to pay for that nuclear waste and there is not enough money in the trust fund and these ratepayers over the next years will not have enough money in the trust fund, when that happens, guess who ends up holding the buck? The person out there making $30,000 a year, the middle income American that has everything on their shoulders already, that has this huge national debt already. Now we are going to pile more debt on them. If Members consider themselves fiscal conservatives, and I do not know anybody in this body hardly that considers themselves anything but a fiscal conservative, but if you consider yourself a fiscal conservative, you have to at least vote for this amendment. This bill is bad enough, but at least this amendment would give the taxpayer some sort of protection against the nuclear power industry shifting the burden from themselves to the taxpayer.

Mr. ENSIGN. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Markey] for yielding. We have heard that the NRC says that 100 millirems is fine. But also, remember, I am from the State of Nevada. Remember what the Federal Government said back in the 1950s. They said above-ground nuclear tests, atmospheric tests, are safe. As a matter of fact, if we go out to the Nevada test site, we will see where the bleachers used to be where people used to put on, basically, these glasses with little slits in them and they used to watch above-ground nuclear, atmospheric nuclear tests. Ask the people in southern Utah if they trust the Federal Government to be setting a standard like this. We are raising the standard simply because we need to for transportation. The international community, in Sweden the standard is 10 millirems, not 100, like this bill says; France is 25 millirems per year; Finland and Switzerland, 10 millirems per year; and Canada is 1 millirem per year. Should we in the United States not protect our citizens the same as these countries? I urge a ``yes" vote on the Markey amendment.

Mr. ENSIGN. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. ENSIGN. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time. Mr. Chairman, what we are talking about here is really just a safety issue, just to make sure that there is a comfort level for the people in America. The authors of the bill have even said this is unnecessary because this bill authorizes the monies for these emergency response teams. All we are saying is, and I have only been here almost 3 years, and even in that very short period of time I have seen bills that are authorized for certain amount of money. Does the Highway Trust Fund sound familiar to anybody? Authorized for a certain amount of money and then that money not being spent. The trust fund that we are talking about here, does that sound familiar to my colleagues? Well, what we are saying is that we want to make sure that the money is not just authorized; that the money actually gets to those emergency response teams so that if there is an accident, that the people are adequately trained and can handle this. We have been lucky in this country. We have not had the kind of nuclear disaster from an accident that all of us would never want to happen. But if it does happen, would any of us want to face the parents of a child that was killed in one of these accidents? Was exposed to some kind of radiation that ended up at that point leading to cancer or to certain death? Well, Mr. Chairman, I think that the very least we can do for those people is to make sure that if an accident does occur, that the people in the surrounding areas have the comfort level that their emergency response teams are in place and have been well-trained because the monies from this Congress, and this Congress is the one who is doing all of this. It is not the States out there. This Congress is the one transporting this waste, authorizing the transport of this waste. So this Congress should take the responsibility to make sure that the money is appropriated, the money is adequately appropriated, not just authorized but adequately appropriated, that these emergency response teams would be in place. To do anything less would be a dereliction of our moral duty to our constituents all across these United States. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. ENSIGN

Mr. ENSIGN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Just very briefly, the Congressional Budget Office definitely stated that this bill violates the unfunded mandate law that was part of the Contract With America. The gentleman stated that the State of New York wishes to waive this, or at least the public utility. However, the State of Nevada does not wish to waive its unfunded mandate, and that is why we are asking for a vote on this. A lot of people in this House in the last Congress voted for the unfunded mandate law, and we are asking that those people be consistent on their vote. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. ENSIGN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. The Congressional Budget Office states in its cost estimate of H.R. 1270, dated September 25, 1997, that H.R. 1270 contains intergovernmental mandates as defined in the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act of 1995, PL 104-4. CBO estimates that if this bill were enacted into law, the New York Power Authority, a publicly owned utility, would be required to pay $180 million in the year 2002. The Unfunded Mandates Reform Act set a threshold of $50 million for 1996, annually adjusted for inflation. Therefore, CBO estimates that these mandates would impose costs on State governments exceeding the threshold. Mr. Speaker, I demand a ruling by the Chair that sustains my point of order against H.R. 1270 because it clearly violates the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act that forbade unfunded mandates on State and local governments. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. ENSIGN. Mr. Speaker, I rise to make a point of order under section 425 of the Budget Act on the basis that the provision beginning on page 56, line 15, imposes an unfunded intergovernmental mandate on State governments.

Mr. ENSIGN. Mr. Speaker, I object to the vote on the ground that a quorum is not present and make the point of order that a quorum is not present.

Mr. ENSIGN

Mr. ENSIGN. Mr. Speaker, I object to the vote on the ground that a quorum is not present and make the point of order that a quorum is not present.

Mr. ENSIGN. Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Mr. ENSIGN

Mr. ENSIGN. Mr. Speaker, I object to the vote on the ground that a quorum is not present and make the point of order that a quorum is not present.

Mr. ENSIGN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Washington [Mr. Hastings] for yielding me the time. Let me reemphasize a couple of points my colleague, the gentleman from Nevada [Mr. Gibbons] brought up: first of all, that the court decision that everybody talks about, that we have an obligation to take this waste, that the Federal Government has, what the gentleman from Nevada [Mr. Gibbons] said is true. Also, in the court they did say that some kind of a remedy must take place. However, there are all kind of options on those remedies. Those options range from escrowing nuclear waste trust fund fees, taking title on site, or setting up an interim storage facility in the current law anywhere other than the State of Nevada. This bill seeks to change current law, to wipe it out, saying that permanent repository State also gets interim. In the first two bills on nuclear waste, whatever State was going to get permanent could not get interim because it would prejudice the siting, whether it is suitable or not to put nuclear waste in a deep geological storage facility. Let me just mention a couple things on transport of the waste, as well, because this is really one of the big issues. In Germany they tried to transport high-level nuclear waste approximately 300 miles, just 300 miles, not thousands of miles like we are going to do in this country, just 300 miles. It took 30,000 police officers because there was so much civil unrest because of the transport of this waste. One hundred seventy-three people were injured during this ruckus. There are going to be similar types of civil disobedience, we can bet on it, in America if we go to transporting nuclear waste. The sad thing about it is it is not necessary. The technology exists to do on-site dry cast storage right where it is. And reprocessing has been talked about today. It was talked about by the gentleman who manages time on this side. If we ever want to get to reprocessing, once we ship it to Nevada, we will never be able to reprocess. That will end that debate forever.

Mr. ENSIGN. Mr. Speaker, first let me say that obviously being from Nevada, I am opposed to this rule, but let me give some real reasons to be opposed to this rule. Mr. Speaker, we came in actually as a Republican majority saying we want to open up the process. We want to allow the democratic process to go forward in a fair manner. This bill shuts down that process. It is not an open rule. It should be an open rule, as the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Hall] said earlier. But it also did not allow some very key amendments to be debated on this floor. This bill waives some of the most important environmental laws that we have on the books today. That is why every major environmental group in this country is opposed to this bill. Mr. Speaker, one of the amendments we had on here had to do with private property rights. Republicans came in as part of the Contract With America saying that we want to defend the fifth amendment and when the Government devalues a citizen's property due to an action that it takes, that it should compensate them for that. The Republican leadership would not allow that amendment to this bill, H.R. 1270, to even be debated. Also, Mr. Speaker, they would not allow an amendment that would protect our children in our schools from having nuclear waste transported near their schools. Now, the gentleman who is controlling time on this side talked about alternatives. Alternatives. The NRC said that dry cask storage on site is safe for up to 100 years, keeping it right where it is. The most dangerous part of nuclear waste storage is actually transport. So why do we want to do something that we do not need to do? They are saying that reactors are running out of space. No reactor in the United States has ever shut down because they were running out of storage space. There is plenty of room. Yes, they might have to build a concrete pad or two, put dry casks there, take these nuclear wastes out of the swimming pools, but there is plenty of room. Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to vote against this rule. This rule is ill-founded.

Mr. ENSIGN

Mr. ENSIGN. Mr. Speaker, I also rise to talk about H.R. 1270, not Yucca Mountain but the interim storage of nuclear waste. A lot of people are getting it mistaken. Every major environmental group in the United States is opposing H.R. 1270. Why? Because H.R. 1270 is ignoring all of the laws in the United States that protect us. We are talking about the most dangerous substance known to mankind, but the Republican leadership even blocked us from offering some reasonable amendments. One of those amendments would have allowed us to protect our children and schools from having nuclear waste transported by their doors. Another amendment would have said that this bill cannot waive all of our environmental laws. And then something else, talking about hypocrisy with the Republican leadership on this, the Republican leadership came in defending private property rights, and yet they would not even allow us an amendment to defend private property rights on H.R. 1270. I urge a ``no'' vote today on the rule and on final passage.