John Ensign

Mr. ENSIGN

Mr. ENSIGN. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Kucinich].

Mr. ENSIGN. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Markey].

Mr. ENSIGN. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 3 minutes. Mr. Chairman, before I go on to talk about this amendment, which deals with safety, I want to talk about the comment that the subcommittee chairman made on the last amendment when he said that, well, of course, if the Governors had their choice, every one of them would oppose nuclear waste being transported across their State and they would stop it. He said every Governor. He may want to retract that statement, but he said every Governor. Does it not make sense that we would oppose a bill if every Governor in every State does not want nuclear waste being transported across their State? Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment, and this amendment would simply require certification by FEMA, and by the way, this is an independent agency, that adequate appropriations, in other words, monies be appropriated to exist for the emergency response teams that are going to be necessary across those 43 States if an accident did occur. Local fire and police departments will be the first ones on the scene of a nuclear waste accident, and it is vitally important that these forces are mobilized and trained in responding to possible radiation leaks. H.R. 1270 authorizes funding for these purposes, but makes that funding contingent upon actions of the Committee on Appropriations. This year, for an example, the energy and water appropriations bill provided $2.6 billion less than the administration's request for programs that are ongoing. The money simply is not there. But we need to ensure that if that money is not provided, that we do not undertake activities when we have not adequately prepared to deal with the consequences of those activities. Mr. Chairman, I think it is absolutely outrageous that we would not simply make sure that the money is there, that adequate money is there; not to be appropriated, but actually there, mandated that we spend to make sure that the transport of the deadliest substance known to mankind, if an accident occurs, that those response teams have the adequate funding that they can prepare to meet the type of accident that could ensue. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. ENSIGN. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me time. Mr. Chairman, this is clearly about States' rights and the tenth amendment. This is not a national security issue, as some people have said it was. We have had nuclear waste at these facilities for decades. If it was a national security issue now, it would certainly have been a national security issue then, and it will be in the future then, because we are not taking all the nuclear waste from these facilities. It will continue to exist in the district of the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Upton], in the district of the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Hastert], and on and on. Nuclear waste will still be in their districts. They will not have as much of it, but they will have it. What the amendment of the gentleman from Nevada [Mr. Gibbons] does is says that the Governor, who is the closest representative to a State and is aware of what is happening in their State and knows best, would say that these emergency response teams have to exist and be properly trained before nuclear waste can come through their State. What representative here in Congress would not want their Governor to have to say, yes, the emergency response teams are in place? Now you can bring the waste through our State. But until that Governor says that these emergency response teams are in place and are trained properly, no nuclear waste can come through my State if I was a Governor. I would certainly want that right if I was a Governor, and I know virtually every Governor across this country would want that right as well.

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

Mr. ENSIGN. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. The government's own scientists at the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board said that there is no hurry, that we do not need to do this now. There is time to do a cost-benefit analysis. We are not running out of space, there is plenty of space. All you have to do is build cement pads at the nuclear facilities with dry cast storage. The NRC has said that is good for 100 years. It has been mentioned we have not had an accident yet. Mr. Chairman, I am from Las Vegas. We go on odds in Las Vegas. With 100 miles or whatever they said that have been traveled so far with no accidents, the odds are, one is coming. All you have to do is see how many train wrecks we have had in the last several years. Imagine what one of those train wrecks would do if the people that have done some of the early studies were wrong on these canisters. We are not talking about a small risk here; we are talking about major environmental safety hazards. I think a reasonable cost-benefit risk assessment is very justified. I would urge a yes vote on this amendment.

Mr. ENSIGN. Mr. Chairman, I yield 30 seconds to the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Kucinich].

Mr. ENSIGN. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, every major environmental group in this country opposes H.R. 1270: The Sierra Club, the National Resource Defense Council, Friends of the Earth, U.S. PIRG, Public Citizen, Citizen Alert, League of Conservation Voters, Greenpeace, Nuclear Information and Resources Service, Military Production Network. By the way, those are the people that live around these facilities that we are talking about that have the nuclear waste, and those people are standing up and saying that it is our moral responsibility to come up with solutions, and the solution is not an interim storage facility out in Nevada. The reason, and one of the reasons that these environmental groups oppose this bill is because we have not determined what the risks are. We have not determined what the costs are going to be. As the GAO does new studies and finds out that, first of all, Yucca Mountain is much more expensive than anybody ever thought before, and it seems like every year they come out with new studies that say Yucca Mountain is much more expensive, the same thing with interim storage. If you actually do the cost-benefit analysis and risk assessment, when you start taking into account, there was a case in New Mexico where radioactive waste was transported by a person's property, that person was awarded by the court and upheld by the State Supreme Court of New Mexico that that was considered a takings and that person had to be compensated for the loss because of the perceived loss of valuation of that person's land. As we are transporting nuclear waste, the most deadly substance known to mankind, across 43 States, across all kinds of people's property, let us say that you have a very nice, beautiful piece of property that is a resort. Now you have got nuclear waste being transported by it. It could very well be argued, especially viewing what happened in Germany where they had 30,000 police officers being required to transport nuclear waste, just 6 casks, by the way, of nuclear waste, just 6,300 miles to the north, 173 people were injured. People are trying to say that private property is not going to be devalued by nuclear waste being transported by it? And especially this bill says that you have to give local notice. We know that as you give local notice, that people are going to come out in this country and protest the shipment of this waste. Land is going to be devalued. So we do not even know how much this is actually going to cost because of that. By the way, the taxpayer ends up holding the bill on this. It is under our Constitution, if the Federal Government based on the Fifth Amendment does devalue somebody's land, it is going to be the taxpayer that ends up holding the bill on this. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. ENSIGN. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 30 seconds to say that, first of all, new science is being discovered all the time in Nevada. Plutonium just recently was discovered by the National Academy of Sciences to have migrated almost one mile. The significance of that discovery is that they did not expect that. Because all of the proponents of the bill have been saying, first of all, Yucca Mountain is safe, there is no water to worry about, do not worry about the groundwater table or any of that. But science is constantly finding new things. That is why we need this cost-benefit and risk analysis. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Nevada [Mr. Gibbons], who sits on the Committee on Resources, who rejected this bill, by the way.

Mr. ENSIGN. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. ENSIGN. I yield to the gentleman from Massachusetts.

Mr. ENSIGN. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 3 minutes. Mr. Chairman, the amendment that I have offered today is consistent with the language in the Contract With America that Republicans brought to this floor a little over 2 years ago. It is based on a concept that before the Government does something, we should do studies that say what are the risks, what are the costs versus the benefits? Very simple. What this, H.R. 1270, does is, H.R. 1270 presumes that this Congress knows everything that there is to know about nuclear waste. It presumes that this Congress has all the experts that it needs right here, that all of the studies have already been done. And the nuclear energy industry actually says that all of the studies say that the Yucca Mountain is suitable and all these things, when even the Government's own scientists have said the Yucca Mountain has not been deemed suitable or acceptable. That is why the President has threatened to veto this bill. What we are saying with this amendment is simply that the Secretary of Energy shall conduct these studies prior to moving the bill forward. The GAO has estimated the Yucca Mountain project to cost nearly $33 billion. Before dumping endless amounts of taxpayer dollars into the project, let us take a step back and make sure that this is the best use of the American people's money. If this project is as good as my colleagues say, obvious cost-benefit analysis will show that it is. Mr. Chairman, we are asking that the Republicans especially who support this bill, that they be consistent in their arguments. They have argued in the past for cost benefit analysis. And why is that? They have argued in the past because it is a good thing to do. Before the Government goes and does something, we should prove that there are benefits. What are the risks? What are the benefits? Let us just stick to the principle in the Contract With America that we all came and we all signed in 1994 on the steps of the Capitol.

Mr. ENSIGN

Mr. ENSIGN. Mr. Speaker, I have a motion at the desk.

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 offer a privileged motion.

Mr. ENSIGN

Mr. ENSIGN. Mr. Speaker, on that, I demand the yeas and nays. The yeas and nays were refused. So the motion to adjourn was rejected.

Mr. ENSIGN. Mr. Speaker, I offer a privileged motion.

Mr. ENSIGN

Mr. ENSIGN. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman would yield further, could the gentleman possibly address what seems to be happening in the Congress? We have talked about many different parts of the science, whether it be on site, dry cask storage being the best storage up to 50 years. Second, the gentleman mentioned some type of recycling, reprocessing this waste. Even if the new technologies the gentleman talked about are not developed, there are older technologies currently in the works in Great Britain, in France, and in Sweden, and they are doing it very safely and they have obviously a much better nuclear power industry in those countries. So when we are looking at what is driving this policy in this country, I believe and the gentleman's comments on this would be appreciated, from my perspective I see several things happening. First of all, Members of Congress that have nuclear reactors in their districts, they want to get the wastes out of their State. But probably, and most significantly, the driving force behind this is the nuclear power industry, because the nuclear power industry right now only has nuclear powerplants that are going to last 20 to 30 years from now. After that, if we left it where it is, they would be responsible for storing this waste and paying for that storage. If the Yucca Mountain or the interim storage facility is built in Nevada, would the case not be that ratepayers and the nuclear power industry no longer would have to pay the bill, but now the taxpayers from across the country, even in those States which do not have any nuclear reactors, all of those States and the taxpayers in those States would be left holding the bill? So not only do people have to have this stuff transported through their State when they never had nuclear power in their State, but they are also going to have to foot the bill to pay for the storage of this stuff for thousands of years.

Mr. ENSIGN. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman would yield, I heard the gentleman from Nevada speak this morning in front of the Committee on Rules on the cost of the potential cleanup if we had one of these accidents with leakage in an area. Could the gentleman address the cost of cleaning up one of those environmental disasters?

Mr. ENSIGN. If the gentleman will continue to yield, Mr. Speaker, from what I am understanding, based on the scenario that the gentleman has painted, based on this hot metal burning and causing one of these casks to come apart, looking at the gentleman's map down there and looking at St. Louis, looking at Denver, CO, right through the center of Denver, CO, looking at Los Angeles, CA, looking at potentially coming across Hoover Dam, which is, from Arizona coming into Nevada, if one of these transport mechanisms, say, was on Hoover Dam, had a crash, went over the side of Hoover Dam, which is about 450 feet down onto a concrete slab, and we had a fire down there, one of these casks broke open, what State would be most affected, besides the State of Nevada, which is sitting right there, and the State of Arizona? What is the No. 1 State that would be affected by this radiation fallout?

Mr. ENSIGN. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman would yield, people say if we cannot bring it to Nevada in an interim storage facility or a permanent repository that Congress is talking about, they ask me, ``What is the answer?'' Correct me if I am wrong on this. When they were developing the transport mechanism, these things they say are safe, the Committee on Commerce says they are safe, but when they were developing this--and I had a conversation today with the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Upton], the lead sponsor of the bill from the Committee on Commerce, and I asked him when they were developing the transport mechanism they developed these dry casks to store them. I asked him, are these dry casks safe for up to 100 years? And he said, yes, they are safe for up to 100 years. And I said why not leave them right where they are instead of transporting them and talking about the potential accidents? Mr. Speaker, I would ask the gentleman from Nevada if he sees any reason at all for transporting this dangerous waste through cities like St. Louis and Denver and Los Angeles and many other cities like Atlanta across the country?

Mr. ENSIGN. Mr. Speaker, would the gentleman yield?

Mr. ENSIGN. Mr. Speaker, I would ask, is the gentleman aware that in the transport of this nuclear waste across the country, that the most highly dangerous substance ever produced by mankind is an environmental problem, is a health and safety problem? This high-level nuclear waste on these routes of transportation will be going near even elementary schools, day care centers, and the like across the country? Is the gentleman aware that we tried to offer and tried to get approved in order an amendment just to make nuclear waste not go within 1 mile of schools, and that the leadership, the Republican leadership, did not allow this amendment to be in order? Is the gentleman aware of that?

Mr. ENSIGN. If the gentleman will continue to yield, Mr. Speaker, from what I understand from hearing the gentleman from West Virginia this morning, or this afternoon, he talked about this train collision happening, and he even said, luckily, only by God's grace, was the explosive material on one of the trains taken off just before these trains collided.

Mr. ENSIGN. Salt Lake City.