Paul Wellstone

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. I say that the Senator from New Mexico spoke with great eloquence and power, and speaks for me.

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, this amendment has nothing to do with the Government's obligation to take possession of the waste. I think the Government should. But if the fund is insufficient, somebody will have to pay for that shortfall, and that somebody is the person who holds title to the waste. DOE will have possession under my amendment, but the utilities will retain the title. My colleagues have confused this. Of course, DOE will have possession. But the utilities will pay the title. This is not, Minnesotans and all the people across the country, about turning the lights off. That is not what this amendment is about, and my colleagues know it. It is about making sure that taxpayers don't get stuck with this unfunded liability.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Has the Senator completed his remarks?

Mr. WELLSTONE. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. WELLSTONE. I will take 1 minute to respond. The Senator wants it both ways. First he says the utility companies are absolutely right, the fund is sufficient to cover the costs. Now he is saying the ratepayers of Minnesota will have to pay all this additional money with his scare stories. First the utility companies say this fund is sufficient to pay the cost. So, if that is the case, Senator, there will be no additional cost. But if the fund is not sufficient, over 10,000 years, then, Mr. President, the question is, who pays the costs? People in Minnesota believe that, as a matter of fact, the people who benefit pay the cost. I come from a State with a standard of fairness. Nobody wants to see an unfunded liability transferred by sleight of hand to taxpayers everywhere all across this country, period. As far as the environment is concerned, Senator, since you were a bit personal and I will not be too personal, I would be pleased to match my environmental record with your environmental record for the citizens of Minnesota to look at any day. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WELLSTONE. How much time is remaining for this Senator?

Mr. WELLSTONE. That is correct. I will take my 11 minutes now, if it is all right. First, a quick response. This amendment has nothing to do with the Federal Government living up to its commitment to take the waste. I am in favor of that. This amendment has to do with who pays the cost over 10,000 years; it has to do with tax liability. You cannot mix apples and oranges. Let me just yield to the Senator from Nevada for 1 minute, please.

Mr. WELLSTONE. A quick response to the Senator from Minnesota.

Mr. WELLSTONE. This is not on my time.

Mr. WELLSTONE. In the very court decision the Senator cited, the court did not find this to be illogical; they made that distinction. I am not arguing the Federal Government should not take responsibility. I believe we should live up to that responsibility. This is a question of whether or not taxpayers should have to pay for the liability of it.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Will the Senator yield 1 minute?

Mr. WELLSTONE. The original findings of the bill that you wrote.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Dispose of has to do with possession, and title has to do with who pays for it. As a matter of fact, let me read for you, as long as this is on your time and not on my time, let me read for you--

Mr. WELLSTONE. Let me just read from the decision to put this to rest and the part you did not read: In addition, contrary to DOE's assertions, it is not illogical for DOE to begin to dispose of SNF by the 1998 deadline and, yet, not take title to the SNF until a later date.

Mr. WELLSTONE. There is a basic distinction. You are talking about possession, and I am talking about title. I did not say there wasn't a commitment to change this in terms of possession. I read the findings of the original legislation, and I am telling you that when we had the original findings, the original bill, it was made very clear that, in fact, when it comes to title and when it comes to the actual liability of paying for this, this should be paid for by people who benefit from nuclear power, not by taxpayers across the country. Period.

Mr. WELLSTONE. This doesn't take away this right legislatively.

Mr. WELLSTONE. I don't disagree with that.

Mr. WELLSTONE. The court decision only deals with the statute, and we are changing law. I was out during part of the Senator's presentation, and I think the part of the finding of the court that you did not read I will read when I have time. So I will come back to it.

Mr. WELLSTONE. I have said, unless they pay damages. But I have also made it clear the courts would decide that and I have also made it clear that by the very estimates of the utility industry, this is the very question that is in doubt, that there would be no damages because there would be no shortfall.

Mr. WELLSTONE. My response would be, if it was decided by the courts that this amendment improperly breaches preexisting contracts, then presumably the utilities would be able to recover damages from the Government. However, I want to point out one more time that if the industry and the DOE are correct, that the fund is sufficient, there would be no shortfall and therefore there would be no damages. That would be up to the courts to decide.

Mr. WELLSTONE. I thank the Senator.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Will the Senator yield just for a moment?

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I may reserve the remainder of my time but, before I do, if I could, I ask my amendment be modified to effect the changes in page and line at the desk, necessary because of the adoption of the amendment of Senator Murkowski.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, the question then becomes whether there will be a real problem. After all, if everybody agrees that the fund will be adequate, the question is whether there is going to be any taxpayer liability to worry about. The Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board in its March 1996 report to the Congress states: In a discussion of costs, however, the board believes a more important question is whether the nuclear waste fund is adequate to pay the cost of disposal as well as previously unanticipated long-term storage. Although the Department of Energy has not yet made a new formal determination of the fund's adequacy, in a presentation before this board, analysts who conducted an independent function and management review of the Yucca Mountain project suggested that the nuclear waste fund as currently projected would be deficient by $3 to $5 billion. In a June 1990 report, the General Accounting Office estimated, depending on varying inflation rates and numbers of repositories needed, a potentially huge shortfall--up to $77 billion. The report states: Unless careful attention is given to its financial condition, the nuclear waste program is susceptible to future budget shortfalls. Without a fee increase, the civilian waste part of the program may already be underfunded by at least $2.4 billion in discounted 1998 dollars. That is the GAO report of 1990. Now, Mr. President, in fairness--and I am trying to present a rigorous analysis for my colleagues--there is no consensus on whether the fund will be adequate. The Department of Energy believes that it will be. The nuclear industry likewise is quite adamant that the fund will be sufficient. But, of course, estimating fund adequacy is a very complicated matter, and reasonable people can have different views. There are two basic elements to determine if the fund will be adequate. First, there is a total lifetime cost estimate for the disposal program. Depending on how far out you wish to run it, this could require making estimates for thousands of years. DOE's latest life cycle cost estimate--this is September 1995 --estimates costs for only 88 years, from the beginning of the program in 1983 through the expected end year of the program, which is 2071, when the repository is decommissioned. This, of course, assumes that the repository is built, loaded, and closed on schedule, I might add, a very questionable assumption. Cost estimates also depend on the elements of the program, including whether there will be both an interim facility and a permanent repository. In the Department of Energy's 1995 estimate, it is assumed that the program will only include a permanent repository. They were not even talking about the interim storage facility. The second element to determine fund sufficiency has to do with the supply side of the question: how much money will be put into the fund through fees. Because the fees are based on generation of electricity, this estimate is inextricably tied up with the life expectancies of existent nuclear powerplants and their level of electricity generation. What if the plants do not get relicensed? What if they shut down prematurely because of economic considerations or safety issues associated with aging reactors? So far, no plant has lasted to the end of its license. That is a point worth emphasizing. What if the plants have long outages and thus generate less power? The Department of Energy assumes all plants operate for their full 40-year license with no renewal and that their generating efficiency improves over time. In the end, Mr. President, I think we all have to realize that any estimate of fund adequacy is tentative at best. As Daniel Dreyfus, Director of the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management of DOE, put it last April, addressing the adequacy of the fee to ensure a sufficient fund: Any such fee adequacy analysis must, of course, be based upon a number of assumptions about the near and long term future. Some of the most important are the projected rate of expenditure from the fund which in turn impacts the interest credits accruing from the unspent balance, the assumed future rates of interest and inflation, and the assumed number of kilowatts of nuclear power still to be generated and sold. Significant deviations from these could result in errors in either direction that would warrant changes in the fee. Mr. President, what my amendment would do--we now have established that the fund, which is the utility companies' fund, may not be sufficient, and some believe we are headed for a significant shortfall. The evidence is irrefutable on that point. Here is where we get to the crux of my amendment. If there is a shortfall, who is going to pay for it? The answer is that the owner of the waste, the title holder, will pay for the shortfall. If title transfers to the Department of Energy, the taxpayers in this country are going to be on the hook. It is the taxpayers who are going to end up having to pay the costs. The amendment I offer today would protect the taxpayer from such an uncertain fate. My amendment would simply prevent the Department of Energy from accepting title to the waste unless accepting title was necessary to protect the public health and safety and the environment. For people concerned about liability for damage from an accident caused by DOE once the waste is in the Government's possession, my amendment would ensure that the DOE is, indeed, liable for such damages. All this amendment does is protect taxpayers from shouldering the burden of waste disposal costs after the fund runs out. That burden should remain with the utilities. That was the intention and that is the way it ought to be. We do not know the cost over 10,000 years, and this transfer of title through the sleight of hand transfers a huge potential unfunded liability to taxpayers in this country. I have heard my colleagues argue that ratepayers and taxpayers are indistinguishable. That is not true. In other words, some folks seem to believe that changing the law to make sure that the utilities pay for the outyear liability is pretty much the same as if the taxpayer is directly on the hook for it as current law and this bill would have it. That is simply not so. Ratepayers are people who currently use nuclear-generated power. Taxpayers are everybody. All ratepayers are taxpayers but not all taxpayers currently use nuclear-generated power. Ratepayers are a subset of taxpayers. Ask people in northern Minnesota whether they ought to be held as liable for a fund shortfall as, for example, somebody in the Twin Cities. Ask somebody in Montana if they feel they should pay as much for waste disposal as somebody in a more heavily nuclear State. Mr. President, this bill, as I have stated already, would provide for title to transfer to the taxpayer. That is what this bill is about. I think that is a very flawed premise in this bill. While that is also part of the current law, the bill throws in a new twist. Under S. 1936, title transfers even sooner than under current law. Current law has title transferring when DOE accepts the waste for permanent disposal. In other words, title does not transfer until we actually have a permanent place to put it. S. 1936, however, does not wait. This bill puts the taxpayer on the hook as soon as the Department of Energy takes it off the utility's hands for interim storage. That is what this is about. As I have already indicated, the level of the fee is integral to any estimate of fund sufficiency. Current law allows the Secretary of Energy to adjust that fee, if necessary, to ensure fund sufficiency. Despite the General Accounting Office and other estimates, this bill would remove that authority, effectively freezing the one-mill fee, which has never been changed or pegged to inflation in statutory language. Thus, even if the Department of Energy does ultimately estimate that the fund will experience a shortfall, the Secretary cannot even act to prevent it to protect taxpayers from accepting the liability. Finally, Mr. President, this bill would require a significant up- front expenditure from the fund to pay for construction of an interim storage facility, something that was not considered by the DOE in its latest assessments of fund sufficiency. As has already been explained, interest buildup from the unspent fund balances is a key component ensuring fund sufficiency. With large early expenditures, there will obviously be less interest accumulated and the fund will be less able to cover long-term costs. This amendment is all about responsibility. It is all about making sure that costs are allocated to those who should bear them. It is all about deciding who should be on the hook when shaky estimates of costs well into the next century and beyond prove, as they invariably do, to be off the mark. We do not know what the costs are going to be. The estimates are very shaky. Yet what we are doing through this bill is essentially transferring all of the liability to taxpayers in this country. Less than a month ago, in discussing this issue on the floor of the Senate, one of the chief sponsors of the bill, the Senator from Idaho, said, ``It is irresponsible to shirk our responsibility to protect the environment and the future for our children and grandchildren.'' I could not agree with him more. But protecting our children and grandchildren also means protecting their wallets, as I am sure he would agree. We have spent an enormous amount of time and effort in the past few years cutting the deficit and moving toward a balanced budget, in large part to protect future generations. Let us have some consistency. Let us keep that goal in mind. Let us not stick future generations of taxpayers with a potentially enormous liability. Let the title to nuclear waste stay with those who generate it. That is what this amendment says. It is simple. It is straightforward. Mr. President, how much time do I have left?

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, let me explain. As I have already described, the full cost of the waste disposal program is to be borne by the generators of that waste. To implement this idea, Congress created the nuclear waste fund in the Treasury. The nuclear waste fund is supplied by a fee paid by the nuclear utilities, which is really the ratepayer. That fee is specified in the 1982 act to be equal to ``one mill,'' which is one-tenth of one cent per kilowatt-hour of electricity generated. The 1982 act further gave the Secretary of Energy the authority to adjust the fee if she or he found it necessary to ``ensure full cost recovery.'' As you can readily see, when a commercial nuclear powerplant ceases to generate electricity, it ceases to pay into the nuclear waste fund. In the next 15 to 20 years, as our current nuclear plants age, more and more of these plants will stop generating power, and the flow of money into the nuclear waste fund will begin to dry up. When no more money is flowing into the fund in the form of fees, we will know how much money we will have to pay for the full cost of the disposal program. Now, we must ask the question: Will we have enough money? Will all those fees aggregated in the nuclear waste fund, plus interest paid out as necessary to meet the actual progress of the program, be sufficient to cover all the actual costs of storing high-level nuclear waste until it is no longer a threat to public health and safety and the environment, perhaps as long as 10,000 years? Are we going to be able to cover the cost? I will share with you the opinions of the experts on that question in a moment, but first let me tell you who is stuck with the tab if the nuclear waste fund is not sufficient. Because our nuclear waste policy provides for title to the waste to transfer from the utility to the Federal Government, which translates into taxpayers--it is you and me, or at least our families in the future--who are going to be stuck with the bill. You see, it is the transfer of the tab which the nuclear utilities are really working for. Moving the waste in Nevada is important to them, but I am not sure that is the real prize. What they really want is to be free and clear of the stuff because they know that there is a fair chance that disposal costs will be greater than what they are currently saying it will be. When their plants are shut down and they no longer pay the fee into the fund, they want to make sure that the taxpayer cannot come back to them to pony up some more. If the Department of Energy holds title, the waste is no longer the utility's problem, but it is the taxpayers' problem, and it is a potentially huge one. Let us see if this is a real problem. After all, Mr. President, if everybody agrees that the fund will be adequate, then there will not be any taxpayer liability to worry about. Mr. President, could I have order, please, on the floor, and could I ask my colleagues to please cease discussion?