Nation’s Nuclear Waste Doesn’t Belong In Tennessee

October 13, 2006, Nearly two decades after a decision was made to establish a permanent site in Nevada for the safe storage of the nation’s nuclear waste, no such facility has opened. As a result the U.S. Department of Energy is trying once again to force Tennessee to store waste from the nation’s nuclear power plants.

In the 1980s, the Department of Energy proposed building a temporary nuclear waste storage site in Tennessee at Oak Ridge. I fought that proposal because I didn’t want millions of Tennesseans to live with the hazards that come with transporting this dangerous material.

If Oak Ridge were to become a nuclear dumping ground, the effects would be felt by all state residents, not just those living in East Tennessee. On the way to Oak Ridge, trucks carrying radioactive material would travel down our highways and Main Streets. Middle Tennesseans could find themselves stuck in traffic behind literally tons of highly radioactive nuclear waste.

In 1987, I helped pass a law designating the remote, unpopulated Yucca Mountain site in Nevada as the sole location for storing the nation’s nuclear waste. That law also specifically rejected proposals to build a temporary storage site in Tennessee.

Yucca Mountain was originally scheduled to open in 1998 but has faced repeated delays. The latest reports estimate the site will not be ready until 2017. Meanwhile, nuclear waste is building up at power plants around the country, and storage space is running out. TVA estimates nuclear waste storage caused by delays at Yucca Mountain will cost the agency $90 million over the next five years. As a result, costs from the Department of Energy’s delays in opening Yucca Mountain may show up on ratepayers’ bills.

Using Tennessee as a nuclear waste dumping ground was a bad idea twenty years ago, and it’s a bad idea today. Sending the nation’s nuclear waste to Tennessee provides neither a temporary nor a permanent solution to the problem.

Rather than relying on old ideas that were rejected by Congress and citizens throughout the country, the Department of Energy should consider creating both temporary and permanent storage facilities at Yucca Mountain. It just doesn’t make sense to transport radioactive material twice, and the Nevada site already has been deemed suitable for waste storage. Waste could be easily moved from temporary to permanent storage without an additional impact on our roads and communities.

The federal government needs to ensure safe storage for our nation’s nuclear waste. Let’s focus on real solutions to nuclear waste storage rather than devoting valuable time to discarded proposals that would put hazardous material in Tennessee communities.