United States Senator for Nevada Harry Reid En Espa�ol

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Yucca Mountain

The proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump is never going to open.  Since I was elected to Congress in 1982, I have been fighting against Yucca Mountain because it threatens the health and safety of Nevadans and people across the United States.  The science is incomplete, unsound, yet clearly demonstrates that Yucca Mountain is not a safe site for isolating nuclear waste. The tide is turning on Yucca Mountain, and it is time we look at viable alternatives and realistic approaches to long term nuclear waste storage.  My highest priority is to ensure the health and safety of Nevadans and I will continue to fight against bringing spent nuclear fuel to Nevada.

Safely Storing Spent Nuclear Fuel: The Spent Nuclear Fuel On-Site Storage Act of 2005

I am convinced that the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump will never be built because of the myriad of scientific, safety and technical problems with the project. It simply is neither safe nor secure, as illustrated by numerous significant scientific, legal and budgetary setbacks.  Yet, we must safely store spent nuclear fuel. Fortunately, dry cask storage is a viable, safe and secure alternative that is readily available and can be fully implemented.

The technology for long-term storage of spent nuclear fuel in dry storage casks has improved dramatically in the past 20 years.  Fourteen cask designs have been licensed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which says that spent nuclear fuel can be safely stored using dry cask storage on-site at the nuclear power plants for at least 100 years. Already, dry casks safely store spent nuclear fuel at 37, and are authorized at 4 additional, sites throughout the country, many of them near communities, water ways and transportation routes.  The Nuclear Energy Institute has projected that 83 of the 103 active reactors will have dry storage by 2050.

In order to take advantage of this scientifically-based and safe solution, I was joined by the entire congressional delegation from both Nevada and Utah to introduce the Spent Nuclear Fuel On-Site Storage Act of 2005, S. 2099.  Our bill would effectively end our governments funding for Yucca Mountain because it would require commercial nuclear utilities to safely transfer spent nuclear fuel from temporary storage in water-filled pools to secure storage in licensed, on-site dry cask storage facilities. After transferal, the Secretary of Energy will take title and full responsibility for the possession, stewardship, maintenance, and monitoring of all spent fuel thus safely stored.

Since the Spent Nuclear Fuel On-Site Storage Act of 2005 will allow nuclear waste to be safely stored for approximately a hundred years, our legislation will also allow time for a scientifically-based, safe solution to be developed.  This is important because the current policy being pursued is endangering the public by rushing headlong towards a repository that is fraught with scientific, technical and geological problems when the waste can be stored safely and securely in dry casks.  Our bill guarantees all Americans that our nation’s nuclear waste will be stored in the safest way possible.

Our legislation also protects the taxpayer from continuing to spend billions of dollars on a project that is neither safe nor secure. Although each year I am able to significantly slash funding for Yucca Mountain, our government has continued to needlessly spend hundreds of millions of dollars on this project. 

The Spent Nuclear Fuel On-Site Storage Act of 2005 guarantees all Americans that our nation’s nuclear waste will be stored in the safest way possible and requires commercial nuclear utilities to secure its spent nuclear fuel in licensed, on-site dry cask storage facilities.  Storing nuclear waste on-site is the safest, most reasonable and most effective way of allowing nuclear power companies to continue operating while keeping the health and safety of Americans as our top priority.

An Admission of Failure: The Nuclear Fuel Management and Disposal Act

In 1982, Congress passed the Nuclear Waste Policy Act to address the difficult issue of storing nuclear waste. The Act called for disposal of spent nuclear fuel waste in a deep geological repository that would remain stable and directed the Department of Energy to study a number of sites in detail and pick the most suitable site based on the natural features of the site.  In 1987, Congress took action based on political expediency and limited the Department of Energy’s studies solely to Yucca Mountain.

On July 23, 2002, President Bush signed Joint Resolution 87 (Public Law 107-200) that called for the Department of Energy to seek licenses from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to build and operate a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain. Since then though, a wide array of scientific, technical and safety problems have arisen that have further delayed the Administration’s hope that this project could be completed. 

To avoid Yucca Mountain’s grave scientific, technical and safety problems the Administration submitted a legislative package to Congress on April 6, 2006.  The legislation, entitled the Nuclear Fuel Management and Disposal Act, S. 2589, would gut the basic scientific, technical, legal and safety standards that apply to Yucca Mountain. 

For instance, the bill attempts to take the entire Yucca Mountain program off budget because the project has faces so many extensive challenges that publicly disclosing their costs the myriad number of problems with the proposal would permanently damage the future validity of the site. The Administration’s legislation also seeks to preempt sate, local and federal laws whose goals are to protect the health and safety of Nevadans.  The bill’s provisions include:

  • permanently withdrawal approximately 150,000 acres of NTS DOD and BLM land and voiding mineral rights to the land;
  • allowing the site design to be changed after licenses are granted and without adequate provision for analysis of the impacts, hearings and oversight;
  • preempting many of the National Environmental Protection Act’s requirements;
  • preempting local, state and federal water law, air quality and toxic cleanup requirements;
  • busting the 77,000 metric ton cap, increasing the amount of waste that is allowed to be stored at Yucca and the risk of a criticality event;
  • taking future nuclear fees off-budget in an attempt to increase funding and prevent an open discussion of the lack of progress; and,
  • removing local, state and DOT authority over transportation of the waste.

The introduction of this bill is an admission by the Administration that the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump is a failure; it is fraught with public health, safety and scientific problems that cannot be fixed.

EPA Radiation Standard

In 1992, energy legislation was passed by Congress that directed the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to set radiation standards for the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump that would ensure protection of public health.  The same bill directed the National Academies of Science to advise the Environmental Protection Agency on the technical basis for these health-based standards.  In other words, how much radiation could an individual safely be exposed to were the doomed project ever to be completed?

In 2004, a federal appeals court found that EPA violated the law when it proposed a radiation standard for only 10,000 years.  This was an important victory for Nevada because the federal appeals court found that EPA did not heed the recommendations from the National Academies of Science, but arbitrarily set the standard at 10,000, whereas the NAS found that the standards should be set at peak dose (peak exposure) and that peak radiation levels were likely to be reached at a much later date.

EPA was ordered to complete another radiation standard that would protect human health and safety. On August 9, 2005, EPA released its proposed radiation standards for Yucca Mountain. EPA’s proposed standard is wholly inadequate, does not meet the law’s requirements and does not protect human health and safety.  Instead of sticking to the commitment that Yucca Mountain would proceed only if it were based on sound science, EPA has cast sound science aside in favor of political expediency in the myopic pursuit of Yucca Mountain.  The new radiation standards submitted by EPA represent the latest attempt by the Administration to ignore sound science and disregard the health and safety of Nevadans.

EPA has now proposed two sets of radiation standards for Yucca Mountain, neither of which will protect Nevadans from public health dangers associated with ionizing radiation. One of their radiation standards proposes that people living in the area of the proposed Yucca Mountain dump be allowed to be exposed to millirems of radiation per year.  This new standard is important because it proposes that individuals who live around the proposed Yucca Mountain project would be exposed to dozens of times more radiation than what is safe for the general public.  EPA also proposed to throw out the groundwater standard post 10,000 years, the time of peak exposure, despite its own acknowledgement that groundwater is the primary path of radiation exposure for the public. 

EPA’s role in this rulemaking and its overall mission is to protect public health and the environment.  A recent NAS study has confirmed that there is a linear dose relationship between radiation exposure and cancer.  In other words, there are adverse effects from radiation even at the lowest levels, and the higher the levels of exposure, the greater the adverse effects.  These effects can be devastating and include sudden death, cancer, birth defects, mental retardation, and developmental defects – both physical and mental.  Unfortunately, although EPA purports to agree with the NAS conclusion, this rule flies in its face, allowing greater levels of exposure while ignoring the increased health effects from these levels.  

In fact, EPA is proposing the least protect public health radiation standard in the world, a standard that is forty times weaker than the public health standard for low level radiation.  This proposal is unacceptable and will needlessly expose people to the risk of horrible adverse effects for generations. 

Transportation

The transportation of nuclear waste is a critical issue. The tragic events of September 11, 2001 showed us what terrorists can do. Transporting the 77,000 tons of nuclear waste from America’s nuclear power plants to Yucca Mountain would require roughly 53,000 truck shipments and 10,000 rail shipments over 25 years through cities and counties home to 250 million people. As most of the waste in generated east of the Mississippi, that means most waste will be traveling across the country. Tens of thousands of shipments of deadly radioactive waste, an average of approximately 2,800 each year, will be rolling through neighborhoods in 43 states and hundreds of major metropolitan areas on its way to Nevada for the next several decades.

Approximately 125 million people live in the more than 700 counties on DOE’s highway routes, and approximately 110 million live on the train routes.  If you live within 1.5 miles of a highway or railway, you live within 1.5 miles of a possible nuclear waste delivery-route. DOE predicts that between 10.4 and 16.4 million people will live within 1/2 mile of a nuclear waste transportation route by 2035.  This is a dramatic increase in the number of shipments that have historically occurred; more shipments will occur in the first year than have occurred nationwide in the last 40 years or so.

The Department of Energy has not fully evaluated the risks and possibilities associated with its massive transportation proposal. A recent National Academies of Science report recommended that a thorough analysis of the risk from terrorism be undertaken before any spent nuclear fuel is transported.  Also, recent train accidents have highlighted the serious risks of transporting waste. A freight train carrying hazardous materials caught fire in a Baltimore tunnel in 2001 and burned at extremely high temperatures for several hours. If this train had been carrying nuclear waste, the consequences could have been devastating.  The same National Academies of Science report calls for an examination of these types of incidences also.

On December 29, 2003, the Department Of Energy announced a proposal to build a rail line through Nevada to Yucca Mountain. The proposal would withdraw a stretch of public land 319 miles long and 1 mile wide for at least 20 years, and presumably for much longer. Proposals for shipping the waste through Las Vegas include transporting it through the I-15, I-515 interchange through the heart of downtown.  Or, an alternative plan would have it skirt the outskirts of the city, passing through residential neighborhoods, by schools, hospitals, business parks, etc. 

As Americans have learned more about the nuclear waste that could pass by their schools, hospitals, churches, and homes, they have reacted strongly. City and state governments across the country have expressed their opposition to waste traveling through their communities. Waste would travel through 44 states on its way to Yucca Mountain, yet the DOE has not yet completed design of the cask that it would use to transport waste by rail, truck, and barge.

Transporting thousands of shipments across our country would provide thousands of targets for terrorists.  Putting the millions of Americans along the transportation routes in danger is irresponsible.

For Students

The Yucca Mountain project continues to be to elicit numerous questions from interested students across the United States.  The following links below might be helpful for your assignments.

Links for Students:

State of Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects
Las Vegas Sun Yucca Mountain Archive
Las Vegas Review Journal Yucca Mountain Archive
Energy Policy Act of 1992
Nuclear Waste Policy Act as amended
Department of Energy, Yucca Mountain project
Environmental Protection Agency
Nuclear Regulatory Commission
Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board
General Accounting Office

National Academies of Science, National Research Council, Health Risks from Exposure to Low Levels of Ionizing Radiation:  BEIR VII-Phase 2, 2005.