I would like to welcome NRC Chairman Richard Meserve and the other Commissioners to the Committee today. I would also like to welcome Dr. David Adelman from the Natural Resources Defense Council and the other witnesses that are here today to discuss the NRC's radioactive recycling proposal.
I have two very serious issues that I would like to raise.
The first issue involves the NRC's 1998 decision not to require the Army Corps of Engineers to dispose of low level radioactive waste at NRC licensed facilities. The second issue involves the NRC's recent proposal to permit radioactively contaminated materials to be released into the environment without restriction.
Two recent cases in California involving these issues show how the decisions the NRC makes on these matters can have a very direct and potentially harmful impact on the lives of our citizens and our environment.
The first case involves the Army Corps of Engineers disposal of 2,200 tons radioactive waste in a California dump not licensed to dispose of such waste. The dump sits above aquifers that supply water to the Central Valley of California.
When I learned of the Corps action, I immediately demanded that they remove the waste from the site, and dispose of it properly at a NRC licensed facility.
The Corps responded to me that they are under no legal obligation to dispose of this radioactive waste at a NRC licensed low level radioactive waste facility. The Corps justified this position by relying upon a 1998 legal opinion supplied by the NRC.
In that hairsplitting NRC opinion, the NRC told the Corps that it would only require the Corps to send low level radioactive waste to a NRC licensed facility if the waste was generated after 1978.
According to the NRC, the exact same type of waste did not have to be disposed of at a NRC licensed facility, however, if it was generated before 1978.
Since the waste the Corps improperly dumped in California was generated before 1978, the Corps says it has no obligation to dispose of it in a safe, NRC licensed facility.
Although the NRC reads the relevant law as justifying this interpretation, judicial opinions don't support it. I would like to understand better how the NRC justifies this interpretation. Also, I understand that citizens have petitioned the NRC to reverse its interpretation. I would like to hear about the NRC's plans to consider that petition.
I will shortly introduce legislation to require that this radioactive waste - regardless of when it was generated - be properly disposed of in a NRC licensed facility. It will also require the Corps to remove the 2,200 tons of radioactive waste it improperly dumped in California, and to properly dispose of it at a NRC licensed facility.
The second case I would like to address involves the Department of Energy cleanup of a nuclear research and weapons production facility called Rocketdyne located in Ventura County, California.
As part of the cleanup, the DOE approved the release radioactively contaminated building debris for disposal at standard municipal landfills. Shockingly, DOE also released Mailers from the site and sent them to a school to be used as children's classrooms.
Although the trailers were on a site that is heavily contaminated with radioactive materials, DOE didn't even test the Mailers for radioactive contamination before sending them out to be used as classrooms.
When I learned of this incident, I demanded that DOE retrieve the trailers from the school and locate the building debris. I also discovered, however, that there are effectively no federal legal restrictions on releases of this kind.
While the fact that we have no legal restrictions against this practice is bad, the NRC's proposed radioactive recycling proposal is far worse.
That proposal could fill this legal void with a standard which would explicitly allow such releases to occur in the future. It could, for example, allow trailers from radioactively contaminated sites to be used as children's classrooms, as almost occurred in the Rocketdyne case.
For this and other reasons I, along with Sens. Baucus, Lautenberg, Lieberman, Moynihan and Reid, recently sent the NRC a letter urging it not to proceed with a rulemaking which would provide for these releases. In the letter, we pointed out that the NRC proposal appears to be inconsistent with its mission to protect public health and safety.
We also pointed out that the NRC proposal is nearly identical to the agency's "below regulatory concern" policies of 1986 and 1990. As you know, in the Energy Policy Act of 1992, Congress specifically directed NRC not to implement those policies.
I would like to hear the NRC's rationale for pursuing this discredited policy. I would also like the NRC to discuss any studies which show that this policy would be protective of public health and the environment.
I look forward to hearing the NRC's position on these and other issues today.
Thank you.