seriously damage any effort to realistically control greenhouse gases as nuclear power currently accounts for seventy two percent of all carbon free energy production in this country so without a permanent nuclear waste solution we will not be able to cut emissions to the level by the administration the administration is question and this congress has requested during a permanent solution to finding a permanent solution to this puzzle of our nuclear waste has to be a critical part of our long term energy strategy without it we cannot expect achieve a green energy economy because we simply cannot build enough windmills or solar panels to get there without nuclear power and simply after years of similar studies and billions of taxpayer dollars already spent will not get any closer to a final solution i but a little bit forward i'll start again thank you mr chairman and members of the committee i am christopher principal deputy director and currently acting director of the office of civilian radioactive waste management within the department of energy alternatives for nuclear waste disposal and to continue participation in the nuclear regulatory commission license application process however the department remains committed to meeting its obligations for managing and ultimately hosing of spent nuclear fuel and high level waste to that  end secretary of energy is convening a blue ribbon panel of experts to evaluate alternative approaches for meeting the federal government's responsibility regarding federal government liability the nuclear waste policy act authorizes the secretary of energy to enter into contracts with commercial nuclear utilities and commercial research reactor operators that own and generate spent nuclear fuel under the terms of these contracts in return for the payment of a fee of the one mil per kilowatt hour is a tenth of  hour the government was to begin disposing of the spent nuclear fuel starting in one thousand nine hundred eighty if he's collected under these contracts are deposited in the nuclear waste on a fine currently has a balance of approximately twenty three billion dollars which is invested in u s treasury  the government receives over seven hundred fifty million dollars per year in revenues from ongoing nuclear generation and the find averages approximately one billion dollars in annual return on investment to date utility contract holders and paid approximately seventeen billion dollars into the fun beginning in one thousand nine hundred eight most contract holders initiated lawsuits against the government due to the delay in beginning the exception suspending clear fuel as required by the contract courts have determined the delay was a partial breach of contract by the government and numerous trials have been held to determine the amount the department of justice with the department of energy's assistance has been able to settle several lawsuits representing approximately thirty six percent of commercial nuclear power reactors that are covered by waste was a contract today close to six hundred billion dollars in claims has been paid under the settlement payments are made from the department's judgment of the remaining pending cases judgments subject to post trauma motions appeals or a man's total approximately eight hundred million dollars as the damages in each trial are limited to those costs incurred prior to the beginning of the trial future lawsuits may be brought by utilities to recover alleged additional damages until the government has accepted their spent fuel and i would like for the record with mr heard in my left ear that having her staff or for their efforts in that last year the department estimated the liabilities under current law resulting from delaying the beginning of waste acceptance from one thousand nine hundred twenty twenty which was the last we had for the opening of yucca mountain at twelve point three billion dollars we have not attempted to further update that estimate in summary the department remains committed to meeting its obligations for managing and ultimately disposing of spent nuclear fuel and high level secretaries blue ribbon panel will provide the opportunity for a dialogue on how best to address this challenging issue in the panel's recommendations will provide a basis for working with congress to devise a national department looks forward to an ongoing dialogue with members of congress stakeholders and others as a quarterly basis in may one thousand nine hundred five the department of energy announced that it would be unable to begin acceptance of spent nuclear fuel in january one thousand nine hundred it was called for by those contracts a number of every six years utilities will have to go back to court whatever increase damages they have for the preceding six year period and that means we're obviously facing litigation for many years to come as was noted of litigation of the seventy one lost fifty one cases remain pending either in the court of federal claims or in the court of appeals for the federal circuit ten cases have been settled and noted that represents about thirty six percent of the cases are currently on remand to the trial court after seven are pending on appeal between judgments most of which are not final because of appeals and remand and settlements the government's total liability currently stands at one point from the court of federal claims is now pending in the federal circuit and the case was actually argued sometime ago but more recently the court decided they want to hear that case on bach rather than the normal three judge panel all the judges of the court would hear the case and  claimed sixty four million dollars in august another case is going to go to trial where the claim is hundred seventy four million dollars some are two more cases are going to go to trial where the amount requested one hundred million dollars and then in december another case is going to go to address the government's outstanding liability legislative solution would be preferable to the current drain on the resources of the courts and the department of justice caused by the seemingly endless litigation in summary the spent nuclear fuel litigation has already energy or waste disposal services but they have not yet begun to receive currently the department has no identifiable plan for having meanwhile operators of nuclear utilities continue to pay seven hundred fifty to eight hundred million dollars a year to cover the government from the claims and judgments on has paid utilities five hundred sixty five million in compensation because it has failed to meet that schedule the department is estimated that it could begin disposing of ways ten years from now  and twenty it would still need to continue making these compensation payments of around twelve billion dollars before it could catch up and start disposing of waste and schedule how the administration's decision to terminate th it was down last year the budget was down two hundred million dollars last year they laid off five hundred down one hundred one hundred million dollars again this year two hundred ninety seven million dollars it makes me wonder and i don't want to  they would have incurred had the government performed under the contract and as long as we don't perform under the contract and they can demonstrate their incurring costs that they would have incurred they're entitled to that payment from the government and building more nuclear power plants i respect their position i happen to disagree with that we just passed a bill to try to address global warming i'm one of those who believes that building more nuclear power plants is a safe way to provide energy and power for a country there the time frame and what that which that is absolutely needed the materials that are at the utility sites right now they are handled by the regulatory commission make sure that it's safe and the question is when are we going to fill the government's obligation to take these materials away and that's really the purpose of this hearing the secretary has indicated that he wants to go on a different policy path than the one of the nation's been on blue ribbon panel is going to review that and we'll look for those policy plants were designed for the repository to protect these materials for hundreds of thousands of years into the future and make sure that the radio nuclides get into the environment so yes term next hundred years even beyond the sites where they are but eventually unless eventually there has to be a facility that these materials and put them away for to protect them from the environment and that that those pools were never designed to have the waste over the life of the reactor there was an expectation that the government was going to come and take these materials or back in the many of these reactors were built there was a reprocessing   what the utilities have done is they have reracked and basically put together as closely as they can be in the pool but still we've now reached a point where those pools can no longer hold any more fuel and what has to happen is those assemblies have to be taken out in put in dry storage on the reactor sites in the back forty if you will and there are roughly forty four sites in thirty states where we currently have dry storage there's waste in addition to incorporating a disposal policy of nuclear waste done was created to pay for research and for carrying out future projects in two thousand and two congress approved president bush's recommendation of the mountain site and since then congress has continued to fund its research however the current administration has said the amount project quote is not a workable option and for nuclear waste storage and has halted all yuc mountain activities in light of the administration's decision to terminate this project i asked the administration to stop forcing our taxpayers to pay into a nuclear waste gone until the department of energy devises a new nuclear management strategy we should be asking our constituents to contribute to a fund that isn't being utilized to date our constituents have paid or obligated more than thirty billion dollars into the fund floridians alone have contributed contributed over seven hundred sixty six million into the fund and the government has no plan for long term storage which by law is its responsibility in addition the fund has a current balance of twenty two billion and it generates an annual interest of over one billion in two thousand and nine congress appropriated only one hundred forty five million to the civilian radioactive waste management program clearly there is enough money generated in interest alone from this fund to finance  it is time that we stand up for the taxpayers and demand better a few questions does the secretary say why we need a new policy horrible position to be and to defend something that is pretty much indefensible because we're so far along down the path and so now decide we want to new policy direction without giving any reasons why we need a new policy direction as the secretary said why he's he's made certain statements on it again he believes that the technology can give us a better path i really think your question is better know i don't know i don't know that it is i mean i don't know that it is i know we're hearing is and it's we're kind of chuckling because you're having to defend something that you can't really defend because for a long time this congress has worked on a policy on how to store this nuclear waste people fund to generate revenue and the ability to do this and now all of a fuel storage and and what their cost compared to the alternatives that we're considering and i would assume that the blue ribbon panel will consider this in their analysis of alternatives but i think that's an these materials is a geological positon and internationally there are programs and there's actually an international group that meets on a regular basis that talks about their individual programs many of them have storage  that there is international consensus that a repository needs to be developed the size of the repository and the scale of them are much less we have more operating reactors and anybody else world we have more spent fuel than anybody else in the world so that long term repository program but they have not identified a site yet for that wasn't the long term plan of the french to have a repository but again they're there reprocessing their fuel they're storing the residual  the on the armed services committee and i feel it's important to score the challenges associated with nuclear waste management have put implications both to civilian public safety and our and our national defense so my question is can you please clarify the distinction between the requirements for storage and disposal of civilian nuclear waste versus defense to clear waste and are these sites dual purpose or an error any of these sites well the height of the waste from the defense complex the department manages is substantially different and then spent fuel that the materials that sit in tanks on a river hanford reservations and so forth that will be we have a facility to move them move those materials to a permanent disposition defense for nuclear waste management now is not subject to the same charge to a commercial entit so then can you can you please explain how that affects the process in terms of budgeting and federal liability thank you for that question and the answer to it is essentially that there are two components of the budget for with the approach that the new administration is taking with regard to addressing nuclear waste but let me first ask do you personally believe the administration's climate and emission reduction repository and it also made some judgments about how much you have come out to hold and basically amount of capability is probably three to four times the limit so all that information is contained in that report and i would commend that there was a strong business i think it would be implemented and i think i think the challenge here is not so much the technology although that is somewhat of a challenge to make it a liberation but also making it you know as