the subcommittee on energy and the environment will come to order there are many italian imports that i would welcome was drafted in response to the proposed importation of twenty thousand tons of italian low level radioactive waste into the united states to be processed in tennessee and  utah introduced by congressman gordon terry and matheson along with many other members of the energy and commerce committee this bipartisan bill would prevent the importation of low level radioactive waste into this country the state of utah along with the northwest compact of which utah is a member said no we won't take the italian way today the case is making its way through the courts to determine whether the states and the compact have the right to say no to other countries radioactive waste i have worked on low level radioactive waste issues for many years i was away we passed the amendment to the act to both consent to a number of contacts and to ensure that states without disposal sites would be able to access those critical facilities let me state very clearly that when we established the compact system we did so to ensure that low level waste in this country would be able to be safely disposed of in order to encourage new disposal facilities to be established we allow the states to enter into compact to dispose of their waste regionally and we further granted them of already from places outside of their respective compact the purpose of the compact system was to empower the states and not the compact but today some of you that the compact do not have the authority to say no to waste from other countries to me from a plain language reading of the statute and the legislative history this position is obviously incorrect we did not intend for foreign ways to be allowed special privileges to be disposed of within the compact even against the wishes of the compact and the state the compact system the result of a painstaking compromise has provided access for critical low level radioactive waste disposal for almost three decades today i am very concerned that the compact system itself is under assault i disagree with those who argue that this bill is anti nuclear in fact this bill would actually preserve waste disposal to pass to the domestic stewardship of our new us nuclear waste disposal capacity is more important than ever in this context it is important to examine the current state of low level waste disposal in other countries other countries allow importation and disposal of waste from the united states the answer no not germany not canada not switzerland and no not italy not a one no other nuclear waste generating country allows low level waste importation for disposal in fact many countries with nuclear programs do not even have disposal for their own low level ways that include a totally if the us remains the one country that allows for the disposal of foreign ways that nothing stops those other countries from using us as their nuclear dumping ground if we do not protect a low level compact system what what what are we supposed which was supposed i'm grateful for the opportunity to appear today and provide testimony on this very important issue as has been mentioned energy solutions is headquartered in salt lake city utah we are a world leader in environmental clean up and providing a wide range of technical support services to the nuclear industry we also provide critical nonproliferation services under the global threat reduction initiative i'd like to address some of the concerns about safety because that's the underlying concern that we talked about importing nuclear waste we've been safely disposing of low level nuclear materials from within the united states and from abroad internationally for over nine years these materials include covers lab cleaning cloths paper towels and other kinds of materials that are used in areas where radioactive materials are present a low level radioactive waste contains the lowest ration of radiation in the low level waste classification scheme put it in perspective exit signs and smoke detectors that you find in your home have radioactive sources that are more radioactive in the class a designation and are not allowed to be disposed of in our facility both the state and federal regulators concluded that the processing and disposal of class a low level radioactive waste poses no health or safety issues it's important to note for congressman gordon from tennessee the no internationally generated waste would ever be disposed of were orphaned in tennessee we have never processed international material in tennessee that was non conforming and had to be returned to the generating country specifically identified the northwest compact disposal site in richland washington as the final resting place for some of that international waste and i can provide examples to the record there really is no domestic disposal capacity issue in the united states reference was made to the g a o testimony down both commercial and federal disposal volumes are decreasing additionally may of two thousand and eight a license was issued for the struction of another waste disposal site in texas although the presented publicly relates to one hundred fifty million cubic feet of remaining licensed city and we've also made the ten year limit publicly a part of domestically or internationally into their compact facility the clyde facility simply not a compact facility it's privately owned and there are no other facilities like it and so the precedent that people are concerned about from the court's ruling simply has no obligation on any other facility all compact disabilities according to the judge's ruling continue to be able to exclude waste and control waste within their comp system again there including we believe the proposed legislation would prevent american companies from playing an international role in the global nuclear industry largely based on perceptions rather than on