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[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 80 (Monday, May 15, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6648-S6649]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

                        PRAIRIE ISLAND DRY CASK

  Mr. BRYAN. Mr. President, I would like to bring to the attention of 
my colleagues a little noticed, but I think significant, event that 
occurred last week.
  Last Thursday, Northern States Power transferred spent nuclear fuel 
from its reactor pool at Prairie Island into a new dry storage cask 
located at the reactor site.
  Prairie Island, near Red Wing, MN, is the location of two of Northern 
States Power's three nuclear power reactors.
  Licensed to operate starting in 1973 and 1974 respectively, Prairie 
Island 1 and Prairie Island 2 share a spent fuel storage pool.
  Today, 20 years into the 40-year licensed life of the reactors, the 
pool is filling up.
  Northern States Power needed to find more storage for the waste 
generated at Prairie Island. Fortunately, licensed technology, dry cask 
storage, was available which would allow the utility to move the oldest 
spent fuel assemblies out of the pool.
  NSP proposed to locate the casks at the reactor site.
  Thursday's announcement of final NRC approval to load the casks is 
the final chapter in a prolonged political and public relations effort 
by NSP to resolve until the year 2002 its Prairie Island waste problem.
  The public outcry that erupted after NSP proposed to expand on-site 
storage is every utility executive's nightmare, and led to the 
perception of the Prairie Island situation as the poster child of the 
nuclear power industry's current propaganda campaign for interim 
storage of high-level nuclear waste in Nevada.
  In spite of the obvious solution available to NSP, on-site dry casks, 
the Prairie Island situation has, for several years now, been held up 
as the prime example of why Congress must immediately reopen the 
Nuclear Waste Policy Act to speed up progress on moving high-level 
nuclear waste to Nevada.
  Twenty percent of the Nation's electricity power supply, we have been 
told, is at risk if Congress does not act soon.
  Reactors will shut down, cities will go dark, and electricity rates 
will skyrocket, if Congress does not take the waste off the hands of 
the utilities soon--according to the nuclear power industry. The 
nuclear power industry's shameless campaign to get the Federal 
Government to take responsibility for its waste is not new.
  In 1980, at the same time Congress was considering options for the 
permanent disposal of high-level waste, the nuclear power industry was 
pushing for away-from-reactor storage, or AFR.
  Without a Federal AFR facility, according to the industry, reactors 
would begin closing by 1983.
  Of course, no Federal AFR was built, and no reactors closed for lack 
of storage.
  Besides creating the misleading impression of a crisis, of impending 
doom, the nuclear power propaganda campaign has always sought to create 
the impression that there is only one solution, one option for avoiding 
the supposedly catastrophic consequences of reactor shutdowns: move the 
high-level nuclear waste to Nevada. That is the only proposal that is 
offered.
  First, we as a State were targeted for a permanent repository.
  That program is an acknowledged failure.
  Now we are targeted for interim storage.
  For the nuclear power industry, that means 100 years, subject to 
renewal. That amounts to de facto permanent storage.
  According to the nuclear power industry, interim storage in Nevada is 
the only salvation for the future of nuclear power.
  Nevadans have made it crystal clear that we want no part of the 
nuclear power industry's solution to its waste problem. Nuclear waste 
is not welcome in Nevada.
  Nevertheless, the nuclear power industry, and its surrogate for this 
matter, the Department of Energy, has been relentless in its efforts to 
force Nevadans to bear the health and safety risks of solving a problem 
we had no role in creating.
  Mr. President, there are solutions to the nuclear waste storage 
problem that do not include Nevada. Last weeks events at Prairie Island 
make that abundantly clear. [[Page S6649]] 
  For all their propaganda, and all their complaining to Congress, the 
nuclear utilities find a way to handle their waste, and keep reactors 
open and running.
  The CEO of Northern States Power, John Howard, has said ``Resolution 
of interim storage for spent nuclear fuel from our country's commercial 
power plants has reached crisis proportions.''
  Mr. Howard's assessment--that interim storage of nuclear waste is an 
impending crisis, and, thus, Congress must act to move this waste to 
Nevada as soon as possible--is a common theme in the nuclear power 
industry.
  As the Prairie Island situation demonstrates, however, the crisis 
scenario is simply not true from a technical or scientific perspective.
  Of course, I do not expect many of my colleagues will hear much about 
the resolution of the supposed crisis at Prairie Island.
  The resolution of the Prairie Island waste situation simply does not 
track with the contrived crisis scenario developed by the nuclear power 
industry and its lobbyists.
  To admit that nuclear utilities can find ways to take care of their 
own waste would shatter the carefully constructed fiction that interim 
storage in Nevada is the only possible alternative to shutting
 down the reactors.

  It should be acknowledged that Northern States Power paid a price for 
the approval of additional storage at Prairie Island.
  The debate over increased storage was intense, and many are still not 
happy.
  NSP was forced to make concessions, such as building more renewable 
energy sources.
  Other utilities are not anxious to go through what NSP went through.
  The unfortunate fact for nuclear utilities is that nuclear power, and 
nuclear waste, are not popular.
  The public relations and political problems associated with expanding 
storage capacity at reactors is an inescapable cost of nuclear power.
  Northern States Power also paid a financial price for expanding 
storage at Prairie Island.
  As other utilities do the same, especially after the 1998 goal for 
operation of a permanent repository included in the 1982 Nuclear Waste 
Policy Act, some action ought to be taken to provide some relief to the 
ratepayers who have paid in the first instance into the nuclear waste 
fund and who are not receiving the storage at that fund which they 
contemplated would be operational by the year 1998.
  I might say parenthetically, as the distinguished occupant of the 
chair knows, under no scenario, under absolutely none, will a facility 
be opened by the year 1998.
  So I believe as a matter of fairness that ratepayers are entitled to 
some relief in terms of payment into the nuclear waste fund.
  I have reintroduced in this Congress, as I have on previous 
occasions, legislation which this year bears the number of S. 429 which 
will provide a credit against nuclear waste fund contributions for 
utilities forced to build on-site storage after 1998.
  Under S. 429, ratepayers will not be financially penalized for the 
misguided and mismanaged efforts of the nuclear power industry and the 
Department of Energy to build a permanent repository in Nevada.
  I urge my colleagues to reject the nuclear power industry's newest 
assault on the people of Nevada, and support S. 429.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Kempthorne). The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. COCHRAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. COCHRAN. Mr. President, I understand there are two bills due 
their second reading.

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