Date: 1997-10-29
Speaker: DAN SCHAEFER (republican)
Chamber: H
State: Colorado

Mr. Chairman. today the House of Representatives is considering H.R. 1270. legislation to repeal the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 and replace it with the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1997. Mr. Chairman. H.R. 1270 was approved by the Committee on Commerce by a wide margin of 43 to 3. enjoys broad bipartisan support. and was carefully crafted over a 2 -year period. H.R. 1270 achieves the following four principal goals: number one. the acceptance of nuclear waste at an interim storage facility in the year 2002. number two. it continues progress toward permanent disposal of nuclear waste at a geological repository. number three. it improves safety by consolidating storage of nuclear waste. and. four. it enhances consumer protection by ending the diversion of consumers fees for other Federal programs. Mr. Chairman. last year the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit held in the Indiana Michigan Power Company that DOE has a legal obligation to begin acceptance of nuclear waste in January of 1998. It is impossible for DOE to fulfill its legal duty to begin acceptance in 1998. and under current programs that the DOE has. It will not be able to begin acceptance until the year 2010. H.R. 1270 enables DOE to fulfill its legal obligation to begin acceptance at an interim storage facility in 2002. an earlier date that permits time for the NRC for licensing of this particular facility. The overriding goal of the nuclear waste program since 1983 has been providing for permanent disposal of nuclear waste in a geological repository. That goal is strengthened by H.R. 1270. Congress has always sought to avoid a competition for funding between an interim storage facility and a repository. H.R. 1270 avoids such competition by providing ample funds to pursue both programs. According to DOE. the funding provisions of H.R. 1270 provide sufficient funds to provide for interim storage while maintaining the progress towards development of a permanent repository. H.R. 1270 has protections designed to assure the interim storage facility cannot become a de facto permanent facility. There are statutory limits to the nuclear waste that can be stored in the interim facility. 40.000 metric tons. a small portion of the nuclear waste that will be generated. which is 115.000 metric tons. The commitment to the repository in H.R. 1270 is reflected in the funding mechanism of the bill. H.R. 1270 provides for a fee that must average 1 mill. onetenth of a cent. between 1999 and the year 2010. but can fluctuate to match program needs. Without this flexibility in the fee mechanism. funding for the repository may not be as-. sured. Maintaining the commitment to the repository is critical to the States that have significant amounts of defense nuclear waste at DOE nuclear facilities: Washington State. Idaho. South Carolina. Most of these defense wastes cannot be accommodated at an interim storage facility. They will have to be deposited in a repository of this nature. Continued progress on a repository is crucial for these particular States. During the hearings held by the Subcommittee on Energy and Power of the Committee on Commerce on nuclear waste legislation. the Nuclear Regulatory Commission testified that onsite storage of nuclear waste is safe. but centralized storage of nuclear waste offers even higher safety margins than what we have today. Right now. nuclear waste is spread all over the country in scores of sites in 35 States. Consolidating nuclear waste at one site will improve safety and provide for the enhanced protection and the public health and the public safety. Since enactment of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982. consumers have contributed $13 billion. $13 billion. Mr. Chairman. towards the nuclear waste program. Only a portion of these sums. $6 billion. has been spent on the program itself. The rest has been effectively diverted to other Federal programs. This diversion has gotten so bad in recent years that only 15 cents. 15 cents of every dollar paid by consumers. has been spent on the nuclear waste program. We need to protect the consumers and stop the diversion of nuclear waste fees to fund other Federal programs. H.R. 1270 protects the consumers in two ways: changing the fee to an annually adjusted fee that matches the appropriations level. and thereby eliminating the diversion of funds to other programs. and capping the fee at 1 mill. onetenth of a cent per kilowatt hour. Under H.R. 1270. every penny of the fees paid by the consumers in the future will be spent on this particular program. H.R. 1270 is consistent with the budget laws and does not violate paygo requirements. It was not a simple matter to resolve the budgetary concerns related to the bill reported by the Committee on Commerce in 1995. The com-. mittee went through a great deal of effort to resolve budgetary concerns for one reason. a conviction that the diversion of fees paid by the consumers must be halted. The current fee is considered a mandatory receipt. and deleting this fee was deemed to reduce those receipts. The fee in H.R. 1270. since it is annually adjusted to match appropriation levels. is considered a discretionary fee. The committee developed an offset for the loss of the mandatory receipts resulting from the switch from the flat mill fee established by the 1982 Act to the annually adjusted fee in H.R. 1270. The offset the committee adopted was requiring the payment of onetime fees owed by 13 utilities by the end of fiscal year 2002. These fees were required to be paid by the 1982 Act upon acceptance of nuclear spent fuel generated by these individual utilities. Requiring the payment of outstanding onetime fees in fiscal year 2002 was necessary to assure that H.R. 1270 does not violate budgetary paygo limitations. That was the only reason the committee adopted this provision. Opponents of H.R. 1270 have argued that the bill imposes tremendous burdens on taxpayers. Nothing could be further from the truth. The nuclear waste program has always been funded by consumers through fees on electric generation by nuclear power plants. Consumers will continue to fund the program through fees provided by H.R. 1270. The only cost. the only cost under H.R. 1270. is the cost of disposingof the defense waste. It is wholly appropriate that taxpayers. fund this cost. since the benefits of our defense activities accrue to all taxpayers. not to just the consumers of utilities with nuclear power plants. I understand the opponents of H.R. 1270 also assert that this bill preempts State and local transportation and safety requirements. That assertion also is completely false. State and local governments are preempted from establishing inconsistent transportation safety requirements by existing Federal transportation laws. not in H.R. 1270. Mr. Chairman. I would urge my colleagues to certainly support H.R. 1270. Mr. Chairman. I reserve the balance of my time.