Committee Democrats and Blue Ribbon Commission Agree –“Consent-Based Approach” Needed to Identify Permanent Nuclear Waste Repository
(Washington, DC) – Today, the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology held a hearing entitled, “Assessing America’s Nuclear Future – A Review of the Blue Ribbon Commission’s Report to the Secretary of Energy.” The Committee also held a hearing in October 2011 entitled, “A Review of the Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future Draft Recommendations.” The Blue Ribbon Commission (BRC) was formed by the Secretary of Energy at the request of President Obama to conduct a comprehensive review of America’s nuclear fuel cycle and waste disposal issues, policies and strategies. The BRC released its final report last month. Democratic Members applauded the Commission’s work and focused their attention at the hearing on how best to implement the Commission’s recommendations.
Ranking Member Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX) said in her opening statement, “[A]fter five decades of commercial nuclear power in the U.S., we still have not arrived at a comprehensive and equitable plan for permanent disposal of spent nuclear fuel. Yucca Mountain has never fit that bill. It was a decision forced upon Nevada by Congress, and it was only a partial solution at that. For this reason, I welcome the Blue Ribbon Commission’s final report. It represents the strongest effort to date to move the U.S. beyond what is arguably one of our most embarrassing policy failures, and one that has spanned both Democratic and Republican Administrations.”
In its report, the Blue Ribbon Commission observed that DOE’s decision decades ago to terminate a process for a second repository, combined with Congress’s subsequent action to “short-circuit the site selection process … and single out Yucca Mountain as the sole site for consideration, created a widespread perception that the repository location was being determined on the basis of primarily political, rather than technical and scientific, considerations.” Lt. Gen. Brent Scowcroft, USAF (Ret.), Co-Chairman of the Blue Ribbon Commission and one of today’s witnesses reiterated that point, suggesting that all siting decisions are political. “It is fundamentally a political process,” he said.
“It is time to move on and try a new approach,” said Ms. Johnson in her closing remarks, “one that seeks to gain consensus from the start by educating the public and empowering stakeholder communities. I applaud the Commission for having this as their number one recommendation. They have called for a “Consent-Based Approach” to identifying a permanent nuclear waste repository and they acknowledged that the decisions three decades ago regarding Yucca Mountain were not purely technical or scientific, but political, despite vocal and vibrant community opposition. What we need is consensus from the start. In the most powerful democracy in the world, it is the only way this will work.”
She continued, “The Blue Ribbon Commission has given us a framework for this new approach. Some recommendations can be implemented in the near term, and some may take decades to fully realize. All of them deserve our attention and consideration.”
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