Congress must devise a permanent solution for cleaning up stored nuclear waste in communities across America, said U.S. Rep. Greg Walden (R-OR), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, during March 5 comments on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives.
“I rise tonight to address this national pressing need and that is the importance of fixing our broken national nuclear waste management program,” Rep. Walden said, recalling the commitment made more than 35 years ago by Congress and the federal government to local areas hosting spent nuclear fuel and waste sites that the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) would permanently remove and dispose of such hazardous materials by 1998.
“1998,” Walden repeated on the House floor. The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 (NWPA) established the nation’s nuclear waste management strategy and provided the statutory framework that governs the siting, construction and operation of a permanent geologic repository for spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste, according to information provided by the Energy and Commerce Committee.
In many communities, Walden said, cleanup hasn’t been completed, such as at the Hanford Site in southeastern Washington State, a decommissioned and demolished U.S. nuclear production complex that the congressman said is located on the Columbia River near his home and his constituents in Oregon. Walden stressed the need to find a permanent repository for the site’s nuclear waste.
In fact, the Hanford Site remains its most challenging cleanup, says DOE, largely attributable to the 44 years of plutonium production that were ongoing from 1943 to 1987. “After more than two decades of cleanup, considerable progress has been made at Hanford, reducing the risk the site poses to the health and safety of workers, the public, and the environment,” DOE says on its website.
Rep. Walden also said that electricity consumers in the United States already have paid roughly $40 billion to fund DOE’s operation and oversight of the nuclear waste repository, but the materials remain scattered across the country, according to the Energy and Commerce Committee. Additionally, Walden noted, “political science has deprived the public of the actual science to prove that nuclear waste can be safely [and] permanently disposed.”
Under Walden’s leadership, the House Energy and Commerce Committee last year approved the bipartisan Nuclear Waste Policy Amendments Act of 2017, H.R. 3053, introduced on June 26, 2017 by U.S. Rep. John Shimkus (R-IL). The measure, which has 109 cosponsors, would reform the nation’s nuclear waste management policy, among numerous other provisions.
“This legislation makes targeted reforms to the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 to set the federal government up to finally keep its promise,” Walden said. “This nuclear waste challenge has vexed policy makers for generations. We — this Congress — have the chance now in a bipartisan way to successfully build a durable solution and I look forward to working with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to achieve this goal.”