 My name is Bob Musil. I'm the president of the Rachel Carson Council. I am also a board member of EESI, the Environmental and Energy Study Institute, and we're very happy to welcome you all here today. We have an outstanding panel on decommissioning nuclear power plants. Those of you in the room presumably know what they are, but one of the problems you will see and we'll hear from a number of distinguished experts here is that this is a problem that was anticipated certainly by the panelists, I know, but the idea that we might be shutting down upwards of 80 nuclear power plants which are packed with highly radioactive materials, highly enriched uranium, sit in local communities. It affects the economy, the health, and there is long-range planning that is lacking on what to do with these fuel rods and other materials. So what we're going to be doing is taking a look, first of all, at what is out there, where they are, why they're dangerous. Then we're going to take a look at some of the options for what to do with them, which range from on-site to long moving them around. Our panelists will talk about that. Then we have folks from Zion, Illinois, the mayor, who are wrestling with the problems already of having a closed nuclear power plant in their community. We also have a leader of the show, Shoni will also be talking about some of the problems connected to Native Americans and their rights. Before I introduce everyone, I'm going to start in one more quick announcement. You can get all of the materials for this briefing, the slides you will see, and other materials at the EESI website. www.EESI.org. For those of you who live Tweet, there we are at at EESI talk. And we're also very happy to be broadcasting on C-SPAN this afternoon. And there will also be a webcast that will be available permanently on the website of EESI. So tell your friends they can start tuning in or later on when we're done you can get all these materials in an important topic. I want to begin then with laying out an overview and some of the problems with Mr. Robert Alvarez. Bob Alvarez is one of those who has been following nuclear power plants for a long time. He is the former Senior Policy Advisor and Assistant Secretary of Energy and has many, many other credentials to be addressing these subjects. So I want to begin with Mr. Bob Alvarez, formerly of the Department of Energy. Bob? I'm recovering from the Department of Energy. What I'm going to talk about here are mostly predisposal issues associated with nuclear power plants. And especially the spend fuel aspect of it which is really the most significant long-lasting problem facing the closure of power plants. As you know nuclear power plants are no longer just about generating electricity they've become major large scale radioactive waste management operations. And after about 60 years the United States has generated 30% of the total global inventory of spent nuclear fuel. By far the largest, there are about 80,150 metric tons at about 125 sites, 99 which are operational. Why should we be concerned about this? As I've said, mainly because this is material which is considered some of the most hazardous material on the planet. And it is a unique material that is sort of something that was totally new and unthought about until about 1950s when the United States government began to sort of ponder the subject of what do we do with these waste. In 1959, Abel Wolman, University of Professor at Johns Hopkins testified before Congress the first time they inquired into the subject. He said their toxicity in general terms both radioactive and chemical is greater by far than any industrial material which we have here too dealt with in any other country. He said we dispose of waste of almost every industry in the United States by actual conversion into harmless material. Wolman stressed this is the first series of waste of any industry of that kind where this disposal is non-existent. Spent fuel is essentially bound up in more than 244,000 long rectangular assemblies containing tens of millions of fuel rods. They in turn contain trillions of pellets about the size of a fingerprint. And they get irradiated in a reactor core for about six years. And after that about five to six percent of that uranium is converted to highly radioactive material ranging from half-lives of seconds to millions of years. Because of these extraordinary hazards it's been long recognized that this fuel should be disposed of or contained. Actually disposal is not necessarily the appropriate term but contained for a period of time of at least 10,000 to 100,000 years which sort of transcends the geologic epic defining human civilization. This is a slide that was given to me by David Kraft which I think is very useful about where the paths are right now. One thing that's key is the indefinite storage seems to be the likely commonality as opposed to what will happen. As I said there are major radioactive waste generators they contain about 23 billion curies of radioactivity. These are considered the largest concentrations of artificial radioactivity on the planet. And one way to compare that is how much radioactivity has been generated by the production of nuclear weapons. In the United States the radioactivity in their high-level waste is about 30 times less than what's been generated by commercial nuclear power plants. The amount of radioactive cesium which is a very dangerous isotope roughly 40% of the longer-lived isotopes in spent fuel is about 350 times more than was released in the environment by all 600 plus atmospheric nuclear weapons tests in the spent fuel. There are about 700 metric tons of plutonium. The global inventory of plutonium right now is about 250 metric tons so there's a lot of stuff in there. Now about 70% of the waste that's been generated by nuclear power plants in the former spent fuel is sitting in pools and it's densely compacted. The rest is in dry gas storage. This is a graph giving you an idea of reactors that are, this is somewhat dated because I think there are some additional reactors should be added. This gives you an idea of spent fuel that's stranded in future standard reactors. We're looking at more than a quarter of the total spent fuel generated by nuclear power plants in this country now at stranded reactors or soon to be stranded reactors. This mic here, right? One of the major, we've talked a lot about the radioactive hazards of these waste but the other principle danger is that it gives off tremendous amounts of heat in the form of what's called decay heat or thermal heat. If you pull a full core it's been irradiated for a few years out of a reactor. At the same time it gives off enough decay heat to power a steel mill blast furnace. It's quite hot and it's enough to cause the cladding of the spent fuel to catch fire as well as even over time that heat remains a problem for about 1200 years when you get in a geologic disposal and the heat is so great it can actually destabilize the disposal medium that is present and so you have to deal with the issues associated with decay heat. We got involved with this problem in 2002-2003 following the 9-11 attacks my colleagues and I put together a working group and basically determined reported in a very scientific journal that if somebody or some event were to cause the pools to drain as US nuclear power plants as they are currently stuffed with spent fuel that would lead to a catastrophic release of radioactivity that would be far greater than a meltdown would be far greater than Chernobyl. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission thoughtly opposed what we had to say. The National Academy was called in to referee our dispute. They came out with findings in 2005 which GNRC attempted to suppress and rewrite but they basically agreed with us that you have to take this problem seriously. These spent fuel pools are holding about four to five times more spent fuel than their current designs allowed and because of that these spent fuel pools were never meant to hold this material longer than five years now they're holding them for decades and they don't have the same time of safety measures that a reactor has like the secondary containment of the big dome it doesn't have independent water supply it doesn't have its own independent source of electricity we pointed out that one of the big problems is the spent fuel pool fire a couple years ago my colleagues updated their analysis and basically pointed out that if an accident were to occur at the LEMRIC reactor involving a spent fuel pool fire about eight million people would have to be evacuated because of land contamination and the damages on the average would be about two trillion dollars this is far greater than the Hurricane Katrina we're looking at something that would be brought about a technological disaster that would be comparable to war one of the problems with spent fuel is sort of unresolved is the fact that the nuclear regulatory commission has been allowing the reactor operators to irradiate the fuel longer by increasing the amount of fissionable uranium-235 from about three and a half to almost five percent in content what this does is it builds up a great deal more radioactivity and fission products as well as well as fissile materials and this stuff is very hot and the NRC does not have a technical basis to support the safe transfer of this material and it's likely to be trapped at reactor sites until we figure out whether this stuff can be safely moved what the research is showing is that the longer you keep this stuff in a reactor and irradiate it the thinner the cladding becomes the more likely it corrodes it becomes very vulnerable to movement and vibrations and there's no technical basis to in terms of information to tell you about the levels that they're burning with right now whether it's safe for any long-term storage or movement this gives you an idea of how much is high burn-up but the standard reactor is roughly 23 percent about 77 percent of it is lower burn-up there's a lot of effort to try to push for a interim storage site to get it out of my backyard hence you have a lot of legislative initiatives that have been promoted over the last few years to do that this is easier said than done because we have a basic problem where transportation infrastructure near reactor sites are variable and changing each spent fuel canister system has unique challenges some of the dry cast out there are not suitable for transport the pickup and transportation order hasn't been determined and what you have is a steady growth of shutdowns and a build-up it's going to clog the system so will the older stuff have priority well if the older stuff is further away these are issues that have not been worked out and again the high burn-up material which gives off a lot of thermal heat may result in being trapped sites for much longer periods than we've been led to believe it could have a major impact because transportation may and certainly disposal will certainly involve repackaging of as many as 11,800 disposal canisters now where is the money coming from under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act the users of nuclear generated electricity are levied to a user fee of one mil per kilowatt hour and that is to pay for the search and the opening of a repository it does not pay for the establishment of an interim storage site the transport of that material to that site the repackaging of the material for disposal that is to be borne by the rate payer at this time although there is legislation that's been offered that would allow the DOE to assume title for a pilot program but beware of that because it could turn into a down payment for a balloon mortgage we're looking at expensive things not been costed out in an adequate fashion this is a rough graph I'll give you a quiz on it to give you an idea of what it would cost maybe to store some of the stranded spent fuel so it gets up to about 3.8 billion dollars and this is DOE numbers DOE has a great record of missing the target when it comes to cost inflation repackaging is one of the big issues that has not been dealt with when they shut their reactors down they remove the infrastructure to allow for repackaging which are the pools and a lot of these dry casts cannot necessarily be opened without some sort of infrastructure DOE expects a repository to be open if the planets line up and congress goes along with the licensing process like a mountain they have a river cutting ceremony they'll come up they'll be able to open a repository maybe by 2048 and then after that it'll take about 50 years to fill the repository and you're basically looking at perhaps the repackaging of 80,000 80,000 small canisters the cost DOE has been looking at this but you're looking at maybe a billion dollars per reactor additional costs for repackaging uncertainties I find this to be a very interesting quote indian point energy is hedging their best when they issue their decommissioning report this report should not be taken as any indication to licensee knows how DOE will eventually perform its obligations or has any specific expectations confirming that performance so these guys are essentially on their own trying to make things up as they go along so the basic approach undertaking this country for storage disposal of spent fuel needs to be fundamentally revamped we need to address the vulnerabilities of storage and spent fuel pools I think they need to be rapidly thinned out it'll take about 10 years we estimate it would cost between 3.5 to 7 billion dollars to do that that would greatly reduce your hazards your consequences and in state of waiting for problems to arise which tends to be the modus operandi of the regulators and the government they need to develop a transparent comprehensive roadmap of what the problems are for the public to understand how long will, what are we talking about in terms of interim storage how long will it take, how much will it cost otherwise the United States would depend on these leaps of faith with regard to nuclear waste storage and the leaps of faith as a state for largely unfunded radioactive waste balloon mortgage payments in the future, thank you very much thank you Bob Alvarez Bob I should mention is also currently a senior scholar at the institute for policy studies and he like all of our panelists will be available for media interviews at the conclusion of this session we also have reserved about a half hour for you to quiz our experts up here and we'll save questions until all of the panelists are done next we have Kevin Camps Kevin is a nuclear waste specialist with the organization Beyond Nuclear he also works with a number of other organizations and has been following these issues for a good deal of time he's going to talk about some of the difficulties with storage options and also about some alternatives one for those of you who remember Bonanza the 20th century TV program called Haas it's all yours Kevin thank you Bob so I applaud just in advance I'm going to have to skip some slides but Bob's done a great job on the pool risks for example so I will fly through the images but I'll try to hit some main points during my talk one is that we oppose not only the current risky pool storage but also the inadequate dry cask storage and that's why we're calling hardened onsite storage a significant safety upgrade and security upgrade to dry cask storage we also oppose the Yucca mountain dump and centralized interim storage and the unnecessary high risk shipments through 44 states many major cities and 75% of US congressional districts that are a part and parcel of that plan and I'd like to start by pointing out that today July 16th is a day of infamy in New Mexico and nationwide because of the trinity atomic bomb blast of 1945 the church rock uranium mine tailing spill of 1979 and incredibly now in its tone deafness the nuclear regulatory commission's announcement of the beginning of the licensing proceeding for the centralized interim storage facility targeted at southeast New Mexico, Holtec Eddie Lee Environmental Alliance we have a September 14th legal intervention deadline and believe you me the environmental movement will show up for that deadline in opposition to this environmental injustice and so yes empty the pools into dry cask storage but as you'll see we are calling for significant safety and security upgrades on the dry cask storage so just to give you an idea and Bob already touched on this if a pool had caught fire and one nearly did at Fukushima Daiichi it was sheer luck that it didn't instead of 160,000 nuclear evacuees there could have been as many as 50 million and that according to the prime minister who was serving at the time he said it would have been the end of the Japanese state and the pool risks in the United States are greater than those in Japan because our pools are packed more densely so other risks of pool storage are leakage into groundwater and surface water as has been going on at Indian Point upstream on the Hudson from New York City for decades at this point and also the risk of heavy load drops even the transfer out of the pools is high risk has to be done very carefully we've had near misses in Minnesota we've had near misses in Michigan and in Vermont with stuck cranes and slippage of cranes so this gives you an idea of what dry cask storage looks like vertically oriented dry casks horizontally oriented dry casks and there have been major issues around the country since dry cask storage began in 1986 just a few examples this is multiple cask designs and models this is multiple sites seal leakage at North Anna I'm sorry at Surrey Virginia where if you lose the inerting heat transfer medium the helium gas you can overheat the nuclear fuel inside cracking of containers as at Palisades in Michigan hydrogen gas generation explosions and fires as at Point Beach in Wisconsin the list goes on and on faulty shims as at San and Ophry, California just recently revealed we had that problem at Palisades in Michigan where I'm from as early as 1994 and so I mentioned hardened onsite storage these are the gentlemen who conceived of it and gave it its phraseology Dr. Arjun Makhajani of Institute for Energy and Environmental Research coined the phrase hardened onsite storage Dr. Gordon Thompson commissioned by Citizen Awareness Network of the Northeast wrote a report in January 2003 called robust storage we have a statement of principles for safeguarding nuclear waste at reactors that should be in your packets and by the way I will post this at the Beyond Nuclear website beyondnuclear.org with detailed explanations of these and links to these documents we have over 200 groups in all 50 states signed on to these principles we've been calling for this since 2002 actually it's been a long time we've been calling for this and it's falling on deaf ears in the US federal government in the nuclear power industry so significant upgrades to safety and security are required and one point I'd like to mention at the end there is to prohibit reprocessing the extraction of plutonium from high-level radioactive waste which Holtec in New Mexico plans to do if they can get away with it this example of the group signed on to these principles and some of those groups helped organize today so thank you very much for that so on the left there you see a graphic representation of hardened on-site storage by Dr. Thompson as compared to the bowling pin dense configuration which is a high security risk if attackers were to show up with anti-tank weapons for example so fortifications are necessary and I should add that some sites are not appropriate for on-site hardened storage place like prairie island Minnesota which is the home of the prairie island Indian community a flood plain in the Mississippi river it has to go to higher ground it has to go further inland but not a thousand or two thousand miles away to New Mexico rather a few miles away for the interim and this will be required no matter what because if Yucca mountain were to open today which of course it won't if CIS centralized interim storage open today it would take 50 years to group the waste to these sites that's 50 years of ongoing on-site risk that should be addressed Holtec the basis of the New Mexico centralized interim storage has a quality assurance epidemic going on dating back to the year 2000 we have whistleblower information from industry and from NRC that major quality assurance violations are associated with the Holtecs this has not been rectified by the nuclear regulatory commission for years and decades so the whistleblowers pointed out that decisions like this in the space program led to space shuttles hitting the ground and Dr. Landsman will serve as an expert witness for the environmental coalition challenging the Holtec centralized interim storage the structural integrity of these containers being questioned not at 60 miles per hour on the rails but at zero miles per hour in on-site storage the pools need to be emptied intense but should be retained in case there's an emergency need to transfer from old degraded cask into new replacement cask now the risks of moving this material through 44 states through a hundred major urban centers in this country through 330 of the 435 house districts this gives you an idea of the layers of protection but are they robust enough for severe accidents I should point out that centralized interim storage would make these much nearer term risks so there has been talk it's now delayed of 2021 for pilot interim storage of 2024 for full scale and why are these sites in the Texas New Mexico borderlands being targeted because the attitude is this is a nuclear sacrifice zone you have a national low-level radioactive waste dump in Texas at waste control specialists you have the whip site waste isolation pilot plant in New Mexico for plutonium from the military disposal you see a 2014 industrial fire at whip followed a few days later by a plutonium release to the environment that was supposed to be impossible and this site in Texas is near or above the Oglala aquifer these are not appropriate sites it's not a nuclear sacrifice zone there are large Hispanic communities there the two sites are within 40 miles of each other and so the risks of centralized interim storage is that it becomes permanent that then the containers could degrade and release their contents at the surface of the planet and even if the waste were to leave this is multiplying transport risks unnecessarily on the left you see a congressional tour of Yucca mountain as just happened led by John Schimpkes this is a waste of taxpayer money that has to stop and our joke about the Yucca dump and you see one of the toes twitching a thousand environmental groups have opposed the Yucca dump for a generation and will continue to do so this gives you an idea of all the states impacted by road and rail shipments this map shows you how intense those shipments are in a state like Illinois where most of the shipments are actually from reactors in other states moving through and then as you get further west especially in Utah and Nevada the worst of the transport impacts waste control specialists in Texas all mainline rail could be used for these shipments and here's Holtex map they only want to look at Maine Yankee and San Onofre California what about the 120 other reactors in this country what about those transport risks and I would point out that a place like Fort Worth Texas would get hit coming and going first out to New Mexico and then up to Yucca mountain so an example of how high risk the Department of Energy is willing to undertake liquid high-level radioactive waste shipments for the first time in North American history began last year there needs to be congressional oversight and we thank Senator Gillibrand and Representative Higgins for questioning this very high-risk behavior through their their state and so here's an example of very risky barge shipments of high-level waste bound for the west on the Hudson River past Manhattan are you kidding me this is the Department of Energy proposal talk about the security risks but it's many other waterways the Great Lakes, rivers, sea coasts here are road and rail shipments through New York here's right here where we're standing Capitol Hill and I live in Mount Rainier, Maryland there's a train line that would carry waste through where I live I work in Tacoma Park, Maryland if you stand on the metro platform in Tacoma Park you could get a gamma and neutron dose one of these things goes by this is too close for comfort for the high risks of these shipments State of Nevada deserves a shout out for their analysis of these risks and again these will be posted on the website study the details of places you care about because if we don't do something about it it's going to start coming through and put them at risk an alternative to barges would be these heavy haul trucks which have their own risks this is a reactor pressure vessel it's got high level waste at Big Rock Point in Northern Michigan they had several incidents in 2003 during this heavy haul truck shipment to get it to a rail head and put it on a train this is interstate 40 in Oklahoma in the spring of 2002 just as the Yucca votes were happening in Congress at the time the underwater submersion design criteria for these containers is dangerously inadequate and so too the high temperature long duration fire risk scenario a July 2001 underground tunnel fire in downtown Baltimore and Dr. Marvin Reznikoff of Radioactive Waste Management Associates studied the details of this fire asking the question what if a holtac container had been in that and his conclusion was it would have failed it would have released at least a fraction of its contents and large numbers of people would have been injured by that it would have cost $14 billion to clean up the mess the risk of attacks these containers are not designed to withstand anti-tank missiles Shimkus himself at a congressional hearing said it's hard to fire a tow anti-tank missile it would be hard to hit one of these shipments with such a 40 year old weapon system well attackers would probably be trained in their use and they are designed to hit Soviet tanks that go 37 miles per hour and so these shipments would slow down in a place like south side of Chicago a very large fraction of shipments would go through there and they could be hit and there have been upgrades to these anti-tank weapons systems over the decades so these are where the radioactive poisons go if there is a breach of a shipping container to different organs and tissues in the human body depending on the isotope even if there is not an accident incident free routine shipments still emanate gamma radiation and neutrons at a rate of 10mAh at a distance of 6 feet that's why we call them mobile X-ray machines that can't be turned off and they cause harm to people nearby that's 1-2 chest X-rays per hour if the shipment happens to be contaminated externally France has had hundreds of these documented sometimes 500-3,300 times permissible dose rates the United States has 50 documented examples of this it would cause more harm to people nearby this is Fred Upton who's long advocated for the Yucca dump Shimkis has now taken the lead HR 3053 passed the house on May 10th is now over on the Senate side would increase the allowable amount to be buried at Yucca would gut the licensing proceeding is non-consent based in violation of the Blue Ribbon Commission's final report and is adamantly opposed by the environmental movement of the United States it's ironic that Upton supports these ideas because barred shipments on Lake Michigan could put at risk the drinking water supply for 40 million people downstream in two countries and a large number of Native American First Nations if just one of them goes down and leaks again the irony for Congressman Shimkis is that thousands of shipments of high-level waste from other states would pass through Illinois including on the south and west sides of Chicago bound along for the west on the Senate side you've got Senate energy and water appropriations Alexander and Feinstein that are more interested in centralized interim storage it's fair to say and the irony of that is what would that mean if San and Ophry's waste were to be rushed into transport through the heart of Metro LA we are not ready for this nobody even knows about this transport communities along the corridors involved do not consent to these risks and we're now closer to 80 years into this mess we need to stop making it we need to harden onsite storage we need to stop pursuing these dead ends at Yucca Mountain and centralized interim storage and prevent these risky transports thank you Kevin Camps thank you Kevin is with Beyond Nuclear and will be available for interviews like all of our expert panelists what we've been listening to in these incredible problems associated with high level radioactive waste impact communities part of the reason we are so deeply concerned is that I'm going to turn to Mayor Al Hill who will explain that in Zion Illinois there is a decommissioned nuclear power plant from 1998 suffice to say it affects the community Mayor Hill we're glad to have you with us thank you I do have to get my glasses on him getting older things change I am Al Hill and I am the mayor of Zion Illinois a community with a population of 25,000 located approximately 45 miles north of Chicago and situated directly on Lake Michigan I am not an expert on nuclear power or fuel storage or transportation but I would like to share with you our experience as a host to a nuclear power plant as well as a decommissioning and fuel storage process Zion nuclear power plant was licensed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 1973 and operated from 74 to 98 decommissioning is expected to be completed before the end of the year we presently have 64 drycast storage units on site in Zion in 1968 the nuclear power was a new technology that was to provide low cost electric power this was good for Zion good for Illinois and good for our country the people in Zion understood that locating the power plant within the community and along the shores of Lake Michigan would entail some cost there was an understanding that the community would give up 257 acres of lakefront property that there would be an eyesore on the community that would be there a long, long time recreational access to the lake for visitors as well as local citizens would be severely limited and an understanding that economic development opportunities associated with the lakefront would be severely inhibited in exchange for the cost there was an understanding that the Zion community would benefit from locating the power plant Zion would benefit from the jobs created by the plant that each taxing body would receive significant tax dollars from the increased equalized assessed valuation of the plant and that when the operating license of the plant expired there were 257 acres that would be returned to pristine condition and a property return for development purposes that was the deal it was an unwritten deal but that was the deal there was never ever an understanding that once the plant closed the Zion community would play host to a radioactive dump that contains 2.2 million and I'll say that again 2.2 million pounds of nuclear spent fuel rods on our lakefront that was not part of the deal I speak for all the citizens of Zion when I say that we do not want to be a storage facility for radioactive waste our community is staggering the closure and decommissioning of the plant has had a negative impact on local taxes local employment and our ability to maintain sustainable economic development we were crushed by the loss of nearly half of our property tax base in 1998 when operating the Zion nuclear station contributed over 19 million dollars a year to the cost of local services today they contribute slightly more than one million close your other plant also saw the loss of 800 full-time well-paying jobs estimates are that 42 million dollars per year was lost from payroll design in the surrounding communities without considering the safety of nuclear waste when businesses are considering locating in Zion or making real estate investments the nuclear waste presents a negative perception of our community plans call for development of the lakefront and we are unable to attract investments to that to what should be the most valuable waterfront land along Lake Michigan the city of Zion comprehensive plan calls for the development concepts that are intended to preserve and enhance the natural areas and to create economic opportunities through new housing, educational and tourism uses the lost opportunity for economic development on the lakefront property is one of the most difficult realities for our community with the 2010 scuttling of the yucca mountain program we are not naive enough to believe that the rods will be removed anytime soon we therefore believe that our community should be compensated we also believe that the federal government should do the compensating in 1982 the united states congress enacted a nuclear waste policy act which was intended to begin the process of disposing of nuclear waste the act contains a section entitled interim storage fund this section references impact assistance which says that the secretary shall make annual payments to a state or appropriate unit of local government or both in order to mitigate the social or economic impact occasioned by the establishment of subsequent operation of an interim storage capacity within a jurisdictional boundaries of such government impact assistance could be as high as 15 dollars per kilogram of spent fuel payments made shall be allocated in a fair and equitable manner with a priority to those states or units of local government suffering the most severe impacts I can't imagine any government anywhere that will suffer more severely than the Zion area communities we're talking about lake michigan lakefront property that is valued at a fraction of its fair market value because of 1 million kilograms of radioactive waste stored on the shoreline Zion has never been asked about and never contemplated or consented to converting the decommissioned site to an indefinite and long-term nuclear storage facility the attempt of the 1982 federal regulation is clear that communities will suffer social and economic impacts if they are designated as interim storage facilities and that they should be compensated Senator Tammy Duckworth and congressman Brad Schneider have introduced legislation in 115th congress that would go a long way to make affected communities whole the legislation will not only apply to Zion but other communities throughout the united states that are experiencing the decommissioning process the act is called you gotta bear with this one sensible timely relief for americans nuclear district economic development act of 2017 that all goes out to stranded and it talks about stranded nuclear waste these are HR 3970 and S1903 I am hopeful that this legislation will successfully pass both houses of congress this is an issue that should receive bipartisan support nuclear power plants are located in both republican and democratic districts I am hopeful for what this legislation will do for Zion for the Zion community I am particularly hopeful of what it will do for all communities across the united states that are presently hosting nuclear power plants every one of those plants are facing decommissioning and spent fuel storage issue I hope that the legislation will help those communities avoid the pitfalls that Zion has had to deal with and is still dealing with 20 years after closing I want to thank you for your time and I also want to thank you for the opportunity to share our experience with you I do want to say that I have because of time factors I've kind of glossed over the details of what's happened in our community but if any of you have any questions afterwards I will be happy to go into details on housing values and the like things like that since this has happened so thank you thank you very much Mayor Hill our next speaker has an extremely long I don't want to say exposure to nuclear issues many of us are not familiar with the health effects and what these things can do to individuals but our next speaker Ian Vosibarty is the principal man of the western bands of the Shoshone Nation of indians he's secretary of the native community action council that's a party with standing in NRC docket number 63001 of Yucca Mountain and he has extensively studied the health effects and is deeply concerned based on the science that Native American populations are not protected by any of the plans around Yucca Mountain and elsewhere thank you good afternoon my name is Ian Vosibarty I'm the principal man of the western bands the Shoshone Nation of Indians I'm also the secretary for the native community action council we are a party with standing in the atomic safety licensing board proceedings on Yucca Mountain we have three primary contentions first ownership Treaty of Ruby valley of 1863 is in full force and effect and western Shoshone title remains unextinguished that is our primary contention in the atomic safety licensing board and even with the department of energy using the Brio of land management's master title which are the last status record of the United States government the department of energy cannot prove ownership does not adjudicate title our other contentions are based on our past exposure from fallout in weapons testing we cannot endure any increased burden of risk from any source that includes fracking radiation that includes coal ash radiation or any high level nuclear waste that would be transported or stored in our country our final contention is water right which is water which is necessary both spiritually and as a property right and those are our three primary contentions if you want to ask me more about it you can go to our website which is nativecommunityactioncouncil.org and all of the information is there thank you thank you very much Ian for that all of these issues I think Bob Alvarez started with talking about half lives that go up into the millions of years I'm not sure our next speaker will be here but he will be here after many of us representative I want to introduce there he is Jackson Hinkle he's a graduate of San Clementi High School member of San Clementi Green regional youth director of earth guardians organized a youth led campaign led to the removal of plastic water bottles from over 60 campuses and he's also interestingly since we're here to talk about policy politics and how to solve these issues he's the founder of the Orange County students for city council a coalition that is currently recruiting mobilizing and supporting progressive students to run for city council positions so we're glad to have you here and representing thank you all for having me and before I begin I just wanted to say how great it is to see so many young faces in this crowd in this movement you don't see a lot of young faces but just know this is your future, this is your children's future their children's future and so on so if you don't remember anything else today take that with you so my name is Jackson Hinkle I'm 18 years old I am representing San Clementi Green here today and I'm also representing the voices of future generations in my home of San Clementi California many of the speakers have already touched on the Santa no free nuclear generating station is current home to nuclear waste and the waste is being stored in what is known as thinwalled canisters thinwalled canisters are widely used across the United States but not so much in other countries they're 5 8 of an inch thick they can't be monitored for cracks, repaired if there was something to go wrong with the canister and they can't be transported there's many problems with that when you're dealing with nuclear waste if you just kind of gloss over what I just said in addition to all those things moist marine salts and potassium chloride that's found in New Mexico can cause corrosion in cracks in these canisters once a crack starts it only takes 16 years to grow completely through the wall according to the nuclear regulatory commission the president of Holtec the manufacturer of the canisters used near my home of San Clementi California has even admitted that it is not feasible to repair canisters even if you could find cracks he stated that as much as a microscopic through wall crack in a canister will release millions of curies of radionuclides into the atmosphere we can no longer treat this catastrophic issue as a minor inconvenience and we can no longer kick this radioactive can down the road moving forward what we need to do is oppose consolidated interim storage bills such as HR 3053 we must require a high priority project to move existing nuclear fuel from thin walled canisters to thick wall casks and lastly we need to find the safest location to store thick wall casks and we can no longer repair canisters for additional environmental and security protection what many people fail to see or seem to ignore is the fact that the mismanagement of nuclear waste doesn't only pose issues for future generations and far down the road it's going to affect us right now and it already is affecting us right now and it's going to continue to affect us if we don't deal with it properly so thank you for having me thank you very much Jackson I'm only a couple of years older so I want to join your group last but not least our final speaker is Jeffrey Fettis he's a senior attorney with the natural resources defense council NRDC with their energy and transportation program he's won cases before the nuclear regulatory commission a successful challenge to the wonderful EPA radiation protection standards for the proposed yucca mountain nuclear waste repository I remember testifying on those that said somewhat absurd exercise but thank you for all that and why don't you bring us on home and Jeff Fettis get to the right slide here we go how's the sound good my name is Jeff Fettis I'm attorney at NRDC and I'm going to turn to unlike my colleagues here I'm going to turn to a slightly more practical set of discussions and they've done a good job of setting up a lot of the risks and the realities of what we face but I want to turn to a few things that are going on right now and why I think this briefing is so well timed for congress to start considering first again this is all EESI website this is coming this is the trajectory slide that we have in the last several years six reactors at five plants have closed either for economic or safety related reasons two close in the next several years are at least seven reactors at five plants and there are only two under construction right now and the trajectory of those are at best uncertain two got cancelled this past year in South Carolina new build AP-1000 reactors so whatever one's position is on issues related to nuclear power and whether or not one submits to the idea that 80-year licensing is a reality there is a downward trajectory and decommissioning is coming I want to also just caution you right at the outset that decommissioning really isn't just about the nuclear waste issues although NRDC and myself in particular have a long and public history of testifying on the matters, litigating on the matters and I'm happy to talk with any of you at enormous length about all of these things but let's put that to the side and talk about what decommissioning is as well besides the nuclear waste and Mayor Hill really touched on that it is a gigantic industrial cleanup of huge industrial facilities that have a singular item nuclear waste that makes it more complicated and more challenging than almost any other industrial cleanup but please make no mistake you have profound amounts of piping concrete cleanup extraordinary efforts that have to get done at these facilities that have been radioactive and used as industrial with industrial chemicals as well for decades upon decades and let's turn to what that really means and I'll update you on some reality so a few years ago the NRC to its credit and again hell just froze over because NRDC just said that but NRDC to its credit got started on working on the rulemaking to finally address many of the issues with decommissioning they saw the wave coming because it was really apparent by 2015 that you couldn't miss it the advance notice came out in November final basis the basis and that's NRDC CodeSpeak and if they're NRDC folks here in the room they can explain it even better than I can but that's basically what they're going to put in the rule and what they're not going to put in the rule meaning what they're going to treat as guidance and not actually have as a legal requirement and they do that before they even have a draft rule so they have a final basis that came out in November of last year and now there is the NRC staff has submitted a draft rule to the commission for its consideration I cannot tell you when the draft rule will come out for public comment because that's up to the commission and the commissioners the five NRC commissioners and when they vote on it send it forward or send it back to staff and if they even make any changes again that's up to the commission it is our best guess that that rule will come out later this year early next year that is our best guess but again you're better served asking the NRC at that moment the final rule will come out in either 2019 or 2020 presuming they fit that time frame now you're thinking well we have all these decommissioning issues well the NRC is doing a rulemaking to address all these issues that's true they are and they're to be commended for starting a rulemaking on decommissioning unfortunately as of right now and then again this could change because the NRC commissioners could send it back we don't expect that but as of right now there are some significant issues of dispute and contentiousness that the rule is not addressing that they're not going to solve many of the problems especially those cited by Mayor Hill which I've heard him do at longer proceedings which he can do in great detail but let me briefly walk you through what some of these moments of contentiousness issues of contentiousness are likely to be the fact that the NRC's decommissioning rule is not only unlikely to solve many of the decommissioning problems this tsunami that is coming of massive industrial cleanup but I think they're going to make it worse and I think congress is going to be called on either through its legislative or through its appropriations powers to start to solve some of these problems so this is I think the start of this so the first issue is the biggest one right now when Zion or any other nuclear operator decides to end its licensed operations and move into decommissioning it doesn't actually need to file a plan that the NRC approves they basically just send the NRC a letter and the NRC has no has essentially currently seeds its regulatory authority and I think that will continue to be the case based on the draft rule that we've seen thus far and that also comes along with a whole host of issues when the NRC seeds that regulatory authority and doesn't keep regulatory requirement on you have to meet X environmental standards or Y cleanup standards there's no opportunity for the state for the local community for any NGOs for any tribes to intervene and say that's not good enough or we think the cleanup should be better or for example we think the cleanup should go faster or slower or we'd like our already trained workforce to be a part of that cleanup and right now that segues into the state and local government role when the decommissioning plan is not a requirement and there's also no National Environmental Policy Act coverage of it which means this is certainly a major federal action that affects the environment how that cleanup will go that's essentially put to the side by the current lack of rules and even by the proposed rule that we're likely to see this next year that extraordinarily limits any state and local government role so not only did Mayor Hill's folks in Zion not have a voice future communities all around the country will not have a voice and then again this is truly a bipartisan issue this is about those local and state voices the community transition and workforce needs are also right now because of the lack of any regulatory authority and the likelihood of the NRC to continue ceding that authority right now one of the things that can happen is there are three ways basically that decommissioning can take place and I'll go nerdy for a second but I'll take you with me way one is called decon and that's what it sounds like it's decommissioning where within the first several years the actual cleanup really starts going and that's what happened with Zion actually they did get going and start on the cleanup and do the work and remove the concrete break down the piping dispose of things to license radioactive waste or other disposal sites and actually do the cleanup there is a lot of wisdom in doing that because you actually have already that provides a transition for workforces that are inevitably going to go down as reactors do close it also you have trained radiation health safety staff that's there there's another way to do decommissioning that's also allowed under the rules and more and more reactor operators are availing themselves of this and it's called safe store and safe store means under the rules right now and under the proposed, likely proposed rules reactor operators can sit on those sites for years upon years, decades upon decades up to 60 years which takes that extraordinary amount of viable commercial land out of the communities for those times needless to say a lot of communities are very upset about this concept as are a lot of states the NRC has heard about that in great detail in the comments thus far not just from NRDC but several states that goes to why are some of those reactor operators doing that well sometimes they haven't saved enough for decommissioning and that's another issue GAO has done several excellent reports that we cite and by the way if anybody wants NRC's comments on the process thus far as well as citations to the GAO reports on the adequacy of the surety amounts that have been put aside for decommissioning or sort of the lack thereof that's going to be a significant issue with this rule will the NRC require enough to make sure there will be enough to pay on the back end for this extraordinary cleanup and then of course there are emergency preparedness issues you heard a whole host of reasons today why those are necessary going forward especially while we have fuel sitting in spent fuel pools and also of course the radiological issues all of these issues will be significantly reduced we don't know what's going to happen but the draft rule as we've seen it thus far does not look likely to solve any of these issues and we think that means when the agency hasn't done it it's likely to come back to Congress and the Duckworth Bill the Duckworth and Schneider House and Senate the Duckworth and Schneider Bill about that compensation that really gets at compensating the communities that by any measure are going to have spent fuel in their communities for decades to come as well as under a safe store and the likelihood of a lot of reactor operators just sitting on the sites for decades at a time rather than immediately moving to cleanup and one last thing even when you do DECON just to not make sure I have any illusions here for those of you who are not familiar with the nuclear cleanup world even when you do DECON the faster version you're still not going in to be breaking apart reactor vessels for at least a decade or many many years so by any measure these are going to be large long cleanup processes that was basically it except to say as a last note the nuclear waste issues that NRDC has worked on and you heard so much about today really should be seen as a separate issue where there's a national debate about how to solve these issues and I'm happy to talk at length about that what I'm very interested in Congress doing in the next few years on the decommissioning side of things is one making sure the communities that have these enormous burdens that by any measure they're going to have while these giant industrial cleanups start to move forward in place after place is that those communities are well served by federal law which means not just compensation but also significant oversight on making sure the decommissioning process solves most of the issues if not all of it right now it's not going to so thank you I want to thank all our speakers for an amazing job of bringing these incredibly technical and challenging subjects to light in an interesting and informative way and now you have a chance we have about a half hour and I'd like to call on people if you would identify who you are where you're from and then pose your question the floor is now open to all of you yes ma'am hi my name is Ashley I'm from Senator Debbie Stabenow's office from Michigan my question is the west side of our state is preparing for the closure of Palisades 2022 and I'm just wondering what can governments at any level do to prevent the outmigration of nuclear employees and to encourage economic development in post nuclear communities thank you you haven't already just full disclosure I'm from Kalamazoo, Michigan and I've lived here for 20 years but Kalamazoo is still home we have said till we were blue in the face that I'm sorry we have said until we were blue in the face that the workforce at Palisades as Jeff just said should be retained they have the institutional knowledge of that badly contaminated site they've had tritium leaks and there's drinking water for the adjacent Palisades Park community that is implicated by those leaks into groundwater and the leaks that go into the lake are then a hazard for the drinking water in South Haven so with the institutional knowledge of those workers they should be the ones in charge of the cleanup for years or even decades to come and there is a lot to clean up at that site and the other major issue at that site is safeguarding and securing the high level of radioactive waste many hundreds of tons that is currently right on the lake shore 150 yards from the water in violation of NRC earthquake safety regulations that waste needs to be moved further inland to higher ground out of any earthquake danger out of any tsunami danger on the Great Lakes and the workforce that's there now could be in charge of that and in addition to the carbon free electricity sources and so workers could be younger workers perhaps once decommissioning is done could be retrained to work in the solar industry the wind industry both of which have incredible potential in Southwest Michigan just look in South Haven there's a major solar array over by Lake Michigan College and then the lake shore wind power potential is just tremendous I can also address that by you want to know what could be done and through our experience we had no idea what could be done Exxalon kept approximately 150 workers on staff for probably 10 to 15 years many of the other highly trained highly paid employees went to other nuclear power plants throughout the state of Illinois and that's part of what affected our community when people moved the housing values in our community dropped tremendously not only did we lose the value of the plant but we lost the housing values when people moved out many of them became abandoned and we went from a community that had about 30% of our living units were rental units right now and this is with the housing crisis of 2008 that hit also we have 66% of our living units in town are rental units and we have 3.8% of the population of Lake County which is approximately 800,000 people and we have 35% of the low income housing vouchers in our community and it has just put a stress on our schools it has put a stress on our police and fire it has just put a stress on our services that we provide I'd like to add one quick thing to be very explicit when you look at and the unions have put this out in relation to the decommissioning rulemaking thus far it's probably on the NRC website or if not I'll find it for you but if you look at the likely drop off of employment in allowing for the decon process at least you have a slow glide path down and there could be arguments as to where that glide path should be and what over time but if you look at the likelihood of employment and what could happen to a community under aggressive use of the safe store option where the essentially the reactor operator simply mothballs things it just drops like a stone and that could be absolutely savage to a region that we think the rules need to be thoughtfully structured to not allow that to happen and that's not the way we're going right now thank you in the back but before we do that I just want to ask our speakers we have two options we're doing multimedia and different microphones if you stay at the panel if you would just project out to the back or if you're close enough to get to the podium capture it may be hard on that end but thank you very much back there my name is Hannah Bogle I'm a senator at Marquis office we we saw the proposed rule that was sent to the commission that they assumed that the onsite storage would remain there for 16 years while we'd love to have a permanent solution at 16 years we're a little worried that that's optimistic and we're additionally concerned with the effects that climate change will have on some of the postal storage it's a problem we're having in the program nuclear site and having very they're putting the onsite storage very close to the just level and so I'm interested in kind of your take on the NRC storage proposal and the decommissioning rule and whether you think they're appropriately accounting for having tax when they're doing this sort of forecast no specifically there are two frustrating things and I'm actually the guy that litigated it so sorry the NRC doesn't have to do a deep analysis of its long-term storage in the context of the decommissioning rule it does so via its continued storage rule which was unfortunately given validation by the DC circuit in 2016 that said they're going to have to continue to do NEPA analysis over the next several years on that continued storage rule and that will be the vehicle to look at the issue of the viability of continued storage and so I'm happy to talk with you about that later they kind of separate out the issues that they have to address via generic rule makings or generic analysis and you would think that the decommissioning rule would address nuclear waste but it really puts it to the side and also the sea level rise issue will come up in a host of context not least of which in the 80-year process of decommissioning as well as well as long-term storage in coastal areas especially so I'm sorry, my quick follow-up to that as well is you mentioned that the dry cast of storage is only net for short-term how short-term are the cast that's meant to be used in Mr. Albers in his home so that's and they can be re-licensed if they hold up I think my general observation is that we are letting the symbolic quest for a disposal solution cart to basically put it in front of the safe storage horse we lack a national storage policy it's one of default that's why we have pools jam-packed and and sort of NRC acting in a very reactive way to things happening we don't have any rational program and quite frankly Department of Energy should have a role in this besides trying to restart Yucca Mountain but they're not and so there needs to be some sort of way to take a look at the storage as a priority before we start to think we can actually find a disposal site because I find that what's happening here is largely an effort to seek a symbolic victory regarding your question about the canisters and how long we really have with all of them just north of where I live there's Diablo Canyon and there was a canister at Diablo Canyon that was only two years old that showed all the signs of cracking but there's no way of actually checking if it is cracking so that's a problem that the NRC has not dealt with in a good way if I may add the model we should be emulating is probably that which is developed by Germany and Switzerland they became very serious about things like airplane crashes, tommas and things like that in the 1980s and they heavyed up their switch yards their containment domes and have thick walled dry canisters that are in buildings capable of carrying material impacts we don't have that and we need to start to think about how do we deal with the long-term challenge posed by indefinite storage of this material on the surface up here my name is Jeff Johnson I'm a reporter at the Kibble Village on that same subject I've been listening to this I've been trying to figure out what's the solution in the short-term and long-term is there a problem if on-site storage is the problem if in-pool storage is the problem if dry-cast storage is the problem is there any solution is the one that you're talking about Bob Bob is that what we should be actually doing or did I miss it maybe I missed something maybe there was something that came by I'm happy to talk to NRC's perspective so it's just we're not a monolithic group right now of geologic repositories as the ultimate I think Bob is absolutely right that we need to be girding for the long-term in terms of interim storage and the idea of Haas and much much more robust interim storage during the long pendency of time that we're going to need to get to repositories we have as just NRC aggressively pushed over the last decade an idea that we think can solve the institutional and technical challenges related to getting to a geologic repository and that is very simply doing away with the environmental exemptions in the Atomic Energy Act which is essentially allowing EPA in the states regulatory authority over nuclear waste there would be one whale of a regulatory process once that happens but once it's done there could actually be a process where you could get to technically defensible and public accepted repositories unlike the issue now where you're essentially telling the state of Nevada you have no choice you're just going to take it and we have 50 years of evidence that that has not worked and we know that the only safe place for this material and it's not even that safe we don't know it yet but the only viable option is in RDC and we're sort of in the grand consensus with most of our colleagues is geologic repositories we have to figure out about how to get there it's not just finding a place it's finding how to get there in a publicly accepted way we think there's a serious way to do it and I'd be thrilled to talk to all of you but again that's nuclear waste the decommissioning issue which I want to keep your eye on the ball here is this gigantic cleanup that has a profound effect on community after community congressional district after congressional district Senate state concern Senate state concern so hold the two issues in parallel but that's the Kevin did you want to add just real briefly I'll project better you know it's good news that Oyster Creek, New Jersey the oldest operating reactor in this country pushing 50 years old Shima Daiichi twin design is about to shut down and the good news includes the fact that as soon as the nuclear fuel leaves the core you cannot have a reactor core meltdown by definition but the risk moves to the pool and moves to the dry casks and that's why we've emphasized hardened onsite storage as close to the point of origin as possible but with rising sea levels that may have to go inland and to higher ground not a thousand or 2,000 miles west to New Mexico for temporary storage so called but a few miles inland and so I would emphasize the good news of reactor shutdowns and now the focus has to turn to as Bob just said securing and safeguarding these forever deadly he mentioned a million year half life another victory that Jeff won back in 2008 when EPA finally finished their court mandated rewrite of the Yucca regulations was an acknowledgement that Yucca would remain hazardous for a million years into the future that's low ball and in terms of deep geologic disposal which is the end goal there are some criteria that have to be met scientific suitability environmental justice legality honoring treaty rights consent based citing regional equity transportation risk minimization so we have a lot of work to do in this country but I want to emphasize the good news of nuclear shutdowns stop making the waste put a cap on this problem that grows by 2,000 metric tons per year we had a hand back there and then we'll come up the front sir this is Mark nuclear energy institute I do have one question related to decommissioning in the process and first of all thank you to the panel for being here today this is really presented I think a pretty broad spectrum of issues a lot of community concern regulatory concerns and those in the industry and you point to the tremendous cleanup and waste management problem that's represented by decommissioning some of the pitfalls and the challenges that are in front of us to do that but in my mind I'm trying to reconcile that forward looking challenge with yes history over decades where a dozen plants have decommissioned without even safely without any headline grabbing serious issues either from an industrial safety or nuclear safety standpoint so I'm trying to reconcile in my mind at least and maybe for those in the room what has changed with time that brings us to this point today nice to see you two things I think that are really apparent right now the challenges facing the industry that we all share is making sure there's the adequate amount of money for it because in most of those and you would certainly I'm sure acknowledge this most of those cleanups have been substantially more expensive than they were first targeted the Humboldt Bay which had a small test reactor is now in the billions of dollars of cleanup and I think its original target is 400 million or something like that and that has happened at site after site so the adequacy of cleanup funding is a significant concern because it's turned out to be a much more expensive and complicated proposition than people originally thought and I think the the emergence of safe store as a likely option of which your clients will avail themselves poses significant challenges for a whole host of communities in a way that the ones that have been decommissioned honestly haven't even suffered as much I mean as much as Mayor Hill talks about what Zion has suffered I think reactor operators that go right into safe store and you see the actual cliff of employment that will have profound effects on a community and that hasn't happened in the 12 or so that have been done thus far so that's the first thing up front here and I'm going to just repeat the questions not because you're not clear but so we can get our miking issues under control Stephanie Cook with nuclear intelligence weekly it strikes me from what Kevin was saying and what Jackson was saying Mayor Hill and the other speakers that there may be a conflict between the different communities facing nuclear plant closures and that some want to see interim storage and get you know just get it out as fast as possible and others are more reconciled to the fact it's just not going to happen that easily one question I have is to Mayor Hill is do you talk to the other mayors about this and are you going to try to come up with a unified position and secondly how long would it be before any of you think that if this interim storage ever worked out an interim storage facility I think a date was mentioned but how realistically you know soon they talk about it the NRC licenses that they could have it operating next you know in the early 2020s but what's the realistic date for interim storage if it ever happens and what's the realistic date we know 2048 isn't for permanent repository but what is a realistic date let me just try for our which basically this may expose differences between communities some of whom want to deal with this nearby some want to ship it out there may be differences on that do the mayors Mayor Hill and others talk about developing a comprehensive strategy or how to agree on this and then essentially what is a realistic timeline for the interim for interim and permanent storage I can just address the question of whether we talk to other mayors and there is a difference I think on what people would like to do in our community we would like to be gone we would like them to start taking it tomorrow as I said when I was speaking we're not naive enough to think that that's going to happen so we're asking for compensation and we have had phone calls and we met in New York with some a lot of people on the eastern seaboard about this problem and I've called every Mayor in the communities that are in decommissioning or have been decommissioned we have our school superintendents calling every one of those school superintendents we have our park and recreation people calling every park and recreation person we go down our librarians are calling their librarians that they contact their senators and their congressman and make them aware of the issue and that there is a bill out there and right now I guess I'll be completely honest nobody no one expects anything to happen before the November election so we are waiting word from our senator and our congressman that we will revisit that and we will try and get more information out to the federally elected officials that have something to do with it but we are organized it's our city that's taking on that responsibility and we're communicating with people and that's where we are as far as when it will happen I am expecting that it will be 40 years from now as we move it off of our facility out of our city but our site is not hardened they're sitting out there they're about 200 yards from Lake Michigan and you'd like to see them hardened oh yes ma'am I would like to see them hardened and I said I have been assured time and time again that nothing can happen these things are safe they're absolutely safe nothing can happen to them my question is then why are there arm guards 24 hours a day 7 days a week guarding them if nothing can happen and they all kind of shrug I wanted to tell a story from a half life ago 1997 I invited Ian Zabardi to a Don't Waste Michigan meeting I still serve on the board of directors and introduced him to Dr. Mary Sinclair the founder of Don't Waste Michigan who is in the women's history hall of fame in Michigan for her great lakes protection against reactor risks and radioactive waste risks as again now Yucca Mountain was the talk of the town let's just dump it out there nobody lives out there who cares it's a wasteland it's not a wasteland and Ian was able to explain to Dr. Sinclair not only about the Treaty of Ruby Valley the environmental injustice of another blow to the western Shoshone the people of Nevada after weapons testing and waste dumping and she realized despite her passion and knowledge about protecting the great lakes from these risks that Yucca Mountain was not a solution and she contacted Senator Stabenow about this in the critical year of 2002 and thanks to Senator Stabenow for raising on the senate floor the risks of barge shipments not only is Yucca Mountain not a solution these proposals would put the great lakes at even greater risk than before so that's that issue of communities against each other get it out of here we don't care how it leaves or where it goes it's not just we are one nation under God indivisible and there is no exception for radioactive waste so screw Nevada is not an option screw New Mexico is not an option screw Texas is not an option and for communities like San Nofri that are very much in harm's way what about Camp Pendleton how about a five mile move of the waste to a place where thousands of U.S. Marines can help guard it out of the tsunami zone there's something else at work here and what it is and it's in HR 3053 is transfer of title for this forever deadly waste that this industry has profited mightily from generating onto American taxpayers that is not a good reason for these very dangerously bad decisions one thing you mentioned which was the 2048 for those of you again who are not familiar with the nuclear cleanup world 2048 number comes from the previous administration's likely calculation of arriving they did a blue ribbon commission because when in Washington DC one does blue ribbon commissions when one is not sure what to do and the blue ribbon commission that was finalized in 2012 came out with a set of findings this key of which was we need to find and avoid what happened with Yucca Mountain and find a consent-based process and it was their estimation and the administration then that 2048 would be a reasonable time so that's why you sometimes hear the 2040s people want time frames no one has a crystal ball and can give you the precise time frame it is NRDC perspective and NRDC is alone that if congress were to take up our idea of doing away with the environmental exemptions and actually changing the regulations to set the strong protective health criteria that we think are necessary and with EPA and state authority over that waste that we could truncate some of that time and I don't think it will happen in the next 10 years but do I think it could happen within 20 or 25 if congress gets off the dime and actually solve some of the original problems with the nuclear waste policy act that forgot about states and just you know right now we're sort of telling one state you're going to get it and they're saying no we're not we're going to be stuck in this impasse for another 50 years so hopefully we will not I just want to emphasize that Yucca Mountain is Shoshone property recognized under the 1863 Ruby Valley and it's not going to happen it's not doable it's not doable because of that and that is the likely reason why it was the application withdrawn in the first place but that wasn't argued in the case that came up Yucca Mountain would be an ongoing research and development project it's not a solution it's in the biosphere it's above the water table in the original intent of deep geologic disposal with subsea bed below the water table and what we're looking at at Yucca Mountain it's just a matter of time before that radiation comes out and my people expect to be around another 10,000 years with your help so we see our food there we see our resources there and we need the pure water pristine water something that is very rare now on this planet pristine water is what we need for our survival it's our religion you know we practice these living life ways in a relation to the land it's our identity and we expect to be there so Yucca Mountain is not going to be a solution period that's about all the time we have on a lighter note I just want to be sure everybody understands that I don't want to screw Texas or New Mexico or Nevada we understand we would like to be compensated I want to thank all of our speakers to try to summarize it would be impossible but I think one of the things that we have focused on is the decommissioning has been happening is happening will be increasingly happening has immediate impacts that need to be dealt with now there are long range problems long range stories repositories and the like but we have heard from communities from young people from the Native American tribes and from experts that this material is dangerous it is there there will be more and we need to do something about it so I want to thank them for pointing that out in a very effective way thank you for your questions go back to your to the hill and try to create some action I want to thank EESI for sponsoring this briefing and there are many many groups who have participated there's actually a citizens lobby day going on in these issues and some members of those organizations who have been involved are here so our experts up front and perhaps some people from participating organizations are available to the media for interviews or for you to just exchange cards and do business thank you all very much