 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Press Contact:
Alyson Heyrend
Communications Director
240 East Morris Ave. #235
South Salt Lake, UT 84115
(801) 486-1236 (phone)
(801) 455-5593 (cell)
(801) 486-1417 (fax)
Congressional Hearing Validates Need for Matheson Radioactive Waste Bill
Washington, D.C.—Congressman Jim Matheson said today’s hearing before the Subcommittee on Energy and Air Quality of the House Energy and Commerce Committee illustrated the need for passage of his bipartisan legislation to ban the importation of foreign radioactive waste.
“The witnesses at today’s hearing verified the two primary reasons for enacting my bill,” said Matheson. “First, it’s clear that our current radioactive waste policies never anticipated the issue of foreign imports, and there is doubt as to whether any government agency has decision-making authority regarding imported radioactive waste. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission testified it doesn’t have authority, the state of Utah testified that it doesn’t have authority. The Northwest Interstate Compact on Radioactive Waste Management has voted to reject a proposal to import 20,000 tons of radioactive waste from Italy, but EnergySolutions testified that it has filed a lawsuit claiming the Compact does not have this authority. Everyone is point fingers elsewhere and no one appears to be in charge.”
“Secondly, the US has limited storage space for domestically produced waste,” said Matheson. “The testimony indicated that with very low assumed volumes, there is about 30 years of capacity left here. These estimates didn’t take into account new nuclear power plants that will be built in this country, new cleanup efforts that will take place or the importation of foreign waste. Thirty years is not a very long time frame and today’s hearing told us that the available capacity could be used up sooner than that.”
“We have increasing demand for low level radioactive waste storage and shrinking space. No one is clearly in charge of whether or not we should be taking foreign radioactive waste. I see no good reason, as public policy, to allow other countries to unload their waste on the U.S. and Utah,” Matheson said.
Matheson said there is a broad consensus that our country’s future energy profile will include more nuclear power plants. “This legislation supports that effort by maintaining capacity for low level waste from domestic sources,” Matheson said.
# # #
| ||||||||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||||||||
