>> unsuitable, yes or no? >> license application was a semitechnical criteria. >> is an unsuitable, yes or no? >> in the d.o.e.'s judgment on application -- >> d.o.e. noted opposition is crucial i am assuming i'm trying to find out if it is scientifically credible or not. ..

it like you to provide to the committee all communications regarding the judgment and legal counsel department of energy saying they don't have to comply with the law or threatened e-mail, anything. it's important we have an opportunity. will you provide that? >> the department provided about 40,000 pages already. >> we have this par stultz we understand when someone receives legal let us not to comply with the all we like to have that there, not just 40,000 pages. quote you can do that. back to the question with regard now that we have ruled that the site was suitable back in 2002 and you just confirm that a reversal will require physical evidence that the criteria suitably are not met and then dod would have to follow steps laid out in the statute in the

lock walking away. do you have the physical evidence it's no longer suitable? >> as was in my testimony and my other speakers all ready, secretary chu has made the statement -- and public acceptance. >> i'm asking what we don't get to do is to say we get to selectively enforce the law based upon the polls change or we need votes in states. from a scientific -- this is where it is a credible organization or lacks credibility. i really want it to be a credible organization. i suspect for many scientists in there. to either be a scientist or go by the polling and politics. has there been physical evidence that says the site is no longer suitable which their forces your compliance with the law by saying we don't have to use

yucca mountain anymore. is there evidence that says it is not suitable? >> the license application was based on criteria on general counsel the secretary's view is that we do have the authority to withdraw -- >> i didn't ask if you had the authority. >> ehud will provide that information to us. >> to provide the information -- >> the gentleman's time is expired. the gentleman from georgia for five minutes. >> a moment ago we were going over the subject of the cost of invested in the program so far there was an attempt to explain some of the value we recoup from this, the knowledge and information and lessons learned. what i would remind you is that the more you spend on something of doubtful authenticity the more you have to think you got the real deal. he said $5 million on a pen and ink sketches a leonardo did benge you are likely to be it is the real deal. for $5 for it you know it is a fake. the point i want to emphasize is

there's a difference between the value of the lesson learned in the cost of a lesson learned. i'm not sure we have a good understanding of the difference of the magnitude of this and in this particular case. i want to get onto -- i wanted her to see where to go from here but i want to change the subject just a little bit. i had been present when secretary chu summed up the cost to the american consumer of the fact that we were a nuclear pioneer country in this world and we went down a bunch of different paths and got different designs and different reactors in here and there, part of a legacy of being a pioneer going first and developing all kind of different ideas. he was talking to one of his colleagues in france and the french colleagues it's simple with the problem is with you americans. you've got 80 different reactors and wan cheese. we have 80 different cheeses and one reactor. it's a good lesson to learn. we get 80 different ways to repositories in the country whether we know it or not or like it or not. and a whole array of approaches

dealing with the problem for the foreseeable future. so what storage, dry storage, some more stable, some more safe than other. meanwhile the american consumer has been paying for this long-term waste repository program that stopped dead in its tracks right now. two-thirds the cost is been paid by ratepayers whether they know or like it or not or support it or not and another effort has been paid by the general fund by tax payers chipping in their income tax to run the government. all the money paid so far i gather has been spent the money is still coming. one question i have and maybe this is addressed in part to the blue ribbon commission but i want to address it to you all what can we do to divert that to provide some stability, predictability and safety in the meantime for all those utilities that are running and operating in the plans now and try to operate a 70 waste repositories on site the we've got right now? for a sample of the money is forced to extract from customers in the form of an excise tax on

the rate the european can be diverted back to those utilities on the condition that they used to take what storage and turn it into dry storage, something that is unstable and likely to get losing something that's very stable, an asset the would not be stranded, something that could have lasting value no matter what we do in terms of long-term, wouldn't that be useful thing to do? is anybody get suggestion on those lines would weaken due in the current mess we are in? >> i would say there's a couple hurdles. under the policy that the money being collected for the long-term repository. we talk about maybe using it for centralized repository we have the authority to use the fund for that server have to be a change in law for that and in the meantime the industry says if you're not going to pursue a long-term repository stop collecting the money. and the preceding on the -- he may have some doubt about the

2020 date but it's still being used by the dot has the best alternative going forward. >> of the department of energy recognizes it as the response of the for the long-term management of the used fuel the fuel is being generated at the plan for example whatever the future option is going to be that's still will require handling by the department of energy that is the rationale for continuing to collect the fees and there has been no rationale at least demonstrated to change the fee. >> i recognize your need to set aside a little something in the future of the handling charges you all will incur in the future. we are handling right now. my rate payers are handling it right now and customers right now. my question is to shine a light on the problem you've got a law that tells you the policy will be it's going to take 25 years to implement a lot of annual appropriation bills that have to get through both houses of

congress to implement. if we have to have a change in the law to do anything can we at least open the discussion and put on the table the idea of the changes we can all agree on to try to manage the problem on site as long as it takes us to get our act together because it took the act of congress to sit down the course and a plan that required the congress to go along with it will require another act of congress to fix. let's have an interim strategy and try to work together on that. >> the german yields back his time and recognizes the gentleman from pennsylvania and just for the record they are supposed to call votes at 2:30. we will try to get one or two more rounds of questioning before we go down but we have to adjourn because there's three votes in a row and not of r. dee will be through. the gentleman from pennsylvania is recognized. >> the nuclear waste policy act of 1982 created a federal legal

obligation to accept nuclear fuel and dispose it in a geological facility; is that correct? >> there was a commitment on the part of the nation, the federal government took possession of the waste and explore the long-term repository. >> so is it accurate to say in spite of law that congress resolved how to manage spent nuclear fuel and high-level waste back in 1982? >> was a decision made by the congress on the nuclear policy act, that's correct. >> the development of the act was not the development of a single converse or some partisan maneuvering, was it? >> nope. >> point of fact, in 1982 when the nuclear waste act was enacted, there was a republican president, republican senate and democrats firmly controlled the house. in 1987 when the congress determined yucca mountain consistently the top of the top three sites was to be examined

for the repository there was a republican present and democrats controlled the house and the senate in 2002 leadership of the congress was reversed but congress overwhelmingly resolved to support the development of 306 to 117. so when the nation through its elected representative resolved how to solve the nuclear waste program and did so in a consistently bipartisan fashion, wouldn't you agree? >> those are decisions passed by the congress. >> the department of energy motion to withdraw the license application said, quote, the secretary has decided that ag illogic repository at yucca mountain is not a workable option for the long-term disposition. was the secretary's decision based on internal department scientific evaluation by the administration? >> as indicated, the license

application was based on the technical criteria, and the secretary in his evaluation recognized the importance of technical criteria and social except in secretary of. >> was it based on any scientific evidence that yucca mountain isn't workable? >> speed it was based on the concern that there were two major criteria. as i indicated. >> is under contract and all scientific evidence that it's workable and safe? >> i will be remained to be determined through the process and in the doe's estimation monday suspended the license was their determination. >> has the department determined that yucca mountain's repository is not suitable to meet their relevant safety standards for long-term storage of spent fuel and nuclear waste? >> there is no data that has been presented along those

lines. however again the decision has been made to withdraw, and whether that -- and the legality of that is being tested both reports. >> doe still stands behind the quality of its application to the repository can be built and protected in the public health for 10,000 years or more is in that case doesn't the doe estimate as much in its application to the nrc? >> there were those deemed by the department of energy. >> so speaking yucca mountain remains a workable option, why is it not workable in the doe's view? >> spec i don't know how else to save the secretary in his view is both technical criteria in social the acceptance criteria as key to ever moving ahead toward successfully opening a repository >> what scientific evaluation

has the doe performed to make this determination? >> i believe i just indicated there was a question of social public acceptance. >> so this is the opinion of the secretary. did the boen form the opinion? was money from the white house or the ad fenestration involved in this decision in any way? >> that was before i was involved. i simply can't state -- i can't answer to that, sir. i know the secretary had the benefit of the general counsel but it was within his rights to withdraw the application, and that's now in the courts and the nrc. >> thank you mr. chairman. >> the chairman emeritus, mr. dingell for five minutes. >> mr. gaffigan, we have a situation where the federal government has invested huge sums of money in a thing we cannot use.

we have taxed the daylights out of the ratepayers, and how much is the fund we taxing to the ratepayers? >> the current balance is about $25 billion. >> how much have we spent on that? >> almost 10 million. just to clarify we spend about ten plus another 25 sitting there. >> so we've got a gigantic coal in the ground. now, of -- tommy, there's a lawsuit going on on this matter is they're not? >> there is. >> and the federal government is being sued because of the diversity and the treaty in that lawsuit is never progressed to the point where it is going to lead to a judgment, is that right? >> there were some oral arguments taken in march of this year. the basic just to those arguments was whether there was a final action of the government, whether the nrc was going to rule so the was the

gist of the oral argument. we haven't heard anything since. >> you stated the the officials stated they had frequent meetings and focus groups to help guide the shutdown. can you tell me what that means? >> we had a hard time knowing what that means, so we asked -- >> i think we know what it means but we asked them could they at least document what they had in terms of a shutdown. they said they had a draft plan they were working on it. >> has the draft plan been submitted to anyone mr. chairman? >> the draft plan was not completed and the department moved ahead as expeditiously as possible to shut down by the end of -- >> if you could share that with us. >> would you submit it please? >> i honestly don't know if it's completed, sir. i don't know.

>> submit a and we will tell you what we think of it. >> now, in your testimony, secretary lions, you said that the dod takes exception in the gao report that a final impact of terminating yucca mountain is the committees may be less willing to host spent nuclear fuel repositories or other storage sites in the future due to further erosion of the credibility. to go on to say that on the contrary the new start could lead to enhancement of the department's approach. i don't mean to make light of a difficult situation, but to your knowledge as committees around the country give voluntary to the nuclear waste repository? >> yes, sir there had been communities. >> who volunteered to do this? >> the one i am aware of is new

mexico and around the carlsbad area. there may be others. >> is that for high energy waste? >> this is local community support and yes, sir. >> now mr. friedman, how much is closing out the yucca mountain project costing the federal government? a yearly basis or? >> mr. dingell, i'm not sure to the answers the question. if i can i certainly will. >> it isn't going for peanuts, its cost and lots of money? >> they spend a great deal of money on the network and finalizing some of the technical studies that have been done to estimate how much is it estimated the closeout of yucca mountain will the department of energy liability, do you have an estimate on that? >> we do expect that it will be -- >> can you answer that for the record?

>> how much as the united states invested in the yucca mountain project? how much of that works for the nuclear waste front, the rate payers and how much of the federal government in the taxpayers? >> about two-thirds from the refund and 10 billion. >> [inaudible] >> how much does that come down to from the ratepayers? >> 10 billion about 5 billion from the taxpayers and that doesn't include the judgment. >> i know my questions seem repetitive so everyone who comes up from the department gets the same because we've all heard how much fuel and we destroyed the stuff. we don't reprocess it the way the french do but we did cost lots of money and then you guys come up and explain to us and a little while later someone else runs the committee and then you come up and explain to us again

for your successors to so we have a facility here that everybody wants to do something with. we have a resource we are not using. we are threatening nuclear which is extremely important to this country and an energy sorted jindal the other problems that we have, and it seems we have no long-term plan for dealing with spent nuclear waste at the best we can say is you seem to be proceeding on a dangerous path with more of this stuff piled up. and members of congress need to know what's going on. we need to protect the funds collected and have a long term solution either storage that will work or reprocessing. and when are you going to get to this? was this question going on when i was chairman of the committee as a matter of fact it was going on live as a young member of this body. when is it i can look forward to

being young enough i'm going to get an answer on these questions? >> i think the best answer is that is the charge of the blue ribbon commission and will have the interim report in july of this year. i'm looking for to that report and i too have been looking many years to understand what the long-term solutions acceptable in the country will be. >> thank you mr. chairman. >> for a notice to my colleagues, the first question. we have votes on the floor, we are going to finish with this, the chairman emeritus for five minutes and then we will recess. the question to my colleagues is what is your pleasure to ask the first panel to come back. have some of you been waiting to address questions to them or do we go to the second panel? you want the first panel? >> i think you should let the panel come back because some of the members -- >> that's my question and by imposing to my colleagues and we

will ask you to come back after votes to finish up. the chair recognizing as chairman emeritus for five minutes. >> i know we have a vote so i'm going to go through this quick we of the nuclear waste policy act of 1982 as amended in 1987. that's 29, 24 years ago. under that law, the nuclear regulatory commission and the department of energy are authorized to find a permanent repository for the high level of nuclear waste both from civilian and military applications in this country through a convoluted process yucca mountain was chosen as the repository. it's been through innumerable hearings, studies, but back in 2008 a license application was tendered to the nuclear regulatory commission by the department of energy. i think the law gives for years to make a decision. with the change in the

administration, the obama administration last year asked to withdraw that application. the board in power to make the decision whether the application should be withdrawn in a very unusual decision chose not to allow it to be withdrawn, and now we've got a very convoluted process at the nrc where we are trying to determine whether there is a vote or isn't a vote, and we are in discussions and a bipartisan basis with the chairman of the nuclear regulatory commission about that issue. the department of this hearing is to determine what the legal criteria is for the department of energy to terminate yucca mountain. and the distinguished deputy secretary or under secretary has said if i heard him correctly that that decision was based on social public acceptance. is that correct, dr. lyons? >> secretary chu testified many

times yes, technical criteria and -- >> where does it say the social public acceptance is a criteria? >> i didn't say that it was a nuclear policy act. >> on the decision making process. >> again, sir, our secretary has the benefit of legal counsel and this is in the courts and the inner city -- >> the secretary decided that yucca mountain should -- couldn't be -- wasn't acceptable because it was in the desert. would that be a criteria? if he just decided he didn't like the color purple would that be a criteria? >> i think you know our secretary, sir, and he has a substantial criteria. >> i don't think social public acceptance is a criteria. >> as i noted in my testimony, there are many actions that are still required if yucca mountain were ever to open. and many of the decisions require permits and conferences from the state of nevada.

>> my understanding is everybody through your level and above has to hold up your hand and take an oath of office or an oath to uphold the constitution that is in the law of the united states and all of this. the have a current public law that has not been amended to give as the department of energy of 40 to tender an application. the application has been tendered. the satori decided to withdraw the board is responsible for accepting the winstrol said no. so i would assume the secretary of energy is knowingly and willfully violating federal law. >> as you are aware the day after they made the decision the commission decided they wish to take review. that is their prerogative as the commission and we are in -- we are in a -- it's not in negotiation but we are certainly in a situation where we are trying in to determine what the chairman and the current members

of the nrc just what they decided or not decided to do and that is a convoluted mess if i've ever seen one. >> can't, and what is going on but the court this is also at the court, the legality of that withdraw will be determined essentially. >> i've got 51 seconds. if this congress affirmatively states that the application should continue to be reviewed and that yucca mountain should continue to be considered, according to the current law is the secretary of energy and the united states going to honor that law? >> if we are ordered by one of the mechanisms that isn't appealed to continue to resolve a license we indicated repeatedly on testimony this weekend and well. however, as at least part of our thinking, but congress hasn't provided any appropriations and

fy 11. >> i have a feeling we will at the end of this year to do so. with that i yield back. >> that's not true. we stopped funding the last half of this year, the first part of the fiscal year was under continuing resolution and that's another issue of debate. the chair recognizes mr. inslee for as much time as he can consume before we have votes. >> thank you. this is very disturbing on a couple of basis. one is in my state and washington people are very diligently following their obligations legally and in their profession getting the waste ready to ship to yucca mountain. they are going to be ready to ship 970 canisters. they are doing their job, but the department is not doing its job. now that is on a local concern. but our national concern i think the situation is one of a failed state. we talk about field states around the world.

because of the failure to follow the law this is the equivalency of the field the state. we've reached a national decision and its unpopular in one part and a beautiful part of the country as it will be in any part of the country that we ever have this decision made and yet we can't execute a decision. now this sort of statement that social acceptance is now legal criteria i don't understand. how are we ever to build anything like a nuclear waste repository anywhere in the united states if social acceptance is a mandatory criteria to build something. >> in new mexico is the strongest local effect and i noted that there are a member of international examples where with careful education with transparent process these there

has been strong acceptance of repository programs. >> why didn't you do the same thing in nevada? >> are you saying there's something unique about nevada that makes them unique in the united states and this will be well as rosewater in the rest of the united states? it's going to smell the same no matter what name we put on it and this is a failed policy looking for another social acceptance criteria failure around the united states. what evidence do you have that there is any more socially acceptable place for this particular situation? >> i provided the exhibit of the waste isolation part that's a different repository, a different type of repository but it is a repository and it has strong local the acceptance. >> in the decision making of the department based on the science and geology, and hydrology we decided that it was the best place. now you're telling me we're going to look for a less

scientifically credible less geologically stable, less hydrological place because we might get a little better social and acceptance that is a failed policy by a field state feud regardless to the administration is an abject failure to follow the federal law is most disturbing and it's unacceptable , and i don't really want to think i want to be labor you with many questions i just want to tell you it's unacceptable by any administration of any party to make its decision when we are dealing with this number of curious radiation based on the social the acceptance is just not a winner for this country. >> thank you. >> the gentleman yields back his time. the votes being called right now. there's three votes that are going to run around 30 minutes. we will see who comes back, and

be prepared to answer questions, but having done this before, it may be it for dewaal but you need to be here in case someone wants to ask a specific question. i recessed this hearing subject to the call of the chair. [inaudible conversations] >> we will go ahead and resume the hearing. i recognize myself for five minutes for my opportunity to question. thank you very much for being here today and/or time to share with us just a couple of quick questions based on some previous testimony by dr. lyons. i had a great deal of discussion

regarding social the acceptance of the social look substance theory as it pertains to the yucca mountain license. can you cite satori authority for the acceptance criteria? >> not in the policy act. >> mr. friedman, can use of the socialist substance criteria? >> not that i'm aware of. >> dr. lyons can you cite the authority for the socialist substance? >> not citing statutory authority, sir, but i tried to indicate is the number of steps that would be required to open yucca mountain, steps that nevada stands i.t. believe in opposition to a and i believe they could very successfully. >> so you agree there is no statutory authority or basis for social lexington's as criteria? >> not specifically in the nuclear waste policy act.

>> the answer is no then there is no statutory authority for the social acceptance? >> no. >> thank you. what is the theory of your legal counsel what he believes that social acceptance is about criteria? >> our secretaries out mind that many times. the briefs that are general counsel has filed either with of the nrc or in the court cases those are available. the staff has them. that spells out the positions of the general counsel. i certainly won't try to repeat it. i'm not a lawyer. >> as your role as inspector general what is that role in the mashaal? >> the responsibilities one is to act as an independent set of eyes and ears for the secretary and the congress and to bring to justice those attempting to defraud the people of the united states. three is to be independent fact

finders and high-profile controversial matters and to give the u.s. taxpayers a seat at the table when the government decisions are made. >> thank you. mr. friedman to you believe the social acceptance criteria is a valid theory? >> i don't know how to answer the question to be honest. you asked whether i thought it was in statute and i don't believe that it is per say, so why would have to say it's somewhat questionable from a legal standpoint but i'm not a lawyer and i'm not making a legal judgment. >> in the rules to mention the inspector general has under its purview do you believe one of them is to expect or to perhaps visit with the secretary's office about the social look substance criteria that they are using? do you believe there is no statutory authority? >> we have a responsibility under the statute mr. gardner not to over get what it's done

so i think it is fair to say the gao report is a major topic of this hearing has really addressed that issue. >> you stated that it's likely that the termination of the project will significantly impact the department's environmental remediation liability which is currently estimated at $250 billion in the future cleanup cost. have you seen any value is a by the department regarding how the decisions will affect the liability? >> what we are anticipating i indicated in my testimony, my complete testimony the we will be looking at this as the department prepares its financial statements for the current fiscal year and they will be responsible for coming up with a revised estimate which will reflect their judgment as to the impact of the closure of yucca mountain on five liability and we will be reviewing that carefully at that time. skimming the the burden of energy recent actions to dismantle its stockpile will increase the volume of the defense nuclear waste.

how has the department planned to accommodate the waist as it shuts down yucca mountain? >> yucca mountain, approximately 10% was designated as i recall for high-level defense waste and spent nuclear waste. mike understanding is that the current inventory of waste in that category exceeded, exceeds even though 10% of yucca mountain reserved for that purpose originally. there may be lots of proposals right now that compact of the waste to mix it with to doubt lend if you will, but the fact of the matter is it will have an impact as a level grows. did the department consider whether its role in a start would be compromised by its decisions on yucca mountain? >> it is a very fundamental issue to be honest with you it is outside my area and my

purview. i don't know the answer to the question. >> has the doe done any analysis on the implications? >> i have not seen such analysis however the department recognizes its responsibilities for the defense high-level waste. that's never been in question. >> my time is expired. the chair recognizes mr. cassidy for five minutes. >> i recall the end of june 29th [inaudible] the department of energy did not have the authority to close yucca mountain. >> june 29, 2010? >> yeah. but anyway, i mean, does a the rule of law see so? does the attorney you sought an opinion from trump the

administrative procedures set up to hear your concerns? >> the licensing board decisions are reviewed by the commission and can take review of any decision and the commission and i was no longer on the commission at that time. i would like to take a review of the decision. the move is the responsibility -- >> excuse me, i have limited time. the commission has not yet issued its report and there's allegations of a political process. but was there is a upon the ruling of the preliminary administrative court june 29, 2010 board was there a stay upon that? the bling hasn't been released but nrc but clearly you are disregarding it. >> not being a lawyer i don't want to get into a question of what a stay is in this case. i am positive my statement is accurate that the commission has taken to review and the action is with the commission. >> but the action of the

commission, if you will, you preempted because they have not issued it will buy you shut down yucca mountain even though you were told you don't have the legal standing to do so and you're not an attorney because it is fundamentally the question is before the tax payers. we just blew $10 billion frankly it doesn't look like you have the legal standing and i'm getting a little bit of a legal road saying that you're not an attorney, i don't mean to be rude but imagine the frustration. what we ask your next. mr. friedman's complete testimony in the written portion speaks of a process whereby after you disregarded this atomic safety board ruling and decide upon 2010 to shut down you declared abandonment of what was it, 22 metric tons, mr. friedman? >> you may be referring to the gao report. >> are thought of as cleary and abandoned. >> it was property abandoned. >> granted it was --

>> computers, office equipment, that sort of thing. >> stuff like those valued and why did you just declare it abandoned? it looks like you were trying to make it so it would be expensive to restart after deciding the disregard of the ruling. why did the dod just declare it abandoned? >> abandonment is one of the mechanisms by which property can be disposed. the department was working on an expedited schedule to complete the shutdown within fiscal year ten. i should say there's a complete inventory under way now and will eventually as we go to the end of the closeout process it will be a reconciliation. >> for whatever reason it came back not entirely organized but one of the men had testimony and said there was a rather hasty shut down and that the complete

sort of gathering of information that would have been beneficial was not done that like other intellectual property was lost. am i speaking for one of the two of you? >> i would summarize i think both the ing and the gao had concern about the lack of the plant shut down. they basically started shutting down in june of 2010, sorry, february 2010 and complete it shut down by september 2010. during that time there was a draft plan that never got finalized to get things done quickly, and we raised concerns about that. >> so it looks like there was an attempt to abandon the process in a way that it cannot be restarted. >> as part of the quality assurance program as each decision has been made along the way the technical justification for that must be recorded in writing. >> who made the decision to abandon material including things that could have been sold to scrap or given federal agencies and started to turn it over to a contractor who made the decision? >> it was an evaluation on the

property in the decision, however, i believe both of the reports in question here note a majority of this equipment in question was transferred to other doe sites particularly handford. >> it's declared abandoned but under the process they can transfer to other sites. most of it got transferred internally. it was considered unusual but the doe had the authority to do that. our concern was, and we put this out in the recommendation that number one in some cases they didn't have a good inventory they say they are working on that and we say great the should have a full accounting for the inventory and what was sold. we think that remains to be done. and then last we think they should consider a plan to restart if they are compelled to do so. those were the recommendations. >> the gentleman from north carolina is recognized for five minutes. >> thank you very much mr. chairman and i thank the witnesses for their testimony is today.

i'm sorry i couldn't hear the testimony in the entirety but i will certainly work with my staff and look at your transcript as we go forward. but mr. chairman, by any assessment, this is a very, very complicated issue, but it's clear to me the department of energy's decision to withdraw its application for yucca mountain is really the cherry on top of the agreed plan mismanaged several exercise. i generally believe the department of energy should follow the process laid out by the act and maintain focus on the technical and scientific elements of yucca mountain rather than the political considerations. but i am a realist and understand all politics are local and if any of our respective institutes came to us and said this is our number one issue we would certainly fight tooth and nail to stop it even if the focus should be technical in nature. notwithstanding ratepayers in my state of north carolina have

contributed $900 million of their hard-earned money to help finance the construction of a permanent repository for the nuclear waste. i believe in nuclear power. i said it time and time again. a mix of over 30% of the state's generating capacity. i'm embarrassed to tell my constituents that their contributions have amounted to very little as we appear to be in no better position to solving this problem as we were when we started splitting atoms. we have a responsibility to see that this process, to see this process through and to make it a high priority. so let's talk about some of the options set out by the giglio. you stated that an independent organization with predictable funding might be a way to overcome some of the administrative issues we have had with yucca mountain. with such an independent organization have to be created by statute or does the administration have the authority to create it?

>> currently no administration or separate authorities, so i think it would have to be created. >> you might eliminate some of the political capriciousness by granting this agency predictable mandatory funding but eventually the decisions to cite a depository would be inherently political, and we all understand that. that said, outside of the funding how could this independent agency be able to overcome the political hurdles with any greater efficiency than the department of energy? >> we sort of had to lessons learned and that's part of it, that's the first lesson that perhaps some consistent leadership policy on where we are going would be a mechanism to get there. overcoming the factors including public acceptance which is recognized by many as a hurdle that should be addressed as well as the technical and safety issues. the key to those sort of things is transparency, education,

economic incentives, those are some of the tools that have been used in other countries to gain acceptance for such a site. >> you talk about greater transparency in the process. where do you see historical transparency gaps, and how might they be closed? >> it sort of goes back to the 60's when they looked at a facility in kansas. there was a feeling on the part of the folks that were out there that there wasn't full disclosure of what the information was even in the process of yucca mountain there's been complaints about not full disclosure of the different issues out there and i think the doe discredit worked on that and tried to establish some credibility but it still has a way to go particularly in the eyes of the folks of nevada. >> the american people may not take notice of this issue based upon the spent fuel issue alone but i guarantee you that they will notice on the cost of not completing the project becomes known. mr. friedman, to you in your testimony i'm told by my staff that you stated that the u.s.

nuclear to litigation liability is approximately $15 billion. if the project is completely schogol and no clear path is established when will the government to make the payments and to whom >> i don't know the answer to your question mr. butterfield, but there will be payments that have to be made there is no doubt, and our view is that it's likely that there will be a significant increase in the gross amount of the payments. >> will my constituents and the chairman's constituents and all of our constituents ever see a refund of the moneys contributed to this? >> that's not for me to say. if this project actually comes to a close of the is a legislative fix or amend the door series of amendment or legislation dni wouldn't surprise me if there would be some attempt to try to reimburse those who've made those contributions only to see them go for naught.

>> the answer to the question is the only way you're going to get the money back to open this -- excuse me, mr. butterfield, to open this project. lots of questions have been asked today and dr. lyons i have to say i almost feel sorry for you. you know what's going on here. it devotee of the audience knows what is going on here. the democrats, mr. inslee, mr. green, all the republicans know what's going on here and it's unfortunate we even have to have this hearing. the process of debating or what to do with high-level and low-level nuclear waste began when i was a state representative in new hampshire and in the early 1980's and i believe there was a site in new hampshire that was under consideration of some of the earlier rounds we've done through an excruciatingly detailed analysis.

we passed legislation. there's been battles that have occurred as we heard over different administrations the different parties and it's been bipartisan and we've come to as good a conclusion as we have possibly come to which is a great national the importance, and then the energy secretary at the president and perhaps others that have a political interest in this issue stop the project, potentially incurred expense of legislation, waste can and possibly less $25 billion tax payers' money of the criteria and social acceptance which is an interesting comment and everything to the blue-ribbon commission that can't consider any sites and in essence what we are proposing is the clock be wound back to the early 80's again and we began the process

you are the secretary for the nuclear energy. so you are pretty high up in this organization, but you can't make any comments, can you define social the acceptance, what it is? i feel sorry for you because i know you can do is raise questions because there are no answers to the questions because there aren't any velte criteria for doing what you're doing that give it a try. >> i am the assistant secretary, sir, not the under secretary. i grew up in nevada. i visited nevada, i worked in nevada, i saw the opposition in nevada growing and as it was created. i have watched over many years while nevada has progressively blocked each of the various initiatives attempted with regards to yucca mountain. in my view, there are many, many steps that remain before yucca mountain could never be opened. the views and nevada for which i am using the buzzword of public acceptance for socialist

substance, that opposition responds in nevada i believe will continue to block progress towards opening yucca mountain. >> not one single member of the subcommittee that i have seen has come out and shared door view of republican and democratic and i understand there are no members for nevada. is there anyplace in the united states you could build this without local opposition in your opinion? >> i used the example several times today about the isolation pilot plant in new mexico that enjoy is very, very strong local and regional support of the way the process develops as well as a repository site in other countries which is what the prc is evaluating i think provides extremely important lessons as to how to do this job right, and get the public digit commission, generate the acceptance which i am convinced can be achieved. >> i beg to differ with you. i think the -- it's been pretty

clear that the gao, the inspector general will hear a leader panel that this project is ready to go. the taxpayers have found it, the tax payers will be on the hook for billions more if we don't proceed, and the justification for its hopefully suspension, not termination are as of yet undefined technical criteria, social the acceptance criteria and what is not mentioned is political criteria. with that, mr. chairman, i will yield back. >> the gentleman yields back. that concludes the testimony of the first panel and questions so thank you very much for your time today and bearing with us through the votes.

and we will stand in recess subject to the call of the chair. we have a 4:00 markup beginning, and we will give as much information as possible when we reconvene. >> [inaudible conversations]

>> let me apologize and welcome the second panel. there was clapping as i was coming down the hallway. >> they want to get the hearing back going on. so we will start and call the hearing to order and we want to welcome our second panel. i'm excited to have the second panel here and in order again as i will go from left to right, your right to left, we have on panel to mr. charles hollis of the county commissioners, united county nevada, good to see you, sir. mr. martin malsch on behalf of the state of nevada. welcome, sir. mr. commissioner public-service commission and mr. christopher

kouts, former acting director of the d.o.t. office of civilian radioactive waste management. again, your full statement will be submitted for the record. you have five minutes, and we will start with you, mr. hollis. welcome. >> thank you mr. chairman and members of the committee. thank you again for the opportunity to testify about the local support in nevada for yucca mountain. im gary hollis and i am the chairman of the county board commissioner. state of nevada. as you know, mr. chairman, yucca mountain is located entirely within my county. while the testimony is - i want you to know that it reflects the views of the other county commissioners as well, and as well as many political and local leaders in rural nevada. mr. chairman, we deeply appreciate you and congressman

green took time to visit yucca mountain and to meet local people in nevada. as you learned there are many of us that live next to yucca mountain that support the completion of the licensing process. most of us who live believe the decisions on yucca mountain to be made based on sound science and again this only happens if the full review by the nuclear regulatory commission. if the torment of the repository is safe, like a freeze construction. i'm sure you understand no one is more concerned about the safety and welfare of the citizens of nye county and the other commissioners. is my community, my family, my friends live and work here. i would never accept a federal facility to be located in my county if i thought that it was unsafe. no matter what the economic benefits were attached to it.

frankly i resent suggestions that any of the nye county commissioners would jeopardize the health and safety of our citizens for any sum of money that would not happen on my watch. when congress passed the 87 amendment to the nuclear waste policy act to provide money for local communities impacted by yucca mountain to fund oversight activities. nye county used the money to create an independent science program. we had unbiased scientists to conduct the work. after years of effort, they found no reason to believe that the repository could not be built and operated safely. we have provided that information to the department of energy and the public. our work was top-quality and the results were available to everyone. but to get the full picture, we need to see all the evidence from every source.

that includes information from nye county, the doe, nrc staff and the state of nevada. we want every piece of evidence to be reviewed so a final determination of the safety of yucca mountain can be made. that determination can only happen if the licensing process is complete if the nrc determines that the repository can't be built and operated safely i would be the first person to object to its construction. i only ask that all of the facts and the science are reviewed by the nrc and that the legal establishment by the nuclear waste policy act is carried out. let the facts dictate the results, not politics. my views are shared by leaders of other nevada counties. upon being elected last year, nye county commissioner initiated a resolution of

support for the licensing application. and worked with churchill and lincoln counties to do the same. thus the six rural counties that would see the most impact from yucca mountain called on the doe and nrc to complete the licensing process. we are willing to live by the result of a fair scientific review process. i ask permission to put all six resolutions into the record, mr. chairman. >> is their objection? hearing none commesso ordered. >> beyond the political leaders of the other counties and the majority of the residence of the county support a license application mr. chairman, let me point out that all five nye county commissioners expressed their support for yucca mountain, and all elected or reelected by our citizens.

therefore it is not accurate to say there is no local support for yucca mountain. the people that live in the neighborhood support the completions of the licensing process. thank you. i'm available to any tv to answer questions you may have and i hear with to of the county technical professionals and they're there to answer questions as well. thank you, mr. chairman. >> i would now like to recognize mr. malsch for five minutes and you're full statement is in the record. >> thank you. >> and check your microphone before we go through this. there's a button. >> thank you, mr. chairman and members of the subcommittee. i appreciate the opportunity for testimony on the state of nevada at this hearing today. my name is martin malsch. i have practiced law and the nuclear energy field for over 40 years in both the public and private sectors, and i am a

special deputy attorney general to the state of nevada. the failure of the yucca mountain repository program is a direct result of the decisions taken beginning almost 25 years ago. a decent respect for history would have suggested that those decisions created a very high risk of program dillinger but the lessons of history were disregarded. the original 1982 nuclear waste policy act for saw many of the problems which now affect the yucca mountain program. among other things, it sought fairness and redundancy by requiring multiple sites from which to choose holton of locations for the repositories, and it's strove for regional equity by setting up a site selection programs for the two facilities, one in the west and one in the east. however, all of this was scrapped in 1987. congress decreed that all proposed redevelopment efforts must focus now on just one site in nevada, and it did so notwithstanding incomplete scientific information, and the

fact that now spent reactor fuel and the over waste from every region and the country would now be sent to a single western state with no nuclear power plants or high level waste generating facilities. .. these and other serious problems led to even more engineering fixes. when it appeared likely that the yucca mountain site did not satisfy certain epa and nrc requirements the requirements

were simply eliminated. these actions by congress and then by epa, d.o.e. and nrc destroyed the credibility of the program. public opinion in nevada which until 1987 have been mixed with regard to yucca mountain now solidified into strong consistent across the board opposition. in biannual surveys done between 1989 in 2010, opposition to the project has remained confident between 53 and over 70%. father has been and continues to be some support for the project in small rural counties spawning the site such support cannot be extrapolated to the wider nevada population. taken together the six county sometimes cited as some level of support for the program comprise only a tiny fraction of the state population. in 2002 in the vetted carefully evaluated the effects of a repository on the state community and economy in that report documents the potential

among other things for significant risks to nevada's unique to earth-based economy and property value losses and health effects associated with transportation. while it can be difficult to determine a particular large amounts of money have been spent, there is no sense now in spending good money after bad. d.o.e.'s by nixon yucca mountain is unworkable and the decision to seek withdrawal of the license application and establishment of the blue ribbon commission to look for alternatives for the management and storage is fuel for the right and lawful things to do. that the potential to put the county on a path to a safer or cost effective and expeditious solution to managing spent fuel and high-level waste. thank you mr. chairman and that concludes my remarks and i would be pleased to answer any questions. >> thank you mr. malsch. the chair recognizes mr. wright. >> thank you chairmanship is and i would like to thank you free leadership on this issue.

i am a commissioner for the michigan public service commission. i'm appearing today on behalf of the public service commission in michigan. electricity ratepayers the national association of regulatory utility commissioners. i have been involved with this issue of spent nuclear fuel from spent nuclear reactor since surely after the nuclear waste policy act passed in 1983 which established the policy that the federal government has the responsibility for the safe and permanent disposal of government and commercial nuclear waste in a cheer lockett depository and the customers that benefit from the electricity generated from the nuclear power pay for the commercial share of the disposal cost. that was the deal and we agree to that deal. the fee payments to the nuclear waste fund began in june of 1983 as required by the nuclear waste policy act. i'm here to tell you that is the only component of that program that has ever worked as

intended. nearly 30 years later the federal government has no money and we have their waste. when the department of energy submitted a license application to the nuclear regulatory commission in june of 2008 we knew that it could take three or four years to carefully review the safety and other aspects of this verse to the kind facility. we were not prepared to learn that after more than 20 years of study and nearly $15 billion spent that a different secretary of energy would withdraw the license application with prejudice in march of 2010 with no indication that the site is unsafe or that the application is flawed. instead the motion to withdraw cited only that yucca mountain was considered not a workable option. the department of energy took other steps to terminate the yucca mountain project documented in the april report that the gao including disbanding of the office of civilian radioactive waste management that had managed the

program. like others we have questioned the legal and administrative authority with the department of energy to disband this office. as you know the department of energy requested no appropriations for the waste program for fiscal years 2011 or 2012 except for support for the blue ribbon commission on america's nuclear future. yet when the nuclear energy institute in the and the national association of regulatory utility commissioners suggested that the secretary of energy suspend fee payments by utilities to the nuclear waste fund in 2009, that was denied in an unconvincing from announcement that all of these are essential. the nai have appealed that decision to the federal court of appeals which is pending. we can only speculate how much time and money it will take the u.s. to be -- except fuel for disposal if it is other than yucca mountain but it is likely to be decades. it seems essential than that we seek out and develop one or more

central interim storage facilities to take used fuel from the sites where reactors are currently shut down and the property cannot be decommissioned and return to other productive uses because of waste remains. such as the big rock nuclear power plant in michigan. regardless of what storage transportation or disposal solutions the blue ribbon commission may recommend, they will need certain and reliable financing support. concerning the financial impacts of terminating the yucca mountain, a more predictable funding mechanism would certainly enhance teacher waste management. also an independent organization outside of the department of energy could be more effective in citing and developing a permanent repository. if yucca mountain's termination is sustained at me and starting over to find and develop a repository since there is clear consensus that at least one site

is needed in all scenarios. unfortunately there are too many unknowns to be forecast how long it would take to authorize the search and select full evaluated and be ready ready to begin deposited in a repository, yet another 20 years seems to be highly conservative. with that i would conclude my testimony and make myself available for questions. thank you irk us be thank you and now the chair would like to recognize mr. kouts for five minutes. again your full statement is in the record and welcome. >> thank you pitcher chairman and members of the subcommittee. i'm christopher kouts director of the department of energy now defunct office of civilian radioactive waste management. i appreciate the invitation to appear before the subcommittee. i will focus myra marks and the recently released gal report that we discussed earlier by mr. cibrian administrations -- as background for 25 years i

served in various technical and management positions in virtually every program area within the office. i became the principle that the tractor of the program in 2007 and was the acting director for january 2000 until i retired in early 2010 after 35 years of federal service. while serving in the program i was reminded on a daily basis of the formidable challenges given to the program by the nuclear waste policy act. as patient as those who follow the program it been over the years with its progressany new attempt to establish disposal or interim storage facilities outside the confines of the act will be met by many new and likely more vexing challenges regardless of the organization or entity established to administer it and y. will knew any effort be more problematic? the answer to that question lies in the advance of society has experienced in communication and information. in the program proceeded to the facility siting process in the 1980s for two repositories and

interim storage facility the internet was not in place. e-mail is not available to the general public nor the social media of today exists. the 2470 psychoanalysis and will create many opportunities were those opposed to such facilities to spread rumors and disinformation. as a result the credibility of any new process will be severely challenged from its inception. in addition the state of nevada is given a clear trend of those opposed to such facilities, delay delay delay and it should be noted they did not in anyway in any way progress the lawsuit direction of the state is taken to attempt to impede the project are good and certainly their right to do so and i fully respect that. accordingly, the timeframe of decades noted in the gao report for in a repository is nothing then notional. and it does not appear to stem from a conference of a violation of the program's past experience of the changes that appeared since have appeared since the 1980s. the report suggests an independent entity outside the federal government to be more successful. the grass is always greener.

it is also my belief that congress should have the final word on facility siting and ultimately any siting decision will be a political decision and form by thorough technical evaluation just as in the case of yucca mountain. it is difficult to understand the gao report so-called benefit of terminating the yucca mountain project to afford d.o.e. the opportunity to explore other approaches. d.o.e. has no authority to undertake new approaches under the confines of the act in history has shown the consensus needed to develop a new policy path will not come easily or quickly. because the development of yucca mountain has been such a contentious and protracted process is being suggested that only consensual siting of these facility should be pursued. i would submit to the subcommittee the u.s. and international experience in this area proves otherwise. in my discussions over the years with the directors are repository programs abroad they have consistently expressed their concerns that due to the long timeframe depository programs take to develop a

political consensus at the beginning can evaporate with one election just as it has in the u.s. with yucca mountain. at the end of the day implementing repository program requires that a consistent national leadership. and closing, besides the sizes of gowdy the decision to terminate the project is disturbing because yucca mountain has not failed in a technical or regulatory test. the thousands of scientists and engineers and others that worked on the project over the years believe as i believe that the site would meet the stringent regulations of epa and the nrc and assure these materials would not adversely impact future generations in the environment. given a substantial investment this nation is made in the site and the policy that has been supported by every prior administration since 1982, i believe the nation deserves a final and definitive answer regarding yucca mountain from the nrc licensing process. thank you for this opportunity to discuss these issues and i would be pleased to answer any questions the subcommittee might have. >> thank you us are so or so

when i would recognize myself for five minutes. again mr. hollis and want to welcome you here and i think in my visit up there, which is my second visit, i think it was even better that i drove a helicopter out there. give you an idea of how far the definition of local is. the size of the federal property that persists, how big is that land mass? >> counties are around 18,000 square miles. >> i was told that the federal property, the blm, the d.o.e. and the nuclear test site is the size of the state of rhode island. is that correct? >> vitesse site is the size of the state of rhode island. that does not account for the total test range.

>> yucca, the mountain itself is not on the outskirts of the federal government land. it is my recollection that we went through the gate. we still drove 10 or 15 miles to get to yucca mountain. is that true? >> if i could answer that. nester chairman of the site itself is basically half of it is on the nevada test site in the other half is on blm. >> so from the security gate, that is how far of a drive from the first. >> you entered around mercury, since the gate was that we used to use is now closed and he probably drove about five miles from that gate to try to get to a place near the mountain is my guest. >> when we talk about local -- what is the county, what is your county seat? what is the county seat?

>> from where i live it is 165 miles to the county seat. >> okay and that's how my visited is that the closest community of sites? >> yes, it is approximately 34,000. >> 34,000 the county is about 43,000. >> so, you are local? >> guest. >> in the region sofa we want to talk to local individuals -- and driving from las vegas my hometown of collins alone of annoying this state capitol is a town called springfield. is about 90 miles. is that the distance? >> actually it is probably 130 miles, 130 might -- 135 miles. >> no one in illinois would say we are local to springfield and no one in springfield illinois

would save it is local. and so we appreciate you being here and we appreciate a local voice in this debate on what the local citizens want and all you were asking us for the nrc to make a decision. >> that is correct. >> because there is ice to debate and we have the commissioner tier and we feel the nrc commissioners have voted. we would like to know what the results of that vote is. >> absolutely. that is what we want wanted no. >> you are also speaking for other counties that are closer in proximity to the city of las vegas? >> well i am pretty well speaking for all the counties around yucca mountain as having -- that have impacts to yucca mountain are those six counties are the ones that i am talking about, and that i have resolutions here in support of.

>> thank you. mr. kouts, you mentioned in your bio, you were in the office of civilian radioactive waste management, correct? >> that is correct. >> that office was enacted by what statute gave that office he authority? >> the nuclear waste policy act of 1982. >> and that law is still valid, correct? >> yes, sir it is. >> and who was in charge of and how many people were in the civilian radioactive waste management office right now? >> b. zero. >> and would it be your -- if there is no one fulfilling the role under the law that someone is not abiding by the law? >> although i'm not a lawyer, it would seem to me the department is not following. >> i have 11 seconds. how long would it take to reconstitute the office and

reach the answer on how much that will cost? >> let me preface my estimate by saying this all presupposes that the department did not demolish the office as they tried to demolish the licensing process with impunity. the motion that they filed was with prejudice which meant that if indeed it was withdrawn from the nrc it could never be resubmitted, so if the department has treated the office that way then i think it will take many years. if the records are in reasonable shape, and if you can coax the staff and i'm not talking about federal staff. i'm talking about the contractors and scientific staff and you can get the contractors in place, you will have to get a law firm to direct the licensing process. having said that it would probably take two to three years to reformulate the office and to get it in a position where it could begin to defend a license

again. and from that point it would probably take assuming the nrc has issued their report or nearby close to that probably at least another three years to get a final answer out of the commission so that would probably be a five to six your time period. assuming again they didn't terminate the office. >> thank you very much. my time is expired. like to recognize the vice-chairman of the committee, mr. murphy from pennsylvania. >> thank you is your chairman. i wonder if he could tell me a little bit of your background. you are an engineer by trade? >> yes, sir. two degrees in engineering and i'm also licensed professional engineer. >> you have worked with the department of energy? >> i join the department of energy back in 1978 in a joined the program in 1985. >> and you have been involved, when you say the program you mean the program of yucca mountain? >> i live through just about all

the challenges and everything else through the act and i lived in the program or i was in the program during virtually its entire existence. >> are you familiar with the legislation that has been passed and signed into love regarding yucca mountain? >> very familiar. >> you have read it? been many times. >> have you found anything in there that sets the standard in the law in terms of social acceptance of the sightings? >> no, sir. i read it many times that i never found anything like that in there. >> are you familiar with the department of energy or anybody involved with these projects? >> only the current secretary of energy. >> heard in the previous testimony multiple times related to their counsel and the secretary of energy saying that was the standard they were going to use. it reminded me of other standards used and they looked at, when the white house talked about changing some of the other

regulations that come up. they would look at social aspects of this as well. but i am curious as we go through this if you have any idea of any standard in engineering at all supplied anywhere else in -- the universe. take our solar system. >> no sir. i think the irony of all of this is there is local support. there is acceptance of a repository there assuming and i would say appropriate levels because they think they're concerned about its safety. the bottom line is that justice dr. lyons indicated that the local community around carlsbad would like it but i don't think the local community around nye county is any different in regard to that than carlsbad. again i don't understand the standard and i wasn't involved in those conversations so your

guess is as good as my. >> you made references to finding something in the community of nimby. i am interested in the science and trying to find a safe place to put nuclear fuel. to save where it is now but not long-term, looking at long-term sites too. the department of energy describes it as an unworkable. do you agree with those terms? to believe it has been a stalemate sir. i think it has been a very contentious process and i would not deny that but i believe it is still may. >> 25 years of people wringing their hands. >> that is correct certain we had a great victory in submitting a license application 2008 so i would look at that as a stalemate. unfortunately they truncated licensing process but is indicated in my testimony believe the nation deserves an

answer on yucca mountain. >> as far as you can tell, through your knowledge and experience that answer has not been forthcoming. i'm interested in looking for social aspects on this, but no other -- you hurry my reviews questioning at of the d.o.t. secretary that we have not seen any scientific legal, and information out there which were contraindicated what has been put forth in licensure up to this time. >> i agree with -- the answer is no and i will save as long as i was principle deputy and acting director in the program during this administration i was never asked for any technical information regarding the site, so my assumption was that technical information was not part of the secretary's decision-making process and had anyone else in my program been asked for it i would have known about it. the bottom line is to my knowledge the secretary's decision was not a technical one, at least he didn't ask for any information from the program for it and he must have criteria

which again since i wasn't part of the decision-making process i cannot comment on. >> i thank you and with that i would yield that. >> the chair recognizes the ranking member mr. green from texas. >> i appreciate the patience and i apologize their witnesses. we actually had a mark upon the full committee downstairs and on a bill i was working on and i'm also the chair on a pipeline from canada legislation we were working on. i appreciate obviously energy is important where i come from and i appreciate the opportunity a few weeks ago to come out to two or yucca mountain and i've supported it in congress and it is good to see on the ground what was happening. mr. kouts in your testimony you mentioned a the potential challenges restarting the selection process of the storage facility. i'm concerned about that process and i said on a earlier panel you mentioned your disagreement with gal recommendation that

congress should have final say. do you also take issue with a blue ribbon commission and their potential recommendations? >> if you are asking my opinion about the primary recommendations of the blue ribbon commission i would use three words. i would say there are predictable. i would say they are disturbing and i would also say they are amusing and let me explain why. predictable in the sense if you've you read the presence executive order it is very clear the president had made up his mind and yucca mountain was not an option. he talked about in his order that the last 25 years is basically been -- not unworkable to use some other work but clearly charged to the commission about what his views were. so what came out of it was yucca mountain obviously was not on the table and they want to restart the whole process. that is the real troubling part because i don't think anyone at the commission really understands what it would be

like for this country to go through another siting process for a repository. it was a gut-wrenching, very very difficult time not only inside the department of energy but outside the department of energy and now as i indicated the social media that we have an opportunity for disinformation, it will be magnitudes more challenging than it was back in the 80's and let me just finish with the amusing aspect. the preliminary recommendations is that it took so long for them to come up with their predictable disturbing conclusions. >> mr. hollis thank you for being here and thank you for your hospitality. we had a brief meeting their. you mentioned your desire to see yucca mountain proceeds if the health and the safety and areas protect a berkin mentioned resolutions passed by a dade

county and other areas. can you discuss the resolutions and further explain the position of your county? >> the six resolutions is just asking the d.o.e., department of energy and the nuclear regulatory commission to finish the process. to finish the license application. that is what we are supporting. we want them to finish. we can't make a valuation of the safety of yucca mountain without all the evidence and we are asking for all the evidence. and the evidence is that the nuclear regulatory commission has to follow the licensing application. it has to be completed before we will know. if it is unsafe i will be the first one to stand up and say no but if it is safe i will be the first one to say let's build it. >> i typically go with the folks who live in the neighborhood and you are about as close as folks

who live in that neighborhood is you can get. mr. white your testimony you discuss the need to develop at least one interim storage facility for a net savings to the federal government. you suggest one of nine potential locations where your reactors were shut down. can you go further in detail on the suggestion and how could it help solve our ease the burden of our nuclear storage dilemma? >> the there are a couple of different aspects to that question. what we are -- one of the things we are very concerned about is the fact the program and not performed at all. we have nothing and we have nine sites around the country where they are shut down reactors and many of those plans for example the big rock nuclear plant in michigan they have decommissioned the site as much as i possibly can what is left on the 750-acre site is an independent spent fuel storage facility. it is just a doctor cast sitting so we cannot return that

property to productive use and so we think there could be some lessons learned if we could consolidate at least the fuel at those nine shut down sites into one location and it would achieve the savings because currently the customers and utilities that own those sites are paying those costs continually despite the fact that they are no longer generating electricity at that site. >> also discuss financing the disposal of nuclear waste in the nuclear waste fund. for nuclear waste fund were not used for the purpose you discussed what with alternative means for financing of the disposal of nuclear waste the? part of this came out of our ratepayers included in my area and part of the came it came from just general revenue. where would that, where would we get the other funding? >> that is a good question and i don't have the answer to that. we agree to what i called the

deal where the customers would pay the cost. the beneficiaries of nuclear generation would pay the cost of the program. what we are frustrated by his we have paid and paid and paid and we have nothing to show for it. i can argue that the customers paid for the design of spent fuel pools at the reactors. we pay for the reconsolidation when those pools fill because the government hadn't taken it away. we paid again when the fuel was removed and put into dry cask's. the wild where paying for the federal program with nothing to show for. >> i appreciated. my time is right out. mr. chairman a matter what happens with yucca mountain we still needed nuclear waste disposal facility in the president supports investment to alternative energy and secretary chu gave testimony before a committee that we were unable to meet the president's goals of the do not invest in nuclear energy. part of that is also finding a place to have a permanent storage and this means we need

to have it stored safely somewhere and if not yucca than we don't want that members of congress 25 years from now like we are saying okay where we going to put this? it is still sitting on the sites all over the country so thank you. >> i thank my colleague and now i'd like to recognize congressman whitfield from kentucky who chairs the energy and air subcommittee. very knowledgeable on energy issues. >> i hope i can live up to your expectations. >> i hope you can too. >> thank you for being here. we really appreciate it. i think it is very difficult myself to come to any conclusion except that this administration is ignoring the law because the policy act of 1982 did set this up. in 2002 yucca mountain was proved as the site and for this

administration to pull back its application for construction authorization for construction, before any decision has been made, it seems to me as a violation of the law. would you agree with that? >> but me preface by saying i'm an engineer who is read the act many times but i tend to agree with the ministry of law judges at the nrc to when they read the act could not find any basis for the secretary to withdraw the application in section 114, which is the same section. if there was a flaw in the license application i think the secretary could pull it back and fix it and resubmit it but just to withdraw it with prejudice, in other words saying that it is never going to be submitted again, i certainly don't see that authority in the act.

>> and that obviously the nrc's construction authorization board agreed with that because they refused to allow them to withdraw the information that was in june of 2010. and so we have had one year for the commissioners to take this issue up and make some decisions and i think that anyone who has heard chairman jaczko testified it was certainly walk away with the conclusion that he simply is dragging his feet because one of the commissioners term is going to expire may be at the end of this month and he knows the appointment of the next commissioner will be voting with him. and yet, to do that is violating the policy act so it appears even just a reasonable interpretation is nothing but politics and then i heard you

answer mr. murphy and say you were the acting director of the office of civilian radioactive waste management so if the secretary was going to withdraw this application, it would appear that he would come to you for some technical information and yet you testified he did not do so. is that correct? >> that is correct, sir. he did not. >> if he didn't technical information making the decision to withdraw, what kind of information would he need to make a decision like that? >> if i could just give you my experience for the program having been in it for 25 years and again i was a career ses and acting director over the years i've been involved with lots of meetings and told not to attend lots of meetings and once i've been i have been told not to attend are typically those among political appointees where they

will discuss political issues so my assumption was since i was not involved in the decision-making process that those types of discussions were going on. we did not have a political for the program. there was no one appointed so therefore there was no one from the program politically appointed by the president is meetings but that is what my ascension was because i was in both. >> i think the logical conclusion is that it was political. it was done to help harry reid and the american people are the ones who are going to suffer from this. over $15 billion has been invested already. ratepayers for utilities are paying fees for this. taxpayers are now legally liable to pay over $15 billion in judgments against the federal government because they cannot live up to the responsibility for policy act of 1982.

so, it seems to me, and then you take the six counties closest to the repository as mr. hollis has testified, actually support the nuclear regulatory commission at least going through the process and making some final decisions. and adopted resolutions basically to that effect. so i don't think there is any question that this is bad news for the american people. is costly to the american people, the taxpayers and it is probably a violation of the policy act of 1982. >> gentleman's time has expired. mr. kouts i appreciate your testimony and i think the gao analysis kind of supports your assertion. yucca mountain is the most studied place on the planet and i think you were there for most of the study.

just want to remind the second panel that the record will remain open for 10 days and this hearing may be followed up by individual questions by my colleagues, so if you could then answer those and get those back to us as expeditiously as possible we would appreciate it. we will continue to move forward on addressing these obviously disconcerting events that many of us questioned the legality of and look forward to moving types of legislation that will help you know, enter another voice in what the vast majority of representatives of the constitutional republic would like to do based upon previous agreements and laws passed so we thank you for your testimony and appreciate your time.

members have 10 days to submit questions for the record and with that this hearing is now adjourned. >> thank you mr. chairman. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

's bay shuttle endeavour return for its final landing at the kennedy space center in cape canaveral florida. endeavour is nasa's fifth space shuttle constructed as a replacement for challenger. endeavour flew its first mission in may of 1992. nasa's thirty-year space shuttle program is scheduled to end this summer with the final mission of the space shuttle atlantis targeted july 8. >> touchdown. deployed by greg johnson. forward gear touchdown.

after a journey of 6.5 million miles endeavour landing in darkness and illuminated by the dedication of every astronaut scientist engineer flight comptroller mechanic and dreamer that helped it fly. youngish of completing his 120th millionth mile after screw delivered an attention to the international space station will sift through the darkness for years to come. >> endeavour. >> 122 million miles flown during 25 challenging spaceflights. your landing leaves a legacy for this amazing vehicle that will long be remembered. welcome home, endeavour. >> thank you houston. you know the space shuttle is an amazing vehicle. the fly through the atmosphere at mach 25, i mean steered to the atmosphere like an airplane, landed on the runway. is really an incredible ship. on behalf of my entire crew i want to thank every person that has worked for to get this

mission going and every person that is worked on endeavour. it is sad to see her land for the last time, but she really has a great legacy. >> great words, cheney marked we will meet your crew on 5-3. >> 5-3. >> after the leading space shuttle endeavour commander mark kelly and crewmember spoke to reporters. this briefing is 20 minutes. >> good morning and thank you for joining us here at nasa kennedy space center in florida for space shuttle endeavour's sts 134 post-landing crew news conference. is my pleasure to introduce to you the sts 134 crew and commander.

commander mark kelly. >> hello everyone. thanks for coming out. very early in the morning at 2:30 when we landed if you were there and thanks for waiting. sorry it took us along. we were doing some medical tests and some medical experiments. one of our crewmembers, greg chabot toff is still in the process of doing that so he will not be with us today. i would first like to introduce the rest of my crew. to my lips greg johnson our pilot, former air force colonel f-15 pilot. this is a second flight, second flight on endeavour and second landing at night. mike fincke u.s. air force colonel as well. mike is now the u.s. record holder for time in space. he previously did two long duration flights flying up and down on the russian soyuz. and then colonel roberto vittori

of the italian air force who is with the aussie but on a mission for the european space agency. roberto and i actually have known each other the longest, having served at the naval test center the tuscan river at the u.s. naval test pilot school, probably 15 years ago now. and drew fuestel who led three of the space walks during this mission and supervise all four of them, really critical member of this crew. we did for eda's which are very, as many of you know, gary very high risk things to do and they went flawlessly. we got everything done that we planned to do. we installed the alpha magnetic spectrometer on flight day two

for the mission which was a pretty exciting milestone for us. it will be a new day for astrophysics and space to have a very high tech cosmic article detector outside the earth's atmosphere. dr. king and his team of over 600 scientists and engineers are now really really busy analyzing 50 million particles a day. i've no idea how they do that. how do you sort through 50 million of anything? but he is managing to do that are hopefully we will see some amazing discoveries. but now i guess we'll just go around the room and take your questions. do i get to pick? [laughter] >> when the microphone comes around please say your name.

>> commander kelly, peter king from cbs news radio. we will get this one hopefully out of the way. did you truly say to your wife in your first conversation, i am back and how do that first conversation go and how did she sound you? >> i haven't spoken to her yet. she is probably still sleeping. is 8:in the -- 8:30 in the morning here and she's in the hospital and i don't want to wake her up so i sent her mother and e-mail and said the first thing i do when i leave this press conference let me know if she is awake and then i'm going to call her. >> marsha dennis with "associated press" and i am sorry to continue on the same thread but what are you going to tell her and you know, do you think she got up to watch on tv? what are you thinking? >> i don't know. and the reason we didn't have her come down here was because it was really late in the night and what she is going through now is a very physically challenging and difficult thing,

very busy schedule. it certainly would be disruptive. we all have kids right now that are just crashed from being up all night and for anybody you yu know just anybody in this room, for us it is kind of easy because we have sleep shifted over long period of time that for you folks out on the runway you are probably pretty tired right now. what i'm going to say to her? i am going to really miss her and can't wait to get back there tomorrow to see her. so we are all looking forward to spending time with their families. >> evan brown, "fox news" radio. colonel vittori, you are the last non-nasa astronaut to fly in this they shuttle. how important has the shuttle been to the non-nasa space program or the european agency and so on and so forth? >> everything we have done -- we

have continuously been using the possibility to fly on this shuttle. i don't recall exactly when was the first year but since the very beginning of the shuttle and obviously for me it is a privilege to be the last one on board the shuttle. the flight has been spectacular and i was very pleased to see the space station almost double the size of ice on 2005. i was very pleased to see that coppola, node 3a and node two and everything else that one way or the other went through the european space agency and industry so i am very honored and privileged to have had this opportunity and grateful to nasa. >> mark. >> mark redman with talking

space. a question for commander kelly. ifrs i you and your crew here august 26, 2010 at the shuttle landing facility when amos came over from geneva switzerland. i remember thinking how committed and focused you were on that hot august day and what you expect do you expect that you will always remember about sts 134's crew and mission? >> will certainly in a 16 day flight we have got a lot of great stories that we will be telling for a long time. many that we certainly can't share with you. but what i will remember most you know are the poor guys here and greg chamitoff. this was an incredible group. these flights are really hard to do. i mean it is very tiring, very long days, technically difficult staff. spacewalks are very hard and they were ' arm operations.

i would say our pilot greg johnson here is probably one of the most experienced robotic arm operators even though -- this stuff is really really difficult and to do it with a group of people that are just so accomplished and so experience and it makes it very easy for me. it expire job a lot easier to have guys like this on this crew. i will remember them more than anything. >> todd helfer send of florida's florida's -- florida today i guess for mark kelly. i think you came into the court and the mid-1990s and it is kind of fascinating to me to see how the content in these missions has grown in complexity over the years and i'm wondering if you can comment on what your

perception is on how much more complex these missions have become and whether or not it is possible, humanly possible to squeeze anymore into a mission then you guys seem to have done this time around? >> well, that is a good question. they have become more complex and you know, a lot of times you hear crews say this is the most complex shuttle mission ever. you wouldn't hear that out of me at this point. they are all really hard so i have never said that. they are really really difficult to do. they are all completely jampacked. but you know, i think you know, to address, can kenya pat moran? it doesn't really matter. we are going to fly one more flight in six weeks. that flight schedule has been written. is a crew for. they are going to have an equally challenging time inside atlantis. the mission will have to be a little shorter because they can

transfer power from the space station to the space shuttle so i think you know, they will have a challenging flight and these are really hard, but they should be. it is really really expensive to fly the space shuttle or any spacecraft for that matter. so the fact that our days then we wake up and we go to work and we do not stop until we fall asleep is appropriate. it is the way it should be. fortunately we are able to do this without generally without making mistakes and thankfully without hurting people as we go about the day on the space station. >> gene necessary abc news for drew and mike. you both pulled off an eight or plus space while. that was exhausting for us out here. how was it for you on that night? >> it wasn't planned. [laughter]

it was exhausting for us as well. i was lucky to have mike there. we sort of talked about it pre-flight about what her plans were. it was our longest and most difficult eda. it kind of word together. we knew that going into it so we had a plan that hey we are going to do what it takes and also we knew we had to finish the task and see it through to completion. it was tough. i think mike is going to lose a few fingernails over this and i certainly have some veto pans but i was fortunate that mark supported us in getting the job done. we knew we had a day off ahead of us the next day so everything sort of came together and sometimes looking forward you don't see the path through the yen but looking back i see how it was almost fortuitous we have that day off and we were able to have eva land on that day that

allow us to go late and i were -- and overall we only left one thing out on the table which was a cable that we didn't deploy. that is a fairly straightforward task that can be left for others to do so the content was packed. we planned it that way and we trained for year and a half to make sure we optimized every moment of the eda's and they think you know luckily we were successful in doing that with the teamwork between the whole crew and the support of the crew in the three spacewalk or so it worked out well. >> i agree with drew. [laughter] >> me three. >> james dean and i was wondering if any of you got to stay up to see the soyuz the part and if so how in need of an experience was that or how eager are you to see that photo that hopefully will come out with you guys there on the outpost, the

only time that picture with the shuttle there will ever be seen? >> if they did, they were not following the commander's orders. [laughter] we were asleep. that was her sleep time. was right in the middle of our sleeptime sleep time and we really didn't have a chance to watch it as much as we wanted to. we just had to get our rest because it was, the whole mission was a sprint. >> we are definitely looking forward to that photo coming out. we also took a similar photo through some careful preplanning. we took a very nice fisheye lens on the flat part of our last eda. greg chamitoff was able to sit on top of the world, top of the space station and look back and we have a couple of really nice shots where we can see and into the space station, the shuttle on one side, the european automated transfer vehicle on the other side, the american segment, the russian segment and the european japanese and it is

just really a stunning picture. i think greg said some nice words that we got to see that for real. is not the only picture we are going to see but i think when pollock took the shot from the soyuz they will be spectacular. i think we should all be impressed how big and magnificent that space station is. we sought on the rendezvous, undocking and the rendezvous for the storm and we were just, we were kind of show we say not jada guys but not easily impressed any more. we have been there, done that. we were impressed. we were excited like 5-year-olds at a rollercoaster park. it was pretty impressive. >> brian, if this struggle grandma sent winding down endeavour did so well with their problems, you feel there would be more years left in the shuttle that remain? >> well, we made a decision sometime ago to retire this they

shuttle on this schedule to use, to use the nasa budget to build a new vehicle to go on and do exploration, to have a simpler, safer spacecraft. y. love this they show. i fly it just like jerry here, flight as much as i probably could. i would probably go out every couple months of like that, have the opportunity to fly this they shuttle. but it is 30 years old and you know, we have got to grow and adapt and build new things and it is going to be probably five or six years, maybe seven before we have a new u.s. spacecraft to take crewmembers first to and from the international space ine station and hopefully outside lower earth orbit but we will get there. so this was the plan, but you know personally, yeah i would love to fly the space shuttle every week if i could.

>> denny's with.com. at a question for mike. you are an experienced space buyer and said there is a record for the most number

i made a t-shirt with the space shuttle on it with markers because they were not out in the stores yet and i still have the t-shirt. ante no childhood dreams don't always come true and sometimes your life -- but man this dream, the reality was better than a dream. can you believe that? it was so incredible. we just landed a few hours ago and i'm asking in i can't believe it. it was so surreal how wonderful that was so i'm paying -- thankful to my crewmates were supporting and helping get through these really difficult and tough missions but we got through it and did it really well. it was really amazing. ..

space station is a very large and there's a long distance to move over, so that creates -- that's a lot of effort in itself spending the time moving across the space station doing that

works of the growth very challenging in different ways, very fatigued, any work you do that's done outside of the space suit is fatigued soaked to compare them is to compel the relative size of with the two spacecraft, the satellite reverses the telescope verses the space station. but the work still wears you out after six or eight hours. as you're sort of sad that it's over but it has to be done. >> this will conclude continuing coverage of the 134 mission. for more information on the 134 were social endeavors pleased visit www.nasa.gov. thank you. [inaudible conversations]

the federal reserve has made to disclosures on its lending practices in the past six months to comply with provisions in the new financial regulations law triet it's the first time in the federal reserve almost 100 year history it has made such disclosures. next the house financial services subcommittee looks of the lending practices of the federal reserve. texas republican congressman ron paul chairs the hearing. >> once again, i apologize to everybody for the inconvenience. i apologize to myself because nobody likes to be inconvenienced but it looks like we have a system set up here that we can pursue with our hearings. and without objection, all members opening statements will be made part of the record. the chair notice some members may have additional questions for the panel which they may wish to submit in writing.

without objection the record will remain open for 30 days for members to submit written questions to these witnesses and to place their responses in the record. also, i would like to emphasize at this time that this hearing deals with a very complex matter and it's a large amount of material and therefore written questions i'm sure will be followed up, so why ask for as much cooperation as you can give us because there are times when questions are sending in and they sort of get lost but because there are so much it's complicated and now our time looks like it is going to be shortened, we may have to depend a whole lot on our written question, so we ask for your cooperation. but i will go ahead with an opening statement and for anybody else that wants to have an opening statement.

>> [inaudible] >> pardon me? [laughter] >> i want to emphasize these hearings i consider very important. it has come about because many things that happened over the last few years there has been a lot of movement in the country for more transparency in general as well as with the federal reserve system and i think my position on the sisterly well -- fairly well known that there has been legislation passed. the dodd-frank bill has stipulations about more information coming to us by that legislation passed last year. there's also been the court cases that has required under the freedom of information act and we will be dealing with a lot of that today. and also, the provisions in of the law that was language that was put in by basically senator

sanders that has required some additional information. but what is referred to today so often on hearings and the materials that came out of the freedom of information act is called the dumping and i find rather interesting to call it that, because it sounds like a lot of material was dumped, and when you think of 29,000 pages of technical and information, it is fairly large and our staff have been working quite do the card and quite frankly it isn't that easy to to get out. it reminds me of a story that was told and north supposedly a true story that an individual was being audited by the federal reserve and they came to him and said we want five years of everything that you've ever done

and every reseat you've ever had, and of course that made him very unhappy, so he put them all together in a bushel basket and he dumped them and i tell you what, it didn't go over very well. and he got into a lot of trouble. i'm not suggesting this is similar but it reminds me when i look and try to figure out what we have it's a lot of material and to sort this out is not easy the one argument, and i understand the argument very clearly on the hesitancy of the federal reserve not to give out too much information to early was the idea that they might be proprietary, it might set the stage for concerns in the markets. i think of this in contrast to what the public of the fcc is if the fcc has a purpose to investigate the reports and get the information out immediately, and that is their responsibility, and if accompanied doesn't let us know

what they're doing and what their accounting procedures are degette into a lot of difficulty with this seems to be different about the federal reserve we have a bank that may be in difficulty in the market situation that information should be available to us, so i take the position that information shouldn't be the detrimental to less coming into the more we can get the better, and i am hopeful that today we will be able to ask the important questions to get more information hot and we can follow on with more questions later ron and there will be more transparency without ever injuring anybody. that certainly would be mauney bolt. so i would like now to yield five minutes to mr. clay. >> thank you mr. chairman. and thank you so much for holding this hearing to examine.

with of the dodd-frank wall street reform protection act and the freedom of information act also i want to thank the witnesses for appearing today deutsch of the u.s. financial crisis, the congress passed the dodd-frank wall st reform and consumer protection act of 2010. this legislation was crafted as a response to the financial crisis which has cost nearly 10 million american jobs and over $10 trillion in household wealth. nearly 4 million families have lost their homes to foreclosure and an additional 4.5 million have slipped into the foreclosure process are seriously behind on their mortgage payment.

according to the financial crisis in query reported a combination of excessive borrowing car risky investments and the lack of transparency put the financial system on a collision course of self destruction. in the years leading up to the crisis, too many financial institutions as well as to many households borut to much leading them to financial distress if the value of the investment decline even modestly. for example, as of 2007, the five major investment banks were operating with extraordinarily thin capital by one measure the leverage ratio were as high as 40-1, meaning for every $40 in assets there was only 1 dollar of capital to cover the losses to a less than a 3% drop in asset value to wipe out a

company. leverage was often hidden in off-balance sheet entities and derivative positions and thru window dressing of financial reports available to the investing public's. within the financial system, the danger of this debt was increased because transparency was not required or desired. under cover corporate dealings assisted in the financial meltdown which still plagues us today. in order for the democracy and capitalism to exist correctly, transparency must be at the core and trust and transparency and the rule of law are fundamental to this nation's success and this depends on trust. trust business produces good product sandy trusted business will deliver good services. democracy depends on trust,

transparency promotes the government accountability, free and fair elections, competition and free markets and the rule of law are critical to it. the dodd-frank wall street reform consumer protection act addresses these issues by reforming the federal reserve. one it limits the federal reserve 13 through causerie emergency lending authority by prohibiting of the emergency lending to an individual entity. secretary of treasury must approve any lending program and the program must be broadbased and loans cannot be made to insolvent firms. collateral must be sufficient to protect taxpayers from losses. and number to it requires the federal reserve to disclose counterparties and information about amounts, terms and conditions of 13-3e and discount window lending and open market

transactions on an ongoing basis with specified time delay. these are just a few examples of the importance of the dodd-frank wall st reform and consumer protection act. thank you mr. chairman. i look forward to the witnesses' comments. >> thank you, gentlemen. do you care for an opening statement. okay. no more opening statements so we will go on and introduce our witnesses. first, we have mr. space albert is as the general counsel with the board of directors since 2004. he's been with the board for 40 years. also mr. thomas baxter, jr. has been the executive vice president of the legal work with the federal reserve bank of new york since 1995. he also serves as the deputy general counsel of the fomc. mr. baxter has been with the new york fed for more than 30 years.

without objection, your written statements will be made part of the record. it has been agreed upon by the witnesses ranking member play and myself and mr. elbra is to deliver the remarks of the joint written testimony of mr. alvarez and mr. baxter. the testimony may run longer than the testimony for five minutes, and i yield now to mr. alvarez. >> chairman paul, a ranking member clay, members of the subcommittee, the federal reserve bank of new york appreciate the opportunity to discuss the way the federal reserve and forms the congress and the american people about its policies and actions. central bank lending facilitates the implementation of monetary policies and allows the central bank to address short-term liquidity pressures in the banking system. the role of the lender of last resort is a critical one long filled by central banks around

the world especially during times of economic crisis when discount window lending can mitigate strains in the financial markets that could otherwise escalate and lead to sharp declines in output and employment. in the united states all discount window loans are fully secured and the federal reserve hasn't suffered a loss to date on its discount window lending. the federal reserve regularly release is significant detailed information about its operations in order to promote the understanding of how the federal reserve foster's financial stability and economic stability and to facilitate an evaluation of our actions while preserving the ability to effectively fulfill the responsibilities that the congress has given the federal reserve. since 1914 the federal reserve published its balance sheet every week the false statements annually that were audited by independent public accounting firm which for the last four years has been delayed.

these audits covered mainly in, made in leyna ii and iii as well as the transactions conducted through the discount window and with foreign central banks. it also publishes a special report to congress post on the website that details the federal reserve's emergency lending programs including providing information on the amount of lending under each program, the type and level of collateral associated with those loans and information about the war were some of those facilities. in addition the federal reserve bank of new york maintains a web site that includes schedules of purchases and sales of securities as a part of the open market operations. with the information describing the securities involved. the federal reserve is fully cooperating with the gao in an extensive review of each of the special lending facilities developed during the crisis. this will assess operational integrity, internal controls, security and collateral

policies, policies governing third-party contractors and the existence of any conflict of interest or inappropriate favoritism and the establishment or operation of the facilities. as provided by the dodd-frank act on december 1st, 2010, the board published detailed information on its website about the federal reserve actions during a financial crisis. this release includes the names of far worse, the amount borrowed, the date credit was extended, the interest rate charged, information about collateral and a description of the credit terms under each facility. similar information was provided for the draw of the foreign central banks on the dollar liquid the swap plan the federal reserve. for the agency transactions, details included the name of the counterparty, the security purchase hold and the date amount and price of the transaction. on march 31st, 2011, the federal reserve released documents

related to the discount window in response to the requests filed under the freedom of information act. the march 31st release included documents containing information related to the borrowers of the discount window between august 8th, 2007 and march 1st, 2010. there wasn't required to be disclosed under the dodd-frank act. going forward, the dodd-frank act provides the release of information on any broadbased emergency lending facility one year after the termination of the facility as well as the gao audit of the facility. the act also provides for the release of information regarding discount window lending and open market operations conducted after july 21st, 2010 with a two-year lag. for lending facilities including but emergency landing facilities and the discount window and for open market operations, the federal reserve will publish information disclosing the identity of the borrower or counterparty, transaction amount

of interest rate or discount paid into the collateral pledged. federal reserve believes the lead provided by the act for the release of transaction level information as doubles tannin portion balance between the public interest in formation about the participants in transaction with federal reserve and the need to ensure the system can effectively use its congressional reoffered lost power to maintain the stability of the system and implement monetary policy. we will carefully monitor development in the use of the discount window and other federal reserve office devotees and keep the congress informed about their effectiveness. the federal reserve has worked and will continue to work with congress to ensure our operations promote the highest standards of accountability comes to rich and policy effectiveness consistent with meeting our statutory responsibilities. we appreciate the opportunity to describe the federal reserve efforts on the sub subject and are happy to answer any questions you may have and we will be responsive to any questions you may submit as

well. thank you mr. chairman. >> i thank the gentleman. and i will yield myself five minutes but announced we will likely be able to have a repeat questioning. i think the time will permit that but i will start off with five minutes. i first want to ask unanimous consent on an article for the record from bloomberg on $80 billion secret of loans without objection. i want to refer to one document, and this document from the material that we got from the federal reserve is called a chart pack of monitoring metrics for facilities, and i assure you know all 29,000 pages or you know exactly what i'm talking about, but it tells you about the problem we have in trying to find out information, and this

particular document has 327 pages to, but in this particular document, it has some interesting material that i did not know about and i want to ask about, and it reveals that there was a previously undisclosed federal fed lending program known as the single open market operations and its referred to as stomo. and this is something new and it allows us to give .01% free money to companies like goldman sachs and with essentially free loan to the well-connected businesses. but also the problem that we had in analyzing this to find out information that we are looking for as it turns out just in this particular area 81% of the content has been redacted so we

end up with a lot of pages, and then we end up with 19% actually has information that we have to sort out. the question is why were these details, you know, not mentioned? is it that everything has to be done in secret? you know, we would like to know, people would like to know but we didn't see any evidence until this was dug out of here, and maybe it was mistakenly not redacted or something like that. it makes us wonder why we don't know about this and that of course is one of my beefs with the federal reserve is that the central bank yields so much financial power you literally can have transactions greater than what we can do with our own budget, and that's why it's a deep concern to me and many other people as well.

but why was this not published, and are these and other programs that have yet to be disclosed are there others? why were so many pages redacted? can you claim this to be in compliance with the freedom of information act when we don't know what's been excluded? and i would like to get your reaction from this, and talk specifically about this one program and what's been going on with it. >> mr. chairman, the program you're referring to, it was not a secret program, it was actually publicly announced by the federal reserve on march 7th, 2008 when the program began. it was a short-term program that ended in january, 29 and transactions that were conducted under that program as a part of our open market operations were reported along with other open market operations on the new york federal reserve bank

website and very quickly after the transactions occurred. the documents you have before you are the response for the freedom of information act request, and so that may have itself should explain why there are reductions. the way the freedom of information act works is it is a request for certain types of information in documents, so reductions are made first the agency collects all documents that may have any information that relates to the request. and information that is not requested is taken out of the documents redacted from the documents simply because it's not responsive to the request. so it's not the desire to keep things secret it is a desire to be responsive to the request and when a requesters access for documents or information that is extraneous or not the kind of information that was requested, not relevant to the request that

is taken of the documentation and that's why you see so much reduction in the documents before you. these documents were reviewed by the court and released by the court in accordance with the freedom of information act. estimate does that mean that somebody would follow up and brought in a request that all that material to become available? would they have to just change the freedom of information act request? >> another request for me for a broad range of information we would review that information, determine what is confidential and what could be released and the decision would be made on that request it made so broad to turn over everything. >> i'm not sure there are enough people in the world to look at everything we have to turn over everything but we would do the best we could. >> my five minutes is up and i will deal to mr. clay. >> thank you mr. chairman and

mr. alvarez. just one question. has the dramatic and i believe welcome the increase in transparency, including your own initiatives and those called for in the wall street reform act of 2010 had any adverse or troubling consequences either for policy-making at the fed or for the financial institutions that you regulated and interact with? >> we think the increases in transparency particularly around of monetary policy that we have taken in the last few years has been very helpful and responsive and have improved understanding of the federal reserve and the actions come policy actions we are trying to take. we provided a lot of detailed information about the credit transactions we engaged in during the crisis. there has been -- conagra's we think struck a very important balance between the need for

access to the information and providing the delay so that participants in the transaction don't experience stigma that often occurs when there's an immediate release of information, allowing their for an explanation for why institutions have participated in the facilities. we are monitoring whether there will be any effect and of course we won't know until we see how they operate in the future. we will keep the congress informed on the effectiveness if there is any to that effect we will let you know. >> so, you will inform the congress as to if their needs to be changes. okay, thank you for the response and at this time i would like to yield the balance of my time to the gentlewoman from new york. >> i thank the gentleman for yielding and the chairman for holding this important hearing and i welcome both of our

witnesses and i think we all have to remember we were on the verge of collapse the we had the great recession instead of the great depression because of the monetary policy and many of the steps that we took. one of the steps we've taken to stabilize markets and move forward is the dodd-frank bill, and in that we required the gao to conduct an audit of the federal reserve, and we also required the fed to make information about the transactions of the emergency landing facilities from december, 2008 to march, 2010, available to the public. in addition, dodd-frank required the fed disclosed information about the entities to use the discount window or under i believe it was section 13 through coats relending

facilities. in addition to what we required in dodd-frank, the federal reserve is also already subject to robust congressional oversight. and i'd like to ask the two witnesses can you give the committee some examples of the type of congressional oversight that you are already required to do even before dodd-frank? >> to of the most important types of oversight are the chairman of the federal reserve of the fomc provides testimony on the economy twice each year on the call of the house and the senate, and that is an important check on our monetary policy and the state of the economy, and another of the important message is this hearing and hearings like this that we are going through this stuff and the governors and the chairman of the federal reserve, the reserve

bank have often been called to congress to report on every aspect of our duties and how we implement various policies and you use those as oversight to us and we explain the positions we've taken, so i think it's the interaction between the congress and the federal reserve and the testimonies in particular that have been an effective form of oversight. >> my time is about to expire but as you know, there's a gao audit authority now. was their anything that was excluded from the gao audit of 40? >> savitt is to audit a full range of the federal reserve responsibilities. that includes all of the emergency transactions, the discount window, our transaction, our supervisory authority, consumer authority, and various aspects of the

authority and an area congress reserved to the federal reserve is the implementation of monetary policy, the actual policy-making decision process. the gao does look at how we implement the policy in the form of making sure the transactions actually occur as appropriate and are accounted for on the balance sheet, that they are fully disclosed but the decision making process for the monetary policy is the one thing outside of the scope of authority. >> may i follow up with one brief question on the -- what are the arguments for the party excluding it? why was that excluded? what are the arguments for it? >> so, the import of the true importance of allowing the federal reserve and fomc to conduct monetary policy independently has been demonstrated throughout the world in both actions by other

central banks and in a variety of studies of monetary policy. the point i think is the congress wanted to preserve the ability to have discussions that are full and free and frank and to discuss the alternatives for monetary policy to reach the best monetary policy decision. as initio doesn't do audits in the sense of a technical audits like a financial auditor might do but does performance and policy reviews, so that would mean the gl with a review the alternatives considered, have the decisions made, when the decisions were actually appropriate that would cause second-guessing of the fomc cast into doubt whether the fomc was making the policy decision or whether the gao was making policy decisions on monetary policy and more difficult for the monetary policy to be done effectively by the federal

reserve. >> thank you. i now yield five minutes to the vice chairman from north carolina. >> mr. chairman, thank you very much, and i appreciate you holding these hearings and you know, i'm going to take a little different approach. i represent the third district of eastern north carolina. it's a great district to represent the camp lejeune base, and the frustration of the average business person down in my district is very deep and severe, and we have had numerous inquiries from the district citizens of the third district about the federal reserve and how decisions are made, and i know you cannot go into some of the backroom negotiations at the reserve. i'm not even asking that. but how do you say to the

small-business owner that in the crisis situation we seem to find ways to help foreign banks, foreign entities and i'm looking at a note my staff prepared for me that harley-davidson, mcdonald's, gee, toyota, and yet i've got people in my district saying that i go to the local banks and i can't get any loans and my credit has always been good. why and how does the federal reserve seem to be able to find a way to help these entities that are gigantic and through greed and manipulation they cheated yet they get bailed out, they get help when the average

business person down in eastern north carolina and probably across america they can't go to the bank and it alone yet here we are at the federal reserve looking at those foreign banks who might need some help for these corporations that might need some help. that's why this hearing is very important. the transparency, the trust, that is a big word to me, trust, isn't there with the average citizen when it comes to the federal reserve and yet if it hadn't been for the pushback i want and all the entities to show the bottom line and what was in the closet of the decisions who was being helped we would have known that and yet i know you gentlemen of attorneys and court probably not at the position to put the end of the bible to tell the truth

to the american people that is my concern is how do we build the american people when we see what is happening at the federal reserve. >> we understand that it and feel the same frustration. the programs designed and implemented by the federal reserve during the financial crisis were not designed to aid big companies for the sake of aiding big companies. the programs we designed for example the talf program that we designed was designed to pass money and credit liquidity on to the american people so for example the talf resulted in 3 million more auto loans during the crisis than would have occurred a million more small-business loans. the programs you're talking out were the kershaw peter facility

which provide short-term funding to the companies so they could continue to keep employment up and manufacturing up in the united states so they could continue to provide jobs and provide opportunities in the united states. our efforts were all designed to try to keep the economy is moving and not for the sake of holding the larger institutions. and i a understand that there's a different perception. part of that perception comes from the fact that most of the financial tools that were given are designed to work through banks or work through large market so we use the tools the best we can in order to have the funding aid in the broadest range of people possible. >> will i guess mr. chairman i know my time is about up, but i guess in a way that it had not

been for these bloomberg and wall street journal and all fees raising the questions during investigations i don't know if we would be having this hearing today. i don't know. >> alladi yield five minutes to mr. maloney from new york. >> i thank the chairman for yielding and thus he is aware of the jobs numbers come out and the economy has been improving not as fast as we would like but we are digging our way out of that whole, and now that we have the benefit of hindsight and we are slowly recovering from the financial crisis of 2008, i know that some have taken the position that i do not agree with but they've taken the position that the fed lending during this time actually helped contribute to the crisis, and some have argued the fed didn't need to take the action that it

took because the situation would have stabilized on its own. but i'd like to ask our panelists today is it true that without the actions that the fed took that by not setting up facilities it did, by not giving institutions access to the discount window to provide additional liquidity to the economy that the crisis would have been far worse secure comments mr. l fairness and mr. baxter. >> thank you. we do believe that the facilities, the staff to established did ease the crisis and were designed to do that. the studies coming forward now show they were successful and unfreezing various commercial

markets, the asset backed securities market providing liquidity to the financial system that was important for the financial system to continue to operate. the funding that we provide it was provided without any losses to the taxpayer. indeed the emergency landing facilities resulted in $9 billion worth of interest and fees that were passed on to the treasury. as i was explaining to congressman jones, the facilities were designed in may to provide real relief to american consumers and small businesses in the form of student loans, in the form of ogle loans, small business loans, credit card loans as well as allowing the operation of companies to rely on the commercial paper market which had frozen up to continue to find a source of funding to keep

operations going so we'd think that they will be more successful and a good use of the tax payer funds. >> i would say that there is an impression, and i hear it and other members of congress here it that's out there but all the actions the fed took during the crisis served only to help financial institutions. but i want to make it clear that the point that, and i want to make sure that people understand that all of these actions were in the form of loans and in fact over 125 billion has been returned through the treasury over and above what was loaned out, that is what i want to know if that is true. >> in the last two years we have provided about $127 billion of earnings to the treasury that's correct. >> can you bring this down to main street? can you give the committee members and the general public

so the examples of how that lending helped not only stabilize the economy and keep our financial and institutions in place but literally help me in st. and working men and women? >> i would like to return to the talf program which was specifically designed to make sure that loans were made in the united states to help students obtain educational loans for college to help small businesses have sba loans, credit card loans to provide all the lending, to provide equipment leasing and a variety of other kinds of loans that were not being made during the financial crisis because of the liquidity shortages. that program was extraordinarily successful. >> is it still operating? >> it is. it has closed but there are still about $14 billion of loans

outstanding for $70 billion of credit extended through the program through its life. much of it has been repaid. >> i'd like to ask about a number of programs that said in cages and including holding gold for foreign countries, account services, liquidity programs, in your experience are these common activities for central banks? >> yes, conagra's woman, they are common for the central banks, it's common for central banks around the world to hold reserves, and as you know, the dollar is the principal reserve currency, at the federal reserve of new york we hold over $3 trillion on behalf of the foreign central banks in countries. it is very important to hold those sizable reserves because the sizable reserves are principally in festive and treasury securities which helps to finance the debt of the

united states. so holding the dollar reserves is a very important function of the federal reserve and we do that at the new york fed and its similar to functions other foreign central banks perform around the world. >> my time is expired. thank you. >> i yield to mr. greene from texas. >> thank you mr. chairman and the witnesses for appearing as well. i am interested in the central banks of other countries as compared to our country and the disclosure the engaging compared to our country, and i know that the systems are not going to be the same boat with reference to a disclosure can you give some indication so we have some sort of comparison? >> so the practices of

disclosure very quite a bit around the world but i believe the federal reserve is one of fish not the most transparent central bank. many central bank in developed countries do not, flexible, announced their policy decision or votes that were taken, they do not announce or provide minutes for the meetings, the federal reserve does provide minutes. many banks to not publish at all the transcript of the meetings and federal reserve publishes the transcript of five years after each meeting. on the discount window that is a power the four central banks have but they are much less transparent in that area as well. indeed, you may you recall that - the start of the crisis it was a leak about a loan made by the bank of england to northern iraq

there resulted in a run on northern iraq. so, the foreign countries tend to be more circumspect about the information they disclose about the discount window lending operations. >> with respect to the incident that mr. oliver is described, the british parliament has written a report which is titled the run on the rock and it has a section that describes how that began, and there was triggered by public reports about a borrowing by in northern iraq at the bank of england, and with the permission of the chair we could submit that report for the benefit of the subcommittee. >> thank you. one question if i may, i know the u.s. probably gone through this, but explain to those who are viewing why it's important to have disclosure and why you

try to achieve this balance you have with reference to disclosure. for example, why not just have a cpa, or somebody and all that everything all the time every day? what is the downside to it? >> we have a cpa coming in if to do a an audit of our financial statements including all our transactions and open market transactions. the thought on disclosure is that disclosing the names of the borrowers and the amount they borrow provides the american people with more information to make sure the federal reserve is acting in a responsible way in its lending facilities. the balance on the other side is that the discount window is a very important tool for both in good times and in bad times. in good times for providing

short-term liquidity to institutions when they need it and also has a monetary policy tool to help reduce the volatility of interest rates and in the emergency times to provide liquidity when it's to institutions that are generally healthy but where panic has cost asset all used to be out of whack as it were so they can't fund, the institution can't find itself in an appropriately. so the discount window is a very important tool. the concern is that because it is often used by both healthy and troubled institutions, the public will be confused if it sees the names of the borrower the discount window and not be certain of that institution is healthy or not, and it's a healthy institution is wrongly thought to be trouble because its access to the discount window, then that could cause problems for the institution. that causes institutions to back away from using the discount

window into the mix is much less effective tool both in good times and bad times for addressing liquidity crisis so it's important to have a balance in the disclosure and that is why we think the lag time, the two-year period between the actual loan and the announcement of the bar where is important and leaves the institution some parts of the time to explain itself to demonstrate its health and not be tied to the troubled transaction said a difficult time. >> five think my time is up. thank you, mr. chairman. >> i would like to direct this question to mr. baxter and i want to follow on mr. jones' question about how some of this decisions are made and sometimes the big guys seem to benefit and the little people lose their mortgages and lose their homes and lose their jobs and quite frankly it's very difficult times in this country because it

seems like people are too little hard to save more to big to forget about them who, too big to let them had feel when, but i want to direct a question about the foreign loans and how it seems to me from the figures i look at nearly one-third of all the ones in this period time went to the foreign banks and at one time that he to of this, the personal of the discount window loans went to foreign banks and then, but at the new york fed,

the tremendous amount that went to these banks and this isn't easy for the average american citizen to understand. can you enlighten us on why it seems to be disproportionate? i'm sure they don't represent that portion of the financial problems that exist. one-third of the problems didn't deal with foreign banks but what is the explanation for that? >> yes, chairman paul, the starting point is federal statutory law and section 13, paragraph 14 of the federal reserve act says with respect to the discount window borrowing we are to treat the branch or the agency of the foreign bank just like we treat our own u.s. chartered depository institutions. so there's a principal of national treatment that we start with and it is a principle that is embedded in the federal

reserve act itself, and so we must treat the branch and agency of the foreign branch. second is the new york money center of the united states and with respect to foreign banks that in tend to come to our country and invest in people and form branches and agencies in the united states, many of those foreign banking organizations look to form those organizations in the center of new york. so the short answer to your question is the law requires us to leave went to branches and agencies and with new york in particular, that tends to be the place where foreign banking organizations enter the country. >> it still seems to be out of whack. but within the system and fight for ending sneaking most of the money just open up a subsidiary

in new york to get the line of credit and protection of the bank and a sort of is almost like free insurance for them. do you think this is a good idea that a foreign bank of the have to do is open up and get these bailouts? i mean it just doesn't seem fair at all. >> fees for loans, chairman paul, they were not gifts and any way and the foreign banks have to pay like everyone else, principal and interest. if a foreign bank, and some do decide they would prefer not to form a branch or agency but to start a subsidiary bank in the united states that is their option and some do just that. and of course of the subsidiary bank which would have a u.s. charter that has access to the discount window as well. >> i would add one thing. there's a limit on the amount it can borrow. limited by the amount of collateral that they have the

decompose the discount windows of this boehler collateral in the united states. that doesn't allow a foreign central bank i mean the foreign bank to borrow to the full extent of its assets worldwide. it borrows to support its dollar activities, and the dollar activities are largely though not exclusively but largely in the united states. >> the argument be made that the banks should have had a lot more subsidiaries and new york and maybe increase wouldn't be in so much trouble, the fed would have bailed them out, too. >> their assets are in greece and the our greek assets and they would go to the greek central bank to borrow not to the united states. >> do you care for another series? mr. chairman, for five minutes. >> mr. chairman, thank you again.

i looking through a lot of these reports i want to go to libya and you can understand the rationale by the treasury and the reserves i will just read one paragraph, the incorporation to land by the central bank of libya using the new york branch to get 73 loans from the u.s. federal reserve and the 18 months after the lehman brothers holdings collapsed. help me understand so i can explain to people back in my district that here we are an undeclared war. any time think what we haven't lost any military at this point but we certainly fired a bunch of missiles and we are spending millions of dollars probably billions by now and we are helping other countries, what is

the protection if libya is gaddhafi and gaddhafi is free period of time and we made these affiliate's to libya bank's relationships, what happens in a wartime situation where we are trying to shrived him out of business and we have made these loans to him or to libya, how do you explain that to that person that each and every one of a split sides of the political aisle talked about today that can't get the loans? how do you explain this to walter jones who happens to be a member of congress so he can explain it to his people back home? >> the arab banking corporation

is a bank that is located in bahrain. it's not located in libya. it was at that time that it borrowed from the federal reserve it was not -- they bought a substantial part of the bank after all the loans that were extended by the federal reserve were repaid. we work with the treasury department and the state department which the treasury and state department have responsibility to identify banks that the united states should not deal with because of the foreign policy reasons and the responsibility for designating the banks rests with treasury and state department. we consult with them to make sure that we don't lend to institutions the of determined we shouldn't be lending to. at the time there are the credit extended the banking corporation was not identified by treasury or state department as a bank that was of concern.

it was a foreign banks that had an operation in the united states the was well traded on the respect like another bank from a foreign country. >> mr. chairman, i tell you that knowing that you for many years picked up more and more support for your legislation to all of it the federal reserve it has nothing to do a few gentlemen here today but i am telling you that if the distrust of here by the american people is as deep and sevier as i have ever seen and it does, not only congress itself, not only the administration that the federal reserve is just at this point low as it relates to trust, and i am not talking devotee personally. you are of hi