potential host entities have confidence in the credibility of the process and the trustworthiness of the implement ter of the program. i thank you very much and look forward to the questions from the committee. >> thank you for your testimony. >> chairman kaerper and ranking member and distinguished members of the committee. thank you for inviting me to testify. i have the pleasure of serving as the director of nuclear energy. >> oreal. >> i'm glad we got that straightened out. now i can move on to the bigger problems. >> still have the pleasure of serve as the director of nuclear programs. throughout my career on working on the waste isolation pilot plant and the yucca mountain project. i have experienced firsthand the meaning of consent based

approaches to repository projects and the caldron of public controversy. it is from this perspective that i offer my comments today recognizing any such comments are my own and don't represent the positions or opinions of the department of energy. we are fortunate that the united states contains maniee logic forlations that are technically suitable for nuclear waste. and ef more locations technically suitable for interim storage. but challenges remain despite facilities that are essentially and politically acceptable to local communities, host states and the federal government. one exception has been the waste isolation pilot plant. while noting the success of the whip, the blue room commission correctly notes that quote, no one could have designed the process that was ultimately followed ahead of time nor could that process ever be replicated

unquote. while the whip process can't be replicated exactly it does offer important lessons especially in regards for the needs for unquestioned credibility and intity in the individuals representing the federal interest. the placement of trust and credibility will be a prereck cyst for success. which leads me to what i believe are other prereckists if addressed will enable and encourage more potential host communities and states to consider the sitting of new nuclear waste facilities. if left unresolved can be expected to stifle or confound any consent based sitting process. the first issue to clarify is the uncertainty of exactly who will be the federal representative of a consent based negotiation. the department of energy or as the commission recommends a new government chartered corporation. complicating this uncertainty is the unresolved issue regarding whether or not to continue to co-mingle the management responsibility of defense and

commercial waste. the second issue needing clarification is to finalize what new standards and regulations will be that governor the determination of safety. the commission correctly calls for the.com of the new generic disposal standard in supporting regulatory requirements that coat should be finalized prior to the site selection process, unquote. we need to recognize that these are often long lead time items. the third issue centers on when there will be a confidence that the geologic repository for permanent disposal of spent fuel will be realized. the commission directly notes quote, the challenge of sitting one or more consolidated storage facilities cannot be separated from the status of the disposal program. the lack of a discernible repository development program can be expected to thwart the willingness of some communities or states to the hosting of

needed waste management facilities and perpetuate the moratoria on new nuclear power plant construction. simply consent based siting efforts will be stifled so long as potential host communities and states have uncertainty over who, what, and when. who will be the organization representing the federal interests when negotiating for consent? what are the final regulations that will govern a determination of safety? and when will there be a confidence over whether a geologic repository for permanent disposal will actually be available? in a broad sense, the intent of the brc recommendations are to open new opportunities for the federal government to meet its nuclear waste management obligations and to promote a larger number of opportunities for states and communities to willingly host needed storage and disposal facilities. the technical solutions for developing one or more storage and disposal facilities do exist or are readily developed. given the technical solutions to storage and disposal are readily available, the timeframes of decades often suggested for

siting new facilities are thus rooted in the prerequisites to initiating a consent-based program. prompt action on resolving the items noted will help minimize further delay and better enable this generation to meet its obligations for responsible nuclear waste management. i thank you for the opportunity to testify and look forward to answering your questions. >> thanks very much. just, i'd like each member of the panel to briefly react to what you just heard from mr. orrell. we'll start with you, mr. fettus. briefly react, 15 seconds. >> i think it would be extraordinarily premature for congress to not take its time to do what i outlined and dr. peterson and general scowcroft outlined which was to methodically work through the process of creating new legislation. that's criteria. >> thanks so much. >> from what i heard, i tend to agree. i believe with a lot of what he's laid out. that, i mean, i think it's

sensible. >> i would agree that what he's laid out makes good deal of sense. >> okay. >> mr. metlay? dr. metlay? >> i would certainly agree, and my board has certainly taken the position there are no technical impediments to developing a repository. >> another question for you, mr. metlay. you mentioned an amendment to the nuclear waste policy act. could you take a minute, i don't think you mentioned this in your testimony, but take a minute if you will and talk more about the negotiators' intended role and is this something we should or could pursue this time around? if you could. and be fairly brief in your response. be brief in your response. >> certainly. the negotiators as you said was established as part of the 1987

amendments act. it was given a broad charter to negotiate with any state or native-american tribe, an agreement to host either a repository or an interim storage facility. after many years of efforts, that task proved unsuccessful, and i believe it was in 1993 that the congress decided to get rid of the office of negotiator. certainly the idea was a useful one, and other countries have tried it. >> with success or not? >> not so much. >> okay. all right. fair enough. thank you. for mr. orrell and commissioner wright, the blue ribbon commission recommends consolidated storage facilities in parallel to a disposal program.

some in congress believe we can pursue interim storage first without also pursuing a parallel disposal program. based on your experience and knowledge, how easy or difficult would it be to get consent at all levels of government if interim storage is pursued without pursuing a disposal program? that would be for you, mr. orrell and mr. wright. >> well, my -- >> i ask you to be brief. >> without a robust discernible repository development program, the enthusiasm for moving early on consolidated storage will probably be short lived. >> all right. thanks. mr. wright? >> what he said. >> you guys are getting good at this, you know? might invite you to come back

and be our third panel today. this is one for the entire panel. and if all of you were in our shoes, what would be your first action to get this country started and on a consent-based approach toward finding a final resting place for our spent fuel? and what should congress' first step be, and is there any action that we shouldn't take that we should rule out at this stage? that would be my question. do you want to go first, mr. fettus? >> you should start by doing what you're doing precisely today with these kinds of hearings. you should start with additional hearings on the issues that are going to be very complicated. like fees. the issue of site selection process. the issue of standards. finally, i think the one mistake you could make is to commence site selection process right now, where you start down the road of an interim storage site that jumps ahead of the line in all of this. >> good. mr. wright, a somewhat longer response than you gave to our last question, but not a lot

longer. >> there are actually two things that jump out right away. first is to pursue the fed court because you've got to do something with the fee. to make things happen. and transportation, move in the decommission sites right away can happen and needs to happen so that these sites can be put back to productive use. >> all right. thanks. >> we agree, the yankee companies agree that the dual track makes sense, however, the repository could be quite a number of years away. and so we're very appreciative of the language in the senate appropriations bill that calls for a pilot project for decommissioned plant fuel. and we think that there's a good deal of lead time both for transportation and other planning that needs to go into that along with developing a consent-based approach for identifying a volunteer host community. and so we think there are near-term actions that the department of energy with congress' support could certainly get started on while we work out some of the knottier issues.

>> mr. metlay, just very briefly, please? >> based on the international experience, it's clear those countries who have had a successful siting program have figured out the program of distributing power between the central government and the periphery. countries like germany, japan, and switzerland, where you have a federal system, have had a much more difficult time. >> all right. thank you. mr. orrell? >> two issues. one, make the fundamental decision about whether to use fed corp as the blue ribbon commission understands. it's an issue that translates to all of the other recommendations in some form. two, i would encourage the promulgation of the new disposal standards and regulations as these tend to take very long periods of time. >> all right. thank you, all, very, very much. senator barrasso? all right.

he's going to yield to you. take it away. >> he already did that once. i'm getting in his debt. this has been very helpful and very interesting. mr. howes, let me ask you about yankee companies. you've got three sites, right? how many reactors? [ inaudible ] >> the sites are fully decommissioned. >> so all you've got stranded fuel. >> we have stranded nuclear fuel at three of our sites. the reactor, you know, all of the buildings have been removed. they're fully decommissioned. >> and so you've got the fuel that we're supposed to be taking care of? >> our fuel is licensed by the nrc for both storage and transport and it's ready to go when the federal government comes to pick it up. >> well, the suggestion, and you mentioned the language in the appropriations bill, which comes from an impulse to -- these things take a while.

i mean, the stalemate's been 25 years. it takes congress a little while to pass any kind of legislation. so our thought with the appropriations bill was can we take a step or two while we work out the comprehensive piece or legislation? which would then take over the whole process. do you think that's reasonable? >> yes, we do. we think that there are near-term actions that could be taken. i think, as was mentioned earlier, before you could actually move to consolidated interim storage, you'd have to amend the nuclear waste policy act to do that. there are any number of things you can do leading up to that including beginning the transportation planning, identifying the routes for moving this material. i mean, if you're not sure where it's going, you pretty much know the sites -- the routes going out of the sites. yes, we think it's imminently feasible to get started on this.

>> in the proposal, in the appropriations bill, of course, any site that's chosen even as a pilot site would have to be approved by the congress. in other words, a law would have to be passed. so -- so i would guess that the law that would be passed would be the comprehensive next step forward. from your company's point of view, how would such moving ahead with such a consolidation site affect the yankee companies? >> well, as i indicated, there are any number of steps that need to take place. for example, a transportation task doesn't yet exist, for example. the department of energy would need to provide a transportation cask to move our material. all of this -- there are years of lead time to do this. and so our -- i mean, our sense is that there are things that can be done within existing authority of the department of

energy to get started on this track with the hope that congress, in fact, will make the needed changes to the nuclear waste policy act to allow this to move forward. >> mr. wright, do you -- do you agree or disagree that if we, in the congress, try to move as aggressively as we can to pass a comprehensive piece of legislation that it's prudent to go ahead with the language in the appropriations bill that allows the department of energy to begin the process of identifying a consolidation site? >> yes, i believe -- we're in favor of -- >> i know. i just wanted to get you to say that. >> absolutely. yeah. absolutely. >> what are the advantages of it if you're in favor of it? >> well, i think it does a number of things. one, it proves you can move it. and number two, you know, the government's on the hook for a

lot of money liability wise, and this may start to reduce their exposure to some of that. >> mr. fettus, you're not in favor of that? >> no. >> and your reason? >> the reason, quite simply, senator alexander, is that we think that not treating the storage process -- and by the way, as was cited here today by mr. howes, we don't have objection to the stranded fuel potentially going to an operating reactor site as a consolidated storage. we think that makes imminent sense. we've said that repeatedly for years. that said, within the structure of where we are now and after the 20-some years of gridlock, if you don't set the chess board properly for the next set of steps going forward, we think you could prematurely choose sites that either may not be suitable, will not fall into the consent-based process that congress is going to have to very arduously try and build. >> thank you.

sometimes we do things better step by step than we do comprehensively. henry clay nearly killed himself trying to pass his compromise and went to nantucket to recover and senator douglas from illinois picked up the compromise and offered each piece of it separately and they all passed with senator houston being the only senator to vote for each piece. so we don't want to go so fast in identifying a consolidation site that we don't do an appropriate job on the second repository, but we've been stuck so long on the yucca stalemate that my hope, mr. chairman, is we can find prudent ways to move ahead on the consolidation site while at the same time being very careful as we work through the authorization legislation to go aggressively for a repository

and let the processes learn from one another and eventually be the same process. and that will not be derailed by the yucca debate. it's a -- you know, we have conclusively demonstrated that we have a big difference of opinion over yucca mountain. and i don't think we need 25 more years to do that. so we also, i think, have everybody here, and if anyone disagrees with that, i hope you say so, that even if we opened yucca mountain, we'll soon need, or maybe immediately need, a second repository for the material we already have. and so we need consolidation sites and we need a second repository or more and so we're looking for a prudent way to get on with it. so that -- this hearing is a good help to that and the testimony today has been very useful. >> i agree. i agree.

senator udall? >> thank you, senator carper. this question is to mr. orrell and mr. fettus. i'm trying to drill down a little bit because the brc on this issue of parallel versus what we have in the law now, as you know d.o.e. can't enter an interim site unless a permanent site is already open. so the brc talks about parallel. how far along, in your opinion, do we need to be toward a permanent site before you start opening an interim site or a consolidated site? >> i'm very happy to begin. a lot farther along than we are now. i'll start with that. i think, and as i outlined extensively in my written testimony, there's a long and, i think it's safe to say,

torturous history of the repository program as well as sputtering attempts at an interim storage program. and as dr. metlay, i think, effectively outlined today, it's the countries that are having any progress are countries that have resolved the allocations of power. and if we don't do that, and i have a set of suggestions in my testimony as to how we begin to do that in a more thoughtful way that avoids the mistakes of the pass, i think we could do it. but congress has a significant amount of work to do before we do anything remotely related to site selections or moving forward on that front. and that includes storage or that includes final -- >> mr. orrell? >> as noted earlier, this hinges on the definition of consent and how you would secure that.

if a host community needs consent on allowing interim storage or consolidated storage facility and it would like to have a knowledge that there is a repository program behind it, it would probably define what the level of progress would be. but one other measure might be simply an uncontested waste confidence decision. we have a recent waste confidence decision from the nrc that unfortunately has been legally contested and that brings at least to suspect whether or not we have a sufficient progress on a repository program. >> thank you. mr. fettus, you recommend removing the exemptions of radioactive pollutants from state environmental authority. why would giving states more authority over a nuclear waste site making consent-based siting more likely? and what does the wipp experience tell us about state

authority? >> first, in answering this question, i want to respond briefly to senator carper's admonition that these things are seen as dumps. they are. this is some of the most toxic and dangerous waste that will be radioactive for a million years. this is a difficult thing to manage. it's why the scientific consensus for over half a century has been deep geological disposal. this is a difficult matter with extraordinarily dangerous waste. that said, i am informed by my work for senator udall when he was attorney general of new mexico. the only meaningful time that states felt in any measure comfortable in terms of accepting this kind of facility within their borders, no matter the incentives. i mean, if it were simply a matter of financial or monetary incentives or structural, then

yucca mountain would have been built a long time ago or built and actually operating a long time ago. what it is is when states essentially have a measure of skin in the game. and a governor and attorney general, his congressional delegation, can say, we can make a deal here because we have control with, of course, the federal floor that i'm quite sure epa, whatever new entity can harmonize their standards. when states have a measure of control to say we can regulate this according to the most strict and protective standards that we see fit, and when that's the case, there's a potential for this kind of very complicated, difficult decision to go forward. without that, it's not going to happen in our federal system, and i think -- i think the

evidence bears me out on that. >> thank you. >> to my panel, i ask senator barrasso if he feels prepared to bring us home and be our last questioner. he's up to it. take me home. do you want some music? >> thank you, mr. chairman. >> the guy from nashville, from tennessee. >> thanks, mr. chairman. mr. howes, i'm concerned about how long it's taken to address the long-term storage of nuclear waste. its process began three decades ago. we're no closer to a solution. with regard to interim storage, you talk about wanting to see that timely implementation of the blue ribbon commission's recommendation -- i keep saying blue river which is where people go skiing in the -- it's a great place to do a number of different things. blue ribbon's recommendations. what would be timely? you talk about timely to see these recommendations implemented. >> we recognize nothing proceeds

quickly when we're talking about nuclear waste. i think the brc, the blue ribbon commission, recognize there are long lead times for developing any of the consolidated storage options including looking at transportation and other issues. the blue ribbon commission, i believe, said that this might be able to be done in a decade or so. i think that that would be a wonderful thing. i think it may be optimistic. we're prepared to, you know, work with other stakeholders to get this done as rapidly as possible. we're not naive enough to think it's going to happen overnight. >> and mr. wright, you said in your testimony you have long favored consolidated interim storage but find the report vague as to the quantity, the duration and the cost. so, i mean, these are very big issues to solve, so could you elaborate a little more on that

point, what details we have on this committee and the public at large need to see here. what do we need to see from this commission and the administration before signing off on a plan? >> well, i do believe that you do see things better now than maybe what has been in, i guess, mentioned in years past. you really are starting to focus on it and i've been very gratified with what i've heard here today. you know, it's still -- and i agree with mr. howes -- it's going to take lead time. ten years is what's been thrown out on some of that stuff. you have reports to go through. there are hoops that have to be jumped through. the bottom line i think for the confidence of states and utilities we serve and regulate is the money. making sure that the money is used for what it's supposed to be used for. and that trust that needs to be built with any partnership with the federal government and states and communities that you're going to be dealing with.

i think that's huge. >> thank you, mr. chairman. >> i'm going to ask one more, just one more question. if my colleagues want to ask another question, they're welcome to. sometimes when we have a panel -- this has been a real good hearing. i appreciate all you all being here and appreciate our colleagues being here. here's my question. one of the things my colleagues may recall, i like to look for consensus. and from a panel. and you all agree on some things and disagree on some things. maybe just start with you, mr. orrell, one major point you think there's consensus from this entire panel. what might that be? >> well, i would say that the general feeling of the time has come to take action. >> okay. dr. metlay? >> my board has written in one of its publications, it would be a shame if we temporize. 101 i.

are there any additional -- >> mr. chairman? >> i say to my colleague i need to recognize gentleman