March 5, 2018

Today Rep. Dina Titus of Nevada’s First Congressional District released the following statement and video clip after speaking on the floor to reject recent efforts to restart the unworkable Yucca Mountain repository.

Rep. John Shimkus -- an Illinois lawmaker and No. 1 Yucca Mountain advocate in Congress -- led a Special Order Hour Monday night to beat the Yucca Mountain drum, appeasing his friends in the nuclear energy industry and distracting the public from the major funding, siting, and environmental concerns in his legislation, H.R. 3053, to revive the project.  

Rep. Titus pre-empted the Yucca Mountain confab with a floor speech to remind lawmakers of the dangers posed by the Shimkus bill, the Nuclear Waste Policy Amendments Act of 2017.  

HERE IS A LINK TO THE VIDEO. TEXT OF THE CONGRESSWOMAN’S SPEECH IS BELOW.

“Mr. Speaker, I am here to once again remind my colleagues why the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository is an unworkable project.

“There are design flaws that NRC’s own analysis shows will lead to radioactive waste leaking into the water table and transportation plans would ship more than 70,000 metric tons of nuclear waste by train and truck through 329 Congressional Districts for years to come.

“Now, some of my colleagues are pushing legislation that makes this bad project even worse by breaking the caps on the amount of allowable waste to be stored, increasing the danger and invalidating any existing studies.

“If the proponents of Yucca Mountain and their industry donors are serious about solving the problem of nuclear waste storage, they would follow the Blue Ribbon Commission recommendations and pass my consent-based bill rather than dumping nuclear waste into a state that does not produce it and does not want it. Nevada is not a wasteland.”