Sam Gibbons: “Let me say that with regard to those people who believe that the ratepayers have paid into the fund enough money, let me…”

“Let me say that with regard to those people who believe that the ratepayers have paid into the fund enough money, let me say that this stuff is going to be around for thousands and thousands of years. I hope they are ready to keep paying, and paying, and paying, because they are going to have to pick up the responsibility if the taxpayers do not for the continued storage of this material at Yucca Mountain. First of all, I am a geologist and I truly understand some of the problems we have got with suitability. If we keep lowering the standards, sure, we can make it suitable for storage. The problem is that we are taking away the safety standards of this site. Earthquakes, 33 known earthquake faults lie directly through this site in the Yucca Mountain area, and over the last several years, there have been over 600 earthquakes in the surrounding 5 1/2 miles that have impacted this. Earthquakes that raise the water table, that would surround and, in fact, could flood the repository, putting the canisters in harm of polluting the water table. This groundwater contamination has been proven already.”