William Bryan: “It very cleverly changes that. Remember the premise in the 1982 Nuclear Policy Act itself was the responsibility will be…”

“It very cleverly changes that. Remember the premise in the 1982 Nuclear Policy Act itself was the responsibility will be that of the utilities, in terms of the financial responsibility. Repeatedly-- over and over again. The responsibility goes far beyond the initial licensing period. We are talking about something that lasts for tens of thousands of years. But this is why this is the nuclear industry bailout or relief act. What they have done is limited the liability of the utility by saying, until 2002, the maximum amount that can be contributed into the nuclear waste fund, a fund that is generated by a 1 mill levy on each kilowatt hour of energy generated, will be 1 mill. The people who have looked at that, the General Accounting Office and others, have concluded that the fund currently is underfunded between $4 and $8 billion. It gets better. After the year 2002, the utilities' liability is further limited to the amount of the annual appropriation. So there is nothing that is being done with respect to the long-term implications of this piece of legislation, in terms of the storage of nuclear wastes. Let me be clear that by the year 2033, for the utilities, nuclear utilities that are currently licensed, those licensing periods expire. What this means is that the American taxpayer, people who have never received 1 kilowatt of nuclear-generated power, will pick up the balance. Let me be clear on that.…”