Shelley Berkley: “in 1983, President Reagan signed into law the Nuclear Waste Policy Act. The new law began with a reasonable scientific…”

“in 1983, President Reagan signed into law the Nuclear Waste Policy Act. The new law began with a reasonable scientific approach. The country would search all over the Nation looking for geological formations which were capable of burying high-level nuclear waste. The new law would also consider three sites so as to provide some regional equity to the burden of storing the waste. One site would be in the northeastern part of the country, one site would be in the southeastern United States, and one site would be in the West. These three sites would be studied and then presented to the President of the United States for a decision. Since then, politics has had more to say to the siting of high-level nuclear waste than the science. After Members of Congress from the Northeast began to openly oppose placing the dump in the Northeast, the Department of Energy unilaterally decided to take them off the list. When placing the dump in the southeastern part of the country came up as a campaign issue in 1984, President Reagan unilaterally decided to take the southeastern part of the country off the list. These decisions were not based on science, Mr. Speaker. They were based on politics. Then in 1987, the so-called ``screw Nevada'' bill was passed into law. This bill made the most political of decisions, to designate one site, Yucca Mountain, as the only site, excluding any other consideration from any other region in the country.”