John Spratt: “Mr. Speaker, South Carolina is an unenviable host to one of the largest concentrations of military-generated radioactive…”

“Mr. Speaker, South Carolina is an unenviable host to one of the largest concentrations of military-generated radioactive waste in our country, if not in the world. There are over 37 million gallons of highly-radioactive waste stored in 49 single-lined tanks at the Savannah River site. This waste contains over 400 million curies of radioactivity and represents potentially the single most hazardous threat to the environment and to the people of South Carolina and Georgia, and for that matter, the whole region because it sits atop the Tuscaloosa aquifer. There are millions more gallons of this kind of waste stored at DOE sites from upper New York State to Washington State. Over the years, the Department of Energy has worked with these States, my own State of South Carolina, to develop plans to manage the waste by separating out the highly-radioactive contents, transform it into a glass waste solid, suitable for shipment to a national repository for ultimate disposal, and until then, store it on-site in a special interim storage facility.”