Today, Rep. Scott Peters (CA-52) called for federal action on interim and long-term nuclear waste storage during a meeting of the Energy and Commerce Environment and Climate Change Subcommittee. The meeting covered three bills, the Nuclear Waste Policy Amendments Act of 2019, the Spent Prioritization Act of 2019, and the STORE Nuclear Fuel Act of 2019, which outline solutions that move spent fuel out of decommissioned plants and into interim and long-term storage.

“There’s not a lot of enthusiasm among the states to accept any defined or undefined amount of nuclear waste. There just isn’t,” said Rep. Peters. “To me…the magic of federalism is the supremacy clause and the ability of the federal government to…[say] in this geology, per this engineering, [and] through this licensing process that this risk is lower.”

He continued, “It’s up to this committee to say, ‘from a tactical perspective [and] from a safety perspective, it’s not going to be in these dangerous places; It’s going to be in this safer place.’ That’s why I support all three of these bills, and I think we ought to move forward.”

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Watch Rep. Peters' remarks HERE.

The decommissioned San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) in San Diego sits 100 feet from the Pacific Ocean, near 8 million people who call the region home. Rep. Peters has advocated for an all-of-the-above approach to nuclear storage, where both interim and long-term storage is necessary. He voted to permit the Department of Energy to begin disposal of millions of pounds of nuclear waste from SONGS last May. He also offered an amendment in the Energy and Commerce Committee to allow the development of both interim and permanent storage to move forward simultaneously.