Senate Standing Committee on Energy, Utilities and Communications

The Senate Committee on Energy, Utilities and Communication will come to order. I want to say good morning and we're holding our meeting in room 1200 on the Old Street building and we're asking all Members of the Committee to be present in room 1200 so we can establish a quorum.

We only have one measure on today's agenda and that is our AJR 18 by Assemblymember Davies. And we will start as a Subcommittee, if that's all right with our Members here and Assemblymember Davies, when you're ready, you may begin.

Good morning. I first want to say thank you so much for taking the time out to hear our Bill. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Today I'm here to present AJR 18 Members.

Back in 1998, the Federal Government was legally obligated to work with states who had nuclear facilities in their state to find safe and secure places to store access nuclear fuel. California, as you know, has and had facilities in Sacramento, San Luis Obispo, San Diego, and Humboldt counties. After more than 25 years, we are still waiting.

Nothing has been done and our communities are suffering for it. As noted by the supporters of AJR 18, since 2000, us taxpayers have paid $10.6 billion in damages to cover costs associated with on-site nuclear storage that hasn't been moved yet. AJR 18 is quite simple.

It simply implores the Federal Government to enact policies outlined in the latest Blue Ribbon Commission on America's nuclear future and finally get this fuel out of the state and to consent-based sites approved by the Federal Department of Energy. Senators, the resolution is not here to debate the merits of nuclear energy.

It is a simple tool to show the Federal Government that the world's fifth largest economy is ready for them to start acting and do the job they have been neglecting for over two decades.

This resolution passed the Assembly with no no votes and is supported by multiple chambers of commerce, our State Park Foundation, US San Diego, a local Native American tribe, and many other organizations. With me here to testify in support and answer any questions is Manuel Camargo. I respectfully ask for an aye vote on AJR 18.

You have two minutes.

Good morning Mr. Chair and Senators. My name is Manuel Camargo and I am here on behalf of Southern California Edison and the Spent Fuel Solutions Coalition advocating for the passage of AGR 18. Today, spent nuclear fuel is stranded at more than 70 sites in 34 states, including here in California.

Californians alone have prepaid approximately $2 billion for the disposal of spent fuel. Due to this, we need solutions now and we must avoid passing this problem on to the next generation of Californians.

We must amend the Nuclear Waste Policy Act to provide for a durable spent fuel management program that provides for both near-term storage and the long-term disposal of spent nuclear fuel. AJR 18 will help send a strong message to Congress and call attention to this important issue.

With your support, we will compel the Federal Government to deliver solutions. For those reasons, I urge you to please vote aye on this resolution.

Thank you. Thank you. Any additional witnesses and support? State your name and your organization. Seeing none. Witnesses in opposition. If you're the primary witness in opposition, you have two minutes.

Hi, my name is Bill Alio. We're the Environmental Working Group and representing a number of co-signees to our letter. We opposed unless amended in the Assembly, but the author did not accept our suggested amendments. So now we're just straight opposed. The reasons are simple and are stated in the analysis.

One is, by doing consolidated and storage, you have to move it twice. Once to the interim place and then twice again when it goes to the permanent location where that is. Secondly, the CIS sites are usually trying to be located in EJ or disadvantaged communities.

Third is interim storage reduces the pressure to establish a permanent solution which has been. You know, we've been trying to seek, the nation's been trying to seek for ever since the Yucca Mountain site was discarded. Fourth, it could become a permanent location. So wherever you put it, be careful.

Fifth is it could be established right here in California and then made permanent so it could come back to bite California, where if we're saying, yeah, get this stuff, get it out of San Onofre or wherever it could end up in California.

There's nothing in this resolution or the Federal Government saying it can be banned from certain places. They're just looking to do it. Why not California in the long run? So for those reasons, we oppose the resolution. Thank you.

Thank you. There's no witnesses in opposition or in support here in room 1200. Hearing seen none. Bring it back to the Committee. Any questions by the Committee Members? Senator Newman.

Were you first? Were you before? Thank you, Mr. Chair. So I want to, first of all, thank you for the measure. I request to be added as a co-author if it gets amended along the way. I see that Senator Blakespear has already come. I visited the Songs facility.

I've had extensive conversations with the folks involved there. And I've actually talked to Congressman Mike Leavitt, who's actually working diligently at the federal level trying to solve this problem. Hopefully, we give him some help to do that. But I want your take on one of the objections.

This assertion that an interim storage site is likely to be located in a community of color. I mean, certainly that's not our practice currently, nor our intent on this. Would you mind speaking to that?

Yes. Thank you, Senator. The current best practice and the program underway by the US Department of Energy at present is a consent-based process.

And very simply stated, that means that you're not going to cite either an interim storage facility or a permanent disposal facility for spent nuclear fuel unless the host community is well-informed and would like to have it there. That is to say that that community sees it will be better off for hosting the facility.

I appreciate that. I just want to get that explicitly on the record here today. So with that, glad to support the Bill. Thank you.

Senator Wilk.

Yeah, we don't have GEO till 9:30, so I'm going to kill a couple minutes. Whether you support nuclear energy or not, this makes sense. And I happen to support nuclear energy. And I toured Japan a number of years ago and after the 2011 tsunami, they shut down all 57 of their nuclear power plants.

And then they realized we're not going to be able to go net zero without nuclear power. So when I was there, they had 10 backups online, others in the permitting process. We're going to have the same challenge here. And to have this delayed for over two decades is ridiculous. So hopefully it doesn't get amended.

But if it does get amended, I'd love to be added as a co-author as well. And I really appreciate you bringing this forward.

My pleasure.

Thank you. Senator Min.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Appreciate this resolution. It's an important one. As we know in Orange County, most of our districts, maybe all of our districts, are threatened by this ticking time bomb with the spent fuel at Songs. And so this is a problem. We've known about this problem. We need to address it.

We need both the state and the Federal Government to work together to address this in a timely way. We're talking about many hundreds of billions of dollars in potential property value that potentially could be destroyed. So I will be supporting the Bill. I want to thank you for bringing it forward.

And if there is an opportunity to be added on as a co-author, I too would like to thank you.

Senator Dodd.

Yes, thank you. Other countries have found the answer to this issue and I'm confident that we can as well. I was most recently in Canada, the province of Quebec, and they are bound and determined to continue on their nuclear power additions.

Obviously they do a lot of hydro, but they believe that their future for additional power is with nuclear. In addition to that, I was in France last November, and we toured a nuclear plant.

And clearly the nuclear scientists and the people that we saw, even in the environmental community, they've got some synergy around this, and they just simply say, we cannot hit our carbon-free goals without nuclear. And I just think this is an example.

We don't always have to recreate the wheel on how we do everything in the State of California. This is something that we should have been doing a long time ago, and it's high time that we move forward. Thank you.

Thank you. Any additional questions or concerns? We have a motion by Senator Grove. Oh, yeah, yeah. We got to establish a quorum. Can we first establish quorum?

[Roll Call]

We have a quorum, and I would just want to echo some of the comments that my colleague from Napa has stated. I, too, have visited nuclear plants around the world, and to describe what we have now as a ticking time bomb, I think, is a little hyperbole. Where it is right now, it's very safe.

The question is, again, where do we move it to? And most countries. I was in Denmark, and the local town was literally fighting, bidding to store the nuclear waste. And I said, well, is it a tax break? I said, is it some type of incentive for the community? Is it guaranteed jobs? They said, no.

We feel it's our responsibility. If this is our power source, we're obligated to store this nuclear waste. So I commend them. And we should take that approach of seeing not in our backyard, but how do we store this safely, regardless of it?

And we should be happy to report we haven't had a nuclear accident or any kind of exposure since Three Mile Island in 1979. So that tells you we are doing it right. We're doing it safe. But, yes, finding a permanent home for this nuclear waste is important. So I commend you for this legislation.

I just had a question as it relates to it. Your resolution mentions AJR 29 but not similarly adopted. SJR 23. Why is that? That was Chavez. AJR 29 was Chavez in 2016.

Yeah. I have no opposition to that Bill or that resolution, and honestly, no reason for the exclusion.

Okay, I just curious. All right, so we have a motion by Senator Grove, we have a do pass, and we recommend aye vote so Secretary, please call the roll.

To be adopted to the Senate Floor. [Roll Call]

The measure has 10 votes. We'll leave the roll open for probably the next 10 minutes for absent Members to add on. So thank you.

Thank you very much. And we'll definitely put you on as co-authors as asked and can let our office know if anyone else would like to jump on. Got that? Thank you very much. Appreciate you taking the time today.

Thank you.

If your vote... you're free to go.

We're still in the Energy Committee, so I'm going to ask that we open the roll for absent Members at this time to add on.

Okay. AJR 18, Davies, to be adopted in order to the Senate Floor. Current vote, 10-0. [Roll Call] 11 to 0.

That measure has... AJR 18 has 11 votes. That will conclude our hearing. I just want to thank everybody for participating in today's hearing, and the Senate Committee on Energy, Utilities, and Communications is now adjourned.