Natural Resources committee  Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman. Obviously the presentation on nuclear power would be impacted by the events that have taken place in Japan, so I felt it might be helpful to give the committee an overview of what's here. I've provided a slide deck to try to allow the committee to u

Natural Resources committee  Obviously we have a situation under normal events, and a situation under failure events, if you can call it that. We're required to assess all of that. Under normal activity, of course, we're working with the local municipalities on the road transport piece. The transport vehicl

Natural Resources committee  Obviously we have to think of the bounding case here. If it's an accident on the road that is in the vicinity of our site, we would obviously respond to that, along with emergency services. There is an emergency plan in place already. There are lots of things that travel, so th

Natural Resources committee  Obviously there's a lot of conversation about whether this is a first-of-a-kind thing. To a certain degree, in an attempt to try to simplify a complicated subject and reassure people, we give them examples of things that move around all the time. For example, consider the movemen

Natural Resources committee  First, as I say, it's very difficult to start talking about radioactive half-lives of components. You can easily mention the word “plutonium” and people immediately take that to a different point. You have to ask how much and in what form. I think Dr. Thompson answered the quest

Natural Resources committee  No. We've confirmed that the outer shell is clean. This process will remove anything that may be on the outer shell with the intention of deeming that to be scrap metal. That scrap metal for free release, not containing radioactivity, still has to be then melted down with other

Natural Resources committee  Of course they did appear before the commission, as Studsvik were themselves challenged.

Natural Resources committee  I'm not going to try to speak for the doctor—

Natural Resources committee  —one, because he has spoken; two, because he's my regulator—

Natural Resources committee  —but I'll speak for myself when I say that my characterization of things is a simple one. And you'll hear some of this. This committee will hear from mayors in our community. One, they better understand what we do, and two, they know us as parts of their community. That obviously

Natural Resources committee  And I would hope that those elected officials, faced with that dilemma of one set of information versus another, will have confidence in their regulatory process.

Natural Resources committee  First, I can tell you that there never was an intention to bury anything on site. They were not being buried on site. Those are special purpose buildings. I can tell you that actually as things stand today, it's more expensive to send them to Sweden.

Natural Resources committee  It is more expensive to send—

Natural Resources committee  Yes. We were asked that in the hearings, and you will see that information, and the hearings—

Natural Resources committee  It was felt to be important to allay some of the concerns and answer some of the questions about what happens to the metal--what this recycling and treatment look like. So the responsible project manager from Studsvik sat through all of the proceedings and provided a presentation