Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: Welcome everybody to House Energy and Digital Infrastructure. It is Thursday, May 13. Are here to check-in with Lissa Windham who will identify herself as a former member of Lissa, I'm going to let you say it right. I'm going to let you say how you want to, how you're testifying today. So, I'm representative Kathleen James from Manchester.

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: Scott Campbell from Saint John's Barry. Richard Bailey, Lamoille two. Michael Southworth, Caledonia two. Christopher Howland, Rutland four.

[Rep. Dara Torre (Clerk)]: Dara Torre, Washington two. Laura Sibilia.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: Great. Lisa, for the record.

[Lisa Windham (Vermont NDCAP member; Chair, Federal Nuclear Waste Policy Committee)]: My name is Lisa Windham, and I am a current member of the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Decommission Citizens Advisory Panel, and I also chair the Federal Nuclear Waste Policy Committee of the panel.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: Sorry. Lisa, we're going to take one break. Sorry, we have a little disclaimer. Sorry, I apologize, Lisa. I am also a current member of and we have just Great, thanks for that.

[Lisa Windham (Vermont NDCAP member; Chair, Federal Nuclear Waste Policy Committee)]: Yes, you are. Very glad of it.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: Super. All right.

[Lisa Windham (Vermont NDCAP member; Chair, Federal Nuclear Waste Policy Committee)]: All right. Do you want me to begin my testimony now?

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: Yes, ma'am. Thanks for being here.

[Lisa Windham (Vermont NDCAP member; Chair, Federal Nuclear Waste Policy Committee)]: Well, thank you. Hold on a second. I'm just pulling it up.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: We have a member who has to leave to work on a bill in another committee. No disrespect.

[Lisa Windham (Vermont NDCAP member; Chair, Federal Nuclear Waste Policy Committee)]: That's okay. I'm trying to pull up my testimony here. It's somehow it somehow disappeared when I got on Zoom. So just give me a moment.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: No rush.

[Lisa Windham (Vermont NDCAP member; Chair, Federal Nuclear Waste Policy Committee)]: Here we go. Might need having some allergies today, I might need some frequent water breaks. Thank you So for bearing with I am Lisa Windham and I am a member of the Vermont Yankee Endicap panel and have been since 2017. I'm a citizen appointee, having been appointed by the senate president's pro tem, Becca Ballon, Timash, and now Philip Baruth. So almost ten years watching the process. I also want to say that the views that I'm sharing with you today are my own and do not necessarily represent the views of the end of cap overall, except when I refer to official end of cap advisory opinions, which I will do so in this testimony. As I think you know that NDCAT panel serves as a conduit for public information and education to encourage open communication and community involvement in matters relating to the decommissioning process of Vermont Yankee. We receive written reports and presentations, and we advise the governor, the General Assembly, Vermont state agencies and the public on matters relating decommissioning, and that's all laid out in the establishing legislation that formed the Vermont NDCAP. I also helped form and currently chair the NDCAP's panel on federal nuclear waste policy, which has been regularly convening since 2021. We've created a video archive of our regular discussions, which range from all topics ranging from Yucca Mountain to understanding more about our whole tech casks for nuclear waste, reprocessing, forms of nuclear storage, views from our federal delegation on laws governing nuclear waste and also the writing of new laws that may impact the spent fuel that we currently store at VY. So these meetings have become an important source of information, not just for our panel and our state, but for many other states and others that have regularly participated in these discussions, which again are taped and viewed on YouTube and Brattleboro Community Television. When I first came to the panel, I realized as someone interested in nuclear waste that the panel had taken a position supporting a change in federal law that would allow for the development of consolidated interim storage of high level nuclear waste, which is also referred to mostly as spent fuel, without any real discussion as to the merits or any nod to the controversial aspects of this change in law. So under my motivation, the panel retracted support for consolidated interim storage.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: What does that mean, interim storage? What is that?

[Lisa Windham (Vermont NDCAP member; Chair, Federal Nuclear Waste Policy Committee)]: That would be a place in The United States where stranded nuclear fuel, spent fuel like we have a VY would go to one place to be stored together above ground on a temporary basis until we have made permanent disposal of this high level nuclear waste, which is called for under current law. So I am going to get a little into that as I go along, but just suffice to say that the panel changed it, withdrew its support for consolidated interim storage because there are a lot of issues around it which we can get into. But then the panel had no position on changes to federal nuclear waste policy until in February 2022, we issued our first advisory opinion on the matter, and that was in response to the U. S. Department of Energy's request for information regarding consent based citing of such a federal interim spent nuclear fuel storage facility. So we engaged in a whole process of trying to understand the issues around consolidated storage. And we issued an advisory opinion, which I'll describe briefly below. The opinion was hashed out in collaboration with fellow committee members, including representatives of North Star, the owner of the plant, and representatives from the towns of Vernon and Guilford that are closest to the reactor site, as well as other committee members. And I'll go through this advisory opinion now just to see where we came out. So the Endicap Advisory Opinion prioritizes progress on a deep geologic repository first, which is what is mandated under current law. The DOE has chosen to focus on short term consolidated interim storage, promising communities that such storage would be temporary. But in our opinion, we said we really need to show that there is some progress on a permanent disposal solution before we try to begin taking this fuel and putting it in a place where it's going to have to move again in the future and which is above ground, does not conform to what the Federal Nuclear Waste Policy Act has outlined for us. So we need to really, before we spend any more money on a consolidated facility for our nuclear waste, we really should make some progress on citing a permanent disposal. And that really has been something that the DOE, which is responsible for the spent fuel and high level nuclear waste, really should be focusing its efforts on, but they are not. And to try to get communities to agree to consent to host such waste in the absence of any progress at all on the deep disposal facility that everyone knows we need regardless of whether we reprocess or whatever we do, it's generally accepted, recognized that we need this permanent disposal and to start taking fuel and putting it somewhere else without any progress on permanent disposal, we felt was foolish and really did not do much to engender any kind of trust in the Department of Energy moving forward to take on this role of managing our nuclear waste.

[Rep. Dara Torre (Clerk)]: So that

[Lisa Windham (Vermont NDCAP member; Chair, Federal Nuclear Waste Policy Committee)]: was one of the positions that we have. So our opinion stated that any consolidated nuclear waste facility should be pursued only after we have begun to make progress on a deep geologic disposal facility. The NRC says that the waste is safe stored in casks like we have at VY for long periods of time. So why move it twice was the general sort of feeling.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: We have our first question. That was a hand signal. Rep Kleppner.

[Rep. Bram Kleppner (Member)]: Hi, thank you and sorry for coming in late. Do you have any sense whether there are, now that Yucca Mountain is apparently stuck forever, is there any progress in identifying any other potential sites for long term deep storage?

[Lisa Windham (Vermont NDCAP member; Chair, Federal Nuclear Waste Policy Committee)]: No. No, and the fact is that even if Yucca Mountain were to open tomorrow, which it won't and it's not just for political reasons, there's been a lot of geologic problems with that site that have been hashed out and recognized by physicists and geologists across the board. Likewise, the local native tribes that are out there, the Shoshone Native Americans are vehemently opposed to that site as well. But even if it were to start receiving nuclear waste, it would already be full. We'd already be looking for a second deep geologic disposal site. So the truth is that the narrative focuses on one deep site, but the truth is that we probably will already need two. And certainly if we start accumulating more nuclear waste, we'll probably maybe even need more. I should mention that there really hasn't been much progress internationally on development of these deep disposal sites. It's just really beginning. Finland has apparently just opened a site after forty years of developing a deep geologic disposal site, which is great for Finland. And they took it seriously. Sweden is working on one. Canada has announced a site. They're still trying to work on it. But Finland only has less than 2% of the total high level nuclear waste spent fuel that we do. So it's a much smaller amount than what we're going to have to contend with here in The United States. Does that answer your It

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: does, thank you, yes.

[Lisa Windham (Vermont NDCAP member; Chair, Federal Nuclear Waste Policy Committee)]: I'm sorry, I'm trying to read my testimony from the computer so it's hard for me to see anybody with their hands raised, so just feel free to interject.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: I'll just vigorously interrupt. Rep Campbell.

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: You may be getting to this or it may be off topic, but I'm wondering about what France does with their waste. I keep hearing, Oh, France takes care of their waste. Reprocess it and whatever.

[Lisa Windham (Vermont NDCAP member; Chair, Federal Nuclear Waste Policy Committee)]: France is also seeking deep geologic disposal, they reprocess but even with reprocessing they will need a deep geologic disposal facility. Reprocessing does not take care of all nuclear waste, there will always be the need for deep geologic disposal. I've heard different estimates for how much reprocessing could reduce the total amount of waste needed to be disposed, and those estimates vary widely because there isn't a lot of experience with the reprocessing. So even France has the need for the deep geologic disposal facility, even though they are reprocessing a good amount of their waste. And a figure that I have heard is about half of the waste will still need to go into some form of disposal.

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: Okay, great. Thank you.

[Lisa Windham (Vermont NDCAP member; Chair, Federal Nuclear Waste Policy Committee)]: Should I go back to my testimony?

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: Yes, on we go. Thank you.

[Lisa Windham (Vermont NDCAP member; Chair, Federal Nuclear Waste Policy Committee)]: You're breaking up a little.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: Oh, weird. I said yes, please. On we go.

[Lisa Windham (Vermont NDCAP member; Chair, Federal Nuclear Waste Policy Committee)]: All right. The truth is really nobody wants to take on this nuclear waste. The DOE has been investing in this process of trying to develop a consent based siting initiative for whatever kind of storage, permanent or temporary. And they have put a lot of 22,000,000 in the past couple of years on this consortium project, which gave small groups around the country a million to $2,000,000 to go around and try to inquire among communities, what would it take for you to accept nuclear waste? In my opinion, it was really a public relations effort to sort of familiarize and make it seem that nuclear waste wasn't something terrible to have and there might be incentives, but really nobody has stepped up to want to host such a facility. And it should be noted that in places like Texas and New Mexico, Texas where Vermont has been sending its low level waste, their low level waste facilities and the governors and legislatures in those two states have vehemently opposed any citing of high level spent fuel in their state. And that really raises questions for us because if the two states that have the most sort of experience with low level waste are adamantly opposed to receiving higher level waste, what does that say about that state's experience in dealing with the waste? Likewise, a deep geologic disposal facility in Carlsbad, New Mexico, that's Department of Defense facility called the WIP facility Waste Isolation Pilot Project was supposed to really highlight the feasibility of deep geologic disposal. And they've had a lot of problems. There was a major explosion. The place closed for several years. So it hasn't exactly been the showcase that the government had hoped for. I should also say that over the years there is something called the nuclear waste fund that was a nuclear electricity generating tax that had been imposed on generating facilities. That fund now has about $48,000,000,000 in the nuclear waste fund that's expressly supposed to pay for permanent disposal. But there's been a lot of interest in that fund for other purposes. And even if that fund was to be used for the deep geologic disposal right now, it would probably only count for half of the total expenditures required to develop a deep geologic disposal facility. So, you know, that nuclear waste fund, the tax that was imposed on the new electricity production by nuclear was rescinded ten years ago by federal courts because utilities were arguing that there shouldn't be a tax collected for that purpose because the DOE still doesn't have a solution. And the court actually ridiculed the Department of Energy saying their pie in the sky, their estimates really had no relationship to reality. Therefore, you couldn't keep taxing the nuclear electricity generation without a viable plan. So basically for the past ten years, there's been no investment in that nuclear waste fund toward permanent disposal. So that is a real problem and the DOE has yet to rectify that. So our advisory opinion that's the disposal part our advisory opinion that we issued also pointed to the need for an independent, integrative federal waste management agency, a new agency outside of DOE to try to deal with the waste. And this mirrors recommendations by the Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future, which

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: is

[Lisa Windham (Vermont NDCAP member; Chair, Federal Nuclear Waste Policy Committee)]: called for a new independent agency that would be not subject to congressional appropriations, to changes in administration which tend to ping pong back and forth any progress on dealing with our nuclear waste. So that it would create an independent agency. And that is something that we also backed in our advisory opinion at Endicap. And there's a lot of groups calling for that. For instance, the San Onofre Nuclear reactor on the shore of the Pacific Ocean has waste in casks sitting on the Pacific Ocean. They've been pushing for a solution to take those casks away. They back temporary storage because they're concerned about what might happen in the short term to those casks because they're right on the ocean and in a seismic active zone. So they are leading the charge really nationally with Representative Levin in that state who has tried to get some federal action and has a variety of bills, including the Nuclear Waste Administration Act that would create a new federal agency to deal with this, but there has been really no traction on any of those bills over time. We have over 100,000 metric tons of spent fuel sitting at about 76 sites around the country, most of it on waterways that are now subject to flooding and other catastrophic climate situations potentially. And that number is just going to grow if we expand nuclear further.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: So, I never thought about this before, literally until just this minute. I sort of assumed that the storage casks were totally bomb proof. So in other words, if there were an earthquake, the casks would, I don't know, roll into the ocean but not break open or something. I mean, I'm not being facetious. Just I guess I don't understand how vulnerable the casks themselves might be to some sort of catastrophic event.

[Lisa Windham (Vermont NDCAP member; Chair, Federal Nuclear Waste Policy Committee)]: Well, know, the casks are heavily tested and the NRC has said that they're secure. And I have no real issues with our casks, the 58 casks that we have sitting highly visible on the banks of the Connecticut River. My concerns about the cask relate more to potential deterioration over time. They're only licensed for forty years. So you know, they are subject to failure. They've been holding up pretty well so far, but we're really unclear even in our committee about who's responsible for like if there is a problem with the cask, it would really fall to the owner of the company to have to re cask the material, which would be very, very costly and they would probably end up suing the federal government for compensation for having to repair any cask is what we believe would happen. But you are right, the long term feasibility of those and reliability of those casks is an unknown. They are monitored, they're heavily monitored, there's a security apparatus around them, but they still present a risk. So that much less of a risk by the way than a spent fuel pool, which I'm very relieved that our former governor and the memorandum of understanding when Vermont Yankee was sold, expedited removal of fuel from the spent fuel pool because they are much more vulnerable to all kinds of particularly loss of power situations where once you have got this bent fuel in a cask, is much safer because it is passively cooled, you do not require an input of electric of energy and water to cool the spent fuel rods. Therefore, those pools are susceptible to fires and other issues, which makes them pretty scary actually, and there's a few of them still around. But at any rate, is there any more questions? I don't see any.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: No, forward we go.

[Lisa Windham (Vermont NDCAP member; Chair, Federal Nuclear Waste Policy Committee)]: Okay, so there's been different entities have proposed different ways of creating an independent agency that would oversee our federal nuclear waste management. Former NRC Chair Alison McFarlane just issued a report outlining a structure called New Corp that would actually put a lot of private enterprise in charge, like a quasi public private partnership to manage the waste. But there really has been no progress on the creation of such an independent agency either. So there's been no action on most of these bills that have gone through Congress and it really feels like it's a hot potato that Congress really doesn't want to deal with and they've sort of left a lot of these matters to be dealt with by the executive and by agencies. So we keep producing estimates of 2,000 tons of nuclear waste each day with no real solution, hoping that the future will somehow take care of it. I would say that in that advisory opinion, we also pointed to the need for real cost benefit analysis of nuclear energy and that would take into account the full cycle of nuclear from the front end mining to the back end forever nuclear storage reprocessing. There's not really been a comprehensive study of the long term costs of the entire fuel cycle. The Office of General Accounting has done some studies, the Congressional Budget Office has done others, but there really needs to be much more of a public discussion analysis of the whole nuclear enterprise and the costs involved therein. And so that was also part of our advisory opinion. So, know, I wanted does anybody have any questions up to now regarding that advisory opinion and the stance that the end of cap has taken on federal nuclear waste storage?

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: Sure, just to put a finer point on it. What you're saying is we really don't know how much electricity generated by nuclear power costs.

[Lisa Windham (Vermont NDCAP member; Chair, Federal Nuclear Waste Policy Committee)]: That's true.

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: We know it's a lot.

[Lisa Windham (Vermont NDCAP member; Chair, Federal Nuclear Waste Policy Committee)]: Well, it's certainly higher than renewables at this point. I get to that little bit later in the testimony. So the push for new nuclear that was really stimulated, I mean, it's been going on for years, but the Trump administration really stepped on the gas when they issued executive orders last year that have really pushed nuclear into the forefront. But I think one thing that the committee needs to consider is that industry oversight has been very much diminished by this rush to new nuclear. We're very concerned about the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. There's been changes to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that have cut staffing and diminished the independence of that agency. It's been commented on a lot. And there's also been recent rules that put more of the oversight process into the Department of Energy as opposed to the NRC. So this independence of regulators is really under threat right now under the Trump administration. And recently 12 offices of attorney generals, including Vermont, have commented on some of these new rules and have basically that call for an elimination of environmental impact studies being done for some of these new reactor designs. It raises a lot of concerns about at a time when we're testing new technologies and pushing new nuclear so fast, why are we diminishing the regulatory power of the NRC? It causes a lot of questions and concerns. Edwin Lyman at the Union of Concerned Scientists said recently that these changes at the NRC are not about making the reactor licensing process more efficient, but about weakening safety and security oversight across the board. The change to NRC's mission effectively directs the agency to enforce only the bare minimum level of regulation at every facility it oversees in The United States. There's also been recent posts about sort of a, you know, there's never there's like a muzzling going on at the NRC where professional views or non concurrences are discouraged from being made public, which is really a blow to transparency at NRC. Likewise, the US Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board, which is an independent federal agency mandated by Congress to evaluate the technical and scientific validity of DOE activities has really been eviscerated. There's only one member remaining. The staff is still there, but their ability to interject has been really diminished and that's concerning to me. You know, this idea also of the Department of Energy, it's such a vast agency tasked with this mission of managing our nuclear waste, while they at the same time build our nuclear weapons at the various national labs across the country. And they're also in charge of the cleanup from the defense waste from the Manhattan Project. They run the Office of Environmental Management, roughly $8,000,000,000 a year for nuclear cleanup at just those defense sites around the country, 15 different sites. So the Department of Energy has a very complicated, complex portfolio that many industry sort of onlookers really feel is unmanageable and opaque. There's not a lot of transparency within the agency and that's also a cause for concern as more oversight keeps getting shifted into the Department of Energy. So that's a major concern. Another concern that has been coming up lately are the diminishment of radiation protections as we're anticipating more new nuclear. There's been a push to basically eliminate the as low as reasonably achievable radiation standards, which the whole rest of the world uses. And The United States has studied over years and always referred back to these lowest as possibly achievable levels. The fact is now this administration is trying to raise the allowable radiation levels and it's doing so at the risk of communities around reactors and also to workers at these defense labs that are engaged right now in an unprecedented push for more nuclear weapons, more nuclear weapons development than we've seen since the Manhattan Project. So workers are the allowable exposure to radiation for workers is proposed to be raised. Harvard just did a study in December 2025 that analyzed cancer and mortality rates near nuclear power plants. And they estimated that about twenty thousand six hundred cancers in the state of Massachusetts, roughly three point three percent of all the cases studied were attributable to living near a nuclear power plant. So these are new studies. There hasn't really been enough study of the impact of radiation and to lower the levels, the standards for radiation exposure. It just makes you wonder, you know, why are we doing that? If we want to invest in new nuclear, why are we doing so while diminishing safety standards? If new nuclear is better, then why do we have to have lower safety standards around it, lower regulatory standards around it is a big question for me as I look at these issues. So these findings of the Harvard study highlight the importance of acknowledging and addressing nuclear energy's health impacts at a time when this expansion is being pushed as a solution to climate change and our energy needs. So I just referenced that study. There's been a lot of discussion around it. The study really highlights the need for more research. But I also want to say that it's not just cancer that we're concerned about when it comes to living near a nuclear reactor or being exposed to more radiation. There's a number of studies that point to immune system issues, that exposure to constant lower acceptable levels of radiation have a diminishing impact on the health of women and children, even much more than men. So, you know, it's not just cancer. It's something that we don't fully understand. And again, why are we lowering the safety threshold on radiation as we push for new nuclear? Shouldn't we, as we progress through the technology, make ourselves safer? But that's not actually seems to be the case. So I want to move now to just some comments about advanced reactor technology. Because I know everybody's talking about the small modular reactors and how they sound very exciting. The technologies is like over 90 new designs and there's all kinds of excitement about technological innovation around these things. But as you've probably heard from others, a lot of it feels really pie in the sky and untested. And certainly the actual building and demonstration of these new reactors has not been done. So a lot of it is speculation. A lot of my comments are going to derive from the National Academies of Sciences. They've been looking at these issues very closely at the request of Congress. And you know the National Academy of Sciences like the gold standard nationally, they have bipartisan groups that get together, there's people on all sides of the issue that look and they make recommendations. So I've based some of my comments here on one of their recent studies, merits and viability of different nuclear fuel cycles and technology options and the waste aspects of advanced nuclear reactors. So my point of view is really based on a lot of what I read from the National Academies of Science and other groups, but they're an excellent source to really look to. And in general, when they looked at all these different technologies over several years, they found that these new technologies when compared to our current existing fleet and technology of light water once through fuel cycle reactors, they found that they really didn't stack up to what we're already doing, which is a pretty stinging indictment. They said sticking, this is basically quoting from the National Academies report, sticking to the known technology and economies of scale would avoid problems and costs associated with recycling and production of high assay uranium, which is the kind of new fuel that we are trying to develop and some of these new reactors use, which again poses proliferation problems and other environmental issues around this kind of fuel cycle production that is being envisioned in this new push for nuclear. It raises a lot of concerns about proliferation, especially when private companies are rushing to the fore to partner with governments around the world to develop these new types of nuclear fuel. The National Academy said that implementing just a few most promising reactor concepts and their associated new fuel cycles on a large commercial scale would require substantial government and industry investments well beyond 2050, which the National Academies have also said really limit Contribution that nuclear can make to the things of dequinization we need to make now.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: Hey, you're cutting I out am wondering if you should turn off your video. Oh.

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: Great.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: And I'm not sure where we are. We have another this is very interesting to me, by the way. We do have another witness coming at ten. It doesn't have to be like a hard stop, but I wanted to give you a time check to see how you're doing with your testimony.

[Lisa Windham (Vermont NDCAP member; Chair, Federal Nuclear Waste Policy Committee)]: Yeah, you're breaking up a lot too.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: Shoot.

[Lisa Windham (Vermont NDCAP member; Chair, Federal Nuclear Waste Policy Committee)]: Yeah, okay. Can you hear me now?

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: I can hear you now, yep. I was just saying, have another coming in at ten. It doesn't have to be like a hard stop, but I wanted to know how you're doing with your testimony just time wise. Oops. Oh. There she goes.

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: Grandma?

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: She's we just lost her. Yeah. Think so.

[Rep. Dara Torre (Clerk)]: So did you hear what she said about the the timeline to do all the No. Something like 2050?

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: Yeah. Oh. Maybe Yeah. The last thing she said, yeah, it was something about investments will be required through 2050. And I I can't remember exactly what it was come up with. Come up with the plant. What do do with this waste that lies for $10,000 something? I don't know.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: She trying to come back, Alex? Or She's not in

[Rep. Dara Torre (Clerk)]: the waiting room. She goes knocking.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: Let me email her.

[Rep. Dara Torre (Clerk)]: What's her can I don't have her email address?

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: K. Must be a video connection. Oh, yeah. I just got hooked up to video in this.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: I'm just gonna say I've got working pretty well. I love video. Yeah. But Well, it doesn't work.

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: You you have the fiber? Yeah. No. It just does supposed to have what's the biggest one? One gig. Well, I mean, Yeah. And it So right. Yeah. And the Wi Fi comes in. That's. You're getting it over the air, so that's. You have it have it through a cable. It's through a cat cat five cable. Oh, yeah. That that's that's that's when you get to the full speed. Yeah. I do have a cat five. I'll get Not interesting. Never said that. So you you need to plug a cable into your computer and into your digital box. Yeah. To get to get the full speed. Yeah. To get the full speed? Wi Fi becomes the becomes the chirpoin. So it's the Wi Fi between the little box on the side and the computer. So you need to get a I mean, you may at least my Wi Fi. There might be more advanced Wi Fi in room.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: Cat She's in the waiting room. Okay.

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: Cat five. Here we Thank you. I don't know if she heard the suggestion to leave her camera off, but that might help with

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: Hi, Lisa.

[Lisa Windham (Vermont NDCAP member; Chair, Federal Nuclear Waste Policy Committee)]: I don't know what happened, but I guess it's Vermont. Right?

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: Yeah. Well, I was just saying, I don't know if it would help to leave her camera off. And then the other I was just doing a time check too. We have another witness at ten it doesn't have to be like a hard stop at ten but your testimony is very relevant so if you've got a lot more to go we could stay on for another fifteen minutes and then invite you back or if you're almost done. I don't know how you're proceeding.

[Lisa Windham (Vermont NDCAP member; Chair, Federal Nuclear Waste Policy Committee)]: You know, I think I can wrap up pretty quickly if you want. Obviously, I'm going to submit the written testimony, so you know. Great.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: Sure, why don't we just forge ahead then? Like I said, we don't have to hard stop right at ten.

[Lisa Windham (Vermont NDCAP member; Chair, Federal Nuclear Waste Policy Committee)]: Yeah, I think you've heard from other people about some of the problems with the small scale reactors. Basically, they're untested, there's a lot of promises about them. They're going to generate more and more exotic forms of waste that is generally accepted. Some of these new nuclear projects like New Scale in Utah have, you know, the estimates are really that they took twice as long and cost twice as much. There was an academic study examining 180 nuclear power projects around the world and found that 175 of them exceeded the initial budget by an average of 120 by the time they were completed. And they also take 64% longer than projected. So these are just considerations regarding new technology and this idea that the small modular reactors somehow, even without economies of scale, are going to be able to deliver lower electricity prices seems inconceivable at this point. Likewise, internationally, these SMR projects are over budget and unreplicated. There's a lot of supply side problems with them. Meanwhile, wind, solar, batteries and grid solutions are scaling up much faster at much lower costs. So it really appears that SMRs don't change the economics. They don't change the waste problem. They tend to replicate nuclear's problems just in smaller packages. And that just makes it more expensive per kilowatt hour with the smaller reactors. So I'm not really sure what the advantages are seen to be ultimately. So you really have to be very careful if we're going to be considering one in our state. I wanted to mention the Welch the Welch and Balance Nuclear Plant Decommissioning Act.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: We have testimony on that.

[Lisa Windham (Vermont NDCAP member; Chair, Federal Nuclear Waste Policy Committee)]: Yes, saw the testimony on that. I just wanted to say that Endicap is going to be considering that at the next it's on the agenda for our next full panel meeting. And it really underscores the fact that while the industry sues the federal government every year, a couple of years, because the DOE hasn't taken away the nuclear waste, there's really no way for the local community to get any compensation for actually playing this role of interim storage, which we are. Now, once the decommissioning and all the buildings are done and the remediation takes place, we are going to be stuck with the ISFSI, the independent spent fuel storage installation for likely the next, at least even if things go the way the industry would like it for the next twenty or more years. So it really stands to reason that the local community should get some form of compensation for playing this role of an interim high level nuclear waste storage site. And the Welch balance legislation would really do that and raise awareness for the cost of communities for playing host. So that is something I think that we might end up issuing another advisory opinion about in the future once we learn more and have a panel committee vote. Just to note also on the reprocessing, we had Sven Bader come address our committee. He's probably one of the nation's leading proponents of reprocessing. And even he, in the testimony to our committee, raised so many issues regarding the cost and feasibility of reprocessing nuclear fuel. It just seems like an astronomical level of investment over a long period of time that we really need to consider more deeply before we thrust ourselves into it. So just questions for Vermont moving forward. Who's liable should something go wrong is a big one. The Price Anderson Act that puts full liability basically on The US taxpayer for any nuclear issue that might arise was just renewed for forty years. A lot of people feel like if the industry actually had to be liable for the safety and for some of the costs associated for mistakes in nuclear power that you wouldn't see nuclear power developed. The liability rests with taxpayers and that is a major consideration for a state like Vermont. Yes?

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: A question about that. We saw passing reference to the Price Anderson Act in yesterday's testimony, but we didn't have a chance to really understand. Could you tell us what that is?

[Lisa Windham (Vermont NDCAP member; Chair, Federal Nuclear Waste Policy Committee)]: Yeah, the Price Anderson Act basically puts the liability for the cost of any kind of accident or nuclear mishap on the public. I think it's after, I don't know what the number is, the industry would have to pay up to, I think it's 10, maybe 100,000,000. I'm not really sure. There would be some industry liability, but miniscule, almost negligible when you compare to the costs associated with the kinds of nuclear failures we've seen, for instance, in Fukushima or Chernobyl. Those costs are through the roof and they're forever they're just something to consider when you're considering any kind of new nuclear reactor. Things do go wrong, particularly with new technology that's really existing potentially in a diminished regulatory environment. In an environment where there's lower standards regarding radiation, there's going to be potentially more problems associated with it. So, I just want to say that this push to me for more nuclear that the governor is also seems to be a proponent of is really being pushed through and rushed in a way that I think is reckless. I'm not necessarily against adding nuclear energy to our mix. But some of these promises I call faith based science. There was a thing called the waste confidence rule for the past half a century, where we were promised that there would be some solution to the nuclear waste that solutions exist, there's just not the political will. But the truth is, in real life, there has been no solution. There has been no progress. So how can we count on it changing in the future? I really don't see any kind of solution to some of these problems. Nuclear is not green, it's not clean. It might have its place in the mix, but certainly not as something we should be dumping all of our resources into, frankly. And I have to also mention to the committee that nuclear energy development goes hand in hand with nuclear weapons development. It's not stated frequently enough. I have come to believe after attending many gatherings, nuclear deterrent summits, studying this issue. We probably wouldn't have nuclear energy if it wasn't for the obsession with nuclear weapons development. And again, we are making more nuclear weapons now and investing more production than we have since the Manhattan Project at much higher scale. And it's worrisome because these fuel cycles, this involvement of the private sector, these grants given to people like Peter Thiel, 900,000,000 to a new startup that's going to create new fuel technologies. It just seems incredibly risky and really a very questionable use of taxpayer dollars. The academies of science say we should not be doing any of this before we have dealt with the waste that we currently have. Permanent geologic disposal. I'll return to that. This is the consensus of the experts. Why are we not making progress? Why would we want to create so much more nuclear waste and different types of waste when we haven't even dealt with the most basic issues? And that's really my testimony. I have a lot more that's in mind, but I don't wanna kind of run through. I would love to hear any more questions. The end cap itself, once North Star applies for a partial license termination, will probably be before the end of the year, the end cap legislation calls for the dissolution of our panel. But decommissioning is not finished. That ISFASI is going to stay there for a long, long time in the future. And we should be paying close attention to the federal changes to things that are going to affect our state regarding that nuclear waste. So I would propose that once the end cap dissolves because the license is terminated for the reactor itself, that the legislature pick up a new piece of legislation that would create a similar citizen's body around the ISFSI itself and the issues that we face as a state regarding long term storage of high level nuclear waste.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: Sounds like a good idea. We do have a couple of questions, T. And then R. Campbell, and then we'll let you go listen and we'll look forward to receiving your written testimony. I'll certainly give it a close read and I know you said you were taking time now to cite your sources, which is always really helpful too.

[Lisa Windham (Vermont NDCAP member; Chair, Federal Nuclear Waste Policy Committee)]: Yes. Imperative.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: Yeah, it is imperative. Rutland?

[Rep. Christopher Howland (Member)]: I'm not sure how much you know about international nuclear power compared to how we do it in US, but what you flagged about the risk to the public, is that mitigated in other countries where the power plants are developed on a scale and the whole country, it's an investment. It's not like ratepayers, local ratepayers, or even a state. Are we kind of an outlier in how we develop power and how we divvy up the risk?

[Lisa Windham (Vermont NDCAP member; Chair, Federal Nuclear Waste Policy Committee)]: You know, I don't really know a lot about that. So I would be reluctant to comment on it. Suffice to say that the rest of the world adheres to the allow lowest achievable radiation standards. That is the international standard that we are seeking now in The United States to diminish at our own risk. So I would say in Europe and other places, it's funny with nuclear reactors, everybody wants to put a reactor as far as possible away from their population centers. Look at even our corner of the state where we chose to site our nuclear reactor, right on the border with Massachusetts. And that's the trend. So it just begs the question, if this is so safe, why are you putting it as far as possible away your population centers and other things? And I think that is the right approach by the way, but it just tends to erode this kind of sense of safety around nuclear power in general. And again, the constant exposure to low level radiation, even at acceptable levels has not been adequately studied and has been proven in recent studies to potentially diminish our health overall, which is something that needs to be looked at more closely.

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: Well, wanted to follow-up on that very question. I presume that somebody must have walked around the dry cats to Vernon with a Geiger counter or whatever and tried to measure if there's any radiation leaking off that storage site. Is that so? Yes. Do know how Do know how often

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: often

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: those tests are done?

[Lisa Windham (Vermont NDCAP member; Chair, Federal Nuclear Waste Policy Committee)]: Oh, I think that they're done regularly and frequently. I don't know the actual frequency of them, but I have a lot of confidence in North Star and their oversight because we have a good company there and good people working. That's not always the case at other reactors. We're very lucky in Vermont to have North Star. However, they knew when they purchased the plant that it was well managed from the start. They knew they were getting a plant that had been well managed. And that was partially by the way, because of the heavy oversight our state had required. But the truth is that any company that owns the reactor or the ISFSI is responsible for monitoring and reporting what happens inside their fence line. So the state really doesn't have any ability to, all we can measure is outside our fence line, which our Department of Health does.

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: Okay. And you mentioned a second ago about there haven't been studies on long term exposure to low level radioactivity. I guess I wonder about that too.

[Lisa Windham (Vermont NDCAP member; Chair, Federal Nuclear Waste Policy Committee)]: Yes. There have been studies in Europe and other places and there's a guess it's the Gender Radiation Project that is here in The United States has studied a lot of that and has a lot of references. I actually referenced them in my testimony. So there's a number of studies that have been done that link low level constant exposure to health issues apart from cancers. And they are in my testimony.

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: Great, okay, thank you.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: Melissa, thank you so much for joining us. We really appreciate your time and we'll get your written testimony distributed to the committee and posted up on our committee page when we receive it.

[Lisa Windham (Vermont NDCAP member; Chair, Federal Nuclear Waste Policy Committee)]: Thank you. It's been an honor to address you here today and yeah, I hope that you can continue your oversight as legislators on this issue because some recent bills would diminish your ability to weigh in and to protect the public and we must not let that occur. Thank you.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: Thank you so much, Lisa. Thank

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: you. Thank Bye

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: bye. Great. Oh, Ellen, yay. I am gonna need to ask for a five minute break. Sorry, Ellen. If we could go off live, and we will be back at 10:10.