BRC Co-Chair Letter to The Honorable Fred Upton, Chairman, U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee and The Honorable John Shimkus, Chairman, U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee, Subcommittee on Environment and the Economy

Dear Representatives Upton and Shimkus,
At the direction of the President, the Secretary of Energy established the Blue Ribbon
Commission on America’s Nuclear Future and charged it with reviewing policies for
managing the back end of the nuclear fuel cycle. We are serving as the Co-Chairmen of
the Commission and have taken note of your recent comments about the Commission’s
work.
Your comments echo those we have heard from several members of Congress and from
people across the country who believe the United States should not abandon the
investment it has made in developing a proposed nuclear waste repository at Yucca
Mountain in Nevada. As we have listened to testimony and public comment, we have
been constantly reminded of the serious lack of trust that exists today in the federal
government’s ability to meet its waste cleanup obligations. The decision to withdraw
the license application for the proposed Yucca Mountain repository has only increased
this deficit of trust. Unfortunately, the longer our country fails to solve the nuclear
waste problem, the greater the trust deficit becomes – with the U.S. government
continuing to fail in its legal and moral obligation to take spent nuclear fuel and defense
high level waste while the future of nuclear power as an option for electrical generation
in this country is seriously jeopardized.