Safe and reliable nuclear energy provides roughly 20 percent of the nation’s electricity and nearly a quarter of Michigan’s power. In fact, the U.S. is the world’s largest supplier of commercial nuclear energy – generating about a third of the world’s nuclear electricity.

Southwest Michigan is home to two nuclear power plants: Donald C. Cook Nuclear Power Plant in Bridgman and the Palisades Nuclear Power Plant in South Haven.

Currently, spent nuclear fuel for these plants is safely stored on site. Unfortunately, fuel storage at the nation’s 62 nuclear plants is at or near capacity.

We need a safe, permanent waste storage site that is not on the shores of Lake Michigan.

That is why I recently joined two of my Senate colleagues in introducing resolutions calling on the U.S. Congress, the U.S. Department of Energy and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to complete facilities for safe storage of nuclear fuel.

Congress passed the Nuclear Waste Policy Act in 1982 requiring the federal government to follow a strict timeline for building a permanent repository for high-level waste from the nation’s nuclear power plants.

In 2002, Congress and President Bush approved Yucca Mountain in Nevada as the site of a safe nuclear waste repository for the U.S.

Senate Concurrent Resolution 8 calls on Congress to appropriate from the Nuclear Waste Fund the money necessary to build the permanent repository, and my resolution compels Congress to return the money collected from Michigan residents if a permanent repository is not built.

Michigan taxpayers have been assessed $812 million since 1983 for the construction of a permanent site and each year the fund’s balance increases by about $750 million in direct taxpayer payments.

Yet — it is 2015 — and a permanent site still has not been built. There is only so long the nation can continue to safely store waste at temporary sites at the cost of hardworking taxpayers.

We are urging the federal government to live up to its responsibility to establish a permanent repository for high-level nuclear waste.

 

Sen. John Proos, R-St. Joseph, represents Southwest Michigan.