Mr. KRAFT. Thank you. I want to thank the committee for opportunity to present today.

My organization is based in Evanston, Illinois and we have been around 20 years. Our purpose is to act as a citizen watchdog organization on the commercial nuclear power industry. Illinois, as was mentioned earlier, has more reactors than any other State. In our opinion, it needs more surveillance and watchdogging as well. And I think history has borne that out amply.

My comments today will be different from the previous ones you have heard, largely which have been based on public health and medical concerns. I want to focus in on the issues of energy and infrastructure and how that factors into the terrorist threat in the future.

In trying to get a handle on how I would put my remarks to you today, I was thinking back to my experience on September 11th and that following week after the tragedy. And what occurred to me is something that I think you in Congress really need to examine from a strategic standpoint. A lot of what you have heard today I think is a tactical response to crises and emergencies that we are anticipating, but unless we also anticipate in a broader sense and a broader scale how our society is structured, where it is vulnerable and where we can make substitutions, then we are fooling ourselves into thinking that we are really protecting the public.

So what I hope to get across to you today is one concept that September 11th has demonstrated. And that is, the way we have constructed our technological society makes our infrastructure both a target and a weapon. In the past, there was a distinction between the two and I think it was much more clear cut.

What we need to take a look at in the future is how our infrastructure that we depend on has now become both weapon and target and how they can be interchangeable. This is very significant. The fact that airplanes were not anticipated as weapons of mass destruction certainly does not call for the abolition of commercial air transport but what it does say is we need to respond in a totally different way to airport security or to construction of buildings, and that was particularly hammered home when the Nuclear Regulatory Commission admitted 1 week after the accident that it had failed to do the calculations which would demonstrate that our reactors could withstand those hits on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. And we are still waiting for the numbers to be crunched.

That is a major shift in thinking and if we are going to proceed in the 21st century on a technology-based society, it is up to the leadership of this Nation to consider that dual role. And when you choose to go down a technological path, you had better be prepared for the boomerang.

Now I am going to get into some of the specifics that I have observed in terms of the nuclear power situation and then I would also refer you to a report that we produced last October and it is available on our Web site, called "Here Today, There Tomorrow: Commercial Nuclear Reactor Sites as Terrorist Targets."

Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. Mr. Chairman, I would ask that we insert that into the record.

Mr. HORN. Without objection.

Mr. KRAFT. I do have additional copies available and this is on our Web site. Regrettably, I mailed this to the Illinois delegation last October and because of the anthrax situation, you may not have received it. So I apologize for that.

The second thing that struck me over the weekend as I was preparing for these remarks was a comment that Albert Einstein supposedly made, and that is that "A clever person solves a problem; a wise person avoids it." What I want to get into now are avoiding some future problems in a strategic kind of way; specifically dealing with nuclear power and with nuclear waste.

As we have observed situations since September 11th and watched the NRC's rather lethargic, uneven response to the tragedy, we have to hammer home a few points. The first is that if you are going to rely on reactors in the 21st century, you, the leadership of this country, must certify to the public that those reactors belong in the 21st century and can withstand 21st century threats. If they cannot do so, they do not belong here.

Shipbuilding changed after the Titanic hit an iceberg. We need to make the same kind of shift in the nuclear power industry. The set of criteria that is used to make that determination is called the design basis for the reactor. I would submit to you that the NRC needs to revise, re-examine and rewrite the design basis, not only for the future reactors that it anticipates so that they can show that they can hold up under these threats, but they are going to have to take a look at re-examining the design basis for reactors that are permitted to operate and who are applying for plant life extension for an additional 20 years because these will be the reactors that will be selected as future terrorist targets. If they cannot withstand the terrorist threat, they must be closed.

We would further point out that the spent fuel pools which are a point of controversy both in terms of the Yucca Mountain issue coming up, and just the operation of reactors in the future, must be significantly upgraded and hardened, from an engineering standpoint. Security at reactor sites needs to be greatly enhanced, and the sites themselves may actually have to be redesigned in order to survive credible terrorist threats in the 21st century.

We think the NRC has failed in its regulatory practices and we need to take a look at why that has happened. And again, I think it would be useful to look at Einstein's quote to move away from an infrastructure that has inherent danger to an energy infrastructure that does not have the same dangers that nuclear power would have. And this would be to aggressively promote renewable energy alternatives, efficiency and something that was actually touted very highly in the Bush energy plan, a concept called a "distributed generation," so that transmission systems are not disrupted.

I will stop there and be glad to answer any questions you might have. Thank you.

[NOTE. The report entitled, "Here Today, There Tomorrow: Commercial Nuclear Reactor Sites as Terrorist Targets," may be found in subcommittee files.]

[The prepared statement of Mr. Kraft follows:]

TESTIMONY OF

DAVID A. KRAFT, DIRECTOR

NUCLEAR ENERGY INFORMATION SERVICE

before the

SUBCOMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT EFFICIENCY, FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT AND

INTERGOVERNMENTAL RELATIONS

in Chicago, IL, July 2, 2002

My name is David A. Kraft; I am director of Nuclear Energy Information Service, an environmental organization based in Evanston, IL. We focus on reactor and radioactive waste safety and security issues, primarily in Illinois, the most nuclear-reliant state in the U.S. We appreciate the opportunity to present our views on energy and Homeland Security to your Committee today. We will focus primarily on nuclear power and waste related issues.

The events of Sept. 11th have changed a lot of things, for a lot of people. That's good; they should have, for not to change would be to deliberately remain as vulnerable to such attack in the future. What we find disturbing is the amount effort and resources being poured into defending the ultimately indefensible, while little emphasis is being placed on necessary infrastructure shifts to make this Nation less vulnerable to future Sept. 11th's. We will elaborate below.

There are two levels of response to the questions this Committee has posed to its witnesses: 1.) The first, an analysis and response to "what is" in terms of nuclear power and energy infrastructure, and 2.) Implementation of what needs to be in the future, to prevent or minimize the effects of Sept. 11th-scale attacks. Each has a unique set of required interventions.

WHAT IS:

Today the U.S. relies on 103 operating commercial nuclear reactors (and their required accompanying spent fuel pools and dry-cask storage containers) for about 20% of its electricity. Forty-thousand plus tons of so-called "spent" reactor fuel reside at 131 sites around the country. Each of these large-scale reactors is tied into the main power transmission grid, which was demonstrated by natural causes a few years ago to be old, constrained, brittle, and vulnerable to disruption with enormous negative region-wide effects.

This nuclear power system is allegedly regulated by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), which this past week authorized the license of a new reactor design, the AP-1000. The development of our Nation's radioactive waste disposal system is in the hands of the Department of Energy, which oversees the development of the proposed "high-level" radioactive waste (HLRW) facility. Both have a demonstrated track record indicating a severe allergic reaction to regulation either doing it, as their charters mandate; or following them, as law requires.

Recently, we have seen the Administration propose and energy "strategy" calling for the construction of as many as 150 new nuclear reactors; heavy nuclear industry subsidization; and fasttracking of such programs as new reactor licensing, reactor operating license extension, and radioactive waste dump siting at Yucca Mt. Nevada, as well as extension of the controversial Price Anderson Act insurance subsidy. We have see Congress follow suit with quick passage of Price Anderson Act in the House with fewer than 20 representative present; and most recently, rapid approval of the Yucca Mt. high-level radioactive (HLRW) waste dump, prior to full disclosure of information by Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham.

On their part the nuclear industry is interested in extending the operational lifetimes of their current reactors by 20 years, and build new ones, many of which would not benefit from the reinforced containment structures present at today's reactors, and in one case would have no containment building at all. The NRC as state above has licensed one such design this past week; and is considering licensing the design with no containment building as well. The industry also takes out full-page advertisements arguing how undesirable it is to keep storing HLRW at reactor sites in Illinois, yet doesn't seem to have any problems with the idea of perpetually generating additional quantities of hotter, more hazardous wastes, for longer period of time in Illinois.

And finally, we have the numerous press accounts exclaiming July 4th threats to nuclear reactors, "dirty" bombs and the capability of 100 nations to have them, and recent accidents involving radwaste vehicles.

Based on this easily documentable description of the world of nuclear power since Sept. 11, 2001, one is led to paraphrase the famous Albert Einstein quote and conclude that, "The events of Sept. 11th have changed everything in our world, save the way we think!"

WHAT WE SHOULD AND NEED TO DO:

The attack of Sept. 11th demonstrated that our highly technology-reliant infrastructure is BOTH target AND weapon. The only way for any kind of meaningful Homeland security to succeed is to recognize this fact, and act to minimize the overall threat and impact from the technologies we choose to continue using in our infrastructure.

The 9-11 attack, and recent threats to nuclear installations demonstrate and amplify that

nuclear power (and its inevitable wastes) is inherently dangerous; requires intense centralization and largeness of scale; and can produce catastrophic results while delivering a commodity that can be obtained from other means, permission for its future use must be judged taking these factors into account in a post-9-11 world, and comparing them with the consequences for other energy resources.

Several significant changes -- based on the old physician's maxim of "First, do no harm," -must be implemented before nuclear power is permitted to continue operation into the rest of the 21" Century:

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