Editor’s Note: On Wednesday, The Heritage Foundation published a blog in The Foundry entitled “Concerns Over Nuclear Waste Importation Should Not Lead to Ban.” You can read it here. Congressman Bart Gordon, a sponsor of the legislation, asked us for the opportunity to respond. While we may have policy differences, an open and transparent debate on these matters is essential to good governance. We welcome Congressman Gordon’s response below.
Concerns Over Nuclear Waste Importation SHOULD Lead to Ban
While I was encouraged to see the Heritage Foundation is taking an interest in the Radioactive Import Deterrence Act, the organization’s recent posting on its blog, The Foundry, demonstrates a misunderstanding of the fundamental goals of this legislation.
Currently, no other nation in the world takes in another country’s nuclear waste for permanent disposal and perpetual monitoring. Every nation has a responsibility to take care of its own waste. Since the Nuclear Regulatory Commission received the initial application for the importation of 20,000 tons of Italian waste, there have been applications to bring in both Mexican and Brazilian nuclear waste. The sites we have licensed in the U.S. were established to dispose of the waste from our own nuclear power plants and other facilities, and we expect that need to grow rapidly with the planned expansion of nuclear power, which I and the bill’s other authors support. The RID Act would set an important precedent.
We cannot and should not send the message to the world that the U.S. is willing to be their nuclear waste repository. Permanent disposal of another country’s waste is not, nor has it ever been, a part of any agreement on nuclear fuel cycle technology cooperation – agreements that the U.S. has with 41 other countries, including India, China and the United Arab Emirates. Surely, the Heritage Foundation isn’t proposing that we take the nuclear waste from all of those countries! The RID Act prevents the U.S. from becoming a global dumping ground, while offering the President an opportunity to exempt shipments that advance important policy goals.
The Heritage Foundation’s posting also states – without any evidence – that somehow if the U.S. doesn’t dispose of other countries’ nuclear waste, our companies will lose some sort of competitive edge. Since no other country takes in foreign nuclear waste, that is a false argument. Furthermore, there is nothing to stop a U.S. company from building a waste processing facility in another country and using their technology to treat that country’s waste. At least two companies have already said they intend to do so.
We already have limited space in our country for the radioactive waste generated by American entities, and it should be preserved for them. I look forward to the Energy and Commerce Committee’s consideration of this important bill, and I hope that my colleagues take the time to consider the important objectives of the bill and its careful protection of our domestic industries.
Congressman Bart Gordon represents Tennessee’s Sixth Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives where he is the Chairman of the House Science and Technology Committee and a senior member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
The views expressed by guest bloggers on The Foundry do not necessarily reflect the views of The Heritage Foundation.
In response to Heritage analyst James Carafano’s paper, “National Security Not a Good Argument for Global Warming Legislation”, the American Security Project responded to four “myths” in Carafano’s piece. But their retaliatory facts ignore Carafano’s central premise that the Waxman-Markey cap and trade bill will do much more economic harm than environmental good and would undermine “the nation’s capacity to deal with natural disasters here and abroad.”
Part I is here.
ASP’s other two critiques are:
1.) Refuting Carafano’s notion that “U.S. action alone would not impact world CO2 levels.” Their response: “If we don’t take the lead in reducing CO2 levels, other countries will, and we will lose out on the resulting jobs and economic growth. Once, the United States led the world in the production of solar panels. Now China leads and the U.S. is only fourth and we are buying clean energy technology we used to export.”
Notice they don’t actually say U.S. action alone will impact world CO2 levels. That’s because it won’t. As mentioned in part one, Climatologists project the Waxman-Markey cap and trade bill would only change global temperatures by two 10ths of a degree Celsius by century’s end.
The common battle cry among advocates of cap and trade is that once the United States paves the way for a carbon-reduction plan, other countries will follow suit. Yet, in a case of international cooperation, India, China and the rest of the developing world would likely have to revert to emission output levels that are pure fantasy. On a per-capita basis, China would backtrack to about one 10th of what the United States emitted in 2000. India and most of the developing world would have to drop to even lower levels. This is a de-developing strategy which no country will adopt.
Worse, carbon capping actually punishes the developing world for using cleaner technology. The developing world is doing just that: developing. For that reason, the technologies they use and the infrastructure they build are newer, cleaner and more efficient.
On an unrelated note, it shouldn’t matter whether the United States is first, fourth, or four-hundredth in the world in producing solar panels. The law of comparative advantage is one of the first lessons in economics: a business or company will produce a good if its opportunity cost is lower. George Mason University economist Russ Roberts says it bluntly, “We export so we can have money to buy the stuff that’s hard for us to make–or at least hard for us to make as cheaply. Self-sufficiency is the road to poverty.” And if solar and wind and any other source of energy can compete in the free market to provide consumers cheap electricity, all the better.
2.) Carafano’s last “myth” is that “The environment does not cause wars—it is how humans respond to their environment that causes conflict.” ASP says: “Countries have been going to war over land and resources for centuries, and there is every empirically proven reason to believe that as climate change effects food, water and other resources, it will force migration, destabilize governments, and cause nations to increasingly go to war. Again, we can already see this happening in parts of Africa. The challenge then is to act now to prevent the circumstances from developing that will make conflict more likely in the future thereby minimizing future impacts and direct costs to the United States.”
Carafano responds to this: “There was significant climate change in the 17th century and by some accounts that contributed to the 30 Years War and related conflicts such as the English Revolution. But climate during the 18th century was very stable by comparison and, in fact, on the eve of the French Revolution harvests improved… it all depends on how humans chose to react to their environment.”
ASP is right in arguing that natural disasters can lead to competition for scarce resources, which can lead to conflict. We even saw that, on a much smaller scale than Africa, in Katrina when resources became scarce and prices were driven up. This will become more prominent if we enact a cap and trade system that cripples our economy. Production will dwindle, resources will become scarcer and innovation and entrepreneurial activity will fall, which will be more detrimental to regions like Darfur because many adaptations are driven by markets. Seed companies develop drought and heat resistant strains that have increased agricultural productivity in the face of global warming. Low tech, but efficient, dams create reservoirs in the Himalayas to provide water supplies and irrigation during dry months. These simple, cost-effective technologies will help developing countries adapt as well rather than forcing them into costly international carbon reduction treaties.
Capping CO2 only hinders the overall economic development of poorer countries and thus puts them in a worse position to adapt to climate change, if necessary.