Senators Proos, Colbeck, Robertson, Meekhof, Hansen, Zorn, Rocca, Horn, Stamas and Emmons offered the following concurrent resolution:

            Senate Concurrent Resolution No. 9.

A concurrent resolution to urge the President and Congress of the United States to explore and support policies that will lead to the establishment of facilities within the United States for the reprocessing and recycling of spent nuclear fuel.

Whereas, The federal Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 called for the United States Department of Energy to begin collecting spent nuclear waste and develop a long-term plan for storage of the material. In 2002, Congress approved Yucca Mountain in Nevada as the location to allow the Department of Energy to establish a safe repository for high-level spent nuclear waste; and

Whereas, In 2010, the Department of Energy halted the project at Yucca Mountain when the construction authorization process was in progress, despite the Nuclear Waste Fund receiving more than $30 billion in revenue from electric customers throughout the United States in order to construct the facility and store the spent fuel; and

Whereas, The Argonne National Laboratory has developed a high-temperature method of recycling spent nuclear waste into fuel, known as pyrochemical processing. This process allows 100 times more of the energy in uranium ore to be used to produce electricity compared to current commercial reactors; and

Whereas, Extending the productive life of uranium ore through pyrochemical processing ensures almost inexhaustible supplies of low-cost uranium resources for the generation of electricity, minimizes the risk that used fuel could be stolen and used to produce weapons, and reduces the amount of nuclear waste and the time it must be isolated by almost 1,000 times; and

Whereas, Advanced non-light-water reactors currently under development in the United States and internationally have the potential to utilize used fuel from existing reactors as fuel, but according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, there are no reprocessing facilities currently operating within the United States; and

Whereas, The federal government’s inability to adequately store or reprocess almost 100,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel has adversely affected the residents of the state of Michigan. Michigan has paid more than $800 million into the Nuclear Waste Fund since 1983, but the federal government has failed to use it to permanently store nuclear waste in a way that serves the public; now, therefore, be it

Resolved by the Senate (the House of Representatives concurring), That we urge the President and Congress of the United States to explore and support policies that will lead to the establishment of facilities within the United States for the reprocessing and recycling of spent nuclear fuel; and be it further

Resolved, That copies of this resolution be transmitted to the President of the United States, the President of the United States Senate, the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, and the members of the Michigan congressional delegation.