Pete Domenici: “When Congress passed the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, we created a contract with the country's taxpayers that the…”

“When Congress passed the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, we created a contract with the country's taxpayers that the Government of the United States would accept responsibility for waste from the reactors providing them with power across these United States. We have now watched for 15 years while the date for this permanent geological repository has moved from an original target of 1998 to the current earliest possible date of 2010. Even though progress at Yucca Mountain in the last few years has finally been significant, the taxpayers impacted by their regional utilities are faced with continued storage of high-level waste at 80 sites in 41 States. Many of those storage sites are near population centers and significant funds are now being expended to keep those multiple sites safe and secure. Many of those sites are nearly full; 23 will be full in 1998, 1 year from now. Incidentally, nuclear energy is still important in the United States.”