Political Quotes

“Mr. President, last Wednesday, the Department of Energy submitted a motion to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to withdraw its license application to construct a spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste repository at Yucca Mountain. What was the latest rationale for this? Simply because we need it too much. That might seem like creative interpretation on my part, but just last week, Secretary of Energy Steven Chu noted that due to the revival of the nuclear industry, Yucca Mountain's repository would hit its statutory capacity limit in the next several decades and would not meet future industry needs. Instead of moving forward with a permanent repository that billions of dollars have already been spent on and simply expanding the arbitrary limit the law puts on the size of the repository, spent nuclear fuel from commercial nuclear reactors will be stored onsite at over 100 locations across the country for at least the next several decades. If we do have the nuclear revival that many of us believe is needed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and meet our energy needs, the number of onsite storage locations across the country will only increase.…”