Political Quotes

“the waste was supposed to have been taken by the Federal Government for safe, central storage by, as I said earlier, 1998. Will that happen, Mr. President? The answer is clearly no. No, because we have not addressed the problem; we simply put it off. Even though this $12 billion collection from American ratepayers to pay for this storage has gone into the Federal coffers, and even though a Federal court has reaffirmed that the Government has a legal obligation to take the waste by 1998, still, today, there is no plan for action. By 1998, 23 reactors in 14 States are going to be full. What are we going to do then? Are we going to shift over to some other power? We are going to have to do something. By the year 2010, 65 reactors in 29 States will be full. What are we going to do then? The conservative estimate is that 25 percent of our nuclear plants will not be able to build onsite storage and will be forced to shut down. That would mean the loss of over 5 percent of our Nation's electric generating capacity. When is Yucca Mountain going to be ready for a permanent repository? Not until at least the year 2015. What do we do in the meantime? Simply leave it there? Let the litigation mount up for our inability to honor a contractual commitment? How good is a Government contract if the Government can simply ignore it? Therefore, in the mind of this Senator, what this Nation needs and what S. 104 is all about is a temporary solution.”