Lisa Murkowski

I was disappointed with the Administration's overall request for fiscal year 2013.

The Nation is seeking an equal opportunity to apply for such funding and participate with other entities on Long Island.

This provides a win-win for both the Nation and the State of New York, allowing for a beneficial partnership.

The Nation appreciates the work of Committee member Senator Murkowski to support hydrokinetic projects by sponsoring a bill, S. 630.

The Nation recommends that the Committee develop legislation that would require DOI to expedite fee to trust applications for tribal energy projects.

Yes, 14 years, and that is not only time, but as I mentioned earlier, that is considerable resources.

So, we would not then--we, the American public, would not see that benefit there in terms of----

I do think, Mr. Chairman, that this is an issue that we as a committee are going to have to figure out how we work through this.

I think Senator Kyl led, or laid it out relatively clearly in terms of the ceding of jurisdiction, ceding of authority here.

It would seem to me that not only is this ceding some authority from the Congress to the executive branch, but, in fact, you are adding additional time, additional delays, and, of course, that translates to additional costs for whatever…

I think it is pretty unusual, and I would like to understand from the Administration's perspective where we are going as a policy initiative.

I do share your sense of urgency though, that we must get moving on this.

But the important thing that I think your question raises is the linkage between the storage and the disposal.

Recognizing--I'm assuming that you've got these stranded sites all over the country. Do you move to one consolidated storage, or is it regional?

You have mentioned that we have ten stranded sites where we're incurring pretty considerable expense for the security in these areas.

Of course you do have some apprehension out there now as we look at some of these quasi-Federal agencies that have this independence and this autonomy, and have created some serious problems.

But if you structure it as has been proposed with access to the funding that you have recommended, do you have any suggestions as to how we insulate such an entity to prevent the politics from being a driving force within the…

You do have to give that promise or make good on that promise that it will have a permanent repository.

We're recommending is an adaptive, staged, consent-based approach.

Any attempt to force a solution, top-down, a federally mandated solution... is going to take longer, it's going to cost more, and you're going to have less--fewer odds of success.

We want to give to that future generation the options... to make their choices and make this work out all well.

We have a fundamental obligation. It's a legal obligation; it's an ethical obligation to the generation that follows us.

The cost of this is just getting out of hand: a heavy cost to utility ratepayers, a heavy cost to the American taxpayer, a heavy cost to the communities that have been unwilling hosts to long term storage.

I think I was wrong. I think we're actually in a worse position than we were before.

Taxpayers thus far have paid over $2 billion in damages resulting from the government's failure to take title to the used nuclear fuel.