Political Quotes

“My amendment is very simple. Of the $733 million appropriated in this bill for nuclear energy research at the Department of Energy, it separates out $10 million to spend on a cooperative effort with NASA to restart the production of plutonium- 238. Advancing the state of nuclear energy technology was the initial mission of the DOE, and it was hugely successful, developing technologies now used in power plants, submarines and deep space missions. This last focus is now one of the smallest: DOE spends about $40 million a year building plutonium-238 radioisotope thermal generators, RTGs, for NASA and for national security purposes. This program began in the fifties. RTGs flew on all of the Apollo missions and many times since. In deep space, RTGs are often the only possible source of power. Unfortunately, in the early nineties, the U.S. shut down plutonium- 238 production, and since then, the Department of Energy has been using stockpiled material and material purchased from Russia to build these devices. Recently, though, Russia refused to continue that relationship, and our supply of plutonium-238 is almost exhausted. There are no other viable ways to provide this power, so the U.S. must restart production to allow any deep space or national security uses to continue. This project has been requested in the last three budget requests, under the Bush and Obama administrations.…”