Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I rise to thank the Senator. Once again, it has been a great pleasure to work with him. I do think we have a lot of this bill in common, but we do have some points of difference, and I want to say a little bit about my point of difference. I very much want to leave a world for my grandchildren where there is not danger from nuclear weapons or nuclear fuels, and today I don't believe I can say we have achieved that. The ranking member was correct, the head of the NRC did testify in his view the hot rods were safe for 100 years in those spent fuel pools. Well, you know, there were problems with spent fuel pools at Fukushima. I think, as life goes on, we are going to see more of that. We know cladding has to be improved. We know that, perhaps, the design basis of a new nuclear reactor has to meet events which are not necessarily predicted. Who would have thought a 47-foot tsunami would hit Fukushima? But it happened. I am in California. We are in the ring of fire. Sure enough, there have been earthquakes in the southern tip of South America, in Asia, in Christchurch, New Zealand, going right around. These have been very large earthquakes, approaching 9, and the concern is, what happens next. So I think safety is a very real problem, and I think as we appropriate monies we should be concerned with safety. Spent fuel pools were designed to harbor hot rods for a relatively short period of time.…”