Political Quotes

“During the fifties and sixties, we were engaged in what was known as the cold war. We could not build nuclear weapons fast enough, and we surely built a lot of them. Beginning in the eighties and on into the nineties, we got a little more sane. We and Russia and others became somewhat more sane about what to do with our nuclear weapons, and we began to dismantle many of the nuclear weapons we had, as did Russia. In the nineties, an agreement was reached between the United States and Russia on the disposition--that is, the ultimate disposition and disposal--of the unused, unnecessary plutonium that both the United States and Russia held in their various stockpiles. That was a good thing. You don't want this stuff lying around. You don't want people to get their hands on it, particularly terrorist organizations. So there was a common understanding between Russia and the United States on the disposal of this unused, unnecessary, and extraordinarily dangerous material. The United States undertook to do this in a facility in South Carolina known as the MOX facility, and we have been at it since the late nineties, putting together a facility. It hasn't gone well. In fact, it has gone very, very badly; and in the recent last 2 or 3 years, the administration has decided that this is not going to work and that the facility as designed should be put in cold storage and there should be a new way of dealing with this issue.…”