Political Quotes

“This particular section provides $700 million-plus for nuclear power research, various kinds. The chairman spoke to this issue a few moments ago. The purpose of my amendment is to carve out of that $700 million-plus a sum of $20 million to restart America's program on recycling spent nuclear fuel. We currently call this spent nuclear fuel a ``waste'' when, in fact, it still possesses about 97 percent of the energy that was originally in the uranium and then processed once through the light water reactors. The purpose of the amendment is to restart. In the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, America undertook a program to close the nuclear fuel cycle. That was abandoned in 1994 after a successful effort to recycle and to use that energy that is found in the nuclear fuel. Unfortunately, now this spent nuclear fuel, which we call a ``waste product,'' is sitting at every reactor in the United States and mostly around the world, creating a significant hazard. We only need to think about Fukushima's little swimming pool that went dry and of the meltdown that occurred at that point. We need to recycle and completely use, or as much as possible completely use, the energy in these spent nuclear fuel pools. If we do so, we can do it in a way that significantly reduces the hazards and that significantly reduces the longevity of the problem from some 200,000 to some 300 years and create an enormous energy opportunity. This is a beginning.…”