Political Quotes

“About an hour and a half ago we had a very important debate on this floor concerning some 30-plus metric tons of unused surplus plutonium to be disposed of in South Carolina at the mixed oxide fuel facility. The debate went on. I want to thank my colleagues on the majority side for elucidating the issue and bringing to our attention, as did I, that we have some 34 metric tons of plutonium lying around in various depositories around the United States. And from our discussion earlier, it is pretty clear it is not going to be disposed of any time soon. Now, this bill would set about the United States putting together facilities that would create even more plutonium somewhere in the range of 80 nuclear bomb pits. This is the essential element in a nuclear bomb. For what purpose? Well, we really probably can't talk about it here in this public setting, but it appears to be a rather unclear purpose as to why we would need to build a new facility at a multibillion dollar cost for the production of more plutonium pits when we have 34 metric tons of them sitting in various repositories. So I guess I just kind of ask: Why are we doing that? Well, this amendment would simply limit the PF-4 facility in Los Alamos, New Mexico, to no more than 10 pits a year, which they can produce.…”