Political Quotes

“this amendment bars the Department of Energy from planning for nuclear waste transportation in any fiscal year in which funds are deemed to be insufficient by the Federal Energy Management Agency to ensure adequate and trained emergency response teams along all the transportation routes to be used in each such fiscal year. On its face this sounds like a good idea, but when we look at it, it is another amendment designed to prevent transportation of nuclear waste. It is going to create a circumstance in which, instead of addressing this issue once and for all, we create now yet again another regulatory mechanism, where every year we have to fight in this Congress over whether we are going to have in place the necessary structure to move ahead with transporting the spent nuclear fuel of this country to permanent storage. This amendment would prevent the Department of Energy from beginning to accept nuclear waste in the year 2002. Last year a Federal court said that the United States has a legal obligation to begin acceptance of nuclear waste in the year 1998. H.R. 1270 provides for that acceptance at least by the year 2002. This amendment would delay the beginning of that acceptance for years.”