Political Quotes

“I thank my colleague from Illinois. I just want to say thank you for your leadership on this issue, among many other things. This is an issue that is very important. It is important not just for the country. It is important for my State, and it's important for my district. The 11th District of Illinois is kind of north central Illinois. It's a beautiful place. Come spend money there sometime. But we have three nuclear power plants there. In fact, at each nuclear power plant of course there is stored nuclear waste on site. And then we also have an area that was intended to be early on, the original site of what was going to be nuclear reprocessing in this country, and now it is really just a pool with stored nuclear waste in it. So in one district--I think there's 131 locations across the country where we are storing this nuclear waste, and in my district alone we have four of those. So this is an issue that is very important not just to the people of Illinois, the people of the 11th District, but mainly to the people of this country. I mean, Yucca Mountain, the fund was created for this sole purpose of finding a place, a safe place, a safe alternative to store nuclear waste. Now, going back to the very beginning part of the debate as to why do we need nuclear power, I think we have addressed that. I think most Americans are on board with the understanding that it is good, clean power. It provides a lot of great jobs.…”