Political Quotes

“Mr. Chairman, I certainly rise in opposition to this Markey amendment. The amendment would zero out an appropriation of $20 million for what I believe is an extremely important ongoing environmental nuclear waste reduction research program being conducted by the Department of Energy in Illinois and in Idaho. The program is known as the electrometallurgic treatment program. It shows, I believe, promise as a method to greatly reduce, reduce, not increase, the volume and toxicity of over 2,700 metric tons or more than 150 different types of spent nuclear fuel which is supported at various DOE sites throughout this Nation. It is a new and exciting treatment of spent fuel which also locks up and makes inaccessible plutonium that spent fuel contains. There is no proliferation here of plutonium. And that is what, when we talk about reprocessing, I think the gentleman must know; when we talk about reprocessing of nuclear waste, we are talking about the creation of pure plutonium. That alone is weapons grade plutonium. When we take that plutonium and we bind it with the actinides and the transuranic wastes, then you have no problem in that regard. And that is what this new process does. It is not reprocessing.”