Political Quotes

“I thank my colleague for his comments. I now yield to the gentleman from the State of California (Mr. McNerney), a member of the Energy and Commerce Committee, a good friend, also. Mr. McNERNEY. Mr. Speaker, I thank Mr. Shimkus for yielding. We work together on nuclear waste. I have been to the Yucca Mountain site, and I have seen the work that has gone on there. But, first of all, I just want to say there are a lot of issues out there that we are dealing with here in Congress; so how important is nuclear waste? I mean, we have got the gun issue; we have climate change; we have the economy; we want to create jobs; trade. I mean, there are a lot of issues; so how important is nuclear waste? I mean, it has been festering for decades--for decades--so how urgent is it? You know, we haven't had a major accident yet, but there are tens of thousands of tons of high-level nuclear waste sitting in relatively exposed conditions, so what could possibly go wrong? I mean, high-level nuclear waste is so radioactive that it emits heat. It emits an immense amount of heat. So we could--I will give you a couple of things that could go wrong. The waste could be commandeered and then made into weapons. It doesn't have to be made into a nuclear fission bomb. It could be made into a dirty bomb. Just put a bunch of nuclear waste with explosive material in some city and that city would be uninhabitable for the rest of our lifetimes, for sure. There also could be waste leakage.…”