Political Quotes

“I come to the floor again to continue to identify and educate you on the various locations where we store high- level nuclear waste around this country and the various positions that our colleagues in the other Chamber have voted either for or against, in hopes that eventually the public will become well informed and that they will take action through their elected officials to do even what the Blue Ribbon Commission suggested, which is decide and locate a long-term geological storage facility. This is not new. We've been doing it for decades. The Nuclear Waste Policy Act was established in 1982. The amendments were passed through this Chamber and signed into law in 1987, which identified a long-term geological repository at a place called Yucca Mountain in the desert in Nevada. What I've been attempting to do throughout this past year and a half--I chair a subcommittee that has direct responsibility for this-- is identify different locations. So today we go to a place very close to here. In fact, I think it's only 43 miles from the District of Columbia, and that's a place called Calvert Cliffs. I like to compare and contrast it with where our nuclear waste should be stored, not in a decade or two from now, but at this very moment where it should be. Calvert Cliffs is in Maryland, and at Calvert Cliffs there are 1,300 metric tons of uranium, of spent fuel, onsite versus Yucca Mountain, which is a mountain in a desert where we have no nuclear waste onsite.…”