Ed Markey: “Mr. Chairman, as George Gershwin might say, "It's very clear, plutonium is here to stay. Not for a year, but forever and…”

“Mr. Chairman, as George Gershwin might say, "It's very clear, plutonium is here to stay. Not for a year, but forever and a day. The Rockies may crumble, Yucca may tumble, they're only made of clay. But plutonium is here to stay." That is the problem, Mr. Chairman. It is here to stay; 10,000 years, 20,000 years. Nobody knows how long. This bill presumes that it is very safe. "Do not worry about it: We are picking Nevada," says the Congress. "We do not have any geologic or scientific evidence that supports our decision, but we have decided that we are getting it off of all the sites that it has been generated at and we are moving it to Nevada." Mr. Chairman, in this legislation, we are going to suspend a lot of protections which we give to Americans. We are going to decide here today that each American could be exposed to 100 millirems of radiation. Now, in Sweden the standard is 10. In Switzerland it is 10. In Canada it is 1. Even at the New Mexico waste isolation pilot project, it is 15 millirems. But here, we are going to say that for every 286 persons exposed, that one of them will contract a cancer. We are going to decide that today. We are going to establish a level that does not allow the EPA to set these standards. We will decide them. That is what this bill says, and that is wrong.”