Ed Markey: “I will use some of that time to praise the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Barton) for the process that he put in place for us…”

“I will use some of that time to praise the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Barton) for the process that he put in place for us to, on the one hand, pass a particularly odious piece of legislation which I historically have opposed but at the same time sweetening it with a provision that will deal with a palpable threat to our society, which is that the terrorist organizations that are under the control of Osama bin Laden have clearly indicated that nuclear power plants are near the top of their list of targets if they could successfully pull off one of those attacks. So built into this legislation is something which I think every Democrat and every Republican can support wholeheartedly. It requires the President to do an immediate assessment of the current vulnerabilities of the plants to terrorist attack and what aspect of the defense of these plants should be the responsibility of the Federal governments. It secondly requires the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to do a rule-making to upgrade its rules on the design basis threat which establishes the parameters for what the licensees need to defend against. Third, it requires the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to issue new rules to enhance the security of transportation of nuclear materials. Fourth, it codifies into law the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's operational safeguards response evaluation preparedness which tests security at nuclear plants through force-on-force exercises.”