Rod Grams: “I want to follow up on what the Senator from Louisiana was saying. Just last week, the courts reaffirmed what the…”

“I want to follow up on what the Senator from Louisiana was saying. Just last week, the courts reaffirmed what the Congress and also the Nation's taxpayers have known since 1982 when this contract, this agreement was worked out, and that is, the Department of Energy has the legal obligation to begin accepting nuclear waste by January 31, 1998. This ruling by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, the second highest court in the land, marked a historic transformation in the nuclear waste debate. We are no longer discussing whether or not DOE has a responsibility to accept the waste, but how quickly we can move toward the final disposal solution. As my colleagues know, the roadblocks have not been environmental or technological, only political. After nearly 15 years, and at a cost to the Nation's electric consumers of $12 billion, the courts appear to have finally cleared that path. So why are some of our colleagues still trying to raise new obstacles? Is it because they are opposed to finding a real resolution to this environmental crisis? I cannot believe anyone would want to see nuclear waste continue to pile up in some 35 States, 41 if you include waste produced by the Government. Many of those States' utility commissioners argue that the ratepayer had paid for the waste to be removed and stored at a single permanent site. It was the DOE's failure to live up to its end of the bargain that led to the highly publicized lawsuit against DOE.”