Rob Andrews: “Mr. Speaker, colleagues, our country is living on borrowed time. A quantity of highly enriched uranium or plutonium the…”

“Mr. Speaker, colleagues, our country is living on borrowed time. A quantity of highly enriched uranium or plutonium the size of a grapefruit that could be put into a vehicle the size of a U-Haul truck could result in the detonation of a nuclear weapon about the size of that which leveled Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Loose nuclear materials have been too loose and too free for too long around the world. This was the first and most urgent recommendation of the 9/11 Commission. Frankly, we have been moving at too slow of a pace with too little of a focus and without sufficient funding to get this problem under control. Today's long overdue legislation is a necessary first step toward protecting the American people against these egregious consequences. This legislation properly focuses on the problem of loose nuclear material, the origins of which and the whereabouts of which we do not know. It focuses upon nuclear material that is in hands that are not properly being secured, it focuses on nuclear materials that are being properly secured, and it expedites the process of converting reactors that use highly enriched uranium to reactors that would use low-enriched uranium and, therefore, be much, much less of a risk.”