Political Quotes

“I remind everyone in this Chamber of the charts Chairman Murkowski showed us earlier. They show nuclear waste stored in 80 sites across America. They show another chart with one site, the Nevada test site, and they claim that all the waste will be moved from these many sites to this one site. This simply is wrong, and it is misleading. Nuclear waste will remain at the nuclear reactors for as long as these nuclear reactors operate and long afterward. Nuclear waste will be stored in these cooling ponds at these reactors during their operation and after they shut down. Dry cask storage will be required at many of these reactors, whether or not S. 1936 passes. Those Senators who believe that S. 1936 will get nuclear waste out of their backyards are misinformed, and they are wrong. The first chart of the junior Senator from Alaska, the chart with waste stored across the Nation, represents our future under S. 1936, as well as our past. In addition to waste in the backyards that it is already in, it will be in the backyards of places all over this country along the transportation routes. Remember, Mr. President, we have already had seven nuclear waste accidents, 1 for every 300 trips. We are going to have thousands of trips; 12,000 shipments alone will go through the State of Illinois; thousands through Massachusetts; almost 12,000 through Nebraska and Wyoming. This legislation is wrongheaded.”