Shelley Berkley: “Mr. Chairman, two nights ago this House passed legislation that would prohibit dangerous trucks coming to this country…”

“Mr. Chairman, two nights ago this House passed legislation that would prohibit dangerous trucks coming to this country from Mexico. Certainly trucks containing nuclear waste going through our neighborhoods is more serious than dangerous Mexican trucks, which we prohibited from coming onto our highways. It seems to me there is not one of us that can go home to our constituents and say we voted down a piece of legislation that would demand that the Department of Energy actually publish the proposed transportation routes of 77,000 tons of toxic nuclear waste. This nuclear waste is going to be coming across all our neighborhoods, all of our towns, through our communities, through 43 States en route to Yucca Mountain, Nevada. Now, I appreciate the fact that both the chairman and the ranking member suggest that perhaps this is premature, but listening to what the administration has been saying with their new reliance on nuclear energy and the fact that in the committee language itself, although there has not been completion of the scientific study saying Yucca Mountain will be the Nation's repository, certainly nobody reading the signs can say that this country is not trying very hard to make Yucca Mountain, which has been selected as the only site, the one that is acceptable for nuclear waste. I might add, however, that it is not acceptable, and it is very apparent that it is not.”