Shelley Berkley: “later today, the Bush administration, with the aid and comfort of the Republican Congress, will once again propose to…”

“later today, the Bush administration, with the aid and comfort of the Republican Congress, will once again propose to remove all congressional oversight of nuclear waste in this country to be stored at Yucca Mountain and double the amount of nuclear waste to be stored in the mountain. Let me remind everybody that Secretary Bodman, the Secretary of Energy, just testified last week that he has no idea how much Yucca Mountain is going to cost, and he has no idea how long it is going to take to ensure that they could build Yucca Mountain; but he wants to remove congressional oversight over the nuclear waste budget. Let me remind everyone, there are no radiation standards now. The court threw them out. There is no way to safely transport nuclear waste across our country. And after 9/11, it is incomprehensible to me that we have not come up with a threat assessment. There are no canisters that currently exist that will not corrode. We have a thousand e-mails from the scientists at the National Geologic Survey that demonstrate that they fudged or made up the scientific data that went into making the decision that Yucca Mountain was okay. Now they want to eliminate the oversight of Congress over the budget of Yucca Mountain. I think that would be a dereliction of our duty. We ought to stand up to the administration and do our job. ____________________”