On the recordJuly 25, 2012
Madam Chair, first of all, we're dealing with nuclear regulatory authority, with nuclear power plants, and we're not dealing with small businesses. We are dealing with very large businesses. Secondly, we're dealing with permits for construction or modification of a nuclear power plant. Because of the disaster at Fukushima, hopefully, we learned from experience, it may very well be that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission will want to put out new regulations or modify old ones in light of what we have learned from what the Japanese didn't do right, and this would say that they could not promulgate any such regulation as long as unemployment is above 6 percent. As long as unemployment is above 6 percent, we must continue to risk all of our lives. That makes no sense. Second of all, yes, we want to do environmental streamlining. Well, what this bill says--and this would apply to this, too--is that if an environmental impact statement takes longer than a certain number of days, forget about it. But it's the sponsor, not the Nuclear Regulatory Agency, the sponsor that controls the timing of the EIS. So if you've got a terrible project which you know is an environmental disaster, all you have to do, under this bill, is to slow-walk the EIS because you control it, and then you don't have to worry about any environmental consequences. That's backwards, it's upside down, and it risks the public safety. I urge the adoption of this amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.
