George Voinovich: “I rise today to offer the Price- Anderson reauthorization bill as an amendment to the Energy Policy Act. Last year, as…”

“I rise today to offer the Price- Anderson reauthorization bill as an amendment to the Energy Policy Act. Last year, as the former chairman of the Nuclear Safety Subcommittee, I introduced the Price-Anderson reauthorization bill, S. 1360, that reauthorizes the insurance program for commercial nuclear reactors. The Price-Anderson Act was first passed back in 1957 and has been renewed three times since then. The current authorization expires on August 1 of this year. This amendment provides the insurance program for commercial nuclear powerplants and Department of Energy contractor employees. In my State of Ohio, this is very important for the contractor employees who are currently working at the Mound and Fernald facilities, former sites of nuclear facilities of the Department of Energy. This is the type of must-pass legislation that keeps the trains of Government running on time. I think it is important to note that during the previous administration, both the Department of Energy and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission issued reports to Congress recommending the reauthorization of Price-Anderson. The DOE and the NRC reports also called for a doubling of the annual premium paid by the nuclear reactors from $10 million to 20 million. This recommendation was made prior to the relicensing process. At that time, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission projected that up to half of our nuclear reactors would be retired instead of being relicensed.…”