Jeff Merkley

There is tremendous concern about the possibility of the QRM and a 20-percent down payment requirement...

We have now, thankfully, outlawed the undocumented loans.

I have had a lot of conversations with people on the ground who have worked with families...

Senator Lamar Alexander is co-sponsor of the electric vehicle bill and been very involved on that front.

I want to praise my colleagues. Senator Snowe has been very involved and is the chief cosponsor of our bill for a National Energy Security Council.

That is kind of a different answer than the question I was asking though, in terms of comparing it to our other generally available transportation fuels at this point.

Does that fit, then, with the point that you were just making about carbon dioxide production, if you will, carbon dioxide footprint?

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Do not let go of it. Hold tight.

We have to take a look at those things because the upside risk is so substantial.

In 1972, there was a report from the predecessor organization, the Atomic Energy Commission, that recommended the Mark I system be discontinued because of unacceptable safety risks.

I express my deepest sympathies to the families in Japan, victims of the triple tragedy, the earthquake, the tsunami and certainly the nuclear disaster.

Certainly we have to be prepared in far better ways than simply saying that something would be bad.

I am going to interrupt you because I only have a limited amount of time and actually you dodged the basic question which was, is our venting system different from the Japanese system?

We need to apply a stress test to our nuclear plants and understand what the weaknesses are.

Here again you did not answer my core question which is, these plugs that are apparently in the design of at least one of those reactors that are on the bottom side, are those, do we have a similar design and that is a concern in American…

So my understanding is that a lot of these emissions are the result of actually the fracking fluid carrying the methane to the surface.

Why is Pennsylvania's Department allowing this highly contaminated fluid just to be put right into a creek?

So I may have misinterpreted the pictures that were presented in your slides, but it looked like pipes coming out of the brine treatment facility into a creek and it is just dumping all of this ineffectively treated, highly contaminated…

But if it was a newer facility, if you were looking at newer facility in Pennsylvania that had been designed specifically, we would find that all of these problems had been addressed?

We found no verified instance of hydraulic fracturing harming groundwater.

So basically, if he had been running his water 30 years ago, he would have had exactly the same problem?

That is what I am asking.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

So in that area, despite the Halliburton loophole, you feel like you have enforcement powers?

I also wish to congratulate my colleague from New Hampshire. It is an extraordinary privilege to serve in this Chamber and it is a long tradition of the Chamber to utilize one's first speech or maiden speech as an opportunity to address…