So step one is to get everything into dry storage within 6 years.

This accountability is important.

Mercury containment is the highest environmental priority in and around Oak Ridge in Tennessee due to releases into the East Fort Poplar Creek.

I read your op-ed, and those are very appropriate questions, important to our national security, and they cost a lot of money.

I would like to see some estimate of what the backlog of projects is, what the estimated work plan is over the next several years.

When the Senate functions, which it occasionally does, it does so because of collegiality such as that exists between the Senator from California and me.

I celebrate any example of your coming in under budget.

Governing is about setting priorities, and given our current fiscal constraints--especially on non-defense spending--we are going to have to make some tough decisions this year to make sure the highest priorities are funded.

I look forward to treating her with at least as much courtesy as she has always treated me.

Would you take a look at that cleanup? That is extremely important to us.

I want to help create an environment in which you can succeed.

But the bottom line is the only problem you need to solve is you need water to cool the reactor, and you need the power to pump the water.

But let me be clear: Yucca Mountain can and should be part of the solution.

I question the level of priority this administration is placing on our Nation's critical infrastructure.

I think your legislation that moves towards a pilot scale storage facility is probably the thing that we could bring on the fastest, 6 to 8 years perhaps.

If there were a private repository, not operated by the Department of Energy but licensed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, that was willing to take your used fuel, would it be appropriate to use such a repository for that?

Do you have sufficient resources at the Commission to complete the licensing activities for Watts Bar II this year?

You still need a permanent repository to store your fuel.

I believe you said it is not just who has the biggest computer. It is also who has the personnel to operate such.

I know Senator Feinstein, for example, would like to get used fuel out of California from closed plants to somewhere else.

You mean the material arrives, and within 6 years, it's in a dry cask, is that what you're saying?

The President's budget estimates the Nuclear Waste Fund has a balance of $36 billion at the beginning of fiscal year 2016.

I do not think there is a terrorist anywhere that could get into that building that they have got that houses those redundant steps.

The obstacles here are the United States Congress and the President of the United States. That is us.

It doesn't make common sense that we would want to be a great country with great ports and a great inland waterway system, that we would be collecting money from taxes on cargo and from users of inland waterway systems to reconstruct those…