Political Quotes

“I think the likely place that this mercury is going to come is to my district, Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Everybody within DOE and the NNSA, the National Nuclear Security Administration, expects this mercury to come to the Y-12 National Security Complex. We are in the middle of modernization, sweeping modernization, new facilities, because we are the Fort Knox for highly enriched uranium for our country, and we basically received a mandate from the Congress to more properly secure this material. We've got a new design basis threat. We have new security challenges. This is about a $42 million price tag. I understand there are ways to pay for it, but it's going to go somewhere, and when you push on one side of the balloon, out pops the other. We just want to raise the concern because probably no place in America wants to be the place that this mercury comes to. You've raised the concerns about mercury. We can safely store it and we do. We have got an excellent record and reputation. But we want to make sure that this is done properly.”