Joe Barton: “in 1981 and 1982, I was a White House Fellow in the Department of Energy and served at a very low level on the task…”

“in 1981 and 1982, I was a White House Fellow in the Department of Energy and served at a very low level on the task force that developed the recommendations that later became the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982. Today, I stand on the floor as one of the chief sponsors of this resolution, along with the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Boucher), my good friend. If the Lord shines upon me, I may be fortunate enough to live long enough to be alive the day we ship the first shipment of high-level nuclear waste to the repository, which will probably be sometime in the year 2015 to 2022. If that happens, I will have spent almost 40 years of my adult life in some way or the other addressing this issue. I think it is time to send this resolution to the floor of the other body for a vote so that we can let the Nuclear Regulatory Commission receive an application from the Department of Energy in the next 2 years about this license application. The money has been put into the trust fund. The resolution does not deal with any of the transportation issues; we will deal with those later. There is absolutely tremendous bipartisan support. The time has come to stop talking about this and to vote on it. I hope that we vote in the affirmative at the appropriate time.”