Scott Klug: “My colleagues, this is an amendment to try to attempt to terminate the GTMHR program, which is a gas turbine nuclear…”

“My colleagues, this is an amendment to try to attempt to terminate the GTMHR program, which is a gas turbine nuclear reactor project. But let me, if I can, put two numbers in perspective. Taxpayers have already spent more than $900 million to develop this technology. This bill in front of us appropriates $20 million under energy research supply activities to fund the project and if we continue to fund the project, the General Accounting Office estimates that we will spend nearly $2.6 billion in additional funds. It is always interesting to come to this floor to try to argue to terminate science projects, because we are invariably told that science projects are either are in two stages of development. It is early enough in the project where we do not know if the technology is going to pay off, so we cannot stop it, or we have invested so much money in the project over the years, cannot afford to terminate it so we still have to spend the money. This amendment will simply eliminate the funding this year from the appropriations bill for $20 million the amount appropriated to GTMHR.”