Alan Simpson: “I thank the gentleman from Nebraska for his efforts in nonproliferation and his strong advocacy for this program and…”

“I thank the gentleman from Nebraska for his efforts in nonproliferation and his strong advocacy for this program and trying to become the expert. And really, he is what I consider maybe one of the foremost experts in the House on nonproliferation issues. I thank both the gentleman from Nebraska and the gentleman from California for their efforts in this area. It is a challenging issue for us. You know, I was interested to hear the $47 billion because I have heard $31 billion. I have heard $30 billion. There are all sorts of different estimates, and we haven't got the numbers of how they came to these conclusions. And when they look to the alternatives in this report that just came out from the Department, they said, if I remember correctly, the downblend activities had a cost that was much less. But if you look at the downblend alternatives, what they didn't add into it is that you would put that material in WIPP theoretically. First of all, you would have to get WIPP extended. It is supposed to be closed. So you have got a 15-year extension of what you would have to do. There was no cost in there for the operation of WIPP for those 15 years and what it was going to cost. So we are still having a hard time coming to grips with what the actual cost of the different alternatives are. This is one of those things that it is frustrating for our committee, I think, over the years for a lot of different things.…”