Nuclear Power

Floor Speech

NUCLEAR POWER -- (Senate - October 02, 2008)

Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I don't want to repeat what has already been said by Senator Voinovich recently, but I do want to explain why I am cosponsoring legislation designed to tackle in a comprehensive way the biggest issue still outstanding in our efforts to revitalize nuclear power for this Nation, that being how we handle the waste.

I also want to talk about the retirement of the ranking member of the Senate Energy Committee, Senator PETE DOMENICI, who I will so deeply miss in the future.

Concerning the nuclear bill, I am cosponsoring the U.S. Nuclear Fuel Management Corporation Establishment Act that has been crafted by Senator VOINOVICH, with Senator Sessions and a number of other Senators, and I have already cosponsored the SMART Act, which was crafted by the ranking member of the Energy Committee, Senator Domenici, and cosponsored by Senator Sessions and others, since the two bills work together to set up the policy and the management structure to improve how we handle the waste that nuclear powerplants generate.

While it is obviously too late in this session of Congress for either bill to advance, I want to say that I am certainly intending to help reintroduce both bills next year and in working next session to merge them into a comprehensive plan to recycle and then properly store the remaining waste that results from nuclear power production.

I am interested in working on these bills because I care about reducing greenhouse gases. And nuclear power is the best proven technology to produce power for this country without producing any carbon emissions. For anyone serious about tackling carbon emissions, finding a way to grow the next generation of nuclear power is vital.

Today nuclear energy provides about 20 percent of the Nation's electricity. As Senator Voinovich may have mentioned those 104 operating powerplants save America from producing about 681 million metric tons a year of carbon dioxide. If we are going to deal with global warming, we must find a way not just to keep nuclear power going, but also growing to help meet this Nation's growing thirst for electricity.

I was in France in late June and toured the French nuclear waste recycling facilities at LaHague. Recycling allows you to gain twice as much nuclear power from a given amount of uranium ore. More importantly, it cuts substantially the amount and the half-life, and in some cases, the toxicity of the waste that you later have to store. That is important for the environment.

In these two bills, the Nuclear Fuel Management Corp. will set up a Government corporation to take authority to manage spent nuclear fuel and provide both interim storage, the development of geologic repositories, such as the Yucca Mountain facility currently under consideration, and also to handle the construction and operation of any reprocessing and fuel fabrication facilities.

The SMART bill is designed to further the process of siting and advancing the construction of up to two reprocessing plants, since it would help to encourage cities in this country to welcome such plants. These bills, perhaps pared with one introduced last year to remove some potential regulatory hurdles to construction and opening of a Yucca Mountain repository, would effectively amount to a comprehensive solution to the waste issue. They would be the final pieces to the puzzle. That is the case because of the efforts of Senator PETE DOMENICI.

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