[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 118 (Tuesday, September 9, 1997)]
[House]
[Page H7019]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        NUCLEAR WASTE POLICY ACT

  (Mr. GIBBONS asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. GIBBONS. Mr. Speaker, the rhetoric surrounding H.R. 1270, the 
Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1997, is often technical and rarely 
illustrative in a personal manner, where the impact will be the 
greatest. Many American cities around this country are going to be 
affected by this act. Typical American cities such as St. Louis, MO, 
will become nuclear refuse hubs as radioactive waste is transported and 
funneled from subsidized nuclear powerplants through St. Louis to the 
proposed nuclear storage site in Nevada. Residents of St. Louis should 
know that this waste will travel along Interstate 70, next to North 
Memorial Drive and the Mississippi River, meaning that if an accident 
were to occur and a small fraction of the shipping cask's contents were 
released, it would be sufficient to contaminate a 42-mile square area 
that would take 460 days to clean up. This would devastate downtown St. 
Louis, endanger the people living there, contaminate the Mississippi 
River, threaten every city and person downstream.
  Mr. Speaker, my colleagues were sent to Congress to serve and protect 
their constituents, not mandate a physical, environmental, and economic 
disaster upon them.

                          ____________________