[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 67 (Wednesday, May 7, 2003)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5798-S5801]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             ENERGY POLICY

  Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, I am here this morning to speak to the bill 
that is now before us, S. 14, brought to the floor yesterday by Senator 
Pete Domenici, the chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources 
Committee of our Senate. It is a work product that a good many of us 
have been involved in for well over 3 years, in looking at the issue 
prior to the Bush administration coming to town and certainly with the 
initiative of the Bush administration to recognize the need for a 
national energy policy and to produce for us an outline of their vision 
of a national policy and asking the Congress to work its will over the 
last good number of years to produce that policy.
  Of course, that came in the backdrop of brownouts and blackouts in 
California, of a jigsaw or certainly unprecedented ties or ups and 
downs in the gas markets of our country and a real recognition that 
over the last good number of decades the Congress of the United States 
and our Government had not minded the energy store of our country very 
well.
  We were resting on the laurels of a relatively substantial surplus in 
electrical energy--the ability to produce hydrocarbons here at home; be 
less dependent upon foreign oil; and, to watch all of that change with 
the growth of our economy and some of the other government regulations 
that denied or limited the ability to produce energy for our country.
  We know during the decade of the 1990s we went into a mode of 
deregulating the electrical industry all in the name of spreading that 
surplus out around the countryside but all based on the premise that 
you could lower the cost to the consumer because, in fact, there was a 
surplus.
  Of course, during the decade of the 1990s we saw that surplus rapidly 
disappear with the phenomenal growth we went through with the country 
and the fact we were not adding to the energy base of our country. I 
believe while consumers in the short term experienced some relief--and 
ratepayers in the end--we saw price spikes, instability, brownouts, and 
a greater concern about a constant, stable flow of energy--the high-
quality kind that is critical to fuel an industry and making sure that 
it was available upon call and when necessary, something that in the 
late 1990s and certainly at the turn of the decade was all in question.
  That is one of the reasons we are here on the floor debating energy, 
and will be for the next several weeks in our effort to pass a 
comprehensive energy policy that will promote the kind of production 
that will advance conservation, and that will certainly promote the 
protection of the environment and the production of clean energy. In 
all of that context, what is most significant is, in fact, the 
production area. We now know with our capabilities and our technologies 
that we can produce it cleanly in a nonpolluting way, or certainly in a 
less impacting way to enhance the availability of supply.

  One of the areas I have spent a good deal of time on over the last 
number of years is the issue of nuclear energy. Certainly during the 
decades of the 1970s and the 1980s and into the 1990s there was a 
concerted effort on the part of a variety of interests to argue that 
somehow nuclear energy was not a safe form of energy; that it was one 
that we ought to take out of our energy portfolio. What they failed to 
recognize was that about 20 percent of our generating capacity is based 
on nuclear energy. It really was a scare tactic to panic an uninformed 
public, on the safety and the stability of nuclear energy, into a sense 
of urgency as related to eliminating nuclear energy. During that period 
of time as knowledge began to grow, another fact began to emerge out of 
all of these issues. That was that nuclear energy was rapidly becoming 
a least cost part of our total energy package--that the cost of 
production was stable, that the reactors had operated very effectively, 
and that in retrofitting them, modernizing them, relicensing them, we 
were extending their life and getting greater efficiency.
  In the last spike in our electrical costs, the nuclear energy 
industry--the electrical side of it--became the least cost producer of 
electrical energy.
  At the same time, we have not brought any new reactors on line. The 
public and/or the interest groups have driven the costs by their 
concern over the siting of them and the building of them. And the 
constant demand of retrofitting them and building into them 
comprehensive and redundant systems has driven the costs and the 
ability to build one beyond the reach of the consumer and the 
ratepayer, and, of course, therefore, the utilities.
  Understanding that we continue to push forward not only to develop a 
waste repository system to take the high-level waste out of the interim 
storage facilities at these reactors, as we have promised the public we 
would do, and move them to a permanent repository that is now sited and 
in the process of being licensed in Yucca Mountain in the deserts of 
Nevada, but we also have opened up another geological repository at 
Carlsbad, NM, known as a waste isolation pilot plant that handles 
transuranic waste--what I call ``garbage waste'', such as the tools and 
smocks of nuclear workers. The WIPP facility takes waste from our 
defense facilities, but the point is this facility has been operating 
for a number of years and we have demonstrated that we can deal with 
this type of waste safely.
  This government has worked hard to keep good on its promise while 
there are many who would deter it and try to deny those promises to the 
consuming public, arguing that somehow we couldn't handle waste; 
therefore, we shouldn't have new reactors, and, certainly, therefore, 
we shouldn't build them if we couldn't manage the waste stream.
  While all of that was going on, another issue began to emerge in the 
context of global concern. It was the issue of climate change. I will 
be speaking to that in a few moments. But the issue of climate change 
began to be argued by many as a product of greenhouse gas emissions, 
and in part certainly produced by the emission of greenhouse gases from 
the production of energy, and mostly electrical energy. While that 
grew, it allowed many of us to argue that the ability to produce 
electricity through a nuclear reactor was nonemitting, or an emission-
free system. That has clearly become recognized. I think many of our 
experts now in the field of energy worldwide, as we see the need for 
energy constantly growing, will admit that over the course of the 
decades to come 20 percent of the electrical production, which is 
nuclear in this country, probably has to grow into 30 or maybe 40 
percent of the total package to work to keep our air clean.

  In France, I believe now nearly 80 percent of their electrical 
capacity is nuclear. Many other countries are following that route. 
They are managing their waste effectively and responsibly. It is also 
true in Japan. Here is a nation that not very long ago was most 
antinuclear for obvious reasons. But they came to recognize also that 
the ability to produce electricity for a growing economy in their 
country could be produced safely by nuclear energy.
  All of that realization and all of that work in part came together 
with the

[[Page S5799]]

coming to town of President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, 
and the selection of Spencer Abraham as our Secretary of Energy--all 
recognizing that in the course of this we were going to have to get a 
new reactor design and new concepts that would allow us to advance the 
cause of electrical generation through the nuclear industry.
  As a result of that growing interest and as a result of all of the 
changes that occurred in the world over the last several decades, and 
the clear understanding that the energy we produce for today's market 
and future markets needs to be clean, there is a much better 
understanding of the role that can be played by the nuclear industry if 
certain kinds of things are allowed to happen. I believe those certain 
kinds of things are new reactor designs--what we call new passive 
designs, those systems that are designed to shut themselves down 
automatically if problems occur instead of to be activated manually by 
human operators. We believe--and the industry certainly believes--that 
all of that is highly possible today. There are models out there that 
demonstrate that capability.
  There are many in the scientific and engineering community who 
recognize the validity of being able to do that. It is with that, and 
the concept of new generations of reactor systems, that we began to 
look at the potential of this country's building that kind of 
prototype--a generation IV, passive reactor system that is clean, that 
burns its fuel more efficiently, that is extremely robust in its 
capabilities as it relates to safety and shutdown and, of course, in 
the end, because of its efficiencies and fuel utilization, leaves less 
waste compared to the old reactors.

  Let me depart for a moment and tell you a story that I think most 
Americans do not know about today. It occurred in my State of Idaho, at 
a site now called the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental 
Laboratory. At the beginning of Admiral Hyman Rickover's desire to 
create a nuclear Navy a good number of years ago, activities began to 
be undertaken in the deserts of Idaho. Those activities related to the 
development of the prototype reactors to be put into the Nautilus 
submarine--a reactor that was small but efficient and powerful and safe 
for operation and safe to live by, to live right beside.
  Of course, we have seen the phenomenal growth of that capability over 
the last good number of decades. We have become so good at building and 
engineering the reactors for our nuclear Navy today that a reactor that 
once had to be fueled every few years now need not be fueled for the 
design life of the hull of the vessel itself. That is almost a hard 
concept to imagine: that for a new nuclear Navy vessel today, when 
launched, and when its reactor is activated, that reactor will operate 
for the life of the vessel--but that is what is going on today.
  That engineering, that capability, that efficiency was developed in 
the laboratories in Idaho. Of course, it is one of the great stories of 
energy efficiency, of safety, and of the effective management of the 
atom itself. It is that kind of technology that should be, and we hope 
can be, applied to the commercial side of the atom today, that we can, 
in fact, build smaller, modular, flexible, passive reactors that, when 
fueled, continue to operate long term for the production of 
electricity; and, of course, in doing that, to be immune from the price 
spikes in the marketplace that are based on the supply of fuel itself, 
because when that reactor is fueled and activated, it then continues to 
operate, at a flat cost, nearly for the lifetime of that fueling, which 
could go on for a good number of years. That is a uniqueness that we 
think we are now capable of producing in new reactor designs and new 
reactor concepts.
  As all of this was developing, and this new interest was growing--and 
certainly brought to the forefront by the Bush administration, as they 
came to town and began to openly talk about the development of passive 
reactor concepts versus an administration that had just left town that 
worked actively trying to stop, to turn off, or to shut down the 
nuclear industry--other dynamics began to occur.
  This is another unique dynamic that now fits into the whole concept 
of building a new nuclear reactor today: It is hydrogen, hydrogen fuel 
cells, and the ability to build clean hydrogen fuel cells that generate 
electricity to operate our automobiles.
  I have driven a hydrogen fuel cell automobile, as many of my 
colleagues have, and they drive most effectively, except the prototype 
that I was driving up in Dearborn, MI, costs about $6 million. Well, we 
know that is out of the reach of the average citizen. However, we also 
understand that if this technology is applied to the transportation 
market as a whole, that there could come a day when my children and my 
grandchildren will view it normal to go to the local car dealer and buy 
a hydrogen fuel cell electric automobile at a competitive price in the 
market. That electric automobile will drive very efficiently, long 
term, at low cost, and have zero emission.
  This administration, once again, in pushing the envelope of energy 
and energy technology, has argued that this ought to be the 
transportation fuel of the future, and we ought to begin to invest, 
increasingly so, in this concept.
  In S. 14, these concepts come full circle, and we begin to authorize 
the investment substantially in the development of the hydrogen fuel 
cell--now, not just for the automobile, but the idea that there could 
come a day when you could develop small, modular fuel cells for the 
individual home, and they could run safely and easily and emission free 
for long periods of time to generate electricity for a home site or a 
small business or a rural dwelling is very feasible with the 
development of that technology.
  Here rests the problem: Most have said we will gain this hydrogen 
through natural gas, that natural gas can become the producer of 
hydrogen. The problem is, you are using one energy source to produce 
another energy source. The efficiency of doing that makes it, in fact, 
a very poor use of natural gas.
  We have also seen the unwillingness of this Congress or some interest 
groups to allow the exploration for natural gas and the expanded 
capability of that production.
  I spoke yesterday on the floor about the pumping back into the ground 
of billions of cubic feet of natural gas in Alaska. Why? Because there 
is no way of getting it to the lower 48 States without the development 
of a pipeline, a pipeline that is proposed and embodied in S. 14, for 
the necessary purpose of supplying natural gas to the lower 48 states.
  But the reality of the use of natural gas is that it ought not be 
used to produce hydrogen, and it ought not be used to fire gas turbines 
to generate electricity. Efficiency-wise, that is a poor use of natural 
gas. Natural gas ought to be used for the purposes of space heating. 
That is where it is the most efficient, and in an industry where it can 
be used for certain processing purposes. That is where natural gas 
finds its highest efficiencies.
  If we want to develop a hydrogen transportation fuel industry--and 
natural gas is not necessarily the best source of hydrogen--how do we 
get it? How do we push that envelope to supply an abundant source of 
hydrogen to a marketplace that may well grow to fuel the fuel cells 
that will generate the electricity that will propel the modern car 20 
or 30 years or 40 years from now? You can do it through using 
electricity to split water into oxygen and hydrogen--a process known as 
electrolysis. You can do it through the use of electricity in a much 
more efficient way than you can with the use of natural gas.
  What do you use in electrolysis? You use water. So not only do you 
have an abundant resource that can be converted, but it can be 
converted in a very clean way into a gas that, when utilized, produces 
no emissions into the atmosphere.
  Is this a dream? No, not at all. It is a reality, and we know that. 
It is a reality within the engineering capabilities of this country and 
the industries embodied in the energy field. We know that is a 
capability.
  How do I jump from nuclear to hydrogen? I want to bring both of those 
together this morning because what we believe is that a generation IV 
passive reactor of the kind we are proposing be built as an 
experimental prototype by our Government, and one that is proposed and 
authorized in this S. 14 comprehensive energy policy for our country, 
also has built in it a system to

[[Page S5800]]

produce hydrogen. The idea is that we can, in fact, get two for one, 
and we can design safe nuclear reactors today, or passive nuclear 
reactors today, that are capable of having within them a system that 
splits water to produce hydrogen for the future transportation market 
of our country. This concept is something that is so exciting to me and 
ought to be exciting for our country.
  To think that we have the capability of moving ourselves that much 
further forward is an opportunity. I liken this uniqueness, this 
application of science and engineering and technology, to something 
almost as important as the space program was decades ago. It is what 
Government ought to be doing, ought to be using its resources for--to 
push the envelope of technology forward and to allow the kinds of 
developments in technology that the private sector can then take and 
effectively use--because the private sector cannot afford to invest the 
hundreds of millions of dollars that it ultimately will require to 
develop this kind of technology. This long term technology development 
does not have the immediate payback return on it and so if we leave it 
all to industry it simply will not happen for a long period of time.
  Embodied in S. 14 are the provisions that would authorize exactly 
what I am talking about today, a new reactor design for our country, a 
design that has within it the capability of the production of hydrogen 
through electrolysis, and to me that is a tremendously exciting 
concept. That is why I believe S. 14 is important legislation. A press 
person stopped me the other day and asked: How is President Bush doing 
on his domestic agenda? One of this President's No. 1 items, or top two 
or three, in his domestic agenda is a national energy policy. A lot has 
taken that issue off the headlines the last number of years--from the 
issue of 9/11 to terrorism to the war in Iraq. But underlying all of 
that and always important for the productivity of an economy, for the 
future of a Nation, is an abundant energy supply.

  Through all of that, we have found just how fragile our energy 
supplies are. We are now nearly 60 percent dependent for our oil supply 
on foreign countries. We have in our infrastructure of electrical 
production aging facilities and transmission that is not effectively 
being replaced to sustain the quality of electricity we have.
  As soon as this country begins to get back into the 3, 4, 5 percent 
growth rates we hope to see in the near future, we will find once again 
a lack of supply because we are not producing it or, if we are trying 
to produce it, we are trying to use gas through electrical turbines. 
The pricing of that is yet to be determined because of our inability to 
produce a more abundant supply of natural gas.
  All of those issues fit together, and the American public, I hope, 
will be allowed to focus on that with us as we debate these issues 
embodied within S. 14.
  S. 14 is a bill that was written the right way. It was written by the 
authorizing committee on Energy and Natural Resources, a combination of 
ideas that have worked their way through the process, that came to that 
committee to be crafted into legislation in a bipartisan way. 
Amendments were offered. Some were voted up; some were voted down. Most 
importantly, the process the American people respect and ask for was 
allowed to effectively work.
  The energy bill we had on the floor a year and a half ago was not 
written by committee, but by a couple of individuals in the majority 
leader's office. The bill we have on the floor today was in fact 
crafted by the responsible committee of the Senate. I hope we can 
debate it thoroughly, amend it, if necessary, and ultimately get it 
into a conference with the legislation the House has passed so we can 
put it on our President's desk for his signature as a national energy 
policy for the country.
  I have talked about a few provisions of the policy I believe are 
tremendously important. Let me speak to one other I believe is 
important as we work our way toward the development of a comprehensive 
policy.
  Many of us have been through what is known as the Kyoto debate, a 
debate on climate change, an argument that the production of greenhouse 
gases is in fact creating a greenhouse effect that has created global 
warming. There are some who believe that emphatically. Others say the 
science simply does not bear that out today, that while our world may 
be getting warmer, it is not necessarily believed it is the greenhouse 
gases or the emission of those that is causing it. The obvious reason 
for that argument is clear. Historically, over the millions and 
millions of years of our timetable for the world, we have seen this 
globe get cold, get warm, and go through a variety of changes. There 
will be some who argue the changes we are experiencing today are in 
fact a product of that magnitude of geological change. I am one who has 
argued on the side of science.

  Others found this to be a rather nifty political idea and have 
generated the politics of it, arguing that, my goodness, the world was 
going to come to an end and the ice cap on the Antarctic was going to 
melt and shorelines were going to move inland hundreds of feet, if all 
of this ice melted in the world today, and that could all be stopped if 
we would simply stop emitting the greenhouse gases produced by the 
burning of fossil fuels.
  If we were to do that, because that is what would be required, if we 
knew in fact our globe was warming and we knew it was warming because 
of the emission of greenhouse gases, that is something this country 
would rush to do. However, it would also rush to convince the rest of 
the world to do it with them and in a way that would find alternative 
sources of energy. We would want to do that based on the very best 
science available, to use the modeling that could be produced by the 
supercomputers to bring about those kinds of judgments. We really would 
be talking about turning the light switches of our country off, unless 
we were willing to shift dramatically to new sources of energy in a 
relatively short time.
  I am one who believes the science is not yet there to argue those 
kinds of changes. In fact, the Clean Air Act has produced a much 
cleaner environment, and we have on board current policies today that 
are continually reducing the amount of greenhouse gas produced per 
capita individual in our country as compared with other countries. We 
are contributing in a major way today to the improvement of the world 
environment. But we are a big country. We are big in the sense of the 
use of energy. We are the largest country in the world when it comes to 
the use of energy, and it is because of our wealth and because of the 
size of our economy. So when you examine the amount of greenhouse gas 
produced per capita individual, we still remain high, at the top of the 
list.
  There are other countries today who have demonstrated little concern 
about the emission of greenhouse gas in their building of an economy. 
China, India, other countries, Third World emerging nations working 
hard to produce an economy to put their people to work. They have paid 
little regard to the environment. In fact, in the debate at the Kyoto 
climate change conference, the interests driving the conference said: 
We can just exclude developing countries because they can't comply. 
They are not advanced enough, and we couldn't get them to comply, 
anyway. Yet they have become major producers of greenhouse gases.
  If you believe that in fact emissions of greenhouse gases are 
creating the kind of climate change some would argue is going on, then 
certainly the developing countries ought to be included. Why should we 
shut ourselves down and allow other countries to increasingly become 
polluters, allow them to be extremely competitive in the economic 
marketplace, when we have denied ourselves that kind of competitiveness 
because we have driven our cost of production up dramatically by new 
energy sources?
  That is all part of a fairly general summary of the debate that has 
gone on here in the Senate and across the country and the world for the 
last number of years. I have attended a conference of the parties at 
The Hague related to climate change. That was the attitude of the rest 
of the world, that the United States economy was the bad actor 
producing all of the greenhouse gases, and we should just shut the 
United States' economy down or we should demand that the United States 
change its ways dramatically.
  What they were not saying was: We also will consider making a similar

[[Page S5801]]

change in our country, as long as our cost of production remains 
relatively low.
  The reason they will not say this is that they want their 
competitiveness in the world economy to rapidly increase compared to 
that of the United States. That became part of all of that debate. I, 
along with Senator Byrd and Senator Hagel, some years ago developed a 
resolution that got 95 votes in the Senate suggesting that this country 
ought not go it alone when it came to climate change, and it certainly 
ought not proceed without good science; and we ought to build the 
systems that produce the science that allow those of us who shape 
public policy to make decisions based on the best science--I am talking 
lab science, not political science.

  The climate change debate has been a good deal about the politics of 
the environment rather than the reality of the change itself, or what 
is producing the change and the science involved. This administration 
has said: Let's err on the side of science. Let's make sure we have an 
ambitious effort to get where we need to get, relating to climate 
change. We are not going to ignore it. We are going to be sensitive to 
it, but we are going to make sure that what we do is done right.
  It just so happens that the nuclear initiative I have just talked 
about fits nicely into that equation of beginning to produce more and 
more of our electrical power from a nonemitting fuel source. The 
hydrogen fuel cell vehicle concept that I am talking about is, again, 
another clean technology. So while we are pushing the envelope of 
technology, we clearly ought to be building the scientific base to be 
able to make the decision as to how much further our economy and our 
country ought to go towards zero emissions into the environment in the 
name of climate change.
  Those are awfully important issues, and they are some this country 
cannot deny or sidestep. But until we have the best science available, 
until we are using our own modeling, based on our own supercomputers, 
and we are not using the modeling with the Canadian bias, or a German 
bias, the kind of modeling that is producing the science that we are 
looking at today because we don't have our own, then shame on us for 
not developing it, for not using our own science and our own scientists 
to make sure that the science from which we base our decision is the 
right science. As I have said, the consequence is to produce an economy 
in which the American worker is no longer competitive or productive as 
it relates to other workers around the world. If that becomes the case, 
we slowly put our economy and our country at a tremendous disadvantage.
  The great advantage we have always had as a country is the 
availability of an abundant energy supply. It is from that energy 
supply, which in most instances costs less than a comparable form 
anywhere else in the world, that we have built the greatest economy the 
world has ever seen, that we have put more people to work, that we have 
generated more wealth, and we have created a standard of living that 
all of us are proud of, and that we have provided for ourselves and our 
citizens truly the American dream.
  Was it all based on energy? It all was based on the availability of 
energy as a major component of that industrial base, that economic 
base. It was certainly also based on the free market system and the 
competitive character of that and the innovation that occurred through 
that. But along the way, Government effectively used itself and the 
resources of the American taxpayer to push the technology, lift the 
horizons of experimentation that, in a way, ultimately brought that to 
the ground for use by the consuming public and to be generated in the 
private sector.
  That is what S. 14, in large part, is about. It is about the grand, 
new designs of new concepts that deal with large production. It is 
about the grand, new utilization of wind turbines and photovoltaics, 
and certainly the type of energy that is extremely clean and can 
provide a portion of energy to our energy basket. It is about making 
our current forms of energy even cleaner by advancing the technologies 
available, to give the tax incentives to effectively use the regulatory 
device to do so, and also not to deny ourselves the continued 
production of energy from our public lands and resources, and to do so 
in clean, environmentally sound ways that we now have the technology to 
utilize, because we pioneered it.

  The world uses our technology today to produce clean energy. We are 
denying ourselves the use of our own talent. This very comprehensive 
energy bill will advance our cause as a country in the world, and in 
the area of energy technology dramatically. That which we produce for 
ourselves is also available to the rest of the world. It is not nor 
should it ever be ignored that even in China today, as it works to 
build new energy technologies, it is using the technology that we 
developed to produce energy for itself. Now we are wanting to push that 
envelope of technology even further, in a more aggressive approach that 
is environmentally benign and clean and productive for our general 
economy.
  So a good deal of work has gone into the legislation. Now we will 
work our will on the floor of the Senate with different amendments that 
compete with some of the concepts I have talked about and, in some 
instances, would like to deny them altogether. We will vote it, I hope, 
up or down within the next few weeks. I believe it will pass and we 
will move it to a conference with the House and then ultimately to the 
President's desk. All of that happens when the President signs this 
into law and public policy.
  I think the Senate and the Congress of the 108th can be proud of the 
work it has done on this energy bill. We can look forward into the 
future for generations of Americans and say we have redesigned the 
foundation, reshaped the context of a national energy strategy for our 
country. As this policy is implemented, it will allow that continuation 
of an abundant supply of a variety of forms of energy that in the past, 
today, and in the future will feed an ever-growing economy that 
continues to grant the average American citizen access to the American 
dream. That is what we are about. That is what good public policy ought 
to be about.
  I believe S. 14 embodies a great deal of that.
  I yield the floor and I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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