[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 42 (Wednesday, April 5, 2006)]
[House]
[Page H1456]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             YUCCA MOUNTAIN

  (Ms. BERKLEY asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute and to revise and extend her remarks.)
  Ms. BERKLEY. Madam Speaker, later today, the Bush administration, 
with the aid and comfort of the Republican Congress, will once again 
propose to remove all congressional oversight of nuclear waste in this 
country to be stored at Yucca Mountain and double the amount of nuclear 
waste to be stored in the mountain.
  Let me remind everybody that Secretary Bodman, the Secretary of 
Energy, just testified last week that he has no idea how much Yucca 
Mountain is going to cost, and he has no idea how long it is going to 
take to ensure that they could build Yucca Mountain; but he wants to 
remove congressional oversight over the nuclear waste budget.
  Let me remind everyone, there are no radiation standards now. The 
court threw them out. There is no way to safely transport nuclear waste 
across our country. And after 9/11, it is incomprehensible to me that 
we have not come up with a threat assessment. There are no canisters 
that currently exist that will not corrode. We have a thousand e-mails 
from the scientists at the National Geologic Survey that demonstrate 
that they fudged or made up the scientific data that went into making 
the decision that Yucca Mountain was okay.
  Now they want to eliminate the oversight of Congress over the budget 
of Yucca Mountain. I think that would be a dereliction of our duty. We 
ought to stand up to the administration and do our job.

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