[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 150 (2004), Part 8]
[Senate]
[Pages 10470-10489]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




   NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT FOR FISCAL YEAR 2005--Continued


                Amendment No. 3226 To Amendment No. 3170

  Mr. CRAPO. Mr. President, I call up amendment No. 3226.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
  The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

       The Senator from Idaho [Mr. Crapo] proposes an amendment 
     numbered 3226 to amendment No. 3170.

  Mr. CRAPO. I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be 
dispensed with.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The amendment is as follows:

       Strike all after the first word of the matter proposed to 
     be inserted and insert the following:

     3119. TREATMENT OF WASTE MATERIAL.

       (a) Availability of Funds for Treatment.--Of the amount 
     authorized to be appropriated by section 3102(a)(1) for 
     environmental management for defense site acceleration 
     completion, $350,000,000 shall be available for the following 
     purposes at the sites referred to in subsection (b):
       (1) The safe management of tanks or tank farms used to 
     store waste from reprocessing activities.
       (2) The on-site treatment and storage of wastes from 
     reprocessing activities and related waste.
       (3) The consolidation of tank waste.
       (4) The emptying and cleaning of storage tanks.
       (5) Actions under section 3116.
       (b) Sites.--The sites referred to in this subsection are as 
     follows:
       (1) The Idaho National Engineering and Environmental 
     Laboratory, Idaho.
       (2) The Savannah River Site, Aiken, South Carolina.
       (3) The Hanford Site, Richland, Washington.
       (c) This section shall become effective 1 day after 
     enactment.

  Mr. CRAPO. Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Democratic leader.
  Mr. DASCHLE. Mr. President, I came to the floor with the 
understanding that we are in a moment where we haven't been able to 
move forward legislatively as far as the schedule goes. I wanted to 
take a few minutes of leader time to comment on a number of specific 
issues.


          Paul Wellstone Mental Health Equitable Treatment Act

  Mr. DASCHLE. Yesterday I spoke about the Paul Wellstone Mental Health 
Equitable Treatment Act. This is a critical piece of health care 
legislation. One in five Americans today suffers from a mental illness 
every year. Many are now denied health care they need because of legal 
discrimination by their health insurers. Such discrimination often 
takes a terrible toll on people with mental illness, their families, 
and all of us.
  It is estimated that not treating mental illness costs our society 
$300 billion a year. The Wellstone bill will end that discrimination 
for all Americans. It is modest, affordable, and urgently needed.
  I mentioned yesterday people from across America were coming to 
Washington on June 10 for a rally in support of mental health parity 
and the Wellstone bill. The famous Wellstone green bus that Paul loved 
to campaign on is coming back here for that rally.
  It is my hope the majority leader will agree to allow the Senate to 
vote on the Wellstone bill prior to the June 10 rally. I think it would 
be a fitting tribute to Paul, and it would make a profound difference 
for millions of Americans who live with mental illness.
  (The remarks of Mr. Daschle pertaining to the introduction of S. 2451 
are located in today's Record under ``Statements on Introduced Bills 
and Joint Resolutions.'')


                     commemoration of memorial day

  Mr. DASCHLE. Mr. President, 2 weeks ago, in the Black Hill National 
Cemetery, SD, SSG Cory Brooks was laid to rest.
  A member of the South Dakota National Guard, Sergeant Brooks died in 
Iraq in late April, and his friends and family gathered to remember his 
laughter, his joyful spirit, and his love of country.
  Among the mourners was a man Cory Brooks had never met, Pat Red Fox.
  Mr. Red Fox came as a representative of the Cheyenne River Sioux 
Tribe.
  Six months earlier, the tribe had suffered the loss of PVT Sheldon 
Hawk Eagle, who died when his Black Hawk helicopter collided with 
another above Mosul.
  The families of Sheldon Hawk Eagle and Cory Brooks had little in 
common on the surface.
  But each passed along the values of service and patriotism to their 
children.
  With pride and sorrow, each said good-bye as their loved ones were 
shipped overseas. And each prayed that Sheldon and Cory would complete 
their mission unharmed. Today, they are bound to one another in 
mourning.
  And so to acknowledge this bond, this sacred bond that transcends all 
apparent differences, the family of Sheldon Hawk Eagle sent Pat Red Fox 
to Cory Brooks' funeral with one of the most valued gifts in the Sioux 
tradition--a star quilt bearing the colors of our Nation, and the Sioux 
symbol representing the immortality of the soul and the connection 
between the living and the dead.
  During the upcoming recess, our Nation will commemorate Memorial Day 
with a special unity, immediacy, and poignancy.
  As we honor those who gave their lives for their country in 
generations past, young American soldiers today face mortal danger.
  As we offer thanks for the sacrifice of families who suffered the 
loss of loved ones, hundreds of American families are today mourning 
the deaths of their children, spouses, and parents.
  For them, the cost of war and the price of freedom is not a thing of 
memory. It is the inescapable fact of their lives. And their pain and 
shock reverberate throughout American communities.
  All Americans stand together in awe of the courage of our soldiers, 
and in gratitude for their sacrifice.
  But the urgency of this Memorial Day also serves to amplify and 
clarify our understanding of America's history.
  Within the sacrifices of today's soldiers, we see a clear reflection 
of the sacrifice of those who came before.
  Like our soldiers today, our veterans, too, left families behind. 
They, too, woke up to uncertain dangers. They, too, saw their friends 
fall. Yet, knowing both their risks and their responsibilities, they, 
too, performed their duty each day. And many gave their lives.
  Forty years ago, President Kennedy noted that no nation ``in the 
history of the world has buried its soldiers farther from its native 
soil than we Americans--or closer to the towns in which they grew up.''
  At our proudest moments, the American people have sent our sons and 
daughters across the globe to fight for freedom.
  Today, the honor of defending those who cannot defend themselves is 
carried forward by young American soldiers. But their service is 
doubled, for in addition to offering a chance for freedom to the Iraqi 
people, they are renewing our understanding of the cost of war, the 
price of freedom, and the immeasurable depths of American valor.
  Seven hundred and ninety one Americans have lost their lives in Iraq. 
Another 122 have died in Afghanistan during the course of Operation 
Enduring Freedom.
  As was true in World War I, World War II, and the Vietnam War, South 
Dakotans have volunteered for service in disproportionate numbers. And 
as before, South Dakota has borne a disproportionate share of loss. 
Seven of South Dakota's sons have lost their lives in this conflict:
  CWO Hans GOO-Keye-sen, of Lead; PFC Michael DOOL, of Nemo; CWO Scott 
Saboe, of Willow Lake; CPT Chris SOUL-zer, of Sturgis; SP Dennis 
Morgan, of Winner; PFC Sheldon Hawk Eagle, of Eagle Butte; SSG Cory 
Brooks, of Philip.
  For them and for the hundreds more who have lost their lives in 
service to

[[Page 10471]]

their country, America is united in sorrow, and in debt for their 
sacrifice.
  But this sorrow, and this debt, is not unique to us. In many ways, it 
has been the central experience of each and every American generation.
  My father was an Army sergeant in World War II. He landed on the 
beaches of Normandy with the 6th Armored Division on ``D Plus 1''--June 
7, 1944.
  He was injured during the landing, and, as he was recovering, one of 
his duties was sending word back to the States of those who had died so 
their loved ones could be notified.
  That experience left my father with a profound sense of respect for 
the sacrifices that freedom sometimes demands, and he passed that 
lesson on to his four sons.
  When I was a boy, every Memorial Day, my parents would take my 
brothers and me to the cemetery to pay our respects to the heroes who 
lie buried there.
  Later in life, when I was in the service, I learned the lesson in a 
deeper way, as friends of mine lost their lives in Vietnam.
  The men whose names my father sent home from Normandy, the men whose 
names are carved into The Wall in Washington, and all of the other 
noble heroes we honor gave their lives to preserve our freedom.
  We are in their debt--today and every day. Now a new generation of 
Americans is called to battle--in Iraq, Afghanistan, and many other 
areas around the world. And once again, they are answering the call, 
and making us proud.
  In 1868, just three years after the end of the bloodiest conflict our 
Nation has ever known, General James Garfield led the first observance 
of the holiday we now know as Memorial Day.
  Standing among the graves of Union and Confederate soldiers alike, he 
said:

       If silence is ever golden, it must be here beside the 
     graves of fifteen thousand men whose lives were more 
     significant than speech and whose death was a poem the music 
     of which can never be sung.
       We do not know one promise these men made, one pledge they 
     gave, one word they spoke; but we do know they summed up and 
     perfected, by one supreme act, the highest virtues of men and 
     citizens.
       For love of country they accepted death, and thus resolved 
     all doubts, and made immortal their patriotism and virtue.

  No words, no ceremony could add to the honor they won in their lives.
  So this year, with the heroism of our soldiers so radiant, we must 
acknowledge that Memorial Day is not commemorated for the sake of those 
who gave their lives, but for our own.
  We remember their courage because within it lie the seeds of our own 
courage.
  We remember their sacrifice, because it shows us both the cost, and 
the value, of freedom.
  Memorial Day is not merely a time to remember those who died in 
uniform, but a time for each of us to rededicate ourselves to trying in 
our own way, in our own lives, to meet the the example of patriotism 
set by all the men and women who defend our Nation.
  It is a time to rededicate ourselves to carrying forward the legacy 
that has been passed down from one generation to the next.
  As with the families of Sheldon Hawk Eagle and Cory Brooks, it is a 
legacy that binds together every American.
  It transcends borders and generations and all political divisions.
  Above all else, it is this shared legacy, and the great gifts that it 
has conferred upon our Nation, that we reaffirm on Memorial Day.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The assistant Democratic leader is recognized.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be dispensed with.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                              Rule of Law

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, the core concept which has guided this 
Nation for 200 years has been the rule of law. That is why we have a 
Constitution. That is why we have a judiciary. That is why we have a 
national legislature, to make and revise the laws which rule our 
conduct, one and all, no exceptions. Therefore, no one, not the 
mightiest in his mansion, not the lowest begger on the street, is 
above, beneath, or outside the law.
  If a law is outmoded, has lost its utility, if it is obsolete, it is 
not the place of any citizen, no matter how high or how low, to decide 
it must no longer be obeyed. That decision rests only with the Congress 
or with an interpretation by the Federal courts. That is the only place 
that decision can rest.
  Yet I have in front of me a memorandum written in January of 2002 by 
Alberto Gonzales, the White House counsel to President Bush, telling 
the President of the United States that the Third Geneva Convention of 
1949 is obsolete, that the War Crimes Act, which we passed in 1995 
making it a felony to commit a grave breach of that Convention, is 
inapplicable, and that as a result, prisoners captured on the 
battlefield can be questioned using means that would violate the Third 
Geneva Convention.
  I am not talking about members of al-Qaida. The Gonzales memo 
specifically discusses members of the Taliban. It makes an extremely 
questionable argument that the Taliban are not prisoners of war because 
they were not the government of a state.
  That argument is most disturbing. In the first place, it represents 
precisely the kind of arguments which the drafters of the Third Geneva 
Convention tried to defeat, drafters who included representatives of 
the United States. Those drafters repeatedly expressed their concern 
that the German Government, the Nazi government during World War II, 
used trumped-up legalisms to avoid applying the 1929 POW Convention to 
captured prisoners. One of those arguments was that Polish prisoners 
were unprotected because, according to the Nazis, Poland had ceased to 
exist as a state. That is precisely why articles 4 and 5 of the current 
Convention are written in such broad language with such inclusive 
presumptions.
  I am equally disturbed by Mr. Gonzales's argument that because the 
Taliban were generally unrecognized as a legal government, they should 
not be afforded the protection required for soldiers of a de facto 
government. What particularly bothers me about that is the statement 
issued by the White House late in 2001 that the United States 
recognized that the Taliban was a de facto government of Afghanistan. 
You cannot have it both ways. Did Mr. Gonzales forget that statement? 
Did he ignore it or did he just not care that it squarely contradicted 
his memo of January 25, 2002, made just days later?
  When he sent that memo to the President, over the objections of the 
Secretary of State, Mr. Gonzales and everyone else involved in its 
drafting and preparation sowed a bitter harvest. They sowed the seeds 
of solitary confinement, of sensory deprivation, of physical 
mistreatment, of violations of religious right, of legal rights, of 
rights against intimidations and threats and torture--all grave 
breaches of the Third Geneva Convention. They sowed the wind, and now 
we are reaping their whirlwind caused by that memorandum from the legal 
representative of the President of the United States.


                           Amendment No. 3170

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington.
  Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I rise to speak on the Graham amendment.
  It is almost unbelievable that we are on the DOD authorization bill, 
a very important bill that we need to discuss and move forward, as it 
supports a lot of important things for our troops, and our military 
strategy. But somehow the other side of the aisle and the Department of 
Energy think they can sneak in language to this Defense authorization 
bill that would allow the reclassification of hazardous, high-level 
nuclear waste and basically call it incidental waste. Basically it 
would reclassify nuclear waste that is in existing tanks in my State, 
in South Carolina, in Idaho, and in New York, and basically say that 
waste can be

[[Page 10472]]

covered over with cement, with sand, and could be grouted. Basically, 
it says we can take high-level nuclear waste and grout it--grout it.
  For most Americans, grout is something they see in their bathroom, 
not something they do with nuclear waste. Yet this is what we have 
before us in the underlying Department of Defense authorization bill. 
It is a shame. It is a shame that this body would allow such a 
significant change, really a change to the Nuclear Waste Policy Act on 
how nuclear waste is classified in this country, without public debate, 
without a public vote, without a public hearing, even without 
legislation discussing that change. Yet the other side of the aisle 
thinks they can come at 1 o'clock in the afternoon and offer an 
amendment to change 30 years of policy, and that in the blink of an 
eye, they are going to get a vote on changing that policy without 
discussion.
  The underlying bill is flawed. As far as I am concerned, it has made 
the whole DOD bill radioactive itself. Why do they play politics on an 
issue that is so important to our country? Why do they try to sneak 
through a change that ought to be debated in public in full daylight, 
with people weighing in on what is appropriate science?
  Mr. President, if I sound as if I am a little upset about this 
underlying bill and the fact that it has this sneak attack language to 
reclassify high-level nuclear waste, you are right.
  Fifty-three million gallons of nuclear waste reside at the Hanford 
nuclear reservation in the State of Washington.
  This Senator wants to see that waste cleaned up. I do not believe 
that can happen by pouring cement on top of it and putting sand in 
those tanks and all of a sudden now say we have cleaned up waste. 
Nowhere has that policy been promulgated as sound science.
  This is a picture of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation and one of its 
reactors in proximity to the Columbia River. My constituents in 
Washington State already know the 53 million-gallon tanks of nuclear 
waste are leaking, and there are toxic plumes that have already gained 
access to the Columbia River. So, yes, Washington State wants the tanks 
to be cleaned up. They want the material that has been part of the 
nuclear mission of this country removed from the tanks, the tanks 
cleaned up, the ground cleaned up, the plumes removed to the best 
possible extent, in order for us to go on with our mission and our life 
at the Hanford Reservation.
  What we do not want is somebody to come in and say all of a sudden 
these underground storage tanks that exist below ground should be taken 
and cement poured on top of them and that means they are cleaned up.
  It is amazing to me because when I think about the Hanford project 
and what I think it meant to our country, these were men and women in 
1943 who started on a mission to produce a product that would help us 
win the war. In less than 2 years, they had the world's first reactor 
going and they produced plutonium that provided a very valuable tool 
for our country. Those men and women did their job.
  Now we have been left with the aftermath of that and we should handle 
it in the same professional way those men and women did, by cleaning up 
the waste and recognizing that these tanks are leaking and they are 
causing hazard to the environment. The appropriate way to clean them up 
is by making sure the material is removed and that that material is 
placed in a more permanent storage. That is exactly what science has 
been saying. Yet my colleagues believe that in this underlying bill, 
the Defense authorization, it was somehow appropriate, in a closed-door 
session, with no public, no public testimony, no public witness to this 
language, no bill saying they were going to put this in the DOD bill, 
they can now sneak through this policy.
  Well, thank God some people in America are paying attention because 
they are starting to respond. I will share some of that with my 
colleagues. For example, the Idaho Falls Post Register basically said 
those on the other side are choosing the wrong side.
  What happened in this case is the Department of Energy--maybe I 
should stop for a second and give some of my colleagues a little 
reminder of how we got to this point, because everybody thinks 
reclassification of waste is something that belongs to the States. It 
does not belong to the States. It belongs in the Nuclear Waste Policy 
Act that was passed in 1982. That was passed by Congress, after much 
debate. It went through the Energy and Natural Resources Committee and 
the EPW Committee. They had a discussion about what nuclear waste 
cleanup should be. They have the authority.
  So when the Department of Energy recently said ``let us accelerate 
the cleanup of waste, let us do it faster, we have an idea, instead of 
removing all of the material from these tanks we can just pour cement 
and sand on top of it and somehow we can get this done quicker and 
cheaper''--I am sure everybody in America agrees that pouring sand and 
cement on top of the waste that is there instead of cleaning it up is 
cheaper. But no one says it is safer and no one says it satisfies 
current law in the Nuclear Waste Policy Act.
  That is why when the Department of Energy tried to use an order 
basically reclassifying waste, saying, ``let us try this accelerated 
cleanup, let us try this notion of grouting and see if it, in fact, is 
the way we can do this.'' The courts have said the Department of Energy 
does not have that authority to reclassify the waste; the definition 
lies within the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, and DOE was not consistent 
with that act.
  So what did the Department of Energy do when they lost that case? 
Yes, it is on appeal. They can go through the appeal process. But 
instead of coming to Congress and asking for public hearings on 
changing the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, saying, ``listen, we think some 
waste that ought to be able to be reclassified,'' they have snuck 
language into the DOD authorizing bill.
  Let me be clear again. Sneaking in language is having a closed-door 
session, without public debate, without public scrutiny, without a 
hearing on the change in this reclassification.
  Now all of a sudden we are presented with this bill and people think 
we ought to move ahead without removing this radioactive language that 
is in the DOD bill, which I say has no business being here. If people 
want to debate this policy, let us debate it in the broad daylight of a 
hearing and discuss what hazardous waste is and the changes to the 
Nuclear Waste Policy Act that might be appropriate.
  I guarantee, if somebody wants to change the Nuclear Waste Policy 
Act, that bill would not go to the Senate Armed Services Committee. It 
would be a policy that was debated by the Energy and Natural Resources 
Committee and by the EPW Committee. It is not the Armed Services 
Committee's jurisdiction to change the Nuclear Waste Policy Act. This 
underlying bill basically will put in place language contradictory to 
the Nuclear Waste Policy Act.
  What are newspapers around America saying about this? Basically, the 
Idaho Falls Post Register says, ``if the courts are uncooperative, try 
blackmail. That is what DOE is doing by holding $350 million in cleanup 
funds, including $95 million for Idaho's national engineering and 
environmental laboratory.
  They go on to say, ``if blackmail fails, start cutting deals in 
secret with Congress. DOE found an ally and behind closed doors in the 
Senate Armed Services Committee won a provision in the Defense 
authorization bill that would allow DOE to reclassify the high-level 
Savannah River waste.''
  I think they said it best when they said the view from Boise is more 
accurate, and that Kempthorne, the Governor, believes the measure 
``would wreck Idaho's position in the court by setting a precedent in 
short order, it would undermine the State's landmark decision.''
  It goes on to say: ``Why would you reward DOE for its heavyhandedness 
against the State by passing something in the committee with the 
thinnest of claims to jurisdiction? If the Nuclear Waste Policy Act 
needs revision, do so in the open. Hold hearings. Conduct them in 
germane committees. What is going on here is not science, it is bare-
knuckle politics.'' That is from the Idaho paper.

[[Page 10473]]

  The Seattle Post-Intelligencer said a similar thing: ``The Senate 
should halt the nuclear waste plan.'' Why? Because the bill gives the 
DOE the reclassification authority and withholds funds, and that this 
is a scheme to reclassify, hoping the States will cave in. It is not a 
good idea.
  What did the Idaho Statesman say? Well, basically in a headline that 
said ``State Cleanup Faces An All or All Proposition,'' it said: ``We 
expect the Feds to clean up and move out all the highly radioactive 
liquid waste now stored in Idaho. No haggling, no shortcuts. Our 
political leaders need to hold firm even when politicians in other 
States are willing to cut deals.''
  What did the Spokesman Review in my State say? I thought the 
Spokesman Review had an interesting take. They said: ``For example, let 
us say the next step would be to persuade the affected parties and the 
public there is scientific consensus on this matter. Without that, 
there will be no hope of political consensus. The U.S. Department of 
Energy believes leaving some waste behind is a good idea but is trying 
to slip this in as a seismic policy shift in the Defense authorization 
bill without comment or without congressional debate.''
  I think these newspapers have it right. In fact, another newspaper in 
my State, the Tacoma News Tribune, said: ``It was bad enough that the 
U.S. Department of Energy was trying to carry out illegal, quick, and 
dirty disposal of the Nation's most dangerous radioactive waste. Now a 
Senate committee is helping the Department circumvent the law.''
  I think these newspapers are on to it. The Buffalo News, in their 
editorial, called it ``A Dangerous Game.''

       The Federal Department of Energy is trying to use 
     administrative sleight of hand to avoid its responsibilities 
     in the cleanup of nuclear waste at West Valley and several 
     other sites. DOD is trying to downgrade the threat of nuclear 
     waste altered in this bill. The department argues that the 
     waste should be classified as high level based only on how it 
     originated, not on what they are. But what they are still is 
     bad. It's still radioactive and it's still a Federal 
     responsibility.

  That is from the Buffalo News.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have all those editorials 
printed in the Record.
   There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                  [From the Buffalo News, May 10, 2004]

 Dangerous Games--Federal Effort To Bury Nuclear Wastes at West Valley 
                           Is Unconscionable

        The federal Department of Energy is trying to use 
     administrative sleight of hand to avoid its responsibility in 
     the cleanup of nuclear waste sites at West Valley and several 
     other states.
        This contemptible effort involves downgrading the threat 
     of nuclear waste, thereby allowing the government to bury 
     that dangerous material at West Valley and other sites 
     instead of shipping it to a permanent repository as called 
     for in a 1982 law.
        Fortunately, New York Sens. Charles E. Schumer and Hillary 
     Rodham Clinton recognized this downgrading for what it was, a 
     threat to West Valley and surrounding areas from the 
     possibility of future leakage of this radioactive material. 
     After they protested the legislation, Sen. Lindsey Graham, a 
     Republican from south Carolina who introduced the bill that 
     would have allowed the DOE to downgrade the threat of nuclear 
     wastes, altered his bill. It now will apply only to the waste 
     remediation project at Savannah River, S.C.
        But that doesn't remove the danger. The House, essentially 
     led by Republican Majority Leader Tom DeLay, still has to 
     consider the DOE legislation. That cannot be a comforting 
     thought to residents living near West Valley.
        The department argues that the wastes should be classified 
     as ``high-level'' based only on how they originated, not what 
     they are. But what they are is still bad, still radioactive 
     and still a federal responsibility.
        Decades of expensive cleanup progress have improved safety 
     at West Valley, but the work is far from over. The 
     radioactive liquid wastes from a nuclear fuels reprocessing 
     effort have been solidified into safe glass logs, which were 
     supposed to be stored elsewhere. But the anticipated long-
     term storage facility at Yucca Flats is years from 
     completion. Tanks and residual wastes still remain at West 
     Valley, and an underground plume of water is contaminated 
     with radioactive strontium. Covering wastes with concrete 
     won't help that.
        The 600,000 gallons of West Valley wastes have their 
     counterpart in nuclear weapons production wastes at other 
     sites--53 million gallons at Hanford on the Washington-Oregon 
     border, 34 million gallons at Savannah River near Aiken, 
     S.C., and 900,000 gallons at the Idaho National Engineering 
     and Environmental Laboratory.
        West Valley is the only site where the state shares the 
     cost of cleanup.
        Those costs may run into the tens of billions of dollars 
     over decades, but the mess remains a federal issue. At West 
     Valley, the risk includes not only the site's land but water 
     drainage that flows into Buttermilk Creek, Cattaraugus Creek 
     and Lake Erie. Trace amounts of that radioactivity have been 
     tracked as far as Buffalo.
        The DOE also is threatening to withhold $350 million in 
     cleanup money from military-related cleanup efforts unless it 
     gets a change in the definition of what constitutes high-
     level waste. That bit of weaseling does the department no 
     credit. These sites were created by the federal government, 
     and the federal government should not be allowed to walk away 
     from them.
        Acceptable cleanup at West Valley involves removal of all 
     wastes and dismantling and removal of the contaminated 
     structures that were used to process and store them. The 
     government cannot be allowed to escape that responsibility 
     through administrative trickery.
        If the federal government truly could end a problem by 
     renaming it, we'd already be at ``mission accomplished'' in 
     Iraq.
                                  ____


           [From the Idaho Falls Post Register, May 19, 2004]

                        Choosing the Wrong Side

       Why would Idaho's two U.S. senators support the Department 
     of Energy against their own state?
       You'll have to ask them.
       A big vote is coming up--possibly today or tomorrow--in the 
     Senate.
       Idaho has a lot at stake.
       The outcome is expected to be close.
       Idaho Gov. Dirk Kempthorne is on the right side.
       Sens. Larry Craig and Mike Crapo intend to be on the wrong 
     side.
       At issue is nearly 1 million gallons of high-level 
     radioactive wastes stored in Idaho. The Hanford nuclear site 
     in Washington has 53 million gallons. Savannah River in South 
     Carolina had 37 million gallons.
       Federal law says that waste may be collected and stored in 
     a national repository. DOE wants to reclassify it, leave some 
     material behind and save a few bucks.
       But it can't get a judge to go along. Last year, U.S. 
     District Judge Lynn Winmill ruled DOE couldn't do that on its 
     own. DOE appealed.
       If the courts are uncooperative, try blackmail. DOE is 
     withholding $350 million in cleanup funds--including about 
     $95 million for the Idaho National Engineering and 
     Environmental Laboratory.
       And if blackmail fails, start cutting deals--in secret--
     with Congress. DOE found an ally in freshman Sen. Lindsey 
     Graham, R-S.C. Behind closed doors in the Senate Armed 
     Services Committee last week, Graham won a provision in the 
     Defense authorization Bill that would allow DOE to reclassify 
     high-level wastes at Savannah River. Another provision allows 
     DOE to continue holding cleanup funds hostage in Washington 
     and Idaho until the accede to DOE's demands.
       Fortunately, the House version contains none of this 
     mischief. So even if the Senate goes along, there's still 
     hope a conference committee will reject it.
       Craig and Crapo say they're willing to defer to Graham on 
     something they believe affects only his state--as long as the 
     cleanup funds are kicked loose. They also believe Graham will 
     be appreciative down the road when Idaho needs his help.
       The view from Boise is the more accurate one, however. 
     Kempthorne believes the Graham measure could wreck Idaho's 
     position in the courts by setting a precedent. In short 
     order, it would undermine the state's landmark 1995 
     settlement with DOE, which requires the agency to clean up 
     the INEEL and ship wastes out of the state.
       That's not to say Idaho isn't willing to negotiate. But no 
     governor can surrender unilaterally to DOE demands without 
     unraveling the 8-year-old truce that ended the statewide 
     battle over the INEEL, its future and the waste issue that 
     has raged for more than a decade.
       Politically, two states are weaker than three. If South 
     Carolina cuts a private deal on waste, Washington and Idaho 
     are left to fight on their own.
       And why would you reward DOE for its heavy-handedness 
     against the states by passing something in a committee with 
     the thinnest of claims to jurisdiction? If the Nuclear Waste 
     Policy Act needs revision, do so in the open. Hold hearings 
     and conduct them in the germane committees--Energy or 
     Environment and Public Works.
       What's going on there isn't science. It's bare-knuckle 
     politics.
       So as early as today, Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., will 
     offer a motion to strip Graham's language from the defense 
     bill. She has the support of Graham's colleague, Sen. Ernest 
     Hollings, D-S.C. But it's going to be close, and the Idaho 
     delegation could make the difference.

[[Page 10474]]

       Does Graham may have more to offer Craig and Crapo than 
     Idaho voters?
       Maybe. Craig is in the second year of a six-year term. 
     Crapo just got re-elected to a second term. Although the 
     election isn't until November, Idaho Democrats have forfeited 
     the race.
       Just the same, both Idaho senators ought to reconsider.
                                  ____


          [From the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, May 18, 2004]

                 Senate Should Halt Nuclear Waste Plan

       Senators should halt the Bush administration's Department 
     of Energy's attempts to boss everyone around on nuclear waste 
     policy and end run the federal courts. The administration's 
     bullying tactics should be met with a firm refusal to submit.
       The DOE has a responsibility to clean up the heavily 
     contaminated radioactive waste in tanks at Hanford and 
     several other sites around the country. A federal judge 
     already has overruled the department's attempts to reclassify 
     the waste in order to save money and leave it at the sites.
       Legitimately, Energy has filed an appeal. But is has shown 
     horrid judgment with attempts to dictate changes in federal 
     law to evade its responsibility, blackmail states into 
     accepting the waste and free itself of state controls.
       Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., has put language into a 
     defense authorization bill to give the department much of 
     what it wants. The bill would authorize reclassification of 
     the waste in his state and let DOE withhold $350 million in 
     cleanup money for Hanford and other sites until their states 
     cave in to reclassification schemes.
       Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., is leading a fight against 
     the plan. Tank waste at Hanford threatens to pollute the 
     Columbia River. Environmental groups rightly complain about 
     rewriting the waste law in a defense bill without public 
     hearings.
       The Senate should strip Graham's amendment from the bill. 
     The Energy Department needs to clean up nuclear waste fully, 
     not evade public accountability.
                                  ____


                [From the Idaho Statesman, May 11, 2004]

               State Cleanup Faces All-or-All Proposition

       Idaho's political leaders need to hold the Department of 
     Energy to a simple standard.
       We expect the feds to clean up and move out all the highly 
     radioactive liquid waste now stored in Idaho. No haggling and 
     no shortcuts. Our political leaders need to hold firm even 
     when politicians in other states are willing to cut deals.
       About 900,000 gallons of high-level radioactive waste sit 
     in underground tanks in the Eastern Idaho desert, above an 
     aquifer that provides water for many Idaho farms and 
     communities.
       After decades of nuclear defense work in states like Idaho, 
     it's time for the Energy Department to fully clean up the 
     sites that helped produce the implements of the Cold War.
       Unfortunately, the Energy Department has been more 
     interested in cutting corners than in cleaning up. The agency 
     wants to clean up most of the waste but leave a fraction of 
     it in the tanks, sealed with grout.
       The Energy Department has been trying to foist off less-
     than-clean cleanup as adequate and cost-effective. B. Lynn 
     Winmill, an Idaho federal judge, ruled last year that the DOE 
     plan violated federal law. Since then, the Energy Department 
     has pushed the idea in Congress, and it may have a taker. 
     With the help of Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., the Energy 
     Department now has language in a defense bill limiting its 
     cleanup obligations in South Carolina, where 34 million 
     gallons of waste are stored at its Savannah River Plant.
       The language covers only South Carolina, not Idaho. Still, 
     it could set an alarming precedent, and could put pressure on 
     Idaho's political leaders to cave to the federal government.
       In Idaho, cleanup should be non-negotiable. Idaho has the 
     law and Winmill on its side and has in hand a binding 
     agreement with the feds mandating the tank cleanup. Then-Gov. 
     Phil Batt reached a comprehensive waste cleanup deal in 1995, 
     and Idaho voters ratified it a year later.
       The deal gives Idaho leverage--but only if state officials 
     and the Idaho delegation hold the feds to every word of it. 
     Especially the word ``all.''
                                  ____


              [From the Tacoma News Tribune, May 10, 2004]

            Fix Energy Department, Not the Law It's Breaking

        It was bad enough that the U.S. Department of Energy was 
     trying to carry out an illegal quick-and-dirty ``disposal'' 
     of some of the nation's most dangerous radioactive waste. Now 
     a U.S. Senate committee is helping the department circumvent 
     the law.
        The law in question is the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, which 
     Congress passed in 1982. Among other things, this act 
     requires the federal government to safely dispose of high-
     level nuclear waste in a deep underground repository. The law 
     quite explicitly specifies that the radioactive byproducts of 
     plutonium creation--a category of waste all-too-abundant at 
     the Hanford Nuclear Reservation--must be buried in such a 
     repository.
        Despite what the law says, the Energy Department has other 
     plans. Hanford's high- level wastes are presently being 
     stored on site in steel-walled tanks, many of which have 
     leaked dangerous radioisotopes into the surrounding soils. 
     The department does intent to encase most of the wastes in 
     these tanks in glass cylinders, which will be buried. But it 
     also wants to leave significant quantities on site. 
     Naturally, the idea is to save money.
        The Nuclear Waste Policy Act, however, doesn't say, ``Bury 
     what's convenient, and don't spend too much trying to get the 
     rest.'' It says, ``Bury it, bury it all, and bury it deep.'' 
     A federal judge in Boise last year called the Energy 
     Department on its scheme, ruling that the leave-it-in-place 
     plan would violate the law.
        Laws, however, can be altered. That is what Sen. Linsey 
     Graham (R-S.C.) is now trying to do, so far with success. At 
     this behest, the Senate Armed Services Committee last week 
     amended a defense bill with a measure that partially exempts 
     the Energy Department from the requirement that all high-
     level waste be sent to a repository.
        The amendment applies only to South Carolina wastes, but 
     it's a scary precedent for this state. The Energy Department 
     has already made clear its desire for an incomplete cleanup 
     at Hanford, the nuclear contamination capital of America.
        If Congress attempts to relax the disposal standards in 
     Washington as well, the state had better be given 
     consultation rights and veto power over whatever plan the 
     Energy Department comes up with. The department simply cannot 
     be trusted to act in the interest of Washington and its 
     environment.
        As for Graham, his constituents in South Carolina ought to 
     be giving him an earful about the prospect of living in 
     perpetuity with the world's most lethal garbage.
                                  ____


              [From the Spokesman-Review.com, May 9, 2004]

                     Debate Needed on Nuclear Waste

        For the sake of argument, let's say leaving some lethal 
     waste buried at nuclear weapons sites is a good idea, because 
     the cost benefits outweigh the risks.
        The next step would be to persuade affected parties and 
     the public there is a scientific consensus on the matter. 
     Without that, there would be no hope of a political 
     consensus. The U.S. Department of Energy believes that 
     leaving some waste behind is a good idea, but it is trying to 
     slip this seismic policy shift into a defense authorization 
     bill, without public comment or congressional debate.
        Last year, DOE tried to get House-Senate conferees on an 
     already passed energy bill to accept this change. But that 
     bill has bogged down. Now it has found an opening in a bill 
     that otherwise has nothing to do with energy matters. U.S. 
     Sen. Lindsay Graham, R-S.C., is pushing the change, but 
     according to a Seattle Post-Intelligencer article, a deputy 
     assistant energy secretary is listed as ``author'' in 
     supporting documents.
        In effects, Graham's measure would exempt DOE from the 
     1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act, allowing the agency to solely 
     determine when a site has been ``cleaned.'' This is just the 
     latest DOE maneuver to shut states out of the decision-making 
     process, which is in direct conflict with the 1989 Tri-Party 
     Agreement.
        DOE has been trying to reclassify some ``high-level'' 
     waste as ``low level'' for two years, but the states, 
     Congress and the courts have said no. A federal judge's 
     ruling sent DOE back to Congress to get the law changed. Such 
     a change would have enormous implications for sites such as 
     the Hanford Nuclear Reservation and the Idaho National 
     Engineering and Environmental Laboratory, both of which are 
     near major rivers. DOE previously announced a plan that would 
     redefine as ``low level'' 53 million gallons of waste at 
     Hanford and 900,000 gallons at INEEL.
        Idaho and Washington are against reclassifying the waste. 
     Said Sen. Maria Cantwell of Washington: ``Trying to rename 
     high-level nuclear waste doesn't change the fact that it is 
     still dangerous, toxic, radioactive sludge that needs to be 
     cleaned up.''
        Critics say another danger in allowing such waste to be 
     reclassified and permanently buried where it sits is that it 
     paves the way for the importation of any other waste DOE 
     deems to be ``low level.'' Hanford could be a dumping ground 
     for another state's waste. The National Academy of Sciences 
     has concluded that the best approach is to bury nuclear waste 
     deep underground. Since that conclusion, Yucca Mountain in 
     Nevada has been chosen as the national repository.
        Without a scientific or political consensus, it is 
     unconscionable for DOE to seek such a major change on such an 
     important matter, especially in the absence of an open 
     debate. The agency needs to stop the repeated end-runs and 
     make a good-faith effort to involve all affected parties if 
     it sees the need for change.

  Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, let's go back for a second to what this 
issue is as it relates to the Nuclear Waste

[[Page 10475]]

Policy Act and what the underlying change in this bill does. That is 
the question at hand.
  My colleagues on the other side of the aisle hope we can get rid of 
this issue in one afternoon--again, without public debate, without the 
scrutiny of changing the definition of highly radioactive waste. They 
think we should just pass what is in the underlying bill. It has only 
seen the daylight because of the objections of myself and other 
colleagues and the scrutiny of the press. That is what has gotten them 
now to offer the amendment on the floor. The amendment on the floor is 
not sufficient to strike the language relating to the reclassification 
of waste.
  So what is the issue? In 1982, when we passed the Nuclear Waste 
Policy Act--I wasn't here but other Members were--basically we came up 
with a definition. We said:

       Highly radioactive material resulting from the processing 
     of spent nuclear fuel, including the liquid waste produced in 
     the reprocessing. . . .

  That is what this reactor did for us in World War II. It basically 
processed spent nuclear fuel and that liquid waste was then stored in 
tanks still at Hanford.

       That the solid material derived from such waste that 
     contains fission products in sufficient concentrations. . . .

  So that is what we said high-level radioactive waste was. We went on 
to add to the definition:

       Highly radioactive material that the Commission says is 
     consistent with the law requires permanent isolation.

  That is what we said in 1982, that the spent fuel from these reactors 
required permanent isolation. That is what the current law says. The 
current law says spent fuel requires permanent isolation. That means 
you have to remove it from the tanks that are there, because the tanks 
are leaking and you cannot guarantee permanent isolation.
  So the tanks have started to be cleaned up and the process for 
cleaning them up is underway. But now the Department of Energy wants to 
say, ``let's have a new definition of that.'' In fact, in the 
underlying DOD bill, in section 3116, it basically says:

       High-level radioactive waste does not include radioactive 
     material resulting from the processing of spent nuclear fuel.

  How about that? One change in the DOD bill and billions of gallons of 
waste in my State is no longer high-level radioactive nuclear waste. 
Just like that, changing the definition. Yes, it says the Secretary can 
determine whether various hurdles have been scaled, but that is 
contradictory to the current law in the 1982 act.
  I remind my colleagues this is an act that was passed through this 
body after hearings, after discussion. I think the process may have 
taken more than a year. It took more than a year to define high-level 
radioactive waste. Yet now we want to pass the DOD authorizing bill 
with this change in it and basically say, ``let's go ahead and 
reclassify nuclear waste.''
  I am not for reclassifying nuclear waste without a debate and a 
discussion and, frankly, the notion that this underlying bill would 
reclassify it in such an inappropriate fashion, to say you could 
somehow call this grouting and that this would be a sufficient way to 
deal with the country's nuclear waste, is incredible. It is incredible 
that this is the scam being used on the American public just to get 
this process in place.
  Let's go through some of the history, because as I said, I think this 
is really sour grapes by the Department of Energy, which has tried to 
get this policy pushed through and has not been successful. In fact, in 
2001, basically, the Department said that they would re-create a better 
cleanup process. But, they said, we obviously have to get States to 
agree.
  They came to us in Washington State and we said: We have an agreement 
with you about the level of waste that is going to be cleaned up under 
the requirements of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, so we don't really 
know what you mean by reclassification. At that time they refused to 
say that they meant they would clean up 99 percent, or all that was 
technically possible, of this waste.
  So we in Washington State said: Listen, it doesn't sound like you 
have a serious plan for reclassifying waste when you just want to call 
it a different name. That is not an appropriate process. In fact, 
Washington State decided not to do that.
  Wisely enough, the Idaho court basically said DOE didn't have that 
ability, they didn't have the ability to reclassify that waste. That is 
exactly why they are trying to sneak this language in today, because 
they would like to continue to say that they can move ahead on a plan 
that, sure, would save money, but who wants to save money by leaving 
nuclear waste in the ground, where it is leaking into the Columbia 
River or the Savannah River, or other areas of the country?
  If somebody thinks this is an issue that affects the State of 
Washington, or affects just Idaho, or affects South Carolina--it 
doesn't. These are bodies of water, with the potential of nuclear waste 
in them, that flow through many parts of our country. To pass 
legislation without debate on changing the Nuclear Waste Policy Act is 
an incredible statement, that people are willing to override 30 years 
of law just to do that.
  There are other issues I think we need to talk about. I am very 
pleased the Governor of Idaho, Governor Kempthorne, issued a release 
saying:

       Federal legislation undermines the cleanup that was to take 
     place in Idaho, at the Idaho facility.

  In fact, Governor Kempthorne has said his opposition to the 
legislation that was passed by the Senate Armed Services Committee is 
because it allows the Secretary of Energy to withhold an estimated $95 
million from cleanup funds, which is part of the debate we are going to 
have on the underlying amendment. But then he goes on to say:

       I recognize the need to ensure public confidence in how we 
     manage nuclear waste. This legislation would be a huge step 
     backwards, reinforcing public fears about our Nation walking 
     away from nuclear cleanup obligations. I am also concerned 
     this legislation will negatively impact DOE's compliance with 
     the 1995 court settlement case in Idaho.

  I think Governor Kempthorne, who has to deal with this, just as 
Governor Locke does in the State of Washington, has realized what a bad 
deal this is for Idaho. He realizes the underlying language, when it 
tries to reclassify waste, is a danger.
  I find it interesting that we will forget the Nuclear Waste Policy 
Act, no problem. We will write our own rule about what hazardous waste 
is. We will come up with our own definition.
  The states of Washington, Idaho, Oregon, South Carolina, New Mexico, 
and New York filed into the court case and in their amicus brief said:

       DOE cannot ignore Congress' intent . . . by simply calling 
     [high level] waste by a different name.

  South Carolina joined that case. South Carolina went to the courts, 
put its name on a brief, objecting to the DOE attempt to reclassify 
high-level nuclear waste by issuing an order.
  Why all of a sudden are we now going to listen to one State tell us 
they have the right to decide they are going to keep nuclear waste in 
their State and they are going to call it something else? Nuclear waste 
that reaches the Savannah River does not affect just South Carolina, 
and a definition in statute that conflicts with the Nuclear Waste 
Policy Act does not just affect South Carolina; it affects everyone. 
That is not the way to legislate, by sneaking it in without having full 
public debate about this issue and the obligations we have for nuclear 
waste cleanup.
  What has the Atomic Energy Commission said? Basically, it said in 
1970 that over the life of these tanks, basically you have a problem. 
Basically, what you are saying when you assume that you will take those 
Hanford tanks or Savannah River tanks or Idaho tanks or West Valley 
tanks, and you are going to leave material in them and somehow put 
cement over the top of them and everything will be okay--that is 
counter to all the science we have had for 50 years.
  The Atomic Energy Commission said ``over periods of centuries,''--
guess what, that is what happens when you leave it in the tanks for a 
long period

[[Page 10476]]

of time; you are talking about centuries--``one cannot assure the 
continuity of surveillance and care which tank storage requires.''
  (Mr. Crapo assumed the Chair.)
  Ms. CANTWELL. They are saying if you put in high-level waste, we 
cannot tell what will happen to that over a long period of time. That 
is why the decision was made to take it out and put it in a permanent 
storage facility somewhere else, because these tanks do not have the 
capacity.
  The science says that once you do the grouting of this waste, 
unfortunately, your opportunity to do other things is much more 
difficult. Once you have poured cement on the ground and solidified it, 
the process of getting it out and retrieving it is made immensely more 
difficult. In fact, the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research 
in 2004 said:

       Grouting residual high-level waste in tanks that contain 
     significant quantities of long lived radionuclides . . . Is a 
     policy that poses considerable risk to the long-term health 
     of the water resources in the region.

  This statement is from 2004. In 2004, people have said this grouting 
technique, which basically is storing this in the leaking position in 
underground tanks, is a threat to the water resources of the region. 
These tanks are not more than 7 miles from the Columbia River, not 7 
miles from one of the major water resources of the Pacific Northwest. 
It already has a plume of nuclear waste that has reached the river. 
Fortunately, it is at a level that we can contain today but only if we 
continue to clean up the tanks.
  This proposal to pour cement and sand on top of it and just keep the 
waste in the ground has not been proven as a secure way to keep the 
waste intact and water resources clean. So what you are leaving us with 
in the Pacific Northwest--in Washington, in Oregon, in the tributaries 
feeding in and out of the Columbia River and into the Pacific Ocean--is 
the threat of 50 million gallons of nuclear waste not being cleaned up 
in a sufficient fashion and that waste ending up in the Columbia River. 
Or in the South Carolina, Savannah River. Governor Kempthorne said it 
right: this is a huge step backward because it reinforces the public 
fears about this process.
  This Senator wants to have the nuclear waste cleaned up in our State. 
Some people may not understand the process, or some people listening to 
this debate may even think this is somehow about four or five States in 
this country. It is not about four or five States in this country and 
just about whether we will change the definition of high-level 
radioactive waste and what we will do about the definition.
  That is what I am concerned about today in the underlying bill. This 
Nation has a responsibility--as it had a responsibility in development 
of the reactors, the development of the plutonium, and the development 
of that product--this Nation has a responsibility for the cleanup of 
those facilities. Oftentimes my colleagues forget about that 
responsibility until it comes time to do the budget and people see the 
huge amount of money that is spent on nuclear waste cleanup.
  I would be the first Senator to say we have made mistakes in this 
process. It is mind-boggling to think prior to my coming here that at 
one point in time somebody gave contracts to a company to produce 
vitrified logs, and they were not going to pay them until they made the 
vitrification work. Somewhere along the way people figured that would 
not work, that the vitrification process was not underway and 
operating. But now we have been successful and vitrification is 
starting to take place. That means we are taking the nuclear waste out 
of the ground and solidifying it into a glass log substance and that 
glass log substance will then go to permanent storage. So it will be in 
a facility that can help store that product for an indefinite period of 
time. That has been the plan. That is the plan on the books. That is 
the plan of record.
  But that is not what the DOE authorizing bill does. It says, ``no, 
let's reclassify that waste and say that it is not high level. Let's 
just call it another name, let's call it grout and say it is okay to 
keep in the ground, let it contaminate water, and let's keep the 
savings from that unbelievable shortcutting of our responsibilities in 
the cleanup process.'' I don't think that is something we want to do as 
a body and government.
  I would like to talk about how this legal process worked and why DOE 
is attempting to do this. What my colleagues seem to want to think 
today is that this is all about giving the State of South Carolina the 
ability to negotiate with DOE what nuclear waste cleanup should be. In 
fact, as I said, in the underlying bill, instead of saying that high-
level waste is something that needs to be retrieved, basically that 
spent fuel from reactors is something that needs to be retrieved from 
tanks and put in permanent storage, basically the DOE underlying bill 
says, no, high-level radioactive waste resulting from fuel process can 
be reconsidered and considered for a different kind of storage 
permanently in the tank. And that is something South Carolina and DOE 
can do together.
  That is not what the cleanup partnership really is. The cleanup 
partnership is not about the State of South Carolina and the Federal 
Department of Energy interpreting the Nuclear Waste Policy Act in a new 
way by passing contradictory language.
  Let's imagine for a second that we let the State of Michigan 
determine what the clean air standards are for the State of Michigan. 
Let's say that EPA and the State of Michigan decided, well, the clean 
air standards for Michigan are going to be at X level, and that somehow 
that is OK for Michigan, but somehow we do not think that is going to 
apply to the rest of the country.
  Does anyone think that once it applies to Michigan, some other State 
is not going to say: How come you gave Michigan an exemption? They 
continue to pollute the air at a level that the rest of the country 
does not, which has a higher standard. We are talking about a recipe 
for disaster in the courts and for predictability in the process. I 
think it is very detrimental, where we are going with this legislation.
  The court process that took place is now on appeal to the Ninth 
Circuit Court. We are still waiting for a decision. I think the 
appropriate thing for the Department of Energy to do, while they are 
waiting for their decision on appeal, is to say they want to come to 
Congress and have hearings on changing radioactive waste definitions, 
that they want to come and have a discussion about that.
  I appreciate the fact the Senator from Michigan, Mr. Levin, as this 
issue was discussed in the Armed Services Committee, understood the 
dangerous precedence of this language, and understood how important it 
was to get the DOD bill done. He basically asked that they not include 
that language in the bill.
  Now, it was a closed-door session. I do not know what the real vote 
was. I am sure it was a closely, hotly debated issue. But, really, what 
they put in was section 3116, which would overturn 30 years of 
carefully crafted laws and 50 years of scientific consensus related to 
the cleanup of the Nation's radioactive defense waste.
  As written, this provision--because it allows DOE to reclassify waste 
that, as I said, for decades has been classified as high-level waste--
basically says the radioactive and chemical toxic components would stay 
the same. So basically the same toxic level of waste is there, but we 
are just going to call it another name. I appreciate the fact that the 
Senator from Michigan tried to change this language and prevent it from 
being in the bill. Unfortunately, it is in the underlying bill before 
us.
  The underlying bill before us also created a slush fund of $350 
million. I find it intriguing. I love knowing a little bit about 
software because when you share documents and you basically try to make 
changes to documents, and you e-mail those around to everybody, you can 
look at the text and see where the changes came from. It is very 
interesting, this legislation was proposed by a member of the Senate 
Armed Services Committee. But when you check on who was really the 
author of

[[Page 10477]]

the legislation, when you look at who was making the changes to the 
legislation, it was the Department of Energy.
  The Department of Energy wrote the statute and basically submitted it 
to the committee, and tried to make it look like it was a Member's 
idea. This is coming straight from the Department of Energy, that lost 
a court battle, and does not want to wait for an appeal, does not want 
to come here and fight their battle in the daylight, but wants to try 
to sneak language in a bill, in the hopes these people will blink on a 
Thursday afternoon. Well, I am not prepared to have this bill move 
forward without having this discussion today about this change.
  Now, what was DOE's great idea that they submitted through a member 
of the Senate Armed Services Committee? What was their wonderful idea? 
Well, besides reclassifying waste, they decided, ``well, let's create a 
$350 million slush fund that gives the Secretary of Energy the 
authority to withdraw cleanup funds from the States of South Carolina, 
Washington, and Idaho--until they agree with our reclassification 
plan.'' Basically, it was to hold them hostage and blackmail them into 
agreeing.
  As I said, when the State of Washington was offered this deal 2 years 
ago, we said: ``We are not taking any deal unless we understand what 
you are cleaning up and how you are cleaning it up. The fact that you 
think you are going to reclassify and rename this is not good enough 
for us. Let's see the details.'' When they refused to show us that they 
planned on cutting cleaning up all this waste, we refused to accept the 
deal. Now they are hoping they will buy off some other State.
  If the Department of Energy really believes science is on their side, 
if it really believes this grouting technique works, if it really 
believes this is the process we ought to pursue, then come before the 
Energy and Natural Resources Committee, come before the EPW Committee, 
and debate a change to the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, the policy that 
defines highly radioactive waste and how it should be cleaned up.
  I think it is a tragedy, especially when you think about the good job 
the people did at Hanford, the process by which these people speedily 
got to the business of helping us in World War II, in the cold war 
years, and providing us with help and support. They got the job done. 
They did their job. Now it is our turn to do our job and clean this up.
  When you are talking about 100 million gallons of highly radioactive 
waste that is stored in 253 deteriorating tanks in all of these 
States--as I said, at Hanford we have 53 million gallons of this tank 
waste, about 60 percent of the whole national inventory. So 60 percent 
is in Washington State, along with other high level waste stored in the 
Hanford 200-Area. That includes spent fuel and miscellaneous volumes 
that contain high-level waste from offsite which are also buried in the 
ground.
  I am all for considering new technology and new ways to clean up 
waste and to retrieve waste that is buried in the ground that is 
considered high-level waste, which may have come from other States or 
have been basically brought to the Hanford Reservation. Some has been 
dumped on the Hanford Reservation and then has been part of the storage 
there for some time, but that is a different issue.
  The Nuclear Waste Policy Act makes it very clear that spent nuclear 
fuel from reactors needs to be placed in a permanent isolated area. 
That does not mean pouring cement in tanks and calling it incidental. 
It is very clear about that. So we can talk about other technologies to 
clean up other kinds of waste, or we can come back and debate changing 
the Nuclear Waste Policy Act. But because 67 of the 177 tanks that we 
have in Washington State have already leaked 1 million gallons of waste 
into the ground, that is 1 million gallons of nuclear waste, this 
Senator does not take this issue lightly.
  DOE estimates that at Hanford, 270 billion gallons of ground water is 
contaminated above the drinking water standards across 80 miles of this 
site, and that plumes containing numerous toxins have reached the 
Columbia River.
  I think we have another picture of the Hanford site. I encourage all 
my colleagues, at some point in time, to go to the Hanford site. This 
site is in Washington State, but this is a Federal responsibility. It 
is a Federal responsibility to clean up nuclear waste. It is not just 
the province or jurisdiction of four or five States in the country. We 
spend budget money on this issue, and we need to get the job done.
  You can see one scene of the Hanford reservation, which is almost as 
big as--a third of the size--the State of Rhode Island. It is an 
immense property. I know the senior Senator from Washington State has 
joined me, and she can tell you--because she was instrumental in 
getting the Hanford Reach Monument created, preserving some of this as 
a national monument for us. On the one hand we are preserving it as a 
national monument and then deciding one day we are going to take high-
level radioactive waste, rename it, let the plume that is already 
reaching the Columbia River to stay in the ground, and that somehow by 
putting cement and sand on it, we are all going to be OK.
  Everybody wants to say how much cheaper that proposal is. I think 
everybody in America gets how cheap it would be to pour concrete and 
sand. What they want to know is whether it is safe, whether it is the 
right technology, whether it is going to stop the plumes or leaking 
tanks, whether you are going to change the current law first to get 
there.
  This is a beautiful, pristine area of our country that we can 
preserve, but only if we do the job we are responsible to do, as the 
people who created the B reactor and created this facility were 
responsible in doing.
  To be irresponsible today by offering this on the DOD authorizing 
bill and thinking we are going to have a debate about it in a few short 
hours and change 30 years of law and 50 years of science is shameful. 
It is shameful that we think we can have this kind of discussion in a 
few hours and wrap up a decision. If people are so sure about their 
position, then hold the public hearings and have the debate. Because 
these tanks are leaking and one million gallons have already leaked in 
my State. It is not something that is a tomorrow issue.
  What about the science? Let's go back, so my colleagues are clear 
about how we got here. Congress required DOE to clean up these sites 
and make it a priority, and they did that in that 1982 act. That act 
reflected science dating back to 1950, when the National Academy of 
Sciences recognized that high-level radioactive waste, such as the 
waste at Hanford, must remain isolated from human beings and the 
environment long enough for the radioactivity to decay. That is a long 
process.
  That is why the Atomic Energy Commission, a precursor to the 
Department of Energy, also recognized something must be done to treat 
high-level radioactive waste in the tanks and at these DOE sites, and 
they referred to ``over a period of centuries.'' As I said earlier, 
this isn't a problem where you think about it for a few years or even a 
decade. You have to come up with a solution for centuries.
  Over a period of centuries, the Atomic Energy Commission wrote in 
1970, ``one cannot assure the continuity of surveillance of care with 
storage tanks.'' Basically they said, you can't get it done with 
storage tanks. So the science has not changed since then.
  Yet there are provisions in this bill where DOE says, let's throw out 
the science. And the provision in this bill would allow DOE to take 50 
years of science and leave an indeterminate amount of toxic sludge in 
these leaky tanks and simply say: Mission accomplished. I think we have 
heard that statement before.
  What science says is that grouting residual high-level waste in tanks 
that contain significant quantities of long-lived radionuclides is a 
policy that possesses considerable risk to the long-term health of the 
water resources of the region. That is what science says.
  The grouting proposal that is in this bill is a considerable risk. In 
the State of Washington, we are very familiar with this. In Washington 
State, thank

[[Page 10478]]

God our Department of Ecology has had strong reservations about 
grouting and we have vocalized those. For us, because it is 50 million 
gallons of this highly radioactive waste, it would have to have been a 
plan for durability for 10,000 years. That is what you would have to 
have. That is how radioactive the waste is.
  What is bothersome is when people say an indeterminate amount, that 
is what DOE can decide. An indeterminate amount? The last 8 percent of 
the waste in the tanks has 50 percent of the radioactivity. Think about 
that. So we are saying in this underlying bill, go ahead, DOE. Leave an 
indeterminate amount in the tanks. Maybe they will say let's leave 10 
percent. Maybe they will say, let's leave 5 percent. We know at 8 
percent it is 50 percent of the radioactivity.
  We think the grouting plan is something that is not the way to go. We 
set it aside in Washington State. We said that basically glassifying or 
vitrifying the waste was the way to go. That means that process of 
turning it into a glass structure so it is a solid structure and taking 
it to permanent storage was a better way to go.
  As I said, in 2002, DOE wanted to use this accelerated initiative. We 
in Washington State had people come and talk to us about what 
accelerated cleanup was and what the schedule would be on high-level 
waste. And we said: We want to understand how you are going to comply 
with the agreements that are already on the table and with the Nuclear 
Waste Policy Act, with the triparty agreement, because this isn't the 
first time the Department of Energy has had debates with the State 
about their responsibilities for cleanup.
  I can't imagine that there is an OMB director or a DOE executive who 
does not come to that post and look at the numbers involved in cleanup 
and basically says: Boy, there has to be a way we can get this done 
quicker and cheaper. I am all about getting it done quicker, given that 
I have a million gallons already leaking and running into the Columbia 
River. I am all about quicker. But I am not about a plan that has not 
been verified by science, that has not had a hearing in a full 
committee as to this process and what it will mean.
  Everybody gets the quick factor, but who said cleaning up nuclear 
waste in America should be about doing it on the cheap? It is about 
doing it the right way. As the Atomic Energy Commission said, it is 
about keeping it out of the reach of humans for centuries.
  Subsequently DOE has insisted upon researching new technologies for 
the treatment of Hanford tanks, this new form of grout, cast stone, 
steam reforming, and different forms of vitrification. In all, I think 
there were three cases. DOE said they would still retrieve waste from 
the tanks, but try to treat it and bury it in steel containers and 
lined trenches in the Hanford site.
  I can tell you, even the new and improved grout was quickly rejected 
by the State of Washington and by other scientists.
  According to the officials at the Washington State Department of 
Ecology, grouting would have violated the State requirement that any 
alternative waste that was not performed at the vitrification objected 
to. And, in addition, the State found that this grouting would still 
pose ground water risks and create leaching; furthermore, that this 
would violate drinking water standards.
  Even more interesting is the fact that the grouting was not to be 
found more efficient. In some instances, grouting wasn't found to be 
any cheaper than other options of cleaning up the tanks. While 
everybody says that pouring cement and sand on this is a great way to 
clean up nuclear waste, most people figured out that leaking would 
still happen and that nuclear waste would still need to be removed. 
They figured out that it was even more expensive to remove than waste.
  So those are the scenarios with which we are dealing. Those are the 
scenarios that have been discussed. This debate--whether we want to 
reclassify nuclear waste and call it low-level waste and say we are 
going to grout it--might be new to some of my colleagues in the Senate 
as to. But for the State of Washington, we already said this plan 
wasn't acceptable science, and that reclassification was something we 
didn't think we should go along with, when DOE wasn't willing to give 
us a definition on how they were going to clean up the waste.
  So this is very difficult because the tanks holding sludge and salt 
cake and hard heels--this would mean the waste in those tanks would not 
be penetrated to remove and segregate the radionuclides. The hazardous 
material would not be separated out and removed. It means those tanks 
would not be thoroughly mixed without the right level of product. 
Basically, what they found is that grout, as engineered, is not an 
option that protects human health and the environment for such a 
significant portion of tank waste, when we don't know the definition, 
because it is an indeterminate amount of tank waste.
  As I said, even the last 8 percent of tank waste includes 50 percent 
of the radioactivity. How do you know, by using this grouting process, 
that you have successfully rendered this a nonhazardous substance? So 
grout as an in-tank treatment for significant waste volume will be, as 
I said, probably more expensive than other routes when we find out that 
it is not successful.
  The best science says is don't hold States hostage by reclassifying 
waste and telling them we are not going to give them money for cleanup 
unless they agree to our definition. This definition is something that 
the Department of Energy thinks they can come up with on their own. But 
the courts have determined that DOE doesn't have that authority.
  The courts have not sided in DOE's favor. The courts have not said 
don't go ahead with cleanup. They didn't say you cannot move forward on 
cleaning up the tanks. The courts said: DOE cannot move forward on its 
plan of reclassifying waste and saying that it is a grout process and 
that is going to work. It says you cannot move forward on that.
  So back to the underlying bill and what happened in the Defense 
authorization bill. There was an amendment that would enable the 
Department of Energy to exempt an intermediate amount of highly 
radioactive waste from regulation as high-level radioactive waste.
  I am reading from legal counsel's interpretation of this underlying 
provision in the DOD bill. This interpretation says the amendment would 
allow the Department of Energy to continue to store waste long thought 
destined for deep geologic repository in existing storage tanks or send 
them to waste isolation pile-up plants or low-level radioactive waste 
burial sites. It also would exempt the Department's handling of those 
wastes from the license and regulation by the Nuclear Regulatory 
Commission. It will, in short, overturn the fundamental legal 
principles that have governed the disposal of these wastes for the past 
30 years.
  This legal briefing goes on to point out--which I think is very 
important--that for nearly half a century, when the DOE and its 
predecessors made plutonium for their nuclear weapons, they did so by 
irradiating uranium fuel, transforming it into plutonium, and 
reprocessing the spent fuel, as I showed in the picture with the 
reactor. And that became high-level radioactive waste. This is the term 
given to the plutonium spent fuel from the reactors was high-level 
waste.
  So what did the Nuclear Waste Policy Act say? In 1981, the Nuclear 
Waste Policy Act said: Let's establish a comprehensive program for the 
disposal of this spent nuclear fuel, and put it in deep geologic 
repositories licensed by the Commission.
  So let me be clear about this point, because I am sure we will hear 
about this in the debate. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission was given 
the responsibility of the deep geological repository license procedure. 
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission was not given the responsibility for 
these low-level tanks. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission was not given 
the responsibility to interpret this change in the DOD bill as it 
relates to whether this is

[[Page 10479]]

a cleanup plan and whether they can license it because that is not 
their responsibility. Their responsibility, as the Nuclear Regulatory 
Commission, is on Yucca Mountain and the deep geological solution. That 
is what their responsibility is.
  The act directed the President to decide whether high-level 
radioactive defense waste should be disposed of in the same repository 
as civilian waste, or in a separate repository. So in 1985, President 
Reagan decided this defense waste should be put in the same repository 
as civilian waste.
  The 1982 act defines high-level radioactive waste. We had a decision 
by the President in 1985 that military waste should be treated as 
civilian waste, and that the civilian waste should be put in the same 
spot.
  So that is the plan we have been on. Now, I have had some concerns 
about how much waste you are actually going to take out of Hanford 
because, I tell you what, I want more than 17 percent of the waste 
taken from Hanford to go to Yucca Mountain. I want it cleaned up and I 
want it in a permanent place.
  I don't want grouting and I don't want to have plumes continuing to 
leak. But that was the decision made in 1985, and the President made 
that decision. They said, let's vitrify this waste, glassify it, take 
it out of the tanks, turn it into glass logs, and take that to a site 
for permanent storage, wherever that site is.
  The plan, since 1985, has not been to pour cement and sand and create 
grout leaving some percentage, some indeterminate amount of waste in 
tanks.
  I cannot emphasize how important it is if DOE believes in this 
philosophy, this science, if DOE thinks this is the successful course 
of discussion that should happen with spent nuclear fuel, then come to 
the broad daylight of a Senate hearing and make their case and put that 
before the appropriate Senate committees. If they are so proud of their 
science and the standing of their decision, they should have no problem 
doing that. As Governor Kempthorne of Idaho said, when you don't end up 
achieving public consensus, you don't do anybody any favors.
  The issue is the Department of Energy knows all too well, because 
these States of Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and South Carolina 
challenged the Department of Energy in court, that these States do not 
believe this order or plan for reclassifying waste is sound science. 
They do not believe it is sound science. That is why they challenged it 
in court.
  I know the Department of Energy knows they cannot waltz into the 
Senate hearing rooms and make their case without hearing the critiques 
of the experts who have been dealing with this issue for years and 
years. And by ``the experts,'' I mean not only the scientists, but the 
people who have to live with the economic and health consequences of 
having a million gallons of nuclear waste leak into the ground and make 
its way to the Columbia River. Those people are paying attention, and 
they are paying attention to the fact that this science is not standing 
the test of daylight and scrutiny. If it were, they would be here 
debating it.
  I am saying to them now, this Senator, and I am sure members of other 
committees, welcomes the opportunity to understand this technology, to 
understand this new process, to understand exactly how taking some 
level of spent fuel from these reactors in these underground tanks and 
somehow pouring a grouting material on them is going to make for a 
successful cleanup effort.
  I am sure my colleagues would love to hear if it actually saves 
billions of dollars and can be safe and sound science. But if that is 
the case, then we should not be in a rush today. After the courts have 
already said DOE does not have the authority to change this policy 
without the approval of Congress, the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, my 
colleagues should not be in a hurry to pass this legislation that 
basically says in a contradictory form: Go ahead, DOE Secretary, 
reclassify the waste because nuclear waste from spent fuel does not 
have to be classified as highly radioactive.
  The definition of highly radioactive waste that is used in the 
Nuclear Waste Policy Act was initially modeled after the definition 
found in the West Valley demonstration project. That is a commercial 
site in New York. I am again reading from the legal opinion Energy 
counsel has provided to us.
  It basically said waste produced by reprocessing of spent fuel, that 
it included both liquid waste and that waste directly from reprocessing 
and dry solid material derived from that solid waste.
  In addition, it gave the Nuclear Regulatory Commission the authority 
to include other waste in the definition of such material. 
Significantly, West Valley gave the Commission power to add material 
other than reprocessing waste to the definition, but not to exempt any 
part of the processing of waste.
  We have had this debate, and I know the Department of Energy objected 
to the definition. I know they wanted the regulatory agencies to be 
able to exclude material from high-level radioactive waste. I know that 
is what they wanted. But Congress rewrote the definition, not as the 
Department asked, but, as enacted, the final definition provides, as I 
said earlier, high-level radioactive waste means material from 
reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel, and that other radioactive material 
that the Commission, consistent with existing law, determines requires 
permanent isolation.
  That is the process by which we, as the legislative branch, have 
gotten to the point of making decisions about this incredible product 
that was made by men and women throughout our country in the 1940s. It 
was a time of great military need, during World War II and the cold 
war. And they did their job, as the federal government had asked.
  Now we are saying we are going to ignore the definitions and the 
process and not really have a hearing on the Nuclear Waste Policy Act 
or the fact that the DOE has already been turned down in the courts in 
its ability to reclassify that waste.
  Mr. ALLARD. Mr. President, I wonder if the Senator from Washington 
will allow me a moment.
  Ms. CANTWELL. Does the Senator have a question?
  Mr. ALLARD. Pardon?
  Ms. CANTWELL. Does the Senator have a question?
  Mr. ALLARD. I do not have a question. I wanted to know how much 
longer the Senator from Washington will take because we have Members in 
the Chamber who would like to speak. They have schedules and would like 
to get some feel of when their opportunity may come up to speak.
  Ms. CANTWELL. Without yielding the floor.
  Mr. ALLARD. Mr. President, I ask the Senator from Washington how much 
longer she anticipates taking to complete her remarks.
  Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I have some more material on the history 
of the process. I see 2 of my colleagues in the Chamber who are also 
very concerned about this issue, but I imagine at least another half 
hour or so longer, maybe more.
  Mr. ALLARD. I thank the Senator for that guidance.
  Ms. CANTWELL. Does the Senator from Washington have a question?
  Mr. ALLARD. I would hope we could go back and forth. I think that is 
the way the debate has been going. The next Senator I will call on is 
Senator Inhofe, and then whoever on your side.
  Ms. CANTWELL. I obviously want my colleagues to join in the debate on 
this issue, but the reason this Senator feels so strongly about this 
process is because I do believe this measure does not belong on the 
Defense authorization bill. We have a very important piece of 
legislation that needs to move through the process, and yet we have an 
entity the courts have turned down, that believes that States have 
turned them down, that believes this is a controversial issue, and 
thinks they ought to sneak it in on a DOD bill and that is a way to do 
legislation. It is not the way to do legislation.
  This is the only opportunity we have to expose the fact this 
legislation has been drafted this way and the unbelievable effect it 
has on so many people in

[[Page 10480]]

this country when the Department of Energy can author legislation and 
give it to a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee who then 
offers it in a mark-up in private and includes it in the legislation.
  I am going to take a little more time to go over these facts because 
I think the bright light of day needs to shine on the fact the Nuclear 
Waste Policy Act of 1982 ought to have the attention of the Energy and 
Natural Resources Committee and ought to have the attention of the 
Environment and Public Works Committee and not be proposed on the 
Defense authorization bill without the scrutiny of public debate and 
foresight that such a huge, significant change in policy would bring 
about.
  This is why I am going to take as much time as necessary to explain 
this policy and to say to the members of the Senate Armed Services 
Committee that while any member has the ability to offer any amendment 
they want, including in an authorizing bill, usually it is the other 
way around. We have authorizing on appropriations and issues of that 
nature that have caused----
  Mr. INHOFE. Will the Senator yield for a question?
  Ms. CANTWELL. The Senator will yield for a question.
  Mr. INHOFE. I remind the Senator from Washington, if she is concerned 
about the action that we had proposed with the Environment and Public 
Works Committee, I chair that committee and I am waiting to be heard 
concerning this issue because I also have a lot of interest in it. I 
appreciate the fact that the Senator is suggesting our jurisdiction 
should be heard, and that is what I am waiting to do.
  Will the Senator agree with that?
  Ms. CANTWELL. I thank the Senator for his question. The issue is that 
the Senate Armed Services Committee should never have voted and 
considered this legislation in a closed door session without those 
hearings. So I certainly want the Member to be heard but--I think I 
have the floor, Mr. President.
  Mr. INHOFE. Will the Senator yield the floor for a question?
  Ms. CANTWELL. I think I have the floor, Mr. President, and I will 
yield in a moment for another question.
  The issue is that we have been trying to work with the author of this 
legislation on a compromise that would promote a dialog and a hearing. 
My staff has been working diligently since the language came out of the 
Senate Armed Services Committee.
  This morning we learned without warning, without notice, that perhaps 
now they did not want to continue discussion on that, they did not want 
to continue discussion on how we brought this issue to light.
  I really did not want to spend the afternoon on the Senate floor. We 
had hoped we would actually propose a better process and procedure, but 
others want to move forward on changing the underlying bill, which in 
this amendment is still flawed. The proposed amendment by Senator 
Graham of South Carolina makes a bad situation slightly better but does 
not correct the underlying problem. And this Senator whose home state 
has one million gallons of nuclear waste flowing to the Columbia 
River--is going to be heard on the details of this proposal.
  The fact that we have not had a full public hearing on a significant 
change in 30 years of policy and 50 years of science is something that, 
if it takes me 5 hours to explain, I will take it. I will take the 5 
hours to explain to my colleague the significance of these changes.
  Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, will the distinguished Senator yield for a 
question?
  Ms. CANTWELL. I will yield to the Senator for a question.
  Mr. WARNER. I thank the Senator. May I most respectfully explain that 
under the Senate rules of allocation of committee responsibilities, 
this issue of the nuclear waste is directly within the purview of the 
Senate Armed Services Committee. We control, through oversight, 70 
percent of the budget of the Department of Energy. The cost of nuclear 
waste cleanup comes before our committee. So I want to say to my 
distinguished colleague, while she may have concerns about the 
legislative process as a whole, there is no doubt about the 
jurisdiction of the Armed Services Committee over this subject.
  We have put in our bill, which is now at the desk and the subject of 
debate, the specific provisions the Senator is addressing. 
Jurisdictionally we had the perfect right to incorporate in our bill 
such legislative language we deemed as a committee necessary for 
dealing with this question of this specific type of nuclear waste. I 
was not certain that the distinguished Senator was aware that clearly 
this is in the jurisdiction of this committee.
  Ms. CANTWELL. I thank the Senator for his question, but under rule 
XXV, the Armed Services Committee has jurisdiction over national 
security aspects of nuclear energy, the Energy and Natural Resources 
Committee has jurisdiction over nonmilitary development of nuclear 
energy, and the EPW Committee has jurisdiction over the nonmilitary 
environmental regulation and control of nuclear energy.
  Undoubtedly SASC has jurisdiction over the reprocessing that created 
the tanks to begin with because DOE was responsible for the national 
security, but I do not see how anyone could seriously argue how the 
waste, disposal, and cleanup of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act is a part 
of the national security aspect of the Senate Armed Services 
Committee's jurisdiction.
  While I am more than happy that the committee has used this authority 
to bring this issue up, I think the committee is doing an injustice to 
say to our colleagues that a change that is in contradiction to the 
Nuclear Waste Policy Act ought to be passed by the committee without 
hearing, without debate, without full scrutiny of public daylight. This 
provision would really contradict 30 years of law on the books when the 
agency promulgating that rule change lost a court battle basically 
telling it it does not have the authority to redefine high-level 
nuclear waste.
  I fully respect, because of all the committees that I work with, I 
know that the chairman of the Armed Services Committee always strives 
to be fair and balanced at his hearings. And there are difficult 
challenges that we have had over many sensitive subjects in the last 
several weeks. The chairman has gone way out of his way to make sure 
the continuity of that committee works well and that the rules and 
processes are followed. But I say to the chairman that if the 
Department of Energy is so sure about these statutory changes they are 
promulgating through his committee without debate, then they ought to 
be willing to have the hearings and have the debates with the other 
committees that have jurisdiction for the cleanup, not the national 
security efforts the Senator was responsible for as the chairman of 
that committee.
  Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, if I could reply, without the Senator 
losing her right to the floor, I will shortly bring the President's 
budget request for funds. I will bring appropriations acts and I will 
show the Senator the direct linkage of the request for funds coming to 
the Armed Services Committee, the Armed Services Committee bill going 
to the Appropriations Committee, and action by the Appropriations 
Committee on the authorizations of expenditure of the funds for nuclear 
waste and cleanup. It is irrefutable, and I will take a little time to 
go out and get the documentation. Then I will ask unanimous consent to 
print that documentation in the Record.
  I thank the Senator.
  Ms. CANTWELL. I thank the chairman again for his statement. I point 
out to him that the difference between authorizing for appropriations 
and oversight of policy, and what I am debating is that the committee's 
oversight over nuclear waste cleanup policy as set out in the Nuclear 
Waste Policy Act. When that was passed in 1982 and moved through the 
legislative branch and made its way through the debates, it was debated 
in the Energy and Natural Resources Committee and EPW Committee. As the 
parliamentarian referred to those committees, I am sure that the SASC, 
because of its nature of the appropriated funds, has some 
responsibilities. But I do not think that the SASC is the committee of 
jurisdiction for changing the Nuclear Waste

[[Page 10481]]

Policy Act. I do not think that is the primary responsibility of that 
committee.
  So, I don't know. I say to the Senator, the chairman of the Senate 
Armed Services Committee, I have a great deal of respect for his 
willingness at all times in the most difficult of situations to try to 
have consideration of issues be as fair and balanced as possible, and 
to give Members their opportunity. I am happy to continue to discuss 
with him the nuances of this particular issue. But I have a feeling 
that if we had this Nuclear Waste Policy Act before us today and we 
asked the Parliamentarian--this change that is in your bill, under a 
separate act, under a separate stand-alone bill--it would not be 
referred to that committee. It would be referred jointly to those other 
committees and maybe to SASC in the authorizing of an appropriation, 
but not for the policy change.
  Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I will reply later today with the 
documents in hand.
  Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I think there are several other people 
here.
  Mr. REID. Will the Senator respond to a question from the Senator?
  Ms. CANTWELL. Without losing my right to the floor.
  Mr. REID. Yes. I say to my friend from Washington, having spoken with 
her, it is my understanding the Senator has said publicly that if we 
came back after the break, the Senator would be willing to look very 
closely at the amendment pending and would be willing to offer one of 
her own, that she would agree to a time certain on that amendment. Is 
that true?
  Ms. CANTWELL. I simply want the issue to have the appropriate amount 
of debate and dialog. All of us will have the opportunity to vote up or 
down on any of the amendments anybody wants to offer to this section. 
But the question before us was, all of a sudden at 11:30 today, without 
notice, when we had been in negotiations on this language, to bring it 
to the floor, this Senator feels obligated to make sure this time 
period is used to bring committee members and colleagues up to speed 
about the contents of the underlying bill.
  Mr. REID. Does the Senator yield for another question?
  Ms. CANTWELL. Yes.
  Mr. REID. It is my further understanding the Senator, who has spoken 
for some time now, has a lot more to say, is that right, on this 
amendment, on this date? She has only gotten warmed up; is that right?
  Ms. CANTWELL. That is correct.
  Mr. REID. And you, as a matter of courtesy, will allow Senators 
Hollings and Murray and anyone on the majority side to speak and you 
will be back at a later time for another round or two; is that correct?
  Ms. CANTWELL. That is correct. I will give my colleagues from 
Washington and South Carolina an opportunity to join in this debate and 
participate because I think it is very important that this issue 
receive the full attention of Members. As I said at the beginning of 
this discussion, I do not believe this is an issue--even though a lot 
of my colleagues would like to classify it as an issue that only 
affects Washington State, South Carolina, or Idaho perhaps with some 
impact on Oregon and maybe Georgia, or New York in its commercial 
facility. I have never thought of this nuclear waste issue as a 
geographic-specific debate.
  Our responsibility as a body is to make sure nuclear waste cleanup 
happens in a process that the science determines will not be with harm 
to humans or to the environment. We now have a proposal before us that 
science says will be harmful, that is not based on sound science, that 
has not met the test, nor has our approval.
  While I am willing to have this debate, I hope my colleagues will use 
this debate as an opportunity to understand our challenge on nuclear 
waste cleanup and the tremendous amount of resources that are spent by 
our Government on that cleanup and the efficiencies that need to happen 
to make that process go more smoothly than it has in the past.
  But I can guarantee to my colleagues that wanting that process to go 
more smoothly in the future, and wanting it to be more cost effective, 
does not simply mean coming up with a short-term proposal, a fix that 
is counter to what existing statute and law is. If we want to have that 
debate, let's go through the normal committees and have that debate, 
and let's have the scientists come in and discuss it with us, and let's 
not end up with a process where we are going to be battling in the 
courts. I don't think that does any of us any good. Certainly, for us 
in the State of Washington, with a 1-million-gallon plume heading 
toward the Columbia River, it doesn't do us any good.
  I hope my colleagues will use this opportunity to focus attention not 
just on the question at hand, of high-level radioactive waste, but I 
would say the consistency by which the States of Washington, Oregon, 
Idaho, South Carolina, and others have banded together in the last year 
or two in authorizing and appropriations language that has done a good 
job to make sure the processing of radioactive waste is completed.
  I remind my colleagues, this is the first time I think the Department 
of Energy has successfully picked off a State. At first the underlying 
language was actually blackmail: We are going to make this change and 
nuclear waste is going to be reclassified, and if you are going to 
agree with us, we will give you some money, and if you don't agree with 
us, we are not cleaning up your waste. That is blackmail. That is what 
the current language in the DOD authorizing bill is. It is blackmail.
  Now, after my colleagues have seen what ludicrous language that is, 
Senator Graham wants to offer an amendment that will not tie up the 
funds. But we still remain with the underlying problem, which is the 
Department of Energy is trying to reclassify highly radioactive waste 
as low-level ancillary waste and say it can be grouted, that is that 
cement and sand can be poured on it and somehow, leaving incidental 
amount of tank waste is a sufficient way to clean up tanks.
  I will continue to fight on this issue until Members understand the 
significant policy change that is before this body.
  I ask unanimous consent after the remarks of Senator Inhofe that 
Senators Murray, Allard, and Hollings be recognized, and that I 
immediately be recognized after them.
  Mr. REID. I object.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard. The Senator from 
Washington has the floor.
  Ms. CANTWELL. I want to accommodate the Senator from Nevada. I was 
proposing to accommodate and trade off recognition of the four Members 
who are present on the floor?
  Does the Senator have a question?
  Mr. REID. When the Senator yields the floor, I will speak.
  Ms. CANTWELL. The Senator from Nevada--I am happy to yield the floor 
to the Senator from Nevada.
  Mr. REID. Pardon me?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is the Senator yielding the floor?
  Several Senators addressed the Chair.
  Ms. CANTWELL. Does the Senator from Nevada have a question?
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I yield to the Chair. I have a question on 
that statement. The Senator from Washington has a right to speak, but 
we are not going to set a long list of speakers here at random, what 
speakers are going to speak. I think what we are going to do, we have a 
number of speakers on the floor, Senators Inhofe, Hollings, Allard, 
Murray--people who have been here for a long period of time.
  It appears to me we are not going to have a vote on this in the near 
future. I suggest what we do is enter into agreement for the next 
several however long it takes. We have people who want to speak. We can 
go forward and whoever gets the jump ball, have people be recognized 
whenever they get the floor.
  Senator Hollings has said Senator Inhofe has been here longer than he 
has. Senator Inhofe could be recognized for whatever time he feels 
appropriate. I would like to get some idea of what the time should be. 
Then, Senator

[[Page 10482]]

Hollings, I think that would be the best way to go.
  But in the meantime, it must be under some agreement, whoever gets 
the floor.
  Mr. ALLARD. Will the Senator from Nevada yield?
  Mr. REID. I am happy to.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington has the floor.
  Ms. CANTWELL. The Senator from Washington is happy to entertain a 
question that would allow the various Members who are here----
  Mr. REID. The Senator from Washington has to understand--she has the 
floor, and if she wants to keep talking, let her keep talking. When she 
finishes, we will be happy to----
  Mr. ALLARD. If the Senator from Washington will yield, I would like 
to pose a plan of how we can go through this. I suggest that maybe we 
can sit down with leadership and work out some time for debate. I know 
Senator Graham on this side of the Senate floor would like to wrap up 
this debate. Maybe we can get some time limits to give everybody an 
opportunity to speak. I know there is some interest in having some 
votes tonight. I believe I need to work with leadership on this side, 
if Senator Reid will work with leadership on his side, to determine if 
we can work this out. The Senator from Washington can finish, and I can 
call on the Senator from Oklahoma. Maybe we can sit down and work out a 
time agreement.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, if the Senator will yield----
  Mr. ALLARD. I yield.
  Mr. REID. The Senator from Washington has the floor.
  Let me say this: Everyone should understand that there is not going 
to be a vote on this amendment tonight. Everyone should understand 
that. There is going to be no vote on the pending amendment tonight. I 
told people that 5 hours ago. No one believed me. There is not going to 
be a vote on the Graham amendment tonight.
  Mr. ALLARD. Nobody is calling for a vote on this amendment tonight, 
but there might be other votes.
  Mr. REID. We will not agree to set this one side. If the Senator from 
South Carolina wishes to withdraw his amendment and set some orderly 
procedure to take it up when we get back after the Memorial Day break, 
we are in agreement. But we are not going to agree to set this aside to 
go to another amendment.
  Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, this Senator is happy to yield the floor 
to my colleague to discuss this issue. I want to make it clear that 
after 30 years of standard policy, they are not willing to just have a 
few hours of debate and then vote on this significant a change. The 
underlying Graham amendment does not fix the underlying DOD committee-
passed authorization language that allows the Department of Energy to 
reclassify waste.
  That is the key issue at hand. We do not want to leave this bill with 
this reclassification of highly radioactive waste to an amendment on 
spent fuel storage tanks to then be grouted over. We need to have the 
attention of this body, my colleagues who are members of the various 
committees I mentioned and my colleagues from those States directly 
affected, although I said it is a policy everybody should be 
discussing, and the public needs to have an idea and an opportunity to 
understand that this is a major policy proposal which is being proposed 
in this underlying bill.
  I would have preferred that the Graham amendment not be brought up 
today, not to this particular issue of the DOD bill being discussed. We 
are still talking. We hoped we might able to work something out and 
save our colleagues the time and attention of studying a nuclear waste 
policy proposal and what level of radioactivity could be sufficiently 
removed from tanks and what couldn't be. But if my colleagues want to 
continue to pursue the subject, we are going to continue to pursue and 
discuss this issue.
  With that, I know various Members of both sides of the aisle are 
waiting, and I will have more to say on this subject as we continue to 
debate the DOD authorizing bill and continue to debate whether the 
Graham amendment is sufficient in disposing of the problem that has now 
been created in the underlying bill in overriding 30 years of law and 
science about how this country should clean up nuclear waste. I don't 
believe anybody in America wants to do it on the cheap. We need to give 
the American public the certainty that this body will not propose major 
policy changes without hearings, without debate, without committees of 
jurisdiction having oversight of this policy proposal that is in the 
Defense authorization bill.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, we are trying to work out, subject to the 
approval of the majority leader, to allow Senator Inhofe to speak for 
15 minutes and Senator Hollings for 45 minutes. They have waited a long 
time. Senator Allard, being the gentleman he is, did want to talk about 
the subsequent votes; there are a couple of judges who need votes. We 
have 25 to do before the end of June, so we have a lot of voting to do. 
Then, of course, everyone should understand that we will be right back 
on the Defense bill following those votes.
  We appreciate the courtesy of the Senator from Oklahoma for being 
patient and the Senator from South Carolina. The order has not been 
entered, but that is what we will order. It would be appropriate for 
the Senator from Oklahoma to start his speech.
  Members should understand that we will have a couple of votes around 
5:30.
  Mr. ALLARD. I yield 15 minutes to the Senator from Oklahoma.
  Mr. INHOFE. I ask the manager if I could have 20 minutes, but I will 
probably not take that long. I am saving the best for last and I don't 
want to miss it.
  Mr. ALLARD. I amend that and ask unanimous consent that the Senator 
from Oklahoma be allowed to speak for 20 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma is recognized for 20 
minutes.
  Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I will clarify a couple of things that 
were said by the distinguished Senator from Washington that I am sure 
she believes are true but need to be elaborated upon. First, 
characterizing the consideration of going back to the old policy as 
something that happened in the middle of the night, something that 
happened in the dark, something that happened in a less than honest way 
is not at all accurate.
  I suggest two things. First, I chaired the Subcommittee on Clean Air, 
Wetlands, Private Property and Nuclear Safety of the Environment and 
Public Works Committee in 1998 and 1999. During that time, of course, 
we had jurisdiction over the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. During that 
time, they had countless hearings. They had comment periods. They 
talked about this out in the open, with people given an opportunity to 
be heard. I happened to be chairing the committee that had oversight at 
the time. I remember that very well.
  Second, I suggest this was discussed in the Senate Armed Services 
Committee. It certainly was not something that was done in any way that 
was less than totally honest and totally done in the daylight. By 
suggesting that Senator Joe Lieberman and Senator Jack Reed and the 
other Members on this side of the issue did something that was not out 
in the open, I don't think is quite fair.
  We had a hearing this morning with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. 
It is an oversight hearing we have had ever since 1998. That is when, 
in the NRC, I believe we saw a major change. They have done a good job. 
The NRC says we should manage waste based on the risk it poses, not how 
it is defined.
  The Department of Energy was attempting to pursue this very policy 
when it was stopped in its tracks. What

[[Page 10483]]

stopped it? Several of my colleagues already mentioned a lawsuit was 
brought against the DOE by the Natural Resources Defense Council. This 
is the allegedly charitable organization that uses a substantial amount 
of taxpayer dollars in the form of discretionary grants to achieve its 
goals.
  Three weeks ago I spoke in the Senate about the spurious and 
misleading advertisement run by the NRDC. This organization places a 
higher priority on imposing ridiculously stringent environmental 
standards than on essential elements of national security. They have 
proven this many times in the past by filing lawsuits to limit the Navy 
readiness exercises and otherwise hampering our military. Now the NRDC 
has hamstrung the Department of Energy in the faithful execution of its 
responsibilities.
  This amendment allows the DOE to pursue the best plan to dispose of 
this nuclear material. That plan saves our taxpayers money. It shortens 
the amount of time the waste remains in the tanks. It is a safe way to 
do it. It is a well-thought-out way of doing it and one that has been 
the subject of a lot of daylight. It is merely going back to a policy 
that has worked for a long period of time.
  We know the background. Sometimes it is necessary to repeat it. 
During the cold war, the national security of the United States 
necessitated the building of nuclear weapons. Now, 50 years later, we 
are faced with the legacy of this effort and the need to clean up the 
sites where there is waste from the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel. 
The creation of this waste was a necessary result of the chemical 
processes needed to make defense nuclear material. We all understand 
that.
  Last summer, this very important cleanup effort, which is the single 
largest ongoing environmental risk reduction project for the Department 
of Energy, took a crushing blow when the district court issued a ruling 
that created significantly illegal uncertainties and enormous problems 
for the Department's tank waste cleanup at the Savannah River site, the 
West Valley, the Hanford site, and the Idaho National Engineer 
Environmental Laboratory. Unless these legal uncertainties are 
resolved, the only path the Department of Energy could in theory pursue 
that does have the necessary legal certainty would be to involve 
sending all the waste in tanks and the tanks themselves to Yucca 
Mountain no matter how long or short lived is the radioactivity they 
contain.
  This dramatic change in course would increase the costs of the 
cleanup itself in terms of human lives sevenfold and also delay 
completion of simply emptying the tanks and treating the waste there by 
four decades, thereby further substantially increasing the risk, as the 
NRC pointed out, to the public health and safety during the time period 
by leaving the waste in tanks for that much longer. It would also 
increase the cost of simply emptying and treating the tank waste, 
according to the DOE estimates, by an additional $86 billion, only $1 
billion less than last year's supplemental appropriation for the Iraq 
war, for approximately a total cost of $138 billion.
  We are talking about something really big. The estimates for delay 
and the additional costs do not take into account the very complex 
logistics of transporting and disposing of all the additional waste at 
Yucca Mountain or the complex logistics of preparing for disposal, 
transporting, and disposing of the tanks themselves. Keep in mind, it 
is not just what is in the tanks. The tanks themselves would have to go 
there and be disposed of at the Yucca Mountain facility. These would 
also add additional decades and tens, if not hundreds, of billions of 
dollars to the cleanup cost.
  Furthermore, under this scenario, the number of canisters of waste 
that would be transported to Yucca Mountain would increase from 20,000 
canisters to approximately 200,000 canisters.
  I know there are a lot of members in the Senate concerned about the 
transport of waste to Yucca Mountain. That would increase it tenfold. 
Some have asked, why not just authorize and appropriate $350 million 
needed for the cleanup activities in fiscal year 2005 and force the 
Department of Energy to continue its work? This is not a responsible 
path. If the Department of Energy constructs the facility necessary to 
prepare waste for disposal as low-level or transuranic waste and 
prepare the waste for disposal and then finds out after the fact that 
it lacked the legal authority to classify the waste in this manner, 
hundreds of millions of dollars of the taxpayers' money would already 
have been wasted and years of cleanup work lost. The Department may 
have actually made it harder to put the waste in the form needed to 
dispose of it at Yucca Mountain.
  The fundamental root cause of the dilemma that faces our Nation today 
is the ambiguity presented by the Nuclear Waste Policy Act's definition 
of high-level waste and that, if left unclassified, is producing this 
technologically irrational result without environmental benefit that, 
in fact, increases health and safety risks.
  It is up to this committee and this Congress to resolve ambiguity in 
order for the cleanup of the sites which played such a key role in the 
national security of our Nation. The language before the Senate 
clarifies the ambiguity, and I urge adoption of this language.
  What had happened on this, back in the time it was considered in SAS 
Committee--the Senate Armed Services Committee--was that it was an 
amendment to actually go back and do it as it had been done before, to 
do it in the best way, as determined by the multitude of hearings that 
were conducted by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and which were 
conducted during the time I chaired the oversight committee. So we were 
there. We knew it was taking place.
  The thing that I guess bothers me the most--I see the ranking 
minority member of the Senate Armed Services Committee on the Senate 
floor. We acted very responsibly. This was not a partisan issue. This 
was a bipartisan issue. To infer in any way that things were done in 
the dark of night or in any way inappropriately is to say that I and 
several others--certainly the chairman of the committee; certainly 
Senator Joe Lieberman; certainly Senator Jack Reed, who supported this 
effort and supported the Senator from South Carolina--were acting 
inappropriately. I do not think that is realistic.
  By the way, it has been said several times that there is some doubt 
as to what the NRC's position is on this issue. I will read the last 
paragraph of a letter that was sent to me, on May 18, as chairman of 
the Environment and Public Works Committee. This last paragraph says:

       It is our understanding that some opponents of DOE's 
     proposed plans believe that the tanks and the waste residuals 
     should be disposed of as high-level waste in a geologic 
     repository. While either approach could potentially be 
     implemented within NRC regulatory requirements, we note that 
     removal of the tanks, packaging of the tanks and residuals 
     for transport and disposal, and disposal of the waste at a 
     geologic repository, if feasible, would incur significant 
     additional worker exposures--

  That is human lives. We are exposing individuals.

     and transportation exposures--

  The transportation exposures we have talked about on this floor many, 
many times--

     at very large financial costs.

  You might conclude that, at this time, with all the terrorist threats 
around, these could become prime targets while being transported. Still 
quoting the letter:

       Whereas, if DOE's proposed plans meet appropriate criteria, 
     such as those used in NRC's previous reviews, then the NRC 
     believes that public health and safety can be maintained 
     while avoiding unnecessary additional exposures and risks 
     associated with removal and transport of the waste and 
     unnecessary additional expenditures of Federal funds.
       I hope this letter satisfactorily addresses your questions.

  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the entire letter from 
the NRC to me dated May 18 be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:


[[Page 10484]]




                                Nuclear Regulatory Commission,

                                     Washington, DC, May 18, 2004.
     Hon. James M. Inhofe,
     Chairman, Committee on Environment and Public Works, U.S. 
         Senate, Washington, DC.
       Dear Mr. Chairman: This letter responds to your request of 
     May 18, 2004, for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission's 
     (NRC's) views on waste-incident-to-reprocessing (WIR). 
     Specifically, you requested NRC's thoughts on: (1) the U.S. 
     Department of Energy's (DOE's) plan to grout in place the 
     remaining residues left in the tanks at the Savannah River 
     Site (SRS), the Hanford site, and the Idaho National 
     Engineering and Environmental Laboratory (INEEL); and (2) the 
     risks to human health and the environment by following DOE's 
     plan or the Natural Resources Defense Council' (NRDC's) plan. 
     The concept underlying WIR is that wastes can be managed 
     based on their risk to human health and the environment, 
     rather than the origin of the wastes. For wastes that 
     originate in reprocessing of nuclear fuel, such as the tank 
     residuals at the DOE sites, some are highly radioactive and 
     need to be treated and disposed of as high-level radioactive 
     waste. Others do not pose the same risk to human health and 
     the environment, and do not need to be disposed of as high-
     level waste in order to manage the risks that they pose.
       At the outset, it must be understood that the NRC does not 
     have regulatory authority or jurisdiction over SRS, Hanford, 
     or INEEL. In the past, DOE has requested NRC review of some 
     of its WIR determinations and supporting analysis. The NRC 
     entered into reimbursable agreements to perform these 
     reviews, which were provided as advice and did not constitute 
     regulatory approval. NRC performed comprehensive and 
     independent WIR reviews for Hanford in 1997, SRS in 2000, and 
     INEEL in 2002 and 2003. These reviews involved both waste 
     removed from tanks, and waste residuals remaining in the 
     tanks for grouting and closure. NRC assessed whether DOE's 
     determinations had sound technical assumptions, analysis, and 
     conclusions with regard to specific WIR criteria. These 
     criteria are: (1) the waste has been processed to remove key 
     radionuclides to the maximum extent that is technically and 
     economically practical, and (2) the waste is to be managed so 
     that safety requirements comparable to the performance 
     objectives in NRC's regulation 10 CFR Part 61 (Licensing 
     Requirements for Land Disposal of Radioactive Waste), Subpart 
     C, are satisfied. In all cases, the NRC staff found that 
     DOE's proposed methodology and conclusions met the 
     appropriate WIR criteria and therefore met the performance 
     objectives and dose limits that would apply to near-surface 
     low-level waste disposal and would protect public health and 
     safety. It should be noted that the Commission did not review 
     all of DOE's actions with regard to WIR at those sites, and 
     that the NRC conclusions applied only to those actions that 
     the NRC reviewed. It should be noted that the Commission in 
     its ``Decommissioning Criteria for the West Valley 
     Demonstration Project (M-32) at the West Valley Site; Final 
     Policy Statement'' (67 FR 5003, February 1, 2002), 
     established WIR criteria for that site identical to those 
     used in our reviews of the three DOE sites.
       It is our understanding that some opponents of DOE's 
     proposed plans believe that the tanks and the waste residuals 
     should be disposed of as high-level waste in a geologic 
     repository. While either approach could potentially be 
     implemented within NRC regulatory requirements, we note that 
     removal of the tanks, packaging of the tanks and residuals 
     for transport and disposal, and disposal of the waste at a 
     geologic repository, if feasible, would incur significant 
     additional worker exposures and transportation exposures at 
     very large financial costs. Whereas, if DOE's proposed plans 
     meet appropriate criteria, such as those used in NRC's 
     previous reviews, then the NRC believes that public health 
     and safety can be maintained while avoiding unnecessary 
     additional exposures and risks associated with removal and 
     transport of the waste and unnecessary additional 
     expenditures of Federal funds.
       I hope this letter satisfactorily addresses your questions.
           Sincerely,
                                                     Nils J. Diaz.

  Mr. INHOFE. We have a lot of commissions and a lot of organizations 
in the committee that I chair. We have some 17 Departments for which we 
have oversight and we deal with on a daily basis. When the Nuclear 
Regulatory Commission was originally formed, it was to have the 
expertise and the knowledge as to what is going to assure the most 
safety for the public in the cheapest way you can get things done. They 
have done a good job. We have a lot of organizations such as this 
throughout Government. We have CASAC, the Clean Air Scientific Advisory 
Committee. We look to them because they have expertise. We look to the 
NRC because they have expertise.
  I do not want to imply that any of the Members here would have 
necessarily less expertise than the NRC, but I suspect that is the 
case. So we rely on that expertise. Here we have the Department of 
Energy with all of its experts saying: This is the safe way to do it. 
This is the cheapest way to do it. And we have the NRC, which is 
charged with the responsibility of public safety, saying: This is the 
best way to do it.
  So I believe, when the time comes, we need to look at this rationally 
and not try to make disparaging remarks about some of the members of 
the Armed Services Committee in our consideration of this amendment. 
Keep in mind, this was years in the making. Six years ago we started 
hearings on how to properly dispose of this, and the conclusions they 
came to were unanimous.
  With that, Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I ask the Senator, are we in a position now 
to do anything on this request we had?
  Mr. ALLARD. No. We are still hearing. Senator Inhofe has finished his 
statement. I would suggest we recognize the Senator from South Carolina 
for 40 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from South Carolina is 
recognized--
  Mr. REID. No. The Senator is recognized for whatever time he wants. 
He has the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Cornyn). The Senator from South Carolina.


                      Setting The Record Straight

  Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, I thank my distinguished colleagues. I 
have, this afternoon, the opportunity to respond to being charged as 
anti-Semitic when I proclaimed the policy of President Bush in the 
Mideast as not for Iraq or really for democracy in the sense that he is 
worried about Saddam and democracy. If he were worried about democracy 
in the Mideast, as we wanted to spread it as a policy, we would have 
invaded Lebanon, which is half a democracy and has terrorism and 
terrorists who have been problems to the interests of Israel and the 
United States.
  It is very interesting that on page 231, Richard Clarke, in his book 
``Against All Enemies,'' cites the fact that there had not been any 
terrorism, any evidence or intelligence of Saddam's terrorism against 
the United States from 1993 to 2003. He says that in the presence of 
Paul Wolfowitz. He says that in the presence of John McLaughlin of the 
CIA. In fact, he says: Isn't that right, John? And John says: That is 
exactly right.
  The reason was when they made the attempt on President Bush, Senior, 
back in 1993, President Clinton ordered a missile strike on Saddam in 
downtown Baghdad, the intelligence headquarters, and it went right 
straight down the middle of the headquarters. It was after hours so not 
a big kill--but Saddam got the message: You monkey around with the 
United States, a missile will land on your head.
  So, in essence, the equation had changed in the Saddam-Iraq/Mideast 
concerns whereby Saddam was more worried about any threat of the United 
States against him than the United States was worried about a threat by 
Saddam against us.
  I want to read an article that appeared in the Post and Courier in 
Charleston on May 6; thereafter, I think in the State newspaper in 
Columbia a couple days later; and in the Greenville News--all three 
major newspapers in South Carolina. You will find that there is no 
anti-Semitic reference whatsoever in it.
  The reason I emphasize that upfront is for the simple reason that you 
cannot put an op-ed in my hometown paper that is anti-Semitic. We have 
a very, very proud Jewish community in Charleston. In fact, it is where 
reform Judaism began. The earliest temple, Kadosh Beth Elohim, is on 
Hasell Street. I have spoken there several times. I had the pleasure of 
having that particular temple put on the National Register. This 
particular Senator, with over 50 years now of public service, has 
received a strong Jewish vote.
  Let me emphasize another thing because the papers are piling on and 
bringing up again a little difference of opinion I had on the Senate 
floor with Senator Metzenbaum. It was not really

[[Page 10485]]

a difference. What had happened was we were discussing a matter, and we 
referred to each's religion in order to make sure there would not be 
any misunderstanding or tempers flaring. The distinguished Senator from 
North Carolina, Mr. Helms, referred to himself as the Baptist lay 
leader, Senator Danforth as the Episcopal priest. I referred to myself 
as the Lutheran Senator. And when Senator Metzenbaum came on the floor, 
I referred to him as the Senator from B'nai B'rith, and he took 
exception. He thought it was an aspersion. I told him: Wait a minute, I 
will gladly identify myself as the Senator from B'nai B'rith. I did not 
mean to hurt his feelings. I apologized at that time but not for the 
legitimacy and the circumstances of the particular reference.
  Now here we go again, some years later. The Senator from Virginia, 
Mr. George Allen, and I are good friends. Maybe after this particular 
thing he might feel different, but I know his role as the chairman of 
the campaign committee. And so I have an article here where Senator 
Allen denounces Senator Hollings' latest political attack, Senator 
Hollings' antisemitic, political conspiracy statement. Let me read the 
statement here from the May 6 Post and Courier, and you be the judge:

       With 760 dead in Iraq, over 3,000 maimed for life--home 
     folks continue to argue why we are in Iraq--and how to get 
     out.
       Now everyone knows what was not the cause. Even President 
     Bush acknowledges that Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 
     9/11. Listing the 45 countries where al-Qaida was operating 
     on September 11 . . . the State Department did not list Iraq.

  They listed 45 countries and at that particular date on September 11, 
2001, they did not even list Iraq.

       Richard Clarke, in ``Against All Enemies,'' tells how the 
     United States had not received any threat of terrorism for 10 
     years from Saddam at the time of our invasion.
       On page 231, John McLaughlin of the CIA verifies this to 
     Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz. In 1993, President 
     Clinton responded to Saddam's attempt on the life of 
     President George H.W. Bush by putting a missile down on 
     Saddam's intelligence headquarters in Baghdad. Not a big 
     kill, but Saddam got the message--monkey around with the 
     United States and a missile lands on his head. Of course 
     there were no weapons of mass destruction. Israel's 
     intelligence Mossad knows what's going on in Iraq. They are 
     the best. They have to know.
       Israel's survival depends on knowing. Israel long since 
     would have taken us to the weapons of mass destruction . . .

  Let me divert for a second there. I was here when Israel attacked the 
nuclear facility in Baghdad during the 1980s. In all candor, when 
President Bush, on October 7, 2002, said, after all that buildup by 
Cheney, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld and everybody else, that facing clear 
evidence of peril, we cannot wait until the smoking gun is a mushroom 
cloud, I thought we were attacking for Israel. I thought that they knew 
about some kind of nuclear development there. And rather than getting 
them in further trouble with the United Nations and the Arab world, 
that its best friend, the United States, would knock it out for them. 
That is why I voted for it. I got misled. Our attack on Iraq, the 
invasion of Iraq is a bad mistake. I will get into that later. But let 
me read even further:

     . . . if there were any [weapons of mass destruction] or if 
     they had been removed. With Iraq no threat, why invade a 
     sovereign country? The answer: President Bush's policy to 
     secure Israel.
       Led by Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and Charles Krauthammer, 
     for years there had been a domino school of thought that the 
     way to guarantee Israel's security is to spread democracy in 
     the area. Wolfowitz wrote: ``The United States may not be 
     able to lead countries through the door of democracy, but 
     where that door is locked shut by a totalitarian deadbolt, 
     American power may be the only way to open it up.''

  Namely, invasion. That is Wolfowitz talking.

       And on another occasion: Iraq as ``the first Arab democracy 
     . . . would cast a very large shadow, starting with Syria and 
     Iran but across the whole Arab world.'' Three weeks before 
     the invasion, President Bush stated: ``A new regime in Iraq 
     would serve as a dramatic and inspiring example for freedom 
     for other nations in the region.''

  I referred to those three gentlemen because I know them well. They 
are brilliant. I have been for years associated one way or the other 
with each of them. I read Charles Krauthammer. I wish I could write 
like he can. With respect to Richard Perle, he was sort of our 
authority in the cold war, best friend of Scoop Jackson. That is how I 
met him 38 years ago almost. I followed him and I followed his advice, 
and that is in large measure how we prevailed in the cold war. So I 
have the highest respect for Richard Perle.
  And, of course, the other gentleman, Paul Wolfowitz, Paul Wolfowitz, 
I met him out in Indonesia when he was Ambassador. He came back. We 
were good friends. He was looking around for a position, and I know I 
offered him one--in fact, we might go to the records and find 
temporarily he might have been on my payroll for a few weeks. But I 
have always had the highest regard for Paul Wolfowitz.
  That is why I referred to him. I had their sayings and everything 
else. But let me go, diverting for a minute, right to the Project For 
The New American Century. I have a letter that was written on May 29, 
1998, to Newt Gingrich, the Speaker, Trent Lott, the Senate majority 
leader. These are the gentlemen who said this:

       We would use U.S. and allied military power to provide 
     protection for liberating areas in northern and southern 
     Iraq, and we should establish and maintain a strong U.S. 
     military presence in the region and be prepared to use that 
     force to protect our vital interests in the Gulf and, if 
     necessary, to help remove Saddam from power.

  And that is signed by--and I want everybody to remember these names--
Elliot Abrams, William J. Bennett, Jeffrey Bergner, John R. Bolton, 
Paula Dobriansky, Francis Fukuyama, Robert Kagan, Zalmay Khalilzad, 
William Kristol, Richard Perle, Peter Rodman, Donald Rumsfeld, William 
Schneider, Jr., Vin Weber, Paul Wolfowitz, James Woolsey, Robert B. 
Zoellick. There is a studied school of thought of the best way to 
secure Israel. We have been going for years back and forth with every 
particular administration, you can see where we are now.
  But in any event, the better way to do it is go right in and 
establish our predominance in Iraq and then, as they say, and I have 
different articles here I could refer to, next is Iran and then Syria. 
And it is the domino theory, and they genuinely believe it. I differ. I 
think, frankly, we have caused more terrorism than we have gotten rid 
of. That is my Israel policy. You can't have an Israel policy other 
than what AIPAC gives you around here. I have followed them mostly in 
the main, but I have also resisted signing certain letters from time to 
time, to give the poor President a chance.
  I can tell you no President takes office--I don't care whether it is 
a Republican or a Democrat--that all of a sudden AIPAC will tell him 
exactly what the policy is, and Senators and members of Congress ought 
to sign letters. I read those carefully and I have joined in most of 
them. On some I have held back. I have my own idea and my own policy. I 
have stated it categorically.
  The way to really get peace is not militarily. You cannot kill an 
idea militarily. I was delighted the other day when General Myers 
appeared before our Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense and he said 
that we will not win militarily in Iraq. He didn't say we are going to 
get defeated militarily but that you can't win militarily in Iraq.
  Mr. ALLARD. Will the Senator yield?
  Mr. HOLLINGS. Not until I complete this thought. Time is running out 
on me.
  The papers are the ones that pointed out Wolfowitz, Pearle, and 
Charles Krauthammer were of the Jewish faith. They are the ones who 
brought all this Semitism in there. I can tell you that right now, I 
didn't have that in mind. I had my friends in mind and I followed them. 
We had this in the late 1990s under President Clinton, when we passed a 
resolution that we ought to have Saddam removed from power, have a 
regime change. I was wondering how it went. I had to find my old file--
on this Project For The New American Century.
  Now, going back to my article: ``every President since 1947 has made 
a futile attempt to help Israel negotiate peace. But no leadership has 
surfaced amongst the Palestinians that can

[[Page 10486]]

make a binding agreement. President Bush realized his chances at 
negotiation were no better. He came to office imbued with one 
thought.''
  Mr. ALLARD. I wonder if the Senator will yield, preserving his time, 
for a unanimous consent request to move forward with the judge vote we 
have at 5:40.
  Mr. HOLLINGS. Without losing my right to the floor, I will yield.


            Unanimous Consent Agreement--Executive Calendar

  Mr. ALLARD. Mr. President, as in executive session, I ask unanimous 
consent that at 5:30 today the Senate proceed to executive session to 
consider the following nominations en bloc on today's Executive 
Calendar: No. 556, the nomination of Raymond Gruender to be U.S. 
Circuit Judge for the Eighth Circuit; and Calendar No. 557, the 
nomination of Franklin S. Van Antwerpen, to be U.S. Circuit Judge for 
the Third Circuit.
  I further ask unanimous consent that following 10 minutes of debate, 
equally divided between the chairman and ranking member of the 
Judiciary Committee, or their designees, that the Senate proceed to 
consecutive votes on the confirmation of the nominations, with no 
further intervening action or debate; further, that following the vote, 
the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action, and the 
Senate then return to legislative session.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I ask that the Senator modify his request so 
that the statement of the Senator from South Carolina will stop at 
5:40, and the rest of the unanimous consent kick in at 5:40, rather 
than 5:30, so we will be voting at 5:50.
  Mr. ALLARD. I am willing to modify it.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, let me again read from my article:
  President Bush came to office imbued with one thought: reelection.
  I say that advisedly. I have been up here with eight Presidents. We 
have had support of all eight Presidents. Yes, I supported the 
President on this Iraq resolution, but I was misled. There weren't any 
weapons, or any terrorism, or al-Qaida. This is the reason we went to 
war. He had one thought in mind, and that was reelection. I say that 
about President Bush. He is a delightful fella, a wonderful campaigner, 
but he loves campaigning. You cannot get him in the White House or 
catch him there, hardly. He doesn't work on these problems at all.
  I have worked with all of the Presidents. I know the leadership goes 
to the White House and tries to work with him. He is interested in one 
thing, and that is to be out campaigning. So he had one thought in 
mind, and that was reelection.
  Again, let me read: Bush thought tax cuts would hold his crowd 
together and that spreading democracy in the Mideast to secure Israel 
would take the Jewish vote from the Democrats.
  Is there anything wrong with referring to the Jewish vote? Good gosh, 
every 1 of us of the 100, with pollsters and all, refer to the Jewish 
vote. That is not anti-Semitic. It is appreciating them. We campaigned 
for it.
  I just read about President Bush's appearance before the AIPAC. He 
confirmed his support of the Jewish vote, referring to adopting Ariel 
Sharon's policy, and the dickens with the 1967 borders, the heck with 
negotiating the return of refugees, the heck with the settlements he 
had objected to originally. They had those borders, Resolution No. 
242--no, no, President Bush said: I am going along with Sharon, and he 
was going to get that and he got the wonderful reception he got with 
the Jewish vote. There is nothing like politicizing or a conspiracy, as 
my friend from Virginia, Senator Allen, says--that it is an anti-
Semitic, political, conspiracy statement.
  That is not a conspiracy. That is the policy. I didn't like to keep 
it a secret, maybe; but I can tell you now, I will challenge any 1 of 
the other 99 Senators to tell us why we are in Iraq, other than what 
this policy is here. It is an adopted policy, a domino theory of The 
Project For The New American Century.
  Everybody knows it because we want to secure our friend, Israel. If 
we can get in there and take it in 7 days, as Paul Wolfowitz says, then 
we would get rid of Saddam, and when we got rid of Saddam, now all they 
can do is fall back and say: Aren't you getting rid of Saddam?
  Let me get to that point. What happens is, they say he is a monster. 
We continued to give him aid after he gassed his own people and 
everything else of that kind. George Herbert Walker Bush said in his 
book All The Best in 1999, never commit American GIs into an unwinnable 
urban guerrilla war and lose the support of the Arab world, lose their 
friendship and support. That is a general rephrasing of it.
  The point is, my authority is the President's daddy. I want everybody 
to know that. I don't apologize for this column. I want them to 
apologize to me for talking about anti-Semitism. They are not getting 
by with it. I will come down here every day--I have nothing else to 
do--and we will talk about it and find out what the policy is.
  Let me go back to this particular column:

       But George Bush, as stated by former Treasury Secretary 
     Paul O'Neill and others, started laying the groundwork to 
     invade Iraq days before the Inauguration.

  There is no question, he got a briefing. That was the first thing he 
wanted out of former Secretary of Defense Bill Cohen. Then the nominee, 
about to take the oath of office as President of the United States, 
wanted to be briefed on Iraq. They had this policy in mind coming to 
town. Mr. President, 9/11 had nothing to do with it, and we all know it 
now. We have to understand it because that is the only way really to 
help Israel and get us out of the soup. Everybody is worrying about 
Iraq. We better worry about Israel because we certainly have put her in 
terrible jeopardy with this particular initiative.

       Without any Iraq connection to 9/11, within weeks President 
     Bush had the Pentagon outlining a plan to invade Iraq. He was 
     determined. President Bush thought taking Iraq would be easy. 
     Wolfowitz said it would take only 7 days. Vice President 
     Cheney believed that we would be greeted as liberators, but 
     Cheney's man, Chalabi, made a mess of de-Baathification of 
     Iraq by dismissing Republican Guard leadership and Sunni 
     leaders who soon joined with the insurgents.
       Worst of all, we tried to secure Iraq with too few troops. 
     In 1966 in South Vietnam, with a population of 16 million, 
     General William C. Westmoreland, with 535,000 U.S. troops, 
     was still asking for more troops. In Iraq, with a population 
     of 25 million, General John Abizaid, with only 135,000 
     troops, can barely secure the troops, much less the country. 
     If the troops are there to fight, there are too few. If they 
     are there to die, there are too many. To secure Iraq we need 
     more troops, at least 100,000 more. The only way to get the 
     United Nations back in Iraq is to make the country secure. 
     Once back, the French, Germans, and others will join with the 
     U.N. to take over.
       With President Bush's domino policy in the Mideast gone 
     awry, he can't keep shouting ``Terrorism war.'' Terrorism is 
     a method, not a war. We don't call the Crimean war, with the 
     charge of the light brigade, the cavalry war, or World War II 
     the blitzkrieg war. There is terrorism in Northern Ireland, 
     there is terrorism in India, and in Pakistan. In the Mideast, 
     terrorism is a separate problem, to be defeated by diplomacy 
     and negotiation, not militarily.
       Here, might does not make right. Right makes might. Acting 
     militarily we have created more terrorism than we have 
     eliminated.

  The title of this article is ``Bush's failed Mideast policy is 
creating more terrorism, `` and, I could add, jeopardizing the security 
of Israel.
  They say: He talks like a big fan of Israel. I am. I have a 38-year 
track record. I will never forget some 34 years ago meeting with David 
Ben-Gurion. He talked about little Israel, less than 3 million at that 
time in a sea of 100 million.
  Let's say Israel has 5 million people there now, but there are 150 
million Muslims surrounding it. If you punch the particular buzzer I 
did with Yitzhak Rabin 1 day down on the Negev to scramble the air 
force, I think it was 21 seconds they were up in the air, and in a 
minute's time, they were outside over Jordan.
  Militarily, Israel is a veritable aircraft carrier. You can hardly 
fly and

[[Page 10487]]

you are out of the country, and everybody has to understand that. You 
cannot play the numbers game Sharon plays. He thinks he can do it 
militarily.
  I want to remind you, it was in that 6-day war--the book is ``Six 
Days of War'' by Michael Oren. Look on page 151, and Major Ariel Sharon 
says: Look, we are going to decimate the Egyptian army and you will not 
hear from Egypt again for several generations. And Levi Eshkol, the 
Prime Minister, on page 152 says: ``Militarily victory decides nothing. 
The Arabs will still be here.''
  That is my theme. I have watched it over the years. You have to learn 
not to kill together, but to live together. The finest piece I ever 
read was right in this morning's paper. There is still hope. I refer to 
an article: ``Israeli Arabs Exalting in a Rare Triumph.''
  There are a million Israeli Arabs. They won a soccer match in Tel 
Aviv. The majority of the team was of Israeli heritage, and they held 
an Israeli flag, if you can imagine that in the political United States 
of America. They are living together. Every Prime Minister since David 
Ben-Gurion has realized that fact: that they have to learn to live 
together. They all moved, and they almost had it under Ehud Barak and 
President Clinton. Arafat proved he did not want peace. He did not 
accept it. That was our one chance.
  Unfortunately, rather than working on that one chance and continuing, 
Ariel Sharon went in their face at Temple Mount, the intifada started, 
and he has been killing 10 to 1. He plays the numbers game, almost like 
we had in Vietnam. He thinks he can eliminate by moving the ball some, 
getting some more settlements, bulldozing a house, but he is creating 
terrorism.
  I had a headline the other day. When I saw it, I showed it to my 
staff. I said: You all come in here, I want to ask you something. 
``Israel plans to destroy more Gaza dwellings.'' You see that headline? 
I asked staff members: Suppose they bulldoze your daddy's home. 
Wouldn't you want to cut their throat?
  They said: In a New York minute.
  How do you create terrorists? Where is the front line in the so-
called war on terrorism? I learned the answer recently on a trip I was 
on with the distinguished chairman of the Appropriations Committee and 
the chairman of the Armed Services Committee. We talked for over an 
hour with the King of Jordan. He finally cautioned at the very end, 
when we stood up, he said: You have to settle this Israel-Palestine 
question. That is the only way to get on top of this. We went over to 
Kuwait to the Prime Minister when he got through, he said: You have to 
settle the Israel-Palestine situation.
  I will quote Mr. Musharraf, the President of Pakistan. When we got 
there, he cautioned if you can settle the Israel-Palestine question, 
terrorism will disappear around the world.
  Then we came in on a Friday evening to make a little courtesy call 
with the French. The distinguished Senator from Virginia with 
Lafayette--and I have slept in Lafayette's bed over there in Richmond, 
VA, and I helped with that particular thing because I believe and 
remember the French help. I will never forget--everybody is going to 
the 60th anniversary of D-Day, but I was at the 50th anniversary and we 
went over to Ste-Mere-Eglise, where a major, who was a Citadel 
graduate, had broken through the line and saved us from having to leave 
the beachhead and go back to England. They made a movie of it. A shell 
burst killed him. They laid him down on their side. He is buried on the 
side of the chapel.
  We went to the services. We had talks there. This little old lady 
came. She was about 80 years old, walking with a cane. I was listening 
to the mayor, and she pulled my jacket and she said: Thank you, Yank. 
If you had not come we would be goose-stepping.
  I turned to her and I said, thank you, madam, because if you had not 
come, we would still be a colony.
  The majority of the troops on the field at Yorktown with the 
surrender of Cornwallis were French troops. We had French troops that 
helped us get this so-called freedom. All this anti-French stuff, do 
not give me french fries and everything else, is crazy.
  I was proud to appear with the Senator from Virginia. But Chirac, he 
said, look, we have to have western solidarity. We have to work 
together now and we have to watch this competition from China in the 
Far East, and we in the western world have to stick together. He said 
he wanted to help in Iraq, but he needed a U.N. resolution to cover. He 
said what we have to do is do something about Israel and Palestine.
  I said, what would you do?
  He said, I would put a peacekeeping force.
  I said, would French troops come?
  He said, French troops would come immediately. We would be part of it 
and we would separate them from killing each other every day.
  My position is, and I believe in this particular policy as strongly 
as I know how, might does not make right, but right makes might. We 
have lost our evenhanded posture and reputation in the Mideast. We are 
in worse off shape with Israel, our principal interest in the gulf.
  Sharon has not helped us at all. We see him going back and forth. 
They say, oh, no, it is negotiation. But we are throwing over the 
United States-Israel policy of some 35 years insofar as negotiating the 
settlements and the refugees. We are saying forget about all of that, 
let Sharon keep bulldozing them. Now in the morning paper on the front 
page one sees the killing of children, they are saying, we are 
defending Israel. That is the U.S. policy. That is not just Israel's 
policy.
  They are coming in there with U.S. equipment, U.S. gun helicopters, 
U.S. tanks that are bulldozing. That is our policy. That is the reason 
for 9/11 and Osama. He said, I do not like American troops in Saudi 
Arabia, get the infidel out. That is why they went right into that 
thing. Where do you think we get all this talk about hate America? I do 
not buy that stuff. I have traveled the world. They love Americans.
  Recently we met with the Ambassadors of Germany and France, and 
Britain in our policy committee and they said the young people are 
disillusioned. They always look to the United States for the moral 
position and taking and defending that particular position. They do not 
look there anymore.
  We are losing the terrorism war because we thought we could do it 
militarily under the domino policy of President Bush, going into Iraq. 
That is my point. That is not anti-Semite or whatever they say in here 
about people's faith and ethnicity. I never referred to any faith. I 
should have added those other names from the Project For The New 
American Century, but I picked out the names I had quotes for. And for 
space, I left other things out.
  Mr. President, on May 12 of this year, I had printed in the Record 
the article in its entirety.
  I diverted from the reading of the article several times, so for the 
sake of accuracy I wanted the whole article printed.
  This particular op-ed piece appeared in the Post and Courier. Never 
would they have thought, having read it, if it was anti-Semitic, that 
they would have ever put it in there. Nor would the Knight Ridder 
newspapers in Columbia, SC. Nor would the Metro Media newspapers in 
Greenville, SC. But the Anti-Defamation League picked it up and now 
they have given it to my good friend, Senator Allen of Virginia. I have 
his particular admonition how I am anti-Semitic and I cannot let that 
stay there.
  My staff knew I was coming over and waiting my turn in order to talk 
under the Pastore rule. I know I am as vitally interested as anybody 
can be about this issue. Our distinguished colleague from Washington, 
Senator Cantwell, knows this subject backward and forward.
  The reason I had not known or gotten all fired up is I have been 
doing some other work and South Carolina has already looked to me for 
everything at that Savannah River plant. I am on the Energy 
Appropriations Subcommittee and we have gotten all the money--do not 
worry about money. This is a policy of nuclear waste disposal, high-
level waste, being reclassified under an end-around-end deal of trying 
to make

[[Page 10488]]

it low-level waste and, as Senator Cantwell says, pouring in some sand 
and concrete on top of it. The scientists say, watch out, the remains 
in these tanks are 50 percent as deadly and dangerous as the entire 
tank container.
  Back to Saddam, everybody is glad we have gotten rid of Saddam, but 
we can see what has happened. There is an old saying we learned in 
World War II that no matter how well the gun is aimed, if the recoil is 
going to kill the gun crew, you do not fire.
  Did this White House and administration ever think of the recoil? It 
severely injured the gun crew. Yes, ordinarily to get rid of Saddam, 
like they put a missile on the intelligence head, they could have put a 
missile on him any time they wanted, but they did not want to do that. 
They wanted the domino policy to ensue.
  No, no, getting rid of Saddam was not worth almost 800 dead GIs and 
over 3,500 maimed for life. Some say every time we want to criticize 
the policy, we are weakening the GIs. I am strengthening the GIs. I 
said let's get enough in there so they can secure themselves. We have 
135,000 now. A third of those are guarding the other third, and that 
means leaving a third, 35,000 or 40,000 troops, running out like a fire 
drill to any particular trouble and coming back in and eating. I have 
been there.
  You can see it in Rafah. They are building a big old thing like in 
Kosovo, where we hunker down and act like we are in charge of Kosovo. 
The Albanians are in charge of Kosovo.
  You can't force-feed democracy. It has to come from within. We helped 
liberate Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, 60-some years ago, and Morocco, 
Algeria, Tunisia have not opted for democracy, nor has Libya, nor has 
Egypt, nor has Lebanon, nor has Syria, nor has Iraq, nor has Iran, nor 
has Afghanistan, nor has Pakistan, nor has Jordan, nor has Yemen, nor 
has Aden, nor has Saudi Arabia, nor has the organization of Arab 
states.
  Come on. So we have to go out and not speak sense with respect to 
policy, and when you want to talk about policy, they say it is anti-
Semitic. Well, come on the floor, let's debate it. Because my friend 
from Virginia admonishes me. Referring to me he says, ``I suggest he 
should learn from history before making accusations.'' I didn't make 
any accusations. I stated facts. That is their policy. That is not my 
policy.
  Mind you me, when we went into Iraq, the only people in the world who 
favored that policy were the people of the United States and the people 
of Israel. The people of Jordan, Iraq, Britain, Spain, Poland, Italy, 
Japan, everywhere around the world said you just don't invade a 
sovereign country no matter how bad the rascal is. We have Kim Jong of 
North Korea--he has weapons of mass destruction, but we don't do 
anything there.
  Don't give me this about how we saved this and we did this or did 
that. We have to sort of learn that the front line now is not the 
Pentagon but the State Department. We have to work through diplomacy. 
We live in a global economy and a global world. That is only going to 
come about economically, politically, diplomatically, and by 
negotiations.
  The United States, until this invasion and this domino policy for 
Israel--don't tell me it is otherwise, about spreading democracy. They 
know what they are talking about. They are insisting on it. It is not a 
Jewish policy or a Semite policy. It is their domino policy. That is 
exactly what it is. But they know how to make you tuck tail and run. 
Not the Senator from South Carolina. We don't run, we don't win, we are 
not right, we are wrong a lot of times, but I have thought this out as 
thoroughly as I know how, and it worries me that here we are.
  I said after we got into that thing in Vietnam with the Gulf of 
Tonkin--I came there at that particular time, in 1966, went to Vietnam 
when we were under fire three times--actually over into Cambodia before 
and that kind of thing. We finally came up with McNamara writing a book 
saying he was wrong.
  I'll never forget, McNamara comes out to Allie Richenberg near Saint 
Albans to get his tennis lesson at 7 o'clock, and Bob Mcnamara turned 
to Allie and said, ``Allie, what do you think about my book?'' He said, 
``It's as bad as your backhand. You should not have written it.''
  But we had to wait 20 years for that one, and we killed 58,000 
Americans. Now we have killed almost 800, maimed for life thousands of 
others. Are we going to just continue on?
  What would the Senator from South Carolina do if I were king for a 
day? Yes, I would put the troops in to get security, and I would step 
up the election. I can tell you right now, I have run for all kind of 
offices, 20-some statewide offices and campaigns. But don't put me in 
on that temporary coalition. That fellow, El Baradei, who is running 
around the United Nations to get a temporary coalition or government to 
turn power over to on June 30--don't put me in that. I immediately have 
to repudiate the United States, that I am not a stooge for the United 
States. We just have our fingers crossed that we can hold law and order 
so we can have an election. But don't wait until 2005, or December; by 
September 30, let's get that election going.
  Let's realize we are in real trouble. Saudi Arabia is in trouble. 
Israel is in trouble. The United States is in trouble. I am going to 
state what I believe to be the fact. In fact, I believe it very 
strongly. They just are whistling by on account of the pressures that 
we get politically. Nobody is willing to stand up and say what is going 
on.
  It was a mistake like Vietnam. We got misled with the Gulf of Tonkin, 
we got misled here, and we are in that quagmire. ``Municipal guerrilla 
war and a quagmire,'' that says George Herbert Walker Bush. I will end 
on my authority--President George Herbert Walker Bush said:

       Never commit U.S. troops into an unwinnable urban guerrilla 
     war and turn off the Arab world.

  Look in that book of his and you will see exactly what I am talking 
about. He is not anti-Semitic. He is sensible. He didn't go in.
  Yes, Colin Powell, General Powell said if you are going in, let's 
have enough troops. They tried to do it on the cheap. They were ill 
advised. My friend Paul Wolfowitz said you will do it in 7 days. Come 
on. And they let the Republican Guard back into the city of Baghdad and 
into the Sunni triangle, and the next thing you know, when Chalabi, who 
has now been demoted or set aside--he did away with their leadership 
and everything, so they got turned off and they buddied up with the 
insurgents, and now we have hell on our hands. Everybody knows that.
  So it has been ill prepared, ill advised, and ill administered. The 
entire thing is a mess. Don't give me ``support the troops, support the 
troops.'' I have been with troops, about 3 years in combat, so don't 
tell me about troops. I have always supported the troops.
  You ask how many Senators have gotten a Woodward Award from the U.S. 
Army. They don't give that out lightly. I have been with every 
Secretary of Defense until this one, and I think he is brilliant, but I 
think he has made a mistake going along with this domino policy. We 
have it now out on the table, and we will all talk about it, and we 
will be around and ready to debate it.
  I appreciate the colleagues yielding to me. I wish I had all the time 
to put all these articles in.
  I want to thank--and I am going to sit here and support my friend 
from Washington. She has done a magnificent job stating what the issue 
is.
  It is simply under the auspices of an accelerated disposal plan going 
around end to reclassify--and it is around end. I had not heard 
anything about it. I have been handling everything at Savannah River 
for 30 some years. I called up the South Carolina Department of Health 
and Environmental Control--DHEC--and they were adamantly opposed and 
gave me the brief they signed a few weeks ago adamantly opposing it, 
with the assistant attorney general's name on it. They say this is DHEC 
policy. I talked to two members of DHEC and they said it was never 
brought up at their meetings. They do not know anything about it.

[[Page 10489]]

  So, yes, it is a little rider for one special State that is injurious 
not only to the State itself--I say that advisedly--but also to the 
United States.
  I yield the floor.

                          ____________________