[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 156 (2010), Part 8]
[Senate]
[Pages 10621-10628]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                             GULF OILSPILL

  Mrs. MURRAY. Madam President, as we close in now on 2 months since 
the deep water explosion that set off the gulf oilspill, the toll of 
this disaster is continuing to mount--from the oil-soaked pelicans we 
see on the front cover of each newspaper everyday, to the tar balls 
that dot a previously pristine coastline, to the closed fishing grounds 
and half-empty hotels. The human impact is felt in Louisiana, 
Mississippi, Florida, throughout the gulf coast region. This disaster 
has reached into our economy, our environment, and the way we see our 
energy future. But there is one place it also threatens to reach and 
that is into our pocketbooks.
  When it comes to BP's promises to cover all the costs associated with 
this disaster, I am sorry but I am not ready to take them for their 
word. That is because as a Senator from the Pacific Northwest, 
Washington State, I have seen firsthand what happens when big oil is 
allowed to make promises and not required to take action. When the 
Exxon Valdez oilspill happened in 1989--I remember it so well--that 
company assured the public that the economic and environmental damage 
would be paid for. Then I remember them fighting tooth and nail all the 
way to the Supreme Court, to deny fishermen and families from my home 
State the compensation they were due.
  So I am not impressed by BP's promises and I am not ready to take the 
word of a company with a track record of pursuing profit over safety. 
Instead, I believe it is time for us to answer some very fundamental 
questions, such as who should be responsible to clean this up? Who is 
going to bear the burden of big oil's mistake? Should it be the 
taxpayers or families and small business owners who paid such a high 
price already or should it be the companies that are responsible for 
this spill, including BP, which, by the way, is a company that made a 
$6.1 billion profit in the first 3 months of this year alone?
  I cosponsored the Big Oil Bailout Prevention Act because the answer 
is clear. I believe BP needs to be held accountable for the 
environmental and economic damages of this spill and I am going to 
fight to make sure our taxpayers do not wind up losing a single dime to 
pay for this mess. To me, it is an issue of fairness. If an oil company 
causes a spill, they should be the one to clean it up, not our 
taxpayers. This bill eliminates the current $75 million cap on oil 
company liability so taxpayers will never be left holding the bag for 
big oil's mistakes. This is straightforward, common sense, and fair.
  I have to say, I am extremely disappointed that this commonsense bill 
continues to be blocked by the Republicans every time we have tried to 
bring it up. But I want everyone to know I am going to keep fighting 
for the Big Oil Bailout Prevention Act until we get it passed.
  That alone is not enough in response. This week I also signed on to a 
letter to BP's CEO, asking them to back up the promises they are making 
to pay with action by requiring them to set up a $20 billion fund to 
begin covering the damages we will see.
  It is also why I am working to make sure this never happens in any 
other part of our country. I have always been opposed to drilling off 
the coast of my home State of Washington and this tragedy is just one 
more painful reminder of the potential consequences of opening the west 
coast to drilling. The economic and environmental devastation caused by 
the Exxon Valdez disaster is still impacting people and families and 
businesses in my State. Washington State's coastal region supports over 
150,000 jobs and it generates almost $10 billion in economic activity--
all of which would be threatened if drilling were allowed to happen off 
our west coat.
  I am going to keep fighting for legislation that bans drilling off 
the west coast and makes sure big oil companies are never allowed to 
roll the dice with Washington State's economy and environment.
  We need to hold big oil accountable. We need to make sure that 
disasters such as this never happen again. We also need to remember the 
workers who were killed and injured in this horrific tragedy. We cannot 
forget that this is an issue that is larger than this one tragedy. The 
entire oil and gas industry has a deplorable record of worker and 
workplace safety. We have to make sure that every worker is treated 
properly and protected, and that companies that mistreat their workers 
are held accountable.
  We know the oil industry is able to operate under stricter safety 
standards and regulations because they are already doing that--in 
Europe, in Australia, and even in Contra Costa County in California, 
where that county has

[[Page 10622]]

a set of stricter guidelines that have reduced their injuries and 
fatality rates for their workers.
  But we also know worker safety should not be measured just by injury 
rates. We should be working at reducing the dangerous conditions that 
exist such as fires and hazardous spills and release of toxic gases. 
When accidents do happen, we have to record them, learn from them, and 
build on a program to prevent them from ever happening again. We have 
to make sure our workers are treated with respect and their rights are 
protected. Like a lot of people, I was appalled last week to read 
reports in the Washington Post about BP's history of worker safety 
violations and numerous reports of worker intimidation. No workers 
should ever believe that reporting safety violations could endanger 
their job and no company should ever pursue its bottom line in a way 
that endangers its workers.
  The Senate deserves answers from BP on worker safety conditions and 
how suppressing worker complaints could have contributed, actually, to 
this disaster. So I was extremely disappointed last week when I held a 
hearing in my subcommittee to examine worker safety issues in the oil 
and gas industry and representatives of BP failed to show up--failed to 
even show up.
  Workers everywhere have to feel confident that their employers are 
putting their safety first and companies that betray that trust have to 
be held accountable. I am going to keep working to make sure that 
happens. I look forward to having future hearings that I hope BP will 
come to in the coming weeks so we can get to the bottom of this. 
Meanwhile, I am going to continue fighting to keep drilling away from 
the Washington State coastline and I am going to keep pushing to make 
sure our taxpayers do not have to pay for the mistakes big oil makes.
  I yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Illinois.
  Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, would you please advise me when I have 
spoken for 9 minutes.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Chair will so advise the 
Senator.
  Mr. DURBIN. I thank the Senator from Washington because she brings 
back an experience that I had 21 years ago, when I went to Prince 
William Sound in the beautiful State of Alaska. It is one of the most 
beautiful places on Earth but at that moment it was a sad situation. 
The Exxon Valdez tanker had run aground and spilled literally thousands 
and thousands of barrels of black, sludgy, crude oil on this beautiful, 
pristine area. I went out in a Coast Guard cutter to one of the tiny 
little islands in the middle of Prince William Sound, which is 
otherwise as beautiful as God ever made this Earth, and there, covered 
in oil, was this rock-strewn island, and men and women, dressed in 
yellow slickers, were taking big cotton cloths and trying to scoop up 
the oil and put these cloths into bags to be carted away. I asked one 
of the workers, after the television cameras were off, I said, Do you 
think we are doing any good? He said, If we didn't do anything it would 
take 10 years for God to clean up this mess. For all we are doing, it 
might take 9 years and 6 months.
  It was a pretty cynical view, but I tell you, 21 years later Prince 
William Sound is paying the price for that one tanker that ran aground.
  Senator Murkowski of Alaska told us some species of fish have all but 
disappeared. Herring can't be found in this area anymore. Yes, some of 
it is recovering, but it is slow, painfully slow. It takes generations 
for that to happen.
  We decided at that moment in history that we had to have an oilspill 
liability fund. In other words, we say to the oil companies, when you 
produce a barrel of oil we want 8 cents from each barrel to go into an 
oilspill liability fund so if there is another spill in the future and 
you cannot pay for it as a company, there will at least be this fund 
collected from your industry to try to repair the damage--8 cents a 
barrel.
  Let me tell you what the price of oil is today according to the Wall 
Street Journal. It is over $75 a barrel. So 8 cents represents about 
one-tenth of 1 percent of the cost of a barrel of oil. Keep that in 
mind because I want to tell you about an amendment that is coming to 
the floor this afternoon.
  In the bill pending on the floor, we increased that 8 cents to 41 
cents. The idea is to have enough money in this oilspill liability fund 
that if in some future crisis you do not have a deep-pocket, big-time 
oil company such as BP, we will at least have enough money collected 
from the industry to repair the environmental damage from tankers 
running aground or drilling in the gulf or other places that goes awry. 
We raise it from 8 cents to 41 cents. It is one-half of 1 percent of 
the cost of a barrel of oil.
  Why do I bring this up? John Thune, Republican Senator from South 
Dakota, is going to offer an amendment this afternoon. Most people will 
not get a chance to read it in its entirety. It is 210 pages long. Let 
me tell you several features that are worth noting, particularly as 
President Obama speaks to the American people tonight about what is 
going on in the Gulf of Mexico, with this bill. John Thune offers the 
Republican substitute amendment, and what John Thune does for the 
Republicans is to eliminate the increase in this tax on a barrel of 
oil. Of course, big oil doesn't want to spend this money. They don't 
want to pay this tax. They don't want to create this oilspill liability 
fund. And the Republican substitute says they do not have to. Even 
though we know and see every single minute of every day the damage 
being done in the gulf, the Republican substitute amendment eliminates 
the increase in the tax on a barrel of oil.
  That is not all. In our bill we also increased the liability for 
oilspills. Now it is at $1 billion. We increase it to $5 billion. Is 
there anyone who thinks that we can escape with only $5 billion in 
damages from what is going on in the Gulf of Mexico? I don't. Sadly, I 
think it is going to be much more. We tried to change the underlying 
law to say in the future, for any for oilspills, there will be 
liability up to $5 billion in our underlying bill. The Republican 
substitute eliminates the increase in liability for the big oil 
companies.
  This is a dream come true for big oil, but it is not a dream come 
true for America, where we are so dependent on oil today and where we 
need to make certain if there is another environmental disaster 
tomorrow, we are prepared to take care of it.
  What is the alternative if the Thune Republican substitute passes? If 
the damage occurs in Prince William Sound, in the Gulf of Mexico, who 
will be expected to bail out the damage? American taxpayers. So the 
Republican substitute takes the burden off the big oil companies and 
puts it on the taxpayers of this country. That is wrong. It is 
fundamentally wrong. If for no other reason I hope the Senate rejects 
the Republican substitute, that they would have the nerve to stand up 
in the Senate today, standing up for big oil under these circumstances. 
How can they possibly defend that? They will try, and you will hear it 
on the floor.
  There is one other provision that ought to be noted in the Thune 
substitute and here is what it says. It eliminates the language in the 
underlying bill that creates incentives in America's Tax Code for 
American businesses to relocate their production facilities overseas. 
Think about it. We have incentives in our Tax Code rewarding American 
businesses that build production facilities overseas. Does that make 
any sense in this economy, with 8 million people out of work and 6 
million who have given up looking for jobs, that we would eliminate the 
provisions that stop companies from moving overseas? We need to keep 
good-paying jobs right here in America.
  The Republican substitute does not agree. The Republican substitute 
wants to continue to incentivize American companies so they will move 
production facilities overseas. We give them a break in the Tax Code 
now in terms of the taxes they pay on the income they earn overseas, 
but the bill before us eliminates it and the Republican substitute 
defends it.

[[Page 10623]]

  How can they do this? In one amendment they defend big oil companies 
and stop us from collecting money to protect taxpayers if there is 
another environmental disaster. Then they turn around and try to 
protect the loopholes in the Tax Code so that American businesses can 
move their production facilities overseas. It is the clearest 
definition of the difference between the two political parties I have 
seen in a long time.
  Earlier, the Senate Republican leader came forward, Senator 
McConnell, and said we need more government in the Gulf of Mexico. I 
think we do have an important responsibility here as a government to 
make sure the damage that has been done by British Petroleum is in fact 
taken care of and repaired--and there will be a lot of it, 
unfortunately. It is interesting to hear these speeches from the 
Republican side of the aisle about how we need an expanded role of 
government. It seems as though some of my colleagues are suffering from 
political amnesia. It was not too long ago that they were coming here 
crying that government was too big and had too big a hand in our 
economy, but we have learned through the recession brought on through 
the greed of Wall Street, through this terrible environmental disaster 
in the Gulf of Mexico, there is a legitimate and important role of 
government.
  Tonight the President of the United States will address the American 
people and tell us about what we are doing and what we need to do. It 
will go beyond this terrible environmental disaster and challenge us to 
look to the big picture, the picture about the future of energy and the 
American economy. There are some people who do not want to talk about 
this, but it is fundamental. We need to move our nation forward--with 
cleaner, renewable, sustainable sources of energy.
  We need to have more efficient cars and trucks that burn less fuel 
for the same mileage. We need to have fewer emissions into the 
environment which damage our lungs and the Earth on which we live, and 
we need to have a policy that is forward looking. When I listen to the 
other side of the aisle, they are looking in the rearview mirror. We 
cannot afford to do that anymore. America can move forward together 
when we accept our responsibility to the environment and to provide 
clean, renewable energy for the growth of our economy.
  I reserve the remainder of my time and yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from New Jersey.
  Mr. MENENDEZ. Madam President, there is no doubt that the vivid 
images we see every day of economic and environmental tragedy unfolding 
in the gulf are unprecedented, if not apocalyptic in nature. They have 
opened our eyes to the need for a fundamental redirection in our policy 
and the need for definitive action now to hold big oil accountable. The 
images are horrific, and they have made Americans realize the dirty 
fuels of our industrial past and the environmental and human toll they 
are taking in the gulf as we speak should now give way to a consensus 
on a real, meaningful investment in clean energy and increased 
oversight of corporate polluters.
  The time has come for change and this Congress needs to stand up for 
all those families in the gulf, for the rich habitats of marshes and 
estuaries that are being destroyed. The time has come to make the big 
polluters pay. But the time has also come to look ahead and plan for a 
smarter, greener, safer, cleaner future.
  No one--no one--can look at what is happening in the gulf and think 
we should not call big oil to task. No one can look at the images of 
brown pelicans drowning in a tide of crude oil and not wonder how to 
stop it and, at the same time, how to move to a comprehensive energy 
policy that will take us beyond our reliance on fossil fuels and toward 
clean energy independence. No one can look at Louisiana shrimpers and 
oystermen, fishing fleets idle, businesses closed, and not feel for 
those families wondering how they will get their lives back.
  This is not the time to shield big oil from full responsibility, as 
our colleagues on the other side seem to favor. This is not the time 
for excuses. Two things are clear. Those who are at fault must be held 
accountable. We need to embrace this tragedy as an opportunity to 
formulate a new American energy policy that creates American jobs and 
ultimately invests billions of dollars that we spend on foreign oil at 
home on clean energy sources. Our friends on the other side of the 
aisle have said no to that approach. They have said no to energy 
reforms and favored big oil. They said no to every effort to hold big 
business accountable for its failures. They said no to Wall Street 
reform and favored big banks. They said no to environmental oversight 
and favored corporate polluters. They have said no to even commonsense 
economic recovery legislation to put people back to work and save the 
economy from the disaster 8 years of their policies have created. They 
said no to families denied health coverage and favored big insurance 
companies. They have also continuously blocked my Big Oil Bailout 
Prevention Act that would hold BP accountable for damages, lifting the 
liability cap from the ridiculous $75 million worth of liability--less 
than 1 day's profit for BP--and lifting it to an unlimited liability 
since they have created unlimited damages in the gulf. No, they come up 
with proposals that basically are to protect big oil.
  Let's index it to their profits regardless of how much damage they 
have created. Let's worry about the ``smaller driller'' even if they 
cause unlimited consequences to our environment. Is there a difference 
between a $100 billion company and a $10 billion company when both of 
them create the same environmental damage that has been created in the 
gulf? I don't think so.
  The question is, Whose side do we stand on. Do we stand with the 
taxpayers to make sure they don't reach into their pockets for big 
oil's consequences, or are we going to defend big oil? If we were to 
bring to the floor a bill to invest in a clean energy future and create 
clean energy American jobs, they would say no to that as well.
  It seems to me it is time to say yes to American-made clean energy, 
yes to the millions of jobs it would create. It is time to also end tax 
loopholes for big oil companies, such as BP, that are avoiding paying 
billions of dollars in taxes. They are getting huge tax breaks for 
drilling activities and revenues, and they are concocting foreign tax 
schemes, all of which amount to more than $20 billion over the next 10 
years.
  That is why I have introduced a bill to end tax loopholes for big 
oil. It seems to me the flow of revenues to the oil companies is like 
the gusher at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico. It is pretty heavy and 
constant. There is no valid reason for these multibillion-dollar 
international corporations to shortchange the American taxpayer. They 
certainly are not using the extra money they get from exploiting tax 
loopholes to bring down the price of a gallon of gasoline for New 
Jersey families.
  Unlike the gusher in the gulf, we can topfill these loopholes and 
shut them down quickly and permanently, if we pass this legislation. 
But my colleagues on the other side continue to say no to commonsense 
reforms. We could use the billions of dollars and giveaways to big oil 
for an alternative fuel program. We need to look at the economic 
potential for modern, safe, renewable energy rather than to take the 
risk of another environmental and economic disaster. Instead of 
doubling down on 19th century fossil fuels, we should be investing the 
money we have been giving to big oil in the clean, limitless, 21st-
century energy that would create thousands of new jobs, significantly 
reduce the burden of energy costs, and help clear the air we 
collectively breathe. It is time we close those loopholes and move 
forward on alternative fuels and embrace the future rather than cling 
to the ways of the past and pay the oil companies to continue those 
ways of the past.
  Specifically, the legislation I have introduced recoups royalties 
that oil companies avoided paying for oil and gas production on public 
lands. It prevents big oil from manipulating the

[[Page 10624]]

rules on foreign taxes to avoid paying full corporate taxes in the 
United States. It ends tax deductions and giveaways to big oil such as 
deductions for classifying oil production as manufacturing, deductions 
for the depletion of oil and gas through drilling, and the deductions 
for the cost of preparing to drill. That is right. Big oil actually 
gets a deduction for preparing to drill.
  Among other provisions, it recoups royalty revenue with an excise tax 
on oil and gas produced on Federal lands and on the Outer Continental 
Shelf to pay back taxpayers for contract loopholes. That would save an 
estimated $5.3 billion. It ends big oil's abuse of foreign tax credits, 
saving another $8 billion.
  While the Close Big Oil Tax Loopholes Act stops giving big oil tax 
breaks, it protects refineries and oil companies with yearly revenues 
of less than $100 million and lets them retain certain tax credits and 
deductions. It repeals big oil's expensing of drilling costs. In the 
President's budget, this saved $10.9 billion, but we are exempting 
smaller companies that would lower that estimate. It repeals big oil's 
depletion allowance for oil and gas wells estimated to save $9.6 
billion. It is time to close these big tax oil loopholes, time to stem 
the flow of revenue to the oil companies, and invest in smart, 
alternative fuels for the future.
  The fact is, oil companies make up 4 of the top 10 spots on the 
Fortune 100 list of the largest corporations. In the first 3 months of 
this year alone, in the first quarter of 2010, the top 5 oil companies 
made over $23 billion in profits--not revenue, profits.
  They can afford to do business without American taxpayers subsidizing 
them. It is time for action. Millions of Americans are out of work. 
Families are hurting. Communities are hurting. People everywhere are 
feeling the pinch, and big oil companies are raking in the profits.
  At the same time, some of them, such as BP, are creating enormous 
environmental disasters in our country. That is why I am proud of my 
colleagues in the Senate Democratic caucus who sent a letter to BP 
saying: Put $20 billion down in an escrow account administered 
independently so we can make sure those in the gulf begin to have the 
relief they so desperately need.
  To my colleagues on the other side, it is time to stop saying no and 
do what is right, what makes sense, and what keeps us secure. It is 
time to stop saying no to commonsense policies that end tax loopholes 
that benefit big oil. It is time to protect American taxpayers by 
lifting the liability cap so big oil, which made the spill, messed up, 
should clean up, be responsible for it, instead of American taxpayers. 
It is time to use those tax breaks from big oil and close them to 
invest in clean energy solutions that create greener, better, more 
secure American jobs for the 21st century. It is time to hold big oil 
accountable and invest in the future.
  Those are the choices. I hope we will make the right ones.
  I yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Florida.
  Mr. NELSON of Florida. How much time remains?
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. There is 3 minutes 45 seconds 
remaining.
  Mr. NELSON of Florida. Madam President, I just came back from 
Pensacola. I saw the oil not only out in the gulf, I saw the oil in 
Pensacola Bay. It is also in Perdido Bay. There are tar balls in the 
bay. They are slipping underneath the booms. Those tar balls are 
getting into the wetlands, into the marsh grass. But out there in the 
bay, there is this reddish orange gunk. Sometimes it is in streamers. 
Sometimes it is in hamburger-sized patties. Sometimes it is in quarter, 
dime-sized patties. It looks awful. That is what we are facing. We are 
going to face it for a long time, especially if the oil continues to 
gush into the gulf for the rest of the summer.
  We have to have a command-and-control structure. After talking to all 
of our people in Pensacola at the emergency operations center, it is 
getting better. But it had to get better because when the oil entered 
Florida waters in Perdido Bay, the emergency operations center in 
Florida was not even informed by the EOC in Pensacola. So it has to be 
tightened up more, like a military chain-of-command structure, so when 
things need to get done they can get done immediately.
  The problem in the past has been the Coast Guard is here. BP is 
there. BP is doing its thing. We can't do that for the long term, as 
much as we will be facing.
  Secondly, we have to set up a trust fund because we are going to be 
in this for the long haul. Think of the restaurants and their 
livelihood that is at stake--not just the fishermen, the restaurants 
because people are not coming. What about the hotels? What about the 
lessened revenue for local governments and the school boards as a 
result of people not having the economic activity due to our fishing, 
our oystering, our beaches, our tourism, and all that? It is humongous. 
We need a trust fund.
  Fifty-five of us sent a letter 2 days ago saying we want a trust fund 
set up by BP, operated by an independent group, that would be on the 
magnitude of $20 billion. Let's get it now. I don't think BP is going 
to be going broke. But on the basis of the experience with the Exxon 
Valdez, a lot of those claims, there were questions about whether they 
ever got paid when there were legitimate claims.
  Third, tonight is the time for the President to say: We are going to 
declare that this Nation is getting on a road rapidly to make our 
independence from our dependency on oil.
  That is a report straight from the Gulf of Mexico on the Florida 
coastline.
  I yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Tennessee.
  Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, I thank the Senator from Florida for 
his comments. All of us are deeply concerned about his State, the 
coast, and those others on the gulf coast. I know he is working hard to 
see that the Federal Government makes the appropriate response.
  Tonight the President of the United States speaks to the Nation from 
the Oval Office about the oil spill. The oil spill is in its 57th day. 
I would like, with respect, to suggest what I hope the President does 
not do tonight and what I hope he does do, because the entire Nation's 
attention is focused on this tragic spill, the consequences for the 
people in the gulf, the consequences for the people of this country, 
and the consequences for our energy and economic future.
  What I hope the President does not do tonight, No. 1, is use the oil 
spill as an excuse to pass a national energy tax, collecting hundreds 
of billions of dollars from Americans and driving jobs overseas looking 
for cheap energy. The so-called cap-and-trade national energy tax is 
not appropriate here because it has nothing to do with cleaning up this 
oil spill. Not only does it drive jobs overseas, it also does not work 
when applied to fuel. We have had plenty of testimony before the 
Environment and Public Works Committee. It would simply raise the 
gasoline tax but it is not going to change behavior enough to reduce 
the amount of gasoline consumed or carbon emitted. Finally, when 
applied to utilities, is premature because we have not yet found ways 
to recapture carbon from coal plants cost effectively or in a way that 
would enable coal plants to make money from the carbon rather than 
raising the price of everybody's electric bill.
  So, No. 1, I hope the President stays focused and does not follow the 
advice of the White House Chief of Staff, who has been so often quoted: 
Never let a crisis go to waste. This is a crisis, but do not try to 
mislead the American people into thinking the cure for the oil spill is 
a new national energy tax that drives jobs overseas looking for cheap 
energy.
  No. 2, I would hope the President--while helping us figure out what 
to do about the oil spill and making sure it never happens again--does 
not destroy the rest of the gulf coast economy in the meantime. The 
Senators from Louisiana, Ms. Landrieu and Mr. Vitter,

[[Page 10625]]

have both spoken eloquently on behalf of the livelihoods of so many in 
that area. We do not stop flying after a terrible airplane accident, 
and we are not going to stop offshore drilling after a tragic spill 
such as this one. What we need to do is to find out why it happened and 
to make sure it does not happen again.
  Thirty percent of the oil and twenty-five percent of the natural gas 
we produce in the United States comes from thousands of wells in the 
Gulf of Mexico. If we were to shut them down, natural gas prices, home 
heating prices, and gasoline prices, all would skyrocket, and we would 
rely more on tankers from overseas that have a worse safety record than 
the offshore oil drillers.
  No. 3, I hope the President will not recommend, as the current 
legislation pending in the Senate does, that we spend taxes collected 
for the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund on something other than cleaning 
up oil spills. Let me say that again. I think Americans might be 
looking at Washington and wondering: What is this? You mean to say I am 
paying a higher gasoline tax, in effect, to go into a fund to clean up 
oil spills and the Congress is thinking about spending that money on 
something other than cleaning up oil spills? The answer is exactly 
right.
  The proposal that is on the floor before the Senate today would raise 
from 8 cents to 41 cents the per-barrel fee on oil that is supposed to 
be used to clean up oil spills and spend it on more government. So that 
is another thing I hope the President does not do tonight. I hope he 
remembers it is called the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund. If we want 
to re-earn the trust of the American people, we would spend the oil 
spill cleanup money on cleaning up oil spills.
  Finally, I hope the President does not pretend that renewable 
electricity has anything to do with reducing our dependence on foreign 
oil. Already, I see the ads for the windmills that the big corporations 
are putting out. But let's think about renewable electricity for a 
minute. We are talking about oil in the gulf. We use oil for 
transportation, not to create electricity. Renewable electricity--wind, 
solar, and biomass--creates electricity, which we do not need more of 
for transportation because there is so much unused power at night. So a 
clean energy program that is a national windmill policy or a national 
solar energy policy or national biomass policy may be useful for the 
country in some ways, but it has nothing to do with reducing our 
dependence on foreign oil. I will say more in a minute on how we can do 
that.
  But let me stop for a minute, if I may, to back up what I said. Solar 
energy, for example, is two-hundredths of 1 percent of the electricity 
we produce in the United States. We all hope someday we can reduce its 
cost by a factor of four and put it on rooftops as an intermittent 
supplement to our electricity needs. It has great potential for that. 
But the better way to spend money is on research and development to 
reduce its cost, not to pretend that somehow solar panels have anything 
to do with cleaning up the oil spill or reducing oil consumption.
  Biomass, which is sort of a controlled bonfire, has the potential to 
help clean up our forests and generate electricity. We have in the 
forests of Tennessee, New Hampshire, and other places dead trees from 
the pine beetle or from other disease. Cleaning them up and burning 
them to create electricity is a good idea, and there is biomass is also 
an important source of energy for our industrial sector as well. But 
the idea of cutting down and burning trees to create large amounts of 
electricity is a preposterous idea in the United States.
  As an example, one would have to continuously forest an area one-and-
a-half times the size of the Great Smoky Mountain National Park in 
order to produce enough electricity to equal one nuclear reactor. And 
in foresting an area one-and-a-half times the size of the Great Smoky 
Mountain National Park, you would have hundreds of trucks every day 
running up and down the mountain, belching out fumes, carrying the wood 
to a place to burn it.
  Finally, wind, which has become the ``pet rock'' of the 21st century 
energy policies. Wind can also be a useful supplement in our country. 
But it is important to know that it only produces 1.8 percent of our 
electricity, and wind turbines have nothing to do with reducing our 
country's dependence on oil. In addition, there are many other more 
efficient ways to produce clean, carbon-free electricity.
  For example, I just mentioned that wind produces 1.8 percent of all 
of our electricity and about 6 percent of our carbon-free electricity. 
Nuclear power produces 20 percent of all of our electricity and 70 
percent of our carbon-free, pollution-free electricity. To produce the 
20 percent of our electricity that comes from about 100 nuclear 
reactors today would require 186,000 of these 50-story wind turbines 
covering an area the size of West Virginia. The Tennessee Valley 
Authority, in the region where I live says that it can depend on wind 
to be there when it needs it 12 percent of the time because, of course, 
you can only use it when the wind blows. This compares to the 
dependability of nuclear to be there 91 percent of the time when it is 
needed.
  Then we have all seen and heard the awful stories of the pelicans 
immersed in oil. Well, that is not the only form of energy that causes 
a problem with birds. The American Bird Conservancy says the 25,000 
wind turbines we have today can kill up to 275,000 birds a year, and 
one wind farm in California killed 79 Golden Eagles in one year.
  So the point is, we need renewable energy. We need to advance it. We 
hope solar becomes cost competitive. Biomass can be useful. So can wind 
power. But it has nothing to do with reducing our dependence on foreign 
oil.
  Now what do I hope the President does say tonight.
  Well, No. 1, I hope the President stays focused on cleaning up the 
oil spill--cleaning up the oil spill and taking care of those who have 
been harmed. We need a plan to fix the problem. We need accountability 
in the regulation of energy production. We need to ask the question, 
Where is the President's plan? Where are the people and the equipment 
necessary to implement the President's plan to clean up an oil spill? 
This is not the first time we have had such a spill. After the Exxon 
Valdez tanker spill--that was different, but it was still a big spill 
of oil--the country was convulsed by that, and Congress acted and 
passed the Oil Pollution Act of 1990. It said the President shall 
ensure that he has a plan to clean up a worst-case oil spill and have 
the people and equipment to do it.
  Effectively, the President has delegated that job to the spiller. 
Perhaps President Bush would have done the same. Perhaps President 
Clinton would have done the same. But if the only option the President 
has is to delegate the law to the spiller, perhaps he should amend his 
plan or we should change the law. We should discuss that, and perhaps 
the President will make a recommendation on that.
  But tonight the first thing is: Clean up the oil. Get the job done. 
Plug the hole. No. 2, help people who are hurt. I come from a State 
where we have just had a thousand-year flood event, where we have had 
$2 billion of damage in Nashville alone, and the flood damage went all 
the way to Memphis. We know what that kind of pain is, and people are 
busy helping each other and cleaning up and not looting and not 
complaining. But we feel deeply for the people on the gulf coast and we 
want to help them. We would like to help make sure BP pays for the 
cleanup and damages as they have promised. We would like to help raise 
the limits on liability and address the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund. 
Congress might consider the nuclear energy model of insurance for the 
future because that model gets all of the nuclear companies involved 
in, No. 1, making the nuclear reactors safe, and in, No. 2, addressing 
any sort of accident they had.
  I wish to see a similar sort of insurance fund for the oil well 
companies so you do not have just BP involved in cleaning it up, but 
you have every other oil company interested also in providing the 
technology, the expertise, the help and the advice to do the job.
  The third and final thing I hope the President does is chart a way 
for our

[[Page 10626]]

clean energy future. I have heard a lot about that on the other side of 
the aisle, and there is a great deal of bipartisan cooperation in this 
area. Let me be specific. For fuel, I hope the President will renew his 
support for electric cars and trucks. Republican Senators--all 41 of 
us--have said we support the idea of electrifying half our cars and 
trucks. That is a very ambitious goal for our country. But we can do 
it. It is the single best way to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. 
If we were to electrify half our cars and trucks--which would take a 
while--we could reduce our dependence on oil by perhaps one-third. But 
we would still be using 12 million barrels of oil a day.
  Senator Dorgan and I and Senator Merkley have introduced bipartisan 
legislation to create a better environment for electric cars and trucks 
in America. The President has strongly urged this idea, and Secretary 
Chu has worked hard to create support for batteries and for cars. There 
is room for bipartisan agreement on the single best way to reduce our 
dependence on oil, and that would be by encouraging electric cars and 
trucks; electrifying half of them.
  No. 2, for electricity, the single best way to produce clean 
electricity is nuclear power. One hundred nuclear reactors produce 20 
percent of our power, but 70 percent, as I said, of all of our carbon-
free electricity. Senator Webb and I have introduced legislation to 
create an environment in which we can build 100 more nuclear reactors.
  We do not need these reactors in order to have electric cars and 
trucks. The Brookings Institution and Obama administration officials 
have said we do not need to build one new powerplant in order to 
electrify half our cars and trucks because we have so much extra 
electricity at night. If we plug them in when we sleep we can have 
electric cars and trucks and would need no new windmills, no new 
nuclear plants, no new coal plants for that purpose.
  But if we need new green electricity, the best source for it is 
nuclear powerplants. They are the most useful. They are the most 
reliable, and they do the least damage to the environment. The number 
of deaths due to nuclear accidents at American commercial U.S. nuclear 
powerplants is zero. The number of deaths due to nuclear accidents in 
the Navy nuclear fleet is zero. There is a system of accountability, 
and as a result, a very good record.
  So it is electric cars and trucks for fuel, nuclear power for 
electricity. The President has been very good in the last few months on 
nuclear power. He has appointed strong members to the Nuclear 
Regulatory Commission. He has appointed strong members to a commission 
to deal with used nuclear fuel. He has done a good job of beginning to 
get the loan guarantees going for the first new plants. So electric 
cars and trucks and nuclear power are areas where we should be able to 
work in a bipartisan way in the future.
  The third area is on energy research and development. The President 
has recommended and the Congress has approved more money for energy 
research and development. Republicans support doubling our energy 
research and development for a clean energy future. That would mean 
projects such as reducing the cost of solar power to one-fourth of 
today's cost. That would mean recapturing carbon from coal plants. It 
would mean developing a 500-mile battery, which would almost guarantee 
the electrification of half our cars and trucks over time. It would 
mean intensive research to find ways to recycle used nuclear fuel in a 
way that does not isolate plutonium. It would also mean research for 
making clean biofuels from crops we do not eat.
  Making great advances in solar, carbon recapture, electric batteries, 
nuclear recycling, and biofuels would be the third important part of 
our energy future. While we are at it, Congress should pass the clean 
air bill Senator Carper and I have authored, and that 13 other Senators 
have cosponsored. It is cosponsored by eight Democrats, six 
Republicans, and one Independent. While we are figuring out what to do 
about carbon, we can go ahead and do what we know how to do, which is 
reduce pollution from mercury, sulphur, and nitrogen from our coal 
plants to improve our air quality, reduce health care costs, and save 
lives.
  So there are many things I hope the President will talk about to have 
bipartisan support: fuel, electric cars and trucks, electricity, 
nuclear plants, energy R&D, solar, carbon recapture, batteries, 
nuclear, clean fuels, and finally, the clean air bill Senator Carper 
and I and others support.
  This is an important time for our country. It is a time when we 
deserve bipartisan action. It is a time when we deserve to look to the 
future. It is a time when we need to focus on cleaning up the spill, 
helping the people who are hurt, planning for a future, and doing it in 
a realistic and bipartisan way.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record 
an op-ed I wrote and which was published in the Wall Street Journal on 
Friday and an address I gave yesterday in Knoxville to a group of 
scientists entitled ``Nuclear Power is Green.''
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

             [From the Wall Street Journal, June 11, 2010]

                    An Energy Strategy for Grown-Ups

                          (By Lamar Alexander)

       The tragic Gulf oil spill has produced overreaction (``end 
     offshore drilling''), demagoguery (``Obama's Katrina'') and 
     bad policy recommendations (``We must generate 20% of our 
     electricity from windmills''). None of this helps clean up 
     and move forward. If we want both clean energy and a high 
     standard of living, here are 10 steps for thoughtful grown-
     ups:
       (1) Figure out what went wrong and make it unlikely to 
     happen again. We don't stop flying after a terrible airplane 
     crash, and we won't stop drilling offshore after this 
     terrible spill. Thirty percent of U.S. oil production (and 
     25% of natural gas) comes from thousands of active wells in 
     the Gulf of Mexico. Without it, gasoline prices would 
     skyrocket and we would depend more on tankers from the Middle 
     East with worse safety records than American offshore 
     drillers.
       (2) Learn a safety lesson from the U.S. nuclear industry: 
     accountability. For 6o years, reactors on U.S. Navy ships 
     have operated without killing one sailor. Why? The career of 
     the ship's commander can be ended by a mistake. The number of 
     deaths from nuclear accidents at U.S. commercial reactors is 
     also zero.
       (3) Determine what the president's cleanup plan was and 
     where the people and the equipment were to implement it. In 
     1990, after the Exxon Valdez spill, a new law required that 
     the president ``ensure'' the cleanup of a spill and have the 
     people and equipment to do it. President Obama effectively 
     delegated this job to the spiller. Is that a president's only 
     real option today? If so, what should future presidents have 
     on hand for backup if the spiller can't perform?
       (4) Put back on the table more onshore resources for oil 
     and natural gas. Drilling in a few thousand acres along the 
     edge of the 19-million acre Alaska National Wildlife Refuge 
     and at other onshore locations would produce vast oil 
     supplies. A spill on land could be contained much more easily 
     than one located a mile deep in water.
       (5) Electrify half our cars and trucks. This is ambitious, 
     but it is the best way to reduce U.S. oil consumption, 
     cutting it by one-third to about 13 million barrels a day. A 
     Brookings Institution study says we could electrify half our 
     cars and trucks without building one new power plant if we 
     plug in our cars at night.
       (6) Invest in energy research and development. A cost-
     competitive, 500-mile-range battery would virtually guarantee 
     electrification of half our cars and trucks. Reduce the cost 
     of solar power by a factor of four. Find a way for utilities 
     to make money from the CO2 produced by their coal plants.
       (7) Stop pretending wind power has anything to do with 
     reducing America's dependence on oil. Windmills generate 
     electricity--not transportation fuel. Wind has become the 
     energy pet rock of the 21st century and a taxpayer rip-off. 
     According to the Energy Information Administration, wind 
     produces only 1.3% of U.S. electricity but receives federal 
     taxpayer subsidies 25 times as much per megawatt hour as 
     subsidies for all other forms of electricity production 
     combined. Wind can be an energy supplement, but it has 
     nothing to do with ending our dependence on oil.
       (8) If we need more green electricity, build nuclear 
     plants. The 100 commercial nuclear plants we already have 
     produce 70% of our pollution-free, carbon-free electricity. 
     Yet the U.S. has just broken ground on our first new reactor 
     in 3o years, while China starts one every three months and 
     France is 80% nuclear. We wouldn't mothball our nuclear Navy 
     if we were going to war. We shouldn't mothball our nuclear 
     plants if we want low-cost, reliable green energy.
       (9) Focus on conservation. In the region where I live, the 
     Tennessee Valley Authority

[[Page 10627]]

     could close four of its dirtiest coal plants if we reduced 
     our per capita use of electricity to the national average.
       (10) Make sure liability limits are appropriate for spill 
     damage. The Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund, funded by a per-
     barrel fee on industry, should be adjusted to pay for cleanup 
     and to compensate those hurt by spills. An industry insurance 
     program like that of the nuclear industry is also an 
     attractive model to consider.
       These 10 steps forward could help America grow stronger 
     after this tragic event.
                                  ____


                         Nuclear Power is Green

       Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, hanging in my office in the 
     Dirksen Senate Office Building in Washington, D.C., is a 
     photograph taken forty years ago of President Nixon meeting 
     with Republican congressional leaders in the White House 
     Cabinet Room. Sitting over at the side are two young White 
     House aides, Pat Buchanan and Lamar Alexander, both of us 
     barely thirty years old. I was invited to the meeting because 
     my job then was to help the president with congressional 
     relations. I can distinctly remember the conversation that 
     day.
       President Nixon was attempting to persuade Republican 
     leaders that a new environmental movement was coming fast. 
     The members of Congress did not sense this as clearly as the 
     president did. The president turned out to have better 
     antennae than the congressmen did. Our big and complex 
     country, like a big freight train, moves slowly when starting 
     in a new direction, but once going, it moves rapidly and the 
     momentum is hard to stop. This certainly was true of the 
     modern environmental movement during the early 1970s.
       We Americans suddenly were falling all over ourselves 
     looking for ways to limit our impact on the planet, looking 
     for cleaner and greener ways of living. 1970 was the year of 
     the first Earth Day. Congress enacted Clean Air and Clean 
     Water laws and created the Environmental Protection Agency. 
     Recycling became as faddish as the hula hoop. All of this 
     made sense to me because growing up in East Tennessee I was 
     raised to appreciate the beauty of our natural environment 
     and the importance of clean water and air. That is why I 
     chaired the President's Commission on Americans Outdoors 
     during the 1980s, and why I spend so much time as a United 
     States Senator working on stronger clean air laws, on 
     stopping mountaintop mining, and on introducing legislation 
     to expand wilderness within the Cherokee National Forest. For 
     me, it has been a lifelong moral imperative to treasure 
     natural resources at the same time we use them responsibly to 
     make our lives more productive.
       That is why in a speech in Oak Ridge in May of 2009, I 
     called for America to build 100 new nuclear plants during the 
     next twenty years. Nuclear power produces 70 percent of our 
     pollution-free, carbon-free electricity today. It is the most 
     useful and reliable source of green electricity today because 
     of its tremendous energy density and the small amount of 
     waste that it produces. And because we are harnessing the 
     heat and energy of the earth itself through the power of the 
     atom, nuclear power is also natural.
       Forty years ago, nuclear energy was actually regarded as 
     something of a savior for our environmental dilemmas because 
     it didn't pollute. And this was well before we were even 
     thinking about global warming or climate change. It also 
     didn't take up a great deal of space. You didn't have to 
     drown all of Glen Canyon to produce 1,000 megawatts of 
     electricity. Four reactors would equal a row of wind 
     turbines, each one three times as tall as Neyland Stadium 
     skyboxes, strung along the entire length of the 2,178-mile 
     Appalachian Trail. One reactor would produce the same amount 
     of electricity that can be produced by continuously foresting 
     an area one-and-a-half times the size of the Great Smoky 
     Mountains National Park in order to create biomass. Producing 
     electricity with a relatively small number of new reactors, 
     many at the same sites where reactors are already located, 
     would avoid the need to build thousands and thousands of 
     miles of new transmission lines through scenic areas and 
     suburban backyards.
       While nuclear lost its green credentials with 
     environmentalists somewhere along the way, some are re-
     thinking nuclear energy because of our new environmental 
     paradigm--global climate change. Nuclear power produces 70 
     percent of our carbon-free electricity today. President Obama 
     has endorsed it, proposing an expansion of the loan guarantee 
     program from $18 billion to $54 billion and making the first 
     award to the Vogtle Plant in Georgia. Nobel Prize-winning 
     Secretary of Energy Steven Chu wrote recently in The Wall 
     Street Journal about developing a generation of mini-reactors 
     that I believe we can use to repower coal boilers, or more 
     locally, to power the Department of Energy's site over in Oak 
     Ridge. The president, his secretary of energy, and many 
     environmentalists may be embracing nuclear because of the 
     potential climate change benefits, but they are now also 
     remembering the other positive benefits of nuclear power that 
     made it an environmental savior some 40 years ago.
       The Nature Conservancy took note of nuclear power's 
     tremendous energy density last August when it put out a paper 
     on ``Energy Sprawl.'' The authors compared the amount of 
     space you need to produce energy from different 
     technologies--something no one had ever done before--and what 
     they came up with was remarkable. Nuclear turns out to be the 
     gold standard. You can produce a million megawatts of 
     electricity a year from a nuclear reactor sitting on one 
     square mile. That's enough electricity to power 90,000 homes. 
     They even included uranium mining and the 230 square miles 
     surrounding Yucca Mountain in this calculation and it still 
     comes to only one square mile per million megawatt hours.
       Coal-fired electricity needs four square miles, because you 
     have to consider all the land required for mining and 
     extraction. Solar thermal, where they use the big mirrors to 
     heat a fluid, takes six square miles. Natural gas takes eight 
     square miles and petroleum takes 18 square miles--once again, 
     including all the land needed for drilling and refining and 
     storing and sending it through pipelines. Solar photovoltaic 
     cells that turn sunlight directly into electricity take 15 
     square miles and wind is even more dilute, taking 30 square 
     miles to produce that same amount of electricity.
       Now these are some pretty big numbers. When people say ``we 
     want to get our energy from wind,'' they tend to think of a 
     nice windmill or two on the horizon, waving gently--maybe 
     I'll put one in my back yard. They don't realize those nice, 
     friendly windmills are now 50 stories high and have blades 
     the length of football fields. We see awful pictures today of 
     birds killed by the Gulf oil spill. But one wind farm in 
     California killed 79 golden eagles in one year. The American 
     Bird Conservancy says existing turbines can kill up to 
     275,000 birds a year. And for all that, each turbine has the 
     capacity to produce about one-and-a-half megawatts. You need 
     three thousand of these 50-story structures to equal the 
     output of one nuclear reactor. And even then, they only 
     produce electricity about one-third of the time--that's how 
     often the wind blows. At the only wind farm in the Southeast 
     United States, at Buffalo Mountain, the Tennessee Valley 
     Authority says that electricity is only being generated about 
     19 percent of the time. Based on the wind industry's own 
     numbers, I have estimated that to provide 20 percent of our 
     nation's electricity we would need 25,000 square miles of 
     turbines. That's an area the size of the State of West 
     Virginia. At some point, this stops being picturesque and 
     begins to look like what good environmentalists and 
     conservationists have always fought against--the invasion of 
     precious natural landscapes by industrial civilization. Or, 
     we are destroying the environment in the name of saving the 
     environment.
       Most comparisons of wind power to nuclear power are grossly 
     misleading because nuclear is so much more reliable than 
     wind. You'll notice that I said a few minutes ago that a wind 
     turbine produces one-and-one-half megawatts. That would be 
     true if the wind blew all of the time, but of course it blows 
     about one-third of the time, and then only when it wants to, 
     which is often at night when we don't need more electricity. 
     And today, such large amounts of electricity can't be stored. 
     So the Tennessee Valley Authority, whether it is producing 
     wind from its 18 turbines on Buffalo Mountain or buying it 
     from South Dakota, says wind in its portfolio has only a 10 
     to 15 percent dependable capacity--that is, wind power can be 
     counted on to be there 10 to 15 percent of the time when you 
     need it. TVA can count on nuclear power 91 percent of the 
     time, coal, 60 percent of the time and natural gas about 50 
     percent of the time. This is why I believe it is a taxpayer 
     rip-off for wind power to be subsidized per unit of 
     electricity at a rate of 25 times the subsidy for all other 
     forms of electricity combined.
       Still, people who are genuinely concerned about landscapes 
     and pollution and global warming have argued against nuclear 
     power's green credentials because of the waste. Well, the 
     ``problem of nuclear waste'' has been overstated because 
     people just don't understand the scale or the risk. All the 
     high-level nuclear waste that has ever been produced in this 
     country would fit on a football field to a height of ten 
     feet. That's everything. Compare that to the billion gallons 
     of coal ash that slid out of the coal ash impoundment at the 
     Kingston plant and into the Emory River a year and a half 
     ago, just west of here. Or try the industrial wastes that 
     would be produced if we try to build thousands of square 
     miles of solar collectors or 50-story windmills. All 
     technologies produce some kind of waste. What's unique about 
     nuclear power is that there's so little of it.
       Now this waste is highly radioactive, there's no doubt 
     about that. But once again, we have to keep things in 
     perspective. It's perfectly acceptable to isolate radioactive 
     waste through storage. Three feet of water blocks all 
     radiation. So does a couple of inches of lead and stainless 
     steel or a foot of concrete. That's why we use dry cask 
     storage, where you can load five years' worth of fuel rods 
     into a single container and store them right on site. The 
     Nuclear Regulatory Commission and Energy Secretary Steven Chu 
     both say we can store spent fuel on site for 60 or 80 years 
     before we have to worry

[[Page 10628]]

     about a permanent repository like Yucca Mountain.
       And then there's reprocessing. Remember, we're now the only 
     major nuclear power nation in the world that is not 
     reprocessing its fuel. While we gave up reprocessing in the 
     1970s, the French have all their high-level waste from 30 
     years of producing 80 percent of their electricity stored 
     beneath the floor of one room at their recycling center in La 
     Hague. That's right; it all fits into one room. And we don't 
     have to copy the French. Just a few miles away at the Oak 
     Ridge National Laboratory they're working to develop advanced 
     reprocessing technologies that go well beyond what the French 
     are doing, to produce a waste that's both smaller in volume 
     and with a shorter radioactive life. Regardless of what 
     technology we ultimately choose, the amount of material will 
     be astonishingly small. And it's because of the amazing 
     density of nuclear technology--something we can't even 
     approach with any other form of energy.
       So to answer the question, ``Is Nuclear Green?'' I believe 
     the answer is ``Yes.'' When you compare it with all the 
     problems we face in discovering and mining and burning fossil 
     fuels, when you think of the thousands of square miles of 
     American landscape we're going to have to cover with 
     windmills or solar collectors to get appreciable amounts of 
     energy--when you compare that to the one square mile taken up 
     by a nuclear reactor and comparatively small amount of spent 
     fuel--well, I don't think there's any question about which 
     technology is going to have the least impact on the 
     environment.
       And as a group of geophysicists and earth scientists, I 
     know that you appreciate the fact that nothing can be more 
     natural than harnessing the heat of the earth. As we know, 
     energy cannot be created; it is transformed. Potential energy 
     becomes kinetic energy and then the cycle starts over. Nearly 
     all the energy on the earth comes from the sun. Plants and 
     trees are stored solar energy. The energy to sustain animal 
     and human life comes from plants and other animals. Fossil 
     fuels are organic matter that was buried millions of years 
     ago. Wind and hydropower are energy flows set in motion by 
     the sun's heat. Capturing sunlight on your rooftop is the 
     most direct way of tapping solar energy and converting it 
     into electricity.
       There is one form of energy, however, that has little to do 
     with the sun. Deep within the earth the temperature rises to 
     as much as 7,000 degrees Celsius. Much of that heat comes 
     from the breakdown of two elements--Uranium and Thorium. We 
     can tap into the earth's natural heat by using the steam that 
     rises naturally out of the earth at geysers and fumaroles to 
     create electricity. Dig deep enough anywhere on earth and you 
     will encounter geothermal energy.
       When we generate power with a nuclear reactor, we just 
     replicate this naturally occurring process that already goes 
     on deep within the earth. We just do it in an accelerated, 
     controlled way and harness the heat that is produced for our 
     own use. We gather through mining naturally occurring 
     uranium, purify and concentrate and maybe enrich it, and then 
     arrange it in such a way as to greatly speed up a process 
     that would have happened anyway--which is the fissioning of 
     Uranium 235. We can then use the heat to boil water and 
     produce electricity.
       But even this accelerated reaction is not entirely unique 
     to our engineered nuclear reactors. Two billion years ago, in 
     the country of Gabon in uranium deposits in the Oklo region, 
     a lucky combination of hydrology and bacteria converted some 
     natural uranium deposits into a nuclear reactor that ran for 
     what was probably hundreds of thousands of years. Scientific 
     American reported a few years ago that these natural reactors 
     probably released, over a period of thousands of years, the 
     same energy that the Watts Bar reactor produces in a decade--
     which is to say a huge amount of power. It's interesting to 
     note that two billion years after those reactors shut off, 
     the world is still here and life still evolved, even though 
     the waste from those reactors wasn't contained and Greenpeace 
     wasn't there to picket.
       So nuclear power is as natural as sunlight. It comes from 
     the same source that heats the earth's core. It is a lot more 
     efficient than converting sunlight into electricity or the 
     process of converting sunlight into energy for plant life. 
     The beauty of nuclear power is that we are able to increase 
     the efficiency of this energy source in our reactors and 
     ultimately create electricity that produces very little 
     waste.
       I believe nuclear is green. I believe it is natural. I 
     believe it's the best thing that could have happened to the 
     environment to provide the low-cost, reliable, green energy 
     that America needs for the 21st Century.

  Mr. ALEXANDER. Thank you, Mr. President. I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Udall of New Mexico). The Senator from 
Nebraska.

                          ____________________