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[Page: S2768]

Mr. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, the waste was supposed to have been taken by the Federal Government for safe, central storage by, as I said earlier, 1998. Will that happen, Mr. President? The answer is clearly no. No, because we have not addressed the problem; we simply put it off.

Even though this $12 billion collection from American ratepayers to pay for this storage has gone into the Federal coffers, and even though a Federal court has reaffirmed that the Government has a legal obligation to take the waste by 1998, still, today, there is no plan for action.

By 1998, 23 reactors in 14 States are going to be full. What are we going to do then? Are we going to shift over to some other power? We are going to have to do something.

By the year 2010, 65 reactors in 29 States will be full. What are we going to do then?

The conservative estimate is that 25 percent of our nuclear plants will not be able to build onsite storage and will be forced to shut down. That would mean the loss of over 5 percent of our Nation's electric generating capacity. When is Yucca Mountain going to be ready for a permanent repository? Not until at least the year 2015. What do we do in the meantime? Simply leave it there? Let the litigation mount up for our inability to honor a contractual commitment? How good is a Government contract if the Government can simply ignore it? Therefore, in the mind of this Senator, what this Nation needs and what S . 104 is all about is a temporary solution.

When S . 104 passed the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, it passed with a solid bipartisan vote of 15 to 5. Almost half of the members and all majority members voted in favor of the bill. Americans have waited too long for a solution to this environmental and public safety challenge, and there is absolutely no purpose to be served by waiting any longer.

I am, of course, sensitive to the concerns of my colleagues from Nevada, but this is a legacy of our generation, and we have an obligation to address that legacy. To put it off to somebody else's watch, another Presidential administration, simply puts off a responsibility and an obligation that we have. We have an obligation to act, and to act in a timely manner, because we are going to be in breach of our contract next year. So there is a critical need to construct a safe, central storage facility to eliminate the growing threat to the environment and to the American people.

As I said earlier, I worked with Members on both sides of the aisle to attempt to solve the problems that they have with this bill. In the markup, we accepted several amendments from the Democratic side, and I am ready to work with other Senators on amendments they may have to improve the bill, because our goal is a responsible one. It is safe, central storage as soon as reasonably possible after 1998. We have offered, time and time again, to work with the new Secretary of Energy, Secretary Pena, and the staff at the Energy Department. During his confirmation, we pressed the White House to ensure that the Secretary has the portfolio to respond to this pressing problem, and they indicated that he did have that portfolio.

Over the recess, the committee staff has worked on a proposed compromise. Senator Bingaman's staff has been very constructive in this regard. Much of what Senator Bingaman has proposed appears acceptable. However, the bottom line is the need for a predictable path, with certainty, to interim and permanent waste storage. We simply cannot leave trap doors that allow central storage to be delayed for decades.

I want to refer to a chart to identify just what we are talking about relative to spent fuel and radioactive waste that is destined for geologic disposal. This chart on my right shows the United States, and for some reason or another they left Hawaii and Alaska off, but that is not uncommon around here. The brown areas show commercial reactors, and they are primarily in the Midwest--Illinois,

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