Reid: Sponsors of S. 104 in this Senate and the nuclear industry know that no such designation is possible within 24 months. Everyone knows that. That is why this substitute is as big a sham as the original bill. As I indicated, you can dress up a pig however you want, but it is still a pig. This legislation is still garbage, no matter how they try to dress it up.

They know that there has been spent to this point over a decade trying to understand the area around Yucca Mountain well enough to approve permanent storage there. They want to void the billions of dollars spent in Yucca Mountain and sidetrack, short-circuit the system. They know that any site that receives nuclear waste will keep it forever, because a permanent repository will never be built. That is the whole game of the very powerful, greedy, devious, deceptive nuclear waste industry. They do not want to play by the rules. They want to have their own game where they set their own rules, as they are trying to do in S. 104, and they are trying to doctor it up by saying we have made the goal lines not 100 yards apart, they are only 80 yards apart. That is not true.

They know once waste is moved from its generator site to a centralized site, it will never be moved again. A suitability decision will permit designation of a site. Viability will not.

So the only possible way to proceed, the only way to overcome the overwhelming opposition to centralized interim storage, is to designate an interim storage site at a place that has already been found suitable for permanent disposal of spent nuclear fuel. That is the only way to do it.

It is this inability to see that S. 104 is putting the horse behind the cart, that is, establishing an interim site before a suitability decision--it is this blindness that compels me to believe S. 104 is really all about sabotaging this country's avowed policy to permanently dispose of nuclear waste .

The industry, with all their money and all their profits, want to change the system. They want to change the rules in the middle of the ball game. Everyone knows that Nevada is not happy with Yucca Mountain. But at least some rules have been established there, where scientists have at least some say in what is going on there. And the reason the nuclear waste industry is willing to change--wants to change the rules in the middle of the game is they know that Yucca Mountain is being, at this stage, studied, analyzed, and characterized in a fair fashion.

Think about it. S. 104 would move nuclear waste to Nevada and store it there permanently at a site that has been found unsuitable for that purpose. I repeat. Think about it. S. 104 would move nuclear waste to Nevada and store it there permanently at a site that has been found unsuitable for that purpose. What could be more outrageous than that?

Such a policy goes beyond stupidity, goes beyond unfairness. It would knowingly risk public health and safety by storing waste at a site that has been determined to be an unsafe site, and, by storing waste on an open, concrete pad, exposed----

The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Smith of Oregon). The Senator has

used 11 minutes.

[Page: S2898]

Mr. REID. I thank the Chair.

By storing waste on an open, concrete pad, exposed to the weather and all manner of natural and accidental damage. That is wrong. Permanent storage, because that is what it would be, at a temporary site would be about the worst decision this Senate could make.

This legislation, this so-called substitute, is as bad as the original bill. I defy anyone to controvert what we have talked about here today, about the problems they had in Germany. Eight casks out of 420, moved 300 miles, not thousands of miles like we are moving them here. They had to call out 30,000 police and army personnel to allow those to proceed, at a cost of $150 million.

I reserve the remainder of my time.