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“RUSSIAN PLUTONIUM DISPOSITION AGREEMENT” mentioning the U.S. Dept. of Energy was published in the Senate section on pages S2820-S2821 on April 17, 2002.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
THE UNITED STATES/RUSSIAN PLUTONIUM DISPOSITION AGREEMENT
Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I rise today to bring the Senate's attention to a matter of tremendous international importance to our efforts to prevent the terrorists' use of weapons of mass destruction.
I wish to talk about the United States/Russian plutonium disposition agreement, a commitment between our two countries to each permanently dispose of 34 metric tons of plutonium from nuclear weapons. Thirty-
four tons is enough material to make over 4,000 nuclear weapons.
I was pleased to help develop aspects of that agreement during several interactions with the Russian leadership of Minatom, both here and in Russia. I was in Moscow with our President in 1998 when the first agreement was initialed. I believe this agreement represents one the most significant accomplishments between the United States and Russia in the last 10 years in our joint efforts to keep the material and technology of weapons of mass destruction out of the hands of those that seek to do us harm.
The agreement basically commits the United States and Russia to turning 34 tons of plutonium into fuel that can be burned in commercial nuclear power plants. In this way, electricity is produced and the used fuel is left in a condition that makes it unusable in the future for nuclear bombs. Facilities will be built in both the United States and Russia to perform this work.
Our Government completed a 4-year process to decide what type of facilities was needed for this disposition mission, and where those facilities should be built. The United States considered four sites, Washington State, Idaho, Texas, and South Carolina, and after a vigorous competition in which the State of South Carolina lobbied very hard to get the mission, the decision was made to site the disposition facilities in South Carolina.
Now, South Carolina is hesitating. The plutonium disposition agreement is being imperiled by the unwillingness of the State of South Carolina to reach an agreement with the Department of Energy on taking shipment of the plutonium identified for disposition and building the required facilities.
It is appropriate for the Governor of South Carolina to insist on every assurance that his State will be treated fairly, and will not simply become the permanent storage site for unwanted nuclear material if for some reason the plutonium agreement should fall apart.
But the Governor has done that, he has succeeded, he has won. He should be congratulated.
The Governor has gotten the Secretary of Energy to provide South Carolina all of the assurances they never got from the Clinton administration, including full funding for the MOX program, a strict construction schedule, and a number of mechanisms, including statutory language and other measures, to ensure that the agreement will be legally enforceable.
However, the Governor is apparently insisting that this matter should be thrown to the courts and resolved through the mechanism of a court ordered consent decree. Putting the courts in charge of executive branch non-proliferation and foreign policy affairs will slow our ability to meet our goals of reducing Russian nuclear material stockpiles, and will allow others who are opposed to the program's goals have a voice in their implementation. Ultimately, I fear America's national security will be undermined.
Further delay in reaching agreement with South Carolina will undermine the United States/Russian plutonium disposition agreement. We must move forward with the construction of the MOX plant that will be used to dispose of the plutonium at issue in order to honor our commitments to the Russian Federation. That will be very difficult, if not impossible, in the face of litigation from the Governor of the State where the plant will be located.
The Russians will not go along to reduce their plutonium inventory unless we do. A failure in this program means more material may end up on the black market where terrorists could have access to it.
For 50 years now the State of South Carolina, like my home State of New Mexico, has hosted some of the most important facilities within our nuclear weapons complex. For 50 years, tens of thousands of the sons and daughters of South Carolina proudly toiled in relative anonymity so that the rest of the country, and the world, could enjoy the peace provided by our nuclear shield during the long, dark days of the Cold War. I am proud of the citizens of South Carolina and their unique service for our county.
Today, the children and grandchildren of the previous generations of South Carolina heroes have a tremendous opportunity to almost literally, as the prophet Isaiah said, ``beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks.'' They stand on the cusp of a grand new opportunity to lead the world community in converting nuclear weapons to electric power while at the same time keeping the material out of the hands of would be terrorists.
We must go forward with this important agreement. Thus, I will close today by urging both the Secretary of Energy and the Governor of South Carolina to work together to resolve their differences, move out together, and not threaten this effort by resorting to litigation.
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