Pete Domenici

Mr. DOMENICI

Mr. DOMENICI. I commend Senators Chafee, Warner, Lieberman, and Smith of New Hampshire for their dedication to the issue. I will work with my colleagues during the conference with the House to identify potential sources of funding for the Estuary Restoration Act.

Mr. DOMENICI. The Endangered Species Act has also significantly affected areas of my State. I want to work with the Senator from Idaho to find a solution to this issue and provide help for the affected communities. funding for the green brook sub-basin project

Mr. DOMENICI. As am I.

Mr. DOMENICI. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I seek permission to speak for up to 10 minutes as if in morning business.

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. DOMENICI

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, actually, I don't know what Senator Bond thinks it is, a celebration or whatever. What I understand is that I have been around here a while. There are a lot of reasons to seek a rollcall vote. I have begun the practice of not trying to speculate as to why rollcalls are requested. In some situations, I would not ask for them and Senators insist on them. Other times, I wonder why they don't because it seems to be such a great issue. Senator Bond is entitled to his request. I yield the floor and have no objection to the unanimous consent.

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I understand we are looking for somebody to offer an amendment that can be debated tonight and voted on tonight. Senator Murkowski is ready to proceed with an amendment. We have one scheduled after it, but I will try to determine if we can find some additional amendments.

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I yield to the Senator from Massachusetts to ask a question.

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, let me state in the presence of the majority leader that nobody is more interested in getting the bill completed than the Senator from New Mexico. I remember one year when this bill was vetoed over an amendment that was debated in this Chamber. The distinguished majority leader remembers that. It was a pretty onerous situation to veto an entire bill over the Missouri River. We have not been on this bill very long because if you want to recall with me, what happened is you carved out big pieces of time for other things during each of the days that this bill has been up, so that on Monday we had a little time but no votes; Tuesday, yesterday, we didn't start on this bill until after noon, and this morning we finished our memorials and started at 11 o'clock. So while it may seem that we were here the whole time, we have not been on the bill that whole time. This would be a very short number of hours. Nonetheless, I will work with our Members, and I don't think anybody is intending to delay matters. We just put them off when, in fact, we have long lists, wondering who is going first. There are not a lot of amendments that people say they want to vote on. There are a lot of amendments that are going to be either in the managers' amendment or are not going to be taken care of. Senators know that. I will try to get two or three more lined up if we can proceed with this one now. I yield the floor.

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I rise to compliment the distinguished Senator from Alaska on what his amendment will do. There is no question that the Department of Energy is now engaged in a transition period as we prepare for new technologies, both in conservation and in the production of electricity and other aspects of energy consumption in our country. His amendment supplements a portion of this bill which continues to fund college programs in the area of nuclear physics and related matters. He brings it down to creating some openings for internships to get involved in this kind of technology and training. I think it is a rather interesting approach to this changing period. He discussed it with me. I urged him to proceed with reference to this idea. I urged that we not support the motion to table and that we permit this new idea to be approved with reference to the kinds of skills that are necessary to make the transition, and see whether it will work, along with other programs that we are now funding out of the Department of Energy. I yield any time I may have.

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. DOMENICI. As I understand it, we entered into an agreement to vote on the Bond amendment at a time certain. I now speak to Senators on my side of the aisle. We have the list of the kinds of amendments people are thinking about. I hope that in the next 2 minutes a Senator who has an amendment that he really wants to have us vote on and consider for some extended period of time will advise either this Senator or Senator Reid because we ought to go on to another amendment or two. The Bond amendment will have its vote, and it will be disposed of. We need to have something to do. I urge them to consider coming down to talk about the amendment they would like to offer. I yield the floor.

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. DOMENICI. I thank the Senator. There may well be someone in particular, Senator Bond. I do not want him to have to wait if he arrives in the next 10 minutes. I yield the floor.

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I thank you. I will be very brief. I remind the Senate how important this Missouri River issue is and was. First of all, I am very grateful to hear that it is going to get resolved, which I understand to be the case. I haven't seen the language yet, but obviously there are very good Senators who have a more genuine interest than this Senator. So it will be right. But last year, believe it or not, this entire bill that we are talking about was put at risk because Senator Bond sought to protect the river. An amendment passed, which I supported, that made the entire energy and water bill subject to that amendment with reference to not moving ahead too fast with the new ideas. It had a veto threat with it. Believe it or not, since 1979, I think is the case, energy and water types of appropriations bills had never been vetoed. So we put at risk all the things that are needed in this bill and said we would take it. If the President vetoes it, we will find a way to pass the bill one way or another. The reason I state that is because, obviously, the issue is a very important one. It brought down this entire energy and water appropriations bill. Incidentally, we found a way to fix it. It became an issue. I am hopeful that today it remains an issue, and that, with this amendment which has been spoken to and about by those who are Missouri River affected, we will end up with something that is really an achievement. Last year, I wondered--it is a very important bill--whether it was worth putting the entire bill at risk of a veto. My good friend, Senator Bond, who is now joined by others--and I compliment them all-- told me: It is a worthwhile thing to do, Senator. I don't like putting your entire bill at risk--the one I happened to have managed then; the one I am ranking member of now--but I willingly did it, and I think that had ultimately a bit to do with resolving this issue in a better way. Because the Senate did find out it was a very serious issue and that they would put it at risk, with a veto pen, with reference to the issues between the river people and the professional Federal bureaucracies and the environmentalists. Hopefully, it has been worked out in an amendment that will be agreed to today. I compliment everybody who has worked on it. I can see the fine hand of the majority leader. I can see other Senators from the other side of the aisle who got together to do it. I must, with all respect, compliment Senator Kit Bond for not giving up and for his tenaciousness last year in seeing to it that we, as a Senate, understood that some of our Government people were busy about changing things and that we ought to get ourselves involved. Normally, we would not like to get involved, but we did. Today, perhaps, within an hour or so, we will end this issue with a compromise, which will mean we will not have anyone objecting, and everyone--whether they are so-called river people or environmental people or commerce interests--will all agree that their Senators have done a yeoman's job. I yield the floor.

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I won't object, but I did maybe leave a misinterpretation a while ago when I spoke about being pleased that we had reached consensus after all of these difficult times, including last year. I may have left the impression that there was not going to be a vote required. That was not my prerogative. I should not have said it. The Senator who is the prime sponsor has indicated he wants a vote. We will have one.

Mr. DOMENICI

Mr. DOMENICI. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. DOMENICI. Thank you. Mr. President, let me proceed with some discussion while we wait for the activities and desires of our Senators, both Democrat and Republican. First, I want to make a comment about the President's energy policy. Then I would like very much to talk about the future in terms of the economies of the world, prosperity and growth, and how it is related to energy, and how I see that future compared with others. First, let me talk about the President's energy policy. It is contained in notebook form. For anyone who wants to read it from cover to cover, it is a cover-to-cover approach. It covers almost every issue. They have assessed almost every kind of energy and conservation issue that I believe has been in or around Washington, or anywhere in this Nation. They have begun to list what our energy needs of the future are and to come up with them in a rather basic way to let people challenge what we need in the future. That is all well and good. But essentially, I would like to make a point that has not been made very often. If you look at the whole policy on energy that the President submitted to us--which was worked on for weeks on end by the Vice President and a distinguished staff, some of whom used to serve us here in the Senate--let's talk just a bit about how much new energy we are going to need out to 2020. They worked on it with economic experts, with projectors of growth, and with those who could estimate the electricity needs of our country for certain episodes during the next 20 years. The conclusion was that the current ratio between energy demand and the gross domestic product might remain constant. Now gross domestic product is what we all reference to measure how much growth we have and how much we grow is measured as an addition to gross domestic product. When it is growing over a sustained period of time at a powerful rate, in America we equate that with prosperity, with jobs, with more opportunity, and higher pay for those who are not earning so. I don't think they have estimated the gross domestic product increase for the next 20 years at any exceptional rate, but rather sustained--something like blue chip experts estimate. In doing that, we concluded we would need 77 percent more energy in 2020 than we are producing today. If we drew a pie chart of a certain size which showed how much we are using today and then drew one around the outside, you would add 77 percent. Or you could take 2020 and draw one big pie. Then you would show a piece of it that is current needs and another piece that is future. In any event, the piece that is future needs would be 77 percent more than we are using today. Most interesting, this national energy policy recommends conservation and efficiency measures that would reduce that increase by over half, resulting in us only needing to produce 29 percent in real energy additions. The rest of it would be made up by enhancing and increasing our conservation and our efficiency. And there are numerous examples there on how you would increase efficiency, which equals a lot of research on products that will use less, on conservation. All kinds of things that we have already learned to do and are doing well, we would do more and do better. Frankly, the President and some of the President's spokesmen may have started off talking about supply. We might have gotten a little bit excited about it. Some people in the country asked: What about conservation? Well, I am just recalling, when it is all finally done, this is what it is: 77 percent new energy need; only 29 percent of it with new powerplants. They may use natural gas, which seems to be almost the singular source of every new powerplant in the country, and that can't continue forever. We will have to do some others. There's not been many new coal-burning powerplants, even though we are applying clean coal technology and, yes, not a new nuclear plant for two decades or so. But everything is moving in the direction of ``let's do it better.'' Let's do it more efficiently; let's do it cleaner. And let's permit America to grow. That is for starters. I am not changing any of that when I speak of this bill being a very good start in implementing an energy policy that moves us in the direction of diversity of energy, not just one kind; diversity so there is competition; diversity so that, in fact, you can address some overarching issues such as ambient air pollution that produces global warming. We ought to be able to address some of those issues in our future thinking, because they are caused by certain types of energy being used to produce our energy supply, by kinds that produce the carbon dioxide and other things that go into the atmosphere and cause pollution. What if we can produce energy that causes little or none of those gases or much less of those. You can understand that clearly we don't have to be worried about global warming to the extent that we reduce the very essence of global warming pollutants in the basic supply of energy for electricity in our country. Obviously, we are not talking as much about automobiles and their pollution here, but clearly, it is a very powerful thing to just look at the electricity needs and see if we can do that in a way that truly helps us with reference to global warming instead of hurting us. There are a lot of people around that say there is a Kyoto agreement and we should follow it, even though the Senate voted about 2\1/2\ to 3 years ago, 95-0, that the Senate would not ratify the Kyoto agreement if they sent it to us. It seems to me every time we get in this debate in this country and the President is talked to about Kyoto, or for those who argue with him overseas, nobody even brings up the subject: ``What about the Senate which voted 95-0 that we did not want to enforce that kind of program because it would put too much pressure on our future in terms of prosperity and, yes, indeed, may put a lot of pressure on countries that truly need to build new electric generating capacity so they can prosper.'' What I am suggesting is, this bill moves in the direction of what we might very well call ``beyond Kyoto'' or what we may call ``prosperity beyond Kyoto.'' I will go through some of the very exciting things that are done in this bill that permit us to move in the direction of having a mindset beyond the Kyoto agreement, having a mindset for great prosperity for the underdeveloped countries and the developed countries in terms of being able to use energy for growth and prosperity without concern about global warming. This is a pretty big vision, a pretty big idea, but frankly, I believe America should do it. I believe our President should take the lead. I will go through a few things we are doing here and then fit them into a wrap-up as to how that could be America's vision beyond Kyoto. First, the renewable energy programs in this country have made great strides in terms of innovation, proving concepts, but today it is still a very small portion of the energy production in our country. We ought to do what we did in this bill--increase our focus on renewables, ask that more be done in that area, and that it be part of a great inventory of potential products for this ``beyond Kyoto'' idea. In this bill we made a good start. We funded renewable programs to the tune of $435 million. This is not legislation saying we shall have solar and who will do what. It just says we have these programs going, the Department of Energy shall manage $435 million during this year for the various renewable programs we have. That is 16 percent higher than current levels. There is no question that if we keep the pressure on and have a broader vision, this would be part of what we can do better. We can impose on that kind of technology to do more. Then there are hydrogen-based technologies. Some think the world ought to be on a hydrogen diet for energy in the not too distant future, and some think it could be the basis for future growth projections. I am not quite there yet, but clearly it belongs in the equation. We have added about 30 percent to the research in that area. This might end up decreasing our use of petroleum products in transportation, even though our basic agenda here is not with reference to the automobile and the internal combustion engine and the like. That research is largely being moved ahead in another appropriations bill. High temperature superconductivity is important because it causes us to waste a lot less electricity as you run the electricity down the lines. Superconductivity would make it such that you would lose very little, if any, a very dramatic step forward. We have increased that about 20 percent, hoping that our great scientists can move into superconductivity and capture some of the waste that now goes into transmitting electricity--an exciting kind of idea. Geothermal: We know there is a lot of it out there. We have added some research money, although we have been doing this for many years; that is, spending money on this system. We think we should try harder and do more. Wind systems: They are already in existence. Now I am not one who thinks that wind energy can be as big a component of the future as others, just because I have observed what we currently do and I can't visualize doing 10 times as much or 50 times as much. But in any event, we said let's proceed with a little more dispatch. And then on the side that we would call nuclear: The problem is that when you say nuclear power, people think of driving by a nuclear powerplant. Incidentally, you don't see any smoke come out of the chimneys because there is none. You don't see any pollution because there is none. The spent fuel rods are inside that machine, and to the extent they are not careful with those, that creates some source of problem for human beings. But these are gigantic nuclear powerplants. They are almost all of one type. It is amazing how the American people, over the last 15 years, have grown more accustomed to driving by them and living with them, such that today in America there is a willingness to take another look at nuclear. I know as soon as we take another look there will be those who would like to blindfold us right now and say: ``Stop that. It is terrible, bad for everything.'' Let me tell you, it is not bad for global warming; I will guarantee you that. If any group of environmentalists are really committed to solving the problem of global warming, let them at least listen to a proposal that would bring the world into contact with a new generation of nuclear powerplants. We might be able to set a goal for 10 or 15 years from now when we would be diminishing the pollution that would be commensurate with that growth, as far as global warming is concerned. Why should that be dismissed when it is that profound and gigantic a potential? Why would we dismiss clean coal, moving it to the furthest level of cleanliness, even if it costs a lot of money to do the research? Why would we say that would not work? What are we supposed to live on? Right now, people would say: Your State will continue to flourish, Senator Domenici. Natural gases will do it. New Mexico is the fourth largest producer, and it is going up and away. Every new powerplant we have heard of, including the three in New Mexico--that won't be for our people but for somebody else--will be built with natural gas, as far as we know. We didn't have any for many years. The price is causing people to invest in natural gas. For the long term, you need natural gas, but you also need some other things. What does this bill do about nuclear? Well, first, there are some very significant increases and some very interesting approaches to keeping this option alive. For the 21 percent that we already get from nuclear power today, we need to make sure we don't close those plants down prematurely but continue them for their entire useful life and do what we can to make sure that transition is smooth, functional, and safe. Now, let me go through some of the things we are doing to create this option. This bill pushes nuclear power forward with the following initiatives: $19 million for university research reactor support--that is a $7 million increase--to make sure our country has the educational resources necessary for an economy that continues to rely substantially on nuclear power--the old ones plus new ones. After all, we came up with this technology. Some of our great companies built these powerplants. They are all over the world, although we didn't build all of them in foreign countries Seventy-eight percent of France's electricity comes from nuclear power. If you tell people that, they say they don't believe it, or so what? Well, they have a lot less problems with greenhouse gases than we do--sufficiently less that Mr. Chirac can lecture our President about it. That is pretty interesting. If we had 68 or 70 percent of our electricity from nuclear plants, we might be lecturing him. But we don't; we have 21 percent. Germany has around 35 percent, and Japan is building new ones--in fact, as we speak, they are building new ones. The United States is sitting on this problem of not having enough energy so we can maintain our prosperity in the future. We say our universities used to be the pride of the world in terms of creating nuclear physicists and design engineers who worked in this field. All of the universities, except a few, have dramatically reduced these programs and are very excited about building some of this back into their programs through intramural-type grant programs, where they can do research and learn these particular scientific professions. There is a $4 million increase in a program to improve the reliability of our 103 existing nuclear powerplants. Let me suggest another thing that is little known. While we had some brownouts in California and some shortages elsewhere, they were minimized because the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the nuclear powerplant industry in America had been working so well together, and the licensing process and the regulatory processed worked so well during the last decades, that more energy was produced by the nuclear powerplants by upping their capacity in total safety, such that, on average, they increased by the equivalent of 22 new powerplants. Nobody knows that, but that happened. So while we are looking around for new sources, these licensed facilities, getting up in years, ratcheted up a bit and produced the energy equivalent of 22 new nuclear powerplants on top of the 100-plus we have in the United States. This bill continues with an increase of $7 million for a total of $14 million, in an area which is very exciting. I hope it will be used prudently. In fact, I hope it will be used to join with partners in the world to produce something really important. This is for the next generation of nuclear reactors. Some people call it generation IV reactors. There are a couple of them in the design stage today, and some people have read about them. They are very exciting new technology. They are going to produce nuclear reactors that are passively safe. That means that their makeup, in terms of the physics, is such that they can't melt down. They will not have a meltdown possibility in the generation IV reactors that will be produced. In addition, they will have much less left over, much less unused, enriched uranium, so there is much less risk. This reduces greatly the proliferation concerns, with reference to the byproduct from the reactors. This bill also addresses the Nuclear Regulatory Commission--which, incidentally, has been doing an outstanding job. The chairman now is a Democrat appointee. We urged the President to keep him on. He has been so exciting and powerful and such a force in terms of leading that Nuclear Regulatory Commission in the right direction toward the safety and well-being of our people, and maintaining the essence of our nuclear industry. We hope he is going to remain as the chairman. Now, I don't think I was saying anything out of school there. I think the chairman knows what is thought of him. I think I may have indicated that he is going to stay on and he wants to stay on. Remember, just a few years ago we didn't have any money in these programs that I am talking about. We decided it was best to have an Energy Department for this great United States. But back then, when you walked in the door, what we wanted was no nuclear energy and nothing nuclear in the Department of Energy for the greatest nation on Earth. That is the end to which we had gone in terms of our anti-nuclear-power sentiments. I am not exaggerating; that is a truism. I was fortunate to be chairman of the subcommittee for 6 years. My good friend was ranking member part of the time--Senator Reid. We started to build a little bit of nuclear energy capacity back up, so that now they are no longer ashamed. Obviously, they have divisions and departments that are doing nuclear work, so they can't hide anymore. I think they are very forward-thinking about it. But just remember, with generation IV we are not talking about the kind of reactors we have now, although they are pretty safe and people now are excited about how clean they are. The only thing people who oppose nuclear power are saying is: What about the waste that comes out of them? We are doing well when we can produce energy that will no longer cause any global warming, but we have a problem of how do we get rid of the waste. Just think of this. What is the dimension of this problem? I want to speak of it in physical dimensions. A football field--you have a number in your great State, Mr. President. A football field 12 feet deep is the waste problem of America. That is how big it is. When people scare us to death about it, the truth is, it is just a matter of human beings deciding with technical excellence, engineering expertise, and resources what to do about that. You can either bury it, put it away for an interim period of time, or change it from its current form to another. In Europe, they are not in a hurry to bury it permanently. They are doing other things with it--interim storage--and they are moving ahead with other technologies to make the end product far less toxic. This bill says we are not going to fund Yucca Mountain, the permanent repository, as much as we have in the past. Although we will go to conference, where the House has a higher number to keep it going. We will have that debate in conference, and we do not always win every nickel and every penny. So we are looking forward to going to conference and seeing what can be done. There are two other technologies that are right there ready to go. One of them is called accelerator transmutation. This is very exciting new technology, proven out beyond the experimental stage, and we have $70 million to continue the work. It is an accelerator, therefore it is not a nuclear reactor, that will change what high-level waste is as this accelerator does its work on the waste product. Ultimately, just to make it simple, what it will produce is a residue that instead of having a half-life in the neighborhood of tens of thousands of years, the residue will have a half-life in the neighborhood of 700 years. After 300 years, it would be no more dangerous than uranium ore from the ground. If we can get a byproduct like that, there is nobody who would stand up and say we cannot handle that. What is difficult to handle is proving modular-wise and scientific-wise what will happen 10,000 years from now when we put something underground and leave it there. That is what makes the problem and the job for nuclear power of the future a difficult one. I repeat. We are singularly the only country saying let's put it underground and forget about it forever, when it has only used up 5 percent of its energy. Ninety-five percent of the energy is still in the rod that you put in the ground. So true and so powerful is that statement that you cannot talk to the Russian leaders at any level about energy. You cannot talk to any of them about getting rid of the waste product in any way other than using it, which is amazing. As a matter of fact, they just put out word the other day that if we are so frightened about the waste product, they would accept it. Nobody is seriously thinking about that, although maybe some are. But it just shows you the difference, the mentality between those who have worked that problem in Russia. Some of them learned from us; we learned some from them. They had the greatest nuclear scientists; we had the greatest. We never did decide who had the best. They both had so much respect for each other in nuclear weaponry; I think that kept us from ever having war. You can bet the greatest scientists working on our nuclear weapons knew exactly who the greatest scientists were over there. And they were the greatest. They were not just getting a degree in physics and going over and taking on a program. They were fantastic people. That expertise has come down to nuclear reactor waste and they understand it. They even moved to the next generation of nuclear power, breeder reactors, which we have become so frightened about that even Senator Domenici does not talk about it. So we moved to an interim discussion of the kind of nuclear reactors we are talking about today. We have transmutation, a big word which means changing the makeup and content of this product into something far less toxic. Incidentally, it has two other uses that are very positive that come out of this accelerator process, one of which is to produce all the radioactive isotopes you need for the medical programs of the country. One of these major accelerators would provide all you need. Plus another use that is rather significant would be to back up our tritium production; it will do that, too. We are currently going to use reactors to do that job. Under Secretary of Energy Bill Richardson we decided to do it down in Tennessee at one of their TVA nuclear reactors. So that is where the tritium in the program will be produced. This could even be a backup for that reactor in the event we moved ahead. Some people talk about the estimated costs of transmutation. They use the numbers wrong because the total number over a long period of time, when they tell you how much that is, does not take into consideration how much electricity it produces. It is just telling you what it costs. That would be like saying the next 10 nuclear powerplants, my gosh, are going to cost $1.5 billion each, but you don't know how much electricity it produces. You just hold to the $15 billion number. Let me emphasize I want to stop using the word ``waste'' and use ``spent fuel'' because I just gave you an example of how much of the energy is still in the spent fuel. It is 95 percent. It is still energy that can be used. As long as we have cheap uranium, it is obvious we are not going to go full speed ahead to produce byproducts that cost a lot of money. In the process we do know these are some of the approaches to making sure we have options in the future. To wrap up the vision, the vision is to take these resources and others the administration might need to ask us for and produce a commitment by the United States of America, led by our President, to put together a 10-, 15-, or 20-year plan that says ``beyond Kyoto'' and say to the world: ``Let's bring together the electricity-producing resources we have been discussing--renewables, biomass, clean coal, nuclear--let's bring them together and decide in a scheduled approach to begin to produce them so that we can begin to use them in the world without any effect on global warming. It is very doable. We ought to be excited about it. It means this problem in America might have brought out the best in us. We may be able to tell poor countries with these new reactors that we can put one in every country. They will be very small. They will be modular in size. Perhaps they will be 50 megawatts each instead of 1,000 megawatts. Perhaps they have the characteristics I described here. But let's set the world under our leadership to working on these kind of criteria and then develop the science and technology with our businesses and other countries to do it. I have asked the President to think about this. I call it now ``reaching beyond Kyoto,'' but it may be ``prosperity in abundance for everyone post-Kyoto.'' It may be an equal title because if, in fact, we have to restrain the growth substantially because the energy source is polluting and thus causes some problems with reference to global warming, then it is an admission that other people cannot become as wealthy as we are; that they cannot have as many things as we have. We constantly remind the world how much energy we use, and, yes, we do; we use more than any other country. We use maybe 25 percent. But this little country, America, also produces about 25 percent of the gross domestic product of the world, too. We have a chance to reach beyond this bill, beyond the discussions about an energy policy in detail with reference to each of these different things on transmission lines, using the public domain for more gas and oil, and to set a goal beyond all of that which would say to the United States and the world: You can almost pick your resource because if you do not have any coal, you can use uranium; you can use these new fourth-generation reactors. If you have coal, we are developing the cleanest of coal technology so you can use that, be a nonpolluter and grow. I think it makes a lot of sense. I am pleased to have thought it through a little bit and to have spoken to it a couple times. The Senator can tell I might have spoken about it one time or another. Yes, I have. It is a pretty good message to be accompanying an energy and water bill if, in fact, this bill is supposed to be doing something about the energy crisis. We have discussed the approach that there might be something in America that says it is good enough for an America of the future and an America that can help lead the world in the future. I yield the floor.

Mr. DOMENICI. Not only do we not have any objection, but we think it is a good compromise and ought to be accepted. We will do our best in conference to retain it.

Mr. DOMENICI. I say to my good friend from Arkansas that I understand the situation in Arkansas and the reason for his amendment. I am happy to support report language which will take care of this project in place of the Senate voting on your amendment.

Mr. DOMENICI. Madam President, it is my understanding Senator Reid was on the floor with reference to the amendment regarding the Great Lakes. It was his and my understanding we had agreed to that amendment. I think we stopped short of the magic words ``agreeing'' to it. I indicate there is no further debate on the amendment, and we yield back all time.

Mr. DOMENICI

Mr. DOMENICI. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. DOMENICI

Mr. DOMENICI. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, may I have 30 seconds before we do that? I want to clear up the record. We have not spoken yet. This idea about drilling in the Great Lakes is not part of President Bush's energy policy. So we are not here arguing that the President should not get what he wants; their policy does not involve the notion of drilling in the Great Lakes. We are trying to put something together that would be a moratorium that would be satisfactory to the Great Lakes' Senators. We should have that ready soon, which we will be willing to accept and go to conference and do everything we can to keep it.