Two rare things happened around the same issue in the Minnesota Senate Wednesday afternoon.
Rarity No. 1: Sen. Amy Koch spoke, introducing a resolution calling on President Obama’s administration and the Congress to “adopt legislation enabling the construction of one or more centralized interim [nuclear] storage facilities. . .”
Since her downfall, the former Senate leader has rarely spoken on the Senate floor.
Rarity No. 2: EVERYBODY in the Senate supported the measure. Yep. Unanimity. 64-0.
Of course, there was some debate. A few DFLers suggested that the nuclear energy is not the long-term answer for the country; disposing of the waste being the seemingly unsolvable problem.
“Every state wants another state to take the waste they produce,’’ said DFLer Mary Jo McGuire.
Koch disputed that, saying that “some communities’’ are open to taking the waste.
But this resolution was mostly benign, unlike legislation Koch, of Buffalo, had proposed in the past which would have lifted the state’s moratorium on building nuclear power plants.
Timing is everything. Last year’s tsunami in Japan that destroyed nuke plants pretty much took the steam out of the efforts by Minnesota legislators for lifting the moratorium.
What happens to the resolution now?
It is to be sent, by Minnesota secretary of state, to the president, the speaker of the House, the majority leader of the Senate and the secretary of the Department of Energy.
“Then it will get thrown in the recyle bin,’’ said Sen. John Marty.