Exelon CEO's state of the nukes address

John Rowe, CEO of Exelon Corp. - owner of the Oyster Creek nuclear plant in Lacey - and newly installed chairman of the nuclear industry's chief lobbying arm, the Nuclear Energy Institute, addressed the NEI today at its annual conference.
A few of the highlights:
On relicensing:
"License renewal has become a routine undertaking. Three-quarters of our operating plants have renewed their licenses or indicated formally to the NRC that they intend to do so."
On profitability:
"License extension will enable us to extract value for our customers and earnings for our shareholders far in excess of what we imagined 10 or 15 years ago."
On disposal of nuclear waste:
"Over the past 30 years, the American people have paid almost $30 billion to develop a permanent repository for spent fuel. And sadly, we are not much further along today than we were 10 years ago. We must accept that the operation of a permanent disposal facility at Yucca Mountain will not happen soon – certainly not by the 2017 date currently advertised by the Department of Energy.
"... I support NEI's position that long-term interim storage must be that alternative. We must establish a process under which the federal government takes title to spent fuel, and moves it from reactor sites to one or more federal locations for consolidated interim storage. While permanent disposal at Yucca Mountain or a similar facility remains a long-term imperative, the industry can proceed if the operational date slips to 2025 or 2035 or even some later date. But we risk losing everything if we cannot tell our friends and neighbors, with confidence, that the federal government is meeting its commitment to safely store spent fuel."