As you know, President Bush—since his first days in office—has been a strong proponent of revitalizing nuclear power in this country. 

 

Our Gen IV and NP 2010 programs—as well as last year’s Energy Policy Act provisions for federal risk insurance—are intended to enhance our energy security and energy diversity by promoting safe, emissions-free nuclear power.

 

Now, as I am sure you are all aware, we are taking our next—and perhaps our boldest--step.

 

One week ago, our Administration announced the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, or GNEP, as part of President Bush’s Advanced Energy Initiative.  This Initiative arises directly from the President’s belief that science and technology will lead us to cleaner and better sources of energy, to new ways to heat our homes, power our cars, run our businesses, preserve our environment – and, therefore, ensure a safer, more secure future. 

 

Combined with the President’s other major announcement, the American Competitiveness Initiative, this effort recognizes that to maintain our country’s economic preeminence in an increasingly competitive world, we simply must maintain our scientific and technological superiority.  And doing so requires a substantial and sustained investment.  In fact, the President has committed to doubling the amount of federal spending on physical science research over the next ten years.

 

This kind of investment in science and technology will be critical to the success of GNEP, which is a groundbreaking international effort to expand emissions-free nuclear energy with new technologies that effectively and safely recycle spent nuclear fuel, without producing separated plutonium.  There are several major advantages to this. 

 

First, the energy benefits will be enormous. Nuclear power already produces vast quantities of electricity relative to the amount of fuel required.  But the potential energy we could produce from new, so-called “fast reactors,” using recycled fuel, is even greater. 

 

Right now, the nuclear material we dispose of from “once-through” reactors still retains up to 90% of its energy.  This is an enormous amount of nuclear waste that we… well, waste!  You’ve heard the expression, “Don’t hide your light under a bushel.”  By the same token, I don’t see why we should go through so much effort to bury so much valuable nuclear fuel under a mountain—if there is a better way.

 

Processing spent uranium fuel for use in advanced reactors will allow us to extract much more energy from the same amount of nuclear material—while also vastly reducing both the volume and the radiotoxicity of the waste that ultimately requires disposal.  This means that rather than requiring another five or six—or ten—Yucca Mountains over the coming decades to meet our nuclear disposal needs, we will just need one site.

 

At the same time, because the process will consume—rather than separate—plutonium, proliferation risks will be significantly reduced.  There are currently 200 metric tons of separated plutonium, produced by other nations’ civilian nuclear power plants, stored at various sites around the world.  Putting this material back into reactors as fuel will greatly reduce the risk that it might be stolen or seized for destructive purposes.

 

Finally, the partnership arrangement between fuel-cycle and reactor-only states envisioned by GNEP will help supply the world with clean electrical power by offering non-fuel-cycle nations commercially competitive and reliable access to nuclear fuel, in exchange for their commitment to forgo the development of enrichment and recycling technologies. 

 

If we’re successful in fully implementing the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, we’ll be able to increase energy security both here in the United States and abroad, encourage clean economic development around the world, and improve the environment.

 

These are ambitious and far-reaching goals.  Indeed, I realize some people may think we are being too ambitious. 

 

Let’s remember, these skeptics say, that we haven’t built a new nuclear power plant in this country in thirty years.  Getting the first new plants sited, licensed and built--this thinking goes--while also resolving the challenges of building a permanent waste depository, should be more than enough to keep us busy for the foreseeable future.  Under the new Energy Policy Act, we have opportunities now for nuclear power that we haven’t had for a long time, and—according to these critics—we should capitalize on these advantages without getting involved in something bigger.

 

Now, I can understand this thinking.  But in the final analysis, I cannot agree with it.  I’ll explain why in a moment; but first let me say that GNEP will not interfere with our more immediate plans to see several new nuclear power plants built in the U.S.

 

Getting the first new reactors underway is important—vital, even.  And I promise you that our Administration is dedicated to following through on our plans regarding NP 2010, and to overcoming the challenges regarding Yucca Mountain.  The President has made this pledge repeatedly—and he intends to keep it.

 

Having said that, I think that if one looks at the long-term trends unfolding in the United States and the world, it will become clear that these more immediate plans are necessary, but not sufficient, to meet the greater challenges we will face in the next ten, twenty, or fifty years.

 

First, other nations are moving ahead with nuclear power, and the question we face is whether we want to stay at the leading edge of this development, and help to guide it, or not. 

 

Right now, 130 new reactors are under construction or consideration around the world.  The explanation for this is simple.  The world needs more energy, and less carbon. 

 

Indeed, people everywhere are coming to see nuclear energy not only as an acceptable or responsible choice, but as a desirable one. 

 

Now, I hardly need to belabor nuclear power’s benefits for this audience.  My point is that what you all know very well is become increasingly obvious to the rest of the world as well.

 

But to rephrase the question I asked a moment ago, will the accelerated pursuit of nuclear power emphasize commerce and cooperation, or will it involve a chaotic scramble to make use of the world’s most dangerous materials?  Will the global development of nuclear energy follow a path that is safe, that recognizes both the promise and the danger of splitting the atom?  In other words, will this interest in nuclear technology—which includes states like North Korea and Iran—take place with or without the substantial benefits and security that GNEP offers?

 

To clarify what I mean by that, and to explain why GNEP is not merely advantageous but necessary, I invite you consider some of the major events unfolding in the world.

 

If you ask people what they regard as the most serious problems or challenges we will face over the next few decades, you are likely to hear a few different answers.  Let me mention the ones that I think would dominate any informed discussion of this subject.

 

First and foremost, of course, we must always be concerned about the safety of our nation and its people.  So I think we would all agree on the need for the strongest possible safeguards to prevent the proliferation of nuclear technologies, materials, and expertise.  Keeping nuclear and radiological weapons out of the hands of terrorists is one of our most urgent priorities—not just for the United States, but for the civilized world.

 

Another national security consideration is the dependence that the industrialized nations of the world have on oil--that commodity which is currently so essential to our economies, but, as the President noted in his State of the Union Address, so often imported from unstable parts of the world.  There are other problems with our consumption of fossil fuels, and I will get to those in a minute.  But certainly one concern is the wealth and influence that oil provides to regimes that may not always have the best interests of the world’s democracies at heart.

 

I think a third global challenge becomes evident when we look at the question of national security more broadly. Even if we are able to quickly and resoundingly defeat the terrorist threat we currently face, we will still be confronted with the desperate, grinding poverty that grips so much of the world.  

 

What developed nations should, or indeed can, do about this poverty raises complex political and moral questions. But it also raises national security considerations, in the sense that the most underdeveloped and “failed” states have frequently served as safe havens for terrorists and other fanatics.  Think of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, or Bin Laden’s forays into chaotic Sudan. 

 

But if these underdeveloped nations are ever to build thriving economies, and achieve lasting prosperity, they will need—perhaps above all else—access to affordable and reliable energy supplies, particularly electricity.

 

Finally, there is there is the global challenge that confronts us regarding the environment.  Even if we were to suddenly discover massive new reserves of oil within the territory of the United States, which allowed us to eliminate all of our oil imports, we would still have to deal with the pollution and greenhouse gasses emitted by burning fossil fuel--not to mention the pollution caused by other nations.

 

It seems to me that these are some of the most critical challenges we face.  And even if some might place other concerns on the list, I think most people would put these that I’ve mentioned at or near the top: the proliferation of nuclear materials, the political concerns over oil dependency, the need to reduce poverty through economic growth, and curbing or even eliminating the pollution and greenhouse gasses emitted by using fossil fuels.

 

The message I want to drive home today is that the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership represents a multi-layered and sophisticated plan to address, at least in part, all of these challenges. 

 

Because these problems are not going away.  The choice that confronts us today is not whether to respond to these challenges, but how we will react and adapt to our changing world. 

 

We could respond to these problems haphazardly, piecemeal and inconsistently.  We could focus on one or two of them, and let the others fester, putting them off until a time when they have grown more difficult and less manageable.  

 

Or we can find a better way.  For instance, we can leave open the loophole in our current nonproliferation framework that allows states to pursue nuclear weapons work under the pretense of developing a fuel cycle for peaceful energy purposes.

 

Or we can use GNEP to close that loophole.  We can continue to rely on unstable—sometimes unfriendly—nations to fuel the world’s transportation sector.  Or we can develop new technologies and set the stage for massive new sources of electricity to power our cars and trucks, and work toward ending our dependence on oil.

 

We can abandon the world’s underdeveloped nations to poverty and squalor, and stand by while they struggle to meet their growing energy needs with fossil fuels. Or we can work in cooperation with other nuclear fuel-cycle states to provide these nations with commercially attractive, safe and proliferation resistant sources of nuclear energy.

 

Finally, we can continue to pour carbon and other greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere.  Or we can join the growing global consensus that acknowledges nuclear power’s enormous environmental advantages.  Electricity use in the developing world is estimated to increase 125 percent by 2025.  Generating this power entirely with coal would mean 5 billion tons of additional CO2 emissions each year, while supplying the same amount of electricity with nuclear reactors would, of course, add zero.

 

Now, I do not mean to suggest that the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership is a magic bullet that will wipe out all of our problems.  In fact, President Bush and I recognize that implementing GNEP will require overcoming some serious obstacles.

 

But we also believe that we must overcome these hurdles, because GNEP represents the next, necessary, step in the nuclear era--an era in which the truly awesome potential of nuclear power will finally be able to flourish.

 

One reason that I am excited and optimistic about GNEP is the fact that the most substantial obstacles we face are technological.  I am almost tempted to say “merely technological.”   As we look around us we see that there are many things in the world we would like to accomplish, but that are beyond our control.  Mankind, unfortunately, has always been plagued by folly, cruelty and corruption.  But applying innovation and ingenuity to difficult technical challenges is something we can do.  In fact, it is something at which Americans have always excelled.  Our history, and our great economic success, is in many ways the story of this American commitment to innovation and our capacity for technological progress.

 

Side by side with this legendary Yankee ingenuity and independence, we have also shown again and again an unparalleled capacity to marshal our resources in the service of great national purposes.  In the last century, we fought two World Wars, survived a Great Depression, put a man on the moon, and brought the Cold War to a peaceful conclusion.  We did so by standing shoulder to shoulder and working hard to do together what none of us could do separately.

 

And I believe we can again confront and overcome our most urgent challenges—this time on a global scale—to overcome problems that are global in scope and require nothing less than concerted, international action.

 

GNEP envisions a world in which all responsible nations work together to share the benefits of peaceful nuclear power.  And if we succeed, well, we can do so much. We can provide vast quantities of affordable electricity, increase energy diversity, promote economic development, reduce pollution and carbon emissions, curtail nuclear waste, and significantly reduce the risk of nuclear terrorism.

 

These are enormous goals, and will require enormous effort, dedication and perseverance.  But even those sterling qualities will be without effective purpose unless they are given direction and guidance.  We need a roadmap—a deliberative, cooperative and considered plan to direct our exertions and achieve the goals I have described. 

 

I believe that GNEP is that roadmap.  And I hope that in these remarks today, I have at least opened the door to persuading you of that as well.

 

With that, let me conclude my remarks and thank you for your attention.  Thank you.