Remarks prepared for Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham
At the National Press Club

Thank you. I am delighted to be here today.

Preparing for these remarks in the days leading up to today’s program has been a challenging task.

Events of the past week have brought to the fore memories of two of our most beloved Presidents. Men who answered the call and helped defeat the two greatest challenges to peace and freedom the modern world has ever known.

One, Dwight David Eisenhower, the man whose life and work this organization honors, led the D-Day Invasion at Normandy 60 years ago.

In recent days, on the windswept beaches on the northern coast of France, we celebrated the anniversary of that event, which has been described as having saved civilization in its darkest hour.

The other great President, Ronald Reagan, a general of a different sort, led America to victory in another war, a war against Soviet communism and expansionism.

He was the quintessential American, embodying everything that was good and noble and optimistic about this great country.

His passing was met with profound sadness not just by his countrymen, but by people all over the globe.

Indeed, because of these two heroes, millions upon millions of people all over the planet live in the bright sun of freedom, rather than cower in the dark shadows of totalitarianism.

The D-Day anniversary, and the death of Ronald Reagan, reinforce the old adage: Freedom isn’t free. The peace and security and freedom we cherish must constantly be secured and earned and won, over and over, through resolve, determination, courage, and sacrifice.

Dwight Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan understood and appreciated that truth.

Because they did, the United States and the free world faced down the twin evils of Naziism and Soviet Communism – the two scourges of the 20^th century – and prevailed in that century’s two epic conflicts.

But we live in a new century, and the defining conflict of this one has already been revealed.

It is a conflict between the civilized nations of the earth, steeped in freedom and progress, versus the retrograde terrorists and terrorist states that would use devastating weaponry and technology to destroy them.

Is civilization itself at stake, as in the Second World War, or the Cold War?

Perhaps not in the same way; yet this fact does nothing to minimize the threat at hand.

The slaughters perpetrated on September 11 … and at Bali … and at Madrid … leave no question that what is at stake today are the lives and safety of, literally, millions of innocent people.

We know there are terrorists whose ambition is nothing more than death and suffering.

We know they are trying to acquire the means to achieve this ambition on the largest possible scale.

We know they are in league with the world’s most notorious thugs and despots.

And we know that our challenge of thwarting their aims grows increasingly complicated in a world where technology and science make constant advances.

A century ago, the great novelist Joseph Conrad wrote The Secret Agent, about secretive anarchists who planted bombs in public places to sow terror among the populace of London.

Today the threat we must guard against isn’t just the anarchist placing a bomb in the downtown square … now we must worry about the terrorist who places that bomb in the square, but packed with radiological material.

Whereas once we had to worry about the madman whose ambition, within the realm of possibility, was to assassinate a world leader … now we must worry about the madmen whose ambition is to destroy a world capital.

As President Bush said in a speech at the National Defense University in February: “The greatest threat before humanity today is the possibility of secret and sudden attack with chemical or biological or radiological or nuclear weapons… America, and the entire civilized world, will face this threat for decades to come.” 

The recent revelations of the complex network established by A.Q. Khan give startling scope to the nonproliferation challenge we collectively face.

The large quantities of uncontrolled or lightly controlled nuclear and radiological material of potential use in weapons have added an entirely new dimension to this worldwide threat.

Over 200 of the world’s research reactors are nearing the end of their life spans.

Four hundred reactors have already shut down or been decommissioned, creating large quantities of spent fuel and radiological sources that must be secured and/or disposed of. 

Our challenge could not be more clear: As the 21^st century unfolds, the stakes are higher. The dangers are greater. The worries are graver. Our challenge is more pronounced.

A test of our resolve will be how we adapt to new and evolving threats as the 21^st century takes its shape.

A decade ago, in the wake of the Cold War, our nonproliferation programs were of a certain type.

They were narrowly focused on securing nuclear weapons and weapons-grade material made vulnerable by the collapse of the Soviet Empire.

That pretty much remained the focus of U.S. nonproliferation efforts by the time President Bush took office in 2001.

Since then, we have broadened and accelerated these programs.

In part, this has been a response to our own top-to-bottom review.

In part, it has been a result of 9/11.

And it also reflects the direct decisions made by the Russian Atomic Energy Minister, Alexander Rumyantsev, and me as we have assessed priorities.

Our efforts have been very successful.

In a moment I will chronicle some of these successes.

But first let me say that they were achieved because of several things.

First and foremost, because President Bush and President Putin have made this a priority from the beginning of their relationship.

Second, because America has been successful in getting other countries to join this effort.

And third, because we have established a much better working relationship with our counterparts in the Russian government.

This has been the case at all levels, but especially between Minister Rumyantsev and me.

I don’t think it’s any secret that the Department of Energy and Minatom did not work closely on a day-to-day or week-to-week basis in the past.

But we do now.

In the three and a half years since becoming Secretary, I have met personally with Minister Rumyantsev on a dozen occasions.

We have developed a very effective partnership. And this close association has translated into great progress on many fronts, which I will now discuss.

First, we have substantially increased our nonproliferation spending.

This President’s most recent DOE budget request to Congress sought a nonproliferation budget of $1.35 billion – a nearly 75 percent increase over the last—and largest—budget request of the previous Administration.

Second, we have accelerated and expanded a number of important nonproliferation programs.

• We have accelerated our efforts to secure 600 metric tons of weapons-usable material in Russia. By the end of this fiscal year, we will have secured over 46 percent of this material, as opposed to the 20 percent claimed by some. Perhaps more importantly, by the end of this year we will have secured 70 percent of the sites. During 2003 and 2004, we will have secured more material than in any other two year period in the program’s history. Indeed, since FY 2001, we have already secured 17 percent more material than the total material secured in the program’s previous history. Most importantly, we will finish this work by 2008, fully two years ahead of the original schedule.
• We have also accelerated the recovery of approximately 10,000 high-risk radiological sources in the United States.   In the past 18 months, the program has doubled the number of sources recovered during the eight-year life of the program.
• We have dramatically accelerated our work with the Russian Navy to secure their fuel and nuclear warhead sites. During my first trip to Moscow in 2001, I met with Admiral Vladimir Kuroyedov, the head of the Russian Navy. He made a personal appeal for the U.S. to assist Russia with security upgrades at Russian Navy warhead and High Enriched Uranium fuel storage sites on a faster, fuller basis. I gave my commitment that we would move aggressively, and we have. I am happy to report that we will have secured 100 percent of Russian Navy fuel and nuclear weapons storage sites by the end of 2006.

Third, we have launched a number of key new initiatives to address the evolving nuclear security threat:  

• In June 2002, the President proposed – and the G-8 leaders established – the Global Partnership Against the Spread of Weapons and Materials of Mass Destruction. This new 10-year program will bring important new resources to bear on non-proliferation, disarmament, counter-terrorism, and nuclear safety. And it will engage countries that previously had not been involved. The partnership has already secured almost $17 billion dollars in pledges – 85 percent of the way to our target. We are working hard with our partners and Russia to reach the $20 billion target and go beyond it. We believe that figure should be a floor, not a ceiling. 
• In the spring of last year, we began a new program with Russia to upgrade security for its Strategic Rocket Forces sites. By the end of this year we will have secured two sites, and are working to secure the remaining 15 by the end of 2008.
• On May 31 last year, the President announced the establishment of the Proliferation Security Initiative, a program of counterproliferation partnerships to allow the U.S. and its partners to interdict suspect cargo on land, at sea, or in the air, and to seize illegal weapons-related material or missile technologies. As a direct consequence of this initiative, Libya decided to abandon its WMD and long-range missile programs. Since last December, we have worked with Libya, the IAEA, and other international partners to dismantle Libya’s nuclear weapons program.
• Last year, we created the MegaPorts program to place radiation detection equipment at the world’s major seaports. This summer, we will complete installation of radiation detectors at the largest seaport in Europe, the Port of Rotterdam.
• Last year, Minister Rumyantsev and I established a joint process to allow us to begin upgrading security at Russia’s most sensitive sites without compromising Russian security interests. Under this cooperative effort, we initiated a pilot project at a sensitive Russian site and will assess the results this summer, paving the way for access to the last remaining and most sensitive sites to be secured. 
• In 2002, at its annual convention, I called upon the member nations of the IAEA to establish a new international effort to account for, secure, and, where appropriate, dispose of radiological sources that could be used in a radiological dispersal device.   Last spring, we launched this effort by co-hosting, along with the Russian Federation and the IAEA, an international conference for more than 120 nations.  As a result of this conference, participant nations agreed to:
  • First, identify high risk radioactive sources that were not under secure and regulated control, including “orphan” sources.
  • Second, launch an international initiative to facilitate the location, recovery, and securing of such sources.
  • And, third, call on all IAEA member states to enhance their own national regulatory bodies to address safety and security of radioactive sources in their countries.

This conference set the stage for our new Radiological Threat Reduction program, which is working in more than 40 countries to prevent the acquisition of radiological dispersal devices by terrorists.

• And, finally, just last week, the G-8 – during America’s chairmanship – endorsed a Nonproliferation Action Plan that will further aid our progress. The G-8 partners actively affirmed their support to eliminate the use of HEU in research reactors, and to secure and remove fresh and spent HEU fuel. And they also spoke strongly in favor of controlling and securing radiation sources, as well as strengthening export controls and border security.   The strong and growing G-8 support for this work is extremely important.

We would be fooling ourselves, however – and endangering our citizens – to ever say we have done enough. The continually shifting nature of geopolitics … the ever-forward advancement of science and technology … the hardened determination of terrorists to sow death and destruction – all of these demand that we continually reassess the situation, that we constantly revisit the topic at hand, and that we incessantly update our defenses and our plans to combat proliferation threats.

As the global proliferation threat continues to evolve, it has become clear that an even more comprehensive and urgently focused effort is needed to respond to emerging and evolving threats. 

Although we are accomplishing much, there is always more we can do.

For that reason, I traveled to Vienna two weeks ago to address the International Atomic Energy Agency and to propose a new phase in our global non-proliferation effort.

With Director General Mohammed ElBaradei, I announced the Global Threat Reduction Initiative to secure, remove, or dispose of an even broader range of nuclear and radiological materials around the world that are vulnerable to theft. 

This Global Threat Reduction Initiative – or GTRI – is a concrete initiative to protect, collect, and secure materials not satisfactorily dealt with by existing nonproliferation programs.

The idea is that the entire spectrum of nuclear materials must be addressed.

The GTRI reflects the realities of the 21^st century that were so startlingly made clear to the world on that September morning three years ago, and plugs the gaps that our current efforts do not adequately address.

We will do this by the securing, removing, relocating, or disposing of these materials and equipment—whatever the most appropriate course may be—as quickly and expeditiously as possible. 

Specifically under the Initiative:

We will first work in partnership with Russia to repatriate all fresh and spent Russian-origin nuclear fuel that currently resides at research reactors around the world.

In 1998, a small amount of fresh fuel was removed from a research reactor in Georgia.

No further fuel retrieval occurred for four years.

Then, in 2002, we began working on an ad hoc basis to return fuel from the most dangerous of these reactor sources.

As many of you know, working with the IAEA, the Russian government, and a number of other partners, we have been successful in repatriating to Russia 14 kilograms of fresh HEU from Romania, 17 kilograms of fresh HEU from Bulgaria, nearly 17 kilograms of HEU from Libya’s research reactor, and 50 kilograms of fresh HEU from Serbia.

But it was clear to us that proceeding on this ad hoc approach would take far too long to adequately secure all the material needing to be addressed.

During the last year, we have been working with Russia to formalize this effort and put in place a plan to get the work done quickly under a formal government-to-government agreement.

I am happy to say that the day after we announced the GTRI, we signed that government-to-government agreement with Russia to get the job done.

Under this new agreement, Russian fresh HEU fuel will be returned to Russia for safe storage or disposition – not in three years, or five years, or eight years – but by late next year.

We are also working, under that agreement, to repatriate all Russian-origin spent HEU fuel.

Presently there is around four metric tons at 20 reactors in 17 countries.

We intend to finish this effort by 2009.

A second feature of the GTRI will be to take whatever steps necessary to accelerate and complete the repatriation of U.S.-origin research reactor spent HEU fuel – about 20 metric tons in all – from more than 40 locations around the world.

Let me acknowledge that this DOE program has had a long history of not performing as well as it should.

This program was assigned many years ago to the Department’s Environmental Management division, which is very able in doing its work to remediate former U.S. weapons sites.

But it did not have the international outreach capabilities to work with foreign governments on delicate negotiations and to get this done at a fast pace.

So in order to address this, I recently moved this entire program from our Environmental Management division to the nonproliferation division at our National Nuclear Security Administration.

I made it clear to the people there that I want this job done as soon as possible, and I assure you it will be.

While we confront a number of challenges in carrying out this work – including the need to extend our legal authority under NEPA to repatriate this fuel, the diplomatic challenges we will encounter with several of the host countries, and the sheer magnitude of this enterprise – I believe it can be done in a very expedited fashion.

Indeed, an overwhelming share of this work will most certainly be finished within four to five years. The rest involves more complex circumstances that require a broader international focus.

For that reason, in Vienna and in Moscow, I proposed the convening of an international partners conference later this year to enhance our ability to address special challenges.

Both the IAEA and the Russian Federation have agreed to help host this effort, and we are moving ahead. I am confident that this approach will succeed and enable us to also expeditiously address work in these more complicated situations.

The third major feature of the GTRI will be to convert the cores of 105 civilian research reactors that use HEU to use low enriched uranium fuel instead.

We will do this not just in the United States, but throughout the entire world.

We will first target those reactors where the threats and vulnerabilities are highest.

We have already converted, or are just about done converting, roughly a third of those 105 reactors.

We believe we will finish another third in the next four to five years.

The rest may not be able to be completed that quickly, given today’s technology, and given the constraints we have in terms of manufacturing the safer substitute fuel.

I know some have implied that this work can be done quicker.

But the people who make those assertions are simply ignoring the realities of science, and the realities of what, exactly, a mission of this scope entails.

Let me put this in perspective.

Changing a reactor core is not like changing the battery in your car.

Not all cores are the same, and we don’t yet have a proven LEU replacement fuel for every type of reactor.

While we have developed LEU that works for some reactors, there are others for which we still have to perfect and license a workable substitute.

We will do this, but it takes time.

And until this happens, it is unlikely that other nations will give up the use of their research reactors willingly.

Moreover, I should note that even after this fuel is perfected, we are still hindered by other technological limitations, because there is only one place in the world where this new fuel will be able to be manufactured.

This, obviously, will affect the speed with which we can convert these reactor cores.

So those who say we can accomplish 105 core conversions all around the world in three or four or five years either haven’t taken the time to learn these facts, or they know them but choose to disregard them.

The simple fact is this is not a political science challenge, it is a real science challenge, and we have real scientists working right now at our national labs to find the answers to some vexing technological problems.

In short, ladies and gentlemen, this is neither a question of will nor a question of resources.

If we find ways to speed up these activities – and we are determined to do so – we will not hesitate to move the clock forward, because it is in our interest to accomplish these objectives as quickly – and as thoroughly – as the technology will allow.

For our part, we believe it is not appropriate to make time commitments, the fulfillment of which is problematic.

The issues of nonproliferation demand honest, serious plans and timetables.

And that is what we have offered.

Anyone who says they have a plan for this work with a faster timetable than ours, but without the scientific ability to address this replacement fuel impediment, does not have a real plan at all.

The final pillar of the Global Threat Reduction Initiative will be to work to identify other nuclear and radiological materials and related equipment that are not yet covered by existing threat reduction efforts.

Once identified, we will secure, remove, relocate or dispose of these materials and equipment in the quickest, safest manner possible.

We will rapidly address the most vulnerable facilities first, to ensure that there are not any gaps that would enable a terrorist to acquire these materials for evil purposes.

Obviously the GTRI is a very expansive, robust undertaking. To make it successful will require several things.

First, we need a single organization whose sole purpose is to make sure it is done on time.

For that reason we have established such an office at NNSA.

Second, we need resources.

The United States is prepared to spend the resources necessary to guarantee success, and we have already announced plans to contribute more than $450 million to this effort.

That amount is sufficient to complete the U.S. Foreign Research Reactor Spent Fuel Return, the Russian Research Reactor Fuel Return efforts and to also fund the conversion of all targeted U.S. and Russian supplied research reactor cores under the Reduced Enrichment for Test Research and Test Reactors program.

But we will need heightened international cooperation to finish the job.

Dedicated as the United States is to such an undertaking, it is clear that a truly effective nonproliferation regime is made up of the collaboration of efforts by as many nations as possible, not just a few.

This is particularly true with the collection of materials that are not of Russian or American origin, or that may be located in locations that pose certain challenges that the United States and Russia cannot address alone.

That’s why in Vienna and Moscow, I also proposed the aforementioned Global Threat Reduction Initiative Partners’ Conference.

This conference will address material collection and security in places where a broader international effort is required.

It will also focus on material collection and security of other proliferation-attractive materials, not of U.S. or Russian origin, such as those located at conversion facilities, reprocessing plants, and industrial sites, as well as the funding of such work.

I am confident it will be successful.

As I said a little earlier, I am very proud of what the Bush Administration – and DOE in particular – have achieved, and what we have added to these programs during the last four years.

Four years ago, there was no comprehensive international effort to address Radiological Dispersal Devices. Today, there is.

Four years ago there was no MegaPorts program to place radiation detection equipment at the world’s major seaports. Today, there is.

Four years ago, we weren’t working with the Russian Strategic Rocket Forces, and now we are working at 17 sites that will be finished in the next four years.

Four years ago, there was no mechanism to return Russian reactor fuel. Today we have a formal government-to-government agreement to accomplish this in an abbreviated timeframe.

Four years ago, there was no G-8 Global Partnership with $20 billion in commitments for nonproliferation. Today there is. And we now have a Nonproliferation Action Plan that reinforces our efforts and gives global support for the President’s nonproliferation strategy.

Real progress is being made, and will continue to be, until the job is done.

Consolidating current programs … speeding the return of Russian and U.S. origin fuel … securing the most dangerous materials worldwide to reduce the most perilous threats … working together on an international basis. That is the agenda before us.

We will take these steps because we must. The circumstances of a dangerous world have thrust this responsibility on the shoulders of the civilized world. We don’t have the luxury of sitting back and not taking action.

The Global Threat Reduction Initiative is precisely the vehicle we need to take the necessary action now.

It is ambitious, but realistic.

It is bold, yet also practical.

It builds on previous successes and positions us for new ones.

And it’s the strategy best suited to dealing with the defining threat of the 21^st century.

I want to conclude today with the same message I gave in Vienna.

It is a message that applies to all the civilized members of the international community.

It is a message that applies particularly to a nation such as ours that has always stood for peace and freedom.

And it is a message that I think particularly resonates given our recent reflections on the lives and work of Ronald Reagan and Dwight Eisenhower. That message is this:

The responsibility falls to us … to take necessary action to prevent the horrors of 9/11 being replayed, but on a nuclear scale. 

The responsibility falls to us … to ensure that the civilized world continues to enjoy the peaceful uses of the atom – in medicine, electricity generation, and beyond – while minimizing or eliminating any dangers.

Like Dwight Eisenhower, leading the Allied invasion to turn back Hitler’s tide … like Ronald Reagan, leading the West’s great power in a clash with the forces of Soviet evil … we are charged with safeguarding civilization from those who want nothing more than to see it destroyed.

I am optimistic that we can do this. We have a President who understands the awesome scope of the current crisis, even when many others do not. And because of the resolve he has shown,

I am confident that we will bring about the safety and security the American people deserve.

Thank you.

Location:
Washington, DC