Remarks As Prepared For Deputy Energy Secretary Clay Sell
Thank you Rose for that generous introduction. I also thank you for the significant work you do in support of democracy and freedom at the Carnegie Moscow Center. It is a privilege to share the dais with you once again, as I did just 3 months ago in Moscow.
I appreciate the effort put forth by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in convening this conference. I consider it an honor to address this distinguished gathering and to be included now with the impressive list of past speakers. It is a pleasure to also be with my colleagues from federal agencies throughout government and the Congress. Thank you for being here.
The theme of this year's conference is "Tomorrow's Solutions" with a focus on tangible ideas to strengthen the nonproliferation regime. And Carnegie has kindly invited me to lead a conversation on the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership and Nonproliferation Policy. I will do that. But let me take the opportunity to broaden that discussion somewhat to consider a larger slice of the global nuclear enterprise: from weapons, to watts, to waste disposition.
This allows me to use this forum to talk about, and to put into context, 2 of the most important and transformational (and I would add, most attacked) nuclear initiatives of the Administration…the future of the nuclear fuel cycle (known as GNEP) and the future of the strategic nuclear deterrent (known as RRW, or the Reliable Replacement Warhead).
While these topics may appear as unrelated initiatives from opposite ends of the D.O.E., they are in fact built on the same strategic foundation: A firm commitment to reducing the number of weapons and weapons capable states, while ensuring the benefits of nuclear power are spread as widely as possible.
It has been nearly 70 years since the 1st successful experiments on nuclear fission. Since then, the release of atomic power has provided the world with some of its greatest opportunities and some of its gravest challenges.
Within humanity's grasp is the ability to produce enough clean electrical power to meet much of the world's energy demands. Yet that same technology-uncontrolled-brings with it the power to end the world as we know it.
Together, the policies represented in GNEP and RRW seek to enable a world where nuclear power becomes the primary global source of electricity,…where the world's stockpiles of nuclear weapons are reduced to a minimum,… and where there are national, international and commercial arrangements to keep all of this operating economically, safely and securely.
And I submit that the U.S. must seize the opportunity to help lead that effort, and that the D.O.E. has the technical and scientific wherewithal to play a major role.
Let me be specific. The U.S. has the opportunity now to prudently, effectively and significantly reduce the number of our nuclear weapons by moving from our Cold War stockpile to a stockpile that is still safer, more secure and far less likely to ever require nuclear testing.
President Bush pointed the way in 2001 when he said, "We can, and will change the size, the composition, and the character of our nuclear forces in a way that reflects the reality that the Cold War is over."
He further stated his commitment to "achieving a credible deterrent with the lowest-possible number of nuclear weapons consistent with our countrywide security needs, including our obligations to our allies."
Based upon that direction, the subsequent Nuclear Posture Review, and the Moscow Treaty, the D.O.E. then developed a concept for a Reliable Replacement Warhead - the RRW.
While the RRW will not represent a new role for nuclear weapons, and will have no new or different military capabilities, the RRW will have more robust performance margins that will increase reliability and enable us to significantly reduce the size of the overall stockpile.
Furthermore, the RRW will have the latest safety and security systems. And it will be built in a smaller, safer, and more responsive complex, sufficient for our countrywide security needs, but one that frees us from relying on huge stockpiles of "reserve" weapons, as we do today.
We are confident we can build the RRW and transform the production complex based upon the continued and remarkable success of the Department's Stockpile Stewardship Program.
But while the number of nuclear weapons is to be reduced to the "lowest- possible" number, consistent with our countrywide security needs, the number of civilian nuclear reactors must be increased to the highest possible number consistent with our energy security and environmental needs.
Let me elaborate. The Department's Energy Information Administration predicts that energy demand will increase by nearly 60 percent by 2030. More dramatically, it predicts a near doubling of world consumption of electricity during that same period. Much of the growth, of course, will come from the developing economies around the world.
That is an extraordinary amount of new demand that will require an extraordinary amount of new supply.
As such, the President has stated a policy goal of promoting a great expansion of nuclear power here in the United States, and around the world.
Nuclear power is the only mature technology of significant potential to provide large amounts of completely emissions free base load generation to meet this need…resulting in significant benefits for clean development, reducing world greenhouse gas intensities, pollution abatement, and the security that comes from greater energy diversity.
To be more direct, no person can be serious about climate change without being serious about greatly expanding nuclear power.
But nuclear power, with all of its potential for mankind, carries with it 2 historic challenges: (1) what do we do with the nuclear waste? and (2) how can we prevent the proliferation of fuel cycle technologies that can lead to weaponization?
GNEP looks for to address and minimize those 2 challenges by developing technologies to recycle the spent fuel in a proliferation-resistant manner and support a reordering of the global nuclear enterprise to encourage the leasing of fuel from fuel cycle states in a way that presents strong commercial incentives against new states building their own enrichment and reprocessing capabilities.
This is a major change in U.S. civilian nuclear policy.
And no longer will the U.S. government be casting a baleful eye on the rest of the world's reprocessing activities, but instead seek international cooperation to foster the growth of global nuclear power, including improved methods of recycling. The useable material in spent civilian nuclear fuel and excess weapons fissile material will now be acknowledged as potential valuable assets, to be developed and used, and not just liabilities to be buried.
This approach was heartily endorsed just last month, when Secretary Bodman met with ministers from China, Russia, Japan and France, along with observers from the United Kingdom and the International Atomic Energy Agency to discuss ways to enhance cooperation within the GNEP framework.
As Secretary Bodman said after the meeting: "Today's Joint Statement officially puts the 'P' in the Global Nuclear Energy 'Partnership. For Americans, pursuing nuclear power is wise policy; for industry it can be good business; internationally, it is unmatched in its ability to serve as a cornerstone of sustainable economic development, while offering enormous potential to satisfy the world's increasing demand for energy in a clean, safe and proliferation-resistant manner." I couldn't have said it better myself.
There are 2 items relating to GNEP and non-proliferation that deserve additional review - fuel leasing and the form of recycling that the U.S. envisions.
In an international fuel leasing regime - enrichment and recycling of spent fuel would be limited to countries that already have these capabilities. They, in turn, would lease fuel to other nations who would agree to refrain from enrichment and reprocessing in return for a guaranteed fuel supply and removal of spent fuel. This is a concept that goes back to the Acheson-Lillienthal report of 1946. It has been discussed at various times and in various forms since that date and was actually implemented by the Soviet Union.
What makes fuel leasing so important is the increasing recognition that enrichment and reprocessing of spent fuel are, in principle, within the grasp of most nations and could foster proliferation.
Furthermore, there is now a view that spent fuel - like enriched fuel - could become managed as an asset in states with advanced fuel cycle technologies.
This latter realization opens up commercial possibilities for the provision of services benefiting both fuel cycle and reactor-only states. In this way the market and the international desire for less proliferation could in principle become aligned -- a potentially powerful combination.
But not all recycling methods - separation and burning of spent fuel - are equal. We believe that the current PUREX reprocessing technology can be significantly improved, and we are looking forward to working with our international partners to develop a new generation of more effective and proliferation resistant recycling technologies.
These 2 policy ends--a reduction of nuclear weapons to the lowest possible numbers, and increasing the beneficial use of nuclear power--are strategically and operationally interlinked in a number of specific ways.
First, reducing the number of warheads in the stockpile could result in a significant amount of uranium and plutonium to fuel an increasing number of reactors, while at the same time permanently reducing the amount of weapons usable material. The "Megatons-to-Megawatts" plan is but one example of this.
Second, the science and technology - and in particular computation and simulation - that was developed within stockpile stewardship will surely be applicable for a next generation of civilian nuclear power, and many of the advanced security and safety techniques being developed for the RRW and the transformed weapon complex should likewise be applicable to an expanding global civilian nuclear power enterprise.
And third, as the Global Partnership expands and becomes embedded into international norms and behavior, it is not too far-fetched to envision further reductions in nuclear weapons.
All of this represents a great opportunity and challenge for the D.O.E.…perhaps the greatest challenge since its creation some 3 decades ago. Though some might doubt our ability to respond.
When I 1st came in contact with D.O.E. while working for Congressman Mac Thornberry of Texas in 1995, the prospects for D.O.E. were pretty grim. The Superconducting Supercollider in Texas had been cancelled in 1993; the Rocky Flats plutonium plant posed real challenges for nuclear materials management; weapons labs were in despair about the loss of testing and mission; WIPP was still under injunction; the Integral Fast Reactor had been cancelled, as had the Advanced Neutron Source, and the Material Protection Control and Accounting work in Russia had just begun.
Indeed, when the Republicans took control of Congress in 1995 a major effort was launched to abolish the DOE. How things have changed.
The D.O.E. was not abolished, and has instead enjoyed some remarkable successes that bear on our discussion here. Let me cite a few examples:
- 4 new world class Office of Science user facilities have been constructed - on time and within budget - and are now operating. The billion dollar class Spallation Neutron Source at Oak Ridge having opened most recently.
- All the buildings, equipment and material have been safely removed from Rocky Flats - it is now becoming a wildlife preserve.
- Stockpile Stewardship has been an astonishing success. All the weapons in the U.S have been certified without nuclear testing, in large measure because of the deep understanding of the nuclear explosive process brought about by a reinvigorated weapons lab complex.
- The stockpile stewardship simulation plan has driven the high performance computing revolution: performance on real, difficult problems has improved by a factor of almost 10,000 during this period. The U.S. is now by far the world leader in high performance computation, having been led there by the D.O.E. countrywide laboratories, which run 6 of the eleven fastest computers in the world.
- WIPP has been licensed and has safely disposed of some 50,000 cubic meters of radioactive material.
- The Nuclear Power 2010 program, the Generation IV International Forum, the Advanced Fuel Cycle Initiative and now the GNEP programs all represent DOE's renewed commitment to civilian nuclear power.
- The Department's Nuclear Nonproliferation plan will complete its work at 123 sites by the end of 2008, securing hundreds of tons of fissile material in Russia and other former Soviet States, and has converted 48 reactors in 27 countries from HEU to LEU.
- It has trained thousands of U.S. and foreign customs officials, equipped over 100 sites with radiation detection equipment and engaged thousands of former foreign weapon scientists at 180 institutes across the former Soviet Union, Iraq and Libya.
- We are on schedule to shut down 2 of the last 3 plutonium production reactors in Russia by 2008, with the last one shutting down by the end of 2010.
- The Megatons to Megawatts plan has blended down some 300 metric tons of Russian HEU to make fuel to generate 2.5 trillion kilowatt hours of U.S. electricity…about 10% of our consumed electricity since the inception of the program.
- And finally, the Office of Secure Transportation, has transported nuclear weapons and special nuclear material over 116 million miles since it creation in 1975 without a fatal accident, or the loss, release, or damage to its cargo.
In short, while hardly without problems, the D.O.E. is an organization with a solid accomplishment, and is poised to provide the technical leadership for the global nuclear renaissance.
Of course, there is another approach. There are those who believe that nuclear weapons are just too dangerous to ever be controlled and so advocate for their immediate abolition. But those of us burdened with the duty of countrywide leadership and the hard decisions that go with it, know that nuclear deterrence will remain a critical element of our countrywide security policy, and that of our friends and allies who rely on it, for the foreseeable future.
There are those who believe nuclear power presents too much of a proliferation risk, the spent fuel problem is too difficult to solve, and nuclear power will always be too expensive compared to alternatives. In short, they feel the risks inherent in nuclear power outweigh any benefits of carbon (and pollution) free nuclear energy.
These critics desire a return to a nuclear phase-out policy last at its peak popularity 20 years ago - in ignorance of the nuclear industry's safety and productivity accomplishments and the new reality of a carbon constrained world. But even if we were to again pursue this unwise path, the world's commitment to nuclear power would continue on without us…but without us there to shape it.
We cannot run from this future. We must embrace it. Perhaps most importantly, GNEP starts from the premise of a global partnership: where one looks for not to mandate what the partners should do or not do, but to work together toward a common goal, defined by agreed principles, while maintaining respect for countrywide differences.
And nations working together toward a common goal is in itself a most desirable policy.
We cannot uninvent nuclear weapons. But we can reduce their levels, reduce their costs, dispose of excess material, avoid separating plutonium, and devise better ways of conducting nuclear business that provide energy, avoid carbon and reduce proliferation.
Indeed, I would suggest that the Bush Administration nuclear policies are a 21st century continuation of the Eisenhower's 1953 Atoms for Peace speech to the United Nations when he said:
"To the making of these fateful decisions, the U.S. pledges before you - and therefore before the world - its determination to help solve the fearful atomic dilemma -to devote its entire heart and mind to find the way by which the miraculous inventiveness of man shall not be dedicated to his death, but consecrated to his life."
And that, my friends and colleagues, should again be our joint calling today.
