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United States Proposes Global Plan
To Encourage Nuclear Energy
Feb 9, 2006 - STATE DEPARTMENT RELEASE/ContentWorks
The U.S. Energy Department has proposed a broad global
energy partnership to promote nuclear energy as a
clean and safe source of electricity and develop advanced
nuclear technologies to prevent spent nuclear fuel
from being used to produce nuclear weapons.
U.S. Deputy Secretary of Energy Clay Sell announced
the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP) as part
of the President Bush's Advanced Energy Initiative
at a February 6 media briefing. Sell said a central
goal of the partnership would be to develop and demonstrate
a process to recycle spent nuclear fuel in a way that
does not separate plutonium. Such a process, Sell
said, would result in more-stable nuclear waste with
lower radiotoxicity than waste currently produced
by reactors. The change would greatly reduce concerns
about nuclear-weapons proliferation, he said. Spent
nuclear fuel containing plutonium could be useable
as weapons material, according to Sell.
The GNEP will seek involvement by countries that
have invested in nuclear power ' initially the United
Kingdom, France, Russia, China and Japan, and later
perhaps, India. The administration's budget request
proposes $250 million for GNEP in the fiscal year
that begins in October, more than double the amount
allocated for similar nuclear-related initiatives
the current fiscal year. Sell said GNEP's budget would
increase "dramatically" in the next three years.
The deputy secretary outlined other initiatives GNEP
will take up, including an international system for
nuclear-fuel leasing. He said the idea is to provide
"commercially attractive incentives" for a country
to buy a reactor, lease nuclear fuel and then send
it back for recycling and waste disposal. Such a system
would bring the benefits of nuclear power to an economy,
yet keep a country from investing in its own fuel
cycle, Sell said. He said this too would hinder proliferation
of nuclear weapons.
Environmental and energy-supply issues were behind
administration support for new nuclear power plants
in the United States, Sell said. The administration's
budget allocates money to foster the application and
licensing of new nuclear power plants, after a 30-year
hiatus from such projects. Administration plans could
result in a new nuclear power plant in operation by
2014.
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