U.S. and Japan to Forge Nuclear, Hydrogen Bonds

TOKYO, Japan, January 12, 2004 (ENS) - U.S. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, in Japan for the first stop of a four nation trip through the Asia-Pacific region, called Friday for increased cooperation between the United States and Japan on challenges arising from growing energy demand and energy security requirements. Abraham said the United States prefers Japan over Europe to host an experimental nuclear fusion power reactor.

During an address to the national business federation Keidanren in Tokyo, Abraham said both countries will bet their energy futures on hydrogen and nuclear power - both fission and fusion.

Hiroshi Okuda, chairman of the Nippon-Keidanren, is also chairman of the Toyota Motor Corp. (Photo courtesy Keidanren)

Abraham said it is "critical" that the United States and Japan do what it takes to "make sure nuclear energy remains an internationally accepted form of energy."

"You and I know that nuclear power is safe. It is reliable. It is efficient. It is affordable," the secretary said. "Yet, we have to make it even safer, even more reliable, even more efficient, and even more affordable."

"That means developing a fuel cycle that costs less overall, is more environmentally benign, and more proliferation resistant," said Abraham.

He urged Japanese business leaders to approach "the public discussion over nuclear power prepared to make the case that it is critical to dealing with global issues of climate change, the environment, and energy and economic security."

Japan and the United States are each partners in the Generation IV International Forum, an international consortium that is designing the next generation of nuclear reactors. "We are pooling scientific expertise and sharing ideas in order to design the nuclear reactors of the future," Abraham said, "and I expect that significant technological breakthroughs are not too far off."

Conventional nuclear power plants generate energy by means of splitting atoms, known as nuclear fission.

Generating energy by means of nuclear fusion, the process that powers the Sun, is a dream both countries are trying to fulfill through ITER, a $5 billion international project to build an experimental nuclear fusion reactor.

Since the year 2000, scientists and engineers from Canada, Europe, Japan, Russia have been planning to construct a fusion reactor. The stated goal is to demonstrate the scientific and technological feasibility of fusion energy for peaceful purposes.

In February 2003, the United States and China joined the negotiations. At the end of May 2003, the Republic of Korea also joined the negotiations.

But at an ITER ministerial meeting in Washington, DC in December, Canada gave notice that it will no longer participate in the ITER project.

Concerning the ITER construction site, the parties were deadlocked with Japan, Korea and the United States for the Japanese site, and Europe, Russia and China for the European site. The decision is now probably deferred until mid-February.

U.S. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham (Photo courtesy Independent Petroleum Association of America)

"I am proud to say the United States strongly supports building ITER in Japan," Abraham said. "From a technical standpoint you have offered the superior site."

The location Japan has proposed is Rokkasho, a nuclear complex in Aomori Prefecture in northeast Japan, where a MOX nuclear fuel fabrication facility is being built to power Japanes nuclear power plants. Made from mixed uranium and plutonium oxides, the fuel is known as mixed oxide or MOX fuel. The Rokkasho plant is being built by Japan Nuclear Fuel Ltd. with financing from major Japanese electric power companies and the nuclear industry for the purpose of processing spent fuel from Japanese light water reactors and manufacturing it into MOX fuel.

But two independent research organizations are calling on the government of Japan to abandon the Rokkasho Nuclear Processing Plant. The groups, one based in Japan and the other in the U.S., say the plant is clearly uneconomic and poses unacceptable safety and proliferation risks.

"The plutonium fuel from this plant would be the most expensive in the world, by far," said Arjun Makhijani, president of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, a nonprofit organization based in Takoma Park, Maryland. Abandoning the Rokkasho plant right now would economically be the wise thing to do."

But Secretary Abraham told the business gathering that in his view Rokkasho is "superbly situated to receive the large materials needed for ITER," and Japan has the scientific talent to carry out the project. "What's more," Abraham said, "the local community clearly welcomes this project and has always gone out of its way to encourage the siting of ITER in Rokkasho."

"Fusion power produces no troublesome emissions, it is safe, and has few, if any, proliferation concerns," he said. "It creates no long-term waste problems. Moreover, fusion plants could produce hydrogen - our ultimate freedom fuel - to power hundred of millions of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles in the U.S. and abroad."

Abraham said called hydrogen a fuel with "special promise," and said President George W. Bush is "particularly excited" about hydrogen, which could "improve our energy, economic, and environmental security," and "truly revolutionize the world in which we live."

The energy secretary said President Bush has pledged the United States' full involvement in the international effort to go from a world where our cars and trucks run on petroleum to one where they run on hydrogen powered fuel cells.

"This is, at heart, a radical idea ... all the more so for a President who, in an earlier career, worked in the oil industry," he said. "But President Bush sees in hydrogen the possibility of not just solving, but transcending, the old problems and old public policy debates surrounding energy."

In November, the United States hosted the first meeting of the International Partnership for the Hydrogen Economy, which Japanese representatives attended.

We already know how to power cars using hydrogen fuel cells, Abraham said, mentioning working prototypes that "perform flawlessly," like the Nissan X Trail, the Honda FCX, or Toyota's Highlander Fuel Cell Vehicle - all Japanese made automobiles.

Now the challenge is to make fuel cell vehicles affordable so that consumers will not opt for models that run on fossil fuels because they cost less.

"One challenge, then, is to lower the cost of fuel cells by a factor of ten," Abraham said. "Similarly we must lower the cost of hydrogen production, which is approximately four times too high today."

Storage of hydrogen onboard cars and trucks is still blocked by technical hurdles, said Abraham, and "we must surmount the overarching obstacles to developing a hydrogen based delivery and refueling infrastructure. The International Hydrogen Partnership is the way to do this."

International cooperation is the key to overcoming these obstacles, Abraham said, "strengthening ties, fortifying friendships, and buttressing alliances to take common approaches to shared challenges."