Bush Presses Nuclear Power Development Agenda

POTTSTOWN, Pennsylvania, May 25, 2006 (ENS) - President George W. Bush visited a Pennsylvania nuclear power plant Wednesday to make the point that the United States needs to build more nuclear power plants to expand the country's energy supply without increasing global warming. "Nuclear power helps us protect the environment," the President said.

Speaking at Exelon's Limerick Nuclear Generating Station about 40 miles northwest of Philadelphia, President Bush touched on the need for more renewable energy generated by the wind and Sun, but he focused most strongly on nuclear energy, calling it a source of power that is abundant, affordable, and safe.

"Nuclear power is safe," the President said to applause. "It is safe because of advances in science and engineering and plant design. It is safe because the workers and managers of our nuclear power plants are incredibly skilled people who know what they're doing."

President George W. Bush addresses an audience at the Limerick Generating Station, urging the the advancement of nuclear energy. (Photo by Kimberlee Hewitt courtesy the White House)

"People in our country are rightly concerned about greenhouse gases and the environment, and I can understand why - I am, too," he said Wednesday. "As a matter of fact, I try to tell people, let's quit the debate about whether greenhouse gases are caused by mankind or by natural causes; let's just focus on technologies that deal with the issue." Nuclear power is the President's preferred technological solution.

"For the sake of economic security and national security, the United States of America must aggressively move forward with the construction of nuclear power plants," urged Bush. He cited France, which has built 58 plants since the 1970s, and now gets 78 percent of its electricity from nuclear power.

"China has nine nuclear plants in operation and they plan to build 40 more over the next two decades," said Bush. "They understand that in order to be an aggressive nation, an economic nation that is flourishing so that people can benefit, they better do something about their sources of electricity. They see it."

There are currently 104 licensed to operate nuclear power plants in the United States, which generate about 20 percent of U.S. electricity. No new plants have been built for about 20 years. "To maintain our economic leadership, we got to do it again," Bush said.

Bush repeated his strategy mandated by the Energy Policy Act of 2005 of extending loan guarantees, production tax credits, and federal risk insurance for the builders of new nuclear power plants.

But the President's nuclear power solution is not one that is supported by most environmentalists.

"Nuclear power will help us deal with the issue of greenhouse gases," the President said. "Without nuclear energy, carbon dioxide emissions would have been 28 percent greater in the electricity industry in 2004. Without nuclear power, we would have had an additional 700 million tons a year of carbon dioxide, and that's nearly equal to the annual emissions from 136 million passenger cars."

Exelon's Limerick nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania (Photo courtesy NRC)

"President Bush’s speech today at the Limerick Generating Station in Pennsylvania advocating the building of new nuclear power plants completely neglects the dangers and unresolved problems associated with nuclear power," she said.

Despite streamlined licensing procedures for new reactors enacted by Congress in 1992 and more than $12 billion in taxpayer subsidies to nuclear utilities authorized in the Energy Policy Act of 2005, the White House wants to do more for the nuclear industry, Boyd said. "It is creating a vaguely defined 'working group' of federal agency officials to push even harder for the construction of new nuclear reactors."

"The administration’s enthusiasm for nuclear power conveniently ignores the reasons we stopped building new nuclear plants more than 20 years ago: Nuclear power is fatally flawed. Nuclear reactors create large quantities of radioactive waste that pile up around the country and remain dangerous for hundreds of thousands of years," Boyd said.

"Nuclear waste also presents the temptation to reprocess, as shown by the president’s proposed Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, which would create a global plutonium economy and increase the risk that plutonium could be used in nuclear weapons or dirty bombs," said Boyd, a position shared by other environmental groups.

"New nuclear plants will also expose many more communities to the threats of nuclear accidents and potential terrorism," Boyd said. "And once again taxpayers will be on the hook for the hefty financial risks associated with building nuclear plants."

But regardless of these dangers, Bush is supported in his nuclear power policies by other countries, including Russia.

Russia and the United States have "full coincidence of approaches" towards the nuclear power industry development, "there could be only tactical differences," head of Russia's Federal Atomic Energy Agency (Rosatom) Sergei Kiriyenko said in New York City on Sunday.

He arrived in New York in order to hold talks with the leadership of U.S. energy companies and participate in the annual forum of the Russian and U.S. business elite held by RAND Corporation, according to the official Russian state news agency ITAR-Tass.

The Rosatom chief said both countries understand "that the energy crisis is looming ahead and it is impossible to overcome it and ensure stable energy security in the world for the next 30-40 years without the atomic power industry development."

He said with this end in view it is necessary, "on the one hand to ensure access of new countries to inexpensive nuclear power and on the other – to guarantee the non-proliferation regime."

Kiriyenko said this task is linked with the development of new technologies – both in the fourth-generation reactors and processing of waste and in such innovation decisions as fast high-temperature reactors making it possible to dispose of accumulated waste and weapons grade materials and ensuring movement towards new energy sources such and thermonuclear and hydrogen power.

Russia and the United States have "ambitious plans" and it is necessary to lift restrictions on this way in order to move forward realizing that "joint work in the atomic power development meets mutual interests and the maintenance of restrictions is just the inheritance of the past that is illogical and inappropriate nowadays and totally unmotivated," Kiriyenko said.

On Monday and Tuesday Kiriyenko met in Washington with Bush administration officials and American lawmakers. According to the Rosatom head, the main goal of the meetings was to "create normal conditions for the two countries’ cooperation in the atomic power industry sphere," which envisages lifting all discriminatory restrictions on the supply of materials and services of Russia’s nuclear power branch.