Domenici speech - A NEW NUCLEAR PARADIGM

["William F Miller"<MILLERWF@inel.gov>]

Maybe because of this there will be a re-evaluation of US policy..

cc:
Subject:  Domenici speech - A NEW NUCLEAR PARADIGM



I thought you might find the following interesting.  Particularly the
paragraph and following:
" I said earlier that I would not advocate increased use of nuclear energy
and ignore the nuclear waste problem.  The path we've been following on
Yucca Mountain sure isn't leading anywhere very fast.  I'm about ready to
reexamine the whole premise for Yucca Mountain."
A NEW NUCLEAR PARADIGM
SENATOR PETE V. DOMENICI
INAUGURAL SYMPOSIUM
BELFER CENTER FOR SCIENCE AND INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS
HARVARD UNIVERSITY
OCTOBER 31, 1997
     Earlier this week, I spent substantial time on the subjects of nuclear
non-proliferation, the proposed Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, nuclear
waste policies, and nuclear weapons design issues.  The forums for these
discussions were open and closed hearings of two major sub-committees of
the United States Senate, a breakfast where two Cabinet secretaries joined
l0 United States Senators, and private discussions with specialists in
these fields.
     During the week before, I spent time on the question of whether or not
a l,200 foot road should be built in a National Monument, a monument whose
enabling legislation I authored almost a decade ago.
     Without demeaning any person's sense of perspective, I have to note to
you today that for every person who attended the nuclear hearings, 50
attended the road hearings.  And, for every inch of newspaper coverage the
nuclear matters attracted, the road attracted 50 inches.
     Strategic national issues just don't command a large audience.  In no
area has this been more evident during these last 25 years than in the
critical and interrelated public policy questions involving energy, growth,
and the role of nuclear technologies.  As we leave the 20th Century,
arguably the American Century, and head for a new millennium, we truly need
to confront these strategic issues with careful logic and sound science.
     We live in the dominant economic, military, and cultural entity in the
world.  Our principles of government and economics are increasingly
becoming the principles of the world.
     There are no secrets to our success, and there is no guarantee that,
in the coming century, we will be the principal beneficiary of the seeds we
have sown.  There is competition in the world and serious strategic issues
facing the United States cannot be overlooked.
     The United States   like the rest of the industrialized world   is
aging rapidly as our birth rates decline.  Between 1995 and the year 2030,
the number of people in the United States over age 65 will double from 34
million to 68 million.  Just to maintain our standard of living, we need
dramatic increases in productivity as a larger fraction of our population
drops out of the workforce.
     By 2030, 30 percent of the population of the industrialized nations
will be over 60.  The rest of the world   the countries that today are
"unindustrialized"   will have only 16 percent of their population over age
60 and will be ready to boom.
     As those nations build economies modeled after ours, there will be
intense competition for the resources that underpin modern economies.
     When it comes to energy, we have a serious, strategic problem.  The
United States currently consumes 25 percent of the world's energy
production. However, developing countries are on track to increase their
energy consumption by 48 percent between 1992 and 2010.
     The United States currently produces and imports raw energy resources
worth over $150 billion per year. Approximately $50 billion of that is
imported oil or natural gas.  We then process that material into energy
feedstocks such as gasoline.  Those feedstocks, the energy we consume in
our cars, factories, and electric plants, are worth $505 billion per year.
     So, while we debate defense policy every year, we don't debate energy
policy, even though it already costs us twice as much as our defense, other
countries' consumption is growing dramatically, and energy shortages are
likely to be a prime driver of future military challenges.
     When I came to the Senate a quarter of a century ago, we debated our
dependence on foreign sources of energy.  We discussed energy independence,
but we largely decided not to talk about nuclear policy options in public.
     At the same time, the anti-nuclear movement conducted their campaign
in a way that was tremendously appealing to mass media.  Scientists, used
to the peer-reviewed ways of scientific discourse, were unprepared to
counter. They lost the debate.
     Serious discussion about the role of nuclear energy in world
stability, energy independence, and national security retreated into
academia or classified sessions.
     Today, it is extraordinarily difficult to conduct a debate on nuclear
issues.  Usually, the only thing produced is nasty political fallout.
     I am going to bring back to the market place of ideas a more
forthright discussion of nuclear policy.
     My objective tonight is not to talk about talking about a policy. I am
going to make some policy proposals.  Tomorrow there are sessions on energy
policy and nuclear proliferation.  I'll give them something to talk about.
      I am going to tell you that we made some bad decisions in the past
that we have to change.  Then I will tell you about some decisions we need
to make now.
     First, we need to recognize that the premises underpinning some of our
nuclear policy decisions are wrong.  In 1977, President Carter halted all
U.S. efforts to reprocess spent nuclear fuel and develop mixed-oxide fuel
(MOX) for our civilian reactors on the grounds that the plutonium could be
diverted and eventually transformed into bombs.  He argued that the United
States should halt its reprocessing program as an example to other
countries in the hope that they would follow suit.
     The premise of the decision was wrong. Other countries do not follow
the example of the United States if we make a decision that other countries
view as economically or technically unsound.  France, Great Britain, Japan,
and Russia all now have MOX fuel programs.
     This failure to address an incorrect premise has harmed our efforts to
deal with spent nuclear fuel and the disposition of excess weapons
material, as well as our ability to influence international reactor issues.
     I'll cite another example.  We regulate exposure to low  levels of
radiation using a so-called "linear no-threshold" model, the premise of
which is that there is no "safe" level of exposure.
     Our model forces us to regulate radiation to levels approaching 1
percent of natural background despite the fact that natural background can
vary by 50 percent within the United States.
     On the other hand, many scientists think that living cells, after
millions of years of exposure to naturally occurring radiation, have
adapted such that low levels of radiation cause very little if any harm.
In fact, there are some studies that suggest exactly the opposite is true
-- that low doses of radiation may even improve health.
     The truth is important.  We spend over $5 billion each year to clean
contaminated DOE sites to levels below 5 percent of background.
     In this year's Energy and Water Appropriations Act, we initiated a ten
year program to understand how radiation affects genomes and cells so that
we can really understand how radiation affects living organisms.  For the
first time, we will develop radiation protection standards that are based
on actual risk.
     Let me cite another bad decision.  You may recall that earlier this
year, Hudson Foods recalled 25 million pounds of beef, some of which was
contaminated by E. Coli. The Administration proposed tougher penalties and
mandatory recalls that cost millions.
     What you may not know is that the E. Coli bacteria can be killed by
irradiating beef products.  The irradiation has no effect on the beef.  The
FDA does not allow the process to be used on beef, even though it is
allowed for poultry, pork, fruit and vegetables, largely because of
opposition from some consumer groups that question its safety.
     But there is no scientific evidence of danger.  In fact, when the
decision is left up to scientists, they opt for irradiation   the food that
goes into space with our astronauts is irradiated.
     I've talked about bad past decisions that haunt us today.  Now I want
to talk about decisions we need to make today.
     The President has outlined a program to stabilize the U.S. production
of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases at 1990 levels by some time
between 2008 and 2012.  Unfortunately, the President's goals are not
achievable
without seriously impacting our economy.
     Our national laboratories have studied the issue.  Their report
indicates that to get to the President's goals we would have to impose a
$50/ton carbon tax.  That would result in an increase of 12.5 cents/gallon
for gas and 1.5 cents/kilowatt-hour for electricity   almost a doubling of
the current cost of coal or natural gas-generated electricity.
What the President should have said is that we need nuclear energy to meet
his goal.   After all, in 1996, nuclear power plants prevented the emission
of 147 million metric tons of carbon, 2.5 million tons of nitrogen oxides,
and
5 million tons of sulfur dioxide.  Our electric utilities' emissions of
those greenhouse gases were 25 percent lower than they would have been if
fossil fuels had been used instead of nuclear energy.
      Ironically, the technology we are relying on to achieve these results
is over twenty years old.  We have developed the next generation of nuclear
power plants   which have been certified by the NRC and are now being sold
overseas.  They are even safer than our current models.  Better yet, we
have technologies under development like passively safe reactors,
lead-bismuth reactors, and advanced liquid metal reactors that generate
less waste and are proliferation resistant.
     An excellent report by Dr. John Holdren for the President's Committee
of Advisors on Science and Technology, calls for a sharply enhanced
national effort.  It urges a "properly focused R&D effort to see if the
problems
plaguing fission energy can be overcome    economics, safety, waste, and
proliferation."  I have long urged the conclusion of this report  -- that
we dramatically increase spending in these areas for reasons ranging from
reactor safety to non-proliferation.
     I have not overlooked that nuclear waste issues loom as a roadblock to
increased nuclear utilization.  I will return to that subject.
     For now, let me turn from nuclear power to nuclear weapons issues.
     Our current stockpile is set by bilateral agreements with Russia.
Bilateral agreements make sense if we are certain who our future nuclear
adversaries will be and are useful to force a transparent build-down within
Russia.  But I will warn you that our next nuclear adversary may not be
Russia  we do not want to find ourselves limited by a treaty with Russia in
a conflict with another entity.
     We need to decide what stockpile levels we really need for our own
best interests to deal with any future adversary.
     For that reason, I suggest that, within the limits imposed by START
II, the United States move away from further treaty imposed limitations and
move to what I call a "threat-based stockpile."
     Based upon the threat I perceive right now, I think our stockpile
could be reduced.  We need to challenge our military planners to identify
the minimum necessary stockpile size.
     At the same time, as our stockpile is reduced and we are precluded
from testing, we have to increase our confidence in the integrity of the
remaining stockpile and our ability to reconstitute if the threat changes.
Programs like science-based stockpile stewardship must be nurtured and
supported carefully.
     As we seriously review stockpile size, we should also consider
stepping back from the nuclear cliff by de-alerting and carefully
reexamining the necessity of the ground-based leg of the nuclear triad.
     Costs certainly aren't the primary driver for our stockpile size, but
if some of the actions I've discussed were taken, I'd bet that as a bonus
we'd see major budget savings.  Now we spend about $30 billion each year
supporting the triad.
     Earlier I discussed the need to revisit some incorrect premises that
caused us to make bad decisions in the past.  I said that one of them,
regarding reprocessing and MOX fuel, is ham-stringing our efforts to
permanently dismantle nuclear weapons.
     The dismantlement of tens of thousands of nuclear weapons in Russia
and the United States has left both countries with large inventories of
perfectly machined classified components that could allow each country to
rapidly rebuild its nuclear arsenals.
     Both countries should set a goal of converting those excess
inventories into non-weapon shapes as quickly as possible.  The more
permanent those transformations and the more verification that can
accompany the conversion of that material, the better.
     Technical solutions exist.  Pits can be transformed into non-weapons
shapes and weapon material can be burned in reactors as MOX fuel, which by
the way is what the National Academy of Sciences has recommended.  However,
the proposal to dispose of weapons plutonium as MOX runs into that old
premise that MOX is bad despite its widespread use by our allies.
     MOX is the best technical solution.  I challenge you to develop a
proposal that brings the economics of the MOX fuel cycle together with the
need to dispose of weapons grade plutonium.  Ideally, incentives can be
developed to speed Russian materials conversion while reducing the cost of
the U.S. effort.  The idea for the U.S. Russian HEU Agreement originated at
MIT, and I know that Harvard does not like to be upstaged.
     I said earlier that I would not advocate increased use of nuclear
energy and ignore the nuclear waste problem.  The path we've been following
on Yucca Mountain sure isn't leading anywhere very fast.  I'm about ready
to reexamine the whole premise for Yucca Mountain.
     We're on a course to bury all our spent nuclear fuel, despite the fact
that a spent nuclear fuel rod still has 60-75% of its energy content  --
and despite the fact that Nevadans need to be convinced that the material
will not create a hazard for over 100,000 years.
     Our decision to ban reprocessing forced us to a repository solution.
Meanwhile, many other nations think it is dumb to just bury the energy-rich
spent fuel and are reprocessing.
     I propose we go somewhere between reprocessing and permanent disposal
by using interim storage to keep our options open.  Incidentally, 65
Senators agreed with the importance of interim storage, but the
Administration has only threatened to veto any such progress and has shown
no willingness to discuss alternatives.
     Let me highlight one attractive option.  A group from several of our
largest companies, using technologies developed at three of our national
laboratories and from Russian institutes and their nuclear navy, discussed
with me an approach to use that waste for electrical generation.  They use
an accelerator, not a reactor, so there is never any critical assembly.
There is minimal processing, but carefully done so that weapons-grade
materials are never separated out and so that international verification
can be used.   And when they get done, only a little material goes into a
repository - but now the half lives are changed so that it's a hazard for
perhaps 300 years  a far cry from 100,000 years.  It sure would be easier
to get acceptance of a 300 year, rather than a 100,000 year,  hazard,
especially when the 300 year case is also providing a source of clean
electricity.  This approach, called Accelerator Transmutation of Waste, is
an area I want to see investigated aggressively.
     I still haven't touched on all the issues imbedded in maximizing our
nation's benefit from nuclear technologies, and I can't do that without a
much longer speech.
     For example, I haven't discussed the increasingly desperate need in
the country for low level waste facilities like Ward Valley in California.
In California, important medical and research procedures are at risk
because the Administration continues to block the State government from
fulfilling their responsibilities to care for low level waste.
     And I haven't touched on the tremendous window of opportunity that we
now have in the Former Soviet Union to expand programs that protect fissile
material from moving onto the black market or to shift the activities of
former Soviet weapons scientists onto commercial projects.  Along with
Senators Nunn and Lugar, I've led the charge for these programs.  Those are
programs directly in our national interest.  I know that some national
leaders still think of these programs as foreign aid, I believe they are
sadly mistaken.
     We are realizing some of the benefits of nuclear technologies today,
but only a fraction of what we could realize
     Nuclear weapons, for all their horror, brought to an end 50 years of
world-wide wars in which 60 million people died.
     Nuclear power is providing about 20% of our electricity needs now and
many of our citizens enjoy healthier longer lives through improved medical
procedures that depend on nuclear processes.
     But we aren't tapping the full potential of the nucleus for additional
benefits.  In the process, we are short-changing our citizens.
     I hope in these remarks that I have succeeded in raising your
awareness of the opportunities that our nation should be seizing to secure
a better future for our citizens through careful reevaluation of many
ill-conceived fears, policies and decisions that have seriously constrained
our use of nuclear technologies.
     Today I announce my intention to lead  a new dialogue with serious
discussion about the full range of nuclear technologies.  I intend to
provide national leadership to overcome barriers.
     While some may continue to lament that the nuclear genie is out of his
proverbial bottle, I'm ready to focus on harnessing that genie as
effectively and fully as possible, for the largest set of benefits for our
citizens.
      I challenge all of you to join me in this dialogue to help secure
these benefits.