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DOE News Release
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 14, 2004

NEWS MEDIA CONTACTS:
Teri Ehresman, 208-526-7785 or cell 208-520-6252, ehr@inel.gov

Nuclear energy leaders focus on energy security

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Leaders from industry, academia and U.S. Department of Energy national laboratories are meeting in Washington, D.C., today to help improve the nation's prospects for achieving energy security by advancing the role of nuclear energy.

"While there is a growing consensus that expanded use of nuclear energy offers great benefits for our society, a unified strategy that addresses the question of how to achieve these benefits must be developed," said Chairman Pete V. Domenici of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee in a letter inviting the leaders to the forum. "An important step in developing this approach is to bring together decision-makers from the nuclear industry, national laboratories and academia to identify and debate these issues and opportunities."

Seven Department of Energy national laboratories are sponsoring the one-day forum at the Sheraton Crystal City Hotel in Washington, D.C. Invitees to the meeting include managers of electric utilities, nuclear industry executives, university leaders, national laboratory experts, DOE officials and other elected officials and staff members.

The national laboratory sponsors have been working to help the nation more effectively realize the benefits of nuclear energy. In July 2002, the directors of six Department of Energy national laboratories wrote to the Secretary of Energy to urge DOE to "implement a comprehensive and integrated plan to further the development of nuclear energy and the management of nuclear materials." The action plan, developed by the laboratory directors last year, helps achieve their vision of "sustainable peace, prosperity, and environmental quality, enabled through immediate U.S. leadership in the global expansion of nuclear energy systems."

The three goals, identified by the DOE laboratory directors as part of their action plan, include:
1) Reduce air pollution and global climate risk and improve energy security by meeting an increasing fraction of future U.S. and world energy needs through safe and economic nuclear energy solutions.
2) Achieve a 90 percent reduction of reactor waste requiring repository disposal by 2050 by significantly reducing the amount of uranium, plutonium and minor actinides in disposed waste.
3) While expanding the use of technology worldwide, reduce the threat of nuclear weapons proliferation.

The laboratory directors have recommended four specific actions to be taken in the near term:
1) Provide significant incentives for near-term deployment of new nuclear power plants in the United States.
2) Develop and demonstrate advanced Generation IV reactor systems that can support a major expansion of nuclear energy -- for both electricity production and generation of hydrogen for transportation -- in the first half of the 21st century.
3) Develop and demonstrate closed fuel cycle technology to produce an economically, socially and politically sustainable fuel cycle of the future.
4) Demonstrate technology that will set the world standard for proliferation prevention.

With 20 percent of the nation's current electricity requirements supplied by nuclear power and no new nuclear plant orders since the early 1970s, industry experts warn the nation is headed for a potential energy and environmental crisis as current reactors approach the end of their designed life expectancy. Most of the nation's nuclear power plants will reach the end of their licensed operating cycles between 2005 and 2030.

Today's meeting included a broad look at where the country is today in terms of nuclear technology. Breakout sessions developed strategies for energy leaders to use in revitalizing the nuclear option for the benefit of the nation. A final report resulting from the forum will be delivered to participants and become the basis for a road map to the future in the nuclear industry.

-INEEL-
04-053

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