U.S. and Japan sign nuclear power pact
The Bush administration's plan to rapidly expand global nuclear energy took a key step Wednesday when the government signed an agreement with Japan to conduct joint research on a new generation of reactors and a new type of nuclear fuel.
The Energy Department has been pushing an ambitious but controversial agenda to build a fleet of nuclear power plants worldwide, based on prospective technology that would include reprocessing radioactive wastes.
The agreement with Japan is the first formal international deal under the program, known as the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership.
The program would make the U.S. a more important player in the worldwide nuclear building boom, in which 222 new reactors are planned, said Assistant Energy Secretary Dennis Spurgeon.
"That is $1 trillion of business on the horizon," he said.
But many nuclear energy experts are lukewarm to the proposition, saying it seeks to solve complex future problems even before the U.S. can fully address the existing questions involved in restarting nuclear power plant construction.
"Some kind of nuclear nirvana is the driving force behind this," said Victor Gilinsky, a former member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. "It has a certain intellectual appeal until you think about how it would work and what it would cost."
The program got strong backing from congressional Republicans, but the new Democratic leaders say it is going forward without proper authorization.
"To date, there has been very little congressional input to and oversight of this plan," Senate Energy Committee Chairman Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) said in a statement to The Times. "I look forward to having a hearing in the Energy Committee to learn more."
The idea of reprocessing spent nuclear fuel dates back decades. But it has long been rejected because reprocessing it is so expensive and environmentally messy.
The National Research Council said in a mid-1990s study that reprocessing existing U.S. commercial waste by so-called transmutation would cost more than $100 billion and take more than a century.
Spurgeon, a former nuclear industry executive, said newer technology could reprocess waste at a much lower cost.
The administration is seeking a major expansion of nuclear power as a way to reduce production of greenhouse gases linked to global warming.
