Philip Sewell, Senior Vice President,
United States Enrichment Corporation, Inc. (USEC)
Megatons to Megawatts:
Turning Nuclear Warheads into Nuclear Energy
Panel Chairman:
Ambassador Linton F. Brooks, Administrator,
National Nuclear Security Administration and Under Secretary
for Nuclear Security
BROOKS: Phil Sewell is Senior Vice President of USEC, United
States Enrichment Corporation. And he is responsible
for international trade and, in particular, for implementing
what remains the largest, single nonproliferation program
ever, the elimination of 500 tons of Russian weapons
grade highly enriched uranium under what is often called
the Megatons to Megawatts Program.
Before he came to the
U.S. Enrichment Program in 1993, he was the Deputy Assistant
Secretary in the Department of Energy, where he was
deeply involved in the uranium enrichment activities
and represented the United States in negotiating the
agreement on highly enriched uranium. And before that
he held a number of positions in the Department.
SEWELL: Good afternoon. I want to first thank you for the opportunity
to speak at this forum. It’s an honor to participate
at the anniversary of, the 50th anniversary that addresses
issues associated with President Eisenhower’s
monumental “Atoms for Peace” proposal delivered
to the United Nations in 1953.
The Eisenhower proposal
sought to address the proliferation of nuclear weapons
by sharing information and nuclear materials with other
nations to promote the peaceful use of atomic energy.
Over the past 50 years the pursuit and accomplishments
of the peaceful atom have achieved tremendous success
in many fields. And, as mentioned this morning, that’s
shown by the fact that about 16% of the world’s
electricity comes from nuclear reactors today.
But these peaceful achievements
are still obscured by the shadow of nuclear weapons
proliferation. Almost every day we see news reports
about nuclear weapons proliferation by nations and stories
about the possibility of bomb-grade material falling
into the wrong hands. So the subject of this meeting
today is indeed timely as is the panel discussion on
controlling nuclear material. As you can see from the
program, the title of my presentation pretty well captures
the importance of what we are doing to secure nuclear
bomb-grade material.
Megatons to Megawatts
is a 20-year program and an agreement between the U.S.
and Russian governments to turn 500 metric tons of Russian
nuclear warhead material into fuel to produce electricity.
Eliminating 500-metric tons of bomb-grade material is
the equivalent of eliminating 20 thousand nuclear warheads.
So, this Megatons to Megawatts Program is among the
most ambitious and successful efforts to control nuclear
weapons material. It also uses the most effective method
of controlling nuclear weapons material--eliminating
it.
Some of you may not be
familiar with this program, so please bear with me.
I would like to briefly describe some background information
about this program. We’re all familiar with the
Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Program and
other disarmament agreements. They have achieved tremendous
results by the dismantling and destruction of thousands
of nuclear weapons systems and the removal of warheads
for secure storage.
In the late 1980s, representatives
from the United States and Russia began to focus on
how to improve safeguards for the nuclear weapons material
that was in storage. As the collapse of the Soviet Union
took place these discussions moved into high gear. In
1992, the outline for an innovative U.S.-Russian nuclear
materials control program was adopted and in 1993, a
formal government to government agreement was signed
by the United States and Russia, committing the two
nations to an ambitious 20-year undertaking--the elimination
of nuclear weapons-grade material, capable of making
20,000 nuclear warheads.
The formal title of the
landmark 1993 agreement is as follows, “The Agreement
between the Government of the United States of America
and the Government of the Russian Federation Concerning
the Disposition of Highly Enriched Uranium Extracted
from Russian Nuclear Weapons.” One could fall
asleep reading that. As you can tell, it’s a big
mouthful. So what we tried to do was capture the essence
of what this agreement does by labeling it Megatons
to Megawatts.
This agreement provides
over 20 years, that 500-metric tons of HEU taken from
dismantled Russian nuclear warheads will be converted
in Russia to low enriched uranium, suitable for use
as fuel in commercial nuclear reactors. Over this period
an executive agent, appointed by the U.S. government
will purchase this recycled weapons material, valued
at $12 billion dollars. The fuel will then be sold to
utility customers for use in commercial nuclear reactors
to produce electricity.
Quite remarkably the entire
Megatons to Megawatts Program is financed not by government
funding but by these commercial fuel purchases. My company,
USEC, Inc. is the U.S. executive agent responsible for
implementing this program with our Russian counterpart
Tenex and that is exactly what we have been doing over
the past ten years. We are more than one-third of the
way through this program, having eliminated more than
190-metric tons of highly enriched uranium, which is
equivalent to more than 7,500 nuclear warheads. And
each and every day more warhead material is converted
into fuel that will be used to produce electricity.
Now the value of this
program extends beyond this basic mission of eliminating
nuclear weapons material. There is also a human dimension.
Our purchases from Russia amount to approximately $500
million dollars a year. To date, through the Megatons
to Megawatts program Russia has received total revenues
from fuel and uranium purchases of more than $4 billion
dollars.
These proceeds have supported
thousands of Russian workers at numerous facilities
who take part in the process of transforming HEU into
reactor fuel and who also work on environmental restoration
and clean-up programs in Russia and who work to improve
the safeguard systems in place for these weapons materials.
This underscores the importance
of addressing issues concerning highly talented people
who were previously involved in weapons programs and
how to keep them working on peaceful pursuits. We believe
the ten-year successful track record of this nuclear
disarmament and nonproliferation program can serve as
a model for even greater efforts in the future.
The success of this program
is based on the ability of the commercial nuclear fuel
market to economically assimilate the additional of
this material. Thus, it is the private sector market
that essentially pays for and sustains this program.
Today the commercial nuclear
fuel market is essentially in balance. Demand roughly
equals supply. The introduction of substantial amounts
of new weapons grade material for use as fuel, would
upset that balance and that could undermine the smooth
implementation of the Megatons to Megawatts Program.
Given market limitations, how can we use this approach
to eliminate even more warhead material?
As we heard this morning,
there are increasing signs that there will be a worldwide
expansion of the use of nuclear power--and that includes
in the United States.
There are growing indications
of renewed interest by the utility industry and by the
government. Both industry and government plans call
for a substantial expansion of the use of nuclear power
in the decades to come.
The construction of a
new generation of commercial nuclear power stations
will obviously increase the demand for nuclear fuel.
This increased fuel demand could provide a cost effective
way of increasing the amount of nuclear bomb grade material
that could be eliminated by using it as fuel in these
commercial reactors.
Perhaps a radical new
proposal will help accelerate the arrival of this new
generation of commercial power reactors. Here is one
idea that has been recently proposed by Nick Timbers,
the President and CEO of USEC, Inc.
Why not seek a commitment
by the private sector to build a single, new generating
nuclear power station with U.S. government support.
This support could be achieved directly by a number
of incentives, such as tax incentives, loan guarantees
or financing through the federal financing bank.
You may well ask, why
would Congress or the Executive Branch have any interest
in direct financial support for a new power reactor?
Because we could stipulate that this new reactor would
be powered entirely by fuel recycled from dismantled
nuclear weapons. This new power reactor would facilitate
the government’s efforts to reduce the threat
posed by nuclear warhead material. For discussion purposes,
Mr. Timbers suggested we call the proposed new reactor
concept, the Isaiah Nuclear Energy Plant, after the
Biblical prophet Isaiah, who called for turning swords
into plowshares.
There are different kinds
of advanced reactors designs that might be chosen for
this Isaiah concept, so for rough calculation and estimate
purposes, here are some useful statistics. The initial
core for an Isaiah reactor could use LEU derived from
three metric tons of highly enriched uranium. That would
facilitate the elimination of 100 nuclear weapons just
from the first fuel core loading. Each refueling would
contain LEU from about 25 additional warheads. And over
a projected lifetime for the Isaiah reactor, more than
two thousand nuclear warheads could be eliminated.
Could such an Isaiah nuclear
energy plant attract U.S. government support? I believe
there is a convincing case to be made for this proposal,
given three distinct advantages. Number one, it could
provide increased domestic energy security. Number two,
it could help mitigate the potential of global warming
with emission free electricity from nuclear reactors.
And three, it could provide enhanced national security
by eliminating nuclear weapons material. That’s
a triple hit.
We believe that both the
worldwide nonproliferation community and the American
public would consider supporting the construction and
the operation of a nuclear power plant that would make
the world safer.
When you consider the
record of the Megatons to Megawatts program, the Isaiah
project is quite logical. Twenty percent of America’s
electricity is generated by nuclear power. About 10percent,
or half of all of America’s electricity , is generated
by fuel derived from Russian nuclear warheads.
Put another way, nuclear
warheads that were once aimed at American targets, are
now generating electricity to serve those same communities.
And building on what has been accomplished through the
Megatons to Megawatts Program, over the last ten years,
we could expect impressive results in the future. Let’s
look ahead. If Isaiah were to stimulate industry to
build one, five, ten, 15, 20, or any number of power
reactors, a portion of the fuel they would use could
come from nuclear weapons material. The increased demand
for nuclear fuel would drive the opportunity to eliminate
more nuclear warhead material. The vision of thousands
of megawatts of electricity being generated by eliminating
thousands of nuclear warheads is a vision that should
become a reality.
Worries about the use
of nuclear energy persist. But, no matter what your
view is of nuclear energy, we cannot force the nuclear
genie back in the bottle, nor erase E=MC2, nor un-invent
enrichment, nuclear power reactors or weapons technologies.
After all is said and done, nuclear energy and nuclear
power are realities. We will have to live with and safely
use their benefits to our greatest advantage. The good
news is that we are at an intersection of mutual interests.
Given all these facts
and ideas, I believe there is a mutual interest between
those who advocate expansion of commercial nuclear power
and those who seek to eliminate more nuclear weapons
material.
Advocates of nuclear nonproliferation
can accelerate the increased elimination of this material
just by securing the expansion and dynamics of the marketplace
to facilitate these activities. Nuclear power plants
are eliminating more and more bomb grade material every
day. More power plants will consume more warheads.
The Megatons to Megawatts
Program is just one example of how the private sector
and government policy interests can combine to achieve
a tremendous nonproliferation success. The Isaiah reactor
concept can be another such effort.
I believe that there are
a number of areas where the strength of the commercial
nuclear industry can help insure positive nonproliferation
results in concert with government policy objectives--whether
it be by eliminating nuclear weapons material or preventing
its further accumulation. I would ask NNSA Administrator
Linton Brooks, and Deputy Administrator Paul Longsworth,
to consider exploring new approaches to utilizing the
strength of the private sector to assist the Administration
in achieving further non-proliferation objectives.
And Dr. Scheinman and
Ambassador Lehman, as respected leaders in this field,
your consideration and thoughts on these proposals would
be very useful as well. And that invitation also includes
all of you at this conference. I ask you to please consider
the mutual interests of those who advocate control and
elimination of nuclear weapons material and those who
advocate expansion of commercial nuclear power for peaceful
purposes.
With the guarantee of
rigorous safeguards, the realization of a new generation
of commercial nuclear electric generating stations can
also make the world a safer place. Safer, because each
and every power reactor could be eliminating nuclear
warhead material each and every day they operate. Thank
you.
[applause]
Question and Answers:
BROOKS: We now turn to the part of the program where you get
to ask the questions. I’m going to stand for this
because I can’t see that half of the room from
where I’m sitting. I would ask that you identify
yourself and, no matter how piercing you think your
voice is, wait until the microphone gets to you. And
I think we start with a question in the back.
NEFF: I’m
Tom Neff from MIT. I have a question for Larry Scheinman.
First I want to correct one of the things that Phil
Sewell said. ...(Inaudible) receives about $425 million
dollars from USEC for the enrichment services and I
think the company profits by about $100 million dollars
a year. Phil was right. This is money that should go
into pockets of the sensitive nuclear workers that protect
this material.
My question for Larry
was Iran. We have gone from a period of a week ago,
in which we were being very tough on Iran and we’ve
gone now to where three countries are now promising
cooperation in helping Iran with its civil nuclear program.
Larry, could you comment a little bit about this switching
of gears and where you think this comes out in the perspective
of history?
SCHEINMAN: Well,
I think it is enormously comforting to see that Iran
has, in fact stepped away from what looked like a very
conflictual and contentious approach. But I would worry
about what kind of an outcome we get in the following
sense.
If it were true that Iran
would be prepared to completely dismantle its enrichment
activities in exchange for some kind of a guarantee
for long-term fuel supply from outside, presumably the
European Union from what I understand to be the case,
and that this could be done in the context of an additional
protocol with all of the bells and whistles of transparency
that that could bring-- We may need even more. Then
I see this going in a very, very constructive direction
because I think this would be a bell weather for how
other countries would have to try to treat this approach
to their fuel cycle desires in the future.
Iran is a real test case
in this regard. If on the other hand, what looks to
is to take a leaf from Ron’s book, some kind of
a multi-nationalization of an Iranian enrichment program
sitting on Iranian territory, that becomes more problematic
and I would be concerned about that, although I must
say that, if I think about some of the questions that
Ron just raised in his run down of the issues of what
do we mean by this, that, and the other, there’s
no need for us to be uniform in how we approach this.
I think we can take this region by region or country
set by country set as long as we stay within the parameters
of the arrangement that brings about the outcome that
we desire, which is avoidance of further proliferation.
BROOKS: I had a question over here
and then we’ll go over there.
HORNER: Dan Horner from McGraw Hill Nuclear Publications. I
think that you just made a-- I’ll pose this question
as a devil’s advocate question and then ask the
panelists to respond. In Paul Longsworth’s presentation
he mentioned, as part of the U.S. nonproliferation efforts,
the effort with regard to the U.S. supplied research
reactor overseas and converting those reactors and bringing
back the HEU fuel. But wasn’t the supplying of
those reactors a direct outgrowth of the Atoms for Peace
Program and, in that respect, isn’t that a proliferation
downside of the Atoms for Peace Proposal and wouldn’t
your job have been easier if that aspect hadn’t
taken place?
If Paul could respond
to that initially and maybe some of the other panelists
then could jump in. Thanks.
LONGSWORTH: You
know, it’s not, and I’m going to give you
a strange answer here. It’s not, because the original
deal was that the spent fuel from those reactors would
come back to the U.S. and I think, even in 1953 when
they kicked that program off as the-- We realized that
obviously we needed to repatriate the nuclear material.
It is a strange answer because we are going to complete
about half of the fuel that we’ve identified in
an environmental impact statement by-- In the next few
years we will have only addressed about half of the
fuel that, again, we designated to come back to the
United States.
So we are about halfway
there in fulfilling our commitment from 1953. But I
think we are going to continue to work on that and get
that stuff back. But, no. I think it was part of the
original bargain that that stuff would come back to
the U.S.
INDUCI(?): Joseph Induci at the Brookhaven Laboratory. There used
to be something called the Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty,
which I thought had potential to bring in a few countries
that aren’t currently covered and now I hear nothing.
Would one of the panel members be willing to enlighten
the group on just what happened there?
BROOKS: Ron?
LEHMAN: The Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty was initially envisioned
as sort of either of two things, one was a universal
treaty open to all parties, the other was something
that one would do, maybe on an interim basis or a regional
basis, but primarily focused on South Asia and perhaps
the Middle East, i.e., the non-parties as well as the
weapon states. Interestingly enough, there was a UN
resolution in the General Assembly co-sponsored by both
the United States and India, supporting a fissile material
cutoff. And all the P-5 have said that they can live
with it.
Having said that, it is
in the conference on disarmament. It’s caught
up on linkages, by and large issues such as Pakistan’s
concern about making sure that it deals with residual
stocks. It is not enough to cut off the production for
weapons purposes; they want to deal with the existing
stocks. There’s linkages to India by the issue
of a time bound framework for disarmament. In short,
there’s been maybe some flexibility on each of
those, at least expressed by the parties. But the process
seems bogged down in the CD.
ElBaradei in his Economist
article raises the question that others have raised
before of whether or not this could be the basis either
for a new restraint regime or an additional restraint
regime. But thus far people have not been able to break
it away from these linkages.
BROOKS: I would like to
just add that as the community thinks about the future,
the Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty is a good example
of the limitations of formal multi-lateral arms control.
It’s it’s one of the reasons why we probably
need to spend more time thinking about, as Ron said
in his presentation, whether “international”
means the same sort of thing that it has always meant
or whether there are commercial international agreements
a la the USEC Agreement that are, at least part of the
solution.
We had a question down
here.
__: Question for Mr. Sewell,
I was intrigued by his suggestion with regard to the
government sponsoring a reactor, the intent of which
is to get rid of the, let me call it, surplus nuclear
materials in Russia and, perhaps, even our own defense
programs. We are not only having the problem with uranium
235, we also have a problem with regard to plutonium
239. And if the real objective is to get rid of those
materials-- There have been people said, “Well,
you just bury them.”
But if you really want
to get rid of them and get a new reactor into being,
you would design the reactor core, which initially would
burn straight 235 or straight 239. And if you do that,
in the case of the 235 rather than using low enriched
uranium, you don’t make any more plutonium, which
you would in your scenario, and the people would jump
on that, the anti’s, saying we’re really
not doing what we want to do.
So initially these reactors,
which you are suggesting, could be designed to burn
straight 235 or straight 239 and really get rid of all
this surplus E-2(?). Economically, and for the long
run, it doesn’t make any sense, but at least politically,
if that’s the objective, it would succeed. Thank
you.
BROOKS: Bill,
do you want to respond?
BILL: I can’t correct you at all, I don’t think.
That is a very good suggestion. The only thing I could
say is that most reactors today are designed to use
low enriched uranium and that’s the concept that
we were trying to do so that we wouldn’t have
to be any major investments in a nuclear infrastructure
for commercial basis. But conceptually, the concept,
the idea that you propose is valid.
And the idea that we put
forward, in terms of government support in burning basically,
nuclear materials, is just that. It’s an idea
of the government and industry to grasp and design in
a way that’s optimum, optimum in terms of meeting
policy objectives by the government and the world community
and also in a way that will help provide incentives
to build a new nuclear reactor that will get things
started, with respect to the increased use of nuclear
power that has so many benefits.
That incentive, again,
would be one in which the government doesn’t have
to pay anything in the end. It’s merely a backup
incentive that would be paid back and looking in a way
that several different objectives can be accomplished
at once and that’s the main idea in concept. And
your concept and idea is just as valid and I just applaud
them all. It’s good for mankind, good for the
world. That’s what we’re proposing today.
BROOKS: Let
me just point out a third concept that’s actually
what we’re doing. Some of the defense HEU is,
in fact, being burned in U.S. reactors -- TVA reactors.
In addition, at a galacticly slow pace, we are working
with the Russian Federation to the elimination of 34
tons of weapons plutonium in each country through conversion
into MOX fuel. It doesn’t make any economic sense
either but it does allow us to take advantage of existing
reactors.
We had a question over
there.
KEEN: My name is Linda Keen and I’m President of the
Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission. My question is for
either Ambassador Lehman or for Mr. Longsworth. Can
you see in the future a safeguard regime for countries
who are committed to peaceful use, who have put in extensive
safeguards but is more risk based than the blanket program
that we see now?
LEHMAN: I’ll go first and buy you some time. The classic
issue is the cookie cutter problem. One size does not
fit all. And there are tremendous inefficiencies and
actually drawbacks in trying to make one size fit all.
The result is that we spend a tremendous amount of money
verifying things that are low risk and many of our arms
control efforts but then can’t apply what is needed
to deal with areas that are of higher risk.
In 1991, our approach
to dealing with North Korea, for example, was not only
to have them be parties to the NPT and have an IAEA
safeguards agreement, but there was the North-South
Denuclearization Agreement, which would have provided
for no processing, no enrichment, North or South, and
for separate bi-lateral inspection regime, the idea
being that North Korea was a greater risk. This was
a way to enhance things.
The problem is that in
many of the international fora, the question of a common
standard and universality of membership drives much
of the debate, much of the question when you deal with
India, for example, it has to do with their desire to
have a common standard for everybody which would be
fine if you could create those conditions but, in fact,
things aren’t the same everywhere.
However, what I have experienced
is, when you get more into the, I’ll use the generic
phrase, cooperative threat reduction and constructive
engagement, you start to deal with practical problems
that inevitably have to deal with the specific differences.
And in many cases, I think the great debate about the
future of arms control, international constraint and
cooperative threat reduction is really the great debate
between how much emphasis you put on standardization
of norms and how much emphasis do you put on engagement,
constructive engagement.
LONGSWORTH: You
know there are so many nuances with how safeguards work
actually gets done at facilities and I’d just
like to parrot what Ambassador Lehman said. Inspections
are the tool to the end not the objective. And I think
everyone would agree that the IAEA probably spends a
lot of money inspecting facilities that are not really
a proliferation risk. For example, in the U.S., I don’t
think anybody has accused the U.S. of selling plutonium
or weapons on the open market. But because inspections
are a tool and because of the universality principle,
I think we allow inspectors to come in and we fully
support that but it is a problem because it does take
limited IAEA resources and the UN is inspecting facilities
that don’t pose a great proliferation risk. But
it is the way you get other countries to open up their
facilities. So it is a tool to the end.
BROOKS: Back
here.
LYMAN: Hi. I’m Ed Lyman with the Union of Concerned Scientists.
I wanted to ask a follow-up question to Dan Horner’s
question on research reactors. With all due respect,
I don’t think you really gave a complete answer
to the question of whether exporting HEU research reactors
all over the world was the best idea or not and, in
fact, the other part of the answer you left out, is
that not only are we taking the spent fuel back but
we are persuading reactors that we had shipped that
only used highly enriched uranium to convert so they
no longer need to use highly enriched uranium but can
use low enriched.
And that was a flaw in
the original regime that we’re trying to play
catch up on. In that respect, I’d just like to
ask you, it would be a terrible legacy, 50 years after
Atoms for Peace, if our own export control law was to
be significantly weakened, yet that’s exactly
what’s going on in Congress right now, where’s
there’s an attempt to modify the U.S. HEU export
control laws to make it easier for certain countries
to receive highly enriched uranium without any obligation
to work with the US to convert.
And I am just wondering
why the administration is not, to my knowledge, going
on record and said anything about this particular question,
which I think is quite important and something that
my organization is fighting very hard for. So, thank
you.
LONGSWORTH: Let me start at the beginning of your question and work
through it. It wasn’t possible to build reactors
at the time with low enriched fuel to achieve what you
needed to do for science, medicine, agriculture and
other purposes. I wouldn’t describe it as a flaw
in the original approach because I think the United
States took the best course available to it at the time
was, we’ll send the fuel out and we’ll take
it back. And it’s taken 50 years to start doing
that but we’re making progress on that.
I do want to point out,
on behalf of Ambassador Brooks, it is not his program
or mine that is responsible for taking those back. It
is another part of DOE, but (laughter) so, for the record--
But now low enriched fuels are becoming available and
it is possible to have the same nucleonics in a reactor
and get the same performance with difference kinds of
fuels, low enriched fuels, and we’re beginning
to do that.
One of the programs that
we carry out is to convert these reactors as I mentioned
in my remarks. With regard to the Burr, Schummer, depending
on which one is being debated in the energy bill, you
know, interestingly enough, we were unaware that that
provision was in there. I believe we are opposed to
it. Frankly, I may get in a lot of trouble here, but
I think we were opposed to the Schummer amendment because
we have all of those authorities that Schummer, which
was the underlying provision that was amended, that
it required us to take a lot of steps that aren’t
necessarily appropriate to have in the statute.
And so I don't know if
we agree with either provision, the underlying Schummer
amendment or the Burr amendment, which you refer to
would weaken the Schummer provision. So I think we are
opposed to the Burr, but we are also opposed to the
underlying Schummer amendment, which was being modified.
BROOKS: There
was a question over here but I lost where it was. Yes,
sir.
POMPER: Miles
Pomper from Arms Control Today. A question for either
Ambassador Brooks or his Deputy-- You mentioned the
additional protocol and that it might come up before
the Senate in the next few weeks, what’s been
holding it up? It’s been held up for close to
a year now and my understanding is that it is infighting
in the administration between the State and Defense
Departments.
LONGSWORTH: President
Bush has sent it to the Senate so it is pending action
by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. While they
are doing that, we are having discussion within the
administration on exactly how we would implement it.
But it think the next step is for the Senate to hold
hearings and provide its advice and consent or not provide
its advice and consent.
BROOKS: The President has made it very clear on wanting to see
the additional Protocol brought into effect. As to what’s
holding up hearings, you’re talking to the wrong
branch of the government when you are talking to Paul
and I.
More questions. Yes, sir.
Down here--
__: I was glad to hear
of Mr. Sewell’s proposals for cost-benefit to
the public of expanding nuclear power to burn up some
of these materials. It doesn’t stretch my imagination
very much to think that the public would also accept
a certain amount of public funds going to try to purchase
this material and keep it out of the hands of terrorists,
if it is only a few billion dollars a year, when the
public supports hundreds of billions for defense, if
the public was just explained the affect of not doing
this compared to the effect of the 9/11 incident on
our country.
Could somebody answer
why we don’t have the government proposing to
spend some taxpayers’ money on this in advance
to get this material and then put it in reactors as
we build them?
BROOKS: Well, I’ll answer it. Secretary Abraham proposed
and his Russian counterpart agreed well over a year
ago to a parallel program that would create a strategic
uranium reserve. We would purchase basically whatever
the Russians would chose to sell us and the quantity
is still being debated. Right now it is only a few tons
a year. Blend it down and make it sort of the uranium
equivalent of the strategic petroleum reserve. It would
just sit there minding it’s own business, but
it would be in a form that would be suitable for energy
us and unsuitable for weapons use.
There is dispute on the
hill as to whether that is good use of public funds
and I’ll let you know when I see the appropriations
act. But the idea is one that the President thought
of a year ago and it’s basically a good idea.
We’re also purchasing, and this is small amounts,
I mean small amounts in the Russian context but large
amounts in anybody else’s, HEU from Russia for
the handful of U.S. research reactors that have not
yet been converted to low enrichment fuel. They’ll
be burning Russian HEU here very shortly, once again,
the will of the funders permitting, and I’m pretty
sure it will.
Did you have a question
down here? [pause] Can we get a microphone down front?
__: Firstly,
I would like to make one historical remark. Indeed,
historically, all technologies have become, as they
were introduced ...(inaudible) technologies, and all
have proliferated in the past. So, what we’re
trying to do here is historically, totally, unprecedented
and, therefore, one should not be surprised that it
is extremely difficult. I mean that is one remark. In
that sense, Administrator Longsworth gave a list of
the program achievement and his note was certainly quite
optimistic. And there are, indeed, many achievements
to be proud of.
But I think it is a matter
of the glass either being half full or half empty, namely,
there have been developing many impediments and the
time scale in which some of these programs have been
proceeding have slipped really extremely badly. I mean
the plutonium disposition has slipped very badly that
one is now talking about 17 years, or whatever the number
is. There have been glitches in the HEU Purchase Agreement.
There are major problems in the MPC&A [Material
Protection, Control and Accounting] improvement in Russia
due to, on the Russian side, them not giving access
sufficiently, on the American side, due to the insistence
on liability protection for the American participants.
These are problems that
we don’t let the Americans to attend various conferences
and so on and so forth. And I was wondering, whether
one of the panelists can give some comments, whether
there are really some major efforts being made to try
to re-accelerate some of the lost time on some of these
programs.
BROOKS: Let
me, because I think that is really a question that is
addressed to those of us who are in government. I can
tell you that Secretary of Energy has been more active,
as far as I’m concerned, than any Secretary in
history in trying to accelerate programs and remove
roadblocks I can tell you that the President has been
active in pushing these. I can tell you that it was
discussed with President Putin at Camp David. And so
we are trying to accelerate but I think the honest answer
is, it is a very slow process and a very difficult process.
I think that is going
to have to be the last question. As I listen to your
comments and the comments of the panel, I came to sort
of three broad conclusions that I will leave with you.
One is that the international regime that grew out of
President Eisenhower’s vision, hasn’t done
everything, but it’s done a lot. The second is
that there are lots of good ideas for the future and
we ought to explore those, but all those good ideas
are going to take time. And, therefore, I guess, the
third is that redoubling our efforts at material protection
is probably pretty important in the near term.
With that, I think what
is next on your schedule is a break until four, but
before you do, I wonder if you would join me in thanking
our panel.