Bush: Technology can reduce nuclear energy risks

By Caren Bohan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush said on Saturday he hoped to promote greater use of nuclear power both at home and abroad, and said he saw promise in new technology aimed at reducing nuclear waste.

Bush has asked the U.S. Congress for $250 million to fund research to restart a controversial program that would reprocess spent nuclear fuel.

The initiative would also involve working with other countries like Russia, France, Japan and Britain to establish an infrastructure to supply nuclear fuel to other nations.

"Together, we will develop and deploy innovative, advanced reactors and new methods to recycle spent nuclear fuel," Bush said in his weekly radio address.

"This will allow us to produce more energy, while dramatically reducing the amount of nuclear waste and eliminating the nuclear byproducts that unstable regimes or terrorists could use to make weapons," he added.

Bush said the program, known as the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, would eventually be expanded to help emerging economies develop nuclear fuel supplies.

"In exchange, these countries would agree to use nuclear power only for civilian purposes and forego uranium enrichment and reprocessing activities that can be used to develop nuclear weapons," he said.

Western countries are concerned that Iran's nuclear program will be used make nuclear weapons. Tehran insists it is for peaceful purposes to develop fuel to run its nuclear power plants to generate electricity.

The administration says such disputes could be avoided in the future if countries were allowed to lease recycled fuel, eliminating the need to build up their own nuclear programs.

Bush has long held the view the United States should build more nuclear power plants, and has touted it as a clean energy source and alternative to expensive natural gas.

He pointed out that France had built 58 nuclear power plants in the past three decades and generated more than 78 percent of its electricity from that source.

"Yet here in America, we have not ordered a new nuclear power plant since the 1970s," Bush said.

Reprocessing, which separates uranium and plutonium from spent fuel so the elements could be used further, was abandoned by the United States in the 1970s because of concerns it could spread nuclear weapons.

Bush's budget request would allow research into new separation technology that would make it harder to use the plutonium byproduct in nuclear weapons. The Bush administration says reprocessing could reduce some of the thousands of tons of waste stored at nuclear power plants around the country.

Some scientists outside the administration are not convinced the new reprocessing technology would eliminate the risk of militants acquiring weapons-making material.

Bush, who called in his annual State of the Union speech in January for the United States to break its addiction to Middle East oil, plans a swing through Wisconsin, Michigan and Colorado to discuss energy policy. He is also pushing expansion of alternative fuels like solar and wind power and biodiesel fuels for automobiles.



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