Lake provides testimony for the record for Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources
See: Press Release
Past President James Lake presented ANS views on the Nation's need for nuclear energy to the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources on July 18. In his remarks, Lake stated that "ANS recommends the reinstatement of the DOE Office of Nuclear Energy, Science and Technology to the Assistant Secretary level..." He stressed the contributions of nuclear energy to the economy and the need for Congressional support for funding of future nuclear technology research, future work force and the benefit of humanity.
See also: Press Release
Testimony for the Record
United States Senate
Committee on Energy and Natural Resources
Dr. James A. Lake
Past President (2000-01)
American Nuclear Society
July 18, 2001
United States Senate
Committee on Energy and Natural Resources
Dr. James A. Lake
Past President (2000-01)
American Nuclear Society
July 18, 2001
Introduction
My name is James Lake. I am the immediate past President (2000-01) of the American Nuclear Society (ANS). It is an honor for the ANS to provide your Committee with the views of our Society on the U.S. nuclear energy research and development program.
The American Nuclear Society is a not-for-profit, international professional society with 11,000 members including scientists, engineers, educators, power plant operators, and regulators in the broad field of nuclear science and technology. The Society's 19 technical divisions range from reactor physics and mathematics and computation to nuclear and criticality safety, operations and power, and fuel cycle and waste management. Our membership includes more than 750 students from 32 universities, and approximately 1,000 international members from 40 countries. The Society's membership is geographically distributed in 52 U.S. and 9 international local sections and 23 branches at nuclear power plants.
The Society's main objective is to promote the advancement of engineering and science related to the atomic nucleus. We serve our member's professional needs in their efforts to develop and safely apply nuclear science and technology for the public benefit, primarily through exchange and sharing of technical information in our publications and Journals and at our meetings and conferences; we serve our member's professional needs; we promote public information and understanding of nuclear science and technology matters through our teacher workshops, our web site and other public information activities; and we sponsor scholarships in nuclear science and engineering.
The Importance of Nuclear Energy to American Prosperity
Sharply rising electricity and natural gas prices, and the energy shortages in California that threaten to spread to other parts of our Nation, have awakened Americans to the harsh realities of limited energy supplies and the volatility of energy prices. At the same time, world energy growth projections are a staggering 100% in the next 20-30 years which will put enormous economic and political pressure on U.S. imported fuel supplies. Energy has been, is, and will continue to be the fuel of U.S. economic prosperity. Our position as the preeminent world economy, and our standard of living, are inexorably linked to our ability to assure abundant, affordable, and clean energy supplies in the future.
Energy conservation and efficiency are a necessary, but not sufficient, part of a national energy strategy that will assure America's future prosperity. Energy use per capita is frequently misused in an attempt to justify the premise that American energy consumption is excessive and wasteful. However, this fails to recognize that America is the most productive Nation on Earth. American productivity per capita is highly dependent on energy. The facts are that Americans consume some 26% of the world's energy, and we produce more than 23% of the world's Gross Domestic Product. Therefore, whereas energy conservation and efficiency improvements are an important part of our future energy strategy, conservation and efficiency alone cannot do the job. Increasing prosperity and productivity require increasing energy supplies.
The National Energy Policy, released in May of this year, is correct in calling for a new National priority to balance energy demand and the efficiency with which energy is used, with an increased effort to assure energy supplies that are secure, affordable, and clean. The American Nuclear Society believes that nuclear energy is an increasingly important element of our Nation's future energy supply that fully meets these criteria.
Nuclear Energy is Performing at Record High Levels
Today, 103 U.S. nuclear power plants are performing at record levels, generating over 750 billion kWhrs of electricity this past year (about 20% of the total U.S. electricity generation) at generating costs that were lower than coal, and substantially lower than gas or oil. Nuclear power is thriving in the newly deregulated marketplace, with most of the plants expected to apply for and receive 20-year license extensions from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), and with a healthy business developing around the purchase of some of the plants by large nuclear generating companies who can operate them more efficiently, and at lower cost in future markets. The mistaken image of nuclear power as uneconomical is proven to be far from true, and the Government's long term investment in the development and testing of nuclear power technology has produced an economical, safe, and environmentally clean electricity source that can now play an increasingly important domestic and worldwide role in the future.
Safety performance of nuclear power has also improved coincident with the improved economic performance. Unusual Events reported to the NRC declined in the last decade from nearly 2/plant/year to less than 0.2/plant/year in 2000. Nearly two thirds of plants routinely experience no unplanned shutdowns, and the industrial safety record in the U.S. nuclear industry is nearly ten times better than that of the total industrial sector. In this context, it is not surprising that a clear majority of Americans support continued operations of U.S. nuclear power plants, and there is growing support for building new plants.
Americans are increasingly committed to the protection of our environment. Whereas there continues to be considerable scientific debate about the degree to which our climate is being affected by the emissions of CO2 and other pollutants from burning fossil fuels, it is prudent to take action now to reduce, or at least limit the growth of these air emissions in a manner that is consistent with both our economic prosperity and our environmental stewardship responsibilities. The continued operation of emissions-free nuclear power plants, and construction of new nuclear power plants in the future, can be an important tool to carry out our Nation's moral and ethical obligation to reduce air emissions without an accompanying negative impact on the U.S. economy. One can look to the French example of responsible, clean electricity generation. France generates more than 75% of its electricity with nuclear power, and the nation is highly electrified. As a result, France has a fraction of the air pollution of neighboring Germany.
Nuclear Energy's Role in Assuring America's Future Prosperity
The now-mature and high-performing nuclear power industry is in a position to grow as a major component of our Nation's clean-energy strategy. The nuclear power industry "Vision 2020", announced at the Nuclear Energy Assembly in May of this year calls for an additional 10,000 MWe to be generated by the current 103 U.S. nuclear power plants by the year 2020 through plant efficiency and capacity factor improvements, and 50,000 MWe of new generation to be built. However, because of projected overall increases in electricity demand over the next two decades, nuclear power will still remain at about 23% of the U.S. electricity generating capacity in 2020 even with these aggressive increases in production. As fossil fuels become more scarce and increasingly more expensive, and as our Nation and the world seek to move toward lower emission sources of energy, we should be preparing the technical, regulatory and economic pathways for clean nuclear power to assume an even larger share of U.S. electrical generating capacity in the mid 21st century. For example, for nuclear power to supply 30% of our electrical generation in the year 2020, we would need to more than double the current generating capacity. Finally, research is under way to explore the potential for producing hydrogen using high-temperature nuclear reactor systems. If this is successful, nuclear energy could play a pivotal role in producing the hydrogen fuel necessary for transitioning the transportation sector from oil to emissions-free hydrogen fuel cells. It is possible, therefore, to envision a future with hundreds of U.S. nuclear power plants, and perhaps thousands worldwide.
In order for nuclear energy to achieve its full potential as a sustainable, long-term, clean-energy resource with large-scale domestic and global deployment, the technology must be improved in the following areas:
- The economic performance of nuclear power must continue to improve in an increasingly deregulated electricity market. Whereas the current generating cost is relatively low from existing nuclear plants whose investment costs have already been paid off, substantial improvements are required in capital cost and construction time for new nuclear power plants to compete in future markets.
- The safety performance of nuclear power plants must continue to improve in order to satisfy the very demanding expectations of the American public, and future technology must be more robust and less susceptible to equipment or human failures as nuclear power is more broadly deployed worldwide.
- The technology must be sustainable in the long-term. In particular, nuclear wastes must be managed cost effectively. This goes well beyond the opening of the U.S. high-level waste repository, and it includes the minimization of wastes from future nuclear power systems and the development, demonstration, and deployment of the fuel-cycle-of-the-future that will be sustainable from an economic and fuel supply standpoint, socially acceptable, environmentally responsible, and more proliferation resistant.
The Role of the U.S. Government in Nuclear R&D
The U.S. nuclear power industry is responsible for cost-effective and safe operations of its power plants, for improving their operations such as to increase economic value, and for providing the major commercial impetus behind new plant construction. The U.S. Government plays an important role in stimulating the energy security and environmental quality aspects of nuclear power in the Nation's interest, and in supporting the long-term, high-risk R&D that will improve the technology and allow it to take its rightful market share. The Government must further take responsibility for supporting the broad educational infrastructure and stimulating the flow of nuclear scientists and engineers into the nuclear enterprise.
Government has three primary interests in nuclear energy, science and technology. First, trained manpower and state-of-the-art technology are vital to carrying out the Government's nuclear operations, including those related to national security and environmental cleanup. Second, the Government desire to exercise world leadership in nuclear matters requires a strong nuclear technology R&D program with significant international components. Third, the Government has a broad mission responsibility to assure adequate, affordable, and clean energy supplies, and to assure that nuclear power remains a viable option for expanded deployment in the future. The balanced energy supply portfolio that is sought in the National Energy Policy should include investment in the development of future energy technologies based upon their merit and potential for contribution to America's future energy security and environmental quality needs. In this regard, the R&D component of the proposed fiscal year 2002 nuclear energy, science and technology budget is far less than the investment in other energy technologies. From ANS' perspective, the FY-2002 nuclear budget should be increased substantially to support nuclear energy R&D needs.
Specific American Nuclear Society Recommendations
ANS members work in all of the broad fields of nuclear science and engineering at laboratories, educational institutions, industry, and Government. Thus, ANS has considerable knowledge and a studied opinion about the technology needs and the needs for the DOE nuclear energy R&D program. We will focus our recommendations on the following areas:
- The Nuclear Energy Research Initiative/Nuclear Energy Plant Optimization programs,
- University infrastructure support,
- Development and timely deployment of the next generation of advanced nuclear energy systems (Generation IV) that will respond to the critical issues listed above,
- Development, testing and deployment of the fuel cycle of the future that includes advance fuel recycle, and
- Establishment of a DOE Assistant Secretary for Nuclear Energy.
The Nuclear Energy Research Initiative (NERI) was begun in fiscal year 1999 in response to the recommendations of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST), and subsequently an international component (I-NERI) was added in 2001 to leverage the U.S. Government R&D investment against international activities. The purpose of the NERI and I-NERI programs is to address critical technical barriers to the long-term use of nuclear energy, and to maintain U.S. leadership in the area of nuclear science and technology.
The NERI program solicits R&D proposals from the U.S. scientific and engineering community at universities, laboratories, and industrial research institutions in areas such as advanced reactor conceptual design and development, high burnup nuclear fuels, innovative waste management technology, improvements in the resistance to proliferation of nuclear materials, and basic nuclear science and technology. Proposals by teams of researchers are selected for funding by a peer-review process.
The NERI/I-NERI program was funded at $35M in fiscal year 2001. PCAST envisioned the program growing to approximately the $75M/year level with a 3-year rotation of projects. This program is, and continues to be, vital to the future of nuclear energy. Valuable collaborations are established between the university community, the national laboratories, and the nuclear industry. The NERI program has been a major contributor to the revitalization of our university nuclear engineering programs, and is credited (by many students) with directly influencing their entry into the nuclear engineering discipline.
The Nuclear Energy Plant Optimization (NEPO) program supports a modest level of Government-industry cost shared R&D in areas that will allow for plant power and capacity factor increases and plant lifetime extension. The NEPO program was initiated in fiscal year 2000, and is currently funded at $5M (for the Government share). PCAST envisioned the NEPO program funded at $10M/year. With 23,000 MWe of plant efficiency and capacity factor increases from the 103-reactor U.S. fleet in the last decade, and an industry goal of 10,000 MWe of additional generation before 2020, this modest investment can produce substantial benefits in clean electrical generation.
ANS fully supports the continuation of the NERI/I-NERI and NEPO programs with adequate resources to support existing project commitments and to grow toward the PCAST funding levels of $75M/year and $10M/year, respectively. The Administration's budget request for fiscal year 2002 proposes a reduction in the NERI/I-NERI budget from $35M in 2001 to only $18M in 2002. This budget request will only support the existing NERI/I-NERI projects, but will not allow for any new project startups in 2002. This situation is devastating, especially to incoming nuclear engineering students who will be seeking support for their graduate work. ANS therefore recommends that the NEIR/I-NERI budget be increased substantially (to $60M) in 2002. This increase is necessary to grow the scope of nuclear energy R&D, both from the standpoint of the needed technology and also to provide the continuity of research opportunities for students and other researchers who will form the core of the nuclear science and engineering technical manpower of the future. ANS further recommends that the NEPO program be increased to $10M in fiscal year 2002 to extract the maximum value from this research in near-term output of clean, low-cost electricity from the Nation's nuclear power plants.
University Infrastructure
There is growing concern for the health and vitality of the university and national laboratory infrastructure in the U.S. that trains and employs the technical specialists who keep our Nation at the forefront of nuclear science and engineering. The recent 10-year decline in enrollments in U.S. university nuclear engineering programs is beginning to show some signs a life with modest increases in 2001-02 enrollments at more than a third of NE Departments. The return of interest in nuclear engineering is based on several factors; the current attention paid by the public and the press to energy, and particularly the opportunity for nuclear energy to play a prominent role in supplying increasing amounts of clean energy, the return of Government support for R&D in nuclear science and engineering that provides for exciting research opportunities for today's students to invent the next generation of nuclear technology, and the presence of high-paying jobs as the demand for new graduates exceeds the supply by at least a factor of 2. America has limited time in which to address the issue of assuring a sustained manpower supply for the 21st century as a large fraction of the technical specialists, who have brought nuclear science and technology to the point today where it can make even larger contributions to our future energy needs, are nearing retirement. It is critical that those specialists leaving the field in the next 10 years be replaced by trained young people with renewed enthusiasm and new ideas to carry the technology forward to even greater benefit to Americans and the world.
The U.S. infrastructure has been losing key research facilities, notably university research reactors, that are needed to carry out future research and training missions. In the last decade, more than half of the Nation's university research reactors have been closed because of lack of support, and several others at major nuclear engineering universities are currently contemplating closure. It is important that we take action now to assure adequate support for the remaining U.S. university research reactors.
The university infrastructure has been supported in the past 2 years with a modest $12M budget that provides nuclear engineering fellowships and scholarships, research reactor fuel and research instrumentation support, and a small number of university research grants. The American Nuclear Society recommends that this university infrastructure support program be substantially increased in scope and funding (to at least $30M in fiscal year 2002), to increase the level of support for graduate and undergraduate fellowships and scholarships, to recruit young faculty and to support research-initiation grants during the first few years of their tenure, to increase the funding available under the Nuclear Engineering Education Research (NEER) program, and to support the Nation's university research reactors with major instrumentation upgrades, operations support, and relicensing support. Legislation to address these needs is contained in S-242 and S-472.
Generation IV Advanced Reactor Development
In order to accelerate the development of advanced reactor systems that can fully address the economic, safety, waste and proliferation-resistance goals discussed above, ANS recommends that Congress increase substantially the support for the Generation IV Advanced Reactor Development program (called Nuclear Energy Technologies in the 2002 budget request). It is important that these Generation IV systems be developed and tested in order to allow industry to deploy them in a timely manner where they can contribute to the increasing domestic and global energy demands in a way that is affordable and environmentally responsible. This is a key role for the U.S. to play in exercising world leadership to promulgate the next-generation of emissions-free nuclear power technology that is cheaper, safer, minimizes and manages wastes better, and removes the potential for proliferation of nuclear materials in a sustainable fuel cycle.
The efforts initiated by the Department of Energy to organize an international group of nine countries, called the Generation IV International Forum, to collaborate on the needed R&D to produce one or more Generation IV designs, shows great promise of U.S. leadership, and for highly-leveraged investment leading to a Generation IV advanced reactor product for 21st century global deployment. In 2001, efforts were begun, with a team of domestic and international experts, to develop a Generation IV Technology Roadmap to guide the necessary R&D in a cost-effective and technically-optimum way. The R&D community will have done all of the necessary things to prepare for a major launch of the Generation IV R&D program in fiscal year 2002. The Administration's proposed 2002 budget of $4.5M would only support completion of the Roadmap, but not initiation of the focused Generation IV R&D that the international community is prepared to join in a cost-shared partnership. ANS therefore recommends a substantially higher Generation IV (Nuclear Energy Technologies line item) budget of $50M in 2002 to complete the Roadmap, to provide key technical support to near term deployment of some of the early stage Generation IV advanced reactor systems like the AP-1000 and the Pebble Bed Modular Reactor, and to initiate the focused R&D on promising Generation IV reactor and fuel cycle system concepts.
The Fuel-Cycle-of-the-Future/Advanced Fuel Recycle
In the public's mind, the failure of the U.S. Government to follow-through on the opening of the Nation's high level waste repository represents one of the biggest obstacles to the expansion of nuclear power. Nuclear electricity consumers, having paid more than $16B into the nuclear waste fund, from which $6B has already been spent without moving any spent nuclear fuel out of the power plants and into the repository, have every right to expect a prompt resolution of the siting, characterization, licensing, and opening of the repository. ANS believes that a scientific consensus is developing that deep-geological disposal is a technically acceptable way to isolate nuclear wastes from the environment, and we urge the Administration and the Congress to proceed expeditiously with the process of determining the social and political acceptability of proceeding with the licensing and operations of the repository.
However, permanent disposal of spent nuclear fuel in the deep-geological repository is not the only possible approach to closure of the back end of the fuel cycle. The National Energy Policy proposes to reconsider the decades-old decision by the Carter Administration to abandon the option to reprocess and recycle this fuel. It is well known that recycling could increase the energy extracted from nuclear fuel by factors of 10-100, while at the same time reducing both the quantity and radioactive lifetime of the residual wastes that would eventually have to be stored in the repository. These potential advantages must be balanced against the overall economics of the fuel cycle, and the safety, radioactive emissions, and proliferation potential inherent in today's fuel reprocessing technology. The National Energy Policy challenges us to rethink the economics, safety, environmental, social, and national security aspects of the fuel-cycle-of-the-future in light of today's political and social expectations, and today's technical capabilities. The social debate will ultimately decide whether it is more responsible for our Nation to burn nuclear fuel only once, and permanently dispose of the spent fuel in a repository that has to be designed and managed to prevent the release of the hazardous materials for thousands of years, or if we should reprocess and recycle the plutonium and other fuel materials to continue to burn them for their energy value, and subsequently only dispose of the shorter-lived fission produce residues in a much simplified repository that only has to be designed and managed for a lifetime of a few hundred years. ANS believes that this debate must be conducted in an environment where the technical basis for deep-geologic disposal and that for reprocessing are fully developed as a foundation for informed decision making. As such, the U.S. must reenter the international arena of advanced fuel reprocessing R&D.
Some of the most vocal opposition to reprocessing spent nuclear fuel comes from the concern that this could increase the potential for world-wide proliferation of the technology to obtain nuclear-weapons-usable material, and thereby create a future national security concern. ANS shares the conviction that the commercial nuclear fuel cycle shall not create an unacceptable future proliferation risk. However, the nonproliferation aspects of the international fuel cycle are rigorously overseen by the International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards program, and the existing fuel reprocessing programs in France, England, and soon-to-be-Japan, have not presented unacceptable proliferation risks as judged by the fact that no Nation has yet chosen to divert commercial nuclear materials for non-peaceful purposes. Notwithstanding the fact that diversion of nuclear materials from the commercial fuel cycle is already the most difficult and most expensive way to obtain these materials, and it produces poor quality material for nuclear weapons purposes, ANS believes that the U.S. should invest in advanced recycle technology development and testing, including but not limited to the electrometallurgical/pyroprocessing technology at Argonne National Laboratory, that does not produce separated, weapons-usable plutonium. Because even deep-geologic disposal of spent fuel presents some long-term potential for nuclear materials diversion, ANS believes that effective advanced recycle technology can improve upon the proliferation resistance of the once-through commercial nuclear fuel cycle and further reduce the potential for diversion of nuclear materials for non-peaceful purposes. The key issues to be explored in this research include the economics of reprocessing, the separations efficiency between the recycled materials and the fission product wastes, the ability to control radioactive releases from the process and minimize waste residues, the ability to safeguard the process so as to be inherently proliferation resistant, the optimization of the recycle process with respect to current Light Water Reactors and Generation IV future reactor systems, and the ability to bridge between the materials in the current stockpiles of spent UO2 LWR fuel into the optimum recyclable fuel.
Establishment of a DOE Assistant Secretary for Nuclear Energy
Because of the growing importance of nuclear energy and nuclear science and technology to our Nation's energy security, national security, public health, and environmental quality, the American Nuclear Society recommends the reinstatement of the DOE Office of Nuclear Energy, Science and Technology to the Assistant Secretary level in order to attract and retain the kind of leadership required to maximize the Government's contribution to developing and applying nuclear energy technology in the Nation's interest.
Closing Summary
This is a critical juncture for nuclear energy which stands on the threshold of making a substantial and increasing contribution to future domestic and world needs for abundant, clean and low-cost energy supplies. Major research and development and university infrastructure support needs exist that are not adequately addressed in the Administration's fiscal year 2002 budget request. Congressional leadership will once again be required to adequately support the development and timely deployment of new Generation IV reactor and fuel cycle system technologies, and the recruitment and education of young engineers and scientists in order to realize the tremendous potential of nuclear energy and nuclear technology for future generations of Americans.
Thank you for the opportunity to present the views of the American Nuclear Society.
