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GNEP - Extract from a transcript about reviving a dying nuclear industry. This conversation was held earlier this year - and is the brainchild of George Bush. He is dragging other countries into it to support it by allowing Australia to sell uranium to India and Russia.
Tom Morton: US president, George Bush, speaking at a nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania earlier this year.
No new nuclear power plants have been built in the United States in the last 30 years. So the Bush Administration is offering some incentives to get the industry's spirits up, amongst them, loan guarantees, tax credits, and indemnities against legal action.
George Perkovich.
George Perkovich: What's happened now at GNEP is the nuclear industry and the Department of Energy have been scrambling to find ways to revive nuclear power, and so they came up with this new package that says 'Look, we'll invent internationally because we actually can't afford, or we can't get Americans to invest in nuclear power, but if we get everybody in it together, we might revive this industry. And we'll invent some really cool, new reactors that will have these magical properties that they won't allow nuclear proliferation, there won't be an environmental mess, it'll be really cool and if everybody pitches in together, and spends hundreds of billions of dollars, we'll have a rebirth of nuclear energy.'
Tom Morton: To assist this rebirth of nuclear energy, the US is now going back to a policy it abandoned 30 years ago. Reprocessing of nuclear waste is a central part of the GNEP package, and it will cost a projected $US100 billion.
Critics of GNEP say this is a bad case of the tail wagging the dog; the industry's intractable problems with waste driving a massively expensive welfare program for nuclear power. But Jack Edlow doesn't agree.
Jack Edlow: Well I'm sorry Tom, I don't agree with you. GNEP was conceived of because of the US interest in engaging other countries such as India, and also frankly Iran, in a way to try to find to give them a way to access to the nuclear power business without turning over to them materials or technology that they could use in a proliferation way. That to me was the original way forward with GNEP.
Later, this waste reduction became a potential and was added to it as a longer term objective. That's why I say I think there's a nearer term objective of non-proliferation issues and a longer term objective also going forward on waste reduction.
George Perkovich: I think you have to be really naïve about history and about technology and about bureaucracies to believe that much of this is actually going to come true. The US government, the Department of Energy, is already backing off in their private briefings in terms of saying that this will have non-proliferation benefits. It's becoming more and more clear that this is about promoting a dying industry.
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/backgroundbriefing/stories/2006/1726921.htm#
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