National laboratories calling for nuclear energy strategy

• Argonne National Laboratory
• Oak Ridge National Laboratory
• Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
• Los Alamos National Laboratory
• Sandia National Laboratories
• Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory

Lab directors call for nuclear energy strategy

Directors of six leading Department of Energy laboratories called for a long-term national nuclear energy strategy that includes working with international partners to develop a global nuclear energy plan.

In their white paper "Enabling a Global Nuclear Future," the directors of Argonne, Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore, Los Alamos, Oak Ridge and Sandia national laboratories recognize that "the long-term challenges of energy and national security and protection of the environment are closely coupled" and that "[a]ccelerating growth in worldwide energy demands, coupled with increasingly stringent environmental constraints, requires significant use of nuclear energy now and well into the 21st century."

"We hope to inspire the nation’s leaders," said Argonne Director Hermann A. Grunder, "to combine related but separate nuclear energy programs into a single, coordinated effort to optimize the ability of nuclear energy to help solve the 21st century’s global concerns about energy supply and the environment."

• Reduce global climate risk by providing an increasing fraction of future U.S. energy and world needs through safe and economic nuclear energy solutions,
• Minimize reactor waste requiring long-term disposal by significantly reducing the amount of uranium, plutonium and minor actinides, and
• Reduce the threats of nuclear proliferation and terrorism by designing intrinsic and extrinsic safeguards into all elements of the fuel cycle.

The document calls upon the nation’s leaders to coordinate existing nuclear energy projects under a "comprehensive and integrated plan to further the development and deployment of nuclear energy and the management of nuclear materials that will meet these challenges."

• At the global level, energy security and national security are strongly linked. Energy supply impacts international relations, the environment and global prosperity. Advanced nuclear systems can provide energy to significantly mitigate the impact of carbon energy sources on the environment and to enable important industrial processes, such as hydrogen production and water desalination,
• An integrated, comprehensive systems approach is essential to a global architecture that incorporates a diversity of reactor designs, fuel cycles, reprocessing and waste management with appropriate safeguards and proliferation-resistant features,
• Multi-government cooperation and partnerships with industry, national laboratories and universities are required, and
• The United States and Russia, as the founders of the nuclear era, have a special responsibility for nuclear materials management and nonproliferation. Advanced fuel cycle approaches can be developed and already separated weapons-capable nuclear materials can be secured and managed to reduce the dangers of nuclear proliferation.

For more information, please contact David Baurac.

Next: Argonne, INEEL lead U.S. role in planning the next generation of nuclear reactors

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