good morning and this this hearing will come to order and i want to welcome everyone to today's hearing to explore the policy questions in the research development and demonstration needs associated with recycling of spent nuclear fuel i would like to welcome our expert panel who will discuss the ongoing already activities in the federal government private sector and around the globe and help to understand the safety environmental security and economic issues related to the adoption of the nuclear reprocessing strategy i'm supportive of nuclear power as i believe it is part of the solution to the daunting challenge of climate change and energy independence and also recognize that our one hundred four operating reactors provide very reliable base load power to me the best reason to consider reprocessing is an expansion of nuclear power may make the once thought or went through fuel cycle inadequate for maintaining our nuclear power supply as your aim sources eventually become scarce there are near term technologies available f reprocessing spent nuclear fuel that could be deployed in the united states relatively quickly but there are some well documented concerns raised about this strategy i'm also aware of ongoing research and more advanced technologies that could address the nuclear fuel cycle issues that we face today and while we processing of spent fuel allows us to extract more energy from the given supply of natural uranium it raises concern about increased costs for waste management and the political ration of weapons grade materials i am hopeful that today's discussion will shed some light on the various benefits challenges and risk that we must address before adopting a long term nuclear recycling strategy and i've told our witnesses earlier we have a variety of hearings going on simultaneously the bells are ringing we may have votes and we want to have as much of a hearing as we can if it gets to a point where there's going be a long lapse we will try to be respectful of your time and so let me my statement here that's ok as i know you got prepared statements and as you go through that as much as you can i would hope that you and then later in your in the question answers try to help me with what i think is sort of m ratio question least one of the racial questions and that is do we move forward with existing tech ologies to reprocess or do we  do we skip that and wait for the next generation to come along and sort of a part of that is do we have storage now to wait for that next generation is that next generation really you know feasible and what are going statement thank you mr chairman for holding this hearing today on nuclear fuel fuel recycling i'm sitting in for a real ranking member mr hall from texas who is temporarily detained on the floor and i'm sure he'll return shortly and spice up the meeting was inevitable sense of humor i'm very pleased that you're holding this hearing mr chairman i think it's a very important issue for this committee to be looking into as nuclear energy is a clean and reliable source of baseload power in the united states now not everyone has agreed with that statement over the years but i must say back and when nuclear power began to run into trouble in the united states with environmentalist s and i am a staunch the noise was a staunch environmentalist i argued strenuously for nuclear power on the basis that it was the only method available then which would not continue to greenhouse gas back in  seventy not too many people worried about greenhouse gases today we were a great deal about them but we all know the basic facts that are currently eight hundred four nuclear power plants in thirty one states in the united states generating approximately twenty percent of the electricity produced nuclear plants in two thousand and eight ran out of capacity factor ninety one point five percent compared to seventy three point six percent for coal forty two percent for natural gas and forty percent for renew my home state of michigan is for nuclear plants and another one under construction and they currently generate twenty six point two percent of the state's electricity one of the highest of any states i believe as the industry is facing resurgence and the interest to build new nuclear plants the issue of nuclear waste is prevalent that's always been the one great deterrence to using nuclear energy that's even more so true with the decision by the obama administration to abound in a permanent repository nevada after over twenty years of research and billions of dollars of carefully planned and reviewed scientific field work so we're here to receive testimony from our four expert witnesses on the facts and on the pros and cons of reprocessing and recycling used nuclear fuel i believe that finding some sort of solution to how to handle or use nuclear fuel is critical to the continued successful contribution of nuclear energy to our countries electric generation and i look forward to hearing from today's witnesses on this important and timely topic i do regret mr chairman that this committee has not had much to say about him going nuclear waste in the past this is one of many issues which should be in our jurisdiction but it has been another committee i think we would have written a better bill regarding yucca mountain and i think the biggest problem is the way the bill was written it was impossible to meet the requirements no one could predict or prove that for ten thousand years there have been no leakage whereas if we had taken the route of monitored retrieval storage with the ability to repair any casks that might  leak we would been much further along at much less cost no matter what that may or may not have been the best solution but certainly should i've been examined i hope we don't know myself i have mixed feelings about the reprocessing approach the cost is as we know very high and well the problem and in a better way than other things that we could do but i'm very eager to hear the comments from the experts this morning and to find just what we can do in terms of dealing with nuclear waste what is safe what is proper and what is best what is most economical and what other approaches might be available and useful without  elders i will point out that i think that we are the only committee on the house side and maybe the senate too in the last several years to have any type of hearings own nuclear energy we're going to continue with that we've had a variety of both as well as roundtables i think that you are actually correct that we need to play a strong role in making sure that decisions are made on a scientific basis and not just an emotional basis and i think we can play good role there you'll also be pleased to know that physicist and i would like if possible to submit this this letter from him to the record but read a small portion of it as we began you know it might be best to wait let's  reva international or incorporated rather mislay surprise is the senior vice president g e a touchy nuclear energy and chief executive officer of global nuclear fuel and dr charles is the philip the read senior fellow for science and technology at the council for foreign relations and now you know to my colleague from illinois this bigger to introduce witness from her home state thank you chairman garden i would like to welcome dr mark peters from argonne national laboratory as one of today's witnesses i'm very pleased that he could be here to enlighten the committee on the work done in my district and reprocessing research dr peters is currently the deputy associate lab director for the energy sciences and engineering director at he juggles the responsibility for management integration of the labs energy research and development portfolio and also provides technical support to the d advance fuel cycle initiative where he was recently appointed a f c national campaign director for spent fuel disposition as most of you can see from his bio dr peters has extensive nuclear research repository experience as a former mountain projects science and engineering manager at los alamos and at the d o a office of civilian radioactive waste so i've had the pleasure of working with dr peters over the years and know that his perspective will be very informative so i look forward to  operation there so the witnesses will have five minutes for your spoken testimony your written testimony will be included in the record for the hearing when you have completed your spoken testimony we will begin with questions each member will then have minutes and we will begin with dr mark peters dr peters you may begin chairman gordon dr eyler smith has bigger members of the committee thank you for the opportunity to testify before you on advanced technology for nuclear fuel recycling my name is mark peters and i am the deputy associate lab director for energy sciences and engineering at the argonne national laboratory and mr chairman i ask that my full written testimony be entered into the record and i'll summarize it here so i want to talk about summarize my testimony going over three general areas first provide an introduction in some context and then a bit about spent nuclear fuel management and the fuel cycle and then finally talk about the advanced nuclear fuel cycle research and development program and needs going forward so by way of introduction  energy demand is increasing at a rapid pace in order to satisfy the demand and protect the environment for future generations including reduction of greenhouse gas emissions future energy sources must evolve from the current dominance of fossil fuels to a more balanced sustainable approach to energy production that is based on abundant clean economical energy sources nuclear energy is already a reliable abundant carbon free source of electricity in united states in the world in addition to contributing future to future electricity production could also be a critical resource for fueling the transportation sector however nuclear energy must experience significant growth to achieve the goals of reliable for evil energy in a carbon constrained world there are a number of challenges associated with the global expansion of nuclear power any advanced nuclear fuel cycle and that meeting these challenges must simultaneously address issues of economics uranium resource utilization nuclear waste minimisation and a strengthened nonproliferation regime all of which require systems analysis and investment in new technologies in the end a comprehensive comprehensive and long term vision for expanded sustainable nuclear energy must include safe and secure fuel cycle technologies cost effective technologies for the overall fuel cycle system and ultimately a closed fuel cycle for waste and resource management related to spent nuclear fuel management the nuclear fuel cycle is a cradle to grave framework that includes uranium mining fuel for the creation energy production and nuclear waste management there are two basic nuclear fuel cycle approaches and open or once through fuel cycle as currently planned by the united states involves treating spent nuclear fuel as waste with all ultimate disposition of the material in a geologic repository in contrast a closed or recycle fuel cycle as currently planned by other countries for example france russia russia and japan involves treating spent nuclear fuel as a resource whereby separations and acting out recycling in reactors work with geologic disposal for reprocessing to be beneficial as opposed to counterproductive it must be followed by recycling transmutation and fission destruction of of the ultra long lived radio toxic constituents reprocessing by the pure at the so called purex method where you recall which is  extraction followed by plutonium recycling using mixed oxide fuel in light water reactors is a well established technology but is only a partial solution is not at all clear that we should park on this path especially since the united states has not made a massive investment in a pure x infrastructure of the united states is proceeding with the plan to reduce excess weapons plutonium inventory using moxon of yours in crime in contrast advancement of fast reactor technology for transuranic recycling consumption would maximize the benefits of waste management and also allow central progress toward the longer term goal of sustainable use of uranium and subsequently story i'm with fast reactors there is no urgent need to dispose to to deploy recycling today but as nuclear energy expands once through fuel cycle will not be sustainable to maximize the benefits of nuclear energy in an expanding nuclear energy future it will ultimately be necessary to close the fuel cycle fortuitously it is conceivable that that that a decades long hiatus in united states investment circumvents the need to rely on a dated recycling infrastructure rather we have the option to develop and build new technologies and develop business models using it bantz systems related to the r and d program to reduce cost ensure sustainability and improve efficiency safety and security significant investments on the order of several hundred million dollars per year in a sustained nuclear energy r and d program are needed such a program must effectively support and integrate both basic and applied research and use modeling and simulation capabilities to address both near term evolutionary activities such  life extensions of the current nuclear fleet and long term solutions for example advanced reactors and feels like the technologies and facilities as a nuclear energy nuclear industry pursues evolutionary r and d to further improve efficiencies along each step of the current fuel cycle is incumbent upon the government to implement long term science based r and d programs for developing transformational technologies and options for the advanced fuel cycle in the very near term we recommend that the united states advance fuel cycle program develop a science and technology road map this would involve national labs universities and industry and and be a comprehensive start with a comprehensive set of options for fuel cycle technologies and overall systems the road map should describe the technical readiness risks and potential benefits of each option and their criers r and d for each this will be followed by implementation of a robust science based r and d program to address all the challenges related to the fuel cycle finally there is sufficient time to analyze the technology options choose the path to investigate and conduct the science based  and technology demonstrations that would be needed in the future for making decisions about the nuclear fuel cycle in the united states however it is imperative to begin now to build the r and d infrastructure that is needed for science and technology development which must include advances in theory modeling and simulation new separations fuel and waste management technologies and advanced reactor concepts and with that i thank you and please answer any questions thank you dr peters and dr hansen you're recognized thank you today relevant to today's testimony is the fact that a review operates the largest and most successful recycling facilities in the world i'm going to focus first on some of the benefits and criticisms associated with recycling the main benefits i think are reasonably well known there is a conservation of uranium resources that occurs because of the recovery of material and it's reuse recycling makes waste management easier by reducing the volumes the heat loads and changing the waste form which is to be disposed of and importantly recycling as a path to burning plutonium and removing it from proliferation concern recycling as we perform today destroys about thirty percent of the plutonium and it alters the composition of the uranium plutonium so that is no longer very attractive for weapons purposes now in contrast of these benefits the criticisms are in three areas first nonproliferation last than the volume of waste i want to focus on is nonproliferation issue because this is one of the reason we are not doing reprocessing in the united states today in recent years many countries have embarked on nuclear weapons program for reasons of national procedure and power but they have not done it using the commercial fuel cycle they have done it in dedicated program the vast majority of countries seek only peaceful uses of nuclear power and they rely upon the industry to provide them with enriched material and recycling services rather than build their own facilities this is one way to control the spread of the nuclear facilities by having a robust in in just three providing services that it would contribute to nonproliferation let's examine the case for proliferation and start with the version of the united states has for a long time had a plutonium economy in the military complex they have demonstrated a wonderful ability to control the material and to keep it from diversion there is no reason in my mind that the same techniques that are used for our weapons program cannot be used for commercial recycling to make sure that there is not a diversion what about that fact the same argument holds true we have not had thefts of sensitive nuclear material in the united states it's very well protected and i don't see any reason again that we can't protect commercial material in the same way this leaves only one reason to forgo recycling and that is the issue of setting an example for the rest of the world this is the extensible reason that we are not recycling but that policy has not stopped france the u k russia in japan from doing recycling and it will not stop china and india from doing it those are the next two nations which are going to embark on recycling programs i would strongly r recommend as an individual and as a representative of riva that the united states step to the forefront and build a recycling complex which can provide a service to other countries to make it unnecessary and economical for them to pursue their own recycling and this would be a step forward in nonproliferation i'm not going to spend a lot of time on costs this can be an expensive proposition it can be done in an economical fashion as we are doing in europe the cost of the fuel cycle for nuclear power is such a small fraction of the total cost of electricity produced that if we were to double the cost of  handling the back end of the fuel cycle the consumer would see a few pennies pennies a month so it's not economically unattractive and waste the volume reduction is enormous it's at least a factor of four for the repository for the high level materials you do end up with a little bit more of the low level materials which need to go into surface burial but our calculations show that this would increase low level waste only by about two and a half percent which is certainly not an onerous price to pay with regard to r and d we are very supportive of r and d in the federal complex there are things that industry will not do because they're too long term or too speculative we are very supportive of the a f c i initiative which mar peters referred to we believe this should go forward that work should continue to be done in advance a korea separations and also an electro metallurgical separations which are not as advanced as as a quiz processing and i think that lisa price will have more to say about that we should not be seeking a proliferation proof fuel it doesn't exist we can't find it we can make it proliferation resistant and that's what we need to do i would end my testimony here by trying to answer very quickly your question i would personally vote for proceeding in a rather determined and in a near term basis to implement recycling in the united states i think waiting for generation for technologies would be another mistake for this country thank you very much thank you dr hansen and this price you recognize for five minutes mr chairman dr  members of the committee i appreciate the opportunity to speak with you today on a suggested approach for research development demonstration for the nuclear for nuclear fuel recycling should you not see nuclear energy developed this approach based on technology originally funded by the department of energy the options for dealing with the nuclear waste problem can really be categorized three ways in the three r s repository reprocess or recycle however the differences between those three r s drive the way you think about the opportunities and how to proceed long term storage would be required in any of these scenarios however the amount of time that waste would have to be isolated in a repository depends on which are is selected now why is that it's because the most significant factor impacting long term storage is the amount of heat that is generated principally by four elements in the u s nuclear fuel called trains  r s different how these transfer enix are handled so let's look at the three r s briefly repository refers to sequester in the u s nuclear fuel in a permanent repository a typical spent fuel bundle will see significant heat reduction after hundreds of thousands burned up and consumed as power is generated by the reactor they're not part of the waste stream and that significantly reduce reduces the heat load on the repository to hundreds of years rather than thousands or hundreds of thousands of years with that i have four recommendations for the committee first work with industry to drive research development and demonstration for recycling jia toci has developed a framework for research on closing the fuel cycle and we've actually submitted that to michelle in advance of this testimony we recognize the critical importance of working with our national labs in our universities and advancing the research and development work in support of this effort number two funded research that leads to logical development in areas like licensing manufacturing and design validation and advanced separation technologies three we should continue to fund basic research in advanced technologies for closing the fuel cycle and lastly we should fund demonstrations that will provide the data that will support an informed decision on commercially deploying potential back and fuel cycle solutions the nation has an opportunity today to lead a transformation to a new safer and more secure energy approach to nuclear energy and carbon free electricity it provides enhanced energy security it provides additional options for geologic storage greater than that which exists today it can reduce proliferation concerns nuclear waste millions and importantly it thank you mr chairman dr elders and members of the committee for inviting me to testify i request of my written comments be entered in official record in the following remarks i briefly discuss major findings and recommendations based on the written testimony united to prevent the spread of reprocessing facilities to other countries and encourage countries with existing stockpiles to separate will tell me i'm from reprocessing facilities to draw down those stockpiles united states should reaffirm and strengthen this policy reprocessing the type currently practice in a handful of countries poses a significant cliff russian threat because the separation bill tony i'm from highly radioactive fission products separates it from a protective barrier against theft a thief if he had access could easily carry away separate bills hon fortunately this reprocessing is confined to nuclear arms states except for japan if this practice spread to other non nuclear weapon states the consequences for national international security could be dire presently the vast majority of the thirty one states with nuclear power programs do not have reprocessing plants u s policy has been effective in setting an example in limiting the spread of reprocessing japan france and russia to launch their every processing programs before three agreement with the us as i point out my written testimony they are interested in reprocessing we need to reaffirm that reprocessing is not something that should be done on the korean peninsula especially we're dealing with a nuclear armed north korea united arab emirates and it's one twenty three agreement has a clause at the very end of the green it on equal terms and conditions that could open the door to the u s the engaging in the processing or uranium enrichment a future depending on what other countries in the middle east do especially jordan i was just in jordan to two months ago and found out their plans global stockpiles of civilian plutonium are growing at about two hundred fifty metric tons of quibbling to tens of thousands of clear bombs are comparable to the global stockpile of military persona and more than one thousand metric tons of all tony m is contain and spent nuclear fuel in about thirty countries the types reprocessing that were examined under the global nuclear energy partnership or gene up do not appear to offer substantial clip for a show which has been benefits according to research sponsored by the department of energy moreover the daily assessment points out that these techniques pose additional safeguards challenges for example it is difficult to do an accurate accounting the amount of all tony and a bulk handling or processing facility that produces bills hony a mix with other elements this challenge raises the probability of diversion impulse hony and by insiders however more research is needed to determine what additional safeguards could provide greater assurances that reprocessing methods are not misused in weapons programs and whether it is possible to have assurances of timely detection of a diversion of a significant quantity pony and or other physical material time is on the side united states there is no need to rush toward deployment and development of recycling of spent nuclear fuel based on the forseeable price for uranium and uranium enrichment services and the known reserves of uranium this practice is presently far more expensive than the once through uranium fuel cycle nonetheless more research is needed to determine the cost and benefits of recycling techniques coupled with fast neutron reactors or other types of reactor technologies this cost vs benefit analysis would concentrate on the cape a bill these technologies to help alleviate the nuclear waste management challenge in related research there is a need to better understand the safeguards challenges and the use of fast reactors such reactors are dual use in a sense that they can burn transuranic material or can breed new plutonium in the former operation they could provide a needed nuclear waste management benefit but they are expensive and the latter operation they can pose a serious simple it for ration threat because they obviously breed more plutonium concerning lessons united states can learn from other countries nuclear waste management experience the first lesson is that a fair political and sound scientific process is essential for selecting a permanent repository the second lesson is that reprocessing is currently practiced is not substantial levy reserves of uranium it's believed based on current demand we have probably another eighty years worth of supply maybe much greater than that the mit study that was just updated a few weeks ago makes this one of their major recommendations thank thank you there were lots of good points made in the survey the viable you're running really is something we should try to do well first let me think the waitress is for speaking in english i was a little concerned that some of us wouldn't understand what you're talking about but you dumb it down for us and i thank you for that i'd like to also ask if you would submit to the committee your suggestions for a and r and b roadmap know it was somewhat mentioned but i would like you know what what what we should be recommending to department of energy and while you're doing that what you think should be the federal row versus the private row and before i get into my question that i posed earlier i would like to not start a fist fight but i would like to see whether there's anyone who disagrees with dr han s you know very specific statement that there is no such thing or will be no such thing as a proliferation proof reprocessing does anyone disagree with that i guess what i would say to put it in context is the question and i think dr ferguson touched on it is how you safeguard the treatment of plutonium through the process and i would submit that the study include reactor with the electr article processing doesn't separate play tony and all of all of the transuranics are burned in the reactor and that's one way to help safeguard now a statement an absolute statement that there is absolutely no chance maybe an impossible standard but it is not the type of concern if you will if the plutonium is not separated out on its sound and there are other methods where in fact is consumed without that separation teacher yes mr chairman very briefly and i think it's four years gone two thousand and five merican physical side and dr allison are members a p s they published a study on safeguards challenges and they recommended we develop more to our indian safeguards and they clearly move forward with existing reprocessing technologies or should we wait and for that next generation and do we have the storage capacity to wait which statement i i don't think we should proceed with existing technologies and let me let me expand on why not why i think that the deal we program over the course of the last ten years has done a lot of analysis systems analysis i'll call it of the fuel cycle and thinking about whether we should go with recycling n l w r's or or or bypass that and go directly to say fast reactors and so we've looked at the options and in the end i'm going to tell you that we still need to continue to evaluate the options but as we've done that we've seen there is some benefit as alan alluded to with going to existing technologies and recycling in thermal reactors you get volume reduction and you do get reduction in and some of the radio talks of continuous the constituents as well as the heat generating rate in your clients but it's only part part of the way there and if you want to go to the full benefit you need to go to full closure of the fuel cycle and even the countries that are currently doing like france japan russia they are currently practicing  reprocessing using pure x like technologies and perhaps recycling in some reactors ultimately their plan is to go to fast reactors and full closure of the fuel cycle so the question really is on the table is do we leapfrog or do we take a more evolutionary path and i would put to you that because we have not currently put significant investment in the united states that that we should seriously consider the leap frog approach meaning that we develop the advanced technologies as we do that in the lab we've done a lot of that lab already do some additional science based work demonstrate those at a reasonable engineering scale and then go build them at the commercial scale one other point i make about storage  so there's the current spent fuel inventory is stored spread across multiple sites hundred twenty one sites thirty nine states have currently stored spent fuel at the reactor sites i won't get into whether it's better to have centralized storage or storage at different sites but it's safe and secure as it sits right now it's not a permanent solution so we need to move in a measured measured path i don't have much time left so is there anyone else who wants to address that i thought you probably would hansen and you know your microphone over forty years of research built into our existing processes and we have developed a future process we call being built around the world and are going to be built in the united states are called generation three plus they are evolutionary reactors i cannot find a single utility anywhere in the world that is prepared to leapfrog to a fast reactor today the situation is identical with recycling we have evolutionary technologies which we can use today and we need to research a lot more before we can do the leapfrog the problem with leaping is you don't know where you're going to land and instead of landing on the lily pad you may end up in the water and drown because your technology doesn't survive and i don't abuse my time so you want i guess i would echo dr peters comments first in the money that we would have to invest to build the infrastructure for reprocessing could be better spent working on the technology roadmap for developing the recycling the road map that we've developed in this has been developed in conjunction with many of the national labs would say that you could develop recycling over the course of fifteen to twenty years and there's programatic research that's laid out there one of the big advantages we haven't talked about but dr ferguson mentioned on the uranium supply balance is recycling for recycling allows you to extract about ninety percent of the available energy that's inherent in uranium and reduce the waste volumes by about ninety eight percent so not only are you having a better overall conservation with respect to an important natural resource you've also got a completely different characteristics that you can then consider any valuating your long term storage and so thank you thank you you know one of the unfortunate things about this format is that we don't get to go deeper in but we've had some roundtable and i think we'll probably have more these were where we can really talk so just in conclusion very quickly i want you to give me two numbers the first number is how long do you think that we can continue store existing locations with broadcast where we might be in the second is how long do you think it would take to get that next generation recycling dr peters two numbers will quickly across everybody can store till the end of the century if you want to but i would argue commercial by twenty fifty  can continue to store virtually indefinitely it's safe and secure and there are no restrictions on the ability to supply storage so that that is not a concern i'm talking about i like even onsite i wouldn't recommend doing that but nonetheless  more recently in about one thousand nine hundred three we began developing a sodium cooled reactor and it and it in fact continued with development with government funding through the advanced liquid metal reactor program that was funded through one nine hundred ninety five and so there in fact there have been quite quite a few developments in the fast reactor technology since the early one nine hundred fifty s when it was first introduced at the time at that time in between the one thousand nine hundred ninety five to two thousand and one timeframe the n r c actually reviewed conceptual design work for the advanced for the sodium cooled reactor and found that there were no significant safety concerns that would prevent moving ahead to taking the next step there's still quite a bit of research and development work and demonstration work to be done but we believe that the proof of concept is there and that in fact the reactor with a development path would be successful you also mentioned water moderated reactors that they're both functional not detrimental to the other  think about it is with the like the analogy to borrow from my testimony of oil and how do you extract all of the value in a barrel of oil a lot of the oil is going to be used to fund the gasoline engine but there's going to be some oil that's going to be used to make diesel for use in diesel cars and the question is which is better a gas an internal combustion engine or a diesel engine and the answer is they've got their own applicability and so there are going to be situations where they're very complementary to each other and they're not at all substitutes what i would say in the context of an overall nuclear balance is that the view of using a fast reactor to address the transuranics would require about a third of your nuclear installed base thirty percent of the megawatts that you would generate be a fast reactor and the balance of it be a light water reactor and that would be sort of the such a system that would be m balance all of the trains your antics and all of the waste product in or in the used fuel of then could be sent over to the fast reactor and then you would significantly greater fuel cost but doesn't seem quite to jibe with what you said what do you think about that statement or what is your reaction our experience in europe is that the additional cost for doing recycle approximates five to six percent of the costs of producing electricity it's not a large amount i don't think people have foregone i clean because of the cost issue you need to have a fairly significant sizable industry in order to justify doing recycling if you have a small situation with only a few reactors it's very hard to justify it and most countries are not going to be prepared to make the massive upfront investment in building a facility as long as they can provide a service from somebody else like a river or someday the united states are you suggesting that a river or someone else would provide this service in various parts of the world and all the waste would be shipped to those areas that is in fact what we are doing today we are doing recycling for japan for switzerland for belgium a number of other countries italy now and  we provide the service we either return the plutonium to them is as mox fuel or else we give it to another reactor and only the high level waste goes back to the country from which the fuel came a you encountering any problems for people who are objecting to plant being in the area or waste being trance transported through their particular country or their part of the country the only place where that has  presented a significant problem has been in germany where the step away from nuclear and the green party has made it a big issue and they have tried to impede transports but the transports are continuing as we speak mainly ask you a couple of questions and one has to do with a letter and i don't know if you're aware of it that was sent to president obama in december for about thirty five organizations from around this country raising serious concerns about  about both reprocessing and recycling and in particular they point to the reprocessing that's done in france the u k japan and russia two hundred fifty metric tons of separated  plutonium which they say is enough to make about thirty thousand nuclear weapons and according to a g a o report in two thousand and eight reprocessing irradiated fuel would pose a greater risk of proliferation in comparison with direct disposal in and a geologic repository and so i wonder if you have some of those same concerns and i understand that the council on foreign relations has a raised exactly that concern and yet dr hansen i think that you dismissed that as a proliferation both the proliferation concern and its security concern that question is directed to me i would like to go back to what i said in my testimony riva does not believe nor do i personally believe i don't think anybody this panel to believe that we ought to have reprocessing or recycling taking place in every country in the face of the earth this would not be a good thing to do however the proliferation risk if we do it in the united states is vanishingly small vanishingly small if we can protect all of the nuclear weapons and all the nuclear material we have in this country then we can easily protect the material that would be in commerce from doing recycling so i don't think it's a risk in the united states  lower joan made a statement to that nonproliferation conference she said there are only two countries in the world which would be prepared to export our technology one of them is the united states and the second one is china thank you and then to any of our other panelists so concerns have been raised by the union of concerned scientists with regard to reprocessing spent nuclear waste among them they cite an increased volume of radioactive race by of ways by a factor of seven significantly increased by more than a factor of six the volume of low level waste requiring disposal and a license low level waste facility and great facility that's currently as we know licensed to accept this ways and they also cite the reduce the reduction in the volume of high level waste requiring disposal in a deep geologic repository which we also don't have  less than twenty five percent and so i guess my question is is the investment that we're talking about literally hundreds of billions of dollars that would be required for reprocessing giving given the security questions given the lack of a geologic depository for the for the fuel is this really worth our investment or should we be making more investments and particularly in sources of energy that actually going to get it someplace else without the attendant costs and i'll just leave that open to the well i guess i first i would say it seems to me like we need to be investing in a lot of different or g s forces but it's to me nuclear is  escapable in terms of contribution to base load on say that first second as you well know to the comments by unit concerned scientist all the waste that they're referring to exist we have to deal with greater than classy low and high level waste already is there increase the high level waste volume reduction is actually a bit more significant than they say and i think alan to that in his testimony there is there would be an increase in the low level waste small increase and also probably a small increase in greater than class c but it's a tradeoff and i would argue when you put all this together and think about stain ability reducing the overall burden on high level waste which is the most toxic and all the other components particularly in a in a in an era where we're hoping nuclear will grow it makes sense to go to recycling because we're going to have to develop sites anyway the nice thing about recycling also is you can tailor the wa streams and perhaps look at different disposal settings for the different way streams which is much different than the way we think about the problem right now thank you my time's expired and i probably will have some clue what i think dr ferguson wants to probably thank states if we just keep that constant which i think all four of us well one point is that it's not a question about being against nuclear power all four of us on the panel are for nuclear energy and i think we all want to see it continue to grow so but let's assuming we have a roughly and fifty fast reactors how much are they gonna cost and they cost a lot more than a light water reactor what we really need to hear from the great if we had a fifth panelist from the utility company utility company and asked that person will they be willing to invest in a fast reactor we're having a hard enough time this country getting utilities invest in light water reactors to get the next generation of nuclear reactors being built in this country and here we are trying to and this may fit right in with the comments of our alternative reactors in terms of the traditional reactors that we've been dealing with in the fast reactors that you just mentioned but back to the letter that  i submitted for the record just for the sake of my colleagues it's a letter that i received from nicholai penrod five sorry about mispronouncing the name step off from the institute in moscow and i would like to read a portion of that letter at this time and then follow up with a couple questions that i have for the panel this is to address to meet your congressman it is time to upgrade the relations between the united states and russia particularly in the area of nuclear power it is time to move from a relationship where the u s provides technical assistance to russia to a real partnership for improving global energy and economic environment and nonproliferation i believe that the best developed and most fruitful area where the united states and russia can perform nuclear cooperation is in the joint development of a high temperature gas cool reactor the united states and russia must work together to not only bring the benefits of this reactor to both our countries but to ration resistant and secure type of reactor to other less developed countries who are moving quickly to harness the benefits of nuclear energy in this way we can make great progress and non proliferation economic development without harming our environment and let me just note that twenty years ago one would think that i was reading a letter about cooperation with russia in this area i'd tell you you're nuts but but the fact is i think today some of the greatest out of the most important avenue we have to succeed and some of the issues that are being discussed here today is our cooperation with other countries in particular with the former soviet union with russia who is reaching out to us for this type of cooperation now with that said the letter mentions the height temperature gas cool reactor i'd like to ask the panel if that is a technology that would significantly reduce the racist that has to be dealt with in the recycling and reprocessing s russia cooperation and just to briefly plug something i recently directed a council on foreign relations task force report on nuclear weapons policy chaired by brant scowcroft and bill perry and i was a project director we just published a couple of weeks ago we have major recommendation on there that we need greater cooperation with russia on peaceful nuclear energy and the particular point you make about the high temperature gas reactors things an important one the department or g itself has looked at these reactors not enough in my opinion but what they've seen is that there are some benefits to be derived from them maybe not a huge benefit in terms of waste reduction but one benefit is that they're more efficient that you can get a lot more electrical energy produced for them out of your produce from nuclear fission if we had to do it all over again you know go back fifty years in the past one hundred fifty s and we started commercial nuclear power probably been a little bit of a wise decision to have a stronger development of these type reactors right now the light water reactors are getting about a third of a fission c so we're wasting about two thirds of the energy with the h d g r you can get about forty five percent or so efficiency out of these so that's one thing that's a lot more  if it provides those kind of benefits and the other reaction from the panel let me let me say so the high temperature gas reactor is one of the concepts as dr ferguson allude to that's part of gen for international forum so we are we are looking at it general tomic which is us based company has been thinking a lot about the high temperature gas reactor and so there is a lot of thinking about it as far as international cooperation i can agree more especially in r and d one one last note before we have the person the scientist who wrote me that letter from russia with us today and his name is nick nick and i wonder if we could just say hello all right thank you very much for indulging me mr chairman  pleased today that we're here today talking about this because as the debate continues about the future of energy generation in our country and the role the nuclear power has it's critical that we as a nation invest in the necessary research and development to talk about the waste to talk about what needs to be done we spent fuel and how we can break it down how we as a nation have fallen behind other nations and how simply sticking it in the ground without attempting to break it down or attempting to solve this problem  is less ignorance and i'm really happy that we're here today to talk about this and mr chairman to really be excited about the fact that in the charter in the hearing try to say that there is widespread agreement that a more robust long term research and development program is needed to address these outstanding issues and to truly look to see how we can focus a lot of our energy and investment leaning upon the expertise that we have around the country around the world to help excel or eat this and to have a distinguished panel is that we have today that have expertise in each of these areas is something that that's really important to me mr chairman i'd be anxious to hear from mr price do you think that the way that we're handling waste today is  or can we be doing it better well i think in terms of the way the utilities handle it today it's very safely stored and appropriately stored in the utility sites either in pools or in dry cask storage and so now i think we all four agreed that there were there is sufficient and sufficient ability to store it at the utility sites today does that mean that we need to not look ahead to the fact that we really do need to have some sort of repository in the nature of that repository in the size and the characteristics of it are dependent upon what solution we choose for managing the waste so today are we find yes can new can new plants to be built with sufficient capacity on their sites to be able to handle this the u s nuclear fuel when it comes out of the reactors yes but we do need to be looking ahead to a long term solution that's going to help us address and really maximize the value of what is an asset that we have and use nuclear fuel prices utilizing a repository simply it less expensive than recycling it's not clear that it's going to be less expensive in the long run because the characteristics of the repository could be quite different if you have to if you have to isolate the fuel for hundreds of thousands of years you have different considerations than if you have to isolate it for thousands or hundreds of years and so if you can i say if you can isolate and store the fuel for hundreds of years and then have the heat reduction the radio taxes to be reduced to a level where it's not no longer considered high level waste then you've got different characteristics and you might be able to utilize the repository in a different fashion so the cost of the repository and the management of that over the long run compared to the call just for the recycling program is something that needs to be evaluated then why are we recycling today and we're just talking about storing it recycling is one of those things that is as far as i know from a history standpoint was not considered we didn't move ahead with that in sort of the late seventy's early eighty's could the argument be made that it's cheaper less expensive to store in a facility like amount as opposed to engaging in the necessary means to be able to invest in the technology to adequately break down and to be able to utilize a recycle spent fuel or waste my last comment i'll turn it over to my colleagues on the panel i would say that that wasn't the decision that drove storing it on site and a repository solution versus recycling opportunities that was driven by other factors including proliferation concerns and risk at the time and i think this is the time to look at if we're going to move ahead with the nuclear renaissance we need to have an all enclosed fuel cycle opportunity that really allows us to safely manage nuclear fuel in a you know in a more safe more secure way going forward thank you and if i could mr dr ferguson you mentioned the mit study that's taken into consideration how much uranium is out there in the inventories are you aware of the  big environmental concern with people and mr chairman the reason i bring that question up is as we look towards the debate about how the role nuclear energy will have in the future of our nation's energy needs that we not forget about many of the abandon uranium mines around the country at current count over five hundred in the navajo nation alone they need to be addressed as we talk about this as well and so as we about the importance of recycling in r and d to being able to break down waste that we not forget about some of the responsibilities that we have also with some of the abandoned mines and the people that are being impacted today there's been a hundred thirteen structures that are in process of being demolished twenty seven radiation contaminated structures and ten residential yards where people are living in these contaminated areas and i think that we need to make sure we talk about that at some point as well thank you very much mr chairman for this important hearing thank you for bringing that up i'd again i think one of the things we've learned today is that we do need to have that type of survey we need to be revealing things you just talked about and we will have you know this is this this this kind of discussion is not off limits to this committee and there again there are there are hard questions that need to be asked to and here and the first month that i was here i got a call that the president had cut twenty million dollars from the electoral metallurgical program at argonne i didn't even know how to pronounce it at the time but i was very concerned and worked to get that money back so this is how long at least when i've been here that we really have been working on reprice reprocessing and now we're talking recycling but it's very frustrating i think that we really haven't moved the goal posts very far and in fact with there were six we read processing plants that were built in this country and then more and one opened and then the rest were shut down without even opening by then president carter and still we sit you know waiting for something to happen and i know dr peters you said that you don't think that it's really urgent that we move ahead right now but i'm really i am frustrated that we are not making the process enough progress and particularly if we're going to face something like cap and trade and you know all the things that we're going to have to do because of the carbon you know because the carbon issue and i think that's very important but i think that that nuclear really has to be at the forefront of moving ahead if we're going to be able to have reduced the carbon in this country and and reprocessing recycling i guess calling it recycling now is so important but we have to move ahead peters what are what are the research aspects of jena and the advance fuel cycle initiative which of those or what aspects of those should be continued so we has been going on for for a decade or more there is there also needs to continue to be work on advanced fuels developing advanced fuels for ultimately research for ultimate recycling there needs to be work on waste management the waste management aspects of the problem so other concepts say in addition to say yucca mountain positive thinking about certain streams going down boreholes versus salt disposal forces alternative disposal concepts all this has to be brought together through and but the component that we need to add to it is the demonstration component and that gets back to needing to think very carefully over the long term about the r and d needs for the science and engineering at the lab scale but thinking about ultimately going to demonstration that need to be laid out  i think the problem that we had with the g nap was that there was some want to move right from the research and development to the commercialization rather than doing the demonstration or the systems analysis but how long is this going to take and dr hansen you've talked about and i've been been to france to see see what you do there and it seems like they're moving and everyone talks about the proliferation and yet i think we were so worried about that thirty years ago and yet most of the events fortunately most the countries that we worried about already have some capabilities in that area so we need to to move ahead faster to find you know maybe something resistant but at least to to go forward on our own with with our development and in your i guess the  are discussions ongoing with three or four u s utilities have a strong interest in purchasing that material for their reactors do you think we're moving fast enough for development of no absolutely not sitting now on sixty thousand metric tons of spent fuel we are discharging two thousand every single year and that's before we build any new reactors if it takes us twenty years to start up recycling we will have one hundred thousand metric tons of fuel in storage the largest plant in the world which we operate in france reprocesses and recycles about seven hundred metric tons a year that means if we replicated that plan in the united states of take sixty years just to get rid of the inventory without touching the materials being discharged i think we have waited too long i think we need to start as soon as we can while continuing on advance technologies to do it even more efficiently and i applaud the committee's support of the sci program in that regard i think that's very very important but i don't think we can wait for revolutionary changes which may never actually come to fruition thank you need to go on one level lower for the technological part of it but in terms of our i state for the record that i'm a proponent of nuclear energy as one of the alternatives supplies that we need in order to move forward  so i'm very much and interested in lightened by what you have said when i was able to grasp from it perhaps my comment would be that we i think we all you all said that the recognizable problems are  nonproliferation cost and waste and those are things that would have to be considered no matter what course of action we took as i understood you dr peter said fastrack the advanced fuel  program dr hansen said recycle and bring it home and if i understood correctly dr price said we could be doing both did you say it's possible to create a situation in which  seventy percent is based on recycling and thirty percent then uses the recycled or did i misunderstand you on that i'd like to clarify that all but dr hansen and i advocate different ways to handle these nuclear fuel  the technique he uses and reprocessing does extract some of the incremental energy and burns plutonium the technology that i'm advocating actually burns up all of the high heat bearing constituents in the us nuclear fuel and so it's a different technology i do think we should continue to do research as dr peter suggests focused on the recycling side of things because i think we can drive that and have a better all in solution in the back and thank you  i think that was clarified but i appreciate it very much so dr peters if you are recommending that the united states advance fuel cycle program develop a road map in your opinion what's the reasonable timetable in the budget for the development of that road map and other words where should we be going now and would you agree that continuing the recycling while working on the advanced is is a good parallel track so so first on the road map to cost estimate on the fly here i'm not speaking for the department but we wouldn't reinvent the wheel there's been a tremendous amount of work done already that's the first thing so so i'm thinking i'm  g a group of lab university and industry people getting together over the course of the next six six months to a year to put together i think a very robust roadmap and it would not be it would not break the bank it would be you know a few million dollars kind of thing because we've thought about this very deeply i think we just need to come together and lay out lay out lay out the right path forward your your other question should we do what i was trying to i think you articulated my position correctly when you in your introductory remarks i think we should continue the event fuel cycle program but i would argue for a bump in the investment once we have the right the right roadmap and go for it and i think the outcome of that roadmap  nuclear industry i have never seen a leapfrog that was successful in this industry i started in the fast reactor world when i got out of school and it was just around the corner we were going to be turning down fast reactors and they were going to replace light water reactors fast reactors a little like fusion it's always twenty thirty years into the into the future and it just keeps on receding there i would like to have the optimism that dr price has with regard to fast reactors but my own experience is that that they are not yet proven to be commercially acceptable we're only having a nuclear renaissance because the utilities have driven capacity factors up in excess of ninety percent  running the plants very efficiently there is not a single fast reactor anywhere in the world even achieved a fifty percent capacity factor there is a lot of proof of principle that which needs to be done before any utility will purchase a fast reactor so if we're talking about leap rate what you said about the utilities needing to be at the table absolutely and i think on the fast reactor question i think the narrowed down a specific question of relevance to your committee is what is the role of the u s government should you be putting money in developing a demonstration project for a fast reactor and it's been a big debate in a related area that's a demo project carbon capture and storage from coal fired plants we've been back and forth on this and it looks like secretary chu is now willing to put about a billion dollars toward that my opinion is to step in the right direction and so the question comes to i think dr hansen as framing it as an interesting way we look at france we look at japan even look at russia and we look at india the few countries that have some experience in fast reactors and i was in france just two months ago spent a week there touring and what visit the phoenix reactor site they're shutting it down this year i talk to the directory it's very sad man because they're shutting it down all the time and it's the you know uncertain when france is even going to get the next fast reactor built maybe twenty twenty or beyond so that's part of the door to really fully close the fuel cycle that's what ms price is saying basically have two choices here you would have the choice of the french are doing now which is a wants through recycle and they're storing the mox spent nuclear fuel hog so they still have to pay for those storage costs and they're the view is that they're going to eventually mine that plutonium and that spent fuel defeat fast reactors in the future but we don't know if these fast reactors are going to work and not there economically feasible so maybe it does make sense to put some federal money into one demonstration project and see if this works or not thank you dr orders and i think it's cause your questions certainly demonstrate that we need dig more  and i just want to say that i appreciate the fact that you've been brave enough that to openly discuss these issues political orthodoxy basically says there's a lot of discussion that this committee's been doing that shouldn't be done if you want to you know the a political might and in american politics and i know but the just having this discussion really i think does credit to this committee and shows how essential this committee is to just congress but this nation and so i just really want to congratulate you on that because the fact is that when it comes to anything new we have seen prejudice and ignorance stand in the way of science and it's just as much as history has damn people in the past for allowing their prejudices and their their phobias to stand in the way of intellectual decision and discussion i think that time is going to show that you lead the charge on opening the door pulling the curtain back and being frankly looking at the facts rather than misperceptions of the past so if you missed your time is extended another topic i think is going nuclear not a meltdown look my question is one of the things that i will get into this one of the great obstructions working at first of all i totally agree that we ought to be looking not at the supposal but it's storage based on either short term or long term reprocessing in some way we can talk about that but let's be frank about it one of the great oppositions to yucca mountain jack was not based on on site locations issues it was based on transport now how in the world will we be able to face the political heat and i know you're probably the wrong ones but just your comments about the issue that we need to address the issue of transport especially ones kind of interesting because from the military point of view there's a lot of related issues that don't seem to be standing in the way of our of the united states government doing what it needs to be able to take care of the so in france they are transporting patani i'm several hundred miles from the hog reprocessing facility in normandy down to the maalox facility in the south of france and i haven't had any security incident that i'm aware of and i've been doing this for many years so so far so good but it only takes one incident there you know transporting several bombs worth of full tony and shipment so it's not the political threat in countries like france it's not that france would then use that commercial program to make its own nuclear weapons it's that insiders might be able to sneak out some quantities of that material as i point out my testimony only one tenth of one percent of the material going through  callan facility annually could be enough to make a nuclear bomb now you pointed out the u s military i used to be in the u s military and it was in the u s nuclear navy we have a very good safety record but we had a problem a couple years ago in the u s air force there was a pen spear incident in which some nuclear armed cruise missiles were unaccounted for for thirty six hours there was an insider threat there it was really just a really bad mistake of accountability but it does point out that even in organizations with high security standards things can go missing there is an opportunity for diversion it's it's as you noted it's not technical issue per se the technolog exists we do it safely and securely now domestically it's all about public trust and confidence and that's that's it's a social science issue that if there's science in it and so it's about communication and people understanding that the risks and what not at a level that they that they can understand and also talking them very carefully about what the plans are and making it very transparent and that that's something that needs to be done i mean we've had success in the united states with shipments to the way site selection pilot plant for in new mexico i'd say in general the transportation program there has been has been as has gone very well so we have some experience domestically but it would be a long process of developing true public trust and confidence  i would just like to echo what mark peters has just said the we have transported tens of thousands of casts of use fuel to to our facilities in france without any incident the containers which are used for all practical purposes indestructible there is a need to get public acceptance and that is a social science issue not a technology issue i think we've had a phobia in this regard for many many years and we need to get over that for you because we have to eventually move the material somewhere well my time is expired but i just want to say i think that maybe maybe i am suspicious of intention here but the was almost probably gated by people based on the fact that they saw it as a way to destroying an energy source based on misperception and they used as an excuse for an agenda that wasn't upfront and fell thank you very much mr chairman and again thank you for holding th hearing i hope to see us continue this there may be one committee that wants to handle only the pieces of legislation that are marked h r that may not want to address the nuclear power issue but i'm glad to see that we've been able to reserve this most because they've been been willing to avoid it and i hope that we you continue your leadership on the issue thank you thank you mr bilbray and dr hansen if you want to confirm the under strict ability of those cas alone you my daughter echo what congressman bilbray just said about you and how open you are and how good you are to all of us even if even though i can't remember where mr bilbray called me because it hurt my feelings so much what were you all those words about people like me that absolutely did not support nuclear energy and it isn't because it's not decent energy it's because of human error and and our lack of being able to handle waste and and have a place for a for waste and transporting and you know it's it's a good energy in till it isn't and then look what we've got we've got another here sima we have hiroshima i know we can i absolutely believe we should be using the same amount of millions of dollars for and other kinds of energy research until i don't think it'll ever be safe enough and i would and i just want to be upfront with that and i don't i would you know there solar there is when there's way there's geothermal there's all kinds of things we haven't even thought about because we're putting millions and billions of dollars into something that people really don't want to have in their neighborhood so when we have gone on and on about yucca mountain imagine dr hansen if we tried to build a recycling plant in the united states of america to handle all of all of the nuclear waste for the world worldwide i mean i can imagine trying to get through that argument and maybe twenty thirty forty fifty years from now but i don't think that could happen now maybe some other country maybe we could convince some poor country to take our waste and hamlet you know on some some island where we could just turn our backs on it which i wouldn't support at all but i i'm not trying to i mean i know i'm not going to convince you you're not going to convince me this is very good because i learn what all of you folks think is so important and why it's ok to invest and doing all of this when indeed we could have quite an accident here in the united states of america and that's why we don't have new nuclear sites and how long's it been since we've got a new nuclear plant in the united states yes dr nineteen ninety six was bar you know one was the last plant really come operetta south carolina tennessee tennessee all of the tiare t v s so about it that was the plan was ordered back in alabama actually but oh well from against these plants that you're having to surmount well i think it really boils down to the economics i mean there has been some public opposition but if you look at the communities where nuclear power is being generated they tend to be overwhelmingly supportive of nuclear power plants for jobs and the plants have gone become very safe compared to where we were three mile island i grew up in pennsylvania and not too far from where the accident happens our members what happened there thirty years ago and i have mentioned to congressman bilbray i was in the u s nuclear navy so i know what safety program is like that meets high standards of excellence what happened immediately after three mile island was the for nuclear power operations it's been a self policing organization that has been an industry watchdog that doesn't mean we don't need a nuclear regulatory commission we do we need a strong independent regulator but has serve an important purpose in keeping the industry accountable and in a way kind of shaming them in doing peer reviews and making sure that there are living up to high standards not we have enough problems if you look at a plant we in ohio a few years ago davis bessie there was  commission has seventeen combined construction operating license that they're in the process of evaluating right now that could lead up to twenty six new units so right now the what they're saying is there could be new plants online by twenty fifteen twenty sixteen so they are moving forward it's a lot of it's about the economics and for the same amount of investment there are not safer ways to provide energy in the united states first of all so i probably can't give you a clear answer to that but i'll say right now is that we should be investing in all the things that you're talking about but they just aren't cost competitive more importantly it's the reliability and the ability to produce a lot of electricity that you don't get from some things like solar and wind yet yet if i may i'd like to correct one thing in your statement the there is no energy technology is risk free that is certainly true and nuclear has some unique hazards associated with it but it has been has a very very high safety record worldwide there is no conceivable accident in the civilian nuclear power cycle that can anywhere near the consequences of her oshima that is physically impossible you mentioned who would want it during the jean up studies fifteen communities raise their hand and said we want to study putting a recycling facility in our community because of the economic benefits it would be that would come with it finally just  to make the case for the fact that there was no such thing as a perfectly safe industry the wind into the industry is growing by the way we make windmills too but when the women industry is growing pretty fast in the u k and there's a very interesting company there that's making windmills and they are keeping track of the deaths caused by wind mills which at last count had reached forty one worldwide and we haven't killed that many people with the nuclear industry in over fifty years of operation thank you dr hansen and missiles we need you chernobyl is was a bad example with a bad reactor with no containment and poorly operated the direct consequences in terms of death was exactly thirty one thank you and mr hall is recognized for five minutes country well as in the u s navy right i don't know it's exactly what the reactor or jeb bush right ok ronald reagan yes or how many nuclear power units who in the last thirty years have been the only purchasers of nuclear power in this country well that brings well the u s navy and brings up a very important point about our workforce and part of the work on doing a council for relations is analyzing the nuclear workforce in the shortages we have  is very rapidly and the fact is not only has the federal government continue to purchase and invest in nuclear power as its as its preferred source for large craft but it also places it in the middle of high urban areas like san diego bay where you have multiple multiple nuclear reactors right in the urban core right that's correct and it's also the submarine reactors the design to go very deep i can't tell you how deep that's classified but very deep and still operate very effectively as chairman thank you very much i just want to point out how safe it was time for me to reclaim a time and i ok let me use my time dr ferguson real quick answer from me on this if you would you talked about first reactors in your testimony  it's a political opposition to super phoenix was the big fast reactor shut doubt down in the mid one nine hundred ninety s mainly for political reasons but they were also having problems i think one of one of the panelists mentioned or maybe one of the congressm mentioned about fast reactors the history of fast reactors we haven't really had a fast reactor ever operate even at fifty percent power capacity so it's still on proven technology phoenixville was designed to be a prototype to be a test the current processing technologies electromagnetic separation an advanced instrumentation give us a little explanation not that you make me understand it but we'd have it on record you can deal with it in a number of ways one is by discharging them to the atmosphere as long as you stay within regulatory limits and the other thing that you can do is capture package and dispose of them we haven't done much research  that capture and control the basically it's like carbon sequestration we haven't done it because we haven't needed to do it but if we're going to locate a recycling facility in united states i think we're going to have to meet some very strict limitations on the discharges and so we need to research in that particular area we've already talked about research on electro metal a lot of metallurgical separations that should continue in advance of the fast reactors with regard to the safeguards  there's no doubt that you have to have safeguards and security associated with these types of facilities in order to do that you have to have very very sophisticated instrumentation to him to measure the flows of material and to make sure that material is not surreptitiously removed from the facilities there's a lot that can be done in this particular area and i think we could learn a lot from what the u s military has done and the national labs in order to make the next generation facility that's built  witnesses a fascinating topic if i applaud you and praise you mr chairman can have an extra six minutes it is a worthwhile hearing and we're grateful for your expertise i want to talk a little bit about that in the mix you know we do have a difficult choices before us i happen to be absolutely convinced that the evidence is clear that the climate is changing that earth is overheating and that the oceans are becoming a satisfied so reducing c o two output makes a lot of sense on the other hand it's not just nukes or c o two there are a host of other technologies there's a large carbon cost of that so talk a little bit about that but also talk to us a little bit about subsidies what when we talk about the relative economics of nukes versus alternatives what kind of subsidies government subsidies go into the nuclear industry from front to back including insurance including waste reprocessing etc and on the research side can you share that with us if i may i will try and address your first question leave the second one to the to the panel you're absolutely right when you are trying to compare technologies you need to look at life cycle carbon footprints and not just the emissions from the facility the nuclear power plants basically r s zero emission plants there is a carbon footprint associated with enrichment of building the plant and doing the mining however it is very small if you look at the carbon footprint of the available technologies to produce electricity what you'll find is the lowest carbon footprint is nuclear and when they are five you need to look at these things there are some very good studies that have been done by in the u k and in the international community to make a comparison and i would submit that that nuclear energy is very very carbon friendly let's talk a little bit about subsidies so maybe i'll speak to the r and d part perhaps is the best place for action star so in the past there was significant investment in r and d in the in the old energy two points i'd like to make is that how many nuclear power plants we need to build to really take a further bite out of climate change if you look at a study from two thousand and four done at the princeton researchers d seven wedges how many nuclear power plants would you need to have on line that mid century you would need to have the equivalent of about a thousand one thousand megawatt electric power reactors online by that mid century right number actor's roughly four hundred and build about another six hundred in addition now i know reva is building the p r which is about a six hundred megawatt electric plant so but the ballpark figure is you have to build one new one thousand to come online every two weeks between now and mid century to have a further reduction a significant reduction in greenhouse gases from nuclear power it's a very it's not impossible to do it that's very challenging the last time we came close t world was and early one nine hundred eighty s when france and japan were building nuclear reactors rapidly so i just want to put that out there and then terms of subsidies the question of can we learn from other countries experience that mentioned i've been studying the french experience is the french model applicable to us well they have very central government control the french government owns array of us they have a controlling stake in river they own electricity to france we don't have that kind of situation united states the french government was able to offer a loan structure to allow france to build now about fifty eight nuclear reactors are now operating we've one hundred four reactors operate more in france but there is a proportional use the french are ahead of us about eighty percent to twenty percent so the question is does it make sense for us whether the opportunity costs for us and giving the nuclear industry here in united states which is a relatively mature industry billions of dollars or maybe even hundreds of billion dollars worth of loans to further stimulate nuclear power expansion in my main point would be that that cost needs to be factored into the per kilowatt hour per megawatt hour cost the subsidies we say one technology superior to another on a cost perspective there whosis subsidies it should auto factor into that you're right i would have should be in the business of picking winners and losers two years ago a published report said that if you want to be support of nuclear power you need to get the carbon pricing right either through a carbon tax or cap and trade so at the right price nuclear be an equal playing field with coal and natural gas if you take a look at the price of commodities in the market today what you would see is that nuclear with its subsidies and wind and solar with their subsidies and even with natural gas in the three to four dollar range where it's been in the eight to ten dollar range nuclear is straight up competitive with natural gas and if you put a carbon tax on it then it's more attractive and it's more attractive the one in solar including the subsidies that they currently have today it is a grave shame that some of our colleagues are not here to have heard those prior statements will pay and so unless projects default the net cash flow will be to the government and not from the government coming from the state with website with a little bit cautious about that last a yes no doubt thank you dr barrett as usual very good negative the extra analogies negative externalities associated with some of these fuels that are the incumbent fuels suddenly technology takes off and we start doing exciting things is a very clean nuclear  power with no emissions and it's very very exciting so dr hansen i think i'm right about this i'm not sure so it's dangerous to ask questions if you don't know but our colleague or former colleague  from ohio used to tell me all the time that dave hops and used to be critical of the mox process as i recall and can you tell me what the his objection as i recall was fit what we're doing it's an oversight he says he charges was old technology and we should be moving on to new technology i'm wondering what your reaction to that  concept of recycle he was not supportive of the mox project in south carolina for a number of reasons in particular he was very skeptical of the fact that the russians would do their share which was to demilitarize at the same pace that we were doing it and as the russians slowed down he became skeptical of the whole program however we have very important nonproliferation concerns and obligations under the n p t we need to start destroying military plutonium and that facility is going to do it i never heard any criticism from him with regard to the technology i did hear a lot of criticism of the department of energy and its seeming inability to control and bring projects to completion price he said is it your understanding that what they've hobson's objection was if you remember  i'm sorry i don't know what his objections might is what i heard him say dr hansen i think is that he didn't like the technology sought that it was old he said anybody want to comment about whether it is old or is in fact it's  state of the art and i never heard him make that comment but i would say that back to what the russians are doing so what the russians have have considered doing is actually taking care of the p e o in a fast track or as opposed to going to mo thermal recycle so and this i mean opportunity fast reactor discussion by the panel i encourage the committee to look more deeply into fast reactor experience because there is a schizo extensive experience  in the us and worldwide and there are there's currently demonstration fast reactors being constructed in other countries so i wouldn't want to say that they it's not an unproven technology so i think it would it would behoove us to look at that much more carefully before we just dismiss it as an unproven technology i think it needs to be developed further is your quick explanation of that technology and how does it work with its well there's different ways of cooling it as opposed to being moderated by water it's moderated by perhaps liquid metal with letter liquid sodium and the difference is the neutral how fast neutrons travel inside the core so instead of building up a lot of isotopes higher than uranium you can actually configure the core such that you can burn it down so it's  mox for addressing plutonium if you did bring the plutonium and if you do use the plutonium in a mox context you still end up with spent nuclear fuel on the back and that you actually have to then turn around and handle if you burn it in a fast reactor you're actually consuming the plutonium and so that's the basis i would assume that he would say look there are technologies that can more completely consume it and reduce the waste that you've got to deal with on the back end to that for you know i've been to japan i was there a couple years ago visited m fast reactor site they had an accident on this secondary non nuclear side of their fast reactor they used liquid sodium for the coolant and the properties so do remember your high school chemistry class where you take some sodium and you strip of it you put it in some water what happens it goes like cray catches on fire so they had a sodium fire at that facility and the japanese are being very cautious in bringing that facility back up again they've had some public opposition about that fast reactor trying to educate the public to about trying to re operate that reactor so that's japan's experience i mentioned france's experience earlier it's a mr hall but it's a mixed record i think you know dr peters making a good point here we need to take a fresh look at fast reactor technology in this price also makes a good point it can offer some significant benefits if it's economically effective if we can handle some of the safety issues we want to continue this dialogue we thank you for that and the record remain open for two weeks for additional statements from members for answers to any follow up questions the committee may ask of witnesses the witnesses are excused