WASHINGTON - The Bush administration's plan to recycle spent nuclear fuel could thwart recruitment efforts by terrorist groups in poor countries by providing impoverished nations with affordable electricity supplies that would improve their economies and the lives of their citizens, US Energy Secretary Sam Bodman said on Monday.
The administration has asked Congress for $250 million in the Energy Department's 2007 budget to develop technology for reprocessing the thousands of tons of spent nuclear fuel stored at US nuclear power plants, which could be supplied to countries as fuel for their new power reactors that would generate electricity.
Bodman said the administration's nuclear recycling plan could particularly help underdeveloped nations, which have "frequently served as safe havens for terrorists and other fanatics," such as the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and Osama bin Laden's initial home base in Sudan.
"Even if we are able to quickly and resoundingly defeat the terrorist threat we currently face, we will still be confronted with the desperate, grinding poverty that grips so much of the world," Bodman said in a speech to the Platt's nuclear energy conference.
He said if these underdeveloped nations are to build thriving economies and achieve lasting prosperity, they will need access to reliable energy supplies, especially electricity, which could be met with the proposed nuclear fuel recycling program.
"We can abandon the world's underdeveloped nations to poverty and squalor, and stand by while they struggle to meet their growing energy needs with fossil fuels. Or we can work in cooperation with other nuclear fuel-cycle states to provide these nations with commercially attractive, safe and proliferation-resistant sources of nuclear energy," Bodman said.
Reprocessing spent nuclear fuel was abandoned by the United States decades ago because it was too expensive and there was fear extremist groups or rogue nations could gain access to the plutonium and make nuclear bombs.
However, the administration wants to use new technology so the plutonium in the recycled fuel would remain bound with other highly radioactive materials, making it less useful for nuclear weapons and reducing security concerns.
Reprocessing separates uranium and plutonium from spent fuel so the elements could be used further.
President Jimmy Carter banned reprocessing because of concerns it could spread nuclear weapons. President Ronald Reagan lifted the ban and President Bill Clinton reinstated it.
Story by Tom Doggett
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
