I gave the following speech this morning (Monday, Nov. 16) at the 2009 Winter Meeting of the American Nuclear Society.  Senator James Webb, who is co-sponsoring a nuclear bill with me, also made seconding remarks.

Sen. Webb and I are here today to propose that the United States build its clean energy future upon the lessons of the Manhattan Project that helped to end World War II,  a millions-of-man-hour effort that the New York Times called “ . . .without doubt the most concentrated intellectual effort in history.”  Specifically, we will introduce legislation today to create the business and regulatory environment to double our country’s nuclear power production within 20 years and to launch five Mini-Manhattan projects to make advanced clean energy technologies effective and cost-competitive.

In 1942 President Franklin D. Roosevelt asked Sen. Kenneth McKellar, the Tennessean who chaired the Appropriations Committee, to hide $2 billion in an appropriations bill for a secret project to win World War II.

Sen. McKellar replied, “That should be no problem, Mr. President.  I have just one question: where in Tennessee do you want me to hide it?”

That place in Tennessee turned out to be Oak Ridge, one of three secret cities that became the principal sites for the Manhattan Project that split the atom and built a bomb before Germany could.   Nearly 200,000 people worked on the project in 30 different sites in three countries.  President Roosevelt’s $2 billion appropriation would be $24 Billion today. 

After that war, in 1947,  Admiral Hyman Rickover came to Oak Ridge for training that led to the nuclear navy that has helped defend our country for a half century.  Shortly thereafter, in December, 1953 President Eisenhower proposed his atoms for peace program that has grown into the world’s most effective supplier of large amounts, of reliable, carbon free, low-cost electricity.

The rest of the world has a new interest this American success story as countries seek energy independence, clean air, cheap energy for job creation as well as carbon free energy to deal with global warming.  The Chinese are starting a new nuclear power plant every two to three months. The Japanese obtain a third of their power from nuclear plants and build new reactors from start-to-finish in less than four years.  France gets eighty percent of its electricity from nuclear power and, as a result, has among the lowest electric rates and carbon emissions in Western Europe.  Russia plans to double its nuclear power capacity.  The United Arab Emirates is planning three new reactors by 2020.  And just last week, the United Kingdom announced it will build ten.

Yet, the country that invented this remarkable technology---The United States--- hasn’t started a new nuclear power plant in 30 years even though we still get 70 percent of our carbon-free electricity and 19 percent of all our electricity from 104 reactors built mostly between 1970 and 1990.  

It is true that there are other promising forms of low-carbon and carbon free renewable energy but the stark reality is that there is a huge gap between this renewable electricity we would like to have and the reliable, low-cost electricity a country that uses 25 percent of all the energy in the world has to have.  Today, despite heavy subsidies, wind, solar, geothermal and biomass renewable energy produce only 3 percent of all U.S. electricity.

The Energy Information Administration forecasts a 22 percent increase in U.S. electricity demand during the next 20 years.  For that much electricity our country simply can’t rely solely on conservation, windmills and solar panels or even natural gas.  We are fortunate to have new massive natural gas discoveries in the U.S.  But a natural gas power plant still produces about half as much carbon as a new coal plant, and if too many natural gas plants are built, today’s low prices may mean high prices tomorrow for farmers, homeowners and manufacturers.   

A recent Nature Conservancy scientific paper warns of a coming renewable energy sprawl, especially from biofuels, biomass and wind turbines, that would consume an area the size of West Virginia.  A biomass plant, for example, that would produce as much electricity as one nuclear reactor on one square mile would require continuously foresting an area one and a half times the size of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

Providing 20% of our electricity from fifty story wind turbines, as some have suggested, would require covering an area the size of West Virginia and building 19,000 miles of new transmission lines.  When these are strung along our scenic ridge tops, coastlines or other treasured landscapes, I am afraid we are destroying the environment in the name of saving the environment.  Solar and wind installations require between 30 and 270 square miles to duplicate the output of just one nuclear reactor on one square mile.  Moreover, these energy sources must be “backed up” by other generation since they only produce power when the wind blows or the sun shines and that electricity can’t be stored in large amounts. 

There is only one wind farm in the entire southeast because the wind doesn’t blow enough.  And, in the Tennessee Valley Authority region, solar costs at least 4-5 times as much as other electricity TVA buys. 

As for green jobs, according to the Department of Energy, there would be 250,000 construction jobs for 100 new nuclear plants.  This would compare with 73,000 jobs to construct the 180,000 wind turbines needed to produce 20 percent of our electricity from wind. Of course, producing a lot of cheap, reliable, energy is the best way to produce new jobs. 

Think of it this way:  if we were going to war we wouldn’t mothball our nuclear navy and start subsidizing sailboats.  If climate change as well as low cost reliable energy are  national imperatives, we shouldn’t stop building nuclear plants and start subsidizing windmills. 

I am on the side of those who say we need to deal with climate change.  The National Academies of Sciences of eleven industrialized countries, including the United States, have said that humans probably have caused most of the recent global warming.  If fire chiefs of the same reputation said our houses might burn down, I would buy fire insurance.  But I’d buy insurance that worked and that was not so expensive that I couldn’t pay my mortgage or hospital bills.  

Fortunately, there are two steps that will benefit our country in multiple ways—namely cleaner air, more energy independence and reliable amounts of low cost power—that will also help fight global warming.  The first is to double production of electricity from carbon free nuclear power, which would mean building 100 new plants as we did between 1970 and 1990—or a larger number of the new small and modular reactors now being discussed.  The second is to apply to the promising new technologies the same discipline and resources that we did with the original Manhattan project in order to make then effective and cost competitive.

That’s why the bill that Sen. Webb and I will introduce today, the Clean Energy Act of 2009 proposes:

 1.     Loan Guarantees---$100 billion to encourage start-ups of all forms of carbon-free electricity production, expanding the $47 billion loan guarantee program that exists today.  $18.5 billion of these funds are currently available for nuclear projects.  This should help to get the first new plants up and running.  The Congressional Budget Office estimates this could cost up to $10 billion, and could cost less.

2.     New Reactor Designs--$1 billion over five years to enable the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to review new designs such as Generation IV reactors that don’t isolate plutonium and small modular reactors that can be built in U.S. factories and assembled onsite like Lego blocks.    

3.     Nuclear Workforce--$1 billion over ten years to ensure a supply of nuclear engineers, operators and craftsmen such as welders and pipefitters.  As members of this society know better than any other, American has a generation gap of these skilled personnel.

4.     More power from existing reactors— $500 million over 10 years to increase the efficiency and develop longer lifetimes for our existing 104 reactors which together could equal the production of 20-30 new reactors.  

5.     Five new “Mini-Manhattan-Projects” for clean energy: $750 million per year over ten years for research and development:  capture carbon emissions from coal plants, develop advanced biofuels from things other than crops we eat, improve batteries for electric cars, make solar power more cost competitive, and recycle used nuclear fuel.    

The cost to taxpayers over 20 years would be about $20 billion.  No new energy taxes or mandates are required.  These $20 billion would compare with the $170 billion we would spend in taxpayer subsidies if we were to produce 20 percent of our electricity from wind, not counting the billions more for transmission lines. 

And by my computation, if we actually did build 100 nuclear plants in 20 years as well as electrify half our cars and trucks in 20 years—which we should be able to do without building one new power plant if we plug them in at night—we would come close to reaching the 1990 Kyoto global warming protocols without expensive new energy taxes.  Reaching that goal is even more likely if some of our mini-Manhattan projects produce the results we hope for from new technologies.

The world nuclear power revival is well underway.  With our Clean Energy Act of 2009, that revival might finally reach American shores where it began—and the lessons of the Manhattan project could advance the day when more nuclear power and new forms of clean energy can make us more energy independent, clean our air, help fight global warming and produce the large amounts of reliable, low cost clean electricity that will keep American jobs from going overseas looking for cheap energy.