Nuclear power

“ It recognizes further that the nuclear defense of the West is not a matter for the present nuclear powers alone--that France will be such a power in the future--and that ways must be found without increasing the hazards of nuclear diffusion, to increase the role of our other partners in planning, manning, and directing a truly multilateral nuclear force within an increasingly intimate NATO alliance. ”

“ Work with other interested governments to establish a new international nuclear energy architecture -- including an international nuclear fuel bank, international nuclear fuel cycle centers, and reliable fuel supply assurances -- to meet growing demands for nuclear power without contributing to proliferation. Set the Goal of a Nuclear-Free World: Show the world that America believes in its existing commitment under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty to work to ultimately eliminate all nuclear weapons. America will not disarm unilaterally. ”

“ While we are focusing with justified concern on Iran and North Korea’s quest for nuclear weapons capacity, a number of nations, some of them our good friends, are planning to go into the enrichment and/or reprocessing business, and that conversion means making material for nuclear power. But when you start enriching, it’s very difficult to tell when you move from a nuclear power level of enrichment, which I believe is about four percent, to a 70 to 75 percent enrichment, which can blow up a lot of the world. ”

“ We will also ensure that these developing nations have a reliable nuclear fuel supply. In exchange, these countries would agree to use nuclear power only for civilian purposes and forego uranium enrichment and reprocessing activities that can be used to develop nuclear weapons. ”

“ Nuclear electric power is approaching the point where it will be economically competitive with power from hydroelectric plants or those burning coal, oil, or gas as fuels. Improvements in nuclear power technology are rapidly being made, and it is now widely predicted that before the end of this century most new electric power plants will be nuclear. ”

“ There have been a series of impediments that have been put in the path of nuclear power which now seem to be changing. And nuclear power provides 20 percent of the electricity for homes in this country. ”

“ And the very fact that one out of five homes in America can't turn on their lights without nuclear power is a reminder of how our nation does use nuclear power. In France, for example, 80 percent of electricity comes from nuclear power. So the President understands that technology, safety, modernization, means that nuclear power can be an environmentally friendly and safe part of America's energy mix. ”

“ And as nuclear power--as a nuclear power, as the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon, the United States has a moral responsibility to act. ”

“ The industrial policy of actively exploiting nuclear energy has been formulated and issued, which has effectively secured the growth of the industries of nuclear power, nuclear fuel recycling, and nuclear technology application. ”

“ In politics the atomic nucleus has entered as a promise and as a menace—not as a fact on which we can build and with which we can reckon.
Some technical predictions seem safe:
Nuclear energy will not render our older power plants obsolete in the near future. But nuclear energy will make it 169 possible to maintain the pace—even the acceleration—of the industrial revolution. It will be possible to produce all the energy we need at a moderate cost. Furthermore—and this is the important point—this energy will be available at any place on the globe at a cost which is fairly uniform. ”

“ The accomplishments of nuclear power in the propulsion of ships have already been noted. In addition, there is now going on in industrialized countries in different parts of the world a large-scale development of nuclear power plants for production of electricity. ”

“ As energy needs rise, as oil and gas prices surge, and production shifts more each year to more volatile and less secure areas of the world and as the pace of global warming increases, nations and the private sector are looking more and more to nuclear power to meet those needs. ”

“ Plans for other nuclear-powered desalting projects around the world are being discussed by the United States government, the International Atomic Energy Agency and the governments of many other nations. ”

“ But all that humankind has achieved to date, all that we are seeking to accomplish, and human existence itself can be undone in an instant--in the catastrophe of a nuclear war.
Thus one of the central objectives of my Administration has been to control the proliferation of nuclear weapons to those nations which do not have them, and their further development by the existing nuclear powers-- notably the Soviet Union and the United States. ”

“ If we abandon our light and mobile weapons, we shall enable the Red bloc to take over one country after another, close to their borders, as opportunities arise. The free nations cannot maintain the massive armies throughout the world which would be required to resist such piecemeal aggression. On the other hand, the flexible power of clean nuclear explosives would put us 145 in a position where we could resist aggression in any part of the world, practically at a moment’s notice. ”

“ The United States was the first nation to invent and develop the technology to harness nuclear energy. Since the 1950s, the United States Navy has been operating and advancing transportable nuclear reactors, resulting in powerfully enhanced marine propulsion for its aircraft carriers and allowing nuclear-powered submarines to remain submerged for extended periods of time.
The United States must sustain its ability to meet the energy requirements for its national defense and space exploration initiatives. ”

“ Those who came before us made certain that this country rode the first waves of the industrial revolution, the first waves of modern invention, and the first wave of nuclear power, and this generation does not intend to founder in the backwash of the coming age of space. We mean to be a part of it—we mean to lead it. For the eyes of the world now look into space, to the moon and to the planets beyond, and we have vowed that we shall not see it governed by a hostile flag of conquest, but by a banner of freedom and peace. ”

“ Since the Soviet Union had acquired an atomic capability in 1949 and from all indications its nuclear arsenal had kept on growing steadily, an enemy with atomic combat power was not entirely theoretical. ”

“ It would place the nuclear powers in a position to deal more effectively with one of the greatest hazards which man faces in 1963, the further spread of nuclear arms. It would increase our security—it would decrease the prospects of war. ”

“ The deadly arms race, and the huge resources it absorbs, have too long overshadowed all else we must do. We must prevent that arms race from spreading to new nations, to new nuclear powers and to the reaches of outer space. ”

“ If our decisions and our actions are too slow, can we live with the consequences? Are we prepared to live in a world where dozens of countries have the capability and key ingredients to make nuclear weapons? In such a world, I believe that the dangers we already have today would be greatly multiplied, and there would be a much higher probability that nuclear weapons will be used somewhere in the world. ”

“ And along with the Russians, we're on our way to destroying the missiles and the bombers that carry 9,000 nuclear warheads. We've come so far so fast in this post-cold-war world that it's easy to take the decline of the nuclear threat for granted. ”

“ It has now been two decades since the introduction of thermonuclear fusion weapons into the military inventories of the great powers, and more than a decade since the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union ceased to test nuclear weapons in the atmosphere. Today our understanding of the technology of thermonuclear weapons seems highly advanced, but our knowledge of the physical and biological consequences of nuclear war is continuously evolving. ”

“ Today, as I see it, we are facing far different dangers, including the rise in the number of nuclear weapon states and the number of states that can produce weapon-grade material. Another key ingredients is not simply the weapons, it’s the weapons-grade material. ”

“ We are unequivocally in favour of strengthening the regime of non-proliferation. The present international legal principles allow us to develop technologies to manufacture nuclear fuel for peaceful purposes. And many countries with all good reasons want to create their own nuclear energy as a basis for their energy independence. But we also understand that these technologies can be quickly transformed into nuclear weapons. ”

“ One is that factories are located in cities, and these factories support the war effort. The other reason is that cities are centers of transportation through which the supplies of war materials pass. By destroying these centers the flow of the war supplies can be interrupted.
Nuclear warfare is likely to be quite different from past conflicts. The great concentration of firepower which a nuclear weapon represents makes it possible to attack on enemy anywhere, at very short notice. ”

“ In western Europe and North America, which today have almost 75 per cent of current world capacity, nuclear provides about one-third of the energy that was forecast for it 10 years ago. Apart from Fance, Japan, the USSR, and several other East European countries that have decided to continue with their nuclear programmes, ordering, construction, and licensing prospects for new reactors in many other countries look poor. ”

“ The radioactive cloud released from a reactor accident may be more dangerous than a nuclear explosion. Such a cloud will not stop at national boundaries. Some proper form of international responsibility will have to be developed.
What effect the existence of nuclear weapons will have upon the coexistence of nations is a question less understood and less explored than any other affecting our future. Most people turn away from it with a feeling of terror. ”

“ This can, for obvious reasons, lead to serious instability in the overall system—most interesting systems cannot withstand the unbounded increase of any of their parameters without serious negative consequences. The basic engineering principles underlying the creation of nuclear weapons exploit this feature of positive feedback mechanisms: the destructive output of nuclear weapons results from the energy released during the fission of certain isotopes of (in most cases) uranium or plutonium. ”

“ We’re clearly at a tipping point with regard to the both the proliferation of nuclear weapons and the production of weapons-usable nuclear material. And both are important. Terrorists are seeking nuclear materials and weapons as the list of potential suppliers expands. ”

“ The Bush administration has worked with other nations on the Proliferation Security Initiative, which coordinates national capabilities to interdict the transport of nuclear, biological and chemical materials, their delivery systems and related technology. We at our foundation and most nuclear experts agree that securing nuclear material at the source is the most important feature, and you have to have cooperation around the globe for that. Securing material at the source is the least expensive and most efficient. ”

“ The wide availability of knowledge of how to make a nuclear weapon, that’s what fundamentally changed. Twenty or 30 years ago, countries did not think, could not believe that anyone besides a nation could gather the kind of technological capability together to produce a nuclear weapon. ”

“ Our sources of energy are not yet nuclear sources. Even in the military field, where development has been most rapid, the structure of the armed forces has not yet adjusted itself to the facts of the nuclear age in a realistic manner. ”

“ We are therefore in a position to put before the reader the most important facts about the peaceful and military applications of nuclear energy—of the possible dangers and of the eventual benefits. If we do not succeed, we cannot blame either secrecy or the difficulty of the subject. ”

“ The great mobility of nuclear firepower makes it highly probable that the nuclear conflict will be short. What the factory produces during this conflict will not affect the outcome of the fighting. The only weapons on which anyone can rely are 142 the weapons which are already stockpiled. Therefore, it will be militarily useless to bomb factories.
The same fact of mobility also implies that no great flow of war material will need to be maintained. Practically all movement can be executed by light and fast methods, by planes, submarines, and small battle groups. ”

“ To assure that our nuclear deterrent remains unquestioned under a test ban, we will explore other means of maintaining our confidence in the safety, the reliability, and the performance of our own weapons. We will also refocus much of the talent and resources of our Nation's nuclear labs on new technologies to curb the spread of nuclear weapons and verify arms control treaties. ”

“ And if they ever got hold of a nuclear weapon or nuclear material, we have no doubt they’d use it.
That’s why we’ve been leading a global effort to secure the world’s nuclear materials. And with summits like this, we’ve made important progress. Working with other nations, we have removed or secured enough nuclear material for more than 150 nuclear weapons—material that will now never fall into the hands of terrorists. ”

“ That nuclear war did not receive extensive attention during the early postwar years was a consequence of the nation's short-lived monopoly of atomic weapons and the complexity of military decision making in a dangerous international environment. ”

“ If we renounce nuclear weapons, we open the door to aggression. If we fail to develop clean explosives, we expose people to disaster from radioactive fallout in any serious military conflict. To our way of thinking these are weighty arguments in favor of continued experimentation and development of nuclear weapons. ”