A new federal strategy for advancing the United States’ nuclear energy industry will pay dividends in promoting global nonproliferation, Secretary of Energy Dan Brouillette said on May 29.
“Our nation’s credibility as a supporter of nonproliferation depends upon a robust civilian industry and our technological leadership in the global marketplace,” he said during a webinar organized by DOE’s Office of Nuclear Energy. “In short, if our industry cannot compete in the international market, our commitment to influence global nonproliferation, security, and the safety standards that we all advocate for loses credibility.”
The online session offered a discussion between government officials and industry representatives on the department strategy document released in April, “Restoring America’s Competitive Nuclear Energy Advantage.” The document was the result of work by the Nuclear Fuel Working Group established last year by the Trump administration.
The strategy lays out several steps for the United States to strengthen its position at an exporter of nuclear energy technology, which it says has been ceded to state-owned entities in China and Russia, among other nations. The U.S. has no foreign orders for new nuclear reactors, a market the Department of Commerce estimates is worth upward of $740 billion over a decade, according to the report.
Re-establishing the United States’ position begins with creating a uranium reserve, with the Nuclear Energy office purchasing the material from domestic mines and signing deals for uranium conversion. The Trump administration has proposed $150 million in fiscal 2021 to stand up this program, which it said is needed to reduce domestic reliance on foreign uranium for reactor fuel.
This step would be followed by further investments in research, development, and demonstration of advanced nuclear technologies, which would then be pushed into the global marketplace, according to the strategy.
The United States can demand strict nonproliferation standards for nuclear technology its companies export to other nations, the report notes.
Nuclear cooperation agreements with other nations – informally called “123 Agreements,” based on the applicable section of the Atomic Energy Act – require the partner government to accept standards to prevent proliferation of the exported technologies. The U.S. government as of March 2019 had sealed 23 such deals covering 48 nations, Taiwan, and the United Nations’ nuclear agency. The Energy Department provides technical support for each deal, which are negotiated by the State Department.
“When another nation desires access to U.S. technology, strong non-proliferation standards and regulatory rigor can be ensured,” its new strategy says. “Credibility, however, is linked to the quality of the technology available and the preponderance of alternative technology in the global export market. Unfortunately, some foreign exporting nations, like Russia and China, do not hold their trading partners to the same high standards and may even use lower standards as a selling point.”
The report adds that the federal government needs low-enriched uranium for generating tritium used to increase the explosive power of nuclear weapons, along with highly enriched uranium for the reactors that power naval vessels.
The United States is prohibited from using foreign-generated uranium for its defense needs. The Department of Energy’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) has an extended but finite uranium supply for both needs, according to the strategy: enough unobligated uranium for tritium production through 2041 and for Navy reactors into the following decade.
The NNSA is evaluating two centrifuge technologies for a domestic enrichment facility scheduled to be operational in the 2040s to generate low-enriched uranium for tritium production. One comes from the privately operated Centrus Energy, the other from DOE’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. Selection is expected late this year.
“[T]he strategy if it’s fully implemented, will help ensure that we meet tomorrow’s needs for defending our country,” Brouillette said. “By any measure, America has a well-defined defense need that greatly depends upon a healthy fuel cycle, and, more specifically, an abundant uranium supply.”
