[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 77 (Thursday, May 20, 2010)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4078-S4080]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                U.S.-JAPAN COOPERATION ON NUCLEAR POWER

  Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, as the U.S. Ambassador to Japan Mike 
Mansfield once said, ``the U.S.-Japan relationship is the most 
important bilateral relationship in the world, bar none.''
  About a month ago, China Daily ran an article in which they compared 
the United States' nuclear program to Rip Van Winkle, the legendary 
American folk hero who fell asleep for 20 years after a night of 
carousing with Henry Hudson's men in the Catskill Mountains. ``A 
thunder from China has woken up Uncle Sam, like Rip Van Winkle, from a 
20-year nap, to a different world,'' boasted the China Daily article. 
``This world is in the midst of a Green Revolution. It is the biggest 
sea change since the Industrial Revolution, and Uncle Sam has slept too 
long to take the lead in this new movement.''
  I am not sure that this is really the case, but the point in well 
taken. Out of fear and mistrust, and after a few bad accidents, the 
U.S. 30 years ago decided to put aside construction of new nuclear 
powerplants. Our domestic nuclear industry still kept plodding along, 
learning to operate the plants we had more efficiently and trying to 
sell new plants abroad. But overall we atrophied. Our nuclear 
construction capabilities withered while other countries' capabilities 
flourished. And so here we are, 30 years later, with a much smaller 
nuclear industry that is missing critical parts, like the ability to 
manufacture the largest components.
  Meanwhile the rest of the world kept moving forward. And recently, we 
have started seeing something new--the entrance into the nuclear market 
by countries that are considered low-cost manufacturers, like China and 
South Korea.
  When China recently bought Westinghouse AP1000 reactors from Toshiba, 
they insisted on getting all the engineering specifications as well. It 
is no secret what they are planning. They are going to reverse-engineer 
the reactor and come up with their own design. In another 5 years, 
don't be surprised to see the Chinese marketing their own reactors 
around the world. Also look what Korea has accomplished. Before 1996 
they only built imported reactors in Korea, from companies like 
Westinghouse and Areva. Then they took an old design from Combustion 
Engineering, an American company, and came up with the APR1400. Last 
year the Koreans shocked the world by beating out Areva and 
Westinghouse for a $20 billion contract to build four new reactors in 
the United Arab Emirates. What is going to happen when China enters 
this market? I suspect in 20 years the Chinese will be selling nuclear 
reactors in Wal-Mart.
  Now there are two ways of looking at this. One is to say this is a 
world of cutthroat competition and that if

[[Page S4079]]

China wins then Japan and the United States and everyone else must lose 
as well. That is one interpretation. But the other way to look at it is 
to say we are all improving each other's game and that all this 
competition helps turn us all into better players.
  And that is where international competition helps. If other countries 
start making progress in a technology, we soon realize we had better 
emulate them. We saw this with the auto industry. There was a time when 
America's big three--Ford, Chrysler and General Motors seemed 
invincible in a way nothing could ever change. Each year they competed 
to see who could put the biggest tailfins on their new models and 
nobody ever gave a thought to quality control or gas mileage or whether 
the car would fall apart after 50,000 miles.
  Then these strange new companies named Toyota and Datsun and Honda 
started to enter the market. Their cars weren't all that stylish but 
they were small and efficient, got good gas mileage, and ran like tops. 
You didn't have to ``fix or repair daily,'' as they used to say about 
Ford products. And some people bought them. But they still didn't rival 
the big American manufacturers. Then the oil crisis arrived and all of 
a sudden those cars that could get 30 miles to the gallon started to 
look awfully good.
  Well, you know the rest of the story. Toyota recently passed General 
Motors as the largest car company in the world. GM is in Federal 
receivership. Half the cars sold in America are made by foreign 
companies. But of course the traffic flows the other way as well. 
Nissan will be building its new all-electric Leaf in my home state of 
Tennessee and we are very happy to have them as a good corporate 
neighbor.
  There is a certain irony to all this as well. A lot of the concern 
for maintaining quality that made Toyota and Honda and Nissan such 
great companies came from a man named W. Edwards Deming, a college 
professor who developed a lot of ideas in the 1950s about maintaining 
quality in manufactured products. Deming never attracted much attention 
in this country but he found a receptive audience in Japan. This led to 
the tremendous emphasis on quality that made Toyota and other car 
companies such a huge success. It wasn't until NBC ran a documentary in 
1980 entitled ``If Japan Can, Why Can't We?'' that Americans became 
aware of what Deming had done for Japanese manufacturing. One of the 
first American companies to turn to him for advice was Ford Motors. 
That is one of the reasons why Ford has now gone from the old ``Fix or 
Repair Daily'' to become what is arguably America's strongest auto 
competitor.
  So we have taught each other a lot about auto manufacturing. Now what 
can we learn from each other about nuclear power?
  Well, the first thing to note, I think, is that while China gets 2 
percent of its electricity from nuclear and America gets 20 percent, 
Japan gets 30 percent. In terms of shifting to nuclear, Japan is ahead 
of us. At the same time, the U.S. still leads all countries with 104 
operating commercial reactors, one-fourth the world's total. That great 
building spree from 1970 to 1990, when we constructed about 100 
reactors in 20 years, still stands us in good stead. But it isn't going 
to last forever. There are now 55 reactors under construction around 
the world in 13 different countries, including one in Japan with four 
more likely to start. Meanwhile, American reactors are aging fast and 
we are just getting ready to break ground on our first new reactor in 
30 years. By the way, I should mention that South Korea leads both our 
countries with 35 percent of its electricity from nuclear.
  One place where Americans can feel proud is the way we run our 
reactors. The entire industry now operates at 90 percent capacity. That 
means reactors are up and running more than 90 percent of the time. 
Many of them now go for almost 2 years without shutting down. And when 
they do shut down it is for refueling, which used to take 3 months and 
is now done in only 5 weeks. We have learned a lot about efficiency and 
quality control and getting things done on time. Japan runs its fleet 
at 75 percent capacity and France is just behind us at 85 percent. But 
that is a special case. The French are now the world's biggest net 
exporters of electricity and still have so much nuclear capacity that 
they often close down their reactors for the weekend. You know how much 
the French like their weekends. Once again, though, I have to note the 
Koreans are running their reactors at 95 percent, so we all have 
something to learn there. We have figured out how to run reactors 
efficiently and ultimately that means cheaper.
  We also run our reactors safely. Since the Three Mile Island Incident 
we have improved our safety record and reduced risk at our nuclear 
reactors. The American nuclear industry is proud to say that there has 
never been a death from a nuclear incident at an American reactor. We 
have learned that safe does not have to equal expensive.
  What about new technologies? Our Secretary of Energy, Stephen Chu, 
has recommended that the United States find a niche in mini-reactors, 
the so-called ``nuclear batteries.'' He's willing to concede that the 
Japanese and the French and the Koreans and possibly the Chinese will 
effectively compete against us for sales of large traditional reactors. 
But maybe we can specialize in these 25-to-300-megawatt reactors that 
can be assembled at the factory and shipped to the site where they are 
put together like Lego blocks.
  I think mini-reactors are a great idea. You could power a whole town 
of 20,000 people with something that could be buried 60 feet 
underground and refueled every 30 years. But I wonder how quickly we 
are going to be able to move into this market? It's taking us 5 years 
to get a design approval through the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The 
NRC has told one manufacturer they do not even have time to consider 
small reactors because they are so involved in looking at big ones. If 
there is real money to be made in the field of mini-reactors, won't 
other countries jump in well before we do? Toshiba already has a model 
they are offering to isolated Alaskan villages. The Russians have one 
they are barging into Siberian villages. We had better get going or we 
will be left behind there as well.
  One area in which nearly everyone seems to be progressing is fuel 
reprocessing. The United States gave up reprocessing in this country in 
the 1970s. In retrospect, I think that it was a mistake. We thought we 
were saving the world from nuclear proliferation. It was a noble 
experiment, but it wasn't very practical. We thought if we didn't 
isolate plutonium in this country nobody else would be able to figure 
out how to manufacture it and rogue nations wouldn't be able to acquire 
nuclear weapons. Well, North Korea has developed a nuclear weapon and 
they didn't do it by stealing American or someone else's--plutonium. 
They simply built their own reactor and manufactured weapons 
themselves. Iran is doing the same thing with enriched uranium. Nuclear 
technology is no secret anymore. Controlling nuclear proliferation is 
going to be a diplomatic task, not a technological one.
  While America has hung back from reprocessing, however, Japan and 
other countries have forged ahead. The Japanese have been burning 
excess plutonium in mixed oxide MOX fuel at several reactors. Now they 
have built the world's first reactor designed specifically to burn MOX 
fuel, at Hokkaido. The French do the reprocessing and the first 
boatload of MOX fuel just made it back to Japan from France without 
being hijacked by rowboats from Greenpeace. This is all plutonium that 
will never find its way into nuclear weapons.
  In the U.S., we have been turning swords into ploughshares. In an 
agreement struck in 1996 by Senators Sam Nunn, Pete Domenici and 
Richard Lugar, the United States has been purchasing enriched uranium 
from Soviet weapons stocks and blending it down for use in American 
nuclear reactors. Half our reactor fuel now comes from the program, 
meaning 1 out of every 10 lightbulbs in America is lit by a former 
Soviet weapon.
  Another place where America remains on the cutting edge is in basic 
research. We have designed generation III reactors, which are much more 
simplified and oriented toward safety. Now we are looking for a fourth 
generation of reactors that will make reprocessing much easier. One of 
the ideas on the drawing board is the ``Traveling Wave'' reactor, which 
will consume its own waste and burn for up to twenty years

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without refueling. America's favorite innovator, Bill Gates, has 
invested in a company that is exploring the Traveling Wave. If Bill 
Gates is embracing nuclear, I think it's safe to say America will soon 
be back in the game.
  But we need to continue our commitment to basic science research. We 
must rebuild our industrial capacity and continue producing a skilled 
workforce for the future. We need to start building new reactors in 
America and we need to bring the next generation of reactors to market 
to recognize the benefits of full-recycling. It all starts with 
learning from our experience and the experience of other nations like 
Japan.
  So these two nations as well as others--are prepared to move forward 
together in the great nuclear renaissance that is sweeping the world. 
Japan is on the cutting edge of reactor construction and reprocessing 
technology and I hope we will soon be able to join them by expanding 
our own nuclear fleet and adding our research capabilities. We have 
come a long, long way in 70 years since the closing day of World War II 
when scientists unlocked the energy buried at the heart of the atom. 
Nuclear power has since been used for threats, it has been used for 
destruction, and it has been used to frighten humanity into confronting 
the idea that we might be capable of destroying ourselves and the 
planet along with us. But I think right now we can safely say that 
these two nations are poised on the edge of an era of cooperation when 
we will turn the benefits of nuclear power to the greater good of all 
mankind.

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