[applause] >> those were two very sobering presentations. >> thank you. thank you for inviting me. thank you to the ambassadors for hosting this event. i do not know whether i will be more sobering than that. i want to summarize my remarks. hopefully, you will take a few key points away. i don't like to talk about a nuclear renaissance. i like to talk about enthusiasm

for nuclear energy. the term was coined by an american and is very u.s.- centric. in other countries, there has been nuclear construction ongoing. for many countries and the ones i worry about, they have not had a nuclear power and they are just embarking on this. what are the drivers of that enthusiasm? climate change, energy security, growing electricity demand -- these three things have been documented in many places and i take issue with all three of them. i don't think energy is the way to solve that but be that as it may, this is what many countries are talking about. there are also several dampening effects. you have the four traditional ones -- cost, safety, which, proliferation and now since 9/11, nuclear terrorism.

what is new? what has changed? in cost, they keep going up by the government seemed to manage heater on the supply side for the demand side. they create incentives, they give loan guarantees, they subsidize nuclear power. in my view, that will not be a big -- have a big dampening effect. it should but it often doesn't. safety -- after fukushima, this is now front and center. this is on every headline in the newspapers. we will see how long that lasts. waste -- this is the issue that everybody puts off to the indefinite future. one of the lessons of fukushima is that maybe you should not put this issue off. i am a little optimistic that

countries may take this more seriously, moving spent fuel from what stores to dry storage. proliferation and terrorism -- these are typically in the background. governments can always come up with a thousand reasons to put something higher on their agenda than non-proliferation, but there is a little bit of hope that with the next nuclear security summit in 2012 that this will be paid more attention. if enthusiasm for nuclear energy wilts, if we don't have a lot of growth as people had been expecting a last five years, what then does any of this matter? i would argue that, yes, it does matter, you have the enduring problem of proliferation and terrorism, proliferation of sensitive materials and

facilities, capabilities. so we still need to do with that. what we decide to do on waste, nuclear waste, will have a big impact there. regardless of what happens, i would suggest that we need to shape nuclear energy to reduce the risks. if you cannot halted, you can face that riskier designs, phase out older reactors, and above all, i would suggest that we need to promote alternatives to nuclear energy. in the u.s., we have not been good at doing that. that is the summary of the presentation. i will show you a lot of maps, some areas of nuclear expansion and some nice pictures, optimistic pictures, for the nuclear energy industry. covers of the magazines are old but as ed suggested, nuclear

energy has been a big marketing campaign. it has been branded as secure and green. one company has is a bumper sticker that has this beautiful field of soybean fields, beautiful yellow flowers and says "know new nukes." they coopted the language. i would say that 25 states that don't have nuclear power now are probably furious. 65 are interested in nuclear power. will those countries get nuclear power? no, obviously not. once able to afford it and put the infrastructure to get it. why is this important? it contrasts with what nuclear

energy is today. we have 30 countries plus taiwan that now operate nuclear power. many of the -- much of the current construction is going on in asia. a handful of countries have uranium enrichment capabilities and zero countries have opened a repository for commercial spent fuel. the u.s. open when for defense waste. this is what that looks like a graphically. that was reactor capacity and this is enrichment. brazil looks big but its capacity is very small. this is commercial re-processing of spent fuel. i will show you three different scenarios for growth. the first one is a realistic assessment is based on gdp growth, electricity demand. i would say that would be even

bigger than what we will see now because this is based on 2009- 2010 data. you will add -- how is my math -- 50%. the second scenario is a wildly optimistic scenario. if every country did what it said it would do, you would have a doubling of nuclear capacity worldwide. that is wildly optimistic because i don't think it will happen. the third one is "climate change." "scenario . taken from the massachusetts institute of technology prognosis for 2050, this is what they look like for reactors.

that is the realistic growth and this is a wildly optimistic growth, and then the climate change of 04 fall. you see the colored circles. those are new countries that could acquire nuclear energy. that is not all because if you deploy light-water reactors, you will need enriched rhenium -- uranium for those reactors. those are the three scenarios. it is pretty proportional. where you put those enrichment facilities? i am in the non corp. business of this is a burning question. which countries will acquire uranium enrichment capabilities? you can either make fuel for reactors or fuel for bombs. this is purely not even speculation.

let's look at the countries that currently enriched and let's see who might be one of those candidates countries to enrich. these other countries that might potentially enriched because they are for export, not just for their domestic use, china, india, japan. these are the countries that will have their reactor capacity by 2015 that is 10 or more big reactors that might have an economic reason to enrich. finally, you have countries that have a lot of uranium, more than they need for their domestic uses. this is not a projection, when you sit down and think about what countries might do this, that is what you come up with. it also has an expansion. there are implications for the back end of the fuel cycle. a big reactor will produce 20 tons of spent fuel per year.

these new nuclear states will either store that fuel or lee said. -- or lease it. it will have security implications. the choice of what they do with that fuel whether they stored permanently or whether they sent abroad or re-process it is a choice. there are no legal prohibitions on countries doing this. finally, how many repository's do you really need or want around the world? if we have 30 countries, 60 countries, 90 countries with nuclear power, many of those countries don't have the geology or the space for these repositories. this could become a serious issue. i will quickly go through these but the one. want to make is that we are not

talking just about more reactors. there's a quality to this expansion that has implications across the board. you could have new kinds of reactors and some of them are quite sophisticated and some of the advanced states are pursuing fast reactors, fourth generation reactors. the russians want to sell floating reactors. you could have new suppliers like south korea, china, india, and new locations. i will not go through any of this. you are interested, e-mail me. i will go through the implications of new locations. we have seen what happened in japan, a natural disaster but

also some questions raised about a safety culture. the question for these new states is do they have a physical and intellectual infrastructure and illegal financing and regulatory framework and independent relation? this is a picture of the new nuclear states. the darker the color, the closer they are to actually build the reactors and on top of this, we can map foreign policy failed to state index. you can see that some of these countries may have issues not just with nuclear governments but governance itself. in southeast asia, these are the country's -- this is just a snapshot -- countries with interest in nuclear energy. if you notice of the red, these other commitments in safeguards.

safety, security, liability -- they have not yet met these requirements. i will go through these. i will scatter them. -- i will skip through them. what impact will fukushima have on the plans of these countries if we go back to this map? this was an international poll taken recently. these countries now have a majority-view of nuclear energy. keylay, 84%-, it delayed, 75%-. negative. it is black, it does not mean anything. i might not have data. in other countries, there was a

drop or the negative value rose. these are the new countries interested in nuclear power. that's status countries have airpower, we can see that some -- in the countries that have nuclear power, some of these countries don't have nuclear power, even in china, the support which is very high at 83% support of of nuclear power dropped. more than 10%. this is also true in india and russia. it is too soon. that is just a few data points. that is taken a couple of weeks

after this crisis. you cannot really draw conclusive -- conclusions from those. the key thing will be to watch how governments react, what they do with spending, and what they do with their nuclear safety reviews. i will stop there and invite your comments and questions. [applause] >> thank you very much, sharon and ed. these are complementary presentations. we have a few minutes for discussion and comments and questions, now. i would like to start off with two. i have many more. one is, what is the typical cost of a new nuclear power plant today? i am thinking particularly of

the note areva plant in finland. are we talking $1 billion? do we know? the second question -- i think ed and tom mentions terrorist threats. chernobyl was a mandate accident. we see fukushima with the tsunami being a natural disaster. we have not really seen a terrorist attack on any of their reactors or the spent fuel pools. first the economic question and then the terrorist threat question. who wants to start? >> when you ask what it costs,

my immediate response is for what units to you onewant? after you tell me that i will tell you i don't know. [laughter] basically, overnight costs which means you don't include the cost of the financing and you assume it gets built overnight. depending on whose estimates they are, and whether they are in the u.s. or abroad, they run on the order of $4,000 per kilowatt. it could be twice that. it is in china, it could be less than that. in the u.s., if you talk about the total cost including all the financing per unit is on the

order of $10 billion plus or minus a few billion dollars per plant. what we do know is that absent federal government financing, they're not competitive with other sources of energy, particularly in the united states today, natural gas-fired plants and if you internalize the cost of carbon, they would not be competitive. that is why you see the ceo of the largest nuclear operator exelon saying that he would not build a new nuclear plant in the united states today. you do get some new built in the

southeast where there are regulated plants and they concluded in the base may have a favorable public utility commission that will allow them to put it in the right base than it might. we may get four new nuclear plants in the united states but probably not many more in areas of the country where it has to compete with other forms of energy such as in texas and maryland. the companies have backed out. they are no longer pursuing it. i am thinking of constellation energy atcalvert cliffs and the south texas plant, they have both backed out of their commitments. >> sharon, do you want to add to

the economic question? >> to put it in context, the natural gas plant which is about 500 megawatts cost, in the u.s., $310 million to build an 36 month in nuclear power plant is about twice as big and does not cost near that. it is 10 times the cost. tom is right -- it is virtually impossible for financing. moddy' calls it a bet the farm investment. they take long to build and financing costs can be as high as 80% of the cost. it is really a very expensive proposition. >> ed, do you want to respond

on the terrorist question? >> you're wondering if we have not seen an attempt, how realistic is the threat? one thing i did not mention is in the 9/11 commission report, the report portedthey reported a considered the indian point nuclear plant. they did not mention that specifically but it is the only one that you can conclude they were talking about. they did discuss the potential of targeting a nuclear power plant instead of the world trade center. and the pentagon. their believe was that those plants would be protected by the air force and that they would be shut down if they tried to do that. it turns out, of course, there

are no no-fly zones around nuclear power plants. there was one instituted around dick cheney's vacation home in st. michaels, maryland. [laughter] there was one instituted around disneyland but they did not impose them after september 11 for nuclear power plants. it was a bluff or a misperception that led them to avoid that. part of the issue is that they do have to maintain this glove, presenting the idea that nuclear plants are hard targets. you are better off spending your terrorist dollars elsewhere if you're going to attack. [laughter] unfortunately, is a difficult thing to do. like an accident, you have to make an assessment of what kind of accident do we protect against sex what kind of terrorist attack do we need to worry about tax that is a

complicated mix of what the intelligence agencies are reporting + what is possible. and where you draw the line is a policy decision. we argue that you need to worry more about capabilities than intention at this point. one's capabilities become clear, intention will follow. in the absence of a credible attack, i would not use that -- i would not give that particular significance. we have to be vigilant and spend the money to make sure those vulnerabilities are corrected. >> as a related matter, the reactor was bombed three times what was under construction and guess the iraqi troops and a run

pursued in nuclear-weapons program as a result. -- and i ran pursued a nuclear weapons program as a result. >> what is the probability in the united states and elsewhere? when you look in the middle east or you look at regions where there is high terrorist activity, there are very few, if any, nuclear facilities. in the middle east, you have no nuclear power plants except for buchere which is almost completed. you have some research reactors. and then there are israeli facilities but no nuclear power plants. one of the unfortunate lessons

of the fukushima, in particular with these reactors with spent fuel pools, damage to the containment building can result in some problems per it would not necessarily have the same impact. terrorists watch the news, certainly. the nuclear industry will have to be pretty vigilant and governments will have to put out the word that any new nuclear plants constructed are not going to be vulnerable. >> we have several questions and i will come back. >> [unintelligible] there was an interesting study about nuclear safety last march.

you identified about 14 different incidents and 104 reactors in the united states. because this is an international panel, how can you extrapolate or can you extrapolate about the state of nuclear safety in the world? from the press briefing, it was said that 5% of these events are happening. what is the status of this and the rest of the world? can you tell us about the status of this in japan? maybe the ukraine which has 15

reactors? has there been any impact of fukushima on korean power nuclear construction? >> thank you for your question. it is impossible to extrapolate from u.s. experience to rest of the world. one problem is that there is no international standard for regulation. the only instrument available is the convention on nuclear safety which, first of all, all the results of the international reviews of national programs are not made public anyway. second of all, it is a week

yesterday with no real enforcement. we have problems with the u.s. nuclear regulatory commission but the events that we are highlighting are the ones where they determined through analysis that they could have led to a severe accident above a certain threshold. they had a high probability or relatively high probability of leading to a severe accident. unless they go that far, the outside world does not know how bad it gets. it is impossible to say without knowing if there is any similar mechanism in other countries, how many bands actually raised the risk -- how many events actually raise the rest very we think there needs to be greater international coordination,

mechanisms for inspection, enforcement, and greater transparency around the world. any event anywhere can affect the whole world through public health and economic impact. we would hope that lesson would have already been learned after chernobyl but it was not and we remain hopeful that maybe there will be of real reform now. >> unfortunately, i don't have any information on the abu dhabi reaction to fukushima. the groundbreaking for these reactors to replace the week following fukushima. the koreans were there in theuae. some countries have remained fairly silent, preferring to

wait and see what happens. >> jeff, you had a question. >> there is a safe assumption in science that the unknown is greater than the known. the crystal river reactor in florida, we talked a v about thatia e-mailed. it had a crack in it when they cut a hole and had to replace the steam generator and they may determination that was due to cut again more cracks have appeared. what does this tell us? what will happen to that plant which is now $500 million down? what does this tell us about safety and what we know about what will happen?

crystal river, in florida, on the south coast, on the gulf coast of florida in the southern part of florida. why do the russians want to build flooding reactors? what is the advantage of that? prognosis have any for crystal river but it is a symptom. the studies review incidents that occurred over the past year that could lead to a severe accident. these are accident precursors. for the last eight years, they found out that 30% of the events that actually occurred were things they did not model in their own risk assessments are calledspar models.

they assume everything they think can go wrong at the plants and 30% of what actually happened was not a model. i think that is a good benchmark for the uncertainty that we deal with even with existing plants. on pleasant surprises began to crop up like crystal river. that is one example when you have a technology you think you know light water reactors that have been operating for decades, these unpleasant surprises keep cropping up. i would have to take that with a large grain of salt when someone maintains they know we have covered all the bases. that, unfortunately, is the state of regulation in the united states is that even though there are these indications that there are big areas that they don't know, their attitude is if we don't know something, we will pretend it does not exist seismic risk

-- if we don't know what the seismic risk is which is hard to calculate, we will pretend it does not exist and when we do a different type of analysis. that is the kind of mindset that goes on. we think what the consequences of that is a fukushima-type event. you have a certain level of believe that something will not happen. your regulations and decision making are based on that and it is an irrational belief. >> the russian floating nuclear power plants are somewhat similar to put in a naval reactor heat on a barge and hooking it up to a turbine. one of the shipyards in russia is pursuing this. it is probably close to completing at least a two-unit a

barge. there are areas in russia that would be areas like alaska where you are far from the rest of civilization. you might pay 55 cents per kilowatt hour instead of 5 cents. under those circumstances, they would say there is an economic case for doing so. >> [inaudible] we did a report on our website and floating nuclear power plants. it was done by a russian colleague and translated into english about five or six years ago. this resulted from a visit to

northwestern russia. we visited two of the world's largest ship building shipyards. in the northwest of russia. they are the ones that have been funding dismantling nuclear- powered submarines and ice breakers of the former soviet fleet. both of these plants were in top shape and looking for additional work. -- in tough shape. there were looking for new markets and ways to keep themselves employed. they said nuclear power plants -- nuclear floating power plants were one way to keep employed. years ago, we raised heavy criticism about the security risks and the threat of

terrorist attack and the like if you followed these off of third world countries and plug them in and provide electricity. given the piracy of somalia and the indian ocean, more and more of that risk is perceived as greater. i'm not optimistic about floating nuclear power plants at all. the naval fleet you would need to protect these power plants would be enormous and double or triple the kill what cost of these efforts. >> 35 megawatts compared to the average u.s. power plant which is 1,000 megawatts. >> other questions? >> [inaudible] about terrorism -- is clear that we ignore terrorism at our peril.

i say it mention mostly in the context of flying an airplane into a nuclear reactor. i don't and that is the biggest problem. it is difficult to hit a target like a reactor with an airplane , something that requires a lot of training and you will not get that in the kind of training that the 9/11 people got. i am surprised that the fact they did not want to lend these airplanes did not want to send -- did not send up red flags. i don't think we need to spend so much time on aiming airplanes at reactors but more and more about people penetrating the parameters. >> you are talking about ground attack? >> yes, i believe there was one in south africa a couple of years ago. i think that is vague what actually happened there but i know there was an attack on a

reactor. whether they were trying to steal uranium or they were going to do something, i don't know. they did not succeed. >> this relates to the design base this thread ,dbt, whether we have adequate precautions. >> the nrc agrees with that because they require operating plans to have protection against a ground force attack. it would be a group of adversaries with certain weapons. they do not require protection against aircraft attacked for existing reactors. after 9/11, the issue came up whether that was appropriate and whether there were weapons that needed to be brought to bear, anti-aircraft weapons, etc.

the nuclear regulatory commission was negative about that. they said that happens, we will have large areas of the plant that might be lost as a result of explosions and fires. the utilitiesed to develop plans as to how to deal with what could be the aftermath of an aircraft attacked somewhere on the site if they managed to hit the containment building. they did require those plans but then they said those plans don't have to meet the highest safety standards because that is a beyond design event, an airplane attacked, so we don't have to make them spend a lot of money on equipment for something that is beyond the design basis. i don't agree with that kind of decision.

where the design of bases line is set, it has changed now. their conclusion is that the aircraft threat is not something to worry about that much. >> two observations o --ne is that in terms of protection of nuclear power plants, the protection is better than some chemical facilities. where you could do a lot of damage as well. the other observation is that one of the problems with setting a design basis threat and setting whether you meet that is most threats and the bank robbers usually assess the

capabilities and try to come in with something just a little better. if you said a design basis threat and a terrorist organization knows what it is, it will figure out how to beat the design basis threat. that is a bit of a problem for the people protecting the plant. >> i see one other hand. there are a couple. >> [inaudible] and in your paper, you talked about a few studies on nuclear power plant development. what were those particular reports? secondly, i was looking at the

world nuclear association and they are more optimistic. their numbers were up to 20. how far out is their estimate? >> the mit study was a 2003 future of nuclear power and it was updated last year, i think. the any a, i am not quite sure. .he -- nea, i'm not quite sure the first scenario is realistic growth. the second scenario was states plans. there's very little that is scientific. on wna, a world nuclear

association, 2100 to? how can anybody guess how many nuclear power plants we will have then? typically, these studies look at gdp growth and they project what electricity demand will be and they assign a percentage of that to nuclear. as my statistics professor told me, there is no truth. you have to see when the concrete is being poured to see what these countries will do. >> about the world nuclear association tables, if you go on there website, they catalog the nuclear reactors as operational, under construction, planned, and

proposed. you can project out operational out when the licenses run and when they sort of fade out of service. you run into the issue of license extensions. in the u.s., they go beyond 60 years. reactors under construction only represent about 10% of operational reactors. it is a 10% of addition and they are most likely to get built but may be delayed a few years. reactors that are planned typically are those where they have specific dates with respect to start of construction and

planned beginning of operations. that is another 20% or so. you can run those out for 60 years. in terms of predicting how things will play out in the future, the real issue is the proposed categories. those are the wish lists of the industry. that is why a government official stands up and says we will have 25 gigawatts units of nuclear power and that goes in as a proposed. if you look at those, that can go either way because if you have an event like fukushima, a lot of those things will

disappear. already, the consequence of fukushima, sweden, germany, switzerland, and italy and i think there is one other country, have basically taken -- germany did not have any, they will take operational reactors of the table -- italy, for example would have had eight reactors in a proposed category. they are gone. the south texas plant is gone. because there are no dates associated with these proposed plants, you have to think yourself, what is the planning horizon for the people making

these proposals? it is not much beyond 20 years. everything beyond 20 years from now, say 2030, is in terms of proposed. it is not there. it is not even in the proposed category. you don't know whether it will go up or down. projectionse any beyond 2030. it is nonsense. there is no data out there. >> we are well beyond our time and i don't want to drag this on to long. there are a number of couple of questions? could you ask these questions

privately? i would urge us to do that. i would like to personally thank the ambassador and of the ukrainian college. this is a wonderful venue and for hosting a reception and helping us organize this at an appropriate time of this decade and year. i also want to thank all of our staff. they all really helped and pitched in with pulling this together and for your staff, too, mr. ambassador. do you want to say any final words? >> yes, i would like to thank everybody for this very important event that we have here today.

i would like to express my gratitude to everybody here the topic is really very important. the importance does not become less. that is why we will come back to this topic again and again. nuclear energy is an important issue. thank you very much. thank you to everyone. [applause] it is my pleasure to invite you for the reception which will take place downstairs. thank you very much. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national

cable satellite corp. 2011] >> the ipod mini is no more nooo! i give you the ipod nano. [laughter] >> mike daisey comments on the world as he sees it. he examines apple and the americans' love of technology. >> all my monologues come out of my obsession, they spring out of obsessions that i haven't collision with one another. >> find out more sunday night on

c-span "q &a." it is one of our many signature interview programs online at c- span.org/podcast. >> 2/3 of the american people depend on the network news of the three networks as their primary source of news and information about the president of united states. all were hostile to richard nixon. >> coincide pivotal moments in american history online at the cspan video library. search, watch, clip, and share with every program from 1987. it is washington, your way. cam year's student competition and students to consider washington, d.c. through their lens. >> that is the duty of american culture is that we all come from

somewhere else and even if we are native americans, we have to adjust to the larger culture. anyone who wants to become an american can become american and will be accepted as an american. ♪ of thenot a fan government doing anything. why is the government doing anything? >> the first full year of the obama administration, there was a record number of emigrants which doesn't count all the people caught by the border control. -- border patrol. >> arizona senate bill 1070 attempted to put the responsibility into state hands

to fix the problem. another aspect of this issue is why people move into the united states at all. we took a trip to our hours on the border to get perspective on why immigrants make the trip. the roles of the state and federal government will be defined as the issues reach its climax in the near future. >> on april 23, the governor signed the senate bill. the federal law requires that aliens register with the u.s. government and for them to carry registration documents at all times. creators of the legislation said it it may be racial fal profiling. >> the one who introduced this law has been trying to pass a similar law for the last 15 years. it never, never passed through

the legislature and would never have been signed by any governor. governor brewer signed this bill because she wanted to shore up her right wing base because the election was one year away. >> you look at fb 1070 it is about the fear is made law. s made law. >> presented these bills every year. i have been vigilant on this issue for a long time. it removes the sanctuary policies in this state that are already illegal1644 and 1373, is

illegal to restrict immigration laws. and yet, these cities across the nation have them. >> i supported it. the one thing i liken it is the fact that if you are here illegally, the law enforcement person can arrests that person and they can spend 20 days in jail or you can turn them over to immigration ballo = =. >> i question the term reasonable suspicion. what is that? >> one of the key phrases is attrition through enforcement. attrition is a pretty powerful word. that means let's make the conditions so bad for people that they cannot live here. >> there is a lot of footage of boycotts and fights breaking out

about this situation. the people who are against this legislation, there is a majority of support. >> it is card to be an on documented student. >> sommers and arizona can often have 10020 degrees. we felt was important to see where the border crossings happen to understand what these people go through. >> we went to meet up with an organization and we met them in ajo, arizona. they build water towers in the most deadly areas of the desert for those who are out there. >> now that you have been out here and seen what it is like,

what would your response be to someone? you're just making it easy for them. >> not at all. >> we only walked 1/4 of a mile. the idea that putting water out here is giving them incentives to cross comes from someone who has never been out here. >> it is hard to imagine ceiling of miles and miles of border. it seems pretty unrealistic. >> we walked up to the border and we were immediately approached by one border patrol man and another one and another one came running out a good half mile away and they all joined upper and they checked out what

we were doing their, being cautious that we were not illegal immigrants checking out the wall. >> it doesn't matter what public opinion is. we don't want to go out on our property and pick up dead bodies. >> regardless of how you feel on the issue, you have to be more accepting of the other positions that are out there. you have to embrace without reform, you cannot solve these problems of violence and labor, of in france and the personal freedom. -- of the infringement of personal freedom. >> is important that citizens are encouraged to work together to bring about change.

what i learned from this documentary is that when someone is not educated on an issue, how can you expect to bring change? it is when a community is united and respect each other's differing opinions that change can occur. >> . go to >org -- go to studentcam.org. >> on cspan today, "washington journal" is next live with your phone calls. that is followed by live coverage of the center for american progress and a discussion about the future of the u.s. economy. on c-span 2, newt gingrich and former white house budget director peter orszag will be at the brookings institution to talk about health care reform. that is at 9:00 a.m. eastern time. on washington journal