Mr. President, Senator Webb of Virginia, the colleague of the Presiding Officer, and I are introducing legislation today to propose that the United States build its clean energy future upon the…
Mr. President, Senator Webb of Virginia, the colleague of the Presiding Officer, and I are introducing legislation today to propose that the United States build its clean energy future upon the lessons of the Manhattan Project of World War II. That helped end the war. It was 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 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.
The most important thing I can say is that the senior Senator from Virginia and the junior Senator from Virginia and I have all talked about this subject before. I think we see there is a great deal of consensus in this body about some steps we can take on clean energy. So what Senator Webb and I are hoping to do with this framework is to see on a one-on-one basis whether it is the kind of framework that will permit us to work with other Senators who expressed an interest in nuclear power and energy research and development. And while we are contending about economy-wide cap and trade, we could move ahead with these steps that have to do with clean energy, clean air, climate change, low-cost, reliable energy.
In other words, this is a piece of legislation that you can support if you are for an economy-wide cap and trade or if you are against an economy-wide cap and trade. There are some things we can do to help our country that also help us deal with climate change.
In 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt asked Senator McKellar, the Tennessean who chaired the Appropriations Committee, to hide $2 billion in the appropriations bill for a secret project to win World War II. Senator 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 the 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 3 countries.
President Roosevelt's $2 billion appropriation would be $24 billion today.
After World War II, in 1947, ADM Hyman Rickover came to Oak Ridge for training that led to the nuclear Navy that helped to defend our country for half a 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 in 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 powerplant every 2 or 3 months. The Japanese obtain a third of their power from nuclear plants and build new reactors from start to finish in less than 4 years. France gets 80 percent of its electricity from nuclear power and, as a result, has among the lowest electricity 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 10. Yet the country that invented this remarkable technology, the United States of America, has not started a new nuclear powerplant 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 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 that a country that uses 25 percent of all the energy in the world has to have.
Today, despite heavy subsidies, wind, solar, geothermal, biomass renewable energy produce only 3 percent of 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 cannot rely solely on conservation, on windmills and solar panels or even on natural gas. We are fortunate to have a new, massive natural gas set of discoveries in the United States, but a natural gas powerplant 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 could mean high prices tomorrow for farmers, homeowners, and manufacturers.
Add to that a recent Nature Conservancy scientific paper that warned 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 1 square mile would require continuously deforesting an area about 1.5 times the size of the Great Smoky National Park. Producing 20 percent of our electricity from 50- 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 scenic ridgetops, coastlines, or other treasured landscapes, we will be 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 1 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 cannot be stored in large amounts. There is only one wind farm in the entire Southern United States because the wind doesn't blow enough. In the Tennessee Valley Authority region, solar costs at least four to five times as much as other electricity that TVA buys.
As for green jobs, according to the Department of Energy, there will 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 should not 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 11 industrialized countries, including the United States, have said humans probably have caused most of the recent global warming.
If fire chiefs of the same reputation said my house might burn down, I would buy fire insurance, but I would buy insurance that worked and that was not so expensive that I couldn't pay my mortgage or my hospital bill.
Fortunately, there are two steps that will benefit our country in multiple ways--namely, cleaner air; more energy independence; more reliable, low-cost power--and 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 or 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, such as the renewable technologies, the same discipline and resources we did with the original Manhattan Project in order to make them effective and cost competitive.
That is why the bill Senator Webb and I are introducing today, the Clean Energy Act of 2009, proposes the following: No. 1, loan guarantees: $100 billion to encourage startup of all forms of carbon- free electricity production, expanding the $47 billion loan guarantee program that exists today, and $18 billion of those funds are currently available for nuclear projects.
Secretary Chu has suggested it should be in the forties. I believe that number should be closer to the sixties or the seventies. But the purpose of this is to get the first few nuclear plants up and running, and then the money is paid back. The Congressional Budget Office estimates this could cost up to $10 billion but might cost much less. New reactor designs, $1 billion over 5 years to enable the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to review new designs such as the generation 4 reactors that don't isolate plutonium and, therefore, help solve the used nuclear fuel problems, and small modular reactors that can be built in U.S. factories and assembled on site such as LEGO blocks. No. 3, nuclear workforce, $1 billion over 10 years to ensure a supply of nuclear engineers, operators, and craftsmen such as welders and pipe fitters. Americans have a generation gap in these skilled personnel. No. 4, more power from existing reactors. This would be $500 million over 10 years to increase the efficiency and develop longer lifetimes for our existing 104 reactors. If we did both of these things, we might create the equivalent production of 20 or 30 more reactors. Then, finally, the five new, what we call mini-Manhattan Projects for clean energy.
Here are the five mini-Manhattan Projects: $750 million per year over 10 years for research and development on, No. 1, carbon capture emissions from coal plants. In many ways that is the holy grail of energy R&D. If we can find a way to do that, we can have all of the low-cost, clean electricity we can use. No. 2, develop advanced biofuels from crops that we don't eat; No. 3, improve batteries for electric cars so instead of taking us 100 miles without recharging, they might take us 300 or 400 miles; make solar power more cost competitive.
That has the most promise in terms of renewable energy because we have rooftops on which to put the panels. They just cost too much today. Then recycling used nuclear fuel in a way that doesn't isolate plutonium, that reduces by 99.9 percent the radioactive life of what is left, and by 97 percent the mass we have to deal with. The cost to taxpayers over 20 years would be no more than $20 billion. There would be no new energy taxes or mandates. This $20 billion would compare with $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.
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 powerplant if we plugged 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 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. The lessons of the Manhattan Project could advance the days 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 large amounts of reliable, low-cost, clean electricity that will keep American jobs from going overseas looking for cheap energy.
I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a one-page summary of the Alexander-Webb legislation, called the Clean Energy Act of 2009.
I thank the Senator from Virginia, Mr. Webb, for his leadership. He brings a special knowledge to this because of his background in the Navy as an engineer and as Secretary of the Navy. Thousands of our sailors have lived on top of reactors for 50 years safely. This is an idea that has broad support on both sides of the aisle, I believe. We have gotten so stuck on arguing about the economy- wide cap and trade that we have failed to notice the areas where we may be able to agree. We certainly agree on energy research and development.
The President has strongly supported that. We certainly agree on electrification of cars and trucks. The President also strongly supports that.
I believe there is more agreement on nuclear power than we have seen before. So we are going to work with Democratic and Republican Senators who have already expressed such an interest and others who may be thinking about it over the next few weeks to see if this will form a framework for that kind of discussion.
