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Energy Department Pushes for GNEP and RRW By Jon Fox The Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, a Bush administration plan to spread proliferation-resistant nuclear energy plants globally, and the Reliable Replacement Warhead, the effort to develop a next-generation nuclear warhead, “are in fact built on the same strategic foundation,” said Deputy Energy Secretary Clay Sell. Speaking at the Carnegie International Nonproliferation Conference, Sell said both programs represent “a firm commitment to reducing the number of weapons and weapons-capable states, while ensuring the benefits of nuclear power are spread as widely as possible.” Sell echoed administration arguments for the RRW program, suggesting it would allow the United States to draw down its large stockpile of nondeployed warheads that are maintained, in part, to offset the potential failure of any one weapons system. The new warheads would be less likely to fail than the Cold War-era weapons and would be less likely to require a return to explosive testing to confirm their viability, department officials have said in promoting the program. “The United States has the opportunity now to prudently, effectively and significantly reduce the number of our nuclear weapons by moving from our Cold War stockpile to a stockpile that is still safer, more secure and far less likely to ever require nuclear testing,” Sell said. He suggested that the nuclear material from warheads disassembled as a result of the RRW program could be funneled into the fuel supply for what is expected to be an increasing number of nuclear power plants worldwide. A number of the “security and safety techniques” that officials say will be incorporated into the new planned warhead and the infrastructure that would be required to produce it “should likewise be applicable to an expanding global civilian nuclear power enterprise,” Sell said. “No person can be serious about climate change without being serious about greatly expanding nuclear power,” he said. The GNEP program would seek to boost nuclear power while mitigating the risk that the spread of fuel-cycle technology would allow additional states to produce nuclear weapons material. The partnership seeks to develop technologies to “recycle spent fuel in a proliferation-resistant manner” and to present “strong commercial incentives against new states building their own enrichment and reprocessing capabilities,” Sell said. Critics have questioned whether a new nuclear warhead could be deployed without explosive testing, and have said that developing a new weapon sends the wrong message on nonproliferation. There have also been doubts on administration claims that the GNEP program would eliminate the potential proliferation dangers of fuel recycling.
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