As part of President Bush's Advanced Energy Initiatives, Deputy Energy Secretary Clay Sell announced the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership. He said the United States hopes to work with nations such as France, Russia and Britain, which already possess nuclear reprocessing technologies, to recycle spent fuel and to eliminate the proliferation concerns about old nuclear material.

A week after Bush's statement in his State of the Union that the United States is "addicted to oil," Sell said expanded nuclear energy would help end that addiction.

"To the extent we can replace diesel and fuel oil generation for electricity with nuclear power, that can significantly affect and reduce the growth in demand for oil worldwide," said Sell.

Experts outside the government, however, do not believe nuclear energy, oil and electricity are intertwined intricately enough to end the U.S. dependence on foreign oil -- especially in the short term.

"We don't use oil to make electricity," said Jerry Taylor, a senior fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute. "This plan would have no impact on energy independence whatsoever -- zero -- it is trivial."

Other experts note that the call for energy independence is some 30 years old and a hallmark of nearly every administration since then.

"Virtually every American president since Gerald Ford has called for energy independence," said Scott Denman, a consultant for Collaborations, a non-profit organization concerned with energy policy based in Barryville, Va. "This is a mislabeling of nuclear energy. Only 2 percent of imported oil is used for electricity."

The plan to expand the use of nuclear technology is not new. It was halted in the United States in 1970 because of proliferation concerns.

Sell said nuclear energy is part of the world's future, and the United States must take a leading role in working with other leading nuclear economies. Indeed, Britain and Germany are reconsidering nuclear plants and India, Asia's third-largest economy, is also looking toward nuclear energy.

"It is our goal to develop, in partnership with these other nations, technologies that will allow for recycling of spent fuel but not separate plutonium," said Sell. "We hope to develop an international regime that will allow for fuel leasing so that fuel can be leased to a country interested in building a reactor and taking fuel, but then the fuel can be taken back to the fuel cycle country."

DOE's plan for expanded nuclear energy will receive $250 million in its first year of funding. Sell said that will be expanded in years to come -- especially in the final three years of the Bush administration.

Sell said the United States would have to ensure technologies for storing and recycling spent nuclear fuel were 100 percent secure, which will be very costly down the road.

Benefits of the nuclear initiative are years away because technology is still lacking. Also, much will need to be done with foreign nations involved to work out deals and nonproliferation concerns. Kateri Callahan, president of the Alliance to Save Energy, said more needs to be done to aid short-term goals in energy efficiency.

"Money spent on new technology is good," she said, but added it needs to be coupled with things that can be done immediately to improve efficiency. "This program is not something that can be done overnight."

Callahan said nuclear energy could have a dramatic affect on hybrid car batteries if there were a major breakthrough in battery technology.

"To the extent that we could move forward with a hybrid vehicle, nuclear energy could help - it would be great," she said, but warned it is not economically possible to gamble on a battery breakthrough.

It is expected the world's energy demand will double by 2050 as emerging nations become more technologically advanced. Sell said the fact nuclear energy is a more environmentally friendly source than fossil fuels will become increasingly important in the years to come.

Ronald Bailey, a Science Correspondent for Reason Magazine, said, "nuclear energy is the way to go if you are worried about greenhouse gasses," but like others, he said there are also significant economic issues. "There is not really anything out there that can compete with gas right now - maybe in 20 years," he said.

Taylor of Cato said the nuclear initiative is unfeasible economically.

"Rhetoric is cheap but action is costly," he said, adding Bush's talk of energy independence would remove the United States from the world market.

Many nations, however, are prepared to work to expand nuclear energy. Sell said he met with leaders in London, Paris, Moscow, Beijing and Tokyo to discuss nuclear partnerships.

DOE Secretary Samuel Bodman said the nuclear initiative "brings the promise of virtually limitless energy to emerging economies around the globe."

Edward Lyman, a senior scientist in the Union of Concerned Scientists Global Security program, said the program is being labeled as too many things.

"They are making it a nonproliferation initiative, a nuclear waste disposal problem and a resource issue," said Lyman. "It can't be all of these things."

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