Nuclear energy development efforts

In the business context, the international trends to more effective uranium utilization, closed fuel cycles with reprocessing and recycle of spent fuel, and more effective and efficient management of spent fuel and reduction of eventual wastes are becoming obvious. These trends require major exporters of nuclear reactors and uranium fuel with international commitments to develop an effective international presence and new technical processes to keep technology relevant and competitive (e.g., as evidenced by the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership efforts of the United States). 

The past half-century has witnessed an enormous accumulation of nuclear wastes. This accumulation continues today, but on a smaller scale, due to peacetime uses of nuclear energy. Some of the largest repositories of nuclear waste are derived fi-om atomic weapons development and are found in the USA. These repositories often date back to the 1940s and 1950s and contain a mixture of radioactive and non-radioactive constituents refleeting past efforts to modify the original waste. 

He went on to the United States, where until 1945 he worked with other physicists on the atomic bomb development at Los Alamos, New Mexico. His insistence on sharing the secret of the atomic bomb with other allies, to permit international control over nuclear energy, so angered Winston Churchill that he had to be restrained from ordering Bohr s arrest. Bohr worked hard and long on behalf of the development and use of atomic energy for peaceful purposes. For his efforts, he was awarded the first Atoms for Peace Prize in 1957. He died in Copenhagen on November 18,1962. 

In its November 1997 report, the PCAST Panel on Energy Research and Development determined that establishing nuclear energy as a viable and expandable option was important and that a properly focused R D effort to address the potential long-term barriers to expanded use of nuclear power (e g. nuclear waste, proliferation, safety and economics) was appropriate. The PCAST panel further recommended that DOE reinvigorate its nuclear energy research and development activities in an R D effort to address these potential barriers with a new Nuclear Energy Research Initiative (NERI). This new initiative should fund research based on competitive selection of proposals from the national laboratories, universities and industry. 

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