Nuclear Energy in France: Taking The Long View

Nuclear energy has come of age industrially. It offers numerous advantages over other sources of energy, not least among them energy independence, economic competitiveness, environmental protection and safety. And when we speak of safety, we mean safety as it is defined in free market economies, which bears no comparison to safety as it is practiced in the former USSR and other eastern block countries. The high-level radioactive waste generated by our program is, fortunately, low in volume - about 2m3 per year per reactor - and we have demonstrated precise and responsible management of such waste. Those of you who have visited the La Hague plant were able to walk on top of the vitrified waste interim storage vaults, where the waste is stored pending final disposal. Korea, for its part, has embarked upon a nuclear power program of comparable proportions more recently, with, of course, the corresponding benefits of lower electric power costs and lesser atmospheric pollution. Both the safety and the availability of its reactors are excellent. In his last year opening address, MR. Ah Bong-Wh stated Korea's 'future may have to embrace such facets as the assurance of nuclear safety, technical self-reliance, regional cooperation, persistent enforcement of public relations campaign'. Nuclear power is a viable and necessary alternative for industrialized nations which seek a reliable supply of electricity to support economic development, yet which are not themselves rich in natural energy resources. This is the case for both France and Korea. France, like Korea, has no indigenous sources of fossil fuels -- no oil, little coal -- and we have already fully developed our hydro-electric capability. Yet demand for electricity continues to grow: although at a slower pace than the pre-1973 oil crisis high of nearly 10% per year, demand increased by an astounding 16% in 1992 alone, as MR. John K. Chang indicated in his recants comments to the Nuclear Energy Agency. Nuclear power is the only reasonable means of sustaining this kind of growth if we are not to import the lion's share of our energy, exposing ourselves to the whims of an increasingly politicized oil market or to the pollution caused by coal-fired plants