United States panel presentations

Before I begin I have to make a disclaimer. That is that I am going to be talking about public perception because I think that is very important. But I do not want to give the impression that I think the public is wrong. I happen to agree with the public's perception of nuclear power, and I want to make that clear. I do not like the current generation of nuclear plants as I have made clear in many statements that I have made. On the other hand, in the long term, I feel that we have only two choices on the supply side, and that is nuclear power and solar electricity. And although I think solar electricity has the best chance, I am realistic enough to know that technologies do not always work the way I want. And so I think it is necessary to have at least some kind of nuclear option available. On the other hand, I do not think just any kind of nuclear technology will do. I want to talk to you about the conditions that I think you have to take into account when you try to design reactors that are publicly acceptable. I look at this as an insurance policy. Again, I do not want to be misquoted: I think nuclear power should be considered as an insurance policy, not as our first line of defense. Having made those disclaimers, what we need to do is set out a problem statement. The problem statement I set out is, 'How could one design and demonstrate a nuclear reactor that would regain public confidence in the United States, if one chose to do that?' By regaining confidence, I mean regaining sufficient confidence to site reactors at a number of locations. It is a pretty heavy task because the public cannot judge the technical issues. They have to judge the players by their characters and their histories, just as the way we calibrate anyone that knows things that we do not. I have three theses that I think are crucial. The first is that people do not believe in the claims of advocates, of any point of view, not just nuclear power, once the advocates have been proved wrong on a major point. I think that is already happened with nuclear power and that is one of the problems that you are facing. The second thesis I have is that there does not exist in the country today an agency perceived to be independent, overseeing the technology whose judgement of safety issues is trusted. Once again, I think the issues are standard, we have a classical revolving door problem in the NRC. The third thesis is that people judge newer, complicated technologies by their failures, and not by their successes. There have to be huge perceived benefits to cause people to put up with risks perceived to be unbounded, risks that you do not understand