$4.3 million for FY2000. Note that the bulk of these funds are for reactor refueling costs ($2.8 million; the remaining $1.5 million represents less than 10% of the total operational costs.

Establish a Competitive Peer-Reviewed Program for University Reactors: The panel proposes that a competitive peer-reviewed program augment current DoE financial support for these university research and training reactors. This program would focus on activities beyond operation and would support infrastructure costs associated with personnel and instrumentation upgrades in support of extramurally funded research (e.g., from DoE NEER or NERI grants) as well as facility upgrades and personnel costs that involve innovative training and educational outreach activities. This program would provide additional multi-year grants for reactor facilities that are part of focused proposals by groups of collaborators that can emphasize research, training and or educational outreach. The panel believes that such a program can provide the needed financial support for qualified university research and training reactors. These resources are for activities that go beyond what is needed only for base operation and provide a competitive arena where innovative ideas can be nurtured. The total program cost would be $15 million per year, which is consistent with the proposals to DoE by the University Working Group in 1996 and with previous studies dating back to the 1988 study by the National Resource Council. The panel suggests that this program be instituted incrementally in FY02 and FY03 budgets to allow for development of the needed DoE administration that would accompany this new activity. The panel recommends the following elements for this expanded DoE program for URR support:

A. Key Elements of Competitive Program

1) Multi-year funding awarded through peer-reviewed proposal process.

2) Proposals encouraged for research, for education and for public outreach.

3) Funding levels ranging from small outreach efforts to multi-university teams. 4) URR is required to "qualify" before its proposal is considered. (Specific qualifying criteria have been proposed by the panel see part C).

5) University must provide cost-sharing (auditable using NSF-like procedures). B. Suggested Guidelines to this Competitive Program

• Defined missions: The RFP would include suggestions for missions for research, education/training and outreach, with a university or university teams free to propose different missions.

• Base infrastructure funding: The program would allow a specified fraction of the budget to be used for personnel, instrumentation upgrades and materials and supplies related to the specific deliverables in the proposal. If DoE does not wish to directly fund such items, then the cost sharing offered by the universities could be used. Overhead (indirect costs) on the contracts could also help the university with base and infrastructure funding.

• Funding period: One to five years. (5 years would be needed for a "center", but shorter periods should not be discouraged for other projects.)

• Level of cost sharing: This needs to be consistent with other federal agencies; e.g., NSF and NIH require a 33-50% cost share (with a possible maximum instituted, so that universities can afford to submit large proposals).

• Funding level: The panel proposed funding to ramp up to $15M yr (just for this program, without reducing other NEST programs). This funding level was taken from the URR Center of Excellence proposal (1996). It is similar to what was originally proposed in the NRC study in 1988 and is also consistent with general comments in the DoE 1994 report and the proposal by the University Working Group in 1996. The panel feels this is a minimum level of investment based on the basic principle that annual infrastructure investments of about 510% of the initial capital investment is needed to maintain a level of competence; note that the capital investment for these URRS is well over $250 milÎion. The panel realizes this is a preliminary estimate and may need to be increased as better data become available once the competitive program is operating.

C. Proposed Qualifying Criteria for University Nuclear Reactors

The panel would propose the following criteria to qualify university nuclear reactors for research support from the Department of Energy Office of Nuclear Energy under the proposed competitive peer-reviewed program for research, training and outreach.

• The university reactor must demonstrate an acceptable operational and safety record over the last five years.

The university reactor must demonstrate that it contributes to the educational infrastructure of a suitable degree program(s).

• The university reactor must demonstrate that substantial financial support comes from the university and will continue through at least the program support period.

• The university reactor must have a commitment from the appropriate university official for its continued operation through at least the program support period.

IMPROVEMENT OF UNIVERSITY-DOE LABORATORY INTERACTIONS: RECOMMENDATIONS The first of the current DoE National Laboratories were created, staffed and managed by university personnel following World War II. Thus, these laboratories began with intimate ties to universities, and substantial interactions have continued between the laboratory and university communities. The panel surveyed several DoE Laboratories and the survey indicated unanimous agreement that university interactions are beneficial and should be expanded.

There are a host of ways the laboratories and universities can continue to build upon their interactions, including collaboration on papers, student internships at labs, research subcontracts from labs to universities, large collaborative research projects (for example funded by NERI program), and many others. All of these are important and beneficial; however, the panel believes the most important interaction mechanism is to increase the engagement of faculty members (and thus their graduate students) in funded research that is of programmatic interest to the laboratories. Research funding in line with laboratory objectives is by far the best way to attract both faculty and laboratory interest; programmatic relevance ensures short-term benefit to the lab and produces graduates that are interested and expert in laboratory problems (which is a long-term benefit).

The panel examined several specific approaches that could increase collaboration between universities and laboratories. Some of these strategies have a common theme that would require exercising some level of central authority within the DoE. • Increased Nuclear Engineering and Health Physics Fellowships: These are an excellent means of interacting with top graduate students, since these students are required to spend an intern period at the DoE national laboratories. And this is directly in accord with our proposed increase of graduate student fellowships.

• Increased personnel exchanges between Laboratories and Universities: Laboratories could create programs such as a "Distinguished Visitor Program," under which university faculty could spend extended periods (e.g. sabbaticals) at laboratories. Laboratories could encourage its staff to give seminars and/or spend time as visiting faculty at universities.

• Designated University Awards: Universities provide largely untapped resources that could participate more fully in DoE applied and basic research programs. To take more advantage of this resource, DoE could negotiate a financial incentive for subcontracting a certain percentage of the laboratory's budget to universities. Laboratory management could also require individual programs (or divisions or directorates) to subcontract a set amount or percentage to universities each year.

SENATE BILL 242: UNIVERSITY NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING ACT

I have read Senate Bill 242 in detail and am very supportive of its elements. It addresses all of the issues that I have outlined previously. It realistically augments the current DoE University Programs budget in a phased-fashion, and it is responsive to the needs of assuring a future that nurtures the human resources nuclear energy will need. Let me conclude my comments in support of S. 242 with two major points that I would like to emphasize:

• An important aspect of Senate Bill 242 is that it provides for the enhancement of the human resource that nuclear science and engineering will need to continue to contribute to the common good of this nation. This "people-focus" supports all aspects of nuclear science and engineering as the industry decides to pursue additional nuclear electrical generating capacity or the medical community uses new advances in medical imaging and cancer treatments.

• In addition, Senate Bill 242 provides the infrastructure support for the necessary facilities for the education of future scientists and engineers. This support will provide undergraduates and graduate students with an otherwise unobtainable "hands-on" educational experience, allowing for understanding of nuclear fission-reactor processes and interaction of radiation with matter.

Therefore, I fully support the authorization of $30 million in FY2002 with increased funding in a phased manner to $64 million by FY 2006.

SENATE BILL 472: SUPPORT FOR CONTINUED USE OF NUCLEAR ENERGY

I have also read Senate Bill 472 in some detail and although I do not consider myself an expert in all of the aspects of this omnibus bill, I am quite supportive of its general approach and many of its specific recommendations, as well as the funding needed to accomplish these tasks. Let me provide comments on significant

items:

1. Support for Nuclear Energy

a. Renew Price-Anderson: This legislation provides the essential liability coverage for nuclear activities. It has been and continues to be a rational and reasonable way to assure for compensation from accidents if needed.

b. Assistant Secretary for Nuclear Energy: This is necessary since it elevates the Director for Nuclear Energy to a position held in prior administrations.

c. Nuclear Engineering Educational Support: I have commented on this.

d. Nuclear Engineering Efficiency Improvement: This provision would provide funding for incentives to utilities to make capital investments that would increase the electricity output of nuclear power plants. In this time of rising energy costs and electricity shortages, such a provision provides a needed mechanism to rapidly provide more electrical power with this economic, safe and reliable technology.

e. Nuclear Generation Study provides a status of new and re-licensed plants. 2. Encourage New Nuclear Power Plant Construction

a. Completion of Unfinished Plants: This is a mechanism that can provide for the industry to bring unfinished nuclear power plants on-line by the end of 2004, following a careful review of their viability and reliability.

b. Generation IV Reactor Program: This is an important program that will allow the DoE to develop a program plan with the needed industrial input and guidance. The program provides a roadmap for new evolutionary plant designs, research and development to supply future electrical energy needs, with improved economics, safety and sustainability.

c. Early-site Permit Demonstration Program: This is an interesting concept to provide a "bank" of locations that are pre-approved by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for nuclear power plant sites. This has the potential of taking several years off of the construction time for nuclear power plants and making them more economic. 3. Assure a Level Playing Field for Nuclear Power

There are numerous improvements being proposed that will improve the competitive aspects of nuclear power production. I would endorse many of these; e.g., qualification for environmentally preferable purchase programs, consumer information disclosure standards, no discrimination for international programs.

4. Improve Nuclear Regulatory Commission Regulations

Once again there are numerous improvements that need to be implemented, which will not compromise the general public health and safety, but are needed for process enhancement. I would also endorse many of these; e.g., remove duplicative antitrust review requirements, simplify hearings for licensing actions, give the NRC authority over decommissioning obligations of non-licensees.

5. Development of Nuclear Waste Solutions

The stalemate over disposal of high-level waste that has existed for over three decades is totally unacceptable. This is one of the most important areas that require legislative attention to assure continued use of nuclear power in the 21st century. It is my view that this is primarily a political rather a technical issue. To quote a former governor and a former Secretary of the Interior, Bruce Babbitt, the disposal of nuclear waste is "almost entirely a political issue. There is not much left to quarrel about" at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, the site of the proposed repository for spent nuclear fuel. The former Secretary of the Interior called the site "safe and solid" at a recent Nuclear Energy Assembly Conference on May 22nd, 2001. Former Secretary Babbitt said that the political nature of waste disposal "stems from the inability to appreciate the reality of geologic time and how stable land forms are over relatively short times geologically speaking." I am also aware that the proposed Yucca Mountain repository siting decision is being delayed due to political reasons. Therefore, I fully support the concept of an Office of Spent Nuclear Fuel Research as a backup. This proposal has as its charter, the development of a national strategy for spent fuel. This was part of the Title III interim storage bill proposed during the 106th Congress.

75-728 D-01--8

In summary, the omnibus Senate Bill 472 has my full support.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you all very much. I think all the testimony has been very useful. Let me just ask a very few questions here and then we have one additional panel. Dr. Holdren, let me start with you. One of the things you focused on in this 1997 PCAST report was, or at least one of the things you raised there, was the role of government in commercializing these high public benefit energy technologies. Could you elaborate a little bit as to what you see as the appropriate governmental role in this?

Dr. HOLDREN. Yes, I can do that, although to do so I will have to go somewhat beyond what the PCAST study 1997 itself addressed because our mandate was to look at research and development and not at demonstration and deployment. We went a little bit beyond that mandate in suggesting that in cases where there is a very high public benefit associated with a new technology, the Government's investment in research and development should be added to by an investment at the demonstration stage and perhaps in efforts to buy down the costs of the new technology to the point of commercial competitiveness with the justification that the high public benefit not realized in private returns justifies the Government's moving beyond R&D. In those kinds of cases, one could imagine, for example, a situation where you have a new technology whose cost would fall rapidly if you could get the total quantity of production up a bit. But there is this barrier to be overcome. The production will not rise under market conditions if the initial price is too high to compete with what else is out there. So, you get the Government involved, and there are various ways to do this, in subsidizing the incremental cost required to get production to the level where the new technology becomes competitive, and again the reason for it is the public benefit. For example, in reduced emissions of air pollutants, greenhouse gases, reduced dependence on foreign oil, and so on and so forth, a wide array of public benefits that might justify that sort of involvement.

The second PCAST study in 1999 on international cooperation looked at this in more detail because it did have a mandate to look beyond R&D toward demonstration and deployment. It did look in more detail at specific mechanisms for doing this and also looked in more detail at the circumstances under which it would make

sense.

The CHAIRMAN. Let me ask Dr. Moniz a question that I asked Mr. Blake a little bit earlier. This whole problem of measuring, or metrics, in the expenditure of R&D funds-what do you believe the pitfalls are in going down that road? I mean I am concerned, I guess, that building too many metrics into this system can cause us to make some very shortsighted decisions, and I would just be interested in any comments you have as to how we avoid that.

Dr. MONIZ. Well, Mr. Chairman, I think the physicist's response is always, to quote Einstein, "not everything that can be counted counts and not everything that counts can be counted." And I think that does apply to much of the research enterprise. Indeed, in 1996, I would just observe when I was serving at OSTP we did a multiagency study of metrics in the GPRA context for basic research. And I think that report raises many of the cautions that you elude to. Indeed, it is complex analysis involving, as Bob said, both retro

spective and prospective issues but when all was said and done, certainly especially in the research phase, we emphasized that there was simply no replacement for forums of merit review and peer based review to evaluate particularly prospective investments. Now, having said that, we certainly do not argue that R&D investments are somehow immune from accountability, from using measures. I believe the Academy report, for example, the matrix that Bob referred to, is the kind of approach which clearly has some subjective judgments in filling in the boxes which is very, very important and a way to go. It is also a case that when one takes a sensible system, and I will just finish with one example, that one has in some sense a mixed kind of approach appropriate to the job. It is not one size fits all. Let's take for example a major investment, and I will just pick an example. Let's say, at Fermilab to explore the Higgs boson. There are clearly very quantitative metrics that should be applied to the issue of building the facility on time, on schedule, on costs, et cetera. But those same metrics cannot sensibly be applied to the actual research outcome because the outcomes themselves are of course what you are trying to learn. So, the issue would be, and I would refer back to, and I would be happy to explain, at some other time, go into more detail, in the 1996 report together with the National Academy report. I believe it maps out what is fundamentally a sensible way of evaluating research programs and looking at progress.

The CHAIRMAN. Well, I could ask questions here for several more hours and I am sure you folks could educate me on a lot of things, but let me just stop with that. And thank you very much for coming. We will take your testimony and do our best to learn from it and incorporate the lessons into what we wind up legislating here. Thank you very much.

Let's take a 5-minute break and then we will do the third panel. [Recess.]

The CHAIRMAN. If we go ahead with the third panel. We have three witnesses here in this third and last panel on reprocessing of nuclear fuel. First, Dr. Tom Cochran who is a senior scientist and nuclear program director with the NRDC here in Washington. Mr. Jacques Bouchard who is with the French Atomic Energy Commission. Thank you very much for being here. And Dr. Greg Choppin, who is with the Department of Chemistry at Florida State University in Tallahassee. Thank you very much for being here. Dr. Cochran, why don't you go ahead. And the full statement of each of you will be included in the record. If you could take just 5 or 6 minutes and summarize your main points, we would appreciate it.

STATEMENT OF THOMAS B. COCHRAN, PH.D., DIRECTOR, NUCLEAR PROGRAM NATURAL RESOURCES DEFENSE COUNCIL Dr. COCHRAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My name is Thomas B. Cochran. I am director of nuclear program at the Natural Resources Defense Council. I am a member of the Department of Energy's Nuclear Energy Research Advisory Committee but I am testifying today on behalf of NRDC and not the advisory committee. I am pleased to be here today to testify about U.S. nuclear energy policy and proposals for funding, research and development by the