The international community has now confronted a serious problem to be immediately and simultaneously solved; global warming caused by excessive use of fossil fuel and energy security threatened by surging oil prices. Although it has been said for long time that nuclear energy can be one of the effective answers for global warming, two disasters, TMI in 1979 and Chernobyl in 1986, which had been occurred in two leading nuclear nations made most countries cancel or postpone the plans for using nuclear energy as a main energy source in their territories except several countries like Republic of Korea, Japan, etc. Ironically, nuclear energy is rising as a promising solution which can solve the environmental catastrophe and guarantee sustainable development of international community. There are several reasons why the public could not accept the nuclear energy and enjoy its benefit. The first one is high level radiological waste, nuclear spent fuel. The concerns about nuclear proliferation may be ranked next, as the technology and material for peaceful purposes like power generation can be also used for military purposes like making nuclear weapons. It could be another reason that the development of nuclear energy requires massive capital and advanced technology in various engineering fields. This condition allowed the privilege about nuclear energy to only several developed nations and estranged other developing countries from the benefits from nuclear energy. In this context, the GNEP program of the U.S. government has proposed none too soon the pertinent solutions for settling the current issues of nuclear energy. The top priority of the GNEP program is said to expand the use of nuclear energy, but the most sensitive one is about the limitation of proliferation of sensitive technologies related with uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing.
展开▼
