President Bush Attends Washington International Renewable Energy Conference 2008
And the truth of the matter is, you've got to be -- have a growing economy to be able to afford these technologies in the first place. So here are some ways that we're dealing with the issue of electricity. One, I strongly believe the United States must promote nuclear power here in the United States. Nuclear power -- (applause) -- if you're interested in economic growth and environmental stewardship, there's no better way to achieve both of them than through the promotion of nuclear power. Nuclear power is limitless. It's one existing source that generates a massive amount of electricity without causing air pollution or any greenhouse gases.
And yet the United States -- we haven't built any nuclear power plants in a long time. We have a promising technology available and yet we're stuck -- until recently. All of our citizens probably don't understand, but France, our ally and friend, gets nearly 80 percent of its power from nuclear power. Isn't that an amazing statistic? It's time for America to change.
My administration is working to eliminate the barriers to development of nuclear power plants. Last year we invested more than $300 million in nuclear energy technologies. We want our people to understand that this generation of nuclear power plants is safe. We want people to feel comfortable about the expansion of nuclear power.
There's regulatory uncertainty when it comes to permitting plants in the United States. You can't expect somebody to invest a lot of money and have the regulatory process at the very end stop that capital from being deployed. It makes no sense. Just like tax policy has to be certain, so does regulatory policy have to create a sense of certainty in order to get people to invest.
So in the energy bill I signed in 2005, we began to address that uncertainty with federal risk insurance for those who build nuclear power plants. This insurance protects the builders of the first six new plants against lawsuits -- we got a lot of them in America, by the way; too many lawsuits, in my judgment -- against bureaucratic obstacles and against delays beyond the -- that would cause people to hesitate to participate in this program.
We've also launched a program called Nuclear Power 2010. Sam Bodman is in charge of all these. It's a partnership between our industry and the U.S. government. Since we've started these programs, we've received six applications to build and operate new nuclear power plants in the United States. The paradigm is beginning to shift. And we anticipate that another 13 applications will be submitted this year.
Many of the construction projects will be supported by $18.5 billion in loan guarantees provided by the government. By the way, that's part of a loan-guarantee projects that we got out of Congress -- $18 billion for the nukes, $10 billion for renewable energy expansions in the United States. (Applause.) This will enable our plant owners -- guys that are applying for loans -- (laughter) -- the whole purpose is, is we want to expand our nuclear power industry. And we're taking specific actions to do it.
You know, there's a lot of politicians who just talk. I hope when history is written of this administration, we not only talked, we actually did positive things and constructive things.
We're also working with our friends overseas for the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership. I believe developing nations ought to be encouraged to use nuclear power. I believe it's in our interests, I believe it will help take pressure off the price of oil, and I know it's going to help protect the environment. And so we're working with other nations, like Japan and France and Great Britain and Russia and China, to form this energy partnership, the purpose of which is to help developing nations secure cost-effective and proliferation-resistant nuclear power, and at the same time to conduct joint research on how to deal with the nuclear waste issue, through positive, productive reprocessing.
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