October 22, 2003
Atoms for Peace Conference and Presentation of 2003 Enrico Fermi Awards
Washington, D.C.
Remarks by Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham

Thank you all very much and thank you Ray for that kind introduction.

I want to thank the Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis and the Eisenhower Library for organizing the Atoms for Peace Plus 50 Conference, which the Department of Energy is sponsoring. I am also grateful to the many DOE laboratories that provided exhibits for the conference and I hope everyone had a chance to tour the exhibit area.

We are proud of the legacy we in the Department have inherited from President Eisenhower’s extraordinary initiatives. Now, almost exactly fifty years from the date of the President’s historic speech at the United Nations, is the right time to examine that legacy … both where we have been and where we are headed.

The proceedings of this Conference will serve as a critical reference point and guide for the future and I look forward to reviewing them.

Let me also take this opportunity to thank the organizers of the 2003 Enrico Fermi Awards, which we are celebrating in tandem with our Atoms for Peace Conference. I am grateful for the work you have done and appreciate the time and effort that goes in to events such as this.

It is now my great pleasure to offer personal congratulations to the winners of this year’s Enrico Fermi Award and to thank past winners for joining us this evening.

We will hear more a bit later about these gentlemen, but let me just say now that I believe John Bahcall, Raymond Davis, Jr., and Seymour Sack represent what is best about DOE science. They were willing to take risks in their research and to stand by it when others had doubts. Dr. Davis’s exquisite experiments and Dr. Bachall’s magnificent theoretical insights illustrate how perfectly theory and experiment can be joined. Dr. Sack was instrumental in seeing that America had a credible deterrence when it needed it most. And each is dedicated to the critical importance of basic research.

Gentlemen, congratulations.

I am here tonight representing the Department of Energy, of course, but more importantly, I am representing President Bush, who in fact gives this award for a life-time of achievement in energy-related science.

As the home of basic research in the physical sciences, particularly the science of nuclear energy, our Department is the right place to administer this award for the President.

For tonight we honor not only individual achievement in energy-related science, but the very idea of long-term basic research …the kind of investment that is at the same time most difficult to understand… and most critical to our success as a nation. From deterrence of nuclear conflict, to MRI’s, PET scans and other medical miracles, to 20 percent of the electricity that powers our homes and businesses, fundamental scientific research is the unsung hero of the modern age.

So this evening we recognize … and celebrate … these three scientists as well as the nature of the science they do.

And we could not have found a better forum in which to honor the achievements of basic research in energy … a conference on President Eisenhower’s Atoms for Peace speech.

You’ve just finished a full day of discussion on this speech and its implications for nonproliferation, nuclear energy, and nuclear science. And as far as I can see, the best minds in the business have all taken a crack at these topics. So now, at the end of the day, I’m in the unenviable position of trying to add something more to what has already been discussed. Rather than trying, I prefer, I think, to make a personal observation.

The specific initiatives offered by President Eisenhower in his Atoms for Peace Speech, while extremely important, are of less significance today than the actual vision he offered of how to think differently about atomic power. His foresight, and willingness to be bold at a time of considerable international tension, set the stage for a host of global efforts to apply the power of the atom for peaceful purposes.

Eisenhower’s address also sounded the major themes that became the core of our responsibilities here at DOE … nuclear energy, nonproliferation, and a variety of areas surrounding nuclear science.

And while his proposals in each of these areas were historic, it is clear that Eisenhower was equally concerned with shifting the conversation about atomic power away from questions of war and toward the issue of peace. In fact, what he was really doing was taking the discussion of atomic power back to where it began when Enrico Fermi and others first started looking at the energy that could be released from the atom.

In the process, Eisenhower sketched an agenda for the peaceful use of atomic power that is alive and well today at the Department of Energy.

In Eisenhower’s time, however, the arguments for peaceful use of nuclear energy were very different.

Then, the idea was to move from the destructive to the constructive power of nuclear fission. Eisenhower cited agriculture, medicine, and the generation of electricity as possible applications.

But the very success of Atoms for Peace, just as I suspect Eisenhower hoped, has changed the way we talk about nuclear power.

Today, one of our first imperatives reflects our commitment to a clean environment.

Nuclear power plants emit none of the pollutants associated with the burning of fossil fuels. Since the mid-1970s, nuclear energy has enabled the U.S. to avoid emitting over 80 million tons of sulfur dioxide and about 40 million tons of nitrogen oxides.

Another imperative is to supply energy that is both abundant and affordable.

As many of you know, our Administration has identified hydrogen as being a potential source of unlimited and clean energy. We envision a day when hydrogen will power cars, light trucks, 18-wheelers, factories, and shopping malls.

But this is a vision that will take several decades to implement. And one of the challenges will be to produce hydrogen cleanly and efficiently. What is exciting about nuclear energy is that it promises to do exactly that. Our work with the international community to develop Generation IV technologies such as the Next Generation Nuclear Plant point the way to realize this vision perhaps sooner than some might suspect.

Finally, there is the policy debate surrounding the issue of climate change.

It is obvious to me that an energy source capable of supplying a significant proportion of the world’s power with no greenhouse gas emissions should be at the center of this debate. That is why, in February of last year, I announced our Nuclear Power 2010 initiative, which is today working with the private sector to pave the way for the construction of new nuclear power plants to begin in the United States in the next few years.

Again, I would like to think that Eisenhower would be delighted with the way this debate has changed over the years, although he might be somewhat surprised at the resistance we still see to the expansion of nuclear energy as a power source.

On the non-proliferation front he would probably be astonished … and very pleased … with the vocabulary now employed between two former adversaries.

Inspired by the close, new relationship between our Nations forged by President Bush and President Putin, the Russian Minister of Atomic Energy Alexander Rumyantsev and I have worked very closely over the past two years on a host of nonproliferation issues.

We have been meeting regularly to discuss and put into place greater cooperation, improved steps for protection of dangerous materials, enhanced international physical protection of fissile materials, and to identify ways to boost safety and security in the peaceful use of atomic energy.

Most importantly, Minister Rumyantsev and I have been able to expand and accelerate U.S.-Russian efforts to strengthen the protection of nuclear material. We are now on schedule to complete our efforts to secure Russia’s nuclear material years ahead of previous timetables.

And may I add, the Minister and I are personally engaged in supervising this effort on a day-to-day basis, to ensure that no bureaucratic obstacles hinder its success

The new relationship between our two countries is one of the reasons our joint operation to secure highly enriched uranium at the Vinca reactor in Belgrade was a success. And the return to Russia just last month of 14 kilograms of highly enriched uranium from Rumania is yet another example of the strength of the U.S-Russian partnership to reduce the spread of weapons of mass destruction. Participation in both these operations by the IAEA … an organization that exists today because of Eisenhower’s Atoms for Peace speech … was crucial, and all of us should be proud of it. But ultimately it could not have been accomplished without the close working relationship our two nations have fostered.

Could those sitting in the General Assembly of the United Nations on December 8th 1953 listening to Eisenhower’s vision have foreseen such cooperation?

One wonders if they could have foreseen the progress in nuclear science generally that has been brought to us by generations of particle accelerators at Fermi, Stanford, Berkeley, Thomas Jefferson, Argonne, Los Alamos, Brookhaven, and Oak Ridge national labs. And that is not to mention the singular accomplishments of individual scientists like those we have honored over the years with the Enrico Fermi Award.

Like E.O. Lawrence’s machine built in the 1930s, today’s accelerators are helping us understand huge questions … what makes up the universe and why does it behave the way it does?

But researchers probably never anticipated when they started smashing atoms and protons in our large accelerators that their science … their very basic research on matter … would eventually give us remarkable life-saving technology.

One of every three hospital patients in the U.S. benefits from nuclear medicine. About 10,000 cancer patients are treated every day with radiation therapy from linear accelerators.

In one way or the other, the research we do is all about energy – the energy inside the atom, or finding new sources of energy to power the world’s economy.

One of those new sources may be fusion power. We are working hard on this potentially inexhaustible and totally clean new source of energy. Perhaps one day a future Secretary of Energy will have the chance to award the Fermi prize to a scientist for helping us to reach the goal of a self-sustaining fusion power plant.

The legacy of Eisenhower’s vision in Atoms for Peace and the legacy of the scientific wizardry of Enrico Fermi now rest with the Department of Energy. I am proud to join all of you tonight to celebrate that vision, play tribute to the heritage of discovery given us by Fermi, and to honor three scientists who are the worthy heir to Fermi’s genius.

Thank you all very much.