Building up the global network of nuclear power plants required to meet future energy needs while maintaining the highest levels of safety and reliability will require a high level of international collaboration. Among a host of significant initiatives that should be undertaken, the following are perhaps most urgent.
        

• Plant licensing. This should be contemplated on an international basis. Present acceptable designs should be centrally reviewed so that such plants (and improved ones) could be built as needed without major licensing delays. (Present acceptable designs are General Electric's ABWR, Combustion Engineering's System 80+, Westinghouse's AP600, the French-German PWR design, the Canadian Candu, and the upgraded Russian VVWR.)
          
• Safety inspections. International agreements should be expanded so that an organization such as the International Atomic Energy Association has the authority to perform worldwide inspections. They should confirm that safety procedures and requirements are being met and assure that there is no diversion of materials for potential use in nuclear weapons.
          
• Wastes and the breeder reactor. Nuclear wastes are a resource whose value can be realized through processing facilities that extract plutonium and use it as fuel in breeder reactors. In future decades, the expansion of nuclear power is apt to require use of breeder reactors. Their development should proceed now, so that they will be available when uranium fuel for thermal reactors becomes scarce and too costly. Breeder reactors can provide an essentially unlimited future world energy supply, while reducing the radioactivity of nuclear wastes from thousands of years to a few centuries.
          
• Financing. The industrial nations should examine the financial needs of the developing countries and seek to provide the financing of needed nuclear plants, which will decrease the use of fossil fuel and possible hostilities over limited energy supplies. A nuclear plant has a higher capital cost than fossil plants but much lower fuel costs, so its total energy cost is generally competitive with fossil fuels.
• Planning. Plans should be developed and approved internationally in three critical areas:
          

1. Expansion of manufacturing capability to assure that nuclear-component needs can be met economically and on schedule, while still meeting quality standards.
           
2. Organization and training of plant operating staffs and standardization of operating procedures.
           
3. Promotion and coordination of effective communication between operating nuclear plants, so that experience, procedures, and effective modifications can be shared nationally and internationally."

Considering the energy needs looming on the horizon and the time required to implement effective responses, these five action areas warrant high priority.
--B.W.