President Eisenhower in his 1953 "Atoms for Peace" speech offered nuclear technology to other nations as part of a broad nuclear arms control initiative. In the years that followed, the nuclear power generation capabilities of many nations helped economic development and contributed to the prosperity of the modern world. The growth of nuclear power, while providing many benefits, has also contributed to an increasing global challenge over safe and secure spent fuel management.

Over 40 countries have invested in nuclear energy, developing over 400 nuclear power reactors. Nuclear power supplies approximately 16% of the global electricity needs. With the finite resources and challenges of fossil fuels, nuclear power is becoming more prevalent, both in the U.S. and abroad. We must address this inevitability with new paradigms for managing a global nuclear future.

Over the past fifty years, the world has come to better understand the strong interplay between all elements of the nuclear fuel cycle, global economics, and global security. In the modern world, the nuclear fuel cycle can no longer be managed as a simple sequence of technological, economic and political challenges. Rather it must be managed as a system of strongly interrelated challenges. Spent fuel, as one element of the nuclear fuel system, cannot be relegated to the back-end of the fuel cycle as only a disposal or storage issue.

We must forge the experience and successes of spent fuel management over the past fifty years with a global systems perspective, to reshape the governing of all aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle, including spent fuel management. The role of chemistry in resolving the challenges of spent fuel management, particularly with regard to the recycling and the demonstration of compliance with long-term repository performance standards, is critical to the future of the nation's energy security.