Feb. 18 (Bloomberg) -- President George W. Bush, seeking to boost support for plans to break America's ``addiction'' to fossil fuels, said the U.S. must prevent terrorist states from developing atomic weapons and expand its own nuclear power capacity.

``We will develop and deploy innovative, advanced reactors and new methods to recycle spent nuclear fuel,'' Bush said in his weekly radio broadcast. ``This will allow us to produce more energy, while dramatically reducing the amount of nuclear waste and eliminating the nuclear byproducts that unstable regimes or terrorists could use to make weapons.''

The radio address begins a series of public speeches Bush plans in the coming week to put energy market changes on his domestic agenda this year. Oil prices are up 26 percent from a year ago, crimping consumer budgets and threatening to slow an economy in its fifth year of expansion.

Reversing a 29-year-old government policy, Bush proposes reprocessing the waste produced by nuclear reactors in the U.S. and other nations. The administration requested $250 million in the budget released earlier this month for development of a process to reduce and recycle radioactive waste. The process would foster expansion of nuclear power in the U.S. by reducing by 80 percent the amount of waste sent to the storage site in Yucca Mountain, Nevada.

Plutonium extracted from spent nuclear fuel under today's reprocessing techniques can be used in weapons, and concern about the spread of such material caused President Jimmy Carter in 1977 to scuttle funding for nuclear reprocessing.

Iran

``We must dispose of nuclear waste safely and we must keep nuclear technology and material out of the hands of terrorist networks and terrorist states,'' Bush said.

Bush's plans to expand nuclear power come at a time when his administration is pressuring Iran to halt its fledgling nuclear development program. Iranian officials say the country's nuclear program is to produce energy for civilian use, while the U.S., the U.K., France and Germany say they suspect Iran's program is aimed at developing nuclear weapons.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who took office in August 2005, was criticized by world leaders last year for declaring the Nazi Holocaust of World War II, in which millions of Jews were killed, to be a ``myth.'' Ahmadinejad also has said Israel should be ``wiped off the map.''

Developing Nations

Bush said the U.S. will work with countries that have ``advanced civilian'' nuclear energy programs, such as France, Japan and Russia, to develop new nuclear technologies and provide developing nations with small-scale reactors and a reliable nuclear fuel supply.

Developing countries would, in exchange, ``agree to use nuclear power only for civilian purposes and forego uranium enrichment and reprocessing activities that can be used to develop nuclear weapons,'' Bush said.

In his State of the Union address to Congress Jan. 31, Bush said the U.S. needs to break an ``addiction'' to oil and seek a 75 percent reduction in oil imports from the Middle East by 2025. His 2007 budget proposal seeks funding for development in energy from hydrogen fuel cells, coal, solar power and wind, as well as money to advance the use of fuel additives made from corn and farm waste.

The U.S. needs to wean itself from foreign oil to ensure that the nation's economy, the world's largest at $12 trillion, doesn't lose its dominance as countries such as India and China compete for natural resources.

``Our nation will continue to lead the world in innovation and technology,'' Bush said today. ``By building a global partnership to spread the benefits of nuclear power, we'll create a safer, cleaner and more prosperous world for future generations.''

To contact the reporter on this story: Brendan Murray in Washington brmurray@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: February 18, 2006 10:06 EST