Remarks on Arrival at Covington, Kentucky

Well, thank you very much, Governor, Bob Taft, the Members of the congressional delegations from both Ohio and Kentucky:

It's great to be in the southern Ohio area. But I did want to make a very special announcement here. I am releasing a comprehensive statement on nuclear policy, calling upon all nations of the world to join in a cooperative effort to expand the benefits of peaceful uses of nuclear energy while preventing nuclear proliferation.

The actions that I'm announcing today are designed to strengthen the commitment of all nations to the goal of nonproliferation, change as well as strengthen U.S. domestic policy and programs to support our nonproliferation goals, and to establish a very strong foundation for increasing the use of nuclear energy in the United States and abroad.

The State of Ohio will have an important role to play in meeting these new objectives. We must have new capacity to provide fuel for nuclear power plants here as well as abroad. The additional uranium enrichment plant that we are going to build at Portsmouth, Ohio, is critical to that capacity. Construction of the Portsmouth plant is now expected to cost $4,400 million and will mean 6,000 new jobs for southern Ohio.

The Administrator of the Energy Research and Development Administration has assured me that construction of that plant can begin early next year, which means early 1977. Construction of that plant at Portsmouth, Ohio, will assure a central role for Ohio for years to come in providing fuel needed for nuclear power plants in the United States and around the world.

And I thank the members of the Ohio delegation for the strong support that they have given me in making this announcement possible. And I particularly point out Bob Taft, Bill Harsha, and the rest of the southern Ohio delegation that has done so much to make this announcement possible.

I thank you very, very much.