The Obama-Biden administration is accelerating the programs -- increasing funding by $550 million to a total of $2.7 billion in the Department of Energy -- and moving them to the center of US nuclear policy.
An improving economy would accelerate the program.
"How fast can you accelerate the program?" asked Susan Tolchin, a spokeswoman for Andrew Spano, the county executive of Westchester, where Indian Point is located.
"Today's meeting was an opportunity to identify ways to accelerate the program and bring relief faster," the Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner, said in a statement.
For Iran, it is far more rational at this point to accelerate the program and reject any agreement the West would be prepared to sign.
In 1969, with development running late for the large spacecraft that was to ferry crews and supplies to the station, Soviet officials decided to accelerate the program by employing the Soyuz spacecraft that had been developed during the failed attempt to win the Moon race.
The Obama administration accelerated the program, but suffered a major setback when a computer worm, later named Stuxnet, escaped from the Natanz nuclear enrichment plant in Iran and replicated itself on the Web, where the Iranians and others could download the code that was developed by the N.S.A. and its Israeli counterpart, Unit 8200.
"I've come to the reluctant conclusion that the only way to accelerate the program and also provide adequate incentives for homeowners who sacrifice to stay in their own homes is through permanent, locally-tailored, unconditional reductions in mortgage principal," he said.
Yet military options to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons or a nuclear capability have never been very credible -- bombing likely will not get all of Iran's nuclear facilities and will likely only spur Iran to accelerate the program to deter further attacks.
It has some useful features; among these are the possibility to disallow G U base pairs in the seed region and a seed-match speed-up, which accelerates the program by a factor of 8.
