WASHINGTON, Feb. 20 (Xinhuanet) -- U.S. President George W. Bush on Monday urged building new nuclear plants by 2010 to reduce heavy reliance on imported oil products.

    In a speech delivered at the start of his two-day trip through Wisconsin, Michigan and Colorado, the president pushed a 1.1-billion-U.S.-dollar program to promote the construction of new nuclear power plants, something the United States has not done since the 1970s.

    "We ought to start building nuclear power plants again. I thinkit makes sense to do so. Technology is such that we can do so and say to the American people, these are safe-and they're important,"he said.

    Bush's reasoning was the nuclear plant is the key to break his country's "addiction to oil."

    "Some of the nations we rely on for oil have unstable governments, or fundamental differences with the United States," he said.

    "These countries know we need their oil and that reduces influence. It creates a national security issue when we're held hostage for energy by foreign nations that may not like us," said Bush.

    The president has long held the view the United States should build more nuclear power plants, and has touted it as a clean energy source and alternative to expensive natural gas.

    Bush once pointed out that France had built 58 nuclear power plants in the past three decades and generated more than 78 percent of its electricity from that source.

    "Yet here in America, we have not ordered a new nuclear power plant since the 1970s," he said. Enditem