Suggestions for Nuclear Matters website and organization (John Shanahan) USofA

What the U.S. nuclear power industry, regulators, and nuclear advocates should do to have success before it’s too late.

John Shanahan January 2018 Nuclear Matters is a coalition of great companies and organizations advocating nuclear power and public education. There are many similar organizations and individuals. In our opinion their efforts are not effective enough. They focus on criticizing fossil fuels and not on solving existential problems in the nuclear power industry itself.

Here are three recommendations that could help: 1) Drop discussions of nuclear reducing man-made global warming. This topic involves serious differences in scientific opinion. If nuclear advocates are on the wrong side, it will hurt their credibility regarding nuclear. See many articles on all sides of this topic click here.

2) Stop being negative about fossil fuels. Most Americans depend heavily on fossil fuels to have a great life. Let the rest of the world use fossil fuels until they have better governments, stronger economies, good higher education systems to enable nuclear to be well managed in their countries. Don’t tell Africa they should be using solar ovens while Europe and North America cook with gas and electricity. Oppose organizations that sue the government so that some American youth can have a stable climate! Fight back against organizations that are stopping the world from having plenty of energy from fossil fuels and nuclear.

3) Take effective steps to save nuclear power in the United States. Solve the biggest challenges to its existence.

Here are some challenges that threaten the existence of nuclear power: a) No substantial plans to replace aging existing nuclear plants with new ones. This situation of one generation and out hasn’t happened in most other industries. b) No substantial plans to reprocess used nuclear fuel and employ depleted uranium in fast reactors. Reprocessing used nuclear fuel and using depleted uranium alone has the ability to meet America's electrical energy needs at 1994 levels for over 700 years without anymore mining of uranium or fossil fuels for generating electricity. c) No plans to abandon the Linear No-Threshold Model for radiation safety guidelines and replace with guidelines based on biological science.

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d) No substantial plans to design and license Gen III+ NPPs based on sound, realistic safety criteria. Just keep adding safety systems for the appearance of greater safety. In many cases they simply add more cost. e) Not much interest by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in licensing new nuclear technologies quickly, just keep asking questions and insisting that all licensing questions be answered to extreme, very expensive quality assurance standards. f) Practically no interest in developing thorium based nuclear technologies. g) Far from effective public education to counter very successful misinformation and fear campaigns by the Natural Resources Defense Council, Sierra Club, etc. h) The USA and France have lost companies that can manage very large nuclear design, license and build projects and keep them on schedule and budget.

If these suggestions are not satisfactorily addressed in a timely manner, nuclear power in the United States and in countries that depend on us will fade away and the opponents of nuclear power will have complete victory.

John Shanahan President, Environmentalists for Nuclear – USA Denver, Colorado, USA website: efn-usa.org e-mail: acorncreek2006@gmail.com tel. 303 399 0393

Nuclear Power Plant Leibstadt, Switzerland – Make the world beautiful again.

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