Fossil fuels, nuclear power and man-made climate change (John Shanahan) USofA

Fossil fuels, nuclear, man-made climate change John Shanahan December 31, 2018 I am a civil engineer by education and have worked in nuclear power for most of my engineering career. Civil engineers must face reality if we are to properly serve the public. We can’t promote technical solutions that are unsound engineering or science.

Reality is that fossil fuels are very successful energy sources for all aspects of modern living.

Fossil fuels are important from 38,000 feet above the Earth's surface for commercial airplanes to 12,000 feet below for mining and 40,000 feet for oil extraction,

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Fossil fuels are important for making life easy and comfortable in hot humid countries near the Equator in Indonesia to extreme cold operations on the North Slope of Alaska,

Indonesia near Equator

Alaska near North Pole Note how life exists in the warmest and coldest places on Earth. Which one is where lots of people chose to live?

A naval architect who grew up in New York State was evaluating where to locate his new ship building business. He located it in Alabama, not Connecticut or Maine in part because it was cheaper to cool work areas twenty degrees Fahrenheit than to heat them thirty or forty degrees. The business is thriving in Alabama and they have excellent, dedicated employees.

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Fossil fuels are used in homes of the very rich in the United States and in low income crowded housing in India and Brazil.

Low income housing in Brazil Unless there is solid proof that a lot of people will suffer and die in the next few hundred years by catastrophic man-made global warming and catastrophic sea level rise from use of fossil fuels, they will use these important energy sources until they are no longer economically available. Sea level rise from all causes is a non-starter: Don’t stand there and cry about it, move to higher ground.

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Wildfires in California blamed on man-made global warming by Greenpeace and Governor Jerry Brown, Mr. Moonbeam. Learn about the many wildfires in Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Montana in the 1800s and early 1900s. The difference today is that many towns and rural homes have been built where these natural wildfires occur.

There is no proof that use of fossil fuels is making wildfires in the west worse than a hundred to a hundred and fifty years ago. But the extreme green alarmists and Governor Moonbeam in California will tell you otherwise.

Conjured up man-made sea level rise in South Florida, USA. Sea levels have always gone up and down by hundreds of feet. Mankind was smart enough to move to higher ground instead of trying to imagine how they could reverse climate change by praying to a god.

Nuclear needs excellent industry-utility-government coordination, planning, licensing, operations, decommissioning and waste storage. Radioactive waste storage has not resolved except in France. They have an excellent used fuel reprocessing program and have developed fast reactor technology to extract most of the energy from used fuel and depleted uranium. The United States came very close to having fast reactors and used 4

fuel reprocessing but was stopped by Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. Many countries with nuclear programs did a very good job with the rest of the points mentioned. Canada and France did the best since the early 1970s perfecting large nuclear programs. South Africa and Switzerland are examples of outstanding work developing nuclear power on a small scale of a few reactors.

Jordan is an outstanding example of a country that is developing excellent higher education for nuclear energy and nuclear medicine and planning to implement its use.

The main problem for the world today is who will build new nuclear plants in other countries and what technology should they use.

Many countries that have not started major nuclear power programs aren't even close to being ready to develop it. That is a lot of the world’s population.

The world is sharply divided on these issues: 1) Should we continue to use fossil fuels or not?

2) Do we need to stop using fossil fuels because of supposed man-made climate change and man-made sea level rise or not?

3) Should we use nuclear power and develop new nuclear technologies or not?

4) Should nuclear be developed in countries that don’t have stable governments, strong economies, good education systems, are frequently at war or overrun by terrorists or crime syndicates or not?

5) Is it technically possible to build nuclear power plants for the whole world in 50 to 100 years or not?

This author’s answers are: 1) Yes, 2) No, 3) Yes, 4) No, 5) No. These questions and answers will be discussed in detail in 2019 on the new website. We will notify everyone as soon as we have secured a good website name.

Life without fossil fuels.

What kind of Americans and Europeans demand that the world stop using fossil fuels?

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Indoctrinated American youth rages about fossil fuels causing catastrophic man-made climate change. These adults find it laughable.

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