July 21, 2020
Recommendations for starting a new nuclear advocacy organization By John Shanahan Dear Good Energy Collective Team, Congratulations on the formation of your professional women's nuclear advocacy group. The nuclear energy program in the USA has done many things right since the 1960s, had outstanding leaders, good management and nuclear power plant staff. I know many of these leaders. But, nuclear power in America is in a terrible situation caused mainly by: 1) Bad government decisions from the 1970s through 2016. 2) Discouraging and expensive regulatory management and functioning. 3) Almost no plans to replace existing nuclear plants with new ones. 4) Almost no plans to extract fertile uranium from used nuclear fuel and depleted uranium. 5) Almost no plans to store the real radioactive waste. 6) Almost no plans to develop nuclear power using thorium. 7) Diminishing enrollment in nuclear power engineering education. France and Switzerland solved many of these problems early on but are now being turned back by anti-nuclear groups and new political leaders who cater to the antinuclear sentiment. South Africa has done an outstanding job with nuclear power and production of radioisotopes. They are also under pressure from anti-nuclear groups. Women want to help solve problems that past nuclear power leadership has not solved. I fully agree that you can do better than the record to date and wish you well. Our website, allaboutenergy.net has an international board of advisors and we strongly encourage women to work with us. See here. 1