(John Shanahan) USofA - A good nuclear power program for the world

A good nuclear power program for the world John Shanahan September 2, 2020 1) STRONG NUCLEAR POWER LOBBYING: Nuclear power doesn't have an effective lobbying process to make sure elected officials and the media understand nuclear's benefits and to prevent anti-nuclear organizations having far too much influence in important decision making and public education. This happens in North America, Europe, South Africa, India and Japan where there is plenty of scientific and technical leadership. Some reasons are lack of money for lobbying and lack of willingness of nuclear utilities to stick their necks out and speak the truth for fear of reprisal by regulators and anti-nuclear activists.

2) CONTROL ANTI-NUCLEAR: Anti-nuclear leaders of government (Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Democrats in Congress and Democrat candidates for public office in 2020) and their anti-nuclear advisors (Frank von Hippel, Thomas Cochran, John Holdren, Natural Resources Defense Council, Greenpeace, The Sierra Club, etc.) have all but stopped the nuclear industry in the United States. There is no plan to continue nuclear power on the scale it has been in the United States even for one more generation, much less for hundreds of years. Anti-nuclear power individuals and organizations must be effectively neutralized.

3): LWR NUCLEAR TECHNOLOGY: The current Lightwater Reactor nuclear power technology has been a real success: safe, good management, good operation, good maintenance. But it can not and must not be the sole source of nuclear power for the future. This technology uses less than 1% of the nuclear energy in the uranium ore that comes out of the ground. The rest remains in the used fuel and depleted uranium, which American leadership fools want to put back in the ground at tremendous expense. Less than 2% of the original ore needs to be managed as hazardous nuclear waste, if we allow used fuel to be reprocessed and fissioned in fast neutron reactors. And that hazardous nuclear waste requires storage for less than 500 years, not millions of years. And that hazardous nuclear waste can be stored in simple, inexpensive surface or near surface storage facilities, not in expensive facilities thousands of feet underground. The French nuclear program is doing this. It is an outstanding success. The American nuclear waste program is in shambles as the 2010 Blue Ribbon Committee clearly determined. The American (and thus the world) nuclear waste program is a disgrace, totally because of anti-nuclear activists and their do-nothing partners in public office.

3) ADVANCED NUCLEAR TECHNOLOGIES: We must use advanced nuclear power technologies that are already well tested to access all the nuclear energy in uranium and thorium. The U.S. government and Nuclear Regulatory Commission has blocked all this. There is enough energy in all the retrievable uranium and thorium to meet all the world's energy needs for as long as humans live on Earth - several billion 1

years. See Bernard Cohen, 1983. I talked to Professor Cohen near the end of his life in 2012. Like many energy experts, he was positive and very willing to help with public education and support of fossil fuels and nuclear power to maintain a modern world. He was not the least like foolish politicians who unilaterally mandate stopping use of fossil fuels and nuclear power and force wind and solar on their states, their countries.

4) SCIENCE EDUCATION: Nuclear science education for students and the public is essential if the world is to get away from alarmism that has been wrong and destructive for half a century. An excellent discussion of education is given by Eric Jelinski and Jon Boone, click here. Here are some excerpts: Eric Jelinski: University lecturer in nuclear engineering. Chemical-Nuclear and Mechanical Engineer, Canada “When teaching, we must first be truthful. It is a lie to tell students that the way of the future is the subsidized wind turbines and solar panels because subsidy is not free money. There is no such thing as free anything. Anything declared as free is actually paid for by somebody else, and the ‘somebody else’ is probably you and I, or a donation with an agenda.”

“Political science courses need to be abolished across all college and universities. That does not mean cancelling humanities courses, or history or current events. But we do not specifically need to spend public money for students, who later become representatives of the public in government to have learned how to brainwash and how to make a lie sound truthful. This is the unfortunate environment we live in today. This is how train wrecks happen and people die, because the mirage fooled them.”

Jon Boone: Author and knowledge expert on wind and solar energy, environment, nature, birds. Artist specializing on birds. USA “I would begin any education program with a starter course in music, from which everything else would flow. The idea of breathing in to create tension, the interval between breaths, and then the release of tension through exhalation, all tempered by various rhythm patterns, is the core stuff of pattern and the organizing principal behind art, science, literature, philosophy, and, of course, engineering. It’s the basis for a systematic approach to acquiring sufficient information to create the knowledge necessary for wisdom.”

“I consider music to be fundamental to an understanding of the working of conscious minds, even more basic than language. Having a disciplined sense of why this is so is prerequisite to the idea of intellectual betterment, assuming “betterment" incorporates the notion of seeing further, wider, and with greater discernment.”

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5) RADIATION: Get rid of public fear of low-dose radiation. Get rid of the Linear Nothreshold radiation guideline with Collective Dose Corollary. It absurdly contradicts reality and is designed to stop use of nuclear power and limit use of nuclear medicine.

Use a simple threshold model for radiation safety guidelines. See Mohan Doss, Wade Allison, Jerry Cuttler, ANS-HPS 2018, SARI, XLNT. 6) GOALS AND SCHEDULES: Stop making unrealistic goals and schedules for implementing nuclear power worldwide very quickly. The idea that the whole world could be using fast neutron reactors in fifty as demanded by James Hansen or a hundred years is not going to happen. For most of the world to be using nuclear power, much longer time will be needed. Nuclear power requires sound government. It requires good education, good management, operations and maintenance for nuclear power plants, good industrial support, good nuclear waste management. Those conditions have been missing for a long time. The whole world is not going to be on all nuclear any time soon. We don’t all live in the same design of homes. We don’t drive the same model car.

We don’t have the same pets. Just because the United States, France, South Africa, Sweden, Russia, China and Switzerland have excellent nuclear programs doesn't mean that the whole world will be able to manage nuclear energy soon and forever.

7) TERRORISM AND WAR: Nuclear power is not as simple as coal and gas in war time. A fossil fuel plant can be destroyed and a new one built quickly and easily. Power plants are prime military targets. War is not going away. This point has been ignored for half a century.

8) ELECTRICITY IS ESSENTIAL FOR THE MODERN WORLD: Electricity is the backbone of modern civilization. Electric generating stations and distribution networks are essential for life for 8 billion people. These facilities must be designed for extremes of nature and mankind (war). We must have international cooperation to prevent accidents by needless mistakes. Fukushima and Chernobyl could have been avoided.

They caused terrible delays and public fear. International cooperation can help avoid blind spots and poor management. We do it in most other activities. It’s TEAM WORK. 9) DESIGN AND CONSTRUCTION: The nuclear power design and construction industry has faded away. It must be reestablished. That will take time.

10) CHANGE REGULATORY PROCESS: Regulatory Agencies have been a major source of extra cost and needless safety design requirements. They must be changed completely.

11) WASTE MANAGEMENT: Every living plant, animal and human has a waste management system that is perfect. Every food processing plant has a waste management system. Cities have wastewater treatment plants, garbage dumps and recycling centers. Space travel to the moon and planets has waste management systems.

Waste management is necessary for all living and non-living systems. France has an exemplary nuclear waste system. The United States has nothing. That is simply due to 3

willful program blockages since the 1970s by anti-nuclear efforts and deliberate public miseducation. The anti-nuclear activists want to put perfectly good energy sources from uranium and thorium back in the ground in needlessly expensive waste depositories. It is all illusion. It is against allowing a modern world with plenty of energy to exist. The anti-fossil fuels and anti-nuclear activists are right up there with the worst dictators and tyrants in holding civilization back. If you stop waste management in any living and non-living systems mentioned above, you stop it from existing. That is what the antinuclear activists and their elected officials have done in the United States and therefore for most humanity. This is a serious crime against humanity.

Nuclear power station Penly in France demonstrates the outstanding planning of the French national nuclear program. It is licensed for two operating nuclear plants AND four nuclear power plant sites, visible in the photo. That foresight in the 1970s enables France to build two new nuclear plants as the current operating plants reach end of life and to dismantle the old plants while the replacement plants are operating for continuous operations. France always has two or more plants at a given site. They are identical in design. This makes it possible for optimization of operating and maintenance staff and spare parts. No country has demonstrated this level of excellence in their nuclear power programs. France has also demonstrated successful used fuel reprocessing and practical storage of their much-reduced nuclear waste. Vive la France!

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