U.S. Nuclear Experts Call for Nuclear Energy Summit

A group of distinguished nuclear and energy experts sent a letter to President Obama on Independence Day, supporting the recent call by a bipartisan group of 11 U.S. Senators to convene a Nuclear Energy Summit. The letter begins by stating "Although 62% of the American public favors building more nuclear plants now, full realization of our Nuclear Renaissance is severely restrained by a number of shackles that we can remove if we have the will and the wit."

The letter calls for three key steps, which could be initiated quickly:

1. "Decide to license, build and operate one or two nuclear power plants as soon as possible...."

2. "Encourage the exploration of small reactor plants of 300 megawatts or less, for use in a wide variety of applications, including modular power plant units, process heat, ship propulsion, and power for remote communities...."

3. "At the same time, we should reinstate our program to develop and demonstrate the technology conceived by Enrico Fermi and his colleagues. It was their intent to extract virtually all of the energy contained in uranium by using fast-spectrum reactors operating on recycled fuel. It was never intended that we would limit our nuclear power capability indefinitely to the approximately 1% recovery that we achieve now."

The authors point out that none of these steps is "new or controversial," and that the other nuclear nations—France, Russia, China, India, Korea, and Japan—"are already firing up the next generation of nuclear plants, derived and improved from designs we created in our youth more than half a century ago."

Although some of the signers have no illusions about the lack of "will and wit" of President Obama and the Congress, as a group they have not faced up to the reality that there can be no business as usual until the President is removed and the nation adopts the LaRouche program for Glass-Steagall and an American Credit System.