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Bring Back U. S. Leadership in Nuclear Energy
Based on ‘Atoms for Peace,’ Says Environmental Progress Group

January 2017

Early 1970s: Nuclear reactors providing process heat would be “full-scale operational,” leading to the construction of nuclear agro-industrial complexes.

December 29, 2016 (EIRNS)—"We are writing as scientists, economists, conservationists, and citizens, to urge you to take strong action to save and grow America’s nuclear energy sector," begins a letter to President-elect Trump, sent last week by the Environmentalk Progress research group.

"In the 1960s and ’70s, the U.S. was the world leader in nuclear technologies," the letter points out. Today, American entrepeneurs go abroad, including to China, to develop new concepts. China is investing in "at least five" different advanced reactor designs, World Nuclear News quotes in its report on the letter. The letter calls for the U.S. to adopt an approach based on President Dwight Eisenhower’s 1953 "Atoms for Peace" initiative, starting with the financing of U.S.-made reactors for customers around the world, through institutions such as the Ex-Im Bank and World Bank. They specify loans and loan guarantees to foreign customers who could then buy American nuclear technology. In fact, this is the approach that Russia is implementing very successfully.

Environmental Progress group is also circulating a petition. In addition to the above points, it also states that President Eisehower’s program recognized that cheap electricity is a key economic driver, and it "financed the peaceful use of nuclear power around the world ’to provide abundant electrical energy in the power-starved areas of the world.’"

The petition urges the President-elect and the Congress to "take bold action to make nuclear great again."