Is Industry Reacting Fast Enough?

SINCE Congress 21 months ago ended the Government monopoly on developing atomic energy and invited private enterprise to take a hand, 58 U.S. companies have pledged an estimated $358 million toward construction of atomic reactors with an ultimate capacity of 1,200,000 kw. Nevertheless, private industry is being charged with dragging its feet on atomic development and letting foreign nations get ahead of the U.S. Warns Tennessee's Democratic Senator Albert Gore: "We are losing the race for construction of industrial and civilian atomic-power reactors. Loss of this race to the Soviets would be catastrophic."

To speed U.S. efforts, Gore and Democratic Representative Chet Holifield of California are pushing the Gore-Holifield bill (8-2725 and HR-10805), directing the Federal Government to build six full-scale atomic power plants in different regions of the U.S. Gore says his proposal is "simply a matter of getting the job done as quickly as possible." Actually it raises the old issue of public v. private power in a new form. If the bill should become law, private industry would be pushed aside and public atomic power would be strategically located in six choice areas. Moreover, operating under the "preference clause" of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, the plants would give priority not to private customers but to consumers of public power, i.e., federal, municipal or cooperative electricity plants.

The Gore group's big argument is the need for haste. Russia plans to build more than 2,000,000 kw. of capacity by 1960. The British expect by 1965 to be operating 12 to 17 atomic power plants with up to 2,000,000 kw. capacity. The U.S., on the other hand, plans to produce only about half that amount by 1965.

In reply, Atomic Energy Commission Chairman Lewis L. Strauss last week raised his powerful voice in opposition to the Gore "crash program." Strauss's big point is that the U.S., which has available cheap sources of conventional power, does not need A-power as badly as do some foreign nations ; therefore building reactors just for the prestige would be "shortsighted." What the U.S. needs, says the AEC chief, is to utilize its scarce technical skills in an experimental program to find "reactors which will provide economically competitive power," rather than reactors that probably would be obsolescent before they got into operation.

There are today at least eight feasible techniques for generating reactor heat convertible into electricity, e.g., pressurized water, sodium-graphite, boiling water, fast breeder. Britain, in sore need of power, is concentrating on one proved but cumbersome method (using a gas coolant), which is fast becoming obsolescent; Russia plans seven reactors; the U.S.. however, is actively planning to build and operate all eight types, in addition is considering at least two others. This means that the U.S. will lag in actual atomic-power output; it should also mean that the U.S. will emerge with the best method. A recent editorial in the Journal of British Nuclear Engineering crowed about prospective British ascendancy over the U.S. in atomic-power output, but admitted: "At least one and probably more [of the U.S.-designed reactors] will probably have asserted itself as a normal piece of industrial equipment by about 1960. [while] in Britain there is at present no sign that a comparable situation will obtain at that time."

In the business of exporting reactors to foreign countries, the U.S. is already substantially ahead. The U.S. has built and sold one research reactor to Switzerland, has contracts to sell four more to Spain, Brazil, Japan and Italy, and is to build a full-fledged commercial reactor for Belgium. Thus the U.S. is far ahead of Russia and Britain in the sale of research reactors, and is the only nation planning to export a commercial reactor.

While U.S. progress might be faster, the faults are not private industry's. It took 13 months from the time Consolidated Edison started negotiations with AEC to build a privately financed reactor before the AEC came through with the construction permit. Today, most private companies are still waiting on such essential Government actions as: 1) Government reinsurance to protect private companies against catastrophic damages from a reactor accident, 2) amendment of the Public Utility Holding Company Act to permit individual companies to club together to raise the huge sums necessary to build atomic reactors, 3) a Treasury ruling that expenditures for atomic experimentation are tax deductible, 4) full revelation by AEC of data necessary for building power plants.

In short, what is needed is not a bill to set up Government reactors but a determined effort by Congress and the Administration to remove the roadblocks that keep industry from doing the job.

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