The Struggle over Nuclear Power

Like an infantry platoon under an artillery bombardment, the power industry has spent most of the past year hunkered down in the trenches as its opponents pounded away with questions and criticism. But now, in a campaign that could well determine the future of nuclear power, pro-nuclear forces are on the offensive. Around the nation, power-company officials at press conferences and on podiums have been presenting figures to show that nuclear energy is more practical than other alternatives to oil. In Washington last week, a parade of executives, engineers and federal officials trooped before a joint congressional committee to rebut charges that their installations are unsafe and to convince an increasingly anxious American public that nuclear power plants are necessary.

One reason for the campaign is that on June 8 Californians will go to the polls not only to choose among presidential candidates but to vote on a nuclear referendum. Proposition 15 on the ballot is not, as some opponents have charged, a proposal to outlaw nuclear power plants. Yet, if enacted, the measure could accomplish exactly that. The California initiative would ban the construction of 28 new plants planned for the state over the next two decades unless they met stringent safety standards and won approval by a two-thirds vote in both houses of the state's legislature.

Recent Threat. Proposition 15 could also force the closing of the three nuclear plants now operating in California. It would forbid existing plants to operate at more than 60% of capacity unless federal limits on liability in case of an accident are raised above the recently extended $560 million ceiling. It would also further reduce power output by 10% a year unless two-thirds of the state's legislators endorsed waste-disposal and safety measures. Many believe that the two-thirds approval required in the legislature constitutes an impassable barrier.

The anti-nuclear drive is not unique to California. At least 17 states are now considering various measures to curtail nuclear power. Passage of Proposition 15 in California could thus have far-reaching effects on the power debate in these states.

The threat is relatively recent. In polls conducted last year, over 70% of Californians and 60% of the public nationwide approved of the expansion of nuclear power; no more than a handful of those with reservations about atomic plants seemed concerned enough to try to do something about them. But the anti-nuclear forces seem to be gathering momentum. Last month a trio of middle-level engineers at GE's nuclear-energy division in San Jose, Calif, suddenly resigned their jobs in protest. The trio, Dale Bridenbaugh, 44, Gregory Minor, 38, and Richard Hubbard, 38, announced that they would instead work full time for Project Survival, the organization coordinating the anti-nuclear referendum drive in California. Another engineer, Robert Pollard, 36, quit his job with the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission in protest over conditions at Consolidated Edison's Indian Point nuclear power plants in Buchanan, N. Y.

Horror Tale. All four cited the same basic reasons for their resignations: inadequate protection of the public from nuclear hazards. The public, said the San Jose Three in a statement to the Congressional Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, "has a right to know that an electrical appliance, such as a toaster or hair dryer, has more stringent safety checks than the electrical instruments that control a nuclear plant."

What concerns these nuclear engineers--and many of their fellow protesters--is not any possibility that a conventional nuclear plant will blow up in a mushroom cloud and wipe out a city. All but a few ignorant hysterics recognize that that is impossible. What they do fear, however, is a "meltdown," which can occur if a reactor loses the water used to control the temperature of its uranium core. The four claim that safety systems designed to prevent accidents have not undergone enough testing. If they failed in a crisis, say the four, the results could be disastrous.

They could indeed. An uncooled core would build up heat, melt and drop to the bottom of its container (see diagram). Its heat would vaporize whatever water remained and the pressure of the resulting steam could burst the containment vessel and rupture the outer reactor container as well. This could release a radioactive cloud that would drift wherever the wind blew it. Depending on the location of the plant, such an accident could result in numerous immediate deaths from radiation and even more later from radiation-induced cancers. Far from being a horror tale, insists the nuclear opposition, such a mishap could well occur if nuclear plants are allowed to proliferate.

Nuclear power opponents are jubilant over the resignations and the safety issues thus spotlighted. The anti-nuclear movement has been searching for just such an event to convert the public. The resignations, said Richard Sextro, the Sierra Club's coordinator for passage of Proposition 15, "renewed people's concern that individuals and companies in technology are split."

Just what effect the resignations will have on the California initiative is uncertain. Project Survival President James Burch, who helped arrange the defection of the three GE engineers, is not overly optimistic about the impact on the initiative. But others feel that the resignations, with a few more expected, can only help the anti-nuclear movement in California and other states.

Old Questions. In public at least, nuclear industry officials have tended to play down the political effect of the resignations. "Speaking in radiation terms, how long a half-life will the issue have?" asked one GE spokesman. "I doubt it will last significantly for the next four months." Some of the San Jose Three's quondam colleagues have attempted to portray them as unrealistic idealists because they are members of a self-improvement group called the Creative Initiative Foundation. Others are trying to offset the resignations with strongly pro-nuclear statements.

The industry has taken pains to respond to the defectors on the safety issue. George Stathakis, vice president and general manager of GE's Nuclear Energy Programs division, told the congressional committee that the charges raised by the former GE engineers were old and had either already been answered or were in the process of being dealt with. Con Edison Spokesman John Conway insisted that the Indian Point plants were safe. Said he: "None of these plants constitutes an unreasonable risk to the health and safety of our own personnel or to the public at large."

From within the Government, Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chairman William Anders said that nothing in the defectors' claims would require his agency to take drastic action. Others insisted that nuclear power risks are reasonable. Said NRC Commissioner Edward Mason: "There is not enough money in the U.S. to raise man's other activities to the safety level already achieved by nuclear power plants."

The nuclear safety record to date is impressive. No member of the public has been injured as a result of a reactor accident since the first U.S. nuclear power plant was brought on line in 1957. The odds against future injury are enormous. A controversial study directed by Nuclear Physicist Norman Rasmussen of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology concludes that nuclear plants are thousands of times less apt to produce fatal accidents than fires, non-nuclear explosions, toxic chemical releases, dam failures, airplane crashes and earthquakes. Even with 100 reactors operating (there are now 59 licensed), says Rasmussen, the odds that an individual will be killed by a reactor accident are only 1 in 5 billion per year.

For all these odds and all the safeguards, there has been at least one close call. Last March the world's largest nuclear plant, located at Brown's Ferry, Ala., was well into the chain of events that could lead to a meltdown after human error caused failure of several key safety systems. On a lesser level, a Northeast Utilities plant in Waterford, Conn., spilled radiation outside the plant when a steam condenser ruptured. Other nuclear power plants have had to suspend operations for anywhere from weeks to several months as a result of equipment failures. But most nuclear proponents insist that this record is remarkably good and see no unreasonable hazard in stepping up nuclear power plant construction to meet about a third of U.S. energy needs by 1999.

A study sponsored by the American Physical Society suggests some reservations, however. The report issued last spring concluded that the nuclear power Establishment had underestimated the consequences of nuclear accidents and may well have overestimated the effectiveness of its safety systems. "There is," said the report, "a lack of well-quantified understanding of the performance of some of these special systems under some severe accident conditions." To develop that understanding, the study advised, the reactor safety program should be improved and expanded.

Nuclear plants also raise other questions and fears. One is that expansion of the nuclear power industry would make it easy for terrorists to steal fissionable materials for homemade bombs. That is probably exaggerated. Stringent security can keep nuclear materials from falling into the wrong hands.

Radioactive Legacy. A major concern is nuclear wastes, one of which, plutonium, has a half-life of over 24,000 years. Safeguarding wastes alone, says Biologist Barry Commoner, would require the creation of a kind of permanent "nuclear priesthood," to watch over the radioactive legacy each generation of Americans handed down to its successors.

Meanwhile, where and at what price is the U.S. to get the energy it needs? The pro-nuclear argument is a strong one. With oil reserves finite and access to foreign supplies dependent upon OPEC's whims, the U.S. must find alternate sources of power. But the clear and present choices are anything but promising. Harnessing wind and wave power is today and for the near term little more than an engineer's pipedream. Solar energy will probably not become practicable on a large scale for several decades. Coal, which the U.S. has in abundance, does not seem to be the only answer. Deep mining is expensive and dangerous and stripmining scars the land, especially in the semiarid West. Coal-fired plants are also far from clean.

Even with rising construction costs, nuclear power plants, which are clean, are considered by many experts to be the best and most economical answer to the nation's short-term alternate energy needs. That is all the more reason to ensure that they are as safe as human ingenuity and diligence can make them. Critics who can help in that process are welcome regardless of which side of the nuclear argument they are on. Whatever the odds, the reality of a serious nuclear accident would be catastrophic. It might take only one such mishap to force an indefinite shutdown of the entire nuclear power industry. The U.S. needs nuclear plants and can afford the costs of making them safe; what it cannot afford is a major accident.

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