Less Delay, More Supply

The U.S. and the world badly need more energy in all forms, and quickly. But efforts to increase energy supplies often alarm critics who fear damage to the environment--or, in the case of atomic power, to public safety--and the critics have become increasingly adept at fighting long delaying actions. Last week, however, brought three important pieces of evidence that the need is beginning to overcome the fear. In Washington, the Carter Administration readied a bill to un tie the red tape that has been strangling construction of nuclear-power plants. In Canberra, the Australian government decided to open that country's vast deposits of uranium to the world market. And in New York City, a federal appeals court ruled that oil companies can start underwater exploratory drilling in the Baltimore Canyon, one of the areas of the continental shelf where oil and gas are believed to lie relatively close to U.S. shores.

Speeding Up the Nuclear Plants

A draft bill to cut red tape

All do not foresee that atomic energy is I to be a great boon for a long time."

So said Albert Einstein in 1945, and how right he was. Some 20 years after the startup of the first U.S. commercial reactor in Pennsylvania, the nation has only 63 nuclear-power plants that supply merely 12% of its electricity; lately the number of reactors on order by utilities has dropped. One reason: snarls of red tape at all levels of government, and vehement objections by citizen groups on safety or environmental grounds, slow the process of getting approval. A dozen years can pass from the time a utility proposes a nuclear plant to the throwing of the first switch. In a classic example, land for the Seabrook nuclear reactor was first bought by the Public Service Co. of New Hampshire in the late 1960s; the plant is still only 2% completed and will not go into full operation until 1984. Besides, prodded by environmentalists, the Government forced the utility to build a long sea wall to protect the plant from tidal waves, which company officials estimate will occur literally once in a million years.

Last week the Carter Administration circulated drafts of a Nuclear Regulatory Reform Act, to be sent to Congress this month. The aim is to enable nuclear plants to start generating power six years after they are proposed. The bill would:

Authorize utilities and states to create "site banks" of preselected locations on which nuclear-power plants can be built, and get most necessary environmental clearances even before a plant is proposed. At present, where to put atomic plants is a major headache; somebody is likely to object to almost any site proposed, and wrangles can consume years.

Give quick approval to plants following standardized designs. Now the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (N.R.C.) often forces a utility to keep changing the design of a plant even while it is under construction, adding enormously to delays and costs.

Grant combined construction permits and operating licenses to utilities building standardized plants. Currently, a utility may win state approval, then apply to the N.R.C., which will hold two sets of hearings, one on environmental considerations and one on design safety, be fore it allows construction to start--and then, after the plant is finished, the utility must go back to N.R.C. for its operating license.

Cut delay by prohibiting anti-nuclear groups from raising the same objections at successive hearings before different regulatory bodies. If a state authority, for example, overrode specific environmental objections, they could not be brought up again before the N.R.C.

To support environmentalists and safety critics, the bill also orders the N.R.C. to pay the legal expenses--how much is so far unspecified--of groups fighting nuclear-power plants on environmental or safety grounds. Thus the bill has been carefully drafted to give something to everybody: more power for state governments, the promise of faster construction for utilities, federal money for their enemies.

In practice, the bill also provides something for everybody to hate. States get the power to issue certificates attesting to the need for a new nuclear plant and its environmental acceptability, but the Federal Government reserves the right to preempt the state if it deems that a state is not following federal guidelines. Some Governors are grumbling about that. Utilities are upset by the promise of federal cash to people fighting atomic plants; environmentalists are disturbed because they nonetheless will get fewer chances to block a "nuke." Says one official of the Government's Council on Environmental Quality: "The bill is a real stinker."

For all the carping, the proposed bill is likely to become law some time next year. The need for atomic power in a U.S. grown dangerously dependent on imports of foreign oil is simply too obvious. During the campaign, former Nuclear Engineer Carter argued that the U.S. should regard atomic power as a "last resort." His support of the bill shows that he recognizes it is time to call on that last resort, especially since his own Administration forecasts a need for an additional 320 plants by the year 2000.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.