Life: An Atom-Powered Shutdown

Five Eastern nuclear plants are turned off for safety checks

After seeing The China Syndrome, in which profiteering contractors and profit-possessed power industry executives easily outfox the Government agency charged with regulating their nuclear plants, even citizens not afraid of the peaceful use of reactors may wonder how well the Nuclear Regulatory Commission does its job. Such viewers should find an action last week by the NRC to be reassuring. In a case of life refuting the moviemakers' art, the commission shut down five nuclear plants in the populous East because of questions about their ability to withstand earthquakes.

Turning off the five plants, which together produce about 4.1 million kw of electric power, reflects the NRC's caution in the present fevered climate of public debate about the nation's use of reactors to provide energy. The NRC has not suggested that the plants are unsafe. But engineers from Pennsylvania's Duquesne Light Co., which operates one of the plants, and the Boston firm of Stone and Webster, which designed all five, found a mathematical defect in the computer program used to design some of the plants' coolant pipes so that they would be strong enough to withstand a major earthquake. The firms promptly reported their discovery to the commission. Even though it recognized that the probability of earthquakes in the area is small,* the commission ordered the shutdown until a new analysis could be undertaken. The NRC's action inevitably will provide additional ammunition for both sides in the nation's debate over the safety of reactors. There was fuel for dispute as well last week for those worried about the disposal of nuclear wastes.

Are nuclear plants safe? The answer depends on the definition of "safe." If it means accident-proof, then the answer, as applied to anything from a bicycle to a steel mill, is no. A nuclear plant cannot blow up like an atomic bomb. A plant could, however, suffer a "meltdown" if it loses the water used to cool its uranium core, overheats, ruptures the core's container and releases a deadly cloud of radioactive gases. In the event of such an accident, people close to the plant would die quickly, while others, living as far as a couple of hundred miles downwind of the plant, might die later of radiation induced cancer.

The very fact that such an accident is possible has dictated safeguards that make the probability of its occurring infinitesimal. Nuclear reactors are enclosed in reinforced-concrete "containment vessels" capable of withstanding tremendous pressures from within. All reactors are equipped with automatic shut-off and multiple back-up systems so that any "loss of coolant" that could start a system on the slope toward a meltdown can be quickly corrected. The NRC maintains resident inspectors at many plants, makes unannounced inspections of others and, as last week's action demonstrates, is willing to shut down a plant for as long as necessary if there is even the slightest question of safety.

Experience shows that such safety features work. In 1975, a workman using a candle to test for air leaks accidentally started an electrical fire in the Browns Ferry nuclear plant at Athens, Ala. The fire short-circuited cables controlling the primary cooling system, causing loss of some of the nuclear-core cooling water. But nothing even close to a meltdown ensued. Although one of the back-up cooling systems was also disabled, technicians used other emergency circuits to cool the reactor down long before the situation approached the critical stage.

Technology is not, however, as advanced in overcoming another obstacle to the increased use of nuclear power: the issue of waste disposal. Government and industry spokesmen have long maintained that safeguarding nuclear wastes, which may remain radioactive for millenniums, was a straightforward and easily solved engineering problem. A report to President Carter released last week by a task force representing 14 agencies asserts that the matter is more complex. Current knowledge is adequate only for choosing potential dumping sites for further examination, the group said, not for certifying them as safe. Contending that it is unnecessary for the Energy Department to build a proposed experimental waste storage facility, the committee urged the U.S. to begin instead to seek sites for permanent repositories that could serve both for storing wastes and for evaluating storage methods. The technical feasibility of burying nuclear wastes, the group concluded, "remains to be established."

*Though the East Coast experiences numerous minor temblors, the area's last serious earthquake occurred in 1886, in Charleston. S.C.

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