Nixing Nukes

NRC shuts some plants

Ever since the near disaster at Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island nuclear plant, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has been debating whether to order the shutdown of other nukes designed and built by the same company, Babcock & Wilcox. Some of the watchdog agency's critics have had no doubts about what the NRC should do: they want a shutdown of all nuclear plants in the U.S. Cooler heads, however, pointed out that most of the plants have relatively good safety records. Besides, any major loss of generating capacity at the onset of the summer months--when electrical consumption soars--could cause intermittent blackouts around the country.

At week's end, after several days of public agonizing and behind-the-scenes bickering with the utility companies, the NRC reached a Solomonic decision that was face-saving for everyone. It issued a shutdown agreement, but only after the utilities "voluntarily" offered to suspend operations at the nine B & W plants, including Three Mile Island's disabled reactor. One objective was political: the beleaguered NRC wants to convince critics that it is indeed a vigilant watchdog.

More important, under their pact with the NRC, the utilities consented to

1) inspect their reactors for any flaws in design or construction that might be similar to those at Three Mile Island;

2) modify the emergency core-cooling systems (which are designed to pour thousands of gallons of cooling water on a runaway reactor and thereby prevent The China Syndrome-type meltdown that was narrowly averted at Three Mile Island);

3) improve the training of plant technicians in safety procedures; and 4) station a senior reactor operator in the control room at all times.

Earlier in the week, NRC Chairman Joseph M. Hendrie had gloomily warned that the shutdowns would have a "profound importance for our power supply." For one thing, the utilities that own the B & W reactors would be forced to buy electricity elsewhere for their customers. That would be costly. William Lee, chief executive of North Carolina's Duke Power Co., estimated that the cost of such a shutdown would run more than $100 million a month. But, under the compromise, these forecasts seemed somewhat alarmist.

Three of the plants--in Arkansas, Florida and Ohio--are already shut down for routine maintenance or refueling. So too are Metropolitan Edison's two reactors at Three Mile Island: one because of the March 28 accident, its twin for refueling and maintenance. Thus the NRC's order means an additional loss of only four nuclear plants--California's Rancho Seco and Duke Power's three Oconee reactors in South Carolina--out of 72 nuclear plants licensed to operate across the U.S., including five on the East Coast temporarily shut for earthquake safety studies. All together, nuclear reactors produce about 14% of the nation's electricity.

Clearly pleased by NRC's compromise decision, Lee did something of an about-face. At week's end, he predicted that the "outages"--jargon for when a generator is out of the power grid--would be of "very short duration." Certainly, he said, they would not last into the peak summer season. But Harold Denton, the NRC's reactor regulations chief, was more skeptical. Something of a hero in the nuclear field for his cool troubleshooting at Three Mile Island in the wake of March's accident, he insisted that all B & W pressurized water reactors were susceptible to the kind of failures that occurred in Pennsylvania. Of Lee's optimistic prediction, he said: "Perhaps he's ingenious and will come up with a way to do it." Clearly, Denton had some doubts.

At the height of the Three Mile Island crisis, dozens of pregnant women and children were evacuated to Hershey, Pa., twelve miles away from the crippled reactor. The move was a precautionary one to protect them against any radioactive fallout. For a while state officials even considered evacuating Hershey.

Turns out that the Pentagon had the same idea. Several months ago, the Department of Defense had scheduled an early April meeting of some of its officers at the sprawling Hershey convention center. But since the situation created by Three Mile Island was, ahem, "so uncertain," as one source put it, the brass decided to beat a strategic retreat. They rescheduled their meeting at Ocean City, Md., out of fallout range.

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