Bracing for the Fallout

By Peter Stoler

While atomic-energy officials around the world were trying to escape the political fallout from the Chernobyl accident, some of their American colleagues were fearful that the tragedy could doom their industry for years, perhaps even decades, to come. The U.S. industry has long been in deep trouble, and now it has to prepare for new attacks on several fronts.

In Washington, a collection of consumer, environmental and scientific groups known as the Coalition of Environmental/Safe Energy Organizations called for a complete phaseout of nuclear power plants in the U.S. In Pennsylvania, protesters in Lancaster and Dauphin counties vowed to increase efforts to prevent the reopening of the reactor at Three Mile Island that was not involved in the 1979 accident there. In New Hampshire and on New York's Long Island, antinuclear forces stepped up their campaigns against licensing of the Seabrook and Shoreham plants, arguing that what happened north of Kiev could just as easily happen there. "The accident at Chernobyl makes it clear," said Ellyn Weiss, general counsel of the Cambridge, Mass.-based Union of Concerned Schentists. "Nuclear power is inherently dangerous." Maurice Barbash is a builder who heads a Long Island citizens' group opposed to Shoreham. Last week he was more determined than ever to stop the project. Said he: "I don't see how they could license Shoreham right now. To do so would be madness."

The Chernobyl accident, though, had little immediate effect on American views of nuclear power. For the past several years, network news polls have shown about 60% of the public opposed to building any new plants. Similar surveys taken after the Soviet disaster did not reveal any marked increase in the number of opponents.

Nonetheless, Chernobyl cannot help having an impact on the beleaguered U.S. nuclear industry. Even before the accident at Three Mile Island melted down the credibility of pronuclear organizations, the industry was in trouble. Caught between climbing construction costs, high interest rates and unexpectedly slow growth in the demand for electricity, American utilities stopped ordering new nuclear plants in 1978. After the accident at Three Mile Island, some reactor salesmen tossed away their order books entirely.

But even more problems awaited nuclear energy. In 1983 the Washington Public Power Supply System, or Whoops as it was facetiously labeled after postponing or canceling construction of four of five proposed nuclear plants, sent financial markets spinning by defaulting on $2.25 billion worth of bonds. In the months that followed, the industry suffered several more body blows as a combination of cost overruns and safety questions forced half a dozen utilities to change their plans on the construction of nuclear plants.

These blows left nuclear power moribund, like a patient who needs a respirator in order to survive. Now many fear that the accident at Chernobyl could prove to be the event that pulls the plug. "We're in trouble," conceded Carl Walske, the president of the Bethesda, Md.-based Atomic Industrial Forum, the lobbying group that speaks for the industry. "Before the accident, we could visualize the resumption of orders within about five years. We are still hoping that this will occur, but we expect that there will be some negative effect from a setback like this. If the calls I have received from people in the industry are a good indication, they are all very worried."

There were lessons for the U.S. nuclear industry to learn from the Chernobyl accident. An important one was that authorities must be able to evacuate people living near nuclear plants, quickly moving them out of the path of any radioactive releases. Soviet officials had to clear out four communities with very little warning. It is hard to imagine how people living around some American nuclear facilities, including Indian Point, Zion and Limerick, which are located near the major population centers of New York City, Chicago and Philadelphia respectively, could be quickly evacuated.

Opponents of the atom, however, are stretching their point when they suggest that what happened at Chernobyl could just as easily happen in the U.S. There are few comparisons between the way nuclear power is managed in the U.S. and the way it is handled in the Soviet Union. The biggest difference is technological. Only one of the 100 reactors currently licensed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to operate commercially in the U.S. is graphite moderated like the one at Chernobyl, and it is cooled by gas rather than water, which makes it substantially safer. One of five reactors operated by the Government for weapons production, the Hanford, Wash., plant, is also graphite moderated. Though water-cooled, it has safety features not present at Chernobyl, the Department of Energy insists.

U.S. facilities are safer than Soviet ones in other ways. Unlike Soviet nuclear reactors, all NRC-licensed American installations are equipped with emergency core-cooling systems. These usually work by dumping tons of water into any reactor core that shows signs of overheating. Nor are U.S. reactors as likely to release radiation into the atmosphere in the event that the fuel starts melting. Only the newest of the Soviet Union's Western-style reactors are equipped with the steel-reinforced concrete containment buildings that are designed to hold in radioactive gases and the other by-products of an accident. All licensed U.S. reactors but one are encased in such structures. The exception, the graphite-moderated plant in Platteville, Colo., features a built-in containment system.

An equally important difference between the American and the Soviet nuclear programs is political. The U.S. industry operates in an open society, subject to laws that give the public considerable say over where nuclear plants are located and some input as to when and even if they will go into operation. The same cannot be said of the Soviet Union, where the government makes all such decisions without consulting the public.

Nuclear power currently supplies 16% of the electricity used in the U.S. In years to come, as oil and coal reserves run out, it will probably be called upon to provide even more. Critics of nuclear power may take some satisfaction in halting its expansion, but their success today could leave future generations sitting in the dark.