New Nuclear Odds

For the better part of two decades, the Atomic Energy Commission has been bedeviled by a problem of its own making. In 1957 it released a report with the code name WASH-740. The study was full of careful qualifications, but its conclusion was clear: an accident at a hypothetical atomic plant that released radioactive material into the atmosphere could kill 3,400 people, injure 43,000 others and do some $7 billion worth of property damage. That graphic example has probably caused more disaffection with nuclear power plants than any other argument by any nuclear critic, Ralph Nader included.

Last week the AEC sought to put the old report to rest forever by issuing WASH-1400. This new study, a 3,300-page, 14-volume document that cost $3 million and took 60 specialists two years to research and write, is called An Assessment of Accident Risks in U.S. Commercial Nuclear Power Plants. Like its predecessor, its argument is statistical. The probability of any conventional water-cooled reactor's having an accident in any given year that might kill 1,000 people, the researchers reckon, is about the same as that of a meteor's striking a U.S. population center and killing 1,000 people--1 chance in 1 million.

As for a less serious accident that might kill ten people, the probability is 1 chance in 250,000 per plant per year, the report continues. Put another way, of the 15 million people residing in the vicinity of the 109 nuclear plants that are operating or are under construction in the U.S., one of them might die and two might be injured in a radioactive accident over the next 25 years. Concludes Norman C. Rasmussen, the professor of nuclear engineering at M.I.T. who headed the research team: "The study says to me that these plants do not present a significant risk to the public."

Rasmussen concedes that the report is bound to be controversial. For example, it does not even consider sabotage as a cause of nuclear accidents, a possibility that especially troubles Ralph Nader. Nor does it investigate the additional risk of accident involved in the new generation of gas-cooled reactors or the next generation of fast-breeder reactors. In addition, anti-nuclear critics like the Union of Concerned Scientists in Cambridge, Mass., vow to scrutinize WASH-1400 for any oversimplification, any error in calculation or method that might discredit the work.

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