Nader v. Nukes

Consumerist Ralph Nader has long been predicting that 1975 would be the year when America would awake to the potential dangers of nuclear power and begin to phase out new reactors from its energy plans. But so far, nothing of the sort has happened. There are 55 nuclear power plants--or "nukes," as they are called--operating in the U.S. today, and the Ford Administration wants 145 more built by 1985. Last week a new Harris poll indicated that the American people are ready to go along with that idea. Some 63% of them favor building more nukes, the poll revealed, because they view atomic energy as cheap, clean and "inexhaustible." By contrast, only 19% of the people opposed construction of more reactors, and a mere 5% thought that they were dangerous.

Nuclear opponents promptly explained the results of the poll by saying that the public is simply not well informed about atomic energy. "It has been our experience," Nader adds, "that whenever people find out what the story is, they're overwhelmingly against nuclear power." So the critics are now talking of 1975 as a "year of education." Last week, to spread the word, they took two steps--both of them dramatic.

New Weight. First, the antinuclear forces released an open letter to the President and Congress. Signed by 2,300 "members of the American technical community"--engineers, doctors and scientists, including nine Nobel laureates--it urged "a drastic reduction in new nuclear plant construction." Reason: there are still too many unanswered questions about the safety of atomic power plants, the disposal of radioactive wastes and the difficulties of safeguarding plutonium. Rather than take these nuclear risks, the scientists advised the Federal Government to: 1) start a strict energy conservation program; 2) develop nonpolluting ways of mining and burning coal; and 3) work toward using "the energy from the sun, the winds, the tides and the heat in the earth's crust." All this is familiar stuff, but the large number of concerned scientists--about 20% of those whose signatures were solicited--may lend new weight to the recommendations.

Then, in a more sensational move, citizen groups from 20 states asked the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to improve its contingency plans to save the most lives possible in the extremely unlikely event that a nuclear plant had a serious accident that would release lethal radioactivity. Such a disaster, Nader says, could cause "tens of thousands of casualties, billions of dollars in property damages, and long-term contamination of the affected land." To bring this scary message even closer to the public, antinuclear groups in 15 states last week petitioned their respective public utility commissions to order each utility to enclose in bill mailings its plan for evacuating residents from the area of a nuclear accident. Obviously, such plans would emphasize the horrendous consequences of the worst kinds of nuclear-plant accidents; the fact that the chances of such accidents are infinitesimal could easily escape the public.

Until now, Nader and his followers had pinned their hopes on getting legislative curbs on more nukes. For a while that strategy seemed to be working. A total of 21 states introduced measures to restrict development of nuclear power. But only two have acted: Vermont, which passed a law last April giving the legislature the right to approve (or turn down) future atomic reactors; and California, which will hold a referendum next June on whether, in effect, to ban nuclear plants. Almost all of the other proposals have either been voted down as totally impractical or tabled until next year because of lack of support.

No Curbs. The situation in Washington has been equally disappointing to Nader and his colleagues. The new Congress, which has many members who have professed serious misgivings about the peaceful atom, has so far failed to pass any bill to curb nuclear energy. The lawmakers are clearly reluctant to act against a technology that already supplies 8.5% of the nation's electricity and generates employment as well--especially when there are no alternative energy sources ready to be used. All this is not to deny that nuclear energy still poses many grave problems. But whether "education"--which to the Naderites apparently means scaring the public with hyperbole--is the way to resolve them seems dubious indeed.

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