The Irrational Fight Against Nuclear Power

By Peter Stoler

Back in the benign 1950s, Americans looked on the atom as a friend, a cheerful Reddy Kilowatt that would provide cheap, abundant electricity to run their factories, power their TV sets and even chill the beer they drank while watching them. Today much of this enthusiasm has not only evaporated but turned into antipathy. Antinuclear activists have slowed construction of power plants from Seabrook, N.H., to Diablo Canyon, Calif. Angry people in Texas, New Mexico and Washington have packed public meetings to protest government plans to use their areas for nuclear-waste disposal and to demand the removal of wastes already stored there. Countless Americans who have never picked up a picket sign are having serious second thoughts about nuclear power, and politicians are responding to these apprehensions. California voters rejected an antinuclear initiative only two years ago, but the state's legislature subsequently banned new nuclear construction until the problem of waste disposal has been solved. Last month Wisconsin imposed a ten-year moratorium on any new nuclear construction.

This opposition has had quite an impact. Five years ago, industry spokesmen were confidently predicting that the U.S. would have 1,000 realtors producing power by the year 2000, and utilities were ordering 40 new plants annually. But last year utilities ordered only four new nuclear plants and deferred or canceled plans to build seven more. An important reason for the slowdown is that demand for electric power has not risen as rapidly as forecasters anticipated. Yet another major factor is that delays--some necessary, others merely obstructionist--have stretched completion time of a plant to ten to twelve years. The possibility that plants now abuilding may never be allowed to operate has frightened some power companies, which have no desire to be stuck with costly white elephants. By 2000, the Department of Energy predicts, the U.S. will have no more than 500 nuclear-power plants on line; it could have as few as 200, which would generate less than 20% of the country's electricity.

That would be too few. According to conservative predictions, the nation's need for electricity will more than double by that time. Where will the country get the energy to satisfy the need? And do it at a price that will keep its industries competitive with those of other nuclear countries?

Certainly not from oil or natural gas. Despite the current oil glut, the world's known reserves of both petroleum and natural gas are expected to be declining by the end of the century, and it would be folly to burn what remains to generate electricity. They are far too valuable as essential ingredients for plastics, fertilizers and other chemicals and as fuel for cars, trucks and planes.

Solar energy may ultimately do much to heat and cool homes and factories, but its large-scale use for electricity is a long way off. Even a highly--some would say unrealistically--optimistic federal study forecasts that solar, wind and wave power and the conversion of sun-grown organic matter into methane would at best meet 20% of all U.S. energy needs by 2000.

Nuclear fusion, which could exploit an unlimited fuel supply and promises little contamination of the environment, cannot fill the gap either. Researchers at Princeton and other labs have made some progress on fusion, in which atomic nuclei are combined rather than split. But physicists think it will take decades of problem solving before they can even attempt to build commercial reactors.

Nor is coal the answer. Although the U.S. has an abundant supply, coal, like oil, is an exhaustible resource that would be better used in the chemical industry than for power. Deep mining is expensive, and some 100 miners are killed in accidents each year. Strip mining requires expensive reclamation if the land is not to be left looking like a lunar landscape. Coal-fired plants pump thousands of tons of pollutants into the environment annually, despite the installation of expensive scrubbers, which are often ineffective. Also, coal plants may heat up the earth's atmosphere, a phenomenon that could produce unknown and possibly unpleasant effects on climate.

In short, after weighing the alternatives, nuclear power is necessary. Why, then, the opposition? Some of it stems from an uneasiness about anything new or different and resembles the passionate, unthinking hostility that greeted powered looms, steam engines, railroads, automobiles and other technological advances. Much of the antipathy is emotional, the product of a "Hiroshima mentality" that equates nuclear power with bombs and seeks to ban both. Since the U.S. withdrew from Viet Nam, resistance to nuclear power has become the new crusade for many members of a society that otherwise lacks compelling causes. Nuclear power is an inviting target for those who revolt against bigness--big science and technology, big industry that must build and manage reactors, big government that must safeguard and regulate them. Part of the opposition stems from a desire to return to the supposedly simpler good old days, in which people would do more for themselves and, as one bumper sticker suggests, SPLIT WOOD, NOT ATOMS.

The opposition reflects a doubt that growth, once the watchword of the can-do American philosophy, is good. The skeptics ignore the reality that a slow-growth or no-growth philosophy could kill the promise of upward mobility. That may be acceptable to the middle-and upper-income people who dominate the antinuclear movement. But it would condemn the poor and the jobless to a perpetuation of their have-not status and could well endanger the future of American democracy, in which the social and economic inequalities of the free system are made tolerable by the hope of improvement.

Not all of the antinuclear arguments, however, are emotional. Many reasonable people entertain reasonable doubts about nuclear power. Their main arguments concern:

SAFETY. Only a handful of hysterics believe that a conventional nuclear plant could explode in a mushroom cloud and wipe out a city. But many fear less dramatic accidents, including "melt down," which could occur if a reactor lost the water used to control the temperature of its core, ruptured and released radioactive gas and other material. Many also worry about radioactive contamination and fear that those living near nuclear plants may be subject to constant and eventually deadly exposure to radiation.

The fears are understandable, but the record so far is reassuring. Nobody in the U.S. has been injured as a result of a commercial reactor accident since the first nuclear power plant went on line 20 years ago. Indeed, with all the legally required safety devices--such as strong containment vessels, automatic shutoffs and complete back-up systems--the risks of injury or death are extremely small. It has been estimated that even with 100 reactors operating (the U.S. now has 71), the odds that anybody will die in a reactor accident are 1 in 300 million a year. The risk of dying as a result of an automobile accident is 75,000 times as high. Nor does radiation now appear to be an unreasonable risk. Coal-fired plants actually emit slightly more radiation than nuclear reactors. Americans are already exposed to radiation from natural sources, color television and medical X rays. Routine operation of nuclear plants would add almost nothing to this exposure. In fact, a person living next door to a nuclear reactor in, say, New York, is exposed to less radiation than someone who lives in mile-high Denver.

WEAPONS PROLIFERATION. Antinuclear forces charge that the spread of nuclear plants will accelerate the proliferation of nuclear weapons, particularly in unstable nations. Opponents are even more concerned that the introduction of breeder reactors, which produce more plutonium than they consume, could make it easier for terrorists to steal fissionable materials for do-it-yourself bombs. Finally, they charge that safeguarding nuclear materials would require the creation of a police state that would also mean the end of civil liberties.

These allegations are clearly exaggerated. Stringent enforcement of security measures has kept fissionable materials safe--the country already handles such hazardous substances as explosives and deadly chemicals--without impinging upon personal freedoms. The U.S. decision not to sell uranium-enrichment and reprocessing technology abroad will do nothing to prevent weapons proliferation. Indeed, it will cost America its chance to control international traffic in nuclear materials. France and the Soviet Union are reprocessing nuclear fuels for shipment to other countries.

NUCLEAR COSTS. Says David Cromie of Chicago's antinuclear Citizens for a Better Environment: "The most damning word in the English language is 'uneconomic.' " Foes charge that nuclear power plants cost more to build than, say, coal-burning plants, running more than $800 per kw, vs. around $700 for coal. They also argue that nukes operate well below their projected capacities, making the power they generate even costlier.

Industry figures indicate otherwise. Nuclear plants do cost more than coal-fired ones to build, but they are no less reliable. Most U.S. nukes have operated or have been available about as many days as fossil-fuel plants, which must also undergo periodic shutdowns for maintenance or safety checks. The electricity they produce is often competitive. Over a two-year period, the New England Electric System, operating in a region that is far from fossil-fuel sources, provided consumers with a nuclear-generated kwh. for 1.239-c-, or less than half the 2.596-c- for a kwh. generated by fossil fuels. A resident of Connecticut, which draws 60% of its electric power from nuclear plants, pays an average of $25.13 for 500 kwh. a month. A resident of neighboring Rhode Island, which gets only 14% of its power from nukes, pays $30.34 for the same amount.

WASTE DISPOSAL. Nuclear plants store most of their wastes, which average about 30 tons of spent fuel rods, in water-filled "swimming pools" on the plant premises. But many of these pools, intended to provide only temporary storage, are almost filled, and the wastes are piling up.

However, of those scientists who have studied the matter and expressed an opinion, the overwhelming majority believe the waste-disposal problem can be satisfactorily resolved. The reprocessing of spent nuclear fuels, which the U.S. Government has refused to allow in its ineffective effort to prevent proliferation of weapons, would convert much of the waste into fuel that would be burned up for power. The rest, say nuclear scientists, physicists and engineers, can be vitrified, or embedded in blocks of glass, then buried deep underground in geologically stable salt or rock formations. All the waste generated up to the year 2000 by U.S. power plants could be stacked 6 ft. high on a single football field.

Irrational opposition to nuclear power can only delay a solution to America's energy problems. But even if this opposition ends, some positive action is also essential. If the U.S. is to be assured of energy for the future, the present nuclear licensing process must be sensibly simplified. It is a byzantine snarl that Boston Attorney Thomas Dignan describes as "a full-employment bill for lawyers." Dignan's legal work for the Seabrook plant has generated a 5-ft. shelf of transcripts from a state hearing, 20 3-in.-thick volumes of applications to the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission, 13,522 pages of transcripts from the NRC hearings, a 5-ft. shelf of papers filed before the NRC'S licensing board, and a whole forest's worth of other pleadings, briefs, exhibits and environmental impact statements.

Much of this paperwork morass can be avoided without compromising the safety or civil rights of anyone. The Administration's proposed nuclear licensing bill would allow the NRC to give final approval to plants that follow a standard, accepted design for construction on previously approved sites. In that way, it would eliminate some layers of review agencies and reduce the opportunities for opponents to reopen litigation on is sues that have already been legally resolved by courts. Unfortunately, there will be no action on this proposal before 1979. Legislation to place the licensing process in the hands of fewer agencies (approvals may now be required from as many as 40) also should be introduced. This could reduce the time for completing a power plant to six years and thus help make construction costs lower and more predictable.

Nuclear power did much to help the U.S. get through the storms and coal strike that crippled fossil-fuel plants last winter, providing much of the electricity for hard-hit New England and the battered Midwest. Similarly, nuclear power could save the country from the specter of industrial shutdowns and power blackouts as the oil runs out. Even conservative estimates are that the U.S. will need 390 nukes to provide at least 27% of its electric power by 2000. The time to start building these plants is now. Otherwise, they will not be ready when the nation really needs them. -- Peter Stoler

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