Must we have nuclear power?

If we want clean air and energy for economic growth, the answer is "yes".
by Frederick Seitz

America's electricity demands are soaring, up five percent a year-twice what anyone forecast even five years ago. Rolling blackouts were frequent at my Florida home last winter. Brownouts were anticipated in parts of the nation this summer.

In fact, our demand for electricity is climbing so fast that over the next decade U.S. generating capacity must increase by a third. Fossil fuels supply nearly three-quarters of this energy. But the smoke-belching stacks of coal-, gas- and oil-fired plants are also responsible for about half of our air pollution.

That, we used to think, is a small price to pay for progress. But there is an alternative, one that produces no smoke and can actually create more fuel than it consumes. In many regions it is even cheaper than coal-fired electricity: nuclear power.

Already nuclear power is the second largest source of our electricity, and a new family of "fail-safe" nuclear reactors - some now under construction in Japan - may one day make nuclear power even cheaper and more plentiful. But before these can be built in the United States, major changes must be made in the way nuclear plants are financed, licensed and operated. For that to happen, all of us need to understand the truth about issues long clouded by misinformation.

Getting electricity out of uranium is not difficult to understand. Each atom in this heavy metal contains a bundle of protons and neutrons held together by a powerful force. Occasionally, an atom spontaneously splits, releasing part of the binding energy as heat. It also kicks out a few neutrons that, if they strike other uranium atoms, will cause them to fracture and spray more neutrons, and so on.

In a nuclear power plant, the resulting chain reaction is kept within safe limits by sealing the uranium into zirconium-alloy tubes that are placed far enough apart to let most of the neutrons escape without hitting other atoms. The temperature of the core is controlled by inserting or removing [neutron absorbing] tubes. To make electricity, the heat from the core boils water and drives a steam turbine that cranks a generator - just as in a coal-fired plant.

The only major difference between nuclear and conventional plants is that nuclear fuel is far more radioactive. For this reason, the core must be sealed from the outside environment - and so must the spent fuel, which remains radioactive for years.

If other types of power didn't present equal or worse problems, it would make no sense to consider nuclear power at all. But they do:

Coal is much dirtier than it used to be. U.S. reserves of clean-burning anthracite are virtually exhausted. Today, power plants must use soft coal, often contaminated with sulfur. When the smoke from this coal is dissolved by precipitation, it results in "acid rain."

Burning coal produces carbon dioxide as well, which can act as a blanket, trapping solar heat in our atmosphere. Eventually, this could contribute to global warming, the greenhouse effect, though there is no conclusive evidence that this has begun.

Coal also contains a surprising amount of radioactive material. Indeed, a coal-fired plant spews more radioactive pollution into the air than a nuclear plant.

Oil and natural gas are too scarce to meet our electrical needs now, let alone in the next century. We already import over 40 percent of our oil from abroad, and that will probably increase.

Solar power seems to be a wonderful idea: every square yard of sunshine contains about 1000 watts of inexhaustible energy, free for the taking. The trouble is, the taking isn't free. To meet our electrical needs, we'd have to build enough collector plants to cover the state of Delaware. No serious student of solar power expects it to be anything but a supplement to the conventional electricity for decades.

Wind power generated a lot of excitement in the early 1980s, when magazines featured photographs of a "wind farm" at Altamont Pass, Calif., with hundreds of windmills. Everyone seemed to forget that taxpayers' money helped buy the farm. Today, the giant blades spin productively only half of year, because winds frequently aren't strong enough to cover costs.

Hydro power is the cleanest practical source of electricity. But in the United States, most rivers that can be profitably dammed already are.

Other, more exotic energy schemes would hardness ocean tides and waves, nuclear fusion (the process that powers the sun) or heat from the earth's crust or the sea. But even proponents admit that none of these will become a major source of energy soon.

Some people believe we can solve our problems through conservation. But even if we instituted every form of conservation known, we would buy perhaps a decade before demand overtook supply again.

Now let's look at the advantages of the nuclear power.

1. It's clean. Radioactive emissions are negligible, much less than the radioactivity released into the air naturally from the earth or produced by cosmic rays. Standing next to a nuclear plant, I am exposed to only one-half of one percent more radiation than when sitting in my living room. A coal station, on the other hand, requires huge dumps of fuel and ashes that menace the environment.

Despite a widespread misconception, nuclear waste is not a technical problem. The 108 nuclear plants in the United States generate less than 4000 tons of fuel waste each year. In fact, all 33 years' worth of the nation's spent fuel would only fill a football field to a depth of five feet. Non-nuclear hazardous waste, by contrast, totals 275 million tons annually. And nuclear waste is easy to monitor and control. The spent fuel can be kept on the premises for years until it decays to a radiation level suitable for trucking to long-term storage sites.

"What if a truck has an accident?" anti-nuclear activists ask. The answer is that when you're moving a chunk of waste the size of a bushel basket, it's easy to build an indestructible container. These already exist. In tests, they've been rammed by speeding locomotives and burned at 1475 degrees Fahrenheit in jet fuel without producing a single leak.

"What if the truck is hijacked by terrorists who want to build an atomic bomb?" Answer: this would be pointless. To make a bomb, the usable portions of the nuclear-fuel waste would need to be extracted in a reprocessing plant costing hundreds of millions of dollars. A terrorist group with that kind of money could far more easily mine the ore, which occurs naturally throughout the world.

The best place to store nuclear waste is deep underground, because the earth provides excellent shielding. The waste will be packaged in metal-and-ceramic containers for easy retrieval. As its radioactive ebbs, future generations may want to recycle the un-spent fuel. (Reprocessing of spent fuel is being done in Europe and Japan.) The federal government has already selected an underground storage site in Yucca Mountain, Nev. Actual use, however, must wait for years of federal testing. Meanwhile, the location is being challenged in court by the state of Nevada.

2. It's inexhaustible. U.S. uranium reserves will last many decades, and our long- term supply is guaranteed. Through a process called "breeding," a reactor can convert uranium into plutonium-an even better fuel. Breeder reactors, now in use France, could thus extend the reserves for millions of years.

3. It's secure. Because it needs so little fuel, a nuclear plant is less vulnerable to shortages produced by strikes or by natural calamities. And since uranium is more evenly scattered about the globe than fossil fuels, nuclear power is less threatened by cartels and international crises.

4. It's cheap. In France, where nuclear power supplies 70 percent of the electricity, nuclear power costs 30 percent less than coal-fired power. This enables France to export electricity to its neighbors. In Canada, where nuclear power supplies 15 percent of the electricity, Ontario Hydro has proposed building ten more nuclear reactors over the next 25 years.

In the early days of nuclear power, the United States made money on it too. But today opponents have so complicated its development that no nuclear plants have been ordered or built here in 12 years.

The decline of the U.S. nuclear-power industry began in 1979 with the Three Mile Island 2 accident. Radioactive emissions were negligible; the reactor shut itself down, and no lives were lost. Control room designs are safer now, and the number of instructors and simulators at training sites has dramatically increased. Ironically, the Three Mile Island 1 plant has the best performance record in the world.

The greatest fear of nuclear power opponents has always been a "meltdown": the reactor core overheats and breaks its seal, leaking radioactive gases. This is partly what happened at Chernobyl in 1986, and critics still cite Chernobyl as proof of what can happen here. But they fail to mention that the Soviet reactor had an appallingly obsolete design, one that is not used in the United States for generating electricity.

Today, the chances of a meltdown that would pose a threat to U.S. public health are very slim. But to even further reduce the possibility, engineers are testing new fail-safe reactors that rely not on human judgment to shut them down but on the laws of nature.

One type, first designed in Sweden, has a pool of boron-laced water surrounding the reactor core. If the core overheats, the hot water naturally rises, pulling up more boron from below, which stops the reaction in its tracks. As long as the law of gravity holds, a meltdown can't occur.

Another type, being developed at Argonne National Laboratory in Idaho, is called the Integral Fast Reactor (IFR). It recycles most of its wastes into more fuel, "It's the next best thing to a perpetual-motion machine," says physicist Charles E. Till. Where a conventional reactor might require 200 tons of fuel, the IFR would need only one ton. And because its liquid-sodium cooling system does not cause the corrosion and cracking that wears out conventional reactors, its lifetime is almost limitless.

The U.S. Department of Energy is also enthusiastic about the IFR. Says Jerry D. Griffith, Associate Deputy Assistant Secretary for Reactor Systems, Development and Technology: "If we can generate all U.S. electric power exclusively with IFRs, the atmosphere would essentially be free of pollution from utilities."

Fail-safe reactors could be feeding the power grid within ten years. General Electric is already building two 1300-megawatt advanced reactors in Japan. But don't expect them ever on U.S. shores unless things change in Washington.

The procedure for licensing nuclear power plants is a nightmare. Any time during, or even after, construction, an objection by any group or individual can bring everything to a halt while the matter is investigated or taken to court. Meanwhile, the builder must add nice-but-not-necessary improvements, some of which force him to knock down walls and start over. (One reason GE is building its new reactors in Japan is that construction takes only six years there, versus 12 here.)

"In every case where a plant has been opposed, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has ultimately granted a license to construct or operate," notes Chauncey Starr of the Electric Power Research Institute. "But the victory often costs so much that the utility ends up abandoning the plant anyway."

A case in point is the Shoreham plant on New York's Long Island. Shoreham was a virtual twin to the Millstone 1 plant in Connecticut, both ordered in the mid-60's. Millstone, completed for $101 million, has been generating electricity for two decades. Shoreham, however, was singled out by anti-nuclear activists who, by filing endless protests, drove the cost over $5 billion and delayed its use for many years.

Shoreham finally won its operating license. But the plant has never produced a watt of power. Gov. Mario Cuomo, an opponent of a Shoreham startup, strong-armed New York's public-utilities commission into the following settlement: the power company could pass the cost of Shoreham along to its consumers only if it agreed not to operate the plant! Today, a perfectly good facility, capable of servicing hundreds of thousands of homes, sits rusting.

To prevent such absurdities, the federal government must limit public hearings to the period before ground-breaking. Once a go-ahead is given, the utility should be able to build and operate the plant so long as the work passes NRC inspection. Outsiders should not be able to halt the project without showing serious cause. "Public safety would be protected," says Carl Goldstein of the U.S. Council for Energy Awareness, "but it would no longer be possible to shut down a $4-billion plant with a 25-cent stamp."

This "one-step licensing" could revive the industry almost overnight, according to utility executives. In fact, the NRC issued a proposed rule in support of one-step licensing in 1989, but opponents of nuclear power have tied it up in court. The industry will not order new plants until Congress acts first. Standardized plant designs are also necessary. No two facilities in the United States are alike, because blueprints are continually subject to NRC revision. "In France," says Starr, "they get a design approved and duplicate it all over the country. This saves a tremendous amount of money." Indeed, engineering work accounts for ten percent of a typical nuclear plant's cost. The NRC has agreed to approve a few off-the-shelf plans that can be used anywhere. But these, too, are being challenged in court.

The way out of this mess is clear. The nuclear industry should not be given carte blanche, but neither should those who would seize on any technicality of the law to destroy it. Risks should be evaluated reasonably, not hysterically.

James J. O'Connor, head of Commonwealth Edison of Chicago, one of the largest U.S. utilities, says, "An expanding nuclear-power program is vital to our economic well- being." When nominating Adm. James Watkins as Secretary of Energy, President Bush made his support for this energy source clear. "I am convinced we are not going to solve the national energy needs through hydrocarbons alone," he said. "We must safely use nuclear power."

I am one of the people alive today who attended the famous conference in 1939 where Danish scientist Niels Bohr announced the splitting of the atom. The news stunned us all. Here was a process that could release a million times more energy from a lump of fuel than any fire. Some of us observed that it might usher in a golden age of global prosperity. It still can happen.

FROM THE AUGUST 1990 ISSUE OF READER'S DIGEST