� Melvin R. Laird, Moderator @ THE AMERICAN ENTERPRISE IN­ EXECUTIVE STITUTE FOR PUBLIC POLICY RE­ COMMITIEE SEARCH, established in 1943, is a publicly supported, nonpartisan re­ Herman J. Schmidt search and educational organization. Chairman of the Board Its purpose is to assist policy makers, William J. Baroody scholars, businessmen, the press and President the public by providing objective William G. McClintock analysis of national and international Treasurer issues. Views expressed in the insti­ Richard J. Farrell tute's publications are those of the Dean P. Fite authors and do not necessarily reflect Richard B. Madden the views of the staff, advisory panels, officers or trustees of AEI. SENIOR STAFF ADVISORY BOARD Anne Brunsdale Paul W. McCracken, Chairman, Ed­ Director of Publications mund Ezra Day University Professor Joseph G. Butts of Business Administration, Univer­ Director of Legislative sity of Michigan Analysis R. H. Coase, Professor of Economics, Robert B. Helms University of Chicago Director of Health Policy Studies Milton Friedman, Paul S. Russell Dis­ tinguished Service Professor of Eco­ Thomas F. Johnson nomics, University of Chicago Director of Research Gary L. Jones Gottfried Haberler, Resident Scholar, Assistant to the President American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research for Administration Richard M. Lee C. Lowell Harriss, Professor of Eco­ Director of Planning nomics, Columbia University and Development George Lenczowski, Professor of Po­ Edward J. Mitchell litical Science, University of Califor­ Director, National nia, Berkeley Energy Project Robert A. Nisbet, Albert Schweitzer W. S. Moore Professor of the Humanities, Colum­ Director of Legal Policy bia University Studies James A. Robinson, President, Uni­ Robert J. Pranger versity of West Florida Director of Foreign and Defense Policy Studies Louis M. Thompson, Jr. Assistant to the President for Communication IS NUCLEAR POWER SAFE? @ Melvin R. Laird, Moderator @ Daniel Ford Craig Hosmer Ralph E. Lapp Lawrence I. Moss Ralph Nader

An AEI Round Table held on May 15, 1975 at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research Washington, D.C. THIS PAMPHLET CONTAINS THE PROCEEDINGS OF ONE OF A SERIES OF AEf ROUND TABLE DISCUSSIONS. THE ROUND TABLE OFFERS A MEDIUM FOR INFORMAL EXCHANGES OF IDEAS ON CURRENT POLICY PROBLEMS OF NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL IMPORT. AS PART OF AEI'S PROGRAM OF PROVIDING OPPORTUNITIES FOR THE PRESENTATION OF COMPETING VIEWS, IT SERVES TO ENHANCE THE PROSPECT THAT DECISIONS WITHIN OUR DEMOCRACY WILL BE BASED ON A MORE INFORMED PUBLIC OPINION. AEI ROUND TABLES ARE ALSO AVAILABLE ON AUDIO AND COLOR-VIDEO CASSETTES.

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PRINTED IN UNITED STATES OF AMERICA LVIN R. LAIRD, Reader's Digest and the AEI National Energy Project; moderator of M the Round Table: We have a very interest­ ing topic to discuss today, Is nuclear power safe? Our panelists are five distinguished Americans. First, I would like to introduce former Congressman Craig Hosmer from California, who served in the Congress for eleven terms. He is a graduate of the University of Michigan Law School, served in the United States Navy in World War II, and retired from the Naval Reserve as a rear admiral in 1973. During his time in the House of Representatives, he served on the Joint Atomic Energy Committee and was its ranking minority member at the time he retired. He was known in the Congress as the real champion of nuclear power, a champion of nuclear power plants for the U.S. Navy and of nuclear power throughout the United States. Next is Ralph Nader. Mr. Nader, a graduate of Prince­ ton and the Harvard Law School, has been doing great research in the legal rights of the consumer. His book, Unsafe at Any Speed, published in 1965, dealt with the American automobile industry and automobiles in general. In 1969, he established the Center for the Study of Re­ sponsive Law, which has received and still receives a great deal of attention, as all of you know. At present, he is supporting in the Congress, through letters to various mem­ bers of the House and the Senate, the proposed Nuclear Energy Reappraisal Act, which would provide for a five­ year study of the safety and economic problems of nuclear power.

1 On my left is Laurence Moss, a very fine young man whom I first got to know in 1969 when he came to Wash­ ington as a White House fellow. He is a chemical engineer and a nuclear engineer; he has served as executive secre­ tary of the Committee on Air Quality and Power Plant Emission Control of the National Academy of Sciences. From 1973 to 1974, he was president of the Sierra Club. He has also served as chairman of the Federal Power Commission's Subcommittee on Environmental Aspects of Energy Production and Conservation. He is now chairman of the National Science Foundation Subcommittee on En­ vironmental Aspects of Energy Facility Siting. He is not speaking to us today as a member of those committees, however, but as an individual interested in this subject. Next to him is Dr. Ralph Lapp. A graduate of the University of Chicago, Dr. Lapp was associate physicist with Arthur Dempsters in the discovery of uranium-235. From 1943 to 1946, he was division director of one of the great laboratories at the University of Chicago, which was dealing in this field of research. He is now a consultant for the Senate Public Works Committee and also for the General Accounting Office, an arm of the United States Congress. He is the author of a recently published book, Nader's Nuclear Issues, 1975. The last member of our panel is Daniel Ford, who received his B.A. degree in economics from Harvard. He then worked as a technical interrogator in the AEC's rule­ making hearings on emergency cooling systems, as co­ ordinator of environmental research for the Harvard eco­ nomic research project, and as a consultant on atomic energy regulations to the Senate Government Operations Committee. He is now executive director for the Union of Concerned Scientists. The union is involved in a number of studies on the impact of advanced technology upon society and provides technical information on the nuclear program to environmental groups around the country. We will first have an opening statement from Con­ gressman Craig Hosmer.

CRAIG HOSMER, former member of Congress (Republi­ can, California): Thank you, Mel. One problem of nuclear

2 safety is that it is something like relative humidity; you must ask yourself, compared to what? And you also have to ask, what are the costs and what are the benefits, what are the risks and the rewards? For instance, this country must get 20 percent of its entire energy supply from overseas, and 40 percent of its gasoline and oil. So what is the risk of continued depen­ dence on imported energy to turn the wheels of this coun­ try, to keep the men employed in the factories-what is the risk of continued dependence on foreign oil? We could have our own domestic energy supply and energy inde­ pendence if we increased the use of coal and nuclear power and displaced the imported oil. We have to ask ourselves, what's the comparison of risks? Is it wise for a country like ours to continue to bear these overseas risks? And also, is it wise for our country to continue to pay more than it has to for its power-because nuclear power is cheaper than other kinds of power? One risk we shouldn't hear about anymore is the one that most people think is inherent in nuclear reactors­ and that's the risk of their exploding. Mr. Nader, himself, denied that one on 28 April in a hearing in the Congress when he said, "No, these things won't explode." The other risk that people worry about is that nuclear power plants will release some radioactivity-and there is a possibility of that happening. But our best scientists tell us that that possibility, that risk, isn't very large. For instance, the Rasmussen study indicates that the risk of a loss-of-fluid accident releasing radioactivity is about 1 in 250,000 for a hundred reactors. Now that, indeed, is a very, very small risk to take in return for independence from overseas oil, jobs for people here at home, and so on. As we get into this discussion today, I intend to hark back to that subject, because we simply cannot consider this topic in isolation. We have to consider it as you do every other human activity-in the context of risks versus benefits, what is best for the individual, what is best for the country. MR. LAIRD: Ralph Nader?

3 RALPH NADER, Center for the Study of Responsive Law and consumer advocate: I think we should look at our energy future in two directions. One direction would focus on rigorous energy conservation. We waste at least 40 per­ cent of the energy in this country. We consume per capita more than twice the energy that the Swedes and West Germans consume, and they have very high standards of living. If we prevented this waste and consumed energy efficiently, if we controlled the pollution from the fossil fuels that we have in considerable abundance in this coun­ try and if we initiated a program of research and develop­ ment in order to phase in solar and geothermal energy over a forty- to fifty-year period, we would pursue a path of employment, of safety, of respect for future generations, of respect for our environment-a program that would re­ duce inflation, reduce pollution, and enhance the ability of this country to raise the capital it needs for other areas besides energy. We could, however, go in another direction-that is, the nuclear power path, which involves building 1,000 nuclear plants all over the United States, touching almost every state and region. It involves transporting radioactive materials daily by rail, truck, and barge, over highways and other transportation conduits. It involves the risk of releasing significant amounts of cancer-causing, leukemia­ causing, or genetic damage-causing radioactive materials from the nuclear plants themselves. This can occur in case of sabotage, accident, human or engineering error, or earthquake, or from the transport of the materials by, again, theft or sabotage or human error; and it can occur in the area where radioactive wastes, deadly for up to 250,000 years, have to be stored safely away from the hu­ man environment. Now, these are risks. There have already been spills of radioactive material around the country. These events increase the risk of cancer and genetic damage. There have been near misses. One plant was closed down forever. There have been plants that have been closed down for well over a year because of safety problems. The dangers of nuclear power and the unresolved safety problems have

4 been recognized by many scientists, some of whom are Nobel Prize winners, by other specialists outside the nu­ clear industry, and by scientists and officials in the Nuclear Regulatory Commission of the government and in indus­ try. These problems have been recognized repeatedly, either under oath or in internal government memoranda. I think we have to ask ourselves the question: do we go the way of conservation, efficient use of fossil fuels, and a fast program of alternative energy sources that are safe and clean, such as solar-much more practical than most people are led to believe? Or, do we go the nuclear route, creating national security problems in this country, a mini­ garrison state, and tolerating the uninsurability of a major industry, an industry that is unreliable and confronted with spiraling costs? I think the choice has to be made by the people of this country. That's what this program is all about-to try to give information so people themselves, who will be at risk and who will be damaged and harmed if something goes wrong, are able to decide democratically, at the grass roots throughout the nation, for themselves and for future generations.

MR. LAIRD: Thank you very much, Ralph Nader. You've now heard from Ralph Nader, who is opposing the devel­ opmen.t of nuclear power, and from Craig Hosmer, who is advocating the development of nuclear power. Next, we'll hear from Larry Moss, an environmentalist who favors the development of nuclear power but opposes the develop­ ment and use of coal for energy. Larry?

LAURENCE MOSS, National Science Foundation and past president of the Sierra Club: I'm not sure that's an ac­ curate description of my position. Let me begin by saying that I think the question in the title of this program, Is nuclear power safe?, is really not the right question, as Craig Hosmer indicated. We have to talk not about whether nuclear power is absolutely safe, because nothing is. We should instead talk about whether it is safer than the alternatives. Ralph Nader is much more sanguine about the pros-

5 pect of greatly expanding the use of coal than I am. I'm much more concerned about air pollution and about the injuries and deaths that result from the occupational hazards of coal. I think there are things we can do to reduce those social and environmental costs, but they can­ not be reduced to zero, just as the risks of nuclear power cannot be reduced to zero. In our discussion today, I hope we talk about the risks of each, especially of nuclear power. I hope we identify the key points in the nuclear fuel cycle where those risks exist-the reactors, the reprocessing plants, the fuel fabri­ cation facilities, the depots for the storage of long-term wastes. There are, indeed, risks at each of those points­ risks of accidents, risks arising from sabotage, from ter­ rorism. But these risks are not so different, in my opinion, from risks that are associated with coal, or risks that arise from involuntary exposure to other causative agents. If a person is injured or killed, it doesn't make much differ­ ence to him what the cause was. The fact of the injury is the important thing. There is even, in my opinion, no basis for saying that because it involves long-term risks associated with damage to future generations, nuclear power is fundamentally dif­ ferent from coal. There are risks like that associated with coal. As an example, if we use up the coal deposits in the world, burn them, we will increase the carbon dioxide concentration of the atmosphere eightfold. This will have an unknown effect on climate. It could be either a warm­ ing effect or a cooling effect; it could bring on another Ice Age, with mass starvation caused by a cut in agri­ cultural productivity; or it could bring on a warm spell, which would melt the polar ice caps and thus increase the ocean level by more than 300 feet and flood out all of our coastal cities. Now, I'm not saying the probability of this happening is high. My point is that there are low proba­ bility risks associated with coal as well as with nuclear power that affect future generations, and they should be considered in comparing the risks. For these reasons, I think it is not appropriate at this time to call for a moratorium on nuclear power, and I ex­ pect that we will, in the course of this discussion, compare

6 these risks in more detail in an attempt to come up with a reasonable assessment. Just one final point. I believe that the risks of nuclear power, as well as the risks of coal, can be significantly reduced by taking a number of actions, and I think we ought to get into that during the course of this discussion as well.

MR. LAIRD: Thank you very much, Larry. And now, Dr. Ralph Lapp, an advocate of nuclear power.

RALPH LAPP, consultant to the Senate Public Works Com­ mittee and the General Accounting Office: Thank you, Mel. Let me say, first of all, that I'm an advocate of ade­ quate energy for the United States, consistent with main­ taining a viable economy, and only through the process of elimination. When I make a realistic and technically competent assessment of what energy sources will be avail­ able in the future and then co::npare them to the yearly production and consumption of energy, by elimination, I arrive at the fact that the only way to maintain an ade­ quate energy supply in the United States, one that will sustain renewed, full employment, support a high quality of life, and avoid a return to Walden Pond, which many conservationists seem to have in mind-the only way is uranium. That is shown by this chart, which happens to be a rather complex one. At this distance from the television camera, it may look like the electrocardiogram of a crowd. But, in fact, it is a systematic plot of geopower ( solar energy, plus great emphasis on the production of geo­ thermal energy), of hydro power, of all the oil we can get, of natural gas, and of three times the amount of coal we now burn. With all of that, I arrive at zero growth for the United States, even with conservation. Only by adding the nuclear compoI'.ent, for which we have the technology in hand, do we arrive at adequate growth for the United States and avoid a return to Walden Pond. There are risks associated with the uranium fuel cycle-as there are risks associated with everything. Auto­ mobiles are dangerous, but no one advocates eliminating

7 U.S. ENERGY SCENARIO (1975-2000) q (Quadrillion Btu)

400 4% /3% 200 ..... c::2% . ··· 100 .····o· ;0 � 80 c, ... ··· � u...;f 'v 60 -� 'r .�o cP 40 ················:z> 11_ < 20 ..··:::.-.:::.::�y · ....� .: 7,"' i Q ..,,.� 10 :! (.J)� "'7 8 ! & 6 j ...... HYDRO ·····. 4 f. ..· · /J (!)

2

0.5

NUCLEAR

1920 1940 1960 1980 2000

Source: Ralph E. Lapp

8 the automobile; airplanes are dangerous; everything is dangerous. Risk, as Craig Hosmer said, must be balanced against reward. The risk begins with uranium, as you take it from the earth. But there, I would say, one of the great advantages of uranium, even though it comes from a low-grade ore, is that it is so energy-intensive that the energy output of one uranium miner equals the energy output of twenty-five coal miners. And by the end of the century, when we would have to dig for this coal of which Ralph Nader is so fond, and would have a great population of underground miners and great stripping operations, I believe that uranium mining will be a salvation. The risk associated with transportation of the refined fuel is essentially zero. It is processed, put into ceramic pellets, made into fuel rods for nuclear power plants, burned without flame inside the reactor core, stored for a while, cooled, and transported in heavy, lead-cased tanks, so that it can then be reprocessed. The reprocessing takes place not by the old techniques for military wastes of which Ralph Nader speaks. I am talking of the present technology, reducing wastes to solids and transporting those solids to what I believe to be a favorable final de­ pository, which is embedded in salt mines somewhere in the southwestern United States. There is no reason why this method of waste disposal cannot be adequate. Geo­ logic deposits that have gone unmoved for 50 million years should remain relatively stationary during the relatively short time, on a geologic scale, that they must remain in­ tact. Thus, from the very beginning to the end, from the earth back to the earth, I believe that, as with no other fuel cycle, the nuclear power cycle has been scoped and assessed, and that it is a safe operation. But I submit that today we are discussing the ques­ tion, Is nuclear power safe? Mr. Laird, I believe this bears upon a fundamental dilemma of democracy. I happen to be a scientist, Larry is an engineer, and we have some lawyers here-and the problem is that we're talking about technical things for which society is not uniformly edu­ cated. I can see that people who do not have the long technical training that some of us have will be frightened. Fear is a powerful reason for avoiding something. But I

9 believe there is also the danger of a society without ade­ quate energy. I have come to the conclusion that nuclear power is safe, reliable, and sufficient for our needs.

MR. LAIRD: Thank you very much, Dr. Lapp. And now, Daniel Ford.

DANIEL FORD, executive director of the Union of Con­ cerned Scientists: There are three simple points that I would like to try to make at the outset. First, I think people should understand that the nuclear power program in the United States is in extremely serious difficulty from the economic point of view. The majority of the nuclear power plant projects in the United States, construction plant projects, were cancelled or post­ poned last year. The capital cost of building a nuclear plant has increased tenfold over the last decade. This means that if the country is to continue with nuclear power, either massive rate increases to be paid by the con­ sumers or massive government subsidies to be paid by tax­ payers will be required. Given all the other costs that the consumer has today, it is not realistic to expect that this kind of subsidy for the nuclear program will come about. So from the economic point of view, nuclear power has gotten to the point where it is virtually costing itself out of the market. The second point relates to the credibility of the safety assurances that have been provided. As Dr. Lapp indicated, it is very difficult for the general public to get a grasp on these issues. It is also difficult for the public simply to accept the assurances of the industries and the federal agencies that are promoting these projects. What is truly important is to have independent technical ex­ pertise applied to these problems. That, in part, is a func­ tion of our organization, and recently the American Phys­ ical Society [APS], the professional society of physics, con­ tributed a new study to help clarify the technical questions for the general public. The important contribution of that study is the estimate of exactly what risk is involved in a nuclear power reactor accident. The authors studied a type of accident which, according to AEC statistics, would

10 be expected to happen once every couple of decades in a program of the size the Atomic Energy Commission is promoting. These are the consequences of such an acci­ dent, as predicted by the American Physical Society's study: Lethal cancers would be produced by the accident, between 10,000 and 20,000 lethal cancers. Genetic defects would be produced in the population exposed to the radio­ active material, between 3,000 and 20,000 such cases. And, finally, between 22,000 and 350,000 of those living near the reactor would develop thyroid nodules, a small fraction of which would be malignant. We believe that the size and scale of the potential reactor accident is quite unique, and it raises the most profound questions about whether society wants to rely on a technology with these difficulties. The final, general observation I'd like to make is that the country is in trouble, because the entire management of the nuclear power program has not shown the type of care and diligence, nor the type of candor, that is required to manage a program with such large inherent risks. Our investigation, which we will be discussing during the pro­ gram, has obtained thousands of AEC internal files which show that, for the last ten years, rather than acting to protect the public, the federal regulators have been much more interested in promoting the program. Their interest was so intense that it Jed them to suppress and conceal critical information about the hazards from the general public. And plainly, no matter what one thinks on a the­ oretical level about the nuclear power program, with its history of mismanagement and concealment, until the whole issue is sorted out to the satisfaction of society at large, we are in no position, through any democratic processes, to commit the American nation to the establish­ ment of nuclear installations in all of its back yards.

MR. LAIRD: The study you were talking about was more about a light water-cooled type of reactor, was it not?

MR. FORD: That is correct. And we should clarify for the audience that the nuclear program in the United States

11 involves what are called water-cooled reactors today. They take uranium and burn it up, so to speak. But the govern­ ment has long-standing proposals to develop a different type of reactor called the plutonium breeder which would manufacture by internal processes a special material called plutonium which in and of itself is immensely toxic. And not only would that risk be involved, but the proposal is to make plutonium a basic fuel for the U.S. economy. And, of course, many people are concerned about the extreme cancer risk associated with plutonium. Another worry is that this material, if stolen and converted, could be ·used in the manufacture of a nuclear weapon. Many questions about the prudence of relying on such material have not been satisfactorily resolved. MR. LAIRD: Dr. Lapp, what is your thought on that? DR. LAPP: There are many misconceptions and errors of fact that Mr. Ford has put forth here. If you were a scien­ tist, Mr. Ford, you would understand the responsibility to seek the truth, to quote a report accurately. You have so misstated the results of the APS study that it is almost incredible. You talk about an accident that the project studied, one which might occur once every two decades. You have that wrong. In point of fact, if you took the most probable accident-and they never discussed the probability of oc­ currences-you would find that the study would predict only one accident before the year 2007. One accident! And this could be the most probable accident if you multiply the- MR. FORD: That's one every three decades, Dr. Lapp. DR. LAPP: It happens to be much farther than that. We are now talking about the fact that the consequences you have mentioned are much less probable. The consequences of the accident that you have cited are actually not more than one death per year, and one cancer death per year, according I to the APS study applied to this. And I have corresponded with the people on the APS study and have interrogated them.

12 MR. FORD: Dr. Lapp, we are quite familiar, of course-­ we have on our staff nuclear physicists, nuclear engineers and we, of course, have talked closely-

DR. LAPP: How many do you have?

MR. FORD: -and studied this quite closely. Dr. Lapp, we have, among our members, many of the Atomic Energy Commission's own scientists and officials. The fact-

DR. LAPP: Let's clarify the words "many of them." As a scientist, I like numbers. How many people are in the Union of Concerned Scientists who actually have profes­ sional competence in the reactor engineering field? Could you name them by name or not?

MR. FORD: Well, there is a small difficulty for me in identifying the Atomic Energy Commission officials, in presenting them in a public hearing; a couple of dozen individuals-

DR. LAPP: I am talking about the Union of Concerned Scientists now, not about something else.

MR. LAIRD: I think probably you are not going to answer that particular question; you feel that you cannot answer.

MR. FORD: The Union of Concerned Scientists, itself, is a group that started with an informal faculty group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

MR. LAIRD: Well, I mean about listing your membership. I don't think- MR. FORD: The only difficulty is that Dr. Lapp would like to know the names of the people inside the federal gov­ ernment, the technical experts of conscience who have cooperated with us and we are certainly not going to reveal their names. One of the things that has happened in the nuclear power program, one of the great tragedies, is that individuals who have been concerned have been fired; they have been removed from their positions.

13 MR. LAIRD: Larry can make a comment and then we will go to you, Ralph, and then to you, Craig.

MR. MOSS: I would just like to comment on the substance of some of the points that have been raised. First, about the American Physical Society study, which, I think, makes an important contribution to this issue. Indeed, the study did identify certain injuries that would result from reactor accidents that the AEC had not properly accounted for, although I think that Mr. Ford has exaggerated the significance of that correction. It should also be pointed out that all of the eleven or twelve people associated with that APS study oppose a moratorium on nuclear power plants. This was stated at the American Physical Society meeting. They said that even though the risks that they had identified were somewhat higher than those calculated by the AEC, they had no reason to believe that the risks were greater than those from the use of coal and that, therefore, it would not be logical to advocate a moratorium on nuclear power. On the point about the economics of nuclear power, Dan Ford spoke about all of the cancellations of nuclear plants. By the way, some coal plants have been cancelled as well. I think that this is a reflection of a reassessment on the part of the electric utility industry over what rate of growth will occur for its product, namely, electrical en­ ergy. We have had such significant increases in the prices of electricity in the last two or three years, especially in the last year or year and a half, that people are beginning to think that maybe there is some elasticity to the demand for electricity-namely, with the price so high people won't demand as much as they would if the price were kept low. We don't know exactly what that relationship is, but we know pretty well what direction it's in and it could be very significant. And indeed, in the last year or two, the growth rate in electricity use has been much lower than historic rates. In any event, if nuclear power is uneconomic and is being priced out of the market, why is it necessary to have a moratorium? I am not quite sure what Ralph Nader and Dan Ford are all excited about.

14 MR. NADER: Nuclear power will never develop in this country without massive federal subsidies, in the form of both the direct and indirect loans that have been going on and of outright government purchase of nuclear power plants. Evidence: the president of Westinghouse Corpora­ tion, Mr. Kirby, petitioned the government the other day, asking the government to buy four of his company's pro­ posed floating nuclear plants outright and lease them back to the utilities. When you talk about nuclear power pricing itself out of the market, as Mr. Ford has, you're talking about the consumer market, the competitive free enter­ prise market which the nuclear power advocates are ready to overthrow in favor of a massive federal subsidy. Now, I would like, Mr. Laird, to try to concentrate on the issues and not have Mr. Lapp constantly bringing in personalities. I want to establish once and for all that there are experts on both sides of this question. There are Nobel Prize winners on one side and Nobel Prize winners on the other. But, the most telling comment was made by Albert Einstein many years ago. He said they are not the ones who decide; you in the viewing audience decide-the people of this country. Moreover, I want to dispense with any more of this picky personality backbiting that Mr. Lapp engages in. I would like to cite Mr. Lapp's testimony in 1972 when he was a critic of nuclear power, highly dubious about its lack of safety-and matters are getting worse now, not better-when he described Mr. Ford, on his left there, as follows: "I submit that he, Mr. Ford, probably knows more about emergence core cooling than 98 percent of the physicists who have Ph.D.'s in this country." I want this country-and I would hope you would, too, Mr. Lapp-to focus on the issues. I can cite you engineers and scientists, and you can too, but let's focus on the issues. In every nu­ clear plant, there is at least 2,000 times more radioactive material than the fallout in the Hiroshima weapon. A nuclear plant-not the breeder design, a light water re­ actor-does not explode but it can have a deadly accident, as everybody agrees. People disagree over the probability; but there could be an earthquake, there could be sabotage, there could be human error. A man with a candle started

15 a fire in a big nuclear plant in northern Alabama a few weeks ago and shut down the entire plant for four to six months. A man with a candle. Just a simple thing like that. Moreover, there could be design engineering errors. There are a lot of defects here. We have to ask ourselves whether we want to go the route of federal ownership of nuclear plants, federal subsidies, noninsurability of nu­ clear plants because the industry won't put its money where its assurances are, plans to evacuate people from major metropolitan areas in case there is a meltdown or a deadly release. There are perhaps dozens of other prob­ lems; police at all kinds of junctures, guarding, security classifications, invasions of privacy. Or, do we want to ask a simple question: if we can save more energy between now and 1990 than nuclear power will give us, why should we have nuclear power? I submit that the evidence is very powerful that our waste of energy in this country-which results in sales and profits for industry but which is waste from a consumer point of view-is massive. For instance, the American In­ stitute of Architects issued a study recently saying that if just our buildings-not our gas-guzzling cars and our in­ dustrial processes and all, but just our buildings-if these can be made energy-efficient through retrofitting and new designs, we will save more energy than nuclear power would give us by the year 1990. And that is assuming everything goes swimmingly well with nuclear power, with no breakdowns, shutdowns, and postponements-no man with a candle to close the world's biggest nuclear power plant.

MR. LAIRD: Craig, we will go to you and then back to Dr. Lapp for a comment. MR. HOSMER: I don't want to let the American people get conned out of their great heritage of adequate power by some of these arguments that are going on. As stated by Mr. Nader, we have scientists on both sides of these questions. Some of them say yes to nuclear power and some of them say no. We only have one scientist here. But I've been trying

16 to listen to scientists for twenty-five years or longer. I used to work with the Atomic Energy Commission as a lawyer and I spent a long time in the Congress trying to analyze these risks and dangers and listening to what scientists came in and said, to find out whether Scientist Black was right or Scientist White was right. After a while, you be­ gin to get a feel for that sort of thing. Recently, I went to the Statistical Abstract of the United States. I counted up all of the scientists and all of the technicians in this coun­ try, on the government payroll, working for universities, and working iQ private industry, and I found out that there were 2,358,400 such people. That number is very large in relation to the very small number of people who tell you that nuclear power is too risky. Mr. Rasmussen is one of the people who says that nuclear power risks are quite negligible. Mr. Ford just argued with that. He is an economist. I will still stick with a scientist, Dr. Rasmussen, who spent three years, with over sixty other scientists, coming up with his assessment. I will stick with him against any critique put together in three months, at the most, or in thirty seconds on a tele­ vision show by somebody else who isn't even a scientist. I will also argue economics with these fellows who say that because nuclear plants have been cancelled or delayed, they are not economical. The people over at Gen­ eral Motors or Chrysler and at a lot of other enterprises in this country aren't doing much business now either, are they? Because we've got a recession now. That is the reason for nuclear cancellations and postponements, not risks. The fact cannot be refuted that, even though the in­ vestment costs of nuclear power plants are high, the elec­ tricity out of those plants is the cheapest electricity you can produce. A survey was made in 1974 of all of the nu­ clear production in this country and what it costs. We only produce 6 percent of the power in this country out of nuclear plants, and it saved the rate-payers in this country $810 million on that meager amount. So if you want to have high-cost power, just don't have nuclear. If you want to have adequate industrial activity in this country and jobs, you had better go nuclear. That's cost and net bene-

17 fits, ladies and gentlemen, and those are the things we have to talk about.

MR. LAIRD: Dr. Lapp?

DR. LAPP: Well, Arthur D. Little Company, which has to make the economic recommendations for the utilities that have to ·choose between fuels, completed a study for New England Electric, based upon plants that will be in opera­ tion in 1985. It was an exhaustive study taking into ac­ count the only three possibilities-coal, oil, and nuclear. On the basis of their studies, even though nuclear plants are more expensive to build-Mr. Ford is correct on at least that one thing-the fuel costs, as Craig Hosmer says, are so much lower that they offset the capital cost. On this basis, they find that nuclear will be one-half the cost of the fossil fuels. Now, if you go to people in New Eng­ land, to the utilities there, and tell them to burn coal, you are putting them in a terrible spot. If they have to burn oil, they are at the mercy of actions taken in the Persian Gulf. I submit that one of the great virtues of nuclear power is that it has continuity of supply. In other words, once you button up a plant, you've got a year's supply right in the reactor vessel itself and you can store outside many more years if you want to. With coal or oil, on the other hand, you are at the mercy of the supplier. This is a relatively unappreciated aspect of it. But I have calculated, using very conservative as­ sumptions, that in the five-year period 1976 to 1980 the production of electricity with coal and oil will cost the United States $13.7 billion more than if it were produced by nuclear fuels. Now, that's hard cash which will not be charged to the people when they pay their monthly electric bill.

MR. LAIRD: Daniel Ford.

MR. FORD: Well, Dr. Lapp's figure of savings of $13 bil­ lion is very hard to reconcile with the fact that about a trillion dollar subsidy will have to be paid and borne by the consumer in order to have the nuclear program. This

18 Arthur D. Little study, which is cited by the industry as a definitive study, was reviewed by the Harvard Business School and they said the numbers that the study came up with were little more than random guesses. I'm an econo­ mist and if you want me to speak about economics, I will be happy to. DR. LAPP: I wish you would because I would like to know where the thousand billion dollars is coming from. Where does that come from? MR. FORD: The assumptions made by the Arthur D. Little study are arbitrary. The second thing that Arthur D. Little does not reference at all are its past estimates. Arthur D. Little's estimates double every time it redoes the estima­ tion. The fact of the matter is that the economic nuclear plants Mr. Hosmer spoke of are the older, smaller plants that were built with the capital costs of a decade ago, and several were built with direct government subsidies and several under special discount and contractual arrange­ ments which no longer exist today. The fact of the matter is that if society is to rely on nuclear power, it is going to require massive rate increases to be paid for by the con­ sumer or, in the alternative, by massive federal subsidies. Dr. Lapp, the nuclear community's international jour­ nal, Nuclear Technology International, has devoted its March 1975 issue, a special issue, to nuclear financing. The introductory section said that it is no longer a ques­ tion of whether massive federal subsidies will be sought for the nuclear program; it's only a question of when. And the fact of the matter is, to an economist, the simplest sign that something doesn't have economic advantage as claimed is that the proponents come in and ask for fed­ eral bailout. That's the situation with the nuclear power program from an economic point of view. MR. HOSMER: Would you rather have a cheaper power plant with no fuel? MR. FORD: The fact of the matter is that that is not the alternative we are going to have. If you look simply in

19 terms of the coal reserves of the United States, according to the Project Independence study, we have 433 billion tons of proven reserves in the United States, not to men­ tion ultimately recoverable reserves of 1.5 trillion tons. Our annual consumption of coal is only about 0.6 billion tons. So our proven reserves are enough for nearly 800 years. Now, nobody is recommending that we rely on coal to the point of exhaustion, but we do have coal available during the period of transition from our present energy technologies to the alternatives-solar, geothermal, fission, et cetera-that we are working to develop.

MR. HOSMER: You've got to get the stuff out of the ground, too, you know.

MR. FORD: The issues that Mr. Moss identifies, a long­ term consequence associated with coal, are certainly true. And none of us is saying that our long-term commitment ought to be for coal. What we think is that the coal that we have, combined with energy conservation, should be the bridge, just for the next couple of decades, while we make the transition from our present mix of energy supply alternatives to the new alternatives that we ought to be developing at a rapid rate.

MR. LAIRD: Larry Moss.

MR. MOSS: First, I would like to agree with two or three of the points that Ralph Nader made. He said that the people should decide issues like this and I think that is quite proper. You have to weigh different values; you have to decide what society is willing to pay to avoid injury or death regardless of which alternative you pick. And the only way to do that is through a political process involving everyone who has a position on it so that his values can be considered. The decision shouldn't be made just by technical experts, I'm sure.

MR. LAIRD: That is the purpose of this program.

MR. MOSS: Exactly.

20 MR. LAIRD: And that's why the American Enterprise In­ stitute is sponsoring these programs on educational TV all over the United States.

MR. MOSS: It's a valuable activity.

MR. NADER: Does that mean that the American Enter­ prise Institute favors a national initiative referendum on nuclear power?

MR. LAIRD: No, but it believes in a very adequate public dialogue on these important issues.

MR. FORD: How long a period would you like to allow for dialogue before we sort of-

MR. LAIRD: I am a little bit concerned on all of these statements about whether the consumers in this country are really making a great effort to cut back in consumption of energy. I was down in Florida today driving along the highway and I didn't find very many motorists who were even abiding by the fifty-five-mile-an-hour speed limit. So I don't think the story has gotten through to the American public. People are not reacting along the conservation line as much as some of our speakers on this panel have indicated today. I am sorry I interrupted you.

MR. MOSS: Well, just to follow up on what you said, I don't believe that over the long run we are going to get enormous energy conservation from altruism, from people doing what they think is good for society, especially if they suspect that their neighbor isn't doing it. That's why I put more weight on using price and market mechanisms -to make sure that the user of energy pays the full cost of the energy he uses and that there are no subsidies, and to make sure that if there are social and environmental costs, they are included in the price. I fully agree with the implication of what Ralph Nader said-that we ought to eliminate all those subsidies and that, when a company comes in with a request for the

21 government to buy four nuclear power plants, we ought to turn it down. We ought to repeal the provisions of the Price-Anderson Act which now limit the liability for nu­ clear plant accidents. We should also eliminate the $1 billion a year paid to the victims of black lung disease from the federal treasury. This should be paid by the coal companies and the users of coal. And we should also levy charges on emissions of sulphur dioxide, including those arising from the burning of coal, which produce an esti­ mated damage to people downwind of about $10 to $20 billion a year. All of that should be included in the ,price. I think that when you look a.t the various subsidies that are now going to nuclear energy and compare them with the subsi­ dies that are now going to coal, including the failure to take these environmental costs into account, I suspect that you will find that the coal subsi.dies are much higher. But your basic point is correct; they should all be eliminated. The other thing I want to agree with you on is the importance of conservation. In terms of a research and development program for the country, I would put perhaps highest priority on research to develop more efficient ways of doing what we want done.

MR. NADER: It has the lowest priority now.

MR. MOSS: It is getting very little money now. I don't think we can, overnight, give it more money than every­ thing else, but we can bring it up to a very much higher rate of expenditure than it now has. Industry, on the average, is less than 10 percent efficient in the use of en­ ergy if you calculate this with the second law of thermo­ dynamics, which takes account of the fact that energy is more useful in certain forms than in other forms. And that kind of thing should not be allowed to continue in­ definitely. Higher prices will, in part, help correct the situ­ ation, but we also need research to tell industry, more than we know now, exactly how they can make the improve­ ments in the best way.

MR. HOSMER: I do think that we need to have some

22 reasonable feel for the degree of conservation that actually can be achieved if you are going to use that as an argu­ ment for scrubbing nuclear power and a means of bridging the energy gap. Now, Mr. Nader spoke in terms of 40 percent waste of energy, which may be quite right, but whether we can make 100 percent improvement and elimi­ nate all of that waste is something else. That's quite a practical matter. To me, it seems that we can probably squeeze out 60 percent of the waste, which means saving 25 percent of the energy we used to burn. In other words, we can run this country on 75 percent of the amount of energy we have been using to turn the wheels and to keep people working and everything else. But we probably can't go much lower than that. Now that kind of saving is not going to bridge the gap because it is going to take time to get into the era where we can rely on solar power. In this country and in every modern complicated economic society, it takes about fifty years for an idea to go from its initial concep­ tion to its full commercialization. And this is exactly the pattern with nuclear energy. Nuclear energy started in 1945 and here, thirty years later, in 1975, it is still not fully commercial. It will be about 1995, another twenty years, before it can pick up the full load of about 50 per­ cent of this nation's electrical energies. That means if we start now with solar energy, we are not going to get there until 2025. Mr. Nader's testimony that I referred to earlier quoted NSF figures and NASA figures showing that by 2020 we might be able to squeeze out 30 percent of our heating and cooling from solar, and I think something like 20 to 23 percent of our electrical energy. So you see, it takes time and this energy gap is facing us now. There is no way, really, that I can see of filling that gap without nuclear energy because even at a 2 per­ cent growth rate in energy in this country, which is what the low scenario of the Ford Foundation postulates, there will he a 28 percent increase in total energy use by 1985.

MR. NADER: To expand on your point on conservation, the 40 percent figure came from sources within the Office of Energy Conservation in the Federal Energy Office. This

23 figure referred to the short term, involving usage reduction by thrift and modest capital improvement. Look at the federal government. It merely sent memos out saying "be careful, don't waste energy," and reduced its energy con­ sumption over 1973 by more than 20 percent-simply by being thrifty, never mind basic redesign of buildings and vehicles to improve fuel efficiency and the like. The point I am trying to make is that the engineering frontiers and the thrift frontiers and the economic pricing frontiers are really massive as ways of reducing energy waste. For example, if we just doubled the efficiency of our automobile, we would reduce the amount of consump­ tion of our nation's petroleum by 15 percent. And going from fourteen miles per gallon to twenty-eight miles per gallon is really no big technological breakthrough, except for "Generous Motors," that is. [Laughter.]

MR. HOSMER: If you can do that, get 15 percent increase in the efficiency, you can get 50 percent increase in the efficiency of your automobile right now just by getting two people in a commuting car instead of one.

LAIRD: Now for the second half of our Round Table on the question, Is nuclear M. power safe? This is the time when members of the audience participate, so we will turn to them for questions. Who will be first?

JOHN DOUGLAS, Science News magazine: Thank you. One issue that's been passed over here is that of the breeder reactor. And I wonder if Mr. Lapp-or Mr. Ford or Mr. Nader-would comment on whether he believes that it is also safe for development at this time.

MR. LAIRD: Dr. Lapp?

24 DR. LAPP: The breeder reactor has been under develop­ ment for some time. It is a reactor which will use liquid sodium for cooling instead of water. This coolant has certain safety aspects which have been troublesome in the water reactor program. So that in a certain sense, the sodium-cooled breeder can be definitely safer than the light water reactor. I am in favor of the power breeder development, because the United States, here, is actually following behind other countries that have also examined it-Germany, FranGe, the United Kingdom, and others. The strongest of these others, Russia, has gone this way. It is the technology of choice, because it allows the uranium resources to be fully exploited. It allows us to have nuclear power, not only in this century, but in centuries to follow. I think that the development of a safe nuclear breeder is the logical course for the United States. MR. LAIRD: Would you care to comment, Mr. Nader? MR. NADER: The breeder, of course, is much more hazardous than the light water reactor for several reasons: one, it is capable of exploding; second, it does produce a great deal more plutonium. If we have an economy relying on plutonium, we are going to have an economy with one bite of the apple, because if one major nuclear power plant catastrophe should occur for whatever reason-sabotage, or engineering, or human error, or earthquake-it's not likely that this country would allow nuclear power to con­ tinue. Then, we would have a radioactive crisis with per­ haps the loss of habitation in a major city, and hundreds of thousands of fatalities, serious injuries, cancer rate in­ creases, and an unemployment crisis, because if Boston is suffused with a radioactive cloud, people aren't going to go to work the next day. So by putting all our eggs in breeder-type reactors we would have both a radioactive and an economic crisis. If a coal plant blows up, that's the coal plant. If an oil power plant blows, that's that. But if one nuclear power plant has a major catastrophe, spraying hundreds of square miles with radioactive material over very densely popu­ lated areas near these plants, then it's a real crisis.

25 MR. LAIRD: Larry, I would like to hear from you. You are the environmentalist.

MR. MOSS: I would like to talk about the breeder from the environmental point of view. And I think it has some ad­ vantages and some disadvantages. One obvious advantage, as Ralph Lapp said, is that one can get about fifty times more energy from a pound of uranium ore with the breeder than with the regular water reactors. That means less mining and a more efficient use of mineral resources. Another advantage, from the point of view of accidents, is that the breeder is a low-pressure system. So if there is a break in a coolant line, you don't lose all of your coolant right away, and it doesn't have any explosive force asso­ ciated with the expansion of the coolant. Another benefit is that one of the worst of the radioactive materials that people worry about escaping from a reactor and hurting people is radioactive iodine. It happens that sodium, the coolant used in the breeder, has a great affinity for iodine, and very little iodine is likely to escape if there is any sodium around. On the side of the disadvantages, there will be some­ what more plutonium in circulation in a breeder reactor economy than in a water reactor economy, not an entirely different order of magnitude, but maybe two to three times more. We are, indeed, ushering in the plutonium economy now with conventional reactors, especially if we go to plutonium recycle. The qualitative difference between con­ ventional reactors with plutonium recycle and a breeder reactor economy is not really that significant in terms of risks. Finally, another disadvantage is one alluded to by Ralph Nader: we cannot rule out with absolute certainty an explosive energy release caused by a rapid reassembly of the fuel in a breeder, as we can with the watei: reactors. And that has to be more carefully assessed than has been up to now.

MR. LAIRD: Craig, you brought up the development of these reactors. You've watched them as a member of the Joint Atomic Energy Committee and also as an advocate for Navy power. How many accidents have we had?

26 MR. HOSMER: The SL-1 was an Army reactor which had a small accident, but nobody was hurt off the premises. With the Navy reactors, there have been none. The only other reactor accident of a major proportion that I can think of was the one at Windscale in the United Kingdom. And that-

MR. LAIRD: How many fatalities?

MR. HOSMER: No fatalities. Of the two accidents that I mentioned, the only thing that happened was they didn't allow the sale of milk from cows located a mile or two downstream from the reactor accident for, I think it was, twenty-six days.

MR. NADER: The SL-1 accident involved three fatalities. That might be de minimis to some people, but it did, for the record-

MR. HOSMER: Well, that wasn't a civilian power reactor; it was an Army reactor on an Army station, run by Army personnel, for Army purposes. So you can't-

MR. NADER: You don't trust the Army then?

MR. HOSMER: Well, I just meant-

MR. NADER: Some people don't trust the utilities.

MR. LAIRD: You sound like Admiral Rickover. He said, "Only the Navy can do this."

MR. HOSMER: Well, the Navy and the civilian nuclear power programs run their reactors by the exact same pro­ cedures. And if it is safe for the Navy, it's safe for civilians. And Mr. Nader admitted that at that famous hearing he went to, too. He wouldn't shut down any Navy reactors. And those reactors come right in the middle of cities.

MR. FORD: Let me just respond to the question about the safety record of the industry. As I mentioned in my open­ ing statement, we have received thousands of Atomic

27 Energy Commission internal documents. And one of the most significant studies that the AEC suppressed was a study completed in late 1973 reviewing the operating records of the U.S. nuclear power program.

MR. LAIRD: Is this the military record of the Navy or the civilian-

MR. FORD: No, this is the commercial reactor program in the United States. And, according to this AEC internal study, although on the surface the program had been successful in terms of avoiding major accidents to date, when one looked below the surface one found, in the AEC reviewer's own terms, that there were serious safety prob­ lems "besieging" the reactors operating in the United States; that the basic safeguards which were supposed to be applied by the utilities, the stringent controls, to pro­ vide careful construction of the plant, were being vio­ lated; that careless errors were happening repeatedly with nuclear power reactors all around the United States; and that, in fact, so serious were the defects in the operating procedures of nuclear plants that this AEC task force concluded one could not have confidence in the govern­ ment's officialassurance of reactor safety. So the fact of the matter is, it is certainly gratifying that we have not had a catastrophic accident to date, but this is of little significance in terms of the question, how long can we go on avoiding such accidents, given the widespread weaknesses in the safety systems, in operating practices, and so forth?

MR. LAIRD: Your point is, then, that the record to date has been good, but you think it's perhaps because we have just been lucky?

MR. FORD: No, that's not my point. The record has been free of a major accident. That's one test of how good the record is. When looked at in terms of whether the record shows that the required care and diligence has been ap­ plied, that the safety systems have been adequately in­ stallec and tested, on that score, the record is very poor.

28 The AEC, itself, stated in its assessment of the operating records that the absence of a major accident to date in the nuclear program was largely the result of good luck. And our feeling is that we ought to do the testing, that we ought to develop safety standards, rather than just, you know, moving ahead swiftly with the program hoping that good luck will secure our civilization from major accidents.

MR. LAIRD: Let's go to the audience.

GARY THOMAS, State University of New York in Stony Brook: I'm currently involved in technology assessment. There have been a number of assumptions raised by mem­ bers of the panel, and I would like to ask other members to comment. First, I would like Dr. Lapp to comment on the alternatives to fossil fuels, the practicality of solar energy and geothermals; second, I would like Mr. Nader to comment on Dr. Lapp's point about adequate economic growth.

DR. LAPP: I believe your first question was with regard to the so-called exotic or new energy sources. Take, for example, geothermal energy. This is a localized, geo­ graphically limited energy source, presently exploited com­ mercially in the United States only north of San Francisco: This can grow, but I believe even with the rapid expansion of that facility, since it will be the only power plant of that type, it will contribute probably less than 1 percent of total energy by the year 2000. With regard to solar energy, the big problem is that it is a diffuse source of energy and, therefore, to use it effectivelyfor the central generation of power is not within the time frame of this century. For some uses it is eco­ nomically feasible, but that is by no means certain for all home heating, only perhaps for supplemental home heat­ ing. However, if you look at the hard numbers here you will see that in energy units-we call them small "q's"­ about ten "q's" are involved in home heating. And since it would not be generally useful in old homes, especially some of the kinds that are built in large cities, because of

29 space problems, it could be used in, let's say, one or two new homes. On that basis, I've arrived at the conclusion that perhaps with government subsidy-probably with gov­ ernment subsidy-solar energy could contribute about 2 percent by the year 2000. And I'm all for it.

MR. LAIRD: What about the economic growth part of that question?

MR. NADER: Well, the question is the standard of living. And we all know that we could have a lower GNP and a higher standard of living, and a low standard of living with a higher GNP, depending on what our values are. Why can't we be at least as energy efficient-

MR. LAIRD: I don't know how you get along on $5,000 a year. [Laughter.]

MR. NADER: I don't have an automobile for one. Let me illustrate: Why can't we be as energy efficient as the Swedes and the West Germans? We use two-and-one-half times more energy per capita than they do. They have a high standard of living, but they have a much lower per capita energy consumption and they are not the paragons of conservation. They waste, too, but we waste enormously. And I'm not just talking about consumers leaving lights on or running their motors in cars. I'm talking about steel and aluminum, the large office buildings, the vehicles. The design of the technology in our country has been used to maximize the waste of energy because wai,ite sells more gasoline, it sells more electric power. When we talk about the economy, my point is: why don't we go the direction-which we, as a nation, are fully capable of doing-of the kind of conservation that will prevent the need for nuclear power, that will stop in­ flation to a very substantial extent, that will reduce pollu­ tion and lighten the capital burden? Now, when I talk to people around the country about nuclear power, people who have read something about it, they ask some important questions: If it is so safe, why isn't it insurable? Will we have domestic conflict of seri-

30 ous proportion over nuclear power, a question which deals with the reliability of our economic system? Why do we need evacuation plans for major metropolitan areas if it's so safe, if there's only a one out of a billion or a one out of a trillion chance of anything disastrous happening? And above all, why do we need to have a highly interdependent nuclear power plant network when failure or a catastrophe for one will lead to a shutdown or enormous domestic turmoil? Those are the key questions. That's why I think Sen­ ator Mike Gravel [Democrat, Alaska] is right on point in leading a national petition to open up these issues, and in saying, look, for heaven's sake, at least stop for a few years on nuclear, until you have solved the problems of safety and sabotage that the government, itself, has rec­ ognized repeatedly.

DR. LAPP: Are you recommending-

MR. LAIRD: Ralph Lapp, you can have a question, but then we are going back to the audience.

DR. LAPP: All right, I'll make it quick. Ralph, would you recommend, then, in the statement you made about West Germany, that U.S. workers be paid the same as the West German workers and that we adopt the same standard of living as the West Germans? And have you calculated what this would mean to the economy of the United States?

MR. NADER: I don't think that you have been in West Germany lately, Mr. Lapp.

DR. LAPP: I have. I have been in West Germany-

MR. NADER: Because, on any international comparative index, the Swedes and the West Germans have as high a standard of living as the Americans.

DR. LAPP: I asked you a very specific question about salary. Will you answer that?

31 MR. NADER: But they are getting more for their money. The standard of living in Sweden is at least as high as it is in this country. If you don't believe it, go to the United Nations' data and read, or go to Sweden and look at the situation there. Compare, for example, their social services and their health insurance systems with ours.

DR. LAPP: There are quite different qualities of life, I submit, in these two places.

MR. NADER: In this country, we have allowed big busi­ ness to waste enormous amounts of energy, which all in­ creases the GNP, but it doesn't improve the quality of life of the average man and woman in this country.

MR. LAIRD: Do you really think it's only big business that wastes energy and that the consumer doesn't contribute?

MR NADER: The consumer does, but the facts are that 70 percent of the energy in this country, according to the Federal Energy Administration, is consumed by industry and commerce. And that's obvious. Look at the big office buildings and aluminum plants and the like. And while consumers have got to discipline themselves, the big-

MR. LAIRD: Do you think consumers are disciplining themselves?

MR. NADER: Somewhat. They were-

MR. LAIRD: Well, what percentage are disciplining?

MR NADER: Well, for example, they are cutting down on some of their electric consumption, some of their motor vehicle use-

MR. LAIRD: Do you think that's the reason car sales are down? MR. NADER: No, the reason car sales are down would go deep into the auto industry's mismanagement of the kind of-

32 MR. LAIRD: We don't want to get into that. We will go to the audience. Yes?

BRUCE NETSCHERT, National Economic Research Asso­ ciates: I have a question for the entire panel. And that is-

MR. LAIRD: That will be difficult. [Laughter.]

MR. NETSCHERT: Does the panel recognize the fact that there is a crucial distinction in this discussion that has not been acknowledged, namely, the distinction between energy conservation in toto and electricity conservation? The point I'm making is that when Mr. Nader says that there is a great conservation possibility in buildings, he is talking about heating, which means fuel. When he talks about the conservation possibility of an industry, he should distinguish, again, between fuel conservation and elec­ tricity conservation. There are big possibilities in fuel, but when you are running a motor on electricity, you either run it or you don't. And I just would like to know what the response is to-

MR. LAIRD: First, Larry, you comment on that.

MR. MOSS: The point is well taken: fuels may or may not be substitutable in the various uses. But I agree with what Ralph Nader said, namely, that there are enormous op­ portunities for conservation, not only in the use of par­ ticular fuels or of electricity, but also of energy in general. We have just begun to scratch the surface. The reason, I think, why the per capita consumption of electricity and other fuels has been so much higher in the United States than in West Germany and Sweden and Denmark, and in a few other countries we could name, is that historically the price of energy has been much lower in the United States, partly because of our natural advantages and partly because of the subsidies we were talking about before, like depletion allowances or the write-off of intangible drilling costs. As we get rid of those, as we have the user of energy pay the full cost, I think we will begin to see efficiency improve in the United States

33 and move towards the average of some of the other coun­ tries we have mentioned. MR. LAIRD: Daniel, do you care to comment? MR. FORD: I'll stick with Mr. Moss.

DR. LAPP: There is a point in the question Mr. Netschert raises which is, I think, quite interesting. It is this: As our pumpable fuels, natural gas and the liquids, decrease in availability, we are forced to a choice of solid fuels. And with solid fuels we have the problem that, given our pres­ ent technology, we are compelled to use central generatiqn of power, which means generation of electricity, in which there is today about 67 percent waste, perhaps a little more, just by the very nature of the thermal cycle. Sadi Carnot had something to do with this. But, this being the case, we will find that as we go to the more electrified society that Mr. Nader talks about, waste will be very hard to fight.

MR. NADER: Of course, the premise of nuclear power is this 5 or 6 percent electricity growth, and that's based very heavily, not just on waste, but on the replacement of fuels like oil for home heating by all-electric houses. Your point is going to be decreasingly less relevant if we move toward an all-electric economy.

MR. HOSMER: You are ignoring, on that one, the fact that the 20 percent of our energy that we import from overseas, we import in the form of oil. And if we are going to re­ place that oil with domestic energy sources, it would have to be coal and it would have to be uranium. You can only turn uranium into usable energy in the form of electricity. And people won't haul coal around anymore and clump it into the furnace, so you would have to tum it into elec­ tricity, too. So your future electricity growth is going to be high if the destiny of this nation is no longer to depend on a foreign supplier for 20 percent of its vital energy supply.

MR. NADER: The answer to that is a more efficient auto­ mobile. That's the way to cut down on oil imports.

34 MR. LAIRD: The problem we are having right here, ladies and gentlemen, is that we are getting into the economic aspects of this subject and are not dealing with the ques­ tion before the panel. It has to do with the safety of nuclear power. Can we get back to safety? Yes.

DANIEL METLAY, Brookings Institution: An important safety question involves radioactive waste management. I would like Mr. Ford and Mr. Moss to comment on what they think the possibilities are of solving the radioactive waste problems.

MR. FORD: Well, the radioactive waste problem ari.ses be­ cause radioactive materials, some of them created in the reactors, retain their capability to harm human beings for very long periods of time. Something has to be done with these materials. They can't be allowed to reenter the human environment. The problem is simplified to some extent by the small physical quantity of the materials, but it is com­ plicated by the fact that they are giving off heat and are very difficult to handle. We have reviewed the different proposals that the government has made-all of them are in the research and development stage-but there is no proven means for the long-term disposal of radioactive waste. One of the most troubling aspects of the program is the fact that it's not just a technical problem that re­ quires some pi_eces of equipment or some design, but it's a problem that requires human beings to do certain things over a long period of time with a great degree of care and diligence. The question, simply put, is: do we believe that we can confidently entrust these immensely hazardous materials for a long period of time to human care without their entering the environment? The AEC's record in handling these wastes has been very unsettling. For example, in June 1973, it was dis­ covered that one of the tanks which contained waste from the nuclear weapons program had been leaking. (The AEC says, we'll never do this again, we'll figure out a different way.) That tank leaked 115,000 gallons of high-level radio­ active waste intn the ground. It leaked for seven weeks

35 undetected and it turned out that the AEC hadn't bothered to install any kind of emergency warning device in case of a leak. Instead, they had a man go around every week and read an indicator that measured how much waste was in the tank-a fine thing to do. But nobody bothered to compare the readings for two weeks, which would, of course, have shown less radioactive waste, week after week after week. This type of carelessness with this type of hazardous material is what gives so many people pause about relying on the technology that will have this as a by-product. Radioactive waste is not only a technical problem. It's also a moral problem because whatever convenience we get from nuclear power electricity we could get in other ways, for example, from coal; but we leave future generations the legacy of these radioactive weapons.

MR. LAIRD: Now that you bring up coal, let's talk to Larry.

MR. MOSS: First, I will talk about the nuclear safety ques­ tion. It is important to design the waste storage system so that, even with human failures, no significant amount of radioactive waste is released in the environment. This means, for one thing, that we do not want to store these radioactive wastes indefinitely in a liquid form because of the possibility of leaking tanks, because of the need for maintenance. And, in fact, they are now being converted to solid form-all the wastes in the nuclear power program will be converted to solid form-and as Dan Ford said, they will be relatively concentrated, small in volume com­ pared with the enormous amounts of power that they will provide. It's important to choose the proper location for stor­ age. And I think the AEC made a mistake when they picked that particular salt mine in Kansas, without ade­ quately mapping out the geological conditions and without appreciating that there had been drilling activity in the area, so they really couldn't ensure that there would be no leakage. Some people have also proposed that we separate the

36 plutonium and the other transuranic elements to a much higher percentage than we are now planning to do, for economic reasons, so that the radioactive material that is left behind to be stored has half-lives no longer than a few decades, and so that it will decay within a few cen­ turies to the level of a natural ore body. The plutonium and the other transuranics that were taken out would be recycled in nuclear reactors until they also were broken down into shorter-lived fission products. This has a good deal of appeal, because, even though a few centuries is a long time, it's not the 100,000 years which you talk about for plutonium. The final point I want to make is that, again, there is a parallel with the fossil fuel case, because this eightfold increase of carbon dioxide that I spoke about, if we burn all the coal, will decay very, very slowly, according to the best calculations that have been done using atmospheric and oceanographic modeling. It will have an equivalent half-life of decay of about 1,000 years, longer than any of the fission product radioactive wastes we are talking about, and long enough to influence the climate of the earth for many, many generations in the future.

MR. LAIRD: Yes?

ANN ROOSEVELT, U.S.-Canada Environmental Council: I was a delegate to the recent U.S.-Canada Environmental Council meeting where a majority of the groups, which were the major environmental groups in the United States and Canada, came out against further development of nuclear energy. One of the things discussed at that meet­ ing, which I really don't think has been discussed in any depth here, is a subsidy issue that is coming up this sum­ mer before the United States Congress. That is the pro­ posed revision of the Price-Anderson Act. I would like to ask Mr. Nader if he would explain the issue, because it in­ volves a very complicated insurance question. And then I would like to ask Mr. Lapp if he favors lifting the limit on liability that is currently in the present Price-Anderson Act and in all the other congressional bills that are being proposed.

37 MR. LAIRD: Thank you. Ralph, do you want to comment?

MR. NADER: Yes. Back in 1956, the utilities asked Con­ gress to give them limited liability or they could not pro­ ceed with building and openi.ting nuclear power plants. They had nu idea of what the likelihood of a major catas­ trophe would be. In the ensuing nineteen years, there have been various studies showing, between some ranges, that there could be billions of dollars of property damage and tens of thousands of fatalities and many, many more can­ cer cases and injuries. To my knowledge, this is the only industry in the history of the United States that has been given limited liability for damage done to metropolitan regions or to human beings and their property outside the nuclear plant itself. The coverage under Price-Anderson sounds like a lot of money when you consider a liability policy, but actually it's less than 1 percent of the potential maximum catas­ trophic damage from a nuclear power plant mishap. The coverage amounts to about $550 million. That's what would be paid out under the Price-Anderson Act, in the event of a big catastrophe, to the innocent people who were damaged or injured. Of this $550 million, the taxpayer pays almost four-fifths; private insurance companies pay only about $130 million or so. I recall that Milton Friedman, vvhen asked about the Price-Anderson Act, stated in Chicago that if the nuclear power industry could not adequately insure itself on the private market, it should not be allowed to operate with a subsidy. This whole nuclear power issue is one that is going to attract a lot of conservative interest as well as liberal interest. The nuclear power industry is heading straight for government ownership and/or government subsidy. Nuclear plants will be surrounded by police and other security personnel to safeguard us from the stu­ pendous risks.

MR. LAIRD: You voted for that bill, Craig, which was sponsored by Mel Price and Clint Anderson in the Con­ gress of the United States. What is your comment?

38 MR. HOSMER: Well, this is a very interesting story that Mr. Nader has to tell. He is talking about the grand acci­ dent that has one chance in a billion of happening, ac­ cording to the best statistics anybody can get. And we are not talking about not being able to get this insurance, or having to put in a limit on liability because nuclear power is so dangerous. The fact is that if you ever want to get a case settled, when you're dealing with something that spreads over a certain distance, you have to put a limit on the liability. There is nothing unique and extraordinary about that. And there is nothing unique and extraordinary about having this kind of insurance. Let me say that the banking system of the United States carries 1,600 times more of this kind of insurance than is provided in Price-Anderson. It is simply that, where you have large but remote risks, it then becomes a respon­ sibility of government to provide for the remote con­ tingency that something of that nature might occur. This is a very common practice. I have heard Mr. Nader argue that nuclear power is so risky that they can't get insured and they have to have this. Let me bring to your attention the situation of the doctors and their malpractice insurance. It is not that medicine is too dangerous to practice. If doctors cannot get malpractice insurance, it is simply the economics of the thing. And Price-Anderson insurance is the economics of the thing here. Its purpose is not to protect the people who own and operate these plants; it is to protect the public. If Mr. Nader has his way, they will simply take away this protection to the public. They will simply make every­ body have to go to court to sue if there is an accident, and sustain a burden of proof, and all that sort of thing.

MR. LAIRD: Craig, you will have to agree that Milton Friedman is very consistent. I admire him for it. He's a great, consistent economist, and there aren't many of them left in the United States.

DR. LAPP: Well, I think I would answer your question by saying that the proposed revisions to the Price-Anderson Act did call for escalation with greater assumption of lia-

39 bility per year by the utilities, riding up to, I believe, as much as $2 billion in the 1980s. Well, I would like to say that there are many things that are not insurable to the full extent of liability. For example, when you get on an airplane, the probability that you are going to die is ten to minus six-or, translated, one chance in a million that that flight is going to crash and kill you. Now, that's pretty high compared to the risks of nuclear power plants. There is a very definite limitation there. The chance that that plane could crash into a crowded station is by no means zero; it's quite high. The chance that a dam in California could break and kill 10,000 people-as many as 25,000 people in the case of one dam-is quite high. I do not believe those people are insured and I believe that the probabilJty of a dam break­ ing is one chance in less than 100. And that's a pretty high risk.

MR. NADER: You are not being fully cognizant of what the meaning of strict liability is, Mr. Lapp. The coverage is one thing. And, the coverage for flood insurance pro­ portionately is much greater than the coverage of Price­ Anderson for a nuclear catastrophe. But these people out­ side the nuclear power industry can still sue the dam people or the airplane people, and they can recover under the common law. There's no limit. What we are talking about is that the U.S. Congress, under pressure from the utilities, has said in effect to the American people, you can recover up to $550 million for a nuclear catastrophe, and that's it. I don't think that's sufficient. If it is really a one out of a billion chance, why don't the utilities insure on the private insurance market without the taxpayer paying the bill? And I would also add that there is really not a shred of support in the scientific community, except for a dis­ credited report called the Rasmussen report, to permit us to conclude that we know what the probability is for a big accident. You don't know what the probability is. I don't know what the probability is. The projection of one out of a billion is a phony numerical mesmerization. More­ over, for the latest commentary on that, I will refer you to

40 an American Physical Society report, which, in effect, says that the fault tree analysis used by the Rasmussen report is not reliable for predicting these kinds of catastrophes. Instead, what we have to rely on is the practice of human history-that there has never been a major technology in the history of the world that hasn't had a fatal, major catastrophic accident.

DR. LAPP: Before you get onto that phonograph record that I've heard many times, I will tell you this: I took that remark you made about discrediting the Rasmussen re­ port, and I took it as transcribed by a member of the press in this hotel, and gave it to the panel from the American Physical Society and asked them if they believed it. And they did not support it.

MR. NADER: Let me just say, Mr. Lapp-

DR. LAPP: Now, these are the men who wrote the report.

MR. NADER: -that these are very inhibited men. I talked to Dr. von Hippel, who is one of the authors of the Ameri­ can Physical Society report, and I asked, "Do you believe that this report by the twelve physicists thoroughly dis­ credits the Rasmussen report?" He said "Yes."

DR. LAPP: In public, when I asked Dr. von Hippel that question, he did not say that.

MR. NADER: You see, he is afraid of you. [Laughter.]

MR. LAIRD: Yes, you must have twisted his arm. We are going to move to another question.

JARED BLUM, legislative assistant to Representative Ham­ ilton Fish, U.S. Congress: I'm afraid I'm on the same issue. I'm a layman with respect to nuclear energy, but whatever the probabilities are, the nuclear industry seems to be so opposed to a moratorium that-my question is this: if we continue building nuclear plants at the rate that we are going, will there come a point, is there a potential time, Dr. Lapp, when we will have so many

41 nuclear plants that the risks involved will be unacceptable to humans?

DR. LAPP: I will try to be very brief in answering your question. The Rasmussen report was based upon the analysis of reactors at the present time, applying the re­ sults to 1980 and 100 reactors. It is unfair to apply sta­ tistics of that type to the year 2000 and 1,000 reactors, if there are that many then, because that's twenty-five years away in time, during which research and development would continue. I would expect, sir, that with continued emphasis on research and development, the margins of safety, which are already large in nuclear power plants, will be widened in a relatively few years. And, therefore, the answer to your question is: I would expect the risk to decrease very severely with time.

MR. FORD: Dr. Lapp's statement is essentially that when nuclear plants age, there will be more research, and the plants will age with grace. The actual experience in the nuclear program is that nuclear plants do not age with grace, but that they suffer from fibration problems, corro­ sion problems, and operator errors. They wear out. Their reliability is very poor. The safety margins do not improve. They demonstrably rlecrease. Now, as to the nature of the risk posed by this, a few moments ago Dr. Lapp talked about other risks in life, he talked about the earthquake­ correction, not an earthquake-he talked about having a dam failure. And he said the probability of that was quite high.

DR. LAPP: Yes. MR. FORD: I understand you. Remember that Dr. Lapp has said that the probability of a dam failure is quite high. Let me quote the sworn testimony of Ralph Lapp a few years ago, before he began his work with the nuclear industry. Dr. Lapp stated: The siting of nuclear electric stations adjacent to large populations imposes extraordinary responsi-

42 bilities on the regulatory agency which must li­ cense these plants. A nuclear power plant con­ stitutes a unique metropolitan hazard, both in nature and in potential magnitude. I can think of only one parallel comparable risk, namely, siting a large population in a valley directly below a high dam. I think that the contrast between the assurances that Dr. Lapp has given us today about the safety of reactors and his sworn testimony about dam probability raises some questions about the credibility of the statements that he offered us. I believe that scientific expertise is required which is why our organization has bothered to have tangible research.

DR. LAPP: Which you have failed to document as to its expertise.

MR. FORD: We've written five volumes of published studies, and you purchased every single one of them. [Laughter.]

DR. LAPP: I didn't purchase a single one of your studies, and they are not-

MR. FORD: Well, it's no wonder you can't evaluate what we have to say, if you didn't read the studies.

DR. LAPP: I said you evaluated nothing. This is the tech­ nique. The technique is to take quotations out of time and space. Look, I happen to be more concerned about reactor safety than these people.

MR. FORD: I have it here on the record.

DR. LAPP: And my statement is that I am still concerned about reactor safety. At the time I made that statement, which was four years ago or so, I believed that we should not locate reactors close to metropolitan areas. I still be­ lieve that. Only two years ago, I was a chief witness in a

43 case against a utility that wanted to site a reactor close to a metropolitan area, because I want a very high margin of safety for these plants. And I did not-

MR. LAIRD: May I interrupt, Dr. Lapp. We are about to go off the air, and I have told Larry that he could have a last comment.

MR. MOSS: Well, my answer to the question, if anyone remembers the question [Laughter], is this: Yes, I think that if we greatly expand the use of nuclear power and do nothing differently than we have been doing in the last few years, the risks could rise to an unacceptable level. But there is no reason why we have to follow that particular pattern. For example, one of the recommenda­ tions of the APS report was to design the containment so that if there were a major fuel accident, there could be controlled release through filters, rather than a breaking apart of the containment vessel with large amounts re­ leased. If we do that, we would cut down those numbers that Ralph Nader was talking about.

MR. LAIRD: Members of the panel and ladies and gentle­ men, I'm sorry, but our time has run out. This has been a very interesting discussion. I think that it has added immeasurably to the dialogue in America on the question, Is nuclear power safe? Thank you. [Applause.]

44 ROUND TABLES The Economy and Phase IV ($2.00) John T. Dunlop, Charls E. Walker, Yale Brozen, and Gary L. Seevers

Foreign Trade Policy ($2.00) William R. Pearce, Al Ullman, Barber B. Conable, Jr., and Hendrik S. Houthakker

The Energy Crisis ($2.00) Part One: Clifford P. Hansen, Morris K. Udall, Mike Mc­ Cormack, and Charles E. Spahr. Part Two: Jennings Ran­ dolph, Mark 0. Hatfield, Dixy Lee Ray, and Philip H. Trezise. Part Three: J. William Fulbright, John N. Nas­ sikas, George W. Ball, and Charles J. DiBona

Watergate, Politics, and the Legal Process ($2.00) Part One: Charles S. Hyneman, Richard M. Scammon, Aaron Wildavsky, James Q. Wilson, and Ralph K. Winter, Jr. Part Two: Richard M. Scammon, Harry H. Wellington, James Q. Wilson, and Ralph K. Winter, Jr.

Indexing and Inflation ($2.00) Milton Friedman, Charls E. Walker, Robert J. Gordon, and William Fellner Is the Energy Crisis Contrived? ($2.00) Walter F. Mondale, Charles H. Murphy, Jr., Stanley H. Ruttenberg, and James W. McKie Japanese-American Relations ($1.50) Hubert H. Humphrey, Ted Stevens, Robert S. Ingersoll, and Philip Caldwell

Health Insurance: What Should Be the Federal Role? ($2.00) Bill Brock, James C. Corman, Al Ullman, and Caspar Weinberger

Is Nuclear Power Safe? ($2.00) Daniel Ford, Craig Hosmer, Ralph E. Lapp, Lawrence I. Moss, and Ralph Nader

Round Tables are also available in audio cassettes ($3 each, ten for $20) and in video cassettes (rental-$45 each, purchase-$125). Is Nuclear Power Safe? presents the edited transcript of an AEI Round Table in which five concerned spokesmen focus on various aspects of this timely question. Ralph Nader, consumer advocate, and Daniel Ford of the Union of Con­ cerned Scientists maintain that the dangers of nuclear theft and waste disposal accidents are too great to justify increased use of nuclear power. Ralph E. Lapp, physicist and nuclear consultant, and Craig Hosmer, former con­ gressman and member of the Joint Atomic Energy Com­ mittee of the Congress, assert that nuclear power is the only means to offset the growing shortage of fossil fuels. Lawrence I. Moss, nuclear engineer and former president of the Sierra Club, takes a third view, arguing that the risks inherent in the use of nuclear power are less than the risks posed by massive use of coal resources. Melvin Laird, former counsellor to the President and secretary of defense, moderates the discussion. $2®

American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research 1150 Seventeenth Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036