Environment: The Great Nuclear Debate

The trouble is first recorded by sensitive, computerized instruments in the control room of the nuclear power plant. They warn that temperatures inside the reactor are rising fast toward a danger point — so fast that only one explanation is possible: somehow, the main pipes carrying water to the reactor core have broken or clogged. As white-coated technicians look on helplessly, the back-up water system also fails. Deprived of the coolant that controls its temperature, the reactor begins melting in its own heat. Then the machine and its fuel collapse into a molten mass that explosively converts the coolant water into steam. The resulting blasts rip open the power plant's massive concrete dome, releasing a cloud of radioactive gases. Tens of thousands of people living near by are contaminated by radioactivity. Many die within days. Others suffer lingering illnesses and develop cancer years later.

The possibility that this grim scene will become a reality some day is highly remote. But the specter of nuclear catastrophe — energetically raised by Consumerist Ralph Nader and heightened by such books as John Fuller's We Almost Lost Detroit and The Prometheus Crisis by Thomas Scortia and Frank Robinson — has seeped deep into the U.S. consciousness. A growing number of Americans are now more concerned about the consequences of nuclear accidents than they are about the need for nuclear energy. To them, the menace presented by the nation's 56 operating nuclear power plants and the 64 now under construction is greater than the threat of a renewed oil embargo and energy crisis. Their fear is the driving force behind the bills now before Congress and 24 state legislatures to slow the spread of nuclear power. It has also helped citizen groups in California and Oregon to win a place on the ballot next year for initiatives that would curb the use of atomic energy in those states.

For the first time in its 20-year history, the atomic power industry in the U.S. is fearful for its future. "Uncertainty is the bane of the nuclear industry," Carl Walske, president of the Atomic Industrial Forum, recently said. The fact that the industry does $10 billion worth of research, development and construction a year (not including the sale of almost 8% of the nation's electricity) hardly fazes Ralph Nader. Addressing an audience of nuclear critics in Washington, B.C., he confidently predicted that nuclear plant construction will be stopped in five years.