Clinch River: a Breeder for Baker

By KURT ANDERSEN

In a lean federal budget, pork-barrel politics as usual

Ronald Reagan was elected as a fierce penny pincher, and the budget thundering toward final passage by both houses is full of pared-down appropriations. But tucked amid all the austerity is $228 million to begin construction of an experimental nuclear power plant on the Clinch River in eastern Tennessee. Since 1970 the Government has invested more than $1 billion in the project, and the plant is seen by its backers as central to American nuclear development. The President is a strong supporter of nuclear power, and the Administration has lobbied hard to continue Clinch River's funding. Last week the House voted down, 206 to 186, a last-ditch attempt to cancel 1982 appropriations for the plant. The Senate Energy Committee had earlier authorized funds without debate.

Congress gave Clinch River the go-ahead despite mounting evidence that the reactor is an unnecessary and colossally mismanaged boondoggle--and potentially dangerous as well. Four days before the House vote, an Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee staff issued an excoriating report on the project subtitled "A Cost and Technical Fiasco." The report cited well-known problems, like Clinch River's increase in cost from $669 million in 1973 to at least $3.2 billion, and raised again questions about the adequacy of the reactor's safety mechanisms.

The most damning revelations were in the report's catalogue of financial abuse. Many contracts for the manufacture of reactor components were slackly written, lacking even technical specifications. Said Investigator A. Ernest Fitzgerald of one contractor's agreements: "I think it was very decent of Westinghouse to do any work, because it is not clear they have to do anything at all under these contracts." A steam generator priced at $5 million in 1975 actually cost the Government $71 million. The report found evidence of both bribery and fraud by some contractors. A consortium of 753 private utilities agreed in 1973 to put up more than a third of the capital for Clinch River. Thanks to the cost overruns, the private sector investment will be no more than 8%, and probably less.

At the heart of the Clinch River debate are not its finances but its technology; the 375-megawatt plant to be built is a breeder reactor, which creates more atomic fuel than it burns. The physics behind this alchemy is not new. A few light bulbs were powered by the first tiny breeder 30 years ago, and a 200-MW breeder plant was fired up--and failed--near Detroit in 1966. Conventional nuclear reactors also create fuel, but about 35% less than they consume, rather than, like breeders, about 20% more. Says A. David Rossin of the American Nuclear Society: "Breeder reactors will be needed. To abandon Clinch River now would be a crippling blow to the U.S. breeder program." Agrees Pietro Pasqua, a physicist at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville: "We ought to be proceeding as fast as we can. We are now ten years behind the rest of the world."

Indeed, Britain, West Germany, the Soviet Union and France are already operating breeders more advanced than the one not yet built at Clinch River. To critics this argues against a U.S. commitment to the expensive Tennessee project. "It's like the Concorde," "says Vanderbilt University Physicist John Barach. "Let the French do it. If we need it, we can get them to license a breeder to this country."

Breeders can be fueled by uranium or Plutonium, but they produce only the latter. Plutonium is a far handier substance for making bombs, and some skittish critics are afraid that Clinch River might become a target for terrorists seeking to cadge a few pounds of plutonium to make an atomic weapon. The reactor is designed to be cooled by liquid sodium, a highly volatile substance, and there are some doubts about the ability of the reactor to control a catastrophic leakage in the sodium ducts. "It is a much more dangerous and complex device than other reactors," says Vanderbilt's Barach.

Clinch River's proponents insist (hat breeders are the only means that the U.S. has to guarantee itself an unlimited domestic supply of atomic fuel. But even this advantage may not justify the costs. "There won't be a shortage of conventional uranium for at least 50 years," says Jan Beyea, a physicist on the staff of the Audubon Society. "Certainly there is no urgent rush to get into breeder technology." President Jimmy Carter, worried about the proliferation of plutonium, tried to stop Clinch River. Even Budget Director David Stockman, while he was a Michigan Congressman, opposed Clinch River, contending that the Government should not underwrite nuclear development for the private sector by building the reactor. He called the project "totally incompatible with our free-market approach to energy policy."

Stockman argued within the White House for denying Clinch River further funds, but was overruled. What sealed the Administration's commitment to the reactor was geography--and politics. The plant is to be built in the home state of Senate Majority Leader Howard Baker. Already 458 Baker constituents work on the project, and there is the promise of 4,000 more jobs for the seven-year duration of construction. "In large measure," says one congressional aide, "the Reagan support is due to the fact that Baker is for it." Yet Baker barely had to enter the fray. Admits one of his aides: "This year we didn't have to save it ourselves. We didn't have to do that much." Republican Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, who worked to kill Clinch River in the House, insisted that his toughest opponent was Howard Baker. And who else? "Howard Baker," Gregg repeated. "After that, you don't need any other lobbyists."

--By Kurt Andersen. Reported by Gary Lee/Washington and Peter Staler/New York

With reporting by Gary Lee/Washington, Peter Staler/New York

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