Time to Choose

By John Greenwald

Nuclear power. The words conjure first the hellish explosion at Chernobyl that spewed a radioactive cloud across the Ukraine and Europe five years ago this week, poisoning crops, spawning bizarre mutant livestock, killing dozens of people and exposing millions more to dangerous fallout. Then the words summon up Three Mile Island (shown here) and the threat of a meltdown that spread panic across Pennsylvania's rolling countryside seven years earlier. From these grew the alarming television programs, the doomsday books, the terrifying movies, even the jokes (What's served on rice and glows in the dark? Chicken Kiev). Could any technology survive all that? It seemed this one couldn't. U.S. utilities ordered their last nuclear plant in 1978 -- and eventually canceled all orders placed after 1973. Nuclear power looked as good as dead.

Yet it lives. More than that, it is reasserting itself with great force. A survey of high-level policy leaders and futurists by Yankelovich Clancy Shulman, released this month, shows a sudden upsurge in support for nuclear power following a decade of rejection. As the world worries about global warming and acid rain, even some environmentalists are looking a bit more kindly on the largest power source that doesn't worsen either problem: nuclear. New reactor designs would make accidents like Chernobyl and Three Mile Island impossible, or so the engineers say, and while much of the public is skeptical, some scientists are persuaded.

The sometimes theoretical debate is becoming intensely practical. As summer approaches and electric companies around the U.S. warn of periodic brownouts, people wonder, Where will we get more juice?

Nuclear power has a long way to go before it becomes the answer to that ! question. The public is afraid of it. Wall Street doesn't even want to hear about it. Most environmental groups are still virulently antinuclear. Yet here, there, in more places every day, support is building. The National Academy of Sciences called this month for the swift development of a new generation of nuclear plants to help fight the greenhouse effect. The new atomic plants already on the drawing board (see box) would replace power stations that burn coal and oil, fossil fuels that belch heat-trapping carbon dioxide -- the primary greenhouse gas -- into the atmosphere.

Many scientists applauded the findings of the independent academy, which conducted a 15-month federally funded study of the greenhouse problem. Says Ratib Karam, director of the Neely Nuclear Research Center at Georgia Tech: "Nuclear energy is now the only major source of power that does not produce CO2. In terms of global society, nuclear power plants are essential."

Even before the academy released its report, George Bush put forth an energy plan in February that proposed greatly speeding up the procedure for licensing the new generation of nuclear plants. That is critical: public challenges to plant construction have stretched out licensing to as much as 20 years and raised building costs to such intolerable levels that many utilities have been forced to abandon plants before they ever opened.

To speed the process further, the Administration wants Westinghouse, General Electric and other suppliers of nuclear plants to build them to a standard design that would be relatively simple to repair and maintain. France, which generates 75% of its electricity from the atom -- more than any other nation -- has used a standard reactor since the mid-1970s, enabling any nuclear engineer or plant operator to work on 52 of the country's 55 plants at a moment's notice. By contrast, each of the 112 U.S. nuclear plants, which produce 21% of the nation's electricity, was custom built at its site. So when something goes wrong, a specialist has to fix it, causing delays that tend to make U.S. plant shutdowns longer than in France.

The new push for atomic power gained impetus from the gulf war, which focused attention on America's appetite for Middle East oil. Nuclear advocates have long argued that atomic plants could help wean the U.S. from risky reliance on energy from one of the world's most volatile regions. The effect would be small. Most utilities have already phased out their oil-fired plants, which generate just 6% of U.S. electricity and represent about 3% of the country's overall use of oil. But nuclear proponents insist that new atomic plants would further reduce America's dependence on foreign oil, enhancing U.S. energy security while reducing polluting emissions of CO2.

The threat of climatological change could lead to a rapprochement between the nuclear power industry and U.S. environmentalists, long bitter foes. As they prepared to celebrate the 21st anniversary of Earth Day this week, leading environmentalists had the specter of global warming much on their mind. "Nuclear has a proven track record of producing large amounts of energy," says Douglas Bohi, director of energy at Resources for the Future, a Washington-based research group. "But the industry has to convince the public that the new technology will be safe and pose fewer problems."

Nearly everyone agrees that this challenge will be key. It will surely be one of the most daunting public relations assignments of the century. After nearly 40 years of living with the so-called peaceful atom -- once expected to make electricity "too cheap to meter" -- Americans remain deeply ambivalent about nuclear power. A TIME/CNN poll conducted this month by Yankelovich Clancy Shulman found that 32% of the 1,000 adults surveyed strongly opposed building more nuclear plants in the U.S. vs. just 18% strongly in favor. So do Americans hate nukes? Not necessarily. When asked which energy source the U.S. should rely on most to meet its increased energy needs in the next decade, a surprising 40% of respondents picked nuclear power, far surpassing the 25% who chose oil and the 22% who named coal.

The apparent contradiction results from the old not-in-my-backyard syndrome. Many people want nuclear power as long as it's generated elsewhere. Fully 60% of respondents said a new nuclear plant in their community would be unacceptable, vs. 34% who said it would be acceptable. Coal got a warmer reception. Only 41% considered a new coal plant in their community unacceptable, while 51% said it would be acceptable.

Such tangled feelings about the risks and rewards of nuclear power fit a worldwide pattern. In March the governments of Britain, France, Germany and Belgium -- Europe's largest users of nuclear energy -- jointly reaffirmed their commitment to the atom and pledged to cooperate in the development of new reactors. Yet while the statement recognized "the environmental ^ benefits" of nuclear power and noted that it provides "one appropriate response to the challenges now confronting the entire planet," the signers warned that future development of atomic energy "must take place in conditions of optimum safety, ensuring the best possible protection both for populations and for the environment."

Safety is a vital global issue. A nuclear power accident anywhere stirs public fears about nuclear plants everywhere. Executives of U.S. utilities shuddered in February when the failure of a valve caused the worst mishap in the 20-year history of Japan's atomic power industry, crippling a plant in the town of Mihama, about 200 miles west of Tokyo. "When the skill and discipline of the Japanese falter," says Lawrence Lidsky, an M.I.T. nuclear engineer, "that means anyone can screw up."

The strongest motive for a U.S. nuclear renaissance is America's galloping demand for electricity. The Department of Energy says the country will have to raise its present generating capacity of 700 gigawatts -- or 700 billion watts -- another 250 gigawatts by 2010. That is the equivalent of 250 large coal or nuclear power stations. The need will grow more acute as existing nuclear plants, which were designed to last 40 years, are dismantled and buried. By 2030, DOE says, the U.S. will need 1,250 more gigawatts of generating capacity than it has now.

The hottest argument in energy circles focuses on the right mix of fuels and conservation methods to satisfy this proliferating need for plug-in power. The issue is not whether the U.S. has enough coal. Even if the nation chose to meet all its staggering demand with its most popular fuel for generating electricity, coal, its reserves would last many decades. The question is whether America wants to bear the costs and effects of burning all that coal or would prefer the costs and effects of splitting some atoms instead.

Or perhaps it would rather do something else entirely. Environmentalists call for harnessing such renewable resources as wind and solar power and retrofitting homes and offices to use electricity more efficiently. The only trouble is that, according to the National Academy of Sciences report, "alternative energy technologies are unable currently or in the near future to replace fossil fuels as the major electricity source for this country. If fossil fuels had to be replaced now as the primary source of electricity, nuclear power appears to be the most technically feasible alternative."

That endorsement marks one of the few recent positive developments for an industry that has been mired in misery for more than two decades. Faced with an endless round of challenges, U.S. utilities have walked away from 120 nuclear plants since 1974 -- more than all the plants now in operation. In New York State, the Long Island Lighting Co. gave up on its completed $5.5 billion Shoreham nuclear facility in 1989 after local authorities refused to approve the firm's plans for an evacuation route for nearby residents in the event of a serious accident. The state now plans to buy the plant for a token $1 -- and to spend about $186 million to dismantle it.

Such fiascoes have for years discouraged virtually every U.S. utility from even looking sideways at nuclear power. "We have no plans to build a nuclear plant," says Pam Chapman, a spokeswoman for Indiana's PSI Energy. The troubled company is still reeling from the financial crisis that sandbagged it in 1984, when it wrote off $2.7 billion in construction costs for a half-built reactor. Concurs Gary Neale, president of nearby Northern Indiana Public Service Co., which scrubbed a barely started nuclear plant in 1981: "We're not antinuclear, but given the size of our company, I just don't think it ever would be practical for us."

Nor is nuclear power currently practical for any other firms in America, Wall Street experts argue. "The first utility that announces plans to build a new nuclear reactor will see its stock dumped," warns Leonard Hyman, who watches electric companies for Merrill Lynch. Hyman estimates that abandoned U.S. nuclear projects have generated some $10 billion of losses for the utilities' stockholders. "Investors are not quite ready to warm up to nuclear power just yet," says Hyman. "They're still recovering from their first chilling experience -- and it was very chilling." He adds, "There is no demand for new plants, because no one wants to spend the next 10 years in court or being picketed."

All that resistance stems from fear, and the overriding fear these days is of nuclear waste. Says I.C. Bupp, managing director of the Massachusetts-based Cambridge Energy Research Associates and a longtime student of nuclear energy: "There will be no nuclear renaissance until a waste-disposal program exists that passes some common-sense test of public credibility and acceptability."

The public's dread centers on the radioactive elements that remain in spent fuel rods after atomic reactions. While such highly toxic fission products as strontium 90 and cesium 137 have half-lives of only about 30 years, other intensely radioactive substances like plutonium will endure for tens and even hundreds of millenniums, and are piling up fast. High-level waste -- that which is most radioactive -- from U.S. power plants is not voluminous. More than 30 years' worth totals 17,000 tons, a thimbleful compared with the slag that would result from generating equivalent power by burning coal. Yet this waste threatens to fill all available storage space at generating facilities, and the U.S. has made little headway in developing a safe final resting place for more of it.

Congress three years ago selected Yucca Mountain in a remote part of southwest Nevada as the site for a permanent underground repository. The state has fought the plan in a series of court battles that have helped delay the scheduled opening of the site to 2010. The DOE is meanwhile compiling a library of 10 million computerized documents that will attempt to analyze every aspect of the site to be sure it can safely hold the waste.

In light of all the turmoil, most people might be surprised to learn that a number of scientists say the waste problem can be solved with little fuss. The spent fuel rods can be buried in steel canisters thousands of feet below the surface, and experts can predict with a high degree of probability that a site will remain stable for hundreds or thousands of years. But as the public perceives nuclear waste, that's just not good enough. While the risks of so- called deep geologic disposal appear no greater than many others that Americans accept every day -- crossing the street, driving a car -- no scientist can guarantee that a disposal site will remain unchanged for tens of thousands of years or that groundwater may not seep into the containers at some point during the eons that the waste will remain radioactively hot. As long as the American public demands ironclad assurance that the waste cannot ever escape its containers, people's fears can never be entirely soothed.

In France, where the state runs the nuclear plants, the public seems less fearful of nuclear waste. The French convert their high-level waste into a stable, glassy substance and store it in concrete bunkers at plant sites while experts study where to dispose of it permanently sometime early next century. "The most important thing to remember is that we have time to make a proper decision," says Bernard Tinturier, director of strategic planning for the government's Commissariat for Nuclear Energy. French scientists are considering four locations around the country, including clay deposits about 120 miles north of Paris and a shale site near the Loire valley. If the French seem calmly deliberate about the issue of nuclear waste, that may be because they view atomic power as a necessity rather than an option. With virtually no oil and little coal or natural gas, France has decided to rely on its rich uranium deposits as the primary source of fuel for its power plants. The country is pressing ahead with plans to construct seven new nuclear plants by the end of the decade.

With new nukes out of the picture in the U.S., utilities have been scrambling to find other sources of the electricity they need to prevent summer brownouts and blackouts that hit when demand for air conditioning peaks. To handle the load, utilities have quietly placed orders in recent years for enough gas-fired generators to produce 30,000 megawatts of electricity -- equivalent to 30 large nuclear plants. But gas has drawbacks as a long-term alternative to nuclear energy. Though far cleaner burning than coal, it is still a fossil fuel that emits at least some CO2. Reliance on natural gas would require augmenting pipelines that link the energy-rich U.S. Southwest to the populous North and Northeast, an expensive undertaking with its own environmental hazards.

So utilities are turning with increasing vigor to other nonnuclear energy sources. California's giant Pacific Gas & Electric gets a substantial 14% of its generating capacity from renewable energy sources such as the sun and wind. Its neighbor, Southern California Edison, joined forces this month with Texas Instruments in a six-year, $10 million project that will use low-grade silicon instead of more expensive higher grades to make photovoltaic cells that convert sunlight into electricity. Says Robert Dietch, a Southern Cal Edison vice president: "This has the potential to be the type of breakthrough technology we've all been looking for in the solar industry."

An alternative energy source that will not become practical for a long time, if it ever does, is nuclear fusion, which can use ordinary water as fuel. The difficulty is that fusion requires temperatures as high as hundreds of millions of degrees Celsius, and scientists have been unable to develop reactors that can handle that. Reports that some researchers achieved "cold fusion" at room temperature now produce more chuckles than heat.

The most productive nonnuclear, nonfossil power source in the long run may be not some new way of generating more electricity but new ways of using less. Instead of spending money to build plants, utilities sometimes find it more economical to offer customers financial incentives to use power more efficiently. In New York City, for example, Consolidated Edison spent more than $8 million in January and February on rebates to customers who traded in their energy-hogging air conditioners and lighting fixtures for efficient new models. Notes John Dillon, a Con Ed assistant vice president: "The cleanest megawatt is the megawatt not consumed."

Most environmentalists emphatically endorse conservation as a superior alternative to nukes. "Over the past decade, the U.S. has gotten seven times as much new energy from savings as from all the net increases of energy supply," asserts Amory Lovins, director of research at Rocky Mountain Institute in Snowmass, Colo. "Efficiency is a clear winner in the market, leaving everything else in the dust." Declares Lester Brown, president of the Washington-based Worldwatch Institute: "We as a nation should be hell-bent for efficiency. The exciting thing about conservation is, we have a huge potential for savings with already existing technology."

Other experts argue that the U.S. will profit from both conservation and nuclear power. "Conservation has tremendous potential," says Cambridge Energy's Bupp. "We have every reason to applaud the effort. But it will take time and good management to get the full results." Meanwhile, he says, the nuclear power industry has "invested $1 trillion over the past 30 years making plants simpler, cheaper and safer. Nuclear power should continue to provide about 20% of U.S. electric generation over the next century because it does work."

That moderate proposal seems sensible, but it won't be easy to realize. No matter how much scientific support the stricken industry receives, it hasn't a hope of getting back on its feet without lots of help from Washington, and for the moment that looks uncertain.

Utility executives must be persuaded that ordering nuclear plants again can make economic, environmental and practical sense. The first challenge, already addressed in the Administration's recent proposal, will be to streamline the licensing process, which now requires a set of public hearings before a plant ; can be built and another before it can start operating. In the case of New Hampshire's $6 billion Seabrook nuclear power station, the second round of hearings kept the completed plant idle for three years, costing its owner, Public Service Co. of New Hampshire, an extra $1 billion in interest and other expenses before the facility finally opened in 1990. To prevent such costly delays, the White House wants to accelerate licensing by compressing the two sets of hearings into one while still allowing for public comment before a plant starts up.

But that proposal seems sure to set off a furious battle in Congress that will test the depth of George Bush's commitment to nuclear power. "Congress is risk averse," says a House staff member. "The public doesn't like nuclear energy, and it doesn't want the right of a public hearing taken away." A careful reader of the public mood, Bush has so far shown little willingness to put up much of a fight for his program. Even chief of staff John Sununu, a former engineer who pushed hard for Seabrook when he was New Hampshire's Governor, has shown at least as much interest in blocking opponents of nuclear power from key jobs in the Administration as in promoting nuclear energy.

While the White House has dithered, the DOE has invested more than $160 million in recent years to help develop a new generation of advanced reactors with standardized designs. Participants in the program include GE and Westinghouse, which have put up a total of $70 million. Washington wants four designs ready for utilities to choose from by 1995. "The key is getting the first one built," says William Young, an assistant DOE secretary for nuclear energy. That would "let the public know what it can expect."

But the question remains: Who would buy such a plant? Wall Street experts say the most likely customers could be consortiums rather than individual firms. "The next generation of nuclear reactors will be partly owned by manufacturers as well as by utilities," says Barry Abramson of Prudential Securities. "Utilities want to spread the risks around this time." That seems to be happening already. Without much fanfare, for example, Westinghouse and Bechtel, a San Francisco-based engineering firm, have formed a joint venture with the Michigan utility Consumers Power to purchase and operate nuclear plants.

The federally run Tennessee Valley Authority could be another deep-pocketed customer for the first new reactor. TVA chairman Marvin Runyon says he may order a nuclear plant by the end of the decade. TVA also plans to restart one of three nuclear reactors at its Browns Ferry plant, near Athens, Ala., this summer. The facility had a serious fire in the mid-1970s and shut down in 1985 to correct safety problems. Runyon likes atomic energy because it is clean, but he lists four conditions that must be met if nukes are to regain the public's trust: "One-step licensing, standardized designs, a nuclear-waste- disposal program and a bold spirit of confidence."

That will be a tall order for a fractious industry that seems to have a knack for making things difficult for itself. Case in point: while some congressional lawmakers want to sponsor a demonstration project that would showcase new nuclear technologies and help streamline licensing procedures, squabbling manufacturers have been resisting the idea. Companies that have developed new technologies argue that they don't need the project to prove that their designs are efficient and safe. Firms whose plans are still on the drawing board are worried that the project would leave them out in the cold.

The bickering has left legislators shaking their heads. Bennett Johnston, a Louisiana Democrat who chairs the Senate Energy Committee, says he may drop a provision to fund demonstration projects from a bill he has co-sponsored to speed up the licensing of nuclear plants. Sighs a frustrated Senate staff member: "This is a hard industry to help."

It certainly is. Of all the genies unleashed by modern science, none has inspired more anxiety than the power of the atom. As if that were not disquieting enough, the industry has long been plagued by what Victor Gilinsky, an outspoken former member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, has called "too many deep-dish thinkers," who believed the future belonged to nuclear power and often overstated its potential. "It became a way of life instead of just a practical way of generating electricity," Gilinsky says. "The whole thing just became too ponderous, instead of practical and sensible."

Now the U.S. must decide just how practical and sensible nuclear power -- and other sources of energy -- really are. Nukes worry the public far more than they worry scientists who have studied their technology, yet the decision must be a matter of public will. Would Americans rather run the risk of a worldwide rise in temperatures or take the chance that steel canisters filled with high-level radioactive waste might someday leak? Or would they prefer to minimize both risks in favor of heavy reliance on efficiency and alternative energy -- and then not be sure the lights will come on when they flick a switch?

The choice should not seem anguished. After all, it's about how to improve the lives of a growing number of people in an expanding economy. But following any course will require years of commitment -- and as projections of electricity demand soar, there is no time to lose.

CHART: NOT AVAILABLE

CREDIT: From a telephone poll of 1,000 American adults taken for TIME/CNN on April 10-11 by Yankelovich Clancy Shulman. Sampling error is plus or minus 3%. "Not sures" omitted.

CAPTION: OF TWO MINDS

Which one of these energy sources should the U.S. rely on most for its increased energy needs in the next ten years?

Do you favor or oppose building more nuclear power plants in this country?

Which of these issues in building nuclear plants do you deem "very serious"?

CHART: NOT AVAILABLE

CREDIT: TIME Chart

CAPTION: POWER PUZZLE

CHART: NOT AVAILABLE

CREDIT: TIME Chart by Joe Lertola

[TMFONT 1 d #666666 d {Source: International Atomic Energy Agency; U.S. Council for Energy Awareness}]CAPTION: WHO'S GONE NUCLEAR

With reporting by Jerome Cramer/Washington, Thomas McCarroll/New York and Jeanne McDowell/Los Angeles