The accident at Three Mile Island on March 28, 1979, was followed by a decade of decline for the nation's nuclear power industry. But despite tremendous cost overruns, gross mismanagement, climbing interest rates, and slumping demand - factors that together would wipe out most businesses in a matter of months - nuclear power is still hanging on. It remains on a life-support system, namely the U.S. government, which has refused to pull the plug on the dying industry.
Meanwhile, it is the public, not the U.S. government, that is left with the bill, as the utilities that own the nuclear facilities attempt to hike their rates to recoup their billion-dollar losses. And it is the public that is left with a potential public health disaster - due to the effects of accidents, routine emissions of low-level radiation, and the mounting radioactive waste from the plants - that could have life-threatening implications for all of us.
The Reagan administration did everything in its power to try to jump-start the struggling industry. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), the agency set up to ensure public health and safety, essentially became an activist for nuclear power during the Reagan era. Just after Bush was elected in November, the Reagan White House (the one that promised to "get big government off the backs of the people") quietly issued a couple of executive orders that significantly expand federal control over the civilian nuclear power industry.
One of the executive orders gives the federal government the authority to assume control of a civilian nuclear power plant in the case of a "national security emergency," further blurring the distinction between civilian and military reactor use (long championed by the U.S. government as part of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty).
The second order gives the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) the authority to draft emergency evacuation plans "to compensate for the nonparticipation or inadequate participation" of state and local governments in coming up with their own plans. This order comes out of frustration over the unwillingness of the local authorities simply to rubber-stamp emergency evacuation plans, which have been required since the accident at Three Mile Island.
What the FEMA executive order fails to mention is the reason such plans have been opposed in the first place. New York Gov. Mario Cuomo joined local officials in refusing to go along with any emergency plans in case of an accident at Long Island's Shoreham nuclear plant, believing any large-scale evacuation of the area to be physically impossible. Many state and local officials that host nuclear plants in other areas of the country have come to the same conclusion and made the same protest.
The testimonies of those who lived through the nightmare of fear and mass hysteria a decade ago at Three Mile Island reveal the false security of making elaborate evacuation plans in case of an "accident." For the NRC and the nuclear industry to continue on its current path without taking seriously the role of local residents and public officials is to deny completely the reality of that experience.
THE OVERRIDING OF STATE and local opposition to emergency evacuation plans is just part of an anti-democratic trend that has characterized the nuclear power industry in recent years. The NRC's proposed "one-step" licensing rule for new reactors would further silence public dissent as well as increase the risks to public safety.
Instead of the current procedure of a utility applying for licensing at two different stages, first for a construction permit and later for an operating license (with public hearings held at each stage), the one-step rule would combine the two, making it possible for the utility to receive an operating license before a reactor is ever built. One observer compared it to "getting your college degree when you enroll as a freshman."
And while the voices of local residents and public officials are being increasingly marginalized by the nuclear power industry, it is the public that bears the burden of an industry that is too costly and too dangerous.
The bill is already coming due for residents near many of the nation's nuclear power plants, as they face utility rate hikes as high as 50 percent (which often only covers the costs of plant construction). Shoreham, which was originally supposed to be completed in 1973 at a cost of $75 million, has cost about $5.4 billion to date (or $2,000 for every man, woman, and child living on Long Island). And the plant may eventually be dismantled if state legislators can be convinced by Gov. Cuomo that closing the plant would be less expensive than opening it.
But as significant as the financial reasons are for turning away from nuclear power, it is the potential impact on public health that may ultimately bring down the curtain on the nuclear power industry. The outcome of the more than 2,000 public health claims related to Three Mile Island that are still pending in court will undoubtedly have a significant impact on the future of the industry.
Those who were injured or who lost family members may never be able to "prove" that the accident at Three Mile Island was the cause, just as the utility will probably never be able to prove it was not. But regardless of the outcome of the cases still pending, the existence of disproportionate cancer rates and other negative health effects in the immediate area around Three Mile Island should be evidence enough to show that the plant poses too great a risk to the public health.
And the risks are not limited to Three Mile Island. The presence of highly radioactive waste and the ongoing emissions of low-level radiation from nuclear plants around the country are contaminating the ecosystem and likely affecting the human gene pool. There need not be another accident such as the one at Three Mile Island for there to be an eventual public health disaster.
It is time to pull the plug on nuclear power and begin formulating a national energy policy that emphasizes energy efficiency and the use of renewable energy resources. We can't afford not to do so.
Brian Jaudon was editorial assistant at Sojourners when this article appeared.
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