THE NUCLEAR POWER ISSUE

...Later, a succession of high-altitude bomb tests, with their peculiar mushroom-shaped clouds, and fears of "fallout" and Strontium 90 were our main concerns...

...No" literature warned that passage of Proposition "15 will hurt elderly" and would cost "$7,500 per family...

...william J. lanouette, a frequent contributor, is on the staff of The National Observer...

...David Pesonen, a former Sierra Club editor who is now a San Francisco lawyer, tried to raise these thres issues by intervening at public hearings on the construction of several California nuclear plants...

...Radioactive elements and their isotopes have known "half-lives"-the time it takes for half their particles to disintegrate to another form...

...And they're likely to be among the half dozen most persistent issues for years to come: insurance, safety, and waste disposal...

...And, like it or not, this is an atomic age...

...Will the costs of decommissioning plants, and disposing of wastes, add significantly to the cost of nuclear power...

...But these were either hushed up in classified documents or played down by utility public-relations campaigns intent on proving that nuclear plants could be "good neighbors" and would offer electricity "too cheap to meter...

...that, for example, new forms of shellfish were now living near the plant because the bay or river's temperature had risen...

...In 1972, based on challenges related to that plant, the Court affirmed that the Atomic Energy Commission should consider environmental issues, as well as those of health and safety, when regulating nuclear plants...

...A young theology student, Jim Garrison, explored this very region when he took time off from writing a doctoral thesis at Trinity College (Cambridge) to prod a few of the voters in California...

...They warned one another, and the electorate, that if the "nuclear shutdown scheme works in California, [its backers] will carry the attack into other states, stopping only when the last American plant is padlocked...

...The AEC response to thermal pollution-caused when a reactor's waste heat is discharged into local bodies of water-was first to deny that it had any effect on marine life, then claim that the effect was actually beneficial...

...Too, the facts and issues that bombarded voters for more than a year, and the subjective reactions that these invoked, were often peripheral to the still-unsolved conflicts of the nuclear-power debate...

...For as the proposition was drafted, a "yes" vote meant saying "no" to nuclear power, and vice versa...

...CIF is a nonprofit educational movement that encourages its 2,000 members to expand their social and moral concerns, and most of those who heard Pesonen's appeal for help saw a moral imperative in it and wanted to join the campaign...

...These bills authorize a one-year study of siting nuclear powerplants underground...

...The first issues that arose with commercial nuclear power were low-level radiation and thermal pollution...

...We were down to a zero bank balance the [January] day I went down to Palo Alto to talk to the Creative Initiative Foundation," Pesonen recalls...

...What threats do terrorists and saboteurs pose to the security of nuclear power and the stability of political order...

...exposed welding defects in a reactor...

...was but one component of a larger system...

...Then came "Calvert Cliffs," the landmark Supreme Court decision about a reactor on Chesapeake Bay...

...They'll do that despite the fact that the United States desperately needs every source of energy it can get to maintain its factories, farms, and homes...

...Then, in 1953, Ike proclaimed Atoms for Peace at the U.N., dedicating America's military technology to benevolent ends: medical research and treatment, power for merchant ships, heat to generate electricity...

...But from the events of recent weeks one result has become very clear: For good or for ill, the nuclear debate is now a thoroughly public and political process...

...Others haven't, though, and the scale model that failed "six times out of six...

...From there must come America's voice...

...As one campaign analyst concluded after the election, voters probably heard this appeal and concluded "there's nothing special here- it's just an old-fashioned campaign after all," thus taking the "Yes on 15" challenge less seriously than they might have otherwise...

...Being the first of many, California's vote was probably destined to be confusing...

...He failed to qualify for a ballot initiative by the May 1974 deadline, but cut his losses and started over that fall...

...Yet it's the function of religion to give value to whatever is around us...

...Remember the debates, and soul-searching, about whether or not you should gun down your neighbors to keep them from invading your home fallout shelter...

...Will uranium prices and supplies be adequate for the economical operation of nuclear plants during their predicted 40-year lifetimes...

...While the issue of thermal pollution has diminished somewhat because of the introduction of cooling towers, it was revived recently when Calvert Cliffs plants received permission to dump hot water into Chesapeake Bay as an emergency procedure...

...It also provided much of the motivation, manpower, and money for the "Yes on 15" effort-and much of the public controversy too...

...Are adequate steps being taken to prevent national and sub-national use of atomic power for political purposes...

...Vote No on 15...

...California's recent proposition vote, and those scheduled this November in Oregon and Colorado, will have certainly shifted the nuclear power debate to a broader constituency...

...Your vote will keep open all of the energy options we have in California-and America...

...And when America's voice finally did come, three decades after Einstein's call, it sounded both decisive and confusing...

...Jim Burch, a CIF leader and Project Survival's president, says it's "embarrassing" that the 10 families who head CIF live in a million-dollar housing complex yet argue for a simpler lifestyle...

...To protect the foundation's tax-exempt status they quickly formed a group called Project Survival, raised $20,000 and in two weeks had 150,000 more signatures...

...The AEC/NRC, and the nuclear industry, were responsive to some critics, however...

...To most people in the Church," Garrison said during the campaign, "nuclear power is a non issue...

...Publicity about Proposition 15 at least made more people aware that there is a debate going on over the atom's future, although the level of that debate isn't always the highest...

...There were new moral dilemmas, some awesome and others awkward...

...Economy: Are nuclear plants cost-competitive with coal-fired plants...

...For most of the nuclear industry's history the issues and options that shaped its future development have been considered behind closed doors by a few technical experts, business executives, and government officials, who all felt that they "knew best" how to serve the public interest...

...In part, attention focused more on the campaign itself than the traditional issues because that was most visible, and because most voters' impressions of nuclear power were emotional or incomplete...

...And even if the nuclear debate does develop fairly rationally, there's still no guarantee that rational choices will be appreciated by the electorate...

...While the campaigning didn't amply reflect them, the three issues raised by Proposition 15 were at the heart of the ongoing nuclear-power debate...

...And without a theological approach to this power our understanding of it must be incomplete...

...Pesonen charged that his opponents hired a band of scruffy-looking young people to carry "Yes on 15" signs outside a hall where he was speaking in ultra-conservative Orange County...

...An ERDA spokesman later conceded that some of the information was "in error" and that "some of the answers were a little simplistic...

...In fact some of the reactor backup systems have been tested, and have worked fairly well...

...No on 15" campaigners also blamed CIF for trying to impose "elitist, no-growth, Small-Is-Beautiful lifestyles" on a populace that really wanted more toasters and TVs...

...The "No on 15" campaign raised no complaint about any specific dirty tricks by the "Yes on 15" people, "unless," one spokesman added, "you include their outrageous lies...

...Perhaps in Oregon and Colorado the issues will be more clearly defined, the meaning of a "yes" or "no" vote more carefully spelled out...

...The country's needs have never been greater...

...And homes with "yes" signs elsewhere in the state were splattered with mud...

...and lobbied to split the AEC into two separate agencies, one that promotes nuclear power, the other that regulates it...

...Encouraged by the "No on 15" committee, the California press spent almost as much time after the G.E...

...But it was also confusing...

...3's resignations investigating CIF as it did covering the engineers' criticisms of the nuclear industry...

...The AEC's standard reply to such charges, now carried on by its successor, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, is that you receive more radiation aboard one transcontinental airline flight than you do living for a year at the barbed-wire fence that surrounds a nuclear plant...

...Are the risks inherent in a serious reactor accident worth the benefits gained from the power it produces...

...Beginning with a cover that showed a shaft of light piercing the universe, and laid out with a style and simplicity reminiscent of grade-school catechisms, the handbook warned readers: "Americans are being asked to take sides on an issue that has become so fuzzy and emotional that it's hard to know WHO to believe...

...With atomic power we have the transformation of matter, molecular transformation, which is just what 'miracles' are all about...

...It was decisive because Proposition 15, the primary-ballot initiative to curtail the operation and expansion of nuclear power in the state, was defeated by a solid two-to-one margin: 3.6 million to 1.8 million...

...In the campaign's final months some officials in the nuclear industry, and in federal and state government, became obsessed with Proposition 15, but more for its larger psychological impact than for its local political consequences...

...It's true, however, that no actual test of the crucial Emergency Core Cooling System has ever been run...

...Never before had Albert Einstein's prophecy been realized, that "to the village square we must carry the facts of atomic energy...

...Some were dismissed almost as quickly as they were raised, while others have persisted and appear to be very long-lived...

...By visual and verbal persuasion "Yes on 15" and "No on 15" became catch phrases for many personal concerns that defied both partisan and philosophical loyalties...

...The public was assaulted by dozens of competing claims, economic forecasts, promises, threats, fears-by radio, television, direct-mail appeal, bus poster, billboard, bumper sticker...

...But shifting to this posture-from earlier emphasis on nuclear power's health and safety issues-may have hurt the "Yes" effort seriously...

...Thus they were able to raise a sizable war chest with large corporate donations, many from out of state...

...How effectively could local populations be evacuated from around a reactor that is releasing high levels of radiation...

...But when he couldn't halt their construction, because these issues are common to all plants and not just the ones he intervened in, he started looking for "a political device" that would bring his concerns to public attention...

...For as a compromise with the demands of the proposition, the nuclear industry supported-and the California Legislature enacted-three bills that assert the state's role in the regulating of nuclear power...

...Intervenors have also uncovered weaknesses in plant security...

...This the "No" forces did successfully by arguing that the dollar limit curtailed their freedom of speech...

...The church has not articulated anything about it-by encyclical or other pronouncement-so it just doesn't exist...

...And when a thermal-pollution "event" occurred recently in Long Island Sound, the reactor's operation was described as being "conducive to the mortality of the menhaden species...

...Many new plants have gigantic cooling towers to handle their waste heat, instead of dumping it into the nearest body of water, in part because of intervenor pressure to curb thermal pollution...

...In 1957 the first commercial power plant began operating in Shippingport, Pa., and now, two decades later, 53 are operating, five more are licensed to operate, 74 are under construction, and 104 planned...

...But in doing so there is also the danger that the many complicated issues will be increasingly oversimplified, and that the debate will be polarized into the absolute alternatives of "yes" or "no" votes...

...The California campaign produced another legacy, too...

...It could even take a theological turn, where the morality of developing this controversial energy source becomes subjugated to profounder doubts...

...What damage could be caused by an accident during the transportation of nuclear materials...

...Isn't it time to shed some light on nuclear energy-to substitute facts for myth...

...THE NUCLEAR POWER ISSUE WILLIAM J. LANOUETTE The debate shifts to a broader constituency Last month, more than 5 million California voters participated in what was widely publicized to be America's first referendum on nuclear power...

...For the most part he found clergy and laity bemused by his proposals, although he says that a visit with San Francisco's Archbishop Joseph McGuckin prompted that churchman to make a personal statement-not binding on his congregation-in favor of Proposition 15...

...These questions aren't likely to be answered for some time, in part because of their technical complexities, and in part because they involve value and policy judgments that are just now being identified...

...Never before had ordinary citizens been asked to make a politically-binding choice about the future of this complex and controversial technology...

...Don't allow others to make decisions for you...

...If the "No on 15" people were warning voters more about bread-and-butter issues than the "Yes on 15" people were, they were also giving them more attention themselves...

...To be sure, with any new technology accidents do occur, and some did with nuclear power...

...By January 1975 he had half the signatures he needed...

...The booklet was quickly withdrawn from distribution, however, after public criticism that the Federal Government was meddling in a state-election campaign...

...Will the need to import uranium lead to unacceptable doubts about future price and supply...

...and put to the Legislature the question of whether waste disposal can be safe...

...At times such name-calling even degenerated into mud-slinging, some of it with real mud...

...The "Yes" campaign tried to capitalize on this disparity, and did its best to portray the vote as a "classic struggle" between the "little guy" and "big business...

...And the half-lives of issues in the nuclear debate have varied too...

...A few federal officials were swept up in this frenzy too...

...Get the facts, then-Let your voice be heard...

...Leaflets handed out by the "Yes" canvassers warned that "emergency safety systems have never been fully tested . . . Scale model tests have failed six times out of six...

...Indeed, the public arguments about nuclear power could take some new and unexpected directions in the years ahead, veering from the unanswered questions that confound us today and striking out for unexamined problems...

...The public's perception of atomic energy has changed only gradually since it burst into our collective consciousness-and consciences-from Hiroshima and Nagasaki...

...With more public debate the extreme arguments of both sides may become more moderate, and the rhetoric more subdued...

...When an underground blast that was to create a crater produced a mound of earth instead, the AEC announced the formation of a "negative crater...

...The three bills may still be challenged by the industry as "unconstitutional," or they may be curtailed by future amendments, but they, too, have set a precedent for the public debate on nuclear power, moving the controversy beyond the village square and into the statehouse...

...Morality: Is this generation morally justified to leave a radioactive legacy for future generations from a power source that is admittedly just temporary-until solar and other sources are perfected...

...Simplistic, too, were some of the threats and promises contained in some of the "Yes" and "No" "campaign literature," which isn't surprising considering the task of reducing a complicated technology to media slogans...

...Will the Fast Breeder Reactor, which produces plutonium fuel from now-useless forms of uranium, prove to be safe and economical...

...urged closer scrutiny of potential earthquake damage to plants...

...And a pro-nuclear "no" vote, according to the anti-nuclear "yes" campaign, promised more chances of a catastrophic nuclear-plant accident, more opportunities for terrorists to use nuclear materials against the public, more mindless materialism at the expense of a better "quality of life," and more perils from long-lived radioactive wastes for thousands of future generations...

...Those Project Survival types are the old Lefties, who eat Granola and think that conserving energy means shutting off the lights in their swimming pools," a "No on 15" campaign official said...

...It was as if the voters of the state were let into a menagerie of menacing fears, asked to browse around for a while, and then told they must decide which ones they'd prefer to take home and live with...

...And at a public debate at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles one of the "No" campaign's most effective speakers, nuclear engineer Paul Lorenzini, conceded that possibly they wouldn't work when he said that "to test a full-scale reactor you'd have to destroy it...

...make new-plant construction contingent on there being reprocessing facilities for spent fuel...

...What threats do long-lived radioactive wastes pose to future generations...

...Too, intervenors themselves have become an issue in the nuclear debate because industry and government officials charge that they delay the NRC's review process needlessly, confuse the issues through ignorance or exaggeration, and increase the costs of atomic energy...

...And considering their backers-electric utilities, corporations, reactor vendors-they found it easier to raise money than the "Yes" folks did raising voter consciousness...

...This would be unfortunate, indeed, considering the number of issues still unresolved...

...to quit their jobs and work to pass the proposition...

...Scientists charged that those living near a plant could receive unacceptable doses of low-level radiation, well below the AEC's permissible limits but having cumulative significance over the years...

...By the final months of the campaign Project Survival had some 10,000 members, led mostly by CIF officers...

...They're pushing a socio-economic philosophy under the guise of being moral do-gooders," one nuclear-industry executive complained...

...Would the victims of a major nuclear accident be fairly compensated...

...And such criticism, while extreme, did have some truth to it...

...The outcome of California's voting, and the future of its three nuclear bills, may indeed be confusing...

...For some of CIF's members, and their motives, became issues in the campaign...

...Nuclear-industry spokesmen labeled CIF a "cult" and charged that it had "brainedwashed" three high-ranking nuclear engineers at General Electric Co...

...Since then environmentalists have had a field day, challenging construction permits and delaying the spread of nuclear plants...

...Measured half-lives vary from millionths of a second to billions of years...

...Too, much of the early information was secret because of its military applications, and frequently that tradition of secrecy has persisted in industry and the government...

...By this time he was also fast going broke...

...But it did give opponents and proponents of nuclear power, and the press, some useful experience in trying to discuss this subject's specific problems with the general public...

...He was in California to cover the nuclear-power referendum...

...Radioactivity became "sunshine units...

...These include questions of safety, economy and morality, among them: Safety: What are the risks and probabilities of a major accident...

...And because the nuclear legacy had first been so destructive, the commission strained credulity and the English language to make every event -no matter how unfortunate-seem positive...

...Incomplete or not, however, public understanding of the atom is likely to expand for some time to come...

...Just the opposite might happen, where majorities of voters are "scared into" supporting nuclear power by threats of future energy disruptions, or are "scared out" of using it for fear of the havoc an accident-or terrorists-could cause...

...Indeed, the facts and issues that the voters ultimately did decide on were just the ones most easily projected by the mass media: threats of economic and energy insecurity...

...In the end the "No" campaign out-spent proponents by about four to one, $3.5 million to $900,000, but to do this had to challenge in court a $1.2 million spending limit imposed by the state's new Campaign Reform Act...

...An anti-nuclear "yes" vote, according to the pro-nuclear "no" campaign, promised more inflation, more unemployment, more air pollution from fossil-fuel power plants, and more hardships for the poor as America's industrial growth and "standard of living" are stifled by future energy shortages...

...The San Francisco office of the Energy Research and Development Administration distributed thousands of pamphlets entitled Shedding Light on Facts about Nuclear Energy...

...Will effective uses be found for the large amounts of waste heat now produced by reactors...

...A utility worker was sued for defacing a "Vote Yes on 15" yard sign in Corte Madera...

...The standards on a few radiation sources were tightened, and the matter was largely forgotten...