No nukes' is not enough

...Many elements of such a system have already been proposed and demonstrated practicable on a small scale...

...Presidential election means a new lease on life for the U.S...

...The PUCs are the chief agencies making energy decisions on new generating plants, rate increases, and rate structures...

...The negative political and public climate, reflected in increasingly critical government regulations and increasingly active local citizens' groups, makes the future of nuclear energy highly questionable...

...It was a logical next step on an already proven path...

...Bad news for the industry just keeps surfacing, sometimes in the least likely places...

...The other principal rivals for a revamped breeder project would be the Han-ford Reservation in Washington, and the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory, where politicians are beating the drums for a large-scale, power-producing breeder demonstration project...

...h based on reports by free-lance writers Taylor Moore and Catherine Quigg...

...11 Broaden the Base of the People's Energy Movement...

...Not only does a strategy for people's energy encourage a much broader coalition—it demands one...

...Tennessee newspapers report that Reagan struck a deal with Clinch River's leading lobbyist, Senator Howard Baker, to guarantee completion of the project if Baker could put Tennessee in the Reagan column...

...The peace movement must change from the present centralist model, in which national organizations set national movement policies and calendars, and individuals hold powerful staff positions, to a new decentralized model in which local and regional organizations determine their own policies and programs, and national organizations exist to nurture and support local efforts...

...Moreover, the industry has launched a major public relations offensive to win the American public back to nuclear power...

...This analysis by Contributing Editor Samuel H. Day Jr...

...The industry has reason for hope: Reagan has surrounded himself with nuclear advocates...

...nuclear industry...

...Either it assumes that past successes call for a no-change strategy in the future, or it makes a deliberate strategy shift for the 1980s, both to capitalize on those successes and to adjust to radically new social conditions...

...By contributing directly to soaring energy prices, to unemployment, and to inflationary costs of housing, health care, and other such human needs, hard energy is clearly against the best interests of the general citizenry...

...The Portland plan called for heavy citizen participation in the planning and application of new energy directions, through use of public information forums and citizen committees...

...And the power structure in the United States, including both political parties, leading politicians, and the business leadership, still remains strongly supportive of the industry and hopeful of its revival under the Reagan Administration...

...The successes of the anti-nuclear power movement suggest strategies for opposing nuclear weapons...

...Nuclear power had become an issue of public debate...

...Even S. David Freeman, head of the Tennessee Valley Authority, has seen the light...

...Obviously, anyone who expects the nuclear industry to succumb to the economic bad news that has been coming its way is in for a disappointment under Reagan...

...It would be surprising if Reagan did not try to smooth the way not only for domestic power plants but also for nuclear exports, which ran into more obstacles under Carter than the industry liked...

...It has grown since the 1960s from a tiny handful of die-hard environmentalists and leftover Vietnam war protesters, to a mature, broad-based, and multiA minority has become a majority— a few lonely activists have created a movement faceted social movement that has had decisive impact on a major national industry and on public consciousness...

...All but seven states have successfully challenged the right of utilities to charge customers for "construction work in progress," thereby undercutting financing plans for many reactors under construction...

...Also, this demonstration of available and economically viable alternatives will erode the support for nuclear power and the other hard-energy sources among people who now see them as undesirable but necessary...

...This strategy is having increasing success in Europe, the scene of widespread placement of nuclear missile bases...

...The chief policy goal of the IOU is to make the most money for its directors and stockholders...

...But the powers that be . . . will see that Clinch River is finished...

...Fossil fuels are dangerous to human life...

...These are the same corporations and politicians who have long advocated increased military spending, with Most Americans would end nuclear power, but they don't know what to put in its place A comeback for the breeder...

...Finally, anti-nuclear activists must advocate their own strategy so that the powerful people's movement they have developed will not be dissipated when nuclear energy is defeated, as was the anti-Vietnam war movement, with its single objective, when that war suddenly ended...

...in order to build the political power to end nuclear energy, and to assure that its replacement is acceptable, the movement must actively advocate other options as well...

...11 Build Support for Public Power and Energy Cooperatives...

...P.H...

...The tax loopholes for oil exploration are an obvious example...

...Such patronage is not guaranteed...

...And even with solar, Government money goes to huge schemes involving satellites and square miles of mirrors, with all their problems of untested environmental impact and lack of democracy...

...This hard-energy path seemed ideal...

...Alternative power sources are also needed for the very pragmatic reason that the state public utility commissions, the agencies which have been responsible for most of the reactor cancellations in recent years, cannot cancel reactors without proving that other power sources exist...

...Nowhere is this more evident than in the field of energy...

...Peter Sandman, public opinion analyst, said in a recent interview that most Americans believe nuclear power is both dangerous and necessary, but that half think it so dangerous that it should be stopped even though it is necessary, while the other half think it so necessary that it should be continued despite the danger...

...you also must implement a carefully thought-out winning plan...

...Regulation could be further simplified by a change of guard at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission which, according to Business Week, could be dominated by Reagan appointees as early as June...

...And utility companies made record profits, since their earnings were based on the level of capital investments in generating plants...

...But "no nukes" is no longer enough...

...Phantom taxes— the large sums of money in customers' electric bills, collected for the utilities' Federal income taxes but then not paid because of giant tax deductions for building new, often nuclear, generation plants—have for the first time been successfully stopped in the Indiana courts...

...There are others, some with influence in the Reagan White House, who believe Clinch River should be scrapped to clear the way for a much larger, more advanced breeder reactor...

...As in a game of chess, warding off your opponent's attacks and trying to capture pieces is not enough...

...Its use of centralized electricity dropped 6 per cent in the first two years despite a 7 per cent increase in customers, and by 1980 total energy consumption was reduced by 18 per cent...

...Under intense pressure from the public, the NRC is also considering halting the operation or construction of some reactors because of their proximity to high density areas...

...and, as the action campaign process built the anti-nuclear movement in the 1970s, to educate the public and build a strong consensus in support of a soft-energy path...

...On the other hand, only heavier subsidies to an already subsidized industry, along with a cleared regulatory track, will keep the industry alive...

...The American citizen was being educated about nuclear power for the first time, and public opinion against it had grown from an insignificant minority to a strong minority position in 1978, and to a majority position in 1980...

...The former President's treatment of the breeder, in the phrase of one industry publication, was "all words, no action—like steering a parked car...

...Without an alternative strategy, nuclear power cannot be completely stopped...

...The anti-nuclear movement now employs a wide variety of strategies...

...Led by General Electric and Westinghouse, the list of multinationals involved in nuclear energy reads like a Who's Who of Government military contractors and nuclear weapons builders...

...A strategy shift from anti-nuclear to pro-people's energy greatly encourages the necessary speed-up of this process...

...The quadrupling of hard-energy prices has helped undercut the U.S...

...The automatic rise of electric rates through the fuel adjustment clause has been eliminated in some states, and rate hikes are being challenged with varying degrees of success by citizen groups all over...

...Finally, spurred by the accident at Three Mile Island, the issue of nuclear safety has become a more powerful focal point for opposition...

...Such initiatives will reduce the demand for centralized electricity production, thereby removing the chief justification for giant new electrical generation plants...

...Towns, cities, and counties across the nation are moving toward conservation and alternative energy policies and practices—making studies, implementing plans, holding conferences, putting out manuals, journals, and newsletters, and building national networking organizations with an energy and enthusiasm amounting to a new social movement...

...These are the interests now working to reinstate the draft and involve us in military conflict over oil in the Middle East which could escalate into an all-out nuclear war...

...U New nonviolent action campaigns to capture state public utility commissions (PUCs) for the public interest...

...Catherine Quigg (Catherine Quigg is a researcher and writer for Pollution and Environmental Problems, Inc., a public interest group in Palatine, Illinois...

...It must place nuclear energy in the larger context, calling for a shift from the traditional hard-energy path of massive, centralized generating plants using nonrenewable fuels to a new soft-energy path of flexible, decentralized generation based on a diversity of mostly renewable energy sources...

...While all cause air pollution and the greenhouse effect (which could result in the melting of the icecaps and ultimate flooding of the coastal United States), coal has additional damaging effects in particulate pollution and acid rain...

...Opposition is being mobilized against nuclear power in people's backyards through continued demonstrations and occupations at dozens of reactor sites and through local referenda (which defeated reactors outside Seattle and in Kern County, California...

...The weapons connection Since the dawn of the atomic age, nuclear weapons and nuclear power have been inextricably intertwined...

...A more extensive version of this article, originally published by Movement for a New Society, may be purchased from William Moyer, 4713 Windsor Avenue, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19143, at 25 cents each, or $8 for fifty copies...

...andW.M...

...Within a few years this new social If a thousand nuclear plants won't light our lives, what will...

...The same pattern appears in the corporations...

...too dangerous...

...The handful of lonely voices had been transformed into a full-blown social movement...

...The Federal Government, too, supported the hard-energy path by providing enormous tax breaks for constructing new generating plants and billions of dollars for research and development of new centralized generation techniques...

...The fight, however, is far from won...

...High American consumption of such nonrenewable resources is also unjust...

...Everywhere, decisions that affect people's lives—sites for mining, milling, and transmission lines, rate structures, prices—are made without their participation, and usually without their knowledge...

...Investors and bankers have become cautious about nuclear investment, especially since Three Mile Island, with the Bank of America's policy against nuclear investment leading the way...

...In 1979, Portland, Oregon, adopted a goal of 30 per cent reduction in city-wide energy use by 1985, through weatherizing houses and subsidizing alternative renewable-energy plans...

...State energy regulators automatically blessed everything new and big that would produce more electricity...

...hold spectacularly...

...The breeder reactor is a heat machine that makes much more efficient use of uranium, the basic nuclear fuel, than do the "light water" reactors that constitute the industry's first generation of nuclear power producers...

...It has also increased public anti-big-oil sentiment, kindling people's dissatisfaction with the energy sector of their lives...

...New Republican chairman Mark Hatfield of Oregon voted the industry position just 33 per cent of the time in 1980, while Democrat Warren Magnuson of Washington, whom he replaced, voted with industry 83 per cent of the time...

...Now, however, with nuclear power being questioned by almost everyone, the movement must take the next step, beyond opposition to an active fight for an acceptable replacement...

...A solution to that problem may have been handed to him by Jimmy Carter, who, before leaving office, established a working group in the Department of Energy to study various ways of meeting a "plutonium shortage" expected in the late 1980s in the nuclear weapons production program...

...In recent months, Barron's has given Three Mile Island's General Public Utilities a pessimistic financial review, while The Wall Street Journal has described Washington Public Power Supply System as a utility in trouble because of its huge cost overruns on five nuclear plants...

...movement had already had startling success...

...The peace movement has been more effective when it emphasized peace conversion, a strategy which shows how a shift from military to social spending could produce more jobs and increase human welfare locally...

...The spread of nuclear power proliferates nuclear weapons, since it provides the technical know-how and fissile materials for building them...

...It is not surprising, therefore, that anti-nuclear weapons organizing has had most success where there has been a local nuclear target—a laboratory or weapons site, as with the Rocky Flats project in Denver, the People for a Nuclear Free Future in Santa Cruz, and the Mid-Peninsula Conversion Project in northern California...

...coal, too, is becoming increasingly expensive as it is extracted farther from end electrical use, and deeper in the mines...

...For almost three decades after World War II, centralized electricity generation grew at a rate of 7 per cent annually in the United States— doubling every ten years...

...Kenneth Davis) and Secretary of Defense (Caspar Weinberger), he chose vice presidents of Bechtel Corporation, the nation's largest builder of nuclear power plants...

...Since the sources currently considered by the PUCs—and the Government, the utilities, and the energy corporations—still center on hard-energy options, it is vital that the anti-nuclear movement advocate its own options...

...Hard path or soft: the choice is political —and so are the consequences...

...In 1977 Freeman labeled the Clinch River breeder "a technological turkey that will only prove when it is built that we are fifteen years behind the French...

...We are well aware of the danger...

...Previously cheap nonrenewable energy sources have soared in price, forcing working and even middle-class Americans to cut back on their consumption...

...Dozens of new anti-nuclear groups formed that summer, and demonstrations began all over the country...

...As it has grown and gained respectability it has been joined increasingly by mainstream Americans of all ages and by significant elements of the labor movement...

...Nuclear power and nuclear weapons present similar safety and health problems arising out of mining and milling uranium, transporting radioactive substances, and storing long-term waste—not to mention the low-level radiation dangers of "normal" operations and much more serious consequences of catastrophic accidents...

...In addition, this use of "the peaceful atom" would give nuclear weapons a better image, while providing materials for the nuclear bomb program and building a nuclear establishment that would support both the bomb and reactor programs...

...The successes of the 1970s are clear: Opposition to nuclear power has grown from a fringe to a majority opinion and the three-year-old de facto moratorium on orders for new reactors probably will become permanent...

...As the people of Davis...

...This will involve the same process of clarifying the basic function of the system (that is, providing economic benefit, security, and a focus for patriotism), finding out people's real questions and fears, and coming up with answers that are more convincing than those of the war-makers...

...the Chinese character for "crisis" is made of two elements: "danger" and "opportunity...

...It is no wonder, then, that those who began to question nuclear power in the 1960s were seen as crazies who wanted to return us to the stone age...

...The normal operation of a standard reactor produces enough fissile material to make ninety nuclear warheads annually...

...In its early years, the anti-nuclear energy movement was overwhelmingly young, white, and countercultural...

...The movement must now fight for an alternative as strongly as it has fought against nuclear power...

...Yet much of the movement remains disconnected from, or not interested in, many of the alternative initiatives...

...For example, people's economic needs are better served by a peace economy, the multinationals rather than the anti-war people are the ones who are unpatriotic, and there are better ways of ensuring security...

...As a result, a soft-energy plan was developed in which energy use would be drastically reduced...

...Since the opposition to soft energy is also the opposition to full employment, decent housing, and meaningful, safe work, all of which are seen by women, minorities, and the working class as vital to their well-being, an already-articulated basis for solidarity exists...

...The nuclear industry had a problem with Jimmy Carter: Carter had doubts about the "breeder reactor," an advanced technology on which the industry bases its only real hope of growth into the Twenty-first Century...

...The ubiquitousness of power plants and their impact on public safety and economic well-being inspired a vigorous grass-roots movement against nuclear power...

...The breeder does this by producing more reactor fuel while it generates power...

...Earthquake faults, which caused the NRC to close the Humboldt, California, reactor, now threaten the starting up of the Diablo Canyon plant...

...At that point, the Reagan Administration will try to start whittling down funding on solar and conservation energy programs and directing money instead into nuclear projects...

...This new strategy is not a repudiation of the highly successful direct-action orientation of the anti-nuke movement but a logical next step, a means of assuring even greater success in the future...

...The contenders are the same: big business—utilities and their political representatives—against the general citizenry...

...The movement has opposed nuclear energy as too expensive...

...But the original occupation goal of permanently preventing construction has proved to be inappropriate because it is generally unattainable...

...In addition, some state regulatory agencies have ruled to limit utility company loans, stocks, and bonds because of the high cost of money in general...

...The dreams of a nuclear energy future for the United States, held so confidently five years ago by the nuclear industry and the Government, have been shattered...

...In most places, the generating capacity already is 30 per cent to 40 per cent beyond what is needed for peak loads...

...The "declining block" electrical rate structure encouraged ever more demand by lowering the rate for higher electric consumption...

...soaking up government subsidies and technical research funds that otherwise might have gone to other sources...

...The Senate Appropriations Committee could pose problems for the industry...

...If the trouble persists, the economic growth of the Northwest and the survival of nuclear power in the U.S...

...There are a lot of people with a lot at stake...

...More electricity was seen as promoting an expanding economy, more jobs, a better life for all Americans, and a strong nation...

...A soft-energy path for America includes decentralized public power as a replacement for the outdated private investor-owned utilities (IOUs...

...Thirteen states have a suit against the Federal Government demanding the right to control nuclear energy decisions at the state level, and thus curb the power of the Federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission...

...As Reagan energy adviser Davis said_ "If the nuclear business can't be revived under a Republican President, it is dead, or at least its prospects for the future are very bad...

...Implementation of such a vision of systemic change will require the building of a massive social movement...

...In this setting, it is easy to understand why nuclear energy was so warmly welcomed in the 1960s...

...The present energy system of giant centralized electrical generating plants serving masses of people is inherently undemocratic...

...economy by contributing to inflation, unfavorable balance of payments, and a general recession...

...While the threat of all-out nuclear war is real, it tends to freeze the public into hopeless inaction...

...Three Mile Island provided a benchmark of this success...

...The price of our chief fossil fuel sources, oil and coal, is skyrocketing, and already at the limits of what poor and working Americans can afford...

...For the strength of the present anti-nuclear movement to be transferred to the next stage of the struggle, the larger issues must be raised and an alternative strategy emphasized within the movement now...

...One strategy should be to make production of nuclear weapons a local issue...

...While attention to other sources of power was helpful, it was not critical...

...How can Reagan renew the breeder reactor subsidy without seeming to renege on his pledge to cut domestic spending...

...The projection of a thousand reactors by the year 2000 has been reduced to fewer than 200, and recent trends indicate that such a scaled-down forecast is still high...

...Direct anti-nuclear efforts must also be maintained to counter strong pro-nuclear efforts and to remove a major obstacle to the adoption of the soft-energy path...

...The American anti-weapons movement should also consider organizing around the local targets of a limited nuclear war...

...One of the new technologies the Department will be investigating is—you guessed it—the breeder reactor...

...The forecast of a thousand plants by the year 2000 promised a glowing future for the nation...

...And the members of a New Hampshire utility co-op are fighting its promise to buy 2 per cent of Seabrook...

...The struggle will not end with the end of nuclear power...

...Portland, and Franklin County have found, the choice between the hard- and softenergy paths is not technical, but political...

...Baker did just that, and now that he is also Senate majority leader, the future of the project looks promising...

...while the equally serious Fermi reactor accident in 1966 passed virtually unnoticed, by 1979 nuclear power had been made such a public issue that the nation's attention was riveted on Three Mile Island for days and strong ripple effects continue almost two years later...

...And the choice between them will be made not according to which path makes most sense in the long run, but which has the political power to win...

...The shift from a national to a local focus against nuclear weapons must be accompanied by a corresponding shift in organizational styles, again following the lead of the anti-nuclear power movement...

...The economic hazards of going nuclear have become big news in the important journals of commerce...

...Since Three Mile Island, the issue of safety has acquired new prominence, badly tarnishing the industry's reputation as a clean, safe energy source...

...A second lesson to be learned from the anti-nuclear power movement is to focus more on alternatives to nuclear weapons and less on the generalized danger of world holocaust...

...If the Department has its way, billions of dollars will be spent in developing a new means of producing plutonium...

...If Continued direct efforts to stop nuclear power...

...while these nonrenewable energy sources are limited and running out, Americans consume 30 per cent of the world's annual production of oil, 40 per cent of its coal, and 60 per cent of its natural gas—even though they are only 5 per cent of the world's population...

...It would demand larger generating plants (which would cost more and, therefore, yield more utility profits), and it would produce more electricity than anything engineers had previously dreamed possible—a classic example of bigger and better...

...11 The evolution of the movement from a narrow "anti-nuke" to a broader "people's energy" focus...

...f Continue Direct Efforts to End Nuclear Power...

...Springfield, Illinois...

...As reported in Nuclear Engineering International, Drs...

...Critical to the new strategy, therefore, is this reality that most Americans would favor ending nuclear power if they saw a readily available, acceptable substitute...

...the more we use now, the less is available for non-Americans and for our future generations...

...But the first major test of the Reagan nuclear policy will come, his advisers say, when Congress takes up the fiscal 1982 budget request...

...its resultant soaring inflation and loss of jobs, rather than spending to meet real human needs...

...As energy adviser (W...

...For three years there has been a de facto moratorium on new reactor orders, while scores of old orders have been cancelled...

...Statewide moratoria have opposed nuclear plants in some states, and public opinion is running 2-to-l anti-nuclear in most areas adjacent to reactor sites...

...Uranium mining is running into stiff local resistance all over: Vermont rejected the mining of its rich newly discovered uranium deposits, and such mining has been banned in the Canadian province of British Columbia...

...If Capture State Public Utility Commissions through Nonviolent Action Campaigns...

...When the movement was a minority opposition, site occupations worked well in making nuclear power a public issue, educating and winning over public opinion, and building the strength of the movement...

...The seventy-two presently operating reactors are dangerous and expensive, and each passing day brings almost 100 more reactors closer to operation...

...It is shot through with poor design features, and to finish it will cost a tremendous amount of money...

...Yet the doubts about nuclear power grew as new information kept coming in on low-level radiation, accidents and near-accidents, problems with waste storage and mill tailings, rising costs, cost over-runs, and rate increases...

...The conditions for successful mass occupation—a local populace totally aroused and united in opposition—existed in the original action in Whyl, Germany, in 1975, but have not been present anywhere else since (though such an action might be possible if an attempt were made to start up Three Mile Island...

...The prestigious Nuclear Engineering International did not mince words: "Ronald Reagan's victory in the November 4 U.S...

...unnecessarily unfair to future generations, which must contend with its radioactive leftovers for thousands of years...

...While alternatives to the war system will not be simply accomplished, working within a larger framework is bound to increase the effectiveness of the movement...

...Built with passive solar design, new housing developments within Davis now require only half the energy of comparable housing elsewhere, and one development, Village Homes, is using 60 to 75 per cent less than the norm...

...Rural areas as well are finding it practical to move toward decentralization and energy self-sufficiency...

...Reagan and the Republicans promised to turn the motor on...

...The hard-energy method of production in giant, centralized electrical generating plants—with oil, coal, shale oil, syn-fuels, satellite solar—is also needlessly expensive, dangerous, unjust, undemocratic, and limiting...

...Perhaps we can learn a lesson from ancient China...

...There is little doubt, the industry believes, that he means to try...

...There is a difference between the public being against nuclear power and being willing to demand its end...

...Even the nuclear utilities say that they wouldn't start planning new reactors under present conditions...

...There are seventy-two reactors operating and another ninety either waiting for an operating license, under construction, or planned...

...Davis, California, was perhaps the first town to lead the way, adopting in 1075 the goal of reducing its total energy consumption by 50 per cent in ten years...

...And now, when the movement is full of enthusiasm and forward momentum, is the ideal time to take on that challenge...

...And, while giving lip service to the need for breeder research, he scaled back Federal support for the problem-plagued Clinch River breeder demonstration project near Oak Ridge, Tennessee...

...The energy decisions are made by a few people running giant corporations for the benefit of rich stockholders (usually including themselves and local banks), often to the disadvantage of the virtually powerless citizen-customers...

...The demand for electricity has tapered off considerably from previous projections, dropping from an annual increase of 7 per cent to about 1 per cent—and this could drop even further...

...Also, for the minor victories along the way to be empowering and have substantial spill-over effects for different groups, those groups must participate in the process...

...The anti-nuclear movement cannot claim real victory if reactors are shut down only to be replaced by such technology...

...The mainstream replacements, however, exhibit most of these problems as well...

...If we can grasp the opportunity and use the situation as a lever to move the whole society forward, the crisis will have served us well...

...could be in serious jeopardy," The Journal reported in January...

...The availability of money for investment in nuclear power is also under attack...

...She wrote "Incident at Zion" in the September 1980 issue...

...After Reagan's election, Freeman publicly reversed his opposition to the breeder...

...The combination of big oil corporation muscle, OPEC unity, and the inevitable strains on an economy based on ever increasing production rather than the meeting of social needs—this combination of events which we called the energy crisis—has brought with it a major shift in prices, energy growth rates, and forecasts for the future...

...The occupation of the Seabrook reactor site in the spring of 1977, inspired by site occupations in Europe, provided a turning point...

...The struggle must continue, but "no nukes" is not enough...

...The ease with which James Schlesinger moved from the Atomic Energy Commission to the Pentagon and back to the Department of Energy symbolizes the in-terchangeability of personnel within the nuclear establishment...

...The careful preparation, the drama, the bringing together of old anti-war activists, environmentalists, and a new generation of young people, offered a model of engagement and a focal point for concerned action...

...Nuclear weapons, on the other hand, seem more remote: Key policy decisions are made nationally, and the local impact of the weapons is not as easily recognized...

...This model, in which a soft-energy plan is developed and implemented with high citizen involvement, has been widely disseminated and adopted by other cities and towns, including Ann Arbor, Michigan...

...A. Bukhofer and D. Okrent said the probability of core meltdown accidents in light water reactors of modern design is higher than that given in the Federal analysis of earlier reactor designs...

...As with nuclear power, Government support of fossil fuel energy development helps keep funds from the study of other possibilities...

...Local laws have been passed opposing the transportation of nuclear materials...

...It is now time to shift the major target of demonstrations away from the sites...

...Not only towns but small cities have since taken on similar campaigns...

...If De-emphasize Actions at Nuclear Power Sites...

...Last fall at a conference of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Stockholm, two leading scientists presented papers disputing safety probability calculations in a reactor safety study by the Federal Government...

...While the steeply rising oil prices forced by corporations and monopoly oil nations are largely unnecessary in the present, the underlying reality of rapidly dwindling world oil reserves will cause real scarcity in the future...

...A consortium of thirty municipal utilities in western Massachusetts towns reduced their promised investment in Seabrook by 60 per cent following a citizens' campaign...

...This new strategy should include: 11 The development of citizens' soft-energy movements...

...P.H...

...For the past century, we have followed the hard-energy path of ever more electricity produced by ever larger generating plants...

...Even most opponents of nuclear power have talked about a switch to other hard-energy sources...

...That next step, logical as it may be, goes counter to the deeply entrenched American tradition that more is better and biggest is best...

...It has amassed a formidable lobby of scientists, engineers, technicians, managers, bureaucrats—and has acquired special significance as a symbol of the Government's commitment to nuclear power's long-range future...

...The two paths are incompatible...

...The movement should take the following steps: 1f Develop Local Soft-Energy Paths...

...to have the PUC adopt a soft-energy path as its guiding framework...

...public issue for education and debate, and to provide a focus for the development of a powerful opposition movement...

...The tremendous push for Government-subsidized research in shale oil and coal gasification is another...

...The political, military, and business interests which constitute the "nuclear establishment" control both programs...

...A choice does have to be made...

...Until now, the hard-energy path has dominated the decision-making process...

...But even if the present Clinch River design is abandoned, Baker and the other Oak Ridge lobbyists doubtless would have the clout to keep the project in Tennessee...

...Although little progress in making the shift has been seen at the national political level, where pro-growth corporate influence dominates, at the local level the soft-energy path has taken A strategy for the 1980s To end nuclear power and achieve an acceptable energy future, the anti-nuclear energy movement should expand into a people's energy movement, in which a broad range of citizens organize to take charge of the energy sector of their lives...

...But after decades of unbridled growth, hard energy has run up against economic, environmental, natural, and political barriers...

...As nuclear power is being successfully challenged, a new social and political struggle about its replacement is already emerging...

...across the country...

...Faced with these bleak reports of nuclear power on the skids, the nuclear industry is hoping that Ronald Reagan will straighten things out...

...These are the pivotal years...

...Increasing electrical production levels, combined with the efficiencies of larger generating plants fueled by cheap coal, oil, and gas, reduced the unit cost of electricity, making each kilowatt hour of electricity cheaper...

...But because the fuel for a breeder-based nuclear industry would be plutonium—a basic ingredient of atomic bombs—Carter blew the whistle on what had been a long-range Federal policy of massive support for breeder reactor research and development, and for reprocessing of the industry's spent fuel to recover plutonium for a future breeder program...

...He successfully opposed the start-up Of the industry's only commercial reprocessing plant, at Barnwell, South Carolina...

...Consequently, more than twenty nations with nuclear energy facilities could produce nuclear weapons if they chose...

...The main goal of the PUC direct-action campaign would be to make the PUC serve the interests of the people rather than the energy industry...

...A powerful grass-roots network of opposition had spread across the nation and comparable movements were flourishing overseas...

...Clayton, New Mexico, and Crystal City, Texas...

...William Moyer is an author and activist in the Philadelphia Movement for a New Society...

...intensely undemocratic, with the general public virtually powerless in the industry's decisions...

...Thomas B. Cochran, a physicist with the Natural Resources Defense Council, explained the thinking behind this view: "Some of Reagan's advisers, principally those with an eye toward cutting the Federal budget, see dumping Clinch River and starting a bigger breeder project as a way to maintain a strong, visible breeder program in the United States while at the same time spending less money in the first few years than it would cost now to finish Clinch River...

...They believe that without nuclear energy we would be faced with cold winters, blackouts in summer, job losses, and a weakened nation dependent on the oil of hostile Arab nations to meet our energy needs...

...The cost overruns, high cost of money, and shortness of available money for capital investment have combined to make nuclear energy too expensive for most utilities, and investors have been cautious about risking much investment in nuclear reactors...

...We need to begin thinking about the characteristics of a new energy system, one that would meet our essential energy needs, would contribute to our well-being, and would jeopardize neither our habitat nor the lives of future generations...

...Ken Winkleblack of the utility industry's Electric Power Research Institute at Palo Alto, California, agrees there can be no stopping Clinch River now: "Clinch River has been a disaster...

...When the anti-nuclear position was a weird opinion on the fringes of American society, a singular "no nukes" strategy was enough to make nuclear energy a Can Reagan revive nuclear power...

...Franklin County, the poorest county in Massachusetts, after projecting its current trends into the future, found that, by the 1990s, well over half of people's income would be required to pay for their energy...

...Without such direct targets, local organizers must work harder to clarify the economic and political connections, the correlation between high military spending, fewer jobs, and less attention to human and social needs...

...One bill that Reaganite members of Congress hope to push through would cut nuclear power plant construction time by "simplifying" regulatory procedures...

...As the anti-nuclear energy movement has begun speaking to the whole energy system, so the anti-nuclear weapons movement must begin speaking to the whole war system...

...It must switoh from a fringe strategy to a majority strategy, from mere protest to successful resolution...

...its advocates and beneficiaries are the leaders of the nation's corporate and political power structure— the utility, energy, and banking industries, acting in concert with the two political parties, the military establishment, and the Federal Government...

...New state energy plans across the country are explicitly excluding nuclear power beyond those reactors already under construction...

...Public power, on the other hand, is in business to serve people, it is organized at the local level of municipality or county rather than IOU areas, and it is ultimately controlled by its customers...

...While other countries, notably France and the Soviet Union, forged ahead with breeder development, Carter dragged his heels for four years, citing the danger of plutonium proliferation...

...The Department of Energy recently made a projection of 400 reactors by the year 2000 and is pouring funding into the implementation of that goal...

...If De-emphasis of actions at nuclear sites...

...In contrast, the soft-energy path would meet the human needs of the people in this country while transferring energy planning and decision-making into their hands...

...During the 1970s there began a significant, though still unacknowledged, shift in energy sensibilities from a hard-energy path of maximum growth by ever-bigger generating plants using nonrenewable fuels, such as oil, coal, synfuels, gas, and uranium, toward a soft-energy path emphasizing energy conservation and efficiency, local control, and increased reliance on decentralized, renewable sources of energy such as solar, wood, wind, water, and methane...

...The shift in strategic emphasis is a direct result of the movement's success...

...Although a majority of Americans now oppose it, many buy the line that there is no acceptable alternative...

...andW.M...

...Though still quite small and unnoticed through the mid-1970s, nuclear opposition grew quietly and steadily over the years...

...We can't afford to commit hundreds of billions of dollars to nuclear power while also financing the development of appropriate technologies and conservation efforts of the soft-energy path...

...The primary target for nonviolent direct action can now shift from nuclear plant sites to state public utility commissions...

...The symbolic importance of Clinch River will assure its completion, as a necessary sign of encouragement to the industry, even though a breeder won't be needed before the year 2000, says W. Kenneth Davis, a senior executive of Bechtel Power Corporation and a Reagan energy policy adviser...

...In addition, instead of the present reliance on outside nuclear power and oil, energy needs would be met by local renewable resources, so that energy jobs and income would stay in the county...

...The Vermont Public Service Board's 1979 ruling that stockholders, not customers, were responsible for investment failures caused two utilities to drop their promised investments in the Seabrook reactor...

...Now the industry is looking to Ronald Reagan for relief—and he's looking for a way to oblige...

...The 1980 Republican platform pledged support for reprocessing and the breeder reactor, and Reagan's Energy Secretary, James Edwards, reiterated that promise in Senate testimony...

...Except for the PUC campaign focus, all these directions are being tried in various ways by anti-nuclear groups Pamela Haines is a free-lance writer and adult education teacher in Philadelphia...

...The industry publication summarized the scientists' conclusions: "If, as anticipated, there are some 300 light water reactors operating in the world by 1985, the chance of core meltdown somewhere in the world before 1990 is about one in five unless some substantial improvement in light water reactor safety can be made...

...More than $1 billion already has been poured into the Clinch River project over the past fifteen years...

...The anti-nuclear movement's success has been astounding...

...The anti-nuclear energy movement is also beginning to focus on nuclear financing and people's pocketbook issues...

...11 Advocacy of local public power and electric cooperatives...