DOWN BUT NOT OUT
Wasserman, Harvey
Shut Down But Not Out The shrinking half-life of the 'peaceful atom' BY HARVEY WASSERMAN Twelve years ago, in August 1976, the first occupiers were arrested at the Seabrook nuclear power plant...
...Seabrook is the largest construction project in New England history...
...In August 1976, at the first peaceful protest against the Seabrook plant by members of the antinuclear Clamshell Alliance, eighteen demonstrators were arrested at the site...
...eventually, as many as a dozen reactors would provide its leverage...
...Cuomo has been pushed to the limit by some angry, powerful, and very well-organized groups," says Grossman...
...The utility's dream was to become a regional power broker...
...At this point, the best the industry can hope for by 2000 is 120 plants...
...Last year, for example, Cleveland Electric Illuminating slipped its Perry reactor into operation despite a tardy attempt by Ohio Governor Richard Celeste to block an evacuation plan...
...Seabrook, like Shoreham, poses insurmountable difficulties to anyone attempting to draw up an evacuation scheme for use in the event of nuclear catastrophe...
...But last year, LILCO insisted on conducting a 5 per cent radioactive test run, and that made it impossible to do anything with the plant but dismantle and bury it...
...That third confrontation turned out to be instrumental in making atomic energy a global issue...
...But it also shielded LILCO from the demands of those who wanted the utility itself dismantled and taken over by the state, and who were pressing for prosecution of LILCO executives...
...What makes Seabrook notable is the power of the opposition that mobilized against it...
...But though the high hopes once held out for the "peaceful atom" have been dashed, the industry is not yet dead...
...In June, agreement was reached for the state to buy the Shoreham plant for $1, while allowing LILCO to institute substantial rate increases and reap significant tax benefits...
...And on April 30, 1977, 1,414 demonstrators were seized at the third Clamshell occupation—though the protest continued to be remarkably free of violence...
...So long as even one nuclear plant remains on line, the risk remains: At any moment, a lethal cloud could rise and begin taking its toll...
...James K. Asselstine, a former member of the U.S...
...A highly publicized two-week standoff ended in surrender by the state...
...And the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has been licensing new reactors as rapidly as they can be pushed through the pipeline...
...However, on June 7, while Shoreham and Seabrook were inching toward the scrap heap, a referendum to retire California's Rancho Seco reactor, near Sacramento, was defeated by a margin of less than 2 per cent...
...But evacuation planning is a problem for any nuclear facility: Ohio's Perry plant, for instance, is hemmed in by Lake Erie to the north and by inadequate highway transportation to the south...
...There have been two global-scale nuclear accidents, one at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania, the other at Chernobyl in the Soviet Ukraine...
...This spring, opponents of nuclear power were able to claim two huge victories, one at Seabrook and the other at the Shoreham plant on New York's Long Island...
...Texas's Comanche Peak is near Dallas/Fort Worth...
...It was the only provision in the law that gave the states a say in licensing nuclear facilities...
...When the Long Island Lighting Company (LILCO) applied for its construction permit in May 1968, it said the Shoreham plant would cost about $70 million and go on line in 1974...
...The last order for a new nuclear plant that has actually gone into construction was placed in 1974—the same year in which Richard Nixon predicted that 1,000 commercial reactors would be operating in the United States by the year 2000...
...Since then, thousands more have been arrested at nuclear reactor sites all over the world...
...If the Administration effort succeeds, it might conceivably still be rescued by new investors, but that seems improbable—especially after the Shoreham debacle...
...LILCO was simply never able to persuade Governor Mario Cuomo that there was a safe and effective way to move hundreds of thousands of Long Islanders out of the path of the radioactive cloud that might rise some day from Shoreham...
...The fate of the Seabrook and Shoreham plants, long in balance, has been sealed...
...Those are unacceptable odds, and even the comforting victories at Shoreham and Seabrook will not diminish them...
...Just over 100 reactors are now licensed to operate in the United States, with another two dozen or so on the way to possible completion...
...It is, rather, whether another disaster will occur before alternatives can be brought on line and the last reactor shut down and entombed...
...But it was a setback nonetheless, and it means Rancho Seco—a clone of Three Mile Island-will remain in operation at least until 1990, when another referendum may be held...
...Without such a plan, no operating license could be granted—a precaution enacted by Congress after the accident at Three Mile Island...
...Its survival came to hinge on how swiftly the plant could be put into service—and into the rate base...
...As demonstrators were hauled off by police under the eyes and cameras of international news media, New Hampshire Governor Meldrim Thomson Jr...
...Without CWIP, the company was driven to the brink of bankruptcy...
...Nuclear Regulatory Commission, estimates that the chances are one in two that a Chernobyl-sized accident will occur at an American commercial reactor within the next twenty years...
...Celeste had previously given his approval, but an earthquake rocked the site in January 1986, cracking pipes and concrete and destroying area roads and bridges...
...Now these actions and reactions have Harvey Wasserman, an early organizer of the Clamshell Alliance, is co-author of "Killing Our Own: The Disaster of America's Experience with Atomic Radiation...
...At the same time, about a trillion dollars has been squandered on construction of atomic energy plants, and another trillion or so may be spent on attempts to dispose of nuclear waste...
...Shut Down But Not Out The shrinking half-life of the 'peaceful atom' BY HARVEY WASSERMAN Twelve years ago, in August 1976, the first occupiers were arrested at the Seabrook nuclear power plant in New Hampshire...
...Most refused, and more than 1,000 wound up being held in National Guard armories...
...Still, fewer and fewer plants are on line...
...The attempt backfired, but it will cost Long Island ratepayers and taxpayers millions of dollars...
...Or, to put a finer point on it, Long Islanders persuaded Cuomo that allowing LILCO to proceed would spell the end of his political career...
...demanded that those arrested be required to post $ 100 bail...
...How many of those can be stopped remains to be seen, but there have been some close calls...
...The buyout appeased the majority of Long Islanders—more than 70 per cent, according to opinion surveys—who wanted the reactor dismantled...
...reached critical mass...
...This spring, the Massachusetts Municipal Wholesale Electric Cooperative, an umbrella organization for thirty-four Bay State power companies, suspended its financial support for Seabrook, and some analysts viewed this decision as the final nail in the reactor's coffin...
...Together, they represent almost $ 11 billion in invested capital—more than enough to have pushed Long Island and New England a long way toward development of an economy based on solar power...
...The question is no longer how large a role nuclear power will play in the energy mix of the Twenty-first Century...
...Under intense grass-roots pressure—the kind of pressure that persuaded Dukakis and Cuomo to block Seabrook and Shoreham—Celeste attempted to withdraw his approval, but his challenge came too late...
...All signs point to the likelihood that the 350 commercial reactors operating around the world are becoming more dangerous...
...Conversion to coal was once an option for the Shoreham plant...
...In terms of sheer size, Seabrook and Shoreham are gigantic undertakings...
...Earlier in the spring, nuclear opponents lost their third referendum attempt to shut down the Maine Yankee plant at Wiscas-set...
...Today, the rusty dome of its unfinished Unit Two stands like a huge, abandoned jalopy next to the gleaming white—but equally dormant—dome of Unit One...
...The idle Shoreham plant looms against a background of sea, sand, and scrub...
...Karl Grossman, the author of Power Crazy, an account of the controversy that has surrounded the Shoreham reactor, has called the radioactive test "an attempt to blackmail Long Island int6 opening the plant...
...The Shoreham plant succumbed, after a long and bitter struggle, to the utility's failure to formulate an evacuation plan that The likely demise of Shoreham and Seabrook must be counted as a major victory for grass-roots organizing...
...Concern about the hazards posed by "the peaceful atom" has been instrumental in building political movements and in toppling governments...
...In the years that followed, Seabrook's opponents managed to block the billing practice known as Construction Work in Progress (CWIP), which would have permitted the Public Service Company of New Hampshire to charge consumers for the nuclear plant before it began producing power...
...would satisfy the State of New York...
...The increasingly likely demise of these two plants, which have come to symbolize the status and future of nuclear power, must be counted a major victory for grass-roots organizing...
...Technically, the plant has not yet been canceled, and the Reagan Administration is pushing hard for changes in licensing procedures that would allow Seabrook to operate...
...Three weeks later, the second Clamshell occupation brought 180 arrests...
...Though 100 reactors are in operation in the United States—and 350 worldwide—the prospects for nuclear power have changed dramatically...
...His first book, "Harvey Wasserman's History of the United States," will be reissued this fall by 4 Walls 8 Windows Press...
...Governor Michael Dukakis of neighboring Massachusetts has blocked Seabrook evacuation plans...
...It was a heartbreakingly close outcome for a contest in which nuclear opponents had been outspent, as usual, by a ratio of ten to one...
...That was why Dukakis's refusal to sign off on evacuation doomed the utility...
...Ohio's Zimmer plant, which was canceled in 1984 when it was 97 per cent complete, cost only $1.7 billion and is now being converted to produce energy from coal...
...It got to the point where allowing the plant to go on line became simply unthinkable...
...California's Diablo Canyon is in a prime earthquake zone...
...So far, the cost overrun for the first— and last—stage of that scheme stands at more than $5.2 billion...
Vol. 52 • August 1988 • No. 8
