Mad Science: The Nuclear Power Experiment

by Joseph Mangano

  The impasse posed by high level waste goes on. There are no real answers. And yet, the nuclear industry continues to produce these highly toxic chemicals, with government permission.

  The information about nuclear reactors in the early years of the atomic era originated largely from industry and government. Both parties had vested interests in the success of the US nuclear power program; industry was in it to make profits, and government was in it to soften the public dread of nuclear war. These interests certainly influenced the kinds of information – and how this information was presented – to the public, to investors, to manufacturers, and to other parties.

  Initially, the platitudes helped many people fall in love with nuclear power. Eisenhower’s “Atoms for Peace” speech in December 1953 at the UN was strongly received by all. The Congress passed the Atomic Energy Act, almost immediately and almost without dissent. Tax subsidies were granted to nuclear utilities, which scrambled to develop atomic power programs. Articles were written about the benefits of the peaceful atom, scientists became interested, and academia joined in the effort to make a better world through nuclear energy.

  Problems arose almost immediately, and this is when the culture of secrecy, deception, and lying began. The year 1957 was a key year. The WASH-740 report, issued by Brookhaven National Laboratory, calculated that a meltdown at a nuclear power plant would cause thousands of casualties from radiation poisoning and cancer. At the same time, utilities could not find any insurance company that would write a policy covering losses after a meltdown. The Price-Anderson Act in late 1957 covered the insurance problem, and the Brookhaven report was either ignored or contested. As the year 1957 ended, the Shippingport reactor near Pittsburgh opened, to great cheers from across the nation – typically leaving out the fact that the reactor had been planned and built with government money. Thus, the culture of covering up nuclear power’s blemishes was born.

  The cover-up continued by ignoring the meltdowns at the Experimental Breeder Reactor in Idaho and the Santa Susana Field Laboratory in Southern California. These were federally funded projects, but government officials did not release complete information to the public – even to nuclear plant workers and local residents who may have been harmed. Upbeat reports by the AEC that the atomic research program was proceeding well were not challenged by Congress or by independent analysts. The Cold War was at its height, and any who challenged such an important government program would automatically be faced with accusations of being un-American or even a Communist sympathizer. The nuclear program continued to have a free pass and an enormous lack of accountability, even though public funds were used to build it.

  Challenges finally began to emerge in the 1960s, a time when the Cold War had reached its depths and public fears had reached new highs, and when a new culture that endorsed the challenging of authority emerged. People were confronting the government’s Vietnam War policy, and demanding changes. In the South, blacks stood up to the Jim Crow laws that had long deprived them of equal rights. And people demanded an end to the military practice of exploding nuclear weapons with huge amounts of fallout into the atmosphere – and succeeded when President Kennedy and Premier Khrushchev signed the 1963 Partial Test Ban Treaty. Backers of nuclear power had lost their ability to simply proclaim that reactors were a clean and inexpensive way to solve America’s energy problems. Their slogans were now being challenged and under much greater scrutiny.

  Even though the American nuclear honeymoon had ended, and was replaced by a contentious battle, those in government and industry who initially promoted the technology did not change their public pronouncements. Progress was replaced by decline in the 1970s, but authorities bravely kept up their efforts to promote nukes. In 1974, as new orders for reactors tumbled and the cancellations of existing orders skyrocketed, the AEC still bravely predicted that by the year 2000, the US would have 1,200 reactors producing much of its electricity.

  American nuclear power supporters’ delusions reached a new height in 1979, when the unthinkable happened. A large, new nuclear reactor at the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania experienced a meltdown of more than half its core due to basic human errors. The reactor was permanently damaged, radiation was released, and operators barely avoided a much more devastating result. Still, the nuclear hierarchy stood fast on their belief that Three Mile Island was no big deal. Even today, the phrase “nobody died at Three Mile Island” is heard. In a strong spin, the increased regulations imposed on utilities following the meltdown indicated a “success” – that Three Mile Island operators did a fine job in not allowing a full, catastrophic meltdown. Finally, in the first twelve years after Three Mile Island, numerous scientific articles examining the psychological impact of the meltdown were published, a time when not a single study of local cancer rates appeared in journals. (Subsequent scientific studies found elevated local levels of lung cancer, leukemia, thyroid cancer, and infant mortality.)

  The delusion that nuclear power was safe reached even greater heights after the 1986 total core meltdown at Chernobyl. Officials blamed the disaster on inferior Soviet reactor design, although it was human error that caused it. For years, national and international authorities claimed that the death toll from Chernobyl included only thirty-one liquidators who were exposed to very high radiation doses as they controlled the fire. Even while scientific studies showing a far greater casualty list piled up, the number thirty-one was used again and again. The Chernobyl fallout that reached the US food and water supplies was dismissed as harmless.

  In addition to minimizing the harm caused by meltdowns, the pro-nuclear faction was proclaiming that routine releases from US reactors were harmless. In the 1980s, some scientific research studies (most from foreign nations) found unexpectedly high levels of cancer near nuclear plants, especially in children, who are far vulnerable than adults to radiation’s harmful effects. Few US academic researchers touched this topic, fearing that incurring the wrath of the federal government would harm them professionally. Some, like John Gofman and Thomas Mancuso, defied the hierarchy by finding a link between radiation and cancer and going public with their findings – and promptly had their federal funds for research pulled. When forced to take action by Senator Edward Kennedy, the federal government produced a national study of cancer near reactors in 1990 – which remains the only such study in the nearly seventy years that US reactors have operated. This study, by the National Cancer Institute, concluded that there was no evidence that radiation emissions from reactors were linked with cancer. This conclusion is still quoted by the pro-nuclear priesthood, even though it is old.

  The culture of deceit about the benefits of nuclear power intensified after the late 1990s, as part of the so-called nuclear revival. Reactors were “green” energy, said some, since they did not emit greenhouse gases. But this pronouncement conveniently left out the fact that the fuel cycle of producing uranium and decommissioning closed plants used huge amounts of carbon-emitting gases. The term “emission-free energy” was often used – a deception that ignored the routine emissions of poisons that were arguably as toxic as those from coal or natural gas plants, and the use of huge amounts of greenhouse gases in the processes before and after nuclear plants operated.

  Costs of new reactors were a big issue, as they had been for decades, and the industry bravely asserted in the early 2000s that building a new reactor would “only” cost $2 to $3 billion. But by the end of the decade, even the highly pro-nuclear Energy Department estimated the tab to be $9 billion, with other estimates hovering between $10 and $15 billion. The costs of decommissioning, and health costs of potential meltdowns and persons harmed by routine emissions, were conveniently left out of the industry’s calculations. Safe alternative energy sources like wind and solar power were dismissed as being far too costly – even though these technologies had received far less federal largesse than nuclear power, and the cost per kilowatt hour decreased rapidly as more wind and solar units were built. Nuclear supporters t
ried to limit the choice of electric sources to nuclear and coal – even though there were many more less toxic and, in the long run, less expensive options.

  The nuclear revival was confronted with the obvious question – if nukes were so great, why had no new reactors been ordered since 1978? The typical response, that the fear created by meltdowns at Three Mile Island and later by Chernobyl had stopped leaders from supporting nuclear plants, was badly misleading. The truth was that well before March 28, 1979, the day Three Mile Island melted down, Wall Street lenders had stopped providing funds for nuclear projects. Many public protests had been held against nuclear power well before the Three Mile disaster. Also, utilities had largely given up on reactors as a growth industry by 1979, scrapping plans for new reactors and canceling projects already proposed. The truth was that Three Mile Island simply speeded up the inevitable.

  The nuclear revival also had to explain why existing reactors designed to operate only forty years should be kept in service up to sixty or eighty years. The response was to not explain fully, a policy embodied by NRC regulators, which only required utilities to show that existing parts could be maintained in the future. Utilities did not have to submit a “report card” on how the reactor operated during its first forty years, keeping this information largely hidden from the public.

  As the 2000s went on, and as the nuclear revival struggled to gain traction, it was hit with perhaps its greatest roadblock, the multiple meltdowns at Fukushima, Japan beginning in March 2011. While many wrote that Fukushima had doomed the nuclear revival, backers still refused to yield. People such as President Obama’s energy secretary Steven Chu declared that nuclear power still had to be part of the mix of future American energy. These pronouncements, made in the shadow of images of multiple explosions at Fukushima, along with thousands evacuating the local area, and workers looking like spacemen trying to control the disaster, may have been the greatest delusion in nuclear history.

  In summary, despite all of the industry and government support, all the manipulation of information and public opinion, and all of the fierce opposition against nuclear opponents, the US nuclear power program has been a failure, and will fade into obscurity in time.

  At the core of the triumph of forces opposed to nuclear power is an illustration of democracy in action. The US is a society founded by principles in which the majority of all the people, not just the privileged few, would be the basis of public policy. An informed population would have the right to make these decisions.

  The emergence of nuclear power was used as a soothing medicine to counter fears of a world destroyed by all-out nuclear war. But this antidote was never described truthfully to the American public. Instead, it was based on secrecy, distortion, and outright lies – largely using money from American taxpayers. The American people have a right to breathe clean air, drink clean water, and eat clean food – and at very least must be informed of any impurities. The rise of nuclear power, and its continued existence in the face of many facts countering the standard “cheap” and “clean” slogans, stands as an anomaly in a democratic society.

  But while the nuclear power program continues, the forces employing truths to educate the American public have affected public opinion and shaped public policy. The last formal order for a new reactor in the US occurred in 1978, and the last reactor order that wasn’t later cancelled took place in 1973. The AEC prediction of 1,200 operating nuclear reactors in the US never topped 112, and is now stuck at just 104. Twenty-three nuclear reactors have permanently closed in the past. One reactor (Oyster Creek in New Jersey) will close by 2019, and the futures of Vermont Yankee and Indian Point 1 and 2 in New York remain very much in doubt. Others surpassing forty years in existence may not last much longer. And building a single new reactor will either take years to complete or never occur.

  In the final analysis, the failing of nuclear power is a triumph for truth over non-truth, and a win for the majority will over a small number with vested interests. This process has taken a long, long time, from the initial concerns raised in the 1950s over safety and health risks, and will certainly take longer, probably decades. But there is an inevitable aspect to this process. There have been enormous costs and casualties to the American nuclear power gambit, in financial, human, and other terms. Sometimes, however, this has to occur before a change is made. Many well-meaning and informed people truly believed that nuclear power would be highly beneficial to American society. Many were willing to overlook some initial snafus, so that nukes would eventually live up to their promise.

  But as time passed, many initial supporters changed their opinion – not just Wall Street leaders losing money, government leaders losing votes, or media looking for a good story, but the rank-and-file Americans. They joined those who were initially skeptical about unleashing the atom on society in such huge amounts – for peaceful as well as military purposes. They educated themselves and expressed themselves repeatedly, in private and in public. They struggled against the mighty forces of industry and government unwilling to relinquish such a treasured project. And the tide turned, not quickly or smoothly, but over the long term.

  There are many Americans who have participated in rallies against nuclear power, read or viewed media stories about its shortcomings, written letters to newspapers, or simply held private beliefs that the facts show that nuclear power is far too dangerous and costly, and should be phased out of the US energy mix.

  Thus, in the spring of 2012, the US experiment with nuclear power should be considered a failure. The recent events in Japan are still being played out, with a final casualty count years away, but they may have permanently destroyed any remaining, flickering hope that this once-bright technology would meet its original expectations. Leaders of other nations, including Germany and Switzerland, have already stated plans to phase out nuclear power, and debates have taken place in other lands. The debate over nuclear power’s benefits and risks has been a long, costly, and sometimes angry one, but this technology will fade away in the United States during the early twenty-first century.

  Appendix: Disease and Death Rates Near Santa Susana Field Laboratory

  Studying the health consequences of living near a nuclear plant is a complex undertaking, which can take years to complete – with no guarantee that conclusive results will be found. Typically, a good study consists of two components: a dose and a response. The dose portion calculates the level and type of exposure to humans living near the plant, while the response portion typically involves disease and death rates. It is up to the researcher to examine whether or not patterns of dose and response suggest a cause-and-effect relationship.

  Epidemiology, the study of disease patterns in populations, uses several types of methods to examine consequences of a pollutant such as radiation exposure. One is a case-control study, which compares persons with and without a disease. In the case of nuclear plants, if the cases (persons with a disease like cancer) have higher levels of radiation exposure than the controls (healthy persons), it suggests that radiation is linked with higher cancer risk. Another is a longitudinal, or cohort study, which tracks over time populations exposed and not exposed (or less exposed) to a toxin such as radiation. If, over time, more cases of a disease like cancer occur in the exposed group, a cause-and-effect relationship is suggested.

  Even though case-control and cohort studies are professionally recognized by researchers, they present many obstacles to obtaining conclusive results. One such obstacle is resources, especially in cohort studies. It may take years to conduct such a study; one famous example is the Framingham study begun by federal researchers in 1948. Several thousand Framingham residents were selected, and tracked over time to understand risk factors for heart disease by documenting higher rates of disease in certain groups. This process took decades to conclusively identify risk factors such as lack of exercise, a high-fat diet, and smoking. The Framingham study is still ongoing, more than six decades after it began.

  Another proble
m specific to radiation studies is the “dose” component of the dose-response relationship. Calculating just how much radiation was taken up by humans is often a daunting, nearly impossible task. Measuring radiation levels in bodies is limited by the cumbersome processes of autopsies, biopsies, urine samples, blood samples, etc. Some types of radiation decay very quickly, and are not detectable for very long in the body. Estimates of doses can be made using wind patterns, diet, and other factors, but these are often not precise.

  Measuring the dose from radioactive emissions to persons living near the Santa Susana Field Laboratory is difficult. During the 1959 meltdown and at other times dozens of radioactive chemicals were emitted. Some remain at the site, and can be released in various ways (for example, during the 2005 forest fires that surged through the area). Local residents get some of their food from local sources (such as water from wells and municipal reservoirs), and much of the food is imported from distant regions. Some residents haven’t lived in the area very long but are migrants from other areas, while others are lifelong residents. These are just some of the dose-related problems facing the researcher; the list goes well beyond these.