If this were a sane and rational world, the first anniversary of the TMI incident on March 28, 1979, would be cause for gratification in spite of the 52 deaths traceable to it.
Those deaths are among the several well-kept TMI secrets; they were caused by the fossil-fired power substituting for the crippled TMI Unit 2.(*)
Another 52 died in producing the substitute power for TMI Unit 1--not because it is crippled, but because its license was revoked by NRC commissioners like Naderite lawyer Peter Bradford, catering to the hysteria fanned by the mass media and by all the better people who lecture us on how capitalism puts raw power over human lives.
But in a rational world, there would have been cause for celebration, too: Never before in the long history of human energy conversion has it happened that energy, in amounts vast enough to cause over $200 million damage, went out of control without taking a single life or even causing a single injury. No other kind of energy conversion has a multiple armor so secure and resilient that it will stand up to the ghastliest of all perils¾human incompetence.
But there is more. The Kemeny Commission, including obstinate nuclear foes, and with a mandate based on the presumption that the incident was a disaster, reached some conclusions so surprising to the mass media that they mostly censored them. "We conclude that in spite of serious damage to the plant, most of the radiation was contained and the actual release will have negligible effects on the health of individuals. The major health effect was found to be mental stress" (which was, of course, caused by the hysteria fanners, as well as the inept NRC team's fantasies about the hydrogen bubble exploding¾a physical impossibility). "Even if a meltdown [had] occurred," adds the Kemeny Report, "there is a high probability that the containment building ... would have been able to prevent the escape of large amounts of radioactivity."
For its own report, the NRC commissioned antinuclear radical M. Rogovin (ex-counsel to Common Cause and a Fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies), but he, too, failed to come up with anything more.** Perhaps the best kept secret is the report by the Kemeny Commission Staff, i.e., by the experts. As we go to press, their full report, strangely, remains available to nobody but a few privileged government libraries and public document rooms, though for $600 you can get a Xerox copy from Pergamon Press, a private publisher. However, the summary (stock no. 052-003-00728-2, $4.50 from GPO, Washington, DC 20401) confirms the technical conclusions with much more certainty; in particular, it states that even in a complete meltdown, the radioactivity would have been contained against steam explosion, overpressure or penetration of the foundation by the molten fuel. "The release of fission products would not be changed by a large factor over what actually ocurred at TMI-2."***
Alas, we do not live in a sane and rational world; and what this vindication of nuclear safety is being used for is to hound nuclear power out of existence. This is being done by a number of tactics, the most successful of which is to burden utilities with long lists of "safety" regulations involving major changes and delays that would bankrupt them, and when they are thus forced to cancel orders for new plants, to boast "You see? We told you nuclear power is uneconomical."
The utilities have neither the courage nor the capacity to stand up to this kind of government-supported, organized destruction. All they will do is reassert their sincerely held conviction that nuclear power is safe, clean, and economical, but that they cannot take the risk of "regulatory uncertainties"¾an understatement for prohibitive government harassment.
It will be up to the budding grassroot pro-energy movement to save nuclear power from the Naderite termites; for if the de-industrializers succeed in strangling America's safest, cleanest and most abundant domestic source of energy, they will have no difficulty in killing the less safe and imported sources; nor in making themselves the elite that can afford the luxury of small-scale energy sources as it keeps the common man in his place.
* The figure follows from the premature deaths caused annually in the US by burning coal, as derived by Brookhaven National Lab and quoted in the OTA's report The Direct Use of coal (1979), by prorating it for 72% of coal burned in power plants and for the 845 MW of TMI-2 out of 500,000 MW total US capacity.
** The Rogovin Report cost the taxpayer $3 million, of which $40,000 were paid for the actual write-up by a technically illiterate newspaperman who gave the chapters of this government document titles like The Pump is Bumped and My God, Who Is Watching the Store?
*** For details we again encourage readers to subscribe to the excellent NLAS Newsletter, Box 354, Murraysville, PA 15668; subscription fee: pledge to write 2 letters to your elected official per newsletter.
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Vol. 7, No. 8
Newsletter: Access to Energy Newsletter Archive Volume: Volume 7 Issue/No.: Vol. 7, No. 8 Date: April 01, 1980 03:23 PM Title: Anniversary of the Grand Disaster
Copyright © 2004 - Access to Energy Newsletter Archive
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