Why the nuclear industry keeps losing

Five days earlier, the House had passed a new version of the Price-Anderson Act by an impressive margin of 396-17; it was hailed by the nuclear industry as a "victory for the consumer," though for reasons given in this issue, it leaves me somewhat cold.

Yet these little successes cannot hide the big failures: the very word "nuclear" continues to evoke fear; no utility will now take on the hassle of building a nuclear plant; no state wants to be the site of a nuclear waste depository; and no new domestic orders are in sight.

The reason for this is not just Ralph Nader's mendacious and superstition-laden propaganda, but that the nuclear industry is, in one critical aspect, aping him. That coal and other fossils are far more detrimental to public health and environment is known all too well to Kendall and Nader (though probably not to Jane Fonda or Congressman Gephardt); but for understandable reasons, they conceal this demonstrable fact. However, the nuclear industry conceals it too, for it does not want to offend its most important customers, the electric utilities. The reason is different; the cover-up the same.

To point out the morality of saving lives by introducing a safer power source, according to the nuclear flaks, would "play up one energy industry against another;" for flaks are never short of rationalizations.

But instead of talking simple morality to the people, the industry builds lobbies to talk to politicians. It had expected much from Howard Baker, erstwhile nuclear advocate (when it got him Oak Ridge votes), now White House chief of staff. They were, of course, disappointed. But even if Baker were an honest man (rather than a power merchant who made a career as in-quisitor in an earlier wave of congressional lynch mobs), he should not be involved in the issue. If nuclear power is neither artificially obstructed nor left undefended by its supposed guar-dians, it will stand on its own merits and does not need to be imposed by politicians from above.

But until then, literally hundreds of thousands of lives will be lost to coal and other fossils. And when nuclear power finally wins, as win it must, it will have won not because of the nuclear industry, but in spite of it.