TO bolster free-world defenses, the Administration last week urged Congress to rewrite the Atomic Energy (MacMahon) Act to give U.S. allies more atomic-weapons information, more nuclear material. But to many U.S. businessmen, a stronger atomic defense is only one side of the coin. They want some equally drastic changes in the U.S. atomic-energy program to develop commercial power for use throughout the power-hungry world. While AEChairman Lewis L. Strauss maintains that the commercial program is clipping right along, experts in Congress and industry disagree; they insist that commercial nuclear power must be sped up, or else the U.S. will fall far behind other nations.
The main argument is over how much help the U.S. Government should give private industry. AEC's position is that nuclear power for peaceful purposes should be largely a private venture, with AEC supplying only limited funds. Originally, businessmen supported the idea, lest nuclear energy grow into a giant public-power program. Now their position has changed. Even the stoutest private-power men feel that the program needs a strong infusion of Government aid because commercial nuclear power is so new, so complex and so costly that private companies cannot carry the burden alone. Says President Newton I. Steers Jr., of the Atomic Development Mutual Fund, Inc. (assets: $45 million), a onetime AEC official and longtime private-power advocate: "There isn't a reactor manufacturer in the U.S. who doesn't favor Government assistance to get them over the hump."
The big hump is the fact that conventional U.S. power is so cheap—and nuclear power so expensive—that the U.S. itself has no pressing domestic need for a crash program. Thus, AEC orients its program toward the laboratory, has considered well over 100 different ways of producing nuclear power, and is concentrating on small experimental reactors to test the most likely methods. AEC hopes to foster an industry producing possibly 95 million kw. of nuclear power by 1980, or 25% of the estimated total power demands of the U.S. But U.S. industry is learning, to its sorrow, that there is a vast gulf between atomic power in the lab and in commercial quantities. Costs have shot up to the point where they discourage even the richest companies.
The one large nuclear power plant completed to date, the 60,000-kw. station built by Westinghouse Electric Corp. for AEC and the Duquesne Light Co. of Shippingport, Pa. (TIME, Nov. 25), is a major milestone for the U.S. —and a perfect example of the cost problem. Westinghouse's original cost estimate was $37.8 million. The plant will ultimately cost about $100 million. The Government paid 95% of the bill to get it operating; the power produced is so expensive that AEC also pays a heavy subsidy to make it marketable.
There is no such heavy Government aid for the sixteen privately sponsored plants, which comprise the bulk of the program. Builders are largely on their own, working under fixed-price contracts with risk of heavy losses. As a result, one small experimental plant is completed, only four are under construction. Two others have been contracted for, but negotiations with AEC for another five are poking along, and four more have been canceled.