In cooling down the failed reactor at Three Mile Island, experts from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) had to assess somberly the risks of every feasible step, weigh them against the dangers of waiting too long, and act only after satisfying themselves that they had a reasonably clear idea of what to do. The same spirit ought to govern the public and its leaders in the intense debate about the future of nuclear power that is now beginning.
As at Harrisburg, hasty judgments, formed in response either to panic or to glib reassurances that nothing much was amiss, could lock the nation into a misguided energy policy damaging to the health, welfare and productive strength of the U.S.
In the early stages of the debate, some tough questions have to be answered with an honest "nobody knows." But even before the final explanations are in on just what went wrong at Three Mile Island, it is possible to state two principles to guide future energy policy:
1) The U.S. needs nuclear power.
2) Nonetheless, the nation should reconsider just how much is required and how to get it with maximum safety.
The nature of the need should be clarified first. Fissioning atoms cannot drive cars or heat homes or melt steel, though that may become possible in some distant future. Nuclear power today can be used only to generate electricity. Last year, nuclear plants produced 12.5% of the nation's electricity, or something less than 4% of its total energy. Utilities have cut back sharply on their once ambitious plans for nuclear expansion because of rocketing costs of plant construction, regulatory and legal delays, and uncertainty about how rapidly demand for electricity will grow. President Nixon's energy planners foresaw atomic plants supplying 40% of all U.S. electricity by the year 2000. Jimmy Carter's strategists can see no more than 25% (or less than 8% of total energy consumption), and there is much doubt that even that goal can be met. Thus the fastest increase in nuclear power that realistically can be expected would come nowhere near freeing the U.S. of its dangerous reliance on foreign oil.
But nuclear power's role cannot be eliminated without dire consequences. In some areas—New England, around Chicago, parts of the Southeast—atomic plants supply about half of all electricity. Shutting them would lead to blackouts and brownouts that would gravely threaten public health and safety. Electricity bills would soar, cruelly pinching low-income homeowners, as utilities were compelled to turn to higher-cost sources of energy. Some power companies would be forced to buy still more foreign oil at prices of up to $20 a barrel, fanning inflation, weakening the dollar and tying the U.S. energy future yet more tightly to the explosive politics of the Middle East. M.I.T. Physicist Henry Kendall, a leader of the antinuclear Union of Concerned Scientists, readily concedes: "If we throw the switch and shut down all the nuclear plants next Thursday, that would represent a traumatic situation that could not be dealt with by the country."