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The commission urges that the federal licenses for utilities to operate nuclear plants be periodically reviewed—and suspended if public hearings show that the plants have been running unsafely. Currently, they are licensed for their expected lifetime, generally 40 years, with no review at all. Explains Arizona Governor Bruce E. Babbitt, a commission member who supports nuclear power:
''We must find some way to drive out of the business the utility companies that prove to be incompetent.''
Also, the commission recommends that no new plants be placed near large population centers. NRC has stopped approving sites near metropolitan areas, though it has not specified any rigid distance requirements. Of the 100 U.S. sites where nuclear plants are operating or under construction, only ten are within ten miles of 100,000 or more residents.
These recommendations, even if adopted, will not by themselves assure a future for nuclear power. Long before the T.M.I, accident, that future was being gravely threatened by so many problems that construction of new reactors has come to a near standstill.
One reason is that the annual growth of demand for electricity has fallen to around 3%, from the steady 7% through the 1950s and '60s. Meanwhile, the time required to bring a reactor ''on line'' has stretched out to a dozen years after the start of construction. Reasons for the delays: public opposition, cumbersome regulatory and licensing procedures, and the fact that reactor designs have not been standardized; each plant is custom-built, and the NRC demands many design changes while it is being erected.
The delays run up the cost of building a reactor, as does the rocketing rise in interest rates on the money that utilities must borrow to build plants. One example: the estimated cost of Long Island Lighting Co.'s Shoreham, N.Y., plant has quintupled from $300 million to $1.5 bil lion during the ten years it has been under construction. Nuclear plants now operating produce electricity more cheaply than coal-fired power stations (1.50 per kw-h for nuclear in 1978, vs. 2.30 for coal), but the cost of finishing those now under construction will be so enormous that there is some question whether that competitive advantage can be maintained.
The waste-disposal problem is getting worse. Scientists cannot agree on the safest method of permanently burying nuclear garbage, some of which remains radioactive for thousands of years. At present, the most highly radioactive wastes, such as spent fuel rods, are stored under water in plant "swimming pools," but reactor operators are running out of pool space. Wastes that emit less radioactivity are placed in sealed containers and trucked to dump sites for burial. However, some of the containers have leaked, either underground or in transit, and dump sites have been closed in Hanford, Wash., and Beatty, Nev. This leaves only one dump in the entire country that still accepts nonmilitary atomic trash, and South Carolina Governor Richard Riley has closed that site, at Barnwell, to wastes brought in from out of state.