6
Wednesday, August 20,1975
University Daily Kansan
Nuclear power pros and cons a hot topic. . .
From nage 2
Creek plant is small compared with other plants in the East, but it is growing.
A meeting in February in Topeka of groups from as far west as McPherson and as far south as Yates Center drew 45 persons. They met as a coalition to exchange information about the Wolf Creek plant's efforts to prohibit its construction.
The same kind of meeting in July in Baltimore twice as many people from a larger
The nuclear opponents, locally and worldwide, say there are problems with nuclear power, wherever it is applied, that nuclear reactors unacceptable option for providing energy.
BUT PEOPLE WHO favor nuclear power should be aware of the extreme options and, by extension, the risks involved.
According to the AEC's performance figures, the nuclear opponents say, for five years after a nuclear plant is fired up, it needs a breaking-in period to iron out bugs in the system, so it generates electricity at well under the plant's capacity.
And almost invariably, the two sets of charts, figures and expert testimony connect.
Both sides pile up charts, figures and expert testimony to make their points.
Production declines steadily from the sixth year, so that in the 12th year the plant must produce $40\%$ of its output.
THE PLANT REACHES peak capacity,
when it produces at 67 per cent of capacity,
wheref produces at 53 per cent of capacity.
They quote performance figures from the
competition, but you don't see them are an
average of figures from the competition.
Nuclear opponents say, for example, that clear plants don't work nearly so well at home.
But the utilities that want to build the Wolf Creek plant, the opponents say, base their cost and revenue figures on the assumption that plant will operate at 80 per cent of capacity.
The assumption of 80 per cent is clearly unrealistic, because the AEC figures indicate that the plant will never operate at its optimal capacity of 67 per cent, they say. The nuclear opponents fear that the plant won't produce as much electricity as the utilities expect, and that the resulting high cost for each unit of electricity will show up as higher electric bills.
BUT DON McPHEE, vice president of productions for Kansas City Power and Light Co. (KCPL), says the nuclear opponents are missing the AEC figures. The peak production figure of 67 per cent of capacity is based on an average of 40 plants.
Some of those plants were lemons, and they have pulled down the average McPhee薯.
A similar average taken for coal-fired plants would indicate that no company should build a coal plant, because the average would say that coal plants don't produce at a high enough percentage of electricity. In other words, cost McPhee says. But the average would be misleading, because a few coal-fired lemons would pull it down, he says.
The utilities think the Wolf Creek plant will operate at 75 per cent of capacity, which is a reasonable expectation based on the most history of existing plants, McPhee said.
THAT WAS BUT one example of the kind of statisticics engaged in by those who favor nuclear power and those who oppose it. There are countless other examples. Sometimes one side has the last say, and sometimes the other does.
Each side agrees that in the face of such a welter of conflicting information, a person's approval or disapproval of his actions would have whose figures he cares to believe. But having said that, neither side will concede that perhaps no one knows the correct figures. Each side disagrees.
The nuclear opponents raise their most disturbing object when they talk about the possibility of nuclear weapons.
Fission, the process by which uranium atoms are split to release energy in the core of a nuclear reactor, produces lots of heat. The fission reaction is kept in control partially by water circulating through the reactor core to keep the temperature down.
They sketch a grim scenario of a nuclear reactor gone wild, which could contaminate hundreds of square miles with radioactive particles and cause thousands of deaths and injuries.
Meltdown can occur if the reactor's cooling system fails and water stops flowing through the reactor core. If a reactor's internal core is cooler than the core would rise quickly; the uranium rods that are the reactor's fuel would fuse into a lump and melt through the bottom of the reactor and into the earth, thus releasing quantities of lethal radioactive particles.
A NUCLEAR REACTOR can go out of control, a situation known as melldown.
NUCLEAR PROPONENTS and nuclear opponents can't agree on how much damage would be caused by a meltdown. They do agree that it would be a lot.
There has never been a meltdown at a large reactor in the United States. That safety record shows the adequacy of safeguards and regulations at nuclear plants, according to those who favor nuclear power.
The safeguards and regulations are designed to keep the possibility of a meltdown at a minimum, MpChee, of KCPL says the possibility of a meltdown is about the same as the possibility of a large city being struck by a meteor. We don't stop
building cities because they might be struck by meteors, McPhee says.
successfully, all of the floors is of little importance."
BUT NUCLEAR OPPONENTS look at the possibility of a meltdown a bit differently. They say the possibility is not so remote as McPhee thinks. And they say that if something can go wrong, it eventually will no wrong.
THE POSSIBILITY of a meltdown isn't the only reason nuclear opponents think nuclear power is unsafe for this planet. Radioactive waste also has them worried.
"The situation can be likened to a man who has been pushed off a very tall building. He is now trapped under the floor and passes the 19th floor is not based on a realistic assessment of the situation. The fact that he has not yet hit the ground is no evidence that he is dead, his past safety record of having passed
The water that flows through a reactor's cooling system becomes contaminated. If one of the pipes carrying the contaminated water is broken, the water is a mess to clean up.
Chauney Keepard, a scientist who opposes nuclear power, puts it this way:
A pipe leaked water, and the water was so contaminated that anyone cleaning it up would have to use an allowable dose of radiation that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has set for an entire year. There is no safe dosage of radiation, but the regulatory has set a maximum allowable dosage.
Bill Ward, a lawyer for the Mid-America Coalition of Energy Alternatives, a group based in Kansas City, Mo., that opposes nuclear power, tells this tale of how one plant in Oklahoma used up some contaminated water that flooded the basement of its reactor building.
SO THE POWER company ran teams of high school students into the basement of the reactor at 15 minute intervals. Each student was given a short period of 15 minutes and then ran out of the area. The students weren't told that they were receiving their maximum yearly dosage in the afternoon.
"That's the kind of moral irresponsibility that's common," Ward says. "I'm not
saying the people who run nuclear plants
are more important than just saying they
aren't any more moral.
But the power companies have a good record that leakage leaks before they begin disruption.
In January, the regulatory commission ordered all 23 boiling-water reactors in the state to be shut down after a tiny cracks in key safety system piping were found at an Illinois reactor. At that time S3 commercial power reactors were licensed to operate by the govern-
A SOPHISTICATED detection system didn't warn of moisture seeping from the pipes at the Illinois reactor. The moisture
See NUCLEAR page 7
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