© 2012 Joseph Mangano

Published by OR Books, New York and London

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First printing 2012

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Contents

Prologue by Alec Baldwin

Nuclear’s Rise and Fall

Tiny Atoms, Huge Risks

Soothing Big Bang Fears

Big Meltdown in Hollywood’s Backyard

Evidence Trumps the Big Lie

Secrecy Cracks Reveal Carnage

Danger Now, Danger Tomorrow, Danger Forever

Trouble in Atomic Paradise

Defibrillating a Corpse

Red-Hot Legacy

Appendix

A Note from the Author and Acknowledgments

References

Prologue

I grew up in a household with five siblings, and my father was a schoolteacher back in the 1960s and 70s.

I remember my mother, who seemed to fret over money issues at every moment, would stress out about our utility bill. During the winter, she turned the heat down to fifty-five at night and was constantly admonishing us to turn off the lights. After sunset, the lights were on in our house on an “as needed” basis. We had to use power carefully, and in an age of fewer electronic gizmos and demands on power that we live with today. Most homes had one television. No VCR, no Xbox, no computers, no cell phones. My mother whined over any electric bill higher than thirty dollars. From the beginning, energy meant cost.

So companies schemed about how to lower that cost. Nuclear power was presented, not as an answer, but as the answer. On Long Island, in the early 1970s, the power authority, the Long Island Lighting Company (LILCO), joined the tide of utilities that were applying for and constructing nuclear reactors in order to address the country’s dwindling domestic oil production and a looming US dependence on foreign oil. The Shoreham Nuclear Power Plant was started in 1973 and LILCO proposed that it would cost $75 million. By the time it was completed, in 1984, the cost to build the facility, which would be passed on to LILCO ratepayers (who were already paying among the highest rates in the continental US), was $2 billion.

In addition to the mismanagement and usurious rates that were to be borne by Long Islanders, Shoreham was deemed inoperable due to an ineffective evacuation plan that would have forced Long Island’s large, residential population to bottleneck through New York City area roads, tunnels, and bridges in case of a catastrophic event involving the reactor. In 1989, Shoreham was closed in an agreement with New York State officials that passed on nearly all of the then-$6 billion cost of closing, decommissioning, and decontaminating the facility on to LILCO customers, who then officially became the highest commercial utility ratepayers in US history.

The numbing debacle that is the story of Shoreham, and the nearly criminal enterprise that launched it (exiting LILCO executives paid themselves multimillion dollar bonuses in the wake of the fiasco), presents only one side of the sad and demoralizing history of the nuclear power industry that I have come to know over the past twenty years. Over time, I became involved with other community organizations in applying the “Shoreham Principle” to the closing of the research reactor at Brookhaven Lab. My association with various public interest groups has introduced me to rhabdomyosarcoma clusters near where I live, the arrogant and oft-penalized management of the Millstone nuclear facility in Waterford, CT (the recipient of the largest government fine in history: $2.1 million), and I learned about the Oyster Creek facility in Toms River, New Jersey, where soft tissue cancers and autism rates are significantly higher than the national average.

Along the way, I have met many concerned and dedicated activists as well as scientists. Dr. Ernest Sternglass, Dr. Helen Caldicott, Jay Gould, Scott Cullen, Richard Webster, just to mention a few. My neighbor Christie Brinkley did yeoman’s work on the Oyster Creek public information programs that we worked on. However, the real thread in all of this, the constant, tireless voice that has helped keep me linked to reports from the front lines of the battle to expose the staggering risks to public health posed by nuclear power, has been Joe Mangano.

I’ll let Joe give you the facts and his analysis of them. I simply want to state that Joe has been one of the most dedicated, intelligent, and evenhanded public activists I have ever known. He has also proven to be one of the most effective, on a battlefield where gains are measured in inches, if not centimeters. If not for Joe’s efforts, as well as those of quite a few other concerned citizens, Oyster Creek might have remained open indefinitely, spewing its special cocktail of nuclear byproduct all over the Ocean County, New Jersey community and adding more to the stockpile of waste that we still don’t know what to do with. As of now, the plant is scheduled to close in 2019, ten years earlier than its operator, Exelon, had originally sought in its extension applications. Part of that is Joe.

Read this book and learn in a few hours what it took me years to cobble together from knowing this great public servant.

—Alec Baldwin

New York City

April, 2012

Nuclear’s Rise and Fall

On a warm California morning – July 12, 1959 – just outside Los Angeles, workers at the experimental nuclear reactors at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory reported for duty. Those who worked on the Sodium Reactor Experiment, one of ten reactors at the lab, were eager to make the fourteenth in a series of tests of the futuristic machine. The experiment tried to cool uranium fuel in the reactor core with sodium rather than the standard method, which used water. Hopes were high that this design would revolutionize atomic power reactors in the US, and perhaps around the world.

There had been problems with the first thirteen tests over the past two years. In the most recent one, there had been an explosion. The inexperienced workers tried to find its cause, but were unsuccessful. In retrospect, leaks had probably limited the ability to keep the sodium cool – a crucial aspect of running the reactor safely. But instead of taking the prudent path of stopping or postponing the test series, Test 14 was placed right on schedule, with no delays.

Almost immediately after work began, something went badly wrong. The sodium was not cooling the reactor core, which heated up to levels never seen before at Santa Susana – or perhaps in the US. Inside the core were long rods, containing uranium atoms that were split to power the reactor, along with the dozens of dangerous radioactive chemicals formed as waste products when uranium atoms are split. The long rods began to melt, and a large volume of radioactive gas built up in the reactor room. Instead of shutting down the reactor and investigating the cause, technicians added additional rods designed to control the process, but these only made the situation worse.

The next two weeks were a series of restarts and more meltdowns, similar to repeatedly banging one’s head against a brick wall. Why didn’t managers shutdown the Sodium Reactor Experiment? The answer was one common to the US atomic power program: adherence to a mentality of “the show must go on” in spite of any dangers. Every day, radioactive gases from holding tanks in the reactor building were released into the air – often at night, a highly toxic job given to workers on the “graveyard shift.” Finally, two weeks to the day after the run started, the reactor was finally shut down. The amount of radiation released into the environment was never accurately measured – in fact the entire meltdown was kept secret from the public for the next two decades. Sodium-cooled reactors failed; of the 439 reactors operating worldwide today, only two are sodium cooled (none in the US). But the damage had been done, and today the Santa Susana site sits amidst a large mess of toxic waste.

The meltdown at Santa Susana is a microcosm of the entire US nuclear power program. It began with great enthusiasm for what the technology could do – so much enthusiasm that when problems began piling up, those in charge kept the program moving, convinced that the atom would be the answer to America’s future energy problems. But it wasn’t then, still isn’t, and never will be. The American nuclear power program is a failure. Why did nukes fare so poorly? Why were they allowed to cause such damage, and how is it the debate still continues? How a technology with such promise was allowed to cause such huge threats and ring up a staggeringly high tab in the process can only be understood by examining its origins.

On a December day in 1953, President Dwight D. Eisenhower stood before the United Nations to deliver a critical speech on nuclear power. Eisenhower had been president less than a year, but had already become a crucial figure in the Cold War between capitalist and communist nations. Perhaps his most important achievement was that he had helped broker an end to the Korean War, permanently splitting that nation into two countries, the communist north and the capitalist south. Just one month after Eisenhower took office, Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin died, bringing the Cold War to another phase, one that offered more hope for reconciliation.

Eisenhower presented a complex figure. He was a military man by training and experience, a graduate of West Point and a lionized figure who had served as a junior officer in the first World War, and as the supreme commander of all Allied troops in Europe during the second, elevating him to heroic status. Some worried about a soldier occupying the White House during this time. The military mindset during the early years of the Cold War was based on a strict interpretation of America’s ability to maintain military superiority. This superiority extended to nuclear weapons; the US had produced and used the first bombs, and those in the military community believed they should be used freely, despite the horrors at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Just four years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Soviet Union developed its own bomb, and successfully detonated it. In late 1952, the US exploded a thermonuclear (hydrogen) device, with explosive power 1,000 times greater than an atomic weapon. But just nine months later, the Soviets exploded their own super-bomb. The US had lost its monopoly, but maintained superiority in the numbers game. In the race to test and manufacture as many as possible as quickly as possible, an all-out effort gave America the lead. By the end of 1953, the US had tested forty-four bombs to the Soviet total of just three. The US had amassed about 1,000 nuclear weapons, while the Soviets had just a handful. And the United Kingdom, allied with America, had also begun testing and stockpiling nuclear weapons. A number of military leaders believed that nuclear war was inevitable, and even should proceed while the US had such superior numbers.

The modest sense of security that a monopoly on atomic weapons gave people was ebbing, even though a lead was maintained in the count of nuclear weapons. The image of a hostile communist regime exploding an atomic bomb and then building a stockpile of these weapons was disturbing to many Americans. Scientists began to look beyond current numbers and envision a fearful situation, with both nations able to destroy the other through attacks that were indefensible. A group at the University of Chicago instituted the “Doomsday Clock” to measure proximity to global disaster. The initial 1947 setting of seven minutes to midnight was reduced to two minutes by 1953 as the arms race heated up.

Had Eisenhower subscribed to the military model, he would have taken the aggressive stance that it was possible, even desirable, to win an inevitable nuclear war. A part of his policy fit this model. He continued Harry Truman’s program of developing a large arsenal of nuclear weapons with the utmost speed. A series of eleven aboveground atomic bomb explosions had taken place in Nevada during the spring of 1953, and similar programs would follow in 1955, 1957, and 1958. Another series of shots were being planned for the Marshall Islands in the south Pacific, including what would be a hydrogen bomb with an equivalent yield of 1,000 Hiroshimas. During Eisenhower’s eight years in office, the number of US nuclear weapons grew from 1,000 to 20,000.

But the new President was a complex man, not easily categorized, who deviated from a completely hardline policy. He had been shaken by the carnage of the recently-ended World War, and had opposed Truman’s usage of nuclear weapons on mostly civilian targets in the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

In 1945 Secretary of War Stimson, visiting my headquarters in Germany, informed me that our government was preparing to drop an atomic bomb on Japan. I was one of those who felt that there were a number of cogent reasons to question the wisdom of such an act… first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated… and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives.

He also understood the growing public fear over the nuclear arms race. So Eisenhower’s mission to the U.N. that December day was to soothe fears. He could not get around the fact that the atom represented a devastating power the world had never seen, nor could he deny that a race for nuclear superiority between two hostile nations was under way and was gathering momentum. However, he could inform the public that there were uses of this new technology that would help, rather than harm, humans – thus giving rise to the phrase “peaceful atom.”

Eisenhower first spoke at length about the dangers of atomic bombs, and the responsibilities of leaders of nations with the bomb to reduce or eliminate these dangers. He then turned to another approach that went beyond just control of nuclear weapons:

The United States would seek more than the mere reduction or elimination of atomic materials for military purposes. It is not enough to take this weapon out of the hands of the soldiers. It must be put in the hands of those who know how to strip its military casing and adapt it to the arts of peace. The United States knows that if the fearful trend of atomic military build-up can be reversed, this greatest of destructive forces can be developed into a great boon, for the benefit of all mankind.

The United States knows that peaceful power from atomic energy is no dream of the future. That capability, already proved, is here – now – today. Who can doubt, if the entire body of the world’s scientists and engineers had adequate amounts of fissionable material with which to test and develop their ideas, that this capability would rapidly be transformed into universal, efficient, and economic usage.

The President also proposed an international Atomic Energy Agency, most likely to be operated by the United Nations, which would “… devise methods, where by this fissionable material would be allocated to serve the peaceful pursuits of mankind. Experts would be mobilized to apply atomic energy to the needs of agriculture, medicine, and other peaceful activities. A special purpose would be to provide abundant electrical energy in the power-starved areas of the world.”

The speech was widely hailed. Eisenhower had taken a stand as a peacemaker, while not backing down from the realities of having to be a Cold Warrior leading a nuclear arms race. If the genie was out of the bottle, and atoms were now part of the world, its destructive uses would be minimized and its constructive uses maximized.

Eisenhower was trying to envision the future world’s energy needs. The nation was growing rapidly, in terms of its population. One reason for this was the number of babies. After years of low birth rates during the Great Depression and World War II, the Baby Boom had been in full swing for nearly a decade. Men and women were marrying and having large families. A decade earlier, there were just over 2.5 million births a year. By 1953, the number had nearly reached 4 million. There was no end in sight to the boom. The growing number of people – especially society’s younger members, who required more institutions like offices and schools – meant a greater need for electricity.

Another reason accounting for growing energy needs was the exodus to the suburbs. The economy, which was finally prospering for the first time since the late 1920s, put more money in people’s pockets, allowing many to move out of smaller, group dwellings in densely populated cities into larger, single-family quarters in fast-growing suburban areas. Bigger homes needed more electricity to heat and cool them. More people used televisions and other electronic products in the household, including refrigerators, stoves, dishwashers, and washing machines. Living in the suburbs meant more people had to purchase and use private cars, instead of the public transportation so predominant in cities. The cars of that period consumed energy in enormous quantities compared to those of today.

The improved economy also meant greater energy needs in the workplace. More people working meant more offices that needed more power. Manufacturing industries were still predominant over service industries, and the workplace was becoming more mechanized. Even agriculture continued to mechanize. More machines requiring energy were needed to produce goods, along with the basics of lighting, heating, and cooling offices.

Another factor that was driving up energy demand was that Americans were living longer lives. Improved health care and living conditions had been lowering death rates, especially in infancy. More babies who survived and grew to have children of their own helped boost the population, and raise energy needs. Lower death rates among adults meant more elderly people, which also translated into greater energy needs, especially in settings like hospitals; the post-World War II era featured a hospital building boom. The nation’s population had reached 150 million by 1950 and was soaring. Predictions of this number doubling to 300 million within several decades were being made. Once the Baby Boomers began having babies themselves, the numbers were sure to soar even more.

Virtually the entire nation was electrified, compared to the early twentieth century, a fact not lost on private corporations. Companies like General Electric and Westinghouse were cranking out more and more units for home and industrial use each year. Utility companies were producing more energy as demand grew. Rising stock prices showed confidence that the trend would continue into the future.

A long-term energy policy was needed to meet demand. The predominant energy sources of the time were oil and coal, which had been able to meet growing needs for years. Resources were plentiful, but the US had begun to import foreign oil after World War II, to augment domestic production. Neither Eisenhower nor anyone else could have foreseen the extent of problems that would be caused by a growing dependency on foreign oil in the future, but there certainly was a realization that self-sufficiency was preferable. Importing energy added costs to the product. American companies and government officials had to reach political agreements with counterparts in foreign nations supplying energy. This was a challenge, especially during the Cold War in which the US was in competition with the Soviet Union for the allegiance of many nations.

Then there was the problem of air pollution. The environmental movement had not yet blossomed by the mid-1950s. But the issue was entering the public consciousness. An absence of blue skies and clean water was becoming more and more a part of the American landscape. One source of these darkening skies was coal burning plants. Coal was a developed technology, cheap to mine, and highly plentiful domestically, but its processes, from mining to electricity production, were dirty ones. Any long-term plan for energy could not rely simply on more and more coal burning plants.

By the end of 1953, at the time of Eisenhower’s speech, the country’s leaders recognized that the American Empire would need energy to fuel its growth. Conveniently, the creation of electricity from nuclear power had been given a head start; the American experience operating nuclear weapons reactors for a decade was similar in many ways to that needed to produce electricity. The process of splitting uranium atoms generated enormously high levels of heat, which could be used to heat water, leading to production of electrical power. The process would be controlled, as opposed to the uncontrolled, chain-reaction process employed in nuclear weapons explosions.

As part of the Idaho National Laboratory in the eastern part of the state, the federally-operated Experimental Breeder Reactor I was constructed in 1951 to address various research goals for developing nuclear power. By December of that year, the reactor produced enough electrical power to light the building containing it. While Eisenhower did not identify what he meant by the “power-starved areas of the world,” US officials envisioned that the first nuclear power reactors would be built in America. Any soothing of fears of the destructive atom had to begin at home. In addition, the energy needs of a rapidly-growing nation were being met by coal, oil, and gas, each an old and polluting source. Atomic power seemed to be the wave of the future.

To date, producing energy to meet the nation’s demands had always been a matter that the private sector handled through market forces – identifying demand, and meeting that demand with supply. Coal and oil were purely a private function, as were other, less-used forms of power. And good entrepreneurs are always inclined to pursue new options if they can be developed into a profitable effort. Private energy companies were certainly interested in developing atomic power, even though the government had a monopoly over the technology. The interest was so strong that the monopoly quickly changed when, after lobbying by energy companies, Congress passed the 1954 Atomic Energy Act. The legislation actually was an amendment to the first such Act passed in the aftermath of World War II. It authorized government, for the first time, to allow private companies in America and abroad access to technical information about nuclear energy production. Private companies could operate nuclear reactors, but would have to first receive a license from federal officials.

The changes in the Act meant not just a greater push for reactors in the US, but abroad. The federal government began to export nuclear technology and materials to friendly nations, with the understanding that these were to be used for peaceful purposes, and not any buildup of atomic weapons. This effort served the dual purposes of being good for business, and for countering Communist propaganda that Americans were only interested in the atom for building a large weapons arsenal for the purpose of destroying the Soviet Union and its allies.

Federal management of nuclear power was primarily the responsibility of the Atomic Energy Commission. The AEC was legally a civilian-run agency, although it had close ties with the military. Eisenhower had appointed Lewis Strauss as AEC chairman in 1953. Strauss was a wealthy investment banker who had a lifelong interest in physics, funding giants in the field such as Leo Szilard and Ernest Lawrence. He was one of the original commissioners at the AEC, serving for four years under Truman, during which time he urged the US to develop a program of hydrogen bombs, which were roughly a thousand times more powerful than atomic bombs. He was greatly distrustful of Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer, the scientific director of the Manhattan Project that developed the original atomic bombs used on Japan, because Oppenheimer opposed developing a hydrogen bomb.

In a September 1954 speech to the National Association of Science Writers in New York City, Strauss summarized the government party line, i.e., that nuclear power was almost too good to be true. In particular, his words “too cheap to meter” to describe the atom’s ability to produce electricity would be repeatedly cited for years afterward.

Our children will enjoy in their homes electrical energy too cheap to meter. It is not too much to expect that our children will know of great periodic regional famines in the world only as matters of history, will travel effortlessly over the seas and under them and through the air with a minimum of danger and with great speeds, and will experience a lifespan far longer than ours, as disease yields and man comes to understand what causes him to age. This is the forecast of an age of peace.

Eisenhower himself praised nuclear power when he could. On Labor Day 1954, he made a national television appearance in which he waved a “magic wand” that signaled the start of construction of the first US nuclear power reactor. The site was Shippingport, a small town in western Pennsylvania about thirty miles from Pittsburgh. The Westinghouse Corporation, based in Pittsburgh, had elected to enter the nuclear power game – aided by very generous subsidies from a federal government eager to see the America’s first nuclear reactor take off. The image of a career military man illustrating the non-military uses of the most deadly combat weapon in human history was an opportunity of which Eisenhower and his advisors availed themselves.

The government also found some strong allies to help spread its message. One of the more prominent backers was Walt Disney, a major force in television, movies, and amusement parks. Disney, who had a long-time interest in public affairs, used his powerful media apparatus to convey the pro-atom message to the American public. After meeting with government officials in late 1955, Disney and his advisor Heinz Haber launched a project to produce a sixty-minute animated cartoon entitled “Our Friend the Atom.” Haber was an astrophysicist who had served in the Nazi air force during World War II. Working with the US Navy and General Dynamics (which built nuclear powered submarines), Haber produced the cartoon that featured a fisherman who opens a bottle. A genie emerges, and tells the fisherman he will kill anyone who released him. After tricking the genie back into the bottle, the fisherman convinces the genie to grant his wishes if he frees him again. The parallels of the genie representing atomic power and the fisherman representing Americans was clear to the public, millions of whom viewed the cartoon after its release in January 1957.

In addition to its publicity campaign, Washington increased funding incentives for new domestic nuclear reactors and encouraged other, friendly nations to develop the technology. Despite these extensive government efforts, nuclear power made little progress in the mid-1950s, for several reasons. Slogans like “too cheap to meter” hid concerns about the costs of building and maintaining reactors. The cost of weapons reactor construction was high, but completely borne by taxpayers. Private companies, which would have to foot the bill for power plants, were concerned, as were Wall Street financiers who would generate loans for reactors. Second, there was the matter of reliability. Private companies, while interested in nuclear power, were not convinced that this new technology would be able to quickly produce electricity with a minimum of start-up costs and disruptions to their operations. Reactors were far more complex to operate than coal or oil plants, which had a proven track record.

But the most serious of all problems standing in the way of nuclear power development was safety. In the promotion of nuclear power, several major issues went unaddressed, each based on the fact that reactors produced a mixture of radioactive chemicals, the same waste products as did atomic bombs. These “fission products” numbered more than 100, each of them radioactive and harmful to health. They did not exist in nature, but only were created when uranium atoms were split after bombardment with neutrons. They included isotopes such as cesium-137, iodine-131, and strontium-90. Like all radioactive products, they decay over time, but at different rates. Some disappear from the environment in days, even hours or minutes, but some exist for hundreds and thousands of years. Like the genie in the Disney cartoon, these products had to be secured, as exposure to humans and animals was known to kill and injure cells and cause diseases such as cancer.

The safety questions raised over the 100-plus fission products were threefold. First, could reactor operators figure out a foolproof means of safely storing these products for thousands of years? Second, how much radioactivity would be released into the environment (and into humans) as part of routine operations? Finally, and perhaps most urgently, could operators guarantee that there would be no major malfunction of reactors, resulting in a meltdown of the red-hot core or waste pools, and a large-scale release of fission products to the air and water? Assurances given by government officials were not sufficient, certainly not to energy companies who were rebuffed by all insurers when they sought to purchase policies against damages after a catastrophic meltdown.

The energy companies involved in nuclear power were stuck; no insurance, no reactors. There was no way any utility would risk operating a reactor, with billions in potential losses after a meltdown, without adequate insurance. They took their case public, hoping to get the government to break the impasse. Westinghouse Vice President Charles Weaver stated that, “Obviously we cannot risk the financial stability of our company for a relatively small project no matter how important it is to the country’s reactor development effort, if it could result in a major liability in relation to our assets.”

Seeing that the inability of energy companies to secure insurance against a catastrophic meltdown was preventing reactor power development, the government again rose to the rescue. In 1957, Congress passed the Price-Anderson Act; the legislation limited the liability borne by energy companies from a meltdown to $60 million. It also guaranteed that up to $500 million in federal funds would be committed to additional liabilities from a meltdown. The Act was to last for a decade, when private companies could then buy liability insurance without government guarantees.

The reality was that a catastrophic malfunction at a nuclear reactor could cost more than $60 million, or even $500 million. A 1957 study by Brookhaven National Laboratories known as WASH-740 estimated that property damages to land, buildings, food, and water would cost up to $7 billion – not including the costs to society from the many thousands of deaths and illnesses. But since the need to jumpstart the reactor program was paramount, Congress and the Eisenhower administration ignored the report, and passed the Act with the arbitrarily low number of $60 million that they knew insurance companies would cover.

With the problem of liability taken care of by government intervention, the door was open for nuclear reactors to proceed in the US. The Shippingport reactor, after operating for several months on a test basis, began selling nuclear-produced electricity commercially in May 1958. Once again, Eisenhower presided over the occasion by waving a “neutron wand” at the White House to signify the beginning electrical production, and “ease mankind’s burdens and provide additional comforts for human living.” The age of nuclear power reactors in the US had begun.

This spirited boost in the mid-1950s gave many a highly positive view of nuclear power. But in just over half a century since then, the view has changed drastically. Nuclear power may well be the most argued-about, hotly-discussed form of energy.

The advent of atomic power indeed represents a unique chapter in American history. It is a relatively new discovery, one whose development has been closely shaped by military, economic, and political factors. It is also a public issue that paradoxically has been characterized by a culture of secrecy and deception. It has challenged various rights that are deeply rooted in the American saga. The right of people to have access to clean air, water, and food is one. The right of people to be informed of the actions of its leaders, and conversely the obligation of leaders to be accountable to the popular will, is another. The right of people to self-determine, including issues like how their energy is generated, is yet another.

A total of 127 nuclear power reactors have operated in the US. Of these, twenty-three have closed permanently; since 1998, the remaining 104 have been in operation, and no new ones are being built at present. The 104 reactors are located in thirty-one states, at sixty-five sites (some sites, or plants, have more than one reactor). These machines generate just over 19% of the country’s electricity, far behind coal, which produces about half. The 104 reactors actually produce about 8% of the nation’s energy; nuclear power cannot produce non-electrical forms of energy.

The figure of 20% of the nation’s electricity is a sort of wall, as nuclear reactors have stalled at about that figure for about two decades, never producing more than 20.6% of the country’s electricity in a single year. In all but one of the most recent eight years (2003–2010), the proportion has been between 19% and 20%. With no new reactors to begin operating for at least a decade more (if ever), with current reactors operating at nearly 90% capacity (which is not likely to be exceeded), and with population and electrical needs growing steadily, the coming years will likely see a drop below 19% (see table):

Source: Department of Energy. H. Data for 2010 is an estimate, based on an extrapolation of 11 actual months. Electricity generated in thousands of megawatts electrical.

A number of nations have followed the American lead, and operate nuclear power reactors, with 439 such units now in operation worldwide. A number of developed nations, especially in Europe, rely on nuclear power for part of their electricity. The most notable of these is France, which gets about 80% of its electricity from nuclear power. However, a number of European nations have no nuclear power reactors, including Albania, Austria, Denmark, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Serbia, and Turkey. In the developing nations of Africa, Asia, and South America, very few nuclear power reactors exist, long after Eisenhower called for their development in “power-starved areas of the world.”

In the 1960s and early 1970s, hundreds of new nuclear reactor units were ordered by utility companies. But construction turned out to be much slower and costlier than expected. For many reactors, an excessively long time transpired between the time they were ordered and electrical power was produced. For example, the two North Anna reactors in northern Virginia were announced in October 1967. However, they didn’t begin producing electricity for commercial use until June 1978 and December 1980, a total of eleven and thirteen years later, respectively. A single reactor at the Clinton plant in central Illinois was announced in January 1973, but didn’t begin generating electricity until November 1987, nearly fifteen years later. The last reactor to begin operating in the US was Watts Bar, in eastern Tennessee; an announcement that two new reactors would be built took place in January 1970. However, reactor #1 at the plant did not begin operations until May 1996, a staggering twenty-six years after the announcement. Plans to build reactor #2 were scrapped in the 1980s, while still in the early stages of construction. Total construction costs for the first seventy-five US reactors amounted to more than three times that originally projected, according to one study by the US Energy Information Administration, although some believe this figure to be understated.

When reactors were finally started, they ran into another problem that had an impact on both economics and safety. Mechanical problems frequently required reactors to close until these problems were diagnosed and resolved by maintenance staff. The “capacity factor” or the percent of time that reactors were in operation was just under 50% in the early 1970s. By the late 1980s, the figure had risen slightly, to 57%, according to the EIA. In some cases, the problems were so complex and presented such a threat that reactors closed for long periods, generating no electricity (or revenue) during that time, and incurring substantial costs for repair and rebuilding. Some were persistently problematic. The Peach Bottom reactor #2 in southeast Pennsylvania closed from April 1984 to July 1985 – only to close again from March 1987 to May 1989. Thus, over a five-year period, the reactor only operated for a maximum of eighteen months, and, reported the Union of Concerned Scientists, probably fewer. There were fifteen operating reactors that had to be shut down for at least two years and eight months (consecutively) before starting up again; they are listed below (see table):

Lochbaum D. US Nuclear Plants in the 21st Century: The Risk of a Lifetime. Cambridge, MA: Union of Concerned Scientists, May 2004.

Then, of course, there were accidents. The most famous of these occurred on March 28, 1979 at the Three Mile Island reactor #2 in central Pennsylvania. More than half of the core melted down after a series of human errors that compounded mechanical limitations. The crippled reactor never restarted, and cost Metropolitan Edison large amounts in legal fees. Reactor #1 at the plant, while not affected by the meltdown, closed and did not restart for nearly seven more years.

High construction costs, frequent shutdowns, and accidents primarily represented safety issues, but were also economic ones. Utilities were forced to take out loans much greater than originally expected, then pass along these costs over a long period of time to ratepayers. These large loans tied up money that would otherwise be used by companies for other development projects, or for making greater operational profits.

Utility companies weren’t the only ones having troubles with the high costs and safety issues posed by reactors. Banks that loaned money for new reactor construction became concerned as well. They could easily see that reactors cost much more than originally projected, took years before they began to produce revenue, and were often shut down for repairs. As a result, funds from Wall Street for new reactor construction began to dry up, and many reactors that had been ordered were cancelled by utility companies. The vision that nuclear reactors were “lemons” became predominant. New orders faded in the 1970s, and stopped completely in 1978. (Actually, according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the last formal order submitted to the federal government for a new US nuclear reactor that was not subsequently cancelled took place in 1973.)The nation never reached more than 112 reactors operating at one time, and since 1998 the number has been stuck at 104 – a far cry from the 1972 prediction by President Richard Nixon’s Atomic Energy Commission that at the dawn of the twenty-first century there would be 1,200 reactors operating in the country. Over half the US reactors that were commissioned were either cancelled or halted before construction was completed (see table):

Source: US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (http://www.nrc.gov)

The performance of those reactors that did start up caused major safety problems. US nuclear reactors have generated about 66,000 metric tons of highlevel waste. This waste consists of slow-decaying radioactive fission products created to produce electricity, requiring long-term storage. As of early 2011, the US has no long-term plan for permanently storing the waste. The attempt to build a permanent repository under the ground at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, which received considerable criticism as soon as it was first proposed in 1982, was never completed, and funding was cut off by the Obama administration in 2010. Thus, all high level waste remains in temporary storage at each nuclear plant for the foreseeable future.

Another problem caused by reactors was emissions of radioactive chemicals into the local air and water. Some of these occurred during meltdowns like Three Mile Island. But even without a meltdown, every reactor must routinely emit a portion of the radioactive particles and gases it produces. Sometimes these releases are deliberate; for example, reactors must go through the “refueling” process about every twelve to eighteen months. Part of refueling includes the dumping of radioactive waste into local water.

The radioactive chemicals emitted by reactors enter human bodies by breathing and the food chain after entering local water supplies, vegetation, and animals. Government agencies have set “permissible” limits for emissions and levels in air, water, and food, and utility companies have monitoring systems to ensure that they are in compliance with the law. Government goes one step further to assume that legally-sanctioned emissions are harmless – without conducting any scientific studies. But for the past half century, the assumption that “permissible” doses pose no harm to humans has been questioned, and the battle continues today over whether these routine releases have increased disease rates in people living near nuclear plants.

The problems caused by reactors extend beyond those in operation. Twenty-three power reactors have closed permanently, along with a number of smaller research reactors. But shut down doesn’t mean that necessary work is over. A complex series of steps that constitute “decommissioning” of a nuclear plant to retire its parts and secure its waste is required by federal law, requiring many years and considerable costs to complete. Decommissioning can be a dirty process, posing health threats to workers and the local population. Similar to new reactor construction, decommissioning operations ran well beyond expectations, in terms of time needed and dollars required.

Creating nuclear power has also spawned problems aside from the operations of reactors. One is known as “reprocessing.” As high level radioactive waste began to pile up, government supported the concept of essentially recycling the waste so it could be reused as fuel for power reactors. The Atomic Energy Commission footed the bill for building a reprocessing plant at West Valley, just south of Buffalo, NY. But reprocessing was a total flop, a much dirtier process than anyone had envisioned. In 1972, after just six years of operation, reprocessing ceased at the West Valley site, leaving behind it a failed promise and a legacy of enormous contamination to the local environment.

Generating nuclear power is far from just a matter of what happens at reactors. Producing electricity at nuclear plants is the culmination of a series of steps, beginning with mining uranium, and then continuing with uranium milling, enrichment, and refining at specialty plants around the nation. Each of these processes is a dirty one, fraught with health risks to workers and local residents. These same steps were used in preparing uranium for nuclear weapons production, so adding nuclear power production increased the threat posed by these processes.

Finally, another concern posed by the development of nuclear power is linked to its research component. In the mid-1950s, ways to create nuclear power were still very much in the development phase. Scientists worked to refine nuclear power production methods at a series of research facilities across the US. Some of these research reactors were located at universities, while others were at plants operated by private companies hired by government officials eager to support efforts to improve nuclear energy generation.

After just a generation, the craze to develop nuclear power faded. With no orders to build new reactors and with the end of nuclear weapons production at the end of the Cold War, interest in the field waned. Fewer college students majored in nuclear engineering. Many of the research reactors at universities and operated by private companies shut down, as did some nuclear power reactors.

The wane of nuclear research didn’t occur without some major problems having occurred first. One of the sites designated to help develop ways to produce nuclear power was the Santa Susana Field Laboratory just outside of Los Angeles. Operated by Rocketdyne, a company chiefly concerned with developing liquid rocket engines, Santa Susana was home to ten small nuclear reactors, including the Sodium Reactor Experiment.

Things went terribly wrong at Santa Susana. The experiments resulted in four meltdowns in just several years, including the one in July 1959 that may well have been larger than any other in US history, including Three Mile Island. All Santa Susana reactors shut down by 1964, having failed in their task to find an advanced new method of producing nuclear power.

The mention of the Santa Susana experience brings up a corollary issue with nuclear power, beyond those of safety and economics. The industry, although supported generously with public tax dollars and other financial incentives, operates in secrecy. The general public, or even members of Congress, know very little about what transpires at atomic plants, especially on matters of environmental pollution and safety. This culture may be a carryover from top-secret nuclear weapons operations and/or a matter of not wanting to air “dirty laundry” to the public. If the dangers of atomic energy were revealed, the public might become alarmed and Congress might withdraw its generous support. For decades, nuclear safety issues have been hidden or minimized by those in charge. Yet the secrecy and deception have actually fueled the struggle to understand the industry’s successes and failures. Over time, more people have become suspicious and challenged the rhetoric that nukes are “cheap and clean.” These challenges gained strength as the end of the Cold War reduced the need to support a growing nuclear weapons arsenal. Eventually, this wall of secrecy and deception began to give way – although it still has not completely disappeared – and nuclear power’s negative side has been more thoroughly revealed.

As the twenty-first century began, the growing concern over the threat of global warming gave pro-nuclear factions the chance to revive their product. Because reactors did not directly emit greenhouse gases to produce electricity, they were portrayed as “green” and beneficial to the environment. An attempt was made to order new reactors for the first time in a generation. Popular support was sought in a series of efforts, but many Americans were either against or skeptical about new reactors. Financial leaders had long memories, and Wall Street rebuffed all appeals for funding new reactor construction. Nuclear industry leaders went to Washington to ask for government’s help, bolstered by enormous lobbying and campaign contributions, but found the going very slow. After the disastrous meltdowns at Fukushima early in 2011 reminded the world of the dangers of the atom, the struggle to revive nuclear power became even more difficult.

Nuclear power in the United States has become a major industry. It has also provoked large-scale protests from concerned citizens. It has generated a lengthy and emotional debate among experts on just how safe (or unsafe) the technology is to current and future generations. It has generated much concern about financial viability among utilities that operate reactors; among Wall Street financiers; among public policy makers; and among American citizens paying utility bills. It has deeply involved government in what was originally intended to essentially be a private enterprise. Early in the twenty-first century, more than fifty years after Eisenhower’s speech and the resulting push to develop nuclear power for energy, nuclear power remains shrouded in controversy.

After an examination of the American experience with nuclear power, a fair assessment shows the negatives greatly outweigh the benefits. Problems of reliability, economics, and safety refute the early prophecies that nuclear power would prove to be cheap and clean. It will also examine the culture of secrecy and deception that has been practiced by those involved with the US nuclear power program since its inception in the 1950s and that continues today, and how the failure of nuclear power became more obvious as the barrier of secrecy was gradually dismantled, and the truth revealed.

Tiny Atoms, Huge Risks

Long before nuclear reactors and atomic bombs, radiation was an integral part of life on Earth. The planet contains considerable radiation that is not man-made, commonly referred to as background radiation, which can be categorized into three types:

Cosmic radiation: charged particles from outer space that exist in the Earth’s atmosphere, and enter human bodies through breathing. Levels of cosmic radiation are greatest in the troposphere, high above earth, which has raised concerns for airline pilots and flight attendants exposed to more of these rays than most other humans.

Terrestrial radiation: found in soil, rocks, water, air, and vegetation. Much of this type of radiation is found in the atoms uranium-238 and potassium-40. They decay very slowly, which limits their harmful effects. Each is taken up by the human body through breathing and the food chain.

Radiation is also found in the body’s tissues, through breathing and the food chain. Most of this type of radiation takes various forms of the elements carbon and potassium.

Thus, every human being is exposed to natural radiation on an ongoing basis. One footnote to this list of radiation includes the chemical radon-222, which is formed when radium-226 (a terrestrial metal which exists in rocks) decays. radon-222 is a gas, and although it decays and disappears quickly, it exposes humans to perhaps as much radiation as the three categories of natural radiation combined. A common practice in the US is for homeowners to measure levels of radon in the soil surrounding their home, and take remedial action when levels are excessively high.

Natural radiation poses health risks, regardless of whether it is cosmic, terrestrial, or in the body. However, a distinction needs to be made between types of radiation known as ionizing and non-ionizing. In all atoms, protons and neutrons make up the nucleus with electrons circling the atom. In a non-radioactive or stable atom, there is a balance (similar number) of protons and electrons. For example, hydrogen has one proton and one electron each. Even in radioactive but non-ionizing atoms, the number of electrons and neutrons are the same. radium-226 has 138 neutrons, 88 protons, and 88 electrons. But in radon-222 (a decay product of radium-226) there are 126 neutrons, 86 protons, and 88 electrons – the other protons from the original radium-226 that decayed having become natural helium atoms. radon-222 is the product of ionizing radiation, defined as that with enough power to knock an electron from its normal orbit around the atomic nucleus. This imbalance is important in understanding the especially destructive properties of man-made ionizing radiation from atomic weapons tests and nuclear reactors, described later in this chapter.

While stable atoms remain in the earth’s environment, radioactive atoms disappear. Ionizing radiation is not a measure of mass, but a measure of the degree to which the radioactive atoms decay. Each type of radioactive chemical, or isotope, decays at a different speed, measured by a concept known as “half life” or the amount of time needed for half of the chemical to decay. radon-222 has a half life of four days. In other words, 50% of a quantity of radon-222 will remain in four days; 25% will remain in eight days; 12.5% will remain in twelve days, etc. A general consensus is that a radioactive chemical essentially disappears after about ten half lives. Radioactive chemicals have half lives that can be measured in seconds, while those of others are billions of years.

Radiation can be categorized into five types of exposures. Alpha radiation is found in fast-traveling particles that can be easily stopped by various types of matter – including human skin that stops airborne alpha radiation. Beta radiation is also found in fast-moving particles (even faster than alpha), that can penetrate through air, into skin and other human tissues. Neutron emissions are a powerful form of radiation created when the atomic nucleus is struck by a particle and fired from the atom. X-rays are products of fast moving electrons that can create pictures of tissues and bones on film, and race completely through the body. Finally, gamma radiation represents waves of energy similar to X-rays that can penetrate matter such as the human body. Humans can be harmed from exposures to all of these.

Humans first used natural radioactive products several hundred years ago, as miners in what is now Germany and the Czech Republic dug for uranium in the ground. Uranium was first mined in the western US in the late 1800s. Today, about three-fourths of the world’s mined uranium is obtained (in relatively equal proportions) from the former Soviet Union, Canada, and Australia, with the remaining one-fourth distributed among a number of nations, including the US.

The beginning of man-made radiation can be traced to November 8, 1895, with the discovery of X-rays. German scientist Wilhelm Roentgen was conducting experiments in his laboratory at the University of Wurzburg using cathode ray tubes. He observed a faint light on a bench well outside the tube, which came as a great surprise. Roentgen later noted: “I have discovered something interesting, but I do not know whether or not my observations are correct.”

Subsequent experiments by Roentgen found that he had hit upon a new phenomenon not visible to the human eye that could penetrate not just the tube cover, but all substances – with the exception of lead. The new ray did not resemble anything that had been identified previously, so the term “X-ray” was applied – a term that is used universally to this day.

Roentgen’s paper, submitted the following month to a journal, was noticed by other scientists. The following February, Paris physicist Henri Becquerel built on Roentgen’s discovery by showing that the presence of uranium gave the rays their ability to penetrate matter. Quickly, the concept of radioactivity had been established. Two years later, Marie Curie announced that the elements radium and polonium also held the same radioactive properties as did uranium.

Speedily, scientists envisioned multiple uses for the new technology. The primary purpose was medical, as human bones and tissues could literally be photographed to help doctors diagnose patient ailments. The first medical X-ray in the US was taken at Dartmouth College by brothers Gilman and Edwin Frost, who captured an image of a man with a broken wrist, just two months after Roentgen’s discovery. Manufacturers developed machines that soon became more sophisticated, and were mass produced. By the 1920s, X-rays were used to diagnose ailments of the brain, digestive tract, kidney, and bladder, as well as bones. All hospitals and many physician offices featured the new machines, which truly revolutionized the practice of medicine. Attempts were also under way to use the new technology to treat disease, not just diagnose it.

Despite all the attention that the benefits of X-rays were getting, the medical profession in these early years took little note of their health risks. A number of anecdotes indicate that scientists knew there was a risk from the very beginning. Becquerel, after carrying a tube containing radium in his pocket for a short time, found that the skin under the pocket became raw and irritated – and returned to normal after he removed the tube. Salesmen and radiologists died from radiation-related conditions, which raised concern even though studies to understand the extent of the damage were slow in the making.

In early twentieth century America, standards for medical products were far looser than they are today. It was almost inevitable that some would capitalize on the euphoria over the fascinating new technology, and peddle it as health-promoting. This idea, although well-intentioned, was beset by exaggerated claims. Probably the most common of these new-fangled ideas was the effort to promote radium as an elixir to all health problems and even a boost to good health. The chemical appeared in tonics, hair restorers, toothpastes, and even “Radium Water.” For a while, plenty of people – including sick ones who were looking to recover their health – fell for these false and dangerous claims. They used radium to improve their health, only to become sicker and to hasten death. The health toll from use of these products will never be fully known.

Industries other than medicine also quickly began using X-rays for various purposes. One of the more common such uses was in shoe stores, which employed a device known as a fluoroscope that was actually a continual stream of radiation, versus a single shot X-ray. Fluoroscopes, which were also used by doctors and hospitals, were installed in thousands of US shoe stores in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s to help the shoe clerk find any unusual malformations of the foot. People, often children, were exposed to X-rays in these machines for an average of twenty seconds, but sometimes much longer. Doses were relatively high, especially for children, but early advertisements played up benefits of the “Shoe Fitting Fluoroscope”:

Guard their foot health carefully through carefully fitted shoes. To help insure better fit, leading shoe stores use the ADRIAN X-ray Machine. Whether the shoe clerk is an “old-timer” with twenty or more years of fitting experience or a “Saturday extra” who has been on the job only a few weeks, ADRIAN X-ray Machines help him give your child the most accurate fitting possible.

After decades of use, claims and studies about the hazards of fluoroscopes started to pile up. Medical groups began to set standards for using shoe-fitting fluoroscopes, and subsequently, states began to ban their use, particularly since they provided little benefit – foot malformations could be detected without these machines. The practice was essentially ended in the US by 1960.

Little attention was paid to health hazards of X-rays from industrial uses in the early twentieth century, but anecdotal evidence shows that there were indeed casualties. Probably the best-known and most blatant of these instances was that of workers who painted dials of watches with radium for the US Radium Corporation in New Jersey during the 1920s. Workers routinely licked the tips of the brushes to keep them pointed to make their work more precise, even though the brushes contained radium. Both employers and employees assumed that the amount of radium on the brushes was so small that it could not possibly cause harm to humans.

As time went on, dial painters began suffering and dying from a variety of illnesses involving the teeth, mouth, jaw, and other affected organs. The company contended that the health problems were a matter of substandard dental hygiene, refusing to admit that radium ingestion played any role. Some of the employees and their estates sued the company, but lost. They were set to appeal to the US Supreme Court when the company settled the suits to avoid admitting any wrongdoing.

Continued scientific experimentation with radiation led to the Manhattan Project, an all-out effort sponsored by the US government to develop the first atomic bomb. In December 1942, a team led by Enrico Fermi succeeded in creating a “chain reaction” of neutrons; when targeted to uranium atoms, this chain reaction could conceivably create a weapon far more powerful than any in human history. The perceived threat that scientists in Nazi Germany were making the same attempt to develop a similar weapon gave the project an urgency that resulted in a successfully tested bomb in the desert of New Mexico less than three years after the project began. Almost immediately after the initial test, bombs were used on civilian targets in the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, resulting in enormous casualties, estimated at about 210,000 excess deaths within four months and about 350,000 excess deaths within five years.

The initial atomic bombs were based on a process known as nuclear fission. This was only possible after assembling enough atoms of uranium-235 to produce a large scale weapon. U-235 is actually a small proportion of natural uranium (most is U-238); after mining the mineral, an extensive process of milling, conversion, enrichment, and fabrication, explained later in this chapter, was needed to create adequate amounts of the U-235 that is so critical to nuclear weapons.

Fission involves the splitting of U-235 atoms by bombarding them with neutrons (some atomic bombs use the splitting of plutonium-239/240 atoms). As uranium atoms split, neutrons strike other U-235 atoms, causing a chain reaction in which extremely high heat is created. Breaking U-235 atoms apart also creates several hundred new chemicals, known as fission and activation products. They are not found in nature, but formed by the rearrangement of protons, neutrons, and electrons from the old U-235 atoms. Some of these chemicals have become well known during the atomic era of the past sixty-five years, including iodine-131, cesium-137, and strontium-90.

The horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are well documented. Many people closest to the blasts were vaporized, literally melted, by the bombs. But a considerable portion of the damage to the Japanese victims was a direct result of exposure to the extremely high heat, and the resulting fires caused by the heat. The many fission and activation products created by the blasts also entered the environments of the two cities, but played a secondary role. However, because no atomic weapons have been used on human targets since 1945 (only tested in remote locations), the greater actual danger since then has been posed by the hundreds of fission and activation products formed when atomic weapons are exploded.

Fission products are radioactive forms of non-radioactive elements found in nature. For example, iodine is one of the elements found in the periodic table of the elements in any basic chemistry book. iodine-127 is a natural form of the chemical that is stable and non-radioactive. The element is a key to the healthy development of the thyroid gland, a small butterfly-shaped organ wrapped around the throat. The thyroid is a kind of command center for physical and mental development, especially in infancy and childhood; hormones produced in the gland are critical to healthy development. Since the 1980s, every American newborn has been screened for levels of thyroxine, one of the crucial hormones produced in the thyroid gland. Any baby who has low levels of the hormone is immediately placed on an artificial dose of thyroxine, to prevent conditions including dwarfism and mental retardation.

There are thirty-seven radioactive forms of iodine, including a number that are formed when U-235 atoms are split, when an atomic bomb explodes or when a nuclear reactor operates. One of these is I-131, which has four more neutrons than the stable I-127. I-131 particles enter air, water, and most importantly the food chain. One common way that Americans ingested I-131 from atomic bomb tests above the ground is by drinking milk contaminated when cows grazed on grass where the chemical had settled. Once in the body, I-131 particles quickly make their way through the stomach to the bloodstream, and seek out the thyroid gland. They attack tissues by emitting harmful beta particles, destroying and injuring healthy cells, and reducing levels of important thyroid hormones. Exposure to I-131 and other radioactive forms of iodine has been linked in medical studies with higher risk of thyroid cancer, benign thyroid growths, hyperthyroidism (excess hormone levels), and hypothyroidism (lack of adequate hormone levels).

Ironically, I-131 is so effective in killing thyroid cells that it is used as a treatment against thyroid cancer and hyperthyroidism. The chemical has a half life of 8.05 days, which means that it only lasts several months before disappearing. I-131 became part of the American vernacular in the 1950s when fallout from atomic bomb tests above the ground in Nevada swept across the continental US, and contaminated the food chain nationwide. Government officials found very high levels of the chemical in Utah milk, although no orders were ever given to destroy milk. I-131 was also the type of chemical that was released in greatest amounts by the 1986 meltdown at the Chernobyl nuclear plant in the former Soviet Union.

Another element of particular interest in understanding man-made radiation effects is strontium. This element is a metal that is chemically similar to calcium, and thus its non-radioactive forms can be helpful in stimulating bone and tooth development. There are four stable, non-radioactive forms of strontium (Sr-84, Sr-86, Sr-87, and Sr-88), and nine radioactive forms, one of which is Sr-90. This isotope is created after nuclear weapons tests and nuclear reactor operations, and is released into the environment in the form of particles. Sr-90 enters the human body through the food chain; over half of this is through milk, with the rest from meat, vegetation, wheat products, and water.

Sr-90 particles behave like calcium once it enters the body. It quickly moves from the stomach to the bloodstream, and seeks out bone and teeth. As all radioactive chemicals do, Sr-90 behaves like a “wild bull in a china shop” by firing dangerous beta particles to damage and destroy healthy cells. The chemical can also penetrate into the bone marrow at the center of bones, which is a critical part of the human anatomy; the white and red blood cells that form the “army” of the immune system develop in the marrow. Thus, exposure to Sr-90 is not just a risk factor for bone cancer, but for leukemia and all other types of cancer. Its power has been captured by modern medicine as a treatment for bone cancer, due to its ability to quickly kill fast-multiplying cancerous cells in the bone.

Unlike I-131, Sr-90 decays slowly, with a physical half life of 28.7 years. The body gets rid of it more quickly (biological half life), but still, the chemical remains in the body for years. And unlike I-131, Sr-90 does not disappear entirely. Instead, it does what numerous radioactive isotopes do; it decays into another chemical known as a “daughter product” called yttrium-90. Y-90 is also radioactive, and seeks out the pituitary gland at the base of the brain. Because the pituitary gland is important for various brain functions, the health threat of Sr-90 is multiplied, even though the half life of Y-90 is just 2.7 days. A list of radioactive forms of Strontium, with their half lives, follows; the half life of Sr-90 is 28.7 years, but all others are less than sixty-five days (some measured in minutes or hours):

Sources: US Nuclear Regulatory Commission: Radionuclides (10CFR Part 20, Appendix B. H (list of isotopes). Holden NE. Table of the Isotopes. In Lide DR. CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics (85th Edition). CRC Press, 2004.

In the 1950s and 1960s, as aboveground atomic weapons tests continued, Sr-90 became a household word in the US Scientists identified it as one of the most deadly of the several hundred fission and activation products. As far back as the early 1940s, the American team developing the first atomic bomb considered a contingency plan if the bomb could not be successfully exploded. The plan was to drop large quantities of Sr-90 from airplanes over German cities, so that it would infiltrate the water supply and food system, causing great harm to humans. A decade later, as Sr-90 levels in the food supply and human bodies increased, so did concern. Many leaders, including the 1956 Democratic presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson, spoke out on the horrors of this exceptional poison:

This radioactive fall-out, as it is called, carries something that’s called strontium-90, which is the most dreadful poison in the world. For only one tablespoon equally shared by all the members of the human race could produce a dangerous level of radioactivity in the bones of every individual. In sufficient concentrations it can cause bone cancer and dangerously affect the reproductive processes.

The reference to reproductive processes is a key component in understanding radiation health risk. When radioactivity attacks the cell, it breaks the cell’s membrane, and can enter the cell nucleus, where DNA that dictates the human genetic code resides. Radioactivity is capable of breaking DNA bands; sometimes, these breaks can be repaired by the body, but other times the damage is permanent. Damaged DNA thus can be transferred to future generations during the reproductive process, something that not all pollutants are capable of. This type of damage was not just a theory, but a universally agreed upon scientific principle. As far back as 1927, biologist and future Nobel Prize winner Hermann Muller published a pioneering paper that first documented that X-ray exposure to fruit flies increased genetic mutations not just in the irradiated flies but in the succeeding generation, a finding subsequently duplicated by other experts. In 1947, soon after the atomic bomb was developed, British geneticist J.B.S. Haldane told a conference that the greater danger of atomic weapons was the genetic damage it passed down to future generations: “The killing of ten percent of humanity by an attack with atomic bombs might not destroy civilization. But the production of abnormalities in ten percent of the population by gene mutations induced by radioactivity may very easily destroy it.”

A final aspect of the threat posed by Sr-90 and other man-made radioactive chemicals is the much greater risk to the fetus and infant, compared to adults – a concept true of all pollutants. Nobel Peace Prize winner Dr. Albert Schweitzer made note of the vulnerability of young people, while singling out Sr-90 as an especially dangerous poison, in a 1957 broadcast “A Declaration of Conscience” that called for an end to aboveground atom bomb testing:

Strontium-90 is particularly dangerous and… present in large amounts in the radioactive dust… To the profound damage of these cells corresponds a profound damage to our descendants. It consists in stillbirths and in the births of babies with physical or mental defects.

From the earliest years of the twentieth century, scientific experts knew that radiation exposure carried health consequences. The more important question, however, was just how dangerous this relatively new technology was. In more specific terms, how many humans would be harmed and killed from exposure, especially certain categories of people at certain doses?

This question has proved difficult to answer, for varying reasons.

It takes considerable time to plan, conduct, and review the epidemiological and medical studies to calculate doses and risks of radiation exposure. Animal studies were conducted beginning in the early years of the atomic era, but they were often fed high doses of radiation, sometimes rubbed on their skin. Thus, the results are not always transferable to humans at these doses.

There was a built-in tendency to emphasize the positive aspect of radiation. The technology was revolutionary and exciting. Physicians could literally take pictures as if they were inside the human body. Diseases could potentially be cured. Industry could do many things with radiation, such as making wristwatches glow in the dark. The ability of radiation to offer multiple benefits to society made it almost impossible to resist using it, even before a good understanding of health risks was achieved.

Radiation takes multiple forms, and thus understanding its health risks is not a simple, one-dimensional concept. Radiation can include X-rays, natural radioactivity, and man-made fission products. Man-made radioactivity comprises hundreds of isotopes, making it difficult to understand relative contributions to disease. Types of exposure can vary; some are quick, single exposures such as X-rays, while others are protracted exposures, like fluoroscopy. Doses are often difficult to measure accurately. Some exposures are external (like X-rays) and some internal (ingested in food and water). Risks also vary according to characteristics of those exposed; for example, the fetus, infant, and child have a much greater sensitivity than an adult to the same dose.

Radiation effects may take years to be diagnosed after exposure, and thus it can take many years to achieve a true understanding of radiation risk, even if research is diligent and well organized. Some effects, such as child cancer risk after a fetus is irradiated, can be documented in the short term. But other effects may take years, even decades, after exposure. Actually, because human DNA is damaged by radiation, the true effects may only be known when future generations are assessed by research.

Economic incentives also hinder the development of comprehensive research and understanding of radiation risk. As mentioned, physicians and various industries made extensive use of the new technology; any evidence of resulting harm might result in product liability or other economic setbacks. In the case of medical uses of radiation, the expert researchers are the very users of the technology, thus setting up a difficult situation in which the same group using a technology must also monitor its safety, which is difficult for humans to do objectively.

The use of nuclear technology for military purposes set up a blockade to a good understanding of radiation risk. Military strategists might be willing to be truthful about the atom bomb’s destructive power, but are not likely to admit risks of creating or testing such a bomb, as doing so might slow down progress in building the desired nuclear arsenal. In World War II and the Cold War, during which the bomb was born, national security was paramount, and the issue of conducting health research was relegated to a back seat – even denied.

The body of knowledge of radiation health risks was improving by the mid-twentieth century. Professional organizations had begun to establish maximum exposure standards that while not “safe” could be viewed as manageable. As time passed, more technologically advanced machines tended to release less radiation. Some of the more outrageous practices, like peddling radium as a cure-all for health problems, had been discredited and ceased. A number of professional research articles had appeared in the medical literature, documenting higher-than-expected morbidity and mortality rates of diseases such as cancer after radiation exposure.

But with the introduction of the atomic bomb, the already elusive goal of understanding radiation exposure’s effects became considerably more difficult. New questions arose. How many people actually died at Hiroshima and Nagasaki? What did they die of? How many would die in the future? How much radiation had they been exposed to? What was the exposure to workers who built the bomb, and persons living near these factories? How many of them would die in the future? What about fallout from atom bomb tests? How far did it travel? How much entered human bodies? What kind of risks would ensue in the future?

Under normal conditions, with political issues not a factor, these would be very daunting questions to address. Research would have to be prospective, literally following the lives of human guinea pigs (Hiroshima and Nagasaki residents, nuclear weapons plant workers, persons living near nuclear plants, and persons exposed to bomb test fallout) to find answers. But in a Cold War environment in which a nuclear war was seen as inevitable by many, “winning” the race to develop superior numbers of atomic weapons was all important. Truth was an inevitable casualty. James Nolan, the chief safety planner at the Los Alamos site where plans for the first atomic bomb were conceived, stated what many scientists on the project knew to be true:

Possible hazards were not too important in those days. There was a war going on… [Army] engineers were interested in having a usable bomb and protecting security. The physicists were anxious to know whether the bomb worked or not and whether their efforts had been successful. Radiation hazards were entirely secondary.

The federal government’s atom bomb program had been legislated into civilian hands, namely the Atomic Energy Commission, by the Atomic Energy Act of 1946. The idea was that the AEC would follow the principle of civilian control of the military, as established in the Constitution. Congress did not trust the military to manage any aspect of nuclear weapons, other than to know how to use them in warfare. The AEC, an independent commission reporting to the President, would handle the rest – including the establishment of safety standards based on relevant research.

This was a noble goal, but one that was structurally doomed to fail. The need to “take the lead” in the race for nuclear superiority against a hostile Communist power like the Soviet Union was far too strong. The AEC became not an objective group of civilians as designed, but one that essentially made conditions as easy as possible for the military to build its arsenal. From the outset, the AEC fully committed itself to not admitting nuclear weapons development, including operation of weapons plants, posed any undue harm to Americans.

During World War II and its immediate aftermath, the federal government vigorously developed a series of nuclear plants, each with a discrete purpose in developing nuclear weapons. These included:

Wasserman H, and Solomon N. Killing Our Own: The Disaster of America’s Experience with Atomic Radiation. New York: Delta, 1982.

Each of these continued work until the end of the Cold War around 1990 made additional production of nuclear weapons unneeded. Safety conditions at these plants in the early days of the atomic age would be considered terrible by today’s standards. Probably nowhere was the amazingly shoddy handling of large amounts of dangerous radioactivity as evident as it was at the Hanford Site. Hanford is a huge tract of 586 square miles, on the Columbia River in southeastern Washington State. The site was selected by the US military during World War II to manufacture plutonium for atomic bombs. Plutonium is considered even more dangerous than uranium, so this remote site was selected. (Oak Ridge was the main site selected for bomb-grade uranium production; but because the site was just twenty miles from the city of Knoxville, Tennessee, military leaders opted to produce plutonium at Hanford).

Working quickly, workers at Hanford produced plutonium for the world’s first atomic bomb, set off in Alamagordo, New Mexico on July 16, 1945, and the Nagasaki bomb a few weeks later. The breakneck pace was accompanied by tremendous contamination at the site. In the first three years of operation, a staggering total of 685,000 curies of iodine-131 were released into the air at Hanford. In 1949, the plant conducted an experiment known as the “Green Run” that deliberately released 8,000 more curies of I-131. Health and safety concerns occupied a back seat to progress in nuclear weapons development. The Hanford complex eventually reached nine nuclear reactors by 1963.

DuPont and General Electric operated the Hanford plant under contract with the federal government. Despite being accountable to the public in principle, much about Hanford and its safety practices was deliberately kept secret. Huge amounts of water from the Columbia River were required daily to cool the reactors and returned to the river full of radioactive contamination. Massive amounts of airborne releases from Hanford also occurred. One hundred seventy-seven tanks holding captured nuclear waste were buried underground; nearly half leaked (and are still leaking today) into groundwater and threaten to enter the Columbia River. Exposures to workers and to local residents, also known as “downwinders,” were considerable, but were not addressed publicly by either the Atomic Energy Commission or its contractors. The vague assurance that Hanford was being operated “safely” was the standard official position for decades.

The highly toxic situation at Hanford was not known to the public for years, but anecdotes told during the post-Cold War era eventually brought the situation to light. One such recollection was given by William Wright, an engineer who described the crude conditions of dissolving uranium slugs (one of the numerous processes at Hanford) during those early years:

If we starting dissolving and the wind got bad, we would have to quit, so we were at the vagaries of the wind. That’s before we had sand filters and all kinds of purifiers. The radiation danger was always with us. In the early days, we carried Geiger counters with us, we didn’t have fancy pencils and badges.

For decades, no health studies were conducted, either on the population living close to Hanford or on the thousands of workers at the plant. No studies were needed, according to official pronouncements, as exposures were below federally-developed standards, and thus assumed to be too low to cause damage. Health physicists, many of whom depended on the AEC or other federal agencies for financial support, simply agreed and took no action to question this position. Finally, in the 1960s, there was some movement from the AEC. Large-scale protests against atomic weapons tests had led to the ban of all tests above the ground, but also put the entire weapons production industry on the defensive. In 1964, the AEC hired Dr. Thomas Mancuso, an occupational health specialist at the University of Pittsburgh, to study long-term health effects of nuclear weapons workers, including those at Hanford. Mancuso had a distinguished record, and had become one of America’s most esteemed researchers in understanding occupational health risks posed by various hazardous chemicals.

Mancuso was given access to health records of workers, as well as the doses received during their employment (measured daily by badges they wore at work). His work proceeded slowly – too slowly for the AEC, which wanted a quick assurance that “no risk” was detectable from research. Mancuso’s deliberation became more infuriating to the AEC in 1974, when Samuel Milham, an epidemiologist with the Washington State Department of Health, wrote a paper concluding a 25% excess of cancer deaths existed among Hanford workers. AEC officials demanded that Mancuso publicly announce that no such excess existed. He refused to do so: “But I told them (the AEC) they couldn’t use my study to counteract Milham’s. My findings were much too premature. For all I knew, Milham might be right.”

The AEC then turned to Battelle Northwest, a research organization considered likely to be sympathetic to AEC/Hanford supporters and hostile to Milham, to analyze the report. Much to the shock of the AEC, Battelle researchers found that Milham had correctly analyzed the data, and that a link between occupational exposure to radiation and cancer risk among workers existed. Mancuso, now openly defying the AEC, called in esteemed British physician Alice Stewart to help with the project. Stewart had become a pioneer in radiation research twenty years before, when she found that pelvic X-rays to pregnant women nearly doubled the chance that the fetus would die of cancer before age ten (1956 and 1958). She had become the subject of tremendous scorn from health, medical, and nuclear officials – until similar studies by other researchers found similar results, and the practice of prenatal X-rays ended in favor of the safe, non-radioactive ultrasound. Also brought on to the team was George Kneale, an expert statistician and a close colleague of Stewart.

Mancuso’s moves were too much for federal officials. He was notified that his funding would be terminated, and ordered to hand over his database to the federal government. Mancuso, knowing that his time on the project was limited, persisted nonetheless. In 1976, during the “grace period” given by the US Department of Energy (DOE), which had replaced the AEC as the chief regulator over nuclear matters, to collect his papers and hand them back, results were finally reached. Mancuso, Stewart, and Kneale concluded that cancer death rates among Hanford workers were 5–7% greater than expected – not quite the 25% figure given by Milham, but still statistically significant because of the large number of workers involved. The following year, the findings were published in the scientific journal Health Physics and reported widely in the media. Congress quickly requested hearings on the matter, and the DOE falsely testified that Mancuso was no longer with the project because he had reached retirement age – even though his contract with the University of Pittsburgh would last eight more years, and he was in fine health at age sixty-four (he would live until ninety-two). The DOE transferred the project to the Oak Ridge Associated Universities, a group over which it could exert more control.

But the story wasn’t over. Mancuso handed over his extensive files to the DOE – but kept a copy, and sent it to Stewart and Kneale. Government funds were no longer available, but Mancuso’s British counterparts did much of the heavy lifting, and five more journal articles on risks to Hanford workers were subsequently published. The DOE now padlocked any public access to records of radiation doses and health of nuclear weapons workers, even though they were paid with federal funds and thus public record. A lawsuit based on the Freedom of Information Act was filed to obtain the records, but the DOE fought it in court. Some members of Congress threatened to pass legislation shifting responsibility for nuclear research away from the DOE, but still there was no response. It wasn’t until 1990, as the Cold War ended, a full fourteen years after federal officials locked up nuclear worker files, that the ban was lifted, and the DOE agreed to share files with the Three Mile Island Public Health Fund, which had been set up to conduct similar research as a result of legal actions following the meltdown at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania.

Then, and only then, was objective research on nuclear weapons workers and occupational health risks allowed to proceed. A number of articles were published in medical journals; and finally, in the year 2000, the DOE released a report concluding, based on these studies, that workers suffered from cancer in unusually high numbers. Later that year, Congress enacted a law that guaranteed compensation for workers who suffered from one of various types of cancers.

This story of the battle over the understanding of health risks posed by working at Hanford concerned a nuclear weapons plant. However, the dynamics of this story—denial of risk by federal officials who were pressed to show supportive evidence and tried to control results to favor findings of “no risk” – are very pertinent to nuclear power plants. It pitted those experts like Mancuso and Stewart who sought to conduct objective research against federal agencies and nuclear industry officials who did everything possible to make public assurances of “no risk” and to prevent any findings of health risk from being published. Even though nuclear power plants represented a “peaceful” use of the atom, and did not have a direct link with national security as did nuclear weapons plants, the same culture of secrecy and deception would continue in the years to come.

Health threats of generating electrical power at nuclear plants exist well before reactors operate. The genesis of reactors is the production of their fuel, i.e., fissionable uranium. This metal must be mined from rocks, which is a highly dangerous and dirty process. For many years, even before the atomic bomb was developed, health experts had observed elevated disease and death rates among uranium miners. These workers routinely inhaled the fine particles and gases found in dust during the mining process, harming their lungs and respiratory organs. After the mid-1940s, much more uranium mining was conducted to generate nuclear weapons. Safety was poorly enforced by uranium companies and government health agencies. Making the situation worse was that much of the uranium mining in the US was done largely by poor Native Americans living in uranium-rich western states like Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah. These largely disenfranchised people had little power against large companies and pro-nuclear government regulators, along with poor access to health care. The culprits here were (once again) the AEC, and the congressional Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, which typically did the bidding of the military to generate as many weapons in the quickest time possible – again, relegating safety and health to a less important role and either ignoring or denying any problems.

The next step after uranium mining is that of milling, in which uranium-encrusted rocks are crushed into a fine powder. Similar to uranium mining, these mills were largely unregulated and companies were left to themselves to determine functions such as measuring exposures, enforcing safety measures, and conducting health assessments of the workers. Anecdotal testimony to Congressional committees showed that mills were often full of radioactive dust. Workers did not always wear respirators, and even if they did, cloth protectors for the nose and mouth often became full of uranium powder. There were also reports that milling companies used by the federal government falsified levels of exposure by the workers.

The next step in the uranium “fuel cycle” is conversion, which occurs when the powder from milling, known as yellowcake, is converted to uranium fluoride gas. Following conversion is uranium enrichment, in which the U-235 used in reactors is separated from the unusable U-238, which must be stored thereafter. The three federal enrichment facilities, at Oak Ridge TN, Paducah KY, and Portsmouth OH, all have extensive histories of large-scale contamination. Following enrichment is fabrication, in which the uranium is converted to uranium oxide form, and packed into long tubes known as fuel rods. Then, and only then, is the uranium ready to be sent to nuclear power plants to fuel reactors. Each of the five steps – mining, milling, conversion, enrichment, and fabrication – takes place in a different setting, and considerable transportation is required to move uranium from one setting to the next. There are risks to workers and local residents that accompany each process, as workers are exposed occupationally and some uranium byproducts are released into the local environment. And naturally, there is an enormous amount of energy – typically greenhouse gas emitters – required to operate factories for each step, as well as to power trucks that transport the uranium in its various forms from one place to another. Once the pellets of uranium oxide are ready, they are shipped to nuclear plants, and the process of generating energy is – finally – ready to begin.

From the outside, the several buildings comprising nuclear power plants do not make a grand impression. In fact, they look relatively similar to coal or oil plants and the buildings are not particularly high or wide. The one exception is that some nuclear plants have cooling towers, about 500 feet in height, adjoining the reactors. The towers release steam at the end of the process of creating electricity. Other plants have no cooling towers, but instead operate “internal” cooling systems.

There are two types of reactors used in the US. One is the Pressurized Water Reactor, which is the most common type (sixty-nine of the 104 reactors now in use are PWRs). This type of reactor employs primary and secondary circuits to cool water. The other type is the Boiling Water Reactor (BWR), which represents most of the older US reactors. BWRs differ from PWRs in that they have only a single circuit to cool water.

Nuclear reactors operate by taking in cool water from nature and heating it. They require very large amounts of water, so all reactors are typically located on rivers, lakes, bays, or oceans. Water is drawn into the reactor’s core, and is heated to a temperature of about 325 degrees Celsius. The heating process is focused in the long fuel rods containing the pellets that are bombarded by neutrons. There are hundreds of these rods that are bundled into what is known as a fuel assembly; a large reactor typically uses hundreds of fuel assemblies at one time. The number of fuel rods and assemblies in a reactor differ by whether the reactor is a PWR or BWR design. It is important to note that the process of releasing neutrons is controlled and limited by operators at the plant, as opposed to an explosion of an atomic bomb, which is an uncontrolled process.

When heated water turns to steam, it travels through piping to turbines, which produce electricity. Used water is returned to the environment, either as steam through the cooling towers, or as heated water sent directly back into the source.

The principal components of nuclear reactors are made of steel and concrete. The reactor’s pressure vessel, a steel structure that houses the core, is in turn contained in a larger steel containment vessel. Beyond the vessels is an outer building made of concrete, which exists to keep radiation from escaping into the environment in case of a meltdown or other accident.

About every eighteen months, fuel assemblies are no longer capable of producing electricity, and must be replaced. This process is known as “refueling” and requires that the entire reactor be shut down while this occurs. The reactor core is allowed to cool and new fuel assemblies are brought in to replace the old ones, which are stored in deep pools of water within the plant. Enormous amounts of radioactive waste particles generated while producing electricity are now contained in the fuel assemblies. Those chemicals that decay rapidly, such as iodine-131 (half life of eight days), disappear quickly. But a number of other man-made radioactive chemicals have not decayed, and will remain for a long time. cesium-137 and strontium-90 have half lives of thirty and twenty-nine years, and will thus continue to exist for hundreds of years. But these aren’t the slowest decaying chemicals: the half life of plutonium-239 is 24,400 years; thus, this chemical will need to be stored safely away from humans for about twice as long as civilization has existed.

These spent fuel assemblies, also known as high level radioactive waste, must be constantly cooled with water in the pools. Any loss of cooling water, from mechanical failure, act of sabotage, or a natural disaster, would be catastrophic. The average US nuclear plant contains the equivalent radioactivity of about five times what was released during the Chernobyl meltdown in 1986, and hundreds of times more than that produced from the bombs used at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Because many US reactors have operated for thirty years or more, pools at these aging reactors cannot house any more spent fuel, and assemblies are transferred to “dry cask” storage, which are steel and concrete caskets containing the assemblies that are placed outside the reactor. At least five years must elapse between the time reactors use fuel and when they are placed in dry casks, to at least partially reduce the amount of radioactivity and decrease the heat in casks.

Changing fuel assemblies is not the only activity that takes place during refueling. There are a number of mechanical inspections that occur while the reactor is out of service. A scheduled release of radioactive water into the environment also typically occurs. When the refueling is complete, the reactor is restarted – in a gradual manner, just as it must be shut down in a tapered manner, to reduce safety risks. Any other unscheduled closing of a reactor to address mechanical problems observes the same procedures.

The final step in operating a nuclear reactor actually occurs after it closes permanently. A total of twenty nuclear power reactors in the US have been shut down, mostly in the 1980s and 1990s. Operators of these reactors are required by federal law to “decommission” the plant, which involves a series of functions that disassembles the reactor’s parts and stores them away from humans, animals, and plants. The decommissioning process has taken much longer than expected for reactors already closed – typically at least a decade. It also has been a very costly process; federal law requires all reactor operators to maintain a minimum amount of funds specifically earmarked for decommissioning, during the time the reactor operates; this amount often runs into the hundreds of millions of dollars.

The preceding description included 1) the “front end” of the nuclear fuel cycle (uranium mining, milling, conversion, enrichment, and fabrication), 2) the process of generating electrical power in reactors, and 3) decommissioning nuclear reactors that have shut down permanently. Each raises questions about safety and health. There are numerous ways in which humans can be exposed to radiation in the production of atomic electrical power, including:

– Occupational Exposure: Nuclear workers can be exposed to radiation in each phase of the process of generating electricity, from the time that miners dig uranium out of the ground to the decommissioning efforts after a reactor shuts down permanently. Standards that impose maximum levels of occupational exposure have existed for years, and monitoring worker exposure is mandated by law, but several problems exist. Permissible exposure levels do not necessarily mean safe exposure levels. Worker exposures have not always been monitored, and government oversight has not always been adequate. Exposures measured in workers usually are just a gross total of radiation, and do not measure specific types of radioactive chemicals. Finally, health studies of workers are hampered by the fact that nuclear workers are typically healthier than the general population and have better access to health care, and thus comparing disease rates of workers to local residents often shows lower rates among workers, and thus is not particularly helpful.

– Accidents/Meltdowns: Since the first nuclear reactors were built over sixty years ago, mechanical failures at these complex machines have been a concern. Of greatest concern is the potential for a catastrophic meltdown that would emit large amounts of radioactivity, exposing not just workers and local residents, but many humans. This concern has become a reality on several occasions, the worst of which occurred at the Chernobyl plant in the former Soviet Union in 1986. A total loss of coolant at one of the plant’s reactors during an experiment due to human error caused an explosion, blowing the concrete lid completely off the reactor, which had no outer containment building – a design error. Massive amounts of radiation were released and detected around the globe, thousands of miles from the site. The damage to human health was devastating, and may take years to fully assess. The multiple meltdowns at the Fukushima plant in Japan beginning March 2011 after a powerful earthquake and tsunami are still in progress as of this writing, and may eventually rival Chernobyl in contamination and human casualties. Other accidents include the 1979 Three Mile Island meltdown, in which over half of the reactor core melted – again a result of human error during operations.

– Routine Releases: Even the best-designed and best-managed nuclear reactor must release some amount of radiation into the environment outside the plant. There are planned releases, like those during refueling about every eighteen months. There are also accidental releases from mechanical problems. Plant personnel attempt to minimize these releases, but no reactor can operate with zero releases of radioactivity. In 1971, the AEC held public hearings on guidelines for “effluents” from nuclear plants. The Commission later proposed a standard for liquid and gaseous emissions, then also proposed that no action was needed against any reactor operator unless they doubled the limit in a single quarter or quadrupled the annual limit over twelve months (AEC/NRC). Nobody denies that routine releases from nuclear plants occur, nor does anyone deny that these emissions enter air, food, and water. But there has been a long debate over whether these releases, even though they are legally sanctioned, have harmed humans, which will be examined later in this book.

– Exposure to Stored Waste: Nuclear power reactors store most of the waste that they generate, in deep pools of water or in dry casks. These storage methods are designed to keep humans from being exposed to any of this radioactivity. But foolproof methods are a promise, not a guarantee, and the threat of exposure – due to mechanical failure, act of terrorism, natural disaster, or simply transporting these chemicals – will remain for thousands of years.

The issues listed above – that is, understanding risks from exposure to radiation from nuclear power plants – are essentially matters of health research that are addressed by scientists. But any aspect of nuclear power was and is highly politicized, and the effort to understand health risk is perhaps the most politicized. Attempts to document truths about atomic energy risks were met head-on by a culture of secrecy and deception.

Soothing Big Bang Fears

An understanding of how secrecy, deception, and outright lies became a part of the nuclear power industry must begin by recognizing the historical roots of this culture. Specifically, the development of the atomic bomb during World War II represented the first use of the novel technology of atomic fission. Spurred by the concern that Nazi Germany might develop and use a similar weapon first, President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered the US military to conduct an all-out effort to develop the bomb. (Actually, after the discovery of fission, about six nations began researching an atomic bomb.) This effort, famously known as the Manhattan Project, required less than three years to successfully develop and test the new weapon.

Thorough secrecy was an absolute necessity, a built-in fact of life of the Manhattan Project, to keep sensitive information from falling into the wrong hands. The American public was told nothing about it, and even most government officials knew nothing about it (Harry Truman, who had been Vice President for three months, was only informed about the project after he assumed the presidency following Roosevelt’s sudden death). The large budget appropriations (a total of $2 billion) were described to Congressmen in vague terms, who voted for these funds anyway with few questions. People living near weapons production sites were not told of their true purpose, only that they were plants aiding in the war effort. All but the highest-ranking workers at these plants had no idea about the product; again, they were told that the work was simply part of an effort to win the war.

When the test bomb known as Trinity was successfully exploded in the desert of southern New Mexico in the pre-dawn hours of July 16, 1945, the flash could be seen as far as 200 miles away. The official explanation to people who saw and reported it was that the flash was just an explosion at a munitions site. Not until the Hiroshima bomb was dropped twenty-one days later did the military remove the cover of secrecy from the Manhattan Project, and for the first time, Americans realized the true nature of what had been going on at places like Oak Ridge, Hanford, and Los Alamos.

The use of the bomb and the end of the war brought relief to war-weary Americans. But in addition, a discussion over use of the new device began within scientific, political, and military circles, as well as among everyday citizens. Had it been necessary to use the weapon at all? Should it have been used on civilian targets? Was a second bomb needed to end the war? Truman and his advisors held that the decisions had been morally correct. But many others, including military leaders such as Eisenhower, disagreed. These alternative viewpoints did not change any minds in the White House.

Just six weeks after the bombs were dropped, US troops entered Hiroshima and Nagasaki to inspect and “clean up” the devastated cities. The soldiers later related they were given no specific instructions about what the city would look like or what condition the survivors would be in. No precautions were taken regarding clothing or diet; the soldiers not only breathed the local air, but used the Nagasaki municipal water supply for drinking and bathing. They also wore no badges to measure the amount of radiation to which they were exposed, because a military team had visited the two cities two weeks earlier and found contamination on the ground “below hazardous limits.” Over 1,000 Army, Navy, and Marine troops participated in this mission for six weeks, when they were reassigned.

But the mission’s implications continued, as reports of health problems from the troops followed. Some were complaints immediately after the mission, including skin sores that itched and burned. Others didn’t occur until years later, when the troops were still only middle aged, otherwise healthy men. An unusually high number of various diseases were reported, not just cancer, but disorders of the bloodstream, lung, heart, skin, and bone as well. Reports of these problems were aired by the media, as a number of soldiers spoke out publicly. The federal response, however, was to exclude the Nagasaki group from studies of soldiers stationed close to atom bomb tests in Nevada and the Pacific, and to deny requests from afflicted soldiers seeking Veterans Administration benefits. Protests from members of Congress forced a 1980 report by the Defense Department – which ignored any potential health risks to the troops from service in post-bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki; only a mention of four cases of multiple myeloma was made, a number considered not abnormal among this population. The years went on, anecdotes piled up, but the deceptive party line held fast.

Those who worked for the Manhattan Project were stationed at Los Alamos, Hanford, and Oak Ridge. Security was extremely tight; only those with clearance were allowed into the factories and laboratories. Access in and out of the towns that sprang up near the three sites was also greatly restricted. High level scientists were instructed not to divulge any information about the project to their families. Even with these extreme measures, information was leaked. After the Soviet Union exploded its first atomic bomb in 1949, it was learned that the Russian effort had benefited from information obtained from Klaus Fuchs, a spy who worked at Los Alamos during the Manhattan Project under the guise of a British scientist, who smuggled details of the Manhattan Project to the Stalin regime in Moscow. Complete secrecy, along with the supporting lies and deceptions, were now an even greater priority for the atomic weapons program.

The Japanese surrender ended World War II, but the American effort to expand its nuclear arsenal continued. The war had rearranged the balance of world power, and the US and Soviet Union emerged as the dominant nations. While the Americans and Soviets had been allies against Nazi Germany, after the surrender the relationship became an uneasy alliance at best and an outright hostile relationship at worst. The Soviet takeover of Eastern Europe at the end of the war fueled worry that Stalin had still greater ambitions on his mind. American intelligence had reason to believe that the Soviets were developing nuclear weapons, and for his part Stalin knew that the US would stockpile them. The Cold War, with nuclear weapons squarely in its midst, was on.

US bomb tests resumed after the war at a relatively slow pace, with just five explosions between 1946 and 1950, and the production of several dozen weapons during this time. The US worldwide monopoly on nuclear weapons continuewd. But during this period of relative calm, the tight secrecy surrounding the bomb program continued. Safety precautions for nuclear weapons workers were poor, but these were far less important to leaders than maintaining secrecy and ensuring success of the bomb program, so no concerns were publicly raised about them.

The first successful atomic bomb test by the Soviets in August 1949 shattered any lasting hope of avoiding hostilities. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were no longer seen as oddities, but the start of a very real, and very threatening trend. The Truman Administration, at the urging of military leaders, stepped up its program of testing and manufacturing atomic bombs. It expanded bomb testing from remote south Pacific locations to include a site in Nevada, just seventy miles northwest of Las Vegas. Production of bombs was also sped up, and the test-and-build race caused the number of nuclear weapons to soar from 1,000 in 1952 to a peak of 32,000 in 1967.

The Soviets, even after Stalin died in 1953, joined in the sprint. The duel for nuclear “superiority” was now a chilling reality which was not eased until the end of the Cold War nearly four decades later. In that time, the US military conducted 1,051 nuclear weapons tests (the Soviets did 719), in the atmosphere and in underground locations (below):

Source: Norris RS and Cochran TB. United States Nuclear Tests, July 1945 to 31 December 1992. Washington DC: National Resources Defense Council, 1994. Excludes weapons used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

Much has been written about the Cold War nuclear arms race, how it was conducted, and how it affected American public policies. A series of secretive and deceptive practices by officials became an integral part of the race developed, and are listed here:

Nuclear War “Winnable.” A number of US leaders viewed nuclear war as inevitable, and the arms race as an opportunity for America to stockpile more weapons than the Soviets in order to “win” such a war. Predictions abounded that even the loss of tens of millions of Americans could result in a military victory. This viewpoint was perhaps the greatest distortion of the atomic age. Nuclear war, like any war, is not an inevitable force of nature, but a conscious choice of leaders. In addition, as the Soviet Union quickly stockpiled weapons, it became clear that all-out nuclear war between two nations would result in massive casualties, to current and future generations, endangering life on the planet – clearly a war without “winners.” Yet numerous American leaders continued to preach the gospel of winnable nuclear war for years.

Selection of Nevada as Test Site. After the Soviets became an atomic power, the Truman administration decided to step up the number and frequency of bomb tests. Sites in the south Pacific would continue to be used, but officials wanted another location in the continental US, to shorten the time needed to shift materials and personnel. Government planners chose a remote location in the Nevada desert, on land already owned and secured by the military. Officials agreed that the site was far enough from large populations to not pose any health risk. But two days after the first Nevada test in January 1951, fallout was detected by Geiger counters used by Eastman Kodak employees in distant Rochester, New York, during a snowstorm, at five to ten times typical background levels. Officials may have been surprised, but denied that the fallout posed any health hazard, as they did for all 100 aboveground tests in Nevada over the next dozen years (another 106 atmospheric tests were conducted in the Pacific) – with no health studies or other evidence to back their claim.

Missile Gap Exaggeration. When the Soviet Union joined the atomic club, the US had a much greater number of weapons in its stockpile. This “lead” continued well into the 1950s. As late as 1960, the US had about 20,000 weapons to about 2,000 for the Soviets. The Soviet total only exceeded the American one in the late 1970s. However, the highly charged atmosphere of the 1950s led a number of political leaders to fabricate the notion that the Soviet Union had greater numbers of weapons, in spite of evidence to the contrary secured by intelligence agencies. This “missile gap” was propagated by the Eisenhower administration, by Presidential candidate John F. Kennedy, and by military leaders. These distortions made Americans excessively fearful at the time, and generated support for an expanded US nuclear program based on false information.

Hiding Atomic Tests. Aboveground atomic bomb tests were publicly announced by the military as they occurred. Some were even televised. After 1963, tests continued at the Nevada site, below the ground, until late 1992, when the last test occurred. But in 1993, Energy Department officials made a belated revelation of 204 tests that the public had never been told about, amounting to about 20% of the 1,051 total bomb tests. Most were small-scale tests conducted in the 1960s and 1970s that could escape detection by seismic instruments. “We were shrouded and clouded in an atmosphere of secrecy,” stated Energy Secretary Hazel O’Leary.

Suppression of H-Bomb Opponents. After the Soviets joined the nuclear arms race, the Truman administration began a program to develop a hydrogen bomb, a nuclear device about 1,000 times more powerful than the atomic bomb. The H-bomb was tested successfully in the Pacific in 1952 and 1954. Some scientists were disturbed and voiced their dissent, most notably Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer, who had led the scientific team at Los Alamos that developed the first nuclear weapons. The AEC council chaired by Oppenheimer recommended against pursuing an H-bomb. In a climate marked by fear of anything remotely linked to communism, this was unacceptable to US leaders. In the late 1930s, Oppenheimer had been briefly engaged to a Communist party member, and attended party several meetings and made small donations – all of which had ended by 1941. The AEC convened a special hearing; some witnesses called Oppenheimer a patriot and humanist, while others cautioned he was a threat. Oppenheimer’s security clearance allowing him access to restricted data was revoked by Eisenhower.

No Public Monitoring of Early Bomb Tests. The AEC did not operate a system to monitor fallout from bomb tests for a dozen years, until the US Public Health Service started one in 1957, after a dozen years of testing. This lack of information enabled the AEC to deflect any concern over fallout. Perhaps the most blatant incident took place in spring 1953 in southwestern Utah, where several thousand sheep were found dead by farmers soon after a large bomb test in nearby Nevada. Measurements of high radiation levels in sheep thyroid glands and notations that many sheep had burns on their wool by the Public Health Service were suppressed by the AEC in secret meetings, and irate farmers were told that the large number of deaths were due to malnutrition. The case was taken to court, where it continued into the 1980s.

Silence and Denial Among Health Officials on Fallout. For a decade after the first atomic bombs, there was virtual silence by health officials, at the local and national level, on potential health risks of fallout. Not until the mid-1950s, with the bomb test program generating momentum and public fears mounting, did some officials publicly state their concerns. The initial statements made their way into the election campaign of 1956, where concerns were cited by Presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson and others. But many scientists wouldn’t budge from the party line that fallout was harmless. In 1963, during Senate testimony over the treaty to ban aboveground tests, Dr. Edward Teller declared that current levels of fallout represented no danger. Not until 1999 did US government officials acknowledge health risks from bomb tests.

Marshall Islands Residents. The US tested 106 nuclear weapons above the ground or in the waters of the south Pacific, the majority of which were in the Marshall Islands, a remote set of atolls in the Pacific far from any populated area. These tests included the H-bomb explosions, deemed too powerful to use in Nevada. The largest was Bravo on March 1, 1954, which had a yield of 15,000,000 tons of TNT, or 1,000 Hiroshima bombs. US officials notified residents of the nearby island of Rongelap before the blast, but assured them no evacuation was needed. Fallout from the blast, which looked like falling snow, covered the ground to a depth of one inch. Not until two days after, with a number of natives reporting various illnesses, was the island evacuated. These and other residents were allowed to return to their homes even though much dangerous radiation remained. Not until decades later did the federal government set up a fund to compensate south Pacific victims suffering from health problems due to the atomic tests.

Nuclear Weapons Workers. The denials of health risk for workers exposed to radiation on the job preceded the bomb building program. The previous chapter discussed the case of the luminous watch dial painters who became ill after ingesting radium by licking the tips of their brushes, only to meet resistance and denial by the company. The workers at the various plants that contributed to atomic bomb production suffered the same fate, only at the hands of the federal government and its contractors. The case of workers at Hanford resulted in decades of contentious fighting between sick workers and independent researchers on one side, versus government officials and their contractors on the other. The standard practices of government during the arms race was to assure workers that exposure levels were harmless, and keep records of exposures and health status under lock and key. Only the end of the Cold War brought a belated admission by the Energy Department that harm had been caused, and sick or deceased workers were entitled to compensation.

Atomic Soldiers. During the period of aboveground nuclear weapons tests, about 250,000 military personnel were stationed close to the blasts, and exposed to fallout. In some cases, the soldiers were those stationed in test areas, conducting routine activities, such as maintaining security and measuring yields. Some were on ships in the Pacific that subsequently were laced with fallout with no health precautions being taken. In some instances, soldiers were called to Nevada from other posts, not being told of the mission until they arrived, to simulate how much time and how many soldiers it would take to secure an area destroyed by a nuclear weapon. Soldiers were stationed just several thousand feet from the blasts, without any protection for their eyes and lungs, and ordered toward the epicenter of the blast just minutes after explosion. Some tests had unexpectedly high radiation yields in unexpected directions, and planned maneuvers had to be scrapped while soldiers were hastily evacuated. Once again, veterans suffering from various radiation-related diseases were met with a consistent set of denials.

Spying Programs. Spying operations, by both the US and USSR, were a natural and necessary aspect of the arms race. In 1956, the American spy program using U-2 planes capable of flying out of Soviet radar surveillance began. The program, kept secret from all but the CIA and the military, did pick up considerable evidence confirming the Soviets were far behind the American in its nuclear capabilities. But political and military leaders persisted in spreading fears that the Soviets stockpiles had reached or exceeded those of the Americans. Ultimately, the U-2 program proved dangerous. The first U-2 flight directly across the Soviet Union either failed or was shot down on May 1, 1960. Pilot Francis Gary Powers was taken prisoner by the Soviets, the voluntary moratorium on all bomb tests observed by both sides since October 1958 was doomed to a quick end, and Cold War hostilities ignited. The Khrushchev regime told the world about the program, and Washington was forced to admit its existence.

Backlash to Health Studies. In the midst of Cold War-era official denials that radiation exposure caused harm, some brave scientists defied the party line by presenting research that suggested a radiation–cancer link. One of these, the study of Hanford workers by Thomas Mancuso, was described in the previous chapter. Mancuso’s colleague in the Hanford study “Alice Stewart” had entered the contentious area in 1956 when she found that pelvic X-rays to pregnant women nearly doubled the risk that the fetus would die of cancer by age ten. Both Mancuso and Stewart became the object of hostilities from those in government, and leaders in the medical and physics fields. “Everyone in America who took our side in the years subsequent to the Mancuso incident lost their funding. They don’t burn you at the stake anymore, but they do the equivalent, in terms of cutting you off from your means to work, your livelihood.”

Human Radiation Experiments. During the era of nuclear arms development, the AEC and Defense Department funded a series of experiments in which thousands of Americans were administered radioactive substances, without their consent. The purpose of these experiments, which occurred in a number of esteemed medical centers, was purely to measure uptake of radioactive substances in the body, and the body’s ability to function until its organs became damaged – topics of great interest in those architects of the bomb program. Subjects included babies, pregnant women, mentally disabled children, poor patients, prisoners, and the terminally ill. Perhaps the most disturbing example was the injection of radioactive plutonium-239, possibly the deadliest substance on earth, to terminally ill hospital patients. A 1993 series of articles in the Albuquerque Tribune exposed these sordid practices, which were conducted from the mid-1940s to the mid-1970s. Subsequently, President Bill Clinton authorized an Advisory Commission on Human Radiation Experiments to investigate and inform the public.

The reason(s) for the culture of secrecy and deception that marked the emergence of the American nuclear weapons program is a matter that has been debated extensively. A detailed discussion here would be repetitive. In summary, much of the debate’s focus has been on a mixture of policy reasons and psychological factors, which of course are subject to interpretation. Some believe that government officials deliberately and needlessly brainwashed the American public to meet military objectives. Others state that secrecy and deception was necessary to avoid a nuclear war, or to avoid further world domination by the Soviet Union. Still others contend that any secrecy and deception was relatively benign and kept to a minimum, and that any misinformation by US leaders was presented in the name of maintaining world peace.

Whatever the reasons for the clandestine atmosphere, it existed. Moreover, it directly led to how leaders and the public addressed nuclear power. The ideals embodied in Eisenhower’s 1953 “Atoms for Peace” speech were certainly noble. Nobody could argue with the dangers of nuclear weapons, and the potential for the atom to serve non-destructive purposes. But from the moment Eisenhower left the podium at the United Nations after his speech, secrecy and deception dominated the atomic discussion.

By all means at its disposal, the government attempted to hide the weaknesses and problems posed by nuclear power. The 1954 Atomic Energy Act gave private companies special breaks that encouraged the development of nuclear power. The 1957 Price-Anderson Act was perhaps the biggest cover, when it limited liability of nuclear companies in case of a catastrophic accident to just a small portion of costs. This government cover for private utilities was not just a matter of a few original reactors quickly working out some early kinks; today, the chance of a meltdown is still very much a reality, especially as reactors become older and their parts corrode. The Price-Anderson Act is still in existence today, and must be as long as reactors operate, for no insurance company would ever write a policy for a utility without these limits being in effect. Government and industry tried to downplay the Act, and virtually ignored the 1957 Brookhaven report that put the cost of a meltdown far beyond Price-Anderson’s liability limits, but the Act has stood as a monument to denials of the dangers of atomic power.

In addition to legislative actions, government officials boosted nuclear power with an enthusiastic program of public education. The discussion of the benefits of nuclear power was exaggerated. Other actions were more image than substance, such as Eisenhower flipping switches to mark the start of the first US nuclear power reactor. Government made its pitch to private businesses that produced energy, and did it well, as proposals and orders for hundreds of reactors were made from the late 1950s to the early 1970s. (Of course, government financial incentives did not hurt either.) Virtually all scientists, even those who had opposed bomb testing, were convinced that the new reactors had great potential.

Part of the early promotion of reactors was that they could be built quickly. Utility companies estimated that only several years would be required for construction, giving the impression that reactors were basic, uncomplicated machines. The reality was just the opposite, and actual time between the initial application to regulators and startup stretched in years, even decades. This underestimation of time also translated into much higher costs than had been initially promised. Politicians and the public took note of this, but maybe the greatest disturbance was on Wall Street, which was loaning billions of dollars to develop reactors, while utilities took ten or twenty years without taking in a single penny of revenue to pay back the loans.

Another early promise that failed was that reactors would immediately generate large amounts of power. The first thirteen US reactors that began operations from 1957 to 1968 were small units, averaging only 163 megawatts electrical (not until the early 1980s did the large reactors averaging 1,000 megawatts begin coming on line). These early reactors only accounted for a very small percent of US electricity consumed (about 2% by 1970). Each of the thirteen closed permanently after only an average of eighteen years in service, even though federal licenses allowed forty years of operation.

The hype over nuclear reactors also suggested that they would be smooth-running operations. The reality was quite different, as many reactors were frequently closed due to mechanical problems. The “operating factor” (the percent of time that reactors operated) was dismal for many years. Through the 1960s, 1970s, and into the late 1980s, the factor only stood at just above 50%, a highly disappointing performance that was never addressed as the reactor program was promoted. Even though this percentage has risen since, reactors did not account for 20% of the nation’s electrical production until 1992, where it has remained ever since.

The issue of a meltdown was first swept under the rug through the Price-Anderson Act, which severely limited corporate liability and saddled taxpayers with this burden. But as reactors were planned, the delusion continued. AEC regulations required that nuclear plant operators would have to develop an evacuation plan in case of a meltdown – which would cover only the ten mile radius around the reactor. The ten mile number was selected arbitrarily, and grossly underestimated the area affected by a meltdown. Airborne radioactive particles would enter the atmosphere and be propelled by prevailing winds, and would be breathed by humans and animals. If a prevailing wind was ten miles an hour, as it often is in many areas, it would take roughly that amount of time for the poisonous radioactivity to travel ten miles. It would be impossible to evacuate all residents in this small window of time. Many large cities today have operating reactors within fifty miles, and thus radioactivity released from a meltdown would enter the city’s air within hours. Radiation would travel even further than ten miles, making the evacuation requirements even more meaningless.

Perhaps most importantly, there was the issue of assuring that reactors were operating in a safe manner. Early practices governing the planning and monitoring of new reactors were shoddy, and reminiscent of the experience with weapons plants and bomb tests. Before reactors were built, federally mandated environmental impact statements were prepared – all concluding that they posed no risk, without citing any health studies (because they weren’t being conducted). The AEC also required utilities to monitor reactor emissions and local levels of radioactivity, and report this information publicly. Again, the conclusion of all monitoring programs was “no risk” (with, conveniently, an absence of health studies).

But there were major problems with monitoring programs, which would be exposed as many reactors were ordered and began producing power. First, the federally set limits of human exposure from reactor emissions were arbitrary ones. Officials erroneously jumped to the conclusion that these “permissible” limits were “safe” limits. They also failed to recognize that some humans are much more sensitive to a dose of radiation than others; for example, fetuses, infants, and children suffer much more damage than adults due to their underdeveloped immune system.

The first challenge to “permissible” limits from exposure to reactor emissions came in 1969. The AEC had set up a program six years earlier to better understand radiation’s effects on humans, plants, and animals, and appointed Dr. John Gofman of the Lawrence Livermore Lab in California as its chair. Gofman was the co-discoverer of several new radioactive chemicals, and had helped develop the bomb. This giant in the nuclear field stunned the AEC, and the entire science world, when after carefully studying reactor operations and effects of emissions, he declared that the government should reduce “permissible” limits by 90%, and that permissible emissions would result in as many as 32,000 cancer deaths to Americans each year. Suddenly, the concept of permissible equalsed safe was challenged. The AEC was furious, and struck back at Gofman and his colleague Dr. Arthur Tamplin by cutting their budget and staff. Tamplin resigned in frustration from the AEC post in 1973, while Gofman did the same two years later.

The next challenge to monitoring programs focused on how effectively they were being carried out. The first US nuclear reactor was Shippingport, just outside Pittsburgh, which began operating in 1957. The experience of the small reactor encouraged the utility to build two new and much larger reactors on the site in the early 1970s. As the proposed new reactors were considered, Professor Ernest Sternglass of the University of Pittsburgh presented figures on emissions from Shippingport and what he contended were unusually high local infant death rates. A furor over the Sternglass paper erupted. Pennsylvania Governor Milton Shapp assembled a commission, which found that the monitoring system was inadequate and careless, which also was an indictment of the AEC regulators that were supposed to ensure an effective monitoring system. In time to come, government requirements for monitoring emissions and environmental radiation levels were reduced. Despite these hassles, the two new reactors, known as Beaver Valley 1 and 2, were built.

The giddiness among nuclear power backers a half century ago was at epic proportions. There was no energy problem that nukes couldn’t solve, they were safe and clean, and they would save people a lot of money. Plans and proposals flew off drawing boards, and into public statements, with little to no regard of any potential risk. These proposals were made across the nation, but one area that merits a detailed review is the New York City metropolitan area.

New York had long been the most populated city in the US. By 1950, its population had reached nearly eight million, and suburban counties in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut within thirty miles of Manhattan added over four million more. Its energy needs were large and getting larger. It also was facing an environmental problem, as were all large cities, as dirty forms of energy released large amounts of visible pollution from homes, cars, and industries. With a pro-nuclear federal government, the 1958 election of an equally gung-ho Governor Nelson Rockefeller, and the interests of the dominant utility in the city (Consolidated Edison), the conditions were ripe for nukes to make their move in New York – even though the risks of a dangerous technology were higher than anywhere else, due to the dense population.

The years 1962 to 1972 represented a boom time for nuclear energy proposals in New York. In December 1962, Con Edison announced it had submitted a formal application to the AEC for permission to build a nuclear reactor at a site called Ravenswood. This was in the New York borough of Queens, on the East River just across from the United Nations in Manhattan. About five million people lived within five miles of the site. The first US protests against reactors took place against Ravenswood, including petitions to President John F. Kennedy and Mayor Robert Wagner. The organizers, mostly Queens community leaders, pressed their case throughout 1963. Finally, in January 1964, Con Ed withdrew its plans for the Ravenswood plant. The company contended that the decision had nothing to do with opposition to the plant, but that it had decided to buy large amounts of hydroelectric power from Canada. But the real reason for the withdrawal was stated by none other than former AEC Chair David Lilienthal, suggesting even the pro-nuclear AEC had opposed a reactor in such a densely populated area: “I regard this as a decision very much in the interest of the health and safety of Metropolitan New York … I think this decision is very much in the public interest.”

But the demise of Ravenswood did not mean an end to proposed nukes in New York City. In 1967, the magazine Power suggested that Con Edison might build a reactor underneath Central Park, in the middle of Manhattan. After The New York Times followed with an editorial critical of the idea, Con Edison denied it had any such intention the following week. Then, in October 1968, Con Edison made front page headlines when it proposed a nuclear reactor below Welfare Island (now known as Roosevelt Island), a thin, one-mile long strip in the East River just across from Manhattan, which housed two large municipal hospitals for the chronically ill. On the same day as the announcement, a task force headed by philanthropist Laurence Rockefeller (brother of the New York State Governor) also endorsed a below-ground reactor.

Laurence Rockefeller soundly supported the Welfare Island proposal. His rationale betrayed a delusion about the risks of placing nuclear reactors anywhere, let alone in the most densely populated city in the nation:

Mr. Rockefeller said he believed that the dangers of nuclear power were so slight that there was no longer any reason to bar them from cities. But he said public opinion was insisting on a completely no-risk installation. He believes the slight risk of leakage from a nuclear reactor – there is no danger of explosion, he said – is well worth it, considering the contamination that exists now with air pollution. Mr. Rockefeller said that he did not understand “why we have to go to ‘no-risk’ there (at a nuclear generating plant) when it isn’t even that safe to go home at night.” He continued “We might just as well sleep in the office.”

The public wasn’t buying such a myopic view of nuclear power in the big city, and thus the Welfare Island idea never generated any support. By 1970, it had disappeared from the Con Edison radar screen, in favor of other projects.

Proposals for reactors within the New York City limits went nowhere, so utilities persisted by floating ideas to build them in the immediate outskirts of the city. In March 1971, the New Jersey Public Service Electric and Gas Company announced it had acquired a site in Bayonne, New Jersey, and had told the AEC it intended to build two large nuclear reactors on the site. Bayonne lies on the Hudson River, just three miles from Manhattan’s southern tip where Wall Street is located. That the company would even make such a purchase and proposal was puzzling. Its Executive Vice President Robert Baker stated that any formal proposal to the AEC from the company would be at least two to three years away (this proposal again never went anywhere):

“We have good reason to believe that any application in the immediate future would be fruitless,” Mr. Baker said. He added, however, that the company hoped that public fears of the environmental dangers would be overcome by the safe operation of other large nuclear plants by Public Service and other utilities.

In October 1971, the city government co-sponsored a conference, in which the novel concept was proposed of building a nuclear “jetport” in the ocean just south of the New York City shoreline. While no number of reactors was indicated, the city was excited by the possibility. “Five years ago, such a project would have been considered silly. But now there’s some optimism that it can be done,” said City Planning Commissioner Donald Elliott. But coverage of the same article that quoted Elliott also noted that “the concept still is considered an extremely long shot.” Again, the plan never made it past the conference.

The nuclear delusion of the greatest scale ever proposed for New York City occurred on April 1, 1970. On that day, Con Edison chairman Charles Luce announced the company’s intention to build two man-made islands off the coastline of Brooklyn, a New York City borough with a population of three million. Each island would contain four large nuclear reactors. On August 9 of that year, Luce announced that a contract with the Bechtel Corporation was imminent to study the feasibility of such a project, and predicted that offshore nuclear reactors near Brooklyn would succeed because it represented an environmentally friendly way to generate power:

This would be one solution to the problem of thermal pollution, or thermal effects that we encounter with our other nuclear plants… The toughest environmental problem is water heating, but we believe we can beat this by drawing low-temperature water from deep supplies and pouring it back into the ocean. These man-made islands would do just that.

The proposal of man-made “nuclear parks” just off the waters surrounding of New York City, plus other proposals in the city, totally ignored the many dangers of nuclear reactors, including occupational exposures to workers, routine releases to the general environment, the chance of a meltdown, and the accumulation of large amounts of deadly radiation.

Although these were the only known proposals to build reactors in New York City, many more in proximate locations were made. In fact, applications for sixteen reactors within 100 miles were officially submitted to the AEC (and to its successor organization, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission). But of these, only five were built and operated (three at Indian Point thirty-five miles to the north, one at Oyster Creek sixty-five miles to the southwest, and one at Haddam Neck, ninety miles to the northeast). Of these five, Indian Point #1 and Connecticut Yankee have closed permanently, and Oyster Creek will close by 2019 (see below). The other eleven reactor orders were withdrawn for safety and cost considerations, and at least nineteen other proposed reactors, including those mentioned in the preceding paragraphs, never even made it to the formal application stage. Thus, an area that might have had thirty or more reactors wound up with just five at the maximum, a number that is now three (below).

Of the many dangers involved in operating a nuclear reactor in or near a city like New York, none are as blatant as the impossibility of safely evacuating the area if a large-scale meltdown occurred. On a normal day, the New York area is snarled with traffic. If all people in the area were to be evacuated after a meltdown, not just the working population, the massive jam would far exceed all previous ones. The federally-required evacuation plan of just the ten mile radius around a reactor would be woefully inadequate, as radiation would travel with prevailing winds much further than ten miles, into New York City, which has no evacuation plan.

One of the sixteen New York-area reactors that were ordered was Shoreham, on Long Island, fifty-five miles northeast of New York City. An evacuation from this site would be a nightmare; Long Island is a small strip of land with nearly three million people perpetually plagued by traffic jams. Moreover, there is only one way to evacuate Long Island by land – through New York City! Nonetheless, the 1968 reactor order was approved by federal regulators, and construction began. But the New York State government was required to approve the evacuation plan; and beginning in the early days of Shoreham, the answer from the Governor and state legislators was “no.” Legislators were spurred by public protests organized by local groups including the Sierra Club and Audubon Society, the largest of which occurred on June 3, 1979, during which 15,000 persons attended the demonstration and 600 were arrested. The Long Island Lighting Company pressed on with construction, hoping that somehow it could persuade the state to change its mind. But the change never came. Shoreham was completed but never opened, except for a brief test of the reactor at very low power, and it closed permanently in 1989. The company had originally pegged the cost of the reactor at $65 to $75 million, but the final tab was closer to $6 billion. These costs were passed on to the Lighting Company’s ratepayers over a three year period. The large reactor stands quietly at the site, a symbol of the failure of nuclear power. A final legacy of Shoreham was that two small wind turbines began operating at the site in 2005.

The New York metropolitan area’s dance with nuclear power is almost complete. Where dozens of reactors were once envisioned, only three remain (one of which will close by 2019). The two reactors at Indian Point are aging, and will eventually close. No new reactors in the NYC area have been proposed in decades. And despite the hyperbole about how nukes were the “best” means of generating electricity in New York, the city and its suburbs have been able to produce and import enough to satisfy its ever-growing demand. The extensive effort to bring nuclear power to America’s largest city was a house of cards, which ignored or minimized threats – threats that will exist indefinitely, as large amounts of radioactive waste remain stored at suburban plants in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut.

While the New York City area was going through its nuclear dance, an even stronger effort was being made on the other side of the nation, in California. As the twentieth century evolved, the “Land of Milk and Honey” was the place to go. The state’s population from had rocketed from 1.5 million to 10.5 million from 1900 to 1950, and predictions of 30 million or more by the year 2000 abounded. The need to accommodate this huge influx of people entailed many things – including figuring out how to generate enough electricity.

The utilities in California salivated at the chance to build nuclear reactors all over the state. If proposals for New York were in high gear, they were even more frenzied in California. In August 1969, the California state assembly supported a twenty-year development plan by utilities to build sixty-three nuclear reactors at various locations in the state. This number may now seem incredibly large, but just four decades ago was readily accepted by legislators and utilities alike.

California had gotten a jump start in building nuclear reactors, at both ends of the long state. The Humboldt Bay reactor, well north of San Francisco, was the first to operate west of the Mississippi River when it opened in 1963. The San Onofre reactor, south of Los Angeles, began operations in 1967. At that point, there were only twelve reactors producing electricity nationwide, and California had two of them. There were also research reactors operating at Vallecitos, just east of San Francisco, and Santa Susana, just northwest of Los Angeles.

But California’s nuclear dream died. The death process began early; Vallecitos and Santa Susana experienced multiple problems, and both had closed their reactors by 1964. The shut-downs did not immediately sway utilities; by 1970, they had submitted a total of twelve California reactor applications to the AEC, and two more were delivered in 1975. But of the fourteen reactors, seven were cancelled before they were constructed and three more closed, leaving the state’s thirty-eight million residents with just four units (see below):

The story of how the atomic dream in California died featured all the elements of its decline across the US. At first, the great hype about how reactors would benefit people made atomic energy almost seem like fun. In 1958, a “nuclear park” was proposed for Bodega Bay, on the Pacific coast just north of San Francisco. But the proposed site was very close to the fault that had caused the 1906 earthquake that destroyed the city of San Francisco. In the mid-1960s, Pacific Gas and Electric proposed a second location at Bodega Bay, but it too was too close to the presence of a nearby fault. As the AEC asked for more documentation about the site, the company realized the folly of its idea, and dropped the proposal in 1972.

The most contested nuclear plant was Diablo Canyon, in San Luis Obispo County in mid-California. Diablo Canyon was first proposed by Pacific Gas and Electric in 1965, as a two-reactor plant that would cost $320 million (it would eventually cost $5.3 billion). Local residents and state and national groups were concerned about many issues, including the nearby faults that could cause earthquakes and the damage that would be caused to the aquatic life in the Pacific Ocean – concerns that were dismissed by the utility and federal regulators, which had given the plant the go-ahead. Opposition turned into full-fledged protests at the site, beginning on August 6, 1977 (the thirty-second anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing). Over the next few years, protests grew in size and intensity, especially after the 1979 meltdown at the Three Mile Island plant sparked anti-nuclear protests across the nation. During a two week period in September 1981, when the plant was blockaded by protestors, over 1,900 people were arrested. A number of elected officials, including California Governor Jerry Brown, spoke out against Diablo Canyon. But the utility persisted, and in the mid-1980s, both reactors began operating.

The controversy over Diablo Canyon was accompanied by failures of California reactors that had already begun operations. The Humboldt Bay reactor, which was also located near faults, was small and problematic, and proved unprofitable; the reactor closed permanently in 1976. The Rancho Seco reactor was also unprofitable, operating only 39% of the time in its history due to a variety of mechanical problems. Some were serious. In March 1978, a “dryout” of the steam generators made the plant susceptible to a meltdown, a situation that was deemed the third worst accident in among US reactors by the NRC. In December 1985, another breakdown caused the plant to shut for over two years for repairs. Local residents had had enough, and took action. Rancho Seco was not owned by a private utility, but by the Sacramento Municipal Utility District. In June 1989, a ballot initiative to close the plant was approved by voters, and the large reactor never operated again.

The early nuclear love affair in California didn’t last long. By 1976, a state referendum was placed on the ballot to ban all new orders for nuclear reactors, until a long-term solution for nuclear waste storage was found. Voters approved the referendum, and new orders ended.

Government and industry leaders pushed the perception of nuclear reactors as a safe and inexpensive way to produce electricity. They denied or hid the numerous risks posed by atomic power – the same power used in nuclear weapons, the most devastating force the world had ever seen. Some of this hiding was done through legislation, such as the Price-Anderson Act greatly limiting industry liability in case of a reactor meltdown. Bolstered by this soothing assurance of safety, many overlooked the risks and pursued the development of nuclear reactors. In the early days of nuclear reactors, the vision of their role in the future was as sunny as it gets; in 1974, the AEC predicted that by the year 2000, about 1,200 reactors would be operating in the US.

But when reactors were actually ordered, constructed, and operated, the shine came off their image. Reactors were proposed in dangerous areas, such as New York City and the earthquake-prone California coast. They took an eternity to build, much longer than earlier predictions, as Wall Street investors waited years before a penny in loans could be paid back. Costs of planning and building nuclear plants were billions more than promised. Reactors were small at first, were closed frequently for repairs, and often shut down permanently after just a few years of operation. Beginning in the 1970s, some began to question how much radiation was leaking into the environment, and whether it posed harm to workers and local residents.

Officials were not about to admit to these realities. They maintained the stance that reactors were “clean” and “cheap” and either ignored or opposed anyone who publicly stated otherwise. The beating that the once-rosy image of reactors was taking proved to be too strong to maintain momentum. Perhaps the greatest blows were received from the 1979 partial meltdown at the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania and the 1986 total meltdown at the Chernobyl plant in the former Soviet Union, which galvanized a frightened public to many open large-scale protests. Over two dozen US reactors closed permanently, and orders for new reactors ceased after 1978. Over 100 ordered reactors were cancelled. The number of US reactors, instead of reaching the 1,200 number predicted by the AEC, settled at 104, and the percent of electrical power generated by these reactors never exceeded 20%.

But even with this extremely disappointing record, the culture of secrecy and deception endured. The 104 reactors continued to be big investments, not just financial ones, but as means of viewing the atom from a non-destructive standpoint, even as the Cold War ended the immediate fear of nuclear war. The fights over risks from nuclear weapons plants moved to nuclear power plants. The dynamics were the same; citizens and independent scientists and officials seeking the truth challenged the pro-nuclear faction made up of government and industry leaders.

The fight would take place over many plants, with many similarities at each. However, a special fight would take place at a special plant in the hills overlooking Los Angeles, a fight where secrecy and deception would reach amazing heights.

Big Meltdown in Hollywood’s Backyard

The Simi Valley in California is a bowl-shaped geological formation, in southeastern Ventura County on the border of Los Angeles County. It lies just thirty miles northwest of downtown Los Angeles. Less than twenty miles from the Pacific Ocean, it is surrounded on all sides by hills and mountains, including the Santa Susana Mountains to the north and the Simi Hills to the south.

The area’s climate is typical of Southern California, with hot summers and mild winters. There is little rainfall other than in the winter months. The area remained rural for decades, even as Los Angeles grew into a large metropolitan area. Not until about 1960 did suburban sprawl begin to take hold in the Simi Valley. Since that year, the population of Simi Valley city has jumped from 8,000 to 130,000, while the number of residents in Ventura County soared from 200,000 to 830,000, according to US Census Bureau data. The area is essentially a bedroom community for commuters to Los Angeles, which now has over ten million residents (below):

Source: US Census Bureau

For years, Simi Valley was best known as a site for filming movies. It made front-page news in 1991 when it was selected as a site for the racially charged trial of white four Los Angeles police officers who savagely beat Rodney King, a black man; the acquittal of all the officers set off riots in Los Angeles and across the nation. Simi Valley is also the site of Ronald Reagan’s grave and presidential library.

It was this sunny, country setting that officials from North American Aviation visited and reviewed in 1947. The company had been founded in 1928, and enjoyed tremendous growth, first as a maker of civilian planes and then military aircraft during World War II. Executives recognized Southern California as a place where flying could take place throughout the year, compared to the original headquarters in Michigan (it was part of General Motors Corporation), with its long, cold, snowy winters. Simi Valley also had much more needed space for company operations. In 1948, GM spun off NAA as a public company.

The amount of work at NAA had dropped sharply from its peak during World War II, but the company recovered quickly by identifying new products it could develop. The military was interested in using rocket engines in its aircraft, and continued as NAA’s best customer. The company operated Rocketdyne, a large division focused on developing liquid fueled rocket components and propulsion systems. In 1947, Rocketdyne fired the first rocket engine in the US. Three years later, the XLR43-NA-1 large liquid propellant rocket engine was successfully tested, and by 1956, the first Atlas, Thor, and Jupiter engines that powered rockets were successfully constructed. In time, many models of rocket propelled aircraft were made at the site, giving Rocketdyne a prominent place in American development of rockets.

The military presence at NAA continued to be strong during the Cold War. In fact, of the 2,558 acres at the Santa Susana site, 451 are owned by the federal government.

The federal government’s atomic program was the perfect solution to propel NAA expansion back to wartime levels. The Manhattan Project and the bomb program’s aftermath did not escape the eye of NAA officials, who gave the atom high priority. In 1948, NAA founded its Atomic Energy Research Department, whose mission was to develop nuclear technology and nuclear reactors, for military and civilian uses. Seven years later, as the national push for more civilian nuclear power moved into high gear, the department was renamed Atomics International, whose major customer was, again, the federal government, and whose primary mission was to test different types of reactors.

The brains behind the development of the atomic bomb during World War II were located at several sites. The core group of researchers, including luminaries like Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer, was placed at the Los Alamos National Lab in a remote region of northern New Mexico. In addition, the Oak Ridge and Hanford installations that produced fuel for and assembled nuclear weapons included a research component. After the war, the government expanded its research program by adding a number of research sites, including:

– Idaho National Laboratory, in an isolated section of eastern Idaho

– Argonne National Laboratory, just outside of Chicago

– Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, in the San Francisco bay area

– Brookhaven National Laboratory, on Long Island, sixty miles from New York City

Each of these places was dedicated to atomic research, for both military and civilian purposes (although military was the principal priority). Some had connections with large universities; for example, Argonne was affiliated with the University of Chicago, and Livermore with the University of California at Berkeley. This link with academia helped expand the schools’ fellowships, research funding, teacher training programs, equipment, and job opportunities for graduates. Each of the new labs enjoyed generous funding from the federal government. And even though the public knew of their existence, there was little public accountability required in return for the large number of dollars that rolled in each year from Washington. The process was simple; labs told the AEC what they needed in general terms, the AEC made budgetary requests, the very pro-nuclear and compliant Joint Atomic Energy Committee accepted these recommendations, and Congress voted them into annual budget bills, with few or no questions asked. The culture of secrecy in the atomic field continued into its research component.

But while the four national laboratories bore the large brunt of nuclear research, the federal government was still interested in supporting companies that could push the nuclear technology envelope. NAA officials, who were well respected in military circles for their work towards the war effort, made themselves known in Washington as able and willing to join in the nuclear development effort. Applying expertise in aviation in the nuclear field made sense, as delivery systems were a critical part of the American atomic weapons program.

After several years in the planning stage, Atomics International began work developing nuclear power reactors at the Santa Susana site in 1955. The first such US reactor that had produced electrical power was built in 1951 at the Idaho National Lab, but there were several types of power reactor designs on the drawing board that needed to be explored before nuclear plants could be built. Prominent among the projects given to Atomics International was the Sodium Reactor Experiment (SRE).

Sodium is a metal that converts to liquid at high temperatures. Thus, sodium can theoretically be used as a coolant of the hot core of uranium (and its many fission products from splitting uranium) in a nuclear reactor. Sodium was seen as a viable alternative to water, which was typically used as the coolant of choice in the earliest reactors, forcing reactor to be situated on a large body of water. A sodium-cooled reactor could be placed literally anywhere.

In the Sodium Reactor Experiment, hot liquid sodium was pumped through pipes, which in turn needed to be cooled to prevent the pipes from melting and the sodium from escaping. This process was especially critical, since sodium burns when combined with air, and explodes when combined with water. The substance chosen to cool the pipes was tetralin, an oily organic fluid.

The sodium reactor’s core was placed in a building, or “vessel,” lined with stainless steel. The core contained forty-three fuel elements, each of which contained seven fuel rods (skinny six-foot-long steel tubes filled with uranium fuel). As with all reactors, this uranium was used in fission, in which neutrons bombarded the uranium atoms to create high heat – as well as hundreds of radioactive chemicals like strontium-90 and iodine-131. Hot liquid sodium passed beneath the core and was absorbed by the fuel elements into a pool above the core; at this point, the sodium’s temperature was 950 degrees Fahrenheit. Heat exchangers shifted this heat to a “loop;” which in turn transferred the heat to a steam generator; the generator boiled water to make steam to be used in a turbine; and finally the steam in the turbine produced electricity.

This process was a highly technical, complicated one. It required huge amounts of uranium, sodium, and tetralin to operate even a small experimental reactor of 6.5 megawatts (today’s reactors are typically just over 1,000 megawatts). The pipes could circulate 50,000 pounds of hot liquid sodium at one time. A large amount of uranium was loaded into the fuel elements in the core, even though this type of reactor had never been tested before. So even on a small scale, the testing of the sodium-cooled reactor was a challenging one that included significant amounts of hazardous chemicals. Workers were situated behind thick walls, in case something went wrong.

Another nine small reactors were built in one section, known as Area IV, at Santa Susana, primarily for purposes other than conducting the Sodium Reactor Experiment. Atomics International worked with Southern California Edison to develop the system, which first “went critical” – that is, produced electrical power – through a nuclear reaction, in April 1957. Only a small amount of electricity was produced, but the Sodium Reactor Experiment at Santa Susana technically became the first commercial nuclear plant in the US when it sold electricity to some local customers in the nearby Southern California city of Moorpark.

The publicity given this new (and untested) idea was, in the spirit of the Cold War, highly positive. A nuclear reactor that had generated and sold electrical power – the first to accomplish this task worldwide – was a great headline for the media, which typically supported government efforts.

During the Cold War, being “in first place” was of great importance, perhaps no more so than in late 1957. In September of that year, the Soviet Union had successfully shot Sputnik, the first unmanned capsule, into space. The Khrushchev regime took maximum advantage of the event to boast of the superiority of Soviet technology and of communism in general. This event and the propaganda that followed were met with dread in the West, especially in the US. America had been the first to develop an atomic bomb, and promised to lead the post-war world in a peaceful direction; could it be that the Soviet Union was actually as proficient, or even more sophisticated? Was the US falling behind?

America needed its own “first” success late in 1957, and the Sodium Reactor Experiment served the purpose perfectly. The success at Santa Susana made page one headlines in the Los Angeles Times (“la gets first power from atomic reactor”), and was quickly recognized by national media. In November of that year, television host Edward R. Murrow chose it as a subject for his popular show See It Now. The show’s crew was allowed to film the lighting of Moorpark with electricity from Santa Susana. Murrow gave the nation – and actually, the world – a glittering review of the atomic breakthrough in the hills of Southern California:

Enrico Fermi once looked at a reactor and said “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if it could cure the common cold?” Here at Moorpark, a chain reaction that started with him washed the dishes and lit a book for a small boy to read.

The Murrow piece was seen by millions of American television viewers. Atomics International followed up by making a movie about the Sodium Reactor Experiment, which was released and distributed in the summer of 1958. The AEC, and the entire nuclear field, was delighted. The Santa Susana program continued in a spirit of optimism and progress.

Up to July 1959 – and for years after – Santa Susana enjoyed a lofty public reputation. In military and Congressional circles, it was an integral part of America’s rocket and atomic programs. In the Los Angeles area, it was a high-tech beacon of which local residents could be proud. Among workers, Santa Susana remained a desirable place to which research technicians and support staff wanted to devote their careers.

Bonnie Klea worked for decades at the Santa Susana site in various capacities, beginning at age twenty-two. Years later, after developing cancer, she became a leader of Santa Susana workers seeking to publicize unhealthy practices at the site. She commented on the loyalty that she and all workers had to Atomics International in particular, and the US nuclear program in general:

The AEC did an extensive background check on me and gave me a “Q” clearance. I never questioned the job or the project and made it a point not to know what I was working on. I was never briefed on dangers or the meaning of signs posted around. I never questioned the safety. Many of the workers were right out of high school and working at this high paying job to afford college or they were right out of military duty, were loyal to America and enjoying the benefits of higher pay and health benefits.

For those wishing to help move America forward in the new technological era, there was seemingly no better place to be than Santa Susana. It was fully integrated into both the US space missions and its atomic program – in a place that promised warm weather to boot. At its height, 16,000 persons were employed by Rocketdyne in Southern California.

This shiny image that the program championed in the Simi Valley changed, abruptly and permanently, in July 1959. The unit used for the Sodium Reactor Experiment was preparing for a Power Run that tested its ability to generate electricity while using sodium as a coolant. This was to be the fourteenth Power Run overall, and the seventh to date in 1959; these events typically lasted one to three weeks.

Run #3 was the exciting effort in 1957 that put atomic electricity in the homes of Americans – and Santa Susana in the news – for the first time. But since then, a number of problems had occurred. After Run #8 in January 1959, operators removed fuel elements from the reactor core, and noticed a sticky black substance on the elements for the first time. This was probably tetralin that had penetrated the pipes carrying the hot sodium, which in turn penetrated into the core with the uranium-laced fuel elements. The problem was merely observed and noted, and managers did nothing to slow down the schedule of future runs. After Run #13 in May 1959, operators were generally in agreement that tetralin had leaked again. The sodium used in the reactor was washed with nitrogen to remove contamination.

Another problem with Run #13 occurred at about the same time. While washing a fuel element, an explosion occurred. The inexperience with the new sodium-based reactors limited operator knowledge as they attempted to diagnose the problem. Once again, the most likely cause of the explosion was that the tetralin leaks had limited cooling of the sodium, which then was able to penetrate into the uranium-based fuel elements. Again, no halt or slowdown of schedules for further tests was made. Atomics International was flirting with disaster.

Early on July 12, 1959, Power Run #14 began. Soon after, technicians noticed something was going wrong. The sodium was obviously not cooling the reactor core, as temperatures climbed to levels much greater than during any of the previous tests. The question was why, and soon an answer was found – an all-too-familiar one. The oily tetralin that was supposed to cool the sodium had again leaked through the pump seals protecting the pipe through which sodium flowed, and was overwhelmed when it came into direct contact with the extremely hot sodium liquid. The tetralin turned into a tar, making it powerless to cool the sodium, which made the sodium able to penetrate into the fuel elements.

A blazing-hot bull in a china shop now existed in the core. The uranium (and its hundreds of radioactive byproducts formed when it was bombarded with neutrons) that was supposed to be cooled by sodium hadn’t been cooled at all. The fuel rods containing uranium pellets began to melt and large amounts of radioactive gases were formed. Operators had seen this before, but never close to these levels of heat and radiation. Technicians tried to remedy the situation by adding more fuel rods (control rods) into the reactor core, a maneuver known as a “scram.” But this action only raised the heat – and the danger. Finally, they succeeded in manually shutting the reactor down, on July 13.

At this point, Atomics International leaders knew that they had a problem on their hands, of a magnitude the company had never before experienced. The creation of high levels of radioactive gas that could not be cooled was not new, but had never before approached the amounts they were seeing on this Power Run. Even over half a century later, not much is known about who made the decisions, and on what basis decisions were made; but for reasons that appear to be inexplicable and reckless, the reactor was restarted, after just an hour and a half of deliberation.

John Pace, a twenty-year-old trainee who had worked at Santa Susana for six months, believed that the problem could not be identified while the reactor was shut down:

It’s like if you had a problem with an automobile, and you check it out to see what might be wrong. The only way that they could figure out what happened with the Sodium Reactor Experiment is by running the reactor at low levels for short periods.

But Dan Hirsch, a professor at the University of California at Santa Cruz who later became president of the Committee to Bridge the Gap, an advocacy group concerned with Santa Susana, voiced a different opinion when he testified in 2008 to a US Senate Committee chaired by Barbara Boxer of California:

So many difficulties were encountered that, at least in retrospect, it is quite clear that the reactor should have been shut down and the problems solved properly. Continuing to run in the face of a known tetralin leak, repeated scrams, equipment failures, rising radioactivity releases, and unexplained transient effects is difficult to justify. Such emphasis on continued operation can and often does have serious effects on safety and can create an atmosphere leading to serious accidents. It is dangerous, as well as being false economy, to run a reactor that clearly is not functioning as it was designed to function.

For nearly two weeks more, Power Run #14 continued; this period could be compared to someone slamming his head repeatedly against a brick wall – the damage to the head would only get worse with each attempt. On July 14, the reactor was restarted gradually, and radiation levels in the reactor building jumped again. The power produced by the reactor jumped far faster than expected, due to a failure in coolant. The increase in the temperature of the sodium as it traveled through the pipes was also far greater than ever seen before. Operators were aware of these abnormalities, but tried to figure them out while continuing the power run.

Atomics International officials knew that radiation levels in the reactor were higher than they had ever been before. Pace remembers that starting on the second day of the meltdown, “the holding tanks were all full. They still didn’t know how much radiation we were dealing with – the monitors went clear off the scale.”

Each day for the next two weeks, radiation in the holding tanks was gradually released into the air. Pace recalls that the exercise took place every day, sometimes twice a day. “They liked to do it at night, since not as many were on the graveyard shift,” he says. But the greatest concern among officials was which direction the wind was blowing. “They tried to make sure it was blowing towards the Pacific Ocean, instead of the San Fernando Valley, so it would affect fewer people.”

Finally, on July 23, the order was given to shut down the reactor and end the ill-fated Power Run #14. Some of the fuel elements were stuck when operators tried to move them – a sign that a meltdown had taken place. Gradually, power was reduced until it was shut off completely on July 26. Power Run #14 was finally over.

The matter at hand now was not to try and restart the reactor, but to figure out what had gone wrong and what harm had been caused. Of the reactor’s forty-three fuel assemblies, thirteen had been damaged – a meltdown that was the most severe to that point, and quite possibly the most severe in the sixty-plus years of the US atomic era. These assemblies were ruined, and had to be constantly cooled before being disassembled and stored permanently, so that its red-hot particles would not expose humans to its radioactivity.

The fuel assemblies were ruined, but shutting down the reactor was not the end of the problems they caused. The question of how to secure the damaged fuel assemblies was a daunting one. As bad as the accident was, it was made far worse because the reactor had no containment structure – which is the concrete dome now standard in all nuclear reactors to prevent radiation from leaking into the air in case of an accident. “It was just a building with walls,” Pace says. Atomics International officials made the decision to pump the huge amount of radioactive gases into tanks, and then release the gases into the atmosphere. But the company did this without informing the public.

The thirteen damaged fuel assemblies were removed from the reactor one by one. The highly delicate process was a risky one, and trouble naturally ensued. On August 2, one of the assemblies was placed into a protective cask, but raising the cask broke the assembly, with part of it now lodging in the cask and part remaining in the core. Radioactivity, naturally, was spurting from the assembly. Pace, who was working at the reactor at the time, recalls that the situation flustered the operator:

It was such a shock to the operator, he panicked. He pushed the wrong button to stop it to see what had happened … and this lifted the lead shield off the floor that protected against radiation leaking out of the reactor core… The panicked worker ran and signaled with the alarm for everyone to get out of the building.

Another worker volunteered to return to the building and lower the shield, but after he did the building was kept off limits for two weeks afterwards. The health of the two operators is still not known.

Measuring radioactivity levels at the site was usually a routine function. For example, operators measured concentrations of radioactive gas in tanks at the reactor every day. In previous runs with problems, levels had been found to be roughly ten times more than typical levels – which apparently disturbed nobody at Atomics International. But levels in July 1959 were literally off the charts – at minimum, about 10,000 times more than normal (Atomics International chart, 1959). One estimate, made years later by David Lochbaum, a nuclear engineer with the Union of Concerned Scientists, was that the radioactivity level above the reactor pool was one million times greater on August 1, just after Run #14 ended, compared to June 20, in the period between runs.

Calculating how much radioactivity had escaped from the stricken reactor would be a difficult undertaking under any circumstances, as hundreds of radioactive chemicals are produced, some of which decay and disappear in hours or days. To compound the problem, in the early days of the nuclear era, equipment was relatively unsophisticated, and was unable to make any estimate of total releases. Decades later, some experts tried to reconstruct what had happened and make an estimate, but these attempts were also fraught with limitations.

But there was another element that limited the accuracy of calculating releases – deception. Atomics International was not about to make this terrible incident seem worse than it was. The first move was to inform workers that the situation was not to be discussed with anyone – not just media, but even families. Apparently, workers (many of whom were loyal or frightened of any consequences if they were caught snitching) kept the secret. “All employees were instructed that the incident was not to be discussed,” says Pace. “I told my wife very little about it.”

Three days after the fateful Power Run #14 ended, an ad-hoc Committee was created to study the situation by Atomics International. The panel returned a judgment of “no harm” in prompt fashion. The company issued its version of the incident to the media. The Los Angeles Daily News of August 21 published a story entitled “Parted Fuel Element Seen at Atomics International.” The paper accepted the company’s line, and stated that the sodium reactor had operated safely.

Just one month after the meltdown, on August 29, 1959, company officials prepared a document for internal circulation and review by the AEC, stating that fuel elements were damaged, and that leaks due to tetralin failure were the likely cause. But while the document admitted damage, it was also adamant that no harm had occurred to workers or local residents: “The fuel element damage is not an indication of unsafe reactor conditions. No release of radioactive materials to the plant or its environs occurred and operating personnel were not exposed to harmful conditions.”

The blatant lie can only be explained in one way: stating the truth would have frightened the public, possibly dooming the entire Santa Susana effort, and even the entire US nuclear power program. This short memo was followed by a longer report issued by Atomics International in March 1962. The report’s summary continued the party line that while fuel elements had been damaged in July 1959, the harm was minimal:

Although significant fuel melting did not occur, some degree of preferential fission products volatility is involved in the relative release of the various fission products… Only Xe and Kr isotopes were found in the reactor cover gas.

The report was referring to krypton-85 and xenon-133, both gases that decay quickly and disappear within days. There was no admission that any of the other fission products, including strontium-90, cesium-137, cobalt-60, and Tritium (which decay much more slowly and can be detected for many years) had escaped from Santa Susana. The conclusion defied scientific logic, since splitting uranium atoms results in hundreds of new chemicals, which exist and are transported all together. Again, company officials could not bring themselves to fully admit the terrible damage they had caused.

There were other subsequent incident reports and monitoring reports that covered the events of July 1959, but never did any of these admit to any release of radioactivity that might harm local residents.

The issue of how workers’ radiation exposure was handled was particularly vexing. Employees at Santa Susana typically wore film badges that measured radiation exposure. The badges were picked up at the start of each work day, and turned in when workers had finished their shift and left the premises. Atomics International was responsible for monitoring daily and yearly exposures to ensure that they complied with federal specifications.

Even over a half century later, it is not clear how Atomics International handled the matter of monitoring worker exposure. The film badges may not have been able to document exposures with precision, since levels were so much higher than ever before. There is also a question of how diligent the company was in ensuring badges were worn. Pace asserts that they were removed from employees; without monitoring, it was impossible to measure contamination levels: “Before July 13, we wore film badges, and after then, at some point, they took them away, since they knew that the levels would be really high.”

Then there was the matter of the company ensuring that workers took needed precautions. Apparently, there was no special clothing or equipment to protect workers from radiation exposure. Pace says that ordinary cotton coveralls were worn even during clean up operations involving removal of radiation. Instead of looking like astronauts, like they should have, employees looked more like ordinary factory workers – only Santa Susana was no ordinary factory.

In 1959, and for decades after, no records of worker exposure were released to the public by Atomics International, which steadily maintained that regulations had not been violated. No questions were raised about any documents, statements, and conclusions. No employee of Atomics International questioned them. No member of Congress or the AEC questioned them. No local resident questioned them. No member of the media questioned them. Blind faith ruled for years after the 1959 disaster.

The no-question response reflects not just the prevailing culture of compliance and obedience so prevalent in those times, but the belief that somehow, despite the failure of Power Run #14 and ones before it, the system was working and not posing any harm. Plant operators should have known better; scientists had established that the power of radiation exposure could be devastating, and even operators who weren’t trained scientists knew they were working behind thick walls separating them from the reactor for good reason. Everyone knew that the fuel elements contained the same uranium (and its 100-plus toxic byproducts) used at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and in atomic bomb test explosions in the atmosphere. Yet no one seemed to be overly concerned about the clear dangers at Santa Susana.

Those who have studied the atomic era have considered possible reasons for these attitudes. Some have suggested a delusion existed that nuclear technology was the greatest thing to ever occur, and that somehow any problem could be fixed. Others have also considered that nuclear supporters insisted on believing that the technology somehow wasn’t that dangerous, since it was used for peaceful purposes. Still others believe that instead of a delusion, there was a deliberate obfuscation of the true risks to ensure that nothing stood in the way of the program’s progress – even if humans and other life suffered in the process.

Despite the troubles of the summer of 1959, the show went on at Santa Susana. The Sodium Reactor Experiment was repaired, and reopened in September 1960. More experiments were conducted, and in February 1964, the reactor shut down again so more modifications could be made. But in May 1965, Atomics International officials finally gave up, and closed down the reactor permanently. The decommissioning process that followed was an intricate and slow one. Reactor parts were taken away and placed into permanent storage by 1981, and the building that housed the reactor was destroyed in 1999. Today, a grassy field marks the site of America’s worst nuclear disaster – a stark contrast to the events of years before.

Santa Susana’s nuclear program encompassed much more than just the Sodium Reactor Experiment, and lasted far beyond 1959. Altogether, ten reactors were built and operated. Three other accidents occurred at the Santa Susana site, all within a ten-year period when optimism about nuclear power development in America was so high.

The AE-6 reactor actually experienced an accident in March 1959, four months before the Sodium Reactor Experiment meltdown. Radioactive gases were released into the atmosphere. The SNAP8ER reactor, which was intended to power missions in the US space program, was a troubled facility, with a history of unsafe practices and conditions. The reactor operated in spite of these problems, until in 1964 operators determined that 80% of its radioactive fuel had been damaged. The SNAP8DR reactor also was part of the Santa Susana program to build the SNAP-10A reactor launched into outer space, and experienced problems similar to its counterpart SNAP8ER. In 1969, operators found that about 30% of its fuel was damaged.

The ten Santa Susana reactors all closed by 1980, but by no means was the assault and long-term damage on the environment limited to what occurred inside these ten reactors. These additional types of operations include the following:

Sodium Burn Pit. Atomics International operated a sodium burn pit in an open space in Area IV at Santa Susana, close to the Sodium Reactor Experiment. The purpose of the pit was to burn waste products. Actually, the pit was conceived as an improvement to the original means of disposing radioactive waste from the site. For several years, waste was put in barrels, moved by truck to the Pacific coast, placed in a tug boat, and then shipped until it was dumped into the Santa Cruz Basin, about halfway between Santa Barbara and Los Angeles. The barrels were subsequently found to leak toxic radioactivity into the ocean. But even before leaks were known, Santa Susana operators wanted a more efficient way – not necessarily a safer way – to dispose of waste. Not having to move waste from the site would certainly be more efficient.

The highly dangerous activities at the sodium burn pit were casually noted in an internal memo at Atomics International:

This was, and has since been, used to dispose of dangerous chemicals, fuels, oxidizers, explosives, etc. These are burned with quantities of ordinary contaminated fuels. This procedure eliminated the costly method in use at that time, of trucking them from the facility and dumping in the ocean.

What actually happened in the pit was reminiscent of the Wild West. Contamination was placed into barrels, which were dumped into the burn pit, and waste was vented into the air periodically. During these ventings, workers loaded rifles and fired into the barrels, which ignited and exploded. The plumes of heavily contaminated air then moved with prevailing winds, even though the plumes were never tracked. There is no evidence that workers who fired on the barrels in the pit took any special precautions, such as masks. In addition, there were no measurements of amounts of highly dangerous chemicals disseminated by these plumes.

Burn Pit for Components. Another open air burn pit was dug close to the sodium burn pit, for the purpose of disposing of Sodium Reactor Experiment components. These were placed in pools of water, which caused them to burn and boil for days at a time, as sodium reacts violently with water, causing toxic vapor to drift into the air. Periodically, the contaminated water was pumped out of the pit, and disposed into a nearby ravine that abutted a children’s camp. Burning of hazardous materials continued long after the last of the ten Santa Susana reactors closed in 1980. Again, the extent of contamination and damage to humans from the toxic vapors remains unknown.

The Hot Lab. In 1957, Santa Susana became designated by the AEC as a site to reprocess used nuclear fuel, a recycling of fission products that had been used by reactors to prepare it for further use. This concept was one of the more risky ones of the early atomic era, as reprocessing is a dangerous process that involves creation of much greater levels of waste than the normal splitting of uranium atoms. The facility in which used fuel was accepted and prepared was aptly named the “Hot Lab” – the largest such facility in the nation.

Soon after the process began in 1957, there was trouble. The Hot Lab cutting irradiated nuclear fuel caused a fire that “got out of control” and caused “massive contamination” according to a report issued decades later by Rockwell International. There were other fires at the Hot Lab, but this was the largest and the one that caused the greatest contamination to the site.

Atomics International also operated a plutonium Fuel Fabrication facility at Santa Susana that created plutonium, a process considerably dirtier and more dangerous than creating uranium. The site was also home to a Uranium Carbide Fuel Fabrication facility that developed uranium fuel. Finally, radioactive waste was also transported from Santa Susana to three landfills in the Los Angeles area, none of which were specifically licensed to accept or store radioactive products.

While the focus of this analysis is nuclear-related operations, it must be noted that Santa Susana also produced huge amounts of non-radioactive but harmful chemicals from its operations, and released them into the local environment. Many of these were produced from its rocket-related operations. Perhaps the most potent of these chemicals was trichloroethylene, a known carcinogen commonly known as TCE. This chemical was used to wash down test stands after firing rockets and missiles. Since about 20,000 such tests were conducted at the site, a huge amount of TCE was used over several decades, contaminating the site and moving off site as well. Other toxic chemicals used by Rocketdyne in its rocket program included perchlorate, PCBs, dioxins, hydrazines, heavy metals, and various volatile organic Compounds. Similar to the cocktail of radioactive chemicals, these products were not just used, but spilled, buried, mishandled, and released in large amounts, rounding out Santa Susana’s unfortunate ecological record.

The strong optimism that marked the early years of the nuclear program at Santa Susana did not last. The mechanical failures, especially the meltdown of July 1959, served notice that this technology was not the clean solution that it was touted to be. And although the US nuclear program continued well after 1959, North American Aviation began to lose interest in the technology, as did other companies across the nation. As the priority assigned to atomic power development waned, Atomics International merged with the Rocketdyne division in 1978, and greater precedent was given to rocket development and testing. All nuclear reactors were abandoned at Santa Susana by 1980.

The legacies of atomic operations at Santa Susana are multiple. The major goal of making a sodium-cooled reactor work and creating a model for a new type of reactor turned out to be a failure. Today, water is still the coolant of choice, although in time boiling water reactors gave way to pressurized water models. Of the 439 nuclear power reactors operating around the world today, only two are sodium cooled – none in the United States. The attempt at Santa Susana to develop an alternative to a water-cooled reactor was a complete failure.

In addition to Santa Susana, three sodium-cooled reactors operated in the US. Each was small in scale, two of the three operated only briefly, and all posted poor results. The sixty-two megawatt Experimental Breeder Reactor II in Idaho operated from 1964 to 1994. The EBR II was the prototype for the Integral Fast Reactor, but Congress cut off DOE funding for this model before it was completed, and it was shut down. The seventy-five megawatt Hallam reactor in Nebraska was built by the AEC as a follow-up to Santa Susana. Corrosion and stress in the reactor caused the plant to close within several months; it never restarted because repairs would have been excessively costly. Fermi 1 was a sixty-one megawatt reactor thirty miles south of Detroit. It began operating at low power in 1963. Three years later, Fermi 1 experienced a partial meltdown, and a far greater catastrophe was narrowly averted. Several years later, the aptly titled We Almost Lost Detroit described the frightening scenario so close to a major metropolitan area. Fermi 1 was closed permanently in 1972 (see Chapter 8 for more on Fermi 1).

Sodium reactors also fared poorly overseas. Probably the most disaffected experience occurred in France, which began operating a large 1200 megawatt reactor called the Superphénix at Creys-Malville, just thirty miles from Lyon, in 1985. But the reactor ran into considerable problems. A decade later, after the unit had only operated at full power for six months, a French nuclear official declared that Superphénix had “collected an impressive series of accidents.” The French government denied a request to restart the reactor in 1998, and acquired the reactor for the sum of one franc. With 3,300 tons of radioactive sodium that must be constantly heated still in the reactor, the cleanup will continue until at least the year 2025.

But despite the string of failures, the backers of sodium-cooled reactors won’t quit. In December 2004, the City Council of Galena, Alaska voted to serve as a test site for a new sodium reactor made by Toshiba. Galena is a village of 1,000 people close to the Arctic Circle, inaccessible by road. The tiny (ten megawatt) reactor would provide power to the town, and Toshiba hopes it will serve as a prototype for other reactors. But a number of safety and logistical issues stand in the way of the Galena proposal, and as of early 2011, Toshiba has yet to submit an application to the NRC.

In 2007, the Department of Energy gave a three-year, $550,000 grant to Kansas State University to produce a sodium-cooled nuclear “fast” reactor. Professor and lead researcher Akira Tokuhiro responded to the grant by stating that “liquid sodium works well” for the task of cooling nuclear reactor fuel. The failure of the Santa Susana experience, and a half century of insoluble problems apparently hasn’t dampened the cheerful outlook of the proponents of this type of reactor. But the fact remains that, fifty-four years after Santa Susana opened, sodium-cooled reactors remain very much on the drawing board, a once-bright hope that has failed miserably.

Other nuclear programs at the Southern California site that were seen as so promising half a century ago have failed. One of these is reprocessing, which was one of the ideas that the Santa Susana lab was so eager to develop. Not only did it not get much traction in the lab, but the major US program in West Valley, New York, just south of Buffalo, was a disaster. The AEC reprocessed used nuclear fuel there beginning in 1966, but unexpectedly large amounts of contamination caused the program to halt just six years later. President Gerald Ford suspended the program, and his successor Jimmy Carter terminated it, leaving the site with huge amounts of contamination that has yet to be successfully cleaned up. However, much like sodium-cooled reactors, the idea of reprocessing has been recently reintroduced, as the Energy Department is building a reprocessed nuclear fuel facility at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina.

The nuclear program at Santa Susana was a harbinger for the demise of sodium-cooled reactors – but it represented much more. Even though all US government nuclear plants had poor safety records in the early days of the atomic era, Santa Susana must be held in special regard. First, it was located very close to a large metropolitan area, something no other site can claim. Los Angeles, just thirty miles away, is now home to 10 million persons. In addition, the rapid growth of the area even closer to the Santa Susana site creates another concern. The formerly rural open field has grown into a populated suburb; today, about 150,000 live within five miles of the plant, while 500,000 live within ten miles.

Second, it also was the home of another polluting industry, namely the Rocketdyne program of developing rocket fuel and propulsion system; Rachel Carson’s 1962 classic book Silent Spring was one of the first, and most famous, sources that established the synergistic effects of multiple environmental contaminants being far more harmful than their sum. The classic example is contained in the numerous studies of coal miners who smoked having a far greater risk of lung disease than those who fell in just one of the two categories. Combining large amounts of radioactive materials with a cocktail of other contaminants presents a major environmental health concern.

Finally, while it is literally impossible to calculate the emissions from Santa Susana, and compare these with levels from other weapons plants, it is quite possible that this site produced more contamination than any other. Shoddy management practices and decisions, plus the lack of a strong containment in the reactor buildings, added to this risk. Atomics International phased out its nuclear program in Southern California by the 1980s, but the years of secrecy and denial of any environmental contamination or health risk merely delayed the next phase of the Santa Susana story – discovery.

Evidence Trumps the Big Lie

By the late 1970s the US atomic power program was in trouble. What had not long ago been the fair-haired child of government and industry, a can’t-miss source of energy, had given way to a series of disappointments. However, the door to the decline of nuclear reactors was opened by trends in nuclear weapons programs. After the nadir of Cold War hostilities and its nuclear component was reached in the early 1960s during the Cuban Missile Crisis, things began to change.

In a democratic society like the US, change is almost inevitably a bottom-up process in which popular sentiment motivates leaders to create policies, rather than the other way around. The trend against the nuclear arms buildup was no exception, and it was done at a time when public opinion was freely expressed by rank and file Americans for a variety of issues. By the early 1960s, the civil rights movement had matured into a coordinated program that involved thousands of the most disenfranchised Americans pushing for change that guaranteed minorities full legal rights under the Constitution. The civil rights movement was soon followed by a similarly large movement against the growing American military involvement in Vietnam, on both moral and legal grounds.

Public protests also began against the harm to the environment caused by the growing use of toxic chemicals, a movement inspired by Rachel Carson’s classic 1962 book Silent Spring. Part of the environmental movement was the “ban the bomb” campaign against nuclear weapons testing and proliferation, which had became a strong force nationwide by the early 1960s, perhaps most strongly embodied in the group Women Strike for Peace. Protests against nuclear weapons didn’t end with the 1963 Test Ban Treaty, which only relegated atomic tests to underground locations. On June 12, 1982, nearly one million people crowded into New York’s Central Park to call for an end to the nuclear arms race.

Public fears about nuclear weapons had become so entrenched that leaders in both the US and Soviet Union recognized the need for action. The tough talk of the 1950s about inevitable nuclear war and the need to “win” such a war faded, and instead was gradually replaced by détente, a dialogue about ways to control arms and reduce nuclear risk. These beliefs were translated into public policy, and during the 1960s and 1970s a series of nuclear weapons-related treaties negotiated by the two superpowers were enacted:

The treaties did not ban atom bomb tests entirely; France and China had not signed the 1963 accord, and continued to test bombs in the atmosphere – but in time, following the American, Soviet, and British lead, the last aboveground test worldwide occurred in China in 1980. Underground tests were still permitted, but the changing atmosphere led US political leaders to reduce the number of nuclear weapons tests, even in the face of opposition by many military officials. In the seven-year period 1963–1969, a total of 324 bombs were tested beneath the Nevada desert. Just a decade later (1973–1979), this number had plummeted to just 147, a 55% decrease. Another measure of a slowdown in Cold War atom bomb testing was the reduction in the number of tests kept secret from the public (all such tests were revealed by the Department of Energy in 1994). In the same time periods, these non-reported tests fell from ninety-one to fifty six, a 38% decline. Finally, in September 1992, reduction in atomic tests would culminate with the last US test.

The slowdown in testing and in development of new weapons systems had the effect of finally stopping the buildup of nuclear arsenals and reducing them instead. The US total had surged from about 1,000 in 1953 to its all time peak of 31,255 in 1967; but just eleven years later, dismantling had reduced this figure to 24,418, a drop of 22% and a strong head start to sustained disarmament leading to the current figure of about 5,000.

The downturn of nuclear weapons production and testing in the 1960s and 1970s softened the base on which the nuclear power program stood. With much less of an incentive to distract people from an inevitable nuclear war, there was less need to promote the “peaceful atom.” Moreover, the skepticism displayed by the public against institutions like legalized segregation, wars to halt the spread of communism, and industrial practices that contaminated the environment shifted easily into the nuclear power program. By the late 1970s, it had been a quarter century since Eisenhower’s speech that kicked off the American nuclear power program. Extensive promises had been made. Many billions had been spent. The public wanted to know results – the true results, not rose-colored ones.

The record had certainly had not lived up to the vision of a generation earlier. The US was not on its way to the number of 1,200 reactors predicted by the AEC – in fact, it would be lucky to reach 100. The very earliest reactors created a lot of hype, as when Eisenhower flipped a switch to start Shippingport as America’s first power reactor. But they were few in number and small in size, incapable of generating much power. By early 1969, more than fifteen years after Eisenhower’s speech, just thirteen reactors had ever been completed and put into operation (and two of these had already shut down permanently). These thirteen reactors had an average of only 163 megawatts electrical, compared to a typical model of over 1,000 after the late 1970s.

In addition to those closed permanently after just a few years, these first reactors typically experienced multiple mechanical problems causing the reactor to close for considerable periods, during which no electricity could be produced. At least one, Fermi 1, experienced an accident that could have been catastrophic (near a large metropolitan area like Detroit). Some types of reactors, like sodium-cooled reactors at Hallam and Fermi 1, fared poorly amidst numerous mechanical breakdowns. All reactors generated high level waste that had to be constantly cooled and stored at each plant indefinitely, as the AEC had not developed a permanent plan for waste storage. The first thirteen reactors to produce and sell power (excluding much smaller research and experimental models) had all closed permanently by the 1990s, after an average of just eighteen years in operation, far less than the predicted forty. By early 1969, these thirteen reactors could not even produce 1% of the electricity badly needed by a rapidly growing nation.

Nuclear utilities were not deterred by the slow start. They ordered hundreds more reactors, all larger ones capable of producing more power. The 1970s would be better, according to the latest promise, and applications for 152 new reactors were officially submitted to federal regulators in the decade. But this new crop didn’t fare any better. These reactors took a long time to build; an average of 13.5 years elapsed between the utility’s application to the AEC/NRC and when the reactors began producing electricity – if they were finished at all. Only forty-five reactors of the 152 applications were eventually completed; the other 107 were cancelled or halted during construction and never operated. Cost overruns were huge; conservatively, reactors wound up costing at least three times more than original predictions, sometimes much more. There were frequent mechanical problems, some of which were serious, such as the 1975 accident at the Browns Ferry 1 reactor in Alabama. Finally, there was the partial core meltdown at the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania in 1979, described in greater detail later in this book.

While people were unhappy with the high costs – that they paid in the form of higher utility bills – it was the safety problems that caused public opinion to boil over in a series of large-scale assemblies against nuclear power. From 1976–1978, multiple protests were held at Seabrook, New Hampshire; Diablo Canyon, California; Trojan, Oregon; and Shoreham, New York. Tens of thousands took part, and thousands were arrested. Media covered each of these events, which reached millions of television viewers or newspaper readers. The March 1979 Three Mile Island meltdown only energized the protest movement. Two months later, 65,000 showed up at a Washington, DC rally against nuclear power. Four months after that, 200,000 crowded into lower Manhattan for a similar event, featuring performances by various celebrity musicians. In the late spring and early summer of 1979, protests were held at Three Mile Island, Pennsylvania; Vermont Yankee, Vermont; Rocky Flats, Colorado; and Rancho Seco, California, as well as continued protests at Diablo Canyon, Seabrook, and Shoreham. Even Hollywood helped galvanize public opinion. The dramatic movie The China Syndrome starring Jane Fonda, Michael Douglas, and Jack Lemmon about a meltdown at a nuclear power plant opened on March 16, 1979. Just twelve days later, the core at the brand new Three Mile Island melted down. Millions flocked to theaters to see the film, reinforcing the dangers of reactors to many more Americans.

It was in this environment of public disappointment, skepticism, and fear of health dangers that Santa Susana halted its nuclear operations. Rocketdyne officials knew that its nuclear program had caused extensive contamination, but they simply closed up shop, left the radioactive mess in Area IV virtually untouched, and went on with its rocket program. They did this not just because they elected to do so, but because they were allowed to do so. No regulator, no elected official, no reporter, no health researcher, no whistleblower at the site, no concerned citizen raised any concerns about Santa Susana’s environmental health threat.

U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (http://www.nrc.gov)

But that changed, quickly and dramatically.

The initial change was modest. It was led by Daniel Hirsch, a college professor and activist who had been teaching nuclear policy at the University of California, Santa Cruz and UCLA. In 1970, Hirsch also had founded the Committee to Bridge the Gap, a citizen group interested in better understanding the risks of nuclear energy in California. Hirsch knew a lot about Santa Susana – perhaps more than anybody outside of Atomics International. From his lectures, some of his UCLA students became curious about the plot of land in Ventura County that started so promisingly but was now leaving the nuclear business. In 1976, the students took action, remembers Hirsch:

The students went to look for records on Santa Susana. The irony is that they were able to find a lot of primary documents because Chauncey Starr was teaching at UCLA and had brought a lot of his stuff with him.

The Chauncey Starr to whom Hirsch was referring was a leading physicist who had worked with Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer on the atomic bomb project during World War II. After the war, he joined Rockwell as Vice President and became President of Atomics International for twenty years, before becoming Dean of the UCLA School of Engineering and Applied Science in 1967. Starr was an avowed nuclear proponent throughout his life, and his opinion never wavered despite the many problems encountered by the nuclear industry. In 2003, just four years before his death at age ninety-five, he commented on the idea for a transcontinental, interconnected network of air-cooled underground nuclear power plants spaced about 100 miles apart: “I think in thirty to fifty years there will be systems like this. I think the advantages of this are sufficient to justify it.”

Hirsch’s students searched the UCLA library system, a painstaking task in the days before the Internet. To their surprise, in a distant annex of one library at the school, they found a gold mine of information Starr had brought with him from Atomics International. Apparently, Starr saw no need to protect, hide, or destroy records that would incriminate the operators of Santa Susana for unsafe practices. Sure enough, the annex collection included document after document describing, among other things, the disaster of July 1959. The students carefully perused the documents, plus photos and films, and brought them to Hirsch. The discovery was initially reported by the Los Angeles peace group Another Mother for Peace, but otherwise received little notice. Three years later, a renewed effort to publicize the still-secret problems of Santa Susana went a little better. In the immediate aftermath of the Three Mile Island meltdown, The Committee to Bridge the Gap issued a report on the 1959 accident. The NBC affiliate in Los Angeles aired a week-long series of reports on Santa Susana, and some local residents went public with what they believed to be a cluster of leukemia cases, although they didn’t get far with the Ventura County Health Department.

During the 1980s, little progress was made in understanding Santa Susana’s effects on environmental health, and undoing the contamination that still was present at the site. This slow start was partly a result of government and industry doing what it could to quell any concerns. In 1982, Atomics International made a movie about the decommissioning of the Sodium Reactor Experiment, leading viewers to believe that decommissioning meant decontamination. In 1985, the Energy Department hired experts from the Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois to take environmental samples at Santa Susana, and they produced a report giving Santa Susana a clean bill of health, declaring boldly that “no radiological threat” existed at the site.

But these attempts to end environmental health concerns just could not work, given the enormous scale of contamination (and anecdotes of people suffering from diseases) in the new era of skepticism. In 1986, Hirsch was leading a panel convened by the interior committee of the House of Representatives. He made a point to inform committee members about problems with the N-reactor (a nuclear power reactor) at the Hanford complex, noting that the reactor had some structural similarities to the Chernobyl reactor that had experienced a catastrophic meltdown earlier that year. As the Cold War drew to an end, Congress was moved to order the Energy Department to study contamination at all DOE nuclear sites, including Santa Susana. In May 1989, an Energy Department contractor issued a report on contamination at the site, and the media jumped on some of the juicy details. An example of these reports came from Atomics International contractor James Werner, who commented on the dreadful conditions he observed at one of Santa Susana’s waste disposal pits:

When I was there, there were dead rats floating belly up and bloated little snakes swimming in it. It was the nastiest thing. You could see the sheen from chemicals and stuff.

With the public release of the report and media reports that followed, the true battle to understand what had happened at Santa Susana, how to clean up the site, and how badly it had affected local health had begun. It was a battle that would last for decades, and (as of mid-2012) have no end in site.

In the Santa Susana epic, the year 1989 proved to be a turning point. Not coincidentally, this year signaled the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. Accordingly, it was a year when new Energy Secretary James Watkins pledged to clean up the toxic legacy of nuclear facilities under DOE control. These world events paved the way for progress in the efforts to understand and remediate Santa Susana, which had been growing throughout the 1980s. At the core of the Santa Susana movement, similar to any progressive movement in a democratic society, were rank and file citizens. In 1989, Hirsch began to dedicate his efforts full time to the Committee to Bridge the Gap. In addition, four local women who had gotten to know each other while serving on the Susana Knolls Homeowners Association board took action. This board was not a nuclear-focused or Santa Susana-focused group, but one that aimed to ensure that surging suburban development in the area didn’t totally obliterate the pristine remnants of the Simi Valley. The women became close, and found that they shared numerous concerns, one of which was the relatively obscure Santa Susana lab and the potential environmental health risks it had made.

On the other side of the battle line in 1989, ready to contest any efforts to discover environmentally unsound practices, were factions of industry and government. North American Aviation was still active at Santa Susana, continuing to conduct rocket-related operations. It was also trying to restart nuclear work at the site; Rockwell International was attempting to secure federal permission to process radioactive fuel elements, in fairlylarge amounts (up to eleven pounds of enriched uranium and 4.4 pounds of plutonium). Government opposition to making public any findings of contamination and health threats would be led, of course, by the US Energy Department, the successor to the AEC that had led the American program of nuclear weapons development, and “peaceful” atomic programs designed to improve public opinion of the atom. DOE had the blessing of military leaders; even the end of the Cold War arms race had failed to halt the military’s desire for atomic superiority.

After learning of the Energy Department’s 1989 report on Santa Susana, the four women at the Homeowners Association met to discuss the developing situation, and decided to form the Rocketdyne Cleanup Coalition. The concern they felt for their health, along with that of their families and neighbors, from revelations of extensive contamination at Santa Susana was clarified by Marie Mason during a February 2011 interview with the CBS affiliate in Los Angeles:

Well we were horrified, because we were raising our children here. This is like paradise. I mean, we all have creeks running through our yard. Our children played in the creeks when they were little.

With the grassroots mechanism in place, other players were inspired to join the Santa Susana fight. One was the media. When the May 1989 Energy Department report was released, Los Angeles Daily News ran a long article and editorial on Santa Susana in which it asked

How could a major defense contractor under the direction of a government department have allowed its facilities to become so contaminated? Part of the answer seems to lie in ignorance and apathy.

Another member in the battle against Santa Susana was elected officials. Some recognized that the issue was entering the public arena, and joined the fight in 1989. Congressman Elton Gallegly, whose district included the Santa Susana site, jumped into the fray, criticizing the Environmental Protection Agency as being “insensitive to the human needs of our communities.” After statements such as this, a final component that would determine Santa Susana’s fate – regulators – emerged. The EPA quickly became involved in the investigation of Santa Susana – a potentially promising development, since EPA (unlike DOE) had no direct involvement in the nuclear weapons or power programs. With citizens, media, regulators, and elected officials now poised to investigate, there was a chance that the secrets of what had happened there in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s would finally be revealed.

The multiple investigations of Santa Susana focused on two areas: environmental contamination and health risk to local residents and workers.

The Energy Department had a conflict of interest in the investigation of Santa Susana. The Department, which was responsible for ensuring safe practices at nuclear-related sites, was the very group that (as the successor to the AEC) had for decades maintained a policy of keeping unsafe practices secret from the public. With DOE not likely to be helpful or objective, advocates turned to another federal agency with authority over a place like Santa Susana, namely, the EPA. In July 1989, Congressman Gallegly followed his critical comments against the agency by ordering it to inspect the radiation monitoring program at the site, just to get an idea of whether it was feasible to assess the contamination. A team from the EPA’s National Radiation Lab in Las Vegas found some deplorable practices that would create obstacles for any effective assessment, all of which were unknown to or ignored by the Energy Department. Years later, in testimony to a US Senate Committee chaired by California’s Barbara Boxer, Hirsch described some of these scandalous practices:

Santa Susana Field Lab was washing radioactivity off vegetation before monitoring; it was burning the vegetation to an ash, driving off the volatile radioactivity in the vegetation before monitoring; it was similarly heating soil samples to high temperatures to drive off the volatile radioactivity before monitoring.

The EPA also documented that operators at the site filtered groundwater samples and disposed of the radioactivity, thus reducing the true levels of contamination. The report concluded that without correction, the system of radiation measurements at Santa Susana could not possibly assess where and how much radiation had been dumped at the site.

The DOE and EPA, two federal agencies with some overlap in their respective missions, were now at odds with each other. The EPA was much more likely to find unsafe practices at Santa Susana and report it to the public than the DOE. Congress had oversight powers over these and other federal bodies, and some members of the California delegation urged cooperation between the two. But this was not going to happen easily, as both groups wanted primary authority. Finally, in 1995, a joint DOE/EPA policy was reached, declaring that all DOE sites (including Santa Susana) would be cleaned to EPA standards.

But troubles followed. In 1994–1995, Rocketdyne conducted a survey of the infamous Area IV at Santa Susana, where the ten reactors had been and other nuclear operations had occurred. The DOE accepted the report from its subcontractor, but the EPA was critical. In a 1997 letter to Boeing (which had recently purchased the Santa Susana site), the EPA took issue with, among other things, the desirable levels of radiation in the soil that the DOE wanted to achieve, terming them far too high and inconsistent with EPA legal requirements. In March 2003, the DOE defied the EPA by announcing the site would be cleaned up, but to standards that fell woefully short of EPA’s; would only clean up a very small portion of the radiation-contaminated soil; and would allow residential use at the site in as little as ten more years – and claimed that these policies were consistent with the DOE/EPA agreement. The EPA, naturally, was furious with the DOE.

Seeing that the DOE was taking an obstructionist position and that it would have to be forced into being vigilant about monitoring and cleanup, opponents filed a lawsuit in US District Court in 2003. The plaintiffs included the Committee to Bridge the Gap, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and the City of Los Angeles. Four years later, the case ended in a resounding defeat for the DOE. In a forty-six page opinion, the Court challenged the DOE finding (based on the 1994–1995 Rocketdyne survey) that Santa Susana presented “no significant impact” to the local environment. It leaned strongly on the 1997 EPA letter to Boeing, also noted in follow-up letters to President Bill Clinton from California Senators Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer as its basis to rule against the DOE:

The EPA was highly critical of the Rocketdyne survey, faulting its methodology on several accounts and ultimately calling for it to be scrapped and redone… The letter itself focused mainly on the fifteen millirems per year radiation exposure screening level employed in the survey… cited a number of problems with how the survey was conducted which “leads to the conclusion that the survey could have missed radionuclides in the ground or buried sources” … cited several problems with the way the survey analyzed data… and cited the survey’s exclusion of 25% of Area IV from the study.

The Court found that DOE had violated the National Environmental Policy Act that gives EPA its powers, and banned DOE from transferring or selling Area IV until it had developed an acceptable Environmental Impact Statement. The Court also asserted its jurisdiction over the matter until it deemed that DOE had met its legal obligations to decontaminate the nuclear portion of Santa Susana. Those pressing for a speedy and comprehensive cleanup had won a clear victory.

The suit against DOE was not the only legal action targeting Santa Susana. In February 2004, a class action suit was filed by local citizens, many afflicted with diseases such as cancer, against Boeing. The case was eventually settled for an undisclosed amount, but not before some disturbing information had been presented. Dr. Arjun Makhijani of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research testified that the amount of radioactive iodine-131 released into the air during the July 1959 meltdown at Santa Susana was about 260 times greater than that released during the Three Mile Island meltdown two decades later. Makhijani’s figure was just an estimate, and one that was challenged by others, but it lent credence to the belief that the 1959 incident had been the worst in US history.

In 1998, local resident Margaret Ann Galasso was one of 132 local residents suffering from illnesses that sued Boeing. Seven years later, her attorneys led by Barry Cappello accepted a $30 million settlement, asking that the 132 residents agree to it with the provision they not divulge anything about the settlement. Galasso signed, but when she found she would only receive $31,000 (a small amount considering she needed to pay bills to treat her uterine cancer), she forfeited the money by going public. A transcript of an interview with CNN correspondent Drew Griffin stated:

All I kept getting were papers, papers, papers. Sign this, sign that, sign this, sign that. I kept taking the papers and throwing them into a box. The purpose of the settlement was to my mind, it is to make Mr. Cappello rich.

As the turf battle between EPA and DOE for authority over Santa Susana raged, the state of California also entered the picture. In 2006, the state legislature established the Santa Susana Field Lab Advisory Panel, which was supported by funds from both state (California EPA) and federal (DOE) agencies. The group heard some strong statements from expert witnesses about contamination from the 1959 meltdown. Nuclear engineer David Lochbaum of the Union of Concerned Scientists contradicted the original claim of Atomics International that the only types of radioactivity that escaped into the air were krypton-85 and xenon-133 gases. Lochbaum asserted that as much of 30% of the reactor’s total amount of iodine-131 and cesium-137, an enormous amount, was released.

In 2007, the California legislature passed SB990, which set standards for the Santa Susana cleanup. The bill empowered California’s Department of Toxic Substances to authorize a remediation of the site “to protect public health and safety” and banned any sale or transfer of the property by Boeing until cleanup was final. The standards were strict, along the lines of what the EPA intended, and much stronger than those that the Energy Department had proposed. Citizen groups hailed SB990 as the kind of strong regulatory tool needed to properly clean up the site 2008. Boeing had other ideas: it sued the state in 2009 over the law. About the only issue that regulators and legislators could agree on was the future use of the Santa Susana site; in 2007, Boeing and the State of California entered an agreement that eventually, the site would become state park land, off limits to any residential or commercial uses. The state legislature and EPA were not officially partners, but were certainly playing on the team opposing Boeing and the DOE.

Despite some progress, very little cleanup had taken place at Santa Susana as the early years of the twenty-first century rolled along. The DOE, despite its resounding defeat in federal court, doggedly continued to resist attempts to make it assess and clean the site on anything but its own terms. It refused a request from Congress to conduct a joint (with the EPA) survey of the site in 2008. That year, DOE announced it had selected a company to prepare an Environmental Impact Statement for Santa Susana; but it failed to reveal that the radiation portion would be done by Science Applications International Corporation, which had been recently sued by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission and found guilty in federal court of a conflict of interest.

In April 2009, the DOE announced it was allotting $41.5 million, mostly from the just-enacted economic stimulus bill, for environmental sampling of Area IV. Finally, in December 2010, state and federal officials (including DOE) agreed on a decontamination program, for Area IV and the Northern Buffer Zone (one-fourth of the total site) with an estimated completion date of 2017. DOE and the National Aviation and Space Administration would remove chemical and radioactive toxins from the site, to meet the specifications of the strict 2007 California state law. All parties seemed pleased with the agreement, including the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Committee to Bridge the Gap:

DOE and NASA have now shown their concern for us their neighbors and for that we applaud them. We will soon be able to fall asleep at night and not worry about the contamination on the hill oozing down the mountain, or blowing off in the Santa Ana winds to rest on unsuspecting souls. December 6th is a historic day for nuclear and toxic waste cleanup and Southern California.

Despite these advances, more than two decades after the initial recognition that a cleanup campaign was needed the work is still in its very early stages. Moreover, with Boeing still pursuing legal action against SB990, it is uncertain when the cleanup project will begin and end.

As slowly as the effort to monitor and decontaminate Santa Susana has evolved, attempts to understand health risk have probably been slower. Part of the reason for this is that even when there is a sincere and objective desire to understand this risk, research can be difficult. Epidemiological and clinical studies are often long and time consuming, and methods used often are limited when attempting to determine cause and effect. Even when high disease rates in local populations are found, health researchers often are at odds about whether elevated rates represent “correlation” or “causation.” Even seemingly obvious studies linking factors like tobacco use and higher lung cancer rates need to be interpreted cautiously, since many other reasons can increase risk. Other problems in understanding risk of environmental pollutants include selecting diseases (cancer, other), selecting populations (male/female, children/adult, etc.), selecting type of measure (incidence, mortality), and selecting time periods to study.

Methodological issues are one aspect limiting environmental health studies, but potential bias issues are most certainly another. The matter of who conducts studies, and whether they are objective experts has been hotly contested for decades. The fact that environmental contamination is typically produced by large industries with power to affect government, academic, and media officials can be a roadblock to conducting studies at all, to ensuring that they are constructed properly, and to attaining accurate results. The nuclear industry has evolved in a highly political environment since its beginnings, raising the chances that studies will be biased.

The Santa Susana lab raises serious questions about health risk because of the extensive amount of known contaminants to which humans were exposed. The issue of whether plant workers and/or local residents suffered from diseases in greater-than-expected rates is a crucial component of any investigation. In the decades of the 1990s and 2000s, there has been a struggle to understand health effects of contamination – a struggle that continues through 2011, and probably well after, even though many have had strong concerns for years.

In October 1990, the California Department of Health Services prepared a report that found bladder cancer was 50% higher than Los Angeles County in the three census tracts of Canoga Park and Chatsworth, closest to Santa Susana. The study was not publicly released until four months later, prompting a furious response from California Assemblyman Richard Katz. “By keeping this critical report’s findings from the people directly impacted by the results, the DHS has in effect been holding the public hostage,” was how Katz described it.

Even though the bladder cancer study was focused on local residents, early attempts at understanding health risk from Santa Susana were mostly on the health of workers at the plant. The cooperation of Rocketdyne was essential to any worker study, since it possessed worker exposure records (from badges worn daily by workers) and health histories, but the company was in no hurry to share these with any external health research experts. Then there was the DOE, which funded activities at Santa Susana. As the “boss” of Rocketdyne, the DOE was in position to authorize worker studies. But fearing unfavorable results, the DOE initially resisted funding these studies in the face of repeated calls by officials and citizens to do so.

Finally, in February 1993, it allocated nearly $1 million to study worker health, and formed a team from UCLA to conduct a study. The team was guided by a fourteen-member Oversight Panel, co-chaired by Hirsch and David Michaels of the City of New York Medical School. It included some distinguished academic researchers, including Dr. Alice Stewart, author of the pioneering studies of cancer risk from low dose radiation in the 1950s, linking abdominal X-rays to pregnant women with cancer risk to the child. The only DOE employee on the panel was purposely classified as a non-voting member.

Three years later, the UCLA team had finished a rough draft of its study. Findings were distributed for comment – including to Rocketdyne officials, even though the company had a public relations and financial interest in its outcome. Eventually, the study was released by the Oversight Panel, which stated that 27% of cancer deaths among workers were attributable to workplace exposures. It also found:

– Higher death rates of blood, lymph system, and lung cancer from external exposures (using badge readings).

– Progressively higher death rates of all cancers and those sensitive to radiation, with progressively higher external doses (using badge readings).

– Higher death rates of digestive, oral, pharynx, esophagus, and stomach cancer from internal exposures (breathing, eating, drinking).

– Higher death rates for cancer in workers exposed after age forty-nine.

The panel made the important point that worker exposures did not violate legal limits, yet still caused a considerable number of excess cancer cases, suggesting limits were not protecting workers:

Although the cancer deaths at SSFL attributable to radiation exposure were dose-related, they occurred at doses substantially below those considered permissible by official US and international regulatory bodies, thus raising questions about the adequacy of current regulations.

The report concluded that health of the Santa Susana workers should continue to be monitored in the future, and that a study of cancer risk to the entire community, not just workers, was warranted. The UCLA researchers published study results in the American Journal of Industrial Medicine in 1999.

Progress towards studying health of all residents living in the community near Santa Susana, not just plant workers, lagged behind. Pressure from local residents to conduct these studies grew, causing elected officials including US Senator Dianne Feinstein to become involved. In 1999, Feinstein wrote three letters to Donna Shalala, President Clinton’s Secretary of Health and Human Services, to appropriate funds to examine the feasibility of such a study. More pressure was applied by activists, who in 1998 forced the release of a state Department of Health Services study on lung cancer rates in Southern California. The study, which had been completed two years before but not released, showed elevated rates in Ventura County tracts closest to Santa Susana.

Finally, the federal government relented and sent out staff from its Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry to Southern California. The staff conducted a one-day hearing, which failed to appease activists. Recollections of the day’s proceedings included a statement by an ATSDR radiation specialist, who claimedthat “eating a banana provided more radiation than living below the facility.”

A study of cancer risk among members of the community closest to Santa Susana had never been conducted, mostly because of DOE’s refusal to open its pocketbook to provide the substantial resources needed for such a study. But in the early 2000s, a breakthrough was made. The department settled a law suit by pledging several million dollars to a fund (independent of DOE) that supported and administered grants subsidizing health studies at DOE nuclear facilities. The Santa Susana Oversight Panel, which had finished its worker studies, successfully applied for and received a grant from this fund, and coupled with subsidies from the state of California, finally began to consider the health effects to the community from the July 1959 accident.

The panel received no help from Rocketdyne when it asked for data:

We discovered that Atomics International had a meteorological station on top of the SRE at the time of the accident. We requested that Rocketdyne provide us with the weather data. Rocketdyne declined, asserting that the information was proprietary – a trade secret. Which way the wind was blowing nearly fifty years ago obviously is not a business secret… withholding of weather data suggests the possibility that Rocketdyne has something to hide regarding the implications for environmental releases and exposure of off-site populations.

The panel produced a report in October 2006, accompanied by more detailed reports from consultants. One was from nuclear engineer David Lochbaum of the Union of Concerned Scientists, who estimated that the accident released 6,500 and 1,300 curies of iodine-131 and cesium-137 into the air, compared to seventeen and zero from the Three Mile Island accident. Lochbaum’s numbers provide the basis for the estimate that Santa Susana releases were about 458 times greater than Three Mile Island, even exceeding Arjun Makhijani’s prior estimate of 260 times. Physicist Jan Beyea also prepared a long report, estimating doses to humans and their health effects. Beyea concluded that the 1959 accident caused between zero and 1800 cancers to local residents, with an average of 260 excess cancer cases.

For the first time, experts had attributed cancer risk to the 1959 accident. But the report fell short in some ways. The panel itself noted that epidemiological studies such as the one it did had a limited ability to identify excess cancers. Moreover, citizens were not totally satisfied. The idea that fewer than 300 people developed cancer, in the largest county in the US (Los Angeles, with a population of over ten million, of whom four million will develop cancer in their lifetime) suggests that the accident caused only minimal harm.

The four women who formed the Rocketdyne Cleanup Commission may be among those who think Beyea may have badly underestimated casualties. In 2006, they published a long memoir of their experience over nearly two decades called Loss of Innocence. (Perhaps not coincidentally, three of the four are now cancer survivors, and the other has experienced problems with her thyroid gland.) The memoir, published the same month that the excess cancer estimate was made public by the Panel, stated that limited health studies to date “reinforce the fact that our original goal of a community epidemiological study is still needed.” Much like the effort to understand contamination patterns at Santa Susana, much more work is needed to satisfactorily calculate health hazards to local residents.

The story of Santa Susana is still, as of mid-2012, very much a work in progress. Full understanding of the extent of contamination at the site, along with the extent of health consequences to workers and local residents, will not be known for at least the foreseeable future.

Particularly since 1989, there have been extensive efforts to unlock the secrets of the vast and mysterious site in the Simi Valley. But even these efforts have left many stones unturned. A substantial part of the reason that more is not currently known is resistance, mostly by government and industry officials. This resistance has taken many forms, including public denials of wrongdoing, refusal to participate in effective remediation programs, refusal to fund needed health studies, lack of cooperation in sharing data, and even legal actions (as plaintiffs and defendants). Resistance continues today, even though it is weakening somewhat with the passing of time.

There are reasons supporting the belief that resistance will continue to fade in the future. One is that Santa Susana is no longer used for any research purpose; the nuclear program was halted in 1980, and the rocket program finally ceased in 2006. (Of course, the post-nuclear era at Santa Susana was not free of risk; a 1994 explosion that killed two Rocketdyne workers ended up in a lawsuit that Boeing settled a decade later.) Another is that the Cold War ethos that anything done in the name of national security is acceptable is, at long last, fading from the scene. This belief has been replaced, in the Simi Valley and across the nation, by a hard truth that considerable and avoidable damage was done during the nuclear program, damage that still hasn’t been fully accounted for.

Regarding Santa Susana, this message has been reinforced repeatedly, primarily by citizens seeking the truth, and backed by media and public officials. The History Channel aired a program in 2006 on the large 1959 Sodium Reactor Experiment accident. John Pace, the young man who worked at the site during the accident, was astonished to view himself in the old footage, and reports of workers that became ill from the accident moved him to begin telling his story about what had happened. The fiftieth anniversary of the meltdown in July 1959 brought considerable media attention. Even more recently, the CBS-TV affiliate in Los Angeles produced a news broadcast about the site and the four women who led the Rocketdyne Cleanup Coalition, on February 3, 2011.

The primary legacy of Santa Susana’s atomic experience is that it attempted to develop a technology that wound up adding little to the US nuclear power program. Sodium-cooled reactors are non-existent in the US and virtually non-existent worldwide. DOE plants are still in operation, but their primary purpose is cleanup. With the last order for a new US nuclear power reactor having occurred in 1978, the need to develop new technology in this area is greatly reduced. Contamination at DOE plants like Santa Susana still exists in large quantities, and it will take years to restore the sites to their previously untainted states.

A secondary legacy of the Atomics International experience relates to operating a nuclear plant near a major metropolitan center. The ten most populated cities in the US are each in the vicinity of a nuclear power plant (below). But none are located as close as Santa Susana to downtown Los Angeles, which is just twenty-nine miles away.

Sources: US Census Bureau (population), US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (location). Distance represents approximately the center of each city to the border of the nuclear plant.

In the past, some proposals to build reactors even closer to big cities (or actually within cities, as in the case of New York) have been turned down. None of the thirty-three new nuclear reactors across the US that have been proposed over the past decade are slated near major cities. The experience of a meltdown occurring less than thirty miles from a county that now has 10 million people has yielded a lesson of “don’t come too close.”

Some may believe that the legacy of Santa Susana is still unfolding, and that the future will utilize the knowledge acquired from nuclear research at the plant. Since about the time the new millennium began, there has been talk of a “nuclear revival” featuring more reactors and techniques like reprocessing (which requires sodium cooling). But this talk has been nothing more – only talk – without accompanying actions. The historical record of plants like Santa Susana continues to unfold, perhaps affecting long-term public policies related to nuclear power.

Secrecy Cracks Reveal Carnage

By 1970, nineteen nuclear power reactors had begun operations in the US. In addition, utilities had officially placed orders for ninety-one more reactors to the Atomic Energy Commission. Many more would be announced in the next few years. In 1973, the Arab oil embargo and resulting energy crisis gave nuclear backers another basis for expansion: energy independence. Late that year, President Richard Nixon announced “Project Independence” which (among other things) called for 1,000 reactors to operate across the country by the year 2000. The AEC topped Nixon’s prediction the following year with a figure of 1,200. Research was in full force to develop various models for reactors.

The early nuclear reactors were a sort of pilot test. Nobody knew just how these new machines would function on a daily basis, as the research documented problems along with promise. The early reactors encountered a number of mechanical problems that hadn’t been anticipated. Many were forced to shut down for extended periods for repairs, and a few even shut down permanently after just a few years in operation. But the utilities in charge just went about their business, and the rosy image of nuclear power among the vast majority of Americans continued unabated.

Why were utilities given carte blanche in these early years? First, the nuclear weapons plants culture was carried over to nuclear power plants. Bomb factories operated in virtual secrecy, and were permitted by government officials, media, and the public to do so, in order to maintain national security. By virtue of the “nuclear” in their description, nuclear plants were allowed to work without much accountability.

A second reason for the great freedom enjoyed by utilities was the strong positive public image generated by industry and government through extensive advertising campaigns, and other direct and indirect propaganda.

Third, the assumption that utilities were safely operating nuclear reactors was an outgrowth of the strong support by many Americans for this goal. The psychological term “cognitive dissonance” can be applied here. This phenomenon occurs when humans are disturbed by conflicting ideas (e.g., the atom is both destructive and peaceful) and reduce this dissonance by believing only what they want to believe. The need for people to believe that the atom was not just a weapon of mass destruction was so strong that it was overpowered by the image of a peaceful atom, and filtered out facts that suggested other potential concerns.

Fourth, industry and government had a vise-like grip on information relating to reactor safety. Government regulations in the early days of power reactors were quite loose, and operators pretty much could do what they wanted, and tell regulators what they wanted. Often, problems went unreported. Even when utilities aired “dirty laundry” to regulators, these officials would react in a cooperative, non-punitive manner, as the AEC and state radiation boards were equally determined that reactors succeed at all costs. All believed in telling elected officials, media, and the public at large only the rose-colored-glasses version of reactor performance.

Fifth, there was little to no effort made by elected officials, reporters, and public citizens to question the party line about reactors. Part of the reason for this was the long standing American cultural practice of believing in the integrity of officials and institutions. Questions were simply not asked. Much has been written about how the 1960s marked a turning point from this culture, to one in which skepticism became more prevalent and greater public accountability was demanded, by politicians, media, and citizen groups. This change did not occur until the nuclear power industry had operated for well over a decade.

Sixth, fears held by nuclear workers and other professionals of repercussions of “whistleblowing” about risks of nuclear reactors were strong. No protections were in place; a nuclear plant worker who brought up a safety issue to his superiors risked losing his job, and risked never working in the field ever again. An extreme example was the 1974 death of Karen Silkwood, who worked in an Oklahoma factory making plutonium pellets for nuclear fuel rods. After determining she had been exposed to high levels of plutonium, Silkwood was found dead in her car just off the road she was traveling on to meet with a reporter from the New York Times and union officials. While the Kerr-McGee company later settled a legal action for $1.38 million while admitting no guilt, to this day some believe Silkwood was run off the road and killed by those fearful of the admissions she was about to make.

Regulators as well were in a tight spot, as the goals of not standing in the way of nuclear development, of not frightening the public about reactors, and of not darkening the sunny image of the industry, were paramount. Finally, health researchers, many dependent on government grants to support their research, also had to keep a lid on their concerns, out of fear of backlash, which people like Alice Stewart and Thomas Mancuso experienced. There were undoubtedly concerns among at least some nuclear engineering and public health experts, but political issues took precedence over safety concerns.

For these reasons, virtually no information on unsafe and unhealthy practices at nuclear power plants was known for many years.

The questioning of the image of “clean” nuclear power reactors evolved gradually. Among the general public, many Americans couldn’t completely shake the realization that in reactors the exact same chemicals were produced as in the atomic bombs that threatened life on Earth. There were also early contentions from professionals that exposure to relatively low doses of fallout from atom bomb tests were hazardous.

The first eminent scientists to question government claims that bomb fallout was risk free were Linus Pauling of the US and Andrei Sakharov of the Soviet Union. Writing in a 1958 edition of the Soviet journal Atomic Energy, Sakharov calculated that there would be 10,000 human victims for every megaton (one million tons) of nuclear explosions. Because atomic blasts from 1945–1963 equaled 600 megatons worldwide, Sakharov’s prediction would translate into six million victims. He explained in the article: that “halting the tests will directly save the lives of hundreds of thousands of people.” Pauling had presented a petition to the United Nations early in 1958, signed by 9,235 scientists including thirty-seven Nobel Prize winners, urging a halt to all atomic bomb tests.

The deceptive and secretive assertions from officials that bomb fallout was harmless fell apart, especially as aboveground tests were banned. In July 1963, President John F. Kennedy cited health hazards, especially to infants and children, as one reason to enact the Partial Test Ban Treaty:

Even then, the number of children and grandchildren with cancer in their bones, with leukemia in their blood, or with poison in their lungs might seem statistically small to some…. But this is not a natural health hazard – and it is not a statistical issue. The loss of even one human life, or the malformation of even one baby – who may be born long after we are gone – should be of concern to us all.

In late 1964, with the treaty in effect for nearly a year, President Lyndon B. Johnson acknowledged the hazards that fallout had caused:

We cannot and we will not abandon the test ban treaty to which I just referred, which is the world’s insurance policy against polluting the air we breathe and the milk we give our children. Already that policy has paid off more than you will ever know, and since this agreement was signed and the tests stopped, the dread strontium-89 and iodine-131 have disappeared from the environment. The amount of strontium-90 and cesium-137 has already been, in one year, cut in half. This is technical language, but what it means is that we can breathe safely again.

In addition to the proclamations by Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, other, more technical cracks in the staunch belief that bomb test fallout hadn’t harmed anybody were beginning to emerge. In 1967, Dr. Edward Weiss of the US Public Health Service published an article in the American Journal of Public Health documenting that high rates of thyroid cancer in Utah occurred shortly after upwind atmospheric atom bomb tests were conducted in nearby Nevada.

Two years later, Dr. Ernest Sternglass published probably the most shocking paper on atomic bomb fallout to that point. Sternglass was a radiation physics professor at the University of Pittsburgh, who had received over a dozen patents for radiation-related inventions while working for the Westinghouse Corporation. His interest in health risks of the atom, which stemmed from the fact that both his parents were physicians, rose during the 1960s. His testimony to the US Senate in favor of the 1963 Partial Test Ban Treaty was based on an article he had just published on the susceptibility of the fetus to X-rays, and implications for hazards of bomb test fallout.

Even after atmospheric tests by the Americans and Soviets were banned, Sternglass became keenly interested in calculating the number of casualties. In 1969, he published an article in Esquire magazine entitled “The Death of All Children.” The article started by describing how the US stillbirth rate had been falling steadily until 1950, when it leveled off until the mid-1960s. Sternglass added that long-term steady declines in US infant mortality had also suddenly stopped in 1950, as large-scale atom bomb testing above the Nevada desert began:

Infant mortality had shown a steady decline in the period 1935–1950; but beginning with the Nevada tests in 1951, and continuing until just after the test ban in 1963, the rate suddenly leveled off in the US… Only after the major portion of the most violently radioactive material from the 1961–62 tests had disappeared did US infant mortality began to decline again in 1965, at a rate close to the previous 1935–1950 decline.

Sternglass calculated the difference, during the bomb test years, between the actual death rate and an expected continuation of prior rates. His result was a shocking 375,000 “excess” infant deaths.

Some factor(s) had caused this unexpected halt in the progress in lowering infant death rates. Sternglass had offered bomb fallout as the principal reason; and while many factors affect the risk of an infant dying, there was no other obvious cause. Actually, a continued decline in infant death rates should have occurred. The 1950s and 1960s were years of economic prosperity in the US, during which more people held jobs, lived in better housing, and ate more and better foods. Higher employment meant more people had health insurance, and more hospitals were being built, thus giving more people better access to medical care. The Esquire article noted that the National Center for Health Statistics had devoted a 1965 conference to the flattening out of infant mortality, but after considering numerous potential factors could not explain this abrupt and unexpected change.

The Sternglass piece instantly received strong reactions. The November 1969 issue of Esquire featured supportive letters from Congressmen Cornelius Gallagher and Claude Pepper, high ranking members of Congress who were very involved in public health issues. Pepper described the research as “very interesting to me and I believe that this information coming from such an eminent educator should be given serious consideration.” Others disagreed with Sternglass, and the AEC enlisted Dr. John Gofman to rebut Sternglass; Gofman calculated a number of excess infant deaths of 4,000, far below the Sternglass figure but still too high for the AEC. Sternglass also published his findings in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, along with a comment from Princeton physicist Freeman Dyson, who had helped develop the American hydrogen bomb; Dyson conceded that Sternglass “… may be right. The margin of uncertainty in the effects of worldwide fallout is so large that we have no justification for dismissing Sternglass’s numbers as fantastic.”

Dyson is correct in his belief that precise number of infant deaths from bomb fallout will probably never be known, but the poorest progress in infant death rates in the entire twentieth century was then, and remains today, the period 1950 to 1964, a phenomenon which still has no clear explanation half a century later.

The growing contentiousness over bomb fallout risks during the 1960s had set the stage for a similar debate over nuclear reactors. But even before the bomb fallout debate began, there were some voices raised about hazards of nuclear power plants. Former AEC official John Bugher declared at the 1956 American Public Health Association meeting that atomic reactors would present a much greater health threat than nuclear weapons, because of the huge amounts of radioactive chemicals released into the environment from a large number of reactors. Several months later, Thomas Parran of the University of Pittsburgh expressed concern about the health risk posed by a full-fledged atomic energy program.

Concerns about health risks of nuclear power plants even bothered those who otherwise were decidedly pro-nuclear. In 1963, former AEC Chairman David Lilienthal weighed in on the debate over whether to build a nuclear reactor in New York City, stating that “the pressure of engineering convenience and costs will bring down these plants more and more into densely populated areas. To start down that road without first completely licking the problem of risks, or dependability in a regionwide system, is a foolhardy course.”

It was only a matter of time before the US atomic energy program became the subject of protest. In 1968, as the Vermont Yankee reactor was being built, the first public forum on health threats posed by a nuclear plant was held at picturesque (and nearby) Stratton Mountain. When the AEC initially turned down a request to send a representative to the conference, Vermont Senator George Aiken leaned on the Commission, which then sent thirty-nine members, including Chairman Glenn Seaborg, to another conference held the next year in Burlington. Aiken wasn’t the only national political leader to challenge the slogan that reactors were safe. In 1968, Massachusetts Senator Edward Kennedy proposed a moratorium on licensing new reactors until a review of health risks could be made. Three years later, Alaska Senator Mike Gravel made the same proposal, with an additional caveat that utilities should bear all liability in case of a meltdown, and not just the small portion limited by the Price-Anderson Act. The fight, pitting nuclear utilities and their AEC allies against concerned citizens and elected officials, was just beginning.

In 1974, Congress abolished the AEC, because of the conflict of interest in its two missions of promoting nuclear reactor safety and expansion. In its place, a new Nuclear Regulatory Commission was established. But the NRC proved to be little different than the AEC, as its cadre of engineers dedicated to developing the industry continued to dominate the regulatory function. Many NRC staff had once worked at nuclear power plants. Moreover, NRC was structured so that about 90% of its funds would come not from public dollars, but from industry fees; the long shadow of nuclear utilities that had kept the AEC from acting objectively had merely been transferred to another bureaucracy under another name.

The considerable questioning of reactor safety tended to be theoretical, and not accompanied by any studies of actual health trends near reactors. Sternglass performed the first such study. In the spring of 1971, he followed up his powerful article on infant deaths and bomb test fallout by presenting a paper at a meeting in Berkeley, California. The sixty-two-page report featured infant deaths compared to radioactive releases from nuclear power plants. Sternglass examined trends in releases and infant deaths near five early reactors, but concentrated most closely on Dresden (fifty miles from Chicago) and Indian Point (just thirty-five miles from New York City). He found:

– From 1964–1966, when large airborne releases occurred at the new Dresden reactor, annual infant deaths in Grundy County (the reactor’s location) steadily rose from seven to eighteen, and the annual number of babies born less than 5½ pounds soared from sixteen to forty-two.

– From 1961–1966, as the new Indian Point reactor began operating, the infant death rate in Westchester and Rockland Counties, which flank the reactor, rose 13%, involving hundreds of infant deaths; the rate fell elsewhere in New York State.

For the first time, actual data on radioactive emissions from reactors and disease/death rates were in play. Correlating the two is a difficult and complex task, but Sternglass had raised red flags, especially by showing how highly susceptible fetuses and infants may have been harmed near nuclear power plants. The data were heatedly discussed, and received strong criticism from government and industry, but also received support from some scientists with no direct ties to the American nuclear power program. One was Morris DeGroot, a statistician at Carnegie-Mellon Institute in Pittsburgh, who reviewed Sternglass’ data and found it to reflect a tentative correlation between radiation exposure and health risk to infants.

That same year, Sternglass applied his statistical techniques to Shippingport, the first nuclear power reactor in the US, located just outside Sternglass’ home in Pittsburgh. This time, Sternglass extended his examination beyond just infant deaths, also finding elevated rates of stillbirths, low weight births, and childhood leukemia downwind from Shippingport. He also charged that officially reported levels of radioactive releases from the reactor had been misrepresented. Local media reported these charges, moving Governor Milton Shapp to appoint a blue-ribbon commission of three radiation health experts. The commission found that the system of radiation monitoring by Duquesne Light, which owned and operated the plant, was inadequate for accurately determining the amount of emissions from Shippingport. State health officials fought allegations that local infant death rates were high, but the gloss was off the reactor’s image, and it would close permanently a decade later.

Sternglass continued his work for years, and remains a controversial figure. But the significance of his findings in the early 1970s was that now the debate over reactor safety would be conducted using evidence, not slogans or assumptions. Statistical evidence being made public would lift the veil of secrecy from reactors, challenge statements that reactors were “safe,” and force greater public accountability.

Orders for new reactors in the 1970s dwindled, and many existing orders were cancelled. Several accidents raised public skepticism about nuclear power. One took place in March 1975 at the Browns Ferry plant in northern Alabama. Workers looking for leaks with a candle accidentally ignited a whole room of insulation cables that controlled the plant’s three reactors. The cooling system was rendered inoperable, but backup systems were not, and supplied critical cooling water to the core and waste pools at reactor #1. If not for this backup system, a meltdown would have occurred. Two Browns Ferry reactors were shut down for the next eighteen months for repairs; reactor #3 was still being constructed. Plant operators could not hide the obvious; the two brand-new reactors that promised to bring large amounts of electrical power to northern Alabama were sitting idle for years to come.

Fueling public protests were a number of other accidents at reactors. The largest and most significant of these was the 1979 partial meltdown at the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania. But there were others, and some involved radioactive releases into the environment. Official NRC records in the table below showed that radioactive releases from US nuclear power reactors into the air rose during the 1970s.

Source: Tichler J., Nordem, K., and Congemi, J. Radioactive Materials Released from Nuclear Power Plants: Annual Report 1986. Prepared for the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission: NUREG/CR-2907. Upton NY: Brookhaven National Laboratory, 1988.

The above table includes only iodine-131 and particulates, or radioactive chemicals with a half life of eight days or more, and thus those likely to enter the food chain. Although there is some question about the precision of these figures, they are often used as a proxy for total environmental emissions. From 1970 to 1974, the number of curies emitted soared from 5.85 to 37.77, only to level off thereafter. Naturally, NRC officials viewed these numbers with no concern, as they were well within federally-prescribed limits. They were often referred to as “routine” releases.

Rising levels of routine emissions, a meltdown at Three Mile Island, other accidents at places like Browns Ferry, and growing public suspicion that reactors were harming people all came to a head in the 1980s. Finally, scientific studies examining the health of Americans exposed to radioactive emissions from power reactors were conducted.

The question of how many people living near nuclear plants develop cancer is a very basic one. Nonetheless, there was no huge rush by researchers to conduct studies of cancer near nuclear reactors. Government health officials were the logical ones to undertake this task, but they were not going to volunteer for duty. Doing so risked incurring the wrath of the nuclear establishment within the government – not just the NRC, but the Energy and Defense Departments – and possibly cost researchers their jobs. Moreover, government health officials were politically handicapped by the fact that large utilities were significant contributors to political campaigns; whoever occupied the Oval Office had been the recipient of substantial donations of these politically savvy companies. State and local health officials were in the same predicament, as the Governor of a state was highly likely to have been the recipient of largesse from nuclear utilities.

The other logical group which should have been conducting studies of cancer near nuclear plants was health professionals at universities, who typically spent a large portion of their time conducting research. But once again, the political impasse in Washington blocked studies. University-based health researchers often receive a large portion of their funds from the federal government, especially the National Institutes of Health. Nobody with the means to do the needed studies was willing to face the prospect of losing funds or losing their jobs. And this potential backlash was real. John Gofman had lost his funds from the AEC when he dared publish research that concluded up to 32,000 cancer deaths a year could occur under current legal limits of radiation releases from reactors, and soon resigned from his position at Lawrence Livermore Lab. Thomas Mancuso of the University of Pittsburgh was stripped of his grant from the Energy Department because he discovered and announced that workers at the nuclear weapons plant in Hanford were suffering from cancer in unexpectedly high numbers. Even those with tenured faculty positions, who are virtually guaranteed against being fired, were not going to take the chance of becoming involved in research on the cancer link with nuclear reactors.

One exception in the 1980s to this paucity of needed research was Carl Johnson, a physician who also was the director of the Jefferson County Health Department in Colorado. Johnson had become interested in the radiation-cancer link because the Rocky Flats plant that produced plutonium triggers for nuclear weapons was located in his county. In 1981, he published an article in the journal Ambio about elevated cancer rates near Rocky Flats. Two years later, Johnson shifted his focus to nuclear power plants; he wrote a response to an article in the American Journal of Public Health that had concluded that child cancer mortality near the San Onofre plant in Southern California was not especially high. Johnson took issue with this conclusion, and presented data on cancer incidence to support his position.

In the late 1980s, the issue of cancer rates near US nuclear plants finally came to the national forefront. Two principal factors brought the issue to a head. British researcher Martin Gardner found an elevated rate of child leukemia near the Sellafield nuclear reprocessing plant in northern England. About the same time, in December 1987, Boston University professor Richard Clapp published a study that found high leukemia rates in census tracts near the Pilgrim nuclear power plant in Plymouth, MA. Clapp’s article was published in the prestigious British journal Lancet, and drew some attention.

The attention paid to Clapp’s article did not elude Senator Edward Kennedy and his staff. Not only was Pilgrim located in Kennedy’s home state of Massachusetts, but Kennedy was the Chair of the Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources, and had a longstanding interest in health issues, including environmental health. Just one month after Clapp’s article was published, Kennedy sent a letter to James Wyngaarden, the Director of the National Institutes of Health, and urged a study of national cancer near US reactors be undertaken. Kennedy emphasized the concerns from radioactive releases, along with the lack of studies in his letter:

[Citizens and groups] are obviously concerned about those dangers in the context of potential nuclear power plant accidents. They are also concerned about those dangers as a result of the possibility of low-level radiation emanating from such plants… In view of the number of incidents and situations which have prompted legitimate concern, and because of the dearth of data relating to this subject, it would be helpful for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to conduct an appropriate inquiry into this entire question.

The issue of cancer rates near nuclear power plants had been ignored by the federal health establishment for over three decades, but a powerful member of Congress such as Kennedy had to be dealt with. Three weeks later, Wyngaarden responded to Kennedy by stating that a nationwide study of cancer deaths near US nuclear plants was already under way – a dubious claim, since NIH had never publicly announced such a study.

The National Institutes of Health is actively involved in studying the adverse effects of ionizing radiation, and we concur with your view that the risks at low levels need further clarification… The descriptive studies of leukemia clusters around the Pilgrim power plant in Massachusetts, and several plants in the United Kingdom, have led us to initiate a large-scale evaluation of cancer deaths occurring among persons living near the over 100 reactors operating in the United States. We are correlating county mortality data from the 1950s through early 1980s with reactor operations to determine whether the previous reports might be chance occurrences based on small numbers, or whether there might be valid reasons for concern. This evaluation should be completed within about one years.

The NIH study, assigned to the National Cancer Institute, was not completed “within one year” as Wyngaarden predicted, but nearly three years – giving greater support to the belief that the NIH had done nothing until Kennedy’s letter arrived. Even before the study had begun, Wyngaarden expressed doubt whether results of such a study could be helpful, because of the “very small health effects” involved – a curious opinion given that he had committed the NIH to a major undertaking, and a violation of scientific objectivity prior to an examination of data in a relatively unknown area:

It is important to stress that useful information about very small health effects, like those associated with very low levels of radiation, is extremely difficult and expensive to obtain. An indirect approach, such as studying populations with higher-level exposures and extrapolating the results to lower levels, tends to be more productive.

Another statement made by Wyngaarden that revealed bias against finding any radiation–cancer link was the following:

The most serious health impact of the Three Mile Island (TMI) accident that can be identified with certainty is mental stress to those living near the plant, particularly pregnant women and families with teenagers and young children.

At the time, nine years after the Three Mile meltdown, not a single journal article examining trends in cancer rates near the reactor had been published.

In July 1990, the federal report was finally finished, and in September of that year, the National Cancer Institute unveiled results of its study, contained in three volumes about seven inches thick. The eight-member committee that directed the study made its conclusion clear, on the very first page of the summary: “The Committee concludes that the survey has produced no evidence that an excess occurrence of cancer has resulted from living near nuclear facilities.”

The NCI study had looked at cancer death rates in 107 counties near sixty-two US nuclear plants (ten weapons and fifty-two power plants) during the years 1950 to 1984, covering 880,028 persons who died of cancer. The basic approach taken used “Standard Mortality Ratios” of local vs. US rates; for example, if a local rate was 2% below the US, the SMR would be 0.98. The study examined SMRs in the periods before and after a nuclear plant began operations, both in the 107 “study” counties and in 321 “control” counties that were demographically similar but geographically distant from any nuclear plant.

Naturally, cheers went up from pro-nuclear advocates, including Michael T. Rossler of the Edison Electric Institute, who said “The study is helpful. It shows there is not a problem to individuals, that there is not a danger from radiation.” Others were not convinced. Kennedy himself commented that the study “is not a clean bill of health for the nuclear industry.” Study conclusions were used for decades after by the nuclear industry as “proof” that reactors operated safely, and did not pose any health problems for local residents.

While it was important that the federal government finally acknowledged the issue of cancer near nuclear plants and produced some research, the study had a number of limitations. A brief summary of these follows:

Mortality Only. The study examined cancer deaths near all sixty-two nuclear plants included, but considered cancer cases near only four of these, because only the states of Connecticut and Iowa had established cancer registries for most of the period 1950–1984.

One-Third of Reactors Excluded. Only nuclear plants that began operations by 1981 were included. This means that of the sixty-five plants (with 104 reactors) now operating, data for twenty-three plants (with thirty-five reactors) started after 1981 were excluded from the study.

Only Data to 1984. The latest data (1984) were already six years old when the report was released; the fact that no other national study has been done since makes the data over a quarter century old.

Ignores Wind Direction. A “study” county was selected purely based on proximity to reactors, ignoring other factors such as whether it was downwind from the nuclear plant.

Whole Counties Only Used. The use of entire counties can be criticized because 1) no sub-county data was used, and 2) only the one or two closest counties were used. (This is a difficult issue to resolve, but some maintained the NCI should have expanded the study to include more counties and/or sub-county data.)

Cancer Only. The study only considered cancer as a potential health effect of living near a nuclear plant, and excluded others such as underweight births, infant deaths, and birth defects.

Control Counties Close to Nukes. Some of the NCI “control” counties selected as unexposed areas are actually close to reactors, in some cases adjoining “study” counties, and thus were probably also exposed to releases from reactors.

The NCI study actually raised some red flags – that is, data suggested that living near a nuclear plant was in fact linked with elevated cancer risk. One good example is Three Mile Island, the site of the worst meltdown in US history (Santa Susana was not included in the NCI study). Officials chose to examine cancer mortality data for three Pennsylvania counties closest to TMI; Dauphin (where the plant is located), Lancaster, and York. York County is also the site of the Peach Bottom nuclear plant.

The NCI study provides data on the local vs. national cancer death rate for the periods 1970–1974 (before the plant opened) with 1975–1984 (after startup) for the counties closest to TMI. Of the fourteen types of cancer studied, the local-vs.-national Standard Mortality Ratio (SMR) near Three Mile Island showed:

– ten types of cancer increased after startup

– two types of cancer decreased after startup

– two types of cancer were unchanged after startup

The SMR for the most radio-sensitive cancers all rose, including thyroid cancer (+58%), bone/joint cancer (+13%), and leukemia (+10%). Moreover, the SMR for children dying of cancer by age nineteen rose 10% (below):

Source: Jablon S. et al. Cancer in Populations Living Near Nuclear Facilities. Washington DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1990.

Another indication that the NCI study showed living near nuclear plants may have harmed Americans involves incidence data. Cancer incidence (cases) is much more helpful than cancer mortality (deaths) in understanding the effects of a pollutant such as radiation. Advances in medical science have enabled physicians to keep many cancer victims alive; for some types of cancer, survival rates are very high, including thyroid and child cancer, which are probably most sensitive to radiation. While all US deaths have been recorded since the 1930s, there is no national cancer registry of diagnosed cases. The only states which had established cancer registries in the years covered by the NCI study were Connecticut and Iowa, which operated four plants (a small fraction of the sixty-two plants with mortality data in the report).

Even though four plants is not a large number, some interesting results were obtained. Thyroid, breast, and child cancer incidence increased after startup near each of the four plants (below). It appears that lack of incidence data was a major limitation of the NCI study.

Numerous questions were raised after the 1990 NCI study was unveiled. One of them was that there was no plan by federal regulators to follow the study up and improve its methodology – clearly, it was only done because of pressure applied by Senator Kennedy. Nuclear supporters cited the research as evidence that reactors posed no health risk – even decades later. In July 2010, the Nuclear Energy Institute issued a “White Paper” on radiation safety – a dubious undertaking, since the NEI is the lobbying group for the large corporations who operate nuclear reactors. The White Paper’s section on studies of radiation studies to the public first cited the NCI study – even though the data was between twenty-six and sixty years old.

For the next two decades, federal regulators took no actions to conduct other studies of cancer near nuclear plants.

In the mid-1980s, Dr. Jay Gould became involved in the issue of hazards of nuclear reactors. The 1979 partial meltdown at Three Mile Island and the 1986 complete meltdown at Chernobyl sparked his interest. Gould was an economic statistician who served as an expert witness in numerous legal actions. One of the last cases he worked on before retiring involved the Westinghouse Corporation, which along with General Electric manufactured over 90% of the world’s nuclear reactors. Gould read about Westinghouse, and became intrigued by the issue.

At about the same time, Gould learned about Ernest Sternglass, who had just retired from the University of Pittsburgh and moved to New York City, where Gould lived. The two met one night, and hatched the idea of forming a group of professional researchers independent of government and industry to conduct the much-needed studies of cancer risk from nuclear reactors. They decided to name the group the Radiation and Public Health Project (RPHP).

Over the ensuing quarter century, RPHP produced twenty-seven medical journal articles, which had to undergo strict peer review of and acceptance by experts before publication. RPHP members recruited by Gould and Sternglass also made extensive efforts to share research findings with the public, producing seven books on the topic of health risks of relatively low dose radiation exposure from reactors. The group also held twenty-three press conferences after the year 2000, leading to considerable exposure from media.

Some of the principal findings from RPHP are as follows:

Baby Tooth Study. Beginning in 1998, RPHP collected nearly 5,000 baby teeth from US children, and sent them to a specialty lab that measured levels of strontium-90 in the teeth. The study was Gould’s brainchild, inspired by a similar effort in the 1960s by Washington University in St. Louis examining in-body atom bomb fallout. The RPHP tooth study involved citizens’ groups and celebrities like actor Alec Baldwin and model Christie Brinkley to collect teeth, and results were published in five medical journal articles. The major findings were that children in counties closest to nuclear plants had 30–50% higher levels of Sr-90 than those living far from reactors, and average Sr-90 levels rose 50% from the late 1980s to the late 1990s. Most importantly, trends in Sr-90 near nuclear plants in New York and New Jersey were followed by similar trends in local childhood cancer. The tooth study remains the only study measuring radiation levels in bodies of Americans living near nuclear power plants.

Notes: Rates adjusted to 1970 US standard population. Counties included are Middlesex CT (Haddam Neck), New London CT (Millstone), Benton/Linn IA (Duane Arnold), Harrison IA (Ft. Calhoun). SIR represents the county rates vs. the state rate.

Closed Reactor Study. Group members found that when US nuclear plants closed, the health of infants and young children living near and downwind improved immediately and dramatically. Specifically, the first two years after shutdown near all eight plants studied found large declines in infant deaths, birth defects, and cancer diagnosed in children under age five.

Child Cancer Study. The rising child cancer rates near four nuclear plants in the NCI study inspired more detailed research by RPHP. It examined cancer incidence in children diagnosed by age nine in the period 1988–1997 near fourteen nuclear plants in the eastern United States. Near all fourteen plants, the local cancer rate exceeded the US standard, with a total excess of 12.4%.

Thyroid Cancer Study. The US incidence of thyroid cancer, which is highly sensitive to radiation exposure, is increasing more rapidly than any other cancer. RPHP researchers examined thyroid cancer rates in the 500 most populated US counties and found that of the eighteen with the highest rates, eleven were located in a small area of eastern Pennsylvania, central New Jersey, and southern New York. This area has sixteen nuclear power reactors (thirteen still operating), the greatest density in the US.

Coverage of RPHP presented an obstacle to the “selling” of nuclear power, and industry leaders were furious. The tooth study caused some of the strongest vitriol from industry, and for good reason: here was hard evidence of poisonous chemicals produced by reactors in the bodies of American children. The Nuclear Energy Institute, made up of corporate giants like Entergy, Exelon, and Duke Power, embodied the fears of these research findings and how they might sway public opinion and public policy. As part of a twelve-page diatribe against the tooth study placed on its web site, the NEI declared:

For several decades, a small group of activists has tried to instill fear in the public that a substance called strontium-90 is evidence that low levels of radiation released from nuclear power plants causes cancer and health problems in nearby residents. Since the claims first surfaced some thirty years ago, they continuously have been dismissed by mainstream scientists as scare tactics and ‘junk’ science contributing nothing to finding the real causes of cancer. They are instead manipulations of the public by these groups without any basis in science. These studies are known as the ‘tooth fairy project.’

In a blunt example of the industry’s hammerlock on government regulators, the NRC posted an eight-page critique on the tooth study on its website at about the same time. The NRC took a position similar to the NEI, using many of the same references and the same wording. The NRC, which employs many physicists and engineers, but no health researchers, made the declaration that low doses are harmless – an opinion that defied the growing trend of studies on X-ray radiation to pregnant women, Americans exposed to bomb test fallout, and exposed workers at nuclear weapons plants:

If ingested in quantities that produce very large radio-logical dose rates (about a thousand times higher than doses we all receive from natural radiation), Sr-90 is known to increase the risk of bone cancer and leukemia in animals, and is presumed to do so in people. Below these doses, there is no evidence of excess cancer.

While most scientists and health officials were quiet on the issue, some succumbed to the power of the NEI and NRC, and issued public critiques of the tooth study. But some professionals stood up for the study’s integrity. Donald Louria, a physician who was Professor of Preventive Medicine at the New Jersey Medical School and who was familiar with RPHP tooth study activities in New Jersey, was one of these who asserted the dangers of strontium-90 in the body:

Studies such as those… measuring body burdens of that dangerous radioactive isotope, strontium, and relating those body burdens to cancer risk are very useful and important.

The verbal fight between RPHP supporters and detractors continued for years. But the group endured, chiefly because it was not beholden to government for support, as Dr. Thomas Mancuso and Dr. John Gofman had been in the 1970s. There were instances, however, when RPHP sought public funds, and ran into trouble. In 2000, the New Jersey legislature allotted $75,000 to support the baby tooth study in the state. But Governor Christie Whitman used a line-item veto to kill the funds, stating that the tooth project should have been paid for by private sources. The following year, EPA administrator Whitman came under tremendous public fire after she stood at Ground Zero one week after the 9/11 attacks and declared the air was safe to breathe. And after leaving the Bush administration, Whitman co-chaired the Safe Energy Council, an industry-funded effort to encourage the expansion of nuclear power in the US.

The only other studies of cancer near US nuclear plants, other than the ones that RPHP were churning out, focused on Three Mile Island. The reaction of the research community following the March 1979 partial meltdown was disturbing. By late 1990, nearly twelve years after the accident, not a single medical journal article addressed actual cancer patterns in persons living near the stricken Pennsylvania plant. (One article shortly after the meltdown, by former NCI director Dr. Arthur Upton, estimated that TMI would cause an additional 0.7 cases of cancer – essentially zero.) However, there were thirty-one articles that addressed psychological and stress concerns among local residents, in publications like Journal of Trauma and Stress, Psychosomatic Medicine, and Health Psychology. Andrew Baum, a psychologist then working for the Defense Information Systems Agency, was the author or co-author of eight of these articles. This represented a clear effort to relegate any harm from the Three Mile Island meltdown to “just stress.”

The first journal article with actual cancer statistics only was published because resources had become available from a settlement of a legal action that established the Three Mile Island Public Health Fund. Unfortunately, the Fund and the researchers it chose received their money from the nuclear industry. A group of researchers from Columbia University were chosen by the Fund, and the first journal article utilizing official counts of cancer near Three Mile Island finally went to press in September 1990. The team documented that the number of newly-diagnosed cancer cases among the 160,000 residents within ten miles of the stricken reactor soared 64% from 1975–79 to 1981–85, from 1,722 to 2,831 cases. Numbers jumped for leukemia, lymphoma, lung cancer, and childhood cancer. But the group showed a bias in the article, stating that they believed relatively low dose exposures would not show any risk: “prior expectation based on estimated releases and conventional radiobiology – that no excess cancer would be found – was confirmed.” The following June, their next study ended with the comment that local cancer increases “might reflect the impact of accident stress on cancer progression.”

The Columbia studies remained the only ones to assess actual cancer rates near Three Mile Island until 1997, when a University of North Carolina team headed by Steven Wing published a journal article. The UNC group had been asked to do this study by 2,000 local residents, many suffering from cancer and other diseases, who had filed a class action suit against Three Mile Island. Using the Columbia team’s data, Wing found that, indeed, there was a correlation between radiation exposure and cancer risk near Three Mile Island. Wing pointed out that the Columbia researchers may have been biased in believing that doses from the accident could not cause an increase in cancer – a point that was not lost on the Columbia team. A fight in the journals broke out. Columbia team member Mervyn Susser fired off a letter to the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, which had published Wing’s study. Suggesting that the Wing article was “advocacy parading as science,” Susser went further: “Wing’s position amounts to a charge that we are either incapable of understanding our data… or that we obfuscate or lie … We are not sure we can say the same for Wing et al …. As we see it, they have done no more than muddy the waters.”

A letter by Wing and his colleagues was published in the same issue of the journal, sweeping aside Susser’s assertions that the UNC team had caused a “brouhaha.” Instead, the letter called for a scientific discussion based on the facts, not name-calling:

We gave attention to residents’ reports of acute symptoms, acknowledged the history of secrecy and incompletedisclosure of radiation releases in the nuclear industry, and considered other supporting evidence of high level radiation assembled by plaintiffs in the civil suit… It is unfortunate, if not tragic, that so many questions remain eighteen years after the accident.

The UNC team’s concern over lingering Three Mile Island questions were never put to rest. Several years later, researchers from the University of Pittsburgh published two journal articles agreeing with the Columbia group’s “no link” conclusion for the 32,000 people living within five miles of the plant. But the Pittsburgh team also received funds from the industry-supported TMI Public Health Fund; only used data on cancer deaths, not cases; and only used data after 1979, not before the meltdown. No other attempts were made by researchers to examine hard data on cancers near Three Mile Island. To this day, the issue of how many casualties were caused by the meltdown remains an open one, empowering many to use the phrase “nobody died at Three Mile Island” and the broader “nobody ever died from American nuclear power plants.”

The notion that only people living within ten miles of Three Mile Island may have been harmed needs reassessment. An article in the journal Science showed that airborne levels of xenon-133, a fission product created in nuclear weapons tests and nuclear reactors, was three times above normal in Albany NY, 250 miles northeast of the plant, for five days after. Xe-133 decays quickly, with a half life of 5.3 days. It is clear that the prevailing winds brought the greatest radioactive plume from Three Mile Island towards the north and east.

Because the fetus is most vulnerable to radiation, it is logical that trends in infant deaths (especially those who died in the first twenty-eight days of life) before and after Three Mile Island be examined. Comparing rates just before and after the accident (1977–78 and 1979–80) shows increases for fourteen of nineteen Pennsylvania counties to the north and northeast of the plant, compared to just nine of the other forty-eight counties in the state (below).

Source: National Center for Health Statistics, Vital Statistics of the United States, Annual Volumes, 1977–1980.

On May 15, 2009, a notice abruptly appeared in the federal register. “The NRC is conducting a study to provide contemporary information on risk of cancer in the vicinity of nuclear plants,” it read. It announced that a Request for Proposals to conduct the study would be forthcoming within fifteen days, and that the winning bidder would be expected to take two years to complete the study.

The reason why the federal government finally decided to act, nearly twenty years after the first cancer study was completed, is a mystery. Four months before the federal register notice, RPHP Board members Joseph Mangano and Robert Alvarez had visited the staffs of Senator Edward Kennedy and Representative Edward Markey, asking that a new cancer study be conducted, by a source independent of government and industry. Whether these visits prompted the NRC to act is anyone’s guess.

The NRC was hardly an objective party to any cancer study, as it was staffed by former workers for nuclear utilities and received most of its funds from industry fees. It also had no health experts on its staff, yet it quickly selected the Oak Ridge Associated Universities (ORAU) to conduct the study. ORAU was a group of professionals tied in closely with the Energy Department-operated nuclear weapons complex in the town of Oak Ridge, TN. They were seen by many as leaning decisively towards the belief that nuclear reactors were operating safely, and not linked with cancer risk. Moreover, many of the ORAU members were nuclear engineers and physicists, not physicians or epidemiologists. The outcry from anti-nuclear activists quickly reached Capitol Hill, and in December 2009, fourteen signed a letter to NRC Chair Gregory Jaczko outlining their concerns about what should be included in a well-performed study.

The embarrassed NRC quickly reversed itself by dropping the Oak Ridge group, and replacing it with the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) Nuclear Radiation and Studies Board to conduct the study. While this looked like an improvement on paper, there were similar problems of objectivity and a pro-nuclear slant. The Board’s Chairman was former NRC chair Richard Meserve; he recused himself from the study, but the appearance of an overly cozy relationship between the NRC and NAS was obvious. Of the nineteen members of the Board, only five had health and medical credentials, most of the remainder being physicists or nuclear engineers. Not a single Board member had ever published any study on cancer near nuclear plants.

In 2010, the NRC held public hearings on the cancer study. Among those testifying was UNC professor Steve Wing, the lead author of the Three Mile Island studies. In April 2012, a NAS panel issued a feasibility report on what would be involved in a radiation-cancer study; a completion date would probably be 2014 or later, and there is speculation that the study may never take place. Despite the fact that a new study was under way, there were a number of lingering concerns, both methodological and political, that a repeat of the “no risk” conclusion of the 1990 NCI study would be reached as a formality. Some suspected that this was merely a tool for industry and government to promote an expansion of nuclear power.

The history of understanding and publicly sharing unsafe practices at US nuclear power plants has been a long and rocky one. The initial dynamics of the 1950s pitted industry and government promoters of nuclear power making assurances of safety against those skeptics(scientists, citizens, media, and public officials) who dared challenge this assumption and demand evidence of practices and outcomes. Over half a century later, this match-up has hardly changed, even though evidence of harm has slowly but surely accumulated.

Danger Now, Danger Tomorrow, Danger Forever

In the most general sense, radioactive waste refers to chemicals that are radioactive but have no further use after being created. While all radioactive waste is dangerous and necessitates actions to keep humans and other living organisms from being exposed to it, the type of radioactive waste that is the focus here is that produced at the end of the nuclear fuel cycle, i.e., uranium mining, milling, enrichment, and fabrication. These chemicals are produced in reactors, and constitute the most plentiful and most dangerous of all the types of waste already mentioned. They are commonly referred to as high level waste by experts. In order to generate energy, reactor operators place fuel rods into the reactor’s core. These rods, about twelve feet in length and the diameter of a pencil, are made of an alloy of the metal zirconium. They consist of uranium pellets about half an inch long that are stacked on top of one another inside the rods.

About 100 fuel rods are bundled together in what is called a fuel assembly. The rods do not touch one another so cooling water can flow between them. Hundreds of assemblies at a time are loaded into a steel chamber in a reactor’s core. Plant operators shoot neurons into the fuel rods, which results in the “fission” process (splitting of uranium atoms) and the resulting high heat that will be converted into steam, moved through turbines, and converted into electricity.

The process of splitting uranium atoms in the reactor core is the same as that when an atomic bomb explodes – with several exceptions. The uranium used in reactors is only about 3% pure (percent of U-235), compared to 95% in an atomic bomb. In addition, the fission in a nuclear reactor is regulated, or controlled. Hundreds of control rods made of boron or cadmium are also placed in the reactor core to absorb neutrons from the fuel rods, keeping the neutrons from doing any further damage. In an atomic bomb explosion, the fission process is not controlled.

Fuel rods are used for about twelve to eighteen months each, when their useful life ends. The old rods are replaced by new ones in a process called “refueling.” The reactor is shut down during refueling, as other maintenance is performed during this time. The old rods, also known as “spent fuel rods,” are transferred into deep pools of cool water at the plant – stacked upright, with water between them so rods will not touch each other.

At this point, even though the fuel rods have no further use because the U-235 is used up, they are highly radioactive. When they are first retired and placed into the spent fuel pools, they consist of hundreds of radioactive chemicals in particulate form. These can be classified into four categories:

– Fission products, which are atoms created when the U-235 atom is split

– Actinides, which generally are heavy atoms that are created when U-235 atoms decay

– Fuel Impurity Activation Products, created from fuel impurities absorbing neutrons

– Zircaloy-4 Activation Products, created when the zirconium sheath around the rods absorbs neutrons

Storage of spent fuel actually begins in the reactor core, as the fission process generates electricity. Large volumes of radioactive waste products, in the form of particles and gases, are produced, and remain in the fuel rods as they continue to generate high heat to boil water after being bombarded with neutrons. Because it takes a long time for fuel rods to be used up, only every twelve to eighteen months are they removed from the reactor core during refueling.

Although a small portion of the enormous amount of radioactivity escapes into the environment, the large majority is contained within the rods in the core. The core, then, becomes the first storage area of high level waste. The key to keeping the radioactivity in the core from causing tremendous harm is cooling water. Any loss of cooling water will result in the core’s temperature reaching extremely high levels, typically about 3,400 degrees Fahrenheit – causing it to melt down, and release the high level waste into the reactor building, and possibly into the environment.

The concept of meltdown is far from fictional. Although power reactors are just under sixty years old, they have experienced a number of meltdowns. The largest, of course, was at Chernobyl in 1986, although the multiple meltdowns at Fukushima in 2011 may eventually rival Chernobyl. In the US, meltdowns at power reactors have occurred at the Idaho National Laboratory (1955 and 1961), Santa Susana CA (1959), Waltz Mill PA (1960), Fermi MI (1966), and Three Mile Island PA (1979). Repeated assurances by leaders that reactors are constructed and operated with such care that a meltdown is not possible have been proved untrue time and again. Actually, some leaders acknowledge that meltdowns are all too possible. In the late 1980s, just after the Chernobyl disaster, NRC Commissioner James Asselstine told a Congressional hearing there was at least a 45% chance that a fleet of 100 reactors would experience a core meltdown in twenty years, a chilling estimate given the current US fleet consists of 104 aging and corroding units:

Given the present level of safety being achieved by the operating nuclear power plants in this country, we can expect to see a core meltdown accident within the next twenty years.

The amount of radioactivity in a typical reactor core means the potential for causing harm to public health is enormous. The containment building where the core is located must not be penetrated, or a catastrophe will ensue. In the wake of the Three Mile Island accident and with public opposition to nuclear power growing, Congress asked officials at Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico to calculate how many humans would be harmed in a worst case accident scenario.

In 1982, Sandia officials turned in their work to the House Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs. Results were shocking. The estimates of damage to humans were classified into several types. Immediate casualties included fatal and non-fatal cases of acute radiation poisoning, and long-term cancer deaths were also included. Calculations varied, but some were high, especially those near highly populated areas. For example, a worst case core meltdown at either of the two reactors at the Limerick plant (which was being built and had yet to start operating in 1982) would devastate the greater Philadelphia area. Within twenty miles of the plant, there would be 74,000 fatal and 610,000 non-fatal cases of acute radiation poisoning; and within fifty-five miles, there would be 34,000 fatalities from cancer in the long term. The sharp growth in local population in the thirty years since the Sandia study would raise these numbers considerably.

The report, Calculation of a Reactor Accident Consequences (CRAC-2), was published in the New York Times and Washington Post on November 2, 1982, the day after it was submitted to Congress. Some have criticized the report as too cautious; for example, acute radiation poisoning casualties were calculated at fifteen to twenty miles from reactors, and people living within fifty to sixty miles would die of cancer, while some believe a meltdown would cause harm to a much greater area. No other such estimate has been made since; and the increase in the US population from 226 million in 1980 to 309 million in 2010 would increase the casualties accordingly. The lesson for storing waste in the core is that high level waste released from the core in a meltdown would devastate human health. The table below lists the reactors with the greatest potential to cause harm.

Source: Sandia National Laboratories. Calculation of Reactor Accident Consequences (CRAC-2) for US Nuclear Power Plants. Presented to Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs, November 1, 1982. Published the following day in the New York Times and Washington Post.

The harm caused by waste while it is still in the core is arguably most dangerous, as all radioactive chemicals – fast-decaying and slow-decaying – are still active. Long-term storage contains enormous amounts of radiation, but without the fast-decaying products, which have disappeared.

When fuel rods are “spent” or unable to produce any more electricity through fission, and fuel assemblies are changed during refueling every twelve to eighteen months, spent fuel rods are moved from the core into deep pools of water in the nuclear plant. These “spent fuel pools” are designed to be temporary storage facilities. They must maintain cooling water in them, or the possibility of a meltdown will become a reality.

In a relatively short period of time, a substantial portion of the radioactivity in spent fuel rods decay and disappear. Some of the chemicals in the rods have relatively short half lives, including xenon-133 (five days), iodine-131 (eight days), barium-140 (twelve days), and strontium-89 (fifty days). Some even have half lives measured in hours or minutes. A general consensus is that ten half lives are needed for a radioactive chemical to essentially disappear from the biosphere. But because of the enormous amounts produced in the reactor core, some short-lived products are still present in fuel rods for several years after they are retired.

Moreover, even after the fast-decaying chemicals disappear, huge amounts of many chemicals still remain. One accounting lists 211 separate radioactive chemicals that are still present in pools of spent fuel rods ten years after they are retired. These encompass radioactive forms of seventy-six of the elements that are found in any basic Periodic Table of the Elements, i.e., more than one radioactive isotope is present for some elements. For example, only one form of radioactive Carbon is present (C-14), while three forms of radioactive cesium are found in the pools (Cs-134, Cs-135, and Cs-137).

Some of these chemicals have relatively short half lives; Ruthenium-106 has a half life of one year. But on the other end, some chemicals have extremely long half lives (below):

Sources: US Nuclear Regulatory Commission: Radionuclides (10CFR Part 20, Appendix B. H (list of isotopes). Holden NE. Table of the Isotopes. In Lide DR. CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics (85th Edition). CRC Press, 2004.

Some of these chemicals on this list are not just man-made, but also found in nature, i.e., rhenium-187, thorium-232, uranium-238, uranium-235, iodine-129, lead-205, and hafnium-182. But the others are strictly man-made from atom bomb explosions and nuclear reactor operations. Many of these are not necessarily the most harmful, as the very slow decay rates mean only a small amount of radioactivity will be released in a given time. But they still pose harm to humans and other forms of life, and will be on the planet forever.

Faster-decaying chemicals making up high level waste will not last forever, but are more radioactive, as shorter half lives mean faster decay rates, and greater exposures. While all radioactive chemicals in waste are harmful, some are more toxic than others. One of these often cited is plutonium-239, an especially deadly chemical made more dangerous because it is used to trigger atomic bombs.

High level radioactive waste must be stored safely away from all forms of life – forever. Just a single flub in storage could result in enormous suffering, due to the large amount of waste involved. And experts have yet to agree upon a single solution, over sixty years since the atomic age began.

As of 2012, there are roughly 68 million metric tons of radioactive waste stored at US nuclear power plants, a number that increases by about two million each year and that greatly exceeds that at any nuclear weapons plants. The 68 million metric tons are contained in over 200,000 fuel assemblies with over two million spent fuel rods. Because this waste is spread across eighty-two locations across the US, some sites contain well over one million metric tons. The waste contains 11.8 billion curies of radioactivity, most of it cesium-137, plutonium-241, and strontium-90.

The dangers of the waste to the health of living organisms cannot be underestimated. strontium-90 seeks out bone and bone marrow, where the red and white blood cells of the immune system are formed. plutonium-241 enters the lung. cesium-137 disperses through the muscle and soft tissues in the body. The enormous volume of these poisons means that any breach of securing waste at any plant would cause enormous harm to humans, animals, and plants.

The typical plant’s share of radioactive waste translates into the equivalent of hundreds of times more than that released in the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs, and several times more than what was released by the 1986 meltdown at Chernobyl, which was a very new plant which had accumulated little radioactive waste, mostly in the reactor core. The plant with the largest volume of high level nuclear waste is Millstone, on the Long Island Sound near New London, Connecticut. Long Island is situated as close as eleven miles from Millstone. It is one of the most difficult places to evacuate, with a population of nearly three million people jammed into a relatively small strip of land – and the only land-based evacuation route running through New York City, the most densely populated city in the US.

The following table presents a summary of the amount of high level radioactive waste stored at US nuclear power plants as of early 2011. The terms “metric tons” and “curies” may not be easily identifiable to all, but the numbers are staggering in their destructive ability.

Alvarez R. “Spent Nuclear Fuel Pools in the U.S.: Reducing the Deadly Risks of Storage.” http://www.ips-dc.org/reports/
spent_nuclear_fuel_pools_in_the_us_reducing_the_deadly_risks_of_storage. Accessed on May 24, 2011.ent_nuclear_fuel_pools_in_the_us_reducing_
the_deadly_risks_of_storage. Accessed on May 24, 2011.

The large majority of the waste (about 80%) is still stored in pools of water, at least twenty feet deep, inside the plant. But this type of storage was never designed to be anything more than a temporary solution for maintaining waste. With many reactors now having operated over thirty years, and about 30% of the fuel rods in the core placed in storage every twelve to eighteen months, fuel pools are reaching capacity at many plants.

The need to continually cool the pools with water to avert a meltdown has become more critical as fuel rods accumulate. As devastating as the Chernobyl meltdown was, very little of the danger came from the fuel pools and virtually all the radioactive spent fuel from the new reactor was released from the damaged core. But a typical US reactor holds several times more radioactivity in its fuel pools than Chernobyl’s core. Loss of cooling water at the pools would cause a staggering number of casualties. In 2004, Union of Concerned Scientists staff member Dr. Edwin Lyman calculated deaths if the core and fuel pools at the Indian Point plant near New York City melted. Lyman estimated that, in the worst case, within fifty miles of the plant, 44,000 would die relatively quickly from acute radiation poisoning, while 518,000 would die from cancer in the decades ahead.

As spent fuel pools filled, utilities complained to the NRC, which allowed them to “re-rack” the rods, a term that essentially means jamming more fuel rods into the pools than originally planned. But with no permanent destination for storage and with reactors continuing to produce waste, filling pools to their capacity has meant that utilities have had to make other plans.

That plan involved moving the fuel rods from pools into dry cask storage. Dry casks are enormous steel cylinders into which the spent fuel rods are placed, surrounded by inert gas. The cylinders are placed into concrete and steel structures, making the total weight of each dry cask about 126 tons. About twenty-four fuel assemblies (roughly 2,400 fuel rods) are contained in each cask. They are stored outside on the grounds of a nuclear plant, some placed horizontally and some vertically.

Utilities are not permitted to place high level waste into dry casks until they have been in spent fuel pools for at least five years, to allow some decay of the short-lived radioactive chemicals and some cooling of the red-hot waste to occur. But still, the waste inside the casks is hundreds of degrees, and dry casks are still considered a form of temporary storage. However, the NRC assures that “over the last twenty years, there have been no radiation releases which have affected the public” from dry casks.

The first NRC license granted to allow dry cask storage occurred in 1986, at the Surry plant in southern Virginia. Since then, forty-six plants have obtained twenty-year licenses for what are known as Independent Spent Fuel Storage Installations, virtually all of which are used for dry cask storage. Some, but not all, of these plants are now shifting waste from pools into dry casks. By 2011, about 20% of fuel at US nuclear power plants is contained in over 1,000 dry casks.

Another option for handling used fuel is called reprocessing, a type of recycling of high level waste. This option has been employed in other nations, especially the United Kingdom and France, but was only used in the US from 1966 to 1972.

Of all the health and safety concerns posed by radioactivity at nuclear plants, the problem of high level waste is probably the most worrisome. While there have been core meltdowns at various sites, including Santa Susana in 1959, Three Mile Island in 1979, Chernobyl in 1986, and multiple reactors at Fukushima in 2011, high level waste still poses a greater concern in the long run. In a typical US nuclear plant operating for about thirty years, the amount of radioactivity maintained as waste is several times more than the radioactivity in the reactor core(s), even though only slow-decaying chemicals are in waste storage facilities.

There are numerous scenarios in which high level waste can harm the public. In particular, spent fuel pools, which still house the large majority of the waste, are problematic. Any loss of cooling water – from mechanical failure, act of terrorism, or natural disaster – will expose the extreme heat of spent fuel rods to air – the same air that people breathe. Buildings in which pools are located do not have containment structures like the buildings housing the reactor core. Any exposure of non-cooled fuel rods that melt will cause fires and explosions and can escape into the environment – a scenario like that at Fukushima in March 2011, which lost cooling water to two of its spent fuel pools after an earthquake and tsunami extinguished power needed to generate cooling water. The image of a “dry” fuel pool at Fukushima reported by journalists and government/industry officials is a chilling one.

Storing high level radioactive waste at nuclear plants presents a huge security challenge. Damage to the fuel pool building from a terrorist attack could result in an enormous disaster. The image of a plane hijacked by terrorists on September 11, 2001 flying directly over the Indian Point nuclear plant on its way to the World Trade Center in New York City is particularly disturbing. The spent fuel pools at Indian Point are built into a small hill on the grounds that could potentially allow direct impact from a crashing airplane. With seventeen million persons living within fifty miles from the plant, the ensuing environmental catastrophe could potentially be the worst in US history.

Dry casks are seen as preferable to fuel pools by some, but they also pose a threat to public health. The casks are placed outside a nuclear plant at ground level, and are visible to those at or near nuclear plants with this type of storage. While they are not as hot and radioactive as spent fuel pools, radioactivity in dry casks is still hundreds of degrees, and the casks contain huge amounts of these deadly chemicals. They are large and strong, but many contend would be no match for a fast-moving airplane of much greater size. And over time, as reactors continue to operate, dry casks will contain more and more spent fuel.

Such monumental safety problems posed by temporary storage raise the question of why most of the radioactive waste produced by nuclear plants is even there, instead of being stored in a safe, permanent location. The answer is that over sixty years after the atomic age began there is no safe or permanent solution to the waste problem, with none in sight for the foreseeable future, with the distinct possibility of such a solution never being reached.

Nuclear weapons plants in the US began operating in 1943, and power plants first started in 1957. From the outset, the fission process generated huge amounts of highly radioactive waste, regardless if the reactor was used to make nuclear weapons or generate electricity. Even before reactors started, scientists knew this waste would be produced, but no plan for maintaining waste was made.

At first, such as plan was seen as an obstacle to the breakneck pace of creating nuclear weapons for World War II and for the Cold War arms race. Atomic bombs were needed as fast as possible to ensure national security, and lack of a plan for radioactive waste, while a problem, would not be allowed to stand in the way of this goal. Planning a system of permanent waste storage wasn’t a priority. But ignoring the issue didn’t mean the need for a long-term plan would go away.

The waste problem at nuclear weapons sites was handled in a very slipshod manner, and the extent of the resulting contamination is staggering. Of all the weapons plants, Hanford in southeastern Washington State accumulated the most waste. Today, there are 53 million gallons of high level liquid waste stored in 177 underground tanks. About a third of them are leaking their toxic contents into the soil and ground water, and are moving through the groundwater to the Columbia River. In addition, 25 million cubic feet of solid radioactive waste is strewn across Hanford, a mess that will take decades more to clean up. The Santa Susana plant was only used for research, not to produce weapons or generate commercial electricity. Still, enormous amounts of radioactive waste in the environment were allowed to accumulate at the site, and have yet to be cleaned up (see Chapter 5).

Nobody wanted responsibility for developing a permanent plan for storing waste. Private utility companies that owned reactors operated as individual, local entities, not a united group with a national focus. They placed used fuel rods into pools and continued working, willfully oblivious to the eventual need for a permanent waste repository. Knowing this, Congress assigned the AEC the responsibility of managing radioactive waste as part of the 1954 Atomic Energy Act. Three years later, the National Academy of Sciences produced a report recommending geological disposal in deep underground sites. The report cheerfully stated: “The Committee is convinced that radioactive waste can be disposed of safely in a variety of ways and at a large number of sites in the United States.”

However, the report also featured a dire warning about the magnitude and danger of the task, one that was to prove prophetic over the next half century: “The hazard related to radioactive waste is so great that no element of doubt should be allowed to exist regarding safety.”

The NAS report also recommended that salt deposits were the most secure means of burying waste. This did not stop the AEC from considering a variety of disposal methods, including storage under polar ice sheets, under sea beds, in deep boreholes and wells, in outer space, and melted into lava. Ultimately, the AEC rejected each of these approaches and concentrated on finding an area with ample salt that could be used for storage.

The 1957 NAS report cited several locations with ample salt deposits, including sites in Arkansas, Colorado, Kansas, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, New York, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, and Texas. After scouting various potential sites in these areas, the AEC decided to focus on “Project Salt Vault” at an abandoned salt mine near Lyons, Kansas, a town of 4,500 people about seventy miles northwest of Wichita. Site preparation began in 1963, and two years later, the first canisters containing spent fuel assemblies were placed into the mine. The project inserted and removed assemblies for the next several years, and in 1970, the AEC announced that the Lyons site was being considered as the permanent site for radioactive waste.

The AEC had made a poor choice. Probably the greatest danger at the Lyons site was the presence of a nearby hydraulic mine that had used considerable amounts of water. A waste site would have to be devoid of water (the rationale for the Project Salt Vault) for many thousands of years. Any contact of the super-heated waste with water could corrode the canisters holding the waste, and could create steam containing deadly radioactive gases and particles that would be shot into the air, breathed by humans, and enter the food chain.

Opposition from local citizens and leaders was fierce. “The Lyons site is a bit like a piece of Swiss cheese,” said Kansas geologist William Hambleton. When the AEC persisted, political leaders in Washington were called in to help. Congressman Joe Skubitz angrily made the case against the Lyons salt mine in particular, and against the idea of a permanent disposal facility in general: “The Federal Government cannot compel a sovereign State to do itself and its citizens possible irreparable injury if its officials refuse to be stampeded.”

In August 1971, an amendment by the two US Senators from Kansas blocked action on the Lyons site until a safety panel independent of the AEC could give its assent. Several months later, the AEC gave up on the site. It continued the search for an acceptable salt formation throughout the 1970s in various states. But all posed problems, and as time went on, Congress became increasingly nervous. Large volumes of waste were accumulating at nuclear plants, the plan to reprocess waste had been abandoned, opposition was encountered at every site examined by the AEC, and the nation’s growing anti-nuclear sentiment prompted a four-year debate in Washington. Seeing that progress towards a permanent waste storage site would need legislative backbone, Congress passed the National Waste Policy Act (NWPA) in 1982.

The NWPA mandated that the Energy Department (the successor to the AEC) choose two waste burial sites, in the eastern and western parts of the nation. The first site – the western one – was to house 70,000 metric tons of high level waste. The proposed sites for a second repository – in the East – included the upper Midwest, northern New England, Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia. Strong local opposition was met in each of the proposed areas; it was clear that nobody wanted the monster of permanent nuclear waste stored in the backyard.

The following year, Congress passed another law naming Yucca Mountain, Nevada as the site of choice, and dropped the idea of a second repository. Yucca was a logical choice to some; it was located in a remote area close to where nuclear weapons had been tested. Others pointed to geological flaws, and to the fast-growing Las Vegas area just eighty miles to the south. Numerous legal actions were attempted. Local opposition was strong – Nevada was no different than any other state – and leaders denied needed state permits. The federal government countered by passing a 1992 law dropping the requirement for state permits. The legislative battle continued, fought largely on partisan grounds, as the Energy Department began preparing the Yucca site. In 2000, Democratic President Bill Clinton vetoed a measure that would have sped up the schedule for Yucca. The administration of his Republican successor George W. Bush succeeded in enacting approval legislation and submitting a license application. Finally, in 2010, Democrat Barack Obama’s Energy Department withdrew the application for the repository, and penciled in zero dollars in the federal budget for continuing work. For the moment, at least, the partially built repository at Yucca Mountain is dead, leaving the nation with no plan for permanent high level waste disposal.

Obama’s Energy Secretary Dr. Steven Chu epitomized the consistent lack of progress in creating a permanent solution for high level waste storage, when he made a public statement in 2009. His comment could have been made six decades earlier, symbolizing a back-to-square-one attitude. The regional waste sites he mentioned have been proposed in the past, but they have evoked a strong not-in-my-backyard response.

So the real thing is, let’s get some really wise heads together and figure out how you want to deal with the interim and long-term storage. Yucca was supposed to be everything to everybody, and I think, knowing what we know today, there’s going to have to be several regional areas.

The road to Yucca Mountain has had a rocky experience, and the idea of it or any other permanent waste site is very much in doubt. Still, the site may eventually be used in the future. The idea of starting over in the search for a permanent waste site, after over half a century of efforts, would evoke a groan from even the most ardent opponent of Yucca. But the true lesson of the permanent waste repository experience is that there is no “good” way to permanently store high level radioactive waste, especially in the enormous amounts generated by US nuclear power reactors.

Of all the obstacles to a “safe” means of storage, perhaps the most daunting is the length of time that these poisons must be kept from living things. Most of the waste is made of cesium-137, plutonium-241, and strontium-90, which will decay and disappear in 300 to 600 years. But this is an extremely long time to maintain a foolproof system. In the period 300 to 600 years ago, the United States did not even exist as a nation. What life will be like on earth and in Nevada 300 to 600 years down the road is anyone’s guess – a guess that makes plans like high level waste disposal a dangerous gamble.

Even if US nuclear plants ceased operations today, and somehow the high level waste was maintained safely for hundreds of years, the problem wouldn’t be solved. Dozens of other radioactive isotopes with longer half lives would remain in massive amounts, and their slow decay rates would require complete segregation from all forms of life for many thousands of years – a length of time that makes hash of any predictions and plans.

The problems of Yucca Mountain or any other site are multiple. There is no known underground site on earth without a geological risk. Water infusion is a common one. Earthquakes represent another (both water seepage and earthquake potential have been cited as reasons to reject Yucca Mountain). There are other geological concerns over such a vast amount of time. The changing climate of the earth may create new threats.

Then there is the issue of shipping. Filling any single permanent repository would require thousands of trips by train and truck to deliver the waste from all eighty-two operating and shut-down nuclear plants to the repository, probably taking twenty years to empty the current stock at all US plants. Many of the plants are in the east, over 2,000 miles from Yucca Mountain. All of the transportation would require tight security every inch of every trip. The waste would often travel through highly populated areas of the nation. A single mishap that would unleash the deadly contents of the truck or train would be disastrous. This could occur from mechanical failure (of the casks, truck, or train), human error (drivers falling asleep), act of sabotage, natural disaster like an earthquake or hurricane, or other scenarios. Some have given the idea of transporting massive amounts of waste the sobriquet “Mobile Chernobyl.”

Another issue with permanent storage is the limited amount of space now planned. A huge space has been excavated at Yucca Mountain. But if all waste now stored at US nuclear plants were emptied, Yucca’s repository would be filled to capacity. And by the time it took to complete this extensive task, about twenty years, the existing 104 reactors would have produced enough waste to fill the equivalent of another Yucca. (If many more new reactors are built and operated, as some are suggesting, there would be even more waste produced.) The process of finding and developing a new site – or of at least doubling the capacity of the Yucca Mountain site – would have to begin all over again.

The idea of a site that would require impenetrable security for thousands of years has collided with the era of terrorism. A site such as Yucca would have to be secured, and the transportation process to Yucca would have to be secured – in addition to each nuclear plant being secured. It is no secret that nuclear materials are a terrorist target; President George W. Bush mentioned that Al Qaeda had planned attacks against US nuclear plants in his 2002 State of the Union message. A permanent waste repository, along with the required transportation to the site, would certainly raise the stakes for would-be terrorists.

The list of concerns posed by a permanent storage repository goes on. However, the idea of scrapping a single permanent waste site and leaving high level waste at individual plants is highly problematic as well. There would be no need to transport waste, but all the same problems at a single site would exist at each nuclear plant. Some of these are located close to large population centers. Some are built near earthquake fault lines or have other natural threats. Finally, the idea of operating a network of eighty-two separate permanent waste storage systems instead of one arguably makes it eighty-two times more possible that something could go wrong. Nobody can say with certainty that eighty-two small Yucca Mountains is preferable to one large Yucca Mountain.

At the beginning of the atomic age, leaders never envisioned that high level waste storage would pose a problem. Their reasoning was that waste could be reused through a method known as reprocessing. On paper, it sounded like a great idea. But like many aspects of nuclear power production, it was a concept that had not been well thought out or sufficiently tested, and one that eventually would create considerably more problems than it solved.

Reprocessing is a method in which uranium-235 and plutonium is separated from used nuclear fuel, so that they can be used to power reactors again. There are a number of ways that this can be done, but the most commonly used method is known by the acronym PUREX (Plutonium and Uranium Recovery by Extraction). Several methods, including the bismuth phosphate approach tested during the mid-1940s at Oak Ridge and Hanford, are obsolete. But the AEC bought into this premature concept, and announced a program to encourage private industry to reprocess spent fuel.

In 1966, the AEC allowed a company called Nuclear Fuel Services to operate a reprocessing plant at West Valley, NY, thirty miles south of Buffalo. The next year, the AEC authorized General Electric to build a spent fuel plant at Morris, IL, near the Dresden power reactors; and four years later, construction began on a reprocessing plant in Barnwell SC, close to the Savannah River Plant nuclear weapons facility. It appeared that the dream of reprocessing would become a reality.

But the dream quickly became a nightmare. After just six years, Nuclear Fuel Services voluntarily stopped reprocessing at West Valley, because widespread contamination forced additional regulations from the AEC, which proved too costly for the company. In 1976, President Gerald Ford suspended all reprocessing of used nuclear fuel in the US, and the following year, President Jimmy Carter banned it altogether, and construction at the unfinished plant at Barnwell stopped. General Electric had already backed out of the Illinois project as West Valley closed. Spent fuel reprocessing in the US was dead.

What happened to the great idea that would make lemonade out of lemons? Several large scale problems caused the government’s policy to change, including:

Even though uranium and plutonium could be separated from other fuel and reused to power reactors, they represented a small portion of the spent fuel. The other radioactive chemicals in spent fuel remained, some with very long decay periods, and permanent storage was still required for a staggering amount of waste.

Reprocessing generated huge amounts of pollution at West Valley. Some was emitted into the environment and some was stored. The carnage included enormous amounts of used fuel assemblies, liquid waste, solid waste, and low level waste. Some cleanup has occurred, but to this day, West Valley remains a large, dirty burial ground for high level nuclear waste.

Creating more plutonium free of other radioactive chemicals was recognized as a risk to nuclear weapons control. Any theft of the separated plutonium after reprocessing would essentially hand the thieves weapons-grade fuel. In the 1970s, leaders of both parties were making efforts to limit nuclear arms, and recognized that reprocessing was creating a threat to the US and the world.

Reprocessing proved to be much more expensive than originally planned – a common refrain for any aspect of nuclear power. The cost of building and maintaining reprocessing facilities, transporting materials to facilities, waste cleanup, and reprocessing itself was extremely costly. Private companies required taxpayer funds from Washington or would have to raise electric bills to pay the hefty tab.

But even with this array of problems, some persisted in keeping the battered hope of reprocessing alive. Similar to the Yucca Mountain fight, policies shifted frequently, usually along party lines. In 1981, Republican President Ronald Reagan lifted the ban on reprocessing, and research on a new Integral Fast Reactor that could (allegedly) handle reprocessing began three years later at the Argonne National Lab in Illinois. But Democratic President Bill Clinton cancelled the project in 1994. Later in Clinton’s presidency, in 1999, a switch was made; the Energy Department signed a contract with Duke Energy, the French national nuclear agency COGEMA, and Stone & Webster to develop a Mixed Oxide (MOX) fuel fabrication facility at Savannah River (still not complete). Republican George W. Bush heartily endorsed reprocessing, as part of the revival of nuclear power, and his Energy Department made sure that construction of the facility at Savannah River began in 2006.

MOX, the latest in a series of reprocessing ideas, is slightly different than previous versions, since it would involve conversion of plutonium designed originally for nuclear weapons into appropriate form for nuclear power plants. The NRC explains its rationale for pursuing the MOX facility in South Carolina:

The purpose of manufacturing MOX fuel is to meet the goals of the US Department of Energy’s Surplus Plutonium Disposition Program. The process of converting the fissile material into MOX fuel renders the plutonium less attractive for use in nuclear weapons.

The attempted assurance by the NRC that converting the plutonium into MOX would make it “less attractive” badly understates the danger of having plutonium of any sort in circulation, in this case removing weapons grade plutonium, transporting it to a MOX facility, and working with it in the facility.

In addition to the US, other countries experimented with reprocessing on a small and experimental basis, only to abandon the technology. These included Belgium, China, Germany, and Italy. Of all the nations operating nuclear reactors, the only ones that currently reprocess used nuclear fuel are France, India, Russia, and the United Kingdom. Japan is planning to open a reprocessing center in 2012, although the debacle at Fukushima may cause this plan to be postponed, or even abandoned.

The experiences in France and the United Kingdom, which lead the world in reprocessing spent fuel, are telling. The UK began reprocessing its spent fuel in the 1950s at the Sellafield plant in northwest England on the Irish Sea. Sellafield is also the site where the British manufactured its nuclear weapons. A major core meltdown occurred at the weapons reactor in October 1957, and is seen as one of the worst meltdowns in world history. At Sellafield, reprocessing has been conducted at its Magnox plant (which uses the PUREX method), its Thermal Oxide Reprocessing Plant, and its MOX plant. It reprocesses considerable amounts of high level nuclear waste from other nations, as well as from British reactors.

Sellafield has been the subject of numerous protests from within the UK, and has been criticized by governments in Ireland and Norway, which share the Irish Sea with Britain, for the pollution it causes. Martin Gardner, a professor at the University of Southampton, found that children born near Sellafield and those whose fathers were employed at the plant were more likely to develop cancer. The Gardner article was published in the British Medical Journal and provoked response letters in the journal, most of them critical of his methods and conclusions.

The La Hague plant, on the Normandy coast, is unlike Sellafield, in that its sole purpose has been reprocessing high level waste, from France and other nations, since its opening in 1976. La Hague is vital to the French nuclear program, the most extensive of any nation (80% of electricity in France is generated by nuclear power plants). Once again, La Hague has been the target of various protests. A team led by Professor Jean Francois Viel of Besancon published several articles on child cancer near the La Hague plant, finding that the risk of childhood leukemia was elevated for those using local beaches and those consuming local fish.

Since the start of the atomic era, there has been a hope that a solution for the nuclear waste problem could be found. As time went on, and problems mounted, the hope was dashed, and supplanted by another hope that somehow, technological advances to be discovered in the future would save the day. For sixty years, this hope has endured – with no magic solution, as the amount of waste has continued to mount to staggering levels. The original idea that waste could be reprocessed to isolate uranium and plutonium for additional use was not, and is not, without major problems. Even if the US opts to resurrect its long-dormant reprocessing program in the future, it will be saddled with enormous problems generated by its high level waste.

The matter of how to safely secure sixty-six million metric tons of highly radioactive waste for thousands of years is daunting enough. But addressing the question in the future will be even more daunting; at current levels of operation, another sixty-six million metric tons will be added to the stockpile in just thirty years. Even the greatest optimist must recognize that waste poses an insoluble problem for the foreseeable future, and maybe forever. With no solution in sight, the prudent course is to first minimize the amount of waste, as whatever course is chosen for the waste will pose enormous risk to human health and safety.

Trouble in Atomic Paradise

The dawn of the atomic era was full of great optimism and hope. Supporters spoke enthusiastically about the positive aspects of nuclear energy. The ability of the atom to provide plentiful amounts of electricity was one theme often cited. The “clean” energy that nuclear reactors would produce – meaning there were no smoky emissions from stacks like with coal plants – was another. And the modest cost of nuclear power was still another.

But these proclamations were based on theory, not actual experience, and ignored concerns about this new technology that were emerging at nuclear weapons plants. From the very beginning, problems plagued the atomic energy industry, and by the late 1970s these problems had turned a fast-growing industry into a stagnant one, far short of original expectations. The difficulties with nuclear power can be classified into two major categories. Unexpectedly poor financial performance is one of them, and safety hazards (epitomized by meltdowns) is the other. These two factors turned the American public against nuclear reactors, and brought growth to a halt over the past four decades.

The AEC hope of 1,200 reactors in operation by the year 2000 failed miserably. Only 254 reactors were ordered (the last in 1978); of these, 127 were cancelled or never completed, and twenty-three others were shut down permanently, leaving the nation with just 104 early in the twenty-first century.

The early projections of nuclear reactor costs were based on numerous assumptions, which proved to be overly optimistic. As these financial problems mounted, lenders halted their support for reactors, effectively killing growth. The various monetary matters that emerged are given below:

Complexity. Constructing a new nuclear reactor was seen as a relatively simple matter in the mid-1950s. But this vision was based on limited use of test reactors, which were much smaller and less complex than the ones eventually built. They were also constructed and operated on government property, whereas actual reactors required site selection and preparation. Nobody had any idea of how complex a task it was to build and test a large new reactor before it was ready to produce electricity, and projected costs proved to be far short of actual ones.

Inflation. In the 1950s, inflation was not a factor in the US economy, and not considered in projected future costs of reactors. But beginning in the mid-1960s, a steady pattern of inflation became part of American life, and the price of literally everything spiraled. The cost of nuclear reactor related materials, personnel, land, and interest on loans (among others) reached heights far above initial projections.

Uranium Supply. All US reactors rely on uranium for fuel. While planners knew that uranium existed in the western part of the country, nobody really bothered to calculate actual supplies and future demands. By the 1970s, the domestic uranium supply was running short, forcing a huge price increase. From 1973 to 1976 alone, a time when some bragged that nuclear power would help solve the oil shortage, the price for a pound of uranium oxide had soared from $7 to $42, adding considerable cost to the cycle of preparing uranium for reactor use, and in operating reactors.

Opposition Means Delays. In the 1960s and 1970s, the public sentiment against nuclear power grew. This meant delays in constructing reactors, increasing the fixed daily costs in the process. The Shoreham reactor on Long Island, originally slated to cost $75 million, eventually cost $2 billion to build over twenty-one years. The reactor was never allowed to operate, and the total cost of $6 billion to build, close, decommission, and decontaminate was far greater than the initially-projected costs, and passed on to Long Island ratepayers. The longest period between reactor order and startup was twenty-six years (1970 and 1996), at the Watts Bar plant in Eastern Tennessee, the last US reactor to come on line.

Frequent Breakdowns. The original planners of nuclear reactors expected them to work with only a few minor problems. But this vision was based more on hope than reality. In the early 1970s, reactors were closed for mechanical repairs over half the time, and by the mid-1980s, only operated 57% of the time. Shut down meant no electrical production, and no electricity meant no revenue. Wall Street leaders recognized that reactors were a poor investment, and halted loans to utilities. To this day, no utility can successfully obtain a loan for constructing a new nuclear reactor from a major investor.

Premature Shut Downs. All reactors were initially expected to operate for forty years. But a number of early reactors closed permanently, well before the forty-year mark, due to the high cost and depleted revenue from mechanical problems. Utilities were forced to raise their rates for other forms of electricity in order to pay back loans for reactors.

Cost of Meltdowns. None of the atomic “founding fathers” envisioned that a large scale meltdown would occur at a US reactor. But they were wrong (see the list of meltdowns described later in this chapter). Meltdowns either forced immediate shutdown and decommissioning of reactors, or required lengthy periods of repair – all at a high cost, with no revenue to offset it. In the case of Three Mile Island, numerous legal actions, and their settlements, cost the utility considerable funds.

New Regulations. The 1979 meltdown at Three Mile Island rattled Americans, and leaders were forced to do something to assure that it would never happen again. This chapter will later discuss a Presidential Commission that prescribed a series of enhancements in personnel management, design of reactors, safety practices, and other regulations – all of which raised the cost of operating a reactor considerably.

Greater Security. Nuclear plant operators always enforced security measures. But as time went on, and especially after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, these measures were increased dramatically, in the form of more personnel, more sophisticated equipment, more extensive tactics, and greater accountability procedures. (These fast and dramatic changes were not accomplished without problems, as indicated by anecdotal stories of security guards sleeping on duty.) Once again, these marginal costs just added to the expense of nuclear power.

Waste Disposal Costs. Nuclear plants were never supposed to house much of the radioactive waste they produced. Instead, it was to be reprocessed (reducing the volume of waste) and the rest shipped to a permanent waste repository. But reprocessing failed dismally at West Valley New York, and the idea to build other reprocessing facilities was scrapped. The selection of Yucca Mountain as a permanent repository in 1987 encountered huge opposition, and the eventual decision by President Obama to pull funds for the site – a multibillion dollar investment now a white elephant – leaves huge amounts of waste at each nuclear plant, in spent fuel pools and in dry casks after pools fill up.

New Types of Reactors Fail. A number of different types of reactors were the subject of experiments in the early days of the atomic era, with the hope that they would be later used successfully. But they failed; examples of this are breeder reactors (the experiment in Idaho resulted in a meltdown) and sodium-cooled reactors (like the one at Santa Susana, which also melted down). Costs were borne by federal tax dollars.

Decommissioning Costs. With reprocessing facilities and a permanent waste repository now moot, the amount of waste at a typical plant now far more than ever expected, and inflation having taken costs far beyond any early prediction, the costs of decommissioning a nuclear plant when it closes have soared. Federal law requires utilities to set aside a minimum amount for decommissioning – so the company won’t “leave town” if it closes a plant – which is typically in the hundreds of millions of dollars for a single plant. The utility, naturally, passes along these costs to ratepayers while the plant is still in operation.

Insurance Costs. The Price-Anderson legislation was enacted in 1957 because no private insurer would write an insurance policy to cover a meltdown at nuclear plant. The limit of what a utility would be responsible for is now $9.5 billion, far short of actual costs (which would be borne by taxpayers). This maximum amount has never been reached, but the potential excess costs to the utility and taxpayers remain.

Tax Breaks. Nuclear utilities have received considerable tax breaks from federal and state governments over the years, breaks that are paid for by taxpayers, adding to the costs of reactors.

The cost of nuclear reactors was one major cause of the industry’s decline. But numerous meltdowns constitute the other major cause. Below is a description of the meltdowns in the US, and several that occurred in foreign nations, which helped change public policy and reduced the extent to which the nuclear industry developed.

Chalk River, Canada, 1952. The first known meltdown at a nuclear reactor occurred not in the United States, but at Chalk River, Canada, 110 miles northwest of Ottawa. On December 13, 1952, the five-year-old NRX research reactor at the site sustained a hydrogen explosion from an unexpected power surge that couldn’t be controlled. Cooling water was lost, the core was badly damaged, and the structure flooded with radioactive water. Among the cleanup team dispatched to the site was a young Naval officer named Jimmy Carter, a nuclear engineer who would become America’s thirty-ninth President – and who ironically would be dispatched to the stricken Three Mile Island reactor nearly three decades later. Another accident at Chalk River that melted fuel rods occurred in 1958. Although the 1952 meltdown was not part of the American nuclear power program, it was a foreboding of more accidents to come, in the US and around the world.

Experimental Breeder Reactor, Idaho, 1955. The Idaho National Laboratory in the eastern part of that state was founded in 1949, as the US military and AEC prepared a series of plans to develop its atomic program, both for nuclear weapons and power reactors. In its history, Idaho National has operated over fifty small research reactors at that site, and is sometimes known as the “Atomic City.”

The first American nuclear reactor to generate electricity was the Experimental Breeder Reactor (EBR-1) at Idaho National, which accomplished this on December 20, 1951. It later powered the small nearby town of Arco, Idaho with electricity. The concept behind a “breeder reactor” was to produce enough fuel to use not just at that time, but also to use in future reactor operations, rather than just producing useless and dangerous radioactive waste. It could also produce plutonium-239 by ensuring neutrons struck uranium-238 atoms after producing electricity, and sell the plutonium back to the government for military uses. The breeder reactor was a great source of hope for the atomic future of the US in the early 1950s.

But on November 29, 1955, the EBR-1 suffered a partial meltdown of its core. Operators were testing the flow of cooling water, but thermal expansion of fuel rods proved to be much greater than expected, and some of the rods melted. The EBR-1 did not operate after that; and even though an EBR-2 was built at Idaho National, the concept of the breeder reactor had proved too dangerous to be workable. The large breeder reactors envisioned over fifty years ago by nuclear engineers never were used in the US. The 1955 meltdown was kept quiet from the media and American public by the AEC until the Cold War ended decades later.

Westinghouse Testing Reactor, Pennsylvania, 1960. In 1960, a second US nuclear meltdown took place, this time in western Pennsylvania. The Westinghouse Corporation, based in Pittsburgh, was poised to test and build many nuclear reactors for the growing American fleet; in fact, Westinghouse and General Electric did build the large majority of the 500-plus reactors ever operated worldwide.

Westinghouse built a Testing Reactor at Waltz Mill, a tiny town about twenty miles from company headquarters in Pittsburgh, and began operating it in 1959. The Testing Reactor used shorter fuel rods (three to four feet, instead of the usual twelve to thirteen feet) that were clad in aluminum instead of the usual zirconium. Just several months after operations began, on April 3, 1960, the reactor experienced a meltdown to some of the fuel rods in the core. Radioactive krypton and xenon were released into the air, and the site was immediately evacuated.

Over two million gallons of radioactive water accumulated in lagoons in the area, and had to be disposed of into permanent storage by state officials. Much like the breeder reactor tested in Idaho, the Westinghouse concept of a new reactor with shorter fuel rods clad in aluminum never caught on, and was scrapped in the 1960s. The company kept the meltdown a secret, and again the event went unnoticed by the public and the media.

Santa Susana, California, 1959. The 1950s also saw its share of nuclear accidents overseas that caused large releases of radiation. One occurred in late 1957 at the Kyshtym radioactive waste dump in the Ural Mountains in the former Soviet Union. A massive explosion at Kyshtym was fatal to a large – and still unknown – number of people, but the Soviet authorities kept the blast a secret for decades.

Also in late 1957, the Windscale nuclear plant in northern England that produced plutonium experienced a fire that melted fuel pellets in its core. Large amounts of radiation escaped through the stacks of the reactor before it could be controlled, and a ban on selling milk produced in a 200 square mile area around Windscale was implemented, because of public health risk posed by the radioactivity in milk. Unlike earlier meltdowns, this one was made public, arousing the British people but having little effect in the US.

Just two years later, a meltdown occurred at a research reactor in the Santa Susana Laboratory near Los Angeles in July 1959, arguably the largest nuclear meltdown in US history. The tragic details of the Santa Susana fiasco were to be made public only at the end of the Cold War. Much is still unknown about Santa Susana.

Savannah River Plant, South Carolina, 1970. In late 1970, two fuel rods melted down at the Savannah River Plant, a large nuclear weapons production site near Aiken, South Carolina. The accidents discharged considerable radioactivity, but in keeping with the typical practices at government run weapons plants, the public was kept in the dark, and the plant continued to operate.

Not until eighteen years later did hearings chaired by Senator John Glenn reveal these meltdowns, causing a prolonged debate over the radioactive releases and the potential health threats to plant workers and the general population. Dr. Jay Gould documented a threefold rise in strontium-90 in South Carolina milk from 1970 to 1971, along with unexpectedly large increases in infant and total deaths in the state in the few months after the accident.

Idaho National Lab, 1961. Among the meltdowns in the early years of the American atomic program, possibly the most dramatic occurred on January 4, 1961. The event occurred at the Idaho National Laboratory, in the Lost River Desert, forty miles west of Idaho Falls – where the 1955 meltdown earlier described had taken place.

Just before Christmas 1960, workers shut the Stationery Low-Power Plant #1. SL-1, as was known, was a research reactor designed for military use in remote areas, one that could fit into cargo planes and trucks and be assembled quickly. The reactor had been having problems, especially with control rods sticking as they were inserted and removed from the reactor core, instead of sliding in and out easily; in the five weeks prior to shutdown, control rods stuck 13% of the time.

On the frigid night of January 3, when the temperature reached seventeen degrees below zero, a three-person crew appeared at the dark building to prepare the reactor for restart. The team consisted of John Byrnes, Richard Legg, and Richard McKinley, all soldiers in their twenties, who had volunteered for duty in the military’s nuclear program. At about 9 p.m. the workers were reconnecting control rods to the drive mechanism (these had been disconnected to move blocks at the top of the reactor). As they lifted the control rods out of the reactor, something went terribly wrong – a malfunction whose exact cause still remains unknown.

The reactor went critical, 20% of the fuel melted, and a huge amount of heat energy was released. Water shot upwards against the lid of the pressure vessel that contained the reactor, shooting the lid nine feet into the air until it slammed against the ceiling. Byrnes and McKinley were violently thrown sideways, and Legg was impaled in the ceiling of the room with a control rod thrust into his mid-section. His body “looked like a bundle of rags hanging down,” according to one rescue worker. The violent impact was the cause of death, but because the explosion blew radioactive metal shards into their bodies at a staggering 500 to 1000 rads per hour, they would have quickly succumbed to radiation poisoning had they survived the blast. The bodies could only be removed at very brief intervals by workers who raced in and out of the building to hold down exposures, and could only be buried in drums encased in lead shielded boxes.

The reactor was destroyed, and the site dismantled and buried nearby. The accident was not the worst in atomic history, but was the first to receive substantial attention – because the worker deaths had to be made public. It was impossible for the AEC to hide the deaths of young men being killed while working with this dangerous machine. The martyred workers became symbols for the dangers of the atom – even though many, many more were being imperiled by the use of this technology.

The AEC soon reported that a “low-level” plume of radioactive iodine-131 had escaped from the reactor into the air, and that soil samples had detected strontium-90. But in general, the AEC was very secretive with the press. Labor leader Walter Reuther, who was opposing construction of the Fermi nuclear plant near Detroit at that time, claimed a similar accident near a populated area would have harmed “thousands of people.” Michigan Health Commissioner Albert Heustis asked for “official factual data” about the accident, complaining that the only information available was in a few brief press releases. But no further information was forthcoming. Three decades later, an Energy Department analysis confirmed that I-131 from the 1961 explosion did actually spread to towns sixty miles downwind, and was 100 times above normal levels in nearby Atomic City, Nevada.

Fermi 1, 1966. Among the types of nuclear reactors that were the subject of 1950s experiments was the breeder reactor. In the early part of the decade, Detroit Edison President Walker Cisler became interested in the concept, and formed a consortium (including representatives from powerful companies like Ford and General Motors) to build a breeder reactor at Monroe, Michigan, about thirty miles south of Detroit. He raised millions for research, and with the blessing of the AEC, the project seemed inevitable.

In late 1955, the accident at the EBR-1 facility in Idaho raised the question of whether building a new breeder reactor was a sound idea. EBR was actually much smaller than the one Cisler envisioned, and less capable of harming people. Moreover, the EBR was in a remote part of Idaho as opposed to near Detroit, a city with 1.8 million people at the time and hundreds of thousands more in its suburbs. But in January 1956, Detroit Edison submitted its AEC application for the new Fermi reactor (named after the famed physicist Enrico Fermi), at an estimated cost of $40 million.

Even in the atomic-happy 1950s, not everybody was in favor of Fermi. US Senator Pat McNamara of Michigan went on record in the Senate:

First and foremost in my mind was the vastly important question of safety of the proposed reactor… Monroe, Mr. President, is only about thirty miles from Detroit, a city of over two million people and surrounded by populous suburbs. That is why safety is so important. Up to now, the AEC has appeared to run roughshod over the safety question, and there are many questions to be answered.

Other high-profile opponents included Walter Reuther, head of the United Auto Workers, who teamed up with the United Paper Workers of America and the United Electrical Workers to hold hearings about Fermi safety issues. Some witnesses raised serious concerns, but Detroit Edison and government officials tried to assure Reuther that the plant was safe. Reuther filed a suit against the AEC to halt construction; in 1960, an appeals court ruled in his favor, only to be reversed the next year by the Supreme Court. The Fermi construction went on.

In August 1963, with its construction cost now at $120 million (three times the original estimate), the Fermi breeder reactor “went critical” at very low power. But many problems ensued, and by 1966, it still had not produced any power used by Detroit-area citizens. In the fall of that year, operators believed they had finally fixed all the problems, and planned to raise the reactor gradually to its peak.

On October 5, 1966, this attempt had a disastrous outcome. Control rods were pulled too far out of the core, which promptly overheated. Alarms went off, fuel assemblies melted, and radiation filled the containment building. Nobody was really sure what had caused this problem, until months later when a crushed piece of zirconium metal that protected fuel rods was found at the bottom of the reactor. The piece had broken loose from its original position, clogging coolant nozzles that led to the meltdown.

The worst part of the Fermi 1 debacle was what almost happened. A huge amount of liquid sodium came perilously close to meeting air – a combination that would have caused a massive explosion and release of radiation. Only a tank of argon gas in the core stood between the sodium and air – essentially sparing Detroit a terrible catastrophe.

Operators decided to fix the damage at Fermi, a process that took a long time. Detroit Edison stubbornly clung to the belief that it could still be salvaged and put the enormous amount of $132 million into repairs. But even the gung-ho AEC had soured on Fermi by then. In 1972, it denied an application to restart the reactor, and Fermi 1 closed permanently. The AEC tried the breeder reactor concept at a new plant at Clinch River, near Oak Ridge, Tennessee, a project which was terminated in 1983 before construction was completed, with costs soaring billions past the original estimate.

Fermi backers had high hopes at its outset, but the optimism met with colossal failure. For the hundreds of millions spent over nearly two decades (far outstripping the original $40 million prediction), it operated less than thirty days total, and produced very little plutonium. More importantly, its 1966 meltdown came perilously close to a large-scale disaster that could have had a terrible impact on a major metropolitan center. The frightening near-miss for Detroit was also a warning for the entire US nuclear power program. But it was not to be the last meltdown or the meltdown most critical to American nuclear policy.

Three Mile Island is a strip of land in the Susquehanna River, in south central Pennsylvania. The small, wooded area was virtually unknown to anyone aside from local residents – until March 1979.

By that time, two nuclear reactors were operating on the island, to generate more electrical power for local residents. The twenty mile area around the plant included the historic town of Gettysburg, the popular tourist town of Hershey, the site of a large population of Amish people, and many large dairy farms. It also included the cities of Harrisburg, Lancaster, Lebanon, and York, and was home to about 663,500 persons.

In the mid-1960s, officials of Metropolitan Edison, a large Pennsylvania utility, selected the site as the future home of the two nuclear reactors. The first unit opened in June 1974, and the second unit started in December 1978. The capacity of the Three Mile Island reactors (786 and 906 megawatts electrical) was far greater than the sixty-one megawatts at Fermi. Along with the two similar-sized reactors at Peach Bottom, just thirty-five miles to the southeast, south-central Pennsylvania had the densest concentration of nuclear reactors in the US.

On March 28, 1979, Unit 1 at Three Mile Island was changing fuel rods, and was not operating. But Unit 2 was operating at full capacity just three months after startup, and what happened that day changed American history.

At about four in the morning, for reasons still unknown, the pumps feeding water to the reactor core stopped running. The reactor shut down automatically, and the pressure in the nuclear part of the reactor rose, causing a relief valve to open to relieve this pressure. When the pressure declined, the valve should have closed – but it didn’t, and the signals visible to the operator on duty erroneously showed it to be closed.

Frederick Scheimann, the foreman of the crew working the reactor early that morning, recalled what happened:

“All of a sudden, I started hearing loud, thunderous noises, like a couple of freight trains,” he said later. He jumped down from the pipe, heard the words ‘Turbine trip, turbine trip’ over a loudspeaker, and rushed to the control room. The maintenance crew working on the polisher had accidentally choked off the flow in the main feedwater system, forcing Unit 2’s generating equipment – its turbine and reactor, which had been operating at 97% of full power – to shut down.

Large amounts of cooling water poured out of the reactor core through the faulty valve, and Three Mile Island Unit 2 was in big trouble. The core overheated, and began melting. Alarms sounded, but even then, operators believed water levels in the core to be adequate, since levels in the pressurizer area were normal. They reduced the flow of coolant water, which only made the situation worse. Not until a full eighty minutes later was the mistake recognized.

By then, a large-scale meltdown was well under way. Nearly all of the zirconium cladding surrounding the fuel rods ruptured, and fuel pellets inside the cladding that contained uranium melted. About half of the reactor core melted into a fiery-hot, highly radioactive mush. By 11 a.m., NRC personnel and the White House had been notified about the situation, and all non-essential workers were ordered to leave the plant – but not the people of the Harrisburg area.

In addition to the lack of cooling water in the melting reactor core, another problem arose. An enormous bubble of hydrogen gas built up in the dome of the pressure vessel, the building that houses the reactor core, raising the possibility of a fire or explosion. Not until four days later did Metropolitan Edison relieve the pressure of the hydrogen bubble by deliberately releasing it into the air, in a sort of “burping” action. The meltdown was finally over. Because the containment around the reactor building was not breached, environmental radiation releases were believed to be lower than others like Santa Susana and Chernobyl.

The story made national and international news. There were several images that stuck in the mind of the American people. There were government and industry spokespersons nervously trying to explain what had happened. There was a grim-faced President Jimmy Carter, himself a trained nuclear engineer, and his wife Rosalynn touring the site in hard hats. There were the inevitable references to and footage of the movie The China Syndrome that had opened in theaters less than three weeks before. And there were the thousands of local residents taking to their cars and evacuating the area on jam-packed highways, as soon as the word “meltdown” hit the airwaves, ignoring the pleas of leaders to remain calm.

Regulators had grave concern for the safety of workers and local residents. But there was much confusion over whether an evacuation should be ordered. In a meeting on March 30, more than forty-eight hours after the meltdown began, NRC Chairman Joseph M. Hendrie stated:

It seems to me that I have got to call the Governor… to do it (order an evacuation) immediately. We are operating almost totally in the blind, his information is ambiguous, mine is nonexistent, and – I don’t know, it’s like a couple of blind men staggering around making decisions.

Later that day, Governor Richard Thornburgh advised that all pregnant women and pre-school children (but not their parents) evacuate the area within five miles of the stricken plant. In all, about 40% of residents within twenty miles evacuated, totaling 200,000 or more people, half of whom did not return until at least a week after the accident. Thornburgh frequently clashed with new state Health Commissioner Dr. Gordon McLeod during the crisis and in the months after. McLeod, who spoke out repeatedly about potential health risks and the lack of preparation to address the meltdown, was fired just seven months later.

Almost immediately, President Carter ordered an investigation of the accident. The Kemeny Commission, named after its chair Dr. John Kemeny of Dartmouth College, returned a report six months later. It strongly criticized Babcock and Wilcox, who manufactured the reactor; Metropolitan Edison, who operated it; and the NRC, who regulated it. In cited eleven other instances in which similar valve problems had occurred in the past at American nuclear reactors. It recommended many changes, including improving plant design and equipment requirements, monitoring employee performance, and regulating plant operations by the NRC.

The Kemeny Commission’s recommendations were strong in some ways, but could have reasonably gone further. It mentioned that thirteen to seventeen curies of radioactive iodine had escaped into the environment, along with 2.4 to 13 million curies of noble gases, mostly krypton and xenon – enormous amounts. But it casually termed these releases as “controlled and planned.” Subsequently, some contested these numbers, claiming they were underestimates. In another section, the report addressed health concerns, calling the potential effects as “not known.” But even before any health studies could be conducted, the Kemeny Commission arrived at a conclusion that was to permanently affect any efforts to understand the true damage from Three Mile Island.

The major health effect of the accident appears to have been on the mental health of the people living in the region of Three Mile Island and of the workers at TMI. There was immediate, short-lived mental distress produced by the accident among certain groups of the general population living within twenty miles of TMI. The highest levels of distress were found among adults a) living within five miles of TMI, or b) with preschool children; and among teenagers a) living within five miles of TMI, b) with preschool siblings, or c) whose families left the area.

This statement had no basis in scientific fact, broke the rules of scientific research that objectivity must be maintained prior to examination, and set the stage for future research articles. Over eleven years later, thirty-one articles in journals addressed stress and psychological problems due to Three Mile Island, while no articles – zero – examined actual rates of diseases such as cancer in the local area. Some local residents, distressed at the lack of research while anecdotal evidence of people, animals, and plants suffering built up, took matters into their own hands, conducting door-to-door surveys of local residents. Jane Lee, who was instrumental in conducting these surveys, observed: “You don’t have to be a great genius to see what’s going on here. Wherever the worst of the radiation blew, that’s where the health effects are. The people here are the human dosimeters.”

The Three Mile Island meltdown strengthened public sentiments, which were already moving against atomic power. In May, a rally in Washington against nuclear reactors drew 65,000 people (featuring California Governor Jerry Brown as a speaker), while in September, a rally in New York City drew 200,000 people (including speakers Jane Fonda and Ralph Nader). Also in September, Musicians United for Safe Energy founded by rock stars Jackson Browne, John Hall, Graham Nash, and Bonnie Raitt held five “No Nukes” concerts in New York’s Madison Square Garden, featuring many other popular acts. An album and film of the concerts were released the following year. The media brought the protests and concerts to the attention of millions, firming up opposition against nuclear power.

Legal actions were also a legacy of Three Mile Island. In 1981, a citizen group suing the utility agreed to a settlement of $25 million to create the Three Mile Island Public Health Fund. In 1983, Metropolitan Edison pleaded guilty to one count of falsifying pre-accident safety test results, and no contest to six other charges, and was fined $1 million to set up an emergency planning system. Anti-nuclear activist Harvey Wasserman estimates that $15 million has been paid to local parents with children born after the meltdown with one or more birth defects. Finally, a class-action suit brought by over 2,000 local residents with cancer and other health problems was dismissed in federal district court, and the appeal upheld the decision.

Then there were the studies of health consequences of the meltdown. These attempts escalated into a war between researchers. One group was seemingly on a mission to dismiss any potential threats, or blame them on stress and psychological factors rather than radiation. The other side included those professionals who took a more open-minded viewpoint. This research battle has been discussed in Chapter 6 of this book.

Life at Three Mile Island took a long time to return to any semblance of normality. Unit 1 at the site, which was closed for refueling during the March 1979 meltdown, stayed closed because of public protests, legal actions, and regulatory sluggishness. Finally, it restarted in October 1985, and is still operating. The thirty-seven-year-old reactor recently received permission from the NRC to operate past its original forty-year license, to a maximum of sixty years (ending 2034).

The cleanup of Three Mile Island 2 was a long and delicate process. The damaged core, along with large amounts of radioactive water, waste, and fuel was moved to the Idaho National Laboratory, operated by the US Energy Department (with, naturally, taxpayer dollars). Not until 1993, over fourteen years after the meltdown, was the decommissioning declared complete.

There are those who believe that the Three Mile Island meltdown ruined the US nuclear power effort. This is not quite true; before March 28, 1979, concerns had grown about this technology, protests had begun, politicians had voiced opposition, Wall Street financial backers had cut down on loans for new plants, and utilities had cancelled dozens of planned reactors. A more accurate way to term Three Mile Island’s impact is that it put the lid on an already-built coffin of any hopes that the field would expand, a legacy that lives on today. It is no coincidence that the last order to the NRC to build a new reactor in the US took place in October 1978, just five months before Three Mile Island.

The name Three Mile Island became synonymous with nuclear power threats and related fears. But it didn’t take too long – just seven years – until a new name that embodied nuclear power’s ability to cause massive harm entered the mindset of Americans, and people around the world: Chernobyl.

The Soviet Union had embarked on an ambitious plan of nuclear power beginning in the 1960s. The nation’s advanced atomic weapons program had endowed it with a core of well trained nuclear scientists. These highly skilled workers, along with the country’s need for electrical power, spurred the Communist government’s decision to move forward and build nuclear power reactors.

One of the nuclear plants that gave the leadership high hopes was Chernobyl, a complex situated in the Ukraine near the border of Belarus, about eighty miles from the large city of Kiev. Four reactors were built at the site. In 1986, operators of the newest Chernobyl reactor #4, just three years old at the time, were conducting an experiment. The reactor’s backup generators took over a minute to start up if power was lost, a time considered unacceptably long if cooling water to the core was lost. Several earlier tests had been conducted to correct this situation, but all failed.

On Friday, April 25, 1986, the latest experiment to reduce the lag time in generator startup was conducted, while Chernobyl Unit 4 was otherwise shut down for maintenance. The reactor was readied for the test, but the level of power fell well below the minimum needed for the test. Almost all the reactor’s control rods had been removed, which was a move that would severely limit the ability to cope with any problems. By now it was after midnight; night workers had replaced those on the day shift who had begun the experiment.

At 1:23 a.m. local time on April 26, an emergency shutdown was followed by an extremely rapid increase in the power level, and then by two massive explosions. The blast blew the concrete lid completely off the reactor; radioactive debris spewed from the damaged reactor; and fires began throughout the plant.

The fires blazed for hours, and were visible for miles around. G. N. Petrov, an eyewitness driving his car near the town of Pripyat which adjoined Chernobyl, recalled the sight:

I approached Pripyat around 2:30 a.m. from the northwest … I could already see the fire above No. 4 unit. The ventilation stack, with its horizontal red stripes, was clearly lit up by the flames. I remember how the flames were higher than the shaft, so that they must have been nearly 600 feet in the air… by the light of the fire, I could see that the building was half destroyed.

Brave firefighters took more than five hours to bring the blazes under control – all except the fire in Reactor 4, a huge and devastating event which would not be extinguished for another two weeks. These heroic workers were exposed to high levels of radiation, and would all perish from acute radiation poisoning not long after. Subsequently, the large amount of radioactive debris scattered around the plant was shoveled into the reactor by liquidators. During the next few days, the reactor was covered with sand, lead, and boric acid dropped from helicopters – again by liquidators who would meet untimely deaths from exposure. Finally, other workers buried the reactor under a concrete sarcophagus by late 1986, where it remains today.

The impossible task of clearing the local area wasn’t confined to the Chernobyl plant, but to a broader area heavily hit by radiation. Entire villages and towns were visited by the liquidators, who now numbered in the thousands. Liquidator Arkady Filin recalls the confusion, fear, and anger of local residents they visited:

We buried trash heaps and gardens. The women in the villages watched us and crossed themselves. We had gloves, respirators, and surgical robes. The sun beat down on us. We showed up in their yards like demons. They didn’t understand why we had to bury their gardens, rip up their garlic and cabbage when it looked like ordinary garlic and ordinary cabbage.

A staggering amount of radioactivity was released during the meltdown. There have been varying estimates of the total, all between fifty million and 100 billion curies. Never before in history had this amount of radiation entered into the environment at one time; even the largest aboveground nuclear weapons tests fell far short of Chernobyl.

To compound matters, the radiation plume was thrust thousands of feet into the air, and proceeded to encircle the globe, mostly in the Northern Hemisphere. Precipitation brought the radiation back to earth, where it entered the food chain. The hardest hit areas, naturally, were the Ukraine, Belarus, and European Russia. But land in distant nations like Finland, Sweden, and Yugoslavia were hard hit; they received from 10% to 40% of the contamination measured in the former Soviet Union.

Even the United States, whose closest point to Chernobyl is over 6,000 miles away, was subjected to radioactivity from the catastrophe. Radioactive chemicals from Chernobyl detected in various parts of the nation by the Environmental Protection Agency included barium, cerium, cesium, iodine, lanthanum, ruthenium, and zirconium. They first appeared in the air above the US just nine days after the disaster. From mid-May to late June 1986, the weekly EPA levels of iodine-131 in pasteurized milk at sixty sites around the country were about 5.6 times greater than normal, before returning to typical levels (I-131 has a half life of eight days).

The Pacific Northwest was hardest hit, because of heavy rainfall in May. The table below shows that Boise, Idaho and Spokane, Washington had levels twenty-eight and twenty-two times above normal. Some individual readings were extremely high. The highest EPA measurement occurred in Spokane on May 16 (136 picocuries I-131 per liter of milk, compared to the usual 2.5), while the Washington Department of Health and Social Services reported a staggering 560 in the town of Redland on May 5.

Source: Office of Radiation Programs, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Environmental Radiation Data, Volumes 42 and 46, 1985–1986.

Longer-lasting radioactivity did not disappear as quickly. cesium-137 levels in US milk were nearly four times above normal during May and June 1986, just after Chernobyl. But levels did not return to normal until 1989, nearly three years later (Cs-137 has a half life of thirty years).

Measuring radioactivity was a difficult task, but there was relative agreement among scientists as to where the plume went and how much entered the environment and diet. But calculating casualties was another story. Literally from the moment the Chernobyl reactor exploded, the fight over the number of casualties was on. Some clung to the extremely low number of thirty or thirty-one deaths. Even today, this risibly low number is used, as on the March 2011 web site of the World Nuclear Association, which declared:

Two Chernobyl plant workers died on the night of the accident, and a further thirty-eight people died within a few weeks as a result of acute radiation poisoning.

Even highly prestigious organizations maintained that only a small number of people had been harmed, all of them in the former Soviet Union. In 2005, just prior to the twentieth anniversary of the disaster, a conference was held in Vienna. Among the presenters were officials from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), World Health Organization (WHO), and United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR). The conclusion of panelists was that Chernobyl caused just 9,000 cancers, along with cataracts in workers and local children.

But the minimalists were opposed, as three billion people around the world had been exposed to radioactive fallout from Chernobyl (and with residual fallout in the biosphere, are still being exposed through the food chain). The Soviet Union and its successor nations were slow about conducting and releasing studies, and even suppressed studies. But many anecdotes of horrible suffering, especially among children, made their way across the world, making it clear that the carnage was massive. Nikolai Kalugin, a local resident whose daughter died, recounts time spent in hospitals overflowing with people suffering from radiation-related disease:

My daughter was six years old. I’m putting her to bed and she whispers in my ear. “Daddy, I want to live. I’m still little.” … Can you picture seven little girls shaved bald in one room? There were seven of them in the hospital room… My wife came home from the hospital. She couldn’t take it. “It’d be better for her to die than to suffer like this. Or for me to die, so that I don’t have to watch anymore…” I want to bear witness: my daughter died from Chernobyl. And they want us to forget it.

In late 2009, a 327-page book by three Russian scientists was published by the New York Academy of Sciences. The book was replete with facts, tables, graphs, and maps – based on over 5,000 articles and reports (both printed and on the internet), many never acknowledged before since they were written in the Slavic languages. The evidence in this report was disturbing. The proportion of children in Belarus, the Ukraine, and European Russia considered healthy had shrunk from 80% to 20% since 1985. The biggest number of all was the estimated worldwide number of deaths from the catastrophe: “The overall mortality for the period from April 1986 to the end of 2004 from the Chernobyl catastrophe was estimated at 985,000 additional deaths. The estimate of the number of additional deaths is similar to those of 1994 and 2006. A projection for a much longer period – for many future generations – is very difficult.”

The book referred to earlier estimates by Dr. John Gofman, discoverer of several radioactive uranium and plutonium isotopes and part of the Manhattan Project, and Dr. Rosalie Bertell, the Catholic nun and mathematician who made the health risk of radiation exposure her life work.

The impact of Chernobyl is still being felt. Three Mile Island was a setback for the already-slipping American nuclear program, but Chernobyl dealt it an even more devastating blow. Images of a reactor with damaged metal sticking out in all directions, along with pallid faces of dying workers and children in hospitals with no hair on their heads were more powerful than Three Mile Island. The rationalization that Chernobyl was a Soviet-made, not American-made reactor, was trumped by the fact that human error had caused Chernobyl, and humans were still operating reactors all across the world, including the US. A quarter of a century later, Chernobyl maintains an indelible mark on nuclear power.

The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 destroyed the twin towers at the World Trade Center in New York City, and damaged the Pentagon, with nearly 3,000 people losing their lives. The attacks, orchestrated by the group Al Qaeda, ushered in a new period in which terrorism was an actual threat, that attacks could successfully occur on American soil, and that numerous American institutions could be targets.

Nuclear reactors were one of these. In his 2002 State of the Union address just four months after the attacks, President George W. Bush noted that plans of Al Qaeda to attack US nuclear plants had been discovered. Suddenly, officials at nuclear power plants had to explain themselves. Nuclear plants were secure, they said; but paradoxically, increased security measures would be implemented right away. Another refrain, that a fast-moving jet airplane that crashed into a nuclear reactor could not penetrate the containment building, was an assertion that many challenged.

One of the two airplanes that destroyed the World Trade Center had taken off in Boston. After being hijacked by terrorists, it flew directly south towards New York City – and directly over the Indian Point nuclear plant, just twenty-three miles from the New York City border and thirty-five miles north of midtown Manhattan. This fact was not lost on local residents and officials, many of whom called for the plant to be shut down. The governments of the four counties that flank Indian Point (Orange, Putnam, Rockland, and Westchester) all voted to not endorse the plant’s emergency evacuation plan in 2002, but were overridden by the NRC.

Entergy Nuclear of Jackson Mississippi, the large corporation which owns ten US nuclear plants, had just purchased Indian Point less than a year before the 9/11 attacks. It suddenly found itself on the defensive, and for years after aired and printed advertisements citing Indian Point as “safe” energy. As the forty-year license expiration dates (2013 and 2015) for the plant’s two reactors approach, many New York officials opposing any license extension, including Governor Andrew Cuomo, cite risk of a terrorist attack as one of their reasons.

After Three Mile Island, there were no further core meltdowns at US nuclear plants, aided in part by the stricter regulations and practices suggested by the Kemeny Commission. This cheered many nuclear proponents, who believed that meltdowns were a thing of the past.

But the absence of a meltdown didn’t mean the threat had disappeared. Over the years, many accidents occurred that brought reactors close to a meltdown. The advocacy group Greenpeace USA published a report that listed 200 “near miss” meltdown situations at American nuclear plants in the two decades after Chernobyl. Among those was the 2002 situation at the Davis-Besse plant near Toledo, Ohio, found not during an official inspection but quite by accident. Boric acid had eaten through an eight-inch steel beam at the top of the reactor, so that it was just one-eighth of an inch at its thinnest point – just that much short of allowing radiation to leak into the air. The Davis-Besse plant closed for over one year for repairs.

In early 2011, many Americans probably thought of meltdowns at US nuclear reactors as a historical artifact. The twenty-fifth anniversary of Chernobyl, the last major meltdown, was approaching. The lengthy effort to reinvigorate nuclear power in the US also helped push meltdowns from the American consciousness.

But on March 11 of that year, news from halfway around the world jolted the thoughts of many who were otherwise complacent. In northern Japan, a powerful earthquake measuring 9.0 on the Richter scale, the worst in Japanese history, struck with terrifying force. The earthquake was followed by a tsunami which swept through the area with waves up to thirty feet high. The devastation was the worst ever for a natural disaster in Japan. It took the lives of nearly 30,000 people, destroying cities, roads, buildings, and means of communications.

Not far from the center of the earthquake and tsunami lay two nuclear plants at Fukushima Daichi, seven miles apart, which operate a total of ten reactors. Japan has one of the highest concentrations of nuclear reactors in the world, with fifty-four reactors in a country the size of California. The disaster cut off the electricity at the plant, and disabled the backup generators. Without electricity, or the capacity to replace it, no water could be created to cool the highly radioactive reactor cores and waste pools. And with roads and other means of transportation devastated, help was not immediately available.

What happened next was a nightmare. There were meltdowns in three of the reactor cores, and two of the spent fuel pools. Television viewers watched with horror as several explosions in the next few days tore apart the containment buildings, and huge amounts of radioactivity were released. Within several weeks, even the reluctant Japanese government classified the situation as a “Level 7” – which recommended evacuation of all persons living within three kilometers from the plant, a radius that soon rose to ten, then twenty, and then thirty kilometers. Many Japanese living more than thirty kilometers away are still eating food and drinking water that are far more contaminated with radiation than usual. Experts still didn’t know when he meltdowns may be fully controlled, a year after the disaster.

Fukushima gave another dimension to the worst case scenario of a nuclear meltdown. For the first time, multiple reactors were involved (all others involved a single reactor). In addition, another cause of a meltdown was added – an act of nature. Before 2011, only mechanical and human errors caused meltdowns, and acts of sabotage represented another possible cause. But now, an earthquake and tsunami could cause the unthinkable – forces of nature that could happen as easily in the US (with its extensive coastline) as in Japan.

The disaster had an immediate impact on the attitudes of Americans. Polls showed a drastic decline in the percent who favored building new nuclear reactors. A poll taken of 814 Americans in the first week after Fukushima showed a strong anti-nuclear sentiment and a nearly equally strong preference to use clean renewable energy sources instead.

Source: “ORC International: After Fukushima American Attitudes About Nuclear Power Policy Questions” A Survey Conducted for the Civil Society Institute, March 22, 2011. http://www.csi.org.

Then there was the issue of whether Japanese fallout would make it to the US, and whether health there would be threatened. It took precisely six days after the earthquake/tsunami for airborne radiation from Fukushima to hit the west coast. In the days following, the EPA produced data showing that environmental radiation levels had jumped. In the period March 18–25, based on sixty-six air samples and twelve precipitation samples, the average concentration of iodine-131 was about twenty times above normal – and up to 100 times above normal in Idaho (see table below). Elevated radiation levels had reached all parts of the US. These data are preliminary, but important. They are comparable to levels after large-scale aboveground atomic bomb tests in China in the late 1970s and close to half of the peak levels after Chernobyl in 1986 (EPA). Levels found by the EPA fell in April, and the EPA announced on May 3 that it would revert to its typical program of taking samples every three months, as opposed to at least weekly, a move that disappointed many as the Fukushima meltdowns were still in progress.

All figures are in picocuries of iodine-131 per cubic meter of air. The high level in 2011 was recorded in Boise Idaho (0.840), or 84 times above normal.

The health impacts on Americans of Japanese fallout would take time to calculate, perhaps several years. If there are any adverse effects, it is likely that the fetus and infant, or elderly, would suffer most immediately. Preliminary data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed that in the first fourteen weeks after the radioactive plume entered the US, the average number of weekly reported infant deaths in 119 US cities (30% of the population) rose 1.80% higher than the fourteen weeks of a year earlier. The 2010–2011 change for the prior fourteen week periods was a decrease of 8.37%. There was also a gap for deaths for all ages. Again, this is preliminary, but suggests the patterns found after Chernobyl may be repeated.

Other meltdowns at European nuclear plants have occurred as well, although they are not as well-recognized as Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima. In 1967, the small reactor Unit 2 at Chapelcross in Scotland experienced blockage in one portion of its reactor core, but was not shut down until 2004. In 1989, the brand-new Griefswald 5 reactor in the former East Germany suffered a meltdown that damaged ten fuel elements, and was closed permanently.

In France, a nation whose leadership prides itself in being the most nuclear country in the world (80% of its electricity is from nuclear plants), meltdowns at two reactors at the Saint-Laurent plant occurred. The brand-new Reactor A-1 experienced its melting uranium in 1969, and Reactor A-2 followed in 1980; both plants shut down permanently in 1992.

Over half a century ago, the first meltdowns broke through the “it couldn’t happen here” belief. The Japanese fiasco actually broke through the same belief, which was being repaired, once again. With 104 aging nuclear reactors still operating in the US and 439 worldwide, the possibility of another meltdown is probably not a matter of if, but when. There are about sixteen million Americans who live within thirty kilometers (18.6 miles) from a nuclear plant – the radius of mandatory evacuation after Fukushima.

Note: Three samples from May 1–3, 1986 were negative numbers, and assumed to be 0. All figures are in picocuries of iodine-131 per liter of precipitation. The high level in 2011 was recorded in Boise Idaho (242), or 121 times above normal.

Sources: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. http://epa.gov/japan2011/docs/rert/radnet-air-final.pdf and http://epa.gov/japan2011/docs/rert/radnet-precipitation-final.pdf. Also U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Environmental Radiation Data, Report 8 (April 1977) and Volume 46 (April–June 1986).

Meltdowns have had an impact on nuclear policy, turning many leaders and citizens against the technology, and the Japanese disaster of 2011 will make that impact even stronger in the future. The Japanese meltdowns, along with the nagging issue of who will pay for the very expensive new reactors, will ensure that virtually no new orders for US reactors will occur.

Defibrillating a Corpse

The 1990s started out as a bleak time for the US nuclear industry. All orders for new reactors had ceased, and by the middle of the decade, all new reactor construction was finished. The remaining reactors were still experiencing mechanical problems, and were closed a substantial proportion of the time for repairs. A growing number of utilities were opting to throw in the towel, and close reactors. Prior to 1987, only nine US reactors had closed, and all of these were very the small original reactors (except for the Three Mile Island reactor that melted down).

But in just over a decade, from the late 1980s to the late 1990s, another fourteen reactors shut down permanently, bringing the number left in operation to 104. Many of these closed reactors were large units; they were originally expected to operate for forty years, but performed poorly from a safety and financial point of view. The list of closed reactors, both before and after 1987, is given in the table below.

It is noteworthy that federal regulators never closed a single reactor, even the stricken Three Mile Island reactor. All shutdowns were decisions by utilities to abandon their once-prized reactors (with one exception: the Rancho Seco reactor near Sacramento California was owned by a municipal authority, and closed in 1989 after a public vote). Most of the utilities that elected to close reactors were relatively small, and turned to other sources of energy.

With no new reactors on the horizon, and the existing reactors aging, the only option for the industry was to try and get as much use and revenue out of the current fleet as possible – a good idea from a business standpoint, but a disturbing one from a health and safety standpoint.

With construction of new reactors a dead issue, one other way to get a little more out of the nuclear power industry was to get more power out of existing reactors. This could be done by modest expansions of reactors, simply by asking for permission from the all-too-willing NRC.

From late 1977 to late 1992, fifteen such proposals were submitted, and the NRC approved all fifteen. These uprates allowed operators to generate more electricity, but they were all small ones – an average of about a 4% expansion. This adds up only to about half of one large new reactor, which had little effect on total output at US nuclear plants.

But after these initial applications, utilities caught on to the idea that uprates could provide more power – and more revenue. In the nineteen years from spring 1993 to spring 2012, 129 proposed uprates were submitted to the NRC – and all 129 were granted. While most were small, several were substantial expansions of reactors. Of the 129 uprates, sixteen of these raised reactor capacity by 13 to 20%. The total additional power that could be produced was 5,849 megawatts electrical, which amounted to nearly six new reactors – a relatively easy way to “build” new plants without having to turn a single shovel of earth.

Sources: US Nuclear Regulatory Commission

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. http://epa.gov/japan2011/docs/rert/radnet-air-final.pdf and http://epa.gov/japan2011/docs/rert/radnet-precipitation-final.pdf. Also U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Environmental Radiation Data, Volume 46 (April –June 1986).

The reactor uprate craze continues. By the spring of 2012, twenty more pending applications had been submitted, all of which will almost certainly be approved by the rubber-stamp NRC. Half are large expansions of 12–17%, and would amount to the equivalent of another one-and-a-half new reactors. Uprates haven’t amounted to a total nuclear revolution, but helped give the revival an early start.

As mentioned, US reactors have a historically poor record of mechanical safety. In 1972–74, the “capacity factor” (portion of time in operation) of US reactors was a paltry 48%. By 1985–87, the number wasn’t much better (57.4%). Reactors were closed often to repair mechanical problems, and repairs took more time than utilities wanted. Being closed nearly half of the time – when no electricity could be produced, and no revenue could be generated – was bad business, as well as a reflection of an inability to operate efficiently.

After the 1980s, the capacity factor of US reactors rose. Utilities became more experienced with anticipating and correcting reactor problems. In addition, large utilities began to buy reactors from smaller ones. The “vertical integration” approach to operating reactors employed by these large companies meant that specialists in one particular aspect of reactors would be assigned that role for all reactors owned by the corporation. This “floater” technique has reduced time needed to correct any problems. In addition, operators developed methods of fixing problems while not having to shut down reactors.

The capacity factor rose sharply, until by 2002, the national mark reached 90.3%. Since then, the factor has hovered around 90% for each subsequent year. A jump in capacity factor from 57% to 90% for a fleet of about 100 reactors amounts to an increase of 55% of electricity generated and sold, which lined the pockets of utilities considerably.

However, many analysts of nuclear power were not pleased with the soaring capacity factor. They likened it to running an old car much more of the time, a move that makes it more likely for the car to break down. The national average was 90%, but for one-quarter of the reactors, the 2007–2009 figure topped 95%. For the La Salle 1 reactor in Illinois, the annual numbers were 99%, 100%, and 99%, while figures for the Davis Besse reactor (which had come close to a meltdown in 2002) were 99%, 97%, and 99%.

Raising the capacity factor helped boost the bottom line of utilities. But energy demands were rising rapidly, and pushing old reactors as hard as possible would barely make a dent in meeting these needs. Moreover, this move was only temporary, since many reactors were approaching the end of their forty-year license. The nuclear industry, however, had other plans.

In 1990, two US nuclear reactors had been operating for twenty-eight and thirty years, and another eight had been operating for at least twenty. The oldest of these was Yankee Rowe, a small reactor in western Massachusetts. The process of applying for a license extension for another twenty years past the original forty-year limit would be a lengthy one, especially for the early prototypes. Thus, the process to extend Yankee Rowe’s license would need to begin well in advance of the forty-year deadline.

Surprisingly, the process was not the typical NRC rubber-stamp. Instead, NRC staff found that the pressure vessel at Yankee Rowe was badly corroded from years of operation, and concluded that continued operation would raise the chance that a meltdown could not be contained in the reactor building. NRC senior metallurgist Pryor Randall concluded that continued operations at Yankee Rowe would not be safe (“I cannot agree that restart is safe or justified.”)

Despite Randall’s warning, the NRC approved the application for a twenty-year license renewal for Yankee Rowe. In June 1991, the Union of Concerned Scientists and New England Coalition on Nuclear Pollution then took legal actions against the NRC, with the goal of shutting the plant. The actions succeeded and Yankee Rowe closed permanently in October 1991.

The NRC now had a problem. If Yankee Rowe couldn’t cut the mustard, would any other reactor be able to meet regulatory requirements for license extension? This was an extremely important issue. With a stagnant industry, nuclear backers wanted to run reactors for over forty years, as perhaps a final chance to squeeze out more revenue before reactors began closing. Of course, it was a gamble, since nobody knew the safety risks involved in operating a reactor over thirty years old.

In December 1991, just two months after Yankee Rowe closed, the NRC published regulations governing reactor license extensions. But the industry lobbied to strongly water down the requirements, so that all the operators would have to do is present a program of age-related degradation management. They were successful, and in August 1994, the regulations were changed.

To get a twenty-year license extension beyond the forty-year, utilities were not required by the NRC to show their “report card” proving that they caused no health harm or safety threats during their first forty years of operation. The National Whistleblower Center argued the rules in federal court, but failed to force any change in the new, weakened regulations period.

The stage was now set for a bonanza of extending reactor licenses. In June 1995, departing NRC Chairman Ivan Selin predicted that existing plants would become “valuable assets” in the coming years after his NRC had simplified the processes to build new reactors and extend the old ones.

The new regulations needed to be tried out, and the test case was the Calvert Cliffs nuclear plant. Calvert Cliffs is a plant on the Chesapeake Bay, just forty miles from Washington, DC and fifty-five miles from Baltimore. Its two reactors began operating in October 1974 and November 1976. Two other reactors in adjoining Charles County were ordered in the early 1970s, but were cancelled a few years later.

The idea of large nuclear reactors so close to such a large metropolis, including the nation’s capital, didn’t sit well with many people. About 3.3 million people live within a fifty-mile radius of the plant, and the only land-based means of escape is through the Baltimore-Washington area. Moreover, those who valued the marine life in the Chesapeake Bay were not happy either. A citizens committee took the AEC to court in the late 1960s, claiming that the initial AEC licensing of Calvert Cliffs ignored the newly-enacted National Environmental Protection Act. The committee actually won, and the Baltimore Gas and Electric Company (as well as all future applicants for reactor licenses) were forced to prepare and submit an Environmental Impact Statement.

Calvert Cliffs had compiled a checkered record during its first twenty years, including:

– It experienced three “near miss” meltdowns. Two (one for each reactor) occurred on July 23, 1987, when off site power was lost. These were considered the fifteenth and sixteenth worst situations at US reactors from 1986 to 2006. The other was on January 12, 1994, when a reactor “trip” at Unit 2 experienced complications. Additional near misses subsequently took place in May 2001 and January 2004.

– A 1996 NRC report estimated that the chance of a dangerous accident at Calvert Cliffs was one in 83 over a sixty-year period, four times greater than other US reactors.

– Both reactors were placed on six consecutive semiannual NRC “watch lists” of the most problematic five nuclear plants in the US, from 1988 to 1991. The NRC stopped publishing this list in the late 1990s.

– Of the fifty-one temporary shutdowns of US nuclear plants that lasted over a year, two were at Calvert Cliffs. Unit 1 was down for seventeen months (May 1989 to October 1990), while Unit 2 was down for twenty-six months (March 1989 to May 1991).

– The cancer death rate in Calvert County was 2.2% below other Maryland counties in 1979–1983, just after the two reactors came online. But by 2002–2005, the county rate was 16% above the rest of the state. Calvert County is growing fast, now approaching 100,000 residents, up from 35,000 in 1980.

A substandard performance like this would worry any company subject to effective regulatory requirements. But Baltimore Gas and Electric wasn’t worried, and rolled up their sleeves to prepare the first license extension application. It was a lengthy document that took several years, but finally was sent to the NRC in April 1998. Over the next two years, the NRC made three site visits to Calvert Cliffs. In addition, four public meetings featuring many comments from local citizens were held, and the NRC allowed the public to comment in writing as well. The Environmental Impact Statement and Safety Evaluation Reports were huge, like thick telephone books. Many comments, both for and against license extension, were received.

In March 2000, the NRC approved the applications. The Calvert Cliffs reactors could now operate until 2034/2036, a full sixty years after initial startup. The NRC had found no safety concerns in its Environmental Impact Statement – a curious conclusion, given the plant’s problematic record to date, and the complete lack of knowledge of how a sixty-year-old reactor would function.

Calvert Cliffs turned out to be not just any other nuclear plant. President George W. Bush toured the site in June 2005 – the first president to visit a nuclear plant since a somber Jimmy Carter rushed to the stricken Three Mile Island site twenty-six years earlier. The plant was later bought by Baltimore-based Constellation Energy; and in 2008 Constellation partnered with Electricité de France to propose a new 1600 megawatt electrical reactor at the site, which would be the largest in the US, costing about $10 billion.

Right after Calvert Cliffs received its approval, twenty-year license extension applications poured in and the NRC rubber stamp went into action. By April 2012, the NRC had made decisions on seventy-one of the 104 reactors – and approved all seventy-one. Another thirteen were under consideration, and more applications were expected in the next several years. Thus, it is likely that all 104 reactors will receive permission to operate for sixty years. By August 2011, nine reactors had passed forty years of operation, with another twenty-eight to join this group by the end of 2014. The fleet of US nuclear reactors is truly a geriatric one.

In a few cases, citizen groups filed legal interventions opposing license extensions. Citizen groups opposing the Oyster Creek, NJ (the oldest of the 104 US reactors) stretched out the process for four years – only to have the NRC approve the twenty-year extension one week before the reactor turned forty. Other groups opposed the extension at Grand Gulf, located in Claiborne County, Mississippi, 85% of whose residents are black. But in most cases, there was little resistance.

While the sixty-year mark will not be reached by a US reactor until 2029, already there are plans for keeping them in operation to a maximum of eighty years. In February 2011, the Electric Power Research Institute – a spinoff of the nuclear power industry – held a “Workshop on Life Beyond 60.”The conference discussed the interest that Constellation Energy has in proposing yet another twenty-year extension to the NRC, to a cumulative total of eighty years, in about the year 2020 for two reactors it owns in upstate New York, Nine Mile Point 1 and R.E. Ginna (EPRI). And the EPRI is investigating extensions up to 100 years as well.

From the 1950s to the 1990s, nuclear reactors were operated by local utility companies – which produced energy in various forms, not just nuclear. The company that had by far the greatest investment in nuclear power was Commonwealth Edison, a Chicago-based firm that owned and operated eleven reactors at five plants in northern Illinois. The next highest was the Philadelphia Electric Company (PECO) with five reactors at two plants. Most utilities confined their nuclear operations to a single plant.

But things changed starting in the late 1990s. Utilities began buying out smaller ones, absorbing their nuclear reactors in the process. The largest buyout occurred in October 2000, when Unicom (which owned Commonwealth Edison) merged with PECO, creating an energy giant that owned seventeen of the 104 reactors in the US, along with minority ownership in the two Salem New Jersey reactors and ownership of the two Zion reactors in Illinois, closed in 1998. The company, with revenues of $18.6 billion in 2010, also is profitable, with a net income of $2.6 billion.

Exelon is still in acquisition mode; it made a deal in 2005 to buy the Public Service Enterprise Group in New Jersey, which was nixed only after considerable protests from New Jersey activists. In April 2011, it purchased Constellation Energy of Baltimore for $7.9 billion; Constellation owns five nuclear reactors in Maryland and New York (all purchased from 1999 to 2004) and had linked up with Electricité de France to build the largest reactor in US history – a plan that was scrapped in 2010.

Another company making a big move in the nuclear world was New Orleans-based Entergy, with its nuclear division in Jackson, Mississippi, whose operations were traditionally confined to Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi. But Entergy looked elsewhere, and from 1998 to 2006 purchased reactors in Massachusetts, Michigan, Nebraska, New York, and Vermont. The company now owns twelve reactors at ten plants, and is also profitable (annual revenue and profit of $13.1 and $1.2 billion). Its biggest purchase was the three reactors at Indian Point, just thirty-five miles north of midtown Manhattan. Unit 1 is closed permanently, Unit 3 was purchased in November 2000, and Unit 2 was purchased on September 6, 2001 – just five days before a jet hijacked by terrorists flew directly over Indian Point on its way to the World Trade Center. Duke Energy has made a name for itself too, controlling seven reactors in the Carolinas.

What happens when nuclear reactors are owned by larger and more powerful corporations? The obvious answer is that the companies have much greater sway in determining nuclear policy. The growing companies formed the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) in 1994, a group that fronted the pro-nuclear agenda. The NEI claims to have 350 members in nineteen countries, representing not just owners of nuclear plants, but companies that manufacture parts for reactors.

The all-out push to lobby for the nuclear agenda was on, by the NEI and its members. From 1999 to 2009, the industry spent $645 million on lobbying and another $63 million in campaign contributions. With that kind of financial strength, it wasn’t difficult to convince powerful officials to support an expansion of nuclear power.

For example, a key player in the 2000 merger between Unicom and PECO was none other than Rahm Emanuel, who represented Unicom. Emanuel, of course, went on to become a member of Congress, the Chief of Staff in the Obama White House, and subsequently mayor of Chicago. Frank Clark, CEO of Commonwealth Edison, was a major Obama advisor and fundraiser. Duke Energy has pledged to raise $32 million for the 2012 Democratic national convention in Charlotte, North Carolina, where Duke is based. The Republican side of the aisle had just as many, probably more, supporters from large energy conglomerations that operated nuclear plants.

Getting a champion in the Congress to lead political efforts was important for the nuclear tycoons. In 1997, they found him – New Mexico Republican Senator Pete Domenici. In that year, a suggestion by a Domenici staffer, who had worked at the Los Alamos lab in New Mexico, suggested that nuclear power would be a good issue for his boss to take a strong leadership role in. At first, Domenici was skeptical. But soon he was convinced, and spent his remaining fourteen years in Washington relentlessly supporting the cause of nuclear power.

With the NRC and Congress taken care of, the final piece in the effort to generate political power for a nuclear revival was the White House. The big opportunity came in November 2000, with the highly controversial victory of George W. Bush over Al Gore in the Presidential election. Bush was strongly supportive of large energy companies. He had been an oil executive, as was his father, the former President. He had strong support in the energy community. And Vice President Dick Cheney had earned enormous sums in the 1990s working for energy giant Halliburton between stints in Washington as Secretary of Defense and Vice President.

In early February 2001, barely after Bush had taken his seat in the Oval Office, the National Energy Policy Development Group was formed, with Cheney as its chair. The group met numerous times before a final report was issued on May 16. The White House would not release materials on the group’s activities, and fought requests to reveal these materials until 2005, when a federal appeals court ruled in favor of secrecy. But there can be little doubt that, along with oil and coal, leaders of nuclear interests were represented, as the report contained recommendations to 1) streamline regulations for nuclear plants, 2) attempt to revive reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel, and 3) move faster towards a permanent repository of high level waste.

The nuclear revival now had all the right players in place. Companies were earning more from reactors than ever before, because construction costs were paid and reactors were operating more of the time. Reactor operators had merged into conglomerates that had strong political allies. And with the passage of decades since the meltdowns at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, the horrors that reactors were capable of were just memories fading into the past.

But still, for the revival to succeed there had to be a well-defined purpose that the public and leaders would support. Nuclear power wasn’t new. In fact, it had failed to live up to the great hype at the start of the atomic age. And these were the same reactors – machines that produced electricity by heating water after splitting uranium atoms – that had been rejected, by financial institutions, elected officials, and the general public. The product needed repackaging.

The answer wasn’t conceived by nuclear leaders so much as it fell into their laps. As the millennium began, the concern about global warming and climate change had gained considerable strength in the US and worldwide. Oil, coal, and natural gas producers were on the defensive. Many elected officials and scientists were speaking out about the hazards that continued greenhouse gas emissions presented. Nuclear leaders saw a great chance to capitalize.

The industry conceived a campaign to promote nuclear power as “clean” or “green,” and even as “emission-free.” Prominently positioned in the NEI web site, under the section entitled Protecting the Environment, the NEI claims that “nuclear plants generate 69.3% of all carbon-free electricity in America and are an essential mitigation tool for reducing greenhouse gases.”

The nuclear industry hired or encouraged others to subscribe to these ideas and to publicize them. Perhaps its most brilliant move was the industry’s formation of the Clean and Safe Energy Coalition (CASE) in 2006. The Coalition was co-chaired by Patrick Moore. A Canadian who held a PhD in ecology, Moore had been one of the founders and early leaders of the environmental group Greenpeace in the 1970s. He spent fifteen years with the group, which was strongly against nuclear reactors and nuclear weapons tests. But by the mid-2000s, Moore had begun to criticize the environmental movement, and perhaps lured partially by lucrative compensation – how much CASE pays Moore remains a mystery – became co-chair of the group. Moore now took the position that nuclear power was necessary for the US, and was not a polluting source of energy. He contended that other environmentalists were now pro-nuclear. Moore drew considerable attention from the media. He converted his earlier logic to his new position by drawing spurious conclusions based on distortions and outright untruths:

What nobody noticed at the time, though, was that Three Mile Island was in fact a success story. The concrete containment structure did just what it was designed to do – prevent radiation from escaping into the environment. And although the reactor itself was crippled there was no injury or death among nuclear workers or nearby residents.

(TMI did in fact leak radiation into the environment – and does to this day – and cancer levels in the area are highly elevated.) Moore’s co-chair at CASE was Christine Todd Whitman, the former governor of New Jersey and EPA Administrator. Whitman had been known as a moderate or even liberal among Republicans. But she infuriated environmentalists in 2001. Just seven days after the 9/11 attacks, the ruins of the World Trade Center were smoldering with a concoction of hazardous materials from the building, including asbestos, lead, mercury, and dioxin. The smell to local residents was strong, a number of rescue workers were reporting respiratory health problems, and a number of health professionals were speaking out about potential health hazards. But Whitman released a written statement that brazenly proclaimed: “Given the scope of the tragedy from last week, I am glad to reassure the people of New York … that their air is safe to breathe and the water is safe to drink.”

When Whitman and Moore were introduced as leaders of CASE, she proclaimed nuclear power to be “environmentally friendly, affordable, clean, dependable, and safe” – a mantra used by proponents. The industry made sure that CASE, the NEI, and other organizations convinced as many groups and individuals as possible, including those regarded as environmentalists. The NEI web site lists a number of these, including the EPA, Academies of Science for the G8+5 Countries, and Business Roundtable, which proclaimed that nuclear power is safe and/or the best means of reducing carbon emissions.

The “green” campaign of nuclear supporters was based on slogans, as it had been during the 1950s. The same problems – routine exposures to local residents, the chance of a catastrophic meltdown, and the insoluble problem of waste storage – were still there, but ignored or minimized. “New nukes” were actually the same old nukes, i.e., machines that used split uranium atoms to heat water, and generate massive amounts of over 100 carcinogenic radioactive chemicals.

One new component of the nuclear revival, that nukes didn’t produce greenhouse gases, was a huge distortion of fact. Nuclear reactors themselves do not produce greenhouse gases, but the initial steps in the nuclear fuel cycle – uranium mining, milling, enrichment, fabrication, and purification, along with the required transportation between these steps – each burn huge amounts of carbon. Transporting waste to a repository uses large amounts of carbon emitters. And after a nuclear plant is shut down, the process of decommissioning a reactor uses more greenhouse gases. Adding many more nuclear reactors would barely make a dent in the global warming problem.

Other slogans featured in the nuclear revival have no basis in fact. One is that nuclear power would allow America to lessen dependence on foreign sources of energy, mainly petroleum from the Middle East and other nations. This sounded good as the price of gasoline approached $4 a gallon and a series of Middle East political struggles that threatened US oil interests emerged. But the reality is that nuclear power can only be used for electricity, and oil is the source of only about 2% of US electricity. More nukes would do nothing to lessen American dependence on foreign oil.

Another distortion worked into the pro-nuclear argument is that nuclear power was a “renewable” source of energy. This logic assumed that nuclear waste could be reprocessed, and uranium reused as fuel. But reprocessing had experienced major safety problems in the US and the several other nations that attempted it, and actually had been rejected by most countries with nuclear plants. Moreover, even if reprocessing was attempted, the enormous amount of waste products except for uranium-235 and plutonium-239 would remain, and have to be permanently stored. Finally, the title of “renewable” nuclear power ignored the fact that the supply of uranium was a finite one, and would eventually run out, as opposed to solar and wind power.

As the pieces of the nuclear repackaging movement were put together, momentum changed. Permanent shutdowns of existing US reactors halted after January 1998. License extensions sped up, as did uprates, and capacity factors soared. The amount of nuclear power produced by reactors jumped 39%, from 577 to 800 million kilowatt hours between 1990 and 2010. But this was only enough to keep the nuclear share of the nation’s electricity consumed at just over 19%. And from 2007 to 2010, the amount began to decline slightly, as production from the existing 104 reactors slipped (US Energy Information Administration). To truly succeed, the nuclear revival had to put its most important component into action – building new reactors.

This was not going to be easy. The last formal order for a new US reactor had occurred in 1978 (the last order that was not cancelled was in 1973). The nuclear hierarchy took their ideas back to the bankers in hopes of getting financial support for constructing new reactors. But lenders have long memories, and even in relatively good economic times, their answer was the same – no money for new reactors. They listened to the arguments from the industry, but saw a potential Trojan horse that would produce yet another financial bath. No lending firm wanted to be first. As John Kennedy of Standard and Poor’s explained, “A first-of-its-kind facility always costs more.”

The nuclear industry needed a Plan B, and that was to get support from government. But before they could do that, they needed a plan, and they needed to promote the plan before entering the halls of Capitol Hill. President Bush served as the head cheerleader. In addition to numerous remarks and written statements about building a new generation of nuclear reactors, he made the first visits by a sitting President to a US nuclear power plant since Jimmy Carter rushed to Three Mile Island in 1979. Bush went to the Calvert Cliffs, Maryland plant in 2005 and to the Limerick plant in southeast Pennsylvania the following year. At Limerick, Bush toured the plant in a white hard hat, and explained the party line behind new reactors:

Nuclear power helps us protect the environment. And nuclear power is safe. For the sake of economic security and national security, the United States must aggressively move forward with construction of nuclear power plants. Other nations are.

The NEI called for forty-five new reactors to be in operation by the year 2030. This number was cited by high-ranking politicians such as Senator John McCain, the 2008 Republican nominee for President. Others went beyond the NEI; Senator Lamar Alexander declared that 100 new reactors were needed by 2030, which would more than double the current capacity. In a strange poker-like action, the stakes were raised even more in 2010, when a bill sponsored by Alexander and Congressman Devin Nunes (R-CA) introduced a bill that would allow 200 more nuclear reactors by 2040.

The utilities announced plans to build new reactors at specific sites. By 2008, there were thirty-four new reactors proposed at twenty-three sites, the large majority in southeastern states, where the population was increasing fastest. Some were new sites, but most were reactors to be added next to existing units. Local reactions to proposals for new reactors were generally positive. Many public officials liked them because they brought in tax revenue. Many local residents liked them because they offered new jobs.

The industry had been working Congress strongly since 2001, especially since the White House and both houses of Congress were controlled by Republicans (although the industry counted many friends in the Democratic Party as well). Finally, in 2005, Congress enacted a law that included $18.5 billion in federal loan guarantees backing new construction. In case of default from a reactor not being completed, the lender would get its money back – from taxpayers. Congress also extended the Price-Anderson Act was for twenty more years, ensuring that nuclear utilities could purchase insurance against meltdowns by limiting their liability.

The change in Presidents from Bush to Obama didn’t stop the nuclear industry from pushing for more federal largesse. And while Obama had expressed some concerns about nuclear power during the 2008 campaign, and cut funding from the Yucca Mountain waste repository in Nevada after assuming office, his Energy Secretary Steven Chu became a strong supporter of new reactors. In 2010, Obama’s proposed budget included $36 billion more in subsidies for construction of new reactors (which was rejected by Congress). The nuclear revival had all pieces in place in an all-out effort to build new reactors, but the effort would soon sputter.

With virtually all of the existing nuclear plants headed for approvals from the NRC to operate for sixty years, at a high capacity factor of about 90%, it was now time for the new reactors to take hold. But after a decade of hype, lobbying, and government action, new nukes are as big a question mark as they ever were.

President Obama made one move when he authorized $8.3 billion in loan guarantees, nearly half of the total pot of $18.5 billion – to build two new reactors at the Vogtle plant on the Savannah River in Georgia. Obama’s proposal to add $36 billion more in loan guarantees was never passed; and with the federal deficit expected to continue at all-time highs for the foreseeable future, many doubt whether any more funds will be forthcoming from Congress.

As of April 2012, the NRC lists twenty applications for new nuclear plants (thirty-four reactors) that the Commission has accepted. All of these are just letters of intent from utility companies, and the real work has yet to be done. Of the twenty plants, all but four were applications from 2007 and 2008.

But this upbeat NRC list does not show that numerous proposed new reactors reactors have either been delayed or suspended.. In addition, five more new reactors that once were in the NRC sights are now cancelled or being revised. As of 2012, the only new reactors that appear to be making any substantial progress are the two new units at the Vogtle plant in Georgia – not a very good record, over a decade after the idea of building many new US reactors was first introduced.

The biggest factor in the revival’s slump was the cost of building new reactors. As the renaissance began, industry leaders optimistically declared that it would take only $2 to $3 billion to build a new reactor. But as time went on, and discussions with private and public lenders became more serious, this number soared. In October 2008, the Energy Department released a statement declaring that to build the twenty-one reactors (at fourteen plants) for which it had received applications would cost $188 billion – a staggering $9 billion per reactor.

Stephen Thomas, an energy studies professor in London, declared that a new reactor at the Callaway plant in Missouri would exceed $10 billion. A spokesperson for Ameren, the company hoping to build the Callaway reactor, clung to a figure of $6.7 billion, far below the official Energy Department estimate. But even some industry leaders succumbed to the reality that new reactors would be very costly. Thomas Piquemal, chief financial officer for Electricité de France seeking to build a new reactor at the Calvert Cliffs, Maryland plant (with Unistar in Baltimore), estimated $10 billion would be needed to add the reactor.

While banks stopped lending money for new reactors in the 1970s, the financial crash of 2008 made a difficult task far worse. Bad loans for real estate, and the collapse of the real estate market would have destroyed the banking system without the $700 billion bailout from Congress. Although they survived, banks became extremely tight in lending additional funds to any institution or individual – especially unreliable customers like nuclear utilities.

The sleight-of-hand around the cost issue was no longer effective: and now the idea of paying $10 billion to construct a new reactor, which would not produce any revenue for at least a decade, was not palatable to Wall Street. Congress did throw in $18.5 billion of loan guarantees for new reactors. But it wasn’t about to commit to hundreds of billions, which is what would be needed if the forty-five new nukes proposed by the NEI or 100 new units envisioned by Senator Alexander were to be built. The historical record of cost overruns was well known – the first seventy-five US reactors cost over three times as much to build as originally projected. And the record on default wasn’t very good either, with over half of nuclear reactors ordered never having operated. Obama’s plea for $36 billion more in federal loan guarantees in 2010 fell on deaf ears on Capitol Hill, and was not included in any appropriations bill.

The cost issue was never going to be overcome, and even the nuclear utilities knew this. One example of this is the proposal to build a new reactor at Calvert Cliffs, which would create the largest US reactor by far. The project, jointly managed by Unistar (a spinoff of the Baltimore-based Constellation Energy) and Electricité de France, was in line for $7.6 billion in Federal loan guarantees. But the federal Office of Management and Budget asked Unistar/EDF to pay just $880 million up front as earnest money, to encourage the project to go forward. The utilities balked, arguing that they shouldn’t be mandated to pay a dime, and plans for the new reactor were shelved late in 2010.

While high costs alone would have been enough to stagger the momentum of the nuclear revival, there were other factors. Addressing the problem of what to do with the huge amount of waste was also glossed over in the pro-nuclear hype; the permanent repository at Yucca Mountain and reprocessing spent fuel would comprise the solution. But these were old ideas riddled with massive safety problems. And when it came time to take action, policy makers would not take the plunge. In 2010, Obama killed any additional funding to construct Yucca, and Energy Secretary Chu organized a Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future to study this and other matters – essentially restarting a process that had begun over half a century earlier. Reprocessing high level waste could never get past the ghastly experience at West Valley, New York in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Progress to build a reprocessing center at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina was very slow, and in April 2011, a panel of scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology issued a paper concluding that reprocessing was not needed.

The economic stumbling block for new reactors is partly a result of health concerns. What makes nuclear reactors so expensive to build? There are many physical parts involved that must be made of strong and durable materials – so that these complex reactors can withstand the intense heat to avoid a meltdown, and limit routine emissions. Reactors employ many people, a large proportion of whom must be well trained and educated – again, so that reactors can operate as safely as possible. Reactors have strict security programs to prevent any acts of sabotage that would imperil the health of workers and local residents. Finally, reactors must abide by a long list of safety procedures and are subject to a bevy of regulations during the construction and operation phases – once again, to reduce any errors that might release radiation, in low or high amounts. Thus, high costs of reactors are due substantially to the health and safety concerns posed by these dangerous machines.

The “not in my backyard” mentality was another factor in the failure of the nuclear revival to generate momentum. Despite years of relentless publicity, only about half of Americans welcomed the idea of a new nuclear plant near their home. (The previously mentioned support of new reactors from residents near existing plants amounted to only a small portion of the population.) The figure was an increase over the previous generation, but still not the strong majority that would translate into extensive political and financial support. Actually, the reticence of many to be located near a nuclear reactor was a holdover from the days when reactors were proposed for large cities. Proposals such as the one to build the Ravenswood reactor just across the East River from the United Nations in New York City frightened many – including the highly pro-nuclear regulators at the AEC. Now all reactors are at least thirty miles, often more, from America’s large urban areas.

Another reason for the failure of the nuclear revival was that in the minds of many Americans, it was impossible to separate nuclear weapons from nuclear reactors. The original Eisenhower-era effort to promote atomic power for “peaceful” purposes was well-intentioned, but could never completely eliminate the fact that reactors used the same uranium fuel as weapons; uranium atoms split in the same way as in bombs created very high heat; created over 100 radioactive cancer-causing chemicals (waste products), as do weapons; and routinely released a portion of these chemicals into the environment and the food chain, as do weapons. The idea that a reactor was essentially an atomic bomb that created electricity remained in the minds of many Americans, long after Hiroshima and Nagasaki and long after atomic bomb testing had ended.

Finally, the length of time needed for the nuclear revival to blossom, especially that needed to build new reactors, may have hurt its chances. As the nuclear industry made a huge push in the decade after 2000 just to hold on to its 19% share of the US market, other forms of electricity boomed. Wind power capacity in the nation jumped nearly sixteen times, from 2,539 to 40,180 megawatts from 2000 to 2010. Wind power now accounts for 2.3% of electricity in the US, according to the American Wind Energy Association. The Energy Department published a report in 2008 predicting that by 2030, wind could feasibly produce 20% of US electricity. The 20% figure is, coincidentally, just higher than the nuclear portion today.

Solar power also grew rapidly in the early years of the twenty-first century. The number of new photovoltaic solar installations in the US leaped from 79 to 878 between 2005 and 2010, and construction of several solar farms in sun-baked Southern California far larger than any prior solar plant were in progress. By 2007, solar capacity in the US was 8,775 megawatts, well below wind power but still rising rapidly, and over four times greater in 2009 compared to 2000. Other renewable forms of energy, such as geothermal and tidal power, show similar promise, although these haven’t made as great an advance as wind and solar.

Constructing new solar and wind plants has proven to be much faster and much less expensive than new nuclear facilities. Moreover, there are no environmental risks to wind and solar power, and it draws from renewable sources, while world uranium supplies will eventually run out. Natural gas plants are also faster to build than nuclear plants; and while there are environmental risks, they give off just over half the greenhouse gases that coal plants do, making them somewhat helpful, at least in the short tern, in reducing the effects of climate change. Supplies of natural gas are also ample, at least for now. In the past decade, generation of electricity from natural gas soared 80%, compared to 9.5% for all sources, raising its share of the US electrical market from 15.5% to 25.4%, as the table below shows.

Source: Energy Information Administration. US Net Electric Generation by Energy Source, 1999–2009. From Monthly Energy Review, April 2010. www.eia.doe.gov.

Perhaps the architects of the nuclear renaissance hadn’t realized that with demand for energy growing steadily, speed was essential for the revival to be successful – or the effort would lose out to other energy sources.

The nuclear revival was already stumbling in the spring of 2011. The prospects were becoming increasingly likely that the “renaissance” would be a matter of keeping old reactors going as long as possible, and that few or no new reactors would ever be built. But in March 2011, the news that at least four reactors at the Fukushima plant in Japan were experiencing meltdowns arrived in the living rooms of Americans. The images were powerful, and almost didn’t need spoken or written words. Workers dressed like space men measuring radiation levels, explosions at reactors, and tangled metal parts strewn across damaged reactors were highly disturbing images that brought many back to thoughts of Hiroshima, Three Mile Island, and Chernobyl.

The images were not only focused on what would happen to the Japanese, but to Americans, as the radioactive plume drifted from Japan to the US in just days, and began showing up in the food supply. The week after the meltdowns began, the ABC program World News Tonight began with anchor Diane Sawyer sitting in front of a picture of a glass of milk, with a caption “Is America’s milk safe to drink?” below it.

The American people responded. An ABC News/Washington Post poll just after the Fukushima disaster found that only 35% would support construction of a new nuclear plant within fifty miles of their home – down from over 50% just fourteen months earlier. Analysts poured out stories examining whether the nuclear revival was dead, with numerous quotes from experts. One of these was Jeff Kueter of the George C. Marshall Institute think tank:

I think it will be very difficult to build a new nuclear power plant in the United States in the wake of what happened in Japan. It was already highly unlikely that we would see a new nuclear plant being built in the United States, for simple economic purposes as well as “not in my backyard” psychological issues that still accompany nuclear power.

Various nations made decisions to put the brakes on its nuclear plans Japan was the obvious one; by May 2012, all of the fifty-four reactors in that country were closed, pending inspections. Some of these reactors, at Fukushima and other locations, will never restart. Some believe that if there are no or few blackouts in the summer of 2012 (when electrical demand is highest), the majority will remain closed, as the mood of the Japanese people remains ardently anti-nuclear. If a nation that has been so dependent on nuclear power for its electricity like Japan is able to continue with much less from this source, some consider this potential scenario as the beginning of a large decline in the nuclear field. Elsewhere, German Chancellor Angela Merkel announced plans to phase out all seventeen of the country’s nuclear reactors within eleven years. The Swiss government suspended all considerations of building new reactors indefinitely. And the Indian government, which had high hopes for building new reactors, began a safety review of all reactors in that nation. In America, Congressmen like Democrats Edward Markey of Massachusetts and Henry Waxman of California pushed for public hearings on the safety of US reactors.

Weeks after the disaster, as the Japanese failed to halt the meltdowns and radiation continued to pour out of the stricken Fukushima reactors, the Obama administration announced a safety review of US reactors in terms of earthquake risk, and suggested a rethinking of the nuclear renaissance in general. Energy Secretary Chu stuck to his theme that nuclear power remained a necessary part of America’s future energy mix, but Fukushima made it difficult for many to accept.

The nuclear revival was a powerful force in the early 2000s, and many thought it would revolutionize the energy mix in the country. But in mid-2012, any chances of a revival were questionable at best, and defeated at worst.

Red-Hot Legacy

The American experience with nuclear power has always featured enthusiastic promises about how it will aid society. There is nothing special about this, as the introduction and sustaining of any commercial product, whether it is a new flavor of ice cream or a new type of automobile, is accompanied by marketing from its manufacturers and vendors. Marketing being a given, the success of the product is ultimately determined by market forces, i.e., whether the demand for the product is sufficient enough to continue supplying it.

But nuclear power featured one significant difference from most commercial products. It was, and still is, a commodity based on an exceptional effort by government to ensure its success. During the Cold War, an American-Soviet war involving atomic weapons was a distinct, terrifying possibility. The buildup of nuclear arsenals on both sides continued, and any end to the confrontation, or even détente and reduction of these arsenals, was decades away. Government leaders concluded that everything possible was needed to reduce the threat, even if it meant nothing more than soothing popular fears of these terrible realities.

The Atoms for Peace program was an immediate way to counter the fright caused by all-out nuclear war. Its purpose was making people understand the atom as not just a weapon of mass destruction, but a means of making life better. For example, there were nuclear medical devices and methods that could improve doctors’ ability to diagnose and treat disease. While there was no more lofty use of the atom than saving lives, its ability to produce electricity to power homes and businesses was another logical means of improving society.

Unfortunately, those who market and sell a product ignore or minimize any risks. For years, tobacco manufacturers extolled virtues of cigarettes, such as flavor, ability to aid relaxation, even ability to improve physical performance – without a mention of the health hazards it posed. Exaggeration and even out-and-out lies were part of marketing, such as athletes stating that they lit up a cigarette right before a game to make them stronger and concentrate better. Those who marketed nuclear reactors would also exaggerate and lie, perhaps more than makers of other products, since national security was at stake.

Industry was certainly interested in nuclear reactors, but as with any product, only for potential profits. And nuclear-related companies didn’t have to jump into the reactor game, as there were other means of generating electricity. Government, on the other hand, had a much stronger interest. In the eyes of public leaders, nuclear power had to succeed, or the atom would be seen strictly as a means of destroying the planet. Cold War tensions, which were bad enough, would worsen. The government would spare no expense, and would say and do anything to assure the proliferation of nuclear power.

This “too critical to fail” ethic applied to nuclear power can be traced to the military origins of the atom. During World War II, the possibility of Nazi Germany developing an atomic bomb forced President Roosevelt to assign the Manhattan Project the highest priority. Its budget was unlimited, speed was of the essence, and all other considerations – including health hazards in building and testing a bomb – would have to wait. Moreover, the project was to be kept completely secret from everyone, except for those few leaders working on it. Even the initial bomb test at Alamogordo, New Mexico in July 1945, the flash of which could be seen for hundreds of miles, was explained as an explosion at a munitions plant. During the post-war period, the US effort to test and develop more nuclear weapons than the USSR was also marked by the same dynamics – a massive budget, a breakneck pace, a high degree of secrecy, and lies and distortions (such as the late 1950s myth that the Soviets had exceeded the Americans in numbers of weapons).

The aspects of secrecy, lying, and distortion in the nuclear field shifted easily from military to civilian applications. Over half a century later, this culture still is evident in the debate over nuclear power’s role in generating electricity for America.

Early in the atomic era, one of the mantras nuclear proponents used again and again was that reactors would produce electricity at a very low cost. AEC Chair Lewis Strauss’s use in 1954 of the phrase “too cheap to meter” has been cited again and again to epitomize the exaggerated expectations in terms of costs. The truth was that nobody was really sure how much atomic energy would cost – predictions were based on many untried assumptions. And there certainly was a bias on the part of government and industry to minimize cost estimates, to help sell the new product to the American people.

The early misconceptions that were used to estimate costs of reactors conveniently featured an exclusion of the massive input of federal funds. Early research reactors were all federally funded. Workers and equipment used in early reactors typically gained their experience with the (federal) atomic weapon program. Shippingport, the first permanent nuclear power reactor in the nation when it opened in 1957, was completely funded with federal dollars. Tax breaks were given to nuclear plant operators from the very beginning. Perhaps the greatest subsidy was the liability limitation in case of a meltdown granted by Congress in the 1957 Price-Anderson Act. All private insurance companies had refused to sell utilities a policy in case of a meltdown because of the massive potential costs, so Congress imposed a strict limit on what operators would have to pay – and made taxpayers liable for the remainder. With the law in place, insurance companies wrote policies freely. No nuclear reactors would ever have been constructed in the US without Price-Anderson.

Once reactors were built, electric bills certainly didn’t go down as promised – they soared. A host of reasons accounted for the high cost of constructing and operating nuclear power reactors. Some of these factors could not have been expected in the mid-twentieth century, such as delays caused by strong opposition, greater security requirements, the large number of cancelled or closed reactors, and inflation. Others were ignored based on wishful thinking, such as frequent expensive shutdowns, costs of meltdowns, and the failure of reprocessing to address the waste issue. But many facts known in the 1950s should have been taken into account by those thinking into the future, including the finite supply of uranium, the costs of decommissioning a closed reactor, and the difficulty of agreeing on and safely operating a single waste repository site.

The cost issue soured many on nuclear reactors. Lenders on Wall Street stopped supporting the industry in the late 1970s, and did not part with a dime for new reactor construction thereafter. Many public officials saw the bottom line spiral, and retreated from being strong supporters of the technology – even when the industry begged Congress for loans in the past decade. Many in the media informed the public of the true costs of nuclear power. Finally, many in the public became aware that nuclear power was not good for the pocketbook – sometimes just by reading their ever-rising electric bills.

Another form of costs of nuclear power is that of increased health costs to humans harmed by radiation exposure. Costs of a single case can be staggering. For example, treating a child with cancer can often cost $1 million in the first year alone. Premature and underweight babies who require care in neonatal Intensive Care Units for weeks and months often run up bills of $500,000 or higher. While it is often difficult to account for a single case of cancer or a single baby born at low weight, the contribution of nuclear reactors to these cases carries a substantial price tag.

The final chapter in the long history of unexpected and high cost overruns of nuclear power reactors has occurred during the effort to generate a nuclear revival after the late 1990s. Laying the groundwork for the revival proved costly to utilities. They had to pay for lobbying, other promotional expenses, and to replace the parts of aging reactors that they kept in operation. Eventually, the ever-higher costs of constructing new reactors proved to be the major reason that the revival has sputtered and appears to be failing in the year 2011.

Another major building block in the early hopes of nuclear power reactors was that they would prove to be “clean” ways to create energy. The existing major sources of coal and oil not only polluted the environment and posed health risks, but also were burdened by the impact on public opinion caused by the image of smokestacks releasing chemicals into the air. Health professionals expressed concerns about inhaling these emissions. But virtually no health professionals in the 1950s opined that nuclear power was a hazard to the public. Reactors were new, appeared physically to be “clean,” and were the benefactor of a massive PR campaign from government and industry. Compared to coal and oil, with virtually no studies in the medical literature, nuclear power – not atomic bombs – seemed a much better alternative.

A number of health and environmental hazards emerged, and will continue to present a threat to humans, animals, and plants for many thousands of years. Meltdowns were, and still are, the greatest health threat posed by reactors. Chapter 8 lists and describes the not infrequent meltdowns in the early atomic era. The initial meltdown at the experimental reactor at Chalk River in Canada in 1952 was followed by a series of US meltdowns, at the Experimental Breeder Reactor in Idaho (1955), the Santa Susana Field Laboratory in California (1959), the Westinghouse Testing Reactor in Pennsylvania (1960), the Stationary Low-Power Unit in Idaho (1961), and the Fermi 1 power reactor in Michigan (1966). These five reactors were relatively small units operating at low power, but several were near large population centers like Pittsburgh, Los Angeles, and Detroit. Thus, when a large reactor melted down at the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania in 1979, there should have been no surprise. The full damage to human health from these meltdowns is still not known.

The impact of meltdowns was known before nuclear power reactors were built, but ignored or minimized. The WASH-740 report from the Brookhaven National Laboratory in 1957 estimated that thousands would become ill or die from radiation exposure after a meltdown. The CRAC-2 report by the Sandia National Laboratory in 1982 also made estimates, and reported them to Congress. And contrary to the oft-repeated slogan that US nuclear power “never killed anyone,” there have been casualties from meltdowns. The three workers killed instantly in Idaho in 1961 are the most blatant examples. The only study to date measuring the impact of the Santa Susana meltdown, which was kept secret for several decades, estimated 1,600 cancer cases (Chapter 5). Several studies of populations living near Three Mile Island have indicated health casualties as well.

The final health legacy from meltdowns to the US nuclear power story came from overseas. A number of meltdowns occurred in the past half century, but had little impact here. But the catastrophes at Chernobyl (1986) and Fukushima (2011) could not be overlooked. Health studies of casualties, anecdotal stories, photos, and videos of suffering people (especially children), visual images of fires, explosions, workers dressed like astronauts measuring radiation, and statements of assurance by government and industry leaders were a reminder of the devastating damage reactors are capable of.

In addition to meltdowns, several other types of health hazards from reactors emerged:

1. Fuel Cycle. Early information on nuclear plants focused almost exclusively on the actual operation of reactors. It failed to examine the processes needed before a reactor could operate. Processes in which uranium fuel is mined, milled, enriched, and fabricated, are all dirty and hazardous to workers and local residents. Transportation of uranium from one site to another is necessary between each step, creating more hazards. And the end of the nuclear plant’s life – decommissioning – is also a delicate and hazardous process that presents a potential health hazard. All of these processes represent health risks not just from radiation, but from the enormous amounts of greenhouse gases emitted into the air.

2. Routine Radioactive Releases. Architects of nuclear power reactors knew that they, much like those that built nuclear weapons, had to release a portion of the radioactivity it produced into the local air and water. But this fact was ignored in the promotion of nuclear plants, as government officials simply set “permissible” limits of releases and environmental levels, and termed any exposure to these low doses as harmless – without conducting the needed studies. Other forms of relatively low-dose radiation exposures – abdominal X-rays to pregnant women, exposure to Nevada atom bomb test fallout, and occupational exposure to nuclear weapons plant workers – were linked with higher disease rates in scientific studies. But officials adamantly refused to admit that similar exposures from nuclear plants were also causing harm.

It wasn’t long before scientists began to notice the emissions, and question the assumption that they posed no health threat. One of the early skeptics, Dr. John Gofman, estimated that reactors could still legally operate within emission limits permitted by government while causing 32,000 cancer deaths per year. Another, Dr. Ernest Sternglass, made use of official public health data to illustrate unexpectedly high disease and death rates near nuclear reactors, especially among the young. These pioneers were subjected to great criticism and ostracism, but the topic never went away. Today, thanks largely to the work of the Radiation and Public Health Project research group, there are dozens of scientific publications indicating that routine emissions from US nuclear plants have caused additional fatal and non-fatal diseases.

3. Occupational Exposures. Another health threat posed by nuclear reactors is that of occupational exposures to plant workers. Workers are routinely exposed to radiation, and wear badges that are checked each day by operators for doses. For years, officials denied that occupational exposures could cause disease because levels were too low; but a 2000 report from the Energy Department concluded that nuclear weapons workers were vulnerable to many types of cancer, and victims entitled to compensation. It appears logical that similar findings would be made for civilian nuclear workers who are exposed to the same chemicals.

But even as government officials admitted that nuclear weapons workers had been harmed, they did not flinch on their stance that nuclear power plant workers were in no danger. The standard line that doses below “permissible” limits were harmless was used again. Independent scientists have been interested for years in studying risks borne by civilian nuclear plant workers. Unfortunately, no independent studies could be conducted for nuclear power plant workers, as they were employees of private companies, who kept doses and health records under lock and key. Moreover, the government does not conduct or require health studies of power plant workers, much as it doesn’t require studies of disease rates of nearby populations. Any such studies must be conducted by professionals independent of industry or government.

4. High Level Radioactive Waste. Another health hazard, possibly one that exceeds meltdowns, is the accumulation of high level radioactive waste. Some fission products decay quickly, and do not need to be stored at reactors. But many others have long half lives that require long-term storage. For example, plutonium-239 has a half life of 24,400 years, meaning it is present in the environment for about 240,000 years – essentially forever.

These particles and gases, contained in fuel rods, must be shifted from the reactor core to storage when the rods are spent, about every eighteen months. The initial storage is in deep pools of water that must be constantly cooled to prevent a meltdown. These pools are meant to be temporary, prior to waste being sent to a permanent repository, which had been expected to be Yucca Mountain since the 1980s. But as time passed and the Yucca site ran into roadblocks, each plant was stuck with keeping the waste at the plant. Pools at many plants reached their maximum capacity to hold rods; some rods were bunched in greater concentrations, but a number of plants have now had to store some of the oldest waste in dry casks of steel and concrete on the ground outside the plant.

Because some isotopes will last for thousands of years, nuclear reactors have saddled the US and the world with 66,000 metric tons (as of mid-2011) of this highly toxic waste. This amount is about eleven billion curies of mostly slow-decaying waste, far exceeding the initial estimates of 150 million curies of mostly fast-decaying waste released from Chernobyl. Experts debate the alternatives, but in truth there is no safe way to maintain the waste. Keeping it at each plant – in pools or in dry casks – means that these dangerous chemicals will be scattered at nearly 100 sites, some close to highly populated areas, and an accident or act of sabotage at only one site would mean catastrophic health hazards to many. Even a permanent repository means that a massive amount of these deadly chemicals would be stored at a single site and any geological failure in the next several thousand years would mean another catastrophe. A permanent repository also creates a target for terrorist activity. Transporting waste to Nevada means thousands of trips by truck or train, often through large population centers, and a single flub means disaster. Finally, even if all waste is brought to Yucca Mountain or another single site safely over the next twenty years, it would then be full, and continued operation of the 104 reactors means accumulation of waste that would fill another Yucca storage site.

The impasse posed by high level waste goes on. There are no real answers. And yet, the nuclear industry continues to produce these highly toxic chemicals, with government permission.

The information about nuclear reactors in the early years of the atomic era originated largely from industry and government. Both parties had vested interests in the success of the US nuclear power program; industry was in it to make profits, and government was in it to soften the public dread of nuclear war. These interests certainly influenced the kinds of information – and how this information was presented – to the public, to investors, to manufacturers, and to other parties.

Initially, the platitudes helped many people fall in love with nuclear power. Eisenhower’s “Atoms for Peace” speech in December 1953 at the UN was strongly received by all. The Congress passed the Atomic Energy Act, almost immediately and almost without dissent. Tax subsidies were granted to nuclear utilities, which scrambled to develop atomic power programs. Articles were written about the benefits of the peaceful atom, scientists became interested, and academia joined in the effort to make a better world through nuclear energy.

Problems arose almost immediately, and this is when the culture of secrecy, deception, and lying began. The year 1957 was a key year. The WASH-740 report, issued by Brookhaven National Laboratory, calculated that a meltdown at a nuclear power plant would cause thousands of casualties from radiation poisoning and cancer. At the same time, utilities could not find any insurance company that would write a policy covering losses after a meltdown. The Price-Anderson Act in late 1957 covered the insurance problem, and the Brookhaven report was either ignored or contested. As the year 1957 ended, the Shippingport reactor near Pittsburgh opened, to great cheers from across the nation – typically leaving out the fact that the reactor had been planned and built with government money. Thus, the culture of covering up nuclear power’s blemishes was born.

The cover-up continued by ignoring the meltdowns at the Experimental Breeder Reactor in Idaho and the Santa Susana Field Laboratory in Southern California. These were federally funded projects, but government officials did not release complete information to the public – even to nuclear plant workers and local residents who may have been harmed. Upbeat reports by the AEC that the atomic research program was proceeding well were not challenged by Congress or by independent analysts. The Cold War was at its height, and any who challenged such an important government program would automatically be faced with accusations of being un-American or even a Communist sympathizer. The nuclear program continued to have a free pass and an enormous lack of accountability, even though public funds were used to build it.

Challenges finally began to emerge in the 1960s, a time when the Cold War had reached its depths and public fears had reached new highs, and when a new culture that endorsed the challenging of authority emerged. People were confronting the government’s Vietnam War policy, and demanding changes. In the South, blacks stood up to the Jim Crow laws that had long deprived them of equal rights. And people demanded an end to the military practice of exploding nuclear weapons with huge amounts of fallout into the atmosphere – and succeeded when President Kennedy and Premier Khrushchev signed the 1963 Partial Test Ban Treaty. Backers of nuclear power had lost their ability to simply proclaim that reactors were a clean and inexpensive way to solve America’s energy problems. Their slogans were now being challenged and under much greater scrutiny.

Even though the American nuclear honeymoon had ended, and was replaced by a contentious battle, those in government and industry who initially promoted the technology did not change their public pronouncements. Progress was replaced by decline in the 1970s, but authorities bravely kept up their efforts to promote nukes. In 1974, as new orders for reactors tumbled and the cancellations of existing orders skyrocketed, the AEC still bravely predicted that by the year 2000, the US would have 1,200 reactors producing much of its electricity.

American nuclear power supporters’ delusions reached a new height in 1979, when the unthinkable happened. A large, new nuclear reactor at the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania experienced a meltdown of more than half its core due to basic human errors. The reactor was permanently damaged, radiation was released, and operators barely avoided a much more devastating result. Still, the nuclear hierarchy stood fast on their belief that Three Mile Island was no big deal. Even today, the phrase “nobody died at Three Mile Island” is heard. In a strong spin, the increased regulations imposed on utilities following the meltdown indicated a “success” – that Three Mile Island operators did a fine job in not allowing a full, catastrophic meltdown. Finally, in the first twelve years after Three Mile Island, numerous scientific articles examining the psychological impact of the meltdown were published, a time when not a single study of local cancer rates appeared in journals. (Subsequent scientific studies found elevated local levels of lung cancer, leukemia, thyroid cancer, and infant mortality.)

The delusion that nuclear power was safe reached even greater heights after the 1986 total core meltdown at Chernobyl. Officials blamed the disaster on inferior Soviet reactor design, although it was human error that caused it. For years, national and international authorities claimed that the death toll from Chernobyl included only thirty-one liquidators who were exposed to very high radiation doses as they controlled the fire. Even while scientific studies showing a far greater casualty list piled up, the number thirty-one was used again and again. The Chernobyl fallout that reached the US food and water supplies was dismissed as harmless.

In addition to minimizing the harm caused by meltdowns, the pro-nuclear faction was proclaiming that routine releases from US reactors were harmless. In the 1980s, some scientific research studies (most from foreign nations) found unexpectedly high levels of cancer near nuclear plants, especially in children, who are far vulnerable than adults to radiation’s harmful effects. Few US academic researchers touched this topic, fearing that incurring the wrath of the federal government would harm them professionally. Some, like John Gofman and Thomas Mancuso, defied the hierarchy by finding a link between radiation and cancer and going public with their findings – and promptly had their federal funds for research pulled. When forced to take action by Senator Edward Kennedy, the federal government produced a national study of cancer near reactors in 1990 – which remains the only such study in the nearly seventy years that US reactors have operated. This study, by the National Cancer Institute, concluded that there was no evidence that radiation emissions from reactors were linked with cancer. This conclusion is still quoted by the pro-nuclear priesthood, even though it is old.

The culture of deceit about the benefits of nuclear power intensified after the late 1990s, as part of the so-called nuclear revival. Reactors were “green” energy, said some, since they did not emit greenhouse gases. But this pronouncement conveniently left out the fact that the fuel cycle of producing uranium and decommissioning closed plants used huge amounts of carbon-emitting gases. The term “emission-free energy” was often used – a deception that ignored the routine emissions of poisons that were arguably as toxic as those from coal or natural gas plants, and the use of huge amounts of greenhouse gases in the processes before and after nuclear plants operated.

Costs of new reactors were a big issue, as they had been for decades, and the industry bravely asserted in the early 2000s that building a new reactor would “only” cost $2 to $3 billion. But by the end of the decade, even the highly pro-nuclear Energy Department estimated the tab to be $9 billion, with other estimates hovering between $10 and $15 billion. The costs of decommissioning, and health costs of potential meltdowns and persons harmed by routine emissions, were conveniently left out of the industry’s calculations. Safe alternative energy sources like wind and solar power were dismissed as being far too costly – even though these technologies had received far less federal largesse than nuclear power, and the cost per kilowatt hour decreased rapidly as more wind and solar units were built. Nuclear supporters tried to limit the choice of electric sources to nuclear and coal – even though there were many more less toxic and, in the long run, less expensive options.

The nuclear revival was confronted with the obvious question – if nukes were so great, why had no new reactors been ordered since 1978? The typical response, that the fear created by meltdowns at Three Mile Island and later by Chernobyl had stopped leaders from supporting nuclear plants, was badly misleading. The truth was that well before March 28, 1979, the day Three Mile Island melted down, Wall Street lenders had stopped providing funds for nuclear projects. Many public protests had been held against nuclear power well before the Three Mile disaster. Also, utilities had largely given up on reactors as a growth industry by 1979, scrapping plans for new reactors and canceling projects already proposed. The truth was that Three Mile Island simply speeded up the inevitable.

The nuclear revival also had to explain why existing reactors designed to operate only forty years should be kept in service up to sixty or eighty years. The response was to not explain fully, a policy embodied by NRC regulators, which only required utilities to show that existing parts could be maintained in the future. Utilities did not have to submit a “report card” on how the reactor operated during its first forty years, keeping this information largely hidden from the public.

As the 2000s went on, and as the nuclear revival struggled to gain traction, it was hit with perhaps its greatest roadblock, the multiple meltdowns at Fukushima, Japan beginning in March 2011. While many wrote that Fukushima had doomed the nuclear revival, backers still refused to yield. People such as President Obama’s energy secretary Steven Chu declared that nuclear power still had to be part of the mix of future American energy. These pronouncements, made in the shadow of images of multiple explosions at Fukushima, along with thousands evacuating the local area, and workers looking like spacemen trying to control the disaster, may have been the greatest delusion in nuclear history.

In summary, despite all of the industry and government support, all the manipulation of information and public opinion, and all of the fierce opposition against nuclear opponents, the US nuclear power program has been a failure, and will fade into obscurity in time.

At the core of the triumph of forces opposed to nuclear power is an illustration of democracy in action. The US is a society founded by principles in which the majority of all the people, not just the privileged few, would be the basis of public policy. An informed population would have the right to make these decisions.

The emergence of nuclear power was used as a soothing medicine to counter fears of a world destroyed by all-out nuclear war. But this antidote was never described truthfully to the American public. Instead, it was based on secrecy, distortion, and outright lies – largely using money from American taxpayers. The American people have a right to breathe clean air, drink clean water, and eat clean food – and at very least must be informed of any impurities. The rise of nuclear power, and its continued existence in the face of many facts countering the standard “cheap” and “clean” slogans, stands as an anomaly in a democratic society.

But while the nuclear power program continues, the forces employing truths to educate the American public have affected public opinion and shaped public policy. The last formal order for a new reactor in the US occurred in 1978, and the last reactor order that wasn’t later cancelled took place in 1973. The AEC prediction of 1,200 operating nuclear reactors in the US never topped 112, and is now stuck at just 104. Twenty-three nuclear reactors have permanently closed in the past. One reactor (Oyster Creek in New Jersey) will close by 2019, and the futures of Vermont Yankee and Indian Point 1 and 2 in New York remain very much in doubt. Others surpassing forty years in existence may not last much longer. And building a single new reactor will either take years to complete or never occur.

In the final analysis, the failing of nuclear power is a triumph for truth over non-truth, and a win for the majority will over a small number with vested interests. This process has taken a long, long time, from the initial concerns raised in the 1950s over safety and health risks, and will certainly take longer, probably decades. But there is an inevitable aspect to this process. There have been enormous costs and casualties to the American nuclear power gambit, in financial, human, and other terms. Sometimes, however, this has to occur before a change is made. Many well-meaning and informed people truly believed that nuclear power would be highly beneficial to American society. Many were willing to overlook some initial snafus, so that nukes would eventually live up to their promise.

But as time passed, many initial supporters changed their opinion – not just Wall Street leaders losing money, government leaders losing votes, or media looking for a good story, but the rank-and-file Americans. They joined those who were initially skeptical about unleashing the atom on society in such huge amounts – for peaceful as well as military purposes. They educated themselves and expressed themselves repeatedly, in private and in public. They struggled against the mighty forces of industry and government unwilling to relinquish such a treasured project. And the tide turned, not quickly or smoothly, but over the long term.

There are many Americans who have participated in rallies against nuclear power, read or viewed media stories about its shortcomings, written letters to newspapers, or simply held private beliefs that the facts show that nuclear power is far too dangerous and costly, and should be phased out of the US energy mix.

Thus, in the spring of 2012, the US experiment with nuclear power should be considered a failure. The recent events in Japan are still being played out, with a final casualty count years away, but they may have permanently destroyed any remaining, flickering hope that this once-bright technology would meet its original expectations. Leaders of other nations, including Germany and Switzerland, have already stated plans to phase out nuclear power, and debates have taken place in other lands. The debate over nuclear power’s benefits and risks has been a long, costly, and sometimes angry one, but this technology will fade away in the United States during the early twenty-first century.

Appendix: Disease and Death Rates Near Santa Susana Field Laboratory

Studying the health consequences of living near a nuclear plant is a complex undertaking, which can take years to complete – with no guarantee that conclusive results will be found. Typically, a good study consists of two components: a dose and a response. The dose portion calculates the level and type of exposure to humans living near the plant, while the response portion typically involves disease and death rates. It is up to the researcher to examine whether or not patterns of dose and response suggest a cause-and-effect relationship.

Epidemiology, the study of disease patterns in populations, uses several types of methods to examine consequences of a pollutant such as radiation exposure. One is a case-control study, which compares persons with and without a disease. In the case of nuclear plants, if the cases (persons with a disease like cancer) have higher levels of radiation exposure than the controls (healthy persons), it suggests that radiation is linked with higher cancer risk. Another is a longitudinal, or cohort study, which tracks over time populations exposed and not exposed (or less exposed) to a toxin such as radiation. If, over time, more cases of a disease like cancer occur in the exposed group, a cause-and-effect relationship is suggested.

Even though case-control and cohort studies are professionally recognized by researchers, they present many obstacles to obtaining conclusive results. One such obstacle is resources, especially in cohort studies. It may take years to conduct such a study; one famous example is the Framingham study begun by federal researchers in 1948. Several thousand Framingham residents were selected, and tracked over time to understand risk factors for heart disease by documenting higher rates of disease in certain groups. This process took decades to conclusively identify risk factors such as lack of exercise, a high-fat diet, and smoking. The Framingham study is still ongoing, more than six decades after it began.

Another problem specific to radiation studies is the “dose” component of the dose-response relationship. Calculating just how much radiation was taken up by humans is often a daunting, nearly impossible task. Measuring radiation levels in bodies is limited by the cumbersome processes of autopsies, biopsies, urine samples, blood samples, etc. Some types of radiation decay very quickly, and are not detectable for very long in the body. Estimates of doses can be made using wind patterns, diet, and other factors, but these are often not precise.

Measuring the dose from radioactive emissions to persons living near the Santa Susana Field Laboratory is difficult. During the 1959 meltdown and at other times dozens of radioactive chemicals were emitted. Some remain at the site, and can be released in various ways (for example, during the 2005 forest fires that surged through the area). Local residents get some of their food from local sources (such as water from wells and municipal reservoirs), and much of the food is imported from distant regions. Some residents haven’t lived in the area very long but are migrants from other areas, while others are lifelong residents. These are just some of the dose-related problems facing the researcher; the list goes well beyond these.

Despite these great difficulties in obtaining precise dose measurements, researchers shouldn’t ignore the issue of Santa Susana health hazards. Actually, the “response” (health hazards) side of this dose-response relationship is full of data. Death records have been maintained by health departments in all US states and counties since the 1930s, and all deaths since 1979 are readily available on the internet. State-based cancer registries were rare just thirty years ago, but all states now operate registries that collect information on each diagnosed case of cancer in state residents. For example, California began collecting cancer incidence data in 1988.

Exposure to radioactive chemicals emitted from nuclear plants harms the body by killing cells and impairing them by breaking bands of DNA, the genetic material crucial to all human functions. This theoretically means that rates of all diseases should be elevated in a population exposed to radiation. In reality, this isn’t true, since many factors account for a person’s risk of disease, not just radiation exposure.

But some persons are more susceptible to radiation than others. The fetus, infant, and child are harmed much more than adults by a particular dose of radiation, because their immune systems are still underdeveloped, and because their cell division rate is much faster (and a damaged cell will have less time to repair itself before dividing into more damaged cells). Some diseases are also much more linked with radiation than others; for example, the only known cause of thyroid cancer (other than being female, history of thyroid disease, or low intake of iodine, which is found only in third world countries) is exposure to radiation, in particular radioactive iodine that seeks out the gland. Radioactive iodine is not found in nature, but only produced in fission, when uranium atoms are split in an atomic bomb explosion or in an operating nuclear reactor.

The following tables examine current rates (and historical trends) for certain conditions near Santa Susana. Unexpectedly elevated rates should not be automatically be viewed as ironclad proof that the Santa Susana laboratory harmed people, but as red flags that harm may have occurred, and as suggestions that more detailed research should continue.

A developing fetus is extremely delicate, and sensitive to external toxins. There are several ways to examine fetal health. One of these is analyzing rates of underweight and premature births. A failure to thrive in the womb often results in underdeveloped babies who must be delivered early.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has posted county-specific rates of premature and underweight live births from 1995 to 2006 (as of early 2011) on the internet. CDC data show that current Ventura County rates of babies born under 2500 grams (5.5 pounds, the standard definition of “underweight”) is relatively similar to the state rate. But a decade before the county rate was 13.6% below the state, and has risen over time. Rates for all major racial groups (white non-Hispanic, white Hispanic, Asian) making up 95% of Ventura County births, now exceed the state.

Source: US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, http://wonder.cdc.gov/births. Accessed on March 3, 2011.

Adjoining the Santa Susana lab directly to its south are three zip code areas (91302, 91307, and 91377). It is a small area (62.3 square miles), with a current population of about 62,000 persons. The major cities include Balabasas (zip code 91302), West Hills (zip code 91307), and Oak Park (zip code 91377). The three-zip code area straddles the Ventura/Los Angeles County line.

The California Department of Human Services has collected birth weight data by zip code (mother’s residence) since 1989. During the past ten-year period 2000–2009, the rate in the three-zip code area was the highest in Ventura and Los Angeles counties, 36.9% above the California rate, based on 516 babies born under 5.5 pounds. The rate has risen from the early part of the decade (31.3% higher) to the latter part (43.4% higher). The three-zip code area is not especially poor (only 12% of births are to Hispanic mothers, compared to 51% statewide). Other local zip code areas have elevated low birth weight rates (not as high as the one described here). The location of the three-zip code area so close to Santa Susana contamination raises a red flag for more detailed research.

The impact of any harm to the fetus can also be observed during infancy, defined as the first year of life. Perhaps the most commonly used measure of infant health, or even of health in a population, is infant mortality, or the rate of deaths before the first birthday of live-born babies.

The current (2003–2007) infant death rate in Ventura County exceeds the state rate by 18%, and the neonatal death rate is 21.1% greater. The greatest excesses exist among white Hispanics (41.4% and 44.3% greater, respectively). Similar to low-weight births, the Ventura infant death rate was 21.4% less than the California rate in the mid-1980s, but has risen steadily over time, to the current mark of 18% greater.

Source: California Department of Public Health, www.cdph.ca.gov/data/statistics/Documents/birthzip2008.pdf. Accessed on March 7, 2011.

Source: US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, http://wonder.cdc.gov/mortSQL.html. Accessed on March 3, 2011.

Another way to look at Ventura County’s infant mortality situation is to compare it with other counties in California. The eighteen most populated counties in the state, each with at least 420,000 residents, account for about 32 million of the 37 million California residents (over 86%). Ventura is one of these counties. In the period 2003–2007, Ventura had the fifth highest infant death rate of the eighteen counties (all races).

Source: US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, http://wonder.cdc.gov/mortSQL.html. Accessed on March 3, 2011.

About half of all births in California are to Hispanic mothers, and virtually all are classified as whites. Assessing infant death rates among white Hispanic mothers in the eighteen counties for 2003–2007 showed that Ventura County had the highest rate in the state. The Ventura rate of 738.43 deaths per 100,000 live births, based on 237 deaths, is 41.4% greater than that of all other California counties – a statistically significant difference. But the gap is far greater when Ventura is compared to some other well-populated California counties, i.e.:

– 134% higher than San Francisco County (738.43 to 315.60)

– 85% higher than Contra Costa County (738.43 to 399.83)

– 60% higher than Alameda County (738.43 to 461.32)

– 59% higher than Sacramento County (738.43 to 465.25)

Ventura County’s Hispanic population has no obvious risk factors that would account for its high infant mortality rate. The finding represents a public health issue that merits the continued monitoring and rigorous follow-up among officials – even though, prior to this publication, there has never been any public revelation of this situation.

Source: US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, http://wonder.cdc.gov/mortSQL.html. Accessed on March 3, 2011.

The health of the child, along with the fetus and infant, is also an important aspect of conducting research of radiation health effects. A 2003 paper from the US Environmental Protection Agency estimated that children age 2–16 are three times more susceptible than adults to a given dose of radiation, while children under two are ten times more susceptible. Moreover, diseases and deaths in children are often an outcome of an insult(s) during the fetal and infant period – an insult that could include radiation exposure. Damage to the DNA during pregnancy may not be diagnosed as a disease such as cancer until later in childhood.

Probably the two most commonly accepted childhood diseases that result from radiation exposure are cancer and birth defects. In the US, there is no national system of tracking birth defects. However, cancer has been tracked for many years (deaths since the 1930s and cases – in California – since 1988).

Child cancers are different than adult cancers. The most common adult cancers – lung, breast, prostate, and colorectal – are virtually nonexistent among children. Pediatric cancers can roughly be divided into thirds – one third of the cases are leukemia, one third brain and nervous system, and the other third a mix of several other types of cancer like lymphoma. Prior research shows that while leukemia is especially sensitive to radiation exposure, radiation raises the risk of all types of cancer in children.

Cancer rates can be measured in terms of mortality (deaths) and incidence (cases). But incidence is more meaningful by far, since medical treatments have improved to the point where a large majority of children survive the disease. Thus, when assessing any potential cancer risk from an environmental cause, incidence is by far a more helpful indicator. In California, the current (2002–2006) rate of child cancer cases (diagnosed in children age nineteen or younger) are available by county; similar to infant mortality, Ventura County has the highest rate of the disease of any of the eighteen most populated counties in California. In the five-year period 2002–2006, about 200 Ventura County children were diagnosed with cancer.

Source: California Cancer Registry. H. Accessed on March 4, 2011. Rates adjusted to 2000 US population.

In addition to cancer incidence, cancer deaths are reported by county and state health departments, and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention develops statistical data from them and makes them available on the internet. For the most recent five-year period (2003–2007), Ventura County had the highest rate of cancer deaths among children age 0–19 of the eighteen most populated California counties. The Ventura rate was 3.643 deaths per 100,000 persons, 19% over the California rate, based on forty-three deaths.

Source: US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, http://wonder.cdc.gov. Accessed March 4, 2011.

Similar to infant deaths, the Ventura County child cancer death rate was 8.8% below the California rate in the mid-1980s. But since then, the rate has climbed steadily, and the latest rate (2003–2007) is 19.4% greater than all other California counties.

While children are most susceptible to harmful effects of pollutants like radiation, adults can be harmed as well. A review of the latest data from the California Cancer Registry shows that each year in Ventura County, nearly 700 persons are diagnosed with the disease, 99% of whom are adults. The county’s age-adjusted 2003–2007 rate of 446.7 cases per 100,000 persons is 2.9% higher than the state of California (434.3).

Source: US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, http://wonder.cdc.gov. Accessed March 4, 2011.

Some types of cancer are more sensitive to radiation exposure than others. The type that is most often cited is thyroid cancer, the risk of which is elevated from exposure to radioactive iodine, produced only in atomic bomb explosions and nuclear reactor operations. Other than being female, having other thyroid conditions, and a diet low in iodine (not a factor in the US), scientists have yet to come up with any other risk factors for the disease (Mayo Clinic, American Cancer Society). According to the National Cancer Institute, the incidence rate of thyroid cancer has tripled across the US since 1980, faster than any other type of cancer, yet experts are struggling to understand why.

California’s cancer registry first produced comprehensive data in 1988. From 1988–2008, of the eighteen most populated California counties, Ventura County had the highest rate of thyroid cancer incidence. In that twenty-one year period, 1,211 cases of the disease were diagnosed. Because of the known large releases of radioactive iodine during the 1959 meltdown and from other nuclear operations, Santa Susana should be considered one possible factor for the high rate in Ventura County.

Source: California Cancer Registry. H. Accessed on March 4, 2011. Rates adjusted to 2000 US population.

Incidence rates of thyroid cancer in Ventura County exceed state rates for all racial and ethnic groups, except for Hispanics (5.7% below the state). The county rate for blacks is 74.9% higher than the state’s, i.e., nearly double, although this is based on just twenty cases.

Source: California Cancer Registry. H. Accessed on March 4, 2011. Rates adjusted to 2000 US population.

Source: US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, http://wonder.cdc.gov. Accessed March 4, 2011. Rates adjusted to 2000 US standard population.

Cancer mortality is also an indicator of health status that may suggest a link with contamination from Santa Susana. In the past twenty-five years, the Ventura County cancer death rate has steadily been about 4% to 7% below that of other California counties (below). This does not suggest any link with Santa Susana radioactive pollution, but also may reflect the ability of advanced medical treatments to keep cancer victims alive, especially in a low-poverty county like Ventura, where people have access to medical care.

There are consistently high rates in Ventura County of health status measures most closely linked with radiation exposure. These are known as descriptive statistics, and do not represent a conclusive proof of cause-and-effect between Santa Susan emissions and cancer risk to local residents. But they do suggest that local health has been adversely impacted.

There are no other obvious reasons why disease and death rates should be elevated; basic socio-demographic indicators in Ventura County are similar to that of California (below). The county has somewhat smaller proportions of black and Asian residents, and has a much lower poverty rate (8.7% vs. 13.3% in 2008), suggesting that rates of many diseases in Ventura County should be lower than the California rate. Thus, it is important that the search for other factors explaining these unusually high disease and death patterns continue. In addition, it would be helpful to acquire and analyze sub-county health data, such as the zip code specific rates of infant deaths, to examine any correlation with proximity or wind direction from Santa Susana.

Source: US Census Bureau, http://www.census.gov. Accessed on March 4, 2011.

Thus far, more than two decades after the effort to understand how Santa Susana had impacted health in Southern California commenced, little research has been done. The 2006 study by a panel of UCLA researchers that concluded between zero and 1800 cancers (average of 260) were caused by the 1959 meltdown is a start. But this is just one study, which has never been published by a peer-reviewed medical journal. In an area where millions of people will develop cancer in their lifetime, this number appears small considering how large-scale the 1959 accident was, and how much contamination was created at the site. The high local rates of low-weight births, infant deaths, and thyroid cancer cases means that more detailed research is merited to find more precise answers to the question of health risk, especially while contamination still exists at Santa Susana, and the threat to human health remains.

A Note from the Author and Acknowledgements

For purposes of readability, and following the precedents set by distinguished scholars such as Mike Wallace (Gotham) and many others, I have elected to leave footnotes out of the body of the text. But all my statements of fact and quotations are readily verifiable, and I welcome any questions about my research in putting together this book, which has been years in the making.

While many have helped me understand the facts about nuclear power in America, special thanks are in order. Kay Drey provided the support and encouragement that made this book possible. Kristen Shrader also encouraged me to pursue this piece, and her advice was invaluable. Buzz Cuthbert reviewed the book and made helpful comments that improved the book’s comprehension. RPHP Board members and many advisors strongly backed the pursuit of the book. Alec Baldwin was kind enough to endorse the book with his prologue. Last but not least, my wife Susan served as a sounding board, and gave good advice on the initial drafts.

J.M.

Figures

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