A Short History 

of Nuclear Regulation, 

1946 - 1999 

by J. Samuel Walker 

Historian 

Office of the Secretary 

Nuclear Regulatory Commission " : .

January 2000
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Preface 

History, automobile maker Henry Ford once said, "is more 

or less.., bunk." Philosopher George Santayana was more 

charitable in his assessment of the discipline when he de

clared that "those who fail to study the past are condemned 

to repeat it." In a sense, both Ford and Santayana were right. 

Much of the past has little meaning or importance for the 

present and deservedly remains forgotten in the dustbins of 

history. But other parts of the past need to be remembered 

and studied in order to make sense out of the present. 

Today's events are a direct outgrowth of yesterday's, and un

derstanding the history of any given problem is essential to 

approaching it knowledgeably. It is the task of the historian 

to gather evidence, to separate what is important from what 

is not, and to explain key events and decisions of the past. 

This short history of nuclear regulation provides a brief 

overview of the most significant events in the agency's past. 

Space limitations prevent discussion of all the important oc

currences, and even the subjects that are included cannot be 

covered in full detail. The first chapter of this account is 

drawn from the first volume of the NRC's history, Control

ling the Atom: The Beginnings of Nuclear Regulation, 

1946-1962 (University of California Press, 1984). The sec

ond chapter is largely based on the second volume of the 

NRC's history, Containing the Atom: Nuclear Regulation in a 

Changing Environment, 1963-1971 (University of Califor

nia Press, 1992). The findings and conclusions on events that 

occurred after 1971 should be regarded as preliminary and 

tentative; they are not based on extensive research in pri

mary sources. It is my hope, however, that this overview will 

help explain how the past has shaped the present and illumi

nate the considerations that have influenced regulatory de

cisions and procedures over the years. It is also my hope that 

this outline will suggest that history should be viewed as 

something more valuable than "bunk."

iii
Table of Contents 

Chapter 1 The Formative Years of Nuclear 

Regulation, 1946-62 ................ 1 

Chapter 2 The Nuclear Power Debate, 

1963-75 ........................... 23 

Chapter 3 The NRC and Three Mile Island ...... 47 

Chapter 4 New Issues, New Approaches ......... 61

V
Chapter 1 

The Formative 

Years of 

Nuclear Regulation, 

1946-62
Chapter 1 

The use of atomic bombs against the Japanese cities of Hiroshima 

and Nagasaki in August 1945 ushered in a new historical epoch, 

breathlessly labeled in countless news reports, magazine articles, 

films, and radio broadcasts as the 'Atomic Age." Within a short 

time after the end of World War II, politicians, journalists, scien

tists, and business leaders were suggesting that peaceful applica

tions of nuclear power could be as dramatic in their benefits as nu

clear weapons were awesome in their destructive power. Nuclear 

physicist Alvin M. Weinberg told the Senate's Special Committee 

on Atomic Energy in December 1945: 'Atomic power can cure as 

well as kill. It can fertilize and enrich a region as well as devastate 

it. It can widen man's horizons as well as force him back into the 

cave." Newsweek reported that "even the most conservative scien

tists and industrialists [are] willing to outline a civilization which 

would make the comic-strip prophecies of Buck Rogers look obso

lete." Observing that ideas for the civilian uses of atomic energy 

ranged "from the practical to the fantastic," it cited a few exam

ples: atomic-powered airplanes, rockets, and automobiles, large 

electrical generating stations, small "home power plants" to pro

vide heat and electricity in individual homes, and tiny atomic gen

erators wired to clothing to keep a person cool in summer and 

warm in winter. 

Developing nuclear energy for civilian purposes, as even the most 

enthusiastic proponents recognized, would take many years. The 

government's first priority was to maintain strict control over 

atomic technology and to exploit it further for military purposes. 

The Atomic Energy Act of 1946, passed as tensions with the Soviet 

Union were developing into the cold war, acknowledged in pass

ing the potential peaceful benefits of atomic power. But it empha

sized the military aspects of nuclear energy and underscored the 

need for secrecy, raw materials, and production of new weapons. 

The 1946 law did not allow for private, commercial application of 

atomic energy; rather, it created a virtual government monopoly 

of the technology. To manage the nation's atomic energy
The Formative Years of Nuclear Regulation, 1946-62 

programs, the act established the five-member Atomic Energy 

Commission (AEC). 

In 1954, Congress passed new legislation that for the first time 

permitted the wide use of atomic energy for peaceful purposes. 

The 1954 Atomic Energy Act redefined the atomic energy pro

gram by ending the government monopoly on technical data and 

making the growth of a private commercial nuclear industry an ur

gent national goal. The measure directed the AEC "to encourage 

widespread participation in the development and utilization of 

atomic energy for peaceful purposes." At the same time, it 

instructed the agency to prepare regulations that would protect 

public health and safety from radiation hazards. Thus, the 1954 

act assigned the AEC three major roles: to continue its weapons 

program, to promote the private use of atomic energy for peaceful 

applications, and to protect public health and safety from the haz

ards of commercial nuclear power. Those functions were in many 

respects inseparable and incompatible, especially when combined 

in a single agency. The competing responsibilities and the prece

dence that the AEC gave to its military and promotional duties 

gradually damaged the agency's credibility on regulatory issues 

and undermined public confidence in its safety program. 

The AEC's regulatory program was most directly affected by the 

agency's commitment to encouraging the rapid growth of civilian 

nuclear power. The initial impetus for peaceful atomic develop

ment came mostly from considerations other than meeting Ameri

ca's energy demands. In the early 1950s, projections of future en

ergy requirements predicted that atomic power would eventually 

play an important role in the nation's energy supplies, but they did 

not suggest an immediate need to construct atomic power reac

tors. The prevailing sense of urgency, at least among government 

leaders, that led to the 1954 Atomic Energy Act and to the growth 

of commercial nuclear power derived instead largely from the fear 

of falling behind other nations in fostering peaceful atomic prog

ress. The strides that Great Britain was making in the field seemed 

disturbing enough, but the possibility that the Soviet Union might 

2
Chapter 1 

surpass the United States in civilian power development was even 

more ominous. AEC commissioner Thomas E. Murray described 

a "nuclear power race" in a 1953 speech and warned that the 

"stakes are high." He added: "Once we become fully conscious of 

the possibility that power hungry countries will gravitate toward 

the USSR if it wins the nuclear power race,... it will be quite clear 

that this power race is no Everest-climbing, kudos-providing con

test." Like Murray, many government officials emphasized that 

surrendering America's lead in expanding the peaceful applica

tions of atomic energy would deal a severe blow to its international 

prestige and world scientific dominance. 

The eagerness to push for rapid civilian nuclear development was 

intensified by an impulse to show that atomic technology could 

serve constructive purposes as well as destructive ones. The asser

tions made shortly after World War II that atomic energy could 

provide spectacular advances that would raise living standards 

throughout the world remained unproven and largely untested. 

As the nuclear arms race took on more terrifying proportions with 

the development of thermonuclear bombs, the desire to demon

strate the benefits of atomic energy became more acute. President 

Dwight D. Eisenhower, spurred by the detonation of the Soviet 

Union's first hydrogen device, starkly depicted the horror of nu

clear warfare in a widely publicized address to the United Nations 

in December 1953. At the same time, he emphasized that "this 

greatest of all destructive forces can be developed into a great 

boon, for the benefit of all mankind." Eisenhower's appeal for 

peaceful nuclear progress and his affirmation of the potential 

blessings of civilian atomic energy were echoed by many other 

high government officials. 

By 1954, a broad political consensus viewed the development of 

nuclear energy for civilian purposes as a vital goal. The Atomic 

Energy Act of that year resulted partly from perceptions of the 

long-range need for new energy sources, but mostly from the 

immediate commitment to maintain America's world leadership 

3
The Formative Years of Nuclear Regulation, 

1946-62 

in nuclear technology, enhance its international prestige, and 

demonstrate the benefits of peaceful atomic energy. It infused the 

atomic power program with a sense of urgency, and in that atmo

sphere, the AEC established its developmental and regulatory 

policies. The 1954 act gave the AEC wide discretion on how to 

proceed. Despite the general agreement on ultimate objectives, 

the means by which they should be accomplished soon created 

sharp differences. 

The AEC favored a partnership between government and indus

try in which private firms would play an integral role in demon

strating and expanding the use of atomic power. "The Commis

sion's program," AEC chairman Lewis L. Strauss explained, "is 

directed toward encouraging development of the uses of atomic 

energy in the framework of the American free enterprise system." 

It was the AEC's conviction, he added, "that competitive eco

nomic nuclear power . . . would be most quickly achieved by 

construction and operation of full-scale plants by industry itself." 

To accomplish its objectives, the AEC announced a "power dem

onstration reactor program" in January 1955. The agency offered 

to perform research and development on power reactors in its na

tional laboratories, to subsidize additional research undertaken 

by industry under fixed-sum contracts, and to waive for seven 

years the established fuel use charges for the loan of fissionable 

materials (which the government would continue to own). For 

their part, private utilities and vendors would supply the capital 

for construction of nuclear plants and pay operating expenses 

other than fuel charges. The purpose of the demonstration pro

gram was to stimulate private participation and investment in ex

ploring the technical and economic feasibility of different reactor 

designs. At that time, no single reactor type had clearly emerged as 

the most promising of the several that had been proposed. 

The AEC's incentives received a mixed response from private in

dustry. For several years, some utility executives had shown a keen 

interest in investigating the use of nuclear fission for generating 

electricity. But commercial applications of atomic energy had 

4
Chapter 1 

been thwarted by the severe limitations on access to technical in

formation dictated by the 1946 Atomic Energy Act. In 1953, when 

the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, created by the 1946 act to 

carry out congressional oversight of the AEC, conducted public 

hearings on peaceful atomic development, spokesmen for private 

firms emphasized that industrial progress was possible only if the 

restrictions on obtaining data were eased. By opening nuclear 

technology to commercial applications, the 1954 Atomic Energy 

Act largely satisfied those complaints. From the perspective of 

utility companies, the act offered an opportunity to participate in 

nuclear development and gain experience in a technology that 

promised to help meet long-term energy demands. Vendors of 

reactor components welcomed the prospects of expanding their 

markets, not only in the United States but also in foreign countries 

where the need for new sources of power was more immediate. 

The enthusiasm of the private utility industry for nuclear power 

development, however, was tempered by other considerations. 

Although experiments with AEC-owned reactors had established 

the technical feasibility of using nuclear fission to produce elec

tricity, many scientific and engineering questions remained to be 

answered. Despite the financial inducements the AEC offered 

through its power demonstration reactor program, the capital and 

operating costs of atomic power were certain to be much higher 

than those of fossil fuel plants, at least in the early stages of devel

opment. Across the industry, the prospects of realizing short-term 

profits from nuclear power were dim. An American Management 

Association symposium in 1957 concluded: "The atomic industry 

has not been-and is not likely to be for a decade-attractive as 

far as quick profits are concerned." When Lewis Strauss made his 

oft-quoted statement in 1954 that nuclear power could provide 

electricity "too cheap to meter," he was referring to long-term 

(and far-fetched) hopes rather than to immediate realities. He 

knew as well as industry analysts that the heavy investments re

quired were a major impediment to the growth of nuclear power. 

5
The Formative Years of Nuclear Regulation, 

1946-62 

In addition to financial considerations, recognition of the hazards 

of the technology intensified industry's reservations about nuclear 

power. Based on experience with government test reactors and 

the prevailing faith in the ability of scientists and engineers to 

solve technological problems, the AEC and industry leaders re

garded the chances of a disastrous atomic accident as remote. But 

they did not dismiss the possibility entirely. Francis K. McCune, 

general manager of the Atomic Products Division of General 

Electric, told the Joint Committee in 1954 that "no matter how 

careful anyone in the atomic energy business may try to be, it is 

possible that accidents may occur." 

Mindful of both the costs and the risks of atomic power, the elec

tric utility industry responded to the 1954 Atomic Energy Act and 

the AEC's demonstration program with restraint. Although many 

utilities were interested in exploring the potential of nuclear 

power, few were willing to press ahead rapidly in the face of exist

ing uncertainties. The AEC was gratified, and rather surprised, 

that by August 1955 five power companies---either as individual 

utilities or as consortiums-had announced plans to build nuclear 

plants. Two decided to proceed without government assistance 

and three others submitted proposals for projects under the 

AEC's power demonstration program. 

The Joint Committee on Atomic Energy was less impressed with 

the response of private industry to the 1954 act and the AEC's in

centives. The Democratic majority on the committee favored a 

larger government role in accelerating nuclear development, 

which conflicted with the AEC's commitment to encouraging 

maximum private participation. The issue became a major source 

of contention between the AEC and the Joint Committee, con

tributing a philosophical dispute to relations that were already 

strained by political differences and a bitter personal feud be

tween Strauss and Joint Committee chairman Clinton P. Ander

son.

6
Chapter 1 

In 1956, two Democratic members of the Joint Committee, Rep

resentative Chet Holifield and Senator Albert Gore, introduced 

legislation directing the AEC to construct six pilot nuclear plants, 

each of a different design, in order to "advance the art of genera

tion of electrical energy from nuclear energy at the maximum pos

sible rate." Supporters of the bill contended that the United States 

was falling behind Great Britain and the Soviet Union in the quest 

for practical and economical nuclear power. Opponents of the 

measure denied that the United States had surrendered its lead in 

atomic technology and insisted that private industry was best able 

to expedite further development. Strauss declared that "we have a 

civilian program that is presently accomplishing far more than we 

had reason to expect in 1954." The Gore-Holifield bill was de

feated by a narrow margin in Congress, but the views it embodied 

and the impatience of the Joint Committee for rapid development 

placed a great deal of pressure on the AEC to show that its reactor 

programs were producing results. 

The AEC's determination to push nuclear development through a 

partnership in which private industry played a vital role had a ma

jor impact on the agency's regulatory policies. The AEC's funda

mental objective in drafting regulations was to ensure that public 

health and safety were protected without imposing overly burden

some requirements that would impede industrial growth. Com

missioner Willard F. Libby articulated an opinion common among 

AEC officials when he remarked in 1955: "Our great hazard is that 

this great benefit to mankind will be killed aboming by unneces

sary regulation." Other proponents of nuclear development 

shared those views. They realized that safety was indispensable to 

progress; an accident could destroy the fledgling industry or at 

least set it back many years. At the same time, they worried that 

regulations that were too restrictive or inflexible would discour

age private participation and investment in nuclear technology. 

The inherent difficulty the AEC faced in distinguishing between 

essential and excessive regulations was compounded by technical 

uncertainties and limited operating experience with power 

7
The Formative Years of Nuclear Regulation, 

1946-62 

reactors. The safety record of the AEC's own experimental reac

tors engendered confidence that safety problems could be re

solved and the possibility of accidents kept to "an acceptable cal

culated risk." But experience to that time offered little definitive 

guidance on some important technical and safety questions, such 

as the effect of radiation on the properties of reactor materials, 

the durability of steel and other metals under stress in a reactor, 

the ways in which water reacted with uranium, thorium, alumi

num, and other elements in a reactor, and the measures needed to 

minimize radiation exposure in the event of a large accident. 

The AEC's regulatory staff, created soon after the passage of the 

1954 Atomic Energy Act, confronted the task of writing regula

tions and devising licensing procedures rigorous enough to assure 

safety but flexible enough to allow for new findings and rapid 

changes in atomic technology. Within a short time the staff 

drafted rules and definitions on radiation protection standards, 

distribution and safeguarding of fissionable materials, and reactor 

operators' qualifications. It also established procedures for licens

ing privately-owned reactors. The 1954 act outlined a two-step 

procedure for granting licenses. If the AEC found the safety anal

ysis submitted by a utility for a proposed reactor to be acceptable, 

it would issue a construction permit. After construction was com

pleted and the AEC determined that the plant fully met safety re

quirements, the applicant would receive a license to load fuel and 

begin operation. 

Because of the uncertainties in technical knowledge and the 

AEC's goal of encouraging different reactor designs, the agency 

had to judge license applications on a case-by-case basis. The early 

state of the technology precluded the possibility of formulating 

universal standards for all aspects of reactor engineering. The reg

ulatory staff reviewed the information that applicants supplied on 

the suitability of the proposed site, construction specifications, a 

detailed plan of operation, and safety features. The proposal re

ceived further scrutiny from a panel of outside experts, the Advi

sory Committee on Reactor Safeguards (ACRS). The ACRS, 

8
Chapter 1 

composed of part-time consultants who were recognized authori

ties on various aspects of reactor technology, conducted its own 

independent review of the application. The recommendations of 

the staff and the ACRS went to the commissioners, who made the 

final decision on whether or not to approve a construction permit 

or operating license. (Later, the Commission delegated consider

ation of regulatory staff and ACRS judgments to panels drawn 

from the 'Atomic Safety and Licensing Board" while retaining fi

nal jurisdiction in licensing cases if it chose to review a board 

ruling). 

The AEC did not require that a prospective power reactor owner 

submit finalized technical data on the safety of a facility to receive 

a construction permit. The agency was willing to grant a condi

tional permit as long as the application provided "reasonable as

surance" that the projected plant could be constructed and oper

ated at the proposed site "without undue risk to the health and 

safety of the public." The two-step licensing system enabled the 

AEC to authorize construction of nuclear plants while allowing 

time to investigate any outstanding safety questions and prescribe 

modifications in initial plans. Agency officials recognized that the 

wisdom of permitting construction to proceed without first resolv

ing all potential safety problems was disputable, but they saw no 

alternatives in light of the existing state of the technology and the 

commitment to rapid development of atomic power. They were 

confident that regulatory requirements were adequate to guard 

against the hazards of nuclear generating systems. The AEC ac

knowledged, however, that it could not eliminate all risks. 

C. Rogers McCullough, chairman of the ACRS, informed the 

Joint Committee in 1956 that because of technical uncertainties 

and limited operating experience, "the determination that the 

hazard is acceptably low is a matter of competent judgment." 

It soon became apparent how the AEC's judgment on safety is

sues could be influenced by its ambition to promote the private de

velopment of nuclear power. The Commission's actions in grant

ing a construction permit for a commercial fast breeder reactor, 

9
The Formative Years of Nuclear Regulation, 

1946-62 

despite the reservations of the ACRS, ignited an acrimonious con

troversy with the Joint Committee and raised questions about the 

AEC's regulatory program. In January 1956, the Power Reactor 

Development Company (PRDC), a consortium of utilities led by 

Detroit Edison, applied for a permit to build a fast breeder in La

goona Beach, Michigan, located on Lake Erie within thirty miles 

of both Detroit and Toledo, Ohio. The AEC had already received 

applications for two privately-financed light-water reactors, but 

the PRDC proposal was the first to come in under the power dem

onstration program. 

The fast breeder reactor that the PRDC planned was far more ad

vanced in its technological complexity than light-water models, 

with which scientists and engineers had greater experience and fa

miliarity. After review of the PRDC's application and discussions 

with company representatives, the ACRS concluded in an internal 

report to the Commission that "there is insufficient information 

available at this time to give assurance that the PRDC reactor can 

be operated at this site without public hazard." The ACRS also ex

pressed uncertainty that its questions about the reactor's safety 

could be resolved within the PRDC's proposed schedule for ob

taining an operating license. The ACRS urged that the AEC ex

pand its experimental programs with fast breeders to seek more 

complete data on the issues the PRDC application raised. 

The public dispute over the PRDC case was triggered by state

ments of Chairman Strauss and Commissioner Murray in congres

sional budget hearings. After the AEC requested a supplemental 

appropriation for the civilian power program, the commissioners 

were subjected to sharp criticism by Clarence Cannon, chairman 

of the House Appropriations Committee, when they appeared to 

testify in June 1956 on the need for the expenditures. Cannon, a 

strong public power advocate, badgered Strauss about private in

dustry's lack of progress in atomic development and suggested 

that the PRDC had no "intention of building this reactor at any 

time in the determinable future." Strauss, anxious to show that 

10
Chapter I

PRDC reactor un

der construction, 

1958. 

industry was making good headway, replied: "They [PRDC] have 

already spent eight million dollars of their own money to date on 

this project. I told you they were breaking ground on August 8. I 

have been invited to attend the ceremony; I intend to do so." Inad

vertently, he had revealed that he planned to attend the ground 

breaking ceremony for a reactor whose construction permit was 

still being evaluated by the AEC. 

During hearings the following day, Commissioner Murray, in an 

effort to demonstrate the need for research and development 

funds, disclosed the conclusions of the ACRS on the PRDC ap

plication. Murray was so uneasy about the safety implications of 

the committee's report that he went to see Joint Committee chair

man Anderson and outlined its contents. 

Members of the Joint Committee were angered and disturbed by 

the revelations of Strauss and Murray, not only because of safety 

concerns but also because the AEC had failed to inform them offi

cially about the reservations of the ACRS. The AEC was obliged

11
The Formative Years of Nuclear Regulation, 

1946-62 

by the 1954 Atomic Energy Act to keep the Joint Committee "fully 

and currently informed" about its activities, and committee mem

bers believed that in the case of the ACRS report the agency had 

failed to carry out its charge. The Joint Committee immediately 

requested a copy of the ACRS document. The AEC was reluctant 

to agree, and after long deliberation, offered to deliver a copy only 

if the Joint Committee would keep it "administratively confiden

tial." The committee refused to accept the report under those con

ditions. The AEC was even less accommodating with the state of 

Michigan. When Governor G. Mennen Williams, who learned of 

the ACRS report from Senator Anderson, asked the AEC for a 

copy, it refused on the grounds that "it would be inappropriate to 

disclose the contents of internal documents." 

Meanwhile, the AEC's regulatory staff was completing its review 

of the PRDC's application. The staff took a more optimistic view 

of the safety of the proposed reactor than had the ACRS. Since 

the company had agreed to perform tests on the questions raised 

by the committee, the staff recommended that it be granted a 

construction permit. On August 2, 1956, the Commission decided 

to issue the permit by a vote of three to one (Murray was the dis

senter). It acknowledged the concerns of the ACRS by inserting 

the word "conditional" in the construction permit to emphasize 

that the company would have to settle the uncertainties about 

safety before receiving an operating license. Commissioner Har

old S. Vance summarized the majority's reasoning during discus

sion of the application. "We are doing something that we ordi

narily would not do," he said, "in that we would not ordinarily 

issue a construction permit unless we were satisfied that reason

able safety requirements had been met." But he added: "It may be 

some time before reasonable assurance can be obtained. If we 

were to delay the construction permit until then, it might delay a 

very important program. If we didn't think that the chances were 

very good that all these questions would be resolved, we would not 

issue the permit." 

12
Chapter 1 

The AEC's decision elicited angry protests from the Joint Com

mittee. Congressman Holifield, citing Strauss's earlier announce

ment of his plans to attend the groundbreaking ceremonies for the 

plant, charged that the AEC chairman was acting in a "reckless 

and arrogant manner." Anderson accused the agency of conduct

ing "star chamber" proceedings and pledged that the Joint Com

mittee would "ascertain the full facts involved in this precipitate 

action." 

The Joint Committee soon acted to prevent a recurrence of the 

AEC's conduct in the PRDC case. Anderson ordered the commit

tee staff to prepare a study of the AEC's licensing procedures and 

regulatory organization, including consideration of whether regu

latory and promotional responsibilities should be carried out by 

separate agencies. The staff concluded that the creation of sepa

rate agencies was inadvisable at the time, principally because of 

the difficulty of recruiting qualified personnel for purely regula

tory functions. It did, however, suggest other reforms in the 

AEC's regulatory structure and procedures. Anderson imple

mented his staff's proposals by introducing legislation to establish 

the ACRS as a statutory body, direct that its reports on licensing 

cases be made public, and require public hearings on all reactor 

applications. The AEC opposed all three measures, but muted its 

objections because Anderson presented them as amendments to a 

bill to provide indemnity insurance for reactor owners, which the 

agency strongly favored. 

The AEC regarded indemnity legislation as essential for stimulat

ing private investment in nuclear power, a view that industry 

spokesmen and the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy shared. 

Since they recognized that the chances of a severe reactor acci

dent could not be reduced to zero, even the most enthusiastic in

dustry proponents of atomic power were reluctant to push ahead 

without adequate liability insurance. Private insurance companies 

would offer up to $60 million of coverage per reactor, an amount 

that far exceeded what was available to any other industry in the 

13
The Formative Years of Nuclear Regulation, 

1946-62 

United States. But in the event of a serious accident, it seemed in

sufficient to pay claims for deaths, injuries, and property damages 

in areas surrounding the malfunctioning plant. 

Therefore, industry executives sought a government program to 

provide additional insurance protection. H. R. Searing, chairman 

of the board of Consolidated Edison, declared that although his 

company would proceed with the construction of its Indian Point 

plant near New York City it would not load fuel and begin opera

tion unless the insurance question were resolved. General Elec

tric's Francis McCune went even further by telling the Joint Com

mittee in 1957 that if Congress did not enact indemnity legislation, 

his company would stop work on Commonwealth Edison's Dres

den station, then under construction. He suggested that without a 

government insurance plan, the market for civilian atomic energy 

would collapse and vendors would withdraw from the field. 

Spurred by the industry's concerns, both the AEC and the Joint 

Committee considered methods by which the government could 

provide additional liability insurance for reactor owners. Their ef

forts culminated in legislation introduced by Senator Anderson 

and Congressman Melvin Price, which proposed that the govern

ment underwrite $500 million of insurance beyond the $60 million 

available from private companies. The AEC initially opposed set

ting a specificupper limit on the amount because there was no reli

able way to estimate the possible damages from a reactor accident. 

But Anderson, wanting to avoid a "blank check" for industry, 

rather arbitrarily decided on the $500 million figure. The bill stip

ulated that Congress could authorize additional payments if nec

essary and also required that reactor owners contribute funds to 

the insurance pool as their plants were licensed. With strong sup

port from the AEC and the industry, Congress passed the Price

Anderson bill in August 1957. In final form, the measure included 

Anderson's reforms of the AEC's licensing procedures. Although 

the agency disliked Anderson's amendments, it accepted them to 

avoid jeopardizing or retarding approval of the indemnity bill. 

The Price-Anderson Act was a regulatory measure in effect 

14
Chapter 1 

because it provided insurance protection to victims of a nuclear 

accident, but it was largely promotional in motivation. Industry, 

the AEC, and the Joint Committee believed that it would remove 

a serious obstacle to private atomic development. 

The PRDC case and the Price-Anderson Act clearly illustrated the 

AEC's emphasis on developmental rather than regulatory efforts. 

The precedence that the AEC gave to promoting the growth of nu

clear power resulted from a number of considerations. The 1954 

Atomic Energy Act made it a national goal to encourage the wide

spread use of atomic energy for peaceful purposes, but private in

dustry was often hesitant to assume the costs and risks of develop

ment. Therefore, the AEC sought to persuade or induce private 

interests to invest in nuclear power. This seemed particularly ur

gent because of the intense pressure the Joint Committee placed 

on the agency to speed progress and its persistent threat to require 

the AEC to construct prototype plants if private firms failed to act 

promptly. One important way that the AEC pursued its objective 

of private development was to write regulations designed to pro

tect public safety without being overly burdensome to industry. 

Safety questions were largely a matter of judgment rather than 

something concrete or quantifiable, and AEC officials found it 

easier to assume that such issues had been or would be satisfacto

rily resolved than to assume that reactors would be built. When it 

issued a construction permit for the PRDC fast breeder reactor, 

for example, the Commission's vision of an advanced technology 

plant that showed the effectiveness of its power demonstration 

reactor program outweighed the reservations of the ACRS. 

Though aware of the implications that safety questions posed for 

the development of the technology, the AEC believed that nu

clear science, in due time, would provide the answers to any out

standing problems. In short, the desire for tangible signs of prom

ise was more compelling than first resolving more ethereal safety 

issues.

15
The Formative Years of Nuclear Regulation, 

1946-62 

The AEC's emphasis on stimulating atomic development did not 

mean that it was inattentive to safety issues. The regulations that 

the staff drafted shortly after passage of the 1954 Atomic Energy 

Act reflected careful consideration of the best scientific informa

tion and judgment available at the time. The AEC recognized and 

publicly acknowledged the possibility of accidents in such a new 

and rapidly changing technology; it never offered absolute assur

ances that accidents would not occur. Nevertheless, it believed 

that compliance with its regulations would make the chances of a 

serious accident very small. The agency did not view its develop

mental efforts as more important than regulatory policies, but it 

clearly viewed the need to encourage industrial growth as more 

immediate. 

By 1962, the AEC's efforts to stimulate private participation in 

nuclear power development had produced some encouraging re

sults. In a report to President Kennedy, the agency proudly 

pointed out that in the short time since atomic technology had 

been opened to private enterprise, six "sizeable" power reactors 

had begun operation, and two of those had been built without gov

ernment subsidies. Despite industry's lingering concerns about 

the costs of nuclear power relative to fossil fuels, the AEC's devel

opmental and regulatory programs had fostered the initial growth 

of commercial nuclear power. The agency predicted that by the 

year 2000 nuclear plants might provide up to fifty percent of the 

nation's electrical generating capacity. Despite the AEC's claims, 

the future of the nuclear industry remained precarious. The four

teen reactors in operation or under construction were still far 

from being commercially competitive or technologically proven, 

and interest in further development among utilities appeared to 

be flagging. Both the AEC and Joint Committee were acutely 

aware of and deeply disturbed about those uncertainties. 

To make matters worse from the perspective of nuclear propo

nents, there were signs of increasing public opposition to, or at 

least concern about, nuclear power hazards. In the early days of 

16
Chapter 1 

nuclear power development, public attitudes toward the technol

ogy were highly favorable, as the few opinion polls on the subject 

revealed. Press coverage of nuclear power was also overwhelm

ingly positive. An article in National Geographic in 1958, for exam

ple, concluded that "abundant energy released from the hearts of 

atoms promises a vastly different and better tomorrow for all man

kind." In the late 1950s and early 1960s, however, the public be

came more alert to and anxious about the hazards of radiation, 

largely as a result of a major controversy over radioactive fallout 

from nuclear weapons testing. One result was that the public be

came increasingly troubled about the risks of exposure to radioac

tivity from any source, including nuclear power. 

Before World War II, the dangers of radiation were a matter of in

terest and concern mostly to a relatively small group of scientists 

and physicians. Within a short time after the discovery of x-rays 

and natural radioactivity in the 1890s, scientific investigators con

cluded that exposure to radiation could cause serious health prob

lems, ranging from loss of hair and skin irritations to sterility and 

cancer. Ignorance of the hazards of x-rays and radium and use of 

them for frivolous purposes led to tragic consequences for people 

who received large doses of radiation. As experience with and ex

perimental data on the effects of radiation gradually accumulated, 

professionals developed guidelines to protect x-ray technicians 

and other radiation workers from excessive exposure. 

In 1934, a recently-formed American committee representing 

professional societies and x-ray equipment manufacturers recom

mended for the first time a quantitative "tolerance dose" of radi

ation, 0.1 roentgen per day of whole-body exposure from external 

sources. Committee members believed that levels of radiation be

low the tolerance dose were generally safe and unlikely to cause 

injury "in the average individual." The same year, an interna

tional radiation protection committee composed of experts from 

five nations took similar action. Neither body regarded its recom

mended tolerance dose as definitive because empirical evidence 

remained fragmentary and inconclusive. They were confident, 

17
The Formative Years of Nuclear Regulation, 

1946-62 

however, that available information made their proposals reason

able and provided an adequate margin of safety for the relatively 

small number of individuals exposed to radiation in their jobs. 

Then came Hiroshima. The dawn of the atomic age made radi

ation safety a vastly more complex task for two reasons. First, nu

clear fission created many radioactive isotopes that did not exist in 

nature. This meant that instead of considering only x-rays and ra

dium, professionals in the field of radiation protection had to 

evaluate the hazards of new radioactive substances about which 

even less was known. Second, the problem of radiation safety ex

tended to significantly larger segments of the population who 

might be exposed to radiation from the development of new ap

plications of atomic energy. Radiation protection broadened 

from a medical issue of limited proportions to a public health 

question of, potentially at least, major dimensions. 

As a result of the drastically altered circumstances, scientific au

thorities reassessed their recommendations on radiation 

protection. They modified their philosophy of radiological safety 

by abandoning the concept of "tolerance dose," which assumed 

that exposure to radiation below the specified limits was generally 

harmless. Experiments in genetics indicated that reproductive 

cells were highly susceptible to damage from even small amounts 

of radiation. By the early 1940s, most scientists had rejected the 

idea that exposure to radiation below a certain threshold was in

consequential, at least for genetic effects. The American commit

tee of radiation experts, named the National Committee on Radi

ation Protection (NCRP) in 1946, took action that reflected the 

consensus of opinion by replacing the terminology of "tolerance 

dose" with "maximum permissible dose," which it thought better 

conveyed the principle that no quantity of radiation was certifi

ably safe. It defined the permissible dose as that which "in the light 

of present knowledge, is not expected to cause appreciable bodily 

injury to a person at any time during his lifetime." While acknowl

edging the possibility of suffering harmful effects from radiation 

in amounts below the allowable limits, the NCRP emphasized that 

18
Chapter 1 

the permissible dose was based on the belief that "the probability 

of the occurrence of such injuries must be so low that the risk 

should be readily acceptable to the average individual." 

Because of the growth of atomic energy programs and the sub

stantial increase in the number of individuals working with radi

ation sources, the NCRP decided by 1948 to reduce its recom

mended occupational exposure limits to fifty percent of the 1934 

level. Its international counterpart, named the International 

Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) after World War 

II, adopted the same maximum permissible dose. The new maxi

mum permissible whole body dose that the NCRP and ICRP rec

ommended was 0.3 roentgens per six-day work week, measured by 

exposure of the "most critical" tissue in blood-forming organs, go

nads, and lens of the eye. Higher limits applied for less sensitive 

areas of the body. In addition to the levels established for expo

sure to x-rays or gamma rays, the NCRP and ICRP also issued 

maximum permissible concentrations in air and water of a list of 

radioactive isotopes that give off alpha or beta particles, known as 

"internal emitters." Alpha and beta particles cannot penetrate 

into vital human tissue from outside the body, but if they enter the 

body by consumption of contaminated food or water or by breath

ing of contaminated air, they can pose a serious health hazard. 

The allowable limits established by both groups applied only to 

radiation workers, but because of the genetic effects of radiation 

and the possibility that other people could be exposed in an acci

dent or an emergency, each also issued guidelines for larger seg

ments of the population. In view of the greater sensitivity of young 

persons to radiation, the NCRP recommended that the occupa

tional maximum permissible dose be reduced by a factor of ten for 

anyone under age eighteen. The ICRP went further by proposing 

a limit of one-tenth the occupational level for the general popula

tion. Neither committee had any legal authority or official stand

ing, but since their recommendations reflected the findings and 

opinions of leading experts in the field of radiation protection, 

they exercised decisive influence on government agencies 

19
The Formative Years of Nuclear Regulation, 

1946-62 

Researcher at 

Brookhaven Na

tional Laboratory 

removes plug from 

lead shield contain 

ing radioactive ma. 

terials. Man at his 

left holds Geiger 

counter to monitor 

radiation levels. 

concerned with radiological safety The AEC used the NCRP's oc

cupational limits in its own installations, and after passage of the 

1954 Atomic Energy Act, in its regulations for licensees. The 

agency's radiation protection regulations, which were first issued 

for public comment in 1955 and became effective in 1957, followed 

the NCRP's recommendations for radiation workers and set a 

permissible dose of one-tenth the occupational level for members 

of the general population potentially affected by the operations of 

licensees. 

In the immediate postwar period, deliberations over the risks of 

radiation and permissible exposure levels were confined mostly to 

scientific circles. Concern about radiation moved from the rari

fied realms of scientific and medical discourse to the front page as 

a result of the fallout controversy. The testing of nuclear weapons 

in the atmosphere by the United States, the Soviet Union, and 

Great Britain produced radioactive fallout that spread to popu

lated areas far from the sites of the explosions. The fallout debate

20
Chapter 1 

made radiation hazards a bitterly contested political issue for the 

first time. Scientists disagreed sharply about how serious a risk 

fallout presented to the population, and the question became a 

prominent subject in news reports, magazine stories, political 

campaigns, congressional hearings, and scientific studies. This not 

only called public attention to the potential health hazards of rela

tively small amounts of radiation (as opposed to acute exposure), 

but also made clear that scientists did not know a great deal about 

the effects of low-level radiation. 

The fallout controversy affected the AEC's regulatory program in 

two important ways. First, it led to a tightening of the agency's 

radiation standards. In response to increasing public concern and 

the findings of scientific groups, the NCRP and the ICRP both 

lowered their recommended permissible levels of exposure. They 

acted to provide a larger margin of safety but emphasized that 

there was no evidence that the previous levels had been danger

ously high. They reduced their limits for occupational exposure to 

an average of 5 rem per year after age eighteen while continuing 

tosuggest that population levels be restricted to ten percent of oc

cupational levels (0.5 rem per year) for individuals. They added a 

new stipulation that, for genetic reasons, the average level for 

large population groups should not exceed one-thirtieth of the oc

cupational limit, or 0.17 rem per year. The AEC promptly adopted 

the new recommendations as a part of its regulations; it issued 

them for comments in 1959 and made them effective on January 1, 

1961. 

The fallout debate further influenced the AEC's regulatory pro

gram by arousing public anxieties about the health effects of low

level radiation. This was evident, for example, in citizen protests 

against the dumping of low-level radioactive wastes in ocean wa

ters. The AEC had authorized the dumping of such wastes under 

prescribed conditions for over a decade, but it became a subject of 

controversy only after the fallout issue sensitized public opinion to 

radiation hazards. In a similar manner, the first widespread objec

tions to the construction of proposed nuclear power plants arose 

21
The Formative Years of Nuclear Regulation, 

1946-62 

in the wake of the fallout debate. Citizen protests against the 

construction of the Ravenswood plant in the heart of New York 

City in 1963 and the Bodega Bay plant on the coast of California 

near the boundary of the San Andreas fault in 1963-64 played a 

vital role in aborting both projects. 

At the end of the first decade that followed passage of the 1954 

Atomic Energy Act, the prospects for rapid nuclear power devel

opment were mixed. Impressive strides had been taken, to be sure, 

but many uncertainties remained. Public support for the technol

ogy appeared to be strong but, as Ravenswood and Bodega Bay 

had shown, it could not be taken for granted. Beginning in the 

mid-1960s, however, a variety of considerations fueled an unantic

ipated boom in the nuclear power industry that resolved some of 

the unknowns about nuclear progress while raising a host of new 

questions for the AEC's regulatory staff.

22
Chapter 2 

The Nuclear 

Power Debate, 

1963-75
Chapter 2 

During the late 1950s and early 1960s the use of nuclear power to 

generate electricity was a novel and developing technology. Since 

relatively few plants were operating, under construction, or on or

der, the scope of the AEC's regulatory functions such as reactor 

siting, licensing, and inspection was still limited. During the later 

1960s, however, the nation's utilities rapidly increased their or

ders for nuclear power stations, participating in what Philip 

Sporn, past president of the American Electric Power Service 

Corporation, described in 1967 as the "great bandwagon market." 

At the same time, the size of plants being built also expanded dra

matically. The sudden arrival of commercially competitive nuclear 

power placed unprecedented demands on the AEC's regulatory 

staff and raised new safety problems that reactor experts had not 

considered previously. The surge in reactor orders and the growth 

in the size of individual reactors also spurred new concerns about 

the environmental impact of nuclear power and intensified public 

uneasiness about the safety of the technology. 

The bandwagon market was an outgrowth of several develop

ments that enhanced the appeal of nuclear power to utilities in the 

mid- and late 1960s. One was the intense competition between the 

two leading vendors of nuclear plants, General Electric and Wes

tinghouse. In 1963, General Electric made a daring move to in

crease its reactor sales and to convince utilities that nuclear power 

had arrived as a safe, reliable, and cost-competitive alternative to 

fossil fuel. It offered a "turnkey" contract to Jersey Central Power 

and Light Company to build the 515 electrical megawatt Oyster 

Creek plant near Toms River, New Jersey. For a fixed cost of $66 

million, General Electric agreed to supply the entire plant to the 

utility (the term "turnkey" suggested that the utility would merely 

have to turn a key to start operating the facility). The company's 

bid was successful, winning out not only over Westinghouse but 

also over manufacturers of coal-fired units. General Electric ex

pected to lose money on the Oyster Creek contract, but hoped 

that the plant would help to stimulate the market for nuclear 

power. 

23
The Nuclear Power Debate, 1963-1975 

The Oyster Creek contract opened the "turnkey era" of commer

cial nuclear power and came to symbolize the competitive debut of 

the technology. Glenn T. Seaborg, chairman of the AEC, told 

President Johnson that it represented an "economic break

through" for nuclear electricity. Westinghouse followed General 

Electric's lead in offering turnkey contracts for nuclear plants, set

ting off a fierce corporate battle. The turnkey plants were a finan

cial blow for both companies; their losses ran into the hundreds of 

millions of dollars before they stopped making turnkey arrange

ments. One General Electric official commented: "It's going to 

take a long time to restore to the treasury the demands we put on it 

to establish ourselves in the nuclear business." But the turnkey 

contracts fulfilled General Electric's hopes of stirring interest 

among and orders from utilities. They played a major role in trig

gering the bandwagon market. 

There were other important considerations that convinced a 

growing number of utilities to buy nuclear plants. One was the 

spread of power pooling arrangements among utilities, which en

couraged the construction of larger generating stations by easing 

fears of excess capacity and over-expansion. A utility with extra or 

reserve power could sell it to other companies through intercon

nections. The desirability and feasibility of using larger individual 

plants worked to the benefit of nuclear vendors. They emphasized 

that bigger plants would produce "economies of scale" that would 

cut capital costs per unit of power and improve efficiency. This 

helped to overcome a major disadvantage of nuclear power rela

tive to fossil fuel-the heavy capital requirements for building 

atomic plants. During the late 1960s designs for nuclear facilities 

leap-frogged from the 500 to the 800 to the 1000 electrical mega

watt range even though operating experience was still limited to 

units in the range of 200 megawatts or less. The practice of "design 

by extrapolation" had been employed for fossil-fuel units since the 

early 1950s. Before the mid-1960s this approach appeared to work 

well, and it was natural that vendors extended it to nuclear units.

24
Chapter 2 

In addition to turnkey contracts, system interconnections, and in

creasing unit size, growing national concern about air pollution in 

the 1960s made nuclear power more attractive to utilities. Coal 

plants were major contributors to the deterioration of air quality 

and were obvious targets for clean-up efforts. As the campaign to 

improve the environment gained strength, the electric-utility in

dustry became more mindful of the cost of pollution control in 

fossil-fuel plants. They increasingly viewed nuclear power as a 

good alternative to paying the expenses of pollution abatement in 

coal-fired units. 

The bandwagon market for nuclear power reached its peak during 

1966 and 1967, exceeding, in the words of a General Electric offi

cial, "even the most optimistic estimates." In 1965, the year before 

the reactor boom gathered momentum, nuclear vendors sold four 

nuclear plants with a total of 17 percent of the capacity that utili

ties purchased that year. In 1966, by contrast, utilities bought 20 

nuclear units that made up 36 percent of the electrical capacity 

committed. The following year nuclear vendors sold 31 units that 

represented 49 percent of the capacity ordered. In 1968, the num

ber of reactor orders dropped to 17, but the percentage of the ca

pacity filled with nuclear plants remained high at 47 percent. 

The bandwagon market orders were large facilities that far ex

ceeded the size of operating reactors. Between 1963, when the 515 

electrical megawatt Oyster Creek reactor was ordered, and 1969, 

when the plant began operation, the AEC issued 38 construction 

permits for units that were larger than Oyster Creek. Of those 

plants, 28 were in the range of 800 to 1100 megawatts. The degree 

of extrapolation from small plants to mammoth ones was a matter 

of concern even to some strong nuclear advocates. By the late 

1960s, it was apparent that design by extrapolation was not as suc

cessful as anticipated earlier. "We hoped the new machines would 

run just like the old ones we're familiar with," complained one 

utility executive about his huge coal-burning stations. But, he 

added, "they sure as hell don't." 

25
The Nuclear Power Debate, 1963-1975 

The rapid increase in the number of reactor applications and in 

the size of proposed plants placed enormous burdens on the 

AEC's regulatory staff. The flood of applications inevitably 

caused licensing delays because the staff lacked enough qualified 

professionals. Between 1965 and 1970, the size of the regulatory 

staff increased by about 50 percent, but its licensing and inspec

tion case load increased by about 600 per cent. The average time 

required to process a construction permit application stretched 

from about a year in 1965 to over 18 months by 1970. The growing 

backlog drew bitter complaints from utilities applying to build 

plants and from nuclear vendors. One utility executive predicted 

that if delays became commonplace, "it can safely be asserted that 

the splendid promise of nuclear power will have had a very short 

life." Another was even more critical, calling the licensing process "a modem day Spanish Inquisition" carried out by 'AEC engi

neers, scientists, and consultants [who] have no serious economic 

discipline." The AEC attempted to streamline its licensing proce

dures but found it impossible to reduce review time or to satisfy 

the demands of the industry. 

The licensing process lengthened not only because of the number 

of applications that the AEC had to evaluate but also because of 

the complexity of the proposals it received. The growth in the size 

of reactors and the practice of design by extrapolation raised many 

complex safety issues that could not be easily resolved. The exer

cise of careful judgment in assessing reactor applications was al

ways critical, but it became even more so as utilities campaigned to 

build plants closer to populated regions. Although the AEC 

adopted an informal prohibition against "metropolitan siting" in 

urban locations (such as the proposed Ravenswood plant in down

town New York), it was more receptive to "suburban siting" fairly 

close to urban populations. This reduced the emphasis on one 

traditional means of protecting the public from the consequences 

of a nuclear accident--"remote siting." It placed greater depen

dence on the other general method of shielding the public from 

the effects of an accident-engineered safeguards (a term later 

26
Chapter 2 

superseded by "engineered safety features") that were built into 

the plant. Even as the relative importance of engineered safe

guards increased in the 1960s, questions arose about their reliabil

ity in preventing a massive release of radioactivity to the environ

ment in the event of a severe accident. 

The engineered safeguards in nuclear plants differed in design 

and operation, but they served the same basic functions. A num

ber of systems were placed in reactors to remove heat and reduce 

excessive pressure if an accident occurred. They included, for ex

ample, passive core sprays and pressure suppression pools, "safety 

injection" systems that would shoot large volumes of water into 

the reactor vessel, and combinations of filters, vents, scrubbers, 

and air circulators that would collect and retain radioactive gases 

and particles released by an accident. The final line of defense if 

the engineered safeguards failed was the containment building, a 

large, often dome-shaped structure that surrounded the reactor 

and associated steam-producing equipment as well as the safety 

systems. 

Reactor experts were confident that in almost any situation the 

engineered safety features built into a plant and the containment 

structure would protect the public from the effects of an accident. 

But they were troubled by the possibility that a chain of events 

could conceivably take place that would bypass or override the 

safety systems, and in the worst case, breach containment. "No 

one is in a position to demonstrate that a reactor accident with 

consequent escape of fission products to the environment will 

never happen," Clifford K. Beck, the AEC's deputy director of 

regulation, told the Joint Committee in 1967. "No one really ex

pects such an accident, but no one is in a position to say with full 

certainty that it will not occur." 

The AEC strived to reduce the likelihood of an accident to a mini

mum. It based its decisions on the safety of reactor designs and 

plant applications on operating experience, engineering judg

ment, and experiments with test reactors. Experience with the 

27
The Nuclear Power Debate, 1963-1975 

first commercial reactors had been encouraging; it had provided a 

great deal of information that was useful in understanding reactor 

science. But it was of limited application to the newer and larger 

reactors that utilities were building by the late 1960s. The rapid 

growth in reactor size placed a premium on the careful use of engi

neering judgment. In order to decrease the chances of a major ac

cident that could threaten public health, the AEC required multi

ple back-up equipment and redundancies in safety designs. It also 

employed conservative assumptions about the ways in which an 

accident might damage or incapacitate safety systems in its evalu

ation of reactor proposals. 

The regulatory staff sought to gain as much experimental data as 

possible to enrich its knowledge and inform its collective engi

neering judgment. This was especially vital in light of the many un

answered questions about reactor behavior. The AEC had spon

sored hundreds of small-scale experiments since the early 1950s 

that had yielded key information about a variety of reactor safety 

problems. But they provided little guidance on the issue of great

est concern to the AEC and the ACRS by the late 1960s-a core 

meltdown caused by a loss-of-coolant accident. 

Reactor experts had long recognized that a core melt was a plausi

ble, if unlikely, occurrence. A massive loss of coolant could hap

pen, for example, if a large pipe that fed cooling water to the core 

broke. If the plant's emergency cooling systems also failed, the 

build-up of "decay heat" (which resulted from continuing radioac

tive decay after the reactor shut down) could cause the core to 

melt. In older and smaller reactors, the experts were confident 

that even under the worst conditions-an accident in which the 

loss of coolant melted the core and it, in turn, melted through the 

pressure vessel that held the core-the containment structure 

would prevent a massive release of radioactivity to the environ

ment. As proposed plants increased significantly in size, however, 

they began to worry that a core melt could lead to a breach of con

tainment. This became their primary focus partly because of the 

greater decay heat the larger plants would produce and partly 

28
Chapter 2

because nuclear vendors did not add to the size of containment 

buildings in corresponding proportions to the size of reactors. 

The greatest source of concern about a loss-of-coolant accident in 

large reactors was that the molten fuel would melt through not 

only the pressure vessel but also through the thick layer of con

crete at the foundation of the containment building. The intensely 

radioactive fuel would then continue on its downward path into 

the ground. This scenario became known as the "China syn

drome," because the melted core would presumably be heading 

through the earth toward China. Other possible dangers of a core 

meltdown were that the molten fuel would breach containment by 

reacting with water to cause a steam explosion or by releasing ele

ments that could combine to cause a chemical explosion. The pre

cise effects of a large core melt were uncertain, but it was clear that 

the results of spewing radioactivity into the atmosphere could be 

disastrous. The ACRS and the regulatory staff regarded the 

chances of such an accident as low; they believed that it would oc

cur only if the emergency core cooling system (ECCS), made up of 

redundant equipment that would rapidly feed water into the core, 

failed to function properly. But they acknowledged the possibility 

that the ECCS might not work as designed. Without containment 

as a fail-safe final line of defense against any conceivable accident, 

they sought other means to provide safeguards against the China 

syndrome. 

At the prodding of the ACRS, which first sounded the alarm about 

the China syndrome, the AEC established a special task force to 

look into the problem of core melting in 1966. The committee, 

chaired by William K. Ergen, a reactor safety expert and former 

ACRS member from Oak Ridge National Laboratory, submitted 

its findings to the AEC in October 1967. The report offered assur

ances about the improbability of a core meltdown and the reliabil

ity of emergency core cooling designs, but it also acknowledged 

that a loss-of-coolant accident could cause a breach of contain

ment if ECCS failed to perform. Therefore, containment could no 

longer be regarded as an inviolable barrier to the escape of radio

29
The Nuclear Power Debate, 1963-1975 

activity. This represented a milestone in the evolution of reactor 

regulation. In effect, it imposed a modified approach to reactor 

safety. Previously, the AEC had viewed the containment building 

as the final independent line of defense against the release of radi

ation; even if a serious accident took place the damage it caused 

would be restricted to the plant. Once it became apparent that un

der some circumstances the containment building might not hold, 

however, the key to protecting the public from a large release of 

radiation was to prevent accidents severe enough to threaten con

tainment. And this depended heavily on a properly designed and 

functioning ECCS. 

LOFT reactor un

der construction, 1969. 1 

The problem facing the AEC's regulatory staff was that experi

mental work and experience with emergency cooling was very lim

ited. Finding a way to test and to provide empirical support for the 

reliability of emergency cooling became the central concern of the 

AEC's safety research program. Plans had been underway since 

the early 1960s to build an experimental reactor, known as the 

Loss-of-Fluid-Tests (LOFT) facility, at the AEC's reactor testing 

station in Idaho. Its purpose was to provide data about the effects 

of a loss-of-coolant accident. For a variety of reasons, including 

weak management of the test program, a change of design, and

30
Chapter 2 

reduced funding, progress on the LOFT reactor and the prelimi

nary tests that were essential for its success were chronically 

delayed. Despite the complaints of the ACRS and the regulatory 

staff, the AEC diverted money from LOFT and other safety re

search projects on existing light-water reactor designs to work on 

the development of fast-breeder reactors. A proven fast breeder 

was an urgent objective for the AEC and the Joint Committee; 

Seaborg described it as "a priority national goal" that could assure 

"an essentially unlimited energy supply, free from problems of 

fuel resources and atmospheric contamination." 

To the consternation of the AEC, experiments run at the Idaho 

test site in late 1970 and early 1971 suggested that the ECCS in 

light-water reactors might not work as designed. As a part of the 

preliminary experiments that were used to design the LOFT reac

tor, researchers ran a series of "semiscale" tests on a core that was 

only nine inches long (compared with 144 inches on a power reac

tor). The experiments were run by heating a simulated core elec

trically, allowing the cooling water to escape, and then injecting 

the emergency coolant. To the surprise of the investigators, the 

high steam pressure that was created in the vessel by the loss of 

coolant blocked the flow of water from the ECCS. Without ever 

reaching the core, about 90 percent of the emergency coolant 

flowed out of the same break that had caused the loss of coolant in 

the first place. 

In many ways the semiscale experiments were not accurate simu

lations of designs or conditions in power reactors. Not only the 

size, scale, and design but also the channels that directed the flow 

of coolant in the test model were markedly different than those in 

an actual reactor. Nevertheless, the results of the tests were dis

quieting. They introduced a new element of uncertainty into as

sessing the performance of ECCS. The outcome of the tests had 

not been anticipated and called into question the analytical meth

ods used to predict what would happen in a loss-of-coolant acci

dent. The results were hardly conclusive but their implications for 

the effectiveness of ECCS were troubling. 

31
The Nuclear Power Debate, 1963-1975 

The semiscale tests caught the AEC unprepared and uncertain of 

how to respond. Harold Price, the director of regulation, directed 

a special task force he had recently formed to focus on the ECCS 

question and to draft a "white paper" within a month. Seaborg, for 

the first time, called the Office of Management and Budget to 

plead for more funds for safety research on light-water reactors. 

While waiting for the task force to finish its work, the AEC tried to 

keep information about the semiscale tests from getting out to the 

public, even to the extent of withholding information about them 

from the Joint Committee. The results of the tests came at a very 

awkward time for the AEC. It was under renewed pressure from 

utilities facing power shortages and from the Joint Committee to 

streamline the licensing process and eliminate excessive delays. At 

the same time, Seaborg was appealing-successfully-to Presi

dent Nixon for support of the breeder reactor, and controversy 

over the semiscale tests and reactor safety could undermine White 

House backing for the program. By the spring of 1971, nuclear 

critics were expressing opposition to the licensing of several pro

posed reactors, and news of the semiscale experiments seemed 

likely to spur their efforts. 

For those reasons, the AEC sought to resolve the ECCS issue as 

promptly and quietly as possible. It wanted to settle the uncertain

ties about safety without arousing a public debate that could place 

hurdles in the way of the bandwagon market. Even before the task 

force that Price established completed its study of the ECCS prob

lem, the Commission decided to publish "interim acceptance cri

teria" for emergency cooling systems that licensees would have to 

meet. It imposed a series of requirements that it believed would 

ensure that the ECCS in a plant would prevent a core melt after a 

loss-of-coolant accident. The AEC did not prescribe methods of 

meeting the interim criteria, but, in effect, it mandated that 

manufacturers and utilities set an upper limit on the amount of 

heat generated by reactors. In some cases, this would force 

utilities to reduce the peak operating temperatures (and hence,

32
Chapter 2

the power) of their plants. Price told a press conference on June 

19, 1971 that although the AEC thought it impossible "to guaran

tee absolute safety," he was "confident that these criteria will as

sure that the emergency core cooling systems will perform ade

quately to protect the temperature of the core from getting out of 

hand." 

The interim ECCS criteria failed to achieve the AEC's objectives. 

News about the semiscale experiments triggered complaints 

about the AEC's handling of the issue even from friendly observ

ers. It also prompted calls from nuclear critics for a licensing mora

torium and a shutdown of the eleven plants then operating. Criti

cism expressed by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), an 

organization established in 1969 to protest misuse of technology 

that had recently turned its attention to nuclear power, received 

wide publicity. The UCS took a considerably less sanguine view of 

ECCS reliability than that of the AEC. It sharply questioned the 

adequacy of the interim criteria, charging, among other things, 

that they were "operationally vague and meaningless." Scientists 

at the AEC's national laboratories, without endorsing the alarm

ist language that the UCS used, shared some of the same reserva

tions. As a result of the uncertainties about ECCS and the interim 

criteria, the AEC decided to hold public hearings that it hoped 

would help resolve the technical issues. It wanted to prevent the 

ECCS question from becoming a major impediment to the licens

ing of individual plants. 

The AEC insisted that its critics had exaggerated the severity of 

the ECCS problem. The regulatory staff viewed the results of the 

failed semiscale tests as serious but believed that the technical is

sues the experiments raised would be resolved within a short time. 

It did not regard the tests as indications that existing designs were 

fundamentally flawed and it emphasized the conservative engi

neering judgment it applied in evaluating plant applications. But 

the ECCS controversy damaged the AEC's credibility and played 

into the hands of its critics. Instead of frankly acknowledging the 

33
The Nuclear Power Debate, 1963-1975 

potential significance of the ECCS problem and taking time to 

fully evaluate the technical uncertainties, the AEC acted hastily to 

prevent the issue from undermining public confidence in reactor 

safety or causing licensing delays. This gave credence to the allega

tions of its critics that it was so determined to promote nuclear 

power and develop the breeder reactor that it was inattentive to 

safety concerns. 

By the time that the ECCS issue hit the headlines, other questions 

about the environmental effects of nuclear power had eroded 

public support for the technology. The problem of industrial 

pollution and the deteriorating quality of the natural environment 

took on growing urgency as a public policy issue during the 1960s. 

The increasing public and political concern with environmental 

protection, occurring at the same time that demand for electricity 

was doubling every ten years or so, placed utilities in a quandary. 

As an article in Fortune magazine put it: "Americans do not seem 

willing to let the utilities continue devouring ... ever increasing 

quantities of water, air, and land. And yet clearly they also are not 

willing to contemplate doing without all the electricity they want. 

These two wishes are incompatible. That is the dilemma faced by 

the utilities." 

Utilities increasingly viewed nuclear power as the answer to that 

dilemma. It promised the means to meet demand for power with

out causing air pollution, and environmental concerns were a ma

jor spur to the growth of the great bandwagon market. Environ

mentalists recognized the benefits of nuclear power compared to 

fossil fuel, but they were more equivocal in their attitudes toward 

the technology than were industry representatives. Their ambiva

lence was perhaps best summarized by the statement of a leading 

environmental spokesman in 1967: "I think most conservationists 

may welcome the coming of nuclear plants, though we are sure 

they have their own parameters of difficulty." 

Officials of the AEC actively promoted the idea that nuclear 

power provided the answer to both the environmental crisis and 

34
Chapter 2 

the energy crisis. Seaborg was especially outspoken on this point. 

Although he acknowledged that nuclear power had some adverse 

impact on the environment, he insisted that its effects were much 

less harmful than those of fossil fuel. In comparison with coal, he 

once declared, "there can be no doubt that nuclear power comes 

out looking like Mr. Clean." 

The view of nuclear power as beneficial to the environment rela

tive to conventional fuels was undermined in the late 1960s by a 

major controversy over the effects of waste heat from nuclear 

plants on water quality, widely known as "thermal pollution." 

Thermal pollution resulted from cooling the steam that drove the 

turbines to produce electricity in either a fossil fuel or nuclear 

plant. The steam was condensed by the circulation of large 

amounts of water, and in the process the coolingwater was heated, 

usually by 10 to 20 degrees fahrenheit, before being returned to 

the body of water from which it came. This problem was not 

unique to nuclear plants but it was more acute in them, largely be

cause fossil plants used steam heat more efficiently than nuclear 

ones. The problem of thermal pollution created more anxiety than 

previously during the 1960s because of the growing number of 

plants, the larger size of those plants, and the increasing inclina

tion of utilities to order nuclear units. 

Thermal pollution caused concern because it was potentially 

harmful to many species of fish. It could also disrupt the ecological 

balance in rivers and streams, allowing plants to thrive that made 

water look, taste, and smell unpleasant. Technical solutions to 

dealwith thermal pollution were available, but they required extra 

costs in the construction and operation of steam-electric plants. 

Cooling towers of different designs or cooling ponds, for example, 

would greatly alleviate the release of waste heat to the source body 

of water. Utilities resisted adding cooling apparatus to the plants 

they planned to build, however, because of the expense and an ap

preciable loss of generating capacity.

35
The Nuclear Power Debate, 1963-1975

Advocates of stronger federal action to protect the environment 

in the news media, Congress, and state and federal agencies urged 

the AEC to require its licensees to guard against the effects of 

thermal pollution. The AEC refused on the grounds that it lacked 

the statutory authority to impose regulations on hazards other 

than radiation. It argued that the 1954 Atomic Energy Act re

stricted its regulatory jurisdiction to radiological dangers, a view 

that the Department of Justice and federal courts upheld. This did 

not placate the AEC's critics, who accused it of ignoring a serious 

problem that nuclear plants exacerbated. Several members of 

Congress introduced legislation to grant the AEC authority over 

thermal pollution but the agency opposed those measures unless 

fossil fuel plants had to meet the same conditions. The AEC 

feared that nuclear power would be placed at a competitive disad

vantage if plant owners had to provide cooling equipment that was 

not required on fossil-burning facilities. 

Researchers from 

Argonne National 

Laboratory take 

measurements of 

the thermal dis

charge plume from 

the Big Rock Point 

Nuclear Power 

Plant on Lake 

Michigan. 

The AEC came under increasing criticism for its position. The 

most prominent attack appeared in a Sports Illustrated article in 

January 1969. It assailed the AEC for failing to regulate against

36
Chapter 2 

thermal pollution and attributed its inaction to a fear of the "fi

nancial investment that power companies would have to make... 

to stop nuclear plants from frying fish or cooking waterways 

wholesale." The article was a distorted and exaggerated presenta

tion, but it contributed to a growing perception that instead of be

ing a solution to the dilemma of producing electricity without 

causing serious environmental damage, nuclear power was a part 

of the problem. 

Eventually the controversy over thermal pollution died out. One 

reason was that Congress passed legislation that gave the AEC au

thority to regulate against thermal pollution and that applied to 

most fossil fuel plants as well. A more important reason was that 

utilities increasingly took action to curb the consequences of dis

charging waste heat. Although they initially resisted the calls for 

cooling equipment, they soon found that the costs of responding 

to litigation, enduring postponements in the construction or op

eration of new plants, or suffering a loss of public esteem were less 

tolerable than those of building cooling towers or ponds. By 1971, 

most nuclear plants being built or planned for inland waterways 

(where the problem was most acute) included cooling systems. But 

the legacy of the thermal pollution debate lingered on. It under

mined confidence in the AEC and wakened public doubts about 

the environmental impact of nuclear power. It played a vital role 

in transforming the ambivalence that environmentalists had dem

onstrated toward the technology into strong and vocal opposition. 

As a result of the thermal pollution issue, the AEC and the nuclear 

industry frequently found themselves included among the ranks of 

enemies of the environment. 

The thermal pollution question was the first but not the only de

bate over the effects of nuclear power that aroused widespread 

public concern in the late 1960s and early 1970s. A major contro

versy that arose over the effects of low-level radiation from the 

routine operation of nuclear plants also fed fears about the ex

panding use of the technology. Drawing on the recommendations 

of the National Committee on Radiation Protection, the AEC 

37
The Nuclear Power Debate, 1963-1975 

had established limits for public exposure to radiation from nu

clear plants of 0.5 rem per year for individuals. To determine the 

allowable release of radioactive effluents from a plant, it assumed 

that a person stood outdoors at the boundary of the facility 24 

hours a day, 365 days a year. Licensees generally met the require

ments easily. In 1968, for example, releases from most plants mea

sured less than three percent of the permissible levels for liquid 

effluents and less than one percent for gaseous effluents. 

The conservative assumptions of the AEC and the performance of 

operating plants did not prevent criticism of the AEC's radiation 

standards. A number of observers suggested that, in light of the 

uncertainties about the effects of low-level radiation, the AEC's 

regulations were insufficiently rigorous and should be substan

tially revised. This first emerged as a widely-publicized issue when 

the state of Minnesota, responding to questions raised by environ

mentalists, stipulated in May 1969 that a plant under construction 

must restrict its radioactive effluents to a level of about three per

cent of that allowed by the AEC. 

The adequacy of the AEC's radiation standards became even 

more contentious in the fall of 1969, when two prominent scien

tists, John W Gofman and Arthur R. Tamplin, suggested that if ev

eryone in the United States received the permissible population 

dose of radiation, it would cause 17,000 (later revised to 32,000) 

additional cases of cancer annually. Gofman and Tamplin worked 

at Livermore National Laboratory, funded by the AEC, and their 

position as insiders gave their claims special credibility. They ini

tially proposed that the AEC lower its limits by a factor of ten and 

later urged that it require zero releases of radioactivity. 

Gofman and Tamplin not only argued that the existing standards 

of the AEC and other radiation-protection organizations were in

adequate but also challenged the prevailing consensus that the 

benefits of nuclear power were worth the risks. Gofman was espe

cially harsh in his analysis; he insisted that in its radiation protec

tion regulations, "the AEC is stating that there is a risk and their 

38
Chapter 2 

hope that the benefits outweigh the number of deaths." He added: 

"This is legalized murder, the only question is how many mur

ders." 

The AEC denied. Gofman's and Tamplin's assertions on the 

grounds that they extrapolated from high doses to estimate the 

hazards of low-level exposure, and that, furthermore, it was im

possible for the entire nation to receive the levels of radiation that 

applied at plant boundaries. Most authorities in the field of radi

ation protection agreed with the AEC that the risks of effluents 

from nuclear power were far smaller than Gofman and Tamplin 

maintained. Nevertheless, in an effort to provide an extra mea

sure of protection, reassure the public, and undercut the appeal of 

its critics, in June 1971 the AEC issued for public comment new 

"design objectives" for nuclear plants that would, in effect, reduce 

the permissible levels of effluents by a factor of about one 

hundred. This action elicited protests from industry representa

tives and from radiation-protection professionals, but it did not 

impress many critics, who expressed doubt that the AEC would 

enforce the new guidelines. The controversy focused public atten

tion, once again, on the effects of low-level radiation, but it did 

little to clarify a complex and ambiguous issue. 

In addition to the objections that its positions on thermal pollu

tion and radiation standards stirred, the AEC provoked sharp 

criticism for its response to the National Environmental Policy 

Act (NEPA). The law, passed by Congress in December 1969 and 

signed by President Nixon on January 1, 1970, required federal 

agencies to consider the environmental impact of their activities. 

The measure was in many ways vague and confusing and it gave 

federal agencies broad discretion in deciding how to carry out its 

mandate. The AEC acted promptly to comply with NEPA, but its 

procedures for doing so brought protests from environmentalists. 

The agency took a narrow view of its responsibilities under NEPA. 

In a proposed regulation that it issued in December 1970, it in

cluded, for the first time, non-radiological issues in its regulatory 

jurisdiction. But it also stipulated that it intended to rely on the 

39
The Nuclear Power Debate, 1963-1975 

environmental assessments of other federal and state agencies 

(rather than conducting its own), it agreed to consider environ

mental issues in licensing board hearings only if raised by a party 

to the proceeding, and it postponed any review of NEPA issues in 

licensing cases until March 1971. 

The AEC declined to take an expansive view of its responsibilities 

under NEPA for several reasons. One was the conviction that the 

routine operation of nuclear plants was not a serious threat to the 

environment and, indeed, was beneficial compared to burning fos

sil fuel. The major products of nuclear power generation that af

fected the environment, radiation releases and thermal dis

charges, were covered by other legislation. Furthermore, 

implementation of NEPA might divert the AEC's limited human 

resources from tasks that were more central to its mission. The 

regulatory staff was "all but overwhelmed" by the flood of reactor 

applications and did not relish the idea of having to spend large 

amounts of time on environmental reviews. Most importantly, the 

AEC feared that weighing environmental issues other than radi

ation and thermal releases would cause unwarranted delays in li

censing plants. The time required for evaluating applications was 

already increasing and the AEC worried that NEPA could force a 

"quantum leap" in the length of the process. It sought to strike a 

balance between environmental concerns and the need for electri

cal power in framing its regulations. 

Environmentalists complained that the AEC had failed to fulfill 

the purposes of NEPA and took the agency to federal court over 

the application of the AEC's regulations to the Calvert Cliffs nu

clear units, then under construction on the Chesapeake Bay in ru

ral Maryland. On July 23, 1971, the United States Court of Ap

peals for the District of Columbia handed down a ruling that was a 

crushing defeat for the AEC. The court sternly rebuked the 

agency in its most widely-quoted statement: "We believe that the 

Commission's crabbed interpretation of NEPA makes a mockery 

of the Act." The Calvert Cliffs decision was, in the words of 

40
Chapter 2 

Nucleonics Week, a "stunning body blow" to the AEC and the nu

clear industry. 

The Calvert Cliffs decision was another in a series of setbacks for 

the AEC and nuclear power. It was apparent by the summer of 

1971 that public distrust of the AEC was growing and support for 

nuclear power was declining. The cumulative effect of controver

sies over ECCS, thermal pollution, radiation standards, NEPA, 

and other issues eroded public confidence in the AEC's commit

ment to safety and raised doubts about the benefits of nuclear 

power. Antinuclear activists capitalized on growing uneasiness 

about the health and environmental effects of the technology. 

Some of the critics were well-informed and responsible in their ar

guments, but others were one-sided and inaccurate. Attempts by 

nuclear proponents to correct a plethora of misleading and exag

gerated stories, advertisements, speeches, and other presenta

tions inevitably failed to win as much attention or produce the 

same effect. To make matters worse for the AEC, it suffered from 

the general disillusionment with the government, established in

stitutions, and science that prevailed by the late 1960s, largely as a 

result of the Vietnam war. One college student summarized the 

situation after listening to a debate between Victor Bond, a radi

ation expert from Brookhaven National Laboratory, and a vocal 

AEC critic: "Dr. Bond sounds good but we can't believe him. He 

works for the government." 

By the summer of 1971, the AEC was an embattled agency, largely 

though not exclusively because of regulatory issues. Seaborg, after 

serving as chairman for ten years, resigned his post in July 1971 

and Nixon appointed James R. Schlesinger, assistant director of 

the Office of Management and Budget, to take his place. Schle

singer was determined to make the AEC more responsive to envi

ronmental concerns and to improve its tarnished public image. As 

an important first step in those efforts, he and William 0. Doub, 

who took a seat on the Commission at the same time that Schle

singer assumed the chairmanship, concluded that the AEC should 

not appeal the Calvert Cliffs ruling, and, after considering the 

41
The Nuclear Power Debate, 1963-1975 

alternatives, their colleagues agreed. The AEC announced its de

cision on August 26, 1971. 

The AEC's response to the Calvert Cliffs decision brought a storm 

of protests from utilities who feared long delays in the licensing of 

plants that were nearly ready for operation. Schlesinger explained 

the AEC's new position in a speech he delivered to a meeting of 

industry groups in Bal Harbour, Florida on October 20, 1971. He 

told his audience that although the long-term outlook for nuclear 

power appeared "bullish," the pace of development depended on 

two variables: "first, the provision of a safe, reliable product; sec

ond, achievement of public confidence in that product." Schle

singer declared that the AEC's policy of promoting and protecting 

the industry had been justified to help nuclear power get started, 

but since the industry was "rapidly approaching mature growth," 

the AEC must redefine its responsibilities. "You should not ex

pect the AEC," he announced, "to fight the industry's political, so

cial, and commercial battles." Rather, he added, the agency's role 

was "primarily to perform as a referee serving the public interest." 

The message of Schlesinger's speech was unprecedented; it pro

claimed a sharp break with the AEC's history and a new direction 

in the agency's approach to its regulatory duties. 

Schlesinger's efforts to narrow the divisions between nuclear pro

ponents and critics and to recover the AEC's regulatory credibility 

produced, at best, mixed results. Many environmentalists were 

pleased with the AEC's acceptance of the Calvert Cliffs ruling and 

with Schlesinger's Bal Harbour speech. Their guarded optimism 

about Schlesinger's attitudes was perhaps best summarized by the 

title of an article about him in National Wildlife magazine: 

"There's a Bird Watcher Running the Atomic Energy Commis

sion." But major differences between the AEC and environ

mentalists remained; many of the same issues that had aroused 

concern before Schlesinger's arrival continued to generate con

troversy.

42
Chapter 2 

One of those issues was the reliability of emergency core cooling 

systems. In light of the objections to the interim acceptance crite

ria for ECCS that the AEC had published in June 1971, the agency 

decided to hold a rulemaking hearing on the issue that would ap

ply to all licensing cases. It hoped that this would avoid repeating 

the same procedures and deliberating over the same questions in 

case-by-case hearings and that generic hearings would provide a 

means to resolve issues common to all plants. The ECCS hearings 

got underway in early 1972 and stretched into 135 days over a pe

riod of a year and a half. When they ended, the transcripts of the 

proceedings filled more than 22,000 pages. The ECCS hearings 

led to a final rule that made some small but important revisions in 

the interim criteria. They also produced acrimonious testimony 

and front-page headlines that often reflected unfavorably on the 

AEC's safety programs and that further damaged its credibility. 

Another issue that undermined confidence in the AEC in the 

early 1970s was its approach to high-level radioactive waste dis

posal. The growth of the nuclear power industry made the safe dis

posal of intensely radioactive spent fuel rods and other waste ma

terials an increasingly urgent matter. The AEC had investigated 

means of dealing with reactor wastes for years, but had not found a 

solution to the problem. As early as 1957, a scientific consensus 

had concluded that deep underground salt beds were the best re

positories for long-lived and highly radioactive wastes. In 1970, in 

response to increasing expressions of concern about the lack of a 

policy for high-level waste disposal from scientific authorities, 

members of Congress, and the press, the AEC announced that it 

would develop a permanent repository for nuclear wastes in an 

abandoned salt mine near Lyons, Kansas. It aired its plans without 

conducting thorough geologic and hydrologic investigations, and 

the suitability of the site was soon challenged by the state geologist 

of Kansas and other scientists. The uncertainties about the site 

generated a bitter dispute between the AEC on the one side and 

members of Congress and state officials from Kansas on the other. 

It ended in 1972 in great embarrassment for the AEC when the 

43
The Nuclear Power Debate, 1963-1975 

reservations of those who opposed the Lyons location proved to 

be well-founded. 

In addition to debates over ECCS and high-level waste disposal, 

questions over reactor design and safety, quality assurance, the 

probability of a major reactor accident, and other issues fueled the 

controversy over nuclear power. The number of contested hear

ings for plant licenses steadily grew. The ongoing controversy frus

trated Schlesinger's hopes of increasing public confidence in the 

AEC and of defusing the conflicts between opposing views. By 

highlighting the issues on which the AEC's performance was sus

pect, it also obscured the requirements that the regulatory staff 

imposed over the protests and against the wishes of the nuclear in

dustry, the high standards that it demanded in the design and 

construction of nuclear plants, and the conservative assumptions 

that it applied in evaluating plant applications and formulating 

radiation-protection regulations. 

As the nuclear power debate continued, the AEC came under in

creasing attacks for its dual responsibilities for developing and 

regulating the technology. This became a major argument that nu

clear critics cited in their indictments of the AEC; it was, said one, 

"like letting the fox guard the henhouse." The question of creating 

separate agencies to promote and to regulate the civilian uses of 

nuclear energy had arisen within a short time after passage of the 

1954 Atomic Energy Act, but in the early stages of nuclear devel

opment it had seemed premature and unwarranted. It gained 

greater support as both the industry and antinuclear sentiment 

grew, and it took on greater urgency after the Arab oil embargo 

and the energy crisis of 1973-74. One of President Nixon's re

sponses to the energy crisis was to ask Congress to create a new 

agency that could focus on, and presumably speed up, the licens

ing of nuclear plants. After much debate, Congress divided the 

AEC into the Energy Research and Development Administration 

and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in legislation it passed in 

1974. The Energy Reorganization Act, coupled with the 1954 

Atomic Energy Act, constituted the statutory basis for the NRC. 

44
Chapter 2 

The new agency inherited a mixed legacy from its predecessor, 

marked both by 20 years of conscientious regulation and by unre

solved safety questions, substantial antinuclear activism, and 

growing public doubts about nuclear power.

45
C"hiapter 3 

The Nuclear 

Regulatory 

Cornission and 

Three Mile Island
Chapter 3

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission began its operations as a 

separate agency in January 1975. In many ways, it carried on the 

legacy inherited from the AEC. It performed the same licensing 

and rule-making functions that the regulatory staff had dis

charged for two decades. It also assumed some new administrative 

and regulatory duties. The NRC, unlike the AEC's regulatory 

staff, was the final arbiter of regulatory issues; its judgment on 

safety questions was less susceptible to being overridden by devel

opmental priorities. This did not mean that the NRC acted with

out regard to industry concerns or that its officials always agreed 

on policy matters, but it did mean that the agency's statutory man

date was clearly focused on ensuring the safety of nuclear power. 

The NRC devoted a great deal of attention during its first few 

months to organizational tasks. At the same time it carried out a 

variety of regulatory responsibilities. It continued to review plant 

applications and to issue construction permits and operating li

censes for new units. The NRC deliberated over a number of 

pressing problems shortly after its establishment. One issue that 

received particular notice, both within and outside of the NRC, 

was the safeguarding of nuclear materials. The term "safeguards" 

applied to the prevention of theft, loss, or diversion of nuclear fuel 

or other materials or the sabotage of nuclear plants. This question 

took on greatly increased importance and visibility in the early 

1970s because of growing apprehension about the activities and 

intentions of terrorist groups. There was a wave of terrorist bomb

ings, assassinations, hijackings, and murders at that time, perhaps 

the most shocking of which was the murder of Israeli athletes at 

the 1972 Olympics. 

The increase in such attacks around the world raised new concerns 

that terrorists would be able to build an atomic bomb, which was 

underscored by the well-publicized warnings of some nuclear ex

perts that making a bomb was not terribly difficult for anyone who 

obtained the necessary materials. As a result, the AEC, and after 

its abolition, the NRC, substantially strengthened regulatory re

quirements for the transportation of nuclear materials and for 

47
The NRC and Three Mile Island 

nuclear plant security. The NRC also devoted considerable atten

tion to the export of nuclear materials to foreign countries. The 

United States was by far the leading supplier of nuclear fuel and 

other materials for the production of nuclear power abroad, and 

the NRC exercised important responsibilities for ensuring that 

nuclear exports did not encourage the proliferation of nuclear 

weapons or make them available to terrorists. 

Despite the prominence of safeguards problems, the cental issue 

for the NRC at the time of its creation remained reactor safety. 

There were two events in the early months of the NRC's existence 

that commanded the particular attention of the agency and the 

public. The first was a major fire at TVAs Browns Ferry nuclear 

plants near Decatur, Alabama in March 1975. In the process of 

looking for air leaks in an area containing trays of electrical cables 

that operated the plants' control room and safety systems, a tech

nician set off the fire. He used a lighted candle to conduct the 

search, and the open flame ignited the insulation around the 

cables. The fire raged for over seven hours and nearly disabled the 

safety equipment of one of the two affected units. The accident 

was a blow to the public image of nuclear power and the recently

established NRC. It focused new attention on preventing fires 

from threatening plant safety and on the possibility of "common

mode failures," in which a single cause could initiate a chain of 

events that incapacitated even redundant safety features. 

The second source of unusually extensive discussion and consider

able controversy shortly after the NRC began operations was the 

publication of the final version of the "Reactor Safety Study" that 

the AEC had commissioned in 1972. The purpose of the study was 

to estimate the probability of a severe reactor accident, an issue 

that the AEC had never found a satisfactory means of addressing. 

To direct the study the AEC had recruited Norman C. Rasmussen, 

a professor of nuclear engineering at MIT. Rasmussen, assisted by 

AEC staff members, applied new methodologies and sophisti

cated "fault-tree" analyses to project the likelihood of a serious 

nuclear accident. The final Rasmussen report, released in 

48
Chapter 3 

October 1975, concluded that in comparison to other risks, includ

ing fires, explosions, toxic chemicals, dam failures, airplane 

crashes, earthquakes, tornadoes, and hurricanes, those from nu

clear power were very small. 

The Rasmussen report, while hailed as a pioneering effort that en

lightened a complex subject, also drew criticism from both inside 

and outside the NRC. Some authorities suggested that the study 

failed to account for the many paths that could lead to major acci

dents. Others complained that the data in the report did not sup

port its executive summary's conclusions about the relative risks 

of nuclear power. After considering the arguments on both sides 

of the issue, the Commission in January 1979 issued a policy state

ment that withdrew its full endorsement of the study's executive 

summary. 

Within a short time, discussion of severe nuclear accidents ceased 

to be strictly a matter of theoretical projections. On March 28, 

.1979, an accident at Unit 2 of the Three Mile Island nuclear sta

tion near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania made the issue starkly and 

alarmingly real. As a result of a series of mechanical failures and 

human errors, the accident (researchers later determined) uncov

ered the reactor's core and melted about half of it. The immediate 

cause of the accident was a pressure relief valve that stuck open 

and allowed large volumes of reactor coolant to escape. The reac

tor operators misread the signs of a loss-of-coolant accident and, 

for several hours, failed to take action to cool the core. Although 

the plant's emergency cooling systems began to work according to 

design, the operating crew decided to reduce the flow from them 

to a trickle. By the time that the nature of the accident was recog

nized and the core was flooded with coolant, the reactor had suf

fered irreparable damage. 

The credibility of the nuclear industry and the NRC fared almost 

as badly. Uncertainty about the causes of the problem, confusion 

about how to deal with it, conflicting information from govern

ment and industry experts, and contradictory appraisals about the 

49
The NRC and Three Mile Island 

Three Mile Island. 

looking southeast. 

The accident oc

curred in the reac- F tor at the right of 

the photograph. . 

level of danger in the days following the accident often made the 

authorities appear inept, deceptive, or both. Press accounts fed 

public fears and fostered a deepening perception of a technology 

that was out of control. Walter Cronkite told television viewers 

that as a result of the accident, "the danger faced by man for tam

pering with natural forces, a theme from the myths of Prometheus 

to the story of Frankenstein, moved closer to fact from fancy." 

Newspapers ran headlines warning, for example, of a "RACE 

WITH NUCLEAR DISASTER" and "RISK OF MELTDOWN." 

Long after the technological dangers had subsided, the psycholog

ical effects of the TMI accident lingered on. 

In some ways, the TMI accident produced reassuring, or at least 

encouraging, information for reactor experts about the design and 

operation of the safety systems in a large nuclear plant. Despite 

the substantial degree of core melting that occurred, containment 

was not breached. From all indications, the amount of radioactiv

ity released into the environment as a result of the accident was 

very low. One estimate suggested that of 66 million curies of 

iodine-131 in the reactor at the time of the accident, only 14 or 15 

curies escaped. Further, the emergency core cooling systems 

worked effectively once plant operators allowed them to run ac

cording to design.

50
Chapter 3 

Those findings were overshadowed by the unsettling disclosures 

of TMI. It focused attention on possible causes of accidents that 

the AEC/NRC and the nuclear industry had not considered exten

sively. Their working assumption had been that the most likely 

cause of a loss-of-coolant accident was a break in a large pipe that 

fed coolant to the core. But the destruction of the core at TMI had 

resulted not from a large pipe break but from a relatively minor 

mechanical failure that operator errors had drastically com

pounded. 

Perhaps the most distressing revelation of TMI was that an acci

dent so severe could occur at all. Neither the AEC/NRC or the in

dustry had ever claimed that a major reactor accident was impossi

ble, despite multiple and redundant safety features built into 

nuclear plants. But they had regarded it as highly unlikely, to the 

point of being nearly incredible. The TMI accident demonstrated 

graphically that serious consequences could arise from unantici

pated events. This enhanced the credibility of nuclear critics who 

had argued for years that no facility as complex as a nuclear plant 

could be made fool-proof. Public opinion polls taken after TMI 

showed a significant erosion in support for nuclear power. One 

survey found for the first time that the number of respondents who 

opposed building more nuclear units exceeded those who favored 

new plants. At the same time, the polls indicated that the public 

did not want to abandon nuclear power or close existing plants. 

The NRC responded to TMI by re-examining the adequacy of its 

safety requirements and imposing new regulations to correct defi

ciencies. It placed much greater emphasis on "human factors" in 

plant performance in an effort to avoid a repeat of the operator 

errors that had exacerbated the accident. The agency developed 

new requirements for operator training, testing and licensing, and 

for shift scheduling and overtime. In cooperation with industry 

groups, it promoted the increased use of reactor simulators and 

the careful assessment of control rooms and instrumentation. In 

addition, the agency expanded its resident inspector program to 

station at least two of its inspectors at each plant site. 

51
The NRC and Three Mile Island 

The NRC devoted greater attention to other problems that had 

received limited consideration before TMI. They included the 

possible effects of small failures that could lead to major conse

quences, such as happened at Three Mile Island. The agency 

sponsored a series of studies on the ways in which "small breaks 

and transients" could threaten plant safety. A second area on 

which the NRC focused was the evaluation of operational data 

from licensees. It established a new Office for Analysis and Evalu

ation of Operational Data to systematically review information 

from and the performance of operating plants. This action re

flected the belated recognition that malfunctions similar to those 

at TMI had occurred at other plants, but the information had 

never been assimilated or disseminated. 

The NRC undertook other initiatives as a result of TMI. It de

cided to survey radiation protection procedures at operating 

plants in order to assess their adequacy and to look for ways to im

prove existing regulations. It expanded research programs on 

problems that TMI had highlighted, including fuel damage, 

fission-product release, and hydrogen generation and control. In 

light of the confusion and uncertainty over evacuation of the areas 

surrounding TMI during the accident, the NRC also sought to up

grade emergency preparedness and planning. Those and other 

steps it took in the wake of the accident were intended to reduce 

the likelihood of a major accident, and, in the event one occurred, 

to enhance the ability of the NRC, the utility, and the public to 

cope with it. 

While the NRC was still deliberating over and revising its require

ments in the aftermath of TMI, another event shook the industry 

and further undercut public support for nuclear power. This time, 

the NRC was a distant though interested observer rather than a 

direct participant. On April 26, 1986, unit 4 of the nuclear power 

station at Chernobyl in the USSR underwent a violent explosion 

that destroyed the reactor and blew the top off it. The explosion 

and subsequent fire in the graphite core spewed massive amounts 

of radioactivity into the environment. The accident occurred 

52
Chapter 3 

during a test in which operators had turned off the plant's safety 

systems and then lost control of the reactivity in the reactor. With

out emergency cooling or a containment building to stop or at 

least slow the escape of radiation, the areas around the plant 

quickly became seriously contaminated and a radioactive plume 

spread far into other parts of the Soviet Union and Europe. Al

though the radiation did not pose a threat to the United States, 

one measure of its intensity in the Soviet Union was that levels of 

iodine-131 around Three Mile Island were three times as high af

ter Chernobyl than they were after the TMI accident. 

The design of the Chernobyl reactor was entirely different than 

that of U. S. plants, and the series of operator blunders that led to 

the accident defied belief. Supporters of nuclear power empha

sized that a Chernobyl-type accident could not occur in commer

cial plants in the United States (or other nations) and that Ameri

can reactors featured safety systems and containment to prevent 

the release of radioactivity. But nuclear critics pointed to Chemo

byl as the prime example of the hazards of nuclear power. A repre

sentative of the Union of Concerned Scientists remarked: "The 

accident at Chernobyl makes it clear. Nuclear power is inherently 

dangerous." A popular slogan that quickly appeared on the plac

ards of European environmentalists was: CHERNOBYL IS 

EVERYWHERE. The Chernobyl tragedy was a major setback to 

the hopes of nuclear proponents, to win public support for the 

technology and to spur orders for new reactors. U. S. utilities had 

not ordered any new plants since 1978 and the number of cancella

tions of planned units was growing. ."We're in trouble," conceded 

a spokesman for the Atomic Industrial Forum. "If the calls I have 

received from people in the industry are a good indication, they 

are all very worried." 

The Chernobyl accident added a new source of concern to long

standing controversies over the licensing of several reactors in the 

United States. In the aftermath of Three Mile Island, the NRC 

had suspended the granting of operating licenses for plants that 

were in the pipeline. The "licensing pause" for fuel loading and 

53
The NRC and Three Mile Island

low-power testing ended in February 1980. In August 1980 the 

NRC issued the first full-power operating license (to North 

Anna-2 in Virginia) since TMI. In the following nine years it 

granted full-power licenses to over forty other reactors, most of 

which had received construction permits in the mid-1970s. In 1985 

it authorized the undamaged Three Mile Island Unit 1, which had 

been shut down for refueling at the time of the TMI-2 accident, to 

resume operation. 

Although many of the licensing actions aroused little opposition, 

others triggered major controversies. The two licensing cases that 

precipitated what were perhaps the most bitter, protracted, and 

widely publicized debates were Seabrook in New Hampshire and 

Shoreham on Long Island, New York. The key, though hardly the 

sole, issue in both cases was emergency planning. The Three Mile 

Island accident had vividly demonstrated the deficiencies in exist

ing procedures for coping with an off-site nuclear emergency. The 

lack of effective preparation had produced confusion, uncer

tainty, and panic among members of the public faced with the 

prospect of exposure to radiation releases from the plant. After 

the accident, the NRC, prodded by Congress to improve emer

gency planning, adopted a rule that required each nuclear utility 

to come up with a plan for evacuating the population within a ten 

mile radius of its plant(s) in the event of a reactor accident. The 

rule applied to plants in operation and under construction. It 

called for plant owners to workwith state and local police, fire, and 

civil defense authorities to put together an emergency plan that 

would be tested and evaluated by the NRC and the Federal Emer

gency Management Agency (FEMA). The NRC expected coop

eration between federal, state and local government officials to 

upgrade emergency plans and provide better protection for the 

public if a serious nuclear accident occurred. 

The NRC did not, however, anticipate that state and local govern

ments would try to prevent the operation of nuclear plants by re

fusing to participate in emergency preparations. That was pre

cisely what the states of New York and Massachusetts sought to do 

54
Chapter 3

in the cases of Shoreham and Seabrook. In New York, Governor 

Mario M. Cuomo and other state officials claimed that it wouldbe 

impossible to evacuate Long Island if Shoreham suffered a major 

accident. Although plant proponents pointed out that emergency 

plans did not require the evacuation of all of Long Island if a seri

ous accident occurred, the state refused to join in emergency plan

ning procedures or drills. The NRC granted Shoreham a low

power operating license, but the state and the utility, Long Island 

Lighting, eventually reached a settlement in which the company 

agreed not to operate the plant in return for concessions from the 

state. 

Opponents of a 

full-power license 

for Seabrook 

o express their views at NRC headquar 1 ters in Rockville, 

~i IMaryland, 199u. 

A similar issue arose at Seabrook, though the outcome was differ

ent. The plant is located in the state of New Hampshire, but the 

ten mile emergency planning zone extended across the state line 

into Massachusetts. By the time that construction of the plant was 

completed, Massachusetts Governor Michael S. Dukakis, largely 

as a result of Chernobyl, had decided that he would not cooperate 

with emergency planning efforts for Seabrook. New Hampshire 

officials worked with federal agencies to prepare an emergency 

plan, but Massachusetts, arguing that crowded beaches near the 

Seabrook plant could not be evacuated in the event of an accident,

55
The NRC and Three Mile Island

refused. As a result of the positions of New York regarding Shore

ham and Massachusetts regarding Seabrook, in 1988 the NRC 

adopted a "realism rule," which was grounded on the premise that 

in an actual emergency state and local governments would make 

every effort to protect public health and safety. Therefore, in cases 

in which state and/or local officials declined to participate in 

emergency planning, the NRC and FEMA would review and eval

uate plans developed by the utility. On that basis, the NRC issued 

an operating license for the Seabrook plant. The arguments that 

raged over emergency planning and other issues at Shoreham and 

Seabrook attracted a great deal of attention, spawned heated con

troversy, and raised anew an old question of the relative authority 

of federal, state, and local governments in licensing and regulating 

nuclear plants. 

The lengthy and laborious licensing procedures that applicants 

had to undergo in the cases of Shoreham (which had received a 

construction permit in 1973), Seabrook (which had received a 

construction permit in 1977), and other reactors stirred new inter

est in simplifying and streamlining the regulatory process. It 

seemed apparent that the complexity of the licensing process was 

a major deterrent to utilities who might consider building nuclear 

plants. By the late 1980s, the nuclear option looked more appeal

ing to some observers, including some environmentalists, because 

of growing concern about the consequences of burning fossil fuel, 

especially acid rain and global warming. Furthermore, nuclear 

vendors were advancing new designs for plants that greatly re

duced the chances of TMI-type and other severe accidents. 

One way that the NRC proposed to facilitate licensing procedures 

was to replace the traditional two-step process with a one-step sys

tem. This would ease the burden on applicants, but it raised a vi

tally important question: what level of detail would the NRC re

quire in applications for advanced plants in order to satisfy its 

concerns about their safety? The agency had never required the 

detailed technical information in construction permit proposals 

that it expected in operating license applications, but in a one-step 

56
Chapter 3

licensing process it was unclear how much data would be needed 

to evaluate and certify safety designs. 

After long discussions that reflected differing views among com

missioners, staff, and nuclear vendors, the NRC reached a deci

sion on what constituted an "essentially complete design." It es

tablished a "graded approach" in which the level of detail that an 

applicant would be required to submit varied according to the sys

tem's, structure's, or component's relationship to plant safety. 

The objective of the NRC's action was to ensure safety while pro

viding flexibility for the development of new designs. 

While the NRC was deliberating over a number of new regulatory 

procedures and problems, it was also reviewing some old issues. 

The most prominent of those questions was radiation standards. 

The NRC had begun work on revising its radiation protection reg

ulations in the aftermath of Three Mile Island. Although the AEC 

had issued "design objectives" that in effect reduced the permissi

ble levels of radioactive effluents from nuclear plants in the 1970s, 

the basic regulations for occupational and population exposure 

had remained unchanged since 1961 (an average of 5 rem per year 

for radiation workers and 0.5 rem annually for individuals in the 

general population). Based upon new recommendations of the 

NCRP and the ICRP and upon new research findings, the NRC 

tightened its regulations in several regards, the most prominent of 

which was to restrict population exposure to 100 (rather than 500) 

millirem per year. 

Despite new scientific information and epidemiological studies, 

the health effects of low-level radiation remained a source of un

certainty and controversy. Some studies provided results that 

were very reassuring about the hazards of radiation emissions 

from nuclear plants. A major survey conducted by the National 

Cancer Institute, for example, found no increased risk of cancer in 

107 counties in the United States located near 62 nuclear power 

plants. But other evidence was more disquieting, such as a cluster 

of cancer cases near the Pilgrim reactor in Massachusetts and a 

57
The NRC and Three Mile Island

high incidence of leukemia in children around the Sellafield re

processing plant in Britain. 

None of the studies on the effects of low-level radiation was, or 

claimed to be, definitive. The subject continued to be a source of 

interest to and debate among scientists. It also continued to be a 

source of considerable anxiety to the public. The most graphic evi

dence of public apprehension about radiation was the reaction to 

the NRC's announcement of a new policy on radiation levels that 

were "below regulatory concern" (BRC). In June 1990, the NRC 

published a policy statement outlining its plans to establish rules 

and procedures by which small quantities of low-level radioactive 

materials could be largely exempted from regulatory controls. The 

agency proposed that if radioactive materials did not expose indi

viduals to more than 1 millirem per year or a population group to 

more than 1000 person-rem per year, they could be eligible for the 

exemption from full-scale regulatory control. This would not be 

granted automatically; the NRC would consider requests for ex

emptions for sites that met the dose criteria through its rulemak

ing or licensing processes. It intended that the BRC policy would 

apply to consumer products, landfills, and other sources of very 

low levels of radiation. The NRC explained that the BRC policy 

would enable it to devote more time and resources to major regu

latory issues and thereby better protect public health and safety. 

The NRC's announcement of its intentions on BRC was greeted 

with a firestorm of protest from the public, Congress, the news me

dia, and antinuclear activists. Some critics suggested that the 

agency was defaulting on its responsibility for public health and 

that BRC would allow the nuclear industry to discard dangerously 

radioactive wastes in public trash dumps. It was, alleged one anti

nuclear group, "a trade-off of people's lives in favor of the finan

cial interests of the nuclear industry." In public meetings that the 

NRC held to explain BRC, aroused citizens called repeatedly for 

the resignation of the commissioners or their indictment under 

criminal charges. Eventually, the Commission terminated action 

on the BRC issue. The outcry over BRC underscored the 

58
Chapter 3 

difficulty of even attempting to sponsor a calm and reasoned dis

cussion on the subject of radiation hazards. 

The uproar over BRC was one of several indications of how the 

regulatory environment had changed since the passage of the 1954 

Atomic Energy Act made possible the development of nuclear 

power for electrical generation. A public that had welcomed the 

growth of nuclear power in the 1950s had become skeptical of the 

technology and suspicious of those responsible for its safety. Nu

clear plants had become larger, more complicated, and more 

costly to build. The longest running nuclear plant until its closure 

in 1992, Yankee Rowe in Massachusetts, had a capacity of 175 

electrical megawatts and was constructed for about $39 million. 

By comparison, for example, Seabrook had a capacity of 1150 

electrical megawatts and cost over $6 billion to build. The length 

and complexity of the licensing process had grown commensu

rately. The owners of Yankee Rowe applied for a construction 

permit in 1956 and received an operating license in 1960 without a 

murmur of protest. Seabrook's owners applied for a construction 

permit in 1973 and received an operating license in 1990 after long 

legal proceedings and many angry demonstrations. The contrasts 

between Yankee Rowe and Seabrook were results of a series of 

inter-related technological, administrative, and political develop

ments that shaped the history of nuclear regulation.

59
Chapter 4 

New Issues, 

New Approaches

k
Chapter 4

The focus of the NRC's activities gradually shifted away from li

censing requirements for new plants to overseeing the safety of 

operating plants. Since it received no applications for construc

tion permits after 1978 and had completed work on most operat

ing license applications a decade later, it devoted much less atten

tion and fewer resources to its licensing responsibilities. During 

the first half of the 1980s, the NRC's deliberations and policy deci

sions were in large measure a response to Three Mile Island. By 

the latter part of the decade, however, the agency was addressing a 

wide range of new questions relating to the safety of the about 100 

plants in operation. Not surprisingly, the issues it considered 

often raised difficult and divisive questions for which there were 

no ready answers. 

One of the first and most important issues that the NRC tackled as 

it turned its attention to the regulation of operating nuclear plants 

was maintenance. It estimated in 1985 that more than 35 percent 

of the "abnormal occurrences" that it had reported to Congress 

over the previous ten years were directly attributable to mainte

nance deficiencies. Many of the problems arose from human er

rors, such as failing to follow procedures, installing equipment in

correctly, or using the wrong parts to make repairs. The need for 

improvements in maintenance was underscored when an incident 

at the Davis-Besse plant in Ohio resulted in the loss of all feedwa

ter in 1985. Failures in feedwater pumps, including auxiliary 

pumps that had not been tested or maintained, caused what could 

have produced a major accident. 

The nuclear industry was well aware of shortcomings in mainte

nance programs and took steps to make improvements. The NRC 

applauded the efforts of the industry but insisted that licenses still 

"had a long way to go in the maintenance area." Therefore, in 

June 1988 the Commission directed the NRC staff to draft a main

tenance rule as a matter of "HIGHEST priority." In June 1991, 

despite industry objections that a rule was not necessary, the 

Commission voted to issue a regulation that required adequate 

maintenance programs of all commercial nuclear plants. It 

61
New Issues, New Approaches 

acknowledged the substantial improvements that many licensees 

had made, but it concluded that an industry-wide regulation was 

still necessary. The NRC worked with the industry to establish 

procedures for monitoring the effectiveness of maintenance pro

grams. 

Another key issue that the NRC considered was the decommis

sioning of plants, the final step of the life cycle for operating facili

ties. Between 1947 and 1975, a total of 50 nuclear plants, including 

five small experimental power reactors, were decommissioned. In 

the late 1970s, this experience gave the NRC confidence that de

commissioning of nuclear plants would not present major prob

lems when their licenses expired. In response to an investigation 

by the U.S. General Accounting Office, congressional hearings, 

and a petition from environmental organizations, however, the 

NRC took a closer look at the subject. In 1984, the staff reported 

to the Commission that existing regulations covered decommis

sioning in a "limited, vague, or inappropriate way and are not fully 

adequate." As a result, the NRC drafted a rule that required licen

sees to specify how they planned to ensure that sufficient funding 

was available to clean up the sites on which their plants were lo

cated and to make certain that radiation levels at decommissioned 

sites were low enough to allow the land to be used for other pur

poses. After soliciting public comments and making modest revi

sions in the draft, the NRC published a final rule in 1988. 

The decommissioning rule was much more comprehensive than 

earlier NRC regulations but it did not resolve all of the issues that 

arose on the subject. Within a short time after the rule became fi

nal, the agency faced an unprecedented and unanticipated ques

tion-what to do about funding for "prematurely shut down reac

tors." Three plants, including Shoreham, closed well before their 

operating licenses expired, which raised questions about how to 

pay for costs of decommissioning reactors that had not operated 

long enough to accumulate adequate funding. This issue was un

derscored by the costs of decommissioning the Yankee Rowe 

plant, which ran much higher than projected. While the NRC 

62
Chapter 4

wrestled with this question, it also deliberated over the level of 

radiation that should be permitted at the sites of decommissioned 

plants. This issue generated opposing views and sometimes sharp 

differences between the NRC and the Environmental Protection 

Agency. 

As decommissioning issues were debated, the NRC devoted con

siderable attention and resources to the question of license re

newal. While some utilities were closing reactors long before their 

40-year operating licenses expired, others were weighing the pos

sibility of extending the lives of plants beyond 40 years. The 

40-year licensing period for nuclear plants was a rather arbitrary 

compromise written into the 1954 Atomic Energy Act that was not 

based on technical grounds or operating experience. In the late 

1970s, industry groups closely examined the issue of plant life ex

tension for the first time. The Electric Power Research Institute, 

for example, concluded that reconditioning of old plants offered 

potentially major benefits, but it cautioned that the benefits de

pended on financial considerations as well as on technical assess

ments, environmental issues, and projections of power availabil

ity. Those uncertainties were compounded by industry's concern 

that the NRC was not prepared to address the issues surrounding 

license renewal promptly and knowledgeably. 

In 1985, the NRC, prodded by Chairman Nunzio J. Palladino, un

dertook a careful analysis of license renewal. The agency had 

sponsored research on the critical question of the safety effects of 

plant aging for years, but many technical questions remained to be 

answered. License renewal also raised complex legal and policy is

sues. The NRC staff cited the "central regulatory question" that 

plant life extension presented: "What is an adequate licensing ba

sis for renewing the operating license of a nuclear power plant?" 

The NRC deliberated over this issue and its corollaries for several 

years. Eventually, it decided that the maximum length of an ex

tended license would be 20 years. It also concluded that using the 

existing regulatory requirements governing a plant would offer 

63
New Issues, New Approaches 

reasonable assurance of adequate protection if its license were re

newed, provided that the "current licensing basis" was modified to 

account for age-related safety issues. In 1991, the Commission ap

proved a regulation on the technical requirements for license re

newal. After considering ways to evaluate the environmental con

sequences of license renewal, the NRC elected to develop a 

generic environmental impact statement that covered effects that 

were common to all or most nuclear plants. In April 1998, Balti

more Gas and Electric became the first utility to apply for license 

renewal for its Calvert Cliffs plants on the ChesapeakeBay. Duke 

Energy Corporation followed suit in July 1998 when it sought li

cense extensions for its Oconee nuclear units in South Carolina. 

As the NRC considered its policies on license renewal, represen

tatives of the nuclear industry expressed concern that the costs 

and uncertainties of the regulatory process would negate the po

tential advantages of plant life extension. This was consistent with 

strong industry criticism of the NRC's regulations or the ways in 

which they were implemented. A report prepared for an industry 

group, for example, concluded in 1994 that the NRC's policies and 

practices represented a "serious threat to America's nuclear en

ergy resource" by distracting plant management, undermining 

public trust in nuclear power, and "pricing nuclear power out of 

the competitive energy marketplace." Industry protests about reg

ulatory burdens were nothing new, of course, but they had taken 

on increased urgency and intensity by the early part of the 1990s. 

Industry officials complained that NRC regulations were in many 

cases intrusive, excessive, and potentially counterproductive. 

They particularly objected to the agency's numerical ratings of 

plant performance, which they found to be arbitrary and inconsis

tent. In September 1998, the Commission indefinitely suspended 

the "Systematic Assessment of Licensee Performance" program, 

which the agency had created in the wake of the Three Island acci

dent to evaluate and score management practices in several differ

ent categories of plant operation. In June 1999, it began a pilot 

64
Chapter 4 

program to test methods of providing more consistent and pre

dictable plant evaluations. 

As a part of its reexamination of the regulatory process, the NRC 

evaluated the role of risk assessment and performance indicators. 

The benefits of risk assessment had been debated since the Ras

mussen report without making a major impact on the formulation 

or enforcement of the NRC's rules. Nuclear industry representa

tives complained that the NRC relied too heavily on "prescrip

tive" regulations. They urged the agency to place greater empha

sis on non-prescriptive performance-based assessments that 

would recognize the significant improvements that industry had 

achieved since Three Mile Island. This would allow licensees 

greater leeway to determine how to accomplish regulatory goals 

and presumably cut costs without sacrificing safety. In 1991, the 

Commission instructed the agency staff to investigate the feasibil

ity of using more performance-based regulations that focused on a 

"result to be obtained, rather than prescribing to the licensee how 

the objective is to be obtained." This initiative received strong 

support from Ivan Selin, chairman of the NRC from 1992 to 1995, 

from his successor, Shirley Ann Jackson, chairman from 1995 to 

1999, and from their colleagues on the Commission. 

The effective employment of performance-based regulation was 

closely tied to informed analyses of risk. In 1995, the Commission 

unanimously approved a policy statement that encouraged the ap

plication of probabilistic risk assessment "as an extension and en

hancement of traditional regulation." The agency believed that 

risk analysis would enable it to "focus on those regulated activities 

that pose the greatest risk to the public" and to ease "unnecessary 

burdens on licensees." The industry and the NRC agreed on this 

general objective, but many uncertainties about how to apply the 

concept of risk assessment in practice had not been resolved. The 

industry was concerned that the NRC gave unwarranted emphasis 

to the redundant "defense-in-depth" approach that had been ap

plied since the earliest days of the nuclear power industry. Those 

concerns were magnified in 1997 when the Commission voted to 

65
New Issues, New Approaches 

require a containment spray system in a new Westinghouse plant 

design even though risk assessments indicated that the design was 

"safe enough" without the spray system. Despite this affirmation 

of the importance of defense-in-depth, the NRC continued to 

search for ways to use probabilistic risk assessment to improve the 

regulatory process. 

Although risk-informed regulation offered many potential bene

fits for evaluating the technical performance of nuclear plants, it 

was not a reliable way to detect safety issues that could generate 

acute public concern. In that regard, it was not necessarily a useful 

means of building public confidence in nuclear power technology 

or the NRC. This was amply demonstrated when a series of prob

lems arose at the Millstone nuclear station, which included three 

plants located on the northern side of Long Island Sound in Con

necticut. The safety issues at Millstone required attention, but 

they were not so serious that risk analysis was likely to identify 

them as priority matters. As Commissioner Nils J. Diaz com

mented in 1997, of the many issues raised about Millstone, "only a 

handful appear to have been safety-significant." Nevertheless, the 

failures at Millstone created a great deal of controversy and a bar

rage of criticism of the NRC. 

The uproar over Millstone began in the early 1990s when several 

plant employees claimed that they were harassed, intimidated, 

and/or dismissed from their jobs by the owner of the plants, North

east Utilities, for calling attention to safety problems and viola

tions of NRC regulations. The NRC investigated the concerns 

raised by the "whistle-blowers" and determined that the safety is

sues they raised were not of major significance and had been cor

rected. But the agency also concluded that the utility had harassed 

employees and assessed it a fine of $100,000, the maximum 

amount allowed by law. This did not satisfy the dissidents at Mill

stone and elsewhere, who insisted that the NRC was neither 

prompt nor firm in dealing with the issues they cited or in protect

ing them from retaliation by their employers. As a result of the 

complaints from Millstone and other plants, the agency 

66
Chapter 4

reexamined and eventually tightened its policies in order to pro

vide better protection to whistle-blowers who contacted it about 

safety issues. 

Meanwhile, new revelations at Millstone generated increasing 

NRC scrutiny. It also commanded growing media attention, much 

of which was sharply critical of the NRC. In 1993 and again in 1994 

the NRC fined Northeast Utilities for procedural violations that 

the agency viewed as serious lapses in the management of the 

Millstone units. The utility pledged to improve its performance 

and "to resolve issues raised by [its] employees." Nevertheless, 

another issue raised by company employees soon triggered new 

reservations about safety at Millstone and the effectiveness of the 

NRC's enforcement policies. In this case, the whistle-blowers ob

jected to the company's practice of placing the entire nuclear core 

into the spent fuel pool at Millstone Unit 1 during refueling opera

tions. The plant's "final safety analysis report," which provided 

the basis for the its operating license, specified that only one-third 

of the spent fuel rods would be moved into the pool. But 

Millstone-1 had performed "full-core off-loads" for years as an 

"emergency" procedure with the knowledge of the NRC. Finally, 

after employees questioned the practice, Northeast Utilities ap

plied for a license amendment that expressly permitted full-core 

off-loading, and in November 1995 the NRC granted its approval. 

By that time, the utility and the NRC were the subjects of exten

sive and unflattering coverage in the local media. In March 1996, 

the criticism reached a new level of visibility when Time magazine 

ran a cover story on the whistle-blowers who had "caught the Nu

clear Regulatory Commission at a dangerous game." It suggested 

that an accident in a spent fuel pool posed the hazard of "releasing 

massive amounts of radiation and rendering hundreds of square 

miles uninhabitable." It charged that the NRC "maybe more con

cerned with propping up an embattled, economically straitened 

industry than with ensuring public safety." NRC chairman Jack

son conceded that the Time article demonstrated that "not all as

pects of nuclear regulation or nuclear operations in certain places 

67
New Issues, New Approaches 

are as they should be," but she strongly denied the implication that 

"the Millstone situation borders on an impending TMI- or 

Chernobyl-type disaster." 

Amid the growing criticism, the NRC conducted its own reviews to 

identify and correct errors that the Millstone experience brought 

to light. An internal task force reported in September 1996 that 

the "safety significance of Millstone's refueling practices was 

low." Nevertheless, it recommended a series of procedural, infor

mational, and management improvements. The agency also un

dertook a careful study of a frequently-used provision in its regu

lations that allowed licensees to make changes in their plants 

without NRC permission under certain conditions. In 1999, after 

considerable debate over the threshold for permitting such 

changes, the Commission approved revisions designed to clarify 

the rule and provide guidance on when NRC consent was neces

sary within a risk-informed framework. 

While the NRC examined its own regulations and procedures, it 

conducted an expanding probe of the Millstone plants. In May 

1996 the NRC's inspector general faulted the agency for failing to 

recognize the problems at Millstone and impose corrective actions 

much earlier. When the NRC's investigations, along with those 

conducted by the utility, turned up hundreds of performance and 

procedural deficiencies, the agency took the unusual step of stipu

lating that the three plants, all of which had been shut down, would 

not be allowed to restart without a formal vote of the Commission. 

Eventually, after the utility made management changes, took a se

ries of steps to address its shortcomings, and decided to perma

nently close Millstone-i, the Commission authorized the restart 

of units 2 (in 1999) and 3 (in 1998). The series of problems at Mill

stone underscored the general difficulties that the NRC had en

countered with plants that did not perform up to standards and 

did not correct their deficiencies promptly or effectively. The 

Commission devoted a great deal of energy to dealing with the 

many aspects of encouraging or forcing improvements in plants 

that did not fully meet its requirements. 

68
Chapter 4 

Although reactor safety issues captured a lion's share of public no

tice, the NRC also devoted substantial resources to a variety of 

complex matters in the area of nuclear materials safety and safe

guards. The protection of nuclear materials from theft or diver

sion remained a major agency concern, though it did not com

mand the level of public attention it had received in the 1970s. In 

cooperation and sometimes in conflict with other government 

agencies, the NRC evaluated the safety problems involved in 

building and operating repositories for high-level and low-level 

radioactive waste. Despite federal legislation that attempted to 

provide the means for establishing permanent waste sites and the 

efforts of federal and state officials, scientists, engineers, and 

other professionals, the disposal of radioactive wastes remained a 

source of intense public concern and bitter political controversy. 

The NRC also considered its role in regulating certain medical 

uses of radioactive materials. Although it exercised only limited 

responsibilities in the field of "radiation medicine," it sought to 

ensure that patients received the proper doses of radiation from 

procedures under its regulatory authority. Its rules elicited pro

tests from medical practitioners and organizations who com

plained about regulatory overkill that intruded into physician

patient relationships. 

The issues surrounding the regulation of nuclear materials, the 

problems at Millstone, and the use of risk assessment underscored 

patterns in the history of nuclear regulation over a period of four 

decades. The nuclear industry and materials licensees often as

serted that regulatory requirements were too burdensome, too in

flexible, and too strict. Nuclear critics, on the other hand, fre

quently lamented that regulatory requirements were too lax, too 

sympathetic to industry concerns, and too inattentive to public 

safety. The NRC, and the AEC before it, attempted to find a 

proper balance between essential and excessive regulation, but 

this was a difficult and uncertain task that usually elicited com

plaints from one side or all sides of regulatory issues. The NRC 

sought to separate valid criticisms from those that were exagger

69
New Issues, New Approaches 

ated or ill-informed, but this process won few plaudits from its dif

ferent (and frequently competing) constituencies. "The bane of 

the regulator," a senior agency official remarked in 1998, "is to 

feel unloved." The ongoing effort to promote the safe use of nu

clear materials and the safe operation of nuclear power plants 

without imposing undue burdens on licensees ensured that nu

clear regulation would remain a complex and controversial public 

policy issue.

70
Federal Recycling Program
NUREG/BR-O1 75, Rev. 1