It should begin with a national commitment to rapidly implementing existing energy efficiency technologies. The transition from fossil fuels and nuclear power to renewable energy sources, such as solar, wind and biomass, should begin immediately, even as massive resources are shifted into renewable energy research. Down the road, the goal should be decentralization, with energy sources located as close to end-users as possible.
Unfortunately, the framework of the U.S. energy debate has been set by the Bush administration's National Energy Strategy, which is essentially a plan to accelerate the country's current deadly course. Ignoring all existing and emerging evidence of the catastrophic environmental effects of reliance on fossil fuels and nuclear power, the administration and its Congressional allies, especially Senator Bennett Johnston, D- Louisiana, are seeking to shore up the oil, coal and nuclear power industries.
Many of the administration's proposals are designed to prolong the life of the otherwise-decaying nuclear power industry. One of the most insidious proposals would limit (eliminate being the real goal) citizen participation in nuclear-power-plant licensing by enacting a "one-step" licensing process.
Every currently operating U.S. nuclear power plant went through a more open two-step process, as required by the Atomic Energy Act of 1954. Citizens were able to participate in a public hearing before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) granted a plant a construction license and in another hearing before it gave the plant permission to go on line.
In 1989, the NRC changed the rules of the game to block citizen involvement. Under the NRC's licensing rules, a utility could apply to the NRC for a site permit up to 20 years before it develops concrete plans to build a nuclear plant, and have its reactor design certified as acceptable by the NRC 15 years before construction. When the utility finally decides to begin construction, citizens would have a right to a hearing on the utility's application for a combined construction and licensing permit, but not on site or design issues, since the NRC would have already resolved those questions.
A three-judge panel of the District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals struck down many portions of the NRC's rule. The entire Court of Appeals has reheard the case, and a decision is now pending.
But one-step licensing could become law even if the appeals court rules against the NRC's 1989 procedure, through the legislative process. It is currently a provision of the Senate's Energy Bill.
The perils of the one-step process are clear. A 1984 report from the NRC's Atomic Safety and Licensing Board panel to the Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards detailed more than 20 reactor safety improvements resulting from the hearing process. Among the public contributions cited by the panel were: improvements in the steam generator system at Minnesota's Prairie Island facility; upgrading effluent-treatment systems at Michigan's Palisades plant and Illinois's Dresden facility; and new regulations to improve the protection of safety equipment against fires at all plants. In addition, utilities' awareness of the public scrutiny to which the hearing process subjected them undoubtedly helped temper their recklessness.
Yet even with the scrutiny afforded by the two-step process, the nuclear industry has built up an atrocious safety record. A recent report from the Washington, D.C.-based Safe Energy Communications Council cites a December 1991 NRC document which indicates nuclear power plants are beset by 787 safety problems - these are ones identified by the pro-nuclear NRC - that utilities have failed to address.
The one-step process will make it even easier for the nuclear industry to demonstrate its callous disregard for safety and the potential consequences of a major nuclear accident.
The nuclear industry and its friends in government know that it is citizen protest and attention to safety matters that has led to the industry's current predicament, with no nuclear plant ordered after 1973 ever coming on line. With the one-step process, the industry hopes to do an end-run around the major obstacle to its continued survival.
The 40-year U.S. experience with nuclear power has been an unmitigated disaster. One-step licensing is a step in the wrong direction.
Instead, U.S. nuclear energy policy should be reversed. Citizens should support, and Congress should adopt, legislation introduced by Rep. Peter Kostmayer, D- Pennsylvania, (now in the House Interior Committee's Energy Bill), which, while inadequate, would at least allow citizens the right to a hearing before a nuclear facility began operating if they could present significant new information not previously considered by the NRC. But Kostmayer's legislation should only be seen as a brief, interim measure, to be kept in place until Congress requires the rapid phase-out of nuclear power.