Nuclear Power and the Environment: The Atomic Energy Commission and Thermal Pollution, 1965–1971

Abstract

Nuclear Power and the Environment: The Atomic Energy Commission and Thermal Pollution, 1965—1971 J. SAMUEL WALKER During the latter half of the 1960s, the decline of environmental quality in the United States took on growing urgency as a public policy issue. A series of controversies over the effects of substances such as DDT, mercury, and phosphates, ecological disasters such as a huge oil spill off the coast of California and the death of Lake Erie from industrial pollution, and easily visible evidence of foul air and dirty water fueled public alarm about the deterioration of the environment. At the same time that the environmental crisis commanded increasing attention, questions about the availability of electrical power triggered deepening concern. Since the early 1940s, the use of electricity in the United States had expanded by an average of 7 percent per year, which meant that it roughly doubled every decade. Utility and government planners found no indications that the pace of growth was likely to slow in the near future. A report prepared by the White House Office of Science and Technology in 1968 predicted that the nation would need about 250 “mammoth-sized” new power plants by 1990. Power blackouts and brownouts became increasingly common­ place in the late 1960s, graphically illustrating the discomfort and inconvenience that a shortage of electricity could cause.1 Dr. Walker is historian of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and coauthor, with George T. Mazuzan, of Controlling the Atom: The Beginnings of Nuclear Regulation 1946-1962. 'Considerations Affecting Steam Power Plant Site Selection (Washington, D.C.; Executive Office of the President, Office of Science and Technology, 1968); Nucleonics Week, December 12, 1968, pp. 4—5; Jeremy Main, “A Peak Load of Trouble for the Utilities,” Fortune 80 (November 1969): 116-19 ff.; “Why Utilities Can’t Meet Demand,” Business Week, November 29, 1969, pp. 48-62; “Conservation Forces Thwart Utilities’ Hunt for Power Plant Sites,” Wall Street Journal, March 23, 1970, p. 1; “Danger of More Power ‘Blackouts,’ ” U.S. News and World Report, April 20, 1970, pp. 48—50. For the best overviews of environmental issues, see Samuel P. Hays, Beauty, Health, and Permanence: Environmental Politics in th United Slates, 1955—1985 (New York, 1987); Martin V. Melosi, Coping with Abundance: Energy and Environment in Industrial America (Philadelphia, 1985); Martin V. Melosi, “Lyndon Johnson and Environmental Policy,” in Robert A. Divine, Copyright is not claimed for this article. 964 The Atomic Energy Commission and Thermal Pollution 965 The growing public and political concern with environmental quality and the continually increasing demand for electricity put utilities in a quandary. Electrical generating stations were major polluters; fossil fuel plants, which provided over 85 percent of the nation’s electricity in the 1960s, spewed millions of tons of noxious chemicals into the atmosphere annually. Coal, by far the most commonly used fuel, placed a much greater burden on the environ­ ment than other fossil fuels. The sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides that coal plants released were important ingredients in air pollution, and the carbon dioxide they emitted raised the possibility of harmful climatic changes over a long period of time. The difficulties caused by burning coal, and to a lesser extent oil and natural gas, defied easy solutions. The concurrent demands for sufficient electricity and clean air created, in the words of the Conservation Foundation, “a most vexing dilemma: How do we protect the environment from further destruction and, at the same time, have the electricity we want at the flick of a switch?” An article in Fortune magazine depicted the problem in even starker terms: “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.”* 2 After the mid-1960s, utilities increasingly viewed nuclear power as the answer to that dilemma. While conforming with their plans to achieve “economies of scale” by building larger plants, it promised the means to produce sufficient electricity without fouling the air. Envi­ ed., The Johnson Years, vol. 2: Vietnam, the...