First Published: The Call, Vol. 8, No. 11, March 19, 1979.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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Fresh proof of the dangers of nuclear power plants under capitalism came March 13 as the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission shut down five Eastern nuclear plants.
From the Virginia Electric and Power Co. to Maine Yankee, the five plants will remain closed until they can prove their cooling systems can withstand earthquakes.
The question remains: What about the plants at Indian Point. N.Y., and Diablo Canyon, Ca., and others built near geological faults?
AII the nuclear plants in this country are unsafe. Fires, leaks, electrical failures, errors in design, lack of worker training and improper dumping at nuclear plants have endangered the health of thousands of people and caused untold damage to the environment.
The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), based in Cambridge, Mass., has just issued a book-length collection called the “Nugget File,” showing how safety is compromised at the 71 nuclear plants now operating in the U.S.
According to UCS founder and MIT professor Henry W. Kendall, U.S. industry pushed forward reactor construction too fast in the ’50s and ’60s. The reactors now in operation, says Kendall, incorporate “a whole generation of design blunders.”
Among examples in the UCS report was an incident at Commonwealth Edison’s Quad Cities No.2 reactor at Cordova, Ill., in which an atomic reactor was allowed to overheat all night without being corrected. If a reactor overheats, it could melt, and set the stage for a major radiation release from the fuel “core” of the power plant.
The UCS also cited incidents at other nuclear plants, like the accidental connection of a radioactive waste storage tank to a drinking fountain, and the accidental discharge of 14,000 gallons of radioactive water that had been held back by a basketball used as a makeshift plug.
Fire is one of the most dangerous kinds of “accidents” that can happen at a nuclear plant. In the seven-hour fire at the Brown’s Ferry nuke in Alabama in 1975, 1,600 electrical cables were burned or charred, disabling the Emergency Core Cooling System (ECCS) and dangerously overheating one of two reactors there. There was no independent back-up cooling system.
In theory, the ECCS installed at most plants is supposed to guarantee that the radioactive fuel “core” will not overheat.
In fact, according to a recent UCS brochure, the cooling system “has never been adequately tested.” Even veteran Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) research scientists, the brochure continues, “have expressed misgivings about this safety system.” The UCS says it has obtained internal government documents cataloging “numerous defects in current ECCS equipment.”
Just as the bosses have sacrificed safety to profits inside the plant, so have they trampled on safety in storing and dumping nuclear waste, which can remain radioactive for 100,000 years or more. U.S. capitalism, with all its advanced-technology, has not found it “profitable” to develop a reliable, long-term method of storage or disposal of these deadly wastes.
Right now, much of the waste sits under water in “temporary” holding pools at reactor sites around the country. Examples of leakage abound.
Dumping wastes right into the environment is also common. From 1973 to 1977, the Zion, Ill., plant dumped 100,000 gallons of water containing radioactive tritium into Lake Michigan. And in Denver, Colo., an old dumping site for uranium waste was discovered last month under a factory. Officials believe there are 20 other old radioactive dumps in the city.
The dangers of nuclear power plants are not inherent in the industry. “In principle,” says Prof. Kendall of UCS as quoted in the March 12 Fortune, it ought to be possible to design a safe reactor.
Under capitalism however, profits come first, and the people’s well-being, second. That’s why no nuclear reactor or storage site in the U.S. today is safe.
Properly used, nuclear power is enormously efficient because it doesn’t use up scarce resources like coal and oil. Instead, under capitalism, nuclear plants threaten the health and safety of U.S. workers and the people as a whole, and their products are often instruments of mass destruction.