[Mb-civic] Amity Shlaes: US must exorcise its nuclear demons

[Michael Butler]

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Amity Shlaes: US must exorcise its nuclear demons
>By Amity Shlaes
>Published: April 24 2005 20:12 | Last updated: April 24 2005 20:12
>>

Jane screws up, yet Jane endures. That seems to be the lesson of the success
of Jane Fonda's new autobiography*. One reason Americans like Miss Fonda is
that her challenges are so often their challenges. Young Jane had a bad
family (cold Henry as father, the suicidal mother). Many Americans have
faced the same obstacle. Adult Jane spent many of her middle years
justifying her own stupid behaviour in Vietnam. Ditto American baby boomers
- although their behaviour did not usually range to posing for photos with
North Vietnamese anti-aircraft guns.

But there is a final Jane-related challenge still confronting the US. It is
a challenge that Congress is reviewing as it moves forward on energy
legislation, and it is one that George W. Bush, the president, will discuss
with Tony Blair, the UK prime minister, at a forthcoming summit of the Group
of Eight in Scotland. It is America's China Syndrome.

The China Syndrome has nothing to do with China. The name comes from Miss
Fonda's 1979 Columbia Pictures film about a massive meltdown at a nuclear
power plant, in which a reactor core burns deep into the earth, or "all the
way to China" (hence the title). The film featured Miss Fonda with bright
red hair and the giant hoop earrings that were popular that year - a year
when there was a revolution in Iran and the petrol price soared. Two weeks
after The China Syndrome opened in New York cinemas there was a genuine
nuclear accident at Three Mile Island, outside Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
Small amounts of radioactivity escaped into the atmosphere. This created, as
Miss Fonda puts it, "the most shocking synchronicity between real life
catastrophe and movie fiction ever to have occurred". Shares in nuclear
power companies plunged. Shares in Columbia Pictures rose. Miss Fonda and
her then husband, the activist Tom Hayden, embarked on a 52-city anti-nuke
tour.

The nuclear disaster in Chernobyl in Ukraine that came half a decade later
reinforced the prejudice against the industry, even though US standards were
far higher than Soviet ones. The introduction of new plants ceased; the
authorities suspended projects under construction. The most spectacular of
these suspensions was Long Island's Shoreham plant. Lilco, the utility,
spent more than $5bn on the plant only to see regulators decommission it.
Electricity ratepayers on Long Island were forced to shoulder much of the
cost of the loss.

This anti-nuclear attitude seemed affordable as long as other fuels existed.
There was always coal. In the past decade, American power companies leapt
into the natural gas business. Gas-fired plants were less likely to attract
demonstrators. Investors wanted to avoid a Shoreham repeat - hundreds of
thousands of hours and billions of dollars committed only to confront
failure.

But, as Peter Huber and Mark Mills remind us in a book** considerably less
self-indulgent than Miss Fonda's, the substitution has been outrageously
wasteful. It takes four tons of coal to provide the power needs of one
inhabitant of Chicago's Lake Shore Drive for a year. A few ounces of uranium
could cover the same need. There is also the damage to the environment. The
central hypocrisy of the green movement in our era is that anti-nuclear
policy has driven the US to use the hydrocarbon fuels so much opposed by the
anti-global warming movement. Or, as Mr Huber puts it: "If we had simply
built all the plants that were in the pipeline at the time of Three Mile
Island then we would have reduced current coal combustion sufficiently to
satisfy the Kyoto treaty."

Meanwhile, over decades, US nuclear-power plants operated successfully and
increasingly efficiently. That record ought to have been considered against
the Three Mile Island story. But it was not.

The mood is now changing and the energy options open today are far more
numerous than in the 1970s or 1980s. Scarcity, once the premise of all
energy policy, can now be questioned: new technologies mean that the US may
never run out of energy. As for the China Syndrome, the US is beginning to
overcome it. Useful changes in the law made over a decade ago mean permits
can be granted upfront, allowing companies to avoid a Shoreham experience.
Now several consortia are seeking permits for new plants. James Lucier of
Prudential Equity Group predicts that a site permit will be issued in the
next year.

The Bush administration for its part backs increased use of nuclear energy.
The energy bill is likely to provide investment tax credits for new plants.
This month Mr Bush argued for the nuclear components of the new legislation.
On Friday Dick Cheney, the vice-president, spoke about getting past the
Three Mile Island experience.

But the White House needs to be more aggressive. In coming weeks we will
hear a lot about a "nuclear option" in the Senate, the phrase referring to
the White House's intent to escalate its procedural war against Democratic
filibusters. Let the White House also go "nuclear" on nuclear energy. After
all, anti-nuclear romanticism can always come back into fashion. Hoop
earrings have. And, as Miss Fonda proved in her day, vehemence can be very
effective.
>
>* My Life so Far (Random House);
>** The Bottomless Well: The Twilight of Fuel, the Virtue of Waste, and Why we
will Never Run out of Energy (Basic Books)
>
>amity.shlaes at ft.com
>
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