Mad Science: The Nuclear Power Experiment

by Joseph Mangano

  Sodium reactors also fared poorly overseas. Probably the most disaffected experience occurred in France, which began operating a large 1200 megawatt reactor called the Superphénix at Creys-Malville, just thirty miles from Lyon, in 1985. But the reactor ran into considerable problems. A decade later, after the unit had only operated at full power for six months, a French nuclear official declared that Superphénix had “collected an impressive series of accidents.” The French government denied a request to restart the reactor in 1998, and acquired the reactor for the sum of one franc. With 3,300 tons of radioactive sodium that must be constantly heated still in the reactor, the cleanup will continue until at least the year 2025.

  But despite the string of failures, the backers of sodium-cooled reactors won’t quit. In December 2004, the City Council of Galena, Alaska voted to serve as a test site for a new sodium reactor made by Toshiba. Galena is a village of 1,000 people close to the Arctic Circle, inaccessible by road. The tiny (ten megawatt) reactor would provide power to the town, and Toshiba hopes it will serve as a prototype for other reactors. But a number of safety and logistical issues stand in the way of the Galena proposal, and as of early 2011, Toshiba has yet to submit an application to the NRC.

  In 2007, the Department of Energy gave a three-year, $550,000 grant to Kansas State University to produce a sodium-cooled nuclear “fast” reactor. Professor and lead researcher Akira Tokuhiro responded to the grant by stating that “liquid sodium works well” for the task of cooling nuclear reactor fuel. The failure of the Santa Susana experience, and a half century of insoluble problems apparently hasn’t dampened the cheerful outlook of the proponents of this type of reactor. But the fact remains that, fifty-four years after Santa Susana opened, sodium-cooled reactors remain very much on the drawing board, a once-bright hope that has failed miserably.

  Other nuclear programs at the Southern California site that were seen as so promising half a century ago have failed. One of these is reprocessing, which was one of the ideas that the Santa Susana lab was so eager to develop. Not only did it not get much traction in the lab, but the major US program in West Valley, New York, just south of Buffalo, was a disaster. The AEC reprocessed used nuclear fuel there beginning in 1966, but unexpectedly large amounts of contamination caused the program to halt just six years later. President Gerald Ford suspended the program, and his successor Jimmy Carter terminated it, leaving the site with huge amounts of contamination that has yet to be successfully cleaned up. However, much like sodium-cooled reactors, the idea of reprocessing has been recently reintroduced, as the Energy Department is building a reprocessed nuclear fuel facility at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina.

  The nuclear program at Santa Susana was a harbinger for the demise of sodium-cooled reactors – but it represented much more. Even though all US government nuclear plants had poor safety records in the early days of the atomic era, Santa Susana must be held in special regard. First, it was located very close to a large metropolitan area, something no other site can claim. Los Angeles, just thirty miles away, is now home to 10 million persons. In addition, the rapid growth of the area even closer to the Santa Susana site creates another concern. The formerly rural open field has grown into a populated suburb; today, about 150,000 live within five miles of the plant, while 500,000 live within ten miles.

  Second, it also was the home of another polluting industry, namely the Rocketdyne program of developing rocket fuel and propulsion system; Rachel Carson’s 1962 classic book Silent Spring was one of the first, and most famous, sources that established the synergistic effects of multiple environmental contaminants being far more harmful than their sum. The classic example is contained in the numerous studies of coal miners who smoked having a far greater risk of lung disease than those who fell in just one of the two categories. Combining large amounts of radioactive materials with a cocktail of other contaminants presents a major environmental health concern.

  Finally, while it is literally impossible to calculate the emissions from Santa Susana, and compare these with levels from other weapons plants, it is quite possible that this site produced more contamination than any other. Shoddy management practices and decisions, plus the lack of a strong containment in the reactor buildings, added to this risk. Atomics International phased out its nuclear program in Southern California by the 1980s, but the years of secrecy and denial of any environmental contamination or health risk merely delayed the next phase of the Santa Susana story – discovery.

  Evidence Trumps the Big Lie

  By the late 1970s the US atomic power program was in trouble. What had not long ago been the fair-haired child of government and industry, a can’t-miss source of energy, had given way to a series of disappointments. However, the door to the decline of nuclear reactors was opened by trends in nuclear weapons programs. After the nadir of Cold War hostilities and its nuclear component was reached in the early 1960s during the Cuban Missile Crisis, things began to change.

  In a democratic society like the US, change is almost inevitably a bottom-up process in which popular sentiment motivates leaders to create policies, rather than the other way around. The trend against the nuclear arms buildup was no exception, and it was done at a time when public opinion was freely expressed by rank and file Americans for a variety of issues. By the early 1960s, the civil rights movement had matured into a coordinated program that involved thousands of the most disenfranchised Americans pushing for change that guaranteed minorities full legal rights under the Constitution. The civil rights movement was soon followed by a similarly large movement against the growing American military involvement in Vietnam, on both moral and legal grounds.

  Public protests also began against the harm to the environment caused by the growing use of toxic chemicals, a movement inspired by Rachel Carson’s classic 1962 book Silent Spring. Part of the environmental movement was the “ban the bomb” campaign against nuclear weapons testing and proliferation, which had became a strong force nationwide by the early 1960s, perhaps most strongly embodied in the group Women Strike for Peace. Protests against nuclear weapons didn’t end with the 1963 Test Ban Treaty, which only relegated atomic tests to underground locations. On June 12, 1982, nearly one million people crowded into New York’s Central Park to call for an end to the nuclear arms race.

  Public fears about nuclear weapons had become so entrenched that leaders in both the US and Soviet Union recognized the need for action. The tough talk of the 1950s about inevitable nuclear war and the need to “win” such a war faded, and instead was gradually replaced by détente, a dialogue about ways to control arms and reduce nuclear risk. These beliefs were translated into public policy, and during the 1960s and 1970s a series of nuclear weapons-related treaties negotiated by the two superpowers were enacted:

  The treaties did not ban atom bomb tests entirely; France and China had not signed the 1963 accord, and continued to test bombs in the atmosphere – but in time, following the American, Soviet, and British lead, the last aboveground test worldwide occurred in China in 1980. Underground tests were still permitted, but the changing atmosphere led US political leaders to reduce the number of nuclear weapons tests, even in the face of opposition by many military officials. In the seven-year period 1963–1969, a total of 324 bombs were tested beneath the Nevada desert. Just a decade later (1973–1979), this number had plummeted to just 147, a 55% decrease. Another measure of a slowdown in Cold War atom bomb testing was the reduction in the number of tests kept secret from the public (all such tests were revealed by the Department of Energy in 1994). In the same time periods, these non-reported tests fell from ninety-one to fifty six, a 38% decline. Finally, in September 1992, reduction in atomic tests would culminate with the last US test.

  The slowdown in testing and in development of new weapons systems had the effect of finally stopping the buildup of nuclear arsenals and reducing them instead. The US total had surged from about 1,000 in 1953 to its all time peak of 31,255 in 1967; but just eleven years
later, dismantling had reduced this figure to 24,418, a drop of 22% and a strong head start to sustained disarmament leading to the current figure of about 5,000.

  The downturn of nuclear weapons production and testing in the 1960s and 1970s softened the base on which the nuclear power program stood. With much less of an incentive to distract people from an inevitable nuclear war, there was less need to promote the “peaceful atom.” Moreover, the skepticism displayed by the public against institutions like legalized segregation, wars to halt the spread of communism, and industrial practices that contaminated the environment shifted easily into the nuclear power program. By the late 1970s, it had been a quarter century since Eisenhower’s speech that kicked off the American nuclear power program. Extensive promises had been made. Many billions had been spent. The public wanted to know results – the true results, not rose-colored ones.

  The record had certainly had not lived up to the vision of a generation earlier. The US was not on its way to the number of 1,200 reactors predicted by the AEC – in fact, it would be lucky to reach 100. The very earliest reactors created a lot of hype, as when Eisenhower flipped a switch to start Shippingport as America’s first power reactor. But they were few in number and small in size, incapable of generating much power. By early 1969, more than fifteen years after Eisenhower’s speech, just thirteen reactors had ever been completed and put into operation (and two of these had already shut down permanently). These thirteen reactors had an average of only 163 megawatts electrical, compared to a typical model of over 1,000 after the late 1970s.

  In addition to those closed permanently after just a few years, these first reactors typically experienced multiple mechanical problems causing the reactor to close for considerable periods, during which no electricity could be produced. At least one, Fermi 1, experienced an accident that could have been catastrophic (near a large metropolitan area like Detroit). Some types of reactors, like sodium-cooled reactors at Hallam and Fermi 1, fared poorly amidst numerous mechanical breakdowns. All reactors generated high level waste that had to be constantly cooled and stored at each plant indefinitely, as the AEC had not developed a permanent plan for waste storage. The first thirteen reactors to produce and sell power (excluding much smaller research and experimental models) had all closed permanently by the 1990s, after an average of just eighteen years in operation, far less than the predicted forty. By early 1969, these thirteen reactors could not even produce 1% of the electricity badly needed by a rapidly growing nation.

  Nuclear utilities were not deterred by the slow start. They ordered hundreds more reactors, all larger ones capable of producing more power. The 1970s would be better, according to the latest promise, and applications for 152 new reactors were officially submitted to federal regulators in the decade. But this new crop didn’t fare any better. These reactors took a long time to build; an average of 13.5 years elapsed between the utility’s application to the AEC/NRC and when the reactors began producing electricity – if they were finished at all. Only forty-five reactors of the 152 applications were eventually completed; the other 107 were cancelled or halted during construction and never operated. Cost overruns were huge; conservatively, reactors wound up costing at least three times more than original predictions, sometimes much more. There were frequent mechanical problems, some of which were serious, such as the 1975 accident at the Browns Ferry 1 reactor in Alabama. Finally, there was the partial core meltdown at the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania in 1979, described in greater detail later in this book.

  While people were unhappy with the high costs – that they paid in the form of higher utility bills – it was the safety problems that caused public opinion to boil over in a series of large-scale assemblies against nuclear power. From 1976–1978, multiple protests were held at Seabrook, New Hampshire; Diablo Canyon, California; Trojan, Oregon; and Shoreham, New York. Tens of thousands took part, and thousands were arrested. Media covered each of these events, which reached millions of television viewers or newspaper readers. The March 1979 Three Mile Island meltdown only energized the protest movement. Two months later, 65,000 showed up at a Washington, DC rally against nuclear power. Four months after that, 200,000 crowded into lower Manhattan for a similar event, featuring performances by various celebrity musicians. In the late spring and early summer of 1979, protests were held at Three Mile Island, Pennsylvania; Vermont Yankee, Vermont; Rocky Flats, Colorado; and Rancho Seco, California, as well as continued protests at Diablo Canyon, Seabrook, and Shoreham. Even Hollywood helped galvanize public opinion. The dramatic movie The China Syndrome starring Jane Fonda, Michael Douglas, and Jack Lemmon about a meltdown at a nuclear power plant opened on March 16, 1979. Just twelve days later, the core at the brand new Three Mile Island melted down. Millions flocked to theaters to see the film, reinforcing the dangers of reactors to many more Americans.

  It was in this environment of public disappointment, skepticism, and fear of health dangers that Santa Susana halted its nuclear operations. Rocketdyne officials knew that its nuclear program had caused extensive contamination, but they simply closed up shop, left the radioactive mess in Area IV virtually untouched, and went on with its rocket program. They did this not just because they elected to do so, but because they were allowed to do so. No regulator, no elected official, no reporter, no health researcher, no whistleblower at the site, no concerned citizen raised any concerns about Santa Susana’s environmental health threat.

  U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (http://www.nrc.gov)

  But that changed, quickly and dramatically.

  The initial change was modest. It was led by Daniel Hirsch, a college professor and activist who had been teaching nuclear policy at the University of California, Santa Cruz and UCLA. In 1970, Hirsch also had founded the Committee to Bridge the Gap, a citizen group interested in better understanding the risks of nuclear energy in California. Hirsch knew a lot about Santa Susana – perhaps more than anybody outside of Atomics International. From his lectures, some of his UCLA students became curious about the plot of land in Ventura County that started so promisingly but was now leaving the nuclear business. In 1976, the students took action, remembers Hirsch:

  The students went to look for records on Santa Susana. The irony is that they were able to find a lot of primary documents because Chauncey Starr was teaching at UCLA and had brought a lot of his stuff with him.

  The Chauncey Starr to whom Hirsch was referring was a leading physicist who had worked with Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer on the atomic bomb project during World War II. After the war, he joined Rockwell as Vice President and became President of Atomics International for twenty years, before becoming Dean of the UCLA School of Engineering and Applied Science in 1967. Starr was an avowed nuclear proponent throughout his life, and his opinion never wavered despite the many problems encountered by the nuclear industry. In 2003, just four years before his death at age ninety-five, he commented on the idea for a transcontinental, interconnected network of air-cooled underground nuclear power plants spaced about 100 miles apart: “I think in thirty to fifty years there will be systems like this. I think the advantages of this are sufficient to justify it.”

  Hirsch’s students searched the UCLA library system, a painstaking task in the days before the Internet. To their surprise, in a distant annex of one library at the school, they found a gold mine of information Starr had brought with him from Atomics International. Apparently, Starr saw no need to protect, hide, or destroy records that would incriminate the operators of Santa Susana for unsafe practices. Sure enough, the annex collection included document after document describing, among other things, the disaster of July 1959. The students carefully perused the documents, plus photos and films, and brought them to Hirsch. The discovery was initially reported by the Los Angeles peace group Another Mother for Peace, but otherwise received little notice. Three years later, a renewed effort to publicize the still-secret problems of Santa Susana went a little better. In the immediate aftermath of the Three
Mile Island meltdown, The Committee to Bridge the Gap issued a report on the 1959 accident. The NBC affiliate in Los Angeles aired a week-long series of reports on Santa Susana, and some local residents went public with what they believed to be a cluster of leukemia cases, although they didn’t get far with the Ventura County Health Department.

  During the 1980s, little progress was made in understanding Santa Susana’s effects on environmental health, and undoing the contamination that still was present at the site. This slow start was partly a result of government and industry doing what it could to quell any concerns. In 1982, Atomics International made a movie about the decommissioning of the Sodium Reactor Experiment, leading viewers to believe that decommissioning meant decontamination. In 1985, the Energy Department hired experts from the Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois to take environmental samples at Santa Susana, and they produced a report giving Santa Susana a clean bill of health, declaring boldly that “no radiological threat” existed at the site.

  But these attempts to end environmental health concerns just could not work, given the enormous scale of contamination (and anecdotes of people suffering from diseases) in the new era of skepticism. In 1986, Hirsch was leading a panel convened by the interior committee of the House of Representatives. He made a point to inform committee members about problems with the N-reactor (a nuclear power reactor) at the Hanford complex, noting that the reactor had some structural similarities to the Chernobyl reactor that had experienced a catastrophic meltdown earlier that year. As the Cold War drew to an end, Congress was moved to order the Energy Department to study contamination at all DOE nuclear sites, including Santa Susana. In May 1989, an Energy Department contractor issued a report on contamination at the site, and the media jumped on some of the juicy details. An example of these reports came from Atomics International contractor James Werner, who commented on the dreadful conditions he observed at one of Santa Susana’s waste disposal pits: