The Quest: Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World

by Daniel Yergin

  Influential scientists and members of the foreign-policy community in the United States and other countries began to question the promotion of nuclear power—not on grounds of safety, but because of the risks of proliferation. During World War II, Harvard chemistry professor George Kistiakowsky, known as “Kisty,” had been one of the chief designers of the atomic bomb at the secret Los Alamos laboratory. Later he was the White House science adviser to President Eisenhower. But now, in 1977, troubled by second thoughts, he said, “We must hold back on great expansion of nuclear power until the world gets better. It’s just too damn risky right now.”19

  THREE MILE ISLAND

  Whatever their bitter differences, on one thing proponents and opponents of nuclear power could absolutely agree: The core of an operating reactor had to be kept “constantly supplied with copious amounts of coolant to dissipate the heat produced by fission.” Otherwise, something terrible could happen.

  And that nightmare scenario suddenly seemed about to become a reality—in the predawn hours of March 28, 1979, in Unit 2 at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant, on the Susquehanna River, near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. The chain reaction of events started at 4:00 a.m. with a shutdown in the feedwater pumps that were meant to keep the reactor core cool. Initially the problems were dismissed as a “normal aberration.” Then a whole series of further malfunctions and operator errors ensued, one piling on top of the next. At one point, the instrumentation misled the operators into thinking that there was too much water in the cooling system, instead of too little. They turned off the emergency cooling system and shut down the pumps that were circulating water, which eliminated their ability to remove heat from the reactor core. All this generated a sequence of events that melted part of the reactor’s core, forced a complete shutdown of the plant, and led to a minor release of radioactive steam. It also ignited fears of a major radioactive leak and a total meltdown .20

  The result was immediate panic. “Nuclear Nightmare” was the cover of Time magazine. The New York Post headlined “Nuclear Leak Goes Out of Control.” Thousands of people fled their homes; residents over a wide area were instructed to keep their windows tightly shut and turn off air conditioners to prevent intake of contaminated air. Almost a million people were told to prepare for immediate evacuation.

  A few days after the accident, Jimmy Carter, the nuclear engineer–turned–president, arrived by helicopter at Three Mile Island. He viewed the crippled reactor from a school bus and then, along with his wife, Roslynn, toured the plant’s control room with his shoes garbed in yellow plastic booties. The president promised to “be personally responsible for informing the American people” about the accident. Fears were further stoked by the coincidental release of a motion picture, The China Syndrome, about a nuclear meltdown. The film and its message became a national sensation, helping to feed the panic.21

  THE AFTERMATH

  The accident at Three Mile Island riveted the world. It also led to an overhaul of safety management, including much greater focus on human factors and preventing operator errors. Who better to provide understanding of what had gone wrong and what needed to be done than Admiral Hyman Rickover ? Jimmy Carter asked his old boss to help him with the investigation.

  Rickover wrote a lengthy private letter to the president “to put the issue in perspective as I see it based on my own experience.” In a letter of lasting value for its insight into disasters, Rickover wrote:Investigations of catastrophic accidents involving man-made devices often show that:1. The accident resulted from a series of relatively minor equipment malfunctions followed by operator errors.

  2. Timely recognition and prompt corrections . . . could have prevented the accident from becoming significant.

  3. Similar equipment malfunctions and operator errors had occurred on prior occasions, but did not lead to accidents because the starting conditions, or sequence of events, were slightly different. If the earlier incidents had been heeded, and prompt corrective actions taken, the subsequent catastrophic accident would have been avoided.

  4. To reduce the probability of a repetition of similar or worse catastrophic accidents, adequate technical standards must be established and enforced, and increased training of operators must be provided.

  This pattern has been characteristic of broken dams, aircraft crashes, ship sinkings, explosions, industrial fires etc.

  “As was predictable,” the admiral said, the investigation into Three Mile Island “revealed the same pattern.” Rickover went on to identify many problems, from lack of training and discipline in operations to lack of standardization. “For example, it makes no sense that the control room for Unit 1 at Three Mile Island is designed much differently than the control room for Unit 2, even though both reactor plants were designed by the same manufacturer.”

  Rickover did warn the president against relying upon a “ ‘cops and robbers’ syndrome” between government regulators and the nuclear power industry. Government regulators would never be sufficient and could not adequately do the job. Instead the admiral advocated that the utilities come together to create a central organization that could provide “a more coordinated and expert technical input and control for the commercial nuclear power program than is presently possible for each utility with its limited staff”—a position that he had advocated for years.22

  Shortly after, the nuclear power industry founded the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations to serve exactly that purpose. The institute became the industry’s own watchdog, and a very tough one, with the utilities stringently evaluating one another. The companies all understood that the viability of nuclear power in the United States was at stake and that they were all in it together. The industry could not withstand another accident. It would operate at Rickover standards.

  The accident at Three Mile Island brought the great nuclear bandwagon to a screeching halt. Orders for more than 100 new reactors in the United States were eventually canceled. The last nuclear power reactor to go into operation in the United States was one that had been ordered in 1976.

  The next several years proved to be a time of agony for the U.S. power industry. A few utilities went bankrupt. Others came very close. Construction was halted on plants that were as much as 90 percent completed. The Shoreham plant on Long Island was actually fully completed and underwent low-level testing. But in the face of local opposition, after producing only a small amount of power, it was shut down forever. Eventually the $6 billion plant was sold off for a grand total of one dollar to the Long Island Power Authority.

  Still, over 100 nuclear power reactors did end up operating in the United States, although often at far higher cost than originally expected and with construction extended over much longer time spans than planned. They became part of the base load of the nation’s power supply. But they were not operating anywhere near their full capacities. Improving operations became the top priority for the industry. To do so it drew on the most obvious pool of talent—the alumni from Admiral Rickover’s nuclear navy. The mission of the retired naval officers was to make the fleet of existing nuclear power plants work better, at Rickover standards.

  Still what was remarkable was how fast the nuclear power industry had developed and how large it had grown. The design and building program had commenced only in the early 1960s. Yet within little more than two decades, nuclear power was supplying about 20 percent of U.S. electricity, and that remained the case even after the brakes were slammed on.

  FRANCE’S TRANSFORMATION

  Nuclear development was also stymied in other countries. Popular opposition to nuclear power had emerged in Europe prior to Three Mile Island. Austria completed a nuclear power plant at Zwentendorf, 20 miles from Vienna. But it was never turned on and it has sat idle ever since. In many other countries, political stalemate and indecision were also slowing ambitious programs.

  One country that went resolutely ahead was France. In the immediate aftermath of the 1973 embargo, Jean Blancard, the senior energy official
in the government, made the case to President Georges Pompidou that France had to decisively move away from oil—especially oil in electrical generation. The nation’s electricity supply could not depend on oil, which could be cut off. “The period from here on will be quite different—a transformation, not a crisis,” Blancard said to the president. “It is not reasonable,” he continued, for France to be “dependent” on decisions from the Middle East. “We must pursue a policy of diversification.” Pompidou was more than receptive to Blancard’s argument. Though seriously ill with cancer and swollen from the effects of treatment, he convened his senior advisers and confirmed nuclear power as the way to eliminate oil from French electricity and restore autonomy to the nation’s energy position. Nuclear power, rather than oil, would increasingly be the basis of France’s energy supply, complemented by a return to coal and a new emphasis on energy efficiency.

  Yet, to the government’s consternation, the nuclear program immediately ignited determined opposition across the country. Four hundred scientists signed a proclamation demanding that the government postpone the installation of new plants until all safety questions could be answered.23

  Despite the protests, and large demonstrations around the country, France’s centralized political system, bolstered by the prestigious engineering culture in the upper reaches of French government, locked in the commitment. Even the election in 1981 of the Socialist François Mitterrand as president did not alter the commitment to nuclear power. Labor unions and the communists, who were part of his coalition, were already onboard, as they saw nuclear as a promoter of jobs and energy security. The fact that the state company, Électricité de France, operated the entire power industry also greatly helped. “People trusted EDF,” said Philippe de Ladoucette, chairman of France’s Commission for the Regulation of Energy. “It was seen as the ultimate French champion.” France continued to build dozens of reactors over the decades. One striking result of this continuing commitment was to propel France into the vanguard of the global nuclear supply industry.24

  “BLACK STALKS”

  The other European country that continued to move ahead on nuclear power was the Soviet Union. In 1963–64 the first standard-size civilian reactors in the Soviet Union were commissioned. By the middle of the 1980s, 25 reactors were operating in the Soviet Union.

  One type of Soviet civilian reactor was so similar to Westinghouse’s pressurized light-water reactor that it was dubbed the “Eastinghouse.” Another design was the RBMK, a prototype of which was that first tiny reactor in the scientific city of Obninsk. The RBMK was based on a reactor developed for manufacturing weapon-grade nuclear fuel. As it was being adapted for civilian nuclear power, some Soviet scientists had warned that it was not safe and argued strongly against using it for civilian nuclear power. But the political authorities overruled the scientists. It was much cheaper to build, and it became a mainstay of Soviet nuclear power.

  Four such RBMK reactors were built at the little village of Pripyat, about 65 miles north of Kiev, then the capital of the Soviet republic of Ukraine. But the plant became better known by the name of the nearby town, Chernobyl, which in Ukrainian means “black stalks,” for a long grass that was common to the region.

  In the early morning hours of April 26, 1986, operators were carrying out a poorly designed experiment aimed, ironically, at enhancing the safety of the plant. Through a series of mistakes, they lost control. The first of two explosions blew the top off the reactor, followed by a fire. These reactors did not have the kind of containment vessels that were standard in the West to prevent a catastrophe. Radioactive clouds were released and carried by the winds across vast stretches of the European Continent. The first indications that something had gone seriously wrong were heightened radioactivity readings on sensors in Sweden. The word spread quickly, including back into the Soviet Union. Terrified crowds packed the railway station in Kiev, trying to squeeze onto overcrowded trains and flee the region. Fear and panic spread throughout the Soviet Union. Without any news or information, the rumors became more and more sensational.

  But for more than two weeks the Soviet leadership and media denied that anything serious had happened—it was all the creation of the Western press. One senior Soviet energy official, meeting Westerners in Moscow, pounded his fist down on the table and insisted that any notion of a nuclear accident action was a total fabrication by the Western newspapers.

  Then, on May 14, 1986, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev went on television and in sober, somber tones did something that Soviet leaders never did: gravely reported what had actually happened. While attempting to dispel some of the sensationalism surrounding the event in the Western media, Gorbachev talked about the now-evident perils of what he called “the sinister power of uncontrolled nuclear energy.”25

  This was a historic turning point. Within the Soviet Union, this accident—which according to dogma could never happen—was a major political and social shock that contributed to shattering confidence in the communist system and the myths that helped to hold it together.

  THE EXCEPTIONS

  Across Western Europe, Chernobyl’s impact on the energy sector was immense; it fueled and solidified the opposition to nuclear power. Italy pledged no new nuclear power plants and eventually shut down its capacity. Sweden and Germany introduced moratoria on nuclear power and aimed at a phaseout. Britain’s Atomic Energy Commission prepared to devote the rest of its days to the decommissioning of plants. Chernobyl had done in Europe what Three Mile Island had done in the United States: brought the development of new nuclear power to a stop.

  In Europe, only France plowed on with its program. “France’s commitment to nuclear energy was never reconsidered, in spite of major accidents,” said Philippe de Ladoucette. “Ever since the end of World War I, energy independence had become a motto.” Bolstering all of this was the fact that so many policymakers came from a technocratic engineering background.26

  With its political foundation secured, nuclear would become the indispensable baseload of French power supply. Its 58 reactors supply almost 80 percent of France’s electric power. France is also the largest exporter of electricity in the world: those sales to neighboring countries constitute France’s fourth-largest export.

  In Japan, too, nuclear power plants continued to come online—with more than a dozen in the decade following Chernobyl’s meltdown. But Japan’s cultural legacy regarding nuclear power was more complicated. It was the only country to have ever suffered a nuclear attack, and the politics of nuclear power could engender a powerful emotional response from voters and politicians alike. But the oil shocks of the 1970s, which threatened to undermine Japan’s postwar economic miracle, were deeply traumatic. Indeed, so much so that the political will to support the nuclear program remained strong.

  “Unlike the United States or the United Kingdom, Japan had no choice but to depend on imports for virtually all of its fossil-fuel supply,” said Masahisa Naitoh, a formerly senior energy official in Japan. Accordingly, Japan has viewed nuclear energy as “an affordable, stable electricity source and as essential for Japan’s energy security.” Rather than abandon the nuclear plan, Japan strengthened safety regulations and moved ahead. To a large extent opposition was “neutralized.” By the beginning of 2011 Japan’s 54 operating nuclear reactors were delivering 30 percent of Japan’s total power, and the official target was for nuclear power to provide 50 percent of Japan’s electricity by 2030.27 Japan’s commitment seemed immutable and unshakeable.

  But Japan, along with France, was the big exception.

  WHAT FUEL FOR THE FUTURE?

  In the United States, the shuttering of nuclear development left a big question: If not uranium, what would be the fuel of the future in electric power? Oil was already being driven out of the electric power sector in response to the oil crises of the 1970s. Natural gas was an obvious answer. Except that in 1978, Congress had banned its use in new power plants due to the sharp increase in natural gas prices in the
1970s and the conviction that there was a shortage. Natural gas, it was said, was too valuable to be burned in power plants, but rather should be saved for higher purposes—heating homes. Nuclear power was far from being “too cheap to meter” and was now subject to a de facto moratorium.

  That left only one resource: coal, which once again became the mainstay for much of the new capacity. It was domestic, it was abundant, and it provided security and dependability. But for how long? The costs of new capacity would trigger changes in the regulatory bargain that underlay the power industry in the United States—and, once again, in the decisions about fuels. The most dramatic impact would be in California.

  19

  BREAKING THE BARGAIN

  Almost 1.5 million voters—it was the biggest win ever recorded in a California gubernatorial election: that was the overwhelming margin by which Democrat Gray Davis defeated his Republican opponent in 1998. Because of California’s importance, that triumph automatically started talk of him as a potential future president. Davis was a career Sacramento politician. He had been chief of staff to Governor Jerry Brown in the 1970s and painstakingly climbed his way up the political ladder thereafter. Indeed, so entrenched was Davis in California politics that on his election as governor, an aide joked that in the days since Davis had been chief of staff, it had taken the new governor “23 years to walk 15 feet.”1

  After his first 100 days in office, Davis was more popular than his boss, Jerry Brown, had been in the same time frame and even more popular than California’s best-known former governor, Ronald Reagan. As for being governor, Davis had a plan: do nothing radical. It certainly made sense. After a deep recession, the state’s economy was surging.