Once the aec regulatory staff concludes that the “reasonable assur­ance” test has been met, it abandons all pretense of being in any sense the applicant’s adversary and becomes the applicant’s enthusiastic ally doing all within its power to procure speedy issuance of the construction permit. This begins with the staff’s safety analysis report, which goes to great pains to allay and soothe any concerns which members of the pub­lic might have by sweeping negative considerations under the carpet. Here are some specific examples from the regulatory staff’s safety analysis re­port issued on February 20, 1969, in the Consolidated Edison Indian Point No. 3 case. Indian Point No. 3 is a pressurized water reactor de­signed to produce 965 megawatts electrical, with an ultimate capacity of 1,033 megawatts electrical, to be immediately adjacent to two other Con­solidated Edison nuclear power plants of lesser capacity. It was projected that in 1980 almost 60,000 people will live within a З-mile radius of these plants, and more than 312,000 would live within a 10-mile radius.

The regulatory staff’s safety analysis report was 66 double-spaced pages with an additional 37 pages of appendixes. If one reads this docu­ment carefully and objectively, he cannot escape the conclusion that it is a sugar-coated presentation designed primarily to persuade the reader

* There has been only one case in which an adverse report has been issued. In the Bodega Head case, the acrs issued a favorable report, whereas the aec Regulatory Staff issued a negative report. The applicant, Pacific Gas and Electric Company, promptly withdrew its application.

that all is sweetness and light and that hazards are nonexistent. For ex­ample:

a. The report nowhere points out that the Indian Point No. 3 reactor has a capacity far in excess of that of any other nuclear power plant op­erable in February 1969. As of the date of the report, the largest operable privately owned nuclear power plant in the United States had a capacity of only 567 megawatts electrical. A candid safety analysis would have disclosed this fact and would have discussed the safety significance of the move toward substantially larger reactors. The trend toward larger reac­tors with higher power levels, and the problem of extrapolating from the experience with smaller reactors, have been matters of considerable con­cern to the aec for the past several years. As stated in the 1964 report of the Energy Policy Staff, Office of Science and Technology, Considerations Affecting Steam Power Plant Site Selection (S. David Freeman, a con­tributor to this volume, is director of this staff): “With the growth in size and power level of power reactors, the necessity for, and use of, en­gineered safety features has become an increasingly vital and integral con­sideration in reactor safety design and evaluation.”

b. The report states that Consolidated Edison’s environmental mon­itoring program, in operation since 1958, “has demonstrated that Indian Point Unit No. 1 has had no adverse effect on the environment.” It would be more candid to state that the monitoring program has not produced any evidence of such adverse effect.

c. The report states that the containment structure “will… re­main functional in the event of an earthquake acceleration of 0.15 g.” This is, of course, a prediction based only on untested theoretical analyses.

d. The conclusion is that discharges of radioactive effluents will be “only a small fraction” of the limits specified in Part 20 of the aec’s reg­ulations and that “calculated radiological doses” in the event of an acci­dent are “well within” the aec’s guidelines. This is an invitation to the unsophisticated reader to conclude that no adverse effects will occur. Ac­tually, even these low levels are not known to be safe.*

e. Various safety features of the reactor are discussed and given the

* In the Calvert Cliffs case, the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board suggested that under some circumstances it might be appropriate for the Board to “question the validity” of Part 20 “as establishing the outer limits of acceptable risk.” The Com­missioners thereupon issued a memorandum chastising the Board for this suggestion. The Commissioners apparent attitude that Part 20 is sacred and beyond challenge in specific cases seems strangely inconsistent with one of the provisions of Part 20 it­self, which states that requirements more stringent than those established in Part 20 may be imposed in any specific case if the aec deems such action “appropriate or necessary.” (10CFR§20.502.) staff’s blessing without any indication that they have never been tested in the crucible of experience.

f. There is no explicit recognition anywhere in the report that even minimal risks to the health and safety of the public are involved. And al­though the staff’s ultimate conclusion that there is reasonable assurance of no undue risk would clearly seem to require some finding that the risks which do exist are outweighed by benefits so as to be not “undue,” the report does not discuss benefits at all. Apparently, the entire safety analy­sis proceeds on the assumption that every nuclear power plant is per se sufficiently beneficial to outweigh risks, obviating any necessity for weigh­ing the risks of this particular plant against the benefits of this particular plant.

It is clear, I believe, that the aec regulatory staff, having concluded that there is “reasonable assurance of no undue risk,” becomes an advo­cate of that conclusion and an ally of the applicant in attempting to allay public concern and to get the nuclear power plant licensed and built. This attitude carries over into the hearing. In the uncontested hearing the appli­cant and the aec regulatory staff sing a beautifully harmonious duet. As the aec’s Regulatory Review Panel pointed out in 1965: “It has been the policy of the aec staff counsel to limit cross-examination of the applicant to clarification of those matters which have not already been resolved, with the one exception that cross-examination is normally used to bring out the fact that minimal discharges of radiation are to be expected from routine operations and to bring out some of the plant safeguards in ac­cident situations” (Report to the Atomic Energy Commission, July 14, 1965, p. 41; emphasis added).

The staff’s benevolent attitude is further evidenced by an intriguing footnote in the decision of the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board in the Malibu case. That case involved the question whether an earthquake fault at the site might result in permanent ground displacement. The record in this case included a report by the United States Geological Survey stating that the probability of permanent ground displacement in the next half century was “negligible.” The footnote indicates that this report was based on a report prepared by the Survey’s field geologists which concluded that the probability of faulting was “very low.” The field geologists’ language was changed by their supervisor to “negligible” at the suggestion of the aec regulatory staff*

* One of the field geologists who wrote the original report stated: “Negligible to me means can be neglected. We could not say that the probability of faulting could be neglected.” 2 Commerce Clearing House Atomic Energy Law Reporter, 11,248, at p. 17,459-3. In the Matter of Department of Water and Power of the City of Los Angeles (Malibu Nuclear Power Unit No. 1), З A. E.C. 122, at 124 (1966).