With these radiological safety guides and their purposes in mind, I shall now look at the aec’s reactor licensing and regulation procedures. Everything aec does in this area is necessarily based strictly upon the guides which, as a federal agency, it must follow. If one is unhappy with the guides imposed upon aec, the proper place to complain about them and make suggestions is to the frc, not the aec. There are procedures for doing just that if one takes the time and has the ingenuity to discover them.

The aec is not a nuclear Mafia conspiring to cram unsafe and un­needed nuclear plants down the throat of an unwilling but helpless nation. The predicted population of 300 million people in this country by the year 2000 will create tremendous demands for electricity, two-thirds of which goes to fuel the industries that will provide them their livings. Fur­thermore, the aec’s licensing process is not a device to boost the sale of nuclear power plants without regard for adequate protection of the public health and safety. I wish to emphasize that I am aware of some responsible scientists, having expertise in certain areas, who have raised questions which may have been only partly answered by the presently available in­formation. Their comments, well intended, should be considered. This should be done in a technical meeting where scientists can discuss these matters with their fellow scientists. The public rally, the cardboard pla­card, and the licensing board hearing are inefficient vehicles for technical communication and should not be used for that purpose.

aec’s first step has been to analyze frc’s guides and to translate them into general regulations covering all the activities involving ionizing radia­tion over which it has licensing jurisdiction; these regulations are available in a document entitled “Standards for Protection against Radiation” (10 CFR Pt. 20), which deals with definitions, permissible doses, levels and concentrations, precautionary procedures, waste disposal, records, re­ports, notifications, and so on. These are the general rules to be observed. The standards are more specific than Chairman Mao’s Thoughts, but not specific enough to assure absence of undue risk at a particular reactor at a particular site.

When somebody actually wants to build a reactor, then the aec ap­plies procedures calculated to assure that a particular plant at a particular place complies with each and every one of the frc’s guides. These proce­dures are contained in its regulations, “Licensing of Production and Uti­lization Facilities” (lOCFRPt. 36). These procedures are set forth in de­tail in Part A of Appendix В (p. 161).

In summary, although potential exposure of persons to the minute amounts of radiation legally and intentionally released from nuclear gen­erating stations is the focus of concern by many people at the present time, it has been a constant concern to the United States government ever since the discovery of atomic fission.

This concern has been expressed by a cumulative expenditure on the subject over a period of almost 30 years by the Manhattan District and its successor, the aec, of billions of dollars and millions of scientific man­hours. It is a concern which is interwoven into every procedure of the aec’s regulatory and licensing process and which attaches to each event in the history of any reactor (from conception of the idea, to design, to con­struction, to operation, and finally to retirement) and to every link in the nuclear fuel chain (raw materials, mining and milling, conversion of yel­low cake to UFe, enrichment, fuel fabrication, reactors, transportation, and reprocessing of spent fuel).

Protection of persons from radiation exposure is a component of mil­lions of design calculations and of each and every of the thousands of parts and pieces of a nuclear reactor which must work in unison the first time and for so long as the facility exists. The same protection attaches to each of the thousands of fabrication steps required to fashion these sep­arate components into a whole reactor, to the construction of an entire nuclear electric generating facility, and to the intricacies of its operation thereafter. This protection afforded by the aec’s licensing and regulatory activities continues not only for the IV2 years necessary for a construction permit and the 6-8 years of construction, but also for up to 40 years after an operating license has been issued.

Nowhere in the world today or at any previous time has there been a more meticulous, detailed, and scrupulously unbiased machinery for as­suring public protection against any hazard than that in the aec’s licenses and regulations protecting against radiation hazards. In executing this re­sponsibility the aec can and constantly does call upon the vast technical resources of other federal agencies for assistance and advice in their area of competence. For instance, under a 1964 agreement with the Depart­ment of the Interior, the aec uses the technical capabilities of the Geo­logical Survey with respect to the geological aspects of a particular reactor site, particularly those relating to seismology. On the radiological effects of a facility on aquatic and other wildlife, the aec brings in the consider­able talents of the Fish and Wildlife Service. The Weather Bureau and the Coast and Geodetic Survey provide assistance in obtaining and analyzing meteorological data. The Federal Water Pollution Control Administration and the Public Health Service also make valuable contributions to the re­actor licensing process in their fields.

This vast machinery and extensive effort is dedicated to one pur­pose: assuring that a nuclear power plant is designed and constructed and will operate without exposing individuals and the public to radiation lev­els above which not the aec but the nation’s and the world’s foremost ex­perts have calculated to be without undue risk.

Objective versus Subjective Regulation. At no point does the aec’s judgment of what is or what is not an acceptable level enter the picture. Its only judgment is that a particular reactor at a particular place does or does not meet the standards. By this means, tampering with the standards themselves is ruled out. This is the objective standards approach to reac­tor regulation. It is to be contrasted to any approach which would allow the regulators to jimmy standards up or down, for example to levels “as low as possible”; in the latter case, what may be “as low as possible” be­comes a subjective matter primarily depending on the daily condition of the regulator’s liver or stomach or other vital organs. This is the so-called visceral approach to reactor regulation.

Nuclear Incident Safety. Nuclear plant accident hazards have not loomed large in the current controversy over nuclear power stations, per­haps by reason of the outstanding safety record achieved because persons who deal with atomic energy respect its potential hazards and exercise great care to negate them. If for no other reason than that the magnitude of a reactor accident which could damage the public would also wipe out a utility company’s multi-hundred million dollar investment, unparalleled effort is made to design, construct, and operate nuclear plants so as to re­duce the risk of nuclear incidents to near zero.* * It has been argued by some that nuclear plant “unsafety” is proved because the Price-Anderson Act (PL 85-256, 71 Stat. 576 [1957]) limits liability from a nuclear

Chauncey Starr, dean of the engineering school at ucla, has esti­mated that for these reasons the operation of a nuclear plant to produce electricity is at least one hundred times safer than the operation of a fossil fuel plant for the same purpose.*

Radiation Release Safety. The current controversy does, however, focus on the proposition of turning over to the states some degree of con­trol over radiation releases from nuclear power plants. I doubt that many people seriously want to give states the primary or exclusive responsibility for regulating the nation’s nuclear activities. In fact, the idea is so horrify­ing I refuse to discuss it.

The genesis of the aec is probably too well known to bother repeat­ing here, but recalling it serves a purpose. Because of its beginnings as the developer of nuclear weapons, the aec started the peaceful atomic busi­ness with two strikes against it. The Commissioners themselves as well as every employee of the aec realized at the beginning that just being safe would not be enough. The public was basically frightened of atomic ener­gy and radiation. They knew that achieving the goal set out for them by the Congress and the President would require a level of public safety never before achieved in American industry. In the 23 years since it was organ­ized, the aec has assembled the most brilliant team of scientists and engi­neers ever assembled — within the aec itself, in its multi-disciplinary na­tional laboratories, in our greatest scientific universities, and in indus­try. The whole nation marveled at the precision and accuracy of the Apol­lo 11 program, and the men who put it together. The men who are devel­oping the nuclear power program are equally competent and probably more concerned with safety. Today, more than 50 per cent of the aec’s annual budget is devoted to the peaceful applications of atomic energy.

accident to $560 million and provides that the federal government shall act as in­surer to the extent that private insurance to that amount cannot be obtained. This is an erroneous inference; insuring nuclear power plant operation is not analogous to the risky business of flood insurance which private insurers decline to write owing to large losses and frequent occurrence, and for which a federal government insurance program has been enacted. Price-Anderson indemnity is analogous to the federal home mortgage insurance program established at a time when private insurers were reluctant to enter the field because no loss experience had been gained with the in­stallment sale of homes, just as no loss experience has been accumulated even to this date with respect to nuclear power plants. Further, because of the lack of nu­clear power plant accident loss experience at the time of the Price-Anderson Act, the rather large $560 million liability limit cannot reasonably be regarded as any meas­ure of the possible magnitude of any accident. Rather, it is a figure arbitrarily legis­lated in an abundance of caution and nothing more. To that I am my own footnote — I was there.

* “Social Benefit vs. Technological Risk,” Science, September 19, 1969, 165, 1232. Hear also “Current Nuclear Affairs,” Audio Tape No. 5, October 1969 (Instruc­tional Dynamics, Inc., 166 E. Superior Street, Chicago, Illinois 60611).

These include not only power reactors but programs like the development of a small, inexpensive artificial kidney, a radioisotope-powered heart pacemaker, and the use of radiation in the treatment of cancer. In fact, with the exception of the National Institutes of Health, the AEC probably has more to offer in the areas of biological and medical research than any other organization. The use of atomic energy to generate electricity was identified as a high-priority national objective with the passage of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954. It has been supported by every President since, and it has a particularly enthusiastic friend in President Nixon. But always the primary concern has been protection of the public, both under routine operating conditions and in the event of a malfunction. To this day, no member of the public nor any employee of an AEC-licensed nu­clear power plant has ever been killed or injured because of the operation of a civilian reactor. Also, no worker or member of the public has ever been exposed to radiation levels above the permissible annual limits by a licensed reactor, and no release of radiation above the federally estab­lished quantities has ever occurred.

What the hue and cry from some quarters seems to be is for dual or concurrent regulation by aec and the states, principally on the grounds that states should have a privilege to impose more restrictive limitations on radiation releases than those imposed by aec reactor licenses. Being basically a states’ righter myself, the idea is attractive to me in principle. Thus, to me the issue is whether it would be workable. As a practical mat­ter, is multiple regulation necessary or wise or even safe?

Although some people say so, we are not dealing here with a situa­tion analogous to allowing a state to impose restrictions on emissions from automobiles more strict than those imposed federally. The automobile is a $4,000 item, its emissions are local, and its working principles are sim­ple and well understood. The nuclear plant is a $200 to $400 million in­vestment, its emissions may not be confined locally or even within state boundaries, and its working principles are exceedingly complex matters within the comprehension of only a relatively few experts.

If we accept the contention that the federal standards are too low, say, for Minnesota, then it logically follows that they are too low for Cali­fornia, where the President of the United States owns a house 2.0 miles from a 430-megawatt nuclear power station, and they are too low for all the other states with nuclear power projects. If that be the case, our con­cern properly should be with revision of the federal standards by which the aec must regulate rather than a state-by-state imposition of different standards.

The important issue here is not whether, for example, the Minnesota

Pollution Control Agency or the Federal Radiation Council should estab­lish standards for the release of radiation from the Monticello nuclear plant. Although Minnesotans may think that life and lakes and streams and milk are more precious in Minnesota than anyplace else, that just isn’t so. The important question is whether the federal standards are adequate for all Americans. In other words, has the federal government been negli­gent in its responsibility for protecting the health and safety of the public?

Over the past 25 years, the federal mechanism set up in this country to control nuclear radiation has become the most precise and effective public health program ever created anywhere by anybody. For this reason the task of proving a charge of negligence is very difficult. To avoid this dif­ficulty, the opponents of nuclear power are attempting to shift the burden of proof, saying the aec must stand guilty until proven innocent. They de­mand a list of ten accidents that did not happen because of the aec’s regu­lations and a list of twenty people who did not get leukemia because the aec has insisted that radiation releases be held to and below permissible levels. They call upon the aec to prove the negative. When the aec comes up with a refutation of something like the theories of Dr. Ernest J. Sternglass (radiation physicist at the University of Pittsburgh), the op­ponents just answer that the aec is not to be believed because it is fraught with internal conflict of interest between promotion and regulation (this canard is dealt with in Appendix B, second part, p. 164). And when someone like me suggests that they are aiming at the wrong target — the aec instead of the frc — they just get sore and say “he’s got to go!”

Arguments for Exclusive Federal Control. Specifically, arguments against dual federal/state regulation and for exclusive federal control in­clude, but are not limited to, the following:

a. Dual regulation is unnecessary because: The unprecedented safety record compiled by the federal regulatory mechanism is the best example of the effectiveness of the present system for protecting public health and safety. The aec has both the financial resources and the technical compe­tence to administer an effective program. It is inconceivable that any sin­gle state could develop either the financial resources or the technical com­petence to provide the same level of regulatory protection to the public. If the federal radiation release standards can be shown to be inadequate, the federal standards should be amended rather than authorizing states unilaterally to impose their own standards. Machinery already exists — namely, the frc— by which any necessary improvements in radiation standards may be initiated. It would prove futile inasmuch as dispersion of radionuclides in air, water, and food is not impeded by political boun­daries of states; a reactor in State A may have more environmental effect in State В than it does in State A. It has yet to be shown that the health and safety of the public are not fully protected by the federal standards. It has yet to be shown that the public would be better protected under state regulation than it is under federal regulation.

b. Dual regulation is unwise because: The public is best protected by the organization with the most competence and experience in dealing with radiation. Dispersion of regulatory authority diffuses regulatory responsi­bility and thereby weakens responsibility. Duality of regulation represents an inefficient use of the limited number of scientific and engineering per­sonnel who have both educational and practical credentials in the field. The many scientific disciplines and technical skills required for nuclear regulation are beyond the resources of the states. The drain on state budg­ets of developing and operating an effective regulatory program repre­sents a dissipation of state resources badly needed for other public pro­grams. Nuclear technology is still evolving, making it mandatory for the regulator to maintain a constant awareness of progress and problems in reactor development; this is best achieved within a single unit such as the aec. It will introduce confusion into licensing and will surely extend the already long process, further consuming time which engineers should be spending on advancing the state of reactor design. It would add another regulatory burden on power producers, further complicating efforts to provide adequate quantities of low-cost electricity to consumers. Should dual regulation unduly hamper the construction and operation of generat­ing facilities, the results could range from impeded industrial growth to actual power outages, the latter case resulting in dangers to public health and safety.

Dual regulation is unsafe because: Preoccupation with one aspect of reactor safety (i. e., radiation releases) at the expense of reactor design, construction techniques, and operating procedures could unwittingly in­duce hazards in other areas. Varying standards of multiple regulatory agencies may necessitate design features imposed to meet a multitude of requirements which could yield a less safe final product, might actually weaken the basic design integrity, and might create new hazards. Variety in state standards would impede the development of uniform manufactur­ing and construction codes, which are considered essential to improving the reliability of nuclear power plants.

There is another reason why bringing states into the regulatory pic­ture is unnecessary, unwise, and unsafe, and that is politics. Politics have never been injected into radiation safety by the frc or the aec. But at the state level — or anywhere there is a handful of lobbyists — politicians in­stantly become reactor regulation experts. Rationality is stripped from regulation like bark from a tree and the whole business sawed into plat­form planks.

State Regulation “Horror Case”

The arguments I have presented against dual regulation aren’t par­ticularly academic. Many of them are illustrated in the Monticello case in Minnesota. Plans for this $92 million plant were announced in 1966, and an aec construction permit was issued in 1967. The state of Minnesota essentially ignored the plant at Monticello until 1969, when the mpca at­tempted to license it and to set limitations on radioactive waste discharge and radiation monitoring requirements based on a consultant’s report, “Radioactive Pollution Control in Minnesota.” A copy of the report, by Dr. E. C. Tsivoglou of the Georgia Institute of Technology, was sent to the International Commission on Radiation Protection. It was studied by H. J. Dunster, who heads icrp’s task group on environmental radiation monitoring. In a letter to Tsivoglou dated August 20, 1969 (reproduced in Appendix A, p. 157), Dunster severely criticized the report; so severe was the criticism that Dunster wrote the aec that it was aimed solely at the

MPCA.

Dunster’s letter reveals how an unbiased world authority looks at the mpca’s understaffed, underexperienced attempt at regulation. Here are typical quotations from Dunster’s assessment:

On the tone of the report: “I came to the conclusion that there are some special political difficulties associated with pollution control or the introduction of nuclear power into Minnesota, which would make a logi­cal programme limited to genuine needs unlikely to be acceptable to the legislator.”

On the proposed regulations: “Your proposals seem somewhat ex­treme and could certainly not be related to the recommendations of icrp.”

On the generalizations about regulatory principles: “It did not seem to me, however, that the recommendations of the report were based on these excellent principles.”

On radioactivity monitoring requirements: “A programme of envi­ronmental measurements based on the recommendations of icrp Publica­tion 7 would require less routine effort and expense than the programme you have suggested and would give a genuine assurance of safety.”

On whether the report follows icrp recommendations: “I can say categorically that the radioactivity standards you have recommended are not based on icrp recommendations.”

On the requirement for limiting radioactivity at point of discharge to that permissible further away where contact with humans finally may be made: “I must take exception on behalf of icrp… It is a travesty to use these as a basis for limiting the concentration in an effluent, unless the effluent is directly consumed or directly breathed. . .”

On the assertion that off-site environmental monitoring and surveil­lance is necessary at Monticello or “any other potential waste source”: “The first sentence… is not convincing to me in regard to the pro­posed reactor and is demonstrably false in respect of the final few words.” On the off-site monitoring requirements for Monticello: “The rec­ommended programme is not consistent with icrp recommendations. If it is adopted, it will involve the citizens of Minnesota in higher taxes and higher charges for nuclear electricity than necessary… I am not con­vinced that they will be getting value for money and am certain that the expense cannot be laid at the door of icrp.”

For the reasons given and because of these demonstrated shortcom­ings of dual regulation in practice, I suggest that responsibility for regula­tion of nuclear power be left solely with the federal government.