U.S. AGENCY UNDER FIRE ATOMIC ENERGY COMMISSION FACES INCREASING CRITICISM

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32566, 27 March 1971, Page 18

U.S. AGENCY UNDER FIRE ATOMIC ENERGY COMMISSION FACES INCREASING CRITICISM

(Newsweek Feature Service) WASHINGTON. Criticism of the Federal Government in the United States is usually levelled at the agencies and departments most prominently- in the public eye the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, for instance, or the Department of Defence. But in recent months some of the most strident sniping has been directed at an agency shrouded in secrecy, which has turned out to be one of the most powerful in the nation: the Atomic Energy Commission.

After 25 years of selfimposed anonymity and statutory autonomy, the A.E.C. is suddenly finding itself under attack by everyone from congressmen to conservationists, housewives to scientists, anti-war activ-

ists to state legislators. The complaints against the A.E.C. include polluting the atmosphere, “raping” the land, poisoning this and future generations of children, and finally, exercising its power with lofty arrogance. There is no question that the commission is powerful. Formed under the Atomic Energy Act of 1946, 'it was given a mandate to develop, use and control nuclear energy in all its manifold forms. In the last 20 years it has spent more than $35,000 million of the taxpayers’ money under the sympathetic supervision of the Joint House-Senate Committee on Atomic Energy. The committee has been extremely careful, and extremely successful, in keeping the A.E.C. out of politics. Partly because it has been so discreetly apolitical, the A.E.C. has had free rein to exploit the atom and achieve some of the great marvels of the age. Use in medicine Strides in weapons research are only the most spectacular of the commission’s accomplishments. It has harnessed nuclear electric power. A score of nuclear power plants are already in operation and 98 more are on the way. Its work in the field of radioactivity has all but created a new generation in medicine. Some of the A.E.C.’s projects have been less successful. Nuclear power for merchant ships has proven to be prohibitively expensive and inefficient, and nuclear-

powered desalination plants, to extract fresh water from the sea have yet to be developed. But these minor set-backs; are not what is troubling the agency’s critics. Rather, they are concerned that the A.E.C. is not sufficiently under control. It not only establishes projects and priorities in vital areas, but according to its critics, it also sits in judgment on itself, determining its own standards. Thus, Senator Edmund Muskie has asked that the Federal Government set up a commission to determine the effects on the environment of underground nuclear blasts. Since 1950, the A.E.C. has exploded more than 400 nuclear devices all but 181 below ground. And in spite of the commission’s; assurances that the tests were conducted in complete safety, there have been a few unsettling and alarming incidents. Not long ago, for instance, two blasts broke through the surface in Nevada, and one sent a cloud of radio-active dust leading off toward Utah at 8000 feet. Six hundred workers had to be evacuated from the test site. Need for power | Even more disturbing has been the A.E.C.’s headlong programme to build nuclear power plants, which it has defended as “critical” if the country is to meet the future need for electricity.

“The key to an advanced civil ’.tion is an advanced standard of living,” said the chairman of the A.E.C. (Mr Glenn T. Seaborg), “and the key to that is power. If, tomorrow, we were to suffer an instant cut-back of, say, 20 to 30 per cent of our total energy consumption, we would probably witness the collapse of Western civilisation as we know it.” But other authorities —including the first chairman of the commission. Dr David E. Lilienthal—have suggested that nuclear power plants are contributing to the destruction of civilisation as men would like it to be. “Once a bright hope shared by all mankind, including myself,” Dr Lilienthal has said, "the rash proliferation of atomic power

plants has become one of the ugliest clouds hanging over America.”

It is also one of the most potentially lethal, according to the critics. Atomic power plants emit none of the standard pollutants into the air—ash, smoke and sulphur dioxide. But they do give off radio-active materials which can cause cell damage in humans. Two A.E.C. scientists have challenged the commission’s standards on the amount of radiation that a man can safely absorb and have asked that the generally accepted amount be heavily reduced. They argue that if humans are subjected to 170 “millirads” of man-made radiation every year, in addition to radiation from the sun and from minerals in the earth, the incidences of cancer, i leukaemia and birth defects will soar. 150 years old One A.E.C. official has replied that no-one is likely to be exposed to enough harmful radiation to do him any serious damage until he is at least 150 years old. For the time being, at least, such arguments will most probably remain academic. The A.E.C. is not willing to shed any of its power, and the joint HouseSenate committee, under the protective wing of a Republican, Mr Chet Holifield, is not likely to divest the commission of any of its responsibility.

But criticism of the A.E.C. is being heard in important quarters and the days of the commission’s hegemony in matters atomic are probably numbered. "It’s relevant to ask questions about the A.E.C. without expressing unhappiness with its performance,” said Mr David Freeman of the White House’s Office of Science and Technology. “Perhaps A.E.C.’s research role could be much broader. At first, with a new thing like the atom, you organise around the technology. Later there comes a time when you organise around the subject matter.

“A.E.C. has been tremendously successful, but now we should ask: what about the next 25 years?” said Mr Freeman. “I think that after 25 years you need to give an agency a new mission.”