The MacNeil/Lehrer Report; Nuclear Reactors - How Safe?

ROBERT MacNEIL: Good evening. There are seventy-two power plants in this country fueled by nuclear reactors and supplying about twelve percent of our electricity. None of them, so far as is known, has ever blown up or caused death or serious injury. Yet many Americans, for rational or emotional reasons, continue to worry about the safety of nuclear power, and many have campaigned vigorously against it. Last Friday opponents of nuclear energy got a psychological boost for their cause when the government said that some of the reassurance it had been peddling about nuclear safety was unfounded. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission withdrew its endorsement of a 1975 report claiming that risks from nuclear power plants were minimal. In short, the federal government has been forced to rethink just how safe nuclear power is. Ironically, that rethink coincides with an effort by the Carter administration to promote nuclear power and speed up the process by which new plants are approved. Tonight, a fresh look at the risk factor in nuclear power. Jim?

JIM LEHRER: Robin, we`re going to be talking about two reports, the Rasmussen study and the Lewis study. One is a review of the other, a study of a study, in other words. The Rasmussen report came out in 1975; it was the work of sixty scientists headed by Dr. Norman Rasmussen, a professor of nuclear engineering at MIT. They were commissioned and given three million dollars by the old Atomic Energy Commission to make an independent study of the nuclear reactor safety question. Their conclusion: the Rasmussen report`s major finding was that the chance of a serious nuclear accident was about equal to the danger of a meteor hitting a city, and that was likely to happen once in a million years. In short, there was little or nothing to worry about. The Rasmussen conclusion has since been used as a major reference point by the nuclear industry and others interested in promoting nuclear energy. It was specifically cited, for instance, in getting government-subsidized insurance coverage for reactors.

Pushed by Congress and others, the new Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which took over reactor licensing from the AEC, commissioned a second study in 1977. Completed this fall, that was the Lewis study, which has triggered the new fuss. Robin?

MacNEIL: The Lewis study, or review, took a year, and it was conducted by a team headed by Dr. Harold Lewis, a physicist with the University of California at Santa Barbara. Dr. Lewis is with us tonight in Los Angeles. Dr. Lewis, what weaknesses did you find in the Rasmussen study?

HAROLD LEWIS: Well, first let me begin by trying to make clear exactly what we did. We didn`t entirely review the Rasmussen study, but we had some other parts to our charter, which I`d like to be able to talk about a little later. But directly to your question, the weaknesses we found were that it generally overstepped the state of the art. That is to say, they tried to find numbers with greater precision than the data base available, the information available, and the statistical tools that they had available would permit. So they came down with results whose precision was overstated. We commended them for a good try, and we also commended the methodology.

MacNEIL: I see. Does that mean that their findings may be right but there`s no way of actually measuring whether they`re right?

LEWIS: That`s exactly right. That is to say, any calculation of this kind is done with a certain range of uncertainty, and we were very careful to say that we had no reason to believe that the Rasmussen group either overstated or understated the risk of an accident, but we were sure that they greatly understated the uncertainty in their conclusions. I think that Norm Rasmussen agrees with this.

MacNEIL: I see. Now, you said there were other points to your charter you wanted to mention. What were they?

LEWIS: Specifically, we were asked to not only review the Rasmussen report and clarify its achievements and limitations but also to study that kind of risk assessment methodology and make a recommendation to the Nu clear Regulatory Commission on how that kind of methodology can be brought into the regulatory process, how it can be used more effectively in the future; and in a certain sense I think that the more important part of our charter because that`s forward-looking.

MacNEIL: And what did you recommend to the commission on that score?

LEWIS: We recommended that they make much wider use of the methodology in guiding their own research program, in trying to direct their assets into licensing and regulation of reactors toward those places where the weaknesses really are as determined by this methodology. And I`m very pleased to say they seem to have accepted all our recommendations. MacNEIL: Your review was rather sharply critical of the so-called Executive Summary published after the Rasmussen study. Does that mean that much of what Rasmussen found was sound but that the way it was pre sented to the public was inaccurate or slanted?

LEWIS: No, that isn`t quite right. First of all, the Executive Summary was attached to the report and was published at the same time, not later. Secondly, much of our complaint about the Executive Summary was that it misrepresented the contents of the report, and in that sense it lent itself to misuse and misrepresentation in the public debate about nuclear power. Our view was that as a document which was intended to interpret the results of the study for the public it should simply not have been represented as a summary of the report.

MaCNEIL: I see. Most people -- like myself -- who cannot assess the scientific nuances of this will probably simply want to know, does this mean that nuclear power is not as safe as we thought it was? Does your review mean that?

LEWIS: No. No, I don`t think it means that nuclear power is not as safe as we thought it was. Obviously, many of us think different things about that. But it does mean that we`re not as clear about the safety of nuclear power as we were. Our view was that the Rasmussen report was and still is the best single source of information about nuclear safety, but it isn`t up to the mark. In a certain sense the question is, how well do you need to know how safe nuclear power is? There is a risk; there`s a risk in everything we do. The important thing is to know what the risk is and go with open eyes into a situation in which we`re willing to trade the known risks for the known benefits. And we`re, I guess, not as far along on that track as we thought we were.

MacNEIL: Well, thank you. We`ll come back, Dr. Lewis. Jim?

LEHRER: The government`s decision to commission the Lewis study was specifically prompted by Congressman Morris Udall, Democrat of Arizona. Congressman Udall is chairman of the House Interior and Insular Affairs Committee, which plays a major oversight role on nuclear policy. Congressman, what caused you to ask for a review of the Rasmussen report in the first place?

Rep. MORRIS UDALL: Well, there was a good deal of discontent in the scientific community about it, and I was also troubled that it was being used to help pass something called the Price-Anderson Law, which limited the amount of liability that companies have to pay in the event there is a nuclear accident, and it was being used, I felt, improperly and was being given a lot of significance as absolute or pretty strong assurance to people, Don`t worry, nuclear power`s safe, here`s this panel of scientists, they`ve studied it, you`re not going to get hit by a meteor, you`re not going to be hurt by a nuclear plant; relax, all is well. I didn`t like that, and I thought the Nuclear Regulatory Commission ought to be taking a little bit harder look at it, and I asked for a review. And I`m really pleased that they came through. This illustrates, incidentally, one of the good things about Congress when we handle ourselves properly. Instead of passing laws and charging off to put out another fire someplace, we ought to go back and see how old laws are being administered and we ought to ride herd on the agencies. And this was what our committee was trying to do in this instance, was to see if the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that we all look to for nuclear safety, the safety of these plants, was really doing its job; and we thought they were placing too much reliance on a study that might not justify that kind of reliance.

LEHRER: Does the Lewis report bear out the complaints and the concerns that were expressed to you which caused you to ask for this review in the first place?

UDALL: Yeah; in a sense, the significance of all of this is that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission -- and to some extent the nuclear industry -- was using a report beyond what that report really said, particularly if you looked at the Executive Summary. The report didn`t really say that, as Dr. Lewis pointed out, and it was concerning me that this commission that we all look to as an impartial, unbiased commission was using this beyond what really the report, I think, justified.

LEHRER: I take it, then, that you`re delighted by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission`s reaction to the Lewis report by issuing the statement that it did last Friday.

UDALL: Yes, I`m really pleased. The importance of this is, we used to have the old Atomic Energy Commission, which was both regulator and promoter. They both promoted nuclear power and regulated nuclear power. A few years ago we split it up and said we`re going to have an impartial agency, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and friends, you`re to be a referee, you`re not promoting nuclear power. Your job is there to protect the public health and safety. I think NRC had a hard time breaking away from that old history, and what their action here shows is that they`re beginning to be the impartial referee that we all hoped they would be.

LEHRER: Is there any evidence that the original Rasmussen findings were intentionally weighted toward an "it`s safe" position by the government itself?

UDALL: Oh, some of the anti-nuclear people feel this. Dr. Rasmussen`s a pretty good scientist, I think he was trying to do the right thing. What he was trying to do was to quantify things that aren`t quantifiable. In a vast technological system with miles and miles of pipes and important pumps and fail safe mechanisms, they took a mathematical projection of this and said if this pump is likely to fail once every hundred years or ten years, and that failure leads to another failure, how likely is that to happen at the same time, and build up a mathematical case for something that -- we need mathematics, but something that depends on common sense and judgment and not just probability studies like you`d use to determine how often you`re going to get a straight flush if you deal the cards 10,000 times.

LEHRER: All right. Congressman, thank you. The nuclear industry`s response to the Lewis study has been mostly that it doesn`t change anything, that nuclear reactors are safe, that the risk factor is extremely low. Here representing industry is John Taylor, vice president and general manager of the Water Reactor Division of the Westinghouse Electric Corporation, one of the largest suppliers of nuclear reactors in the world. First, Mr. Taylor, do you agree that the Rasmussen report needed a second look, a review?

JOHN TAYLOR: I think a new and quite theoretical methodology definitely needed a second look, and it`ll need a third and fourth look to bring it to the stage of sureness that it can become a real tool in the regulatory process. Today we use another approach in achieving safety in our nuclear power plants. It involves a large number of highly developed standards which govern the design, the construction, the testing, the operation of these plants, with inspectors within both the industry and government to see that these standards are met. This results in the safety record that was mentioned at the start of this program: not one death from nuclear- related accidents in nuclear power plants since their inception over twenty years ago. These standards have been under development for almost thirty years; they continued under development during the period the Rasmussen methodology was being developed. I`m confident that they are providing safe nuclear power for our country.

LEHRER: Where would you place the risk factor, in the simplest of terms? Use the meteor analogy or any other analogy you would like. Where does industry place the risk factor?

TAYLOR: We attack the issue of providing backup systems in the event of failure of our equipment or the personnel operating the equipment. These backup systems go into the second, third, fourth and fifth level to assure that if an accident occurs action will be taken by the backup systems to prevent hazard to the public. Our record to date, even though we`re generating twelve percent of the electricity in this country at a savings to the consumer of two billion dollars, I think demonstrates that.

LEHRER: How do you interpret what Dr. Lewis and his colleagues are saying in their review?

TAYLOR: I see in Dr. Lewis` comments and recommendations some extremely important points. He is saying let us use this tool more on a relative assessment basis to establish proper priorities in our safety development program, use them to diagnose small events in our operational experience to give us better guidance on further improvement as we go. And he also was saying, inferentially, use them to evaluate other methods of energy production to compare the risks between nuclear power and other energy production; use them perhaps to compare the risks if we have not enough energy, which is of great concern to me as I see the action of OPEC and the actions in Iran today.

LEHRER: Do you see the Lewis findings and the resulting action of the NRC, which was to pull its endorsement away from the Rasmussen study, as a negative in terms of the development of nuclear energy?

TAYLOR: I would say, Jim, as I read their material, they haven`t pulled away endorsement; they`re going to in fact try to more effective ly use these techniques. I think we`re going to suffer a negative reaction on the publicity that`s come out so far. But I`m confident in the long term, by the application of these methods across the board to establish our energy planning, that we will in fact find that nuclear power is safer, environmentally more acceptable by these methods, and we`ll find a renewed growth in that sector.

LEHRER: All right; thank you. Robin?

MacNEIL: Critics of the nuclear power program gained a lot of credibility when they were joined by a group calling themselves the Union of Concerned Scientists. One of the union`s founders was Dr. Henry Kendall, a professor of physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dr. Kendall, what does the Lewis review signify to you?

HENRY KENDALL: Well, it says something very important. It says that the standard position of the nuclear industry and that position that`s been held for decades, that reactors are proven safe, has now essentially been demolished; and that, of course, is now affirmed by the repudiation of the central findings of the Rasmussen study. And that opens up whole new questions about the future of nuclear power and also about how to deal with the reactors that we have and with the genuine safety problems that they have.

MacNEIL: Is the question of reactor safety now an open question, to you?

KENDALL: Well, yes, it is open, and it has been open for some time. The Rasmussen results were never accepted by scientists who had a very serious look at it. The Union of Concerned Scientists put together a group of thirteen people and published a 200-page public study which kept that question alive. Now the situation is that the uncertainties, as Dr. Lewis pointed out, are so great that, to my mind, you cannot exclude the possibility that the reactors are genuinely unsafe. That cannot be proven; it may not even be true. But it is a possibility. And so there is a risk, and it has to be assessed very carefully now in the light of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission`s action.

MacNEIL: Do you believe, following up on a question Jim asked a moment ago, that the Rasmussen report or the way it was presented to the public was deliberately colored in order to appear favorable to nuclear energy?

KENDALL: It`s very hard to know whether it was deliberately colored or not, but the fact that it was colored and slanted, inadvertently or for whatever reason, is certainly the case. It`s technically bankrupt, in my opinion, in its central findings that reactors are exceedingly safe in those numerical conclusions. And of course it is this weakness, which is really a very unfortunate thing to have happened, that has now been repudiated by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

MacNEIL: What would have been the motivation in doing that? If the original AEC, the Atomic Energy Commission, sponsored the Rasmussen report, what would have been the motive in presenting it that way?

KENDALL: Well, of course the nuclear industry and the people who buy and operate nuclear reactors have been under constant pressure on the safety issue for many years. Former Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission James Schlesinger commissioned the Rasmussen study in 1972 when our group opened very serious questions about the possible weaknesses in the emergency systems. They very badly needed a report that said that reactors were completely safe. And that`s what they got.

MacNEIL: Are you suggesting they deliberately went about getting such a report?

KENDALL: No. But they needed the report, and you know, these things occasionally come out the way you want, consciously or unconsciously. It`s really unfortunate, but that is certainly what happened.

MacNEIL: Should reactors that have been licensed since the Rasmussen report in 1975 be -- I believe there are thirteen of them, is that a correct figure?

KENDALL: Well, it`s some number like that.

MacNEIL: Should they be reexamined in the light of the Lewis review?

KENDALL: Well, it`s not just that thirteen. The whole group of operating reactors in the United States should have their operations, their designs, their maintenance procedures and everything reviewed. That is what the Union of Concerned Scientists is now urging the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to do. Because it is not just the repudiation of the Rasmussen report we`re concerned with, it is a whole host of open, unresolved safety questions that involve many aspects of reactor operation. These are the things which may, one or another or in combination, lead to a genuine risk, and some reactors, I believe, should be shut down. Others should be operated under more stringent safety limits; perhaps some of them can be left the way they are.

MacNEIL: Well, thank you. Jim?

LEHRER: First back to you, Dr. Lewis in Los Angeles. Do you believe that your report justifies the reexamination of all the nuclear reactors now under construction and now in operation in this country?

LEWIS: I don`t think our report justifies that. I do think one should keep a constant eye on these things, and in another context, which Mr. Udall knows very well, I`ve been trying to push the Nuclear Regulatory position into a posture of examining all the minor incidents that occur in reactors, much as we do for aircraft accidents, in order to keep abreast of those things which pure theoretical methodology won`t tell us about. We do that in airplanes, which are also very complicated things. I think that the great virtue of the NRC statement Friday -- and I applaud them for having made it, not only because they were responsive to our report -- the great virtue is that it pulls them back from a position which was technically indefensible into one which has the potential for being technically solid, and that can only be good for nuclear power.

LEHRER: All right, Congressman Udall, to you on the question that Dr. Kendall raised, which was that James Schlesinger, then head of AEC, needed a report that said a certain thing and they got it. Is there any evidence of that that has come to your attention?

UDALL: Well, the opponents of nuclear power pointed to letters and statements by Dr. Schlesinger and others with the AEC over the years. Clearly, nuclear power proponents wanted to show that this industry was safe and that nuclear power is safe, and they were reaching out to get anything they could get. There are some circumstances that suggest that Rasmussen`s report was commissioned with the idea that it would come along and say nuclear power was safe. Once it came out it was used and probably its effects overstated by some of the proponents of nuclear power. But I don`t see a lot of the -- you know, blatant dishonesty that some people are suggesting with regard to this; I think it was a conscientious study by Dr. Rasmussen. I don`t think you can quantify things that aren`t quantifiable, that`s where we end up.

LEHRER: All right. And to you, Mr. Taylor, on the basic point that Dr. Kendall made, which is that the whole question, the whole nuclear industry position on safety has now been demolished once and for all and we start from ground zero. How do you respond to that?

TAYLOR: Jim, as I mentioned, safety standards were developed and being utilized to build safe plants before the Rasmussen report. Since its issuance, we have not -- although, if you took literally the estimates made, we would -- we have not reduced the conservatism which governs the design and operation of the nuclear power plants. I`d like to make a point on the issue which seemed to be expressed, that we don`t on a continuing basis look at problems in our plants. We are, more than any other industry, required to report safety incidents to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, who analyzes and disseminates that information as rapidly as they can to the entire industry. Our industry organizations are accumulating data on field experience to guide their associates to do a better job. Every day this work is being done in the standard method of addressing each of these standards across design, construction and operation of these plants. It`s being attended to.

LEHRER: Dr. Lewis, you were the one who suggested the NRC should do that. Are you satisfied with what Mr. Taylor says the industry is doing?

LEWIS: Oh, I certainly did not say that they don`t do it; they do indeed do it. They file licensee event reports routinely. The picture I had in mind - - and perhaps this is no place to talk about it -- is the idea of having a quasi-judicial external agency responsible for reviewing the incidents, much as the National Transportation Safety Board reviews the events which occur in aircraft accidents. The idea is not to have the regulator, in a sense, reviewing himself, and I think even if it contributed no new knowledge it might contribute a little extra credibility to the process.

LEHRER: I see. Robin?

MaCNEIL: Yes; Dr. Kendall, you`re a physicist yourself in the atomic energy field. Is there a way of finding out how risky or dangerous reactors are? How can you assess the probable risk in something that hasn`t actually failed? For instance, the Congressman mentioned a valve. If a particular crucial valve has never failed in the experience of its lifetime, how can you measure from that the likelihood of it failing?

KENDALL: Well, you can make estimates of it, and I think that was certainly the attempt that Norman Rasmussen made. And let me say, I do not either wish to appear or directly suggest that the study was dishonest. I do not feel that. But as the Lewis panel has pointed out, the effort to carry out all this quantification didn`t work. It`s my personal belief right now that it`s beyond the capacity of present engineering science to do this, partly because we just haven`t had enough experience with nuclear plants to accumulate what Dr. Lewis called the data base. Perhaps in the future we can do it. But we can assure the safety of reactors in many ways, short of having an actual quantitative prediction.

MacNEIL: Which is what Mr. Taylor is saying, that by engineering backup schemes to the fifth level you can ensure that as far as is physically possible.

KENDALL: Well, at least in principle you can do that. But we`ve had some very scary examples in the nuclear program where backup systems have been disabled right through the nth level. In fact, in one of the biggest incidents in the nuclear program which many people regard as a near miss, all of the backup systems were disabled on a reactor. So you can never be completely sure. But I differ with Mr. Taylor in the extent to which there are safety problems presently in the reactor program. An accident-free record, which we have had, we`re all gratified for, but that is no proof for the future. And there are safety problems, and that is why the controversy is fueled.

MacNEIL: Mr. Taylor, what`s your reaction to that? Are you saying there are no safety problems in the system?

TAYLOR: I did not say that. I think I made it very clear that every day we are reporting on incidents and transmitting that information across the industry so they will learn from that experience, and continuing to improve ourselves. I`m from Pittsburgh, and just a Super Bowl victory, and I remember clearly Coach Noll saying, "We`re best, but we`re going to be better next year." I feel that way about nuclear power. I want to comment about the Browns Ferry fire. Many, many of these backup systems were disabled. However, no loss of life occurred, no major hazard resulted from that, I think again an indication of the defense in depth against accident which we`ve built into this program.

MacNEIL: Congressman, finally, as somebody who represents the public in this in an elected sense and brought the issue up, how would you now tell the American people -- how would you evaluate the safety of the nuclear power program as compared with what you thought it was before the Lewis study came out?

UDALL: Well, it`s important that we not overstate this, it`s important that we put it in perspective. What we had here was a report telling the American people and the nuclear industry and all the rest of us, "Relax, the best scientists we`ve got, in a mathematical way have shown this level of safety comparable to being hit by a meteor." We now know, due to Dr. Lewis` review work, that you can`t say that. Now, it may be safer, it may be less safe, and it`s important that we not overstate this because...

MacNEIL: I think we have to leave it there, Congressman. Sorry to cut you off. Thank you, Dr. Lewis in Los Angeles; Mr. Taylor, Congressman Udall in Washington; Dr. Kendall here. Good night, Jim.

LEHRER: Good night, Robin.

MacNEIL: That`s all for tonight. We`ll be back tomorrow night, when we`ll examine the State of the Union address President Carter is delivering this evening. I`m Robert MacNeil. Good night.