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Can nuclear power so/ve the
energy problem? ls it real/y
safe? Orare the benefits over–
ridden by inherent dangers?
by
William F. Dankenbring
I
NDIA'S UNEXPECTED
explosion of
a nuclear device below the
Great Indian Desert triggered
worldwide concern. Then carne
the news of U. S. plans to de–
velop atomic power for peaceful
uses in Egypt and Israel. These
events, once more, have focused
world attention on the fact that the
fissionable by-products of peacetime
atomic power can be used for weap–
ons development.
Growing Threat of Nuclear
Terrorism
Dr. Theodore B. Taylor , an
American nuclear weapons expert
who was involved in the Los
Alamos project, is worried about an–
other problem - the possible theft
of nuclear material by terrorists. Po–
litica l terrorists could fashion
"homemade" nuclear devices ca–
pable of k.illing 50,000 people or
more if exploded near a downtown
skyscraper in a modern city.
According to Taylor and other
critics of the nuclear energy pro–
gram , international safeguards
against the theft of weapons-grade
material are not strong enough.
Furthermore , the technology
needed to build a bomb, once the
right materials are hijacked, is quite
simple. The techniques have been
published in articles and are avail–
able in almost any large library.
A recent study by the Energy Pol–
icy Project sponsored by the Ford
Foundation declared: "Under con–
ceivable circumstances, a few per–
sons, possibly even one person
work.ing alone who possessed about
lO kilograms of plutonium oxide
and a substantial amount of chem–
ical high explosive, could, within
severa! weeks, design and build a
crude fission bomb."
In view of these possibilities, one
must wonder: Can nuclear energy
for peaceful uses be pursued with–
out dangerous side effects? Is it
worth the risk?
Kenneth P. Baskin, manager,
generation engineering of Southem
California Edison Company, gave a
direct answer to this question when
asked about the threat of terrorist
activity at the San Onofre gener–
ating plant: " If they blew up the
piant, you get into a 'what if' game,
and it's hard to intelligently say
what would happen." He pointed
out that the containment building
itself (at San Onofre) has walls of
reinforced steel and concrete four to
six feet thick, and the reactor con–
tainment vessel has sides of high–
strength steel six to eight inches
thick.