Perhaps uniquely among US industries, the history of the commercial nuclear power industry is inextricably linked with the history of the agency created to regulate and nurture it. The raw materials and technology required for the industry to function were developed and controlled by the US government, which alone had invested the capital and scientific resources needed to bring the discoveries that made the industry possible. Government laboratories and contractors developed reactor designs, uranium enrichment processes, fuel rod designs and manufacturing facilities. The Atomic Energy Act of 1946 (Text) prohibited private or commercial use of atomic energy and continued a government monopoly on nuclear technology begun during World War Two. It was determined to be necessary to maintain complete, exclusive, control over atomic raw materials and technology in order to continue the US advantage in the nuclear field. In 1954 this state of things was changed by passage of a new Atomic Energy Act (Text) which set the development of a commercial nuclear power industry as an urgent national goal. Strict restrictions on dispersal of nuclear technology and maintenance of the US lead in atomic energy research remained to control exportation to other nations of equipment, data or atomic energy related technology. Specific licensing requirements were established to control access within the US by private concerns of nuclear materials and originally all fuel remained the property of the US government to be leased to power plant operators. No other commercial industry has been so controlled by the government. The origins of the commercial nuclear power plant in America very definitely are tied to the Manhattan Project and its replacement, the Atomic Energy Commission.

The Atomic Energy Act of 1946 established the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) to oversee all aspects of atomic energy in the United States, which amounted to nuclear weapons production since the Act prohibited commercial use of atomic energy and established government control over all aspects of atomic energy. The bill was introduced by Senator Brian McMahon (CT) who intended to "conserve and restrict the use of atomic energy for the national defense, to prohibit its private exploitation and to preserve the secret and confidential character of information concerning the use and application of atomic energy". The legislation was signed into law August 1, 1946. The law specified penalties for releasing restricted data regarding nuclear weapons which ranged from severe fines up to 20 years imprisonment. The first Chairman of the AEC was David Lilienthal. His background was as Director, then Chairman of the TVA. There were four other members of the AEC, Sumner Pike, former Securities and Exchange Commission member; Lewis Strauss from Wall Street (partner at Kuhn, Loeb & Company); William Waymack, Editor of the DesMoines Register and Tribune; and Robert Bacher, a Physicist from Los Alamos.

The Atomic Energy Act of 1946 (AEA 1946) established a committee of Congress to oversee the AEC called the Joint Congressional Committee on Atomic Energy, which was chaired by Brian McMahan. Lilienthal resigned as Chairman of the AEC on November 9, 1949 over his objections to developing the super (hydrogen bomb). Gordon Dean replaced him. Dean was an attorney in Senator McMahans law firm and was pro super. In 1953 Lewis Strauss became Chairman. Strauss presided over the AECs own black list period and was responsible for the removal of a number of people from positions in the nuclear defense establishment on account of their supposed communist sympathies, among them Robert Oppenheimer. After the passage of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 (AEA 1954) which made establishing a nuclear power industry in America a major goal, Straus did all he could to push the nations utilities into nuclear power. The AEA 1954 directed the AEC to "encourage widespread participation in the development and utilization of atomic energy for peaceful purposes". Additionally, the AEC was instructed to develop regulations to provide for public safety.

It was at this point that the AEC announced the Power Demonstration Reactor Program under which they would provide research from the national laboratories, subsidize industry research, and provide fuel free for seven years for any utility willing to pay to build and operate a nuclear plant. Despite the financial inducements the industry did not immediately jump on the nuclear bandwagon. For one thing, the cost to build and operate a nuclear plant were sizable and the technology untried. Much remained to be learned including which type of reactor would be best. In addition, there was the possibility, perhaps remote, of an accident, resulting in devastating liability to the Utility. The AEC recognized the need for indemnity insurance for operators of reactors as did the Joint Committee. Insurance companies were only willing to insure operators for $60 million which would not be adequate in the event of a serious accident. Industry spokespersons made it clear that without indemnification there would be no plants. H.R. Searing of Consolidated Edison told the Joint Committee that his company would not bring their Indian Point Nuclear Plant on line unless the question of liability were settled. Francis McCure of GE told the Committee that his company would cease work on Commonwealth Edison’s Dresden Plant.

Dresden Nuclear Plant

The Chair of the Joint Committee, Senator Clinton Anderson and Congressman Melvin Price introduced legislation to provide Federal Funds to underwrite $500 million beyond the $60 million for each reactor offered by the Insurance Industry. The bill provided for the possibility of additional money to be authorized by Congress on a case by case basis in the event of a claim. It also limited the claims for damages by the public to a prorated share of the $560 million. The Utility would also be required to make payments to a pool as a condition for licensing. Congress passed the bill in August 1957 thereby removing an obstacle to nuclear power development that perhaps they should have let remain. Harold Green wrote in the Michigan Law Review "The fact that the technology exists and grows only because of Price-Anderson has been artfully concealed from public view so that consideration of the indemnity legislation would not trigger public debate as to whether nuclear power was needed and whether its risks were acceptable...". (Price Anderson today)

In the course of the debate over indemnifying the utilities from liability for reactor accidents Francis McCure of General Electric pointed out to the Joint Committee "no matter how careful anyone in the atomic energy business may try to be, it is possible that accidents may occur". As if to underscore the possibility, the Brookhaven Report was released in 1957. The report titled 'Theoretical Possibilities and Consequences of Major Accidents in Large Nuclear Power Plants' was researched and produced by 40 scientists at Brookhaven National Laboratory. They were directed by the AEC to provide answers to several questions, namely "1. How likely is a major reactor accident? 2. If one occurs, what are the chances that radioactive material will be released into the environment? 3. What factors and conditions would affect the distribution of that material over public areas? 4. What levels of exposure or contamination would cause injury to people or damage to property? 5. If releases of fission product should occur, what would be the scale of death and injury and the costs to property?"

AEC had intended that the report allay fears of nuclear power, but in the event, it accomplished nothing of the sort. For the purposes of the report it was supposed that a typical reactor, under typical weather conditions, toward the end of its 150day fuel cycle, of 100-200 megawatt capacity, located on a river about 30 miles from a city of 1,000,000 population was involved. The scientists estimated that 400,000,000ci of radiation would be in the core of such a plant under such conditions. Then they estimated the results from three hypothetical accidents, Case one: the reactor core destroyed but no release of fission products from the reactor vessel, Case two: release from reactor vessel, but containment building intact, and Case three: release from containment to the outside environment. The possibility of a Case three accident was judged to be from 1:100,000 to 1:1,000,000,000 per reactor year. In the event of a Case three accident the team estimated the consequences to be "as many as 3,400 people might be killed, 43,000 injured, and as much as $7 billion of property damage done. People could be killed at distances up to 15 miles and injured as far away as 45, land contamination could extend for greater distances- indeed, agricultural restrictions might prevail over an area of 150,000 square miles". The report had the effect of increasing the liability concerns of utilities, reactor vendors and the insurance industry alike. In October 1957 the Windscale plutonium production facility in Britain had an accident in which the core of the graphite moderated reactor caught fire and melted down the fuel rods, releasing radioactivity outside the plant. The authors of the Brookhaven Report appeared prescient.

The licensing procedure for private reactors outlined in the AEA 1954 specified a two step process. First the utility would submit a safety analysis and the AEC would, if the plant was approved, issue a construction permit. After the plant was built AEC would inspect it to assure safety requirements were met and issue an operating license. Each license was judged on an individual basis since each plant was a custom design and the circumstances of each case varied. AEC's regulatory staff examined the suitability of the proposed site, the construction specifications, a plan of operations and safety features in the documents presented by the utility. The proposal was also examined by an Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards (ACRS) made up of recognized authorities on reactor technology who did an independent review of the material. Recommendations of staff and ACRS were presented to the AEC Commissioners who decided each case. The utility was not required to submit final technical data in order to get a construction permit, simply provide 'reasonable assurance' of safety and operation 'without undue risk to the health and safety of the public'. The dual and conflicting roles of the AEC, to promote nuclear power and to regulate safety, became a factor almost immediately.

In January 1956 application was made to build and operate the Enrico Fermi Liquid Sodium Breeder Reactor to be located 30 miles from Detroit and operated by a consortium of utilities known as the Power Reactor Development Company (PRDC). The proposed plant was a 100 mW fast breeder reactor utilizing liquid sodium, a very reactive metal, as coolant and with no moderator. LMFB were experimental, one on a much smaller scale had been developed at the Idaho Reactor Test Site. AEC was anxious to implement breeder programs for it felt that the future of atomic energy lay in that technology. Breeders were designed to produce more fuel than they burned, thereby obviating the need to locate additional reserves of uranium from outside the US. However, breeder reactors were also more dangerous to operate than typical LWRs the more highly enriched fuel could, in the event of an accident which damaged the fuel rods, produce a supercritical assembly which could result in an explosion equivalent to 1000 pounds of TNT. The posed a threat to the containment which must be inviolable to provide protection to the public from the large quantity of radiation contained in the fuel. LMFBR tend to have a positive coefficient of reactivity which means that they naturally tend toward increased reactivity if the flow of sodium in the core is disturbed in any way. This increase in reactivity can produce power surges that happen very quickly and are difficult to control. EBR I was being tested in Idaho to determine the most appropriate means of dealing with this tendency just prior to the receipt of the license application. Under rigorously controlled conditions the small experimental reactor was brought up to power and observed for power fluctuations. An excursion occurred which the operators were unable to control resulting in the meltdown of the core of the reactor. No one was injured due to the scaled down size of the reactor but the core was destroyed. This incident should have served as an ill omen for the proposed power plant, but it did not deter the AEC.

The proposal for the Enrico Fermi LMFBR was sent to the Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards for review by the AEC. ACRS was established by the AEC to provide technical reviews of reactor designs in 1948 as a strictly advisory body. The 15 member ACRS concluded "there is insufficient information available at this time to give assurance that the PRDC reactor can be operated at this site without public hazard". AEC had already determined they would approve the application however, and ignored the ACRS report. The PRDC had applied under the demonstration program so the AEC Commissioners had to approach the Joint Committee for funding approval. At the meeting before the Joint Committee Chairman Strauss spoke of the plants groundbreaking ceremony as a preordained conclusion revealing the fact that the AEC had already reached their decision on the issue. In an attempt to assure appropriation of sufficient Research and Development funds Commissioner Murray of the AEC brought up the contents of the ACRS report to the members of the Joint Committee. Upon discovering the existence of an unfavorable ACRS report the Joint Committee applied additional pressure and forced the publication of the report. When the AEC approved a conditional permit for the plant on August 21, 1956 prior to the resolution of the safety questions raised in the ACRS report the Joint Committee was livid. Many members of the Joint Committee felt that the Commission was behaving in a "reckless and arrogant manner". After this case the ACRS was made a statutory rather than an advisory body whose reports would be public.

The AEC also had to approve regulations to license operators of reactors and initially argued against being required to do so. Chairman Strauss argued that it made more sense to leave the training and monitoring of reactor operators up to utilities in an executive session with the Joint Committee in May of 1954. Members of the Committee took exception to this plan and in writing the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 included a provision making the AEC responsible for licensing reactor operators. The Commissioners enacted regulations in 1955 requiring applicants to pass a test and a medical exam but otherwise leaving training and evaluation to the utilities. This regulation remained in effect for 15 years and allowed operators to renew their licenses every two years by presenting evidence they had performed safely and competently at their jobs. In the area of safety regulations in general the Commission was concerned that regulations not be burdensome to industry lest they become a barrier to expansion of nuclear energy. By 1962 the AECs cheerleading had resulted in the construction of six power reactors, two of which were built with entirely private funds.

Public opinion regarding nuclear power changed over the course of time from initial acceptance and support to disapproval and anti nuclear activism. This evolution began with the controversy over nuclear fallout from atmospheric bomb tests in the late 50s and early 60s. Public anxieties regarding low levels of radiation were heightened by news stories about the deaths of sheep in Utah and a series of B Horror movies about giant mutant insects supposedly spawned by radiation exposure. Overall the message got across to the majority of people that radiation, even a little bit, was bad for you. It became accepted common knowledge that although radiation couldn't really produce a 60 foot ant, it could cause genetic mutations, cancer and other long term effects. Public protests were successful in preventing two proposed power plants, Ravenswood in New York City and Bodega Bay in California. Just as the public was souring on the concept of nuclear power the utilities finally decided to jump on board.

Oyster Creek NPP Photo British Energy

The period from 1963 to 1975 became known as the Great Bandwagon Market, a term coined by Philip Sporn in 1967. Sporn was President of the American Electric Power Service Corporation. At the same time the number of orders for nuclear plants was up, the size of plants was increasing. A number of factors coincided to create the boom, among them the stiff competition between General Electric and Westinghouse, the two primary builders of reactors. GE raised the stakes in 1963 by offering Jersey Central Power and Light a turnkey contract on the Oyster Creek Plant located in Toms River, New Jersey. GE contracted to build a 515 mw nuclear plant, ready to run for $66 million and beat all other bidders including fossil fuel plants. GEs plan was to stimulate demand even though they knew they would lose money on the deal. Westinghouse began offering turnkey contracts as well, revving up the competition between the two and losing hundreds of millions for both companies, but also increasing demand for plants. Another factor that contributed to the Bandwagon Market was the institution of power pooling arrangements between electric utilities under which those with generating capacity beyond their own needs could sell excess power to other utilities. This resulted in larger plants being built since reserve power had become an income producing commodity rather than an unsalable liability. The trend toward larger and larger plants made the initial capital costs of building a nuclear facility as opposed to a coal fired facility less of a consideration. This increase in size came despite the lack of experience in operating reactors of such large capacity. Between 1963 and 1969 the size of plants being designed doubled to 1100 mw when experience was still limited to plants of 200-500 mw Public concern over air pollution also increased the allure of nuclear plants vs. coal fired plants with the latter’s sulfurous discharges. The net effect of all of these factors was to sharply increase orders for nuclear plants from 4 in 1965 to 31 in 1967.

The increase in size concerned a number of regulators who felt that the correspondence between small and large plants design wise might not be as direct as the utilities assumed it would be. So called design by extrapolation was used in which the results and design of smaller plants were simply projected into larger sizes. This method was not as successful with nuclear plants as it had been in the 1950s with coal plants. It produced nuclear plants that were less reliable to operate and raised safety concerns for the licensing staff at the AEC. Increased complexity, little to no operating experience in similar sized plants and the large number of applications lengthened the approval process and raised the ire of the utilities who complained bitterly and vociferously about the delays. Lengthening the period required to construct a new facility cost the utilities money as did the end of the turnkey contracts. When utilities began paying the actual cost of building the plants as opposed to the artificially low subsidized prices of the turnkey contracts nuclear plants ceased their competitive edge over fossil fuel plants. In addition, the cost of coal was actually dropping, as was the price of uranium, while oil prices rose steadily into the 1970s. Reactors were sited nearer and nearer large metropolitan areas diminishing the traditional safety factor of remote siting and increasing the importance of engineered safely features. The larger plants also increased the potential for damage in the event of an accident, requiring more attention to safely features such as passive core sprays, pressure suppression toruses, and safety injection systems to flood the core in the event of a loss of coolant accident (LOCA). AEC required redundant systems to provide multiple backups of safety related equipment.

The issue of greatest concern to the AEC and ACRS was a LOCA that resulted in a core meltdown. Larger plants operated at higher temperatures and pressures making the possibility of a LOCA greater and the increased size of the fuel load made it all the more likely that if the fuel did melt it would breach the containment as well as the pressure vessel. In the event the fuel melted it's heat would be sufficient according to theory to melt its way through the steel pressure vessel landing on the concrete floor of the containment building with only a foot or two of steel reinforced concrete between it and the outside world. The molten mass of steel, fuel. and melted cladding would then, again theoretically, cut through the floor like the proverbial hot knife through butter and continue on into the ground. This scenario became known as the 'China Syndrome' since that presumably would be the direction in which the melted fuel was heading. The main line of defense against such an occurrence would be the Emergency Core Cooling System or ECCS which was designed to dump large quantities of water into the core to cool the fuel and prevent it from melting in the first place.

Prior to 1966 when the China Syndrome concern arose the containment building had been viewed as a failsafe final barrier to the dissemination of radioactivity beyond the plant property, but with the realization that under certain circumstances this final barrier might not provide a barrier at all, the previous paradigms had to be redrawn. The AEC had previously planned a series of tests at the Reactor Test Facility in Idaho on the ECCS called the LOFT experiments for Loss of Fluid Tests. Preliminary tests with a scaled down reactor mock up indicated that ECCS might not function as designed. In a 9" long electrically heated core the injection of water to mimic the action of the ECCS was blocked by quantities of steam and exited the miniature reactor without providing any cooling to speak of through the same hole used to simulate the cause of the LOCA. The report on the test results stated that "essentially no emergency core coolant reached the core...ECC liquid was ejected from the system in Test 849 as in previous tests with accumulator ECC, and at no time did ECC liquid reach the core".

The AEC attempted to keep the results of the test from the public so as not to provide the antinuclear lobby additional ammunition, but they were forced to issue interim operating guidelines to reactor owners to mitigate the potential failure of the ECCS. These requirements meant that larger plants would have to operate under their rated capacity in order to reduce their operating temperatures. The process of issuing the interim regulations produced the exact result the AEC was trying to avoid, the test results became public and were commented on by the Union of Concerned Scientists who were not so confident as the AEC that the interim fix was adequate. In fact the scientists at the AEC National Labs were also less than confident. AECs sanguine view was based on their conviction that the ECCS was not fundamentally flawed and that any minor problems could be engineered out of it with additional research. Publicity surrounding the issue forced the AEC to hold public hearings. Originally intended to last six weeks, the hearings extended to two years and produced 22,000 pages of testimony and 1,000 supporting documents. Damage to AECs credibility with the public was exacerbated by press accounts and leaked documents from within the AEC and the Union of Concerned Scientists. In the summer of 1974, in answer to the nuclear critics, the AEC released the Rasmussen Report.

Produced over three years at a cost of $4 million by Professor Norman Rasmussen and a team of 40 scientists, the AEC funded report concluded that although the risks of a meltdown might be higher than previously believed, the consequences of such an event were less than expected. Rasmussen, Dean of Engineering at MIT, wrote in the Executive Summary, which received wide press coverage, that the chance of a major nuclear accident was "about as likely as a meteorite crashing into a city, or a chance of one in the course of a million years". However the conclusions in the Executive Summary were not even supported by the body of the report. As the suppositions of the report were dissected by outside scientists and even those at the AEC controlled National Labs, it became obvious that the Rasmussen Report was a puff piece intended to quiet critics of nuclear power. By the time the full report was issued in 1875 it had been largely discredited, and in 1979 the AECs replacement, the NRC distanced itself from the report officially.

While the ECCS controversy was ongoing, the AEC also reconsidered its position on operator licensing. Regulatory staff at the AEC recognized that the larger plants of the period ran for longer periods which limited the opportunity for operators to gain experience in start ups, shutdowns and transient conditions. It was felt that this lack could be effectively addressed through additional training requirements for license renewal. A program requiring lectures and on the job training was instituted and applied to operators and senior operators in 1973. This new program did not address all concerns regarding operator competency however. Forrest J. Ramick of Penn State University questioned the competence of operators in light of training aimed at passing tests rather than running plants and expressed reservations about a "reliance on rote memory to fulfill training requirements, and courses taught by indifferent training coordinators". That Remicks fears were well founded was proven in March of 1979 at Three Mile Island II in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. After the partial meltdown of the plants core the Presidential Commission assigned to study the accident, the Kemeny Commission, concluded that inadequate training of operators was a substantial factor in the accident and blamed the utility and the NRC for the poor showing.

Three Mile Island NPP Photo British Energy

NRCs investigation of the accident arrived at a similar conclusion and on April 20, 1979 the Commission requested a complete review of existing training requirements. Sixteen recommendations came out of this study, most of which the Commission accepted, but the implementation of a number of new policies was delayed. In 1982 this delay resulted in Congress ordering the NRC to implement a set of comprehensive regulations within 12 months in the wording of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982. This timeframe was missed as the NRC continued to dither over details of the regulations. When NRC staff issued proposed regulations in February of 1984 the industry protested that the plan developed by staff would curtail industry training plans that would result in a higher standard if allowed to proceed. Industry was concerned that the requirements suggested by NRC staff would produce a shortage of qualified operators at a time when eleven plants were scheduled to go on line and proposed the gradual phasing in of training improvements. In 1984 the NRC approved the industry plan as an interim solution while they further examined staff proposals. The staff submitted revised proposed rules to the Commission in June 1984. It was rejected by the Commission who approved industries suggested plan on March 14, 1985. If industry kept to its expressed plan for improving training the NRC agreed not to implement additional rules of its own.

For two years industry moved ahead with its plan and reached a number of the goals set, including gaining accreditation for 131 training programs at 31 sites. In 1987 the Commission issued its final rules for training providing for the 61 sites without accredited programs. A few days after the rules were issued NRC inspectors discovered operators at the Peach Bottom Plant routinely slept while on duty. The plant was ordered closed on March 31, 1987. It was revealed that in addition to sleeping on duty, the operators read magazines, played video games, and engaged in rubber band fights. The plant remained out of service for two years. NRC considered the guidelines it had issued adequate to meet the requirements of the NWPA of 1982, however, Public Citizen did not and won a suit in the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. In April 1990 the court found that the statutory requirements had not been met. NRC directed staff to produce a new rule which was duly presented to the Commission in April 1991. The Commission promptly rejected it in its entirety and directed staff to produce another proposal that was less specific and that would not interfere in industries "highly effective training programs". A final rule was eventually approved in March 1993.

In December of 1969 Congress passed the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) which was signed into law January 1, 1970. NEPA required Federal Agencies to consider the environmental impact of their activities. AECs response to NEPA was based on its conviction that operating nuclear power plants had little or no environmental impact, as well as their lack of staff to pursue environmental impacts aggressively. Primarily AEC believed that excessive consideration of environmental impacts would unnecessarily delay approval of new license applications. Another instance of AECs promotional mission interfering with it's regulatory mission. Environmental groups took the agency to court over the Calvert Cliffs nuclear plant's environmental impact and AECs regulations regarding plant siting. The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia issued a ruling on July 23, 1971 lambasting AECs lack of attention to environmental issues. Chairman of the AEC Glenn Seaborg resigned after ten years in July of 1971 and was replaced by James Schlesinger the Assistant Director of the Office of Management and Budget. The Commission decided not to appeal the Calvert Cliffs decision, announcing its decision on August 26, 1971. Schlesinger had an entirely different view of the purpose and mission of the AEC than past Chairmen, a fact made clear in his remarks to an industry meeting in Bal Harbor, Florida on October 20, 1971. He stated that "You [the nuclear industry] should not expect the AEC to fight the industries political, social, and commercial battles". Schlesinger attempted to recover the agencies credibility but the furor over a proposed nuclear waste repository in a Lyons, Kansas salt dome resulted in the location, which AEC had argued for vehemently, being proven unsuitable to the AECs great embarrassment. In view of the dual and contradictory goals assigned the AEC by the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 and the increasing attention called to this basic conflict by critics of nuclear power, in 1974 the AEC was divided into two agencies. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, intended to provide regulatory oversight of the industry and the Energy Research and Development Administration or ERDA, to encourage development of various energy technologies. The 1974 Energy Reorganization Act ended the two discordant goals assigned to the AEC 20 years previously. The statutory mandate of the NRC was clearly to ensure the safety of nuclear facilities.

Browns Ferry NPP Photo TVA

In its first year of existence, the NRC dealt with two major issues- the first in March of 1976 was a major fire at the Browns Ferry Plant operated by TVA in Decatur, Alabama. This incident highlighted the deficiencies of the redundant systems engineered into nuclear power plants and claimed by regulators and industry alike to assure safety. Public attention was focused on so called common mode failures that were capable of defeating redundancy. In this case, a candle used to search for air leaks by an electrician defeated millions of dollars in engineering. Shortly after the Browns Ferry Fire the Rasmussen Report or 'Reactor Safety Study' commissioned by the AEC came out. As previously described, sharp criticism of the methods and conclusions of the report resulted in the NRC withdrawing its support of the Report in January 1979. In March of 1979 the credibility of the NRC received a further blow as a result of the partial meltdown at Three Mile Island Unit 2 (TMI). The result of a series of mechanical and human failures, TMI brought the spotlight of press and public once again to the issue of reactor safety. The accident was largely ascribed to operator error, calling into question training requirements for reactor operators. In addition, it pointed out an unforeseen precipitating event for a LOCA, in this case a stuck pressure relief valve, which had not been considered in previous probability studies and fault tree analyses. Approximately half of the core melted at TMI damaging the reactor so badly it was permanently closed as a result. Loss of public confidence in nuclear power as a safe and reasonable alternative resulted from the two well publicized accidents. NRC reexamined its prior assumptions regarding the efficacy of engineered safety features in light of the weaknesses discovered through analysis of Browns Ferry and TMI 2. Several studies were done to examine how relatively minor failures could cascade into serious incidents, the NRC established an Office for Analysis and Evaluation of Operational Data to systematically examine the performance of plants and hopefully spot possible problems before they resulted in a major event. NRC also instituted additional emergency planning regulations to prevent future confusion on the grand scale that occurred during the TMI 2 accident. While these processes were still ongoing another event occurred that stunned the industry, the public, and the NRC. A catastrophic accident at the previously unheard of V.I.Lenin Nuclear Power Plant near Chernobyl splashed across the worlds television screens. After TMI 2 the 40 nuclear plants then on order were canceled, after Chernobyl activists called for the closure of operating plants. Antinuclear sentiments increased worldwide in the wake of Chernobyl.

By the late 1980s the NRC decided it was necessary to streamline the license application process. No new plants had been ordered in a decade and a number of those granted construction permits had been canceled. The NRC found that "it seemed apparent that the complexity of the licensing process was a major deterrent to utilities who might consider building nuclear plants". Licensing was reduced from a two step to a one step process. Rather than submitting a rather general construction application and a detailed operation application, one application describing safety related systems in detail and others more generally was adopted. The change in licensing procedures did not result in the new plant orders the NRC hoped however. There were still no plans to build any plants and by this time 97 ordered plants had been canceled. It began to appear that the glorious expansion of nuclear power that had been predicted early on would not come to pass. In addition to the high capital costs of nuclear vs. coal plants, layers of regulations to insure safety, and inefficient operation of Light Water Reactors combined to make nuclear an unattractive option. 70 to 90% of the cost of electricity generated by a LWR comes from the capital charges associated with its construction, in a coal fired plant the figure is between 30-35%. Lack of operating efficiency added to these costs. Plants had been expected to operate at 80% of rated capacity but in fact were operating at closer to 60%. Additional design requirements for safety continued to be added, increasing the cost per KW five times between 1970 and 1980. After the TMI 2 accident the NRC implemented a defacto moratorium on licensing, this lasted 18 months. 57 operating licenses have been granted since 1980 beginning August 21, 1980. All of these plants were ordered prior to the 1979 accident and had already been granted construction permits. No construction permits for new plants have been issued since 1978. In 1974 it had been projected that there would be 850-1400 nuclear plants in operation by the turn of the century, there are 109. Delays in construction are a factor influencing nuclear plants relative unpopularity, in 1974 the average delay was 33 months, by 1978 the average delay had risen to 54 months. Of the plants having construction permits at the time of TMI 2 the last gained its operating license in 1996, a full 23 years after the construction permit was issued in 1973. This was the Watts Bar Unit I plant operated by TVA. It is safe to say at this point that nuclear power is not a growth industry.