The Faustian Bargain

I am submitting this statement as a long-time student and practitioner of benefit-cost analysis, not as a specialist in nuclear energy. It is my belief that benefit-cost analysis cannot answer the most important policy questions associated with the desirability of developing a large-scale, fission-based economy. To expect it to do so is to ask it to bear a burden it cannot sustain. This is so because these questions are of deep ethical character. Benefit-cost analyses certainly cannot solve such questions and may well obscure them.

These questions have to do with whether society should strike the Faustian bargain with atomic scientists and engineers, described by Alvin M. Weinberg in Science. If so unforgiving a technology as large-scale nuclear fission energy production is adopted, it will impose a burden of continuous monitoring and sophisticated management of a dangerous material, essentially forever. The penalty of not bearing this burden may be unparalleled disaster. This irreversible burden would be imposed even if nuclear fission were to be used only for a few decades, a mere instant in the pertinent time scales.

Clearly, there are some major advantages in using nuclear fission technology, else it would not have so many well-intentioned and intelligent advocates. Residual heat is produced to a greater extent by current nuclear generating plants than by fossil fuel-fired ones. But, otherwise, the environmental impact of routine operation of the nuclear fuel cycle, including burning the fuel in the reactor, can very likely be brought to a lower level than will be possible with fossil fuel-fired plants. This superiority may not, however, extend to some forms of other alternatives, such as solar and geothermal energy, which have received comparatively little research and development effort. Insofar as the usual market costs are concerned, there are few published estimates of the costs of various alternatives, and those which are available are afflicted with much uncertainty. In general, however, the costs of nuclear and fossil fuel energy (when residuals generation in the latter is controlled to a high degree) do not seem to be so greatly different. Early evidence suggests that other as yet undeveloped alternatives (such as hot rock geothermal energy) might be economically attractive.

Unfortunately, the advantages of fission are much more readily quantified in the format of a benefit-cost analysis than are the associated hazards. Therefore, there exists the danger that the benefits may seem more real. Furthermore, the conceptual basis of benefit-cost analysis requires that the redistributional effects of the action be, for one or another reason, inconsequential. Here we are speaking of hazards that may affect humanity many generations hence and equity questions that can neither be neglected as inconsequential nor evaluated on any known theoretical or empirical basis. This means that technical people, be they physicists or economists, cannot legitimately make the decision to generate such hazards. Our society confronts a moral problem of a great profundity; in my opinion, it is one of the most consequential that has ever faced mankind. In a democratic society the only legitimate means for making such a choice is through the mechanisms of representative government.

For this reason, during the short interval ahead while dependence on fission energy could still be kept within some bounds, I believe the Congress should make an open and explicit decision about this Faustian bargain. This would best be done after full national discussion at a level of seriousness and detail that the nature of the issue demands. An appropriate starting point could be hearings before a committee of Congress with a broad national policy responsibility. Technically oriented or specialized committees would not be suitable to this task. The Joint Economic Committee might be appropriate. Another possibility would be for the Congress to appoint a select committee to consider this and other large ethical questions associated with developing technology. The newly established Office of Technology Assessment could be very useful to such a committee.

Much has been written about hazards associated with the production of fission energy. Until recently, most statements emanating from the scientific community were very reassuring on this matter. But several events in the past year or two have reopened the issue of hazards and revealed it as a real one. I think the pertinent hazards can usefully be divided into two categories—those associated with the actual operation of the fuel cycle for power production and those associated with the long-term storage of radioactive waste. I will discuss both briefly.

The recent failure of a small physical test of emergency core cooling equipment for the present generation of light-water reactors was an alarming event. This is in part because the failure casts doubt upon whether the system would function in the unlikely, but not impossible, event it would be called upon in an actual energy reactor. But it also illustrates the great difficulty of forecasting behavior of components in this complex technology where pertinent experimentation is always difficult and may sometimes be impossible. Other recent unscheduled events were the partial collapse of fuel rods in some reactors.
There have long been deep but suppressed doubts within the scientific community about the adequacy of reactor safety research vis-à-vis the strong emphasis on developing the technology and getting plants on the line. In recent months the Union of Concerned Scientists has called public attention to the hazards of nuclear fission and asked for a moratorium on the construction of new plants and stringent operating controls on existing ones. The division of opinion in the scientific community about a matter of such moment is deeply disturbing to an outsider.

No doubt there are some additional surprises ahead when other parts of the fuel cycle become more active, particularly in transportation of spent fuel elements and in fuel reprocessing facilities. As yet, there has been essentially no commercial experience in recycling the plutonium produced in nuclear reactors. Furthermore, it is my understanding that the inventory of plutonium in the breeder reactor fuel cycle will be several times greater than the inventory in the light-water reactor fuel cycle with plutonium recycle. Plutonium is one of the deadliest substances known to man. The inhalation of a millionth of a gram—the size of 1 grain of pollen—appears to be sufficient to cause lung cancer.

Although it is well known in the nuclear community, perhaps the general public is unaware of the magnitude of the disaster which would occur in the event of a severe accident at a nuclear facility. I am told that if an accident occurred at one of today's nuclear plants, resulting in the release of only five percent of only the more volatile fission products, the number of casualties could total between 1,000 and 10,000. The estimated range apparently could shift up by a factor of ten or so, depending on assumptions of population density and meteorological conditions.

With breeder reactors, the accidental release of plutonium may be of water consequence than the release of the more volatile fission products. Plutonium is one of the most potent respiratory carcinogens in existence. In addition to a variety of other radioactive substances, breeders will contain one, or more, tons of plutonium. While the fraction that could be released following a credible accident is extremely uncertain, it is clear the release of only a small percentage of this inventory would be equivalent to the release of all the volatile fission products in one of today's nuclear plants. Once lost to the environment, the plutonium not ingested by people in the first few hours following an accident would be around to take its toll for generations to come—for tens of thousands of years. When one factors in the possibility of sabotage and warfare, where power plants are prime targets not just in the United States but also in less developed countries now striving to establish a nuclear industry, then there is almost no limit to the size of the catastrophe one can envisage.

It is argued that the probabilities of such disastrous events are so low that these events fall into the negligible risk category. Perhaps so, but do we really know this? Recent unexpected events raise doubts. How, for example, does one calculate the actions of a fanatical terrorist?

The use of plutonium as an article of commerce and the presence of large quantities of plutonium in the nuclear fuel cycles also worries a number of informed persons in another connection. Plutonium is readily used in the production of nuclear weapons, and governments, possibly even private parties, not now having access to such weapons might value it highly for this purpose. Although an illicit market has not yet been established, its value has been estimated to be comparable to that of heroin (around $5,000 per pound). A certain number of people may be tempted to take great risks to obtain it. AEC Commissioner Larsen, among others, has called attention to this possibility. Thus, a large-scale fission energy economy could inadvertently contribute to the proliferation of nuclear weapons. These might fall into the hands of countries with little to lose, or of madmen, of whom we have seen several in high places within recent memory.

In his excellent article referred to above, Weinberg emphasized that part of the Faustian bargain is that to use fission technology safely, society must exercise great vigilance and the highest levels of quality control, continuously and indefinitely. As the fission energy economy grows, many plants will be built and operated in countries with comparatively low levels of technological competence and a greater propensity to take risks. A much larger amount of transportation of hazardous materials will probably occur, and safety will become the province of the sea captain as well as the scientist. Moreover, even in countries with higher levels of technological competence, continued success can lead to reduced vigilance. We should recall that we managed to incinerate three astronauts in a very straightforward accident in an extremely high technology operation where the utmost precautions were allegedly being taken.

Deeper moral questions also surround the storage of high-level radioactive wastes. Estimates of how long these waste materials must be isolated from the biosphere apparently contain major elements of uncertainty, but current ones seem to agree on "at least two hundred thousand years."

Favorable consideration has been given to the storage of these wastes in salt formations, and a site for experimental storage was selected at Lyons, Kansas. This particular site proved to be defective. Oil companies had drilled the area full of holes, and there had also been solution mining in the area which left behind an unknown residue of water. But comments of the Kansas Geological Survey raised far deeper and more general questions about the behavior of the pertinent formations under stress and the operations of geological forces on them. The ability of solid earth geophysics to predict for the time scales required proves very limited. Only now are geologists beginning to unravel the plate tectonic theory. Furthermore, there is the political factor. An increasingly informed and environmentally aware public is likely to resist the location of a permanent storage facility anywhere.

Because the site selected proved defective, and possibly in anticipation of political problems, primary emphasis is now being placed upon the design of surface storage facilities intended to last a hundred years or so, while the search for a permanent site continues. These surface storage sites would require continuous monitoring and management of a most sophisticated kind. A complete cooling system breakdown would soon prove disastrous and even greater tragedies can be imagined.

Just to get an idea of the scale of disaster that could take place, consider the following scenario. Political factors force the federal government to rely on a single above-ground storage site for all high-level radioactive waste accumulated through the year 2000. Some of the more obvious possibilities would be existing storage sites like Hanford or Savannah, which would seem to be likely military targets. A tactical nuclear weapon hits the site and vaporizes a large fraction of the contents of this storage area. The weapon could come from one of the principal nuclear powers, a lesser developed country with one or more nuclear power plants, or it might be crudely fabricated by a terrorist organization from black-market plutonium. I am told that the radiation fallout from such an event could exceed that from all past nuclear testing by a factor of 500 or so, with radiation doses exceeding the annual dose from natural background radiation by an order of magnitude. This would bring about a drastically unfavorable, and long-lasting change in the environment of the majority of mankind. The exact magnitude of the disaster is uncertain. That massive numbers of deaths might result seems clear. Furthermore, by the year 2000, high-level wastes would have just begun to accumulate. Estimates for 2020 put them at about three times the 2000 figure.

Sometimes, analogies are used to suggest that the burden placed upon future generations by the "immortal" wastes is really nothing so very unusual. The Pyramids are cited as an instance where a very long-term commitment was made to the future and the dikes of Holland as one where continuous monitoring and maintenance are required indefinitely. These examples do not seem at all apt. They do not have the same quality of irreversibility as the problem at hand and no major portions of humanity are dependent on them for their very existence. With sufficient effort the Pyramids could have been dismantled and the Pharaohs cremated if a changed doctrine so demanded. It is also worth recalling that most of the tombs were looted already in ancient times. In the 1950s the Dutch dikes were in fact breached by the North Sea. Tragic property losses, but no destruction of human life, ensued. Perhaps a more apt example of the scale of the Faustian bargain would be the irrigation system of ancient Persia. When Tamerlane destroyed it in the 14th century, a civilization ended.

None of these historical examples tell us much about the time scales pertinent here. One speaks of two hundred thousand years. Only a little more than one-hundredth of that time span has passed since the Parthenon was built. We know of no government whose life was more than an instant by comparison with the half-life of plutonium.

It seems clear that there are many factors here which a benefit-cost analysis can never capture in quantitative, commensurable terms. It also seems unrealistic to claim that the nuclear fuel cycle will not sometime, somewhere experience major unscheduled events. These could range in magnitude from local events, like the fire at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal, to an extreme disaster affecting most of mankind. Whether these hazards are worth incurring in view of the benefits achieved is what Alvin Weinberg has referred to as a trans-scientific question. As professional specialists we can try to provide pertinent information, but we cannot legitimately make the decision, and it should not be left in our hands.

One question I have not yet addressed is whether it is in fact not already too late. Have we already accumulated such a store of high-level waste that further additions would only increase the risks marginally? While the present waste (primarily from the military program plus the plutonium and highly enriched uranium contained in bombs and military stockpiles) is by no means insignificant, the answer to the question appears to be no. I am informed that the projected high-level waste to be accumulated from the civilian nuclear power program will contain more radioactivity than the military waste by 1980 or shortly thereafter. By 2020 the radioactivity in the military waste would represent only a small percentage of the total. Nevertheless, we are already faced with a substantial long-term waste storage problem. Development of a full-scale fission energy economy would add overwhelmingly to it. In any case, it is never too late to make a decision, only later.

What are the benefits? The main benefit from near-term development of fission power is the avoidance of certain environmental impacts that would result from alternative energy sources. In addition, fission energy may have a slight cost edge, although this is somewhat controversial, especially in view of the low plant factors of the reactors actually in use. Far-reaching clean-up of the fuel cycle in the coal energy industry, including land reclamation, would require about a 20 percent cost increase over uncontrolled conditions for the large, new coal-fired plants. If this is done, fission plants would appear to have a clear cost edge, although by no means a spectacular one. The cost characteristics of the breeder that would follow the light-water reactors are very uncertain at this point. They appear, among other things, to still be quite contingent on design decisions having to do with safety. The dream of "Power too cheap to meter" was exactly that.

Another near-term benefit is that fission plants will contribute to our supply during the energy "crisis" that lies ahead for the next decade or so. One should take note that this crisis was in part caused by delays in getting fission plants on the line. Also, there seems to be a severe limitation in using nuclear plants to deal with short-term phenomena. Their lead time is half again as long as fossil fuel plants—on the order of a decade.

The long-term advantage of fission is that once the breeder is developed we will have a nearly limitless, although not necessarily cheap, supply of energy. This is very important but it does not necessarily argue for a near-term introduction of a full-scale fission economy. Coal are vast, at least adequate for a few hundred years, and we are beginning to learn more about how to cope with the "known devils" of coal. Oil shales and tar sands also are potentially very large sources of energy, although their exploitation will present problems. Geothermal and solar sources have hardly been considered but look promising. Scientists at the AEC's Los Alamos laboratory are optimistic that large geothermal sources can be developed at low cost from deep hot rocks—which are almost limitless in supply. This of course is very uncertain since the necessary technology has been only visualized. One of the potential benefits of solar energy is that its use does not heat the planet. In the long term this may be very important.

Fusion, of course, is the greatest long-term hope. Recently, leaders of the U.S. fusion research effort announced that a fusion demonstration reactor by the mid-1990s is now considered possible. Although there is a risk that the fusion option may never be achieved, its promise is so great that it merits a truly national research and development commitment.

A strategy that I feel merits sober, if not prayerful, consideration is to phase out the present set of fission reactors, put large amounts of resources into dealing with the environmental problems of fossil fuels, and price energy at its full social cost, which will help to limit demand growth. Possibly it would also turn out to be desirable to use a limited number of fission reactors to burn the present stocks of plutonium and thereby transform them into less hazardous substances. At the same time, the vast scientific resources that have developed around our fission program could be turned to work on fusion, deep geothermal, solar, and other large energy supply sources while continuing research on various types of breeders. It seems quite possible that this program would result in the displacement of fission as the preferred technology for electricity production within a few decades. Despite the extra costs we might have incurred, we would then have reduced the possibility of large-scale energy-associated nuclear disaster in our time and would be leaving a much smaller legacy of "permanent" hazard. On the other hand, we would probably have to suffer the presence of more short-lived undesirable substances in the environment in the near term.

This strategy might fail to turn up an abundant clean source of energy in the long term. In that event, we would still have fission at hand as a developed technological standby, and the ethical validity of using it would then perhaps appear in quite a different light.

We are concerned with issues of great moment. Benefit-cost analysis can supply useful inputs to the political process for making policy decisions, but it cannot begin to provide a complete answer, especially to questions with such far-reaching implications for society. The issues should be aired fully and completely before a committee of Congress having broad policy responsibilities. An explicit decision should then be made by the entire Congress as to whether the risks are worth the benefits.