reactors without a fraction of the technological infrastructure to safeguard them that we have in this country.

This is an important question. I admit it presents a challenge to the Joint Committee as basic as any challenge ever presented to Members of Congress, not only because of the seriousness of continuing the present path to present future generations but of the difficulty for anyone to have to admit that the situation was not what it was suggested it was, and that drastic investigative and remedial measures are required.

If the Joint Committee decides to begin these drastic investigative and remedial measures, then I think it will find far more information than has been submitted at these hearings and in other forums around the country because it alone has the spectacular authority and leverage to get the entire range of doubts and skepticisms from the Atomic Energy Commission, its laboratories, the utilities and the reactor manufacturers themselves.

I don't have to emphasize because I am sure some of this has come before you in the processes of meeting with some of these people, that even the advocates of nuclear power are having grave doubts about the likelihood of its safety. I have consulted with a number of these people who have thus far refused to jeopardize their entire careers by speaking out. But what they say in private such as what Dr. Alvin Weinberg has written in public, is that we are striking a potentially catastrophic bargain with society through nuclear fission and that there is no doubt that the potential risk here, multiplied throughout the country wherever there are fuel reprocessing plants, radioactive waste disposal sites or operating nuclear powerplants or even transportation vehicles conveying these materials to and fro, the risk is catastrophic.

While many may not particularly care about what they do to the present generation, I think we have to consider this not just a technical problem but a moral issue of the greatest gravity in terms of sending to future gentrations the kind of contaminated resources on the planet earth that major accidents could produce. And if you are somewhat persuaded by probability figures that have been juggled from the Atomic Energy Commission in recent months, I would suggest you ask the Atomic Energy Commission what their probability of failure was for a satellite which they sent up in the late 1960's over the Indian Ocean, a satellite whose probability of failure was as estimated to be one out of a billion. And that satellite aborted on the first try, showering plutonium-238 over the Indian subcontinent.

I don't think there has been a case of such technological arrogance and hubris as is now displayed in the fervid promotion, economically, politically, and technically, of nuclear fission development throughout the country. I think Mr. Chairman, that if this committee is willing to extend its exposure to the kind of evidence that has been so belatedly brought to its attention that this committee can only come to the conclusion that the nuclear fission program is not worth the candle, whether for Americans or for people overseas to whom these reactors are being promoted by corporations with Government support and in some ways with a subsidy. The role of

a Federal subsidy here needs to be explored in one important fashion, and I think the Joint Committee is going to explore it later on, and that is the insurance function.

Chairman PRICE. Mr. Nader, that is the subject of another hearing.

Mr. NADER. Yes, Mr. Chairman, I am completing this.

I might bring to your attention that even so conservative an economist as Milton Friedman has stated that if it is true that nuclear powerplants could not economically operate if they had to assume full private insurance coverage, then nuclear powerplants should not be allowed to operate. This reflects in one fashion the broad ideological consensus of people around the country, whether they are liberal, moderate, radical, or conservative, around this issue.

Thank you very much.

Chairman PRICE. Mr. Nader, I am sure that you are sincere in your criticisms of the program. However, operating under the rules of the committee that we have advance copies of the testimony 24 hours ahead of time, the committee has not had an opportunity to examine your statement in depth. Consequently, the committee will go over the statement and, if necessary, we will even call the Commission back to answer some of the points that you raised in your statement.

Offhand, I would like to comment on just two of your recent ones, about the transit satellite in 1960 which failed to enter orbit. However, it disappeared exactly as designed so that no danger to humans would be involved.

Mr. NADER. I think that is not the case. Professor Kendall will comment on that briefly.

Chairman PRICE. Professor Kendall has already testified before the committee.

Mr. NADER. Dr. Daniel Ford may comment on it.

Chairman PRICE. He may comment on it. Then we will have someone else from the Commission comment on what, he commented

on.

Dr. FORD. The satellite failure was considered by health physicists to be a particularly significant event because although a very small incident took place, although a very small amount of radioactivity was released into the global atmosphere, the fact is that all men, women, and children on Earth will over the period of their lives be exposed to an increase in the general level of background radiation by an order of a significant fraction of a millirem.

Chairman PRICE. I think the important thing to consider, Mr. Ford, is whether or not the satellite performed as designed.

Dr. FORD. What I am trying to clarify is the nature of the radiation hazard that ensued, that while the dose that individual people received as a result of that incident is small, the fact is that it is a dose that is given to all men on Earth which indicates the significant effect that you can have from a relatively minor failure in the program, a highly improbable failure at that."

Chairman PRICE. What was the radiation hazard that did ensue from the transit?

Dr. FORD. There was an increase at the global level of background radiation. To think that a small event as a single satellite failureChairman PRICE. How much increase?

Dr. FORD. The increase was on the order of a fraction of 1 millirem, an order of four-tenths of 1 millirem.

Representative HOLIFIELD. Do you know how much you get with an X-ray?

Dr. FORD. Vastly more. But the fact is that it is the person who is exposed to the X-ray that gets it, for example

Chairman PRICE. Dr. Ford, what are your qualifications?

Dr. FORD. I am trained as an economist, a graduate of Harvard. Representative PRICE. An economist?

Chairman PRICE. You are testifying on a radiological matter. Mr. NADER. Mr. Chairman, let me suggest that you obtain the advice of Dr. Karl Morgan, who is the preeminent health physicist who worked many years for the Atomic Energy Commission. Chairman PRICE. We will, Mr. Nader, and we do.

Mr. NADER. Let's not get into the issue of qualifications, Mr. Chairman, because I think the Joint Committee which has foisted the technology on the American people will suffer by contrast.

Chairman PRICE. When we do go for information, though, we go to the people qualified in the field.

Mr. NADER. Let us talk about the evidence, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman PRICE. That is what we are talking about.
Mr. McCormack?

Representative MCCORMACK. I think the witness is hardly the person to define the criteria under which this hearing should be conducted. That is the chairman's responsibility. I think the witness should keep that in mind.

Mr. NADER. The chairman has always solicited opinions from the witnesses, Mr. Congressman.

Chairman PRICE. Mr. Holifield.

Representative HOLIFIELD. Mr. Chairman, the witness, Mr. Nader, has completely disregarded the request and the demand of the committee, the rules of the committee, which require that a statement be given to the committee, its members, and its staff, 24 hours before presenting it in open hearing.

As I understand, this statement was only available at 1 o'clock today. It is an extraordinary statement. It is a statement that in effect calls into question our honor and integrity and alleges conspiracy between members of the Joint Committee, and the AEC. It makes accusations which, in essence, imply criminal action on our part.

In view of the fact that it is such a comprehensive and denunciatory statement I would respectfully request that the staff and the AEC be given an opportunity to study the statement and that the committee determine what future action can be taken on this matter. I resent the personal statements that have been made, using my name, and I resent the imputation of the committee's lack of honor and integrity.

I would point out to the gentleman that on the table behind us are 69 volumes of hearing records which the members of this com

mittee have chaired and have listened to, thousands and thousands of hours from hundreds and hundreds of scientists, men of competence and men of particular competence in the field of nuclear energy, from every discipline of science, and the preponderant evidence in those volumes there, not just the statement of an isolated scientist here and there, but the preponderant evidence of many men of honor and integrity, contrary to the statements which the gentleman has made, and certainly contrary to the imputations he has made against a great body of scientific people who hold high esteem in the minds of the public.

So, I would say, Mr. Chairman, that I will personally desist from questioning the gentleman because of the unfair position he has placed the committee in and he has placed me as an individual in. But that does not mean that I will not answer it at some time when we have had time to analyze and obtain the reference that he has made to credible sources, certainly not to newspaper reports, because we are accustomed to having newspaper reports that are distortions, and I would suggest that we go to the next witness. Chairman PRICE. I would just like to ask one or two things to correct the record while Mr. Nader is here.

COMMITTEE SUPPORT FOR AEC REGULATORY

Mr. Nader, one of your statements was that the Joint Committee has permitted deep cuts to be made in the budget of the AEC regulatory staff. Where did you get that information?

Mr. NADER. The reference is, first of all, that it has not objected to the OMB's action. In prior years, Mr. Chairman, I think the articles in Science Magazine have shown how there has been a decline in the needed support.

Chairman PRICE. In the first place, you are not making a true statement. Secondly, the item that you are talking about is not an authorization item. It was an appropriation item and the jurisdiction would be within the Appropriations Committees. But secondly, it was not a deep cut in the budget, as related to fiscal 1974 budget. Actually it was an increase. But there was a cut in the increase by the OMB.

I don't think you understood.

Mr. NADER. It was a cut in the proposed budget, Mr. Chairman. But I am not just talking about this year.

Chairman PRICE. That is the only one you could have been talking about, because that is the only one that the Washington Post had the story on.

Mr. NADER. This reduced support for the safety activities of the AEC installation has been going on for many years.

Chairman PRICE. This committee has never reduced its support for regulatory. We have always been strong on the regulatory features of the program.

I would just like to give you this information, maybe it has not been furnished to you by some of your colleagues, but the committee, among a long list of the actions it has taken over the years to enhance the safety of nuclear reactors, was responsible for the establishment as a statutory body of the Advisory Committee on

Reactor Safeguards which has conducted safety reviews over the years-Mr. Holifield has referred to the volumes of hearings on reactor safety. We have visited laboratories, the research laboratories, we have listened to the scientists who were doing the work. We have concentrated and insisted on an adequate safety program within the AEC through the years. I think the gentleman knows that.

Mr. NADER. Mr. Chairman, we could go on with a great detail on a number of problems which the Joint Committee simply has not inquired into and has not had hearings on in time.

Chairman PRICE. The gentleman from California has just pointed out to you the thoroughness with which we go into these projects in hearings over the years. The trouble is too many people don't take the opportunity to read these hearings.

Mr. NADER. But in all those volumes, Mr. Chairman, do you have the 1965 AEC sponsored study on the damage from a credible risk accident that I mentioned in the testimony?

Chairman PRICE. Well, in some of the new ones, because this has been the subject of this hearing.

Mr. NADER. This was done in 1965, Mr. Chairman.

Chairman PRICE. I would say probably yes, if you go through these hearings. I can't remember that off the top of my head. I would say probably yes, we do.

Mr. NADER. That is not the case.

Dr. FORD. Mr. Chairman, if I could give you some guidance in looking through the material, the committee received a very vague 2-page letter in 1965 reporting the results of the study in which none of the detailed technical quantitative results were available. The AEC in June for the first time released 2,000 pages of AEC internal memo which they represented as never having been released before.

Chairman PRICE. The committee is not going to overlook any statement you have made. We are going to go into each one of them thoroughly. We are going to have the Commission back if we need to have answers from the Commission on them.1

Mr. NADER. Mr. Chairman, may I correct just one point?

We asked the committee Mr. Lippman asked the committeefor a copy of its rules on the submission of testimony and Mr. Lippman states that he did not receive a copy.

Chairman PRICE. I doubt that very much. But the rules are similar to rules of all House Committees, at least, and I think maybe the Senate too. The general rule on the Hill is that you submit the staement 24 hours in advance of a hearing.

Mr. NADER. We have been in touch with your staff member Chairman PRICE. We are not quarreling with you about that. We only state that because you had not submitted your statement in advance we were deprived of the opportunity to go over it. The first knowledge of it we had was your reading of it. We are not quarreling with you.

Representative HOLIFIELD. Mr. Chairman, may I ask Mr. Bauser, the staff director, if he has made any attempt the last few days to obtain Mr. Nader's statement?

1 See appendix 8 for AEC comments on testimony of Mr. Nader.