for terrorist purposes and possibly the question of sabotage, which in a sense is an induced accident.

Now, the nuclear industry and the Atomic Energy Commission, are not in agreement with the views that we and other critics have with respect to the safety of these devices. This, in effect, is the controversy that I am referring to.

However, I would like to emphasize that there are many people who agree with the UCS, with our position, that the assurances of safety are presently inadequate.

SUPPORT FOR UCS POSITION

Among the people who agree with our position are many scientists outside of the program and a number of organizations that have reviewed the safety issue. Among them, for example, the Rand Corp. of California, which carried out a detailed study for the California Legislature and, as a result of their concern, recommended to that State that there be a slowdown in the implementation of nuclear power until some of the safety questions had been resolved.

The Federation of American Scientists study group that was assembled to look at these matters essentially agreed completely with our group that the assurances of safety were inadequate and that the Atomic Energy Commission's statements on the subject were not supported fully enough in their view.

Recently the British Government, in looking to the possibility of buying over 2 dozen American reactors, carried out a study, and they, too, have confirmed the conclusions that I have stated and in particular pointed to the weaknesses in the emergency core cooling systems, weaknesses in the accident analysis that I will come to in a moment which has been carried out in this country, and indicated that there were problems which would take them a number of years to resolve.

NUCLEAR PROGRAM DIMINISHING NOT SOUGHT BY ALL CRITICS

Now, not all of the critics who agree with our views on the weaknesses in the safety assurances recommend diminishing the nuclear program, but there is general agreement among quite a community of people that there exist serious unresolved safety problems. Some of these people are in the Atomic Energy Commission, itself, and in the laboratories on which the Atomic Energy Commission depends for a number of its critical safety evaluations.

In the face of this controversy we believe that the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy could perform a very valuable service by looking into and attempting to resolve this great controversy before the nuclear program continues with the very large projected increase that the AEC at least expects will ensue in the next decade.

The Atomic Energy Commission has from its beginning had a double mandate of both promoting nuclear power and regulating it. Unfortunately, the critics do not believe many of the AEC's claims in the safety area. Especially there is the strong belief that in many cases the promotional aspect of their activity has taken precedence over the questions of regulation that have to do with assuring safety.

The Joint Committee could find out exactly what is going on. It is not a matter that I in a 20-minute speech can give substantial documentation for. Some of this documentation is in the written material that I and my colleague, Mr. Ford, prepared and have given to the committee.

Let me take two examples of this controversy to show you what in part it consists of, and these are but two from a wide range of examples over which we, the critics, and the atomic and nuclear industry do not agree.

MANAGEMENT OF RADIOACTIVE WASTE

The first has to do with the disposal of radioactive waste. These wastes which necessarily, as I have said, accompany the production of nuclear power are of unparalleled toxicity, and they have to be kept from the environment for tens of hundreds or thousands of years.

Dr. D. L. Ray, Chairperson of the Atomic Energy Commission, has stated that proven technology exists today for providing safe, economical management of high-level waste.

However, this statement follows the AEC's claims that adequate disposal was possible in bedded salt domes in Lyons, Kans., a project which fell because of inadequate technical support and which finally appeared to have been quite poorly considered.

The present schemes represent a reversion to a proposal that the AEC had abandoned, itself, some years earlier, namely, that of retrievable surface storage.

Even this is not yet available, but the prospect, according to the AEC, is that it will be developed hopefully some years ahead. This in our view is not a satisfactory situation, particularly in view of a third aspect of the waste storage which has been the mismanagement of the large quantities of radioactive wastes which have already accumulated, many of them in the weapons program.

There have been repeated leaks approaching now some 500,000 gallons of enormously radioactive material, some of these from leaking and corroding steel tanks, some of them from fresh, new equipment which has not performed its function and has allowed in the most recent months some 7,000 gallons of radioactivity, not to seep into the earth, but to spray into the air.

A second example has to do with accident analysis.

In the testimony which you have heard regarding accidents and emergency core cooling systems, it should be recognized that there are accidents that the AEC states are not possible or alternatively have such a low probability of occurring that no protection need be afforded against them.

FEARS OF PRESSURE VESSEL RUPTURE

The principal example of this is the possibility that the pressure vessel, the main containment structure-not the outer containment but the inner pressure device which holds the hot water and within which resides the nuclear reactor core which generates the heat-that this device may split and rupture.

There are no protective systems installed in any reactor that will mitigate the consequences of a pressure vessel rupture. There are various reasons given by the Atomic Energy Commission why this is the case. Many of the reasons revolve around the statement that it is not a credible accident, that its probability, as I have said, is so low as to be effectively negligible.

However, in 1965 the Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards recommended means to ameliorate the consequences of a pressure vessel rupture. This recommendation was never acted on, evidently for the reason that there was no protective mechanism that anyone could invent for controlling such an occurrence.

Last year Peter Morris of the Atomic Energy Commission admitted that the AEC had not been able to and could not develop means for such control and the Atomic Energy Commission had simply decided to accept the risk.

We attempted to raise this issue in the emergency core cooling hearing, and we were not allowed to do so.

BRITISH GOVERNMENT VIEW ON POSSIBILITY OF RUPTURE

The British Government review on this issue suggests very strongly that they differ with the contention that pressure vessel rupture is impossible, and the nuclear inspector in parliamentary testimony indicated that eminent metallurgists had advised him in reaching

his view.

I would state that eminent metallurgists in this country have advised our group of their similar conclusion, that if a pipe can break, which the AEC considers possible, so can the steel and the structures which comprise the main pressure vessel.

Technically and scientifically these AEC decisions are wrong in our opinion, and a searching review of this and other elements of the accident analysis are necessary before one can consider the claims that the AEC is making, many of them on the basis of the Rasmussen study, whose supporting information is not available to us or to anyone at the present time for critical review and which, I gather, will not be available for many months.

The Atomic Energy Commission appears willing to assume risks for itself and for the country, like pressure vessel rupture, without adequate review and without listening to the detailed criticisms and comments of our groups such as our own who have conducted technical analyses of the problems.

The evident objective in this and other decisions is to keep the nuclear program going at all costs, and the critics believe that this is unacceptable, that one cannot and should not impose risks of this kind in a complex and potentially extremely hazardous technology without a full airing of just what lies behind the safety assurances or the lack of safety assurances and the vigorous controversy which is now in progress.

REACTOR SAFETY RECORD

The AEC put a great weight on the fact that there have been no fatal nuclear accidents up to the present time. I should point out that this is, indeed, a very gratifying record, but it is also necessary to point out that compared to the projected size of the program the

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industry is barely out of the infant stage in terms of accumulated experience.

The largest reactors, which are the ones that trouble us the most, have accumulated no more than about 50 reactor-years of operating experience generating electricity, and this has been only in the last few years. This 50-year number is barely more than the expected operating life of a single reactor and is hardly justification in and of itself for proceeding with a program that will have over a thousand reactors at the end of the century if one takes AEC estimates. The accident and abnormal occurrence experience in the industry is not one to give people a heartened view of quality assurance or of the care and diligence that is required in a program of this kind. This is documented in the written material that I have provided.

SOME PROBLEMS CITED

I will only state that Milton Shaw, formerly Director of the AEC's Division of Reactor Development and Technology, noted just recently that some of the plants are falling apart, and he cited steam problems and at least one case in which the reactor core got loose for reasons which no one understands and vibrated and chewed its way down inside the reactor vessel, shifting out of position.

The recent decision to cut over $10 million from the AEC regulatory staff budget deeply disturbs the community of critics.

It is a growing industry and it clearly needs a growing regulatory staff, and in view of the controversy a rate of growth which perhaps even exceeds that of the industry, itself, and I emphasize especially that this is true in view of the controversy.

The AEC Commissioners apparently are not supporting the regulatory staff whose job it is to insure the kind of safety that the critical community believes is necessary. Evidently, given the vote of the Commission recently not to appeal this budget cut, the Atomic Energy Commission appears not to be moving to correct the kind of serious ills that we observe.

In conclusion let me say that it is our view that because of these difficulties the nuclear program is in quite serious trouble and increasing numbers of people are coming to understand that this is the case.

NUCLEAR PROGRAM MUST BE ABOVE SUSPICION

The massive amounts of radioactivity that are associated with nuclear energy imply that the whole program has to be-must becompletely above suspicion in regard to safety, in regard to control and safety of nuclear material, with respect to the ultimate disposal of radioactive wastes in large quantities in such a way that they will never-never meaning geological periods of time-return to the environment.

It is our belief that the program should not continue without the kind of control and direction and assurances of safety which will not only make it safe, but make it above suspicion.

Thank you.

Chairman PRICE. Thank you, Dr. Kendall.

(Additional material supplied by Dr. Kendall follows:)