Did the villain of 'Oppenheimer' have a point?
The illusory promise of cheap power fed the nuclear industry...until Three Mile Island
In a 1954 speech to science writers, Atomic Energy Commission chairman Lewis Strauss forecast an idyllic future.
“It is not too much to expect that our children will enjoy in their homes electrical energy too cheap to meter,” he predicted. Strauss also spoke of the likelihood of high-speed travel “over the seas and under them and through the air,” of famines becoming a thing of the past and of researchers conquering disease to greatly extend lifespans.
Strauss was a fierce Washington power player who would be depicted by Robert Downey Jr. in Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer”. In an Oscar-winning turn, Downey seized the role of Strauss as the sly archenemy who torpedoes the government career of pioneering nuclear physicist Robert Oppenheimer.
The promises of high-speed travel and longer lifespans have come to fruition, but “electricity too cheap to meter” launched a controversy that persists to this day. It came to mind with last week’s news about a possible restart of a reactor at Three Mile Island.
Strauss was widely interpreted to be promising that power from nuclear fission would provide that cost-free electricity, saddling the emerging industry with a goal that it could never achieve. (Defenders of Strauss say he really wasn’t referring to nuclear fission, but was counting on the far-off dream of nuclear fusion.)
In any event, commercial nuclear power became a reality in 1958 and the industry grew exponentially beginning in the late 1960s.
And then came March, 1979.
‘The China Syndrome’
A film called “The China Syndrome” was released on March 16, 1979. Jane Fonda and Michael Douglas starred as members of a TV news crew who happen to be filming a feature segment at a California nuclear power plant when operators, led by a shift supervisor played by Jack Lemmon, narrowly prevent an accident from turning into a full meltdown. The executives in the power and media industries seek to cover up the near catastrophe.
A few days after the film’s release, a nuclear industry executive was quoted in the New York Times lashing out at the movie as “an overall character assassination of an entire industry.”
And then, in the early morning hours of March 28, a pump failed at the Three Mile Island Unit 2 nuclear reactor near Harrisburg, Pa. As pressure built up in the reactor, a relief valve opened and then stuck in that position even after the pressure decreased. As a result, much of the water that cooled the reactor’s core was driven off as steam, and the core grew too hot.
Unit 2 was shut down and never operated again, but some small amount of radiation was released. “The accident’s exposure had no detectable health effects on the plant workers or surrounding public,” according to the US Department of Energy.
It was nevertheless the worst accident in the history of the American nuclear industry and fed public fear about reactor safety. And so it was eye-opening last week when the owner of Three Mile Island, Constellation Energy, announced that it would seek to reopen Unit 1, which had been mothballed five years ago, to provide energy for Microsoft.
Like many other large technology companies, Microsoft is looking for electricity to feed power-hungry AI computer chips — and nuclear power is especially attractive because it does not emit carbon which can fuel climate change.
In the aftermath of the Three Mile Island accident, some plants were temporarily closed and regulators would not license new reactors for a time. Utility companies stopped ordering new reactors. A hundred nuclear power units were delayed or cancelled.
A chart from the US Energy Information Administration shows how the nuclear power industry has essentially stalled for the past 35 years.
While safety concerns were a key issue, the ballooning cost of nuclear power played a role in the industry’s stagnation.
Among the casualties: The Shoreham nuclear plant on Long Island, estimated in 1969 to cost $261 million dollars, was completed in the mid-1980s at a cost of $5.5 billion. It never went into regular operation, and it was eventually decommissioned, under pressure over safety concerns from New York State officials including Gov. Mario Cuomo.
From “too cheap to meter,” it became too costly to run.
New appeal
But nuclear power has new appeal at a time when the world is searching for sources of energy that won’t exacerbate climate change. At the same time, concerns about safety persist, especially in light of accidents at Chernobyl and Fukushima that had far greater health consequences than Three Mile Island.
As of last year, the average age of the 93 operating reactors in the US was approximately 42 years. The real question isn’t whether some mothballed plants like Three Mile Island can be restarted; it’s whether utilities and governments are willing to invest in new generations of nuclear technology to provide carbon-free power and address lingering safety concerns.
“The real question…is whether utilities and governments are willing to invest in new generations of nuclear technology to provide carbon-free power and address lingering safety concerns.”
Meanwhile, there really is some electricity now that’s “too cheap to meter.” But it’s not nuclear: The Wall Street Journal reported this week that, in the Netherlands, Finland and Spain, “A big increase in wind and solar power has pushed wholesale prices to zero or below for many hours of the year, spurring a sea change in the way people use power—based on whether the sun is shining or the wind is blowing.” The Journal quoted a Dutch software salesman who’s gotten to charge his two electric cars for free as a result. In the US, most states don’t yet allow that kind of up-to-the-minute pricing, but that could change soon.