To illustrate how these interests pull in different directions for different reasons, consider just one issue. Changes in plant licensing and safety regulation often are cited as necessary elements of any strategy to revitalize the option, but there is little agreement on either the type or extent of reform that should be instituted.

• Before utilities will make a commitment to invest several billion dollars in a nuclear plant, they want assurances that extensive modifications will not be necessary and that the regulations will remain relatively stable. Utilities contend that such regulatory changes delay construction and add greatly to costs without a clear demonstration of a significant risk to public health and safety. To the utilities, such assurances do not appear to be impossible to grant. They point out that NRC has licensed 80 plants and should know what is necessary to ensure operating safety. Therefore, they would support revisions to the regulatory process that would make it more predictable and stable. • However, there is another side to this coin. No plant design has been analyzed exhaustively for every possible serious accident sequence, and operating experience is still too limited for all the potential problems to have been identified. Accidents at Three Mile Island and at the Browns Ferry reactor involved sequences of events that were not understood clearly enough until they occurred. If they had been, both could have been prevented easily. As the NRC and the industry recognize different accident sequences, backfits are needed to prevent future occurrences. Proposals to reduce NRC's ability to impose changes in accordance with its engineering judgment will be seen by safety regulators as hampering their mission of ensuring safety.

• But there is a third side to this coin. Not only do the industry and NRC see regulatory reform very differently, but critics of nuclear power find much to fault with both the utilities and the NRC. In particular, they feel that the NRC does not even enforce its present rules fully when such enforcement would be too costly to the industry. Furthermore, they

believe that the technology has so many uncertainties that much greater margins of safety are warranted. Thus, nuclear critics strenuously oppose any changes in the NRC regulations that might limit their access to the regulatory process or constrain the implementation of potential improvements in reactor safety.

• The public is yet a fourth side. Public opinion polls show a long-term trend against nuclear power. The public demands that nuclear reactors pose no significant risks, is frustrated by the confusing controversy surrounding them, and is growing increasingly skeptical about any benefits from nuclear power. These conditions do not give rise to a clear mandate for regulatory reform in order to facilitate more reactor orders. Such a mandate will depend largely on improved public confidence in the management ability of utilities and their contractors, in the safety of the technology, in the effectiveness of the regulatory process, and on a perception that nuclear energy offers real benefits. • The nuclear supply industry's interests are not synonymous with the utilities' and thus represent a fifth side of the coin. The utilities need to meet demand with whatever option appears least expensive. If that option is not nuclear power, something else will suffice. The supply industry, however, has a large vested interest in promoting nuclear reactors, and the careers of thousands of industry employees may hinge on policy changes to revitalize the nuclear option, including regulatory reform.

• Investors may be ambivalent about licensing reform. Lengthy and uncertain licensing makes nuclear power a riskier investment during construction, but any accident during operation can have the same, if not greater, effect. Insofar as more stringent licensing makes accidents less likely, it reduces the financial risk. However, investors probably will be more concerned with the near-term risks involved in getting a plant online and would be more supportive of streamlined licensing if it reduced those risks.

As representatives of consumers' economic interest, public utility commissions' share

the investors' ambivalence, but they might give more weight to operating safety because an accident that shuts down a reactor for a prolonged period usually will mean the substitution of more expensive sources of electricity.

Thus, there are at least seven different parties in each policy debate on nuclear power: seven sides to the coin of each issue. No doubt others could be added, but those described above represent the major positions. Each party is a collection of somewhat differing interests, and each will look for different things in any policy initiative. Given such a multiplicity of interests, it is not surprising that the present impasse has developed.

Figure 1 illustrates these concepts. Utilities are at the center because they make the ultimate decision about whether to order a nuclear plant or something else. The other parties have considerable, sometimes decisive, influence over

whether a nuclear plant will be built, how much it will cost, and how well it will work. Each of these parties has its own agenda of conditions that must be met before it would support a decision by a utility to order a reactor. These conditions are listed with each party. Those conditions that are common to all are listed at the bottom of the figure. For instance, nuclear power must be very safe, with a very low risk of core meltdowns or major releases of radioactivity. Disputes over this point relate to the degree of safety required, the adequacy of the methodology in determining safety, the assumptions of the analyses, and the actual degree of compliance with regulations. In any case, however, existing reactors must be demonstrably safe, and future reactors probably will be held to even higher standards.

A closely related issue is reliability. A smoothly operating reactor is more productive for its owners, and it also is likely to be safer than one that frequently suffers mishaps, even if those mishaps.

have no immediate safety consequences. Thus, it also will be considerably more reassuring to the public.

Other common criteria are that there must be a clear need for new generating capacity and a significant cost advantage for nuclear power. In addition, a credible waste disposal program is a prerequisite for any more orders.

Other conditions are especially important to some groups but less important to others. Some of these conditions already are met to some degree. The arrows in figure A drawn to the conditions under utilities indicate the major areas that are related to the other parties.

Many of the conditions in figure 1 are necessary before enough of the participants in the debate will be satisfied that nuclear power is a viable energy source for the future. It is much more difficult to know how many must be met to be sufficient. All the groups discussed above have considerable influence over the future of nuclear power. Efforts to revive the optionwhether initiated legislatively, administratively, or by industry-are unlikely to be successful if some of the interests find them unacceptable. The task of breaking the impasse therefore is formidable.

This report responds to requests from the House Committee on Science and Technology and the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources asking OTA to "assess how nuclear technology could evolve if the option is to be made more attractive to all the parties of concern" and to identify possible technical and institutional approaches for the Congress "that could contribute to the maintenance of this important industry." The report describes the major impediments to nuclear power relative to other types of generating capacity, identifies options that might be considered to remove those impediments in light of the problems and conflicts discussed above, and explores the consequences of not maintaining the nuclear option.

Changes could be made in the technology and in the institutions that manage it. If a reactor were to be developed that physically could not suffer a major accident or pose health and safety risks for the public, it might allay some of the concerns of the regulators, the intervenors, and the public. Such a reactor might not require the ever more stringent standards of quality required for current light water reactors (LWRs), thus reducing the economic risks. Improvements also could be considered in management of the construction, operation, and regulation of reactors. If all reactors were to match the experiences of the best man

aged plants, there would be much less concern over the future prospects for the nuclear option.

It is the intent of this study to explore these possibilities in the light of the different interests and different concerns discussed above. The report details the various difficulties facing the future of nuclear power and the measures that would be useful and practical in overcoming these difficulties if the Nation wishes nuclear power to once again be a well accepted, viable energy option. The technological options are restricted to converter reactors similar to those now available on the international market. These are the reactors that could be deployed in the United States by the end of the century. Breeder reactors are not included because their development program will not make them commercially available until sometime in the next century. The other elements of the fuel cycle-uranium resources and enrichment, reprocessing and waste disposal-are not included either. Waste has been considered in great detail in a recent OTA report. The other elements need not pose constraints to reactor orders, which is the key issue addressed in this report.

This assessment was carried out with the assistance of a large number of experts from all sides of the nuclear debate-utilities, nuclear critics,

reactor vendors, consumer groups, NRC, academics, State PUCs, nuclear insurers, executive branch agencies, the financial community, architect-engineering (AE) firms, and interested members of the public. As in all OTA studies, an advisory panel representing most of these interests met periodically during the course of the assessment to review and critique interim products and this report. Contractors supplied analyses and background papers in support of the assessment (these are compiled in vol. II). In addition, OTA held three workshops to review and expand on the contractors' reports and to ensure that all the relevant interests on each issue would be considered. The first workshop examined the energy and economic context for nuclear power, including projections of electricity demand, capital costs for powerplant construction, and the financing and rate regulation of electricity generation. The second workshop focused on the technological, managerial, and regulatory context for nuclear power, identifying the problems with current LWRs and the licensing process for them, and assessing alternative reactor technologies and proposals for licensing revision. The third workshop examined institutional changes, public acceptance, and policy options for revitalizing nuclear power. Based on these and other discussions, the OTA staff developed a set of policy options. Advisory panel members, contractors, and workshop participants are listed at the front of the report.

The nuclear debate long has been characterized by inflexible, polarized positions. We see some evidence that this polarization is softening For the most part, the OTA workshop participants and advisory panel members showed a willingness to compromise, including admissions by industry representatives that many mistakes had been made, and by nuclear critics that nuclear power could be a viable source of electricity if managed properly.

Volume I of this report is organized as follows: Chapter 2 presents a summary of the report. Chapter 3 sets the context for decisions on the future role of nuclear power-factors affecting electricity demand, financial considerations including rate regulation and the

costs of nuclear plants, and other elements in utility planning.

• Chapter 4 considers the technological alternatives to today's light water reactor: improved LWRs; the high-temperature gas reactor as evolving from the demonstration plant at Fort St. Vrain, Colo.; the heavy water reactor as developed in Canada; the PIUS concept-an LWR redesigned to make catastrophic accidents essentially impossible; the effects of standardization and scaling down reactor size.

• Chapter 5 examines the human element in building and operating reactors and ways to improve the quality of these efforts; it analyzes the wide range of experiences in construction costs and schedules and in reactor operation, new measures that may improve quality control (e.g., the Institute for Nuclear Power Operations), and further steps that could be implemented if existing efforts prove inadequate.

• Chapter 6 describes the present regulatory process and the various concerns with it, and evaluates the major proposals for revision. • Chapter 7 reviews the long term viability of the nuclear industry if no new orders are forthcoming to see if the option would be foreclosed without stimulation, and how the operation of existing reactors would be affected; and examines the management of nuclear power in other countries to see what lessons can be learned from alternative approaches.

• Chapter 8 focuses on trends and influential factors in public acceptance as one of the key elements in a revival of nuclear power, and evaluates measures designed to improve public acceptance.

• Chapter 9 analyzes a series of policy options that Congress might consider. Depending on one's views of the desirability of and necessity for nuclear power, a policymaker might see little need to do anything, want to improve the operation of existing reactors, or make the option more attractive so that it can play an expanded role in the Nation's energy future. The options are analyzed for effec

tiveness and for acceptability by the various parties to the debate. Packages of options are considered to see if compromises might be possible.

Volume II of the report, which includes contractor reports and background papers prepared

in support of the assessment, will be available through the National Technical Information Service, 5285 Port Royal Rd., Springfield, Va. 22161.