Although the limitations .
technical problems, parti
~ance with the 1963 treaty.
treaty imposed severe
in testing high-yield
warheads, the Commission ; laboratories nevertheless
were highly successful in devising ways to improve and update nuclear weaponsby testing underground.
Civilian Power: The Proliferation of the Peaceful
Atom in the Sixties
The signing of the Limited Test Ban Treaty in August
1963 also had an impact on the civilian power program.
The cessation of weapon testing in the atmosphere gave
new hopethat the peaceful atom might soon command as
large a share of the Commission's time and budget as the
military atom had for so manyyears.
Although the imminence of economic nuclear power
had been a main theme at the 1968 Geneva Conference,
recurring technical difficulties in many of the prototype
and demonstration plants in several European countries
continued in the next few years to frustrate hopes for a
practical new source of electrical power. In the United
States, however, prospects were somewhat more en-
couraging. In March 1962 President Kennedy had re-
quested the Atomic Energy Commission to take a ‘‘new
and hard look at the role of nuclear power” in the Nation's
economy. In submitting the Commission's report several
months later, Seaborg noted optimistically that the Commission’s ten-year civilian power program, adopted in
1958, was on the threshold of attaining its primary abjective of competitive nuclear power by 1968. Suggested
goals for the future included a concentration of resources
in the most promising reactor svstems, the early establishment of a self-sufficient and growing nuclear powerindustry, and increased emphasis on the developmentof improved converter or breeder reactors which would conserve natural uranium resources. The report was broadly
circulated and stimulated public confidence in the
economic prospectsfor civilian nuclear power.(24)
On November 22, 1963, Lyndon B. Johnson became
President of the United States. One of Johnson's first and
probably most significant acts was to order a 25 percent
cutback in production of enriched uranium and the shut
down of four plutonium piles, with the expectation that
other nations might be challenged to do the same.
Although verification was difficult, Chairman Khruschev
later announced production cutbacksin the Soviet Union.
Another milestone in:civilian power development occurred on December 12, 1963, when the Jersey Central
Power and Light Company announced that it had con-
Private Ownership Legislation
On August 26, 1964, President Johnson brought to an
end an eighteen-year mandetory government monopoly of
Special nuclear materials by signing into law the ‘Private
Ownership of Special Nuclear Materials Act.” Enriched
uranium for powerreactor fuel would no longer haveto be
leased from the government.Private entities would be permitted to assume title to special nuclear materials.
Although the new law provided fora transition period for
the changeover from government to private ownership,
after June 20, 1973 private ownership of power reactor
fuels would become mandatory. The Act also authorized
the Commission to offer uranium enriching services to
both domestic and foreign customers under long-term
contracts, beginning on January 1, 1969. Most of the
Atomic
Energy
Commision’s
literature
on
reactor
technology had been declassified as early as 1955. With
the adoption of the Private Ownership Act in 1964, fisSionable materials as well as reactors now entered the
Public domain, and a full-fledged nuclear industry became
a possibility.(26)
But how would a full-fledged nuclear industry be
regulated? Could one agency continue to regulate a single
energy technologyin a time of increasing energy needs? in
a few years the energy crisis of 1973 would bring these
questionsinto sharp focus.
Nuclear Power Capacity
The Commission’s 1962 report on civilian power had
projected 5,000 megawatts of nuclear power capacity by
1970 and 40,000 by 1980. Within five years the outlook had
changed so dramatically that in March 1967 the Commis-
sion issued a supplementary report doubling its previous
Predictions. Within a few years, however, even these re-
vised statistics were exceeded. (By the end of 1974 two
hundred and thirty-three nuclear central-station generating
units, with a capacity of 232,000 megawatts, were either in
operation, under construction, or on order in the United
States. X27)
The Breeder Reactor
In addition to predicting dramatic increases in megawatt
Capacity, the Commission’s 1967 report on civilian nuclear
power reaffirmed the promise of the breeder reactor for
meeting long-term energy needs, and gave the Liquid
Metal Fast Breeder Reactor (LMFBR) the highest priority
for civilian reactor development. A major boost was given
to the program four years later by President Richard Nixon.
tracted for a large nuclear power reactor to be built at
Oyster Creek near Toms River, New Jersey. According to
the company’s own evaluation, the plant would be competitive with a fossil fuel plant. For the first time an
American utility company had selected a nuclear power
plant on purely economic grounds without government
assistance andin direct competition with a fossil-fuel plant.
In a commencement address at Holy Cross College on
June 10, 1964, President Johnson called it an “‘economic
Operating today.’’(28)
The fast breeder project included a demonstration piant
form of newlegislation.
tor (CRBR)—and a test reactor in Richland,
Washington—the Fast Flux Test Facility (FFTF). Clinch
breakthrough."(25) Two months later private industry
received further encouragement from Congress :n the
In his “clean energy’ message to Congress on June 4,
1971, the President called for the commercial demonstration of a breeder reactor by 1960, stating that ‘The breeder
reactor could extend the life of our natural uranium fuel
supply from decades to centuries, with far less impact on
the environment than the power plants which are
in Oak Ridge, Tennessee—the Clinch River Breeder Reac-
~~
underground test. . acc