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