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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (March 29, 1983)
How safe is nuclear safety? MONSTER COOKIE & COOKIE MAN COOKIES SALE 2 / QQC reg. 55c each Cr 9 /oatmeal choc. /choc.chip chip / rocky road /peanut butter / Oatis cookie* choc, chip / peanut butter t peanut butter choc, chip i nree Mile Island; is it safe now? WASHINGTON <AP) - About 4,300 safety changes have been made at atomic power plants since the Three Mile Island accident. But critics contend the changes don’t go far enough to make nuclear power safer. Some critics say the industry made only the easy, cheap changes and not the difficult, most important improvements. Officials overseeing the industry acknowledge that a dozen of the 198 fixes given the highest priority after the March 28, 1979, TMI accident have fallen more than a year behind schedule. Harold Denton, whose calm defused the panic four years ago at Harrisburg, Pa., said he was too optimistic about how fast regulators could turn around an industry with 65 nuclear utilities, four reactor makers, a dozen architect engineers and thousands of subcontractors. "It’s not as though we’re NASA, buying our own space shuttle where we've got control over everything that goes into it,” said Denton, director of the Nuclear Regulatory Commis sion’s Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation. “We have to develop a technical basis for a re quirement and see how it fits in every plant before we issue it.” It was not until three months ago, for ex ample, that the last of the nation’s 76 nuclear plants with operating licenses finished putting in gauges that tell operators the level of water in the reactor containment. Had the operators at TMI had such a gauge, they would not have wrongly assumed the reactor was safely covered with water. Instead, TMI operators cut off an emergen cy system feeding water to the reactor, thus allowing the unit to overheat, damaging its core and releasing radioactivity into the atmosphere. “The plants are a heck of a lot safer now than they would have been if Three Mile Island had not occurred,” Denton said. “TMI was the impetus to force a lot of changes." Following its own investigation into the ! Emerald graphic accident and one by a presidential commis sion, the NRC came up with what Denton called a “wish list" of 349 items to make nuclear plants safer. That list of 6,000 specific tasks is the basis for most of the safety changes. The NRC says 72 percent of those tasks were completed, at an average cost in older plants of $65 million each. While conceding there have been some changes, critics contend they have been too few and too slow in coming. Further, they assert, the industry and the NRC have dwelled upon the easy fixes. “They’ve applied the Band-Aids, but many improvements in power plant design and opera tion that were identified during the TMI post mortems have yet to be implemented,” said safety engineer Robert Pollard, a former NRC staffer with the anti-nuclear Union of Concern ed Scientists. There also is a perception that the NRC is devoting too much time to the Reagan ad ministration’s efforts to bolster the ailing in dustry with licensing changes to make it easier to build plants. Portlanders reluctant to evacuate “w" ■ l aim u (AP) — Two-thirds of Portland’s residents don’t think the city should participate in plans to evacuate citizens in the event of a nuclear attack, according to a Bard sley & Haslacher Inc. poll. About one-quarter of those responding to the survey commissioned by The Oregonian newspaper felt the city should take part in a federal program to relocate Portlanders to outlying areas and shelter a large population for up to two weeks. Another 14 percent were undecided. The poll’s findings were reported in a copyright story in the Oregonian’s Sunday editions. The Portland Nuclear Civil Preparedeness Planning Task Force is to consider the poll’s findings in delivering a report to the City Coun cil in two weeks. Current plans call for the report to urge that the city not participate in relocation plans for nuclear war. “I’m very impressed with the size of the popular opposition in this city,” said Dr. Charles Schade, Multnomah County health of ficer and chairman of the task force. “I was a lit tle surprised to see the results so lopsided. “I think the reason is the exact wording of the question. Other polls in Portland and elsewhere have shown general support for civil defense planning." The poll sampled a 292-person cross sec tion of the Portland public from Feb. 18 to March 3. The poll has a maximum range of error of 5.9 percent. Those surveyed were over 18 and were asked whether Portland should have a nuclear-attack relocation plan. A poll conducted last July and August by Intercept Research Corp. came to a different conclusion than the Beardsley/Haslacher poll. In the earlier poll, respondents were asked whether the city should have a plan for civil defense or a nuclear disaster. Fifty-eight per cent of the i,200 persons surveyed thought Portland should have a plan, 36 percent oppos ed a plan and 6 percent were undecided. That poll had an 8 percent maximum range of error. Dean Bollon, president of Intercept Research, said the differing results of the two polls may be due to the fact that the questions were slightly different. “I think maybe the Bardsley question is prehaps more direct...,” he said, noting that it concentrated on nuclear attack as opposed to disaster or accident. “And there’s been a con siderable amount of press and conversation about the nucelar issue since August when that (the first poll) was taken.” HAIRCUT ONLY (FVe-washed hair) $8-50 HAIRCUT, SHAMPOO f CONDITIONER^ IO. EXTRA Offer Good thru April 9th F®uf WILLAMETTE CAMPUS OSSuasu o. _ i‘WrWtS 3-HOUR PHOTO FINISHING Films in before 10 a.m. Ready by 1 p.m. No Limit • Develop & Print C-41 only S|99 12 Exposure 24 Exp....$3.99 36 Exp....$5.99 coupon must accompany order OREGON PHOTO LAB 1231 Alder “Across from Sacred Heart Hospital” A Free Gift For Your Best Friend The Domino’s Pizza Flyer offers hours of fun for you and your dog. 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