a766  1708  30 Nov 74
$ADV 08
Adv Sun Dec. 8
Commoner Roundtable 440 three takes 1,360
By LEE MITGANG
AP Business Writer
    NEW YORK (AP) - Dr. Barry Commoner, one of the nation's leading
environmental scientists, is again taking on a familiar foe of his:
the Atomic Energy Commission.
    Predicting hat the nation will eventually abandon nuclear power as
a means of combatting the energy shortage, Commoner, 56, says the AEC
''has not been candid'' in disclosing either the dangers or the
technical shortcomings of atomic power.
    Commoner, a professor of biology at Washington University at St.
Louis and chairman of the Institute for Science and Public
Information, first attracted wide attention in the '50s when he
warned the nation that Strontium-90 fallout from above-ground A-bomb
tests posed a serious envrionmental and health hazard. His warnings
were in part responsible for driving nuclear tests underground.
    Commoner said in an interview with The Associated Press that
President Ford's ''Project Independence'' energy program will lead
the nation into a worsened energy situation.
    Commoner calls instead for a radical re-ordering of the nation's
economic house, and singles out the auto industry and petrochemical
industry as perhaps the most wasteful.
    He suggests that a better course than that charted by President
Ford would be a ''Works Progress Administration'' to put people to
work in a ''solar energy industry.''
    Here are some of the questions and answers from the interview:
    Q. The Ford administration has put the accent on stepped-up fossil
fuel production, including offshore drilling, as the way out of our
energy problems. What's your view of ''Project Independence?
    A. It won't work, even in carrying out the purpose of the Ford
administration which I assume is to maintain the growth of the
economic system. Take oil production: at present we produce 10 to 11
million barrels a day of oil. One of the things the Ford
administration wants to do is double that. A study done for Project
Independence, which only saw the light of day because the Oil & Gas
Journal got hold of it, shows the annual expenditure of capital for
domestic oil production is around $400 million. That works out to $40
a year in investment to produce a barrel of oil a day. The capital
requirement to double our oil output would raise that figure to $600
a barrel per day. Now, the most difficult thing for people to
understand is that this same law of diminishing returns operates in
the case of nuclear energy, too. And the reason is the technology is
uncertain. It's shaky.
    So this present course of simply producing more and more energy by
conventional means is going to run into the inefficiency with which
capital is used.
    MORE
    
2010pES 11-30
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a767  1716  30 Nov 74
$ADV 08
Adv Sun Dec. 8
NEW YORK - Commoner Roundtable Take Two: used. 430.
 
    Q: There have been charges recently that the government hasn't been
completely frank about possible dangers related to nuclear energy.
    A: The Atomic Energy Commission has not been candid. And one of the
reasons is it has had a built-in conflict of interests. It is
responsible for the safety of the very operations it is supposed to
promote. And it's obviously paid more attention to promotion than
safety. Witness the fact that one of their key safety engineers
resigned in protest over the very fact that AEC was not being candid
with the public.
    The AEC knows about the plutonium hazard, the radioactivity, knows
it is so severe and so poorly understood that equally competent
experts differ by a factor of 10,000 in their estimate of what the
standard ought to be.
    Q: How do we persuade the many companies that have sunk billions
into atomic energy to turn their backs on their investments? Wouldn't
that create terrible economic dislocations?
    A: I think it would. But look. Nuclear power is a mistake. I hate
to make predictions, but I think we're going to wind down the nuclear
power program. You understand the present (fission) reactors are
hopeless unless the breeder (which theoretically produces more fuel
than it consumes) succeeds. Because they'll run out of fuel. I don't
think the breeder is going to fly because of the capital costs.
    Q: You've said many times you prefer solar energy. But isn't that a
long way down the road? What about our short-term energy problems?
    A: Solar energy is an answer to short-run problems. There now
exists operational technology for using solar energy for space
heating and hot water. That would represent 20 per cent of the
national energy budget. Pittsburgh Plate Glass had an ad recently
offering solar heaters for sale. A small plant in California has them
in their catalog. The old houses in Florida have solar collectors.
The Technology exists.
    Q: Is it any good up north where there's less sun?
    A: Well, the National Science Foundation has a school operating in
Minnesota on solar energy. The present cost for solar for an average
home is about $4,000. This is very high. But I've pointed out at
Federal Energy Administration hearings that the bill for 60 million
homes is $240 billion. In 8 to 10 years we spend that much on foreign
oil. So in 8 to 10 years you could get the price back on this
investment. Obviously this can't be done under private enterprise
arrangements. The government would have to set up loans. And
incidentally, this could be the thing to save the auto industry.
Solar collectors could be manufactured very easily in auto plants.
    MORE
    
2019pES 11-30
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a768  1727  30 Nov 74
$ADV 08
Adv Sun. Dec. 8
NEW YORK - Commoner Roundtable Take Three: plants. 490.
    Q: You've often said the place we need to save energy is not just
at the consumer level, but at the production level. Two places you've
mentioned are the auto industry and the petrochemical industry.
    A: Those are the main places. The auto industry, I think, is
selfevident. Even super-bus systems would save enormous amounts of
fuel. By a super-bus system, I mean one where every minute there is a
bus that comes along, and you don't have to pay any fare.
    Q: Well, how does one of these superbusses come into existence?
    A: By building busses, putting them on a route and telling people
they're free. What else is there to do?
    Q: Is your overall prejudice, then, toward government building
these things, or the private sector?
    A: My position is these kinds of transformations have to be carried
out. And it's a test of the private enterprise system as to whether
they can do it. The indications are that it can't. Take the business
of the size of cars. I think it's now well established, to quote
Henry Ford: ''Minicars make miniprofits.'' It's a very serious
question whether Detroit can hack it economically making small cars.
    Now the petrochemical industry: that's a classic example of how we
supplant labor with energy. The petrochemical industry is extremely
wasteul of energy by any economic measure. It is also totally
replaceable. Because that's how it came into being in the first
place: by replacing other industries.
    Q: Let's say, then, we stop using synthetics and go back to cotton,
wool, soap and natural fertilizer. There are still entire economic
systems built around the petrochemical industry. Do we kiss them all
goodbye?
    A: That's like the nuclear question. Somebody's going to get hurt.
In effect we've locked ourselves into a whole series of capital
investments in order to support what turns out to be an
anti-ecological thing. But I think we have to ''bite the bullet,'' to
quote our President. And it's a big bullet.
    The price of energy is going up. It's throwing a monkey wrench into
the economics of the petrochemical industry. And I really think it's
not the likes of me that's going to give them trouble. It's going to
be the economic depression which as far as I'm concerned has been
heavily driven by the wasteful use of capital brought about by the
ways we make and use energy.
    Q: Some people, like Donald C. Cook, chairman of American Electric
Power Co., say environmentalists like yourself will head for the
hills when it comes time to assess blame for the energy crisis.
Should environmentalists accept any blame?
    A: That's nonsense. The reason why 40 per cent of utilities plans
have been held back this year is because their bond ratings have
dropped. They can't compete in the capital markets. One reason is
investors suspect them of being vulnerable to delays because of their
lack of environmental validity.
    . . . None of us in the institute feel despondent over the state of
the environmental cause. I think what Mr. Cook and his friends are
doing is looking for a scapegoat. And they won't find it.
    End Adv Sun Dec. 8, sent Nov. 30
    
2028pES 11-30
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