The following article was submitted by SCC Member, Karen Maute. Although it was written in 1979, it still pertains today. VUI has said many times that we should exploit the hazardous uranium deposit that "God has provided". This article by a respected United Methodist minister and trustee of the Vermont Electric Cooperative, Inc. where he also served as the chairman of their alternative energy committee at the time that he wrote this, would beg to differ with VUI's position. GV
by J. George Butler
Mr. Butler, a retired United Methodist minister, is a trustee of the Vermont Electric Cooperative, Inc., and chairman of its alternative energy committee. This article appeared in the Christian Century April 18, 1979, p. 438. Copyright by the Christian Century Foundation and used by permission. Current articles and subscription information can be found at www.christiancentury.org. This material was prepared for Religion Online by Ted & Winnie Brock.
Christian ethics has as its frame of reference Jesus’ idea of God. God is creator of heaven and earth, a loving God concerned about human beings -- the children of God who are of infinite worth in his sight. We must reverence all of his creation: humanity as well as the earth. The psalmist sang: “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof.” Nearly 500 years ago Martin Luther questioned the distinction between the sacred and the secular: all life is sacred. And long before Luther, the creeds of Christendom spoke of God as “maker of all things visible and invisible.
From this perspective, Christian ethics has a great deal to say about nuclear power -- its potential to destroy life and to poison the earth. Christians often use the word “stewardship,” but most often in a narrow sense, in connection with the practice of tithing one’s worldly goods. True Christian stewardship embraces the larger meaning found in the ancient creeds: all of life, “the world and they that dwell therein.
“Christianity,” wrote Anglican Archbishop William Temple (Nature, Man and God, 1935), “is the most avowedly materialist of all the great religions”: it is concerned with daily bread as well as things spiritual, for the two are inextricably interrelated. Because of this materialism, Christian ethics must examine nuclear power in broad perspective. From the standpoint of stewardship of life as well as stewardship of the earth.
The Rasmussen Report
Let us consider nuclear power first in its relation to life. What dangers does it pose? Nuclear advocates assure us that the risk of catastrophic accident is negligible. For example, the public-relations department of the Illinois Power Company puts out an attractive brochure which quotes from a government report, the Rasmussen Reactor Safety Study: “Assuming 100 operating reactors . . . the chance of a nuclear accident involving 1,000 fatalities [is] in the same class as that of a meteor striking a U.S. population center, causing the same number of deaths.
But the Rasmussen report is not the scientific document it purports to be. Henry Kendall of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, founder of the Union of Concerned Scientists, took advantage of the Freedom of Information Act to pry from a reluctant Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) some material heretofore suppressed. His objective review of the Rasmussen document says simply that Americans have been deceived by it. Using the government records to which he finally gained access, Kendall concluded:
That federal, officials .suppressed the results of an internal review of the “Reactor Safety Study,” made prior to its release, that found major flaws in the study’s methods, assumptions and data base. One reviewer called the study’s concept of accident probability “gibberish”; another reviewer labeled some of its estimates “suspiciously low.
That the “Reactor Safety Study” abandoned its review of certain sensitive safety issues because study officials feared “the facts may not support our predetermined conclusions” and because it was “not known in advance” that the results would “engender confidence” in the reliability of reactor safety systems.
That the basic plan of the “Reactor Safety Study” was written by two MIT nuclear engineers; one was a director of the Atomic Industrial Forum, the nuclear industry lobbying group; the other, a nuclear industry consultant, was misrepresented as being a specialist in nuclear reactor safety.
That the basic plan of the “Reactor Safety Study” was to produce a report that would have “significant benefit for the nuclear industry.” The study outline also stated: “The report to be useful must have reasonable acceptance by people in the industry.”
That, despite the claim that the study was “independent” of the industry, the nuclear industry actually carried out important parts of the actual safety analysis reported in the study.
That the government suppressed the report of another special task force of government nuclear safety experts which concluded that “it is difficult to assign a high degree of confidence” to the type of risk estimates being made by the “Reactor Safety Study” The Risks of Nuclear Power Reactors: A Review of the NRC Reactor Safety Study (Union of Concerned Scientists, 1977)
Prodded by the work of the Union of Concerned Scientists and by Congressman Morris K. Udall (D., Ariz.), chairman of the House subcommittee on energy and the environment, the NRC finally issued a report on January 19, 1979, repudiating major portions of the Rasmussen document. As the January 20 New York Times reported: “The decision [by the NRC] to reject totally the Rasmussen Study’s summary was based on a finding that the summary ‘is a poor description of the contents of the report.
But the nuclear industry proceeded to step up its lobbying to counteract the damage. General Electric has ordered its nuclear-division executives to seek out at least one congressperson or administration official on each trip to Washington to spread the pro-nuclear gospel; the company is even considering awarding prizes to those who manage to reach particularly important officials. Whether such efforts will succeed is anybody’s guess. Udall believes that the fate of nuclear power is “hanging in the balance.” Should Congress decide that no new fission plants may be built until the waste-disposal problem is solved, the future of nuclear power may well be sealed.
Though nuclear advocates contend that reactors are safe, the American insurance industry apparently does not agree. There is not one homeowners’ insurance policy written in America which does not have a nuclear-exclusion clause. Further, no private group of insurance companies would consider writing nuclear-insurance coverage for the civilian nuclear power industry. Congress was forced to pass the Price-Anderson Act, guaranteeing $560 million of government insurance, before the civilian nuclear power program could begin operations.
Read the rest of the article here: Unforeseen Risks
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