The development of the breeder reactor is being proposed because current U.S. water cooled reactors are able to release only about 1 percent of the stored energy in natural uranium. An LMFBR would make possible the release of over 50 percent. (See app. A.)

The factor of 50 or so increase in the extraction of energy from uranium is important because high-grade uranium ore is much less abundant than high grade fossil fuel deposits in the Earth's crust. Estimates of the U.S. economically recoverable coal resources, for example are of the order of 1 trillion tons [2]-enough to support U.S. energy consumption at the current rate for about 300 years. U.S. resources of high-grade uranium ore are estimated to be of the order of millions of tons. [3] A million tons of uranium is equivalent to approximately 2 trillion tons of coal if used to fuel a breeder reactor but it is only equivalent to about 40 billion tons of coal if used in current commercial nuclear reactors. With current technology, therefore, high-grade uranium ore represents a rather small energy resource relative to coal. With a breeder reactor the uranium resource would grow in two ways: The releasable energy in a pound of uranium ore would be increased by a factor of 50 or so, as has already been noted, and it would become economic to mine much lower grades of uranium ore even to extract dissolved uranium from ocean water. Uraniumand thorium-would then come to represent very large energy resources indeed in comparison to the fossil fuels.

II. HAZARDS OF A PLUTONIUM ECONOMY

While the LMFBR would remove the short-term resource limitations on fission energy, it would also tend to exacerbate some of the troublesome problems of our current fission power technology. In particular, it would require the introduction of a "plutonium economy." Plutonium is produced by conventional water-cooled reactors just as it is by the LMFBR. The LMFBR technology requires recycle of the produced plutonium, however, while the water-cooled reactors do not. Recycle of the produced plutonium and the leftover uranium-235 in the spent fuel from a conventional water-cooled reactor increases the amount of energy extracted from the original uranium ore by less than 50 percent [4] and it is a marginal decision whether the fuel value of the recovered uranium and plutonium justifies the cost of the reprocessing of the fuel. [5] In contrast, the LMFBR technology is premised on the chemical purification and recycling of the fuel tens of times before all the uranium has been converted into plutonium and fissioned. [6]

The plutonium economy raises two types of concerns:*

1. ENVIRONMENTAL

Plutonium is an extremely hazardous and long-lived environmental contaminant. The more that it is handled, the larger the fraction which

Perhaps the most sustained effort to bring these concerns to public attention has been made by the Natural Resources Defense Council (beginning with the lawsuit which resulted in the AEC's "LMFBR Program Environment Impact Statement"), and with critiques of that program growing out of Dr. Thomas Cochran's book. "The Liquid Metal Fast Breeder Reactor: An Environmental and Economic Critique" (Resources for the Future, 1974).

will tend to find its way into the environment. ERDA has set as an objective the containment of plutonium and the associated long-lived radioactive isotopes at a level where only one atom out of a billion processed in the LMFBR fuel cycle will leak out into the environment.[7] Various groups including the EPA have raised questions as to whether such an objective is achievable in practice. If it is not, then we must face the question on whether achievable containment levels are tolerable. (See app. B.)

2. DIVERSION

It takes a rather elaborate facility to separate plutonium from the highly radioactive fission products. Once this has been done, however, the plutonium is easy enough to handle so that there is legitimate concern that a small group of individuals with rather modest resources might be able to steal some of the material and fabricate a crude nuclear weapon.[8] Less than 20 pounds of plutonium would be required for the manufacture of a crude nuclear explosive with an expected yield equivalent to more than 100 tons of TNT. By the year 2000 approximately 20,000 times this much new plutonium would be produced each year in the projected fission economy of about 1,000. large 1 million kilowatt reactors.[9] (See app. C.)

On the international level, the prospect of a plutonium economy raises the issue of a proliferation of nuclear weapons states based on plutonium separated out from the spent fuel of nuclear powerplants. Establishing the plutonium economy as an integral part of nuclear energy technology could be a significant step in facilitating the promotion of other nations with nuclear powerplants to the nuclear weapons "club."

Aside from the issues posed by the plutonium economy, the LMFBR seems to have both safety advantages and disadvantages when compared with current water-cooled reactors. It is unclear at the present time therefore which design is safer. (See app. D.)

III. TIMING OF THE LMFBR DECISION

The timing of the decision in the United States on whether or not to go ahead with the breeder reactor depends in part on the larger energy policy context discussed above, that is, on a continuing comparison of the relative promise and hazards of the alternative energy supply technologies.

The decision to go ahead with the LMFBR or some other uranium conserving reactor design will depend also upon the rate at which the U.S. resources of high-grade uranium ore are depleted.* This rate of depletion in turn depends on two factors: (1) The rate at which U.S. reactors consume uranium, (2) the total U.S. resources of highgrade uranium ore.

*For the present purposes we will ignore the possibility of the United States importing (or exporting) significant amounts of uranium. According to current estimates the United States possesses approximately one-third of the world's high-grade uranium resources outside the Communist bloc. (Testimony of Robert Nininger. "Oversight Hearings on Nuclear Energy-Part II," June 5, 1975, p. 403.) This may merely reflect, however, the

1. RATE OF CONSUMPTION OF URANIUM

Essentially all currently operating U.S. commercial nuclear power reactors are light water-cooled reactors-LWR's.* As of June 30, 1975, the total U.S. nuclear generating capacity totaled less than 37,000 megawatts electric (MWe). Additional capacity totaling 77,000 MWe was under construction, however and a further 104,000 MWe of capacity was on order for a grand total of 218,000 MWe. [10] The total U.S. electrical generating capacity as of the end of 1975 was about 492,000 megawatts. [11] The nuclear capacity built, under construction or on order is therefore equivalent to almost one half of the Nation's fossil fueled generating capacity.

A 1,000 megawatt electric (MWe) light water-cooled reactor-the most common U.S. power reactor-currently requires about 165 tons of unenriched uranium oxide (U3Os) per year. [12] By increasing the extraction of uranium-235 out of the natural uranium at the enrichment plant back to past levels, this requirement could be reduced by approximately 16 percent. [13] With recycle of uranium it could be reduced by a further 17 percent and a final 17-percent reduction could be obtained by recycling the produced plutonium for a total potential saving of approximately 40 percent. [4] For the approximately 200,000 MWe of capacity currently built, under construction, or on order, operating for a 30-year lifetime, the UsOs requirements in the absence of any of these changes would be approximately 1.2 million tons. [14] With all of the changes, the requirements could be reduced to approximately 700,000 tons.

In testimony before the subcommittee, Roger Legassie, ERDA's Assistant Administrator for Planning and Analysis, presented a projection of nuclear capacity for the year 2000 as between 625,000 and 1,250,000 MWe. This nuclear capacity was assumed to generate between 50 and 75 percent of the total electrical energy consumed in that year which was assumed in turn to account for approximately 50 percent of all fuel energy consumed in that year-compared with approximately 26 percent currently. The total U.S. energy budget in the year 2000 was assumed to be between 1.8 and 2.6 times larger than the 1973 U.S. energy budget.[15] Similar electrical energy growth projections were offered to the committee by Robert Smith, president of Public Service Electric and Gas of New Jersey and chairman of the Energy Analysis Division Executive Committee of the Edison Electric Institute.[16] The range of year 2000 nuclear energy capacity projections offered the subcommittee in testimony by John Hill, Deputy Administrator of the Federal Energy Administration, 600,000 to 700,000 megawatts, fell at the low end of ERDA's range of projections but still represented an enormous growth. [17]

If such growth were realized and if new uranium conserving nuclear reactor designs were not introduced, then the 30-year uranium requirements for U.S. reactors operating in the year 2000 would be increased threefold to sixfold beyond the requirements for the capacity already under construction, being built, or on order.

*The cooling water is termed "light" to distinguish it from the "heavy water" used in Canadian type power reactors. In heavy water "heavy hydrogen" or deuterium atoms are substituted for the ordinary hydrogen atoms in H2O. Heavy water is expensive but has the advantage of capturing fewer neutrons than are captured in light water.

One small 330 million watt High Temperature Gas Cooled Reactor (HTGR) has just

Quite a different perspective on electrical energy growth projections was offered to the subcommittee by Professors Duane Chapman and Timothy Mount of Cornell University.[18] Professors Chapman and Mount pointed out that the past rapid increases in demand for electrical energy-an approximate doubling every 10 years since 1920 [19]were accompanied by corresponding dramatic decreases in the cost of electric power relative to the costs of other commodities.

Between 1950 and 1970 this relative cost fell by a factor of two. [20]* In their testimony they pointed out that this trend of declining real prices of electricity has now been reversed with a 50-percent increase in the relative prices of electricity from 1972 to 1974. With these price increases they expect a dramatic slowing in the growth rate of electric energy demand.

Another witness Dr. Robert Williams, then director of research of the Institute for Public Policy Alternatives of the State University of New York, and formerly senior scientist at the Ford Foundation's energy policy project directed the subcommittee's attention [21] to a study done for the Ford Foundation's energy policy project (EPP) by Edward A. Hudson and Dale W. Jorgenson of Data Resources Inc. (DRI).[22] The findings of this study appeared to support the contentions of Chapman and Mount.

The DRI study uses an approximate mathematical description of the U.S. economy to estimate the effects of price increases in electrical and other forms of energy on the rest of the economy. The economists used their model to determine what changes in energy prices and Government policies would be required for energy consumption to continue to grow at the historical rate or to grow at specified lower rates. They found that a continuation of the dramatic relative price decreases of the past would have to occur for electricity to realize growth rates in demand such as those projected by the Government and the utilities, that is, the relative price of electricity would have to drop by 50 percent to bring about the fourfold increase in electrical demand by the year 2000 that ERDA characterized as "moderate to low." On the other hand, with a rather modest 30-percent increase in the relative price of electricity, it was found that the consumption of electricity would only double by the year 2000.

Quite encouragingly the DRI study found that such very different projections in the relative prices of and demand for electricity had little effect on the growth of employment or of the economy. The higher prices had primarily the effect of stimulating increased efficiency in the use of energy in the satisfaction of essentially the same final consumer demands. Quantitatively the DRI analysis showed a slightly reduced GNP (4 percent subtracted from a real growth of 130 percent) in the year 2000 in this "technical fix" scenario but a slightly increased employment (3 percent added to a growth of 50 percent in man-hours.) The increased employment stemmed from the fact that energy-conserving production procedures will tend to be slightly more labor intensive. Dr. Williams also submitted for the record a paper published by John G. Myers of the Conference Board. [23] This paper points out

In this connection it is interesting to note that, although the consumption of electricity grew much more rapidly than the gross national product (measured in constant dollars) between 1950 and 1970 (5 times compared to 2 times), due to the relative price decrease of electricity, the share of the gross national product being expended on the purchase of electric energy increased only slowly-by approximately 25 percent over the

that, despite a decrease of 24 percent in the price of energy relative to other commodities between 1947 and 1970, the average rate of growth in energy consumption over the same period was approximately 0.6 percent slower than the average rate of (real) growth of the gross national product. With the recent increase in energy prices Mr. Myers suggested that the difference between these two growth rates might open up to 2 percent, that is, that only about a 12 percent energy consumption growth rate would be required to support a growth rate of 312 percent in the real GNP.

To substantiate the DRI assertion that it would be possible to increase the real GNP by 130 percent while increasing total energy consumption by only approximately 50 percent (that is, to increase the ratio of real GNP to total energy consumed by 50 percent), Dr. Williams offered a detailed list of currently feasible and economically justified measures for increasing dramatically the efficiency of our current use of energy. He stated that, if these measures were adopted throughout the economy, the amount of energy required to produce an average unit of the gross national product could be reduced by approximately 40 percent.

Of course, in view of the peaking of U.S. production of our principal fuels, oil and natural gas (currently about 75 percent of U.S. energy supply), one can expect a continued shift of the Nation's economy to electric energy derived from coal and uranium fueled powerplants. Even if the electric sector were to grow to the point where it consumed 50 percent of the total primary fuel used by the economy (up from 26 percent in 1973), however, the average growth rate of the electrical energy sector would be less than 3 percent greater than that of total energy consumption-approximately the historical difference. A reduced growth rate in overall energy consumption would therefore be reflected in a reduced growth rate in electrical energy consumption. It appears that the analysis presented by Chapman, Mount, and Williams call into substantial question the administration's projections of electrical energy growth.

2. U.S. URANIUM RESOURCES

The subcommittee heard testimony on the uranium resource situation from Mr. Robert Nininger, ERDA's Assistant Director for Raw Materials. [24] Mr. Nininger testified that, as of January 1, 1975, ERDA estimated that the United States had in well-established reserves approximately 690,000 tons of UO-mostly in uranium ore of a grade comparable with that currently being mined. (Included was 90,000 tons classed as being recoverable as a byproduct from phosphate or copper mining by the year 2000). Mr. Nininger also presented ERDA estimates that an additional "potential resource" of approximately 2.9 million tons of UO, in ores of similar grade was still to be found for a grand total estimated resource base of 3.6 million tons U3O8 in "high grade" ores. These "high grade" ores currently being mined average approximately 0.2 percent uranium by weight. [25] The ore which Mr. Nininger included in his estimate went down to approximately 0.06 percent uranium by weight. [26] *

*Although in a percentage sense this ore appears quite low grade, in an energy sense it is not. Even at 0.1 percent uranium by weight, 1 ton of uranium ore can provide the equivalent energy of 20 tons of coal when used to fuel a water-cooled reactor and the