State, Experts Plan for Nuclear Safety

Increased reliance on nuclear power is "unpalatable" because the benign attitudes of nuclear power proponents toward the development of new nuclear plants are false and unrealistic, MIT physicist Henry W. Kendall said yesterday.

Kendall's views clash with those of Michael Driscoll, another MIT physics professor, who said yesterday that nuclear power presents less risks than more common sources of power, like coal.

Nuclear power wins "hands down" over coal power, Driscoll said, adding that the tremendous amount of previous research into the effects of nuclear radiation means the technological problems of nuclear power "can be licked."

Driscoll said it is unlikely that individuals will be able to steal radioactive material from nuclear plants in order to build their own atomic bombs, but did warn of the possibility that as more and more nations develop atomic weapons one of them will use a nuclear bomb.

Kendall said he is worried that nuclear plants could release massive amounts of radiation into the atmosphere after an accident during a plant's operation.

"A ruptured pipe or a poorly designed pressure vessel" could cause the release over an area of 60 to 70 miles ten times the radiation that an American atomic bomb caused in Hiroshima, Japan, in 1945, Kendall said.

"Badly managed plants, high accident records and poor plant performance mean that nuclear power proposals are impertinent and unwise," he said.