(00:00:00) For a time, it was feared the conditions at the Three Mile Island unit. 2 reactor could not be managed Pennsylvania Governor Richard thornberg requested that all children and pregnant women leave the area President Carter last weekend on a visit to the site of the accident cautioned that while the situation was under control and evacuation of the area might still be called for he urged people to respond calmly if that situation arose. Well it now seems that things at the Three Mile Island plant have been brought under control and fears of widespread illness or death have lessened but the incident has raised our awareness of nuclear power as perhaps no other in the 25 years since the industry began this morning. We are going to discuss some of the advantages and disadvantages the pros and cons if you will of making electricity by nuclear fission in the studio to help with that discussion are Roland Jensen and Ken Peterson. Mr. Jensen is director of corporate strategy and planning for northern states power company and SP operates three nuclear power generators in Minnesota to it. The island just north of red wing and one at Monticello about 35 miles Northwest of the Twin Cities. My other guest this morning is Ken Peterson. He's an attorney for the Minnesota public interest research group or Emperor. He is here to represent the view of those who oppose for the development of nuclear power gentlemen, good morning, and thanks for being with me. I should mention before we start this morning that mr. Jensen your voices in less than top condition because you're recovering from a cold and so that's going to account for some roughness, but will will will bear with you and Beth Allen is here to in the studio with us from nsps public relations department and she'll jump in if mr. Jensen can't continue. I guess I would like to begin our discussion this morning by asking each of you to respond to this question and that is how should we view what's happened at Three Mile Island. Is it an isolated incident that has no real broad significance, or is it something that's indicative of problems problems that are inherent in nuclear power sources. Mr. Jensen. (00:02:00) I think that it's not indicative of problems in the nuclear industry. I want to first state that it was indeed a serious accident more probably someone like myself who spent his professional career in nuclear power in the design construction and operation of nuclear power plants recognize the severity of the accident more than some others do it. We learned some things out of the accident at this point, although of course, there are many things yet to come in before we understand what completely happened but we learned for one thing. Of course that the accident can happen. We'd always said an accident could happen. We had never said that that it was impossible for one to happen. So and this reinforces an accident can happen, but I think what we have learned from it, is that the Safety Systems operate to a point where we can sustain the in accident. Serious as this without any impact on the on the public safety. So the I think we have to view it with concern. We have to use this to study what what's happened there and go on from there to improve the safety of the the other plants that we have in operation in the plants that will be built into the (00:03:20) future. Can Peterson. (00:03:25) Strikes me that perhaps it is inherent contradiction. Mr. Jensen says will not try and do exaggerating the dangers of nuclear power and I do think often many people do Post nuclear power do exaggerate those dangers. However, I do think it does point up some problems inherent in the generation of electricity by by means of a nuclear reactor. That is that since 1954 when we we've really gotten into nuclear power the utilities the manufacturers of nuclear Machinery have been telling us that we're at we can actually engineer out human are that we can build in technological redundancies that will provide safety backups prevent any major accidents now at Three Mile Island, there was a human are there and fortunately there were We did avoid a major accident through our you know, our technical backups However, the fact that the accident did occur the act that the accident could have been much more serious through the human are shows we can't completely engineer out. These problems is a long as you have people running something as long as you have people involved in the operation of any technology you're going to have problems and you the real inherent thing about nuclear power it seems to me is that it's done such a scale in presents the possibilities of such incredible damage in danger that we there does become impossible to engineer these human errors which can affect it. And so hence perhaps as a society we should be looking at smaller forms of generation ones that have the potential for a less devastating impact. At the same time, I agree with mr. Jensen and that we should analyze the situation you try to take the precautions to engineer out any possible, you know future mistakes like this, but the fact remains I think that as long as we have people running these things we're going to have the possibility of accidents and I'm simply afraid we may have a more serious action (00:05:35) someday. Are you do I understand you correctly to say that you're not necessarily opposed to all nuclear power production that it's just the when it comes to a plant the size of the one at Three Mile Island. When you said a moment ago about yeah smaller. Yeah, I (00:05:51) guess I'm not sure that's economically feasible to build real small units. We used to have a small unit Minnesota dollar the Elk River and Elk River Minnesota. I think was owned by United Power Association. That one was an early model, but it wasn't last and the reason was torn down decommission. It just wasn't being a prophet in nuclear power plants and as Raleigh can probably I think would agree is they really do have to be building a big scale to make them profitable. (00:06:18) Would you agree (00:06:19) C'Mon? Say it my profitable? I don't know that that's the right term. They have to be built on a larger scale than than some others in order for us to get cheaper electricity. I think if we want to look at the term profitability if we look at at nsps three operating reactors, if we would have built coal plants instead of those three reactors the Builds now would be about 10 to 15 percent higher than they are in the for the public. So it's not really a matter of profitability. It's a matter of cost of power to the public and there certainly is in in nuclear has in Coal if we are going to build a smaller plant it costs more per unit and there is a size which if you get below it just becomes too costly to generate power by that method. (00:07:19) Mr. Jensen. There's been a lot of talk in the past 10 or 11 days since the accident at Three Mile Island about shutting down all nuclear reactor power plants, and I'm interested in knowing what that affect what effect that would have on people here in Minnesota. If the NRC said Monday morning to NSP that you had to shut down both of your reactors are all three of them by the end of the month. (00:07:46) Well that that of course would have a Dramatic effect for this area for the nation and primarily for this area because of our early every Reliance on nuclear power the state of Minnesota gets about one-third of its electrical energy from our three nuclear power (00:08:04) plants. (00:08:05) Now if they were to be closed down there is not capacity available to cover all of that that energy we would have to if we were going to continue at the same energy use we would have to resort as much as we could do oil fire generation. But of course, there's not another there's not enough oil capacity in the area that we could this is stain that so the problem would become one of don't want to be called rationing of energy but it had certainly be one of like a rotating brownout type of thing because we just would not have the capacity to meet the energy (00:08:43) requirements. So it's not as though we might experience a complete power blackout so much as that, it would be just (00:08:50) a shortage and it would be more you to be what I term a chronic shortage rather than an acute capacity shortage that we would be faced (00:08:58) with can let me turn that question around and ask ask the other part of it of you and that is how do you respond to to that statement by an SP? And by the company power companies around the country that it would put a severe strain on the system if they had to shut down nuclear power plants particularly the large ones which which are generating so much electricity. (00:09:23) I agree. There's no question that Minnesota particularly NSP service area. We have an unusually high percentage of nuclear generate electricity Nationwide. I think it's figure something like 13 percent of our electricity is generated by nuclear means if we were to shut down all the nuclear plants in this country tomorrow or begin the month of May obviously, we'd have some major problems. I think right now we're Nationwide and these figures become kind of the main I become very worthwhile because you're talking such big turns a nationwide we do have for something like a 10 to 15 percent excess capacity, but that doesn't mean that it in a particular Point you're going to have enough electricity that is you may have 10 to 15 percent excess capacity in your whole system. But then you knock out 13% that nuclear systems. Then you should be equal you should be right on but then you're going to other problems is generating electricity, obviously. It comes down all the plants the country would have real problems. So which leads to the point of that? I feel personally that people post nuclear power shouldn't necessarily call for the end of the plants but foreclosed safety inspection of them and for scrutinizing them one at a time and making a real determination that the power generated there is safe and that in the future, you know, the future that we can provide a means to replace those power plants, but he has of shutting down tomorrow with the first of next month. I would certainly not be in favor that I like listen to my radio my TV just as much as everybody else. (00:11:00) Speaking of future development what kinds of steps does NSP take when it considers building a power plant particularly in nuclear power plant. (00:11:14) Well in considering how to meet the demand the electrical demand we look at the various aspects one. Of course is economics. We evaluate the economics of various ways of meeting the power. We also have tried in the past to maintain a diversity of fuel supply we have for instance on the nation what happened in 1977 in the severe winter when when the coal piles froze up out east and Then followed by the coal strike and the problems then in getting power from the coal plants. So we have tried to maintain a diversity so that we wouldn't be completely dependent on one type of fuel supply. So I'm looking at economics and diversity of Supply is primarily what we look at. We also are very concerned about the environmental impact our analysis show and I think has been supported by a number of agencies the the last which is interesting enough that Wisconsin Public Service Commission when they turned down our application for the Tyrone plant said that their conclusion was that it was environmentally the better option than coal. So we look at economics. We look at environmental aspects and we look at diversity of Supply in making our decision as to what type of plant will request a build (00:12:48) at what point if any is there a spot in that procedure for citizens in the area of a plant or a potential (00:12:55) plan of the the the process that is set up now is that when we apply to let's say in A Minnesota to the Minnesota Energy agency. There is an environmental impact statement developed which looks at the Alternatives and looks at the alternative methods of meeting that power one of which were instance is to not meet the Power. That's one of the Alternatives we have and at that point there are public hearings held on these Alternatives and the public then they would get their input. Okay (00:13:33) time is 15 minutes past 10:00 o'clock and you're listening to a discussion of the pros and cons of nuclear power. And in a few moments were going to open up our phone lines here at ksjn and st. Paul and invite listeners to calling questions for our guests in the studio. Can Peterson from Emperor Greg and Rowley Jensen from NSP? Our number in the Twin Cities area is 2211550. That's two two one one five five zero. If you are listening to us in central Minnesota outside the Twin Cities metropolitan area. You can call us toll-free at 1-800-669-9133 of those numbers again in the Twin Cities, 2211550 and outside the Twin Cities, but in the state of Minnesota, 1-800-662-2386. We're waiting for callers. Mr. Jensen. I'd like to ask you about the question of insurance. Coverage for nuclear power plants, we've heard an awful lot of talk out of Pennsylvania about what kind of compensation people can expect from the power company out there those people who've had to move out for a time or some people there was a lawsuit. I believe that was filed yesterday that calls for a complete medical coverage for everybody living in a county adjacent to the plant for 20 years. What kind of coverage does NSP have in this (00:15:00) regard? The each power company is required to carry two types of insurance policies one is called nelia which is nuclear liability. And the other is knee Pia, which is nuclear property insurance. These are carried through private insurance companies. That about it is I recall is 300 million dollars now is the limit at which we can carry through private insurance companies. And beyond that if the if the cost is beyond that then the price-anderson ACT which is a governmental insurance policy picks up from there. Now, we pay the utility pays premiums, of course to the private insurance companies to cover for the 300 million for each liability in the property. And in addition the utilities pay the same premiums same type of Premium to the federal government. So it's not a it's not a gift. So to speak of the government did say the government running an insurance policy. And the reason that has to be done by the government is because when we start getting over 300 million dollars, it becomes too great for an insurance company to handle and so when he fact what the government policy has is a 300 million dollar deductible on it, which is By the private insurance. (00:16:34) So you pay the first three hundred million dollars. Yes. Is there any stipulation in that policy that you know of that says that there's a ceiling on how much an individual might get (00:16:46) you know, II guess I can't answer that. I don't know maybe Ken knows (00:16:51) the overall the total amount of Claims can be 560 million dollars, but in terms of the individual no, there's no no limit as to what the individual could get. So (00:17:03) the family just over half a billion dollars for any single (00:17:06) accident straight single (00:17:07) accident. Okay, which does its itself Eliza what we know right now that the Harrisburg accident will come anywhere near that however, if we look at some of the new figures are getting on on radiation dangers and some of the new health studies are coming out pointing out there takes 10 to 15 years to really determine whether or not an exposure has resulted will result in a cancer. We may not even know that presumably if If our our estimates now are incorrect, the thresholds were holding as many scientists or some scientists now claim that threshold levels are much too high as much as 10 times do I then it is very conceivable that we will have many many cases of cancer another some genetic damage. (00:17:56) What do you mean by threshold levels? (00:17:58) Well, right. Now we do say that the federal government has certain levels below which we assume that we know damage to an individual's are safe actual safe levels of radiation, however now And what we were studying at more and more and some people are starting to question whether there is such a thing as a real safe threshold level a dr. Mancuso from the University of Pittsburgh after doing a 12-year study estimates that our current figures may be as much as 10 times too high and that in the other people actually say there is no threshold level that in fact that their dental X-rays you receive from your dentist. Every time you go in there may be actually causing you undo my lots of radiation. I don't think we're at a point Joe we can we determine whether or not this is true yet, but the fact remains that we're finding out more and more about radiation its health effects. And as we go along that road, I think we'll find out more and more about the dangers of Three Mile Island type plant and then we'll get back to the insurance of the real the real cost to society or to the utility or to the federal government whoever ends up being for (00:19:10) we have a number of listeners on the phone and if you'll put your headphones on so you Here the colors will go to our first caller before we do that. Let me give the numbers out again and they are in the Twin Cities 2211550 and outside the Twin Cities, but in the state of Minnesota 1-800-662-2386 one request for our questioners this morning and that is because of the number of people who are likely to respond to our program. I'd like it if you would limit your question to a minute and we'll go to the first question or now. Good morning. You're on the air (00:19:41) morning gentlemen, I would like either of you to address the problem of nuclear waste disposal. I've heard that a lot of plants have had trouble with their storage capacity. It's been filling up and they've been told that they could send it off somewhere that hasn't happened yet. As far as I know. Would you address that question? (00:19:59) Mr. Jensen? Yes, originally for instance when northern states power designed. It sucked. Excuse me. It's three reactors at that time. It was thought That we would be able to reprocess the spent Fuel and therefore we designed the spent fuel storage capacity at these plants to cover for like several years of reactor operation to give time for the fuel to cool down so we can ship it off site since the time we designed the abilities reactors. The federal government has determined that it's going to hold up on reprocessing. So therefore we have not been able to ship the spent fuel off-site. So what we have done in our doing in the interim is redesigning the fuel pools so that we can increase the number of fuel elements that we can store in these pools. And now we have Monticello or we can operate into the late 80s before we'd have to do something different there. Our plan is at Prairie Island to do the same thing within the next several years. (00:21:15) Can do you have any lotion on that dope question of waste disposal (00:21:19) the whole question of waste disposal is one of most troubling both to the federal government to utilities as well. As I think is the citizenry right now. The federal government is latest report said that we will probably will have a permanent waste disposal site ready by 1992 at the earliest 1994 at the latest. No one knows how much that's going to cost yet what exactly or exactly where the disposal site will be. We're considering everything from New Mexico salt to Minnesota Granite. The in the meantime, we do have a right to point out some real problems at the plants late 1880s by Monticello and earlier at Prairie Island Anouk the new possibility maybe a temporary. Storage place for the spent fuel rods at called the way from reactor sites or afr's currently there's no laws on the laws allowing this right legislation allowing. Afr's how it is lot of talk in Congress of doing it. The problem with that is you run into more transportation of nuclear materials and many people feel that that's unsafe and it could lead to more problems than it actually solves. (00:22:34) Let's go to another listener on the line. Good morning. We're listening for your (00:22:37) question. And my question is what do they plan to do if the people of a particular state where the depository is supposed to be located refused to have the depository in their States Territory? (00:22:54) Well, the the federal government of course is the one that is is as taken the responsibility for storage of nuclear waste the of course are going to have to solve that problem whether there is a nuclear plant in operation or not because of the large amount of nuclear waste that have been generated and are being generated in the in the weapons program. I don't know what what the government is going to do with the with these wastes, you know, if every state will not accept a way storage place in its Then his boundaries it's a problem that is going to have to be solved regardless of whether their nuclear power plants or not. Okay can do you have a response to that? What if (00:23:48) it Minnesota right now? We do have a law requiring legislative approval if we decide to if the federal government decides the suppose the waste in the state, we think that every stage there the right to be told that one of the whole problems in nuclear power has been a decision making has been centered in Washington and way from the states and localities. We'd like to keep the veto power Secretary of Energy Schlessinger. However opposes that as do a number of members of Congress frankly, though. If I remember of Congress, I would think twice about being the person that allowed nuclear waste to be disposed of my state (00:24:24) you're listening to a discussion of nuclear power and the implications of having it in the state of Minnesota and in the country for that matter and our guest this morning in the studio are can Peterson whom you just heard from Minnesota public interest research group and Raleigh Jensen from northern states power company who doesn't always talk the way he's talking this morning. He's struggling through the last days of a rather bad cold, and we're inviting your phone calls this morning for questions. You can call us in the Twin Cities at 221155062211550. And there are some lines open right now outside the Twin Cities. It's 1-800-662-2386 that you limit your question to a minute in length, and we're ready for another question right now. Good morning. You're on the air. (00:25:41) I know of one community of the 1,500 people because of 250 billion BTUs available tests to waste from the mill in his locality. It would require a 50 billion to heat the whole town Burlington. Vermont is presently heating the whole town of I believe it's five hundred thousand or fifty thousand I guess is were anchored with residue would they converted a coal burning plant would in Minnesota? We're not dealing with this problem and I'd like to find out whether Emperor has considered it again. We haven't done as much as we should we do have one and a half staff people that work on alternative energies. We've been constantly more on solar energy than we have on wood the same time. We realize that particularly Minnesota and in the northern half of the state the wood is a great natural resource the department the state energy agency isn't has been doing quite a bit of research into that. They've also done quite a bit of research into Cattails, which can be very good in the northern Minnesota peat bogs. We Advocate various forms of alternative energies. I think that most of us agree that eventually that's the way we have to go the question is how soon will we be able to go that way we think we can go we can use Alternative Energy such as solar would various by other biomass has very soon. I think a lot of the people in the federal government and the state government and utilities think that that's quite a ways away. (00:27:15) Maybe we should just take a second or two out to explain that the emperor is not strictly limiting its activities to energy development and Alternatives that it's an active in other consumer affairs projects as well. Do you have any comments about would (00:27:30) fuel? Yes. Yes, I do way. I certainly think we should use all fuels that we have available to us and would well it sounds very And there is a lot of wood in Minnesota. It turns out that if we're going to use wood solely for the energy that we need. Minnesota would come denuded State very quickly. It's interesting back and I think about the sixteen hundreds England decided that it was not going to use coal. So it passed a law which made the use of coal a capital crime. So they went to Wood and in a matter of less than one generation England was completely denuded and they were back to burning coal. So if the energy uses in England in the 1600s would couldn't support their very meager uses at that time. We know that it cannot support our use is now the plant in Burlington Vermont that you refer to is indeed fired by would as I recall is better 25 megawatt plant, which unfortunately is much too small to heat the City of Burlington. But it does provide some energy. So I they I think would is a source but we must remember that. It's a very very small Source but it's something that we shouldn't use as much as we can. (00:28:52) Let's go to another listener. There are several waiting to ask questions. Good morning. We're listening for your question. (00:28:57) Good morning. (00:28:58) The question. I would like to ask concerns not The Economic Consequences of the commission, but for example, if the regulatory agencies that are investigating the operation of the 3-mile plant were to decide that that design or that the operation of a plant such as that would be Unsafe and suppose that were to be applied to plants of that nature in Minnesota to be decommissioned. What would the cost be and who would bear it? (00:29:34) Mr. Jensen, (00:29:35) first of all, we don't have any plants of a that exact type in Minnesota. However, the the question is still applicable as to what would happen. First of all if we approach the decommissioning in a fairly rational way, what we would do is allow the plant to set for some period of time to let the short-lived radioactivity decay and then we could cope with the decommissioning at a much lesser cost than it would be if we felt that it had to be done immediately. There have been several plants and that have been decommissioned. They are smaller, but it's not really so specific to the cost of decommissioning is not narrowly necessarily specific to the size of the plant. We know that The plant here in Minnesota at Elk River on by CPA. It was decommissioned and Zen has been completely moved from site and buried there was a reactor in Nebraska that the name of it slips me right now, but it was completely decommissioned in they are farming that site now so the costs of decommissioning are not necessarily astronomical and some people would like it would like to say that it is if we do it properly (00:30:58) A question that may be related to to decommissioning and also goes back to waste disposal listeners called in and asks, what's the process by which nuclear wastes are disposed of you mentioned earlier that there's a cooling-off time. Maybe you could very briefly Trace through the (00:31:15) process the young the cooling off time. For instance the the situation at Three Mile Island. The reason that they ran into difficulty there in the reason that you have a problem with nuclear fuel is that after you shut off the chain reaction, there are short-lived radioisotopes and continue to Decay and as they Decay they give off heat that immediately upon shut down the reactor give the continues at about 7% of its powerful power level for the first few minutes and it drops off. And finally in the few hours is down to about 1% and after about six months, then the Decay heat is still there, but it is a very low level so when we designed the the storage facilities what we planned was for the fuel to set in the storage facility for up to six months where it would cool to the point where it could be handled without danger of it overheating. And so we therefore have to wanted at that point then to take the fuel elements and ship them off to a reprocessing center now to reprocessing Center, they chemically reprocess the fuel and take out the the different isotopes that are remaining of which there's plutonium. And of course plutonium is the main reason why the reprocessing is not been allowed but plutonium besides being able to be used for a bomb is also an excellent fuel source So the plan would be to reuse that plutonium in a reactor is a fuel source, we would take out the uranium that's remaining in use that there are a number of radioisotopes that would be useful for research would be useful in the medical fields and they would be used for that. The Isotopes that would not then be useful would be put in a uni vitrified form or any glass like substance and then buried in in some some storage place of which no one has developed yet. Not not because it's technically difficult to do it. It's not technically difficult to do but it we find it's very politically difficult to do. (00:33:45) Can do you have something to say about about that process? (00:33:50) Well, I the real the real problems with the process are well known to most of us. I would disagree before I go into those that I think we're finding that it is more technically difficult than we thought several years ago. We thought that salt would be an excellent way of disposing of waste in the last few months number of Studies have come out showing that salt isn't so good this not as dry as we had hoped. The real problem is the assumptions behind you can permanently dispose of the waste that we can we can dispose of waste safely for five hundred to a thousand to two thousand two for plutonium up to 250,000 years our relationship to our descendants to and fifty thousand years from now will be similar to our present relationship to the Cro-Magnon man is that it's very difficult for us to predict what the needs of society where people will be in that time. You know that time period way cheops when we built this pyramid said that his tomb would be permanently safe in two generations robbers had broken into it. The point is on on waste disposal is that you can't read determine what the political structure what the state of civilization will be in the future. And so to me it's it's a terrible Legacy and a very frightening Legacy to pass on to Future Generations in terms of just how safe can you re dispose of waste how much can you predict what Society is going to be like what sort of governments were going to have that may want to use a plutonium which were generated which will be storing. So I don't have an answer to waste storage. We have to store it someplace we're generating we have to start someplace and it is a problem in those states don't want it. Perhaps the real answer is simply stop building new plants. (00:35:41) Mr. Jensen, do you have any response to that the idea of such long-term storage? (00:35:46) Yes, of course. The best way to handle plutonium is not to store it for 250,000 years, but due to use it when we take plutonium and put it back in reactor. We not only get the energy out of it, but then we have disposed of the plutonium in the safest possible way. (00:36:02) So a plutonium is recycled back into a nuclear power plant. It does not come out (00:36:07) plutonium. No, no and we've used it in the fission process to create energy. I'm we're leaving many legacies for the future. I think that the nuclear waste is probably one of the least of the problems of Legacy that we're leaving for the future. I think the worst thing we can do is to leave the future with no alternatives. If we start closing out alternatives for the future, I think the Legacy we leave them will be much worse than any Legacy. That might be left from nuclear waste storage. There. Are there many many ways that Society is dealing with now and always has dealt with that are lethal. The interesting thing is the nuclear waste does have does have an end point. It does have a half-life most of our other waste don't it's as an infinite Half-Life and we it it seemed to kind of nonchalantly field that we can just leave those those chemical wastes but nuclear which does have an end realistic end point. We feel we can't leave it. I think there's an incongruity. (00:37:12) We have some very patient listeners who are on the phone right now and we'll go to another question or right now. Good morning. We're listening for your (00:37:17) question. Hi. I was wondering if I seem to look back in history and see that only twenty thirty years ago. No one had air conditioning and people manage to get by just fine with letting the temperatures be as they would in the summer times and dressing for the weather and I wonder how much what percentage of the power in Minneapolis area goes for air conditioning and could we get by without do without nuclear plants? If we did not let people use air conditioning and just allow them to dress for the weather in the summer time. (00:37:48) Mr. Jensen. Well, I unfortunately I can't answer the exact percentage that does go to air conditioning and it is a large percentage. There's no question. A lot of our energy is used for air conditioning. I would debate though whether Society is better off without air conditioning a few years ago. We did a study and it looked at the the health effects of Eat and it's very interesting you find that the health effects of heat are are not insignificant at all. The death rate goes up as the temperatures go up. So if we were to decide that we're going to forego electricity for go air conditioning so that we could shut down the nuclear plants. The end result would be that you would have a higher death rate occurring from the lack of air conditioning than you will ever have from the from the nuclear plants that are operating. So I think any time you look at doing something you have to look at the trade-offs we tend to put nuclear unit in isolation. We look at only the risk that exists with nuclear and we don't want to look at the benefits that result from the use of the energy. So I think if we were to decide that we're going to forego the air conditioning so we can shut down the nuclear plants. You would find there would be an adverse effect on the death rate in the area (00:39:14) can do you have any response to (00:39:15) that? I expected always been adverse public effect. Minnesota is a it's a summer peaking the NSP system. Anyway is a summer peaking unit. That means that most of our electricity or the highest usage of electricity occurs in the summertime. I think our air conditioner scream a lot more efficient than they are President Carter the other night. Do you know proposed that perhaps we allow our commercial buildings to have heat up to 80 degrees in the summertime that seems to me reasonable it seems to me we should have more conservation measures. I frankly wish utilities would do more in that area in encouraging other companies to build more efficient energy using appliances such as air conditioners. (00:40:00) We have another Mr. On the line. Let's go to his or her question. Good morning. We're listening for your question. (00:40:06) Yes. I have a question. It would that could be answered by either the gentlemen perhaps they're any regular program either existing or planned for periodic overtime thorough inspections of nuclear plants are shut down for a short period of time and more less a bolt by bolt inspection of every component that handles radioactivity. (00:40:33) I'm not quite sure what you mean by a bolt by bolt inspection. But yes there there is a requirement on all of the Safety Systems in the plant for a an ongoing inspection. There's this includes inspections of the welds that includes inspection of the operability of the safety systems. And there's this is an ongoing safety inspection that continues in these plans both during operation and during shutdowns. Ironically at Three Mile Island. It was one of these inspections that cause their problems not not to condone what the where that you shouldn't do safety inspections, but after one of their in in operation safety inspections where they had to shut offs and valves to do the safety tests for some inexplicable reason and it's certainly something that will want to hear more about July but they did not open the valves up again after having done that safety tests. But yes, there are certainly there's ongoing testing in the in the safety aspects (00:41:42) Ken. (00:41:44) Yeah there I recognize that I will point out though is what Raleigh was saying is the whole human hair business the problems that NSP has had it Prairie Island fuse had been each of as far as I know up to 76 each a have been caused by human error. And so once again we run into this this problem of people running, you know, supposedly perfect and machinery and making mistakes leading valves open at Browns Ferry their lighting candles and causing fires. We do have this problem and that to me is the real The bottom line and all these things is that you can have all the safety inspections you want but eventually people going to make mistakes (00:42:26) 16 minutes before 11 o'clock, you're listening to a discussion of nuclear power in the region and we have a number of listeners on the line who have questions for our guests this morning and so we'll go to another person right now. Good morning. You're on the air. (00:42:38) Hello. I'd like to direct my question towards the tendency for our society to centralize our energy demands and like industry and I was wondering or towards energy utilities and I'm interested in developing our self-sufficiency and Industry in energy and why don't we concentrate on on developing would as a as a resource for individuals to use or photocells, you know, there are photocells that deliver, you know energy 4525 cents for a kilowatt hour. You know, why don't we develop these? Why don't we take the demand off of NS? He and the other energy delivers and concentrate their their energy towards satisfying commercial and Industrial (00:43:29) uses. Mr. Jensen. Yes. I think the answer is very simple to that question has been answered in one word and that's economics the you talk about photocells for five cents a kilowatt hour. I think you're off by several orders of magnitude. Unfortunately, if if you could if it were possible by a smaller scale it do economically produce energy. We would see it happening. It's the same the same factors as we discussed earlier that apply for the economics of size of nuclear plants apply for other aspects of you're going to build a small plant. We've heard for instance that the people could neighborhoods could get together and build a small diesel plant and thereby get its own power. The unfortunate there to two aspects of course economics is one of the major ones the other is who is the one that wants to get up at three o'clock in the morning when it's 20 below and the diesel stops. So it all comes down to the alternative energy sources coming is one of Economics as the main the main problem and the supply is the other you're just not going to be able to get enough wood for instance or the other alternatives to carry our we're we're high technology society and we are high energy use society and what might have worked fifty or a hundred years ago and are no longer able to cope with our society is set up so that it cannot it cannot operate without some some pretty major changes and if Society decides to make these major changes then of course it can cope with it. (00:45:12) Mr. Jensen. I have a question that spins off from that and that is from time to time we hear And that the power companies reason power companies don't pursue Solar Development with a great deal of aggressive activity is because once know solar is developed and is economical everybody could have a unit on his or her home and the power companies would go out of business. (00:45:35) No, I that's certainly not true. We if we if we could make energy if we could make electricity from the Sun economically. We certainly have no reason not to do that. I have been involved in top management of the utility for a number of years and I can say that that has never come up in any of our discussions what we're going to do that. We're trying to Corner the market or that we're afraid we might go out of business (00:46:00) can do you have some thoughts on (00:46:01) solar? Yeah, I think what we have are a couple of institutional problems that they're certainly our economic problems, which I'm not all that familiar with and by think that the fact is we all have institutional problems. We found out this year that doing some research into the bylaws of number rural coops is that many of them forbid people from generating electricity on site that is they say in their bylaws that the individual has to buy all the electricity. They use has to be bought in the coop that certainly is a hindrance to development of alternative energy sources in rural (00:46:37) areas. I'm sorry. The law says (00:46:39) that's not the law. It's a coops bylaws which the member to in a coop agrees to go along with. I'm not sure how many coops actually greet actually enforce that there has been at least one case so they have tried to enforce it, but they actually do is say the bylaws say that un electricity you use on your farm will have to be generally happy bought from us. That's one reason why you don't see windmills anymore is because the electricity has to be bought NSP on the other hand has said or done McCarthy president has be has said they'll buy all the electricity which is generated by anybody on their on-site. Hopefully someday the co-op's we have that sort of foresight. I think eventually we'll reach that point. The other institutional problem. I think is one more of perception. I agree with Rowley when he says that obviously NSP is not sitting up in the corporate board rooms making a devious decisions trying to you know, squelch solar energy in the state. However, I think that's probably a question of perception. If you only have a hammer in a nail generally just going to pound things or and so I do with utility has the same perception. They only can build big plants and have high Volume transmission lines and Cetera that's they're going to build they don't have the people. They haven't built into itself the idea of decentralized energy energy. So they don't perceive instead of deck in this case using the hammer and they all said using a screwdriver and a bolt. They're using the hammer nail building big big plants. They're not really thinking about other things just because they don't have the capacity to do so yet (00:48:23) we have listeners on the line. Let's go to another one right now. Good morning. We're listening for your (00:48:27) question. My question is to mr. Jensen. (00:48:47) Well nuclear fission, of course is a is only a stopgap depends on of course how you define stopgap? It could be The nuclear fission if we go to the breeder could be a stopgap for maybe five hundred years. If we don't go to the breeder, it's certainly less than that. The I guess I'm not sure that I know of any non polluting source of energy that exists the Sun the solar energy is not non-polluting. So I don't know that such a thing exists. I think what would finally Society if there's going to be any Legacy that we leave for society? It has to be the the opportunity for society to move to what we would consider. Excuse me, an infinite source, and of course the Infinite Source and not quite sure what you meant by hydrogen I expect you meant fusion and I would agree that for all practical purposes and we moved to Fusion. That would be an Infinite Source it from what we see now. It might be as low polluting it. Many however, I've always observed that when we look at something. We don't know how to do. We think it's non-polluting. So I'm not sure that Fusion Energy will be non polluting and I'm not sure as I sell I know that that I do energy is not a non-polluting energy solar is not a non-polluting but maybe Fusion might be as close as we will come How is solar not non-polluting? Well in order to use solar energy. The only way it can be used as to build a collector plates which primarily going to build out of copper or aluminum or glass and to build that requires huge amounts of energy and you do it Mining and this type of thing (00:50:39) can do you have a response to that gentleman's question about short-term stopgap measures. (00:50:46) Yeah, I guess I agree to a certain extent. It is a failure of leadership in the field of Courage, but perhaps it's it's not necessarily, you know, I don't think people Bhima, let you know evil but I expect it's just a question of lack of creativity. We're entering into an age which we have no never encountered before and so were opting I think on our decision maker making levels opting for those decisions or that advice offered to us by by necessary Bhai technology instead. We are abandoning. I think more traditional forms of advice forms of wisdom. We're building a building things simply because we can build them. We're not trying to really look around and explore our own past explore explore those places that we do we know things can work and we don't we do know I think that we shouldn't build big things are going to actually potentially cause harm to other people we know we don't want to do that. But I think we sort of rationalize things away by saying wow, the risk is not all that great and we sort of Quant try to quantify risk and By dangers and I don't think we can redo that. I think that history can show us nothing else history can show us that the best societies are those societies which try to develop something which is close to people the people can understand and that has some democratic aspects. I mean Democrat the small D. I don't think things like nuclear power really have off of that potential and hopefully our politicians and our decision makers of government will start to realize that (00:52:26) we have another caller on the line. Good morning. Thanks for (00:52:29) waiting morning. I would like to address my question to mr. Jensen. There are certain government imposed limits on how many carries a nuclear plant can emit per year. Minnesota standards are considerably more stringent before the plan in Monticello was built and is p promise to keep the Minnesota standards. But this plant is way above that level right now. How can you explain that discrepancy? (00:52:49) Well, I guess I'm not sure that I like I am sure I don't agree with you. I don't know. I don't know. I'm not sure what Minnesota standards you're referring to or how much higher we are above them. I think that what we have done at Monticello in the gas waste treatment system is developed a system that is one of the best in the nation and the nuclear power plants. And as I say there have been so many standards that the state of Minnesota has talked about that. I'm not sure that any of us even know which standard is meant and if I could just answer curie's is not is not the thing. It's it's Realms. So if been for a while the state of Minnesota was going man carries, but carries is a meaningless (00:53:38) aspect. What's the difference between the two well (00:53:42) Gary is the amount of radioactivity that exists for whatever length of time in the situation and he wanted Water Reactor like Monticello, there could be a high Curie discharge that comes from a very short-lived Isotopes for instance nitrogen. 16 is one that has just a few second half life by the time that that radioactivity would get out of the stack. It would have decayed down to zero and the Realms or the the rottens the actual the actual radioactivity that I which a person would get would be extremely low because the radioactivity the high Curie radioactivity had died away. Again, (00:54:26) I think what the caller is referring to is initially the Minnesota Pollution Control agency. It did attempt to regulate emissions from the Monticello plant, which were more stringent than those imposed by the federal government in a court case. It was ruled that Minnesota do not have that Authority and so now and is p as I understand it is going by the the federal guidelines the federal rules and not by going by the Minnesota rules it so but I don't think that necessarily means it has to be doing the wrong thing. They were simply doing what they thought were the safe safe regulations imposed by the federal government. (00:55:03) We have just over three minutes left in our program this morning and we have a listener on the line and if you can be brief, we'll take your question. Good morning. (00:55:12) I like that man. Your gifts their views regarding the assignment of economic risks between stockholders of a regulated utility and its customers. And specifically World. They think in the case of the Three Mile Island plant, the company could be justified passing on the cost of repair and removal of the disaster to its stockholders or two. It's the customers. (00:55:34) Okay? Mr. Jensen. Well a as far as the three-mile island incident wanted to refer to that I'll refer to the situation here in Minnesota with with NTSB is earlier in the program. I mentioned the price of electricity the cost of electricity to the customer here is a result of our nuclear power plants are running 10 to 15% below. What they would have been if we would have built coal plants which means that our customers have now for about seven years been paying 75 to 100 million dollars per year Less in their total electric bill that that of course is not flowed through to the stockholders in any way shape or form. Now if the stockholders could have gotten that if that would have flowed through to the stockholders and I would say there's no question. The stock order than would would bear any costs that would result from from an accident. However, since since Society since regulation is set up that it does not flow through to the stockholder. Then the person who gets the benefits or the one is the person who has to has to handle the risk so would count. It can't flow both ways were the customer gets the benefits but the shareholder carries the risk without any (00:56:49) benefits again, we have about 30 seconds for response from (00:56:52) you Frank. Thank the customer should pay for it. The customers received electricity. They should pay for it. You know, the customers don't like it. They should presumably oppose the use of those type of electrical generating sources, which actually going to endanger them. It's going to cost them more money through my lines will cause those customers a lot of money. They had a protest that companies use of nuclear generate electricity. (00:57:14) We're out of Time can Peterson and attorney for the Minnesota public interest research group. Thanks for being with me this morning and Raleigh Jensen for struggling through your cold and bad voice this morning. Thanks very much for being with us from NSP.