Nuclear Poll: Americans are uncertain about nuclear power

By WILL LESTER, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - Americans are more ambivalent about nuclear power than they were a decade ago, with fewer than half saying they support using atomic energy to produce electricity, according to an Associated Press poll.

Sixty percent say they believe nuclear plants are safer now, but half the respondents believe a serious nuclear accident is likely at a U.S. power plant. That number is unchanged from the 1989 AP poll.

The latest poll, taken 20 years after a serious accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant near Harrisburg, Pa., found 45 percent of adults saying they support the use of nuclear energy. That is down 10 percentage points from 1989.

The nuclear power industry supplies about 20 percent of the nation's energy. No new plants are being built in this country and many existing facilities are seeking relicensing.

About one-in-three people surveyed said they oppose the use of nuclear power, while one-in-four said they didn't know. The percentage in opposition was the same a decade ago, but the number who said they didn't know where they stood on the issue was twice as high as it was in 1989.

Men were more likely than women to support nuclear power, according to the poll conducted by ICR of Media, Pa.

"I still think it will work," said 73-year-old Jim Bissey, a cashier from Springfield, Ohio. "We have nuclear submarines and other nuclear devices that seem to work okay. I'm hoping that technology has moved forward so that whatever happened at Three Mile Island they can control or eliminate."

On March 28, 1979, a series of failures cut off the flow of cooling water to the reactor, which caused the top half of the reactor's radioactive core to collapse and melt. Contaminated coolant water escaped into a nearby building, releasing radioactive gases.

The telephone survey of 1,015 people was taken Friday through Tuesday. The margin of error is plus or minus 3 percentage points.

Even a majority of those who support the use of nuclear power said they wouldn't want to live within 10 miles of a plant.

"I have not seen enough evidence to be anti-nuclear power," said 33-year-old Kirsten Hoffman, a wife and mother from Corpus Christi, Tex. "But it's the old NIMBY syndrome - not in my back yard."

Industry officials say the 1990s are good times for nuclear power, even though no orders for new plants have been placed in more than two decades.

Scott Peterson, a spokesman for the Nuclear Energy Institute, said the industry has "more than 100 nuclear power plants operating at record levels of efficiency and safety." He sees the environmental debate over pollution from coal and oil plants as a significant boost for nuclear

power and believes that in another decade there may be an appetite for more large-scale plants.

The storage of radioactive waste continues to be an environmental concern, with almost half in the poll saying they believe it cannot be safely stored for many years. One-third said they thought it could be safely stored.

Some existing nuclear plants may be able to compete economically with other types of plants in energy production costs, said Tom Cochran, senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council. But Cochran said the prohibitive cost of building new plants could reduce the amount of nuclear power in another couple of decades.

That would be fine with Dianne Carr, a 42-year-old Sharpsburg, Md., resident who vividly remembers news reports about the Three Mile Island accident in neighboring Pennsylvania.

"Nuclear power is pretty scary," she said. "I remember reading about evacuation plans for cities after Three Mile Island and it was mind-boggling."