text: Opposition to Nuclear Power Grows Stronger - Commitment Is Needed - NYTimes.com
  Opposition to Nuclear Power Grows Stronger; Commitment Is Needed
  I was pleased to see you take a strong position on nuclear power in the United States (''Revive the Atom,'' editorial, Dec. 8). However, I would like to present the other side of the public relations ploys and preachments of the United States Council of Energy Awareness on ''nuclear electricity and energy independence.''
  Yes, on the global scale, nuclear power generation is growing. According to a recent study by the International Atomic Energy Agency, over the last 15 years, the annual growth rates in the fraction of electricity produced by nuclear have been 15 percent for industrialized countries, 28 percent for developing countries. Only in 1988, 14 new nuclear power reactors in eight countries were commissioned, bringing the world's total of operating plants to 429. At the end of 1988, 26 countries had nuclear power plants, with 105 more under construction.
  The increasing need for electrical energy, lack of local sources of energy, the specter of worrisome balance of payments and foreign debt caused by imported energy and, finally, fear of burning more fossil fuel and the resultant greenhouse effect will bring proliferation of nuclear power plants, at least for the near future.
  However, this trend could lead from the frying pan of the greenhouse effect into the fire of disastrous nuclear accidents, like the one at Chernobyl, near Kiev in the Soviet Union. The Chernobyl accident demonstrated for the first time that the effects of any such nuclear accident would not be localized, but would spill over into neighboring countries and have global consequences. The radioactive fallout from Chernobyl contaminated the milk supply of Sicily, 1,000 miles away.
  It is not simply, as the Council on Energy Awareness argues, design, small scale or such technology as automation that make a nuclear power plant safer. Technological systems accidents are caused by the way the engineered and human components interact. The safety of large-scale systems demands an approach to design and operation as attentive to human as to technical elements.
  To revive the atom and have safe nuclear plants, we need much more commitment, communication and cooperation among government and international agencies, plant manufacturers, utilities, unions and research communities. We need dedication by all parties, not rhetoric or public relations. As the Nobel physicist Richard Feynman said of the space shuttle Challenger explosion:
  ''For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.''