OFFICE MEMORANDUM e© STANFORD UNIVERSITY © OFFICE MEMORANDUM © STANFORD UNIVERSITY «© OFFICE MEMORANOUM

SO\ TAL

Date: February 21, 1975

To : File
FROM: Joshua Lederberg
SUBJECT:

I have had a number of inquiries motivated by my having signed
the statement on energy policy which was circulated by Professor Hans
Bethe recently. I am dismayed that there has been so much reaction to
a single sentence in that statement, referring to the urgency of
expanding our energy-producing capability without it having been read
in the context of the entire writing. I am therefore attaching a copy

of the full statement and hope that it will be read with equal emphasis
on all of its parts,

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I am also attaching a post-script that did not appear in the

public press and which partly amplifies some of my own additional views
on the subject.

A point that none of the signatories would have wished to see
overlooked is that energy production and consumption by any means whatsoever
entails an inevitable environmental cost. On the other hand, as we have seen
in recent months, sudden variations in the cost of and utilization of energy
can have the most serious consequences for economic Stability and we must
plan for policies that can carry us through transitions with the least
wreckage. On the one hand there is no way that we can consume energy and
not pay for it; on the other hand, we can hardly afford to undertake abrupt
changes in our energy~consuming economy! Indeed, it will take a notable
effort merely to stabilize our per capita consumption of energy without
inviting serious economic consequences.

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To rely upon an ever increasing quota of imported oil to satisfy the
energy deficit, is of course to expose ourselves to ever deeper political
coercion of a kind of which we have ssen only the mildest foretaste, the

long-range outcome of which could be frightful beyond any of the other risks
in question,

I would have hoped that as many readers would have reacted to the
plea for planned conservation as have responded to the remarks about
nuclear power, With respect to these,opinions of course differ widely.
My own position is that the safety problems of nuclear power plants have
been by no means solved to the point of complacency, and there are many, many oo
revisions of policies that have been promulgated in the past when the paastoud
promotion of nuclear power in this country was a monopoly managed by a
joint committee of the Congress. My own conviction is,however, that these
problems are soluble, that continued development of nuclear power should be
permitted and perhaps even encouraged although under the closest and most
critical scrutiny of its designs so as to reach ever increasing perfection
with regard to safety in parallel with the increasing number of plants that
are to be designed and constructed. The safety engineering of nuclear reactors
is a difficult and intricate problem on which T can hardly claim ultimate

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expertise, and on which we see new criticisms and new insights every day.
Exaggerated and faulty criticisms have perhaps done a disservice by be-
clouding the real measure of the problems that need to be faced - in the

long run on matters as complex as this, we will have to rely upon our
judgements of the competence and the integrity of the people who devote
themselves most intently to the actual technical issues, and upon the
management structure in which they have the opportunity to exchange information
and criticism and to respond to public concern. Especially with respect to
the latter, the previous management organization of atomic energy has been
highly faulty, and I certainly have no brief for measures like the federally
imposed guarantee of insurance which frustrates an objectively motivated
third party examination of the costs and risks.

There have, however, been many constructive changes in the organization
of the federal energy program in recent months and I believe that they should
be given an opportunity to demonstrate to the American people that they are
now up to the task.