White House Chronicle

News Analysis With a Sense of Humor

John T. Conway: A Remembrance

by Leave a Comment

By Llewellyn King

John T. Conway, who died on Feb. 12 at the age of 92, was a force. And he triumphed in many things — as a Navy engineer, an FBI special agent, an attorney, a congressional staffer, a presidential appointee, a utility executive, a husband and a father.

I am glad to say that John was my friend, and that I was the beneficiary of his joy and generosity.

I knew him for more than 40 years. And I knew him to be a man for whom everything was an adventure. He sought it and it sought him.

If you were lucky enough to know John, you were swept along in his adventure. I was swept along in the corridors of the Capitol, which he knew inside out from his days as a staffer on the storied Joint Committee on Atomic Energy. I was swept along in the labyrinth of offices at Consolidated Edison Company in New York, when he was executive assistant to the chairman. I was swept along into the arcane and essential work of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, when he became its first chairman, appointed by President George H.W. Bush, in 1989.

And I was swept along on K Street in Washington, when John was headed for a favorite watering hole. He was an Irishman from New York, where his father was a policeman for 30 years. John was Irish in the best sense of that: He enjoyed a drink and loved the companionship that went with it.

John was a raconteur who took time to ask questions. You always felt he knew a lot more than you did — and this was for the simple reason that he did. An evening in his company was a time to laugh, but also a time to learn.

A 42-page interview that FBI historians conducted with John in 2009, as part of an oral history of the agency, can be found online at http://www.nleomf.org/assets/pdfs/nlem/oral-histories/FBI_Conway_interview.pdf In this remarkable document, John discusses his attempts to see active duty in World War II and his extraordinary career at the FBI.

John had told me a lot about his life as an FBI special agent, including how close he had come to turning a Soviet spy. He said he felt cheated not to have closed the deal.

He was both an engineer and an attorney – with degrees from Tufts University and Columbia University School of Law — so he was well-suited to the nuclear business in Washington. From the 1950s, the nuclear world was populated with giants. John stood tall even among that august company.

He joined the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy in 1958 as an assistant staff director, and became its executive director in 1968. It was the only joint committee of Congress that has ever had the power to introduce legislation — and as such, it was something of a law unto itself. It had very private offices in the Capitol, accessed by a discreet elevator that was almost under the dome.

All the committee members were there because of their devotion to nuclear energy. They sought their assignments because they believed in nuclear energy for defense, electricity generation and medicine. Democrat and Republican were as one where nuclear was concerned. The chairmanship switched between the House and Senate every two years, but the committee’s policy of collective aims never varied. Many of its members were national figures such as Sen. Henry “Scoop” Jackson (D-Wash.), Sen. John Pastore (D-R.I.), Sen. Clinton Anderson (D-N.M.), and John Anderson (R-Ill.), who ran for president as an Independent.

Because of the secrecy which surrounded it and the depth of knowledge among its members, Congress was usually swayed by the committee. In short, it got what it wanted.

Making sure that happened was John Conway. As staff director, his influence in Congress and in its vassal agency, the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), was considerable. He was at the right hand of members during an expansion of nuclear power and in dangerous days of the Cold War. He circled the globe as the quiet man who smoothed things out — some critical, as in Moscow with Sen. Jackson, or in Rome with Sen. Pastore.

When Pastore was chairman of the committee, he took John with him on a trip to Rome. Now Pastore was a short man, and John was a tall, raw-boned one. They traveled together at a time when Europe was littered with what were called “counterpart funds.” This was local currency that had accumulated in U.S. embassies in payments, but could not be repatriated and converted into dollars.

At the U.S. Embassy in Rome, John was given a big roll of lira — a common practice at that time when congressmen visited European countries. With the roll in his jacket pocket, John accompanied Pastore for an audience with the Pope. Pastore was a devout Catholic, and John told me he thought this was the highest point of the senator’s life.

The audience began in curtained room in the Vatican, and involved Pastore, John, the Pope and his aide. Before they left the room, the Pope handed a glass-and-metal crucifix to Pastore, who clutched it to his chest, profoundly moved.

Then the Pope indicated that he and Pastore should go to another room where, presumably, the senator received a papal blessing. John and Pope’s aide stood looking at each other in the curtained room. He was so grateful for his boss’s audience with the Pope and the gift of the crucifix that he felt some reciprocation was needed. Having brought no presents, John handed the Pope’s aide the roll of lira.

Then the aide, who thought this generosity required major reciprocity, threw back the room’s curtain to reveal a great tub of identical crucifixes. He grabbed a bunch and handed them to John. Big problem. If Pastore had found out that they were given to all, he would be devastated. And if John declined the offer, there might be an international incident. So he stuffed them into his shirt and crossed his arms over his chest to keep them from clinking.

Soon, John was reunited with Pastore. The two left the Vatican — with John suffering painful pricking from his burden.

When they were back on a Roman street and Pastore was distracted, John unloaded his burden into a trash can. “Ask John. He will know what to do,” they used to say all over Washington. And he always did.

A truly great man has passed, paid up in full in the human club.

Llewellyn King, executive producer and host of “White House Chronicle” on PBS,” was the founder and publisher of “The Energy Daily” for 33 years.

The Collision Course in the South China Sea

by Leave a Comment

By Llewellyn King

When I was learning to fly, one of the lessons was that if you see an object on the horizon that is seemingly stationary but getting larger, watch out. It is probably an aircraft closing with you.

Trouble with China in the South China Sea is on the horizon of U.S. strategic concerns and getting larger. A major confrontation may be at hand.

China claims sovereignty over the Spratly and Paracel islands in the South China Sea. Its claims have been disputed by Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines,Taiwan and Vietnam.

Ignoring these neighbors’ territorial claims, China has built artificial islands on otherwise submerged reefs in the Spratly archipelago. They have built runways, capable of landing military jets, on Fiery Cross and Subi reefs, and are building one on Mischief Reef.

Vietnam and the Philippines have also built up reefs, but on a smaller scale, and mostly to help their fishing fleets.

Offshore islands, real or summoned from the deep, are trouble. Argentina and Chile nearly went to war over the Beagle Channel Islands, off the inhospitable tip of South America, until Pope John Paul II brokered a peace deal in 1984.

Britain and Argentina most certainly did go to war in 1982 over the Falkland Islands, which Argentina claimed then and still claims.

Nations use territorial disputes not only to divert attention from domestic problems, but also to heal the real or imagined wounds of history.

China feels, reasonably, that it was kicked around in history. Britain occupied parts of it, most notably Hong Kong, and then acted as a drug lord in the 19th-century Opium Wars. In the 20th century, China was invaded by Japan.

Now, as the world’s second-largest economy and most populous nation, China is feeling assertive.

But all of Asia, and by extension the rest of the world, is invested in this dispute: one third of the world’s shipping passes through the South China Sea, and its rich fishing grounds are a vital food source for the region.

The Chinese bolster their claims with a 1947 map showing what is known as the “nine-dash line,” or the cow’s tongue because of its shape, in the South China Sea. This line extends around the sea and encloses 90 percent of the area; by historical standards this is a whopper of a claim for territory, and one which threatens U.S. allies in the region as well as our shipping.

The Chinese claims appear to be in total violation of international law,  particularly the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, which the United States has not ratified, and which China ratified in 1996.

The dispute with claims and counterclaims is laid out in a new, dispassionate report by the Boston Global Forum, a Harvard professor-heavy think tank.

The United States responded to the China’s claim of territorial integrity for its artificial islands after a long delay, testing the right to navigate by sending the USS Lassen, a guided missile destroyer, through the 12-nautical-mile zone off Subi Reef on Oct. 27. China has reacted angrily with aerial exercises.

The USS Lassen’s transit of the reef appears to have divided the White House. At one point, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter would not acknowledge in public that it had actually happened, or that U.S. aircraft might test the Chinese claim to territorial air rights.

These actions are known as freedom of navigation operations, or FONOPS. It is a term we will hear more of if the United States and China cannot divert from their brinkmanship in the South China Sea.

The United States does not favor any nation’s claim to islands, or even rocks, in that sea. It does, though, have a vital interest in checking Chinese expansion and the interests of its Asian allies who expect a robust U.S. response to China’s island grab — and claim to a whole ocean. — For InsideSources.com

How to Move the Nuclear Project Forward

by Leave a Comment

Nuclear power ought to have everything going for it. It has worked extremely well for more than 60 years — a fact that will be celebrated at the Nuclear Energy Institute’s annual meeting in Washington this week.

Yet there is a somber sense about civil nuclear power in the United States that its race is run; that, as in other things, the United States has lost control of a technology it invented.

Consider: There are more than 70 reactors under construction worldwide, but only five of those are in the United States. They are in Georgia, South Carolina and Tennessee. Even so, costs are rising and rest of the electric utility industry is resolutely committed to natural gas, which is cheap these days.

Once nuclear power plants are up and running, they tend do so seamlessly for decades, often operating above their original design output. It is clean power, unaffected by fuel prices, doing no damage to the air and very little to the earth, except in the mining of uranium or in immediate contact with the used radioactive fuel, when it is finally disposed of — an issue made thorny by two presidents, Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama.

Carter banned nuclear reprocessing just as it was about to be commercialized, and Obama nixed the Yucca Mountain waste repository in Nevada. The trigger for his devastating decision was the opposition of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), thought to be acting on behalf of the gaming interests of Las Vegas. Talk about wheels of fortune — a great technology endangered by legions of slot machines.

Overlooked when the nuclear titans gather in Washington will be two of nuclear’s greatest achievements: the nuclear Navy and the transformation of medicine. The Navy is largest maritime war machine in history with its aircraft carriers that can stay on station for more than a year and submarines that can go under the icecaps and stay submerged for months.

The utility industry seeks stability in all things, ergo it is not scientifically entrepreneurial. It embraces risk reluctantly. It accepts new technology when it is delivered with limited or shared risk.

It was that way with nuclear power, where the risk was shared with the government and sometimes the vendors. Likewise, with the development of today’s aero-derivative gas turbines, the military did the work and took the risk.

In this atmosphere it is easy to forget that nuclear is not a mature technology, but that it belongs at the frontiers of science. Today’s nuclear power plant is analogous to the black rotary phone — there is room for improvement.

But as there is no competition between electricity supplying entities, the impetus must come from elsewhere: government and incentivized private companies. Some like the General Atomics Corp. in San Diego, Calif., have reaped huge benefits by exploring the scientific frontier. While they are known mostly for the Predator drone, General Atomics' work on nuclear fusion has provided the building blocks for magnetic resonance imaging and tissue welding among dozens of medical advances and has enabled the company to use fusion science to develop the electromagnetic catapults for launching aircraft from carriers. If you get to ride a levitating train, it may be because it is suspended by electromagnetic forces pioneered in nuclear research by General Atomics.

Nuclear waste – the industry hates that term because of potential energy left in spent fuel — is the sad story of nuclear: too much yesterday (ideas codified and frozen 60 years ago), not enough tomorrow.

When aviation science has been stuck in the past, it has leaped forward by offering prizes to unleash invention: the first flight across the English Channel, the first Atlantic crossing, and now the first commercial foray into space, were inspired by prizes.

The good burghers of the nuclear industry might with their government allies think of cobbling together a really big prize that will change the thinking about how we deal with used nuclear fuel. At present, there are only two options: reducing the volume by cutting it up, leaching the useful stuff out and making glass out of the rest, and burying that or everything in a place like Yucca Mountain.

Generally in life and science, when there are only two options, there is a deficit of thinking. — For the Hearst-New York Times Syndicate

 

 

Nuclear Power’s Undeserved Bad Year

by Leave a Comment

 

The great event of the nuclear calendar for 2011 was the earthquake and tsunami that hammered three reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi plant in Japan.

If you are a nuclear power believer, these sturdy old machines proved their mettle. They withstood all that nature could throw at them; although terrible damage resulted from the loss of external power and the swamping of the emergency diesel generators. The result was core melting and trouble in the used fuel storage pools.

If you are doubtful about nuclear power, or you are simply a political opportunist, this event was the final nail in the coffin, the proof that the end had arrived. For you, it provided more evidence that nuclear power is inherently unsafe and that its use, as American scientist Alvin Weinberg once said, is a Faustian bargain. (It was a remark that Weinberg wished he had not made and which his staff and supporters tried to justify by explaining that in the German legend, Faust finally gets his soul back, having foolishly pledged it to the devil.)

Such nonsense aside, the extraordinary thing about Fukushima is that although almost 25,000 Japanese died as the result of the earthquake and tsunami, no one died directly from the nuclear accident or from the release of radioactivity. The buildings and containment structures survived as they were designed to 40 years ago. This, despite a wall of water 45 feet high with incalculable force.

Each year, thousands of people are killed in coal mine accidents around the world. In 2010, 2,433 people were killed in China’s mines, the world’s deadliest.

Yet it was nuclear that had the world holding its breath. As with all accidents or even incidents, nuclear is held to a standard of safety orders of magnitude stricter than is applied to any other industrial activity, including other big energy undertakings, like oil refining, chemical production and transportation, and aviation.

The suspicion that falls upon nuclear technology is not only unfair – it is uneven.

The peace has been kept for five decades by the U.S. nuclear navy. In home waters and ports, nuclear ships and submarines sail without criticism.

Even the two organizations which appear to make their livings from relentless attacks on nuclear, the Union of Concerned Scientists and the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, have not dared to attack the nuclear navy. They do not protest, say, the USS Enterprise, when the great aircraft carrier sails blithely into domestic ports with eight reactors at work.

No one raises issues of waste, terrorist attacks or the consequences of military action. Those who make a living out of opposing nuclear power do not have the temerity to go after nuclear propulsion in warships. The public would not tolerate the disarmament that that would entail.

So the opponents go after nuclear’s soft underbelly: civilian power. It is hard to imagine that it is more dangerous to operate a nuclear facility built to be safe on land than one built for war-fighting on the high seas and in ports and harbors.

There are times in history when triumph is recorded as failure. The British and the Prussians finished off Napoleon in the Belgian town of Waterloo. But in the English Language, “Waterloo” — a British victory – is a synonym for catastrophic defeat. Americans believe the Tet Offensive was the turning point in the Vietnam War, even though the combined forces of the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army were roundly defeated by U.S. and South Vietnamese forces.

Fukushima, a once-in-history accident, was a victory of design and construction for its time. Even the radiation releases are now found to be lower than expected, even those in the exclusion zone are surprisingly low. Despite eager attempts to find a surge in new cancers around the plant, none has shown up.

The lessons are to incorporate more passive features, better power supply and to protect the emergency generators. Newer designs already incorporate some of these features — and all will going forward. The industry has reacted with unusual alacrity in the past to new lessons, something uncommon across the broad range of industrial endeavor from aircraft to automobiles. As with aviation, nuclear safety is always a work in progress, a striving.

To my mind, after 40 years of chronicling nuclear power, the industry makes a mistake in rushing to advertise the safety of  nuclear power plants. That way the seeds of doubt are sown.

Aircraft makers learned that lesson back in the 1930s. They learned that the trick was to shut up and do better.

If nuclear plants are unsafe, they should be closed down. Now. Today.

If not, their virtues should be trumpeted. Now. Today. Where are the trumpets? – For the Hearst-New York Times Syndicate