T.V. Executive Opposes Mississippi Nuclear Plant

A Mississippi television station executive is trying to intervene in Mississippi Power and Light's plans to build a 2500-megawatt dual reactor nuclear power plant in Port Gibson, Miss.

Raymond J. McGrath, public affairs director of WJTV in Jackson, Miss., has filed objections to the plant with the Atomic Energy Commission(AEC), on the grounds that MP&L has not fully considered possible ways of making the plant safer.

Symbolic Gesture

McGrath asked the AEC earlier this month to allow him to withdraw as an intervener, on the condition that the AEC board hearing MP&L's request for a plant license consider all his objections.

The AEC has not yet granted McGrath's petition to withdraw. However, McGrath said yesterday that he probably will be allowed to withdraw, and that the AEC will have to investigate his objections because they have been raised during previous hearings on the plant.

Harvard-Owned

MP&L is a subsidiary of Middle South Utilities Inc. Harvard is the largest single stockholder in Middle South with 560,000 shares, yesterday worth about $9.2 million.

Two other Middle South subsidiaries--Arkansas Power and Light and Louisiana Power and Light--are also under attack from environmentalists who charge that the plants the utilities plan to build will be environmentally harmful.

McGrath's original objections to the MP&L plant were:

* that MP&L has not considered the idea of building the plant underground so that it would be safer;

* That MP&L has not considered adapting the plant to produce geothermal rather than nuclear power;

* that the plant as now planned will release radioactive matter into the atmosphere, although with proper planning this radioactive release could be eliminated; and,

* that Mississippi bears the entire financial burden for building the plant--it will cost $1 billion--while its power will be used in Louisiana and Arkansas also.

McGrath has, however, completely withdrawn the last two objections and hopes that the AEC will assume responsibility for looking into the other two.

The issue of radioactive release, McGrath said, is too complex for him to judge, and it may be impossible to eliminate radioactive emissions completely.

Middle South responded earlier this year to complaints from McGrath and other Mississippi residents about the plant's financing by creating a new subsidiary, Middle South Energy Inc. The new company will be the official owner of the new plant, and the expense will be shared by Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi Power and Light Companies.

Herbert Carver, advertising manager for MP&L, said yesterday that he thinks McGrath's objections are unfounded. "of course I don't agree with him," Carver said, "because I work for Mississippi Power and Light."

"Nuclear energy is just as safe as anything else we've got," Carver said. "It's more dangerous to take an airplane ride these days than to live next to a nuclear plant. This nuclear fuel can't explode. The smartest scientists in the world couldn't make it explode."

McGrath also said yesterday that he considers the proposed plant's emergency core cooling system inadequate. The cooling system, he says, would go into operation when the plant's nuclear reactor reached 2300 degrees Fahrenheit, but the reactor would start to melt at 1700 degrees.

McGrath said he did not enter his objections about the cooling system with the AEC, because the proposed system, although unsafe, conforms with already-approved AEC criteria.

He also said that MP&L will not be able to get insurance for the plant unless it is converted to geothermal power.

Last month, McGrath said, officials of MP&L tried to cancel a speech he made about the plant at Millsaps College in Mississippi. The officials, McGrath said, called a Millsaps trustee and asked him to persuade the college president to call off the speech, but the president refused.

The proposed plant's first 1250-megawatt reactor is scheduled for completion in 1981, and the second in 1983. The plant will be called the Grant Gulf Nuclear Power Plant.

McGrath is the only person who has filed objections to the plant. He said he has gotten little support in his fight against the plant.

Preliminary Hearings

The AEC has held three preliminary hearings on the plant this year, and the final licensing hearing will be held early next year.

Another AEC licensing board will hold a final hearing early next year on Louisiana Power and Light's proposed 1165-megawatt Waterford plant in Taft, La.

Robert Head, a New Orleans, La., environmentalist, is intervening in that hearing on charges that the plant's emergency core cooling system will be inadequate for handling emergencies.

Also early next year, the Arkansas Public Service Commission will hold hearings on Arkansas Power and Light's proposed 2800-megawatt coal burning plant at North Little Rock, Ark. Environmentalists are opposing the plant because of the sulfur dioxide emissions it will produce