SHOOTOUT AT CLINCH RIVER 



879 



together. "This approach would allow the country to build in an 

 orderly way upon the six years of work on the CRBR," Schlesinger 

 wrote. 



Between Friday the 17th and the following Tuesday, when the 

 full committee was scheduled to meet, there was frantic lobbying, 

 more conferences and almost nonstop negotiations going on to try 

 and line up the terms of the compromise. Teague authorized Flowers 

 to draft an amendment for the March 21 full committee meeting, repre- 

 senting as closely as possible the proposals in the March 17 letter. 

 The chairman insisted that the basic authorization for the CRBR, 

 going back to the 1970 law, must not be terminated because that 

 represented the keystone to House majority support for a strong 

 breeder reactor program. In a further effort to attract support from 

 nuclear advocates, Schlesinger also endorsed legislation to speed up 

 the licensing of new nuclear plants. This move sparked an angrv 

 reaction from the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environ- 

 mental group, which said it "represents the final corruption of the 

 President's moral and political courage on the nuclear issue." 



On the night before the full committee meeting, another tension- 

 laden meeting was held on Capitol Hill in an attempt to hammer out 

 the final details on the compromise amendment to be offered March 21. 



"THE PRESIDENT IS CALLING" 



Late on the evening of March 20, the President telephoned 

 Teague from Georgia. As Teague told his committee the next day: 



The President in no way, form or fashion committed himself to Clinch River. 

 But he completely and absolutely committed himself to breeder technology, and he 

 committed himself to the letter you have in front of you that came from Dr. Schlesin- 

 ger. (The March 17 letter.) 



Flowers described the compromise to the committee in some 

 detail. He noted that DOE over a period of VA years would study the 

 design of a new breeder demonstration project in the 650-to-900 mega- 

 watt range, from two to three times the size of the CRBR. Flowers 

 described it as "a viable accommodation which we hope will get us 

 off dead center on breeder technology." 



Wydler was reasonably supportive at the start: 



About a week ago, the Secretary of Energy came to us and had a proposition, 

 in effect, offering us various things the administration was willing to do which 

 enhanced the development of atomic energy in our Nation, asking us in effect to get 

 away from this confrontation on the Clinch River Breeder Reactor Project. 



We really felt that the initial proposals were vague, and we spent most of the 

 last week trying to get some hard information on what was really being proposed. 



