Mloi ITOI I VI ( I !\< II RIVER 895 



Brown and Harkin both wrote additional and dissenting views on 

 theCRBR. Harkin said: 



Forget about the symbol of Clinch River; and let us work at really moving 

 ahead with the new ideas and the design concepts that we have with breeder tech- 

 nology. * * * We are not |ust keeping (the CRBR) alive; we are reviving some- 

 thing that, for all intents and purposes is dead anyway. 



Brown asked: 



Why is there such a struggle over the Clinch River Breeder Reactor Project? I'm 

 convinced that it is a matter of political overkill, where the nuclear power industry 

 and t he supporters of this single public works project are using the CRBR as a symbolic 

 test of strength and a simple effort to keep the money flowing. 



In a joint letter to President Carter on March 27, 1979, McCormack 

 and Wydler suggested that the CRBR might beneficially be terminated 

 "provided that the administration and the Congress are committed 

 publiclv and in the law, to support construction of an advanced 

 LMFBR during the coming decade." The proposal was not accepted. 

 On the House floor, Fuqua and Brown attempted to overturn the 

 majority action of the committee on July 26, 1979, but their compro- 

 mise efforts were defeated by a margin 10 votes greater than in 1978, 

 as the committee view prevailed, 237-182. 



And so the struggle went on and on. Was it, as Representative 

 Brown put it, "merely a pork-barrel public works project?" Or was it, 

 according to Representative Bouquard, "equivalent to all the minable 

 coal in the United States and all of the oil reserves in the world?" The 

 peacemakers were badly outnumbered by the polarizers. Although 

 President Carter assembled the principal leaders for a summit meeting 

 at the White House once again in the spring of 1979, he had far more 

 success with President Sadat and Prime Minister Begin. 



NUCLEAR RESEARCH AND OVERSIGHT 



When the Science Committee took over some of the work of the 

 Joint Committee on Atomic Energy in 1977, there was a chaotic 

 situation. The Joint Committee had rarely been questioned or chal- 

 lenged since the days it had firmly established civilian control over 

 nuclear matters. Oversight in depth had not been carried out in recent 

 years. The fears of some segments of the populace concerning nuclear 

 power, safety, and wastes were rising. Many of these problemswerc 

 unceremoniously tossed into the laps of members of the Fossil and 

 Nuclear Subcommittee. 



The Flowers subcommittee was forced to start off its work in 1977 

 with several other seemingly insurmountable handicaps. The sub- 

 committee had to wait to get firm figures on the new Carter budget at 



