ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT ANALYSIS
Searching for the Balance

ORNL engineers developed an electronic tag that can be surgically implanted in a fish. This tag, which emits ultrasonic signals, is being used to observe the behavior of salmon near hydro-electric dams—information that will facilitate the fish's safe upstream and downstream passage.

Before federally funded or approved installations can be constructed, the effects of the projects must be scrutinized. Their costs and benefits must be weighed in environmental impact statements (EIS), which have been prepared for nuclear power plants since 1971. Researchers from ORNL and three other national laboratories became involved in a crash project to draft EIS's for 90 operating nuclear power plants, as well as those under construction or on the drawing boards. Also in the 1970s, ORNL was involved in decisions about whether cooling towers should be built for proposed power plants to protect the Hudson River's striped bass.

During that decade and after, many questions arose. Will fish populations decline if fish pass through power plant cooling systems or are exposed to heated water discharged by nuclear facilities? How much radioactivity are workers and the public exposed to during normal operation of nuclear plants? What are the environmental and socioeconomic impacts of geothermal, solar, fossil, synthetic-fuel, biomass-conversion, and hydropower projects? To address these and other questions, the EIS team headed by ORNL's Ed Struxness, Bill Fulkerson, Tom Row, and Johnnie Cannon conducted considerable research.

To assess impacts on fish of passing through intake screens, ORNL researchers developed computer models under the leadership of Larry Barnthouse, Sig Christensen, and Webb Van Winkle. Researchers led by Chuck Coutant developed methods for measuring water temperature preferences of fish and motivated the development of power plant engineering controls to minimize damage to nearby fish populations.

ORNL researchers have been national leaders in developing fish protection devices for hydropower plants, examining socioeconomic and cultural impacts of power plant construction and operation, and predicting risks and benefits of operations ranging from research facilities in Antarctica to the permanent high-level nuclear waste repository approved by Congress for Nevada's Yucca Mountain.

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