Recharging nuclear power.

PUBLIC SERVICE of New Hampshire, the utility that is building the Seabrook nuclear-power plant, has laid off 5,200 workers and stopped work on the site--temporarily, it says; permanently, the enemies of nuclear power hope. This becomes the latest in a series of surprising difficulties afflicting the nucler-power industry.

The difficulties are "suprising," because nuclear power continues to live up to the expectations of rational men. It remains the cheapest source of electricity in the country. In 1982, the last year for which figures are available, the average cost of electricity generated by nuclear power was 3.1 cents per kilowatt-hour. Coal-powered electricity cost 3.5 cents per kilowatt-hour; oil-powred cost 7 cents per kilowatt-hour. (Tese figures includes construction costs, which, for nuclear power, are grossly inflated by environmental challenges and regulatory delays.)

Major utilities, which presumably do not want to go broke, continue to place their chips on nucler. Commonwealth Edison, the nation's largest user, projects annual savings of $1.1 billion when its new plants go into service, and estimates it has saved $3.2 billion over the last decade by using the plants it already has. Pacific Gas and Electric expects to save $5 billion over ten years because of its project at Diablo Canyon. France, Sweden, and a dozen other countries in Europe and Asia (including, interestingly, the Soviet Union) press on with their nuclear programs.

Nuclear power remains, without question, the safest energy source. The bugaboos of Three Mile Island have vanished like the night. There were no glowing fish, as the Village Voice reported; no "A-cloud" moving "closer," as the headline writers of the New York Post declared. Nuclear plants emit less radioactivity than the average coal plant. Nuclear wastes are compact and disposable; they do not spew into the air, or collect, by the ton, on dirty scrubbers. Uranium miners get no black lung.

Nuclear power has eloquent defendrs-Petr Beckmann, editor of the monthly Access to Energy; Samuel McCracken, author of the The War against the Atom; Bernard Cohen, an occasional contributor to NR and numerous other publications who, unlike most of the members of the anti-nuke Union of Concerned Scientists, is actually a scientist.

And yet, the perception remains that nuclear power is dirty and deadly; expensive, exotic, and unsafe.

We suffer from a failure of mind and will. The media, which should instruct us, have been derelict. The pollsters Stanley Rothman and Robert Lichter have shown that support for nuclear powr is highest among the scientists who know most about the relevant disciplines; lowest among reporters. The gap is reflected in their coverage. (In fairness to the New York Post, it should be noted that its editorial page is one of the few sources of sensible information on this issue.)

The failure of will is political. Governors, congressmen, presidential candidates can get the facts; they already knwo the need. Coal pollutes; oil is undependable. And yet they allow regulators and environmentalists to mire the industry in frivolous procedures; they truckle to anti-nuclear rhetoric, or indulge in it. Former Governor Jerry Brown was so incensed by Diablo Canyon he almost lost warp speed. Gary Hart lists the sun among his new ideas. Why should a French socialist like Mitterand be more out front on this issue than an American conservative like Reagan?

Three Mile Island slowed nuclear power almost to a halt. But that was five years ago. It is time to get moving once again.