Harvard has more than $180 million invested in 18 nuclear companies that process nuclear fuel, construct or maintain nuclear facilities, and operate some of the country's 70 licensed nuclear plants. The University may have to reexamine these previously uncontroversial investments.

Anti-nuclear activists have recently turned to the use of proxies to snape corporate practices. This trend towards economic pressure tactics may find a following on the Harvard campus in the same way that pressure for corporate morality in South Africa has in the last few years.

Whether a university's investments give it the ability--or the right--to influence corporate behavior was a major point in the South Africa controversy.

And as the South Africa debate decreases in intensity this year, it seems already possible that nuclear power--and especially Harvard's major investments in it--might replace last year's campaign for divestiture.

Clearly nuclear power has already generated more public controversy than than the South Africa question did. This time Harvard's funds are invested in the potential hazard right next door.

George W. Siguler, assistant treasurer of Harvard College, says that, at this time, energy is the largest single investment Harvard holds, and that, for many reasons, the University will not "run away from these companies just because of opposition to nuclear energy." Siguler adds that nuclear energy is just a small portion of most major oil companies activities.

But Harvard probably won't be able to dodge a stand on the nuclear question forever. Lawrence F. Stevens '65, secretary of the Advisory Committee on Shareholder Responsibility (ACSR), will face quite a few shareholder resolutions this spring from investors alarmed by the mishap at Three Mile Island.

Harvard's investors share commodities in industries that range from mining companies to conglomerates, from utilities to electronics companies including, of course, oil companies.

The largest single investment is $35 million in Exxon Corporation, which is involved in the exploration, mining milling and fabrication of nuclear fuel. Among investments in seven other oil companies, Harvard has $16 million invested in General Electric Company, a corporation active in the same processes as well as the manufacture of nuclear reactors.

Another $3.7 million of the University's funds lie in Allied Chemical, which is involved in the exploration, reprocessing and storage of nuclear fuel, and $1.6 million lie in the KerrMcGee Corporation another company involved with the total nuclear fuel cycle. Harvard also has $500,000 invested in J. Ray McDermott and Company, the owner of Babcock and Wilcox--the firm that built the reactor at Three Mile Island and six other plants throughout the country.

However, the companies Harvard invests in are just a few of the 66 that anti-nuke shareholders will hit with proxies and resolutions early next year.

Richard Austin, chairman of the Coalition of Appalachian Energy Consumers, says he believes the group's resolution calling on the American Electric Company to halt its investment in nuclear power will be more effective in educating the public on the dangers of nuclear power than in immediately eliminating the use of nuclear energy.

Austin says his coalition of 20 groups is typical of organizations that use their power as shareholders to influence corporate policy. The diverse coalition is one of many different groups pooling their shares and numbers to oppose nuclear energy.

He says the group includes blue-collar workers, environmentalists, citizens concerned with the high cost of energy, disgruntled shareholders, and anti-nuke people spread out across the six states in which the American Electric Power Company operates power plants. The coalition is "a broad based group with a common concern for the direction of the utility's development," Austin adds.

Officials in the National Council of Churches, an unusually powerful and active articulator of shareholder dissatisfaction with corporate practices, say that, for the first time, churches are preparing a significant number of resolutions directed at the nuclear power industry.