GOVERNMENT AGENCIES assigned a particular task often pursue it with a single-mindedness, an inertia, that precludes any kind of dissent. In his new book. The Cult of the Atom, Daniel Ford shows that this bureaucratic blindness is now here more apparent than in the case of the Atomic Energy Commission. Set up in 1946, the A.E.C. took on the task of overseeing and encouraging the development of the American nuclear power industry.

A tremendous confidence in the potential of the "peaceful atom" prevailed after World War II Proponents foresaw an "Age of Plenty" in which weather would be atomically controlled, cars would travel for years on small pellets of uranium, and the moon would be only a short distance away via atomic powered vehicles. One of the chairmen of the Commission even forecast that electricity would probably be "too cheap to meter" The A.E.C. has spent the last three decades trying to fulfill these high hopes, but, as Ford shows, the intentions have gone dangerously astray.

Indeed the Commission was plagued with problems almost from the first. After the exciting breakthroughs of the Manhatten Project, which developed the atomic bomb, the task of working out the details of nuclear power plants was relatively mundane. As Ford writes, "Nobel prizes are not given to people who do plumbing, even for a nuclear reactor's cooling system." The result was that many of those most talented in nuclear physics returned to the ivory tower or took on positions in weapons development.

Far worse, the pressure on the A.E.C. to prove the potential of nuclear power led it to ignore many important safety concerns. As early as 1953, physicist Edward Teller, the leading nuclear weapons expert at the time, told a congressional committee that "We have been extremely fortunate in that accidents in nuclear reactors have not caused any fatalities. With expanding applications of nuclear reactions and nuclear power, it cannot be expected that this unbroken record will be maintained." Yet Teller's warnings that "a release of [radioactive materials from a reactor] in a city or densely populated area would lead to disastrous results" received scant attention within the Commission for close to twenty years. Indeed, the A.E.C. allowed reactors to be built close to major metropolitan areas such as New York and Chicago. (Still, it is to the Commission's credit that it did not approve Consolidated Edison's proposal for a nuclear plant in Queens, across the East River from midtown Manhatten.)

A GREAT NUMBER of the problems that developed in the power plants grew out of the cozy partnership set up between the A.E.C. and the growing nuclear power industry. Necessary safeguards were often dismissed because of the additional cost to contractors, and a tremendous amount of attention was played to solving the problem of liability in the case of an accident at a nuclear plant, in order to quell the industry's growing concern about potential lawsuits, the A.E.C. pushed Congress to pass the historic Price-Anderson Act of 1957, which absolved the manufacturers and operators of nuclear power plants from liability and all but eliminated the right of those injured in a nuclear accident to sue for damages.

In the early 1970's, the Commission began to meet with a great deal of opposition from environmental and public interest organizations and it responded with a series of hearings and studies to confirm the safety and potential of nuclear power. Yet Ford clearly shows that the outcome of these studies was all but predetermined, that the A.E.C. made very certain that the conclusions emphasized that nuclear power was both safe and economic. Memos were suppressed, evidence was ignored, and analytic methods minimized the estimated dangers. Commission scientists and employees were explicitly instructed that they should "Never disagree with established policy." But Ford is able to chronicle this manipulation and bureaucratic blindness precisely because there always was some dissent within the A.E.C. Scores of scientists spoke candidly to him of the actual dangers involved; one A.E.C. scientist explained to Ford that he was not allowed to release a damaging document, and then proceeded to drop the document into a nearby trash can, commenting that he would not notice if Ford removed it.

What is perhaps most disturbing is the tendency of those at the A.E.C. to hope that time would eventually solve the safety problems which were constantly becoming apparent. Scientists banked on the fact that, by the time nuclear power plants which were already being built were in operation, solutions would have been found to all the safety hazards, and, at the same time, they hoped that "future research would demonstrate the adequacy of the industry's safety systems." One A.E.C. engineer characterized this as "the triumph of hope over reason," and, if Ford's book is at all accurate, that hopeful and incompetent--attitude dominated the Commission throughout its existence.

THE A.E.C. WAS ABOLISHED in 1974, and its conflicting tasks of acting as both promoter and regulator of the nuclear power industry were split between what subsequently became the Department of Energy, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Unfortunately, the N.R.C. has largely continued to give safety a low priority. One major result of thirty years of ignorance and mismanagement was the accident at Three Mile Island in March, 1979. Yet Ford well knows that, relative to what might happen. Three Mile Island was only a minor mishap. In one incident in 1961 that the A.E.C. did not "take seriously," an entire reactor at the Commission's Idaho test station exploded when a workman, possibly bent on murder-suicide, precipitously removed a safety rod from the core of the reactor. Were this to happen in a major nuclear plant the results would be catastrophic; as Ford optimistically writes. "The forecast accident, if it occurs, will very likely mean the prompt end of commercial nuclear power in the United States."

Ford is undoubtedly biased against the nuclear power program. As a past executive director of the Union of Concerned Scientists, he takes a dim view of those willing to exploit nuclear power without being fully aware of its dangers. Still, Ford's evidence, culled from thousands of pages of A.E.C. documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, is overwhelming. It is also frightening.

Biased or not, Ford's book portrays a nuclear power industry encouraged by government agencies and dominated by profit-minded corporations which are largely unconcerned with safety precautions. But as one of the wiser A.E.C. analysts told his colleagues in 1973, "someday we all will wake up." With more than seventy nuclear power plants now in operation in the United States, that moment cannot come too soon.