In 1994, in a low security building at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, a bent, balding 61-year-old engineer - hands slightly shaking from the oncoming ravages of Parkinson's disease, which he daily ignored as he continued his life's work in defense of his country - performed the last useful action of the American civil defense program. He boxed all of the approximately 10,000 reports, monographs, books, and other research documents in the Emergency Technology Library at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and shipped them to a safe location, out of reach of the federal government, so that they would not be destroyed. These documents contain a complete record of the American civil defense research program from the end of World War II until its termination by the Bush and Clinton Administrations.

At the present time, the United States has no strategic missile defense - even though her scientists and engineers are easily capable of building one; she has no tactical nuclear weapons - even though her scientists and engineers built a complete inventory which was then ordered destroyed by President George Bush; she has no biological weapons - these were destroyed by treaty with the Soviet Union, which nevertheless continued to build biological weapons; she is currently incinerating her entire stockpile of chemical weapons - even though these weapons continue to be accumulated by her enemies in many countries; and she has no civil defense program whatever - not even the pitiful evacuation and radiological monitoring program that was in place until its termination by the Bush and Clinton Administrations.

In those days of 1994, the third and last director of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory civil defense research program, Dr. Conrad V. Chester, could think of only one final action. He acted to preserve a printed record of American engineering research knowledge about civil defense so that, if his country ever decides to provide civil defense protection for its people, the engineers of that day will have this information available.

Connie Chester was born to Lithuanian immigrant parents in Bos-ton on July 8, 1933. He was trained as a chemical engineer. His brother commanded an American nuclear submarine. When Eugene Wigner founded the Oak Ridge National Laboratory civil defense research program in 1964, Dr. Chester became one of the original members of that research team and became director of the program in 1972. He made many substantial contributions to knowledge about civil defense, including work that assured completion of development and publication of the expedient civil defense techniques described in the book Nuclear War Survival Skills by Cresson Kearny.

Dr. Chester gave essentially his entire professional life to the development of technology and knowledge with which the American people could be protected from chemical, biological, or nuclear disasters that might result from accident, terrorism, or war (and, incidentally, from natural disasters as well). He was one of a small and dwindling number of superb scientists and engineers whose knowledge of these subjects remain available to the American people. Soon, all that will be available will be the remnants of their libraries.

Conrad Chester died from natural causes on 16 August, 1996. Dr. Chester, whose death was not noticed by the American people, gave his life to the development of the means to protect those people and their families from very real and continuing dangers in the modern world - means that the gaggle of 20th century politicians and bureaucrats have been too selfish and shortsighted to implement.

Ah, but we are told that all of the threats are gone. Just this past month our new Russian friends were whiling away their time firing multiple tests of their newest submarine-launched ballistic missiles -missiles for which the only practical target is the United States. This, of course, must just be a new and more spectacular form of disarmament. If they keep the tests going for the next 50 years, maybe they will run out of missiles. Anyway, who are we to say that nascent free enterprise in Russia should be discouraged by prohibiting them from participating in the growing world market for weapons of mass killing along with entrepreneurs in North Korea, mainland China, Syria, Iran, and other innovators in the field of population control.

If anyone ever unleashes this nuclear, biological, or chemical technology upon the American people - and there are many capable individuals in the world who would like to do so - the ingenious defenses that Connie Chester and his patriotic professional colleagues invented to protect Americans will probably not be available.

If present conditions prevail, there will be no civil defenses, no strategic defenses, and no practical offensive deterrents. All there will be is fear - fear which may be used to convince the American people to give up much of their freedom and all of their self-respect.

I was fortunate to meet Dr. Chester at the American Civil Defense Association meeting in 1985 and, through his generosity, to have the opportunity to read about 1,000 of the documents at the Oak Ridge Emergency Technology Library in 1986. (He and Greg Zimmerman had identified the most valuable 1,000 in their ORNL review report No. 6252 published in 1986.) Over the years, he has given me information and advice on numerous technical subjects such as that evident in one of the articles below. His wisdom and engineering knowledge were very remarkable. Each year, except in 1996 due to poor health, he traveled to meetings of the DDP and other organizations to share information both about dangers and available defenses.

In recent years, Dr. Chester concentrated largely upon the specific dangers of biological and chemical weapons - from terrorism and from war. Although his work generally emphasized the passive defense of civilian populations, my notes from a recent conversation with him include his following chilling statement: "Biological and chemical weapons, since and including World War I, have always been used against those with no retaliatory capability.'' As soon as the ongoing chemical disarmament is completed, the United States, for the first time in half a century, will have no ability whatever to respond in kind to an attack by chemical or biological weapons - no retaliatory capability whatever. (Unless, of course, one has fantasies about our current crop of American politicians raising the ante to a city-busting strategic nuclear exchange.) Dr. Conrad Chester will be missed - far more than we now know.

During one section of his presentation entitled "Are We Using Sound Scientific Principles in Environmental System Management?'' to the 1996 DDP meeting, Professor Stanford S. Penner reviewed the factors and circumstances surrounding the shutdown of the 460 MWe nuclear reactor at San Onofre in Southern California. Professor of Engineering Physics S. S. Penner built the Center for Energy and Combustion Research and the Department of Mechanics and Engineering Sciences at the University of California at San Diego, where he has been the most eminent engineer for the past 30 years. Prior to that, he had a distinguished career at the California Institute of Technology. Author of 300 research papers, numerous books, and also much clas-

sified defense research work that cannot be listed in his public CV, which is already longer than that of 10 ordinary scientists, Dr. Penner is a very authoritative source of information. After reviewing the serious problems in energy planning that are arising as a result of the political successes of anti-nuclear power political agitators who have essentially stopped the construction of new nuclear power plants in the United States, he made the following additional remarks:

"A significant advantageous development that could serve to ameliorate some of the imbalances resulting from current failures of adequate planning is the result of unanticipated long operating lifetimes of properly designed nuclear reactors. In general, U. S. planning has assumed 40 years for reactor lifetimes, which is consistent with normal 40-year depreciation schedules. New Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) license-renewal rates generally allow 20 years of additional operation in the U.S. Nuclear reactors in France are generally assumed to last longer than 50 years, planners in Belgium assume 40 to 70 years of operation, Japanese reactors are expected to have 60 years of operating lifetimes. Consistent with these longer operational windows, experts at the IAEA have been developing component-specific guidelines to extend useful periods of operation. Needless to say, a longer operating lifetime would reduce the need for new electricity correspondingly. Unfortunately, the opportunity provided by longer operating life may well become a casualty of collusion between anti-nuclear public utility regulators and utility executives with their eyes on the near-term bottom line at the expense of the public, as will now be described by an unfortunate, perhaps trend-setting example.

"The Southern California nuclear reactor complex at San Onofre consisted of three operating reactors, one with a design power output of 460 MWe and two 1160 MWe units. The smaller reactor was put out of commission in 1995 following the suggestion by the California Public Utility Commission to allow the involved operating utilities full cost recovery over a four-year period if this plant were decommis-sioned, coupled with the threat that cost recovery for future failure corrections of this plant would not be approved. From the perspectives of the utility executives (of Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas and Electric Companies), the near-term bottom line could be secured by accepting the offer. The clear loser in this deal is the public: close to 500 MWe of power output at a cost of about 2.5 cents/kWh will have to be replaced by non-nuclear capacity costing close to 6 cents/kWh. The needed power will ultimately be supplied either by a utility spin-off or an independent power supplier, and we can see no new market entries that could come close to the production cost of the decommissioned nuclear reactor.'' The complete text of Dr. Penner's talk is available by writing to him at the University of California of San Diego. It will be published on CD-ROM by DDP. Audio tapes of his talk are currently available from DDP at telephone (520) 325-2680.

Professor Penner also said that the decommissioned reactor had an exemplary operating record and a probable useful life of as much as 40 more years. Southern California Edison executives reply that this was an older reactor. What do we expect them to say - that they agreed to an anti-nuclear deal with California state regulators whereby the public will pay hundreds of millions of dollars in extra electricity costs in order to protect their profits? What did we expect them to do - make a stand on principle, keep the reactor operating, and then be punished with rate schedules that would cost their company its profits and perhaps cost them their jobs? Executives rarely do that sort of thing.

Dr. Walker F. Todd, in an interview entitled "From Constitution to Corporativism'' in The Moneychanger, pp 1-5, August 7, 1996, available from P. O. Box 341753, Memphis, TN 38184-1753, calls this "corporativism,'' which he defines as a partnership of big business, big labor, and big government. My high school economics teacher just called it fascism, but then he did not have to contend with the visions of World War II concentration camps which have complicated the modern usage and interpretation of this word. "Fascism'' Todd defines as corporativism with an aggressive military component added. In any case, one thing is certain. This is not "free enterprise'' or anything else resembling it. It is tyranny. Tyranny should be attacked on principle. A secondary and much weaker way in which it is attacked is by pointing out instances in which it fails to work according to normal standards of rationality, efficiency, and cost-effectiveness. In the San Onofre case, the central governmental authority is dominated by an irrational ideology which it managed to pursue by making this deal with its corporate counterpart at the expense of the public.

Increasingly, we are seeing engineers standing by helplessly while obviously wrong actions are taken for politically correct purposes that have no rational justification. Much of the rest of Dr. Penner's presentation provided another example - that of the irrational agenda by which enviro agitators are shutting down the garbage incineration industry. It is becoming politically incorrect to burn trash - even in high-tech incinerators which produce a minimum of pollution.

As I watched Professor S. S. Penner, one of our country's most accomplished engineering physicists and aerospace engineers, speaking with technical facility and yet helplessly protesting that the enviro-contaminated corporativists [my term for them] will not even let him burn garbage, I was reminded of a play that I attended many years ago in London. It was a surrealist drama by Ionesco entitled Rhinoceros. Although I do not especially care for this sort of drama, I attended this one because it was produced and directed by Orson Welles and the leading role was played by Sir Laurence Olivier.

As I remember it now, the play opens in an English pub which is disrupted when a rhinoceros runs down the street outside. It develops that turning into a rhinoceros has become the latest fad, and soon everyone is doing it. The climax of the play was a soliloquy by Sir Laurence Olivier (one imagines him doing Hamlet or Macbeth) during which he expounded upon the reasons why he refused to turn into a rhinoceros. It turned out that Orson Welles had built the walls of the staged room in which Olivier was standing from scrim curtains, which become invisible to the audience when lights shine on the back of them. Therefore, as Olivier delivered his speech, Welles changed the lighting so that the walls of the room around him disappeared, and he found himself standing in a jungle inhabited by many rhinoceroses.

A special tragedy is that the people who suffer most from artificially high electricity prices are not the government and corporate elit-ists who prevent the accomplishments of modern engineering and science from being used correctly. Even as America diminishes in wealth as a result of damage from thousands of events such as this, the elite will still have enough money to pay for electricity at inflated prices. It is the great majority of Americans who are in the middle class and poorer classes who suffer the consequences.

Many efforts have been made to estimate the amount of lost resources that result in the loss of a human life. This is a highly qualitative exercise, but reasonable estimates suggest an upper limit of about $10 million per life. In other words, when $10 million is wasted and that waste distributed among 250 million Americans, the collective private decisions in response cause at least one unnecessary death. For example, with less disposable income, decisions are made that may involve less safe driving equipment such as worn tires, or less nutritious food, or perhaps a fatally delayed visit to a doctor. These decisions decrease public well-being enough that somewhere in the country a person dies. More pessimistic estimates are as low as $1 million per life -the lifetime earnings of an average American. (See, for example, Access to Energy 21 No. 6 about the work of R. L. Keeney, Risk Analysis, Vol. 10, pp 147-159 (1990), estimating $5 million per life.) Whatever estimate we use, it is evident that the unnecessary closing of the 460 MWe reactor at San Onofre cost the lives of many Ameri-cans - lives that were made possible by the engineering miracles within this power plant, and lives that were forfeited when Americans were arbitrarily deprived of its electrical energy.

Those American lives were exchanged for personal ambitions - the personal ambitions of the members of the California Public Utility Commission and of the executives of Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas and Electric, who colluded to decommission the power plant. Moreover, as Professor Penner points out, this particular reprehensible event may well be magnified if it serves as an example that deprives us of part of the extra life remaining in the exceptionally well-engineered inventory of other American nuclear power plants

 

Most of the antinuclear debate revolves around minuscule radiation levels that are barely detectable above background and for which harm to human health has never been observed. Moreover, the growing science of hormesis indicates that such low levels are, in fact, beneficial with a crossover to harmful levels somewhere around 50 milliSv/year. (See Access to Energy 23, No. 11, p 3 and earlier articles.) Even the Chernobyl accident has only managed three identifiable deaths from residual radiation - those among the approximately 700 excess children with thyroid cancer which could have been avoided if the Soviets had immediately distributed potassium iodide and instituted other simple prophylactic measures. There are also a claimed seven extra cases of infant leukaemia among children exposed before birth. (See "Infant leukaemia after in utero exposure to radiation from Chernobyl,'' E. Petridou, et al, Nature 382 , pp 352-353 (1996)).

Rarely do we look at the other end of the scale - the "unthinkable'' end where radiation dangers actually approach those falsely claimed by anti-nuclear agitators for peaceful, well-built nuclear power reactors. What conditions must prevail to actually kill large numbers of people with residual nuclear radiation?

"Residual Radioactivity in the Soil of the Semipalatinsk Nuclear Test Site in the Former USSR'' by M. Yamamoto, T. Tsukatani, and Y. Katayama in Health Physics 71, No. 2, pp 142-148, is instructive. This location in Kazakhstan was the site of the first Soviet nuclear explosion on 29 August 1949. Altogether 459 nuclear explosions were conducted at the three technical areas of this site between 1949 and 1989. Of these, 346 were underground explosions. All 113 of the other explosions - 26 ground explosions and 87 atmospheric explosions occurred at one of the areas, Technical Area III. Surely here we can find the nuclear hell on earth of unsurvivable residual radiation.

Measurements of radiation at Technical Area III in 1994 one meter (3 feet) above the ground showed a residual radiation intensity of 30 microsieverts per hour ( microSv/h ). Is this a dangerous level? Probably. Even hormesis fans estimate the crossover to negative health effects at about 6 microSv/h, and International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) publications (see Access to Energy 23 , No 11) give the global average background level as 0.3 microSv/ h.

However, IAEA gives the level for passengers in an SST at 10 mi-croSv/h and in an ordinary airliner as 5 microSv/h. So, an hour spent at the site of 113 nuclear explosions over a 40-year period ending in 1989 has about the same negative health effects from radiation as a trip from San Francisco to New York in an ordinary jet airliner.

But what about On the Beach? Well, we cannot get there with all the nuclear weapons on earth, but what can we do? "Minimizing Excess Radiogenic Cancer Deaths After a Nuclear Attack'' by K. S. Gant and C. V. Chester in Health Physics 41, No. 3, pp 455-463 (1981), gives estimates for the health effects of residual radiation from an all ground-explosion attack with 5,000 megatons of nuclear weapons on the United States. After the initial few days, when the population is assumed to be evacuated and in fallout shelters and with prudent near-term use of shelters in the worst locations, much of the American population would be forced to live thereafter in a radiation environment comparable to that at the Semipalatinsk test site. Residual radiation levels in American counties with the worst fallout were estimated to be about 3 times greater than the 30 microSv/h at Semipalatinsk.

Even including growing food in this inescapable environment, Gant and Chester estimated a 400 day decrease in life expectancy from cancer for the average American. By comparison, days of life lost under ordinary conditions in America today are 1,000 days, 500 days, and 2,000 days from cancer, stroke, and heart disease respectively. Gant and Chester considered only cancer. Other increases in degenerative diseases could be added to increase their estimate somewhat.

The greatest loss of life in a nuclear war would not occur from radiation, however, unless the nation were so foolish as to have no fallout shelters. (Find yours if you can. Fallout shelters are for protection from the very high levels of initial fallout radiation which dissipate rapidly over the few days following an attack.) The greatest loss of life would occur as a result of loss of technology. Just as technology has increased the number of healthful lives that can be lived in the United States, loss of technology would decrease that number of lives.

How much? Well, the Soviet Union did not suffer a nuclear attack, but the delivery of the fruits of technology decreased significantly as a result of confusion during and after the events of 1990. Between 1990 and 1994, the life expectancy of Russian men dropped from 64 years to 57 years - 2,500 days. (See "Technology and Lifespan'', Access to Energy 23, No. 3 (1995)). Modern civilization can tolerate even large increases in radiation much better than than it can loss of technology.

 

An interesting example of the biased mindset of scientists working with complicated biological systems and anxious to relate their work to the latest politically correct fad is provided by "Mongolian Tree Rings and 20th-Century Warming'' by G.C. Jacoby, R. D. D'Arrigo, and T. Davaajamts in Science 273, pp 771-773 (1996). Choosing pine trees growing very near the tree line of mountains in central Mongolia, the authors observe a sharp increase of growth during the 20th century (see Figure 1), which they attribute entirely to 20th century temperature increases. They conclude that these increases were solely of solar origin until recently. Lacking direct temperature data before 1820, they assume that all increases in tree growth are the result of temperature increases and derive earlier temperatures from growth of similar trees, thereby constructing a correlation between growth and temperature.

No doubt tree growth, especially at these altitudes, is strongly temperature dependent, but what about carbon dioxide fertilization? Idso and coworkers have shown in their studies of Bristlecone Pine (see Figure 2 and AtE 21, No. 4, p3 (1993) for references and discussion)

that this enhanced growth correlates well with their extensive experiments on tree growth and carbon dioxide fertilization - a factor completely ignored by Jacoby, et al. The Mongolian increases are probably caused by temperature increases and carbon dioxide fertilization, but fad and fashion have hidden this from the minds of these investigators.

With the global warming industry just beginning to find glimmers of greenhouse warming that are almost undetectable within the noise of ordinary temperature variations, it is evident that all observations are consistent with the interpretation that global warming from human activities is so small an effect as to be insignificant (unless, of course, your research grant or political agenda depends upon it). Should this, for some unforeseen and unlikely reason, change as a result of future observations, there would remain the question as to how to counteract the warming without condemning hundreds of millions of people to death by energy deprivation, especially in less developed countries.

"With a Bang, Not a Whimper'' by Eric Felten in The Weekly Standard, pp 18-19, August 5, 1996, available from P. O. Box 96153, Washington, DC 20090-6153, reviews some alternatives that have been suggested. As he points out, if humans can turn the thermostat up, why should they not be able to turn it down?

Suggestions that have been made (which Felten draws from a 1992 study by the National Academy of Sciences) include: 1. Firing dust into the stratosphere with 16-inch naval guns at a cost maximum of $500 million per year including all operating costs of the ships. 2. Adjusting the exhaust on commercial airliners so that one percent of the fuel is converted to soot at an estimated cost of $7 million per year. 3. Sulfur incinerators at sea to seed clouds with sulfur emissions at a cost of about $500 million per year. (Here Felten points out that the global warmers themselves reduced their estimates of warming by one half when they included sulfur emissions by current power plants burning soft coal.) 4. Converting the carbon dioxide into biomass by planting forests or seeding some areas of the ocean with iron in order to increase the growth of plankton, which is a very low cost activity.

Since waiting another 30 years to take temperature data does not significantly alter the temperature outcome even in the extreme global warming models (see Access to Energy 23, No. 7 pp 1-2 (1996)), there is certainly no need for remedial action now. If a time for such action should ever come, it is evident that there are many innovative ideas available that would not involve trillions of dollars in economic losses, hundreds of millions of human deaths, and technological stagnation.

The American Civil Defense Association (TACDA) will hold their 18th meeting in Fairfax, Virginia on October 11-14, 1996. Information and registration can be obtained from TACDA at P. O. Box 1057, Starke, FL 32091-1057 or telephone (904) 964-9641. Publisher of the Journal of Civil Defense which is now in its 29th year, TACDA has been a consistent advocate of civil defense for the United States.

Many of the most active individuals working for civil defense attend TACDA meetings either as speakers or audience. If you are interested in this subject, and far more Americans should be, attending a TACDA meeting is an excellent way to further that interest.

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Access to Energy is also used as source and background material by other publications with very large circulations that sometimes use parts of Access to Energy with or without attribution. Although we prefer mention, we are pleased to have these materials widely distributed.

• "Remembering Silent Spring and Its Consequences'' by J. Gor-don Edwards at the DDP meeting (audio tapes from (520) 325-2680) details the outright lies by which Rachel Carson and her followers destroyed DDT and concomitantly the lives of hundreds of millions of people in poor countries. The National Academy of Sciences concluded in 1970 that DDT saved 500 million lives before it was banned.
  
  Carson dedicated her book to Albert Schweitzer whom she quoted as saying "Man has lost the capacity to foresee and to forestall. He will end by destroying the earth.'' The Schweitzer quote actually referred to his concerns about nuclear war. About DDT, Schweitzer wrote, "How much labor and waste of time these wicked insects do cause us . . . . . . but a ray of hope, in the use of DDT, is now held out to us.''
  
  
• An estimated 2.4 million children in American public schools are now being given Ritalin, an amphetamine, for the alleged diseases of Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) (see Access to Energy 23, No. 9, p4 (1996)). Now Science News 150, p 111 (1996) reports that 25% of those children diagnosed as ADHD soon develop the symptoms of manic depression, which requires additional "medication'' and, often, hospitalization.
  
  To acquire a diagnosis of ADHD and thereby a ticket on the National Education Association's joyride of mind-altering drugs, the child must appear to be "inattentive, impulsive, and hyperactive.'' In other words, the child must react in an entirely normal way to the inhuman zoo in which he is incarcerated each day by the state. The number of home-schooled children is now about 1.5 million and estimated to be growing at 15% per year. This should help to stop the current epidemic of childhood manic depression.

• The Case for Mars by Robert Zubrin scheduled to be available in bookstores in October. Dr. Zubrin's address has changed from that given in the August 1996 Access to Energy editorial. It is now Pioneer Astronautics, 445 Union Blvd., Suite 125, Lakewood, CO 80228.

• Practical Homeschooling, available from P. O. Box 1250, Fen-ton, MO 63026-1850 or 1-800-346-6322. This is an excellent source of a wide variety of materials, ideas, educational programs, and other resources for homeschooling. I am writing a regular column in this magazine as are 12 other people with useful and interesting ideas.

• New American 12, No. 18, p 42 (1996), available from 770 Westhill Boulevard, Appleton, WI, which reports that American deaths in 1992 included 21,257 in passenger car accidents; 12,646 in falls; 4,186 by drownings; 3,958 by fires and burns; 1,196 by inhalation and ingestion of food; 53 from lightning; and 39 in airplane crashes. So, the federal government is saddling the airlines with more safety regulations and the auto industry with rules for lighter, less-protective cars.
  
  
• Bagatorials by John and Ned Roscoe, Simon and Schuster 1996, which is a wonderful selection of libertarian messages that the Roscoes have published on their grocery bags - including one by Petr Beck-mann entitled "Don't let yourself be duped on Food Irradiation.''
  
  
• Environmental Briefing Book 1996 by the Competitive Enterprise Institute, 1001 Connecticut Avenue, Suite 1250, Washington, DC 20036. This is excellent and reliable antienviro ammunition.
  
  
• The Education Liberator is the Monthly Publication of the Separation of School and State Alliance, 4578 N. First #310, Fresno, CA 93726. Their name speaks for itself.