MORE WALL STREET FICTION

We do not have the space, time or money to counter every hoax by Nader & Co, but we are saddened when the Wall Street Journal, which has bucked the popular tide on many other issues, is suckered into printing anti-nuclear superstitions Alas, it does so with disturbing regularity.

We sent the rebuttal of one of these gaffes (AtE Dec.1974) to the editor, and were told that it would be forwarded to their Chicago Bureau, where the nonsense had originated. We never heard from them again, and neither did their 1 1/2 million hoaxed readers.

Instead, the WSJ published a centerpage article about the future of plutonium by Burt Schorr of its Washington Bureau. Unlike the previous case, there weren't any outright falsehoods, only halftruths, and that makes it even worse. "A small amount of the material," writes Schorr, "contains enough radioactivity to make an entire city uninhabitable." Bunk. Plutonium is a deadly radioactive poison when eaten, breathed or applied to the skin; but its radioactivity (alpha particles only) is such that one page of the Wall Street Journal is sufficient as a shield against it. It does not produce gamma radiation that will penetrate almost anything but thick layers of earth, concrete or lead.

"A fuel toxic beyond human experience," we are told. Bunk. All the heavy metals are deadly poisons, and 8 of them are more toxic than plutonium. Many tons of it have been handled and processed in the last 30 years of human experience.

High-level wastes could be imbedded in the ice of the Antarctic or shot into outer space, reports Schorr, but such proposals are "little more than vague speculation." Bunk. Both of these proposals have definitely been ruled out. The viable proposals include storage in salt formations known to have been undisturbed for the last 200 million years, and burial in holes several miles deep. But the real point is that there is plenty of time to find and consider even better possibilities, for the problem (unlike enrichment and recycling facilities) is not at all pressing. The reason is that the volume involved is miniscule: 7 MWh of generated electricity (the present US annual per capita consumption) produces a waste volume equal to the volume of - get ready for the stupendous amount! - one aspirin tablet. Actually, less than 1/20 of an aspirin tablet, if one considers the fraction of power now generated by nuclear plants. But even if all of the US electric capacity were nuclear, how long would it take for the waste of the entire US to fill a cubical volume 200 feet on a side? 350 years. Repeat: Three and a half centuries (see "Nuclear Power Risks," American Scientist, MarchApr. 1974). But Mr. Schorr hasn't been told, and he has the jitters already.

There is more bunk in the article, more than we have space to refute. Of course, Mr. Schorr is no physicist, and in Washington, of all places, it is easy to get hold of the wrong "expert" to ask for advice. But much of Mr. Schorr's bunk has nothing to do with physics and comes under quite a different heading: