AGAINST THE SHUT-DOWN INITIATIVES

Combatting the Colorado shut-down initiative are Coloradans for a Responsible Energy Future, Bow 8439, Denver, CO 80201, ted. 571-7423; in Oregon, Oregonians Against the Ban on Nuclear Energy, 1015 Cascade Bldg., Portland, OR 97204, tel. 221-1470.

Dr H. Peter Metzger, author of The Nuclear Establishment (1972), was a critic of the AEC and atmospheric nuclear weapons testing, but not of nuclear power. A syndicated science news columnist, he has written an outstanding article "Anti-Nuclear Initiatives Hoax on Public" for the Rocky Mountain News, exposing the charlatanism of Gofman, Sternglass, Marten, and others. Photostats of the article (almost 2 newspaper pages) free from Coloradans for Resp. En. Future, at address above.

"In contrast [to the three GE resignations], how much have you read of the resignation of a large part of the membership of the anti-nuclear Union of Concerned Scientists, or that this organization is down to fewer than a dozen people?" asks Earl Dunckel, Manager of Business Environment Communications of General Electric Co., in a thoughtful and articulate speech on Energy Futures. Copies free from the author, Box 7600, Stamford, CT 06964.

A second test of emergency core cooling was performed in the Idaho Loss of Fluid Test facility on May 10 (first test: AtE May 76). It was designed to test the emergency core cooling under a simulated full-sized break in an inlet pipe of a reactor operating at full pressure (a "blowdown"). Two valves simulating the blowdown opened in 0.03 of a second and depressurized the steam in the reactor vessel from 2260 psi to 100 psi in 40 seconds. Ten minutes later, the emergency core cooling was let go. The hot walls of the downcomer (a passage through which the cooling water must pass to reach the core), the critics had charged, would flash the cooling water into steam and would prevent further water from reaching the bottom of the reactor vessel. It would reach it in 6 seconds, NRC and ERDA engineers had predicted. They were wrong: It was there in 3 seconds. [More: NRC News Releases, 6/1/ 76.]

How would the fossil-fuel industry respond to an equivalent [of the Price-Anderson] act holding them responsible, on a no-fault basis, for ills deemed to result from fossil-fuel pollutants? What about establishing a 'Fossil Regulatory Commission'? How did the nuclear debate get so far out of balance? These are some of the questions asked in an article "Nuclear Power - Compared to What?" by D.J. Rose (MIT), P.W. Walsh (U. of Wisc.) and L.L. Leskovjan (Florida P&L) in American Scientist, May-June issue

Commoner's Poverty of Power, scientifically worthless and economically 128 years out of date (since Barry could find nothing that Marx had overlooked), is not the most far out work on energy and ecology by a radical college professor. Stanford professor Paul Ehrlich cum wife attack nuclear power, Adam Smith and the Green Revolution in the July issue of Penthouse, where they serve the pubic interest between close-ups of masturbating Lesbians and eulogies to anal sex. But the pubic interest was gone when the votes on California Proposition 15 were counted. "It shows what well-financed liars can do," said Dr Ehrlich. Indeed, it does; they can get clobbered again in Oregon and Colorado.