"Heroic," Nader termed the stage-managed resignation of 3 GE engineers a year ago. A politician can easily be taken in by the anti-nuclear horror fiction; but an electrical engineer knows, or darn well ought to know, that opposing nuclear power is, in effect, advocating a policy of keeping the public death toll needlessly high by less safe energy sources. What could motivate him to take a stand that helps maintain death, injury and disease?
We gave some reasons at the time, but we may have overlooked one of the motives: greenbacks. The three heroes were each assured of a minimum monthly income of $1,500 after taxes (reports the Am. Nucl. Soc. newsletter); whenever the three martyrs could not rake in that much cash in fees for their harangues, the difference would be paid by Project Survival and allied organizations.
That cozy arrangement has now been made cozier. The three upright "scientists" are now partners in MHB Associates, located next to the offices of Project Survival in Palo Alto, where they dispense their wisdom for $50 an hour.
Who would pay for the hackneyed propaganda peddled by these sorry ex-engineers turned politicians?
The State of Texas would, with New York picking up part of the tab. The two states have joined as third parties inthe NRC hearing on mixed oxide fuels, which has pitted some of the nation's major utilities against some of the nation's major environmental saboteurs the NRDC, Nader's NPIRG, and the Sierra Club.
The Texas Attorney General's Office has contracted for thousands of dollars' worth of "testimony" through MHB. It even seeks further witnesses through MHB (reports the Journal of Commerce), though genuine expertise is as near as the U. of Texas at Austin. As for New York, it is blessed with a number of Nobel-Prize winning experts - Hans Bethe, for example - but who needs Nobel Prize winners when the scare propagandists offer their services for a few kilobucks?
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Vol. 4, No. 6
Newsletter: Access to Energy Newsletter Archive Volume: Volume 4 Issue/No.: Vol. 4, No. 6 Date: February 01, 1977 01:05 PM Title: How furbish is the lousewort?
Copyright © 2004 - Access to Energy Newsletter Archive
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