NUCLEAR NOTES

8,000 lb of plutonium and highly enriched uranium unaccounted for over the last 30 years! Isn't that terrible. Except that material unaccounted for (MUF) does not mean lost or stolen. It simply means the inevitable discrepancy between calculation and measurement. For example, in processing plants, the plutonium must pass through some 50 miles of piping. A coating of 1/100,000 inch alone will often account for the discrepancy of a given plant, but there are many other sources of imprecision The total of 8,000 lb over 30 years represents less than 1% of the material handled. In congressional hearings last summer, ERDA administrator FRI emphasized that the amount actually lost or possibly stolen would be insufficient to build even a single crude bomb. Which led the Washington Post, home of investigative reporting, to write that the 'missing" material was enough to fuel about 500 nuclear bombs.

The fast breeder reactor makes less plutonium available for diversion than the storage of fuel from conventional reactors as proposed by the Carter administration. In essence this is so because the breeder has the plutonium inaccessible in the core, whereas the "throw away" method leaves the fuel rods producing more plutonium even while they are being stored. Details are given in a paper by EPRI Director Dr C Starr, "The Breeder, Proliferation and National Policy," available to AtE readers from R.A. Sandbergb Dir. of Communications, E.P.R.1., Box 10412, Palo Alto, CA 94303.

"If you have any hair, it will make you want to yank it out by the roots," said Jack Lemmon at the beginning of his program on plutonium (produced for $125,000 of taxpayers money), and for once he must have been right for Lemmon's lemon was too much even for the Public Broadcasting System, which has periodically brought blatantly anti nuclear propaganda. It refused to put the program on its regular schedule, and only 9 out of 268 PBS stations around the country decided to touch the thing (originally shown by KCET Los Angeles, Nov. 2). Since positive reinforcement may be more effective than protest (which PBS has richly deserved in the past), it might be well to thank PBS President L.K. Grossman at 475 L'Enfant Plaza West, Washington, DC 20024, for rejecting this type of "documentary." [More: AIM Report no. 22, November 77 Part It, from 777 14th St. N.W., Suite 427, Washington, DC 20005 contributions welcome.]

If you thought Samuel McCracken's The War Against the Atom in the Sept. 77 Commentary brilliant (we did), take a look how he handles his detractors in the letters department of December issue! Bull. Atom. Sci. editor B. Feld stands revealed in his full shabbiness, and the Sierra Club's chief nuclear sage in his full ignorance; but the others probably also wish they hadn't written in. The three GE defectors, for example, get the retraction they demanded this way: "I am reassured to learn that it is through stock ownership, rather than through the GE profitsharing plan, that Messrs. Hubbards Bridenbaugh and Minor continue to share in GE profits. It makes all the difference in the world."