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1) How we can handle nuclear waste is the headline of explanatory text on a card carrying a sample button of dark blue borosilicate glass (minus the radioactive wastes sealed in it), its size corresponding to one person's share of nuclear wastes if all of the US electric power were nuclear. The cards with the samples had been produced by the DoE for educational purposes, but when Juliet Zivic of Americans for More Power Sources (Box 501, Manchester, NH 03105) wanted to get them to educate people, they gave her the runaround and how it might be taken to imply that this administration, blah, blah, blah... From our previous stories on Juliet Zivic you will know that she is not the kind of woman to take no for an answer, and the end of a long story is that you can now write for these cards with the borosilicate glass (and we hope you will). Send 25 cents per card to J. McElroy, Asst.Mgr. Chemical Technology Dept., Battelle Northwest, Box 999, Richland, WA 99352. Once again, thanks, Juliet!
2) At Seabrook, the antinuclear stormtroopers quickly changed back to crybabies when they met determined resistance to their attempts to tear down the fence and occupy the construction site. But now Maine Yankee is under attack in a lavishly financed campaign to shut it down by referendum. "A few of us are trying to combat this," writes Annette Stevens, grassroots pro-energy organizer, "but we need money, literature, help of all kinds, speakers who are engineers and doctors. (There are a lot of young mothers in Maine who believe everything Dr Helen Caldicott says.) ... Thanks for any help you can give."
It's the by now familiar story: The antinukes, who are rolling in money from the foundations and are supported from your taxes as "intervenors," pose as the underdogs, while utilities are being gagged and forbidden to defend themselves. The defense of the future now rests with the "little" people (who tower above the dwarfs with Harvard law degrees), and they need your help. Please send money 'and any other help you can give to Mrs. A.F. Stevens, Maine Voice of Energy, Back Beech Rd., RFD 1, N. Berwick, ME 03906.
3) Of the six commissions investigating the Three Mile Island accident, Carter's commission headed by Prof. Kemeny is due to publish its report shortly after this issue is mailed. We do not expect much enlightenment from it; the press will no doubt find places it can play up should that prove necessary. The NRC's commission is headed by radical activist Rogovin; the Senate's by Colorado's Hart, who during the TMI accident played disgusting politics in utter disregard of public safety (AtE May 79); another commission is headed by Congressman Udall, who is almost equally cynical; and we know little about the commission established by Pennsylvania's Gov. Thornburgh. The one body that we consider trustworthy, because it is manned by experts employed by the utility industry (which stands to lose most by incidents like Three Mile Island), is the Nuclear Safety Analysis Center set up at the Electric Power Research Institute in Palo Alto. It has a staff of 36 experts and a 1979 budget of $3.5 million (none of which, we believe, is government money) and is headed by the widely respected scientist Dr Edwin Zebroski. But being a nuclear engineer, isn't he biased in favor of nuclear power? Yes: like any scientist is biased in favor of excellence; like a surgeon is biased in favor of medicine. Or would you let Jane Fonda take out your appendix?
4) Risk of Energy Production, by Canadian scientist Dr. H. Inhaber is one of several works demonstrating the lower risk of nuclear power per electric energy generated. This superior safety is a well established result, and has been confirmed by many scientific organizations, including the A.M.A. and the American Health Physics Society;
"controversial" is a buzzword label nowadays given to any firm result if it has been attacked by one or two mavericks. Inhaber's work was attacked by Prof. J.P. Holdren (we ignore ex-scientist's Paul Ehrlich's amateurish tantrums) and much has been made of his objections in the press without giving Inhaber a chance to reply. But Inhaber's letter to the New Scientist (England) of 14 June 1979, though short, gives a devastating rebuttal; for example, it reveals that Holdren's previous work, which he has never retracted, gave less conservative figures for nuclear risks than Inhaber used and which Holdren criticizes as not pessimistic enough. (The Inhaber report, AECB/1119, is available free from AECB, Box 1046, Ottawa, Canada KIP 5S9.)
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Vol. 7, No. 3
Newsletter: Access to Energy Newsletter Archive Volume: Volume 7 Issue/No.: Vol. 7, No. 3 Date: November 01, 1979 02:52 PM Title: Hairshirts or energy?
Copyright © 2004 - Access to Energy Newsletter Archive
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