KELDIKOTT COUNTRY

But the country that is going nuclear most doggedly is the USSR. With an oil production higher than Saudi Arabia's, the Soviets have been increasing their electric power generation since World War II as shown by the curve in the next column [1]; the upper curve is the delivered power in billions of kWh, the lower curve is the capacity in thousands of MW. The preferred type is nuclear. "The need for the greatest economy of oil ... will inevitably lead to more use of nuclear power," says A. Alexandrov, President of the Soviet Academy of Sciences.

Large scale expansion of all types of nuclear power generation which supplies itself with fuel [i.e., breeders] and wider use of coal are the only sensible way of avoiding an energy crisis.... This will completely do away with the need to employ oil and gas as energy sources. [Their] use as chemical feedstocks and as raw materials for the production of fats and proteins will be extended for centuries."

[2] Accordingly, the Soviets are forging ahead with a determination unknown in the West. Volgodonsk, a town born in the 50's in constructing the Volga-Don canal, had a population of 35,000 in 1977; this year it counted 130,000. Unobstructed by the no-growth crusaders, it hosts "Atommash," the world's first assembly line of standardized nuclear power reactors. Its first unit went on line two years ago, and four 1,000 MW units are now in production; in 1984 the plant will turn out eight 1,000 MW reactors a year.

Unobstructed by the Sierra Club, the Soviets are building new breeders. Their second commercial (fast liquid sodium breeder BN-600 went on line at Byeloyarski in the Urals last April; with 600 MW it is now the world's largest operating breeder.

Unobstructed by the friends of the Earth, they are building nuclear heating plants (producing no electric power) in residential areas to heat cities. They have 500 MW each and provide heat through a network of hot-water pipes up to a distance of 3 km (1.9 miles) [3]. No containment building, of course; it is cheaper to make new Russians than all that concrete.

And no protests from Helen Caldicott. To the contrary, she has now made it from Izvestiya (AtE Oct 80) to Pravda, and from Yelena to Khelen. A long article in Pravda of Dec 1, 1980, extols her "work."

Not a word about her fanatical hysteria opposing nuclear electric power; instead, Khelen tells Soviet read- ers that "our politicians have long ago turned into puppets of the military-industrial complex;" as to what her organization is doing in the US, "One of our principal tasks is to explain, from the medical point of view, all the catastrophic consequences of using nuclear weapons," for (you would think on reading her interview) Americans need medical enlightenment as to why nuclear bombs should not be swallowed instead of aspirins; and since there is not a word breathed to the contrary, one must assume that doktor i ucheny (doctor and scholar) Khelen Keldikott is in perfect agreement with the American Medical Society's Council on Scientific Affairs, which was asked by the AMA to study the health effects of various energy generating sources and found nuclear the least damaging [4].

After all, Khelen khas taken the oath of Khippocrates; and Pravda is the Russian word for truth.

[1] Nauka i zhizn, no.4, 1980; [2] Sovyetski soyuz, no. 8, 1979; [3] Tekhnika i nauka, no. 10, 1979, p.5; also [1] and UPI story of 9 June 1979; [4] Journal of the AMA, vol.240, no.20, 10 Nov. 1978, pp.2193-21956.