NUCLEAR NOTES

1) If there was indeed sloppiness at Diablo Canyon (and we do not yet have the facts), then it is embarrassing, and we will not try to whitewash the culprits. Nevertheless, assuming that the plant had not been additionally strengthened against earthquakes at all (an unreasonably wild assumption), it is still safer in an earthquake, in both probability and consequences, than California's hydroelectric dams whose power it will one day replace; keeping it closed still endangers lives.

2) Latest mortality study of plutonium workers at Rocky Flats weapons plant involved 7,112 workers from 1952 to 1979. Cancer deaths: 64% of the expected number in the general population. (More: Nucl. News, Dec. 81, pp.135-138).

3) New Mexico's Board of Medical Examiners denied Continuing Medical Education credit for listening to Helen Caldicott ("the difference between nuclear reactors and bombs is mostly psychological") & Co expound "the psychosocial context of the nuclear arms race." Who, indeed, would give 14 credit hours for such a stunt? Harvard Medical School; Department of Continuing Medical Education (Dec.1-2).

4) Dr B. Maglich's Fusion Energy Corporation which seeks to achieve thermonuclear fusion by non-random collisions of nuclei [AtE May 76], but has had no funding for 5 years, has become sole manager for a planned $2.8 billion Energy Research Center in Saudi Arabia. His "Migma Lab" near Princeton, N.J., reopened last August and is to be sharply expanded in 1982.

5) The replacement power for the undamaged, but idle TMI Unit 1 is costing about 2 lives per week [AtE Dec 80]; relicensing is to come up in January. Will the NRC protect public health?