The Wall Street Journal is a refreshing exception among dailies in its free-market attitudes, but as we have pointed out often over the last nine years, their ignorance of nuclear matters makes them antinuclear in effect, if not in intent. Apart from their exaggerated coverage of "experts" like Lovins or Komanoff and a virtually total absence of comment by genuine experts, they have recently brought articles on plutonium with the usual irrelevant chatter, withholding the antinuclear record of such authors as NRC Commissioner Gilinsky or Brian Chow, "physicist and research specialist at Pan Heuristics," a veteran antinuke who helped kill the California Sun Desert project. As in their coverage of the Silkwood case in 1975, this is not due to ignorance of physics, but to incompetence in journalism, especially the watchdog kind; they probably have little knowledge that letters like the following get written (by a plutonium expert, now in the employ of an eastern utility, whom we had prodded to rebut Gilinsky's nonsense):
Petr:
Received your note and heartily concur in your view of Victor Gilinsky, but I won't rebut his garbage in the WSJ
¾for two reasons. (1) Earlier this year my rebuttal of [ex-NRC Commissioner] Bradford's trash was not printed. (Sacred Cows?) (2) I am known to be employed by a utility that requires periodic approvals from the NRC I cannot jeopardize such financially critical milestones of my company. Perhaps when Gilinsky's term is over and he is replaced, I can then write a review of his part in the U.S. nuclear moratorium.Please understand.
Sincerely,
Readers will understand why we withhold the writer's name and company. We are sending a copy of this issue to the Wall Street Journal; in vain?
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Vol. 10, No. 1
Newsletter: Access to Energy Newsletter Archive Volume: Issues Issue/No.: Vol. 10, No. 1 Date: November 23, 2004 02:14 PM (For actual publication date see newsletter.) Title: The Profits in Cancer
Copyright © 2004 - Access to Energy Newsletter Archive
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