PAN-HEURISTICS AND THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

The capacity factor of a power plant is the ratio of average to peak (capacity) power and describes the utilization of the plant. Ideally, a plant would have a capacity factor of 100% (on line at full power all the time). It is a key economic indicator, and the garbage by Komanoff, the Hellmans, and other undereducated parrots is largely based on its alleged low value for nuclear plants.

The North American Reliability Council's 1983 report (which summarizes data through 1981) gives the average capacity factors for the ten years 1972-81 as follows: pumped storage, 12.16%; hydro, 32.34%; fossil, 55.86%; nuclear 61.53%. So much for the temper tantrum by two ignorant antinukes, Mr & Mrs Hellman, in the Wall Street Journal [AtE Sep 83]. That article alone would not make the WSJ antinuclear; only surprisingly undiscerning.

Its front page articles have always given undue emphasis to antinuclear spokesmen, presenting only feeble counter-arguments, or none at all. But in the last year or so, antinuclear propaganda has appeared on its editorial page, too, mainly by spokesmen of a California outfit called "Pan Heuristics." They do not, like the Hellmans, work with crude taunts, but with subtle tricks of incomplete truths. Typically, in a recent letter, a "senior policy analyst" of Pan Heuristics disputed a claim that reactor-grade plutonium could not be used for cost-effective military weapons. He used correct, but irrelevant points on critical mass, never mentioning that reactor-grade plutonium is so contaminated with other isotopes that its explosion becomes unpredictable in strength and timing, so that it is useless for any weapon, cost-effective or not.

This is typical for the Pan-Heuristics anti-nukes. They do not attack nuclear safety (correctly considering it an issue that can dupe only the low IQs), but go for economics and the proliferation scare with underhanded little cover-ups as above. They are evidently well-funded; their director is Albert Wohlstetter, usually identified as a former political science professor at the University of Chicago, never as one of the principal anti-nuclear witnesses in the now historic British Windscale Inquiry of 1977-8, where he testified on behalf of the Friends of the Earth. [The other principal witnesses: the (US) NRDC and the (British) National Peace Council.] Before the repeated appearance of their spokesmen in the WSJ, Pan Heuristics was mainly known in California, where it was a leader in forcing the abandonment of the Sun Desert nuclear plant, and later in virtually outlawing nuclear power in that state.

Is the WSJ being duped by these cool-headed, objective, erudite, respectable analysts?

Possibly. But not by its own letter-writing policy. Authors are not usually allowed to reply to letters criticizing their previously published contributions. The just mentioned Pan Heuristic plutonium sophistry, for example, was never allowed a rebuttal. But when the Hellmans' bilge was at long last countered by leading nuclear scientists and industry executives (as well as praised by a stockbroker), who was allowed a week later to defend their bilge once more? The Hellmans.

Does that make the WSJ antinuclear?

Not necessarily. They could also have a special policy for married couples from the professoriat in years divisible by three, provided the last two digits form a prime number.