The NRC kills 42 people

During these 150 days of studious studying the study's studibility, the substitute power brought in to replace TMI-1's output will cause, by the best available statistics, a median 42 premature deaths (in excess over the nuclear toll), mostly linked to coal-fired air pollution (under the existing strict clean-air controls). The sources for the calculation are listed in my letter to the NRC of 15 Nov. 1980 [AtE Dec 80], and if the allegation is absurd, it should have been easy enough to refute. But the NRC did not reply that Brookhaven National Lab's vast accumulation of data was faked, or that a nuclear accident could kill more people than fossils are now killing. Like the antinukes, they do not dispute: they ignore.

Collectivists will find consolation in the fact that most of the 42 victims are likely to be elderly and already ailing, so that when one converts the number of premature deaths to total labor hours lost, the loss for The People, The Society or The Common Good is reassuringly small. But for those who value life, even if old and fragile, and who cherish truth for its own sake, things are not quite as trivial.

The parties legally involved in the hearings are organizations of political activists such as the Union of "Concerned" "Scientists" and several other antinuclear lobbies, the State of Pennsylvania (quite as antinuclear, for it is good politics to be on the side of the lynch mob), and the utility (GPU). Not among the parties was Edison Electric or the Atomic Industrial Forum (why not?). And genuine scientists do not have the means, the time or the clout to argue the case for public health before a group of hypocritical politicians. In short, nuclear power in the US is as defenseless as the 42 victims who have been effectively condemned to death by the bureaucrats sworn to protect the life and health of the population.

But the trouble goes deeper than the individual commissioners (such as breast-beating posturer Asselstine, who probably lacks both the knowledge and the wits to realize that he is helping to kill people) or their staff of largely antinuclear lawyers with as much nuclear expertise as Jimmy Carter, who appointed many of them.

The trouble goes deeper even than the public that has been brainwashed by false information: it goes as deep as a public that has been so intimidated by the opinion-manufacturing machine of the media that it fails, and perhaps no longer dares, to ask the most fundamental questions of life, health and safety.