FORBES FOLLIES

The Feb. 11 issue of Forbes brings a cover story on the nuclear debacle by a reporter who shares something with the nuclear industry he berates: he has no inkling of what is going on.

He attributes the skyrocketing cost of nuclear plants over the past decade merely to mismanagement (to which all other industries are immune?), and he claims that the industry has been killed not by its enemies, but by its friends.

Among such "friends" he counts the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which has included professional antinukes Bradford and Gilinsky, and even now includes ignorant posturers like Asselstine and waffling weaklings like Palladino; its staff consists largely of antinuclear lawyers (many of them appointed by Carter). With or without judicial rulings obtained by the antinuclear litigators, the NRC has forced horrendous costs on nuclear plants by unnecessary retrofits while prolonging the life of far more dangerous non-nuclear sources.

What the nuclear industry is indeed to blame for is its cowardice in facing the brainwashers: instead of tern people after TMI that it was not a case of good luck, but the inherent safety of the source that prevented anybody from getting hurt, and instead of celebrating the historical landmark in which 943 MW went out of control without causing any casualties, they whined "We have been bad boys, but we will sin no more." But is inept resistance to a murderer the same thing as suicide?

The Forbes writer fails to see a powerful, media-backed social movement of income redistributors determined to destroy the free-enterprise system. Like the nuclear industry, he probably believes that this movement can be placated by redoing the welds on a few pipes or making some administrative changes. It is, for example, remarkable that in a 17-page article there is no mention of the Government Accountability Project. (Business Week's Barbara Starr characterizes it as "a consumer watchdog group" - which is like calling the Soviet government "a Moscow-based group of pacifists.")

Of course there are individual cases of mismanagement (Shoreham in N.Y. may be one), but the more typical cases are the ones where the cost was artificially driven up and then the GAP lynch mob moved in for the kill -- as happened with the Zimmer (Ohio) and Midland (Michigan) plants.

For a less shallow point of view and deeper enlightenment on GAP, send for "Antinuke crowd has boosted costs" and "Taking GAP's measure," AIF, 7101 Wisconsin Ave, Bethesda, MD 20814, and for a more general view of what is going on, get R.J. & E. Isaac's The Coercive Utopians, $16.45 from AIM, Box 28390, Washington, DC 20005.