MISCELLANY

1) Mortality of Nuclear Weapons Test Participants is a 95-page report by the Medical Follow-up Agency of the National Research Council (National Academy of Sciences, 2101 Constitution Ave., Wash., DC 20418). It abounds in mortality and other tables, discusses the methods of evaluating them, and reaches the conclusion that "there is no consistent or statistically significant evidence for an increase in leukemia or other malignant disease in nuclear test participants."

2) Reader R.L. Crawley sent my Non-Problem of Nuclear Wastes ($2 from us) to the Utah, High Level Nuclear Waste Office and received a reply from its Public Information Officer Tim St. Clair pointing out its severe deficiencies, such as stating "The heat generated by the wastes will have died down to 3.6 kW per canister, or less than is released by the typical home laundry drier." The statement is perfectly correct; a kilowatt is a unit of power, or energy per second, regardless whether that energy is heat, electricity or other. But it unleashed the ire of Mr. St. Clair: "The statement is grossly misleading because the author has converted heat to electricity... Size and electricity are not the issues. Heat is the issue and spent fuel will emit more than 400 degrees Fahrenheit from a canister." They have highly competent public information officers at that Utah agency. I take it Mr. St. Clair is 3 miles old, weighs 5 gallons and has a salary of 15 millivolts; but I am puzzled as to how many degrees Fahrenheit he emits.

3) Robert J. Fields, Director of Regulatory Affairs of the FMC Corporation, delivered a statement on product liability to the Board of Directors of Consumer Alert (1024 J St./#425, Modesto, CA 95354) which gives some choice examples of litigation in lieu of self-responsibility. Sample: In 1984, a woman attempted suicide by locking herself in the trunk of her car, but was discovered still alive 9 days later. Naturally, she sued Ford Motor Co., which had failed to provide the trunk with an inside latch. An insensitive and evidently sexist federal court held that manufacturers are not required to anticipate the use of car trunks for suicide.

4) To the contrary, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Jerry Pacht is a sensitive and aware guardian of the law: he ruled that the Abalone Alliance's blockade of Diablo Canyon, accompanied by physical violence and inflicting a cost of $2.2 million on San Louis Obispo County and the State of California for clearing the public roads of thugs and vandals, was protected by the First Amendment (that's the one guaranteeing the constitutional right to criminal tresspass and stormtrooper assault). Additionally, he slapped an assessment of $82,000 in attorney's fees against the plaintiffs (San Louis Obispo County, local taxpayers and employees who were imprisoned by the blockade), evidently for not knowing what the First Amendment protects. The Pacific Legal Foundation is nevertheless appealing the verdict in the stubborn belief that due process should take precedence over mob action and welcomes contributions (555 Capitol Mal/#350, Sacramento, CA 95814).

5) Capitalism favors the consumer, not the capitalist, who often asks the government to protect him from the free market and who does not greatly object to paying taxes (passed on to the consumer anyway). Fund for Stockowners' Rights (Box 956, Vienna, VA 22180) has published a list of contributors against a Michigan amendment calling for a vote before tax increases. The opponents outspent the proponents by more than 10:1; those who contributed more than $25,000 included Chrysler, Ford, GM, and Detroit Edison. Same story in California.

6) In the October 85 Health Physics, Andrew Hull of Brookhaven Natl. Lab. takes issue with a headline "Up to 4,684 deaths over 10,000 years estimated by EPA's study of [nuclear] waste disposal." Assuming the present population and longevity to remain stationary, there will be 30 billion US deaths over 10,000 years, of which 4.5 billion will be due to cancer. That the EPA should be able to extract a fraction of roughly one millionth from that total with a precision of no less than four significant figures is a tribute to the dazzling Geniuses of Regulatory Science. True, they forgot about the lives saved by nuclear technology, but at least they generated a scary headline.

8) Double-Z Awardee Meselson [AtE Oct 85] & Co took their time to answer Kucewicz's article charging that their hypothesis of Yellow Rain being merely bee droppings is false and irrelevant. Their defence (WSJ 10/2) is brilliant: not all alleged samples of chemical warfare contained mycotoxins, they explain. To continue the October issues analogy, Oswald was innocent because not all of his bullets killed President Kennedy. Significantly, among the journals which have enthusiastically gobbled up Meselson's bee droppings is the New Scientist, a politicized British journal, and the quasi-engineering journal C&EN, whose editor Michael Heylin not only slants his pieces to the left, but is intellectually too underprivileged to grasp the point of the dispute.