ECHOES AND UPDATES

I goofed badly with the decimal point in the Fernald com-parison [AtE Aug 89] . If you go over it, you will find that the Zim-mer coal plant will put the same order of uranium into the environment as the Fernald plant, not 9 times more. This does not affect the conclusions (any illness caused by uranium could just as well be caused by a coal-fired plant), but the value was wrong (as a flood of letters pointed out), and I sent a correction to all editors of publications who subscribe, and contacted the editors in the Ohio-Kentucky area by telephone. I am also told that the Fernald plant is not an enrichment plant, but a straightforward fuel fabrication plant that manufactures fuel rods from yellowcake. The following facts, which I did not use, do not excuse my error, but luckily reduce its gravity 1) the atmosphere round Cincinnati contains the effluents of far more than a single 1,000 MW of coal-fired power plant, as well as of metallurgic and other non-electric coal-fired plants; 2) coal contains far more active radioisotopes along with uranium, especially potassium 40, thorium, polonium, lead 210, and radium; 3) anyone in the Fernald area over age 35 will have accumulated a larger life-time dose from coal than from the uranium enrichment plant.

There is little news about fusion this month. The State of Utah has released $4.5 million for a fusion research institute. It was joined by General Electric by an undisclosed, but allegedly large initial investment. As expected, a DoE panel recommended no funds for the project, and with characteristic modesty and restraint the American Physical Society newsletter What's New brought this under the headline "The last twitch of the fusion col-lapse."

Another great liberty lover goes native: Treasury Secretary Alan Greenspan was a life-long friend and disciple of Ayn Rand, who rejected statism and collectivism, prized the individual above "society," and who was a ferocious enemy of the income tax. On 22 March 1989 he made a statement before Committee on Banking, Finance and Urban affairs. On the S&L bailout and federal deposit insurance, he said "When so much money is needed to make up for such large losses, partly from mismanagement, and in no small part due to fraud, is it reasonable to ask the taxpayer to pay any of these costs? It is. The reason . . . is the basic benefit to the economy as a whole . . . With the gains to society as a whole that come with deposit insurance we must accept both the pos-sibility and the reality that there will be losses to be borne by society as a whole."

In the Valdez oil spill, the detente-minded Bush administra-tion certified that the use of a Soviet oil skimming ship was "essen-tial to perform American military national defense duties," in order to let it operate in US waters. Exxon hired it at $15,000 a day, but soon had to fire it after it failed miserably. More details from State Department Watch, Box 7981, Northridge, CA 91327, a very worthy and informative organization that I urge every reader to join.

Prof Clack points out in the Kansas Intelligencer ($12/yr., 5524 Anderson Ave., Manhattan, KS 66502) that between 1967 and 1988 the Scientific American carried 59 articles on national defense, almost all of which carried the message that it is useless for the US to strive for a credible defense posture. The Scientific American is an excellent journal for anything truly scientific, but carefully check the articles on defense, environment and other politically flavored subjects; most often you will find them pure Leftist propaganda.