Seabrook goes on line

On March 1, the NRC granted the Seabrook plant a full power license. On March 13, the US Court of Appeals in Washington refused to block the license. Seabrook is now on line at low power, which will be gradually increased in several steps, with a number of prolonged tests carried out at each stage. By late fall, America's most embattled nuclear plant will go on line at full power to give New England heat, light, and the life blood for its industry. In spite of its control of the national and local information industry, the ruling pack of saboteurs was able to slow the wheel of history for 20 years, but not to stop it.

As late as the day before the court decision, the House Inte-rior Committee called a hearing with a number of saboteurs hoping to prepare anti-Seabrook legislation. Like a man who has killed his parents and then complains that he is an orphan, Dukakis had (unlawfully) refused to cooperate in testing evacua-tion plans and now screamed about life boats that don't float. Senator Kennedy also attacked the "lack of a state-sponsored evacuation plan," though the one worked out and tested over the lawless roadblocks by these two orphans works and has the ap-proval of both courts and the NRC.

Thus end 20 years of obstruction by those who crave political power at the expense of the health and environment of their vic-tims. They raised the dollar cost of Seabrook tenfold, bank-rupted the utility that owns it, and forced one of America's few honest governors out of office. But these are the lesser costs. In those 20 years the most Honorable Sen. Kennedy, though direct-ly associated with the death of only one woman, helped to cause some 1400 premature deaths by obstructing the replacement of fossil fuels by this one healthier source.

The loss of human life was matched by the loss of justice. Dukakis and Cuomo, who spat on their oaths of upholding the law and instead actively obstructed it in stymieing evacuation plans, were not impeached; nor were their accomplices and abettors in political office. At every occasion these impostors, elected to enforce the law, took the side of the storm troopers against the law-abiding population.

And no wonder: it is the organizations promoting the lawbreakers and their tactics to whom these sham-executors of the law are beholden for it is they who bring in the votes. As late as last October, 700 demonstrators, of whom 475 were arrested, tried to scale the fence of the Seabrook plant and take it by storm after an address by Molly Yard, President of the National Organization of Women.

"Storm troopers!" exclaimed Ralph Nader in mock dismay when I debated him in 1978. "That's what he calls citizens using their constitutional rights . . ."

What constitutional rights did he mean? The constitutional right to criminal trespass? The constitutional right to destroy other people's property? The constitutional right to overrule the ballot box with clubs, catapults and scaling ladders? Not only Nader, but the entire information/education industry has been presenting these power-hungry lawbreakers as heroes.

In vain.

Western Canada and the US West and Midwest (21%, 23%, 9%, resp.). Elsewhere the cost of a kWh is comparable to, and more often well below, that of coal--78% in Japan, 71% in Germany, 69% in France; even in the eastern US it is 94% of the cost of coal-fueled power. For the Green Priests concentrate their verbal attacks on nuclear power only because it is better suited to scare propaganda; they have been just as successful in stymieing electricity generation from any other source.

But Seabrook will help kill more than lies about finances. It will help kill the myth that the environmentalists are protecting the environment; like every beneficial and environment-friendly technology, it will help show that environmentalism is not based on science, but on the political faith of a power-hungry elite that abuses people's inborn love of nature and their yearning for a clean and wholesome environment.

As the NRC chairman's gavel closed the meeting of March 1, a hysterical woman screamed in religious fervor. The scream died out, and Seabrook's 1,150 MW turbines keep spinning.