GOOD READING

Another blockbuster: The Nuclear Energy Option, 338 pp., hdbd., $24.95, Plenum Press (233 Spring St., New York, NY 10013) by Prof. Bernard L. Cohen, far and away America's best, most convincing and most knowledgeable public supporter of nuclear power. Like all independent scientists, he is not fettered by the nuclear industry's utility-appeasing and suicidal suppression of comparisons with coal and other fossils, and he presents the wide public with eminently readable, non-technical, yet scientific facts, comparisons, arguments and examples. Occasionally one meets thoughts previously published in his 1983 book "Before It's Too Late", but they are excellent and bear repeating. Since then we have had Chernobyl and a number of other new perceived clubs with which to beat nuclear power; they splinter like glass on Cohen's cool logic. There are hundreds of points that never made it into this newsletter, such as why the government will spend $1 billion to clean up its own mess at West Valley, N.Y., when $20 million would be sufficient to guarantee safety with a risk so tiny as to be unknown to the government in other and more urgent cases. Don't miss this book of enlightening and enjoyable reading.

R. J. Bidinotto, "Freedom's foe for the '90s," The Freeman (Irvington on Hudson, NY 10503), Nov. 1990. Contrib. welcome.

P. Brimelow, L. Spencer, "Ralph Nader, Inc.," Forbes, 9/17/90, is the best yet summary of Nader's centimillion dollar cor-porate empire (see also Amer. Spect. article [AtE Sep 90]). Though worded carefully, the article strongly suggests that Nader accepts bribes, practices tax evasion, takes protection money (inflicting vengeance if not paid), and is quite willing to defeat his own causes for an adequate baksheesh. Nader demanded a retraction and threatened to sue, but Forbes, which seems to have regained a little spine since the senior Forbes died, is sticking to its guns. Nader's lifestyle in a $1.5 million luxury house (while telling the press he lives in a simple room) is reminiscent of Jim Bakker, except that, Nader does not milk his misled believers' pockets for his personal wealth and comfort only, but for political power over people in ad-dition, and with such dastardly methods as grossly distorting scien-tific evidence for his own ends. As the Czechs say, I much prefer Jim Bakker's butt to Ralph Nader's face.

D.M. Rappoport, speech to Western utility officers of 9/27/90, free to AtE subscribers from V. Kamber Grp., Attn. P. Crosland, 1920 L St. NW/#200, Washington, DC 20036 (202-223-0870). By an endangered and almost extinct species: a utility executive who does not prostrate himself before the sham-environmentalists.

E.C. Krug, "Acid rain . . . and just maybe the sky isn't falling," Luncheon address, Ill. Inst. Mining, 9/27/90; $3.50 from Dr Krug, 513 Kerry Dr./#101, Winona, MN 55987.