THE GREAT PLUTONIUM DIVIDEND

Let's assume that the leading Democratic presidential can-didate (George Bush) goes into shock therapy or something and emerges a principled leader of the US. He abandons the obstruc-tionist Neanderthals of the UN; he gives no-nonsense support to the democratically elected Croats against the Serbian Commu-nists, to the civilized Armenians against the semi-savage Azeris, etc.; he takes this historically unique opportunity to propose an international charter of the rights of ethnic minorities, whether Serbs in Croatia or Russians in the new republics, or Kurds in Iraq and Turkey¾an American charter with American (not UN) teeth in it. Instead of giving China Most Favorite Nation status, he presents them and the North Koreans with a 1962-Cuba type blockade of their budding trade of missiles and nuclear techno-logy. He abandons requirements for a unified ex-Soviet army, the hope of Russian-chauvinist irredentists and conspirators, so that the Russians and other ex-Soviet peoples can fight them without having to fight the US President as well. He goes full speed ahead with deployment of G-PALS and other SDI weapons to protect the US from Assad, Saddam, Khadaffi, and God knows how many other aspiring nuclear madmen.

And you recycling fanatics, who recycle paper and bottles, and who force people to sort their refuse into pious classes that will uplift the hearts of the ecologic clergy¾you wouldn't object to recycling that plutonium, would you?

Ah, yes, and then there is energy conservation! Even if you recycle that plutonium only for regular reactors, it will provide mixed-oxide fuel for many decades at present rates of power con-sumption; if you use it in fast reactors, it will provide fuel for cen-turies, and if you use¾pardon the obscenity¾breeders, it will provide power indefinitely (certainly for several millennia). Fall round my neck, Amory Lovins! At last we need no longer quarrel, for surely an energy conservation fanatic who is willing to exchange all of America's lamps would never forego turning swords into energy for millennia, would he? Just think of all those breeders lighted by fluorescent lights with Lovins-approved starters at night, and by day, of course, by redirected sunlight!

And do not let us disappoint the Southern California Air Soviet and analogous pollution control priests elsewhere. There would be enough electricity available for cheap electric cars¾no, not bat-teries on wheels with no range and no acceleration, but electricity for the streets of Los Angeles, Denver, and the other very few US cilies where air pollution is still a problem. Not with unsightly over-head wires, of course, but with underground cables from which the cars would be powered via a pick-up coil, their battery needed only to get them home from the nearest electrified street. Once again I appeal to Patricia Schroeder: you wouldn't deny your Denver constituents the total elimination of air pollution, would you?