ECHOES AND UPDATES

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I regret to report that the clout of Texas won the day in the Senate and resurrected the SSC to the extent of $550 million for the coming year. The House may go along in conference, and Bush will sign it with the same bravado as he signed the racial quota bill.

Rep. William Dannemeyer (R-Calif), one of the great ex-ceptions in the House of Ill Repute, introduced a resolution for a Presidential Commission to determine "whether there has been any measurable depletion of stratospheric ozone beyond that caused by natural phenomena, whether it has been proven that the use of CFCs damages stratospheric ozone, and whether the phaseout of CFCs will have any effect on stratospheric ozone." Three cheers for Congressman Dannemeyer! On 8/6/92, a press con-ference organized by 21^st Century Sci. & Tech., where Dannemeyer was joined by several scientists, 20 journalists of the mass media were present; many more were informed by FAX. Not one of the 20 Goebbelsian slaves, nor any of the network propagandists, dared open his mouth to break the rigid censorship. Ceausescu lives!

"The media continue to talk of weapons hazards if terrorist organizations obtain plutonium from spent nuclear fuel. Could you clarify this?" R.G.S., San Francisco, Calif.

If you ever meet somebody from a terrorist organization, please encourage this myth. The plutonium, an alpha emitter that can hurt you only if it gets inside your body, won't do a thing to him, but some of the other fission products will, I hope, kill him. All plutonium is made from uranium 238 by fast neutron irradiation, but the irradiation in a power reactor takes so long that it gives rise to many plutonium isotopes which are not usable in a bomb, be-cause owing to spontaneous neutron emission the explosion would fizzle, killing only some bystanders, and above all, this would hap-pen at an unpredictable time. Weapons grade plutonium (pure Pu 239) is made in completely different ("production") reactors, where the uranium is burned up (irradiated) so fast that the Pu is produced before the other isotopes start appearing. A terrorist or-ganization would need such a reactor (such as the N-reactor in Hanford, Wash.); a power reactor or spent fuel captured in transportation would be of no use to them.

While the Eurotwerps are working on creating a giant Yugoslavia, and Bush is flailing, prattling and pressing the flesh, Japan has proposed the obvious idea I suggested [AtE Apr 92] of using the weapons plutonium, after "denaturing" it with other isotopes, in power reactors. My suggestion was to use it in mixed-oxide fuel for US reactors, but the Japanese are far ahead and will within the next few months, begin operation of a fast breeder prototype that runs (and breeds) plutonium. Their proposal is to buy some 100 tons of plutonium from Soviet weapons and burn them in a "fast reactor" (a reactor working with fast neutrons, but with a breeding ratio less than one, so that it produces less plutonium than it burns) while producing electricity. As proposed, the plan is unlikely to work. The Russians need their own electricity and have considerable experience with breeders and fast reactors. The Eurotwerps are paranoid, the US will study the proposal to death for security reasons, and the Japanese will need at least 10 years to build such a plutonium furnace (which could provide a medium-sized city with power for 30 years from Soviet plutonium). See Nature 7/30/92.

Most isotopes used in nuclear medicine are short-lived; for patients should not stay radioactive for days or months. But the shipping takes longer than the few hours for which the isotope is needed, and it would arrive transmuted or stable at its destination. The most often used radioisotope is the gamma emitter tech-netium 99. Its halflife is only 6 hours, so that the patient is soon rid of it, yet 6 hours are insufficient to ship it even by air. What is done is to ship molybdenum 99 with a halflife of 66 hrs, which decays into Tc 99, or as they say in nuclear medicine, the Mo is the "cow" from which the Tc is "milked." 16,000 US patients a day depend on technetium for diagnostics (I am among them, though not every day). The Mo is shipped from Chalk River, Ontario; the US has only recently made arrangements for privatization of its own Mo 99 production, and there is no backup for Canada . At the end of July, the Canadian government only narrowly avoided a strike at Chalk River; otherwise 16,000 US patients a day would have been without diagnostics. Why? The answer is in the "Command and Prohibition" boxes in the diagram for a mixed economy, in par-ticular, the boxes labeled "commands and prohibitions.".

The Nature Conservancy looks like a good and genuine en-vironmental organization and some years ago I joined it. Then I saw that they sell most of their lands to the government and left. "The Nature Conservancy: 'Sell it to the Feds' " is an article (Orga-nization Trends, July 1991, Capital Research Center, 1612 K St NW/#704, Wash. DC 20006, $10 for 7 pages) confirming them as collection agents for the government.