OF DUNCES AND KNAVES

About the only thing true in this fantasy, which must surely first have been rejected by the National Examiner as too preposterous, is that the allied forces used depleted uranium in their anti-tank and other shells. That is because uranium, the densest natural element, is denser than lead or other old-fashioned munitions materials. But its halflife is 4.6 billion years, so that it is next to not radioactive at all. In fact, the uranium cladding of an anti-tank shell is nowhere near as radioactive as Mr. Hoskins himself (though some isotopes in its decay chain are); certainly a dunce like him would not even know how to measure such tiny radioactivity in the presence of the natural background.

Like all heavy metals, such as lead and mercury, uranium is chemically bone-seeking and generally toxic. However, this has nothing to do with radioactivity, and besides, what does this alleged doctor think old-fashioned munition was made of? World Wars I and II, this Harvard sage seems to think, were fought with water pistols. His fantasy includes such statements about depleted uranium as "The material is extremely hard and abundant and provided free to weapons manufacturers by the nuclear industry." Hard, yes, abundant, most certainly not (except in the storage containers of the government lab at Oak Ridge, Tenn.), and the rest is undiluted hogwash. The nuclear industry in the semi-socialist US does not own any enrichment plants and hence it does not own an ounce of depleted uranium.

But I have news for this colleague of Helen Caldicott while she was at Harvard before becoming a socially responsible rock crooner. He will no doubt be surprised to hear that uranium, because of its high density and negligible radioactivity, is widely used for shielding radioactive sources so to protect people from radiation, a job that it does better than lead.

That is the kind of doctor and public health specialist they have at Harvard, America's oldest university. But if Hoskins is a dunce, Bruce Babbit is a knave, and one as foul as they come. Senior subscribers may remember how as governor of Arizona in 1979 he fanned the antinuclear hysteria by closing a swimming pool because it exceeded the allowance of tritium in drinking water and shut down the plant that made the tritium. This is an isotope of hydrogen used as fluorescent paint on dials, replacing the far less safe radium that had been used before [AtE Jan 80, see also article by M. Brucer, M.D., in Reason, March 1980].

To make his "cabinet look more like America," Billary appointed this con artist Interior Secretary, and before he had even time to settle at the trough, he halted the West Valley low-level waste (LLW) disposal site in the California desert, intended mainly for California's hospital wastes.

This may yet have a silver lining. For one thing, it will show people that LLW are to a significant degree (about 1/3 nationally) hospital wastes from nuclear medicine for diagnosing and curing, the sick. For another, if California hospitals don't just pour these wastes down the sink, but refuse to treat patients with radioisotopes (as they may be forced to), it may only take a few ensuing deaths to work wonders for Baboon Babbit's image.