One of the world's most effective environmental groups is San Francisco-based FRIENDS OF THE EARTH. Although FOE publishes Not Man Apart - a monthly tabloid magazine packed with authenticated, hard-to-find facts that every concerned citizen needs - far too few of MOTHER's readers regularly see a copy of NMA . We are therefore quite pleased that FOE's staff has agreed to write a regular FRIENDS OF THE EARTH column for THE MOTHER EARTH NEWS(R)
In 1972, Clifford Beck-head of the Government Liaison Regulation Office of the Atomic Energy Commissionvisited the U.S.-built Tarapur nuclear reactor on the west coast of India. While there, he witnessed an incredible sight: Indian workers, employed in the largest and "most technologically advanced" atomic generating facility in Asia, were using long bamboo poles to operate the plant's radioactive waste system!
Concerned, Beck investigated further and found "substantial" leaks in fuel shipments, haphazard storage of radioactive materials, and high amounts of local contamination. Although the plant was originally designed for operation by only 250 workers at a time, he discovered that-in the three years since the facility had been completed in 1969-more than 1,300 employees had received their maximum allowable doses of radiation, and had been replaced. When he returned to AEC headquarters in Maryland, the official told his colleagues, "Tarapur is a prime candidate for disaster."
Several months later, three Indian health physicists supported and elaborated on Beck's claims. Radioactivity, they said, had been found along the Arabian Sea's shoreline for up to 40 kilometers from the plant ... and in the bodies of local people who ate fish. The scientists accused General Electric and Bechtel Corporation (who together had designed and built Tarapur) of engineering laxity.
The statements disturbed Bechtel. In 1973 (nearly a year after Beck's initial report) the company sent John Walkerone of its chief engineers-to investigate Tarapur. Walker found that the problems did indeed exist ... and that they would be neither temporary nor easily solved. Worse yet, he discovered that a large number of key American specialistswhose expertise was desperately needed at the facility-had already received their maximum doses of radiation, and had been sent home.
Still, the situation continued. In fact, it got worse. In April of 1975, Indian energy officials admitted that the total radiation released to personnel at Tarapur-and the total quantity of radioactive waste discharged-between June 1974 and March 1975 actually exceeded that for all of 1973 (the year of Walker's report)!
Nevertheless, J.C. Shah-the chairman of India's Atomic Power Authority-denied that the Tarapur reactor had spread radioactivity along the seashore and among the fish-eating population. "Being an atomic power plant," he said, "there is bound to be some radioactive fallout, but the authorities have kept it at a level lower than tolerable and there is no concern at all."
The truth was simply not being told. Paul Jacobs-editor of the new magazine Mother Jones-heard the story and went to India to gather information and write an article on the subject for his first issue. And in the process, he uncovered a secret Indian government report-issued in 1973-which documented at least two cases of radiation-induced cancer deaths ... and which assumed that other Tarapur workers would be victims too! (Unfortunately, the fates of those "other workers" will probably never be confirmed. Most of the local villagers who worked at Tarapur and left because of high radiation exposure were transient ... and once they moved on, became virtually impossible to locate.)
Jacobs printed his blockbuster article on Tarapur in the premier (February/March 1976) edition of Mother Jones ... and the ensuing furor has yet to subside. Why?
Because it so happens that Tarapur is almost identical to-and was designed and constructed by the same companies as-the Dresden I reactor in northern Illinois. What's more, many of the nuclear power plants exported to foreign countries by U.S. firms today are also near-duplicates of their original American counterparts ... and the incidents at Tarapur point out the need for (and total lack of) mutual communication between countries and companies who use or manufacture nuclear generating equipment.
"If a design flaw develops in a carbon-copy reactor," wrote Jacobs, "the chances are that the same will turn out to be true of the original. The problem is that there is no way we can quickly tell when something goes wrong with one of those overseas reactors ... and the companies involved aren't eager to tell anyone when they find out."
The latest development in the Tarapur controversy has emerged from the offices of the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Early this year, environmentalists learned that the NBC was preparing to grant export licenses for two separate shipments of low-enriched uranium intended for Tarapur. Several activist groups and fifty members of Congress asked the agency to hold hearings first, and pointed out that U.S. support of India's nuclear program was inconsistent with national security and the public safety goals of the Atomic Energy Act.
India-in addition to already having enough plutonium to make hundreds of nuclear weapons, and in addition to running its two reprocessing plants under almost no safeguards- has long been a vigorous opponent of the Nuclear NonProliferation Treaty. Canada, in fact, now refuses to participate at all in that eastern nation's atomic industry, because the "peaceful" nuclear technology they contributed to the country was used to build an atom bomb.
The NRC, however, "compromised" by letting the first 45,000-pound shipment go to India immediately, and promised that hearings would be held later.
This summer, Federal Judge Charles Richey ordered the tuna industry to stop fishing "on porpoise".
For years, fishermen have taken advantage of the fact that yellowfin tuna-one of the most "marketable" of all varieties-can be found under and behind schools of surface-swimming porpoises. Commercial skippers would simply throw out purseseine nets wherever they sighted the cetaceans, and pull the drawstrings shut. Theoretically, the dolphins could swim outleaving only the tuna behind-but in too many cases the airbreathing mammals were trapped, and drowned. Nobody knows exactly how many porpoises have been killed over the years in this manner, but the number is undoubtedly in the millions.
Now, however, the use of the purse-seine net has been effectively banned. The Marine Mammal Protection Act, passed in 1972, stated that porpoise kills incidental to tuna fishing were to decrease steadily from that year on, and eventually reach zero. But the decline never happened. And when the Environmental Defense Fund and eleven other groups sued the Department of Commerce for enforcement of the law, tuna fishermen cried that their business would be wiped out if they couldn't continue fishing "on porpoise".
Judge Richey apparently saw the situation differently. "The interests of the marine mammals come first under the statutory scheme," he said in his decision, "and the interest of the industry, important as they are, must be served only after protection of the animals is assured."
Predictably, tuna companies are appealing the decision ... and are also lobbying hard to get a law passed that will exempt them from such rulings in the future. Conservationists, of course, are opposing such measures.
Dow Chemical Company's plans (reported in MOTHER NO, 40) to construct a $600 million petrochemical plant in the Sacramento River Delta have been blocked. The Bay Area Air Pollution Control District refused-on a preliminary basis, at leastto grant an operating permit for the proposed facility. And the agency also axed Arco's scheme to build an even bigger plant adjacent to Dow's.
The problem? Pollution ... and lots of it, already choking the air in the Bay Area with oxidants, particulates, and hydrocarbons. The factories would've poured even more of the noxious stuff into the atmosphere, and-by the very stuff into me atmosphere and-by the very nature of their chemical products-would've presented a serious threat of water contamination as well.
Now, however, it looks as though the Delta-including Suisan Marsh, the largest tidal wetlands area remaining in the state-has a fighting chance. In a recent interview with a San Francisco Chronicle reporter, one senior air district official commented, "I'm not sure anything can be built there under our rules."
On June 8, California's voters turned out in surprising numbers to beat Proposition 15-the nuclear safety initiative-by a tidy margin of two to one.
As you know if you read this column in MOTHER NOS. 33 and 37, the measure would've required utility companies to prove to the state legislature-once and for all-that atomic power is safe power. Antinuclear activists didn't really expect to win on election day, but-on the other hand-we didn't anticipate losing as badly as we did, either.
The spending capacity of our opponents was undoubtedly a major factor in the defeat. Although supporters of the initiative organized the best citizen-backed campaign in California's history-and managed to raise over a million dollars-contributions on the other side from pro-nuclear utility companies, reactor manufacturers, and other large corporations added up to several times that amount. (In fact, the legality of donations from some out-of-state companies is questionable ... and several state Attorney Generals are now investigating those firms.)
The "NO-on-15" forces launched a formidable radio-and-television campaign, and apparently managed to convince Californians that the initiative would completely shut down nuclear power, throw the state into economic chaos, place an extra utility-bill burden on every family, increase air pollution and lung cancer (from coal- and oil-burning plants), and cause a rise in unemployment.
Supporters of Proposition 15, on the other hand, argued that the measure would amount to a shutdown only if reasonable safety requirements couldn't be met, and stressed the desirability of legislative over "expert" judgment on the subject, the issue of people versus large corporations, and the dangers that nuclear energy presents to future generations.
It's clear who stroked the voters' heartstrings best. A backpatting post-mortem memo, purloined from within the Pacific Gas and Electric Company, reveals the "other side's" strategy: "We campaigned against the initiative measure itself; we did not allow ourselves to be sidetracked into a debate over nuclear safety (which is an argument we would not have won), or the appropriateness of our spending or any other non-relevant issues."
The debate still goes on in other states, however. Arizona, Colorado, Oregon, and Washington all have similar nuclear initiatives on their November ballots. And meanwhile, Californians for Nuclear Safeguards-the prime force behind the pro-Proposition 15 campaign-will keep its offices open indefinitely and continue to fight for safe energy.
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