94e Mirigan Ratug Seventy-nine years of editorial freedom Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan The AEC: An ineffective watchdog A 420 Maynard St., Ann Arbor, Mich. News Phone: 764-0552 Editorials printed in The Michigan Daily express the individual opinions of staff writers or the editors. This must be noted in al reprints. SATURDAY, MAY 23,, 1970 NIGHT EDITOR: ROBERT KRAFTOWITZ Nixon Doctrine: Promises, promises (EDITOR'S NOTE; The following is reprinted with permission of Ramparts Magazine. The au- thor is a former editor of The Michigan Daily.) By ROGER RAPOPORT THERE WAS A FAMILIAR ring to the fire alarm that sounded at 2:29 p.m. on May 11, 1969 at the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) Rocky Flats plant, 16 miles upwind of central Denver. It sig- naled the latest in a series of over 200 fires that have occurred since the plant opened in 1953. But to hear the AEC tell it, Rocky Flats, which has the dangerous assignment of fabricating plutonium into nuclear triggers for hydrogen bombs and warheads, has built up an enviable safety record. Den- verites who expressed concern about this latest accident were given a soothing, if somewhat evasive, official reply: "Rocky Flats ranks first in AEC facilities for saf- ety and holds the fourth best all-time mark in American industry - 2122 consecutive d a y s (24,295,542 man-hours) without a disabling injury." But all the press releases and National Safety Council plaques in Colorado didn't prevent plutonium from igniting spontan- eously in the main production area on May 11, The flames leapt up inside the maze of glove boxes where plutonium is fabricated into parts for nuclear weapons. Tons of cellulose laminate shielding in the glove boxes fed the blaze, and it was nearly three hours before firemen brought the fire un- der control. - DAYS LATER DOW CHEMICAL CO., which operates the plant for the AEC. re- ported that the fire had done $45 million worth of damage and burned $20 million worth of plutonium, enough to build about 77 Nagasaki-size atom bombs. But Dow and the AEC reassured increasingly ner- vous Colorado residents that no radiation had escaped f r o m the safeguarded and specially constructed plant. Brandishing data compiled by the Col- orado Department of Public Health and the U.S. Public H e a 1 t h Service, AEC spokesmen declared: "No appreciable amount of plutonium escaped from t h e building and no offsite contamination re- sulted from the fire." This was supposed to be the last word. But for the over one million residents of Denver, it was the beginning of member- ship in the official AEC fairyland where accidents a r e infrequent, casualties un- usual, pollution a forbidden word, and the gravestones carefully hidden from public view, SINCE 1944 THERE HAVE been 142 re- corded atomic science fatalities, and cau- tious public health officials predict an- other 400 to 900 victims within the next 20 years. The conservatism in this estimate is clear when the facts are considered. In western towns, for instance, hundreds of thousands of tons of radioactive uranium mill wastes have been used as fill for con- struction sites and the radiation levels in some of the houses built on top of this waste are so high that residents are now being- evacuated. AEC-sanctioned nuclear enterprises have contaminated the Colo- rado River, Lake Mead and the Great Salt Lake with radium; they have dumped ra-, dio-iodine into the Columbia River and re- leased fission gases in Puerto Rico. They have seriously elevated iodine 131 levels in Utah milk and killed off deer and fish near Buffalo. And now two top experts predict that what the AEC regards as "allowable levels of radiation" could lead to as many as 32,000 extra cancer victims a year. There are many reasons for this criminal irresponsibility. Most obvious is the fact that the AEC and its allies in industry.have totalitarianized their hold over nuclear power. They probably have more freedom to pollute than any other power structure in the country. The AEC finances, licenses, regulates and polices itself. Other govern- ment agencies inovlved in the sampling or monitoring of radiation pollution are often forced to rely on inadequate AEC data, or are themselves funded-and con- trolled-by the AEC. Consultants for the atomic energy industry who work under AEC research grants crop up time and again as prime congressional witnesses proclaiming radiation is virtually harmless if kept below the so-called "safe-thres- hold." And although atomic power reactors are so dangerous that insurance companies will not cover them (the public, through Congress, pays for $500 million worth of insurance on each plant), when a 6tate agency tries to set tough radiation stand- ards for proposed nuclear power plants in its area, it is immediately sued by the AEC. Not only does the AEC control the sci- entific talent involved in atomic power, it also determines which information about its activities reaches the public. UNDER THE AEC'S SYSTEM of self- scrutiny, nuclear installations are free to contaminate both their workers and the public. The experience at Rocky Flats makes this clear. During the years the Colorado nuclear weapons production com- plex was being hailed as the safest of AEC plants, many workers there were being overexposed to plutonium. Plant officials refuse to say how many have died of can- cer, but medical journal articles wr!tten by scientists employed at Rocky Flats admit that 325 workmen have been contaminated by radiation over the years. As in the case of the Santa Barbara oil disaster, technology to deal with accidents is almost non-existent. The AEC's solutions to the pollution it creates are almost pathetically inept. In 1968, for instance, a qu'antity of oil that had been contamin- ated by plutonium was scooped up, placed in a drum and trucked off from Rocky Flats to the official AEC burial grounds. En route, however, the drum began to leak, contaminating over a mile of high- way. The AEC's solution was to repave the road. Unfortunately, plutonium's half-life of 24.400 years is a good deal longer than the full-life of asphalt, and many years from now, when the roadbed wears away, the hot plutonium will be exposed, to con- taminate unborngenerations. After the May 11 fire, local scientists affiliated with the Colorado Committee for Environmental Information (CCE) began to be skeptical of the Dow and AEC scien- tists. This independent group of college professors and privately-employed scien- tists asked the AEC to monitor Denver area soil for possible plutonium contami- nation from the fire. In August 1969, Dow-AEC refused to make the plutonium soil samples. @PRamparts Magazine A e 9 cbp T ilk 4 I F Letters to the Editor Speaking of sanctuaries .. . IN CLARIFYING the U.S. position in Cambodia, President Nixon promised the nation that U.S. c o m b a t troops would not penetrate more than 21 miles into Cambodia, and that they would be totally withdrawn by June 30. One promise has already been broken, the other will be broken July 1. Earlier this week, the 21 mile limit was s ur p a s s e d when the U.S. an- nounced it had begun bombing the N o r t h Vietnamese headquarters 28 miles inside C a m b o d i a. Pentagon sources put it another way saying that the allied thrust has forced the North Vietnamese to move their headquarters beyond the 21 mile limit permitted U.S. ground troops. AS OF NOW, the Pentagon is content to say that they can wipe out the headquarters with air attacks. But next week, the Pentagon will probably in- form us that the North Vietnamese moved their headquarters again, and the combat troops will now be neces- sary. The North Vietnamese headquarters may well be a figment of the Penta- gon's "commie - behind - every - tree" imagination. Or, it may not be. It doesn't matter. Whether Nixon's "U.S. ground troops" are there or not, government officials have made it clear that U.S. bombers will be. And one way or another, we will maintain and ex- pand our military presence in South- east Asia. -ALEXA CANADY -MARTIN HIRSCHMAN Co-editors Why Mao? To the Editor:: YOUR EDITORIAL reprinting Mao Tse-Tung's "Turning the Tide against U.S. Imperialism" disgusts me and makes me truly disillusioned in your wisdom. It is not that the U.S. is not imperial- istic, it is. But that is not the point. Why do you resort to print- ing the words of someone whose hands are also blood stained, in this case with Tibetian blood. Are you so naive as to be impressed by anything sounding "revolu- tionary"? On my part I am not at all impressed by the condemnation of one murderer by another. Have we not enough anti-war and im- perialism voices among those whose integrity is pure that you must quote Mao? --Bohdan Wytwycky 515 Lawrence GM proxies To the Editor:: PROFESSOR CLARE E. GRIF- FIN in a May 21 letter made some interesting, if not dubious, asser- tions. The professor, in discussing Campaign GM, doubted the "so- cial value of the particular pro- posal-voting for social and eco- logical reforms formally proposed by Campaign GM-but that is ir- relevant to the larger question implied." This larger question was "whether owners should really control the larger corporations." Prof. Griffin goes on to state that corporate giants are control- led, not by their owners the share- holders, but, instead, by pofes- sional managers. These managers, she adds, are more sensitive to the community and to social re- sponsibility that the average shareholder. True, the sharehold- ers of GM are diverse-school teachers, women inheritors, trust funds, churches, universities, etc. -and may not be socially con- scious, but is James Roche or Ed- win Cole? General Motors creates approximately 35 per cent of the air pollution in the United States. CONCERNING THE business aspects of Prof. Griffin's comn- ments, are the managers of GM really best for the business? Does GM maximize profits at the inter- section of its marginal cost nnd marginal revenue curves? Do these professional managers maintain, or even attain, a level of optimum efficiency? Consumer sovereignty is dying and GM is the mortician. The shareholders, although po- tentially not as informed as the managers, must express their de- sires with their votes. And if the managment is wrong, as Lam- paign GM contends, let the share- holders vote against the manage- ment. -Ira E. Hoffman, '73 May 21 Stanford To the Editor: AT DAWN ON Friday, April 24, a calculated attempt was made to burn to the ground the Center for Advanced Study in the Be- havorial Sciences at Stanford, California. Fires were set at four different sites; had they all taken hold, most of the Center would have disappeared, along with the lives of two college students asleep in a caretaker's cottage. G o o d fortune, timely discovery, and ex- pert fire-fighting prevented the worst. But the actuality was bad enough: to speak only of measur- able losses, ten studies were com- pletely burned - one-fifth of the total - with varying destruction to the work of as many Fellows. The worst losses were suffered by a distinguished Indian scholar. The Center is both a place and an idea. As a place, it sits on a hillside, overlooking the campus of Stanford Univetsity. It is built on Stanford land, but has no oth- er connection with Stanford or any other institution. As an idea, it has had a vital and enduring impact on the work of more than 700 scholars from the United States and places in all parts of the world who have had the op- portunity to spend a year there, 45 at a time, in independent study and. research. Established in 1954 with the aid of a Ford Foundation grant, the Center has offered Fel- lowships to social scientists and humanists - sociologists, psy- chologists, anthropologists, phi- losophers, political scientists, stu- dents of history, of literature and of language, to name just a few - who are concerned, each in his own way, with the behavior of man and society. The Center en- ables each scholar to pursue his chosen field of study, in the com- pany of colleagues, without con- straints of any kind. The Center, indeed, has come to epitomize the free search for truth in the study of man, the b e s t traditions of scholarly community, interchange and dialogue. We do not know whose hands set these fires; we do not know whether the Center was a singular target, or a symbolic one, or mere- ly a target of opportunity. What is clear is that the destruction at the Center took place in an at-, mosphere where physical violence, with cumulative effects, has in- creasingly become anaccepted in- strument of political and social action. The burned-out studies and charred remains of books and papers at the Center bear witness that the consequences of violence, are perverse, uncontrollable, and destructive of the life of the mind. -Richard B. Brandt philsophy dept. Stanford University and 32 others Letters to the Editor should be mailed to the Editorial Di- rector or delivered to Mary Rafferty in the Student Pub- lications business office in the Michigan Daily building. Let- ters should be typed, double- spaced and normally should not exceed 250 words. The Editorial Directors reserve the right to edit all letters submitted. CINEMA Kudos to experiments 4By DONALD KUBIT HERE IS AN interesting combination of movies now showing at the Campus Theater. The subject of the two films is similar, but the difference in approach and attitude is immense. Add to this the fact that the supposed "A" film receives top billing over the better experimental film and you have a perfect example of false advertising. Who's That Knocking At My Door? is a far cry from the laurels suggested by its promos as "a new classic." Its technique is as boring as a home movie and its storyline is worse. A young man (Harvey Keitel) innocently meets a young lady (Zina Bethune) in the setting of the Staten Island Ferry. Their rela- tionship blossoms into love and talk of marriage pervails until the young man discovers that his true love has been raped in her youth and is no longer pure. Although he is no rookie when it comes to bedroom gymnastics, he is a firm believer in the idea that the girl he settles down with must be of the stock from which Virgin Marys are made. Their relationship dissolves as quickly as it occurs when the girl realizes this, and they go their separate ways amid the hustle of lower-class life in New York. The makers of this movie have made a vain attempt at symbol- izing religion as the central issue in the final decision. However, except for preponderance of religious references in the last scene, this theme never really develops. The other movie, In, is a Canadian experimental film, that offers enough in diversity and involvement to stand by itself. Again the story deals with two people in love, but the circum- stances are more realistic and the style is more entertaining. The key figure is a boy named Tom-a gigolo who knows how to play the game, but still comes off as being sort of loveable-in a cor- rupted sense. After we see how he operates, the fickle hand of fate interludes and he falls for a girl he had planned on exploiting. To- gether they continue to rake the system until an accidental murder provides the girl with a reason for splitting the scene, thus forcing the young man to suffer the plight of those he has previously rendered. The golden rule may be "Do onto others," but in this case a strong point is made for keeping an eye on those you are in cahoots with. The film's photography is excellent. There is a juxtaposition of black and white and color film, but this is handled well, and the trans- fers are comfortable. Some of the dialogue is lost because of mumbling, but it works as an integral part of the film and not against it. The humor is perhaps a bit burlesque, but nevertheless funny in a subtle sort of way. Since the double feature has become a thing of the past, movie audiences have adjusted their patience quotas and now prefer to only see one film at a time. Two movies in one night, though better in terms of financial reasons, can be an awful strain to sit through. In is shown first and it may be wise to see it and then quietly sneak out of the theater before the second feature begins. But for those die-hards, who feel they have to get their money's worth-my sympathy. 1A ii, I, .4 Observatory extension: Cars or people? THE PROPOSED Observatory S t r e e t extension, w h i c h comes before City Council Monday night for final approval, is another example of the misguided pri- orities that plague Ann Arbor and all U.S. cities. The e x t e n s i o n of Observatory from Geddes Road to Forest to facilitate traffic movement to the hospital area will not only cut through one of the city's most pleasant residential neighborhoods, but will also cause a change in traffic pat- terns that could affect a far broader area. The disruptive effect that the extension will have on the Forest Court neighbor- hood is reason enough for the council to reject the extension. But neither this im- mediate consideration, nor the opposition to the extension expressed in a memoran- dum prepared by members of the city's planning department appear to have per- suaded a majority of the council's mem- bers. Few people, however, have considered the effects the extension will have both on the people who live near Observatory north of the Forest Court area, and on those who live to the south of the pro- nnvsc~ci extension in the Buri'ns Park neii'h- Eventually, the stretch of Observatory now on the hill would also have to be expanded to meet the increase in cars. And widening Observatory to four lanes would m a k e it necessary to eliminate parking, which would cause a great in- convenience for dormitory residents, or to destroy the trees and bring cars even closer. TRAFFIC RUNNING south on Observa- tory will run into Forest and proceed on to Hill Street. Many residents of the Burns Park neighborhood fear that some of this traffic will continue south onto residential streets instead of turning on- to Hill. They also fear that eventually the increase in traffic volume in the area might prompt the city to consider putting in a through route south from Hill to Stadium Boulevard. k And they are right. Any increase in traffic in the Burns Park area would be as disruptive to people's lives as the ex- tension itself is to those who live near Forest Court. Street improvements can provide only temporary relief for transportation prob- lems, and a never-ending series of stop- gap measures can provide no solution to b alancing teacups The ritual of 'making it'-American Style 'p A nadine colnodas." EVERY FORAY into Nightlife offers that golden opportunity to Meet-Someone- Have - A - Few-Drinks-an-Hope It-Goes- from-There we have all either experienced, read about or seen in the movies. Just the other night a friend and I went to one of Ann Arbor's night spots where the golden opportunity manifested itself for four patrons. About 10 p.m. two women and two men entered the club separately and somehow found each other - an event that most likely was occurring at a thousand bars across the country. All four eventually landed three seats away from where my friend and I were sitting and whether we liked it or not, we were within hearing distance of their anx- ious conversation and within viewing dis- tance of subtle efforts both at the table and on the dance floor. FURTHER RITES. The subject of thirst brings up the subject of quenching it - not with water, of course, but with a beer or some other appropriate drink. And after the waitress takes the order, the rites begin. That night they included dancing and as soon as the waitress did her part, the foursome bounced onto the floor to begin. PHASE III: THE GOOD TIME. Danc- ing, especially if the music is fast, is a nice anonymous, aloof way to have The Good Time. And the four patrons did their part gloriously, jiggling as best they could to the beat of the music, smiling and laugh- ing when necessary. As the music continued and as each partner felt more at ease with the other, their jiggling increased to include strains of The Twist, The Pony, a little Rumba This phase - which the foursome hand- led quite nicely - takes very little finesse. It merely involves suggesting "Boy, I sure am thirsty after that dancing - you know, you're really good - I think I'll have an- other drink. How about it?" And accosting the nearest waitress to give the order. - Meanwhile, of course, the constant stream of conversation is going on about how good the band is, how many brothers and sisters do you have? Do you like Ann Arbor? Do you come here often? PHASE V: FIRST ATTEMPTS AT THE MOVE. It is now nearing midnight and the time to determine just how well and how far things are going. Whether or not it must always be like this, The Move cur-. rently is, in American society, most often made by the male. And the other night it was done pretty much along ccepntepd lines. the only change same time made her position clear: She was not interested in Moving just then. PHASE VI: THE FILIBUSTER. If the actual, physical Move fails, one can always resort to verbal suggestions like, "Well, why don't we all go to my place." Or if either party is visiting, "Say, do you know of a good spot we could go to after this?" Phase VI was executed that night, not too long after the First Attempt failed. But the suggestion was nipped in the bud by squeals from the women about fatigue, inebriation, having to get up-early and "I'm only a junior" (at what we couldn't decipher). Then the women abruptly got up from the table and scurried out of the club. PHASE VII. THE DENOUEMENT. Well, you can't always get what you want. 4