Page 4-Tuesday, August 1, 1978-The Michigan Daily
michigan DAILY
Eighty-eight Years of Editorial Freedom
420 Maynard St., Ann Arbor, M. 48109
Vol. LXXXVIII, No. 55-S News Phone: 764-0552
Tuesday, August 1, 1978
Edited and managed by students
at the University of Michigan
Hands off sources
T HE FIRST Amendment used to assure a
free press.
In recent months, though, both the U.S.
Supreme Court and the Soviet government have
joined in the assault on the press. First, the Stan-
ford ruling determined that police may conduct a
general search of newspaper offices with nothing
more than a search warrant. Then the Soviet
courts convicted two American journalists of
libel for printing quotes from the families of
dissidents Anatoly Scharansky and Aleksandr
Ginzburg.
Now, New York Times investigative reporter
Myron Farber is threatened with a jail sentence
unless he agrees to relinquish all his notes per-
taining to the case of a Mario Jascalevich, a
doctor who is being tried for the murder of 13
patients.
In 1975, Farber began an investigation of 13
mysterious deaths at Riverside Hospital in New
Jerser in 1965-66. Farber wrote a series of ar-
ticles providing evidence that the deaths were
actually murders committed by a person he
identified only as "Dr. X". These stories led to
the indictment of Jascalevich on 13 counts of
murder.
Jascalevich claims he needs Farber's notes for
his defense, although he can not point to any
specific, vital information in the reporter's
records. The Superior Court ruling in favor of
Jascalevich grants license to anyone who,
behind the guise of justice, launches a fishing
expedition through reporters' or newspapers'
records.
Faber claims, and rightly so, that the police
and Jascalevich have just as much access to the
undisclosed sources he used to write his articles.
Farber also asserts that if he were to reveal his
records and sources to the court, news people,
and therefore the entire country, would no longer
be privy to anonymous sources.
The court's ruling is just one more action taken
by the judiciary which limits the public's right
to information.
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By Rasa Gustaitis
Amid world-wide controversy
about nuclear waste disposal, an
even tougher problem has
arisen: how to dispose of a used-
up nuclear power plant which will
be too hot to dismantle for
decades without exhorbitant ex-
penses and hazards.
The 100-megawatt reactor in
Niederaichbach, Germany, was
closed in 1974 because of defects.
Since then it has been under 24-
hour guard because, despite im-
mediate removal of the uraninum
that fueled it, the entire in-
stallation is permeated by radio-
activity.
AUTHORITIES PLAN to main-
tain it under guard for at least 25
years, at a cost of 150,000 marks
($75,000) annually.
Similar radioactive fortresses
are likely to proliferate in Europe
and North America as nuclear
plants reach the end of their life
span, estimated at 30 years.
In Western Europe, about 16
plants are likely to proliferate in
Europe and North America as
nuclear plants reach the end of
their life span, estimated at 30
years.
In Western Europe, about 16
plants are expected to be per-
manently put out of action by
1990. In the United States, 60 to 70
small-scale installations, most of
them experimental and prototype
plants, have been decom-
missioned so far. But 71 commer--
cial plants, mostly of 1,200
megawatts, are now in operation
and eventually will have to be put
away, according to Carl Gold-
stein, assistant vice president of
the Atomic Industrial Forum. It
involves encasing the entire plant
in cement for a hundred years
and rigging it with intrusion
alarms.
OR THE PLANT could be
guarded around the clock for a
century, then dismantled, he
said. The term for this alter-
native is "mothballing."
"Utility companies don't think
this would be a terrific burden,"
Goldstein said. Some, he said,
are planning to put money away
for decommissioning costs.
Goldstein estimated that such
costs for a large single reactor
would run $30 to $40 million,
about 6 or 7 per cent of the plant's
cost. But entombment costs of
one reactor, at Oyster Creek,
N.J., has been estimated by in-
dustry sources at half the con-
struction costs.
IMMEDIATE dismantling, if
possible without undue hazards to
workers and people in the area, -
would run much higher.
The only power plant to have
been dismantled fully in the
United States so far is at Elk
River, Minn., and the cost ex-
ceeded construction. The 30-
megawatt demonstration
facility, only one-fourth the size
e itself
S commercial reactors now
coming into use, was passed to
Dairylaid Power Cooperative by
the Atomic Energy Commission
(AEC). It was shut down by order
of the state's pollution control
agency because it leaked.
The AEC planned to entomb the
installation, but the cooperative,
armed with a contract that
promised the AEC would
restore the Site to original con-
dition when the plant's usefulness
was over, insisted on disman-
tling.
TO AVOID CONTAMINATION
by radioactive dust, the facility
was first encased in concrete,
then flooded. From 1972 to 1973
divers with acetylene torches
took apart the equipment under-
water.
The cost of the job, $6.5 million,
suggests that dismantling a 1,200-
megawatt plant would require
$260 million. But with inflation
continuing, it could go much
higher.
The alternative would appear
to leave the mammoth power
plant ruins standing, to be dealt
with by future generations.
In Germany, officials have
looked to salt caves as possible
future power plant disposal sites.
But local authorities have begun-
to resist radioactive dumps.
Rasa' Gustaitis is an
associate editor of the Pacific
News .Service.
LETTERS TO THE DAILY:
Kennedy better choice in '80
To The Daily:
Since around the time of the
New Hampshire Primary in 1976,
I was a supporter of Mr. Carter
for President. He seemed to me
and to many others as someone
whou could unify the country in
the implementation of new
programs that would for once
benefit those in need instead of,
as is usual, in catering to the
"needs" of the very wealthy few.
But as time goes on (two years
already) and such programs as
wonders whether Carter lives up
to the expectations many of us
had of him. As stime goes on he
resembles more and more a
complacent Republican than a
progressive Democrat.
Perhaps Senator Edward Ken-
nedy would be a better choice in
1980.
-Arthur Arroyo
Editorials which appear without a byline
represent a consensus opinion of the Daily's
editorial board. All other editorials, as well as
cartoons, are the opinions of the individuals
who submit them.