ustxtxb_obs_1994_06_03_50_00016-00000_000.pdf

need to live here for two months,. that would really make a difference. When I went to El Paso, I said, I need to be here for two months to stop the dump. Are you considering that? I thought of it but I’ve got so much to do at home. You know, .we [Australia] export uranium to eight countries abroad. It’s everywhere and I can’t do the whole thing. Several doctors came up last night, especially a young one who said he’s going to contact people in El Paso…Well, if the doctor goes up there and talks to the hospital doctors, and then goes to the editorial boards of the newspaper and television stations, and a big public meeting is organized…here’s a start. And then he spends some time in Sierra Blanca and really talks to the people, as a physician, you know. That’s the way to do it. It’s the only way… The root of this, as you suggest, is transnational or multinational nuclear power, when you talk about the international Mafia. You’re a physician, not an economist. So how do you address Well, it’s hard to, because nuclear power does not make money. But in the Department of Energy, they’ve always termed nuclear power the hard-energy pathway, and solar and wind, which is now absolutely up to the mark and state of the art, as the softenergy pathway, and there’s a sexual connotation in that. And I think it’s about power and control. So you come back to think, what the hell do they think they’re up to? I think they’re so over their heads in it, like most men, they don’t want to admit they’ve been wrong. And they don’t want to back down, it has to do with pride, power and control, and I can’t think what else. And it’s now almost totally out of hand. And if North Korea gets a bomb, Japan will be well tempted to build bombs and they can build bombs in a couple of weeks, they’ve got the technology and they’ve got the plutonium. So we’re getting into an area of extraordinary instability in the world, nuclear instability in the world. And only if this country takes itself seriously and disarms, and disarms the Russian bombsI mean, they’re in an incredible situation now. They can do it both. They can say to Japan, “no,” they can say to North Korea, “no,” and they can in fact become the world’s nuclear policemen. But only if they behave in a responsible fashion themselves. Otherwise they don’t have a moral leg to stand on. But because the Cold War is over, they can do that. It’s an incredible opportunity, which should be presented to Clinton and to Hazel O’Leary. You said last night that the nuclear industry takes advantage of the latency period in cancer to hide the human risks of cancer. Well, it’s been fortunate for them that it takes so long for cancer to develop. So it’s a cryptogenic danger. And from the Hiroshima-Nagasaki data, and the medical data, we know it takes five to 10 years postirradiation for leukemia to develop. Sometimes it’s a little earlier. But there is a latent period. And for solid cancers it’s generally five to six to seven years post-irradiation, although there is some evidence lately that solid cancers appear a little earlier than that. That’s the first thing. The second is that no cancer identifies its origin, or etiology, so therefore, the only way to determine whether there is an increased incidence due to an accident like Three Mile Island, are clusters of cancers and leukemia around power plants and they need to be old for the cancers to have had time to develop the only way to do that is to take the exposed population and compare them to an unexposed population, which is a proper epidemiological study. Now, the NRC [Nu-, clear Regulatory Commission] doesn’t fund epidemiological studies and I suggest that they should. Absolutely. And every population around every reactor should be followed epidemiologically. You mentioned that Hazel O’Leary’s office is sitting on a lot of evidence about Harrisburg, Three Mile Island. Do you know what kind of data? Well, it’s what I implied last night. One: from the data that was collected by lay people, after the accident, there were many instances of people who developed I’d say, sub-acute radiation illness, where they got erythema, reddening of their skin, bleeding around the gums, their hair fell out, and they had vomiting and diarrhea, which indicates really quite high levels of radiation exposure. There were a number of patients who had that syndrome, and so we know that a lot of radiation got out. Two: that there is no evidence or data that I can find of soil-testing to see if there are long-lived isotopes in the soil around that area and downwind where the plumes blew. They did actually track the plumes; one of them blew over Boston. And so there were radiation monitors distant from the plant, which measured gamma radiation. And so they knew where the plume went in some cases. Three: that the radiation monitors were not working for 10 days during the accident. So any estimates are only guesstimates of how much got out. Four: They did the estimates before they realized that 70 percent of the fuel melted down. So you would have to, by extrapolation, say that their estimates are totally wrong. And five: I would absolutely say that it’s a cover-up, because they’re paying out huge amounts of compensation to people who have died from diseases unrelated to radiation. I believe it’s $40 million. This is Texas today. A state full of Sunbelt boosters, strident anti-unionists, oil and gas companies, nuclear weapons and power plants, political hucksters, underpaid workers and toxic wastes, to mention a few. igf v. Izz ii i i f tz a4 ,,.10!: .74 \\ t li . ‘ AF ‘kV Vo, tr : . ‘ BUT rilli. DO NOT i DESPAIR! r im ,b THE TEXAS 1/IIP server . TO SUBSCRIBE* Name Address City State Zip $32 enclosed for a one-year subscription. Bill me for $32. 307 West 7th, Austin, TX 78701 16 JUNE 3, 1994 ..,