Best nuclear survival tactic? Run for office

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Full-scale nuclear war certainly ranks high on my list of must-avoid situations. It is a prospect so horrifying that it may be preferable not to survive such a holocaust than face the devastation to follow.

Hard as it is to believe, however, there actually is a fate even worse, thanks to the farsighted designs of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). It is what might be called a scenario of "worst-case" proportions, and it is this: To survive a nuclear attack only to discover that your fellow survivees consist of an inordinate number of elected public officials and gov -ernment bureaucrats.

This nuclear nightmare may become reality, if the Reagan administration accepts the FEMA's proposal to construct 600 bomb shelters for local officials between 1988 and 1992. The idea behind this "Save the Politicians" campaign, which will cost $1.5 billion, is to ensure that order is quickly restored during what the FEMA calls the "trans-attack" period, and a smooth transition made to "post-attack government and society."

The architects of this plan seem unfazed by the fact that these sheltered officials will represent a "post-attack" constituency that resembles something closer to PostToasties than registered voters.

Still, they hope to get the day after off to a patriotic start, and what better way to do that than by making sure that private property stays private. That's why the bomb 12 SOCIALIST ACTION JUNI shelters will also house all the land records, so that survivors can "retain and demonstrate ownership" of property.

Of course, restoring "post-attack" inequality will be a time-consuming drain on a budget-strapped government, so the FEMA forewarns the public that when the bombs drop-you're on your own. This is what the FEMA likes to refer to as a "self-help" program. In other words, don't expect a free ride just because life as we know it has ceased to exist.

That's an idea that should appeal to Ronald Reagan, for whom the extent of philosophical wisdom doesn't go beyond the idea that clean living and hard work always pay off.

Here we have the make-believe ideology of the conservative movement carried to its absurd end. Just pull yourself up by your bootstraps, brush off that radioactive dust, and go out and conquer the world and/or start a small business.

Do you think Horatio Alger would have allowed something as petty as total nuclear devastation to get in the way of personal ambition? This is America, after all, where anyone can become president—an assertion the present occupant of the White House provides unfortu -nate confirmation of.

Still, the folks at the FEMA are not purists. They do plan to distribute what may become standard to every "post-attack" household—low-cost radiation detectors. For starters, 3.8 million of these will be handed out.

The FEMA also plans to circulate "instructional materials" for use by families, churches, and schools. What kind of instruction will be provided is not explained, but in line with the "self-help" philosophy perhaps we can expect books and pamphlets on such topics as "Radiated Real Estate?: How to Avoid a Financial Meltdown;" or "I'm OK, You're Thermo -nuclear."

Back in the 1950s they used to tell us to "duck and cover" in the event of a nuclear attack. The 1980s version of this advice apparently has a different twist: The politicians will be the ones running for cover, while the rest of us act like sitting ducks in an atomic shooting gallery.

All this could be left at the level of a ridiculous joke, if not for the fact that the Reagan administration and its cronies at the FEMA are dead serious. And if you don't believe them, they've got a little arsenal of nuclear warheads that provide 30,000 reminders that they're not kidding around.

Now, if we could just convince them to enter those shelters a little early, and take all those property records with them. We'll let them know when it is safe to come out.—MARK HARRIS

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(continued from page 1: “Rail workers' strike inspires far-reaching labor solidarity”) times greater than normal had been detected. France feared the truth would spur greater support for the anti-nuclear movement, as unnamed officials told the Monitor.

Those in the know, of course, know better than to believe that a disaster like Chernobyl can't happen here. "The Russians didn't build that plant with an eye toward having it blow up," said Owen Thero, president of Quality Technology Co., a Lebo, Kan., firm that serves as a consultant to the nuclear industry. "It was a management failure and we've got them here in the U.S., too."

The Western media for two weeks made much of the fact that the Chernobyl facility, according to U.S. intelligence sources, lacked a containment dome required of U.S. commercial reactors.

However, The New York Times belatedly reported on May 19 that the Chernobyl plant did have a containment structure. The plant "had more safety features and was closer to American reactor designs than Western experts had assumed," the Times noted.

Not only that, two nuclear safety critics, Robert Pollard, who has served on the staff of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and Daniel Ford, former executive director of the Union for Concerned Scientists, charge that the containment structure at CAUTION:

RADIATION HAZARD Peter Blakely Chernobyl "bears a striking resemblance to the defective pressure-suppression design used by General Electric."

In 1972 the top safety adviser at the Atomic Energy Commission had recom -mended that General Electric be forced to stop building nuclear plants with a "plainly defective safety shield."

However, as the suppressed documents show, Joseph H. Hendrie, an AEC safety adviser who later became chairman of the Nue rear melation becase it posed throw into question the continued operation of licensed plants" and "could well be the end of nuclear power."

Ford said suppressed government documents made public under the Freedom of Information Act reveal that 39 of the 100 U.S. nuclear plants have containment structures that could leak or rupture even in relatively minor accidents.

And in the event of a meltdown, Ford warned, there is no "magic shield" at any U.S. plant that could contain such a disaster.

Moreover, there are five aging, government-run nuclear plants, which are used for the current nuclear weapons build -up, that lack any containment buildings.

One of these plants is a graphitemoderated reactor run by the Department of Energy in Hanford, Wash. A former tech -nician at the Hanford plant, Larry Caldwell, told The Washington Post that "all the problems that plagued the Russians could THE RUSSIANS HAD A NUCLEAR POWER PLANT MELTDOWN 17-' CIA NEWS NUCLEAR POWER potentially affect this one. They've blown fuel elements out of the reactor tubes. Two years ago, they...spilled 400,000 gallons of radioactive water."

The other four reactors are at the Savannah River complex near Aiken, S.C. It too has been plagued with spills, leaks, and other accidents.

And things are getting worse. The Critical Mass Energy Project, a Ralph Nader group, recently released a study that demonstrates a trend toward increasing problems at U.S. plants. Reported safety incidents at nuclear plants rose from 2310 in 1979 to 5060 in 1983.

In fact, 1985 was the worst year for safety since the Three Mile Island disaster in 1979, according to Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.). Markey warns that "the list of close calls strongly suggests that a major U.S. nuclear accident could be lurking around the corner."

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission admits that commercial reactors in the United States suffered from a host of safety problems last year, including broken emergency equipment, inadequately trained operators, badly designed or poorly main -tained machinery, insufficient attention to detail, and poor management.

One incident last year involved a nuclear power plant in Ohio. It suffered a series of operator errors and equipment malfunctions that led, as a senior atomic safety adviser described it, to "40 minutes of chaos and fast-approaching disaster" before the reactor was brought under control.

Another incident involved the Rancho Seco reactor near Sacramento, Calif., which went through a severe temperature gyration last December, dumping hundreds of gallons of radioactive water inside the plant. These are but two among a number of serious safety incidents in the past year.

But it is not only the threat of a nuclear accident that poses risks. There is danger from the mining and processing of uranium necessary for nuclear production, which imperils workers employed in this industry and threatens the environment by releases •THE RADIO ACTIVE CLOUD IS DRIFTING TOWARD YOU.

CIA NEWS CLOSE ENOUGH FOR YOU TO HATE THE RUSSIANS NOT CLOSE ENOUGH FOR YOU TO...

CIA NEWS of radioactive gases.

And there is the eternal problem of what to do with nuclear wastes, some of which must be kept isolated from all living things for hundreds of thousands of years. There is, in fact, no existing technology for its sate disposal.

Yet nuclear power continues to proliferate. Cuba, for example, is now constructing two nuclear plants. President Fidel Castro justified this project at the First National Forum on Energy in December 1984, when he said that nuclear contamination and accidents were problems limited to capitalist societies "seeking to cut corners and costs."

Unfortunately, that is not true. Nuclear technology is unsafe wherever it exists.

Still, Castro is right in one respect-nuclear power in capitalist societies serves to generate not just power but profit-and profit conflicts with safety. Carl Walske, head of the Atomic Industrial Forum, put it bluntly: "If you buy two cents worth of safety for a dollar, that doesn't make much sense."

Rep. Markey, too, pointed out in Congress that the NRC considers modifi -cations in existing reactors more on the basis of how much a change will cost than how much it will improve safety.

When it comes to its liability in the event of an accident, however, the nuclear industry displays a much keener sensitivity to the potential for disaster. Industry lobbyists are now pressuring Congress to defeat a bill that would increase liability from the present $650 million limit to $8.2 billion.

Nuclear power is a threat that has been foisted upon the world first by Washington and the U.S. nuclear industry, and second by the short-sighted policies of the Soviet bureaucracy.

The disaster at Chernobyl confirms again the urgency of organizing a protest movement of international scope that can compel the promoters of nuclear power to take the one step that will ensure no more disasters: Shut down all nuclear plants!

ORGANIZE AGAINST NUCLEAR POWER

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