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Date:         Tue, 8 Sep 1992 01:10:20 -0500
From:         "VALENTINE M. SMITH" <CDELL@UMKCVAX1.BITNET>
Subject:      On Russia and nuclear safety, Bosnia and fall's coming, (#768)
Comments: To: val-l@ucf1vm.BITNET, jwales@iubvm.BITNET, olsenj@stolaf.edu,
              shlyakhter@huhepl.harvard.edu, kousen@rayleigh.res.utc.com,
              christic@igc.org, blank@physics.ucla.edu,
              76701.103@compuserve.com, anthlal@umnacvx.BITNET

I've been slogging along with my messed-up sinuses, and feeling
pretty crummy, so with the family off doing the local Renaissance
Fair, I slept, getting some rest. But two issues from this past
week's materials strike me to comment.

On Russia and nuclear safety-

RFE/RL reported today that the LA Times had had a series of articles
by John-Thor Dahlberg on the fragilty of Russian nuclear safety, the
"lethal legacy of official high-handedness, and a continued penchant
for secrecy over nuclear waste ..." and I'm thinking, this guy could
just as easily be describing the American nuclear power situation. It
would seem that no nation that has nuclear waste is dealing with it
very openly - when was the last time any of you heard what France was
doing with their waste? This is a country where roughly 70% of ALL
electrical power comes nuclear fission plants.

Russia has problems with Chelyabinsk, Chernobyl and the Kara Sea,
while we struggle with Fernald (?), Hanford, and Rocky Flats, not to
mention several nuclear power plants approaching age thirty. These
are serious problems for both nations, and we're not talking about a
problem diminishing over time.

Yet, in a world growing increasingly balkanized, no one wants to
really discuss, or produce ideas that solve, the problem of nuclear
waste. I do not know a number for tonnage per year worldwide, but it
isn't being dealt with, and the amounts in "temporary storage" just
keeps growing, in the XSU, in France, in Great Britain, in India, in
South America, and all over North America. We still have the waste
from the two bombs dropped on Japan in storage in New Jersey - that's
the beginning of the problem, 47 long years ago.

So, I think a worldwide "solution" has to be genuinely arrived at.
The onus should be no more on the Russians than the originators of
this always-expanding mess to solve the problem.

My other comment revolves around something I rather caually wrote a
few days ago, thinking there was more time.

On Bosnia, and the coming of fall-

It got cold in Sarajevo a few days ago. There is no water or
elctricity there, and damned little food with the UN relief flights
on hold, and Karadzic now under a Vance-Owens "ultimatum" to allow UN
supervision of Serb heavy guns around four Bosnian cities by 12
September. However, no one knows what will occur if that deadline
isn't met, so far all the bystanders seem incapable of even holding
open an airport against the irregulars.

The other day, I watched on cable an account of the Nuremburg trial
of 1945-46. Those men were tried for acts that are some of what is
happening in Bosnia today - acts against humanity, mass murder,
waging aggressive war. 11 were executed. I think a few heads should
roll for the death of Bosnia. I'm convinced, at least at present,
that the division of Bosnia between Croatia and Serbia will occur,
and that the UN will do nothing. I'm convinced that such a course is
politically and economically sound, and morally reprehensible. Every
nation of the UN ought to be outraged, what is happening in
ex-Yugoslavia could well happen elsewhere, as is occurring in Somalia
and Mozambique as I write.

Yet, negotiations without results (because no side involved is
committed to results), the "big powers" dither and allow men of
dubious character wage aggressive war that saw such war on a larger
scale only a half-century ago. Are our memories as short as it seems?

It would seem that both of these problems are solvable. Why aren't
the best minds on this planet trying to solve them? Why won't the
participants see that war is economically ruinous as a policy? How
many will perish in Sarajevo to prove the point that all the sides
are being jerks currently?

I agree that no solution comes easily, and I know both these problems
are toughies. But, to say they aren't solvable, and stand on the
sidelines wringing our hands seems morally unconscionable. We all
have a stake in solving both the difficulties in Bosnia, and the
nuclear waste problem all over the world, in addition to the problems
like are in Somalia today. No person on this planet should be
starving to death, or being killed by mortar fire on a city street,
or dying young because of radiation exposure - would you not agree? I
have no magic answer, but doing nothing doesn't appear to be a very
good solution either. VMS
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