Re: A Real Solution

[Maury Siskel <maury@webtexas.com>]

For Tom Savin, Mike Ford, Douglas Minnema, et al:

We are not held hostage by OPEC any more than by our own government and,
collectively, by our own individual actions. I submit that we have
allowed EPA to regulate old refineries out of business and to preclude
construction of new ones; we have allowed the President and the Congress
to stop offshore exploration (even while violating previously sold
drilling leases); we have allowed the President and the Congress to rule
vast "public" parts of the nation out of bounds to those able to compete
with OPEC and with non-OPEC producers cooperating with the revived
cartel.

Collectively we continue to hold ourselves hostage to zealots who play
on our fears to such a degree that additional nuclear power construction
is rendered silly by the time and cost required to surmount these absurd
fears.  Absurd? yes ... real? you betcha'! In this great land of
supposed freedom, you can no longer yell: "fire" in a crowded theater.
But we allow the growth of a whole industry to earn their livings by
yelling: "nuclear disaster" in a crowded nation.

The only 'nuclear' that I've worked with was with the aircrews who could
deliver weapons during the Cold War and now using the power permitted at
long last from Glen Rose, Texas in spite of the zealots. I only hope all
of you folks along with others of my ilk  :-)  will continue writing
letters (and voting) to sources of distorted "news" and to members of
Congress. Ultimately, fear will outrun greed anytime - when it finally
costs us dearly enough for long enough, we will wake up in the cold
sweat of fear to realize how far we have strayed from common sense
politics and empirical data.. I hope the awakening will occur before it
is too late.

My thanks to all of you in this industry who are working so hard to wind
up the alarm clock.
Sincerely,
Maury Siskel    maury@webtexas.com

************************************************************************
The RADSAFE Frequently Asked Questions list, archives and subscription
information can be accessed at http://www.ehs.uiuc.edu/~rad/radsafe.html