Re: "Political wranglings over WIPP"

[Steven Dapra <sjd@swcp.com>]

October 20



	I have read and re-read the review of Chuck McCutcheon's book in Nuclear

News (NN).  I have also lived in New Mexico for about 20 years (most of

them in Albuquerque), and have watched the disputes swirling around WIPP.

Sometimes I watched closely, sometimes from a distance.  I have not read

McCutcheon's book.



	According to the NN reviewer, "The book empirically proves that public

opposition to a nuclear repository stems from lack of trust toward the

government and the perceived risk."



	If McCutcheon's book proves anything it proves that a small,

well-organized, tenacious, and noisy band of fanatics can spend over 20

years trying to derail a useful, important, and enormously expensive

Federal project.  I don't have any polls on WIPP handy, but would guess

that "the public" - the general mass of New Mexico residents - never cared

much either way about WIPP.  The "public opposition" invoked by the

reviewer came from that small band of anti-nuclear fanatics who also happen

to occupy the left-hand end of the political spectrum.  Their location on

the spectrum explains their entire reason for opposing WIPP.



	Among other things, the anti-WIPP elements are anti-defense.  WIPP's

purpose was to store wastes from bomb production.  If the anti-WIPPers

could have derailed WIPP there would have been no place to store bomb

production wastes and if there were no place to store these wastes sooner

or later bomb production would have to be shut down.



	In 1991 a leading anti-WIPP partisan wrote an article for a local weekly

tabloid wherein he claimed that 70 percent of the waste slated for WIPP

'didn't exist yet.'  He went on to write:  "That 70 percent is waste that

will be generated when DOE resumes the production of nuclear bombs.

Apparently, even with their present ability to destroy the human race

20,000 times over, and the collapse of the Cold War, DOE still does not

feel safe.  So the opening of WIPP would not solve the nuclear waste

problem, because it will act as a green light for the Pentagon to resume

nuclear weapons production on a major scale, at a time that we desperately

need economic re-building, not more weapons of destruction."



	Let's overlook the veracity of the 70 percent claim, and the 20,000 times

over claim.  Isn't it perfectly obvious that this piece of opposition to

WIPP is coming from someone who is motivated by politics, and not by any

real or even alleged business about "trust toward the government," or by

any interests in "perceived risk"?



	Trust and risk are only a stalking horse that a bunch of left wing

extremists are hiding behind to advance - in this case - their anti-defense

agenda.  



Steven Dapra

sjd@swcp.com













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