Page 8 RAIN May 1981 Access cont. Canadian Renewable Energy News, monthly, $14.00/yr. from: CREN Publishing Lt4. P.O. Box 4869, Station E Ottawa, Ontario KlS 5Jl CANADA Each month, hundreds of periodicals from around the world land in the Rainhouse mailbasket. In order to be well informed but not overwhelmed, we must plow through the basket selectively, and those few publications w~ich ~re unusually thorough or-thol\ghtprovoking always get plucked out well'a.head of the rest. The Canadian Renewable Energy News is one of these few. Its very readable articles, columns, and reviews provide an excellent means of keeping up with technical and political developments in solar, wind, hydro, biomass, and conservation, both in Canada and'the U.S. The Canadian focus can be a real advantage to U.S. readers, both in reminding them of innovative projects going on north of the border and in providing con.:. trasts and comparisons between methods of handling important issues in the two coun- - ------------- NUKES - --~------- - - --- ---- ----- Secret Fallout: Low-Level Radiation from Hiroshima to Three Mile Island, by Ernest Sternglass, 1981, 306 pp., $5.95 from: McGraw-Hill 1221 Avenue of the Americas New York, NY10020 "The Silent Toll: Uncovering the Deadly Consequences of Three Mile Island," by Thomas Pawlick, Harro,wsmith No. 28 (June 1980), $2.00 from: Harrowsmith • Camden East Ontario KOK lJ0 CANADA Dr. Ernest Sternglass, professor of radiation physics at the University of Pittsburgh, be~ gan his scientific career in the late 1940s, a protege of Albert Einstein. As he told Har:- rowsmith associate editor Thomas Pawlick last year, he was imbued in those days with the promise of the peaceful atom. "There wasn't a decent person . .. , scientist or engineer, who wasn't looking forward to the great glory of the atomic age when eJectricity would be too cheap to meter and we would no longer have air pollution. ... It just never occurred to me that anyone might build a reactor that would leak. ... 11 All that changed for Sternglass when he tries, like performance standards for renewable energy products; grassroots/industry conflict and cooperation; and government incentives or disincentives to development of renewables. Unfortunately, the biggest barrier facing Canadians (as summarized by CREN columnist Jeff Passmore) is one we all instantly recognize: "solar is still not taken seriously in this country-largely because energy is not taken seriously.... Canadians still use the wall plug pretty much at random. And Ottawa woqld like to keep it that way." -JF 1980 Montana.Renewable Energy Almanac, by Nancy McLane, 1980, 214 pp., and The Montana Renewable Energy Handbook, by Jan Konigsberg, 1980, 144 pp., both free from: Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation 32 S. Ewing Helena, MT 59601 This is the kind of thing that every state should be doing. Montana Energy Almanac is a good summary of the energy issues that began to study statistical evidence of health damage resulting from low-level radiation. Beginning with the fallout from atomic bomb testing, he later moved on to the effects of nuclear reactor emissions. Again and again, his research uncovered the same ugly story: increases in spontaneous abortion, stillbirth, infant death, birth defects, leukemia, respiratory problems and thyroid disor- ·ders following in the path of nuclear contamination. An ardent supporter of the nuclear industry now found himself transformed into one of its most vocal and effective critics. The story of Ernest Sternglass over the past two decades has been one of continuous statistical warfare: he flings his numbers at the nuclearestablishment which, in turn, flings them back ·with wholly different sets of conclusions attached. George Wald, Nobel Laureate in Physiology and Medicine, comments in his introduction to Secret Fallout that Sternglass has an "exuberantway" with . statistics which has sometimes drawn criticism, evert from fellow scientists who otherwise supp~rt him on nuclear issues. Be that as it may, the clear message, both of Secret Fallout and·of Pawlick's excellent Harrowsmith article on Three Mile Island, is that the government and nuclear industry have long had a serious interest in silencing or discrediting him. Because Sternglass sees low-level radiation as a threat to the body's immune response system, his opponents' attitude toward information provides him with a disturbing analogy: "you could say that freedom of information is society's immune response mechanism against dangerous social o =~MER \ OPEAA8SE OUT.51DE VEN"T ~ Oft ~ ''"""' i.= =~OR ~ INSU1,ATED ROOF ENE~G'I EFFICIENT GREENMOU5E Landscape De~ign I HOU!IE. trends [and] the irresponsible use of atomic power is in some ways like a cancer cell in society. If you cover up and suppress the news of its presence, the body won't respond to control the cancer until it's too late. 11 Secret Fallout is important, both as the story of a courageous figure in the anti-nuclear struggle and as a historical record of two decades of debate over the role of the atom. Unfortunately, the author sometimes gets bogged down in his statistical analyses when the real drama lies in the fight for the free flow of information. That drama is better captured in Pawlick's Harrowsmith article, which also summarizes what Sternglass has to say about the long-term impacts of the Three Mile Island accident and provides one of the best layperson's analyses I've seen on the controversy surrounding low-level radia-· tion. Both Sternglass and Pawlick are well worth reading; if you lack either time or money, opt for Pawlick. - JF The People of Three Mile Island, interviews and photographs by Robert Del Tredici, 1980, 127 pp., $7.95 from: Sierra Club Books 530 Bush Street San Francisco, CA 94108 One week after the accident, Claii:,Hoover, whose farm is near the Three Mfle Island plant, saw his dairy cattle begin to abort and die. In all, he lost seven cows and thirteen calves. A few months later, local resident Jane Lee
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