Letters to LR (June 1980)

Bouquets...

The February issue of The Libertarian Review is one of the best yet. Roy A. Childs’s article on “The Iranian Drama” is the most incisive analysis of the Iranian situation that I have yet seen. In it he has clearly shown an enormous depth of understanding of the situation and communicated it to his readers. I applaud him on his outstanding writing.

The rest of the magazine contains the same high quality. It is the only libertarian publication that I now read cover to cover.

Keep up your good work.

PORTER DAVIS Vice President Wm. E. Davis & Sons, Inc. Oklahoma City, OK

I applaud your excellent, factual, and most stirring article on “our” friend the Shah and the tragic events in the ever-contin-uous “Iranian Drama.” It was a grim and totally accurate reminder of the ugly reality that exists beneath the sham of patriotic rhetoric along with economic and military threats. My only regret is that not enough people, let alone Carter himself, will ever lay eyes on your words, much less accept them. Can you imagine any of the gang at the White House reading your piece? (But of course they know it already and could never admit it!)

And here I am, in “Small-Town,” U.S.A., where only a mere handful see the Iranian/U.S. dilemma as we do. Most Americans would deny the truth, and condemn your article, but that’s probably because that truth ter-rifies them. So it’s the old story: the people who should read LR won’t, and those who do, don’t always need to. As one of those who has known about the Shah and our country’s involvement with him etc.... I feel I still needed to read it, see it in black and white with photos! I thank you. And I thank your efficient and thoughtful production manager who provided me with a copy of this fine issue. Ironically, the day I read your saga of the Shah, this “thought” came over the news wire: “A thought for the day: Poet Robert Burns said: ‘Man’s inhumanity to man makes countless thousands mourn.”

IAN FRANCKENSTEIN Cottage Grove, OR

And brickbats

I’VE had it with your uncritical, trendy leftism. Revisionism is fine, but your recurring pie-in-the-sky statements implying that the poor Russians have been forced into their aggressions by a black-hearted, imperialist, war-mongering U.S. just make me laugh out loud. I can just see them now: “Ve only vant peace-ski, comrades... and, while you’re at it, Lithuania, Lat-via, Estonia, Finland, Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, etc., etc.”

Having directly experienced the heel of the U.S. military (and U.S. militarism) for 21 months, 29 days, eight hours and some odd minutes, I am hardly its friend or apologist. But afterwards, as a free man, I got to see the East German Kameraden goose-stepping the guard out to this grotesquely-misnamed “Denk-mal an die Opfer des Fascis-mus und Militarismus” in Berlin. I have to laugh when I reflect that you think those militarists are any different to, or better than, our native variety. You have quite a lesson in front of you.

FRANKLIN SANDERS Memphis, TN

The trucking war

Thanks for the excellent, well-written, highly informative article on the trucking industry by Doug Bandow. It’ll be great ammunition for my arguments against mixed-economy advocates.

MIKE DALEY Berkeley, CA

Liberty and the unions

In the February issue of The Libertarian Review, Bruce Bartlett proposes that libertarians take advantage of a unique position and support private unions in a coming battle with public sector unions. He claims that because of public union costs which private union members must pay as taxpayers, there must eventually be a confrontation between the groups. The truth is that the two will work together to rob all of us the more. Power doesn’t behave the way this dreamer dreams or there’d be strong evidence by now of a conflict between the two groups. There is none.

We decry the use of force and agree not to support it: the unions profit by the use of force, and the present immense government comes directly from union organization and power.

There is some need for unions in the private sector, to see that individuals are not swept under the rug, to develop social, recreational, purchasing and other coordinated groups to take advantage of bulk purchasing power, and so on. It is when they use force to increase their costs that we are all destroyed.

A strike is against the consumer, not the employer. He passes on the costs. We need to rouse public opinion against every strike, use strikes to build up our public support. An opinion study recently showed that 54 percent of the voters dislike union policies, 23 percent accept them. This would let the Libertarian Party make use of a massive opinion already existing to build its political strength. The conservatives don’t use this material, leaving it up to us to develop voting support. I suspect we’d be able, even in 1980, to eliminate a handful of Congressmen who have voted straight union support. Properly presented, the material should even get us union votes in the secrecy of the ballot box. Union members know they’re losing jobs to foreign producers, but are never told that they do it themselves. And we’ll get more votes from non-union workers who realize they can’t get industrial jobs in America because the unions price their workers out of business.

Union members, or potential union members, are the victims of their own follies. The chronic unemployment that has hurt this nation for decades comes primarily from unions’ pushing up their prices, thus to cost themselves out of their markets. We are probably a million jobs short because of that particular idiocy, and thousands of employers have been wiped out by it. The minimum wage laws are a second harsh factor in unemployment, as we well know, and that was pushed into law by the unions in order for them to be able to get massive wage increases across the board through political force, rather than having to strike for them. The two factors make it impossible to get rid of unemployment, and thus they have used the government to make the rest of us pay for the unemployment that comes primarily from their activities.

Unions have priced their members out of work ever since they first organized, and always will. The Auto Union is a glaring example. Fifty years ago, the industry exported 10 percent of its production. Today, imports take a quarter of the American market. The unions have pushed up their members’ prices to where they take home a third more than do workers in comparable jobs in other industries, and they cut productivity to where a Japanese worker will produce a third more cars in his lifetime than will an American auto worker. Then you find their leader, an avowed Socialist, going to Japan to threaten Japanese producers to slow down their shipments to the U.S., or produce more of their cars here, or face a vast organized program of coercion to frighten the rest of us away from buying what are better bargains. Again, it is the American consumer who pays, not the Japanese builder.

Nobody is entitled to more pay every year for doing the same job. If he can get it by peaceful means, that’s up to his employer, but to use force is obnoxious. We are paid only for our productivity, for the value we add to the product. If we add no more value, then to force getting more pay is morally contemptible, and as we’ve seen in the Auto Union case, economically destructive. In this connection, if the unions had never had a wage increase over the last forty-five years, their retired members’ savings, because of growth in buying power as productivity improved, would be worth every dollar they invested and substantially more. As it is, their dollars from the ‘30s are 90 percent destroyed, from the ‘60s, 70 percent destroyed and so on. Without union support, the government would never have pushed us into massive peacetime inflation. We’d have had some during the wars, but retired dollar buying power would be superbly better than is now the case.

There’s no practical way to get current union members to admit that unions in public agencies are bad because then they’d have to admit their evil in the private sector. They don’t have much to say in any case, the unions are run by their angriest members who gain power by claiming to defend the union member agains savage employers. They have not turned against government because it is government that gives them their robbing power, so there’s not much chance of their attacking public unions. Under proper cooperation, public unions will help them elect leftists to more Congressional seats to give them all handouts, far in excess of the added tax cost to private union members of public union costs. We’re up against clever savages.

We Libertarians need to demand the elimination of the use of force in labor negotiations. That’s our basic premise. Once it’s established, unions will tend to lose political clout and we’ll be better able to reduce massive government.

THOMAS S. BOOZ Plantation, FL

Bartlett replies:

I Sympathize with Mr. Booz’s concerns about the power of labor unions. There is no question that they often use force and violence to achieve their ends and that we are all worse off for it. I would certainly favor repeal of all laws which provide union with special privileges. (These privileges are thoroughly outlined in Roscoe Pound’s Legal Immunities of Labor Unions. However, I would not go as far as Mr. Booz does in blaming unions for our economic woes. Unions do not cause inflation; government and only government causes inflation, by printing money to pay for deficit spending. If unions persisted in pressing for wages above the market rate and the government did not accommodate such increases by printing more money all unions would accomplish is to cause unemployment. Thus I would still argue that our attention must be focused on government, not on unions.

It is not a matter of us versus them. Union members are just like everyone else. They pay taxes, they are frightened by inflation, they own homes, and they are just as concerned about the intrusion of government into their lives as other Americans. Indeed, it would be a terrible mistake to compare the typical union member today with the typical member of a couple of decades ago. One might almost say that unions are victims of their own success; rather than identifying with the ideals of the working class, most union members now see themselves as part of the beleaguered middle class. This is one reason why union membership is declining.

The fact of the matter is that in spite of seemingly large wage increases, most workers are worse off today than they were in the early 1970s. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics the average worker in the private sector made $136.90 in gross wages in 1972. In October 1979 this worker’s gross wages had increased to $225.62. But in real after-tax terms (in 1967 dollars) this worker is only making $80.74 compared to $89.54 in 1972.

The point I am trying to make is that people like Mr. Booz ought to direct their concerns at the real villain—government—and stop worrying about unions. As I said in my first article, the real issue is the private sector versus the public sector. The private sector is shrinking every day from the encroachment of government; we ought not to abandon any potential allies, including the unions.

And more on nukes…

It seems to me, when one looks at the figures on radiation releases, that you have only two honest choices:

1. You can apologize to your readers for the ignorant claptrap you printed about the evils of nuclear power, or
2. You can be consistent, and call for the immediate shut-down of all coal-fired industry and utilities, since they subject innocent people to nuclear radiation and receive large government subsidies (on the order of a billion a year for black lung, just for starters).

ERIK BUCK Brunswick, OH

Your continued attack on nuclear power has the hysterical tone that per-meates the popular press, and is based on very shaky scientific reasoning. Mr. Riggenbach’s reading of the article he cited in the New England Journal of Medicine was evidently quite superficial. He states that: “Leukemia has occurred at more than two times the normal rate among persons who were under 15 and living in Utah in the path of fallout from the tests” (p. 22 of May, 1979, issue). According to the actual article (N Eng J Med 300:399), the mortality rate for leukemia in the high-fallout counties was increased by 2.44 times over its pre-test rate, which was abnormally low, but was only 33 percent greater than the leukemia mortality for the United States as a whole. For the low-fallout counties, the mortality was also increased, but by 9.6 percent, which was not statistically significant. In contrast, other childhood cancers actually declined by 52 percent in the high-fallout areas, and 4.2 percent in the low-fallout areas. Total cancer mortality (leukemia + other childhood cancers) was 8.46 per 100,000 children in the susceptible age group before the nuclear tests, and 7.46 per 100,000 in children born at the time of the nuclear tests. That is actually a decrease. Now, I do not mean to imply that fallout is good for children. Clearly, exposure to radiation increases cancer risk. The question is, by how much, and how does this compare with risk from other means of generating energy. Furthermore, the fallout from atmospheric tests of bombs causes much more radiation exposure than power plants. The amount measured at Three Mile Island was about one-tenth the amount occurring in Pennsylvania at the time a bomb was exploded by Red China. Now, Dr. Gofman is quite concerned that there is no threshold level below which there is no risk. Therefore, he should be agitating about coal-fired plants, for the airborne effluents from them cause a higher radiation dose than those from nuclear plants (Science 202:1048, Dec. 1978). By the way, radioactive effluents are very easy to measure. Chemical ones are more difficult, and have more unpredictable and unknown effects.

The AMA Council on Scientific Affairs has published estimates of the various risks from mining injuries, pneumoconiosis, radiation exposure, air pollution, etc. (Journal of the American Medical Association 240: 2193, Nov.

1978). Total deaths expected per 1000 megawatt electric units generated by various means are as follows: Coal 2.16-314; Oil 1.1-101; Natural gas 0.06-0.28; Nuclear 0.045-1.1.

What about solar? A “huge solar plant,” the world’s largest solar-pow-ered electric generating plant,” opened in Coolidge, Arizona, a few days ago. It cost $4.5 million. It covers one acre, and will provide sufficient electricity to irrigate 200 acres. That’s about 150 kilowatts. It takes about 1000 megawatts to supply a million people. At $30,000 per kilowatt times 1000 kilowatts per megawatt times 1000, that’s $30,000,000,000 ($30 billion) for a power plant for one big city. I’m sure the cost will come down some, but I don’t think such a plant is going to make it in a free market, no matter how many cartoons you and others publish.

JANE M. ORIENT, M.D. Tucson, AZ

Gofman replies:

If my response to Mr. Buck and Dr. Orient shows impatience, it is because their letters can not be distinguished from the misinformation supplied to the public by the Atomic Industrial Forum and other nuclear promoters, often via letters-to-the-editor. It is to the credit of The Libertarian Review that its editors try to help readers find the scientific truth, instead of letting the magazine naively serve as an uncritical agent for the nuclear promoters.

I shall deal with the major claims of Dr. Orient’s letter, but it would take too much space to deal with them all. As the great libertarian teacher, F. A. Harper, wrote in “To Shoot a Myth”:

The real reason why myths are impossible to shoot is that the forms they can take are infinite in number, and also that they evade one’s aim at infinite speed. As to the number of forms myths can take, consider the possible answers to 2 plus 2. The only nonmythical answer is 4. But there are infinite mythical answers…. So if one’s aim were perfect and he could shoot a myth with every shot, he could spend his entire lifetime shooting myths released by only one myth factory, without ever demolishing all this factory could produce. For automation is well established in myth factories; their production can operate at a fantastic speed…. And in addition, myths are hard to shoot because they flit here and there at the speed of force without resistance since they are not burdened by the weight and rigid confines of fact. And if you should be so lucky as to hit one squarely, it is likely only to spat-ter into any number of sub-myths, as if you hit a gob of mercury with a hammer…. (Writings of F.A. Harper, Volume 2).

Dr. Orient assures us that she does not mean to imply that fallout is good for children. At least that should be reassuring about Dr. Orient. But it is simply flabbergast-ing that she chooses a preliminary evaluation of leukemia in Utah to answer her own question: By how much does radiation increase the cancer risk? I did not realize there were still any physicians who are unfamiliar with the mountain of epidemiological evidence from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, from the irradiated patients with anklosing spondylitis, and from the numerous quantitative studies of breast cancer induced by radiation. Cancer and leukemia risks per rad are to be found in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Beebe, G.W., Kato, H., and Land, C.E., “Studies of the Mortality of A-Bomb Survivors: Part 6: Mortality and Radiation Dose, 1950-1974” Cancer Research 75, 138-201, 1978. Cancer and leukemia risks per rad, for the anklosing spondylitics, are to be found in “Sources and Effects of Ionizing Radiation,” Annex G, page 361, United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation, 1977 Report to the General Assembly, United Nations, New York, 1977. (Numerous additional data providing relationships between radiation dose and cancer induction will also be found there.)

From these data, Dr. Orient could well ascertain to what extent radiation increases the risk (the occurrence) of both leukemia and cancer. Any physician even slightly familiar with this subject, would mention the solid data rather than isolating a preliminary study in Utah—where one does not even have a dose-estimate—to claim that opposition to nuclear power is “based on very shaky scientific reasoning!”

As for the estimates by the A.M.A. Council of Scientific Affairs on the mortality-risk from generating electricity by various fuels, those estimates are simply and totally worthless. Anyone at all can generate a Santa Claus wish-list stating a trivial dose which he (she) wishes will be the actual dose given to people by nuclear power. Neither Dr. Orient nor the people she cites have the fog-giest notion of what the dose really is now and will be from the nuclear power cycle (for reasons, see LR, October 79). By the way, measurements of the average gamma-ray dose at the perimeter of the utility’s property tell you exactly nothing about the real exposure-problem via air, water, and soil contamination. The dose at the fence-line can be trivial while the dose delivered at great distances can be a public health disaster.

To know what the mortality-risk from nukes is and will be requires knowing what the dose is and will be. This requires, among other things, that Dr. Orient and others know whether containment of the poisons is and will be 99 percent … or 99.9999 percent perfect for all the radioactive garbage in the nuclear cycle. Anyone who assures us he (she) knows this is either lying or incompetent or both. When I predict that containment will not be 99.999 percent perfect, and that nuclear power will therefore lead to a public health disaster, I label my prediction as a prediction and not as a fact. But it is a fact that nuclear power is a giant experiment upon the human species, including upon many individuals who do not consent to be guinea pigs.

The fact that no one knows the present or future dose from nukes makes the dose impossible to compare with fallout doses.

In arguing that LR and Dr. Gofman should agitate about coal-fired plants, Mr. Buck and Dr. Orient are barking up the wrong tree. Even before I took a position against nuclear power, I was opposing the sloppy, filthy, careless, callous, murderous misuses of coal. When Senator Edmund Muskie asked me during a Congressional Hearing in 1969 how I felt about killing people by coal emissions, I replied, “Senator, I do not condone homicide with knives any more than with guns.”

Ironically, it is my consistency in defending human rights against all sources of pollution which is causing alarm and apoplexy among some passionately protechnology libertarians, who seem to think (temporarily, I’m sure) that random murder in order to achieve affluence (affluence via technology) and/or progress (see below) is the same as killing for self-defense!

I, too, love technology with a passion. My opposition to premeditated random murder by any type of technology does not mean that I belong to the “simple-lifeis-better” camp of environmentalists. I love the power of technology (including chemical inventions) to liberate humans from repetitive toil (via machinery and tools), from poor health (via sanitation technology, for example), from ignorance of the natural laws (via all sorts of sophisticated research tools), from limited access to the capital of accumulated human ideas, knowledge, music and art (via affordable books, televisions, phonograph discs and tapes, etc.).

But modern technologies developed in a non-libertarian world, and so their producers and users were permitted to violate the rights of third parties with impunity, e.g. they were allowed to pollute third parties, which is trespass. As libertarians, who believe that no individual (or group of individuals) may do anything at all with anyone else’s life, liberty, or property without that person’s consent, it is perfectly natural for us to insist that producers and users of technologies adjust themselves to respecting our individual human rights!

It can’t happen overnight. But it can happen apparently without the help of some leading “libertarians” who subordinate their passion for libertarian principles to their passion for technology!

Dr. Orient claims that “the airborne effluents from [coal-fired plants] cause a higher radiation dose than those from nuclear plants.” Exceedingly poor to absent science is the basis for that claim, whether or not it was published in Science magazine. The Libertarian Review can do better! I shall now show that nuclear power generation puts 35 to 81 times more of the naturally radioactive nuclides onto the surface of the Earth than does coal power. Note that this ratio is exclusive of the astronomical quantity of manmade (unnatural) radionuclides created by nuclear power plants.

No one disputes that coal contains, in quite variable amounts from source-region to source-region, some radioactive uranium, thorium, and their decay-products. If one wishes to know how much natural radioactivity is brought to the environment by the nuclear power cycle vs. the coal power cycle, it is self-evident that one would compare all parts of the nuclear cycle which put natural radioactivity into the environment with all parts of the coal cycle which do that. It is also self-evident that it would be fraudulent to demonstrate one part of the coal cycle releasing natural radionuclides, and fail to demonstrate that part of the coal cycle which releases by far most of its natural radionuclides! Sadly, precisely this fraud is commonplace in the promotion of “clean” nuclear power.

The honest comparison asks, which of the two fuel cycles (coal power or nuclear power) puts more uranium and decay products into a position to enter the biosphere? The issue is NOT whether the natural radioactivity is spewed out of the stack of a coal plant as fly ash and gas, vs. getting dumped into a huge mound of tailings which leak into rivers and from which radon gas and other materials are carried off on the winds. The issue is, how much natural radioactivities do the two cycles put above ground which would otherwise remain deeply buried in the earth?

The 238Uranium decay series will have the same number of curies of every member of the decay chain. Thus, if there is one curie of 238U, there will be one curie of 234U, one curie of 230Th, one curie of 226Ra, and one curie of all further decay products, including 222Radon. It is largely the 226Radium and 222Radon which are the subjects of health concern with respect to natural radioactivities associated with any particular fuel cycle.

So we can look at the nuclear fuel cycle and the coal power cycle with respect to any single member of the uranium decay chain and feel confident that this describes the environmental load of other members of the decay chain.

Let us use 238Uranium as the monitor for the decay-chain which starts with that nuclide, and calculate the quantity of 238U (and necessarily the whole decay-chain) which will be brought to the surface of the Earth for the generation of one megawatt-year of electricity via the uranium light-water-reactor cycle versus the coal-fired electric power cycle.

(a) Uranium in the Nuclear Cycles per Megawatt-Year of Electricity

I have presented the datum that the current light-water-reactor cycle, when performing theoretically, delivers 3.033 × 10^7 kilowatt-hours (electrical) per short ton of U3O8 (which is the “yellowcake” delivered from milling operations). (Ref: Gofman, “Gross Energy Available through Light Water Reactors,” May 1977). This is the same as 3.033 x 10^4 megawatt-hours (electrical) per short ton, and dividing by 8760 hours per year, we have

3.033 × 10^4 8760 = 3.46 megawatt-years (electrical) per 2000 pounds of U3O8. Since there are 454 grams per pound, this means 3.46 megawatt-years(e) from (2000) × (454) = 9.08 × 10^5 grams of U3O8. Therefore the power output is 1 megawatt-year (electrical) from every 2.62 × 10^5 grams of U3O8. But we are interested in uranium, not its oxide, so we use the fact that uranium constitutes 84.8 percent of U3O8. Therefore, one megawatt-year(e) requires (0.848) × (2.62 × 10^5 grams), or 2.22 × 10^5 grams of uranium itself. These calculations are quite consistent with Nero’s estimates for the light water reactor cycle. (Ref: Anthony Nero, Guidebook to Nuclear Reactors, 1979).

The summary here is that we must bring to the Earth’s surface 222,000 grams of uranium, and of course all the decay products of uranium (including 226Radium and 222Radon), for every megawatt-year of electricity produced by the nuclear fuel cycle.

(b) Uranium in the Coal Power Fuel Cycle per Megawatt-Year of Electricity

The United Nations Scientific Committee on Effects of Atomic Radiation provides the datum that 3 × 10^3 tonnes of coal are used per megawatt-year of electrical power. There will be differences for different coals, but this is a reasonable number to work with. From UNSCEAR tabulations, for U.S. coals, there are two values for the members of the decay chain, 0.7 and 0.3 picocuries of uranium per gram of coal. We shall do the calculations for both these values.

First we calculate the number of grams of coal per megawatt-year(e), which is (3 x 10^3 tonnes) × (10^6 grams per tonne) = 3 × 10^9 grams of coal. For 0.7 picocuries of 238Uranium per gram of coal, the total uranium brought up with the coal would be (0.7) × (3 × 10^9) = 2.1 × 10^9 picocuries for the coal required to produce one megawatt-year (electrical). From separate calculations, it can be shown that each gram of uranium represents 3.3 × 10^5 picocuries of 238U alpha particle activity. Therefore, 2.1 × 10^9 picocuries represents

2.1 x 10^9 3.3 x 10^5 = 6364 grams of uranium. If we use the UNSCEAR value of 0.3 PCi per gram of coal, the uranium brought up would be 3/7 as much, or (3/7) × 6364 = 2727 grams of uranium in the coal required for one megawatt-year of electrical power.

(c) Comparison of the Nuclear and the Coal Fuel Cycles

If we use the value of 0.7 PCi 238U per gram of coal, the nuclear cycle brings to the earth’s surface a much larger quantity of 238U and its decay products than does the coal cycle, the ratio of the amounts being

222,000 6364 = 34.9 times as much from nuclear as from coal cycle.

If we use the lower value for uranium content of coal, of 0.3 picocuries per gram of coal, the ratio is even much more unfavorable for the nuclear fuel cycle, being

222,000 2727 = 81.4 times as much natural radioactivity brought to the surface of the Earth as for the coal cycle.

(d) Summary

Thus the commonly made assertion that there is more natural radioactivity associated with the coal cycle than with the nuclear cycle is wrong by a factor of 35 to 81 times!

This does not necessarily mean the dose from the natural nuclides associated with nukes will be 35–81 times higher than the dose associated with coal. The dose-ratio from the natural nuclides may be higher than that, lower than that, or about equal, depending on several unknowns. Unknowns include the actual migration and reconcentration of these nuclides in the biosphere, and the likelihood of human irresponsibility, like using some of the uranium tailings for major building projects in Colorado, like damming uranium mill ponds with dams which break, to name real examples.

The whole comparison of the natural radioactivity from the coal and nuclear cycles is one device among many which nuclear promoters use successfully to divert people’s attention from the totality of the problem, which is very much larger.

Furthermore, the comparison does not address the tacit, unlibertarian assumption that an individual can be legitimately forced to accept either coal pollution or nuclear pollution against his will, by us technology-lovers, as long as we claim it is for the sake of “the economy,” “human progress,” or (if we dismiss collective benefits) for individual affluence and progress!

As for Dr. Orient’s assertion that one cannot build an economic solar plant with cartoons, I think she is absolutely right. I have never heard of any power plant being built with cartoons. But if Dr. Orient really wants to know something about the prospects of solar energy, I am surprised she has not read the abundance of serious reports, including some from the Department of Energy, on the excellent progress toward photovoltaic (“solar cells”) generation of electricity at costs per kilowatt grossly lower than the costs for the monstrous large-scale plant prototype in the desert.

Dr. Orient might ask herself, who wanted this desert-type of solar plant? Is she aware that one of the reasons this approach was taken was probably to show how expensive solar could be, if one tried hard enough to make it so?

Just remove all the non-free-market subsidies and monopoly-powers and liability-limits which protect nuclear power producers. Just let solar energy compete with nuclear energy in a truly free market (for instance, repeal the building codes that are obstacles to solar power), where we honor the human rights against price regulation and guaranteed profits, against eminent domain, against government-granted monopoly, against government-legalized trespass and enforced guinea-piggery! Just try the free market, Dr. Orient, and we will find out if solar plants will be built at competitive costs or not.

However, even in a free market, solar plants will not be built with cartoons. For that illumination, we shall be forever grateful to Dr. Orient.

LR welcomes letters from readers. Letters intended for publication should be typed, double-spaced, and addressed to: Letters to LR, 1620 Montgomery, S.F., Cal. 94111.