fusion energy foundation

News BriefsU.S. BUDGET CUTS TARGET NATIONAL LABORATORIESThe Housie Appropriations Committee's Water Resources and Energy Subcommitteeapproved in mid-]une a Department of Energy budget that wouldcut $28 million from high-energy scientific research funding. Researchersmeeting June 18 at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Illinoissaid that mre than 600 highly skilled basic-science researchers might have tobe dismisseid, and might be very difficult to rehire. According to Fermilabdirector Dr. Leon Lederman, the cuts would also mean mammoth waste ofcapital investment and manpower. The physicists said that the cuts willnecessitate klosing major particle accelerators for several months a year forlack of operating funds. "We are equally concerned about all the other areasof basic science that will be affected by these cuts," Lederman added.ANTINUCLEAR CONGRESSMEN MOBILIZE AGAINST URANIUM EXPORTSAfter President Carter reaffirmed his decision June 19 to license the shipmentof 38 tons 1 of enriched uranium for India's Tarapur nuclear power facility,members of the U.S. Congress sought to block the export by securing a twothirdsvote against the authorization within 60 days. Led by Rep. Ed Markey(D-Mass.), 35 congressmen have filed a resolution opposing the fuel shipment,and a joint resolution of the Senate Foreign Relations and Government AffairsCommittees strongly condemned the White House move as jeopardizing theadministration's nonproliferation program. The president's decision wasshaped by State Department insistence that breaching the fuel shipmentaccord would damage relations with India, to whom, as Undersecretary ofState Warrjen Christopher recently told Congress, the Soviet Union would be"delighted" to make up the enriched uranium deficit.12 FUSION September 1980WESTERN WATER SUPPLY STILL JEOPARDIZEDThe U.Sj Supreme Court voted June 16 to exempt California's Imperial Valleyfrom the 1902 Reclamation Act, which denies federally funded water suppliesto irrigate farms over 160 acres. Unanimously overturning an appellate courtdecision, tjhe justices ruled that the valley's farms are entitled to draw ColoradoRiver wat^r through the canal financed by the Boulder Canyon Project Act of1980, which specifically exempted large farms from the 160-acre limit.Less noticed, however, was the Arizona state legislature's passage a weekearlier of strict conservation mandates on groundwater use by all majoragricultural, industrial, and municipal consumers. The law was drafted byprivate and public users under a threat by the Department of the Interior todelay theCentral Arizona water project. One effect of the state law will be torestrict owner-operated farms' use of natural reservoirs.LOUSEWORT LAURELS TO AIF'S CARL GOLDSTEINUnhapp|ily,thismonth'saward isthe first to a member of the nuclear industry.The Lousswort Laurels for September go to Carl Goldstein, public relationsofficer of the Atomic Industrial Forum, for his views on high technology. Ourthanks to a visiting West German industrial representative who submitted theitem to us, quite outraged at the outlook of the ostensibly pronuclear Mr.Goldstein.As relayed to us, Mr. Goldstein commented on the "attractive views" of theFusion Energy Foundation and then offered the following remarks about thealleged effect of a full nuclear gearup: "Nuclear energy, any high technology,and intensive energy development will bring this country to a state ofprosperity and complacency, which only a lot of energy and high technologycan bring you to. And then, once this country is so prosperous, and socomplacent, and so fat, then it can be subverted; the government can betoppled because it will be half asleep."Does this mean that if the United States is poor, unhappy, and austere, thenit will have true national security?