Big Blue Disk 49/bbd49.zip/URANIUM.CMP

Text File | 1990-09-18 | 4KB | 58 lines

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     Murray Powell was reared in the shadows of Colfax sawmills.  He moved
 to Homer in 1956.  Today, at age 67, he is a greeter at the WalMart there.  If
 Murray Powell isn't an honest picture of smalltown life in America, then Paul
 Harvey is a Communist and God didn't make the little green apples.  Despite
 the Star Trek, Sci-fi sound of "uranium enrichment plant," Mr. Powell didn't
 panic last year when he heard one might be built just outside his cozy,
 comfortable town.  Instead of immediately choosing one of two extreme views -
 that the plant's opening would cause a gold-rush-sized boom in the economy or
 an instant BOOM! on the horizon, after which everyone would turn green and
 glow in the dark - Mr. Powell settled in the middle.

     "I keep an open ear and try to keep an open mind," he said,
 speaking from years of experience.  "I don't try to get the ends before I get
 the means."  So Mr. Powell listened to the plant's representatives talk about
 nuclear energy.  He asked about the safety.  He observed people working in
 similar plants in the Carolinas as one of a broad cross-section of the
 parish's population asked to make the hands-on trip.  He examined the
 information.  He thought about the future.  And then, he made up his mind.
 "When I was growing up, I had to pick up wood chips; we had to cut wood to
 get a fire," he said.  "We had a cow because dairies weren't functioning
 then.  Autos were scarce; we used mules.  But we've moved up now, moved from
 that period to another era."

     "When I was young, I could get history from the elders about how
 frightening automobiles were to them.  When I learned to read, I got to
 understand about Mr. Ford, about this airplane thing.  I imagine it was as
 shocking to my elders as uranium was to me.  I know now we're gonna have to
 accept change although we don't always understand it."  Like most of us, Mr.
 Powell wouldn't know a uranium enrichment plant if it walked up and sat down
 right in front of him.  Only engineers, scientists and people who play Double
 Jeopardy really and truly know what one is anyway.  But he has accepted the
 possibility that the plant may indeed be built because, after careful study,
 he views it as a good change.  Good changes are called progress.

     Technology is scary because change is scary.  While neither is always
 good, where you stand usually depends on where you sit.  A modest example:
 Cable television brought us MTV (thumbs down) but also ESPN (double thumbs
 up).  Most of us agree that, except for a serious lack of air-conditioning,
 the old days were wonderful.  But the world is moving, and to a certain
 extent, we must move with it or get run over by something a lot more potent
 than a Model-T.  Progress.

     Facts say nuclear energy is safe, clean and cheap.  It is scary only
 because it is relatively new.  But everyone from Louisiana's governor to the
 mayors of Homer and Haynesville and a vast majority of people in between are
 satisfied at this point that the proposed plant is good for Claiborne Parish
 and, above all it is safe.  A fraction of a fraction of people remain opposed
 to the plant.  Since obtaining licensing for the plant will last two more
 years and full operation is scheduled no earlier than 1996, there is plenty of
 time to ask questions.  There is the same amount of time to learn.  "I don't
 have all the answers," Mr. Powell said.  "But I feel, for the good of
 everybody, we can live with this."

          ***  From The (Shreveport) Times, Shreveport, LA  ***

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