MonitoRadio Daily Program; [1989-03-28]

Radio, the broadcast service of the Christian Science Monitor. I'm Bill Moller, sitting in for Clint Jones, coming up on this Tuesday, March 28th. The government of Yugoslavia struggles to hold that divided country together, a look at alternate energy technologies on this anniversary of Three Mile Island, and Dustin Hoffman tells us why he thought he'd never rise above the bit part. First though, a summary of the day's news with Lisa Watts. Port Valdez reopened today for the first time since an Exxon tanker ran a ground last Friday, spilling 11 million gallons of oil, meanwhile environmental damage is already taking its toll in Alaska's Prince William Sound. As Tim Wollstone reports, the oil is now washing ashore due to high winds, which is prompted President Bush to get the federal government involved in the cleanup. President Bush today dispatched three top advisors to Alaska for a firsthand look. One option be considered a federal takeover of the cleanup. Alaska Governor Steve Cooper says the oil industry wasn't prepared to deal with this spill and should be held accountable. I believe the industry should pay for all of it, a hundred percent, including taking care of the fishermen whose seasons may well be ruined by this

spill. Oil began washing ashore on several nearby islands yesterday, as strong winds hampered efforts to contain the now 100 square mile slick. Meanwhile, the driving record of the Exxon Valdez skipper is being questioned. Captain Joe Hazelwood has been arrested several times for driving under the influence of alcohol. Results from drug and alcohol test given crew members after the accident are expected soon. From Mount of the Radio, I'm Tim Wollstone in Anchorage. Meanwhile, back in Washington, a coalition of the nation's largest environmental organization branded the Valdez oil spill a disaster on the magnitude of Chernobyl, and they're pledging to step up efforts to stop further oil development in other parts of Alaska. Monitor Radio's David Brown reports. In the early 70s, environmentalists supposing the Alaskan oil pipeline project warned of a disaster like the Exxon Valdez, but the pipeline got to go ahead after the oil industry promised safeguards to avoid such accidents. Today, environmentalists said no more promises. Lisa Spear of the Natural Resources Defense Council. The phrase environmentally sound oil development is a contradiction in terms.

The Exxon Valdez disaster makes it clear that no matter how many precautions are taken, the unthinkable can still happen. Conservation groups say they'll step up their campaign against a plan to allow oil exploration in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The oil industry is pushing the proposal and President Bush says he still supports it, but it's clear the plan will face more intense congressional scrutiny in the wake of the Valdez accident. For Monitor Radio, I'm David Brown in Washington. 10 years ago today, the cooling towers at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania became the symbol of the closest America has come to a nuclear catastrophe. TMI, as it's known, was the grand daddy of them all. And as Aaron Cohen reports from Washington, the near -mill down was only one of many throughout the country. The government watched a group public citizen says the Three Mile Island accident was just the tip of the iceberg. There are nuclear safety analysts Kenneth Mollie said, a just completed report reveals a pervasive safety problem throughout the industry. There have been over 33 ,000 mishaps reported at nuclear commercial reactors in this

country in the last 10 years. Using a nuclear regulatory commission estimate of the number of mishaps that remain unreported, the number that should have been reported in the last 10 years may be as high as 44 ,500 mishaps. The number two reactor in Three Mile Island is still in the cleanup stage. And with two years to go, it has cost over $1 billion so far to purge the reactor of its deadly refuse. For Monitor Radio, I'm Aaron Cohen in Washington. In other news, police fired on hundreds of ethnic Albanian protesters in Yugoslavia's Kosovo province today, killing at least one person and wounding 14 others. They're riding to protest Serbia's bid to gain more control over the region. Kosovo's the Republic's autonomous southern province, bordering Albania, and Serbia's parliament has formally adopted constitutional changes to increase authority over government and schools there. In six straight days of riding since Kosovo's parliament approved the changes, 21 people have died. Israeli Prime Minister

Yatsat Shamir toured Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank today in an effort to reaffirm his hard -line policies. Shamir will bring his new peace proposals to Washington next week. Meanwhile, Palestinian guerrillas set off an explosion at an Israeli post in South Lebanon and a build -up of more than 5 ,000 Palestinian fighters in the area could threaten Israel's northern border. For Monitor Radio, I'm Lisa Watts. Yugoslavia is a young country, only 71 years old. It's made up of six republics and two autonomous provinces. Its population comes from six separate nationalities. There are three distinct languages and three religions. In attempting to manage this country of multinational diversity, the government has had to improvise and offer freedoms not commonly enjoyed in communist nations. But the government has only had limited success in keeping the peace. The latest uprising has come from Kosovo, one of the two autonomous provinces. In Kosovo, Albanians far outnumber all

other groups. For the past six days, Albanians have been rioting, angry because their provinces own parliament, approved changes in their constitution, giving the neighboring Republic of Serbia more control over the local government in Kosovo. To get more insight into this latest flare -up of Yugoslavia intentions, we talked with Dr. Kenneth Naylor, a professor in the Department of Slavic and East European Studies at Ohio State University. Question number one, why would Kosovo's parliament adopt laws that would so enrage the people it represents? In part, they're two things. First of all, the parliament of Kosovo is Albanian but the basic principle of the people who belong to the parliament are also the principles of the communist party. And since this in order to have gone through this stage, in the broader sense, must have also been approved by the party in Kosovo. Most of, but not all, of the leaders of the party in Kosovo are Albanians. But that they also see the necessity, unless they're going to break away, completely, and separate themselves from either Serbia or Yugoslavia

or someone like both and join Albania, they have to somehow bring about a situation so that they tie into the whole system of the Republic of Serbia. I would assume that some Albanians, some portion of the population in Kosovo would like to declare independence. There have been a long period and for many years a great number of people who would like to separate from Yugoslavia and become part of Albania, yes. There have been many instances where Yugoslavia's ethnic and religious populations have clashed over a number of different issues. Are the tensions in Kosovo now similar to what we've seen throughout Yugoslavia over the last number of years? Well, they're similar, but they're different. We hear a great deal about the tensions in Kosovo, but they're not only in Kosovo, there have been problems with Albanians in Macedonia, which is another of the provinces, which is very, which borders on Kosovo, and there have been other situations. Frequently,

they tie in more to historical separations since Yugoslavia's made up of a great many different people with great many separate histories. But in this instance, this is largely religious and partly linguistic. You visited Yugoslavia a number of times you've actually lived there over the years. What do you think is going to be the likely outcome, first of all, with this particular uprising in Kosovo? Well, it has been said for many years, I've heard two sides on this in Yugoslavia. On the one hand, the older generation tends to feel the Kosovo should be preserved, because that was the scene of a very famous battle 600 years ago, which went to the end of the Syrian kingdom. On the other hand, the younger generation, many of them feel that Kosovo should just be cut loose and let go join Albania. Actually, I would suspect that they will try simply to make some kind of agreement so that the ethnic unrest is at least brought into line. One final question,

how does the government in Belgrade try to keep everyone happy and still hold the country together with all these tensions that seem to be trying to pull it apart? Well, partly part of the situation is this. On the one hand, you have a situation where you've got a number of people from different origins, different religions, different languages, and they have been partly brought together by strong leadership. Before the war, there was Alexander. The first of it was probably was assassinated in 1934. After the war, there was Tito. These people have in effect run the country. They've been the figure head of the country, and this has left them all together. It has been described this way. We went from a cult of personality to a cult of no personality. Dr. Nailer, thanks very much. You're welcome. Dr. Kenneth Nailer of Ohio State University. Ten years ago today, the radioactive core of one of the

reactors at Pennsylvania's three mile island nuclear power plant began to melt down. For days, there would be conflicting reports as to what exactly was happening and how serious it was. The accident was finally contained, but the damage was already done. Not just to the plant, the real damage caused by three mile island was to the credibility of the U .S. nuclear power industry. That credibility gap still exists. Correspondent Rachel Vicaro looks back on the accident and the lessons learned. I remember the day of the accident and all the children came home from school screaming there was poison gas, poison gas. And it's hard to explain to a kid that you're leaving. They can't see it, smell it, feel it, and we're leaving because we're getting away from it. Carol Olson, resident of Middletown, Pennsylvania, recalling how the accident at three mile island changed her life. Ten years ago today, the residents near TMI found themselves in the spotlight, as people all over the world watched the events unfolding at what had been an obscure nuclear power plant. News coverage of the accident was confusing it best and

often wildly misleading. But now TV cameras within the damaged unit 2 reactor are helping to reconstruct what happened back then. Doug Badell, manager of public information at TMI. What occurred the morning of unit 2 was a series of relatively minor things that together caused a substantial problem and did in fact cause uncovering of the reactor core. That kind of accident stemming from those circumstances simply wasn't expected to occur and wasn't recognized as it was occurring. According to Badell, over 50 percent of the core had melted and the rest of the core was badly damaged. Crews now work around the clock on a platform above the reactor to remove the remaining debris. Still at issue are plans for the remainder of the cleanup. A proposed forced evaporation of 2 .3 million gallons of water used for the cleanup process and the eventual closing of the building sometime after 1990.

Radiation has permeated the walls of the basement at unit 2 and the operating company GPU Nuclear has proposed closing it off and taking it down sometime in the next century. To many residents, including Carol Olson, the final phase of the cleanup poses difficult choices. Well, it's sort of like the lesser of two evils. We get rid of it or we sit on it and I would just like to see it resolved and cleaned up totally and finished. At least that aspect of it, the plant will still remain in operation and hopefully there will be no other incidents but at least we could get the accident behind us and feel safe that the contamination is cleaned up. The unit 2 cleanup is complicated by the fact that unit 1 came online again in 1985. The decision to restart TMI's unit 1 caused heated debate throughout the area. Residents of three counties voted 2 to 1 against the restart in a non -binding

referendum in 1982. However, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission ordered that the plant be restarted. Jan Smallstig, a Middletown resident, is still bitter about it. I think it makes you feel used. You know, I feel like they just pated you on the head. Like, we're here, we'll give them this, let's look at them quiet for a while. Just, you know, like, here you go, take this but, you know, just used, really. Economically, this area has not been affected greatly because of the accident. Shareholders of Metropolitan Edison, the company that operated TMI at the time, found that although the stock suffered it first, it is now highly rated. TMI unit 1 is considered to be one of the top producing power plants in the world, and GPU nuclear was voted 1988 Electric Utility of the Year. Until unit 1 came back online, customers of Metropolitan Edison did pay more for electricity, but ironically, MetEd's customers live in eastern Pennsylvania, nowhere near the plant that supplies their

power. Property values in Middletown remained stable, and the mass migration once expected never occurred. Jan Smallstig. I think some people think, you know, we'll leave. Go live somewhere else, move. You know, what are you doing? Staying there. But that's easier said than done. First of all, you have your family, your home, your roots here. You have, you know, you've established yourself here. And where can you go? Where do you go that there isn't another nuclear power plant? The odds catch up with you sooner or later. In the wake of the catastrophe at Chernobyl, TMI is still an object of much scrutiny. With each anniversary, residents are forced to relive the painful events that occurred in March of 1979. Scientific studies are underway to determine the effects that the released radiation and stress of those days may have caused. However, 10 years has not been enough time to determine accurately the effects the accident may have had on the surrounding population. Eric Epstein, spokesman for TMI

Alert, a group which monitors the activities of three -mile island. If you look back, and if you look back like the bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, they're still doing studies 40 years later on health effects. So, I mean, we're going to be the guinea pigs for a long period of time, and nobody's really comfortable with that idea. The overall effect to the nuclear power industry has been staggering. No new nuclear power plants have been ordered in this country since the accident. 65 nuclear power projects have been cancelled, and countless other plants have been the target of anti -nuclear activist groups. In a world of dwindling energy resources, some difficult decisions need to be made about the future of nuclear power. John Yule, area resident. I don't think any of us like the idea of having a facility nearby that had the worst nuclear accident in American history, but in all fairness, while we sit here and complain about the energy crisis, how many of us would voluntarily turn off our toaster ovens or our air conditioners. For monitor radio, this is Rachel Vicaro in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. But for now, there are only the conventional sources, nuclear among them. Coming up

next, though, we'll have a look at some of the unconventional sources. You're listening to monitor radio, the broadcast service of the Christian Science Monitor on American Public Radio. I'm Bill Muller. Shortly after the accident at Three Mile Island, a group of contemporary pop musicians held a huge concert at Madison Square Garden to protest the use of nuclear power and raise support for natural solar energy. Solar energy would later be held along by the Arab oil embargo, but solar and the other alternate energy

technology did not advance fast enough to become a practical replacement to the oil, coal, hydroelectric, and nuclear power we now so heavily rely on. But in recent years, there have been new breakthroughs in the alternate energy field, and the country now has a new energy secretary who will be considering if these new developments hold any promise for our energy future. Monitor Radio's Anthony Smith reports. In January, the Bush administration named retired Admiral James D. Watkins to be secretary of energy. Watkins, a former chief of naval operations in nuclear submarine commander, was chosen for his extensive nuclear -related knowledge and background. One of the new energy secretary's top priorities will be cleaning up nuclear weapons sites, or at least giving the administration a sensible and believable estimate of what it's going to cost to do it. Secretary Watkins will also have to set the country's nuclear energy policy, and determine whether nuclear energy has a commercial future beyond its space and national security applications. Charles Chiquetti is deputy director of the Energy and Environmental Policy Center at Harvard

University. He thinks nuclear energy has a limited future. Given the current political climate which doesn't like paying for nuclear plants when they're under construction, it's going to even like less paying for nuclear plants when they're not producing electricity, and therefore I think we've got a situation where the economics are so far away from nuclear, and the whole direction is to move towards smaller independent power operations that are going to sell the electricity back to the utilities, making the utility more of a delivery service and a brokering service rather than a generating entity. I just don't see the nuclear option being economically viable. Chiquetti says the exception in the near future would be if America began to make a move away from pollution causing fossil or carbon -based fuels, in which case he sees nuclear power and stronger conservation measures as options that would then pose tough political questions. Chiquetti is also concerned about the hazardous environmental impact third world countries will make as

their economies begin to rely on cheaper fossil fuels. More optimistically, he notes America's conservation progress today, relative to 15 years ago. We're not moving in the right direction, but we're not moving in the wrong direction. If I could address United States first, our energy policy really doesn't, there isn't an energy policy. Philip Kruver is president of a company that researches and markets emerging alternative energy technologies. The edict of the past administration has been to rely on the market, and I think our Congress is now finding that we can't rely on the market to develop new technologies because it can't react fast enough. According to Kruver, new technologies sometimes take 50 years to develop, implement and test before they can make a major or cost -effective contribution to the electricity supplies of the world. Kruver says this is evidenced by the renewed concern within the 101st Congress. He cites three new bills which look at alternative energy measures and address environmental concerns,

such as global warming. While Kruver sees a need to iron out problems in nuclear energy, he sees advanced coal technology as America's major transitional resource into the next century. He feels that added emphasis must be made on renewable energies. There I'm talking about advancements in wind energy, solar thermal, photovoltaics, and with the combination of all these different technologies, the energy mix, so to speak. The resources, the ingenuity, the natural indigenous resources of the United States will have a very nice energy mix for the next century. Kruver notes that in light of all the notoriety of the greenhouse effect, he foresees a future emergence from a fossil fuel economy to a hydrogen -based economy. Hydrogen is unquestionably the fuel of the future, and it's just on the threshold now of becoming economically viable, and there's a bill in Congress supported by Senator

Matsunaga to put in the substantial research to develop an energy infrastructure based upon the hydrogen atom replacing the carbon atom for the future. In recent developments, just last Thursday, two scientists in Utah, Stanley Ponds and Marty Fleischman, announced what they called a ridiculously simple breakthrough in the production of nuclear fusion. After five years of experimenting, the two say they have created fusion in a test tube. Fusion, a form of nuclear energy which produces abundant inexpensive power, is produced when atoms collide. In contrast to nuclear fusion, fusion has very little radioactive waste. Seen as the ideal energy source, the scientists feel fusion could begin to solve the world's energy problems, with practical commercial applications in as soon as ten years. Of course, there are skeptics, and it remains to be seen if the experimentation can be continued on a larger level. Although it is not certain where our new technologies will take us in the next century, we do know that fossil fuels are a finite resource. The world's population and

demand for energy is growing, especially in third world countries. Environmental problems are pressing, yet new options are encouraging, as the world strives to meet current and future energy needs. For monitor radio, I'm Anthony Smith. How dust and Hoffman plummeted into stardom, that after Lisa Watts updates the headlines? Iran's Ayatollahomani today accepted the resignation of his radical successor, in an effort to stick to the militants of the Iranian Revolution. Ayatollahose Mata -Zeri was apparently acting on Homeni's orders to resign. The United States and Iraq have reached a tentative compensation agreement for 37 U .S. sailors killed in a 1987 Iraqi missile attack. Iraq will pay $27 million to the families of the U .S. star Krumin. The Air Force has temporarily grounded its fleet of B -1B bombers, after one of the planes suffered a wing malfunction just before training flight. And on Wall Street, the Dow row 17 and a half points,

closing at 2275 .36. For monitor radio, I'm Lisa Watts. Tomorrow night in Hollywood, the 61st Academy Awards will be held to pick the best this and the best that in the movies. Dust and Hoffman is expected to win one of the best best actor. He's a man we learn in this interview with correspondent John Tibbets, who for a long time never thought he was really cut out to be a star. It seems like Dust and Hoffman has always been in the movie spotlight, always there at Oscar Time. Yet when the Los Angeles -born actor just turned 21, arrived in New York City in 1958 to study acting. Stardom, especially movie Stardom, was the last thing he expected. As a matter of fact, I roamed at various times in the late 50s with Bob DeValentine Hackman, we had parties with the Bongo drums and the wine bottles with the candle and then Bobby would play guitar, hoping to meet a girl that way. And I would play piano and if anyone was to ever dissade us,

you guys are going to be movie stars in six months or a year. We would have laughed at them because the three of us shared one thing in common and that was that we never thought we had a chance. His acting teacher was Lee Strasberg, exponent of the famous method school of acting, who told him again and again that there was no such thing as a leading man or villain that all roles are character roles. Besides, the appearance of the slight, below medium height young man was ill -suited to his dreams of fame. But I was told at a very early age not to bother about my fantasy. Go to New York, study acting, if you're lucky, you'll get parts for the rest of your life as a character actor playing subsidiary roles off Broadway or something. And I was really content with that as most actors would be if we could work constantly, that's success. Hoffman's voice is low and halting. Characteristically, he speaks slowly, deliberately.

I asked him about the stardom that did indeed come with the graduate in 1967. The film that he had said plummeted him to stardom. And it was, I was aware of the fact about a year after that. I guess when I said that in an interview that I had plummeted to stardom, meant that suddenly one is a star now, but the roles that you're going to see are movie star roles or just, you know, inter -ext blessing, in short. Yeah, you're not going to get the same parts that you were hoping to get in the theater. But he is stubbornly fought for those roles in the movies, those character roles, as he calls them, against the advice of director Mike Nichols, who had worked with him in the graduate. He took the offbeat role of the Shabby Drifter Ratso Rizzo in Midnight Cowboy to prove his versatility. Then there was the title role of Lenny in 1974, a single father in Kramer versus Kramer in 1979, a soap opera actress in Tootsie in 1983, and the role that brought him back to Broadway as a full -fledged star in

1983, Arthur Miller's death of a salesman. The role of salesman Willie Lohman helped Hoffman define just what a real actor is. He sets up the scene from Arthur Miller's play. In the Requiem, which is the funeral of Willie at the end of the play, Charlie, the next -door neighbor, has that famous speech in which he says, nobody does blame this man of a salesman's got to dream, boy, it comes with the territory when you get a spot on your tie, boy, that's an earthquake. That's an actor that he's really talking about, and an actor is really the heart of Willie Lohman. He is really no different than the great performance by Olivier as the entertainer. Willie Lohman is selling himself just as we all are selling ourselves in that when you said not only to do what you love but to be loved.

And as co -producer of Rainman, he's proud of its eight Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director, and of course Best Actor. But Hoffman tells me that the real success is just continuing to work, of beating the odds against his ever -becoming a star in the first place. That plummet to start him hasn't been so bad after all. Yeah, the American dream certainly more than being a millionaire is to make your living for your during your whole life doing what you love. Dustin Hoffman, not a movie star so much as an actor and a salesman. In New York for Monitor Radio, I'm John Tibbets. And that is Monitor Radio for Tuesday, March 28th. Thanks for listening. We'll talk with you again tomorrow from Boston. I'm Bill Monitor sitting in today for Clint Jones and this is the American Public Radio Network.