Behind New Atom Policy

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Amongst a series of wellpublicised statements, President Carter recently made an announcement on US domestic nuclear policy.

He proposed to defer indefinitely the commercial reprocessing of spent nuclear fuels and the recycling of plutonium (a widely used material for nuclear warheads); and to defer the date of the commercial introduction of "fast breeder" reactors which are fuelled with plutonium.

In drawing up these proposals Carter was no doubt strongly influenced by the report of a recent study, funded by the Ford Foundation.

Its authors, including a number of "liberal" US scientists and economists (among them Harold Brown, Carter's Secretary of Defence, and Joseph Nye, his deputy UnderSecretary of State), urge him to take precisely this course of action.

They base their recommendations on two factors. One is the enormous cost of reprocessing spent uranium-based fuels from conventional reactors to obtain piutonium to fuel fast reactors.

The other is the cost of developing a commercial fast breeder reactor. which has soared from $3.000 millice to S12.000 million in the pas: :e* y2a.

Further—?? there are larger reserves of uranium in the US. than was previously realised-sufficient to fuel a major conventional reactor programme for several decades to come.

Britain's Prime Minister CaHaghan, amongst others, has hailed the Carter proposals as a welcome initiative to curb the proliferation of nuclear weapon material and the attendant hazard of nuclear war. However, they are open to less charitable interpretations.

Most of the other major nuclear technology countries, such as Britain, have much poorer prospects than the US of adequate future uranium supplies and thus have developed fast breeder projects to circumvent this problem.

Fast breeder reactors can produce more plutonium than they consume. They could make those countries which have access to this technology much less dependent on the enriched uranium needed to fuel the US-designed conventional reactor-which forms the heart of 70% of the world's nuclear power stations.

The US is a long way behind other countries, especially Britain, in the technology of reprocessing and of plutonium-based fast breeder reactors.

If this technology is not made commercially available on the world market, then the US as supplier of 50% of the world's uranium has a distinct commercial advantage.

The US, pursuing the Carter line, could curb the attempts of other countries to acquire fast reactor technology and force them to maintain LS-designed conventional them access to the enr uranium they need to fuel existing conventional reactor grammes.

The US, pursuing the Carter line, could curb the attempts of other countries to acquire tast reactor technology and force them to maintain US-designed conventional reactors by temporarily denying them access to the enriched uranium they need to fuel their existing conventional reactor programmes.

Recently, Westinghouse, the leading US nuclear contractor, has defaulted on nearly 80 contracts to supply power stations with enriched uranium fuel, and no supplies of US-manufactured nuclear fuel have reached Europe since last July.

Exports of such material have been halted by Carter pending the introduction of new terms and conditions for its sale.

The US has a further sanction available to them. Under the terms of the Non-proliferation Treaty they could legally block the movement of spent US-manufactured nuclear fuel to reprocessing plants either within the country which used the tuel, or abroad.

This could affect reprocessing contracts being negotiated-for instance the one proposed between Japan and Britain, centred on the development of the Windscale processing plant.

These events should therefore be seen not as any progressive move by Carter, but as just the beginning of a heightened struggle between the leading capitalist nuclear powers for control of the world market in nuclear fuel and techched their proTeacher unemployment is now 20,000. This figure will double in September. Chancellor Healey's spending cuts have led to a drastic decline in resources available for use in schools.

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On top of all this teachers' living standards have fallen along with those of the working class as a result of the Social. Contract.

Against this background an observer at the National Union of Teachers (NUT) Conference in Eastbourne over Easter could be forgiven for believing he had stepped into a fantasy world.

Despite a flood of resolutions from local associations calling for more militant policies, the majority of the 2,000 delegates raised their hands time and time again for the do-nothing proposals of the Executive.

The tone was set on the very first day when a 5% pay offer under Phase 2 was overwhelmingly accepted.

20% INFLATION Several speakers pointed out that this meant £1-£2 after stoppages for most teachers during a year when inflation will run at 20% at least.

But these arguments fell on stony ground in the absence of any alternative being offered by the platform.

On the third day of conference this support for wage control found its logical expression when the membership with rights to jobless teachers.

The conference also marked a further stage in the erosion of democracy in the NUT.

Teachers from Little Ilford School, some of whom lobbied the conference, failed to receive support against their suspension from the union for participating in a one-hour strike.

Even more sinister, the Executive gained support for the introduction of a postal-ballot type system, with all its connotations of Tory press interference in elections and ballot rigging, to replace the present method of voting at NUJ Max Morris meetings.

As the working class moves forward against the Social Contract the cosy debating circle atmosphere of the NUT will be rudely shattered and the need for a clear alternative to this betrayal will come forward.

Such an alternative must now be prepared around the struggle for socialist policies coupled with the fight for NUT affiliation to the This demand is central to posing a break from the practice of 'liasing' with Tory and Liberal MPs and making a development towards an independent political solution for teachers in alliance with the mass of the working class.

Yet another date scheduled for the closure of the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Hospital came to nothing last Monday 18 April as a mass picket of hospital workers and supporters from all over London assembled outside the hospital.

Thus in spite of all the weaknesses of the EGA work-in, this tactic has now resulted in no less than three postponements of closure and kept the hospital open for more than six months.

Even more important, the example of the EGA workers in occupying their hospital has now been taken up by other hospital workers fighting closures including those in Hounslow.

Thus the EGA is still the centre of the fight to defend the NHS in London and it is this fact which has led the NHS unions to organise a conference of their junior bureaucrats at the hospital next Friday.

This move, designed to coordinate the inactivity of union officials relies on the prestige of the EGA work-in for its credability:

Yet the conference was organised at the EGA without the knowledge of the stewards and NUPE stewards in the leadership of the WORKERS at originally voted to strike on April 20 and put out call for a local In the face of decisions by the major factories in the area (especially the Leyland plants) to restrict "action' to delegations to the London demonstration and lobby, Rolls Royce decided to call off their strike. Instead a brief factory gate mass meeting was held which voted against the Social Contract and then went back to work. work-in have been told they will not be welcome even though their General Secretary, Alan Fisher, will be making his first visit to the hospital.

Fisher This belated attempt to bring together union full time officials (only the ASTMS delegation will contain lay members) on the question of the cuts comes as a response to the first meeting of CLASH (the organisation formed by NHS shop stewards to build an allLondon body to fight the cuts in the absence of any such initiative from full time officials.

Suspicious of the motives of full time officials, CLASH has called for a lobby of the full-timers' conference to call for an end to one day protest actions and to demand an all-out strike against the cuts.

Although supporting the one-day protest called by London NOPE on May 11, CLASH points out that more and more workers realise that one day actions offer