Mavis Belisle Interview, Part 1 of 2

DT: My name's David Todd. It's October 3rd, 2002. We're at the Peace Farm, which is in Panhandle, Texas, across from the Pantex complex. And we have thechance to be visiting with Mavis Belisle, who's the director of the Peace Farm and has been a leader in both the environmental and non-violent protests against Pantex for many years. And I wantto thank her for taking the time to talk to us. Mavis, I thought we might start with your childhood days and if there might have been factors in your youth that contributed to your interest inpeace and environmental protection? Any members of your family or early friends that you had?

MB: To my knowledge, it was more a matter of timing than particular people. I was- I was born on the naval air station in Corpus Christi and grew up in Dallasand went to schools in Dallas. I was in junior high school when the integration activities began in that- in that area, began to be very visible.

And so my first experiences with non-violence and with social change were with integration as an issue, rather than- than peace or environmental affairs. Imoved into college at UT in Austin just as the envi- the Vietnam War was heating up and the U.S. was becoming more and more deeply bogged down in Vietnam.

And, of course, it was an- an issue for all of the young men I knew. They, you know, were scared to death to open their mailboxes everyday, even though theyhad student deferments, there was still a chance of, you know, of getting draft notices. So it was impossible not to be aware of- of the impact of that on- on their lives, and therefore, on, youknow, on my life. And- and to be- to be- become active in antiwar- anti-Vietnam War activities there, which merged still with the- the integration activities, which were ongoing at the UT campus atthat time.

I lived in the- the co-op that was the first on-campus housing that was room-by-room integrated. Now the university dorms were integrated, but they had stillall of the- the black students in one particular wing rather than having them intermingled within rooms.

So, those two things together, I think, were a part of my formation. And, of course, that was also the- the time that Rachel Carson's book was being widelyread and distributed. And so all of those little pieces kind of came together at the same time.

DT: You mentioned integration. Can you tell some of your personal experiences in junior high school or later, and the kind of impact that might have had onyou?

MB: In- in- in junior high school, I lived in- in Oak Cliff, which was the- as- as African Americans began moving out of South Dallas and expanding into otherareas of Dallas, Oak Cliff was one of the first places that began to be integrated. The- the little Presbyterian Church that I was a member of at that time discussed the issue a lot because theywere in a neighborhood which they feared would be integrated very quickly. It was close enough to the- to the river area.

And they made a decision to move further south where they thought it was less likely to be integrated. And I left the- the church at that time and looked foranother that would be actively involved in- in trying to bring out- bring about a peaceful integration.

DT:I think you were speaking earlier about how some of your non-violent response to change came out of integration. Can you give me an example of how you hadthat sort of attitude and how it played out for you?

MB:I think the awareness of non-violence itself didn't come until later. We- non-violence, as a, you know, as a philosophy of change, at least, didn't comeuntil later when- when I was in Austin. And I was working with a group there that was meeting on Saturday mornings at a Piccadilly cafeteria downtown, and we were sitting every morning with- withprotest signs outside the Piccadilly, which was one of the places that was resisting integration. And- and of course, we did preparation before that and- and what- what passed then as non-violencetraining. And preparation for dealing with, you know, people who would be hostile on the street. And- and there was never any real violence, we were spit on a few times and- and kicked once ortwice, but never, you know, never seriously threatened.

DT:What was the non-violence training that you might go through? What sort of ideas would you try to share with one another to prepare?

MB: Just- just how to respond, how not to be caught up in the, you know, in verbal confrontations, es- and especially not respond if there were, you know, moreovert violence. And it was more a- just an awareness and a- and a pledge to behave that way that- that, you know, that comprised the training.

DT:So the idea was- in non-violent protest was more to be playing witness by your presence rather than to try and engage in some kind of debate about what wasright and wrong.

MB:Right, right. It- when people are tense and angry and- and upset and- there's very little point in trying to engage in a reasoned discussion. You know,you- you accept their emotion and- and what, you know- whether you agree with it or not, you accept the fact that that's where they are and- and don't try to make, you know, reasoned arguments atthat time. It's a fairly futile activity. And that's true, no matter what the issue is, whether it's a- an environmental issue or a peace issue or anything else.

DT:You brought us up to your college years when you were involved in protesting some of the civil rights problems of the day. Can you carry us on a littlebit further and tell us more?

MB:When I left college I- I went to the Peace Corps and spent three years in Micronesia. I was on- in one of the western island groups called Palau and- whichis- but on the opposite end of Micronesia, on the eastern side, were the Marshalls, where they actually had done nuclear weapons testing in the- in the 1960's. Up until 50- 1950's and 1960's, andmoved whole populations off of islands to do U.S. weapons testing. Even the islands that I was on, though, had belonged to Japan up until World War II and the U.S. had taken them aft- hadfought, you know, across the islands, you know, piece by piece, during the Pacific War.

And the effects of the war were still- World War II, were still very visible when I was there from '66 to '69. There were still islanders being injured bymines that had been left, you know, along the coast. And still, you know, bombed out buildings that had been part of the Japanese communication center and their administrative centers.Those- those buildings had never been repaired. And the school that I taught in was actually one of those bombed out buildings that had been somewhat repaired to make it usable for aschool.

So, I guess it gave me a more direct experience of what war might have been like than- than most people, you know, my age would've had. At the same timethe- the islands were being used as R&R stops for troops from Vietnam, so occasionally, primarily Navy and Air Force, we had very few Army groups there, but Navy and Air Force crewswould be there occasionally on R&R.

And there'd be the interaction with them, with their experiences and, I guess a final part of that was that the- the last year I was there, the Japanese wereallowed back on the islands for the first time since the end of the war. And they sent a delegation to reclaim bones and do the ceremonial burning of- of- of bones, so they'd had islandershelping them search out caves that had been used during the war and places in the harbors where ships or boats might've been sunk to help gather and collect the- the- the victims of- their victimsof the war.

DT:You mentioned that there were the bombed out buildings left over from World War II and the bones of the victims...

MB:And people still being injured.

DT:Yeah.

MB:Yeah.

DT:Could you talk about some of the effects you might've seen from either the dislocated people or the direct effects of the bombing, the testing that wasdone through the early nuclear weapons?

MB:The- that- the dislocated people and the- and the islands that were actually used for bombing were pretty far away from me. I was able to visit them, youknow, on- on trips a couple of time, but- and to talk to Marshallese, you know, about their experiences, but they were really not very close to me. It wasn't something that I could doregularly.

DT:Well, what kinds of stories did you hear from the Marshallese?

MB:These are- these are all very small islands, scattered about in the middle of, you know, of a very big ocean, and so every- every piece of land isincredibly important. In a way that- that I think it's hard for us, you know, who buy and sell land and move from one piece of land to another regularly, it's- it's hard for us to understandhow- how much of- of a person's identity can be tied up with a particular piece of land. And how important it is because that's where their ancestors are- are buried also. And to lose that, and tobe forced onto another island with another, you know, with another group who- who has now- who has to share resources which were too meager to begin with, and to lose that- the land of their own,the land of where there ancestors were, is to lose identity in a way, I think, that's very hard for us to understand. You- you can't pay people for a piece of land like that, like we assume thatyou buy and sell lots here.

DT:Something else that comes to my mind. You chose to serve in the Peace Corps but I think you mentioned that you were from a military family. Was there muchreaction to your choice?

MB:No. My family was- was not military. I was born on- on the naval air station because it was the- the very last year of the World War II and my father wasstationed there. But he was only there until '46 and did- did- was not in the military after that.

DT: I see. Well, maybe you can carry us a little bit further on. You served through your Peace Corps years as a teacher and then when you finished your tourof duty, what happened?

MB:I spent about five months in Japan and again saw- was able to visit Hiroshima and see directly the effects of- of, you know, the first nuclear- nuclear bomb,first atomic bomb.

DT:What was your impression, and why did you choose to go? That must have been a rare thing.

MB:I- I chose to go to Japan because of interaction with- with the Japanese and- when I was in- in Palau, and really being interested in that and just wanting tosee- see Japan and the- and their shrines and temples and art and everything else.

I chose to go to Hiroshima just because of- it seemed that you wouldn't have been in Japan unless you had seen that. So I- I made a trip down there to do that.I spent most of the time, though, in Tokyo and Kyoto. A part of being in- in Tokyo was also another chance to see the Vietnam War from another perspective because Japanese students were very,very hostile to the U.S. war in Vietnam.

And to the fact that- that U.S. Navy ships that they knew were carrying nuclear weapons were docking in Japanese ports, against the treaties which prohibitedthat. So there were a lot of protests of- of Americans, and especially American military at that time in Vietnam, which were never, I think, reported in the- in the press in the U.S.

DT:What was your impression when you went to Hiroshima?

MB:I think sadness more than anything else. Sadness and- and- and, of course, pleasure at the recovery. But just the- the fact that so many lives, andparticularly civilian lives, were wasted. And that- and that the- the affects on the survivors, the long-term, you know, health effects and scarring and- and disablement. You know, it- it didn'tend the day after the bombing, it- it goes on and on forever.

DT:So was that pretty clear to you at the time that there were mutagenic and carcinogenic problems?

MB:I think out- that was not so clear to me at the time, but the- just how severely damaged the- the lives of even the survivors were was clear.

DT:Can we get some examples of what you saw?

MB:Mmm-hmm. The- the- the scarring and the- the fact that many of the survivors never married and had children because it was such a- a- a fearful thing. It wasvery difficult for them to find marriage partners who were willing to have children with them, or they themselves might have also been afraid to have children because of the possible effects.So there were people who lived their lives as unwilling singles because of that and unwilling non-parents because of that.

DT:You also mentioned that when you were in Japan, you discovered that there were a lot of Japanese students and young people who were aware that there werenuclear weapons and (?) of the treaties, and I'm curious how they knew and why their knowledge wasn't shared through the media here in the United States?

MB:They- they just knew and I think they knew which class of ships carried nuclear weapons. Although the official policy of the Navy has always been neitherto- I think the words are neither to confirm or deny the presence of nuclear weapons on a particular vessel. It- it's pretty generally known around the world which classes of ships routinelycarry them. And the- and the Japanese government knew it and accepted it, but for students in Japan it was- they were- they were really outraged by the fact that it was happening and that theirown government was allowing it.

DT:Well, did this visit to Japan sort of foretell what you were going to be doing later on or was it just a sort of isolated experience with nuclear arms andnuclear weapon use?

MB:I think the combination of- of- of being- being in the Marshall's and then being in Hiroshima, the combination of the two, was life changing. I don't knowthat either one of them was more so than the other one. But, just an- just an awareness that- that not only nuclear weapons, but war has an impact that goes far beyond the- the military personnelwho fight it.

DT:And it reaches communities like Amarillo.

MB:Hmm-mmm. Hmm-mmm.

DT:If you can help bring us up to date a little bit. After you came back from Japan, what did you do then and how did it lead you eventually to Panhandle,Texas?

MB:I- I moved back to Dallas and I worked there until 1991. I had for about ten years, two Micronesian children, who came over the- one of them the first yearthat I came back and one a subsequent year, to go to school here. And the village that they lived in, and that I had taught in, only went through eighth grade, so they would've had to leavehome to get education beyond the eighth grade in any case. And so they came to- to live with me in Dallas and to go finish their high school years and college there. And I worked during thoseyears for a Tex- Texas Catholic newspaper, the diocesan newspaper for the dioceses of Dallas and Fort Worth.

DT:And at this time, was the Catholic Church interested and supportive of the kind of non-violent and environmental concerns that you had?

MB:These- these were the- in- in a very general way, in a- not so much in a specific way, but they were- they were willing, they were- they were tolerant andaccepting of- and sometimes even supportive of my activities. From the mid 70's on, I spent a lot of time working on Comanche Peak, the- the nuclear power plant just outside of Dallas, andengaged more with that than with nuclear weapons issues.

DT:Were you involved in some of the non-violent protests?

MB:Yes, yes, uh-huh.

DT:Did you get involved with some of the civil disobedience as well?

MB:Yes, uh-huh. We- I worked originally with a little group called Armadillo Coalition of Texas and as things progressed at Comanche Peak, and- and the work onthe intervention was going on- the legal intervention, but it was pretty clear that that was not going to be successful. The- the- the coalition divided itself into another organization called theComanche Peak Life Force. And the Life Force organized the civil disobedience activities at Comanche Peak. We had affinity groups in Dallas, Fort Worth, Denton and Austin, so there wereseveral- several different groups working on it.

DT:As far as I'm aware, it's one of the very few civil disobedience acts in almost any kind of progressive cause in Texas, and certainly inenvironmental...

MB:I think it was the first organized large-scale, and when I say large, I mean, 50 to 100 people arrested at the demonstrations, that had ever happened inTexas. There had been individual arrests in small groups of like two or three during the Vietnam War, I understand, but- but not really an organized and planned civil disobedience until the- theComanche Peak Life Force.

DT:Well, can you tell the story of how that came about?

MB:We- we just felt like that it was- that we weren't adequately getting public response doing the kind of educational events and activities that we had beendoing. It was still very minimally known in Dallas and Fort Worth that there was even a nuclear power plant under construction. And the sign in Glen Rose even said- most people in Glen Rosedidn't understand that it was a nuclear power plant. The sign in front of it said, Comanche Peak Steam Electric Generating Station, or something like that. The words atomic and nuclear werenowhere visible.

The Armadillo Coalition wanted to continue with its educational activities and- and that kind of programming and did not want to be associated with the civildisobedience, so it was a friendly split, and- and many of us continued to work in both organizations and to do both kinds of things, but we set up a different name. So- and did the civildisobedience. And brought in- originally we brought in trainers from Oklahoma, non-violence trainers to do the training for trainers, for us, and I think probably there were eight or ten of usin that initial training.

And then we began holding non-violence trainings in Dallas and Fort Worth on weekends for six or eight weeks before the first actual civil disobedienceaction. And recruited a lawyer, a man named Louis Pitts, who had also been involved with the Black Fox opposition. That was the nuclear power plant that was under construction in Oklahoma thatwas cancelled fairly early in its construction, right after Three Mile Island, in fact. So- so their trainers were- were free to- to do traveling and to- to come and lend us a hand.

DT:And what form did the civil disobedience take?

MB:We did- we climbed over the fences at the- at the dump plant and onto- occupied the plant property. The first two were pretty symbolic occupations, we justbasically put ladders over the fences and even very carefully so we wouldn't damage the- the barbed wire. And sat down and waited for them to come and- and do the arrests. The third one was muchmore extended, and we actually had people on the site for about two weeks. It was that- that hottest summer in Dallas in years, and so the big logistical problem was keeping- I was- I was arrestedfairly early in the occupation, my group was- was pinned down by helicopters and we were arrested. But several of the other groups were able to maintain the occupation for almost two weeks.

DT:And they were- can you tell how you were pinned down by helicopters and how the others were more elusive?

MB:We were just scattered across the- the plant site and we would go and at various times and- and do things like hang banners from the- the buildings.At- toward the end, one group even had a- a small smoke device that- it didn't create a flame at all, but it created a lot of smoke, and they used that- actually on the roof of- of one of thebuildings to show how bad the security was. And it was, of course, very visible to news helicopters and everything. But as groups would go in and out, you know, to do actions, sometimes theywould get caught.

DT:Was that one of your goals is say that not only is the plant capable of failing for mechanical reasons but also from terrorists, or just saboteurs.

MB:Right. Mmm-hmm. Mmm-hmm. And...

DW:How did the media treat you? Did they portray it in rather black and white? Were you the crazy protesters, or do you feel you got any fair shake in thecoverage?

MB:Actually, I think we did. I think we got fairly well handled by media. They- the difficulty was that they wanted to keep escalating; they wanted things toget more exciting. And we realized that if that happened, that we would- that we would have people hurt. And so we stopped doing actions on the site itself and moved- moved back into doing thingsat the corporate headquarters in Dallas.

DT:Why were you concerned that people would get hurt? Were the police pretty hostile?

MB:Yeah. Mmm-hmm. They were.

DT:You mentioned in your own experience when you got pinned down by the helicopter.

MB:Mmm-hmm. The- we were- we were arrested by Texas Rangers and they came and well, for example, I was arrested with another woman, who was substantiallylarger than me, both taller and- and quite a bit heavier. And they handcuffed us both to a- a pole and dragged us across the fields, which were, you know, in that area, prickly pear steady tothe- to the helicopter, a good distance away.

And because she was so much heavier, I was kind of bouncing around on the- on the handcuffs and I still have a place on- along this edge of my thumb wherethere's (?) is enough nerve damage that there's a line that there's basically no feeling along. Some of- some of the others were intentionally dragged through beds of prickly pear, and so whenthey were taken into jail, they were pretty imbedded with cactus spines.

DT:And then, once you were in jail, was bail made? What was the procedure after that?

MB:We did- we- we were originally released on- on our pers- on personal recognizance. Our attorney had arranged for that in advance. We were first tried as agroup, the whole, I- I think there ended up being 48 of us in the first arrest group. And we were tried as one group, and brought in expert witnesses and- and, you know, the whole- the wholeshebang. And- and that was also very fairly covered by media; they did a good job of presenting the information that- that our expert witnesses provided.

DT:And the charge and the witness's testimony, what were those?

MB:The- the charge was trespassing, criminal trespass. And the witnesses talked about health effects, and safety hazards of nuclear power plants. We were- wewere acquit- we were- well, there was a hung jury on the first trial, and they decided then that they would try us one by one, singly one at a time. I was the first person brought up for trialand- and I was convicted, and sentenced to a fine, which I- I can't even remember now what the amount was. But I- I chose not to pay it and spent the time in- in jail rather than pay the fine. Thesecond person, while I was- began- came up for trial while I was in jail, and she appealed, she was a Sister Patricia Ridgley, from Dallas, a Catholic nun. And she appealed for the transcripts ofthe first trial on the basis that she was a- a pauper, because she had no income, you know, which is- which was true, of course, the way nuns work; she had very little personal income.

And so that would've fallen on the- on the county to provide that transcript. And at that point, they chose to drop the charges and drop the charges on theremaining defendants rather than- than go- I think initially they had thought that- that the trials would be a- a fundraising activity for them, that once we all paid the fines, we- you know, itwould be good income for the county. When they ended up having to feed and house me in jail and- and were faced with paying for her transcript, which I think the costs were estimated atsomething over ten thousand, they decided it wasn't going to be a fundraising activity for them and dismissed the charges.

DT:Can you recall what the prosecuting attorney- why he, or she, decided to bring charges? Was it just a fundraising ploy from the outset or was there alittle antagonism?

MB:Oh, no, I don't think so. I think they- they wanted to discourage us from- from being there and from doing the protest altogether. I think, you know, duringthe- during the process, they realized that, you know, paying fines was a good way- might be a good income, at least to offset their expenses from- for the arrests and everything. But when it- whenit looked like that that wasn't going to be the case, they dropped it pretty quickly.

DT:Can you speculate about why there was such interest and support for the Texas Utilities Project at Comanche Peak when it came after, as I recall, ThreeMile Island, Chernobyl, and the costs overruns at the South Texas Nuclear Project?

MB:The- they began construction on the plant in the early seventies, I want to say '73 but I'm not positive about that. So it was- by the time we began theprotests in, I think the first one was in '76, but then it was really a couple of years before there were any more. It was really like '78- 7- before we were really doing very much in thecommunity. So they had a lot of in- investment in it, Texas Utilities did. That- of course that, yeah. And for the community, it was a- a tax issue. The- the agreement between the utility companyand the county was that, once it was online and operating, it would come into their tax base. The taxes were deferred until then, but it was- you know, it's a multimillion-dollar facility, itended up being multibillion dollar, so it's a big- it's a big asset to the tax base.

DT:Do you think that Somervell County was - I believe at that time, was one of the poorest in the state? Was it chosen on the grounds that it was one of thepoorer counties that would maybe welcome the income?

MB:I suspect that that was a factor. It was also, like many rural counties, a relatively elderly county. Many of the people were sixty-plus and there wererelatively few younger people still in the community. So I think that might've also been a factor in the choice. Plus the fact that it was just off the Brazos River and just off Lake- near- nearLake Granbury, as an emergency water supply, so I think those also made it an attractive site.

DW:Is the reason it was difficult to actually stop it then possibly because without the support of the local community, you're all kind of outsiders comingin. Do you think had the actual town of Glen Rose opposed it, you might have been able to stop it?

MB:A long time before we did the- even the first legal protest there, the first legal rallies, we had gone door-to-door, literal- I mean, it's a small enoughtown that you can do that. Literally, door-to-door with leaflets and information and trying to talk to people. And, as I say, it was really a surprise to many of them that it was a- a nuclearpower plant. Their little community newspaper had carefully avoided- avoided that and was very supportive of the project. I think it might've made some difference, but very, very few legalinterventions have succeeded, especially when a plant was as far along as this one was when they began.

DT:What were some of the arguments that you made against the case and, in the intervention? Some of the major ones, could you mention those?

MB:Now we didn't actually do the intervention, although we assisted and did some fundraising for the organization that was the legal intervener. But theyused construction problems. They're very limited in what they can use in a legal intervention. It's very, very restricted to- you can't bring in things like generic accident things, or generichealth and safety issues. So they had to pretty much focus on the construction of the plant itself. And there were some fairly serious construction flaws, in- both in pouring concrete and inrunning pipes.

The original design had made the two units to- to be set up and- and piped, more or less, like a left hand and right hand. They actually began construction ofthe second one in the wrong direction so they would've been like- the piping was totally, you know, out of...

DT:Two left hands or two right hands?

MB:Right. Right. Mmm-hmm. So there were- there were a lot of design problems that- there were holes in the concrete that you could've put a Volkswagen in,yeah. And this is in the containment building, you know, they...and some of them they had to, you know, chip out and repour and some of them, you know, they didn't, but.

DT:Were there many safety improvements made following Chernobyl or Three Mile Island?

MB:There were some. There were some. But not as much- the util- and the utilities used that to justify the- the cost increase, they- you know, they extendedplan- extended construction time and the cost overruns. But really, most of the changes following Three Mile Island were related to training and personnel issues, they were- there were very fewthat- that were major construction changes.

DW:Shockingly similar to the situation at Diablo Canyon. I've seen tremendous parallels here. Because we had the left unit blueprint that was flipped andturned out on the right side.

MB:Oh, you're kidding, you're kidding.

DW:And the right unit.

MB:Came back with poison ivy all over them.

DW:Or was it poison oak?

MB:May have been poison oak. May have been poison oak.

DT:Well, maybe this would be a good chance to talk about some of the groups that worked with you to contest the construction of Comanche Peak. I know therewere several, and there were some interesting schisms between the groups...

MB:Mmm-hmm. Yeah.

DT:And I was curious if you would talk about some of your partners, and how some of the differences arose?

MB:The- the original intervener group was CASE in Dallas, Citizens for Sound Energy, Citizens for Safe Energy, I'm not positive now which it was [latter nameis correct], but the initials were C-A-S-E. And a woman named Juanita Ellis. And we worked together initially. But when we began planning the civil- and- and we- we actually brought in speakers todo programs for the Armadillo Coalition that- that were experts that Juanita used very extensively in helping develop, you know, her- her background for- for the intervention. Another group alsoformed in Fort Worth as- as- as a legal intervener, after TMI. Three Mile- after Three Mile Island. And they worked together pretty well for a while.

DT:Which was that?

MB:Pardon?

DT:What was it called?

MB:I'm trying to remember. The woman who- who worked on it primarily was Betty Brink, but I've got a total blank on the name of the organization [likely,Citizens for Fair Utility Regulation].

DT:But they didn't come at it from the same sort of- As I understood it, Juanita's emphasis was on the- the sort of boondoggle cost overrun, this energy's notgoing to be too cheap to meter aspect. But my impression was that Fort Worth's group was more for the environmental public health.

MB:They- they did, but it- at one- but eventually when it- they folded all of their contentions together. And the actual intervention was in CASE's name, butusing the contentions that both groups had- had organized and researched and- and the other group also provided logistical support. And all of us did during the intervention itself, during thehearing itself. Bringing in food and bring- running copies, hauling boxes back and forth, boxes of documents back and forth. When Juanita made the settlement without- without consulting witheither the other intervener group or with any of us, the- the relationships had begun to get difficult when we did- when we did the civil disobedience. She was- she was very opposed to that, eventhough it brought- because it brought attention to the plant, it actually increased her funding.

People who wanted to give money, but didn't really want to support us, increased contributions to- to CASE. So it benefited her, and she recognized that itdid and even acknowledged it a couple of times, but- but really didn't like what we were doing at all. And so we all, I think, felt like we were partners, and the settlement was made without anyconsultation with any of us and benefited only Juanita's group. And so it created a really serious, you know, split that- that has never healed at all.

DT:Can you talk about...

MB:We- we had in- we had, in fact, been in- been talking to one of the attorneys within the week that the settlement occurred and she was- we- at that time wewere doing rate protest activities and economic protest things, and she- she was encouraging us to go ahead with it and thinking it would be, you know, it was good to keep public attention on itand public pressure up and didn't say a word to us that they were in negotiations for a settlement. So we all felt, I think, very betrayed. I know I did, and I know Betty Brink did, and JimSchermbeck, also.

DT:And your counterparts on the other side knew that they were dealing with only a part of the coalition?

MB:Yeah, they did. I've had occasion to talk with one of the attorneys, they were- they were working with the Government Accountability Project, attorneys.And I've had occasion to talk to one of them later on other- on some other issues, and he said that they simply saw that their client was Juanita and did what they thought was in the bestinterest of Juanita. You know, our position was that their client was the public interest and what- and the their settlement did not serve the public interest.

DT:Can you talk about some of the- it sounds like a lot of you were volunteers...

MB:All of us were volunteers.

DT:That were working on this. Can you talk about some of the...

MB:All of us were volunteers, yeah. Mmm-hmm. Except the attorneys.

DT:What intrigues me is that these nuclear plants are so technically complex that they're often seen as being not something for mere layman to worry theirlittle heads over and that it's very difficult to approach something as just generalists. That you have to rely on people with expertise. But at the same time, I think a lot of the laymaneducated themselves fairly well. I wonder if you can talk about this struggle over access to information and expertise over what's basically sort of a very public investment and a public policyissue? I hope I'm making myself clear.

MB:Yeah, I think so. I think it's one of the really great scandals of- of American education generally. That we're led to believe that only an elite few cando science. You know, and- and I think that's probab- that's probably the impression that most people have. You have to be very bright, very intelligent to do science. Nobody else need to botherwith touching it at all. And- and people aren't really encouraged, you know, from- and I mean from grade school up except for a very few, to be engaged in- in science on a technical level at all.And the- and the fact is, that's not true.

Anyone who can read and has, you know, any background at all can read science as well as they can read anything else. It's- it's just a matter of beingwilling to put the work into it. I mean, you can read science as well as you can read accounting procedures. And there's an assumption that anyone can do accounting procedures, but not everyonecan do science. And that- that, in combination with the- the secrecy that's associated so much with the- the nuclear weapons part of the complex, you know, has- has- has led to- to just a- awillingness of the public to just leave it to a few experts who, often, really don't know very much more than- than- they know, they will often know a lot about a very particular thing, but theywon't know anymore about the big picture than laymen in the community who have- who have researched it.

That's- that's even true at Pantex, everyone's job at Pantex is so isolated on a particular part of the plant, that they know that part in depth, and verywell. And far better, of course, than we do- those of us who- who work outside. But they often don't have- they have less knowledge about other parts of the plant than we do, so none of them have,I think, as broad a picture as most of the organizations in the community who work around it. I think that's equally true with nuclear power plants.

DT:Maybe this is...

MB:The man who knows the wiring very well won't know anything about the plumbing. You know.

DT:Maybe this is the place to do a segue to Pantex and your involvement with this. I was thinking maybe just as a way to tie the two together, it seems thatthe weapons use of nuclear theory and technology was often justified by the Atoms for Peace idea, and I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about how the two played off each other, thesort of combination of Comanche Peak versus Pantex.

MB:I think, of course, that the whole nuclear power program and- and the Atoms for Peace was to give a clean face to what was really a- really ugly issue ofnuclear weapons. To- to justify having developed nuclear weapons by finding a- a socially productive use for- for the nuclear technology. Fairly- fairly early on, environmental groups split overwhether or not they would support nuclear power, or whether they would have positions on nuclear weapons.

It was a- a major issue in the Sierra Club / Friends of the Earth split. And as- as the movements in opposition to both of them developed, there were somepeople who- who saw it as- as one technology with two end products and some people who saw it as- as issues that needed to be kept entirely separate. That dealt with- and this was true in both theweapons community and the- the nuclear power community. There were people on both sides of- of that argument. They- they tended, for many years, to be separate- to- to work separately. And part ofthat was the- the different level of access to information on nuclear power and nuclear weapons during the- the Cold War years.

And to actually do work on them, you had to be dealing with totally different regulatory processes, different agencies, different rules, differentregulations. So it wasn't really practical for very many people to do both. Nor did you have opportunities for that un- until fairly recently in the nuclear weapons complex. They were pro- theywere exempted from most federal regulation and- and envi- all state regulation until fairly recently. Into the nineties. But the- but the fact is that the- they all start with uranium mining andprocessing, they all s- s- go through fuel fabrication and fuel enrichment.

Fuel- the uranium for nuclear weapons is- is enriched a great deal more than for reactors, but the process is- is not- not substantially different, there's justmore of it. With nuclear weapons, you- you create the plutonium by running it through nuclear reactors and then separating the plutonium out of the- the spent fuel rods. And you have to deal withthe nuclear waste disposal for both of them, but every step of that- of that production process, they both have to have- have to have a way to deal with the nuclear waste. So to me- to me theywere always one technology with two end products.

End of Reel 2212