4 - Wednesday, February 3, 1988 - North Shore News WHAT IS so tragic about the Mulroney government's scheme to launch a flect of nuclear submarines to pro- tect the arctic is that the arc- tic does indeed need protec- tion — fast. The trouble is, the danger isn’t beneath the icc, as Defence Minister Warren Beatty likes to think. It is far, far above. ar Sra Testing cruise missiles, inciden- tally, is a petty affair compared to flying jetliners full of the deadliest material on earth across the nor- thern ice cap. { have nothing but tremendous faith in 747s, yet the memory re- mains vividly in my mind of Mying home from Copenhagen via the polar route a couple of years ago, and looking out my window to sce another 747 moving along what looked shockingly like a collision a hy ds W. got a taste of a little nuclear winter back in 1978 when the Soviet spy satellite Cosmos 954 sank from orbit, burning up in the atmosphere, scattering radioactive material over some 100,000 square kilometres of the Northwest Territories.”’ Seven miles above, as a matter of fact. And coming fast. The Japanese and American governments are working to con- clude a dea! to fly plutonium across northern Canada. Yes, plutonium. The very stuff. And fly it in enormous amounts from reactors in Japan to the reprocessing plants of Europe. While Joe Clark squawks like he's been goosed when foreign submarines crunch up through the ice around the North Pole to have snapshots taken to send to the folks back home, he has uttered not a peep, so far as I know, about the risks that ‘are about to be (taken with the plutonium flights. EUROPEAN FACIAL | course toward us. Of course it passed under us, but it was close enough for me to make out the individual windows. One moment we had seemed to be hovering on the edge ef space with nothing but an unuttcrably empty wasteland below, the next we were in subsonic rush-hour traffic! The odds against even secing anyone at that altitude and latitude are astronomical, let alone nearly coming into eye contact. The point is, don’t tell me acci- dents can’t happen. You can't rule them oul, Quite apart from anything so exotic as a mid-air collision, there is the all-too-real possibility of a Each treatment is designed specially 14 for you, using only the finest and the purest ingredicnts. 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We got a taste of a little nuclear winter back in 1978 when the Soviet spy satellite Cosmos 954 sank from orbit, burning up in the atmosphere, scattcring radioactive material over some 100,000 square kilometres of the Northwest Ter- ritories. It cost Canada $14 million to “clean up’ the mess. For ail that effort, we collected only five grams of radioactive particles. This was about .| per cent of the total believed to have reached the ground, A study by the Atomic Energy Control! Board of Canada shows that the rest of the deadly stuff was ‘‘left to be absorbed into the natural domain." . Because of the high levels of background radioactivity emanating from underground ore deposits in the arctic, it proved impossible to track the fallout by aircraft, using instruments. The search had to be done by foot, across bush and tundra and ice — which proved cqually im- possible. [i was only along roads and around towns that any serious effort could be undertaken. Otherwise, they didn’t clean up — they merely gave up. Which is what would happen in the event of a plutonium Might get- ting out of control, going down, bursting into fame. It would sim- ply be impossible to clean up. Write off the north as a radioac- tive wastcland. If the Japanese-American deal goes ahead, shipments would begin in the carly 1990s and continue through, according to plan, until the year 2000. There would be two flights a month, cach carryiitg its plutonium oxide packaged in sup- posedly crash-proof casks. The safety of these casks has been disputed. Tests to determine how much of an impact they could take without cracking open only apply during take-off and landing, they don't allow for a mid-air col- lision or an Air India — or Korean Airlines — style disaster. The amount of alpha radioac- tivity of the plutonium on board a single such flight would be equal, according to critics, to about a Quarter of all the radiation emitted by all the previous nuclear weapons [ests put together, Another way of putting it is that the amount to be carried over Canada, under the proposed agreement, is cqual to about half the plutonium in the entire current U.S. arsenal. Unleash Farley Mowat, | say! te, a ty ‘ here Buy one item at regular price, get second item at equal value free until February 415, 1988. Community plan hearing date changed THE DATE for the West Van- couver Community Plan public hearing has been changed from Feb. 22 to March i, 7:45 p.m., at West Vancouver Secondary School. West Vancouver District Council tecently made the announcement after the community plan update was introduced. The update is a larger docusnent than in previous years duc to the inclusion of more council policies, explanatory text and other new sections now required by the Municipal Act. Significant policy changes have been suggested for a number of areas, including parkland policies for undeveloped lands above the Upper Levels Highway, as well as a proposal to review planning strategies for that undeveloped land. A statement of council's ‘*goals’’ is also new to the plan. The first goal is to maintain the park-like residential character of West Vancouver through policies of controlied growth and no heavy industry. Other goals include provisiun of desized services with increased ef- ficiency and effectiveness, review- ing (and if necessary altering, diminishing or increasing) municipal services, responding quickly to community concerns, encouraging citizen input and charging for services on a user-pay basis where practical.