It’s full steam ahead for the antinuke warriors. George McGovern will lead off in Congress with a bill calling for a moratorium on the building of new nuclear plants. . . . Other laws in the works, to upgrade safety and health regulations and to repeal Price-Anderson Act which puts a ceiling on insurance payments in the event of nuclear accidents. . . . Protestors blossomed across the land the week following Three Mile Island accident. In Washington anti-Vietnam activist Philip Berrigan turned up and harangued demonstrators to “struggle against the warmakers like the one across the street [from Lafayette Park in the White House].” Placards included “Hell No, We Won’t Glow,” and “Melt Down Corporate Power.” . . . Members of 150 organizations including the Clamshell and Palmetto Alliances, Mobilization for Survival, War Resisters League, Socialist Workers Party, Union of Concerned Scientists (“Les Savants Préoccupes as the French call them) had met just before Three Mile Island to map out major demonstration in Washington April 28, 1980; a hurried meeting last week was called to advance the date by nearly a year, May 1979. . . . Polls now show only 46 per cent of Americans favor further development of nuclear power, as against 69 per cent two years ago. Three Mile Island was, says the New York Times, “a key factor in the shift.” . . . The nuclear incident in Pennsylvania hasn’t stopped France’s plans to build nine new nuclear plants between 1980 and 1985. At the opening of the $3.8-billion Tricastin plant last week, French Prime Minister Raymond Barre put it on the line: “It’s either nuclear energy or economic recession and mass unemployment.”
That Israel-Egypt peace treaty has been a flop in the polls. Carter’s rating went up only nine points in foreign policy, his over-all rating up only one point (to 29 per cent positive) the week following the signing. In contrast, after Camp David he enjoyed a 16-point surge. … In its yearly rundown of the most powerful men in America, U.S. New rates Jimmy Carter Number One and Teddy Kennedy Two (up from 16 a year ago). Third is House Speaker Tip O’Neill, fourth George Meany, fifth Senate Majority Leader Robert Byrd.
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