The Week

■ It will cost taxpayers $39,564 a year to pension off Senator Frank Church of Idaho, $30,840 a year for Mr. Brademas of Indiana, $31,512 for Mr. Murphy of New Abscam, etc., all pensions for life and with automatic COLA increases. Still a helluva bargain.

■ The “Investigations of Reported Plant and Animal Health Effects in the TMI Area” will probably not make a big media splash, since it contains no stories of three-headed foals or luminous chicken eggs. Prepared by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, with the help of the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture and the federal Environmental Protection Agency, the report found that none of the plant or animal defects reported in the wake of the Three Mile Island accident could be blamed on the radiation release, or on the normal operation of the plant. Staggering calves turned out to be suffering from vitamin deficiencies. Infertile she-goats bred when supplied with a new buck. Five hundred dead parakeets and canaries (all in one aviary) showed no signs of radiation damage. Toad sightings have declined around Three Mile Island; but they’ve been declining all over the East, for two decades. Next: a study to determine the cause of Amory Lovins’s glowing prose.

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■ It will cost taxpayers $39,564 a year to pension off Senator Frank Church of Idaho, $30,840 a year for Mr. Brademas of Indiana, $31,512 for Mr. Murphy of New Abscam, etc., all pensions for life and with automatic COLA increases. Still a helluva bargain.

■ The “Investigations of Reported Plant and Animal Health Effects in the TMI Area” will probably not make a big media splash, since it contains no stories of three-headed foals or luminous chicken eggs. Prepared by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, with the help of the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture and the federal Environmental Protection Agency, the report found that none of the plant or animal defects reported in the wake of the Three Mile Island accident could be blamed on the radiation release, or on the normal operation of the plant. Staggering calves turned out to be suffering from vitamin deficiencies. Infertile she-goats bred when supplied with a new buck. Five hundred dead parakeets and canaries (all in one aviary) showed no signs of radiation damage. Toad sightings have declined around Three Mile Island; but they’ve been declining all over the East, for two decades. Next: a study to determine the cause of Amory Lovins’s glowing prose.