desire to minimize risk, private in vestment will be deterred as long as there is a strong possibility that the federal government will step in and assume the risk." The report strongly disapproves of an increased federal role in the energy field for a variety of other reasons. For one thing, it says that "over the past 30 years deliberate efforts to transfer the products of government-spon sored R&D to the private sector have resulted mainly in unsuccessful projects that were eventually aban doned." In its conclusion, the report says that if the government really wants to encourage exploration and promote conservation, it ought to take the "more straightforward approach of eliminating special price controls on existing conventional fuels." And it should consider reducing severe reg ulatory barriers to use of existing en ergy sources and to the development of new ones. D
ACS sets special board election Dr. Raymond P. Mariella, who will join the American Chemical Society staff as associate executive director on July 1, before assuming the office of executive director in 1978, has sub mitted his resignation from the ACS Board of Directors effective July 1. Dr. Ε. Ε. McSweeney, chairman of the Committee on Nominations & Elections, has announced that an in terim election will be conducted by mail ballot of the council to fill the vacancy on the board of directors for the remainder of Mariella's current term as director-at-large, ending Dec. 31, 1978. The committee has nomi nated Dr. Robert B. Carlin of Carne gie-Mellon University (Pittsburgh Section) and Dr. David C. Young of Dow Chemical U.S.A. (Midland Sec tion) for the position. CN&E has es tablished Tuesday, Feb. 15, as the deadline for receipt of petition nom inations for the open position. Under the society's bylaws, members may nominate candidates for directorat-large by providing to the executive director by the deadline date nomi nating petitions containing signatures of at least 300 members, with no more than 50 of the required signatures originating from a single local section, nor more than 200 from any one re gion of the society. The committee plans to conduct the mail ballot promptly after the Feb. 15 deadline, and it hopes to an nounce the outcome of the special election at the time of the spring na tional meeting in New Orleans. D
ERDA's plans for nuclear wastes rapped The Energy Research & Development Administration's practice of burying its solid wastes contaminated with low levels of radioactivity in shallow trenches and pits has so far presented no threat to human health, says the National Research Council's Panel on Land Burial in a recent report. What is going to present a "measurable degree of hazard" is ERDA's plan to exhume and rebury much of the wastes that were buried in the early days of nuclear technology, the panel says. There is no merit in this plan, it adds. There is also no rationale for ERDA's 20-year retrievability plan, which calls for solid low-level ra dioactive wastes currently produced to be stored in a manner that would facilitate retrieval and final disposal within 20 years, the panel says. It recommends disposal in a final re pository. At present, the amount of solid low-level radioactive wastes generated annually by sites managed by ERDA is approximately equiva lent to the volume of solid wastes produced annually by a town with a population of 55,000. One of the panel's concerns is the availability of suitable burial land as the amount of solid low-level ra dioactive wastes increases with the construction of new plants and the dismantling of present reactors and facilities as they become obsolete and are replaced. Volume reduction such as by compaction and incineration is one solution. Another is to design new facilities so that the radioactive parts can be removed without destruction of other portions of the facility. Another of the panel's concerns is ERDA's present upper limit of 10 nanocuries of transuranium nuclides per gram of waste; above this level, the wastes cannot be buried. The panel believes that ERDA should evaluate this criterion since the orig inal assumptions may have to be modified by more recent data on bi ological and ecological effects of lowlevel radiation for occasional QJ* long-term exposure. The panel outlines a number of principles for the selection of future burial sites. It is in favor of desert areas where the wastes would be iso lated from water used by man. How ever, it says that several problems must be resolved with desert sites. Erosion is one and seismic conditions another. A third is that of road transportation, especially if the loads are heavy and the distances great. Rail transportation is recommended in case of great distances.
Workmen place waterproofed concrete cylinders into trenches at Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory to store drums of low-level radioactive wastes. The drums will be retrieved later for final disposal, a practice criticized by National Research Council report
For the continued operation of ex isting sites, the panel recommends several safety measures. To prevent groundwater contamination, it suggests for the future the develop ment of engineering containers or facilities that would isolate the wastes from the water for hundreds of years. For the near term, the panel says that the wastes should be buried only in a hydrogeologic environment that has been demonstrated to be safe. D
Pension clauses delay oil labor contracts Labor contract signing by represen tatives of various oil companies and locals of the Oil, Chemical & Atomic Workers International Union (OCAW) has been delayed. The delay in approval of an otherwise agreed to general settlement came from dis agreement over pension changes in the proposed contracts, according to company and OCAW sources. In volved are nearly 60,000 members of the union who had been covered by more than 400 labor contracts be tween locals and various companies that expired Jan 7. This stumbling block to final agreements developed over how the time of employment was to be calcu lated for purposes of pensions. At press time, however, negotiators ap parently had agreed that this time be based on the date of initial employ ment less deductions above a certain level—usually 60 days—for leaves of absences and strike times. However, Jan. 17, 1977C&EN
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