Kedves UI!
Nem igazan ertem, hogy a Science (vagy Nature, mindegy) 
konzervativ minositesen (a szohasznalaton) miert vagy 
felhaborodva. Egyalatalan az a szegyen, hogy a hideg fuzionak
beugrottak. ("Buszken" jelentem, hogy USA-n kivul egy magyar
intezet volt az elso amelyik "kimutatta".)

Nem tudom, hogy ez mas tudomanyagakban hogyan van, de fizikaban
vannak szakmai lapok, amelyekben a hipotezis jellegu dolgokat
kozlik, s ha az kierett, eleg sok evidencia gyulik ossze mellette,
akkor erdemes azt egy magas szintu, de megis nepszerusito tudomanyos
ujsagban kozolni. Nem szabad altalaban a tudomany hirnevet
meggondolatlan nepszerusito cikkekel rontani, mert akkor a
nagy kozonseg szemeben eltunik a kulonbseg a tudomany es Egelyek
kozott.
(Lehet, hogy a moderator kitorli, mert valoban nem idevalo,
mint az eredeti cikk sem.)
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a tema nemcsak, hogy rettentoen erdekes, de sajnos meg tul 
relevans is a kornyezetvedelmi felfedezesekkel kapcsolatban.  
abszolut KORNYESZ-tema.
moderator
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Udv Gyuri

Keresem a Diana rendes es e/mail cimet, aki tud, segitsen.
Udvozlettel Antonia

European Commission and Bulgaria sign agreement to improve safety of nuclear
power plant


Following a signed agreement between the European Commission and the
government of Bulgaria, Unit 1 of Kozloduy Nuclear Power Plant was
shut down for safety tests on 15 May 1996. 

Last winter, concern was expressed when Unit 1 was restarted by the
Bulgarian government despite advice from EU experts that tests were
needed to ensure that the reactor was safe. If the present tests show
that the safety of Unit 1 needs to be improved, the necessary work
will be carried out. The decision on whether to restart Unit 1 will be
taken on the basis of common agreement between the main designer and
Bulgarian and EU experts. The Commission will provide assistance from
the PHARE technical assistance programme for the Central and East
European countries for the tests and for helping with alternative
energy supplies for winter 1996/1997. 

The Kozloduy Nuclear Power Plant generates around 40% of Bulgaria's
electricity. The power plant has six nuclear reactors, of which Units
1 to 4 are of the oldest type of Soviet-designed pressurized water
reactors. Units 5 and 6 on the other hand are the most modern type of
Soviet nuclear reactors. In 1994 European experts expressed the
opinion that the reactor pressure vessel (the reinforced container
within which the nuclear reactions take place) of Kozloduy Unit 1 had
to be tested to assess its safety. The Commission has been working
closely with the Bulgarian government to ensure that until these
reactors are permanently closed they are operated in the safest
possible conditions. 

Data Source Provider : European Commission, Service du Porte-parole

Document Reference : Based on Commission Press Release IP/96/431 of 21
May 1996.

CITIZENS WHO LOVE THEIR PONDS CAN HELP TO SAVE THEM

The good news is that our Clean Water Act, plus billions of dollars in
municipal treatment plants and industrial wastewater processing, has rescued
many of our streams and lakes from sewerhood.

The bad news is that, with the nastiest waste pipes cleaned up, we still
insult
our waterbodies with filled-in wetlands, runoff from lawns and farms, here a
dam, there a dam, everywhere a little acid rain or toxic fallout.  Ponds
cloud
up with strange weeds.  Almost all the oysters are gone from Chesapeake Bay. 
Only one percent of the natural wetlands of Iowa remain.  Warnings about
contaminated local fish or shellfish are posted in 45 states.

Water quality and water creatures continue to decline not because we lack
protective laws, but because the laws are tepidly enforced.  A recent report
from the Environmental Defense Fund blames "inadequate authority, funding
limitations, and bureaucratic timidity."

Within that bad news, however, there is a bit of good news.  Where government
fails, caring citizens are stepping in.  In just a day of calling around New
England, I uncovered a wealth of citizen efforts to monitor, protect, and
restore local lakes and rivers.  They're scattered, they're vastly
underfunded,
but they demonstrate how public and private efforts could join to clean up
our
water.

Watershed Watch at the University of Rhode Island, for example, keeps 250
volunteers busy at 90 locations taking weekly water samples from April
through
November.  The university trains the volunteers, gives them the equipment,
does
the lab tests, and collates the information (which is passed back to the
volunteers and on to the state Department of Environmental Management).  Not
only do students, auto mechanics, police officers, teachers and retired folks
provide free labor, they also raise much of the amazingly low cost of the
program, through their local conservation commissions or lake associations.

No one has to beat the bushes to find these volunteers.  As word spreads,
more
communities ask to join.  Says Elizabeth Herron of Watershed Watch, "It's
great
to have to go out on your favorite lake once a week.  Hey, I'm not going
fishing, I'm going monitoring!"

Her job is to check on the quality of the information coming in. She's
delighted to report that well-trained citizens collect data as reliably as
professionals.  "You don't have to be a scientist.  You just have to love a
stream and be willing to follow directions."

Jody Conner at the Lakes Program of the New Hampshire Department of
Environmental Services works with 500 volunteers to monitor 125 lakes (out of
800 in the state)  "I can't say enough for the volunteers," he says. 
"They're
my ears and eyes.  If there's problem on the lake, they call me."

As in Rhode Island the New Hampshire program started with just one group
asking
for help in understanding just one lake.  The next year there were ten lakes,
and things exploded from there.  Now Conner's program helps people form lake
associations, puts out videos and books and kids' programs, and trains
monitors
to take water samples and, in advanced courses, to keep track of water
plants,
bugs and fish.

Each group gets an annual report with time graphs of how its lake is
changing.

The ones who've been in the program longest are beginning to trace water
quality up tributaries.  The New Hampshire volunteers also turn out
information
of professional quality.  It goes into the state report on which waters are
swimmable and fishable.  It is helping a study of mercury accumulation in
fish. 
Above all, it tells local governments and citizens when there is trouble in
their water, so they can do something about it first hand and right away.

One of the most active and enthusiastic coordinators of citizen efforts on
behalf of water is Dr.Paul Godfrey of the University of Massachusetts in
Amherst.  He started in 1983 helping citizens monitor acid rain throughout
the
state.  "One year we surveyed 200 lakes and streams for $100 each.  The same
year EPA did 2000 waterbodies and spent $8000 each."  Now Godfrey holds
together the Massachusetts Waterwatch Partnership, a coalition of state
agencies, universities and citizens' groups on 50 lakes and 10 rivers.

Pressed for funds ("I spend 20-30 percent of my time looking for money"),
Godfrey has turned his garage into a workshop where he turns out low-cost
monitoring equipment.  He makes samplers for bottom water out of Mason jars,
cement, epoxy, rope and tubes from Bic pens.  He turned out 100 Secchi disks
at
half the cost of buying them.  (Secchi disks look like dinner plates painted
black and white in opposite quadrants.  To measure clarity you lower them in
the water to see how far down they are visible.)

These programs -- and there are many others -- live hand-to-mouth.  They
don't have the budgets to cover all the waterbodies that need to be watched. 
They depend too much on a few dedicated experts who maintain quality and
enthusiasm.  And they focus on monitoring, which is not fixing. 

But without monitoring, you don't know what needs fixing.  And these citizen
programs do much more than provide free information to governments too
chintzy
to fund the implementation of their own laws.  They educate people about how
water works, how important it is, and precisely how it gets messed up.  They
give folks the information and power to insist that government do what needs
to
be done.  And they depolarize discussions, as more and more citizens know and
understand the facts.  Paul Godfrey saw this happen with his acid rain
monitoring program, as the discussion changed from angry ideological
stand-offs
to "more like a conversation over the back fence."

You'd think state and federal agencies would know a good deal when they see
it
and fund these monitoring efforts properly.

Maybe sometime soon they will.

(Donella H. Meadows is an adjunct professor of environmental studies at
Dartmouth College.)

A KORNYESZ 244 olvastan sokaknak ugy tunhet, mintha 
nyugodtan elfogadnam a DDT hasznalatat pl. malaria ellen.  Nem 
errol van szo.  Nem kivantam reklamot csinalni ennek az 
egyertelmuen kornyezetszennyezo szernek.  En is ugy velem: a 
DDT-gyartasnak es felhasznalasnak mennie kell.  A szermaradvany 
meg igy is velunk lesz evtizedekig!
   Otvos Edithez intezett tul provokativra sikeredett kerdesemre (t.i. 
mivel tartsuk kordaban a malatiat terjeszto szunyogokat) nem konnyu 
megtalalni a valaszt.  De ugy tunik,van.
   C.J. Schofield, aki korabban a WHO munkatarsa volt, a DDT 
kapcsan felhivja a figyelmet: feluletesen elvegzett gazdasagossagi 
szamitasok felrevezeto eredmenyeket adnak!
   Schoefield levezetese: a DDT kiloja 5 USD.  Ezzel szemben az 
alternativ,gyorsan lebomlo piretroid hatoanyagok, pl. deltametrin (mar 
megint?*) cyflutrin kiloja 500 USD, azaz 100x dragabb.  DE: ha 
Afrikaban 100 ezer hazat permetezunk, akkor a kevesbe hatekony 
DDT-bol 30 000 kilora (2 gramm negyzetmeterenkent!).  A 
szuperaktiv piretroidokbol pedig csupan 375 kilo (25 milligram per 
negyzetmeter).  Ezek alapjan az adott terulet  - szerformalasi 
kulonbsegekkel es hajofuvarozasi koltsegekkel korrigalt - 
anyagkoltsege DDT eseten 174 000 USD, piretroid eseten 190 000 
USD.  Alig 10%-kal tobb!  Ha mindehhez hozzaszamoljuk a lokalis 
elosztasi koltsegeket, vilagos, hogy a DDT NEM a legolcsobb szer a 
malariaterjeszto szunyogok elleni vedekezesre!  S akkor meg nem 
beszeltunk az esetleges kornyezeti (k)arakrol!  (Joindulatuan 
felteteleztem, hogy a piretroid nem okoz meg kideritetlen kronikus 
tuneteket; *lasd KORNYESZ 243!) 

   Tehat igenis van alternativa! Remelem, ezzel a DDT-t letudtuk, 
legalabbis e hasabokon (kepernyokon?).

   Termeszetesen a fenti szamitas (forras: International Pest Control 
1992, May/June 88-89.) mas kornyezeti problemak eseten is 
elvegezheto.  Kiderulhet amimint mar annyiszor igy is tortent: nem 
biztos, hogy az a takarekoskodas, ha a legolcsobb egysegaru 
termeket (megoldast) valasztjuk!

Udv,
UI