“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Ever since the accident to the nuclear reactor of Unit No. 2 at TMI, 31 months ago, the reactor’s great containment building and an auxiliary structure have been flooded with highly radioactive water. [It grew to be over eight and a half feet deep in the reactor building.] Utility engineers now have in operation a filtering system to decontaminate before storage the nearly one million gallons of water in the two buildings. The job is to take around nine months; the processed water will finally be disposed of in 1983; the filters holding the radioactive material will be trucked to facilities in Idaho and Washington State for testing and storage. Yet to come are the removal of the reactor’s cover, its damaged core, and the decontamination of the buildings themselves.

Because of the opposition of local people and Pennsylvania officials, utility executives have not been allowed to restart Unit No. 1, which was shut down for refueling at the time of the accident. The cleanup at TMI must proceed regardless of whether Unit No. 2 is repaired or decommissioned, or whether the entire plant is closed down. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has rejected the idea of a sealed-up radioactive power plant sitting on its island in the Susquehanna River; the danger of eventual uncontrolled contamination, including seepage into the river, is too great.²

At the beginning of these notes I wrote that three months passed after Jane finished Chapter 10 of Dreams before she held her next session—a private one—on November 9. In that short session Seth sought to add his reassurances to Jane’s own, and to mine as well.¹⁰ On the 12th Columbia was launched as scheduled, but only after another delay caused by the failure of an electronic decoding unit. Then within a few hours after lift-off, the shuttle’s crew had to deal with the malfunction of one of the ship’s three fuel cells. Mission officials decided that for reasons of safety Columbia would land after a two-day flight instead of staying up for the planned five days; the 83 orbits were reduced to 36. The crew did successfully test the orbiter’s multijointed robot arm, however. In the meantime, on the evening of the 12th, following his suggestion that she resume the sessions on a twice-weekly basis, Jane spoke for Seth in another private session. That one too was short.¹¹

2. The cleanup costs at Three Mile Island are now projected at more than $1.5 billion, and will continue to increase. Many government officials and private analysts now believe that if the operating risks associated with nuclear power generating plants do not ultimately shut down many of them, their economic dilemmas will. I don’t know whether the nuclear power industry in the United States will die, but it’s in great trouble: Various studies show that around half of the 90 reactors under construction could be replaced by more economical coal-fired plants, containing excellent pollution-control equipment. By the late 1980s power from those new nuclear plants will be 25 percent more expensive than it would be if generated from coal.

At least partially because of their brutal history, Iranians—Persians—are strongly self-centered; preservation of the self is given an overriding impetus. The world is seen as being full of peril. Causality, the interrelation of cause and effect, is often ignored or misunderstood in the Iranian quest for immediate advantage. Influence counts for much more than obligation; the concept of long-term mutual trust is seen as basically adversarial; goodwill means little. Yet, such egocentric characteristics often are sublimated into the seemingly contradictory practice of martyrdom—the two are united within the Iranian interpretation of Moslem theology. In a land ruled by a body of theocratic law the needs of the country must ultimately prevail, as in the case of attack from without, say. There is no area in which Moslemic precepts do not apply.

“Nor will you have to.” / The voice is clearer now /
until it sounds / from my own mouth / (vibrant, loud) /
no longer distant. / We chatter half / the night together /
while I shake / the webs of remoteness /
from fingers and toes. / My shell / grew soft as a web /
then it fell apart / and was whisked off sighing /
in the morning / wind. / All around us /
the beach gathers the / precious images /
that leap up suddenly / in the dark, coming in with /
the tide that unites / the tides of the heart.