Correspondents' Correspondence

...Initially, they will build a water-treatment plant along with the geothermal power stations...

...His successor, with the backing of the entire LDP and its handful of independent supporters in the lower house, will then succeed him as Prime Minister...

...He lost in his bid for a seat in the Upper House as a candidate of a small conservative party, the New Liberal Club...

...That is, he defeated his arch-rival, Takeo Fukuda, in a runoff election in the Lower House-the first time in modern parliamentary history in Japan that a party had presented the Diet with the names of two candidates for Prime Minister...

...Thus, following the outbreak of the gas crisis in 1974, more than 50 countries began making serious attempts at exploiting it...

...The United States, Iceland and Japan are among the places where it is already being used...

...But the victory may prove pyrrhic...

...The United Nations Development Program (UNDP), it is noted, invested about $2 million in financing various surveys, feasibility studies and actual drilling work, and has helped Ethiopia locate more than 600 "hot spots...

...In providing a reliable domestic source of energy, the new plants will be an important step toward foreclosing such a possibility...

...The most serious of these is chemical waste disposal...

...An ecologically sound method of large-scale geothermal waste disposal is, therefore, essential for any geothermal project...

...Ohira has pasted up a Cabinet that does not include any leading representatives from the rival LDP factions and can boast just one really prominent name-that of Saburo Okita, the new Foreign Minister, who began to establish his reputation as an international planner soon after the War...

...he is not even a member of the Diet...

...Fortunately the world's most finely honed bureaucracy is highly qualified to mind the store, so to speak, while Japan's elected leaders exchange payoffs and votes in the Diet, smile for the photographers in public and hack away at each other in private...

...Kuraishi cannot order an acquittal, but he can discourage prosecutors from acting effectively if Tanaka ends up having to appeal a guilty verdict-And he could stop prosecutors from exercising their right of appeal under Japanese law if Tanaka is acquitted...

...The project will provide other benefits, too...

...Ohira held on...

...Each will consist of a giant steam turbine-the first of which is being constructed by Japan's Mitsubishi group...

...As it turned out, of course, his conservative Liberal-Democratic Party (LDP), solidly entrenched for nearly a quarter of a century, did far worse than he had ever imagined possible...

...It is not out of the question that Ohira will mastermind a face-saving arrangement for the budget, and that the LDP will win a majority in the Upper House...

...See "How Ohira Failed," NL, November 5...

...Drawing their power from an immense geothermal reservoir some 2,300 feet beneath the earth's surface, the plants will have a combined capacity of 45 megawatts...

...At present the country's fuel bill is about $340 million a year, with rising world prices threatening to strangle the young economy at a vulnerable stage of its expansion...

...Ohira's new Justice Minister, 79-year-old Tadao Kuraishi, signaled the quality of mercy Tanaka might expect when he remarked after being appointed to the post that Tanaka and another former minister under indictment were "close acquaintances of ours and, as a friend, I hope they will be cleared...

...At this stage, Kenya's industrial planners intend to take a middle course...

...The players gather to confer in the three office buildings of the Diet (Parliament), the Prime Minister's official residence down the street, and a few dozen private homes tucked away in the capital's more fashionable districts...

...In fact, there is now a small thermal dehydration operation near the geothermal field in the Lake Naivasha area, where up to three excellent crops of vegetables can be grown yearly...

...But harnessing the earth's natural heat on a major scale is particularly important to a developing nation like Kenya...

...Rapid industrialization has resulted in rapidly increasing oil consumption, despite many ambitious conservation policies...

...Geothermal steam is also being employed in Kenya for the drying of pyrethrum, the plant base of a nonpersistent, natural pesticide manufactured by a thriving East African industry...

...Geothermal energy does have some drawbacks, however...

...Later, they will launch an ambitious scientific research program to develop a reliable and cost-effective way of re-injecting geothermal effluents into the earth...

...The Communists, who gained considerably in the Lower House elections, may also seek some kind of temporary arrangement with the Socialists, despite their notable lack of success in coming to terms in previous years...

...It was at that point that the game started to bore: The Prime Minister's intra-party foes demanded that he accept "responsibility" and resign, and self-righteous national newspapers echoed their cries...

...The energy yield, for example, can be utilized to dehydrate vegetables in dryers similar to those being used in Iceland...

...The East Africa Power and Lighting Company of Nairobi, in overall charge of the undertaking, will channel this to Kenya's growing industries...

...The "Committee for a Better LDP"-best known as the "anti-Ohira forces" -has pledged a vicious, unremitting struggle to unseat him...

...Nobody actually sees what is really happening, but everybody can read accounts in the next day's newspapers, which cover the play in minute if not necessarily accurate detail...

...A long-time party hack who served previously as Construction Minister, Takeshita should obediently carry out the wishes of his master, former Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka, who delivered all the votes of his supporters to Ohira...

...Aided by an agreement just completed with the World Bank and additional financing from third parties, the government will build two geothermal electricity plants near Nairobi...

...Since geothermal energy feeds on the heat beneath the crust of the earth, it is renewable...

...Possibly the most revealing appointment was that of Noboru Takeshita to the crucial post of Finance Minister...

...And the lessons learned along the way could benefit many other countries-in East Africa and elsewhere-in their quest for cheap industrial energy extracted from the volcanic depth of the earth.-Thomas Land...

...For Tanaka, though, the real payoff could be much higher...

...Once they put together a package, Ohira and his allies face another prolonged struggle against their formal opponents-the half dozen opposition parties in the Lower House...

...This year the game began with the campaign preceding the October 7 elections called by Prime Minister Ma-sayoshi Ohira in a bid to increase his power...

...Arsenic, salt, flourine, boron and many other mineral compounds are frequently among the effluents brought to the surface that can harm animal and plant life and contaminate the water if discharged untreated...

...And specialists regard this as merely a modest beginning...

...As the events of the last couple of months have shown, though, such predictions are highly risky here...

...Sensing the chance finally to shatter the discord-ridden LDP, the distant-second-ranking Socialists are talking about an alliance with the Buddhist-backed Komeito Party and the Democratic Socialists, both essentially conservative groupings...

...He is under indictment for his role in the Lockheed aircraft bribery scandal of 1976, and a lower court is expected to deliver its verdict in the near future...

...In time, Kenya's geothermal program could make it a net exporter of energy...

...At the least, this group could embarrass him by sharply critizing the budget, which generally relies on the sale of bonds for 40 per cent of its revenue...

...The installations are to be run by Kenyan personnel currently receiving training from foreign experts...

...Nor, for that matter, is it out of the question that the opposition could create enough confusion to encourage a breakaway from the LDP and the emergence of a new "coalition" capable of sweeping aside the names and faces that have run the political game in this nation for the past two decades.-donald Kirk Going Geothermal Paris-kenya is about to become the first country to harness geothermal energy on a large scale...

...Unfortunately, the subjects under discussion are not the management of a trillion-dollar economy, the sharply declining value of the yen, or the perpetual energy crisis in a nation that must import all of its crude...

...According to this scenario, the LDP will therefore lose badly in elections for the Upper House in June, and the Prime Minister will be voted out as president of the LDP at the next party convention in December...

...most of Africa, they believe, will one day be able to employ the relatively cheap and abundant energy source...

...The betting here is that Ohira will ultimately have to accept a watered-down budget, and that he will be even more politically weakened than at present...

...Ohira will face his first real test before the end of the year, when he must try to convince all factions of the party to agree on a new budget bill for presentation to the Diet this winter...

...Okita, however, has no political power...

...Japanese Game Tokyo-when Japanese politics becomes too much of a game it gets to be a total bore, at least for the spectators...

...At this writing the LDP appears as unlikely to pull together for the sake of pushing through key legislation as it was incapable of uniting behind one man in the vote in the Lower House...

...When completed, these will tap the 6,500-kilometer Rift Valley System-A vast fault in the earth's crust extending from Mozambique to Turkey-for what is projected to be one-tenth of Kenya's energy supply...