***************************************************************** 02/21/04 **** RADIATION BULLETIN(RADBULL) **** VOL 12.44 ***************************************************************** RADBULL IS PRODUCED BY THE ABALONE ALLIANCE CLEARINGHOUSE ***************************************************************** Send News Stories to news@energy-net.org with title on subject line and first line of body NUCLEAR POLICY 1 US: Salt Lake Tribune: Fooling with Nature 2 US: BulletinWire News: Bush administration's unscientific methods 3 US: Knox News: Ensuring TVA has a future 4 Guardian Unlimited: Britons 'had key role in Malaysia 5 Straits Times Nuclear broker: Versace lover, chocolate shop owner - 6 AU: SMH: Britons in Pakistani nuclear scandal - 7 Washington Times: Probe details nuclear deals 8 Daily Star: Ghosts of 1973 still haunt Israel as its spies face Iraq 9 New York Times: Khan, Abdul Qadeer Pakistani Said to Have Given Liby 10 Mercury News: More details surface about nuclear network 11 WorldNetDaily: Shopping-bag nukes 12 Hi Pakistan: Iran has N-arms plans - diplomats 13 Hi Pakistan: A story of shopping bags 14 Hi Pakistan: Pakistan not accountable to anyone for N-proliferation 15 AU ABC: Malaysian whistleblower reveals nuclear trade secrets 16 AU ABC: Fate of nuclear whistleblower unknown. 17 FOXNews.com: Iran Not Learning Lessons From Libya NUCLEAR REACTORS 18 Las Vegas SUN: Fire Breaks Out at Japanese Nuclear Plant 19 US: AZ Republic: Radioactive leak shuts unit at Palo Verde plant 20 US: JS Online: Point Beach told to clean up act 21 US: New York Times: Foes Attack Bid to Renew Oyster Creek Nuclear Li 22 Bellona: Sawdust at the the Leningrad Nuclear Power Plant 23 Pravda.RU France and Japan: who will place nuclear reactor on its te 24 US: toledoblade.com: FirstEnergy users should shop around 25 ITAR-TASS: Thermonuclear reactor may begin to be built 2004 26 US: Post-Crescent: Report finds ‘significant’ issues at Point Beach 27 DW: Five German Nuclear Plants Vulnerable to Terror Attacks, Agency NUCLEAR SAFETY 28 US: Rocky Mountain News: Illnesses leave lives in 'agony' 29 US: Rocky Mountain News: Flats activists seek automatic compensation 30 US: JOURNAL NEWS: Towns are asked to help pass out KI pills NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE 31 Las Vegas RJ: House panel sets LV Yucca meeting 32 RGJ: DOE begins probe into claim safety records were changed at Yucc 33 Beacon Journal: $125 million deal lures uranium plant to Ohio 34 US: KOBTV: United Nuclear submits Church Rock reclamation plan 35 US: Salt Lake Tribune: Nuke controls clear House 36 US: Tri-Valley Herald: Lab receives fines for waste violations NUCLEAR WEAPONS 37 US: Salt Lake Tribune: No nuclear testing 38 NST: Local NPT signatories must report all nuclear material US DEPT. OF ENERGY 39 Seattle Times: State to look into worker complaints at Hanford 40 Rocky Mountain News: Flats activists seek automatic compensation 41 The Olympian: Hanford cleanup project finishes 42 The Olympian: State probes complaints 43 chillicothegazette.com: Piketon plant courtship cost $15 million - 44 Tri-City Herald: Celebrating a milestone 45 Tri-City Herald: State to probe Hanford safety 46 The State: Energy chief gives update on 47 Contra Costa Times: DOE plan doubles plutonium at Livermore 48 KOBTV: Group sues DOE for slow response to request for public record 49 Idaho Statesman: INEEL could help find security threats 50 Tri-Valley Herald: Lab could become nuclear power OTHER NUCLEAR 51 Google News Alert - nuclear 52 Arms Race In Outer Space? Pentagon Prepares To Weaponize, Nuclearize 53 Guardian Unlimited: Nuclear Middleman Can Leave Malaysia ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** FULL NEWS STORIES ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** 1 Salt Lake Tribune: Fooling with Nature February 21, 2004 Much of the work of science is the discovery of patterns that exist in nature, from the spiral arrangement of galaxies to understand how the universe works, but also are often beautiful in their own right. This week, a group of scientists announced they had discovered a pattern that exists in our federal government. This discovery helps us to understand why many things are not working, and is anything but beautiful. The Union of Concerned Scientists released a report Wednesday signed by 60 of our top scientific minds, including 20 Nobel laureates, excoriating the Bush administration for a widespread practice of cooking the books within its various scientific departments, committees, reports and Web sites to fit its political goals. The report makes a stunning case for the hypothesis that, rather than serve the public interest in matters from pollution control to agriculture policy to public health matters, the Bush administration has made it a policy to alter or obliterate data and interpretations that do not serve its purposes. Even the best scientists are wrong sometimes. But even if the UCS report has missed the mark in some of its particular examples, its theory of the misuse of science and scientists by this administration is credible and disturbing. Most of the cases cited by the UCS have been available in the press. They include the removal of a section on global climate change from an Environmental Protection Agency annual statement, removing data on mercury poisoning and other air pollution issues from other EPA reports, overstating the success of abstinence-only sex-education programs in Texas, deleting information on condom use in anti-AIDS materials, and pressuring the National Cancer Institute to promote claims about links between abortion and breast cancer long after the connection had been debunked. And, of course, Department of Energy experts told their superiors that aluminum tubes purported to be part of Saddam Hussein's alleged nuclear program were clearly not suitable for such use. The administration went right ahead and claimed otherwise. All administrations have been known to resist data that are inconvenient and to fish around for whatever expert will provide the interpretation it wants. But never before has it seemed to be such an overwhelming pattern. If the president wants his administration to reclaim any of the credibility it lost in the wake of its pre-war Iraq intelligence failures, he might help himself by seeing to it that this pattern of scientific fakery comes to a swift end. Copyright Salt Lake City Tribune ***************************************************************** 2 BulletinWire News: Bush administration's unscientific methods February 20, 2004 Earlier this week many prominent scientists, outraged by what they called the Bush administration’s “distortion of scientific knowledge for partisan political ends,” released a joint statement calling for an end to such practices. The statement was released in conjunction with “Scientific Integrity in Policymaking: An Investigation into the Bush Administration’s Misuse of Science,” a report put together by the Union of Concerned Scientists. According to the report, “At high levels of government, the administration’s political agenda has permeated the traditionally objective, nonpartisan mechanisms through which the government uses scientific knowledge in forming and implementing public policy.” In the March/April 2004 Bulletin, Editor Linda Rothstein warned of what could happen if the executive branch’s Office of Management and Budget were to overhaul rules on scientific peer review as it wants to do. “If the final—and only—say-so on science resides in the White House, it won’t be long before all government statements will be sprinkled with political pixie dust, and what we now know as science will become ‘science’—just another of the fact-free ideological arguments being used to undermine democratic government as we know it,” Rothstein wrote. On Thursday Russian Col. Gen. Yuri Baluyevsky said that Moscow had successfully tested an experimental “hypersonic” weapon supposedly capable of defeating any prospective missile defense. "The flying vehicle changed both altitude and direction of its flight," Baluyevsky said at a news conference. "During the experiment conducted yesterday, we have proven that it's possible to develop weapons that would make any missile defense useless" (Associated Press, February 19). Baluyevsky also reiterated earlier statements made by President Vladimir Putin that the test of the prototype weapon was not a response to the ongoing U.S. efforts to build a missile defense. He added that Russia had no immediate plans to manufacture the weapon. The construction of a U.S. missile defense may actually lead to greater proliferation. By reexamining how U.S. war planners targeted the Soviet missile defense with massive amounts of nuclear firepower in 1968, and then looking at how present-day nuclear targeting is done, Bulletin authors Hans M. Kristensen, Matthew G. McKinzie, and Robert S. Norris conclude that "it is clear that construction of a U.S. missile defense is actually cause for concern.” "The dynamics of nuclear competition and the history of the U.S. targeting of the Soviet [anti-ballistic missile] system remind us that missile defense systems are potent drivers of offensive nuclear planning. The missile defense that the Bush administration is building will be no exception, despite its limited capability, and it will almost certainly attract nuclear targeting from the start.” ***************************************************************** 3 Knox News: Ensuring TVA has a future New finance man looks inward to trim burgeoning budget By DUNCAN MANSFIELD, Associated Press February 21, 2004 The Tennessee Valley Authority's new chief financial officer knows about layoffs, selling off assets and bankruptcy. "It teaches you a lot. It teaches you about efficiency. It teaches you about how to do your business differently when costs really matter," Michael Rescoe said in a recent interview with The Associated Press. Rescoe, 51, arrived at the nation's largest public utility in July from 3Com Corp., a global leader in computer networking before the telecom bubble burst and two-thirds of its 15,000 employees were let go. Before that, Rescoe was CFO at Pacific Gas and Electric Corp., the nation's largest utility that sank into bankruptcy after selling its power plants as a result of California's fiasco with deregulation. With this background, Rescoe comes to TVA, a government-owned utility facing its own demons - huge debt, rising costs of pollution and growing fears it will lose its 70-year monopoly over the 80,000-square-mile Tennessee Valley. An internal review could reveal as early as Monday what programs will stay and which will go, leading to job cuts for TVA's 13,245-employee work force by June. "It is potentially less employees. But I can't say (how many) because I don't have the data yet," Rescoe said. Although TVA has been analyzing scores of scenarios for what the future might hold, options for reducing costs are limited. "Our costs are machines, fuel and people. So we have to look at machines, fuel and people. And how we deploy them," Rescoe said. Rescoe, a New Jersey native and University of Texas MBA grad, was an investment banker before joining one of his clients - Dallas-based Enserch Corp. He said his experience handling corporate crises is important in helping TVA through its struggles. "The career experience is about companies who perceive that they are in a change process, and the CFO is in a key role ... to either help the change or frustrate the change," he said. "I embrace the future because I think it is exciting. And I think I can help," said Rescoe, who succeeded the retired David Smith. TVA Director Bill Baxter said Rescoe's management expertise with the private sector, utilities and investments "is very attractive" for TVA, a self-supporting agency with some $7 billion in annual revenues from power sales to about 8.3 million consumers in Tennessee and parts of Kentucky, North Carolina, Virginia, Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi. "TVA has some very difficult financial decisions to make ... and I am glad we've got somebody like Mike Rescoe to help us figure that out," Baxter said. TVA operates three nuclear plants, 11 coal-fired stations, 29 hydroelectric dams and a 17,000-mile transmission grid. What is their future? "Anytime you give up assets, you give up scale. You give up flexibility. So I am not a fan of giving up assets," Rescoe said. "Having said that, I am a fan of making your assets more efficient and changing them through time." Many of TVA's fossil plants were built in the 1940s and 1950s, and TVA estimates it may cost up to $3 billion for pollution controls to meet air standards. "The major 'what if' question about our (fossil) facilities is: Are they the right assets for tomorrow? They have been just fabulous, and they are fabulous today. But there is a trend: Nobody is ever going to want less clean air," Rescoe said. Meanwhile, Rescoe said there is no movement to save money by eliminating nonpower programs that are part of TVA's heritage, such as managing the 652-mile Tennessee River watershed for recreation, navigation and wildlife or TVA's economic development programs. Rescoe said it is "pretty clear that our (current) business model, carrying $25 billion worth of debt, is not a good thing. So if you are an enterprise like ourselves, what do you do to reduce debt?" An investor-owned utility might seek a rate increase, but TVA thinks "the right thing to do is to turn inward and look at ourselves," Rescoe said. "To see if there is a way that we can do business better, faster, cheaper." [Get Copyright Clearance] Copyright 2004, Associated Press. All rights reserved. © 2004 The Knoxville News Sentinel Co. All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 4 Guardian Unlimited: Britons 'had key role in Malaysia Malaysian police report implicates the Griffins John Aglionby in Kuala Lumpur Saturday February 21, 2004 The Guardian A British businessman and his son suspected of procuring blackmarket equipment to make nuclear weapons were instrumental in setting up Libya's weapons programme, the Malaysian police allege. Peter Griffin, 68, and his son Paul, 40, from Swansea but based in Dubai and France, supplied equipment, technology and helped arranged the training of technicians "to set up a workshop in Libya to make centrifuge components which could not be obtained from outside Libya" a 17-page police report says. It claims that they set up a front company to buy parts around the world and helped an operation to make parts in a Malaysian factory for the multinational network run by Pakistan's senior nuclear scientist, Abdul Qadeer Khan. The report is based mainly on evidence from another of the network's middlemen, Buhary Seyed Abu Tahir, and briefings by British and US intelligence agents. President George Bush has described Mr Tahir, a Sri Lankan who lives in Malaysia, as the network's "chief financial officer and money launderer." The report says Mr Tahir told officers that he had arranged on behalf of Mr Khan the sale of used centrifuge units to Iran in the mid-1990s, for which Mr Kahn was paid $3m (£1.63m) in cash. Last week the Guardian published the first interview with Mr Griffin. He said the allegations against him and his father were "total nonsense, rubbish" and "totally untrue". Mr Griffin was unavailable for comment yesterday and no one answered the phone at Gulf Technical Industries, his company in Dubai, which arranged many of the procurement deals, according to the documents obtained by the Guardian. Peter Griffin, who has retired to France, could not be reached either. The Malaysian police report does not link either of the Griffins to the Iranian or North Korean nuclear energy and weapons programmes. Neither the Griffins not Mr Tahir have been accused of committing a crime. The Griffins' involvement in Mr Khan's Libyan operation began, according to the Malaysian police, at an unspecified date after an initial meeting in 1997 between Mr Khan, Mr Tahir and a Libyan representative, Mohamad Matuq Mohamad, at which Libya asked for centrifuge units. Their first task was described as Project Machine Shop 1001, to set up the workshop in Libya. The police report implies that Peter Griffin was more heavily involved at this stage than his son. He obtained the required machines from Italy and Spain and allegedly supplied the lay-out plan for the workshop. In 2001/2 Peter Griffin reportedly supplied a lathe machine to Libya for the project and then "arranged to send seven to eight Libyan technicians to Spain, twice, to attend courses on how to operate the machine". At the same time he is said to have supplied an Italian-made furnace to the workshop. The Malaysian special branch conducted its investigation after British and American intelligence officers told it in November that Mr Tahir had used a Malaysian company, Scomi Precision Engineering (Scope), owned by the prime minister's son, "to produce components for the centrifuge unit for the uranium enrichment programme". Detectives homed in on Scope after five crates of goods bearing its labels were found on board a ship, the BBC China, in the Italian port of Taranto, bound for Libya. Agents suspected that they were to be used in the Libyan enrichment programme. The report concludes that Scope was unwittingly duped by Mr Tahir and Mr Griffin into making what it thought were parts for the oil and gas industry . The Malaysian police have submitted their report to the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, asking it to investigate further. Libya has not commented on the activities of the Khan network. Guardian Newspapers Limited ***************************************************************** 5 Straits Times Nuclear broker: Versace lover, chocolate shop owner - FEB 22,2004 Friends and staff see the softer side of the middleman in the black market controversy By Ling Chang Hong MR BUHARY Syed Abu Tahir is a man of fine taste. The shadowy figure at the centre of controversy over Malaysia's role in a nuclear black market scandal loves Versace suits and luxury cars. He has also invested in a fine-chocolates franchise and a gourmet date shop in Kuala Lumpur's chic Bangsar shopping district. Described as well-groomed and flamboyant by former employees, the 44-year-old is a soft-spoken husband and father, friends say. But US President George W. Bush recently named the Sri Lankan as 'the chief financial officer and money launderer' of the global trafficking network led by Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan. The disgraced Pakistani scientist has admitted to selling nuclear secrets to Iran, North Korea and Libya. A Malaysian company, Scomi Precision Engineering (Scope), owned by Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi's only son Kamaluddin, has been accused of producing centrifuge parts for Mr Tahir. Investigations show that between December 2002 and last August, Scope signed a US$3.4 million (S$5.8 million) contract with Mr Tahir to produce 14 'semi-finished components' for a Dubai-based company. While Scope claimed ignorance as to what the parts were meant for, documents obtained by Associated Press showed that Mr Tahir had close business ties with Mr Kamaluddin, 36. Mr Tahir was a director of Kaspadu, a holding company owned by Mr Kamaluddin, until early last year. His Malaysian wife was a major shareholder in Kaspadu until last month. Born in Tamil Nadu, India, on April 17, 1959, Mr Tahir moved to Sri Lanka when he was five. He later studied in New Delhi, where an uncle ran a business supplying parts to Dr Khan's operation. He moved to the United Arab Emirates in his early 20s to start SMB Computers, which later grew into SMB Group. It distributes brands such as Epson and Acer and has operations across the Middle East. From a rundown office in the 1980s, the company's headquarters moved to the upscale, marbled Al Musalla Tower in the heart of Dubai's commercial district. But Mr Tahir, who drove a Mercedes S320 and later a white BMW X5, kept a low profile. He left day-to-day operations to his brother Syed Ibrahim Buhary. According to a former employee, he would receive certain business contacts in private. Among them were a female Sri Lankan politician, a retired Pakistani military officer and a US-educated Indian engineer. SMB staff members told AP that Mr Tahir is a religious Muslim who prayed late into the night during Ramadan. The New York Times said he had travelled to Morocco, Switzerland, Germany and Turkey to carry out his business dealings, according to investigators. His business and social links with the Who's Who of Malaysia's elite started when he moved to Kuala Lumpur in the mid-1990s. Among his new friends were Mr Kamaluddin and Mr Shah Hakim Zain, the chief executive of Scope's parent company, the Scomi Group. The two men were listed among the 20 top corporate 'movers and shakers' by ING Financial Markets last September. In 1998, Mr Tahir married Ms Nazimah Abdul Majid, a cousin of Mr Hakim's and the daughter of a former Malaysian diplomat. The glittering list of guests at their wedding in Kuala Lumpur included Dr Khan. Mr Tahir and his 35-year-old wife lived in an exclusive suburb in Kuala Lumpur with their two pre-school-age children. Security guards at the luxury apartment said the family left their home on Wednesday. The whereabouts of the man, who is a Malaysian permanent resident, remain a mystery although Malaysian police said he was 'still in the country'. Inspector-General of Police Mohamed Bakri Omar told AP yesterday that Mr Tahir was free to leave Malaysia as he had not committed any crimes in the country. But it remains to be seen if the businessman is able to keep his luminous circle of friends. Mr Kamaluddin has already broken ties with him and his family. The Straits Times ***************************************************************** 6 AU: SMH: Britons in Pakistani nuclear scandal - World - www.smh.com.au [Sydney Morning Herald Online] February 22, 2004 The Sun-Herald A British businessman and his son suspected of procuring black market equipment to make nuclear weapons were instrumental in setting up Libya's weapons program, Malaysian police have alleged. Peter Griffin, 68, and his son Paul, 40, from Swansea, south Wales - but based in Dubai and France - supplied equipment and technology and helped arrange the training of technicians "to set up a workshop in Libya to make centrifuge components which could not be obtained from outside Libya", a 17-page police report says. It says the businessmen set up a front company to buy parts around the world and helped an operation to make parts in a Malaysian factory for the multinational network run by Pakistan's top nuclear scientist and father of that country's nuclear bomb, Abdul Qadeer Khan. The Mayalsian report is based on evidence from one of the network's middlemen, Buhary Syed Abu Tahir, and briefings by British and US intelligence. US President George Bush has described Mr Tahir, a Sri Lankan who lives in Malaysia, as the network's "chief financial officer and money launderer". The report says Mr Tahir told officers he had arranged - on behalf of Mr Khan - the sale of used centrifuge units to Iran in the mid-1990s, for which Mr Kahn was paid $US3 million ($3.9 million) in cash. But Paul Griffin said in London last week the allegations were "total nonsense, rubbish" and "totally untrue". He was unavailable for comment yesterday and no one answered the phone at Gulf Technical Industries, his company in Dubai that allegedly arranged the procurement deals. Peter Griffin, who has retired to France, could not be reached. The Malaysian police report does not link either of the Griffins to the Iranian or North Korean nuclear energy and weapons programs. The Griffins' involvement in Mr Khan's Libyan operation began, the Malaysian police say, at an unspecified date after an initial meeting in 1997 between Mr Khan, Mr Tahir and a Libyan representative, Mohamad Matuq Mohamad, at which Libya asked for centrifuge units. The Malaysian police began investigations after British and US intelligence officers advised in November that Mr Tahir had used a Malaysian company, Scomi Precision Engineering (Scope) - owned by Kamaluddin Abdullah, the son of Prime Minister Addullah Badawi - "to produce components for the centrifuge unit for the uranium enrichment program". Police homed in on Scope after five crates of goods bearing its labels were found on board a ship in the Italian port of Taranto, bound for Libya. It was suspected the goods were to be used in the Libyan enrichment program. The Malaysian police have submitted their report to the International Atomic Energy Agency, asking it to investigate further. The Guardian Copyright © 2004. The Sydney Morning Herald. ***************************************************************** 7 Washington Times: Probe details nuclear deals February 21, 2004 KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia  The father of Pakistan's nuclear program sold uranium-enrichment equipment to Iran for $3 million and signed lucrative contracts for Libya, part of a thriving black market in nuclear arms, according to a Malaysian police investigative report released yesterday. The report  based on interviews with one of the operation's purported middlemen, Bukhary Syed Abu Tahir  reveals details about suspected deals among Pakistan, Iran and Libya. It lays out the extent of the black market, which appears to have included a company owned by the son of Malaysia's prime minister, as well as British and Swiss middlemen. Mr. Tahir, a 44-year-old Sri Lankan, said he was one of several people who helped Abdul Qadeer Khan, "the father of Pakistan's nuclear-weapons program," sell nuclear technology to willing buyers. Mr. Khan confessed this month to leaking nuclear technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea. Malaysia's investigation into Mr. Tahir began after a company controlled by Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi's son was said to have unwittingly supplied the network. Police said the 12-page report on the three-month investigation will be given to the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations' nonproliferation watchdog. The Malaysians urged the agency to investigate European individuals and firms. President Bush singled out Mr. Tahir and Malaysia in a speech last week that urged tougher international regulations. Among details supplied by Mr. Tahir in the report are deals between Mr. Khan's operatives to sell nuclear equipment to Iran for $3 million in cash and to supply a uranium compound used in the enrichment process to Libya. According to Mr. Tahir's account, Libya approached Mr. Khan in 1997 for help building a uranium-enrichment program. Negotiations began in Istanbul between the Pakistani scientist and a Libyan identified as Mohammed Matuq Mohammed. What Mr. Khan's network couldn't get for Libya directly, it helped the country build, sending machines and technicians to set up centrifuge-making operations and calling it "Project Machine Shop 1001," according to Mr. Tahir's account. Centrifuges are sophisticated machines that can be used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons or nuclear power. Mr. Tahir told police he was recruited to Mr. Khan's network in 1994. ***************************************************************** 8 Daily Star: Ghosts of 1973 still haunt Israel as its spies face Iraq probe, too dailystar.com/LebNews Opinion DS 21/02/04 While the United States and Britain launch investigations into their intelligence services failures on Iraq, a special committee of Israels Parliament is putting the finishing touches to a seven-month probe of the Jewish states vaunted intelligence services which, on the face of it at least, were just as wrong as the American and British allies about Saddam Husseins weapons of mass destruction (WMD). But the Israeli lawmakers have an added wrinkle to worry about: allegations that Israels intelligence services provided the US with false information that Saddam possessed WMD because they wanted to encourage the Americans to attack Iraq and eliminate one of the Jewish states staunchest enemies without having to involve Israel. Most of what the Israeli lawmakers conclude is expected to be classified, but sources close to the proceedings have already indicated that the report will note serious shortcomings in Israeli intelligence-gathering, especially in countries such as Iraq beyond the Jewish states immediate neighbors. This could affect Israeli intelligence on Iran, which Israel sees as a major threat because of its nuclear arms and ballistic missile programs. Senior Israeli officials have warned that Tehran is within a year of reaching the point of no return in its nuclear efforts, that is to say, the point at which it will no longer need to depend on outside help. Such intelligence has deeply influenced US policymaking and if it were found to be flawed could cause great embarrassment to Israel and the US. Some see these suspected imperfections in Israeli intelligence assessments as part of the lingering fallout from the intelligence failures that took Israel to the brink of disaster of the 1973 Middle East war and which has haunted the nation for the last three decades. Amid great secrecy and considerable opposition from senior figures in the defense and intelligence establishments, the chairman of the Knessets Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, Yuval Steinitz of the Likud Party, launched the Israeli investigation last summer after it became clear that contrary to the dire warnings of Israels intelligence community Saddam did not have WMD and did not use them against the Jewish state. The investigating committee has held 50 sessions and some 70 witnesses have testified before it: including Prime Minister Ariel Sharon; Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz; Israeli Army chief of staff, Lieutenant General Moshe Yaalon; Military Intelligence director Major General Aharon Zeevi; Mossad director Meir Dagan; and Shin Bet chief Avi Dichter. Steinitz insists that the investigation, which he heads, was necessary because there has been no committee that has seriously investigated the intelligence services since the commission set up after the near-disaster of the 1973 war. The final report by that commission, headed by the then-president of the supreme court, Shimon Agranat, published on Jan. 30, 1975, was scathing in its criticism of the inefficiency of Military Intelligence, known by the Hebrew acronym Aman in detecting the surprise attacks by Syria and Egypt. Its main recommendation was to break Amans monopoly on the evaluation of intelligence and to introduce pluralism in the various types of intelligence evaluations. Top officials, like Moshe Dayan, were badly tarnished by the findings and senior intelligence officials were dismissed. The perceived post-Cold War threats to Israel have undergone major shifts in recent years, particularly after Sept. 11, 2001, and the subsequent US-led regime changes in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the question of whether Israels intelligence establishment has not been able to keep pace with the changing security environment is causing considerable concern in Israel. This extends to its allies, particularly in light of European allegations that Israel exaggerated the Iraqi threat so the Americans and British would conveniently eliminate an Arab state that had fired ballistic missiles on Israeli cities in 1991, the first attacks on Israeli population centers since 1948. One of the most vocal critics of the intelligence community is legislator Yossi Sarid, a member of the Knessets Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee who represents the dovish Meretz Party. He says that Israeli intelligence knew that Iraq had no WMD stockpiles and misled the Bush administration. Sharons office insists that Israel had doubts about Saddams weapons and advised Washington of that. In the runup to the Iraq war, Israeli leaders warned of possible attacks with missiles carrying chemical or biological warheads and ordered a nationwide alert. Sarid says Israeli intelligence knew the threat was very, very, very limited & It was known in Israel that the story that WMD could be activated in 45 minutes was an old wives tale. Israel didnt want to spoil President Bushs scenario, and it should have. Scott Ritter, a former top UN weapons inspector in Iraq, has also said that the Israelis overstated the Iraqi threat because they wanted to encourage the US and the UK to launch a war that would eliminate a threat to Israel. As far back as 1995, Israel knew that Saddam Hussein had no capability to hit it with long-range missiles, Ritter said in an interview with the Israeli Ynet website. Steinitz and others across the Israeli political spectrum insist that is untrue, although they acknowledge serious flaws in the intelligence communitys capabilities. In the final analysis, there can be little doubt that Israel has benefited greatly from Sept. 11, 2001, and the US response to those events. The crushing of Saddams odious regime, the ravaging of Saudi Arabias alliance with the US, the isolation of Syria, Moammar Gadhafis amazing surrender of his nuclear arms program and Irans retreat on its nuclear ambitions in the face of international pressure have removed just about every strategic security the country faced. There have been repeated allegations, even within the US, that all that was a key objective of the Bushite neocons, and had been long before Al-Qaeda struck and presented them with the opportunity to put their strategy into practice. More recently, new allegations have been surfacing that the ad hoc intelligence review cell made up of pro-Israel neoconservative hawks within the Bush administration, overseen by Undersecretary for Defense Policy Douglas Feith, prior to the March 2003 invasion of Iraq cooperated closely with Israel in pushing for the war against Saddam. The entire team involved in the Office of Special Plans (OSP) championed by Vice-President Dick Cheney were political appointees and all are closely identified with Ariel Sharons right-wing Likud Party in Israel. Indeed, Feiths law partner is a spokesman for the settler movement in Israel. Whether there was intelligence linkage between the neocons in the Bush administration and the Sharon government or not remains to be conclusively determined. Still, domestic critics of Israels intelligence establishment contend that the data it provided the Americans to buttress their prewar assessment of Saddams WMD programs ­ pointing to a threat that did not, in fact, exist ­ damaged Israelis trust in their intelligence establishment and its credibility in the eyes of Israels allies and friends. Shlomo Brom, an air force reserve brigadier general, intelligence specialist and a former deputy commander of the Israeli Army planning branch, believes there was a serious Israeli intelligence failure over Iraq, just as there was in the US and Britain. In a report issued by the Jaffe Center for Strategic Studies in Tel Aviv in December, Brom wrote: Israeli intelligence was a full partner to the picture presented by US and British intelligence about Iraqs nonconventional capabilities & The failures in the war in Iraq point to inherent failures and weaknesses in Israeli intelligence and decision-makers. Similar failures could take place in the future if the issue is not fully researched and the proper conclusions reached. Brom wrote that Israeli intelligence chose to believe that Saddam had WMD, a dogmatic concept that was viewed with insufficient skepticism. He explained: The intelligence agencies were taken over by a nondimensional view of Saddam that fundamentally described him as the embodiment of evil, a man in the grip of an obsession to develop weapons of mass destruction to harm Israel and others, without any other considerations & There was absolute indifference to the complexity of considerations that a leader like Saddam Hussein must have. The issue of the accuracy of Israels intelligence establishment in assessing threats to the nation has been highly emotive and sensitive since the failure to anticipate the attacks by Egypt and Syria in October 1973 that came within a hairs breadth of defeating Israel. Brom believes that the fallout from the intelligence disaster of 1973 was at least partially to blame for a flawed assessment of Iraq because since that time Israeli intelligence officials have tended to opt for the worst case scenario rather than be caught napping again. Ed Blanche, a member of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, is a Beirut-based journalist who has covered Middle Eastern affairs for three decades. He is a regular contributor to THE DAILY STAR DS 21/02/04 Copyright© 1997-2004 The Daily Star (ISSN 1564-0310). All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 9 New York Times: Khan, Abdul Qadeer Pakistani Said to Have Given Libya Uranium Saturday, Feb. 21, 2004 alerts Libya Pakistan Atomic Weapons *By RAYMOND BONNER and CRAIG S. SMITH* ISTANBUL, Feb. 20 ? The network led by the Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan shipped partly enriched uranium directly to Libya aboard a Pakistani airplane in 2001, providing the fuel stock in addition to the designs and technology to make a nuclear bomb, according to a report by Malaysian investigators released Friday. The report provides a wealth of evidence that businessmen and engineers from Turkey, Germany, Switzerland and Britain, as well as Dubai and Malaysia, were closely involved in recent years in Libya's clandestine nuclear program. It is based primarily on the Malaysian authorities' interrogation of B.S.A. Tahir, 44, a key middleman in Dr. Khan's global nuclear trading network. The shipment of uranium was one of many deliveries of nuclear components to Libya that began with a meeting in Istanbul in 1997 between Dr. Khan and Libyan officials, the Malaysian report says. The International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna confirmed in a report that Libya in February 2001 received a shipment that included 1.87 tons of uranium hexafluoride, a standard raw material for centrifuges to enrich uranium. The fuel required major further enrichment in order to reach bomb-grade quality, nuclear experts said. The amount was ideal for testing centrifuges but would also be sufficient to make one small bomb, they said. The two reports make clear that Dr. Khan and his associates were directly involved in providing Libya with the essential weapons component that is also the most difficult to procure: the uranium fuel. In a confession in Pakistan this month, Dr. Khan admitted that he had secretly sent nuclear designs and equipment to Libya, Iran and North Korea. Dr. Khan's key middleman, Bukhary Seyed Abu Tahir, has been isolated under intense police investigation in Malaysia for many weeks. In a speech on Feb. 11, President Bush said the Pakistani network had sold uranium hexafluoride, but he did not say who the buyer was. The report from the I.A.E.A., the atomic monitoring agency in Vienna, was obtained from a Western diplomat. It described a Libyan nuclear weapons effort that was more ambitious than previously known. Libya was not close to producing a bomb when it decided to disclose and abandon its nuclear program last year. The international agency reported that Libya made a strategic decision in July 1995 to redouble its nuclear efforts. In 1997, it said, foreign manufacturers provided 20 pre-assembled centrifuges of the P-1 type, a model that Dr. Khan developed. Libya also obtained components for an additional 200 P-1 centrifuges. The agency found that between late 2000 and April 2002, much of this gear was made ready for use. But then Libyan officials decided to dismantle and store it "for security reasons." Starting in 2000, Libya embarked on a parallel effort to acquire more advanced centrifuges with rotors made of maraging steel, a superhard alloy, and known as P-2, also a signature design of Dr. Khan's. They spin faster and enrich uranium faster. Libya received two of the advanced centrifuges in September 2000, the atomic agency's report said, and ordered 10,000 more, with parts starting to arrive in large quantities in December 2002. All were made outside Libya. The report said Libya had received no more steel rotors, the heart of the advanced machine. It added, however, that Libya had acquired "a large stock of maraging steel" to make centrifuge parts and that Libyan technicians had trained for such work at foreign sites on at least three occasions. Private experts said 10,000 machines, if successfully completed, could each year make enough highly enriched uranium for about 10 nuclear weapons. But the report said Libya had been only in the planning stages and had produced no enriched uranium. The report by the Malaysian authorities maps out in detail the supply lines leading to the Libyan program. It does not mention Dr. Khan by name, referring to him as the "Pakistani nuclear arms expert" and "Pakistani scientist." It said Mr. Tahir met Dr. Khan when he visited Pakistan in the mid-1980's and won contracts to sell air conditioning equipment to "Khan Research Laboratory." ***************************************************************** 10 Mercury News: More details surface about nuclear network | 02/21/2004 | FROM PAKISTAN, BOMB PLANS, PARTS SPREAD AROUND GLOBE Mercury News Wire Services JAKARTA, Indonesia - The Sri Lankan businessman who was an associate of Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan has told Malaysian police how Khan shipped components to Libya and Iran for their nuclear weapons programs and received two briefcases with a $3 million payment from Iran, a Malaysian police report disclosed Friday. The report outlined nuclear technology sent to the North African country from the late 1990s to last year by suppliers in Pakistan, Turkey, Britain, Switzerland, Germany and Malaysia. Some names had surfaced earlier in the probe, but the Malaysian report was the first time that Turkish companies had been named. Khan also shipped partially enriched uranium directly to Libya aboard a Pakistani airplane in 2001, providing the fuel stock in addition to the designs and technology to make a nuclear bomb, the report said. Libya has acknowledged obtaining much of its nuclear technology, including designs for a nuclear warhead, from a network headed by Khan. Separately, a confidential analysis by the United Nations nuclear watchdog said Libya was operating a more advanced and longer-running program to develop nuclear weapons than outside intelligence agencies and nuclear watchdogs imagined. The confidential analysis by the International Atomic Energy Agency, or IAEA, showed that Libya's program dated to the early 1980s and had succeeded in producing a small amount of plutonium and assembling the basic components to enrich uranium for a nuclear weapon. ``It is evident already that a network has existed whereby actual technological know-how originates from one source, while the delivery of equipment and some of the materials have taken place through intermediaries,'' said the report. In an insider's account of Khan's operation, Buhary Syed Abu Tahir said that Khan asked him to send two shipping containers of used centrifuges -- sophisticated equipment for enriching uranium -- to Iran from Dubai aboard a merchant vessel owned by an Iranian company, according to the 12-page report. In return, the Iranian contact provided the briefcases filled with dirhams, the currency of the United Arab Emirates, that were stashed at Khan's guesthouse in Dubai, the report said. Khan told Tahir that he had also flown uranium hexafluoride to Libya on a Pakistani airliner as part of a secret program he had worked out with the Libyans during the previous four years at meetings in Istanbul, Turkey; Casablanca, Morocco; and Dubai, according to the document. Uranium hexafluoride is a gas used in the process of enriching uranium. Highly enriched uranium is needed to build a nuclear weapon. Jon Wolfsthal, a nuclear expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said in a telephone interview that he was shocked by the length of time Libya had been operating a secret weapons program. ``We knew that Libya had an interest in nuclear technology, but the duration and the depth of it is surprising,'' he said. ``The other thing is the sheer size of what they were trying to acquire.'' The report said that Libya ordered 10,000 advanced uranium centrifuges, which are used to convert uranium into fissile material for nuclear weapons. The IAEA director general, Mohamed ElBaradei, issued the 10-page report Friday night to members of the agency's governing board. A copy of the report was provided to the Los Angeles Times. Malaysian police said they had been cooperating with an international probe of Khan's activities since being approached by U.S. and British intelligence agencies in November. Police said they had interrogated Tahir, who lives and does business in Malaysia, and were keeping him under surveillance but that he was not in custody and had not been charged with any crime. In a speech last week, President Bush called Tahir the nuclear network's ``chief financial officer and money launderer.'' Earlier this month, Khan confessed to selling his country's nuclear secrets and was pardoned by Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf. Paul Kerr, an analyst with the Arms Control Association in Washington, said the uranium hexafluoride provided to Libya would not necessarily have been weapons-grade but could have moved Libya ``further down the road'' to having highly enriched uranium usable in making a bomb. ``What they gave the Libyans, if this is right, is material they could more easily transform into bomb-grade material than if they just gave them natural uranium,'' Kerr said. Kerr added that two key questions remain: How much had the uranium been enriched? And was it provided in a large enough quantity to be useful in manufacturing a nuclear weapon? Though Bush mentioned in his speech last week that Khan's network had sold uranium hexafluoride, the Malaysian report described it as ``enriched uranium'' without saying by how much. The Washington Post and Los Angeles Times contributed to this report. ***************************************************************** 11 WorldNetDaily: Shopping-bag nukes FEBRUARY 21 2004 © 2004 WorldNetDaily.com A few weeks ago, Mohamed ElBaradei – director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency – visited Libya and was shown warehouses full of uranium-enrichment equipment, much of it still in shipping crates, which Libya had clandestinely purchased from "someone." However, ElBaradei reported that he had found no evidence of a Libyan uranium-enrichment program. Apparently, the Libyans had the money to buy such equipment but had no idea what to do with it once they got it. Now comes the Washington Post to report that the Libyans also gave ElBaradei what appear to be blueprints for building an implosion-type nuke. According to the Post: The documents at the center of the investigation were handed over to IAEA inspectors in two white plastic shopping bags from a Pakistani clothing shop. The shop's name – Good Looks Tailor – and Islamabad address were printed on the bags in red letters. One of the bags contained drawings and blueprints of different sizes; the other contained a stack of instructions on how to build not only a bomb but also its essential components. The documents themselves seemed a hodgepodge – some in good condition, others smudged and dirty; some professionally printed, others handwritten. Many of the papers were "copies of copies of copies," said one person familiar with them. The primary documents were entirely in English, while a few ancillary papers contained Chinese text. The Post didn't tell us whether the Good Looks Tailor implosion-nuke design calls for highly-enriched (90 percent) U-235 or for plutonium. The two fissile materials are not interchangeable. For one reason, among many, the critical mass of U-235 is six or seven times that of plutonium. That means that the high-explosive implosion system for a U-235 nuke would have to be much more powerful and have a different geometry. However, the Post's "experts" reckon that the Good Looks Tailor nuke would only weigh about a thousand pounds, could be delivered by ballistic missile and is an early Chinese design. That must mean it's a U-235 implosion-nuke, since the first nukes the Chinese tested, circa 1965, were – for some mysterious reason – U-235 implosion-nukes. However, by the mid-'70s, they were using plutonium and "boosting" the yield with tritium like the rest of us. "Boosting" is the secret of making fission nukes that weigh a few hundred pounds rather than a few thousand pounds. Now, the Indians have long maintained that the nukes the Pakistanis tested in 1998 were based upon that old 1965 Chinese design. True, the Pakistani nukes were also U-235 implosion-nukes. But the 1998 Pakistani nukes were much more sophisticated, being "boosted" with Tritium. So far as we know, no one else has ever done that. Pakistan not only has a sophisticated nuke arsenal, but has a complete nuke infrastructure – including uranium deposits and mines, weapons-grade uranium-enrichment facilities, spent-fuel reprocessing plants as well as nuke-related heavy water, ultra-pure graphite, plutonium and tritium production facilities. Furthermore, Pakistan has for some years been eager to supply turnkey nuclear facilities to international customers. For peaceful purposes, of course. So, where did the Libyans get their uranium-enrichment equipment? And where did they get the U-235 implosion-nuke design? How's this for a scenario? In 1975, the Pakistanis steal the blueprints for first generation gas centrifuges from Urenco, but by the 1990s had developed significantly better ones. Not as good as Urenco's latest designs, but good enough for Pakistani purposes. What to do with the old Urenco stuff? Why not consign it to a "junk" dealer? Then the junk dealer can attempt – with or without Pakistani assistance – to get what he can for it. But what about the Good Looks Tailor nuke design? Well, why not throw it in as an incentive for buying the old Urenco stuff? According to the IAEA, "someone" did attempt to sell Pakistani uranium-enrichment equipment – as well as a nuke design – to the Iraqis in 1990. But by then the Iraqis had already managed to get more sophisticated equipment from Europe and had also managed to design and begin testing a high-explosive implosion system for a U-235 nuke. So, "someone" did market Pakistani uranium-enrichment "junk" – and perhaps the Good Looks Tailor nuke design – to Iraq, Iran, Libya and perhaps North Korea. We now know that Libya bought all of it, Iran bought at least some of it and Iraq bought none of it. But the question remains, where did the "junkman" get the Good Looks Tailor design, and why were all the supporting documents entirely in English? Physicist James Gordon Prather has served as a policy implementing official for national security-related technical matters in the Federal Energy Agency, the Energy Research and Development Administration, the Department of Energy, the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Department of the Army. Dr. Prather also served as legislative assistant for national security affairs to U.S. Sen. Henry Bellmon, R-Okla. -- ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee and member of the Senate Energy Committee and Appropriations Committee. Dr. Prather had earlier worked as a nuclear weapons physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California and Sandia National Laboratory in New Mexico. © 2004 WorldNetDaily.com, Inc. ***************************************************************** 12 Hi Pakistan: Iran has N-arms plans - diplomats February 23 2004 VIENNA, Feb 20: Western diplomats who follow the UN nuclear agency are increasingly certain Iran had an atomic weapons programme after recent reports that essential components had been found for making nuclear fuel or nuclear bombs. Diplomats on the nuclear agency's governing board and a US official said on Thursday UN inspectors in Iran had discovered components which were usable in advanced centrifuges for extracting enriched uranium. Tehran repeated on Friday it had no such equipment, contradicting multiple reports that the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) had discovered such technology. "There was a report that they found (advanced P2 enrichment centrifuge) parts in some military base, which was not true," Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said. "What we have is a research project that hasn't been implemented yet. There are no (P2 centrifuge) parts in any place in Iran. They are just trying to create a fuss about this." But one diplomat said the UN inspectors had found several assembled centrifuges based on the "P2" design, which is a Pakistani version of the European-developed "G2" centrifuge. "The centrifuges were apparently assembled but the Iranians say they never put uranium into them," the diplomat said. Several Western diplomats dismissed the Iranian denials. "The aggregate of evidence clearly demonstrates that Iran is pursuing a covert nuclear programme in the best case and in the worst case a covert weapons programme. The evidence points to the latter," a diplomat said. The circle of diplomats who agree with the US line that Iran has a nuclear weapons programme appears to be widening, with even some non-Western diplomats saying it was becoming increasingly difficult to give Tehran the benefit of the doubt. -Reuters Copyright 1996-2002 . Hi Pakistan. All rights reserved. No part ***************************************************************** 13 Hi Pakistan: A story of shopping bags ISLAMABAD, Feb 20: The controversy surrounding the alleged discovery by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) of Pakistani centrifuge designs in Libya, said to be wrapped in drycleaner bags, appeared to be deepening further as the bags now appears to be that of an Islamabad tailoring shop. The Good Looks Fabrics &Tailors, a stockist of clothes located in Melody Market, was a shop frequented by Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan. During the second week of February, it was reported by a reputable US paper that the blueprints discovered in Libya were wrapped in plastic bags from an Islamabad dry cleaner which later turned out to be that of GLF Tailors. The owner of the shop, Salahuddin Abbassi, told Dawn here on Friday that Dr Qadeer was a frequent visitor to his shop till about five years ago, the time corresponding to the occasion of Pakistan going overt with its nuclear capability. After the nuclear tests in 1998, Dr Khan did not visit the shop, he said. However, a number of people recommended by Dr Khan became my customers, he said. In response to a question if he had any idea how the centrifuge designs ended up in the shopping bags of his shop, he said, "it is not my responsibility what the buyers wrap in the shopping bags once they leave the shop," he said. A well connected fashion designer exporting to Paris and having business interests in Kuwait who was visiting the shop interjected to say that only yesterday, the former army chief Abdul Waheed Kakar visited the shop as a customer. Other important dignitaries are also frequent visitors to the shop, he said, adding, clothing for some of President Musharraf's suits was also supplied by the shop. It was learnt that a photo of Dr Khan which used to adorn the shop was taken off by the staff recently. To a question why the photograph was taken off, Mr Abbasi said, the staff took it off without his knowledge. "Dr Qadeer is our hero who provided a nuclear deterrent to the country," said the well articulated educated owner of the shop when asked if he still considered Dr Khan to be a hero. In response to a question if any security officials had investigated or asked questions of any of the staff members of the shop, Mr Abbasi said a person came to the shop about five days ago and asked if Dr Khan was a frequent visitor to the shop. He said foreign media professionals from two organizations had also interviewed him, one interview taking place in the presence of a politician, Kabir Ali Wasti, who happened to be present there at the time. Copyright 1996-2002 . Hi Pakistan. All rights reserved. No part ***************************************************************** 14 Hi Pakistan: Pakistan not accountable to anyone for N-proliferation - Fazal February 23 2004 DERA ISMAIL KHAN: The General Secretary for Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal, Maulana Fazal-ur-Rehman has said that Pakistan is not signatory of CTBT and NPT so it is not liable to answer on nuclear proliferation. He was addressing to a clerk convention in Dera Ismail Khan. The whole Europe is involved in nuclear proliferation, he said suggesting constitution of a commission to investigate nuclear proliferation around the world. Maulana Fazal-ur-Rehman also asked government for closing operation in tribal areas. Copyright 1996-2002 . Hi Pakistan. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced without the written permission and prior consent of the webmaster. ***************************************************************** 15 AU ABC: Malaysian whistleblower reveals nuclear trade secrets AM - Saturday, 21 February , 2004 08:00:37 Reporter: Peter Lloyd ELIZABETH JACKSON: But first this morning, new information has come to light about the extent of the black market in nuclear secrets. Details of what nuclear material went where have been given publicly for the first time by police in Malaysia. They've been quizzing a local resident who helped finance the operation but has now turned into a whistleblower. And his disturbing account casts doubt on the Pakistan Government's claim that it stopped the trade four years ago. Our South East Asia Correspondent Peter Lloyd reports. PETER LLOYD: Two weeks ago the father of Pakistan’s nuclear program, AQ Khan, stepped forward to confess that he had been secretly trafficking nuclear secrets to North Korea, Iran and Libya. That’s where the detail may have ended without the account of Buhary Syed Abu Tahir, a Sri Lankan businessman based in Kuala Lumpur and identified as Doctor Khan’s chief financier. Mr Tahir had been under investigation since Malaysian centrifuge parts were found in a cargo ship bound for Libya last year. The components came from a company jointly controlled by the son of Malaysia’s Prime Minister. Police cleared the company, saying it had no knowledge of what the materials would be used for, but their interview with Mr Tahir provided an intriguing insight into the business of trafficking nuclear secrets. He told police that in 2001 AQ Khan boasted that he’d used a Pakistani jet to transfer enriched uranium to Libya and that Khan earned more than $3 million for selling used centrifuge parts to Iran in the mid-1990s. Such parts are necessary to enrich uranium to the level needed for a nuclear bomb. Tahir alleges the payment was brought in two briefcases to an apartment in Dubai used by the Pakistani scientist. The financier also named a series of Europeans as middlemen with links to Khan. Less than a fortnight ago Pakistan’s Foreign Minister said AQ Khan’s operation was discovered and stopped in the year 2000 and that he had acted alone. But according to Tahir the scientist was still holding secret meetings with the Libyans two years later in 2002. And then there’s the matter of centrifuge parts from Malaysia heading to Libya as recently as last October. President Musharraf’s spokesman, Major General Shaukat Sultan Khan, said his country would look into the report if asked. SHAUKAT SULTAN KHAN: We do not initiate investigations on media reports. The Government of Pakistan shall look into it if conveyed through official channels. Broadly speaking Doctor AQ Khan had confessed of these activities in his statement, but I would not specifically go into the details as mentioned in this report because it has yet not been conveyed to us officially. PETER LLOYD: It was President Bush who dragged Malaysia into the spotlight by naming the country in a speech on nuclear proliferation. By mid-week administration officials were backtracking and saying the President had not intended to implicate the Malaysians in the trafficking scandal. Kuala Lumpur suspects the US was trying to embarrass it into signing a treaty to control exports of so-called dual use technology, such as centrifuges, but Foreign Affairs Minister Albar Hamid says his country is having none of it. ALBAR HAMID: There is no reason for us to tighten because we are not involved and we do not have the capability. PETER LLOYD: Buhary Syed Abu Tahir remains in Kuala Lumpur but he’s no longer living at his home address. Malaysian police will send the information he gave to the International Atomic Energy Agency, along with a call for the IAEA to launch its own investigation. ***************************************************************** 16 AU ABC: Fate of nuclear whistleblower unknown. 21/02/2004. ABC News Online Malaysia has declined to say what will happen to the man police say confessed to a web of dealings with Pakistani atomic scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, including selling nuclear centrifuges to Iran. Malaysian police released a report detailing evidence from Buhary Syed Abu Tahir, suspected middleman in Pakistan's illicit nuclear parts trade. In the report, Mr Tahir, a Sri Lankan now resident in the Malaysian capital, told of a $3 million sale to Iran of nuclear centrifuge parts made in Malaysia and how Mr Khan arranged the shipment of enriched uranium to Libya. Malaysian Foreign Minister Syed Hamid Albar brushed off questions on Saturday about what was next for 44-year-old Mr Tahir, labelled by Washington as Mr Khan's deputy and money launderer. Though the businessman remains free in the country, a Malaysian intelligence source said he had left his house but remained in the capital Kuala Lumpur. Syed Hamid told reporters police would handle any US Government inquiries on Mr Tahir. "Let the police handle all these things," Syed Hamid told a news conference, declining further questions on the issue. Diplomats and arms experts have said they believe Mr Khan, who has admitted leaking nuclear secrets to Iran, Libya and North Korea, offered Iran his centrifuge designs on the black market. Pakistan says Mr Khan, a national hero dubbed the father of the nation's nuclear bomb, acted alone in selling nuclear secrets but many inside and outside the South Asian country believe the military played a role. Mr Tahir told police of cash-filled briefcases left in a Dubai apartment and meetings in Casablanca, Morocco, Dutch-design nuclear centrifuge units airlifted from Pakistan to Libya and machine shop parts Tripoli bought from Italy and Spain. He named British and Swiss nationals, detailed Mr Khan's contact building from Germany and Switzerland to Turkey and South Africa and described how a consultant of his worked at Malaysian firm Scope on a contract to make centrifuge parts. Police have absolved the company of any wrongdoing. The firm is part of publicly listed Scomi Group Bhd, which is controlled by the Malaysian Prime Minister's son, Kamaluddin Abdullah, and two other investors. "I am delighted that the police have come out in the open about their investigation. This goes to show that whatever we have said has been totally vindicated and we hope we can put this issue to rest," Deputy Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak told reporters on Saturday. The 12-page police report, carrying handwritten additions and sentences blanked out by corrector fluid, included the political assessment that Malaysia had violated none of its obligations under the nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty. But the document added that some of the European nations implicated by Mr Tahir's evidence might have fallen short of their treaty commitments, which are more stringent than Malaysia's. "What is clear is that most individuals involved in the networking are from Europe, whose countries are signatories to the Additional Protocol and the Nuclear Supplier Group," it said. --Reuters © 2004 Australian Broadcasting Corporation ***************************************************************** 17 FOXNews.com: Iran Not Learning Lessons From Libya Sunday, February 22, 2004 WASHINGTON — The Bush administration weighed in Friday on two troubled states that have taken very different paths, and suggested the Iranians may want to take a lesson from the Libyan government, which agreed in December to give up its pursuit of nuclear weapons. Tehran started another day on the wrong foot, according to administration officials who called Friday's parliamentary elections in Iran (search) invalid and not meeting international standards for free and fair voting. Even before the voting began Friday, some of Iran's leading reformists conceded defeat. Their concession followed the Feb. 1 resignation from Parliament of about 120 lawmakers who were protesting a move by Iran's most powerful hardliners to bar more than 2,000 reform-minded candidates from seeking office. "Candidates have been barred from participating in the elections in an attempt to limit the choice of the Iranian people for their government. These actions do not represent free and fair elections (search) and are not consistent with international norms," State Department spokesman Adam Ereli told reporters. Instead of participating in the elections, reformists held a sit-in at the Parliament, encouraged a voter boycott and accused hardliners of rigging the vote. But one reformist lawmaker said even with the ban, he and his allies will look for ways to bring change to the country. "This doesn't mean we will disappear from the political scene. The political scene is not just the government," said Reza Yousefian. In fact, the drama of the elections was not so much the ban or the results, but the turnout -- expected to be about 50 percent nationwide. Many Iranians were expected to stay home not only because of the disillusionment with politics, but because of lost faith in President Mohammad Khatami (search), who is considered a reformist in some Western circles. Khatami didn't alleviate any concerns when he responded to complaints about the vote by saying: "Whatever the result of the elections, we must accept it." Reformists accuse hardliners of blocking Khatami's efforts for change, and they argue that if Islamic conservatives take back control of Parliament, they could undo some of Iran's recent reforms and return to a pattern of clamping down on newspapers -- two were shut down earlier this week, tightening dress codes for women and increasing restrictions on the ability of young men and women to interact in public. Islamic conservatives say that the reformist candidates were barred because they did not qualify. They also told Iranian citizens not to worry about a rollback of reforms, even as they eye the presidency in next year's elections. "Our first step was the city council, the second step is the Parliament, after the Parliament, we can see what the third step is," said Hossein Fadaei, a candidate for parliament. With results not expected for a few days, the Bush administration responded to the crackdown on the reformists by saying the government's actions were indicative of a regime that does not care about its people. "I think the Iranian people have hopes and dreams. And the way to realize those aspirations is through the election of a government that represents them.  To the extent that they cannot do that or to the extent that those aspirations or that will is frustrated, that's disappointing," Ereli said. Iran's Hardline Tactics Extend Beyond Ballot Box Meanwhile, Malaysian police released a report on Friday about interrogations it held with partners of A.Q. Khan, the father of Pakistan's nuclear program, and the man who admits to selling centrifuge parts to Iran. Centrifuge machines can be used to enrich uranium. The parts were sold on the black market in the mid-1990s for around $3 million, according to Malaysian police. The man interviewed by the Malaysians allegedly handled the sale to Iran. At the same time,  U.N. inspectors inside Iran said they found equipment that can enrich uranium (search)for weapons and it is far more advanced than anything Iran has admitted having. Ereli said the discovery is not consistent with a country that's truly trying to come clean on weapons programs. "It is important that Iran stop its nuclear program, full stop, not pieces of it here -- talk about pieces of it here and hide pieces of it there.  They need to get out of the nuclear weapons game completely," Ereli said. Iran has responded that its equipment is just used to produce power, and insists its intentions are peaceful.  While Ereli said that cooperation from Iran with the International Atomic Energy Agency (search) has been "mixed at best," IAEA Director Mohamed El-Baradei said this week that Iran also has not fulfilled a promise to the British, French and German foreign ministers to suspend its uranium enrichment. Secretary of State Colin Powell said that the Iranian government needs to hasten its steps toward admitting its efforts to develop weapons of mass destruction (search).   "After 18 years of trying to deceive the International Atomic Energy Agency and the world, Iran is slowly -- still too slowly -- coming forward with answers needed by the IAEA and by the rest of the international community to make sure that they are not violating their obligations.  It needs to pledge an end -- not just a suspension -- to all of its WMD programs and it must follow those promises with action," Powell told an audience at a conference at Princeton University. Libya Making All the Right Moves (search) Powell said Iran and other rogue nations should learn from Libyan leader Muammar al-Qaddafi (search), who realized after years of trying to pursue weapons of mass destruction that it was not making his people better off nor elevating his country's status internationally. He said al-Qaddafi made the correct decision to give up his pursuit and deal with the international community in a peaceful way. "And now we are working in a spirit of cooperation and openness with President Colonel Qadhafi," Powell said.  Libya agreed to open up its facilities to inspectors, who have removed thousands of pounds of equipment. But an IAEA report made known Friday reveals just how far Libya had progressed in the pursuit of nuclear weapons, importing nuclear materials via the black market all the way up to the end of 2003. It had also managed to process imported enriched uranium into a small amount of plutonium, the material needed to put together the core of a nuclear bomb. According to remarks by diplomats familiar with the report, Tripoli had produced roughly seven pounds of plutonium, not enough to make a bomb, despite efforts as far back as 1985 to do so. Libyan officials have maintained that the country never produced chemical, biological or nuclear weapons but acknowledged having the material, the expertise and the facilities. The IAEA report, prepared by El-Baradei and being presented officially at a meeting next month, says Libya was in direct violation of agreements it made with the IAEA, an agency of the United Nations, and if failed to report a wide variety of secret nuclear activities. Nonetheless, its recent cooperation is not going unnoticed by the United States, which could take steps soon to ease a ban on U.S. travel to Libya that has been in place for more than 20 years. In November, Powell extended the prohibition on travel, but he also took the extraordinary step of allowing a review of that ban after 90 days. Usually, the prohibition is renewed annually. Sunday will be the 90th day since the ban was renewed, and an official said that the administration could act to ease the ban, which prohibits Americans from using U.S. passports to travel to Libya. Depending on Libya's future cooperation, including its revealing details of its weapons program and identifying suppliers, the United States may also make further moves in the future. Currently, Libya is listed as one of seven state sponsors of terrorism, which puts it in a category in which trade is restricted, U.S. oil companies can not operate there and U.S. economic aid is banned as is American support for Libyan loan requests in international lending institutions. Fox News' Teri Schultz and Molley Henneberg, the Associated Press and Tehran reporter Roxana Saberi contributed to this report. foxnewsonline@foxnews.com; For FOX News Channel comments write ***************************************************************** 18 Las Vegas SUN: Fire Breaks Out at Japanese Nuclear Plant February 21, 2004 ASSOCIATED PRESS TOKYO (AP) - A fire briefly broke out Saturday on the roof of a Japanese nuclear facility that was shut down for regular inspections, a spokesman for the plant's operator said. No injuries were reported and no radiation was released in the accident at the nuclear power station in the central Japanese town of Hamaoka, said Shigehisa Osawa, a spokesman for Chubu Electric Power Co. The fire was detected on the roof of a turbine building in a section of the plant containing two reactors that had been shut down earlier for regular inspections, plant worker Yuiichi Kato said. Two other reactors several hundred yards away remained in operation, Kato said. Firefighters were called and the blaze was confirmed extinguished after 45 minutes, Osawa said. Hamaoka is about 100 miles southwest of Tokyo. A rubber waterproofing wall was believed to have caught fire when hydrogen gas used to cool the turbine escaped from a roof duct, the Kyodo News agency quoted firefighters as saying. Plant workers had been removing the coolant from the turbine as part of their inspection, the report said. Osawa said the cause of the fire was still under investigation. -- ***************************************************************** 19 AZ Republic: Radioactive leak shuts unit at Palo Verde plant All azcentral Republic - Today 12News La Voz --> News Sports Max Jarman The Arizona Republic Feb. 21, 2004 12:00 AM The operator of the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station west of Phoenix shut down the plant's Unit 2 generator early Friday after radioactive material was found leaking inside the unit. Arizona Public Service Co., the plant's operator, said there is no danger to plant workers or the public. The radioactive material leaked into water that could eventually be exposed to the atmosphere. Monitors have not detected any radiation outside the plant, but Jim McDonald, a spokesman for APS, said it is possible small amounts may have leaked into the atmosphere. "It's a very small leak on the order of 2 gallons a day," he said. It was the second radiation leak at Palo Verde this month. On Feb. 4, Unit 1 was shut down for four days to repair a small leak in its reactor's cooling system. The latest leak came from a brand-new 800-ton generating unit that was installed last fall to replace an older unit. "You don't expect defects in new equipment, but they can occur," McDonald said. Jim Melfi, one of three Nuclear Regulatory Commission inspectors on site at Palo Verde, said the two incidents do not appear to be related and do not reflect any underlying problems at the plant. Still, he said, the NRC will carefully monitor the situation. The NRC and the state Radiation Regulatory Agency were told of the leak late Thursday. Aubrey Godwin, director of the Radiation Regulatory Agency, said he notified Gov. Janet Napolitano and is monitoring the situation. He noted the agency usually doesn't get involved unless the leaking radiation passes "beyond the fence" at Palo Verde. The unit, which can reach temperatures of 620 degrees, is being cooled so that workers can enter the generator and search for the leak. The radioactive material is believed to be coming from one of 13,000 tubes that carry water that is heated to more than 600 degrees by the unit's nuclear reactor. When the hot tubes come in contact with cold water, it creates an explosive burst of steam that turns a turbine to produce electricity. Jim Levine, APS' executive vice president in charge of generation, was unsure when the unit would be restarted, but he said he did not expect a long outage. The amount of the discharged radioactive material is below the NRC operating standards that would have required the plant to be shut down. "We shut the plant to be cautious and to correct the situation," Levine said. "Our license with the NRC allows us to operate the plant with a much greater amount of leakage." In 1993, one of the heating tubes burst, dumping 100 gallons of radioactive water a minute into the generator. The rupture resulted in a radioactive material being released into the atmosphere. "This is minuscule compared to '93," McDonald said. There are three units at Palo Verde, and they are capable of producing a total of 4,000 megawatts of electricity. It is the largest non-hydroelectric power plant in the country. Print This | Email This | | Subscribe | usa today news • Tornadoes are Earth's most violent storms • Candace Bushnell celebrates birth control advance • S.F. mayor is taking bold plunges today's snapshot How many hits have NASA's Mars Web sites gotten this year? news as it happens Copyright 2004, azcentral.com. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 20 JS Online: Point Beach told to clean up act WISCONSIN ONLINE Nuclear regulators meet with power plant leaders By RICK BARRETT rbarrett@journalsentinel.com Posted: Feb. 20, 2004 Manitowoc - Management at the Point Beach nuclear power plant was told Friday to get its act together amid continued intense scrutiny from federal regulators. U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission officials met with the plant's management company to discuss the results of special plant inspections which followed two serious safety violations in 2001 and 2002. William Travers, the commission's executive director for operations in Washington, D.C., attended the public meeting to underscore the fact that regulators have placed Point Beach under a close watch. "There is a bright light being shown on your program now," Travers said. He and James Caldwell, the commission's regional administrator, made it clear they were not satisfied with the power plant's record of correcting problems. "I am confident that if you don't get this message, we will be back," Caldwell said. "We expect sustained improvements." Regulators said they uncovered about a dozen violations of regulatory policies in a series of inspections last summer and fall at the plant, which is located near Two Rivers. Most of the violations were minor, regulators said. But the plant has been under close observation by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission because of the previous serious violations. Point Beach is the only nuclear plant in the nation to have had two problems classified as "red" - the most serious category under a color-coded system that gauges the safety significance of problems found at nuclear plants. The plant has been operated in a safe manner, the regulatory body said. But some issues need increased attention, including emergency plans. "We identified multiple findings and violations related to emergency preparedness which indicated that Point Beach management and staff did not have a good understanding of license and regulatory requirements," the commission wrote in a Feb. 4 letter. An emergency plan lacked a range of options to protect the public, according to regulators. "The only protective action recommendation that would have been given to state and local officials by your staff in the event of an emergency at Point Beach was evacuation," the commission said in its letter. The plant is owned by Wisconsin Energy Corp. and is operated by Hudson-based Nuclear Management Co., which manages five other nuclear power plants in the upper Midwest. "It is an understatement to say the (commission's) message was sobering," said John Paul Cowan, Point Beach's chief nuclear officer. "Putting issues behind us has not been our forte." The vice president at Point Beach has been replaced, and a new emergency planning coordinator was recently hired. Plant officials say they have a plan to address the commission's concerns, including a perceived lack of follow-through on solving problems. Things must be done right the first time, said Gary Van Middlesworth, acting plant vice president. "We don't expect to have to come back and address repeat issues. . . . (A)ctivity without results is wasted energy, and at Point Beach we don't have time for wasted energy." Wisconsin Energy and Nuclear Management plan to seek approval from state and federal regulators to extend the plant's license by 20 years. The plant's two category "red" findings were linked to a backup water system that's meant to cool the nuclear reactors safely if problems occur. The water system problems never posed an immediate health or safety threat to the area surrounding the plant. While serious, they would not have caused an accident in the plant's reactors, commission officials said. A "red" finding means there is one chance in 10,000 - during a period of continuous plant operation for a year - of equipment failure that leads to a problem in the reactor. There would be three separate barriers to block a release of radioactive material in the environment, said Paul Krohn, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's senior resident inspector at Point Beach. But even the long odds aren't comforting, given that a nuclear accident could result in loss of life and $40 billion in economic damage, said Dennis Dums, research director for Wisconsin Citizens' Utility Board, which represents residential utility customers. In 1996 and 1997, Point Beach was the focus of commission attention for problems that included operator performance. "After the 1997 fiasco, Point Beach put together its first 'plan of excellence,' " Dums said. "Obviously it failed." The plant's management has done a good job of identifying problems but needs significant improvements in taking corrective actions, according to regulators. "We intend to continue our strong oversights at Point Beach," Travers said. From the Feb. 21, 2004 editions of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Journal Sentinel Inc. is a subsidiary of Journal Communications, an employee-owned company. ***************************************************************** 21 New York Times: Foes Attack Bid to Renew Oyster Creek Nuclear License * By ROBERT HANLEY* Published: February 21, 2004 The owner of the nation's oldest nuclear power plant - Oyster Creek, in New Jersey - plans to seek a license renewal to operate the plant through 2029. The decision by the company, AmerGen Energy, comes as anxieties and complaints about Oyster Creek's age, safety, and vulnerability to terrorism are mounting. For years after it began operating in 1969, Oyster Creek enjoyed something of a benign co-existence with residents and government officials in Ocean County, where it is situated. Traditionally, it has attracted far less hostility than the Indian Point nuclear plant in New York State's Westchester County. But in recent weeks, as the time for Oyster Creek's license-renewal decision grew nearer, several communities have passed resolutions expressing varying degrees of concern about the plant and its continued operation after its current 40-year license expires in 2009. Four towns have called for an immediate closing of the plant. Five others oppose renewal of the license, and six more have expressed various concerns about Oyster Creek. Last Friday, the state's environmental commissioner, Bradley M. Campbell, publicly added the McGreevey administration's voice to the criticism. In a letter to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which will review the renewal application, Mr. Campbell said Oyster Creek was "not a model facility." Mr. Campbell said yesterday that the administration's biggest concerns were safety, security, and staffing. "We will oppose relicensing unless those issues are fully addressed, and we are not yet persuaded they can be addressed." Also yesterday, a day after AmerGen announced its plans, a New Jersey senator, Leonard T. Connors, a Republican whose legislative office is about two miles from Oyster Creek, said he opposed a new 20-year license for the plant in favor of one for 5 or 10 years. "The older it gets, the more vulnerable it gets," Senator Connors said. He also said he opposed a new license of any length unless a nuclear experts, independent of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, were allowed to assess the plant's safety. A critic of Oyster Creek, the New Jersey Public Interest Research Group, said in a statement that it opposed license renewal. "At its current age, the plant is an unnecessary risk to public safety," the group said. Officials in Lacey Township, a community of about 26,000 where Oyster Creek is located, say they are happy with the plant. "Of course we want it," the town clerk, Veronica Laureigh, said yesterday. "We definitely want that plant operating as long as it's safe." Ms. Laureigh said Oyster Creek has paid about $3.8 million in property taxes each year to help finance the town's annual budget of about $20 million. In addition, she said, Lacey Township receives $11.4 million a year from a state energy tax because the generating station is within its borders. A vice president of AmerGen Energy, Bud Swenson, defended the plant, which has a generating capacity of 636 megawatts, when he announced the company's plans for the application on Thursday. "Oyster Creek is a clean, safe and reliable source of electricity for New Jersey," Mr. Swenson said in a statement. "It's a major economic engine for Ocean County. We want those contributions to continue, and we will do it in a safe, efficient, environmentally sensitive way or we won't do it at all." The company said it planned to submit its renewal application in mid-2005. The current license expires in April 2009. Customarily, nuclear plants submit renewal applications to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission five years before licenses expire. AmerGen Energy will miss that timetable by about a year. Plants that give the commission less than five years to review an application risk being ordered shut by the commission if it does not approve a new license by the expiration date of the old one. A spokesman for AmerGen Energy, Craig Nesbit, said the company would miss the five-year timetable because it did not decide until late last year to seek renewal. He said the applications seek precise information and will take over a year to prepare. A spokesman for the regulatory commission, Neil Sheehan, said the plant had satisfied all safety requirements. Mr. Sheehan said two of the commission's inspectors were at Oyster Creek, observing operations on a continual basis, as they do at all nuclear power plants. "If the plant wasn't safe to operate, we wouldn't allow it to continue to run," Mr. Sheehan said. "They're under our microscope all the time." ***************************************************************** 22 Bellona: Sawdust at the the Leningrad Nuclear Power Plant ST. PETERSBURG—Workers at the Leningrad Nuclear Power Plant, or LNPP, located 80 kilometers west of St. Petersburg, have told Bellona that the plant’s turbine condensers—a key component in cooling the steam produced in the turbines of the plant’s aging Chernobyl-type RBMK-1000 reactors—are in an ever-worsening and dangerous state of repair. Rashid Alimov, 2004-02-20 20:44 Condensers A condenser consists of pipes via which cold sea water is transported. The LNPP itself is located some 70 meters from the shore of the Gulf of Finland, and thus the banks of the Baltic Sea. At the LNPP, the majority of condenser pipes are defective and have hairline cracks in them, two workers familiar with their condition said, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “Seawater passes through leaky pipes into the cooling water of the reactor and this causes corrosion of the reactor’s channels. A corrosive process could lead to depressurization of the nuclear fuel,” said Sergei Kharitonov, a former employee of the LNPP who was fired for his outspoken criticism of the plant’s negligence toward safety standards. Kharitonov is currently a nuclear expert working with Bellona. z In the photographs published with this article, it is evident that the majority of condenser pipes of the LNPP’s second reactor are stuffed up to avoid further corrosion of the reactor’s water channels. Condensers at the LNPP’s second line (3rd and 4th reactor blocs). Photo: Sergei Kharitonov/Bellona “The condensers do not, in fact, work—they can’t cool [the system],” one LNPP worker, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told Bellona Web. “In order to fix the defective pipes, you have to lower the power of the reactor to about 100 to 200 Megawatts [of the 1000 it usually puts out],” said another LNPP worker speaking to Bellona Web on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals from the plant administration. “But this means a huge loss of electricity production. Aside from that, fluctuations in power impact negatively on the functioning of the equipment.” “The fact that they clogged upsuch a quantity of pipes is the result of the ‘devil-may-care’ attitude of the workers. What happens is that incrustation and jelly builds up inside the pipes. The pipes, already defective, corroded and cracked, are cleaned, usually with simple pressurized water. Recently, someone told the [cleaning] team to use fittings like brushes. But the wrong size was chosen and scrubbed off a large layer of metal. Then three shifts of workers clotted up the defective pipes.” Condensers at the LNPP’s second line (3rd and 4th reactor blocs) Photo: Sergei Kharitonov/Bellona Both LNPP sources consider the situation to be very serious and contacted Kharitonov with their information. z Lowering the power output of the reactors happens often because of the worn out condensers. For example, on February 3rd 2004 reactor bloc No. 4 lowered its energy output to 100 Megawatts for condenser pipe repairs. The next day, the power output was restored. But on February 6th, the reactor’s power output was again lowered to repair the same condenser. This information was officially confirmed to Bellona Web by LNPP public relations officials. “The fact of the matter is that the installation of contemporary condensers is expensive and might affect energy costs,” said Kharitonov. Sawdust “In order that the reactors’ power levels not be reduced and money on energy production be lost, LNPP personnel contrived not to stop up the condenser pipes,” said the second source. “To accomplish this, they spread sawdust in the seawater in the primary pump chamber, which funnels the water into the condensers. The sawdust then fills the hairline cracks in the condenser pipes.” But the second source added that the sawdust is often dirty and filled with sand. “Sometimes wood chips in the sawdust simply clog the pipes,” he said. “When they clean out the pipes, the sawdust, which has been in contact with radioactive steam, is thrown into the Gulf [of Finland] where it simply rots.” This “technology,” added the second source “is absent in the [plant’s operational] rules and instructions, that is, it is in essence illegal.” Kharitonov’s data show that the use of sawdust was prescribed by decree no. 14 on July 5th 2002 and signed by of the head of the turbine workshop. The decree is entitled “On the Organization of Work and Safety Measures During Activities for Lowering of Chlorine Levels in Condensers.” Condensers at the LNPP’s second line (3rd and 4th reactor blocs). Photo: Sergei Kharitonov/Bellona “However, such a decree is, in fact, illegal,” said Kharitonov. “Its 2002 date should not be misleading. It is simply that the decree had been in effect earlier, and almost every year has to be renewed because it will not be entered into the continually effective [LNPP operational] instructions.” According to the second anonymous source from the LNPP, “they have been using sawdust for 20 years already.” Kharitonov added: “The sawdust is spread in conjunction with how much chlorine is discovered in the cooling water. In the second bloc [the levels] are higher.” Both LNPP sources said that the two reactors of the first reactor bloc are using on average 300 to 500 kilograms of sawdust a month. At the second reactor bloc they are using up to 500 kilograms per eight hour working shift. “It’s possible that there exists such an exotic and easy means,” the LNPP’s chief public relations official, Seregi Averyanov, told Bellona Web in a telephone interview about the use of the sawdust. He said that “the problem here is the impact of the water from the Gulf of Finland on the condensers, and not the impact of the reactor bloc on the Gulf of Finland.” He added that, because the pipes are laid in a vacuum, it is possible that corrosive sea water, and even sawdust, can fall through the hairline cracks into the reactor circuit and radioactive steam coming from the turbine, but not visa-versa. Averyanov said that similar problems are found at common thermo-electric plants. “Sometime, because a pipe simply breaks, sawdust falls into the reactor circuit,” said the second LNPP source. z Kharitonov said: “If the sawdust with sand gets into the reactor circuit, it is even worse—at this point, we are talking about something dangerous, about damage to the equipment.” The dumping channel at LNPP. www.laes.ru Rot in the Gulf of Finland “That part of the sawdust which hasn’t plugged up the holes gets sucked back by sea water into the Gulf of Finland,” the LNPP sources said. zz “Aside from that, any sawdust coming into contact with radioactive steam during the operation of the condenser stays in the cracks. When the condenser is shut down, [the sawdust] can fall into the gulf,” the second LNPP source said. “It’s not a large amount, but the problem is that no one can really say how much it is.” He emphasized that a significant amount of corrupted sawdust had built up in the gulf over the years. “In my opinion, there are so many reeds and various splinters in the Gulf of Finland, and the sawdust is unable to not affect it,” said the first LNPP source, and agreed that the sawdust can influence the purity of the color of the water in the gulf. He said that the biggest problem was worn out piping, not the technology to which they race in order to avoid reducing the power output of the reactor. But Kharitonov says the problem is serious. “This is adding a new kind of pollution of the ecosystem to thermal pollution,” he said. The second LNPP source stressed that the use of sawdust “is some kind of primitive Russian folk method whose use at a nuclear power plant is absurd.” Kharitonov added that the Finnish nuclear regulatory body STUK, which regularly inspects the LNPP and always issues it a clean bill of safety, knows about the use of “this old Slavic know-how” at the plant. “At the end of the 90s, [STUK] tried to help the LNPP solve the problem with the condensers, but the problem remains,” Kharitonov said. Bellona Report The Leningrad Nuclear Power Plant as a mirror of atomic energy in Russsia — in Russian. English translation available soon.  Read on » The Bellona Report z Kharitonov authored Bellona’s extensive report on the LNPP’s defects and violations. The report was released on January 21—to general public shock—and later that month Kharitonov — invited by the head of the environmental commettee of the Finnish parliament Satu Hassi — presented it to the Finnish parliamentarians and journalists. Bellona Web has earlier written about STUK’s reaction to Kharitonov’s report and published documents contradicting STUK’s protestations. In a recent issue of Nucleonics Week (5/2004), STUK Director Jukka Laaksonen told reporter Ariane Sains that “[Kharitonov] has personal problems. Any organization with 3,000 people has some people like this, who are not satisfied with their work—[The storage unit is] as safe, as any spent fuel storage at any western plant. It doesn't look so nice from the outside, but it does its job." Indeed, STUK has annually contributed EUR 7m since 1992 for safety improvements at the LNPP, Laaksonen said in an interview with The St. Petersburg Times. Likewise, TACIS has contributed more that EUR 20m for safety improvements at the plant since 1994, according to the European Commision. But Laaksonen accused Bellona of spreading rumors about radioactive leaks at the LNPP in 1996 that were reaching the Gulf of Finland and that this scared a number of people. In fact, it was St. Petersburg’s English-language St. Petersburg Times, among others, that documented the leaks—which were not “rumors” at all—in a series of investigative articles in which Kharitonov, prior to taking a job with Bellona, was a chief source. Bellona, for its part, was entirely engaged in 1996 in the defence of Alexander Nikitin, who was imprisoned by Russia’s secret services for allegedly divulging state secrets in a report about nuclear contamination in Russia’s Northern Nuclear Fleet. The organization was therefore far too busy to spread any so-called rumors—which, in any case, were established fact—about the LNPP at that time. Nikitin was eventually fully acquitted by the Russian Supreme Court in January 2000 and is now Chairman of the Environmental and Human Rights Center Bellona in St. Petersburg. At STUK, Laaksonen said that subsequent inspections by Finnish companies using equipment not available in Russia showed 15 leak points and six possible points in the storage pools, but that all were plain water containing no radioactivity." The act signed march 28th 1996 English translation and the original Russian document, showing that the leaking water was contaminated with the radioactive isotope caesium-137.  Read on » An official act in Bellona Web’s possession, however, shows that the water was contaminated with the radioactive isotope caesium-137. This act was signed in March of 1996 by the LNPP’s then-chief engineer and current director Valery Lebedev. “Measurements were not taken for other elements aside from caesium-137. The water from the spent nuclear fuel [or SNF] pond may contain plutonium and other radioactive elements,” Kharitonov said. In October of 1996, STUK jointly signed a document with the LNPP and the Russian nuclear regulatory agency, Gosatomnazor, or GAN, which stated that “the technical condition of the [SNF] storage facility, and the level of its operation in general, maintain safety during the storage of spent nuclear fuel.” Meanwhile, the volume of leaks from the SNF storage facility during the period from February to August 1996 rose from 12 to 144 litres a day—and by February of 1997 had reached 360 litres a day. Reaction from the European Commission Finland’s Members of European Parliament, or MEP, Matti Vuori and Uma Aaltonen sent an official inquiry to the European Commission after the publication of Kharitonov’s report and presentation before Finnish Parliament. Their inquiry asked, in part: “Does the [European] Commission plan to hold negotiations with Russia over the shut-down of this dangerous nuclear power plant? What has the Commission done to minimize the risk? Has safety of the LNPP been discussed with Russia in the framework of the energy dialogue between the EC and Russia?” The inquiry sent by Finnish MEP Uma Aaltonen and the European Commission's answer. Thursday, Bellona received the answer from the EC to Aaltonen’s inquiry (see companion publication to this article). In its answer, the EC underscores its position: Dangerous first generation reactor blocs must be shut down. This especially concerns those reactor blocs that have reached its engineered service allotment of 30 years of use—the exact age the LNPP’s first reactor bloc attained in December, 2003. At present, the birthday-bloc is under repair. LNPP management plans to complete repairs and modernization by summer and then receive a license from GAN granting the reactor an extended operational period. Presumably, after recent management reshuffles at GAN—which have placed former Minatom brass in regulatory positions—the LNPP will have little trouble obtaining the license. The hunt for whistle-blowers According to a recent publication by the LNPP’s press service, published February 6th in the Vestnik LAES newspaper, the plant’s management is troubled “by the intensifying activities of various ‘greens’ directed against the operational extension of the first energy bloc.” z The LNPP said that it has begun observation of personnel in its units, and that management insists that personnel not distribute information to outsiders about life within the confines of the plant. Plant administration, the LNPP statment indicates, plans to carry out internal investigations and root out informers. Publisher: Bellona Foundation, President: Frederic Hauge Information: info@bellona.no, Technical contact: webmaster@bellona.no Telephone: +47 23 23 46 00 Telefax: +47 22 38 38 62 * P.O.Box 2141 Grunerlokka, 0505 Oslo, Norway ***************************************************************** 23 Pravda.RU France and Japan: who will place nuclear reactor on its territory? [PRAVDA.RU] Last update:02/23/2004 06:40 MSK 16:13 2004-02-21 A regular round of talks with atomic energy ministry representatives of Russia, the U.S., Japan, South Korea and China will be held Saturday in the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) HQ in Vienna. The sides will try to reach a compromise on the project of building and placing a new generation international experimental nuclear reactor ITER, Igor Borovkov, the first deputy Russian atomic energy minister, who heads the Russian delegation, told RIA Novosti. In Borovkov's words, hard talks are ahead, as there's a "stalemate" in regard to the new reactor: Russia, the EU and China are for ITER construction on French territory, while the U.S., Japan and South Korea prefer Japan. To achieve progress in ITER talks, the Russian side suggested building the nuclear reactor on the territory of either France or Japan, and setting up a computer center on analysis of ITER operation by an international expert group on the territory of the other country. This proposal is being studied by Vienna negotiators. The first deputy minister said that, with so little progress at talks to build and place the experimental reactor, there have appeared other opinions of some participants in the negotiations on the change of the format and composition of this process. However, Borovkov stressed, Russia insists on keeping the composition the same, and says all participants must enjoy equal rights. © RIAN Pravda.RU:World ***************************************************************** 24 toledoblade.com: FirstEnergy users should shop around Article published Saturday, February 21, 2004 By JIM PROVANCE BLADE COLUMBUS BUREAU COLUMBUS - FirstEnergy Corp.’s electricity customers would probably be better off taking their chances on the market rather than being subjected to the utility’s current rates for three more years, energy experts said yesterday. The parent of Toledo Edison has given the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio a choice between extending existing rates through 2008 or authorizing the company to seek competitive bids for electricity suppliers early next year. The Akron-based utility has argued that lifting the existing rate freeze as scheduled on Dec. 31, 2005, could expose customers to California-like price spikes. A hearing into the request is expected to wrap up Tuesday with a PUCO decision expected before March 31. "There is sufficient capacity, both generation and transmission, that if solicitations of various sorts were held, people would show up," said Craig Roach, a Washington-based consultant brought in by the Ohio Markets Group to testify before two hearing examiners. "Let the party that offers the best deal to the consumer win," he said after testifying. Critics of FirstEnergy’s plan argue that extending current rates would lock in inflated rates designed partly to compensate the company for past investments, such as nuclear power plant construction, incurred before the market was opened to competition. These "stranded costs" are set to expire at the end of the five-year market-development period, the end of next year. FirstEnergy counters that a rate freeze would provide price stability to customers, protecting them from spikes in a market in which sufficient competition has yet to develop. Opponents of FirstEnergy’s proposal presented affidavits from two electricity suppliers, Reliant Energy and Constellation Energy Group, who said they could offer power in Ohio at lower rates than FirstEnergy. The suppliers, however, are not competing in FirstEnergy’s territory now and stressed that their numbers do not represent an offer to consumers here. Under Ohio’s 1999 law deregulating part of the electricity industry, FirstEnergy continues to deliver power through its grid to consumers but permits customers to shop around to buy the power flowing through those lines. Forty-eight percent of FirstEnergy’s distribution customers have exercised their option to switch to other suppliers, whether it’s the utility’s subsidiary, FirstEnergy Solutions, or someone else. Most, however, are covered by municipal aggregators like Northwest Ohio Aggregation Council, which pools residential buying power to negotiate better deals from a single supplier. The savings, however, are not substantial. © 2004 The Blade.Toledo Blade Company, 541 N. Superior St., Toledo, OH 43660 , (419) 724-6000 ***************************************************************** 25 ITAR-TASS: Thermonuclear reactor may begin to be built 2004 [ITAR-TASS News Agency of Russia] 21.02.2004, 00.55 MOSCOW, February 20 (Itar-Tass) -- Construction of what may become the world’s first-ever thermonuclear experimental reactor (ITER) may begin already this year, Russian Atomic Energy Ministry spokesman Nikolai Shingaryov said on the eve of another working meeting of delegates from the ITER project member-states, beginning in Vienna on Saturday. The official said Russian delegates would call on the other participants in the project to “break the deadlock over the issue of beginning the reactor’s construction on the basis of a compromise.” Shingaryov recalled that Russian specialists had come up with a compromise proposal of building the reactor on the premises of the French nuclear center Cadarache, while the center of control, data processing and research will be stationed in Japan’s Honshu Island. As a global ring of computer communication and research data processing has gone operational to connect the United States, Europe, Russia and China “the proposed compromise option may be carried out successfully from the technical standpoint,” the chief of the Kurchatov Institute, which developed the thermonuclear reactor, Yevgeny Velikhov said. The Russian panel at the Vienna meeting is led by Deputy Atomic Energy Minister Igor Voronkov. Involved in the five-billion-dollar project are Russia, the European Union, Japan, the United States, China and South Korea. © ITAR-TASS. All rights reserved. You undertake not to copy, ***************************************************************** 26 Post-Crescent: Report finds ‘significant’ issues at Point Beach Posted Feb. 21, 2004 By Neil Rhines Gannett Wisconsin Newspapers MANITOWOC — Federal regulatory officials are not pleased with the performance of Point Beach Power Station. A series of intensive inspections at Point Beach last year by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, a response to two “red” findings at the plant, resulted in the discovery of about a dozen other issues in direct violation of NRC statutes. The largest of Wisconsin’s two nuclear facilities, Point Beach has capacity to generate about 1,034 megawatts of power. Owned by We Energies of Milwaukee, the plant is operated by the Nuclear Management Co., based in Hudson. A red finding is the highest measure of safety significance the NRC can assign in the reactor oversight process. The new management staff at Point Beach met with senior officials from the NRC on Friday morning at the Holiday Inn in Manitowoc for the fourth public meeting of its kind, to discuss the special inspections, the findings, and what they mean for the future of the facility. “Significant performance issues exist,” said William Travers, NRC executive director for operations. “We continue to find new safety concerns which need your concern, and they’re getting ours as well.” The two red findings were related to the November 2001 and October 2002 findings of problems with the auxiliary feedwater system. James Caldwell, regional administrator for the NRC, Region III, congratulated the Point Beach team for finding the first problem, but chastised them for not fully addressing the issue, and the resulting second finding of an ‘issue’ in October 2002. The findings caused the NRC to institute the 95003 inspection procedure, which equated to an additional 2,000 hours of inspections at the plant and resulted in finding about a dozen smaller problems. Point Beach has landed in “Column IV” on the NRC’s Action Matrix. Column V, the most severe action that can be taken against a facility, is an order to suspend activities, effectively shutting down the plant. “We don’t take this lightly,” Caldwell said. NMC President Michael Sellman said he understands the severity of the findings, and knows what must be done to remedy the situation. “It’s an understatement to say that the message is sobering,” said John Paul Cowan, chief nuclear officer for NMC. Each of the four NRC officials who spoke during the meeting took turns both praising Point Beach and NMC for their measures to correct the issues, and chastising them for allowing the problems to grow. Travers stressed that while the findings place a large burden on the facility to improve, the public was never in danger. NRC policy requires many back-up systems, so even if a problem exists, as it did in the auxiliary unit, there is still a wide margin of safety. Despite the severity of the findings, Travers complimented the Point Beach on-site inspection team and said he was impressed with the optimism and intentions on the part of those at the facility to improve themselves and fall in step with NRC policy. “We wish you well,” Travers said. “We intend to continue strong oversight of Point Beach and we expect results.” Neil Rhine writes for the Herald Times Reporter, Manitowoc. Copyright © 2004 greenbaypressgazette.com ***************************************************************** 27 DW: Five German Nuclear Plants Vulnerable to Terror Attacks, Agency Says | Germany | Deutsche Welle | 21.02.2004 Nuclear Plants Vulnerable to Attacks [Obrigheim plant: Shut-down before 2005?] Protection (BfS) has called for the shut-down of five German nuclear energy plants because they lack sufficient protection against terror attacks. Of Germany's 18 nuclear power plants, the five plants are most vulnerable in case of a terror attack involving planes such as the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, BfS President Wolfram König said in an interview with Berliner Zeitung. König's assessment is based on a report by the Society for Reactor Safety (GRS), Germany's central expert institution on nuclear safety. The report however does not look at concrete, actual safety risks at particular plants, according to a statement by Germany's federal ministry for the environment, nature conservation and nuclear safety, which oversees the BfS. The ministry's statement added that German states had so far failed to review the safety of plants based on the report. The plants include Biblis A in the German state of Hesse, which is operated by RWE, Philipsburg 1 and Obrigheim in Baden-Württemberg, which belong to energy company EnBW, Isar 1 in Bavaria that's part of power giant Eon and Brunsbüttel in Schlwesig-Holstein, which is operated by Vattenfall Europe and Eon. Spokespeople for the companies could not be reached on Saturday or did not want to comment on König's statements. Environmentalists welcomed König's call to shut down the plants, saying that such a step was long overdue. "A plane crash could lead to a worst case scenario at any German nuclear power plant," Walter Jungbauer, a nuclear energy expert with German environmental organization BUND, told dpa news service. [The Stade plant has already been switched off.] Germany has already passed a law that will phase out nuclear energy by 2020. Each of the country's nuclear plants will be closed down after operating for 32 years. The first closure already happened last November, when the Stade plant (photo) was removed from the power grid. Obrigheim is next in line, with shut-off scheduled for May 2005. Extending lifetime of safer plants? König suggested that energy companies could be compensated for closing down allegedly unsafe plants by extending the operating time on other, more secure sites. "That's economically justifiable and legally possible," König told the paper. He also criticized Germany's nuclear energy suppliers for failing to do more to protect plants from terror attacks. König said he believed the companies had not done what's necessary after the Sept. 11 attacks. He added that he didn't think proposals to enclose plants in a cloud of fog in case of an attack would alleviate the public's safety concerns.DW staff (win) ***************************************************************** 28 Rocky Mountain News: Illnesses leave lives in 'agony' By Ann Imse, Rocky Mountain News February 21, 2004 Ron Roerish and Leonard Homan both strain to breathe through lungs scarred by their work at the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant. But only one can collect the $150,000 federal compensation for nuclear bomb-makers injured on the job. And it's not the one contaminated by plutonium. That's because only three illnesses qualify for the cash: beryllium disease, silicosis and cancer. Roerish, a beryllium victim, collected. Homan, who has plutonium fibrosis, can't. His disease isn't on the list, even though plutonium is created only in a nuclear reactor and used only in building atomic weapons. Homan is eligible to apply for the workers compensation part of the program, but that may mean a court fight to collect. Dr. Lee Newman of National Jewish Medical Center, who treats both men, can only guess that plutonium fibrosis was too new for Congress to include it in the law setting up the compensation program. "It hadn't hit the radar screen," even though Russian doctors had reported it in the mid-'90s, he said. Newman's own work on plutonium fibrosis was published after the compensation law passed in 2000. Claimants must prove their illnesses were caused by their jobs, but science is still discovering the damage wreaked by radiation. Roerish, 62, was once a husky bicyclist who pedaled from Denver to the Royal Gorge for fun. Now, he's tied to an oxygen bottle. With a common cold, "you feel like you're suffocating," Newman said. The 29-year Rocky Flats veteran thought he was taking care of his health when he switched from working with plutonium to beryllium. Blind to the danger, he'd make coffee and snacks while covered with beryllium dust. But government officials knew that breathing infinitesimal bits of beryllium could sicken workers and hid that information to keep up production of nuclear bombs, according to documents filed in a court case. That lawsuit, filed by Roerish and other Rocky Flats victims, failed to win damages from the private company that supplied the beryllium. Workers sickened by beryllium became leaders in the battle to win compensation from Congress, and as a result, their disease was named in the law. As for Homan, his lungs were scarred after a glass tube of plutonium nitrate exploded in his face and he inhaled it in 1957. "They scrubbed me down with Tide and a scrub brush," he recalls. "I was so hot, even the hand-held monitors pegged (went off the scale) when they got close to me." He was hospitalized for a week. The plutonium remained in his lungs, damaging them over time, Newman said. Homan's symptoms are similar to Roerish's, Newman said. Both diseases are treated with drugs that suppress the immune system. That can cause victims to fall ill repeatedly with colds, flu, bronchitis, pneumonia. "They don't understand the agony that all this has caused me. My grandchildren are afraid of me because of this," Roerish said, gesturing to the oxygen tube at his nostrils. At National Jewish, Roerish ran into a Rocky Flats colleague who once sported huge biceps. Now, "he's a shriveled-up old man." "I sure hope I don't go like that," he said. ***************************************************************** 29 Rocky Mountain News: Flats activists seek automatic compensation Illnesses leave lives in 'agony' Sick workers seek justice But many nuclear laborers die before feds process claims By Ann Imse, Rocky Mountain News February 21, 2004 George Barrie and his wife, Terrie, drive down a dusty country road near Craig to their mailbox every day, hoping against hope. The Barries are checking for a letter from the government admitting that George's debilitating ailments were caused by the plutonium he inhaled at the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant near Denver. The fateful decision was due by the beginning of December. They are still waiting. Over the course of five decades, at plants across the country, bomb builders like George Barrie melted and ground plutonium and beryllium - metals so deadly that breathing invisible specks can kill. Thousands of workers fell ill with cancer and other devastating diseases caused by radioactive and toxic substances at their jobs. Surrounded by snaking pipelines of corrosive, explosive and radioactive materials, they risked their lives just as surely as a soldier on the battlefield. They eventually persuaded the federal government to take responsibility, and today the Energy and Labor departments oversee a multibillion dollar effort to provide them $150,000 in cash, weekly workers compensation benefits and medical care. But only 10 percent of 40,000 workers have been paid anything 3 ½ years after Congress passed the program into law. At the rate the Energy Department is working, it will take 20 years to get through its applications. The Labor Department is further along, but is still looking at four more years. The compensation program is hobbled by a complex bureaucracy, repetitive paperwork and the massive task of digging up decades-old records to prove that each illness was caused by the job. Among the problems: • Officials seriously underestimated the number of sick nuclear workers among the 600,000 in the industry. So far, 13 times the original estimate of 3,000 have applied. • Records of workers' exposure to radiation and chemicals, which are needed to prove a claim, are often missing, incomplete or inaccurate. • The private contractor hired by the Energy Department to process workers' paperwork hasn't even touched 11,000 applications. • Doctors panels set up by the Energy Department to review certain claims have completed only 202 of 22,000 applications. • Congress provided no money for the Energy Department's part of the program. That means many ill bomb-makers will have to go to court to collect workers compensation from insurers. So far, no one has been paid under this part of the program. • Both departments have spent triple their original budget to handle only a fraction of the claims. Members of Congress, who passed the program nearly unanimously, are furious. At a hearing last autumn, Kentucky Sen. Jim Bunning's voice was shaking as he read the riot act to Energy Secretary Robert Card, whose agency has the worst logjams. "Many workers sacrificed their health and safety" to build nuclear weapons for their country, said Bunning, a Republican. "It was our intent that each worker have a final determination and be paid. We either correct it legislatively, or we get a new DOE. We're not going to tolerate it!" But so far, the government hasn't fixed the problems. "I just can't believe they are allowing all these people to die without taking them seriously," said George Barrie, who machined bomb parts at Rocky Flats and suffers from 30 ailments, including kidney failure and a brain lesion. "I should have a slam-dunk case. I'm beyond righteous anger. How can you be doing this to us? Not just me, all of us?" While sick workers wait for answers, more of them die. Tough to prove Harry Charles Wolf, a father of three in Highlands Ranch, faces the possibility he might be one of them. Wolf, a chemical engineer, spent two decades in the most difficult, most dangerous jobs in the nuclear industry: dismantling buildings full of plutonium at Rocky Flats and running a plutonium metal production line at Savannah River, Ga. He was a perfectly healthy 43-year-old until one day in 2002 he suddenly lost his ability to speak and carry out simple tasks, such as opening a car door. Doctors diagnosed the worst type of brain cancer, glioblastoma. Wolf and his wife Kathy remember: "We looked it up on the computer, and we sat in bed and cried together." After surgery, he went through a terrifying period of being unable to read or write. His memory of the breakthrough is vivid: waking up at 3 a.m. and realizing he could again read the name on a box of Crunch 'n Munch. He is miraculously alive 20 months later - such a rarity that his doctors are in uncharted territory. He must get an MRI every two months to ensure the cancer hasn't returned. He applied for compensation more than a year ago, thinking of his three children who might not have a father around to help pay for college. He and his wife, also a chemical engineer, were staggered by the maze of paperwork. "Half of it was proving he worked there," said Kathy. Wolf doesn't know what his radiation records will reveal when the government finds them. To qualify for compensation, he must demonstrate that his illness stemmed from on-the-job exposure. That's not easy. There's no medical test to show that radiation caused his cancer. Instead, the record of his exposure will be fed into a complex computer model that will calculate the odds that radiation was responsible. If it's 50-50 or better, he'll be paid. The National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health is handling that part of the job for the Labor Department. It will take four years at the current rate before NIOSH can finish collecting and analyzing employment, exposure and medical records for the 15,000 workers with cancer, according to Dr. Larry Elliott, head of the compensation program for NIOSH. At Energy, things are moving even slower. A no-bid contractor hired to process paperwork has not even opened 11,000 worker applications, according to the DOE Web site. Bob Cary, an Energy Department executive assigned to get the program moving, is one of only 10 DOE employees working on it. And Cary admitted that the physicians panels assembled to review claims that an illness is job-related are looking at only 15 to 20 applications a week. At that rate, it will be 2023 before they are finished. Cary blamed the compensation law, which caps doctors' pay at $68 an hour. He can't find many specialists to work for that amount. "That's a huge problem," Cary said. "We are scrounging the hills to find doctors who can work at $68 an hour." Claims fought for years The compensation program's very existence is a dramatic change for the government. For years it fought workers' compensation claims. A series of successes by workers could have forced new safety measures that would have slowed bomb production. In one example, the Energy Department spent $1 million fighting a single claim in Kentucky, a case that became legendary and discouraged other workers. When the Cold War ended, the veil of secrecy over the bomb program began to lift. Court cases opened documents and the government admitted the dangers faced by bomb-makers. In 2000, Secretary of Energy Bill Richardson announced a change in policy. "The government is done fighting workers and now we're going to help them," Richardson said. "We're reversing the decades-old practice of opposing worker claims and moving forward to do the right thing." "They worked with some of the most hazardous materials known to mankind," he said, and promised to pay medical bills and compensation for lost health and lost lives. One side of the program, run by the Labor Department, pays $150,000 to nuclear bomb workers sickened with beryllium disease, silicosis or cancer. The second side, run by Energy, is open for any ailment that could be caused by making nuclear weapons. It has no cash, and instead relies on insurers that provided coverage to nuclear weapons plants to pay workers compensation. In both cases, there must be proof of sufficient exposure to radiation or toxic chemicals to cause the disease. The 4,000 claims paid so far are all from Labor and are fairly clear cut, for illnesses caused only by unusual elements like beryllium - an essential ingredient for nuclear bombs. But proving most cases is difficult, particularly for workers who built bombs decades ago, when safety standards and record-keeping were erratic. America's nuclear weapons program started in total secrecy and serious ignorance of the dangers. Year after year, assumptions of safe levels of radiation exposure were proved wrong, and had to be revised. Safety improved over time. During World War II, Burrell Brown was a physicist's assistant in a now-closed lab of the National Bureau of Standards in Washington, D.C. His daughter, Ginny Bond, said her late father tested uranium, unaware he was helping to create the first atom bomb. Brown's only protection in handling radioactive uranium was gloves and a pair of tongs, she said. He told his wife about a colleague who didn't wear gloves and lost all of her fingertips. The co-worker died a few years later. Bond has filed for compensation on her mother's behalf because her father died of a leukemia-like illness. But to prove the case, they need records of his radiation exposure. None have been found. "They didn't wear dosimeters (radiation badges) then. I don't even know if they were invented," Bond said. Because there is no data, Stuart Hinnefeld of NIOSH said Brown's contamination will be estimated, based on descriptions of his work. Unlike Brown, scientists at the Los Alamos lab in New Mexico knew they were inventing an atom bomb to drop on Japan. They also knew radioactivity was dangerous and took much greater care. Sandy Simons, a tiny, brilliant inventor who lives in the foothills near Denver, went to work at Los Alamos in 1944 as a 22-year-old metallurgist. Simons was told to take the newly created element plutonium and figure out how to roll it, mold it and chemically alter it to make parts for the first atom bomb. Simons remembers Los Alamos went to great trouble to check him for contamination. He got nose swabs daily to track how much radioactive material he was breathing. Monthly, he was hospitalized for urine and fecal tests to see what might be in his body. The nose swab readings "were sufficiently low that we didn't get concerned," he said. But today, any inhalation of plutonium is considered alarming, and Simons was breathing it every day. He has beaten cancer twice and has applied for compensation. When Rocky Flats opened in 1952 just 17 miles northwest of downtown Denver, the safety standards and monitoring didn't come close to those Simons describes at Los Alamos. Rocky Flats workers say they didn't get daily and monthly medical tests. Some former workers also tell of waiting days to be checked even after a known accident. And in congressional hearings and court cases over the years, they have made accusations of shoddy safety and monitoring, and missing and distorted exposure records. One such critic is Dennis Thurau. "I don't trust anything" in the Rocky Flats radiation records, Thurau said. He worked at Rocky Flats for 18 years until 1998. "I machined plutonium for a living," he said. Once, "I knicked my right pinkie right through the 90-mil glove. It came out bleeding. That's the worst thing that could happen because plutonium can get into your bloodstream." Despite a series of accidents, he said his quarterly radiation badge reports read "zero." Annual checks of radiation in his lungs would come up "off the charts," he said, only to drop to nothing when he was retested the next day. He has multiple sclerosis but hasn't applied for compensation. He doesn't believe there is scientific proof that it is job-related. Longtime Rocky Flats union leader Jim Kelly believes radiation records were falsified to cover up lax safety standards. He's testified before Congress about it. "Management would slap a chem-wipe over the air sampler, and of course, it came up cold," said Kelly, now 71, in an interview. As a radiation monitor, Kelly went to the site of virtually every accident for most of his 35 years at the plant, including major ones in 1957 and 1969. He filled out incident reports on each. "There should be hundreds of those in my records, and there are maybe 15," he said. "I got heavily blasted with contamination several times and had to be scrubbed down and taken to medical," he said. Today, he's dying of heart and lung problems, and he blames Rocky Flats. "I think I've submitted about two feet of documents" to Labor's compensation program, Kelly said. "I'm not going to get anything. It's all a sham." Bob Bistline, the Rocky Flats scientist who has monitored radiation exposure of workers for 38 years, said he, too, doesn't believe the records are complete. Rocky Flats has done its part in the program, pulling dusty old boxes of radiation records from the federal archives at the Denver Federal Center, he said. Contractors have peered at smudgy microfiche and copied and recopied faded documents in hopes of darkening them enough to read. But that doesn't mean that every exposure is in the record, Bistline said. "The policy for a long time was to put the dosimeter (radiation badge) under the lead apron, to determine what dose was getting to the body organs," he explained. People believed torso organs were most sensitive to radiation. But dosimeters tucked under lead aprons didn't measure the exposure to heads and limbs, he noted. "So the doses may not be correct." Even workers with clear records of dangerous exposures are getting nowhere. George Barrie is one of them. In 1982, the glove box where he machined bomb parts leaked radioactive plutonium and americium onto his coveralls. Alarms didn't sound until after he'd gone into the break room and poured a cup of coffee. Tests showed he breathed and drank the potentially fatal bomb materials. Barrie can prove it because he still has the report from 1982. "God knows why, somehow I kept it. I knew that paper was important." He was exposed to radiation two other times, but "we have no proof, no way of verifying it other than the other workers I was working with. And most of them are dead now," Barrie said. Barrie's health began disintegrating at the age of 33. Now 48, he counts 30 ailments, including a brain lesion, near-loss of a kidney, and multiple neurological, gastric and bone problems. None of Barrie's health problems qualifies for the $150,000 through Labor, which pays for only three illnesses. So he's applied to the Energy Department. The physicians panel rejected his claim, concluding there's no connection between his work and his health. He's appealed and the decision was due three months ago. Even if the doctors approve his claim on the second try, that's no guarantee he'll be paid. As it stands today, he'll then have to file for workers compensation, and Terrie Barrie expects they'll have to go to court to collect. The insurers' attorney, she said, has already told her, "Once you file for a hearing date, the gloves come off." Insurers will put up a fight Even though Congress ordered the Energy Department to stop fighting claims, the government can't tell an insurer or private company what to do. Said Bev Cook, an assistant secretary at the DOE, "The insurance company is going to do what the insurance company does." Leon Owens, a union official at the nuclear weapons plant in Paducah, Ky., said at a congressional hearing, "To give workers a physicians panel determination, and then tell them, 'Sorry, there is no one to pay the claim' perpetrates a cruel and unfortunate hoax." At least at Rocky Flats, Energy says it is trying to solve the problem. For 52 years it promised that it would reimburse Rocky Flats contractors and insurers for workers compensation claims, said Tom Rollo, who runs the compensation program for Energy. But Rocky Flats said it doesn't know if the insurers will agree. Right now, insurers have no history of paying claims in the nuclear bomb industry. If suddenly they start paying at Rocky Flats, it could set a precedent for their liability at other bomb plants where they won't be reimbursed. Even if Energy pays, activist Richard Miller predicts insurers still will go to court to fight over the extent of each worker's disability. "None will get clear sailing," he said. Another problem: At some places, the company that ran plants has gone out of business and there's no one left to pay a claim. Meanwhile, many Energy compensation cases end when the claimant dies. Dave Cossa thinks his mother deserves 13 years of workers' compensation for the time since her late husband was diagnosed with mesothelioma from exposure to asbestos in his 37 years at Rocky Flats. But she's in a nursing home, and if she dies before collecting, no one will. That's because workers compensation payments in Colorado only go to the worker, surviving spouses and minor children. The Cossa children are grown, so the right to compensation will die with their mother. Some workers think the Energy Department is deliberately delaying, waiting for the sick bomb-makers to die. "I think it's deliberate," said Kelly, the former union leader. "I think they don't want to keep promises they made." "I'm offended that people think we want people to die off so we won't have to pay," responds DOE's Cary, who is seeking funding and a new law to speed up response. "It has never been, and never will be, the policy of the department to intentionally delay claims in order to reduce liability." imsea@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-892-5438 ***************************************************************** 30 JOURNAL NEWS: Towns are asked to help pass out KI pills By ELIZABETH GANGA THE JOURNAL NEWS (Original publication: February 21, 2004) After a lull since the last major distribution of potassium iodide, Westchester County has asked municipalities within 10 miles of the Indian Point nuclear plants in Buchanan to help pass out the pills for the first time. The pills can help protect the thyroid gland from absorbing radiation, especially in children, after an accident or attack on the plants. "We're just looking at spreading this stuff out and making this stuff as available as we can, as conveniently as we can," said Anthony Sutton, Westchester emergency services commissioner. Both Putnam and Westchester counties are trying to distribute as many of the pills as possible now to head off a scramble in the event of a radiation release. Potassium iodide, or KI, is effective only within a few hours of exposure and protects only one organ from one type of radiation. "The benefit that you derive from taking KI, it's not sufficient for you to change your plan for evacuation," Sutton said. Despite its limited usefulness, residents around the plants said it was still worth going to the trouble to distribute the pills. "I think it's good for people to be prepared and educated about what they can do to be prepared," said Ellen Roth of Montrose, who has two children at Blue Mountain Middle School. But Elise Levine Cooper of Chappaqua, the co-founder of CHANGE (Chappaqua Against Nuclear Generated Energy) at Indian Point, said people should also keep in mind the "big picture." If the plant is attacked, people will die immediately or wither from other cancers, she said. "It can only help, but they need to close the plant down," she said. Cooper also said potassium iodide would be more useful to people farther than 10 miles from Indian Point. There was some discussion in 2002 about expanding the emergency zone around Indian Point to 20 miles, but Sutton said any directives on that would come from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The NRC delivered the potassium iodide to states for residents in the designated 10-mile emergency planning zones around nuclear plants. Westchester distributed more than 25,000 KI pills during four free distribution days in the summer of 2002. Since then the county has been handing out the pills to businesses, schools and institutions that requested them. It has several hundred thousand left. Pharmacies also have them available. Putnam County had several KI distribution days in late 2002. Since then the county has concentrated its efforts on supplying schools and day-care centers within the 10-mile zone, and has allowed Putnam residents to pick up the pills by appointment at the county Emergency Operations Center. More distribution days are planned for the spring, said Adam Stiebeling, the deputy commissioner of the Bureau of Emergency Services. "We're trying to capture each and every resident," he said. So far about 8,500 pills have been distributed to the public and about 3,000 to schools. About 149,000 people live in the 10-mile zone in Westchester and 19,500 in Putnam. The municipalities in Westchester within the 10-mile zone are in various stages of setting up distribution programs. Ossining town Supervisor John Chervokas said he heard from the county some weeks ago but hasn't had any recent contact. Peekskill also hasn't heard from the county yet. Croton-on-Hudson, on the other hand, has already received a supply of about 600 pills. "We'll be distributing it to those people who want to come in and get it," said Village Manager Richard Herbek. Notices will go out in the village newsletter, and residents will be able to pick up the pills at the village offices. Briarcliff Manor has agreed to participate and is waiting to find out from the county how to proceed. New Castle is developing a plan to pass out KI to any town resident. Yorktown expects to have the pills available in the clerk's office and the library. Town and village officials said their residents haven't been voicing any concern about the availability of potassium iodide. In general, organizing around the safety issues at the nuclear plants has been waning, Cooper said. After the struggle against the recertification of the evacuation plan last year, many people fighting for the closure of the plants were discouraged, she said. "The further you get from 9/11," Cooper said, "people are sort of losing interest and just hoping for the best." Elizabeth Ganga Copyright 2004 The Journal News, a Gannett Co. Inc. newspaper serving Westchester, Rockland and Putnam Counties in New York. ***************************************************************** 31 Las Vegas RJ: House panel sets LV Yucca meeting Saturday, February 21, 2004 Railroad subcommittee to convene March 5 By STEVE TETREAULT STEPHENS WASHINGTON BUREAU WASHINGTON -- A congressional panel has set a Las Vegas hearing next month to examine the Department of Energy's plan to build a Nevada railroad to the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository. The House railroad subcommittee will convene at 9 a.m. March 5 at the Clark County Government Center. The lawmakers plan to study a DOE proposal, announced Dec. 23, to develop a railroad within a 319-mile corridor from Caliente to the Yucca site, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, panel chairman Rep. Jack Quinn, R-N.Y., said Nevada officials who oppose the Yucca Mountain Project said they plan to use the forum to challenge the DOE route selection and aspects of its nuclear waste transportation strategy for other parts of the country. "There are many unanswered questions on the safety of nuclear traffic passing through the many states along the proposed rail route," said Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., who arranged the hearing. Porter said DOE should wait until Nevada lawsuits against the repository are resolved before moving ahead with a major segment of the Yucca project. State officials have contended the government has taken environmental shortcuts in putting together a transportation plan. Quinn, Porter and Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., will attend, aides said. An Energy Department representative is scheduled to testify, as well as Roger Nober, chairman of the Surface Transportation Board and Allan Rutter, head of the Federal Railroad Administration, according to Porter's office. Bob Loux, executive director of the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects, and Robert Halstead, a state transportation consultant, will speak. Nevada environmentalist Jeff van Ee and Las Vegas businessman Steve Cloobeck also are scheduled to testify, according to Porter's office. Copyright Las Vegas Review-Journal ***************************************************************** 32 RGJ: DOE begins probe into claim safety records were changed at Yucca Sunday | Feb 22, 2004 Reno Gazette-Journal] ASSOCIATED PRESS 2/20/2004 10:00 pm LAS VEGAS — Energy Department officials have initiated an investigation into whether notes were altered to misrepresent potentially hazardous dust levels at Yucca Mountain. The request is expected to form a base for a broader probe into worker health conditions during excavation and tunneling at the southern Nevada nuclear waste repository site, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported Friday. Margaret Chu, director of the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, requested the investigation in a memo Wednesday. She attached excerpts from a 2002 deposition given by Judy Kallas, a former project worker who claims a supervisor ordered her to change her notes to reflect lower levels of silica at the site. Chu called on Energy Department Inspector General Gregory Friedman to investigate how dust levels were recorded. “I want to emphasize our commitment to address past silica issues responsibly and to maintain a safe environment for our current workers,” Chu said. The Energy Department is attempting to contact more than 1,000 former workers and notify them of a free silicosis screening program. Several former Yucca workers have claimed they contracted chronic lung ailments after inhaling silica-laden dust during excavation and tunneling. Besides asking for an investigation of the issues raised by Kallas, Chu said she wanted to know why Energy Department officials were not informed of the allegation earlier. Kallas, who was fired from Kiewit Construction in 1996 for “disregard of authority and directions of supervisor,” told the Review-Journal she tried to report concerns to managers about altering her notes, but was told to follow her supervisor’s instructions. “I said what they were telling me to do was illegal. Then they reminded me that the only reason I was there was because DOE required somebody with my credentials to be there,” she said. Kiewit spokesman Tom Janssen said Friday his company is looking into the allegations. “We’re just becoming aware of this issue. We’re taking it very seriously,” Janssen said. Chu and Deputy Director John Arthur said Thursday they are seeking to broaden the investigation beyond the allegation of falsified documents. They said they want a picture of worker conditions in the period between 1992 when mining activities began and 1996 when tunnel ventilation was improved and health protections were upgraded and enforced. The Energy Department has acknowledged officials were aware of potentially hazardous silica at Yucca Mountain, but workers were not given effective respiratory protections until 1996. Until then, they were issued dust masks, but their use was not enforced and their effectiveness was dismissed by workers. Arthur said an investigation could include the review of government contracts with companies involved in construction at Yucca Mountain, the site selected by Congress to hold some 77,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel and highly radioactive waste. “There are volumes of documents that we want them to look at,” Arthur said. Investigators working for the inspector general were made aware of Yucca Mountain health concerns in August 2003 by Gene Griego, a Los Alamos, N.M., national laboratory employee who worked as a tunnel supervisor. Copyright Reno Gazette-Journal, a Gannett Co. Inc.Newspaper. Use ***************************************************************** 33 Beacon Journal: $125 million deal lures uranium plant to Ohio | 02/21/2004 | $15 million in taxes pays for enticements Associated Press WASHINGTON - Ohio's successful campaign for a new uranium enrichment plant will cost taxpayers $15 million for state trips and meals, road and water infrastructure projects, worker training grants and other enticements. That amount is part of a $125 million-plus incentive package of state and local tax breaks and about $7,500 spent on meals, trips, newspaper ads and gifts for company officials, according to state documents released at the request of the Associated Press. ``This is probably one of the most attractive packages that we have offered,'' Gov. Bob Taft said. The total value of the USEC Inc. package is expected to be higher than $125 million once several of the tax incentives are calculated. The state in 1998 helped secure a new Jeep plant in Toledo with state and local tax breaks worth about $185 million. USEC announced Jan. 12 that it would build a $1.5 billion plant at its southern Ohio site to use updated centrifuge technology to enrich uranium. The plant is expected to employ 500 people and be operating by the end of the decade. At a cost of $250,000 a job, Ohio beat out a sister plant in Paducah, Ky., for the project. The decision came a year after USEC announced it would run a $150 million plant at the Piketon, Ohio, site that would test its centrifuge technology. ***************************************************************** 34 KOBTV: United Nuclear submits Church Rock reclamation plan KOBTV.com Last Update: 02/21/2004 10:17:18 AM By: Associated Press (Church Rock-AP) -- Two uranium mines that shut down at least 22 years ago would be reclaimed to restore wildlife habitat and grazing land under plans offered by United Nuclear Corporation. The state says a third UNC mine also would be reclaimed under a plan to be submitted later. The 137-acre Northeast Church Rock Mine and the 14-acre Section 27 Mine would be reseeded, revegetated, and have all mine shafts closed. The UNC proposals are being reviewed by the Mining and Minerals Division of the Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Department and by the state Environment Department. After seven years of litigation, the state courts decided in late 2002 that the three closed mines were subject to the New Mexico Mining Act. The company had claimed an exemption, which the courts rejected. (Copyright 2004 by The Associated Press. ***************************************************************** 35 Salt Lake Tribune: Nuke controls clear House February 21, 2004 [PHOTO] Drums of waste materials are shown in this 2002 photo taken at Envirocare's facility in Tooele County. (Steve Griffin/Tribune file photo) By Judy Fahys House lawmakers drew a line Friday on radioactive waste, passing a bill that would require elected leaders to say "yes" before more hazardous types can be disposed of in Utah. Following its 63-6 vote in the state House of Representatives, Rep. Stephen Urquhart's House Bill 145 now goes to the Senate, where the St. George lawmaker said he expects it to receive solid support. The bill goes forward with approving nods from both Envirocare of Utah, the company most affected, and environmentalists -- onetime critics whose opposition once appeared certain to doom the bill. "We hit the Kumbaya point," said Urquhart, noting the conflicts had been resolved during the bill's committee review. "It's time to get it over to the Senate and let them look at it." Co-chairman of a legislative waste task force, Urquhart cobbled together a hard-wrought compromise that pleased and provoked lawmakers in both parties, even while many complained the technicalities of isotopes and picocuries were beyond their grasp. In its final form Friday, the bill would require the Legislature and the governor to give explicit approval anytime Envirocare seeks to dispose of radioactive waste that is hotter than "Class A." That classification is part of the A-B-C scale that states and the federal government use to measure the hazard level of low-level radioactive waste. Class A is the lowest level. Although the legislation still won't give Utah's elected leaders any say over high-level radioactive waste, such as the federally licensed facility planned for the Skull Valley Goshute Indian Reservation, it would close some loopholes for waste going into sections of Envirocare that are not now regulated by the A-B-C system. Those loopholes have allowed the privately owned and operated Envirocare to expand operations at its mile-square landfill in Tooele County from just three radioactive materials in 1988 to more than 200 today -- all with regulatory approval granted by state and federal bureaucrats. Urquhart reminded his fellow House lawmakers on Friday that he proposed the measure last fall in reaction to the U.S. Energy Department's efforts to send unusually concentrated sludge from cleanups in Ohio and New York to a federally controlled part of Envirocare even though the waste exceeded a statewide ban on such hot radioactive material. Congress reclassified the Ohio and New York waste so it could go to Utah, but Envirocare opted out of the bidding for the multi-million dollar contract after a public outcry and opposition from Gov. Olene Walker. "We heard the public wants us more involved in radioactive waste policy," said Urquhart, "and we took a vote today to become more involved." Urquhart pointed out Friday that he originally wanted Envirocare to have to seek approval by elected officials for increasing concentrations of two waste types below the Class A level now taken at the site: "mixed waste" containing hazardous and radioactive components and uranium and plutonium waste known as "Special Nuclear Materials." Envirocare criticized him for "micromanaging" the business. Environmentalists criticized the final bill for allowing still more permit expansions without scrutiny by the governor and lawmakers. In compromising by drawing a line at the Class A hazard level, Urquhart pleased environmentalists by closing the loophole to even hotter wastes and appeased Envirocare by not subjecting its two pending license requests to formal votes. Rep. Greg Hughes, R-Draper, tried unsuccessfully to strip out a 10 percent tax on the mixed waste. "I would like all tax policy decided at the same time," said Hughes. © Copyright 2004, The Salt Lake Tribune. ***************************************************************** 36 Tri-Valley Herald: Lab receives fines for waste violations Saturday, February 21, 2004 - Lab stored hazardous materials longer than the one-year limit in its permit By FROM STAFF REPORT State regulators reached a $31,300 settlement with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory over violations of the lab's hazardous waste permit. A state regulator found the violations in 2000, 2002 and 2003 inspections of the lab's extensive waste-handling and storage operations. Six times, the lab stored 55-gallon drums of hazardous or mixed hazardous and radioactive wastes longer than the one-year limit in its permit. The state found that each of those cases, typically involving common cleaning solvents, were Class I violations, meaning they posed a potential risk to the public, workers or the environment. The lab also failed to provide full waste-handling training for all workers who were identified to the state as potential waste handlers. "We would have taken enforcement action even if there were not repeated violations," said Charlene Williams, Northern California compliance chief for the state's toxic-substances agency. The $31,000 settlement ranks at the low end of the agency's fines, which range from $1,000 to more than $1 million. "None of these violations impacted public health or workers' safety," said Bert Heffner, a Livermore spokesman. The lab since has upgraded its training and installed a better computerized inventory of its stored wastes. ©1999-2003 by MediaNews Group, Inc. and ANG Newspapers ***************************************************************** 37 Salt Lake Tribune: No nuclear testing February 21, 2004 The very thought of nuclear testing at the Nevada Test Site should raise extreme skepticism with residents of Utah. Perhaps Day We Bombed Utah: America's Most Lethal Secret, a book by investigative reporter John Fuller detailing the consequences of the 1950s nuclear testing program. It was alarming to read of the deaths of thousands of deformed animals and human casualties from cancer. The film, "The Conqueror," with John Wayne, Susan Hayward, Dick Powell and Agnes Moorehead, was shot near St. George a year after the testing period. All four stars subsequently died of cancer, along with other cast members. The cast and crew of 200 had been reassured by the government that the possible radiation levels from former tests were completely safe. My husband and I recently traveled to Vimpeli, in northern Finland, which is more than 1,000 miles from Chernobyl. We learned from relatives that the people in this small village are still not allowed to eat fish from the lakes there. The restriction is due to the fallout from the Chernobyl disaster. Is this what we want to happen in Utah? Whether the legislation approved by Congress for $25 million calls for nuclear testing (Tribune, Feb. 9) underground or above, it simply should not occur at all. Marva M. Warnock Park City Copyright Salt Lake City Tribune ***************************************************************** 38 NST: Local NPT signatories must report all nuclear material New Straits Times: The NST Team *Feb 20:* *MALAYSIA is a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty which oversees control over nuclear materials like uranium, thorium and plutonium.* Manufacturing, using, importing and exporting of uranium and plutonium and other materials like thorium that can be converted into uranium are controlled by the NPT. All nations, including Malaysia, which are signatories to the treaty are required to report all inventories and the import and export of nuclear material to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna, Austria. IAEA is the enforcement agency to the NPT but has no control over nuclear equipment such as centrifuge components. SCOPE and Malaysia have, therefore, not broken any of the NPT rules as the components were not among the items listed in the treaty. Malaysia also has yet to sign the additional protocol to the IAEA's enforcement control agreement. In general, the additional protocol ensures control over specific nuclear equipment like single-use items that cover materials such as centrifuges for uranium enrichment. It does not cover dual-use items like centrifuges for the petrol chemical industry, water treatment and the use of molecular biology for protein separation. Therefore, Malaysia has not violated any of the provisions in the additional protocol because the components seized in Taranto, Italy, were basic components and not complete centrifuge units for uranium enrichment. Moreover, under Malaysian Atomic Energy Licensing Act (Act 304), there is no provision for the control of components such as those seized. What is clear from is that most individuals involved in the networking are from Europe whose countries are signatories to the additional protocol and also members of the Nuclear Supplier Group (NSG). Copyright © 2004 NST Online. All rights reserved. Powered by: Zope, Red Hat, Apache, Python, Perl Privacy Policy ***************************************************************** 39 Seattle Times: State to look into worker complaints at Hanford Saturday, February 21, 2004 - Page updated at 12:00 A.M. By Nicholas K. Geranios The Associated Press SPOKANE — The state Attorney General's Office is investigating worker complaints that the speedup of cleanup at the Hanford nuclear reservation is endangering their health. Attorney General Christine Gregoire launched the probe after a letter she sent to the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) last year was not answered, Gregoire's spokesman Gary Larson said yesterday. "The issues are serious enough that they need to be addressed by somebody," Larson said. DOE, which owns the sprawling Hanford site, did not receive the letter until recently, and the agency rejects the notion that worker safety is being compromised, spokesman Joe Davis said. "We will not put any worker at risk for the sake of accelerating cleanup," Davis said from Washington, D.C. "Worker safety comes first, and we take all reporting by workers of a safety issue very seriously." Davis said the department is in the process of answering the letter. At the department's request, the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health has agreed to investigate worker concerns and provide an independent review of site procedures, Erik Olds, with the Energy Department's Office of River Protection, said yesterday. Davis also noted that Gregoire, Gov. Gary Locke and members of the state's congressional delegation have endorsed the federal government's efforts to speed the cleanup of decades of radioactive waste accumulated during the production of plutonium for nuclear weapons. The cleanup, costing about $2 billion a year, involves some 11,000 workers at the site near Richland. Last September, a Hanford watchdog group issued a report that contended scores of Hanford workers have been exposed to toxic vapors in the past two years as the government pushes for a faster and cheaper cleanup of wastes. The Government Accountability Project (GAP) alleges that 67 workers between January 2002 and August 2003 were exposed to toxic vapors escaping from underground tanks that hold radioactive wastes. That prompted the letter from Gregoire asking for the investigation and for the Energy Department to ensure that workers'-compensation claims from Hanford employees are handled fairly. Gregoire has decided to work with other Washington agencies, including the Ecology and Health departments, to determine if the GAP allegations are true. "We're still in the early stages," Larson said. "I can't tell you at this point what specific areas they will be looking into. ... Our role in that would be to assist them as their legal counsel." There is no deadline for completing the review, he said. Davis noted that the number of reportable accidents at DOE facilities nationwide declined from 3 per 200,000 work hours in 1998 to less than 1 per 200,000 work hours in 2003, despite the accelerated work. Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company ***************************************************************** 40 Rocky Mountain News: Flats activists seek automatic compensation By Ann Imse, Rocky Mountain News February 21, 2004 Rocky Flats workers sickened by their jobs see a way around mounds of paperwork blocking their way to federal compensation. But that route is clogged, too. In 2000, Congress authorized compensation for bomb-makers with illnesses linked to their jobs. The law also recognized that radiation records were so bad at some plants that no one could calculate individual contamination. So employees at those places can collect without having to prove their illnesses were work-related. Activists and labor unions say records and contamination at Rocky Flats are just as bad. They are trying to add the plant to the short list of sites where workers automatically qualify. But they've been stymied. Three-and-a-half years after Congress passed the law, the government still hasn't approved the rules to be used in applying to join the short list. Dr. Larry Elliott of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health said he couldn't even estimate when the rules would be finalized. Richard Miller, an activist with the Government Accountability Project, says the government is foot-dragging because of the cost of paying more claims. The activists recently persuaded 18 senators, including Colorado's Ben Nighthorse Campbell, to sign a letter demanding the rules be completed. Meanwhile, activists are asking Congress to simply legislate Rocky Flats into the special category. Robert Bistline, the Rocky Flats scientist who has monitored workers' radiation for 38 years, backs the effort. He'd rather see the money now spent on collecting dusty records and calculating radiation exposures to be spent on paying sick Flats workers. By September of this year, the Labor and Energy departments will have spent $440 million just on administration of the compensation program, officials said. Energy is asking Congress for changes in the law and $76 million more this year and next in hopes of dealing with the 22,000 claims in its backlog by 2006. Another proposed solution is in a bill backed by Colorado Reps. Mark Udall, Diana DeGette, Bob Beauprez and Scott McInnis. It would have the federal government pay legitimate workers compensation claims directly. Miller said Boston University has very roughly estimated the cost of this change at $400 million over 10 years. ***************************************************************** 41 The Olympian: Hanford cleanup project finishes The Olympian, Olympia Washington Saturday, February 21, 2004 Officials, workers celebrate success Pam Brown Larsen, a worker at the Plutonium Finishing Plant on the Hanford nuclear reservation near Richland, signs a poster commemorating a milestone in the cleanup project there Friday. The Associated Press SHANNON DININNY THE ASSOCIATED PRESS RICHLAND -- State and federal officials and workers at the Hanford nuclear reservation Friday celebrated the completion of a project to stabilize and package 4.4 tons of plutonium from the nation's nuclear weapons arsenal. The project was one of three critical cleanup problems at Hanford, along with underground tanks containing highly radioactive waste and corroding spent fuel rods from the nuclear reactors. "What we mark today is a real turning point in Hanford's history and the cleanup operation," said Keith Klein, manager of the Energy Department's Richland office. "As a result, our workers are safer, our environment is safer, and we have done our part in making this nation safer too." Officials from the federal Energy Department and Environmental Protection Agency, state Department of Ecology, state of Oregon, and Indian tribes joined hundreds of workers at the Plutonium Finishing Plant for the celebration. Beginning in 1949, the Plutonium Finishing Plant was the last step in converting plutonium nitrate solutions into pure plutonium "buttons" about the size of hockey pucks, which were sent to other Energy Department sites to make atomic bombs. The work stopped in 1989 at the end of the Cold War, but more than 18 tons of materials containing plutonium in some form remained. The final project to stabilize and package the remaining plutonium involved several tons of solid plutonium materials, including small plutonium-injected cubes used in lab tests and plutonium-laced powders. Some of the waste from the site -- close to 2,000 55-gallon drums -- will be shipped to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico. The remaining material that has higher concentrations of plutonium is being stored in nearly 2,250 50-pound containers until it can be turned into glass for long term storage. Federal officials have not yet announced where the vitrification process will take place, but eventually the material is slated to end up at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. Current plans call for the plant to be demolished by 2009, several years ahead of the 2016 deadline in the Tri-Party Agreement, the 1989 cleanup pact signed by the state, the Energy Department and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. For 40 years, the 586-square-mile reservation in south-central Washington made plutonium for the nation's nuclear weapons, beginning with the top-secret Manhattan Project to build an atomic bomb. Today, it is the nation's most contaminated nuclear site. Cleanup costs are expected to total $50 billion to $60 billion, with the work to be finished by 2035. ©2004 The Olympian Return to Northwest section ***************************************************************** 42 The Olympian: State probes complaints February 21, 2004 NICHOLAS K. GERANIOS THE ASSOCIATED PRESS SPOKANE -- The state attorney general is investigating worker complaints that the speedup of cleanup at the Hanford nuclear reservation is endangering their health. Attorney General Christine Gregoire launched the probe after a letter she sent to the U.S. Department of Energy last year was not answered, Gregoire's spokesman Gary Larson said Friday. "The issues are serious enough that they need to be addressed by somebody," Larson said. The Department of Energy, which owns the sprawling Hanford site, did not receive the letter until recently, and rejects the notion that worker safety is being compromised, spokesman Joe Davis said. "We will not put any worker at risk for the sake of accelerating cleanup," Davis said from Washington, D.C. Davis said the Energy Department is in the process of answering the letter. Also, the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health has agreed to come in March and investigate worker concerns and provide an independent review of site procedures, Erik Olds, with the Energy Department's Office of River Protection, said Friday. Davis also noted that Gregoire, Gov. Gary Locke and members of the state's congressional delegation have endorsed the federal government's efforts to speed the cleanup of decades of radioactive waste accumulated during the production of plutonium for nuclear weapons. The cleanup, which costs about $2 billion a year, involves some 11,000 workers at the site near Richland. Last September, a Hanford watchdog group issued a report that contended scores of Hanford workers have been exposed to toxic vapors in the past two years as the government pushes for faster and cheaper cleanup of wastes. The Government Accountability Project alleges that 67 workers between January 2002 and August 2003 were exposed to toxic vapors escaping from underground tanks that hold radioactive wastes. That prompted the letter from Gregoire asking for the investigation and for the Energy Department to ensure that workers' compensation claims from Hanford employees are handled fairly. Gregoire has decided to work with other Washington agencies, including Ecology and Health, to determine if the GAP allegations are true. "We're still in the early stages," Larson said. "I can't tell you at this point what specific areas they will be looking into. ... Our role in that would be to assist them as their legal counsel." There is no deadline for completing the review, he said. Davis noted that the number of reportable accidents at Department of Energy facilities nationwide declined from 3 per 200,000 work hours in 1998 to less than 1 per 200,000 work hours in 2003, despite the accelerated work. "We have taken significant steps to improve worker safety at Hanford," Davis said. The GAP report contended that only 16 vapor releases requiring medical attention occurred between 1987 and 1992. That number jumped to 45 exposure events involving 67 tank farm workers requiring medical attention between January 2002 and August 2003, GAP said. Officials with the Department of Energy and contractor CH2M-Hill Hanford Group acknowledged that the number of workers seeking medical care had increased in the past 11/2>> years. But that was the result of a new federal policy, said Markis Hughey, a tank official for CH2M-Hill. In the past, workers who smelled an odor did not have the option of a covered doctor visit unless they had obvious physical symptoms. Now they can request a checkup even if they show no symptoms, and they are required to see a doctor if they do show symptoms. Hughey said late last year he knew of no workers who had been hospitalized because of vapor exposure. ©2004 The Olympian ***************************************************************** 43 chillicothegazette.com: Piketon plant courtship cost $15 million - Saturday, February 21, 2004 Incentives, meals, travel part of plans By MALIA RULON Associated Press Writer Courting centrifuge Ohio's $125.1 million incentive package offered to land the USEC Inc. commercial centrifuge plant in Piketon included the following: + $64.3 million: State tax incentives for creating new jobs, buying new manufacturing machinery and doing research and development. Some of these incentives will be calculated later, which would increase the value of the package. + $26 million: Local property tax breaks and other incentives. + $20 million: State financing assistance for the project. The state also will pay an amount, to be determined later, to help the company install the equipment necessary to comply with air quality regulations. + $7 million: Infrastructure assistance for roads and water development projects. + $5.8 million: Four business development grants from the state. + $2 million: Job training for workers. An additional $7,500 spent to land the deal included: + $3,500: Ads placed by southern Ohio chambers of commerce in five newspapers to encourage residents and businesses to send in letters of support for the USEC plant. + $1,740: Flight to USEC headquarters in Bethesda, Md., on state airplane so Gov. Bob Taft and state officials could make a presentation to company officials. + $1,400: Cost for a two-day trip community leaders took to meet with USEC President Nick Timbers, whom they gave two gifts. + $700: State funds used to print and copy the documents necessary to explain the incentive package, put it in binders and on CDs and ship it to USEC in Bethesda. + $160: Cost of a 10-person steak and potato lunch at the governor's residence Nov. 14, 2003. Sources: State documents released at the request of The Associated Press and information provided by local chambers of commerce. WASHINGTON -- Ohio's successful campaign for a new $1.5 billion uranium enrichment plant will cost taxpayers $15 million for state trips and meals, road and water infrastructure projects, worker training grants and other enticements. That amount is part of a $125 million-plus incentive package of state and local tax breaks and about $7,500 spent on meals, trips, newspaper ads and gifts for company officials, according to state documents released at the request of The Associated Press. "This is probably one of the most attractive packages that we have offered," Gov. Bob Taft said. The total value of the United States Enrichment Corp. package is expected to be greater than $125 million once several of the tax incentives are calculated. The state in 1998 helped secure a new Jeep plant in Toledo with state and local tax breaks worth about $185 million. USEC announced Jan. 12 that it would build the plant at its southern Ohio site in Piketon to use updated centrifuge technology to enrich uranium. The plant is expected to employ 500 people and be operating by the end of the decade. At a cost of $250,000 a job, Ohio beat out a sister plant in Paducah, Ky., for the project. Advantage: Ohio The decision came a year after USEC announced it would run a $150 million plant at the Piketon site that would test its centrifuge technology and employ 50 people. The amount in state funds or tax incentives spent to win that deal was not available. Kentucky also competed for that project. However, winning the test plant gave Ohio an advantage. Other advantages of the Ohio site, according to USEC, also didn't come from the incentive package. Existing buildings that remained from Department of Energy tests of the technology in the 1980s would save about $300 million. The cost of securing the Kentucky plant, which is near the New Madrid earthquake fault, was estimated at $75 million. "It's very difficult to recover from that kind of disadvantage and then put an incentive on top of that," said Kentucky Secretary of Economic Development Gene Strong. He would say only that Kentucky's offer for the plant was considerably larger than Ohio's $125 million package. "We broke out every item and put it into a formula," said USEC spokeswoman Elizabeth Stuckle. "There was a significant economic difference between the two sites." The bottom line William V. Ackerman, an economic development professor at Ohio State University, said extras things, such as lunches and gifts, help when wooing a business, but cost is the most important factor. "What they are looking for is keeping their bottom line costs as low as they can keep them, so they compare all the tax breaks and other incentive packages, and whatever gives them the best deal," he said. "Everything else is just one more thing on the pot." The incentive package included millions of dollars in tax credits, local property tax breaks, state financing pledges, development grants, infrastructure assistance and worker training. The legislature passed two bills specifically to beef up Ohio's bid, providing a job creation tax credit, extending a credit for buying new manufacturing machinery and extending from 10 to 15 years the amount of time communities can grant property tax exemptions. The campaign to get the plant started with an October 2002 lunch at the governor's mansion with Taft, U.S. Rep. Rob Portman, whose Cincinnati district includes the plant, and USEC President Nick Timbers. It was followed by a 10-person steak and potato luncheon -- served with buckeye ice cream for dessert -- at the governor's mansion a year later. It was after the first lunch, however, that Portman, excited about the prospect of winning the plant, drove two-and-a-half hours to Piketon with Timbers to meet with union President Dan Minter. Community leaders also personally pitched Timbers on the plant. An extra effort When USEC cut 530 jobs and shut the Piketon plant to consolidate operations in Paducah, tempers among union workers and community leaders had flared. Eager to put the bad feelings to rest as USEC considered where to put the new plant, seven community leaders took time off from work and drove seven hours to USEC's headquarters in Bethesda, Md., to meet with Timbers. "We wanted to show him that any misgivings that might have been there in the past were gone and ... we were totally in support of them doing this project here," said Bob Huff, executive director of the Portsmouth Area Chamber of Commerce. The group, which spent about $1,400 on gas, food and lodging for the two-day trip, gave Timbers a 68-page book of color photographs illustrating a series of murals that depict the region's history ($18.95 cost) and a video about the 1937 flood (estimated $20 cost). Community leaders also spent $3,500 on advertising in five newspapers so they could collect and send to USEC 8,000 letters supporting the plant from businesses and residents. Several letters also came from West Virginia and northern Kentucky, where residents near the Ohio plant would benefit from the permanent plant. "That was one of the intangibles that you can't put a price tag on," said Greg Simonton, executive director of Southern Ohio Diversification Initiative, an economic development group. "It bodes well for the acceptance of the industry." Stuckle, of USEC, said while these efforts were helpful, the final decision was based on an analysis of how each state would affect the cost, schedule and risk of the project. "If the packages were economically more equal, other kinds of issues would have played a larger role," she said. "We appreciated tremendous community and state support in both locations." Originally published Saturday, February 21, 2004 | | Copyright ©2004 Chillicothe Gazette. All rights ***************************************************************** 44 Tri-City Herald: Celebrating a milestone This story was published Saturday, February 21st, 2004 By Annette Cary Herald staff writer Dozens of extra security badges were issued Friday for people who wanted to pass inside the security perimeter of what's been called "Hanford's grand jewel." They celebrated an accomplishment that the Plutonium Finishing Plant's longtime workers never imagined when they first stepped into the high security production facility 15 or 20 years ago. The nearly 20 tons of material containing plutonium left at the plant when it ceased production has all been stabilized and packaged. "What we mark today is a real turning point in Hanford history and the cleanup process," Keith Klein, the Department of Energy's Richland manager, told a couple hundred employees and visitors. As the mission of Hanford changed from producing plutonium to cleaning up the waste and contamination left at the site, three areas were considered urgent risks. One was the plutonium left in various stages of production at the Plutonium Finishing Plant. An early facility there processed a liquid nitrate solution holding plutonium produced at Hanford into a pure form of plutonium for the bomb that ended World War II. PFP eventually would produce more plutonium metal buttons about the size of hockey pucks, for use in weapons production, than any other American facility. When production stopped, workers were faced with leftover plutonium still in a liquid solution, in waste materials and in solid forms ranging from finished buttons to plasticlike cubes intended for criticality experiments. The plant posed a threat not only to the environment, but also to the workers there. Among the risks was a criticality, a potentially deadly runaway nuclear reaction. "Very few people appreciate the complexity of the materials and how nasty they are if not handled right," Klein said. Workers not only finished stabilizing and packaging all the plutonium, but also became the only high-hazard nuclear facility in the nation to be recognized for safety with Star status in DOE's Voluntary Protection Program. "I've always been impressed by the incredible detail it takes to do the job right," said Nick Ceto, manager for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in Richland. "It demonstrates even the toughest jobs can be taken on and accomplished in the right way." The plutonium and plutonium-bearing materials have been reduced to just under 10 tons. The materials that contain the least plutonium, some of it waste material left from making the plutonium buttons, has been packed into about 2,000 containers. Each is about the size of a 55-gallon drum. Some of that waste already has been sent to an underground burial site near Carlsbad, N.M. The plutonium left in more pure forms has been packed into about 2,250 triple-packed, stainless steel containers weighing about 50 pounds each. Until DOE comes up with a national plan for consolidating its plutonium at one site, the containers will remain in vaults at the PFP. Some of the plutonium is weapons-grade and the plant remains heavily guarded, hence the "grand jewel" nickname. Because of the heavy security to get into the complex each day, some workers at other Hanford facilities have likened working at PFP to being in a prison. But the workers at the plant like it. "It has a very strong family atmosphere," said Rick Wilbanks, a project manager. "I've been here almost 20 years and I have worked with a lot of the same people." Although the stabilization and packaging is done, work will transition now to cleaning up and tearing down the 61 buildings at the site and later ground contamination will be addressed. By 2009 all that should be left above ground is a view of Rattlesnake Mountain. © 2004 Tri-City Herald, Associated Press &Other Wire Services ***************************************************************** 45 Tri-City Herald: State to probe Hanford safety This story was published Saturday, February 21st, 2004 By Annette Cary Herald staff writer Federal and state agencies are investigating whether the health of Hanford workers is being harmed during nuclear cleanup work. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, or NIOSH, plans a visit to Hanford on March 9-11 for a technical review of safety procedures at the tank farms. Highly radioactive waste left from producing plutonium is stored there in underground tanks. Separately, Washington At-torney General Christine Gregoire is working with other state agencies to look into workers' complaints that their health has been compromised. "We thought and continue to think that the appropriate agency to look into this is DOE (the federal Department of Energy)," said Gary Larson, a spokesman for the attorney general. But the state office has not received a formal response to a letter sent to the federal agency Oct. 27 requesting an investigation, he said. DOE only recently received the letter, DOE spokesman Joe Davis said Friday in Washington, D.C. It's working on a response, but does not believe worker safety has been compromised, he said. The state sent the letter after the Government Accountability Project, or GAP, released a report last September saying that 67 workers had been given medical attention between January 2002 and August 2003 after being exposed to vapors from underground tanks. Some had symptoms such as nosebleeds, sore throats, dizziness and increased heart rates, according to the watchdog group. "The report raised some very serious concerns," Larson said. "They are serious enough to determine the truth of the matter." The NIOSH technical review comes after a confidential request was filed by Hanford workers, said Fred Blosser, a NIOSH spokesman. The visit to Hanford was scheduled after NIOSH received an invitation from DOE, said Susan Eberlein, a vice president at CH2M Hill Hanford Group. CH2M Hill is emptying the underground single-shell tanks under a DOE contract. The letter from Gregoire asked DOE to solicit an independent investigation of allegations by GAP and ensure claims for workers' compensation are being "fairly, expeditiously and properly handled." It also said the report "presents troubling allegations of fraud in record-keeping associated with tank vapors." "We have used independent legal counsel to investigate the allegation and do not expect any findings to result from that investigation," said Bryan Kidder, a spokesman for CH2M Hill Hanford Group. Concerns about tank vapors have increased as work has progressed to empty nearly all the liquid waste from Hanford's leak-prone single-shell tanks. Some of the 149 tanks, intended for temporary storage, have held waste since the 1940s. CH2M Hill believes no permanent harm has been done to workers' health but has acknowledged that some people, particularly those sensitive to ammonia, have suffered symptoms. The contractor ends work in any areas of the tank farm if ammonia vapors reach a threshold far below that allowed by federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration regulations, CH2M Hill officials have said. They say the company also has taken steps to reduce exposure to vapors, such as inspecting all single-shell tanks and resealing any places where leaks have been found. Tank farm workers who have any symptoms that could be related to smelling vapors are required to go for medical help and evaluation. In addition, any worker may seek medical help related to vapor exposures, even if the worker shows no symptoms. The state investigation into health risks from tank vapors is in its early stages. The Office of the Attorney General is working with other state agencies, including the departments of Labor and Industry, Health and Ecology. The Associated Press contributed to this report. © 2004 Tri-City Herald, Associated Press &Other Wire Services ***************************************************************** 46 The State: Energy chief gives update on 02/21/2 He says agency plans to operate facility at SRS, but timeline is uncertain By SAMMY FRETWELL Staff Writer U.S. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham says his agency intends to operate an atomic fuels factory in South Carolina as scheduled  but he does not guarantee the program will meet fuel production deadlines as required by law. The DOE must meet a series of deadlines, including ones in 2009 and 2011, to avoid being fined $100 million per year, federal law says. The mixed oxide plant would be built at the Savannah River Site near Aiken. Abraham, as required by law, wrote a letter this week to members of Congress updating them on the progress of the fuel plant. The letter says it remains possible to begin producing mixed oxide fuel by 2009 as required, but only if his agency resolves a dispute with Russia and gets additional funding for the $3.8 billion plant. Abrahams letter follows a recent Energy Department decision to delay the scheduled start of plant construction by 10 months, which prompted concern from former Gov. Jim Hodges that the plant would not be built. If the mixed oxide fuel plant isnt built, Hodges says, South Carolina could be left with up to 34 metric tons of unused American plutonium, a poisonous metal and key ingredient in atomic weapons. The material is being shipped to SRS from other federal nuclear facilities for conversion to commercial nuclear reactor fuel. Making it into fuel would render it useless for atomic bombs. We are confident that we will be able to meet overall program objectives  the elimination of enough weapons-grade plutonium for thousands of nuclear weapons, Abraham wrote in a letter Tuesday to Sen. John Warner, a Virginia Republican who chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee. We are still reviewing how to minimize any impacts that this delay might have on the overall program milestones and cost. The U.S. decision to delay the start of its fuel project at SRS until May 2005  rather than this summer  resulted from a disagreement with Russia for a proposed companion plant in that country. The Russians are relying on American help to build the plant, but there are questions about U.S. liability. U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said he read Abrahams letter to mean that the program is still on track, but nuclear nonproliferation activist Tom Clements said the letter provides only lukewarm support for the program. Reach Fretwell at (803) 771-8537 or sfretwell@thestate.com TheStateOnline ***************************************************************** 47 Contra Costa Times: DOE plan doubles plutonium at Livermore | 02/21/2004 | By Guy Ashley and Andrea Widener CONTRA COSTA TIMES LIVERMORE - Lawrence Livermore Laboratory will house twice the plutonium and work with nearly 10 times the radioactive tritium it does now if the Department of Energy gets its way with a new environmental plan for the lab. The lab will start research on how to make new plutonium "pits," the nuclear core of nuclear weapons, and restart a program to sort nuclear weapons material. It will use tritium to get ready for nuclear weapons testing and as part of targets for the world's largest laser, whose construction is beginning to wind down. "It would be a ramp-up" of current programs, said Tom Grim, who is managing the environmental statement for the Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration. The large increases surprised lab watchers, who say the nuclear weapons program should not be getting bigger 10 years after the Cold War's end. "They should be headed in the opposite direction," said Marylia Kelley, executive director of the lab watchdog Tri-Valley Communities Against a Radioactive Environment. She said she was shocked with the increase. "They should be doing less nuclear weapons work, and the work they do should be limited to maintenance of the existing stockpile as it awaits dismantlement," she said. The move is part of a boost in nuclear weapons work from the federal stockpile stewardship program, which aims to maintain the country's nuclear weapons through experiments and computer simulations rather than underground nuclear tests. The proposed 10-year plan would allow up to 3,300 pounds of plutonium to be stored at the lab at any one time, up from the 1,540-pound standard that has been in place for years. It would triple the amount scientists can work with at any one time, and hence the amount that is more likely to be in an accident, from 44 pounds to 132 pounds. Much of the increase will probably go to restarting the plutonium atomic vapor laser isotope separation program, which vaporizes plutonium, then sorts out the different weights with a laser. Originally developed in the 1980s, the program was shut down after reviews determined it wasn't practical. The other new program would test techniques to produce plutonium pits in a still-proposed pit manufacturing facility. "We knew these programs both increase the amount of plutonium to be used ... but they alone, as dramatic as they are, do not answer the question of why DOE would propose to more than double the storage limit," Kelley said. Grim said he could not go into classified details of how much plutonium each program would use. "What we're trying to do is take a very conservative approach to envelope the impact" and estimating higher levels than would be used, said Gordon Guetenberg, who is managing the project for the lab. The environmental plan, which last came out in 1992, shows increased risk to the health of those living and working near the lab, in large part because of the expected increase in tritium, a radioactive form of water. The environmental report estimates that the proposed changes could increase risk for workers. If there were a maximum release, the exposure could result in the chance of 0.075 worker cancer fatalities over a lifetime -- an increase of the estimate of 0.017 worker cancer fatalities in a lifetime based on previous allowed levels. A maximum material handling accident in the Superblock, the lab's plutonium area, could result in 0.17 to two cancer fatalities within the surrounding population over 70 years. The DOE estimates the probability of such an accident occurring is less than once in a million years. The DOE estimates that approximately 11,000 cancer deaths per year would be expected to naturally occur in the population of approximately 7 million persons within 50 miles of the lab. The expansion would come in building targets for the National Ignition Facility, the world's largest laser, and as a diagnostic for nuclear tests -- as part of preparing to test in 18 months rather than 36 months. Lab and federal officials put the estimates at below what people get every year from their everyday exposure. It reveals that the lab is planning to receive waste shipments from another site. Ten to 14 drums full of waste from closed programs at Lawrence Berkeley lab will be shipped to Livermore. It would then be processed and sent out with the 1,000 drums of waste the lab already has waiting to be sent to a New Mexico storage site. Both labs are waiting for approval from the state before going forward with the shipments. "The laboratory view to the public will not change," Grim said. HEARINGS ON ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT The Department of Energy is seeking public comment from Feb. 27 to May 27 on Lawrence Livermore Laboratory's environmental impact statement. Three public hearings are scheduled, including two in the Bay Area and a third in Washington, D.C. • April 27, at 1 and 6 p.m., at the Double Tree Club (formerly the Holiday Inn), 720 Las Flores Road, Livermore. • April 28, at 1 and 6:30 p.m., at the Holiday Inn Express, 3751 N. Tracy Blvd., Tracy. The document itself is available at or at the following locations: • The Livermore Public Library, 1000 S. Livermore Ave., Livermore • The Tracy Public Library, 20 East Eaton Ave., Tracy • The lab's reading room, building 6525, off of Greenville Road; and • The National Nuclear Security Administration's Oakland public reading room, eighth floor, Federal Building, 1301 Clay St., Oakland. To comment on the proposal, go to the lab's Web site or call 877-388-4930. You can also contact documents manager Tom Grim at , fax: 925-422-1776, or by mail at Department of Energy/National Nuclear Security Administration, Livermore Site Office, L-293, 7000 East Avenue, Livermore, CA 94550-9234 A final decision is expected in January 2005. ***************************************************************** 48 KOBTV: Group sues DOE for slow response to request for public records KOBTV.com Last Update: 02/22/2004 10:32:03 AM By: Associated Press (Albuquerque-AP) -- An Albuquerque group has sued the Department of Energy because of delays in granting the group access to public records regarding radioactive waste that may be buried at Sandia National Laboratories. The group is trying to determine if highly radioactive nuclear fuel may be buried at an old Sandia landfill. The DOE and Sandia deny radioactive waste is buried there. Citizen Action filed a lawsuit February 3 in federal court in Albuquerque. The suit charges the DOE with failing to respond to a Freedom of Information Act request filed in August 2002. The DOE sent the group 15 documents on February 11, a week after the lawsuit was filed, saying thousands of pages are being reviewed to determine if they contain classified information. But the group?s leader, Sue Dayton, says the group is not satisfied with the partial release of information. DOE spokeswoman Tracy Loughead says the department is responding as quickly as it can, but the amount of material that needs to be reviewed is extensive. (Copyright 2004 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.) Print Story | - Make KOBTV.com Your Home Page © 2004 KOB-TV, ***************************************************************** 49 Idaho Statesman: INEEL could help find security threats IDAHO FALLS — Research spurred by concerns over the remnants of the former Soviet Union´s nuclear arsenal is now being turned toward the war on terrorism. Scientists at the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory are using high-energy photons to check for substances that could be used in nuclear weapons. “It wasn´t until this focus on homeland security crept in with U.S. Customs that we realized the potential for applying nuclear detection,” INEEL physicist James Jones said. The researchers have been working on testing various configurations of shielding materials, including lead. So far, nothing has been able to block the detector´s signals, Jones said. Currently, only about 3 percent of cargo containers entering the country are inspected, said Laurin Dodd, associate laboratory director of National Security. Since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the U.S. Customs Service has sought technologies that can quickly detect smuggled nuclear material. Using research that showed high-energy photons created in accelerators could be used to X-ray objects, Jones developed new sensors to detect nuclear material. The photons bombard the containers. When they strike fissionable nuclear material, they give off a telltale signature. That technology is being licensed now, and in a few years, scientists see it being used at shipping ports. Jones said the goal for inspecting each container was going to be two minutes, which the team has met. Now, the goal is 20 seconds. Edition Date: 02-21-2004 ***************************************************************** 50 Tri-Valley Herald: Lab could become nuclear power 2/22/2004 Feds might double work on, storage limit of plutonium at Livermore to boost arsenal By Ian Hoffman, STAFF WRITER LIVERMORE -- More than a decade after the end of the Cold War, the federal government is weighing a doubling of plutonium work at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, with new capabilities to extract plutonium with exotic lasers and research into robotic man-ufacturing of plutonium fission cores for nuclear weapons. Unlike its sister design lab, Los Alamos in New Mexico, Livermore is unable to separate large quantities of weapons-grade plutonium or fashion the heavy, gray metal into a "pit," the hollow, grapefruit-size orbs at the heart of the miniature atomic bombs used as a first stage in thermonuclear wea-pons. If Livermore takes on those jobs over the next decade, the lab's storage limit for plutonium would double, rising to more than 1.5 tons, according to a new environmental analysis released Friday by the National Nuclear Security Administration, the weapons arm of the U.S. Department of Energy. Fully converting that amount of plutonium, plus the lab's store of highly enriched uranium, into nuclear weapons would turn Livermore into the world's sixth largest nuclear power, with an arsenal matching that of France. In its 2,500-page tome, the government examines all of Livermore's operations for the next decade and their impacts on human and environmental health. The National Nuclear Security Administration also is considering up to a tenfold increase in the lab's day-to-day work with tritium, a radioactive form of hydrogen used for thermonuclear weapons and fusion research. Scientists would use the gas chiefly for filling tiny metal or plastic spheres for use as targets for fusion experiments. They also would need the tritium for instruments used in evaluating explosive nuclear tests, should Bush end the 12-year moratorium on testing. Federal authorities say all these capabilities are essential for maintaining the nation's existing nuclear arsenal and for meeting Bush administration nuclear policy that calls for new thermonuclear weapons. "It's all for certification," said Thomas Grim, head of the environmental analysis, referring to the annual process in which executives of the weapons design labs and defense officials guarantee to the president that the U.S. nuclear arsenal is ready. Pressed for details, Grim and others demurred. A draft of the new sitewide environmental impact statement says detailed rationales are contained in classified documents. Scientists stressed that studying modern, robotic methods of making plutonium pits won't turn Livermore into a nuclear bomb factory. Instead, the lab would hone methods for use in a new bomb-making plant, the Modern Pit Facility, proposed for location in Texas, New Mexico or South Carolina. "We're going to look at technologies that minimize worker dose (from plutonium exposure), to minimize the plutonium in casting and to minimize our footprint," said Gordon Gueterberg, a former weapons program manager who helped analyze the new plans. Eventually, he said, "We would pick out one of the (existing) pit designs and make a couple of them." Proponents of nuclear disarmament said they were shocked by the proposed boost in Livermore's plutonium inventory and troubled by the increase in tritium work. "This is all about more nuclear weapons, more nuclear materials, less civilian science and more risk to workers and the community," said Marylia Kelley, executive director of a Livermore-based watchdog group, Tri-Valley CAREs. "That's headed in the absolute wrong direction." Much of the lab's risk to its neighbors has come in the form of tritium. It is considerably more radioactive than weapons-grade plutonium, and the gas escapes so easily that incidental releases are almost unavoidable. The lab also had two large accidental releases during the Cold War. "It's an atrocious record," Kelley said. During the 1990s, Livermore's work with tritium, and its releases, declined dramatically. Kelley expects to see increased releases, and that's what federal officials foresee as well. Their environmental analysis shows a tenfold increase in radiation exposure to people living close to the lab's fence line. Almost all of the increased risk is from tritium. But the government's estimate of the actual risk is quite low -- about a third of a millirem a year. Average annual radiation dose to Americans is about 300 millirems a year, from airline flights, medical and dental X-rays and natural sources such as food. The new environmental analysis also estimates the risk of fires or an airplane attack on Superblock, the lab's plutonium facility, as fairly low, with less than one extra cancer for lab employees in their lifetimes. The document is available at the Livermore Public Library and at the lab's Discovery Center. A public comment period runs Feb. 27 to May 27. A final decision is expected in January 2005. In the new analysis, the NNSA proposes a first-ever plutonium-separation factory, on a small scale, using a highly sophisticated process known as plutonium atomic vapor laser isotopic separation, or Pu-AVLIS. It requires vaporizing molten plutonium with an electron beam, then teasing apart its different isotopes using tunable dye lasers, which in turn are powered or driven by other lasers. The laser separation technique could be useful for acquiring "supergrade" levels of plutonium-239, the isotope used in weapons. But it also could produce quantities of plutonium-238, used to make batteries for spacecraft and undersea instruments, and plutonium-242, which behaves like weapons grade plutonium in explosive experiments but does not produce a chain reaction. Tri-Valley Herald All Rights Reserved ***************************************************************** 51 Google News Alert - nuclear Date: Sat, 21 Feb 2004 12:27:38 -0800 (PST) FATE of Sri Lankan Nuclear Middleman Unclear Voice of America - USA Malaysia has declined to say what will happen to a nuclear scientist police say confessed to helping facilitate a string of deals to trade nuclear technology ... See all stories on this topic: DPRK develops nuclear technology on its own: official news agency Xinhua - China 21 (Xinhuanet) -- The official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on Saturday refuted a US allegation over the "transfer of nuclear technology" to the ... See all stories on this topic: NPT signatories must report all nuclear material New Straits Times - Kuala Lumpur,Malaysia MALAYSIA is a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty which oversees control over nuclear materials like uranium, thorium and plutonium. ... See all stories on this topic: NUCLEAR programme to stay, reiterates Musharraf Pakistani Newspaper - Pakistan RAWALPINDI, Feb 21: President General Pervez Musharraf Saturday strongly reiterated that Pakistan’s nuclear programme was here to stay and, being a vital ... See all stories on this topic: REPORT charts Libya's nuclear plan The Age - Melbourne,Victoria,Australia Libya secretly produced weapons-grade nuclear material over two decades in a program to make an atomic bomb that was more extensive than previously believed ... See all stories on this topic: FAZAL advices Musharraf to demand intl. investigation commission ... Pakistan Link - Inglewood,CA,USA DI KHAN : MMA Secretary General Maulana Fazal ur Rehman has said that the entire Europe and USA is involved in nuclear proliferation and advised General Pervez ... IRAN dismisses charges of secret nuclear activities Taipei Times - Taipei,Taiwan Iran, accused by the US of trying to build an atomic bomb, dismissed new allegations on Thursday that it was carrying out sensitive, undeclared nuclear ... See all stories on this topic: PAKISTAN gives army nuclear-capable missile Reuters - London,England,UK By Tahir Ikram. ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Pakistan has taken delivery of a short-range nuclear-capable ballistic missile, according to a military statement. ... HAMAOKA nuclear power plant catches fire but blaze put out Japan Today - Tokyo,Japan SHIZUOKA — A facility at the Hamaoka nuclear power plant in Shizuoka Prefecture caught fire shortly before noon Saturday, but the blaze was quickly ... PAKISTAN gives army new nuclear-capable missile Reuters - India By Tahir Ikram. ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Pakistan took delivery of a short-range nuclear-capable ballistic missile on Saturday, a military statement said. ... This daily-once News Alert is brought to you by Google News (BETA)... - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Remove this News Alert: http://www.google.com/newsalerts/remove?s=92d1672a1b037a07&hl=en Create another News Alert: http://www.google.com/newsalerts?hl=en Try Google News: http://news.google.com/ ***************************************************************** 52 Arms Race In Outer Space? Pentagon Prepares To Weaponize, Nuclearize Outer Space Date: Sat, 21 Feb 2004 19:27:18 -0500 http://www.space4peace.org ----- Original Message ----- From: Global Network To: Global Network Against Weapons Sent: Saturday, February 21, 2004 9:47 AM Subject: PENTAGON PREPS FOR WAR IN SPACE Pentagon Preps for War in Space By Noah Shachtman http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,62358,00.html Feb. 20, 2004 An Air Force report is giving what analysts call the most detailed picture since the end of the Cold War of the Pentagon's efforts to turn outer space into a battlefield. For years, the American military has spoken in hints and whispers, if at all, about its plans to develop weapons in space. But the U.S. Air Force Transformation Flight Plan (PDF) changes all that. Released in November, the report makes U.S. dominance of the heavens a top Pentagon priority in the new century. And it runs through dozens of research programs designed to ensure that America can never be challenged in orbit -- from anti-satellite lasers to weapons that "would provide the capability to strike ground targets anywhere in the world from space." Space has become an increasingly important part of U.S. military efforts. Satellites are used more and more to talk to troops, keep tabs on foes and guide smart bombs. There's also long been recognition that satellites may need some sort of protection against attack. But the Air Force report goes far beyond these defensive capabilities, calling for weapons that can cripple other countries' orbiters. That prospect worries some analysts that the U.S. may spark a worldwide arms race in orbit. "I don't think other countries will be taking this lying down," said Theresa Hitchens, the vice president of the Center for Defense Information. The space weapons programs listed in the Air Force report went largely unnoticed until Hitchens circulated them in an e-mail Thursday. "This will certainly prompt China into actually moving forward" on space weapon plans of its own, she added. "The Russians are likely to respond with something as well." This year, the Air Force will spend hundreds of millions of dollars to find ways to track enemy satellites -- and, if necessary, blind those eyes in the sky. Michael Kucharek, a spokesman for the U.S. Air Force Space Command, said $66.4 million is being spent on a research project to "deny, disrupt and degrade adversary space-based surveillance and reconnaissance systems." He said another $79 million is funding efforts to build a "constellation of optical sensing satellites to track and identify space forces." "As we look to the future, space is where our adversaries are looking to cut us off," Kucharek said. "We know from the attempted jamming of our GPS (global positioning system, which relies on satellites) during OIF (Operation Iraqi Freedom) that our enemies are going to try to deny us from using space." But it's unclear whether putting weapons into space would provide much protection. The arms themselves could become sitting ducks in orbit -- giving the United States a new weakness, not a new strength. Satellites are already a weak "center of gravity" in American militarty planning, argues Bruce DeBlois, the editor of Beyond the Paths of Heaven: The Emergence of Space Power Thought. They're vulnerbale to electronic jamming, orbiting projectiles and nuclear detonations in near-Earth space. The space-based weapons would have all of the same vulnerabilities -- and would make that center of gravity a more inviting target. "Simply put, we would posture ourselves as a target in a volatile context that we create, and weaken ourselves at the same time," Bruce DeBlois, the editor of Beyond the Paths of Heaven: The Emergence of Space Power Thought, told a George Washington University audience last year. However, there's more to the Air Force plan than keeping satellites safe. The Evolutionary Air and Space Global Laser Engagement, or EAGLE, project aims to put mirrors underneath an airship 25 times the size of the Goodyear blimp. In theory, lasers -- fired from the ground, from space, or from the air -- would bounce off these blimp-borne mirrors, to track or even destroy enemy missiles. Incredible as it sounds, the EAGLE effort is underway at the Air Force Research Laboratory's Directed Energy division, sources there confirm. Also under research at the lab is the Ground-Based Laser, which, according to the Air Force report, would shoot "laser beams through the atmosphere" to knock out enemy spacecraft in low-earth orbit. Even more outlandish is the Hypervelocity Rod Bundles research project. That effort calls for creating a system of metal poles, fired from space, that could strike anywhere on the planet. It's a long-held -- and long-ridiculed -- idea. Keeping the rods from liquefying as they enter the atmosphere is a daunting task, noted Columbia University physics professor Richard Garwin in a 2003 presentation (PDF). In order to be considered effective weapons, he said, the "rods would need to be orbited at very low altitudes, and could only deliver one-ninth the destructive energy per gram as a conventional bomb." Despite such technical hurdles, space-based arms are legal. The Outer Space Treaty of 1967 only bans nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction from orbit. Over the years, American administrations have looked into developing such weapons -- most notably, as part of President Reagan's Star Wars anti-missile initiative. However, Hitchens said, "no U.S. president has authorized the deployment of a space weapon, at least in the white (unclassified) world." Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, on the other hand, long has advocated sending arms into orbit. Just before taking office in 2001, he chaired a commission on space and national security that warned that the country could face a "space Pearl Harbor" (PDF) in the years to come. This calamity must be avoided, the commission declared, asserting that the best way to do that is to "vigorously pursue the capabilities ... to ensure that the President will have the option to deploy weapons in space." But pursuing such a strategy may actually put the United States in greater jeopardy, argues David Wright, with the Union of Concerned Scientists. "You're opening a door you might rather not have opened," he said. "America is the country with the most satellites, he explained. By developing anti-satellite weapons, "it legitimizes systems that the U.S. has the most to lose from." Other countries could start pursuing long-taboo space weapons efforts. And while countries like China don't have the technical sophistication of the United States, they already have the capabilities to hurt us in space -- medium range missiles, and nuclear warheads. Wright added, "This could trigger a backlash that actually leaves the U.S. worse off." Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space PO Box 652 Brunswick, ME 04011 (207) 729-0517 (207) 319-2017 (Cell phone) http://www.space4peace.org globalnet@mindspring.com ***************************************************************** 53 Guardian Unlimited: Nuclear Middleman Can Leave Malaysia Saturday February 21, 2004 2:16 PM By JASBANT SINGH Associated Press Writer JOHOR BAHRU, Malaysia (AP) - A confessed black marketeer connected to deals to help Libyan and Iranian nuclear weapons programs has committed no crime in Malaysia and is free to leave, the country's police chief said Saturday. Malaysian police were ``more than willing'' to assist international investigations into Bukhary Syed Abu Tahir, but had no plans to detain him, Inspector General of Police Mohamed Bakri Omar told The Associated Press. Mohamed Bakri's comments came a day after he released a report summing up a three-month investigation into Tahir's role in the sale of centrifuge parts from Malaysia to Libya. The report also revealed unprecedented details of the global trade in nuclear secrets to rogue states. The report cleared a Malaysian company, Scomi Precision Engineering, of being knowingly involved in proliferation, but urged the International Atomic Energy Agency to investigate several Europeans Tahir named as middlemen in the trafficking network created by the father of Pakistan's nuclear program, Abdul Qadeer Khan. Khan confessed this month to leaking the technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea. Asked by AP Saturday if U.S. or international authorities could question Tahir, Mohamed Bakri said: ``If the International Atomic Energy Agency would like to conduct an investigation, we are more than willing to assist.'' But Tahir is not in custody, Mohamed Bakri said, because the investigation had not found any breach of Malaysian laws or the country's obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. ``We are not imposing anything on him,'' Mohamed Bakri said. ``The (IAEA) can interview him if they so desire. There is no law to bar anybody from leaving this country.'' Tahir told Malaysian investigators that Khan sold uranium enrichment equipment to Iran in the mid-1990s and helped Libya advance its nuclear program, the police report said. The report includes general dates and locations of several meetings he attended with Khan and Libyan and Iranian officials, and other details of deals and operatives. Tahir, a 44-year-old Sri Lankan who lives in Dubai and Malaysia, says he was one of several middlemen in Khan's network, which dates back to the 1980s and is believed to involve British and Swiss operatives. Malaysia's investigation into Tahir began after parts made by Scomi Precision Engineering, which is controlled by Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi's son, were seized en route to Libya. The report confirmed the Scomi-made parts could be used in centrifuges - sophisticated machines used for enriching uranium - but that the company did not know what their purpose was or where they were headed. Deputy Prime Minister Najib Razak said the investigation absolved Malaysia of any knowing role in the network. ``What we have said has been totally vindicated,'' he told reporters Saturday. ``And we hope that we can put the issue at rest.'' Police said the investigation report will be given to the International Atomic Energy Agency. Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004 ***************************************************************** NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 this material is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. For more information go to: *****************************************************************