***************************************************************** 03/05/04 **** RADIATION BULLETIN(RADBULL) **** VOL 12.56 ***************************************************************** 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 [southnews] Blix: Iraq war was illegal 2 [DU-WATCH] NZ: Secret Deployment to Iraq 3 US: Guardian Unlimited: Kennedy: Tenet Must Come Clean on War 4 Guardian Unlimited: Blix dismisses argument that war was legal 5 Pakistan News: Wolfowitz's "U-turn" on Iraq war shocks Europeans 6 UK Independent: Blair launches fresh defence of Iraq war 7 UK Independent: Blair's defence is bogus, says the former UN weapons 8 Daily Times: ‘UN nuke watchdog must keep hands on Iran’ 9 Korea: Digital Chosunilbo: North Korea Votes for Kerry? 10 JoongAng Daily: Ban says aid for North can start quickly 11 KoreaTimes: Seoul to Stop Designating NK as Enemy 12 Las Vegas SUN: Officials: N. Korea Denies Uranium Program 13 Bellona: Romania to buy uranium in France 14 Daily Times: India, Brazil, South Africa worried about N-proliferati 15 Las Vegas SUN: Nigeria Denies Nuclear Ambitions NUCLEAR REACTORS 16 US: NRC: Agency Information Collection Activities: Proposed Collecti 17 US: NRC: Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant; Notice of Docketing of 18 US: NRC: Draft Regulatory Guide; Issuance, Availability 19 Daily Yomiuri: TEPCO discloses N-plant alarms 20 US: Tennessean: Experts say TVA project key to nuclear power's futur 21 US: Las Vegas SUN: Senate panel hears nuke power praises 22 US: Times Argus: Troubled Citizens utility is sold to Vermont Electr 23 US: Courier-Journal: Senator lauds TVA plan to restart reactor 24 US: NRC: US NRC Reactor Oversight Process 25 US: WBIR: NUCLEAR INDUSTRY, TVA GET BOOST DURING SENATE HEARING 26 US: NRC: NRC Issues Annual Assessments for Nation's Nuclear Plants 27 US: NRC: Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant, Units Nos. 1 and 2; Not NUCLEAR SAFETY 28 From a Tropical Paradise to a Nuclear Hell - pain from bomb 29 US: [FOODIRRADIATIONCA] Support AB 1988 Keep Irradiated Foods out 30 [DU-WATCH] US engineering civil war in Iraq ... 31 [DU-WATCH] Anthrax is not but straw man .... 32 US: [DU-WATCH] Mix of chemicals plus stress damages brain, liver in 33 [DU-WATCH] Iraqi Hospital on life support 34 [DU-WATCH] anthrax vaccine or uranium causing birth defects and 35 [DU-WATCH] FW: My letter published in March 1 "the Australian" 36 [DU-WATCH] UN: Iraq had no WMD after 1994 37 [DU-WATCH] 2003 UMRC "Undiagnosed Illnesses & Health 38 US: DHHS: CDC: Advisory board on Radiation Worker Safety 39 US: Salt Lake Tribune: Fund for radiation victims clears hurdle 40 Bellona: Nuclear submarine Dmitry Donskoy is about to enter active s 41 US: Tri-City Herald: Downwinder plaintiff drops out of suit 42 US: Las Vegas SUN: Reid to sponsor Senate hearing on silicosis 43 US: Tampa Bay Times: Report downplays Coronet risk NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE 44 Times Business: Long odds on BNFL winning Japanese contract 45 Las Vegas RJ: Reid wants to help sick Yucca workers 46 Las Vegas SUN: Energy Dept. says nuke waste transit method leans tow 47 US: San Luis Obispo Tribune: Where will the poisonous waste go? 48 Pahrump Valley Times: Dear feds: help! (Yucca) 49 US: Courier Post: State tests find problems with private wells 50 R Loux: Comments on Yucca rail trasnportation plans 51 Nevada Appeal: Congress backed into a nuclear corner 52 OA Online: Support outweighs opposition to proposed nuclear-enrichme 53 US: ENN News: A radioactive nightmare in Concord, Massachusetts 54 PR News: Lea County Expresses Support for LES at NRC Hearing 55 Business Gazette: UNITED FRONT AGAINST NUCLEAR WASTE 56 Whitehaven News: DOUNREAY WASTE HEADS TO DRIGG 57 Whitehaven News: “VISIONARY” REACT BAGS TOP AWARD 58 Pahrump Valley Times: Hearing scheduled to discuss health issues 59 Pahrump Valley Times: Yucca delays eyed 60 Las Vegas SUN: DOE grilled about plans for shipping nuke waste to Ne NUCLEAR WEAPONS US DEPT. OF ENERGY 61 DOE: Environmental Management Site-Specific Advisory Board, Savannah 62 DOE: Presidential Directed Mission Requiring Authorization of 63 DOE: Environmental Management Site-Specific Advisory Board, Idaho 64 KRT Wire: EPA Attacks Los Alamos, N.M., Federal Lab's Cleanup Plan 65 Oak Ridger: $6.61M fee for UT-Battelle 66 Oak Ridger: Conner retires after 43-year BWXT career OTHER NUCLEAR 67 Google News Alert - nuclear 68 PhysicsWeb: Bubble fusion makes controversial return ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** FULL NEWS STORIES ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** 1 [southnews] Blix: Iraq war was illegal Date: Thu, 4 Mar 2004 23:29:28 -0600 (CST) UN chief weapons inspector Hans Blix believes the US-led war in Iraq was illegal, a British newspaper reported today. Blix told a London-based daily, /The Independent/, that a second United Nations resolution explicitly authorising the use of force would have been required to make the invasion of Iraq last March lawful. "I don't buy the argument the war was legalised by the Iraqi violation of earlier resolutions," Blix said. Blix attacked reasoning by Attorney-General Peter Goldsmith, the British Government's top legal adviser, that UN resolution 1441 authorised the use of force because it revived earlier resolutions passed after the first Gulf war. Blix said that while it was possible to argue that Iraq had violated UN resolutions adopted since 1991, the "ownership" of the resolutions rested with the entire 15-member UN Security Council and not with individual states. "It's the Security Council that is party to the ceasefire (after the first Gulf war), not the UK and US individually, and therefore it is the Council that has ownership of the ceasefire, in my interpretation." "Some people say (US President George W.) Bush and Blair should be put before a tribunal and I say that you have the punishment in the political field here," Blix told /The Independent/. "Their credibility has been affected by this: Bush too lost some credibility." ______________________________________________________________ Blix: Iraq war was illegal Blair's defence is bogus, says the former UN weapons inspector By Anne Penketh in Stockholm and Andrew Grice Independent (UK) 05 March 2004 The former chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix has declared that the war in Iraq was illegal, dealing another devastating blow to Tony Blair. Mr Blix, speaking to /The Independent, /said the Attorney General's legal advice to the Government on the eve of war, giving cover for military action by the US and Britain, had no lawful justification. He said it would have required a second United Nations resolution explicitly authorising the use of force for the invasion of Iraq last March to have been legal. His intervention goes to the heart of the current controversy over Lord Goldsmith's advice, and comes as the Prime Minister begins his fightback with a speech on Iraq today. An unrepentant Mr Blair will refuse to apologise for the war in Iraq, insisting the world is a better place without Saddam Hussein in power. He will point to the wider benefits of the Iraq conflict, citing Libya's decision to give up its weapons of mass destruction, but warn that the world cannot turn a blind eye to the continuing threat from WMD. But, in an exclusive interview, Mr Blix said: "I don't buy the argument the war was legalised by the Iraqi violation of earlier resolutions." And it appeared yesterday that the Government shared that view until the eve of war, when it received the Lord Goldsmith's final advice. Sir Andrew Turnbull, the Cabinet Secretary, revealed that the Government had assumed, until the eve of war in Iraq, that it needed a specific UN mandate to authorise military action. Mr Blix demolished the argument advanced by Lord Goldsmith three days before the war began, which stated that resolution 1441 authorised the use of force because it revived earlier UN resolutions passed after the 1991 ceasefire. Mr Blix said that while it was possible to argue that Iraq had breached the ceasefire by violating UN resolutions adopted since 1991, the "ownership" of the resolutions rested with the entire 15-member Security Council and not with individual states. "It's the Security Council that is party to the ceasefire, not the UK and US individually, and therefore it is the council that has ownership of the ceasefire, in my interpretation." He said to challenge that interpretation would set a dangerous precedent. "Any individual member could take a view - the Russians could take one view, the Chinese could take another, they could be at war with each other, theoretically," Mr Blix said. The Attorney General's opinion has come under fresh scrutiny since the collapse of the trial against the GCHQ whistleblower Katharine Gun last week, prompting calls for his full advice to be made public. Mr Blix, who is an international lawyer by training, said: "I would suspect there is a more sceptical view than those two A4 pages," in a reference to Clare Short's contemptuous description of the 358-word summary. It emerged on Wednesday that a Foreign Office memo, sent to the Foreign Affairs Select Committee on the same day that Lord Goldsmith's summary was published, made clear that there was no "automaticity" in resolution 1441 to justify war. Asked whether, in his view, a second resolution authorising force should have been adopted, Mr Blix replied: "Oh yes." In the interview, ahead of the publication next week of his book /Disarming Iraq: The search for weapons of mass destruction/, Mr Blix dismissed the suggestion that Mr Blair should resign or apologise over the failure to find any WMD in Iraq. But he suggested that the Prime Minister may have been fatally wounded by his loss of credibility, and that voters would deliver their verdict. "Some people say Bush and Blair should be put before a tribunal and I say that you have the punishment in the political field here," he said. "Their credibility has been affected by this: Bush too lost some credibility." He repeated accusations the US and British governments were "hyped" intelligence and lacking critical thinking. "They used exclamation marks instead of question marks." "I have some understanding for that. Politicians have to simplify to explain, they also have to act in this world before they have 100 per cent evidence. But I think they went further." "But I never said they had acted in bad faith," he added. "Perhaps it was worse that they acted out of good faith." The threat allegedly posed by Saddam's WMD was the prime reason cited by the British government for going to war. But not a single item of banned weaponry has been found in the 11 months that have followed the declared end of hostilities. Mr Blair will argue that similar decisive action will need to be taken in future to combat the threat of rogue states and terrorists obtaining WMD. http://news.independent.co.uk/low_res/story.jsp?story=498039&host=3&dir=62 ______________________________________ *A war that may have left *Iraq and the world worse off * */Sydney Morning Herald/* letters March 5, 2004 *[The significance of this letter is not in the contents. On the other hand the fact that not only it is now acceptable to say it in public but that the editors of the /SMH/ saw fit to lead the letter column with this item.}* With the case for invading Iraq effectively demolished, Mitchell Beston (Letters, March 4) asks, "Would you prefer Saddam Hussein to be in power?" The answer is, "Quite possibly, yes." It is clear now that Saddam's ability to threaten neighbouring states, much less the United States, was minimal. He was a diminished tyrant and a threat only to his people. Even then, Iraq was a country free of public disorder and, without the crippling UN sanctions, a prosperous country with educated people, good medical facilities and, of course, abundant oil reserves. The downside of Saddam remaining in power has to be offset against the death and destruction since March 18 last year: thousands of innocent Iraqis killed and injured, hundreds of coalition troops killed, UN and Red Cross personnel killed, infrastructure destroyed, cultural artefacts looted, hundreds of billions of dollars spent, almost daily insurgent attacks, increased hatred of coalition countries by terrorists and Muslims, and the precedent that pre-emptive attack without United Nations authority is justified provided the attacker thinks it is. *Sydney F. Birchall, Killara, March 4.* The archives of South News can be found at http://southmovement.alphalink.com.au/southnews/ Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/southnews/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: southnews-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ ***************************************************************** 2 [DU-WATCH] NZ: Secret Deployment to Iraq Date: Sat, 6 Mar 2004 01:13:33 -0600 (CST) from :http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/PO0403/S00046.htm Secret Deployment to Iraq From: Peace Action Wellington 'The secret deployment of a second contingent of troops to Iraq is clear evidence that Helen Clark does not want any questioning of her role in supporting the US army of occupation. The last time the troops left, in September, there was significant public opposition and protestors travelled to Ohakea to voice their objection. This time there was no advance public announcement of the deployment' said Peace Action Wellington member Valerie Morse. 'Clark and her cabinet colleagues are cowards. There is no justification for providing security and support to continue an illegal occupation. They call it reconstruction, but it is really all about getting in good with the Yanks for a free trade deal. Meanwhile our own NZDF is being exposed to depleted uranium.' 'Helen Clark has also refused to participate in a public debate moderated by Ross Wilson, president of the NZ Council of Trade Unions about the deployment of troops to both Iraq and Afghanistan.' 'It is ridiculous to provide engineers to a country with 70% unemployment. The Iraqis don't need engineers, they need material and money to reconstruct their own country. New Zealanders do not want to take jobs away from Iraqis or provide assistance to the occupation force.' Peace Action Wellington demands an immediate end to all New Zealand support for Bush's wars. Home Page | Politics | Previous Story | Next Story Copyright (c) Scoop Media --- In du-watch@yahoogroups.com, "Amarie" wrote: ... > > http://www.estripes.com/article.asp? > section=104&article=19868&archive=true ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ---------------------~--> Buy Ink Cartridges or Refill Kits for your HP, Epson, Canon or Lexmark Printer at MyInks.com. Free s/h on orders $50 or more to the US & Canada. http://www.c1tracking.com/l.asp?cid=5511 http://us.click.yahoo.com/mOAaAA/3exGAA/qnsNAA/Sj.0lB/TM ---------------------------------------------------------------------~-> [Brought to you by HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK] Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/du-watch/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: du-watch-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ ***************************************************************** 3 Guardian Unlimited: Kennedy: Tenet Must Come Clean on War Friday March 5, 2004 9:01 PM By LOLITA C. BALDOR Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON (AP) - CIA Director George Tenet must explain why he waited until last month to ``set the record straight'' that Iraq posed no immediate threat to the United State in the months leading up to the war, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy said Friday. Kennedy, D-Mass., said Tenet must explain why he never corrected President Bush and others in the administration when they warned of a nuclear threat building in Iraq. ``Where was the CIA director when the vice president was going nuclear about Saddam going nuclear?'' said Kennedy in a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations. ``Did Tenet fail to convince the policy-makers to cool their overheated rhetoric? Did he even try to convince them?'' Kennedy, a persistent and vigorous Bush critic, said the administration distorted and manipulated the intelligence, when ``the only imminent threat was the November congressional election.'' It was, Kennedy said, ``pure, unadulterated fear-mongering,'' in order to justify Bush's determined decision to go to war. A CIA spokesman declined to comment. In a speech last month, Tenet said that Saddam Hussein's government had posed a danger but that analysts had had varying opinions about whether Iraq possessed chemical, biological or nuclear weapons. He said that information was passed on to the White House. The analysts, said Tenet, ``never said there was an imminent threat.'' But while he has distanced himself from the administration's assertions of an urgent threat in Iraq, Tenet has never said the White House distorted the intelligence. Meanwhile Friday, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee said that ``our senior leaders are still in a deep state of denial'' about intelligence failures. Rep. Jane Harman of California said in a speech to the American Enterprise Institute that she sees ``no discernible signs from the vice president or president acknowledging the obvious flaws in our intelligence systems.'' ``The White House is unwilling to fix the problems in an election year, and so it has kicked the can down the road,'' she said. Harman did not mention Tenet in her speech, but defended him in response to a question from the audience. ``The senior leadership I was talking to is above Tenet's pay grade,'' she said. ``As far as George Tenet goes I have given him credit, I believe this, for many of the reforms at the CIA ... and my own personal view is that while he serves at the pleasure of the president, I hope he will serve through this year.'' Kennedy is a senior member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, where Tenet is scheduled to testify Tuesday. During that appearance, Kennedy said, the CIA director will have the opportunity to explain ``why he was so silent when it mattered most - in the days and months leading up to the war.'' Tenet, named to the CIA post by President Clinton, has been on the hot seat for months as Congress has questioned the quality of the intelligence on Iraq and the existence of weapons of mass destruction. Associated Press Writer Erica Werner contributed to this story. Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004 ***************************************************************** 4 Guardian Unlimited: Blix dismisses argument that war was legal Simon Jeffery Friday March 5, 2004 The former UN chief weapons inspector Hans Blix today rubbished the government's argument that war in Iraq was legalised by existing security council resolutions. He said Britain and the US would have needed a second resolution explicitly authorising the use of force against Saddam Hussein's regime for the invasion to have been legal. But that resolution - presented as a successor to resolution 1441's threat of "serious consequences" if Iraq did not cooperate with the inspectors - was never tabled as it became apparent that not enough security council members would support it. Three days before the invasion, the British government published a summary of the advice from the attorney general, its highest ranking lawyer, stating that 1441 revived resolutions passed since the 1991 Gulf war ceasefire and therefore permitted a fresh invasion. Mr Blix today said he disagreed. "I don't buy the argument that the war was legalised by the Iraqi violation of earlier resolutions," he told the Independent. The former weapons inspector, an international lawyer by training, said he did not believe that resolutions passed by the entire security council would give Washington and London, two of its permanent members, sufficient "ownership" of their authority to act alone. "It's the security council that is party to the ceasefire, not the UK and US individually, and therefore it is the council that has the ownership of the ceasefire, in my interpretation." The government has come under increasing pressure to reveal the full extent of the attorney general's assessment since the intelligence officer Katharine Gun was last week acquitted on charges of charges of breaking the official secrets act over a leaked email. Her defence team had said it would call for documents relating to the assessment to be produced as evidence that the war she had attempted to prevent was illegal. The Observer, the Guardian's sister newspaper, reported on Sunday that senior Whitehall sources had told it that Lord Goldsmith, the attorney general, "tightened" up his advice days before the war began in order to ease the worries of Sir Michael Boyce, the then chief of defence staff, that the likely war's legality was in doubt. Mr Blix said he believed that the attorney general's undisclosed advice would give a less certain backing for the war than the 358 word summary that has so far been published. "I would suspect there is a more sceptical view than those two A4 pages," he said. The former chief weapons inspector has become a frequent critic of Washington and London's conduct before the war since the fall of Iraq's Ba'athist regime last April. As large-scale military operations were winding up at the end of that month he said the US had used "shaky" intelligence to make its case and tried to discredit his team when he challenged American claims on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. He has also accused George Bush and Tony Blair of behaving like salesmen who "exaggerated" intelligence in an attempt to win support for war. He said the British prime minister and US president, while not acting in bad faith, were too preoccupied with spin. "They used exclamation marks instead of question marks," he today told the Independent. "I have some understanding for that. Politicians have to simplify to explain. They also have to act in this world before they have 100% evidence. But I think they went further." His comments came as Mr Blair today prepares to take on his critics over the Iraq war with a keynote speech in the north-east on international security. · Extracts from Hans Blix's book, Disarming Iraq: the search for weapons of mass destruction, are published tomorrow at guardian.co.uk/Iraq Guardian Newspapers Limited ***************************************************************** 5 Pakistan News: Wolfowitz's "U-turn" on Iraq war shocks Europeans PakTribune.Com Thursday March 04, 2004 (2144 PST) BRUSSELS, March 05 (Online): European critics of the Iraq war expressed shock on Thursday at remarks reportedly made by a senior US official downplaying Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction as the reason for the conflict. In an interview in the upcoming issue of Vanity Fair magazine, Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz cited ‘bureaucratic reasons’ for focusing on Saddam Hussein’s alleged arsenal and said a huge reason for the war was to enable Washington to withdraw its troops from Saudi Arabia. "For bureaucratic reasons we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction, because it was the one reason everyone could agree on," Wolfowitz was quoted as saying. He said one reason for going to war against Iraq that was ‘almost unnoticed but huge’ was the need to maintain American forces in Saudi Arabia as long as Saddam was in power. Within two weeks of the fall of Baghdad, the US announced it was removing most of its 5,000 troops from Saudi Arabia and would set up its main regional command centre in Qatar. However, those goals were not spelled out publicly as the US sought to build international support for the war. Instead, the Bush administration focused on Saddam’s failure to dismantle chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programmes. The failure of US forces to locate extensive weapons stocks has raised doubts in a sceptical Europe whether Iraq represented a global security threat. Wolfowitz’s comments followed a statement by Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who suggested this week that Saddam might have destroyed his banned weapons before the war began. Both remarks revived the controversy over the war as President Bush left for a European tour in which he hopes to put aside the bitterness over the war, which threatened the trans-Atlantic partnership. In Denmark, whose government supported the war, opposition parties demanded to know whether Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen misled the public about the extent of Saddam’s weapons threat. "It was not what the Danish prime minister said when he advocated support for the war," Jeppe Kofod, the Social Democrats’ foreign affairs spokesman, said in response to Wolfowitz’s comments. "Those who went to war now have a big problem explaining it," Kofod added. Former Danish Foreign Minister Niels Helveg Petersen said he was shocked by Wolfowitz’s claim. "It leaves the world with one question: What should we believe?" he told The Associated Press. In Germany, where the war was widely unpopular, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeiting newspaper said the comments about Iraqi weapons showed that America is losing the battle for credibility. "The charge of deception is inescapable," the newspaper said on Thursday. In London, former British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook, who quit as leader of the House of Commons to protest the war, said he doubted Iraq had any such weapons. "The war was sold on the basis of what was described as a pre-emptive strike, ‘Hit Saddam before he hits us,’ " Cook told the BBC. "It is now quite clear that Saddam did not have anything with which to hit us in the first place," Cook added. Wolfowitz was in Singapore, where he is due to speak on Saturday at the Asia Security Conference of military chiefs and defence ministers from Asian and key Western powers. He told reporters at the conference that the US would reorganise its forces worldwide to confront the threat of terrorism. "We are in the process of taking a fundamental look at our military posture worldwide, including in the United States," Wolfowitz said adding "We’re facing a very different threat than any one we’ve faced historically." End. Pakistan News Service © PakTribune.com Pvt Ltd 2003-2004 ***************************************************************** 6 UK Independent: Blair launches fresh defence of Iraq war By Jon Smith, Political Editor, PA News 05 March 2004 Tony Blair today launched a passionate defence of the war in Iraq, saying that September 11 came as a "revelation" to him and persuaded him of the need to act against rogue states. The Prime Minister openly acknowledged that his decision to go to war was the most divisive he had ever made, conceding "it remains deeply divisive today". In a speech in his Sedgefield constituency the Prime Minister went on: "The nature of this issue over Iraq, stirring such bitter emotions as it does, can't just be swept away as ill-fitting the preoccupations of the man and woman on the street." That was because the nature of the "global threat we face in Britain and round the world is real and existential and it is the task of leadership to expose it and fight it, whatever the political cost". Mr Blair, in a detailed defence of the case for war against Saddam Hussein's regime, said: "No decision I have ever made in politics has been as divisive as the decision to go to war in Iraq. It remains deeply divisive today. "I know a large part of the public want to move on. Rightly they say the Government should concentrate on the issues that elected us in 1997: the economy, jobs, living standards, health, education, crime. "I share that view and we are." But the premier said the issue of the conflict had to be tackled head-on. He said there had been three inquiries into the conflict, including the Hutton report, and none had shown any Government attempt to falsify intelligence in relation to Iraq. And the Prime Minister said he had mentioned the now notorious 45-minute claim about the readiness of Saddam's weapons only once in his statement to MPs and had not mentioned it again in any debate. Mr Blair said he had never insisted Saddam was an imminent threat to the UK and read extracts from his own speeches to back his claim. He went on: "The truth is, we went to war to enforce compliance with United Nations resolutions." And he added: "Had we believed Iraq was an imminent direct threat to Britain, we would have taken action in September 2002. We would not have gone to the UN. Instead, we spent October and November in the UN negotiating UN resolution 1441. We then spent almost four months trying to implement it." Mr Blair said the controversy over the Attorney General Lord oldsmith's legal advice on the legitimacy of the war was just the latest row over the conflict, and would be replaced by another. Lord Goldsmith had said the war was legal. "It is said this opinion is disputed. Of course it is. It was disputed in March 2003. It is today. The lawyers continue to divide over it - with their legal opinions bearing a remarkable similarity to their political view of the war. "But let's be clear. Once this row dies down, another will take its place and then another and then another. "All of it in the end is an elaborate smokescreen to prevent us seeing the real issue: which is not a matter of trust but of judgment. "The real point is that those who disagree with the war, disagree fundamentally with the judgment that led to war." Mr Blair conceded: "What is more, their alternative judgment is both entirely rational and arguable." The decision to intervene in Kosovo, Afghanistan or Sierra Leone had not been "a hard decision" for most people, said Mr Blair. But he went on: "Iraq in March 2003 was an immensely difficult judgment. It was divisive because it was difficult. I have never disrespected those who disagreed with the decision ... "There was a core of sensible people who faced with this decision would have gone the other way, for sensible reasons. Their argument is one I understand totally." UK Independent Ltd. ***************************************************************** 7 UK Independent: Blair's defence is bogus, says the former UN weapons inspector By Anne Penketh in Stockholm and Andrew Grice 05 March 2004 The former chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix has declared that the war in Iraq was illegal, dealing another devastating blow to Tony Blair. Mr Blix, speaking to The Independent, said the Attorney General's legal advice to the Government on the eve of war, giving cover for military action by the US and Britain, had no lawful justification. He said it would have required a second United Nations resolution explicitly authorising the use of force for the invasion of Iraq last March to have been legal. His intervention goes to the heart of the current controversy over Lord Goldsmith's advice, and comes as the Prime Minister begins his fightback with a speech on Iraq today. An unrepentant Mr Blair will refuse to apologise for the war in Iraq, insisting the world is a better place without Saddam Hussein in power. He will point to the wider benefits of the Iraq conflict, citing Libya's decision to give up its weapons of mass destruction, but warn that the world cannot turn a blind eye to the continuing threat from WMD. But, in an exclusive interview, Mr Blix said: "I don't buy the argument the war was legalised by the Iraqi violation of earlier resolutions." And it appeared yesterday that the Government shared that view until the eve of war, when it received the Lord Goldsmith's final advice. Sir Andrew Turnbull, the Cabinet Secretary, revealed that the Government had assumed, until the eve of war in Iraq, that it needed a specific UN mandate to authorise military action. Mr Blix demolished the argument advanced by Lord Goldsmith three days before the war began, which stated that resolution 1441 authorised the use of force because it revived earlier UN resolutions passed after the 1991 ceasefire. Mr Blix said that while it was possible to argue that Iraq had breached the ceasefire by violating UN resolutions adopted since 1991, the "ownership" of the resolutions rested with the entire 15-member Security Council and not with individual states. "It's the Security Council that is party to the ceasefire, not the UK and US individually, and therefore it is the council that has ownership of the ceasefire, in my interpretation." He said to challenge that interpretation would set a dangerous precedent. "Any individual member could take a view - the Russians could take one view, the Chinese could take another, they could be at war with each other, theoretically," Mr Blix said. The Attorney General's opinion has come under fresh scrutiny since the collapse of the trial against the GCHQ whistleblower Katharine Gun last week, prompting calls for his full advice to be made public. Mr Blix, who is an international lawyer by training, said: "I would suspect there is a more sceptical view than those two A4 pages," in a reference to Clare Short's contemptuous description of the 358-word summary. It emerged on Wednesday that a Foreign Office memo, sent to the Foreign Affairs Select Committee on the same day that Lord Goldsmith's summary was published, made clear that there was no "automaticity" in resolution 1441 to justify war. Asked whether, in his view, a second resolution authorising force should have been adopted, Mr Blix replied: "Oh yes." In the interview, ahead of the publication next week of his book Disarming Iraq: The search for weapons of mass destruction, Mr Blix dismissed the suggestion that Mr Blair should resign or apologise over the failure to find any WMD in Iraq. But he suggested that the Prime Minister may have been fatally wounded by his loss of credibility, and that voters would deliver their verdict. "Some people say Bush and Blair should be put before a tribunal and I say that you have the punishment in the political field here," he said. "Their credibility has been affected by this: Bush too lost some credibility." He repeated accusations the US and British governments were "hyped" intelligence and lacking critical thinking. "They used exclamation marks instead of question marks." "I have some understanding for that. Politicians have to simplify to explain, they also have to act in this world before they have 100 per cent evidence. But I think they went further." "But I never said they had acted in bad faith," he added. "Perhaps it was worse that they acted out of good faith." The threat allegedly posed by Saddam's WMD was the prime reason cited by the British government for going to war. But not a single item of banned weaponry has been found in the 11 months that have followed the declared end of hostilities. Mr Blair will argue that similar decisive action will need to be taken in future to combat the threat of rogue states and terrorists obtaining WMD. UK Independent Ltd. ***************************************************************** 8 Daily Times: ‘UN nuke watchdog must keep hands on Iran’ Monday, March 08, 2004 VIENNA: The United States and the European Union’s “Big Three” were searching for a compromise on a draft UN nuclear resolution on Iran that is not too harsh but keeps up the pressure on Tehran, diplomats said on Friday. On Monday, the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) Board of Governors begins meeting to discuss resolutions on Iran and Libya’s previously undeclared nuclear programmes. Diplomats from the 35 states on the IAEA’s board told Reuters a resolution on Iran had been drafted by the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand and was being circulated. But it had to be revised to accommodate comments from France, Britain, Germany and non-aligned countries. “It’s important that the board keeps its hands on this issue,” said one Western diplomat, adding that the draft’s tone was “not too critical” so as to avoid being controversial. “It’s important to send a message that the board remains involved.” The diplomat said the EU’s “Big Three” were working on softening the resolution by “making the text more positive”. In a new report on UN inspections in Iran, IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei said Iran withheld information on its research in the advanced “P2” enrichment centrifuge, which can produce arms-grade uranium at twice the speed of the “P1” centrifuge. In October, Tehran gave the IAEA what it described at the time as a full and truthful account of its entire nuclear programme. But it failed to mention either the P2 or sensitive experiments with plutonium and polonium, a substance that can be used to initiate a chain reaction in a nuclear fission bomb. Iran has been lobbying board members to remove the Iranian atomic programme from the IAEA’s agenda, but the resolution proposed by Washington and its allies would prevent that. Washington has long accused Iran of running a secret atomic weapons programme in violation of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and has called on the IAEA board to declare Iran in “non-compliance” and report it to the UN Security Council. That could lead to sanctions. But the United States has met with strong resistance on the IAEA board from the “Big Three”, who would prefer to engage Iran instead of isolating it, and the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), which has been loathe to come down hard on Tehran. Washington dropped the idea of reporting Iran to the Council at next week’s meeting, but diplomats said the Libyan precedent would set the stage for a possible Council report in June. In December, Libya announced it had a nuclear weapons programme but invited the IAEA oversee its dismantling. Since then, US, British and IAEA experts have evacuated most sensitive atomic equipment and documents to the United State. For the United States, Libya has become everything that Iran is not — cooperative with UN inspectors, transparent and apparently sincere in its desire to dismantle its weapons of mass destruction programmes. On Thursday, US Under Secretary of State for arms control and international security, John Bolton, told reporters in Lisbon that Iran’s behaviour was in sharp contrast to that of Libya, where disarmament is moving at an “acceptable pace”. The United States and Britain are co-sponsoring a resolution, the text of which Libya has already approved, that will praise Tripoli’s disarmament but will call for a report to the UN Security Council, diplomats said. “This Security Council report will be purely informative,” said one diplomat. “There will be no sanctions against Libya, but it will set an important precedent for Iran.” He said that in June, Washington could then cite the Libyan precedent as a basis for reporting Tehran to the Security Council, but without the praise that Libya will get. —Reuters Daily Times - All Rights Reserved ***************************************************************** 9 Korea: Digital Chosunilbo: North Korea Votes for Kerry? Updated Mar.5,2004 19:01 KST Pyongyang is giving deferential treatment to John Kerry, the presumptive U.S. presidential candidate from the Democratic Party, out of expectation that he would be more moderate on North Korean issues and could resume the stalled bilateral dialogue between the North and the United States, the Financial Times reported Thursday. According to the prestigious British newspaper, North Korean state-run media organizations reported in detail recent speeches by the Massachusetts senator, who is critical of President George W. Bush. The apparent enthusiasm for Kerry, the report said, may reflect North Korean hopes that Kerry's victory might lead to a softening in U.S. policy toward the North's nuclear program as well as a "better the devil you don¡¯t know" mentality among North Korean apparatchiks. "However, the North Korean media is a constituency Mr. Kerry could do without and a signal of support from North Korea will delight Republicans eager to pain Mr. Kerry as soft on national security," the report said. Gordon Flake, an American expert in North Korean affairs, also cautioned North Korea against expecting too much from Kerry. "It would be harder for a Democratic president to do a deal because there would be a lot of pressure on him not to be a soft touch," he was quoted as saying. In the mean time, France's Le Monde reported Tuesday in an article titled "North Korea casts a vote for John Kerry" that just like Washington relies on time for regime change in North Korea, Pyongyang might similarly be hoping for a change in the White House in November. (Lee Chul-min, chulmin@chosun.com ) ***************************************************************** 10 JoongAng Daily: Ban says aid for North can start quickly by Kim Chong-hyuk jieho@joongang.co.kr> 2004.03.05 WASHINGTON ¡ª Korea's foreign minister, Ban Ki-moon, told Korean correspondents here yesterday that Seoul is ready to revive economic assistance to the North before that country completes the dismantling of its nuclear programs. "If the North freezes its nuclear programs as part of a process toward complete nuclear dismantlement, we can take various initiatives. And we have delivered that message to the North," Mr. Ban said. At the end of the six-party talks last month, South Korea, China and Russia said they were willing to provide energy aid if the North implemented a nuclear freeze as a step towards an eventual, complete end to those programs. The United States and Japan did not assert that they would participate, but Mr. Ban said the U.S. "understands" the position of the three countries. Mr. Ban seemed eager to resume that assistance. "The progress in inter-Korean relations is not directly linked to solving the nuclear issue," he said. "Just because the nuclear issue is not solved does not mean that there can be no improvement in Inter-Korean relations, and vice versa." He suggested that Seoul might not provide electricity or other energy directly to the North Korean government, but would provide aid to South Korean companies building energy projects in the North. ***************************************************************** 11 KoreaTimes: Seoul to Stop Designating NK as Enemy Hankooki.com > Korea Times > Nation > North Korea Today By Ryu Jin Staff Reporter The government¡¯s move to discontinue use of the term ``primary enemy¡¯¡¯ as a description of North Korea seems to be a carefully planned move which seeks to avoid controversy. Seo Joo-seok, senior official of the National Security Council (NSC) said on a radio program that it is time to reconsider the designation of Pyongyang as primary enemy. ``Consideration to that effect will be taken, when publishing the new defense white paper,¡¯¡¯ he said. The NSC published a 91-page booklet under the titled ``Peace, Prosperity and National Security,¡¯¡¯ gives the new outline of the Roh Moo-hyun administration¡¯s foreign and security policies. Instead of ``primary enemy,¡¯¡¯ a characterization that has endured half a century since the 1950-53 Korean War, the publication craftily adopted a new expression _ ``direct threat.¡¯¡¯ The change was regarded quite significant, as ``primary enemy¡¯¡¯ has been a bone of contention since the historic inter-Korean summit took place in 2000. In fact, the term ``enemy¡¯¡¯ is internationally used these days only in a state of hostilities. Even West Germany did not call East Germany a primary enemy in the Cold War era. But for South Koreans, who can hardly forget the bloody warfare with their brethren 50 years ago, it is a matter of hesitation. The conservative forces, in particular, have strongly opposed the move to drop the term in government publications. The Defense Ministry has not issued a white paper since 2000 amid fierce controversy over the terminology. The latest move appears to be the results of the government¡¯s agony about the lingering inter-Korean relations, especially in the fields of military exchanges. Little significant progress has been made in the South-North relationship since the eruption of the North Korean nuclear crisis in October 2002. And the government has keenly felt the necessity of dialogue with the North¡¯s military, which keeps the reins of power in the barrack-like nation. Seoul proposed high-level military officials¡¯ talks between the two Koreas, but Pyongyang has shown reluctance citing the ``primary enemy¡¯¡¯ phrases. Some South Koreans also point out that the terms run counter to the spirit of the June 15 Joint Declaration in 2000, in which the South and North agreed to accept each other as ``partners for dialogue and cooperation.¡¯¡¯ The changed terminology of the NSC will certainly affect the feature of the Defense Ministry¡¯s white paper. The ministry said it has yet to consider when the paper would be published and what terms it would employ to describe the North. But, an official said, ``How can the ministry dare to use the words when the NSC, under the direct wing of the presidential office, has dropped it?¡¯¡¯ jinryu@koreatimes.co.kr 03-05-2004 18:05 ***************************************************************** 12 Las Vegas SUN: Officials: N. Korea Denies Uranium Program March 04, 2004 By HANS GREIMEL ASSOCIATED PRESS SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - Despite reported progress in recent North Korean nuclear talks, South Korean officials said Thursday that the North still denies having a secret uranium-based program and that other crucial issues - including an agenda for working-group meetings - are up in the air. The agreement for lower-level officials to meet in working groups to nail down details of a possible deal was seen as a step forward at the six-nation talks that ended Saturday in Beijing. Diplomats say they are crucial in striking common ground before the next round of six-way talks, expected before July. But a South Korean diplomat familiar with the talks said the countries have yet to decide when those meetings will take place or what will be discussed. That will require more haggling through diplomatic channels, he said. "We don't know what the working group will really deal with," he said on condition of anonymity. "It's very difficult to predict what sort of job the working group will do." Lee Soo-hyuck, South Korea's chief negotiator, said North Korea's stance had hardly shifted since the first round of talks last August among the United States, China, the two Koreas, Russia and Japan. "Overall, the North Korean delegation's positions have not changed from those they expressed in the first round," Lee said this week in an interview with South Korea's CBS Radio. "They firmly denied that they have a uranium-based nuclear program, and they also did not change their position on security guarantees." During the Beijing talks, North Korea insisted on keeping a nuclear program for medical and other peaceful purposes. But it said it would give up its weapons program in exchange for aid and U.S. security guarantees. But Washington says North Korea must first start its nuclear dismantlement. It also insists that any deal include the North's alleged uranium-based program, in addition to a plutonium program it readily acknowledges. The nuclear standoff flared in late 2002 when U.S. officials said North Korea admitted having a secret uranium program after being confronted with evidence. Another diplomat familiar with the negotiations said Thursday that the latest talks allowed more "in-depth discussions on substantial matters of a North Korean nuclear freeze and related measures" but "didn't get into what to freeze and what to dismantle." U.S. officials said earlier this week that the chief problem at the talks was North Korea's refusal to acknowledge having a uranium-based program. James Kelly, the U.S. State Department's top official on Asia, told a U.S. Senate panel that the North Koreans "wouldn't give us any satisfaction" about the uranium claim. But Kelly noted that North Korea was less vocal in asserting that position in Beijing than before because of what he said was growing evidence that the denials lack credibility. Abdul Qadeer Khan, a Pakistani nuclear scientist, has admitted providing North Korea with assistance for developing a uranium bomb. -- ***************************************************************** 13 Bellona: Romania to buy uranium in France Romania is going to buy depleted uranium in France for its nuclear reactor in Piteshti. 2004-03-05 19:20 The Romanian science minister Luchian Biro announced this in January, ITAR-TASS reported. He said that Romania agreed with the IAEA to buy in France only depleted uranium, and refuses to buy enriched uranium, which could be used for nuclear bomb. The contract’s life time is 2 years and the price-tag is about $4m. Romania will pay only 500,000 euro, the rest will be paid by the USA and the IAEA. The first delivery should take place by plane this spring. The nuclear reactor built in 1979 is used for research purposes and for generating nuclear fuel for the only Romanian nuclear power plant in Chernavode. The nuclear plant was built with the help of Canada. You are here: www.bellona.no : Russia : Russian NPPs : International cooperation : News story | Top of page Publisher: , President: Information: , Technical contact: Telephone: +47 23 23 46 00 Telefax: +47 22 38 38 62 * P.O.Box 2141 Grunerlokka, 0505 Oslo, Norway ***************************************************************** 14 Daily Times: India, Brazil, South Africa worried about N-proliferation Monday, March 08, 2004 * Demand multilateral actions to rectify nuclear inadequacies * Agree to intensify cooperation at IAEA to ensure peaceful use of atomic energy NEW DELHI: India, Brazil and South Africa expressed concern Friday over what they called serious inadequacies in the implementation of nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament commitments. The three countries demanded multilateral actions to rectify inadequacies. On Friday, the foreign ministers of India, Brazil and South Africa agreed to intensify cooperation at the International Atomic Energy Commission and other forums to ensure the peaceful use of atomic energy through supply of technology, equipment and material under appropriate safeguards. “They underlined that implementation of and compliance with non-proliferation and disarmament commitments suffered from serious inadequacies, which should be redressed with appropriate forward looking multilateral actions,” the joint statement said. The meeting was the first since the countries set up a forum last June to encourage cooperation in defence, energy, health, trade, investment, tourism and infrastructure. Describing their meeting as “historic,” Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorin said the three countries were also willing to play a constructive role in implementing the roadmap to peace in the Middle East. He didn’t go into details. They set up a joint fund to fight poverty and hunger to be administered by the United Nations Development Programme, said India’s External Affairs Minister Yashwant Sinha. India and Brazil have made token contributions of US$100,000 each and Brazil US$50,000, Sinha said. The three countries also agreed to set up a trilateral business council to advise how to better cooperate in specific industries. They will also hold a festival in South Africa next year, highlighting the cultural diversity in the three countries, home to one-fifth of the world’s population. —Agencies Home | Foreign Israel holds off on Gaza pullout Mubarak warns against ME plan US presses for NATO role in ME reform drive Israel ‘war games’ look at post-Arafat era US intelligence on Iraqi mobile bio-weapons labs was not verified Blix believes war in Iraq was illegal Powell says no hurry to end standoff Russian parliament approves new PM Council named to pick Haitian prime minister Malaysia’s Islamic party accuses US of shielding PM ‘Global threat posed by terrorism is real’ China offers Taiwan conditional talks Families urge Bush to pull Sept 11 averts US cautions citizens in Moscow about safety Russia, France call for conference on Iraq Russia presidential candidate Rybkin quits REGION: US setting terrible example in Afghanistan: HRW US using ‘terrorist’ methods over Guantanamo prisoners: Waite India, Brazil, South Africa worried about N-proliferation ‘Junta’s relations with Suu Kyi improving’ ‘UN nuke watchdog must keep hands on Iran’ Failed US Afghan strike spurs intelligence review: Dow Jones Opinion poll puts NDA on top Sri Lanka rejects truce appeal by breakaway rebels ‘UK committed to rebuilding Afghanistan’ Zahir Shah meets Indian president Daily Times - All Rights Reserved Site developed and hosted by WorldCALL Internet Solutions ***************************************************************** 15 Las Vegas SUN: Nigeria Denies Nuclear Ambitions March 05, 2004 By DULUE MBACHU ASSOCIATED PRESS LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) - The Nigerian government denied Friday that it ever sought atomic weapons, distancing itself from earlier statements that suggested its military wanted to develop nuclear capability. Friday's denial, coupled with the other claims, left experts unsure if the African powerhouse was trying to mask its nuclear ambitions, or if it was guilty only of government bungling. The Nigerian vice president's office said five weeks ago that a visiting North Korean delegation had offered the country missile technology. On Wednesday, the Defense Ministry cited a top Pakistani official as saying Pakistan was trying to decide how to help the Nigerian military "strengthen its military capability and to acquire nuclear power." But the same Nigerian Defense Ministry spokesman who made the claim about the North Korean offer later retracted the statement. And on Thursday, Nwachukwu Bellu, the Nigerian Defense Ministry official who signed the statement about Pakistan's supposed offer, called the document a "mistake." Pakistan also denied that its official - Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mohammad Aziz Kahn - made any such offer in a visit Wednesday. Another denial came Friday, from President Olusegun Obasanjo's spokeswoman, Remi Oyo. "Nigeria is not seeking any deal with any country as regards acquiring nuclear weapons," Oyo told The Associated Press. "We're surrounded by friendly nations," She dismissed the government's controversial statements as "something that went awry." U.S. officials and international analysts wonder if Nigeria - Africa's most populous nation with 126 million people - is privately angling to become the world's latest nuclear power or posturing for overseas aid or influence in return for abandoning such ambitions. "It was an extraordinary statement. I wonder how it could have been issued in error," said Susan Rice, former Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs under President Clinton. Rice, a senior fellow at Washington's Brookings Institution, warned that Nigeria's history of military takeovers made it an unstable place for nuclear technology. Nigeria is not entirely nuclear-free, but the U.N. nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, says a reactor it does have is for research purposes. "They are inspected regularly by the IAEA to ensure they are not put to any other uses other than what they're meant for," IAEA spokesman Mark Gwozdecky said. In a document published by the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Council, the Energy Commission of Nigeria appealed last September to the IAEA for "nuclear fuel" to operate a "miniature neutron source reactor." Commission director-general I.H. Umar was cited as saying it was built for Nigeria in March 1999 by China's Nuclear Energy Industry Corporation. Umar declined to comment when reached by telephone. According to the IAEA document, the international body initially disallowed shipments of nuclear fuel to fuel the Nigerian reactor "due to the absence of a sufficient nuclear regulatory framework in Nigeria." Gwozdecky said the Nigerian facility is "under our safeguards." Air Force Gen. Charles Wald, deputy commander of U.S. forces at the U.S. European Command in Stuttgart, Germany, said he was unaware if Nigeria had such aspirations. Remi Oyewumi, a Nigerian political analyst in the capital, Abuja, suggested Nigeria's government may want nuclear weapons because they "confer prestige, no doubt, and Nigeria is also known for wanting prestigious things." Even a corrected statement issued by Nigeria's Defense Ministry on Thursday cited the nation's chief of defense staff, Gen. Alexander Ogomudia, as praising Pakistan's nuclear program for lifting the country from its status as a "developing nation." "General Ogomudia stressed that Pakistan was no longer a developing nation because it had gone beyond that with its nuclear capability," the defense ministry statement said. --- Associated Press writers Glenn McKenzie in Lagos and Todd Pitman in Stuttgart, Germany contributed to this report. -- ***************************************************************** 16 NRC: Agency Information Collection Activities: Proposed Collection; FR Doc 04-4917 [Federal Register: March 5, 2004 (Volume 69, Number 44)] [Notices] [Page 10486-10487] From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr05mr04-130] Comment Request AGENCY: U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). ACTION: Notice of pending NRC action to submit an information collection request to OMB and solicitation of public comment. SUMMARY: The NRC is preparing a submittal to OMB for review of continued approval of information collections under the provisions of the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 (44 U.S.C. Chapter 35). Information pertaining to the requirement to be submitted: 1. The title of the information collection: NRC Form 136, ``Security Termination Statement''; NRC Form 237, ``Request for Access Authorization''; NRC Form 277, ``Request for Visit''. [[Page 10487]] 2. Current OMB approval number: 3150-0049, NRC Form 136; 3150-0050, NRC Form 237; 3150-0051, NRC Form 277. 3. How often the collection is required: On occasion. 4. Who is required or asked to report: NRC Form 136--any employee of approximately 68 licensees and contractors who have been granted an NRC access authorization; NRC Form 237--any employee of approximately 68 licensees and 7 contractors who will require an NRC access authorization; NRC Form 277--any employee of 2 current NRC contractors who (1) holds an NRC access authorization, and (2) needs to make a visit to NRC, other contractors/licensees or government agencies in which access to classified information will be involved or unescorted area access is desired. 5. The number of annual respondents: NRC Form 136: 75; NRC Form 237: 75; NRC Form 277: 2. 6. The number of hours needed annually to complete the requirement or request: NRC Form 136: 23; NRC Form 237: 84; NRC Form 277: 1. 7. Abstract: The NRC Form 136 affects the employees of licensees and contractors who have been granted an NRC access authorization. When access authorization is no longer needed, the completion of the form apprises the respondents of their continuing security responsibilities. The NRC Form 237 is completed by licensees, NRC contractors or individuals who require an NRC access authorization. The NRC Form 277 affects the employees of contractors who have been granted an NRC access authorization and require verification of that access authorization and need-to-know in conjunction with a visit to NRC or another facility. Submit, by May 4, 2004, comments that address the following questions: 1. Is the proposed collection of information necessary for the NRC to properly perform its functions? Does the information have practical utility? 2. Is the burden estimate accurate? 3. Is there a way to enhance the quality, utility, and clarity of the information to be collected? 4. How can the burden of the information collection be minimized, including the use of automated collection techniques or other forms of information technology? A copy of the draft supporting statement may be viewed free of charge at the NRC Public Document Room, One White Flint North, 11555 Rockville Pike, Room O-1F23, Rockville, MD 20852. OMB clearance requests are available at the NRC World Wide Web site: http://www.nrc.gov/public-involve/doc-comment/omb/index.html. The document will be available on the NRC home page site for 60 days after the signature date of this notice. Comments and questions about the information collection requirements may be directed to the NRC Clearance Officer, Brenda Jo. Shelton, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, T-5F52, Washington, DC 20555-0001, by telephone at (301) 415-7233, or by Internet electronic mail at infocollects@nrc.gov. Dated at Rockville, Maryland, this 1st day of March, 2004. For the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Beth C. St. Mary, Acting NRC Clearance Officer, Office of the Chief Information Officer. [FR Doc. 04-4917 Filed 3-4-04; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 7590-01-P ***************************************************************** 17 NRC: Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant; Notice of Docketing of the FR Doc 04-4918 [Federal Register: March 5, 2004 (Volume 69, Number 44)] [Notices] [Page 10489] From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr05mr04-132] Materials License SNM-2505 Amendment Application for the Calvert Cliffs Independent Spent Fuel Storage Installation By letter dated December 12, 2003, Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant, Inc. (CCNPP), submitted an application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC or the Commission) in accordance with 10 CFR part 72 requesting an amendment of the Calvert Cliffs independent spent fuel storage installation (ISFSI) license (SNM-2505) for the ISFSI located in Calvert County, Maryland. CCNPP is requesting Commission approval to amend SNM-2505 to add the NUHOMS-32P as an optional design to the existing NUHOMS-24P design for dry storage of spent nuclear fuel. This application was docketed under 10 CFR part 72; the ISFSI Docket No. is 72-8 and will remain the same for this action. The amendment of an ISFSI license is subject to the Commission's approval. The Commission may issue either a notice of hearing or a notice of proposed action and opportunity for hearing in accordance with 10 CFR 72.46(b)(1) or, if a determination is made that the amendment does not present a genuine issue as to whether public health and safety will be significantly affected, take immediate action on the amendment in accordance with 10 CFR 72.46(b)(2) and provide notice of the action taken and an opportunity for interested persons to request a hearing on whether the action should be rescinded or modified. For further details with respect to this amendment, see the application dated December 12, 2003, which is publically available in the records component of NRC's Agencywide Documents Access and Management System (ADAMS). The NRC maintains ADAMS, which provides text and image files of NRC's public documents. These documents may be accessed through the NRC's Public Electronic Reading Room on the Internet at http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/adams.html. If you do not have access to ADAMS or if there are problems in accessing the documents located in ADAMS, contact the NRC Public Document Room (PDR) Reference staff at 1-800-397-4209, 301-415-4737 or by e-mail to pdr@nrc.gov. Dated at Rockville, Maryland, this 26th day of February, 2004. For the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Stephen C. O'Connor, Sr. Project Manager, Spent Fuel Project Office, Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards. [FR Doc. 04-4918 Filed 3-4-04; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 7590-01-P ***************************************************************** 18 NRC: Draft Regulatory Guide; Issuance, Availability FR Doc 04-4919 [Federal Register: March 5, 2004 (Volume 69, Number 44)] [Notices] [Page 10489-10490] From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr05mr04-133] This notice is reprinted to correct the title of Draft Regulatory Guide DG-7004. The original notice was published on February 25, 2004. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has issued for public comment a proposed revision of a guide in its Regulatory Guide Series. Regulatory guides are developed to describe and make available to the public such information as methods acceptable to the NRC staff for implementing specific parts of the NRC's regulations, techniques used by the staff in evaluating specific problems or postulated accidents, and data needed by the staff in its review of applications for permits and licenses. The draft guide is temporarily identified by its task number, DG- 7004, which should be mentioned in all correspondence concerning this draft guide. Draft Regulatory Guide DG-7004, ``Establishing Quality Assurance Programs for Packaging Used in Transport of Radioactive Material,'' is the proposed Revision 2 of Regulatory Guide 7.10. This revision is being developed to provide guidance on developing Quality Assurance Programs with respect to the transport of radioactive materials in Type B and fissile material packages. This draft guide has not received complete staff approval and does not represent an official NRC staff position. Comments may be accompanied by relevant information or supporting data. Written comments may be submitted by mail to the Rules and Directives Branch, Office of Administration, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC 20555; or they may be hand-delivered to the Rules and Directives Branch, Office of Administration, at 11555 Rockville Pike, Rockville, MD. Copies of comments received may be examined at the NRC Public Document Room, 11555 Rockville Pike, Rockville, MD. Comments will be most helpful if received by April 25, 2004. You may also provide comments via the NRC's interactive rulemaking Web site through the NRC home page (http: //http://www.nrc.gov). This site provides the ability to upload comments as files (any format) if your web browser supports that function. For information about the interactive rulemaking web site, contact Ms. Carol Gallagher, (301) 415-5905; e-mail CAG@NRC.GOV. For technical information about Draft Regulatory Guide DG-7004, contact Mr. J. Pearson [[Page 10490]] at (301) 415-1985 (e-mail JJP@NRC.GOV). Although a deadline is given for comments on these draft guides, comments and suggestions in connection with items for inclusion in guides currently being developed or improvements in all published guides are encouraged at any time. Regulatory guides are available for inspection at the NRC's Public Document Room, 11555 Rockville Pike, Rockville, MD; the PDR's mailing address is USNRC PDR, Washington, DC 20555; telephone (301) 415-4737 or (800) 397-4209; fax 301-415-3548; e-mail pdr@nrc.gov. Requests for single copies of draft or final regulatory guides (which may be reproduced) or for placement on an automatic distribution list for single copies of future draft guides in specific divisions should be made in writing to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC 20555, Attention: Reproduction and Distribution Services Section, or by fax to 301-415-2289; e-mail distribution@nrc.gov. Telephone requests cannot be accommodated. Regulatory guides are not copyrighted, and NRC approval is not required to reproduce them. (5 U.S.C. 552(a)) Dated at Rockville, Maryland, this 25th day of February 2004. For the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Mabel Lee, Director, Program Management, Project Development and Support, Office of Nuclear Regulatory Research. [FR Doc. 04-4919 Filed 3-4-04; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 7590-01-P ***************************************************************** 19 Daily Yomiuri: TEPCO discloses N-plant alarms Yomiuri Shimbun Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) on Friday started to disclose complaints and questions concerning the management and safety of its nuclear power plants, made inside and outside the company, on its Web site, the company announced. TEPCO is disclosing on the Internet the number of complaints and questions it receives every month. It will investigate each case and post the findings on the Web site, the company said. But it will not disclose any information that would give away the identity of whistle-blowers, the company said. TEPCO drew public criticism when its attempt to hide troubles at its nuclear power plants was revealed in August 2002. The scandal led TEPCO to temporarily shut down all its 17 nuclear power plants located in Fukushima and Niigata prefectures. It also was revealed that what was pointed out by a whistle-blower was concealed for about two years while it was being "investigated." But the accusation later helped bring the problem to light. The Fukushima prefectural government has requested TEPCO to make as much information available as possible. Considering the safety and security of local residents, the power company also studied the feasibility of disclosing such information, including information whose credibility is not yet determined. Reacting to the unusual measure, a source close to the Japan Business Federation (Nippon Keidanren) voiced concern, saying, "The measure could cause further trouble if such information isn't disclosed appropriately." Osamu Nakano, professor of communication at Hosei University, said, "Unless TEPCO establishes the standards on which such complaints and questions should be disclosed, premature information could be distributed worldwide. How to protect informants also needs to be studied further." Copyright 2004 The Yomiuri Shimbun ***************************************************************** 20 Tennessean: Experts say TVA project key to nuclear power's future - Friday, 03/05/04 By LARRY BIVINS Tennessean Washington Bureau WASHINGTON — The future of nuclear power production hinges on the Tennessee Valley Authority's efforts to restart its long-closed unit at the Browns Ferry plant, industry experts suggested yesterday. When completed, the $1.8 billion, five-year project to restart Unit 1 at the Browns Ferry site in Huntsville, Ala., would represent the first new production of nuclear power since 1996, when TVA opened its Watts Bar plant. The Browns Ferry unit has been shut down since 1985. TVA operates three nuclear power plants, which produced about 30% of TVA's electricity generated in 2003. The agency serves 8.5 million people in Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia. Jim Asselstine, a research analyst and managing director at Lehman Brothers Inc., said in written testimony that what happens with the Browns Ferry project could have a huge impact on whether new nuclear power plants are built around the country. ''TVA's experience can be very valuable in building confidence within the industry and within the financial community that the scope of construction work on a new plant can be managed effectively,'' Asselstine wrote to a Senate Energy and Resources subcommittee. Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., who led the subcommittee hearing, was more pointed in noting that excessive construction costs, safety concerns and the Enron scandal have made potential investors wary of nuclear power plants, leading to increased reliance on natural gas that is costlier. ''That is why the nation is so closely watching TVA's progress at Browns Ferry,'' Alexander said. ''If that project is successfully completed on time and on budget, it could have an impact on the willingness of other utilities and other financial institutions to invest in nuclear power.'' TVA Chairman Glenn McCullough told the panel that the Browns Ferry project was 40% complete and proceeding within budget. He said the board decided in May 2002 that restarting the Browns Ferry unit would be the smartest way to meet expected energy demand. ''The reason is simple,'' McCullough said. ''Nuclear power plants do not burn fossil fuel so they don't emit combustion products such as sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides into the atmosphere.'' Alexander said nuclear power production also would help states like Tennessee meet clean air standards. By April 15, 75% of Tennesseans will be living in counties where the air quality falls below acceptable standards, Alexander said. He added that he was encouraged by TVA's efforts at Browns Ferry. © Copyright 2003 The Tennessean A Gannett Co. ***************************************************************** 21 Las Vegas SUN: Senate panel hears nuke power praises March 05, 2004 Industry, government officials leave out problems with radioactive waste By Suzanne Struglinski WASHINGTON -- Nuclear industry and government officials touted the benefits of nuclear power at a Senate panel meeting Thursday as they made their pitch for more government incentives to help expansions, but made no mention of how they plan to manage future nuclear waste. The officials listed nuclear power's lack of emissions, price stability and other benefits to the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, which is guiding the ongoing debate over the energy bill. The industry officials also asked Congress for the continuation of federally backed insurance that covers the industry in the event of an accident, tax incentives for power plants and a push for more plants. There are 103 nuclear reactors across the country that generate about 20 percent of the electricity used annually, said Marvin Fertel, senior vice president and chief nuclear officer for the Nuclear Energy Institute. The plants have increased their operating levels and many will opt to renew their operating licenses for 20 more years. In the last year, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission renewed 13 reactor licenses and it has 33 extension applications before it currently, Fertel said. Will Travers, executive director for operations at the commission, explained that the agency is reviewing the licenses and is ready to deal with the construction of a new plant. It has been about 20 years since a nuclear power plant has been built in the United States. Only one of the five witnesses at Thursday's hearing -- James Asselstine, managing director of of Lehman Brothers -- said that spent fuel management needs to be addressed before the industry can advance. "Public acceptance of new nuclear plant commitment will likely turn on two issues: public perceptions of the safety of nuclear power plants and confidence that we will achieve a workable solution for spent fuel disposal," Asselstine said. "Continued progress in developing, licensing, building, and ultimately, operating a waste repository will likely be the determining factor on the spent fuel disposal issue." The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 requires that the Energy Department take spent nuclear fuel from the commercial utilities and permanently store it in a geologic repository. The department was supposed to take the waste by 1998, but now intends to open a repository at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas in 2010. The state has opposed that idea for decades and is fighting it every step of the way. After the hearing, Fertel said it is important that progress is made on spent fuel management, whether it is onsite at the nuclear power plants or eventually at Yucca. Plants now have to manage the waste since the department will take the waste at least 12 years later than required by law. "It's not a technical or safety issue," Fertel said. "It's probably an economic issue, companies are going to build onsite storage and they are also going to continue to pay into the nuclear waste fund." Nuclear ratepayers put money into an account earmarked specifically for Yucca, but Congress has authority over how the money is spent. "2010, that's a date we'd like to see met given they are already 12 years late," Fertel said. "The industry would like to see the government fulfill its responsibility. ... If it was 2011, does that change anything? Not really. We believe 2010 is do-able, we want to see it and want to see it done right" "Ultimately, you have a by-product that you have to dispose of safely. Our belief right now from the science done at Yucca is that it's clearly is ripe for going into licensing. To be completely honest, the thing that we and Nevada have very much in common is to see that it's done right. Wherever it goes whether its on our sites or in Nevada, we want this to be done safely." Under the law, Yucca can hold only 77,000 tons of nuclear waste, but since additional storage space will be needed for future waste, the department has to go back to Congress in 2007 to explain what its next plan will be. Fertel said it is still not clear what decision will be made then, since Congress could pursue studies on nuclear fuel cycles that could reduce the volume and toxicity of the waste. Brendan Hoffman, an organizer for Public Citizen, called it "irresponsible" for the industry to talk about building new plants without even addressing the waste that would along with it. "But that's they way it is set up," Hoffman said. "This issue should have been addressed before they built the first nuclear power plant, but it wasn't. They got their foot in the door and never looked back." ***************************************************************** 22 Times Argus: Troubled Citizens utility is sold to Vermont Electric Co-op March 5, 2004 --> By David Gram ASSOCIATED PRESS MONTPELIER - Good riddance to bad rubbish. That was the upshot of a Public Service Board order issued this week in which the board approved the sale of Citizens Communications Corp.'s Vermont Electric Division to the Johnson-based Vermont Electric Cooperative. The $18 million deal joins two contiguous service territories. Citizens has about 21,000 customers in 43 towns; VEC has about 16,350 customers in 60 communities. The sale means the Stamford, Conn.-based Citizens will exit Vermont and the state's electric utility industry after years of regulatory battles with the board. "Legal reviews of Citizens' management, accounting and regulatory practices found that Citizens was engaged in widespread and long-standing patterns of fraud and deceit on matters within and beyond our jurisdiction," the board said in approving the sale. That drew a strong protest from the company. "Citizens believes that the Public Service Board statement has no basis in law or in fact," company spokeswoman Brigid Smith said. She said a 1997 board order, "which is where they went through our alleged wrongdoings, never once had the words fraud or deceit in it." A board official provided a copy of the introduction of the 1997 order and it did not contain the words "fraud and deceit." Instead, it cited the company's "long and persistent record of misconduct and mismanagement," including overcharging customers and building transmission lines without state approval. In its 1997 order, the board levied a $60,000 fine against the Citizens, required steep rate reductions and placed the company on "regulatory probation" for five years, with the threat that if it didn't shape up, its certificate of public good - its license to operate in Vermont - would be revoked. As part of the sale, Citizens agreed to pay an additional $1 million - $720,000 in ratepayer refunds and $250,000 in penalties to the state general fund. The board determined that those payments were "adequate to resolve any remaining issues associated with Citizens' probation." VEC also has had a rocky past but has made a better recovery, the board said. It emerged from bankruptcy a decade ago after failed investments in the Seabrook nuclear plant in New Hampshire, which originally was to include two reactors and ended up comprising one. "Since then, the cooperative has seen a change in its board of directors, its management and its policies," the board said. "The cooperative has emerged from bankruptcy, and now appears to be in sound financial health without a need to make ruinous payments for imprudent investments." Citizens' sale of its Vermont property is part of a broader pattern in the company in which it has been selling off its electric and gas utilities in various parts of the country and focusing more on telecommunications. Last year it sold electric and gas utilities in Arizona and Hawaii. Copyright© 2003 Rutland Heraldand Barre-Montpelier Times Argus ***************************************************************** 23 Courier-Journal: Senator lauds TVA plan to restart reactor www.courier-journal.com Friday, March 05, 2004 TVA says unit should be online within 5 years By NANCY ZUCKERBROD Associated Press WASHINGTON Senators said yesterday that it's time for the nation to invest more heavily in nuclear power, and praised the Tennessee Valley Authority for doing its part. "I think as the price of gasoline goes up and the difficulty of burning coal cleanly increases, people are going to come to the common-sense solution that if we already are producing 20 percent of our electric power through nuclear power plants, why don't we increase that?" said Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., who chaired an Energy Committee hearing on the issue. Alexander praised TVA for moving toward restarting a nuclear reactor at its Browns Ferry power plant in Athens, Ala. TVA plans to have the facility running by 2007 at a cost of about $1.8billion. TVA Chairman Glenn McCullough testified that the plan was on budget and on time. No utility has sought permission to build a nuclear power plant since the 1979 reactor meltdown at the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania. TVA said it shut down its three units at Browns Ferry in 1985 as part of a review of its nuclear power program. Two units were returned to service in 1991 and 1996, according to the TVA. The nuclear industry is examining sites in Virginia, Mississippi and Illinois as places that might be suitable for building new plants, testified William Travers, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's executive director for operations. Alexander said he is interested in pushing nuclear power plants because they don't increase the kind of pollutants that come from coal-fired plants, which generate most of the nation's electricity. Environmentalists and others point out that nuclear plants produces long-lived, highly radioactive waste that is difficult to dispose of. In 2002, President Bush officially decided to open a high-level nuclear-waste repository about 100 miles from Las Vegas, Nev., in Yucca Mountain, which would store 77,000 tons of used reactor fuel from the nation's commercial power plants. Congress affirmed Bush's decision. Alexander and Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., said they don't see waste disposal as an issue that should stop the production of more nuclear power. McCullough said the modifications of the Browns Ferry facility will give TVA all the capacity it needs through 2014. An energy bill being debated in Congress would provide industry incentives to boost nuclear power production in the United States. Copyright 2003 The Courier-Journal. ***************************************************************** 24 NRC: US NRC Reactor Oversight Process Reactor Oversight Process (ROP) Individual Plant Performance Summaries On this page: + Inputs to the Assessment Process + Individual Plant Performance Summaries + Comprehensive Performance Summaries + Historical Performance + NRC Response to Plant Performance + Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) + Pilot Efforts + Industry Trends + ROP Program Information + Browns Ferry Unit 1 Recovery Inputs to the Assessment Process - The NRC evaluates plant performance by analyzing two distinct inputs: inspection findings resulting from NRC's inspection program and performance indicators (PIs) reported by the licensee (Inspection Findings + Performance Indicators = Plant Assessment). Both PIs and inspection findings are evaluated and given a color designation based on their safety significance. Green inspection findings or PIs indicate a very low risk significance and therefore have little or no impact on safety. White, yellow, or red inspection findings or PIs each, respectively, represent a greater degree of safety significance. + NRC Inspection Findings for each plant are documented in inspection reports in accordance with IMC 0612 (pdf) and summarized in Plant Issues Matrices (PIMs). Inspection findings are evaluated using the significance determination process (SDP) in accordance with IMC 0609 (pdf). The latest PIMs and inspection reports are posted on the plant web along with the PIs about five weeks after the end of each quarter. The inspection findings/PIMs are also updated on the web as soon as practical to reflect any final significance determinations that result in a risk significance that is more than very low significance (i.e., greater than green). Inspection findings that cut across cornerstones, such as corrective action program and PI verification findings, are listed in the PIMs as miscellaneous findings. Links are provided from individual PIM entries to the detailed information in NRC inspection reports. + Performance Indicators are reported to the NRC by licensees on a quarterly basis after the end of each quarter in accordance with IMC 0608 (pdf) and the latest PI reporting guidance. NEI 99-02, Rev 2 (pdf), "Regulatory Assessment Performance Indicator Guideline," which was endorsed by the NRC in Regulatory Issue Summary 2001-25 for licensee use effective for data collection starting January 1, 2002. Performance indicators resulting from this revised were guidance first submitted at the conclusion of the first calendar quarter of 2002. The approved FAQs below should be used in conjunction with NEI 99-02 Rev 2 when determining the current guidance for PI collection and reporting. Individual Plant Performance Summaries - Performance information (i.e., inspection findings and PIs) is summarized for each plant and sorted by the seven cornerstones of safety. This information can be viewed by selecting the plant name from the right column (organized alphabetically as well as by the region where the plants are located). For each plant, the current Action Matrix designation is displayed along with the performance indicators (PIs) and a summary of NRC inspection findings. Links are also provided to NRC assessment letters, inspection plans, and inspection reports. Comprehensive Performance Summaries - Based on the latest applicable performance indicators and inspection findings, the current Action Matrix designation for each plant is available in the Action Matrix Summary. The Action Matrix Summary provides a matrix of the five columns with the plants listed within their applicable column. The most significant inspection finding color designations over the previous 4 quarters for all plants is summarized in an Inspection Findings Summary matrix. The most recent quarterly performance indicator color designations for all plants are summarized in a PI Summary matrix. You can drill down into more detailed information from any of these three summary matrices. In addition, the List of Inspection Reports includes links to all NRC reports documenting ROP-related inspection results and the List of Assessment Reports and Inspection Plans includes links to all NRC performance assessment reports and associated inspection plans for the upcoming year. Historical Performance - Historical snapshots of plant performance from previous quarters as displayed on the web since the inception of the ROP are also available on the Historical Performance from Previous Quarters page. These include pdf files of the individual plant performance summaries, inspection findings, and performance indicators as well as the comprehensive summaries of the action matrix designation, inspection findings, and performance indicators for all plants. NRC Response to Plant Performance - The NRC assesses plant performance continuously, and communicates its assessment of plant performance in letters to licensees, typically semi-annually. These assessment letters are available on the plant performance summary page for each plant, and are posted on this web site as they become available. More detailed information on the NRC's assessment process is available in IMC 0305, "Operating Reactor Assessment Program." The NRC determines its regulatory response in accordance with an Action Matrix that provides for a range of actions commensurate with the significance of the PI and inspection results. For a plant that has all of its PIs and inspection findings characterized as green, the NRC will only implement its baseline inspection program. For plants that do not have all green PIs and inspection findings, the NRC will perform additional inspections and initiate other actions commensurate with the safety significance of the issues. Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) provide a compilation of commonly asked questions and answers related to performance indicators. The NRC and industry review FAQs and work to achieve a consensus view during periodic public meetings. If the stakeholders do not reach alignment on an issue, the NRC makes the final decision and approval determination. The approved FAQs should be used in conjunction with NEI 99-02 Rev 2 when determining the current guidance for PI collection and reporting, and will be incorporated into the next update of NEI 99-02. Approved FAQs can be viewed in three ways: + FAQ identification number (pdf) + by date entered (pdf) + cornerstone/PI (pdf) Draft FAQs (pdf) that have been submitted by various stakeholders and are in the review/approval process are also provided for information purposes only. Note that these draft FAQs have not been approved for use by the NRC. Each draft FAQ will include the status of the FAQ in the review/approval process, as well as a proposed response if one has been developed. Draft FAQs with proposed responses will be considered for final approval at a future public meeting. Once a draft FAQ becomes approved for use by the NRC, it will be removed from the draft FAQ listing and added to the approved FAQs. In addition, Archived FAQs (pdf) that have been incorporated into, and superseded by, the latest NEI 99-02 guidance are included for reference only. Pilot Efforts - The NRC and the nuclear industry have jointly proposed a replacement to the current set of Safety System Unavailability Performance Indicators which is called the Mitigating System Performance Index (MSPI). The 6-month pilot test period extends from September 1, 2002 through March 1, 2003. Industry Trends - The NRC's new program to monitor trends in industry performance to confirm that the safety of operating power plants is being maintained on the Industry Trends Web Page. ROP Program Information - Additional background information can be found on the Detailed ROP Description page. The Office of Public Affairs has published a plain language description of the ROP in NUREG-1649. The ROP-related program and policy documents are also conveniently summarized by subject area on the ROP Program Documents page. Browns Ferry Unit 1 Recovery - The NRC is conducting oversight inspections of the recovery of Browns Ferry Unit 1. Until the unit fully transitions under the Reactor Oversight Process (ROP), information regarding this multi-year project can be accessed at Browns Ferry Unit 1 Recovery. Questions and comments, please contact NRC at . Last modification : May 8, 2003 ***************************************************************** 25 WBIR: NUCLEAR INDUSTRY, TVA GET BOOST DURING SENATE HEARING WBIR-TV, Knoxville, TN US senators said Thursday that the nation should invest more heavily in nuclear power, and praised the Tennessee Valley Authority for doing its part. Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee said using more nuclear power is a common sense solution. He said the need is magnified as the price of gasoline goes up and it gets harder to burn coal cleanly. Alexander praised TVA for moving toward restarting a nuclear reactor at its Browns Ferry power plant in Athens, Alabama. He commented as he chaired an Energy Committee hearing in Washington. ------ On the Net: Energy Committee 3/5/2004 8:09:25 AM Reporter: Associated Press Copyright ***************************************************************** 26 NRC: NRC Issues Annual Assessments for Nation's Nuclear Plants News Release - 2004-03 U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION Office of Public Affairs Telephone: 301/415-8200 Washington, DC 20555-0001 E-mail: No. 04-031 March 5, 2004 power plants. The Davis-Besse nuclear facility in Ohio will not be issued an annual assessment letter by the agency because it is currently under a special NRC oversight program. Every six months most plants receive either a mid-cycle review letter or an annual assessment letter, along with an NRC inspection plan. Updated information on plant performance is posted to the NRC web site every quarter. The next mid-cycle assessment letters will be issued in September. The assessment letters sent to each licensee are available on the NRC web site at: http://www.nrc.gov/NRR/OVERSIGHT/ASSESS/index.html and through ADAMS, the Agencywide Documents Access and Management System. Help in using ADAMS is available from the NRC Public Document Room by calling (301) 415-4737 or (800) 397-4209. Public meetings at each of the plant sites are planned and will be announced in advance. Last revised Friday, March 05, 2004 ***************************************************************** 27 NRC: Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant, Units Nos. 1 and 2; Notice FR Doc 04-4916 [Federal Register: March 5, 2004 (Volume 69, Number 44)] [Notices] [Page 10487-10489] From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr05mr04-131] of Consideration of Issuance of Amendment to Facility Operating License, Proposed No Significant Hazards Consideration Determination, and Opportunity for a Hearing The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (the Commission) is considering issuance of amendments to Facility Operating License Nos. DPR-53 and DPR-69 issued to Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant, Inc. (the licensee) for operation of the Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant, Unit Nos. 1 and 2 located in Calvert County, Maryland. The proposed amendments would extend the implementation date for Amendment Nos. 261 and 238 for Calvert Cliffs Units 1 and 2, respectively to July 1, 2004. The changes to the reactor pressure vessel pressure-temperature limit cooldown rates that were approved by Amendment Nos. 261 and 238 are more conservative than the plants existing rates and result in a longer cooldown period. The existing cooldown rates are acceptable through the end of 2004. Before issuance of the proposed license amendment, the Commission will have made findings required by the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, as amended (the Act), and the Commission's regulations. The Commission has made a proposed determination that the amendment request involves no significant hazards consideration. Under the Commission's regulations in Title 10 of the Code of Federal Regulations (10 CFR), Section 50.92, this means that operation of the facility in accordance with the proposed amendment would not (1) involve a significant increase in the probability or consequences of an accident previously evaluated; or (2) create the possibility of a new or different kind of accident from any accident previously evaluated; or (3) involve a significant reduction in a margin of safety. As required by 10 CFR 50.91(a), the licensee has provided its analysis of the issue of no significant hazards consideration, which is presented below: 1. involve a significant increase in the probability or consequences of an accident previously evaluated; or The proposed amendment extends the implementation period specified in Item 3 of Amendment Nos. 261 and 238 from 120 days to July 1, 2004. Since the existing reactor pressure vessel pressure- temperature limit cooldown rates are valid through the end of 2004, there is no technical or safety issue associated with this request. The proposed amendment is purely administrative. Therefore, the proposed change does not involve a significant increase in the probability or consequence of an accident previously evaluated 2. create the possibility of a new or different [kind] of accident from any accident previously evaluated; or The proposed amendment extends the implementation period specified in Item 3 of Amendment Nos. 261 and 238 from 120 days to July 1, 2004. Since the existing reactor pressure vessel pressure- temperature limit cooldown rates are valid through the end of 2004, there is no technical or safety issue associated with this request. The proposed amendment is purely administrative. This request does not involve a change in the operation of the plant and no new accident initiation mechanism is created by the proposed change. The proposed change does not involve a physical alteration of the plant. Therefore, the proposed change does not create the possibility of a new or different kind of accident from any previously evaluated. 3. involve a significant reduction in a margin of safety. The margin of safety is maintained during the period of extended implementation because the existing reactor pressure vessel pressure-temperature limit cooldown rates are valid through to end of 2004. The proposed amendment extends the implementation period specified in Item 3 of Amendment Nos. 261 and 238 from 120 days to July 1, 2004. Since the existing reactor pressure vessel pressure- temperature limit cooldown rates are valid through the end of 2004, there is no technical or safety issue associated with this request. The proposed amendment is purely administrative. Therefore, this proposed change does not significantly reduce [a] margin of safety. [[Page 10488]] The NRC staff has reviewed the licensee's analysis and, based on this review, it appears that the three standards of 10 CFR 50.92(c) are satisfied. Therefore, the NRC staff proposes to determine that the amendment request involves no significant hazards consideration. The Commission is seeking public comments on this proposed determination. Any comments received within 30 days after the date of publication of this notice will be considered in making any final determination. Normally, the Commission will not issue the amendment until the expiration of 60 days after the date of publication of this notice. The Commission may issue the license amendment before expiration of the 60- day period provided that its final determination is that the amendment involves no significant hazards consideration. In addition, the Commission may issue the amendment prior to the expiration of the 30- day comment period should circumstances change during the 30-day comment period such that failure to act in a timely way would result, for example in derating or shutdown of the facility. Should the Commission take action prior to the expiration of either the comment period or the notice period, it will publish in the Federal Register a notice of issuance. Should the Commission make a final No Significant Hazards Consideration Determination, any hearing will take place after issuance. The Commission expects that the need to take this action will occur very infrequently. Written comments may be submitted by mail to the Chief, Rules and Directives Branch, Division of Administrative Services, Office of Administration, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC 20555-0001, and should cite the publication date and page number of this Federal Register notice. Written comments may also be delivered to Room 6D59, Two White Flint North, 11545 Rockville Pike, Rockville, Maryland, from 7:30 a.m. to 4:15 p.m. Federal workdays. Documents may be examined, and/or copied for a fee, at the NRC's Public Document Room, located at One White Flint North, Public File Area O1 F21, 11555 Rockville Pike (first floor), Rockville, Maryland. The filing of requests for hearing and petitions for leave to intervene is discussed below. Within 60 days after the date of publication of this notice, the licensee may file a request for a hearing with respect to issuance of the amendment to the subject facility operating license and any person whose interest may be affected by this proceeding and who wishes to participate as a party in the proceeding must file a written request for a hearing and a petition for leave to intervene. Requests for a hearing and a petition for leave to intervene shall be filed in accordance with the Commission's ``Rules of Practice for Domestic Licensing Proceedings'' in 10 CFR part 2. Interested persons should consult a current copy of 10 CFR 2.309, which is available at the Commission's PDR, located at One White Flint North, Public File Area 01F21, 11555 Rockville Pike (first floor), Rockville, Maryland. Publicly available records will be accessible from the Agencywide Documents Access and Management System's (ADAMS) Public Electronic Reading Room on the Internet at the NRC Web site, reading-rm/doc-collections/cfr/. If a request for a hearing or petition for leave to intervene is filed by the above date, the Commission or a presiding officer designated by the Commission or by the Chief Administrative Judge of the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board Panel, will rule on the request and/or petition; and the Secretary or the Chief Administrative Judge of the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board will issue a notice of a hearing or an appropriate order. As required by 10 CFR 2.309, a petition for leave to intervene shall set forth with particularity the interest of the petitioner in the proceeding, and how that interest may be affected by the results of the proceeding. The petition should specifically explain the reasons why intervention should be permitted with particular reference to the following general requirements: (1) The name, address and telephone number of the requestor or petitioner; (2) the nature of the requestor's/petitioner's right under the Act to be made a party to the proceeding; (3) the nature and extent of the requestor's/petitioner's property, financial, or other interest in the proceeding; and (4) the possible effect of any decision or order which may be entered in the proceeding on the requestors/petitioner's interest. The petition must also identify the specific contentions which the petitioner/requestor seeks to have litigated at the proceeding. Each contention must consist of a specific statement of the issue of law or fact to be raised or controverted. In addition, the petitioner/requestor shall provide a brief explanation of the bases for the contention and a concise statement of the alleged facts or expert opinion which support the contention and on which the petitioner intends to rely in proving the contention at the hearing. The petitioner/requestor must also provide references to those specific sources and documents of which the petitioner is aware and on which the petitioner intends to rely to establish those facts or expert opinion. The petition must include sufficient information to show that a genuine dispute exists with the applicant on a material issue of law or fact. Contentions shall be limited to matters within the scope of the amendment under consideration. The contention must be one which, if proven, would entitle the petitioner to relief. A petitioner/requestor who fails to satisfy these requirements with respect to at least one contention will not be permitted to participate as a party. Those permitted to intervene become parties to the proceeding, subject to any limitations in the order granting leave to intervene, and have the opportunity to participate fully in the conduct of the hearing. If a hearing is requested, the Commission will make a final determination on the issue of no significant hazards consideration. The final determination will serve to decide when the hearing is held. If the final determination is that the amendment request involves no significant hazards consideration, the Commission may issue the amendment and make it immediately effective, notwithstanding the request for a hearing. Any hearing held would take place after issuance of the amendment. If the final determination is that the amendment request involves a significant hazards consideration, any hearing held would take place before the issuance of any amendment. A request for a hearing or a petition for leave to intervene must be filed by: (1) First class mail addressed to the Office of the Secretary of the Commission, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC 20555-0001, Attention: Rulemaking and Adjudications Staff; (2) courier, express mail, and expedited delivery services: Office of the Secretary, Sixteenth Floor, One White Flint North, 11555 Rockville Pike, Rockville, Maryland, 20852, Attention: Rulemaking and Adjudications Staff; (3) e-mail addressed to the Office of the Secretary, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, ; or (4) facsimile transmission addressed to the Office of the Secretary, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC, Attention: Rulemakings and Adjudications Staff at (301) 415-1101, verification number is (301) 415-1966. [[Page 10489]] A copy of the request for hearing and petition for leave to intervene should also be sent to the Office of the General Counsel, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC 20555-0001, and it is requested that copies be transmitted either by means of facsimile transmission to 301-415-3725 or by email to . A copy of the request for hearing and petition for leave to intervene should also be sent to the attorney for the licensee. Nontimely requests and/or petitions and contentions will not be entertained absent a determination by the Commission or the presiding officer of the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board that the petition, request and/or the contentions should be granted based on a balancing of the factors specified in 10 CFR 2.309(a)(1)(i)-(viii). For further details with respect to this action, see the application for amendment dated February 25, 2004, which is available for public inspection at the Commission's PDR, located at One White Flint North, File Public Area O1 F21, 11555 Rockville Pike (first floor), Rockville, Maryland. Publicly available records will be accessible from the Agencywide Documents Access and Management System's (ADAMS) Public Electronic Reading Room on the Internet at the NRC Web site, . Persons who do not have access to ADAMS or who encounter problems in accessing the documents located in ADAMS, should contact the NRC PDR Reference staff by telephone at 1-800-397-4209, 301-415-4737, or by e-mail to . Dated at Rockville, Maryland, this 1st day of March 2004. For the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Guy S. Vissing, Senior Project Manager, Section 1, Project Directorate I, Division of Licensing Project Management, Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation. [FR Doc. 04-4916 Filed 3-4-04; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 7590-01-P ***************************************************************** 28 From a Tropical Paradise to a Nuclear Hell - pain from bomb Date: Fri, 5 Mar 2004 23:35:52 -0600 (CST) From: Teresa Binstock Mailing-List: list earthfirstalert@yahoogroups.com; contact earthfirstalert-owner@yahoogroups.com Date: Mon, 01 Mar 2004 07:25:12 -0700 Subject: [EF!] From a Tropical Paradise to a Nuclear Hell - pain from bomb testing rages on in the Marshall Islands From a Tropical Paradise to a Nuclear Hell Fifty years ago today, Bikini Atoll was blasted away. The pain from bomb testing rages on in the Marshall Islands. By JoAnn Wypijewski, who has written on Pacific issues since the 1980s for the Nation, the Los Angeles Times and Harper's. March 1, 2004 http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-wypijewski1mar01,1,7066823.story "There's a story I can tell you," a fellow called Bruno Lat said to me a few years back. "I was 13. My dad was working with the Navy as a laborer on Kwajalein" -- an atoll in Lat's native Marshall Islands, controlled by the U.S. military. "It was early, early morning. We were all outside on that day waiting in the dark. Everybody was waiting for the Bravo." That day was 50 years ago: March 1, 1954. Bravo was not the first, or the last, just the worst of the American nuclear tests in the Pacific -- a fission-fusion-fission reaction, a thermonuclear explosion, an H-bomb, the United States' biggest blast. In today's poverty of expression, it would be called a WMD. Except that it was ours, and so real that days after marveling at a sky alight with "all kinds of beautiful colors," young Bruno also took in the sight of refugees from downwind of the blast at Bikini Atoll, miserable and burned and belatedly evacuated to Kwajalein. The skin on their heads, he recalled, "you could peel it like fried chicken skin." In the standard histories, much of what happened that morning was "an accident." That's the term Edward Teller, the bomb's designer, uses in his memoir. The Navy said it had anticipated a six-megaton bomb, but Bravo came in at 15. It expected the winds to blow one way; they blew another. It had not evacuated downwinders in advance because the danger was deemed slight, and anyway the budget was tight. It had not expected that a Japanese fishing boat, the Lucky Dragon, would be trawling 87 miles from the blast. It had not expected that one of the fishermen would die. Officially, the Atomic Energy Commission claimed that the Bravo shot had been "routine" and that among the evacuees "there were no burns. All were reported well." A month later, AEC Chairman Lewis Strauss told reporters that they were not only well but "happy" too. It is a simple matter to find government reports acknowledging the opposite now that that particular lie is unnecessary. The Bravo blast, it is typically said, was equal to 1,000 Hiroshimas, as if that were comprehensible. The Hiroshima bomb instantly killed 80,000 people, more or less. Bravo had the power to incinerate 80 million: 10 New Yorks; 26,666 Twin Towers, more or less. The "stem" of its mushroom cloud was 18 miles tall, its "cap" 62 miles across. That's a cloud five times the length of Manhattan, vaporizing all beneath it, sucking everything -- in Bravo's case, three islands' worth of coral reef, sand, land and sea life -- into the sky, and then showering it in a swirl of radioactive isotopes across an area now estimated at nearly 20,000 square miles. The Marshallese on the island of Rongelap, 120 miles from ground zero, had imagined snow from missionaries' photographs of New England winters. That March 1, they imagined the white flakes falling from the sky, piling up two inches deep, as some freakish snowstorm. Children played in it, and later screamed with pain. On other downwind islands, the "snow" appeared variably as a shower, a mist, a fog. The Navy had a practice of sending planes into a blast area hours after detonation to measure the "geigers," as radioactivity was colloquially known among sailors, and the early Bravo readings are staggering. Scientists didn't know in 1954 that, for example, a radiation dose of 30 roentgens would double the rate of breast cancer in adults. But they did know that 150 roentgens, noted in one of the military's earliest ground-level estimates of Rongelap, was catastrophic. Yet the Navy waited two days to evacuate Rongelap and Ailinginae; three days to evacuate Utirik. Nine years later, thyroid cancers started appearing in exposed islanders, then leukemia. Even on "safe" atolls, babies began being born retarded, deformed, stillborn or worse. In 1983, Darlene Keju-Johnson, a Marshallese public health worker, gave a World Council of Churches gathering this description: "The baby is born on the labor table, and it breathes and moves up and down, but it is not shaped like a human being. It looks like a bag of jelly." The Marshallese say that Bravo was not an accident. In the 1980s, a U.S. government document surfaced showing that weather reports hours before the blast had indeed indicated shifting winds. In 1954, the United States had nine years of data on direct effects of radiation but none on fallout downwind; select Marshallese have been the subject of scientific study ever since. An accident, as the writer Alexander Cockburn once put it, "is normalcy raised to the level of drama." Marshall Islanders endured 67 U.S. nuclear tests between 1946 and 1958, their net yield the equivalent of 1.7 Hiroshima bombs detonated every day for 12 years. A full accounting of the displacements and evacuations, the lies and broken promises would fill pages. A full accounting of the health effect would fill volumes and has never been done. Bruno Lat is not an official victim of any test, so his thyroid cancer doesn't count; the same with his father's stomach tumors. Of the broken culture and broken hearts, there can be no accounting. Today what's left of Bikini Atoll is beautiful, its white sands shimmering beneath the dome of blue, its coconut crabs skittering among the palms, but what grows there is poison. It is not difficult in the Marshall Islands to find people who have forever lost their home, who believe that sickness awaits, that nothing is safe, but we don't call that terror. On this 50th anniversary of Bravo, the Marshallese are petitioning the U.S. Congress to make full compensation for the ruin of their lands and their health. They want Congress to express "deep regret for the nuclear testing legacy." Some had wanted an apology, but that, the majority decided, the United States would never concede. Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times * The material in this post is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. 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For differing results you may uncheck "article" and search on just "subject," etc. /RENEGADE/ also has "time-frame" in the search, so you can tailor your results that way, too. ----- -- Peace! *STRIDER* Sector Air Raid Warden at /RENEGADE/ http://fornits.com/renegade/ DEDICATED TO SPIRIT, TRUTH, PEACE, JUSTICE, AND FREEDOM Articles posted in the last 10 days: http://fornits.com/renegade/peaars.cgi?search=Search&increment=days&many=10 Bay_Area_Activist list Membership is by invitation only. Contact bay_area_activist-owner@yahoogroups.com - to request membership. EF! list - earthfirstalert - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/earthfirstalert List-Subscribe: usenet: news:misc.activism.progressive e-mail: mailto:strider@fornits.com strider@fornits.com No War !!! No Nukes !!! Impeach !!! WHEN SPIDERS UNITE, THEY CAN TIE DOWN A LION -- Ethiopian Proverb ***************************************************************** 29 [FOODIRRADIATIONCA] Support AB 1988 Keep Irradiated Foods out Date: Sat, 6 Mar 2004 00:08:37 -0600 (CST) Another School District Bans Irradiated Food! Grant Unified School District, in Redding, California, voted unanimously to ban irradiated foods in their school! Grant is the 5th California school district to ban these foods this year. Click here for more info: http://www.citizen.org/cmep/foodsafety/food_irrad/schoollunch/articles.cfm?ID=11139 Add your school district to this growing list! If you would like to work with Public Citizen on passing a ban on irradiated foods in your school district, please contact Tracy at (510) 663-0888 x 103. You can download a free activist kit at www.safelunch.org ******************************** Assemblymember Loni Hancock (D-Berkeley) introduces AB 1988, the California Safe School Lunch Act! On Feb. 20th, Assemblymember Loni Hancock introduced Assembly Bill 1988, the California Safe School Lunch Act. This landmark legislation prohibits the California Department of Education from accepting irradiated meat from the US Department of Agriculture to distribute to schools participating in federally subsidized meal programs. This bill also requires schools purchasing irradiated food in the private market to label it, provide information on the health effects, and provide a non-irradiated alternative. By keeping irradiated foods out of the federally subsidized meal program, this bill will protect the health of low-income children, many of whom rely on school meals for a hot and nutritious lunch each day. California will also send a strong message that school lunch programs are not the dumping grounds for substandard, questionable foods that consumers have rejectd and nobody else wants. Read the press release below. See the photo from the press conference, with Congresswoman Barbara Lee, Public Citizen organizer Tracy Lerman, activists, and parents here: www.safelunch.org TAKE ACTION! Urge your Assemblymember to sign on as a coauthor of AB 1988. To find out who represents you in the California Assembly, visit www.assembly.ca.gov and click on "Find My District" on the left side of the page. Background In May of 2003, the US Department of Agriculture approved irradiated foods for the National School Lunch Program, which provides free or reduced price meals for low-income school children. In making this decision, the USDA ignored the thousands of parents, teachers, students, and concerned citizens who opposed serving irradiated food to children over 93% of the people who commented on this decision were against serving irradiated food to kids. Irradiation destroys nutrients and creates toxins in food. Research has linked chemicals formed in irradiated food to numerous health problems in lab animals, including fatal internal bleeding, reproductive dysfunction, and birth defects. Irradiation also perpetuates and may even worsen the filthy and inhumane conditions in feedlots and slaughterhouses, which cause tremendous amounts of groundwater pollution, endanger workers, and are responsible for contamination of meat in the first place. For more info, visit www.safelunch.org Press Release For Immediate Release Contact: Armando Viramontes (916) 319-2014 Herd the Beef about Irradiated Meat? Assemblymember Loni Hancock to introduce legislation to ban serving irradiated meat in school lunches. February 20, 2004 (Berkeley) Assemblywoman Loni Hancock in conjunction with Congresswoman Barbara Lee and Public Citizen are holding a joint press conference today to introduce Assembly Bill 1988, the California Safe School Lunch Act. The National School Lunch Program provides free or reduced price school lunches to low-income school children. Last year, the U.S. Department of Agriculture permitted irradiated ground beef to be served in the National School Lunch Program. Irradiation depletes essential nutrients and creates toxins in food. Research has linked chemicals formed in irradiated foods to numerous health problems, including fatal internal bleeding, reproductive dysfunction, and a rare form of cancer in lab mice. AB 1988 will prevent irradiated ground beef provided though the National School Lunch program to be served in California school lunches. "Serving irradiated beef in our free school lunch program is a systematic public policy of testing questionable lunchmeat on Californias poorest children." states Assemblymember Loni Hancock. ### ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Tracy Lerman Senior Organizer Public Citizen, California Office 1615 Broadway, 9th Floor Oakland, CA 94612 ph: 510-663-0888 x 103 f: 510-663-8569 tlerman@citizen.org www.citizen.org/california Keep irradiated food out of your child's lunch! Visit www.safelunch.org to find out more. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ********** To unsubscribe, please send a email to tlerman@citizen.org with "unsubscribe foodirradiationca" in the subject line. ***************************************************************** 30 [DU-WATCH] US engineering civil war in Iraq ... Date: Fri, 5 Mar 2004 23:33:09 -0600 (CST) http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/3495996.stm http://story.news.yahoo.com/news? tmpl=story&cid=514&e=3&u=/ap/20040301/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_9 Bremner has succeeded undermining indigenous Iraqi leadership and will announce on the current (today or tomorrow) Muslim holy day that the new constitution is written. Rather than allow the formation of an Iraqi government by legitimate election, the Karzai-isk governing council has bowed to western interests. The UN took several million $'s and 3 months to "study" the feasibility of elections by June 30. It delivered its report last week ... obviously ensuring its conclusion is self-fulfilling ... June 30 is too early. How do they keep a straight face at those United Nations? Ayatolla Sistani, who has leadership authority vested in him by over 15,000,000 Iraqis has consistently requested an early election so that the people of Iraq can get on with governing their own country and writing their own constitiution. Bremner, in his arrogant way has said to this request, "I have the last word", a concept and a phrase as offensive to Muslims and Iraqi's as will be the new, American style constitution written by its western-trained expatriot Iraqi puppets. Anyone who knows any Islamic history will know that to announce the occupier-written constitution on Ashura, the 10th of the month of Muharam, will be a major offence to the Muslims and the Shia population in particular. Maybe Bremner will take the pulpit at Karbala. Anti-occupation attacks will shortly escalate. Perhaps this is the plan: engineering destabalisation and civil war. US occupation will be decades long. Health effects of long term occupation will be a new DU chapter for the British, the US and friends. [Brought to you by HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK] Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/du-watch/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: du-watch-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ ***************************************************************** 31 [DU-WATCH] Anthrax is not but straw man .... Date: Fri, 5 Mar 2004 23:38:08 -0600 (CST) Anthrax not but a straw man to suck in US vets I predicted a few weeks ago that the chemotoxicity of uranium will be reemphasized as a ploy to downgrade the significance of its radiotoxicity. This is a lead up position to manage the optics on the current and growing number of OIF DU-caused illnesses. AFRRI, DVA - Baltimore, the DVA Science Advisory Committee, and the Army Health Protection unit all lean (and lie) this way. The research from AFRRI showing cancer biomarkers and mutagenic precursor effects of DU conspicuously refrains from considering radiotoxicity in favor of chemotoxicity. Most of the NPRI presenters, including the so- called independents had this emphasis at last years symposium. The speakers' list at the upcoming MIT program and the entire theme at the upcoming NGWRC program reveal the same bias. The NGWRC in particular should be ashamed of itself for perpetrating this hoax and working the Dan Fahey, Chuck Miles (NPRI, and T. Thornton (MTP) as agents to misdirect veterans from the truth and from restitution. (The NGWRC still hasn't explained its funding sources contrary to the double talk on its website. Why is anthrax hitting the press right now? The DoD/DVA is worried. Uranium internal contamination has already been identified by MOD (1st Armoured Division, which attacked and occupied Basra), even though MOD with the naove support of the DU Oversight Board have been able to keep it out of the papers. (UK investigative journalists are about as brilliant as the US press.) The DOD/DVA know a substantial number of US OIF veterans are seeking assistance from independent physicians and labs. They are trying very hard to keep the lid on. Fahey, NGWRC, MTP et al have been a great help to DOD/DVA by referring veterans directly to Millie McDiarmid (Baltimore DU Follow-up Program). Here is another area where the brilliant investigative journalism of he US is a joke. McDiramid was published in the British Medical Journal stating there is no clinical evidence of radiological toxicity from inhalational uranium contamination at battlefield exposure levels. How can the DVA know what battlefield exposure levels are when they refuse to bioassay vets until months to years after exposure. There is so much professional conflict of interest and medical negligence here, it reeks. Now America's favorite terroristic biotoxin, anthrax, which has a long political shelf life in the US due to its well-established and convenient coincidental appearance following 9/11 is being dealt (again) onto the Gulf War illness table. Sick veterans, who are generally miseducated anyway, and oddly enough who are willing to accept almost any explanation their governments and defense departments proffer, are simply being served with the newest round of chemical explanations for GW illness. Anything to avoid acknowledging the radiological effects of uranium. Isn't it wonderful that the "anthrax" boggie man is coming out of the basement at just the right time for the MIT and NRWRC program? [Brought to you by HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK] Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/du-watch/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: du-watch-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ ***************************************************************** 32 [DU-WATCH] Mix of chemicals plus stress damages brain, liver in Date: Fri, 5 Mar 2004 23:15:45 -0600 (CST) Mix of Chemicals Plus Stress Damages Brain, Liver in Animals and Likely in Humans date : 2/26/2004media contact : Becky Levine , (919) 660-1308 or (919) 684-4148 levin005@mc.duke.edu http://dukemednews.org/news/article.php?id=7433 DURHAM, N.C. -- Stress is a well known culprit in disease, but now researchers have shown that stress can intensify the effects of relatively safe chemicals, making them very harmful to the brain and liver in animals and likely in humans, as well. Even short-term exposure to specific chemicals -- just 28 days -- when combined with stress was enough to cause widespread cellular damage in the brain and liver of rats, said Mohamed Abou Donia, Ph.D., a Duke pharmacologist and senior author of the study. Results of the study were published in the Feb. 27, 2004, issue of the Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health. Abou Donia's study was designed to reproduce the symptoms of Gulf War Syndrome, a disorder marked by chronic fatigue, muscle and joint pain, tremors, headaches, difficulties concentrating and learning, loss of memory, irritability and reproductive problems. The Gulf War Syndrome symptoms have been difficult to explain because veterans outwardly appear healthy and normal, said Abou Donia. Likewise, the chemically exposed animals in Abou Donia's studies looked and behaved normally. But a decade of neurologic research has revealed widespread damage to the brain, nervous system, liver and testes of rats exposed to 60 days of low-dose chemicals -- the insect repellant DEET, the insecticide permethrin, and the anti-nerve gas agent pyridostigmine bromide. These are the same drugs that the soldiers received during the 1990 - 1991 Persian Gulf War, and Abou Donia's rats were exposed to the same levels -- in weight adjusted doses -- as the soldiers were reportedly given. Now, Abou Donia has demonstrated that the combination of stress and short-term exposure to chemicals (28 days) can promote cellular death in specific brain regions and injury to the liver. Moreover, the chemical trio combined with stress caused damage to portions of the brain where its protective blood-brain barrier was still intact. The latter finding suggests that the chemicals permeated the protective barrier in one region, then leaked into other regions of the brain where the barrier remained intact. The ability of chemicals to leak from one area of the brain to another holds the potential for much greater damage to occur to the entire brain. Brain regions that sustained significant damage in this study were the cerebral cortex (motor and sensory function), the hippocampus (learning and memory) and the cerebellum (gait and coordination of movements). Abou Donia's earlier studies demonstrated severe damage to the cingulate cortex, dentate gyrus, thalamus and hypothalamus.(The thalamus is the major relay for visual and auditory information going to the cortex and is also responsible for subjective feelings. The hypothalamus regulates metabolism, sleep and sexual activity, as well as control of emotions.) Abou Donia's team found a significant number of dead or dying brain cells in all of these brain regions, as well as major alterations to brain chemicals that are necessary for learning and memory, muscle strength and body movement. Stress alone caused little or no brain injury in the rats, nor did the three chemicals given together in low doses for 28 days. "But when we put the animals under moderate stress by simply restricting their movement in a plastic holder for five minutes at a time every day, the animals experienced enough stress that it intensified the effects of the chemicals dramatically," said Abou Donia. Soldiers in the Gulf War were likely under stress 24 hours a day for weeks or months at a time, a scenario which could explain the origins of their diverse physical and cognitive complaints, said Abou Donia. "The brain deficits we found in rats reside in specific areas of the brain that we can't measure in living humans," said Abou Donia. "This is why the deficits are so difficult to assess clinically and why animal studies are so critical to understanding the cellular damage." In addition to brain injuries, the Duke study found unexpected damage to the liver, including swollen cells, congested blood vessels and abnormal fatty deposits that diminish the liver cells' function. Liver cells also showed reduced activity of an important enzyme -- BuCHE -- that helps rid the body of some toxic substances. Neither stress by itself nor chemicals alone had any impact on BuCHE levels, but the combination did. Such damage to the liver can reduce its ability to rid the body of toxic substances -- its primary function as a vital organ. And, the less effectively the liver filters out toxic substances, the more the chemicals can concentrate in the brain and nervous system, he added. Finally, the study showed that stress plus chemicals increased the amount of destructive molecules in the brain called reactive oxygen species -- also known as oxygen free radicals. Reactive oxygen species are produced by the body as it metabolizes various substances in the presence of oxygen. Reactive oxygen species attack DNA, RNA and proteins, causing cellular and membrane damage. Normally, the body removes these chemicals from the body and the brain. But excessive production of reactive oxygen species can overwhelm the body's ability to dispose of them. "In our study, there was an increase in reactive oxygen species. We think that either the three chemicals and stress directly produce these free radicals, or the chemicals impede the body's ability to get rid of them," said Abou Donia. relevant links :http://www.dukemednews.org/news/article.php?id=6326 ________________________________________________________________________ Yahoo! Messenger - Communicate instantly..."Ping" your friends today! Download Messenger Now http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com/download/index.html [Brought to you by HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK] Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/du-watch/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: du-watch-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ ***************************************************************** 33 [DU-WATCH] Iraqi Hospital on life support Date: Sat, 6 Mar 2004 01:00:44 -0600 (CST) How the US liberation created shortages of medicine, equipment etc http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A31728-2004Mar4?language=printer ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ---------------------~--> Buy Ink Cartridges or Refill Kits for your HP, Epson, Canon or Lexmark Printer at MyInks.com. Free s/h on orders $50 or more to the US & Canada. http://www.c1tracking.com/l.asp?cid=5511 http://us.click.yahoo.com/mOAaAA/3exGAA/qnsNAA/Sj.0lB/TM ---------------------------------------------------------------------~-> [Brought to you by HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK] Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/du-watch/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: du-watch-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ ***************************************************************** 34 [DU-WATCH] anthrax vaccine or uranium causing birth defects and Date: Fri, 5 Mar 2004 23:14:26 -0600 (CST) 1. anthrax 2. uranium 111111111111111111111111111 http://www.sundaymirror.co.uk/news/content_objectid=14000046_method=full_sit eid=106694_headline=-SCANDAL-OF-THE-ANTHRAX-BABIES-name_page.html February 29, 2004 Front Page and all of pages 4 & 5 ; UK Sunday Mirror: anthrax vaccine causing birth defects and miscarriages in Gul War II veterans 222222222222222222222222 http://www.sundayherald.com/40306 29 February 2004 MoD lied over depleted uranium .INVESTIGATION. Army advises troops in Iraq of health risk but insists Scottish firing range is safe, despite growing international concern By Neil Mackay and Amy Wilson CLAIMS by the Ministry of Defence that depleted uranium (DU) is not a risk to life have been undermined by a Sunday Herald investigation that found the British army is telling soldiers in Iraq that it can cause ill-health. The revelation has outraged the military, scientists and politicians. Studies have shown DU leads to cancers, birth defects, memory loss, damage to the immune system and neuro-psychotic disorders. But the MoD has claimed since the first Gulf war that DU does not pose a risk to health or the environment. However, military sources have passed an MoD card to the Sunday Herald which is being handed to troops on active service in Iraq. It reads: You have been deployed to a theatre where depleted uranium (DU) munitions have been used. DU is a weakly radioactive heavy metal which has the potential to cause ill-health. You may have been exposed to dust containing DU during your deployment. You are eligible for a urine test to measure uranium. If you wish to know more about having this test, you should consult your unit medical officer on return to your home base. Your medical officer can provide information about the health effects of DU. The MoD had fired more than 6350 DU rounds into the Solway Firth from its testing range at Dundrennan by 1999. In the first Gulf war 320 tonnes of DU were used, in the second more than 1000 tonnes were used . Locals in the Dundrennan area and their political leaders are angry that British troops are being warned about the risk of DU, while they are not. A UN sub-commission has ruled that the use of DU breaches the Geneva Convention and the Genocide Convention. DU has also been blamed for the effects of Gulf war syndrome among some 200,000 US troops. It has led to birth defects in the children of veterans and Iraqis and is believed to be the cause of the worrying number of anophthalmos cases babies born without eyes in Iraq. A study of veterans showed 67% had children with severe illnesses, missing eyes, blood infections, respiratory problems and fused fingers. Professor Doug Rokke, the ex-director of the Pentagons DU project and a former US Army colonel who was tasked by the US defence department to deal with DU after the first Gulf war, said: The MoD card acknowledges the risks. It contradicts the position it has taken publicly that there was no risk in order to sustain the use of DU rounds and avoid liability. Rokke attacked the US and UK for contaminating the world with DU munitions and said the issuing of the card meant that they had a moral obligation to provide care for all those affected and to clean up the environment in Iraq. DU is in residential areas in Iraq, troops are going by sites contaminated with it with no protective clothing or respiratory protection, and kids are playing in the same areas. He added: What right does anyone have to throw radioactive poison around and then not clean it up or offer people medical care? Rokke said that the use of DU in Iraq should be deemed a war crime. This war was about weapons of mass destruction, but the US and UK were the only people using WMD in the form of DU shells. Ray Bristow, trustee of the UKs National Gulf Veterans and Families Association, said the MoD card confirms what independent scientists have said for years. Bristow, 45, suffers from chromosomal abnormalities and conditions similar to those who survived the nuclear bomb in Hiroshima. A former warrant officer in the medical corps in the first Gulf war, he is now only able to walk short distances with a walking frame and often has to use a wheelchair. While the card may have been issued to British troops we have to ask, what about the Iraqi people? They are living among DU contamination. And what about the people in Dundrennan? The MoD line has always been that DU is safe it has been caught out in a lie. Bristow says some 29,000 British troops could be contaminated. He was found to have uranium in his system more than 100 times the safety limit. I put on a uniform because I believe in democracy and freedom, he said. Now I cant believe a word my government says. He also believes the discovery of the DU card will help affected troops sue for compensation. Globally, this discovery is of huge significance. Alasdair Morgan, the SNP MSP for the Dundrennan area, called for a ban on DU. He added: This find vindicates those who have said DU should never have been used or tested. T esting should stop in this area completely. Chris Ballance, the Green list MSP for the area, added: DU is a weapon of mass destruction that must be banned. He said the MoD must remove the shells that had been fired into the Solway Firth and tell the people of Dundrennan about the risks. Malcolm Hooper, emeritus professor of medicinal chemistry at Sunderland University and an expert on DU, said it was administrative deception for the MoD to claim DU was not a risk to health while issuing warnings to troops. Hooper, who is a government adviser on DU, described the governments behaviour as a dreadful experiment an obscenity and a war crime against our own troops. He said that the issuing of the card was a confession of failure by the government . Peter Kilfoyle, a former Labour defence minister, said: I can remember similar denials about Agent Orange, but invariably we discover these substances do have long-term consequences. Despite claims on its own website saying DU does not lead to health risks, an MoD spokesman said, when confronted with the card issued to troops: We never said it was a safe substance. It is radioactive, but there is no evidence to link it to ill-health. He said the cards had been issued to reassure troops, adding that the take-up of testing had been low as most soldiers understand the risks are minimal. The MoD insisted it had not changed its policy. [Brought to you by HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK] Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/du-watch/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: du-watch-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ ***************************************************************** 35 [DU-WATCH] FW: My letter published in March 1 "the Australian" Date: Fri, 5 Mar 2004 23:35:15 -0600 (CST) From: Meryl Nass, MD [mailto:mnass@gwi.net] Sent: Sunday, February 29, 2004 8:30 PM Subject My letter published in March 1 "the Australian" Vaccine linked to Gulf War syndrome 01 March 2004 MOST TALKED ABOUT Anthrax shots THANK you for your editorial calling for full informed consent for vaccinations and other medical procedures (23/2). Soldiers should have the same rights as the Australian citizens whose rights they defend. Lying to anyone about the safety of a proposed medical procedure is a clear violation of their civil rights. However, you erred on one very important point. Although the military would have you believe that claims of anthrax vaccine causing Gulf War syndrome, high rates of chronic illnesses, and problems with fertility are urban legends, in fact these claims are, unfortunately, true. In the UK, military physicians studying anthrax vaccination at five air force bases found that at least 25 per cent of recipients were made very ill immediately after vaccination, and of those who volunteered to receive the vaccine, only 25 per cent chose to complete the four dose series. Chronic illnesses were not evaluated. In the US vaccine's package label (which along with the UK vaccine was used in Australia) a large number of chronic illnesses are listed, including Gulf War syndrome (as defined by the Centers for Disease Control). Research sponsored by the US Navy has revealed that vaccine recipients, vaccinated during early pregnancy, have higher rates of birth defects in their offspring, leading to an additional warning in the package label. Six separate studies done by researchers in Canada, the UK and US have linked anthrax vaccine, and multiple vaccinations given before the first Gulf War deployment, to chronic illnesses in Gulf War veterans. Over 3000 anthrax vaccine adverse reactions have been reported to the US Food and Drug Administration since 1998. In fact, the only studies claiming the vaccine is safe long term are those performed by the US Army, which also holds the patent on the vaccine. Dr Meryl Nass Mount Desert Island Hospital Bar Harbor, Maine, US [Brought to you by HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK] Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/du-watch/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: du-watch-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ ***************************************************************** 36 [DU-WATCH] UN: Iraq had no WMD after 1994 Date: Fri, 5 Mar 2004 23:43:11 -0600 (CST) U.N.: Iraq had no WMD after 1994 By Bill Nichols, USA TODAY Posted 3/2/2004 1:33 AM UNITED NATIONS A report from U.N. weapons inspectors to be released today says they now believe there were no weapons of mass destruction of any significance in Iraq after 1994, according to two U.N. diplomats who have seen the document. The historical review of inspections in Iraq is the first outside study to confirm the recent conclusion by David Kay, the former U.S. chief inspector, that Iraq had no banned weapons before last year's U.S-led invasion. It also goes further than prewar U.N. reports, which said no weapons had been found but noted that Iraq had not fully accounted for weapons it was known to have had at the end of the Gulf War in 1991. The report, to be outlined to the U.N. Security Council as early as Friday, is based on information gathered over more than seven years of U.N. inspections in Iraq before the 2003 war, plus postwar findings discussed publicly by Kay. Kay reported in October that his team found "dozens of WMD-related program activities" that Iraq was required to reveal to U.N. inspectors but did not. However, he said he found no actual WMDs. The study, a quarterly report on Iraq from U.N. inspectors, notes that the U.S. teams' inability to find any weapons after the war mirrors the experience of U.N. inspectors who searched there from November 2002 until March 2003. Many Bush administration officials were harshly critical of the U.N. inspection efforts in the months before the war. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said in August 2002 that inspections "will be a sham." The Bush administration also pointedly declined U.N. offers to help in the postwar weapons hunt, preferring instead to use U.S. inspectors and specialists from other coalition countries such as Britain and Australia. But U.N. reports submitted to the Security Council before the war by Hans Blix, former chief U.N. arms inspector, and Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog agency, have been largely validated by U.S. weapons teams. The common findings: Iraq's nuclear weapons program was dormant. No evidence was found to suggest Iraq possessed chemical or biological weapons. U.N. officials believe the weapons were destroyed by U.N. inspectors or Iraqi officials in the years after the 1991 Gulf War. Iraq was attempting to develop missiles capable of exceeding a U.N.-mandated limit of 93 miles. Demetrius Perricos, the acting executive chairman of the U.N. inspection teams, said in an interview that the failure to find banned weapons in Iraq since the war undercuts administration criticism of the U.N.'s search before the war. "You cannot say that only the Americans or the British or the Australians currently inspecting in Iraq are the clever inspectors and the Americans and the British and the Australians that we had were not," he said. [Brought to you by HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK] Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/du-watch/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: du-watch-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ ***************************************************************** 37 [DU-WATCH] 2003 UMRC "Undiagnosed Illnesses & Health Date: Sat, 6 Mar 2004 01:13:15 -0600 (CST) Multiple Chemical Sensitivity International (MCS International) - London 2003 "Misdiagnosed Illnesses - what you can do medically and legally" http://www.elc.org.uk/pages/activities.htm Environmental Law Centre's website where you can find all participant's various papers and presentations. http://www.elc.org.uk/papers/2003Durakovic%20.doc: Undiagnosed Illnesses and Health Consequences of Weapons of Indiscriminate Action and Radioactive Battlefield Prof Asaf Durakovic, M.D., M.Sc., Ph.D., F.A.C.P., When I formerly hinted to you something of this in a letter, you were pleased to answer that you were afraid to giving offense, that people in power were very watchful over the press and apt not only to interpret but to punish everything that looked like an innuendo. --- A letter from Captain Gulliver to his cousin Simpson April 22, 1727 The purpose of this report is to contribute to the understanding of the etiology and pathogenesis of unexplained illnesses encountered in the aftermath of Persian Gulf War I, the Balkan conflicts, Afghanistan and Gulf War II. The Persian Gulf War of 1991 introduced the radioactive battlefield for the first time in history exposing both civilian populations and military personnel to internal contamination with isotopes of Uranium. Civilians of the Gulf States and soldiers of Britain, Canada and the United States were exposed to inhalation of radioactive dust as a consequence of the use of DU munitions. They were found to contain Depleted Uranium in urine samples as well as autopsy specimens of the lung liver, kidney and bone. Whole body measurements detected measurable concentrations of uranium in the first year after the war. Subsequently, neutron activation analysis and mass spectrometry confirmed significant concentrations and ratio of Uranium isotopes with the signature of DU ten years after exposure to the radioactive aerosols( 1). Depleted Uranium, a low level radioactive waste product of the isotopic enrichment of natural Uranium has been a sustained subject of controversy regarding its possible role as an etiological factor in the genesis of Gulf War Illness. While it has been well documented that Uranium isotopes contain both chemical and radiological toxic properties, with organotoxic, mutagenic and carcinogenic effects, recent studies have confirmed that Gulf war veterans contaminated either by DU shrapnel wounds of by inhalational internal contamination show significantly elevated concentration of Uranium isotopes in their urine (2). Recent biodistribtion studies in experimental animals implanted with DU pellets, confirm the well established fact of kidney and bone being the target organs for Uranium isotopes, with the most recent tissue distribution studies reporting a considerable retention in the central nervous system, reproductive and lymphatic system, with possible implication of their adverse effects and pathophysiological alterations of the organs of their retention (3). The potential mutagenic effects of internal contamination with DU were recently suggested by the time-dependent correlation of embedded DU and oncogen expression (4). Neoplastic transformation of human osteoblasts in a DU cell culture confirms a risk of DU mediated cancer induction (5). This is in agreement with the evaluation of the carcinogenic risk of endobronchial cells exposed to DU as well as recently reported quantitative evaluation of carcinogenic risk of DU in the lungs of GWI veterans (6) by determination of time zero pulmonary burden of inhaled Uranium aerosols. The carcinogenic risk of inhaled DU in the lungs was evaluated by applying the Battelle model of simulated interstitial lung fluid in the analysis of a twenty four hour sample of a Gulf War I veteran containing 0.150 micrograms of DU nine years after exposure (7). It was found that the lung burden of DU corresponds to 1.54 mg of DU at time zero of inhalational exposure with an alpha radiation dose of 4.4 millisievert (MSv) during the first year and 22.2MSv within 10 years of exposure. These values exceed the maximum permissible inhalational dose of DU and warrant sustained research in DU induced malignant alterations in the lungs. These human data reports are of particular importance when viewed in the light of recent evidence of mutagenic effects by a very small dose of alpha particles on the stem cells (8) and alpha radiation induced chromosomal instability and chromatid aberrations in human bone marrow cells (9). DU alpha particle induction of chromosomal instability clearly demonstrates mutagenic effects in Uranium positive British Gulf War veterans in a recent report from the University of Bremen, Germany (10). This is in agreement with previous reports of low alpha doseinduced chromosomal instabilities (11), as compared with identically transferred effects of photon radiation (12). Recent improvements in microbeam radiation of mammalian cells allow a precise assessment of the traversal of a single alpha particle through a nucleus of a cell with a capacity of measuring a carcinogenic effect of one single alpha particle (13). Although the mechanism of mutagenicity and oncogenic effects of inhaled alpha emitters still remains unclear, it has been reported that low dose alpha particles can cause sister chromatid changes in normal human cells (14). The practical implication of these studies is important in view of the fact that over ten percent of all lung cancer deaths on the U.S. are a result of pulmonary deposition of alpha emitters. It is also of importance in view of the well-demonstrated alpha particle induced genome instability (15). Human lung cells have been demonstrated to be more sensitive to the adverse effects of alpha particles than lung cells of most experimental animals (16). The lung remains the main portal of entry of Uranium isotopes into the internal environment of the body; the ultimate retention is the skeletal tissue as the final target organ (17). Recent reports of chronic exposure to natural Uranium ore dust are conclusive of both non-malignant and malignant tumor risk in the lung (18). Current reports demonstrate that DU can generate oxidative DNA damage by catalyzing hydrogen peroxide and ascorbate reactions (19). Radiation-induced cell death, chromosomal alterations, cellular transformation, mutation and carcinogenisis are mainly a consequence of the radiation deposited in the nucleus of the cell. Low-level radiation could induce genomic instability with no obvious dose-rate effects, rendering the high doses extrapolation impossible and emphasizing the importance of bystander effects in low-level radiation with alpha particle (20). Alpha radiation induced sister chromatid exchanges at variable doses may elicit alterations in the nucleus expressed as a gene mutation while interacting with cellular cytoplasm. These harmful effects challenge the criticism that low doses of DU are incapable of producing genetic alterations. Gulf War I of 1991 resulted in a post conflict legacy of 350 metric tons of DU left and 3- 6 million grams of DU aerosol in the atmosphere by the most conservative estimates (21). Another legacy of Gulf War I is the Gulf War disease, the complex incapacitating multi organ system disorder, originally thought a consequence of inhalation of desert dust (El Eskan Disease). It subsequently acquired a multitude of names, the number of which appears inversely proportional to the amount of knowledge about the disease. The symptoms of this disabling illness have been equally numerous as their names and predominantly include incapacitating fatigue, musculo-skeletal and joint pains, headaches, neuro-psychatric disorders, changes of affect, confusion, visual disturbances, gate alterations, memory loss, lymphadenopathies, respiratory impairment, impotence, gastro-intestinal symptoms and urinary tract changes. Initially dismissed as malingering, it evolved through the stages a form of chronic fatigue syndrome, post traumatic stress disorder PTSD, through the galaxy of names to currently legally recognized, poorly understood disease entity conventionally accepted in some and not recognized in other countries, with the objective research on its etiology being delayed, misdirected, discouraged and openly antagonized being in non conformity with some of the agenda of political and industrial establishment. Some of the postulated etiological factors include exposure to oil spills and fires, prophylactic medications, biological and chemical warfare agents, non-specific multi-factorial causes of immune system changes and exposure to DU containing aerosols. Whether it is named Al-Eskan disease (23), Gulf War Syndrome (24) or any other name its etiology and pathogenesis have not been co-coordinated, mainly due to the lack of objective interdisciplinary research, There is a similarity of symptomatology and lack of understanding of the causology in both the GW and Balkan syndromes. The criteria of classification still remains unresolved. Several criteria are best exemplified by Haleys factor analysis with as many as six dominant syndromes (25) including three major and no less than 17 minor categories, with other names such as mucocutanious-intestinalrheumatic desert syndrome (26) neuro-immune syndrome, post traumatic stress syndrome and other entities. Some of the causes of GW syndrome such as oil spills; oil refinery fires and desert dust can be eliminated as contributing factors in the Balkans syndrome, however DU armour piercing weapons were used in both conflicts. Nevertheless, the role DU has been downplayed regardless of the reported evidence that allied forces GW I veterans continue excreting Uranium isotopes with a signature of DU 10 years after the exposure to inhalation of DU containing radioactive aerosols, generated by the use of DU ordnance. Most of other proposed causative factors, such as the low level chemical agents, oil refinery fires, immunization, botulism, desert sand, aspergylus flagus, aflatoxins, mycoplasma and other etiological agents have a short biological half-time as compared with the long physical and biological half time of Uranium isotopes. The sustained multiple and progressive clinical manifestations of Gulf War and Balkan illnesses indicate a factor with a long half-life. It has been reported that 15 -20 percent of allied forces Gulf War veterans have reported sick and over 25,000 had died by the year 2000. There is a conspicuous absence of any meaningful basic science and clinical studies of a correlation of the illnesses with Uranium isotope contamination. Similarly there is no meaningful explanation of the sharp increase of cancer rates among the GW- I veterans. The most recent reports of chromosomal aberrations in British GW-I veterans clearly point to DU as a possible oncogenic and mutagenic contributing factor in the Gulf War illnesses (28). The Uranium Medical Research Centre UMRC is the only institution that has performed sustained research on inhalational DU internal contamination and consistently used state of art methodology of thermal ionization and plasma mass spectrometry demonstrating 0.2- 0.33 percent of U235 in the GW I veterans in the total Uranium concentration of 150 ng/L while non exposed contained 0.7 to 1.0 percent of U 235 with a urinary concentration of 14 ng/L. While UMRC research studies of DU in the urine of GW-I veterans were conducted several years after the actual exposure, its most recent scenario of collecting biological and environmental specimens in Afghanistan immediately after Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) provided an opportunity to perform contamination studies close to the time of conflict. Operation Anaconda ended as the first UMRC field team entered eastern Afghanistan .The team had access only to stationary targets and fixed assets since the mobile military equipment had either been removed or secured. The UMRC studies of the population of Jalalabad, Spin Gar, Tora Bora and Kabul areas have identified civilians suffering from similar multi- organ non-specific symptomatology as was encountered in the GW-I and Balkan conflicts. The symptoms encountered included physical weakness, headaches, muscular skeletal pains, respiratory system changes, fever, persistent dry cough, chest pain, gastro-intestinal symptoms, neurological problems, memory loss, anxiety and depression. Twenty four hour urine samples from symptomatic subjects as well as from a control population were collected by the criteria of 1) the onset of symptoms relative to the bombing raids, 2) physical presence in the area of bombing and 3) clinical presentation. The control subjects were selected by their residence in areas not targeted by the bombing and by the absence of symptoms. The assessment of environmental contamination has been performed by the analysis of soil dust, debris as well as drinking water according to established criteria of the estimate of dispersal and hazard o actinides (29) and post impact collection of environmental samples (30). All subjects including the controls were briefed about the protocol and sample collection in local Dari and Pashtu languages. Each subject signed an informed consent form. All samples were analyzed for the concentration and ratio of four Ur isotopes U234, U235, U236 and U238 by the multi collector inductively couples plasma ionization mass spectrometry in the laboratory of the British Geological survey, Nottingham, England. The first results from the Jalalabad revealed significantly increased urinary excretion of total uranium in 100 percent of the subjects, exceeding an average of 20 times higher values than in the non exposed population. The isotopic analysis ratio identified non-depleted Uranium. Subsequent studies of the second field in May 2003 revealed Uranium concentrations the in some samples was 200 times higher than in the control population. These high levels of total Uranium excretion have been identified in the districts of Tora Bora, Yaka Toot, Lal Mal, MahKelai, Makam.Khan, Arda farm districts, Bibi Mahro, Poli Cherki and the Kabul airport. Both filed trips revealed identical ratios of non-depleted Uranium in all areas of eastern Afghanistan. Uranium levels in the soil samples from the areas of OEF bombsites show values of 2-3 times higher than worldwide concentration levels of 2-3 mg/kg and significantly higher concentration in water than WHO maximum permissible levels (31,32). Current UMRC research expands the studies in Afghanistan to the central, western and northern regions. In addition to the continuation of urine excretion studies of Uranium isotopes, interdisciplinary collaboration will be extended to the clinical assessment of renal and pulmonary function, cytogenetic studies of chromosomal aberrations in the peripheral blood of contaminated subjects, electromicroscopic and nanopathology studies of selected tissue samples of biopsy and autopsy specimens. The follow up studies on the GW-I veterans and eastern Afghanistan civilians will continue together with evaluation of unexplained illnesses currently encountered in veterans returning form GW-II post conflict areas. Our studies will be conducted in the international university medical centers and research institutions to evaluate health effects of DU and Non Depleted Uranium (NDU) primarily in the renal and respiratory system by using state of art morphological and functional studies (33). These studies of neoplasitc transformation (34), cellular apoptosis 35), mutagenesis (36) carcinogenic risk(37) are included in the areas of UMRC collaborative research. Our studies of the mechanisms of Uranium contamination by environmental sources (38), inhalational pathway of the mass contamination in military conflicts and clinical studies of the biodistribution acute and chronic effects of Uranium isotope compounds (39) will include our models of the determination of cumulative radiation dose and its biological effects since the introduction of radioactive warfare. Our current evidence of increased carcinogenic risk from inhaled DU (40) will extend to the studies of the biological half-life of carcinogenic risk in the civilian population in Iraq, Gaza strip and Afghanistan. With the purpose of contributing to the understanding and management of currently undiagnosed illnesses in the post conflict areas of the use of the weapons of indiscriminate effects. The currently unresolved questions of etiology, pathogenesis and management of the undiagnosed diseases encountered in the recent military conflicts and interventions(41) may soon be removed from the list of mysterious illnesses by the inevitable advent of unbiased and objective scientific research. References 1. Durakovic, A., Horan, P., Dietz, L.: The quantitative analysis of depleted uranium isotopes in British, Canadian and United States Gulf War Veterans, Military Medicine 167, 9, 620, 2002. 2. McDiarmid MA, Keogh JP, Kooper FJ, McPhaul K, Squibb K, Kaine R, Pino R, Kabat M, Kaup B, Anderson L, Hoover D, Brown L, Hamilton M, Jacobson-Kram D, Burrows B, Walsh M. Health effects of depleted uranium on exposed Gulf War veterans. Res 2000; 83(2): 168-80. 3. Pellmar TC, Keyser DO, Emery C, Hogan JB. Electrophysiologic changes in hippocampal slices isolated from rats imbedded with depleted uranium fragments. Neurotoxicology 1999; 20,5: 575-92. 4. Miller AC, Fuciarelli AF, Jackson WE, Ejnik EJ, Emond C, Strocko S, Hogan J, Page N, Pelmar T. Urinary and serum mutagenicity studies with rats implanted with depleted uranium or tantalum pellets. Mutagenesis 1998; 13-6: 643-8. 5. Miller, A.C., Blakely, W.F., Livengood, D., Whittaker, T., Xu, J., Ejnik, J.W., et al.: Transformation of human osteoblast cells to the tumorigenic phenotype by depleted uranium-uranyl chloride. Environ Health Perspect 1988; 106: 465-71 6. Durakovic, A., Dietz, L., Zimmerman, I., Evaluation of the Carcinogenic Risk of Depleted Uranium in the Lungs of Gulf War Veterans 7. Durakovic, A., Dietz, L., Horan, P., Zimmerman, I.: Estimate of the time-zero lung burden of Depleted Uranium in Gulf War Veterans by the 24 hour urinary excretion and exponential decay analysis. Military Medicine,168,8:600-605,2003. 8. Kadhim MS, MacDonald DA, Goodhead DT, Buckle VJ, Wright EG. Transmission of chromosomal instability after plutonium (alpha)particle irradiation. Nature 355 1992; No.6362: 738-80. 9. Kadhim MS, Lorrimore SA, Hepburn MD, Goodhead DT, Buckle VJ, Wright EG. Alpha-particle induced chromosomal instability in human bone marrow cells. Lancet 1994; 344: 987-8. 10. Schroder, H., Heiniers, A., Freutzel-Pague, R., Schott, A., Hoffmann, W.,: Chromosome aberration analysis in peripheral lymphocytes of Gulf War and Balkan War Veterans. Radiat. Protection Dosimetry J: 103,3,211-219, 1003. 11. Nagasawa H, Little JB. Induction of sister chromatic exchanges by extremely low doses of alpha particles. Cancer Research 1992; 52: 6394-96. 12. Evans HJ. Alpha-particle after effects. Nature 355, No.6362: 674-5, 1992. 13. Miller, R.C., Randers-Pehrson, G., Gerard, S.R., Hall, E.J. Brenner, D.J: The oncogenic transformation of the passage of a single alpha particle through mammalian cell nuclei. Proc. National Academy of Sciences, USA 96, 1, 19-22, 1999. 14. Lehnert, B.E., Goodwin, E.H.: Extracellular factors following exposure to alpha particles can cause sister-chromatid exchanges in normal human cells, Cancer Research 57, 11, 2164-2171, 1997. 15. Kennedy, C.H., Mitchell, C.E., Fukushima,N.H., Neft, R.E., Lechner, J.F.: Introduction of genomic instability in normal human bronchial epithelial cells by 239Pu alpha particles, Carcinogenesis 17, 8, 1671-1676, 1996. 16. Simmons, J.A., Colin, P., Min, T.: Survival and yields of chromosomal aberrations in hamster and human lung cells irradiated by alpha particles, Radiation Res. 145, 2, 174-180, 1996. 17. Dewit, T., Clulow, V., Jackson, J.S., Mitchel, R.E.: Uranium and uranium decay series radionuclide dynamics in bone of rats following chronic uranium ore dust inhalation, Health Physics, 81, 5, 502-513, 2001. 18. Mitchel, R.E., Jacksonm J.S., Heinmiller, B., Inhaled uranium ore dust and lung cancer risk in rats, Health Physics, 76, 2, 145-155, 1999. 19. Miller, A. C., Stewart, M., Brooks, K., Shi, L., Page, N.: Depleted uranium-catalyzed oxidative DNA damage: absence of significant alpha particle decay, J. inorganic Biochemistry 91, 1, 246-252, 2002. 20. Morgan, W.: Genomic instability and bystander effects: A paradygm shift in Radiation Biology, Military Medicine, 167, supp. 1, 044, 2002. 21. Durakovic, A.: On Depleted Uranium: Gulf War and Balkan Syndrome, Croat. Med. J. 42, 130-134, 2001. 22. Bell, D.S..: The doctors guide to Chronic Fatique symdrome, Addison-Wesley Publishing Co. 1994. 23. Korenyi-Both, A.L., Juncor, D.J., Korenyi-Both, A.L.,: Al Eskan disease: Persian Gulf Syndrome. Mil Med 1997; 162: 1-13. 24. Jamal, G.A.: Gulf War Syndrome-a model for the complexity of biological and environmental interactions with human health. Adverse Drug React Toxicol Rev 1998; 17: 1-17. 25. Haley, R.W., Kurt, T.L., Hom, J.: Is ther a Gulf War Syndrome? Searching for syndromes by factor analysis of symptoms. JAMA 1997; 277: 215-22. 26. Murray-Leisure, K., Daniels, M.O., Sees, J., Suguitan, E., Zangwill, B., Bagheri, S., et al. Mucocutaneous-intestinal-rheumatic desert syndrome (MIRDS). Definition , histopathology, incubation period and clinical course and association with desert san exposure. Inter. J. Med. 1997; 1: 47-22. 27. Sartin, J.S., Gulf War illnesses: causes and controversies. Mayo Clin Proc 2000; 75: 811-9. 28. Busby, C.: Science on trial: on the biological effects and health risks following exposure to aerosols produced by the use of depleted uranium weapons. Invited presentation to the Royal Society; 2000 Jul 19; London, UK; given in part to the International Conference against Depleted Uranium; 2000 Nov 4-5; Manchester, UK. Occasional Paper 2000/11. Aberstwyth: Green Audit; Oct. 2000. 29. Mia Z.: Plutonium dispersal and health hazards from nuclear weapons accidents, Current Science, 80, 10, 2001. 30. Schmidt, L.J.: When the Dust Settles Earth Observatory NASA, US National Aeronautics and Space Administration, 2001. 31. Durakovic, A., Parrish, R., Gerdes, A., Zimmerman, I.: The Quantitative Analysis of Uranium isotopes in the Urine of civilians after Operation Enduring Freedom in Jalalabad, Afghanistan. 48th Annual Meeting of the Health Physics Society, San Diego, July 20-24, 2003. 32. Durakovic, A., Parrish, R., Gerdes, A., Zimmerman, I.: Uranium isotopes concentration and ratios in the civilian population of southeastern Afghanistan. FANM Annual Meeting, Amsterdam. 33. Edwards, R.: Too hot to handle, New Scientist, 162, 2189, 20-21, 1999. 34. Miller, A. C., Xiu, J., Stewart, M., Prasanna, P.G., Page, N.: Potential late health effects of depleted uranium and tungsten used in armor-piercinig munitions: Comparison of neoplastic transformation and genotoxicity with the Known carcinogen nickel, Military Med. 167, 2 (supp) 120-122, 2002 35. Kalinich, J.F., Ramakrishnan, N., Villa, V., McClain, D.E.: Depleted uranul-chloride induces apoptosis in mouse 1774 Macrophages, Toxicology, 179, 1-2, 105-114, 2002. 36. Miller, A. C., Xiu, J., Stewart, M., McClain, D: Suppression of depleted uranium-induced neoplastic transformation of human cells by phenyl fatty acid, phenyl acetate; chemoprevention by targeting the p 21 RAS protein pathway, Radiation Res 155, 163-170, 2001. 37. Hahn, F.F., Guilmette, R. A., Hoover, M. D.: Implanted Depleted Uranium fragments cause soft tissue sarcomas in the muscles of rats, Environmental Health Perspectives 110, 1, 51-59, 200. 38. Hakonson-Hayes, A. C., Fiesquez, P.R., Whicker, F.W.: Assessing potential risks from exposure to natural uranium in well water, J. Environmental Radioactivity 59, 1, 29-40, 2002. 39. Leach, L.G., Yuile, C.L., Hodge, H.C., Sylvester, G.E., Wilson, H.B.: A five year inhalation study with natural uranium dioxide (UO2) dust-II. Post exposure retention and biologic effects in monkey, dog and rat. Health Physics, 25, 9, 239-258, 1973. 40. Durakovic, A., Dietz, L., Zimmerman, I.: Differential decay analysis of the alpha dose of Depleted Uranium and the neoplastic risk in the lungs of Gulf War Veterans. Society of Nuc Med 50th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA, June 21-25, 2003. 41. Abu-Qare, AW, Abou-Donia MB: Depleted uranium the growing concern, J. Applied Toxicology 22, 3, 149-152, 2002. ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ---------------------~--> Buy Ink Cartridges or Refill Kits for your HP, Epson, Canon or Lexmark Printer at MyInks.com. Free s/h on orders $50 or more to the US & Canada. http://www.c1tracking.com/l.asp?cid=5511 http://us.click.yahoo.com/mOAaAA/3exGAA/qnsNAA/Sj.0lB/TM ---------------------------------------------------------------------~-> [Brought to you by HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK] Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/du-watch/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: du-watch-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ ***************************************************************** 38 DHHS: CDC: Advisory board on Radiation Worker Safety FR Doc 04-4944 [Federal Register: March 5, 2004 (Volume 69, Number 44)] [Notices] [Page 10454] From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr05mr04-77] DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ACTION: Publication of closed meeting summary of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health (ABRWH), National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), CDC. Committee Purpose: This board is charged with (a) providing advice to the Secretary, Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), on the development of guidelines under Executive Order 13179; (b) providing advice to the Secretary, HHS, on the scientific validity and quality of dose reconstruction efforts performed for this Program; and (c) upon request by the Secretary, HHS, advise the Secretary on whether there is a class of employees at any Department of Energy facility who were exposed to radiation but for whom it is not feasible to estimate their radiation dose, and on whether there is reasonable likelihood that such radiation doses may have endangered the health of members of this class. Background: The ABRWH met on February 6, 2004, in closed session to discuss the Proposed Independent Government Cost Estimates (IGCE) for proposed tasks of a task order contract. This contract, once awarded, will provide technical support to assist the Board in fulfilling its statutory duty to advise the Secretary, HHS, regarding the dose reconstruction efforts under the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act. A Determination to Close the meeting was approved and published, as required by the Federal Advisory Committee Act. Summary of the Meeting: Attendance was as follows: Board Members: Paul L. Ziemer, Ph.D., Chair; Henry A. Anderson, M.D., Member; Antonio Andrade, Ph.D., Member; Roy L. DeHart, M.D., M.P.H., Member; Richard L. Espinosa, Member; Michael H. Gibson, Member; Mark A. Griffon, Member; James M. Melius, M.D., Dr.P.H., Member; Wanda I. Munn, Member; Charles L. Owens, Member; Robert W. Presley, Member; Genevieve S. Roessler, Ph.D., Member. NIOSH Staff: Martha DiMuzio, Cori Homer, Liz Homoki Titus, David Naimon, and Jim Neton; Larry J. Elliott, Executive Secretary. Ray S. Green, Court Recorder Summary/Minutes: Dr. Ziemer called to order the ABRWH in closed session on February 6, 2004, at 1:45 p.m. The purpose of the closed meeting was to discuss the Independent Government Cost Estimate for proposed tasks of a task order contract that provides technical support to the ABRWH review of completed dose reconstructions. General topics discussed: Closed session procedures and Independent Government Cost Estimates for task proposals of the task order contract. Dr. Paul Ziemer adjourned the closed session of the ABRWH meeting at 3 p.m. with no further business being conducted by the ABRWH. FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Larry Elliott, Executive Secretary, ABRWH, NIOSH, CDC, 4676 Columbia Parkway, Cincinnati, Ohio 45226, telephone (513) 533-6825, fax (513) 533-6826. The Director, Management Analysis and Services Office, has been delegated the authority to sign Federal Register notices pertaining to announcements of meetings and other committee management activities for both CDC and the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry. Dated: February 27, 2004. Alvin Hall, Director, Management Analysis and Services Office, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. [FR Doc. 04-4944 Filed 3-4-04; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 4163-19-P ***************************************************************** 39 Salt Lake Tribune: Fund for radiation victims clears hurdle March 05, 2004 By Robert Gehrke The Associated Press WASHINGTON -- Senate budget leaders agreed Thursday to fully fund a compensation program for people suffering from cancer and other illnesses because of their exposure to nuclear weapons programs and testing. If Congress approves the recommendation, which is included in a $2.36 trillion budget blueprint, the Radiation Exposure Compensation trust fund will not go broke next year, and ailing residents will not be issued government IOUs. President Bush requested an additional $72 million for the compensation claims, and the Senate Budget Committee included the request in the bill it sent to the Senate on Thursday. Congress passed the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act in 1990 to compensate uranium miners, millers or ore haulers and so-called downwinders -- those exposed to radioactive fallout from aboveground weapons tests in Nevada. Claimants sickened by their radiation exposure can receive checks ranging from $50,000 to $150,000 from the government. But for years the program has been plagued by shortfalls. In May 2000, the RECA Trust Fund ran dry. For 18 months, cancer-stricken claimants received IOUs from the Justice Department. Many died waiting for their checks to come. The problem was supposedly fixed when Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., and others convinced Congress to approve $65 million a year for the RECA program through 2011. But the program was also expanded to include more people, and the Justice Department has been processing claims more quickly. As a result, the General Accounting Office and Congressional Budget Office estimated the compensation fund would use up its available money by June 2005 and have to go back to issuing IOUs. Several senators, including Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and Domenici had expressed concern about the potential shortfalls and urged the budget committee to approve Bush's request of an additional $72 million. The Justice Department estimates that more than $100 million could be needed to pay the remaining claimants, although the Congressional Budget Office puts the figure at $78 million. To date . . . The government has approved 11,174 claims and paid $735 million to residents in the following states: * Utah * Nevada * Colorado * Arizona * Texas * New Mexico * Wyoming * Idaho * South Dakota * North Dakota * Oregon * Washington "> Copyright Salt Lake City Tribune ***************************************************************** 40 Bellona: Nuclear submarine Dmitry Donskoy is about to enter active service From 1955 to 2001, a total of 248 nuclear-powered submarines and five nuclear-powered surface ships were built for the Soviet It took more than 10 years to upgrade the sub at the Sevmash plant. 2004-03-05 16:35 In the end of last year the sub conducted successful sea trials and launched a testing missile in December. The submarine was based in Severodvinsk since 1989 and only recently Russia found the funds to complete the upgrade. In June 2002 the nuclear cruiser was taken out of the dock. Dmitry Donskoy was upgraded to the fourth generation submarine. The submarine received new equipment, control systems, weaponry and more reliable life-support systems. Some media sources claim, the submarine has not entered active service yet due to the lack of the modern missiles. However, the sub might leave for its permanent base in Zapadnaya Litsa on the Kola Peninsula in the second half of this year. The submarine was built at the Sevmash plant in 1982 and became the first Russian Typhoon submarine Design Bureau Rubin (St Petersburg) developed third generation Typhoon (Akula) class submarine project 941. Sevmash built six Typhoons. The submarine has multi-hulled design, having two parallel main hulls, also called strong hulls, inside the light hull. Maximum diving depth is 400 m. Speed is 12 knots when surfaced and 27 knots when submerged. Typhoon is capable of spending 120 days at sea. The submarine is divided into 19 compartments and powered with two 190 megawatts nuclear reactors. 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 ***************************************************************** 41 Tri-City Herald: Downwinder plaintiff drops out of suit This story was published Friday, March 5th, 2004 By Annette Cary Herald staff writer SPOKANE -- One of 12 downwinders picked as bellwether plaintiffs for people who believe their health was damaged by Hanford emissions has dropped out of a federal lawsuit. The woman said she pulled out because she believes her claim is weak. In federal court in Spokane on Thursday, plaintiff and defense attorneys squabbled over the significance of her decision. Federal Judge William Fremming Nielsen last year ordered both sides to pick six bellwether plaintiffs to take to trial in an attempt to move the suit, now more than a decade old, toward resolution. A jury trial of a dozen claims could lead to a settlement of the 1,800 claims in the suit, he said. Plaintiff attorneys said Thursday that the defense had purposely picked Karla Griffin, the woman who dropped out, because the defense thought her claim was weak. Defense attorneys said her claim was typical. Griffin, whose hometown has not been released, notified the court that after being formally questioned by attorneys in preparation for the trial, she realized she had a family history of thyroid disease, according to attorneys. When plutonium was being produced at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation during World War II and the Cold War, radioactive iodine was released into the air and drifted over hundreds of miles. People living downwind ingested the radioactive iodine when they ate contaminated crops or drank milk from cows that grazed on contaminated grass. Once ingested, radioactive iodine concentrates in the thyroid. All the bellwether plaintiffs have thyroid disease. Attorney Kevin Van Wart of Chicago, representing past Hanford contractors, said claims should have been vetted to remove people with family histories that would show Hanford likely was not the cause of their thyroid disease. Defense attorneys were picking from the bottom of the pool of defendants when they selected their bellwether group, countered downwinder attorney Louise Roselle of Cincinnati. The defense attorneys were looking for bad cases that would not make it to trial, she said. "This was not bottom feeding," Van Wart said. "This was feeding from the core." Plaintiff attorneys signed up clients with thyroid disease, regardless of how much exposure they were likely to have had to radioactive iodine, he said. He said that when selecting an initial 15 bellwether plaintiffs, the defense had to make 45 selections because plaintiffs were being dropped from the suit. The bellwether trial is scheduled in March 2005. In an additional attempt to settle the suit, mediation is to start this month. © 2004 Tri-City Herald, Associated Press ***************************************************************** 42 Las Vegas SUN: Reid to sponsor Senate hearing on silicosis March 04, 2004 By Suzanne Struglinski WASHINGTON -- The Energy Department's lack of silica protection for former Yucca Mountain project workers will be topic of a Senate hearing to take place March 15. The department admitted last month that it knew silica, which can cause the lung disease silicosis, existed at Yucca Mountain but did not require workers digging a tunnel or mining rock there to wear protective gear to protect against silica. Then, a statement surfaced in which a former worker for a contractor said her boss made her change silica dust level tests, causing more concern. Nevada Sen. Harry Reid, the top Democrat on the Senate subcommittee that controls the Energy Department's budget, will sponsor the hearing. He sent letters to the Energy Department looking for answers after it started a silicosis screening project for former Yucca workers in January. "DOE (the Energy Department) knew that exposure is 100 percent preventable, but did nothing that would have protected these workers," Reid said. "At best, DOE's actions are negligent and at worst criminal and I intend to use the hearing to get to the bottom of this." Reid's office notes that the senator's father was a miner who suffered from silicosis. Reid blasted the department's actions at a Senate Appropriations subcommittee this morning where Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham testified on portions of the budget request. Reid said miners at Tonopah died of the same sickness and it is clear the department knew the Yucca workers were also in danger, but did nothing about it. He said his father had the sickness. "I thought all dads coughed at night," Reid said. Reid will work with the whistleblowers who alerted the department to the problems to see what type of federal compensation program might work best for them. Reid has also asked Labor Secretary Elaine Chao to look into the issue but has not received any response yet, according to his office. A final witness list is not complete yet, but Reid's office said current and former Yucca Mountain project workers, department officials, and medical and industrial health experts are among those expected to testify. The hearing, which is open to the public, will take place from 10 a.m. to noon on March 15 at the Clark County Government Building, Commission Chambers, 500 S. Grand Central Parkway. ***************************************************************** 43 Tampa Bay Times: Report downplays Coronet risk Cancer rates near the Plant City factory are lower than the state average, officials say. By RON MATUS, Times Staff Writer Published March 5, 2004 TAMPA - Cancer rates around the Coronet Industries factory in Plant City are below the state average, a state report released Thursday concludes - a finding that suggests fears about a pollution epidemic may be overblown. Officials at the much-maligned plant said they were thrilled with the state Department of Health report, but health officials continue to urge caution. The report is "reassuring but it does not absolutely prove there has been no illness caused in that area," said Doug Holt, who directs the Hillsborough County Health Department and heads a multiagency investigation into Coronet. Thursday's report is part of that wider inquiry. The latest findings come as the aging factory, which turns phosphate into a chicken-feed additive, prepares to shut down at the end of this month. Company officials blame a shrinking market, not environmental problems. But the plant has drawn a barrage of negative media reports and the attention of U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, celebrity lawyer Johnnie Cochran and the California law firm that employs Erin Brockovich. The new report isn't likely to quell fears or stymie lawsuits, including one that Brockovich's firm filed on behalf of 1,200 residents. But it adds to mounting evidence that the plant is not poisoning its neighbors. Since public concern swelled into near panic last summer, a team of government agencies has examined water, air and soil around the plant and found no major problems. Perhaps the most troubling findings came in tests showing elevated levels of arsenic, boron and radioactive articles - all pollutants linked to phosphate processing - in dozens of drinking-water wells near the plant. In response, the state is providing bottled water to more than 40 families. But even so, health officials say the pollution levels are not high enough to cause either serious or widespread health problems. For the most recent report, officials pored through the Florida Cancer Data System, a statewide registry that includes 1.3-million cancer cases. Virtually all cancers diagnosed by Florida doctors are included in the system. Investigators zeroed in on a 48-square-mile area around the plant and looked at data between 1990 and 2000. They limited the review to cancers known to be caused by the pollutants in question, including bone, bladder, breast, lung and prostate cancers. The result: Cancer rates were lower than the state average for both black and white residents. The only exception was higher melanoma rates among white residents, but officials said those rates were not high enough to be "statistically significant." Residents were stumped. The report "doesn't make any sense," said Elaine Edenfield, the mother of a cancer survivor and one of the people who first brought cancer rates to the attention of authorities. "We've got more cases out here than we've ever had. And it's house to house to house to house." Authorities have not looked into the rates of other reported illnesses, including developmental disorders, but said Thursday they will do so. They also said other tests remain to be done, including an analysis of fish in ponds near the plant. A final report is due this fall. - Ron Matus can be reached at 813 226-3405 or [Last modified March 5, 2004, 01:31:15] Tampa Bay headlines ***************************************************************** 44 Times Business: Long odds on BNFL winning Japanese contract March 06, 2004 From Leo Lewis in Tokyo BNFL, the British nuclear fuels company, is on the verge of missing an important contract in Japan, where Kansai Electric Power is expected to select Cogema, BNFL’s French rival, to supply mixed oxide (MOX) nuclear fuel. Japan’s power companies represent the world’s biggest source of MOX business but BNFL has not yet won a contract in the country. If it does not break its way into the Japanese market soon, the future of its £300 million UK-based MOX facility in Sellafield may fall into doubt. Cogema is fast emerging as the likely choice because BNFL’s reputation as a supplier for the controversial fuel, made from reprocessed uranium and plutonium, remains tarnished after a document falsification scandal in 1999. Industry experts in Japan believe that BNFL’s image may be so irreparably damaged that any dealings with it would be hard to sell to the Japanese public. Speculation over the contract resurfaced as Kyushu Electric outlined plans to bring forward construction of a new MOX nuclear power plant in the southwestern province of Saga. Kansai was given the go-ahead to make its choice earlier this month only when the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency gave approval to the idea of buying the fuel from foreign manufacturers. Kansai’s original plan was put on hold in 1999 when the BNFL scandal broke. Fukui local government insiders confirmed that Kansai is unlikely to get clearance to hand the contract to BNFL. In the town of Takahama, where the Kansai MOX facility will be based, a pro-MOX legislator has said that there is “no way that the contract will be given to BNFL”. Doubts have also emerged over BNFL’s ability to deliver on the contracts immediately. It is understood to have sub-contracted recent MOX reprocessing orders to Cogema as its own plant is not fully finished. Copyright 2004 Times Newspapers Ltd. ***************************************************************** 45 Las Vegas RJ: Reid wants to help sick Yucca workers Friday, March 05, 2004 Senator eyes compensation for health woes By STEVE TETREAULT STEPHENS WASHINGTON BUREAU WASHINGTON -- Sen. Harry Reid said Thursday he might try to gain compensation for workers who believe their efforts to drill the exploratory tunnel at Yucca Mountain have led them to contract lung disease. "I think we need to get them some treatment," said the Nevada Democrat. "They should be compensated." Reid did not detail his plans during hurried remarks as he left a Senate hearing where moments earlier he launched a broadside of criticism at Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham over the Yucca Mountain Project. Reid was not available to elaborate. Aides said he is considering efforts to add Yucca workers to programs that assist former DOE project employees with health problems. Spokeswoman Tessa Hafen said Reid plans to confer with workers in Nevada before moving forward, and compensation might be discussed at a Senate hearing being held in Las Vegas on March 15 to hear from former repository workers and health officials. Compensation "is definitely an option but he is not actively pursuing it at this time until we see what the options are," Hafen said. "It certainly seems to be a natural fit." At the hearing to discuss parts of the Energy Department's budget for 2005, Reid charged the department and its contractors "put men's lives at risk" during tunneling operations that took place in the mid-1990s. "DOE's record for protecting workers from foreseeable risks is just horrible," Reid told Abraham. "I'm not making this up." Long an opponent of the plan to develop a nuclear waste repository in Nevada, Reid has focused on new questions about worker health and safety at the site 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas. DOE officials have acknowledged that miners, engineers and others who worked in the 5-mile exploratory tunnel might have been exposed to elevated levels of potentially hazardous fibrous dusts before ventilation was improved and effective safety masks were required to be worn. Abraham did not immediately respond to Reid's comments, but later in the hearing he defended DOE. He said the department established a free health screening program for Yucca Mountain employees and former tunnel workers soon after the issue came to its attention last year. Notices were being sent to more than 1,000 former workers. Copyright Las Vegas Review-Journal ***************************************************************** 46 Las Vegas SUN: Energy Dept. says nuke waste transit method leans toward rail By Kirsten Searer The Energy Department will have a better idea of how to ship spent nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain in a year or two, an administrator for the department said this morning at a hearing of the House Railroad Subcommittee in Las Vegas. Energy Department officials said they were focusing on transporting the waste mostly by rail, but are still considering rail and trucking routes. Gary Lanthrum, director of the national transportation department for the Office for Civilian Radioactive Waste Management in the Energy Department, told congressional members, including Reps. Jon Porter, R-Nev., and Shelly Berkley, D-Nev., that the Energy Department is listening to the concerns expressed by Nevadans as it makes a decision on how to transport nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain. On Christmas Eve the department announced that its preferred rail route for a railroad to ship nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain would go through what's known as the Caliente corridor, through central Nevada. It is especially looking at a rail route through the Caliente corridor. The department announced on Christmas Eve that the Caliente route is its preferred route for rails. Porter asked Lanthrum why that decision was announced on the holiday, when many congressional members and members of the press were focused on other issues. Porter called that move and the Energy Department's decision to proceed with planning Yucca Mountain while Nevada is awaiting a decision to a legal challenge to the project an insult to the state. Lanthrum responded that the department is proceeding with plans for Yucca Mountain because Congress approved the project in 2002. "We don't believe that moving ahead is thumbing our nose at Nevada," he said. Berkley asked Lanthrum what the Energy Department is doing to train first responders in case of possible terrorist attack on shipment. She said she has gotten calls from first responders from all over the country concerned tha they don't know what is going on. She also said that the Eenrgy Department should be more open about how it would mitigate the possibility of terrorist attacks on rails, something Lanthrum said is mostly classified information. "I think this is something the public needs to know," Berkley said. The Energy Department is listening to the concerns of Nevadans in determining a transportation route, Lanthrum said. "Nevadans have expressed a desire that the nuclear waste not go through the Las Vegas Valley and that it go by rail," he said. "We've certainly taking that into consideration as we've developed our plans." Lanthrum said around the U.S. and in Europe, there is a successful record of shipping spent nuclear fuel and radioactive materials without spills. Since the 1960s the Energy Department and industries have successfully completed about 3,000 spent nuclear fuel shipments over 1.7 million miles without injury, he said. In France and Britain an average of 640 shipments of spent nuclear fuel are transported each year, more than the 175 annual shipments currently contemplated for Yucca Mountain, he said. Nevada lawmakers hoped the hearing would lay out the state's concerns with the Energy Department's plans to move and store 77,000 tons of nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. The Energy Department would have to perform an environmental impact report and hold public hearings before it could build a railroad. ***************************************************************** 47 San Luis Obispo Tribune: Where will the poisonous waste go? | 02/29/2004 | Nuclear power Yucca Mountain, Nev., is where the government wants to put the nation's deadly spent fuel; meanwhile, Diablo Canyon continues with its radioactive-garbage plans David Sneed The Tribune YUCCA MOUNTAIN, Nev. - San Luis Obispo County has something in common with the retirees and casino workers of Nevada: trying to figure out what to do with highly radioactive nuclear waste, one of the nation's most pressing environmental problems. Tens of thousands of tons of some of the most dangerous and longest-lasting waste known to mankind sit at 131 sites around the country, including Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant. This spent fuel is so toxic that even touching it results in fatal exposure. The federal government wants to ship the waste to a remote ridge in Nevada called Yucca Mountain and bury it 1,000 feet underground in a $58 billion repository. This plan has sparked a controversy pitting the federal government against the state of Nevada and environmentalists that has lasted nearly 20 years. Now the nuclear waste problem is reaching crucial milestones in Nevada and San Luis Obispo County. "We hope to submit our application (to build the repository) to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission by the end of the year," said Gayle Fisher, a Yucca Mountain spokeswoman with the Department of Energy. Meanwhile, Pacific Gas and Electric Co. has applied to build a new facility at Diablo Canyon for storing its nuclear waste until the Yucca Mountain facility opens. The county Planning Commission held a public hearing on the plan Thursday, and the NRC is expected to issue its license for the facility in March. The facility could hold up to 138 dry casks, enough to store all of the waste generated by the plant through 2025. Starting in 2006, two or three casks a year will be filled with spent fuel. Big environmental battle Since the 1950s, the nation has struggled to find a way to safely dispose of its growing stockpile of highly radioactive nuclear waste. It primarily comes from the nation's 103 commercial nuclear power reactors located at 65 sites. These power plants have already produced 45,000 tons of waste, and 2,000 to 3,000 tons are added each year. The stockpile will eventually grow to an estimated 126,000 tons, if no new reactors are built. The Navy's nuclear-powered submarines and aircraft carriers, as well as nuclear research facilities, also produce high-level radioactive waste. The problem is an international one. Many industrialized nations have nuclear power plants. France, for example, gets 76 percent of its power from nuclear, compared to 20 percent in the United States. "I think nuclear waste will be one of the biggest environmental battles of the next few years," said Maxim Kniazkov, a Washington, D.C.-based staff writer with the French news service, Agence France-Presse, who recently toured Yucca Mountain. A variety of methods for disposing of nuclear waste - including burying it on the ocean floor or in polar ice or launching it into space to burn up in the sun - have been examined. Scientists have concluded that entombing the waste underground in a remote area is the most feasible option. In 1987, the U.S. government selected Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, as the best site for its waste. The Department of Energy, which is responsible for disposal of the nation's nuclear waste, was given a daunting task: Design the Yucca Mountain dump to last nearly twice as long as mankind's recorded history. "Here, we are looking at managing something for 10,000 years," said John Hartley, a geologist and tour guide with the Yucca Mountain Project. By that time, scientists estimate, almost all of the waste's radioactivity will have decayed to harmless levels. Opponents question whether such a long-lasting facility can be designed and warn that some radioactive elements in the waste will stay dangerous for hundreds of thousands of years. Picked for remoteness Yucca Mountain is about as remote a site as can be found in the continental United States. It is surrounded by Nellis Air Force Range and the well-guarded Nevada Test Site, where nuclear weapons have been tested above and below the ground. In addition to being remote and secure, Yucca Mountain has the kind of geology and arid climate scientists were seeking. Yucca Mountain is a mile-high, 12-mile-long ridge of compressed volcanic ash called tuff. The area's high-desert terrain is barren, almost lunar. Vegetation consists of sparse creosote and other drought-resistant plants. "Yucca Mountain is basically a big layer cake busted up by a couple of faults," Hartley said. Workers have drilled a 5-mile-long, 25-foot-wide tunnel into the mountain. If the repository is approved, the tunnel will be the main access portal. A 43-mile grid of tunnels will be bored into the mountain as well. Canisters containing nuclear waste will be stored end-to-end in the labyrinth. "We have not excavated one foot of those tunnels and cannot until we get a permit from the NRC," Hartley said. Officials expect the permitting process to take three years. If all goes according to plan, the repository could receive its first shipment of waste as early as 2010. In the meantime, the tunnel and the many niches and alcoves along its length act as an underground laboratory where scientists test the mountain's durability and permeability. They estimate that the most likely way radiation could escape such an underground tomb would be if the storage casks corrode over the eons and radioactive particles leach into the groundwater. Yucca Mountain proponents think this is highly unlikely, a contention refuted by geologists with the state of Nevada. The storage casks will be encased in corrosion-resistant, nickel-alloy canisters, which will be covered by titanium drip shields. What little rain falls on Yucca Mountain would have to percolate through 1,000 feet of rock to reach the casks. Any contamination that leaked from the canisters would have to seep through another 1,000 feet of rock to reach the water table. Yucca Mountain sits in an enclosed water basin called the Amargosa Valley, which is home to 1,300 residents and is geologically separate from the water table beneath Las Vegas. Although Yucca Mountain is made of volcanic ash and is ruptured by several faults, scientists estimate that the chances of an earthquake or volcanic eruption damaging the repository are slight. Tunnels near Yucca Mountain have received jolts from underground nuclear explosions much stronger than any anticipated earthquake and barely recorded any movement, Hartley said. The likelihood of a volcano disrupting the repository is calculated to be one in 36 million per year. Casinos don't want gamble The data are intended to be reassuring, but the reaction of environmentalists and most Nevadans has been near complete skepticism. Polling shows that 70 percent of all Nevadans are opposed to the Yucca Mountain repository. Nevada's lucrative tourism and gaming industries are concerned that the mere presence of a nuclear waste dump might cause people to avoid the state. "Anything that could cause people to reconsider coming here, either permanently or on vacation, we cannot support," said Catherine Levy with the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce. "The perception that it could be unsafe to come here causes us great concern." This opposition comes despite a recent University of Nevada study showing that the project pumped more than $195 million into the state's economy in 2002 and created 3,650 jobs. Democrat and Republican politicians alike in Nevada vie for who can be seen as the biggest opponent to the project. Most opposition is based on the belief that it is impossible to design a repository that will last 10,000 years. Some high-level scientists have echoed these concerns. An Energy Department technical review board has warned that heat from the spent fuel within the storage canisters would react with water and minerals in the mountain, causing the canisters to corrode sooner than expected. The state of Nevada has filed six lawsuits to stop the project and has established an agency called the Nuclear Waste Project Office to monitor Yucca Mountain. The state's official position is that there are too many scientific uncertainties to allow the project to proceed. "Many studies by federal government scientists and independent contractors suggest that Yucca Mountain is unsafe for holding nuclear waste and keeping it out of the environment," reads a state of Nevada opposition statement. "In fact, state of Nevada scientists believe that the site, under DOE's own guidelines, should already have been disqualified." DOE officials counter that doing nothing is not an option, and that an unprecedented amount of research has been done to make sure the repository will be safe. They also say that storing the nation's nuclear waste in one secure location is safer than leaving it spread out at more than 100 sites all over the nation. High-level support Geologist Hartley and others involved in the project think the effort to stop Yucca Mountain is another front in the bigger war against nuclear power. "I think the strategy of some environmental groups is that if they can delay Yucca Mountain long enough, the nuclear industry will drown in its own waste," he said. But the Yucca Mountain Project has powerful allies, the most formidable of which is President Bush. He has budgeted $880 million for the project in 2005, which is $300 million more than the agency requested. Given this high-level support, federal officials are cautiously optimistic the repository will be built. "I don't think anyone can say for sure, but we think we have a good license application," DOE spokeswoman Fisher said. In the meantime, the 180 employees of the project spend their time doing maintenance and more testing. They have also mounted a public relations campaign to convince Nevadans and the world that the project is safe and worthwhile. Since 1991, 50,000 people have toured the project. Tours are scheduled year-round for the public and a steady stream of reporters, lawmakers and foreign scientists. "Until now, we haven't done a very good job of showing to Nevadans that Yucca Mountain is a significant contribution to the country," Hartley said. David Sneed covers environmental issues for The Tribune. E-mail story ideas and comments to him at dsneed@thetribunenews.com Knight Ridder |Copyright ***************************************************************** 48 Pahrump Valley Times: Dear feds: help! (Yucca) March 5, 2004 Where are our members in Congress (Reid, Ensign, Gibbons, Berkley, and Porter) when we need them? They won't hesitate to give you their views about such high profile issues as Yucca Mountain, yet remain strangely silent about assisting counties that are financially boxed in by the federal government. Payments in Lieu of Taxes (PILT) are federal payments to local governments that help offset losses in property taxes due to nontaxable federal lands within their boundaries. Since the federal government claims dominion over 98 percent of Nye, the county is limited to collecting taxes on the remaining two percent. Recognizing that federal ownership of land could place an extreme financial burden on some counties, Congress enacted PILT legislation to compensate for their losses. However, the program has been hobbled by chronic under funding. Surely, Congress, the keeper of the nation's purse strings, could find a few million dollars from its multi-billion dollar failed war on drugs. Do you think a few million would be missed from the billions allocated annually for foreign aid? I think our congressional members need to explain why they always manage to throw away millions of tax dollars on outrageous port projects yet can't seem to fully fund PILT, which is so essential to Nye County because of the way it is financially strapped by the federal government. Senators Reid and Ensign, Representatives Gibbons, (Porter) and Berkley, are you listening? LEONARD J. COENEN webmaster@pahrumpvalleytimes.com Copyright © Pahrump Valley Times, 1997 - 2003 ***************************************************************** 49 Courier Post: State tests find problems with private wells courierpostonline.com Friday, March 5, 2004 By LAWRENCE HAJNA Courier-Post Staff A report card on a new law requiring testing of private wells during real estate transactions shows that 8 percent of those wells fail state standards for contaminants that can affect health. The report card, released Thursday, also found that 59 percent of wells in New Jersey fail for secondary contaminants, such as iron, that affect the quality of water but don't pose significant health threats. Officials found that an unsettling 12 percent of private wells failed for excessive levels of lead but plan to re-examine the data to determine if testing procedures were flawed. Bradley M. Campbell, the state's top environmental official, characterized the report as "good news and bad news." "The most encouraging news . . . is that families are now armed with the information and can take the steps to protect their health," he said. He noted that the overall rate of contamination in private wells is higher than public water systems, which have been regularly monitored and treated. About 1 million residents statewide get their water from about 350,000 private wells. Private well usage is especially heavy in rural South Jersey. The most serious contaminants include nitrates, fecal coliform, volatile organic compounds, arsenic and mercury. The 8 percent statewide failure rate was consistent in South Jersey, where problems with contamination from volatile chemicals and radionuclides, particularly in Monroe, sparked the Private Well Testing Act. The law requires the testing of wells during property transactions. Nearly 8 percent of 288 wells tested in Gloucester County failed; 11 of 136 wells in Camden County failed for an 8 percent rate. Just 3.8 percent of the 392 wells in Burlington County failed. The DEP, however, has begun phasing in requirements for a new test to screen for radiological contaminants. The DEP's next report in six months will include this data, Campbell said. "I would expect the rate to go up," he said. The shallow Kirkwood-Cohansey aquifer, which sprawls across South Jersey, is notorious for radiological problems resulting from naturally occurring radioactive ores. Campbell said that banks and lenders have been requiring tests of the wells as part of real-estate transactions since the law was enacted. The department has no information that transactions are being harmed by the law, Campbell said. The law, he said, is designed to allow prospective property buyers to know if problems exist before purchasing. Steve Dixon, a Winslow Realtor, said sellers and some agents are not particularly enamored with the law, but buyers appreciate it. "The stricter it is, the better to protect the people," he said. Buyers and sellers are negotiating the cost of installing treatment systems, if needed, Campbell said. The DEP says the cost of treatment systems can range between $200 and $4,000. The report looks at 5,179 well tests triggered by real estate transactions during the first six months of the law, which went into effect in September 2002. Wells most commonly failed for elevated levels of nitrate, a contaminant from fertilizers linked to the sometimes fatal "blue baby syndrome." The next most common failure resulted from fecal coliform, largely from faulty septic systems and animal wastes. Statewide, just 71 wells failed for volatile organic compounds, usually resulting from spills of solvents and fuel. County health departments are required to notify neighbors of properties where wells fail these standards so they can take any steps they see fit, DEP officials said. Meanwhile, 59 percent failed so-called secondary parameters for iron, pH, and manganese - naturally occurring contaminants that affect the taste and odor of water but don't have significant health effects. DEP officials, however, pointed out that this rate appears high because the law requires testing of well water before it enters any treatment systems. Environmentalists praised the law. "Folks with private wells should have the same protections as those with public water," said David Pringle of the New Jersey Environmental Federation. Reach Lawrence Hajna at (856) 486-2466 or lhajna@courierpostonline.com ***************************************************************** 50 R Loux: Comments on Yucca rail trasnportation plans Remarks of Robert R. Loux, Executive Director, Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects to The Railroad Subcommittee of The U. S. House of Representatives Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Las Vegas, Nevada March 5, 2004 Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee, for the record my name is Robert Loux. I am the Executive Director of the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects, the agency within the Nevada Governor's Office that is charged with overseeing the U.S. Department of Energy's Yucca Mountain repository program. I am grateful for the opportunity to be here today and address the issue of spent nuclear fuel (SNF) and high-level radioactive waste (HLW) to the proposed repository site in southern Nevada, especially DOE's approach to the identification of rail access to Yucca Mountain. The current approach DOE is using to make transportation decisions is antithetical to what is required for a any sort of rational, supportable analysis. Rather than seeking to approach planning for the largest, most widespread, and longest duration SNF and HLW shipping campaign in history in a comprehensive and integrative fashion, DOE appears to be attempting to segment decision-making, moving forward on what are perceived to be politically expedient aspects while abandoning the analytical underpinnings needed to make decisions defensible and ignoring the implications of such decisions on the wider system. Let's look for a moment at the current decision process DOE intends to use for making mode and rail access decisions, as reflected in the Federal Register Notice DOE published last December that is the basis for this hearing being held here today. In that Notice, DOE indicated its preference for the Caliente rail spur as the preferred rail access corridor for Yucca Mountain. Yet nowhere is there documentation of the analyses to support such a preference. Neither the Yucca Mountain final Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) nor any other NEPA document that we are aware of contains a legally and substantively adequate analysis comparing the various rail spur options and justifying either the identification of Caliente as the preferred alternative or the selection of the Carlin route as the secondary preference. While the Yucca Mountain EIS does not, in our opinion, provide an adequate and supportable basis for making mode and rail access decisions, DOE did promise in that EIS to follow a logical, albeit truncated, decision sequence and to consult with stakeholders in the rail corridor selection process. The EIS says: + "If the Yucca Mountain site was approved, DOE would issue at some future date a Record of Decision to select a mode of transportation. [p.1-3] + "If, for example, mostly rail was selected (both nationally and in Nevada), DOE would then identify a preference for one of the rail corridors in consultation with affected stakeholders, particularly the State of Nevada" (emphasis added) [p.1-3] + "Other transportation decisions, such as the selection of a specific rail alignment within a corridor, would require additional field surveys, State and local government and Native American tribal consultations, environmental and engineering analyses, and National Environmental Policy Act reviews" (emphasis added) [Pp. 1-3 to 1-4] DOE chose not to honor even this minimal commitment for some form of logical and defensible decision-making. DOE published its Notice of a rail corridor preference on December 29, 2003, but did not engage in consultations with the State of Nevada or any of the affected stakeholders. The Notice identifies the Caliente corridor as the "preferred rail corridor" in the event that DOE adopts the "mostly rail mode" and identifies the Carlin corridor as "the secondary preference in the event the Caliente corridor is not selected." No analysis supporting these decisions was provided. By issuing the Notice, DOE proceeded to identify a preferred rail corridor before adopting a preferred mode and before any national rail routing work had been undertaken. That is very much akin to putting the cart before the horse, or in this case putting the caboose before the engine. The various rail corridor options in Nevada will have significant and differing implications for routes that would be impacted nationally by moving SNF and HLW to Nevada. Without first conducting a comparative analysis of national routes, the identification of one rail access corridor in Nevada over another is like a roll of the dice when it comes to understanding the implications of such a decision for states and cities across the country. DOE's Notice also raises many other questions, including the following: + Why would DOE select a preferred corridor, without first formally adopting a preferred mode? + If DOE adopts the "mostly rail" mode, what is the actual modal mix would be expected? (Nevada believes that 35 percent or more or the waste would likely still be shipped by truck even if DOE succeeds in building a rail spur, resulting in about a thousand truck shipments per year.) + Why did DOE fail to consult with the State of Nevada (or anyone else) before selecting the Caliente corridor? + What specific criteria and data were used to select the preferred rail corridor and secondary preference, and where is the analysis that supports the selections? + Will other rail corridors remain under consideration, or be reconsidered, if Caliente and Carlin are both found to be infeasible - something that is not beyond the realm of possibility given that these two alternatives represent the longest, most costly, and most difficult of the rail access options discussed in the Yucca Mountain EIS? + When will DOE issue a Record of Decision regarding mode selection? + When will DOE conduct a national rail routing assessment to identify preferred rail routes and to understand what the implications of that assessment are for the selection of a Nevada rail access corridor? + Has DOE completely eliminated consideration of "mostly truck" as the preferred mode? (Under what circumstances would mostly truck be used?) Mr. Chairman, these questions and hundreds of others that are raised by DOE's piecemeal approach to spent fuel and HLW transportation can only be answered, we believe, by requiring DOE to undertake a truly comprehensive, integrated, and symmetrical analysis of the transportation system. That can only be accomplished through a full and complete NEPA review, starting with a programmatic EIS for the transportation of SNF and HLW to a repository. When planning is not done in a comprehensive and rational way, it is not surprising that federal agencies get into trouble; they miss important and what should be self-evident impacts of their actions; and their decision-making is open to charges that it is arbitrary and driven solely by political expediency. That is exactly what has happened with respect to the Caliente rail corridor decision. Today, you will be hearing from a number of the people who stand to be significantly and most directly affected by the decision DOE announced in the December 29th Federal Register Notice - the ranchers whose land and grazing rights are already being disrupted by DOE's decision. The Caliente rail option has been on DOE's list of possible rail access corridors almost from the beginning of the Yucca Mountain project in the mid-1980s, for almost 20 years. Yet, in all that time, DOE never once thought to reach out to these ranchers; to let them know what the Caliente rail corridor might mean to them; to seek their input; or to take a hard look at how a decision to select the Caliente option might impact their lives and livelihood. There are other parcels of private land and private interests along the proposed corridor that will also be negatively affected. Most prominent among these is a series of singularly unique and internationally regarded sculptures entitled "City" that have been created over the past two decades by internationally known artist Michael Heizer. Located adjacent to the northeastern segment of the proposed rail corridor, Heizer's massive sculpture lies surrounded by two routing options for the rail spur - whatever option is chosen will unavoidably have major impacts on the work. Yet, until DOE published its Notice, DOE was not even aware that this massive project even existed and had not examined how the selection of the Caliente option might impact it - despite having supposedly "studied" the Caliente route for almost 20 years. DOE's cavalier treatment of the Nevada ranchers and the Heizer project is characteristic of the of the way the Department has approached transportation planning from the beginning of the Yucca Mountain program. In fact, DOE has no transportation plan. When Congress last year directed DOE to produce it's plan for Yucca Mountain transportation, DOE responded (some would say contemptuously) with a meager ten page outline, euphemistically titled a "strategic plan," purporting to discuss how it might go about arriving at a plan. DOE's "strategic plan" contains no specifics, but is rife with platitudes about consultation and cooperation with the State of Nevada, local governments, Indian tribes, and other stakeholders. Yet even those commitments were readily dispensed with when DOE issued its rail corridor identification Notice - the first major decision relating to the transportation program. Despite our opposition to construction of a repository at Yucca Mountain, the State of Nevada has taken virtually every possible opportunity to make constructive proposals to the appropriate Federal agencies: DOE, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), and the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT). Mr. Chairman, for us the safe and secure transportation of SNF and HLW has always been an issue that transcends the pro vs. con Yucca Mountain debate. Wherever a repository or central storage facility might someday be located, the system for transporting waste must not only be the safest possible, but also publicly acceptable. To that end, for the better part of two decades the State of Nevada has consistently and repeatedly recommended specific measures that the DOE should take to manage the risks associated with transportation of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste. In addition, the Western Interstate Energy Board and the Western Governor's Association have done extensive work on nuclear waste transportation and provided DOE with detailed and substantive guidance over the past 15 or more years. WIEB has even developed an extensive High-Level Waste Transportation Primer that provided DOE with a comprehensive framework for an adequate transportation system. WGA has passed numerous resolutions urging DOE to adopt an integrated and comprehensive approach to transportation planning, including adequate preparations to deal with terrorism and to prevent catastrophic accidents through meaningful cask testing. In all that time, DOE's response has been to ignore the information it received, preferring to move forward in a fashion that served political ends rather than working in concert with affected parties towards the development of a workable and defensible SNF and HLW transportation system. The Caliente rail corridor decision is just the latest example of DOE's disregard for sound and defensible transportation planning. Steps DOE Must Follow in the Process For the record and for the benefit of the subcommittee, here is how Nevada believes the repository transportation program should be addressed and how programmatic decisions should be made: 1. First, DOE must develop a draft national transportation plan describing a proposed action and alternatives, including a Nevada component that is fully consistent with the national plan (action plus alternatives). This draft transportation plan would then become the basis for a formal NEPA scoping process. 2. Using the draft plan, DOE would initiate a formal scoping process for a transportation programmatic EIS. This must involve an adequate comment period and scoping meetings in states and cities along all proposed transportation routes, both nationally and in Nevada. 3. Upon completion of the scoping process, DOE must prepare a draft EIS that fully assesses impacts for both the national system (proposed action and alternative) and the Nevada system (proposed action and alternatives). DOE should take extraordinary steps to assure that the public and affected cities, counties, and communities along transportation routes, both nationally and in Nevada, are aware of the draft EIS and have ample opportunity to comment on it. DOE must hold hearings on the draft EIS in communities all along transportation routes. 4. Upon completion of the comment period and hearings on the draft EIS, DOE would prepare a final programmatic EIS that fully complies with NEPA and CEQ requirements. The final EIS will set forth the preferred alternative(s) selected by DOE for both the national and Nevada system, assuring that all aspects of each will be internally consistent. 5. DOE would subsequently issue a formal Record of Decision setting forth the integrated SNF and HLW transportation system (both the selected national and Nevada components and the interface between them). 6. The final EIS and the Record of Decision will become the basis for any discussions with the State of Nevada, Nevada local governments, other states and local governments, the transportation industry, etc. for moving ahead with SNF or HLW transportation activities. 7. Additional NEPA analysis supporting key decisions in both the national and Nevada transportation efforts could then be tiered to the final transportation programmatic EIS. The process we have laid out is not something new or unique to DOE. The Department used just such a NEPA process in compiling the Waste Management Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement that was done in support of planning and decision-making for clean-up of the DOE weapon's complex. By using a this approach, DOE was able to effectively and logically support decisions at the wider programmatic level. Where those decisions led to the need for more operationally-specific actions, additional NEPA reviews logically flowed out of and were tiered to the programmatic EIS. If such a process could be used successfully for DOE's weapons clean-up actions, there is no reason why DOE cannot employ it for the equally complex Yucca Mountain transportation program. Mr. Chairman, this concludes my remarks. I want to thank you again for the opportunity to testify this morning. I would be happy to respond to any questions that members of the subcommittee might have. ***************************************************************** 51 Nevada Appeal: Congress backed into a nuclear corner Friday, March 05, 2004 OurView A series of lawsuits filed by nuclearenergy companies against the Department of Energy show the comer into which Congress has backed itself. As such, they give Nevadans some insight into why the Yucca Mountain site is being shoved down the state's, and nation's, throat. Sixty-five lawsuits have been filed by power plant owners against the Energy Department, totaling billions of dollars in potential damages, all with the same theme. Congress promised in 1982 to provide a storage site for nuclear waste, with the nuclear industry footing the bill for permanent storage. It told the Energy Department to have the site open by 1998. You can argue the wisdom of this arrangement for a nuclear halflife, but that's not going to make any difference. The nuclear industry has the law on its side, and it wants somebody to do something about it. That's why the Energy Department started studying three sites - Yucca Mountain in Nevada, Deaf Smith County in Texas and Hanford in Washington - as potential locations for the nuclear dump. But just four years later, in 1987, Congress told the Energy Department there just wasn't enough time and money to research three sites. Yucca Mountain became the only option. If you've ever heard someone refer to the "Screw Nevada" bill, this is what they're talking about. For the past 17 years, the Energy Department has had nowhere else to look than in the Nevada desert. When it became apparent the site afforded no particular geological safeguards to storing waste, the rules were changed from "see if Yucca will work" to "make Yucca work" The companies producing radioactive waste, in the meantime, have been contributing to a fund and waiting for the Energy Department to solve their problem - as promised by Congress. The 1998 deadline, contained in contracts signed by the Energy Department in 1983, has long since passed. And now the scheduled opening of Yucca Mountain, in 2010, is very much in doubt. Indiana Michigan Power Co., which operates a 2,100-megawatt plant, is seeking $107.7 million in damages because the Energy Department hasn't taken the nuclear waste generated by its two reactors. Testimony in the case this week surmised there will be no repository before 2015. This is the squeeze put on the Energy Department by a bad decision in 1982 by Congress. This is the squeeze Nevada feels every time it tries to protest the raw deal being foisted on it. This is the squeeze that will go away only when the Nuclear Regulatory Commission says Yucca Mountain won't work safely. It's a hard thing to pull the plug after a decade of study and $8 billion. It will only get harder after another 10 years and a few more billion. ***************************************************************** 52 OA Online: Support outweighs opposition to proposed nuclear-enrichment site Friday, 05 March 2004 AMERICAN ONLINE c /o Odessa American 222 E. 4th Street P.O. Box 2952 Odessa, TX 79760 Copyright © 1999-2004 Odessa American. All rights reserved. By Ruth Friedberg Odessa American EUNICE, N.M. — Most of the more than 250 people attending a U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission meeting here Thursday expressed support for licensing Louisiana Energy Service’s proposed uranium enrichment plant. The plant would be built on 550 acres about five miles east of Eunice, said Marshall Cohen, vice president of communications and government relations with LES. Lea County Commissioner Ross Black said he’s “somewhat of an environmentalist” and after doing some research and seeing a similar plant in The Netherlands, he’s satisfied the LES’ plant represents a good opportunity for the area. “We have an opportunity to take this byproduct and put a deconversion plant next door and triple or double the opportunity we have,” Black said. Black urged those present to back the project. County Commission Chairman Harry Teague presented the NRC with 2,000 signatures from people supporting the proposed plant. A deconversion plant would take depleted uranium and make it into low-level radioactive waste that could be disposed of at a low-level radioactive waste site, Cohen said. LES is looking for a private company to do this — hopefully on-site, he said. New Mexico Rep. Janice E. Arnold-Jones, representing Bernalillo County, said she is comfortable with LES. Arnold-Jones runs the Albuquerque office of Parallax Inc. She said most jobs in New Mexico are with the state or federal government. “This is a remarkable opportunity to change that ratio,” Arnold-Jones said. “It goes to the health of your economy. This can be a vibrant area of the state.” Thursday’s meeting was part of the licensing process LES’ proposed plant is undergoing. New Mexico Environment Department communications director Jon Goldstein, relaying a letter from Environment Secretary Ron Curry, said the secretary hopes the plant will undergo “the most thorough and holistic review possible.” The NRC received a license application and environmental report for the facility, to be called the National Enrichment Facility, in December. Because the plant will have a “significant” environmental impact, the NRC must do an Environmental Impact Statement, which evaluates the effects of the plant’s construction, operation and decommissioning. The proposed LES facility has sparked some opposition in Hobbs and around New Mexico. Depleted uranium stays radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years, and is capable of causing health problems and environmental contamination. Lee Cheney of Citizens Nuclear Information Center said he wants LES to submit proof that it has an agreement with a private company that will be ready to accept waste for deconversion before the plant begins production Marshall Cohen, vice president of communications and government relations, said LES is working to find a private company to do its deconversion, which it hopes it would locate on-site. A deconversion plant changes depleted uranium into low-level radioactive waste that could be disposed of in a low-level radioactive disposal site, said Don Hancock, director of the nuclear waste program at the Southwest Research and Information Center in Albuquerque. Both Cheney and Hancock also pointed to the possibility of terrorism and accidents. Cohen said extensive security measures would be taken at the plant. “There are so much better targets,” he said. Cheney also cited property devaluation as a concern. But Cohen said the plant will bring money and hundreds of jobs to the region. Cohen said LES hopes to get licensed by 2006 and start production in 2008-09 with full production in 2013. Estimated project cost is $1.2 billion in today’s dollars, he said. ***************************************************************** 53 ENN News: A radioactive nightmare in Concord, Massachusetts Friday, March 05, 2004By Ed Ericson, E/The Environmental Magazine [emag logo] The waitress at the ice cream shop in Concord, Massachusetts, was surprised. "A Superfund site?" she asked incredulously. "On Main Street?" It's not just a Superfund site but one dubbed by a cleanup contractor as "near the tip of the peak in terms of [cleanup] difficulty." It's radioactive. Concord, the crucible of the American Revolution, where the "shot heard 'round the world" rang out on April 19, 1775, is a Boston suburb filled with professionals and stately homes. Tourists still come to see the war sites and to visit the bucolic Walden Pond that Thoreau celebrated. Few know about the nuclear waste dump at 2229 Main Street. But this shady burg of 15,000 residents quietly struggles with its legacy as the maker of depleted uranium slugs for the U.S. military's latest wars. The soil more than a mile from the nuclear dump is radioactive. A 1993 epidemiological study found the town's residents suffered higher rates of cancer than the state average. Today, atop and buried beneath a low hill above a cranberry bog lie more than 3,800 barrels of radioactive and toxic waste, subject to a government-paid cleanup estimated to take 10 years and cost at least $50 million. The company responsible for most of the waste, Starmet, declared bankruptcy in 2002. Massachusetts has sued Starmet and several related companies to enforce state laws against radioactive dumping, but so far has had little success on the legal front. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) hastily concluded that Starmet was broke and has made no move to charge it for the pending cleanup. "All of the people who benefited and made millions from the process are not being tagged at all with the cleanup process," said Mark Roberts, an environmental lawyer and member of Citizens Research and Environmental Watch, a citizens group that has fought to get the site cleaned up for more than 20 years. Since 1958, Starmet (formerly known as Nuclear Metals) processed depleted uranium into tank shells and armor for the U.S. Army, using caustic acids, beryllium, and other dangerous substances. From the early 1970s until 1985, the company dumped depleted uranium into an unlined lagoon on the property, sending a toxic plume of radiation, heavy metals, and solvents migrating into the groundwater, fouling at least two wells. The company resisted pressure to clean up the lagoon until 1997, when the pond was finally dug up and the soils shipped to a low-level nuclear waste dump in Utah. That project was costly, though, and the remediation company sued Starmet for unpaid bills associated with it. Just about this time, military orders for depleted uranium munitions stopped too. Starmet began to lose money. In May 2001, Starmet officials illegally shipped 1,700 barrels of depleted uranium "greensalt" from a company facility in Barnwell, South Carolina, to Concord. The cash-strapped company was cleaning the South Carolina facility in preparation for sale, EPA documents say. When Massachusetts' health and environmental officials protested, Starmet's president, Robert Quinn, threatened to abandon the Concord site and stick the state with the cost of cleanup. In 2002, after the state forced bankrupt Starmet into receivership, the company did abandon the site for several weeks, according to EPA records. Nowadays Quinn, who angrily blames the U.S. Army for Starmet's bankruptcy, sits at a lonely desk in a low building on the site while a few security guards watch over the mess. And what a mess it is. Conservatively speaking, there is at least 20 times more depleted uranium on and under Starmet's 46 acres on Main Street, Concord, than the 340 tons that were fired in all of Iraq during the first Gulf War. There are tons of beryllium  a probable carcinogen  in the soil and leaking from buried drums. And in a recently discovered area known as the "old dump" there are unknown substances, possibly including high-level radioactive waste and exotic explosives, dating from the effort to build the first atomic bombs. Much of the work during the next four to five years will consist of determining what's in the barrels buried in the old dump, according to Bruce Thompson of De Maximis, Inc., the engineering group chosen by EPA to head the cleanup process. He says some preliminary research indicates that exotic radioactive and heavy metals may have been buried there by MIT scientists during the Manhattan Project. He is also concerned about the potential presence of an explosive, zirconium azide. "That's something I don't want to hit with a backhoe," Thompson told a town subcommittee meeting in September. That Thompson and the EPA arrived in Concord at all is credit to the efforts of a small group of committed activists. Citizens Research and Environmental Watch (CREW) is led by Rick Oleson, a Princeton- and Harvard-educated radiation biologist and toxicologist whose late father was a nuclear physicist. Oleson spent part of his childhood in a house near the factory. State records show the most contaminated area on the site is adjacent to Camp Thoreau, a summer camp for children ages three and up. "It's one industrial setting in a very residential area," said Oleson. "People later could put a house there and dig a well there, or grow vegetables." Oleson and fellow CREW members are focusing their efforts to make sure the EPA demands that the dump is cleaned up to a "residential level," rather than to the looser standards allowable for an "industrial" site. Jeffrey McNabola was a member of Concerned Citizens of Concord, CREW's predecessor, in the 1970s and early 1980s. He notes that the group was warning people about the dangers of depleted uranium and other activities at Nuclear Metals for decades before anyone in officialdom gave them any credence. "There was a cavalier attitude about depleted uranium," he said. "They said that it's safe as chocolate milk." Even Oleson took years to conclude that Nuclear Metals' activities were unacceptable. "I used to cross-country ski and run back there," he said of the woods bordering the dumpsite. "It was a very pretty place ... and there was this big pond. It was full of psychedelic colors." Oleson and CREW are hunkering down for a long battle, keeping a wary eye on the EPA and its cleanup contractors. Loath to link deaths from cancer or rare diseases to the factory and its dump, Oleson (who works for Monsanto) and others in CREW strive to hue a strict scientific line, lest they appear to be "radicals." The strategy seems to be working. "The real story behind the story I tell people is that a few people volunteered their time to really do something that needed doing," said Oleson. "And for years they were dismissed and made fun of. And they totally turned the town around."  ENN is a registered trademark of the Environmental News Network Inc. Copyright © 2004 Environmental News Network Inc. ***************************************************************** 54 PR News: Lea County Expresses Support for LES at NRC Hearing HOBBS, N.M., March 5 /PRNewswire/ -- Over two hundred Lea County citizens showed their support for the LES National Enrichment Facility to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) last night in Eunice, New Mexico. Business leaders, educators, law enforcement officials, fire and rescue workers, community activists, non-profit organizations, residents and state and local elected officials attended the meeting and spoke in support of LES. Supporters of the NEF are encouraged by the prospect of a brighter economy, and confident of the safety of the proposed uranium enrichment plant. "By supporting the construction of this facility, I am, in reality, supporting the creation permanent jobs," said Hector M. Ramirez, Lea County Commissioner. "Eunice, New Mexico, has embraced the NEF for the simple reason that we know and understand the benefits on both sides of the coin," commented Tanya & Lynn White, editors of the Eunice News. NEF supporters also praised LES representatives for continually offering Lea County residents clear, concise and honest information about the project. LES has hosted tours of a similar uranium enrichment facility in Almelo, Netherlands and has held numerous public meetings to answer community questions. "As a school board member and father of three children, I have paid close attention to the information provided by NEF. I feel very confident about the facts provided by NEF as well as the views of community leaders who have traveled to the Almelo facility," said Hobbs resident, Paul Campbell. "All of those who made the trip have assured me, as well as the entire community, about the safety and cleanliness of this industry." "I plan to live in Lea County the rest of my life. I have two children in high school and welcome their return to the county when they complete their education. I would not subject myself or my family's well being if I were not completely reassured of the safety of the LES facility," said T. J. Parks, Superintendent of Tatum Municipal Schools. Organizations such as the NAACP, Lea County United Way, Hispanic Awareness Council, Hobbs Chamber of Commerce, Eunice Fire and Rescue Service, The City of Hobbs, The Lea County State Bank, the Tatum Municipal Schools, and The Economic Development Corporation of Lea County, numerous private businesses and individuals submitted letters of support to the NRC at the meeting. LES President Jim Ferland commented that his company was overwhelmed and deeply appreciative of the support that Lea County is providing this project. "These are great people and we are honored to be in this partnership with them," said Ferland. According to Ferland, the uranium enrichment facility will provide more than 200 permanent jobs and 400 to 800 short-term construction jobs. When the license application is approved, the NEF will introduce the world's most advanced uranium enrichment technology into the U.S. and provide an alternative, domestic enrichment supply source to U.S. nuclear energy companies. LES is a partnership of major nuclear energy companies. Partners include Urenco, Westinghouse and U.S. energy companies Duke Power, Entergy and Exelon. SOURCE LES National Enrichment Facility Copyright © 1996-2004 PR Newswire Association LLC. All Rights ***************************************************************** 55 Business Gazette: UNITED FRONT AGAINST NUCLEAR WASTE Published in on Friday, March 5th 2004 POLITICAL parties in Cumbria have united to fight plans to dump Scottish nuclear waste in the county. Council leader Rex Toft used emergency powers to issue the formal objection to the plans from the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA). In a joint statement with Labour and Lib Dem Group leaders, Mr Toft said nuclear waste should be stored where it is created. The UKAEA has applied to the Scottish Environment Protection Agency to transport solid low-level nuclear waste from Dounreay to BNFL for long-term storage at Sellafield and Drigg in West Cumbria. ***************************************************************** 56 Whitehaven News: DOUNREAY WASTE HEADS TO DRIGG Published on 04/03/2004 By David Siddall SCOTLAND is planning to ship tartan nuclear waste down to West Cumbria under proposals that have not even been notified to the Sellafield Local Liaison Committee. Despite the fact that they have their own low level nuclear waste dump, the AEA hopes to ship its low level waste to the BNFL dump at Drigg. Between 30 and 50 container loads of the nuclear waste a year are due to travel down from Scotland. Copeland Alderman Marjorie Higham claimed the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency did not need to have consent from England for the plan. She said: “I am appalled that we don’t have a say in what Scotland is seeking to do, sending us its nuclear waste. I have been told that with regard to the granting or not of the permission for UKAEA to send radioactive waste to West Cumbria ‘these matters are wholly matters for Scottish Ministers to decide.’ This is in spite of the fact that the licence application has not been advertised in England.” Thirty to 50 containers of nuclear waste could be sent to Drigg from Dounreay each year. Cumbria County Council has this week sent a robust letter of objection to the plans. UK Atomic Energy Authority spokesman Andy Munn said the Dounreay low level waste facility was full. He said that following consultation, the best option for the future was to build a new underground store at Dounreay. “In the meantime, of course, some low level waste is being produced at Dounreay as a result of the decommissioning programme.Our original intention was to store this on site until the long term option was decided. However, the NII pointed out to us that it was against government policy to store waste if a disposal route exists, and that we ought to be sending any interim low level waste to Drigg. Following this requirement, we applied for an authorisation to ship interim low level waste to Drigg. “We understand, from talking to the Scottish Environment Protection Agency, that it notified both Cumbria County Council and Copeland District Council about the consultation.” At Tuesday’s Copeland Council meeting, Coun Norman Clarkson said Copeland officials had failed to get in any objections within the consultation period. Coun Geoff Blackwell agreed that “possibly there could have been a speedier reaction” but he said extra time had now been allowed and Copeland was lodging concerns. ***************************************************************** 57 Whitehaven News: “VISIONARY” REACT BAGS TOP AWARD Published on 04/03/2004 By Gillian Ellison A WHITEHAVEN nuclear decommissioning company has been awarded an £8,000 Engineering Professional Development Award by the prestigious Royal Academy of Engineering. REACT Engineering Ltd, which employs 25 people at its Westlakes HQ, was described as “visionary” by Ian Bowbrick, the Academy’s post graduate and professional development manager. “The Royal Academy of Engineering exists to promote excellence in engineering and to realise this objective it pursu-es a number of activities inclu-ding award schemes,” he said. “One such scheme is the Engineering Professional Development Awards. This aims to help UK engineering companies become world-class performers by ensuring that the knowledge and skills flowing into it from its employees reflect the very latest in technological advances and practice. “We are therefore very pleased to be able to support a company of the calibre of REACT Engineering who have the vision and hunger to achieve this objective.” Dr Trevor Craig, REACT’s personnel director, is delighted that the Academy has formally recognised the company’s commitment to training. “Continuing Professional Development for our senior engineers is a key objective of the company’s business plan,” he explained. “REACT needs pro-active, dynamic and innovative engineers and they need to be aware of the latest technologies and legislative requirements. “We invest significantly in on-going training and the support and encouragement from the Academy is much appreciated as it will enable us to further the aims of our business plan and help to expand the training programmes of new engineering recruits.” REACT’s successful Monitored Professional Development Scheme (MPDS) for its young engineers – approved by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE) particularly impressed the Academy. When IMechE first assessed REACT’s MPDS in 1996 it was the smallest company in the UK to achieve the accreditation. It enables engineers to move to Chartered status within four years by offering them a structured programme of technical and business projects relevant to their work within the nuclear decommissioning industry. Dr Craig explained that the majority of training at REACT was hands on which added real value to a young engineer’s work experience. “It helps to ensure that our engineers understand not just engineering projects but also how a business works in today’s world,” he said. In recent years REACT has taken on several trainee engineers from Whitehaven and West Cumbria as part of its commitment to the local community and its business infrastructure. REACT Engineering Ltd, which is based at the Westlakes Science and Technology Park, undertakes decommissioning work for BNFL at Sellafield and the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority at Dounreay in Scotland. ***************************************************************** 58 Pahrump Valley Times: Hearing scheduled to discuss health issues March 5, 2004 YUCCA MOUNTAIN PROJECT By STEVE TETREAULT PVT WASHINGTON BUREAU WASHINGTON - A Senate energy subcommittee has scheduled a March 15 hearing in Las Vegas to explore worker health and safety at the Yucca Mountain Project, Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., announced Wednesday. Reid said the hearing would investigate reports that workers who dug the 5-mile nuclear waste repository tunnel for the Department of Energy during the mid-1990s were exposed to hazardous mineral particles without being given adequate protective gear. "At best, DOE's actions are negligible and at worst criminal and I intend to use the hearing to get to the bottom of this," Reid said in a statement The hearing, organized through the Senate's energy and water subcommittee, will run from 10 a.m. to noon in the commission chambers of the Clark County Government Building. Reid's office said in an announcement that "current and former Yucca Mountain workers, DOE officials and medical and industrial health experts" are being invited to testify. Reid spokeswoman Tessa Hafen declined to discuss specific witnesses, saying the hearing still is being organized. She said it was not yet clear if other senators besides Reid will attend. Former Yucca Mountain tunnel supervisor Gene Griego said he has accepted an invitation to testify. Griego has been diagnosed with chronic obstruction pulmonary disease, which he believes stems from inhaling fibrous dust particles while working in the exploratory tunnel as it was being drilled. After Griego began airing complaints in 2003, the Energy Department announced it would offer free silicosis screenings to current and former project employees. "I will basically repeat what I've said before," Griego said Wednesday. "They knew the stuff was there and they didn't care and they exposed us to toxins anyway to stay on their schedule." Allen Benson, a spokesman for the Office of Repository Development in Las Vegas, said the Energy Department has been invited to send an official to testify "and that is under consideration now." Benson declined to comment further on the hearing. Energy Department officials have said the department was aware of the presence of silica at Yucca Mountain, as well as other minerals that are potentially harmful if inhaled. The department has said workers may have been exposed to unhealthy levels of particles during tunnel excavation until respiratory protections were upgraded and enforced. The tunnel was built between 1994 and 1997. For comment or questions, please e-mail Copyright © Pahrump Valley Times, 1997 - 2003 ***************************************************************** 59 Pahrump Valley Times: Yucca delays eyed March 5, 2004 By STEVE TETREAULT PVT WASHINGTON BUREAU WASHINGTON - The Department of Energy is underestimating the time it will need to license and open a nuclear waste repository in Nevada, according to an industry expert who said Tuesday a projected 2010 launch date could be delayed by five years "at the earliest." Testifying in a federal lawsuit, nuclear engineering consultant Eileen Supko said the Yucca Mountain Project faces a potential six years of review for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to issue a construction license, double what DOE estimates in official documents. Further delays are likely when the NRC considers a follow-up license to enable DOE to begin accepting waste at a repository, Supko said, and when DOE begins to prepare the Yucca site for major construction. "They are not going to have a repository ready until 2015 at the earliest," said Supko, a senior consultant with Energy Resources International, a firm that advises utilities on managing their nuclear fuel. Supko said a repository opening could be pushed as far as 2020, although she expected DOE would take action to streamline the project. She said DOE already plans to construct the repository in stages, and initial plans for waste handling facilities at the site have been scaled back to save construction time. On the other hand, Supko said the project could face further uncertainties if Congress does not appropriate enough money for construction, or if DOE suffers setbacks in ongoing lawsuits filed by Nevada and environmental groups. "No matter what, the 2010 date is unreasonable and the actual date is farther out in the future," she said. Supko's remarks came during federal court testimony in a lawsuit over government delays in opening a disposal site for highly radioactive spent fuel piling up at commercial nuclear reactors. Indiana Michigan Power Co., which operates the 2,100 megawatt Donald C. Cook Plant near Bridgman, Mich., is seeking $107.7 million in damages after DOE failed to meet a Jan. 31, 1998 contract deadline to take over nuclear waste generated by Cook's two reactors on the shore of Lake Michigan. The trial, which opened Monday before Judge Robert Hodges, Jr., in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, was expected to last two weeks. Utility owners and nuclear plant operators have filed more than 65 similar contract lawsuits against DOE that could total billions of dollars in damages. The Indiana Michigan case is the first to reach the damages phase. Supko testified for the utility, which based its damages claim to her estimates of when DOE would be ready to accept its nuclear waste. In court, attorneys for the Energy Department sought to discredit Supko's testimony, arguing she is neither a construction expert nor an authority on project scheduling. "It is a firm position and DOE's firm belief it will be operating by that (2010) date and DOE has a firm plan to do so," attorney Harold Lester said. Lester said a Yucca project manager, Christopher Kouts, was expected to testify during the trial on how the Energy Department plans to meet the 2010 goal. Supko was not the first to publicly predict a 2015 opening for the Yucca Mountain repository. Ed McGaffigan, a member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said last October that 2015 was a more realistic target than 2010 given the probability of a lengthy NRC review. "I believe the NRC is going to take all the time it needs to get a license reviewed in a deliberative process," Supko testified, despite a federal law that requires the agency to take no more than four years to consider DOE's application for construction approval. Supko said the NRC's handling of an application for the proposed Private Fuel Storage nuclear waste station in Utah is ongoing after seven years. A proposed uranium enrichment plant in Louisiana was still in review after seven years when its sponsors abandoned their license application. Defending her estimate, Supko said, "six years is a reasonable schedule given (Yucca Mountain Project) is a first-of-its-kind licensing effort." For comment or questions, please e-mail webmaster@pahrumpvalleytimes.com Copyright © Pahrump Valley Times, 1997 - 2003 ***************************************************************** 60 Las Vegas SUN: DOE grilled about plans for shipping nuke waste to Nevada By KEN RITTER ASSOCIATED PRESS LAS VEGAS (AP) - An Energy Department official had no immediate answers Friday for a congressional panel seeking details of federal plans to ship spent nuclear reactor fuel to a national radioactive waste dump in Nevada. Gary Lanthrum, director of the department's Office of National Transportation, said the DOE will make public in about six weeks whether it will use trains, trucks or a combination of both to get the nation's most radioactive waste to Yucca Mountain. "Once we make a decision about mode, then we'll start talking about where routes will go," Lanthrum said after testifying in Las Vegas before six House transportation committee and railroad subcommittee members. The Bush administration and Congress in 2002 picked Yucca Mountain as the site to bury 77,000 tons of highly radioactive waste now stored at commercial and military sites in 39 states. The department plans to ask the Nuclear Regulatory Commission by the end of this year for a license to open the repository in 2010. Nevada is fighting the plan in federal court, and Reps. Jon Porter, R-Nev., and Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., used Friday's hearing to marshal support for another attempt to stop the project in Congress. "Yucca Mountain is not a done deal," Porter declared during a break in the session chaired by Rep. Jack Quinn, R-N.Y., and including Reps. Corrine Brown, D-Fla., Julia Carson, D-Ind., and Jim Matheson, D-Utah. Berkley said she hoped the committee would back legislation to force a comprehensive Energy Department study about the safety of transporting nuclear waste before the department picks routes. "The public should know how the government is going to protect people ... from a mobile Chernobyl," she said, invoking the name of the world's worst nuclear disaster. She insisted the government should make public its plans to prevent terrorists from attacking trains or trucks hauling casks of highly radioactive waste across the nation. Lanthrum responded that methods for protecting shipments were classified. But he said DOE officials could brief members of Congress behind closed doors. Lanthrum testified that since the 1960's, the Energy Department has safely moved about 3,000 shipments of spent nuclear fuel a combined 1.7 million miles with no injuries due to release of radioactivity. Carson noted the Energy Department has said it might take 108,000 truck trips or about 3,000 train loads to get the nation's nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain. The DOE plans to accept shipments through 2038. "Your concern is transport," Carson told Lanthrum. "My concern is saving lives." "Our concern is getting it there compliantly," Lanthrum responded. He noted that even if rail is identified as the preferred method for shipping the waste, some shipments would go by truck. While state oversight of rail routes could be limited, Lanthrum said states can designate highway routes for hazardous waste shipments. Matheson said he was concerned that transportation "was never adequately assessed before Yucca Mountain was selected." He noted that Utah would be a crossroads for truck or rail shipments to Yucca Mountain. Porter criticized the Energy Department for the timing of its Dec. 23 announcement of a "preferred route" for hauling the nation's most radioactive waste from the Utah border across Nevada. The department did not identify truck or train routes to Nevada, but said it wants to build a 319-mile rail line from between Caliente and Pioche around the Nevada Test Site to Yucca Mountain. The route, dubbed "the Caliente Corridor," would avoid the Las Vegas area. Nevada officials and activists have derided the in-state route as unrealistically expensive, circuitous and dangerous. They have promised another legal challenge if they can find flaws in environmental studies. Berkley also said Friday the Energy Department was vastly underestimating the cost of the Yucca Mountain project, which she said would cost $308 billion to complete. The Energy Department has projected spending $58 billion on the repository. Allen Benson, a spokesman for the department and the Yucca Mountain project, said Friday that figure had not changed. --- On the Net: Yucca Mountain project: http://www.ymp.gov/ Nuclear Regulatory Commission: http://www.nrc.gov/ Nevada's Agency for Nuclear Projects: http://www.state.nv.us/nucwaste -- ***************************************************************** 61 DOE: Environmental Management Site-Specific Advisory Board, Savannah FR Doc 04-5016 [Federal Register: March 5, 2004 (Volume 69, Number 44)] [Notices] [Page 10439-10440] From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr05mr04-66] River AGENCY: Department of Energy. ACTION: Notice of open meeting. SUMMARY: This notice announces a meeting of the Environmental Management Site-Specific Advisory Board (EM SSAB), Savannah River. The Federal Advisory Committee Act (Pub. L. No. 92-463, 86 Stat. 770) requires that public notice of these meetings be announced in the Federal Register. DATES: Monday, March 22, 2004, 1 p.m.-6:15 p.m., Tuesday, March 23, 2004, 8:30 a.m.-4 p.m. [[Page 10440]] ADDRESSES: Sheraton Hotel & Conference Center, 2100 Bush River Road, Columbia, SC 29210. FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Gerri Flemming, Closure Project Office, Department of Energy Savannah River Operations Office, P.O. Box A, Aiken, SC 29802; Phone: (803) 952-7886. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Purpose of the Board: The purpose of the Board is to make recommendations to DOE and its regulators in the areas of environmental restoration, waste management, and related activities. Tentative Agenda Monday, March 22, 2004 1 p.m. Combined Committee Meeting 5:15 p.m. Executive Committee Meeting 6:15 p.m. Adjourn Tuesday, March 23, 2004 8:30 a.m. Approval of Minutes; Agency Updates; Public Comment Session 9:15 a.m. Facility Disposition & Site Remediation Committee Report 10 a.m. Waste Management Committee Report 10:45 a.m. Strategic & Legacy Management Committee Report 11:30 a.m. Public Comment Session 12 noon Lunch Break 1 p.m. Nuclear Materials Committee Report 2 p.m. Administrative Committee Report 2:45 p.m. Bylaws Amendment Proposal 3:45 p.m. Public Comment Session 4 p.m. Adjourn If needed, time will be allotted after public comments for items added to the agenda, and administrative details. A final agenda will be available at the meeting Monday, March 22, 2004. Public Participation: The meeting is open to the public. Written statements may be filed with the Board either before or after the meeting. Individuals who wish to make the oral statements pertaining to agenda items should contact Gerri Flemming's office at the address or telephone listed above. Requests must be received five days prior to the meeting and reasonable provision will be made to include the presentation in the agenda. The Deputy Designated Federal Officer is empowered to conduct the meeting in a fashion that will facilitate the orderly conduct business. Each individual wishing to make public comment will be provided equal time to present their comments. Minutes: The minutes of this meeting will be available for public review and copying at the Freedom of Information Public Reading Room, 1E-190, Forrestal Building, 1000 Independence Avenue, SW., Washington, DC 20585 between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m., Monday through Friday, except Federal holidays. Minutes will also be available by writing to Gerri Flemming, Department of Energy Savannah River Operations Office, PO Box A, Aiken, SC 29802, or by calling her at (803) 952-7886. Issued at Washington, DC, on March 1, 2004. Rachel M. Samuel, Deputy Advisory Committee Management Officer. [FR Doc. 04-5016 Filed 3-4-04; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 6450-01-P ***************************************************************** 62 DOE: Presidential Directed Mission Requiring Authorization of FR Doc 04-5017 [Federal Register: March 5, 2004 (Volume 69, Number 44)] [Notices] [Page 10440-10441] From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr05mr04-68] National Security Provisions AGENCY: National Nuclear Security Administration, Department of Energy. [[Page 10441]] ACTION: Notice of emergency action. SUMMARY: The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is issuing this notice of emergency action regarding its authorization of national security provisions related to a recent U.S. mission to assist the Libyan government in reducing its inventories of proliferation-sensitive nuclear materials. On January 27, 2004, a U.S.-led team of policy and technical experts successfully extracted from Libya some of its nuclear materials. In order to expedite the removal of these materials from the site, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) Administrator invoked the national security provisions of 49 CFR 173.7(b) and exempted the transport from DOE Order 461.1, Packaging and Transfer of Materials of National Security Interest, thereby allowing the shipment of items by air to the McGhee Tyson Airport at Knoxville, TN and from there to the Y-12 National Security Complex at Oak Ridge, TN by land transport. The shipment included four cylinders of uranium hexafluoride (UF6) of varying enrichment levels. DOE would normally prepare an Environmental Assessment or Environmental Impact Statement analyzing this shipment pursuant to its National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) implementing regulations (10 CFR part 1021). However, due to the urgent and classified nature of the actions required to perform this mission, DOE consulted with the Council on Environmental Quality about alternative arrangements with regard to NEPA compliance for its authorization of national security provisions pursuant to the Council NEPA regulation at 40 CFR 1506.11. This notice is issued pursuant to the requirements of 10 CFR 1021.343. FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: For further information on these activities or other information related to this notice, contact: William O'Connor, NNSA, Office of Safeguards (NA-243), 1000 Independence Avenue, SW., Washington, DC 20585, (202) 586-4867. For information on the DOE National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) process, contact: Carol M. Borgstrom, Director, Office of NEPA Policy and Compliance (EH-42), U.S. Department of Energy, 1000 Independence Avenue, SW., Washington, DC 20585, (202) 586-4600, or leave a message at (800) 472-2756. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: On December 19, 2003, in a decision announced by the United States, the United Kingdom, and Libya, the Libyan government agreed to disclose all its weapons of mass destruction and related programs and to open the country to international weapons inspectors to oversee their elimination. In order to assist Libya in the reduction of its proliferation-sensitive materials, the United States, United Kingdom and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) sent a team of policy and technical experts to Libya. On January 27, 2004, this team, with the full cooperation of the Libyan government, successfully extracted 55,000 pounds of nuclear material and other sensitive equipment from Libya. This shipment included four cylinders of uranium hexafluoride (UF6) that required a National Security Exemption under DOE Order 461.1, Packaging and Transfer of Materials of National Security Interest, because the containers were not certified under 49 CFR 173.7(b). The equipment and materials were airlifted out of Libya and brought to the McGhee Tyson Airport in Knoxville, TN. The nuclear cargo then was transported to the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, TN for International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspection and to prepare cylinders for transport to their final destination. This material was moved as part of a Presidential directed mission. There was insufficient time between the President's directive and the expected movement of the material to conduct an environmental review; hence, the need for alternative arrangements with regard to NEPA compliance. The NNSA Administrator was provided with a classified environmental review contained in an Appendix to a draft Environmental Impact Statement which bounded the accident scenarios. Following review, the NNSA Administrator invoked the national security provisions of 49 CFR 173.7(b) and exempted this transport from DOE Order 461.1, thereby allowing shipment of these items by air to the McGhee Tyson Airport and from there to their destination by land transport. The Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) and the Environmental Protection Agency were briefed in advance of the mission. CEQ found the NNSA's request for alternative arrangements was appropriately limited to the actions necessary to address the immediate impacts and risks associated with this emergency. Based on the briefing that DOE personnel provided, and their commitment to outreach to EPA and appropriate First Responders, CEQ concluded that the NNSA's assessment of the environmental impact of the proposed action, including incorporation of an existing classified analysis of a similar scenario, provided sufficient alternative arrangements for NEPA compliance. The CEQ also was briefed following the completion of the mission. The expedited removal of these materials from Libya was consistent with national security goals related to the consolidation, storage, and disposition of potential weapons-usable materials and supports the nonproliferation policies of the United States. Granting this national security exemption supported the expedited removal of the material consistent with the nonproliferation goals of the Department of Energy and the President of the United States. The Y-12 Site Office ensured that the following conditions were met: First responders at McGhee Tyson Airport were notified of the timing and nature of the shipment. The shipment was escorted by personnel specifically designated by or under the authority of the Department of Energy. The materials arrived at Y-12 without incident and accordingly without any environmental consequences and will be stored there pending IAEA inspection and shipment to the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant, Piketon, OH. Issued in Washington, DC, on February 27, 2004. Henry K. Garson, Associate General Counsel, National Nuclear Security Administration. [FR Doc. 04-5017 Filed 3-4-04; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 6450-01-M ***************************************************************** 63 DOE: Environmental Management Site-Specific Advisory Board, Idaho FR Doc 04-5018 [Federal Register: March 5, 2004 (Volume 69, Number 44)] [Notices] [Page 10440] From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr05mr04-67] National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory AGENCY: Department of Energy. ACTION: Notice of open meeting. SUMMARY: This notice announces a meeting of the Environmental Management Site-Specific Advisory Board (EM SSAB), Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory. The Federal Advisory Committee Act (Pub. L. No. 92-463, 86 Stat. 770) requires that public notice of these meetings be announced in the Federal Register. DATES: Monday, March 22, 2004--8 a.m.-5:30 p.m. Tuesday, March 23, 2004--8 a.m.-5 p.m. Opportunities for public participation will be held Monday, March 22 from 12:15 to 12:30 p.m. and 5:15 to 5:30 p.m. and on Tuesday, March 23 from 11:45 to 12 noon and 3:50 to 4:05 p.m. Additional time may be made available for public comment during the presentations. These times are subject to change as the meeting progresses, depending on the extent of comment offered. Please check with the meeting facilitator to confirm these times. ADDRESSES: Ameritel Inn, 645 Lindsay Boulevard, Idaho Falls, ID 83402. FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Ms. Peggy Hinman, INEEL CAB Administrator, North Wind, Inc., P.O. Box 51174, Idaho Falls, ID 83405, Phone (208) 557-7885, or visit the Board's Internet home page at http://www.ida.net/users/cab . SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Purpose of the Board: The purpose of the Board is to make recommendations to DOE and its regulators in the areas of future use, cleanup levels, waste disposition and cleanup priorities at the INEEL. The tentative objectives for the meeting include: Proposed modifications to the Hazardous Waste Facility Permit for storage and disposal of mixed waste at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant. Authorized funding under the current contract for the Environmental Management program at the INEEL. Modified Fiscal Year 2004/2005 Performance Based Incentives. Public Participation: This meeting is open to the public. Written statements may be filed with the Board facilitator either before or after the meeting. Individuals who wish to make oral presentations pertaining to agenda items should contact the Board Chair at the address or telephone number listed above. Request must be received five days prior to the meeting and reasonable provision will be made to include the presentation in the agenda. The Deputy Designated Federal Officer, Richard Provencher, Assistant Manager for Environmental Management, Idaho Operations Office, U.S. Department of Energy, is empowered to conduct the meeting in a fashion that will facilitate the orderly conduct of business. Every individual wishing to make public comment will be provided equal time to present their comments. Minutes: The minutes of this meeting will be available for public review and copying at the Freedom of Information Public Reading Room, 1E-190, Forrestal Building, 1000 Independence Avenue, SW., Washington, DC 20585 between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m., Monday through Friday except Federal holidays. Minutes will also be available by writing to Ms. Peggy Hinman, INEEL CAB Administrator, at the address and phone number listed above. Issued at Washington, DC, on March 1, 2004. Rachel Samuel, Deputy Advisory Committee Management Officer. [FR Doc. 04-5018 Filed 3-4-04; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 6450-01-P ***************************************************************** 64 KRT Wire: EPA Attacks Los Alamos, N.M., Federal Lab's Cleanup Plan | 03/05/2004 | By Adam Rankin, Albuquerque Journal, N.M. Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News Mar. 5--LOS ALAMOS, N.M. - Short and to the point, comments from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on hazardous and radioactive waste cleanup at Los Alamos are providing some comfort to laboratory watchdogs. In comments delivered Thursday, EPA Region 6 reminds the Department of Energy that final cleanup decisions at Los Alamos National Laboratory are "dependent" on public participation and views held by the New Mexico Environment Department. The EPA comments come in response to the Energy Department's "Risk-Based End State Vision Document" for cleanup at Los Alamos. Similar vision documents for other DOE sites have created a stir among other federal and state regulators, as well as citizen and environmental groups. "We're not totally upset over it, but we also understand it is just a planning document," said EPA's Richard Mayer, the official who wrote the comments. Over the past year, the Energy Department has pushed "Risk-Based End State" visions for each of its sites nationwide. The goal is cutting costs and time by cleaning up contaminated sites to only the level required by anticipated future land use. In many cases, that is an industrial standard that accommodates some level of pollution. State regulatory agencies and citizens groups across the country have pushed back against the cheaper, faster DOE vision. The New Mexico Environment Department, regional environmental groups and a citizens advisory board have likewise expressed varying degrees of outrage over the DOE draft vision document for Los Alamos. They cite the hasty way it has been put together with little public input. Regional environmental groups and the top state environmental regulator say the plan will leave too much waste untouched. "In these documents, DOE assumes that leaving waste in place is the best environmental option," Environment Department Secretary Ron Curry said when the 80-page draft document was first released in January. Part of the DOE vision for Los Alamos includes transferring environmental management programs to the National Nuclear Security Administration. The EPA's Mayer said he is concerned NNSA lacks much experience handling environmental cleanup and the public involvement that goes along with it. Mayer's specific comments also address DOE assumptions that "capping and monitoring" is the end state for the "majority" of sites where mixed hazardous and radioactive wastes that according to DOE lie buried in lined and unlined pits and shafts. "For some of these areas, we don't have all the investigation results to know exactly what will occur at those sites," Mayer said. "It would be premature to say that this (capping and monitoring) would be the final remediation." According to the EPA comments, if contamination is spreading, the waste source may have to be removed. Representatives from local environmental groups, while still reviewing the EPA comments, said they are pleased to see EPA challenge DOE assumptions that some waste can be left in place. ----- To see more of the Albuquerque Journal, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.abqjournal.com © 2004, Albuquerque Journal. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News. ***************************************************************** 65 Oak Ridger: $6.61M fee for UT-Battelle Story last updated at 1:14 p.m. on March 5, 2004 Federal contractor's rating slides to 'excellent' By: Paul Parson | Oak Ridger Staff paul.parson@oakridger.com RATING: The performance review gave the federal contractor high marks in the areas of science and community service. Although UT-Battelle's overall rating dropped, the company still earned $6.61 million from the Department of Energy for managing Oak Ridge National Laboratory in fiscal year 2003. Jeff Wadsworth, the lab's director, said Thursday evening that he was disappointed the rating dropped from "outstanding," which is the highest possible, to "excellent." "Our overall FY 2003 score was very similar to FY 2002's, but it was just short of the threshold needed for an 'outstanding' rating," Wadsworth said. However, UT-Battelle's latest rating didn't drastically change the management fee the federal contractor received. FY 2002's fee was $6.65 million and, per the DOE contract, the maximum fee UT-Battelle can get is $6.86 million. For the ratings period, Oct. 1, 2002, to Sept. 30, 2003, UT-Battelle scored 100 percent on two of the three main performance categories. The two areas pertained to science and technology as well as community service. One of the science and technology projects garnering praise was the Spallation Neutron Source, which will generate neutrons for research once it's completed in 2006. Although it was developed as a partnership of six national labs, ORNL is managing the SNS, which is on time and on budget as far as construction is concerned. In both FY 2002 and FY 2003, UT-Battelle earned an "excellent" score in the performance category of operations and safety. "Total injury data for ORNL shows that the laboratory has made a reduction in this area relative to FY 2002," wrote George Malosh, DOE's site manager for ORNL, in a letter to Wadsworth. However, Malosh pointed out that recent safety incidents at ORNL were a cause for concern. The DOE official noted that the federal agency has challenged UT-Battelle to continue making improvements in the category of operations and safety. "We will be monitoring this area closely in the coming year," Malosh wrote. In the lab's defense, Wadsworth said that UT-Battelle and ORNL have continuously been improving safety. And, even though the lab's rate of accidents and injuries was reduced by more than a third from FY 2002, Wadsworth noted DOE's safety performance bar was set much higher in FY 2003. Wadsworth said the goal for FY 2004 - the current fiscal year - is to get "outstanding" ratings in all three of the main performance categories. UT-Battelle - a partnership between the University of Tennessee and Battelle - has been managing ORNL since April 2000. Under UT-Battelle, Bill Madia served as director until last year when Wadsworth took over in August - shortly before FY 2003 ended. ***************************************************************** 66 Oak Ridger: Conner retires after 43-year BWXT career Story last updated at 1:15 p.m. on March 5, 2004 A native of the central Virginia area, Conner began working at the Nuclear Facilities Plant in 1959 after two years of service in the United States Marine Corps. He earned his business degree from Lynchburg College during his employment at the plant. He would spend the next 40 years at that site, eventually leading the Naval Nuclear Fuel Division, which supplies the United States Navy with all of its nuclear fuel. During his tenure, Mr. Conner never missed a shipyard date for his Navy customers. In 2000, Conner joined the BWXT team vying for the operations contract for the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. The complex is an important component in the nation's defense and played a key role in the Manhattan Project during World War II. Brett Pate/Y-12 National Security Comples Dennis Ruddy, left, president and general manager of BWXT Y-12, congratulates James A. 'Buddy' Conner who is retiring from a 43-year career. BWXT won the contract, and Conner spent the last three years as the deputy manager of operations at the site, which provides stewardship and security to a safe and reliable stockpile of nuclear weapon components and materials. Conner is known for his dedication and remarkable work ethic. Many at the Lynchburg plant remember him greeting employees on the shop floor by 7 a.m. every morning. Operations personnel at the Y-12 facility recall his ability to remove obstacles that inhibited their progress. Those who know him, either through work or the many community activities in which he has participated, all remark on his good nature and positive outlook. Judy, his wife of some 47 years, says his high regard for people and his focus on everyone's positive points is a trait he inherited from his mother. "There are few people like Buddy Connner," said Dennis Ruddy, president and general manager of BWXT Y-12. "His service to this country for the last 45 years deserves immense admiration. I'd love to have him stay with us, but he deserves every minute of his retirement. It will be up to us to carry on his example." Conner says he will "check in on things from time to time" at both Lynchburg and Oak Ridge, but he feels certain that he can give up the reigns and enjoy retirement. He says grandchildren and golf will occupy most of his time now. If you would like to extend your congratulations to Buddy, a community-wide reception will be held today from 5 to 7 p.m. at the American Legion Hall on Greenview Drive. ***************************************************************** 67 Google News Alert - nuclear Date: Fri, 05 Mar 2004 12:59:15 -0800 (PST) NIGERIA, Pakistan Nuclear Deal Causes Outcry AllAfrica.com - Africa Nigeria has pulled back from an earlier press statement that it had discussed acquiring nuclear power from Pakistan, and the reference to nuclear weapons was a ... See all stories on this topic: DUBAI used to smuggle nuclear merchandise, alleges NYT Hindustan Times - New Delhi,India Dubai is providing a congenial environment for masking the destination of illegal merchandise, including those which could be used for nuclear reactors and ... See all stories on this topic: MALAYSIA unwilling to sign additional nuclear non-proliferation ... Khaleej Times - Dubai,United Arab Emirates KUALA LUMPUR - Malaysia showed resistance on Friday to signing stricter nuclear treaty controls, but assured the United States that it will fight trafficking ... See all stories on this topic: BRITAIN Satisfied With Pakistani Nuclear Probe: Jack Straw Aljazeerah.info ISLAMABAD, 5 March 2004 — Britain is satisfied with Pakistan’s cooperation in investigating nuclear proliferation by its chief nuclear scientist, Foreign ... See all stories on this topic: UN nuclear watchdog to review Iran and Libya Khaleej Times - Dubai,United Arab Emirates VIENNA - The UN nuclear watchdog meets next week with the United States, which has vowed to keep up pressure on Iran over an alleged hidden atomic weapons ... See all stories on this topic: CUSTOMS examine British link in nuclear parts trade Guardian - UK ... have opened an investigation into the activities of two Britons, Peter and Paul Griffin, who are alleged to be supplying components for the secret nuclear ... See all stories on this topic: CHINA urges NKorea nuclear talk nations to refrain from ... Channel News Asia - Singapore BEIJING: China urged nations engaged in talks to get North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons program to refrain from words or actions that might worsen the ... See all stories on this topic: NUCLEAR Industry, TVA Get Boost during Senate Hearing WATE - Knoxville,TN,USA WASHINGTON (AP) -- US senators said Thursday the nation should invest more heavily in nuclear power, and praised the Tennessee Valley Authority for doing its ... See all stories on this topic: US Promises To Be Patient On Nuclear Issue E.Sinchew-i.com - Asia Washington promises patience in seeking a diplomatic solution to its 17-month nuclear standoff with Pyongyang, US Secretary of State Colin Powell said ... See all stories on this topic: FRENCH govt accused of lacking nuclear crisis plan Forbes - USA PARIS, March 5 (Reuters) - The French government is under pressure to work out a crisis plan for coping with any major radioactive leak from a nuclear accident ... 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/ ***************************************************************** 68 PhysicsWeb: Bubble fusion makes controversial return News for March 2004 4 March 2004 The physicist who claimed to have observed nuclear fusion in a beaker of acetone two years ago has published new data to back up his claim. Rusi Taleyarkhan, now at Purdue University in Indiana, and colleagues say that fusion neutrons and tritium are produced when the acetone is subjected to intense sound waves in a table-top sonoluminescence experiment (R Taleyarkhan et al. 2004 Phys. Rev. E to be published). However, other physicists continue to doubt the experiment. In sonoluminescence, the bubbles in a liquid emit light when they are forced to expand and collapse by sound waves. Physicists believe that the pressures and temperatures inside the collapsing bubbles could be high enough to initiate nuclear reactions. If achieved, such "bubble fusion" could lead to a new clean energy source. In a controversial paper published in Science in March 2002 Taleyarkhan and co-workers described how they had used high-energy neutrons to create tiny bubbles of gas in a beaker of acetone in which the hydrogen atoms had been replaced by deuterium (D). Taleyarkhan, who was then based at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, claimed that the temperature inside the collapsing bubbles was in excess of a million degrees - high enough for two deuterium nuclei to undergo a fusion reaction (Science 295 1868). DD fusion reactions can produce a helium-3 nucleus plus a neutron, or a tritium nucleus and a proton. However, the results were questioned by many researchers in the field. Now, Taleyarkhan says his team has repeated the experiment with more sensitive detectors. "A fair amount of very substantial new work has been conducted," he said in a press release issued by Purdue. "And this time I made a conscious decision to involve as many individuals as possible - top scientists and physicists from around the world and experts in neutron science." As before, the team claims to detect tritium as well as neutrons with the characteristic energy for DD fusion reactions. Moreover, the fusion products are not observed in experiments with ordinary acetone. Taleyarkhan says that chances of the result being due a phenomenon other than fusion have been reduced from 1 in 100 to 1 in 1011. Michael Saltmarsh of Oak Ridge says he is "intrigued but sceptical" about the new work. "Unlike their Science paper, most of the background notes and supporting information seem to be correct but there are still some puzzling inconsistencies," he told PhysicsWeb. "In particular, the estimated neutron detection efficiency is still an order of magnitude too low. While better than the Science article, the difference would produce a mismatch between the reported neutron and tritium yields." "Thermonuclear sono-fusion may not be impossible," says Willy Moss of the Lawrence Livermore National Lab, "but more tests need to done. Personally, I would like the results to be real, but I believe that the nature of these claims requires absolute proof." "When a startling new discovery is announced, it is the responsibility of the authors to lay things clear," adds Aaron Galonsky of Michigan State University. "Taleyarkhan and co-workers have not done that well enough for me to be able to say whether they have seen nuclear fusion in a bottle of acetone. With two million 14 MeV neutrons per second injected into the room where the experiment was performed, there are opportunities for error in detecting the much rarer, lower-energy sonoluminescent neutrons." Author Belle Dumé is Science Writer at PhysicsWeb [ src=] ***************************************************************** 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: *****************************************************************