*****************************************************************
03/09/04 **** RADIATION BULLETIN(RADBULL) **** VOL 12.59
*****************************************************************
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] Stand up to US, Blix tells Howard
2 NewsMax: Exclusive: U.S. Finds Radioactive Missiles in Iraq
3 KR Washington: CIA director disputes Cheney assertions on Iraq
4 Las Vegas SUN: Top Iraq Nuke Scientist Seeks UN Probe
5 Las Vegas SUN: U.S. Toning Down Criticism of Iran Nukes
6 Las Vegas SUN: Iran Facing Censure for Nuclear Secrecy
7 Las Vegas SUN: U.S., Europe Split on Iran Nuke Activities
8 BBC: Iran set for UN nuclear censure
9 Reuters: Iran Moves Uranium Enrichment to Secret Plants
10 Las Vegas SUN: U.S. Blasts Allies Over Iran Nukes
11 Daily Times: North Korea rejects US nuke demands
12 US: [NukeNet] NRC Continues To Aid Al Qaeda, Play Chernobyl
13 Reuters: Pakistan Tests Longest-Range Nuke-Capable Missile
14 Las Vegas SUN: Israeli: Nuke Whistleblower Must Go Free
15 BBC: Vanunu 'is still security risk'
16 Haaretz: AG Mazuz: Vanunu significant danger to state security
17 Pravda.RU Nuclear fuel from Libya to be processed in Dimitrovgrad
NUCLEAR REACTORS
18 AFP: China on verge of pact to build nuclear plant in Pakistan = rep
19 US: NRC: Agency Information Collection Activities: Proposed Collecti
20 US: NRC: Sunshine Act Meeting
21 US: Reuters: RG&E files plan to keep rates flat, sell Ginna nuke
22 US: Marion Star: Nuclear plant to power up -
23 US: News Messenger: Davis-Besse operators begin restarting plant -
24 US: Beacon Journal: Davis-Besse power plant hums to life
25 US: JOURNAL NEWS: What the rating means
26 US: toledoblade.com: Davis-Besse gets OK to restart, end record 2-ye
27 US: JOURNAL NEWS: Drill to settle Indian Point plan's worth
28 Japan Times: Ehime reactor leaks 1.6 tons of radioactive coolant wat
29 NYT: Chance to Revive Sales Draws Nuclear Industry to China
30 US: Newhouse A1: Questions Linger as Repaired Nuke Plant Prepares to
31 US: Morning Journal: Davis-Besse fired back up
32 US: Newsday.com: NRC gives Indian Point 2 a clean report card
33 US: Brattleboro Reformer: Yankee worker feels ostracized
34 Sofia: Russian Units Tipped for Bulgaria's Second N-Plant
35 US: Brattleboro Reformer: Yankee Rowe waste materials are traveling
NUCLEAR SAFETY
36 Bellona: Sevmash plant produced initial batch of casks for submarine
37 BBC: Sub crash commanders reprimanded
38 Scotsman.com: Commanders reprimanded after grounding sub
NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE
39 US: ALERT! Action needed by *3/17* on nuke materials deregulation!
40 Las Vegas SUN: Science panel in Las Vegas studying geology of Nevada
41 US: Salt Lake Tribune: Utah counties plan to fight nuke testing
42 Las Vegas RJ: Official says sufficient Yucca funding crucial
43 Bellona: Mayak plant launched storage facility for fissile materials
44 Bellona: Russia might accept spent nuclear fuel from Lithuania
45 Chillicothe Gazette: Piketon celebrates future with USEC
46 Las Vegas SUN: Editorial: DOE's recklessness
47 Las Vegas SUN: Senator wants full Yucca Mountain funding
48 US: TheOmahaChannel.com: State Looking For Ways To Pay Nuclear Settl
49 US: toledoblade.com: Oregon council opposes expansion of dump
50 US: KGW: Ecology director concernd about Hanford being nuclear waste
51 US: KTVB: INEEL waste cleanup promo
NUCLEAR WEAPONS
52 US: lamonitor.com: Features Oppenheimer photos commemorate birthday
53 AU ABC: Ailuk Atoll wants to join Marshall Islands atomic compensati
US DEPT. OF ENERGY
54 DOE: International Energy Agency Meeting
55 Tri-City Herald: Opinions Hanford Reach panel deserves more time
OTHER NUCLEAR
56 CS Monitor: French science 'under attack'
57 Renewable Energy News: Bubble Fusion Breakthrough Replicated
*****************************************************************
*****************************************************************
FULL NEWS STORIES
*****************************************************************
*****************************************************************
1 [southnews] Stand up to US, Blix tells Howard
Date: Tue, 9 Mar 2004 17:58:40 -0600 (CST)
The former chief UN weapons inspector, Hans Blix, has called on
Australia to be more independent from the US when deciding "questions of
war and peace".
*Stand apart from the US, Blix urges*
By Peter Fray, Herald Correspondent in London
March 10, 2004
The former chief UN weapons inspector, Hans Blix, has called on
Australia to be more independent from the US when deciding "questions of
war and peace".
Dr Blix, in a rare foray into national politics, said it was only right
that the Prime Minister, John Howard, had been "paying some price" for
supporting the US invasion of Iraq, though he accepted it was difficult
for Canberra to stand up to Washington.
In an interview with the /Herald/ to mark the publication of his
memoirs, Dr Blix said: "It may not be easy to be independent vis-a-vis
the US because they are so tremendously powerful, but [Australia] ought
to be."
He said it would be entirely "improper" for any country to bow to US
pressure on an issue of war on the basis of gaining favourable treatment
or assistance in some other area.
"The US might well go to some small country and say, 'Look, you don't
have [an] interest in Iraq, but you have one big interest in the world
and that is to be friendly to us, so are you going to vote for your
interest or not?' "
A spokesman for Mr Howard said: "The Prime Minister rejects the
criticism that Australia bowed to US pressure."
"It was right for Australia to be involved in the coalition.
Understandably, as leader of it, Hans Blix had wanted the UN weapons
inspection process to continue."
Dr Blix said that, despite Australia's interest in a close relationship
with the US, it had a greater responsibility to the world when judging
whether a country would be subjected to war.
While he accepted that Mr Howard, like the British Prime Minister, Tony
Blair, had not acted in bad faith, it was obvious he had preferred to
listen to misleading and flawed intelligence reports rather than what UN
inspectors were saying.
"They [political leaders] are in a more difficult position than
inspectors are," he said.
"We report the reality in shades of black and grey and white. They have
to get the populations in their countries to decisions, and, in order to
do so, the shades tend to disappear."
Much of the intelligence supplied to Western leaders had been based on
information supplied by Iraqi defectors who "often come up with things
interrogators want to hear" or satellite images subsequently shown to
have "weaknesses".
"Perhaps the regret they [coalition leaders] have now is they did not
let us continue with inspections for some months," he said. "We would
have gone to even more sites given by intelligence, and since there
weren't any weapons of mass destruction we wouldn't have found any. They
would have realised the intelligence they had was not good."
"It seems they paid too much attention to what [Iraqi] defectors were
saying."
Though he had no direct evidence of it, it was highly likely that
Western intelligence agencies had come under "implicit pressure" to
provide their governments with evidence of illegal weapons.
Dr Blix, speaking from Stockholm, said he became convinced that Saddam
Hussein had no banned weapons only in the weeks after the US invasion.
Iraqi witnesses were by then being offered rewards for leading the US
military to weapons sites rather than facing reprisals if they had
spoken to UN inspectors while Saddam was in power.
/This story was found at:
*http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/03/09/1078594365552.html
*//Also found Fairfax sister:
*http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/03/09/1078594363563.html
_________________________________*/
____
Iraq conflict proponents were chasing 'phantoms': Blix
*AFP Wednesday March 10*
Former UN chief weapons inspector Hans Blix said Tuesday that
politicians who backed the US-led war in Iraq ended up "chasing
phantoms" in their unerring belief that the Baghdad regime possessed
weapons of mass destruction.
In Barcelona to receive a Spanish award for his efforts to resolve
conflicts by peaceful means Blix said: "They (the politicians) were
chasing after phantoms."
"They were so convinced they (the weapons) existed that if they saw a
shadow they thought that was proof the phantoms existed," Blix said
after receiving his award from Barcelona mayor Joan Clos.
"They were impatient and they decided to act. But they should have asked
themselves more pertinent questions."
Blix said he believed that those who backed the conflict had "made a
mistake" -- albeit in good faith.
He added it appeared to him that intelligence reports on Iraq's military
capabilities had "exaggerated and misinterpreted" the reality.
"In December 2002 I also had my suspicions on the existence of weapons
of mass destruction -- but having investigated the sites the
intelligence services signalled to me and found nothing I became more
sceptical," he said.
Three months later the United States and Britain attacked Iraq, leading
to the eventual ouster of Saddam Hussein.
____________________________
*US pressured me, says Blix*
March 10, 2004
*The UN's former weapons inspector claims he was urged to help build a
case for war against Iraq. Walter Pincus reports from Washington.*
The United Nations' former chief weapons inspector, Hans Blix, has
claimed that the United States tried to pressure him to tell the
Security Council that Iraq was in violation of UN resolutions just two
weeks before Baghdad was attacked.
On March 6, 2003, the day before Dr Blix was to make his last report to
the Security Council, US Assistant Secretary of State John Wolf asked
"in a rather discourteous tone" why Dr Blix did not conclude that the
discovery of an Iraqi aerial drone and a cluster bomb for delivering
chemical weapons were violations of Iraq's obligations, Dr Blix writes
in his new book, /Disarming Iraq/.
Dr Blix said Mr Wolf "tossed photographs of a drone and a cluster bomb
on my table", which further irritated the former Swedish diplomat
because of the possibility that the pictures had been leaked by someone
on his staff or that his secure fax system had been penetrated.
In Dr Blix's account, his inspectors had examined Iraq's pilotless
aircraft, "and while Iraqi explanations had not been very satisfactory,
we had not yet come to any conclusion about whether the drones were legal".
And although Dr Blix himself had not been briefed about the recently
found cluster bombs, his staff later told him they were "copies of South
African munitions imported by Iraq long ago... and appeared to be scrap
from the past rather than something of current interest".
The exchange with Mr Wolf was one of several last-minute manoeuvres at
the UN that were undertaken to head off the fighting that began on March 19.
"The policy of containment was abandoned in the case of Iraq and
counter-proliferation was applied," Dr Blix concludes.
He compares the $US80 million annual cost of his 200 inspectors to the
$US80 billion annual cost of the US-led invasion force of some 300,000.
Dr Blix repeatedly notes that until early 2003, he too believed that
Iraq might have retained some chemical or biological weapons, or at
least stockpiles of agents, based on inadequate accounting by Baghdad of
weapons or agents that had been destroyed.
In a broader sense, Dr Blix writes that without the US military build-up
beginning in the autumn of 2002, there would not have been a resumption
of inspections.
But, he suggests, had a moderate build-up of US and British forces
continued into 2003, and had inspections continued with no denials of
access to sites or interviews with Iraqi technical people, "Iraq could
have shown in time that there were no weapons of mass destruction".
If that had not been shown by July 2003, Dr Blix writes, "a majority of
the Security Council might have been ready to authorise armed intervention".
- Washington Post
/This story was found at:
*http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/03/09/1078594361094.html* /
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 NewsMax: Exclusive: U.S. Finds Radioactive Missiles in Iraq
[NewsMax.com logo]
Charles R. Smith
Tuesday, March 9, 2004
U.S. Army troops operating at a former Iraqi air base recently
made a startling discovery: Russian-made missiles marked with
radioactive warning signs.
Army bomb disposal troops confirmed using Geiger counters that
the missiles are indeed radioactive.
The discovery is not, however, considered the long-sought
"smoking gun" of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.
The missiles appear to be part of a cache of weapons supplied to
Iraq before the 1991 Gulf War.
The Russian-made R-60, NATO code name AA-8 Aphid, air-to-air
missiles are part of a huge stockpile of former Iraqi Air Force
munitions uncovered in over a dozen concrete bunkers.
Photos Courtesy U.S. Army
The Russian-made missiles are more than 6 feet long. Each
carries 1.6 kilograms or about 3.5 pounds of radioactive uranium
wrapped around a high explosive warhead.
The uranium is not pure enough nor in large enough quantity to be
a nuclear warhead but it is dangerous enough, as you can see from
the label:
Photos Courtesy U.S. Army
U.S. bomb experts noted the R-60 warheads are similar in design
and content to a so-called "dirty bomb" that could contaminate a
small area with radioactive materials.
Difficult Disposal
The discovery of the uranium-laced R-60 missiles illustrates the
difficulty that coalition troops have in trying to dispose of the
billons of dollars of Iraqi weapons left behind after the second
war.
The R-60 missiles cannot simply be destroyed because the
uranium-laced warheads could pose a health hazard to coalition
troops and Iraqi civilians.
Army bomb-disposal experts have gathered up all the R-60 missiles
found at the site and quarantined them at a single, heavily
guarded location.
The R-60 has a very small 6-kilogram (13.2-pound) explosive
warhead. The R-60 missiles supplied to Iraq by Russia contained
uranium in their warheads to assist the small explosive charge in
destroying targeted aircraft.
Russian weapons designers added the uranium belt to the missile
in order to knock-out western aircraft using the dense metal as a
way to punch through heavily armored sections of U.S. made jets.
U.S. troops also found a small number of advanced R-60M warheads
at the site. The R-60M missiles are equipped with an advanced
laser destruct system that detonates the warhead when it passes
close to a target aircraft.
More Russian Missiles
In addition, U.S. troops uncovered several large air-to-surface
Kh-28 missiles, NATO code-named AS-9 Kyle.
Photos Courtesy U.S. Army
The Kh-28 is a Russian-made, anti-radar, air-to-surface missile
with a top speed of more than 2,000 miles an hour.
The missile is approximately 19.5 feet long, 17 inches in
diameter, has a wingspan of 5.5 feet and weighs more than 1,500
pounds. It carries a conventional 340-pound high-explosive
warhead and has a range of 54 miles.
U.S weapons experts are also handling the Kh-28 missiles
carefully, but not because of its electronic radar-seeking
warhead.
The Kh-28 is powered by a liquid-propellant propulsion system
that consists of a fuel tank and an oxidizer tank. The oxidizer
is a dangerous chemical known as "red fuming nitric acid" or
IRFNA. Each missile carries approximately 20 gallons of IRFNA.
The oxidizer is considered to be highly dangerous and a possible
carcinogen. U.S. Air Force disposal squads dismantled a Kh-28
found after the 1991 Gulf War using full Hazmat suits and special
anti-chemical gear.
Again, U.S. forces are taking great care in the disposal of the
missiles for fear of exposing coalition troops and local
civilians to hazardous chemicals such as the oxidizer found in
the Kh-28 missiles.
* * *
Radio appearances: The Charlie Smith Show on the American Freedom
Network on Friday, March 12 at 11 a.m. Eastern time. Show
information at http://www.amerifree.com.
All Rights Reserved © NewsMax.com
*****************************************************************
3 KR Washington: CIA director disputes Cheney assertions on Iraq
Knight Ridder Washington
Tuesday, Mar 09, 2004
[Central Intelligence Agency Director George Tenet speaks
before the Senate Armed Service Committee as he testifies on
Capitol Hill in Washington.]
CHUCK KENNEDY / KRT
By Jonathan S. Landay
WASHINGTON - CIA Director George Tenet on Tuesday rejected recent
assertions by Vice President Dick Cheney that Iraq cooperated
with the al-Qaida terrorist network and that the administration
had proof of an illicit Iraqi biological warfare program.
Tenet's comments to the Senate Armed Services Committee are
likely to fuel friction between the White House and intelligence
agencies over the failure so far to find any of the banned
weapons stockpiles that President Bush, in justifying his case
for war, charged Saddam Hussein with concealing.
Tenet at first appeared to defend the administration, saying that
he didn't believe the White House misrepresented intelligence
provided by the CIA.
The administration's statements, he said, reflected a prewar
intelligence consensus that Saddam had stockpiled chemical and
biological weapons and was pursuing nuclear bombs.
But under sharp questioning by Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass.,
Tenet reversed himself, saying there had been instances when he
had warned administration officials that they were misstating the
threat posed by Iraq.
"I'm not going to sit here and tell you what my interaction was
... and what I did and didn't do, except that you have to have
confidence to know that when I believed that somebody was
misconstruing intelligence, I said something about it," Tenet
said. "I don't stand up publicly and do it."
Tenet admitted to Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, the committee's
senior Democrat, that he had told Cheney that the vice president
was wrong in saying that two truck trailers recovered in Iraq
were "conclusive evidence" that Saddam had a biological weapons
program.
Cheney made the assertion in a Jan. 22 interview with National
Public Radio.
Tenet said that U.S. intelligence agencies still disagree on the
purpose of the trailers. Some analysts believe they were mobile
biological-weapons facilities; others think they may have been
for making hydrogen gas for weather balloons.
Levin also questioned Tenet about a Jan. 9 interview with the
Rocky Mountain News, in which Cheney cited a November article in
the Weekly Standard, a conservative magazine, as "the best source
of information" on cooperation between Saddam and al-Qaida.
The article was based on a leaked top-secret memorandum. It
purportedly set out evidence, compiled by a special Pentagon
intelligence cell, that Saddam was in league with al-Qaida leader
Osama bin Laden. It was written by Undersecretary of Defense for
Policy Douglas Feith, the third-highest Pentagon official and a
key proponent of the war.
"Did the CIA agree with the contents of the Feith document?"
asked Levin.
"Senator, we did not clear the document," replied Tenet. "We did
not agree with the way the data was characterized in that
document."
Tenet, who pointed out that the Pentagon, too, had disavowed the
document, said he learned of the article Monday night, and he
planned to speak with Cheney about the CIA's view of the Feith
document.
In building the case for war, Bush, Cheney and other top
officials relied in part on assessments by the CIA and other
agencies. But they concealed disputes and dissents over Iraq's
weapons programs and links to terrorists that were raging among
analysts, U.S. diplomats and military officials.
They also used exaggerated and fabricated information from
defectors and former Iraqi exile groups that was fed directly
into Cheney's office and the Pentagon. Those groups included the
Iraqi National Congress, whose leader, Ahmad Chalabi, was close
to hawks around Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld and the
White House, but who was distrusted by the CIA and the State
Department.
Adm. Lowell Jacoby, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency,
the military's main intelligence arm, said that "some"
information provided by defectors had checked out, but that they
also gave material that was "fabricated or embellished."
Bush has appointed a bipartisan commission to investigate what
the CIA and other intelligence agencies knew about prewar Iraq,
but wouldn't permit the commission to examine how intelligence
was used by the White House and the Pentagon. Information from
Iraqi defectors and exile groups, who contended that Saddam was a
great threat, was also ruled off-limits.
Politics pervaded Tuesday's hearing. Democrats sought to prove
that Bush and his top aides overstated prewar intelligence
assessments of the threat posed by Saddam. Republicans insisted
that the administration's arguments reflected the CIA's judgment,
the views of most lawmakers and those of the former Clinton
administration.
"Members of this committee, members of the Senate, as well as
past and present administrations reached the same conclusions:
Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction," said Sen.
John Warner, R-Va., the panel chairman.
Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., the Democratic presidential candidate,
and other critics are linking the issue to Bush's credibility as
the election campaign heats up and the toll of dead and injured
U.S. soldiers rises.
*****************************************************************
4 Las Vegas SUN: Top Iraq Nuke Scientist Seeks UN Probe
March 08, 2004
By SAM F. GHATTAS ASSOCIATED PRESS
BEIRUT, Lebanon (AP) -
The father of Iraq's nuclear bomb program denied Monday that
Saddam Hussein tried to restart his atomic activities, but
acknowledged Iraq tried to conceal its banned weapons operations
before destroying them 13 years ago.
Jafar Dhia Jafar, speaking publicly for the first time since
U.S. forces occupied Baghdad, also called for a U.N. probe of
what its inspectors knew before the U.S.-led invasion.
Inspectors "reached total conviction" that Iraq was free of
nuclear weapons yet failed to convey that to the Security
Council because of U.S. pressure, he said.
"Reports of the United Nations to the Security Council should
have been clear and courageous," Jafar said.
Before the invasion last March, chief U.N. inspector Hans Blix
and his nuclear counterpart Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the
International Atomic Energy Agency, said that in four months of
searching, their teams found no evidence of any weapons of mass
destruction or programs to build them, and needed more time to
make a definitive conclusion.
Asked to respond to Jafar's claims, IAEA spokeswoman Melissa
Fleming said ElBaradei was forthright to the Security Council.
She rejected the idea that investigators were absolutely
convinced Iraq had no weapons program.
"In order to be thorough and factual we had to make sure that we
had checked every lead and every possibility before making any
final determination," Fleming said. "After four months, we
weren't quite there yet."
At the time, U.S. officials insisted Saddam was developing a
nuclear weapons program. After the war, U.S. inspectors also
found no signs of a revived program. Still, David Kay, the chief
U.S. inspector who resigned in January, contended last October
he found "evidence of Saddam's continued ambition to acquire
nuclear weapons." That evidence has not been made public.
Jafar has been living in the United Arab Emirates since slipping
out of Iraq to Syria during the war. U.S. officials said last
April he had surrendered and was questioned.
On Monday, he addressed a meeting on the repercussions of the
occupation of Iraq, organized by the Beirut-based Center for
Arab Unity Studies. Before a sympathetic audience of
intellectuals and Arab nationalists, he presented a paper
co-written with Noman Saad Eddin al-Noaimi, a former
director-general of Iraq's nuclear program.
"Saddam Hussein issued orders in July 1991 for the destruction
of all banned weapons, in addition to the systems to produce
them. It was carried out by the Special Republican Guard
forces," the scientists said in their paper.
"We can confirm with absolute certainty that Iraq no longer
possessed any weapons of mass destruction after its unilateral
destruction of all its components in the summer of 1991, and did
not resume any such activity because it no longer had the
foundations to resume such activity," they wrote.
In a later panel discussion, Jafar - who once was an adviser to
the Iraqi dictator as a leader of his nuclear program -
acknowledged Iraq tried to conceal its weapons programs from
international inspectors, who first arrived in early 1991.
"There was concealment at the beginning in all programs," he
said.
But Jafar said the speed with which inspectors operated, aerial
reconnaissance and the large size of equipment that had to be
moved led to the "the concealment operation failing within
weeks" and to an Iraqi decision to dismantle and destroy the
weapons and their programs.
He also acknowledged Iraqi errors in handling the destruction of
the weapons programs.
The United Nations had complained that figures relating to
chemical and biological agents did not match what was produced,
used or destroyed. In a reply to a question from the audience,
Jafar said the destruction of the banned weapons and substances
by Special Republican Guard forces "was not done in a proper,
detailed manner."
"There were great and serious attempts later to document it (the
destruction), put the pieces together and estimate what was
destroyed. It was not convincing," he said.
The two scientists wrote about the history of Iraq's nuclear
program and how Saddam turned it into a covert effort after
Israel's 1981 airstrikes that destroyed a nuclear reactor near
Baghdad before it became operational.
In their paper, the scientists said Iraq achieved "encouraging
results" by the end of 1990 in uranium enrichment programs as
well as in studies and designs of nuclear weapons, but the
activities "did not continue as a result of the Desert Storm war
in 1991."
Iraq produced 160 tons of low-grade uranium in 1990, according
to the scientists, before most of the facilities were damaged or
destroyed in the 1991 Gulf War. The paper listed the detailed
destruction of nuclear facilities in the Gulf War and in 1998
U.S. airstrikes.
Scientists, engineers and technicians who worked on armament and
homegrown technology "were dispersed after the 1991 war. Some
moved to work in state civilian institutions or universities,
some left to work in the private sector, some retired, many
emigrated and some died," they wrote.
--
*****************************************************************
5 Las Vegas SUN: U.S. Toning Down Criticism of Iran Nukes
Today: March 09, 2004 at 11:30:50 PST
By GEORGE JAHN ASSOCIATED PRESS
VIENNA, Austria (AP) -
Accepting painful compromises, the United States agreed with key
European nations on Tuesday to tone down criticism of Iran for
its continued nuclear secrecy.
Washington also accepted a draft resolution containing some
praise of Tehran's willingness to open its nuclear programs to
outside inspection.
Both sides signed off on the draft document prepared for a
high-level conference of the International Atomic Energy Agency
after days of grueling negotiations aimed at finding the proper
mix of praise and criticism.
The United States insists Iran is interested in making nuclear
weapons. Washington wanted the meeting to condemn Iran for not
fully living up to pledges to reveal all past and present
nuclear activities while keeping open options for future
involvement by the U.N. Security Council.
France, Germany and Britain, however, wanted to focus on Iranian
cooperation with the IAEA that began only after the discovery
last year that Tehran had plans to enrich uranium and secretly
conducted other tests with possible weapons applications over
nearly two decades.
IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei told reporters
negotiations continued on final language. The text of the
document still must be approved by all 35 nations of the IAEA
board of governors.
But with the trans-Atlantic rift resolved, the greatest hurdle
to agreement on Iran appeared to be out of the way.
The compromise reflected the obstacles faced by Washington in
its effort to deal harshly with Iran.
When the issue first came up before the board last year, the
United States pushed to have Tehran called before the U.N.
Security Council for possible sanctions, arguing that Iran had
violated the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
But it has been repeatedly forced to back down in the face of
widespread resistance at the board. The consensus text, made
available to the Associated Press Tuesday, made no direct
mention of the Security Council.
The text criticizes Iran for not fully living up to its pledge
to be completely open about past and present nuclear activities.
It "notes with the most serious concern that ... (past)
declarations made by Iran ... did not amount to the correct,
complete and final picture of Iran's past and present nuclear
program."
The text also slams Iran for "failing to resolve all questions"
about uranium enrichment, which can be used to make weapons,
saying the agency "deplores" the lapse.
But it praises Iran for signing an agreement throwing open its
nuclear programs to full and pervasive IAEA perusal and
"recognizes" Iran's cooperation with agency investigations, even
while calling on Iran to "intensify its cooperation."
In Tehran, Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi said he hoped the
IAEA ultimately would come to agree with Iran's assertion that
all its nuclear activities are "for peaceful purposes."
The rift over Iran had led to unusual strains between Washington
and its key European allies. U.S. Undersecretary of State John
Bolton complained in a letter sent to the French, German and
British governments that their stance was hurting the common
effort to get Iran to comply with its promises for full nuclear
disclosure, diplomats told The Associated Press.
"That, of course resulted in some pretty harsh words in reply,"
to Washington, a senior European diplomat told AP.
Besides Iran, Libya is also on the agenda, with ElBaradei
describing both nations as being in violation of the Nuclear
Nonproliferation Treaty.
But with Libya acting on pledges made last year to scrap its
programs for weapons of mass destruction, the focus at the
meeting was on Iran.
In an IAEA report last month, Tehran was accused of continuing
to hide evidence of nuclear experiments, leaving it to agency
inspectors to unearth them. The dossier dealt Iran a setback in
its efforts to convince the world that its nuclear program is
peaceful and that it is fully cooperating with the U.N. agency.
The report mentioned finds of traces of polonium, a radioactive
element that can be used in nuclear weapons and expressed
concerns with the discovery of a previously undisclosed advanced
P-2 uranium centrifuge system - a finding that the U.S.
administration said raises "serious concerns" about Tehran's
intentions.
Iran has insisted its interest in uranium enrichment is only
geared at generating power and not to arm warheads. To show good
will, it has suspended its enrichment program and has also
allowed IAEA inspectors broad access to its nuclear programs.
While praising Tehran for some cooperation, ElBaradei said he
was "seriously concerned" about Iran's refusal to declare plans
and parts for the P-2 enrichment system, calling it a "setback
to Iran's stated policy of transparency."
In contrast to the mixed review of Iran, a draft resolution on
Libya is generally complimentary.
The draft, which also was provided to the AP, expresses "deep
satisfaction," with Tripoli's openness, "welcomes the active
cooperation," exhibited by Libya, and "congratulates" it for
accepting full and intrusive IAEA inspections.
"There is no case to keep Libya on the agenda," Chief Libyan
delegate Giuma Ferjani told the AP. Libya was scheduled to sign
an agreement with the agency on Wednesday, opening its nuclear
program to full IAEA perusal.
Iran, too, insists it wants its nuclear dossier closed -
something ElBaradei has said would not happen until all
suspicions about past experiments are dispelled and future
openness is assured.
---
On the Net:
IAEA, www.iaea.org
--
*****************************************************************
6 Las Vegas SUN: Iran Facing Censure for Nuclear Secrecy
Today: March 09, 2004 at 9:45:42 PST
By GEORGE JAHN ASSOCIATED PRESS
VIENNA, Austria (AP) -
Resolving intense differences, the United States and key
European nations on Tuesday agreed to praise Iran for opening
much of its nuclear activities for outside inspection but to
censure Tehran for continued secrecy in some areas.
Both sides accepted a draft resolution prepared for a high-level
conference of the International Atomic Energy agency after days
of grueling negotiations aimed at finding the proper mix of
praise and criticism.
The United States insists Iran is interested in making nuclear
weapons. It wanted the meeting to condemn Iran for not fully
living up to pledges to reveal all past and present nuclear
activities and keep options open for future involvement by the
U.N. Security Council.
France, Germany and Britain, however, wanted to focus on Iranian
cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency that
began after the discovery last year that Teheran had plans to
enrich uranium and secretly conducted other tests with possible
weapons applications over nearly two decades.
The text still must be accepted by all 35 nations of the IAEA
board of governors. Still, with the trans-Atlantic rift
resolved, the greatest hurdle on agreement on Iran appeared to
be out of the way.
--
*****************************************************************
7 Las Vegas SUN: U.S., Europe Split on Iran Nuke Activities
Today: March 09, 2004 at 2:00:37 PST
By ANDREA DUDIKOVA ASSOCIATED PRESS
VIENNA, Austria (AP) -
The U.N. atomic agency's chief delivered a mixed verdict on
Iran's commitment to prove it does not want to make nuclear
weapons, amid U.S.-European differences on whether Tehran is
living up to its pledge to fully open up its nuclear dossier.
IAEA Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei on Monday described both
Iran and Libya - which has acknowledged having a weapons program
and has pledged to scrap it - as being in violation of the
Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
While praising Tehran for some cooperation, he said he was
"seriously concerned" about Iran's refusal to declare plans and
parts for an advanced uranium enrichment system, calling it a
"setback to Iran's stated policy of transparency."
Only Iran remains in the spotlight, with Libya apparently
keeping pledges to dismantle its weapons program.
Washington, which is convinced that Tehran once wanted to make
nuclear weapons and continues to harbor secrets, seeks tough
language to dominate any resolution that might be adopted by the
IAEA's 35-nation board of governors.
But Germany, Britain and France seek to emphasize Iran's
progress in unveiling nuclear activities and cooperating with
IAEA inspectors since the discovery last year of a secret
uranium enrichment program and covert tests that could be
applied toward making weapons.
Reflecting the rift, U.S. Undersecretary of State John Bolton
complained in a letter sent to the three European governments
ahead of the meeting that their stance was hurting the common
effort to get Iran to comply with its promises for full nuclear
disclosure, diplomats told The Associated Press.
A U.S-proposed resolution text shown to the AP spoke of "serious
failures" by Iran to reveal all and of "most serious concerns"
about its activities - language considered too harsh by the
Europeans.
Still Iran's chief delegate to the IAEA predicted U.S. attempts
to push through a tough resolution would fail.
"Almost all colleagues in the IAEA think that we have done our
best in our ability to work with the agency," Pirooz Hosseini
told reporters.
In an IAEA report made public last month, Tehran was accused of
continuing to hide evidence of nuclear experiments unearthed by
agency inspectors. The dossier dealt Iran a setback in its
efforts to convince the world that its nuclear program is
peaceful and that it is fully cooperating with the U.N. agency.
The report mentioned finds of traces of polonium, a radioactive
element that can be used in nuclear weapons and expressed
concerns with the discovery of a previously undisclosed advanced
P-2 uranium centrifuge system - a finding that the U.S.
administration said raises "serious concerns" about Tehran's
intentions.
Chief U.S. delegate Kenneth C. Brill also told reporters he
thought it was "striking that the more the agency learns the
more the Iranians have to change their stories."
Iran has insisted its interest in uranium enrichment is only
geared at generating power and not to arm warheads. To show good
will, it has suspended its enrichment program and has also
allowed IAEA inspectors broad access to its nuclear programs.
Iran requested an end of the international scrutiny of its past
and present nuclear agenda ahead of the meeting, but ElBaradei
said Tehran would remain on the agency's top agenda until all
outstanding issues are removed.
---
On the Net:
IAEA, www.iaea.org
--
*****************************************************************
8 BBC: Iran set for UN nuclear censure
Last Updated: Tuesday, 9 March, 2004
[Iran's Bushehr nuclear plant under construction]
Iran says the world must accept its nuclear status
Iran faces criticism for failing to disclose parts of its nuclear
programme in a resolution drafted at a meeting of the UN nuclear
watchdog, diplomats say.
However the draft motion is reported to put off any move on
possible sanctions.
Iran earlier rejected charges that it was in breach of accords on
nuclear safeguards. It added that it would not accept comparisons
with Libya.
It was responding after the UN agency's chief expressed concern
at omissions in a declaration on its nuclear programme.
'Final picture'
The resolution is to be submitted to the IAEA's 35-nation board
of governors meeting this week in the Austrian capital Vienna.
It has been discussing a critical report on Iran, which notes
that Tehran failed to reveal sensitive research in a declaration
submitted last October.
Correspondents say that both the US and key European nations
accepted compromises to come up with an appropriate mixture of
criticism and praise for Iran.
A draft of the resolution acquired by news agencies expressed
"most serious concern" that past declarations by Iran "did not
amount to the correct, complete and final picture of Iran's past
and present nuclear programme" despite a pledge to be completely
open about such activities.
But Iran is praised for signing an agreement throwing open its
nuclear programmes to full IAEA inspection.
And a decision on action in response to the "omissions" is to be
deferred until the IAEA's meeting in June.
No comparison
At the beginning of the meeting on Monday, Mr ElBaradei told
reporters that Iran and Libya had been in breach of the Nuclear
Non Proliferation Treaty.
Mr ElBaradei singled out for particular concern Iran's failure to
declare that it was researching advanced centrifuge designs,
known as P2, capable of producing highly enriched uranium.
Iran's foreign minister hit back on Tuesday claiming that it was
wrong to compare Iran with Libya, according to the state news
agency Irna.
This was because Libya had officially declared it was pursuing
nuclear weapons - in breach of the Non-Proliferation Agreement -
whereas Iran is not, he said.
He added that Iran's shortcomings were in the past and most of
them had been resolved.
European states led by Germany, France and the UK have favoured a
more conciliatory approach to Iran, pointing to the complicated
political situation within the Islamic republic.
Iran halted its enrichment programme last year under
international pressure but has indicated the move is only
temporary.
*****************************************************************
9 Reuters: Iran Moves Uranium Enrichment to Secret Plants
Mar 9, 2004 07:10 PM
By Louis Charbonneau
VIENNA (Reuters) - An exile who has previously released key
nuclear information about Iran said on Tuesday Iranian leaders
decided at a recent meeting to seek an atom bomb "at all costs"
and begin enriching uranium at secret plants, Alireza Jafarzadeh,
who disclosed in August 2002 that Iran had a hidden uranium
enrichment facility at Natanz and a heavy-water plant at Arak,
told Reuters his new information came from the same
"well-informed sources inside Iran."
He was a spokesman for the National Council of Resistance of Iran
before the United States, which lists it as a terrorist
organization, closed the NCRI's Washington office last year. He
said the Islamic republic's top leaders, including Supreme Leader
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, gathered after the father of Pakistan's
atomic weapons program, Abdul Qadeer Khan, admitted leaking
nuclear secrets to Iran, Libya and North Korea.
"At this recent meeting, they decided to join the nuclear
(weapons) club at all costs," Jafarzadeh said, adding that the
leaders decided it was "vital for the survival" of the country.
"They set a timetable to get a bomb by the end of 2005 at the
latest," he said, speaking from Washington. Iran has repeatedly
denied trying to develop atomic weapons, saying its nuclear
program is purely peaceful. Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi said
on Tuesday that Tehran had not violated the nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Jafarzadeh said the people at the meeting said they would have to
stop enriching uranium at Natanz, as Tehran had promised France,
Britain and Germany in October. But in order to make the
weapons-grade uranium needed for a bomb, they decided to move
their enrichment to smaller secret sites in the country. "They
will heavily rely on smaller secret enrichment sites at Karaj,
Esfahan and at other places," he said.
Jafarzadeh said Tehran was in a better position to hide the full
extent of its centrifuge enrichment program from U.N. inspectors
now it was able to build centrifuges domestically, without
relying on imports. The allegations came as the governing board
of the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) meets in
Vienna this week to discuss a resolution on Iran's failure to
inform the IAEA about its advanced centrifuge enrichment
research.
Jafarzadeh said the Iranian leaders also agreed at their secret
meeting to adopt a generally "aggressive and confrontational
approach" with the IAEA before "muscling their way to the finish
line to get the bomb." ©
Reuters 2004. All Rights Reserved. More
*****************************************************************
10 Las Vegas SUN: U.S. Blasts Allies Over Iran Nukes
March 08, 2004
By GEORGE JAHN ASSOCIATED PRESS
VIENNA, Austria (AP) -
In a trans-Atlantic rift over Iran, a top U.S. official
complained in a letter to France, Germany and Britain that their
softer stance was hurting common efforts to get Tehran to honor
promises for full nuclear disclosure, diplomats told The
Associated Press on Monday.
News of the letter by U.S. Undersecretary of State John Bolton
came amid tensions at a key board meeting of the U.N. atomic
agency over whether Iran has done enough to banish suspicions it
had a nuclear weapons program.
The diplomats, who spoke on condition of anonymity, refused to
provide details about the letter but said such direct criticism
was unusual.
Convinced that Tehran at one point wanted to make nuclear
weapons and continues to harbor secrets, Washington wants tough
language to dominate in any resolution adopted by the board of
the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency.
On the other side, Germany, Britain and France seek to emphasize
progress Iran has made in revealing nuclear activities and
cooperating with U.N. inspectors since the discovery last year
of a secret uranium enrichment program and covert tests that
could be applied toward making weapons.
At Monday's board of governors meeting, the chief Iranian
delegate predicted that U.S. attempts to crack down on Tehran
will fail.
Yet Iranian attempts to end international scrutiny of its past
and present nuclear agenda found no favor with IAEA
Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei, who said Tehran would remain
a top agenda item for the U.N. agency until fears it was trying
to make nuclear weapons were put to rest.
ElBaradei spoke on the first day of what was to be a three-day
meeting. But diplomats said the conference might go until Friday
because of the lack of consensus on how to deal with Iran's
mixed record on lifting nearly two decades of nuclear secrecy.
"We are still far away on common language," a senior diplomat
said as the meeting progressed.
A U.S-proposed text, seen by AP, spoke of "serious failures" by
Iran to reveal nuclear secrets and the "most serious concerns"
about its activities. Europeans consider that language too
harsh.
Chief Iranian delegate Pirooz Hosseini said the U.S. attempt to
take Iran to task "is not going to work."
"Almost all colleagues in the IAEA think that we have done our
best in our ability to work with the agency," he said.
Before the meeting, senior Iranian official Hasan Rowhani
demanded an end to the scrutiny of his country's nuclear
activities, insisting they were never geared toward making arms.
ElBaradei, however, suggested that Iran would remain an agency
priority. "The issue will (only) be removed from the agenda when
we are done with all the issues that are outstanding," he told
reporters.
ElBaradei also said the board would discuss agency findings
resulting from its probe of the "complex black market network"
providing Iran, Libya and North Korea with nuclear weapons
technology.
He described both Iran and Libya as being in violation of the
Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. But with Libya apparently
keeping pledges to reveal and scrap its nuclear weapons program,
it is Iran taking the heat at the Vienna meeting.
While insisting it is interested in uranium enrichment only to
generate power not to make weapons, Iran suspended its program
to defang criticism. Still, it reserves the right to resume such
activities, despite international demands that its enrichment be
totally scrapped.
Tehran has also allowed IAEA inspectors broad access to its
nuclear programs and handed over materials requested by
ElBaradei. But an IAEA report prepared for Monday's meeting
faults Tehran for continuing to hide evidence of nuclear
experiments unearthed by agency inspectors.
Made public last month, the dossier dealt the Islamic Republic a
setback in its efforts to convince the world that its nuclear
program is peaceful and that it is fully cooperating with the
U.N. agency.
The report mentioned finds of traces of polonium, a radioactive
element that can be used in nuclear weapons but that Iran says
it wanted for generating electricity. It also expressed concerns
with the discovery of an advanced P-2 uranium centrifuge system
- something the Bush administration said raises "serious
concerns" about Tehran's intentions.
ElBaradei told the board he was "seriously concerned" about
Iran's refusal to declare the P-2, calling it a "setback to
Iran's stated policy of transparency."
Hosseini, Iran's delegate, said his country had nothing else to
reveal.
Washington was unconvinced.
"I think its striking that the more the agency learns the more
the Iranians have to change their stories," chief U.S. delegate
Kenneth C. Brill told reporters.
---
On the Net:
IAEA, www.iaea.org
--
*****************************************************************
11 Daily Times: North Korea rejects US nuke demands
Wednesday, March 10, 2004
SEOUL: North Korea rejected a key US demand for easing nuclear
tensions on Tuesday and threatened to link the withdrawal of US
troops from South Korea to a settlement, in the latest sign the
communist country is trying to bolster its hand ahead of new
talks aimed at ending the dispute.
In a dispatch carried by the North’s official KCNA news agency,
Pyongyang dismissed as “unfeasible and unrealistic” Washington’s
stance that the communist country verifiably and irreversibly
dismantle its atomic weapons programmes as a first step in
resolving the 17-month long standoff. US insistence that North
Korea “completely, verifiably and irreversibly” begin dismantling
its nuclear programmes before receiving concessions was a key
sticking point in last month’s six-nation talks aimed at
brokering a deal.
The talks bogged down over differences about what nuclear
projects would be subject to dismantlement and how their shut
down would be verified. They ended without a major breakthrough.
North Korea blamed the outcome on “an infeasible and unrealistic
old assertion that the DPRK should scrap its nuclear programme
first,” adding that a change in “US attitude is a prerequisite to
the settlement.” DPRK stands for Democratic People’s Republic of
Korea, North Korea’s official name. North Korea also reiterated
that it may pin the withdrawal of US troops from South Korea to
the nuclear talks and demand a “verifiable and irreversible”
security guarantee from Washington. —AP Home | National
Bremer and experts discuss Saddam trial Jamali chairs CDC
meeting ‘China will build 2nd N-power plant’ Ashura violence:
Court begins to investigate massacre of 44 Indian Navy to get
first home-built aircraft carrier by 2011 Kashmir media centre on
fire after attack Indo-Pak series: Millions may miss matches over
media row
Daily Times - All Rights Reserved Site developed and hosted by
WorldCALL Internet Solutions
*****************************************************************
12 [NukeNet] NRC Continues To Aid Al Qaeda, Play Chernobyl
Date: Tue, 09 Mar 2004 14:56:55 -0800
Too bad the NY Times makes no mention of the
1964 US government report stating that an area the
size of the state of Pennsylvania would be
rendered uninhabitable if there were a meltdown.
In 1964 reactors were much smaller than they were
just a few years later and the massive quantities
of highly radioative spent nuclear fuel were not
taken into account in the report. What would the
area rendered uninhabitable be now? 2 areas the
size of Pennsylavania? 3? 4 Pennsylvanias? More?
It's also unfortunate the NY Times makes no
mention of the fact that people can't get a cent
of insurance for their homes because the insurance
industry [ no fools] took one look at the problem
and decided nuke plants were too dangerous to
insure. Love that "free" press.
NYTimes: The corrosion incident also exposed
problems within the staff of the regulatory
commission, which initially wanted prompt
inspections of all 68 plants that could be
vulnerable to the problem but relented and gave
the owners permission to delay, leaving time for
the hole in the lid to grow.
What about those other 68 reactors [not plants
as the article states but reactors] throughout the
USA some of which also threaten Canadian and
Mexican territory, water and people?
Lastly, the NY Times makes no mention of the
revolving door between the nuke industry and the
alleged regulators [NRC]. Why not?
See former nuclear engineer of the year Paul
Blanch, referred to in the article on the ongoing
cover up of 3 Mile Island:
http://www.mothersalert.org/blanche.html
http://www.nytimes.com
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/08/national/08CND-NUKE.html?hp
ARTICLE TOOLS
E-Mail This Article
Printer-Friendly Format
Most E-Mailed Articles
Reprints & Permissions
TIMES NEWS TRACKER
Topics
Alerts
Atomic Energy
Nuclear Regulatory
Commission
Ohio
FirstEnergy Corporation
Ohio Nuclear Plant Can Reopen, Agency Says
By MATTHEW L. WALD
Published: March 8, 2004
ASHINGTON, March 8 - The Nuclear Regulatory
Commission said today that it would allow an Ohio
company to reopen a nuclear power plant that was
shut down more than two years ago after
technicians discovered that acid used in the
cooling water had eaten almost all the way through
the lid of the reactor.
The plant, Davis-Besse, near Toledo, has
since undergone extensive changes in hardware and
personnel, although critics say the reopening is
premature. Some are hoping that the owner, the
FirstEnergy Corporation, will sell the plant to
another operator.
The shutdown is the longest in recent years
among the nation's 103 operable reactors, and the
discovery raised questions about the industry's
ability to learn from its mistakes, since
corrosion by such acid was a known problem and
First Energy failed to inspect for it.
Avoiding accidents by recognizing problems
in their early stages is a critical lesson of the
Three Mile Island accident, which occurred 25
years ago this month near Harrisburg, Pa. Despite
that accident, which involved a partial meltdown,
officials were chagrined to discover that a
similar event had almost occurred at Davis-Besse,
which is of the same design. But knowledge of the
reactor's vulnerability had not been communicated
to other operators of the same model.
The corrosion incident also exposed problems
within the staff of the regulatory commission,
which initially wanted prompt inspections of all
68 plants that could be vulnerable to the problem
but relented and gave the owners permission to
delay, leaving time for the hole in the lid to
grow. Plants are designed with emergency equipment
to cope with leaks, but the designs do not
contemplate failure of the steel in that location,
which is 6 inches thick.
A subsequent investigation by the
commission's inspector general found poor
communications within the agency itself. The
commission had a photo taken during a refueling
shutdown in 2000 that showed evidence of the
corrosion, but officials failed to act on it,
according to the inspector general. The commission
staff said that it was still in the process of
reforming its internal procedures.
Today, the commission staff said that it had
grounds for "reasonable assurance" that the
Davis-Besse plant, in Oak Harbor, Ohio, could be
started up and operated safely, but that the
commission would maintain extra scrutiny of the
plant for five years.
A major part of the changes at the plant,
the commission staff said, was changes in its
"safety culture," or the willingness of plant
workers to raise safety questions to managers, and
their expectation that such questions would be
properly resolved.
FirstEnergy has acknowledged that it delayed
an inspection because that would have forced the
closing of the reactor and a loss in electricity
production, and that it was insufficiently curious
about other indications of trouble, like the
presence of the acid, in powdered form, around the
reactor building.
James Caldwell, the regional administrator
for the commission's Midwest region, said that
safety culture was still a problem the first time
that his agency considered allowing the plant to
restart, but that recently "our folks interviewed
about 120 people, and based on that interview, we
determined that the folks said they would raise
safety issue, and management would deal with
safety issues promptly."
In anticipation of the announcement,
FirstEnergy heated up the reactor to more than 500
degrees Farenheit and to more than 2,000 pounds
per square inch of pressure. It will be back to
full power in 10 to 14 days, a spokesman, Todd
Schneider, said. FirstEnergy has spent more than
$600 million on replacement power and on physical
improvements at the reactor, he said.
The company still faces a criminal
investigation by a federal grand jury into its
handling of the corrosion matter. Paul Blanch, an
electrical engineer and specialist in what the
nuclear industry calls a "safety-conscious work
environment," pointed out that the commission had
at one point promised not to allow a restarting of
the plant before the criminal issues were
resolved, but was now doing so.
"If there are people there that could
possibly be indicted, obviously they should not
restart," he said.
But a commission spokesman, Jan Strasma,
said that although a criminal investigation was
continuing, "we see no immediate safety issues
that warrant agency action."
Mr. Blanch said that last year he had tried
to obtain a copy of the plan that the commission
was requiring for reform of Davis-Besse's safety
culture, and was turned down, making it difficult
for knowledgeable outsiders to determine if the
remedy was sound. The commission gave him a copy
on Monday, after the announcement, he said.
Reopening Davis-Besse is good news for
FirstEnergy, but the company faces a variety of
other challenges, including the possibility of
damage suits arising from the blackout last Aug.
14, which began in its territory and stretched
into eight states and parts of Ontario.
_______________________________________________________________________
Subscribe/Unsubscribe Here: http://www.energyjustice.net/nukenet/
Change your settings at:
http://chrome.nocdirect.com/mailman/listinfo/nukenet_energyjustice.net
*****************************************************************
13 Reuters: Pakistan Tests Longest-Range Nuke-Capable Missile
Tue Mar 9, 2004 08:36 AM ET
By Tahir Ikram
ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Pakistan Tuesday successfully test-fired
for the first time a long-range ballistic missile capable of
carrying nuclear warheads to every corner of neighboring arch
rival India.
"The two-stage Shaheen II Missile System, which has been
developed indigenously by Pakistani scientists and engineers, can
carry all types of warheads up to 2,000 km (1,250 miles)," the
Pakistan military said. Nuclear scientist Samar Mubarak Mand -- a
key architect of Pakistan's atomic bomb -- said the full range of
the missile was around 1,500 miles.
"We have fired it to the end of our sea limits, which is about
2,000 km," Mand said on private Geo television.
Pakistan says its weapons program is a response to that of rival
India, with which it has fought three wars since both countries
won independence from Britain in 1947.
Japan expressed concern that Pakistan had conducted the test
despite efforts by the international community to curb
proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and missiles.
"The Japanese government hopes that the test will not bring about
a negative effect on positive developments between Pakistan and
India toward improving their relations," said a statement from
the Japanese embassy in Islamabad.
India, which has a vigorous missile development program of its
own, offered no immediate response to the news.
The military said Pakistan had informed neighboring countries of
the test as a "confidence-building" measure.
The test came after Israel last week concluded a deal to sell
India a strategic airborne radar system, despite warming ties
between Islamabad and New Delhi. Pakistan says the new weapons
exceeds the 900-mile reach of the Ghauri, previously its
longest-range missile, which some experts say was developed with
North Korean help.
TEST AMID CLOSE SCRUTINY
The test of the Shaheen II comes amid intense scrutiny of
Pakistan's nuclear program after revelations that its scientists
sold nuclear secrets to Iran, North Korea and Libya.
© Reuters 2004. All Rights Reserved.
*****************************************************************
14 Las Vegas SUN: Israeli: Nuke Whistleblower Must Go Free
Today: March 09, 2004 at 10:50:36 PST
By STEVE WEIZMAN ASSOCIATED PRESS
JERUSALEM (AP) - Israel's attorney general said Tuesday that a
nuclear informer should be released when he completes his prison
term next month, even if it could harm state security.
Mordechai Vanunu is due to be released April 21 after serving 18
years for treason and espionage. Israeli officials have
expressed concern that he could still disclose secrets.
Israel's Mossad spy agency nabbed Vanunu in Europe in 1986 after
he revealed details and photos of Israel's top-secret nuclear
plant and the country's apparent nuclear weapons to The Sunday
Times of London.
After being convicted in an Israeli court, he spent more than a
decade in solitary confinement.
Attorney General Meni Mazuz told the parliament's law committee
on Tuesday that despite the potential danger of further
disclosures, he opposes placing Vanunu under administrative
detention, or imprisonment without trial.
Administrative detention is usually reserved for Palestinian
suspects. The Israeli human rights group B'tselem said that
according to official figures published last month, 628
Palestinians were being held in administrative detention.
No Israelis are in administrative detention now, though the
tactic has been used against a few Israeli extremists in the
past.
Mazuz said he would come up with other measures to ensure Vanunu
does not disclose more classified information, but he didn't
elaborate, Justice Ministry spokesman Jacob Galanty said.
Vanunu recently issued a statement through his brother saying he
has no more nuclear secrets to reveal. Israel has said it would
keep him under strict supervision after his release, possibly
confiscating his passport.
Mazuz told legislators Tuesday that the restriction placed upon
the former nuclear technician would largely depend upon his
behavior.
Based partly on photographs that Vanunu provided the British
newspaper, it is widely believed Israel has the sixth-largest
stockpile of nuclear weapons in the world. The CIA recently
estimated Israel has between 200-400 nuclear weapons.
Israel has an official policy of "nuclear ambiguity," saying
only that it will not be the first to introduce nuclear weapons
into the Middle East.
Vanunu has become a hero of anti-nuclear weapons activists
during his years in prison and has been nominated for the Nobel
Peace Prize.
--
*****************************************************************
15 BBC: Vanunu 'is still security risk'
Last Updated: Tuesday, 9 March, 2004
[Mordechai Vanunu seen at the Supreme Court in Jerusalem on 13
May 2002 ]
Mr Vanunu completes his 18-year jail term next month
The Israeli authorities say convicted nuclear spy Mordechai
Vanunu could still threaten national security when he is released
from jail next month.
Mr Vanunu was sentenced to 18 years for treason and espionage for
leaking details of Israel's nuclear programme to Britain's Sunday
Times newspaper.
His trial came after he was abducted in Europe by Israeli agents
in 1986.
Attorney General Mordechai Mazuz said restrictions should be
placed on him to stop him revealing further information.
However, he ruled out keeping Mr Vanunu in custody after he had
completed his prison term.
Mr Mazuz told the law committee of the Israeli parliament, the
Knesset, that despite the danger of further disclosures, he
opposed putting Mr Vanunu under administrative detention.
Correspondents say one possibility under discussion is
withholding Mr Vanunu's passport to prevent him leaving Israel.
Secret trial
In 1986, Mr Vanunu, who had worked as a technician at the Dimona
complex, gave the Sunday Times detailed information about
Israel's nuclear programme that led observers to declare Israel
the world's sixth-largest nuclear power.
Before he could reveal more, Mr Vanunu was lured out of hiding in
London by a female Israeli secret agent who persuaded him that
she wanted to meet him in Rome.
Once there, he was drugged by other Israeli agents and brought
home.
Later that year, he was jailed after a trial for treason that was
held in secret.
Viewed as a traitor and a spy by most Israelis, Mr Vanunu has
spent most of his sentence in solitary confinement.
*****************************************************************
16 Haaretz: AG Mazuz: Vanunu significant danger to state security
Last Update: 09/03/2004 22:54
By Gideon Alon, Haaretz Correspondent, and Haaretz Service
Attorney General Menachem Mazuz said Tuesday that the release of
nuclear whistle-blower Mordechai Vanunu from prison "will create
a significant danger to state security."
Mazuz presented his position on the matter in a meeting of the
Knesset's Constitution, Law and Justice Committee convened to
discuss the possible restrictions that might be imposed on Vanunu
upon his release on April 21 after 18 years in prison. Mazuz said
he was basing his assessment on information provided to him by
figures in the defense establishment.
Mazuz noted that in a meeting on the Vanunu release held February
24 in the Prime Minister's Office, he voiced his opposition to
placing Vanunu in administrative detention following his release
from jail
Certain restrictions should be placed on Vanunu in order to
prevent him from carrying out his stated intention of revealing
additional information on Israel's nuclear secrets, Mazuz said.
The attorney general refused to detail what restrictions might be
placed on Vanunu following his release, but noted concerns are
based on letters Vanunu sent from jail over the past 18 years
stating his specific intention to release more nuclear secrets
still in his possession.
Possible restrictions that have already been discussed include
withholding Vanunu's passport, which would prevent him from
travelling overseas.
Yehiel Horev, head of the Defense Ministry's security unit, said
that Vanunu worked for 10 months in extremely sensitive positions
in the Dimona nuclear facility. He added that in all Vanunu's
letters written from jail he expressed his intention to leave
Israel upon his release and publicize all the information he has
in an effort to harm Israel. Horev said Vanunu's stated
intentions were confirmed by a psychiatrist who met with him.
"All criticism is being directed at us, as if we were the
nation's devil," Horev said in a rare public statement.
Officials in the Defense Ministry and the state prosecutor's
office and Meir Vanunu, the brother of Mordechai, also
participated in the Knesset committee session.
Committee chairman MK Michael Eitan (Likud) said he decided to
hold the session because he was convinced Israel was able to
allow a public discussion on the proper balance between security
needs and human and citizens' rights.
Eitan decided to forbid the media from recording or photographing
the committee meeting in order to allow certain figures to
participate who would not otherwise be able to appear. Horev, for
example, said he would only appear before the committee if he was
not taped or filmed.
MK Zehava Gal-On (Meretz), who also initiated the meeting, said
she wanted to learn from defense establishment representatives
and the state prosecutor what considerations would lead them to
place restrictions on Vanunu.
Meir Vanunu said his brother was not permitted to speak with the
media or state bodies during the 18 years he was imprisoned and
that everything published on the affair came from the Defense
Ministry.
"Why don't they let him speak? Have him speak behind closed doors
to the Knesset's Constitution Committee," Meir Vanunu said. He
added his brother has already told the press everything he knows
and is not in possession of any additional information on
Israel's nuclear secrets.
According to Meir Vanunu, the defense establishment opposes the
release of his brother due to the damage he is liable to cause by
describing how he was interrogated in jail and how he was
treated.
© Copyright Haaretz. All rights reserved
*****************************************************************
17 Pravda.RU Nuclear fuel from Libya to be processed in Dimitrovgrad
17:19 2004-03-09
Russia's Atomic Energy Ministry told RIA Novosti today that the
shipment of nuclear fuel from Libya that Russia received on
Monday was shipped to be processed at a scientific-research
institute in Dimitrovgrad, a city in the Ulyanovsk Region (east
of Russia's European section).
About 16 kilograms of highly-enriched uranium (HEU) was shipped
from Libya in accordance with a joint Russian-U.S. program under
the IAEA aegis and within the activities to curtail Libya's
weapons of mass destruction development program. The Soviet Union
supplied the nuclear fuel to Libya in the 1980s for a nuclear
reactor at the Tajura research center near Tripoli.
A representative of the Atomic Energy Ministry, Nikolai
Shingarev, told RIA Novosti that the uranium from Libya will be
converted to low-enriched fuel in Dimitrovgrad. The low-enriched
fuel will be used for the institute's research reactors.
According to the Atomic Energy Ministry's information, this is
the third shipment of Russian uranium that has been returned to
Russia from abroad. Earlier, nuclear fuel from Serbia and Romania
was returned to Russia within the same Russian-U.S. joint
program.
Mr. Shingarev explained that Russia had received 88 nuclear fuel
assemblies from an IRT-2 reactor from Libya. The uranium-235 rods
were 80% enriched, the Atomic Energy Ministry representative
said.
© RIAN
Copyright ©1999 by "Pravda.RU"
*****************************************************************
18 AFP: China on verge of pact to build nuclear plant in Pakistan = report
WAR.WIRE
BEIJING (AFP) Mar 09, 2004
China is on the verge of finalising with Islamabad an agreement
to build a second nuclear plant in Pakistan for civilian use,
underlining the close cooperation between the atomic neighbours,
a report said Tuesday.
The 300 megawatt nuclear power plant at Chashma, in the central
Pakistani province of Punjab, will be built next to the first
Chinese supplied plant, which became operational in 1999.
The Financial Times quoted Pakistani officials as saying the deal
was now "in the final stages" with technicalities being hammered
out at secret talks in Beijing last week.
The paper said a price now had to be settled, ending several
months of Sino-Pakistani negotiations following discussions on
the subject between President Pervez Musharraf and Chinese leader
Hu Jintao in Beijing in November.
The China National Nuclear Cooperation (CNNC) confirmed the talks
had taken place but refused to reveal the outcome.
"From March 1 to March 5 the Pakistan delegation headed by the
president of the Pakistan Atomic Energy Committee Pervez Butt
visited China National Nuclear Cooperation officials in Beijing,"
CNNC said on its website.
"They discussed the second power plant project."
The imminent deal comes despite the United States repeatedly
urging China to halt nuclear cooperation with Pakistan.
Observers have noted that Beijing's help in the second phase of
the Chashma project would allow Islamabad to obtain enriched
plutonium while being a non-signatory to the Non-Proliferation
Treaty.
China said Tuesday safeguards for the reactors at Chashma would
ensure they were used only for generating electricity.
"This project is for electricity generation and will be subject
to the safeguards and surveillance of the International Atomic
Energy Agency," said foreign ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao.
"At present the industrial departments of the two sides have had
consultations on the details and will continue to hold some
consulations on the project."
The deal underlines the close cooperation between the two
countries and follows revelations that a group of Pakistani
scientists sold nuclear know-how to Iran, Libya and possibly
North Korea.
China allegedly assisted Pakistan's nuclear program in the past,
but that assistance has reportedly been halted.
Pakistan has relied heavily on China for its defence equipment
since 1990 when the United States stopped supplying it with
military hardware amid claims it had acquired the capability to
produce nuclear weapons.
Pakistan confirmed it had nuclear weapons in May 1998 when it
matched tests conducted by India.
WAR.WIRE
*****************************************************************
19 NRC: Agency Information Collection Activities: Proposed Collection;
FR Doc 04-5232
[Federal Register: March 9, 2004 (Volume 69, Number 46)]
[Notices] [Page 11045] From the Federal Register Online via GPO
Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr09mr04-123]
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 Forms
366, 366A, and 366B, ``Licensee Event Report.'' 2. Current OMB
approval number: 3150-0104. 3. How often the collection is
required: On occasion, as defined reactor events are reportable
on occurrence.
4. Who is required or asked to report: Holders of operating
licenses for commercial nuclear power plants.
5. The number of annual respondents: 104. 6. The number of hours
needed annually to complete the requirement or request: 20,000
(Reporting: 20,000 Hours 400 responses = 50 hrs per response).
7. Abstract: With NRC Forms 366, 366A, and 366B, the NRC collects
reports of the types of reactor events and problems that are
believed to be significant and useful to the NRC in its efforts
to identify and resolve threats to public safety. They are
designed to provide the information necessary for engineering
studies of operational anomalies and trends and patterns analysis
of operational occurrences. The same information can be used for
other analytic procedures that will aid in identifying accident
precursors.
Submit, by May 10, 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-1 F21, Rockville, MD
20852. OMB clearance requests are available at the NRC worldwide
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-5 F52,
Washington, DC 20555-0001, by telephone at 301-415-7233, or by
Internet electronic mail to infocollects@nrc.gov. Dated at
Rockville, Maryland, this 3rd day of March 2004.
For the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Brenda Jo. Shelton, NRC Clearance Officer, Office of the Chief
Information Officer.
[FR Doc. 04-5232 Filed 3-8-04; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 7590-01-P
*****************************************************************
20 NRC: Sunshine Act Meeting
FR Doc 04-5335
[Federal Register: March 9, 2004 (Volume 69, Number 46)]
[Notices] [Page 11045-11046] From the Federal Register Online via
GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr09mr04-124]
AGENCY HOLDING THE MEETING: Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
DATE: Weeks of March 8, 15, 22, 29; April 5, 12, 2004.
PLACE: Commissioners' Conference Room, 11555 Rockville Pike,
Rockville, Maryland.
STATUS: Public and closed.
MATTERS TO BE CONSIDERED: Week of March 8, 2004 Tuesday, March 9,
2004 9:30 a.m.: Briefing on Status of Office of Nuclear Material
Safety and Safeguards (NMSS) Programs, Performance, and
Plans--Material Safety (Public Meeting) (Contact: Claudia Seelig,
(301) 415-7243). The meeting will be webcast live at the Web
address--http://www.nrc.gov. 1:30 p.m.: Discussion of Security
Issues (Closed--Ex. 1). Week of March 15, 2004--Tentative There
are no meetings scheduled for the Week of March 15, 2004.
Week of March 22, 2004--Tentative Tuesday, March 23, 2004 1:30
p.m.: Briefing on Status of Office of Nuclear Security and
Incident Response (NSIR) Programs, Performance, and Plans (Public
Meeting) (Contact: Jack Davis, (301) 415-7256). This meeting will
be webcast live at the Web address--http://www.nrc.gov. 2:30
p.m.: Discussion of Security Issues (Closed--Ex. 1). Wednesday,
March 24, 2004 9:30 a.m.: Briefing on Status of Office of Nuclear
Reactor Regulation (NRR) Programs, Performance, and Plans (Public
Meeting) (Contact: Mike Case, (301) 415-1275). This
[[Page 11046]] meeting will be webcast live at the Web
address--http://www.nrc.gov. Week of March 29, 2004--Tentative
There are no meetings scheduled for the Week of March 29, 2004.
Week of April 5, 2004--Tentative There are no meetings scheduled
for the Week of April 5, 2004.
Week of April 12, 2004--Tentative Tuesday, April 13, 2004 9:30
p.m.: Briefing on Status of Office of Nuclear Regulatory Research
(RES) Programs, Performance, and Plans (Public Meeting) (Contact:
Alan Levin, (301) 415-6656). This meeting will be webcast live at
the Web address--http://www.nrc.gov. \*\ The schedule for
Commission meetings is subject to change on short notice. To
verify the status of meetings call (recording)--(301) 415-1292.
Contact person for more information: Dave Gamberoni, (301)
415-1651.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: By a vote of 3-0 on February 27, the
Commission determined pursuant to U.S.C. 552b(e) and Sec.
9.107(a) of the Commission's rules that ``Discussion of Security
Issues (Closed--Ex. 1)'' be held March 2, and on less than one
week's notice to the public.
By a vote of 3-0 on March 1, the Commission determined pursuant
to U.S.C. 552b(e) and Sec. 9.107(a) of the Commission's rules
that ``Affirmation of (1) Private Fuel Storage (Independent Spent
Fuel Storage Installation) Docket No. 72-22-ISFSI, and (2)
Requests for Application of New Part 2 Rules to Early Site Permit
Hearings in North Anna, Clinton, and Grand Gulf '' be held on
March 2, and on less than one week's notice to the public.
``Briefing on Status of Office of Nuclear Regulatory Research
(RES) Programs, Performance, and Plans (Public Meeting),''
originally scheduled for March 23, was rescheduled for April 13.
The NRC Commission Meeting Schedule can be found on the Internet
at http://www.nrc.gov/what-we-do/policy-making/schedule.html.
This notice is distributed by mail to several hundred
subscribers; if you no longer wish to receive it, or would like
to be added to the distribution, please contact the Office of the
Secretary, Washington, DC 20555 ((301) 415-1969). In addition,
distribution of this meeting notice over the Internet system is
available. If you are interested in receiving this Commission
meeting schedule electronically, please send an electronic
message to dkw@nrc.gov. Dated: March 4, 2004.
Dave Gamberoni, Office of the Secretary.
[FR Doc. 04-5335 Filed 3-5-04; 10:33 am] BILLING CODE 7590-01-M
*****************************************************************
21 Reuters: RG&E files plan to keep rates flat, sell Ginna nuke
Tue Mar 9, 2004 03:06 PM ET
NEW YORK, March 9 (Reuters) - Rochester Gas and Electric Corp.
said Tuesday it filed a plan with New York regulators to keep
electric and natural gas rates flat for five years in an effort
to win state approval to sell its nuclear plant.
The New York Public Service Commission Staff, the New York State
Consumer Protection Board and other parties joined RG&E in
support of its rate proposals.
If the commission approves of the proposals, the company said it expects
to complete the sale of the 470 megawatt Ginna reactor in New York to a
unit of Constellation Energy Group Inc. of Baltimore by June 30,
2004.
This is an unprecedented task, as electric rates have not
increased during the past ten years. This joint agreement will
require RG&E to operate the business as efficiently as possible,"
said Jim Laurito, president of RG&E.
RG&E, of Rochester, New York, said it would like the commission
to approve of the proposals by the end of May 2004.
RG&E, a unit of Energy East Corp. of Albany, serves about 355,000
electric customers and 291,000 gas customers in the Rochester
area.
© Reuters 2004. All Rights Reserved.
*****************************************************************
22 Marion Star: Nuclear plant to power up -
marionstar.com
Tuesday, March 9, 2004
By GREG WRIGHT
Gannett News Service
AP Photo
The Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Station on the shore of Lake Erie
near Port Clinton is shown in a company photo, date unknown.
Federal regulators will allow Davis-Besse nuclear plant to reopen
after a two-year shutdown because of safety concerns, lawmakers
said Monday.
WASHINGTON -- Ohio's problem-plagued Davis-Besse nuclear power
plant has made enough safety and equipment improvements to reopen
after two years, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said Monday.
At least one consumer watchdog group was troubled by the restart,
saying the agency couldn't prevent future mishaps at the plant 20
miles east of Toledo on Lake Erie.
Officials at FirstEnergy Corp., which operates Davis-Besse, said
they were overjoyed with the decision.
The plant began warming up its reactor within hours of the
announcement and it should be at full strength in two weeks,
FirstEnergy Corp. spokesman Todd Schneider said.
"We are fully committed to operating this plant safely and
reliably," said Gary Leidich, president of FirstEnergy Nuclear
Operating Co.
Federal officials shut down Davis-Besse two years ago after
inspectors found a 6-inch-deep hole in the reactor top. Leaking
boric acid, which caused the hole, could have eaten its way
through the reactor shielding and released deadly radiation into
the environment, according to organizations including the Ohio
Public Interest Research Group.
In a report released earlier Monday, Ohio PIRG officials demanded
the plant stay closed. The group claimed it still had problems
with its coolant pumps and valves, but federal officials said the
equipment was operating well.
FirstEnergy spent about $600 million to replace the reactor head
and install improved safety equipment. FirstEnergy also agreed to
let an outside company monitor its safety procedures.
On Monday, Regional Administrator James Caldwell of the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission sent a letter to FirstEnergy's chief
operating officer, Lew Myers, to announce that Davis-Besse
completed a 31-step checklist to reopen.
About 800 people work at Davis-Besse and the plant will help
supply electricity to millions of homes and businesses in Ohio,
Pennsylvania and New Jersey.
Rep. Marcy Kaptur, D-Toledo, said the long closure and the $600
million invested in the plant proves "deep internal design flaws"
at the plant. She contended the federal government also failed to
regulate the plant properly and workers kept a catastrophe from
happening.
Kaptur said she will visit Davis-Besse in months ahead to see if
it is operating smoothly.
"Education and vigilance will remain our first line of protection
as the plant moves back to full generation," she said.
But Ohio PIRG and other groups are worried that the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission has enacted only 16 of 49 measures it said
are need to prevent future accidents such as Davis-Besse. For
instance, NRC should use the expertise of foreign nuclear power
plants to address equipment problems, said David Lochbaum, a
nuclear safety engineer at the Union of Concerned Scientists.
Originally published Tuesday, March 9, 2004
Copyright ©2004 The Marion Star. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
23 News Messenger: Davis-Besse operators begin restarting plant -
thenews-messenger.com
Tuesday, March 9, 2004
By RICK NEALE Staff writer
AP file photo
THE DAVIS-BESSE NUCLEAR POWER STATION was given permission Monday
by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to reopen after a two-year
shutdown because of safety concerns.
OAK HARBOR -- In a landmark decision, the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission has allowed Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Station to begin
producing electricity after a two-year shutdown.
After months of give-and-take between federal regulators and
FirstEnergy, owner of the plant, NRC officials gave Davis-Besse
the operational green light Monday morning.
"We are fully committed to operating this plant safely and
reliably," FirstEnergy Nuclear Operating Co. President Gary
Leidich stated in a press release. "We have the plant in
excellent operating condition, well-trained employees and new and
enhanced programs to help ensure continued safe, reliable
operation."
About 3 p.m. Monday, workers began pulling the first set of 69
control rods from the reactor vessel, deep inside the
285-foot-high containment building. The reactor vessel is
penetrated by seven groups of control rods. When control rods are
removed, nuclear chain reactions occur, producing heat to
generate steam and electricity.
FirstEnergy spokesman Todd Schneider said more control rods will
be pulled over the next few days.
"We expect to begin generating electricity by the end of the
week. We should be at 15 to 18 percent power," Schneider said.
"We should be up to full power in 10 days to two weeks."
FirstEnergy spokesman Richard Wilkins said the restart process
will be slower and more deliberate than those following ordinary
refueling outages. He said the power-up process will be delayed
for inspections and assessments once the reactor hits 15 percent
power, 50 percent power and 100 percent power.
In a news conference Monday afternoon, NRC Regional Administrator
James Caldwell said the restart order was granted after about 80
agency inspectors and contract experts logged more than 12,000
hours of observations at the plant.
"We based this decision on achieving reasonable assurance that
Davis-Besse can be restarted and operated safely," Caldwell said.
The NRC's Davis-Besse oversight panel recommended Feb. 26 that
the facility be allowed to resume operations.
Caldwell said NRC inspectors will maintain "in-plant,
around-the-clock coverage" during the reactor restart until
Davis-Besse is operating in stable condition. A third inspector
will be also stationed at the plant instead of the customary two.
The NRC 0350 panel will remain in place and continue oversight
duties, including future public meetings with FirstEnergy. The
Akron-based utility must also pay for annual independent
inspections for the next five years, examining safety culture,
corrective actions and other details.
Caldwell dismissed criticisms from U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich,
D-Cleveland that the NRC and FirstEnergy place profits above
public safety. Kucinich has characterized Davis-Besse as "an
example of an unholy alliance between government and industry."
"Our only mission is to protect the health and safety of the
public and make sure nuclear power plants are operated safely,"
Caldwell said.
Another outspoken Davis-Besse critic, U.S. Rep. Marcy Kaptur,
D-Toledo, said the length and cost of the shutdown signal "deep
internal design flaws and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's
failure to regulate properly."
Kaptur said she plans to visit the facility with NRC, management
and workers.
Ottawa County Administrator Jere Witt will attend a series of
meetings at the plant today. Witt served as a local
representative on an NRC overview panel, which voted in December
to recommend the restart.
"They've allowed me to go anytime in the plant, anywhere I wanted
to go -- and I still can," Witt said of FirstEnergy. "I think
they've been open and fair about this. I'm looking forward to it
running for a long time.
"Management was not just talking about changes. They truly were
making changes. I really believe they were open to any
suggestions we had."
Witt said he will continue to serve on an NRC overview panel, in
a fashion to be determined.
Of the $600 million Davis-Besse repair bill, FirstEnergy has
spent about $15 million per month -- or $360 million -- to
purchase replacement power, Wilkins estimated.
Other expenditures included a boric acid leak monitoring system,
high-pressure injection pump modifications and employee training
efforts.
For weeks, the embattled facility has idled at "hot stand-by"
mode while FirstEnergy officials awaited word from the NRC.
Reactor temperatures hovered near 535 degrees, and cooling pump
steam pressures approached 2,000 pounds per square inch.
"In terms of our employees' attitude and enthusiasm, they've been
on 'hot stand-by' for a while now," Wilkins said. "This is a big
day for 800 employees and their families."
Davis-Besse powered down in February 2002 for its 13th routine
refueling outage. But the following month, a series of mechanical
mishaps were discovered -- including a startling 6-inch deep
crater the size of a football in the steel reactor vessel head,
created by leaking boric acid. The hole was unlike any ever found
at a U.S. nuclear power plant.
In response, the NRC closed down Davis-Besse and ordered owner
FirstEnergy to perform extensive repairs at the Carroll Township
facility, including replacement of the damaged reactor vessel
head. FirstEnergy yanked almost every key Davis-Besse manager,
made 120 to 140 design modifications and completed more than
8,000 work orders during its ensuing $600 million project.
The NRC conducted about 75 public meetings regarding Davis-Besse,
many at Oak Harbor High School and Camp Perry.
Contact staff writer Rick Neale at 419-734-7506 or
rneale@fremont.gannett.com
Originally published Tuesday, March 9, 2004
Copyright ©2004 The News-Messenger. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
24 Beacon Journal: Davis-Besse power plant hums to life
| 03/09/2004 |
NRC says FirstEnergy nuclear facility can reopen after two-year
shutdown. Monitoring to continue
By Bob Downing Beacon Journal staff writer
Ohio's beleaguered Davis- Besse Nuclear Power Plant began
powering up late Monday, after being shut down for two years over
safety concerns surrounding a damaged reactor lid.
Akron's FirstEnergy Corp. got word early Monday that it won
approval to restart the plant from the federal Nuclear Regulatory
Commission.
``It's really the beginning of the new Davis-Besse -- with new
equipment, new processes and policies and employees with a new
attitude toward safety,'' said FirstEnergy spokesman Todd
Schneider. ``It's not the old Davis-Besse... It's different. It's
all new.''
The restart announcement was good news for FirstEnergy and its
14,000 employees. The company's commitment to safety has been
challenged in a barrage of federal hearings since a pineapple
size corrosion hole was found on the top of the reactor. And the
more than $600 million in costs associated with the shutdown have
been a drag on profits.
The restart will not end scrutiny of Davis-Besse, which is the
subject of several ongoing federal investigations.
But it's bound to boost morale in a company that was beset by
problems during 2003. In addition to Davis-Besse, the company's
2003 troubles in = [100.0]cluded playing a leading role in the
Aug. 14 blackout, having to restate earnings, a New Jersey rate
case that lowered profits, higher pension costs and increased
regulatory oversight.
The plant, near Oak Harbor along Lake Erie east of Toledo, began
repowering, a process that will take 10 to 14 days to complete,
he said.
Repowering the plant is ``a slow and deliberate process'' with
operators gradually increasing reactor power and producing more
electricity, he said.
The repowering will be stopped at 50 percent and 100 percent
power levels to test equipment and assess operations, he said.
Adding electricity
The plant, with its 800 employees, will likely be at 50 percent
power early next week, he said. It is capable of adding
electricity to the grid when it reaches 15 percent to 18 percent
power.
Federal inspectors will maintain around-the-clock inspection of
the plant during the start-up.
``We are fully committed to operating this plant safely and
reliably,'' said Gary Leidich, president and chief nuclear
officer of FirstEnergy Nuclear Operating Co., a FirstEnergy
subsidiary. ``We have the plant in excellent operating condition,
well-trained employees and new and enhanced programs to help
ensure continued, safe, reliable operation.''
The restart order was approved by James Caldwell, the NRC's
regional administrator in Lisle, Ill., based on numerous federal
inspections and on the improvements made by FirstEnergy.
In his five-page letter, Caldwell said, ``The NRC has reasonable
assurance that the Davis- Besse facility can be restarted and
operated safely.''
That decision was based largely on 12,000 hours of inspections by
more than 80 NRC staffers and contract experts over the last two
years, he said in a teleconference.
The company on Feb. 12 had sought federal approval to reopen. A
federal oversight panel on Feb. 26 recommended that the plant be
authorized to restart.
But the news was disturbing to Ohio environmentalists.
Ohio Public Interest Research Group spokeswoman Erin Bowser said:
``Ohio PIRG is disappointed by the NRC's decision to allow
FirstEnergy to restart Davis-Besse. Clearly, it has not learned
the most important lesson: safety first. The NRC has proven once
again that public safety is not their top priority. Its
inadequate oversight has endangered the public time and time
again.''
Critics speak out
Word of the NRC approval came as environmental and health groups
held a press conference on Monday in Columbus in which they
called on Gov. Bob Taft and state safety officials to oppose the
restart of Davis- Besse.
In a prepared statement, U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Lakewood,
said: ``Much more must still be done to ensure public safety.
Davis-Besse probably could not pass the necessary safety steps
required of a new plant today. That is the standard it should
have to meet. But it appears that the NRC and FirstEnergy are
determined to put profits above public safety.''
Kucinich last year had called for the NRC to revoke FirstEnergy's
permit to operate Davis-Besse.
Davis-Besse was closed in February 2002 for routine maintenance
when inspectors found corrosion on the reactor vessel. They found
a pineapple-sized cavity from corrosion in the steel cap that
holds fuel rods used to generate nuclear power.
It was the most extensive corrosion ever at a U.S. nuclear
reactor and led to a review of 68 similar plants nationwide.
NRC officials blamed plant operators for allowing a breakdown in
safety standards that caused the leak to go unnoticed for years.
But the agency also came under fire for not detecting the leak
sooner. As a result, regulators have agreed to make changes to
its safety and inspection procedures.
FirstEnergy has spent about $600 million making repairs and
buying replacement power while the plant was prevented from
producing electricity.
The 883-megawatt plant produces about 7 percent of the utility's
electric capacity.
The plant's restart follows completion of nearly 10,000 tasks
conducted by FirstEnergy since the plant shut down. Many steps
have been taken to install new equipment, strengthen the
management team and help ensure continuous improvement in the
plant's performance and the overall safety culture.
The company plans visual inspections of the reactor head and
lower vessel during the plant's mid-cycle outage, slated in about
one year.
Operations monitored
The NRC's oversight panel will stay involved in monitoring the
plant and its operations until the company can prove that that
heightened oversight is no longer necessary.
FirstEnergy had hoped to reopen the plant much earlier, but
lingering concerns about its commitment to safety and several
operator errors put doubts into the minds of regulators.
Leidich described the renewed focus on plant safety as a
``relentless commitment that permeates all areas of the
corporation -- from the Davis-Besse control room to FirstEnergy
headquarters in Akron.''
The NRC also issued what's called a confirmatory order requiring
independent assessments and inspections at Davis-Besse for the
next five years to provide assurances that the long-term
corrective actions remain effective.
The NRC said the independent oversight is needed because
FirstEnergy's self-assessments failed to uncover problems.
The NRC will provide one additional resident inspector at the
Ohio plant beyond the start-up. That means the agency will have
three full-time staffers at the plant, at least until September.
Some critics in Congress questioned whether the NRC bowed to
pressure from FirstEnergy and allowed the utility to keep
Davis-Besse operating despite concerns about the reactor lid. The
NRC has rejected allegations that it put profits ahead of safety.
A federal grand jury is reviewing whether there was any criminal
wrongdoing on the part of FirstEnergy over Davis-Besse problems.
In addition, the investigation arm of Congress, the General
Accounting Office, is conducting its own review of the NRC and
Davis-Besse. The GAO report is scheduled to be ready in April.
Bob Downing can be reached at 330-996-3745 or
bdowning@thebeaconjournal.com
*****************************************************************
25 JOURNAL NEWS: What the rating means
NRC findings
• The Nuclear Regulatory Commission will reduce the intense
oversight given to the plants' during the past years.
• Entergy has 30 days to provide a written report on how it will
reduce its repair backlog and correct electrical systems not in
compliance with the plants' license documents.
• Indian Point 2 and 3 last year "operated in a manner that
preserved public health and safety."
• A "yellow" inspection finding assessed against Indian Point 2
in 2001 after a majority of control-room operators failed their
annual operating test was removed in May in recognition of
improved training and performance.
• A "white" inspection finding assessed against Indian Point 2
in August 2002 for incorrectly repairing a fire wall was removed
in December 2003.
• A "white" performance indicator assessed against both plants
in the fall for an unacceptably high number of unplanned
shutdowns will be removed at the end of the quarter because of
improvements to their electrical systems and maintenance.
• Both plants show improvements in personnel performance, though
there was a "relatively large number of personnel errors" during
the refueling at Indian Point 3. Personnel performance at Indian
Point 2 is no longer an issue.
What the rating means
• The Nuclear Regulatory Commission will reduce the intense
oversight given to the plants' during the past years.
• Entergy has 30 days to provide a written report on how it will
reduce its repair backlog and correct electrical systems not in
compliance with the plants' license documents.
NRC gives Indian Point the green
By ROGER WITHERSPOON
THE JOURNAL NEWS
(Original publication: March 9, 2004)
Federal officials for the first time have rated both Indian
Point nuclear power plants as among the best run in the country,
citing improvements in plant equipment and operations.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, in its year-end assessment of
inspection results from the twin plants in Buchanan, yesterday
gave them a "green" safety rating, the agency's highest. The
rating means the plants will receive less intense oversight than
they have had for the past two years.
NRC officials cautioned that plant-owner Entergy Nuclear
Northeast still has much work to do to fix design flaws, reduce
repair backlogs and improve staff performance, particularly at
Indian Point 3.
But the agency praised Entergy for improving conditions,
particularly at Indian Point 2, which was considered the least
safe and poorest run of the nation's 103 operating nuclear
plants when Entergy purchased Indian Point in 2001.
"It is a positive step for them," said Brian Holian, deputy
director of the NRC's division of reactor projects for the
Northeast region. "It is a milestone, but they still have a lot
on their plate."
Indian Point had been the most problematic of the 10 nuclear
plants owned and operated by the Louisiana-based Entergy Corp.
All the others have green ratings by the NRC.
"Green is the color you would want every one of our plants to
be," company spokeswoman Kelle Barfield said. "That's our goal
and we have the people skills and plant processes to help us
achieve those green findings."
Officials from Entergy Nuclear Northeast could not be reached
yesterday or did not return phone calls.
Critics questioned the validity of the new rating, given that
the NRC also acknowledged the plants still have performance
problems.
"A green designation, which is the agency's highest, should be
reserved for only those nuclear plants that have a clean bill of
health," said Alex Matthiessen, director of the environmental
group Riverkeeper, which has called for closing the plants. "I
don't know how they square the ongoing maintenance and repair
and safety problems at the plant with their gold-star rating."
Matthiessen said that the NRC was "whitewashing" problems at the
plants and that "it seems suspicious to me that they could go
from the least safe plant in the country to having the highest
designation in such a short period."
Marilyn Elie, head of the Westchester Citizens Awareness
Network, agreed. "It seems to me that the celebration is a bit
premature as long as serious problems remain at Indian Point 2
and Indian Point 3 with their repair backlog and wiring," she
said.
Since Entergy purchased Indian Point, the plants have
experienced some of their most intense scrutiny following the
Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Entergy has pumped more than
$500 million into equipment and training improvements as it
tried to install a single set of operating standards for the
site. Indian Point 2 was purchased from Consolidated Edison and
Indian Point 3 from the New York Power Authority.
The NRC maintains a color-coded rating system for the results of
its inspections; green represents the highest level of
performance. The ratings then descend through white and yellow
to red as the least safe designation.
Indian Point 2 received the red designation following a Feb. 15,
2000, rupture of a tube in the reactor's steam generator,
triggering a spill of more than 20,000 gallons of contaminated
water inside the plant and the release of a small amount of
radioactive steam into the atmosphere and some radioactive water
into the Hudson River.
The plant was shut for 10 months while the aging steam
generators were replaced. The red designation was removed at the
end of August 2002, but the plant then received a white
designation for an improper fire wall in the control room. That
finding was removed in December of last year.
Indian Point 2 received a yellow performance rating in fall 2001
after a majority of control-room operators failed their annual
relicensing exam. That finding was removed in June 2003 after a
new training program was instituted and the crews passed their
exams.
The NRC uses the same color code for a series of performance
standards that are automatically imposed if a nuclear plant
crosses a certain threshold. Both plants received white
performance indicators in the fall, for example, because of
seven unplanned shutdowns, an amount deemed excessive by the
NRC. A critical NRC report in December blamed the shutdowns on
poor maintenance and lax oversight of contractors by Entergy.
But yesterday, Holian said Entergy had improved its oversight of
its electrical systems and the white designation, too, would be
removed at the end of this month.
"It has been a long time since both plants had no adverse
findings," Holian said. "It is a milestone for the utility."
Holian said the NRC gave Entergy credit for improving the
overall performance by its employees. But at Indian Point 3, he
said, "they had a rash of errors crop up, especially during
refueling outages, and it remains a challenge to them."
In addition, he said, "they have continuing issues with
consistency and thoroughness."
Send e-mail to Roger Witherspoon
Copyright 2004 The Journal News, a Gannett Co. Inc. newspaper
serving Westchester, Rockland and Putnam Counties in New York.
*****************************************************************
26 toledoblade.com: Davis-Besse gets OK to restart, end record 2-year shutdown
Tuesday, March 09, 2004
By BLADE STAFF WRITER
FirstEnergy Corp. yesterday received the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission’s authorization to restart the Davis-Besse plant,
signaling the end to one of the nuclear industry’s worst safety
failures since the Three Mile Island meltdown 25 years ago this
month.
The utility is taking the restart process slowly this week,
pulling out only one of every six boron-filled control rods that
keep nuclear fission from occurring inside the reactor. Numerous
tests will be conducted between now and Monday, when Davis-Besse
is expected to reach 15 percent power capacity - generating its
first electricity since the plant’s record-setting shutdown began
Feb. 16, 2002.
It will likely take up to two weeks before Davis-Besse is running
again at full power, said FirstEnergy spokesman Richard Wilkins.
The NRC, the government agency that regulates the nation’s 103
nuclear plants, has kept the plant idle in response to numerous
equipment, management, design, and performance safety issues
identified during the shutdown.
During that time, thousands of people, including investigators,
scientists, environmentalists, employees, elected officials, and
the general public have also made known their positions about the
plant’s safety issues in person and in writing.
In explaining NRC Midwest regional administrator James Caldwell’s
decision to give FirstEnergy the green light for restart, the NRC
reported it had more than 80 experts spend more than 12,000 hours
inspecting the plant. Those experts included a combination of NRC
officials and outside consultants.
Moments after the company received Mr. Caldwell’s authorization,
FirstEnergy officials walked the nuclear plant’s hallways and
shook the hands of employees weary from the lengthy outage. The
NRC had at various times fielded complaints about the number of
hours that management had told employees to work.
"There are a lot of smiles around here today," Mr. Wilkins said.
Ottawa County Administrator Jere Witt said his faith has been
restored in FirstEnergy, the county’s largest employer and
biggest taxpayer. "I’m really happy to see the hard work for the
employees has paid off," he said. However, he emphasized that the
utility needs "to continue to do the right thing to maintain our
confidence."
Activist groups opposed the decision but admitted it was not
unexpected. They contend the NRC’s restart authorization was
inevitable, largely because they believe the agency has failed
throughout its history to keep an arm’s length from the industry
it was created to regulate.
One nationally known watchdog, David Lochbaum, conceded
Davis-Besse should be allowed to restart. But he continued to
have reservations about the NRC’s ability to police the industry.
"If the NRC’s readiness matched that of FirstEnergy’s, I think
we’d feel a little better about it," said Mr. Lochbaum, a nuclear
safety engineer with the Union of Concerned Scientists.
The NRC has yet to announce disciplinary action against any of
its employees involved with the Davis-Besse debacle. In fact, two
key senior level officials have been promoted.
In addition, the NRC has not come close to embracing 51
recommendations made by its so-called Lessons Learned Task Force.
Some 33 of 49 recommendations being considered aren’t scheduled
to be implemented until at least December. The agency’s governing
board learned recently that some may not be implemented for
years.
"After two years down, we’ve seen a lot of change at FirstEnergy
and Davis-Besse, but not the NRC. It doesn’t give us a warm, cozy
feeling about that reactor or the other 102 reactors out there,"
said Jim Riccio, Greenpeace nuclear policy analyst.
U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D., Cleveland) submitted a petition to
revoke FirstEnergy’s license several months ago to make the
utility prove it had upgraded Davis-Besse to the standard of a
new plant. His petition was rejected by the NRC.
The decision, he said yesterday, is evidence that the NRC and
FirstEnergy "are determined to put profits above public safety."
"The level of scrutiny the startup is receiving can’t be
understated," U.S. Sen. George Voinovich (R., Ohio) said.
U.S. Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D., Toledo) lauded Davis-Besse workers
upon learning about the restart decision, while continuing to
scorn NRC and company officials. She cited an earlier incident on
June 9, 1985, in which Davis-Besse lost a significant amount of
water used to cool the plant’s hot reactor core, resulting in a
shutdown in excess of 18 months.
"It’s been twice now that workers have really saved us by
preventing two catastrophes. The NRC has failed us twice and the
company has failed us twice," Miss Kaptur said.
Tom Henry can be reached at thenry@theblade.com or 419-724-6079.
For earlier stories on Davis-Besse, go to
www.toledoblade.com/davisbesse
© 2004 The Blade. The Toledo Blade Company, 541 N.
Superior St., Toledo, OH 43660 , (419) 724-6000
*****************************************************************
27 JOURNAL NEWS: Drill to settle Indian Point plan's worth
By ROGER WITHERSPOON
THE JOURNAL NEWS
(Original publication: March 9, 2004)
Federal officials will use a four-county drill in June to
determine the effectiveness of emergency plans for the Indian
Point nuclear power plants, ignoring the refusal by the state and
three counties to certify that the plans could work.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency has dropped its
long-standing practice of basing its evaluation of the
effectiveness of emergency plans on the state and county
certifications, as well as the biennial emergency simulation
drill, last held in September 2002.
"There is not a requirement in any regulatory law that says they
have to send those forms," said FEMA spokesman Mike Beeman. "It
has been a practice to put them forward, but it is not a
requirement under the regulations."
That change in a practice that has existed for decades comes
after the furor created last year when the state and the four
counties within 10 miles of Indian Point — Westchester, Rockland,
Putnam and Orange — refused to certify the plans were updated and
effective. At first, FEMA wouldn't approve the plans without the
state and counties, but reversed itself months later.
In a Feb. 21, 2003, letter to the state, FEMA said "in the
absence of fully corrected and updated plans for the counties and
State (FEMA) cannot provide reasonable assurance" that the
emergency plans would work. All nuclear plants are required to
have effective emergency evacuation plans as a condition of their
operating license issued by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. In
July, FEMA changed course and approved the plans over the
objections of the counties and state.
"Somewhere between February and July FEMA completely changed its
position," said Sue Gerry, an attorney for Westchester County,
"and we still don't know why. We have tried to get that
information through their appeals process, but have not received
it."
The appeal, which is still under review by FEMA, was opposed by
Entergy, which asserted in a legal brief that "there is no
factual basis for withdrawing approval of the Indian Point
radiological emergency preparedness plan." Company officials
declined to discuss the legal challenge or emergency plans.
Now, for the second consecutive year, the State Emergency
Management Office has refused to provide federal officials
certification that the plans for the 10-mile zone around the
Buchanan nuclear plants have been updated and are effective. SEMO
spokesman Dennis Michalsky said the agency supports the state's
principle of home rule, and could not document the plans'
effectiveness because Westchester, Rockland and Orange counties
refused to provide local certification. Putnam County Executive
Robert Bondi said this year that he believes the emergency plans
would be effective following a nuclear emergency at Indian Point.
"The state's position is unchanged from last year," Michalsky
said. "We have received documentation from only one county,
Putnam, and have passed that along to FEMA for its review."
"The state is doing the right thing," Westchester County
Executive Andrew Spano said. "We only wish FEMA would do the
right thing."
The four-county drill planned for the first week in June, said
Spano, "doesn't prove anything about the ability of people to get
out in an appropriate time if there is a catastrophic situation."
"There is a disconnect between a drill and reality," Spano said.
"In a drill, I'll tell buses to move and on paper they do. But
there are no real buses on the road.
"If I say we are evacuating 20,000 people, on paper they check
that off. But in reality, no one moves and the highways aren't
suddenly clogged with people trying to get away. A drill can hone
our skills, but it doesn't mean that it will work in real life."
The county has worked extensively to develop a good emergency
evacuation plan, Spano said, but its effectiveness is determined
by the type of emergency. The plan, he said, would be very
effective for an accident that took several days to develop, like
the accident 25 years ago this month at the Three Mile Island
nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania.
"I think the plan we have is a good one," he said, "just not good
enough to save people under certain circumstances — such as a
fast-breaking nuclear emergency triggered by terrorism. And they
shouldn't tell people it is good enough under those
circumstances."
Copyright 2004 The Journal News, a Gannett Co. Inc. newspaper
serving Westchester, Rockland and Putnam Counties in New York.
*****************************************************************
28 Japan Times: Ehime reactor leaks 1.6 tons of radioactive coolant water
Wednesday, March 10, 2004
MATSUYAMA, Ehime Pref. (Kyodo) About 1.6 tons of radioactive
coolant water poured Tuesday morning from a pump at the No. 3
reactor of the Ikata nuclear power plant in Ehime Prefecture,
Shikoku Electric Power Co. said.
The power company said monitoring devices near the building that
houses the reactor recorded a slight rise in environmental
radiation.
Shikoku Electric said the radiation level is 0.5 percent of the
amount that mandates operators to report to the national
government.
No radiation was detected at 13 checkpoints in the larger area
surrounding the reactor, it said.
Shikoku Electric said it became aware of the leak after an alarm
went off just before 10 a.m. Engineers turned the pump off and
the nuclear plant continued operations using backup equipment.
The coolant apparently leaked from the pump's roller bearing.
Officials said they detected excessive heat coming from the
bearing.
This is the second such incident in about 18 months.
In September 2002, about 230 ml of radioactive coolant water
leaked from a pipe at Ikata nuclear plant's No. 1 reactor.
The Japan Times: March 10, 2004 (C) All rights reserved
*****************************************************************
29 NYT: Chance to Revive Sales Draws Nuclear Industry to China
By CHRIS BUCKLEY
[B] EIJING, March 9 - China plans to significantly expand its
nuclear power in the coming decades, and the Bush administration
has been courting the country's top officials on behalf of
American companies seeking a starring role in that expansion.
The United States is competing with France, Russia and, in a
minor way, Canada to build four 1,000-megawatt plants that energy
executives say will signify China's coming of age as a nuclear
energy provider, and offer crucial relief to makers of nuclear
technology starved of new orders in their home countries.
"China is the country most likely to have robust growth in
nuclear power in the next 10 years," said Ron Sinard, who
oversees plant development for the Nuclear Energy Institute, a
Washington organization that represents the United States
industry. "Looking at the market over the next decade, it's
probably the biggest piece of the pie."
The call for tenders may be issued as early as this month,
nuclear industry executives said. The winner is likely to have an
advantage in subsequent bids for 20 or more nuclear plants that
may be built by 2020.
China currently has eight nuclear power plants that generate a
total of 6,200 megawatts; by 2020 nuclear power could provide
China with 32,000 megawatts. Even if all the proposed plants are
built, nuclear power would supply China with about 4 percent of
its electricity needs by 2020, with the bulk of electricity
coming from coal-fired stations and, to a lesser extent,
hydroelectric projects like the Three Gorges Dam.
In choosing among rival bids, China will be making choices not
only on which technology it will use but also on geopolitical
allegiances, environmental safety and, in the case of American
bidders, China's gaping trade surplus with the United States.
"The stakes are huge. These are big contracts with a lot of
implications," said Jean-Christophe Delvallet, who represents the
French energy company EDR in China.
In recent months, a procession of political leaders has pressed
China to favor power plant designs and equipment from their home
countries. They have included President Jacques Chirac of France;
former Prime Minister Jean Chrétien of Canada; Viktor Khristenko,
who was named fuel and energy minister in Russia on Tuesday; and
dozens of less-prominent officials.
President Bush even raised the virtues of American nuclear
technology with the Chinese prime minister, Wen Jiabao, during a
meeting in December, said Jim Fici, a senior vice president at
Westinghouse, which has long sought to enter China's nuclear
energy sector.
The expense of building nuclear plants - more than $2 billion for
each unit - may weigh in Westinghouse's favor as China considers
big purchases to close its $113 billion trade gap with the United
States.
When the deputy prime minister of China, Wu Yi, travels to the
United States in April to discuss trade disagreements, the sale
of American nuclear technology will be on the agenda, according
to United States government officials. Westinghouse is based in
the United States, but is owned by BNFL, a British company.
China is likely to shift from its current mixture of Canadian,
French and Russian technology to a more uniform array of plants,
nearly all the officials and executives interviewed said.
"They want a more standardized system," said Rene de Preneuf, the
chief China representative for Areva, the French-based nuclear
energy company.
Standardization would make building and running plants less
expensive and safer, he said, because it allows equipment, skills
and experience to be shared across a wider net. Standardization
also means the successful bidder has the lucrative prospect of a
run of similar projects.
Most observers agreed the main contest is between Areva, a
company that has long dealt with China and hopes to sell its
latest generation of Framatome ER reactors, and Westinghouse,
which hopes to sell its AP1000 reactor, a model so new that the
Nuclear Regulatory Commission has not yet approved it for
construction in the United States.
This is not the first time China has publicized plans for
expanding nuclear energy. Similar plans were announced in the
early 1990's but were abandoned because of a slowing economy and
a temporary glut in electricity. Energy industry executives and
analysts agreed that this time the Chinese government, alarmed
by the country's voracious appetite for electricity and growing
dependence on imported oil and natural gas, is determined to
expand its nuclear energy resources.
Power shortages that disrupted industrial production across two
dozen provinces last year revived interest in nuclear power. Last
year electricity demand increased 15 percent to 1.9 trillion
kilowatt hours, and tens of thousands of factories in China's
eastern provinces were forced to cancel production because of
power cuts. Similar power shortages are expected this year and
next. The chairman of China's electricity regulation commission,
Chai Songyue, said that China would face a shortfall of 20
million kilowatt hours this year.
Stronger government support for nuclear energy is reinforced by
enthusiastic promises of investment for China's power companies.
"A lot of utilities are investing money to prepare sites that
might be approved in the next five-year plan," said Simon Tang,
who represents Atomic Energy of Canada in Beijing, referring to
China's five-year budget, which will be released next year.
The booming coastal provinces of Zhejiang and Guangdong are the
first in line for nuclear power stations, in part because coal
mines and dams are far away, making energy transport a major
expense. "You must look at this at a local basis," said Philip
Andrews-Speed, an expert on China's energy sector at the
University of Dundee in Scotland.
But energy companies see China as their best potential market.
"Western nuclear suppliers see China as one of their greatest
hopes for rekindling their business," said Edwin Lyman, a
specialist on nuclear energy issues with the Union of Concerned
Scientists, a United States group that opposes nuclear energy.
Economic concerns may outweigh worries about China's role in the
spread of nuclear weapons.
Westinghouse developed the AP1000, which can generate 1,100
megawatts, with half a billion dollars of support from the
federal government, and the government would collect tens of
millions of dollars in royalties from any such plant in China, a
senior United States energy official said. Credit support from
the Import-Export Bank may also be used to finance the plants, he
said, and Chinese officials had sought assurances that China
would receive an export license for the plant.
The National Reform and Development Commission, China's top
energy agency, and Chinese nuclear agencies all declined to be
interviewed for this article.
Critics are concerned that China's leap into nuclear power may
test its immature and incomplete regulatory system. Mr. Lyman of
the Union of Concerned Scientists said it was not clear how China
would ensure that its radioactive materials remained safe, in
civilian hands. He said the AP1000 design lacked too many
traditional safety backups.
His concerns were dismissed by proponents of the deal. Mr. Fici,
of Westinghouse, said tests showed the AP1000 was many times
safer than existing plants. The transfer of the AP1000 technology
to China would "raise no new policy issues" in proliferation, the
United States government official said. The official said he was
confident China would abide by United States rules preventing the
transfer of licensed nuclear technology to third countries.
Critics and skeptics of China's nuclear energy program agreed
that over the coming years, the shape and speed of its expansion
will be at the mercy of economic downturns and political
uncertainties.
"Now there's a scramble to build as much generation as possible,"
said Mr. Sinton, the analyst. "But with all this building there's
the possibility of overcapacity in a few years' time. There are
systemic factors that lead to a boom and bust cycle."
Copyright 2004 NYT
*****************************************************************
30 Newhouse A1: Questions Linger as Repaired Nuke Plant Prepares to Restart
[Newhouse News Service]
BY JOHN MANGELS and JOHN FUNK c.200 Newhouse News Service
The first sign that something was seriously wrong at the
Davis-Besse nuclear plant near Toledo, Ohio, two years ago wasn't
a blaring klaxon or a flashing alarm light.
It was the barest shudder of a robotic drilling machine that was
supposed to be rock-steady.
You don't want unexpected movement when you're doing precision
machining atop a nuclear reactor. The cracked metal nozzle that
the remote-operated rig was cutting out for repair is a vital
part. It's a passageway through the reactor's thick steel lid, a
channel for one of the 61 slender boron control rods that slide
in and out of the core like fireplace pokers to regulate the
fierce atomic furnace.
The cutting machine locks itself in place. It shouldn't move.
But it did. On the night of March 5, 2002, it twisted. Just 15
degrees, but enough for the machining work to come to a stop and
the rig's operator to wonder what was going on with Nozzle 3 near
the center of the reactor's domed lid.
Either the brawny hydraulic clamp holding the cutting tool to the
nozzle had come loose -- unlikely -- or the nozzle itself had
shifted.
But that was impossible. The nozzles, each as big around as a
man's forearm, are embedded in the 80-ton lid. First they're
frozen with liquid nitrogen to shrink them enough to fit a hole
only a thousandth of an inch larger than the sleeve itself. Then
they're welded in place. It would take a bomb to unseat one.
That, or the destructive power of rust.
When Davis-Besse engineers finally got a good look at what was
going on with Nozzle 3, they found a shocking sight. The nozzle
had toppled over. The culprit was a rust hole in the lid.
Thirty-five pounds of fine carbon steel had vaporized, consumed
by corrosion from leaking reactor coolant.
Not only had the rust chewed away the foundation of Nozzle 3 but
it had also gnawed clean through the lid. Exposed at the bottom
of the hole was the reactor's stainless steel liner. The thin
metal was cracked and bulging slightly from the strain of holding
back 90,000 gallons of highly radioactive coolant pressurized to
a ton per square inch.
The rust hole wasn't that big, but it might as well have been the
Grand Canyon. It swallowed plant owner FirstEnergy Corp., and it
has taken the humiliated utility 25 months of repairs and reforms
and more than $630 million to climb out.
The hole claimed the Nuclear Regulatory Commission too. No one,
from the two inspectors based at the plant to the agency's senior
managers in Chicago and Washington, D.C., caught the numerous
warning signs over the years that Davis-Besse was sliding into
mismanagement and disrepair.
Assailed by activist groups, lambasted by a nuclear industry that
has had to share Davis-Besse's bad publicity, skewered by its
internal watchdog, the NRC is struggling to correct its own
lapses. At the same time, it has had to oversee the plant's
complex rehabilitation and reckon with other problem reactors.
On Monday, the NRC announced Davis-Besse can start up again.
As the plant prepares to resume splitting atoms, the question is
whether the changes are the right ones.
Much of Davis-Besse's equipment is new or refurbished. Its
management is different, its work force better trained. As for
the NRC, it has toughened its inspection routines for corrosion
and is planning to beef up its ability to spot problem trends at
the nation's nuclear plants.
But there are nagging signs that neither the utility nor the
regulator has learned all of the rust hole's hard lessons.
After two years of intense scrutiny, Davis-Besse workers' ability
to quickly find and correct potential problems and to judge their
own preparedness remains suspect to regulators. Plant employees
still don't have full confidence in their bosses' commitment to
safety; in fact, the latest company survey in November showed a
decline.
For its part, the NRC refuses to add direct assessments of
nuclear plants' "safety culture" to its inspection routines, even
though lax safety attitudes have been at the heart of
Davis-Besse's problems and most other serious near-misses dangers
at U.S. nuclear plants.
The NRC's own management culture and commitment to safety get low
grades from its employees. And the agency's timetable for
Davis-Besse-related reforms is slipping, even as questions are
being raised internally about the effectiveness of the plan.
"We were real, real close at Davis-Besse," said David Lochbaum, a
nuclear safety engineer and former reactor worker who monitors
the NRC and the nuclear industry for the Union of Concerned
Scientists. "We haven't done enough to make sure we won't be real
close again."
# # #
"How can this happen?" That was Jim Dyer's incredulous reaction
as news of the extraordinary events at Davis-Besse began to
trickle into the NRC on March 6, 2002.
At the time, Dyer was running the agency's Midwest region. He
supervised 24 of the nation's nuclear reactors, scattered across
seven electricity-hungry industrial states.
The NRC had been aware for a week that Davis-Besse might have
cracks in five of its control rod nozzles. It was a worrisome
trend that had begun showing up in U.S. plants in early 2001. The
cracks probably resulted from stresses created during the
nozzles' manufacture and installation, aggravated by the high
temperature and pressure at which reactors operate.
Any potential weakness in one of the barriers between a reactor's
radioactive core and the outside world is cause for concern. A
cracked nozzle could let some of the reactor's corrosive coolant
seep out onto the vulnerable steel lid, although barely a
teaspoonful of dried acid had been found at the worst of the four
previously leaking U.S. reactors. The NRC's thinking was that the
hot metal would dry the liquid, leaving a harmless powder.
The bigger fear was that a crack spreading horizontally around
the nozzle could allow it to shoot from the lid like a Scud
missile. Thousands of gallons of coolant would spew from the
hole, coolant needed to prevent a catastrophic meltdown of the
reactor's fuel rods. Emergency pumps and other equipment would
have to work to refill the ruptured reactor vessel and keep the
fuel from overheating.
From the NRC's perspective, though, there had been several
reasons not to get too worked up about the initial report of
cracks at Davis-Besse.
First, the reactor was in a refueling shutdown, so there was no
immediate safety threat. Second, ultrasound scans indicated the
nozzle cracks were vertical, rather than the more dangerous
horizontal ones.
Finally, even if the cracks had penetrated "through-wall" and
actually were oozing coolant, it was doubtful much acid residue
had accumulated atop the reactor.
After all, FirstEnergy had promised NRC officials only four
months earlier, in the fall of 2001, that workers had been
properly inspecting Davis-Besse's lid for signs of leaks and
corrosion and that it was in good shape.
In reality, the cracked Nozzle 3 had leaked an estimated 47,000
gallons of coolant for four years or more, vomiting 900 pounds of
rusty, acidic slurry onto the lid where workers let it build up.
Now, the deeper the NRC probed in the wake of the rust hole's
discovery, the more glaring the agency's own failures became.
Yes, FirstEnergy had provided misleading, perhaps even criminally
negligent information about the lid's condition (a federal grand
jury investigation is under way). But nearly two years before the
hole was found, a company engineer intent on communicating the
problem had handed a report and seven color photos to one of the
NRC inspectors based at the plant, documenting the accumulation
of "molten, lavalike, rust-colored boric acid debris" on the lid.
The NRC inspector said he didn't have enough training to
recognize the significance of the evidence.
There were numerous other lapses, breakdowns and errors within
the agency, as documented by the NRC's own reviews of the
Davis-Besse debacle. Unraveling one led to another:
-- The agency's inspectors and managers didn't grasp the
potential severity of corrosion on the reactor lid, yet NRC
bulletins and other communiques had been warning of the risk as
long ago as 1987.
-- Recognizing the threat posed by nozzle cracking and the cost
of frequent inspections, the French government began replacing
all of that country's reactor lids in the mid-1990s. But the NRC
had scaled back its reviews of foreign reactor programs, and the
French experience wasn't widely known in the agency.
-- The NRC had mounted a major push in the late 1990s to root out
long-standing design flaws and lapses at U.S. nuclear plants. Yet
post-rust hole inspections at Davis-Besse turned up significant
design deficiencies or questions involving five vital emergency
systems, some dating back to the reactor's construction in the
1970s.
-- A pattern of unresolved corrosion problems and design flaws
showed up not only in past NRC inspections at Davis-Besse, but
also at other U.S. nuclear plants. But to save money and respond
to industry and congressional criticism of overregulation, the
NRC in 1999 had abolished its office dedicated to spotting
reactor problem trends.
-- When the NRC identifies potential safety issues that may
affect large numbers of reactors, it asks utilities to do
inspections and, if necessary, propose solutions and fix the
problem. But the agency didn't follow up to make sure the work
was done.
The agency launched a wide-ranging self-analysis in the wake of
the Davis-Besse debacle. The four-month effort produced 51
recommendations for change, 49 of which were turned into an
"action plan" a year ago.
Sixteen of the highest-priority reforms are done -- seven fewer
than the schedule called for at this point. Of the remainder, six
items don't have target completion dates.
With significant events like Davis-Besse occurring every 2.5
years, Lochbaum worries the NRC "will fall farther and farther
behind the fixing curve" if its schedule doesn't accelerate. "The
NRC knows what needs to be done, but lacks the will to get it
done," he said.
Many of the Davis-Besse-inspired fixes are intended to strengthen
the guidelines NRC inspectors follow when checking plants for
metal cracking, corrosion and equipment problems. Inspectors are
now getting training to encourage more of a "questioning
attitude."
Some of the steps restore or re-emphasize activities the NRC had
moved away from.
For example, the agency will begin limited "back-checking"
inspections of certain safety systems at a sampling of plants to
determine whether utilities have done the work they promised.
Also, the NRC will set up a clearinghouse to report on reactor
operating trends, much as it did prior to disbanding its analysis
unit five years ago.
"I believe we're certainly a different organization" because of
the lessons learned from Davis-Besse, said Dyer, who now directs
the NRC's licensing and inspection activities for all U.S.
commercial reactors. "I'm confident we're poring over this
information and shoring up our programs to make sure that
Davis-Besse can't happen again."
But the agency's critics cite important lessons they believe the
NRC still hasn't learned:
-- The reform plan doesn't address the internal communication
troubles that caused NRC inspectors and managers to repeatedly
miss numerous signs of corrosion at Davis-Besse, warns the
agency's inspector general.
-- "Safety culture" remains a blind spot for the NRC, both inside
the agency and at the reactors it regulates. The nuclear
industry's research outfit pegged lax safety attitudes among
plant personnel as the main factor in most of the 20 close calls
at "near-miss" reactor events since 1974. Although the NRC
required extensive safety culture retraining at Davis-Besse and
regular surveys of workers' safety-mindedness through 2009, there
are no plans to make that a practice at other plants.
NRC employees have significant doubts about their own agency's
safety culture, according to a 2003 inspector general's report.
Only about half of the agency's staff thinks it's "safe to speak
up in the NRC," and less than 50 percent think their bosses trust
their judgment.
-- The NRC hasn't required other plants to address potential
deficiencies in their emergency sumps like those exposed at
Davis-Besse. If a reactor's lid ruptures or a major pipe breaks,
the sump collects and recirculates spilled reactor coolant to
keep the core from melting. During the rust hole investigation,
Davis-Besse engineers determined their sump was woefully
undersized and probably would have been clogged with debris
blasted loose by jets of escaping coolant. The utility boosted
its sump size by 2,400 percent. The NRC has known of the
sump-clogging issue since 1979, but probably will not ask the 68
plants similar to Davis-Besse to make a final assessment of their
sump vulnerabilities until late this year.
-- The NRC continues to insist the rust hole at Davis-Besse was
never an imminent threat to public safety, even though its
analysis of the lid's vulnerability isn't complete and the safety
margin has been shrinking.
"I want to say ... loudly and clearly that it was not close to
being the impending disaster being publicly portrayed," NRC
Chairman Nils Diaz proclaimed in April 2003, a position he has
reiterated recently.
Yet the agency's own preliminary test results last fall, using a
mockup of Davis-Besse's cracked reactor lid liner, showed in at
least one case that the thin metal gave way at a pressure below
what the reactor would have been operating at had workers not
stumbled on the rust hole. An earlier NRC computer model
concluded that had the hole not been found, the liner could have
burst in as few as one or two years.
The final estimate of the risk posed by the rust hole is "still
being determined and bandied about," Dyer said. It's possible the
agency's initial judgment of the odds -- that if 10,000 reactors
operated for a year with the kind of lid corrosion that existed
at Davis-Besse, one of them would have had a core-melting
accident -- will be increased to as much as a 1-in-100 chance, he
said. But the reactor's thick-walled containment building
probably would have held, and "as far as a threat to the public,
it's still pretty far away."
Hal Ornstein, a retired NRC senior safety analyst, questions
whether the agency can change without a strong leader to push
through difficult reforms and additional experienced staffers to
scrutinize reactor records.
"I don't think it (the NRC's Davis-Besse action plan) goes far
enough in recommending what is needed," said Ornstein, who probed
safety problems in the wake of Three Mile Island. "And I don't
think that left on its own, the NRC will do what is needed."
According to Lochbaum, "If Davis-Besse had had an accident, we
wouldn't be in a position to tell the survivors, `We did as much
as we could to protect you.' The NRC won't be a better regulator
five years down the road unless Congress takes an interest.
"Unless you have a body count, Congress doesn't want to get
involved," Lochbaum said. "If Davis-Besse's rust hole had opened
up, Congress obviously would have held hearings. Why don't we
skip the part where people die?"
March 9, 2004 .
(John Mangels and John Funk are staff writers for The Plain
Dealer of Cleveland. They can be contacted at
jmangels@plaind.com and jfunk@plaind.com)
*****************************************************************
31 Morning Journal: Davis-Besse fired back up
By MALIA RULON
Associated Press Writer 03/09/2004
A puff of smoke and spray of water came from an Ohio nuclear
plant yesterday as workers brought it back online after a
two-year shutdown ordered when leaking acid nearly ate through a
protective steel reactor cap.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission gave the plant permission to
restart, beginning a process expected to last 10 to 14 days to
bring it to full power.
''This basically is a new Davis-Besse that we're going to be
starting,'' plant spokesman Richard Wilkins said. ''It's new in
many ways, not just the equipment but also the way we operate the
plant.''
Corrosion on the reactor vessel at the Davis-Besse plant, less
than 30 miles west of Sandusky, was the most extensive ever found
at a U.S. nuclear reactor. It led to a precautionary review of 68
similar plants nationwide.
NRC officials blamed plant operators for allowing the erosion of
safety standards that caused the leak to go unnoticed for years.
The plant is owned by FirstEnergy Corp., of Akron, Ohio, the
company that a U.S.-Canadian government task force said shares
much of the blame for the Northeast blackout last August.
The NRC came under fire for not detecting the leak sooner. As a
result, regulators have agreed to make changes to its safety and
inspection procedures. Yesterday, the agency said the plant can
safely operate after numerous repairs and changes in management,
but environmentalists complained that only 16 of 49 recommended
changes in how NRC oversees nuclear power plants have been made.
The NRC will monitor the startup round-the-clock and is assigning
three full-time inspectors to the plant. Most nuclear plants have
two inspectors.
In addition, NRC will require the plant to undergo an independent
inspection each year for five years. The commission's oversight
committee will continue to monitor the plant ''until we are
satisfied that the plant is up and operating in a stable
condition,'' said James Caldwell, regional administrator for the
agency's Region III office in Lisle, Ill.
The plant was closed in February 2002 for routine maintenance
when inspectors found corrosion on the reactor vessel, where
leaking boric acid had eaten almost through a 6-inch-thick steel
cap.
FirstEnergy Corp. spent about $600 million for repairs and
replacement power while the plant was prevented from producing
electricity.
During the shutdown, regulators also found design flaws in
Davis-Besse's cooling system pumps, which led to prolonged
repairs. FirstEnergy replaced the damaged reactor vessel head,
installed a new leak monitoring system and overhauled the plant's
management.
The company asked the NRC on Feb. 12 for permission to restart
the plant, saying the plant was now capable of being safely
operated.
Two teams of NRC inspectors said at the February meeting that
they saw marked improvement in plant operations and worker
performance. Although the inspectors found widespread problems
during a December review, they said none was serious enough to be
a safety problem.
Environmental groups questioned, though, whether the plant was
really committed to safety. A report released yesterday by the
Ohio Public Interest Research Group identified several unresolved
problems at the plant, such as the failure to fix two leaking
pumps needed for cooling water.
''We are not confident that the NRC is capable of putting safety
first,'' said Sarah McKinney, an environmental associate with
Ohio PIRG and the report's author.
The NRC's Caldwell said he and the inspection team that evaluated
the plant were ''not aware of any equipment problems that would
preclude restart.''
During the shutdown, some critics in Congress questioned whether
the NRC bowed to pressure from FirstEnergy and allowed the
utility to keep Davis-Besse operating despite misgivings about
the reactor lid.
The NRC has rejected allegations that it put profits ahead of
safety.
Meanwhile, people who live near the plant along Lake Erie were
happy to hear that it would be reopened because it provides jobs
and tax money for schools.
''They've had so much attention it'll probably be the safest one
in the country,'' said Tom Brough, who lives on a farm a
quarter-mile from the plant.
------
On the Net:
Nuclear Regulatory Commission: http://www.nrc.gov
FirstEnergy Corp.: http://www.firstenergycorp.com
Copyright © 1995 - 2004 PowerOne Media, Inc.All Rights Reserved.
*****************************************************************
32 Newsday.com: NRC gives Indian Point 2 a clean report card
[March 9, 2004]
By JIM FITZGERALD Associated Press Writer
WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. -- For the first time under the
current federal oversight system, the Indian Point 2 nuclear
power plant has received a clean report card.
As a result, the plant on the Hudson River in Buchanan will no
longer be subjected to extra inspections from the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission, NRC spokesman Neil Sheehan said Tuesday.
It's been a long road back for the plant since a leak of
radioactivity in February 2000 was followed by other safety
problems and the terrorist attacks of 2001 sparked a campaign to
shut down the plant and its twin, Indian Point 3.
Jim Steets, a spokesman for Entergy Nuclear Northeast, which owns
the plants, said, "Entergy purchased Indian Point 2 aware of its
performance problems ... and immediately committed to improving
operation and human performance by implementing a training
program for all Indian Point workers and investing hundreds of
millions of dollars in equipment upgrades and training."
The plant's critics were not assuaged. Alex Matthiessen, who
leads the coalition trying to close Indian Point, accused the NRC
of "participating in a whitewash."
Citing several of the plant's past problems and its continuing
maintenance backlog, Matthiessen said, "It seems to me there's a
complete disconnect between the NRC's rating system and how
they're actually applying it at Indian Point. It seems to me
quite obvious that the NRC is assisting Entergy, which is under
siege from public and political pressure to shut down the plant."
Rep. Nita Lowey, the Democrat who represents most of Westchester
County and has called for decommissioning the plant, said, "NRC
is playing a dangerous game, rewarding Indian Point's continued
security and operational failures with the highest rating
possible. Less oversight certainly won't solve the problems at
Indian Point."
Sheehan said that under the commission's color-coded grading
system, Indian Point 2 had scored "green" on all performance
indicators and inspection findings.
"It means you're doing what you should be doing and therefore
you're going to receive the routine level of inspection," Sheehan
said. "We expect all plants to have nothing but green, to do
everything they can to make sure their operation is in tiptop
shape. What this means is Indian Point 2 doesn't currently have
any blemishes against its record, and since we started this new
reactor oversight program in April 2000, that's the first time
that's occurred."
Indian Point 3, however, has not reached the all-green level. On
the color system that goes down from green to white, yellow and
red, Indian Point 3 still carries a "white" grade for one
performance indicator because of the number of shutdowns it has
had. That grade will be reviewed this summer, Sheehan said.
Indian Point 2 had received a "red" for the radioactive leak, a
"yellow" for poor performance by control-room operators on a
relicensing test, and a "white" for an inadequate firewall in the
control room. The last of those was cleared by the NRC in
January, according to a letter from the commission to Entergy
Vice President Fred Dacimo.
In the March 3 letter, the commission said it was still concerned
about backlogs in maintenance at Indian Point 2 but summarized,
"Overall performance at the Indian Point station has continued to
improve, albeit slowly."
___
On the Net:
Nuclear Regulatory Commission's annual assessment letter for the
Indian Point reactors:
http://www.nrc.gov/NRR/OVERSIGHT/ASSESS/LETTERS/inpt_2003q4.pdf
Copyright © 2004, The Associated Press | Article licensing and
*****************************************************************
33 Brattleboro Reformer: Yankee worker feels ostracized
March 09, 2004 Brattleboro, VT
By CAROLYN LORIÉ Reformer Staff
BRATTLEBORO -- On a trip to the grocery store, Brattleboro
resident Sean Butler ran into a man he had recently met at a
holistic health fair.
The two struck up a friendly conversation and at some point it
came up that Butler worked for the Vermont Yankee nuclear power
plant.
And that's when the conversation stopped being friendly.
According to Butler, his new acquaintance became visibly
uncomfortable, gave a terse lecture on the perils of nuclear
power and then marched out of the store.
"People want to judge me morally because I work there," says
Butler, 38, who has been employed as a instrumentation and
control technician at the plant for three years.
While Vermont Yankee is owned by the Louisiana-based company
Entergy Nuclear, the rank and file at the plant -- over 500
employees -- are largely from this area.
According to Jay Thayer, vice-president of Entergy Nuclear
Vermont Yankee, when the corporation purchased the plant in July
2002, it left the staff largely intact. "It wasn't a normal
takeover. I was the only one who came up (from the corporation),"
says Thayer.
At a recent public forum on Entergy's proposed 20 percent power
"uprate," Peter Alexander, director of the nuclear power watchdog
group New England Coalition, said that while there is a general
mistrust of Entergy, those in the operating rooms at the plant
"are our friends and neighbors." But for some Vermont Yankee
employees, their treatment in the community has been neither
friendly nor neighborly.
When Butler moved to the area from Florida in 2001, he says he
was unaware that there was a large anti-nuclear movement here.
But it didn't take him long to figure it out.
Within a few weeks he began to notice the ubiquitous
"Nuclear-Free Vermont" signs around town and "the anti-nuclear
bumper stickers on every Subaru."
"At first I kind of liked it, because where I came from people
weren't politically aware. It was kind of nice to see that people
do care and voice their concern," says Butler. Before he moved to
Florida, he worked at the Dresden Nuclear Power Plant in Morris,
Ill., where he says the community took little interest in the
plant.
Although Butler was initially impressed by the level of activism
in the community, as he began to explore Brattleboro he found
himself ostracized because of his connection to Vermont Yankee.
At bars in town, he would meet people with similar interests but
inevitably the question would come up about what Butler did for a
living. The reactions, he says, were unabashedly negative. "How
can you live with yourself," he was asked repeatedly.
It happened so many times, Butler no longer remembers the first
incident.
"I think they are trying to make me feel bad," says Butler of
those who are critical of his work. He says he tries to engage
with people about the topic but often grows more frustrated in
the process.
"The people who I have ended talking to about it know very
little about nuclear power. They say we need more alternative
energy -- people don't know about that either. It's just 'down
with nuclear power, we need more alternatives,' " says Butler,
who has experience building energy-efficient timber frame houses.
He says scare tactics employed by anti-nuclear activists and
biased reporting by the Reformer are responsible for the
misinformation about nuclear power circulating within the
community.
Butler, educated at the Naval Nuclear Power School, says he
favors exploring alternative energy sources but also considers
nuclear power to be a safe, clean option -- a combination of
ideas that does not sit well with most advocates of alternative
energy.
Butler, with his pierced ear, goatee, and J. Crew wardrobe,
thinks his less-than-warm reception in the community is due at
least in part to the activities he pursues outside of work.
Like many Brattleboro residents, Butler appreciates fine art,
live music, good food. He is into personal growth, alternative
medicine and community projects. But for many people, these
similarities don't matter as much as the one thing that sets him
apart and what sets him apart is his connection to Vermont
Yankee.
His ties to the plant have also made dates hard to come by.
Going out with women from Brattleboro is all but impossible, says
Butler, who has relegated most of his socializing to other towns,
sometimes traveling as far as Boston or Montreal to meet people.
Being single and a relative new-comer may contribute to Butler's
isolation. For Vermont Yankee workers with long-standing
connections to the area, the experience can be quite different.
"I grew up here. I have lived here for 55 years," says Jan
Bennett, an employee communications and staff writer, who says
she feels fully integrated and welcomed in the community.
Bennett, a resident of Brattleboro and 20-year veteran at
Vermont Yankee, says she has never been openly criticized because
of her where she works.
A similar sentiment is echoed by Larry Smith, a corporation and
community relations representative at the plant, who has lived in
the area for 35 years .
"Vermont Yankee has been a part of Brattleboro ever since it
went on line in 1972. I don't sense any negativity (towards its
workers)," says Smith.
But even being an established member of the community and not
having to negotiate the single social scene, does not guarantee
protection from the negative view many hold of nuclear power.
Mike Romeo, superintendent of technical training and a resident
of Keene, N.H., remembers the day his daughter came home from
grammar school and said that a teacher had told the class that
nuclear power was a bad thing. She was confused, said Romeo, that
her teacher was being openly negative about her father's work.
Romeo, who has lived in Keene for 13 years and coaches baseball
and hockey, says he supports people holding opinions contrary to
his own but doesn't think teachers should be imposing those
opinions on young children.
Because he has talked with other Vermont Yankee workers about
this issue, Butler says he knows that his experience in the
community is not unique. What is unique is his persistence in
confronting it.
In an effort to better understand the motivations, fears and
objectives of the activists, Butler began attending antinuclear
meetings.
"At first I went to scope out the enemy," says Butler, grinning
slightly at his own deep-seated suspicion of "them." Frustrated
at how emotional people got during public forums when trying to
discuss the pros and cons of nuclear power, Butler decided to
find an alternative avenue for bringing people from the two sides
together.
He approached Derrik Jordan, the southern Vermont representative
of Citizens Awareness Network, a anti-nuclear organization.
Butler liked that Jordan was passionate about his ideas but
capable of talking about them calmly and maturely.
The two decided to collaborate. The result was a group of pro-
and anti-nuclear people who began meeting on a regular basis in
March 2003.
"Better communication is the way to resolve these issues," says
Jordan, who was taken aback by the treatment Butler and others
said they received in the community.
The issue of nuclear power can be so emotionally potent that
Jordan likened the feelings on both sides to "religious fervor."
But, he says, "people have to come before issues. I really want
(Vermont Yankee workers) to feel more a part of this community."
The two sides met every two weeks until summer, when they went
to a once-a-month schedule. The group took a break over the
holidays but will resume their talks later this month. Butler and
Jordan agree that the purpose of the meetings, which are attended
by anywhere from five to 20 people, is not to convert anyone to
the other side but to build community.
Despite his efforts to connect with people from the "other
side," Butler continues to feel uneasy in town. Instead of
shopping at the Brattleboro Co-op, he drives to Putney for his
groceries, and as much as he might like to see the work of local
artists, he avoids the downtown galleries.
Although he is pessimistic about how much can be done to change
the reputation of nuclear power of this community, he is looking
forward to returning to the meetings that he and Jordan started.
"It's real diversity," says Butler. "We can learn from each
other."
*****************************************************************
34 Sofia: Russian Units Tipped for Bulgaria's Second N-Plant
novinite.com Sofia Morning News
Business: 9 March 2004, Tuesday.
Preliminary results from the report on ecology impact of second
Bulgarian n-plant Belene have revealed that the pressurized-water
reactor, such as the Russian VVER, is better for equipment,
Krassimir Nikolov, Chief of the Belene Construction Works
Directorate, stated on Tuesday.
A US company is engaged in drafting an expert report on the
advantages of each of two technologies - Canadian and Russian -
proposed by international bidders.
Bulgaria has the options to buy a CANDU heavy water reactor,
proposed by the Atomic Energy of Canada, and a pressurized-water
reactor of the VVER type to be built by an international
consortium including US Westinghouse, France's Framatome,
Russia's Atomexportstroy and Czech Skoda.
The government decided to resume construction of the Belene
nuclear power plant on the Danube River, some 250 kilometres (155
miles) northeast of Sofia, in 2003. The project has been
mothballed back in 1990 under pressure from eco groupings.[
All Rights Reserved © Novinite Ltd., 2001-2004 - Copyright
Novinite.com (thebulgariannews.com also) is unique with being a
real time news provider in English that informs its readers
about the latest Bulgarian news. The editorial staff also
*****************************************************************
35 Brattleboro Reformer: Yankee Rowe waste materials are traveling over Vermont roads
March 09, 2004 Brattleboro, VT
By CAROLYN LORIÉ Reformer Staff
BRATTLEBORO -- Last Tuesday, a container with 40,000 pounds of
low-level irradiated material from Yankee Rowe nuclear power
plant slipped off of a truck bed, spilling the contents along a
road in Rowe.
According to Kelley Smith, spokesperson for Yankee Rowe, trucks
hauling material out of the decommissioned plant routinely drive
through southern Vermont on their way to Interstate 91.
After leaving Rowe, they head north on Route 100 to Whitingham,
continuing on to Wilmington, where they pick up Route 9 west. The
trucks then cross Hogback Mountain, pass through Marlboro and
continue on until the Exit 2 interchange in Brattleboro.
In addition to materials containing low levels of radiation, the
trucks carry paints made with PCBs and building material with
asbestos.
Because the trucks are only passing through Vermont, they are
not required to get a permit from the Agency of Natural
Resources, says Kathy Stacy, an environmental technician with the
agency.
Although the quickest route from Rowe to Route 91 would be via
Route 2 in Massachusetts, Smith said that a bridge in Charlemont
has a weight limit that most of the trucks exceed.
There was also a route through Heath that had to be stopped when
town officials expressed concerns about safety.
Inadequate chains are blamed for the spill, prompting Yankee
Rowe to abandon containers that require being chained to the
truck bed. They will now be secured with special locking pins,
said Smith.
Shipments from the plant stopped while the accident was under
investigation and may be resumed later this week.
The transporting of material out of Yankee Rowe is handled by a
transportation contractor, who then hires subcontractors to do
the actual hauling.
Tufts Trucking of Medford, Mass., owns the truck involved in the
accident, and according to Smith, had been on the job for only a
week and a half. Smith added that a global positioning system in
the truck showed that speed was not a factor.
While Yankee Rowe was closed in 1992, shipments of the hazardous
material didn't start until fall of 2003 and are expected to
continue until spring of 2005.
The bulk of the shipments are scheduled for this year.
The materials are being sent to two different locations.
Everything containing asbestos is going to southern New
Hampshire, while the irradiated materials and those with PCBs are
sent to Palmer, Mass. From Palmer they are put on a train and
sent out to a facility in Utah.
A total of 2,500 shipments are expected to leave Yankee Rowe.
Approximately 600 have been completed, and of those remaining 200
to 250 are slated to go to New Hampshire.
According to Smith, towns are not notified about the truck
routes because the materials "do not pose a threat to public and
health safety." She added, however, that "we are looking at some
other possible routes to minimize the impact on any one town."
*****************************************************************
36 Bellona: Sevmash plant produced initial batch of casks for submarines’
spent nuclear fuel
Sevmash plant in Severodvinsk, Arkhangelsk region, manufactured
the first batch of spent fuel transport/storage casks (TUK) for
spent nuclear fuel from the retired submarines.
2004-03-09 20:49
The first 13 TUKs have been sent to the Russian Pacific Fleet,
ITAR-TASS reported January 21. The contract specifies production
of 24 casks total. Earlier Sevmash won tender for the casks
production announced by the Russian Nuclear Ministry, which deals
with nuclear submarines dismantling. The contract’s price-tag is
$3.5m. The CTR program finances it in the frames of trilateral
American-Russian-Norwegian program AMEC. The experts believe
Russia should produce 220 casks till 2010 to accommodate spent
nuclear from all the retired submarines. The special collection
sites for temporary storage (50 years max.) for these casks are
to be built for these casks at the Russian navy bases.
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
*****************************************************************
37 BBC: Sub crash commanders reprimanded
Last Updated: Tuesday, 9 March, 2004
[HMS Trafalgar]
HMS Trafalgar, pictured before the accident
Two senior commanders have been reprimanded after admitting that
their negligence caused a nuclear submarine to run aground off
Skye.
A court martial had been told that the commanders were simulating
hazards for students on a training exercise.
The submarine, HMS Trafalgar, sustained millions of pounds worth
of damage.
Commander Robert Fancy and Commander Ian McGhie were told that
the sentences would remain on their records for five years.
The hearing at Portsmouth Naval Base heard that the accident in
November 2002 caused three crewmen to be injured.
Naval prosecutor Lieutenant Commander Alison Towler described how
the submarine ploughed into the seabed off a small island called
Fladda-Chuain.
She told the hearing that Cdr Fancy had responsibility for
navigation, while Cdr McGhie had overall command of the training
course.
The court martial was told that the two commanders had agreed to
make the task more difficult for a trainee, Lieutenant Commander
Tim Green.
They did this by removing some of the navigational aids as well
as forcing the submarine to go deeper underwater.
Submarine endangered
Lt Cdr Towler said: "At the time when the submarine became most
vulnerable, deep dived and without the use of navigational aids,
Cdr Fancy became distracted from concentrating on the navigation
of the submarine."
Defending Cdr Fancy, Commander Stephen Taylor said: "Cdr Fancy
fully accepts, as he has done right from the start, that he made
certain errors and these errors meant his submarine was
endangered."
He added that Cdr Fancy was now the commanding officer of another
submarine, as well as commander of the Devonport Flotilla.
The hearing was told that Cdr McGhie was removed from his post as
commanding officer of the training course and now works for the
Ministry of Defence in London.
It had been decided not to discipline the trainee, Lt Cdr Green,
by court martial but instead by administrative censure.
The court martial panel sentenced Cdr Fancy to a severe reprimand
while Cdr McGhie was given a reprimand.
*****************************************************************
38 Scotsman.com: Commanders reprimanded after grounding sub
Wednesday, 10th March 2004
BEN MITCHELL
THE commanders of a submarine which grounded off Skye during a
training mission received reprimands at a court martial
yesterday.
Commander Robert Fancy and Commander Ian McGhie both pleaded
guilty at the hearing at Portsmouth naval base to a charge of
negligence causing the grounding of the nuclear-powered submarine
HMS Trafalgar close to Skye on 6 November, 2002.
Damage to the vessel was estimated at £5 million.
Cdr Fancy was sentenced to a severe reprimand while Cdr McGhie
was given a reprimand by the court martial panel.
The naval prosecutor, Lieutenant Commander Alison Towler,
described how the submarine, at a depth of 50 metres and
travelling at 14.7 knots, ploughed into the seabed of a small
island called Fladda-Chuain as the submarine changed direction,
injuring three sailors and causing the entire crew to fall over.
She told the hearing that Cdr Fancy had responsibility during the
Perisher submarine command course for the navigation while Cdr
McGhie, known as "teacher", had overall command of the training
course.
The actual navigation was being carried out by Lieutenant
Commander Tim Green, who was training to become the commander.
The court martial heard that during the training session the two
commanders, both aged 39, agreed to make the task more difficult
for Lt Cdr Green. They did this by removing some of the
navigational aids as well as forcing the submarine to go deeper
underwater.
Lt Cdr Towler said: "Having denied the student the use of the
ship’s inertial navigation system (SINS), and the ship’s
navigation and positioning system (SNAPS) and global positioning
system (GPS), both Cdr Fancy and Cdr McGhie had a responsibility
to ensure the submarine’s position. Neither did so.
"At the time when the submarine became most vulnerable,
deep-dived and without the use of navigational aids, Cdr Fancy
became distracted from concentrating on the navigation of the
submarine. He was concentrating on ship control rather than
checking that the submarine’s navigation was being properly
conducted. His main focus should have been on navigation but it
appears not to have been."
Lt Cdr Towler said: "Lt Cdr Green was struggling on the Perisher
course. He was under considerable pressure and probably wished to
impress. However, his chart work was untidy. His poor chart work
alone should have put Cdr Fancy on notice that all was not well,
encouraging him to pay more attention to the navigational
aspects."
Cdr Stephen Taylor, defending Cdr Fancy, described him as "an
exceptionally able and diligent commanding officer" whose
priority was always the safety of his ship.
He said: "Cdr Fancy fully accepts, as he has done right from the
start, that he made certain errors and these errors meant his
submarine was endangered."
Cdr Hugh Anderson, defending Cdr McGhie, said that he was removed
from his post as commanding officer of the training course and
now works for the Ministry of Defence in London.
He said that Cdr McGhie accepted his part for the responsibility
in causing the accident to happen.
Lt Cdr Towler said it was decided that Lt Cdr Green should not be
disciplined by courts martial for his part in the accident but
instead by administrative censure.
The court martial was told that new safety procedures had been
put in place for the training sessions as a result of this
accident.
*****************************************************************
39 ALERT! Action needed by *3/17* on nuke materials deregulation!
Date: Tue, 9 Mar 2004 10:07:40 -0600 (CST)
NIRS RADIATION ALERT and UPDATE (1/2004)
Nuclear Power and Weapons Waste to go to Regular Landfills and
other "Non-Regulated Management"
Environmental Protection Agency joins Nuclear Regulatory
Commission, Departments of Energy and Transportation in
Deregulating Radioactive Waste
Comments due to EPA by March 17, 2004 Email to:
a-and-r-Docket@epa.gov
The US Environmental Protection Agency is planning to make a new
rule that would allow nuclear waste to go to places that are not
licensed for radioactive materials.
The goal appears to be to redefine radioactive materials, no
matter what their source (nuclear power, nuclear weapons,
naturally occurring or other), based on EPA-calculated and
projected risks. The new category of nuclear materials (once
called BRC or Below Regulatory Concern) would supposedly not need
radioactive regulatory controls. EPA does not consider all the
potential health effects of radiation and hazardous materials in
estimating the risks. They have never demonstrated the accuracy
of their predictions.
1) First, EPA would allow mixed radioactive and hazardous wastes
to go to facilities permitted for hazardous waste only (RCRA C
hazardous waste dumps and processors).
2) Second, radioactive waste (not mixed with hazardous) could be
permitted to go to places that do not have radioactive licenses
or regulations, such as regular garbage dumps or incinerators or
hazardous sites. EPA justifies this by claiming they will provide
an acceptable level of protection from radiation risk. It seems
obvious this would be a problem for communities around the waste
sites, many of which already leak.
3) Third, EPA suggests that a "non-regulatory approach" to
management of radioactive waste is an option and requests
creative ideas for "partnering" with waste generators or other
schemes to relieve the regulatory burden. Nothing would prevent
radioactive materials from going to recycling facilities and
being mixed with the normal recycling streams which are made into
everyday household items like toys, cookware, personal use items,
cars, furniture and civil engineering projects like roads and
buildings.
4) This dangerous proposal dovetails neatly into the US Nuclear
Regulatory Commission's rulemaking to deregulate and release
radioactive material from control, ironically called "Control of
Solids." The NRC is considering several options for nuclear waste
deregulation including continuing the current case-by-case
release procedures, starting new release procedures that are
based on projected risks, sending the waste to sites that are not
licensed for nuclear materials. NRC is claiming they could
approve "restricted" release of nuclear waste meaning certain
conditions would apply but that NRC would not enforce
them--someone else, as yet un-named would.
The upshot is that NRC and EPA are joining forces to allow
nuclear power and weapons waste which is now generally required
to be regulated and controlled, to be released to waste sites
never designed to take radioactive materials and either
deliberately or unintentionally to the marketplace where it will
come into routine daily contact with us, our children and
environment.
5) To make matters even worse, the US NRC and US Department of
Transportation are on the verge of finalizing new transport
regulations (TSR-1) that would exempt various levels of hundreds
of radionuclides from regulatory control in transit. This will
make it easier for NRC and EPA to deregulate nuclear wastes since
they will no longer require regulation, labeling or control as
radioactive material during transportation. (This is especially
distressing in light of increased security concerns about
transportation of nuclear materials that could be used for dirty
bombs. More unregulated nuclear materials will be on the roads,
rails, barges and aircraft.)
6) Finally, the Department of Energy is in the process of a
Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement on releasing
radioactive materials from its sites. In 2000, DOE halted the
commercial recycling of potentially radioactive metals from
certain contaminated area on its sites, but could resume it. DOE
continues to allow radioactively contaminated metals out for
unregulated disposal and to allow other radioactively
contaminated materials out for recycling or unregulated
disposal--soils, concrete, asphalt, plastic, wood, equipment,
buildings, sites and more. EPA's Nov. 18, 2003 notice would help
legalize DOE's release of nuclear weapons wastes from regulatory
control.
ACTIONS:
1) Send a letter to the new EPA Administrator Mike Leavitt
telling him what you think of the EPA's proposed action,
encouraging him withdraw it. Administrator Mike Leavitt, US
Environmental Protection Agency, 1101A, Ariel Rios Building, 1200
Pennsylvania Avenue N.W. Washington, DC 20460
leavitt.michael@epa.gov
2) Comment to EPA and get organizations and landfill boards to do
so at a-and-r-Docket@epa.gov The proposal is on the EPA website
(www.epa.gov/radiation) and will be posted with comments on NIRS
website (www.nirs.org).
3) Tell EPA we need a 6 month extension to run their ideas by our
communities that will be impacted.
4) Let your elected officials know how you feel about these
dangers by sending them a copy of your letter to Secretary
Leavitt, comments to EPA, NRC, DOT and/or DOE and telling them
about your opposition to the federal rules that would deregulate
and exempt nuclear materials from regulation.
For more information contact: Diane D'Arrigo, Nuclear Information
and Resource Service (NIRS), 1424 16th Street NW Suite 404,
Washington, DC 20036, dianed@nirs.org, 202 328-0002 ext 16 See
NIRS website under Campaigns at www.nirs.org for more info and
actions.
---
Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free.
Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com).
Version: 6.0.614 / Virus Database: 393 - Release Date: 3/5/04
*****************************************************************
40 Las Vegas SUN: Science panel in Las Vegas studying geology of Nevada nuke dump
By KEN RITTER ASSOCIATED PRESS
LAS VEGAS (AP) - It was wet 10,000 years ago in the Nevada
desert near where the federal government plans to bury the
nation's nuclear waste, and climate changes could make it wetter
again in about 600 years, scientists told a federal panel
Tuesday.
But a geologist and climatologist said they could not predict
how wet it could get at the arid Yucca Mountain site during the
more than 10,000 years the nation's nuclear waste is expected to
remain radioactive there.
"There's going to be a change in the amount of water delivered
to Yucca Mountain," Eric McDonald, a Reno-based Desert Research
Institute geologist and professor, said after briefing a Nuclear
Waste Technical Review panel studying the natural systems of the
Yucca Mountain plan. "The question is what that means."
Changes in precipitation, seepage and possible migration of
radiation-contaminated water is key to the Energy Department
plan to license, build and entomb the nation's most highly
radioactive waste.
The Bush administration and Congress picked the site 90 miles
northwest of Las Vegas in 2002, and the DOE plans by the end of
this year to seek an operating license from the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission.
DOE project planners insist the project will meet safety
standards - including Environmental Protection Agency limits on
the amount of radioactivity released from the site for the next
10,000 years.
"If we had any indication that it would not be a safe system,
then we would not be going forward," said J. Russell Dyer, the
senior Yucca Mountain planner attending the science panel.
Project engineers expect that, over millennia, water seeping
into mined tunnels will degrade metal alloy casks containing
nuclear material 1,000 feet underground, he said.
"Because nothing lasts forever, the waste packages will corrode
somehow," Dyer said.
But project planners also expect the mountain's ancient volcanic
rock will isolate the radioactivity - and the natural geology
will slowly filter contaminated water before it reaches the
water table deep underground.
The EPA has set a radiation exposure limit of 15 millirems per
year - about the same as a single chest X-ray - measured 11
miles from the repository for up to 10,000 years.
Nevada is mounting legal challenges to the Energy Department
plan, and state lawyers in January told the U.S. Court of
Appeals for the District of Columbia that the EPA was lax in
setting the radiation standard.
Steve Frishman, a state technical analyst on the Yucca project,
said data presented to the technical board this week could be
crucial for the Energy Department if the court rules the EPA
standard is deficient.
The five-member federal panel of scientists will report to the
11-member Technical Review Board, which could release its
findings within months to Congress and the Energy Department.
A similar panel last year faulted the DOE plan to use metal
alloy casks to contain waste in a high-temperature repository.
Paul Craig, a physicist and engineering professor at the
University of California-Davis, quit the board in January saying
the dump was poorly designed and could leak radioactivity.
Margaret Chu, the Energy Department's Yucca project chief,
rejected the board's findings as inconsistent with continuing
DOE studies.
---
On the Net:
Yucca Mountain project: http://www.ymp.gov/
U.S. Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board: http://www.nwtrb.gov
Nevada's Agency for Nuclear Projects:
http://www.state.nv.us/nucwaste
--
*****************************************************************
41 Salt Lake Tribune: Utah counties plan to fight nuke testing
March 09, 2004
By Mark Havnes
The Salt Lake Tribune
CEDAR CITY -- Just mention nuclear testing and -- as with an
actual blast at the Nevada Test Site -- southern Utahns get hot.
Thousands of Utahns say they and their loved ones were
sickened by fallout from experimental blasts at the site
northwest of Las Vegas, and they worry President Bush may renew
the underground tests.
Those fears run so high that the Kane County Natural
Resources Committee will discuss the issue today. There is talk
that the County Commission may adopt a resolution opposing
nuclear tests.
Bush's budget sets aside about $25 million to prepare the
test site this year and $30 million next year to study weapons
designs, including a nuclear-tipped "bunker buster."
Rep. Jim Matheson, D-Utah, who opposes nuclear testing,
plans to introduce a bill today requiring more notification and
stricter procedures before the experimental blasts could resume
in Nevada.
"Any potential resuming of testing should include health
concerns first," Matheson spokeswoman Alyson Heyrand says.
Southern Utah still is hurting from the above-ground tests,
which ended in 1962, and the underground blasts, which lasted
until 1992. Washington County had the most fallout of any county
in the nation, according to the Commerce Department. Kane County
was seventh and Salt Lake County 27th.
"The truth shall set you free," says Peter Gillespie, an
environmental member of the Kane committee.
Gillespie, who has a doctorate in organic chemistry, notes
that nuclear tests could resume 18 months after Congress gives
its approval.
"The time is quite good to start voicing concerns,
considering the time it takes for anything to reach the
appropriate agency," Gillespie says. "There's evidence that
testing might start again."
Gillespie spent much of his career studying the effects of
radioactive isotopes at the Oak Ridge Institute for Nuclear
Study in Tennessee. He likens them to "shotgun shells" that
trigger irregular cell division wherever they explode.
"We don't want to use [today's] meeting as a scare tactic,
but it has been about two decades since the issue regularly
appeared in the media," Gillespie says. "Many have forgotten
[and] some have never learned the dangers."
Sen. Orrin Hatch says the 2004 Defense Authorization Act
contains provisions for research into a Robust Nuclear Earth
Penetrator, as the bunker buster is called, but notes that it is
a "paper study" and no piece of equipment will be built or
tested.
The act also contains a provision that ends the ban on
research and development of low-yield nuclear weapons, but does
not authorize such work. Any engineering or development of
nuclear weapons would require congressional authorization.
"I understand the concerns of many throughout southern Utah
about the prospect of revived nuclear testing plans," Hatch
says. "So let me be perfectly clear: I will never support
anything that has a chance of harming the public."
mhavnes@sltrib.com
">
Copyright Salt Lake City Tribune
*****************************************************************
42 Las Vegas RJ: Official says sufficient Yucca funding crucial
Tuesday, March 09, 2004
DOE still plans to pursue request for record increase for
project despite panel's OK of cuts By TONY BATT
STEPHENS WASHINGTON BUREAU
WASHINGTON -- Despite cuts approved last week in the Yucca
Mountain program by a Senate committee, the Energy Department
still plans to pursue its request for a record increase for the
nuclear waste project in the 2005 budget, a key official said
Monday.
Margaret Chu, the department's director of civilian nuclear
waste management, said sufficient funding next year is "very
critical" for the department to meet its goal of moving highly
radioactive spent fuel to Yucca Mountain by 2010.
"You all know that, historically, this program has had a
tremendous funding shortfall," Chu told the National Association
of Regulatory Utility Commissioners.
"Since 1995, accumulated shortfalls between the requested
amount and what we actually got has exceeded $700 million," she
said.
After next year, Chu said, the department expects to make
annual budget requests for Yucca Mountain that will average more
than $1 billion.
A nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, 100 miles
northwest of Las Vegas, would cost $58 billion, according to
department estimates. The government already has spent more than
$6 billion on the project.
Chu reiterated the department's plan to seek congressional
approval to fence off $749 million in ratepayer fees to be spent
on Yucca Mountain without counting against federal budget limits.
Chu did not comment on a March 4 vote by the Senate Budget
Committee that would slash the department's 2005 request of $880
million to $577 million. The Yucca Mountain budget this year is
$580 million.
Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., a member of the committee, sought the
cut, saying Yucca Mountain should not receive the requested 51.7
percent increase when the rest of the federal budget is tight.
The House has not yet acted on the Yucca Mountain budget
request.
"The senator will continue to fight any efforts to increase
funding in any way he can," said Ensign spokesman Jack Finn. "As
far as calls for alarm about Yucca Mountain not meeting its
schedule, he has very little sympathy since this is a misguided
and dangerous program to begin with."
Chu said the department is still on track to submit a license
application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission by December.
Out of 293 technical agreements that must be negotiated between
the two agencies regarding Yucca Mountain, the department has
submitted 213 proposals, Chu said.
"Some are still under review," she said.
Copyright Las Vegas Review-Journal
*****************************************************************
43 Bellona: Mayak plant launched storage facility for fissile materials
The facility might take 25 tons of the weapon-grade plutonium
from the Russian nuclear warheads.
2004-03-09 14:13
Finally after all the delays the facility was put in operation at
the Mayak plant in Ozersk, Chelyabinsk region in the South Urals.
Its construction was launched back in 1995. A Russian-American
joint executive group was managing the construction. The group
consisted of the Russian Nuclear Ministry representatives, Mayak
plant, VNIIPIET (St Petersburg), the South Ural Construction
Department, the US Defense Ministry, US company Backtel.
All-Russia Science Research Institute of Experimental Physics
from Sarov was the science leader of the project. On December
10th, 2003, the Russian State Commission headed by nuclear
vice-minister Ivan Kamenskih signed the official act of
acceptance.
The facility consists of the module, two ventilation centres, an
emergency diesel electric-power generator, a fire station, an
administration building and a security service building. The
facility can resist a plane crash, earthquake, and flood. The
main module is made of concrete with 7meters thick walls and 8
meters thick lift slabs. The facility’s lifetime is 100 years and
its price is $412m. The US Government paid the half of it. The
fissile materials storage will be undergoing tests until the
middle of 2004, then the loading operation will begin.
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
*****************************************************************
44 Bellona: Russia might accept spent nuclear fuel from Lithuania
If Ignalina NPP is shut down, Russia will take its spent nuclear
fuel. ITAR-TASS reported on January 23, referring to the
Minatom's Director for Information Policy Nikolay Shingarev who
had commented 20-years anniversary of the Lithuanian nuclear
plant and possible closure of the first unit in December due to
the European Union demands.
2004-03-09 21:36
“Ignalina NPP has been operating successfully and accident free
since the start-up and generated 242.5 billion kWh during 20
years of operation. It is 80% of total electricity produced in
Lithuania…Lithuania is not eager to close down this plant”.
According to Shingarev, Russian Corporation TVEL delivers fresh
nuclear fuel to the Ignalina, and the spent nuclear fuel is
stored in Lithuania in the casks. However, Shingarev believes,
that ”the issue on returning of the spent nuclear fuel to Russia
from the Ignalina for storage and reprocessing in case it is
closed down, should be solved according to the existing
agreements, contracts and the IAEA regulations”, ITAR-TASS
reported.
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
*****************************************************************
45 Chillicothe Gazette: Piketon celebrates future with USEC
- chillicothegazette.com
Tuesday, March 9, 2004
By BROOKE BUNCH Gazette Staff Writer
[Photo] Robert J. Moorhead
U.S. Sen. George Voinovich speaks Monday evening at the Comfort
Inn in Piketon during a celebration of United States Enrichment
Corporation's decision to choose Piketon as the site for its
state-of-the-art American Centrifuge uranium enrichment plant.
PIKETON -- Expressions of gratitude were widespread Monday night
as a community came together to celebrate the beginning of
something big.
Local residents, elected officials and political dignitaries
gathered at the Comfort Inn to celebrate United States Enrichment
Corporation's decision to choose Piketon as the site for its
state-of-the-art American Centrifuge uranium enrichment plant,
expected to cost up to $1.5 billion and employ up to 500 people.
"You're part of something big -- much bigger than Piketon," U.S.
Rep. Rob Portman, R-Cincinnati, told a roomful of guests. "This
is the American Centrifuge, not just Piketon."
The energy was high and the mood was festive as guests discussed
the future of their southern Ohio small town, a future expected
to include growth, employment and money.
"You have been thrust into the national spotlight," said T.J.
Justice, Gov. Bob Taft's regional economic development
representative. "This will have an impact for years to come."
U.S. Sen. George Voinovich gave his thanks to all who worked on
the project, dubbing it a real team effort between elected
officials and USEC employees.
"Tonight, we should thank the Holy Spirit," he said. "Some
wonderful things have happened here because we worked together."
According to USEC President and CEO Nick Timbers, the Piketon
site offered the right mix of economic benefits, existing
infrastructure, assurances concerning seismic conditions and
schedule advantages to bring the new facility to town.
"This is a very important step in the history of our company, but
it's also the future of our company," he said. "There's a bright
and vibrant future for our company and our community as well."
Bruce Johnson, director of the Ohio Department of Development,
said the future of the project has promising opportunities for
growth and development.
"This is an incredibly important project," he said. "You don't
land a $1.5 billion project every day. But it's the potential for
spin-off that's equally important. It's a shining star we ought
to build upon."
(Bunch can be reached at 772-9372 or via e-mail at
Originally published Tuesday, March 9, 2004
Copyright ©2004 Chillicothe Gazette. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
46 Las Vegas SUN: Editorial: DOE's recklessness
Today: March 09, 2004 at 9:16:31 PST
LAS VEGAS SUN
On Friday the railroads subcommittee of the House Committee on
Transportation and Infrastructure met in Las Vegas for a hearing
into the Energy Department's plans to ship nuclear waste to
Yucca Mountain. Nevada Reps. Shelley Berkley and Jon Porter, who
is vice chairman of the railroads subcommittee, said that they
were heartened that members of the subcommittee were concerned
after they had learned more about the dangers posed by shipping
man's deadliest waste.
Rep. Corrine Brown, D-Fla., voted for the Yucca Mountain
project in 2002, but now says she is "having second and third
thoughts" regarding her vote. "I made a mistake," she said. "I
certainly am going to push that we do something immediately."
We've believed all along that the Yucca Mountain project's fate
ultimately could hinge on the opposition that cross-country
shipment of 77,000 tons of nuclear waste could engender from
people who live along the possible routes. It's why the Energy
Department for so long was so elusive about identifying routes
or methods of transportation and, even today, only reveals its
preferences, not an iron-clad list. But the more the public
knows, the more we're certain the Energy Department's
nuclear-waste plans will unravel.
*****************************************************************
47 Las Vegas SUN: Senator wants full Yucca Mountain funding
Today: March 09, 2004 at 11:01:25 PST
Domenici's amendment would undo deal negotiated by Ensign
By Suzanne Struglinski
WASHINGTON --- Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., is working on an
amendment that would allow the Yucca Mountain Project to get the
full $880 million requested by the Energy Department.
If successful, the measure would undo a deal struck by Sen.
John Ensign, R-Nev., to cap the project's funding in the budget
resolution to $577 million, or $303 million less.
The Senate started debate on the budget resolution Monday. It
sets spending limits for Congress to follow as it decides to
fund programs in appropriations bills that will come later this
year.
A Domenici spokesman said the New Mexico senator does not agree
with the Ensign deal, so he wants to offer an amendment that
would raise the spending cap and use the Nuclear Waste Fund to
divert money into the program -- similar to what the Energy
Department proposed earlier this year.
"He is finding a way that holds his subcommittee harmless when
it comes to funding Yucca Mountain," Domenici's spokesman said.
"$750 million would be coming from other programs in the bill."
Nuclear utilities pay about $750 million a year into the
Nuclear Waste Fund, an account earmarked to pay for nuclear
waste storage at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las
Vegas. Of the Energy Department's $880 million request, $749
million would come from this fund with $131 million coming from
the Defense Department or general taxpayer money.
Like all federal programs, the Yucca project competes with
others in a spending bill for a limited amount of money. But the
Energy Department and the nuclear industry would like to see
money go to Yucca without affecting other projects such as
national laboratories and water development programs.
"I believe this is the original funding intent of the Nuclear
Waste Fund," Yucca Mountain Project Director Margaret Chu said
Monday. "It will still need to be appropriated by Congress but
not competing with other programs in a tight budget situation."
Since 1995 the program has been funded at $713 million less
than the department's request, Chu told the National Association
of Regulatory Utility Commissioners. The group was considering,
and likely to pass as it had before, a resolution supporting the
budget and the Yucca project.
Nuclear utilities have been waiting since 1998 for the
department to take nuclear waste off their hands as promised.
They have paid about $20 billion into the Nuclear Waste Fund
while trying to find a way to manage spent fuel at their plants.
Only about $7 billion has been spent so far from the fund on the
project despite the fact the law requires money from the fund to
go toward the project.
Domenici sits on the Senate Budget Committee and is the
chairman of the Senate subcommittee that controls the Yucca
budget. Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., is the top Democrat on that
subcommittee, which helps him cut the budget every year.
Domenici also heads the Senate Energy and Natural Resources
Committee, which has oversight on the Yucca project.
Ensign also sits on the budget committee. His spokesman, Jack
Finn, said it is clear Domenici is "very upset" by the action
Ensign took on the project, but that "when it comes to Yucca
Mountain, he has made it very clear that he would not support a
budget resolution that has higher funding for it."
It was not clear Monday when or if the amendment would be
offered.
*****************************************************************
48 TheOmahaChannel.com: State Looking For Ways To Pay Nuclear Settlement
Tax Hikes Possible
UPDATED: 8:42 am CST March 9, 2004
LINCOLN, Neb. -- Nebraska Gov. Mike Johanns reached a deal with
several state senators late last week to raise the state sales
tax by half of a cent. The money would help pay for a court
settlement related to the low-level nuclear waste lawsuit that
totaled $151 million.
"There's a point where you can't appeal, can't settle," said
Johanns. "They want $150 million, plus interest, and there's a
point that has to be paid."
The Associated Press asked lawmakers whether they support the
plan. In the survey, 14 said they'd vote for the increase, or are
leaning toward supporting it; 16 said either they'd vote against
it, or they're leaning toward voting no; 18 other senators are
undecided and one senator could not be reached.
Monday, senators debated the plan into the evening. Many do not
want to increase taxes, but worry that there are few other
options.
For cities like Omaha, the half-cent tax increase would mean
shoppers pay 7.5 percent tax on purchases, since the city has its
own local sales tax.
State senators meeting Monday questioned if there's any other way
to get money for the settlement, or if it's even necessary to
prepare for the settlement when there are still a few appeals
remaining.
"I think we have other alternatives than to go to people for a
half-cent tax increase," said Sen. Nancy Thompson.
Thompson presented an idea to take money from the state highway
fund to pay for the lawsuit, then issue bonds to pay for state
highway improvements. That plan and several other alternatives
will be debated later this week.
The appropriations committee passed the rest of the budget
Monday. It included a provision to allow school boards to raise
property taxes, which will be debated by the entire Legislature
as early as next week.
Discussion: More Tax Hikes?
Copyright 2004 by TheOmahaChannel.com. All rights reserved. This
*****************************************************************
49 toledoblade.com: Oregon council opposes expansion of dump
Tuesday, March 09, 2004
By IGNAZIO MESSINA BLADE STAFF WRITER
Oregon City Council last night made its opposition to a proposed
expansion at the Envirosafe hazardous waste landfill official.
Council members said their resolution, which asks Gov. Bob Taft,
the Ohio legislature, and the Ohio Environmental Protection
Agency to restore local zoning authority over toxic dumps, is
another step in the uphill battle city officials have waged
against the landfill’s permit modification request.
"This is a very compelling issue, and we all have strong feelings
on the environment and what needs to be done," said Mike Sheehy,
council president.
The landfill operator made a request to the Ohio EPA in January
that it be allowed to increase the height of its active-waste pit
by an additional 70 feet. If approved, it would raise the height
of the landfill cell south of York Street - commonly called Cell
M - to about 120 feet.
Tom Hays, Oregon’s assistant law director, criticized Envirosafe
Services of Ohio, Inc., at a public meeting last night, saying it
had a poor track record.
If the request is granted, he said, the landfill "would be by far
higher than any other feature or building. It would be the
hazardous waste beacon."
Councilman James Seaman said the landfill operator hasn’t done
enough in the area of groundwater monitoring.
Ohio EPA spokesman Dina Pierce said the potential for groundwater
contamination is considered during the agency’s permitting
process.
The perimeter of Cell M is dotted with deep wells that monitor
the bedrock aquifer where groundwater is present. Other wells are
used to monitor possible waste leakage. Mr. Hays said that the
bedrock wells are too deep into the aquifer - about 10 to 15 feet
below its surface - and would not detect contaminants travelling
along the top.
"I think all fair-minded scientists have come to the same
conclusion that the wells are in the wrong place," he said.
In November, researchers from Michigan State University reported
high concentrations of various toxic chemicals and heavy metals
in earth under the Envirosafe facility, and said they posed a
threat of migration. Envirosafe officials disputed the analysis
and assured the public the site is safe. The researchers found no
evidence of contamination in the aquifer. The highest levels of
contamination were under dormant landfill pits that were part of
the former Fondessy Enterprises, which owned the facility until
Envirosafe bought it in the 1980s.
Doug Roberts, Envirosafe president, could not be reached for
comment last night.
The city also is campaigning against a new federal proposal that
might allow disposal of low-level radioactive waste in
communities like Oregon. Mayor Marge Brown, in a letter to the
U.S. EPA, said the Envirosafe site is "unfit to receive such
wastes."
Radioactive waste has been accepted at the facility accidentally.
In October, 1986, 48 barrels of radioactive waste traced back to
a nuclear weapons plant were unintentionally buried at the
landfill. Federal and state officials said at the time the
material posed no health or environment threats.
In 1996, a small amount of radioactive ash was buried at the
site.
In a letter to Mr. Sheehy dated Thursday, Mr. Roberts said,
"Envirosafe has no interest in pursuing receipt of low level
radioactive material described in U.S. EPA’s proposal."
Ignazio Messina can be reached at imessina@theblade.com or
419-724-6088.
© 2004 The Blade. The Toledo Blade Company, 541 N. Superior St.,
Toledo, OH 43660 , (419) 724-6000
*****************************************************************
50 KGW: Ecology director concernd about Hanford being nuclear waste dump
| News for Oregon and SW Washington | AP Wire
03/10/2004
By SHANNON DININNY / Associated Press
State officials remain concerned the Hanford nuclear reservation
will become a radioactive waste dump, despite changes to an
environmental impact statement for handling solid waste at the
central Washington site.
The state Department of Ecology expressed those concerns Tuesday
in a letter to the U.S. Department of Energy, which manages the
site.
The letter was the first response the state has made to the final
environmental impact statement released early last month. The
purpose of the EIS: to support agency decisions on the
construction of new treatment and disposal facilities for
Hanford's waste and waste from other Energy Department sites that
might be sent to Hanford.
In the letter, Ecology Director Linda Hoffman acknowledged that
the final EIS for solid waste addressed several concerns the
state had with earlier drafts, such as burying waste in lined
trenches in the future.
"Nonetheless, we have continuing concerns about Hanford becoming
a national dumping ground for large volumes of radioactive and
hazardous wastes, offsetting the progress on cleanup," Hoffman
wrote in the letter.
Energy Department spokeswoman Colleen Clark said federal
officials continue to discuss issues of concern with the state.
The EIS, while complete, only offers preferred alternatives for
treating and disposing of waste. Final decisions will not be made
until a record of decision is released sometime after mid-March,
she said.
The equivalent of about 75,000 55-gallon barrels of radioactive
waste are buried at Hanford. The material can take thousands of
years or more to decay to safe levels. The state and federal
governments recently agreed on a long-term schedule for cleaning
up the waste.
In the meantime, the federal government started shipping
radioactive and hazardous waste from other sites to Hanford for
packaging before sending the materials to a New Mexico plant for
disposal. Hanford currently accepts and disposes of lower-level
waste from other nuclear plants around the country.
The state, Indian tribes and environmental groups have raised
concerns that highly radioactive and hazardous waste will be
shipped from other states and buried at Hanford.
The state has a lawsuit pending in U.S. District Court,
contending that the Energy Department failed to adequately study
the effects of trucking the waste in from other states and failed
to involve the public in making that decision.
A judge has temporarily banned out-of-state shipments of waste to
Hanford until the case is resolved.
In the letter, Hoffman said the Energy Department should limit
waste that is shipped to Hanford to Cold War-era waste generated
by weapons production or nuclear research activities prior to
1992.
"Many Washington residents may be willing to accept some off-site
wastes to help clean up this nation's remaining Cold War
contamination, but most are not willing to keep Hanford open to
off-site wastes from continuing nuclear-weapon and research
operations," Hoffman wrote.
An initiative likely to go before voters this fall would block
the federal government from sending radioactive waste from other
states to Hanford until all the existing waste at the site is
cleaned up. The measure has been endorsed by environmental
groups, the state Democratic Party and the League of Women
Voters.
The state also said the Energy Department should immediately end
permanent disposal of waste in unlined trenches, rather than wait
until 2006 as proposed in the environmental impact statement, and
install a system to detect hazardous waste leaks from unlined
burial grounds.
Further, labeling groundwater as irreversibly contaminated might
be used as a basis to allow further contamination or forgo
cleanup, the letter said.
For 40 years, the 586-square-mile reservation in south-central
Washington made plutonium for the nation's nuclear weapons,
beginning with the top-secret Manhattan Project to build an
atomic bomb.
Today, it is the nation's most contaminated nuclear site. Cleanup
costs are expected to total $50 billion to $60 billion, with the
work to be finished by 2035.
This text is invisible on the page, but this text is affected by
the invisible item's flow. This text is invisible on the page,
but this text is affected by the invisible item's flow.
kgw.com
*****************************************************************
51 KTVB: INEEL waste cleanup promo
KTVB.COM
Idaho Falls -- Four pools that used to store radioactive
waste at the Idaho Nuclear Engineering and Environmental
Laboratory are being scrubbed clean.
Industrial divers have started to clean a 48-by-70-foot
pool used to hold spent nuclear fuel at the I-N-E-E-L's Test Area
North. By July, they will have cleaned and drained four storage
pools
I-N-E-E-L spokeswoman Stacey Francis says it will reduce the risk
of radiation leaking and reaching the Snake River Plain Aquifer.
Two teams of three divers wear rubber suits filled with air,
three layers of gloves and 28-pound helmets. They began work two
weeks ago.
Randy Bargelt I-N-E-E-L manager for the pool cleanup
project says the water blocks radiation, so the divers are safe.
TAN facility manager Doug Wale says after the pool is
decontaminated, the rest of the building will likely be
demolished.
©2004 Belo Interactive Inc.
*****************************************************************
52 lamonitor.com: Features Oppenheimer photos commemorate birthday
2004/03/09
Monitor Staff Report
The J. Robert Oppenheimer Memorial Committee is sponsoring a
photography show entitled "J. Robert Oppenheimer, 1904-1967:
Photographs From His Life" at the Mesa Public Library Gallery
April 1-May 30.
The show commemorates the 100th anniversary of Oppenheimer's
birthday, April 22, 1904. There will be a reception, which the
public is welcome to attend, from 2-4 p.m. Sunday, April 25, in
the gallery.
The show itself consists of about 50 black and white photographs
gathered from the Committee's collection, the family's
collection, LANL's collection, and the library archives of
Berkeley, Harvard, Princeton and the Institute of Advanced Study.
The gallery, on the third floor of the library, is open during
regular Library hours.
The exhibit will also be displayed at the Onate Center in
Espanola July 2-July 22. Then on July 26, the photographs will be
on view at Fuller Lodge in Los Alamos during the reception
following the annual J. Robert Memorial Lecture. Finally, the
exhibit will be shown at Santa Fe Community College in September.
The J. Robert Oppenheimer Memorial Committee, established in
1970, awards four scholarships annually to promising
college-bound students from Los Alamos high school, and four
more, honoring Norris Bradbury, to students from Pojoaque, Santa
Fe and Capital high schools. This year, another scholarship will
be added honoring Terry Rosen, son of Louis and Mary Rosen of Los
Alamos. In addition, the committee has sponsored, since 1972, a
series of annual free lectures by eminent speakers in a wide
range of fields.
© 2003 Los Alamos Monitor All Rights Reserved.
*****************************************************************
53 AU ABC: Ailuk Atoll wants to join Marshall Islands atomic compensation
A tiny atoll in the northern Marshall Islands has filed a claim
for nuclear test compensation and health care funding.
Ailuk Atoll, which the United States says was not significantly
exposed to nuclear test fallout, has lodged a case for
compensation with the Nuclear Claims Tribunal in Majuro.
Ailuk Islanders say they have experienced severe health problems,
including a high rate of miscarriages and stillbirths among women
They say the problems are a result of living in a radioactive
environment since the Bravo hydrogen bomb test at Bikini fifty
years ago.
Radio New Zealand International reports the tribunal has already
paid out more than 1 billion US dollars in hardship, loss of
compensation and nuclear cleanup funding to Bikini and Enewatak
atolls.
Similar claims from Rongelap and Utrik are to be settled.
10/03/2004 04:34:22 | ABC Radio Australia News
www.abc.net.au
*****************************************************************
54 DOE: International Energy Agency Meeting
FR Doc 04-5253
[Federal Register: March 9, 2004 (Volume 69, Number 46)]
[Notices] [Page 10996-10997] From the Federal Register Online via
GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr09mr04-44]
AGENCY: Department of Energy.
ACTION: Notice of meetings.
SUMMARY: The Industry Advisory Board (IAB) to the International
Energy Agency (IEA) will meet on March 17, 2004, at the
headquarters of the IEA in Paris, France, in connection with a
meeting of the IEA's Standing Group on Emergency Questions. A
meeting involving members of the IAB in connection with a meeting
of the IEA's Emergency Response Exercise (ERE3) Design Group will
be held at the headquarters of the IEA on March 17-18, 2004.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Samuel M. Bradley, Assistant
General Counsel for International and National Security Programs,
Department of Energy, 1000 Independence Avenue, SW., Washington,
DC 20585, 202-586- 6738.
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: In accordance with section
252(c)(1)(A)(i) of the Energy Policy and Conservation Act (42
U.S.C. 6272(c)(1)(A)(i)) (EPCA), the following notice of meeting
is provided: A meeting of the Industry Advisory Board (IAB) to
the International Energy Agency (IEA) will be held at the
headquarters of the IEA, 9, rue de la F[eacute]d[eacute]ration,
Paris, France, on March 17, 2004, beginning at 8:30 a.m. The
purpose of this notice is to permit attendance by representatives
of U.S. company members of the IAB at a meeting of the IEA's
Standing Group on Emergency Questions (SEQ), which is scheduled
to be held at the IEA on March 17, beginning at 10:30 a.m.,
including a preparatory encounter among company representatives
from 8:30 a.m. to 9:15 a.m. The agenda for the preparatory
encounter is as follows: I. Welcome, Review of Agenda, and
Introductions II. Report on Expiration of European Community
Exemption for IAB Activities III. Update on International Energy
Forum IV. Comments on New IAB Web site Prepared by IEA V. Closing
and Review of Meetings of Interest to IAB Members The agenda for
the SEQ meeting is under the control of the SEQ. It is expected
that the SEQ will adopt the following agenda: 1. Adoption of the
Agenda 2. Approval of the Summary Record of the 109th Meeting 3.
Program of Work --Follow-up to Surplus Publication Revenues
Projects --Progress Report on Planning of Emergency Response
Exercise (ERE) 3 --First Steps in Program of Work 2005-2006 --4.
Update on Compliance with IEP Stockholding Commitments --Reports
by Non-Complying Member Countries --Report on Recent Emergency
Response Review of Portugal 5. Relations with the New European
Union Member Countries 6. Report on Current Activities of the IAB
7. Policy and Other Developments in Member Countries --United
States --Japan 8. Emergency Response Activities --Preliminary
Assessment of Economic Impacts of Oil Supply Crises --Bilateral
Stocks and Tickets in IEA Member Countries --Update on IEA/EU
Data Harmonization 9. Activities with Non-Member Countries and
International Organizations --The IEA-India Workshop on Emergency
Oil Stock Issues --ASCOPE Meeting in Cambodia --International
Energy Forum Meeting in Bangkok --The EU Antitrust Situation 10.
Emergency Response Reviews of IEA Member Countries --Revised
Schedule of Emergency Response Reviews for 2004-2005 --Emergency
Response Review of Ireland --Emergency Response Review of the
United Kingdom 11. Other Documents for Information --Emergency
Reserve Situation of IEA Member Countries on January 1, 2004
--Emergency Reserve Situation of IEA Candidate Countries on
January 1, 2004 --Monthly Oil Statistics: December 2003 --Base
Period Final Consumption: 1Q2003-4Q2003 --Quarterly Oil Forecast:
First Quarter 2004 --Update of Emergency Contacts List 12. Other
Business --Dates of Next Meetings: June 29, 2004: 111th Meeting
of the SEQ June 30, 2004: Workshop on Near-Term Risk Assessment
in the Oil Market June 30, 2004: ERE 3 Design Group Meeting
October 25-28, 2004: ERE 3 --Changes in the EPPD Secretariat and
Delegations A meeting involving members of the IAB in connection
with a meeting of the IEA's ERE3 Design Group will be held on
March 17-18, 2004, at the headquarters of the IEA from
approximately 9:30 a.m. to 10:15 a.m. on March 17 and continuing
on March 18 at 9:30 a.m. The purpose of this meeting is to
discuss the structure of an oil supply disruption simulation
exercise in connection with the SEQ, which is scheduled to be
held at IEA headquarters between October 25-28, 2004.
The March 17 meeting will be a preparatory briefing session, the
agenda for which is a review of the agenda for the March 18
meeting. The agenda for the March 18 meeting is under the control
of the SEQ. It is expected that the SEQ will adopt the following
agenda: Phase 1: Workshop on Risk Assessment and
Scenario-Building in the Present and Near-Term Oil Market
--One-day Workshop in Paris, June 26, 2004 Phase 2: A
``Real-Time'' IEA Emergency Response Exercise for Member
Countries --Late September 2004, Member Countries Participate
from Capitals Phase 3: Emergency Response Training and Disruption
Simulation Exercise for Non-Member Countries and New SEQ
Participants --Tentative Schedule, October 25-26,
[[Page 10997]] 2004 Phase 4: The Third IEA SEQ Disruption
Simulation Exercise --Tentative Schedule, October 27-28, 2004
Other Agenda Items --Date of the Next Design Group Meeting As
provided in section 252(c)(1)(A)(ii) of the Energy Policy and
Conservation Act (42 U.S.C. 6272(c)(1)(A)(ii)), the meetings of
the IAB are open to representatives of members of the IAB and
their counsel; representatives of members of the IEA's Standing
Group on Emergency Questions (SEQ); representatives of the
Departments of Energy, Justice, and State, the Federal Trade
Commission, the General Accounting Office, Committees of
Congress, the IEA, and the European Commission; and invitees of
the IAB, the SEQ, or the IEA.
Issued in Washington, DC, March 3, 2004.
Samuel M. Bradley, Assistant General Counsel for International
and National Security Programs.
[FR Doc. 04-5253 Filed 3-8-04; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 6450-01-P
*****************************************************************
55 Tri-City Herald: Opinions Hanford Reach panel deserves more time
This story was published Tuesday, March 9th, 2004
National monument status for the Hanford Reach came with the
promise that this community would have a substantial say in the
land's future.
That expectation remains and will until the federal government
proves it has considered our concerns by creating a management
plan that reflects them.
Such a plan does not yet exist and probably won't before next
Jan. 15, when the Hanford Reach citizens advisory panel is set to
expire.
The problem is that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which is
in charge of managing the 200,000-acre monument, expects that its
assessment of competing management plans won't be finished by
Jan. 15. That will leave the advisory panel essentially in the
position of trusting that Fish and Wildlife will consider
community concerns when picking a final management plan.
That's not to say such trust would be misplaced. The local Fish
and Wildlife office appears to be working well with the advisory
panel.
But the final decision on how the management plan will balance
public access with preservation is not entirely in the hands of
local staffers. The process will involve high-level Fish and
Wildlife and Department of Energy officials.
The opportunity afforded the advisory panel to give advice on
managing the Hanford Reach National Monument will mean little if
the panel is disbanded before its work bears fruit.
The state's congressional delegation consequently needs to work
on extending the advisory panel's life. Otherwise, the
community's voice could be muted. The panel would serve to
channel community sentiment and make it harder to ignore.
The Bush administration isn't a fan of national monuments and
would rather not have inherited the Hanford Reach from the
Clinton White House.
That ambivalence showed itself last year when the committee was
facing an early demise. Congressman Doc Hastings of Pasco said
the administration was ready to get rid of the panel, but kept it
alive at his request.
The panel will need the support of Hastings and other backers
like U.S. Sen. Patty Murray again to see its work through to the
end.
A broad spectrum of Mid-Columbia interests has participated in
planning for the preservation of the Hanford Reach since the
beginning, although there hasn't always been agreement on the
means. Many in the community had hoped for a bigger role than
national monument status allows. The advisory panel was a
concession to their concerns.
This community has done its part, putting aside old divisions to
work collectively toward the Hanford Reach's protection. The
federal government needs to make good on its end of the bargain.
© 2004 Tri-City Herald, Associated Press &Other Wire Services
*****************************************************************
56 CS Monitor: French science 'under attack'
| csmonitor.com
March 10, 2004 edition
SCIENCE WOES: Researchers prepared to march Tuesday while
hundreds of research directors from top scientific institutes met
in the Paris city hall. They voted to stop work in protest of a
government funding shortage.
LAURENT REBOURS/AP
The resignation Tuesday of 1,000 lab directors has the French
government looking at funding reforms.
By Peter Ford | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
PARIS More than a third of France's laboratory directors
resigned en masse Tuesday to protest a government funding
shortage, threatening to paralyze large areas of scientific
research in a country that has always set great store by its
technological prowess.
The dramatic move, plunging the world of French science into
crisis, has revealed grave fears for the future of innovation in
France, which is falling behind its international competitors and
losing increasing numbers of scientists to jobs abroad.
A world-beater in many 20th century technologies such as space
exploration, aeronautics, nuclear energy, and high-speed trains,
France is lagging behind in cutting-edge fields such as
biotechnology and nanotechnology, where small labs have an
advantage over cumbersome industrial research institutions.
The lab directors are demanding higher government spending on
fundamental research. But the plight of French science goes
beyond money to the heart of France's painful efforts to
modernize itself while maintaining its sense of identity.
"Money is not the major issue in French science," says Claude
Desplan, a French biologist who teaches at New York University.
"The problem is the way it is distributed: France has an
egalitarian system, but science is elitist."
Many French scientists, however, fear that planned moves to a
more competitive, US-style system of laboratory funding - paying
researchers for specific projects - would endanger both long-term
research efforts and scientists' job security in a country where
most researchers get tenure early in their careers.
"Copying the American model will not allow labs to develop
long-term plans, and it will create worry for employees about
finding another job," says Jean Dejax, a paleobotanist at the
Natural History Museum in Paris. "We had an excellent system that
is under attack."
The resigning directors are demanding that the government unblock
research funds that have been frozen since 2002, promise to hire
a larger number of young researchers this year, and turn 550
temporary research contracts into permanent positions.
'No new jobs and no new money'
The funding shortage has become critical, says Philippe Lesavre,
head of a laboratory at the National Institute for Health and
Medical Research (INSERM), who resigned with more than 1,000
other lab directors at a mass meeting Tuesday at the Paris city
hall. "Our budgets have been shrinking slowly for some years, but
this year there are no new jobs at all at INSERM for young
immunology researchers," he complains.
"I resigned because it is no longer possible for me to function
like this, with no new jobs and no new money," says Veronique
Monnet of the National Institute for Agricultural Research.
The center-right government has pledged to release the frozen
funds, and to create 120 new permanent research jobs this year.
Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin promised over the weekend to
commit 3 billion euros ($3.7 billion) to scientific research over
the next three years, and announced plans to reform the whole
system of funding.
"We have to plan funding, but also the reform of research
structures in France," Mr. Raffarin told the daily Liberation.
"We are not engaged in short-term bargaining. but facing the
construction of the country's future."
The government's ideas for reform will probably face considerable
opposition, as they are likely to mean an end to the "jobs for
life," which have become a cornerstone of the scientific
community.
French funding of research and development, at 2.2 percent of
GDP, is actually above average for the European Union, and a
greater share of it comes from the public purse, rather than
private enterprise, than in many other developed countries. But
not all the budgeted money is actually disbursed, as the French
government seeks savings to reduce its overall budget deficit: By
the end of last year, the authorities had released only half of
the country's largest research body's 2002 working capital.
Nor is the money necessarily well spent, say some experts. "The
rigidities in the system and the patterns of funding probably
hamper the efficiency of public research," argues Daniel Malkin,
head of the Science and Technology Policy Division at the
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the
Paris-based club of rich countries.
Most of the money goes to large institutions that divide it up
according to criteria that do not sufficiently take into account
scientific excellence or new areas of research, critics say.
A new wave of innovation
France's top-heavy, centralized system of funding science is a
hangover from the glory days of French science in the post-World
War II period, when the state created major research and
development institutions whose large-scale projects to build
nuclear power plants, aircraft, and space vehicles propelled
France to the forefront of innovation.
"We cannot continue with an archaic system designed to boost
France in space and the nuclear field, which is not adapted to
the more fluid world of biotechnology, where progress is made in
small labs by small teams," argues Philippe Pouletty, head of the
Strategic Innovation Council, a private pressure group lobbying
for high-tech firms.
France invested only $20 million in nanotechnology between 1997
and 2000, according to Organisation for Economic Co-operation and
Development figures, compared to $280 million in the United
States, $190 million in Japan, and $70 million in Germany.
French science "is anemic," Etienne-Emile Baulieu, the President
of the Academy of Science, recently told the daily Le Monde. "I
would not speak of decline, but of the absence of positive
evolution. That is extremely serious, because we should compare
ourselves with other countries."
The situation can be ameliorated only by a major cultural shift
in how researchers work, reform advocates say.
"France is changing," says Dr. Pouletty, who is urging the
government to take a competitive "bottom up, not top down"
attitude to science funding. "Some researchers will oppose this,
on political grounds. But most will support the idea, because it
favors the best among them."
www.csmonitor.com | Copyright © 2004 The Christian Science
Monitor. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
57 Renewable Energy News: Bubble Fusion Breakthrough Replicated
Troy, New York - March 9, 2004 [SolarAccess.com] At the same time
as the solar energy industry is waiting for a breakthrough,
dropping solar's cost per watt to some level far more competitive
with traditional fossil fuels - the nuclear industry, and
scientists around the world have been hoping for a nuclear energy
breakthrough that could do the same for fusion. A recent notable
fusion experiment has set off its own chain reaction of attention
among scientists seeking this elusive goal.
Physical Review E has announced the publication of an article by
a team of researchers from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
(RPI), Purdue University, Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL),
and the Russian Academy of Science (RAS) stating that they have
replicated and extended previous experimental results that
indicated the occurrence of nuclear fusion using a novel approach
for plasma confinement.
This approach, called bubble fusion, and the new experimental
results are being published in an extensively peer-reviewed
article titled "Additional Evidence of Nuclear Emissions During
Acoustic Cavitation," which is scheduled to be posted on Physical
Review E's Web site and published in its journal this month.
The research team used a standing ultrasonic wave to help form
and then implode the cavitation bubbles of deuterated acetone
vapor. The oscillating sound waves caused the bubbles to expand
and then violently collapse, creating strong compression shock
waves around and inside the bubbles. Moving at about the speed of
sound, the internal shock waves impacted at the center of the
bubbles causing very high compression and accompanying
temperatures of about 100 million Kelvin.
These new data were taken with an upgraded instrumentation system
that allowed data acquisition over a much longer time than was
possible in the team's previous bubble fusion experiments.
According to the new data, the observed neutron emission was
several orders of magnitude greater than background and had
extremely high statistical accuracy. Tritium, which also is
produced during the fusion reactions, was measured and the amount
produced was found to be consistent with the observed neutron
production rate.
Earlier test data, which were reported in Science (Vol. 295,
March 2002), indicated that nuclear fusion had occurred, but
these data were questioned because they were taken with less
precise instrumentation.
"These extensive new experiments have replicated and extended our
earlier results and hopefully answer all of the previous
questions surrounding our discovery," said Richard T. Lahey Jr.,
the Edward E. Hood Professor of Engineering at Rensselaer and the
director of the analytical part of the joint research project.
Other fusion techniques, such as those that use strong magnetic
fields or lasers to contain the plasma, cannot easily achieve the
necessary compression, Lahey said. In the approach to be
published in Physical Review E, spherical compression of the
plasma was achieved due to the inertia of the liquid surrounding
the imploding bubbles.
Professor Lahey also explained that, unlike fission reactors,
fusion does not produce a significant amount of radioactive waste
products or decay heat. Tritium gas, a radioactive by-product of
deuterium-deuterium bubble fusion, is actually a part of the
fuel, which can be consumed in deuterium-tritium fusion
reactions.
Researchers Rusi Taleyarkhan, Colin West, and Jae-Seon Cho
conducted the bubble fusion experiments at ORNL. At Rensselaer
and in Russia, Professors Lahey and Robert I. Nigmatulin
performed the theoretical analysis of the bubble dynamics and
predicted the shock-induced pressures, temperatures, and
densities in the imploding vapor bubbles. Robert Block, professor
emeritus of nuclear engineering at Rensselaer, helped to design,
set up, and calibrate a state-of-the-art neutron and gamma ray
detection system for the new experiments.
Special hydrodynamic shock codes have been developed in both
Russia and at Rensselaer to support and interpret the ORNL
experiments. These computer codes indicated that the peak gas
temperatures and densities in the ORNL experiments were
sufficiently high to create fusion reactions. Indeed, the
theoretical shock code predictions of deuterium-deuterium (D-D)
fusion were consistent with the ORNL data.
The research team leaders are all well known authorities in the
fields of multiphase flow and heat transfer technology and
nuclear engineering. Taleyarkhan, a fellow of the American
Nuclear Society (ANS) and the program's director, held the
position of Distinguished Scientist at ORNL, and is currently the
Ardent Bement Jr. Professor of Nuclear Engineering at Purdue
University. Lahey is a fellow of both the ANS and the American
Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), and is a member of the
National Academy of Engineering (NAE). Nigmatulin is a visiting
scholar at Rensselaer, a member of the Russian Duma, and the
president of the Bashkortonstan branch of the Russian Academy of
Sciences (RAS). Block is a fellow of the ANS and is the longtime
director of the Gaerttner Linear Accelerator (LINAC) Laboratory
at Rensselaer. The bubble fusion research program was supported
by a grant from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
(DARPA).
© 1999 - 2003 - SolarAccess.com - All Rights
*****************************************************************
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:
*****************************************************************