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line and first line of body
NUCLEAR POLICY
1 AJC: Official: More tips but no mass destruction arms found
2 Contra Costa Times: U.S. lays out key obstacles in WMD hunt
3 Japan Times: Lowering risks from WMD
4 Hi Pakistan: ElBaradei to visit Iran
5 FT: Iran urged to shelve nuclear plant plan
6 Reuters: France, UK, Germany Criticize Iran Nuclear Plant
7 Reuters: New Data Suggests Secret Iran Atomic Plan
8 Korea Herald: [ANN]Pyongyang unlikely to follow Libya
9 ITAR-TASS: Seoul calls on Pyongyang to ditch completely its N-progra
10 US: Now with Bill Moyers: The new nuclear arms race?
11 US: [NukeNet] Safer? you gotta be kidding
12 US: NYT: When Goals Meet Reality: Bush’s Reversal on 9/11 Testimony
13 US: Boston Globe: Op-ed / The failure to keep America safe
14 UPI: Report: Libya, Egypt swapped nukes -
15 baltimoresun.com: Pakistan policy sends dangerous signal
16 Hi Pakistan: No N-sanctions on Pakistan - US
17 Hi Pakistan: The British threat - By George Monbiot
18 BP: Terrorists could target SEA shipping lanes with ‘crude nuclear d
19 Mos News: Duma Issues Terse Statement on NATO -
20 AK: Russia's nuclear product export up 14.6% to $3.01 bln in 2003.
21 Scotsman: UK - Macmillan's wife faced potential nuclear hell
NUCLEAR REACTORS
22 US: TMI-25" Postscript
23 US: [NukeNet] consortium to apply for new COL
24 US: New reactor construction consortium announced
25 US: NYT: Hopes of Building Nation’s First New Nuclear Plant in Decad
26 US: Brattleboro Reformer: Watchdog group won't give up
27 US: KRT Wire: Denton and TMI
28 US: KRT Wire: Some Experts Warn about Problems with Aging of U.S. Nu
29 US: KRT Wire: Experts Discuss Causes of Nuclear Mishap at Pennsylvan
30 US: KRT Wire: Three Mile Island Nuclear Incident Erased Trust of Are
31 US: Brattleboro Reformer: Who has ace in VY fray?
32 US: Lincoln County News: Maine Yankee Completes Transfer of Spent Fu
33 EurActiv: Greens challenge "scandalous" EU loan to Romanian nuclear
34 US: WRAL.com: Progress Energy Reaches Settlement With Former Employe
35 US: NRC: NRC to Hold Open Regulatory Conference to Discuss Surry Nuc
36 US: Post-Crescent: Public meetings set on fate of Point Beach nuclea
37 US: NRC: NRC Makes New Management Assignments to Expand Its Focus on
38 US: LFT: Herkimer native details Three Mile Island disaster in new b
39 US: Reuters: Consortium Seeks Nuclear Plant License
40 CTV.ca: Critics wary of Canadian nuclear power industry- CTV
41 US: NRC: Agency Information Collection Activities: Proposed Collecti
NUCLEAR SAFETY
42 US: Rocky Mountain News: Millions spent; 1 worker aided
43 US: NRC: Advisory Committee on the Medical Uses of Isotopes: Meeting
44 US: Seattle Post-Intelligencer: DOE's backlog of worker claims assai
45 US: Las Vegas RJ: Senators vent over test site disability claims
46 US: Tri-City Herald: Compensation program under fire
47 US: Maine Today: Portsmouth Naval Shipyard will overhaul nuclear sub
48 ITAR-TASS: Radioactive instrument seized in Sakhalin
49 US: Hawk Eye: Grassley takes claims case to Senate panel
50 US: Pahrump Valley Times: DEPLETED URANIUM Nellis ponders range clea
NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE
51 Las Vegas RJ: DOE looks at trucking waste to Yucca site
52 Las Vegas SUN: Reid questions payment to law firm
53 Las Vegas SUN: Nuclear waste could move by truck
54 Las Vegas SUN: Nevada lists nuke rail line woes
55 US: Bradenton Herald: Manatee mulls mining codes about radiation, re
56 US: Mercury News: Navy reaches deal with S.F. on transfer of pollute
57 US: heraldtribune.com: Manatee County officials sort out phosphate s
58 Australian: Scientist dumps on site for N-waste
59 US: MSNBC: Clean-up at old missile site begins
60 Reuters: Government told to clean up Sellafield
61 US: NRC: List of spent fule storage casks
62 US: AU ABC: Jabiru demands answers on water contamination »
63 US: AU ABC: Ranger mine re-opening hangs on incident report »
64 Scotsman: Dounreay makes its final batch of fuel
65 US: FOX Carolina: Duke Power Wants Security Waiver for Plutonium Fue
66 US: Daily Lobo: WIPP to get high-level waste -
NUCLEAR WEAPONS
US DEPT. OF ENERGY
67 U.S. Newswire: NNSA to Start Moving TA-18 Nuclear Materials
68 Times-News: INEEL cleanup prep work reveals broken drum
69 Oak Ridger: Housing Y-12's history
70 Oak Ridger: K-25, museum fates linked?
71 Oak Ridger: SNS director speaks at YWCA luncheon
72 Oak Ridger: SNS open house Friday
73 Oak Ridger: TVA looking to cut 600 to 800 employees
74 Pahrump Valley Times: DOE failed to track NTS water
OTHER NUCLEAR
75 Google News Alert - nuclear
76 Innovations: Bird fall-out measures radioactive fall-out
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FULL NEWS STORIES
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1 AJC: Official: More tips but no mass destruction arms found
[http://www.ajc.com]
By GEORGE EDMONSON
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 03/30/04
WASHINGTON -- The American official now leading the hunt for
weapons of mass destruction in Iraq said Tuesday investigators
are still receiving and checking tips on possible concealed
stockpiles, although none has been found.
"We continue to receive reports all the time that there are
hidden weapons, so it's something which we have to pursue,"
Charles Duelfer said after he met in closed session with the
Senate Armed Services Committee.
Duelfer added the investigation is focused not only on the
existence of banned chemical, biological or nuclear weapons but
also on Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's intentions and his
government's capabilities.
"We're looking at it from soups to nuts," said Duelfer, a former
U.N. weapons inspector who took over the hunt early this year
after David Kay left.
That no weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq has
reverberated throughout the political debate over the war since
Kay said he did not believe Saddam had them. The Bush
administration contended before the war that Saddam possessed
such weapons, an assertion it made in pressing its case for war.
A declassified version of Duelfer's report appeared to support
the contention that more time is needed before making a final
determination: "Interim assessments could turn out to be
misleading or wrong. I believe there is more work to be done to
gather critical information about the regime, its intentions and
its capabilities, and to assess that information for its
meaning."
Kay, reached by telephone, said he had not yet had an
opportunity to read Duelfer's report.
But Michigan Sen. Carl Levin, the top Democrat on armed
services, called on the CIA to declassify Duelfer's entire status
report, delivered to the committee. Levin said he is "deeply
troubled" that the public version leaves out information that
casts doubt on the notion that Iraq had an active WMD program.
Duelfer returned to Washington to deliver his report after
spending about six weeks in Baghdad. He told reporters and
senators he did not now know how long the investigation would
take to complete.
"The hunt will go on until we're able to draw a firm and
confident picture of what the programs were and where the regime
was headed with respect to them," Duelfer said.
In addition to the armed services panel, Duelfer addressed the
Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, which has been
investigating pre-war intelligence. The committee's chairman,
Republican Sen. Pat Roberts of Kansas, said Duelfer and his
staff, known as the Iraq Survey Group, are being "very careful .
. . very comprehensive."
Among the new discoveries, Duelfer reported, was information
related to long-range ballistic missile development and unmanned
aerial vehicles that would exceed restrictions imposed by the
United Nations after Iraq lost the 1991 Persian Gulf War. The
report said the survey group also had new information on
so-called "dual-use facilities" that could produce legal and
illegal substances.
The Associated Press contributed to this article.
[/] © 2004 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
*****************************************************************
2 Contra Costa Times: U.S. lays out key obstacles in WMD hunt
| 03/31/2004 |
By Bob Drogin
LOS ANGELES TIMES
WASHINGTON - The CIA-led team searching for weapons of mass
destruction in Iraq still isn't sure whether Saddam Hussein
possessed such arms and "has yet to identify" the officials who
may have run the programs, the chief U.S. weapons hunter said
Tuesday.
Charles Duelfer, who took over the Iraq Survey Group in January,
told the Senate Armed Services Committee in a closed session that
a shortage of linguists, inexperience among staff members and
other problems have hamstrung the group's search for evidence of
chemical, biological or nuclear weapons.
The CIA released a declassified version of his prepared remarks
after the session.
Duelfer's predecessor, David Kay, publicly told the same
committee in January after he resigned that "we were almost all
wrong" about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.
He said he had concluded that the Baghdad government had not
produced such weapons before the war.
Duelfer said it's too soon to reach "final judgments with
confidence" even though no evidence has been found of nerve
gases, germ agents or nuclear weapons since U.S.-led forces
invaded Iraq in March 2003.
"At this point in time, I cannot say how long this investigation
should take," he added.
Reporting back after his first six weeks in Iraq, Duelfer said he
is refocusing the hunt to determine what the Iraqi government's
intentions had been.
"We're looking at it from soup to nuts, from the weapons end to
the planning end to the intentions end," Duelfer told reporters
after testifying. But his team, he said, is facing several
obstacles.
Duelfer told the panel that many Iraqi managers, scientists and
engineers "perceive a grave risk in speaking with us" and have
refused to cooperate because they either fear arrest and
prosecution or revenge attacks by Saddam loyalists.
"This is, in part, why we do not yet fully understand the central
issue of regime intentions," Duelfer said.
"We do not know whether Saddam was concealing (weapons of mass
destruction) or planning to resume production" someday.
Over the past year, Survey Group members have interviewed
hundreds of Iraqi scientists, and interrogated or detained almost
every known senior figure in its former weapons programs.
But Duelfer said that others, still unknown to U.S. intelligence,
may have been in charge.
"We have yet to identify the most critical people in any
programmatic effort," he said.
"Many people have yet to be found or questioned, and many of
those we have found are not giving us complete answers."
Duelfer also said that the teams have "recovered millions of
documents" but that millions more were destroyed by looters.
The documents are "often mixed up" so research is "extremely
difficult." And a shortage of linguists means only a "tiny
fraction" of the documents are fully translated.
Duelfer also cited surprising staffing problems.
"Most of those" in the Survey Group, he said, "are not experts on
Iraq and most do not have extensive experience in the kinds of
investigative operations and analysis they are asked to
undertake."
However, Duelfer said his group had found "new information" that
needed further investigation.
However, the suggestion that the arms hunt may yet pan out was
discounted by a key Democrat in the closed-door session.
Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, ranking Democrat on the Armed
Services Committee, said he was "deeply troubled" that Duelfer's
classified testimony differed significantly from the prepared
remarks the CIA released to the public.
In an interview, Levin said Duelfer referred several times to
suspicions and concerns about Iraqi weapons in his public remarks
that actually were undercut by information he disclosed in his
classified comments.
"What is troubling is that in the classified documents there is
information that addresses those concerns and gives a
significantly different picture," Levin said.
"It's clear to me that (Duelfer), with the material he has, is
trying to make as strong a case as he can (to the public) for
some kind of weapons program."
MARINE DIES
One Marine was killed and five others wounded in three separate
explosives attacks in this Sunni Triangle-area city of Ramadi on
Tuesday.
The three attacks on Marines in various neighborhoods of Ramadi
involved the detonation of improvised explosive devices, one of
which killed a Marine patrolling on foot and severely injuring a
second Marine.
The Marines took over from the Army in this city of 400,000 about
two weeks ago. While the Army preferred patrolling in vehicles,
the Marine Corps began foot patrols soon after taking control of
the region in an effort to reach out to the citizenry.
In an IED attack on a convoy, there were no reports of injuries.
And in the third attack, a Marine Humvee struck an IED, which
proved a prelude to two more assaults on the same convoy, as a
crowd of Iraqis watched.
-- Los Angeles Times
*****************************************************************
3 Japan Times: Lowering risks from WMD
Thursday, April 1, 2004
By HUGH CORTAZZI
LONDON -- The decision of the Libyan regime to declare and
destroy its weapons of mass destruction, or WMD, is clearly
beneficial to world peace and is a most welcome development. But
we should beware claims by some Western leaders that this has
come about because the Libyan dictator has seen what happened to
Iraq and does not want to suffer the same fate as Saddam Hussein.
We should also be wary of praising Moammar Gadhafi for "his
courage" and "statesmanship." Let us rather recognize that he has
shown that he is not the demented megalomaniac some observers
thought but rather a realist who has at last recognized that his
country is suffering from sanctions and isolation.
If his regime is to survive, the Libyan economy must be
developed, and this requires Western capital and expertise that
can only be obtained if he comes to terms with the countries that
he has hitherto regarded as his enemies.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair's decision to visit Gadhafi in
his tent outside Tripoli may have been necessary, but in view of
the appalling human rights record of the undemocratic Libyan
regime it has been widely criticized. Some see it as the price
Britain must pay for the chance to win lucrative contracts in
Libya; others argue that Britain won't be the first or the last
to suck up to a dictator. Certainly French President Jacques
Chirac has the reputation of being willing to forget principles
in order to achieve commercial gains for France.
It would be a mistake to expect that the Libyan example will be
followed by Iran and North Korea. Libya is a secular state and
increasingly concerned about Islamic fundamentalism in North
Africa, while Iran is still largely under the sway of
conservative clerics who remain hostile to the United States and
Western notions of human rights. Moreover, although Iran's
economy and living standards could well benefit from Western
investment and increased trade, there are no signs of an economic
crisis.
Iran has, of course, noted the plight of neighbors Iraq and
Afghanistan, but Iran fought a long and bloody war with Iraq and
it had no love for the Taliban in Afghanistan. Iran regards
Israel as its particular enemy and is concerned with the fact
that Israel is the only country in the Middle East in possession
of nuclear weapons. It knows that the Americans condone Israeli
actions in Palestine and will not take any steps to persuade
Israel to give up its nuclear weapons.
Israel is seen by the Americans as a democratic state. In their
view, therefore, it can be trusted not to misuse its nuclear
weapons. But this is not Iran's view. It sees the Americans as
condoning human rights abuses by Israeli forces in their efforts
to deal with suicide bombers and as unwilling to put pressure on
Israel to accept a viable two-state solution to the Palestine
problem.
American suspicions of Iranian nuclear intentions have been at
least partly justified by reports from neutral inspectors. In
view of past history, American reluctance to try to open a
dialogue with Iran is understandable. But American rhetoric on
the potential threat from Iran may lead to an increase in the
threat rather than a decrease.
North Korea is again quite different. The North Korean regime of
Kim Jong Il is inevitably, because of the country's self-imposed
isolation, very ill-informed about the world outside. The rest of
the world also lacks wholly reliable intelligence about North
Korea's military and nuclear capabilities.
Some observers may be tempted to write off North Korean claims
as either vain boastings or bluff, but none can afford to be
complacent in the face of a nuclear threat, however slim the
evidence of its existence. The likelihood of Kim following in
Gadhafi's footsteps and unilaterally renouncing WMD is, to say
the least, remote. The needs of North Korea are far greater than
those of Libya, and the ideological obstacles to a deal are much
greater.
The Americans don't like the idea, but there is a case for
trying to bring North Korea out of its isolation by trying harder
to develop a dialogue and inviting North Koreans to travel and
see for themselves that the rest of the world is not bent on
their destruction.
The extent to which Pakistan provided nuclear knowhow to Iran,
North Korea and other countries may be known to Western
intelligence services, but is not yet public knowledge. Both
India and Pakistan have nuclear capabilities with neither country
likely to give up its nuclear weapons in the foreseeable future.
The biggest problem with eliminating WMD is the extent of
proliferation thus far. The "have-not" states should not, in
theory, be frightened of the states that have such weapons
because they should trust in the protection of the United
Nations, the allegedly good intentions of the one superpower and
the other permanent members of the U.N. Security Council. But
since the Iraq war, which the U.N. was unable to stop, as well as
understandable doubts about the good intentions of the major
powers (especially demands for "regime change" in countries
perceived as threats), it is inevitable that less powerful states
are concerned about their future security.
There are no easy answers to the problems involved in
eliminating WMD. The U.N. is not an ideal organization, although
it is better equipped than the former League of Nations. Member
states need to make a renewed effort to strengthen the U.N. and
improve its enforcement capabilities. They must also try much
harder to stop the trade in weapons systems.
The U.S., in particular, needs to be much less unilateralist and
more multilateralist in its approach if it is to persuade world
opinion that its intentions and policies will make for a more
peaceful world. That means less silly political rhetoric about
evil regimes, greater public sensitivity to other peoples and
their cultures, and more evenhanded policies especially in the
Middle East. This may be difficult to achieve in a presidential
election year, but all friends of the U.S. must pray that, in the
course of what looks like being a bitter electoral campaign,
ill-judged comments on foreign policy issues will be kept to a
minimum.
Hugh Cortazzi, a former British career diplomat, served as
ambassador to Japan from 1980 to 1984.
The Japan Times: April 1, 2004
*****************************************************************
4 Hi Pakistan: ElBaradei to visit Iran
March 31 2004
VIENNA: UN atomic agency chief Mohammed ElBaradei is to hold
talks in Iran next Tuesday to urge the government to cooperate
fully with international monitoring of its nuclear programme.
It will be the third visit to Iran by Mr ElBaradei, director
general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, since the IAEA
began investigating in February last year whether Ttehran was
secretly developing atomic weapons, as Washington alleges.
The purpose of the visit is "to consult on outstanding issues
relevant to the IAEA's verification of Iran's safeguards
agreement" under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, agency
spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said in a statement in Vienna.
Copyright 1996-2002 . Hi Pakistan. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
5 FT: Iran urged to shelve nuclear plant plan
By Stephen Fidler
Published: April 1 2004 5:00
Britain, France and Germany yesterday urged Iran not to start up
a new nuclear facility in Isfahan, saying it would undermine
confidence in a commitment it made last year to suspend its
uranium enrichment programme.
Their warning followed a statement by the head of Iran's Atomic
Energy Organisation, Gholam-Reza Aghasadeh, who said the start-up
of the facility was imminent. The plant will convert uranium
oxide into uranium hexafluoride, the feedstock for centrifuges
capable of enriching uranium for use in a nuclear reactor or in
weapons.
"This announcement sends the wrong signal about Iranian
willingness to implement a suspension of nuclear
enrichment-related activities," said a statement by the three
European governments that negotiated the suspension agreement
with Iran last October. Stephen Fidler, London
© Copyright The Financial Times Ltd 2004. "FT" and
"Financial Times" are trademarks of the Financial Times.
*****************************************************************
6 Reuters: France, UK, Germany Criticize Iran Nuclear Plant Wed
Mar 31, 2004 04:57 PM ET
By David Crossland
BERLIN (Reuters) - France, Britain and Germany toughened their
stance on Iran Wednesday by criticizing its decision to start a
uranium conversion plant and demanding Tehran explain itself.
In a strongly worded statement, Europe's "Big Three" powers said
Iran's announcement that it was starting up the plant near its
central city of Esfahan sent the wrong signal and would make it
harder for the country to regain international confidence.
The United States says Iran's nuclear program is a front for
building an atom bomb, while Britain, Germany and France defied
Washington in September by offering to share technology with
Tehran if it stopped its nuclear fuel enrichment program.
Wednesday's statement reflected the Big Three's frustration with
Iran, which has repeatedly violated its obligation to inform the
United Nations of its nuclear activities.
EU diplomats have privately complained that they have been far
too soft on Iran. Tehran insists its nuclear program is solely
for the peaceful generation of electricity.
"This announcement sends the wrong signal regarding Iran's
readiness to implement a suspension of its activities relating to
uranium enrichment," the German Foreign Ministry said, adding
that France and Britain had issued the same statement.
"It will make it more difficult for Iran to restore international
confidence in its activities. Iran must explain its announcement
and its intentions."
GROWING CONCERN
Iran pledged to suspend activities related to uranium enrichment
in October as a goodwill gesture while under intense U.S.
pressure to prove it was not seeking nuclear weapons.
Last month Iran promised to suspend all "remaining enrichment
activities" after Tehran sparked a row by interpreting the
suspension in the narrowest possible sense.
Uranium conversion plants are key to the enrichment process. They
convert uranium oxide concentrate into uranium hexafluoride gas,
which is placed in centrifuges, the machines that enrich uranium.
The element can then be used to make fuel or weapons.
*****************************************************************
7 Reuters: New Data Suggests Secret Iran Atomic Plan
KUWAIT
1st-2nd Apr 2004 : Web Edition No: 11838 Editor-in-Chief:
Ahmed Jarallah [jarallah@arabtimesonline.com]
VIENNA (Reuters) - New intelligence on Iran has fueled
suspicions the Islamic Republic has a secret uranium- enrichment
program, possibly aimed at producing fuel for an atom bomb
program, Western diplomats say. The U.N.'s nuclear watchdog, the
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), has been investigating
Iran's atomic program ever since an exiled opposition group
reported in August 2002 that Tehran was hiding a massive
enrichment plant at Natanz.
Under fire over U.S. suspicions that its nuclear power program is
a front for building atomic weapons -- a charge Iran denies --
Tehran agreed last year to submit to tougher IAEA inspections and
suspend all enrichment-related activities. But a group of Western
diplomats who follow the IAEA said recent intelligence has
provoked suspicion that Tehran moved enrichment activities away
from Natanz to smaller sites that are part of a parallel program
U.N. inspectors have not uncovered.
"We've got lot of intelligence about small enrichment plants (in
Iran) for some months, going back to the November (IAEA) board
meeting," one Western diplomat told Reuters on condition of
anonymity. The diplomat gave no details about the form of this
intelligence.
"HIDE-AND-SEEK"
Allegations that Tehran, which says its nuclear program is
peaceful, may be hiding facilities from the IAEA are nothing new.
However, the specific allegation that Tehran had shifted
enrichment activities away from Natanz to smaller sites was first
made publicly by an Iranian exile last month.
Alireza Jafarzadeh, formerly a spokesman for the National Council
of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) and now president of the
Washington-based Strategic Policy Consulting, Inc., told Reuters
on March 9 about a "recent meeting" of top Iranian officials who
decided to shift enrichment activities to small, secret plants.
He said the group, which included Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali
Khamenei, had also decided to "speed up the nuclear weapons
program" to get a bomb by the end of 2005 and that Tehran "would
pursue a deliberate game of hide and seek with the IAEA."
Washington lists the NCRI as a terrorist organization and shut
down its offices last year. However, the NCRI has a good track
record on Iran's atomic program. Jafarzadeh said his latest
information came from the same "well-informed sources inside
Iran" that told him about Natanz and a heavy-water production
facility at Arak in 2002.
Jafarzadeh's allegations appeared to receive support from a
recent intelligence report, an analysis of which was obtained
last week by the Los Angeles Times. This analysis, seen by
Reuters, said Iran had set up a committee last year whose task
was to hide activities from the IAEA's nuclear sleuths.
Among the allegedly hidden sites are some 300 plants making parts
for centrifuges, which spin at supersonic speeds to purify
uranium for use as fuel for power plants or in bombs. Iran had
suspended IAEA inspections on March 12, ostensibly in retaliation
against an IAEA resolution that "deplores" Iran's failure to
inform the U.N. of sensitive research on items like "P2"
centrifuges capable of producing bomb-grade material.
Two weeks later Tehran let the inspectors return, though several
Western diplomats said the retaliation may have been an excuse to
buy more time to hide activities from the IAEA. One Western
diplomat said that the intelligence could not be considered the
"silver bullet" that proved these allegations about a parallel
enrichment program beyond any doubt.
"Intelligence gives you well-founded suspicions," said the
diplomat, who is convinced the suspicions about Iran's secret
enrichment sites "are well-founded."
All the diplomats said that if Tehran had decided to hide
enrichment facilities from the U.N. nuclear watchdog, the IAEA
would have great difficulty finding them without specific leads.
"An enrichment facility can be the least visible part of the fuel
cycle. It looks like any other industrial site," one said.
[info@arabtimesonline.com]
*****************************************************************
8 Korea Herald: [ANN]Pyongyang unlikely to follow Libya
2004.04.01
By Michael Rirchardson
It would be comforting to think that North Korea will emulate
Libya, which announced in December that it would dismantle all
programs to develop nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.
Tripoli promised to do this under international supervision and,
so far, it has done what it pledged to do. Now, it is starting to
reap the rewards.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair sealed Libya's return to the
international fold last Thursday when he shook hands with Libyan
leader Moammar Gadhafi in a bedouin tent outside Tripoli. It was
the first visit to the North African country by a British leader
since 1943 and marked the symbolic mending of a bilateral
relationship broken by Libyan involvement in terrorism aimed at
Britain.
Two days before Blair met Gadhafi, U.S. Assistant Secretary of
State William Burns sat down with the Libyan leader to discuss
normalizing Libya-U.S. relations, ruptured since the 1980s for
the same reasons as those with Britain.
Libya needs foreign investment to rehabilitate and upgrade its
oil and natural gas fields, to expand exports and boost a
languishing economy hit hard by international sanctions. On the
day of the Blair-Gadhafi meeting, Shell, the British-Dutch
petroleum giant, signed a deal with Libya's state oil company to
explore for oil and gas.
British officials said that Britain would help Libya improve its
conventional defenses and would, in time, push for a European
Union arms embargo to be lifted.
The Bush administration has said that it will move step by step
to improve relations with Tripoli as Libya proves by its actions
that it has given up weapons of mass destruction, renounced
terrorism and actively supported the campaign against the
al-Qaida network.
So far, the United States has lifted travel restrictions to
Libya by American citizens and allowed U.S. firms, including oil
and gas companies, with assets in the country, to begin
negotiating agreements to return.
North Korea wants the same kind of rewards being given to Libya
in exchange for giving up WMD and connections with terrorism:
U.S. recognition, security guarantees and aid for its ailing
economy, not to mention re-integration with the world without a
change of regime, or even domestic political reform, as a
precondition.
But there are some important differences between Libya and North
Korea that suggest Pyongyang won't follow Tripoli down the road
to international acceptance any time soon.
First, North Korea, unlike Libya, isn't coming clean on the full
extent of its nuclear program. Pyongyang has offered to
¥ìfreeze¥î only the plutonium part of its program in exchange for
the benefits it wants.
It refuses to acknowledge or discuss the second part of its
program - using highly enriched uranium to make nuclear bombs.
Indeed, just last Saturday, Pyongyang rejected a complete,
verifiable and irreversible dismantling of all its nuclear
programs, calling the main U.S. demand at the six-party talks on
North Korea hosted by China a plot that would result in
subjugation.
Yet, Libyan disclosures about its sources of supply helped
uncover the nuclear black market masterminded by Pakistani
scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan and provided more evidence that North
Korea seeks a uranium enrichment route, in addition to a
plutonium path, to bomb-making.
Second, North Korea is likely to have hidden away at least a
couple of crude nuclear weapons made from plutonium, according to
the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. And it may be amassing the
plutonium to make more bombs.
By contrast, inspectors from the International Atomic Energy
Agency and other experts say Libya was at least several years
away from producing a nuclear weapon. North Korea is also
developing ballistic missiles with a much longer range than those
it supplied to Libya.
The United States bombed Libya in 1986 for supporting terrorism,
and could have done so again using modern precision-strike
conventional weapons to destroy WMD facilities in the desert
nation.
But the United States does not know where in North Korea's
mountainous terrain any nukes are stored. The mountains are
reportedly riddled with rock tunnels and caves dug for military
purposes.
America would need a new generation of burrowing, bunker-busting
small nuclear weapons to be sure of destroying North Korean
nuclear arms and facilities hidden deep underground if they could
be accurately located.
The United States is years away from developing these weapons.
And such a strike would almost certainly trigger a devastating
North Korean reprisal, if not against America then against South
Korea and Japan as allied substitutes.
Libya concluded that it was likely to be more secure and have a
stronger economy without WMD, than with them. Impoverished and
reclusive North Korea, which has no big oil and gas reserves,
seems convinced that the only real assurance of regime survival
is to have nuclear weapons and the long-range missiles to fire
them as the ultimate checkmate.
The writer is a visiting senior research fellow at the Institute
of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore. This is a personal
comment. - Ed.
By Michael Rirchardson
*****************************************************************
9 ITAR-TASS: Seoul calls on Pyongyang to ditch completely its N-programme
[ITAR-TASS News Agency of Russia]
31.03.2004, 17.14
SEOUL, March 31 (Itar-Tass) - South Korean Minister of Foreign
Affairs and Trade Pan Ki-mun called on North Korea on Wednesday
to give a clear-cut pledge on carrying out complete, verifiable
and irreversible liquidation of its nuclear programme. He
pointed to clear insufficiency of Pyongyang’s proposal on
freezing nuclear projects.
The minister emphasized that according to conditions of the 1994
Geneva understandings with the U.S., “all nuclear projects in
the North should be frozen. However, this has not been done,
since North Korea carried out development studies on producing
enriched uranium and processed worked-out uranium rods for
reactors”. Thus, if North Korea freezes its nuclear projects
again, this will only mean a return to the situation, provided
for by the 1994 agreements.
In the opinion of Pan Ki-mun, the participants in the six-party
talks on settling the nuclear confrontation in the Korean
Peninsula are striving for “the Geneva agreements plus alpha”.
This phrase should mean the need to wrest from Pyongyang a
promise to liquidate fully its nuclear programme.
The minister also intimated a possibility of an economic aid to
the North and other concessions if North Korea promises to
freeze its nuclear projects as the first move towards complete
liquidation of its nuclear programme.
© ITAR-TASS. All rights reserved. You undertake not to copy,
*****************************************************************
10 Now with Bill Moyers: The new nuclear arms race?
Date: Wed, 31 Mar 2004 10:25:22 -0600 (CST)
The new nuclear arms race?
NOW with Bill Moyers
PBS Airdate: Friday, April 2, 2004 at 9 p.m. on PBS
Is the world on the threshold of a new nuclear arms race? In the months
following 9/11, the Bush Administration issued an ambitious plan for the
future of America's nuclear weapons arsenal. That plan envisions new,
specialized nuclear weapons and other devices that could be used in a
first strike against terrorists and rogue dictators.
On Friday, April 2, 2004 on PBS (check local listings), NOW with
Bill Moyers weighs the potential impact of a renewed nuclear arms
development program on global proliferation and examines the
military efficacy of some of these new weapons against a
terrorist enemy. With the Bush administration asking for $500
million to fund research, the program gives viewers a look at the
possibilities for America's nuclear arms future.
*****************************************************************
11 [NukeNet] Safer? you gotta be kidding
Date: Wed, 31 Mar 2004 16:00:23 -0800
SO much dribble from the industry how much safer plants are today compared
to TMI 25 years ago....
During the last two weeks, there has been 10 reactor scrams, one manual
shutdown, the High Pressure Injection Systems found inoperable at 2
Pennsylvania plants, cable separation problems which could cause the loss
of most of the emergency cooling system at Indian Point, cracks found in
the Susquehanna PA reactor, both emergency diesel generators inoperable at
Cooper, an earthquake could cause short circuits in an electrical room at
Wolf Creek, 3 workers injured when their bucket truck contacted a high
voltage line at Susquehanna - a forth injured his hand when the grinder he
was using lost power and he lost control of the grinder, 2 supervisors were
found to be on drugs - one at Turkey Point another at Calloway, and a guard
shot himself in the leg at San Onofre.
I just saw David Lochbaum's data on accident precursor events. An accident
is very close at hand.
Scott Portzline
www.tmia.com
_______________________________________________________________________
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*****************************************************************
12 NYT: When Goals Meet Reality: Bush’s Reversal on 9/11 Testimony
Doug Mills/The New York Times President Bush said he had decided
to make Condoleezza Rice available because "the exceptional
nature of the inquiry" and the horror of the Sept. 11 attacks
justified it.
NEWS ANALYSIS
By DAVID E. SANGER
WASHINGTON, March 30 — When Bush and Dick Cheney took office
three years ago, they made no secret of their intention to
restore presidential powers and prerogatives that they believed
had withered under the onslaught of Washington's cycle of
televised, all-consuming investigations.
But time and again, that effort by the Bush White House has
fallen victim to political reality. It did so once more on
Tuesday, when the president made a four-minute appearance in the
White House press room to announce that he was giving in to
demands from the 9/11 commission that he had resisted for months.
His decision to reverse course, dropping his claim of executive
privilege preventing public, sworn testimony by his national
security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, was part of a distinct
pattern that has emerged inside this highly secretive White
House.
The first reaction to most demands for outside inquiries, or for
details about energy policy decisions or intelligence concerning
Iraqi weapons or Nigerian uranium, has been to build walls: Mr.
Bush, or more often Mr. Cheney in his stead, asserts a clear,
inviolate principle that the president and his advisers need the
freedom to gather information, develop policy and exchange ideas
in private.
But eventually other forces come into play. Gradually pressure
builds until Mr. Bush's advisers — including Ms. Rice herself in
this case, several officials said — determine that the cost is
too high.
"It was only in the last few days, down at the ranch, that the
president began to think that the public wasn't getting the right
impression about our cooperation with the commission," one of Mr.
Bush's most influential advisers, Dan Bartlett, his director of
communications, said Tuesday. "It was a debate all about process,
and he wanted to shift it back to the substance."
Mr. Bartlett did not explain why that decision had taken so long,
since the sparring with the commission had been going on for
months. Other administration aides say it takes time to move the
president and Mr. Cheney, citing an ingrained reluctance on their
part to give ground.
"I think it goes to a deep feeling, much of it surrounding
Cheney and his office, that the powers of the presidency were
eroded for years and that this administration has to claw them
back," one senior American diplomat who has sat in on some White
House strategy meetings said Tuesday. "Then the pressure grows.
And grows. And now people know that if you keep it on long
enough, these guys will give way."
In fact, Mr. Bush and the vice president resisted the creation
of the 9/11 commission itself for more than a year after the
terrorist attacks, saying a public airing of what had gone wrong
among intelligence agencies, in the White House and at the F.B.I.
would inevitably detract from a focus on fighting terrorism. They
cited the example of the Pearl Harbor inquiry, which was not
undertaken until years after the Japanese attack.
But eventually the demand, even from some Republicans, for a
full inquiry into what had led to history's biggest attack on
American soil overwhelmed the Bush team.
The next fight concerned whether the commission could see the
most highly classified documents in government: the President's
Daily Brief, the intelligence warnings that Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney,
Ms. Rice and only a handful of others receive each morning. After
months of negotiations, Mr. Bush granted access to four
commission officials.
Mr. Bush has also resisted the forming of another commission, to
examine the intelligence failures that led to a great
overestimation of Iraq's weapons stockpiles; as Democrats cried
cover-up, he created one. Most telling was the uproar over how
the president had come to assert, in a State of the Union speech,
that Saddam Hussein had sought uranium in Africa. It took a month
of news accounts before the White House declassified a National
Intelligence Estimate, and conceded that the evidence was so weak
that Mr. Bush should never have uttered the statement.
"They wait until a gallon of blood has been shed," one
administration official said.
Copyright 2004 [http://www.nytco.com/] |
*****************************************************************
13 Boston Globe: Op-ed / The failure to keep America safe
[http://www.boston.com/]
Robert Kuttner 3/31/2004 -->
By Robert Kuttner, 3/31/2004
TWO PIVOTAL recent events should make a shambles of President
Bush's contention right after 9/11 that a war on terrorism would
be the defining mission of his presidency.
In late January David Kay, the president's own chief weapons
inspector, admitted that no nuclear, chemical, or biological
weapons were found in Iraq. That finally made it respectable to
question the wisdom of the Iraq war.
Then, last week, the explosive testimony of the president's
former counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke invited intense
discussion about whether the Bush administration had done enough
to avert the 9/11 attack.
However, a third and even more important inference is seeping
into public consciousness: The failure to protect the United
States against terrorism is ongoing and directly related to Iraq.
The Iraq detour has set back America's security in at least five
mutually reinforcing ways.
First, the war distracted top officials from domestic
preparedness, which remains in organizational chaos. No senior
White House official is coordinating antiterrorism, which sprawls
across the CIA, the FBI, the National Security Agency, and the
hapless Department of Homeland Security.
Second, the war diverted resources -- regular troops, commandos,
Arab-speaking analysts, and Predator spy missiles, which
otherwise might have been deployed to tighten the noose around Al
Qaeda in Afghanistan. Two precious years have been lost.
Third, Iraq replicated the very scene that triggered Osama bin
Laden's holy war in the first place -- the presence of US troops
in Saudi Arabia after the first Gulf War. Iraq repeats a direct
American occupation of a Muslim nation, helping recruit new young
Jihadists unknown to Western intelligence agencies.
Fourth, despite blather about a "forward strategy" to advance
democracy, the invasion of Iraq significantly reduced American
leverage against Syria and Iran (who really do harbor terrorist
organizations like Hezbollah) because we need their military
cooperation to secure Iraq's borders. We've also lost leverage
with Saudi Arabia, the breeding ground of Al Qaeda.
Finally, the war undermined foreign cooperation against
terrorists. "It used to be that when relations became testy with
our friends, at least the intelligence cooperation continued to
work," says a former CIA station chief in a Mideast post. "I used
to be able to walk into a president or a prime minister and say,
`Look, here's the deal.' I guarantee, today they'd say, `Sure,
get out of here.' " A former ambassador told me, "Cooperating
with the United States starts being seen as a political
liability. It becomes repugnant to the political class."
Whatever you think of Richard Clarke's motives, this larger story
of the anti-terrorism fiasco has been hidden in plain view for
the past year. Much of Clarke's tale of White House misplaced
priorities and more was previously revealed by former national
security senior officials Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon in
their 2003 book, "The Age of Sacred Terror."
It has been documented in a score of reports by the RAND
Corporation, the General Accounting Office, the Markle and
Century foundations, three national commissions, and a dozen
congressional reports. Nor are others who have observed this
fiasco close up shy about revealing their frustrations to
reporters. "It's bad enough that they screwed it up before 9/11,"
says a career counterintelligence official -- not Clarke -- who
served well into the Bush administration. "What's really galling
is that these people screwed up afterwards."
Unfortunately, much of the media, especially television, still
treat all of this as a merely partisan story of charge and
counter-charge. It is not. The administration's gross failure to
keep America safe from terrorism has been amply documented.
Instead of limiting their focus to Clarke and reducing the story
to "he said/she said" partisan catfight, the media should grasp
the immense import of what has been revealed. If I hear the
phrase, "There's plenty of blame to go around" one more time, I
may take an ax to the TV.
There is, however, a partisan implication. Before the Vietnam
schism, Democrats and liberals were not just credibly tough about
protecting America. They were the realists while the Republican
right were the utopians.
While the right lobbied, in the late 1940s, to start World War
III, statesmen like George Kennan appreciated that containment of
Soviet expansion and George Marshall's plan for the
reconstruction of Europe added up to a policy that was more
proportional and more effective. When right-wing extremists
wanted to risk a nuclear exchange over Cuba, President Kennedy
executed a policy that was both prudent and tough.
Now, courtesy of Bush's astonishing bungling, Democrats are on
the verge of reclaiming that legacy -- not by being more-extreme
saber rattlers, as some on their party's right commend, but by
being better realists about how best to keep America safe. The
country has never faced a more fateful choice.
Robert Kuttner is co-editor of The American Prospect. His column
appears regularly in the Globe. © Copyright 2004 Globe Newspaper
Company.
*****************************************************************
14 UPI: Report: Libya, Egypt swapped nukes -
(United Press International)
March 31, 2004
TRIPOLI, Libya, March 31 (UPI) -- A British-U.S. team of Libyan
nuclear inspectors have found evidence Libya and Egypt exchanged
nuclear and missile technology late last year.
WorldTribune.com said Wednesday the evidence confirmed
suspicions of a secret trade between Cairo and Tripoli in
strategic weapons obtained from North Korea.
"The evidence of Egyptian involvement in Libya's missile and
nuclear weapons program is highly damaging and most of the doubts
we had previously have been resolved," an official said. "That
doesn't mean, however, that there will be imminent
repercussions."
U.S. officials said they doubted whether the alleged
Egyptian-Libyan missile and nuclear cooperation would be raised
during a scheduled April 12 meeting between Egyptian President
Hosni Mubarak and President George Bush.
Officials said Egypt -- which receives about $2 billion in
annual U.S. civilian and military aid -- was angered by a series
of inquiries in 2002 regarding its missile and nuclear ties with
Libya.
*****************************************************************
15 baltimoresun.com: Pakistan policy sends dangerous signal
Opinion > op/ed
By Matt Schroeder and Rachel Stohl Originally
published March 31, 2004
WASHINGTON - The United States has rewarded Pakistan yet again
for its support of the U.S. war on terror with increased access
to U.S. weapons and technology even though the father of
Pakistan's nuclear program, Abdul Qadeer Khan, admitted supplying
nuclear technology to Iran, North Korea and Libya.
The reward is the U.S. designation of Pakistan as a "major
non-NATO ally," or MNNA. Pakistan thus joins an exclusive club
that includes Australia, Japan, Egypt, Kuwait, South Korea,
Argentina, New Zealand, Israel and the Philippines.
MNNA allies don't receive the same mutual defense guarantees as
NATO countries. But they do enjoy priority delivery of excess
defense items, stockpiling of U.S. defense gear, purchase of
depleted uranium antitank rounds and participation in cooperative
research and development programs.
MNNA status is the latest in a series of dramatic changes to U.S.
policies on arms exports to Pakistan. In the late 1990s, the
Clinton administration banned all arms sales to Pakistan
following its 1998 nuclear weapons tests and the 1999 military
coup that brought its current leader, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, to
power.
Sanctions remained in place until after Sept. 11, 2001, when the
United States suddenly found itself in need of Pakistan's
cooperation in the war against al-Qaida. Overnight, Pakistan went
from being an outcast to an indispensable ally. It has received
$596.3 million in weapons and military aid since 9/11. In the
most recent budget request, the Bush administration has called
for an additional $300 million to underwrite future arms sales to
the South Asian country, which borders Afghanistan.
Compared with other recent changes in U.S.-Pakistani relations,
designation as an MNNA country is not the most worrisome.
Pakistan will not automatically receive the F-16 fighter aircraft
it has sought for so long, and barriers to other particularly
sensitive military technology will not suddenly disappear.
What is truly remarkable and troubling about this announcement is
that it comes only weeks after international inspectors confirmed
the existence of a global proliferation network that peddled
Pakistani military technology to rogue regimes, and the pardoning
of its ringleader, Mr. Khan.
Despite the potentially catastrophic consequences of his
malfeasance, Mr. Khan's punishment hardly even qualifies as a
slap on the wrist. In 2001, he was forced to step down as the
director of A. Q. Khan Laboratories. No prison time, no fines -
not even a trial. The decision to proceed with the MNNA
designation despite these developments speaks to a disturbing
trend in post-9/11 U.S. policy: Regardless of past (or even
current) behavior, if a country is on the right side of the war
on terror, sins will be forgiven.
In light of General Musharraf's precarious domestic political
position, it is understandable that he would want to go easy on a
national icon. And in light of his cooperation in the war on
terrorism, it is understandable that the United States would want
to go easy on him.
But by appearing to increase the amount of U.S. weapons and
equipment made available to Pakistan so soon after such a grave
discovery, Washington is sending a message that, in the case of a
strategically important country, it will wink at that country's
inability to maintain control over its military technology and
stockpiles.
Even so, providing General Musharraf with new multimillion-dollar
military aid packages and special access to U.S. military aid
programs might be more palatable if they came with guarantees
that the holes in Pakistan's leaky arsenals have all been
plugged.
But U.S. officials are in no position to offer such assurances.
The U.S. investigation into Mr. Khan's network has just begun,
and until it is complete and corrective action is taken, the risk
is real that U.S.-made weapons and military technology will find
their way out of Pakistan and into the hands of America's
enemies.
Maintaining good relations with, and shoring up, General
Musharraf's moderate regime is not merely desirable, it is
crucial. But there are real costs to providing more U.S. weapons
to a regime whose ability to keep them secure is questionable.
By adding Pakistan to its short list of weapons recipients
despite unresolved proliferation concerns - and then showering it
with money to buy those weapons - the Bush administration is
sending a very dangerous message to other importers of U.S. arms
and to the rest of the world.
Matt Schroeder is a research associate at the Federation of
American Scientists' Arms Sales Monitoring Project. Rachel Stohl
is a senior analyst at the Center for Defense Information.
Copyright © 2004, [http://www.baltimoresun.com] | Get
*****************************************************************
16 Hi Pakistan: No N-sanctions on Pakistan - US
March 31 2004
WASHINGTON: The United States does not believe that
nuclear sanctions can be applied to Pakistan on the basis of the
activities of the now defunct network of nuclear proliferators,
a senior US official said Tuesday.
"With respect to the Khan transactions, the answer to that is
'no'. And at this point, the evidence is not there to support
it," said John R. Bolton, undersecretary for arms control and
international security, when asked if the Bush administration
was going to impose sanctions on Pakistan under the Symington
and Glenn amendments.
Under these amendments, the US administration is obliged to
impose extremely strict sanctions on a country that is
considered a nuclear proliferator. Sanctions under these two
amendments are among the strictest and can halt all economic and
military assistance to the country sanctioned.
Mr Bolton was speaking as a witness at the House Committee on
International Relations, one of the most powerful legislative
bodies in the United States, on the Bush administration's
non-proliferation strategy.
As soon as he finished his written statement, Congressman Gary
Ackerman, a Democrat from New York and a known anti-Pakistan
lobbyist, asked the US official: "Has the president made a
determination of whether Symington or Glenn, apply to Pakistan?"
"The answer to that is no," said Mr Bolton.
Copyright 1996-2002 . Hi Pakistan. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
17 Hi Pakistan: The British threat - By George Monbiot
March 31 2004
The paradox of modern warfare works like this: by enhancing our
military strength, we enhance our opponents’ capacity to destroy
us. The Russian state developed thermobaric bombs (which release
a cloud of explosive material into the air) for use against
Muslim guerrillas. Now, according to New Scientist, Muslim
terrorists are trying to copy them. The United States has been
producing weaponised anthrax, ostensibly to anticipate terrorist
threats. In 2001, anthrax stolen from this programme was used to
terrorise America. The greatest horrors with which terrorists
might threaten us are those whose development we funded.
Given that the most frightening of these technologies is nuclear
weaponry, and given that the possibility that terrorists might
acquire them becomes more real as the list of nuclear powers
lengthens, we should be grateful to Tony Blair for encouraging
disarmament in Libya. Though Libya’s programme was less advanced
than we were led to believe (its "4,000 uranium centrifuges"
turned out to be merely centrifuge casings), and though Blair’s
enthusiasm was doubtless sharpened by the opportunities Libya
offers to British corporations, we should not permit our
reasonable cynicism to obscure the fact that, for just the second
time in history, a state has voluntarily renounced its nuclear
technologies. Libya, unlike India, Pakistan, Israel, North Korea
or Iran, is now abiding by the terms of the nuclear
non-proliferation treaty.
But amid all the backslapping last week, something was forgotten.
This is that the treaty which Gadafy has honoured was a two-way
deal. Those states which did not possess nuclear weapons would
not seek to acquire them. In return, the states which already
possessed them - the US, Russia, China, France and the United
Kingdom - would "pursue negotiations in good faith... on general
and complete disarmament". Libya is now in conformity with
international law. The United Kingdom is not.
At the end of next month, British officials will be travelling to
New York for a meeting about the five-yearly review of the
treaty. It is hard to see what their negotiating position will
be. For they have precious little evidence of "good faith" to
show.
It is true that, since the end of the cold war, the UK’s total
nuclear explosive power has been reduced by 70%. But that appears
to be as low as the government will ever permit it to go. The
defence white paper, published in December, notes: "Decisions on
whether to replace Trident are not needed this parliament, but
are likely to be required in the next one. We will therefore...
ensure that the range of options for maintaining a nuclear
deterrent capability is kept open." Trident stays until it
reaches the end of its natural life, whatever the rest of the
world may offer. And then? Nothing this government has said or
done suggests that it would consider decommissioning those
warheads without replacing them.
To this sin of omission we must add three of commission. The
first is the UK’s support for the US nuclear missile defence
programme, which could scarcely be better calculated to provoke a
new arms race. This month the Fylingdales radar station in North
Yorkshire is being upgraded to accommodate it.
The second is that the government has laid out £2bn to equip the
Atomic Weapons Establishment at Aldermaston with the means to
design and build a new generation of tactical nuclear weapons. In
this respect, as in all others, we appear to be keeping the US
company. Earlier this month, the US National Nuclear Security
Administration released its budget documents for research into
the "robust nuclear earth penetrator", a first-strike
bunker-busting bomb which, if developed, would blow the
non-proliferation treaty to kingdom come. The US government had
claimed that all it wanted to do was to conduct a feasibility
study. But, the new documents show, it has now budgeted to
design, test and start producing it by 2009.
The third is that our policy on the deployment of nuclear weapons
has changed. In March 2002, for the first time in British
history, the government suggested that we might use them before
they are used against us. Since then, Geoff Hoon, the defence
secretary, has repeated the threat several times, on each
occasion further reducing the threshold. Put items two and three
together and the UK begins to look like a pretty dangerous state.
So how does the government reconcile all this with its commitment
to the treaty? By reinterpreting it. In October last year, Geoff
Hoon told the House of Commons: "Under the terms of the nuclear
non-proliferation treaty, the United Kingdom, the United States,
France, China and Russia are legally entitled to possess nuclear
weapons."
The treaty says nothing of the kind. It’s a short and simple
document, which anyone but Geoff Hoon can understand, and it says
just two things about the nuclear weapons possessed by the five
major powers: they mustn’t be transferred to non-nuclear states,
and they must be dismantled.
Fifteen years ago, amid massive controversy, Labour abandoned its
commitment to unilateral nuclear disarmament. Now Hoon’s
rewriting of the non-proliferation treaty suggests that it is
quietly abandoning its commitment to multilateral disarmament.
Or we could put it another way: that the Labour party has
rediscovered its enthusiasm for unilateralism, as long as it’s
someone else who is doing the disarming. As Jeremy Corbyn pointed
out in a Commons debate last week, the government’s
"non-proliferation unit" has recently changed its name to the
"proliferation prevention unit", to reflect the new policy of
reverse unilateral disarmament.
How all this plays with the new nuclear powers is not hard to
imagine. If a nation like Britain - whose prime minister poses as
a broker of peace and disarmament - has abandoned the
non-proliferation treaty, is installing the capacity to build a
new generation of nuclear weapons, has asserted the right to
strike pre-emptively and is beginning, in short, to look like a
large and well-armed rogue state, then what possible incentive do
other nations have to abandon their weapons?
Indeed, the lesson the weaker states will draw from the conduct
of the major powers over the past year is that they should
acquire as many nuclear weapons as they can. If you don’t possess
them, you can expect to be invaded. If you do, you can expect to
be left in peace, or (if you have oil) courted and bribed. And if
you get rid of them, you would be an idiot to expect the big
nuclear states to reciprocate.
Power, the new British doctrine appears to assert, grows out of
the payload of a bomb. This may once have been true, when our
enemies were states which had everything to lose by starting a
nuclear war. But when your enemies are suicide bombers, and when
they have no direct connection to a nation state, mutually
assured destruction ceases to be a useful threat. Your
intransigence merely encourages proliferation elsewhere, and so
enhances the possibility that nuclear material will fall into the
hands of terrorists. The more we assert our strength, the more
vulnerable we become.
Copyright 1996-2002 . Hi Pakistan. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
18 BP: Terrorists could target SEA shipping lanes with ‘crude nuclear device'
March 31, 2004 Wednesday
By Jim Gomez
Co-chairmen Alicia Ramos (centre) of Foreign Affairs Assistant
Secretary and Vladimir Andreyev (right) of Russia and an
unidentified Russian delegate engage in a huddle before the start
of the 2nd Asean Regional Forum, Inter-Sessional Meeting on
Counter-Terrorism and Transnational Crime March 30, 2004. The
forum attended by 125 delegates discussed transport security in
relation to the recent bombing in Madrid that killed at least 190
people. AP MANILA, Philippines (AP) - Terrorists could be
planning to attack Southeast Asia's busiest shipping lanes with a
"crude nuclear device," Australia warned in a report obtained
Tuesday.
It also said al-Qaeda-linked regional terror network Jemaah
Islamiyah continues to thrive despite the arrest of 200 suspected
members and appears to be pursuing terror training and links with
groups from the Philippines to Pakistan.
"The overall picture ... is that Southeast Asia remains a front
line in the fight against terrorism. More attacks that threaten
the safety and security of regional communities are inevitable,"
said an Australian government report.
Australian officials distributed the report at an anti-terrorism
conference in Manila focusing on transport security and organised
by the Asean Regional Forum, Asia's largest security forum that
also includes the United States, Britain and other Western
nations. A copy was obtained by The Associated Press.
The report warned waterways could be targeted in an attack using
"a crude nuclear explosive device or radiological bomb," noting
that over a quarter of the world's trade and half of its oil
passing through the Straits of Malacca and the Singapore Strait.
"There is clear evidence of al-Qaeda's interest in attacking
economic assets as a means of undermining the global economy,
including attacks against shipping," the report said.
It did not give details on the evidence.
Jemaah Islamiyah, which was blamed for the October 2002 Bali
bombings that killed 202, is also shifting to tactics that could
make attacks harder to predict, the report said.
"Despite the degradation it has suffered as an operational
network, it retains an organisational structure, a determined
approach to recruitment and training and a capacity to inflict
further serious attacks in a number of regional countries," the
report said.
The arrests, including last year's capture in Thailand of Riduan
Isamuddin, also known as Hambali, and heightened security
cooperation, have made it harder for Jemaah Islamiyah to stage
large-scale attacks. Its decision-making has also been
decentralised, making future attacks more varied, its scope wider
and harder to predict, according to the report.
One indication that the group is determined to survive is its
effort to link up with organizations beyond Southeast Asia, the
report said, citing the discovery of a Jemaah Islamiyah unit,
identified as the al-Ghuraba cell, in Karachi, Pakistan, last
year.
The cell, composed of Malaysians, Indonesians and Singaporeans,
was established to train future religious and military leaders,
it added.
Another Pakistan-based terror group, the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, has
also been linked to the Karachi cell, the report said.
Copyright © 2003 Brunei Press Sdn Bhd
[http://www.bruneipress.com.bn] . All right reserved.
*****************************************************************
19 Mos News: Duma Issues Terse Statement on NATO -
MOSNEWS.COM
Created: 31.03.2004 17:16 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 18:19 MSK
MosNews
Russia may reconsider its participation in international arms
treaties and increase its nuclear arsenal if NATO disregards
Russia’s concerns in connection with NATO expansion, the State
Duma said in a statement issued Wednesday.
The statement, proposed by three Duma committees on international
affairs, defense and security, was supported by 305 deputies. 41
voted against adopting the declaration.
The State Duma believes that further relations between Russia and
NATO must be based on “specific steps… towards security,” the
statement said, with Russia’s concern at the alliance’s expansion
being taken into account.
Otherwise, the statement reads, the State Duma will make
recommendations to the president and the government to take
appropriate actions to ensure Russia’s security, “including
reconsidering Russia’s participation in arms treaties”.
The statement also includes a request for the head of state to
hold a Security Council meeting to consider the issue of
deploying some additional defense facilities in Russia’s regions
that border on new members of NATO and the issue of strengthening
the country’s defenses as a whole, Interfax quoted the statement.
Write us: [info@mosnews.com]
Copyright © 2004 MOSNEWS.COM
*****************************************************************
20 AK: Russia's nuclear product export up 14.6% to $3.01 bln in 2003.
[AK&M News]
[http://www.akm.ru
31/03/2004 17:03
Russia exported nuclear product worth $3.01 bln in 2003, 14.6% up
on year, according to the documents of the RF Nuclear Ministry.
In 2003, the ministry's enterprises transferred 310.9 mln rbl to
the budget as part of their 2002 profit. Federal budget revenues
generated for the account of such enterprises reached 18.55 bln
rbl.
Over 2003, nuclear industry's enterprises paid (with past due
debt) 38.15 bln rbl to all budgets, including 22 bln rbl to the
federal budget, 7.7 bln rbl to the budgets of Russia's
constituents and 8.45 bln rbl to local budgets.
www.akm.ru [http://www.akm.ru/default.stm] Tel.: (7-095)
916-70-30 / 71-51 (7-095) 132-61-76 / 61-73 Fax: (7-095)
132-69-18 / 60-93 (7-095) 916-71-64 / 70-71 e-mail:
postmail@akm.ru [postmail@akm.ru] Copyright © 1996-2002 AK&Ì
*****************************************************************
21 Scotsman: UK - Macmillan's wife faced potential nuclear hell
Thursday, 1st April 2004
KAREN MCVEIGH
HAROLD Macmillan, the British prime minister, and 209 of his
ministers and Whitehall officials would have been evacuated to a
secret bunker in the event of a Soviet nuclear attack - but his
wife, Dorothy, and their four children, Sarah, Maurice, Caroline
and Catherine, would have been left behind.
In the dark days of the Cold War, when such an event was not only
feared but planned for, women and children came last, according
to a document unveiled yesterday.
The prime minister would have been dispatched, along with five
unnamed members of his war cabinet and 204 other essential
personnel, including members of M16, M15 and the joint
intelligence committee, to a bunker under Boxhill, in Corsham
Quarry in the Cotswolds.
According to the Ministry of Defence Warbook, exhibited at the
"Secret State" exhibition at the National Archives at Kew, in
south-west London, they would have travelled "by whatever means
possible".
Even with the best intelligence, they would have had, at most, a
few hours to kiss their loved ones goodbye.
A series of government information films entitled Protect and
Survive gave advice to the public about what to do in the event
of a nuclear attack. Bricking up windows to minimise radiation
poisoning, stockpiling water in the bath, and blocking up gaps
under the doors with old carpets were all considered jolly good
methods of staving off the worst.
But, privately, Mr Macmillan, prime minister from 1957-63, and
his government, knew such methods were cosmetic at best.
Predictions of the top-secret Strath Report made for grim
reading: Twelve million people dead - including possibly their
own partners and families - incinerated instantly by the blast. A
further four million seriously injured by deadly radiation.
Martial law, with orders given to shoot if rioting began.
Buildings destroyed, cities in ruins.
It revealed that intelligence gathered in the 1950s estimated
that a Soviet strike could be the equivalent of ten megaton
hydrogen bombs on the UK, with devastating consequences.
The report is stark in its estimation of what would happen:
"Fifty miles from the point of explosion, people sheltering in
houses without special protection would be exposed to such heavy
radiation initially that ... many of them would be too ill to do
any useful work. Some would be unable to look after themselves
and, by normal standards, would need skilled nursing and medical
care. Those with fatal doses of radiation would live on for
between one and six weeks."
As a matter of urgency, emergency plans were drawn up to evacuate
Mr Macmillan and others. From the bunker, and 12 other regional
bunkers housing a total of 350 officials, they planned to rule
what was left of the country.
The other 12 were at Catterick, York, Preston, Cambridge, Dover,
Reading, Salcombe, Brecon, Kidderminster, Edinburgh, Armagh and
Nottingham. There would have been a number of other
sub-headquarters, including a bunker in Fife, which is now open
to the public.
The sheer scale of casualties in a worst-case scenario attack was
predicted by civil servant Sir William Strath in his 1955 report
passed to the Cabinet.
He wrote: "Life and population would be obliterated by blasts and
fire on a vast scale. An attack of the size assumed would unleash
an explosive force equivalent to 100 million tons of TNT.
"This is 45 times as great as the total tonnage of bombs
delivered by all the Allies over Germany, Italy and occupied
France throughout the whole of the last war.
"A single megaton bomb could destroy any of our cities (excepting
Greater London) and all or nearly all its inhabitants.
"While much could be done to reduce the number of casualties,
loss of life on a massive scale would be unavoidable.
"No part of the country would be free from the risk of
radioactive contamination."
With typical understatement, it continues: "Morale would be very
low."
Military officials also made contingency plans about how to
launch retaliatory action in the event of the prime minister’s
death.
Professor Peter Hennessy, who put together the exhibition,
described the report as "the most chilling document ever prepared
for British Cabinet ministers".
©2004 Scotsman.com
*****************************************************************
22 TMI-25" Postscript
Date: Wed, 31 Mar 2004 18:38:48 -0800
TMI at 25: POST-SCRIPT
by Eric Joseph Epstein
Mr. Epstein is the Chairman of Three Mile Island Alert , Inc., a
safe-energy organization based in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania and founded in
1977. TMIA monitors Peach Bottom, Susquehanna, and Three Mile Island nuclear
generating stations.
-----
Three Mile Island Unit-2 was built at a cost to rate payers of $700
million and had been on-line for just 90 days, or 1/120 of its expected
operating life, when the March 1979 accident occurred. One billion dollars
was spent to defuel the facility. Three months of nuclear power production
at TMI-2 has cost close to $2 billion dollars in construction and cleanup
bills; or the equivalent of over $10.6 million for every day TMI-2 produced
electricity. The above-mentioned costs do not include nuclear
decontamination and decommissioning or restoring the site to ³Greenfield.²
In August 1993, Dr. Michio Kaku, Professor of Nuclear Physics, City
University of New York, evaluated studies conducted or commissioned by GPU
and the NRC on the amount of fuel left in TMI-2. Dr. Kaku concluded, ³It
appears that every few months, since 1990, a new estimate is made of core
debris, often with little relationship to the previous estimate...estimates
range from 608.8 kg to 1,322 kg...This is rather unsettling...The still
unanswered questions are therefore: precisely how much uranium is left in
the core, and how much uranium can collect in the bottom of the reactor to
initiate re-criticality.²
At the time of the accident, TMI¹s owners had no monies put aside for
decommissioning. General Public Utilities¹ (GPU) customers contributed three
times as much for the defueling effort than the corporation that caused the
disaster, i.e. $246 to $82 million (GPU Nuclear Press Release, January 10,
1985). In January 1993 the Public Utility Commission (PUC) refused GPU¹s
request to hand their customers the TMI-2 decommissioning bill estimated to
be at least $200 million. 1
However, several months later, the PUC reversed itself and gave GPU
permission to pass the cost of decontamination and decommissioning TMI-2
onto the rate payer. This decision to financially assess GPU rate payers for
the accident was upheld by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. In 1995, GPU
hired a consultant to conduct a site-specific decommissioning study for
TMI-2. The ³retirement costs² for TMI-2 were estimated to be $399 million
for radiological decommissioning and $34 million for non-radiological
removal. (GPU, 1997 Annual Report, Nuclear Plant Retirement Costs, p. 52.)
Although the plant is scheduled to be decontaminated and decommissioned
in 2014, if AmerGen requests a 20-year license extension, these activities
will not begin until 2034; fully 55 years after the accident.
Apparently the media has also forgotten the missteps that occurred
during the TMI-2 defueling:
€ In July 1980, Met Ed (GPU) vented 43,000 curies of radioactive
Krypton-85, and other radioactive gasses directly into the atmosphere. TMI-2
was designed to release approximately 770 curies of Krypton-85 a year. Four
months later in November 1980, the United States Court of Appeals for the
District of Columbia ruled that the krypton venting was illegal.
€ On August 12, 1982, cleanup worker William Pennsyl was fired for
insisting he be allowed to wear a respirator while undressing men who
entered highly radioactive areas. Pennsyl filed a complaint with the U.S.
Department of Labor, and on April 11, 1984, settled out of court two days
before an administrative law judge was scheduled to hear his case.
€ On March 22, 1983, TMI-2 senior start-up engineer Richard Parks
publicly charged GPU and Bechtel Corporation with deliberately circumventing
safety procedures, and harassing him and other workers for reporting safety
violations. Parks filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Labor. On
August 12, 1985, GPU and Bechtel were fined $64,000 for the incident by the
Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).
2
€ From July 24-27, 1984, during the reactor head lift, which was
delayed to brake failure on the polar crane, GPU vented radioactive gasses
into the environment. The venting occurred despite pledges by GPU and the
NRC that no radioactive releases would take place during the head lift
operation. GPU was fined $40,000 for the violation by the NRC.
€ On December 1, 1987, GPU announced the firing of a shift supervisor
for sleeping on the job. Although the employee had a record of sleeping on
the job dating back to the early 1980s, GPU did not issue a warning until
October 1986. Edwin Stier, former director of the New Jersey Division of
Criminal Justice, reported that 21 witnesses saw the shift supervisor asleep
on the job.
€ In December 1990, GPU began evaporating 2.3 million gallons of
accident-generated radioactive water (AGW) into the atmosphere. In April-May
1991, the evaporator was shut down for most of this period so GPU could
³rewrite the main operating procedure.² A Notice of Violation was issued by
the NRC. In January 1993, GPU ³discovered² they failed to take periodic
samples of approximately 221,000 gallons of AGW in the borated water storage
tank. Evaporation was completed in August 1993; six months behind schedule.
And less we forget, ³ HARRISBURG, Pa., (AP) - A fire in an active
transformer yard next to a decommissioned reactor was put out Tuesday at
Three Mile Island nuclear power plant, an Exelon Nuclear official said²
(July 2, 2003)...Even Exelon has to be reminded that the reactor isn¹t
decommissioned...
*****************************************************************
23 [NukeNet] consortium to apply for new COL
Date: Wed, 31 Mar 2004 16:00:21 -0800
press release and NYT article below.
=========================================
Press Release
Source: Entergy Corporation
Seven Companies to Investigate Licensing, Design Certification of
Advanced Nuclear Reactors
Wednesday March 31, 9:19 am ET
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/040331/clw034_1.html
WASHINGTON, March 31 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Five leading energy
companies and two nuclear reactor vendors plan to form a consortium that
will work with the U.S. Department of Energy to demonstrate and test a
new licensing process for obtaining a Combined Construction and
Operating License for advanced nuclear power reactors.
The companies have signed a memorandum of understanding expressing
their intent to form the consortium. Neither the planned consortium nor
its members are making a commitment to build a new nuclear unit at this
time.
The consortium will prepare a proposal in response to a DOE
solicitation last November asking energy companies to demonstrate the
U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission's new COL process.
The companies are Constellation Generation Group, a subsidiary of
Constellation Energy, Baltimore; EDF International North America,
Washington, a subsidiary of the large French utility; Entergy Nuclear,
Jackson, Miss.; Exelon Generation, Philadelphia; Southern Company,
Atlanta; and two nuclear reactor vendors, Westinghouse Electric Co.,
Pittsburgh, and GE Energy's nuclear operations, Wilmington, N.C.
Each energy company is expected to contribute to the consortium about
$1 million a year in cash plus in-kind and administrative services,
totaling about $7 million over seven years each.
The consortium plans to submit its proposal as part of DOE's Nuclear
Power 2010 program, a joint government/industry cost-sharing initiative
designed to conduct regulatory demonstrations and advanced reactor
development activities. Demonstrating that the NRC's new licensing
process can result in a COL reduces some business uncertainty for
companies interested in building new nuclear plants.
The new COL licensing process was established by the NRC in 1992 to
streamline obtaining a new license and to add some certainty but has
never been tested.
"Advanced nuclear plants offer a promising potential -- passive safety
designs, stable fuel prices, lower production costs than other fuels
used to generate electricity and a very low environmental impact," said
Gary J. Taylor, president, CEO and chief nuclear officer of Entergy
Nuclear.
Chris Crane, president and chief nuclear officer of Exelon Nuclear,
which owns 17 reactors, said, "To protect consumers against spiking
energy prices and for our own national security, we need to maintain
fuel diversity in the energy industry. Nuclear energy is safe, reliable
and non-carbon emitting. We must keep the nuclear energy option open for
the future."
The consortium's objective is to demonstrate the COL process by
obtaining the first COL license in the new process. A decision on
construction of a new nuclear plant would be made by the individual
members of the consortium at a later date.
The consortium's proposal, if approved and co-funded by DOE, would
determine the best cost estimate yet for building and operating a new
nuclear plant. More detailed engineering work would be done on advanced
nuclear reactor designs than ever before. The two reactor designs
selected by the consortium for further engineering work are
Westinghouse's Advanced Passive 1000 and General Electric's ESBWR.
The consortium plans to complete the COL application and submit it to
the NRC in 2008. After a decision by the NRC, projected in late 2010,
any combination of the consortium's members could use the COL, should
they decide to build a new plant.
Catherine Gaujacq, president of EDF International North America, said,
"EDF has a long tradition of evaluating nuclear plant designs and will
have a great opportunity to do so by joining this effort. We are proud
to partner w
ith the best nuclear utilities in the U.S. by bringing our
successful reactor design experience and as operators of a standardized
fleet of 58 reactors in France."
"Constellation Energy views nuclear power as a safe, efficient and
economical source of power for the future," said Michael J. Wallace,
president of Constellation Generation Group. "While Constellation Energy
has no immediate plans for the construction of a new nuclear facility,
our decision to join this consortium is indicative of our strong desire
to see the process by which new plants are sited streamlined to support
efficient construction in the future. To that end, we look forward to
working with the Department of Energy in testing the NRC's new combined
construction and operating licensing process."
Marilyn Kray, a vice president at Exelon Nuclear, Kennett Square,
Penn., has been selected as the consortium's executive lead and contact
for DOE.
Constellation Energy Group (NYSE: CEG - News), a Fortune 500 company
based in Baltimore, is the nation's leading competitive supplier of
electricity to large commercial and industrial customers and also
manages fuels and energy services on behalf of energy intensive
industries and utilities. It owns and operates a diversified fleet of
power plants throughout the United States including four reactors at two
sites in Maryland and New York and delivers electricity and natural gas
through the Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. (BGE), its regulated utility
in Central Maryland. In 2003, revenues were $9.7 billion.
www.constellation.com .
EDF International North America, Inc. (EDF-INA) is a wholly owned
subsidiary of Electricite de France (EDF), incorporated in 1991. The EDF
Group has more than 45 million customers worldwide, more than 160,000
employees and more than $45 billion in annual revenue. It owns and
operates 280 megawatts of generating capacity in the U.S. EDF is the
largest nuclear generator in the world with a fleet of 58 nuclear
reactors totaling more than 63,000 megawatts of generating capacity.
www.edf.com .
Entergy Corporation (NYSE: ETR - News), based in New Orleans, is the
nation's fourth largest utility, which owns power plants with about
30,000 megawatts of electric generating capacity, serving 2.6 million
utility customers in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and east Texas.
Entergy Nuclear is the second-largest nuclear operator in the U.S.,
operating five reactors at four locations in Arkansas, Mississippi and
Louisiana and five reactors at four sites in Massachusetts, New York and
Vermont, and provides management services to the Cooper Nuclear Station
in Nebraska. www.entergy.com .
Exelon Nuclear, a division of Exelon Corporation (NYSE: EXC - News),
headquartered in Chicago, owns and operates 17 nuclear reactors at 10
sites in Illinois, Pennsylvania and New Jersey. In 2003, Exelon Nuclear
generated 143.9 billion net kilowatt-hours of electricity. Exelon
Corporation is one of the nation's largest electric utilities with more
than $15 billion in annual revenues. Exelon distributes electricity to
approximately five million customers in Illinois and Pennsylvania and
natural gas to 425,000 customers in the Philadelphia area. Exelon is
headquartered in Chicago. www.exelon.com .
With four million customers and nearly 39,000 megawatts of generating
capacity, Southern Company (NYSE: SO - News) is the premier
super-regional energy company in the Southeast and a leading U.S.
producer of electricity. Southern Company owns electric utilities in
four states, a growing competitive generation company, an energy
services business and a competitive retail natural gas business, as well
as fiber optics and wireless communications. Southern Company brands are
known for excellent customer service and high reliability.
www.southerncompany.com .
GE Energy, based in Atlanta, is one of the world's leading suppliers of
power generation technology, energy services and management systems with
2003 revenues of $18 billion. GE Energy's nuclear business devel
ops
advanced light water reactors and provides a wide array of
technology-based products and services to help owners of both boiling
water reactors and pressurized water reactors safely operate and
maintain their facilities with greater efficiency and output.
www.gepower.com .
Westinghouse Electric Co., Pittsburgh, is a pioneering nuclear power
company and a leading supplier of nuclear plant products and
technologies to utilities throughout the world. Today Westinghouse
technology is the basis for approximately one-half of the world's
operating nuclear plants. www.westinghousenuclear.com.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source: Entergy Corporation
=========================================
March 31, 2004
Hopes of Building Nation's First New Nuclear Plant in Decades
By MATTHEW L. WALD
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/31/politics/31NUKE.html
WASHINGTON, March 30 * In an effort to revive the nuclear reactor
construction industry, seven major companies plan to announce on
Wednesday that they will apply for a license to build a new commercial
power plant. The last time a plant was ordered but not later canceled
was 1973.
The companies, including the two largest nuclear plant owners in the
United States and two reactor manufacturers, have not specified what
they would build or where. In fact, they have not made a committment to
build at all. But they have agreed to spend tens of millions of dollars
to get permission to build, and they anticipate tens of millions from
the federal government, which requested such proposals in November. The
money would go to finish design work useful for a new generation of
reactors and to develop a firm estimate of what such plants would cost.
"In order to keep the nuclear option open for the future, we've got to
take this next step," said Gary J. Taylor, president and chief executive
of Entergy Nuclear, a participant.
The industry successfully operates existing plants, Mr. Taylor said,
but it must build more to sustain itself. "Without a future, there's an
inability to attract new talent," he said.
"It can't be just any one company," Mr. Taylor added. "Entergy believes
it's going to have to be some sort of consortium."
Other executives said the consortium would help the industry. "Somebody
needs to take the responsibility to advance the momentum, or there won't
be an option," said an executive at another company who asked not to be
more closely identified before the announcement. "There haven't been any
orders since Three Mile Island, we've got an aging fleet, and at some
point they won't be there any more."
The Three Mile Island accident occurred 25 years ago this month. The
last orders were placed nine months later, in December 1979, but every
one after 1973 was canceled, mostly because of soaring costs. There are
103 commercial reactors now operating; those in service the longest
began operation in 1969.
The consortium's other goal is to test a simplified licensing system
created by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission 12 years ago to help the
industry go from reactor order to electricity production in 5 years, as
opposed to the 10 or 12 years it took under the previous system.
Industry executives say the prospects for new reactor construction are
encouraging because of problems facing competing fuels: natural gas
prices are persistently high and coal power stations face stiff
environmental requirements. Some executives said they hoped their
companies would be compensated for making power without emitting gases
that contribute to global warming.
The generating companies announcing the consortium on Wednesday are
Exelon Nuclear, a unit of the Exelon Corporation that owns 17 reactors
and is the nation's largest operator; Entergy Nuclear, a unit of the
Entergy Corporation that owns 9 reactors, manages a 10th under contract
and is the second-largest operator; Constellation Energy; the Southern
Company; and EDF International North America, a subsidiary of É
lectricité
de France, which owns shares in reactors in this country. As for
manufacturers, the Westinghouse Electric Company, a BNFL subsidiary that
has a design in the late stages of review by the N.R.C., and General
Electric, which has a design under preliminary review, are also
partners.
Whether investors will take the risk depends on estimates of future
fuel and electricity prices at the time of approval, participants said.
They said that they hoped to submit an application in 2008, and that the
Nuclear Regulatory Commission might rule by 2010. By then, the fate of
the government's plan to bury nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, near Las
Vegas, might also be clear. The lack of a site for waste disposal is
another barrier to new reactor construction.
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company
=========================================
Brendan Hoffman
Organizer, Nuclear Energy & Waste
Critical Mass Energy and Environment Program
Public Citizen
p: 202.454.5130
f: 202.547.7392
bhoffman@citizen.org
www.citizen.org/cmep
_______________________________________________________________________
Subscribe/Unsubscribe Here: http://www.energyjustice.net/nukenet/
Change your settings at:
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*****************************************************************
24 New reactor construction consortium announced
Date: Wed, 31 Mar 2004 16:00:24 -0800
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
X-MIME-Autoconverted: from 8bit to quoted-printable by smtp.lan2wan.com id
i2VHHdgi017324
NEW YORK TIMES
Hopes of Building Nation’s First New Nuclear Plant in Decades
March 31, 2004
By MATTHEW L. WALD
WASHINGTON, March 30 - In an effort to revive the nuclear reactor
construction industry, seven major companies plan to announce on
Wednesday that they will apply for a license to build a new commercial
power plant. The last time a plant was ordered but not later canceled
was 1973.
The companies, including the two largest nuclear plant owners in the
United States and two reactor manufacturers, have not specified what
they would build or where. In fact, they have not made a commitment to
build at all. But they have agreed to spend tens of millions of dollars
to get permission to build, and they anticipate tens of millions from
the federal government, which requested such proposals in November. The
money would go to finish design work useful for a new generation of
reactors and to develop a firm estimate of what such plants would cost.
"In order to keep the nuclear option open for the future, we've got to
take this next step," said Gary J. Taylor, president and chief executive
of Entergy Nuclear, a participant.
The industry successfully operates existing plants, Mr. Taylor said, but
it must build more to sustain itself. "Without a future, there's an
inability to attract new talent," he said.
"It can't be just any one company," Mr. Taylor added. "Entergy believes
it's going to have to be some sort of consortium."
Other executives said the consortium would help the industry. "Somebody
needs to take the responsibility to advance the momentum, or there won't
be an option," said an executive at another company who asked not to be
more closely identified before the announcement. "There haven't been any
orders since Three Mile Island, we've got an aging fleet, and at some
point they won't be there any more."
The Three Mile Island accident occurred 25 years ago this month. The
last orders were placed nine months later, in December 1979, but every
one after 1973 was canceled, mostly because of soaring costs. There are
103 commercial reactors now operating; those in service the longest
began operation in 1969.
The consortium's other goal is to test a simplified licensing system
created by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission 12 years ago to help the
industry go from reactor order to electricity production in 5 years, as
opposed to the 10 or 12 years it took under the previous system.
Industry executives say the prospects for new reactor construction are
encouraging because of problems facing competing fuels: natural gas
prices are persistently high and coal power stations face stiff
environmental requirements. Some executives said they hoped their
companies would be compensated for making power without emitting gases
that contribute to global warming.
The generating companies announcing the consortium on Wednesday are
Exelon Nuclear, a unit of the Exelon Corporation that owns 17 reactors
and is the nation's largest operator; Entergy Nuclear, a unit of the
Entergy Corporation that owns 9 reactors, manages a 10th under contract
and is the second-largest operator; Constellation Energy; the Southern
Company; and EDF International North America, a subsidiary of
Électricité de France, which owns shares in reactors in this country. As
for manufacturers, the Westinghouse Electric Company, a BNFL subsidiary
that has a design in the late stages of review by the N.R.C., and
General Electric, which has a design under preliminary review, are also
partners.
Whether investors will take the risk depends on estimates of future fuel
and electricity prices at the time of approval, participants said. They
said that they hoped to submit an application in 2008, and that the
Nuclear Regulatory Commission might rule by 2010. By then, the fate of
the government's plan to bury nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, near Las
Vegas, might also be clear. The lack of a site for waste disposal is
another barrier to new reactor construction.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/31/politics/31NUKE.html?ex=1081748012&ei=1&en=5ed9290a22010e08
---------------------------------
Attachment Converted: "c:\program files\eudora\attach\pgunter.vcf"
*****************************************************************
25 NYT: Hopes of Building Nation’s First New Nuclear Plant in Decades
By MATTHEW L. WALD
Published: March 31, 2004
[W] ASHINGTON, March 30 — In an effort to revive the nuclear
reactor construction industry, seven major companies plan to
announce on Wednesday that they will apply for a license to build
a new commercial power plant. The last time a plant was ordered
but not later canceled was 1973.
The companies, including the two largest nuclear plant owners in
the United States and two reactor manufacturers, have not
specified what they would build or where. In fact, they have not
made a committment to build at all. But they have agreed to spend
tens of millions of dollars to get permission to build, and they
anticipate tens of millions from the federal government, which
requested such proposals in November. The money would go to
finish design work useful for a new generation of reactors and to
develop a firm estimate of what such plants would cost.
"In order to keep the nuclear option open for the future, we've
got to take this next step," said Gary J. Taylor, president and
chief executive of Entergy Nuclear, a participant.
The industry successfully operates existing plants, Mr. Taylor
said, but it must build more to sustain itself. "Without a
future, there's an inability to attract new talent," he said.
"It can't be just any one company," Mr. Taylor added. "Entergy
believes it's going to have to be some sort of consortium."
Other executives said the consortium would help the industry.
"Somebody needs to take the responsibility to advance the
momentum, or there won't be an option," said an executive at
another company who asked not to be more closely identified
before the announcement. "There haven't been any orders since
Three Mile Island, we've got an aging fleet, and at some point
they won't be there any more."
The Three Mile Island accident occurred 25 years ago this month.
The last orders were placed nine months later, in December 1979,
but every one after 1973 was canceled, mostly because of soaring
costs. There are 103 commercial reactors now operating; those in
service the longest began operation in 1969.
The consortium's other goal is to test a simplified licensing
system created by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission 12 years ago
to help the industry go from reactor order to electricity
production in 5 years, as opposed to the 10 or 12 years it took
under the previous system.
Industry executives say the prospects for new reactor
construction are encouraging because of problems facing competing
fuels: natural gas prices are persistently high and coal power
stations face stiff environmental requirements. Some executives
said they hoped their companies would be compensated for making
power without emitting gases that contribute to global warming.
The generating companies announcing the consortium on Wednesday
are Exelon Nuclear, a unit of the Exelon Corporation that owns 17
reactors and is the nation's largest operator; Entergy Nuclear, a
unit of the Entergy Corporation that owns 9 reactors, manages a
10th under contract and is the second-largest operator;
Constellation Energy; the Southern Company; and EDF International
North America, a subsidiary of Électricité de France, which owns
shares in reactors in this country. As for manufacturers, the
Westinghouse Electric Company, a BNFL subsidiary that has a
design in the late stages of review by the N.R.C., and General
Electric, which has a design under preliminary review, are also
partners.
Whether investors will take the risk depends on estimates of
future fuel and electricity prices at the time of approval,
participants said. They said that they hoped to submit an
application in 2008, and that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission
might rule by 2010. By then, the fate of the government's plan to
bury nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, near Las Vegas, might also
be clear. The lack of a site for waste disposal is another
barrier to new reactor construction.
Copyright 2004 [http://www.nytco.com/] |
*****************************************************************
26 Brattleboro Reformer: Watchdog group won't give up
March 31, 2004 Brattleboro, VT
By CAROLYN LORIÉ Reformer Staff
BRATTLEBORO --The fight is not over as far as the New England
Coalition is concerned.
The Brattleboro-based nuclear watchdog group says it will do
everything it can to make sure that Entergy Nuclear's 20 percent
"uprate" at Vermont Yankee does not happen.
On Monday, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission sent a letter to
U.S. Sens. Jim Jeffords and Patrick Leahy, stating that it will
not do an independent engineering assessment, as requested by the
state Public Service Board and the Vermont Senate.
"The NRC has helped considerably by raising the awareness of
this issue," said Shadis, referring to the fact that the letter
generated negative responses from all levels of state government,
as well as from Leahy and Jeffords.
Although Shadis described the process of getting a public
hearing with the NRC as a "great uphill battle," the coalition
intends to do just that.
As an intervenor in the technical hearings before the Public
Service Board, the coalition provided expert testimony and
cross-examined witnesses from Entergy and the state.
In response to the board's March 15 decision to issue a
conditional certificate of public good for the uprate, the group
has filed a motion for reconsideration.
It is unclear how the NRC's refusal will affect the board's
decision, as the order states that the board will maintain
jurisdiction over the case and may revisit the issue, depending
on the assessment of the NRC.
According to Shadis, the coalition became an intervenor because
the parties responsible for protecting the interests of
Vermonters dropped the ball, namely Gov. Jim Douglas and the
Department of Public Service.
Prior to the coalition's involvement, Shadis says that "the
people of Vermont were not represented in this case."
In a previous interview, Douglas' spokesman Jason Gibbs said the
Douglas administration negotiated aggressively on behalf of
Vermonters, which resulted in Entergy's contribution to the
state's general fund and the consumer protection program.
Many critics of the plan have characterized the agreement as a
bribe.
In addition to going before the board, the coalition has tried
to engage Entergy in a pubic debate on the technical merits of
its proposal. Through its expert witness, industry whistleblower
Paul Blanch, repeated invitations have been made, including an
e-mail sent to Jay Thayer, site vice-president at Vermont Yankee.
Blanch says Thayer did not respond.
In addition to the challenge of securing a public hearing with
the NRC, there is there the inescapable inequity of resources
between Entergy and the coalition.
Entergy Corporation -- the parent company of Entergy Nuclear,
which owns Vermont Yankee -- has annual revenues in excess of $9
billion. It is the second largest nuclear generator in the
country, operating a fleet of eight nuclear power stations and
employing over 14,000 workers.
The coalition has one full-time employee, Peter Alexander, who
was hired in December, as the first executive director in the
organization's 33-year history.
In addition to Alexander, there are three part-time workers and
several dozen volunteers. The annual operating budget is
$140,000, all of which comes from private donations.
"It's like Godzilla versus the ant people," says Shadis.
According to Alexander, the efforts are taking a toll on the
coalition's coffers.
"We're limited by our budget. We're limited by the size of our
staff. Entergy has millions that they can spend promoting this
plan in every arena. We basically spent most of our treasury. We
are ready to go to the community (for contributions)," he says.
Except for the alternative energy van program, which is an
ongoing project, the coalition has directed all its efforts to
stopping the uprate. It has been able to do so, largely because
of the donated time of so many people, including industry
whistleblowers Blanch, Arnie Gundersen and David Lochbaum.
Shadis, an artist and anti-nuclear activist from Maine, does all
the legal work, something he learned how to do over the 30 years
he has spent fighting the nuclear power industry. Usually a
half-time employee, he is now getting paid for three-quarter time
but in reality, he says, works more than 40 hours a week.
"We took no measure of time," says Shadis, of all the unpaid
hours.
At tonight's meeting in Vernon with Entergy and the NRC, the
coalition will be out in full force. Alexander, Shadis, Blanch
and Gundersen plan to attend, as well as board members and
volunteers. The meeting will be held at the Vernon Elementary
School, beginning at 7 p.m.
After Monday's letter was announced, Alexander said that he was
hopeful that it would spur even more people to attend the
meeting.
"The NRC has not been as firm as they led on to be. They are
expecting heavy flak from the public and we do not want to let
them down," says Alexander.
*****************************************************************
27 KRT Wire: Denton and TMI
| 03/31/2004 |
Reading Eagle, Pa., Lisa Fernandez Column
herald.com/]
By Lisa Fernandez, Reading Eagle, Pa. Knight Ridder/Tribune
Business News
Mar. 30 - When Harold Denton came to Three Mile Island during
the 1979 nuclear crisis as the government's representative, he
could not find room to work at the plant, so plant employee
Dewey Schneider offered his nearby house as a makeshift command
center. The house is now owned by Exelon Nuclear, plant owner,
and is vacant.
Just the facts: He told it like it was - Harold Denton had never
been to Three Mile Island.
On March 30, 1979, as he hovered in a helicopter over the site
of the worst nuclear power plant accident in U.S. history, he
had no idea what waited for him on the ground.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission's former director of reactor
regulation, Denton has since traveled the world serving as a
consultant to industry and government leaders on things nuclear.
"I've been to Chernobyl," Denton boasted.
Can you say containment building?
But on this day in 1979, Denton had no idea he was about to be
catapulted into the public eye.
Through a combination of mechanical malfunction and human error,
the core of the Unit 2 reactor overheated on the morning of
Wednesday, March 28, 1979.
The reactor containment building was intact, but because it
happened shortly after the release of the movie "The China
Syndrome," the world was seized with the fear that the nuclear
meltdown described in the film was about to happen in the middle
of the Susquehanna River just miles from Harrisburg.
Denton's helicopter touched down at 2 p.m. Initial reports from
Met-Ed and GPU officials were that the situation was under
control.
He would soon learn the Unit 2 reactor core was an inferno of
molten uranium and all hell was breaking loose inside the
reactor control room.
There were so many Met-Ed, GPU, NRC officials and other people
crammed into the reactor control room and offices there was
nowhere for Denton to hang his hat.
Hours later the Washington bureaucrat with no prior public
speaking experience would become the voice of reason.
He was the calm, truth-telling government spokesman who held our
hands through the nuclear nightmare.
Easy to smile, Denton's quiet charm had made him the perfect man
for the job.
"I was an ordinary bureaucrat in Washington," Denton said. "I
wasn't sent here to be a government spokesman."
Like many things, when you are in Washington, it's hard to get a
good read on what's happening outside the beltway.
Gov. Dick Thornburgh was concerned. He was getting conflicting
reports from plant personnel and he didn't like it. He called
President Carter.
Carter wanted someone reliable from the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission to go to Three Mile Island, sort things out quickly
and give him a report of what had happened and what was being
done to fix it.
"We had been sending people up there to evaluate the situation
and it was like they were falling off the face of the earth,"
Denton said. "There were not enough phone lines, no faxes, no
e-mail so you could get in but you couldn't get any information
out."
"We're an administrative agency not an operational agency,"
Denton said.
"There was no trailer, no red phone, communications was a
constant problem."
But Denton drew strength from a brief phone conversation with
the president before he left Washington.
"He told me I needed to remember three things: I had the full
power of the government behind me. I was to always tell the
truth, and keep him informed on any major decisions."
Things started to go right.
Dewey Schneider, a TMI worker lived in a little white bungalow
across the river from the plant. He offered Denton his house as
a command center.
"Things were so chaotic, I didn't brief the governor until 9
o'clock that night," Denton said.
After Denton briefed Thornburgh and phoned the president, the
governor called a press conference.
Thornburgh made a few remarks and took a step back.
"Harold will now take your questions," Thornburgh said.
Thanks Harold.
-----
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Business News.
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28 KRT Wire: Some Experts Warn about Problems with Aging of U.S. Nuclear Plants
| 03/31/2004 |
By Adam Wilson, Reading Eagle, Pa. Knight Ridder/Tribune
Business News
Mar. 30 - A quarter century after the Three Mile Island crisis,
some industry experts and community activists contend a crisis
could happen again at any of the more than 100 nuclear plants
dotting the country.
Aging power plants and the still-pervasive mistrust of the
nuclear industry combine to create a growing sense of imminent
danger among nuclear activists.
"The issue is not if, but when," said Eric Epstein, chairman of
Three Mile Island Alert, a York-based citizens group opposed to
nuclear energy.
TMI was like a high-speed train running into a concrete wall to
the nuclear power industry: No new plants were commissioned after
the 1979 accident.
The aging of the country's nuclear plants and the practice of the
U.S.
Nuclear Regulatory Commission of extending the life of plants
past their decommissioning dates have alarm bells ringing in some
sectors.
Hermann Dieckamp, ex-president of Metropolitan Edison Co.'s
General Public Utilities, shares the concerns about the
possibility of an accident but is not one of those raising the
alarm.
"It (plant aging) raises concerns, but I wouldn't say they can't
be managed," he said. "It doesn't mean the dangers are
cataclysmic.
"It doesn't mean that one day the clock stops. But you have to be
aware of the age of the plant and the kind of things that can
happen."
However, with what they perceived as the industry's lackadaisical
attitude during TMI, industry and community activists believe
that if Dieckamp is somewhat concerned, they should be extremely
alarmed.
"Given the complacency that permeates the industry, and the
re-licensing of antiquated plants, we have a formula for
disaster," Epstein said.
Epstein's concerns also are shared, to a certain degree, by the
NRC, the agency charged with the oversight of the nuclear
industry.
"We take the issues of plant aging very seriously," NRC Chairman
Nils J. Diaz said. "We have seen some material degradation."
However, Diaz said the chances of an accident similar to the one
at TMI are slim.
"Nuclear power has more oversight than most industries so we tend
to detect these issues very early," he said.
David Lochbaum, a nuclear safety engineer with the Union of
Concerned Scientists, a Massachusetts-based organization of
scientists worried by standards and runaway technology, said many
improvements came to the nuclear industry as a result of TMI.
But he said there is never a time to become complacent.
"You can never let your guard down; it's a dangerous technology,"
Lochbaum said. "If you let your guard down it can bite you. It's
inherently dangerous and you can never rest on your laurels."
Lochbaum believes another TMI-type disaster could occur.
"The one area that shows TMI could happen again is what I call
the bathtub-curve," he said. "Early in life there is a higher
chance of failure (in humans) and then things even out. After
that there is a wear-out level for older people. It is exactly
the same with power plants.
"If we let our guard down, get complacent, we may be missing
aging that can cause safety margins to dissipate.
"We could be setting ourselves up for another accident, albeit of
a different nature."
Dieckamp acknowledges the future of nuclear power is at a
crossroads.
"Even at the time of the accident, the future of nuclear power
was turning quite dim," he said. "That continues to be the case
today.
"Nuclear power is fraught with uncertainty and cost."
-----
To see more of the Reading Eagle, or to subscribe, go to
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© 2004, Reading Eagle, Pa. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune
Business News.
*****************************************************************
29 KRT Wire: Experts Discuss Causes of Nuclear Mishap at Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island
| 03/31/2004 |
By Adam Wilson, Reading Eagle, Pa. Knight Ridder/Tribune Business
News
Mar. 30 - Human errors that exacerbated a simple mechanical
malfunction at Three Mile Island's Unit 2 reactor helped set into
motion a crisis that led to a complete overhaul of how the
industry operates.
"It was a real low point for our agency," said William D.
Travers, executive director for operations at the U.S. Nuclear
Regulatory Commission. "We at the NRC knew the accident should
never have happened.
"There were many failings: over-confidence, lack of training and
an inability to communicate. The NRC was perceived as part of the
problem, and that didn't feel good."
NRC officials contend that it wasn't so much technological error
but human error on the parts of plant employees and bureaucratic,
operational and communication snafus on the part of the
commission that contributed to the worst nuclear accident on
United States soil.
Since the accident, the agency has initiated numerous reforms. In
an attempt to safeguard against another nuclear nightmare, NRC
officials said, the agency has:
-- Created the Institute for Nuclear Power Operations, designed
to set and police standards of excellence within the nuclear
industry.
-- Streamlined control-room operations so that operators do not
have to identify and understand the problem to be able to fix it.
Control panels now indicate the malfunction so employees aren't
forced to make a diagnosis in stressful conditions.
-- Installed in all power plants computer-driven simulators that
duplicate control rooms, down to the location of individual
switches. Possible accident scenarios can be constructed by the
simulator and the actions taken by employees can be evaluated for
effectiveness.
-- Installed manned technical and emergency operations support
centers in each plant to obtain outside resources and manpower
and participate in emergency planning in the case of an accident.
-- Reorganized the NRC chain of command so that in case of an
emergency, the chairman can make decisions without consulting
other commissioners.
-- Installed direct phone lines between each plant and NRC
headquarters for faster, unhindered communications.
"There is no question the nuclear power industry got a huge
wake-up call and did things that before TMI would never have
occurred," Harrisburg Mayor Stephen R. Reed said. "The accident
was the result of lax oversight and a nuclear power industry
culture that was ... elitist, aloof and unprepared.
"They had never seriously considered the scenario that occurred
in 1979 because they believed it to be impossible. That's a form
of arrogance."
Even today, after the changes that have been made, there still
are signs of complacency permeating the nuclear industry, NRC
Commissioner Edward McGaffigan said.
For example, in 2002 a football-sized cavity was found in the
reactor head of TMI's twin, the Davis-Besse power plant in Oak
Harbor, Ohio.
The steel liner beneath that reactor's protective cap had been
eaten away by leaking acid and had gone unnoticed for years due
to dismal safety standards at the plant, NRC officials said.
"Davis-Besse is the evidence in this country of complacency,"
McGaffigan said. "We don't need further reminders."
Although the plant was given the go-ahead this month to resume
operations, the NRC again is examining how to revamp safety and
inspection procedures.
-----
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[http://www.readingeagle.com]
© 2004, Reading Eagle, Pa. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune
Business News.
*****************************************************************
30 KRT Wire: Three Mile Island Nuclear Incident Erased Trust of Area Residents
| 03/31/2004 |
By Adam Wilson, Reading Eagle, Pa. Knight Ridder/Tribune Business
News
Mar. 30 - If there was one major casualty of the Three Mile
Island nuclear accident, it was trust.
Misinformation from nuclear and utility officials gave rise to a
loss of trust in the industries as a whole.
"After the accident at Unit 2, a utility's ability to operate a
power plant was lost, and the credibility of an industry was
lost," said Bruce Williams, a vice president of Excelon Nuclear,
which now owns the Three Mile Island Generating Station.
Unit 1, the reactor still operating at the site, is a safe and
reliable plant, Williams insisted.
"But there have been no new nuclear plants ordered in the U.S.
since," he said.
The lack of a workable evacuation plan meant a loss of trust that
government infrastructure would work in times of emergency.
"After the loss of trust, the second big lesson of the accident
was the way the public responded," said Steven Sylvester, a
professor at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster who
specializes in radiation and its physical and emotional effects
on people and the environment.
Much of the uneasiness surrounding TMI was the lack of knowledge
about how much radiation escaped, and much of the blame for that
was placed on poor monitoring of radiation levels, Sylvester
said.
"A lot of the uncertainty and uneasiness grew out of a sense of
that," he said. "If you look at the records of the monitoring of
the plant, it was pretty slipshod at best and deplorable at
worst."
With so much uncertainty abounding, when Gov. Dick Thornburgh
issued a limited evacuation for pregnant women and children,
another vital TMI lesson was learned, Sylvester said.
"The whole idea of an orderly evacuation in the event of a
nuclear accident began to unwind," he said. "More than 100,000
people evacuated. If he (Thornburgh) had evacuated 10,000 people,
would a million people have fled?"
Sylvester also said the idea that hospitals could function
normally in the event of such a crisis vanished.
"That was another casualty, the sense that we can rely on those
infrastructures in a potentially radioactive environment," he
said. "State workers fled, hospitals had struggles staffing.
"Doctors and nurses were doing what everyone else was doing: They
were getting out."
No one can assume government and emergency management
infrastructure will behave in a predictable way, Sylvester said.
Former Lt. Gov. William Scranton III said credibility was the
major casualty of TMI.
But he contends it was plant operator Metropolitan Edison Co.'s
credibility, not the government's, that eroded.
"Certainly the credibility of Met-Ed was shot," Scranton said.
"There were also economic consequences. The tourism industry was
hurt for a time and the dairy industry was hurt significantly for
a time.
"But I don't think a loss of public trust in government was one
of the casualties. There was a great determination to maintain
credibility the whole time because we didn't want to be viewed in
the same light as Met-Ed.
"If people had been expecting this great omnipotent government
that could make instantaneous decisions and make this whole thing
go away then they would have been disappointed."
"Overall, I think the government came out with very good grades
because we were frank about what we could do and what we couldn't
do."
The loss of trust that grew out of TMI did have the one positive
effect of creating a more educated and less gullible populace,
Middletown Mayor Bob Reid said.
"Today when experts say something, the residents question it," he
said. "We are very much more educated. They (residents) know what
happened 25 years ago. They probably question expert opinions
more here than almost anywhere else.
"We are a little bit more suspicious."
-- Reporter Dan Kelly also contributed to this report.
-----
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© 2004, Reading Eagle, Pa. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune
Business News.
*****************************************************************
31 Brattleboro Reformer: Who has ace in VY fray?
March 31, 2004 Brattleboro, VT
By DAVID GRAM
Associated Press Writer
MONTPELIER -- When Maine and Vermont were the only states to vote
for Alf Landon over Franklin Roosevelt in 1936, the old saying
"As Maine goes, so goes the nation," morphed into a new one,
served up like ham and cheese on Yankee wry.
"As Maine goes, so goes Vermont."
Now some Vermonters want to follow Maine's lead again, but this
time it's nuclear -- rather than presidential -- power that's at
issue.
Ever since the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant's owners asked last
year for permission to boost the plant's power output by 20
percent, nuclear industry critics, led by the group New England
Coalition, have been calling for an "independent safety
assessment."
After all, they argue, shouldn't a 32-year-old reactor be given
a thorough physical before its critical systems are asked to take
on a heavy new load?
The federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Monday answered that
question with a resounding "No." A standard review by an agency
that has approved more than 90 power boosts at nuclear plants
around the country and rejected none is perfectly adequate, the
NRC said in identical letters sent to Vermont's two U.S.
senators.
But Vermont's Public Service Board, when it gave the go-ahead
for the power boost on March 15, conditioned its approval on an
extra level of federal review taking place.
Board Chairman Michael Dworkin wrote to NRC Chairman Nils Diaz
to ask for the independent review. While the NRC hasn't formally
replied to that missive yet, the agency's letters to the senators
appeared to make its position clear.
Now the big question is: What will the board do given that its
condition isn't being met?
The quasi-judicial board's three members don't comment on
pending cases, so that question is expected to remain unanswered
for some time.
Entergy Nuclear, Vermont Yankee's owner, is betting it will end
up getting its wish to upgrade. During the next several weeks,
Vermont Yankee will be shut down and the company plans to make an
estimated $60 million in equipment improvements to support the
power boost.
Nuclear critics' demands for an independent safety assessment
have a lot to do with what happened at Maine Yankee in 1996.
Numerous problems at the plant prompted critics, including
then-Gov. Angus King, to demand that the NRC order an independent
safety assessment at the Wiscasset reactor. So many more problems
were uncovered during that review that the plant's owners decided
they would be too expensive to fix and shut down the plant.
Throughout the case involving Vermont Yankee's proposed power
boost, a major question has been: To what extent will the Maine
rigor be applied to the Vermont review process?
Vermont Yankee spokesman Brian Cosgrove argued Tuesday that his
plant and Maine Yankee are similar in name only.
"It's apples and oranges. We are a nuclear plant that has always
had a reputation for being well run and well maintained. Maine
Yankee was a plant that had a lot of problems," he said.
In its letter to Sens. Patrick Leahy and James Jeffords, the NRC
agreed that Vermont Yankee had been performing well. "If plant
performance changes, we will not hesitate to perform the
additional inspections as required by our reactor oversight
process," wrote William Travers, the agency's executive director
for operations.
The Vermont Public Service Board is barred by federal law from
considering nuclear safety issues. When it issued its March 15
approval for the power increase, it said instead that it would
ask the NRC for an "independent engineering assessment."
The board can rule on the economics of utility investments, and
it based its request to the NRC not on safety, but on the plant's
future reliability. The board reasoned that Vermont's utilities
get large amounts of power from Vermont Yankee and would be left
shopping for power on the usually more expensive spot market if
problems connected with the power boost forced the plant to shut
down.
Former PSB Chairman Richard Cowart said that seemed like solid
legal reasoning to him. But he called it unusual for the panel to
include a condition in an order that essentially tells a federal
agency it needs to do something.
"The NRC is quite likely concerned that if they agree to a
comprehensive ... evaluation at the request of the state in
connection with an uprate, that they might be politically
required to accord the same treatment whenever asked in a similar
situation," Cowart said. "And they may not be prepared to do
that."
He said it now would be up to Entergy, the Department of Public
Service and the power boost's opponents to describe to the board
the next steps they believe it should take.
The upshot appears to be that the NRC has called the board's
bluff. What remains to be seen is whether it holds the legal ace
in the hole and is prepared to play it.
Copyright © 2004 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This
*****************************************************************
32 Lincoln County News: Maine Yankee Completes Transfer of Spent Fuel
March 31, 2004
By Greg Foster
All of the spent nuclear fuel from the fuel pool at Maine Yankee
has been transferred to the onsite dry cask storage facility,
another milestone in the decommissioning process.
“Security plans up until three weeks ago had to be focused on
three places, now it is one place,” said Mike Meisner, chief
nuclear officer, during the Community Advisory Panel (CAP)
meeting last Thursday.
As a result, 120 workers will be leaving the decommissioning
project, which is now 86.3 percent complete with an ending date
of mid-2005, according to Rocky Benner, director of
decommissioning.
“In one year we expect the NRC (U. S. Nuclear Regulatory
Commission) to terminate our license, then we will have just the
ISFSI (independent spent fuel storage installation),” Meisner
said.
The NRC has approved the “shrinking license” to the ISFSI, and
programs are accordingly revised to suit only the standalone
facility, which will be fully staffed.
Meisner told the panel that there will be a manager heading up
the operation along with a security plan in place and training
for a security force there. The primary alarm station will serve
as the site “control room”, he said.
The decommissioning organization continues to provide certain
services for the ISFSI, including radiation protection,
corrective action program, and maintenance. Meisner said the
ISFSI specialists are becoming multihatted for security, fuel
fundamentals/radiation protection, and emergency planning.
Some of the decommissioning work is to remove the 23 racks from
the spent fuel pool that remain after transfer of the spent
nuclear fuel to the ISFSI. The work entails lowering the spent
fuel pool water level.
Containment dome
Benner reported that the interior demolition of the containment
dome, which housed the reactor vessel, is now complete and
remediation is underway.
Four of nine exterior 75-foot high rectangles have been cut into
the containment dome to prepare it for implosion some time in
September. Recently, workers demolished the primary vent stack
alongside the containment dome, and all that will remain before
the implosion is the concrete shell.
Soil remediation is underway in the backyard area and the
forebay is being backfilled. The result will be a high tide
wetland area in April with the breaching of the west dike,
according to Benner.
Currently, Maine Yankee is making use of “tents” (temporary
structures) to store waste awaiting transport by rail to
Envirocare in Utah, a dumping area for low level nuclear waste.
To date, 194.5 million pounds or 63 percent of decommissioning
waste has been shipped off site for disposal elsewhere. Tons of
sand/gravel have been delivered on site to fill the fire pool as
well.
Estuary survey
CAP member Ray Shadis, speaking on behalf of the Friends of the
Coast Opposing Nuclear Pollution of which he is executive
director, said his organization has approved a Maine Yankee
contractor selection for an extensive radiological survey of the
Sheepscot estuary.
The survey is to be conducted as the result of settlement
agreements stemming from Friends of the Coast interventions in
company applications before the Federal Energy Regulatory
Commission and the NRC.
The contractor is a consortium of the University of Maine at
Orono, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, and Normandeau
Associates. Dr. C.T. Hess of UMO will head the team effort. Along
with Dr. J.H. Churchill of Woods Hole, he has had previous
experience in radiological surveys of the Maine Yankee vicinity.
Their studies have been published in various scientific journals
dating back to 1976.
“The Maine Yankee radiological surveys will be available to
serve as a benchmark or jumping off place should future
generations want to conduct more in depth studies of the behavior
of nuclear power plant radionuclides in the marine estuary
environment,” Shadis said.
The survey will include deep marine and intertidal zone
sediments, flora, and fauna. Information gathered in the
intertidal zone will be used to calculate health risk to a
hypothetical subsistence farm family living on the former nuclear
plant site and drawing standardized quantities of their food from
the local marine environment.
Shadis said that environmental protection and stewardship
initiatives gained in negotiations with Maine Yankee are among
the all-volunteer organization’s proudest achievements.
Shadis listed the nation’s most stringent radiological cleanup
standards (2.5 times more strict than federal standards),
abandonment of a company proposal to bury contaminated rubble on
site, additional onsite testing, donation of the 200-acre Eaton
Farm as a nature preserve, public access shoreline, center for
environmental policy dialogue at Chewonki, and the estuary
surveys.
The new study will begin after final discharge of the spent fuel
pool water, which is expected to be complete in mid-June. During
the summer months, there will be extensive sampling and a final
report will be available to the public through Maine Yankee or
Friends of the Coast near the end of this year.
Yucca Mountain
During the CAP meeting, there was some discussion about the
ongoing pressure on the federal government to follow through on
its plans for a national high level nuclear waste repository.
Remarks included comments about a statement contained in a
handout that Congressman Tom Allen made available during a
hearing of the House Subcomittee on Energy and Air Quality
concerning the Yucca Mountain site in Nevada.
“Mane Yankee no longer exists, but the community of Wiscasset
cannot redevelop its shoreline, cannot entice businesses, and
cannot open the peninsula for public use,” Allen said. “In effect
the community is held hostage by this spent fuel.”
Allen told the committee members that New England people have
contributed over $1.6 billion to the Nuclear Waste Fund set up to
fund a permanent nuclear waste facility.
“Currently, more than $14 billion sits in this fund, and yet
Congress still is unwilling to allocate more money to the Yucca
project than the fund collects each year,” he said. “We need to
give the Yucca Mountain project the resources to finish by 2010.”
Allen questioned the panel on whether it supports the proposed
legislation that would direct the Nuclear Waste Fund’s annual
income directly to the Yucca Mountain project’s annual
appropriation.
“We need to begin developing a plan to move the fuel,” he said.
In a bid for earlier completion of the repository, he reminded
the panel that Congress made a deal with the American public in
1982.
“In exchange for a surcharge on their electricity, this body
promised that the United States would build a safe, permanent
facility to store nuclear waste by the end of the century,” Allen
said. “We have not made good on our promise.
“Until we make good on our promise, ratepayers, taxpayers, and
people in small towns like Wiscasset, Me. will suffer, and we
will all be more at risk.”
The Nuclear Energy Institute also has just called on Congress to
reclassify the Nuclear Waste Fund so that consumer revenues to
the fund each year go for its intended purpose, the CAP
announced.
Company spokesman Eric Howes told the panel about the
Decommissioning Plant Coalition, made up of decommissioning
nuclear power plants, including the three Yankees, which is
attempting to prod the federal government about the Yucca
project.
“Anything we can do to put pressure on the federal government is
a good thing,” he said. “We’re working with our Congressional
delegation to try to continue to keep this on the front burner to
move this forward.”
Howes also mentioned other options that are being explored to
remove spent fuel earlier.
Land use
Maine Yankee is in the final stages of negotiations to turn over
the 200-acre Eaton Farm property to the Chewonki Foundation for
environmental education, conservation, and public access.
Company officials have stated that only after the demolition of
remaining buildings and completion of site restoration would the
company consider future uses of the Bailey Point plant site.
Currently, however, the company has been in negotiations with the
Town for the purchase of 400 plus acres north of Ferry Road,
excluding the Bailey Point area.
Company officials have said that there will always be some
restrictions for access and development on the property adjacent
to the ISFSI for security reasons until the high level nuclear
waste is no longer there
Vol. 129 - No. 13 [ border=]
This site is owned by Lincoln County News © 2002
*****************************************************************
33 EurActiv: Greens challenge "scandalous" EU loan to Romanian nuclear site
Portal - News nr 1507472
Date: 31/03/2004 12:00 [back] [Homepage]
In short: Environmental groups are preparing to challenge the
Commission over its decision to grant a major Euratom loan to
upgrade Romania's Cernavoda 2 nuclear plant.
Background:
Romania's only nuclear power station is situated in Cernavoda,
on the northern shore of the River Danube near the Black Sea and
the country's border with Bulgaria. The plant is the only CANDU
reactor in Europe. CANDU stands for "Canada Deuterium Uranium".
This type of reactor was designed in the 1960s by a consortium
of Canadian government and private industry.
The Cernavoda nuclear plant is owned and operated by Romania's
nuclear state utility, Societatea Nationala Nuclearelectrica.
Unit 1 at Cernavoda, in service since 1996, supplies over ten
per cent of the country's electricity demand. Unit 2 is
currently under construction and about 40 per cent complete.
Issues:
To finance safety measures and the completion of Unit 2 at
Cernavoda, the Commission decided on 30 March to grant a Euratom
loan worth 223.5 million euro to the nuclear plant's operator.
In the Commission's assessment, the project will contribute
significantly to general nuclear safety in Romania and the
region. In this context, the Commission referred back to the
conclusions of the Cologne European Council, which emphasised
the importance of high nuclear safety standards in the context
of the EU's enlargement.
The primary legal basis for the Cernavoda loan is the 1957
Euratom treaty. It empowers the Euratom Community (part of the
EU) to both promote and regulate the nuclear industry. The
Euratom Loans regime was established in 1977, and then amended
in 1994 to include certain non-member states such as Romania.
This is the third such loan decision since that time.
In 1991, the Espoo UNECE Convention on Environmental Impact
Assessment in a Transboundary Context was signed by Romania,
Bulgaria, Hungary, Ukraine and the Republic of Moldova. The
convention, which entered into force in 1997, requires that
nuclear project information be made available to the public and
to all affected parties prior to the project's approval.
Meanwhile, Romanian officials announced that Unit 1 at Cernavoda
had to be closed down due to a computer malfunction on 29 March.
The plant is scheduled to be restarted on 1 April.
Positions:
The Commission has decided to grant and guarantee to Romania a
long-term loan of 223.5 million euro towards the construction of
Unit 2 at Cernavoda, whose total construction cost is estimated
at 777 million euro. Euratom is co-financing the loan with the
lenders behind the Export Credit Agencies of Italy, France,
Canada and the US. In the Commission's view, the economic and
financial viability of the project has been confirmed by
analyses conducted by independent consultants, the European
Investment Bank and the EU Member States via the Economic and
Financial Committee.
Friends of the Earth Europe has announced its intention to call
on the European Ombudsman to investigate what it says are
suspected bogus nuclear safety claims made by the Commission. In
the opinion of the environmental group, the Commission has
failed to give a detailed justification for its decision and has
withheld key assessment reports on the project. The group, which
aims to make Cernavoda a test case of EU nuclear policy, recalls
that the geographical scope of the Euratom loan facility was
extended in 1994 in order to promote the reduction of risks
associated with Russian-type reactors in the former communist
countries. However, Friends of the Earth believes that since
Unit 2 at Cernavoda is a Western-designed reactor, it meets the
so-called Western standards and is thus not eligible for a
Euratom loan. "It appears that the Commission is abusing its
powers to support the expansion of the nuclear industry, and is
doing so under false pretences," Friends of the Earth campaigner
Mark Johnston has said.
Speaking for the Greens/EFA Group in the European Parliament,
MEP Claude Turmes of Luxembourg said that the Commission's
decision amounts to a "scandalous loan" which is but "a direct
subsidy for dangerous and costly nuclear power". The MEP said
that the loan "also jeopardises the development of sustainable
options such as renewables or energy efficiency not only in
Romania but also, should the electricity produced there be
exported, in the rest of the Union. Despite official Commission
claims on supposed 'safety improvements', no evidence has been
provided to show that this is the case." The Greens/EFA Group
calls on the Commission to demonstrate that the loan will indeed
increase the safety and efficiency of the Cernavoda 2 nuclear
reactor. "For us it is clear that these fallacious claims are
simply being used as a cover for back-door subsidies to the
nuclear industry. It demonstrates once more that Euratom is
undemocratic, non-transparent and obsolete," the MEP said.
Citing the Espoo Convention, the CEE Bankwatch Network (an
international NGO with member organisations from twelve
countries in the CEE and CIS region) concluded at a meeting in
2003 that "the case of the Cernavoda nuclear power plant Unit 2
completion in Romania shows the reluctance of parties to the
Convention to follow the provisions. It also reveals the
European Commission's ignorance as it continues to prepare a
Euratom loan despite the inadequate performance of the
recipient".
Next steps:
Under the Commission's schedule, the loan's implementation
should start in 2004 and end in 2007.
Links:
Official documents:
+ Commission: Commission approves EUR 223.5 million Euratom
Loan to finance safety measures at nuclear power plant in
Cernavodã, Romania [FR] [DE] (30 March 2004)
+ Presidency: Conclusions of the Cologne European Council [FR]
[DE] (3-4 June 1999)
+ Council: Proposal for a Council Decision empowering the
Commission to issue Euratom loans for the purpose of
contributing to the financing of nuclear power stations
+ United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE): Espoo
Convention
+ CEE Bankwatch Network: Cernavoda nuclear Unit 2 in Romania
and breach of Espoo Convention (May 2003)
+ CEE Bankwatch Network: Comments by Non-government
Organisations on Atomic Energy Canda Limited's (AECL) Cernavoda
Reactor 2 Environmental Assessment Summary (January 2002)
+ Campagna per la riforma della Banca Mondiale: Cernavoda 2
NPP in Romania: A test case for the coherence of EU policies in
accession countries (May 2003)
+ Wikipedia: CANDU reactor
+ Canadian Nuclear FAQ: CANDU Nuclear Power Technology
+ Societatea Nationala Nucleoelectrica S.A. (SNN)
+ Friends of the Earth Europe: EU Commission called on to
reveal nuclear funding secrets (1 March 2004)
+ Friends of the Earth Europe: Text of FOE Europe letter to
all European Commissioners (26 February 2004)
© EurActiv 2000 - 2003
*****************************************************************
34 WRAL.com: Progress Energy Reaches Settlement With Former Employee
POSTED: 7:18 pm EST March 31, 2004
RALEIGH, N.C. -- According to documents, Progress Energy has
reached an undisclosed settlement with a former security chief
who was fired after telling federal regulators how he handled a
security breach at the company's nuclear power plants.
The settlement follows a decision in September by a review board
of the U.S. Department of Labor to reverse an administrative law
judge's dismissal of the case of Richard M. Kester. The case was
dismissed in January following the settlement.
Stewart Fisher, Kester's attorney, confirmed the settlement
Wednesday, but declined additional comment. The settlement bars
the parties from discussing the terms of the agreement.
Kester started work in security for Progress Energy in 1996. By
1998 he was leading the division in charge of background
investigations and approving clearances for employees and
contractors who needed access to three of the company's four
nuclear power plants.
Copyright 2004 by The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This
© 2004, [http://www.ibsys.com/] and
[http://www.cbc-raleigh.com/]
*****************************************************************
35 NRC: NRC to Hold Open Regulatory Conference to Discuss Surry Nuclear Plant Operations
News Release - Region II - 2004-02
U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION
Office of Public Affairs, Region II
No. II-04-021 March 31, 2004
CONTACT: Ken Clark (404) 562-4416
Roger D. Hannah (404) 562-4417 E-mail: opa2@nrc.gov
[opa2@nrc.gov]
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission will hold an open
Regulatory Conference with officials of Virginia Electric &
Power Company on April 1 in Atlanta to discuss operations at the
companys Surry nuclear power plant near Surry, Virginia.
Conferees will discuss the preliminary risk significance of NRC
inspection findings associated with a potential fire in the
emergency switchgear and relay room. This room houses the
electrical power sources for most of the essential equipment and
operating controls that would be needed in a plant emergency.
Company officials requested the conference to discuss their
evaluation of the issues safety significance.
The meeting is open to public observation and will begin at 2:00
p.m. in the NRCs Region II office in Atlanta, located in the
Atlanta Federal Center at 61 Forsyth Street, SW, Suite 24T20.
The NRC evaluates regulatory performance at commercial nuclear
power plants with a color-coded process which classifies
regulatory findings as either green, white, yellow or red, in
increasing order of safety significance. The NRCs preliminary
evaluation determined that the safety significance of this issue
is white, meaning that it is considered to be of low to moderate
safety significance.
No decision on determination of the final significance, any
apparent violation or any contemplated enforcement action will
be made during the conference. Those decisions will be made by
NRC officials at a later time, and that information will be made
available on the NRCs web site.
Remote public observation of this meeting will be permitted in
Room O-03B34 in the NRCs White Flint office building at 11555
Rockville Pike in Rockville, MD. Seating may be limited and will
be assigned on a first-come basis. Interested parties should
contact the meeting coordinator, Mr. Steve Monarque, at (301)
415-1544, indicating their intention to attend.
Last revised Wednesday, March 31, 2004
*****************************************************************
36 Post-Crescent: Public meetings set on fate of Point Beach nuclear plant
Posted Mar. 31, 2004
First session tonight at Two Creeks in Manitowoc County
The Associated Press
MILWAUKEE — A series of public meetings set to start today will
let residents have their say on whether to keep the Point Beach
nuclear plant open for 20 more years.
Nuclear Management Co. of Hudson, which runs the plant owned by
Wisconsin Energy Corp. of Milwaukee, filed an application last
month to keep the nuclear plant running until the early 2030s.
The two-reactor plant’s licenses expire in 2010 and 2013. The
plant, located in Two Creeks in Manitowoc County, supplies 25
percent of Wisconsin Energy’s generating capacity.
Federal regulators will hold about seven public meetings over
the next two years as they consider the company’s application.
The first meeting is at 7 p.m. today at Two Creeks Town Hall.
Wisconsin Energy executives say keeping the plant open will save
the company and its customers $474 million, money the utility
says it would have to spend to build new coal plants or buy power
from another source if the Point Beach closes.
Wisconsin Energy’s alternative scenario to keeping Point Beach
open envisions building two new coal plants in 2013 to help the
utility fulfill demand for electricity.
The Wisconsin Citizens’ Utility Board, though, says the savings
aren’t worth the security and environmental risks posed by
nuclear power.
The savings of $474 million, spread over a large group of
customers over decades, amounts to a 2.3 percent savings compared
with the alternative, more costly scenario outlined by the
utility.
“Given the age of the (reactors) and the likelihood for
increased safety concerns, that 2 percent is not worth it,” CUB
executive director Charlie Higley said.
[http://www.postcrescent.com
*****************************************************************
37 NRC: NRC Makes New Management Assignments to Expand Its Focus on Safety, Security, and
Preparedness
News Release - 2004-03
U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION
Office of Public Affairs Telephone: 301/415-8200
Washington, DC 20555-0001 E-mail: opa@nrc.gov
No. 04-038 March 31, 2004
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has made a number of new
management assignments to better focus the agency on safety,
security, and preparedness, and to position it for future change
while continuing to protect public health and safety. The
changes are intended to bring fresh perspectives on key issues
and cross-fertilization of management ideas as the agency moves
forward.
In an announcement to all NRC employees today, Chairman Nils J.
Diaz said, During the last 2 ½ years, the NRC has faced
multiple challenges in every area of its responsibilities. The
agency has turned most of these challenges into opportunities to
do what is right. However, it is clear that the NRC is no longer
a safety agency, but a safety, security, and preparedness
agency. To address these challenges and opportunities, and to
move succession planning into one of our priority areas, a
series of senior management assignments are going to be
effected. These changes are being done with the approval of, or
in consultation with, the Commission.
The new assignments are:
Executive Director for Operations, William D. Travers, will
become Region II Administrator.
Region II Administrator, Luis A. Reyes, will become Executive
Director for Operations.
Deputy Executive Director for Reactor Programs, Samuel J.
Collins, will replace Region I Administrator Hubert J. Miller
upon his retirement in June.
Chief Information Officer, Ellis W. Merschoff, will become
Deputy Executive Director for Reactor Programs.
Deputy Chief Information Officer, Jacqueline E. Silber, will
become Chief Information Officer, pending approval by the Office
of Management and Budget.
Deputy Executive Director for Materials, Research, and State
Programs, Carl J. Paperiello, will become Director of the Office
of Nuclear Regulatory Research.
Director of the Office of Nuclear Regulatory Research, Ashok C.
Thadani, will become Director for International Research and
Development Projects.
Director of the Office of Nuclear Material Safety and
Safeguards, Martin J.Virgilio, will become Deputy Executive
Director for Materials, Research and State Programs.
Deputy Director of the Office of Regulatory Research, Jack R.
Strosnider, will become Director of the Office of Nuclear
Material Safety and Safeguards.
Associate Director in the Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation,
John W. Craig, will become the Deputy Director of the Office of
Regulatory Research.
These changes will become effective in phases, but as soon as
practical.
Last revised Wednesday, March 31, 2004
*****************************************************************
38 LFT: Herkimer native details Three Mile Island disaster in new book
Little Falls Times
By ROB JUTEAU Evening Times Staff Writer (Wed., March 31)
ESCONDIDO, Calif. — March 28 marked the 25th anniversary of the
nation's worst nuclear catastrophe — the accident at Three Mile
Island in Pennsylvania, labeled "Armageddon" by Walter Cronkite.
More than two decades later author William Murray's Nuclear
Turnaround details the comeback of General Public Utilities, the
company that suffered the accident, and lessons for the future of
nuclear power.
Murray, a Herkimer native who lived the first 16 years of his
life at his family's residence at 302 Prospect St., was vice
president of communications at General Public Utilities during
the Three Mile Island accident and recovery period described in
Nuclear Turnaround.
"The book is relevant in today's world where we are once again
considering nuclear power to meet our energy needs," Murray said.
"The changes and improvements in nuclear plants and the utility
industry, as well as government regulation, after the accident
are discussed."
Murray writes in Nuclear Turnaround that the Three Mile Island
"catastrophe" resulted in no deaths and no injuries that have
been substantiated.
"Thousands of lawsuits have been thrown out for a lack of
evidence, and the radiation released into the atmosphere was less
than that measured in the area from the Chinese atomic bomb test
fallout," he said.
The book also details how the company was almost wiped out from
the financial, legal, regulatory and technical fallout. "It took
over seven years to recover and the lessons that the accident
provided for the future of nuclear power were substantial,"
Murray said.
The story is based on interviews with the people who participated
in the accident, the cleanup and the recovery. "This book is a
book for all who have an interest in nuclear power, whether they
are pro or anti-nuclear," Murray said. "Information is revealed
that today's readers are unaware of. If you want to be informed
in a realistic and balanced manner this is the book for you."
He added the book is more important today, as after 25 years the
nation is considering the construction of a new generation of
nuclear power plants. "Nuclear power use has been reconsidered in
light of increased use of fossil fuels, contributing to the
problems of global warming, increased dependence on foreign oil
and natural gas price increases, as well as improvements in
nuclear power plant design and safety," he said.
Murray joined General Public Utilities after 18 years as nuclear
program manager and vice president of marketing at Rockwell
International's Atomics International Division. He holds a
bachelor's in engineering from West Point, class of 1944.
Following the end of World War II, he received a master's in
nuclear science from Princeton University and began a 27 year
career in the nuclear energy field, including work at the Los
Alamos Scientific Laboratory and at Sandia Base, New Mexico.
Murray, born in 1923 and raised in the family residence of his
grandfather John Best, a former Herkimer mayor, and wife Carrie
Bellinger, graduated from Herkimer High School in 1940 and
entered Albany State Teachers College. He received an appointment
to the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1941,
graduating in June 1944 when he was assigned to the 63rd Infantry
Division. He served as a forward observer for field artillery in
France and Germany. He returned home from World War II in 1946
and attended Princeton, receiving his master's degree in nuclear
science in 1948.
He is currently retired and living in southern California, where,
between talks about the energy world, he pursues watercolor
painting and Civil War history.
Nuclear Turnaround is now available through 1stbooks.
For more information on the book, visit www.1stBooks.com.
[http://www.littlefallstimes.com
*****************************************************************
39 Reuters: Consortium Seeks Nuclear Plant License
Wed Mar 31, 2004 05:22 PM ET
By Carolyn Koo
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Two separate groups of companies have formed
recently with an eye toward applying for licenses that could
allow the first new U.S. nuclear power plant to be built in more
than 25 years.
The two consortiums intend to work with the U.S. Department of
Energy to test a new process from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory
Commission for obtaining a license for an advanced nuclear power
reactor.
There is no plan at this time to actually build a new nuclear
reactor, members of both groups emphasized. No company has
followed through with plans to build a new nuclear plant since
the worst nuclear disaster in U.S. history, at the Three Mile
Island plant 25 years ago.
Dominion Resources said the first group of four companies
submitted a proposal a week and a half ago for a license for
Dominion's North Anna site in Virginia. The proposal is a
precursor to the actual application.
The application process is expected to take six years and cost
about $500 million, said David Christian, senior vice president
of nuclear operations at Dominion Resources, which is part of the
consortium.
Dominion's group also includes AECL Technologies Inc., a
subsidiary of Canada's nuclear power reactor developer and
designer AECL; Hitachi America, a subsidiary of Japanese
conglomerate Hitachi Ltd.; and privately held engineering company
Bechtel.
A second consortium of seven companies on Wednesday said it plans
to submit its own proposal "in the next few weeks," said Marilyn
Kray, vice president of project development at Exelon Nuclear, a
division of Exelon Corp.
Exelon Corp. is a member of the second group, which has yet to
decide on a potential site.
The energy companies in the second consortium are Exelon and
Entergy Corp., the No. 1 and 2 U.S. operators of nuclear plants;
Constellation Energy Group; Southern Co.; and France's
state-owned electric company Electricite de France.
It also includes two nuclear reactor vendors: Westinghouse
Electric Co., a unit of British state-owned nuclear company BNFL
Plc; and General Electric Co.
Both groups want to take advantage of a cost-sharing initiative
where the Department of Energy would pay for half the application
cost and the companies the other half. Continued ...
*****************************************************************
40 CTV.ca: Critics wary of Canadian nuclear power industry- CTV
[CTV.ca]
Updated Mon. Mar. 29 2004 6:26 AM ET
Pickering nuclear facility
CTV.ca News Staff
On the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the Three Mile Island
nuclear plant failure, environmental activists are wondering if
the lessons of the near-meltdown have been lost over the years.
There were no deaths or injuries, and no significant amount of
radiation was released. But on March 28, 1979, the United States
had its closest brush ever with nuclear catastrophe.
An early-morning accident in a non-nuclear part of the facility
caused a series of events that shut down the Three Mile Island
Unit 2 in Pennsylvania. By some estimates, it was a very close
brush -- coming within 30 minutes of melting through the
eight-inch-thick steel container that encloses the reactor.
Had the full disaster happened, radiation could have been spewed
over several heavily populated states.
On Sunday morning, anti-nuclear activists gathered outside held a
vigil outside the Three Mile Island nuclear facility. Reactor 2
was mothballed after the accident, but Reactor 1 is still in
operation.
And the North American nuclear industry is booming.
Since the accident, U.S. nuclear power output has risen steadily
-- going from 11 to 20 per cent of the energy supply. One in five
U.S. homes and businesses receive power from nuclear energy.
Canadians get more than 15 per cent of their energy from nuclear
power, and that share is likely to rise.
Earlier this month former deputy prime minister John Manley,
hired by the Ontario government to report on energy options,
recommended that the province continue to rely on nuclear energy
and improve its facilities.
Greenpeace Canada says Manley's report is another sign that the
lessons of Three Mile Island have been lost on governments.
"Nuclear energy is still not safe," Greeenpeace Canada's
campaigns director, Jo Dufay, told CTV News. "It's still not cost
effective and it's still not a real solution."
Industry critics say the problem of disposing of nuclear waste
still hasn't been solved. And Dufay calls nuclear reactors
"sitting ducks for terrorists -- you might as well paint a
bulls-eye on them."
U.S. and Canadian regulators say nuclear energy is a safe, clean
and stable energy resource, and the industry reacted swiftly to
the Three Mile Island incident by upgrading safety procedures.
Dr. Nils Diaz, chair of the United States Nuclear Regulatory
Commission, believes the improved safety record reflects the
lessons learned in 1979.
"They are safer than Three Mile Island," he said Sunday. "We know
a lot more about them now than we did then. We know the systems
better, we know the human responses better, we have actually
established regulatory systems and better operating systems."
© 2004 Bell Globemedia Inc. All Rights Reserved.
*****************************************************************
41 NRC: Agency Information Collection Activities: Proposed Collection;
FR Doc 04-7184
[Federal Register: March 31, 2004 (Volume 69, Number 62)]
[Notices] [Page 16980] From the Federal Register Online via GPO
Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr31mr04-135] [[Page 16980]]
Comment Request AGENCY: 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: 10 CFR
part 4, ``Nondiscrimination in Federally Assisted Commission
Programs''.
2. Current OMB approval number: 3150-0053. 3. How often the
collection is required: On occasion and quarterly.
4. Who is required or asked to report: Recipients of Federal
Financial Assistance (Agreement States) provided by the NRC.
5. The number of annual respondents: Approximately 32 recipients
of Federal Financial Assistance (Agreement States).
6. The number of hours needed annually to complete the
requirement or request: 352 hours (256 hours for reporting [2 hrs
per response] and 96 hours for recordkeeping [3 hrs per
recordkeeper]).
7. Abstract: Recipients of NRC financial assistance provide data
to demonstrate assurance to NRC that they are in compliance with
nondiscrimination regulations and policies.
Submit, by June 1, 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://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/leaving.cgi?from=leaving
FR.html&log=linklog&to=http://www.nrc.gov/public-involve/doc-comm
ent/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 24th day of March 2004.
For the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Brenda Jo. Shelton, NRC Clearance Officer, Office of the Chief
Information Officer.
[FR Doc. 04-7184 Filed 3-30-04; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 7590-01-P
*****************************************************************
42 Rocky Mountain News: Millions spent; 1 worker aided
$74 million DOE program to help sick nuclear plant employees
called 'failure'
By Ann Imse, Rocky Mountain News
March 31, 2004
The Department of Energy program to compensate sick nuclear
weapons plant workers has cost $74 million of taxpayers' funds -
and only one worker has been paid.
That one person in Washington state has received $15,000.
The $74 million has gone to paperwork involved in deciding
whether workers were sickened by radiation or toxic chemicals on
the job.
The DOE says it wants another $76 million for this year and next
and a few legislative tweaks in the program. With that, DOE
Undersecretary Robert Card said Tuesday, a few hundred more sick
workers should be paid by the end of the year.
Some senators who listened to this report at a Senate Energy
Committee hearing in Washington, D.C., indicated they'd rather
toss out the whole program and start over. They also suggested
putting another agency in charge.
The DOE program for sick atomic-bomb plant workers is "a
catastrophic failure," said Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska.
"Sick workers are getting shortchanged, taxpayers are getting
gouged and Congress is getting taken for a ride," said Sen. Chuck
Grassley, R-Iowa. "The Energy Department's problems are not going
to be solved by throwing more money into a black hole."
Congress created the compensation program in 2000, saying nuclear
bomb workers, including those at Rocky Flats outside Denver, put
their lives on the line for the nation's defense. Many died
young. Others ended up with huge medical bills for cancer and
other illnesses they blame on their jobs.
The DOE and the Senate Energy Committee said the agency has
received $74 million to administer the program.
So where has the money gone?
The DOE and its contractors are obliged to track down scarce
documents, some decades old, on individual workers' exposure to
deadly materials used in bomb-making. A panel of physicians makes
the final decision on whether an illness or death was
job-related.
Of 23,000 applications in nearly four years, DOE has rejected
about 5 percent and moved ahead on 1 percent, according to
testimony Tuesday from the General Accounting Office.
But winning a DOE case only gives a worker ammunition to file for
workers compensation insurance. For 20 percent to 50 percent of
the cases, the GAO said, it will be tough to collect. That's
because companies that worked at bomb plants and their insurers
have gone out of business over the years. Existing firms may
choose to fight the claims in court.
As a result, Murkowski noted, a worker can make it all the way
through the DOE system, and then, "you're nowhere."
"In my state of Iowa, almost no one will be paid," Grassley said.
Senate documents did not provide any further details about the
one person who has collected workers compensation.
The program's problems started with the complex procedures
outlined in the law. Then, more workers than expected applied. On
top of that, DOE took two years to write the program rules.
Card said the agency's performance dramatically improved in
recent months, but it needs the additional $76 million to cut
into the backlog.
Murkowski rejected Card's proposals to speed up processing,
because they don't solve the issue of workers not getting paid in
the end.
Card proposed having an independent study done, and waiting to
see how much money the first few hundred workers collect before
making significant changes in the program.
"I'm not interested in waiting around for a study," Murkowski
responded. "I would suggest we change it pretty quickly."
"We need reform," Grassley said. But, he added, the Office of
Management and Budget, which is part of the White House, helped
kill an overhaul of the program last year.
During the hearing, Grassley criticized DOE's no-bid contractor,
Science and Engineering Associates. He said it is billing the
Energy Department $72,000 a year for a mail room clerk and
$400,000 a year for the program manager.
"Only in a government contract can people make so much money and
perform so poorly. If this were the private sector, these people
would get canned and be out on the street," Grassley said.
Instead, "SEA hires lobbyists to influence Congress to let the
company keep this lucrative contract," he said.
Card replied by saying SEA's charges include overhead such as
office space and equipment, and they are comparable to those of
other government contractors.
"The taxpayer is getting a good deal," he said.
The compensation program has a second half run by the Department
of Labor. It uses federal funds to pay $150,000 to bomb-plant
workers with three specific illnesses. Labor has spent $346
million in administration costs so far to hand out $800 million.
It has handled 22,000 of 40,000 cases.
Activists have suggested dropping the requirement to prove
exposure to radiation and chemicals, saying too many records are
missing. They've also proposed switching the Energy program to
Labor, and using federal money to pay lump sums to all victims.
No such comprehensive overhaul bill has been drafted, said Marni
Funk, the Energy Committee's press secretary. "We're still at the
drawing board," she said.
Department of Energy compensation program
• Applicants: 23,000
• Paid: 1
• Amount paid to worker: $15,000
• Administrative costs: $74 million
imsea@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-892-5438
*****************************************************************
43 NRC: Advisory Committee on the Medical Uses of Isotopes: Meeting
FR Doc 04-7185
[Federal Register: March 31, 2004 (Volume 69, Number 62)]
[Notices] [Page 16980] From the Federal Register Online via GPO
Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr31mr04-136]
Notice AGENCY: Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
ACTION: Notice of meeting.
SUMMARY: The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission will convene a
teleconference meeting of the Advisory Committee on the Medical
Uses of Isotopes (ACMUI) on April 12, 2004. The topic of
discussion will be ``ACMUI Vote on the Dose Reconstruction
Subcommittee's Recommendation Relating to the NRC's Method of
Dose Reconstruction.'' This teleconference is being scheduled in
the event that extenuating circumstances prevent the ACMUI from
holding its previously scheduled April 8, 2004, teleconference.
If ACMUI is able to hold its April 8, 2004, teleconference, this
teleconference will not be held.
DATES: The teleconference meeting will be held on Monday April
12, 2004, from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m eastern standard time. Public
Participation: Any member of the public who wishes to participate
in the teleconference discussion may contact Angela R. Williamson
using the contact information below.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Angela R. Williamson, telephone
(301) 415-5030; e-mail [arw@nrc.gov] of the Office of Nuclear
Material Safety and Safeguards, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory
Commission, Washington, DC 20555-0001.
Conduct of the Meeting: Manuel D. Cerqueira, M.D., will chair the
meeting. Dr. Cerqueira will conduct the meeting in a manner that
will facilitate the orderly conduct of business. The following
procedures apply to public participation in the meeting: 1.
Persons who wish to provide a written statement should submit a
reproducible copy to Angela Williamson, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory
Commission, Two White Flint North, Mail Stop T8F5, Washington, DC
20555-0001. Hard copy submittals must be postmarked by April 6,
2004. Electronic submittals must be submitted by April 8, 2004.
Any submittal must pertain to the topic on the agenda for the
meeting.
2. Questions from members of the public will be permitted during
the meeting, at the discretion of the Chairman.
3. The transcript and written comments will be available for
inspection on NRC's Web site (
[http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/leaving.cgi?from=leaving
FR.html&log=linklog&to=http://www.nrc.gov] ) and at the NRC
Public Document Room, 11555 Rockville Pike, Rockville, MD
20852-2738, telephone (800) 397-4209, on or about May 10, 2004.
Minutes of the meeting will be available on or about June 8,
2004.
This meeting will be held in accordance with the Atomic Energy
Act of 1954, as amended (primarily section 161a); the Federal
Advisory Committee Act (5 U.S.C. App 2); and the Commission's
regulations in title 10, U.S. Code of Federal Regulations, part
7. Dated: March 25, 2004.
Andrew L. Bates, Advisory Committee Management Officer.
[FR Doc. 04-7185 Filed 3-30-04; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 7590-01-P
*****************************************************************
44 Seattle Post-Intelligencer: DOE's backlog of worker claims assailed
[seattlepi.com]
Wednesday, March 31, 2004
Only one worker out of 23,347 has won compensation
By CHARLES POPE
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT
WASHINGTON -- Angry and impatient, senators from both parties
yesterday severely criticized the Energy Department for bungling
a program to compensate workers made sick by their jobs at
Hanford and other nuclear weapons plants.
"Should we be patient and let the Energy Department and its
contractor continue to learn on the job, while sick workers die
off?" Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, said during a hearing held
by the Senate Energy Committee.
"The Energy Department has to stop thinking about protecting its
turf, or its contractor's pocketbook, and think about what's
really important -- the workers who put their lives on the line,"
Grassley said.
At issue is a DOE program established in 2001 to compensate
former workers and their families for illnesses caused by
exposure to toxic materials while manufacturing nuclear weapons.
While the program was created amid great fanfare, the DOE
acknowledged yesterday that only one person has received payment,
even though 23,347 claims have been filed.
Grassley and other senators, including Maria Cantwell, D-Wash.,
suggested the DOE is incapable of repairing the program, which
has been besieged by bureaucratic missteps and a failure to
process claims quickly. Grassley was also angered by a no-bid
contract the DOE awarded to Science and Engineering Associates to
process claims.
The company has been paid $16 million so far, even though only 8
percent of claims have been processed.
"Only in a government contract can people make so much money and
perform so poorly," Grassley said, noting that the company's
project manager earns $200 an hour.
Robert Card, the Energy Department undersecretary responsible for
the program, told the committee that improvements have been made
and the pace of work has increased. He also said the department
is convinced it will be able to fix the problems.
"We believe we have a credible plan in place that can accelerate
the process now and allow for us to accelerate in the future," he
said. "But there's only so much the department can do
independently."
Card said the department needs more money if it is to eliminate
the backlog of cases by 2006. The department has asked for $43
million for the next fiscal year.
"The good news is we understand the problems now and can connect
with it if we have the proper resources," Card told the
committee.
That request drew a dubious response from senators, who pointed
out that the department had been given additional money in past
years and has not improved the program.
"Things have gotten worse and we cannot let this get any worse,"
said Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska. "Implementation of the act
remains a catastrophic failure."
The Energy Department program is designed to compensate workers
make sick by exposure to toxic chemicals and other hazards at
Hanford and nearly 300 other weapons production plants.
But the system is complicated and balky because it relies on
employment and health data that is often incomplete or ambiguous.
The health data that is compiled is then presented to a
physicians panel. That panel then rules whether the worker's
illness is connected to his or her work. If the illness is
connected, the claim is forwarded to the workers compensation
program, which determine whether a payment is justified.
Often those claims are contested in court.
The failure of the DOE program is in stark contrast to a similar
program operated by the Department of Labor that provides
benefits to former nuclear plant workers who have been exposed to
radiation and have one of 22 cancers.
If that standard is met, the worker's claim is evaluated to
confirm that he or she worked at a plant where radiation was
released. If the finding is valid, the worker receives a $150,000
lump sum payment. To date, Labor has paid out more than $720
million.
The DOE program, meanwhile, can account for only a single
successful case that reportedly paid $15,000. Both programs also
provide free medical care to those whose claims are accepted.
Cantwell is pushing to expand the Labor program to include a
broader range of diseases, including those that afflict thousands
of Hanford workers. Optimally, she would like the Department of
Labor to take over the entire program.
The DOE, she said, has "dehumanized this process. They forget
that there are workers who provided a service for our country.
Instead of thanking these workers for a job well done, federal
agencies are giving them the cold shoulder and too much paper
work."
The DOE, she said, "is using the intricacies of the program to
dodge the real issue. And that is, the information does not exist
and they're not compiling it in a way that will help people solve
their claims.
"I have constituents say they think, 'DOE is just waiting for me
to die, then they'll process my claim.'
"It's horrible for these individuals, because they need medical
care now and they can't get it." P-I Washington correspondent
Charles Pope can be reached at 202-263-6461 or
charliepope@seattlepi.com
[Seattle Post-Intelligencer] 101 Elliott Ave. W. Seattle, WA
98119 (206) 448-8000
Send comments to newmedia@seattlepi.com
*****************************************************************
45 Las Vegas RJ: Senators vent over test site disability claims
Wednesday, March 31, 2004
By TONY BATT
STEPHENS WASHINGTON BUREAU
WASHINGTON -- Frustrated senators said Tuesday they were not
impressed with a bill proposed by the Department of Energy to
process by 2006 a backlog of disability claims from workers at
the Nevada Test Site and other facilities.
The bill seeks to increase the number of physician panels that
determine if a worker's disability claim is valid.
But Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., noted that even after a
physician's panel approves a claim, the sick worker must still
go before a state's workers compensation board in order to
qualify for payments.
"It just strikes me that the proposal that you have given us
here, and that Secretary (Spencer) Abraham has sent up to us for
legislation, is pretty weak soup compared to the size of the
problem," Bingaman told Energy Under Secretary Bob Card.
Card appeared before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources
Committee to discuss DOE efforts to comply with the Energy
Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act of 2000.
As of March 11, the Labor Department had approved 129 claims
from test site workers and paid out $12.6 million.
Last year, Bingaman and seven other senators tried
unsuccessfully to remove DOE from the compensation program and
put the Labor Department in charge.
Two of those other senators hinted they may try again.
"The Labor Department is performing well. The Energy Department
is not," said Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa.
Sen. Jim Bunning, R-Ky., who sometimes shouted at Card, said
Congress has the authority to decide if the Energy Department
plays a part in the compensation program.
"That would be, of course, your choice," Card said.
"You bet it would," Bunning snapped.
Copyright Las Vegas Review-Journal
*****************************************************************
46 Tri-City Herald: Compensation program under fire
This story was published Wednesday, March 31st, 2004
By Les Blumenthal Herald Washington, D.C., bureau
WASHINGTON -- With one senator calling it a "catastrophic
failure," a Department of Energy program to compensate workers
who became sick from their jobs at Hanford and other nuclear
defense sites came under sharp criticism during a Senate hearing
Tuesday.
Of the 23,000 people who have filed claims since the program was
launched 21Ú2 years ago, only one has received compensation, one
senator said. Even with the changes suggested by the
administration, claimants would have to wait six years for a
decision on their cases, the senator said.
An official of Congress' General Accounting Office said the
department had finished processing just 6 percent of the claims
and action on 60 percent of the claims hadn't even started.
"In short, sick workers are getting short-changed, the taxpayers
are getting gouged and Congress is being taken for a ride," Sen.
Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, told the Senate Energy and Natural
Resources Committee.
Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., a member of the committee, said the
program was a failure and department officials were trying to
"dehumanize" the process rather than face up to the fact that
people were sick and dying while waiting for a decision on their
claims.
Though acknowledging ongoing problems, a top Energy Department
official said progress was being made, the number of claims being
processed was growing rapidly and the backlog of claims was
dropping.
Robert Card, Energy Department undersecretary, said there was a
"credible plan" in place to accelerate the processing of claims.
But Congress needed to provide additional money and approve
legislation to streamline the system for panels of physicians to
act on the claims, he said.
"Ultimately, we will need additional resources and statutory
changes to the statute to achieve our goal of eliminating the
entire backlog by the end of 2006," Card said.
But Sen. Jim Bunning, R-Ky., said the department's latest plan
was unveiled only hours before the committee hearing. Grassley
said the proposal represented a "blind alley" that wouldn't solve
the program's fundamental problems.
"I almost feel my constituents have had to go through a hat trick
to get any information, and I feel today I am still going through
a hat trick," Cantwell said.
In 2000, Congress approved a complicated two-part program to deal
with compensation for workers at defense nuclear sites who have
become sick. Eligible workers who developed cancer or other
diseases after being exposed to radiation or several hazardous
substances would be eligible for a one-time payment of up to
$150,000 in a program administered by the Department of Labor.
The other part of the program allowed the Energy Department to
help its contractor employees file claims with state worker
compensation boards if a panel of physicians concluded the
illness was caused by exposure to toxic substances at DOE
facilities.
While the DOE program has faced mounting criticism, the Labor
Department has issued final decisions in about half the 40,000
claims it received and awarded almost $800 million in
compensation and medical benefits.
Though Cantwell has been most critical of the Energy Department's
action, she also said even more needs to be done to speed
compensation through the Labor Department program.
More than 1,800 former Hanford workers have applied for claims
through the Energy Department program for toxic exposure, the GAO
said.
Cantwell said those who have filed the claims have been given the
runaround and been overwhelmed with paperwork.
"I listen to these stories and I have to wonder about why it is
the federal government is placing the burden of proof on these
sick workers and their families," she said. "Based on what I know
about DOE's record keeping -- and the records I have seen from
these constituents, which contain more black ink than actual
information -- these people face an impossible task."
Cantwell said the nuclear workers compensation program should
resemble the compensation program for those exposed to Agent
Orange during the Vietnam War. Under that program, veterans who
served in Vietnam between 1962 and 1975 and have illnesses
associated with Agent Orange are presumed to have been exposed.
These veterans do not have to prove they were in a specific place
at the same time the herbicide was sprayed because Congress
recognized they deserved medical care and compensation.
© 2004 Tri-City Herald, Associated Press &Other Wire Services
*****************************************************************
47 Maine Today: Portsmouth Naval Shipyard will overhaul nuclear submarine
[http://www.mainetoday.com] [http://www.mainetoday.com]
Wednesday, March 31, 2004 8:00 pm
Associated Press
PORTLAND, Maine The U.S. Navy will overhaul a nuclear submarine
this summer at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, Maine
and New Hampshire´s congressional delegates announced Wednesday.
The $120 million project was put on hold last month when the Navy
said it did not have the funds to complete the renovation of the
USS Montpelier.
U.S. Sen. Judd Gregg said the announcement was a major win for
the shipyard.
"This is very positive news for the region and especially for the
Shipyard and all the people who work there," he said in a written
statement.
The overhaul, which is scheduled to begin in June, is important
to the future of the shipyard, the states´ eight representatives
in Washington said in a joint statement.
"We are pleased that the Navy recognizes how important this work
is to the shipyard and that its workers are the best for the
job," they wrote.
The shipyard, located in Kittery, sits on an island in the
Piscataqua River that separates New Hampshire and Maine. It
employs about 4,000 people from the two states and Massachusetts.
The delegates also said the work will help the shipyard as U.S.
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld draws up a list of military
bases he will recommend for closure in 2005.
Rumsfeld has said he believes the military has about 20 percent
to 25 percent excess capacity at its bases. He has said he plans
to close up to a quarter of the nation´s 425 bases in 2005 to cut
costs.
"This funding for the USS Montpelier underscores the Navy´s
commitment to the value of ensuring a steady workload at the
Portsmouth Naval Shipyard," New Hampshire Sen. John Sununu said
in a statement.
Copyright © Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc.
*****************************************************************
48 ITAR-TASS: Radioactive instrument seized in Sakhalin
[ITAR-TASS News Agency of Russia]
31.03.2004, 18.42
YUZHNO SAKHALINSK, March 31 (Itar-Tass) -- A highly radioactive
instrument has been seized at the seaport of Korsakov in
Sakhalin, the Russian Far East.
The level of radiation emitted by the instrument exceeded the
natural level by 100 times. The instrument arrived from South
Korea supposedly for use in the construction of a gas pipeline
in Sakhalin. No documents for the import of the instrument,
which works on strontium and caesium, were presented, Sakhalin
region deputy governor Lyubov Shubina told a press conference on
Wednesday.
She and other specialists spoke about violations of Russian
health care and sanitary laws by Russian and foreign firms that
are extracting oil and building the gas pipeline in Sakhalin.
They said radioisotope instruments were used in Sakhalin at 156
facilities for Roentgen defectoscopy. Very often the instruments
are used in violation of operating procedures, which may expose
people to radiation.
The hazardous instrument brought into Korsakov will be taken out
of Sakhalin.
© ITAR-TASS. All rights reserved. You undertake not to copy,
*****************************************************************
49 Hawk Eye: Grassley takes claims case to Senate panel
Wednesday, March 31, 2004, Site updated daily at 11 a.m. CST
Senator tells colleagues the Energy Department isn't getting job
done.
By MATTHEW LeBLANC mleblanc@thehawkeye.com
[mleblanc@thehawkeye.com]
Sen. Charles Grassley told the Senate Energy Committee Wednesday
that a Department of Energy–run workers' compensation program is
in dire need of change and challenged federal officials to
release financial information regarding a New Orleans firm
currently processing thousands of claims under the program.
In the second such hearing since December, Grassley, R–Iowa, took
aim at the Energy Department's Energy Employees Occupational
Illness Compensation Program, saying the agency's performance in
processing thousands of claims filed by nuclear weapons workers
nationwide is unsatisfactory.
"We need to fix claims processing and the payment system so Cold
War veterans near Burlington, Iowa, and the rest of the country
aren't left out in the cold," he told the 23–member committee.
Grassley has pushed for changes in the 4–year–old EEOICP since
September. Two efforts to legislate change in the program were
defeated by lawmakers, while calls to his colleagues in Congress
to revamp the system have largely gone unheeded. Tuesday's
hearing marked a renewed push toward changes in the program's
administration and its funding.
More than 23,000 claims have been filed under EEOICP since 2001,
when the program was instituted to dole out compensation payments
to former nuclear weapons workers who contracted illnesses
related to work at DOE–run plants nationwide. Energy officials
say they've completed only 8.3 percent — or just over 1,900 — of
those claims. An October General Accounting Office report stated
that DOE would need 7 years to work off a backlog of claims.
Program statistics show that more than 1,600 former Iowa Army
Ammunition Plant employees have filed claims under the program,
though only 39 payments have been made.
"If this were the private sector, these (DOE) people would get
canned and be out on the street," Grassley said of DOE's progress
in processing claims.
The senator also produced the first details surrounding New
Orleans–based Science &Engineering Associates' role in processing
claims under EEOICP. Grassley says the company surreptitiously
secured a federal contract through the Department of the Navy to
process the claims, which have largely remained stalled.
Grassley requested information about SEA from DOE officials in
letters sent in November and January. The Energy Department
released partial details last week, but many financial details
were left out.
Included in the documents, however, is a cost breakdown of how
much SEA has billed taxpayers for the processing work.
Administrators cost the government — at more than $654,000
annually — more than twice what Labor Department administrators
overseeing a section of EEOICP have billed.
Not included are cost assessments of SEA's actual claims
processing duties. DOE has paid nearly $17 million to SEA for the
processing duties, and $18 million is authorized to be spent on a
contract that expires in December.
SEA was named as "a key employer in our state" that would be
affected by a program overhaul by Sen. Mary Landrieu, D–La., in
an October letter to Domenici. A joint House and Senate committee
agreed to leave Grassley's amendment out of the bill.
Landrieu is also a member of the Energy Committee. Several other
members of the committee co–sponsored Grassley's amendment.
"I will be asking the General Accounting Office to conduct a
broad investigation into how SEA got this contract," Grassley
said Tuesday. "I will also ask GAO to analyze the mysterious way
that SEA, the Energy Department and the Navy are managing this
contract."
Grassley spokeswoman Beth Pellett Levine said following the
hearing Tuesday that the senator's testimony serves notice to the
Energy Committee "that there is a problem," though it's unclear
if the body will take further action on his remarks.
DOE officials say they're doing everything they can to help
expedite the claims process. New rules published last week
outline changes to the program's "physician panel" system they
say will cut the time between filing a claim and receiving
notification.
Physician panels — which determine whether a claimant is eligible
for compensation — have been changed from having three members to
only one.
"(It) will have the immediate effect of increasing the number of
panels available to review completed applications," states a
Federal Register entry published March 24.
The Hawk Eye 800 S. Main St., Burlington Iowa 52601 319-754-8461
Front Desk · 319-754-6824 FAX · 1-800-397-1708 Toll Free
*****************************************************************
50 Pahrump Valley Times: DEPLETED URANIUM Nellis ponders range cleanup
March 31, 2004
By MARK WAITE PVT
The plans to dump 77,000 tons of highly radioactive nuclear waste
at Yucca Mountain aren't all that's glowing in the desert not far
from Pahrump.
A sparse crowd attending an open house at the Pahrump Community
Center Thursday evening heard U.S. Air Force representatives talk
about 68,000 pounds of depleted uranium that have accumulated in
130 tanks used at a test range near Indian Springs by pilots
training at Nellis Air Force Base.
Air force officials are conducting an environmental assessment
at the request of the State of Nevada to determine how to dispose
of the depleted uranium.
The depleted uranium - so-called because it's 40 percent less
radioactive than normal uranium - is touted for its strength,
being twice as dense as lead. However the radioactivity is weak
enough it can't pass through paper or skin, according to a fact
sheet provided at the open house.
Nellis AFB spokesman Mike Estrada said depleted uranium was
first introduced by the Air Force in 1975.
"A tank killer is what it's originally designed for," Estrada
said. "We think it'll be used in the force another 20 years. It
was scheduled to be retired after the first Iraq war."
The famous television footage of the "Highway of Death" leading
out of Kuwait after the Gulf War in 1991 showed tanks destroyed
by rounds of depleted uranium fired from A-10 aircraft, he said.
"We stopped testing it for several years at the request of the
Fish and Wildlife Service because there just wasn't a lot of
studies out there. We resumed testing a few years ago," Estrada
said.
"We think there's about 68,000 pounds of depleted uranium out
there. Each round is about six-tenths of a pound," he said.
The U.S. Air Force fact sheet on depleted uranium notes a study
conducted by the Air Force from 1994-2001 showed there was no
detectable migration of depleted uranium in the soil after the
rain; the particles remained concentrated in the target strike
zone.
U.S. Air Force Capt. Tony Dao said the first environmental
assessment limited the Air Force to firing 7,900 rounds of
depleted uranium per year. He said the hazards of heavy metals
like lead and tungsten are probably more hazardous than the
uranium.
Depleted uranium is also used in the armor plating in tanks,
X-ray shielding and drill bits, Dao said.
Jim Campe, program manager for Nellis AFB compliance with the
National Environmental Policy Act, said contractors clean the
projectiles on the ground. Brooks Air Force Base in San Antonio,
Texas will be in charge of disposing of the depleted uranium in a
licensed facility, he said. One of the options for a disposal
site is at the Nevada Test Site, which already accepts low level
nuclear waste.
There were published news reports veterans in the Gulf War were
suffering health effects from the depleted uranium.
"There hasn't been a direct relation between exposure to DU and
what they call Gulf War Syndrome," U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. Mike
Flynn said. But he added, "People exposed to friendly fire
incidents are being monitored."
"That's been studied, there's lots of studies by the Department
of Defense," Estrada said when asked the same question. "To my
knowledge there haven't been any health effects."
The training range, target 63-10, is located past the Point
Bravo entrance to Nellis AFB off U.S. Highway 95, about 12 miles
southeast of Indian Springs, Flynn said. Cameras focus on the
site to see if pilots hit the tank targets, which take up the
size of two football fields, he said.
Flynn said with only 7,900 rounds permitted per year, only a
small number of sorties carry the depleted uranium payloads.
"That's more than 24 trigger pulls on an A-10," he said.
If a plane crashes, Flynn said the first question that is asked
is if the pilot is OK, the second question is what was on the
aircraft.
"For the most part, every airplane that leaves we know what's on
it," Flynn said. When asked if the depleted uranium was in a safe
storage container in case of a crash, he said, "For the most part
it's all self-contained."
The environmental assessment is due out in June. The fact sheet
handed out at the hearing noted the Nevada Test and Training
Range is the only air-to-ground gunnery range in the U.S. cleared
to use depleted uranium munitions. The air force is debating
whether to cut out the uranium from the tanks, dispose of the
contaminated tanks entirely or take no action at all.
Written comments may be addressed to Mike Estrada, Air Warfare
Center/Public Affairs Office, 4370 N. Washington Blvd. Suite 223,
Nellis AFB 89191. The comment deadline is April 20.
For comment or questions, please e-mail
webmaster@pahrumpvalleytimes.com
[webmaster@pahrumpvalleytimes.com] Copyright © Pahrump Valley
Times, 1997 - 2003
*****************************************************************
51 Las Vegas RJ: DOE looks at trucking waste to Yucca site
Wednesday, March 31, 2004
Unsure when rail line will be complete, energy officials examine
backup plan By STEVE TETREAULT
STEPHENS WASHINGTON BUREAU
WASHINGTON -- Unsure whether they can get a railroad built in
time, Energy Department officials are dusting off a backup plan
that would ship radioactive spent fuel by truck through rural
Nevada for the initial years of the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste
repository.
Shielded nuclear waste casks that are sized to be carried by
trucks would be placed onto rail cars at nuclear reactors and
shipped to a Nevada transfer station, most likely at Caliente,
according to an internal DOE analysis performed this month.
There, the casks would be rolled onto specially designed
tractor-trailers and hauled to the repository. A DOE document
obtained this week indicates a probable truck route travels 330
miles north and west to Tonopah along federal and state roads,
and then south on U.S. Highway 95 to Yucca Mountain.
DOE spokesman Allen Benson confirmed Tuesday the department is
developing a transportation backup plan.
"It's possible that we won't have a rail line when we are ready
to ship, and so we have to have a contingency," Benson said.
"You have to be prepared, and that's what this is."
The contingency assumes nuclear waste would be shipped to the
repository by truck for the first six years of repository
operations, which DOE says will begin in 2010. After six years,
it assumes a railroad would be up and running to the site 100
miles northwest of Las Vegas.
DOE is expected soon to formalize a 319-mile corridor from
Caliente to the repository as its preferred rail route. The
possible route for truck shipments generally tracks the proposed
rail line.
A seven-page analysis was completed by DOE's Office of National
Transportation for the Yucca Mountain Project. It did not detail
the number of potential truck shipments through Nevada over the
six-year period.
Robert Halstead, a consultant for the Nevada Agency for Nuclear
Projects, said the state was aware of the department's study and
has begun to examine it.
Halstead estimated truck shipments through rural Nevada could
increase from about 600 the first year to 2,200 annually by the
fourth, fifth and sixth years. Benson would not comment on the
estimate, saying DOE was developing its numbers.
Benson said the existence of a backup plan does not mean DOE is
conceding it cannot have a railroad built by 2010, although the
Yucca Mountain Project calendar suggests it might be a tough
chore to meet that target.
DOE estimates a 46-month schedule to build a Nevada rail line,
but officials say they can't break ground until they receive a
construction authorization from the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission that might not materialize until 2007 or 2008 at the
earliest.
Benson said the 46 month rail timeline was "a guesstimate.
We're obviously looking at ways to speed that up."
Halstead said state officials will demand DOE perform more
detailed environmental studies if it wants to move forward. If
not, the matter could provide fodder for another Nevada lawsuit
against the Yucca program, he said.
The idea of shipping high level nuclear waste by truck through
rural Nevada drew a thumbs down from Nye County Commission
Chairman Henry Neth. The likely truck route would carry spent
nuclear fuel through Warm Springs, Tonopah and Beatty, and
through Goldfield in Esmeralda County, he said.
DOE studied the truck-cask-on-railcar concept years ago but
concluded in an environmental impact study it would not be
practical to be carried out over an entire 24-year repository
shipping campaign.
Analysts concluded at the time it would add $1 billion to the
program's cost and require a five-fold increase in needed
shipping casks and railcar shipments. Probably the single
biggest show-stopper," Halstead said, are potential safety
questions surrounding the transport of truck casks on rail cars.
Truck casks are inherently more vulnerable to high temperature
fires and are more vulnerable to terrorism and sabotage,"
Halstead said.
Copyright Las Vegas Review-Journal
*****************************************************************
52 Las Vegas SUN: Reid questions payment to law firm
By Suzanne Struglinski
WASHINGTON -- Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., questioned the Yucca
Mountain Project's top official today about the Energy
Department's intention to pay a law firm up to $45 million to
defend the department's license application.
The Energy Department announced last week that it hired Hunton
&Williams to work on the license application for the proposed
nuclear waste site at Yucca, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
Department spokesman Joe Davis said the contract has a limit of
$45 million over five years, but the actual amount paid will
depend on the amount of work completed.
"That seems like a lot of money to me," Reid told Margaret Chu,
the Yucca Mountain project director, "Your staff should be
competent enough to draft and assemble the application itself."
"Given the incredibly technical nature of this application, how
is it possible for a bunch of lawyers to add $45 million in value
to this process?" Reid said at a Senate Appropriations Energy and
Water Subcommittee hearing today.
"While I am hopeful that Hunton &Williams will not have any of
the obvious conflicts of interests that your previous law firm
did, Winston &Strawn, I will be keeping a close eye on the
staffing and billing of this legal team," He said.
Reid is the top Democrat on the subcommittee, which controls the
project's budget each year. Reid asked Chu to answer the
questions at a later time.
Reid also took issue with the department reaching a $4.5 million
settlement with LeBoeuf, Greene and MacRae, a firm that sued when
it did not get the original Yucca contract
"That is a lot of money for a law firm that did not one single
minute of work for the American taxpayers on this matter," Reid
said.
LeBoeuf sued when Winston &Strawn won a $16.5 million contract
to work with the Energy Department on the project. It withdrew in
2001 after conflict-of-interest allegations surfaced.
Davis said Hunton &Williams has been hired to lead the
department's efforts to present its case to the NRC. "The firm
will review any legal work done, including by Winston &Strawn, as
necessary in preparing for the NRC proceeding," Davis said.
*****************************************************************
53 Las Vegas SUN: Nuclear waste could move by truck
By Suzanne Struglinski
WASHINGTON -- The Energy Department has evaluated if it can
move nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain via truck through Nevada if
a new rail line cannot be finished in time, documents show.
A seven-page memo issued March 10 from Gary Lanthrum, director
the office of National Transportation at Yucca Mountain,
includes an analysis that studies how to get spent nuclear fuel
to Yucca "if a new rail line in Nevada were not completed by the
time a repository at Yucca Mountain were licensed by the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission," according to the memo.
The department plans to accept waste at the site by 2010.
The Energy Department has said in the past it prefers the
"mostly rail" option, in which waste would be shipped to Nevada
mainly via train. The department has not yet issued its final
decision on which specific mode of transportation it will use.
To get the nuclear waste to the proposed storage site at Yucca,
90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, it could use legal-weight
trucks, heavy-haul trucks or transfer waste to another rail line.
The analysis showed that using a national rail plan but moving
the waste to the site in Nevada via lightweight truck would
still fall under an environmental impact statement done in 2002.
Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., said today that based on recent truck
accidents, there is bound to be some type of accident when this
waste starts moving across the country.
"This is more than a truckload of fertilizer," Reid said.
The nuclear industry maintains that the shipping spent fuel is
safe, with even the one of the worst case scenario tests
releasing just a few ounces of radioactive material.
*****************************************************************
54 Las Vegas SUN: Nevada lists nuke rail line woes
Planned transport would disrupt much in state
By Cy Ryan SUN
CAPITAL BUREAU
CARSON CITY -- A proposed railroad line that would stretch from
the Caliente area to Yucca Mountain for the transportation of
nuclear waste would disrupt mining, ranching and recreational
activities in Nevada, the state says.
The rail line, even without an accident, would cause health
hazards to workers, could cross land that is sacred to Native
Americans and could interfere with the applications of water
rights sought by the Southern Nevada Water Authority, the state
wrote to federal officials Monday.
The comments were in the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects'
official response to the proposal of the Department of Energy to
withdraw 308,600 acres for the 300-mile line. "DOE's (the Energy
Department's) request for an administrative land withdrawal is
unnecessary and an unwarranted restriction of other legitimate
public uses of these federal lands within Nevada," the state's
filing noted.
The state is asking the Bureau of Land Management, which
controls the land, to reject the application of the Energy
Department, saying the application is premature. Lawsuits are
pending that challenge the selection of Yucca Mountain.
"In light of this pending litigation, BLM should defer any
action on DOE's land withdrawal request pending the outcome of
the state's legal challenges," said the state. It also alleged
the Energy Department's application was technically defective.
It said the BLM should cancel its decision to set aside the
area for two years before it makes a final decision.
The state said the Energy Department has failed to draft a
national transportation plan to route the radioactive waste to
Nevada from other states. And it said that there have not been
any public hearings on the application to withdraw the land from
public use.
The Energy Department plan calls for a corridor one mile wide
for the trains, but the state says that is "widely excessive"
and should be only one-quarter of a mile at the most. It says
that of the five rail access options, the Energy Department's
preferred route is the second-longest, at 319 miles, and the
most expensive, at $880 million. And the route "will be
challenged by rugged topography" including four mountain
crossings that range up to 6,293 feet above sea level.
The Bureau of Land Management must perform an Environmental
Impact Statement before taking any action, the state office
said. It also said the Energy Department's studies were
"woefully inadequate."
The state agency said ranchers who have grazing allotments and
access to the lands in question will be affected in Meadow
Valley, Reveille Valley and Oasis Valley.
Railroad yards, construction camps and access roads would limit
grazing areas for ranchers. And those ranchers have never even
been informed about the Energy Department's intent to carve out
this corridor, the state's filing alleges.
Existing mining claims may be located within the one-mile
corridor of the proposed line. And the withdrawal of this land
will curtail mineral exploration, the state response says.
"The entire Caliente corridor lies within lands claimed by the
Western Shoshone Nation under the Ruby Valley Treaty," according
to the filing. "DOE has acknowledged that the corridor may cross
traditional holy lands important to the Southern Paiute, Western
Shoshone, and Owens Valley Paiute and Shoshone People."
There could be "significant impacts on water resources" if the
Energy Department gains control of these lands, the state said.
It added that the BLM should evaluate the impact of the land
withdrawal on the applications for water rights filed by the
Southern Nevada Water Authority to supply Las Vegas. "In
addition, rights of way the Authority has for future pipeline
corridors might be transected by the proposed rail corridor,"
the state said.
There are a number of areas located within or adjacent to the
lands that are currently under consideration for designation as
federal wilderness areas, according to the comments by the state.
The state also said the BLM should evaluate the impact to
threatened and endangered species as well as to the sensitive
lands in the more than 300,000 acres to be withdrawn.
An accident or a terrorist attack along the route could result
in the rupturing of a rail cask containing spent nuclear fuel.
Cleanup costs could exceed $10 billion, the state said.
Even without an accident the cumulative routine radiation from
the shipping casks could pose a health threat to certain
transportation workers, the state said.
In extreme cases, these workers could receive large enough
doses to increase their risk of cancer by 10 percent or more,
the state said.
"Even without an accident or incident, property values near
routes could decline by 3 percent or more. In the event of an
accident, residential property values along shipping routes
could decline between 8 percent and 34 percent, depending upon
the severity of the accident," the state's filing said.
It's premature for the BLM to act on this application in part
because transportation of the spent fuel could not begin until
2010 and even if the state can't stop Yucca Mountain, shipments
probably won't start until 2015 or later, the filing noted.
The DOE's plan is to haul 70,000 metric tons of heavy metal of
spent nuclear fuel and high level radioactive waste to Yucca
Mountain over 24 years. The plans call for a train with two
3,000-horsepower, diesel-electric locomotives pulling one to
five rail cars containing the waste. There would be buffer cars
and escort cars. There would be one to five trains per week.
The state said if the BLM plans to process the application, it
should, at a minimum, first hold public hearings in Las Vegas,
Reno, Caliente and Tonopah.
+ Nuclear waste could move by truck
*****************************************************************
55 Bradenton Herald: Manatee mulls mining codes about radiation, restoration
| 03/31/2004 |
KEVIN O'HORAN Herald Staff Writer
PALMETTO - Zeroing in on tougher radiation and reclamation
standards, Manatee County officials took another run Tuesday at
rewriting their phosphate mining codes.
The latest proposal in a long-running debate would clamp down on
the amount of radiation allowed at mining or mined sites, while
ratcheting up the type of reclamation required.
"We're looking at a holistic approach for restoration, instead of
the tree-for-tree, acre-for-acre approach now," said Rob Brown,
Manatee's senior environmental administrator.
"This would look at the value of a site, at the types of
ecosystems, the water courses, the integral habitat."
Manatee leaders have been looking for months for a better way to
regulate mining. But they've redoubled their review - with county
and planning commissioners meeting jointly Tuesday - as the
phosphate pits sweep steadily southward and into Manatee.
Already, IMC Phosphates Co. has started mining, or is in the
process of seeking permits to mine, a host of its properties in
and around Manatee - some 5,000 acres in the county and another
40,000 acres bordering it.
And the company owns outright some 21,000 acres in the county,
according to records kept by the Manatee Property Appraiser's
Office, with other mining firms like Cargill Fertilizer eyeing
thousands more acres here.
Commissioners slowed the mining march somewhat in October 2002,
slapping down an 18-month moratorium on new projects. They'll
meet April 20, two days before the freeze is due to thaw, to
consider extending it by five more months.
In the meantime, as the pages have fallen off the calendar,
they've held a series of workshops to discuss the host of issues
that come with the mines. And just as time has brought more
mining, it also has brought more complexity.
Where commissioners of years past concerned themselves mainly
with making sure mining outfits pushed dirt back into place, the
latest group wrestles with the intricacies of ecosystem balance
and the nuances of radiation physics.
"It was euphemistically called a 'land-moving' ordinance,"
Commissioner Pat Glass said of the mining codes originally passed
in 1981. "Now, today, it's a 'mind-boggling' ordinance."
So, they've turned to the experts.
Peter Hubbell, former executive director at the Southwest Florida
Water Management District and currently a consultant with
Tampa-based Water Resource Associates, has helped draft the new
reclamation approach.
The plan he penned not only would adopt the holistic approach for
a site, but it also would bring Manatee in line with neighboring
Hillsborough County, for which Hubbell also is helping rewrite
restoration plans.
"The whole idea of reclamation," said Karen Collins-Fleming,
director of Manatee's environmental management department, "is
not to look at just what you have here."
It's also the approach experts have recommended for dealing with
radiation issues, even if the experts don't agree on just where
to look.
The county's consultant, Charles Roessler, formerly the chief
health physicist with Florida's radiological and occupation
health division, would set strict standards to minimize the risk
for two lead exposures: direct while outside and from radon
buildup in structures.
He back-calculated his standards based on the strict guidelines
offered up by the National Council on Radiation Protection - a
coalition with members such as the American Medical Association
and the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission - and the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency.
But mining industry leaders would rather the standards hold to
EPA proposals used elsewhere, standards roughly double those
spelled out in the county's draft. And they seized on Roessler's
calculations that nearly 9 percent of land already mined wouldn't
meet the new codes.
"That is, of course, some concern," said Patricia Petruff, an
attorney representing IMC. "We need to know what to do about
outliers that never meet the standards."
Also up in the air is the issue of what to test.
The draft proposal put together by county staff would not require
testing of lakes, wetlands or clay settling ponds. While Florida
code requires testing of lakes, as well as other surface and
ground waters, no mandate for clay pond tests didn't sit well
with some.
Down the road, said David Wernicke, a planning commission member,
"Will the sitting commission at that time say, 'Why didn't this
commission of 20 years ago do something about the problem?' "
*****************************************************************
56 Mercury News: Navy reaches deal with S.F. on transfer of polluted shipyard
| 03/31/2004 |
By LISA LEFF
Associated Pres
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - U.S. Navy and San Francisco officials have
ironed out their differences over transferring a polluted former
shipyard to the city, a deal that paves the way for the
one-of-a-kind waterfront property to be cleaned up and developed.
The agreement signed by the Navy today appeared to end more than
a decade of friction between federal and local officials over the
fate of the old Hunters Point Naval Shipyard, which closed in
1974 and has been on the list of highly contaminated Superfund
sites since 1989.
The 936-acre site, of which about 443 acres are usable, is the
largest tract of undeveloped land in San Francisco. Located on
the city's southeastern corner, it abuts the bay and a
neighborhood that once housed shipyard workers but has become
plagued by poverty and persistent violence.
City officials hope their plans for the parcel will serve as an
economic engine that can help revitalize the Bayview-Hunters
Point area.
``Finally getting this document approved by the Navy means we can
move forward with economic development,'' said Jesse Blout,
director of the city's Office of Economic and Job Development.
``We are talking about jobs, we are talking about affordable
housing and we are talking about open space.''
The plan has been in the works for years but repeatedly stalled
as the Navy and the city haggled over who would pay to rid the
shuttered shipyard of radioactive waste, asbestos and PCBs. Under
the agreement, the Navy will be responsible for the cleanup,
giving selected parcels to the city when they meet environmental
standards for their various future uses, Blout said.
The first 78 acres, which is close to receiving regulatory
approval, could be transferred to the city's control as early as
late May, he said. The city's plans call for 1,600 housing units
and 300,000 square feet of commercial space to be built by a
private developer on the parcel, with another 34 acres remaining
as open space.
Other parcels will cede to the city over the next few years as
they are rid of hazardous materials from past military activity.
So far, the federal government has committed $313 million toward
the restoration of Hunters Point, which the Navy actively
operated from 1939 to 1974.
``This is a crucial agreement for the Bayview Hunters Point
community, which establishes important environmental
protections,'' said House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, who
helped broker the agreement over the long negotiations. ``It is a
strong step toward economic revitalization and opportunity, a
safe environment, and a renewed sense of community.''
The Mercury News |
*****************************************************************
57 heraldtribune.com: Manatee County officials sort out phosphate standards
Wednesday, March 31
BY KRISTI CECCAROSSI
MANATEE COUNTY -- In May 2001, the county began to revise its
20-year-old phosphate mining ordinance.
Nearly three years later, the kinks are still being worked out of
the highly technical document. And just how long it will take is
still a question.
But at a work session Tuesday, the county commissioners and
planning commissioners sat down together to talk about the
project.
What is still to be decided: the condition in which mining
companies must leave the land once they are done with it.
The existing ordinance requires only that the land be returned to
pre-mining radiation levels.
County staff want to see companies not only restore the radiation
levels, but also guarantee that the land is suitable for any kind
of future development.
The phosphate industry wants to keep the old wording.
On Tuesday, county staff made the case for the tougher
requirements.
When they were finished, IMC attorney Patricia Petruff argued for
adoption of the less stringent standards set by the federal
Environmental Protection Agency.
But in an interview after the meeting, Rob Brown, senior
environmental administrator for the county, said the EPA
standards are not enough.
"Most of the EPA standards were born of uranium fields in the
Midwest," he said. "You have to understand: Florida is a very
different story."
The state is one of the few with any phosphate mining at all.
The work session was organized so county staff could get some
feedback from the joint commissions on how to proceed with the
ordinance.
But, as Brown said, trying to explain the technical nuances of
the issue can be a difficult task.
That was evidenced when Charles Roessler, a consultant hired by
the county, spent 45 minutes detailing radiation standards.
County Commissioner Amy Stein told him she had "hit a wall" with
the depth of the information; County Commissioner Jane von
Hahmann agreed.
The staff will give it another go on April 20, this time at a
County Commission meeting, where IMC is expected to ask for an
extension of the moratorium on phosphate mining applications.
The company objected to the moratorium when the commission
enacted it in October 2002, but now wants it to continue for a
while.
"We just want to make sure we have sufficient time to get all of
the issues worked out in the new ordinance," Petruff said. Last
modified: March 31. 2004 12:00AM
heraldtribune.com
© Sarasota Herald-Tribune. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
58 Australian: Scientist dumps on site for N-waste
[April 01, 2004]
By Rebecca DiGirolamo
THE commonwealth's proposal to build a radioactive waste dump in
South Australia is "so clearly deficient" that the nation's
nuclear watchdog must reconsider its approval process, an
independent scientist has warned.
Griffith University professor Ian Lowe has raised "significant
unanswered questions" in a document released yesterday to assist
Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency chief
executive officer John Loy in deciding on whether to allow the
dump.
Dr Loy will make the final decision on the unusual three-in-one
licence application of the Department of Education Science and
Training to site, construct and operate a low-level radioactive
repository near Woomera.
Professor Lowe says the material "supplied by the applicant
(DEST) and the evidence given ... raise very serious questions
about the capacity of the applicant to manage the project
effectively to guarantee public accountability".
"It is difficult to see how the proposal could be approved unless
those concerns can be resolved," he said.
Fundamental to his concerns is the failure by DEST to provide
information on the transport of waste, the existing inventory of
waste and waste acceptance criteria until after licence approval.
It's unlikely Dr Loy could license the dump before August, which
means licensing is likely to fall in the federal election
campaign.
The South Australian Government is promising to make the dump an
election issue and is driving legal action opposing the dump
process through the Federal Court.
© The Australian
*****************************************************************
59 MSNBC: Clean-up at old missile site begins
By Sherriene Jones
KSNT-TV March31, 2004
March 30 - Clean-up at the old missile site near Wamego began
Monday. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers found unacceptable
levels of TCE at the site and in nearby water wells in August of
2002.
TCE is a chemical used to clean metal.The U.S. Air Force used the
chemical to clean a nuclear missile kept at the site.
Phase one of the clean-up focuses on the underground sumps and
sediment traps.
Dedra Boggs came to see the clean up work first hand - she lives
just down the hill.
"We've been working on paperwork for quite a long time," said
Boggs."To actually see some physical action going on I think is
going to be really encouraging to residents."
Project manager Saqib Khan understands resident's frustration
with how long the project is taking.
"There are a lot of factors involved," explained Khan."We have to
study it.We have to find out where the sources are.Otherwise
we'll be wasting taxpayers money if we do a clean up and then
find out if we've left something behind.It does take time."
Engineers found TCE in Boggs' well.
"The only thing we knew about TCE was that it was a possible
carcinogen and that we'd been drinking it for 20 plus years and
we didn't have any information," said Boggs.
Khan says the Corps also is offering to pay to have 74 homes
connected to the rural water system in Pottawatomie County.He
says that way residents will a permanent source of water that's
safe and reliable.
Boggs encourages her neighbors to accept the water hook-up.
"This is a one time thing and they need to understand that," said
Boggs."When they're approached to be offered that rural water
option they need to strongly consider what their future option
are if they refuse to take it at that time."
Phase one of the clean-up is expected to take two weeks.Then
crews will focus on the soil that's contaminated.
© 2004 MSNBC.com
*****************************************************************
60 Reuters: Government told to clean up Sellafield
Wed 31 March, 2004 06:30
STRASBOURG, France (Reuters) - The European Union has told
Britain to clean up Sellafield nuclear plant or face fines,
losing patience with London's long refusal to allow full safety
inspections.
The EU executive said Britain had failed to allow EU inspections
to make sure nuclear material did not end up in nuclear weapons.
"The UK operator British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL) has failed to
comply with the... rules concerning accounting for nuclear
material," European Commission chief spokesman Reijo Kemppinen
told a news conference on Tuesday.
BNFL had also not allowed full access to "Commission inspectors
to nuclear material to check the nature and quality and quantity
of the material," Kemppinen said.
The Commission, which polices nuclear safety across the 15-nation
bloc, has asked Britain to devise a plan to clean up Sellafield
by June 1, extending London's deadline by an extra month than
originally planned.
The problem centres on B30, a series of reinforced concrete ponds
that store radioactive waste under water at Sellafield.
"It is impossible to determine accurately the quantities of
material stored and on the spot inspections cannot take place
because of the high level of radiation and poor visibility in the
part of the facility concerned," the Commission said in a
statement.
If state-owned BNFL does not comply with the decision, the
Commission could fine the company.
Greenpeace welcomed the decision, saying the 50-year old B30
ponds contained 1.3 million tonnes of plutonium, posing a major
risk for workers and people living nearby.
"The UK Government and BNFL have prevaricated for years despite
the fact that they knew there was a huge problem," said
Greenpeace nuclear campaigner Jean McSorley, adding that the
Commission should have acted 14 years earlier.
*****************************************************************
61 NRC: List of spent fule storage casks
FR Doc 04-7163
[Federal Register: March 31, 2004 (Volume 69, Number 62)] [Rules
and Regulations] [Page 16769] From the Federal Register Online
via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr31mr04-2]
List of Approved Spent Fuel Storage Casks: NAC-UMS Revision,
Confirmation of Effective Date AGENCY: Nuclear Regulatory
Commission.
ACTION: Direct final rule: Confirmation of effective date.
SUMMARY: The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is confirming
the effective date of March 31, 2004, for the direct final rule
that was published in the Federal Register on January 16, 2004
(69 FR 2497). This direct final rule amended the NRC's
regulations to revise the NAC International, Inc., NAC-UMS cask
system listing within the ``List of Approved Spent Fuel Storage
Casks'' to include Amendment No. 3 to Certificate of Compliance
Number 1015.
EFFECTIVE DATE: The effective date of March 31, 2004, is
confirmed for this direct final rule.
ADDRESSES: Documents related to this rulemaking, including
comments received, may be examined at the NRC Public Document
Room, located at One White Flint North, 11555 Rockville Pike,
Rockville, MD 20852. These same documents may also be viewed and
downloaded electronically via the rulemaking Web site
(http://ruleforum.llnl.gov
[http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/leaving.cgi?from=leaving
FR.html&log=linklog&to=http://ruleforum.llnl.gov] ). For
information about the interactive rulemaking Web site, contact
Ms. Carol Gallagher (301) 415-5905; e-mail CAG@nrc.gov
[CAG@nrc.gov] . FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Jayne M.
McCausland, Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards,
U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC 20555,
telephone (301) 415-6219, e-mail jmm2@nrc.gov [jmm2@nrc.gov] .
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: On January 16, 2004 (69 FR 2497), the
NRC published a direct final rule amending its regulations in 10
CFR part 72 to revise the NAC International, Inc., NAC-UMS cask
system listing within the ``List of Approved Spent Fuel Storage
Casks'' to include Amendment No. 3 to Certificate of Compliance
Number 1015. This amendment adds an alternate poison material,
revises fuel assembly dimensions, revises thermal analyses,
increases Boiling Water Reactor fuel assembly weight, and
incorporates Interim Staff Guidance-11 revision provisions. The
amendment also reorganizes Section 6.5 of the Safety Evaluation
Report, revises Technical Specification A.5.5, and requests
several editorial and administrative changes. In the direct final
rule, NRC stated that if no significant adverse comments were
received, the direct final rule would become final on March 31,
2004. The NRC did not receive any comments that warranted
withdrawal of the direct final rule. Therefore, this rule will
become effective as scheduled.
Dated at Rockville, Maryland, this 25th day of March, 2004.
For the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Michael T. Lesar, Chief, Rules and Directives Branch, Division of
Administrative Services, Office of Administration.
[FR Doc. 04-7163 Filed 3-30-04; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 7590-01-P
*****************************************************************
62 AU ABC: Jabiru demands answers on water contamination »
ABC Northern Territory
[http://abc.net.au/]
Reporter: Fiona Churchman
Wednesday, 31 March 2004
An intense focus from Jabiru locals
It's been an unusual week for residents of the Top End community
of Jabiru.
First it was revealed drinking water at the neighbouring Ranger
Uranium Mine had become contaminated with uranium.
Secondly, the mine, which employs one in five Jabiru residents
and is by far Jabiru's main employer, was closed.
Then 12 workers reported feeling sick after the incident, and
were tested for the effects of radiation and chemicals in the
water.
All of this has created many questions in the minds of workers
and community members, about how such an incident could occur;
what the short and long-term impacts might be and whether it
could happen again.
Energy Resources of Australia, which operates the mine, says it's
been holding daily forums with workers about the contamination,
but it took the community itself to organise a public forum, open
to everyone.
The Federal Government's Supervising Scientist Dr Arthur Johnston
presented his findings so far about the impact of the incident,
which include that a related leak of process water from a holding
tank near Jabiru Airport caused no harm to the environment of
Kakadu National Park.
Dr Johnston was also able to reassure workers who showered in or
drank the contaminated water about their exposure to radiation.
"Our initial estimates of dose that anyone could have received
resulting the ingestion or consumption of water were actually
very low.
"They are lower for example than the radiation which you and I
and everyone in this room is exposed every year of our lives
because of the occurance of radio nuclides in the natural
environment," says Dr Johnston.
Also at the forum was the General Manager of Operations at
Ranger, Simon Prebble, and both he and Dr Johnston fielded
questions about the possible long term health affects of exposure
to chemicals in the water.
"Once we've received the advice from the experts that the company
have employed and the experts we have engaged, we hope that we
might be in a position in the not so distant future to provide
similar assurances on the longer term effects of chemicals but
I'm not going to presume any results from that," says Dr
Johnston.
Mr Prebble answered questions about a water contamination
incident at the mine in 1983 and whether if this has happened
before, it could happen again.
"The whole subject of the investigation we're carrying out at the
moment is to answer just that.
"How could this happen? We need to know and we need to make sure
it can never happen, so we're right in the heart of our
investigation, OSS are carrying out their own investigation, the
Northern Territory Government are carrying out an investigation
as well," he said.
Someone who made his message on the contamination very clear was
Andy Ralph from the Gundjehmi Aboriginal Corporation, which
represents the traditional owners of the area.
"There's been reports of lots of incidents over the years, some
minor, some major at ERA and I suppose in our mind, it ranks
right up there with anything, you know, worse possible scenario
barring a mushroom cloud," he said.
Despite the forum lasting an hour and a half, afterwards some of
those locals who had put questions forward were unsure they had
been fully answered, including Jabiru resident Rod Kennett.
"Given that ERA have said that it's happened in the past, how can
it have gone unfixed, how can we be sure it won't happen again in
the future?
"And given the distress it's caused traditional owners and local
people in the town, I mean, are we going to see any kind of
apology for the stress it's caused?," he said.
"It was a very clear message that we need to wait for the report
to come out to determine what actually happened...and once ERA
have that my understanding of the message from ERA was whether
they felt they had to be in a position to offer any kind of
apology," he says.
A further report from the office of the supervising scientist on
the impact of the incident is expected to be released next week.
Hear Fiona Churchman's report from the public forum (
[http://www.abc.net.au/darwin/stories/m859309.ram] in RealMedia
*****************************************************************
63 AU ABC: Ranger mine re-opening hangs on incident report »
"Australian Broadcasting Corporation Online">
[http://abc.net.au/]
Thursday, 1 April 2004
The operators of the Range uranium mine, east of Darwin, are
continuing to prepare for the mine's re-opening.
The Office of the Supervising Scientist is completing a report on
the incident for the Northern Territory Government.
The report will include requirements that ERA will have to meet
before the mine is re-opened.
It is believed the report will be presented to the Government
today.
More than 100 maintenance and administration staff have returned
to the mine after it was closed just over a week ago because of a
water contamination incident.
Energy Resources of Australia (ERA) says it is not clear how
much money has been lost during the closure.
[http://www.abc.net.au/privacy.htm]
*****************************************************************
64 Scotsman: Dounreay makes its final batch of fuel
[http://www.scotsman.com/]
Thursday, 1st April 2004
JOHN ROSS
THE Dounreay plant reached the end of an era yesterday, when its
last batch of nuclear fuel was manufactured, 47 years after the
process began.
The site’s fuel-fabrication plant, the first active facility to
begin operating at Dounreay in January 1957, supplied fabricated
uranium elements to research reactors around the world.
Work to clean out and decommission the plant is due to begin
today and will take until 2008 to complete at an estimated cost
of £3 million. It is part of the £4.5 billion clean-up of the
Caithness complex, which will be returned to a near-greenfield
site within 60 years.
Tomorrow, the plant operators, the UK Atomic Energy Authority,
will publish a summary of its decommissioning plan over the next
two years, which will be worth £313 million.
The fuel-fabrication plant, known as D1202, manufactured about
10,000 fuel elements using a series of mechanical processes to
turn "billets" of uranium metal and aluminium into high-quality
fuel elements.
They were used to fuel research reactors in Britain and abroad
that were testing how different materials performed when exposed
to radiation.
The process also produced isotopes for industrial and medical
uses, including radiotherapy treatment for tackling cancers and
tumours.
The 20-strong D1202 workforce will now work on other duties,
including the clean-out and decommissioning of the
fuel-fabrication plant.
Norman Harrison, Dounreay’s site director, said: "The workforce
can be very proud of the quality of their workmanship over the
years and the contribution they have made to scientific,
industrial and medical research, not just in the UK but around
the world.
"Their international reputation for quality and professionalism
is one we aim to mirror in how we go about decommissioning the
site," Mr Harrison added.
D1202 was opened to manufacture fuel for Dounreay’s material
test reactor (MTR), the first reactor in Scotland to go
"critical" in 1958, and its sister reactors at the UKAEA site at
Harwell in Oxfordshire.
The MTR stopped operating in May 1969 and its fuel and water
coolant were removed by 1971. The UKAEA decided in 1998 not to
take on any new work for D1202, and the last outstanding order,
from the BR2 research reactor at Mol in Belgium, was completed
yesterday.
John Gibson, the plant manager, said: "I know there is sadness
among the staff about the end of fuel fabrication and the loss of
skills they have built up over the years. But, equally, there is
optimism about the future in decommissioning and the opportunity
to re-establish their reputation as world leaders."
But Lorraine Mann, the convener of Scotland Against Nuclear
Dumping, said: "This is fantastic news. I have been campaigning
for years for this. We are now at a new stage of decommissioning
in which Dounreay can genuinely lead the world, and I am
delighted about that."
D1202 formed part of Dounreay’s fuel cycle area (FCA) which was
strongly condemned by nuclear inspectors in 1998 and resulted in
143 safety recommendations being made for Dounreay to resolve.
Dounreay was Britain’s centre of fast reactor research and
development from 1955 until 1994. The site-restoration plan was
published in 2000 and outlined 1,500 separate projects.
• A Dounreay worker was taken to hospital yesterday thought to
be suffering from meningitis. The man was working for a
sub-contractor in the plant’s prototype fast reactor (PFR).
Two weeks ago another two men working in the PFR were
hospitalised with suspected meningitis. Both were subsequently
confirmed as suffering from meningococcal meningitis and are
recovering following treatment. [
[http://www.scotsman.com/]
*****************************************************************
65 FOX Carolina: Duke Power Wants Security Waiver for Plutonium Fuel
March 31, 2004
GREENVILLE , S.C. (AP) - A nuclear power plant that plans to test
fuel containing a small amount of weapons-grade plutonium has
asked to have some security restrictions waived.
Duke Power has asked for the waiver for its Catawba Nuclear
Station near York because the site is considered a high-risk
target with heightened security, a spokeswoman said Wednesday.
Duke is currently seeking a license from the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission to test mixed-oxide fuel, also known as MOX, in a
reactor at Catawba.
The security restrictions are required by the NRC when there is
enough plutonium in one place to make a nuclear bomb.
But Duke spokeswoman Rose Cummings said the amount of plutonium
would be small. The MOX will be 95 percent uranium and 5 percent
plutonium, she said.
Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokesman David R. McIntyre said
the commission thinks it's important to protect any nuclear
material, but security at power plants is geared more to avoid an
attack to release radiation than theft of the radioactive fuel.
Critics said the MOX fuel is a more attractive terrorist target
and easier to make into a bomb than regulators think.
There will be about 40 pounds of plutonium at Catawba, said Ed
Lyman, a staff scientist with the Union of Concerned Scientists.
It would take only 13 pounds to make a bomb the size of the one
dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, in World War II, he said.
"This is totally inconsistent with both the national regulations
and international standards," he said.
Cummings said the stronger regulations apply to places with pure
plutonium, such as the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New
Mexico.
"Once the assemblies are inside the reactor, it is very unlikely,
but not impossible, that someone could secure that," Cummings
said. "Once it's on site and in the reactor, it's highly
radioactive. It's not like someone could back a truck up to the
plant and take it out."
There has been no decision on the waiver.
Catawba has two nuclear reactors, with 193 fuel assemblies in
each reactor. One of the reactors will have four of the 193
assemblies replaced with MOX fuel rods.
© Copyright 2004 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This
[http://www.worldnow.com] All content © Copyright 2001 -
2004 WorldNow and FOX CAROLINA. All Rights Reserved.
*****************************************************************
66 Daily Lobo: WIPP to get high-level waste -
The Daily Lobo - University of New Mexico
[http://www.dailylobo.com
Published: Wednesday, March 31, 2004 The Associated Press
CARLSBAD, N.M. (AP) - The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
has approved a plan to ship some higher-level waste to the
federal government's nuclear waste dump near Carlsbad.
The DOE would like to send the first shipment of remote-handled
waste to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in 2006, said Roger
Nelson, chief scientist at the Department of Energy's Carlsbad
Field Office.
WIPP has always been scheduled to get some remote-handled waste -
waste that's so radioactive it must be kept in shielded rooms and
handled by remote control robotic equipment.
Congress approved storing remote-handled waste at WIPP in the
early 1990s when it transferred the land for the site to the DOE.
"We have determined that these documents provide an adequate
general framework for the characterization of RH (remote-handled)
waste for disposal at WIPP," the EPA said in a letter dated
Friday.
Characterization is the process of determining what's in a waste
container.
About 10 sites have remote-handled waste slated for WIPP. Such
waste is expected to make up about 4 percent of the total sent to
WIPP.
©2004 Daily Lobo, University of New Mexico
*****************************************************************
67 U.S. Newswire: NNSA to Start Moving TA-18 Nuclear Materials
3/31/2004 6:54:00 PM
To: National Desk, Energy Reporter
Contact: Bryan Wilkes of NNSA, 202-586-7371
WASHINGTON, March 31 /U.S. Newswire/ -- The National Nuclear
Security Administration (NNSA) announced today it will begin
moving special nuclear materials from Los Alamos National
Laboratory Technical Area 18 (TA-18) to the Device Assembly
Facility (DAF) at the Nevada Test Site in anticipation of
shifting the TA-18 mission to DAF.
In September 2004, NNSA will start shipping the first 50 percent
of the TA-18 programmatic special nuclear materials to Nevada.
This campaign will last approximately 18 months. NNSA will
immediately start preparing the DAF to support storage of these
nuclear materials while scheduling packaging and transportation
resources.
"Relocation of this special nuclear material is a major step in
accelerating our efforts to move TA-18 operations to the Nevada
Test Site," said NNSA Administrator Linton F. Brooks. "Getting
this material out of TA-18 and to Nevada will assist NNSA in more
quickly establishing critical national security missions in
Nevada while consolidating special nuclear materials in a newer,
more secure facility."
Since 2000, NNSA has explored options for terminating TA-18
operations, including a new underground facility at Los Alamos
National Laboratory and other Department of Energy sites such as
Argonne National Laboratory in Idaho and Sandia National
Laboratories in New Mexico. NNSA has already strengthened
security at TA-18 and has also removed more than one metric ton
of special nuclear material no longer required.
The DAF was originally constructed in the late 1980's and early
1990s in support of underground testing; however, the halt of
that mission has left the facility underutilized.
Brooks said NNSA is employing a balanced approach to relocating
the TA-18 missions and capabilities to the DAF to address
security, mission need, and taxpayer cost. DAF today is used to
support the build up of subcritical experiments and also targets
for the two stage-gas gun that operates at the test site. NNSA is
designing modifications to DAF to assume TA-18 program
responsibilities. Once modifications are complete, the remaining
special nuclear material to support the associated missions will
be moved.
The TA-18 facilities are the nation's only facilities capable of
performing general-purpose nuclear materials handling and
criticality experiments. These experiments provide unique
training to a variety of federal agencies, including DOE, NNSA,
and Nuclear Regulatory Commission personnel in areas such as
nuclear materials safety, emergency response in support of
counterterrorism activities, and safeguards and arms control in
support of programs aimed at controlling excess nuclear
materials.
/© 2004 U.S. Newswire 202-347-2770/
*****************************************************************
68 Times-News: INEEL cleanup prep work reveals broken drum
Online -- Twin Falls, Idaho
www.magicvalley.com The Times-News | AG Weekly |
The Associated Press IDAHO FALLS -- The federal government is
digging again at the nuclear waste burial ground at the Idaho
National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory.
The Pit 4 project was agreed on within the past few months by the
state and federal agencies to remove waste with high
concentrations of contaminants, officials said Tuesday.
Removal of topsoil already has begun on a half-acre of Pit 4, but
the final planning document has not been released or been
available for public comment. The U.S. Department of Energy said
it did not have a solid cost estimate yet. The plan will be
issued May 3 for a 30-day public comment period.
Tim Jackson, an INEEL spokesman, said the Superfund law allows
INEEL to take measures on the ground to prepare for the project
before it must finish all of the documentation and public comment
requirements. Actual waste retrieval has not begun.
But topsoil removal has been temporarily stalled after workers
discovered a broken waste drum buried only 4 feet below the
surface. A crew had been working on preparing a portion of the
site for two days when an excavator uncovered the broken drum on
March 20, officials said.
The 88-acre radioactive landfill used until 1970 sits above the
Eastern Snake River Plain Aquifer, which supplies water to much
of southern Idaho including the Magic Valley. Officials say
contaminants that have reached the aquifer haven't migrated off
INEEL borders.
Pit 4 follows the quick success seen this year in the small Pit 9
test project. Retrieval at Pit 9 went fast once it got started in
December after years of delays.
"I think the Pit 9 success is enabling Pit 4 to move ahead in a
more simplified and common-sense approach," said Kathleen Trever,
director of the state's INEEL monitoring program.
The Pit 9 removal technique created by contractor Bechtel BWXT
Idaho cost about $80 million and removed only about 78 cubic
yards of debris. Officials said it was too expensive to use
across the rest of the landfill.
The Pit 4 project includes removal of waste where disposal
records show high concentrations of plutonium, other radioactive
wastes and volatile chemicals used as solvents and degreasers.
Officials described targeting Pit 4 as getting "more bang for
their buck." Pit 4 contains waste from nuclear weapons production
at Rocky Flats in Colorado.
Digging at Pit 4 stopped when the barrel was discovered,
Department of Energy Project Manager Jeff Perry said.
"We want to look at what went wrong and what could happen next,"
he said.
It was no surprise that the drum was broken, Jackson said. Many
of the waste containers buried in the area are broken or
decomposing.
Tests done of the area with ground-penetrating radar, geomagnetic
and probing surveys and reviews of historical records indicated
the drums were covered with at least 6 feet of soil, Perry said.
"We were going to leave about 2 feet of soil over the drums until
we built the containment structure over that section of the pit,"
Jackson said. "Now we're re-evaluating exactly how to prepare
that section of pit before we build the containment structure."
Inside the tent, employees would work in specially designed
backhoes and forklifts to remove the drums and dirt and package
the radioactive waste for shipment out of Idaho.
The worker who discovered the shallow drum was not exposed to
anything dangerous, Jackson said. The crew covered the drum back
up with clean soil. The temporary halt is expected to last
through Tuesday, and it will not delay the waste retrieval
project, Jackson added.
There still is a dispute between the state and federal government
over whether the Energy Department must remove all of the buried
waste.
Magicvalley.com is an on-line division of The Times-News,
published daily at 132 W. 3rd St., Twin Falls, Idaho 83301
*****************************************************************
69 Oak Ridger: Housing Y-12's history
Story last updated at 12:03 p.m. on March 31, 2004
INVENTORY: The same type of document protection technologies
being used in the new Bill Clinton and Dwight D. Eisenhower
Presidential libraries will be used at the Oak Ridge storehouse.
By: Paul Parson | Oak Ridger Staff
[paul.parson@oakridger.com]
A state-of-the-art storage facility for historical records from
the Y-12 National Security Complex should be completed by this
summer.
Y-12 has more than 50,000 boxes of records dating back to the
Manhattan Project, and the federal facility is required to
preserve these records under recent federal legislation known as
the National Archive and Records Administration Act.
"There is a significant need and a legal requirement to
properly preserve these valuable records," said Dennis Ruddy,
president and general manager of BWXT Y-12, which manages the
plant for the federal government.
[http://oakridger.com/photo_pages/033104/8164.html]
Marie Moffitt/Staff
A storage facility for historical records from
the Y-12 National Security Complex is under construction in the
Oak Ridge Summit development on Pine Ridge.
Scientific &Technical Resources Inc. of Oak Ridge, which is
owned by Nat Revis, is building the facility in the Oak Ridge
Summit development on Pine Ridge. Blaine Construction is the
general contractor for the project.
Built with an all-concrete exterior, the building will have
office spaces and storage rooms that are temperature and
humidity controlled to preserve the records. It will use the
same type of document protection technologies being used in the
new Bill Clinton and Dwight D. Eisenhower presidential libraries.
Revis said construction is scheduled to be completed this
summer, with the records to be moved in shortly afterward. Under
a long-term lease with Revis' company, around eight to 10 BWXT
Y-12 personnel will operate the facility.
According to Revis, the storage facility will be the "only one
of its kind in the United States" and that a lot of time was
spent developing it. While the storage facility will be the
first building in the Oak Ridge Summit development, Revis said
he hopes other buildings follow suit.
Portions of the Y-12 facility can be seen from the Oak Ridge
Summit development. Y-12 plays a major role in the security of
the nation by its production and refurbishment of weapons
components, storage of nuclear material and prevention of the
spread of weapons of mass destruction.
*****************************************************************
70 Oak Ridger: K-25, museum fates linked?
Story last updated at 11:52 a.m. on March 31, 2004
OFFICIAL: The American Museum of Science and Energy is the hub of
our tourism effort.
By: Paul Parson | Oak Ridger Staff [paul.parson@oakridger.com]
Whether or not the city takes over ownership of Oak Ridge's
science museum might not be decided until a historical
preservation plan can be developed for an aging World War II
federal facility.
Conversations with several officials all point to one thing: The
futures of the American Museum of Science and Energy and the
massive, U-shaped K-25 building could be directly linked in some
form.
Molly Chann, 13, and her brother, Will, 11, get an up-close look
of the U-shaped K-25 building in the Oak Ridge Room at the
American Museum of Science and Energy. The Channs were visiting
from Missouri.
"I really think that the museum is going to be hung up just a
little bit until we figure out what's going to happen to K-25,"
said Oak Ridge Mayor David Bradshaw. "When that solution starts
to gel, you'll see a piece of the museum or the museum as a whole
become a part of the resolution, I think."
Based on what he's heard, Bradshaw said the museum could serve as
a focal point for tours to historical sites on the federal
government's Oak Ridge Reservation. That possibility was also
suggested in a recently released report on the K-25 preservation
effort.
Prepared by Ehrenkrantz Eckstut &Kuhn Architects, the document
offers three scenarios for preserving a portion of the K-25
building. Factoring in the inevitable demolition of the building,
the costs of these scenarios range from $475.6 million up to $537
million, with the initial preservation figures running from $4.6
million to well over $100 million.
The massive, U-shaped K-25 building covers 40 acres at the Oak
Ridge K-25 site and is viewed as a vital part of the Manhattan
Project - a secret effort for developing an atomic bomb during
World War II.
The scenarios identified in the architects' report range from
preserving just the K-25 building's footprint in pavement to
saving a 350 feet by 400 feet portion of the structure along with
the Roosevelt Cell - a piece of operating equipment that was
spruced up for a planned visit by President Franklin D. Roosevelt
that never occurred. Other scenarios and plans are also being
looked at including one by Museums+more, a company which helps
develop museums and educational experiences.
Time And Money
Federal, state and community officials involved in the
preservation effort have until April 2005 to identify an
acceptable plan and funding sources for the K-25 project. And,
based on conversations they've had, Bradshaw said that both he
and Gerald Boyd, manager of the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge
Operations office, hope to find a solution to the museum
situation this calendar year.
The issue of shifting ownership of the museum from DOE to the
city of Oak Ridge has been going on for more than three years. It
all started when DOE eliminated $1.2 million in federal funding
for the facility, leaving UT-Battelle with the responsibility for
providing a plan for the museum's long-term financial stability
under the company's contract to manage Oak Ridge National
Laboratory.
In October 2000, UT-Battelle issued a plan to DOE stating the
federal agency should relinquish control of the museum to the
city. Since then, city and DOE-related officials have been
working to reach an agreement on the fate of the museum, with a
major holdup being funding.
"At this point, discussions on the future of the Museum are
continuing at the top levels of the city and DOE contractors, as
well as community leaders who are also interested in assuring the
museum's long-term viability," said Steven Wyatt, a spokesman for
DOE's Oak Ridge Operations office.
"A number of potential initiatives have been discussed, including
the possibility of the museum focusing on the history of the
Manhattan Project," Wyatt said. "At this point in time, the
laboratory continues to be responsible for the museum and both
the lab and DOE continue to seek viable alternatives."
Like the museum, funding will be a major issue in the K-25
preservation effort. Although the costs of the scenarios proposed
by the architects factor in varying degrees of the building's
demolition, that work would be funded through DOE's cleanup
program. It's the initial preservation costs and any annual
operational costs that could pose a challenge.
"I'm all for historic preservation, but the numbers that I have
seen are very high," said U.S. Rep. Zach Wamp, R-3rd District.
Last year, a bill was introduced in both houses of Congress that
called for a study on the preservation of the historic sites of
the Manhattan Project for potential inclusion in the National
Park Service. While hearings were held earlier this month by the
National Parks Subcommittee of the Senate Committee on Energy and
Natural Resources, no action on the bill has apparently been
taken by House members since October 2003.
U.S. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., is listed as a co-sponsor of the
Senate bill, but other Tennessee elected officials, including
Wamp and U.S. Sen. Bill Frist, R-Tenn., are absent from the
sponsorship list. Wamp, however, said he supports the bill in
principle.
"I'm not sure that the National Park Service wants to take over
any former nuclear sites," said Wamp, who serves on the
subcommittee that funds the National Park Service.
"The National Park Service has a $14 billion backlog maintenance.
And, that 14 billion dollar number is so high that we've had to
employ what's called the fee demonstration program and charge at
the national parks," he said.
Heritage Tourism
Oak Ridge isn't the only place facing the task of transforming
its legacy into successful heritage tourism. However, Joe
Valentino, executive director of the Oak Ridge Convention and
Visitors Bureau, said he believes Oak Ridge is "ahead of the
game" in that area.
"The community has really embraced the heritage," Valentino said.
As examples, the tourism official cited the Secret City Excursion
Train, the Oak Ridge Driving Tour, the annual Secret City
Festival and the Children's Museum of Oak Ridge. Another example,
according to Valentino, is the American Museum of Science and
Energy, which he called the focal point for heritage tourism in
the community.
"It (the museum) is the hub of our tourism effort," he said.
Elsewhere, for example in Richland, Wash., work is under way to
preserve the historic B Reactor - the world's first
industrial-scale nuclear reactor, which was built as part of the
top-secret Manhattan Project. The plan is to turn the reactor
into a museum.
In a joint effort with the Los Alamos Historical Society and the
Los Alamos National Laboratory, the Atomic Heritage Foundation is
organizing events to commemorate the Oppenheimer Centennial and
preservation of New Mexico Manhattan Project properties at Los
Alamos under a Save America's Treasures grant.
Save America's Treasures is a public-private initiative between
the National Park Service and the National Trust for Historic
Preservation, dedicated to the celebration and preservation of
the nation's threatened cultural treasures. The program has
generated millions of dollars in public and private resources
that augment federal matching grants to help address the
country's unmet preservation needs, according to officials.
As for Oak Ridge, Valentino said it isn't hard to promote tourism
locally, but added that it does take money.
"When we go out to places to promote Oak Ridge, all we have to
say is, 'how did 75,000 people keep a secret? And, right there,
you've got people," he said. "They can't believe this actually
happened in America.
"This was a national story that had a world-changing
significance," Valention said. "It's one of the most compelling
stories in America."
*****************************************************************
71 Oak Ridger: SNS director speaks at YWCA luncheon
Story last updated at 11:44 a.m. on March 31, 2004
By: Jennifer Fern | Oak Ridger Staff jennifer.fern@oakridger.com
[jennifer.fern@oakridger.com]
Thom Mason, director of the Spallation Neutron Source, was the
guest speaker at the YWCA of Oak Ridge annual Giving Campaign
Luncheon Tuesday in the Cumberland Room of the Oak Ridge Mall.
The luncheon is a chance for the YWCA to educate the public about
the YWCA's services and programs, and to collect donations for
its campaign.
"We're here today because the YWCA needs your support," said
Jackie Jackson, executive director of the YWCA of Oak Ridge.
Marie Moffitt/Staff
Jackie Jackson, left, executive director of the YWCA of Oak
Ridge, talks with Thom Mason, director of the Spallation Neutron
Source, after the YWCA Annual Giving Campaign 2004 Luncheon. Also
shown are artist renderings of the proposed Oak Ridge High School
building plans.
Some of the programs offered by the YWCA are the shelter for
women and children, food and clothing, a 24-hour hotline,
parenting classes, sales and retail training, computer classes
and English classes. She said the YWCA is also working on a
building campaign to provide a fitness center for the community.
"We must provide community empowerment," Jackson said.
On another community issue, Mason, who serves as chairman of the
Oak Ridge Schools Education Foundation, presented the
foundation's stance on the school system and the study of Oak
Ridge High School.
"We have an excellent school system," Mason said.
He said not only is the school system something that is important
to the students, but also something that is important to the
community as a whole. He said when looking at what education is
becoming in the 21st century, the high school building is not
meeting the needs of the educational aspirations of the
community.
To guide the school system on how to meet these needs of the
community, a detailed study, funded by UT-Battelle, was done by
Heery International in Nashville. The study determined, among
other things, that most of the existing structure is structurally
sound, but needs substantial renovations. However, some portions
of the structure were found not structurally sound. Mason said
the school was built as a high school of the '60s and still is a
high school of the '60s, only it is now 2004.
Three options were provided from the Heery International study.
The options include keeping the existing programs at the current
site, creating a 21st century school at the current site and
creating a 21st century school at a greenfield site. Mason
presented the options, along with two artist renderings, to the
audience.
"That's something that I'm certainly excited about and that I
hope the community will be as well," Mason said.
Mason will be speaking about the Oak Ridge Schools Education
Foundation at the Lunch with the League at 11:45 a.m. Tuesday in
the Social Hall of the Oak Ridge Unitarian Universalist Church.
*****************************************************************
72 Oak Ridger: SNS open house Friday
Story last updated at 11:23 a.m. on March 31, 2004
from staff reports
With the Spallation Neutron Source rapidly progressing toward its
2006 completion, SNS staff members will provide the public with
an opportunity to learn about the project on Friday. The open
house will last from 4:30 p.m. until 6:30 p.m. at the project
office at 701 Scarboro Road in Oak Ridge.
SNS is an accelerator-based neutron source that will provide the
most intense pulsed neutron beams in the world. The facility will
be used for scientific research and the development of a variety
of industrial materials.
The open house will emphasize rapid progress of construction
during the past year. In addition, information will be available
about the project, including construction of the facility;
environment, safety and health performance; accelerator systems;
and SNS science and instrumentation. The public also will have a
chance to learn about employment possibilities.
*****************************************************************
73 Oak Ridger: TVA looking to cut 600 to 800 employees
Story last updated at 11:28 a.m. on March 31, 2004
KNOXVILLE. (AP) - The Tennessee Valley Authority is considering
eliminating 600 to 800 jobs in a cost-cutting move that would
represent the largest downsizing at the federal utility in a
decade.
The job cuts are part of a strategic plan adopted by TVA in
January to prepare the nation's largest public utility for
industry deregulation by reducing expenses and paying down its
multibillion-dollar debt.
TVA, a federal corporation based in Knoxville serving 8.3 million
consumers in seven states, has offered early retirement
incentives to its 13,245 employees. The number of workers willing
to volunteer is unknown.
TVA officials have said layoff notices, if needed, will go out
April 22.
"To the extent there are not enough volunteers, TVA will conduct
an involuntary reduction in force," TVA reported Tuesday in its
quarterly income statement.
"TVA expects the majority of voluntary resignations and
involuntary (layoffs) to occur in 2004. It is anticipated that
between 600 and 800 people will be affected by the change in
staffing levels," the report stated.
The report said the agency expects incentives, severance and
extended medical costs to reduce staffing will cost $27 million
to $36 million.
TVA spokesman John Moulton emphasized the number of job cuts is
"a preliminary estimate that was done back before program reviews
were complete. That number of 600 to 800 is only a forecast."
TVA officials have refused since the strategic plan was unveiled
in October to discuss any specific job reduction numbers.
A 600- to 800-employee reduction would represent 4 percent to 6
percent of TVA's work force and be the most significant cutback
since TVA eliminated 2,400 jobs in 1994. The agency employed as
many as 34,000 workers in the 1980s.
"Well, that is a pretty big ballpark," union spokesman Keith
Craig said of TVA's job reduction estimates.
Craig works for the Chattanooga local of the International
Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, which represents about 6,000
TVA employees.
Craig said he knows some workers nearing retirement age are
interested in the voluntary reduction in force.
TVA is offering one week of pay for every year worked over five
years and two years' medical benefits.
"But I haven't heard anywhere near those kinds of numbers," he
said.
TVA also is looking to reduce some of its 2,137 "staff
augmentation" workers, from secretaries to engineers, who work
alongside full-time TVA employees and some of its 10,324
contractor employees. Those would be in addition to the 600 to
800 full-time workers.
The quarterly earnings report, covering the three months ending
Dec. 31, noted that TVA already has identified $247 million in
capital expenditure reductions.
The strategic plan would lower TVA's long-term debt by $3 billion
to $5 billion during the next 10 to 12 years.
The quarterly report said TVA used a $1.5 billion advance power
purchase payment from Memphis' utility to lower its statutory
debt to $23.3 billion.
However, TVA will continue to list the $1.5 billion on its
balance sheet until the end of the 15-year power purchase deal.
For the quarter, TVA reported $70 million in net income on $1.8
billion in revenue, compared to $314 million in profit on $1.7
billion in revenue for the same quarter in the previous year.
TVA said two non-cash accounting changes elevated the year-old
income.
The utility attributed revenue gains to a rate increase adopted
last fall and a slight increase in power sales.
TVA provides electricity through 158 distributors to consumers in
Tennessee and parts of Kentucky, North Carolina, Virginia,
Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi.
On the Net: Tennessee Valley Authority: http://
[http://www.tva.gov/]
*****************************************************************
74 Pahrump Valley Times: DOE failed to track NTS water
March 31, 2004
CITIZEN ALERT CRITICIZES DEPARTMENT'S EFFORTS TO MONITOR NUCLEAR
BOMB RESIDUES
By STEVE TETREAULT PVT WASHINGTON BUREAU
WASHINGTON - The Department of Energy is failing to track the
potential risks to the public from nuclear bomb residues
traveling in groundwater beneath the Nevada Test Site, a
statewide environmental group said in a study released Monday.
The report by Citizen Alert was critical of DOE's efforts to
monitor groundwater contamination stemming from activities at
Pahute Mesa in the Test Site's northwest sector, where some of
the largest and deepest nuclear blasts were detonated beneath or
close to the water table in the 1960s and 1970s.
The study concluded that wells DOE drilled to monitor groundwater
flows were not placed in the best locations to intercept plumes
of radionuclide contamination.
Peggy Maze Johnson, Citizen Alert executive director, said DOE's
strategy wouldn't give the public enough warning of potential
troubles in water supplies.
"They have no idea at all where (radionuclides) are going, and
how fast they are getting there," Johnson said. "The probability
of detection is low."
DOE environmental official Carl Gertz said Monday monitoring
wells continue to show no traces of contamination in groundwater
beyond the Test Site.
"Our studies have been extensive," Gertz said. "There is no
immediate risk out there and in the near term there is no need to
have any urgent priority.
"We agree we need more data, and it is a matter of time to get
that data," Gertz said. "In the meantime we believe we have the
public adequately protected. There's always scientific debate
over what is the right spot for a well."
Gertz, assistant manager for environmental management, said the
DOE's strategy calls for a Pahute Mesa groundwater monitoring
network to be in place by 2022. He added the state approved the
siting of wells and DOE's overall plans for groundwater
monitoring.
Officials with the Nevada Division of Environmental Protection
could not be reached Monday night.
DOE spokesman Kevin Rohrer added the groundwater paths from the
test site generally flow towards Death Valley and not to where
they would be tapped by users in Southern Nevada.
But one of the study authors said Monday that, because of flaws
in DOE's monitoring techniques, it is possible that contaminated
groundwater has already traveled beyond the Test Site's western
boundary and toward the farming community of Oasis Valley.
Dennis Weber, a physicist who was commissioned by Citizen Alert
while working at the Harry Reid Center for Environmental Studies
at UNLV, said DOE "doesn't have enough information to really
predict where the contamination is going or how fast. If you use
their own numbers it is highly likely that contamination from
Pahute Mesa is at least off the site and on private land.
"A lot of their monitoring wells on Pahute Mesa are not
downstream from major shots so they wouldn't detect anything from
these major blast cavities," Weber said. "They are not likely to
intercept any contamination at all. It's almost as if they have
designed a system that will not intercept contamination because
they don't want to deal with it."
Gertz disagreed with the characterization. He said government has
drilled 17 wells at Oasis Valley, eight on Air Force land
adjacent to the Test Site, and another 16 or so on Pahute Mesa.
The study challenged the DOE strategy of developing computer
models to predict radioactive releases from "action units" where
bombs were detonated, including Frenchman Flat, Yucca Flat and
Ranier Mesa in addition to two sections of Pahute Mesa.
A peer review panel in 1999 found serious flaws in computer
models and data that supported them. Gertz said DOE made
corrections as a result.
But, Weber said, "With the same time and money and the same
effort, if they put some money into characterizing at least one
of (the action units) you'd have almost infinitely more
information than you do now."
Between 1951 and 1992, when nuclear weapons tests were suspended,
scientists conducted 928 nuclear tests at the Nevada Test Site,
of which all but 100 were conducted below ground.
Pahute Mesa hosted 82 underground tests. It was selected for some
of the deepest tests "because it was seismically safest and the
furthest area from Las Vegas," the Citizen Alert report said.
On the Test Site, the report noted DOE monitors 61 wells for
water quality near areas where nuclear tests were conducted.
Offsite, 31 wells and nine springs are monitored.
Portions of the report were made public in 1992 but the entire
96-page study was released only now. Johnson said it was delayed
by peer review and because of staff turnover within Citizen
Alert.
The Citizen Alert study was released alongside a national report
that examined groundwater threats from activities at the Nevada
site and 12 other government nuclear weapon facilities.
That report, issued by the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability,
shows that despite billions spent on weapons site cleanup, "DOE
has failed to eliminate the threat of contamination to major
water supplies," director Susan Gordon said.
For the Test Site, the alliance study said that detonations
"definitely left substantial contamination in and near the
subsurface," but "little is known" about the extent of
groundwater contamination.
"The direction of the plumes and extent of contamination
spreading underground is unclear," the study concluded. The
report was written by a team headed by Marvin Resnikoff, a
technical expert who also has worked with the state of Nevada on
the Yucca Mountain Project studies.
For comment or questions, please e-mail
webmaster@pahrumpvalleytimes.com
[webmaster@pahrumpvalleytimes.com] Copyright © Pahrump Valley
Times, 1997 - 2003
*****************************************************************
75 Google News Alert - nuclear
Date: Wed, 31 Mar 2004 15:39:37 -0800 (PST)
RPT-UPDATE 4-Two groups to seek new US nuclear plant license
Forbes - USA
... Reuters) - Two separate groups of companies have formed recently with
an eye toward applying for licenses that could allow the first new US
nuclear power plant ...
See all stories on this topic:
FRANCE, UK, Germany Criticize Iran Nuclear Plant
Reuters - United States
... The United States says Iran's nuclear program is a front for building
an atom bomb, while Britain, Germany and France defied Washington in September
by ...
See all stories on this topic:
ENERGY Department studying trucking waste to Nevada nuclear dump
Las Vegas Sun - Las Vegas,NV,USA
... is dusting off a backup plan to ship radioactive waste by truck through
rural Nevada in the first years of the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository.
...
See all stories on this topic:
AWARDS given for pieces on nuclear weapons, affirmative action
Access North Georgia - Gainesville,GA,USA
Several news organizations won Peabody Awards on Wednesday for their coverage
of topics ranging from nuclear weapons to transgender romance. ...
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GREENS challenge "scandalous" EU loan to Romanian nuclear site
EurActiv.com - Belgium
Romania's only nuclear power station is situated in Cernavoda, on the northern
shore of the River Danube near the Black Sea and the country's border
with ...
See all stories on this topic:
DEFENCE Chiefs Feared Soviet Nuclear Suicide Squadrons
The Scotsman - Edinburgh,Scotland,UK
British officials feared more than 50 years ago that suicide squadrons
could attack London with a deadly nuclear payload, a document showed today.
...
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IRAQIS living around nuclear site fear radiation contamination
TerraDaily
Hundreds of Iraqis living near the country's largest nuclear plant fear
for their lives as dozens of radioactive barrels from the site looted
at the end of the ...
See all stories on this topic:
PUBLIC meetings set on fate of Point Beach nuclear plant
Appleton Post Crescent - Appleton,WI,USA
MILWAUKEE — A series of public meetings set to start today will let residents
have their say on whether to keep the Point Beach nuclear plant open for
20 ...
See all stories on this topic:
SOUTH Korea says North Korea must clarify nuclear freeze offer
Channel News Asia - Singapore
SEOUL: South Korea's Foreign Minister Ban Ki-Moon said a North Korean proposal
for a nuclear freeze would be unacceptable unless the hermit state shuttered
all ...
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PAKISTAN government cleared in selling of nuclear material
Washington Times - Washington,DC,USA
A Pakistani network that covertly sold nuclear goods used government aircraft
but the Islamabad government was not involved in the transactions, a senior
State ...
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76 Innovations: Bird fall-out measures radioactive fall-out
[http://www.innovations-report.com/home.php]
Society for Experimental Biology 31.03.2004
Jim Clapp (University of Ulster) will reveal how bird droppings
can be used to measure radioactive fall-out in the environment.
Solid urate spheres found in bird excretions can be screened for
man-made pollutants such as radioactive caesium, providing a new
non-invasive way to monitor the environment. Mr. Clapp will
present his latest results today at the annual meeting of the
Society for Experimental Biology at Heriot-Watt University,
Edinburgh (29 March – 2 April 2004).
“This is a new method which does not interfere with the birds or
with the environment” explains Mr. Clapp. “There is no need to
sacrifice birds or disrupt them, which may cause them to leave
their breeding site”. The technique involves collecting solid
urate spheres found in bird droppings and testing the levels of
contaminants against the amount of uric acid in the spheres.
Solid urine is ideal since it remains in place for several days,
can be collected year-round without disturbing the birds, and
birds excrete toxins and their metabolites in their urine so it
provides a direct measure of the toxicity of their environment.
Mr. Clapp expects that this new technique can easily be extended
to test for other man-made pollutants such as heavy metals and
toxins in the near future. “If there are any concerns about a
particular site, we can identify a local bird population and use
this new technique to test the level of pollutants.” says Mr.
Clapp.
More information:
www.sebiology.org/Meetings/pageview.asp?S=2=21
31.03.2004 | Yfke van Bergen | Source: alphagalileo | CMS
by NETZGUT
*****************************************************************
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:
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