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                         NUCLEAR POLICY
 
1 [DU-WATCH] One year after the fall of Baghdad
2 US: WorldNetDaily: When intelligence is disinformation
3 India Times:  North Korea hits back at US terror report - 
4 Korea Herald: Rescuing nuclear non-proliferation   
5 Japan Times: Yabunaka to meet soon with North Korea officials in Chi
6 US: Stuart James: George W. Bush's 'Mission Accomplished'
7 US: U.S. Newswire: Investment in Energy Infrastructure is Critically
8 US: UK Independent: officials are accused of serious felony
9 US: Guardian Unlimited Books: Edward Teller by Peter Goodchild
10 [IPCRI-News-Service] IAEA: Arms no guarantee for Israel - IAEA	
11 Mehr News Agency: With Isfahan UCF Project - Envoy
 
                         NUCLEAR REACTORS
 
12 US: [DU-WATCH] the nuke next door
13 Sunday Herald: Near miss at nuclear plant - 
14 US: Rutland Herald: Fuel rod report never filed in '79 
15 Japan Times: Toshiba, GE hope to build nuclear plant in U.S.
16 ITAR-TASS: Fourth power unit at Novovoronezhskaya N-plant fully shut
17 ITAR-TASS: World has no feasible project yet to liquidate nuclear wa
18 US: Brattleboro Reformer: Search for missing fuel rods frustrating
19 Sofia Morning News: No Project Okayed for Bulgaria's 2nd N-Plant
20 Sofia Morning News: Canada Refutes Bulgarian Nuke Bribe Claims
21 US: DECATUR DAILY: Nuke waste near you: TVA poised to move Browns Fe
 
                          NUCLEAR SAFETY
 
22 US: [DU-WATCH] New wave of Pentagon attacks on UMRC
23 [DU-WATCH] WELCOME TO EU-ROPE
24 US: [Fwd: [du-list] Military officials dismiss depleted uranium fear
25 [Fwd: [du-list] New sourceDU bioassays – fi
26 US: [DU-WATCH] depleted uranium deaths could surpass worst-case
27 US: [DU-WATCH] Pentagon: Uranium didn't harm N.Y. Unit
28 DU: Afghan & Iraqi women face prospect of deformed babies
29 [RADFOOD] Tell USDA: Stronger Mad Cow Testing Needed!
30 US: NCT: Critics say proposed EPA rule threatens health 
31 US: Herald Tribune: Residents worry about tainted water from plant
32 UPI: Britain stockpiles anti-radiation pills -
 
                         NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE
 
33 US: New York Times: Bill Backs Energy Dept. in Atomic-Waste Battle
34 US: Las Vegas RJ: DOE delays Ohio nuclear waste shipments 
35 Las Vegas RJ: NEVADA REPUBLICAN PARTY CONVENTION: GOP rethinks Yucca
36 Las Vegas RJ: Friends, foes of Yucca Mountain work to shape percepti
37 Las Vegas SUN: Rural panel wants funds to study Yucca Mountain plan
38 US: Salt Lake Tribune: Nuke storage decision months away 
39 US: Salt Lake Tribune: Glossing over risks 
 
                         NUCLEAR WEAPONS
 
 
                        US DEPT. OF ENERGY
 
40 [Fwd: [NukeNet] DOE Pushes For Most Polluted Nuclear Site On Earth]
41 Contra Costa Times: Los Alamos' director extols its changes
42 sacbee.com: Review offers rare peek at nuclear lab 
43 Herald Tribune: Budget shortfall could stop work at SRS
44 Herald Tribune: Los Alamos lab director goes on offensive extolling 
45 kgw.com: EPA, Energy Department reach agreement on K Basin sludge 
46 U.S. Newswire: Energy Secretary Abraham to Address Third Annual 
47 BulletinWire News: Hanford contractor cleans up act                 
48 Boston.com: New book delves into Fernald's cruel past
49 Cincinnati Enquirer: Fernald cleanup slows down
50 Seattle Times: Local News: Pact reached on deadlines for N-cleanup
 
                          OTHER NUCLEAR
 
51 [DU-WATCH] How to order The Damned of Kosovo (VHS) in USA &
52 Google News Alert - nuclear
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                         FULL NEWS STORIES
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 1 [DU-WATCH] One year after the fall of Baghdad
 
Date: Sat, 1 May 2004 01:33:33 -0500 (CDT)

 
One year after the fall of Baghdad: how healthy is Iraq?
REPORT
of Medical Aid for the Third World
by Dr. Geert Van Moorter, M.D.
28 April 2004

based on a fact-finding mission to Iraq, March 2004

Contact: Medical Aid for the Third World, Belgium, info@g3w.be, tel. +32/2
209.23.60 geert.van.moorter@skynet.be, tel. +32/486 79.37.98

Dr. Geert Van Moorter was already in Iraq on various missions for the
Belgian non-governmental organization Medical Aid for the Third World, in
April 2002; before, during and after the war in March/April 2003; in
July/August 2003; and in March 2004. He made, together with Iraqi doctors
and health workers,  a random survey on the health situation and the health
care infrastructure in Iraq, after one year of occupation. He visited
hospitals and clinics in Baghdad and Basra. On a health conference in Basra,
he was able to talk to colleagues from all over the country. He had contacts
with Unicef, the World Health Organization, the new Ministry of Health and
with several war victims of last year.

Dr. Van Moorter is specialized in emergency medicine and tropical diseases.
He made a study and published on child mortality and has experience in
public health and post traumatic stress disorder.

Summary:

Evidence that child mortality is on the rise
The purchasing power, the food situation and the living conditions of the
majority of the population have all deteriorated. Half of the active
population has no job and no income. The prices of basic necessities, food
and transportation have doubled or tripled. The quality of the drinking
water is not being controlled, the sewage system of Baghdad has been damaged
by the bombings, there is no regular garbage collection. Iraq has become one
big garbage belt. All these indicators put together point towards a rising
child mortality, a fact being acknowledged by the WHO representative for
Iraq. It also brings Unicef to the conclusion that child mortality will
probably increase further.

Medical infrastructure and medicines: no improvement
The medical infrastructure and the medical material were already outdated
and malfunctioning as a result of the twelve years' embargo. One year after
the onset of the war, these have not yet been renewed. War victims and other
patients do not receive optimal treatment. Complicated operations cannot be
performed. Everything is lacking, including medicines for acute as well as
chronic ailments. This results in deteriorating conditions or even the death
of patients, and in extra handicaps for the wounded. On March 17, right
after the explosion at the Mount Lebanon Hotel in Baghdad, we helped care
for victims in the Ibn Al Nafis hospital. We observed there that there were
no disposable gloves, no appropriate intravenous fluid to treat shock, to
ultrasound, no well-functioning monitors,

Findings:
1. Testifying about the situation in the hospitals is made difficult.
2. The purchasing power, the food situation and the living conditions have
deteriorated. An increase in child mortality is to be expected.
3. Insecurity creates psychological traumas.
4. Access to health care is severely limited.
5. The hospital infrastructure has not improved over the past year.
6. Medicines and medical material are lacking.
7. Depleted Uranium (DU): the population is not informed nor protected.
8. The plans of the CPA and the Ministry of Health are no solution.
9. Appendix: April 2004: US-led troops in Iraq are targeting hospitals,
ambulances and civilians.

1. Testifying about the situation in the hospitals is made difficult.

Access to hospitals is very limited, the press is  hardly allowed to enter.
It was only with difficulty and through personal contacts with medical
doctors that we could enter several hospitals. Doctors who dare to testify
before the camera are intimidated and put under pressure. We talked to two
doctors who had given an interview. Afterwards, someone from the Ministry of
Health visited them. They were forced to sign a letter stating that they
wouldn't give any interviews anymore, or else that they would lose their job
in the hospital.

2. The purchasing power, the food situation and the living conditions have
deteriorated. An increase in child mortality is to be expected.

According to the CPA (Coalition Provisional Authority, the US administration
led by Paul Bremer), 35% of the active population is jobless. Other sources
speak of 60 to 70%.
During the embargo, several foodstuffs were distributed for free among the
population; it concerns dry goods such as rice, tea, beans, sugar, wheat,
milk powder, oil, salt and things such as washing powder and soap. This
distribution is being continued, but regularly some goods are lacking. E.g.
in March, there was no rice. As a consequence, everybody was forced to buy
rice on the free market, which pushed prices up. And anyhow, the food that
is not contained in the food basket - vegetables, fruits, meat, fish,
cheese, eggs, - has to be bought on the market. Their prices have increased
two- or threefold over the past year.
The majority of the population has less cash available, while the cost of
living has increased. The purchasing power has diminished, access to food is
less assured. Many families depend entirely on the food basket. Unicef notes
that malnutrition today is higher than after the first Gulf War of 1991, and
the number of children with acute malnutrition rose sharply in the first
months after the onset of the 2003 war.

The provision of electricity in Baghdad has deteriorated. Water services are
still in worse condition than before the war, and nobody knows the quality
of the drinking water. In some places there is still no water coming out of
the faucet.
The sewage system was already in precarious condition before the war. It has
been hit by the bombings and hasn't been repaired ever since. In many poor
quarters of Baghdad, dirty water is standing in the streets. Garbage
collection is not yet well organized. Garbage is all around the place.

The three main factors that influence child mortality (under five mortality)
at the level of the family are the purchasing power, the food situation and
the living conditions. All three of them have deteriorated over the past
year in Iraq. The local Unicef representative confirmed that child mortality
will probably increase further.

3. Insecurity creates psychological traumas.

According to the director of the psychiatric centre in Baghdad, lots of
children are faced with serious emotional and behavioural problems as a
direct result of the war, the fear, the hate, the occupation. This is what
is called Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Symptoms of this are bedwetting,
aggressive behaviour (verbal and physical), sleeping and eating disorders,
depression, fear, nightmares, concentration and memory disorders,
auto-mutilation, developmental disorders and phobias.
Repeated exposure to war dead and wounded has resulted in widespread
emotional and psychological traumas among medical emergency teams of doctors
and nurses.
Together with the bad economic situation, the insecurity is today's major
problem, causing quite some psychosomatic disorders. There is insecurity
because of the presence of the occupation troops. And there is the problem
of the inefficiency of the police, which has led to an increase in
criminality.

4. Access to health care is severely limited.

The problems with the telephone networks make it difficult to impossible to
call an ambulance. Because of the insecurity, patients as well as doctors
don't dare go to the hospital at night. We experienced ourselves how, after
a major car accident, an unconscious patient could not be brought to the
hospital in an ambulance. He had to be brought with a taxi.
High transportation costs are another factor that renders going to the
hospital difficult. Same thing with the road blockades. A recent Unicef
report states that less than 50% of the Iraqi population has access to the
health care they need, because of the insecurity.

5. The hospital infrastructure has not improved over the past year.

We visited some 25 hospitals, clinics and pharmacies. Nowhere had any new
medical material arrived since the end of the war. The medical material,
already outdated, broken down or malfunctioning after twelve years of
embargo, had further deteriorated over the past year. In places where
looting had taken place, there is now less material than before, as in
Baghdad's rehabilitation centre, which is supposed to provide the entire
country of prostheses. Or as in the burns section of the Al Nour Hospital,
where there is no possibility of sterile treatment, as a result of which all
patients with major burns are doomed to die. Or as in the intensive care
unit of the Kadhemya Hospital - which has 8 of the 16 high intensive care
beds for Baghdad -, where only three respiration machines are functioning.

6. Medicines and medical material are lacking.

In the hospitals, some specific medicines are lacking, e.g. for burns. In
several emergency units, live-saving drugs are not available.

In the popular clinics, for outpatients, there is a constant lack of
medication. The Ministry of Health itself is distributing lists of
medication, where for every drug the amount of products delivered is
mentioned. We saw one such list containing 32 products. For 10 of them 0%
had been delivered! Many patients don't get their medicines, or they get
only half of the dose they need. Results: life quality diminishes, while the
risk at early death increases. This is the case for e.g. epilepsy,
hypertension, angina pectoris, diabetes, chronic asthma,

Doctors may prescribe, but patients, who used to get their medicines for
free, have to buy them now on the private market. For most of them, this is
beyond reach. And many needed drugs are not always available on the market.
There are also doubts as to the quality of these medicines, as they are not
being stored in optimal conditions.

There is also a lack of disposable material, such as gauze, cotton,
syringes, gloves, sutures, In one popular clinic we visited, three
doctors had to share one single stethoscope, while one and the same iron
tongue depressor was being used for all patients.

7. Depleted Uranium (DU): the population is not informed nor protected.

In August 2003, we were only able to obtain unofficial, off the record
information from the World Health Organization (WHO) concerning Depleted
Uranium. The WHO had asked the US Armed Forces leadership information about
the use of DU. They requested to be given a map indicating the places where
the US Armed Forces had used ammunition with DU, in order to be able to
undertake precautionary measures and prevent the contamination with and the
spread of DU particles. The US Armed Forces leadership refused to provide
this information. In March 2004, according to WHO sources, the attitude of
the US Armed Forces and of the CPA (Coalition Provisional Authority)
concerning this topic remained unchanged.
In 2003 and in March 2004, we could personally see that there were no fences
nor warning signs around or near the destroyed Iraqi tanks and APCs
(armoured personnel carrier). Children were playing nearby. Most of this
Iraqi army material has been destroyed by ammunition with DU. The areas
where these tanks and other materials were hit, have not been decontaminated
since. The earth around has not been removed. In the neighbourhood of the
Baghdad Gate, we saw people cultivating vegetables, unaware of the danger,
on fields where in April 2003 many destroyed Iraqi tanks stood. There were
no protective measures to be seen. Along the road between Baghdad and Basra
still a lot of destroyed tanks can be found. We saw people recycling metal
from these tanks. This sometimes happens in an organised way: we saw open
trucks, without canvass, fully loaded with pieces of those Iraqi tanks. In
the south of Baghdad there is an area where this recycled metal is
collected. Again without any protective measure. DU-contaminated dust is
spread by the trucks and with the wind.
Medical doctors in Basra told us that they expect a rise in cancers and
congenital malformations in a few years, particularly in Baghdad, because
that is where DU has been used most. The CPA and the occupying forces have
the duty to protect the health of the population. In the matter of DU they
are neglecting their responsibility.

8. The plans of the CPA and the Ministry of Health are no solution.

Until last year, a number of contracts for medical material that had been
signed by the previous regime were blocked by the UN Sanctions Committee
661. 90 % of them because of a US veto, 10 % because of a British veto. It
concerned contracts for a total value of more than 500 million dollar. This
money, which came from the sale of Iraqi oil in the framework of the
oil-for-food program, was available on a UN account in New York. After the
lifting of the sanctions, this money has been turned over to the CPA, and
yet those contracts have not yet been executed.

The CPA and the interim government are now talking about new plans to invest
in medicines and medical equipment. This can at most be part of the
solution, but even then it is a case of 'too little, too late'. There are
plans for a new paediatric hospital of more than 50 million dollar. This
money would be put to better use by upgrading the existing hospitals. Much
of the money will go to expensive US firms, and it can be feared that these
investments will have a high PR value. This is a case of combating the
symptoms in order to divert attention from the real prevention of illness
and disease, by attacking the root causes such as purchasing power, the food
situation, the living conditions, the insecurity.

In any case, these investments will not free the occupying power of its duty
to guarantee all necessary services to the Iraqi population, as it is stated
in the Fourth Geneva Convention. Security, jobs, an income, food and decent
living conditions are all part of this. All these factors have a major
impact on public health.

9. Appendix: April 2004: US-led troops in Iraq are targeting hospitals,
ambulances and civilians.

We received information from first hand field testimonies from health
workers in Iraq and eye-witness accounts from Fallujah. According to that
information, the US-led occupying forces have:
1.     targeted unarmed civilians and used cluster bombs in populated areas
of the city. This is indiscriminate use of force, not discriminating
combatants from non-combatants. There are several reports of eyewitnesses
stating that cluster bombs are used in Fallujah. These reports are confirmed
by medical doctors.
2.     severely hampered relief work to the wounded.
3.     blocked access to Fallujahs hospital thus forcing doctors and health
personnel to set up field hospitals in private homes.
4.     targeted ambulances that went about the city to collect the injured.

All of these constitute violations of the Geneva Conventions. They have
resulted in the death of hundreds of civilians and extreme misery for
thousands of people in Fallujah and many more in the rest of Iraq.
This is comparable to what happened during the US-led invasion of Baghdad
last year. We were personally witness of the use of cluster bombs and of US
troops shooting at random at civilians, civil cars and ambulances. Then, as
now, it was difficult and even impossible for the health personnel to reach
the hospitals, because US troops were shooting at everything that came on
their way.

Dr. Geert Van Moorter, M.D.
28 April 2004.

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 2 WorldNetDaily: When intelligence is disinformation
 
 MAY 1 2004           
        
During the Cold War, Soviet intelligence agencies sometimes 
provided us "disinformation" – false information, intended to 
obscure the truth. Hence, there were frequently sharp differences 
of opinion within our own intelligence community as to whether or 
not information provided to us by Soviet "traitors-in-place" 
and/or "defectors" was genuine intelligence or disinformation. 

Now, anyone who provides disinformation to Congress has committed 
a felony. If the provider is a U.S. government official intent on 
starting a war, it could amount to treason. So, wouldn't the 
director of Central Intelligence make every effort to see that 
disinformation is never presented to Congress? 

In particular, DCI George Tenet would never have told Congress 
that he had "slam-dunk" intelligence that Saddam Hussein had 
"weapons of mass destruction" if there were any chance that 
intelligence was disinformation. 

In fact, the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraqi WMD he 
provided Congress in September 2002 was replete with caveats, 
qualifications and contrary interpretations. Even though Tenet 
may have attempted to persuade Congress there was a consensus 
within the intelligence community, it should have been obvious to 
the most casual observer that there was anything but. 

By 1997, U.N. inspectors had confirmed that Gen. Hussein Kamel – 
Saddam Hussein's son-in-law – had told them and the CIA the 
truth. He was not an agent of disinformation. He was a genuine 
defector. In charge of Iran-Iraq War WMD programs, he had ordered 
all WMD destroyed on the eve of the Gulf War. By 1995, when he 
defected, "nothing remained." 

Perversely, some analysts within the intelligence community chose 
to disbelieve Kamel and the U.N. inspectors. They chose to 
believe Khidir Hamza – the man Kamel had labeled a "professional 
liar" – and other "little birds." They began compiling a list of 
sites wherein Saddam was alleged to have hidden chem-bio weapons 
or to have begun reconstructing WMD production facilities. 

Consequently, Tenet's NIE of September 2002 began: 

Iraq has continued its weapons of mass destruction (WMD)programs 
in defiance of U.N. resolutions and restrictions. Baghdad has 
chemical and biological weapons as well as missiles with ranges 
in excess of U.N. restrictions; if left unchecked, it probably 
will have a nuclear weapon during this decade. 

Alas, in the months immediately following, the chem-bio weapons 
inspectors under Hans Blix and the nuke inspectors under Mohammed 
ElBaradei visited all the "suspect" sites at the top of the 
little birds' list and found nothing. 

Absolutely nothing. 

Hamza's response? Blix and ElBaradei were incompetent. The United 
States would have to invade and occupy Iraq in order to uncover 
and destroy the well-hidden WMD production facilities. So, on the 
basis of Tenet's "slam-dunk" intelligence, we invaded Iraq and 
have searched high and low for more than a year and have yet to 
find any of the WMD "everyone" believed were there. 

Why bring that up now? Well, Tenet is still presenting to 
Congress "intelligence" that is regarded in some sectors of the 
intelligence community as disinformation. 

For example, here is what the director of Central Intelligence 
recently told Congress about Iran's "nuclear" programs: 

The United States remains convinced that Tehran has been pursuing 
a clandestine nuclear weapons program, in violation of its 
obligations as a party to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty 
(NPT). To bolster its efforts to establish domestic nuclear 
fuel-cycle capabilities, Iran sought technology that can support 
fissile material production for a nuclear weapons program. 

"The United States remains convinced"? Even after IAEA inspectors 
had been accorded unprecedented access to any and all Iranian 
"suspect" facilities and had found no "indication" – much less 
"evidence" – of a clandestine nuclear weapons program or of any 
NPT "violation"? 

And here is what DCI Tenet told Congress about North Korea: 

In late April 2003, North Korea told U.S. officials that it 
possessed nuclear weapons, and signaled its intent to reprocess 
the 1994 canned spent fuel for more nuclear weapons. 

North Korean officials vigorously deny having told U.S. officials 
anything of the kind. And even if they are lying, how can we be 
sure now what they are alleged to have said last April was not 
"disinformation." 

Nevertheless, Tenet is reportedly readying an estimate that North 
Korea now has 8-10 plutonium nukes and will soon have the 
capacity to produce a half-dozen uranium nukes per year, even 
though there is no "hard" evidence whatsoever that North Korea is 
capable of producing either. 

In particular, IAEA inspectors visited the site where the Koreans 
were alleged to be developing a high-explosive implosion system 
for nukes and found nothing sinister. 

Perhaps they ought to have checked out Ryongchon. North Korea 
likened last Thursday's train blast in Ryongchon, a town of 
130,000 near the Chinese border, to "100 bombs, each weighing one 
ton" going off at the same time.
 
Physicist James Gordon Prather has served as a policy 
implementing official for national security-related technical 
matters in the Federal Energy Agency, the Energy Research and 
Development Administration, the Department of Energy, the Office 
of the Secretary of Defense and the Department of the Army. Dr. 
Prather also served as legislative assistant for national 
security affairs to U.S. Sen. Henry Bellmon, R-Okla. -- ranking 
member of the Senate Budget Committee and member of the Senate 
Energy Committee and Appropriations Committee. Dr. Prather had 
earlier worked as a nuclear weapons physicist at Lawrence 
Livermore National Laboratory in California and Sandia National 
Laboratory in New Mexico. 

© 2004 WorldNetDaily.com, Inc. 
webmaster@worldnetdaily.com
*****************************************************************
 3 India Times:  North Korea hits back at US terror report - 

The Times of India
 
  SUNDAY, MAY 2, 2004
                                
indiatimes.com

TOKYO: North Korea on Sunday hit back at the United States for 
naming the communist state as a sponsor of terrorism in an annual 
report, calling the US-led invasion of Iraq the ``pinnacle of 
terrorism.'' 
  
North Korean state radio carried remarks by an unidentified 
government spokesman criticizing the report released last week by 
the US State Department, which kept unchanged a list of seven 
state supporters of terrorism including North Korea. 
  
``The Bush administration launched an illegal invasion of Iraq 
after duping the international community and is now carrying out 
a campaign of mass slaughter whose cruelty is unfathomable,'' 
Radio Pyongyang said in a broadcast monitored in Tokyo by the 
Radio Press news service. ``This must be described as the 
pinnacle of terrorism.'' 
  
The United States says North Korea sells missile technology to 
countries such as Syria and Iran and has accused its reclusive 
regime of importing materials to produce chemical or biological 
weapons which could end up in the hands of terrorists. 
  
Washington and North Korea are also at odds over the North's 
nuclear weapons programmes. 
  
North Korea accused the United States on Sunday of trying to 
isolate it diplomatically and denied any involvement in 
terrorism. 
  
``By eternally branding us as terrorists, the United States is 
trying to justify its efforts to isolate us internationally,'' 
Radio Pyongyang said, adding that North Korea was opposed to 
terrorism ``in all its forms.'' 
  
Cuba, Iran, Syria, Libya, Sudan and Iraq are the other countries 
on the US State Department's list of terror sponsors. Iraq is 
expected to be removed once an interim Iraqi government takes 
power after June 30 and shows it is renouncing terrorism.

 Copyright © 2004 Times Internet Limited. All rights reserved. |
*****************************************************************
 4 Korea Herald: Rescuing nuclear non-proliferation   

  Home > News > Editorial/Op-Ed   

2004.05.03
    
      [The World in Words]
    
As a declared non-nuclear weapon state, Indonesia has always 
striven for nuclear non-proliferation - indeed, for a world free 
of nuclear weapons. But the cause of nuclear non-proliferation is 
now in deep trouble, as countries are once again tempted to 
acquire the means of oblivion.

 For over three decades, the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty has 
been the cornerstone of the world's non-proliferation regime, a 
position that derives from growing acknowledgement of the legal 
and normative standards that it established. Adherence to the 
treaty has increased steadily, reaching a stage of near universal 
acceptance.

 But there is a general feeling that implementation has fallen 
short of expectations, particularly with regard to nuclear 
disarmament. Moreover, there is increasing concern over 
non-compliance and the associated risks of proliferation - to 
worrisome states, particularly in Asia, and, even more ominously, 
into the hands of private individuals and terrorist 
organizations.

 In the face of these threats, what can be done to strengthen the 
non-proliferation regime?

 The treaty regime stands on three pillars: non-proliferation, 
nuclear disarmament and peaceful uses of nuclear energy. It 
envisages the construction of each pillar through a matching 
series of steps taken by both nuclear weapon states and 
non-nuclear weapon states. Strengthening the regime in order to 
confront today's challenges would require no more than following 
this strategy.

 Unfortunately, this has not been the case since 1995, when the 
Non-Proliferation Treaty Review and Extension Conference made the 
duration of the treaty's validity indefinite. The conference, 
which included the original five nuclear weapon states (the 
United States, Russia, China, France and Great Britain) as well 
as a great number of other U.N. members, did not reach consensus 
on a "Final Declaration." But it did adopt three other decisions, 
entitled "Strengthening the Review Process for the Treaty, 
Principles and Objectives for Nuclear Non-Proliferation and 
Disarmament," and "Resolution on the Middle East." These 
constituted a unified package that was meant to be implemented in 
its entirety.

 Five years later, the 2000 Review Conference finally adopted a 
"Final Document," which contained concrete measures, including 
"13 practical steps" for systematic and progressive efforts to 
achieve nuclear disarmament. The evolution of the treaty - its 
adaptation to new environments and problems that were not 
anticipated at the time of its adoption - appeared to ensure the 
treaty's continuing effective implementation.

 But actions speak louder than words, and challenges to the 
treaty regime have continued to undermine its basic principles, 
causing considerable backsliding. Today, the challenges posed by 
proliferation are more complex than ever:

 "proliferation of nuclear weapons technologies by one de facto 
nuclear-capable state;" "one stated withdrawal from the treaty; 
one case of non-compliance;" "increasing assertion of the role of 
nuclear weapons in military doctrines;" "improvements in nuclear 
weapons by some nuclear weapon states."

 The possibility that non-state actors could acquire nuclear 
weapons and other weapons of mass destruction poses an especially 
grave new threat. Confronting it effectively will require the 
support of all treaty signatories.

 But a continuing imbalance and selectivity in the emphasis 
placed by different states on the treaty's three pillars damages 
the unity that the treaty regime needs. In particular, imbalances 
in implementing the agreement's obligations by the nuclear haves 
and have-nots are sharpening. 

For example, some countries want to develop smaller and "usable" 
nuclear weapons designed for preemptive or preventive military 
action. Many non-nuclear weapon states, particularly those from 
the developing world, remain frustrated with the fact that 
peaceful nuclear cooperation is yet to be fully realized.

 These challenges to the non-proliferation regime not only 
jeopardize the credibility, efficacy and viability of the treaty; 
they have also cast a long shadow of doubt on the future of 
nuclear disarmament itself. Deliberations and negotiations both 
within the treaty regime and in other areas of disarmament have 
reached a difficult stage, if not a stalemate.

 To jump-start progress, all treaty signatories should reaffirm 
that the treaty's provisions are mutually reinforcing and must be 
pursued jointly and faithfully. The most dangerous force eroding 
the treaty's credibility is the inclination of some 
nuclear-weapon states to reinterpret at will the package of 
agreements reached in the past.

 Despite the treaty's shortcomings, the overwhelming majority of 
non-nuclear states fully comply with their treaty obligations. 
This constrains the number of nuclear weapon states, thus 
fulfilling one of the pact's most important goals.

 One of the best ways to strengthen the non-proliferation regime 
now would be to implement fully the agreements that have already 
been reached. Selectivity and narrow reinterpretation can only 
weaken the treaty. 

Developing a new set of non-proliferation mechanisms would be a 
waste of time that we cannot afford, because any new protocol 
would have a dubious legal basis and encourage further imbalances 
in implementation. If we are serious about saving the 
non-proliferation regime, the time to act is now.

Dr. N. Hassan Wirajuda is minister for foreign affairs of the 
Republic of Indonesia. -Ed. 

Copyright: Project Syndicate

*****************************************************************
 5 Japan Times: Yabunaka to meet soon with North Korea officials in China

  Monday, May 3, 2004   

 Senior diplomat Mitoji Yabunaka is expected to visit China soon 
for talks with North Korean officials on abductions of Japanese, 
diplomatic sources said Sunday.

 Yabunaka, director general of the Foreign Ministry's Asian and 
Oceanian Affairs Bureau, is expected to hold talks with the North 
Koreans in Beijing or elsewhere in China as early as this week to 
urge them to send the families of five repatriated Japanese 
abductees to Japan, the sources said.

 Deputy Foreign Minister Hitoshi Tanaka, who is said to have 
close connections with North Korean authorities, may accompany 
Yabunaka.

 Although it is unknown who will represent North Korea, the 
Japanese government is hoping First Vice Foreign Minister Kang 
Sok Ju, a key diplomatic aide to North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, 
will attend the meeting.

 Kang has been involved in discussing the abductions with Japan, 
and Tokyo is apparently hoping his attendance will further the 
discussions.

 Japan has been demanding that North Korea allow the children of 
the five returned abductees and the American husband of one of 
them to come to Japan. But Pyongyang has repeatedly accused Tokyo 
of breaking its promise to have the five go back to North Korea 
after what was originally supposed to be a temporary homecoming 
in October 2002.

 The two countries, which do not have diplomatic ties, most 
recently held negotiations in mid-February when Tanaka and 
Yabunaka secretly visited Pyongyang, and in late February on the 
sidelines of the six-party talks on the North's nuclear 
ambitions, attended by Yabunaka.

 The Japanese government has been seeking to resume the talks and 
asked for a bilateral meeting separate from the multilateral 
framework, which also involves China, Russia, South Korea and the 
United States, the sources said. 

The first working group session of the six-way talks is scheduled 
to start May 12 in Beijing, but Japan does not want to rely on 
bilateral contacts on the sidelines of the conference, which has 
the nuclear issue as its focus.

 The Japan Times: May 3, 2004 (C) All rights reserved 
*****************************************************************
 6 Stuart James: George W. Bush's 'Mission Accomplished'

5/1/2004 - 

- And A Reply - Opinion - Chattanoogan.com
 	
[the chattanoogan.com - chattanooga's source for
 		   		
 		posted May 1, 2004
 		
On May 1, 2003, President George W. Bush said:
		 
“My fellow Americans, major combat operations in Iraq have 
ended…In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies 
have prevailed.”
		 
A banner above his head read:
		 
“Mission Accomplished.”
		 
At the time of these statements, 171 died in the war effort.
		 
On April 30, 2004, President George W. Bush said:
		 
“A year ago, I did give the speech from the carrier, saying that 
we had achieved an important objective, that we’d accomplished a 
mission, which was the removal of Saddam Hussein…”
		 
Since May 1, 2003 738 Americans died, and 3,323 have been 
wounded. 
		 
President George W. Bush, in the State of the Union address on 
January 28, 2003, said:
		 
“The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently 
sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. Our 
intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase 
high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons 
production…Our intelligence officials estimate that Saddam 
Hussein had the materials to produce as much as 500 tons of 
sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent.”
		 
On March 17, 2003, President George W. Bush said:
		 
“Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no 
doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some 
of the most lethal weapons ever devised. The danger is clear: 
using chemical, biological or, one day, nuclear weapons, obtained 
with the help of Iraq, the terrorists could fulfill their stated 
ambitions and kill thousands or hundreds of thousands of innocent 
people in our country, or any other.”
		 
The war in Iraq did not confirm the existence of any of the 
materials, or weapons, described by the President on January 28, 
2003 or on March 17, 2003.
		 
In reviewing the President’s performance as Commander in Chief, 
we must ask ourselves:
		 
1. Are the words “we had achieved an important objective” the 
same as “major combat operations in Iraq have ended?” If major 
combat operations ended in May of 2003, why have 738 Americans 
died since May 1? If major combat operations ended in May of 
2003, why have 3323 people been wounded since May 1? If major 
combat operations ended in May of 2003 why are we seeing images 
of bombs, gunfire, and mortar fire in Fallujah, Iraq?
		 
The answer: Major combat operations did not end on May 1, 2003.
		 
2. What did the President mean when he said, “Intelligence 
gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the 
Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most 
lethal weapons ever devised?” Did he mean that Iraq had weapons 
of mass destruction that could be used against us? Did he mean 
that we needed to “oust” Saddam Hussein because he possessed and 
concealed some of the most lethal weapons ever devised? Did he 
mean to justify the war, because of the existence of these 
weapons?
		 
Answer: Yes, but the war effort did not find uranium, the war 
effort did not find weapons of mass destruction, and the war 
effort did not find any chemical agent to produce weapons of mass 
destruction. 
		 
3. Was our “Mission Accomplished” when President Bush flew onto 
an aircraft carrier in a flight suit on May 1, 2003?
		 
Answer: No, people are dying because major combat operations are 
continuing. 
		 
4. Which is the truth Mr. President? 
		 
A. Your statement of May 2003: “My fellow Americans, major combat 
operations in Iraq have ended…In the battle of Iraq, the United 
States and our allies have prevailed.”
		 
or 
		 
B. Your statement of April 30, 2004: “A year ago, I did give the 
speech from the carrier, saying that we had achieved an important 
objective, that we’d accomplished a mission, which was the 
removal of Saddam Hussein…?”
		 
or
		 
C. The banner flying above your head saying “Mission 
Accomplished?”
		 
Answer: None of the above, it is time for an apology, and the 
truth. 
		 
There is only one truth--we have a long way to go before we can 
say: Mission Accomplished. 
		 
Stuart James Sjames139@comcast.net
		 
When President Bush said that major combat operations had ended, 
and mission accomplished, he was referring to the defeat of 
Saddam’s army, the Iraqi military. A defined enemy and a defined 
objective. I do not see anything wrong with that.
		 
As far as the WMD’s, Saddam had enough time between our 
resolution to stop his arrogance and mockery of the UN, and the 
time we went in, to hide or transfer the state of Rhode Island. 
Saddam stalled and stalled while we were trying to convince the 
UN to take a stand. I do recall several months of this nonsense 
while France, Germany, and our other so-called allies had their 
heads buried in the sand. You want to talk military casualties, 
try counting what Germany cost the world and what France owes the 
good ole USA for saving their hides.
		 
Yes, we have had more casualties since the end of the “war.” Wars 
are fought between armies, that war is over. The Iraqi military 
no longer exists to carry out Saddam’s reign of terror. Now what 
we have are fanatical Muslims, taught to hate and kill anybody 
that is not a follower of their cult, conducting terrorist 
attacks and ambushes. These folks have lived this way for 
centuries, born and bred of violence. They are trying to disrupt 
the transition to a free Iraqi society, they have no separation 
between church and state.
		 
To try and win over the Iraqi populace, our troops have been 
riding around in Humvees instead of tanks, a terrorists dream 
come true. In this instance, diplomacy has replaced common sense. 
Fallujah was a city with a defined enemy, diplomacy was out of 
the question, terrorist called the shots. We responded; a step 
closer to transition of power back to the Iraqi people.
		 
By the way, President Bush did fly onto an aircraft carrier in a 
flight suit on May 1, 2003 (the USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN 72). The 
trip was a genuine tribute to our brave military, the flight suit 
was, well, required while flying in a S-3B Viking from the Blue 
Wolves of Sea Control Squadron Three Five (VS-35). 
		 
Jack Varner
jackvarner@comcast.net
		 
news@chattanoogan.com  (423) 266-2325
 © 2004 Site designed and copyrighted by Three HD
*****************************************************************
 7 U.S. Newswire: Investment in Energy Infrastructure is Critically 
Needed, Broad Ranging Coalition Tells Senate Leaders
 
 4/30/2004 10:53:00 AM 

To: National Desk 

Contact: Karl Gawell of Geothermal Energy Association, 
202-454-5264, Christine Real de Azua, 202-383-2508, Jon Chase, 
202-383-2507 both of the American Wind Energy Association 

WASHINGTON, April 30 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Over 100 companies and 
national organizations called upon the Senate leadership today to 
take immediate action on S.1637, the "JOBS" bill. Organizations 
joining the letter represent every aspect of the American economy 
ranging from agriculture and manufacturing to home building and 
renewable technologies. The group emphasized that the bill's 
provisions encouraging investment in domestic energy supply and 
infrastructure are "critical to US economic recovery." 

The letter warned that failure to act would make US energy 
problems worse. "With every month that passes without passage of 
energy tax legislation, the energy industry faces continuing 
uncertainty and disincentives to investing in areas such as 
renewable energy, energy efficiency and new technologies." With 
regard to both the underlying legislation designed to end 
European Union sanctions against American exporters and the 
incentives to spur new investment in energy production and 
infrastructure that have been added to the bill, the 
organizations continued, "we urge the leadership and members to 
work together cooperatively to expedite this process. Failure to 
pass this legislation is already having serious negative 
consequences for the American economy." 

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist has announced that S. 1637 will 
be the Senate's first order of business upon its return on 
Monday, May 3rd. Senator Daschle also has expressed his support 
for completing action on this legislation, and the bill's energy 
provisions enjoy broad bipartisan support. In recent weeks, S. 
1637 has been delayed as a result of a large number of amendments 
that have been offered to the underlying bill. While recognizing 
that a number of Senators in both parties want to offer 
amendments, the letter urged leadership and members on both sides 
of the aisle to "work cooperatively to expedite this process." 

Over 100 organizations and companies signed the letter, including 
more than 20 national associations. The collection of national 
associations signed onto the letter represents both renewable and 
traditional energy sectors, as well as state and local government 
organizations and utility regulators. 

Full text of the letter and list of signatories follows: 

"Dear Senators Frist and Daschle: 

We are writing to express our strong support for prompt Senate 
consideration and approval of S. 1637, the FSC/ETI ("JOBS") Act. 
In general, the underlying bill and the bill's provisions to 
encourage investment in domestic energy supply and infrastructure 
are critical to the United States' economic recovery. 

Both S. 1637 and the energy tax package have strong bipartisan 
support in the Senate, and the leadership of the Finance 
Committee has worked hard to ensure that all revenue provisions 
in the bill have been fully offset. While we understand that 
Senators in both parties are anxious to have the opportunity to 
vote on a number of amendments, we urge the leadership and 
members to work together cooperatively to expedite this process. 
Failure to pass this legislation is already having serious 
negative consequences for the American economy and our industry. 

We support efforts by both parties to promote investment in 
critically needed energy infrastructure. The overarching 
importance of energy issues today - at gas pumps, pipelines, 
power lines, power plants, and overseas - argues strongly for the 
Senate to complete action immediately on this bill and its energy 
tax incentives. With every month that passes without passage of 
energy tax legislation, the energy industry faces continuing 
uncertainty and disincentives to investing in areas such as 
renewable energy, energy efficiency and new technologies. 

Prompt passage of this legislation is vital for supporting 
continued economic growth, maintaining the health of our 
industries, and addressing our nation's need for expanded 
domestic energy supplies. Thank you for your support of both S. 
1637 and the bipartisan energy tax package. 

Sincerely, 

Signatories (109) 

ALLETE/Minnesota Power; Alliance for Competitive Electricity; 
Alliant Energy Corporation; American International Automobile 
Dealers Association; American Wind Energy Association; Arcadia 
Windpower; Atlantic Renewable Energy Corporation; Bergey 
Windpower, Inc.; Bob Lawrence and Associates; Boreal Energy, 
Inc.; CAB Inc.; Caithness Energy; California Independent 
Petroleum Association; Calpine Corporation; Central Ohio Clean 
Fuels Coalition; Cielo Windpower, LLC; Clean Cities Coachella 
Valley Region; Clipper Windpower, Inc.; CMS Energy; Continental 
Milk Producers; Coram Energy, LLC; Credit Union Solutions 
Group/Preferred Dealer Network; Dairy Producers of New Mexico; 
Denver Metro Clean Cities Coalition; Deuel County National Bank; 
DMI Industries; DTE Energy Company; Earth Power Resources, Inc.; 
Edison Electric Institute; Electric Drive Transportation 
Association; Empire Energy, LLC; Enbridge Energy Partners, L.P.; 
Energy Maintenance Service, LLC; Energy Photovoltaics, Inc; 
Energy Unlimited, Inc.; Enterprise Products Partners, L.P.; 
Exelon Corporation; Florida Power & Light; Ford Motor Company; 
Geothermal Energy Association; GeothermEx, Inc; Global Energy 
Concepts, Inc.; Global Wind Harvest; GulfTerra Energy Partners, 
L.P.; Hampton Roads Clean Cities Coalition; Hexcel Corporation; 
Independent Petroleum Association of America; Integrated Waste 
Services Association; Inter-Island Solar Supply; Invenergy, LLC; 
Kaneb Pipe Line Partners, L.P.; Las Vegas Regional Clean Cities 
Coalition; Magellan Midstream Partners, L.P.; MHA Environmental 
Consulting, Inc.; MidAmerican Energy Holdings Company; Mortenson 
Construction; National Association of Home Builders; National 
Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners; National 
Association of State Energy Officials; National Clean Cities, 
Inc.; National Ethanol Vehicle Association; National Hydropower 
Association; National Propane Gas Association; National Rural 
Electric Cooperative Association; Natural Gas Vehicles Coalition; 
Navitas Energy, Inc.; NedPower U.S., LLC; New Uses Council; 
Northern Alternative Energy, Inc.; NRG Systems, Inc.; Nuclear 
Energy Institute; OGE Energy Corporation; ORMAT Power; 
PacifiCorp; Padoma Windpower, LLC; Portland General Electric; PPM 
Energy; Progress Energy; Project Resources Corporation; Propane 
Vehicle Council; RAM Associates; Renewable Energy Systems, Inc; 
Salt Lake Clean Cities Coalition; San Gorgonio Farms, Inc.; 
Select Milk Producers; Sharp Solar; Solar Energy Industries 
Association; Solar Source; Solar Supply of Hawaii; Solarponics 
Energy Systems; SOLEC; Spire Solar; Sun Earth, Inc.; Technology 
North, Inc.; TECO Energy; Thermasource, Inc; TPI Composites; 
Trans-Elect, Inc.; U.S. Sugar Corporation; Valero, L.P.; Vestas 
American Wind Technology, Inc.; Western Renewables Group; Western 
United Dairymen; Whitewater Energy Corp.; Whitewater Maintenance 
Corp.; WindLogics, Inc.; Wisconsin Energy Corp.; Xcel Energy, 
Inc.; Zilkha Renewable Energy 

National Organizations Included Above (21) 

Alliance for Competitive Electricity; American International 
Automobile Dealers Association; American Wind Energy Association; 
Edison Electric Institute; Electric Drive Transportation 
Association; Geothermal Energy Association; Independent Petroleum 
Association of America; Integrated Waste Services Association; 
National Association of Home Builders; National Association of 
Regulatory Utility Commissioners; National Association of State 
Energy Officials; National Clean Cities, Inc.; National Ethanol 
Vehicle Association; National Hydropower Association; National 
Propane Gas Association; National Rural Electric Cooperative 
Association; Natural Gas Vehicles Coalition; New Uses Council; 
Nuclear Energy Institute; Propane Vehicle Council; Solar Energy 
Industries Association 



http://www.usnewswire.com/
/© 2004 U.S. Newswire 202-347-2770/ 			 		   		   			 		   		   
*****************************************************************
 8 UK Independent: officials are accused of serious felony
 
By Andrew Buncombe in Washington
 
02 May 2004

Vice-President Dick Cheney was under mounting pressure last night 
after he and his senior officials were accused of smearing a 
former ambassador and outing his wife as an undercover CIA 
officer in a deliberate act of revenge hatched inside the White 
House. 

In a row which began with off-the-record comments he made to The 
Independent on Sunday last year, a former diplomat, Joe Wilson, 
said Mr Cheney oversaw a group of neo-conservatives who decided 
to try to damage his reputation. Because of Mr Wilson, the White 
House was forced to admit that a key claim in President Bush's 
2003 State of the Union address - that Iraq was seeking uranium 
for nuclear weapons - should not have been made. 

The controversy over what happened next could prove to be the 
most damaging yet to engulf the Bush administration. A criminal 
inquiry is investigating the unveiling in the press of Mr 
Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, as a CIA agent - a serious felony 
under US law. If one of Mr Cheney's senior officials were 
charged, the damage would be huge. 

Should the Vice-President be personally implicated - which Mr 
Wilson believes he is - the outcome would be devastating for both 
Mr Cheney and Mr Bush as they campaign for re-election. 

Mr Wilson has made his allegations in a newly published book, The 
Politics of Truth, subtitled "Inside the lies that led to war and 
betrayed my wife's CIA identity". In it he writes: "I am told ... 
that the Office of the Vice-President - either the Vice-President 
himself or more likely his chief of staff, Lewis 'Scooter' Libby 
- chaired a meeting at which a decision was made to do a work-up 
on me. As I understand it, this meant they were going to take a 
close look at who I was and what my agenda might be." 

The former diplomat has claimed elsewhere that it was also at 
this meeting that the issue of his wife's identity and her role 
as a covert CIA operative was discussed. Mr Wilson said he 
believed it was very unlikely that Mr Cheney was not aware of 
this. 

In an exclusive interview in his office in Washington, just a 
quarter of a mile from Mr Cheney's, he said: "I find it difficult 
to believe that a chief of staff would be undertaking something 
like this without - at a minimum - the Vice-President's 
knowledge." Mr Wilson stopped short of asking for Mr Cheney's 
resignation, but said: "If he [did not know] about it, he should 
be saying so. The leak took place at the nexus of national 
security, policy and politics." 

His struggle with the White House dates to a mission in early 
2002, at the request of Mr Cheney's office. He was sent to the 
west African state of Niger, where he was once ambassador, to 
investigate claims that Iraq was seeking to purchase uranium to 
develop nuclear weapons. The claims were based on a document 
obtained by Italian intelligence services, which had passed the 
information to Washington. 

In less than a week Mr Wilson proved that the claim was false and 
that the document must be a fake. Returning to Washington, he 
reported this to a debriefer from the CIA. Later, experts from 
the UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, 
confirmed the document was a crude forgery. But when Mr Bush and 
his senior officials continued to make the claim - first 
publicised in the British Government's September 2002 dossier on 
Iraq - he felt it was his duty to speak out. In an interview with 
The Independent on Sunday, in which he asked that he not be 
identified, and subsequently in a signed piece in The New York 
Times, Mr Wilson pointed out that it was inconceivable that 
senior US and British officials were not aware of his findings. 

After he went public, his wife was identified as a CIA operative 
by the syndicated right-wing columnist Bob Novak, a veteran 
Washington journalist with close links to the Republicans. It was 
her suggestion to send Mr Wilson to Africa, claimed Mr Novak, who 
said in his column he had been provided with the information by 
"two senior administration officials". 

The leaking of an intelligence officer's identity is a criminal 
offence. An FBI team is investigating the leak and has called a 
grand jury to hear evidence and question potential witnesses. 
Earlier this year it was reported that Mr Libby and numerous 
other officials from Mr Cheney's office had been questioned by 
the FBI. Mr Wilson alleges that it was Mr Bush's senior political 
adviser, Karl Rove, who was responsible for "pushing" the story 
of Ms Plame's CIA position, and that a senior national security 
council official, Elliott Abrams, may also have been involved. 

The White House has been very careful in its remarks on the 
affair, insisting that Mr Rove, Mr Elliott and Mr Libby were "not 
involved in leaking classified information". It has stopped short 
of an outright denial. One reason the White House may have been 
keen to smear Mr Wilson is because it knew his allegations would 
be taken seriously. In the run-up to the first Gulf War he helped 
to secure the release of US citizens taken hostage by Saddam 
Hussein. He was the last US official to meet Saddam while he was 
in power. 

Mr Wilson told the IoS that his wife still worked for the CIA, 
but that her work had been severely disrupted. He said that she 
might also be at risk from anyone who wished to harm her because 
of her previous undercover work. 

"It has been irredeemably changed," he said, adding that his wife 
felt she had been a victim of the political ambitions of senior 
officials within the administration. 

Serialisation of 'The Politics of Truth' begins in 'The 
Independent' tomorrow              


UK Independent Ltd.
*****************************************************************
 9 Guardian Unlimited Books: Edward Teller by Peter Goodchild
 
Biography Megaton megalomaniac 
		 	
Despite pulling some punches, Peter Goodchild's new biography 
presents a compelling portrait of Edward Teller, the Darth Vader 
figure behind the H bomb            
 		
Robin McKie
Sunday May 2, 2004
The Observer 		
 		
[Edward Teller: The Real Doctor Strangelove by Peter
Goodchild] 

 Edward Teller: The Real Dr Strangelove
by Peter Goodchild
Weidenfeld &Nicholson £25, pp467

Dwight Eisenhower was inclined to brood over the growing power of 
America's scientific elite. Yes, technology had given the US 
undreamt-of power, he would tell henchmen, but its protagonists 
now held the nation in dangerous thrall. And of that scientific 
aristocracy, Ike fretted most about its two great, immigrant 
stars: the German creator of modern rocketry and the Hungarian 
father of the H-bomb. 'Beware Werner von Braun and Edward 
Teller,' the President would tell his aides.

Fortunately for Ike, von Braun, the Nazi technocrat who built the 
V2 rocket, was enticed into saving the US's ailing space 
programme, thus sublimating his militant urges. But 
beetle-browed, tireless Teller remained passionately active in 
defence circles for four more decades, making his presence felt, 
usually uncomfortably, on the next nine Presidents until his 
death, at 95, last year.

America, and the rest of the world, still bears the marks of that 
bellicose influence, for Teller, more than anyone else, was 
responsible for driving the US further and further down the road 
to nuclear proliferation. He was obsessed with building the first 
hydrogen bomb, a device whose megaton explosion in 1952 dwarfed 
the kiloton blasts of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs.

Then, as leader of the Livermore atom lab, he directed the 
manufacture of increasing numbers of nuclear weapons so that John 
Kennedy, when elected in 1961, discovered he had inherited 18,000 
of them, with the Soviets galloping to catch up. The world was 
sprinting towards nuclear mayhem, and scientists began to retreat 
in horror.

But not Teller. More and bigger blasts were all he craved and he 
used his reputation and influence to block the introduction of 
test ban treaties; to make merciless (but incorrect) attacks on 
scientists who said nuclear fallout posed cancer risks; and to 
play a major role in disgracing Robert Oppenheimer, the 
distinguished scientist who had led the Hiroshima bomb project, 
but who came to question the need for increased nuclear weaponry. 
(Teller's fellow physicists never forgave him for this last act.)

'I do not want a hydrogen bomb because it would kill more 
people,' Teller claimed. 'I wanted a hydrogen bomb because it was 
new.' The only problem was finding uses for them. Thus he backed 
a plan to use 26 of them to blast out a new Panama Canal, while 
his idea of fleets of orbiting X-ray lasers (powered by nuclear 
bombs) that could destroy attacking missiles formed the basis for 
the US's Star Wars defence shield.

The project cost billions but created nothing except paranoia 
among Russians who seriously considered launching a pre-emptive 
attack on the West - in September 1983 - lest it lose its nuclear 
edge.

Thus Peter Seller's sieg-heiling Dr Strangelove in Kubrick's 
cinematic satire on nuclear war may have superficial similarities 
with von Braun, but is really based on Teller's manic 
obsessiveness, says Peter Goodchild. In fact, a closer cinematic 
parallel probably lies with Darth Vader, a man of initial liberal 
sensibilities who is seduced by the Dark Side. The question is: 
for what reason? Why did the once-urbane Teller end up so hawkish 
and alienated?

Psychoanalysts could doubtless make much of his overprotective 
mother - she would only let him swim with other children while 
she held a cord tied round his waist. That scarcely explains his 
megaton urges, however, and it is a distinct flaw in this 
otherwise fine biography that Goodchild fails to get near the 
core of this disturbing individual.

The best shot is provided by Marshall Rosenbluth, a colleague on 
the H-bomb project. He believes Teller was a modern Coriolanus: 
acclaimed as a national hero (Teller made the cover of Time in 
1957) for his H-bomb work, but later shunned (exiled) as hubris 
and jealousies set in. Eventually, he joined the enemy (the 
military). 'The parallel is quite exact and was, in a way, a 
tragedy,' says Rosenbluth.

That said, Goodchild provides us with a first-rate, thorough 
portrait, in which his subject is set in proper context. Yes, 
Teller was a warmonger, but so were the Soviets. And while he 
consistently exaggerated the Red threat for his own ends, the 
Russians scarcely helped. The author is also impressed with 
Teller's intellectual rigour and his 'unblinking honesty' about 
himself, though in merely describing his subject as 'remarkable' 
when words like grotesque and manic would have been more 
appropriate, he rather pulls his punches.

Goodchild retains some regard for the man, but I found it hard to 
disagree with Isidor Rabi, the Nobel laureate and former friend 
of Teller, who came to hate him: 'It would have been a better 
world without Teller.' It is an unpleasant epitaph but after 
reading this biography, it seems quite accurate.
 	
[UP] 

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004
*****************************************************************
 10 [IPCRI-News-Service] IAEA: Arms no guarantee for Israel - IAEA	
 
Date: Sat, 1 May 2004 02:07:13 -0500 (CDT)

 
Interview: Arms are no guarantee for Israel - IAEA	
 | By Ayman Sharaf, Special to Gulf News | 29/04/2004 |

Representatives of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) have
criticised the way the United States has carried out investigations into
the alleged nuclear programmes of Iran and Libya, creating tensions
between the agency and the world's only superpower.

In an exclusive interview with Gulf News, chief of the International
Atomic Energy Agency, Dr Mohammed El Baradei, spoke about the origins
and consequences of these tensions, the dubious role of the US in
monitoring nuclear activity in the Middle East and the prospects for
nuclear disarmament.

Gulf News: Under what conditions can the IAEA impose monitoring on the
Israeli nuclear programme, and what are the consequences of its being
the sole owner of nuclear weapons in the Middle East?
Mohammed El Baradei: There was a resolution by the UN in 1974 to clear
the Middle East of all weapons of mass destruction . But nothing has
changed in the region since then. The Israeli nuclear programme is
continuing unassailed by international inspection while Arab countries
are actually exposed to danger because of Israel's owning of what it
sees as the essence of its existence. The Arab countries have to find
more effective means to convince Israel that nuclear weapons will not
guarantee it security as long as there is no peaceful and just
settlement of the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict. 

Arab countries, and especially Egypt and Jordan, should have included
the banning of nuclear weapons in the Camp David and Wadi Araba treaties
as both offered a suitable context to tackle this issue in a more
effective way. Arabs then would at least have had official documents to
base their demands on. But, unfortunately, this did not happen.

Yet, there is another chance for the Arab world to speak to address the
international community with one voice, especially after the closure of
the Iranian and Libyan nuclear files and the initiatives towards
acceptance of peace with Israel by almost all Arab countries. 

You recently visited Iran. What were your most significant conclusions
after this visit?
The Iranian file is controversial, complicated and needs double efforts
by the IAEA and cooperation and understanding from Iran. The relations
between the agency and Iran have been strained in the last months due to
our reporting of some inaccurate information about its programme,
especially on the issue of enriching Uranium.

However, since October last year, we have started a clean slate with the
Iranians.

My last visit was very beneficial and I received promises from President
Khatami and other high-ranking officials that they will increase
cooperation with us. For political reasons, the Iranians are eager to
close this file before June. All in all, significant steps have been
taken and we are about to accomplish a final revision of the Iranian
nuclear programme.

What about Libya?
The Libyan file is a special case. It is different from the Iranian
programme in its complexity. The Libyan programme is as yet nothing more
than a project in the making. The Libyan announcement of its programme
came as a surprise for the agency because what we knew about it was very
little.When a Libyan official visited me in Vienna, he gave me
information that showed they were on the way to developing plans for
military applications.

I cannot say they have really achieved something yet as most of the
equipment is stored and not yet in operation. This makes it even more
difficult for the agency to gather information about the issue,
especially since we work through laboratories and examining soil samples
to investigate the claims we receive against countries allegedly
developing nuclear programmes for military purposes.

You were criticised by the American media for your attitude towards the
Libyan and Iranian programmes. What is the reason for this?
The problem concerning Iran is that the United States has concluded,
after conducting their investigations, that Iran possesses a military
nuclear programme. However, the agency did not find any specific proof
that the programme is designed for non-peaceful purposes and we cannot
rely on mere speculation in a case like this. We can only base our
conclusions on the agency's specific mechanisms for monitoring,
inspection and investigation.

The issue of Iraq is a vital lesson for us. We carried out our
responsibilities and concluded that Iraq is clear from all weapons of
mass destruction, but we were completely ignored.

The Libyan case was different because the US and Britain agreed with the
Libyan authorities to move most of the equipment and files to the US.
The agency made it clear that this would jeopardise our work and we
requested that the agency do its job first before the Libyan authorities
would have the right to make special agreements with other international
parties and only if this would not affect our work any further. This, of
course, infuriated the US, in spite of the fact that we are actually
applying policies determined for us by the UN. 

What about the underground market for nuclear material and equipment. Is
there any guarantee that the materials will not fall into the hands of
terrorist groups?
I met the American President, George W. Bush, two weeks ago and will
also meet the French and Russian presidents to discuss the scope for
more international cooperation in battling against this dangerous
business. The UN Security Council is now discussing a draft resolution
that will endorse more cooperation between countries in fighting this
threat. This resolution will also allow international cooperation in
tracking down these terrorist groups wherever they may be in order to
preempt a serious nuclear threat from their side.

- Ayman Sharaf is a journalist based in Cairo.

  _____  

C Al Nisr Publishing LLC - Gulf News Online | contact
editor@gulfnews.com
 

Gershon Baskin, Ph.D.

Israeli Co-Director of IPCRI

Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information

P.O. Box 9321

Jerusalem 91092

Telephone: +972-2-676-9460   Fax: +972-2-676-8011

Mobile: 052-381-715

 

gershon@ipcri.org

 

www.ipcri.org

www.place4peace.com

www.our-shared-environment.net

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 11 Mehr News Agency: With Isfahan UCF Project - Envoy
 		 		 		 		
Tehran:08:37,2004/05/03   																 															

-- Iranian representative to the International Atomic Energy 
Agency (IAEA) Piruz Husseini said on Saturday that the agency’s 
recent report on Iran’s nuclear program which was presented at 
the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference in 
New York last week could have covered more positive aspects of 
Iran’s cooperation with the IAEA.  
																			 																			
Husseini told the Mehr News Agency that the IAEA has no objection 
to Iran’s activities in regard to the Uranium Conversion 
Facility (UCF) project in Isfahan. 
  
Iran expected the agency to make further comments on Iran-IAEA 
cooperation in its report, he added, saying that surely would 
have positively influenced ties between Iran and the agency. 
  
Husseini noted that the current level of Iran-IAEA cooperation 
are good, adding that IAEA experts are inspecting Iran’s 
nuclear facilities and will be preparing a report on the results 
of their work. 
  
On the opening day of the conference (April 26), the director of 
the IAEA External Relations Office, Vilmos Cserveny, said that 
although Iran had failed to live up to its safeguard commitments 
as stipulated in the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the 
Islamic Republic has become more transparent since last October. 
  
Referring to the complementary stages of the uranium processing 
facilities in Isfahan, Husseini said that Iran has discharged all 
its obligations in regard to the project and has even gone beyond 
the IAEA regulations, adding that there is no obstacle hindering 
inauguration of the project. 
  
He stressed that Iran has informed the IAEA about all issues 
related to the UCF project, adding that IAEA inspectors visited 
the Isfahan center over the past week. 
  
Iranian Atomic Energy Organization (IAEO) Director Reza Aqazadeh 
announced earlier that the Isfahan UCF project was in the 
experimental stage and that the center would soon start 
experimental production. 
  
He referred to the UCF project as an important aspect in the 
nuclear fuel cycle, adding that the Isfahan UCF center will 
produce all the raw materials needed for fuel cycle activities. 
  
Aqazadeh said that the UCF will produce hexafluoride uranium, 
metal uranium, and uranium oxide. 
  
IAEA spokeswoman Melissa Fleming also announced that there is no 
controversial issue regarding the opening of the installations. 
  
Fleming said that the agency had been informed in February that 
Iran would start the Isfahan ICF project in March. 
  
She went on to say that Iran’s uranium conversion activities 
have nothing to do with its suspension of uranium enrichment, 
adding that according to Tehran its nuclear program is meant for 
peaceful purposes. 
  
The UCF project is not one of the projects Iran agreed to suspend 
voluntarily. The agency was officially notified about it in the 
year 2000 and it has frequently been inspected by IAEA experts. 
  
Apart from the initial purification processes that are carried 
out in the mine and the UF6 enrichment, all the stages of the 
nuclear fuel cycle are performed inside the UCF facility. 
  
Natural enriched uranium, 19.7% enriched metal uranium, natural 
enriched U02 powder, and natural enriched UF6 gas are the four 
main fuels to be produced in the factory to be used in nuclear 
reactors for producing energy. 
  
HL/MS/HG End 
  
MNA   																			 																			
 																				   																					  
*****************************************************************
 12 [DU-WATCH] the nuke next door
 
Date: Sat, 1 May 2004 01:13:22 -0500 (CDT)

 
http://www.emagazine.com/view/?1730

CURRENTS The Nuke Next Door Do Cancers Cluster Around Atomic Plants?

By Trish Riley

Raised on fresh fruits and vegetables by his vegetarian mother,
Ty-Michael Schmidt never even had a cold or ear infection before
the age of five. Then doctors found a tumor in his abdomen. His
mother, and some scientists, suspect the tumor has something to do
with the fact that he lives near a nuclear power plant.

I never knew a child with cancer until my son, says Audra Schmidt
of Hobe Sound, Florida. Now I know nothing but kids with cancer.
At least 50 kids in our local area have it.

But theres not a cancer cluster in the neighborhood, according to
the St. Lucie County, Florida Health Department, which conducted
an in-depth study of the homes of 28 children with cancer. During
the same period, another 12 cases were identified in near-by Martin
County. Tests were conducted on water, soil, air and dust for 561
different chemicals and potential contaminants. The results were
negative for all chemicals tested.

Debi Santoro with her four-year-old daughter, Jadyn, whose cancer
is now in remission.

TRISH RILEY

We have yet to find any commonality, says James Moses, director of
environmental health for St. Lucie County. We are dealing with 30
cases from 1981 to 1997. There was no cancer cluster.

The study continues, though, because it did find a marked increase
in childhood cancers of the brain and central nervous system: 15
diagnosed in three years, nine within a seven-month period. The
report notes that the trend should be monitored and perhaps studied
further.

Health officials did not test for Strontium 90 (Sr-90), a radioactive
carcinogenic byproduct of nuclear fission. The Radiation and Public
Health Project (RPHP), a nonprofit research center in New York City,
recently released a study linking increased incidence of childhood
cancers to areas near nuclear power plants. The study was published
in the peer-reviewed Archives of Environmental Health last year.

Of the 14 areas studied, the two counties closest to the reactors
in St. Lucie County had the highest cancer rates, says principal
researcher Joseph Mangano, national coordinator of the RPHP. Mangano
says the Florida State Cancer Registry lists four cases in St. Lucie
County for children under 10 from 1981 to 1983, but this increased
to 30 cases from 1996 to 1998. Accounting for a near doubling of
population, the incidence still represents a 40 percent increase,
compared to an average national increase of 11 percent in childhood
cancers.

The RPHP has also been studying radiation levels in baby teeth of
children around the country. Dubbed the Tooth Fairy Project, (see
Your Health, Glowing in the Dark, May/June 2002), researchers report
higher levels of Sr-90 near nuclear power plants, including St.
Lucie and Miami-Dade counties. Water samples indicate higher levels
of Sr-90 in areas within 20 miles of the nuclear power plants than
in more distant locales. The study also found that the levels of
Sr-90 in the teeth of children diagnosed with cancer were nearly
twice as high as levels in children who do not have cancer.

These results are hotly disputed by the multi-billion dollar nuclear
power industry. Their claims are false, says Rachel Scott, spokesperson
for Florida Power and Light, which owns the St. Lucie and Miamis
Turkey Point nuclear power plants. Cancer levels are not higher in
South Florida. The levels of Strontium 90 are not higher in South
Florida, according to the Florida Department of Health and the
Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

The nuclear industry blames any Sr-90 still in the environment on
residual effects of bomb testing. But a U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency report says because of decay, insignificant levels of Sr-90
remain in the soil and atmosphere from the bomb tests that ended
40 years ago.

This touches a nerve in the nuclear power industry, says Stephen
Lester, science director of the Center for Health, Environment and
Justice (CHEJ). These plants are releasing small quantities of
low-level radiation every day. The amounts may seem insignificant,
but when you look at 50 cities, you can see it slowly has an impact.

At least two families were sufficiently convinced to file suit
against Florida Power and Light because of their childrens illnesses,
which include one death.

A huge thing at stake here is the state of nuclear power plants,
says Nancy LaVista, attorney for the plaintiff families. If in fact
it is giving cancer to our children, we have a right to know and a
duty to protect all citizens of Florida.

St. Lucie and Martin County families have joined forces to create
a packet detailing their childrens illnesses. Its not so much for
our children, who are already sick, says organizer Debi Santoro,
whose four-year-old daughter, Jadyn, contracted cancer when she was
six months old. Its for the children to come. These children are
dying and theyre not going to die in vaintheyre going to help other
children.

In another part of the country, New Yorks Westchester and Suffolk
counties and the state of New Jersey have appropriated funds to
study areas near nuclear plants where cancer clusters are suspected.

A 2003 report released by the European Committee on Radiation Risk
found the risk from low-level radiation to be significant, concluding
that the present cancer epidemic is a consequence of exposures to
global atmospheric weapons fallout in the period 1959 to 1963 and
that more recent releases of radioisotopes to the environment from
the operation of the nuclear fuel cycle will result in significant
increases in cancer and other types of ill health.

Meanwhile, U.S. industry officials insist on labeling the reports
junk science, and eagerly push a nuclear energy agenda. The federal
government and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission are currently
promoting legislation to renew interest in nuclear power and encourage
the development of more new nuclear power plants for the first time
since the Three Mile Island nuclear accident in 1979.

Stephen Lester of CHEJ suggests the power industry adopt his
organizations new Be Safe Campaign. Its based on the fundamental
principle of public health that says, if it is dangerous or has the
potential to harm, proceed with caution.

Now 10, Ty-Michael Schmidt spent a year in the hospital undergoing
radical experimental treatment for a rare form of cancer. Doctors
have never been particularly encouraging about his prognosis, giving
him only six months to live when he was diagnosed four years ago,
but he is in remission and hes beaten the odds thus far. Doctors
say his cancer can be traced to fetal cells, meaning it developed
in utero.

For now, RPHP researchers recommend that concerned people try a
remarkably simple precaution: drink only water that comes from a
deep, protected source or that has been filtered to remove Sr-90
particles (such as by reverse osmosis). If only Audra Schmidt and
the dozens of other parents of ill children in her community had
known that.

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 13 Sunday Herald: Near miss at nuclear plant - 

  RAF Herculess breach of power station no-fly zone covered up
for months

By Rob Edwards, Environment Editor 
 
 A large military aircraft came within a few hundred feet of 
Scotlands oldest and most vulnerable nuclear plant in a near-miss 
incident which has been covered up for more than four months.

A RAF Hercules C130 transport plane breached the no-fly zone 
around the Chapelcross nuclear power station in Dumfries and 
Galloway on December 19, 2003. But the incident was only 
confirmed yesterday by the Ministry of Defence (MoD), which said 
it was still conducting an investigation.

The MoD also disclosed that the no-fly zones over three other 
nuclear plants had been breached five times in the past three 
years. One breach was at the Torness nuclear power station in 
East Lothian, one at Dungeness in Kent and three at Berkeley in 
Gloucestershire.

But experts are most worried about the breach at Chapelcross 
because its facilities, built largely in the 1950s, would 
probably not be able to withstand a direct hit by a large 
aircraft. You would get a massive release of radioactivity, said 
John Large, an independent nuclear consultant.

He pointed out that the reactors had no secondary containment, 
and that parts of their primary cooling circuits were exposed. 
They were not designed with aircraft crashes in mind, he claimed. 
If cooling was lost, the fuel could start burning.

After the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington on 
September 11, 2001, the government doubled the restricted area 
for aircraft around nuclear installations to a radius of two 
nautical miles (2.3 miles). The aim was to reduce the risk of 
planes crashing into reactors and radioactive waste stores.

Since then, the MoD has investigated 32 complaints that 
restricted areas have been infringed. It insists that, even in 
the six instances where infringements are now known to have 
occurred, there was never any danger of a crash.

But politicians and environmentalists fear otherwise. The 
consequences, should a crash occur, would be an unimaginable 
catastrophe, said the Welsh Labour MP Llew Smith, who has been 
researching nuclear near misses.

He also attacked the MoD for keeping details of the breached 
no-fly zones secret. It is very worrying, the way this 
information has emerged. The Ministry of Defence should reveal 
such incidents.

The revelation about the near miss at Chapelcross, near Annan, 
clears up a mystery that surrounded a report in the Sunday 
Express five weeks ago. It said that a military aircraft had come 
within 100ft of one of the Calder Hall cooling towers at 
Sellafield nuclear plant in Cumbria in December.

This was categorically denied by British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL) and 
the government. However, sources told the Sunday Herald yesterday 
that the report had just confused the location of the incident, 
mistaking Chapelcross for its sister nuclear station, Calder 
Hall.

Chapelcross consists of four 45-year-old old Magnox reactors, 
plus a secretive military plant for producing radioactive tritium 
for the nuclear warheads carried by Trident submarines. There are 
also cooling ponds for spent fuel and other facilities for 
radioactive waste.

The Hercules C130 aircraft is a four-engined cargo and troop- 
carrying plane with a wingspan of over 130ft. Fully fuelled, it 
weighs over 50 tonnes and it is designed to carry a further 20 
tonnes.

BNFL yesterday confirmed that an incident involving a Hercules 
C130 had occurred at Chapelcross in December. Restricted flying 
zones exist around nuclear power stations to prevent aircraft 
flying below typically 2000ft and within two nautical miles, said 
a spokesman for the state-owned company.

We report all alleged incidents of low-flying [aircraft] to the 
Civil Aviation Authority who have the responsibility for 
enforcing the restricted zones. If we can identify the aircraft 
as belonging to the military, we also report the incident to the 
Ministry of Defence.

The MoD said that all reports were investigated, but 
infringements were very rare. No disciplinary action had been 
taken against offending pilots, but they were informed so that 
they could learn from their mistakes.

In no case was it considered that there was any danger to the 
installation from the infringement, said a MoD spokeswoman. 
Flight safety is something we have always taken very seriously.

British Energy, the private company that runs the Torness nuclear 
power station, refused to comment. In November 1999 a burning RAF 
Tornado crashed into the sea less than half a mile from Torness, 
its two pilots having safely ejected over land.

Environmentalists pointed out that the breaches of no-fly zones 
were all accidents. We also need to guard against a deliberate 
attempt to crash an aeroplane into nuclear facilities, which were 
not designed with such an attack in mind, said Greenpeace nuclear 
consultant, Pete Roche.

Even if the nuclear reactor is not breached, there are other 
facilities on these sites, like spent fuel ponds, which if 
damaged would lead to a large release of radioactivity into the 
atmosphere. 02 May 2004 

  © newsquest (sunday herald) limited. all rights reserved   
*****************************************************************
 14 Rutland Herald: Fuel rod report never filed in '79 

By SUSAN SMALLHEER Herald Staff 

Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Corp. never filed a report with 
federal regulators when it broke two fuel rods in 1979, creating 
the pieces that are now missing. 

The New England Coalition said it made an extensive document 
search - assisted by NRC staff - over the past week, seeking 
information about the incident, but turned up nothing. 

NRC spokeswoman Diane Screnci said she didn't know whether broken 
fuel rods had to be reported to federal regulators back in 1979, 
or now. 

"I don't know what the requirement is now and I don't know what 
was reportable then, and they do change over time," Screnci said. 
She noted there was an extensive list of "reportable" events and 
she would have to research the issue. 

Robert Williams, spokesman for Entergy Nuclear, which bought the 
Vermont Yankee plant in Vernon in 2002, said he didn't know 
anything about the lack of reports in 1979, or whether broken 
fuel rods warranted an official report to regulators. 

Williams said the fuel rod pieces were created when Yankee 
personnel tried to put the damaged fuel rods into new assemblies. 
While the 12-foot fuel rods broke into several pieces, the two 
pieces that are now missing were so short they _were put in a 
special container. 

All the other pieces are accounted for, Williams said. 

New England Coalition technical advisor Raymond Shadis said that 
an NRC official told him Thursday that nuclear power plants were 
allowed to break a small percentage of its fuel rods a year 
without filing an official report with regulators, as long as 
radiation levels remained within certain limits. 

But Shadis disputed Williams' assertion that the plant knows 
where all its fuel rods - and pieces - are. 

"They have lost control of their fuel inventory. You don't lose 
nuclear fuel," he said. 

Vermont Yankee has more than 150,000 fuel rods in its spent fuel 
pool, and about 19,000 in the reactor core at any given moment. 

Shadis said the NRC reported that Vermont Yankee broke two faulty 
fuel rods when they were trying to insert them into the spent 
fuel pool. The fuel rods had been removed from the reactor core 
in 1979 because of leaking radiation. 

The New England Coalition filed a citizens' petition last week, 
asking that the movement of fuel into the reactor be halted until 
the missing fuel rod pieces were found, and saying it had 
evidence of other broken fuel rods. 

"The two rods are the only rods unaccounted for. In 1992 there 
were fuel problems, but there was no breakage into separate 
segments. There is no more fuel unaccounted for," Williams said. 

Shadis said he had been told by a plant employee that a fuel rod 
had "exploded," in 1992 and the employee had seen a video of the 
damaged fuel which looked like it had blown apart, as if it had 
disintegrated. 

Entergy Nuclear has already finished refueling the reactor, 
having already fixed the cracks in the steam dryer, which is at 
the top of the reactor, and had returned the top to the reactor, 
bolting it back in place. 

Meanwhile, Gov. James Douglas said Thursday said he had no 
problem with Vermont Yankee resuming operation next week, despite 
the fact that the missing fuel rod pieces haven't been found. 

"The storage of the spent fuel rods is an issue that's related 
to, but still different from, the operation of the plant, and I 
don't think that it will necessarily hold up the restart of the 
plant next week," Douglas said at his weekly news conference. 

Douglas has called the loss of the fuel rod pieces "unacceptable" 
and has demanded accountability from both Entergy and the NRC. 

"We have no regulatory hold, the schedule is theirs," the NRC's 
Screnci said. "We would have to have a reason it wasn't safe to 
operate to keep them from starting the plant. I know of nothing 
that would prevent them from starting." 

Douglas has been pushing the NRC for a commitment for a so-called 
independent engineering assessment, and has left open the 
possibility that it would ask for a much more detailed, lengthy 
and expensive independent safety assessment. 

So far, the NRC has been noncommittal about doing even the 
engineering review, which the Vermont Public Service Board has 
set as a condition of the plant's permit for a power increase or 
uprate. 

Screnci said there was no connection between the missing fuel and 
the plant's ability to operate. 

And she said there was no reason to stop the plant from resuming 
power generation. 

Vermont Yankee provides about one-third of the state's power 
needs, about half of its production. The rest of its power is 
sold out of state. 

The plant, which shut down in early April, is expected to resume 
power generation on Monday, if things go as planned. 

Williams said that a special remote camera - less than 3 inches 
tall - had been placed in the 40-by-30-foot fuel pool to try to 
locate the missing fuel pieces. He said, if necessary, another, 
more technical camera could be brought in. 

He said the camera came from R.O.V. Technologies of Vernon, a 
company that specializes in remote cameras used by the nuclear 
power industry. 

Once the camera was put in the spent fuel pool, it too became 
radioactive waste, Williams said. 

On yet another front, Wallace Malley, an assistant attorney 
general, said he was researching the issue of whether of the 
"four little words," that Entergy Nuclear wants added to a 1977 
state law dealing with the storage of high-level nuclear waste at 
the Vermont Yankee site in Vernon. 

Malley is doing the research at the request of Sen. John 
Campbell, D-Windsor. 

Malley said he might have the legal opinion finished today, but 
he said it was a complicated issue and it might be Monday before 
the opinion is completed. 

"It's a high priority and we may have something tomorrow," he 
said. 

The four little words - "its successors or assigns" - would clear 
the way for Entergy Nuclear to seek approval from the Public 
Service Board to store high level waste at the Vernon reactor, 
and not have to have approval from the Legislature as well. 

The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

Contact Susan Smallheer at susan.smallheer@rutlandherald.com. 
  
Copyright © 2004 and Barre-Montpelier 
*****************************************************************
 15 Japan Times: Toshiba, GE hope to build nuclear plant in U.S.

  Monday, May 3, 2004   

 Toshiba Corp. and General Electric Co. have applied for 
permission with the U.S. Department of Energy to conduct a 
feasibility study on building a nuclear plant in Alabama, company 
sources said Sunday.

 The two electric giants are hoping to land the contract 
following a Bush administration decision to once again support 
the construction of nuclear power plants, according to the 
sources.

 Building of new nuclear power plants in the U.S. has been 
suspended since the major accident at Three Mile Island in 
Pennsylvania in 1979.

 The Bush administration is promoting the use of nuclear energy 
as a means of reducing America's dependence on Middle East oil.

 Toshiba is eyeing the U.S. market because demand for 
construction of new nuclear power plants and reactors in Japan is 
stagnant.

 According to the plan, Toshiba and GE will work in a consortium 
with four more companies -- the Tennessee Valley Authority public 
power firm, contractor Bechtel Corp., enriched uranium fuel 
supplier USEC Inc. and Global Nuclear Fuel-Americas LLC, a joint 
venture set up by GE, Toshiba and Hitachi Ltd.

 The TVA has applied for permission with the Department of Energy 
as the main body conducting the feasibility study. If government 
approval is obtained, the consortium would begin the study for 
installing an advanced boiling water reactor in Alabama with an 
output in excess of 1 million kilowatts. Total construction costs 
would be around $3 billion.

 The Japan Times: May 3, 2004 (C) All rights reserved 
*****************************************************************
 16 ITAR-TASS: Fourth power unit at Novovoronezhskaya N-plant fully shut down

02.05.2004, 08.27

 NOVOVORONEZH, Voronezh Region, May 2 (Itar-Tass) - The fourth
unit at the Novovoronezhskaya nuclear power station was fully
shut down and put to reserve, its chief Anatoly Fedorov said
here on Sunday. 

According to the station head, this action was taken at the
initiative of the forwarding service of the Unified Energy
Systems of Russia in connection with a decrease in the load in
the systems on the holidays. The set’s shutdown will be used to
carry out preventive routine repairs. It will be restarted
overnight from May 4 to 5, Fedorov added. 

The fourth unit of the Novovoronezhskaya nuclear power station
had been put into operation in December 1972. Following the
expiration of the 30-year planned period of work in 2002, a
decision was taken on continuing its operation for another 15
years. 

Two sets with a total capacity of 1,420,000 kWt are now in
operation at the Novovoronezhskaya station. The radiation
situation on the station’s grounds and nearby territory is
normal. 

       
© ITAR-TASS. All rights reserved. You undertake not to copy,
*****************************************************************
 17 ITAR-TASS: World has no feasible project yet to liquidate nuclear waste

02.05.2004, 09.43

 MOSCOW, May 2 (Itar-Tass) - The world has no new feasible
projects so far to liquidate stockpiled waste of nuclear
production facilities and industrial nuclear power stations.

This opinion was expressed on Sunday by president of the Russian
research center “Kurchatovsky Institute” academician Yevgeny
Velikhov in an interview with Tass. 

According to the prominent scientist, versions of freeing the
world from “the nuclear heritage”, suggested now by researchers
and experts in various countries, “are technically realizable,
but need huge expenses and provoke many questions among the
world community”. 

Velikhov noted that “out of 14 versions of liquidating nuclear
waste in some countries, suggested by researchers now, only
three can be examined dead serious and even in this case with a
great share of doubt and in the most distant future”. 

Radioactive waste can be shipped to the sun by space freight
ferries, to put into pits of the Antarctic ice cap and to place
it into the earth’s crust at great depths so that it can melt in
the plasma of the earth later. However, even these three
versions “put a lot of insoluble questions before mankind,” the
academician added. 

The version of dispatching nuclear waste to the sun is bad over
a premise that “a possible breakdown of a cargo tug at a
lift-off stage is fraught with a radiation disaster”, Velikhov
claimed. Underwater dumping or placement of waste in the
Antarctic “are banned and cannot be materialized, since the
continent should be free, according to deep conviction of the
world public, of nuclear materials,” Velikhov explained. 

Russian nuclear specialists contend, the scientist went on to
say, that “the keeping of waste at land concrete storages in
countries where it was produced” is, for the time being, the
most reasonable solution of the problem. According to Russian
specialists, “the question of storing nuclear waste is not so
pressing for Russia, as for some European countries or Japan
where there are virtually no sparsely populated areas”. 

Velikhov also noted that according to international experts,
this problem is most burning for Britain which “will soon
stockpile 500,000 tonnes of highly active nuclear waste even if
the country does not build not a single new nuclear power
plant”. 

© ITAR-TASS. All rights reserved. You undertake not to copy,
*****************************************************************
 18 Brattleboro Reformer: Search for missing fuel rods frustrating

May 02, 2004 Brattleboro, VT                                                                                 
 			 								 					
By CAROLYN LORIÉ Reformer Staff

BRATTLEBORO -- Ten days have passed since Vermont Yankee 
announced that two segments of highly radioactive fuel segments 
were discovered missing from the spent fuel pool. So far, the 
search for them has proved fruitless.

 The segments, which Entergy Corporation has described as 
pencil-thick and 7 inches and 17 inches long, respectively, are 
most likely not sitting at the bottom of the 40-foot deep pool. A 
robotic camera was used to search the pool, including the 10 
inches between the bottom of the fuel racks and the stainless 
steel floor.

 According to Entergy spokesman Rob Williams, the camera will be 
kept handy to re-enter the pool as engineers review the initial 
data.

 A review of all shipping records is also under way and formal 
interviews with past personnel will begin next week. 

Department of Public Service Commissioner David O'Brien was at 
the plant on Thursday, meeting with Entergy officials and the 
Nuclear Regulatory Commission inspector in charge of the 
investigation. According to O'Brien, Entergy's search will be 
completed by the end of May, at which point the NRC will take a 
more central role.

 An additional NRC inspector, Todd Jackson, has been on site, 
overseeing the search. Jackson was the lead inspector at 
Millstone 1 nuclear station in Connecticut when that plant lost 
two fuel rods in 2000. The rods were never found.

 Neil Sheehan, NRC spokesman for Region 1, said that Jackson will 
remain at the plant "for as long as necessary."

 "We want to make sure that we have a presence and are looking 
over their shoulder as they do the search," said Sheehan.

 The plant, which has been closed for refueling, is expected to 
resume generating power on Monday.

 On April 23, the anti-nuclear watchdog group New England 
Coalition filed a petition with the NRC requesting that the plant 
not be allowed to go back on line, until all the fuel had been 
accounted for.

 In a telephone call with the NRC on Wednesday, Ray Shadis of the 
coalition learned that all the fuel had already been moved, the 
reactor closed and the plant ready to begin generating power.

 Shadis accused the NRC of delaying their response, allowing 
Entergy to complete the outage and stay on schedule.

 Sheehan, however, said that the reactor was already closed by 
the time the petition was filed.

 A telephone conference between the NRC petition review board, 
the coalition and possibly Entergy officials will take place 
next.                           
 		   			 		   	 	
       Copyright ©1999-2004 New England Newspapers, Inc., 
*****************************************************************
 19 Sofia Morning News: No Project Okayed for Bulgaria's 2nd N-Plant
 	 	 	 	 	 	
=] SOFIA NEWS AGENCY novinite.com

Business: 1 May 2004, Saturday.

No project has been approved so far for the construction of 
Bulgaria's second nuclear power plant in Belene.
 
Energy Minister Milko Kovanchev announced, adding that recent 
bribe scandal would not impede the construction of the plant. 
Kovachev also said that an investor for the project will be 
appointed by the end of 2004.
 
Minister Kovachev also added that the existing infrastructure 
will be used in the construction of the new plant. In his words 
the plant should be ready in 2009-2010.
 
Just a few days earlier Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd (AECL) 
claimed that Bulgarian officials insisted for a USD 40 M bribe 
wanted to approve AECL's project concerning the second power 
plant construction in Belene.

 All Rights Reserved © Novinite Ltd., 2001-2004 - Copyright

Novinite.com (thebulgariannews.com also) is unique with being a
real time news provider in English that informs its readers
about the latest Bulgarian news. The editorial staff also
*****************************************************************
 20 Sofia Morning News: Canada Refutes Bulgarian Nuke Bribe Claims
                    
SOFIA NEWS AGENCY novinite.com
  
Politics: 2 May 2004, Sunday.

Canadian Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd (AECL) denied claims for 
corrupt practices among Bulgarian officials dealing with the 
second power plant construction in Belene.
 
A letter sent by AECL reads that no Bulgarian officials have 
contacted the Canadian company. Robert Van Adel, President & CEO 
of AECL sent the letter to Bulgaria's Energy Minister Milko 
Kovachev.
 
Van Adel wrote that there were no grounds in the articles 
published by Canadian Globe and Mail Daily newspapers. Judging 
from your letter I am positive of the transparency of the 
procedure, AECL President & CEO also wrote.
 
Bulgaria approached AECL with a request for a copy of the 
document, which alleged Bulgarian officials of corruption 
concerning the second power plant construction in Belene. 

The AECL is part of an international consortium interested in 
completing the construction of Bulgaria's second nuclear power 
station at a Danube site near the town of Belene.
 
Besides AECL, Czech and Russian companies have declared their 
interest to bid for the power station construction.

 All Rights Reserved © Novinite Ltd., 2001-2004 - Copyright

Novinite.com (thebulgariannews.com also) is unique with being a
real time news provider in English that informs its readers
about the latest Bulgarian news. The editorial staff also
*****************************************************************
 21 DECATUR DAILY: Nuke waste near you: TVA poised to move Browns Ferry 
spent rods above-ground, on-site
 
//www.decaturdaily.com/
    
    SUNDAY, MAY 2, 2004   
  
By Eric Fleischauer 
DAILY Staff Writer
 eric@decaturdaily.com · 340-2435 

Deep in the bowels of a Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant storage pool 
rests an underwater museum of nuclear fission, a collection of 
fuel rods dating back to 1974, when the plant near Athens began 
churning power to the Tennessee Valley. 

  [Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant will soon install 13
steel-and-concrete casks on site. The casks are designed to be
interim storage for nuclear waste until a national repository
opens.]   

  Illustration Courtesy Holtec International

 Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant will soon install 13 
steel-and-concrete casks on site. The casks are designed to be 
interim storage for nuclear waste until a national repository 
opens.   

The nuclear relics will soon be moved to above-ground storage 
casks, an event that will reduce one set of risks but create 
another. 

Experts say the primary risk from the new method is that a 
massive canister will drop from a crane while over the pools now 
used to store the waste. If that happened and the damage emptied 
the pool of water, a meltdown could occur. 

But the operator of Browns Ferry has little choice. The toxic 
museum is full. The Tennessee Valley Authority must find a new 
home for its radioactive curios or shut down. 

Browns Ferry Unit 3 will run out of space for storage of highly 
radioactive spent fuel rods in late 2005. Unit 1, which is being 
restarted, and Unit 2 will run out of storage space in 2009. 

Existing storage is in 45-foot-deep water-filled pools. Water is 
an effective radiation barrier, and because it is circulated, the 
water also keeps spent fuel rods cool. 

The new storage method will be above ground in casks made of 
concrete and steel. TVA is near completion of a concrete pad that 
will hold up to 90 of the 180-ton trash cans. TVA expects to 
receive its first order of 13 casks this week from New 
Jersey-based Holtec International, one of the few companies that 
make them. Each cask is 20 feet tall and 11 feet in diameter. 

The cost of the storage facility will be $22.5 million, a bitter 
pill for TVA because it has already contributed $650 million 
toward constructing a still-dormant national repository at Yucca 
Mountain in Nevada. 

Browns Ferry's most recent  and therefore most highly 
radioactive  assemblies were retired to underwater storage in 
March. They will not go into dry storage for at least five years 
because their high temperatures would damage the casks. 

The casks TVA ordered take the possibility of a national 
repository into account. They are specially designed for both 
on-site storage and transport. 

TVA has about 2,260 metric tons of spent fuel stored in the 
pools, according to Craig Beasley, the plant's spokesman. 

Beasley said the plant maximizes the underwater storage through 
consolidation as the spent fuel rods' radioactivity decreases, 
but that is a temporary fix. 

"You can then pack them closer together, but you have to be very 
sure about how you do it or it might create a hot spot," Beasley 
said. 

A hot spot could melt the metal casings, creating a risk of a 
meltdown. 

Twenty of the nation's 102 nuclear plants already use dry 
storage, Beasley said, so it is "a proven technology." 

Beasley said the casks are so strong that the risk of terrorists 
targeting them is minimal. Just in case, however, TVA will expand 
the high-security portion of its 840-acre site to include the 
casks. The casks will be in the line of sight of a TVA-controlled 
public road, a fact that Beasley said does not place them at risk 
of missile-toting terrorists. 

In a study funded by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, 
physicists calculated the damage to a cask if struck by a Lear 
jet. The cask would not even tip over. 

Different risks 

David Lochbaum, a Washington, D.C.-based nuclear engineer with 
the nonprofit Union of Concerned Scientists, said in some ways 
the casks are safer than existing underwater storage, but they 
create a new set of risks. 

Lochbaum spent 17 years in the industry, including three years at 
Browns Ferry. 

The casks' enormous weight is both a pro and a con, Lochbaum 
said. On the one hand, the weight and strength make them less 
vulnerable to terrorist attacks and less likely to leak even if 
dropped. On the other hand, dropping one can do all sorts of 
damage to whatever it hits. 

To understand the risks, Lochbaum said, one must understand the 
procedure. 

After the casks arrive, a truck will drive them through a door 
and into the plant. A 40-ton metal canister fits within the outer 
"overpack." 

A crane inside the plant will lift the canister to a position 
near the top of the plant, on the refuel floor. From there, 
workers will lower the canister into the pool in which the spent 
fuel assemblies are stored. Once the canister is submerged, a 
mechanical device will move up to 68 of the 14-foot fuel 
assemblies into the canister. While still submerged, workers will 
put a temporary lid on the canister. 

The next step is to lift the canister  filled with water and 
fuel rods  from the pool and set it on the refuel floor. The 
workers will drain the water, install a permanent lid and fill 
the canister with nitrogen, which unlike air will not rust the 
metal parts. The canister is then placed in the overpack and 
transported to the concrete pad. 

Each step in the procedure involves risk, but Lochbaum said the 
most worrisome is the risk that the canister will be dropped 
while it is above the pool. 

"If, accidentally or intentionally, you drop the cask just as 
it's over the edge of the pool, or if it falls on the side wall 
of the pool, that can damage the pool," Lochbaum said. "The cask 
will probably survive, but the pool that catches it will probably 
be damaged." 

Damage to the pool could cause the water to drain, which would 
prevent the spent fuel rods from cooling. 

"If that were to occur, and if the workers were unable to put 
more water back in, the fuel that's been taken out of the reactor 
less than about five years ago is still hot enough thermally to 
melt down. 

"At Browns Ferry the upper floor is just sheet metal," Lochbaum 
said. "It's not designed to keep the radioactive release inside 
like that around the reactor. There's a greater chance that if 
there is a release, the radioactive cloud that goes out to the 
public is large." 

"That's a lot of 'what-ifs,' though," Lochbaum added. 

However low the risk, the consequences would be dire. 

According to the NRC, a meltdown of spent fuel rods would kill 
just as many people as a reactor accident. But the initial body 
count would be lower, with more deaths coming five or six years 
later from cancer and other radiation-caused illnesses. 

A failure of the crane that would lift the canister from the pool 
is not unprecedented. 

In 1999, according to NRC records, the crane in a decommissioned 
plant in Connecticut failed while workers were removing a fuel 
assembly from the spent-fuel pool. The assembly hit the refuel 
floor, although no radiation escaped. In a 1985 study, NRC 
reported 32 crane incidents during a 10-year period. None of them 
resulted in the release of radiation. 

Lochbaum said a crane cable snapped in the early 1980s in a 
Louisiana plant, again with no injuries resulting. 

Beasley said the risk of crane failure is negligible. 

"We follow all the guidelines. The cranes are rated at a certain 
weight, and we stay within the rating," Beasley said. The cranes 
are not now rated for lifting the wrecking ball of concrete and 
steel, but Beasley said they will be soon. 

Beasley said in the event a damaged pool caused the water to 
drain and every other cooling method failed, Browns Ferry workers 
would spray river water through a fire hose to keep the fuel rod 
temperatures below meltdown point. 

'Weakest link' 

Lochbaum said he would like to see Browns Ferry take two steps to 
reduce the risk of a dropped canister damaging the spent-fuel 
pool or other vital components. 

First, he said, TVA should spend more money improving the 
reliability of cranes, which he called the "weakest link" of 
nuclear plants. 

Another important step, Lochbaum said, is to keep the number of 
fuel rod assemblies in the pools to a minimum. The current policy 
at Browns Ferry and other plants is to remove the rods from the 
pools only after the pool's storage space is exhausted. Lochbaum 
said that approach delays the major expenses involved in dry 
storage, but creates greater risk. 

"If you emptied the pools out to the extent that you could, you 
would lower the risk of the pools quite a bit. You'd have much 
less stuff in there if you accidentally dropped the cask or bad 
guys blew a hole in the side of the pool and drained out the 
water," Lochbaum said. 

Dry storage creates other risks as well. + Small amounts of 
radiation escape even from properly sealed casks. Lochbaum said 
this risk is controllable by maintaining Geiger counters near the 
casks. + Improperly sealed casks create a much greater risk of 
significant radiation loss, although two separate seals would 
have to fail. One seal on a cask in a Virginia plant failed three 
years ago, but the other seal held, so no injuries resulted. + 
Terrorists could release radiation by opening the casks, but 
Lochbaum said casks are less vulnerable to terrorist actions than 
the spent-fuel pools. + Radioactive particles sometimes escape 
the reactor and enter water in the pool. If the particles in the 
pool adhere to the canister as workers remove it, the workers 
"can get a pretty healthy dose" of radiation, Lochbaum said. + 
The weak point of the cask is its welded seams. Nuclear waste can 
"tunnel" through those seams and escape, Lochbaum said. The 
Geiger counters reduce this risk. Also, the canister is put in 
the cask so that its seams do not align with the overpack's 
seams. 

Beasley and Lochbaum agree that the best solution would be a 
national repository like the one at Yucca Mountain, although 
Lochbaum said he wished alternative sites were available so 
physicists could determine which site is best rather than trying 
to make a single site adequate. They also agree that TVA's 
underwater museum of radioactive toxins must go. 

"Since we've spent more than half the money we've collected (from 
TVA and other nuclear plant operators) on Yucca Mountain, I don't 
think we could afford to go to a Plan B even if we had one," 
Lochbaum said. 

Given the realities  the absence of a national repository and 
spent fuel pools that are nearly full  Lochbaum said the 
dry-storage casks are the best option. Copyright 2004 THE DECATUR 
DAILY. All rights reserved. AP contributed to this report. --> 
Copyright 2004 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This 

  THE DECATUR DAILY 201 1st Ave. SE P.O. Box 2213 Decatur, Ala. 
35609 (256) 353-4612 webmaster@decaturdaily.com  
  
www.decaturdaily.com   
*****************************************************************
 22 [DU-WATCH] New wave of Pentagon attacks on UMRC
 
Date: Sat, 1 May 2004 01:33:41 -0500 (CDT)

 
What contracting exactly do you do with this blatantly propagandist,
unscientific piece? Are you paid by the military to defame respectable
scientists like Dr. Durakovic?
Why did you send this garbage to me? In 3 copies, too. One is enough to
qualify the author and disseminators to a tribunal for crimes against
humanity.
Piotr Bein

-----Original Message-----
From: (Bilal)PLUM Contracting [mailto:bilalana@yahoo.com]
Sent: April 30, 2004 11:40 AM
To: piotr.bein@imag.net
Subject: New DU bioassay program available  finally, alternative to
UMRC

 New DU bioassay program available  finally,
alternative to UMRC

Environmental Effects of War
April 22- 24, Stockholm, Sweden

Members of Sweden's Green Party at a conference on the
Environmental Effects of War, April 23, were
enlightened by British Professor Randall Parrish, Head
of the UKs National Environmental Research Centers
mass spectrometry laboratory as he questioned the
credibility of earlier published findings of DU
contamination of the UK's Gulf War I veterans.

Last weeks international conference to examine the
effects of DU and Agent Orange was organized to inform
Swedish politicians reviewing government international
aid and humanitarian policy for Afghanistan, Iraq and
Viet Nam. Politicians, the public, members of the
media and humanitarian organizations were educated in
detail by Professor Parrishs presentation using a
series of complex, technical overhead slides aimed at
discrediting the published findings of independent DU
researcher, Dr Asaf Durakovic, and correcting the
inaccuracies of the conferences opening address,
"Uranium Contamination in Iraq and Afghanistan", by
Tedd Weymann, both of the Uranium Medical Research
Center (UMRC), Canada.

Professor Parrish's presentation also raised questions
from Sweden's nuclear medicine experts at the
Karolinska Institute about the credibility of the
April 2004 announcements in the New York Daily News
about DU found in the urine of recently returning US
National Guard troops contaminated in As Samawah,
Iraq.

As the British Geological Surveys senior geologist
representing the organization in the field of
radiation medicine and the bio-kinetics of uranium
contamination, Professor Parrish indicated that Gulf
War I findings of DU in veterans at the Atlantic
Radiogenic Isotope Facility, Memorial University,
Canada, mass spectrometry laboratory were not reliable
and need to be questioned. Professor Parrish cast
doubt on the claims of British, US and Canadian Gulf
War I veterans suffering from Gulf War Illness,
including deceased veterans in the study, who
attribute their illnesses to exposure to DU weapons
used by American and British forces in 1991.

Professor Parrish reported he retested Gulf War I
urine samples sent to him by Memorial University after
being collected by Dr. Hari Sharma of Waterloo
University, Canada. The NERC lab, according to
Professor Parrish, using different mass spectrometry
equipment and newly developed scientific methods
developed in his lab, found different total quantities
of DU than the Memorial lab. In 2003, Professor
Parrish also tested new urine samples provided to him
by members of the UK National Gulf Veterans and
Families Association and cross-referenced these to the
uranium levels in the urine samples collected by UMRC
from UK Gulf War I veterans in 1998  2000, showing
that different equipment and methods on samples taken
2  5 years later, produce different results.

Professor Parrish also spoke about Afghanistan. His
laboratory conducted under contract with UMRC, an
analysis of Japans NGO, NO WAR-NO DU, sponsored
analysis of UMRC's post-conflict field samples from
Afghanistan. Although the methodology and findings are
peer reviewed and published in several scientific
journals and conferences and corroborated by German
and Japanese data, Professor Parrish told the audience
that the nuclear waste found in bombsites and civilian
urine in Afghanistan should not be considered proof
that the US used uranium weapons there. He attributes
the unusually high total levels of uranium in Afghan
civilians exposed to the bombing and living next to
bombsites to high natural levels of uranium in the
drinking water. According to Professor Parrish, the
trace amounts of 236U, a manmade radioisotope, found
in wells supplying drinking water, irrigated flooded
rice fields, bomb craters and civilian urine samples
are explained by errors in laboratory methodology or
from the accumulation of man made uranium from other
artificial sources thousands of kilometers away.

The ParrishNERC announcement at Stockholm strengthens
the British Ministry of Defenses Gulf War DU
Biological Follow-up Program and the confidence of the
Minister of Defense that the government-run testing
program will be very effective. According to a member
of the Depleted Uranium Oversight Board, Professor
Parrishs mass spectrometry facility won the UK
Ministry of Defenses inter-laboratory competition for
a financial contract to conduct uranium contamination
analysis of the urines of British Gulf War I troops.
Professor Parrish has called for comprehensive DU
studies in the environment and bodies of civilians and
veterans exposed in Iraq. He recommended all Gulf War
I and recent Gulf War II veterans found positive in
other laboratories be retested at his facility for a
more accurate and reliable determination of DU
exposure. He noted that his laboratory is recognized
by the Ministry of Defence and is considered by him to
be the best equipped and operated DU bioassay facility
available. Finally, veterans have an alternative to
UMRC.

------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ---------------------~-->
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 23 [DU-WATCH] WELCOME TO EU-ROPE
 
Date: Sat, 1 May 2004 01:39:37 -0500 (CDT)

 
Click on each star in the circle in order to see its equivalent in the reality, in the past and today.
Welcome to Europe!
http://www.webheaven.co.yu/EU/eurostars.htm

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

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 24 [Fwd: [du-list] Military officials dismiss depleted uranium fears]
 
Date: Sun, 02 May 2004 08:59:30 -0700

 
<x-flowed>


-------- Original Message --------
Subject: 	[du-list] Military officials dismiss depleted uranium fears
Date: 	Sun, 02 May 2004 18:09:57 -0400
From: 	et@nucnews.net
To: 	nucnews@yahoogroups.com, DU-List <du-list@yahoogroups.com>



Military officials dismiss depleted uranium fears

By Sandra Jontz, Stars and Stripes
European edition, Saturday, May 1, 2004

http://www.estripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=21933

ARLINGTON, Va. — No U.S. troops involved in the war in Iraq 
are showing signs of medical problems caused by exposure to 
depleted uranium, Pentagon health officials said, negating 
recent complaints by some troops to the contrary.

Since the war started last March, about 1,000 troops who 
indicated they might have been exposed to depleted uranium 
have been tested. Of those, three who have fragments of 
depleted uranium ammunition in their bodies have tested 
positive for higher-than-normal levels, but none show 
adverse health consequences, said William Winkenwerder Jr., 
assistant secretary of defense for Health Affairs.

Recently, National Guard soldiers from New York’s 442nd 
Military Police Company complained of maladies from 
headaches to soreness, insomnia and breathing problems, and 
that independent medical tests of their urine showed high 
levels of DU.

But military-run medical tests have shown just the opposite, 
Winkenwerder said during a Thursday press roundtable.

Twenty-seven soldiers from the 442nd have had their urine 
tested.

“All 27 have normal levels of urine uranium,” said Dr. 
Michael Kilpatrick, deputy director for deployment health 
support directorate for Health Affairs. Of those tested, the 
highest level of natural uranium found was 16 nanograms of 
per liter of urine, with the average about seven nanograms, 
he said. A nanogram is one billionth of a gram.

Uranium is a natural element found in the air, water, soil 
and even food. People have about 100 micrograms of natural 
uranium in their bodies, and excrete between 10 to 50 
nanograms per liter of urine, Kilpatrick said.

“Servicemembers should know that the potential health risks 
of depleted uranium are extremely, extremely low, and we 
have no evidence that there are health consequences among 
people who, even after many years, have high levels of 
exposure,” Winkenwerder said.

The Pentagon’s assertions that DU exposure doesn’t harm are 
false, said former Army Maj. Doug Rokke, who headed the 
Pentagon’s depleted uranium project in the mid-1990s and now 
is a staunch critic of the use of DU and the Pentagon’s 
policies allowing it.

“They’re liars and the U.S. continues to lie concerning 
depleted uranium munitions,” he said Friday in a phone 
interview. “Iraq joins Afghanistan and Bosnia and Vieques in 
being a toxic dump for depleted uranium that you just can’t 
clean up. It’s there for eternity.”

He said he has 5,000 times the normal levels of radiation in 
his body and suffers from respiratory and other medical 
problems.

The U.S. military continues to use DU because of its 
effectiveness in penetrating armor. Depleted uranium, a 
byproduct of enriching uranium for nuclear fuel, is used to 
manufacture ammunition because, as a hard, heavy metal, can 
pierce armor. While 40 percent less radioactive than natural 
uranium, it still is radioactive. DU ammunition ignites when 
impacting a target, and when combined with oxygen, forms 
toxic dust.

“The bottom line, as long as this is exterior to your body, 
you’re not at any risk,” Kilpatrick said. “And the potential 
of internalizing it from the environment is extremely, 
extremely small.”

Continuous medical evaluations of roughly 70 servicemembers 
who served in the 1991 Persian Gulf War and have depleted 
uranium shrapnel embedded in their bodies show no health 
complications linked to the DU, the health officials said.

The 70 excrete between 150 nanograms to 45,000 nanograms per 
liter of uranium in their urine, Kilpatrick said, “and their 
kidneys are perfectly normal.” The kidneys are the principle 
organs affected by DU exposure.

-- 


Posted for educational and research purposes only,
~ in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 ~

NucNews Links and Expanded Archives - http://nucnews.net



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</x-flowed>
*****************************************************************
 25 [Fwd: [du-list] New sourceDU bioassays – fi
 
Date: Sun, 02 May 2004 09:00:36 -0700

 
<x-flowed>


-------- Original Message --------
Subject: 	[du-list] New sourceDU bioassays – finally,alternative to UMRC
Date: 	Sun, 02 May 2004 17:44:50 -0000
From: 	bilalana <bilalana@yahoo.com>
To: 	du-list@yahoogroups.com



New DU bioassay program available – finally,
alternative to UMRC

Environmental Effects of War
April 22- 24, Stockholm, Sweden

Members of Sweden's Green Party at a conference on the
Environmental Effects of War, April 23, were
enlightened by British Professor Randall Parrish, Head
of the UK's National Environmental Research Center's
mass spectrometry laboratory as he questioned the
credibility of earlier published findings of DU
contamination of the UK's Gulf War I veterans.

Last week's international conference to examine the
effects of DU and Agent Orange was organized to inform
Swedish politicians reviewing government international
aid and humanitarian policy for Afghanistan, Iraq and
Viet Nam. Politicians, the public, members of the
media and humanitarian organizations were educated in
detail by Professor Parrish's presentation using a
series of complex, technical overhead slides aimed at
discrediting the published findings of independent DU
researcher, Dr Asaf Durakovic, and correcting the
inaccuracies of the conference's opening address,
"Uranium Contamination in Iraq and Afghanistan", by
Tedd Weymann, both of the Uranium Medical Research
Center (UMRC), Canada.

Professor Parrish's presentation also raised questions
from Sweden's nuclear medicine experts at the
Karolinska Institute about the credibility of the
April 2004 announcements in the New York Daily News
about DU found in the urine of recently returning US
National Guard troops contaminated in As Samawah,
Iraq.

As the British Geological Survey's senior geologist
representing the organization in the field of
radiation medicine and the bio-kinetics of uranium
contamination, Professor Parrish indicated that Gulf
War I findings of DU in veterans at the Atlantic
Radiogenic Isotope Facility, Memorial University,
Canada, mass spectrometry laboratory were not reliable
and need to be questioned. Professor Parrish cast
doubt on the claims of British, US and Canadian Gulf
War I veterans suffering from Gulf War Illness,
including deceased veterans in the study, who
attribute their illnesses to exposure to DU weapons
used by American and British forces in 1991.

Professor Parrish reported he retested Gulf War I
urine samples sent to him by Memorial University after
being collected by Dr. Hari Sharma of Waterloo
University, Canada. The NERC lab, according to
Professor Parrish, using different mass spectrometry
equipment and newly developed scientific methods
developed in his lab, found different total quantities
of DU than the Memorial lab. In 2003, Professor
Parrish also tested new urine samples provided to him
by members of the UK National Gulf Veterans and
Families Association and cross-referenced these to the
uranium levels in the urine samples collected by UMRC
from UK Gulf War I veterans in 1998 – 2000, showing
that different equipment and methods on samples taken
2 – 5 years later, produce different results.


Professor Parrish also spoke about Afghanistan. His
laboratory conducted under contract with UMRC, an
analysis of Japan's NGO, NO WAR-NO DU, sponsored
analysis of UMRC's post-conflict field samples from
Afghanistan. Although the methodology and findings are
peer reviewed and published in several scientific
journals and conferences and corroborated by German
and Japanese data, Professor Parrish told the audience
that the nuclear waste found in bombsites and civilian
urine in Afghanistan should not be considered proof
that the US used uranium weapons there. He attributes
the unusually high total levels of uranium in Afghan
civilians exposed to the bombing and living next to
bombsites to high natural levels of uranium in the
drinking water. According to Professor Parrish, the
trace amounts of 236U, a manmade radioisotope, found
in wells supplying drinking water, irrigated flooded
rice fields, bomb craters and civilian urine samples
are explained by errors in laboratory methodology or
from the accumulation of man made uranium from other
artificial sources thousands of kilometers away.

The Parrish–NERC announcement at Stockholm strengthens
the British Ministry of Defense's Gulf War DU
Biological Follow-up Program and the confidence of the
Minister of Defense that the government-run testing
program will be very effective. According to a member
of the Depleted Uranium Oversight Board, Professor
Parrish's mass spectrometry facility won the UK
Ministry of Defense's inter-laboratory competition for
a financial contract to conduct uranium contamination
analysis of the urines of British Gulf War I troops.
Professor Parrish has called for comprehensive DU
studies in the environment and bodies of civilians and
veterans exposed in Iraq. He recommended all Gulf War
I and recent Gulf War II veterans found positive in
other laboratories be retested at his facility for a
more accurate and reliable determination of DU
exposure. He noted that his laboratory is recognized
by the Ministry of Defence and is considered by him to
be the best equipped and operated DU bioassay facility
available. Finally, veterans have an alternative to
UMRC.





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 26 [DU-WATCH] depleted uranium deaths could surpass worst-case
 
Date: Sat, 1 May 2004 01:13:05 -0500 (CDT)

 
http://proliberty.com/observer/20040410.htm

Depleted Uranium deaths could surpass worst-case predictions

by Amy Worthington

The Pentagon has just announced that 18,000 American troops were
medically evacuated from Iraq during the first year of operations
there. Thousands more have been sickened and maimed in Afghanistan
since 2001. No one knows how many U.S. troops have actually died
in these two quagmires, because the Pentagon cooks the books by
listing the not quite dead as wounded, conveniently excluding them
from the death count when they do die.

There are now two bills pending in our graft-ridden Congress to
authorize mandatory national service obligation for both young men
and women. These are HB163 and S89. Reinstatement of the draft is
not feasible until after the November elections.

Meantime, as the war/occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan grinds on,
military recruiters are frantically mining high schools and colleges
across the nation for new cannon fodder. Under provisions of G.W.
Bush's No Child Left Behind Act, recruiters have access to names,
addresses and phone numbers of all American high school juniors and
seniors.

The Associated Press explains that these hapless kids are being
seduced to the killing fields with hot rod races, trendy ads and
online games. When a recruiter excites the immature with his laptop
game Powerpoint Rangers, you can bet these devious psychological
tools show kids neither the horrors of missing limbs nor the after
effects of depleted uranium.

No American kid should sign on the military's disingenuous dotted
line before reading a new book by Dennis Kyne, former Army air medic
in the 18th Airborne Corps during Gulf War I. This easy-read book,
despite a few expletives, should be a basic primer in all American
high schools. It is guaranteed to give kids a perspective on the
realities of the atomic battlefields to which Washington has been
sending American troops since 1991.

Kyne comes from a family with a proud military heritage, but his
experiences in Gulf War I revealed that the military structure as
it exists today is not what it claims to be. He describes the filthy
living conditions, lies, corruption and incompetence that continually
put our young troops in harms way.

He confirms the military's despicable treatment of vets when they
return to the United States decimated from disease, battlefield
toxins, vaccines and radiation. Desperately needing adequate medical
testing and care, they are abused with games and denials from a
callous establishment determined to escape responsibility and save
money.

The fact that America deliberately creates and arms the enemies it
will fight later is not lost on Kyne.

He notes that the United States sent $1.6 billion in arms and high
tech equipment to Saddam and that one U.S. shipment landed in Iraq
just one day before the U.S. went to war against him in 1991. Kyne
says, Much like the casinos in Las Vegas that give you money to get
you started at the black-jack table, we were giving Iraq the weapons
to get a war started.

This is why Corporate America, including Dick Cheney's gluttonous
Halliburton, Inc., now growing tick-fat from ongoing Middle Eastern
conflagrations, has continued to supply Saddam into the late 1990s.

Kyne illustrates the incredible disinformation to which both the
American public and U.S. forces are continuously plied to stampede
the U.S. into perpetual war so lucrative for corporate warmongers.
He says, As citizens we were told that our mission was to save
Kuwait and so we voiced our support of intervention without knowing
the truths of the war. We did not know that the Kuwaiti girl speaking
before the U.S. Senate, about atrocious things Iraqi soldiers had
done, was the Emir of Kuwait's niece, lying profusely. We did not
know that the oil fields of Kuwait and Southern Iraq were set ablaze
by our own forces.

What worked for father George, worked for son W. Thus America has
been abused with the 9-11 and WMD scams, costing a bankrupt America
$3.7 billion a month in Iraq and $900 million a month in Afghanistan.

Kyne's most shocking revelation is that 75 percent of U.S. Desert
Storm casualties in 1991 were caused by friendly fire, a fact he
says is confirmed by an MIT study. Considering a recent media report
about marines being strafed with depleted uranium by a U.S. A-10
in Nasiriyah, Iraq, this comment by Kyne hits home:

Combat fight badges are awarded to officers when they obtain combat
flight hours .... commanders would get up and lose their minds in
the sand storms.

Lacking any points of reference or terrain recognition skill, these
officers flew with no knowledge as to where they were going, or
which side the enemy was on... Most [on the ground] cried into the
transmitter and started picking their own troops out of the sand
while they pissed themselves in fear..... It became who gets who
first between the United States and itself.

Kyne, who like hundreds of thousands of Gulf War I vets, suffers
from Gulf War Syndrome, describes the horrendous depleted uranium
exposure endured by U.S.

troops during and after the three-day ground war of Desert Storm.

U.S. air forces had spent 45 days contaminating Kuwait and Iraqi
territory with depleted uranium weaponry into which our ground
forces were then forced to march. Kyne tells potential military
recruits, It is time for the world to know that the United States
military is using young soldiers for guinea pigs, not defenders of
the constitution.

Kyne's excellent web site is DennisKyne.com. It contains graphic
pictures of radiation-melted Iraqi bodies, demonstrating the horrific
effects of U.S.

nuclear weaponry now used routinely and illegally in foreign nations
for the aggrandizement of the amoral U.S. defense industry.

Kyne's book and an 8-minute video are only $10 plus $2 shipping.
The book is gripping and easy read. The video brings home the message
of battlefield radiation that has killed thousands of U.S. troops
and which will continue to poison hundreds of thousands more.

This is a great package for informing friends and family. If any
young person you know is contemplating military suicide, give him
or her this book and video and consider it an investment in America's
future.

Write Denis Kyne at PO Box 720254, San Jose, CA 95172

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 27 [DU-WATCH] Pentagon: Uranium didn't harm N.Y. Unit
 
Date: Sat, 1 May 2004 01:10:59 -0500 (CDT)

 
Pentagon: Uranium Didn't Harm N.Y. Unit 
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uslatest/story/0,1282,-4037119,00.html

Friday April 30, 2004 4:01 AM

By ADAM ASHTON 

Associated Press Writer 

WASHINGTON (AP) - Members of a National Guard military
police unit who said they fell ill after exposure to
depleted uranium in Iraq did not have abnormal levels
of the metal, Pentagon officials said Thursday. 

The results did not reassure at least one of the
soldiers. 

Members of the 442nd Military Police Company, based in
Orangeburg, N.Y., had complained of headaches,
soreness and insomnia. A private test this month
indicated that four of them had unhealthy levels of
uranium in their urine. 

Further tests by the military showed that depleted
uranium exposure did not cause the ailments, the
Pentagon said. 

``Those people all had normal levels of uranium in
their urine,'' said Dr. Michael Kilpatrick, deputy
director of the Deployment Health Support Directorate.

Depleted uranium is the hard, heavy metal created as a
byproduct of enriching uranium for nuclear reactor
fuel or weapons material. It is about 40 percent less
radioactive than natural uranium, Kilpatrick said. 

The U.S. military uses the metal in rounds fired by M1
Abrams tanks and A- 10 attack jets to penetrate tank
armor - a practice that has been criticized for
causing unnecessary risks to soldiers and civilians. 

``As long as this is exterior to your body, you're not
at any risk and the potential of internalizing it from
the environment is extremely small,'' Kilpatrick said.

Most studies have indicated that depleted uranium
exposure will not harm soldiers. But a 2002 study by
Britain's Royal Society said soldiers who ingest or
inhale enough depleted uranium could suffer kidney
damage. The report cautioned its results were
inconclusive and recommended a long-term study of
soldiers exposed to the metal. 

About 1,000 soldiers returning from Iraq have been
tested for exposure to the metal. Of those, three
showed unhealthy levels in urine samples. All three
had fragments embedded in their bodies, Kilpatrick
said. 

Soldiers must choose to take a test for depleted
uranium. All members of the 442nd will be able to take
one if they ask, Kilpatrick said. Twenty-seven members
of the unit have been tested so far. 

One company member, Sgt. Ray Ramos, said the latest
results did not reassure him. He has suffered from
migraine headaches, breathing problems and pain in his
elbows since returning from Iraq in September. 

An earlier test suggested depleted uranium may have
been partially responsible for his pain. He said he
will pursue a third test from an independent doctor to
compare the results. 

``When I become ill, or possibly become ill later on,
I want to have things in place,'' said Ramos, 41, of
New York City. 

The Pentagon is monitoring a group of 70 veterans from
the first Gulf War who have pieces of depleted uranium
embedded in their bodies. Kilpatrick said none of them
has shown health problems related to depleted uranium.

Charles Sheehan-Miles, executive director of the
Nuclear Policy Research Institute and a Gulf War
veteran, said the military should test all soldiers
returning from Iraq to determine whether fears about
the metal are valid. 

	
		
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 28 DU: Afghan & Iraqi women face prospect of deformed babies
 
Date: Sat, 1 May 2004 01:29:31 -0500 (CDT)

 
http://www.awakenedwoman.com/hiller_du_choice.htm What Will Be Their
"Choice"?

Afghan and Iraqi women face the prospect of deformed babies By
Stephanie Hiller

"Of course, if Iraq was used as a testing ground for radioactive
weaponry, as appears to have been the case in Afghanistan, then the
true civilian costs in cancers, birth defects and human suffering
could be immeasurable." - Heather Workusch, "America's Shameful
Legacy of Radioactive Weaponry"

In an impressive display, 1.2 million American women came out full
force on the streets of Washington DC this week to protect their
right to have an abortion and protest the Bush Administrations
policies toward women.

In Afghanistan and Iraq, women face a different choice.

It's not about reproductive rights. It's about reproduction.

The issue is not whether to have a baby, but whether the baby will
be born deformed, as so many babies have been in Iraq since the
First Gulf War left behind tons of depleted uranium.

The term depleted is one physicists use to describe uranium that
has been depleted from one isotop, U-235, which is taken out of
natural uranium for use in reactors. Only half a percent of what
they mine is useable for that purpose. The rest -- believe it or
not -- fully 99 percent of every pound of uranium -- is waste left
over from the extraction process.

Unfortunately, the nomenclature is misleading. It is all radioactive,
and the US now has a million tons of uranium mixed with plutonium,
the most toxic material known to "man" with other small residues
called "transuranics", in storage right here in our own country.

Using depleted uranium for weapons has proved a handy way of moving
that waste into the economy -- and out of the country. For the
military, depleted uranium has several additional features. As the
heaviest metal it makes a good penetrator, going deep into underground
buildings or through cement floors without blowing up until it gets
to the bottom.

That points to another great feature of this type of weapon: unlike
the familiar mushroom cloud dominating the horizon, these bombs
give off only a brief flash.

But that flash is deadly, sending forth millions of ionized particles
into the atmosphere -- alpha, beta and gamma rays destructive of
all living tissue.

Inhaled, this radiation may be picked up for 25 miles around the
blast, and it only takes one alpha particle traveling through the
blood into the tissues to start the nuclear reactions that will
cause the disease and death of the body.

In Afghanistan and now again in Iraq, many thousands more tons have
been employed. Figures vary. The US has admitted to using "small"
amounts like 350 tons in Yugoslavia -- 350,000 pounds of highly
toxic material -- but according to internationally known weapons
expert Leuren Moret, sources have demonstrated there is much more.

In Afghanistan, the US claims to have used no depleted uranium. But
Scientists from the Canadian Uranium Medical Research Center, a lab
run by Dr. Asaf Durakovic, a former medical officer of the US
military, have discovered that another type of radioactive uranium
has been found in high doses in the urine of residents living close
to bomb sites in Kabul, Tora Bora and Jallalabad. (see http://www.umrc.net)
. This area also supplies water to Kabul, the major urban center,
and it is also the farming region to the North, the Shomali Plain,
already littered with land mines from the Soviet war.

UMRC scientists have tested the people and the soils at locations
in Iraq and Afghanistan and found them to be 400% to 2000% higher
than normal radiation levels.

Dai Williams, another independent resarcher, has discovered patents
showing that familiar weaponry definitely used in Afghanistan --
cluster bombs, big BLUs and others -- are made with depleted uranium.

Meanwhile, Marc Herold, documenting uncounted Afghan casualties
during "Operation Enduring Freedom" (did they mean in that happy
hunting ground?) posits that 3000 tons of the deadly material was
discharged there.

And most recently, Admiral Bhagwat, retired from the Indian Navy,
has come out with the most alarming figures to date, based on
calculations Japanese scientist Yagasaki, that the total use of
uranium weaponry has blasted the landscape with 250,000 times the
radiotoxicity of the plutonium bomb dropped on Nagasaki, a bomb
which now would be classified a "small nuke" in the vast nuclear
arsenal.

What has also been covered up in the media and by government
scientists as well, on behalf of Pentagon policy and the weapons
industry, is the fact that this radiation -- which compared to an
atom bomb appears to be "low-level radiation" -- this low level
radiation is insidious and toxic, as Ernest Sternglass demonstrated
many years ago and detailed in his book, Secret Fallout (available
on the internet at www.ratical.org) where he meticulously documents
the effects of fallout on the health of women and babies.

As he pointed out there, radiation has raised the death rate,
particularly during periods of exposure following nuclear bomb tests
and power plant discharges and meltdowns like Three Mile Island.
In 1986, the year of Chernobyl, 40,000 additional deaths occurred
in the United States that cannot be accounted for by any other
means. Yet Sternglass was silenced.

Jay Gould confirmed in his book Deadly Deceit that there has been
a steady and intentional distortion of data implanted into state
and federal health records to support false and misleading reassurances
that radiation has not already damaged the health of the American
people. There's plenty of evidence that our health is failing. The
cancer rate alone has risen over the last forty years to now affect
one in three Americans during their lifetimes. We are besieged by
a host of other chronic diseases due to immune system malfunction
and the effect of "free radicals" which are likely due, in whole
or in part, to radiation.

The radiation now permanently jangling the chromosomes and disturbing
the cells of the lungs, blood, bone, and major organs of the Afghan
and Iraq population is far more intense. But what's worse is that
it will stay there. It is already in the soil and water and it will
remain there for 4.5 billion years.

Independent scientists here and abroad have attested to that fact.
At the Uranium Weapons Conference held last October in Hamburg,
Germany, scientists and activists from all over the world met and
considered the results of their independent and separate research.
Their findings confirm what Doug Rokke has been charging all along,
that "Gulf War Syndrome" the mysterious illness debilitating Gulf
War vets (half of whom have since been put on disability) is in
fact due to exposure to radioactive weapons. That the Pentagon has
known since 1942 of the health effects of depleted uranium has also
been documented.

California geoscientist Leuren Moret, a former employee of the
Lawrence Radiation Lab in Berkeley, has spoken internationally on
the rising danger of nuclear contamination. She testified before
the World Court on Afghanistan held in Tokyo last December, which
found the Bush Administration guilty of war crimes for the use of
these indiscriminate weapons.

Measures of toxicity may be disputed, especially in this instance
where US control of the region prohibits accurate studies. Even
when available and accurate, they sometimes seem to be meaningless.
But the birth of one deformed baby with organs outside its body,
or little sticks for legs, webs for fingers, tumors again outside
the body, maybe no heart or no brain, must seem a very real and
tangible thing to a young woman having sexual intercourse with her
husband in those contaminated regions of the world.

What choice will be hers?

How many children have already been crippled by radiation in Iraq
and Afghanistan is not certain. Dr.

Jawad Al-Ali, from the Cancer Treatment Center in Basrah, Iraq
presented his photographs in a Power Point exhibit at the Uranium
Weapons Conference; these horrific images and other taken in Iraq
may be viewed at www.uraniumweaponsconference.de. Another doctor,
Mohammed A. Salman, an eye surgeon from Bagdad, has reported babies
who have been born with only one eye or who are missing both eyes,
a rare anomaly which normally exists at 1 in 50 million births, yet
he has seen 9 cases in two years.

Pregnant women, reports Dr. Mohammed Miraki of the Afghan Depleted
Uranium Recovery Fund, are terrified that their child will be born
deformed.

Exact figures are virtually nonexistent because the United States
has bombed hospitals and other medical facilities, and destroyed
all the medical records, attests physician April Hurley who traveled
to Bagdad as a member of the Iraqi Peace team.

What is a pregnant woman's right to choose when she knows that the
water she is drinking has been contaminated with nuclear radiation?
When the food she is eating and most importantly the milk, if she
can get some, will also be contaminated? When she lives every day
with the knowledge that her people have been guinea pigs for American
radioactive weapons tests.

Faced with this verdict of perpetual death, for herself and for the
generations that come after her, what will be her choice?

No, she won't be able to refuse her wifely duty to her lawfully
wedded spouse.

No, she won't be able to obtain contraception (due in part to Bush's
global gag rule).

No, she won't be able to get an abortion.

No, she can't put that baby up for adoption!

Five years after the Kosovo war, the women of Yugoslavia are begging
for abortions. This is the reality that Iraqi and Afghan women will
be facing, are facing now.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

References:

The amount of material now available on the Internet is truly
staggering, but a visit to the Speakers Page at the Uranium Weapons
Conference (www.uraniumweaponsconference.de) will provide many more
studies and reports than you can read in one night.

I have relied heavily on the work of Leuren Moret (www.mindfully.org
and <http://www.uraniumweaponsconference.de> as well as personal
conversation) and the reports from the Uranium Medical Research
Center in Toronto. (see <http://www.umrc.net> and my interview with
UMRC's Tedd Weymann at< http://www.wakenedwoman.com/umrc.net> Ernest
Sternglass' research in his book Secret Fallout at www.ratical.org/
is invaluable to an understanding of low-level radiation.

I also recommend Admiral Vishnu Bhawat's address to the Internationsl
Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War Conference held February
29, 2004 in Delhi
http://www.mindfully.org/Nucs/2004/Bhagwat-Silent-WMDs-DU29feb04.htm, Marc
Herold's work, particularly "America's 'New' Wars: Precisely
Delivering 'Lethal Injection' by Using Depleted Uranium"

http://traprockpeace.org/DUessayMWHerold.pdf and the work of Rosalie
Bertells.

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 29 [RADFOOD] Tell USDA: Stronger Mad Cow Testing Needed!
 
Date: Sat, 1 May 2004 01:13:28 -0500 (CDT)

 
*Ask USDA why they are blocking meat companies that want to test
for Mad Cow Disease!* In early April, the USDA refused to allow a
small Kansas-based beef company, Creekstone Farms Premium Beef, to
test all of its cattle for mad cow disease. Just this week, the
USDA also denied a request by another small company, Gateway Beef
Cooperative of Missouri, to test its cattle for Mad Cow Disease.

Creekstone wants to test all of its cattle as a way to re-open its
beef exports to Japan. Japan, which stopped importing U.S. beef
following the discovery of a cow that was slaughtered and tested
positive for Mad Cow Disease in December, has demanded testing as
a condition to begin importing U.S. beef.  Read the article below
for more information.

*Call the USDA!* Call or email USDA Secretary Ann Veneman today and
demand that the USDA stop bullying small beef companies and ranchers
who want to do test their beef.  Call her today: 202-720-3631 or
send her an email at agsec@usda.gov.

******************************* New York Times April 18, 2004 A
Strange Ban on Testing Beef

he Bush administration generally frowns on federal regulation and
touts the virtues of voluntary efforts to deal with all manner of
national problems. So it was quite a shock when heavy-handed
regulators at the Agriculture Department refused to let a private
company test all the cattle it slaughters for mad cow disease.

The request to conduct tests was submitted by Creekstone Farms
Premium Beef, a small producer in Kansas, which wanted to resume
selling its high-priced Black Angus beef in Japan, a major market.
The Japanese have detected some 10 or so cases of mad cow disease
in their own country, so they now test every animal slaughtered for
food purposes there. They want American exporters to do the same.

Creekstone was willing to oblige even though it believes the American
beef supply is already safe. (One cow in the state of Washington
tested positive for the disease last December, but it was found to
have originated in Canada.) The Japanese ban is costing the company
some $200,000 a day and has forced it to lay off 45 workers.
Creekstone planned to test all 300,000 animals slaughtered at its
Kansas plant each year, using the same rapid diagnostic tests used
in Japan.

In a country like the United States, where not a single indigenous
case of mad cow disease has yet been detected in cattle of any age,
such blanket testing is probably overkill. It would seem adequate
for consumer safety purposes simply to test most of the nation's
disabled cattle and a suitable sample of healthy cattle, as Agriculture
officials plan to do. But it is hard to see how Creekstone's desire
to do more would hurt anyone else.

The Agriculture Department gave a curt no when Creekstone, which
was required under a 1913 law to get permission to conduct the
tests, sent in its request. The stated reason for the rejection was
that the rapid tests are licensed only for surveillance, not to
guarantee consumer safety. But critics contend the department is
primarily trying to protect the beef industry from pressure to test
all 35 million or so cattle slaughtered in this country annually.
Such blanket testing would raise production costs, and discovery
of a single case of mad cow disease, or even a false positive, might
cause American beef sales to plummet.

What is most worrying about this entire incident is not that
Creekstone will not be able to do the tests, or even that the federal
government appears to be discouraging a minor concession that would
lead to both exports and jobs. If the cattle industry has the clout
to sway a government department on this kind of issue, it probably
has the clout to influence federal officials when it comes to
questions much closer to the interests of American consumers.

American negotiators are pressing the Japanese to relax their
requirements, and if they succeed Creekstone, at least, will have
a happy ending. If they do not, the government should change its
mind and let the market rule. That would be at least a small sign
that the people who help protect the safety of American meat have
their priorities in the right place.

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 30 NCT: Critics say proposed EPA rule threatens health 

North County Times - North San Diego and Southwest Riverside 
County News
 
Saturday, May 1, 2004 9:46 PM PDT 

By: KELLY BRUSCH and DAVE DOWNEY - Staff Writers 

Environmentalists and government officials fear a proposed 
federal rule could allow certain types of radioactive material to 
be dumped in landfills not designed to take such waste, 
increasing the chance people could be exposed to harmful 
radiation.

Although the Environmental Protection Agency is primarily seeking 
comment from the public and industry on disposal of such material 
in dumps specifically licensed for hazardous waste, local and 
federal lawmakers and environmental groups worry the proposal 
will ease regulations to the point that hazardous waste would 
also be allowed in municipal landfills. 

The EPA will accept comments on the rule through May 17, after 
which it could decide to revise the proposal, or implement it. 

Even though the proposal primarily advocates using certain types 
of landfills designed to handle this waste, Riverside County 
officials say they are concerned radioactive material could be 
headed to local landfills. They also fear the law could take the 
matter out of their hands, leaving them little authority to 
refuse the material.

The EPA's proposal, issued on Nov. 18, does not call for sending 
radioactive waste to conventional landfills, but it does seem to 
open the door to the possibility, some scientists and 
environmentalists say.

Diane D'Arrigo, director of the Radioactive Waste Project for the 
Washington-based Nuclear Information &Resource Center, said the 
proposal could threaten communities across the country. Nuclear 
waste generators now send their material to places permitted for 
this disposal. And operators of those facilities must track the 
waste for up to 100 years and prevent leaks, D'Arrigo said.

By relaxing such controls, leftover material from nuclear weapons 
production, medical treatment and nuclear power generators could 
make it into recycling plants and local landfills, she said.

"(It's) completely reasonable to expect if the EPA goes forward 
with this rule, then this waste could make it into the regular 
recycling stream (and be mixed) to make everyday items," she 
said. "This is the overall picture of what the industry is trying 
to do at this point. They want to release this from regulatory 
control and let it out into the world as if it was not 
radioactive."

The proposal, in part, seeks to find new ways to get rid of the 
waste, termed "low activity," or waste with lower levels of 
radioactive material, because just four places in the country can 
legally accept it, according to the rule. In contrast, there are 
about 20 hazardous waste landfills that the agency says are 
equipped to handle it.

The EPA says that risks from this type of waste are much lower 
than for more highly concentrated radioactive waste, and 
alternate disposal options should be explored.

By coming up with creative alternatives, the EPA says more toxic 
waste would be disposed of and less would be stored on the sites 
of companies that use the materials, reducing exposure to plant 
workers and to communities.

Lisa Fasano, spokeswoman for the EPA, said the notice the agency 
has sent out is only the first step in a very complicated process 
to create a new rule.

Local and state landfills

The California Integrated Waste Management Board, along with the 
state Water Resources Control Board, oversees municipal 
landfills. The board cautioned the EPA to extensively research 
the risk that could be associated with dumping the waste in such 
places.

California has about 160 active landfills and other 
waste-processing plants. Some are engineered to hold waste 
differently than others, but the plants have not been studied 
enough to know what risk they pose, the board reported.

In addition, radiation that is already in landfills has not been 
studied or monitored in California or anywhere else in the United 
States, the board said. Some preliminary tests in California have 
shown the presence of radioactive material in water that has 
leaked from the dumps and in groundwater monitoring wells.

The board recommended that the EPA first evaluate the risk from 
radiation already in landfills before it considers allowing new 
waste to be dumped there.

Hans Kernkamp, general manager and chief engineer for the 
Riverside County Waste Management Department, said the likely 
scenario under the proposed rule is that the radioactive waste in 
question would be allowed only to go to specified hazardous waste 
landfills. And he said to his knowledge none of those exist in 
western Riverside County.

But Kernkamp said the county will closely monitor the proposal to 
make sure the ground rules aren't relaxed to the point of 
allowing disposal of "low activity" radioactive waste in 
conventional landfills, of which there are three in western 
Riverside County.

The three include the privately operated El Sobrante Landfill 
south of Corona near Interstate 15 and a pair of county-operated 
landfills, Badlands and Lambs Canyon, east of Moreno Valley and 
south of Beaumont, respectively. While the Corona landfill is 
privately run, it is manned by county workers who, under 
contract, control the gate and screen for hazardous waste.

By far the biggest concern with radioactive waste, Kernkamp said, 
would be the potential for the highly dangerous waste to leak 
into local groundwater supplies.

"It hasn't really been proven that it (low-level radioactive 
waste) doesn't have an effect on public health and safety," 
Kernkamp said. "There isn't enough evidence to prove one way or 
the other, and therefore we should err on the side of caution."

Community risks 

Richard Clapp, an environmental epidemiologist at Boston 
University, said low-level radioactive waste includes such 
materials as hospital syringes used to inject patients for 
treatment of such diseases as thyroid cancer, gloves or other 
equipment used in nuclear power plants.

The public threat from these materials being dumped in local 
landfills comes from the possibility of the waste spilling en 
route from the treatment plant, along with the chance that the 
landfill could leak, and the toxins seep into local groundwater 
supplies, as they have been known to do, he said.

"If there are regulations that would prevent further exposure, 
even at low levels, we shouldn't relax that," Clapp said. "(The 
waste) shouldn't go where people aren't properly trained to deal 
with it, or (shipped on) long routes on the highway. We need to 
keep regulations as strict as we can ---- that's just a prudent 
public health approach; something we know from decades of 
research."

Some lawmakers also have expressed concern with the proposal.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., sent a strongly worded letter to 
EPA Administrator Michael Leavitt urging him to reverse the 
decision to explore the possibility of relaxing disposal rules.

"Radioactive waste, if not stringently regulated, could be 
disposed of in facilities that are neither designed for nor 
licensed to accept such materials, to the detriment of our 
environment and the health of our citizens," Feinstein wrote.

Feinstein said the fact that regulators are focusing only on low 
levels did not make her any more comfortable with the proposal.

"Although the Environmental Protection Agency has given 
assurances that the wastes under review contain only small 
amounts of radioactive material, these assurances are 
unpersuasive in the face of the high risk of potential harm to 
the health and safety of Americans and our environment," she 
wrote.

According to the EPA's proposed-rule notice, the agency is mostly 
interested in exploring use of hazardous waste facilities.

"At this time, we do not expect to extend our disposal concept to 
... nonhazardous solid waste landfills," the notice stated.

However, the EPA suggests that regular solid waste landfills have 
many of the same engineering features as hazardous waste 
facilities, and notes that Michigan recently decided to allow 
disposal of waste from the closed Big Rock Point nuclear plant in 
a conventional landfill.

The notice seeks comment on whether conventional landfills are 
suitable.

Proposed EPA rule on 'low activity' radioactive waste

Public comments are being accepted through May 17 at: Air and 
Radiation Docket, Environmental Protection Agency, EPA West Room 
B108, Mailcode: 6102T, 1200 Pennsylvania Ave. N.W., Washington, 
D.C. 20460. Attention Docket ID No. OAR-2003-0095.

For additional information, call (202) 343-9300. 

  webmaster@nctimes.com 
                © 1997-2004 North
County Times - Lee Enterprises    editor@nctimes.com  

*****************************************************************
 31 Herald Tribune: Residents worry about tainted water from plant

heraldtribune.com: Southwest Florida's Information Leader
 	 	 	 	 	 	 	
By SCOTT CARROLL

SOUTH MANATEE COUNTY -- For nearly 40 years, the American 
Beryllium plant in Tallevast was a source of pride and 
good-paying jobs for the community.

But those jobs came with a hidden cost -- the plant leaked so 
much pollution into the ground that water wells may be tainted 
and cleanup at the site could take a decade.

The pride residents once held for the plant has turned to anger 
and fear.

"If these people in Tallevast knew what was coming here, they 
never would have accepted it," said Charlie Zeigler, who worked 
at the plant for 21 years. "Nobody knew."

That changed last fall, when the company that bought the plant 
from American Beryllium, defense industry giant Lockheed Martin, 
announced that it had found toxic chemicals in the ground water 
beneath the site at concentrations nearly 1,500 times state 
standards.

Lockheed removed more than 500 tons of contaminated soil from hot 
spots on the property, which in turn reduced pollution into the 
ground water, said company spokeswoman Meredith Smith.

Lockheed plans to test about two dozen private wells in the area 
to see if they're safe. If they aren't, the company will hook 
residents up to county water at no charge, Smith said. She added 
that preliminary tests indicate that toxins in the ground water 
exceed state standards when they reach nearby homes, but at 
concentrations too low to pose a health risk.

The substances in the ground water include the cleaning solvent 
trichloroethylene, also known as TCE, and the metal beryllium. 
Both have been linked to cancer in humans.

Lockheed vows to clean up the Tallevast Road plant and 
surrounding areas, but said it could take 10 years.

"I don't have 10 years," said Helen Heathington, 78. Heathington, 
like many Tallevast residents, has lived in the area for decades.

The predominantly black community was one of the last areas to 
get hooked up to county water. That occurred in the mid-1980s, 
more than two decades after the plant opened. About two dozen 
homes still have no access to county water lines.

"We had no choice but to drink that well water," said Laura Ward, 
president of the Tallevast community group FOCUS.

"This is my community, my family, my health we're talking about."

Many of the wells were put in by area residents and aren't very 
deep, Ward said.

Ward and other residents are gathering information on the medical 
histories of area families. Those surveys show a high number of 
cancers, tumors and birth defects in the community, Ward said. 
Seven Tallevast residents have died from cancer this year alone, 
she said.

Ward's own 25-year-old daughter had cervical cancer, and her 
29-year-old son has a cancerous lesion on his face, she said.

The Tallevast Road plant opened in 1961. For nearly 40 years it 
was occupied by the American Beryllium Corp., a subsidiary of 
Loral Corp., which also did contract work for the federal 
Department of Defense. Beryllium, an extremely strong and light 
metal, is used to make a host of products, including aircraft 
parts and weapon casings. Lockheed bought Loral in 1996 for $9 
billion, and soon after shut the Tallevast plant and sold its 
machinery.

Lockheed sold the 5-acre property to Wire Pro Inc. in 2000, and 
discovered the pollution during routine testing in connection 
with the sale. The sale agreement called for Lockheed to assume 
liability for pollution and cleanup at the site.

WPI makes cables, connectors and wiring harnesses at the plant 
and does not use beryllium.

In 2001, Lockheed installed monitoring wells around the property 
to test for ground water contamination.

Those initial tests showed levels of TCE at 4,300 parts per 
billion; the state standard is 3 parts per billion.

Petroleum, beryllium and other substances were also detected at 
several times the state standard.

The highest concentrations of TCE and beryllium were found in a 
former collection pond where TCE-laden water from the plant was 
allowed to evaporate.

Michael Gonsalves, supervisor of waste cleanup for the state 
Department of Environmental Protection, said Lockheed has been 
sending the agency quarterly reports on the testing and cleanup. 
The DEP doesn't have enough staff to monitor or do its own 
testing of sites like the Tallevast plant, Gonsalves said.

"If Lockheed hadn't come forward this probably wouldn't have 
shown up on the radar screen," he said.

Like Lockheed, Gonsalves cautioned that high levels of toxins at 
the site don't necessarily mean there's cause for concern. What's 
important is exposure to people, he said. If tests show drinking 
wells are tainted, the DEP will provide bottled water or filters 
to catch the contaminants, Gonsalves said.

Paul Panik of the county's Environmental Management Department 
said that since the DEP is providing oversight, the county's role 
in the cleanup is "minimal."

Panik also said notifying residents is the responsibility of the 
DEP, not the county.

"It's their bailiwick," Panik said.

Lockheed and government officials acknowledge they have no way of 
knowing how long the pollution has been occurring or how bad the 
ground-water contamination may have been 10 or 20 years ago.

Residents wonder why it took so long to be told of the problem.

"Why would they put all those wells in there and not tell 
anyone?" Ward asked.

It wasn't until last fall, when Lockheed began installing 
monitoring wells outside the plant property, that residents got 
wind of the problem.

Their fears were increased this year when Lockheed took back two 
portable office buildings WPI had donated to a Tallevast 
community center and a church.

The portables had been attached to the old plant and Lockheed was 
concerned they may have been contaminated with beryllium, said 
Gustave Efotte, a project manager who is overseeing the testing 
and cleanup efforts.

Gusto Efotte, a project manager overseeing the testing and 
cleanup efforts, said Lockheed waited to notify the community 
because it didn't want to worry residents unnecessarily.

"The only way to find out if there is an issue with this property 
is to test, and we have said we will do the testing," Efotte 
said. "We are meeting every corporate responsibility that we're 
supposed to." Last modified: May 01. 2004 6:45AM 

heraldtribune.com 
Serving the Herald-Tribune newspaper and SNN Channel 6
 © Sarasota Herald-Tribune. All rights reserved. 
*****************************************************************
 32 UPI: Britain stockpiles anti-radiation pills -

 (United Press International)
 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 
  May 02, 2004                     

London, , May. 2 (UPI) -- The British government has increased 
its supply of anti-radiation pills to cover 50 percent of the 
nation's population, the London Telegraph reported Sunday.

 The potassium iodate tablets protect the body from the effects 
of radioactive iodine emitted by nuclear weapons. The pills flood 
one's thyroid gland with potassium iodate to prevent the 
absorption of radioactive iodine.

 Britain previously held tablets to cover only the 200,000 people 
living near nuclear power stations or naval bases housing nuclear 
submarines.

 However, Health Secretary John Reid was advised by Britain's 
security service that terrorists were trying to obtain a nuclear 
device and it would be a sensible precaution to protect 30 
million people.

 Intelligence services have said there is a real and imminent 
threat. In 2002, Jose Padilla, a U.S. citizen linked to al-Qaida, 
was arrested in Chicago on suspicion of planning to set off a 
dirty bomb.

[UPI Perspectives]                                                                    
*****************************************************************
 33 New York Times: Bill Backs Energy Dept. in Atomic-Waste Battle
 
 By MATTHEW L. WALD

Published: May 1, 2004

[W] ASHINGTON, April 30 — A Senate committee is preparing to take 
up an Energy Department proposal that would leave millions of 
gallons of highly radioactive sludge in underground tanks in 
three states.

 The legislation, which Senate aides say has wide support, is an 
effort to overturn a federal judge's ruling last year that the 
department's plan violates a law governing radioactive waste.

At issue in the debate, to be taken up by the Senate Armed 
Services Committee next week, are hundreds of underground tanks 
at three nuclear-bomb-making plants, in South Carolina, Idaho and 
Washington State.

 The Energy Department has been removing some of the wastes from 
those tanks and solidifying them in glass, in preparation for 
burying them deep inside Yucca Mountain, the Nevada site where 
the department wants to establish a repository for high-level 
waste.

 But the department has also declared that it wants to cut costs 
and speed the cleanup by leaving some residual waste in the 
tanks. At one of the three plants, the Savannah River Site near 
Aiken, S.C., it has already mixed residual waste with cement and 
then sealed the two tanks holding them.

 An environmental group, the Natural Resources Defense Council, 
is suing the department, arguing that the 1992 federal law that 
allows the Yucca repository also requires that high-level wastes 
be buried deeply and not left in the tanks. A federal district 
judge in Boise, Idaho, agreed with the group in a ruling last 
July. The three states where the tanks are situated have joined 
the group in the suit, as has Oregon, whose border lies near the 
Washington plant.

 The department has appealed but has also said it will cease some 
cleanup work until the issue is resolved. Overruling the judge by 
changing the law has "significant support," said a Senate staff 
member involved in nuclear waste issues, and Senator Lindsey 
Graham, Republican of South Carolina, is circulating an amendment 
to a military financing bill that would exempt the department 
from some provisions of the statute, the Nuclear Waste Policy 
Act. It is this amendment that the Armed Services Committee is to 
address next week.

 A lawyer for the Natural Resources Defense Council, Geoffrey 
Fettus, said that if the waste disposal rule was changed, the 
effect would be to allow "nuclear cesspools" at the weapons 
plants. Indeed, Mr. Fettus said, the Savannah River plant would 
become the most polluted nuclear site on earth.

 The Energy Department has argued that cleaning out the tanks 
completely is too slow and expensive a process to be practical. 
Mr. Graham's proposal would allow the energy secretary to decide 
what was clean enough.

 In a telephone interview, Mr. Graham said that the State of 
South Carolina was near completion of an agreement with the 
Energy Department giving the state veto power over cleanup plans, 
and that his amendment would give legislative authorization to 
such arrangements.

 The senator said that allowing the Energy Department to leave 
some waste in place would save billions of federal dollars over 
the next 20 years. Environmentalists oppose the idea, he said, 
only because they want to "create as many impediments as possible 
to remediating nuclear waste" and so make it harder to build new 
nuclear reactors for electric power.

*****************************************************************
 34 Las Vegas RJ: DOE delays Ohio nuclear waste shipments 
 
Saturday, May 01, 2004
 
Nevada fightsplanned burialat the test site By STEVE TETREAULT
STEPHENS WASHINGTON BUREAU
 
Workers toil in February at the former Fernald uranium
processing plant in Ohio.
Photo by THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON -- The Department of Energy said Friday that it will
put off plans to begin transporting radioactive waste from Ohio
to the Nevada Test Site while it reviews a challenge that the
shipments would be illegal.
 
 The department had planned next month to begin the first of
roughly 3,700 truck shipments containing a special type of
potent radioactive waste from a decommissioned uranium plant 18
miles north of Cincinnati.
 
 But DOE deputy general counsel Marc Johnston told Attorney
General Brian Sandoval in a letter no waste will travel from the
Fernald facility before Nevada is given 45 days advance notice.
 
 Johnston could not say how long it might take the Energy
Department to sort out legal questions Nevada officials raised
earlier in the month in trying to block the shipments.
 
 A DOE spokesman in Washington confirmed the letter but had no
further comment. A department spokesman at the Fernald facility
was not available Friday.
 
 The department's action appeared to defuse at least temporarily
a new fight between the federal government and the state of
Nevada over nuclear waste. The state has been battling the
Energy Department over a proposed high-level nuclear waste
repository at Yucca Mountain.
 
 As a result of the DOE announcement, Joe Egan, a Virginia
attorney hired by Nevada to handle nuclear waste matters, said
the state will put off a federal lawsuit it planned to file next
week to block the Fernald shipments.
 
 "We think they blinked," Egan, said of the Energy Department.
"It could be 10 years before we get that 45 days notice."
 
 The Energy Department also notified the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission of the delay in its waste disposal plans. The state
had filed an emergency petition asking the NRC to step in and
take control of the waste.
 
 Later Friday, Sandoval warned the Energy Department in a return
letter not to remove the waste from silos "or do anything else
that might create some health and safety situation in Ohio."
 
 Explaining the letter, state attorneys said they feared DOE
might purposely create an emergency to justify speedy disposal
of the waste in Nevada.
 
 Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., said the Energy Department might
seek legislation from Congress to clear a path from Fernald to
Nevada for the waste shipments. 
"We dodged a temporary bullet," Berkley said. "The real question
is whether or not they have the legal authority to ship this
stuff and dump it at the test site."
 
 Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., maintained the proposed shipments
from Ohio "are simply unlawful. It is my hope that DOE will
formally abandon any plan to transport the waste to NTS."
 
 Sandoval had argued the Fernald waste was misclassified for
burial at the test site, and could not be buried in Nevada under
federal law and the Energy Department's waste disposal
regulations.
 
 Cleanup workers at Fernald were scheduled in May to begin
shipping up to 7,000 containers of radioactive waste material
and slurry that is stored in three silos.
 
 Two of the 20-foot-tall concrete silos have 240,030 cubic feet
of potent waste materials tainted with by-products of high-grade
uranium. The third silo, from where initial shipments were to be
made, contain 137,700 cubic feet of low-level thorium waste.
 
 The Energy Department and its cleanup contractor, Fluor
Fernald, began planning to dispose of the material at the Nevada
Test Site after Envirocare of Utah, a commercial radioactive
waste landfill in Tooele County, withdrew an offer to accept the
waste.
 
 Fluor Fernald has been overseeing the cleanup of the 1,050 acre
complex in southwestern Ohio where the government once processed
uranium for use in nuclear weapons production. The $4 billion
decontamination is expected to be completed by 2006.
 
 The government routinely buries low-level waste, research and
medical materials contaminated with short-lived radioactive
isotopes, in two specified areas of the test site, 65 miles
northwest of Las Vegas.
 
 But state officials said the waste from Fernald was more potent
and long-lived, and would pose more of a threat to the
environment.
 
 Jeff Wagner, a spokesman for Fluor Fernald, said he was not
aware of the Energy Department letter and could not say what any
schedule changes might mean for Fernald cleanup.
 
 "While this issue has been taking place with the state of
Nevada and DOE headquarters, we've continue to move forward with
what we have to do at the site," Wagner said.
 
 
Copyright Las Vegas Review-Journal
*****************************************************************
 35 Las Vegas RJ: NEVADA REPUBLICAN PARTY CONVENTION: GOP rethinks Yucca battle 
 
Saturday, May 01, 2004

Proposal urges talks to secure redress for nuke dump By ERIN NEFF
REVIEW-JOURNAL

Gov. Kenny Guinn, left, talks to State Sen. Randolph Townsend at
a lunch time event Friday during the Nevada GOP state convention
at the Peppermill in Reno.
Photo by THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

RENO -- For nearly two decades, Nevada Republicans and Democrats
could agree on one thing: unified opposition to the Yucca
Mountain Project with no exceptions.
 
 That alliance began to crumble Friday at the Nevada Republican
Party convention, and it could be rubble by this morning.
 
 The state GOP tentatively adopted two controversial platform
planks: one that seeks sound scientific solutions for the
planned nuclear waste repository and one that seeks compensation
for communities affected by the project.
 
 The planks were approved by the platform committee on Friday
and must win approval at the convention today for official
adoption.
 
 The two planks did not mention Yucca Mountain by name, but
rural and Northern Nevada delegates to the convention were
adamant that the state begin seeking recompense for the project.
 
 "Yucca Mountain's going to happen whether we want it or not,"
said Edward Goldberg of Minden.
 
 "That's right, so let's get the big bucks," added Cathy Maclean
of Reno.
 
 Yucca Mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, has been the
only place under consideration for the world's first high-level
nuclear waste repository since 1987. That year, Congress passed
legislation that bitter Nevada officials said all but ensured
the state would become the nation's nuclear dumping ground.
 
 Officials from both parties have long resisted occasional calls
from their own members to negotiate for benefits, maintaining
such a course would only weaken the state's limited leverage.
 
 The state is fighting the repository on a number of legal
grounds and has six lawsuits pending.
 
 "We don't think this is over," Gov. Kenny Guinn, a Republican,
said Friday. "We're still at a very critical point and
negotiations should not be held while we're in court."
 
 The two planks were discussed in a closed-door session, and
there was some support for a plank seeking benefits specifically
from Yucca Mountain.
 
 Brent Chamberlain, the platform committee chairman, said a
number of Yucca Mountain planks were discussed for inclusion in
the 16-plank platform.
 
 "Some were very specific about Yucca Mountain, but we decided
to go with a broader one and deal with federally managed lands,"
said Chamberlain, an Elko resident. "It passed nearly
unanimously."
 
 "There's just an awful lot of federal lands, and there is an
awful lot of other waste that can be brought into the state,
including nuclear," he said.
 
 Robert Adams, vice chairman of the Nye County Republican Party,
worked as an engineer at Yucca Mountain for 10 years and serves
on the federal impact advisory board.
 
 "I think we ought to stop wasting our money on these lawsuits,"
Adams said.
 
 But many of Nevada's top officials, Republicans and Democrats,
aren't ready to halt the state's efforts in court.
 
 Attorney General Brian Sandoval, a Republican, said through his
spokesman that he would strenuously oppose such a plank in the
state Republican Party platform.
 
 Sandoval added he would be greatly disappointed if such a plank
was adopted.
 
 In a prepared statement, Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., rejected the
idea of negotiating with the federal government.
 
 "I never have nor will I ever support any negotiations or
perception of willingness to negotiate with the federal
government on Yucca Mountain," he said. "As I have always said:
That though we lost the political battle, I am confident we will
prevail in the courtroom."
 
 But former Nevada Gov. Robert List, a lobbyist for the Nuclear
Energy Institute, said he believes the proposed plank reflects
the mood of the grass roots of Nevada.
 
 "It is in keeping with what I believe is in the best interests
of our state," he said. "The realities are increasingly clear
that this project is for real and we need to face up to it and
plan for it. 
"It makes good sense to develop a Plan B and to prepare our
state to face the disadvantages and at the same time seize the
opportunities," List said.
 
 Peggy Maze Johnson, president of Citizen Alert, an
environmental organization that has long opposed the Yucca
Mountain Project, was stunned to hear of the proposed planks.
 
 "They're playing the same old Republican games," Johnson said.
 
 Rural Republican delegates attempted to pass a similar plank at
the 2002 state party convention.
 
 "With everything in secret this year, they do it again,"
Johnson said. "How can that square with their elected officials,
who are supposedly fighting Yucca Mountain?"
 
 A platform is designed to represent the core values and beliefs
of a political party. As a result, the GOP, which limits its
platform to one double-sided piece of paper, hopes to use it on
the campaign trail to distinguish its candidates from those of
the other party.
 
 The Democrats passed a 38-page party platform containing
numerous planks on a variety of issues. One plank called for the
impeachment of President Bush.
 
 A state platform is an official document and is considered at
the national convention of each party.
 
 Nevada Democratic Party spokesman Jon Summers said Democrats
were specific in their state platform to oppose Yucca Mountain.
 
 "Clearly what it does is weaken the Republican stance against
Yucca Mountain," Summers said. "This is the single most
important environmental policy in the state, and opposition to
Yucca Mountain is missing from their platform."
 
 Incline Village resident Nina Bechtel said she supports getting
compensation for the repository, with money going to the
counties that will be directly affected by the transportation
and storage of 77,000 tons of highly radioactive nuclear waste.
 
 "I am concerned about the transportation, and they should get
money," she said.
 
 Goldberg, the Minden resident, said he saw a Department of
Energy videotape that convinced him the transportation of such
wastes is safe from potential terrorist attacks. Asked if he saw
video footage of a missile penetrating one of the storage casks,
Goldberg said a spill wouldn't be a problem.
 
 "They're little pellets, and the guys come in with their suits
and sweep it away," Goldberg said.
 
 The other plank supports the enforcement of environmental
regulations in solving scientific problems.
 
 "We put that in because a lot of things happen without peer
review or sound science," said Chamberlain, the platform
committee chairman.
 
 Clark County GOP Chairman Brian Scroggins said he does not
think Republican candidates will be affected if the planks are
adopted today.
 
 "Yucca Mountain's been around for a long time, but I don't
think it hurts our candidates," Scroggins said.
 
 Democrats argue that the Bush administration pushed for the
repository and note that presumed Democratic presidential
nominee John Kerry has vowed to shut down Yucca Mountain.
 
 Guinn, who vetoed President Bush's designation of the site in
2002, triggering an override by Congress, is co-chair of Bush's
re-election campaign in Nevada. Sandoval is the other co-chair.
 
 Guinn said he didn't think the Yucca Mountain issue would
affect Bush, who is still leading Kerry in polls of prospective
Nevada voters.
 
 "We've always been around 75 percent of the people saying,
`Fight that thing,' " Guinn said.
 
 Guinn said there might be a time for Nevada to negotiate for
benefits.
 
 "I am not against, as time goes on, saying I will listen to
people," Guinn said. "I don't think it'll come in my time,
though."

Review-Journal Capital Bureau writer Sean Whaley contributed to
this report.
 
 
Copyright Las Vegas Review-Journal
*****************************************************************
 36 Las Vegas RJ: Friends, foes of Yucca Mountain work to shape perception 
 
Saturday, May 01, 2004
 

GAO audit describes shortcomings in the nuclear waste program By
STEVE TETREAULT
STEPHENS WASHINGTON BUREAU
 
WASHINGTON -- Friends and foes of the Yucca Mountain Project
worked Friday to shape public perception of a congressional
audit that reported quality assurance shortcomings in the
nuclear waste program.
 
 The audit concluded the Department of Energy has failed to fix
persistent problems in the way it backs up research supporting
construction of a spent nuclear fuel repository inside Yucca
Mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
 
 Failure to solve problems in how documents are collected and
how data and software are verified could delay Energy Department
plans to get the site licensed, according to the General
Accounting Office report.
 
 The GAO, the investigation arm of Congress, issued the report
Friday. The report contained no significant changes from a draft
version that was detailed in news accounts earlier in the week.
 
 The Energy Department has dismissed the GAO study as flawed.
Energy officials have said they still plan to be ready in
December to file a license application with the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission.
 
 On Friday, the department's view was seconded by the Nuclear
Energy Institute, a major pro-repository group. 
The General Accounting Office acknowledged in the report it did
not consider the full range of improvements the Department of
Energy has made in its quality controls, said Steve Kraft, NEI
waste management director.
 
 "On balance, things are trending in the right direction," Kraft
said, adding that the nuclear industry believes the Energy
Department will have its quality assurance in adequate shape by
the time it files a licence application.
 
 But Nevada state officials and federal lawmakers who oppose the
Yucca Mountain Project said the report merely confirms other
audits that have been critical of the repository program.
 
 "This just reinforces all the other things going on in the
program," said Bob Loux, director of Nevada's Agency for Nuclear
Projects.
 
 "The DOE's data isn't up to snuff to reach the conclusions the
Energy Department wants to reach, and they can't document it
all," Loux said.
 
 Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., said reports of shortcomings on the
project "is not news to Nevadans."
 
 Ensign said any delays in the Yucca Mountain program would give
critics more time to seek alternatives to burying nuclear waste
at the site.
 
 "This report confirms the Department of Energy is wasting
billions of dollars on substandard science," Sen. Harry Reid,
D-Nev., said.
 
 
Copyright Las Vegas Review-Journal
*****************************************************************
 37 Las Vegas SUN: Rural panel wants funds to study Yucca Mountain plan
 
ASSOCIATED PRESS 

LAS VEGAS (AP) - A panel comprised of members from three rural 
Nevada counties wants $330,000 to conduct studies of a proposed 
rail line that would carry nuclear waste shipments to a planned 
repository at Yucca Mountain. 

The Central Nevada Community Protection Working Group would also 
use the cash to survey people who live near the proposed rail 
line as well as to gauge the route's economic impact, the Las 
Vegas Sun reported Friday. 

The group, which includes members of the Caliente City Council 
and Nye, Esmeralda and Lincoln county commissions, was formed in 
January after the Energy Department designated the Caliente route 
as its preferred rail line. 

The governments represented in the group have talked about 
negotiating with the DOE to receive benefits from the proposed 
Yucca Mountain repository, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. 

"I'm against (the Yucca Mountain project) but I feel it's 
inevitable and I've got to look out for the residents of Lincoln 
County to get whatever we can," said county Commissioner Tommy 
Rowe, a member of the panel. 

But others, including ranchers who strongly oppose the plan to 
bury 77,000 tons of radioactive waste at Yucca Mountain, say 
negotiating is inconceivable. 

The proposed studies are part of a long-standing "prescribed 
program" by the DOE to drum up support for the proposed rail 
corridor, said Bob Loux, executive director of the state Office 
of Nuclear Projects, which opposes the project. 

"It's part of an agenda to make everyone feel like the project is 
inevitable," Loux said. "Once (the DOE does) that they know we 
can't stop the project." 

If approved, the federal government would provide the group with 
$150,000 to hire consultants to survey landowners and users near 
the proposed rail corridor; $80,000 to collect data on economic 
development opportunities along the rail line; and $100,000 to 
coordinate tasks and to provide a "vision" report. 

"We're trying to get feedback based on concern from our 
constituent groups," Nye County Commissioner Candice Trummell 
said of the plan to poll rural residents. "We are working with 
(the Department of Energy) to make it as mutually beneficial as 
possible." 

*****************************************************************
 38 Salt Lake Tribune: Nuke storage decision months away 
 
May 01, 2004   

By Judy Fahys 
 
    Next January is the soonest federal authorities might clear
the way for highly radioactive reactor waste to be stored in the
Skull Valley of Tooele County. 
 
    The Atomic Safety and Licensing Board announced last week it
will have hearings in late summer on its final outstanding
technical question surrounding the proposed waste-storage
facility: whether the waste containers are likely to hold up if
a jetfighter crashes into them. The three-person panel plans to
issue its ruling in January 2005. 
 
    "The process has taken a lot longer than we originally
anticipated," said Sue Martin, spokeswoman for Private Fuel
Storage (PFS), the utility consortium proposing the storage
site. "But we believe that the [long review] time points to the
rigorousness of the process." 
 
    Initially, Private Fuel Storage expected to open the storage
site in 2002, about five years after applying for a license from
the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which relies on the
licensing board to settle technical disputes. If federal
regulators do approve a license, it would be late 2006 or early
2007 before the facility would be ready for waste shipments. 
 
    The project, reportedly worth more than $3.1 billion, would
use about 100 acres leased from the Skull Valley Band of Goshute
Indians. The facility would be big enough to hold more than 10
million depleted reactor fuel rods, roughly 44,000 tons of
waste, in 180-ton steel-and-concrete containers that would be
set atop concrete-and-soil pads. 
 
    Utilities are eager to be rid of waste already piling up at
65 reactor sites because of delays in the federal government's
proposed underground repository in Nevada. 
 
    A report released Friday by the General Accounting Office,
the investigative arm of Congress, said problems with the
scientific programs for the government's proposed Yucca
Mountain, Nev., repository could mean that disposal site will
not open as planned in 2010. 
 
    Industry says the need for the temporary Skull Valley
storage will be even greater the longer it takes to open a
permanent disposal site. 
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
    Last spring, the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board
effectively stalled the license when it ruled there was too
great a risk that the casks could be struck by an out-of-control
jetfighter, thousands of which travel annually between Hill Air
Force Base in northern Davis County and the entrance to the Utah
Test and Training Range south of Skull Valley. The board ruled
that the likelihood of such a crash is more than 1-in-1 million
in a typical year -- a number considered unacceptably high by
federal regulation. 
 
   The licensing board had originally planned to rule on the
issue last year, under orders of the NRC. But the complexity of
the issues caused additional delays. 
 
    Up to four weeks of hearings are set to begin in March,
largely behind closed doors, given the risk that public
deliberations might provide information to potential saboteurs. 
 
    fahys@sltrib.com
 
    
 
   
 
   
			   				 	 "> 	                 				 
 
  
Copyright Salt Lake City Tribune
*****************************************************************
 39 Salt Lake Tribune: Glossing over risks 
 
May 02, 2004   
 
    I am writing concerning the Hazardous Waste Task Force
hearing held on April 22. During the meeting there was an
Park, and Sen. Curtis Bramble, R-Provo, to pass a motion
recommending that the Utah Legislature reject Envirocare's
application for class B and C radioactive waste. However, one
need only look to the wording of the motion -- which indicates
that it is too politically heated to support Envirocare on this
issue -- to see that these legislators are trying to gloss over
the health risks of the hotter waste. 
 
    Do not believe for a second that either Allen or Bramble
have joined the fight against hotter waste. Environmental groups
were not consulted at all on the recommendation and were not
even allowed to address the task force during the hearing. 
 
    What makes the issue even more suspicious is that Sen.
Bramble is up for re-election this year, and this makes me
question whether he truly wishes to stop this waste from coming
to Utah or is he just trying to put off the issue until
supporting Envirocare is less damaging to his political career. 
 
    
 
   Brandon Rufener 
 
   Salt Lake City 
 
    
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
   
 
   
			   				 	 "> 	                 				 
 
  
Copyright Salt Lake City Tribune
*****************************************************************
 40 [Fwd: [NukeNet] DOE Pushes For Most Polluted Nuclear Site On Earth]
 
Date: Sun, 02 May 2004 09:04:38 -0700

 
<x-flowed>


-------- Original Message --------
Subject: 	[NukeNet] DOE Pushes For Most Polluted Nuclear Site On Earth
Date: 	Sat, 1 May 2004 12:31:02 -0400
From: 	Bill Smirnow <smirnowb@ix.netcom.com>
To: 	Bill Smirnow <smirnowb@ix.netcom.com>



  Videos: http://www.envirovideo.com
   Mothersalert Home:
http://www.mothersalert.org/moreinfo.html



   Indeed, Mr. Fettus said, the Savannah River
plant would become the most polluted nuclear site
on earth.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/01/politics/01NUKE.html


Bill Backs Energy Dept. in Atomic-Waste Battle
By MATTHEW L. WALD

Published: May 1, 2004



ASHINGTON, April 30 - A Senate committee is
preparing to take up an Energy Department proposal
that would leave millions of gallons of highly
radioactive sludge in underground tanks in three
states.

The legislation, which Senate aides say has wide
support, is an effort to overturn a federal
judge's ruling last year that the department's
plan violates a law governing radioactive waste.

At issue in the debate, to be taken up by the
Senate Armed Services Committee next week, are
hundreds of underground tanks at three
nuclear-bomb-making plants, in South Carolina,
Idaho and Washington State.

The Energy Department has been removing some of
the wastes from those tanks and solidifying them
in glass, in preparation for burying them deep
inside Yucca Mountain, the Nevada site where the
department wants to establish a repository for
high-level waste.

But the department has also declared that it wants
to cut costs and speed the cleanup by leaving some
residual waste in the tanks. At one of the three
plants, the Savannah River Site near Aiken, S.C.,
it has already mixed residual waste with cement
and then sealed the two tanks holding them.

An environmental group, the Natural Resources
Defense Council, is suing the department, arguing
that the 1992 federal law that allows the Yucca
repository also requires that high-level wastes be
buried deeply and not left in the tanks. A federal
district judge in Boise, Idaho, agreed with the
group in a ruling last July. The three states
where the tanks are situated have joined the group
in the suit, as has Oregon, whose border lies near
the Washington plant.

The department has appealed but has also said it
will cease some cleanup work until the issue is
resolved. Overruling the judge by changing the law
has "significant support," said a Senate staff
member involved in nuclear waste issues, and
Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South
Carolina, is circulating an amendment to a
military financing bill that would exempt the
department from some provisions of the statute,
the Nuclear Waste Policy Act. It is this amendment
that the Armed Services Committee is to address
next week.

A lawyer for the Natural Resources Defense
Council, Geoffrey Fettus, said that if the waste
disposal rule was changed, the effect would be to
allow "nuclear cesspools" at the weapons plants.
Indeed, Mr. Fettus said, the Savannah River plant
would become the most polluted nuclear site on
earth.

The Energy Department has argued that cleaning out
the tanks completely is too slow and expensive a
process to be practical. Mr. Graham's proposal
would allow the energy secretary to decide what
was clean enough.

In a telephone interview, Mr. Graham said that the
State of South Carolina was near completion of an
agreement with the Energy Department giving the
state veto power over cleanup plans, and that his
amendment would give legislative authorization to
such arrangements.

The senator said that allowing the Energy
Department to leave some waste in place would save
billions of federal dollars over the next 20
years. Environmentalists oppose the idea, he said,
only because they want to "create as many
impediments as possible to remediating nuclear
waste" and so make it harder to build new nuclear
reactors for electric power.






http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Nuclear-Waste-Fernald.html
U.S. to Give Notice on Nuclear Waste Move
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: May 1, 2004


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Filed at 12:05 a.m. ET

LAS VEGAS (AP) -- The Energy Department promised
Friday to give Nevada officials 45 days' notice
before shipping radioactive waste from a former
uranium-processing plant in Ohio to a desert
disposal facility.

The announcement prompted state officials to
declare success in their effort to halt shipments
from the plant to the Nevada Test Site, about 65
miles north of Las Vegas.

But an Energy Department official said the
government still plans to send Nevada the most
dangerous waste remaining at the former Fernald
plant, about 20 miles northwest of Cincinnati.
Fernald processed uranium from 1951 until 1989 for
use in government reactors to produce nuclear
weapons.

``We have a schedule,'' department spokesman Joe
Davis said. ``The exchange of letters does not, in
our opinion, upset the schedule.''

Davis declined to say when shipments might begin
and described Friday's promise as ``trying to be
responsive to the state of Nevada.''

Nevada officials threatened earlier this month to
sue in federal court to stop the shipments if the
Energy Department did not respond by April 30.

``They blinked,'' said Marta Adams, a senior
deputy Nevada attorney general. ``We're delighted
that (the Department of Energy) decided to rethink
this ill-conceived plan.''

The Energy Department has been moving low-level
radioactive wastes from Fernald to the Nevada site
for years. But Nevada officials say higher-level
radioactive waste, including uranium ore sludge
and powdery metallic production wastes, will need
a more secure disposal site with lined pits.

The test site, a federal reservation larger than
Rhode Island, is administered by the National
Nuclear Security Administration, a branch of the
Energy Department.

The state also has asked the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission for an emergency order to stop the
shipments. Commission officials in Rockville, Md.,
did not immediately respond Friday to messages
seeking comment.

Nevada also is battling the government in federal
court over plans to open a national nuclear waste
dump at Yucca Mountain, on the western edge of the
test site.

------

On the Net:

Nevada Attorney General: http://www.ag.state.nv.us

Fernald: http://www.fernald.gov

Nevada Test Site: http://www.nv.doe.gov/nts









_______________________________________________________________________
Subscribe/Unsubscribe Here: http://www.energyjustice.net/nukenet/
Change your settings at:
http://energyjustice.net/mailman/listinfo/nukenet_energyjustice.net





</x-flowed>
*****************************************************************
 41 Contra Costa Times: Los Alamos' director extols its changes

 | 05/02/2004 | 

By Leslie Hoffman

 ASSOCIATED PRESS

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. - The man who directs one of the nation's top 
nuclear weapons labs is on the offensive and "unapologetically 
upbeat" about a place that he says has transformed the way it 
does business. 

Last May, Pete Nanos was on the defensive, reassuring worried Los 
Alamos National Laboratory workers after Energy Secretary Spencer 
Abraham announced that the University of California would have to 
fight to manage the lab for the first time in six decades. 

The UC contract expires in September 2005. 

A year after Abraham's April 30, 2003, announcement, Nanos says 
the lab is "poised to turn the corner in a big way" on bad press. 

Trouble began in fall 2002 when allegations surfaced about Swiss 
cheese-style business controls, missing equipment, financial 
malfeasance and efforts by some lab managers to cover it all up.. 

Since then, top managers have been expunged and a number of 
internal and external reviews of business practices completed. 

A wall-to-wall lab inventory accounted for more than 99 percent 
of controlled property, and the lab has instituted hundreds of 
policy changes. 

Nanos also is pushing a more subtle but fundamental change in lab 
culture. 

It's emblazoned across a glossy pamphlet Nanos pulled from his 
briefcase, the lab's new corporate statement extolling "The 
World's Greatest Science Protecting America." 

"That's what I'm making sure that nobody misses at the 
laboratory. ... That's the essence of Los Alamos. It's the 
science and national security mission," Nanos said Friday during 
an interview with the Associated Press. 

Nanos is infusing a corporate-style marketing and management 
approach to a place long known as a bastion of academia where 
scientists say the pursuit of critical science sets the tone. 

Nanos understands that. That's why he says one manager should 
continue to oversee both Los Alamos and California's Lawrence 
Livermore national laboratories, another UC-managed lab whose 
contract will be put up for competitive bid. 

Management of the labs must ensure "that you get a good 
aggressive peer review but that that peer review isn't being 
driven by market share," he says. 

However, the retired Navy vice admiral has injected some 
corporate philosophy into a lab system criticized by auditors and 
members of Congress for its lax business practices. 

For starters, Nanos said the lab must hold the line on costs but 
still meet ever-increasing expectations. 

"I see budgets in the weapons program to be level or maybe even 
slightly declining," he says. "I don't see any large growth in 
weapons budgets, so being able to operate within those budgets 
and meet the critical goals of the nation is going to be 
extremely important." 

A restructuring of the lab's weapons program is the first step 
toward saving money, he says. Nanos recently created a separate 
"directorate" for weapons programs. 

That directorate is responsible for planning, budgeting and 
overseeing the lab's entire nuclear weapons portfolio. That 
leaves other areas of the lab time to focus solely on science. 

Meanwhile, the lab also has lowered overhead costs by $40 million 
this year by scrutinizing how everyone spends their budgets. 

"This is really important to the laboratory because what it does 
is it lowers the cost of science," he says. "It makes our science 
more competitive in the market." 

And, as UC's man on the ground, Nanos has a healthy incentive to 
improve the laboratory's competitiveness under his employer's 
watch. 

"I don't worry a lot about the (contract) competition in the day 
to day, but we do put our best foot forward," Nanos says. 

In the meantime, the lab is starting to get a different kind of 
attention for its business practices -- praise. 

The Energy Department inspector general last month gave the lab a 
positive review for efforts to revamp its purchase card program, 
a focus of the probe into faulty business practices that 
uncovered about $3,000 in improper purchases by lab employees. 

"A year ago, there were some days when I felt like I was the lone 
cheerleader," Nanos says. Now, "everywhere, we're on the up 
slope."   

*****************************************************************
 42 sacbee.com: Review offers rare peek at nuclear lab 
	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	
The Lawrence Livermore study reveals facts about site's
management and environmental effects.
 
By Michael Doyle -- Bee Washington Bureau
Published 2:15 am PDT Sunday, May 2, 2004

 WASHINGTON - The stars are aligned to shed a little more light 
on the usually secret world of the Lawrence Livermore National 
Laboratory, including its plans for ongoing explosives testing in 
San Joaquin County.

 The nuclear weapons lab wants to build a 40,000-square-foot 
center for testing high explosives at its Site 300 east of Tracy, 
plans scrutinized last week at Energy Department headquarters 
show.

 Consequently, things could get bumpy for local red-tailed hawks 
and prairie falcons.

 "Diurnal raptors that forage directly over the facilities are 
the species most vulnerable to flying debris and shock 
overpressure," the Energy Department acknowledges in the Lawrence 
Livermore study that's now in the spotlight.

 For the first time since 1992, the Energy Department is 
conducting a wide-ranging environmental review of Lawrence 
Livermore. By happenstance, the review occurs just as the 
University of California is preparing to compete - possibly 
against the University of Texas, among others - for the contracts 
to oversee the Lawrence Livermore and Los Alamos labs.

 This combination brings into public focus both the management of 
the lab that employs 10,600 people, many of whom commute from the 
northern San Joaquin Valley, and the lab's policy and 
environmental fallout. In particular, facts are bubbling up from 
the approximately 2,000-page environmental study and a series of 
five public hearings that concluded Friday.

 "This is a rare glimpse into the activities, current and future, 
of the lab," said Loulena Miles, staff attorney for the 
Livermore-based group called Tri-Valley CARES.

 The Livermore group wants to convert the laboratory to 
nonweapons work. That's a political long shot, as the 
laboratory's annual budget includes nearly $1 billion for nuclear 
weapons activities.

 The lab is completing its multiple-laser National Ignition 
Facility, useful for weapons development, and future plans 
anticipate boosting production of the "plutonium pits" used to 
trigger modern nuclear weapons.

 As part of the Livermore group's lab-monitoring efforts, Miles 
flew to Washington for the public hearing Friday. Fellow skeptics 
predominated, as allied groups from the Natural Resources Defense 
Council to the Federation of American Scientists also raised 
objections to various revelations in the Lawrence Livermore 
study.

 Site 300, for instance, could store up to 3,000 pounds of high 
explosives in its proposed Energetic Materials Processing Center, 
according to the study. Used for testing explosives since 1955, 
the 7,000-acre site off Coral Hollow Road south of the Altamont 
Pass will be employed for future testing on a "weekly to daily 
basis," the study says.

 "We look at what is foreseeable for approximately the next 10 
years," said Tom Grim, who is managing the Lawrence Livermore 
environmental document.

 More broadly, the lab anticipates doubling the amount of 
plutonium it can store at the heavily guarded Superblock facility 
in Livermore, to 3,300 pounds from the current limit of 1,540 
pounds. An essential fuel in nuclear weapons, plutonium can also 
kill when inhaled in very small amounts; breathing in several 
ten-thousandths of a gram can cause cancer.

 The number of hazardous and radioactive waste shipments into and 
out of the 1.3-square-mile Livermore facility would likewise grow 
to an estimated 310 over the next decade, the new study shows - a 
big increase over the 88 shipments expected if lab operations 
stayed as they are.

 The Energy Department will continue collecting public comments 
on Lawrence Livermore's future through May 27 and expects to make 
its final decisions by January.

 The nuclear weapons lab management contracts are moving on a 
different track, and some officials don't expect the formal 
requests for proposals to be issued until after the November 
presidential election.

 The Bee's Michael Doyle can be reached at (202) 383-0006 or . 

*****************************************************************
 43 Herald Tribune: Budget shortfall could stop work at SRS

heraldtribune.com: Southwest Florida's Information Leader
 	 	 	 	 	 	 	
  Monday, May 1 2004
 
The Associated Press
 
AIKEN, S.C. -- Work on some projects at the Savannah River Site 
could stop temporarily unless officials can make up a $51 million 
budget shortfall.

The number of projects and their nature were not identified 
Friday by Westinghouse Savannah River Co., the private company 
that runs the former nuclear weapons plant for the Department of 
Energy.

The budget shortfall is unrelated to the company's request to lay 
off 300 employees, company spokesman Will Callicott said.

Westinghouse has made up some of the deficit by doing things like 
eliminating landscaping and janitorial services, Callicott said.

But more drastic steps are needed. The company is asking its 
employees to take at least 75 percent of their vacation by Oct. 
1, according to a memo Westinghouse President Bob Pedde sent 
employees April 21.

That way, Westinghouse could save money by not having top pay 
employees who choose to be paid at the end of the year for their 
vacation time instead of taking the days off from work.

But even if all of the company's roughly 13,000 employees 
complied with the vacation request, Westinghouse would still save 
only $10 million, Callicott said.

---

Information from: The Augusta Chronicle, Last modified: May 01. 
2004 10:36AM 

heraldtribune.com 
Serving the Herald-Tribune newspaper and SNN Channel 6
 © Sarasota Herald-Tribune. All rights reserved. 
*****************************************************************
 44 Herald Tribune: Los Alamos lab director goes on offensive extolling lab's virtues

heraldtribune.com: Southwest Florida's Information Leader
 
By LESLIE HOFFMAN Associated Press Writer
 
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. -- The man who directs one of the nation's top 
nuclear weapons labs is on the offensive and "unapologetically 
upbeat" about a place that he says has transformed the way it 
does business.

Last May, Pete Nanos was on the defensive, reassuring worried Los 
Alamos National Laboratory workers after Energy Secretary Spencer 
Abraham announced the University of California would have to 
fight to manage the lab for the first time in six decades. The UC 
contract expires in September 2005.

A year after Abraham's April 30, 2003, announcement, Nanos says 
the lab is "poised to turn the corner in a big way" on bad press.

Trouble began in the fall of 2002 when allegations surfaced about 
Swiss-cheese style business controls, missing equipment, 
financial malfeasance and efforts by some lab managers to cover 
it all up.

Since then, top managers have been expunged and a number of 
internal and external reviews of business practices completed. A 
wall-to-wall lab inventory accounted for more than 99 percent of 
controlled property, and the lab has instituted hundreds of 
policy changes.

Nanos is also pushing a more subtle but fundamental change in lab 
culture.

It's emblazoned across a glossy pamphlet Nanos pulled from his 
briefcase - the lab's new corporate statement declaring "The 
World's Greatest Science Protecting America."

"That's what I'm making sure that nobody misses at the 
laboratory.... That's the essence of Los Alamos - it's the 
science and national security mission," Nanos said Friday during 
an interview with The Associated Press.

Nanos is infusing a corporate-style marketing and management 
approach to a place long known as a bastion of academia where 
scientists say the pursuit of critical science sets the tone.

Nanos understands that. That's why he says one manager should 
continue to oversee both Los Alamos and California's Lawrence 
Livermore national laboratories, another UC-managed lab whose 
contract will be put up for competitive bid.

Management of the labs must ensure "that you get a good 
aggressive peer review but that that peer review isn't being 
driven by market share," he says.

However, the retired Navy vice admiral has injected some 
corporate philosophy into a lab system criticized by auditors and 
members of Congress for its lax business practices.

For starters, Nanos said the lab must hold the line on costs but 
still meet ever-increasing expectations.

"I see budgets in the weapons program to be level or maybe even 
slightly declining," he says. "I don't see any large growth in 
weapons budgets, so being able to operate within those budgets 
and meet the critical goals of the nation is going to be 
extremely important."

A restructuring of the lab's weapons program is the first step 
toward saving money, he says. Nanos recently created a separate 
"directorate" for weapons programs. That directorate is 
responsible for planning, budgeting and overseeing the lab's 
entire nuclear weapons portfolio. That leaves other areas of the 
lab time to focus solely on science.

Meanwhile, the lab has also lowered overhead costs by $40 million 
this year by scrutinizing how everyone spends their budgets.

"This is really important to the laboratory because what it does 
is it lowers the cost of science," he says. "It makes our science 
more competitive in the market."

And, as UC's man on the ground, Nanos has a healthy incentive to 
improve the laboratory's competitiveness under his employer's 
watch.

"I don't worry a lot about the (contract) competition in the day 
to day, but we do put our best foot forward," Nanos says.

In the meantime, the lab is starting to get a different kind of 
attention for its business practices - praise. The Energy 
Department inspector general last month gave the lab a positive 
review for efforts to revamp its purchase card program, a focus 
of the probe into faulty business practices that uncovered about 
$3,000 in improper purchases by lab employees.

"A year ago, there were some days when I felt like I was the lone 
cheerleader," he says. Now, "everywhere, we're on the up slope." 
Last modified: May 01. 2004 3:03PM 

heraldtribune.com 
Serving the Herald-Tribune newspaper and SNN Channel 6
 © Sarasota Herald-Tribune. All rights reserved. 
*****************************************************************
 45 kgw.com: EPA, Energy Department reach agreement on K Basin sludge 

| News for Oregon and SW Washington | AP Wire

05/01/2004 

By SHANNON DININNY  / Associated Press 

The Environmental Protection Agency and the Energy Department 
have reached a tentative agreement on new deadlines for cleaning 
up pools of spent nuclear fuel at the Hanford nuclear 
reservation. 

The EPA had set a May 1 deadline for the Energy Department to 
come up with a new plan for removing radioactive sludge in the K 
East and West basins, or face fines of up to $500,000. The 
indoor, leak-prone pools of water once held 2,300 tons of spent 
nuclear fuel about 400 yards from the Columbia River. About 85 
percent of the fuel has been removed. 

Once the fuel is removed, what will remain is sludge from 
corroded spent nuclear fuel stored in the huge water-filled 
basin, along with dust and dirt and sloughed material from the 
basin walls. 

The Energy Department missed a legal deadline established under 
the 1989 Tri-Party Agreement  the legal pact governing cleanup 
at Hanford  to begin removing the sludge by Dec. 31, 2002. EPA 
fined the agency $76,000 last year. 

The new agreement will require a review by the state Department 
of Ecology and the public before it becomes final. 

"It's unfortunate that we're so far behind on getting started on 
the sludge, but it's a positive that we're finally getting 
started," EPA spokesman Nick Ceto said Friday. "We can't go back 
in time and meet the deadlines they already missed, so our goal 
was to get an overall strategy for dealing with the sludge that 
was better than before." 

The previous plan called for removal of all fuel, debris and 
water, as well as both basins, by the end of July 2007. 

Under the new agreement, the deadline would be bumped to spring 
2009, but a new deadline was added to remove one basin that has 
been known to leak by March 31, 2007. 

The new plan also requires that the sludge be treated before 
being shipped out of state to a national waste repository, Ceto 
said. The waste is expected to be shipped to the Waste Isolation 
Pilot Plant in New Mexico. 

The previous plan called for the sludge to be eventually removed 
from the basins and stored in containers at Hanford before being 
shipped offsite. 

About 2,100 metric tons of spent fuel were stored in the K 
Basins, built in the 1950s to hold the highly radioactive fuel 
rods that came out of the N Reactor, which was used to make 
plutonium for nuclear weapons during the Cold War. 

The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board also has asked the 
Energy Department to provide a technical plan by April 30 for 
removal and disposal of sludge. 

Colleen Clark, a spokeswoman for the Energy Department, said the 
report was not delivered Friday but the department hoped to 
deliver it next week. 

This text is invisible on the page, but this text is affected by 
the invisible item's flow. This text is invisible on the page, 
but this text is affected by the invisible item's flow.     

Advertising [ClassifiedCenter] 

© Belo Interactive Inc.   
*****************************************************************
 46 U.S. Newswire: Energy Secretary Abraham to Address Third Annual 
Conference on Carbon Capture and Sequestration
 
 4/30/2004 3:34:00 PM 
To: Assignment Desk, Daybook Editor, Energy Reporter 

Contact: Jeanne Lopatto, 202-586-4940, or Drew Malcomb, 
202-586-5806, both of the U.S. Department of Energy 

News Advisory: 

Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham will give a keynote address 
at the Third Annual Carbon Capture and Sequestration Conference, 
to be held May 3-6, 2004, in Alexandria, Va. The conference is 
being held in cooperation with the U.S. Department of Commerce, 
the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Environmental 
Protection Agency, and will include participation by the White 
House Office of Science and Technology Policy, various 
international entities, environmental groups, the U.S. Department 
of State, U.S. energy companies and Department of Energy National 
Laboratories. 

The 3rd Annual Carbon Capture and Sequestration Conference will 
include panels and discussions on topics including: 

-- President Bush's Strategic Plan for the U.S. Climate Change 
Science Program; 

-- Major Challenges Facing the Development and Ultimate 
Deployment of Carbon Capture, Separation, Transport and 
Sequestration Systems; 

-- Risk Sharing to Promote the Development of Clean Coal Power; 

-- How A Carbon Credits Market Can Facilitate Government 
Acceptance and Investment in Carbon Capture/Sequestration 
Technologies; and 

-- The Need to Define Just What A Carbon Credit Is. 

WHO: Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham 

WHAT: Keynote Speech 

WHEN: Tuesday, May 4, 11 a.m. 

WHERE: Hilton Alexandria Mark Center, 5000 Seminary Rd., 
Alexandria, Va. 22311 

http://www.usnewswire.com/
*****************************************************************
 47 BulletinWire News: Hanford contractor cleans up act                                                
 		
BulletinWire | April 30, 2004

In response to a rash of exposure incidents that threatened the 
safety of workers cleaning up the Hanford Site nuclear 
reservation, an Energy Department contractor in charge of the 
cleanup has implemented a series of new safety precautions.
 						
The contractor, CH2M Hill Hanford Group (CHG), announced last 
week that it will require workers at Hanfords tank farms, where 
more than 50 million gallons of mixed chemical and nuclear waste 
are stored, to wear supplied-air respirators to protect against 
exposure to waste vapors. CHG officials also announced that they 
will hire at least 10 more safety technicians and will provide 
more workers with personal devices to monitor the substances they 
are exposed to.
 						
This is about the workers, Dale I. Allen, a senior vice president 
at CHG, told the Washington Post. We want to maintain the 
confidence of our workers (April 21).
 						
The safety of tank-farm workers at Hanford has been compromised 
by Energy contractors as they have attempted to accelerate the 
cleanup at the site, according to Bulletin authors Tom Carpenter 
and Clare Gilbert (May/June 2004). Despite knowing of the 
potential hazards of the cleanup work, CHG failed to provide the 
necessary safety equipment and monitoring systems as the 
accelerated cleanup went forward, and as a consequence, by the 
end of March 2004, 99 tank-farm workers had been inadvertently 
exposed to tank vapors, Carpenter and Gilbert reported.
 						
The problem is not only a lack of supplied air at the Hanford 
tank farms. It is a lack of any respiratory protection. In the 
overwhelming majority of exposure incidents, workers were wearing 
no respiratory protection at all, wrote Carpenter and Gilbert. 
Counter to the apparent goals of Energy, implementing more 
stringent safety standards might slow cleanup progress at the 
site.
 													
 by Tom Carpenter and Clare Gilbert, May/June 2004 													
  												 											
 Washington Post, April 22, 2004 													   												
											
BulletinWire | April 30, 2004
 												
GAO to Energy: Improve nuke security
 											
On April 27, the General Accounting Office (GAO) released two 
reports critical of the Energy Departments post-9/11 handling of 
nuclear security. Although the GAO recognized that Energy had 
taken some steps to improve physical security at nuclear complex 
sites, the measures are not sufficient to ensure that all of 
[Energys] sites are adequately prepared to defend themselves 
against the higher terrorist threat present in the post–September 
11, 2001 world, it found.
 												
It took almost two years after 9/11 for Energy to update its 
standard for nuclear security, known as the design basis threat 
(DBT)—a turnaround time that Connecticut Cong. Christopher Shays 
called an inexplicably and inexcusably long time. Besides the 
revised DBT of May 2003, Energy also issued a classified policy 
directive on April 5 of this year that effectively changes its 
security policy at sites with enough nuclear materials to make a 
bomb from one of containment to one of area denial.
 												
In other words, they must be able to prevent terrorists from even 
entering the facility because the terrorists could create a 
nuclear detonation within minutes, summarized Danielle Brian, 
executive director of the Project on Government Oversight (POGO), 
in her April 27 congressional testimony on nuclear security.
 												
This is a critical turning point in the direction of the nuclear 
weapons complex, Brian said. The growing awareness by [Energy] of 
the vulnerabilities posed by these sites is a hollow victory, 
however, without commensurate actions. POGO recommends 
consolidating and relocating quantities of highly enriched 
uranium and plutonium now stored at sites such as Lawrence 
Livermore, Sandia, and Oak Ridge national labs, to more secure 
facilities.
 												
POGO has been advocating this position for some time. In the 
January/February 2002 Bulletin, Brian and coauthors Lynn Eisenman 
and Peter D. H. Stockton asserted that Energy should consolidate 
its weapons quality nuclear material for safety reasons.
 												
Enough special nuclear material to make a weapon is currently 
stored at 10 fixed sites—even though most no longer have a 
national security mission, they reported. Unneeded facilities 
should be closed. . . . Two of the most secure facilities in the 
world could provide enough storage for all the stable 
weapons-grade plutonium and highly enriched uranium that is 
required for national defense purposes—a secure underground 
storage facility at Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico and the 
Device Assembly Facility at the Nevada Test Site.
 											
*****************************************************************
 48 Boston.com: New book delves into Fernald's cruel past
 
  New book delves into Fernald's cruel past Boston Globe His
foster mother died suddenly in March 1949, leaving 8-year-old
Fred Boyce heartbroken and homeless. Needing a new home for him,
state social workers said the shy boy should be
institutionalized, based on an IQ test showing he was
"feebleminded." Without a word from the child, a judge in Boston
committed him to a home for people with ... Scott Allen May 1,
2004 --> 

By Scott Allen, Globe Staff  |  May 1, 2004 

WALTHAM -- His foster mother died suddenly in March 1949, leaving 
8-year-old Fred Boyce heartbroken and homeless. Needing a new 
home for him, state social workers said the shy boy should be 
institutionalized, based on an IQ test showing he was 
"feebleminded." Without a word from the child, a judge in Boston 
committed him to a home for people with mental retardation, 
dooming Boyce to a childhood of taunts, loneliness, and anger. 

Boyce, now 63, is one of hundreds of people of normal 
intelligence who were locked away as children for years at the 
Fernald State School because they did poorly on an intelligence 
test once widely used as a measure of ability to live 
independently, according to a book due out next week. "The State 
Boys Rebellion" for the first time tells the story of this 
invisible class of victims who, to this day, struggle with the 
lingering effects of a limited education and the shame of being 
branded a "moron." 

The book uses patient files and other documents to argue that the 
state-run Fernald School was a stronghold of the eugenics 
movement and an ideology that focused on preventing so-called 
inferior people from having children. Though eugenics had fallen 
out of favor after the Nazi persecution of Jews, author Michael 
D'Antonio argues that Massachusetts followed its principles into 
the 1960s by relying on IQ tests to institutionalize "the 
feebleminded," who very often turned out to be the children of 
the poor. 

"It's hard for me to comprehend that I was there," said Boyce, a 
man comfortable discussing theoretical physics even though his 
childhood IQ score of 73 suggested he had mild mental 
retardation. "I'm not feebleminded. . . . I'm not the Rain Man, 
and I'm not Forrest Gump. . . . I'm just Freddie; that's all." 

Fernald's isolation made the children an easy mark for abuse, 
including nutrition experiments in which children were fed bowls 
of slightly radioactive oatmeal to make their digestion easier to 
track. After the research became public a decade ago, Boyce and 
other members of the so-called Fernald Science Club won a 
settlement of $3 million from MIT and Quaker Oats, which carried 
out and funded the experiments, as well as from the state and 
federal governments. 

But now, as the decaying Victorian campus in Waltham prepares to 
close permanently, it's clear that the radiation experiments were 
part of a lifetime of hardships that cannot be compensated by 
settlement shares of $50,000 to $65,000 per person. For instance, 
Boyce, who was "paroled" from Fernald in 1961, can't afford to 
leave his job running a carnival concession booth, even though he 
is suffering from advanced colon cancer. 

"They are the last victims of eugenics," said D'Antonio, a former 
Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for Newsday in New York who 
gained access to case files of science club members showing that 
teachers and other staff members came to doubt that many of them 
were mentally disabled. Massachusetts officials acknowledged that 
in 1949, the year Boyce was admitted, about 8 percent of children 
in state schools were not mentally retarded or were normal. In 
fact, D'Antonio found an account of a 1940 meeting in which the 
superintendent said the school needed high-functioning residents 
for cheap labor.   

oday, researchers understand that any test contains biases and 
that an imposing test-giver can cause a child to perform more 
poorly. IQ tests were widely used as diagnostic tools by social 
workers and psychiatrists in the 1940s and '50s for children with 
behavior problems or who were not performing as well in school as 
they should. Anyone who scored below 80 could abruptly be sent to 
a state institution. Even in the '50s, however, research was 
beginning to emerge showing that the IQ tests used at the time 
did not measure innate intelligence and that children could 
improve their scores with intensive training.

By 1949, 150,000 children nationwide were institutionalized, even 
though it is likely that thousands of them were of normal 
intelligence, D'Antonio found.

Massachusetts officials do not defend the mental retardation 
policies of the past, agreeing that the state abused people's 
rights until a federal lawsuit in 1972 began the movement to get 
people with mental retardation out of isolated institutions and 
into community homes. The state stopped accepting children at 
institutions such as Fernald by the mid-1970s.

"In the past, families had to hand their family members over to 
the state because there were no options," explained Gerald J. 
Morrissey Jr., commissioner of the Department of Mental 
Retardation. He stressed that families have many care choices 
today and said that fewer than 4 percent of his agency's clients 
are institutionalized.

In fact, the lingering debate at Fernald, where 248 mentally 
disabled adults still live, centers on whether 
deinstitutionalization has gone too far, with some advocates 
arguing that Fernald should remain open for people who have 
called it home for decades and don't want to leave. As a result, 
Morrissey hasn't set a deadline for closing the school, though a 
panel will soon begin looking at development options for the 
pastoral 96-acre property just off Route 128.

The Fernald School, America's first home for the "feebleminded," 
was rooted in compassion when it was founded in Boston in 1849. 
Forty years later, the school moved to its current site, 
providing a country home and job training for people of limited 
mental capacity.

But, by the turn of the 20th century, superintendent Walter E. 
Fernald was a leading advocate of eugenics, a once-popular 
movement that sponsored "fitter families" contests in hopes of 
identifying genetically superior parents to produce the next 
generation.

The Nazi extermination of 6 million Jews in the name of a "master 
race" destroyed eugenics as a respectable science, and the term 
disappeared from scholarly journals. But the machinery of 
eugenics -- the rigid IQ tests and the state schools -- was still 
in place, D'Antonio writes, and researchers at the time noted 
that it was used mostly on children from "disorganized" families 
where parents were neglectful, alcoholic or just plain poor. 

By 1957, the population of the Fernald School had swelled to a 
high of 2,600, but it seemed a school in name only. Residents 
were given few services and little education, were forced to do 
menial labor, and normally were allowed to see family members 
only once a month on "company Sundays." Just as bad, smaller 
children were preyed upon both by bullies and sadistic 
attendants, who could make them sit silently for hours or demand 
sexual favors, according to the book.

For hundreds of children like Boyce who had no mental 
retardation, life there was surreal. Boyce said it was like 
"living in the ether."

Boyce seemed to end up at Fernald almost as a convenience for the 
state. Given up for adoption by his mother as an infant, Boyce 
had been to seven foster homes by the time his foster mother, 
Marion Bond, died. Social workers, who suspected that the boy's 
speech impediment and shy nature were signs of mental 
retardation, promptly took him before a judge at the Boston 
Division of Child Guardianship, arguing that his low IQ test 
proved he should be institutionalized. The judge agreed.

Staff members who got to know Boyce discovered he was perfectly 
bright. A psychologist found his intellect to be nearly normal 
and warned in 1954 that "a prolonged stay here would be 
detrimental to him." Despite such warnings in the files of Boyce 
and others, few children were released, in part because state 
officials feared that they could be blamed if former residents 
turned to crime.

Compared with the tedium and cruelty of everyday life, the 
radiation experiments for which Fernald became infamous a decade 
ago were a bright spot, according to Boyce. The children got 
adult attention and approval, along with perks such as a 
Christmas party and a trip to see the Red Sox. All they had to do 
in return was follow a special diet and submit to minor 
inconveniences, such as blood tests and stool samples.

Although there is no evidence the children were harmed, MIT, the 
state, and President Clinton issued apologies for the unethical 
research at Fernald. Perhaps equally important, revelations of 
the experiments brought members of the science club together 
after decades of isolation, with some not even telling their 
wives where they had grown up.

Boyce visited as many of the 35 named science club members as he 
could find, but what he found often saddened him. Some refused to 
join Boyce's lawsuit for fear of the stigma or some retribution 
from the state, and most of them had struggled economically and 
socially. Still, about half were married with children.

For his part, Boyce is not bitter, though he has struggled 
through a divorce and can't afford to stop working, despite his 
cancer. "I live day by day," said Boyce, who spends nights on the 
road in his camper-trailer at the nearest Wal-Mart store parking 
lot. "Everybody's terminal. It's just a matter of when."

Scott Allen can be reached at allen@globe.com. c Copyright 2004 
Globe Newspaper Company.

*****************************************************************
 49 Cincinnati Enquirer: Fernald cleanup slows down
 
  Saturday, May 1, 2004 

Warning promised if silo waste moved 

By Dan Klepal The Cincinnati Enquirer

CROSBY TOWNSHIP - The U.S. Department of Energy, in a letter 
written Friday to the Nevada Attorney General's Office, said none 
of the 153 million pounds of nuclear waste from the Fernald silos 
will be shipped to that state without at least a 45-day notice. 

Two weeks ago, the Nevada Attorney General's Office threatened to 
sue the Department of Energy if Fernald waste was shipped for 
permanent disposal at the Nevada Test Site, a low-level 
nuclear-waste repository 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas. 

Nevada claims it is illegal, unsafe and a violation of the 
Department of Energy's own rules governing storage of nuclear 
waste to dispose of the silo material in the Nevada Test Site. 

"The department is evaluating the points raised in your letter, 
and at this time we are unable to state how long that process 
will take," said the DOE's letter, signed by Marc Johnston, 
deputy general counsel for litigation. 

"Accordingly, I have been authorized to represent that the 
Department will not ship any of the material stored in the 
Fernald silos to the Nevada Test Site without first providing to 
you 45 days advance notice." 

Nevada Attorney General Brian Sandoval said Friday that the 
letter is a victory for the people of his state, adding that a 
45-day notice would give him sufficient time to file a lawsuit 
asking for an injunction to stop the shipments before they could 
begin. 

Senior Deputy Attorney General Marta Adams, who would handle any 
lawsuit filed against the DOE, said such a suit could be filed 
within a day. 

"We feel the violations are pretty significant and pretty clear, 
and that's why we are so confident," Adams said. "You don't take 
that kind of waste and put it in a glorified hole in the ground 
in glorified bags." 

But Department of Energy spokesman Joe Davis said the letter 
doesn't really change anything. He said the DOE is still 
convinced it can legally ship the waste to Nevada on schedule. 
Shipments are to begin in early June. 

"It is our intention to keep the schedule," Davis said. "We don't 
think that has been jeopardized by trying to be responsive to the 
state of Nevada. 

Davis wouldn't respond directly when asked if that means the 
waste will be removed from the concrete silos that have safely 
stored it for 50 years, even if there is no clear final 
destination for it. But he did say: "I don't think we have any 
unresolved issues." 

That's news to the Nevada officials. 

Sandoval wrote in a letter dated April 13 that storing silos 
waste at the Nevada Test Site violates federal and state law. 
"DOE's plan is reckless and unsafe, and flagrantly violates the 
law," Sandoval's letter said. 

Any delay is likely to make it impossible for the DOE and its 
prime contractor at the site, Fluor Fernald, to make the June 
2006 deadline to complete the cleanup. Fluor Fernald, which is 
handling most of the $4.4 billion cleanup, has a $250 million 
bonus riding on meeting that deadline. 

Jeff Wagner, a spokesman for Fluor Fernald, said it is unclear if 
it could remove waste from the silos and store it in a temporary 
facility at Fernald. 

The DOE might want to begin removing the silo waste so that it is 
ready to be shipped as soon as a final destination is found. 
Government officials originally wanted to ship the waste to a 
private landfill in Utah, but public outcry over that idea caused 
landfill owners there to abandon the plan. 

If it can't ship Fernald waste to Nevada, the Department of 
Energy has no place else to turn. 

Removal of the waste from the silos into a temporary storage 
facility at Fernald is a frightening possibility to Lisa 
Crawford, leader of a citizens group that sued to get the cleanup 
started and has monitored it for the past decade. 

"It leaves us in a real mess," Crawford said. "We have nowhere to 
send it. And it's our opinion that, at this point, they can pull 
nothing out of those silos until they have a clear path forward." 

Crawford's group, Fernald Residents for Environmental Safety and 
Health (FRESH), have thrown up another potential roadblock for 
the silo cleanup. In a letter to the Defense Nuclear Facilities 
Safety Board, the group said neither the DOE nor Fluor plan to 
perform the proper safety reviews before starting the dangerous 
process of removing the waste from the silos. 

Crawford believes the safety reviews are being cut short to save 
time so the 2006 deadline can be met. 

Dave Kozlowski, the DOE's deputy director at Fernald, said that's 
not true. 

*****************************************************************
 50 Seattle Times: Local News: Pact reached on deadlines for N-cleanup
 	 	 	
Saturday, May 01, 2004 - Page updated at 12:00 A.M.

By The Associated Press
 			 			
YAKIMA — The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Energy 
Department have reached a tentative agreement on new deadlines 
for cleaning up pools of spent nuclear fuel at the Hanford 
nuclear reservation. 

The EPA had set a May 1 deadline for the Energy Department to 
come up with a new plan for removing radioactive sludge in the K 
East and West basins, or face fines of up to $500,000. The 
indoor, leak-prone pools of water once held 2,300 tons of spent 
nuclear fuel about 400 yards from the Columbia River. About 85 
percent of the fuel has been removed. 

Once the fuel is removed, what will remain is sludge from 
corroded spent nuclear fuel stored in the huge water-filled 
basin, along with dust and dirt and sloughed material from the 
basin walls. 

The Energy Department missed a legal deadline established under 
the 1989 Tri-Party Agreement — the legal pact governing cleanup 
at Hanford — to begin removing the sludge by Dec. 31, 2002. EPA 
fined the agency $76,000 last year. 

The new agreement will require a review by the state Department 
of Ecology and the public before it becomes final. 

"It's unfortunate that we're so far behind on getting started on 
the sludge, but it's a positive that we're finally getting 
started," EPA spokesman Nick Ceto said yesterday. 

The previous plan called for removal of all fuel, debris and 
water, as well as both basins, by the end of July 2007. 

Under the new agreement, the deadline would be bumped to spring 
2009, but a new deadline was added to remove, by March 31, 2007, 
one basin that has been known to leak. 

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company
*****************************************************************
 51 [DU-WATCH] How to order The Damned of Kosovo (VHS) in USA &
 
Date: Sat, 1 May 2004 01:34:16 -0500 (CDT)

 
In the end, you find how to order this film in English on VHS video
tape for North America:

Michel Collon
Vanessa Stojilkovic Journalist
Director michel.collon@skynet.be
nessa.kovic@indymedia.be

Dear Friend,

Permit us to draw your attention to our film The Damned of Kosovo.
Because we believe it will be useful in your organizing and discussions
of current events with a very wide public and helpful in understanding
what's really at stake for all of us today.  We also believe it
will be of great benefit to include with our film recent important
documentation to show that the situation, already alarming at the
time of filming, has only gotten worse.

The war propaganda at the time of the bombing in 1999 was intolerable
to us, as intolerable as the deafening silence that the media have
imposed on the region today.  If many people were fooled and
manipulated at that time, it is our duty to everyone today to
re-establish the truth and above all to give a voice to the forgotten:
20 exclusive witnesses from the Serb, Roma, Jewish, Muslim, Turkish,
Goran and Albanian communities describe the daily terror of today's
Kosovo where "NATO has entered into a marriage of convenience with
the mafia," said an expert.

Serbia was governed for the last three years by the IMF. 10 million
people sucked into a vortex of misery... The price of bread has
quadrupled. 170,000 families in Belgrade can't pay for electricity
or heating.  The IMF is in the process of laying off 800,000 workers.
Some work 13 hour days, 6 days a week, without social benefits.
Soon, they will close more factories here and move them there.

Unlike what some have told us here at the end of 2003, we are not
'one war too late'!  Quite the contrary:  with their invasion of
Iraq the US strategists not only drew lessons from Kosovo (most
notably in their more and more Machiavellian manipulations of public
opinion), but they developed a global war that began, the day after
the Berlin wall came down, in Yugoslavia.

In fact, after having investigated and conducted many interviews
in the country, our analysis of the situation in Kosovo and in
Yugoslavia allows us to conclude without fear of contradiction that
this war was brought about precisely by the need to control oil
routes; the most striking example (brought out in our film) being
the US military's super-base, Camp Bondsteel, constructed in Kosovo,
right on the tracks of the projected US trans-Balkan pipeline.

When the US occupies a strategic region, it provokes terrible
suffering for all the people there.  And no solution.  If this film
can show that in Kosovo, for the last four years, nothing has been
sorted out, it might also help the other people who've been threaten
and attacked, all over the world, to expose in a simple way the
strategy of the US global war and its catastrophic results.

But the resistance to occupation, in Iraq and in Palestine      also
shows that these people just won't let things slide.  This film is
meant to help, in concrete ways, the forgotten people of Kosovo.
It exists as an NGO project to carry out an international inspection
and to bear witness.

How can you help us?  By spreading the word about this film in your
circles. You will find in our documents a list of concrete proposals.
If you can help us to realize even just one of these proposals, you
will be demonstrating your solidarity with these sacrificed people.
And you will be helping bring a halt to this runaway global war.
Thank you very much.

Michel Collon                           Vanessa Stojilkovic
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ HOW TO ORDER :

IN THE UNITED STATES :

Please make check for $12 + 3.85 for Priority Mail payable to

Good Book Press

P.O. Box 1795

Monterey, CA 93942-1795

U.S.A.

For more information e-mail at:    zoranstar@yahoo.com

The shipping cost of $3.85 represents the actual postage for Priority
Mail.

Shipping for two copies is $3.95 by Priority Mail.

Please include your address if it's different from the one on your
check.

IN CANADA:    $20 CAD (includes shipping costs).

Thank you for contributing to future projects by Michel and Vanessa
by ordering this film.

Please spread the word about the film and show it to as many people
as possible.

Best regards.

Zoran Starcevic

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

TOGETHER WITH THE FILM, YOU RECEIVE IMPORTANT DOCUMENTS :

QUESTIONS, ANSWERS and DOCUMENTATION

BEHIND THE FILM

The Damned of Kosovo

* Intolerable war propaganda of 1999, intolerable silence today.

Why did we make this film and how can it help you?

* Report of the Red Cross on the current situation in Kosovo "Fewer
than 2% of the people forced to flee have returned to their homes."

* What's happening today in Kosovo?  A film breaks the silence.

Interview : Michel Collon & Vanessa Stojilkovic about their Damned
of Kosovo

* France 2 :  Economic War USA -- France in Kosovo Multinationals
on the make under cover as NGOs and 'reconstruction'

* The country no one talks about anymore:  Where is Yugoslavia?

Explosions in prices, lay offs, cancer, and suicides.  The IMF
government.

* "I work up to 13 hours a day, 6 days a week, for a miserable wage"

Scenes of workers' lives today in Serbia.

* Media Quiz:  Kosovo, True or False?

Alastair Campbell also 'informed' us about Kosovo

* Media Quiz :  about our information on the break-up of Yugoslavia
How many years will we have to wait before we learn the truth behind
the war?

* "Let's bust up Iraq like Yugoslavia!"

US strategy suggests . . . ethnic cleansing as a way of sorting out
the mess

* The news that's still hidden from us Oil, USA & the mafia,  Bernard
Kouchner, Jamie Shea, Macedonia. . . .

* Will Wesley Clark do the opposite tomorrow... ?

Latin America, Yugoslavia, China and some other targets. . . .

* Can you help us get the word out on The Damned of Kosovo?

A practical program

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

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 52 Google News Alert - nuclear
 
Date: Sun, 02 May 2004 13:27:08 -0700 (PDT)

 
US to Give Notice on Nuclear Waste Move
Miami Herald (subscription) - Miami,FL,USA
... of Cincinnati. Fernald processed uranium from 1951 until 1989 for use
in government reactors to produce nuclear weapons. "We have ...
<http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/politics/8563810.htm>
See all stories on this topic:
<http://news.google.com/news?ie=utf8&oe=utf8&persist=1&num=30&hl=en&client=google&newsclusterurl=http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/politics/8563810.htm>

BUSH rejects dialogue with N Korea over nuclear issue
Hi Pakistan - Lahore,Pakistan
WASHINGTON: US President George W. Bush will not enter into direct talks
with North Korea to end its nuclear drive, his spokesman said on Thursday
amid ...
<http://www.hipakistan.com/en/detail.php?newsId=en63246&F_catID=&f_type=source>
See all stories on this topic:
<http://news.google.com/news?ie=utf8&oe=utf8&persist=1&num=30&hl=en&client=google&newsclusterurl=http://www.hipakistan.com/en/detail.php%3FnewsId%3Den63246%26F_catID%3D%26f_type%3Dsource>

COLD War's over, but threat of nuclear attack remains
Charlotte Observer (subscription) - Charlotte,NC,USA
Thousands of Russian nuclear warheads are targeted on the United States.
How can this be, after the end of the Cold War nearly 15 years ago? ...
<http://www.charlotte.com/mld/observer/news/opinion/8564507.htm>
See all stories on this topic:
<http://news.google.com/news?ie=utf8&oe=utf8&persist=1&num=30&hl=en&client=google&newsclusterurl=http://www.charlotte.com/mld/observer/news/opinion/8564507.htm>

CALIENTE, NV, Split Over Shipping Of Nuclear Waste
KVBC - Las Vegas,NV,USA
... danger. Many of her sisters and brothers were the so-called down winders
from the above ground nuclear tests in Nevada. Leukemia ...
<http://www.kvbc.com/Global/story.asp?S=1829325&nav=15MVMkrX>
See all stories on this topic:
<http://news.google.com/news?ie=utf8&oe=utf8&persist=1&num=30&hl=en&client=google&newsclusterurl=http://www.kvbc.com/Global/story.asp%3FS%3D1829325%26nav%3D15MVMkrX>

EX-NUCLEAR engineer says company retaliated over safety reports
Newsday - Long Island,NY,USA
SYRACUSE, NY -- A former nuclear power station engineer says he was wrongfully
fired in retaliation for reporting safety problems to federal regulators,
and is ...
<http://www.newsday.com/news/local/wire/ny-bc-ny--nuclearwhistleblo0430apr30,0,6721765.story?coll=ny-ap-regional-wire>
See all stories on this topic:
<http://news.google.com/news?ie=utf8&oe=utf8&persist=1&num=30&hl=en&client=google&newsclusterurl=http://www.newsday.com/news/local/wire/ny-bc-ny--nuclearwhistleblo0430apr30,0,6721765.story%3Fcoll%3Dny-ap-regional-wire>

NUCLEAR disarray as Europe pushes east
New Scientist - London,England,UK
What has received less attention is that they will also be joining the
world's biggest nuclear club. For the EU is bound by a commitment ...
<http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99994935>

SHARON Insists on Nuclear Uncertainty
Turks.US - USA
Israeli President, Ariel Sharon, said on Thursday that Israel has absolutely
no intention of deviating from its policy of nuclear uncertainty. ...
<http://www.turks.us/article.php?story=20040430230359659>

ISRAEL to Maintain Nuclear Ambiguity
Aljazeerah.info
JERUSALEM, 30 April 2004 — Israel will stay silent on its assumed nuclear
capabilities despite international calls for inspection, Prime Minister
Ariel ...
<http://www.aljazeerah.info/News%20archives/2004%20News%20archives/April/30n/Israel%20to%20Maintain%20Nuclear%20Ambiguity.htm>

A missing H-bomb lies off Georgia's coast - but is it a danger?
Macon Telegraph - Macon,GA,USA
... Perhaps that was the beginning of Duke's fascination with nuclear weapons
- an interest that grew when he watched Slim Pickens ride a nuke in the
movie "Dr ...
<http://www.macon.com/mld/macon/sports/horse_racing/kentucky_derby/8567980.htm>

IAEA Has No Problem With Isfahan UCF Project: Envoy
Tehran Times - Tehran,Iran
... to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Piruz Husseini said
on Saturday that the agency’s recent report on Iran’s nuclear program
which was ...
<http://www.tehrantimes.com/Description.asp?Da=5/2/2004&Cat=2&Num=026>
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