***************************************************************** 05/04/04 **** RADIATION BULLETIN(RADBULL) **** VOL 12.107 ***************************************************************** RADBULL IS PRODUCED BY THE ABALONE ALLIANCE CLEARINGHOUSE ***************************************************************** Send News Stories to news@energy-net.org with title on subject line and first line of body NUCLEAR POLICY 1 EUpolitix - Sofia calls for nuclear cash 2 Coastal Post: War on Iraq Is A Nuclear War And The Fallout Is Coming 3 Persian Journal FM: Iran Gave Centrifuge Plans to IAEA 4 UK Independent: EU squares up to Iran over nuclear programme 5 KoreaTimes: New Suspicions Arise on NK's Missile Buildup 6 AFP: China, US hold talks on North Korea nuclear crisis 7 US: WMDs: * U.S. Public Opinion * Solutions -- Interviews 8 [EMMAS] Speak for Yourself, Senator 9 [du-list] Greenpeace launches diplomatic initiative to ban 10 Fortune.com: Intro - The Queen of Nukes 11 BBC: Nuclear protest appeal bid fails 12 Asia Times: Spinning the nuclear missile wheel NUCLEAR REACTORS 13 US: NRC: Sunshine Act Meeting 14 US: projo.com: Vernon nuclear plant back up and running 15 US: JS Online: Unexpected repairs to delay restart of nuclear plant 16 BBC: Pakistan builds new nuclear plant 17 EurActiv.com: Bulgaria back on nuclear track 18 US: TheChamplainChannel.com: Fuel Rod Still Missing At Nuclear Power 19 US: NRC: Yankee Atomic Power Company, Yankee Atomic Power Station (R 20 Sofia Morning News: Bulgaria to Build a Second Nuclear Reactor 21 US: Decatur Daily: Browns Ferry poses little threat to life here 22 US: NRC: News Release - 2004-054 - 054 - NRC Issues Review Standard 23 US: NRC: Report to Congress on Abnormal Occurrences Fiscal Year 2003 NUCLEAR SAFETY 24 [NukeNet] Simulation Gives Glimpse of Nuke Terror 25 [du-list] Gulf War Solider on Hunger Strike - article 26 US: [du-list] Depleted Uranium Munitions Action Plan update 27 [du-list] A.Q. Khan, Urenco and the proliferation of nuclear 28 US: Indy Monitoring Finds Previously Unreported Radioactivity 29 US: [du-list] US Army Medical Command Orders DU medical management 30 Las Vegas SUN: Simulation Gives Glimpse of Nuke Terror 31 BBC: Safety fear sub crew face probe 32 AxisofLogic: The Truth About Depleted Uranium Weaponry: The Only Thi 33 US: Hawk Eye: Report renews claims fight 34 NRC: NRC Upgrades Inspection Team Looking Into Worker Exposures at P NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE 35 US: Las Vegas RJ: LETTERS: Waste casks 36 Las Vegas RJ: STEVE SEBELIUS: Thanks for the issue 37 Las Vegas RJ: DOE shows residents nuclear waste route 38 BBC: Sellafield is hived off in 39 Las Vegas SUN: Money OK'd for Yucca rail study 40 Fortune.com: Intro - How Do You Feel About Nuclear Power Now? 41 US: TheState.com: Nuclear waste plan draws fire 42 FT: BNFL forms nuclear clean-up company 43 Scotsman: Nuclear Firm Hives off Clean-Up Business 44 US: Newsday: EPA clears a hurdle in Cotter Corp. plan to accept Supe 45 PR Newswire: Intelligent Nuclear Clean-Up Business Launched 46 KLAS: State GOP Adopts 'Plank' on Nuclear Waste 47 KRNV: DOE takes plan for rail route to Nevada nuclear dump on the ro 48 KRNV: Nevada Republicans differ over nuclear dump 49 KLAS: Amargosa Valley Plans for Nuclear Waste NUCLEAR WEAPONS US DEPT. OF ENERGY 50 Rocky Mountain News: Flats papers unsealed 51 Albuquerque Tribune: Guests of labs see visa trouble 52 Tri-City Herald: PNNL chosen for hydrogen research 53 AP Wire: DOE to continue funding radiation monitoring this year 54 U.S. Newswire: Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham to Outline Major 55 Times-News: Office offers employees lump sum to retire 56 Oak Ridger: No deal on CROET land swap 57 Colorado Daily: Flats soil sampling explained, questioned OTHER NUCLEAR 58 Google News Alert - nuclear 59 Mojo: Hydrogen Hopes ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** FULL NEWS STORIES ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** 1 EUpolitix - Sofia calls for nuclear cash Bulgaria is asking for €1.7 billion euros to bring its nuclear power sector into line with EU standards. Sofia announced on Monday that it has chosen to finish construction on the Belene nuclear site, by the Danube, rather than upgrading another reactor at Kozloduy. Four Soviet era reactors at Kozloduy will now be closed down. Work on Belene had to be abandoned in the 1990s when the site ran out of money. “The plant is necessary to secure stable and affordable energy for the country”, said prime minister Simeon Saxe-Coburg. He added that “The government has decided to choose an investor by the end of this year”. Bidders include Czech company Skoda and Italy’s Unicredito, and there have also been offers from France, Russia and the USA. The nuclear question had been slowing Bulgarian accession to the EU. The Bulgarian government put the cost of completing Belene at $2 billion – around €1.7 billion at today’s prices. Published: Tue, 4 May 2004 13:54:45 GMT+01 Author: Emily Smith 2004 EUpolitix.com ***************************************************************** 2 Coastal Post: War on Iraq Is A Nuclear War And The Fallout Is Coming This Way May, 2004 By Stephanie Hiller In May, 2003, the United States dumped 2,200 tons of depleted uranium on Iraq, according to reliable sources, and it's logical to assume that more depleted uranium is being employed in the current attacks on Faluja that began April 8 to put down Iraqi resistance to the American presence there. According to independent geoscientist Leuren Moret, the war on Iraq-like the war on Afghanistan-is a nuclear war. "Depleted uranium is a nuclear weapon and it is a weapon of mass destruction under the U. S. government's definition of weapons of mass destruction," Moret says. The Pentagon has repeatedly denied that DU is harmful, despite the symptoms of half the returning veterans from the first Persian Gulf Wars who are now disabled. But researchers have shown that the Pentagon has been fully aware of the consequences of what is called "low level radiation" since 1942, when depleted uranium was first suggested for development as a military weapon under the Manhattan Project. On Sunday, April 6, the New York Daily News reported that nine soldiers who returned from Iraq last summer had symptoms typical of DU poisoning. The News arranged for them to be tested by Asaf Duracovic, a former colonel in the Army Reserves who served in the 1991 Persian Gulf War, and one of the world's foremost experts on the medical effects of radioactive weaponry. Depleted uranium was found in the urine of four of the men - Sgt. Hector Vega, Sgt. Ray Ramos, Sgt. Agustin Matos and Cpl. Anthony Yonnone-the first confirmed cases of inhaled depleted uranium exposure from the current Iraq conflict Recently completed laboratory analyses show two members of Uranium Medical Research Centre's (UMRC) field investigation team are contaminated with Depleted Uranium (DU). The two field staff, one from Canada and the other, Beirut, toured Iraq for thirteen days in October 2003; five months after the cessation of Operation Iraqi Freedom's aerial bombing and ground force campaign. Using mass spectrometry, UMRC's partner laboratory in Germany measured DU in both team members' urine samples. (Please see http://www.umrc.net/UMRC_bulletin_07_Feb_2004.asp) If short-term visitors and soldiers have been so affected, what of the people, living near bomb sites, breathing the air every day, drinking the water? What of the children who play in these sites and collect pieces of exploded materiel to sell so their families can eat? Using figures developed by Japanese physicist, Professor Yagasaki from the University of the Ryukyus, Okinawa, and explained in his presentation at the World Conference on Depleted Uranium Weapons held in Hamburg last October, the radioactivity of 2,200 tons (or 440,000 pounds) of depleted uranium together with some 1,000 tons used in Afghanistan, is the atomicity equivalent to 400 Nagasaki bombs. Depleted uranium is cheap and plentiful. When uranium is processed for fission bombs or fuel rods for use in power plants, only U-235, about half a percent of the total, is used. Most of what's left over is U-238, so-called "depleted" uranium. The US has over a million tons of the stuff, and storage is becoming a serious problem. Though less radioactive than U-235, DU is still highly radioactive and chemically toxic as well. "There is no allowable level of risk," says Moret. Nearly twice as dense as lead, DU is used in tanks and airplanes, as well as bullets, handguns, cannons, all the way up to large bombs weighing more than 5,000 pounds. It's not dangerous until it blows up Depleted uranium is pyrophoric. Relatively innocuous as a metal alloy used in planes, tanks, missiles, bullets and rounds, when depleted uranium burns, it releases a radioactive gas. Larger particles may settle to the ground, but winds blowing across the desert may carry the fine particles to locations in a 1000-mile radius from the explosion. As a result, areas as far west as Egypt and as far east as India are likely to be contaminated. "The US. has staged a nuclear war in the Middle East, from Iraq and Central Asia, to the northern half of India. Half of Egypt, Israel, the Saudi Arabian peninsula, Turkey, Iran, the Russian oil-rich states, the Caspian oil region, and northern are now, or will be, all contaminated." Depleted uranium-U-238-has a half-life of 4.5 billion years. It's effects will be with us forever. It is in the soil, in the groundwater, in food, but the worst of all, it is in the air. When inhaled, it enters directly into the bloodstream. One uranium particle behaves in the body like a tiny nuclear bomb, sending out alpha and beta particles and gamma rays to adjacent cells. These are permanently damaging to the cells and chromosomes and lead to a host of deadly diseases, including cancer and leukemia. They also cause mutations of the genetic material that will show up in subsequent generations as terrible birth deformities, weakened health, and infertility. Moret says the fallout from these foreign wars is headed our way. Spread by powerful desert winds, the fallout will be carried certainly as far as Britain (where dust storms from the Middle East commonly leave residual dust) and then across the Atlantic Ocean. It will also travel across Asia and the Pacific Ocean and be slowly and silently deposited across the North American continent. American citizens have already been exposed to radiation from a variety of sources including malfunctioning nuclear power plants, the disasters at Chernobyl and Three Mile Island, above-ground bomb tests conducted from 1957 to 1963, and the enormous existing pile of depleted uranium, about 1 million tons, poorly stored in the United States. Radiation has caused the geometric rise of cancers in the US-1 in 3 Americans-compared to 1 in 20 before the second World War. It is also responsible for the rise in autism, learning disabilities, chronic immune deficiency disorders (chronic fatigue syndrome, Epstein-Barr and so forth), higher rates of infant mortality and the general weakening of the public's health. Leuren Moret was formerly employed at the Lawrence Berkeley Radiation Laboratory in Berkeley, and the Lawrence Livermore nuclear weapons lab. Since walking out on her job to become a whistleblower at Livermore, she has devoted her time to the study of the effects of nuclear radiation. She has worked with scientists like Dr. Ernest Sternglass, Marian Fulk, Dr. Asaf Durakovic of the Uranium Medical Research Center, Dr. Doug Rokke of Traprock Peace Center and many others. Her testimony at the International Criminal Tribunal for Afghanistan held December 13-14, 2003, in Tokyo was largely responsible for the unanimous verdict on depleted uranium, and that the President Bush and the United States is guilty of war crimes against that country. First published in Awakened Woman at www.awakenedwoman.com [http://www.coastalpost.com/] ***************************************************************** 3 Persian Journal FM: Iran Gave Centrifuge Plans to IAEA [http://www.iranian.ws/] May 5th, 2004 - Reuters Iran said yesterday it had given centrifuge plans to the UN nuclear watchdog and was ready to answer all outstanding questions before a key session of the agency's board on its nuclear program in June. Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi urged European states to work with Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) "to come to a conclusion in the upcoming meeting in June of the board of governors of the IAEA". But diplomats close to the Vienna-based agency said it was unrealistic to expect that all doubts about Iran's secretive nuclear program, which the United States says conceals a drive to develop atomic weapons, could be removed by then. "They'll be on the agenda for the foreseeable future," said a Western diplomat in Vienna who follows the IAEA closely. Asked whether Iran had met UN demands to hand over the plans for advanced centrifuges used to enrich uranium, Kharrazi told a news conference: "Yes, in fact the IAEA inspectors were in Iran and had long discussions with our officials and experts. All information has been delivered to them. "Still of course they are continuing their contacts, if there are any more questions to be answered." An IAEA spokeswoman declined to comment when asked if Tehran had given the agency all the information it had asked for. Diplomats said the "P2" centrifuges, which can be used to make weapons grade uranium, were one of the IAEA's main concerns since Iran had omitted to disclose them in reporting its nuclear program to the agency last year. The IAEA has been unable to resolve the major outstanding question about Iran's nuclear program -- the traces of bomb grade uranium found in the country last year. Iran says the traces were on used centrifuge parts contaminated in Pakistan, but Islamabad refuses to let the IAEA take samples to compare the traces with Pakistani uranium. Five UN inspectors visited Iran last month to check whether Tehran had respected its pledge to suspend making them, as well as most other enrichment-related activities. One European diplomat said Western governments were concerned Iran was playing a skilful game of responding one-by-one to IAEA queries and preparing to demand in June that its program be taken off the board's agenda if those questions dried up. Several Western governments still suspect Iran is hiding a nuclear weapons effort but acknowledge they are running out of leads to follow up, the diplomat said. An Iranian exile group which has revealed previously unknown details of Iran's program in the past said last week that the hardline Revolutionary Guards were now overseeing some 400 nuclear experts to prevent any further leaks. Diplomats said there was concern that if the West leaned too hard on Iran at the June meeting, it might react by stirring trouble in neighboring Iraq, where it had so far played a largely benign role. The coincidence of the IAEA board session and the planned transfer of sovereignty to an Iraqi government in June could be awkward to handle, they said. Iranian.ws [http://www.iranian.ws/] ***************************************************************** 4 UK Independent: EU squares up to Iran over nuclear programme By Stephen Castle in Brussels 04 May 2004 Iran was told yesterday to show more openness over its nuclear programme and make better progress on human rights, as the European Union squared up to Tehran over the prospect of closer political and economic ties. On a visit to Brussels, Kamal Kharrazi, the Iranian Foreign Minister, defended his government's record in opening up its nuclear sites, but questioned whether the EU was serious about improving relations with Tehran. The stand-off left efforts to bring Iran in from the cold, through political engagement, finely balanced, underlining the volatility of the region. Last October, the British, French and German foreign ministers scored a diplomatic coup by visiting Tehran and persuading the Iranians to meet International Atomic Energy Agency demands for tougher inspections of its nuclear facilities. The breakthrough was seen as evidence of effective European diplomacy in the Middle East, defusing tension with one of the nations damned by President George Bush as part of an "axis of evil". Since then there have been growing doubts about Tehran's commitment to making its nuclear programme transparent, and a setback on human rights issues. While Iran has suspended the enrichment of uranium it has continued to acquire centrifuges, which could be used for that task. European Union governments have also criticised the management of February's elections, in which as many as 2,000 pro-reform candidates were prevented from standing. Iran wants to deepen its commercial ties with the EU through a Trade and Co-operation Agreement, which was suspended last year amid mounting suspicions that the Iranians were trying to construct a nuclear bomb. EU diplomats say that no movement will take place until June at the earliest, and the governments of the UK, France and Germany are likely to play a decisive role in the decision. By that time there will have been a new round of nuclear inspections by the head of the UN's nuclear watchdog, Mohamed ElBaradei. Progress on the deal is being linked to Iran's compliance with nuclear inspections, its human rights record, support for counter-terrorism and role in the Middle East peace process. In talks yesterday with Mr Kharrazi, Javier Solana, the EU foreign policy representative and the European Commissioner for external relations, Chris Patten, both stressed that Iran's relations with Europe depended on more "transparency" on the nuclear issue. One EU official said: "We have invested in the relationship and we believe that Iran is a very important partner and, frankly, we are a little disappointed with progress on the nuclear issue. The elections were also very disappointing because of the exclusion of so many reformist candidates." Mr Kharrazi dismissed as "baseless" allegations that Iran was running a secret military programme to develop nuclear weapons, alongside its civilian energy programme, which has been opened to the IAEA. He also denied Iranian opposition reports that the country's Revolutionary Guard was overseeing 400 experts mobilised to develop an atomic bomb. "[The] IAEA has been working with us very closely in different sites and they are continuing their inspections," he said. Officials described the tone of the discussion as "frank". The minister went on the offensive, arguing: "Both sides have to be serious, to work together on different aspects of their relations, economic, political co-operation and other issues. Otherwise Iran may not be interested to push for that." Mr Kharrazi called on the EU to play a bigger role in the Middle East peace process, but he was also critical of the US. "What the Americans have been doing in Iraq, the very brutal actions of American soldiers, the systematic plan to torture Iraqis, to kill them, to rape them, is outrageous," he said. "If Americans are in Iraq to promote democracy, is this the way to do it? American policy has created hatred all among Islamic countries, and we are at the stage of developing clashes between different cultures which is very, very dangerous." UK Independent Ltd. ***************************************************************** 5 KoreaTimes: New Suspicions Arise on NK's Missile Buildup Hankooki.com > Korea Times By Ryu Jin Staff Reporter North Korea is showing signs that it will not give up its missile arsenal, one of its few cash cows, despite enormous pressure by the outside world. The North was found to be building two underground bases for the early deployment of its new missiles with a range of 3,000-4,000 kilometers, according to sources on Tuesday. Citing its routine practice not to comment on military intelligence, the Defense Ministry refused to confirm whether it was true the missile bases were being built in the two regions _ Yangdok in South Pyongan Province and Sangnam in North Hamgyong Province. ``Please understand we are unable to confirm such secret information in our position, spokesperson Brig. Gen. Nam Dae-youn said. Chosun Ilbo, a South Korean newspaper, reported North Koreas deployment of new missiles. The new-type intermediate range ballistic missile (IRBM), which was developed last year and will likely be deployed earlier than the South Korean and United States military authorities originally expected, are said to be capable of reaching as far as Guam and Hawaii. Among the North Korean missiles deployed so far, Rodong-1 has the longest strike range of 1,300 kilometers, covering most of the Japanese territory. In 1998, the North test-fired a three-stage Taepodong-1 rocket that landed in the Pacific Ocean with a range of 1,600-2,200 kilometers. The Pentagon believes the North is developing an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), or the 6,000 km-range Taepodong-2 which could reach Alaska, Hawaii and possibly California. About a year ago, former Japanese foreign minister Taro Nakayama, citing a U.S. document, told visiting South Korean lawmakers that the last piece of a missile warhead test-fired by North Korea was found in the U.S. state of Alaska. The testimony was included in a March 2003 report to the National Assembly. Experts say the IRBM developed last year is a different type of missile from Rodong or Taepodong, but poses evenly serious threats to the U.S., which has been pushing for the so-called missile defense system. ``The deployment of 4,000 km-range missiles would not be an immediate threat for ROK-U.S. combined posture, Rep. Park Jin of the opposition Grand National Party told The Korea Times. ``From a long-term perspective, however, it will certainly be affecting the U.S. missile defense programs. Last Friday, the ROK-U.S. Combined Forces Command (CFC) in Seoul said the U.S. would deploy two additional missile defense batteries in South Korea this autumn as part of a $11-billion upgrade on the Korean Peninsula. The U.S. 8th Armys new 35th Air Defense Brigade, located at Fort Bliss, Texas, and equipped with Patriot Advanced Capability 2 and 3 systems, will be deployed to Korea, the CFC said in its news release. Rep. Park, one of the rare North Korean experts in the Assembly, urged the Roh Moo-hyun administration to pay more attention to the non-nuclear conventional weapons while exerting efforts to resolve the nuclear impasse. ``Reaching near the U.S. territory, the 4,000-km IRBM could pose serious threats to the ROK-U.S. defense posture, he said. With the North insisting its right to have aggressive missile defense programs, the international community might have to address another thorny issue of the non-nuclear conventional weapons even after the resolution of the nuclear crisis. Kim Yong-nam, deputy to North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, said in a recent interview with Selig Harrison that they would ``never transfer nuclear technology to the Islamist terror group _ or to anyone else. But he was quoted by the Washington-based Korean expert as saying: ``Were entitled to sell missiles to earn foreign exchange. Critics said the South Korean government should exert more endeavors to facilitate inter-Korean military talks to reduce tension and build peace on the peninsula through disarmament efforts. Unification Minister Jeong Se-hyun admitted that inter-Korean exchanges were relatively unsatisfactory in the military fields compared with economic, social and cultural areas. ``We will persuade the North this time to comply with our calls for progress in the military exchanges, he said just before heading for Pyongyang, where the 14th inter-Korean ministerial talks kicked off Tuesday. jinryu@koreatimes.co.kr 05-04-2004 16:21 ***************************************************************** 6 AFP: China, US hold talks on North Korea nuclear crisis [http://www.spacewar.com/] WASHINGTON (AFP) May 03, 2004 China's special envoy for North Korea flew in here for talks Monday with US officials ahead of an international meeting on the nuclear crisis gripping the Korean peninsula, the US State Department said. Special envoy Ning Fuqui met with Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage and other officials to set the pace for a working group meeting next week among China, Japan, South Korea, North Korea, the United States and Russia to help end Pyongyang's nuclear drive. "They discussed the progress of the six-party talks and the upcoming working group meeting beginning in Beijing on May 12th," US State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said. He said Ning would have further consultations with US Special Envoy for North Korea Joseph DiTrani, and also meet with James Kelly, the United States point man at the high-level six-party talks that China had been hosting to help resolve the nucler question. The May 12 meeting in Beijing would help formalise the agenda for the third round of the six-party talks, which should be held by the end of June, officials have said. The nuclear impasse erupted in October 2002 when Washington charged that North Korea had not kept its part of the bargain by breaking a 1994 nuclear freeze and launching a secret nuclear weapons program. The United States said it had learned "conclusively" that the Stalinist state was pursuing a covert nuclear weapons program based not on plutonium but on uranium enrichment. Two rounds of six-way talks hosted by China have failed to narrow key differences on how to end the 18-month-old standoff. Washington is demanding the complete, verifiable, and irreversible dismantling of North Korea's nuclear programs, both plutonium and enriched uranium, before it will offer concessions to the impoverished state. Pyongyang denies it is running a uranium scheme, and says it is prepared to freeze its plutonium facilities in return for simultaneous rewards from the United States. WAR.WIRE ***************************************************************** 7 WMDs: * U.S. Public Opinion * Solutions -- Interviews Date: Tue, 4 May 2004 14:49:07 -0500 (CDT) Institute for Public Accuracy 915 National Press Building, Washington, D.C. 20045 (202) 347-0020 * http://www.accuracy.org * ipa@accuracy.org ___________________________________________________ PM Tuesday, May 4, 2004 WMDs: * U.S. Public Opinion * Solutions Interviews Available Governments are currently meeting at the United Nations about the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. STEVEN KULL, skull@pipa.org, http://www.pipa.org Kull is director of the Program on International Policy Attitudes which has recently released two studies: "U.S. Public Beliefs on Iraq and the Presidential Election" and "Americans on WMD Proliferation." He said today: "Sixty percent of Americans believe that just before the war Iraq either had weapons of mass destruction or a major program for developing them. Few Americans perceive most experts as saying the contrary. Perceptions of what the experts are saying are highly correlated with intentions to vote for the president in the upcoming election. Among those who perceived experts as saying that Iraq had WMDs, 72 percent said they would vote for Bush. Despite polling showing that the majority of world public opinion is opposed to the U.S. war with Iraq, only 41 percent were aware that this is the case. Among those who knew that world public opinion opposed the U.S. going to war with Iraq, only 25 percent thought that going to war was the right decision.... Asked how many nuclear weapons the U.S. has, the median estimate was 200 ... the actual number of U.S. nuclear warheads is 6,000. A majority is not aware that the U.S. made a commitment to seek the ultimate elimination of nuclear weapons as part of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. However [when informed] a very large majority (84 percent) thinks doing so was a good idea and that the U.S. should make greater efforts toward that goal. A very large majority supports giving international inspectors the power to examine biological research labs in all countries, including the U.S., to determine if they are abiding by the biological weapons treaty. Three-quarters incorrectly believe that the U.S. government supports such an inspection regime. Americans show a strong preference for multilateral arms control over the use of military threats." JACQUELINE CABASSO, wslf@earthlink.net, http://www.wslfweb.org Executive director of the Western States Legal Foundation, Cabasso has written widely on nuclear weapons. She said today: "President Bush waged war on the pretext of disarming Iraq, whose nuclear weapons program in fact had been dismantled by 1995. Now at the United Nations, where governments are meeting about the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), the United States is claiming that 'the NPT does not prohibit the nuclear weapons states from modernizing their nuclear forces while they possess nuclear weapons.... It would be a novel interpretation of the NPT to assert that conceptual work on a "Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator" or other new weapons designs is problematic under the NPT.' But the treaty requires 'negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date.' More than 30 years after the NPT became law, and 15 years after the Berlin Wall came down, the U.S. position exemplifies bad faith, and is seen that way by most of the world. This does not bode well for the viability of the nonproliferation regime." ALICE SLATER, aslater@gracelinks.org, http://www.gracelinks.org, http://www.abolition2000.org Director of Global Resource Action Center for the Environment, Slater said today: "Members of the Abolition 2000 Global Network for the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons have been monitoring this year's Nonproliferation Treaty meeting. In view of the stalled disarmament process, at our annual meeting we decided to demand that at next year's five-year review conference, heads of state gather from all over the world to consider how to finally make good on the obligation of nuclear disarmament. The people are way out ahead of governments on this issue." JOHN BURROUGHS, johnburroughs@lcnp.org, http://www.lcnp.org Executive director of the New York-based Lawyers' Committee on Nuclear Policy, Burroughs said today: "On April 28, the United Nations Security Council adopted a U.S.-sponsored resolution requiring all states in the world to establish criminal laws, export controls, and other measures to prevent 'non-state actors' -- businesses, rogue scientists, terrorists -- from acquiring and trafficking in nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons and missiles for their delivery. There clearly is a need to address these issues, dramatically illustrated by recent public revelations about the Pakistan-based nuclear proliferation network run by a top nuclear scientist, A. Q. Khan, allegedly without governmental approval, and involving business in several countries in Europe as well as the developing world. But the U.S. government may use it as a green light for unilateral and provocative actions like interceptions of ships at sea in the name of nonproliferation standards. And the resolution accelerates a trend for the Security Council to become the world's lawmaker, rather than relying on negotiation of multilateral agreements, to the detriment of global democracy and cooperation." Also available this week while attending the Nonproliferation Treaty review meeting at the United Nations through the Lawyers' Committee on Nuclear Policy: * HILDA LINI is director of the Pacific Concerns Resource Centre, Fiji, the secretariat for the Nuclear-Free and Independent Pacific Movement , 1993 recipient of the Sean MacBride Peace Prize. * Prof. MITSUO OKAMOTO is with the Hiroshima Alliance for Nuclear Weapons Abolition, Japan, . * ELAHE MOHTASHAM is with the Nuclear Weapons Non-Proliferation International Safeguards System. Ms. Mohtasham is from Iran and is based in London, where her work focuses on nuclear weapons issues related to the Middle East, . * SAM AKAKI is a parliamentary officer for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, Britain, . * REGINA HAGEN is coordinator of the International Network of Engineers and Scientists Against Proliferation, Darmstadt, Germany, . For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020 _________________________________________________________________ You received this message as a subscriber on the list: public@lists.accuracy.org To be removed from the list, send any message to: public-unsubscribe@lists.accuracy.org For all list information and functions, including changing your subscription mode and options, visit the Web page: http://lists.accuracy.org/lists/info/public ***************************************************************** 8 [EMMAS] Speak for Yourself, Senator Date: Tue, 4 May 2004 13:40:55 -0500 (CDT) Published on Monday, May 3, 2004 by CommonDreams.org Speak for Yourself, Senator by Bruce F. Cole A few months ago, after returning empty handed from the snark-hunt for WMD in Iraq, Chief Weapons Inspector David Kay dropped a bombshell on the administration he was quitting, saying that there were, after all the unfortunate messiness, no WMD in that benighted country, no way, no how. Like characters extracted from a Lewis Carroll satire, the Hair-Brained Bushemites (who made the mess) covered their ears and spoke loudly in nonsense syllables. The whole scene was as deliciously insane as Carroll's "The Hunting of the Snark: an Agony in Eight Fits", and so it continues. Government apparently remains, dollar for dollar, our best entertainment buy. Except, of course, for the aforementioned messiness, which tempers the buffoonery considerably: corpses strewn from Falluja to Ramallah to those neat, out-of-sight-but-not-out-of-mind rows of coffins at Dover; wastebaskets full of amputated body parts on the bio-hazard loading docks at Landstuhl and Walter Reed; and (tens of?) thousands of nameless "detainees" twitching in wordless despair under US, surrogate, and mercenary boot-heels from Guantanomo to Abu Ghraib to Baghram, to who knows where else. Given all this inconvenient reality, it wasn't surprising to hear Inspector Kay add the following excuse to his "no WMD" proclamation: "We were all wrong!" After all, when things fall apart, it is always comforting (and exonerating) to know that no one could have predicted the disaster. This is the same shameless cop-out that others have used to explain being asleep at the wheel on 9/11: "No one could have predicted it." Claptrap, but marginally useful claptrap nonetheless...if that's all you have to hang your hat on. So the (tens of?) millions of us in this country who were right all along about Iraq and about the utter depravity of the Bush regime are scratching our heads right now. The Nominee-in-Waiting of the Party that opposes the Mendacity on the Hill is spouting the same brand of claptrap, and I, for one, am as pissed as the prescient Scott Ritter was when David Kay lumped him in with the voluntarily blindfolded. The offending statement was made in a speech yesterday at Westminster College, where John Kerry said: "We stand on the eve of an anniversary in this country -- the day that major combat operations were declared over in Iraq and the president declared, 'mission accomplished.' I don't think there's anyone in this room today or 6,000 miles away who doesn't wish that those words had been true." (emphasis mine) Excuse me, Senator, but that - like Kay's "We were all wrong" and Condi Rice's "No one could have predicted it" - is an insulting banality that ignores recent history. The "mission" that you claim everyone is rooting for is the same one I protested against in Augusta Maine, in New York City and twice in Washington DC, before the invasion that you enabled; I was just one of millions who did so. We are still protesting against that misbegotten mission which, by the way, will never be accomplished. Furthermore, I believe you know it will fail. You must; you are not stupid and, also unlike the Bush brigade, you experienced first-hand how such missions inevitably fail - when you fought in Vietnam and returned home to disclose the folly and the horror. But that was then. Now you're promising to send more kids like your former self to the same kind of made-in-USA disaster you escaped from and railed against thirty-three years ago. In your Westminster speech yesterday you also said, "This may be our last chance to get this right." I'm sorry, Senator, but this cannot be gotten right. Is Joe Lieberman (possibly channeling Hubert Humphrey) writing your speeches, for god's sake? Like them (and, once again, like David Kay) you are clamoring for the ratcheting up of military manpower in full-bore pursuit of a patently lost cause. Here's a novel concept: why don't you hire a pollster to ask the Iraqis what they'd like us to do? Speaking of ratcheting up troop levels, this reminds me of the following questions I've been meaning to ask you, Senator Kerry: If you are elected, how soon after the November election will my 18 year-old son be conscripted? Do you have the courage to answer me truthfully? When will he be asked to kill or die in the desert (or elsewhere) now that the volunteer wells have run dry? Let me in on your plan for the draft, if you have one. My son, who plans to vote this November, is also curious. Just a few more questions: Do you intend to maintain or expand Bush's outrageous, extra-legal, global system of concentration camps, or just maintain it as is? I have listened intently to your eloquent silence concerning that growing blot on our nation's soul. And what about the high-priced, unaccountable mercenary hordes our tax dollars are funding - like the war itself - at the expense of our schools, roads, hospitals and veterans benefits? Any thoughts on that? Is the black hole you want to lead us into a lighter shade than Bush's? Is it shallower? You have lost your bearings, Senator Kerry. I will not follow you to wherever your broken compass leads. Get it fixed, or forget your quest for my vote, the votes of the millions I marched with, and the coming majority in our country who see clearly through this insanity. Get it fixed, or you might as well forget your quest for a new job, as well. Someone is already doing as bad a job as you are promising to do. When failure is inevitable, I would just as soon see a Republican go down in flames, thank you very much. In the meantime, speak for yourself, Senator. Bruce Cole (bccpcole@earthlink.net) is a carpenter, writer, songwriter and political activist, living in Maine. He recently helped draft legislation, which eventually passed, that outlaws paperless and Internet voting in the state. He is a delegate to the state Democratic Convention this month ################################################################# " Social and economic well-being will become a reality only through the zeal, courage, the non-compromising determination of intelligent minorities, and not through the mass." Emma Goldman To SUBSCRIBE/UNSUBSCRIBE to the emmasdance list send email to with the message subscribe/unsubscribe emmasdance. [No subject is needed.] "If I can not dance, I want no part in your revolution." Emma Goldman ################################################################# ***************************************************************** 9 [du-list] Greenpeace launches diplomatic initiative to ban Date: Tue, 04 May 2004 15:02:30 -0700 Greenpeace launches diplomatic initiative to ban bomb making material http://www.greenpeace.org/international_en/press/release?item_id=468178&c ampaign_id=3940 Tue 04 May 2004, New York, UNITED STATES At a press conference in the United Nations today, Greenpeace launched a Treaty for a complete ban on material capable of being used for nuclear weapons. As a consequence of the failure of nuclear-armed states to disarm and stop the production, stockpiling and use of nuclear materials, the new Treaty was presented to diplomats and is designed to control nuclear material production as well as the destruction of current global nuclear stocks (1). While member States of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty meet for the second week of deliberations on disarmament at the UN, the proposed Treaty drafted by Greenpeace, if adopted will force greater nuclear disarmament, greatly reduce the proliferation and security risks caused by civil nuclear material stockpiles and halts any commercial nuclear programmes. In addition, all stocks of weapons usable nuclear material (i.e. plutonium and highly enriched uranium) in the military stockpiles would be placed under international control and any commercial trade would be prohibited (2). "Nuclear proliferation and the threat of terrorists obtaining nuclear materials has dominated the international agenda in recent years. Yet there is something that can be done. The fact that a treaty has not been negotiated is due to the opposition of the nuclear weapon states, and the large players in the commercial nuclear industry. They do not want the international community to get their hands on their weapons materials. But unless such a Treaty is negotiated, prospects for a nuclear free world will remain non- existent," said Shaun Burnie from Greenpeace International. Greenpeace also today released a new investigation into the 'Khan network' that describes in detail how Khan operated to help Pakistan obtain the bomb and later went onto assist others in this quest (3). The report also explores one particular area of 'sensitive technology' that could be used to manufacture weapons useable nuclear material - the uranium enrichment process and how one company Urenco operates in this area. "The exposing of the Khan network highlighted one of the problems of nuclear proliferation, the Greenpeace fissile material treaty if adopted would reduce the threat posed by such technology transfers," concluded Burnie. The need to control nuclear materials and technology has been recognised since it became clear in 1939 that a fission chain reaction could be produced in uranium, releasing large amounts of energy that could be used to make a nuclear explosion. Demands for control escalated in 1945 when the awesome devastation produced by nuclear weapons in Hiroshima and Nagasaki became widely known. Fissile material was rare in the early days of the nuclear age and at that time it was measured in micro-grams. Nearly sixty years later, it is estimated that today's it is nearly 2,000 tonnes. Over the next decade tens of tonnes more of weapons-useable material is to be produced by the commercial nuclear industry (4). ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Notes to Editor: (1). Greenpeace International's Comprehensive Fissile Material Treaty was drafted by external experts with legal and nuclear weapons/fissile material background, and Greenpeace staff, and is available at www.Greenpeace.org.Together with a background briefing that summarizes the last 60 years of efforts to negotiate controls and a Treaty on fissile materials. (2). While most military production of plutonium and highly enriched uranium has halted, stocks of plutonium in commercial reprocessing and MOX fuel programs are still increasing dramatically and are set to continue over the next decade. In Japan, France, the UK and Russia, stocks of plutonium will increase by as much as 125 tons by 2015, equal to 50% of all plutonium production by the nuclear weapon states during half a century of the Cold War. Of major concern is the plan by Japan to start up a new 20 billion dollar plutonium reprocessing plant, capable of producing up to 7,000 kilograms of bomb material each year. Japan already has one of the world's largest stockpiles of plutonium, with not one gram being used in its commercial nuclear program. (3). Report: 'A.Q. Khan, Urenco and the proliferation of nuclear weapons technology - The symbiotic relation between nuclear energy and nuclear weapons. Written by Joop Boer, Henk van der Keur, Karel Koster and Frank Slijper. (3). The commercial nuclear industry have consistently sought to confuse the debate over so-called weapons grade plutonium produced in dedicated military programs, in comparison to reactor grade plutonium produced in commercial nuclear power reactors. Fissile material as referred to in Greenpeace'Treaty covers all direct use nuclear material, plutonium and highly enriched uranium, which in of itself can be used to make nuclear weapons. Unfortunately for the commercial plutonium industry, led by AREVA and BNFL in Europe and JNFL in Japan, the plutonium they are in the business of producing is direct use nuclear material, as classified Category 1 by the International Atomic Energy Agency. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Contact information Cecilia Goin Media Officer, Tel No: +31 6 2129 6908 Shaun Burnie, Greenpeace International nuclear campaigner on + 1 646 247 0849 William Peden, Greenpeace International nuclear disarmament specialist +1 646 247 4017 Duncan Currie, Greenpeace International Law expert +1 917 442 6411 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe from this groups send a message to du-list-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com. In the body of the message type unsubscribe and send. ---------- Yahoo! Groups Links * To visit your group on the web, go to: * http://groups.yahoo.com/group/du-list/ * * To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: * du-list-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com * * Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service. ***************************************************************** 10 Fortune.com: Intro - The Queen of Nukes Anne Lauvergeon, head of French nuclear giant Areva, wants the world to give atomic power another chance. Is the world ready to listen? By Richard Tomlinson Dangling from the claws of a remote-controlled robot, the spent nuclear fuel rods look strangely impotent. Only the heat waves shimmering around the metal tubes give any clue to the radioactivity inside. During its four-year life span, the enriched uranium inside the tubes generated enough power to supply the annual electricity needs of a town of 10,000 people. Or, put in the wrong hands, it could have helped make a bomb to kill them. At La Hague, the world's biggest nuclear reprocessing facility, every possible precaution is taken to ensure that never happens. On this spring morning French soldiers are tramping round the 750-acre compound on the Normandy coast checking for intruders. Three round-the-clock surveillance networks are in operation, beaming live feeds to the nuclear regulatory agencies of the UN, the European Union, and France. An alarm system is set to go off at the merest trace of excess radioactivity. "We consider ourselves the most monitored nuclear site in the world," says Eric Blanc, director of operations at La Hague for Areva, the French state-owned company that runs the facility. For the past quarter century, that kind of sales pitch has failed to quell the fears of most people about nuclear power. The partial nuclear meltdown at the Three Mile Island power plant in Pennsylvania in 1979 drastically curtailed reactor building in the U.S. Seven years later the Chernobyl disaster turned public opinion in Western European countries outside France against nuclear power. As a result, nuclear power's share of global electricity production, which shot up from 2% in 1970 to 16% in 1988, has been stuck at that level ever since. But Areva believes that nuclear power is poised to make a comeback. "You can't have a solution to growing global energy demands without nuclear power," says Anne Lauvergeon, Areva's 44-year-old chief executive. Coming from the French, it's easy to dismiss such remarks as special pleading. After all, Francea country... Full article is 3195 words long Copyright 2004 Time Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction in ***************************************************************** 11 BBC: Nuclear protest appeal bid fails Last Updated: Tuesday, 4 May, 2004 [Protest at Faslane Naval base] Faslane is a focus for protests against Trident missiles Campaigners contesting their convictions for breach of the peace during anti-nuclear demonstrations have had their appeals refused. Jane Tallents, Margaret Jones, and Gaynor Barrett argued that the charge undermined their rights under the European Convention on Human Rights. The trio were convicted of the offence for protests at the Scottish Parliament and at the Faslane nuclear base. Five appeal court judges ruled that their convictions should be upheld. Had they been successful, the case would have reshaped the definition of one of the most common crimes handled by the Scottish legal system, which, as part of common law, currently has no statutory definition. In our view the sheriff w entitled to conclude that her conduct was of such a nature as to provoke a reaction of alarm and disturbance among reasonable persons Appeal judges' ruling At the start of March, five of Scotland's most senior judges heard the two-day appeal from the members of campaign group Trident Ploughshares. Ms Tallents, 45, who lives in Helensburgh, was charged with breach of the peace for her part in a protest in the Scottish Parliament in April 2001. The then Presiding Officer, Sir David Steel, ordered the chamber to be cleared for 10 minutes as Ms Tallents and other protesters shouted slogans, sang, tied herself to a railing and sat down in the aisle refusing to walk while being escorted out by police. She was convicted of breach of the peace at Edinburgh Sheriff Court in August 2001. Margaret Scott QC, representing Ms Tallents, told the judges in March that her client's conviction should be quashed because an accused must cause fear and alarm to be guilty of breach of the peace. Alarming and disturbing Central to the appeals was a statement by High Court judges in the 2000 case of a protester named Pamela Smith. In relation to the charge of breach of the peace, they stated: "What is required, therefore, it seems to us, is conduct which does present as genuinely alarming and disturbing, in its context, to any reasonable person." Giving their ruling at the Appeal Court of the High Court of Justiciary in Edinburgh, the judges - the Lord Justice General Lord Cullen, Lord MacLean, Lord Macfadyen, Lady Cosgrove and Lord Sutherland - stated: "It is plain...that the question whether certain conduct is genuinely alarming and disturbing depends on the context in which it takes place. They may rest assured th their judgement will do nothing to deter us from continuing our campaign of direct action against Trident David Mackenzie Trident Ploughshares "In the present case, the conduct of the appellant (Ms Tallents) interrupted and disturbed not only what was being said and heard in the parliament but also the good order which would nave been expected to be observed while a legislature is in session. "The appellant's conduct was such that it was likely to be persisted in unless there was an intervention by officials or police officers. "In our view the sheriff was entitled to conclude that her conduct was of such a nature as to provoke a reaction of alarm and disturbance among reasonable persons. "We consider that this appeal is not well founded." Common law Ms Jones, 55, from Bristol, was convicted of breach of the peace and fined 120 during a blockade of Faslane naval base on the Clyde in February 2002. She and other campaigners were involved in blocking the public road leading to and from the base. Rejecting her appeal, in a written court decision, the judges said: "If the crime of breach of the peace were to be limited to cases in which there was evidence of actual alarm or annoyance, whether given by the persons who were alarmed or annoyed by others, this would represent an unfortunate and unjustifiable narrowing of the common law." They also rejected the appeal of Ms Barrett, 25, from Exeter, against a conviction for a blockade of the warhead depot at Coulport in 1999. David Mackenzie, a member of Trident Ploughshares, reacted angrily to the judgement. He said: "They said it was important to deter people from disrupting parliament. "They may rest assured that their judgement will do nothing to deter us from continuing our campaign of direct action against Trident." Every year about 15,000 people are charged with breach of the peace under Scottish common law. ***************************************************************** 12 Asia Times: Spinning the nuclear missile wheel [http://www.atimes.com By Stephen Blank When the United States withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty in 2002, all sorts of charges and counter charges flew. Supporters of the treaty argued that if the system worked, an outcome of which they had no doubt, it would lead to a situation where defenses dominate against offenses. This would especially be true because Russia and America had just signed the Strategic Offensive Arms Reduction Treaty (SORT). This treaty formally terminated the state of hostility between the two states in nuclear affairs and let them build whatever mix of offenses or defenses they wanted to have within the numerical ceilings of the treaty. Absent mutual suspicion, the American defense system and any Russian system would not constitute a threat to each other. Opponents of the withdrawal predicted that a new nuclear arms race would start because China would feel threatened by the new missile defense system which, whatever its proponents stated, was designed against it, as well as terrorists or North Korea and Iran. Consequently, China would build many hundreds of missiles, as the Central Intelligence Agency had predicted in 2000-01, to beat the system. That in turn would lead other Asian states, including Russia and India, to build more missiles and defenses against China, touching off what they called an Asian chain reaction. However, as the US has begun to build its system of defenses, the consequences of the withdrawal from the ABM Treaty are manifesting themselves, and typically they are contradicting both camps. At the same time, the US has also just unveiled its own experimental hypersonic missile that could defy any other power's defenses, and it is seriously considering low-yield so-called "bunker-buster" nuclear weapons that could precisely target heavily reinforced and underground bunkers or hideouts, thus giving US targets like Osama bin Laden even fewer alternatives to hide from an attack. Thus, even as it builds defenses, the US is still seeking to ensure that its offensive nuclear capabilities could perform if need be in war time. As proclaimed, the US missile defense system cannot really threaten Russia, which has some 7,000 warheads, although it can obviously threaten North Korea. Indeed, if one does a simple cost analysis of what it would take for China to overcome it, those costs are not at all onerous, so there is little reason to believe this system could prevent a Chinese nuclear attack on the continental United States, especially as China is turning out ever larger numbers of ballistic and cruise missiles. More importantly, the intended missile defense system is a monument to the idea that genuinely effective defenses, with a reasonable possibility of successfully countering missile threats, can be built. Such an occurrence would mark the first time any reliably successful missile defense has been built and that achievement would represent a turn of the endlessly revolving strategic wheel between offensive and defensive innovation toward the defense's advantage, at least in regard to ballistic nuclear missiles. However, the Russian side's continued belief that it cannot let the US possess a missile defense system that gives it the freedom to launch offensive missiles secure in the knowledge that its defenses could successfully deal with any intended retaliation from Russia drove Moscow to try to imitate American policy. In this respect, the Russian military is not just acting out its suspicions of the US that go back decades. It also is doing what any prudent strategist would recommend, despite the fact that there are no conceivable grounds for war with Russia. Possession of nuclear weapons mandates that a government and its armed forces act to safeguard the ability to use them, find military utility in using nuclear weapons and extract the maximum strategic benefits that can be garnered from merely having nuclear weapons. Just as Washington has sought to build both defenses and hypersonic missiles that could overcome missile defenses, Russia has done so too. Russia apparently seeks to counter the missile defense system, as critics warned, by building more missiles or missiles that could overcome the system. Indeed, it is doing both. At the same time, a second, less advertised reason for Moscow's policies, in spite of the fact that nobody believes a war with America is anywhere on the horizon or desirable, or even likely at some future date, is Moscow's growing concern about rising Chinese power. Given present indices of economic and military power and the depopulation of Asiatic Russia, Russian fears of rising Chinese economic and military power have become ever more palpable. This rising concern takes place even though Russia proclaims China as its strategic partner. Indeed, it is precisely because Russia cannot afford to antagonize China that it makes this statement of partnership and refrains from proclaiming that its exercises are not only intended for anti-American, but also possibly for anti-Chinese missions and operations. The same holds true for nuclear weapons, with the added point that Moscow's glaring conventional weaknesses which could well increase relative to China's conventional military power enhances the role of its nuclear deterrent vis-a-vis Beijing and makes the development of survivable (ie mobile as well as hypersonic) missiles and reliable defenses even more important. Therefore, Moscow must develop both its offenses and defenses to guard against potential, even if unlikely, US and/or Chinese threats. Accordingly, in February and April, Moscow successfully tested hypersonic missiles that could carry a nuclear warhead along with its ground-based mobile TOPOL-M ICBM. If further tests of the TOPOL-M are successful, it will be deployed later this year and the same principle applies to the hypersonic missile. Moscow has proclaimed that the hypersonic missile could overcome any missile defense and that the recent experiments it undertook during the war games in February that featured the test of the missile "affect the whole philosophy of military-strategic interaction". Such far-reaching claims cannot be made here, however if these claims about the hypersonic missile's ability to evade missile defense are, in fact, true, then that test and the successful American test of its own hypersonic missile will soon give the wheel of strategic innovation another turn and create a weapon against which there is no existing defense. In effect, that development could and probably will stimulate someone to find a new way for the offense to trump the defense, and so on. Here again the critics have a point in that it appears that the cycle of offense and defense each seeking to trump each other is taking place rather than a transition to a defense dominated world. Certainly Russia's claims would seem to confirm that point. Moscow coyly refrains from stating that this "hypersonic flying vehicle" is actually a ballistic or cruise missile but does state that it can maneuver between space and the earth's atmosphere, making it harder to even conceive of ways to defend against it. Certainly, this claim, if it is true, can also further stimulate the ongoing weaponization of space. Meanwhile, Russia is also adding three warheads per TOPOL rather than the one warhead per missile it had originally deployed. By putting multiple warheads on this mobile and hence more survivable missile, it hopes to ensure the preservation of a robust offensive capability to counter any other government's potential missile defenses and it thus recreates the Multiple Independent Reentry Vehicles (MIRVs) that were so prominent a feature of the strategic landscape after 1970. Since the SORT treaty allows Russia to build whatever it likes within the numerical parameters of the treaty, this procedure saves it a lot of money which it can ill afford to spend. Similarly, it is also outfitting these missiles with a so-called unique "gliding" warhead that allows a missile to change its trajectory at the last moment to elude detection and interception. Thus Moscow, in spite of the fact that it professes a desire to cooperate with Washington on missile defense, will stage a missile defense exercise with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 2005, and as it does not allege a nuclear threat from Washington, it has perhaps already trumped the American missile defense plan and put the restoration of offensive primacy in the nuclear sphere back on the agenda as the new and emerging status quo. The China factor Furthermore, China, too, is not resting on its laurels, despite its public silence about the end of the ABM treaty and the US missile defense program. After all, it, too, has a vital interest in Russian strategic developments and its cooperation with the Russian military across a host of systems and technologies probably gives it a good idea of Russian strategic thinking and programs. As both Moscow and Washington well know, China is also working on ways to counter the US program which will obviously have an impact on its strategic posture vis-a-vis Russia. As many analysts have stated, China is building many more missiles of all kinds of provenance, short, medium and long-range and both ballistic and cruise missiles. It will not be difficult for Beijing to place nuclear warheads on those missiles to target all of its potential adversaries, including Russia. But China also has accelerated its own space program and plans for the military use of space, perhaps even in a first-strike or preemptive mode to knock out US satellites and leave the missile defense system blind. Thus while it follows Russia's suit by building more missiles, it also is apparently aiming to undermine the US system's command, control, and communications capabilities that link it to terrestrial sensors. China has also recently launched two nano-satellites into space. As a result analysts like Richard Fisher of the Center for Security Policy in Washington argue that "China will use micro and nano-satellites for a range of missions, surveillance, reconnaissance, communication, and for destroying enemy satellites. Their size makes them difficult, if not impossible, to detect and either avoid or shoot down." Thus none of the main players in the nuclear arena are resting content with the idea of a defense-dominated world, even as Washington and Moscow, if not Beijing, are building missile defenses. While Washington explores low-yield and supposedly more precise nuclear weapons that could also serve as "bunker busters" and hypersonic missiles, Moscow also is building its defenses and hypersonic, missiles along with more mobile and multiple independently targeted reentry vehicles (MIRVs) on its TOPOL-M missiles. China is building more missiles and also appears to be focusing on depriving either side's defenses from finding its missiles and thus concentrates on attacking their command, control, communications, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities (C4ISR in military parlance) while also moving to join the other two governments in weaponizing space. Meanwhile, the full extent of its own offensive nuclear programs and of any missile defenses that it is building remains unclear. China has also shut down public discussions of its military collaboration with the Russian armed forces, which almost certainly includes issues pertaining to missile defenses and missiles. Whatever one wants to make of these facts, it cannot be said that they reliably and certainly are ushering in an era of incontestable defense dominance. Innovations in strategy and technology have not stopped and probably never will. Arms controllers and many others may not like these prospects even though they warned about them. But in fact the new missiles will replace, not add to, existing capabilities and if it is assumed that policy is in some measure a rational response to existing conditions, the supporters of missile defense have a strong argument. Deterrence today is clearly not feasible as a merely two-sided game, as was the case during the Cold War. Observers on all sides recognize this. The distinguished Indian defense expert Brahma Chellaney wrote: "In the evolving situation, the existing premises of arms control, like the traditional principles of deterrence, are unlikely to hold. It is no accident that the process of arms control has ground to a halt in this state of fluidity. The proposed elimination of multiple-warhead ICBM's under START II was designed to encourage a shift from launch-on-warning to a launch-under-attack posture. But Moscow has made it clear that it intends to stick to a launch-on-warning posture (which is indistinguishable from the capability to preempt) and may not even eliminate its multiple-warhead ICBMs if Washington begins to deploy NMD. In a complex world marked by conflicting trends, it is apparent that each deterrent relationship will be different from the other, premised on principles at variance with classical deterrence theory. The concept of mutually assured destruction is losing relevance. Deterrence will be constructed on principles radically different from notions of qualitative or quantitative parity." Although he was wrong about Russia's reaction, because Moscow cannot afford more than what is contained in the SORT, he certainly is right that deterrence will have to be built on new principles as multiple actors are deterring each other, not to mention terrorists who might yet gain control of nuclear weapons and use them. Thus a defense-dominated world has yet to arrive, but that does not undermine the arguments of those who who supported missile defense. Russia and China's pubic reactions to the US withdrawal form the ABM treaty were much less strident than what those governments had earlier promised. Although the first reactions to that withdrawal are now appearing, they were in act policy decisions long before the withdrawal was announced. In other words, they would have been taken for good reasons regardless of Washington's decision. Moscow has to cut missiles and China clearly felt impelled to build many and diverse types of new ones. Though defense domination is nonexistent, mutual hostility and suspicion among the great nuclear powers is at its lowest ebb in years, making nuclear Armageddon scenarios more remote than they ever have been, except for those threatened by rogue states and terrorists. While the critics might be right about states' reactions, they failed to grasp the changing context of deterrence and strategy that supporters of missile defense had glimpsed even in the 1990s. Thus the quest for defending state interests, for finding good uses for nuclear weapons to safeguard state interests, and for crafting the appropriate force structures and strategy continues, as does the search for offensive and then defensive invention that will restore primacy to one or the other process. As long as governments and militaries are charged with protecting their peoples and these technologies cannot be disinvented, the quest for strategic superiority, self-defense and usable weapons will continue unless checked by policy and non-threatening relationships among the nuclear powers. Similarly, the quest for strategic innovations to ensure the reliable protection of state interests will also continue unabated, absent major changes in international affairs. Arguably those are the lessons of the Cold War, and despite the saliency of terrorism and other forms of unconventional conflict in our time, they may turn out to be a lesson for our time as well. Stephen Blank is an independent analyst of international affairs living in Harrisburg PA. (Copyright 2004 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 13 NRC: Sunshine Act Meeting FR Doc 04-10158 [Federal Register: May 4, 2004 (Volume 69, Number 86)] [Notices] [Page 24695-24696] From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr04my04-108] DATES: Weeks of May 3, 10, 17, 24, 31, June 7, 2004. PLACE: Commissioners' Conference Room, 11555 Rockville Pike, Rockville, Maryland. STATUS: Public and closed. MATTERS TO BE CONSIDERED: Week of May 3, 2004 Tuesday, May 4, 2004 9:30 a.m.--Briefing on Results of the Agency Action Review Meeting (Public Meeting). (Contact: Bob Pascarelli, (301) 415-1245). This meeting will be webcast live at the Web address, http://www.nrc.gov [http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/leaving.cgi?from=leaving FR.html&log=linklog&to=http://www.nrc.gov] . [[Page 24696]] Week of May 10, 2004--Tentative Monday, May 10, 2004 1 p.m.--Briefing on Grid Stability and Offsite Power Issues (Public Meeting). (Contact: Cornelius Holden, (301) 415-3036). This meeting will be webcast live at the Web address, http://www.nrc.gov [http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/leaving.cgi?from=leaving FR.html&log=linklog&to=http://www.nrc.gov] . Tuesday, May 11, 2004 9:30 a.m.--Briefing on Status of Office of International Programs (OIP) Programs, Performance, and Plans (Public Meeting). (Contact: Ed Baker, (301) 415-2344). This meeting will be webcast live at the Web address, http://www.nrc.gov [http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/leaving.cgi?from=leaving FR.html&log=linklog&to=http://www.nrc.gov] . 1:30 p.m.--Briefing on Threat Environment Assessment (closed--Ex. 1). Week of May 17, 2004--Tentative There are no meetings scheduled for the Week of May 17, 2004. Week of May 24, 2004--Tentative Tuesday, May 25, 2004 1:30 p.m.--Discussion of Management Issues (closed--Ex. 2). Wednesday, May 26, 2004 10:30 a.m.--All Employees Meeting (Public Meeting). 1:30 p.m.--All Employees Meeting (Public Meeting). Week of May 31, 2004--Tentative Wednesday, June 2, 2004 9:30 a.m.--Briefing on Equal Employment Opportunity Program (Public Meeting). (Contact: Cornethis Kelley, (301) 415-7380). This meeting will be webcast live at the Web address, http://www.nrc.gov [http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/leaving.cgi?from=leaving FR.html&log=linklog&to=http://www.nrc.gov] . 1:30 p.m.--Meeting with Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards (ACRS) (Public Meeting). (Contact: John Larkins, (301) 415-7360). This meeting will be webcast live at the Web address, http://www.nrc.gov [http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/leaving.cgi?from=leaving FR.html&log=linklog&to=http://www.nrc.gov] . Week of June 7, 2004--Tentative There are no meetings scheduled for the Week of June 7, 2004. The schedule for Commission meetings is subject to change on short notice. To verify the status of meetings call (recording)--(301) 415- 1292. Contact person for more information: Dave Gamberoni, (301) 415- 1651. * * * * * The NRC Commission Meeting Schedule can be found on the Internet at: http://www.nrc.gov/what-we-do/policy-making/schedule.html [http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/leaving.cgi?from=leaving FR.html&log=linklog&to=http://www.nrc.gov/what-we-do/policy-makin g/schedule.html] . * * * * * This notice is distributed by mail to several hundred subscribers; if you no longer wish to receive it, or would like to be added to the distribution, please contact the Office of the Secretary, Washington, DC 20555 (301) 415-1969. In addition, distribution of this meeting notice over the Internet system is available. If you are interested in receiving this Commission meeting schedule electronically, please send an electronic message to dkw@nrc.gov [dkw@nrc.gov] . Dated: April 29, 2004. Dave Gamberoni, Office of the Secretary. [FR Doc. 04-10158 Filed 4-30-04; 9:30 am] BILLING CODE 7590-01-M ***************************************************************** 14 projo.com: Vernon nuclear plant back up and running | Providence, R.I. | AP's The Wire 05.04.2004 6:40 P.M. The Associated Press BRATTLEBORO, Vt. (AP) - The Vermont Yankee nuclear plant has finished its 30-day refueling outage, officials at the reactor's parent company Entergy Nuclear said Tuesday. The outage, a standard procedure that occurs once every 18 months, also involved the installation of new equipment related to the Vernon plant's proposed 20 percent power increase. That equipment included a high-pressure steam turbine. "The outage work was well planned and performed with high quality workmanship and excellent nuclear and industrial safety performance," said Jay Thayer, Entergy Nuclear's site vice president at Vermont Yankee. During the outage, two fuel rod pieces, one 7 and the other 17 inches long and each about as thick as a pencil, were discovered missing from a special bucket-like container on the bottom of the spent fuel pool, where they had been assumed to have been since 1979. During the outage workers also found that a plant component had cracked. They later fixed the problem. The next scheduled refueling is in the fall of 2005, officials said. Belo Interactive Inc. ***************************************************************** 15 JS Online: Unexpected repairs to delay restart of nuclear plant reactor [http://www.onwisconsin.com] Point Beach unit is down for refueling By THOMAS CONTENT tcontent@journalsentinel.com Posted: May 3, 2004 Unit 1 of the Point Beach nuclear power plant will be out of service for an extra week because of unexpected repairs needed for a nozzle in the reactor vessel head. Photo/Elizabeth Flores Workers inspect a reactor vessel head at the Point Beach nuclear power plant last week. Regulators are aggressively monitoring reactor vessel heads after leaking boric acid caused problems in a vessel head in Ohio. The problem, which was found while the plant was down for routine refueling, will cost up to $2.5 million to correct, said Gale Klappa, Wisconsin Energy Corp. chairman, president and chief executive officer. The vessel head is the 6-inch-thick steel lid that covers the nuclear reactor. The Unit 1 vessel head at Point Beach has been the subject of intense inspections in recent weeks by Nuclear Management Co., the Hudson-based company that operates Point Beach at Two Creeks in Manitowoc County. Federal regulators are aggressively monitoring reactor vessel heads after leaking boric acid caused corrosion that formed a hole in the vessel head of the Davis-Besse plant in Ohio. The federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission would not allow Davis-Besse to be restarted for nearly two years while the problem was addressed. The Point Beach reactor vessel heads aren't leaking, but a problem in a penetration nozzle - the part within the Davis-Besse reactor that leaked boric acid - requires attention, Klappa said during a conference call with analysts to discuss the company's first quarter earnings. "The nozzle was still intact," Klappa said. "It had not experienced any leakage of reactor coolant system water at all." The cost to Wisconsin Energy of the refueling - including the expense of buying power while Unit 1 is out of service - will be $32 million to $36 million, or 16 to 18 cents a share, this quarter, Chief Financial Officer Allen Leverett said. The two units at Point Beach account for about 24% of the electricity generated by Wisconsin Energy plants. Unit 2 is continuing to operate at full power while the work is being done on Unit 1. Klappa said nozzle problems similar to those at Point Beach have occurred at other plants around the country. The repairs at Point Beach will begin by the end of this week and lengthen the down time for Point Beach by five to seven days, Klappa said. Maureen Brown, spokeswoman for Nuclear Management Co., said the company doesn't forecast how long the plant will be down. Unit 1 has been out of service for nearly a month. Last fall, a refueling at Unit 2 lasted 42 days. Inspections of Unit 2 found no problems with that reactor. Wisconsin Energy plans to replace the Point Beach vessel heads next year at a cost of $53.9 million. Kewaunee's vessel head is scheduled to be replaced this fall, at a projected cost of $23.8 million. Wisconsin Energy on Monday reported first quarter net income of $91 million or 76 cents per share, compared with $92 million or 79 cents last year. The company's stock price closed up 50 cents at $31.90 Monday. From the May 4, 2004 editions of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Journal Sentinel Inc. is a subsidiary of [http://www.jc.com] . ***************************************************************** 16 BBC: Pakistan builds new nuclear plant Last Updated: Tuesday, 4 May, 2004 China is to help Pakistan build a new nuclear power plant in the north of the country, the two sides have announced. The power plant, to be built at Chashma south of Islamabad by 2010, will be for peaceful purposes, a statement said. It is the second nuclear plant that China has helped Pakistan construct, and comes after a Pakistani scientist confessed to leaking nuclear secrets. To allay fears, Islamabad is stressing the new plant will follow International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards. Observers say Tuesday's deal underlines economic ties between the long-time allies, a day after a car bombing killed three Chinese workers in Pakistan's south-west. Representatives from the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission and the China National Nuclear Corporation signed the contract, estimated to be worth $600m (450m). Western reservations The new 300-megawatt power station will be located next to a plant the Chinese helped to build in the 1990s, also at Chashma, on the banks of the River Indus. "It is worth mentioning that Pakistan's nuclear power plants are under the safeguards of the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency], which is... responsible for monitoring and safeguarding of nuclear power plants," a statement issued by both parties said. [Abdul Qadeer Khan] Khan admitted selling nuclear secrets this year Pakistan has a parallel nuclear establishment, which runs its nuclear-weapon and missile technology programme. In February, Pakistan's best-known nuclear scientist shocked the nation on when he went on television and confessed to leaking nuclear secrets to states such as North Korea, Libya and Iran. Since Islamabad is not a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, its weapons programme is not open to international inspections, says BBC Islamabad correspondent Zaffar Abbas. Pakistan's first nuclear power plant was built in 1972 in Karachi with Canadian assistance. Western nations later ceased nuclear co-operation with Islamabad, after it was alleged Pakistan was developing nuclear weapons. Pakistan conducted nuclear weapons tests in 1998, after its adversary India launched its first nuclear weapon more than a decade earlier. ***************************************************************** 17 EurActiv.com: Bulgaria back on nuclear track Date: 04/05/2004 08:15 [back] [Homepage] Sofia has announced that it would resume the construction of a nuclear plant in Belene, near the Romanian border. This would be the second in the country after closures required by EU accession talks. Brief news: After more than a decade of hesitations and protests, the Bulgarian government has announced that it would resume the construction of a nuclear plant in Belene, on the river Danube north of the country. The project had been stalled in 1990 due to a lack of cash and protests from environmentalists and Romania. Calls for tenders are expected soon and construction should start before the end of the year. Energy minister Milko Kovachev has voiced a series of arguments for resuming construction. One of them is Bulgaria's ambition to become a major electricity provider in southeastern Europe. "The plant is necessary to secure stable and affordable energy for the country," said the Prime Minister Simeon Saxe-Coburg. It is also argued Belene will help Bulgaria meet its environmental commitments to cut greenhouse gas emissions. Experts had expressed concerns at the project when the government put it back on the table in April 2002. The Bulgarian Academy of Science had produced an analysis that pointed to Belene as inappropriate, first of all because of the economic impact due to the bidders' requirement for financial guarantees from the government. For their part, environmentalists had argued Belene was dangerous because it rested upon an active fault in the earth's crust. EU accession talks forced Bulgaria to close Soviet era nuclear reactors during the nineties. Two of them were shut down at the Kozloduy plant and the two remaining ones are scheduled to be closed in 2006 as part of EU accession talks. But the Commission's 2002 nuclear safety proposal to provide funds for decommissioning old reactors triggered furious reactions from environmentalists. They claimed Commissioner De Palacio wanted to revive the nuclear industry in Eastern Europe by subsidising it (see EurActiv, 9 October 2003). Links: Official documents: + Commission/DG Energy: Nuclear issues + Commission/DG Energy: Decommissioning of nuclear installations EU Actors' position: + Bulgaria Development Gateway: Enegy + Chernobyls no more: Belene + Greenpeace: The European Commission's Proposals For Funding of Soviet Designed VVER 1000 Reactors (June 1997) EurActiv 2000 - ***************************************************************** 18 TheChamplainChannel.com: Fuel Rod Still Missing At Nuclear Power Plant [http://www.ibsys.com/] POSTED: 10:51 am EDT May 4, 2004 VERNON, Vt. -- There was still no sign Tuesday morning of two missing pieces of a spent nuclear fuel rod at Vermont Yankee. An underwater search with a robotic camera of the plant's spent fuel pool didn't turn up anything. Now, searchers at the plant are checking the videotape closely and said they may try again. They're also looking through paperwork to see if the rods were mistakenly shipped out-of-state with other radioactive waste. A Yankee spokesperson said the company hopes to have answers to what happened to the fuel rods by the end of the month. Have a comment about this story? [newstips@thechamplainchannel.com] . Copyright 2004 by [planews@ibsys.com] . All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 19 NRC: Yankee Atomic Power Company, Yankee Atomic Power Station (Rowe); FR Doc E4-997 [Federal Register: May 4, 2004 (Volume 69, Number 86)] [Notices] [Page 24695] From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr04my04-107] Notice of Receipt and Availability for Comment of License Termination Plan The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is in receipt of and is making available for public inspection and comment the License Termination Plan (LTP) for the Yankee (Rowe) Atomic Power Station (Yankee-Rowe) located in Franklin County, Massachusetts. Yankee Atomic Electric Company (YAEC, or the licensee) informed the NRC by letter dated February 27, 1992, that Yankee-Rowe was permanently shut down and that decommissioning would commence. YAEC submitted a decommission plan on December 20, 1993, which included an environmental report. The decommissioning plan was approved by Order on February 14, 1995, and the plant is undergoing dismantlement under 10 CFR 50.59. In accordance with 10 CFR 50.82(a)(9), all power reactor licensees must submit an application for termination of their license. The application for termination of license must be accompanied or preceded by an LTP to be submitted for NRC approval. If found acceptable by the NRC staff, the LTP is approved by license amendment, subject to such conditions and limitations as the NRC staff deems appropriate and necessary. YAEC submitted the proposed LTP for Yankee-Rowe by applications dated November 24, 2003, December 10, 2003, December 16, 2003, January 19, 2004, January 20, 2004, February 2, 2004, February 10, 2004, and March 4, 2004. In accordance with 10 CFR 20.1405 and 10 CFR 50.82(a)(9)(iii), the NRC is providing notice to individuals in the vicinity of the site that the NRC is in receipt of the Yankee-Rowe LTP, and will accept comments from affected parties. An electronic version of the Yankee-Rowe LTP may be viewed through the NRC ADAMS system at accession numbers ML033450398, ML033530147, ML041110261, ML040280024, ML040280028, ML040280031, ML040280036, ML040280140, ML040330777, ML040420388, ML041100639, and ML040690034, or at the Yankee Atomic Power Company site closure Web site, http://www.yankee.com/siteclosure/index.htm [http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/leaving.cgi?from=leaving FR.html&log=linklog&to=http://www.yankee.com/siteclosure/index.ht m] . Comments regarding the Yankee-Rowe LTP may be submitted in writing and addressed to Mr. John B. Hickman, Mail Stop T-7-F27, Decommissioning Directorate, Division of Waste Management and Environmental Protection, Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC 20555- 0001, telephone (301) 415-3017 or e-mail jbh@nrc.gov [jbh@nrc.gov] . Dated in Rockville, Maryland, this 22nd day of April, 2004. For the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Claudia Craig, Chief, Reactor Decommissioning Section, Decommissioning Directorate, Division of Waste Management and Environmental Protection, Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards. [FR Doc. E4-997 Filed 5-3-04; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 7590-01-P ***************************************************************** 20 Sofia Morning News: Bulgaria to Build a Second Nuclear Reactor SOFIA NEWS AGENCY [http://www.novinite.com/] For the Record: 4 May 2004, Tuesday. By EU Business Bulgaria announced Monday that it will build a second nuclear power plant to replace two Soviet-era reactors at its Kozloduy facility which the European Union wants shut down by 2006. Prime Minister Simeon Saxe-Coburg said the second plant will be built at Belene, in the north of the country, where work began in 1987 but was suspended in 1991 after pressure from environmentalists. "The government has decided to complete the construction of the power plant at Belene. It will be the biggest investment made in Bulgaria in the past 20 years," he told 1,000 residents gathered in Belene's central square. Saxe-Coburg said the power plant here should be operational in 2010, four years after the planned closure of two 440 megawatt reactors at Kozloduy. The new plant will "allow Bulgaria to retain its strong position on the region's energy market," the prime minister added. The country in 2003 exported some five billion megawatt hours of electricity, mostly to Greece, Turkey, Serbia and Macedonia. The Kozloduy plant in 2002 already shut down two older Soviet-era 440-megawatt reactors under pressure from the EU, which Bulgaria hopes to join in 2007. The two reactors to be shut down were recently given a good bill of health by the UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, but Brussels stood firm that they should be closed for security reasons. The Kozloduy plant, which is also situated in the north on the banks of the Danube, has two other more modern 1,000 megawatt reactors that do not raise any concerns. The plant provides 47 percent of Bulgaria's electricity and there are fears that electricity prices will rise once its output is diminished. The Bulgarian government spent 1.3 billion euros (1.8 billion dollars) at Belene, a town on the Danube near the border with Romania, before the project was abandoned two years after the fall of the Iron Curtain. The foundations have already been built for a 1,000 megawatt reactor, which was to have been supplied by the then Czechoslovakia, along with two generators. Energy Minister Milko Kovachev on Monday said the project was expected to cost another two billion euros by 2010. The government will by July choose between eight proposals for the new plant tendered by five different foreign contractors. They are the US company Westinghouse, France's Framatome, Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd (AECL), the Czech Republic's Skoda and Russia's Atomstroyexport. Atomstroyexport is party to three of the proposals, in consortium with some of the other companies. Several independent economic analysts have expressed doubt about the wisdom of building a new nuclear power plant which they believe will only start making a profit in 20 years. "We are investing huge amounts of money which could be better spent elsewhere," said Krassen Stanchev, a director at the Institute for Market Economy in Sofia. The head of the project at Belene, Krassimir Nikolov, said last week that at this point the government favoured a high-water-pressure reactor for Belene because it was already using this technology at Kozloduy. This would rule out the plan proposed by Canada's AECL which had input from Italy's Ansaldo Nucleare, US company Bechtel, fellow Canadian company SNC Lavalin and Japan's Hitachi.[ width=] [ your 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: Browns Ferry poses little threat to life here www.decaturdaily.com TUESDAY, MAY 4, 2004 EDITORIAL "I'm from Decatur, Alabama, where we glow in the dark," was a way some local people once explained that their area was the home of the world's largest nuclear generating plant. No longer the largest, Browns Ferry, across the Tennessee River in Limestone County, also doesn't generate constant fear of a nuclear accident that will release death-causing radioactive material. We no longer worry about glowing in the night, or didn't until the chilling account in Sunday's DAILY about how the Tennessee Valley Authority will begin removing spent fuel rods from underground, water-filled storage wells and begin putting them in super strong casks above ground. As in the early days of Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant, we'll warm to the idea, and give the tedious transfer process and new storage system less thought as time passes. Our area is not alone. The nation has a problem with what to do with this material that will never dissipate completely. Out of room underground, the casks are at least a temporary solution for storage. No one, however, can say it is completely satisfactory. Even transporting the material across country to the proposed national burial ground in Nevada's Yucca Mountain isn't ideal. But given the possibilities for mishaps along the way, on-site above ground storage might be the better solution. TVA was guilty of sloppy procedures in the early days of Browns Ferry that had negative impact on its nuclear plants. Today its plants are models for efficiency and safety, which, no doubt, will extend to the restorage of the spent fuel rods that are still active enough to cause major mischief. So we're not going to worry about glowing, and neither should other Valley residents. Copyright 1999 THE DECATUR DAILY. All rights reserved. AP contributed to this report. --> Copyright 1999 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. --> SEE THE DECATUR DAILY 201 1st Ave. SE P.O. Box 2213 Decatur, Ala. 35609 (256) 353-4612 webmaster@decaturdaily.com [webmaster@decaturdaily.com] ***************************************************************** 22 NRC: News Release - 2004-054 - 054 - NRC Issues Review Standard for Early Site Permit Applications U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION Office of Public Affairs Telephone: 301/415-8200 Washington, DC 20555-0001 E-mail: opa@nrc.gov [opa@nrc.gov] www.nrc.gov No. 04-054 May 4, 2004 NRC ISSUES REVIEW STANDARD FOR EARLY SITE PERMIT APPLICATIONS The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has issued its review standard for early site permit applications for possible new nuclear power plants. The early site permit process resolves site-related issues regarding possible future construction and operation of a nuclear power plant at a site selected by an applicant. The review standard covers issues such as population density, probable maximum floods that could affect a site, stability of subsurface materials and foundations, aircraft hazards and emergency planning. The review standard also informs potential applicants and other stakeholders of the information the staff needs to perform its review. The review standard is available through the NRCs Agencywide Documents Access and Management System (ADAMS) on the agencys web site, by entering accession number ML040700094 at this address: http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/adams/web-based.html. Help in using ADAMS is available from the Public Document Room staff by calling 1-800-397-4209. For further information Contact : Michael L. Scott, Project Manager, New Reactor Licensing Project Office, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, D.C. 20555, via telephone at (301) 415-1421 or by e-mail at mls3@nrc.gov [mls3@nrc.gov] . Privacy Policy | Site Disclaimer Last revised Tuesday, May 04, 2004 ***************************************************************** 23 NRC: Report to Congress on Abnormal Occurrences Fiscal Year 2003; FR Doc 04-10045 [Federal Register: May 4, 2004 (Volume 69, Number 86)] [Notices] [Page 24688-24695] From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr04my04-106] Dissemination of Information Section 208 of the Energy Reorganization Act of 1974 (Public Law 93-438) defines an abnormal occurrence (AO) as an unscheduled incident or event which the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) determines to be significant from the standpoint of public health or safety. The Federal Reports Elimination and Sunset Act of 1995 (Public Law 104-66) requires that AOs be reported to Congress annually. During fiscal year 2003, 14 events that occurred at facilities licensed or otherwise regulated by the NRC and/or Agreements States were determined to be AOs. The report describes five medical events at facilities licensed by the NRC. Three events involved patients undergoing therapeutic brachytherapy treatments, one event involved an unintentional therapeutic dose of sodium iodide (I-131) to an embryo/fetus, and one event involved a diagnostic overexposure of a minor. The report also discusses nine AOs at facilities licensed by Agreement States. Agreement States are those states which have entered into a formal agreement with the NRC pursuant to Section 274 of the Atomic Energy Act (AEA) to regulate certain quantities of AEA material at facilities located within their borders. Currently, there are 33 Agreement States. Seven Agreement State events were medical events (five therapeutic and two diagnostic), one Agreement State event involved overexposure to a radiographer, and one Agreement State event involved overexposure to members of the public from a damaged gauge. As required by Section 208, the discussion for each event includes the date and place, the nature and probable consequences, the cause or causes, and the action taken to prevent recurrence. Each event is also being described in NUREG-0090, Vol. 26, ``Report to Congress on Abnormal Occurrences, Fiscal Year 2003.'' This report will be available electronically at the NRC Web site http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/nuregs/ [http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/leaving.cgi?from=leaving FR.html&log=linklog&to=http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collecti ons/nuregs/] staff/. Nuclear Power Plants During this period, no events occurred at U.S. nuclear power plants that were significant enough to be reported as AOs. * * * * * Fuel Cycle Facilities (Other Than Nuclear Power Plants) During this period, no events occurred at U.S. fuel cycle facilities that were significant enough to be reported as AOs. * * * * * Other NRC Licenses (Industrial Radiographers, Medical Institutions, etc.) The NRC determined that the following events which occurred at facilities, licensed or otherwise regulated by the NRC, during this reporting period were significant enough to be reported as AOs: 03-01 Intravascular Brachytherapy (IVB) Medical Event at the Queen's Medical Center in Honolulu, Hawaii Date and Place--October 9, 2002; the Queen's Medical Center; Honolulu, Hawaii. Nature and Probable Consequences--A patient undergoing IVB treatment for cardiacrestenosis received an underdose to the intended treatment site, but a dose above the AO criterion to an unintended site. This medical event occurred because the strontium-90 (Sr-90) source contained in the device's source train (catheter) did not reach the intended treatment site. The patient undergoing IVB was prescribed treatment of 18.4 Gray (Gy) (1,840 rads) [[Page 24689]] to the left anterior descending (LAD) artery to prevent scar tissue blockage. Sixteen Sr-90 seeds with a total activity of 2.224 gigabecquerel (GBq) (60.11 millicuries [mCi]) were positioned in the patient using fluoroscopy. Because the radiation oncologist and cardiologist believed that they could see the proximal and distal markers of the source train on the fluoroscopy monitor, the physicist did not perform a survey to ensure that the source train was in the patient's chest. After the end of the treatment, the radiation oncologist was unable to retrieve all of the Sr-90 radioactive sources. After a second attempt to retrieve the sources failed, the oncologist pulled the treatment catheter from the patient and placed it in the bailout box. The bailout box is an acrylic box approximately 12 inches (in) by 10 in by 6 in with a hinged acrylic lid. Acrylic is used because of its shielding properties to attenuate the beta radiation from the catheter system. While inspecting the catheter, the oncologist discovered a kink at the location wherein the distal seed and marker became lodged. The kink was attributed to the patient's anatomy (small curves in the blood vessel, branching off the aorta where the catheter was inserted). A review of the cinematography images revealed that only one Sr-90 seed reached the intended treatment site while 5 seeds were positioned in the beginning LAD and 10 seeds were outside the cinematography field of view. Instead of receiving the intended 18.4 Gy (1,840 rads), the LAD received approximately 1.25 Gy (125 rads). The remaining dose was delivered to an unintended section of the LAD and aorta. No adverse effects due to this medical event are expected. Cause or Causes--This medical event was caused by human error as the licensee did not perform a survey to verify that the radioactive sources were in the proper location. The patient's anatomy was a contributing factor in that there were curves in a small blood vessel branching off the aorta. Actions Taken To Prevent Recurrence Licensee--Based on the cause and contributing factors of the medical event, the licensee modified its procedures to require additional documented verification of the position of the markers by the radiological technologist and medical physicist in addition to the required verification by the radiation oncologist and cardiologist. NRC--On November 13, 2002, the NRC issued a Notice of Violation to the licensee for the failure to follow the manufacturer's operation procedures for the IVB device as specified in its license. This event is closed for the purpose of this report. * * * * * 03-02 Dose to Fetus at Community Hospital of Anderson in Anderson, Indiana Date and Place--August 8, 2003; Community Hospital; Anderson, Indiana. Nature and Probable Consequences--On August 8, 2003, the Community Hospital of Anderson reported that a 35-year-old female patient was administered 1.1 GBq (29.8 mCi) of sodium iodide-131 (I-131) for the treatment of hyperthyroidism. At the time of the therapy, the patient was unaware that she was pregnant and, as a result, an unintentional dose to her embryo/fetus was delivered. On August 25, 2003, the patient's gynecologist informed the hospital and the patient that she had been approximately 15 weeks pregnant at the time of the therapy. The NRC staff contracted with a medical consultant to review the possible deterministic effects of the dose to the embryo/fetus as a result of the event. The medical report indicated that the total effective dose equivalent (whole body) to the embryo/fetus was approximately 0.074 Gy (7.4 rads) and the committed dose equivalent to the embryo/fetal thyroid was approximately 278 Gy (27,800 rads). The licensee anticipated that the fetal thyroid would be ablated. The NRC medical consultant, contracted to review this event, also anticipated that the fetal thyroid would be ablated. Cause or Causes--The event appeared to be an isolated occurrence. The root cause of the event was determined to be human error. Although the authorized physician user and the chief technologist asked the patient on several occasions, prior to the administration of the I-131 dosage, if she were pregnant or believed that she could possibly be pregnant, the patient denied the possibility of pregnancy. Due to other preexisting medical conditions and consultations by other physicians informing the patient that she was unable to conceive, the patient believed that she could not become pregnant and declined taking a pregnancy test prior to the I-131 therapy. Further, the hospital staff, knowing that the patient was also a physician on staff at the hospital, did not pursue a pregnancy test because they believed that the patient was aware of her pregnancy status. Actions Taken To Prevent Recurrence Licensee--The licensee conducted a thorough investigation of the event, including identification of the root cause. The root cause of the event was identified as human error by the patient. The event appeared to be an isolated occurrence. No further actions were deemed necessary to prevent recurrence. NRC--The NRC conducted an inspection on August 26 and 27, 2003, with continued in-office review through September 30, 2003. The inspectors determined that the licensee made the required notifications to the patient, referring physician, and the NRC. No violations of NRC requirements were identified. This event is closed for the purpose of this report. * * * * * 03-03 IVB Medical Event at Washington Hospital Center in Washington, DC Date and Place--May 6, 2003; Washington Hospital Center; Washington, DC. Nature and Probable Consequences--A patient undergoing IVB treatment of two areas within the right coronary artery for the treatment of restenosis was prescribed a dose of 23 Gy (2,300 rads) to each treatment site. Some difficulty was experienced in inserting the catheter to the first treatment site, but in the judgment of the treatment team, the catheter appeared to be inserted properly. Fluoroscopy was used to guide insertion and to position the source train. Upon completion of the first treatment, the catheter was moved to the second treatment position, as planned. When the source train was sent out for the second treatment, resistance was met and this time the catheter was replaced. The second treatment was successfully given. In documenting the treatment, the licensee reviewed the films taken during the treatment and printed a copy of the films for the patient's record. During this documentation, the medical physicist noted that the source markers were not in the right position and suspected that the treatment area was not covered for the first treatment given. The radiation oncologist and interventional cardiologist reviewed the films and determined that the source train was approximately 40 millimeters (mm) (1.6 in) away from the intended treatment site. Therefore, the 23 Gy (2,300 rads) dose was delivered to an unintended treatment site. The NRC contracted a medical consultant to review the medical event and assess the probable deterministic [[Page 24690]] effects of the treatment to the wrong area of the patient's coronary artery. The medical consultant concluded that the dose to the normal segment of the right coronary artery reported in this case was well below the tolerance dose for coronary arteries and no effect was expected other than fibrosis of the right coronary artery vessel wall. Cause or Causes--This medical event was caused by human error, in that the licensee did not properly visualize the placement of the source train due, in part, to a lapse in time in the fluoroscopy performed during the treatment and the inherent inability to differentiate between the proximal and distal markers of the source train. In addition, a kink in the catheter may have prevented the source train from traversing to the correct area of the right coronary artery. Actions Taken To Prevent Recurrence Licensee--The licensee immediately implemented measures to further enhance source positioning verification prior to initiation of future treatments. The measures included verification of fluoroscope calibration and reinstruction of the treatment team to fully appreciate the movement of both ends of the source train at the site prior to treatment. Further, the licensee recommended to the device manufacturer that they redesign the proximal and distal markers to make them more radiographically distinct from each other and from the guiding catheter marker. NRC--No violations of NRC requirements were identified. The NRC issued Information Notice 2003-09 describing medical events resulting from source positioning errors and is in the process of reviewing all events related to IVB since inception of this technology. This event is closed for the purpose of this report. * * * * * 03-04 Iodine-125 (I-125) Brachytherapy Seed Medical Event at Guthrie Healthcare System in Sayre, Pennsylvania Date and Place--May 24, 2001 (identified on June 12, 2003); Robert Packer Hospital (part of Guthrie Healthcare System), Sayre, Pennsylvania. Nature and Probable Consequences--In 2001, a patient received a permanent brachytherapy implant using I-125 seeds as treatment for prostate carcinoma. The authorized user prescribed a dose of 144 Gy (14,400 rads) to the prostate. The implant was performed under ultrasound guidance using 18 needles and 50 radioactive sources, as prescribed in the written directive. In June 2003, the patient returned for consultation regarding additional treatment after a diagnostic test indicated that the prostate cancer may have returned. A computerized tomography (CT) scan taken May 27, 2003, revealed that many of the seeds were not in the prostate but in adjacent tissue where they would have been ineffective in the treatment. The CT scan showed the array of seeds approximately 3 centimeters from the prostate. A review was then conducted of the May 2001 CT scan performed shortly after the initial implant procedure. This CT scan showed the array of I-125 seeds in the same location as in the May 2003 CT scan. The seed configuration resulted in a negligible dose to the prostate and a dose of 60 to 80 Gy (6,000 to 8,000 rads) to an adjacent structure, the penile bulb. The probable deterministic effects to the patient are being determined by NRC medical consultants. The patient and the patient's referring physician were notified of the event. Cause or Causes--The cause of this event is under investigation by the licensee. Actions Taken To Prevent Recurrence Licensee--This event occurred in 2001 and involved an entirely different radiation oncology team than is currently employed by the licensee. The current radiation oncology team uses a different prostate implant protocol than was used in 2001. Reviews of the licensee's current prostate implant program by both the NRC and an independent physics consultant indicate that treatments performed since October 2002 have been accurate. NRC--The NRC staff conducted a special safety inspection on June 19, 2003. Subsequent to this inspection, the licensee (Guthrie Healthcare System) began to audit other prostate implants performed in 2001 and identified additional cases of possible treatment errors. On July 28, 2003, the NRC issued a Confirmatory Action Letter (CAL) specifying actions the licensee agreed to perform, including evaluation of the root cause of the events and performance of an audit of past and current prostate implants. The NRC conducted a second special inspection on August 14, 2003. As of the date of this report, the licensee has reported a total of 21 possible medical events and is continuing the actions required by the CAL. It appears that the treatment errors may have been less extreme for the additional 20 cases reported by the licensee. An NRC medical consultant is currently evaluating these cases. NRC staff will consider enforcement options upon the completion of the licensee's and NRC's investigations. This event is considered open for the purpose of this report. * * * * * 03-05 Diagnostic Medical Event at Deaconess Hospital, Evansville, Indiana Date and Place--March 28, 2003; Deaconess Hospital; Evansville, Indiana. Nature and Probable Consequences--A nine-year-old patient, who had been prescribed a dosage of 0.148 MBq (4 [mu]Ci) in an I-131 capsule for a thyroid uptake study, instead received 15.6 MBq (421 [mu]Ci) of I-131 in liquid form. Because the patient was unable to swallow the capsule, the technologist placed a telephone request to a local commercial radiopharmacy for liquid I-131; however, the technologist erroneously ordered 15.6 MBq (421 [mu]Ci) of I-131 for the patient. The licensee identified the error while reviewing related paperwork on April 2, 2003. The referring physician, the patient, and the patient's family were informed of this event on April 3, 2003. The intended thyroid dose was approximately 0.13 Gy (13 rads), but the NRC's contracted medical consultant estimated that the patient received a thyroid dose of 13.7 Gy (1,370 rads) and an effective dose equivalent of 0.42 Gy (42 rads). According to the medical consultant, no acute radiation effects were anticipated to any organ, since no organ (except the thyroid) received more than 0.01 Gy (1.0 rad). The 13.7 Gy (1,370 rads) dose will not cause radiation thyroiditis. The medical consultant also stated that there was insufficient data on juveniles to be reassured that a radiation dose in excess of 13.7 Gy (1,370 rads) to the thyroid would have no long-term consequences, given the increased radiosensitivity of the thyroid glands of children. Cause or Causes--This medical event was caused by human error in ordering the correct dosage. Actions Taken To Prevent Recurrence Licensee--Corrective actions include (1) develop and use a standardized order form for liquid I-131 that will be faxed to the local nuclear pharmacy as written confirmation of the dosage ordered; (2) modify the computerized unit dose manager system to prevent an inappropriate dosage of I-131 from being entered into the computer system; (3) provide the local nuclear pharmacy with typical dosage ranges used by the licensee, which will be put into the nuclear pharmacy's computer and used as a secondary check to verify that the dosage ordered is appropriate for the [[Page 24691]] study or treatment to be performed; and (4) provide in-service training to the nuclear medicine technicians regarding the medical event. NRC--On August 29, 2003, a Notice of Violation was issued for a violation that included the failure to order the correct quantity of I- 131 as directed by the authorized user, to have a written directive dated and signed by an authorized user prior to the administration of the 15.6 MBq (421 [mu]Ci) I-131 dosage, and to administer a dosage within 20% of the prescribed dosage range for a thyroid uptake study using I-131. This event is considered closed for the purpose of this report. * * * * * Agreement State Licensees The NRC determined that the following events, which occurred at Agreement State licensed facilities during this reporting period, were significant enough for reporting as AOs: AS 03-01 IVB Medical Event at Union Memorial Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland Date and Place--May 22, 2003, Union Memorial Hospital; Baltimore, Maryland. Nature and Probable Consequences--During a cardiac brachytherapy procedure conducted at the licensee's facility, a malfunction of the drive mechanism occurred with an IVB device containing a phosphorous-32 source with an activity of 3.48 GBq (94 mCi). The malfunction occurred during the treatment of the third of three patients. The first two treatments were completed without incident. The treatment of the third patient was initiated with the dummy source successfully reaching the proper dwell position (confirmed visually via fluoroscopy) and returning to the cartridge. The active source was then advanced into the catheter, but when the source movement light continued to blink well after the anticipated transit time, the licensee initiated a fluoroscopic view of the treatment site. The source was not observed in the fluoroscopic field of view, so the licensee assumed a machine malfunction had occurred and initiated emergency procedures. Radiation surveys were performed, which confirmed that the source had stopped inside the patient. The indicator light on the console continued to indicate that the source was in transit even after the licensee confirmed the source was in the patient and not at the treatment site. The licensee was unable to retract the source to its shielded position using the machine interrupt, the system stop button, or the handwheel. At that point, the attending physician removed the catheter and source from the patient and accidently dropped them on the operating room floor. After the power cord was removed from the wall receptacle, the source retracted into its shielded position. The licensee stated that it took approximately 45 to 60 seconds to remove the source from the patient. The manufacturer's representative present during the treatment indicated that this period was 60 to 90 seconds. The licensee estimated a worst case dose to the wall of the patient's artery as approximately 10.38 Gy (1,038 rads) based on a 60-second exposure time. The source delivery unit was taken to the licensee's ``hot'' laboratory after the event and the daily quality assurance (QA) checks were performed in the physics and clinical modes. The unit passed both QA checks. The manufacturer's representative present during the procedure immediately notified the manufacture's technical center. The device was returned to the manufacturer for evaluation and a new device was provided to the licensee. Cause or Causes--This medical event was caused by equipment malfunction. The manufacturer was able to simulate a similar type of failure on two occasions and is focusing on a timer chip as the possible cause of the malfunction. The manufacturer believes that a hardware problem and not the device's software caused the failure. The State of Maryland ruled out human error as the cause of the drive mechanism malfunction. Actions Taken To Prevent Recurrence Licensee--Corrective actions included the implementation of revised procedures regarding dosimetry, emergency response, and notification of incidents. Training for the revised procedures was completed on November 12, 2003. The licensee also revised its annual Radiation Safety Training Program to ensure compliance with pertinent State regulations and revised procedures. State Agency--The State of Maryland conducted an investigation, and the State concurs with the licensee corrective actions that included implementation of revised procedures and an annual emergency exercise. This event is considered closed for the purpose of this report. * * * * * AS 03-02 Industrial Radiography Occupational Overexposure at a Temporary Jobsite in Ghent, Kentucky Date and Place--On November 12, 2002, the Kentucky Radiation Health & Toxic Agents (KRHTA) Branch was notified, by the licensee, that for the month of October 2002, a radiographer's total annual occupational dose was exceeded while working at a temporary jobsite near Ghent, Kentucky. Nature and Probable Consequences--The licensee reported an overexposure to a radiographer of 314 mSv (31.4 rem). A 3.81 terabecquerel (TBq) (103 Ci) Ir-192 source was being retracted after an exposure. The radiographer who had entered the area was in the area for approximately 3 minutes before realizing the source was not fully retracted. Upon realizing that the source was not fully retracted, the radiographer immediately left the area, extended the source, and then retracted it to the housed position. The radiographer's dosimetry was sent for processing and results indicated a whole body exposure of only 48.6 mSv (4.86 rem). However, the licensee, with assistance from the source manufacturer's Radiation Safety Officer (RSO), completed a reconstruction of the whole body exposure to the radiographer. The final result indicated an exposure of 300 mSv (30 rem) whole body from the event. This exposure was added to the radiographer's year-to-date exposure of 14 mSv (1.4 rem), for a total yearly whole body exposure of 314 mSv (31.4 rem). Discussions with the KRHTA Branch, along with independent calculations, confirmed the 300 mSv (30 rem) event exposure. The licensee stated that the thermoluminescent dosimeter (TLD) and operating ratemeter were in the radiographer's pocket, an area that did not reflect true whole body exposure, and the alarm ratemeter was never heard in an alarming condition. Cause or Causes--This event was caused by inadequate operating procedures for the exposure device, improper placement of the TLD in the radiographer's pocket (rather than on his body), improper storage of the alarm ratemeter in his pocket (rather than on his body), and failure to survey the exposure device upon completion of the radiograph. Actions Taken To Prevent Recurrence Licensee--The licensee's corrective actions included revision of the operating procedure for retracting the source into the exposure device, personnel training on the revised procedure and proper wearing of dosimetry devices, and annual refresher training on proper operation and responses of survey instrumentation. Additionally, the radiographer involved will receive an additional 40 hours of [[Page 24692]] radiation safety training prior to returning to work in radiography, and will be evaluated at least once a month for the next year. State Agency--The KRHTA Branch conducted an onsite investigation and concurred with the licensee's dose assessment and identification of the causes of the event. The licensee was issued a Notice of Violation and has provided corrective actions to the Commonwealth of Kentucky. This event is closed for the purposes of this report. * * * * * AS 03-03 Diagnostic Medical Event at Rush Copley Medical Center in Aurora, Illinois Date and Place--July 28, 2003; Rush Copley Medical Center; Aurora, Illinois. Nature and Probable Consequences--The Illinois Emergency Management Agency received a call on July 29, 2003, from a nuclear medicine technician at Rush Copley Medical Center in Aurora, Illinois. The technician reported that a patient who was to receive 148 MBq (4 mCi) of thallium-201 (Tl-201) for a heart test instead received 148 MBq (4 mCi) of I-131 on July 28, 2003. The patient had been admitted the day before the event with an order for a treadmill heart stress test to be performed. The patient remained hospitalized at the facility until discharged after July 30, 2003. The circumstances of the event, as reported by the technician, are that both the exterior lead container and the syringe were labeled as containing a diagnostic unit dose of Tl-201. Although the injection occurred the previous day, it was not determined that I-131 was involved until the morning of July 29, 2003. Service engineers were called to the site on both days to inspect the gamma cameras used after attempts to image the patient failed. The reason became evident when a gamma camera flood source that had been made from what was thought to be the remaining Tl-201 material in the syringe from July 29 showed peaks consistent with I-131, rather than the expected Tl-201. The syringe had been assayed by the medical center before injection. The assayed amount showed the dose to be within the prescribed range for a typical 148 MBq (4 mCi) Tl-201 diagnostic administration. On Friday, July 25, 2003, the nuclear pharmacy received an order for five unit dose syringes of I-131 for the Veterinary Service Center (VSC) and two unit dose syringes of Tl-201 for Rush Copley Medical Center. When the computer generated orders and associated labels were segregated, one of the prescriptions for the Tl-201 was mistakenly substituted for I-131. The pharmacist did not realize the error and the I-131 dose (syringe) and its container were labeled with one of the Tl- 201 labels generated for the original order. On Monday, July 28, 2003, the pharmacy facility manager noted that only four I-131 prescriptions had been filled for VSC. Assuming the I-131 dose had not been filled with the others the previous Friday, July 25, 2003, he filled an additional syringe with I-131 to complete the order for VSC. The medical center estimates that a small amount of residual activity remained adhered to the walls of the syringe. Therefore, it estimates the amount of injected I-131 to be 148 MBq (4 mCi). Based on the package insert information for this material and assuming that an injected sodium iodide solution of I-131 results in a radiation absorbed dose similar to oral administration and that the patient had normal thyroid function (25% uptake), the dose to the patient's thyroid is approximately 51.95 Gy (5,195 rads). The medical center technician indicated that the patient involved had been contacted by the referring physician, onsite oncologists, and the medical center's administrator and lawyer and was informed as to what had happened at the initial time of discovery of the event. Later, a copy of the medical center's report to the agency was also provided to the patient. The medical center offered to perform routine blood analysis throughout the year to monitor any changes in thyroid activity. The patient had been advised as to the potential health effects of the medical event during that time and the need for routine followup testing. The patient has not returned to the medical center for any additional testing, diagnosis, or consultation. The medical center's oncologist indicated that it is very unlikely that any medical changes will be noted in the patient because the dose administered is only slightly larger than that typically ordered for whole body scans using I-131. Blood tests were taken immediately following the discovery of the event. Those tests suggest that the patient was hypothyroid as a preexisting condition to admittance. Cause or Causes--The medical event was caused by the mislabeling of the I-131 unit dose syringe. Other factors that led to the medical event include improper segregation of the prescriptions at the pharmacy and lack of a second means of verifying proper completion of the order. Actions Taken To Prevent Recurrence Licensee--The pharmacy ceased dispensing therapeutic quantities of I-131 in unit dose syringes. Therapeutic doses of I-131 will only be dispensed in capsule form. This will preclude the possibility of a unit dose of diagnostic material being mistakenly filled with a quantity of therapeutic material. Additional corrective actions included (1) retraining of pharmacists, (2) implementation of a dual verification system for all prescriptions received, (3) implementation of a triple check system for dispensing compounds, and (4) testing a new bar code system for tracking all prescriptions. State Agency--On July 30, 2003, the State agency sent an investigator to the medical center and the nuclear pharmacy to observe licensed activities and to review the circumstances of the event. During those onsite visits, preliminary information reported by the medical center and pharmacy was confirmed. The pharmacy was cited for failure to properly fill the prescription as ordered by the physician. The State agency is holding this action item open pending enforcement action and will include a review of the corrective actions taken during the next routine inspection. The agency does not expect any additional significant information to be received or other notable action to be taken outside of the enforcement process. This event is considered closed for the purpose of this report. * * * * * AS 03-04 High Dose-Rate Afterloader (HDR) Medical Event at Saint Joseph's Hospital in Houston, Texas Date and Place--June 9, 10, and 11, 2003; Saint Joseph's Hospital; Houston, Texas. Nature and Probable Consequences--A cancer patient undergoing therapeutic radiation treatment for breast cancer received a superficial skin dose of 70 Gy (7,000 rads) to a circular area approximately 10 mm (0.4 in) in diameter. This error occurred using an HDR device. Deeper absorbed doses of 34 Gy (3,400 rads), 15 Gy (1,500 rads), and 10 Gy (1,000 rads) have been estimated at depths of 10 mm (0.4 in), 20 mm (0.8 in), and 30 mm (1.2 in), respectively. These deeper doses were absorbed by the subcutaneous fat and muscle of the lower left chest wall. The patient had a slight erythema of the skin which measured 5 to 10 mm (0.2 to 0.4 in) in diameter approximately 2 weeks after the radiation therapy injury. The incorrect placement of the source in the catheter was detected on June 11, 2003, between treatment fractions 5 and [[Page 24693]] 6. The patient and referring physician were notified of the treatment error and the facts involved with this treatment. The patient elected to continue treatment with a modified treatment plan after the source location was corrected. A new plan was generated representing a composite of the unintended dose to the skin of the lower left chest wall and the intentional dose prescribed in the original treatment plan. The attending physician, who was present during treatment, followed the patient's progress for any needed medical intervention due to exposure to the HDR source. The patient's erythema of the skin failed to heal and developed into an ulceration. The ulceration was surgically excised by the referring physician. After excision, the area fully healed within a period of approximately two months. The patient continues to be monitored by the referring physician. Causes or Causes--During the setup of the HDR unit with the approved treatment plan, the source was instructed to stop at the 20th position from the catheter tip. The 20th stop resulted in the source stopping at 20 cm (7.9 in) from the catheter tip instead of the planned 20 mm (0.8 in) from the catheter tip. This was due to failure to correct the default value step size from 10 mm to 1 mm (0.4 in. to .04 in) as specified in the treatment plan. This failure was a human error in the copying of the treatment plan into the device's control console after the initial QA test. After the QA test the physician requested that the plan instruction be copied into a new plan, after the initial QA films had been approved. This procedure is required as the device manufacturer does not have a separate QA mode that allows QA without recording the QA tests as a fractional treatment. Actions Taken To Prevent Recurrence Licensee--The facility instituted a policy of comparing the console instructions to the approved QA record prior to each treatment fraction. In addition the medical physicist has made two suggestions for product improvement (1) the addition of a physics QA mode to allow the physicist to test a treatment plan without having it recorded as a treatment fraction to the patient; and (2) the placement of a display on the operator's console that graphically displays the actual position of the source within the catheter. Presently, the source position must be deduced by multiplying the current dwell stop by the step size. State Agency--The licensee's comments and suggested product improvements were forwarded to the manufacturer's regulatory affairs office. The licensee was cited for failure to verify that the specific details of the administration were in accordance with the treatment plan and the written directive. Escalated enforcement actions were taken against the licensee. This event is closed for the purposes of this report. * * * * * AS 03-05 Overexposure at Monsanto Chemical Plant in Luling, Louisiana Date and Place--June 28, 2003, to July 10, 2003; Monsanto Chemical Plant; Luling, Louisiana. Nature and Probable Consequences--The licensee notified the Louisiana Office of Environmental Services on July 10, 2003, that a radiation overexposure had occurred to members of the public due to a loss of control of a 37 GBq (1 Ci) cesium-137 (Cs-137) source that became dislodged from a damaged fixed gauge. The licensee stated that on June 29, 2003, a Monsanto maintenance technician noticed that the gauge's handle mechanism had broken off and fallen to the floor. The technician picked up the broken pieces and placed them on the Monsanto Planner's desk. The Planner was not present. The Planner returned to work on July 1, 2003, but did not discover the pieces until July 10, 2003. The Planner thought the parts were the gauge's locking mechanism and went to the area where the fixed gauge had been mounted and realized that the gauge's source was missing. After realizing that the parts contained the unshielded Cs-137 source, the licensee evacuated the building and secured the area. On July 11, 2003, a representative from a consulting company arrived on-site to perform an area survey, retrieve the source from the Planner's desk, and place the source in a secure storage area. The licensee requested that the manufacturer evaluate the failed gauge and conduct an assessment of the remaining gauges. On July 19, 2003, a representative from the device manufacturer removed the source from the Monsanto plant. It was determined that the Planner occupied the desk for approximately 50 to 60 hours and received a whole body dose of approximately 400 mSv (40 rem). This determination was based on an analysis of the Planner's schedule and work habits together with the radiation dose rate of the source. The technician who carried the source to the Planner's desk received an extremity dose of approximately 18,000 mSv (1,800 rem) to the hand. Reenactments were performed to estimate the exposures to 100 individuals employed by the plant. The estimates were determined by the time spent and proximity to the source. The highest exposure was estimated to be 740 mSv (74 rem) and the next highest exposure 180 mSv (18 rem). Altogether, 42 nonradiation workers exceeded the 1 mSv (0.1 rem) exposure limit to members of the general public. The workers are considered to be members of the public, and not radiation workers, because they are not exposed to radiation from licensed radioactive material as a normal part of their work. Others may have also been exposed at lower levels. Blood tests were performed for seven individuals, but revealed no cell changes. No one has shown signs of sickness or erythema. The licensee contacted the Radiological Emergency Assistance Center/Training Site (REAC/TS) in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and requested its assistance in having a cytogenetic blood study performed for the Planner. The licensee reported that it appears that vibration of the gauge caused the source holder and the attached source to fall. Surveys of the relevant areas and wipe tests on the source did not reveal any source leakage. Cause or Causes--Monsanto believes the cause of the incident was corrosion of the epoxy that holds the source in place. However, the end plate was held in place by one tack weld and the vibration of the gauge could have contributed to the gauge becoming dislodged. Actions Taken To Prevent Recurrence Licensee--The decision has been made to take this type of device out of service and replace it with a newer model. Until the devices are removed from service, weekly visual inspections on the devices will be performed. The Planner and Monsanto engineers/technicians were trained only to recognize the radiation posting on the device. Now the safety training includes pictures of the device, its components, and the radioactive capsule. State Agency--The licensee was cited for two violations. One violation was for the exposure of a nonradiation worker in excess of 1 mSv (0.1 rem) in a year, and the other was for creating a radiation area in an unrestricted area that exceeded 0.02 mSv (0.002 rem) in any one hour. The event was referred to the State of Louisiana's Enforcement Section. This event is closed for the purpose of this report. * * * * * [[Page 24694]] AS 03-06 Brachytherapy Medical Event at University Hospitals of Cleveland in Cleveland, Ohio Date and Place--May 13, 2003; University Hospitals of Cleveland; Cleveland, Ohio. Nature and Probable Consequences--On May 22, 2003, the Ohio Department of Health notified the NRC Operations Center of an apparent brachytherapy medical event at University Hospitals of Cleveland. The licensee reported a radiation treatment to the wrong target area during a brachytherapy prostate procedure using 59 I-125 seeds, each containing 13 MBq (0.351 mCi) for a total activity of 765 MBq (20.71 mCi). The treatment resulted in a distribution of seeds in areas other than prescribed. An unintended area of the prostate gland received approximately 1.4 Gy (140 rads) due to seeds implanted outside of the intended cancer cell site. The licensee determined that 31% of the bladder received 72 Gy (7,200 rads) and 3% of the rectum received 72 Gy (7,200 rads). Cause or Causes--Unusual anatomical aspects of the seminal/prostate vesicle under ultrasound hampered the physician's ability to correctly place the seeds fully within the intended preplan margins. In addition, seed visualization on fluoroscopy was suboptimal. Actions Taken To Prevent Recurrence Licensee--Faculty and staff will increase efforts to identify unusual prostate anatomical features during the preplanning process; specifically, they will continue to cross-check and verify seed position in relation to underlying anatomy. Corrective actions taken by the licensee include (1) the introduction of stabilization needles to assist in keeping the prostate fixed relative to the base plate, the ultrasound probe, and surrounding tissues during the localization and the seed deposition process and (2) the use of a more radio-opaque seed to facilitate positive location during procedures viewed under fluoroscopy. The patient and referring physician were notified of the medical event. State Agency--The Ohio Department of Health performed an investigation of the event. This event is closed for the purpose of this report. * * * * * AS 03-07 Diagnostic Medical Event at Christus Santa Rosa; San Antonio, Texas Date and Place--June 11, 2003; Christus Santa Rosa; San Antonio, Texas. Nature and Probable Consequences--A patient received 85.1 MBq (2.3 mCi) of I-131 instead of the prescribed dosage of 11.1 MBq (0.3 mCi) of I-131. The licensee discovered the error when the patient returned after 48 hours for a scan. The physician's written order requesting a thyroid scan for thyroiditis was misunderstood by the technologist as a request for a ``whole body image'' instead of a ``thyroid up-take and scan''. As a result, the technologist ordered the wrong dose for the prescribed procedure. Both the referring physician and the patient have been informed of the error. Cause or Causes--The medical event was caused by human error. The wrong dosage was administered to the patient because the written order for the I-131 procedure was misread by the administering technologist. Actions Taken To Prevent Recurrence Licensee--The licensee implemented revised procedures mandating that a physician review all prescriptions requiring the use of I-131 and concur on the correct dosage. State Agency--The State accepted the licensee's report and corrective actions as appropriate. This event is closed for the purpose of this report. * * * * * AS 03-08 Therapy Medical Event at Marian Medical Center in Santa Maria, California Date and Place--April 25, 2002; Marian Medical Center; Santa Maria, California. This event was not determined to be an AO until the preparation of the FY 2003 report. Nature and Probable Consequences--A patient was prescribed a therapeutic dose to the thyroid of I-131 with an activity of 296 MBq (8 mCi) but was erroneously administered 3,700 MBq (100 mCi) of I-131 instead. The error was discovered immediately and was reported to the RSO and the referring physician. After consultation, the RSO and referring physician prescribed suppressive and hydration therapy to the patient immediately in order to minimize the patient's absorbed dose. The suppressive therapy blocked the thyroid from absorbing the total dose and the hydration therapy was given to accelerate the excretion of the radioactivity from the body. The dose to the patient was calculated to be 0.03 Gy (3 rads) to the whole body and 38.7 Gy (3,870 rads) to the thyroid. No adverse health effects are expected. Cause or Causes--The State found that the medical event occurred due to human error. Two I-131 capsules had been delivered that day for two patients who were to receive iodine therapy. The capsule containing 3.7 GBq (100 mCi) was given to the first patient. The error was recognized before the second patient was treated; therefore, the second I-131 capsule was never administered. The technologist failed to check the labeling and did not verify the dose using a dose calibrator. Actions Taken To Prevent Recurrence Licensee--Corrective actions included (1) counseling the technologist to review the labels on the vial and to check the dose in the dose calibrator before administration, (2) providing in-service training to technologists on proper procedures, (3) implementing new procedures requiring the doctor to check the label to ensure the patient will be administered the correct dose, and (4) administering I- 131 to no more that one patient daily. State Agency--The State has reviewed and accepted the licensee's corrective actions. This event is closed for the purposes of this report. * * * * * AS 03-09 Gamma Stereotactic Radiosurgery Device Medical Event at Bayfront Medical Center, Inc., in St. Petersburg, Florida Date and Place--Between August and October 2002; Bayfront Medical Center; St. Petersburg, Florida. Nature and Probable Consequences--On October 31, 2002, the Florida Bureau of Radiation Control was notified that 10 patients undergoing Gamma Stereotactic Radiosurgery (gamma knife) had received a dose or doses at least 50% greater than prescribed. The prescribed treatments ranged from 12.2 to 24 Gy (1,220 to 2,400 rads) at the 50% isodose curve; however, the delivered doses to the patients ranged between 19.2 and 38.4 Gy (1,920 and 3,840 rads) at the 50% isodose curve, which is 60% greater than the treatment prescribed. The patients were diagnosed with a variety of brain disorders (vascular diseases, tumors, and functional targets such as selected nerves). A treatment plan was developed and reviewed by the physicist, and the doses were administered using a gamma knife device. On October 30, 2002, while performing a routine QA, the RSO discovered that the physics parameters in the treatment planning file had an incorrect calibration factor. Further investigation identified that the system had an older calibration date which resulted in the incorrect information that the sources had 60% less activity. The medical events were discovered during a review of all patient files. [[Page 24695]] The medical events were reported to two authorized users and three referring physicians. Notification of the medical event was provided to nine of the patients or patients' responsible guardians and they were subsequently provided a copy of the report pertinent to that patient. The authorized user does not anticipate any change in the patient's condition from the additional exposure. The licensee's authorized users noted that these doses are still within the published literature. During the notifications it was discovered that one of the patients had died as a result of the patient's disease. The licensee's authorized users stated that this patient was given palliative treatment for four metastatic lesions that were not close to any critical structure. The patient died approximately 2 months after the treatment, which was the typical period of life expectancy for a patient with this type and stage of disease. Cause or Causes--The State was not able to identify how the calibration date was changed in the treatment planning software physics protocol file. However, it is the licensee's responsibility, through an effective quality management program, to ensure that the treatment is administered with high confidence as directed by the authorized user. Actions Taken To Prevent Recurrence Licensee--The licensee has revised its quality management program to include additional daily checks to verify that the expected dose rate agrees with the dose rate shown on the treatment planning software physics protocol output to within 1%. The gamma knife manufacturer issued a notice dated November 4, 2002, to all customers utilizing the treatment planning system specific to the gamma knife used to treat these patients. The notice requested customers to check the physics protocol and to run tests to verify dose calibration factors after any treatment planning system service or software reinstallation. State Agency--The State conducted an onsite investigation that included interviews with licensee personnel involved and a representative from the device's manufacturer on November 12-13, 2002. In the licensee's medical event report, the licensee indicated the device manufacturer installed a peripheral printer on August 26, 2002. The licensee's report also indicated that on this date the source calibration information was changed. During the investigation the manufacturer stated that it was unable to recreate the occurrence. Telephone interviews were conducted with service personnel from the device manufacturer. The State also consulted with an independently contracted physicist with experience specific to the gamma knife and its treatment planning system to determine the state of the equipment. It was determined that the licensee's quality management program did not routinely verify calibration information as compared to treatment planning dose rates. State actions for this case are still pending. This event is closed for the purpose of this report. * * * * * Dated at Rockville, Maryland this 28th day of April 2004. For the Nuclear Regulatory Commission Annette L. Vietti-Cook, Secretary of the Commission. [FR Doc. 04-10045 Filed 5-3-04; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 7590-01-P ***************************************************************** 24 [NukeNet] Simulation Gives Glimpse of Nuke Terror Date: Tue, 04 May 2004 15:02:17 -0700 I suggest we all call, fax and/or meet with our Senators & Rep to express the urgency of funding and enacting the securing of nuclear materials from the former USSR and other sites. Senators & Reps can be reached at: 202-224-3121 & 877-762-8762. Web sites for them & more contact data are at: http://www.senate.gov & http://www.house.gov Such simulations should also be made of nuclear power facilities. The highly watered down report from Sandia mandated by NRC is at: http://www.mothersalert.org/crac.html http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Black-Dawn.html Simulation Gives Glimpse of Nuke Terror By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Published: May 4, 2004 Filed at 9:53 a.m. ET BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) -- European officials conducted a simulation showing how al-Qaida could kill 40,000 people and plunge the continent into chaos if a crude nuclear device were detonated outside NATO headquarters in Brussels. ``We are in a race between cooperation and catastrophe,'' said former Sen. Sam Nunn, who helped organize the exercise, dubbed Black Dawn. ``To win this race, we have to achieve cooperation on a scale we've never seen or attempted before.'' Advertisement Nunn spoke to reporters Tuesday, a day after the closed-door war games attended by top officials including the European Union's security chief, Javier Solana, and his new counterterrorism czar, Gijs de Vries. In first part of the scenario, European officials were asked how they would respond to intelligence that al-Qaida had obtained enough highly enriched uranium to build a nuclear bomb. In the second, they were confronted with computer projections and video displays illustrating the impact of terrorists exploding the device at NATO's headquarters on the outskirts of Brussels, immediately killing 40,000 people, overwhelming hospitals with hundreds of thousands of injured, spreading panic through Europe and plunging the world economy into turmoil. ``Once you are in this phase, there are no good options,'' said Michele Flournoy, senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, who helped prepare the exercise. More than 50 people from 15 countries and a dozen international organizations attended the exercise, mostly EU ambassadors but also civilian and military officials from NATO, the International Atomic Energy Agency, Interpol and other bodies. Nunn appealed for the Europeans to step up funding for increased protection at sites where weapons-grade uranium and plutonium are stored -- particularly in former Soviet states. He said preventing al-Qaida from getting its hands on such material was the best chance of stopping it from building a bomb. ``It's well within al-Qaida's operational capabilities to recruit the technical expertise needed to build a crude nuclear devise,'' he said. ``The hard part is getting the nuclear material, but we do not make it nearly hard enough.'' Nunn, a Democrat from Georgia and former chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, helped push through a $10 billion program in 1991 to destroy and safeguard weapons of mass destruction in Russia and other former Soviet republics. But he said at least 60 percent of sites still must be secured. He said European leaders should make good on pledges made two years ago as part of a $20 billion commitment by the Group of Eight to provide more funding for that program over 10 years. They should also push President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin to do more when the G-8 group of world leaders meets next month in Georgia, he said. Solana and NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer convened the exercise to show the extent of the danger. ``The threat of catastrophic terrorism is not confined to the United States or Russia or the Middle East,'' Solana said. ``The new terrorist movements seem willing to use unlimited violence and cause massive casualties.'' Nunn urged increased protection for weapons-grade uranium kept at research sites, which are often poorly guarded university facilities; accelerated destruction of tactical nuclear weapons by both the United States and Russia; enhanced international intelligence sharing; and more help to find new jobs for poorly paid Russian nuclear scientists. _______________________________________________________________________ Subscribe/Unsubscribe Here: http://www.energyjustice.net/nukenet/ Change your settings at: http://energyjustice.net/mailman/listinfo/nukenet_energyjustice.net ***************************************************************** 25 [du-list] Gulf War Solider on Hunger Strike - article Date: Tue, 04 May 2004 15:02:19 -0700 Article worth lookig at on site please circulate cheers davey http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/3682525.stm Gulf War soldier on hunger strike Alexander Izett said he was willing to die A former soldier has gone on hunger strike in an attempt to secure a public inquiry into Gulf war Syndrome. Alexander Izett said he was ready to die to force the military to "come clean" over the issue. The former lance corporal from Cumbernauld stopped eating last Saturday, on his 34th birthday, at his home in Germany. Mr Izett said he developed brittle bone disease after being vaccinated in the run-up to the Gulf War in 1990 to 1991. He took his case to the Scottish Parliament earlier this year but has become frustrated with the progress being made by MSPs. I'm now too ill to do anything else but make this final stand Alexander Izett In a letter to his local MSP Cathy Craigie, the ex-soldier said he was "heart-broken" that he could not get the treatment he needed in Scotland. He wrote: "This is a last desperate attempt in trying to force the Ministry of Defence (MoD) to tell the truth regarding my suffered illness of Gulf War Syndrome." He wrote: "I'm now too ill to do anything else but make this final stand. "I was willing to fight and die for my country. Now I am willing to die to make that country come clean and tell the truth of not only my suffering, but that of thousands of my fellow sufferers of Gulf War Syndrome." Mr Izett said he wants a UK-wide public inquiry into Gulf War Syndrome because the Ministry of Defence continues to deny the existence of the condition. Nine injections He said sufferers should be given priority on the NHS, better pension rights and compensation payments for them and their families. He said he received nine inoculations, including one for the plague and another for anthrax, whilst serving with 25 Engineer Regiment, based in Osnabreck, Germany. Veterans believe vaccinations made them ill In the event he never served in the war in Iraq because it lasted only a few weeks and he left the Army in May 1991 after serving for six years. He said he became ill in 1993 and has since broken his ribs, knee cap and shoulder and suffered from depression and stomach ulcers, leaving him unable to work. In a bid to get better treatment, he moved to Germany and he now lives in Bersenbrueck near Bremen on a 70% war pension of 72.50 a week, which he secured after a long legal battle with the MoD. Mr Izett said he would take fluids for the first 14 days of his protest. He said he was being looked after by his wife, from whom he is separated. Speaking from his home, he said: "When Tony Blair got into power he promised a full public inquiry and we are still waiting. It's all promises. I want to see action." Holyrood's Public Petitions Committee agreed to write to the Scottish Executive about Gulf War Syndrome after hearing an emotional plea from Mr Izett in March. ____________________________________________________________ Yahoo! Messenger - Communicate instantly..."Ping" your friends today! Download Messenger Now http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com/download/index.html ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ---------------------~--> Buy Ink Cartridges or Refill Kits for your HP, Epson, Canon or Lexmark Printer at MyInks.com. Free s/h on orders $50 or more to the US & Canada. http://www.c1tracking.com/l.asp?cid=5511 http://us.click.yahoo.com/mOAaAA/3exGAA/qnsNAA/FGYolB/TM ---------------------------------------------------------------------~-> To unsubscribe from this groups send a message to du-list-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com. In the body of the message type unsubscribe and send. Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/du-list/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: du-list-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ ***************************************************************** 26 [du-list] Depleted Uranium Munitions Action Plan update Date: Tue, 04 May 2004 18:51:05 -0700 "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags"> Depleted Uranium Munitions Action Plan Updated May 3, 2004 by Glen Milner Now is the time to send letters to the Department of Transportation The Depleted Uranium Munitions Action Plan is an attempt by activists across the United States to prevent the renewal of a special U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) exemption, E 9649, which allows the shipment of depleted uranium munitions without a DOT Radioactive placard displayed on the shipment. The expiration date for the exemption is June 30, 2004. The complete action plan is posted at http://www.traprockpeace.org/du_mun_action_plan.pdf or http://www.gzcenter.org/DU.htm or contact info@gzcenter.org for a copy. The following is updated information based on a discussion with Mr. Delmer Billings of the Department of Transportation on May 3, 2004: Mr. Delmer Billings, Director of the Office of Hazardous Materials of the Department of Transportation (DOT), stated on May 3, 2004 he thought he had received approximately 50 to 75 statements against the exemption renewal through e-mail and the postal service. I have been told in the past that 10 letters were considered a lot by the DOT addressing controversial exemptions. We have done well with our number of statements. Mr. Billings stated that the renewal would take place some time before June 30, 2004. If we want our statements to be considered, we have to get them in as soon as possible. Mr. Billings stated the Department of Defense has already submitted the renewal application permit for DOT-E 9649. I have asked for a copy of these documents and hope to circulate them when they arrive. Mr. Billings stated the permit has to go through technical review. He stated the DOT will probably ask for additional information from the Department of Defense. Mr. Billings stated it is possible the license will not be renewed. Mr. Billings has been helpful on the issue. He might be able to deny the exemption if we offer enough useful testimony. I asked Mr. Billings if the DOT can be asked to conduct public hearings in areas where the exemption is used. He believed this has never happened before but thought it might be possible. He is checking with his legal advisors whether the DOT could do this. I told Mr. Billings that I would send in a request today for one or more public hearings on this issue where the DOT-E 9649 exemption is used. If anyone has legal counsel who could help us request a public hearing, it might help our case. The attorney I work with is currently too busy. I will also let others know what I hear on this from the DOT. I can be contacted at gkaajm@juno.com or at (206) 365-7865. Glen Milner The following is from the original Depleted Uranium Munitions Action Plan: What to do Contact the Department of Transportation Exemptions division and ask that the DOT immediately terminate and not renew DOT-E 9649. Depleted uranium munitions should have a Radioactive placard and an Explosives placard on shipments. Depleted uranium is an extremely toxic material and much more dangerous when shipped with an explosive propellant as in the case of DU munitions. In case of a fire, first responders (local police and fire fighters) would have no idea the shipment contained radioactive material. The public has a right to know about hazardous shipments through their communities. Send correspondence regarding DOT-E 9649 to: Mr. Delmer Billings DHM-31 Director, Office of Hazardous Materials Exemptions and Approvals Department of Transportation 400 7th St. SW Washington, D.C. 20590 Fax: (202) 366-3308 E-mail: delmer.billings@rspa.dot.gov Please also (if you want) send a copy to info@gzcenter.org Please share this information with others and local officials. Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action, Poulsbo, Washington Website: www.gzcenter.org E-mail: info@gzcenter.org Traprock Peace Center, Deerfield, Massachusetts Website: www.traprockpeace.org E-mail: traprock@crocker.com Military Toxics Project, Lewiston, Maine Website: www.miltoxproj.org Email: mtp@miltoxproj.org Nukewatch, Luck, Wisconsin Website: www.nukewatch.com E-mail: nukewatch@lakeland.ws To unsubscribe from this groups send a message to du-list-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com. In the body of the message type unsubscribe and send. Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ADVERTISEMENT e3ca16.jpg e3cb52.jpg ---------- Yahoo! Groups Links * To visit your group on the web, go to: * http://groups.yahoo.com/group/du-list/ * * To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: * du-list-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com * * Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service. Attachment Converted: e3ca16.jpg: 00000001,730eabb3,00000000,00000000 Attachment Converted: e3cb52.jpg: 00000001,730eabb4,00000000,00000000 ***************************************************************** 27 [du-list] A.Q. Khan, Urenco and the proliferation of nuclear Date: Tue, 04 May 2004 15:02:13 -0700 Dear All, Today Greenpeace International presents in New York a report on Urenco entitled: A.Q. Khan, Urenco and the proliferation of nuclear weapons technology: The symbiotic relation between nuclear energy and nuclear weapons written by: Joop Boer, Henk van der Keur, Karel Koster and Frank Slijper http://www.greenpeace.org/international_en/reports/ex-summary?item_id=467162&archived=&campaign_id=3940 Greenpeace contact New York : 00 1 646 247 0849 Nicky Davies The report, which mainly describes the uranium enrichment consortium Urenco (the history of the ultracentrifuge or gas centrifuge and the way on which this technology was spreaded) as an example of the relation between nuclear energy and nuclear weapons. In there the non-proliferation treaty (NPT) plays an important role. For this reason it wil be presented during the preparation conference on the NPT, which is taken place now. To unsubscribe from this groups send a message to du-list-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com. In the body of the message type unsubscribe and send. Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ADVERTISEMENT 123bcf.jpg 123c79.jpg ---------- Yahoo! Groups Links * To visit your group on the web, go to: * http://groups.yahoo.com/group/du-list/ * * To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: * du-list-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com * * Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service. Attachment Converted: 123bcf.jpg: 00000001,261c93f9,00000000,00000000 Attachment Converted: 123c79.jpg: 00000001,261c93fa,00000000,00000000 ***************************************************************** 28 Indy Monitoring Finds Previously Unreported Radioactivity Date: Tue, 04 May 2004 15:02:04 -0700 Note community meeting at 7 PM on May 6 at Tri-Valley CAREs offices in Livermore, address below. You are invited. --Marylia The RadioActivist Campaign 7312 N.E. North Shore Rd. ~ Tel: 360.275.1351 ~ Belfair, WA 98528 CONTACTS: Norm Buske, The RadioActivist Campaign, www.radioactivist.org Cell: 360.401.0132 ~ Messages: 360.275.1351 ~ E-mail: search@igc.org Marylia Kelley, Tri-Valley CAREs, www.trivalleycares.org Tel: 925.443.7148 ~ E-mail: marylia@earthlink.net Radioactivity Found near Livermore Artificial radioactivity has been detected near the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California. An independent radiological study reports: americium-241, a long-lived, water-borne byproduct of plutonium production cesium-137, a long-lived, air- and water-borne fission product strontium-90, a long-lived, air- and water-borne fission product A grass sample collected by Flynn Road, downwind of the Laboratory, reportedly contains radioactive strontium-90 at about 20 times the reference regulatory level. The RadioActivist Campaign, an independent scientific organization, based in Belfair, Washington, conducted the study in collaboration with Tri-Valley CAREs of Livermore. The RadioActivist Campaign's director, Norm Buske, said his main concern is, "These findings show the Laboratory doesn't detect much of the radioactivity leaking into the community. It doesn't protect the public." Marylia Kelley, executive director of Tri-Valley CAREs, commented: "This is a wake-up call for Livermore and Tracy. The public needs to become informed and organized to protect our health and our environment." The RadioActivist Campaign is collecting additional samples around the Laboratory this week, to complete its radiological reconnaissance. The study is supported by a grant from the Citizens' Monitoring and Technical Assessment Fund (MTA Fund). The RadioActivist Campaign will present its first radiological findings at a community meeting on May 6th, 2004 at 7:00 p.m. at Tri-Valley CAREs office - 2582 Old First Street, Livermore. (Tel: 925.443.7148) Mr. Buske and Ms. Kelley will be available for questions, both before and after the community meeting. They will also be available to the press on May 5th, 2004 between 9:30 a.m. and 10:30 a.m. at Tri-Valley CAREs. -end- Marylia Kelley Executive Director Tri-Valley CAREs (Communities Against a Radioactive Environment) 2582 Old First Street Livermore, CA USA 94551 - is our web site address. Please visit us there! (925) 443-7148 - is our phone (925) 443-0177 - is our fax ***************************************************************** 29 [du-list] US Army Medical Command Orders DU medical management Date: Tue, 04 May 2004 18:51:03 -0700 Thanks to Doug Rokke for forwarding this memo from James B. Peake, Lieutenant General, Commanding, US Army Medical Command. It's available at http://www.traprockpeace.org/ It orders medical management for army personnel in wake of NY Daily News stories of soldiers returning with DU contamination. Iraqi's are left out. Coming tonight - thanks to Marion Kpker, selected proceedings from the Brussels Tribunal on the "Project for the New American Century." Charlie Charles Jenks, attorney at law President of the Core Group Traprock Peace Center 103A Keets Road Deerfield, MA 01342 413-773-1633; fax 413-773-7507 charles@mtdata.com http://www.traprockpeace.org ***************************************************************** 30 Las Vegas SUN: Simulation Gives Glimpse of Nuke Terror By PAUL AMES ASSOCIATED PRESS BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) - European officials conducted a simulation showing how al-Qaida could kill 40,000 people and plunge the continent into chaos if a crude nuclear device were detonated outside NATO headquarters in Brussels. "We are in a race between cooperation and catastrophe," said former Sen. Sam Nunn, who helped organize the exercise, dubbed Black Dawn. "To win this race, we have to achieve cooperation on a scale we've never seen or attempted before." Nunn spoke to reporters Tuesday, a day after the closed-door war games attended by top officials including the European Union's security chief, Javier Solana, and his new counterterrorism czar, Gijs de Vries. In first part of the scenario, European officials were asked how they would respond to intelligence that al-Qaida had obtained enough highly enriched uranium to build a nuclear bomb. In the second, they were confronted with computer projections and video displays illustrating the impact of terrorists exploding the device at NATO's headquarters on the outskirts of Brussels, immediately killing 40,000 people, overwhelming hospitals with hundreds of thousands of injured, spreading panic through Europe and plunging the world economy into turmoil. "Once you are in this phase, there are no good options," said Michele Flournoy, senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, who helped prepare the exercise. More than 50 people from 15 countries and a dozen international organizations attended the exercise, mostly EU ambassadors but also civilian and military officials from NATO, the International Atomic Energy Agency, Interpol and other bodies. Nunn appealed for the Europeans to step up funding for increased protection at sites where weapons-grade uranium and plutonium are stored - particularly in former Soviet states. He said preventing al-Qaida from getting its hands on such material was the best chance of stopping it from building a bomb. "It's well within al-Qaida's operational capabilities to recruit the technical expertise needed to build a crude nuclear devise," he said. "The hard part is getting the nuclear material, but we do not make it nearly hard enough." Nunn, a Democrat from Georgia and former chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, helped push through a $10 billion program in 1991 to destroy and safeguard weapons of mass destruction in Russia and other former Soviet republics. But he said at least 60 percent of sites still must be secured. He said European leaders should make good on pledges made two years ago as part of a $20 billion commitment by the Group of Eight to provide more funding for that program over 10 years. They should also push President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin to do more when the G-8 group of world leaders meets next month in Georgia, he said. Solana and NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer convened the exercise to show the extent of the danger. "The threat of catastrophic terrorism is not confined to the United States or Russia or the Middle East," Solana said. "The new terrorist movements seem willing to use unlimited violence and cause massive casualties." Nunn urged increased protection for weapons-grade uranium kept at research sites, which are often poorly guarded university facilities; accelerated destruction of tactical nuclear weapons by both the United States and Russia; enhanced international intelligence sharing; and more help to find new jobs for poorly paid Russian nuclear scientists. -- ***************************************************************** 31 BBC: Safety fear sub crew face probe Last Updated: Tuesday, 4 May, 2004 [Trafalgar class submarine] HMS Trafalgar has undergone 15 months of repairs Two nuclear submarine crew members are being investigated for disobedience after leaving the vessel amid fears about its safety, the government said. But reports the ship, HMS Trafalgar, was in an unfit state and that some of the crew had "mutinied" were rejected by junior defence minister Lord Bach. Eleven crew were allowed ashore last week after expressing safety fears. Trafalgar had been due to begin operational tests following minor repairs at the Faslane nuclear base. 'Stress' But before it sailed, 12 crew members expressed fears about their safety onboard. Of these, one stayed on board while the remaining 11 left the vessel and were medically examined. Rigorous tests we undertaken to validate all aspects of her seaworthiness, before sailing Junior defence minister Lord Bach The submarine's commanding officer had believed that most of the crew members concerned might be suffering from some sort of stress and wanted them to be properly examined by doctors, Lord Bach said. Five were now back on board and the remaining four had been medically downgraded for a month. The pair involved in the probe were being investigated for disobedience to orders and not for mutiny, he said. Trafalgar had been out of service since it ran aground off the Isle of Skye in 2002 during a training mission. Speaking in the Lords at question time, Lord Bach said it had since completed a major repair at Devonport in Devon. "Rigorous tests were undertaken to validate all aspects of her seaworthiness, before sailing," he said. "Recent press reports alleging that the vessel was in an unfit condition to proceed to sea were completely unfounded," he added. And he denied that any of the 11 crew who left the submarine were safety experts. Court martial Lord Bach refused to confirm claims by Liberal Democrat peer Lord Methuen that the sub had sailed with more than 250 defects, including unacceptably high radiation levels in its reactor compartment. But it was "not unexpected" for there to be minor defects following a maintenance period, he said. The Ministry of Defence confirmed last week that there had been some faults but not enough to stop the Trafalgar going to sea. And it denied there was any radiation leak. Three sailors were injured when the Trafalgar ran aground in November 2002 and an estimated 5m of damage was caused to the vessel. In March, a court martial hearing reprimanded Commander Robert Fancy and Commander Ian McGhie, both 39, for their part in causing the vessel to ground in 2002; both pleaded guilty to negligence. ***************************************************************** 32 AxisofLogic: The Truth About Depleted Uranium Weaponry: The Only Thing Depleting is Human Life [http://www.axisoflogic.com By Vincent L. Guarisco May 5, 2004, 18:41 ''The enormous gap between what US leaders do in the world and what Americans think their leaders are doing is one of the great propaganda accomplishments of the dominant political mythology.'' ~~Michael Parenti, political scientist and author Ever notice how crafty the inventors of modern weaponry working for the Pentagon are -- giving their weapons misleading names that deliberately give the opposite impression of the actual intended use? None is more Orwellian, nor more ghoulish, than "Depleted Uranium," or its even less intrusive acronym -- "DU." Since the early 80's, the all-too-aware world has sounded the alarm about depleted uranium, from a full-blown international outcry to United Nations warnings transmitted through blood-stained pages of the Geneva and Nuremberg conventions to the echos of wooden mallets feverishly slamming down in the world court at the Hague. The message is very clear - the radiation level in depleted uranium is NOT depleted, in fact, it won't be depleted to any safe degree for about two billion years. In retrospect, that's a long time to beg for forgiveness, not only for what we have done, but for what we continue to do on multiple battlefields. Fact - only approximately 14 percent of Americans at best understand the full matrix surrounding depleted uranium. Listen up - depleted uranium is a deadly weapon of mass destruction that has been banned by virtually every nation on the planet. Its illegal use by the United States breaks all existing international treaties, conventions, protocols, and articles of war. It was first introduced into our arsenal around 1983 under the leadership directives of then President George H. W. Bush, and used in the first Gulf War in Iraq to the tune of 350 tons of exploded poison. The main difference between father Bush and his son is that junior unleashed his radioactive arsenal mainly in Iraqi urban centers and civilian neighborhoods, rather than in desert battlefields. Untold thousands of Iraqi people, U.S. soldiers, and coalition troops will pay the price for generations in chronic illness, widespread cancers, long-term disabilities and genetic birth defects. Last year, the Christian Science Monitor sent reporters into Iraq to investigate long-term effects of depleted uranium. In his May 15, 2003 report, ( [http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0515/p01s02-woiq.html] ) staff writer Scott Peterson tells of seeing children playing on top of a damaged tank near a vegetable stand on the outskirts of Baghdad -- a tank that had been destroyed by armor-piercing shells coated with depleted uranium. Wearing his mask and protective clothing, Peterson pointed his Geiger counter toward the tank. It registered 1,000 times the normal background radiation. The families who survived the tragic decade of sanctions, and the recent shock-and-awe bombing campaign of Baghdad may not survive the radiated aftermath of this continued military sacrilege. The highly toxic "Highway of Death" in 1991 after Desert Storm was only a warm-up session compared to what is happening in Iraq during Enduring Freedom under George W. Bush. DU was introduced into our arsenal under the pretension that by incorporating this radioactive concoction into our munitions, it somehow makes them more armor piercing. Even if this is true, what they (the marketing department) forget to mention is that DU is perhaps the most lethal time-released agent ever to be unleashed on mankind except for maybe one exception -- its kin -- the Atom Bomb. Its poisonous effectiveness continues to take life long after the tanks, fighter jets, helicopters, Bradley vehicles, unmanned drones and troops have long gone, put simply, DU is a prolonged latent kiss of death that genetically keeps on embracing for generations to come. It's a fact that other nations will forever hold us responsible for what our government has done in our name, they fully understand that we are willing participants who supply the needed funds that build these weapons; ignorance is not an acceptable excuse for war crimes committed against humanity! This will not soon be forgotten or forgiven. Because I'm the offspring of an Atomic Veteran, and have witnessed what can happen to loved ones exposed to radiation, I hereby claim my right to rename DU --"Death Unlimited." May this horrible name always serve as a subliminal reminder whenever you hear others fraudulently attempting to reference it otherwise. The documented track record associated with DU is a hideous reality, a carcinogenic killer causing birth defects, lung disease, kidney disease, leukemia, breast cancer, lymphoma, bone cancer, and neurological disabilities, etc. When DU munitions explode, it becomes an atomized dust devil that fills the air with a blanket of radioactive poison, which travels in the wind and is easily inhaled and ingested. Then it enters the soil polluting ground water and infecting the food chain. Eventually, the uranium extends past its immediate epicenter impacting the surrounding environment. This stuff is nothing to play with. What is most astonishing is that most Americans have never even heard of DU, and few (14%) fully understand what it is, where its being used, and who is being targeted by its usage. DU is one of the Pentagon's best-kept secrets, its most widely-used genocidal weapon for wiping out entire populations quietly and covertly. Sara Flanders, co-director of the International Action Center and coordinator of the DU Education Project, writes ( [http://www.coastalpost.com/03/09/11.htm] ) that the Pentagon "continues to assert that there are no 'known' health problems associated with DU. But Army training manuals require anyone who comes within 75 feet of any DU-contaminated equipment or terrain to wear respiratory and skin protection." Although the Bush Pentagon denies publicly that DU weapons can cause sickness, it's own internal reports warn that the radiation and heavy metal of DU weapons could cause kidney, lung and liver damage and increased rates of cancer. Flanders says the Pentagon continues to deny health problems associated with DU. But Army training manuals require anyone who comes within 75 feet of any DU-contaminated equipment or terrain to wear respiratory and skin protection. Who comes up with this crazy stuff? Was DU conceived somewhere deep some murky hushed corridor of the Project for a New American century (PNAC)? Or perhaps it came from some other think tank that funded a secret scientific lab deep in the belly of the Atomic energy weapons program? What was the dialogue? Did they say---gee, let's invent a quiet nuclear weapon that can surreptitiously be deployed inside conventional weaponry to progressively eliminate our enemies (and their families) long after we are gone to help reduce future risks of blowback, retribution and revenge? They had to entertain the idea that every plan has a degree of downside -- surely they knew that by using these weapons in battle our own troops would be exposed too, in fact, even more so because they store, transport, handle and load these DU munitions into the very guns that fire them. So why do they continue with this knowing full well the danger to our own troops? Do they purposely shorten the lifespan of our soldiers to shave several costly years off healthcare and pension plans? What are we to think about all this? Are they premeditated murderers? According to Dr. Doug Rokke, U.S. Army health physicist who led the first clean-up of depleted uranium after the Gulf War, Depleted uranium is a crime against God and humanity. (Listen to Rokke's interview on the subject at [http://traprockpeace.org/RokkePressConf23July03.html] ) Rokke's own crew -- 100 employees -- was devastated by exposure to the fine dust. When we went to the Gulf, we were all really healthy, Rokke said. However, after performing clean-up operations in the desert (mistakenly without protective gear), 30 staff members died, and most others -- including Rokke himself --developed serious health problems. Rokke now has reactive airway disease, neurological damage, cataracts, and kidney problems. We warned the Department of Defense in 1991 after the Gulf War. Their arrogance is beyond comprehension, Rokke said. Unbelievable? Think again. Or better yet---ask the more than 150,000 Gulf War Vets who have filed claims after previously serving in Iraq's toxic wastelands during the first Gulf War. After doing so, they were shamelessly denied their benefits by the risk management boys who said that Gulf War Syndrome was a figment of their imagination. Heck, the masters treat their dogs better then them! Is it any wonder that Uncle Sam took away their M-16's before they returned home? With arms in hand, I would love to know which way those same gun barrels would point after receiving such crap in the VA after serving so valiantly. Conspiracy theory? Everyone can't be wrong, so answer me this---why in Sam-Hell does the Pentagon continue to use these weapons even though there is an overwhelming abundance of scientific data from around the globe to back these claims? George W. Bush justifies his continued carnage with a convenient "Saddam Hussein was a horrible dictator who gassed his own people and threatened his neighbors..." But Admiral Gene LaRocque, who fought the Cold War as a commander of a nuclear-armed carrier task force in Europe and served as a war planner in the Pentagon, says war has become a "spectator sport" for most Americans. LaRocque said: "I had been in thirteen battle engagements, had sunk a submarine, and was the first man ashore in the landing at Roi. In that four years, I thought, What a hell of a waste of a man's life. I lost a lot of friends. I had the task of telling my roommate's parents about our last days together. You lose limbs, sight, part of your life-for what? Old men send young men to war. Flag, banners, and patriotic sayings... "We've institutionalized militarism. This came out of World War Two... It gave us the National Security Council. It gave us the CIA, that is able to spy on you and me this very moment. For the first time in the history of man, a country has divided up the world into military districts.... You could argue World War Two had to be fought. Hitler had to be stopped. Unfortunately, we translate it unchanged to the situation today... "I hate it when they say, "He gave his life for his country." Nobody gives their life for anything. We steal the lives of these kids. We take it away from them. They don't die for the honor and glory of their country. We kill them." Are George Bush and his Pentagon guilty of war crimes against the people of Iraq? By unleashing this most deadly of weapons of mass destruction, are they demonstrating reckless disregard for the health and safety of American troops? You be the judge. ****************** * Vincent L Guarisco is a freelance writer from Bullhead City AZ., a contributing writer for many web sites, and a lifetime member of the Alliance of Atomic Veterans. Reprint permission is given as long as article content is not altered or changed and credit is given to the author. Replies welcomed at: [vincespainting1@hotmail.com ] [http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0405/S00032.htm] ***************************************************************** 33 Hawk Eye: Report renews claims fight [http://archive.thehawkeye.com] Monday, May 3, 2004 Site updated daily at 11 a.m. CST Iowa's U.S. senators say a recent federal report is one more step toward compensation goal. By MATTHEW LeBLANC mleblanc@thehawkeye.com Two weeks after a report was released detailing chemical and radiation threats to former nuclear weapons workers at the Iowa Army Ammunition Plant in Middletown, Sens. Charles Grassley and Tom Harkin say they remain committed to a fight to secure compensation payments for thousands of sick and dying former employees. "These workers have waited years to be compensated for workrelated illnesses," said Harkin, DIowa, in a statement issued Friday. "Their compensation is long overdue and it is high time they receive the help they need." A 58page report released April 16 by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health details several health threats related to chemicals and radiation to which thousands of former IAAP workers were exposed from the 1940s to the mid1970s. The report marks one of the final steps toward the doling out of innumerable $150,000 workers' compensation payments under a Department of Laborrun program designed to pay the medical bills of former nuclear weapons workers who contracted illnesses while working at facilities like IAAP. Iowa's senators, who have pushed for changes in the program that would make it easier for former workers to get payments, say the NIOSH report is a step in the right direction, but the document fails to accurately reflect the cancers and injuries many of the former workers now suffer with. "This, hopefully, will give somewhat of a broad sketch of what they did work in," said Beth PellettLevine, Grassley's press secretary. "Maybe it doesn't narrow it down enough." DOL program administrators have withheld funding for many nuclear weapons workers nationwide for the last four years, saying that doctors are unable to prove that their work contributed to their conditions. "Site summaries" detailing the amount of radiation and chemicals to which workers were exposed were commissioned beginning around 2000, and those reports will be used to prove the cause of the illnesses. But IAAP's summary may fall short. At several points in the lengthy and often confusing document, researchers admit that essential data necessary to make determinations on the health of the former workers is unavailable and may never be uncovered. In one paragraph, NIOSH doctors point out that an accurate inventory of radiation and chemical exposures of some former IAAP workers may never be possible because information was "generally not measured prior to 1955...because monitoring data have not been located." Work at IAAP, where workers assembled, testfired and disassembled components of nuclear weapons for about 30 years during the Cold War, has been linked to various lung diseases and cancers among workers. Grassley, RIowa, and Harkin have worked since 2000 to ensure that the workers are compensated for their illnesses. The Democratic senator on Friday pushed for IAAP workers to be included in a "special exposure cohort" that would ensure payment without an arduous dose reconstruction that determines the amount of radiation to which one was exposed during work at the plant. "As a result of inadequate documentation, many workers made sick by exposure at the plant will have difficulty receiving compensation," the statement released Friday said. "By classifying them as a special exposure cohort ... workers would be immediately automatically eligible for compensation." Only a small percentage of affected workers have received payments since the workers' compensation program was instituted in 2001. Only about 39 payments out of more than 1,600 claims filed have been paid to former IAAP employees, according to DOL statistics. The Hawk Eye 800 S. Main St., Burlington Iowa 52601 319-754-8461 Front Desk 319-754-6824 FAX 1-800-397-1708 Toll Free ***************************************************************** 34 NRC: NRC Upgrades Inspection Team Looking Into Worker Exposures at Puerto Rico Irradiator Facility News Release - Region I - 2004-02 U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION Office of Public Affairs, Region I No. I-04-026 May 4, 2004 CONTACT: Diane Screnci (610) 337-5330 Neil A. Sheehan (610) 337-5331 E-mail: opa1@nrc.gov [opa1@nrc.gov] The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has upgraded a Special Inspection Team sent to Puerto Rico early last week to look into an event at an irradiator in Puerto Rico. The upgraded team, called an Augmented Inspection Team (AIT), will continue its work at Baxter Healthcare Corporation in Aibonito, Puerto Rico. The irradiator uses radioactive material (sources) to sterilize a variety of medical devices. On April 21, the operators were lowering the source racks back into the pool when one rack jammed, leaving the radioactive source exposed. Radiation levels outside the irradiator room remained at normal levels. The NRC Special Inspection Team initially sent to follow up on this event found that failures of the limit switches led company employees to bypass certain interlocks in order to enter the irradiator. Two individuals entered the irradiator while the source was exposed. Initial dose estimates and dosimetry analysis performed for the two individuals who entered the irradiator while the source rack was exposed indicate that the individuals may have received a dose of approximately 4.1 rem to the whole body. (The annual occupation dose limit is 5 rem/year.) Additional efforts aimed at confirming the dose are ongoing. The team was upgraded to an Augmented Inspection Team because the event had the potential to cause an exposure greater than 5 rem to an individual. This heightened level of inspection includes naming a senior regional manager to lead the team, the addition of a headquarters based radiation specialist and a greater focus on fact-finding and root cause analysis. The objective of an AIT is to conduct a timely, thorough, and systematic inspection related to significant operational events at NRC-licensed facilities. The NRC team at Baxter will assess the health and safety significance of the event. Members will collect, analyze, and document factual information and evidence sufficient to determine the cause, conditions, and circumstances of the event. The team also will consider the adequacy of the companys actions during and in response to the event. A written report will be issued within 30 days of the end of the inspection. Last revised Tuesday, May 04, 2004 ***************************************************************** 35 Las Vegas RJ: LETTERS: Waste casks Monday, May 03, 2004 To the editor: In response to the April 4 letter from Allen Benson, manager of public relations for the Department of Energy: The headline, "Move the waste away from populous areas," is absurd given that since the 1987 Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository legislation, the Las Vegas valley population has moved 20 miles closer to Yucca Mountain and has almost tripled. Population has also grown at the Paiute Snow Mountain Reservation, Indian Springs and the Amargosa Valley. In the Baltimore tunnel fire, witnesses and firemen described the color of the fire, which suggested it was more than 1,475 degrees. When I took the luxurious and expensive DOE bus tour to Yucca Mountain, a video was shown of a waste cask subjected to a 1,475-degree heat aviation fuel fire for a few hours. This proves nothing. In the Baltimore tunnel fire, the cask would have been subjected to that temperature for days. Since 1987 the investigation of Yucca Mountain has been political. What is scientific about studying only one site that proves to be unsafe? Yucca Mountain leaks and is a seismic zone with a volcanic history. The 1982 waste act stated that the geology of Yucca Mountain should protect the environment. It didn't, and they changed the rules. A shoulder-held weapon, with a shaped charge, can burn a hole through tank armor. It also can breach a nuclear waste cask, thereby creating a dirty bomb. Protect our homeland, abandon Yucca Mountain and harden the waste sites against attack. Don't create thousands of terrorist targets by transporting nuclear waste during wartime. FRANK PERNA LAS VEGAS Copyright Las Vegas Review-Journal ***************************************************************** 36 Las Vegas RJ: STEVE SEBELIUS: Thanks for the issue Tuesday, May 04, 2004 No wonder state Republicans wanted to hammer out their party platform behind closed doors. They were embracing the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump with all the eroticism of a Paris Hilton video. Just when you thought the Yucca Mountain issue was dead, the Republicans come along with the defibrillator and a syringe of epinephrine. Just when the Republican rhetoric about Yucca being a nonpartisan issue pitting Nevada against the rest of the country had been repeated often enough that people were starting to believe, rural GOP members throw things into sharp relief. Just when home-state Republicans such as Gov. Kenny Guinn and Attorney General Brian Sandoval had struck a delicate balance -- disagreeing with the president on Yucca, but agreeing to co-chair his re-election committee in the state -- the party goes and agrees to play host to nuclear waste, if only in exchange for benefits. If U.S. Sen. Harry Reid was right to label as prostitutes those who would negotiate on Yucca, the Republicans who convened in Reno this weekend were just one county off. The fact is most people in Nevada agree with the Republican party platform plank -- adopted without much controversy -- that the Silver State should get some benefits for playing host to Yucca Mountain, because the dump's relentless progress is inevitable. For all the rhetoric, both serious (the state's lawsuits have a good chance of stopping the project) and stupid (Mayor Oscar Goodman personally arresting drivers of nuclear-waste laden trucks), most people in Nevada think the dump is a fait accompli. Which means those rural Republicans aren't too far off when it comes to expressing the will of the majority. In politics, that's usually a good thing. But Yucca Mountain's tortured history in Nevada is a special case, and the Republicans may have handed the Democrats a key issue in the fight to keep the state from going red on Election Day. Although the original "Screw Nevada" bill was fathered by a Democrat, Republicans have always been its foster parents. Former President Ronald Reagan signed it into law, and while Democrat Bill Clinton vetoed two attempts to speed it along, George W. Bush gave it a quantum leap forward. The rapidity of his decision -- in spite of a promise to wait for "sound science" to decide the issue -- caused Reid to call the president a liar. Bipartisan support in both houses of Congress overrode the governor, sending Nevada to court and Department of Energy planners to their highway maps. After the Bush decision in 2002, Democrats tried to paint Republicans as the party of Yucca. Republican leaders such as Guinn cramped muscles trying to keep a straight face while refusing to say the president had lied to them, and that they simply had a disagreement. But not anymore: Now the Republican Party of Nevada has reversed its rote opposition to say it will accept Yucca, pending negotiations "to minimize negative impacts from federal control and exploitation of federally managed lands in Nevada." Let's hope we don't have to wait as long as some Superfund sites for impact minimization should those "negatives" include the irradiation of people from a damaged nuclear waste cask. But once those negotiations are complete, the Republicans will prove they really are the party of Yucca Mountain. Dust off that once-lame, now-vanguard "Yucca Man" costume, Democrats. He'll probably need to make a few appearances at debates and fund-raisers this summer. Take the car to Terrible Herbst and ask them to do some extra scrubbing on that "Nevada is not a wasteland" bumper stick on the old Volvo. Everything old is new again. When Reid's presumptive Republican foe, Richard Ziser, starts throwing down about how Reid does "evil" things with his power, Reid can talk about how he's fought a delaying action against Yucca for years, work that Ziser personally and his party collectively want to throw out by asking what's in the Yucca deal for Nevada. As long as courts don't deal a death blow to the issue before Election Day, every Democrat on the ticket can contrast their party's platform -- opposing Yucca Mountain in clear terms -- with the Republicans' "what's in it for us, baby?" It may be that the Republicans have a point, and that the worst thing about Yucca Mountain is not losing in court, but being forced by courts to take the dump for nothing more than the jobs it will generate. But that's long-term reality. The blacktop between here and Nov. 3 is called short-term politics, and right now, the Republicans have given the Democrats pole position. Who says Yucca Mountain is a dead issue? Thanks to the Republicans, the classics are back for one more trip down political Memory Lane. Steve Sebelius is a Review-Journal political columnist. His column runs Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday. Reach him at 383-0283 or by e-mail at ssebelius@reviewjournal.com. Copyright Las Vegas Review-Journal ***************************************************************** 37 Las Vegas RJ: DOE shows residents nuclear waste route Tuesday, May 04, 2004 Views mixed on rail line to Yucca Mountain By KEITH ROGERS REVIEW-JOURNAL AMARGOSA VALLEY -- With mixed reviews and in a room lined with colorful displays, charts and maps, Department of Energy officials rolled out their plan Monday for building a 319-mile rail line to haul the nation's most potent nuclear waste from Caliente to a yet-to-be-built repository at Yucca Mountain. Some from this rural community of 1,500 that's closest to the mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, welcomed the plan, saying the government's vision for a river of steel rails winding through the rugged terrain of south-central Nevada is inevitable. "I think it's going to be great. It's better than trucking it," said Woodrow Peterson, 90, of Amargosa Valley. "It's going to come here anyway. Personally, I think it's good for the economy." But others in the crowd of 60, mostly from Nevada, who attended DOE's first scoping meeting on the Caliente rail corridor plan said they were skeptical the railroad would ever get built or even that it's necessary. "We're talking $4 million to $5 million per mile. It's not going to be tomorrow. It's going to be a long, costly process," said Pahrump resident Sally Devlin, 75, who said she has attended more than 100 meetings locally about the Yucca Mountain Project in the 13 years she's been tracking it. Robin Sweeney, DOE's Nevada transportation leader, said her agency hopes the public will help answer some of the questions that officials are grappling with such as whether the rail line should be fenced and how it should be routed through grazing allotments and water developments. "We're asking should this railroad be solely for DOE's use versus shared use?" Under the plan, the rail line would be built on a right-of-way between 60 and 200 feet wide that's within a mile-wide corridor of public land targeted to be withdrawn for at least 20 years. The route passes through less than 1 percent of private land, Sweeney said. Her estimates show the rail line could be built in less than 46 months for $880 million, providing 842 construction jobs. But all this depends on funding from Congress, how the process to license the repository with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission proceeds and if officials determine the railroad should be built first to transport construction materials to the repository. State officials disagree, saying the railroad task, if it can be done, will take much longer and cost more than double DOE's estimate. Robert Halstead, transportation consultant for the Nevada Nuclear Projects Agency, said a Caliente rail line has not been shown to be feasible from an engineering standpoint and DOE will have a difficult time showing there will be no significant adverse impacts and that the route is more economically desirable to build than other options. "They've picked this route for politics to pay off their debt with Caliente," he said, referring to Caliente politicians showing support for the Yucca Mountain Project in Washington. Copyright Las Vegas Review-Journal ***************************************************************** 38 BBC: Sellafield is hived off in Last Updated: Tuesday, 4 May, 2004 [Sellafield nuclear reprocessing plant] Sellafield will be one of the main assets of the new business The giant Sellafield nuclear reprocessing plant in Cumbria is being hived off by owners British Nuclear Fuels Limited (BNFL). The company is creating a new business called British Nuclear Group, in readiness for the creation of a new decommissioning agency. The new firm will have an annual turnover of almost 2bn and employ 15,000 people. The new company will also look to carry out decommissioning work abroad. From April 2005 the new operation will face competition for decommissioning work following the creation of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA), which will be based in Cumbria. Nuclear legacy As part of the Energy Bill, which still needs parliamentary approval, the majority of BNFL's assets and liabilities will transfer to the NDA. This will include responsibility for decommissioning plants at Sellafield, which state-owned BNFL has owned and operated for more than 30 years. BNFL says the new company will also look to use its 30 years of experience in decommissioning and cleaning up more than 50 nuclear facilities worldwide to secure international business. Current contracts include cleaning parts of the former Chernobyl complex in Ukraine and power plants in Bulgaria. Nuclear legacy A third strand to the work carried out by the British Nuclear Group will be to apply UK-based expertise to the US market. During the run-up to April, British Nuclear Group will be a separate part of BNFL. Lawrie Haynes, who is chief executive of British Nuclear Group, said the new company would "significantly enhance the clean-up of the nuclear legacy". "In the UK, our focus will be on delivering innovative clean-up programmes for the NDA to enable them to demonstrate value for money for the UK taxpayer." ***************************************************************** 39 Las Vegas SUN: Money OK'd for Yucca rail study By Stephen Curran LAS VEGAS SUN The Lincoln County Commission on Monday unanimously approved a plan to disperse $255,000 from the Energy Department for a three-county board to study a proposed rail corridor to Yucca Mountain. The Central Nevada Community Protection Working Group at its April 21 meeting recommended the funds for Caliente along with the counties of Nye, Lincoln and Esmeralda to gather information about the proposed 318-mile railroad. That meeting, which was closed to the public and the press, is currently the subject of an attorney general's inquiry. The decision also stipulates that, because all Energy Department funds are funneled through the Nye County Commission, the two counties sign a contract to ensure the money reaches Lincoln County in a timely manner, said Lincoln County Commissioner Tommy Rowe. The Energy Department already has an agreement with Nye County, in which Yucca Mountain is located, to receive the funds. "It came about because Nye is the site location," Rowe said. "(The Energy Department) wanted to work with one group, not four (Caliente and the three counties)." Nye and Esmeralda counties and the town of Caliente have yet to OK the plans of the three-county working group for Energy Department-funded studies of their jurisdictions. The Lincoln County study is planned to consist of three separate tasks, used to gauge resident opinion about the route, which would snake 77,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste through large plots of privately and federally owned land. Also planned is a study to examine possible economic development for the route. Such a contract would help each municipality receive its share of the benefits from the proposed project, said Spencer Hafen, chairman of the Lincoln County Commission. Rowe said the agreement would be the first of its kind among the counties. The proposed corridor has angered some ranchers along the route, who see such moves as attempts by the federal government to carve up hundreds of miles of prime grazing land. Strains on the rural county's infrastructure are among the top concerns for county leaders because workers and their families would move to the area, Hafen said. "We need to gather as much information as possible so we know the impact, good or bad," he said during the meeting at the Lincoln County Courthouse in Pioche. The Yucca Mountain project, which could bring a financial windfall for the economically depressed counties, has created a rift between rural Nevada counties and larger, more economically diverse Clark and Washoe counties. The proposed nuclear waste dump may also be responsible for a rift in the state Republican party. Gov. Kenny Guinn, Nevada's top Republican office-holder, replied at the convention that he thought it would be a mistake for the state to negotiate for benefits with the federal government. ***************************************************************** 40 Fortune.com: Intro - How Do You Feel About Nuclear Power Now? There are new reasons to build more plants--and new reasons to fear them. On the western edge of the vast Nevada Test Site, where hundreds of nuclear weapons have been detonated, lies a dusty ridgeline known as Yucca Mountain. Located in a desert region of north-south mountain ranges, it is surrounded by alkaline dry lakebeds--dead-end watersheds that don't lead to the ocean. This hydrologic isolation, government scientists say, makes these lonely areas the safest places to store waste from nuclear reactors without endangering future generations. For years, the Department of Energy has been taxing nuclear electricity at one-tenth of a cent per kilowatt-hour to pay for the construction of a permanent, high-level waste repository. So far this fund has swelled to $17 billion, and the DOE has spent several billion dollars over 20 years studying the Yucca Mountain site. Who knows how long the inquiry might have continued had not the Sept. 11 attacks left people freaked out by the thought of terrorists trying to blow up a reactor and unleash a Chernobyl on American soil? Here's an even scarier thought: Terrorists who really did their homework might go after one of the concrete "swimming pools" where spent reactor fuel is currently stored underwater at nuclear power plants. The pools can contain many times more radioactive stuff than the reactor cores themselves, and they are located outside the stout, armored domes protecting the reactors. "There are fewer barriers between that material and the public," warns David Lochbaum, a nuclear safety engineer at the Union of Concerned Scientists in Washington. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is now in a huddle deciding what needs to be done to harden the nuclear complex... Continue Contact FORTUNE | [http://www.fortunemediakit.com] Copyright 2004 Time Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction in ***************************************************************** 41 TheState.com: Nuclear waste plan draws fire May 04, 2004 Graham says proposal will ease waste disposal, but environmentalists disagree By LAUREN MARKOE Washington Bureau WASHINGTON  Environmentalists are taking U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham to task for his efforts to rewrite federal law on storing nuclear waste. Graham, R-S.C., said he wants to revise the law so the Savannah River Site can move more quickly and cheaply to dispose of its high-level nuclear waste. On Wednesday, he will introduce an amendment to the Nuclear Waste Policy Disposal Act. The huge story here is that the governor of South Carolina and state officials will allow the site to be cleaned up decades earlier, Graham said. Thats something to be proud of. But the Natural Resources Defense Council, one of the nations most influential environmental groups, said Grahams proposal would allow the federal government to ignore state officials when it comes to classifying nuclear waste. One of the results they fear is millions of gallons of high-level waste left in tanks at the Savannah River Site near Aiken. Under current law, such waste must be sent to a deep and secure nuclear waste depository  as opposed to the relatively shallow SRS site. The Department of Energy will have almost unfettered discretion to decide what high-level waste they can abandon in the water table next to the Savannah River, said Geoff Fettus, a lawyer with the NRDC. The waste in dispute is held in 51 tanks at the Savannah River Site, a Cold War-era plant that produced much of the fuel for the nations nuclear arsenal. A lawsuit, supported by the state of South Carolina, last summer halted the Department of Energys waste removal programs at SRS and other nuclear facilities around the nation. A judge agreed that the department had illegally classified nuclear waste left in the tanks as low-level. Graham wants to change the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Disposal Act so the Department of Energy  in consultation with states  legally could reclassify that waste. In South Carolina, the Department of Health and Environmental Control would have to sign off on any disposal plan that leaves high-level waste at SRS, Graham said. Take no comfort in that provision, said Fettus, arguing that Graham would have federal officials deciding in which cases state officials have a say, and in which they are not consulted. If the Department of Energy says there is no high-level waste there, he said, the state has nothing to say. But S.C. environmental officials and Gov. Mark Sanford say they are satisfied with the language Graham plans to offer his Senate colleagues Wednesday at an Armed Services subcommittee meeting. Not all the waste in those tanks will be able to be removed to a national geologic depository, said David Wilson, DHECs assistant chief of the Bureau of Land and Water Management. They can only leave the waste through a closure plan or permit issued by the state. Sanford spokesman Will Folks said the state got what it really wanted  a compromise giving it more say in how the waste is handled. Graham said his changes have a reasonable chance of passing Congress. If they do, he said, the clean-up at SRS would cost taxpayers $30.8 billion instead of $46.8 billion, and take until 2028 instead of 2051. Reach Markoe at (202) 383-6023 or lmarkoe@krwashington.com [lmarkoe@krwashington.com] ***************************************************************** 42 FT: BNFL forms nuclear clean-up company By Andrew Taylor, Utilities Correspondent Published: May 4 2004 5:00 | Last Updated: May 4 2004 5:00 British Nuclear Fuels will today announce a new stand-alone company to take advantage of a growing worldwide nuclear clean-up market worth 3bn a year. Lawrie Haynes, former chief executive of the Highways Agency, will head the British Nuclear Group. The move is part of a restructuring of state-owned BNFL, which next year hands over ownership and financial responsibility for decommissioning its Sellafield complex in Cumbria and other sites to a government-funded nuclear decommissioning authority. British Nuclear Group, which initially will continue to operate Sellafield's nuclear reprocessing businesses as well as its Magnox nuclear power stations, will bid to clean up BNFL's former sites. Potential rivals could include Bechtel, the US group, which has been advising the government on nuclear clean-up policy. Britain faces a growing clean-up bill as nuclear assets come to the end of their lives. Mr Haynes said: "In the UK our focus will be on delivering innovative clean-up programmes for the new nuclear decommissioning authority to enable them to demonstrate value for money." The new company, which will take have 15,000 employees and a 2bn initial annual turnover, will compete for international clean-up contracts. BNFL had more than 30 years' experience successfully decommissioning more than 50 nuclear facilities around the world, said Mr Haynes. Current contracts include cleaning parts of the former Chernobyl nuclear complex in Ukraine as well as power plants in Bulgaria. The group has had mixed success in the US where the British government has been trying to persuade US authorities to provide financial support to cover cost over-runs on fixed price contracts won by BNFL to clean up nuclear waste at Oak Ridge, Tennessee and for getting rid of the waste from old nuclear bomb triggers in Idaho. Mr Haynes joined BNFL as chief executive of the group's government services business division in January last year. The former British Aerospace executive was previously managing director of Microtel Communications, now Orange. Copyright The Financial Times Ltd 2004. "FT" and "Financial Times" are trademarks of the Financial Times. Privacy ***************************************************************** 43 Scotsman: Nuclear Firm Hives off Clean-Up Business [http://www.scotsman.com/] Tue 4 May 2004 By Graeme Evans, City Editor, PA News British Nuclear Fuels put its clean-up activities into a separate company today as it prepared for the creation of a new decommissioning authority. The business, called British Nuclear Group, has annual turnover of almost £2 billion and employs 15,000 people in work including nuclear reprocessing at Sellafield, Cumbria, and the decommissioning of Magnox reactors around the UK. From next April, the new operation will face competition for this work following the creation of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) – a Government body to oversee the clean-up of nuclear sites in the UK. As part of the Energy Bill, which still needs Parliamentary approval, the majority of BNFL’s assets and liabilities will transfer to the NDA. This will include responsibility for decommissioning plants at Sellafield, which state-owned BNFL has owned and operated for more than 30 years. The new company will also look to use its 30 years of experience in decommissioning and cleaning up more than 50 nuclear facilities worldwide to secure international business. Current contracts include cleaning parts of the former Chernobyl complex in Ukraine and power plants in Bulgaria. A third strand to the work carried out by the British Nuclear Group will be to apply UK-based expertise to the United States market. During the run-up to April, British Nuclear Group will be a separate part of BNFL. Lawrie Haynes, who is chief executive of British Nuclear Group, said the new company would “significantly enhance the clean-up of the nuclear legacy”. He added: “In the UK, our focus will be on delivering innovative clean-up programmes for the NDA to enable them to demonstrate value for money for the UK taxpayer.” [http://www.scotsman.com/] | ***************************************************************** 44 Newsday: EPA clears a hurdle in Cotter Corp. plan to accept Superfund waste Newsday.com [http://www.nynewsday.com] [May 4, 2004] CANON CITY, Colo. -- Cotter Corp. is one step closer to accepting Superfund waste at its uranium mill south of Canon City. Stephen Tuber, regional administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, recently notified Cotter the agency had rescinded an order against the plan. The company has tried to resolve concerns about storing the waste. Cotter still needs permission from state regulators and further approval from the EPA on details of the plan. That approval should be routine, said Jerry Powers, Cotter Corp. spokesman. "All we have to do is write to the EPA and ask them to find those areas that are acceptable to receive waste," Powers said Monday. Cotter hopes to boost revenue by processing and disposing of toxic waste. The General Atomics subsidiary wants permission to accept 470,000 tons of thorium-tainted soil from a Superfund site Maywood, N.J. Cotter has asked the state for permission to expand the amount of space it can use to impound waste from 500,000 cubic yards to 4 million. The company also announced last month that it will retool its uranium mill and resume processing ore later this year. Copyright 2004, The Associated Press | Article licensing and ***************************************************************** 45 PR Newswire: Intelligent Nuclear Clean-Up Business Launched British Nuclear Fuels plc Tuesday 4 May 2004, 8:09 GMT DARESBURY, England, May 4 /PRNewswire/ -- British Nuclear Group has today been launched as an aggressive, safe and profitable nuclear clean-up business operating in the UK, Europe and the USA. The business with an annual turnover of almost GBP2 billion, employs around 15,000 people and is underpinned by over 30 years' experience of successfully decommissioning and cleaning up more than 50 nuclear facilities around the world. British Nuclear Group, part of the BNFL Group, enters a new and competitive market as a standalone commercial business from 1 April 2005 and preparations are already well underway. British Nuclear Group's aim is to tackle head-on the challenges set by the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) while continuing to serve existing customers across the UK, Europe, Japan and the United States. During the run-up to this date British Nuclear Group will operate as a separate business group of BNFL. Chief Executive of British Nuclear Group, Lawrie Haynes said: "British Nuclear Group will significantly enhance the clean-up of the nuclear legacy, both at home and abroad. In the UK, our focus will be on delivering innovative clean-up programmes for the NDA to enable them to demonstrate value for money for the UK taxpayer. "I am absolutely confident that with the knowledge, skills and experience that British Nuclear Group has, we will deliver success for all our customers." Subject to the successful passage of the UK's Energy Bill through Parliament the majority of BNFL's UK assets and liabilities will transfer to the NDA on 1 April 2005. British Nuclear Group is organised into three business areas: Management Services, Project Services and BNFL Inc. Management Services, comprising the Sellafield site, the Magnox operating and decommissioning power station sites and the Capenhurst site, will be responsible for the delivery of accelerated site clean-up and operations. Project Services will act as a sub-contractor to Site Licensee Companies while continuing to provide value for money technical solutions to current and future customers. BNFL Inc. will apply UK-driven solutions in the US commercial marketplace while sharing with the UK specific skills drawn from vast experience of operating in the US clean-up market. British Nuclear Group has its own brand identity and logo - an evolution of the BNFL logo - which reflects pride in its nuclear heritage. The logo includes the strap-line 'intelligent nuclear clean-up' to underline the new focus on this activity. Notes to Editors 1. The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) As part of its Energy Bill, the Government intends to establish the NDA on 1 April 2005. The NDA will provide the overall management and direction for clean-up at nuclear sites in the UK. The clean-up programme is expected to take more than 100 years to complete. The NDA will develop a coherent clean-up strategy, making the best use of available skills and resources. It will work in partnership with site licensees, who will be responsible for doing the work, and with the nuclear regulators. The NDA will have four guiding principles: - Focus on getting the job done to high safety, security and environmental standards. - Best value for money consistent with those standards. - Openness and transparency. - Development of competitive markets for clean-up contracts, to drive innovation and ensure the best possible use of available skills. The NDA is not intended to carry out clean-up work itself. The NDA will take ownership of all the sites and associated liabilities. It will place contracts with site licensees, currently BNFL, Magnox Electric and UKAEA, who will be responsible for the clean-up programme at each site. Site licensees will need to meet relevant regulatory requirements and will be encouraged through competition for contracts to drive forward the clean-up work effectively and efficiently. The separation of strategy and planning from implementation is intended to enable the NDA to focus on the strategic management of the clean-up programme. More details about the NDA are available from the Department of Trade and Industry website at www.dti.gov.uk. Distributed by PR Newswire on behalf of British Nuclear Fuels plc PR Newswire Europe Ltd. Ludgate House, 245 Blackfriars Road, London SE1 9UY [info@prnewswire.co.uk] ***************************************************************** 46 KLAS: State GOP Adopts 'Plank' on Nuclear Waste May 4, 2004 Before and after the President approved Yucca Mountain as the nations nuclear repository, major political Republicans and Democrats were united in the fight against it. But now some party members are ready to cash in. klastv.com (May 3) -- The battle over Yucca Mountain took center stage at the State Republican Party over the weekend. Delegates adopted a controversial "plank" that appears to take a stance in support of the nuclear waste dump. Before and after the President approved Yucca Mountain as the nations nuclear repository, major political Republicans and Democrats were united in the fight against it. But it is clear that some party members are ready to cash in on the Yucca Mountain project after the weekends republican State Republican Party Convention. Especially rural counties like Nye County, which are always strapped for money. The proposed party plank read: "We encourage the State of Nevada to begin negotiating with the federal government and other entities to minimize any negative impacts and maximize any benefits in the event that Yucca Mountain becomes a reality." The final draft changed the latter part to read: "To minimize negative impacts from federal control and exploitation of federally managed lands in Nevada." GOP Sate Party Chairperson Earlene Forsythe defends the fact that they decided against using the words "Yucca Mountain". "They want to be able to say, look if you're going to come in to use our land for anything, then Nevada wants to have the right to say you need to pay for that." Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nevada said, "I don't particularly agree with this platform of the Republican Party. Now this is America and certainly they're entitled to give their perspective I'm behind Brian Sandoval, our Attorney General, as were in the court battle. We've taken it out of the Halls of Congress and now we're fighting it in the Halls of Justice." State S. Dina Titus, D-Clark County said, "Once you agree to negotiate, you have no bargaining power left -- they know you'll take it. And with the way Congress is going these days and the Presidency, you can't count on Washington to deliver on any benefits they promise, because the money may not be there and we'll be one of the one's to get struck from the list." Republican leaders say it's too early to waive the white flag. Governor Kenny Guinn, the state's top party official, said when you are at you're weakest point, you don't want to start negotiating. He and others are behind the state's six lawsuits in court against the Yucca Mountain Project. [http://www.worldnow.com] All content Copyright 2000 - 2004 WorldNow and KLAS. All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 47 KRNV: DOE takes plan for rail route to Nevada nuclear dump on the road May 4, 2004 AMARGOSA VALLEY, NV, May 4 The Energy Department has begun its whistle-stop tour showing rural Nevada communities its plan to build a new rail line across the state from Caliente to a planned national nuclear waste dump. The proposal got mixed reviews last night at the first meeting in Amargosa Valley, a farming community 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas and a few miles west of Yucca Mountain. Another meeting's set for tonight in Goldfield. A third is Wednesday night in Caliente. In Amargosa Valley, 90-year-old Woodrow Peterson calls the Yucca Mountain project inevitable, and says it could help the local economy. 75-year-old Sally Devlin says it'll take a lot of money and a lot of time to build a 319-mile rail line from Caliente around the Nevada Test Site to Yucca Mountain. A DOE offical says the rail line could cost 880 million dollars and take less than four years to build. The state's fighting the entire Yucca Mountain project, and says the rail plan is seriously flawed. (Copyright 2004 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.) [http://www.worldnow.com] All content Copyright 2001 - 2004 WorldNow and KRNV. All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 48 KRNV: Nevada Republicans differ over nuclear dump May 4, 2004 The mixed message from last weekend's state Republican convention over a nuclear waste dump in Nevada continues as key GOP candidates file for office and outline opposing views on the project. Congressman Jim Gibbons said in filing for a fifth term that he's adamantly opposed to the dump project despite arguments that the state should soften its opposition and negotiate for federal dollars and other benefits. But Republican Richard Ziser, who filed against Senator Harry Reid, said negotiations would be valuable as long as there's no threat to Nevadans' health, welfare or safety. Assembly Minority Leader Lynn Hettrick went a step further as he filed for office, saying he just toured the Yucca Mountain dump project for the first time and came away, "absolutely convinced there's no significant risk." Gibbons, Governor Kenny Guinn, Attorney General Brian Sandoval and Congressman Jon Porter, all Republicans, counter that negotiating would be a mistake. (Copyright 2004 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.) [http://www.worldnow.com] All content Copyright 2001 - 2004 WorldNow and KRNV. All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 49 KLAS: Amargosa Valley Plans for Nuclear Waste May 4, 2004 Oscar Palomo, Photojournalist Amargosa Valley Plans for Nuclear Waste Project managers for the transportation of nuclear material to Yucca Mountain set up informational booths and then citizens can give testimony one-on-one to a court reporter. More>> (May 3) -- If Yucca Mountain becomes the nation's nuclear waste dump, it's going to mean high-level waste will have to be brought there from nuclear power plants around the country. On Monday, the debate started about how to transport that waste. The route the waste shipments will take depends in part on what you have to say. Monday night is the first public hearing about the transportation of that waste. Eyewitness News was is in Amargosa Valley -- where the first public meeting was held. They expected 50 people and saw a lot more. These public hearings give everyone the chance to ask questions one-on-one with Yucca Mountain Project managers. And the results from five of these meetings will set the exact rail route for nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain. The Department of Energy already selected the Caliente Corridor. Three of the public input hearings are in areas that support the shipment of nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain. Bob Halstead serves as transportation advisor for Nevada. He says the DOE's process of getting public input does work. Project managers for the transportation of nuclear material to Yucca Mountain set up informational booths and then citizens can give testimony one-on-one to a court reporter. A large part of the people in the room at Amargosa Valley accept that the waste is coming. So they wanted to use the forum to get as much money as possible from the Caliente Corridor. That means working with the DOE for private uses of the rail line they may build. The public opinion window closes June 7th. The exact route within the Caliente Corridor for the rail will be selected by February when the Department of Energy finished the environmental impact study. [http://www.worldnow.com] All content Copyright 2000 - 2004 WorldNow and KLAS. All Rights Reserved. For more information on ***************************************************************** 50 Rocky Mountain News: Flats papers unsealed Regulators get chance to review long-secret grand jury documents By Ann Imse, Rocky Mountain News May 4, 2004 State and federal regulators are being offered the chance to review 65 boxes of long-secret Rocky Flats grand jury documents. The U.S. Attorney's office, which oversaw the 1989 grand jury, says the papers are unlikely to provide evidence of secret contamination at the nuclear weapons plant. Still, the Colorado Department of Health and Environment plans to pore over the documents to be sure, said Steve Gunderson, who oversees the Rocky Flats cleanup for the state. He also plans to meet at Rocky Flats with authors of a recently published book on the grand jury and some of their sources, so they can point out sites to be checked for contamination. U.S. Attorney John Suthers on Monday offered to let state and federal regulators review documents collected during the Rocky Flats grand jury investigation 15 years ago. They would look for information on any previously unknown contamination that needs to be cleaned up. That grand jury found evidence of environmental crimes, but some of its findings have never been revealed, due to rules on grand jury secrecy. Suthers said if there is any question about the legality of allowing such a review, he would seek a federal judge's authorization. Suthers' offer covers only documents collected during the investigation - not secret grand jury testimony, transcripts or deliberations, said Suthers' spokesman, Jeff Dorschner. Many of the documents came from the regulators themselves, so it's unlikely there will be any surprises. "No one in our office believes that there is any evidence of contamination at Rocky Flats contained in Justice Department files, which is not otherwise known to the multiple agencies that have been responsible for the cleanup," Suthers said in response to a request from Congressman Mark Udall to open the files to regulators. In addition to the state, the federal Department of Energy and Environmental Protection Agency are being offered access to the documents, Suthers said. The federal government is spending billions of dollars to clean up the former nuclear weapons plant. However, officials worry that they could miss an unknown area of contamination on the 6,000-acre site. Rocky Flats and regulators have studied aerial photos of the sprawling plant looking for disturbed ground, and have examined decades of plant operations records in an effort to discover spills or dumping. "Workers who worked there a long time ago say they know of things buried out there. I wish they'd come forward," said Victor Holm, chairman of the Rocky Flats Citizens Advisory Board. Udall wrote to Suthers at the request of several people, including Wes McKinley, who was foreman of the Rocky Flats grand jury in 1989. Some members of the grand jury wanted criminal indictments against individuals at Rocky Flats and the Department of Energy. But the U.S. attorney at the time, Mike Norton, disagreed and instead reached a plea agreement for a fine of $18.5 million with Rockwell International, which then ran the plant. McKinley co-authored a book repeating his accusations that the Justice Department covered up environmental crimes at the site. A federal judge recently declined to allow him and other grand jury members to waive grand jury secrecy and tell their story. imsea@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-892-5438 ***************************************************************** 51 Albuquerque Tribune: Guests of labs see visa trouble [http://www.abqtrib.com By James W. Brosnan [brosnanj@shns.com] Scripps Howard News Service WASHINGTON - Russian scientists, invited to speak at Albuquerque's Sandia National Laboratories, have had their visas denied or delayed by the U.S government, Sen. Jeff Bingaman said Monday. The visa problems have "resulted in the delay or cancellation of threat reduction activities" at Sandia and forced other non-proliferation events to be moved to Western Europe, the Silver City Democrat said in a letter to Secretary of State Colin Powell and Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge. In the last 28 months Sandia officials invited 305 scientists from Russia or the former Soviet Union to the United States to talk about how to keep their nuclear weapons, material or technology out of the hands of terrorists. The U.S. government turned around and kept 86 of them from coming by delaying or denying the visas, Bingaman said. His letter was released as part of briefing Monday by the American Chemical Society for congressional staff on the problems foreign scientists and students are having entering the United States since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Sandia spokesman John German confirmed Bingaman's numbers. The scientists' visas are being delayed because they are suspected technology thieves, not terrorists. In 1998, the United States began "Visas Mantis" checks to prevent the entry of persons who might attempt to export U.S. technology. A laudable goal, said James Langer, vice president of the National Academy of Sciences. But in 2000 there were just 1,000 "Mantis" checks; last year there were 20,000, he said. "It's clearly being used as a way to turn down visa applications or at least delay them a long time," said Langer. Auditors for the General Accounting Office reported earlier this year that "Mantis" checks now take an average of 67 days and they found some which lasted more than 120 days. Some foreign scientists in the United States are afraid to go home because they know their re-entry will be delayed. Langer said he knows one Ukrainian scientist who decided he could not go home to attend his mother's funeral. A top official at the Department of Homeland Security acknowledged the visa delays, but said they should be reduced once a Terrorist Screening Center is fully up to speed. The center was established at the Justice Department last year to combine the databases of numerous government agencies. Previously, names had to be sent for review to several different agencies, some of which could only check files by hand, explained Stewart Verdery, assistant secretary of for border and transportation security, policy and planning at the Department of Homeland Security. Verdery said he would have to learn more of the facts before responding directly to Bingaman's letter about the Sandia program. But if the United States is inviting those scientists here, they should be a priority for visas, he said. The Albuquerque Tribune. ***************************************************************** 52 Tri-City Herald: PNNL chosen for hydrogen research This story was published Tuesday, May 4th, 2004 By John Trumbo Herald staff writer As much as $15 million to help with hydrogen storage research is being directed to the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland by the U.S. Department of Energy. The money would be part of a $30 million grant to be shared between the Richland lab and the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico as a new national Center for Chemical Hydrogen Storage. The goal is to find a safe and efficient way to carry enough hydrogen to support a fuel-cell-powered vehicle on a 300-mile trip. Instead of toting compressed hydrogen in tanks, which is too bulky, researchers are looking to solid chemical compounds such as metal hydrides that can hold and release hydrogen on demand. Project leader Mike Thompson said PNNL's powerful computers and expertise in theoretical chemistry and catalysis will be important in solving the challenge. Using supercomputers at the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory will help researchers identify which compounds have the most potential for hydrogen storage, Thompson said. PNNL and Los Alamos teaming as center for chemical hydrogen storage will be the third such DOE "center of excellence" in the nation dedicated to development of hydrogen-powered vehicles. Researchers at PNNL will collaborate with those at Los Alamos, but not be co-located. The research team includes scientists, engineers and partners from Pennsylvania State University, the University of Alabama, the University of California at Davis, the University of California at Los Angeles, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Washington and private research companies, including Millennium Cell, Intematix, U.S. Borax and Rohm and Hass. The funding for as much as $30 million over five years is part of the DOE's larger $150 million National Hydrogen Storage Project. PNNL is a DOE lab with 3,800 employees and a $600 million annual budget. Ohio-based Battelle has managed the lab since it was started in 1965. 2004 Tri-City Herald, Associated Press &Other Wire Services ***************************************************************** 53 AP Wire: DOE to continue funding radiation monitoring this year | 05/04/2004 | Associated Press ATLANTA - The U.S. Department of Energy will continue funding Georgia's monitoring program to determine if harmful radiation is leaking from the Savannah River Site near Augusta, a state official said. Carol Couch, director of the state Environmental Protection Division, said Monday that the federal agency will provide $300,000 through the end of this year for the monitoring. The state, she said, will begin to seek alternative funding for next year and beyond. The DOE operates the 198,000-acre site, which sits directly across the Savannah River from Georgia. The state monitors for radiation in the waters of the river and in the air at seven stations between Augusta and Savannah. It also oversees testing for radiation in milk, crops, soil and river sediment. The DOE provided $1.8 million over the past three years to set up the state agency's monitoring program. Georgia had counted on $700,000 to operate the program in 2004. State officials said the DOE had led them to believe the funding would continue for several more years. "We granted this additional funding to ensure continued operations of monitoring through the end of the calendar year," said Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham. "We believe this is a reasonable request." The Savannah River Site used to produce radioactive plutonium for hydrogen bombs. All five reactors have been permanently shut down but the site still harbors millions of gallons of high-level radioactive waste in underground storage tanks. --- Information from: The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, http://www.ajc.com [http://www.ajc.com] Ledger-Enquirer.com | About the Real Cities Network | ***************************************************************** 54 U.S. Newswire: Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham to Outline Major Initiatives to Improve DOE Facility Security; Speech on Friday, May 7 11:45 a.m. 5/4/2004 4:45:00 PM To: Assignment Desk, Daybook Editor Contact: James Guisti (Savannah River) 803-952-7684; or Joe Davis, 202-586-4940, both of the U.S. Department of Energy News Advisory: U.S. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham will outline major changes to the Department of Energy's security policies in a speech on Friday, May 7 at 11:45 a.m. EDT in a major speech at the Department's Savannah River Site in Aiken, S.C. The Department of Energy and its National Nuclear Security Administration are responsible for ensuring the safe and secure posture of America's nuclear weapons stockpile and facilities. Facilities affected by the security changes will include, Lawrence Livermore National Lab (Calif.), Los Alamos and Sandia National Labs (N.M.), Pantex Weapons Plant (Texas), Savannah River Site (S.C.), Y-12 National Security Complex (Tenn.), and Department facilities in Idaho and Nevada. The Department of Energy has established a listen-only, toll- free phone line for the media to hear Sec. Abraham's speech. This is a password protected line and space is limited. The number is 1-877-288-4427. For access to this line, please contact Hope Williams at 202-586-5806 or e-mail at . Only credentialed media will be granted access to the phone line. Name, affiliation, and contact information must be included with your request. E-mail, noting your affiliation, is the preferred method. Abraham will address DOE security officers and managers attending the 32nd Annual Security Police Officer Training Competition being held at the Savannah River Site. Speech location: St. Mary's Education Center, 118 York St. SE, Aiken, S.C. http://www.usnewswire.com/ [http://www.usnewswire.com/] / 2004 U.S. Newswire 202-347-2770/ ***************************************************************** 55 Times-News: Office offers employees lump sum to retire www.magicvalley.com The Times-News Tuesday, May 4, 2004 Twin Falls, Idaho IDAHO FALLS -- The U.S. Energy Department's Idaho operations office is now offering as much as $25,000 each to employees who will retire early at the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory. The agency intends to shift its skill mix from cleanup specialists to nuclear energy experts, in line with the INEEL's transition. "Nobody wants a reduction in force -- they're ugly," said Warren Hallum, a department human resources adviser. Layoffs also cost more in the long run when severance packages and other payments are factored in, he said. Instead, the agency intends to let as many as 60 employees retire early with a lump-sum payment based on a person's years of work for the federal government and his or her age. About half of the Idaho office's 308 employees are 50 or older. But many will not qualify for the maximum payment, and some payments could be as low as $3,000, spokesman Tim Jackson said. So far, about half a dozen employees have taken the offer, which began two weeks ago, and were scheduled to leave by the end of April. Another 20 have expressed an interest in leaving by the end of June. Employees have until Jan. 3, 2005, to request a buy-out and leave Copyright 2004, Lee Publications Inc. Magicvalley.com is an on-line division of The Times-News, published daily at 132 W. 3rd St., Twin Falls, Idaho 83301 by Lee Publications, Inc., a subsidiary of Lee Enterprises. ***************************************************************** 56 Oak Ridger: No deal on CROET land swap Story last updated at 11:56 a.m. on May 4, 2004 DOE CHIEF: 'I've got to decide what, if anything, we can do about it. We legally transferred that property.' By: by Paul Parson and Stan Mitchell Oak Ridger staff An impasse has been reached in an under-the-radar effort that might have resulted in the Community Reuse Organization of East Tennessee essentially swapping a 37-acre parcel of ecologically important land for a much larger piece of developable property. Discussions on the land swap have been taking place for just over a year between CROET and the Advocates for the Oak Ridge Reservation - a natural resources preservation group that the Department of Energy authorized to participate in the effort. As a result of the stumbling block on the land deal, AFORR has requested that Gerald Boyd, manager of DOE's Oak Ridge Operations office, intervene on the issue. Boyd, however, suggested that his hands may be tied. "I've got to take a real hard look at this," Boyd said Monday afternoon. "I've got to decide what, if anything, we can do about it. We legally transferred that property." The 37 acres in question is located at the west end of the Horizon Center industrial park, which DOE transferred to CROET in 2002 after many years of work toward the goal. CROET recently proposed transferring the title of Horizon Center to the Oak Ridge Industrial Development Board - a move that could be a financial boon to both groups. "I'm going to be talking to a variety of folks to see what can be done to get their (CROET and AFORR) negotiations back on track," Boyd said. 'But, I don't know that I can interject myself here at all." In April 2003, AFORR initiated discussions with Lawrence Young, CROET's president, in hopes of exchanging other DOE lands for the 37 acres known as Development Area 4, located near the Oak Ridge K-25 site. AFORR officials said they believed that it shouldn't be difficult to identify other DOE-controlled lands of equivalent development value that could be swapped for Development Area 4. In hopes of working out a land swap, AFORR officials met with Young on a total of 10 occasions, and at least three of these meetings also involved representatives from the city of Oak Ridge. In addition, CROET representatives reportedly met separately with city personnel on Sept. 16. The press was apparently not invited to these meetings. The land swap discussions reportedly ended with CROET maintaining that the only exchange acceptable to them would be one that gives them a good portion of developable land in what is known as ED-3. For several years, the 450-acre Parcel ED-3, also located near the K-25 site, has been considered a prime piece of real estate for development into a business and light industrial park. AFORR said CROET had informed them that the developable portion of the requested tracts had about three times the acreage - nearly 100 acres - of the 37-acre parcel in Horizon Center. AFORR considers the CROET request to be unreasonable. However, Young disputes the amount of developable land, saying that figure is around 67 acres. He also said it was important to remember the discussions between AFORR and CROET were not between the two partners necessary for a land transfer. "Whatever land swap was available, it was simply to gain AFORR's support for said swap," Young said. "This would have still been an agreement between the Department of Energy and Horizon Center. The reason that AFORR was engaged in this process is because they had indicated that they would either support or withhold their support for such a transfer." On Friday, AFORR sent a letter to Boyd essentially asking the DOE chief to intervene on the land issue. "AFORR is frustrated to have reached this stalemate in our efforts to conserve this small but ecologically significant 37-acre tract and its access," AFORR's letter stated. "We believe that CROET's lack of flexibility in this matter has placed DOE in a vulnerable legal position with regard to [the National Environmental Policy Act]." The reason, according to AFORR's letter, is that neither DOE's original environmental assessment on the land nor the document's addendum for the transfer of Parcel ED-1 gave realistic consideration to the environmental impacts for developing or creating access to the 37 acres. "Development of access to Development Area 4 would include converting nearly two miles of a narrow one-lane DOE gravel patrol road to a multi-lane paved roadway and installing three bridges across streams," AFORR's letter stated. "The patrol road traverses ecologically valuable habitat for threatened species." AFORR also argued that the land could serve as a connecting corridor between the Black Oak Ridge and McKinney Ridge portions of a conservation easement. In addition, it is a designated and popular Oak Ridge public greenway and is adjacent to an important wetland, AFORR officials noted. "Also, we note that DOE is still in the embarrassing situation of having deeded to CROET a second right of way corridor to Development Area 4 ," stated AFORR's letter to Boyd. "This transfer directly contravenes the ["finding of no significant impact"] for the transfer, and when AFORR and others brought this situation to your staff's attention in the summer of 2003, all agreed that it needed to be reversed. At that time, your staff had hoped to process this reversal as part of the same real estate transaction that would have implemented the land exchange being negotiated by AFORR and CROET." In light of the impasse in negotiations, AFORR maintains that DOE must "without delay" withdraw the transfer on what some officials are calling an "illegal" right of way. Given that CROET is considering deeding the Horizon Center to the Industrial Development Board, AFORR stated in its letter to Boyd that this transfer issue needs to be resolved quickly. "AFORR is disappointed and frustrated by the failure of our efforts to conserve this small but significant parcel and its access," the organization's letter stated. "We urge DOE to pursue an exchange that resolves the department's NEPA vulnerability and satisfies both environmental and economic interests of the public. We still believe that a 'win-win' solution is achievable." ***************************************************************** 57 Colorado Daily: Flats soil sampling explained, questioned [http://www.coloradodaily.com By RICHARD VALENTY Colorado Daily Staff Writer The former Rocky Flats nuclear weapons production site could become open for human recreational activities as a National Wildlife Refuge in the foreseeable future, and some citizens are asking the natural question "how will anybody know that Flats radiation levels will be low enough for safe human activity?" The Rocky Flats Coalition of Local Governments (RFCLOG) is a group composed of representatives from Boulder, Boulder County and five other jurisdictions with holdings or boundaries adjacent to Rocky Flats. At Monday's RFCLOG meeting, the group discussed soil sample procedures used to detect levels of radiation. "It's imperative that sample results accurately reflect the actual levels of contamination on the ground," said David Abelson, RFCLOG executive director. Currently, Kaiser-Hill Corporation is under contract with the U.S. Department of Energy to perform a Flats site cleanup, scheduled for completion by Dec. 15, 2006. Lane Butler, Kaiser-Hill manager of environmental restoration programs, briefed RFCLOG Monday on Kaiser's soil sampling operations. Samples have been taken from both the "industrial" areas, where weapon production facilities were located and some of the buildings await demolition, and "buffer zones" that lie within the Flats site but outside the production areas. According to Kaiser statistics, there are currently 10,718 sample locations on the Flats site. Also, Kaiser has collected 134,937 total samples, conducted 419,443 total analyses and has 5,916,445 analytical records. A map of the Flats site provided by Kaiser Monday was divided into 30-acre grids showing sample locations. According to Butler, radiation levels in buffer zone grids are determined through "compositing" - mixing five surface soil samples from a grid into a single container and analyzing the soil in that container. Any future Wildlife Refuge recreation, like horseback riding or biking, would take place in the buffer zones. Erin Hamby from Boulder's Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center questions if Kaiser's buffer zone testing will be sufficient. "Having only five samples taken from a 30-acre grid is not enough to capture 'hot spots,'" Hamby told the Colorado Daily in an interview Monday afternoon. Hamby also pointed to a study released in 1999 by Risk Assessment Corporation (RAC), where principal investigator John Till, Ph.D., wrote, "Soil samples should not be composited, rather, individual soil samples should be analyzed for radionuclide contaminants." According to John Corsi, Kaiser-Hill spokesperson, current buffer zone tests show very low soil radiation levels. Corsi said the 1996 Rocky Flats Cleanup Agreement (RFCA) called for soil radiation levels of 650 picocuries per gram, but "the community" felt that figure was too high and asked DOE to sponsor an independent study to determine safe soil levels. Corsi said DOE funded the $500 million RAC study, and Till determined that a range of "20-80 picocuries per gram" would be a safe level for a "resident rancher" who lived and worked on the site. According to Corsi, buffer zone test results should be much lower than 20-80 picocuries per gram. "We haven't got all the data back, but when it comes back, I am certain it will show that we will be very near background radiation levels in the buffer zones, certainly less than one picocurie per gram," said Corsi. Hamby remains concerned that test workers could be digging too deep into the earth, thus "diluting" the test results. According to Hamby, one of the main concerns about soil contamination is that recreational activities could stir up dust from the upper "3-5 centimeters" of the soil, and "resuspend" radioactive particles into the air and water. Corsi said Environmental Protection Agency standards state that Superfund sites like Rocky Flats must be cleaned to a "risk range" where between 10 to the negative fourth power (1 in 10,000) and 10 to the negative sixth power (1 in 1,000,000) people could develop one "excess cancer." "We chose a target right in the middle, 10 to the negative fifth, which is very conservative for a Superfund site," said Corsi. "The Rocky Mountain Arsenal is at 10 to the negative fourth." According to Butler, sample tests will continue throughout the cleanup, and the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment along with the EPA can check Kaiser's work. "We collect many quality assurance samples with every actual sample, and the State of Colorado can independently check samples for quality assurance and quality control," said Butler. [http://coloradodaily.com ***************************************************************** 58 Google News Alert - nuclear Date: Tue, 04 May 2004 16:33:17 -0700 (PDT) PLOT to Recognize Israel as Only Nuclear Power in Middle East: ... Tehran Times - Tehran,Iran ... Prime Minister Ariel Sharons recent visit to the United States, he and US President George W. Bush agreed that the United Nations nuclear watchdog should ... NATO nuclear attack simulation The Australian - Australia THE world is not paying sufficient attention to the threat of a possible nuclear attack carried out by extremists, experts said today after running a ... See all stories on this topic: CHINA, Pakistan Sign $600 Million Deal For Building Nuclear Power ... Voice of America - Washington,DC,USA A government statement says that officials from the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC) and the China National Nuclear Corporation singed the deal in ... See all stories on this topic: TVA aggressively expanding its nuclear capacity AL.com - Birmingham,AL,USA ... for competition in the electric power market, TVA board member Bill Baxter said Monday, and is aggressively working to expand its nuclear generating capacity ... See all stories on this topic: AN Advanced Nuclear Weapons Program Behind Iran s Sham ... American Daily - Stow,OH,USA As the EU big three - France, Britain, and Germany - are playing footsy with Tehran over its nuclear program, new revelations last week confirmed that Irans ... See all stories on this topic: INTELLIGENT Nuclear Clean-Up Business Launched PR Newswire UK (press release) - UK British Nuclear Group has today been launched as an aggressive, safe and profitable nuclear clean-up business operating in the UK, Europe and the USA. ... See all stories on this topic: EQUIPMENT containing nuclear material accidentally damaged in ... MLive.com - MI,USA (AP) Emergency crews went on alert Tuesday when equipment containing a small amount of nuclear material was accidentally damaged at a construction site. ... See all stories on this topic: S. Korean Delegation Visits N. Korea to Discusss Nuclear Program Voice of America - Washington,DC,USA ... delegation from South Korea has arrived in Pyongyang, vowing to press for a softening of North Korea's position in the stand-off over its nuclear development. ... See all stories on this topic: NORTH Korea Pledges Not to Sell Nuclear Weapons to Terrorists Donga - Seoul,South Korea Senior members of the North Korean regime promised never to sell nuclear materials to terrorists including al-Qaeda, reported the British daily newspaper ... See all stories on this topic: COLORADO'S Weapons of Mass Destruction: The Rocky Flats Nuclear ... Democracy Now - USA We speak with Colorado University professor Len Ackland about the former plutonium-processing Rocky Flats nuclear bomb making plant. ... See all stories on this topic: This daily-once News Alert is brought to you by Google News (BETA)... - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Remove this News Alert: http://www.google.com/newsalerts/remove?s=92d1672a1b037a07&hl=en Create another News Alert: http://www.google.com/newsalerts?hl=en Try Google News: http://news.google.com/ ***************************************************************** 59 Mojo: Hydrogen Hopes [MotherJones.com] [Mother Jones] [News] [http://www.motherjones.com/toc/2004/05/index.html] Can hydrogen live up to its promise as the clean fuel of the future? --> [Daily Mojo] May 4, 2004 Last Tuesday was a good day for fans of a hydrogen-fueled future. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham announced federal funding of $350 million for research projects to establish a hydrogen economya follow-up to Bushs statement in the State of the Union address last year that he would set aside $1.2 billion for hydrogen study, making hydrogen the clean fuel du jour--and California's Gov. Schwarzenegger announced plans to build a "hydrogen highway" of 200 fueling stations in California by 2010. Both Schwarzenegger and the federal government are preparing for a transition to hydrogen-fueled cars, perhaps [http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hydrogen28apr28,1,3434389. story?coll=la-headlines-business] . [http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4789193/] that by 2010 he also hopes to see at least 500,000 hydrogen-fuel vehicles on California roads: "These stations will be used by thousands of hydrogen-powered cars and truck and buses. This starts a new era for clean California transportation. These vehicles produce no emission and no smog. They will clear the air and get rid of the smog that is hanging over our cities." Hydrogen, when split by devices called fuel cells, produces electricity and water vapor, but no pollution. If the cells are stacked by the dozens or hundreds, they can make enough electricity to power, say, a car. [http://www.fuelcellsworks.com/Supppage572.html] say its wide use will reduce air pollution and greenhouse-gas emissions while lessening the U.S.'s dependence on foreign oil. But there are some real concerns about practical hurdles like storage, infrastructure, and production. Some scientists say a hydrogen economy is a more remote prospect than its advocates acknowledge. A study put out by the National Academy of Sciences in February [http://www4.nationalacademies.org/news.nsf/isbn/0309091632?OpenD ocument] that in the best case scenario, the transition to a hydrogen economy would take many decades, and any reductions in oil imports and carbon dioxide emissions are likely to be minor during the next 25 years. The Energy Department announced [http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4846212/] in grants Tuesday to more than 130 research institutions and companies, including the Big Three automakers, to put hydrogen-fueled cars on the road by 2015. Private companies will almost match that, to the tune of $225 million. The grants represent nearly one-third of $1.2 billion that President Bush has pledged for hydrogen research, most of it to be distributed over five years. Meanwhile, [http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2004/04/20 /state1629EDT0115.DTL] says he wants to create a network of stations in California, within six years at an estimated cost of $100 million. He did not explain where all the money would come from, but did express hopes for some of the federal funding. California already has [http://www.thecarconnection.com/index.asp?n=156,175&sid=175&arti cle=7101] . Schwarzenegger said: "Hundreds of hydrogen fueling stations will be built. And these stations will be used by thousands of hydrogen-powered cars and trucks and buses. This starts a new era for clean California transportation." In many ways, hydrogen is a promising fuel source. The flammable, colorless, odorless gas is the most abundant element on Earth, potentially an endless source of clean energy. When used to power a car, it produces no tailpipe emissions. According to C. Lowell Miller, a director in the Department of Energy's Office of Fossil Energy, an [http://www.courier-journal.com/business/news2004/05/02/E1-hydro0 2-7294.html] may not be that far off. Iceland already has a bus system driven by hydrogen fuel and Europe, he says, is soon to follow. The most serious argument against hydrogen, though, is that the process for extracting it may cause more pollution than gas-run cars, some experts say. Because hydrogen is bound up in molecules of water or hydrocarbons like natural gas, a great deal of energy must be used to unbind it. The most common method for "mining" hydrogen involves treating natural gas with steam. But with rising prices and declining domestic reserves, natural gas is not the most ideal candidate. Electricity can separate hydrogen atoms from oxygen atoms in water, but this method is expensive and dirty. Hydrogen may also be extracted from coal. Notes a press release put out with the NAS report: Currently, producing hydrogen from coal -- a large domestic resource -- results in emissions of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. To reduce these emissions, large-scale production of hydrogen from coal would need to incorporate captured and stored carbon, the report says. The DOE program should accelerate development and early evaluation of carbon capture and storage technologies and further investigate production methods that do not result in emissions, such as wind, the sun, and nuclear heat processes. Most of the hydrogen fueling stations planned in the next few decades will use fossil fuels as the source for hydrogen. The Sacramento Bee writes about the [http://www.sacbee.com/content/opinion/story/9118146p-10043752c.h tml ] associated with hydrogen: "Over the long term, environmentalists who support hydrogen research and development rightly insist that government should be looking toward renewable sources of hydrogen, such as waste from dairy cows, other agricultural waste, wood chips and, eventually, the most abundant and obvious source, water." "But even water is not necessarily a clean energy source. Stripping hydrogen molecules from water requires large amounts of electricity. If the electricity is generated by dirty coal-fired power plants or nuclear power, a strategy the Bush administration seems to be pushing, the environmental benefits would be substantially diminished, if not lost entirely." [http://www.sacbee.com/content/opinion/story/8931101p-9857320c.ht ml] , acting assistant secretary of energy during the Clinton administration and the author of "The Hype about Hydrogen: Fact and Fiction in the Race to Save the Climate," argues that because it will take several decades before technology allows for a way to generate hydrogen cheaply and cleanly, hydrogen won't make sense as a fuel source until at least 2035. He writes in the Sacramento Bee that "absent multiple major scientific breakthroughs, hydrogen cars will remain inferior to the best clean cars available today, gasoline-electric hybrids such as the Toyota Prius, in virtually every respect: cost, range, annual fueling bill, convenience and safety." Romm also mentions that the U.S. Department of Energy will not make a recommendation about whether fuel cell cars can be commercialized until 2015. Referring to Schwarzeneggers desire to build 200 fueling stations, he argues that "California can wait 10 years to see if hydrogen cars aren't a dead end before making major investments." Romm concludes that the push for hydrogen fuel is unlike any other government effort before. And that might not be a good thing: "Creating a hydrogen economy is unlike any previous government effort, such as the Apollo program or interstate highway system. As the [National Academy of Sciences panel in March] noted, "In no prior case has the government attempted to promote the replacement of an entire, mature, networked energy infrastructure before market forces did the job. The magnitude of change required ... exceeds by a wide margin that of previous transitions in which the government has intervened." - Deborah 2003 The Foundation for National Progress ***************************************************************** NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 this material is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. For more information go to: *****************************************************************