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NUCLEAR POLICY
1 Las Vegas SUN: Blair Braces for Iraq Intelligence Report
2 US: Las Vegas SUN: Report: War Rationale Based on CIA Error
3 BBC: CIA slated over Iraq intelligence
4 Evening Times: CIA facing rap over spy dossier on Iraq -
5 Guardian Unlimited: Iraq errors were CIA's fault, says Senate
6 UK Independent: Butler to single out intelligence chiefs for blame i
7 Korea Herald: Changes in North Korea since Kim Il-sung's death
8 Korea Herald: [EDITORIAL]Roh's fatal mistake
9 Mainichi Interactive: Normalization talks with Pyongyang back on age
10 US: [CMEP] press release - Court overrules Yucca radiation
11 U.S. Firm Said Among Nuclear Black Market
12 US: UCS: New Cases of Scientific Abuse by Administration Emerge
13 US: UK Independent: The energy giants who flew too close to the sun
14 UN Atomic Agency Chief Hails Israeli Aim For Middle East Free Of Nuc
NUCLEAR REACTORS
15 US: NRC: Notice of Availability of Environmental Assessment and Find
16 US: NRC: Exelon Generation Company, LLC, Quad Cities Nuclear Power
17 US: NRC: Florida Power and Light Company, et al., St. Lucie Plant, U
18 Daily Yomiuri: Safety system shuts down Niigata nuclear reactor
19 St. Petersburg Times: EU wants Armenia to close its nuclear power pl
20 US: News 10: Regulating safety at nuclear power plants
21 US: TheDay.com: Sen. Peters' Sinecure
22 Australian: PM casts doubt on new reactor
23 US: NRC: NRC to Meet With Detroit Firm on Apparent Transportation an
24 US: NRC: NRC Finds No Significant Environmental Impacts From Extende
NUCLEAR SAFETY
25 Using Depleted Uranium Is Omnicide
26 [du-list] ? New investigation report from Dutch Plane crash
27 [du-list] NPRI October Conference includes DU items
28 US: [NukeNet] 6th Anniversary Of Dr Bertell's Signed, Notorized
29 US: [du-list] I Eat Depleted Uranium for Breakfast
30 Las Vegas SUN: U.S. Firm Said Among Nuclear Black Market
31 Bellona: Radiation source found in Urals
32 Bellona: Nuclear officials talk about what isn’t there
33 US: Pasadena Star-News: Perchlorate: No need to panic
34 Economic Times: BARC chargesheets 3 technicians -
NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE
35 [PUBCIT_PRESS] Yucca Mountain lawsuit; Meat Safety
36 [NukeNet] VICTORY in Yucca Mountain lawsuit
37 US: nationalgeographic: In New Jersey, Radioactive Cleanup Nears End
38 Las Vegas SUN: Court rejects Nevada's opposition to Yucca
39 US: DenverPost.com: Request to dump uranium-mill waste near Canon Ci
40 Las Vegas SUN: Nevada officials declare victory after Yucca Mountain
41 Las Vegas RJ: Berkley backs choice for vice president
42 Las Vegas RJ: Nevada Democrats rally with anti-Yucca theme
43 Las Vegas SUN: Nevadans told Edwards has changed Yucca stance
44 Las Vegas SUN: Panel to evaluate state's challenge of Yucca database
45 Las Vegas SUN: Yucca in for long delay; radiation standard too low
46 RGJ: Federal officials use stall against Yucca protest
47 RGJ: 3 hearing officers named for Yucca Mountain filings
48 US: chillicothe gazette: Issues rise with nuke waste removal costs -
49 US: Brattleboro Reformer: Spent fuel pool again focus of missing rod
50 US: Salt Lake City Weekly: Nuclear Hot Potato
51 US: CCDR: Cotter request denied
52 US: Waste News: Nevada, U.S. both claim win as court rules on nuclea
53 US: PE.com UPDATE: Perchlorate bill passes House subcommittee
54 US: PE.com: House panel OKs bill to clean up water
55 US: PE.com: System offered to clean water
56 Senator Harry Reid (D-NV: COURT HANDS NV MAJOR VICTORY
57 Public Citizen: Victory in Yucca Mountain Lawsuit;
NUCLEAR WEAPONS
US DEPT. OF ENERGY
58 States to Sue Energy Dept. Over Hanford
59 Guardian Unlimited: States to Sue Energy Dept. Over Hanford
60 DOE: Office of Arms Control and Nonproliferation; Proposed Subsequen
61 DOE: Office of Science; Basic Energy Sciences Advisory Committee
62 Las Vegas RJ: Nuclear agency admits security lax in gun incident
63 Hanford News: Washington, Oregon plan to sue DOE
64 Oak Ridger: Documentary receives award at Secret City Film Festival
65 Tri-Valley Herald: Energy secretary signs 'the machine'
66 WATE: President Bush to visit ORNL on Monday
67 Oak Ridger: Bush to visit Oak Ridge
68 Oak Ridger: Forklift incident spurs use of barriers, signage
69 Oak Ridger: Educating the next generation of scientists
70 amarillo.com Pantex hits the pits in repackaging
71 lamonitor.com: Story on warhead flaw said wrong
72 Paducah Sun: Suit now proceeds on cleanup challenge by plants neighb
73 Oak Ridger: Your View: Remembers advocate of workers' rights
OTHER NUCLEAR
74 [du-list] DU in the news - 10th July 04
75 SF Chronicle: Dr. Thomas Mancuso, longtime advocate for workers' hea
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FULL NEWS STORIES
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1 Las Vegas SUN: Blair Braces for Iraq Intelligence Report
By ED JOHNSON ASSOCIATED PRESS
LONDON (AP) -
An inquiry into the quality of British intelligence has
concluded that claims that Saddam Hussein's Iraq could rapidly
launch chemical or biological attacks were "poorly sourced and
vague," a newspaper reported Friday.
Intelligence on the speed of such attacks was expected to be a
key point in a potentially damaging report by retired civil
service chief Lord Butler to be issued on Wednesday.
Butler was appointed on Feb. 3 by Foreign Secretary Jack Straw
to head the five-member committee looking into the intelligence
claims.
The statement that Iraq could launch on notice of just 45
minutes was made four times in an intelligence dossier published
by Prime Minister Tony Blair's government in September 2002, as
it built its case for war in Iraq.
According to London's Evening Standard newspaper, Butler will
conclude the 45-minute claim "should never have been published
because it was poorly sourced and vague." The newspaper did not
disclose the source of its story.
Butler, the newspaper reported, also concluded that the dossier
should have included vital caveats on the limits of British
intelligence on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.
The government long ago acknowledged it had just one source for
the 45-minute claim, but two of Britain's most senior
intelligence officials have defended the credibility of the
source.
John Scarlett, head of the Joint Intelligence Committee which
produced the September dossier, said the source was a senior
Iraqi military officer.
Sir Richard Dearlove, outgoing head of Britain's foreign
intelligence service MI6 told the inquiry the officer was
"certainly in a position to know this information."
In Washington, the Senate Intelligence Committee said the
Central Intelligence Agency fell victim to "group think" which
assumed that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction - an
assumption shared even by some governments which opposed the
war.
"This was a global intelligence failure," committee chairman,
Sen. Pat Roberts, said on Friday.
There was no immediate reaction in Britain to the U.S. report.
Before the invasion of Iraq, Blair was adamant that Saddam had
stockpiles of fearsome weapons.
"What I believe the assessed intelligence has established beyond
doubt is that Saddam has continued to produce chemical and
biological weapons, that he continues in his efforts to develop
nuclear weapons," he wrote in a foreword to the September 2002
dossier.
However, the Iraq Survey Group's hunt for evidence has proved
largely fruitless, and Blair has retreated. "I have to accept
that we have not found them, that we may not find them," Blair
told a parliamentary committee on Tuesday.
Butler's inquiry aims to establish why there was such a gap
between "intelligence gathered, evaluated and used by the
government" and the lack of evidence on the ground in Iraq.
It has focussed on the "structures, systems and processes" of
how intelligence was gathered "rather than on the actions of
individuals," leading many commentators to assume that key
government and security officials will not be singled out for
criticism.
The 45-minute claim received extensive media coverage. It became
the subject of an intense row between the government and the
British Broadcasting Corp., after the BBC said Blair's office
knew it was false and inserted it against the wishes of
intelligence chiefs.
Three previous inquiries have cleared Blair's government of
acting dishonestly or misusing the intelligence made available
to it.
But more concerns have been raised about the 45-minute claim.
Parliament's Intelligence and Security Committee said in a
September 2003 report that the claim was potentially misleading,
as the dossier failed to make clear it referred to battlefield
munitions, not missiles.
The committee also said intelligence reports failed to reflect
"the uncertainties and gaps in the U.K.'s knowledge about the
Iraqi biological and chemical weapons."
--
*****************************************************************
2 Las Vegas SUN: Report: War Rationale Based on CIA Error
By KATHERINE PFLEGER SHRADER ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON (AP) -
In a scathing indictment of the nation's intelligence services,
a Senate report concluded Friday the CIA provided false and
unfounded assessments of the threat posed by Iraq that the Bush
administration relied on to justify going to war.
Following release of the findings of a yearlong inquiry by the
Senate Intelligence Committee, the panel's Republican chairman
said Congress might not have approved the Iraq war had lawmakers
known the truth.
The committee's top Democrat said he had no doubt: The
resolution authorizing war would not have gotten sweeping
approval if the threat had been understood.
The report, which was highly critical of departing Director
George Tenet, said the CIA kept key information from its own and
other agencies' analysts, engaged in "group think" by failing to
challenge the assumption that Iraq had weapons of mass
destruction and allowed President Bush and Secretary of State
Colin Powell to make false statements.
"Most, if not all of these problems, stem from a broken
corporate culture and poor management" - which won't be fixed
simply by giving the agency more money or people, the report
said.
Although senators from both parties agreed in harshly
criticizing the CIA, Democrats and Republicans clashed over
whether Bush administration officials had pressured intelligence
analysts to overplay the Iraq threat. Democrats said there was
pressure; Republicans said there were tough questions but no
inappropriate influence.
Democrats also said the investigation should have examined
whether the White House had twisted the intelligence it received
- a second phase of the probe that probably won't be finished
until after the November elections.
Sen. John Kerry, the Democratic presidential candidate, said,
"The fact is that when it comes to national security, the buck
stops at the White House, not anywhere else."
The report follows more than two years of criticism of the
intelligence community since the Sept. 11 attacks, including
calls by people inside and outside the government for major
changes in the structure of the intelligence community that was
created after World War II.
Bush called the report a useful accounting of intelligence
agencies' shortcomings. He defended the decision to go to war,
however, as well as his prewar assertions about Saddam's
government and weapons of mass destruction.
"We haven't found the stockpiles, but we knew he could make
them," Bush said during a campaign stop Friday in Kutztown, Pa.
"The world is better off without Saddam Hussein in power."
Tenet has resigned and leaves office Sunday. His temporary
successor, deputy John McLaughlin, said Friday the agency is
learning from its mistakes and has already made changes,
including adding reviews from a "devil's advocate" perspective
to all future national intelligence estimates.
"We get it," McLaughlin said at a rare news conference at CIA
headquarters. "Although we think the judgments were not
unreasonable when they were made nearly two years ago, we
understand with all we have learned since then that we could
have done better."
Bush has not yet named a permanent successor for Tenet. The
report's across-the-board criticism of the CIA could indicate
that any nominee from within the intelligence community would
have a tough time winning confirmation by the Senate.
The report was yet another blow to the credibility of both the
Bush administration and U.S. intelligence agencies. The
committee concluded that key assertions used to justify the Iraq
war - that Saddam Hussein had chemical and biological weapons
and was working to build nuclear weapons - were either wrong or
overblown.
"In short, we went to war in Iraq based on false claims," said
the committee's top Democrat, Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia.
He said the Senate would not have authorized that war with
three-quarters of lawmakers approving "if we knew what we know
now."
The panel's Republican chairman, Pat Roberts of Kansas, said he
didn't know if Congress would have approved the war had it known
the report's findings. He said that without the immediate
weapons threat, military action against Iraq still could have
been justified on humanitarian grounds but that the battle plan
might have been different from a full-scale invasion.
The report left some questions unresolved, including differences
between a classified 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq
and a version made public.
The public report, for example, said Saddam was trying to build
unmanned aerial vehicles that could potentially attack the
United States with biological weapons - a contention that was
not in the classified version of the national intelligence
estimate.
The CIA could not provide an explanation for that change, said a
Democratic committee staff member, briefing reporters on
condition of anonymity.
As they scrutinized Iraq before the war, intelligence analysts
either ignored or discounted conflicting information because of
their assumptions that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, the
report said. Intelligence collectors also worked from that
assumption and set out to find the weapons, it said.
"This 'group think' dynamic led intelligence community analysts,
collectors and managers to both interpret ambiguous evidence as
conclusively indicative of a WMD program as well as ignore or
minimize evidence that Iraq did not have active and expanding
weapons of mass destruction programs," the report concluded.
For example, speculation that the presence of one specialized
truck could mean an effort to transfer chemical weapons was
puffed up into a conclusion that Iraq was actively making
chemical weapons, the report said.
Analysts concluded that Iraq had a mobile biological weapons
program based mainly on the since-discredited claims of one
Iraqi defector code-named "Curveball." The report said American
agents did not have direct access to Curveball or his
debriefers, but the source's information was expanded into the
conclusion that Iraq had an advanced and active biological
weapons program.
According to Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., a CIA official
wrote to a subordinate who had raised questions about the
source: "Let's keep in mind the fact that this war's going to
happen regardless of what Curveball said or didn't say, and the
Powers That Be probably aren't terribly interested in whether
Curveball knows what he's talking about."
Roberts, Rockefeller and other lawmakers have called for changes
in the intelligence community, and Bush said he looks forward to
working with Congress on ideas. But McLaughlin urged caution
against disruptions while the nation is in the middle of the
anti-terror fight.
"Some sort of reordering of the boxes here will not bring you
perfection in the intelligence business," he said.
---
On the Net:
The report is available at: http://www.intelligence.senate.gov
[http://www.intelligence.senate.gov]
--
*****************************************************************
3 BBC: CIA slated over Iraq intelligence
Last Updated: Friday, 9 July, 2004
[Republican Chairman Pat Roberts (left) and Democrat
Vice Chairman Jay Rockefeller (right) present the report]
The report highlights multiple intelligence failures
US senators have severely criticised the country's intelligence
agencies, in particular the CIA, for the quality of their pre-war
information on Iraq.
In a scathing report, the Senate Intelligence Committee says the
CIA overstated the threat posed by Iraq.
As a result, the US and its allies went to war based on "flawed"
information.
However, the report concluded there was no evidence the Bush
administration had tried to coerce or put pressure on officials
to adapt their findings.
Global failure
Most of the key judgements about Iraq's WMD programmes "were
either overstated or were not supported by the raw intelligence
reporting," said the committee's chairman, Republican Senator Pat
Roberts.
SENATE REPORT: KEY POINTS
Assumptions about Iraq wrong, not supported by evidence
Analysts failed to say when intelligence was uncertain
Managers failed to question analysts' assumptions
CIA had no human sources in Iraq since 1998
CIA withheld intelligence from other agencies
The intelligence community suffered a "collective group-think",
which led analysts to presume that Iraq had weapons of mass
destruction (WMD) programmes and to interpret ambiguous evidence
as conclusive, Senator Roberts said.
But the failings were not America's alone.
"It is clear that this group-think also extended to our allies,
and to the United Nations, and several other nations as well, all
of whom did believe that Saddam Hussein had active WMD
programmes. This was a global intelligence failure," he said.
The report said there was no evidence that analysts came under
pressure from the White House to deliver certain findings,
although some Democrats dissented from this conclusion.
We have fostered a de hatred of Americans in the Muslim world Jay
Rockefeller Vice Chairman
The issue of whether the Bush administration exaggerated the case
for war in Iraq is being investigated separately in a report most
likely to be released after the presidential election on 2
November.
The Democrat vice-chairman of the committee, Senator Jay
Rockefeller, stressed his party's regret that the whole matter
had not been addressed in one inquiry.
He said many members of Congress would not have authorised the
war if they had known then what they knew now.
"Tragically, the intelligence failure set forth in this report
will affect our national security for generations to come," he
said.
"Our credibility is diminished; our standing in the world has
never been lower. We have fostered a deep hatred of Americans in
the Muslim world, and that will grow."
Responding to the report, President Bush promised to make sure
the intelligence agencies were reformed.
Speaking on the campaign trail in Pennsylvania, he also stressed
that the world knew Saddam Hussein had been trying to acquire
nuclear, biological and chemical weapons.
"We haven't found the stockpiles, but we knew he could make
them," Mr Bush said.
CIA defence
The US report comes just five days before Lord Butler publishes
the results of his inquiry into the quality of British
intelligence on Iraq.
CIA director George Tenet, who steps down on Sunday, was
criticised for not personally checking President Bush's 2003
State of the Union address.
This contained the allegation - which first surfaced in a UK
report and since discredited - that Iraq had been trying to buy
uranium from Niger.
The deputy director, John Laughlin, said people should not
conclude from the Senate report that there were huge failings
within the CIA.
He told reporters "it is wrong to exaggerate the flaws or leap to
the judgment that our challenges with pre-war Iraq weapons
intelligence are evidence of sweeping problems."
*****************************************************************
4 Evening Times: CIA facing rap over spy dossier on Iraq -
[online@eveningtimes.co.uk]
GEORGE TENET
Copyright © Newsquest (Herald & Times) Limited. All Rights
THE CIA is expected to be strongly criticised today for its
flawed analysis of the alleged threat posed by Iraq's weapons of
mass destruction in the run-up to the Gulf War.
The report to the US Senate on intelligence failures leading up
to the invasion of Iraq will conclude its analysts made mistakes
but claims they were not pressured to change their views to
support arguments for the attack, officials said.
In an impassioned defence of the government, outgoing CIA
director George Tenet said: "No one told us what to say or how to
say it."
But some intelligence experts told the committee, whose report is
released today, that they felt a need to emphasise one piece of
evidence over another.
Several Democratic lawmakers, who are to give an "alternative
view" of the evidence, will point out that this was a form of
pressure.
Some Democrats believe that a hawkish atmosphere backing an Iraq
invasion contributed to analysts operating in an environment of
pressure.
Republicans and Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee
have said their report on pre-war intelligence is a tough
critique of the intelligence agencies' performance.
They place significant blame on the CIA for flawed estimates on
Iraq and, one official said, the report accuses the agency of not
being rigorous or careful in its assessments.
Officials say the year-long review examines the intelligence
community's objectivity and reasonableness as it formed various
estimates on Iraq.
Their work looked at the government's claims about Iraq's mobile
weapons labs, chemical and biological weapons and nuclear
programme.
Senate Armed Services chairman John Warner, a Republican who is
also a member of the Intelligence Committee, encouraged restraint
in drawing final conclusions until the work of the Iraq Survey
Group, which is hunting for the former Iraqi regime's alleged
weapons of mass destruction, is complete.
Democrats wanted to see the investigation consider other issues,
including how senior Bush administration officials may have
misrepresented the analysis provided by the nation's intelligence
apparatus to make the case for war.
The report comes as President George Bush decides who to bring in
to replace Mr Tenet, who leaves his post on Sunday.
And it also comes as the US Navy investigated whether the
abduction of a marine in Iraq could have been a hoax.
Corporal Wassef Ali Hassoun, 24, who was earlier feared to have
been beheaded, has been picked up in Beirut by US officials.
As Corporal Hassoun was found safe, an Iraqi guardsman and five
US soldiers were among nine people killed when insurgents
detonated a car bomb and destroyed a military HQ in Samarra, 60
miles from Baghdad.
*****************************************************************
5 Guardian Unlimited: Iraq errors were CIA's fault, says Senate
[UP]
Julian Borger in Washington Friday July 9, 2004 The Guardian
[http://www.guardian.co.uk]
A Senate report due to be published today will blame the CIA for
the Bush administration's unfounded claims about Iraq's weapons
of mass destruction, and will not address White House
responsibility for the debacle.
The report by the Senate intelligence committee will admonish the
outgoing director, George Tenet, and CIA analysts who, one
Republican senator claimed yesterday, had made "wholesale
mistakes" in their collection and processing of intelligence.
Saxby Chambliss said flawed assessments were passed to Mr Tenet
and found their way into the official National Intelligence
Estimate in October 2002, which accused Saddam Hussein of
stockpiling chemical and biological arms while developing nuclear
ones.
"There were a number of situations where unreasonable conclusions
were reached," Mr Chambliss told the Knight Ridder news agency.
His office said yesterday he stood by his remarks, in which he
argued the White House could not be blamed for believing
intelligence it received from the CIA.
"I would say it's a total vindication of any allegations that
might ever have been made about what the administration did with
the information."
But the administration's critics yesterday described the report
as incomplete. Carl Levin, a Democratic senator on the
intelligence committee, said it was "only half the picture"
because of the insistence by Republicans on the panel that
examination of the White House's role be dealt with in a separate
report, to be published after the election.
Mr Levin produced a de-classified CIA finding that found "no
credible evidence" behind reports that the lead September 11
hijacker, Mohamed Atta, held a meeting with an Iraqi agent in
Prague in April 2001.
The senator said the vice-president, Dick Cheney, had claimed
before the war that it "was pretty well confirmed" the meeting
had taken place, and more recently that the reports had "never
been refuted".
The CIA statement, Mr Levin said, proved "that it was the
administration, not the CIA, that exaggerated the relations
between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida."
The report is published as Mr Tenet steps down after seven years.
In a farewell address to staff yesterday he said: "In the end,
the American people will weigh and assess our record - where
intelligence has done well and where we have fallen short. My
only wish is that those whose job it is to help us do better show
the same balance and care."
Vincent Cannistraro, a former chief of operations in the CIA's
counter-terrorist unit, said Mr Chambliss's conclusion was not
supported by the facts. "People would have to forget an awful lot
of history to make that wash. It ignores the fact that [the Bush
administration] had already taken a strategic decision to go to
war, before they asked for the intelligence."
He said repeated questioning of reports downplaying Iraq's
arsenal and links with al-Qaida by Mr Cheney and other senior
officials led to an atmosphere in which the CIA leadership and
analysts "bent over backwards" to find evidence that conformed to
the administration's views.
Mr Cannistraro said the root of the intelligence fiasco lay in
the CIA's lack of spies inside Iraq and its reliance on exiles
and defectors, one of whom was later denounced by the CIA as an
Iranian agent.
The US homeland security secretary, Tom Ridge, said yesterday
al-Qaida was planning a "large-scale" attack aimed at disrupting
the US elections.
Email julian.borger@guardian.co.uk
[julian.borger@guardian.co.uk ]
Useful links
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Arlington national cemetery [http://www.arlingtoncemetery.org/]
Washington monument [http://www.nps.gov/wamo/]
The Pentagon [http://www.defenselink.mil/pubs/pentagon/]
Capitol Steps political satire [http://www.capsteps.com/]
Washington crossword
[http://americanpresident.warnerbros.com/xword.html]
Washington DC homepage [http://dc.about.com/?once=true&]
[UP]
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004
*****************************************************************
6 UK Independent: Butler to single out intelligence chiefs for blame in WMD inquiry
By Andrew Grice and Colin Brown
09 July 2004
Lord Butler of Brockwell is to defy the Government by including
personal criticism of Britain's intelligence chiefs in his
inquiry into the information they gathered about Saddam Hussein's
weapons before last year's war.
The Independent has learnt that the Butler inquiry has sent
letters to three crucial witnesses outlining draft sections of
next week's report that will criticise them directly.
They are John Scarlett, chairman of the Joint Intelligence
Committee (JIC) which assessed the evidence published in the
Government's dossier on Iraqi weapons in September 2002; Sir
Richard Dearlove, the head of MI6, which gathered the material,
and Lord Goldsmith, the Attorney General, who is believed to have
amended his original legal advice on the eve of the war to give
the go-ahead to military action.
Such criticism of Mr Scarlett would be a setback for Tony Blair,
who promoted him to head MI6 from August without waiting for the
Butler committee. Critics said the appointment was a "pay off"
for Mr Scarlett giving his blessing to the dossier, which claimed
Saddam could deploy weapons of mass destruction within 45
minutes.
The JIC is bracing itself for criticism that it allowed its work
to be used for "political" purposes. Evidence presented to the
Butler inquiry suggested the intelligence supporting the
45-minute claim was "too thin" and vague.
Mr Blair has made clear he does not want to the inquiry to
"scapegoat" anybody, and was hoping that Lord Butler, the former
cabinet secretary, would draw general lessons rather than "name
and shame" individuals. But the disclosure that the letters have
been sent provides the clearest possible sign that the inquiry
report, to be published next Wednesday, will include personal
criticism. Normally, people to be criticised by such an inquiry
are given the chance to make last-minute representations.
Downing Street is said to be "very worried", fearing the report
will criticise the intelligence services for not making rigorous
checks about its information on Iraq's arsenal before it was
included in the dossier, but also that it will criticise
ministers' use of the material.
Although ministers have pledged there will be no "witch hunt"
when Lord Butler reports, there are signs that a "blame game" may
break out between politicians and spymasters. One line of defence
Mr Blair is considering is to say he was not shown the raw
intelligence on which the claims in the dossier were based. Mr
Blair has already said he did not know the "45-minute warning"
related to short-range rather than long-range weapons.
Michael Mates, the Tory MP and a member of the Butler committee,
hinted at such a "blame game" during a Commons debate on the
security services. He said: "It's the misuse of intelligence
which undermines trust in the agencies and reduces the authority
of their status."
Mr Mates, a former defence minister, said: "In this House, we
have to place a certain amount of trust in ministers to conduct
themselves honourably and not to misuse the agencies or the
intelligence they provide for partisan or other purposes. Trust
is at the heart of intelligence work. It is so important that all
of us get across to the outside world that intelligence really
does have its limitations."
David Davis, the shadow Home Secretary, challenged ministers to
say whether Mr Scarlett attached a "caveat" to the information
about Saddam's weapons from dissident Iraqis. He said: "The
question is: was the public let down, not through inaccuracy but
through selective and improper use of information? Did our
government subordinate the nationally vital issue of intelligence
to the politically convenient demands of propaganda?"
UK Independent Ltd.
*****************************************************************
7 Korea Herald: Changes in North Korea since Kim Il-sung's death
2004.07.10
By Kim Keun-sik
It has been a decade since North Korea's founder Kim Il-sung died
in 1994, and the biggest crisis the country has encountered was
the chaos caused by his death. The three years of official
mourning brought much hardship and made the North focus on
stabilizing its system. During this period from 1994 to 1997, the
new leader Kim Jong-il concentrated on consolidating his power to
follow in the footsteps of his father. Slogans such as "Keep up
with socialism," "The philosophy of red flag," "Protect the red
flag," "Cowardice unwanted" and "Spirit of gun and bombs"
emphasized the value of perseverance through the hard times.
Having endured the three years, Kim Jong-il finally officially
assumed office and launched a new era in 1998, with domestic
reform and establishment of relationships with the outside world.
He also exercised sovereign power in his unique way to settle
political problems. The new vision, "Socialist advanced nation,"
was suggested to seek a wealthy country with a powerful army. To
build an economically powerful country was the biggest goal after
establishing a politically and militarily rigid nation. Kim
stressed the importance of science and technology and in
2001announced his "new paradigm," an effort by the North to seek
economic recovery by focusing on the IT industry.
South Korean President Kim Dae-jung's sunshine policy in 1998
came at an opportune time for the North's plans to improve
relationships with foreign countries. Kim Jong-il accepted the
summit between the Koreas in Pyongyang in 2000 and this brought
about a big change in the relationship between the Koreas.
It was not a coincidence when North Korea established a treaty
with Italy in 2001 and then went on engaging other EU countries.
A relationship with North America seemed on the cards when U.S.
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright visited North Korea after
Kim Jong-il's military strongman Jo Myung-rok visited the United
States in October 2000. But the presidential election in the
United States interrupted the relationship and in the end, it was
wasted time for the North.
Looked at overall, Kim Jong-il's regime after 1998 could be
summed as recovering from the political crisis during hard times,
seeking peaceful talks with South Korea and improving
relationships with western countries.
Throughout 2000, Kim Jong-il sped up domestic reform and opening
up the North, albeit very gradually. For instance, North Korea
reformed its economic management in July 2002. The payment and
price of commodities were improved to a realistic level and
market principles on supply and demand were partially adopted.
The distribution, or rationing, system was reduced and an
incentive system was introduced. Even though the changes didn't
mean establishment of a "market economy," the efforts were
considered as a passive adoption of "market principles."
Furthermore, in 2003, North Korea officially admitted the
existence of the market and allowed commerce of industrial goods,
adapting international price and supply and demand rules. Each
manufacturer got rid of an exceeding amount of products, which
meant that the government allowed industries to earn extra
profits apart from the planned ones. Shineuiju City was
designated as a special zone in September 2002, and others were
added: the Gaeseong industrial complex and Mount Geumgang resort.
These were the result of visualizing North Korea's opening up
towards global society.
Kim Jong-il's efforts for reformation and improvement of
relationships are viewed as strategic progress. However, the Bush
government since 2001 worsened the relationship between the
United States and North Korea. Kim Jong-il tried to avoid
problems with the United States by allowing active reformation in
2002, even holding a summit with Japan and admitting kidnappings
of Japanese civilians. Despite such efforts, the Bush
administration's tough policies toward North Korea caused
conflict. The year 2002, when it appeared that Kim Jong-il hoped
for domestic and external reform, suddenly became worse with
eruption of the second nuclear weapons crisis involving the
North. That standoff continues to this day, though at the last
six-party talks in Beijing there appeared to be a modicum of
progress and an agreement by everyone to meet again before the
end of September.
So, the first four years until 1997 can be summed up as a period
for political settlement and social unification after Kim
Il-sung's death. Since then, the North has focused on active
reformation and opening up slightly toward international society,
an effort which failed in 2002 and is still ongoing today.
The 10 years of Kim Jong-il's rule brought stability and
continuation of Pyongyang's system, in North Korean socialist
style. Active and resolute reformation comes next. For a better
outcome, a friendly diplomatic environment is required. The
nuclear standoff however keeps North Korea from seeking more
change.
*****************************************************************
8 Korea Herald: [EDITORIAL]Roh's fatal mistake
2004.07.10
By Kim Keun-sik
Editorial/Op-Ed
[http://www.voiceware.co.kr]
President Roh Moo-hyun made a politically fatal mistake when he
claimed on Thursday that opposition to the planned capital
relocation is tantamount to a campaign for a no-confidence vote
on him, or an attempt to oust him from office. That was a remark
unworthy of a democratic nation's leader.
Some opponents to his plan to move the capital from Seoul to the
central part of the nation may have a hidden political agenda, as
he claims. But most opponents are against the plan because they
believe it will be counterproductive, or because it is not
endorsed by a majority of the people. Still others are calling on
the president to build a public consensus before he launches the
project.
President Roh erroneously denounced "newspaper companies
headquartered in Seoul's urban core" and the "powerful vested
interests in the Seoul metropolis" for fanning opposition to his
plan. But he has only himself to blame because opposition is
growing stronger as he has failed to sell his plan to the public.
In a pluralistic society, all people have a right to voice
opposition to any public works on the drawing board or under
construction. This right cannot be negated just because they have
been approved by the National Assembly, as the capital relocation
plan was. All the more so, given that the legislature did not
conduct full-fledged deliberations when it passed the bill on a
new capital ahead of the April general elections.
The nation has already witnessed what consequences large public
projects bring when they are launched without public consensus.
The administration had to abandon its plan to build a facility
for storing nuclear waste on an island off the nation's
southwestern coast when opposition by residents turned into
bloody strife.
President Roh will have to persuade his opponents to accept the
capital relocation plan if he wishes to carry it out
successfully. He will have to realize that bullying them with
threatening remarks is the last thing for him to do, as this will
surely boomerang on him.
2004.07.10
*****************************************************************
9 Mainichi Interactive: Normalization talks with Pyongyang back on agenda
Japan is ready to resume normalization talks with Pyongyang as
former abductee Hitomi Soga is set to be reunited Friday with her
husband and two daughters living in North Korea, a top government
spokesman said Friday.
"We are talking about resumption of negotiations aimed at
normalizing diplomatic relations with North Korea. Circumstances
had not allowed us to begin negotiations until recently, but we
are ready to start such talks," Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiroyuki
Hosoda told a regular news conference Friday morning.
"I think we'll hold in-depth discussions on the whereabouts of 10
other abductees (that North Korea claims have died or never
entered the country) and its nuclear program."
Hosoda also expressed pleasure at Soga's reunion with her husband
and two daughters in Jakarta. "Ms. Soga has been waiting to meet
them, so I'm looking forward to seeing their reunion."
He said the government will negotiate with Washington over its
request that Soga's American husband, 64-year-old Charles Robert
Jenkins, not be indicted for desertion, while taking his opinion
fully into consideration.
"If his view is clarified in Indonesia, there may be development
in the situation," he said.
When Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi visited Pyongyang, Jenkins
refused to come to Japan because he was afraid that he might be
extradited to the United States. (Mainichi Shimbun, Japan, July
9, 2004)
© 2004 The Mainichi Newspapers Co. Under the copyright law of
Japan, use of all materials on this website,
*****************************************************************
10 [CMEP] press release - Court overrules Yucca radiation
Date: Fri, 9 Jul 2004 13:50:50 -0500 (CDT)
***please forward widely***
***apologies for cross-posting***
P R E S S R E L E A S E
For Immediate Release: Contact: Michele
Boyd (202) 454-5134
July 9, 2004 or
(202) 494-0785
Erica Hartman (202) 454-5174
Victory in Yucca Mountain Lawsuit; Court Overrules Government's Lax
Radiation Standards for Nuclear Waste
Statement of Public Citizen President Joan Claybrook
Today's ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit
that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) illegally set its
radiation release standards for groundwater for the proposed high-level
radioactive waste dump at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, marks a major victory
for citizens of Nevada, for the environment and for science over
politics.
The EPA set 10,000 years as the period during which radiation in
the groundwater cannot exceed drinking water standards at the site's
boundary, but this time frame would not protect the health of future
generations. As the court ruled, the Energy Policy Act requires that the
EPA determine public health and safety standards for Yucca Mountain
"based upon and consistent with" the National Academy of Sciences'
recommendations. The Academy's recommendation is that the compliance
period should extend through the time of the peak risk for radiation
doses from the repository, which studies show are likely to occur in
300,000 years or more. To compensate for Yucca's geologic unsuitability,
the EPA ignored the findings of the National Academy of Sciences.
"It would have been one thing had EPA taken the Academy's
recommendations into account and then tailored a standard that
accommodated the agency's policy concerns. But that is not what EPA
did," the Court wrote in its ruling. "Instead, it unabashedly rejected
NAS's findings, and then went on to promulgate a dramatically different
standard, one that the Academy had expressly rejected."
Given this ruling, the Yucca Mountain Project should be
finished. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) must show that it can
prevent groundwater contamination above drinking water standards at the
compliance boundary for 300,000 years - a standard that the DOE's own
analysis shows the Yucca Mountain site cannot meet. The EPA faces the
choice of either appealing the decision or revising its standard. The
rules have been bent too often to promote Yucca Mountain. We will be
watching closely to see if the EPA makes a wise choice and protects
future generations, as the court mandated.
To read the court's decision, go to
http://pacer.cadc.uscourts.gov/docs/common/opinions/200407/01-1258a.pdf.
###
Public Citizen is a national, nonprofit consumer advocacy organization
based in Washington, D.C.
**********
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To learn more about this and other Public Citizen Critical Mass Energy and Environment Program campaigns, visit our website at http://www.citizen.org/cmep/
-Public Citizen's Critical Mass Energy and Environment Program
*****************************************************************
11 U.S. Firm Said Among Nuclear Black Market
Date: Fri, 09 Jul 2004 20:22:27 -0700
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20040710/ap_on_re_eu/nuclear_black_market&cid=518&ncid=716
Europe - AP
U.S. Firm Said Among Nuclear Black Market
Fri, Jul 09, 2004 - 1 hour, 37 minutes ago
By GEORGE JAHN, Associated Press Writer
VIENNA, Austria - An investigation of the black market
supplying nations wanting nuclear arms has spread to
more than 20 firms — some of them North American — the
chief of the U.N. atomic agency told The Associated
Press Friday. A senior diplomat identified one of the
firms as U.S. based.
Demanding anonymity, the diplomat also said the Syria
and Saudi Arabia are also being investigated as
possible buyer nations, beyond Iraq (news - web
sites), Iran, Libya and North Korea (news - web sites)
— the countries known to have been in contact with
Pakistani scientist A.Q. Khan and members of his
procurement network.
But the diplomat, who is familiar with the
Vienna-based IAEA told The AP that beyond suspicions
prompting a continuing investigation, "there has been
no proof" on Syria and Saudi Arabia that would warrant
them being reported to the board of governors of the
International Atomic Energy Agency.
In separate comments to The Associated Press, IAEA
Director General Mohamed ElBaradei avoided specifics
on the locations of the firms supplying the nuclear
black market beyond saying there were "over 20
countries, some of them in North America."
The diplomat said at least one of them was in the
United States. He declined to elaborate, saying the
agency "was not yet at the bottom of that story." But
he said what is known about that company sheds new
light on the activities of the network, known up to
now for primarily supplying technology to North Korea,
Libya and Iran as part of the process allowing them to
make enriched uranium that can be used either to
generate electricity or make weapons.
=====
//////\\\\\\
"Homeland security is kind of a jump ball -- still very much in the
formative stages, with the real activity further down the pike."
- David W. Zolet, Northrop's vice-president for homeland security.
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
New and Improved Yahoo! Mail - 100MB free storage!
http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail
*****************************************************************
12 UCS: New Cases of Scientific Abuse by Administration Emerge
[Union of Concerned Scientists]
July 8, 2004
Thousands More Scientists Join Protest
Restoring Scientific Integrity
CAMBRIDGE, Mass., July 8Today, the Union of Concerned Scientists
released new evidence that the Bush Administration continues to
suppress and distort scientific knowledge and undermine
scientific advisory panels. The number of scientists calling for
an end to these practices and restoration of scientific integrity
in federal policymaking now totals more than 4,000, including 48
Nobel laureates, 62 National Medal of Science recipients, and 127
members of the National Academy of Sciences.
Had the White House taken action to rectify this situation, and
discontinue practices that threaten the public health and safety
of Americans, we would not be here today, said Dr. Kurt
Gottfried, Emeritus Professor of Physics at Cornell University
and Chair of the Union of Concerned Scientists, during a reporter
briefing. Instead, the White House has been dismissive of the
scientific communitys concerns and new cases of unacceptable
political interference have come to light. As a result, the
number of scientists willing to speak out has grown
exponentially.
The new cases released by the Union of Concerned Scientists
detail incidents of suppression and distortion of scientific
knowledge on issues ranging from mountaintop removal strip mining
to endangered species. Included in these additional cases are
numerous new accounts of political interference with independent
scientific advisory panels, most notably at the National
Institutes of Health (NIH) under the Department of Health and
Human Services. The new cases are available at
www.ucsusa.org/rsi.
Dr. Janet Rowley, recipient of the National Medal of Science, the
Lasker Prizethe most distinguished American honor for clinical
medical researchand a current member of the Presidents Advisory
Council on Bioethics, explained why she signed the scientists
statement. Our government has a responsibility to consider
accurate scientific evidence when it makes decisions that affect
human health. I have seen first hand through the Presidents
Council that this administration distorts scientific knowledge on
stem cell research, which makes it increasingly difficult to have
an honest debate in a field that holds promise for treatment of
many serious diseases like Parkinsons and juvenile diabetes.
Also participating in the briefing were two scientists who
provided personal testimony of inappropriate interference by the
administration.
Dr. Robert Paine, a world-renowned ecologist at University of
Washington who chaired an advisory panel on endangered salmon and
trout, described his panels experience. We were told to strip
out specific scientific recommendations or see our report end up
in a drawer. Dr. Paine and his colleagues went on to publish
their findings in Science.
Another scientist, Dr. Gerald T. Keusch, the former Associate
Director for International Research and Director of the Fogarty
International Center at NIH, described his attempts to appoint
top-level scientists. U.S. Department of Health and Human
Services (HHS) Secretary Tommy Thompsons office rejected 19 of
26 highly qualified scientists Keusch recommended for the Fogarty
Centers advisory council, a body that does not make policy
recommendations or decisions. Because all these individuals
were highly distinguished, NIH was quick to approve them,
explained Keusch. Nonetheless, all but sevenincluding a Nobel
laureatewere rejected by the administration. I was told the
Nobel laureate had signed too many full page letters in The New
York Times critical of President Bush.
In releasing the new cases, the Union of Concerned Scientists
outlined measures to rectify the situation for this and future
administrations, including:
+ Whistleblower protection of government scientists;
+ Restoring independent scientific advice to Congress possibly
within GAO;
+ Greater oversight powers for the Office of Science and
Technology Policy;
+ Stricter enforcement of the Federal Advisory Committee Act
(FACA) with increased transparency for selection and activities
of advisory committees; and
+ Full access to government scientific analysis that isnt
legitimately classified for national security reasons.
In February, 62 leading scientistsincluding Nobel laureates,
leading medical experts, former federal agency directors and
university chairs and presidentsissued a statement calling for
the Bush Administration to restore scientific integrity to policy
making. On the same day, the Union of Concerned Scientists
issued a report, Scientific Integrity in Policymaking,
documenting numerous cases in which the administration had
suppressed and distorted scientific analysis from federal
agencies, and taken actions that have undermined the quality of
scientific advisory panels.
Copies of the new cases, original report, scientists' statement,
and signers can be found online. Click here.
To set up interviews or for UCS info, contact:
SUZANNE SHAW 617-547-5552 888-266-2081
© Union of Concerned Scientists
*****************************************************************
13 UK Independent: The energy giants who flew too close to the sun
09 July 2004
Paraded in handcuffs and frogmarched into court, the former Enron
chief Kenneth Lay can no longer turn to President Bush for help,
reports Rupert Cornwell
It was the ultimate "perp walk" - Kenneth Lay, friend of two
presidents and founder of the erstwhile seventh-largest
corporation in America - was paraded yesterday in handcuffs on
his way to the federal courthouse in Houston to be formally
charged with "spearheading" the most spectacular fraud in modern
US business history.
Just three years ago Ken Lay was chairman of Enron, which was
seen as one of the most innovative and efficiently run companies
in the US. True, in that distant pre-9/11 summer of 2001, a few
were starting to have the odd doubt, that the Enron story might
just be too good to be true. But apart from a clutch of top
executives at Enron and its auditors, Arthur Andersen, no one
could have imagined that before the year was out Enron would have
imploded in a $67bn (£36bn) bankruptcy that would come to
symbolise an entire era of corporate chicanery, ruthlessness and
greed. In the course of 2002 other companies - Tyco, WorldCom and
Adelphia - would tumble into disgrace. None, however, had the
impact of Enron.
The firm Mr Lay created back in 1985 was the embodiment of the
modern conglomerate. "We like to think of ourselves as the
Microsoft of the energy world," the chairman liked to boast, as
Enron's sales, profits and stock continued an apparently
unstoppable ascent. Enron, however, was an edifice built on
fraud. Its collapse consumed the savings of thousands of its
employees, brought down the venerable Arthur Andersen - convicted
of obstruction of justice in 2002 - and shook the credibility of
US financial markets. Its demise prompted the biggest overhaul of
accounting and corporate regulations in decades and, for a while
at least, its shadow fell on the White House.
Mr Lay was its friend and benefactor. Over the years, the company
contributed $600,000 to the various campaigns of George W Bush,
and Enron jets helped to ferry the Bush team back and forth from
Florida during the contested aftermath of the 2000 election. A
grateful President nicknamed him "Kenny Boy". Enron's folding
refocused attention on Mr Bush's cloudy business career, and
"Kenny Boy's" trial may yet do so again.
The 11-count indictment was formally unsealed yesterday. It
accuses Mr Lay of "taking over the helm of a criminal scheme"
during the last months of Enron's life and charges him with fraud
and insider-trading. Mr Lay concealed $7bn of Enron debt, thus
conveying a false picture to investors and its own employees, it
says.
The former chairman has been released on unsecured bail of
$500,000. If convicted, however, he faces up to 30 years in
prison. "This proves that no man, however powerful, is above the
law," James Comey, the deputy US attorney general, declared.
But matters may not be simple. Mr Lay has plainly been a target
of the Justice Department from the outset, but it took
investigators two and a half years to bring the charges - and
they came only after Andrew Fastow, Enron's former finance
director and prime architect of the gigantic fraud, agreed to
co-operate with prosecutors in exchange for a 10-year jail term.
Throughout, Mr Lay has proclaimed his innocence: "I have done
nothing wrong; the indictment is not justified," he said in a
brief statement shortly after news of the charges trickled out.
In court yesterday he responded with a crisp "not guilty" as each
of the counts was read. His lawyers served notice they would
fight the case tooth and nail.
Their argument will be that during the period Enron went sour, Mr
Lay was not chief executive officer but a chairman whose duties
were mainly ceremonial. He thus had no idea of the web of
off-balance sheet partnerships created by Mr Fastow to prop up
Enron's stock price and conceal billions of dollars of losses and
debt.
That too will be the defence of Jeffrey Skilling, Enron's chief
executive officer until his surprise resignation for "personal
reasons" in August 2001, less than four months before the end. It
will, however, be a far harder sell for Mr Skilling, who was
renowned for his bullying, micro-managing style.
The 11 counts against Mr Lay have been added to an earlier
indictment against Mr Skilling and Enron's former chief
accounting officer, Rick Causey - an indication that the three
will be tried together as co-authors of the disaster.
Some legal experts believe that the case against Mr Lay is the
weakest. Reputedly he was not one for e-mails and memos, making
it less likely there will be an incriminating paper-trail. In
court, it could be a case of his word against that of a convicted
felon who has done a deal to shorten his sentence.
But even Mr Lay's lawyers cannot dispute that between August 2001
and the bankruptcy filing of 2 December 2001, their client was
chief executive as well as chairman. That August, after Mr
Skilling left, he received the celebrated letter from the
whistle-blower Sherron Watkins, an Enron vice-president, warning
of a massive accounting scandal. Yet Mr Lay insisted until the
end that nothing was wrong, all the while selling large chunks of
his Enron holdings. (Ordinary employees, whose pension holdings
were largely in Enron stock, were barred from doing so.)
Moreover, the defendant portrayed as an ignorant front-man is a
trained economist, a skilled businessman who founded Enron and
steered the group through its early expansion. He was
knowledgeable enough to have been frequently consulted by an
energy taskforce headed by Vice-President Dick Cheney in 2001,
and at one stage was widely tipped to be a member of the Bush
cabinet.
Lastly, as other lawyers point out, ignorance is no excuse. Mr
Lay's ultimate duty was to protect the interest of shareholders.
Even if he escapes legal punishment, Mr Lay's life is in ruins. A
man worth $400m barely three years ago has been reduced to his
last $1m, net of an anticipated $20m of legal fees. His Colorado
ski lodge has gone; his wife, Linda, has sold off much of the
family furniture. The once-feted grandee of the Texas business
establishment is now rarely seen, except at his Methodist church
in Houston on Sundays.
His company too is little more than a picked-over carcass. The
workforce has fallen from 32,000 to 10,000. The empire whose
sales topped $100bn in 2000 now has a few pipelines in Latin
America, some power plants across Europe, the Caribbean and
China, and a mid-sized telecoms network.
As for creditors, owed $67bn, they will get 20 cents in the
dollar if they're lucky. Such is the inglorious end of Mr Lay's
Enron, emblem of an era that American business will want to
forget; history most certainly will not. Mikhail Khodorkovsky,
the richest man in Russia, bought his way into trouble when he
challenged Vladimir Putin. Andrew Osborn reports from Moscow
Languishing in his spartan Moscow prison cell yesterday Mikhail
Borisovich Khodorkovsky, 41, could only sit and wait for the
shadows to close around Yukos, the successful oil giant which he
fashioned in his own image.
Nine years after he and his associates snapped up the firm for a
fraction of what it was worth and joined the exclusive ranks of
Russia's super-rich, the post-Soviet roller-coaster which he rode
with such aplomb finally appeared to have hit the buffers. With
$15.2bn to his name, Mr Khodorkovsky may remain the country's
wealthiest man on paper but his ability to influence events has
never been the same since he was arrested at gunpoint on an icy
Siberian runway last October and charged with fraud and
embezzlement to the tune of $1bn. At a stroke, Russia's premier
capitalist and "oligarch of oligarchs" was brought crashing down
and put in his place.
Like the other inmates of the capital's overcrowded,
disease-ridden Matrosskaya Tishina prison, Mr Khodorkovsky's
bread is black and accompanied by buckwheat porridge.
The champagne and caviar he used to lavish on corporate
hospitality is long gone and Yukos, once a model of what Russian
firms could become, is close to being systematically dismembered.
On Wednesday police swooped to seize safes from the offices of
top executives. Assets and bank accounts were frozen; creditors
have been left fuming. The Russian tax police are looking for
$3.4bn in unpaid taxes for the year 2000, which Yukos cannot pay.
Mr Khodorkovsky's personal empire is on the brink of collapse.
Mired in fear and ignorance the company can only wait for the
coup de grâce or pray for a reprieve from Russian President
Vladimir Putin. Clutching at what may be the last straw, Mr
Khodorkovsky has raised the white flag and offered to surrender
"a part" of his stake in Yukos to save the company from
bankruptcy.
But, like anyone who holds all the cards, the Kremlin is
considering its options and has so far not responded. Few doubt,
however, that while Mr Khodorkovsky and his associates may be
charged with a plethora of white-collar crimes his real crime was
to bite the hand which fed him so prodigiously.
He made his fortune during the mid 1990s, when the east was in
full swing and the Russian state was selling off its crown jewels
for peanuts.
In that sense, he was no different from any of the other
so-called robber barons who built fortunes among the ashes of the
Soviet Empire under the patronage of the then president Boris
Yeltsin.
"You can't call these people thieves in the true sense of the
word. They were allowed to steal. They were given the keys to the
flat where the money lies and told to help themselves," said one
Moscow analyst, who preferred to remain nameless.
Mr Khodorkovsky thrived on the dearth of rules and regulations.
The good times rolled for the man who had started his career
running a student cafe at his college.
In 1988 he founded one of the first licensed banks in Russia -
Menatep - which became the main investment vehicle for his asset
buying spree. In 1994 he and his business partners bought a 20
per cent stake in Russia's largest fertiliser producer for just
$225,000.
But 1995 was the real turning point. That was when he snapped up
a controlling stake in Yukos, then a disparate patchwork of
inefficient Soviet-era oil firms. He paid just $350m - two years
later it was valued at $9bn. Today it is Russia's largest private
oil company.
Yukos and Mr Khodorkovsky used a series of tax minimisation
schemes which have since been declared illegal, but most analysts
agree that everyone else was using the same devices. But it was
the spectacular success of Yukos that was to be his downfall.
Apparently forgetting that he had prospered on the back of
anarchy, corruption and lawlessness, Mr Khodorkovsky decided to
clean up his and the firm's act and do things by the book.
"He became an over-mighty subject and he wasn't discreet about
it," one senior diplomatic source who knew Mr Khodorkovsky, said.
He had a televised argument with President Putin about corruption
and he used his influence to block tax rises on natural
resources." The oligarch went as far as to tell President Putin
that various "odious people" would have to be got rid of and that
things were "coming to a head" on the corruption front. Mr Putin
publicly recoiled.
Mr Khodorkovsky also bought his own anti-Kremlin newspaper, urged
the government to relinquish its control of oil pipeline
construction policy and hinted that he would sell off part of his
oil empire to an American firm. Indeed, Mr Khodorkovsky made no
secret of the fact that he entertained political ambitions -
there was talk of him standing against President Putin in 2008.
"He was trying to build up a large number of seats in the Duma
[parliament] and was pushing the liberal multi-party idea," said
the diplomat. As such, he supported the Union of Rightist forces
and Yabloko parties, breaching the unwritten rules of the game.
Mr Putin had made it clear when he officially assumed the
presidency in 2000 that he would leave the oligarchs alone if
they stayed out of his domain. But Mr Khodorkovsky had other
ideas.
"He was breaking the concordat," said the diplomat. "It was not
surprising that they tried to rein him in, particularly in
election year. But what surprised everyone was that he didn't
pull back. He had that glitter of martyrdom in his eyes and
decided to continue his course, not to pull back. He knew the
rules of the game like everyone else and he broke them."
Russia's nascent capitalism may have been wild and unpredictable
but there were rules. According to those who know him, Mr
Khodorkovsky, a chemist by education, never did anything without
careful consideration and weighing up the consequences.
"He's a man of many levels and is very complex," said one of his
colleagues, speaking anonymously. "He seemed to be able to see
things in advance of others. He studied formulas and theories and
tested them out." Some analysts believe that the Khodorkovsky
case is not so much about politics, but about a phenomenon which
has bedevilled Russia throughout the centuries - wealth
redistribution.
"This case is starting to be perceived as an economic one, as a
conflict around property," argues Andrey Ryabov, of the Moscow
Carnegie Centre. "This is all about the process of redistributing
assets among the new class who came to power with President
Putin."
UK Independent Ltd.
*****************************************************************
14 UN Atomic Agency Chief Hails Israeli Aim For Middle East Free Of Nuclear Weapons
Date: Fri, 9 Jul 2004 11:00:53 -0400
UN ATOMIC AGENCY CHIEF HAILS ISRAELI AIM FOR MIDDLE EAST FREE OF
NUCLEAR WEAPONS
New York, Jul 9 2004 11:00AM
Concluding a three-day visit to Israel this week, the head of the
United Nations atomic watchdog agency said he welcomed the country’s
pledge to work towards a Middle East that is free of nuclear
weapons.
International Atomic Energy Agency <"http://www.iaea.org/NewsCenter/index.html">(IAEA)
Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei held talks
with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and members of his Cabinet
during his visit to Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.
At a press conference in Jerusalem, Mr. ElBaradei said Mr. Sharon
had confirmed to him that Israeli policy about Middle East peace
means the country is “looking forward” to the region’s establishment
as a zone free of nuclear weapons.
“It’s not a new policy, but affirming that policy at the level of
Prime Minister I think is quite a welcome development,” he said.
Mr. ElBaradei also met officials of Israel’s Atomic Energy Commission
and gave a lecture at a university in Jerusalem during his visit.
The trip by Mr. ElBaradei follows a call by the IAEA General Conference
of Member States for every Middle Eastern country to open
its nuclear facilities to full inspection by the agency and to work
towards a nuclear-weapons-free-zone.
2004-07-09 00:00:00.000
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*****************************************************************
15 NRC: Notice of Availability of Environmental Assessment and Finding
FR Doc 04-15592
[Federal Register: July 9, 2004 (Volume 69, Number 131)]
[Notices] [Page 41554] From the Federal Register Online via GPO
Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr09jy04-117]
of No Significant Impact for License Amendment for Fujirebio
Diagnostics, Inc.'s Facility in Malvern, PA AGENCY: Nuclear
Regulatory Commission.
ACTION: Notice of Availability of Environmental Assessment and
Finding of No Significant Impact.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Jenny M. Johansen, Nuclear
Materials Safety Branch 2, Division of Nuclear Materials Safety,
Region I, 475 Allendale Road, King of Prussia, Pennsylvania,
19406, telephone (610) 337-5071, fax (610) 337-5269; or by
e-mail: jmj@nrc.gov [jmj@nrc.gov] .
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: I. Introduction The Nuclear Regulatory
Commission (NRC) is considering the issuance of a license
amendment to Fujirebio Diagnostics, Inc. for Materials License
No. 37-30487-01, to authorize release of its facility in Malvern,
Pennsylvania for unrestricted use. NRC has prepared an
Environmental Assessment (EA) in support of this action in
accordance with the requirements of 10 CFR part 51. Based on the
EA, the NRC has concluded that a Finding of No Significant Impact
(FONSI) is appropriate. The amendment will be issued following
the publication of this notice.
II. EA Summary The purpose of the proposed action is to authorize
the release of the licensee's Malvern, Pennsylvania facility for
unrestricted use. Fujirebio Diagnostics, Inc. was authorized by
NRC from December 30,1998, to use radioactive materials for
research and development, manufacturing and distribution, and
calibration purposes at the site. On April 19, 2004, Fujirebio
Diagnostics, Inc. requested that NRC release the facility for
unrestricted use. Fujirebio Diagnostics, Inc. has conducted
surveys of the facility and determined that the facility meets
the license termination criteria in subpart E of 10 CFR part 20.
The NRC staff has prepared an EA.
III. Finding of No Significant Impact The staff has prepared the
EA (summarized above) in support of the proposed license
amendment to release the facility for unrestricted use. The NRC
staff has evaluated Fujirebio Diagnostics, Inc.'s request and the
results of the surveys and has concluded that the completed
action complies with the criteria in subpart E of 10 CFR part 20.
The staff has found that the environmental impacts from the
proposed action are bounded by the impacts evaluated by the
``Generic Environmental Impact Statement in Support of Rulemaking
on Radiological Criteria for License Termination of NRC-Licensed
Facilities'' (NUREG-1496).
The staff has also found the non-radiological impacts are not
significant. On the basis of the EA, the NRC has concluded that
the environmental impacts from the proposed action are expected
to be insignificant and has determined not to prepare an
environmental impact statement for the proposed action.
IV. Further Information The EA and the documents related to this
proposed action, including the application for the license
amendment and supporting documentation, are available for
inspection at NRC's Public Electronic Reading Room at
http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/adams.html
[http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/leaving.cgi?from=leaving
FR.html&log=linklog&to=http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/adams.html]
(ADAMS Accession Nos. ML041250426, ML041470132 and ML041830049).
The PDR reproduction contractor will copy documents for a fee.
These documents are also available for inspection and copying for
a fee at the Region I Office, 475 Allendale Road, King of
Prussia, Pennsylvania, 19406.
Persons who do not have access to ADAMS, should contact the NRC
PDR Reference staff by telephone at 1-800-397-4209 or (301)
415-4737, of by e-mail to pdr@nrc.gov [ pdr@nrc.gov] . Dated in
King of Prussia, Pennsylvania this 1st day of July, 2004.
For the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
John D. Kinneman, Chief, Nuclear Materials Safety Branch 2,
Division of Nuclear Materials Safety, Region I.
[FR Doc. 04-15592 Filed 7-8-04; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 7590-01-P
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16 NRC: Exelon Generation Company, LLC, Quad Cities Nuclear Power
FR Doc 04-15593
[Federal Register: July 9, 2004 (Volume 69, Number 131)]
[Notices] [Page 41552-41553] From the Federal Register Online via
GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr09jy04-115]
Station, Units 1 and 2; Notice of Availability of the Final
Supplement 16 To Generic Environmental Impact Statement for the
License Renewal of Quad Cities Nuclear Power Station, Units 1 and
2 Notice is hereby given that the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory
Commission (the Commission) has published a final plant-specific
supplement to the Generic Environmental Impact Statement (GEIS),
NUREG-1437, regarding the renewal of operating licenses DPR-29
and DPR-30 for an additional 20 years of operation at Quad Cities
Nuclear Power Station (QCNPS). QCNPS is located in Rock Island
County, Illinois, approximately 4 miles north of Cordova,
Illinois. Possible alternatives to the proposed action (license
renewal) include no action and reasonable alternative energy
sources.
It is stated in Section 9.3 of the report: Based on (1) The
analysis and findings in the GEIS (NRC 1996; 1999); (2) the ER
[Environmental Report] submitted by Exelon (Exelon 2003b); (3)
consultation with Federal, State, and local agencies; (4) the
staff's own independent review; and (5) the staff's consideration
of the public comments, the recommendation of the staff is that
the Commission determine that the adverse environmental impacts
of license renewal for Quad Cities Units 1 and 2 are not so great
that preserving the option of license renewal for energy-planning
decisionmakers would be unreasonable.
The final Supplement 16 to the GEIS is available for public
inspection in the NRC Public Document Room (PDR) located at One
White Flint North, 11555 Rockville Pike (first floor), Rockville,
Maryland, or from the Publicly Available Records (PARS) component
of NRC's Agencywide Documents Access and Management System
(ADAMS). ADAMS is accessible from the NRC Web site at
http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/adams.html
[http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/leaving.cgi?from=leaving
FR.html&log=linklog&to=http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/adams.html]
(the Public Electronic Reading Room). Persons who do not have
access to ADAMS, or who encounter problems in accessing the
documents located in ADAMS, should contact the PDR reference
staff at 1-800-397-4209, 301-415-4737, or by e-mail to
pdr@nrc.gov [pdr@nrc.gov] . In addition, the Cordova District
Library, 402 Main Avenue, Cordova, Illinois; the River Valley
Library, 214 South Main Street, Port Byron, Illinois; and the
Davenport Public Library, 321 Main Street,
[[Page 41553]] Davenport, Iowa, have agreed to make the final
plant-specific supplement to the GEIS available for public
inspection.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Dr. Michael T. Masnik, License
Renewal and Environmental Impacts Program, Division of Regulatory
Improvement Programs, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission,
Washington, DC 20555. Dr. Masnik may be contacted at 301-415-1191
or MTM2@nrc.gov [MTM2@nrc.gov] . Dated in Rockville, Maryland,
this 2nd day of July, 2004.
For the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Samson Lee, Acting Program Director, License Renewal and
Environmental Impacts Program, Division of Regulatory Improvement
Programs, Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation.
[FR Doc. 04-15593 Filed 7-8-04; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 7590-01-P
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17 NRC: Florida Power and Light Company, et al., St. Lucie Plant, Unit
FR Doc 04-15594
[Federal Register: July 9, 2004 (Volume 69, Number 131)]
[Notices] [Page 41553-41554] From the Federal Register Online via
GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr09jy04-116]
Nos. 1 and 2; Environmental Assessment and Finding of No
Significant Impact The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC)
is considering issuance of amendments to Facility Operating
License Nos. DPR-67 and NPF-16, issued to Florida Power and Light
Company, et al. (the licensee), for operation of the St. Lucie
Plant, Unit Nos. 1 and 2, respectively, located in St. Lucie
County, Florida. Therefore, as required by 10 CFR 51.21, the NRC
is issuing this environmental assessment and finding of no
significant impact.
Environmental Assessment Identification of the Proposed Action
The proposed action would increase the wet storage capacity of
fuel assemblies at the St. Lucie Plant, Units 1 and 2. A
freestanding fuel storage rack module would be installed in the
cask pit in each unit's fuel-handling building. The Unit 1 rack
is being designed to augment storage capacity from 1706 fuel
assemblies to 1849 fuel assemblies, an increase of 143 fuel
assemblies. The Unit 2 rack design has closer
assembly-to-assembly spacing than the Unit 1 rack and is capable
of storing 225 fuel assemblies. The storage capacity of Unit 2
will increase from 1360 fuel assemblies to 1585 fuel assemblies,
an increase of 225 fuel assemblies. The cask pit fuel storage
racks will use Boral as a neutron absorbing poison.
The proposed action is in accordance with the licensee's
application for amendments dated October 23, 2002, as
supplemented August 28 and December 11, 2003, and February 3 and
March 25, 2004.
The Need for the Proposed Action The St. Lucie nuclear plant has
two pressurized-water reactors. Unit 1 commenced operation in
1976 and Unit 2 in 1983. Based on the current licensed capacity,
current spent fuel inventory, and the projected discharges of
spent fuel, Unit 1 will lose the capability to fully offload the
reactor core by the year 2005. Unit 2 will lose the capability to
fully offload the reactor core by the year 2007.
To extend this capability beyond the above dates, the licensee
has proposed license amendments to install a freestanding fuel
storage rack module in the cask pit of each unit's fuel-handling
building.
The additional storage capacity provided by the cask pit racks
will be used to store spent fuel to allow refueling outage fuel
offloads and non-outage fuel shuffles. In addition, the Unit 1
cask pit rack will be used to temporarily store new fuel before
an outage, prior to loading into the reactor core. The capability
to remove, clean, and store the cask pit racks in an alternate
location prior to any spent fuel cask loading operations will be
maintained, because the cask pits will eventually be needed for
loading fuel into transfer casks.
Environmental Impacts of the Proposed Action The NRC has
completed its evaluation and concludes, as set forth below, that
there are no significant environmental impacts associated with
the proposed amendments. The details of the staff's safety
evaluation will be provided in the license amendments when they
are issued by the NRC.
During refueling outages, there may be a slight increase in the
amount of heat that has to be removed from the combination of the
spent fuel pool and the cask pit. The peak increase will be less
than one percent, and the heat load from spent fuel storage is
very small compared to the heat load from normal plant
operations.
Therefore, the overall increase in the amount of heat released
will be quite small and insignificant.
Even though additional boron poison will be introduced by the
Boral panels in the storage racks in the cask pit, no significant
increase in tritium production from the neutron capture by
boron-10 is expected.
The proposed action will not significantly increase the
probability or consequences of accidents, no changes are being
made in the types of effluents that may be released off site, and
there is no significant increase in occupational or public
radiation exposure.
Therefore, there are no significant radiological environmental
impacts associated with the proposed action.
With regard to potential nonradiological impacts, the proposed
action does not have a potential to affect any historic sites.
It does not affect nonradiological plant effluents and has no
other environmental impact. Therefore, there are no significant
nonradiological environmental impacts associated with the
proposed action.
Accordingly, the NRC concludes that there are no significant
environmental impacts associated with the proposed action.
Environmental Impacts of the Alternatives to the Proposed Action
As an alternative to the proposed action, the staff considered
denial of the proposed action (i.e., the ``no-action''
alternative). Denial of the application would result in no change
in current environmental impacts. The environmental impacts of
the proposed action and the alternative action are similar.
Alternative Use of Resources The action does not involve the use
of any different resources than those previously considered in
the Final Environmental Statement related to the St. Lucie Plant
Unit 1, dated June 1973; the Final Environmental Statement
related to the operation of St. Lucie Plant, Unit No. 2
(NUREG-0842), dated April 1982; and Supplement 11 to NUREG- 1437,
``Generic Environmental Impact Statement for License Renewal of
Nuclear Plants Regarding St. Lucie, Units 1 and 2,'' dated May
2003.
Agencies and Persons Consulted On May 19, 2004, the staff
consulted with the Florida State official, William Passetti of
the Department of Health, Bureau of Radiation Control, regarding
the environmental impact of the proposed action. The State
official had no comments. Finding of No Significant Impact On the
basis of the environmental assessment, the NRC concludes that the
proposed action will not have a significant effect on the quality
of the human environment. Accordingly, the NRC has determined not
to prepare an environmental impact statement for the proposed
action.
[[Page 41554]] For further details with respect to the proposed
action, see the licensee's letter dated October 23, 2002, as
supplemented by letters dated August 28 and December 11, 2003,
and February 3 and March 25, 2004. Documents may be examined,
and/or copied for a fee, at the NRC's Public Document Room (PDR),
located at One White Flint North, Public File Area 01F21, 11555
Rockville Pike (first floor), Rockville, Maryland. Publicly
available records will be accessible electronically from the
Agencywide Documents Access and Management System (ADAMS) Public
Electronic Reading Room on the Internet at the NRC Web site,
[http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/leaving.cgi?from=leaving
FR.html&log=linklog&to=http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/adams.html]
. Persons who do not have access to ADAMS or who encounter
problems in accessing the documents located in ADAMS should
contact the NRC PDR Reference staff at 1-800- 397-4209, or
301-415-4737, or send an e-mail to [pdr@nrc.gov] . Dated in
Rockville, Maryland, this 2nd day of July 2004.
For the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Brendan T. Moroney, Project Manager, Section 2, Project
Directorate II, Division of Licensing Project Management, Office
of Nuclear Reactor Regulation.
[FR Doc. 04-15594 Filed 7-8-04; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 7590-01-P
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18 Daily Yomiuri: Safety system shuts down Niigata nuclear reactor
Yomiuri Shimbun
The No. 1 reactor at Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s
Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant in Niigata Prefecture
automatically shut down following a problem that triggered the
reactor's safeguard system, company officials announced Friday.
The shutdown of the 1.1 million kilowatt water boiler reactor
will not cause a radiation leak, TEPCO officials said.
The company is investigating the cause of the problem. The
reactor had just returned to normal power generation Monday after
temporarily generating about 300,000 kilowatts less than normal
due to a problem in the steam condenser's vacuum in late June.
Copyright 2004 The Yomiuri Shimbun
*****************************************************************
19 St. Petersburg Times: EU wants Armenia to close its nuclear power plant
RBC, 09.07.2004,
Yerevan 09:43:10.
The European Union is planning to collect funds to close the
Armenian nuclear power plant, Janez Potocnik, a junior EU
commissioner working with Enlargement Commissioner Guenter
Verheugen, declared at a briefing in Yerevan, Armenia. According
to him, the EU is ready to allocate up to EUR100m for this
purpose and attract its partners to this project, the ARKA news
agency reported.
The closing of the nuclear facility is necessary for
technological and seismic safety reasons, the commissioner
specified noting that Bulgaria and Baltic states also faced such
problems.
At the same time, Potocnik admitted that this was a pretty
complicated process, since new sources of energy were to be
found. According to Armenian experts, some EUR1bn is necessary to
create other energy generating facilities that would replace the
capacity of the Armenian nuclear power plant.
The facility was put into operation in January 1980. Due to
some political circumstances it was closed in 1989. A second
rector of the plant resumed generating energy in 1995. The
capacity of each reactor is 407.5 megawatts. Experts believe that
the power plant can operate until 2018.
Financial flows of the Armenian nuclear power plant are
managed by Inter RAO UES, which is a subsidiary of RAO UES (60
percent) and Rosenergoatom (40 percent).
rights reserved. © 1995-2003 RosBusinessConsulting (095)
363-11-11 Dow Jones Indexes data provided by Dow Jones, Inc.
*****************************************************************
20 News 10: Regulating safety at nuclear power plants
[News 10 Syracuse
Updated: 7/9/2004 2:46 PM
By: Janelle Reichert, News 10 Now Web Staff
The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) held a meeting in
Fulton Thursday to inform the public on the renewal process for
nuclear power plants.
The meeting was also a chance to focus on the renewal at Nine
Mile Point Nuclear Station in Oswego County.
Constellation Energy recently submitted a request to renew its
licenses for unit's one and two at the site.
Power plant safety concerns
The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) held a meeting in
Fulton Thursday to inform the public on the renewal process for
nuclear power plants.
According to the NRC, it is a long, timely, and difficult process
for both them and the applying company to meet the requirements
for renewal, but can be much more efficient than building a new
plant.
"Building a new power plant is not something you would do
lightly…this is a very expensive proposition. So it makes more
sense for them to try and seek license extension, and the plants
that are operating today have said they'll probably seek license
renewal. Once they've paid the capital costs up front it makes
sense for them to continue to operate, as long as they can do it
safely and efficiently and effectively, and that's what we'll be
looking at very closely," said MRC public affairs spokesman Neal
Sheehan. New York has six nuclear power plants, three of which
are in Oswego County.
Today [http://news10now.com/content/weather/] | 7-Day
*****************************************************************
21 TheDay.com: Sen. Peters' Sinecure
Friday, Jul 9, 2004
Published on 7/9/2004
State Sen. Melodie Peters, the Old Lyme legislator who guided
electric deregulation through the General Assembly as
co-chairwoman of the Energy and Technology Committee, is going to
work for Dominion Nuclear Connecticut, owner of the Millstone
plants in Waterford. Shame on her and shame on Dominion.
She has been hired because the state laws regarding such apparent
conflicts of interest are pathetically weak. And because members
of the General Assembly lack the fortitude to eliminate the
loopholes that result in lucrative jobs for them.
Indeed the state Ethics Commission staff, in an informal advisory
opinion, says there's no violation of ethics laws so long as Sen.
Peters doesn't lobby on behalf of the company. And there's the
problem. The laws regarding revolving doors for state legislators
are inadequate, perhaps purposefully so.
Sen. Peters' duties, says Dominion, will be to take the pulse of
local residents regarding the company's petition to extend the
federal license for the plants. Translation: she'll be pitching
the license renewal to local audiences.
The powerful chairwoman of a committee dealing with all manner of
electric utility issues goes to work for a major utility company
in the region and nothing in the state ethics laws prevents it.
Wonder why so many questionable ethical situations get a ho-hum
reaction in the legislature? Because too many legislators would
rather protect special interests, especially their own financial
interests, than deal with either the substance or appearance of
potential conflicts of interest.
Sen. Peters, who is not running for re-election this November,
doesn't see matters that way. She says that her service on the
Energy Committee had little to do with Dominion. The company
bought Millstone after the deregulation bill she guided was
passed, she said. In addition, she said, the company operates
generating stations, and her committee's work deals primarily
with transmission companies. Yet her committee has broad overview
of the electric utility industry and the public's perception of
her hiring can't be good.
Dan Weekeley, director of Northeast government affairs for
Dominion, says that Sen. Peters' chairmanship of the Energy
committee had nothing to do with his company's decision to hire
her as a consultant. Her role in the community is what mattered
to us. ... Melodie's word is gold and I think people know that,
Mr. Weekeley said.
He said that Sen. Peters' connection to organized labor and
senior citizens made her an ideal candidate for the job which, he
said, is taking the pulse of the community regarding re-licensing
of the Millstone nuclear plants.
But the average person will see a potential conflict of interest.
The legislature, which was properly concerned about former Gov.
John G. Rowland's ethical lapses and sought to impeach him, is
all too casual about policing itself. And both Dominion and Sen.
Peters should have been more sensitive to the appearances created
by her hiring. This is especially true in the light of the
Rowland investigation and Gov. M. Jodi Rell's determination to
clean up unsavory ethical situations and the appearance of
conflicts of interest in state government.
Dominion, which has been diligent and professional in operating
the Millstone plants and has advocated a squeaky clean public
image, has tarnished its corporate reputation by hiring Sen.
Peters. Sen. Peters has done her own reputation no favor by going
from the Energy committee to work for a major utility company.
1998-2004 The Day Publishing Co.
*****************************************************************
22 Australian: PM casts doubt on new reactor
[July 09, 2004]
[http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/mm]
PRIME Minister John Howard had indicated rejection of a nuclear
waste dump in outback South Australia could spell the end of
plans for a new nuclear reactor in Sydney, conservationists said
today.
The Australian Conservation Foundation seized on a comment by Mr
Howard yesterday where he said, in response to lively local
debate about the planned major dump: "Now, if that goes on, we
will never have a solution, we won't be able to go ahead with
rebuilding the reactor."
ACF spokesman Dave Sweeney today said this was a significant
statement in view of opposition from environmental groups to the
planned new reactor at Lucas Heights, in southern Sydney.
"John Howard has finally acknowledged that deep community
opposition and the Federal Court's recent rejection of the SA
waste dump proposal could jeopardise the coalition's plans for a
new reactor at Lucas Heights," Mr Sweeney said in a statement.
"ANSTO is Australia's largest producer of radioactive waste and
the failure of the waste dump proposal is a major rebuff to their
expansion plans.
"A credible plan for disposing of radioactive nuclear waste must
be an important pre-condition to the issue of an operating
licence for the new reactor."
Mr Howard today refused to commit to deciding before the federal
election whether a nuclear waste dump would be constructed.
He said federal cabinet would discuss issues surrounding the
nuclear dump at its meeting next week.
privacy © The Australian
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23 NRC: NRC to Meet With Detroit Firm on Apparent Transportation and Storage Violations
News Release - Region III - 2004-04
U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION
Office of Public Affairs, Region III No. III-04-041
July 8, 2004 CONTACT: Jan Strasma (630) 829-9663 Viktoria
Mitlyng (630) 829-9662 E-mail: opa3@nrc.gov [opa3@nrc.gov]
Detroit, Michigan, to discuss three apparent violations of NRC
requirements for the safe transportation and storage of gauges
containing sealed radiation sources.
The meeting, called a predecisional enforcement conference, will
be held at 9 a.m. CDT at the NRC Region III Office, 2443
Warrenville Road, Lisle, Illinois. The meeting is open to public
observation, and NRC officials will be available before the
conclusion of the meeting to respond to questions and comments
from the public.
Imaging Subsurface uses nuclear gauges containing sealed
radiation sources to test soil conditions at road and other
construction sites.
An NRC inspection in April found three apparent violations:
failing to adequately secure a gauge while it was being
transported by truck, failing to have required shipping
documents readily available while the gauge was being
transported, and failing to lock a second gauge or its container
while in storage. None of the apparent violations resulted in
the loss of a gauge or a direct safety hazard. The company took
steps to correct the violations before the NRC inspection was
completed.
These apparent violations are similar to those identified in a
2003 inspection, said Marc Dapas, Director of the Region III
Division of Nuclear Materials Safety. They are of concern to
the NRC because they indicate ineffective management of the
companys radiation safety program regarding proper and timely
corrective actions for the violations found in the previous
inspection.
The decision to hold a predecisional enforcement conference does
not mean that a determination has been made that a violation has
occurred or that enforcement action will be taken. The purpose
of the conference is to discuss apparent violations, their
causes and safety significance; to provide the licensee an
opportunity to point out any errors that may have been made in
the NRC inspection report; and to enable the company to outline
its proposed corrective actions.
No decision on the apparent violations or any contemplated
enforcement action, such as a fine, will be made at the
conference.
If the NRC subsequently concludes that significant enforcement
action is warranted, the NRC will post the action on the
agencys enforcement web page:
http://www.nrc.gov/what-we-do/regulatory/enforcement/current.html
.
Last revised Friday, July 09, 2004
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24 NRC: NRC Finds No Significant Environmental Impacts From Extended Operation of Dresden and
Quad Cities Nuclear Plants
News Release - 2004-08
U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION Office of Public Affairs
Telephone: 301/415-8200 Washington, DC 20555-0001 E-mail:
opa@nrc.gov No. 04-083 July 8, 2004
operating licenses for the Dresden and Quad Cities nuclear power
plants. In its statements, the NRC found there are no
environmental impacts that would preclude license renewal for an
additional 20 years of operation.
The Dresden nuclear facility is located nine miles east of
Morris, Ill. The current operating licenses expire on December
22, 2009, for Unit 2 and January 12, 2011, for Unit 3. The Quad
Cities nuclear facility is located 20 miles northeast of Moline,
Ill. The current operating licenses expire on December 14, 2012,
for Units 1 and 2. Exelon Generation Co., the operator of the
plant, submitted an application for renewal of the licenses for
both plants on January 3, 2003.
As part of its environmental review of the applications, the NRC
held public meetings near each plant to discuss the scope of the
review and the draft versions of the environmental impact
statements. Comments were received from members of the public,
local officials and representatives of State and Federal
agencies.
The Dresden Final Environmental Impact Statement is available on
the NRCs Web site at:
http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/nuregs/staff/sr1437
/supplement17/index.html. Copies are also available for
inspection at the NRCs Public Document Room at One White Flint
North, 11555 Rockville Pike, Rockville, Md.; the Morris Area
Public Library, 604 West Liberty Street, Morris, Ill.; and the
Coal City Public Library District, 85 North Garfield Street,
Coal City, Ill.
The Quad Cities statement is available electronically on the NRC
Web site at:
http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/nuregs/staff/sr1437
/supplement16/index.html. The report is also available for
public inspection at the NRCs Public Document Room; the Cordova
District Library, 402 Main Avenue, Cordova, Ill.; the River
Valley Library, 214 South Main Street, Port Byron, Ill.; and the
Davenport Public Library, 321 Main Street, Davenport, Iowa.
Last revised Thursday, July 08, 2004
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25 Using Depleted Uranium Is Omnicide
Date: Fri, 9 Jul 2004 02:03:04 -0500 (CDT)
Forwarded with Compliments of Free Voice of America (FVOA): Accurate
News and Interesting Commentary for Amerika's Huddled Masses Yearning
to Breathe Free. NOTE: This is quite a long piece--but the lives
of future generations may depend on how carefully you read it. --
kl, pp
Depleted Uranium: The Trojan Horse
Of Nuclear War
By Leuren Moret
World Affairs - The Journal of International Issues, July 2004
www.globalresearch.ca 8 July 2004
The URL of this article is: http://globalresearch.ca/articles/MOR407A.html
Heat not a furnace for your foe so hot that it do singe yourself.
William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
The use of depleted uranium weaponry by the United States, defying
all international treaties, will slowly annihilate all species on
earth including the human species, and yet this country continues to
do so with full knowledge of its destructive potential.
Since 1991, the United States has staged four wars using depleted
uranium weaponry, illegal under all international treaties,
conventions and agreements, as well as under the US military law. The
continued use of this illegal radioactive weaponry, which has already
contaminated vast regions with low-level radiation and will
contaminate other parts of the world over time, is indeed a world
affair and an international issue. The deeper purpose is revealed by
comparing regions now contaminated with depleted uranium - from
Egypt, the Middle East, Central Asia and the northern half of India -
to the US geostrategic imperatives described in Zbigniew Brzezinski's
1997 book The Grand Chessboard.
Fig. 1: Brzezinski's map of the Eurasian Chessboard
SOUTH REGION: "This huge region, torn by volatile hatreds and
surrounded by competing powerful neighbors, is likely to be a major
battlefield, both for wars among nation-states and, more likely, for
protracted ethnic and religious violence. Whether India acts as a
restraint or whether it takes advantage of some opportunity to impose
its will on Pakistan will greatly affect the regional scope of the
likely conflicts. The internal strains within Turkey and Iran are
likely not only to get worse but to greatly reduce the stabilizing
role these states are capable of playing within this volcanic region.
Such developments will in turn make it more difficult to assimilate
the new Central Asian states into the international community, while
also adversely affecting the American-dominated security of the
Persian Gulf region. In any case, both America and the international
community may be faced here with a challenge that will dwarf the
recent crisis in the former Yugoslavia." Brzezinski
The fact is that the United States and its military partners have
staged four nuclear wars, "slipping nukes under the wire" by using
dirty bombs and dirty weapons in countries the US needs to control.
Depleted uranium aerosols will permanently contaminate vast regions
and slowly destroy the genetic future of populations living in those
regions, where there are resources which the US must control, in
order to establish and maintain American primacy.
Described as the Trojan Horse of nuclear war, depleted uranium is the
weapon that keeps killing. The half-life of Uranium-238 is 4.5
billion years, the age of the earth. And, as Uranium-238 decays into
daughter radioactive products, in four steps before turning into
lead, it continues to release more radiation at each step. There is
no way to turn it off, and there is no way to clean it up. It meets
the US Government's own definition of Weapons of Mass Destruction.
After forming microscopic and submicroscopic insoluble Uranium oxide
particles on the battlefield, they remain suspended in air and travel
around the earth as a radioactive component of atmospheric dust,
contaminating the environment, indiscriminately killing, maiming and
causing disease in all living things where rain, snow and moisture
remove it from the atmosphere. Global radioactive contamination from
atmospheric testing was the equivalent of 40,000 Hiroshima bombs, and
still contaminates the atmosphere and lower orbital space today. The
amount of low level radioactive pollution from depleted uranium
released since 1991, is many times more (deposited internally in the
body), than was released from atmospheric testing fallout.
A 2003 independent report for the European Parliament by the European
Committee on Radiation Risk (ECRR), reports that based on Chernobyl
studies, low level radiation risk is 100 to 1000 times greater than
the International Committee for Radiation Protection models estimate
which are based on the flawed Atomic and Hydrogen Bomb Studies
conducted by the US Government. Referring to the extreme killing
effects of radiation on biological systems, Dr. Rosalie Bertell, one
of the 46 international radiation expert authors of the ECRR report,
describes it as:
"The concept of species annihilation means a relatively swift,
deliberately induced end to history, culture, science, biological
reproduction and memory. It is the ultimate human rejection of the
gift of life, an act which requires a new word to describe it:
omnicide."
1943 MANHATTAN PROJECT BLUEPRINT FOR DEPLETED URANIUM
In a declassified memo to General Leslie R. Groves, dated October 30,
1943, three of the top physicists in the Manhattan Project, Dr James
B Conant, A H Compton, and H C Urey, made their recommendation, as
members of the Subcommittee of the S-1 Executive Committee, on the
'Use of Radioactive Materials as a Military Weapon':
"As a gas warfare instrument the material would be ground into
particles of microscopic size to form dust and smoke and distributed
by a ground-fired projectile, land vehicles, or aerial bombs. In this
form it would be inhaled by personnel. The amount necessary to cause
death to a person inhaling the material is extremely small
There
are no known methods of treatment for such a casualty
it will
permeate a standard gas mask filter in quantities large enough to be
extremely damaging."
As a Terrain Contaminant:
"To be used in this manner, the radioactive materials would be spread
on the ground either from the air or from the ground if in enemy
controlled territory. In order to deny terrain to either side except
at the expense of exposing personnel to harmful radiations
Areas so
contaminated by radioactive material would be dangerous until the
slow natural decay of the material took place
for average terrain
no decontaminating methods are known. No effective protective
clothing for personnel seems possible of development.
Reservoirs or
wells would be contaminated or food poisoned with an effect similar
to that resulting from inhalation of dust or smoke."
Internal Exposure:
"
Particles smaller than 15 [micron] are more likely to be deposited
in the alveoli where they will either remain indefinitely or be
absorbed into the lymphatics or blood.
could get into the
gastro-intestinal tract from polluted water, or food, or air.
may
be absorbed from the lungs or G-I tract into the blood and so
distributed throughout the body."
Both the fission products and depleted uranium waste from the Atomic
Bomb Project were to be utilised under this plan. The pyrophoric
nature of depleted uranium, which causes it to begin to burn at very
low temperatures from friction in the gun barrel, made it an ideal
radioactive gas weapon then and now. Also it was more available
because the amount of depleted uranium produced was much greater than
the amount of fission products produced in 1943.
Britain had thoughts of using poisoned gas on Iraq long before 1991:
"I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilized
tribes. The moral effect should be good... and it would spread a
lively terror..." (Winston Churchill commenting on the British use of
poison gas against the Iraqis after the First World War).
GUIDED WEAPONS SYSTEMS
Depleted uranium weapons were first given by the US to Israel for use
under US supervision in the 1973 Sinai war against the Arabs. Since
then the US has tested, manufactured, and sold depleted uranium
weapons systems to 29 countries. An international taboo prevented
their use until 1991, when the US broke the taboo and used them for
the first time, on the battlefields of Iraq and Kuwait.
The US military admitted using depleted uranium projectiles in tanks
and planes, but warheads in missiles and bombs are classified or
referred to as a 'dense' or 'mystery metal'. Dai Williams, a
researcher at the 2003 World Depleted Uranium Weapons Conference,
reported finding 11 US patents for guided weapons systems with the
term 'depleted uranium' or 'dense metal', which from the density can
only be depleted uranium or tungsten, in order to fit the dimensions
of the warhead.
Figure 2 - Hard target guided weapons in 2002: smart bombs & cruise
missiles with "dense metal" warheads (updated September 2002)
Warhead Weight
Warhead weights include explosives (~20%) and casing. Dense metal
ballast or liners (suspected to be DU) estimated to be 50-75% of
warhead weight - necessary to double the density of previous
versions. AUP = Advanced penetrators. S/CH = Shaped Charge. BR =
BROACH Multiple Warhead System (S/CH+AUP). P = older 'heavy metal'
penetrators. ) Dai Williams 2002
source: Depleted Uranium weapons in 2001-2002 : Occupational, public
and environmental health issues - Mystery Metal Nightmare in
Afghanistan? Collected studies and public domain sources compiled by
Dai Williams, first edition 31 January 2002
Extensive carpet bombing, grid bombing, and the frequent use of
missiles and depleted uranium bullets on buildings in densely
populated areas has occurred in Iraq, Yugoslavia, and Afghanistan.
The discovery that bomb craters in Yugoslavia in 1999 were
radioactive, and that an unexploded missile in 1999 contained a
depleted uranium warhead, implies that the total amount of depleted
uranium used since 1991 has been greatly underestimated. Of even
greater concern, is that 100 per cent of the depleted uranium in
bombs and missiles is aerosolized upon impact and immediately
released into the atmosphere. This amount can be as much as 1.5 tons
in the large bombs. In bullets and cannon shells, the amount
aerosolized is 40-70 per cent, leaving pieces and unexploded shells
in the environment, to provide new sources of radioactive dust and
contamination of the groundwater from dissolved depleted uranium
metal long after the battles are over, as reported in a 2003 report
by the UN Environmental Program on Yugoslavia. Considering that the
US has admitted using 34 tons of depleted uranium from bullets and
cannon shells in Yugoslavia, and the fact that 35,000 NATO bombing
missions occurred there in 1999, potentially the amount of depleted
uranium contaminating Yugoslavia and transboundary drift into
surrounding countries is staggering.
Because of mysterious illnesses and post-war birth defects reported
among Gulf War veterans and civilians in southern Iraq, and radiation
related illnesses in UN Peacekeepers serving in Yugoslavia, growing
concerns about radiation effects and environmental damage has stirred
up international outrage about the use of radioactive weapons by the
US after 1991. At the 2003 meeting of parties to the Nuclear
Nonproliferation Treaty, discussing the U.S. desire to maintain its
nuclear weapons stockpile, the Hiroshima Mayor Tadatoshi AKIBA stated,
"It is incumbent upon the rest of the world ... to stand up now and
tell all of our military leaders that we refuse to be threatened or
protected by nuclear weapons. We refuse to live in a world of
continually recycled fear and hatred".
ILLEGAL UNDER INTERNATIONAL LAW
Four reasons why using depleted uranium weapons violates the UN
Convention on Human Rights:
LEGALITY TEST FOR WEAPONS UNDER INTERNATIONAL LAW:
TEMPORAL TEST - Weapons must not continue to act after the battle is over.
ENVIRONMENTAL TEST - Weapons must not be unduly harmful to the environment.
TERRITORIAL TEST - Weapons must not act off of the battlefield.
HUMANENESS TEST - Weapons must not kill or wound inhumanly.
International Human Rights and humanitarian lawyer, Karen Parker,
determined that depleted uranium weaponry fails the four tests for
legal weapons under international law, and that it is also illegal
under the definition of a 'poison' weapon. Through Karen Parker's
continued efforts, a sub-commission of the UN Human Rights Commission
determined in 1996 that depleted uranium is a weapon of mass
destruction that should not be used:
RESOLUTION 1996/16 ON STOPPING THE USE OF DEPLETED URANIUM - DU
The military use of DU violates current international humanitarian
law, including the principle that there is no unlimited right to
choose the means and methods of warfare (Art. 22 Hague Convention VI
(HCIV); Art. 35 of the Additional Protocol to the Geneva (GP1); the
ban on causing unnecessary suffering and superfluous injury (Art. 23
'le HCIV; Art. 35 '2 GP1), indiscriminate warfare (Art. 51 '4c and 5b
GP1) as well as the use of poison or poisoned weapons.
The deployment and use of DU violate the principles of international
environmental and human rights protection. They contradict the right
to life established by the Resolution 1996/16 of the UN Subcommittee
on Human Rights.
FOUR NUCLEAR WARS
"Military Men Are Just Dumb,
Stupid, Animals To Be Used
As Pawns In Foreign Policy"
- Henry Kissinger
Although restricted to battlefields in Iraq and Kuwait, the 1991 Gulf
War was one of the most toxic and environmentally devastating wars in
world history. Oil well fires, the bombing of oil tankers and oil
wells which released millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of
Arabia and desert, and the devastation from tanks and heavy equipment
destroyed the desert ecosystem. The long term and far reaching
effects, and dispersal of at least 340 tons of depleted uranium
weapons, had a global environmental effect. Smoke from the oil fires
was later found in deposits in South America, the Himalayas and
Hawaii. Large annual dust storms originating in North Africa, the
Middle East, and Central Asia will quickly spread the radioactive
contamination around the world, and weathering of old depleted
uranium munitions on battlefields and other areas will provide new
sources of radioactive contamination in future years. Downwind from
the radioactive devastation in Iraq, Israel is also suffering from
large increases in breast cancer, leukemia and childhood diabetes.
RADIATION RESPECTS NO BORDERS, NO SOCIOECONOMIC CLASS, AND NO RELIGION
The expendability of the sanctity of life to achieve US political
ends was described by US soldiers on the ground, and from the air,
along the Highway of Death in Iraq in 1991:
"Iraqi soldiers [whether they] be young boys or old men. They were a
sad sight, with absolutely no fight left in them. Their leaders had
cut their Achilles' tendons so they couldn't run away and then left
them. What weapons they had were in bad repair and little ammunition
was on hand. They were hungry, cold, and scared. The hate I had for
any Iraqi dissipated. These people had no business being on a
battlefield."
(S Hersh, New Yorker , May 22, 2000)
American pilots bombing and strafing, with depleted uranium weapons,
helpless retreating Iraqi soldiers who had already surrendered,
exclaimed:
"We toasted him
. we hit the jackpot
.a turkey shoot
.shooting fish
in a barrel
.basically just sitting ducks
There's just nothing like
it. It's the biggest Fourth of July show you've ever seen, and to see
those tanks just 'boom', and more stuff just keeps spewing out of
them
they just become white hot. It's wonderful."
(L A Times and Washington Post, both February 27, 1991)
Nearly 700,000 American Gulf War Veterans returned to the US from a
war that lasted just a few weeks. Today more than 240,000 of those
soldiers are on permanent medical disability, and over 11,000 are
dead. In a US Government study on post-Gulf War babies born to 251
veterans, 67 per cent of the babies were reported to have serious
illnesses or serious birth defects. They were born without eyes,
ears, had missing organs, fused fingers, thyroid or other
malfunctions. Depleted uranium in the semen of the soldiers
internally contaminated their wives. Severe birth defects have been
reported in babies born to contaminated civilians in Iraq,
Yugoslavia, and Afghanistan and the incidence and severity of defects
is increasing over time. Women in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq
are afraid now to have babies, and when they do give birth, instead
of asking if it is a girl or a boy, they ask 'is it normal?'.
KNOWN ILLNESSES INFLICTED BY INTERNALIZATION OF DEPLETED URANIUM PARTICLES
Table 1: Compiled by Leuren Moret from Interviews with Gulf War Vets
and their families
GENERAL
abnormal births and birth defects
abnormal metabolism of semen: contains
amine & ammonium alkaline
acute autoimmune symptoms
(lung-, liver-, kidney failure)
acute myeloid leukemia
(deadly within days or weeks)
acute immune depression
acute respiratory failure
asthma
auto-immune deficiencies
Balkan-syndrome
blood in stools and urine
body function control loss
bone cancer
brain damage
brain tumors
burning semen
burning sensations
calcium loss in body
cardiovascular signs or symptoms
chemical sensitivities
Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
chronic kidney and liver disorders
chronic myeloid leukemia
chronic respiratory infections
colon cancer
confusion
diarrhea
digestive problems
dizziness
Epstein Barr Syndrome
fluid buildup
fibromyalgia
gastrointestinal signs/symptoms
general fatigue
genetic alterations
glandular carcinoma
Gulf war-syndrome
headaches (severe)
heart attack/disease
high blood pressure
high frequency of micturition
Hodgkin lymphoma
homicide/suicide
immune system deficiency
infections
insomnia
involuntary movements
joint/muscle/leg pain
kidney failure/damage
leukemia
liver carcinoma
loss of feeling in fingers
Lou Gehrigs Disease -ALS
low blood oxygen saturation
( low HbO2)
low lung volume
lung damage
lung cancer
lymph cancer
lymphoma
melanoma
memory loss
metallic taste
Microplasma fermentans/
incognitis infections
mood swings - violence
multiple cancers
multiple myeloma
myeloma
muscle pain
nerve damage
neuro-muscular degenerative
disease
non-Hodgkin lymphoma
other malignancies
pancreas carcinoma
Parkinsons disease
petit & grand mal fits
rashes
reactive airway disease
reduced IQ
respiratory ailments
shortness of breath
sinus diseases
skin cancer
skin damage: sweat glands
with trapped du-particles
skin infections
skin spotting
smell, loss of
sleep disturbances
stiffening of fingers
teeth crumbling
thyroid cancer
thyroid disease
unable to walk
unusual fevers/night sweats
unusual hair loss
vision problems
weight loss
CHILDREN
alimentary disorders
asthma
bladder & sphincter paralysis
blindness
complete range of known and
unknown Congenital Defects
deafness
dyspraxia
headache
kidney disease
leukemia
lymphoma
malformations of legs, arms,
toes & fingers
respiratory disorders
stillbirth
neural tube defects
FEMALE
abdominal pain
breast cancer
breast cancer at very young
age (20)
cervix cancer
endometriosis
headaches
incontinence
joint pain
lung cancer at age 20 and
non-smoker
menstrual problems
miscarriages
nausea
ovarian cancer
paralysis of digestive system
thyroid problems
uterine cancer
MALE
(acute) headache
acute myeloid leukemia
arthritis
avoiding people
breathing problems
(stridor)
chemical sensitivity
chronic myeloid leukemia
endometriosis in partners
gastrointestinal disorder
hip and leg pain
joint pain
lung cancer at young age
lymphoma
skin cancer
skin eruptions
stomach pain
suicide
testicular cancer
unable to walk
VISIE: http://www.xs4all.nl/~stgvisie/VISIE/du-diagnosis.html
DESERT SHIELD/DESERT STORM website:
http://www.ushostnet.com/gulfwar/articles.htm 04/1504
Soldiers who served in Bradley fighting vehicles, where it was common
to sit on ammunition boxes where depleted uranium ammunition was
stored, are now reporting that many have rectal cancer.
For the first time, medical doctors in Yugoslavia and Iraq have
reported multiple in situ unrelated cancers developing in patients,
and even in families who are living in highly contaminated areas.
Even stranger, they report that cancer was unknown in previous
generations. Very rare and unusual cancers and birth defects have
also been reported to be increasing above normal levels prior to
1991, not only in war torn countries, but in neighbouring countries
from transboundary contamination.
Dr. Keith Baverstock, a senior radiation advisor who was on the staff
of the World Health Organization, co-authored a report in November
2001, warning that the long-term health effects of depleted uranium
would endanger Iraq's civilian population, and that the dry climate
would increase exposure from the tiny particles blowing around and be
inhaled for years to come. The WHO refused to give him permission to
publish the study, bowing to pressure from the IAEA. Dr. Baverstock
released the damning report to the media in February 2004. Pekka
Haavisto, Chairman of the UN Environment Program's Post-Conflict
Assessment Unit in Geneva, shares Baverstock's anxiety about depleted
uranium but UNEP experts have not been allowed into Iraq to assess
the pollution.
"DEPLETED URANIUM SCARE" - Claimed by President George W. Bush on the
official White House website:
"During the Gulf War, coalition forces used armor-piercing ammunition
made from depleted uranium, which is ideal for the purpose because of
its great density. In recent years, the Iraqi regime has made
substantial efforts to promote the false claim that the depleted
uranium rounds fired by coalition forces have caused cancers and
birth defects in Iraq. Iraq has distributed horrifying pictures of
children with birth defects and linked them to depleted uranium. The
campaign has two major propaganda assets:"
"Uranium is a name that has frightening associations in the mind of
the average person, which makes the lie relatively easy to sell; and
Iraq could take advantage of an established international network of
antinuclear activists who had already launched their own campaign
against depleted uranium."
"But scientists working for the World Health Organization, the UN
Environmental Programme, and the European Union could find no health
effects linked to exposure to depleted uranium."
The US war in Afghanistan made it clear that this was not a war IN
the third world, but a war AGAINST the third world. In Afghanistan
where 800 to 1000 tons of depleted uranium was estimated to have been
used in 2001, even uneducated Afghanis understand the impact these
weapons have had on their children and on future generations:
"After the Americans destroyed our village and killed many of us, we
also lost our houses and have nothing to eat. However, we would have
endured these miseries and even accepted them, if the Americans had
not sentenced us all to death. When I saw my deformed grandson, I
realized that my hopes of the future have vanished for good,
different from the hopelessness of the Russian barbarism, even though
at that time I lost my older son Shafiqullah. This time, however, I
know we are part of the invisible genocide brought on us by America,
a silent death from which I know we will not escape." (Jooma Khan of
Laghman province, March 2003)
In 1990, the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) wrote a
report warning about the potential health and environmental
catastrophe from the use of depleted uranium weapons. The health
effects had been known for a long time. The report sent to the UK
government warned "in their estimation, if 50 tonnes of residual DU
dust remained 'in the region' there could be half a million extra
cancers by the end of the century [2000]." Estimates of depleted
uranium weapons used in 1991, now range from the Pentagon's admitted
325 tons, to other scientific bodies who put the figure as high as
900 tons. That would make the number of estimated cancers as high as
9,000,000, depending on the amount used in the 1991 Gulf War. In the
2003 Gulf War, estimates of 2200 tons have been given - causing about
22,000,000 new cancer cases. Altogether the total number of cancer
patients estimated using the UKAEA data would be 25,250,000. In July
of 1998, the CIA estimated the population of Iraq to be approximately
24,683,313.
Ironically, the UN Resolution 661 calling for sanctions against Iraq,
was signed on Hiroshima Day, August 6, 1990.
THE PARALLELS
War can really cause no economic boom, at least not directly, since
an increase in wealth never does result from destruction of goods. -
Ludwig von Mises
The parallels between Iraq, Yugoslavia and Afghanistan are
startlingly similar. The weapons used, the unfair treaties offered by
the US, and the bombing and destruction of the environment and entire
infrastructure. In every city of Iraq and Yugoslavia, the television
and radio stations were bombed.
Educational centres were targeted, and stores where educational
materials were sold were destroyed on nearly the same day. Under UN
sanctions, Iraq was not even allowed pencils for schoolchildren.
Cultural antiquities and historical treasures were targeted and
destroyed in all three countries, a kind of cultural and historical
cleansing, a collective national psychic trauma.
The permanent radioactive contamination and environmental devastation
of all three countries is unprecedented, resulting in huge increases
in cancer and birth defects following the attacks. These will
increase over time from unknown effects due to chronic exposure,
increasing internal levels of radiation from depleted uranium dust,
and permanent genetic effects passed on to future generations.
Clearly, this has been a genocidal plan from the start.
Fig. 3: Map of regions within a 1000 mile radius of Baghdad and
Afghanistan which have been contaminated with depleted uranium since
1991. Depleted uranium dust will be repeatedly recycled throughout
this dry region, and also carried around the world. More than ten
times the amount of radiation, released during atmospheric testing,
has been released from depleted uranium weaponry since 1991. In 2002
the US government admitted that every person living in the US between
1957 and 1963 was internally contaminated with radiation. Note that
the contaminated region corresponds with the "South" region on the
Eurasian chessboard in Fig. 1.
What has happened to Human Rights, to the Rights of the Child, to
civil society, and to common humanity?
It is up to the citizens of the world to stop the depleted uranium
wars, and future nuclear wars, causing irreversible devastation.
There are just a few generations left before the collapse of our
environment, and then it will be too late. We can be no healthier
than the health of the environment - we breathe the same air, drink
the same water, eat food from the same soil.
"Our collective gene pool of life, evolving for hundreds of millions
of years has been seriously damaged in less than the past fifty. The
time remaining to reverse this culture of 'lemming death' is on the
wane. In the future, what will you tell our grandchildren about what
you did in the prime of your life to turn around this death process?"
(Rosalie Bertell, 1982)
THE DEEPER PURPOSE: G*O*D* [Gold, Oil, and Drugs]
"We must become the owners, or at any rate the controllers at the
source, of at least a proportion of the oil which we require."
(British Royal Commission, agreeing with Winston Churchill's policy
towards Iraq 1913).
"It is clear our nation is reliant upon big foreign oil. More and
more of our imports come from overseas."
(US President George W. Bush, Beaverton, Oregon, Sep. 25, 2000).
"If they turn on the radars we're going to blow up their goddamn SAMs
(surface-to-air missiles). They know we own their country. We own
their airspace... We dictate the way they live and talk. And that's
what's great about America right now. It's a good thing, especially
when there's a lot of oil out there we need."
(US Brig. General William Looney in 1999, referring to Iraq).
Millions of years ago, before India crashed into the Eurasian
continent and uplifted the Himalayas, the ancient shallow Tethys sea
stretched from the Atlantic across what is now the Mediterranean,
Black, Caspian and Aral seas. Rich oil deposits are now located where
ancient life accumulated and 'cooked' under just the right conditions
to form large oil deposits in the ancient sediments. Long before
1991, Unocal in Afghanistan, Amoco in Yugoslavia, and various oil
companies interested in Iraq oil deposits, had conducted extensive
exploration and characterisation of oil deposits in the Middle East
and Central Asian regions, including the northern half of India.
Britain has maintained an interest in Middle Eastern oil deposits for
a century, and has been the staunchest military partner of the US
since the first depleted uranium war in 1991 in Iraq. Germany,
another military partner in Yugoslavia with forces now in
Afghanistan, was one of the major economic beneficiaries of the
breakup of Yugoslavia and the colonisation of the Balkans. US
interest in Yugoslavia had much to do with building pipelines from
Central Asia to the Mediterranean warm water ports in Yugoslavia. A
silent and hidden partnership between the US and Japan provided large
amounts of cash from Japan to finance the 1991 Iraq and 1995/1999
Yugoslavian wars, with additional help in Afghanistan by providing
not only cash, but fuel for the war, from Aegis warships of the
Japanese Self Defense Forces in the Indian Ocean. Nippon Steel,
Mitsubishi, and Halliburton are now partners in a Central Asian oil
pipeline project. In 2004, despite much citizen opposition in Japan,
the Japanese government has sent Self Defense Forces to Iraq for
'reconstruction'. This action taken by the Japanese government, of
placing troops on the ground in a war zone, will lead to rescinding
Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution, which forever prohibits
military aggression by Japan.
THE IRON TRIANGLE (all under one roof): MILITARY, BIG BUSINESS, POLITICS
The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the
growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than
their democratic State itself. That, in its essence, is Fascism --
ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or any
controlling private power.
- Franklin Delano Roosevelt
But what do oil, military partners, depleted uranium wars, and US
foreign policy have to do with nuclear weapons? The answer came to me
in 1991 when I became a whistleblower at the Livermore Nuclear
Weapons Laboratory near San Francisco, California. Richard Berta, the
Western Regional Inspector for the Department of Energy, told me "The
Pentagon exists for the oil companies
and the nuclear weapons labs
exist for the Pentagon."
Depleted uranium was used beginning in 1991 for three reasons:
* To test the radiobiological effects of 4th generation
nuclear weapons, which are still under development
* To blur and break down the distinction between
conventional and nuclear weapons
* To make it easier to reintroduce nuclear weapons into
the US military arsenal
Today, the US is number one in 4th generation nuclear weapons
research and development, followed by Japan and Germany tied for
number two, and Russia and other countries follow.
Figure 4: Depleted uranium and 4th generation nuclear weapons
Map by Mika TSUTSUMI 12/12/03
The Carlyle Group, a private massive equity firm, the 12th largest
defense business with an obscenely high profit margin, is a business
"arrangement" between the Bush and Bin Laden families, wealthy
Saudis, former British Prime Minister John Major, James Baker III,
Afsaneh Masheyekhi, Frank Carlucci, Colin Powell, other former US
Government administrators, and Madeleine Albright's daughter. The
Carlyle Group is the 'gatekeeper' to the Saudi investment community.
It owns 70 percent of Lockheed Martin Marietta, the largest military
contractor in the US, and because Carlyle is privately owned, has no
scrutiny or accountability whatsoever. A journalist who calls himself
'a skunk at the garden party' described investigating the Carlyle
Group, he said 'it's like shadow boxing with a ghost'. The Group
hires as lobbyists the best known politicians from around the world,
in order to influence the politics of war, and privately profit from
their previous public policies. The conflict of interest is obvious:
President George W. Bush is creating wars as his father, former
President George Bush, is globally peddling weapons and "protection".
Lockheed Martin Marietta now owns Sandia Laboratories, a private
contractor that makes the trigger for nuclear weapons, with a Sandia
laboratory facility across the street from Los Alamos and Livermore
National Laboratories, where the nuclear bombs are made.
At the May 2003 University of California Regents meeting which I
attended, Admiral Linton Brooks was present and newly in charge of
the nuclear weapons programme under the Department of Energy. Admiral
Brooks informed California Lt. Governor Cruz Bustamante and the UC
Regents that the management contract for the nuclear weapons
laboratories, held unchallenged by the University of California for
over 60 years, will be put up for competitive bid in 2005. The
favoured institution, with a faculty member on the 'blue ribbon
committee' making the contract award, is the University of Texas.
This privatisation and management contract transfer of the US nuclear
weapons programme will put control of the US nuclear weapons
programme close to the Carlyle Group. The incestuous relationship
between the US government, private companies, and the Bush and Bin
Laden families in a way answers many of the lingering questions in
everyone's minds about many of the ill fated decisions and policies
that have been implemented.
=====================================================
Leuren Moret has worked at two US nuclear weapons laboratories as a
geoscientist. In 1991 she became a whistleblower at the Livermore
nuclear weapons lab, and since then has worked as an independent
citizen scientist and radiation specialist in communities around the
world, and contributed to the UN subcommission investigating depleted
uranium. Her research on the environmental and public health effects
of low-level radiation from atmospheric testing fallout, nuclear
power plants, and depleted uranium weaponry, is available on the
internet and at http://www.mindfully.org . In 2003, she testified at
the International Criminal Tribunal for Afghanistan held in Japan,
and presented at the World Depleted Uranium Weapons Conference in
Hamburg, Germany, and at the World Court of Women at the World Social
Forum in Bombay, India in January 2004. She is a Global Research
Contributing Editor, a City of Berkeley Environmental Commissioner,
and the Past President of the Association for Women Geoscientists.
More on Mindfully.org by Leuren Moret
Websites:
*
International Criminal Tribunal for Afghanistan written opinion of
Judge N. Bhagwa t : also at
http://www.traprockpeace.org/tokyo_trial_13march04.doc
*
Question 11: What does the US Government know about depleted uranium:
http://traprockpeace.org/moret_25nov03.pdf
*
World Depleted Uranium Weapons Conference:
http://www.uraniumweaponsconference.de
*
Radiation and Public Health Project: http://www.radiation.org
*
"A comparison of delayed radiobiological effects of depleted-uranium
munitions versus fourth-generation nuclear weapons" by A. Gsponer,
J.-P. Hurni, and B. Vitale, 4th International Conference of the
Yugoslav Nuclear Society, Belgrade, September 30-October 4, 2002.
http://arXiv.org/abs/physics/0210071
*
"Fourth Generation Nuclear Weapons: The Physical Principles Of
Thermonuclear Explosives, Inertial Confinement Fusion, And The Quest
For Fourth Generation Nuclear Weapons" by Andre Gsponer and
Jean-Pierre Hurni http://www.inesap.org/publ_tech01.htm
*
54 minute VPRO Dutch TV "Carlyle Group" documentary on internet:
http://www.vpro.nl/info/tegenlicht/index.shtml?7738514+7738518+7738520+118388
57
?
Real Player Video Documentary on the Carlyle Group, by VPRO Dutch
television [500 kbps real video]
?
Real Player Video Documentary on the Carlyle Group, by VPRO Dutch
television [100 kbps real video]
?
Overview of documentary - Interactive Flash Animation - with links
to biographies and articles (Dutch) and specific sections of video.
?
English translation of Dutch introduction Translation of the first
one minute forty seven seconds of this program.
The war in Iraq is over.
The rubble is still smoking While the first dozers are already
entering the country.
After the coalition forces destroyed Baghdad it is now primarily
American companies who are to rebuild Iraq.
An interesting point is that these companies usually have people on
the payroll who have been politicians. Is this a conflict of
interests or a new (global) way of doing business?
One of the corporations that work this way is the Carlyle Group. On
their payroll are people like : George Bush (Sr.), James Baker III
and old premier John Major.
The Carlyle Group is a private investment bank which doesn't come to
the publics attention very often but it is one of the biggest
American (ed: USA) investors of the defense industry, telecom,
property and financial services.
What is the Carlyle Group? Who are the people behind the name? And
how much power does Carlyle have?
*
Global Outlook: http://www.globalresearch.de
Email this article to a friend
To express your opinion on this article, join the discussion at
Global Research's News and Discussion Forum , at
http://globalresearch.ca.myforums.net/index.php
The Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) at
www.globalresearch.ca grants permission to cross-post original
Global Research (Canada) articles in their entirety, or any portions
thereof, on community internet sites, as long as the text & title of
the article are not modified. The source must be acknowledged as
follows: Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) at
www.globalresearch.ca . For cross-postings, kindly use the active
URL hyperlink address of the original CRG article. The author's
copyright note must be displayed. (For articles from other news
sources, check with the original copyright holder, where
applicable.). For publication of Global Research (Canada) articles in
print or other forms including commercial internet sites, contact:
editor@globalresearch.ca .
For media inquiries: editor@globalresearch.ca
) Copyright belongs to the author, 2004. For fair use only/ pour
usage iquitable seulement.
*****************************************************************
26 [du-list] ? New investigation report from Dutch Plane crash
Date: Fri, 09 Jul 2004 20:22:20 -0700
Below, it says
" 'No radiation exposure' "
( whose quote is that? )
and
"Leiden University Medical Centre specialists ..... did not discover any
health problems"
but there is nothing given about environmental radiation monitoring or
urinalysis results.
Anyone find the originating report? My Dutch is nonexistent.
Robert
===============
http://www.expatica.com/source/site_article.asp?subchannel_id=19&story_id=9360
'No radiation exposure' after airplane crash
9 July 2004
AMSTERDAM - An investigation has determined that emergency personnel and
members of the public involved in the Bijlmer airplane crash in 1992 were
not exposed to radioactivity or other dangerous materials.
Leiden University Medical Centre specialists examined 20 firefighters and
other emergency service personnel and Bijlmer residents in Amsterdam, but
did not discover any health problems, news agency ANP reported on Friday.
An Israeli El Al cargo plane crashed into a Bijlmer apartment complex in
October 1992, killing 43 people. The plane had depleted uranium on board and
there were suggestions after the crash that some of the uranium might have
been burned, releasing it into the atmosphere.
In 2002, Amsterdam fire brigade and the Health Ministry resolved to test 20
people involved in the disaster for possible long-term health affects. The
inquiry was launched in response to ongoing concerns expressed by
firefighters and residents.
[Copyright Expatica News 2004]
Subject: Dutch news
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27 [du-list] NPRI October Conference includes DU items
Date: Fri, 09 Jul 2004 20:22:17 -0700
Hi all
Here is the schedule at the present. I wonder if there will be affordable
participation rates for impecunious activists?
Cheers,
Robert
Conference Agenda
http://www.nuclearpolicy.org/confagenda.cfm
Friday, October 15
9:00—10:00 AM
Conference Opening
Michael Mariotte, Executive Director of the Nuclear Information and Resource
Service:
Introduction of NIRS and conference welcome
Dr. Helen Caldicott, President of the Nuclear Policy Research Institute:
Genetic, Biological and Medical Implications of Nuclear Power
10:00—11:00 AM
Panel One
Dan Hirsch, Committee to Bridge the Gap:
Security at Nuclear Power Plants in an Age of Terrorism
David Lochbaum, Nuclear Safety Engineer, Union of Concerned Scientists:
Nuclear Accidents Waiting to Happen
11:30—12:30 AM
Panel Two
Mary Olson, Radioactive Waste Project, Nuclear Information and Resource
Service:
The Seamless Garment—Nuclear Power and Weapons
Arjun Makhijani, President of the Institute for Energy and Environmental
Research:
Uranium Enrichment and Depleted Uranium
12:30—2:00 PM Lunch
2:00—3:00 PM Panel Three
Steven Wing, Associate Professor of Epidemiology at the University of North
Carolina, Chapel Hill:
TMI and Cancer
TBA
3:30—4:30 PM Panel Four
Bill Dougherty:
The Myth of “Clean Air”—CO2 Production in the Nuclear Fuel Cycle
Steven Strong, Solar Design Associates: Solar Power
6:00—9:00 PM Dinner Reception Benefiting NPRI
----------------
Saturday, October 16: Day Two
9:00—9:45 AM
Dr. Helen Caldicott, President of the Nuclear Policy Research Institute
Genetic, Biological, and Medical Implications of Nuclear Power
9:45—10:00 AM
Special Address from Dr. Patch Adams of the Gesundheit! Institute
10:00—11:00 AM Panel One
Paul Gunter, Director of the Reactor Watchdog Project, Nuclear Information
and Resource Service:
Routine and Accidental Radioactive Emissions from Nuclear Power Plants
David Lochbaum, Nuclear Safety Engineer, Union of Concerned Scientists:
Unsafe Reactors
11:30—1:00 PM Panel Two
Diane D’Arrigo, Director of the Radioactive Waste Project, Nuclear
Information and Resource Service:
Reclassification of Radioactive Waste, Recycling into household goods and
disposal
Kevin Kamps, Radioactive Waste Project, Nuclear Information and Resource
Service:
Nuclear Waste Disposal, WIPP, Yucca Mountain and Mobile Chernobyl
Donald Louria, Professor and Chairman Emeritus, University of Medicine and
Dentistry of New Jersey Medical School: Food Irradiation
1:00—2:00 PM Lunch
2:30—2:45 PM
TBA
2:45—3:30 PM Panel Three
Oscar Shirani, Nuclear Industry Whistle-Blower
TBA: Occupational Exposure
4:00—5:00 PM Panel Four
Navin Nayak, Environmental Advocate, U.S. PIRG:
Nuclear Insurance and Price Anderson
Harvey Wasserman: Wind Power
6:00—9:00 PM
Closing Dinner
The Nuclear Policy Research Institute,
with the Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS) and Physicians for
Social Responsibility--Chicago (PSR), presents a landmark symposium,
Nuclear Power and Children's Health
What you can do
October 15-16, 2004 ? St. Scholastica Academy ? Chicago, Illinois
Register On-Line ? Agenda ? Travel and Logistics
Featured Speakers include Dr. Helen Caldicott, President of the Nuclear
Policy Research Institute; David Lochbaum, Nuclear Safety Engineer, Union of
Concerned Scientists; Oscar Shirani, Nuclear Industry Whistle-Blower; Arjun
Makhijani, President of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research;
Steven Strong, Solar Design Associates; Diane D'Arrigo, Director of the
Radioactive Waste Project, Nuclear Information and Resource Service; and a
special address from Dr. Patch Adams of the Gesundheit! Institute.
Join us to learn more about:
The danger of nuclear power plants and the threat of terrorism
The hidden costs of nuclear energy
Protecting your health from exposure to nuclear materials and waste
Risks of transport and disposal of nuclear waste
Recycling nuclear materials into household goods
Non-nuclear alternative energy sources
Co-sponsored by the North Suburban Peace Initiative (NSPI) and the Nuclear
Energy Information Service (NEIS).
Please contact mpeters@nuclearpolicy.org, or visit www.nuclearpolicy.org for
more information
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Suite 210
Washington, District of Columbia 20006
United States
Our postal address is
1925 K Street NW
Suite 210
Washington, District of Columbia 20006
United States
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28 [NukeNet] 6th Anniversary Of Dr Bertell's Signed, Notorized
Date: Fri, 09 Jul 2004 14:58:37 -0700
Tomorrow, July 10, 2004 is the sixth anniversary
of Dr. Bertell's signed, notorized statement on
Jimmy Carter's ongoing cover up of the accident at
3 Mile Island:
http://www.mothersalert.org/bertell.html
See Nuclear Engineer Of The Year Paul Blanch's
statement confirming this ongoing cover up of the
nuclear accident:
http://www.mothersalert.org/blanche.html
3 MILE ISLAND COVER-UP:
DR. ROSALIE BERTELL'S SIGNED, NOTARIZED STATEMENT
--------------------------------------------------
------------------------------
Dr. Rosalie Bertell is the President of the
International Institute of Concern for Public
Health, and a renowned epidemiologist by
profession. She is also an expert on the health
effects of low level radiation. Dr. Bertell
received the Right Livelihood Award (Alternative
Nobel Peace Prize) in 1986. She can be reached at:
drrbertell@home.com Phone: 416-260-0575 Below
is Dr. Bertell's signed, notarized statement of
July 10, 1998 concerning the ongoing cover-up of
the Three Mile Island Accident.
--------------------------------------------------
------------------------------
"I feel that former President Jimmy Carter should
come forth with all of the facts surrounding the
Three Mile Island Accident, especially those which
involved the radiation release and the dose to the
public.
This disclosure should, moreover, be in language
which can be easily and correctly understood by
the public, and not massaged to hide the truth.
After the accident, for example, I found that the
dose officially assigned to the public, was
called: "measured dose to the public from the
accident" - where "measured" meant it only
included the dose after the rate matres were in
place the third day after the accident began;
"accident" meant that the radiation dose received
during the same time period in 1978 when the TMI
reactors were all operating and there was Chinese
nuclear test fallout, could be subtracted.
President Carter was, and continues to be by his
silence, complicit in keeping the true facts of
the Three Mile Island Accident from the American
and world public. While it may have been legally
although not morally, permissible to withhold this
information in 1979 under the guise of national
security needs, now that the Cold War is over it
is no longer credible that the US government
protect the nuclear industry at the cost of the
lives and health of its citizens.
As I, Dr. Rosalie Bertell, President of the
International Institute of Concern for Public
Health, stated in my e-mail to President Carter of
February 10,1998, President carter was and is
involved in the cover up of the Three Mile island
Accident, and in particular the serious health
damage to the people who lived nearby. I was on
the Citizen's Advisory Council to the Blue Ribbon
Panel set up by President Carter to investigate
the TMI accident. The members of this public panel
did not have FBI clearance, with the possible
exception of Dr. Kemmeny who had worked on the
Manhattan Project. The staff, selected from those
who worked for the NRC or DOE, did have such
security clearance, and therefore they were able
to withhold any information they or their
superiors wanted to declare "classified:, from the
Panel. The nuclear weapons program demanded that
workers and the military personnel handle this
radioactive material and the nuclear ordinance,
therefore health effects of radiation could be
classified for national security to prevent
rebellion.
At the first meeting of the Citizen's Advisory
Council to the Kemmeny Commission, I brought up
this potential problem and asked what provisions
had been made for the Commission members to have
security clearance so that they might have full
access to the truth about the accident. Another
Advisory Council Member asked who was in charge of
reactor operations during the accident. These two
questions were never answered, and they were
enough to cause the dissolution of the entire
advisory panel. In fact, Dr. Kemmeny even stated
publicly to the press that we had never been
invited to Washington [although the Commission
paid our air fare and hotel bills]. The Industry
Advisory Council to the Kemmeny Commission
continued to function during the investigation.
The nuclear industry has frustrated the litigation
of all of the serious health claims of the TMI
exposed people, in spite of the Supreme Court's
ruling in 1997 that these claims must be heard.
Lawyers for the nuclear industry are gloating that
they are "invincible" before the Courts. Using
dirty tactics, they have managed to eliminate all
of the expert witnesses which the victims had
engaged to bring their cause before the Court,
subsequently causing the cases to be dismissed for
lack of witnesses. There may be as many as 2,000
people who have not had their grievances heard by
the courts. This dismissal, after the Supreme
Court Ruling, as accomplished through a judge's
ruling, not through the court hearing which the
people had been promised. The people have still,
almost 20 years after the accident, not had their
day in court!
It is my opinion that former President Carter
should come forth and make the truth known so that
the court cases for the victims can be reopened. I
believe that it should also be made a court ruling
that defendants, such as the nuclear industry,
should not be allowed to declare their own
witnesses the official spokespersons for a branch
of knowledge, able to define for the court the
methodologies which they accept and practice as
the only legitimate ones! It was such a ploy that
was used to dismiss the TMI plaintiff's witnesses.
This is blatant violation of justice and of the
human rights of the victims. It is especially
abhorrent in the questions of health effects of
radiation, a field of public health which was
usurped by the nuclear physicists under the
exigencies of potential nuclear war after World
War II. Professional Health Physicists are not
required to have any training in biology, public
health or any medical discipline. Their
methodologies are very limited and unacceptable to
many professionals in the fields of epidemiology,
occupational and public health.
[Signed] Dr. Rosalie Bertell
Notarized by Michele D. Guy, July 10, 1998
--------------------------------------------------
------------------------------
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29 [du-list] I Eat Depleted Uranium for Breakfast
Date: Fri, 09 Jul 2004 20:22:24 -0700
I Eat Depleted Uranium for Breakfast
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2004/07/294632.html
DR, 09.07.2004 23:15
SATIRE
I Eat Depleted Uranium for Breakfast
by: Donald Rumsfeld
I don’t know about you, but I’m getting pretty sick and tired of all these
crazy conspiracy theories that have been going around about how the use of
depleted uranium by our armed forces around the globe is to blame for all
the world’s problems. Whether it’s a bunch of mutated babies and their
crybaby parents in Iraq pointing the twelfth finger on their third hand at
the 320 tons of DU we’ve scattered around their desert since 1990 for their
pneumoconiosis, or the American veterans who want to shake down Uncle Sam
for free treatment for their pulmonary fibrosis (and maybe a hot new sports
car on the side?), I say its all a bunch of malarkey. After all, I eat
depleted uranium for breakfast! And if you don’t believe me, you can ask
the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation,
who reported that the average person ingests 0.000436 grams of uranium 238
per year. You see? And you don’t hear me complaining!
Good golly, I’m steamed.
I recently heard that there are a number of veterans who have the temerity
to claim that they developed rectal cancer from sitting on the DU enriched
armor plating of the M1 Abrams tanks they’d served in during the Gulf War.
I know, it’s ridiculous, but it’s more than that. It’s a complete disavowal
of personal responsibility - the likes of which the good people of this
country have likely become used to seeing in the bourgeoning ranks of their
more slovenly compatriots, but are, like me, as sick as a teenager in
Kosovo with advanced osteoarthritis to see it manifest amongst our esteemed
armed forces. I mean heavens to Betsy, if you’re going to smoke two packs
of cigarettes, eat a big bag of Spicier Nacho Doritos, and wash it all down
with a bottle of Lucky Brand whiskey everyday, you’ve got to learn to
accept the consequences!
Make no mistake about it, the assertions made by such “victims” is
treachery pure and simple. After all, according to the government, DU
munitions are as safe as those composed of lead and copper or a sunny day
at the beach. The US Army reported to Congress that, "The health risks
associated with using depleted uranium in peacetime are minimal. This
includes risks associated with transporting, storing and handling intact
depleted uranium munitions and armor during peacetime." Notice the
operative term ‘peacetime’ in that quote – implying that the whole business
is of such a ludicrous nature that publicizing a report on the health risks
of DU aerosolized by the explosion of such munitions on the battlefield
would just be a waste of everybody’s time. And if it’s good enough for
Congress, why shouldn’t it be good enough for the rest of us?
Angry yet? I know I am, gosh darn it. That’s why I support wholeheartedly
the military’s policy of forcing these conniving sissies to pay for their
so-called “syndromes” on their own by discharging them without benefits.
Jumpin’ Jehosophat!
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30 Las Vegas SUN: U.S. Firm Said Among Nuclear Black Market
By GEORGE JAHN ASSOCIATED PRESS
VIENNA, Austria (AP) -
An investigation of the black market supplying nations wanting
nuclear arms has spread to more than 20 firms - some of them
North American - the chief of the U.N. atomic agency told The
Associated Press Friday. A senior diplomat identified one of the
firms as U.S. based.
Demanding anonymity, the diplomat also said the Syria and Saudi
Arabia are also being investigated as possible buyer nations,
beyond Iraq, Iran, Libya and North Korea - the countries known
to have been in contact with Pakistani scientist A.Q. Khan and
members of his procurement network.
But the diplomat, who is familiar with the Vienna-based IAEA
told The AP that beyond suspicions prompting a continuing
investigation, "there has been no proof" on Syria and Saudi
Arabia that would warrant them being reported to the board of
governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
In separate comments to The Associated Press, IAEA Director
General Mohamed ElBaradei avoided specifics on the locations of
the firms supplying the nuclear black market beyond saying there
were "over 20 countries, some of them in North America."
The diplomat said at least one of them was in the United States.
He declined to elaborate, saying the agency "was not yet at the
bottom of that story." But he said what is known about that
company sheds new light on the activities of the network, known
up to now for primarily supplying technology to North Korea,
Libya and Iran as part of the process allowing them to make
enriched uranium that can be used either to generate electricity
or make weapons.
--
*****************************************************************
31 Bellona: Radiation source found in Urals
The source of radiation found on April 20th near the suspicious
container turned out to be iridium-192.
2004-07-01 20:15
This information was received after spectrometric analyses of the
source. The source was not inside the container as it was assumed
before, ITAR-TASS reported on April 23d. The local police took
measures to find the owner of the container and the radiation
source. There is no threat to the environment or the local
population, ITAR-TASS reported. The metal container was found in
Beloyarsk district in Sverdlovsk region on the road between
Yekaterinburg and Tyumen close to a café. The specialists of the
Ministry of Emergencies detected gamma radiation equal to 2,800
mikroroentgen per hour (20 muR/h is normal).
Publisher: Bellona Foundation [bellona@bellona.no] ,
President: Frederic Hauge [frederic@bellona.no]
Information: info@bellona.no [info@bellona.no] , Technical
contact: webmaster@bellona.no [webmaster@bellona.no]
Telephone: +47 23 23 46 00 Telefax: +47 22 38 38 62 * P.O.Box
2141 Grunerlokka, 0505 Oslo, Norway
*****************************************************************
32 Bellona: Nuclear officials talk about what isn’t there
ST. PETERSBURG—A high ranking official with Russia’s nuclear
regulatory service made a disturbing announcement during a
conference on state control over securing and accounting for
radioactive materials and waste earlier this month, stating
bluntly that Russia has in place no such system to handle any of
this.
The conclusions of Russia's nuclear regulatory organization
were on full display during this month's conference on monitoring
radioactive materials and waste. The screen reads: 'A state
system of accounting for and controlling radioactive waste and
materials does not, in fact, fully exist.'
Rashid Alimov/Bellona
Rashid Alimov, 2004-07-09 14:42
Speaking to the July 5th – 8th St. Petersburg conference,
entitled “The System of State Accounting and Control of
Radioactive Material and Waste,” Sergei Lukovnikov, deputy
director for the Northern European Inter-regional Department of
the Federal Service for Nuclear Oversight—known in is Russian
abbreviation as FSAN—frankly contradicted the name of the
conference, stating that “a state system of accounting for
radioactive materials and radioactive waste has not factually
been created in any full sense.” FSAN used to be Gosatomnadzor,
or GAN, but was rearranged in a government reshuffle in March
enacted by President Vladimir Putin.
Lukovnikov’s assertion also directly contradicted opening
statements by Alexander Agapov who heads the Department of
Nuclear and Radiation Safety at the Federal Atomic Energy
Agency—formerly Ministry of Atomic Energy, or Minatom until the
same March reshuffle. Agapov said during his introductory
statements on July 5th that all radioactive material and waste in
Russia were under full control.
The announcement was somewhat of a slap in the face to the former
Minatom from the former GAN, who have a history of rivalry over
who gets to oversee what sector of Russia’s vast nuclear
industry. In this case, it is more likely that FSAN has more
concrete knowledge about the controls and accounting systems that
are—and are not—in place for radioactive waste.
In accordance with governmental decree No. 1298 from October
1997, such an accounting and control system should have been in
place more than three years ago, beginning January 1, 2001.
No System This decree endowed the executive power structures of
the subjects of the Russian Federation—the official name for
Russia’s regions, all of which are endowed with local
governments—with the authority to account for and control
radioactive materials and waste within their respective
jurisdictions. Russia is divided into 88 subjects of the
federation and fully 85 of these have radioactively dangerous
installations. As per the decree, these regions were to have
created regional informational and analytical centers—or RIATs in
their Russian abbreviation—to deal with local radioactive waste
problems.
Firms, institutes and other structures dealing with the
production, use or burial of radioactive waste and materials were
then, under the decree, to report on a regular basis to these
RIATs organizations, or analytical centers. From there, the
information was to go to Minatom and to officials in the
executive structures of the subjects of the Federation, who were
to be ultimately responsible for any political decisions.
Lukovnikov told the conference, however, that of 85 subjects of
the Federation that have radioactively hazardous installations on
their territory, 42, or fully half, have not created a RIATs, and
that four subjects have created them but they are non-functional.
RIATs are therefore functioning in only 39—or 45 percent—of
Russia’s subjects.
These data from FSAN—which maintains supervision over compliance
with Russian legislation relative to the handling of radioactive
materials and waste by organizations of various levels throughout
the country—were obtained by a GAN study conducted from 2002
through 2003.
Lukovnikov underscored that his data differed strongly from the
FAEA’s but said the reason for that was a more accurate system of
evaluation on FSAN’s behalf. The RIATs system, after all, was
envisioned as reporting to Minatom.
“We consider that the RIATs system is created and functions only
if there are corresponding decisions from the executive
authorities and RIATs work is financed,” Lukovnikov said.
Lukovnikov’s statement officially acknowledged that there is a
problem in obtaining information about the availability,
production, accrual and transfer of radioactive materials and
radionuclide sources. It also acknowledged that there is little
information about radioactive waste, the accrual of radionuclides
within the environment, and territorial contamination caused by
them. After all—as Lukovnikov not so subtilely hinted—the
compilation of such information is the responsibility of the
RIATs system.
During a question and answer period during the conference, a
representative of the Perm RIATs asked what percent of RIATs
facilities were financed on a sustainable basis.
Lukovnikov said: “It is hard for me to say anything because it
seems to me that it is not distinctly defined who pays for what.”
“An inventory of the state system of radioactive waste and
materials accounting and control has been undertaken at only 60
percent of the organizations possessing radioactive waste and
materials,” he added.
He went on to criticize the minimal understanding that executive
authorities in Russia’s subjects possess of guaranteeing their
populations’ safety from radiation hazards, and said that the
RIATs system must not only to count and monitor sources of
radioactivity, but to furnish executive powers with information
necessary for them to make educated administrative decisions in
the event of an emergency situation
“In all actuality, this part of the system doesn’t work,”
Lukovnikov said. He added the suggestion that the FAEA and FSAN
could jointly conduct training courses for regional leaders
throughout Russia in order that they better understand the
principles of government control over radioactive materials and
waste.
As an example of how misinformed local bureaucrats can be about
the RIATs system, Lukovnikov recounted how he was contacted by
the executive authorities in Kalinigrad region, who proposed that
the Northern European Administration of FSAN act as Kaliningrad’s
RIATs and then asked how much such a service would cost.
“And what, you refused?” retorted Agapov with a wink.
New norms? Lukovnikov said that FSAN had worked out a number of
addenda in existing normative acts, as well as new forms of
accountability for organizations dealing with radioactive waste
and materials, which he presented at the seminar.
“This doesn’t concern nuclear materials, but it does concern
spent nuclear fuel because this is, in fact, a variant of
radioactive waste,” Lukovnikov said.
Actually, what Lukovnikov presented varies with what is outlined
in the Ministry of Health’s “Fundamental Sanitary Rules of
Maintaining Radiation Safety”—or OSPORB in its Russian
abbreviation—which provide for accountability and safety
regulations. This caused visible confusion among regional
delegates and one shouted “in what form are we to account [to
authorities] now?”
Agapov was once again at the ready with a wry retort, saying,
“Gosatomnadzor is great, and therefore should not be confuse with
OSPORB,” The delegates, still without an answer, whispered among
themselves.
The FAEA's head of nuclear and radiation safety, Alexander
Agapov. Rashid Alimov/Bellona
What, finally, are trying to build?
“We understand that legislation, to well-known degree, is
overabundant with regard to not very dangerous materials,” said
Agapov, adding that this situation must be reviewed.
Sparring with Agapov, Lukovnikov said: “As a specialist, I still
don’t understand what we are trying to build, finally. Alexander
Mikhailovich [Agapov] thinks that while accounting [for
materials] we should cut out the small change and only pay
attention to the big stuff.”
“Has anyone in the course of creating the system of accounting
for radioactive waste and material evaluated the potential harm
from the absence of this system and it worth? We have to decide
whether we base our judgement on the tangibale money allocated
for this system or on the harm that, as we well know, can be
inflicted ” Lukovnikov added.
Illegal trafficking
When asked the volume of radioactive materials estimated to be
involved in illegal trade, and whether the Minatom RIATs system
could estimate that volume, Agapov responded categorically that
no illegal trade in radioactive materials exists in Russia.
He was supported by his colleague, the head of the FAEA training
centre in St. Petersburg, Yury Lisnenko.
“From 1997 to 2001, control was lost over 50 sources, 38 were
recovered. Real losses were only 12,” said Lisnenko.
RTGs
Some 1000 radioisotopic thermoelectric generators, or RTGs,
are located in Russia, the majority of which are used as power
generators for lighthouses. Every RTG in Russia has exceeded its
engineered life-span and the must be decommissioned.
Read Bellona's Working Paper »
[http://www.bellona.no/en/international/russia/navy/northern_flee
t/incidents/31772.html]
Meanwhile, data from the Yakutia Administration alone, and
relative only to the northern shipping route, indicates that the
region has lost control over 25 radioactive generators—so called
RTGs. Each of these RTGs contain at minimum 40,000 curies of
strontium-90.
“Control over sources of ionizing radiation is lost far more
frequently,” said Bellona’s Sergei Kharitonov. “This concerns
both control over the state of these source, and the control of
their movement from place to place as well And the loss of any
type of control is dangerous.”
Vladimir Kuznetsov, a former inspector with GAN who presently
works with the Russian branch of the environmental organization
Green Cross said: “On average, they lose and find 10 [radiation]
sources a year.But as for the radioactive waste, this information
is inaccessible."
Publisher: Bellona Foundation [bellona@bellona.no] ,
President: Frederic Hauge [frederic@bellona.no]
Information: info@bellona.no [info@bellona.no] , Technical
contact: webmaster@bellona.no [webmaster@bellona.no]
Telephone: +47 23 23 46 00 Telefax: +47 22 38 38 62 * P.O.Box
2141 Grunerlokka, 0505 Oslo, Norway
*****************************************************************
33 Pasadena Star-News: Perchlorate: No need to panic
Opinion
pasadenastarnews.com
Article Published: Monday, July 05, 2004 - 7:09:05
THE jury's still out on the consequences of ingesting low levels
of the main ingredient of rocket fuel, and yet the perchlorate
scare has percolated through local households and into the laps
of Congress.
The fact that traces of perchlorate were found in milk purchased
at grocery stores in the region may have upped the ante.
Researchers found minute amounts of perchlorate in 31 of 32 milk
samples purchased at stores in Orange and Los Angeles counties.
The contamination is thought to come from dairy farmers' use of
alfalfa irrigated by perchlorate-tainted water from the Colorado
River. Lettuce and other vegetables also have been contaminated.
"What's clear is that perchlorate is now permeating the food
chain,' said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. "It's a very serious
thing.'
The study, conducted by the Environmental Working Group, is one
more reason why rocket fuel in the San Gabriel basin needs to be
cleaned up and it needs to be done now. Often, and as the EPA
points out in the Valley, rocket fuel contamination in ground
water comes from defense contractors. And they've been reticent
to accept the blame or ante up.
The Pentagon, after all, is also a likely culprit for
perchlorate plumes stretching across California, with former
rocket manufacturing sites and military storage areas believed to
be the primary source.
And yet a separate U.S. Treasury Department account to help
affected cities and water districts clean up the messes faces a
tougher struggle, since the Bush administration isn't signing
onto it.
Politics aside, the scientific evidence still is lacking on how
much of a danger perchlorate actually poses. And so, its
discovery in water, lettuce or milk in small amounts
realistically should be no cause for alarm.
The researchers from Texas Tech University found perchlorate
levels in Southern California milk averaged 1.3 parts per
billion. Samples from Northern California averaged 5.8 ppb.
California's public health goal is 6 ppb. But a drinking-water
standard has not been set. That's a lapse that needs to be
corrected as soon as possible at least to see if all the fuss is
warranted.
In the meantime, state and local health officials say it's OK to
drink the milk.
Knowing what we do thus far, it's an assessment that appears to
make sense.
Copyright © 2004 Pasadena Star News
Los Angeles Newspaper Group
*****************************************************************
34 Economic Times: BARC chargesheets 3 technicians -
[http://www.indiatimes.com/]
PTI[ FRIDAY, JULY 09, 2004 03:55:59 PM ]
MUMBAI: Bhabha Atomic Research Centre will issue "chargesheets"
within a week to its three suspended technical employees,
suspected to be involved in the alleged radiation exposure case
at its Waste Immobilisation Plant (WIP) at Tarapur, following a
deaptmental inquiry against them.
"Since the matter is very important and of very serious natue, we
are taking all precautions in framing chargesheets and planning
to issue chargesheets by next week," BARC Controller Dr Gajanan
Pungle told PTI here today.
BARC has, since June 21, suspended three technicians at WIP in
Tarapur, who were allegedly responsible for radiation exposure of
three of their colleagues in one of the labs of the WIP on April
17.
Chargesheets are being framed against all the three as part of
the departmental inquiry procedure and once the chargesheets are
issued, the corresponding disciplinary and appointing authorities
will take up the matter for further action on the three persons
as per rules laid down by BARC, Pungle said.
Three employees of WIP, one of the units of BARC at Tarapur, were
allegedly exposed to radiation from a small sample bottle
containing few drops of radioactive liquid on April 17 during the
second/third shifts.
"The three were called for the departmental inquiry on June 21
and an official letter of suspension was issued on June 18 by
BARC," the Controller said.
The inquiry is taking place under the supervision of Atomic
Energy Commission Chairman Dr Anil Kakodkar. PTI LV NPK RT
07091549 D
Copyright © 2004 Times Internet Limited. All rights reserved. |
*****************************************************************
35 [PUBCIT_PRESS] Yucca Mountain lawsuit; Meat Safety
Date: Fri, 9 Jul 2004 17:29:18 -0500 (CDT)
Public Citizen Press Releases
Providing the latest information about Public Citizen activities
-------------------------------------------
Public Citizen released the following July 9, 2004:
Victory in Yucca Mountain Lawsuit; Court Overrules Government's Lax
Radiation Standards for Nuclear Waste
Statement of Public Citizen President Joan Claybrook
Today's ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit that
the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) illegally set its
radiation release standards for groundwater for the proposed high-level
radioactive waste dump at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, marks a major victory
for citizens of Nevada, for the environment and for science over
politics.
The EPA set 10,000 years as the period during which radiation in the
groundwater cannot exceed drinking water standards at the site's
boundary, but this time frame would not protect the health of future
generations. As the court ruled, the Energy Policy Act requires that the
EPA determine public health and safety standards for Yucca Mountain
"based upon and consistent with" the National Academy of Sciences'
recommendations. The Academy's recommendation is that the compliance
period should extend through the time of the peak risk for radiation
doses from the repository, which studies show are likely to occur in
300,000 years or more. To compensate for Yucca's geologic unsuitability,
the EPA ignored the findings of the National Academy of Sciences.
"It would have been one thing had EPA taken the Academy's
recommendations into account and then tailored a standard that
accommodated the agency's policy concerns. But that is not what EPA
did," the Court wrote in its ruling. "Instead, it unabashedly rejected
NAS's findings, and then went on to promulgate a dramatically different
standard, one that the Academy had expressly rejected."
Given this ruling, the Yucca Mountain Project should be finished. The
U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) must show that it can prevent
groundwater contamination above drinking water standards at the
compliance boundary for 300,000 years - a standard that the DOE's own
analysis shows the Yucca Mountain site cannot meet. The EPA faces the
choice of either appealing the decision or revising its standard. The
rules have been bent too often to promote Yucca Mountain. We will be
watching closely to see if the EPA makes a wise choice and protects
future generations, as the court mandated.
To read the court's decision, go to
http://pacer.cadc.uscourts.gov/docs/common/opinions/200407/01-1258a.pdf.
###################################################
Six Months Later and Consumers Still at Risk
Statement by Wenonah Hauter, Director of Public Citizen's Food
Program
Today's announcement by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
that it is again delaying the proposed rules regarding bovine spongiform
encephalopathy (BSE) is an extreme disappointment.
The agency has broken the promise it made to American consumers on Jan.
26, when it announced that it was going to take immediate action to
strengthen the firewalls against BSE. At the time, Health and Human
Services Secretary Tommy Thompson stated: "Small as the risk may
already be, this is the time to make sure the public is protected to the
greatest extent possible."
It is nearly six months later, and the gaping holes in the animal feed
ban still exist - with no specific date when those holes would actually
be closed. It is obvious that the Bush administration has, once again,
kowtowed to industry interests. We call on the administration to
immediately issue an interim final rule that would close these holes.
We must ensure strong and vigilant surveillance of our meat safety
system in order to protect consumers. The FDA must work harder to
protect the health and safety of the public.
###################################################
-------------------------------------------
To be removed from this list send an email to pcpress@citizen.org with "unsubscribe pubcit_press" in the message.
Please visit our website at www.citizen.org
*****************************************************************
36 [NukeNet] VICTORY in Yucca Mountain lawsuit
Date: Fri, 09 Jul 2004 14:58:54 -0700
hi all,
just wanted to let all of you know the good news (excellent news,
really) - the DC Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled, among other things,
that the EPA's radiation protection standard of 10,000 years is illegal.
the court said they are required to follow the National Academy of
Sciences recommendations, and NAS recommended not 10,000 years but as
long as the risk is high, which works out to more like 300,000 years.
DOE knows it can't meet this standard.
in theory, this means a complete victory. while the court ruled
against us and the State of Nevada on all the other counts (check what
all the cases were at
http://www.citizen.org/cmep/energy_enviro_nuclear/nuclear_waste/hi-level/yucca/articles.cfm?ID=10882),
this one victory is so major that there's really no way DOE can design a
repository and prove it will contain the waste for 300,000 years. what
is more likely is that EPA will approach Congress and ask them to change
the law so they no longer are required to draft a rule that is "based
upon and consistent with" the NAS's recommendations.
if and when this happens, we'll need your help to stop it. there's
been enough bending and changing rules to fit the site already, and we
don't need any more. we have science on our side, but politics is
powerful.
i just wanted to let you know this because you're sure to see articles
in the paper that claim this is a defeat for Nevada. they fail to
understand that while we only won one case out of 6, that is such an
insurmountable ruling that it essentially defeats the Yucca repository.
DOE's own analysis shows they can't contain the waste for 300,000
years.
you can read the decision at
http://pacer.cadc.uscourts.gov/docs/common/opinions/200407/01-1258a.pdf
- the 10,000 year standard begins on page 20, with the real meat of the
ruling starting on page 26. best quote:
"Only in a world where 'based upon' means 'in disregard of' and
'consistent with' means 'inconsistent with' could EPA's
adoption of a 10,000-year compliance period by considered a permissible
construction" of the Energy Policy Act (p. 29).
Public Citizen's press release is below.
For Immediate Release
Contact: Michele Boyd (202) 454-5134 or (202) 494-0785
Erica Hartman (202) 454-5174
July 9, 2004
Victory in Yucca Mountain Lawsuit; Court Overrules Government's Lax
Radiation Standards for Nuclear Waste
Statement of Public Citizen President Joan Claybrook
Today's ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit
that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) illegally set its
radiation release standards for groundwater for the proposed high-level
radioactive waste dump at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, marks a major victory
for citizens of Nevada, for the environment and for science over
politics.
The EPA set 10,000 years as the period during which radiation in
the groundwater cannot exceed drinking water standards at the site's
boundary, but this time frame would not protect the health of future
generations. As the court ruled, the Energy Policy Act requires that the
EPA determine public health and safety standards for Yucca Mountain
"based upon and consistent with" the National Academy of Sciences'
recommendations. The Academy's recommendation is that the compliance
period should extend through the time of the peak risk for radiation
doses from the repository, which studies show are likely to occur in
300,000 years or more. To compensate for Yucca's geologic unsuitability,
the EPA ignored the findings of the National Academy of Sciences.
"It would have been one thing had EPA taken the Academy's
recommendations into account and then tailored a standard that
accommodated the agency's policy concerns. But that is not what EPA
did," the Court wrote in its ruling. "Instead, it unabashedly rejected
NAS's findings, and then went on to promulgate a dramatically different
standard, one that the Academy had expressly rejected."
Given this ruling, the Yucca Mountain Project should be
finished. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) must show that it can
prevent groundwater contamination above drinking water standards at the
compliance boundary for 300,000 years - a standard that the DOE's own
analysis shows the Yucca Mountain site cannot meet. The EPA faces the
choice of either appealing the decision or revising its standard. The
rules have been bent too often to promote Yucca Mountain. We will be
watching closely to see if the EPA makes a wise choice and protects
future generations, as the court mandated.
keep up the fight,
Brendan Hoffman
Organizer, Nuclear Energy & Waste
Critical Mass Energy and Environment Program
Public Citizen
p: 202.454.5130
f: 202.547.7392
bhoffman@citizen.org
www.citizen.org/cmep
_______________________________________________________________________
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37 nationalgeographic: In New Jersey, Radioactive Cleanup Nears End
[http://www.nationalgeographic.com/]
Jennifer Hile
National Geographic Channel
July 9, 2004
THE FLORIDA EVERGLADES — -->
A New Jersey county is in the last phases of an intensive U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency project to remove the
radium-contaminated soil upon which homes in several communities
were built.
Problems in Essex County began nearly a century ago, when the
U.S. Radium Corporation (now defunct) processed radium in the
City of Orange Township in the early 1900s.
[Radioactive soil cleanup in New Jersey]
The soil under 240 properties around Orange, New Jersey, was
contaminated by radioactive tailings dumped by the U.S. Radium
Corporation. The defunct company processed radium at a plant in
the city from 1915 to 1926. The soil, which will remain
radioactive for 14,000 years, is being excavated and moved to a
nuclear waste storage facility in Utah.
Photograph by Gene Urbanik, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
Few knew the danger of radioactive materials at the time. The
company deposited radioactive tailings produced during processing
in nearby garbage dumps.
Years later, those dumps were leveled as sites for housing. In
some cases, contaminated soil was mixed with the concrete used to
construct new homes. Today 240 properties in the densely
populated county are identified as contaminated.
"The problem is that, when radium decays, it produces radon gas.
When that collects in homes it can be dangerous. … People exposed
to radon are subject to an increased likelihood of lung cancer,"
Bob McKnight said.
McKnight is the section chief of the federal Superfund project in
New Jersey, which is charged with cleaning up the area.
The Creation of Superfund
Orange is the site of just one of more than 1,200 uncontrolled or
abandoned hazardous-waste dumps across the U.S. that have
designated Superfund sites. The EPA is charged with cleaning them
up.
The U.S. Congress established the Superfund program in 1980. To
fund it, legislators levied a tax on chemical and petroleum
industries to finance cleanup of toxic dumps nationwide.
James Haklar, spokesperson for the Superfund region covering New
York and New Jersey, says Love Canal played a key role in the
creation of the Superfund program.
In 1978 residents of the western New York town discovered their
community had been built on a chemical dump. "That sparked a
community action," Haklar said. "People realized there could be
other unidentified toxic dumps out there with people living on
top of them."
Seventy percent of all Superfund cleanups are paid for by the
parties responsible for the pollution. But in cases where
companies responsible for pollution no longer exist, cannot pay,
or refuse to pay, the EPA uses the Superfund money allocated by
Congress to undertake the cleanup.
Radium Residue
The toxic contamination underlying many Superfund sites today is
often decades old.
In Orange, the U.S. Radium Corporation processed a half ton (450
kilograms) of ore each day on its two-acre (0.8-hectare) facility
between 1915 and 1926.
"Every ton of ore was mixed with 60 tons [54 metric tons] of
water and 6 tons [5.4 metric tons] of hydrochloric acid, then
left to stand for a month," said Gene Urbanik, an engineer with
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers based in East Brunswick, New Jersey.
The corps was contracted by the EPA to clean up the site.
"In the end, only a few precious crystals of radium were
produced," Urbanik said. "The yield was one gram
[three-hundredths of an ounce] of radium for every 250 tons [227
metric tons] of ore."
That left mountains of by-product, which were dumped in municipal
garbage pits throughout Orange and the nearby cities of Mont
Clair and West Orange.
After a higher-yield ore was discovered in the Congo, U.S. Radium
closed its New Jersey plant in 1926, leaving it abandoned.
"As the years went by, houses were eventually built on top of the
open fields where the tailings were dumped, and the contaminated
soil was used to fill in low-lying areas around the properties,"
Urbanik said.
Radioactive Soil
Cleanup of the community's radioactive soil began in January 1997
and is expected to conclude later this year. Treatments varied
according to levels of soil contamination.
In some cases the EPA installed radon mitigation systems in
houses. "It's a pipe that goes through the basement foundation,
collecting gas from below ground before it can enter the home,"
McKnight explained. "The gas is channeled through PVC pipes to a
fan, usually in the attic. The gas is then discharged into the
atmosphere, where it dissipates."
Cleanup officials say the level of radiation found in many homes
affected by contamination fell into a category known as naturally
occurring radioactive material, or NORM.
"That's about as low level as you can get with radioactive soil.
[It] is similar to the level of radiation that you will find in
nature," Urbanik said. "Nevertheless, this is a residential area,
so it needed to be dealt with."
In other areas, contaminated soil was more radioactive and
therefore more dangerous. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was
charged with removing it.
Desert Burial
Laborers wore protective clothing and respirators and worked in
tightly controlled staging areas. They placed contaminated soil
in specialized containers, which were shipped by truck then rail
to a permanent waste-storage facility in the Utah desert, 80
miles (130 kilometers) west of Salt Lake City.
The site is operated by Envirocare. The private corporation is
charged with safely storing the material, which will remain
radioactive for approximately 14,000 years.
"We seal it up in highly regulated disposal cells," said Tim
Barney, the company's senior vice president. "We have a lot of
water-monitoring and air-monitoring stations around the site to
make absolutely sure that no radiation escapes."
Two feet (0.6 meter) of natural, impermeable clay forms the
bottom of the cell. The contaminated soil is then added in
multiple one-foot (0.3-meter) layers. The top of the pile is
covered with another seven feet (two meters) of clay, with thick
layers of gravel covering that. The gravel protects the clay from
erosion. The impermeable clay prevents radiation from leaking
into the atmosphere.
"We believe this is the perfect place for this type of material,"
Barney said. "The clay is naturally available here. The local
groundwater does not drain into any other water system; and we
monitor it constantly to make sure it's pristine. Best of all, we
are over 40 miles [64 kilometers] from the nearest community.
There's nobody living out here."
For related coverage, watch Minutes to Meltdown Sunday, July 11,
at 10 p.m. ET/PT on the National Geographic Channel (U.S. only).
News Home Search at nationalgeographic.com : -->
*****************************************************************
38 Las Vegas SUN: Court rejects Nevada's opposition to Yucca
Mountain waste site.
Today: July 09, 2004 at 10:37:19 PDT
By H. JOSEF HEBERT ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON (AP) - A federal appeals court on Friday rejected
Nevada's arguments against building a nuclear waste site in the
state, but ordered the government to develop a new plan to
protect the public against radiation releases beyond the
proposed 10,000 years.
The three-judge panel dismissed claims by Nevada that the Bush
administration's plan to build the Yucca Mountain waste site was
unconstitutional and said that actions by the Energy Department
and President Bush leading up to approval of the waste site were
not subject to review by the court.
In a victory for Nevada, however, the court rejected the
government standard that the public would have to be protected
from radiation leaks only for 10,000 years. The court said the
compliance period for the radiation standards would have to be
developed well beyond that period.
It was not immediately clear how severe an impact the court's
rejection of the radiation standard would have on the project.
The Environmental Protection Agency will have to develop a
standard that is protective beyond 10,000 years, and some
opponents of Yucca Mountain have argued the current design for
waste containment does not do that.
While the court dismissed Nevada's key arguments, state
officials focused on the court's rejection of the radiation
standard and suggested that might be enough to scuttle the
program.
"The Yucca Mountain site cannot meet the (radiation) standard"
beyond 10,000 years, said Bob Loux, Nevada's state nuclear
project director. He called the Yucca project "effectively dead
- over."
Allen Benson, a spokesman for the Energy Department's Yucca
Mountain project in Las Vegas, declined immediate comment.
But the 100-page ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the
District of Columbia was also a setback to Nevada's attempt to
block construction of the repository planned for 90 miles
northwest of Las Vegas on constitutional and procedural grounds.
The court rejected the state's argument that selection of the
site was unconstitutional and that some procedures violated the
nuclear waste law - the key arguments made by the state before
the court last January.
The state has vowed to continue fighting the case before the
Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which must issued a permit for
the facility. The site is planned to store underground 77,000
tons of highly radioactive waste, mostly spent reactor fuel from
commercial power plants.
Congress approved the Yucca Mountain site in 2002, overriding an
attempt by Nevada to block the project.
While rejecting the heart of Nevada's arguments, the appeals
court upheld arguments by environmentalists that the
Environmental Protection Agency requirements for safeguarding
the environment from radiation were inadequate and would have to
be strengthened.
The court said that the EPA's standard calling for protection
from radiation up to 10,000 years "is not based or consistent
with the recommendations of the National Academy of Sciences,"
which had concluded that the danger to the public goes years
beyond that.
In arguments in January, lawyers for the Natural Resources
Defense Council, which had challenged the EPA standard, argued
that many of the isotopes in the waste would reach their peak
radiation levels and be most dangerous up to 300,000 years into
the future.
The National Academy of Sciences had reached a similar
conclusion in an examination of the standard. The court noted
that the EPA's own policy required that the radiation standard
must be consistent with the National Academy of Sciences
conclusions.
"We're absolutely thrilled," said Geoffrey Fettus, an attorney
for the Natural Resources Defense Council.
Nevada had argued that the process by which Yucca Mountain was
selected as the only site to be studied for a possible waste
site was unconstitutional. It also challenged a Nuclear
Regulatory Commission rule on procedures for considering Yucca
Mountain as in violation of the federal nuclear waste law.
The panel - composed of Judges Harry Edwards, Karen Henderson,
David Tatel - disagreed.
"We vacate the EPA's 10,000-year compliance period," the judges
wrote. "In all other respects we deny Nevada's petition for
review challenging the NRC rule. We also reject the state's
challenge to the constitutionality of the resolution (passed by
Congress) approving the Yucca Mountain site."
"And we dismiss the state's petition attacking the Department of
Energy and the president's actions leading to passage of that
resolution, as those actions are unreviewable," the panel
continued.
The Energy Department plans to submit an application for an NRC
license later this year, a process that could take three years
or more. A recent controversy over Yucca Mountain funding in
Congress also has put the 2010 target date for opening the
facility into jeopardy.
---
On the Net
Yucca Mountain project: http://www.ymp.gov [http://www.ymp.gov]
Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management:
http://www.state.nv.us/nucwaste
[http://www.state.nv.us/nucwaste]
Nuclear Regulatory Commission: http://www.nrc.gov
[http://www.nrc.gov]
--
*****************************************************************
39 DenverPost.com: Request to dump uranium-mill waste near Canon City denied
Article Published: Friday, July 09, 2004
By Robert Weller
The Associated Press
Colorado state health officials today denied a request to
dispose of 24,000 cubic yards of contaminated soil from New
Jersey at a uranium mill near Canon City.
The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment said
Cotter Corp. had not shown it had adequate procedures in place to
safely handle the material at its Canon City mill, and because
Cotter will need the space for its own contaminated waste.
Cotter's attorney, John Watson, said he was disappointed but not
surprised.
"The state continues to manufacture red herrings to somehow
rationalize denying us permission to accept this Maywood
material. And they've done it again," he said.
Cotter is seeking permission to accept a total of 400,000 cubic
yards of soil from the Maywood Chemical Superfund site. The waste
is contaminated with thorium, which was used to make lantern
mantles.
Howard Roitman, director of environmental programs for the health
department, said today's decision does not mean the entire
shipment will be rejected.
Cotter still has time to address the department's concerns about
space and safety procedures, he said.
Watson said those questions have already been answered. He
called the department's response "frustrating." A 2003 state law
gave the health department more say over the mill south of Canon
City. Cotter applied for a permit to operate the mill for an
additional five years under that law. A decision is due by Dec.
15.
The health department had planned to decide on the
24,000-cubic-yard shipment in its Dec. 15 decision. A district
judge ruled last week the two issues were separate because
Cotter sought approval for the 24,000-cubic-foot shipment before
the 2003 law was passed.
All contents Copyright 2004 The Denver Post or other copyright
*****************************************************************
40 Las Vegas SUN: Nevada officials declare victory after Yucca Mountain ruling
Today: July 09, 2004 at 16:37:15 PDT
By KEN RITTER ASSOCIATED PRESS
LAS VEGAS (AP) - Nevada officials declared victory Friday in
their fight to stop the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump,
saying they don't think the Energy Department can meet a
stricter standard to protect the public against radiation
releases.
"The people of Nevada should throw up their arms and cheer at
this court ruling," said Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., referring
to a federal court decision requiring the Energy Department to
contain radiation for longer than 10,000 years at the Yucca
Mountain site.
Friday's ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of
Columbia rejected Nevada's main arguments against the
constitutionality of forcing one state to take all the nation's
nuclear waste.
But justices did uphold arguments that Environmental Protection
Agency radiation standards for the site were inadequate and
would have to be strengthened.
Berkley said that by tossing out the EPA radiation standard, the
court has said "the Bush Administration's plan for Yucca
Mountain will not protect the health and safety of Nevada
residents."
In a statement, Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham noted the court
dismissed the state's challenges to the selection of the site,
90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, and said the department will
work with the EPA and Congress to address the ruling on the
radiation standard.
"Our scientific basis for the Yucca Mountain project is sound,"
Abraham said. "The project will protect the public health and
safety."
Energy Department spokesman Joe Davis said it was unclear
whether the ruling would delay plans to begin the process of
applying for a license with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to
operate the dump. The department had planned to open the
repository in 2010.
Joe Egan, a lawyer who argued the state's case, said the Energy
Department will not be able to meet a National Academy of
Sciences recommendation that the site be made safe for 350,000
years and will not be able to get a license.
"We think we put a stake through the heart of this project,"
Egan said.
Sen. John Kerry's campaign issued a statement praising the
decision and criticizing President Bush for allowing the project
to move forward. The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee
and Massachusetts senator voted against the project in 2002.
"The Court's decision confirms what John Kerry has been saying
all along and what everyone in Nevada knows - that the Bush
Administration has turned its back on sound science in its rush
to build the Yucca Mountain repository," said Sean Smith, a
Kerry spokesman in Nevada.
The Bush campaign referenced exhaustive studies proving Yucca
Mountain is "scientifically and technically suitable for
development."
"John Kerry is politicizing this issue in an effort to distract
Nevadans from his troubling record on strengthening the economy,
lowering health care costs, and protecting our homeland," said
Tracey Schmitt, a Bush campaign spokeswoman.
But Nevada's congressional leaders hailed the ruling as a "major
victory," and citizens' groups were elated.
"I love it. It means they have to go back to square one and do
all this refiguring," said Peggy Maze Johnson, executive
director of Citizen Alert, an anti-nuclear group in Nevada.
"Their whole house of cards is balanced against the fact that
they only have to comply for 10,000 years," said Judy Treichel,
head of the Nuclear Waste Task Force and a longtime Yucca
Mountain opponent. "We said that's ridiculous because the stuff
will probably get out before, but certainly after that time and
contaminate Nevada."
Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., said the ruling was a "significant blow
to the Department of Energy and the Yucca Mountain project, and
I believe enough to effectively kill the project."
Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., was similarly optimistic, saying the
decision gives Nevada a "crucial legal tool to defeat the Yucca
Mountain project once and for all."
Gov. Kenny Guinn, a Republican whose veto of Yucca Mountain was
overridden by Congress in 2002, said he interpreted the court
decision to mean there can be no movement toward licensing in
the near future.
"You can't do much more without a license," he said.
The governor said the Energy Department could go to Congress for
a change in the law or to seek an EPA rule change, adding that
either would take time.
Bob Loux, director of the state nuclear projects office and the
state's top administrator against the nuclear dump, said it took
nine years for the Environmental Protection Agency to set the
radiation standard that the court rejected.
"What's going to happen next. I don't know," Loux said.
--
*****************************************************************
41 Las Vegas RJ: Berkley backs choice for vice president
Friday, July 09, 2004
Nevadan delays support until frank talk with Edwards By STEVE
TETREAULT
STEPHENS WASHINGTON BUREAU
WASHINGTON -- It took three days before Rep. Shelley Berkley,
D-Nev., came out Thursday in support of Sen. John Edwards as the
Democrats' candidate for vice president.
Dismayed that Edwards had voted in 2002 to send nuclear waste
to a Yucca Mountain repository in Nevada, Berkley declined this
week to discuss Sen. John Kerry's choice.
The lawmaker finally spoke up for the vice presidential
candidate after a brief telephone conversation Thursday between
the two in which Berkley said she did most of the talking.
"It is safe to say he was obviously not my first choice for
vice president, so when I heard the news I felt I needed to
speak to him before I could give my wholehearted support,
although I am very supportive of a change in the administration
and a change in the presidency," Berkley said.
Political analyst Stuart Rothenberg said he was not aware of
any other Democrats in Congress hesitating to endorse Edwards
over a specific vote or issue.
But, Rothenberg said, "There may not be another issue at the
moment like Yucca Mountain. Politicians out there (in Nevada)
are so nervous about it and are so aware of it."
Rothenberg said Berkley in the end has little choice but to
back the ticket, "but it just shows you how important the issue
is where she had to at least recognize that he was `wrong' on
the issue and get it on the record that she was going to talk to
him about it."
Brian Scroggins, Clark County Republican Party chairman, said
Berkley's hesitation shows Nevada Democrats are struggling to
justify supporting a candidate with a pro-repository background.
Republicans in the state already are challenged to explain
President Bush, who designated Yucca Mountain for nuclear waste
burial in February 2002.
"Democrats are trying to make Yucca Mountain a Democrat versus
Republican issue, and it's not," Scroggins said. "It's a state's
rights issue. Edwards can now say what he wants, but his vote
was in support of it."
Berkley said there was no sugar coating on the five-minute
conversation with Edwards, who was traveling from Florida to New
York with Kerry.
"There was no mistaking what I said," she said. "I told him he
wasn't my first choice, so I had a frank conversation with him."
Berkley had favored New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson or Rep.
Richard Gephardt, D-Mo.
Edwards told Berkley the same thing he told Sen. Harry Reid,
D-Nev., earlier in the week: He will defer to Kerry's position
on the Yucca Mountain Project, which is that the proposed Nevada
repository will be scrapped if Democrats claim the White House.
Berkley maintained she would not hesitate to walk away. "If I
was unhappy right now, I would not be supporting the ticket,"
she said. "My credibility is more important to me than my
political bona fides. I'm feeling very comfortable with
(Edwards). Like I said, I needed to talk to him."
Berkley said she urged Edwards to campaign in Nevada and
explain his stance on nuclear waste. She said that would
contrast with Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, who have not
discussed Yucca Mountain on trips to the state.
Berkley also chided Edwards for a 2001 vote to prohibit Nevada
sports books from accepting wagers on college athletics, an
issue she said has since faded as a threat to the state's gaming
industry.
Apart from Edwards' vote on nuclear waste, Berkley said the
Democratic matchup of Kerry-Edwards "is far better for Nevada
than the current administration" on issues such as health care,
education, Social Security and small business assistance.
"Just the opposite," Scroggins said, contending Kerry and
Edwards "are an extremely liberal ticket for Nevada."
Copyright Las Vegas Review-Journal
*****************************************************************
42 Las Vegas RJ: Nevada Democrats rally with anti-Yucca theme
Friday, July 09, 2004
By ERIN NEFF REVIEW-JOURNAL
Supporters of the Democratic presidential ticket cheer during a
Thursday rally at the International Association of Fire Fighters
hall.
Photo by John Gurzinski.
Democrats celebrated the Kerry-Edwards presidential ticket
Thursday by emphasizing opposition to the Yucca Mountain Project
despite Sen. John Edwards' vote to approve the planned
high-level nuclear waste repository.
Ross Miller, who supported Edwards' bid for president earlier
this year, told a crowd of about 150 at the International
Association of Fire Fighters hall that "a vote for President
Bush is a vote for Yucca Mountain."
"Stopping Yucca Mountain is as easy as going to the voting
booth and voting for Kerry-Edwards this November," added Miller,
a local attorney and the son of former Nevada Gov. Bob Miller.
None of the speakers told the crowd that Edwards supported the
Yucca Mountain Project planned 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
And Democrats are scurrying to get a statement from Edwards
explaining his votes on Yucca and his current position in
opposition to the dump.
Sen. Harry Reid and Rep. Shelley Berkley, Nevada's Democrats in
Congress, said Edwards has told them he will defer to Kerry's
position on Yucca Mountain. Kerry consistently has voted against
the dump and said that if he is elected, "Yucca Mountain will
not be a nuclear waste repository."
Democrats are angry at Bush because of a 2000 campaign pledge to
base any Yucca decision on "sound science, not politics." The
administration later recommended the project over the objections
of Nevada's congressional delegation. Congress overrode Gov.
Kenny Guinn's veto of the plan in 2002.
Republicans have criticized Edwards, saying the North Carolina
senator lacks experience and that his work as a trial lawyer is
"out of step" with Nevada on the issue of medical malpractice
reform.
"Our country needs strong and steady leadership, which the Bush
administration has continuously shown, not a candidate that
chose his running mate based on polls," state Sen. Ray Rawson,
R-Las Vegas, said on behalf of the Bush-Cheney campaign.
Democrats cheered the selection of Edwards; Clark County
Commissioner Yvonne Atkinson Gates called him "the best choice
John Kerry could make."
Copyright Las Vegas Review-Journal
*****************************************************************
43 Las Vegas SUN: Nevadans told Edwards has changed Yucca stance
Today: July 09, 2004 at 8:59:38 PDT
By Kirsten Searer LAS VEGAS SUN
Several local Democrats expressed concern Thursday that Sen.
John Edwards, the newly minted Democratic running mate,
supported a bill that helped pave the way for the Yucca Mountain
project in 2002.
But they had different perspectives on Edwards' position at an
enthusiastic rally held Thursday in Las Vegas to support the
Democratic ticket. More than 100 people attended.
While Edwards voted in favor of the project in 2002, Sen. Harry
Reid, D-Nev., issued a press release this week saying that
Edwards now opposes the project.
Aaron Johnson, a stay-at-home dad, said at the rally that he
doesn't like the way Edwards voted on Yucca Mountain, but he
trusts the judgment of Sen. John Kerry, the presumptive
Democratic nominee, who chose Edwards on Tuesday to be his
running mate.
"I hope (Edwards) was just ill informed," he said. "I want a
good future. I don't want my kids to have glowing water. That is
a concern with Edwards, but at some point you have to trust your
leader."
John Abbott, a Kerry supporter and Vietnam veteran, said he
thinks Edwards is a good choice because of his "charisma." The
Yucca Mountain vote isn't as important, he said.
"It was a mistake on his part, but I think he's changed his
mind and he's convinced there was not sound science used in the
decision," Abbott said.
Pam Coburn, a stay-at-home mother, said she would have
preferred Missouri Rep. Dick Gephardt as a running mate, but she
appreciates Edwards' emphasis on working class issues.
Yucca Mountain, she said, is not a deciding factor for her in
the race.
"Personally for me it's not a big issue," she said. "I'll be
happy if it doesn't come here. But it's a lot of money that
they've spent on it, and they're going to push it."
Former New Hampshire Gov. Jean Shaheen told the crowd on a
conference call that a Kerry administration would stop Yucca
Mountain. Kerry, she said, has a long voting record against the
project.
"John Edwards has joined him on that, so we are going to make
sure that everyone in Nevada knows about that issue," she said
to cheers.
Alondra Smith, who operates programs for mentally challenged
adults, said her biggest concern in the race is the war, not
Yucca Mountain. She predicted that the nuclear waste project
won't happen.
"I don't think it's going to come through," she said.
Questions or problems? Click here.
*****************************************************************
44 Las Vegas SUN: Panel to evaluate state's challenge of Yucca database
Today: July 09, 2004 at 9:21:19 PDT
By Suzanne Struglinski SUN WASHINGTON BUREAU
WASHINGTON -- A three-person panel will evaluate the state's
challenges to the Energy Department's Yucca Mountain project
document database.
Federal law requires only one officer to evaluate them.
Using the panel shows the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is
taking the matter seriously, said Joe Egan, a lawyer who
represents Nevada on Yucca issues.
"This elevates its importance," Egan said. "It has put a little
more gravitas to it."
G. Paul Bollwerk, chief administrative judge of the Atomic
Safety and Licensing Board, on Thursday appointed board members
Thomas Moore, Alex Karlin and Alan Rosenthal to serve on a panel
that will hear concerns about the document database.
On Wednesday, the commission appointed Bollwerk to be the
pre-license application presiding officer, a position required
by law, but gave him authority to delegate the responsibility.
Bollwerk named the three-person panel within the Atomic Safety
and Licensing Board that will handle "pre-application matters"
for the department's planned nuclear waste storage site at Yucca
Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
Steve Frishman, technical policy coordinator for the Nevada
Agency for Nuclear Projects, said he did not read anything into
Bollwerk's move because three-person panels are common in
licensing proceedings.
"I don't know whether its good or bad," Frishman said. "But now
we'll get a judgment out of three people instead of just one."
The state will today file its official objection to the
department's database. Nevada's lawyers have been criticizing
the database since last week but a 25-page document expected to
be sent to the commission headquarters in Rockville, Md., today
will outline all their concerns.
At issue is the department's claim on June 30, that it
"certified" a database of 5.6 million pages of documents related
to the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste storage project by posting
them on a Web site it created.
Department officials want to file the license application with
the commission by the end of the year and commission rules
require the documents to be made public six months before the
department can file it.
Department officials believe they have met the deadline, but
Nevada's lawyers and other Yucca opponents believe it has not
because not all of the documents are available on either the
department's Web site or one run by the commission. During the
licensing hearings, Nevada will have to base its arguments
against the project on the documents in the database.
The department has yet to send the commission all of the
documents for the official database and is still sorting through
documents to determine if some need to be deleted, officials
said.
The department will have a chance to respond to Nevada's
contention and a hearing by the board is possible, but Egan said
the state will not request one.
*****************************************************************
45 Las Vegas SUN: Yucca in for long delay; radiation standard too low
Today: July 09, 2004 at 11:20:56 PDT
Federal appeals court says 10,000 years is insufficient
By Suzanne Struglinski SUN WASHINGTON BUREAU
WASHINGTON -- A federal appeals court handed Nevada a major
victory this morning, ruling that a key standard for the planned
Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository was incorrect, which
could set the project back indefinitely.
If the decision withstands an inevitable appeal, it would send
the Energy Department back to the drawing board and leave
engineers with an almost impossible standard to meet, said state
officials.
Nevada Attorney General Brian Sandoval said the decision means,
"Yucca Mountain is dead."
The court found that the Environmental Protection Agency
violated the law when it said Yucca Mountain had to hold nuclear
waste safely for 10,000 years and ordered the agency to set a new
standard, which the state's attorney, Joe Egan, said means "the
department will have to apply a standard that all their own
evidence says they can't meet."
In ruling on six lawsuits filed by the state and environmental
groups, including the Natural Resources Defense Council, a
three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District
of Columbia rejected what would have been complete knockouts for
the state.
Nevada argued that the plan to build the repository was
unconstitutional because it force nuclear waste on the state and
said there have been several violations of federal law regarding
clean water and nuclear waste. The state also argued that rule
changes along the way violated law.
The Energy Department is expected to appeal the case it lost,
and Sandoval said the state will appeal the parts of the case it
lost.
The EPA, the court ruled, did not take a recommendation from the
National Academy of Science, which said there was no reason to
set the standard at 10,000 years and said the standard should be
at the point of when the waste will be at its peak radiation.
The National Resources Defense Council argued that peak could be
300,000 years from the time the waste is sent to Yucca Mountain.
State officials said that would mean that the Energy
Department's work, which was designed to meet the 10,000-year
standard, would be insufficient.
"We've been waiting more than 20 years for this," said state's
chief watch dog on nuclear issues, Bob Loux, executive director
of the state's Agency for Nuclear Projects. "I believe this
effectively kills the process.
"I think everyone will recognize that it's futile to proceed
because they can't write a standard Yucca Mountain can meet."
Sandoval called the decision "better than expected," and, noting
that the Energy Department is gearing up to submit a license
application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission at the end of
this year. He said the licensing process "should be scrapped."
Egan said the decision "makes it almost impossible to believe
this repository will ever get a license."
"Any responsible public official should do the right thing and
pull the plug," he said.
Egan said there could be "tinkering with the cadaver" by the
Energy Department on the project but it will be hard to save it.
Egan said the court found the standards were not based on sound
science and the agency ignored the sound science it knew about.
Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., called the fight against Yucca Mountain
"a David versus the giant and the giant is not winning."
Gov. Kenny Guinn called the decision "big for us." "This is big
for us," Guinn told reprters. "They can't go forward without
being licensed. If there is no license, they don't have a
project."
He said the court used "strong language" that the standards are
not based on science.
"They can't do much more without a license," he said. Asked how
President Bush designated Yucca Mountain in view of the decision,
Guinn said the president relied on his advisers. He said he told
Bush that the state was going to court and "this is the first
salvo out of the court system and it's a pretty important one."
Energy Department officials did not immediately comment.
Angie Howard, executive vice president of the Nuclear Energy
Institute, the nuclear industry's lobbying group, said work on
the project, including the license application, should be able to
continue because the commission is not expected to decide to
issue a construction application until 2007 or 2008.
"It is noteworthy that the court affirmed every other challenged
aspect of the federal government's program in these consolidated
cases," Howard said. "This validates our belief that the overall
decision-making process for the Yucca Mountain project rests on
sounds scientific ground."
The nuclear industry supports the Yucca Mountain plan.
The Energy Department needed to meet the EPA standard in order
to prove it could safely store 77,000 tons of nuclear waste at
Yucca, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
"It would have been one thing had EPA taken the Academy's
recommendations into account and then tailored a standard that
accommodated the agency's policy concerns," according to the
court decision. "But that is not what EPA did. Instead, it
unabashedly rejected NAS's (the National Academy of Science's)
findings, and then went on to promulgate a dramatically different
standard, one that the Academy had expressly rejected."
"We think it entirely unreasonable for EPA to have acted
inconsistently with NAS findings and recommendations," the court
said.
The court found nothing wrong with the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission's licensing requirements except that they contain the
10,000-year compliance period set by the EPA.
The decision means the agency will have to set new, higher
standards for the project and the department will most likely
have to go back and look at its scientific studies.
"I have always said there would be no Yucca Mountain," Reid
said. "It is proven to be unsafe by the courts. If the president
had done what he said he would do, he would not have asked for so
much money on an unsafe project."
Reid said he was "as happy as a lark" and that the decision will
help him stop money from going to the project. The department
requested $880 million for the project next year, the largest
amount request in its history.
"They (Energy Department) may have to go on the Atkins diet,
maybe South Beach. They are fat, fat, fat and ugly."
Sen. John Ensign was on a plane this morning and could not be
reached for comment but spokesman Jack Finn said he was pleased
with the outcome and praised Sandoval for this work.
Reid said former Gov. Bob Miller and Gov. Kenny Guinn should be
complimented for "squeezing" money from the state Legislature to
help pay for the legal team to bring the lawsuits.
The state lost its battle to stop the site in Congress two years
ago, turning to the legal system as its second line of defense.
Two decades of opposition against the nuclear waste site and at
least $100 million spent on preparation boiled down to three
hours of oral arguments in the U.S. Court of Appeals in
Washington in January. Such a long hearing is rare but the court
opted to combine all the cases into one since it is such a
complex topic.
The three-judge panel of Harry Edwards, Karen LeCraft Henderson
and David Tatel asked tough questions to the state's team of
lawyers as well as the Justice Department's and Nuclear Energy
Institute attorneys.
After the argument, the state's legal "dream team" agreed there
was no sure win and the project would most likely be allowed to
go through with a license application but were careful not to
speculate further.
The state also won a concession during the hearing from the
Nuclear Regulatory Commission, whose attorney said the state
could challenge the environmental impact statement for the
project, a move that had previously been ruled out. The state's
lead attorney, Joe Egan, said previously the statement could
provide Nevada with a strong argument against the project.
The state brought six court cases, challenging the Energy
Department, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the
Environmental Protection Agency on several aspects of the project
and a constitutional challenge
The court rejected the constitutional claims and dimissed the
challenges against the department.
Nevada sued the department, saying it violated the Nuclear Waste
Policy Act of 1982, and then sued the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission when it changed its licensing rules to fit the
department's man-made barrier additions among other changes. It
also claimed the EPA's radiation standards were not strong enough
while the Nuclear Energy Institute claimed the site did not need
a separate groundwater standard.
Nevada lost a previous case, Nevada v. Watkins, decided in the
9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals more than 10 years ago. The
suit challenged the 1987 law that singled out Yucca as the only
site to be studied as the spent fuel storage site.
Nevada lost that case because the court rejected its
constitutional arguments on the law. The Supreme Court denied an
appeal.
All contents copyright 2004 Las Vegas SUN, Inc.
*****************************************************************
46 RGJ: Federal officials use stall against Yucca protest
[http://www.rgj.com/]
Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham did not respond to claims about
Yucca Mountain documents. - AP file]
YUCCA MOUNTAIN PROPONENT: Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham did
not respond to claims about Yucca Mountain documents.
RENO GAZETTE-JOURNAL
7/7/2004 10:25 pm
If members of Nevada’s congressional delegation can’t make heads
or tails of the Energy Department’s safety information on Yucca
Mountain, perhaps it’s because someone doesn’t want them to.
Burying the opposition in a blizzard of information — needed or
not, pertinent or not — is a standard strategy for slowing
opposition. The federal government is following true to form
regarding the Yucca Mountain project.
Energy officials have known all along they needed to file all
documents six months before the self-imposed December deadline.
Now, they’ve waited until the last minute and dumped millions of
pages in thousands of documents onto a Web site, and no one — not
even the Nuclear Regulatory Commission — can tell whether all
requirements have been met.
The state, of course, has had to jump a series of hurdles from
the beginning — in court and before various commissions to
protest storing the nation’s nuclear waste. In this latest
challenge, the NRC has put the state’s complaints on hold until a
presiding officer for the licensing application can be appointed.
Energy gets to keep its head start before the delegation even has
a chance to state its latest claim.
The delegation has been at this for a long time. They’re as
familiar as anyone can be with the language, the arguments and
all the scientific claims. If there was sense to be made of the
safety, security and health data or of the legal documents filed
for public review, they could do it.
It certainly would benefit the Energy Department to hold off
inquiries and requests by dumping all its data at once and at the
last minute. They aren’t playing fair, however, when they do
this.
Any project of this importance already requires a dense licensing
procedure. It is unconscionable that federal officials continue
these delaying tactics and deliberately increase the complexity
merely to sideline the opposition and to smooth their own way.
© Copyright Reno Gazette-Journal, a [http://www.gannett.com]
*****************************************************************
47 RGJ: 3 hearing officers named for Yucca Mountain filings
||| Home [http://www.rgj.com/]
Reno Gazette-Journal]
ASSOCIATED PRESS 7/8/2004 11:58 pm
LAS VEGAS (AP) — Three members of the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission’s Atomic Safety and Licensing Board were named
Thursday to handle challenges to Energy Department filings on a
national nuclear waste dump in Nevada.
G. Paul Bollwerk III, chief of the NRC Atomic Safety and
Licensing Board, designated Thomas Moore as chairman and Alex
Karlin and Alan Rosenthal as hearing officers for Yucca Mountain
pre-licensing disputes.
Bollwerk had been named Wednesday to oversee Energy Department
compliance with requirements that it publish documents about the
planned repository on an NRC Licensing Support Network.
“Disputes have already arisen,” NRC spokeswoman Sue Gagner said
Thursday. “They will decide how to handle them.”
The Energy Department certified last week that it met a June 30
deadline to post to an Internet Web site more than 1.2 million
documents on the scientific underpinnings of the project.
Nevada will challenge that certification before the newly named
panel, contending the Energy Department failed to satisfy its own
procedures and key NRC rules, said Joe Egan, an attorney handling
the state’s legal opposition to the Yucca Mountain project.
“There are no documents available on the (Licensing Support
Network) as required,” Egan said Thursday. “And the vast majority
of documents that we know are relevant and key to this proceeding
are not available on the DOE’s own Web site.”
If the Energy Department did not meet the June 30 date, it
wouldn’t be eligible to apply by the end of the year for a
repository operating license from the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission.
© Copyright Reno Gazette-Journal, a Gannett
*****************************************************************
48 chillicothe gazette: Issues rise with nuke waste removal costs -
[http://www.chillicothegazette.com
Thursday, July 8, 2004
Experts: Congress must approve more money to decontaminate sites
By Greg Wright Gannett News Service
WASHINGTON -- Congress is unlikely to quickly approve more money
to mop up radioactive and chemical waste around nuclear weapons
plants in the Midwest and South, leaving nearby residents
vulnerable to toxins, scientists said Wednesday.
The General Accounting Office released a report Friday urging
Congress to pump more money into a federal nuclear waste clean up
fund. The Uranium Enrichment Contamination and Decommissioning
Fund will run out of money before plants in Piketon, Ohio;
Paducah, Ky.; and Oak Ridge, Tenn., are decontaminated, the
report said.
"Right now we know there is a fiscal crisis in Congress," said
Edwin Lyman, a senior scientist at the Union of Concerned
Scientists. "There does not seem to be a lot of money around for
properly disposing of nuclear waste."
Congress created the fund in 1992 to clean up Cold War era plants
that processed uranium for nuclear weapons and reactors. The
government and electric utilities that use nuclear fuel put money
into the pot ranging from $480 million to $518 million a year
until 2007.
But this is not enough to clean up radioactive waste and toxic
chemicals at the three plants that cover thousands of acres, have
more than 30 million square feet of floor space, and contain
miles of pipes, the report said.
By the time plant decontamination is set to end in 2044, cleanup
costs will exceed the fund by $3.5 billion to $5.7 billion, said
the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress.
To avoid the budget shortfall, Congress and utilities should
continue depositing money in the fund until 2010, three years
longer than originally planned, the GAO said.
The Bush administration agrees Congress should look at providing
more money, Energy Department Undersecretary David Garman said.
But nuclear experts doubt Congress would approve the money soon.
Lately the administration is more focused on building factories
to process nuclear fuel for power plants, including the American
Centrifuge planned for Piketon, Lyman said. President Bush also
is calling for money to study next-generation nuclear weapons
such as a device to destroy enemy bunkers deep underground.
And the cost of decontaminating the plants could come in much
higher than the GAO estimate, said Richard Miller, a policy
analyst at the Government Accountability Project.
"We need to know what the full price tag is before we decide who
pays what share," Miller said. "Congress should hold hearings."
Rep. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, who represents the area around
Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Piketon, has long supported
more money for decontamination. But Portman wants the Energy
Department to do a detailed cost analysis before acting, said his
spokesman, Kyle Downey.
Rep. Ted Strickland, D-Ohio, who sits on the Energy and Commerce
Committee, said the Energy Department must come up with a
detailed plan for cleaning up the plants.
Lawmakers must get this plan and cost analysis before considering
more money for the fund, said Strickland, who represents some
workers at Portsmouth.
Originally published Thursday, July 8, 2004
Copyright ©2004 Chillicothe Gazette. All rights reserved.
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49 Brattleboro Reformer: Spent fuel pool again focus of missing rods
[http://www.reformer.com/]
July 09, 2004 Brattleboro, VT
By CAROLYN LORIÉ
Reformer Staff
BRATTLEBORO -- Officials at Entergy Nuclear Vermont Yankee said
the missing fuel rods may still be in the plant's spent fuel
pool.
According to Larry Smith, corporate and community relations
representative, records indicate that General Electric shipped a
canister to the plant some time around 1979 and there is
speculation that the canister may have been sent to house the
broken fuel.
Smith said the search of the pool with the cameras was meant to
search for "loose pieces" only, but then later said that
containers that seemed likely to hold fuel were also searched.
In an e-mail sent out to reporters on May 27, however, Vermont
Yankee spokesman Rob Williams wrote that the plant "has completed
a thorough video camera inspection of the entire spent fuel pool
(under the spent fuel racks, on top of spent fuel racks, inside
over 100 vacant fuel storage cells, and inside all storage
containers in the spent fuel pool.") (Emphasis added.)
"Maybe this wasn't considered a container," said Smith, adding
that General Electric referred to the item in question as a
"liner." Smith said that it was possible that this particular
canister or liner may not have been considered a likely place to
store fuel segments.
"It would look like a container," said Arnie Gundersen of the
liner. Gundersen is a nuclear engineer who became a whistleblower
in the 1990s and is now an expert witness for the New England
Coalition, a nuclear power watchdog group.
"There is no way, given the thoroughness of the search, that
they didn't see [this container] back in May," said Gundersen. "I
hope that when they open it, the right pieces fall out."
A special apparatus is being constructed to open the container.
Smith said it would be opened some time next week.
The two highly radioactive segments were discovered missing from
the spent fuel pool on April 20, after the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission resident inspector ordered a different canister -- the
one believed to contain them -- opened.
The two segments are approximately 7 inches and 17 inches long,
respectively, and are as thick as a pencil. They broke loose from
a faulty fuel rod manufactured by General Electric. It is only
the second time that a nuclear power plant in the United States
has lost fuel. The first incident occurred in 2000, at the
Millstone nuclear power station in Connecticut. Although the fuel
was never found, the NRC closed the case under the assumption
that the fuel had inadvertently been shipped to a low-level waste
site in South Carolina or Washington.
On April 30, Neal Sheehan, NRC spokesman for Region I, told the
Reformer that the agency planned to closely supervise Entergy's
search for the fuel. "We want to make sure that we have a
presence and are looking over their shoulder as they do the
search," said Sheehan in April.
When asked why Vermont Yankee's initial search of the pool did
not include inspecting all the canisters, Diane Screnci, NRC
spokeswoman for Region I, said: "What we expect is that they do a
comprehensive investigation. It's up to them to do the actual
search."
David O'Brien, commissioner of the Department of Public Service,
said that while the fuel may be in the spent fuel pool, and not
at large, is a "positive development," he was nonetheless
concerned with Entergy's contradictory statements.
"We're still asking questions along those lines. I don't know
what to make of that answer [about the canisters]. We're
evaluating it ourselves," he said.
According to O'Brien, Entergy officials received drawings of the
canister from GE, then reviewed video footage of the pool and
discovered that it was, in fact, there. They then checked the
canister, without opening it, and discovered that it was
releasing significant amounts of radiation. O'Brien said that
plant officials told him that they had no reason to suspect that
the fuel was in that particular container, which is why it was
not opened during the initial search.
Local elected officials said that while they were hopeful that
the segments were in the pool, they were also disconcerted by
Entergy's earlier claim to have checked all the containers.
"I hope that the rods are found but I fear that this type of
error may be symptomatic of ongoing problems at the plant," said
Sarah Edwards, P-Brattleboro. "This points to the reason why I
introduced a resolution calling for an independent safety
assessment. I am still working to get that."
Rep. Steve Darrow, D-Putney, was incredulous about Entergy's
seemingly contradictory statements.
"So I thought they looked everywhere," he said. "What was the
matter with the first search?"
Vermont Yankee is in the process of seeking approval for a 20
percent "uprate." While there has been strong local opposition
since the company announced its plan last year, the missing fuel
brought wider scrutiny to the plant's request, as well as to the
NRC. Vermont's congressional delegation has written letters to
NRC Chairman Nils Diaz demanding an explanation for the
unaccounted fuel.
Local opposition has only intensified as Vermont Yankee has
experienced various problems, including cracks in the steam
dryer, a transformer fire and the missing fuel.
The Brattleboro-based New England Coalition plans to continue
its fight against Vermont Yankee's uprate request before the NRC.
Executive director Peter Alexander said the latest revelation
that there is at least one container in the pool that had not
been opened only strengthens their case.
"It is evident that Entergy does not know what is in their spent
fuel pool, even after this so-called exhaustive search for the
missing fuel rods," said Alexander. "Public confidence can only
be eroded by such flip-flops."
Raymond Shadis, technical advisor to the coalition, said that
Entergy had ample time to search the 40 by 40-foot pool.
"It leaves one to wonder just how much junk they have sitting on
the bottom of the spent fuel pool," he said.
Sen. Roderick Gander, D-Windham, said that Entergy needs to
explain its May 27 statement.
"Unless there's some explanation from Mr. Williams about that
e-mail, once again Vermont Yankee is its own worst enemy," he
said.
Copyright ©1999-2004 New England Newspapers, Inc., a
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50 Salt Lake City Weekly: Nuclear Hot Potato
July 8, 2004
Group fears radioactive waste deflected from Envirocare could be
headed to Utah by another route.
by Ted McDonough [comments@slweekly.com?subject=re:Nuclear Hot
Potato&cc=template_authoremail] [e-mail a link to this article]
A cross-country game of nuclear hot potato is underway, with
14,000 cubic yards of radioactive waste going to the loser. Some
local activists fear Utah could end up burnt.
Utahs Legislature this year effectively blocked federal efforts
to ship radioactive waste from an Ohio Superfund site to
Envirocare, in Utahs west desert. The new law is silent on
whether the same waste could be shipped to another Utah facility.
That didnt seem like a big deal earlier this year when the U.S.
Energy Department planned to send waste from its Fernald, Ohio,
cleanup to the Nevada Test Site. Now, Nevada is threatening to
sue to stop the waste shipments; Ohio is threatening to sue to
get rid of the waste; and the Energy Department is looking to
find the waste a new final resting place.
Some Utah anti-nuclear activists discount the idea that the White
Mesa uranium mill in southeastern Utah is a likely candidate for
Fernalds radioactive material. But Steve Erickson of the
Citizens Education Project believes Utah could be surprised if it
doesnt pay attention.
In a letter urging the Legislatures Hazardous Waste Regulation
and Tax Policy Task Force to look beyond Envirocare, Erickson
noted the last time the U.S. Energy Department got in a waste
fight with Nevada, Utah ended up on the receiving end of the
material Nevada wouldnt take.
Eight years ago, the state of Nevada challenged an Energy
Department plan to store material known as the Cotter
Concentrates at the Nevada Test Site. Like the material at
Fernald, the Cotter Concentrates were the radioactive leftovers
from 40 years of processing of uranium ore for the nations bomb
programs and traced its origins, in part, to ore mined in the
Belgian Congo around World War I.
Then, as now, Nevada claimed the material was too hazardous to be
legally disposed of at the test site. In 1997, the Energy
Department relented, relabeling the waste as source material for
uranium mills and shipping it to International Uranium
Corporations [IUC] White Mesa mill near Blanding, Utah. The mill
processed the waste to remove its remaining 10 percent of
uranium, and dumped the remainder into tailing ponds.
Its just a strikingly similar situation, said Erickson. This
time around, if Nevada has got a strong case, and the DOE is
actively pursuing alternate disposal options, then IUC would come
to mind.
Shipments from Fernald to the Nevada Test Site were supposed to
begin in June. That didnt happen, but the Energy Department has
said it wants to keep the project on schedule and announced plans
to begin packaging waste for shipment. Unless someone backs down,
the Energy Department needs to find someplace to take the Fernald
waste fast.
Gary Stegner, an Energy Department spokesman working at Fernald,
believes the governments cleanup contractor is looking for
alternatives to the Nevada Test Site. Marta Adams, who is
handling the issue for the Nevada Attorney Generals Office, said
she believes Nevadas case is strong and has heard that the
Energy Department is looking at potentially more appropriate
sites. She believes Texas is a more likely candidate than Utah,
however.
Utah activist Sarah Fields, who for years has closely watched the
White Mesa mill, also doubted Fernald waste will come to Utah.
Regulators wouldnt allow it and I have never had the idea [IUC]
would want the Fernald waste, she said.
IUC officials did not respond to requests for interviews for this
story. Officials previously have said the company doesnt want
the Fernald wastes.
Regardless, Erickson noted the law passed by this years
Legislature to block hotter radioactive waste specifically
exempted the sort of material that came to the White Mesa mill in
1997: one-time radioactive waste relabeled as feed material for
uranium mills.
Utah Sen. Ron Allen, D-Stansbury Park, a member of the
legislative hazardous waste task force, shares some of Ericksons
concerns. Utahs radioactive waste discussion has been fixated
on Envirocare, he said. Ive been asking the question: Can
Fernald go somewhere else? ... I just hope there are groups out
there that dont focus on one or two issues and miss the train.
Sen. Curt Bramble, R-Provo, co-chairman of the task force, said
he trusts International Uraniums written assurances the company
isnt interested in material from Fernald. However, he said he
intends the task force to take up the larger issue of processing
of waste at uranium mills later this summer.
He noted that after IUC extracts uranium at its mill, it stores
whats left over at its site. Questions have been raised about
the difference between what is left over and the stuff Envirocare
takes, he said. Thats something the task force will be
addressing.
Salt Lake City Weekly and slweekly.com ©1996-2004 Copperfield
Publishing, Inc.. All rights reserved.
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51 CCDR: Cotter request denied
7-09-04
[Canon City Daily Record - Canon City and the Royal Gorge Region,
Colorado]
[http://www.canoncitydailyrecord.com]
Health department rejects application for Maywood shipments
Dennis Bloomquist Daily Record Staff Writer
The state health department this morning denied Cotter Corp.'s
attempt to receive 24,000 tons of radioactive soils from a mostly
defunct industrial complex in Maywood, N.J.
The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment
rejected the uranium mill's request on two factors:
+ Cotter has not exhibited sufficient handling and safety
standards.
+ Cotter's tailings ponds may not have enough remaining
capacity to both accept direct disposal shipments and bury its
buildings and on-site soils when the mill is shut down.
Cotter Corp. spokesman Jerry Powers said this morning Cotter is
preparing its response to the decision.
Howard Roitman, director of environmental programs for the health
department, said, "The department has denied Cotter's request to
accept this material because the company's procedures necessary
to ensure the safe and compliant handling of the materials are
not adequate."
Cotter's impoundment capacity is a primary issue of the ongoing
license application.
"Also, it is unclear how much space is left in the company's
impoundment to accept all the plant's building rubble and
contaminated soils when the mill is finally decommissioned,"
Roitman said.
Cotter's earlier volume estimate of 500,000 cubic yards may be
inadequate, Roitman said. He said the reserve needed for
decommissioning may be closer to 5 million cubic yards.
"If the larger number turns out to be the case, there is no room
at the plant site for direct disposal of materials from off
site," Roitman said. "We need to have a much more accurate
estimate."
Cotter sued the health department last month to force a decision
on the first allotment of thorium-laced dirt. Today's deadline
for the health department decision was set 10 days ago by
District Judge Herbert L. Stern III.
About two years ago Cotter won the low-bid contract to receive
the initial 24,000 tons, a fraction of the 470,000 tons of
tainted soils earmarked for removal from Maywood.
The license application includes a request to receive 400,000
cubic yards of Maywood soils.
State Rep. Buffie McFadyen, whose district includes Fremont
County, has opposed the Maywood shipment.
"It's a significant decision today," she said. "They haven't been
able to substantiate whether they have enough room for the
waste," she said.
The health department had hoped to roll its Maywood decision into
Cotter's license application. Cotter operates on five-year
licenses. Cotter's last license expired in 2000, but the mill is
legally allowed to continue operations under the terms of the
previous license, as long as it makes a "timely application."
However, Cotter forced the health department's hand with a
lawsuit filed last month in Denver District Court. The deadline
for health department approval of Cotter's draft license is Dec.
15.
Roitman said, "The requirements to accept the Maywood materials
raises questions about their overall license, so it made sense to
wait on the Maywood decision. The judge felt otherwise, and we
felt comfortable going ahead with our decision."
Opponents of Cotter's ongoing operations have opposed any form of
direct disposal into the two large tailings impoundments.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency determined that leakage
from Cotter's unlined tailings ponds and a 1965 flood that washed
out much of their contents caused the uranium and molybdenum
contamination in Lincoln Park wells.
Today's health department statement points out that "any
additional material Cotter would seek to take from the New Jersey
site or other similar sites would be governed by the provisions
of HB1358, which requires evaluation of the soils and extensive
opportunities for public involvement before any decision is
made."
The initial shipment was exempted from HB1358 because it was
proposed before the legislation was passed.
Sharyn Cunningham, co-founder of the organization Colorado
Citizens Against Toxic Waste, said the battle may be far from
over, however.
"In the near future, most probably, Cotter will sue the health
department for this decision," Cunningham said. "I would be sorry
to see our hard-earned tax dollars spent fighting this horrendous
idea of Cotter/General Atomics, in trying to site a radioactive
waste facility so near a population."
Under provisions of the Colorado State Administrative Procedures
Act, the decision can be appealed by any of the affected parties
to a state administrative hearing officer. The hearing officer's
decision could then be appealed to a Colorado district court.
Cotter's critics, most notably CCAT, have claimed General Atomics
plans to use the core of Cotter's 2,500-acre compounds as a toxic
waste dump for its other facilities.
Cunningham said the denial culminates years of investigation and
advocacy by CCAT. She said the main points cited by the health
department have been CCAT's contentions all along.
"I've spoken with CCAT's board, and we are all thrilled that the
health department made this wise decision," Cunningham said. "
McFadyen is ready for the next round.
"I would doubt that this is the end. There are very few sites in
the nation that take this type of waste," she said, adding
disposal in Colorado is inexpensive because of the state's
regulations.
Both Cotter and Maywood are EPA Superfund clean-up sites. About
470,000 tons of soil have been earmarked for removal from
Maywood. Numerous industries used the Maywood site, but the
primary pollutant is thorium from a long-defunct lantern factory.
The soils would be hauled cross-country by trains. Cotter's
original request is for 24,000 tons. Cotter had the low bid, but
shipments began flowing to Envirocaire, a waste disposal facility
in a remote part of Utah, when they were delayed from being sent
to Cotter.
Cotter Corp. was incorporated in 1956 as a uranium production
company, and became a wholly owned subsidiary of General Atomics
in 2000. Dormant for most of the past decade, Cotter has
attempted to diversify operations by testing zirconium oxide
milling. Calcium fluoride processing is underway.
McFadyen said three-quarters of the people who responded to a
Fremont County Commission survey did not want the Maywood waste,
and 40 percent said they would consider moving if the radioactive
dirt was stored near their neighborhood.
Reporter Joe Hanel of the Daily Record news group contributed to
this report.
News and information is updated Monday - Friday at 5:00pm. Entire
contents Copyright Ó 2004 Royal Gorge Publishing Corporation. All
Rights Reserved.
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52 Waste News: Nevada, U.S. both claim win as court rules on nuclear waste
storage site
[Wastenews.com
WASHINGTON (July 9) -- A federal appeals court rejected many of
the state of Nevada´s arguments seeking to block construction of
an underground storage site for nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain,
but it agreed that the government should develop plans ensuring
against releases for a longer period of time.
The decision left both sides declaring victory.
The U.S. Court of Appeals rejected the state of Nevada´s
contentions that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission´s licensing
requirements are unlawful and that Congress´ selection process of
Yucca Mountain was inappropriate. However, it agreed with the
state´s arguments that the Environmental Protection Agency
improperly developed a compliance plan protecting against
radioactive leaks for 10,000 years. The compliance plan should
extend beyond that period, according to the court.
Project supporters and detractors differed on the impact of the
decision.
The Nuclear Energy Institute, which represents the nuclear
energy industry, said the court´s decision enables the planning
and development of the nuclear waste storage facility at Yucca
Mountain to continue.
The construction at the site, which will store nuclear waste
from power plants, isn´t expected to begin for several years. The
Department of Energy plans to submit a license application for
the repository to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in December.
"The court held that this important environmental protection
program can go forward as planned," said Angie Howard, executive
vice president of the Nuclear Energy Institute. "The one
exception in the court ruling should not impede work at the
repository."
Opponents of the Yucca Mountain project had a much different
interpretation of the ruling. "Nevadans have won a huge victory
today," said Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev. "The court´s ruling is a
significant blow to the Department of Energy and the Yucca
Mountain project, and I believe enough to effectively kill the
program."
Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., agreed that the court´s decision was a
victory. "Today´s court ruling provides Nevada a crucial legal
tool to defeat the Yucca Mountain project once and for all,"
Ensign said.
Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said he was pleased by the
decision. "The court dismissed all challenges to the site
selection of Yucca Mountain," he said. "Our scientific basis for
the Yucca Mountain Project is sound. The project will protect the
public health and safety."
The Department of Energy will work with the EPA and Congress to
determine how to address the court´s one remaining concern,
Abraham said.
Entire contents copyright 2004 by Crain Communications Inc.
webmaster@wastenews.com [webmaster@wastenews.com]
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53 PE.com UPDATE: Perchlorate bill passes House subcommittee
Inland Southern California
02:29 PM PDT on Thursday, July 8, 2004
By CLAIRE VITUCCI / Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON -- Legislation that would help Inland cities pay to
clean up perchlorate-contaminated groundwater passed a key
congressional subcommittee Thursday.
The bill, authored by Inland Rep. Joe Baca, would authorize money
to pay for groundwater cleanup in the Santa Ana and San Gabriel
river watersheds. It also calls for the federal government to pay
65 percent of cleanup costs, leaving state and local agencies and
private entities to fund the remaining 35 percent.
Money already spent to clean up contaminated groundwater for
projects started before or after Jan. 1, 2000, would be eligible
for reimbursement.
The federal fund would be administered through the federal Bureau
of Reclamation. The bill also would require an inspector general
to audit how the money is being spent.
Baca's bill unanimously passed the House Water and Power
subcommittee. It now heads to the House Resources Committee. A
date for that vote has not yet been set.
"Until someone can tell us that perchlorate in our water, milk
and lettuce is good for us, Congress should offer assistance,"
said Baca, D-Rialto. "Our communities are tired of watching the
finger-pointing and waiting for someone to step up to the plate."
The Environmental Working Group released a report that said some
California supermarket milk was contaminated with perchlorate.
The same group last year discovered the chemical in winter
lettuce purchased from California supermarkets.
In sufficient amounts, perchlorate can disrupt the thyroid's
ability to produce hormones that regulate metabolism and fetal
development.
Underground pollution has contaminated at least 20 drinking-water
wells in Rialto, Colton and Fontana - all of which are in Baca's
district. The cities have had to close wells and fear water
shortages.
Perchlorate, a chemical used in rocket fuel and other explosives,
has spread about seven miles from an industrial area in
northeastern Rialto. It has tainted wells that supplied water to
250,000 people. The contamination has prompted state and federal
investigations, triggered a water emergency last summer and
recently prompted an increase in water rates that will cost the
average Rialto resident $17 more each month.
Reach Claire Vitucci at (202) 661-8422 and [cvitucci@pe.com] .
More headlines...
© 2004 Belo Interactive Inc.
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54 PE.com: House panel OKs bill to clean up water
Inland Southern California
Home [http://www.pe.com] Local
WASHINGTON: Inland Rep. Joe Baca's law would help cities fund
projects to get rid of perchlorate.
12:04 AM PDT on Friday, July 9, 2004
By CLAIRE VITUCCI / Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON - Legislation that would help Inland cities pay to
clean up perchlorate-contaminated groundwater passed a key
congressional subcommittee Thursday.
The bill, authored by Inland Rep. Joe Baca, would authorize money
to pay for groundwater cleanup in the Santa Ana and San Gabriel
river watersheds. It also calls for the federal government to pay
65 percent of cleanup costs, leaving state and local agencies and
private entities to fund the remaining 35 percent.
Money already spent to clean up contaminated groundwater for
projects started before or after Jan. 1, 2000, would be eligible
for reimbursement.
The federal fund would be administered through the federal Bureau
of Reclamation. The bill also would require an inspector general
to audit how the money is being spent.
Baca's bill unanimously passed the House Water and Power
subcommittee. It now heads to the House Resources Committee. A
date for that vote has not yet been set.
"Until someone can tell us that perchlorate in our water, milk
and lettuce is good for us, Congress should offer assistance,"
said Baca, D-Rialto. "Our communities are tired of watching the
finger-pointing and waiting for someone to step up to the plate."
The Environmental Working Group released a report that said some
California supermarket milk was contaminated with perchlorate.
The same group last year discovered the chemical in winter
lettuce purchased from California supermarkets.
In sufficient amounts, perchlorate can disrupt the thyroid's
ability to produce hormones that regulate metabolism and fetal
development.
Underground pollution has contaminated at least 20 drinking-water
wells in Rialto, Colton and Fontana - all of which are in Baca's
district. The cities have had to close wells and fear water
shortages.
Perchlorate, a chemical used in rocket fuel and other explosives,
has spread about seven miles from an industrial area in
northeastern Rialto. It has tainted wells that supplied water to
250,000 people. The contamination has prompted state and federal
investigations, triggered a water emergency last summer and
recently prompted an increase in water rates that will cost the
average Rialto resident $17 more each month.
Reach Claire Vitucci at (202) 661-8422 and cvitucci@pe.com
[cvitucci@pe.com] More headlines...
© 2004 Belo Interactive Inc.
*****************************************************************
55 PE.com: System offered to clean water
San Bernardino County
Inland Southern California Home [http://www.pe.com] Local
REDLANDS: If theion-exchange equipment works, Lockheed Martin
will let the city keep it.
01:42 AM PDT on Wednesday, July 7, 2004
By ROBERTO HERNANDEZ / The Press-Enterprise
REDLANDS - A defense contractor whose rocket-testing site is
blamed for polluting Redlands groundwater plans to test a new
treatment system to remove the contamination from a well in the
northeast end of the city.
The process could be online by July 31.
If the treatment works, Redlands will get to keep the system,
said Gail Rymer a spokeswoman for Lockheed Martin Corporation.
"What we're looking at is to ensure that the city of Redlands can
meet their water-quality standards and their water-supply needs,"
Rymer said by phone Tuesday.
The Redlands City Council on Tuesday approved a licensing
agreement with Lockheed that will allow installation of the
ion-exchange treatment system at the city's Rees well site near
Pennsylvania Avenue and Judson Street.
The system is designed to clean ammonium perchlorate from well
water to levels below state health goals.
Perchlorate and another chemical from a former Lockheed
rocket-testing site in Mentone is believed to be have been
seeping into the groundwater beneath Redlands and other Inland
cities for the past few decades. In high enough quantities,
perchlorate may damage the thyroid gland.
Last year, Lockheed and Redlands agreed to a nearly $4 million
settlement in connection with the contamination.
While Lockheed has never formally admitted that its Mentone site
was the contamination source, the aerospace firm has paid
millions of dollars to Redlands and other Inland cities to help
them clean their water supplies.
The new treatment is designed to remove perchlorate to a level
below 6 million parts per billion. While California has yet to
come up with drinking-water standards for the chemical, state
officials say 6 parts per billion is safe for everyone.
The cost of the system and length of the trial period were not
available Tuesday. Rymer said six months to one year is a typical
trial period.
Reach Roberto Hernandez at (909) 806-3060 or rhernandez@pe.com
[rhernandez@pe.com] More headlines...
© 2004 Belo Interactive Inc.
*****************************************************************
56 Senator Harry Reid (D-NV: COURT HANDS NV MAJOR VICTORY
http://reid.senate.gov
For Immediate Release
Date: Friday, July 9, 2004
Rules Yucca Mountain regulations not safe
WASHINGTON, D.C. - In a decision handed down today, the D.C.
Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the people of Nevada in an
argument to stop the Yucca Mountain project. The state of Nevada
sued the Department of Energy claiming a proposed nuclear waste
repository would not be safe. The court decided that federal
regulations are not stringent enough to protect the public from
the significant risks associated with nuclear waste.
Senator Harry Reid and Senator John Ensign released the following
statements today:
"Nevadans have won a huge victory today," Senator Reid said.
"I´ve never believed Yucca Mountain would open, and today it
could not be more clear that´s true. The court´s ruling is a
significant blow to the Department of Energy and the Yucca
Mountain project and I believe enough to effectively kill the
project. There is a reason we have fought this project for more
than two decades. It is impossible to open this kind of nuclear
waste repository and still guarantee the health and safety of
Nevadans."
"Today´s court ruling provides Nevada a crucial legal tool to
defeat the Yucca Mountain project once and for all," Sen. Ensign
said. "Our state´s legal team should be congratulated for this
victory against all those forces that would like to turn Nevada
into the country´s nuclear dumping ground. Our united effort, in
which Nevadans of all political affiliations joined, is the
reason for this victory and our celebration today."
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57 Public Citizen: Victory in Yucca Mountain Lawsuit;
Court Overrules Government’s Lax Radiation Standards for Nuclear
Waste
July 9, 2004
Victory in Yucca Mountain Lawsuit; Court Overrules Governments
Lax Radiation Standards for Nuclear Waste
Statement of Public Citizen President Joan Claybrook
Todays ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit
that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) illegally
set its radiation release standards for groundwater for the
proposed high-level radioactive waste dump at Yucca Mountain,
Nevada, marks a major victory for citizens of Nevada, for the
environment and for science over politics.
The EPA set 10,000 years as the period during which radiation in
the groundwater cannot exceed drinking water standards at the
sites boundary, but this time frame would not protect the
health of future generations. As the court ruled, the Energy
Policy Act requires that the EPA determine public health and
safety standards for Yucca Mountain based upon and consistent
with the National Academy of Sciences recommendations. The
Academys recommendation is that the compliance period should
extend through the time of the peak risk for radiation doses
from the repository, which studies show are likely to occur in
300,000 years or more. To compensate for Yuccas geologic
unsuitability, the EPA ignored the findings of the National
Academy of Sciences.
It would have been one thing had EPA taken the Academys
recommendations into account and then tailored a standard that
accommodated the agencys policy concerns. But that is not what
EPA did, the Court wrote in its ruling. Instead, it
unabashedly rejected NASs findings, and then went on to
promulgate a dramatically different standard, one that the
Academy had expressly rejected.
Given this ruling, the Yucca Mountain Project should be
finished. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) must show that it
can prevent groundwater contamination above drinking water
standards at the compliance boundary for 300,000 years a
standard that the DOEs own analysis shows the Yucca Mountain
site cannot meet. The EPA faces the choice of either appealing
the decision or revising its standard. The rules have been bent
too often to promote Yucca Mountain. We will be watching closely
to see if the EPA makes a wise choice and protects future
generations, as the court mandated.
To read the courts decision, click here
[http://pacer.cadc.uscourts.gov/docs/common/opinions/200407/01-12
58a.pdf] .
Public Citizen
*****************************************************************
58 States to Sue Energy Dept. Over Hanford
Date: Fri, 9 Jul 2004 02:22:38 -0500 (CDT)
http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/1089342628
*States to Sue Energy Dept. Over Hanford*
July 8, 2004 11:09 p.m. EST
By SHANNON DININNY, Associated Press Writer
YAKIMA, Wash. - Washington and Oregon filed court documents Thursday
formally announcing their intent to sue the U.S. Department of Energy
unless it evaluates the harm 40 years of plutonium production caused to
natural resources at the Hanford nuclear reservation.
The letter to federal officials seeks a court-ordered assessment of
environmental harm if the government doesn't conduct one.
"The Hanford reservation's essential role in defending our national
security carried a steep environmental price tag," Washington Attorney
General Christine Gregoire said in a news release.
"Our states have a duty to ensure that the federal government identifies
and repairs that damage."
Gregoire said the goal is not to recover monetary damages, but ensure
the cleanup is thorough.
Kevin Neely, a spokesman for Oregon Attorney General Hardy Myers, did
not return a telephone call seeking comment. A day earlier, he said his
state was discouraged by the federal government's position and was
prepared to take action.
In a statement, the Energy Department said it was evaluating the move.
"We're doing so even as we're continuing to reduce risk and make real
progress in the cleanup of Hanford," the statement said.
The Yakama Nation filed suit against the Energy Department in 2002,
seeking restoration of Hanford natural resources that may have been
damaged by plutonium production for the nation's nuclear weapons arsenal.
The tribes allege contamination of the Columbia River has contributed to
declining Northwest salmon populations in the past 50 years.
The Energy Department has said it is too soon to assess damage to the
environment.
A court ordered the Yakama Nation and the Justice Department, which
represents the Energy Department, into mediation talks earlier this
year. Washington, Oregon and the Nez Perce Tribe of Idaho had asked to
be allowed to join the talks; the Energy Department declined.
"We've done a lot of convincing to those two states that they need to be
a part of this," said Jerry Meninick, Yakama Nation tribal council
chairman. "We feel it's only correct."
Hanford, located near Richland in south-central Washington, was created
as part of the Manhattan Project in World War II to make plutonium for
nuclear weapons. The 586-square-mile site now contains the nation's
largest collection of nuclear waste.
Cleanup costs are projected at between $50 billion and $60 billion, with
cleanup to be completed by 2035.
*****************************************************************
59 Guardian Unlimited: States to Sue Energy Dept. Over Hanford
From the Associated Press
[UP]
Friday July 9, 2004 4:01 AM
By SHANNON DININNY
Associated Press Writer
YAKIMA, Wash. (AP) - Washington and Oregon filed court documents
Thursday formally announcing their intent to sue the U.S.
Department of Energy unless it evaluates the harm 40 years of
plutonium production caused to natural resources at the Hanford
nuclear reservation.
The letter to federal officials seeks a court-ordered assessment
of environmental harm if the government doesn't conduct one.
``The Hanford reservation's essential role in defending our
national security carried a steep environmental price tag,''
Washington Attorney General Christine Gregoire said in a news
release.
``Our states have a duty to ensure that the federal government
identifies and repairs that damage.''
Gregoire said the goal is not to recover monetary damages, but
ensure the cleanup is thorough.
Kevin Neely, a spokesman for Oregon Attorney General Hardy Myers,
did not return a telephone call seeking comment. A day earlier,
he said his state was discouraged by the federal government's
position and was prepared to take action.
In a statement, the Energy Department said it was evaluating the
move.
``We're doing so even as we're continuing to reduce risk and make
real progress in the cleanup of Hanford,'' the statement said.
The Yakama Nation filed suit against the Energy Department in
2002, seeking restoration of Hanford natural resources that may
have been damaged by plutonium production for the nation's
nuclear weapons arsenal.
The tribes allege contamination of the Columbia River has
contributed to declining Northwest salmon populations in the past
50 years.
The Energy Department has said it is too soon to assess damage to
the environment.
A court ordered the Yakama Nation and the Justice Department,
which represents the Energy Department, into mediation talks
earlier this year. Washington, Oregon and the Nez Perce Tribe of
Idaho had asked to be allowed to join the talks; the Energy
Department declined.
``We've done a lot of convincing to those two states that they
need to be a part of this,'' said Jerry Meninick, Yakama Nation
tribal council chairman. ``We feel it's only correct.''
Hanford, located near Richland in south-central Washington, was
created as part of the Manhattan Project in World War II to make
plutonium for nuclear weapons. The 586-square-mile site now
contains the nation's largest collection of nuclear waste.
Cleanup costs are projected at between $50 billion and $60
billion, with cleanup to be completed by 2035.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004
*****************************************************************
60 DOE: Office of Arms Control and Nonproliferation; Proposed Subsequent
FR Doc 04-15624
[Federal Register: July 9, 2004 (Volume 69, Number 131)]
[Notices] [Page 41460-41461] From the Federal Register Online via
GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr09jy04-55]
Arrangement AGENCY: Department of Energy.
ACTION: Notice of proposed subsequent arrangement.
SUMMARY: This notice is being issued under the authority of
Section 131 of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, as amended (42
U.S.C. 2160). The Department is providing notice of a proposed
``subsequent arrangement'' under Article 6 paragraph 2 of the
Agreement
[[Page 41461]] for Cooperation Between the Government of the
United States of America and the Government of the Argentine
Republic Concerning Peaceful Uses of Nuclear Energy.
This subsequent arrangement concerns the recovery and blend down
of 8,330 grams of U.S.-obligated uranium, of which 7,480 g is in
the isotope uranium-235 (U-235), for fabrication into
low-enriched uranium (LEU) MTR type fuel elements. The LEU fuel
elements will replace the high-enriched core in the Comision
Nacional de Energia Atomica (CNEA) RA-6 and for the CNEA RA-3
Molybdenum-99 research and production reactor. 1,930 g of the
total uranium amount (1,730 g U-235) is irradiated and will be
dissolved in order to recover the resulting strontium-90 and
cesium-137. The strontium-90 will be used in the production of
generators for nuclear medicine and the cesium-137 will be used
in the fabrication of sealed sources for medical and industrial
purposes. Both the strontium-90 and cesium-137 will be controlled
under the International Atomic Energy Agency's Code of Conduct on
the Safety and Security of Radioactive Sources. The remaining
amount of uranium is unirradiated and will be blended down in
order to reduce its enrichment to less than 20 percent U-235.
CNEA personnel will perform the blend down operations in
specified hot cells and laboratory facilities under IAEA
safeguards at CNEA's Ezeiza Atomic Center near Buenos Aires.
In accordance with Section 131 of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954,
as amended, we have determined that this subsequent arrangement
will not be inimical to the common defense and security.
This subsequent arrangement will take effect no sooner than
fifteen days after the date of publication of this notice.
Dated: July 1, 2004.
For the Department of Energy.
Kurt Siemon, Acting Director, Office of Nonproliferation Policy.
[FR Doc. 04-15624 Filed 7-8-04; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 6450-01-P
*****************************************************************
61 DOE: Office of Science; Basic Energy Sciences Advisory Committee
FR Doc 04-15625
[Federal Register: July 9, 2004 (Volume 69, Number 131)]
[Notices] [Page 41461] From the Federal Register Online via GPO
Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr09jy04-56]
AGENCY: Department of Energy.
ACTION: Notice of open meeting.
SUMMARY: This notice announces a meeting of the Basic Energy
Sciences Advisory Committee (BESAC). Federal Advisory Committee
Act (Pub. L. 92- 463, 86 Stat. 770) requires that public notice
of these meetings be announced in the Federal Register.
DATES: Thursday, August 5, 2004, 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Friday,
August 6, 2004, 8:30 a.m. to 12 p.m.
ADDRESSES: The Doubletree Rockville Hotel & Executive Meeting
Center, 1750 Rockville Pike, Rockville, Maryland 20852.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Karen Talamini; Office of Basic
Energy Sciences; U. S. Department of Energy; Germantown Building,
Independence Avenue, Washington, DC 20585; telephone: (301)
903-4563.
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Purpose of the Meeting: The purpose of
this meeting is to provide advice and guidance with respect to
the basic energy sciences research program.
Tentative Agenda: Agenda will include discussions of the
following: News from the Office of Science News from the Office
of Basic Energy Sciences Report on BESAC Committee of Visitors
for the Scientific User Facilities Division Report of BESAC
Subcommittee on Theory and Computation in Basic Energy Sciences
Highlights of the Nanoscale Research Centers (NSRC) Directors'
Meeting BESAC Discussion Public Participation: The meeting is
open to the public. If you would like to file a written statement
with the Committee, you may do so either before or after the
meeting. If you would like to make oral statements regarding any
of the items on the agenda, you should contact Karen Talamini at
301-903-6594 (fax) or karen.talamini@science.doe.gov
[karen.talamini@science.doe.gov] (e-mail). You must make your
request for an oral statement at least 5 business days prior to
the meeting. Reasonable provision will be made to include the
scheduled oral statements on the agenda. The Chairperson of the
Committee will conduct the meeting to facilitate the orderly
conduct of business. Public comment will follow the 10-minute
rule.
Minutes: The minutes of this meeting will be available for public
review and copying within 30 days at the Freedom of Information
Public Reading Room, 1E-190, Forrestal Building, 1000
Independence Avenue, SW., Washington, DC 20585; between 9 a.m.
and 4 p.m., Monday through Friday, except holidays.
Issued in Washington, DC, on July 6, 2004.
Rachel M. Samuel, Deputy Advisory Committee Management Officer.
[FR Doc. 04-15625 Filed 7-8-04; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 6450-01-P
*****************************************************************
62 Las Vegas RJ: Nuclear agency admits security lax in gun incident
Friday, July 09, 2004
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. -- Two contractors carried guns onto a
government aircraft at Kirtland Air Force Base last year,
according to an internal investigation.
The employees of a company contracted to provide security for
U.S. nuclear weapons sites were headed to a security exercise in
Las Vegas, the Department of Energy investigation states.
The investigation by the DOE's Office of Inspector General
found no evidence of criminal intent.
However, the report suggests it is a failure by the National
Nuclear Security Administration to implement tough air safety
regulations after the September 2001 terrorist attacks.
NNSA spokesman Al Stotts said the two armed passengers passed
extensive security checks.
"Everyone who gets on the planes is vetted through our security
process," he said.
In its formal response to the investigation, the NNSA
acknowledged that allowing the guns onboard was a problem and
steps would be taken to ensure it does not happen again.
The airplane was one of a small fleet run by the NNSA. The
planes often are used to ferry classified materials and are on
call to respond to nuclear emergencies.
A new system for screening passengers on the NNSA flights is
being put in place, NNSA associate administrator Michael Kane
wrote in a response to the report.
Copyright Las Vegas Review-Journal
*****************************************************************
63 Hanford News: Washington, Oregon plan to sue DOE
Home [http://www.hanfordnews.com]
This story was published Thursday, July 8th, 2004
By The Associated Press and the Herald staff
Washington and Oregon plan to sue the U.S. Department of Energy,
demanding the agency begin deciding what harm 40 years of
plutonium production has caused to Hanford's natural resources.
A letter notifying the Energy De-partment of the two states'
intent to sue will be filed today, said Elliott Furst, senior
counsel for the Washington state attorney general's office.
"We're not asking for money for damages. It's very focused,
asking that the court order the Department of Energy to start
studying what injuries there will be to natural resources," he
said.
Colleen Clark, a spokeswoman for DOE, said the agency could not
respond until the letter is received.
Kevin Neely, a spokesman for Oregon Attorney General Hardy Myers,
declined to comment until after the letter has been filed, but
said the state has been discouraged by the federal government's
position and is prepared to take action.
The two states, as well as the Nez Perce Tribe of Idaho, asked to
be allowed to join mediation talks between the Energy Department
and the Yakama Nation, which sued the federal agency in 2002.
That lawsuit seeks restoration of Hanford natural resources that
may have been damaged by plutonium production for the nation's
nuclear weapons arsenal.
The federal Superfund law covering hazardous waste sites allows
governments, including tribes and states, to seek compensation
for such damage.
The Yakama Nation expanded the suit in 2003 to force DOE and the
Department of Defense to take into account alleged damage done to
Columbia River salmon and other fish.
Hanford was a traditional hunting, fishing and religious area for
Mid-Columbia tribes, and treaties signed in 1855 give the tribes
continued hunting, fishing and cultural rights to Hanford and the
surrounding area.
A court ordered the Yakama Nation and the Justice Department,
which represents the Energy Department, into mediation talks
earlier this year. Furst said earlier this year that the Yakama
Nation had agreed to the states' participation.
But DOE declined to allow the two states to join mediation.
Washington and Oregon officials had hoped that by joining the
mediation talks, they could begin pushing for an assessment of
harm done to natural resources at the site, Furst said.
The Energy Department has said it is too soon to determine if
there were injuries to the environment or whether reparations
should be paid.
© 2004 Tri-City Herald. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
64 Oak Ridger: Documentary receives award at Secret City Film Festival
Story last updated at 12:00 p.m. on July 9, 2004
ARKION's documentary "Martian in Motion: Leo Szilard" premiered
at the Secret City Film Festival on June 26 and won the
festival's Audience Choice Award, receiving the most votes for
any film submitted.
The festival showcased over 40 films from across the United
States. The event proved to be so popular that founder/director
Keith McDaniels announced Sunday that the festival will return
again next year.
The documentary "Martian in Motion: Leo Szilard" was co-produced
and co-directed by Knoxville filmmakers John Fairstein and
William Armstrong for ARKION, a Knoxville-based non-profit
company specializing in documentary films.
The documentary, narrated by Colvin Idol, recounts the life of
scientist and political activist Leo Szilard, born in Budapest,
Hungary, in 1898.
Among his many ideas and inventions, Szilard patented the nuclear
chain reaction in 1934 - several years before it was actually
observed in the laboratory.
Though he stayed behind the scenes, Szilard played an active role
in persuading the U.S. government to sponsor development of the
atomic bomb.
After World War II, Szilard became a biologist and lobbied for
civilian control of atomic weapons. He died in La Jolla
California in 1964. The documentary features interviews with
Alvin Weinberg, retired director of Oak Ridge National
Laboratory, and Fredrick Seitz, father of solid state physics.
Both men worked with Szilard.
Also featured in the documentary is William Lanouette, Szilard's
biographer.
ARKION's documentary is the first chapter in a longer documentary
titled "Budapest: A Martian Landing" that explores the rich
cultural environment of Budapest around 1900.
The documentary will focus on six scientists who were born around
the turn of the century.
These scientists, born about a mile from the center of Budapest,
are Eugene Wigner, John von Neumann, Leo Szilard, Edward Teller,
Dennis Gabor and George von Békésy.
Three of these scientists have received the Nobel Prize for their
contributions. Wigner served as the first director of Oak Ridge
National Laboratory.
ARKION is currently pursuing funding for general release of
"Budapest: A Martian Landing." More information can be found at
www.ARKION.net.
"Martian in Motion: Leo Szilard" received funding from the
Richard Lounsbery Foundation, W.W. Armstrong Photography and
ThinkTank. A1LabArts, the Knoxville-based artists' organization
served as fiscal sponsor for the Lounsbery grant.
The documentary is available for rental and sale through ARKION's
Web site at [http://www.ARKION.net] .
More information about the festival is at
[http://www.secretcityfilmfestival.com] .
*****************************************************************
65 Tri-Valley Herald: Energy secretary signs 'the machine'
Article Last Updated: Friday, July 09, 2004 -
Livermore lab's new supercomputer will be capable of 100 trillion
calculations per second
By Ian Hoffman, STAFF WRITER
LIVERMORE -- As a working H-bomb designer in the mid-1990s,
Bruce Goodwin and colleagues figured they one day would need a
computer a million times more capable, a machine able to simulate
a full thermonuclear explosion, from "button to boom."
On Thursday, Goodwin confessed in a low voice to Energy Secretary
Spencer Abraham that he never dreamed such a supercomputer would
take shape in his career at Lawrence Livermore National
Laboratory.
Abraham took a proffered pen and, walking up to a black monolith
in an acre of blinding white floorspace, scrawled his name on the
first cabinet of Goodwin's grail, a veritable city of
interconnected IBM servers known as ASCI Purple.
When its 1,500 cabinets are wired together next spring or summer,
Purple will perform
100 trillion calculations per second. Roughly 2.3 million
precocious teens stabbing madly at hand calculators would take a
year to match Purple's machinations in that second.
"Purple is the machine," said Goodwin, now chief of the weapons
program at Livermore.
Yet both Purple and the four-story office built for scientists to
operate and serve it, the Terascale Simulation Facility, are
verging on obsolescence before they come online. Purple
symbolizes a supercomputing architecture carried almost to the
end.
It can simulate a full H-bomb -- all the physics of a miniature
star in three dimensions, and more -- but it will take almost two
months. That's too long for weapons analysts to perform the
hundreds of simulations needed to be certain that all seven major
warhead and bomb designs in the U.S. arsenal will operate as
designed, with a few changes and yet without exploding a single
one.
Their findings go to Abraham who with the defense secretary must
certify the working order of the entire arsenal every year.
"I don't think I have a more important responsibility in my job,"
Abraham told lab scientists Thursday.
Weapons scientists say that job ultimately calls for a petaflop
-- a thousand trillion operations a second. They talk of a
"petaflop imperative."
"We have very strong requirements for the petaflop by the end of
the decade, and it won't end there," said Dona L. Crawford,
Livermore's associate director of computing.
The "big iron" like Purple -- sprawling stacks of servers woven
together, powered by several megawatts of electricity and cooled
by thousands of tons of chilled water -- can't pass data fast
enough to be worth the extra millions of dollars, power consumed
and acreages of floorspace.
So close by Purple will be a chief competitor, a collection of
special chips clustered into five different kinds of networks and
known as Blue Gene/L. Its 164 trapezoid-shaped cabinets will
occupy half a tennis court's worth of computer room, eat a third
of Purple's power, cost less and deliver 3.6 times the power.
Together, they will give Livermore about 460 trillion
calculations a second, or almost half a petaflop and abundant
reason to rename the building that Abraham dedicated Thursday.
Soon after, senior lab executives pulled Abraham into secure
offices for a classified computer simulation of a terrorist
attack on the lab's plutonium facility, known as Superblock.
Security officials said the simulation reprised a live
"force-on-force" exercise, when lab security officers faced a
mock assault by fewer than a dozen officers from other Energy
Department facilities.
Other lab officials said the simulations showed Abraham the
different outcomes of adding new defenses, such as the $20
million in barriers and alarms that Livermore is seeking by 2006.
Abraham has shaken the lab's senior management by suggesting last
spring the possibility of removing Livermore's entire inventory
of plutonium and highly enriched uranium. Critics of security at
the nation's nuclear weapons sites say Livermore is too hemmed in
by surrounding houses to allow the kind of firepower needed to
repel a serious attempt to steal an A-bomb's worth of plutonium
or uranium.
The secretary's decision is set for early next year. But Abraham
wasn't tipping his hand. "For me to speculate would be unfair,"
he said. "We're trying to do this evaluation in an objective
way."
Contact Ian Hoffman at papers.com">ihoffman@angnews-
*****************************************************************
66 WATE: President Bush to visit ORNL on Monday
[http://knoxville.wate.com
July 9, 2004
KNOXVILLE (WATE) -- The White House Friday has confirmed that
President Bush will visit East Tennessee on Monday.
The president will tour the Oak Ridge National Laboratory Monday
morning, before giving a speech at the lab's Wigner Auditorium.
Air Force One is scheduled to touch down at McGhee Tyson Air Base
at 10:20 a.m. Monday. The president will travel by motorcade to
Oak Ridge. He's expected to stay just a few hours before heading
back to Andrews Air Force Base in D.C.
Bush is expected to talk Monday about the war on terror and
stopping the distribution of weapons of mass destruction.
On July 6th, 6 News reported that a portion of low-enriched
uranium and radioactive sources recovered from Iraq were being
stored and studied at DOE facilities in Oak Ridge and Portsmouth,
Ohio. [ materials in East Tenn.
[http://www.wate.com/Global/story.asp?S=2005598] ]
The material is not weapons-grade. But it could be used in
constructing a so-called dirty bomb.
The U.N. says the U.S. never had permission to take the materials
from Iraq. Officials say the U.N.'s nuclear agency had put the
materials under seal at a nuclear complex near Baghdad. But
American officials say they thought they had the authority to
move the materials.
Components of Libya's nuclear weapons program were also flown to
Oak Ridge in January 2004. Officials said the 55,000 pound
shipment was likely evaluated at the Y-12 Nuclear Weapons Plant.
[ Libyan shipment ]
And in 1994, highly-enriched uranium from Kazakhstan was brought
to the Y-12 plant.
The last sitting president to visit the Oak Ridge facilities was
Mr. Bush's father, George Bush, Sr. more than a decade ago.
"I think we're seeing that in the war on terror Oak Ridge is
playing a part," said Knox County Republican Party Chairman Chad
Tindell. "We're seeing materials from Libya being shipped there.
I think it shows the importance of the work that goes on out
there at Oak Ridge."
Bush was last in East Tennessee in January. He visited a Knox
County school to mark the anniversary of the No Child Left Behind
Act and host a campaign fundraiser. [ Bush in Knoxville ]
6 News Reporter Tearsa Smith
[http://www.wate.com/Global/story.asp?S=865720] contributed to
this report.
[http://www.worldnow.com] All content © Copyright 2000 -
2004 WorldNow and WATE. All Rights Reserved.
*****************************************************************
67 Oak Ridger: Bush to visit Oak Ridge
Story last updated at 11:43 a.m. on July 9, 2004
REASON: Trip could be connected to recent shipment of Iraqi
material.
By: Paul Parson | Oak Ridger Staff paul.parson@oakridger.com
[paul.parson@oakridger.com]
The White House confirmed this afternoon that President Bush will
visit Oak Ridge on Monday.
Taylor Gross, a White House spokesman, said Bush will be touring
some local Department of Energy facilities. The president will
also deliver a talk about terrorism during a stop at Oak Ridge
National Laboratory, according to Gross.
Sources have confirmed that Secret Service representatives
scouted some DOE-related sites Thursday and may do so again
today.
However, spokesmen for DOE and two of its facilities, ORNL and
the Y-12 National Security Complex, said they could not discuss
Bush's visit.
U.S. Rep. Zach Wamp, R-3rd District, is also expected to be in
Oak Ridge on Monday, but his office could not confirm if the
visit is connected to the president's trip.
If it happens, Bush's visit could be connected with recent
shipments of radioactive material from a former Iraqi nuclear
research facility to a DOE site. ORNL officials were reportedly
involved in the project.
Earlier this year, Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham paid a
similar visit to Y-12 to showcase for the media non-classified
Libyan nuclear weapons materials and components that were being
stored at the federal facility. During his visit, Bush may tour
the facility housing the Libyan materials.
*****************************************************************
68 Oak Ridger: Forklift incident spurs use of barriers, signage
Story last updated at 12:01 p.m. on July 9, 2004
By: Paul Parson | Oak Ridger Staff paul.parson@oakridger.com
[paul.parson@oakridger.com]
Following an investigation by the Department of Energy's Oak
Ridge cleanup contractor, controls have been implemented on a
narrow road where a forklift accident occurred last month.
"Since then, concrete barriers have been placed along the
creekside stretch of road and signage has been placed that
requires traffic to yield for one-way passage," said Dennis Hill,
a spokesman for Bechtel Jacobs Co.
The incident involved a 26,000-pound forklift associated with
Melton Valley cleanup efforts sliding down an embankment and
overturning in White Oak Creek.
Though the driver was reportedly not injured, the forklift had to
be decontaminated because it came in contact with the creek's
sediment. In the past, radionuclides like strontium-90,
cesium-137 and iodine-131 have found their way into the creek
from old waste burial grounds in Melton Valley.
According to Hill, the entire Melton Valley haul road was walked
down to identify any other similar locations where signage or
other controls might be appropriate.
As a result of the incident, Hill noted that Bechtel Jacobs
conducted a companywide "safety timeout" - including all
subcontractors - to review several key safety focus areas such as
personal accountability for safety, responsibility for co-workers
and adherence to procedures.
*****************************************************************
69 Oak Ridger: Educating the next generation of scientists
Story last updated at 12:01 p.m. on July 9, 2004
By: Paul Parson | Oak Ridger Staff paul.parson@oakridger.com
[paul.parson@oakridger.com]
Officials at Oak Ridge National Laboratory are helping students
and educators reach for the stars.
And, they'll continue to do so as part of an initiative unveiled
Thursday by Department of Energy that aims to promote science
literacy and help develop the next generation of scientists and
engineers.
Dubbed "Scientists Teaching and Reaching Students," or STARS for
short, the program is designed to enhance the training of
America's mathematics and science teachers; grow students'
interest in these subjects; and draw attention to DOE-related
researchers - thereby encouraging young people and prospective
teachers to pursue careers in math and science.
"There is plenty of evidence that we need to do a better job of
teaching basic science education to our young people," said Jeff
Wadsworth, ORNL's director. "As one of the world's leading
centers of scientific research, ORNL seeks to be East Tennessee's
foremost advocate and supporter of science education."
ORNL and its managing contractor, UT-Battelle, already support a
number of educational programs aimed at elementary and high
school students as well as teachers in the region. And, Wadsworth
said those efforts fall into three categories.
"We are helping expand the number of accredited science teachers
by funding the University of Tennessee's summer science education
workshop for middle school science teachers," the lab chief said.
"For students, UT-Battelle offers more than 100 summer intern
slots at the laboratory, summer camps and environmental classes
for elementary students, science scholarships to the University
of Tennessee, and funding for science competitions for area high
schools.
"Perhaps most important, UT-Battelle has provided approximately
$230,000 to fund new science laboratories in 23 Tennessee
schools," Wadsworth continued. "Together, these initiatives are
making a real difference in the availability and quality of
science education in East Tennessee."
Under DOE's STARS program, ORNL and the federal agency's other
national laboratories will plan and host science appreciation
days that will bring thousands of fifth- and eighth-graders to
the facilities each year for a day. The labs will also sponsor
career day programs - sending scientists out to local schools to
conduct experiments in classes and to discuss career
opportunities with students.
"It is critical that we leverage the resources of this department
- and of all our national labs - to help create a new generation
of scientists who will achieve the scientific breakthroughs and
technological advances so essential to our future security and
prosperity," Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said in a prepared
statement. "The risks of a scientifically illiterate nation in
the 21st century are too great for business as usual."
The science education initiative also calls for the creation of
an Office of DOE Science Education and the implementation of a
pilot program that will bring instructors to DOE labs where they
will work with researchers and engineers with the goal of
improving their knowledge of science and their ability to teach.
For more information on the STARS program, visit the DOE Office
of Science Web site at www.science.doe.gov
[http://www.science.doe.gov]
*****************************************************************
70 amarillo.com Pantex hits the pits in repackaging
| Local News:
07/09/04
[Amarillo Globe News
Plant reaches 10,000 mark in repacking plutonium cores
By JIM McBRIDE jim.mcbride@amarillo.com The Amarillo Globe-News
Pantex Plant should finish repackaging thousands of plutonium
pits into safer containers in about two years, a Pantex official
said Thursday as the plant announced it repackaged its 10,000th
pit this week.
Pantex stores more than 12,000 pits, the radioactive cores of
modern nuclear warheads, in a series of heavily guarded
underground bunkers.
About 30 production technicians are repackaging pits into safer,
sealed-insert containers for long-term storage. A recent
government report, however, says some Pantex pits eventually may
have to be repackaged again before they are shipped elsewhere for
recycling.
A.J. Eggenberger, vice chairman of the Defense Nuclear
Facilities Board, a government watchdog agency monitoring safety
issues at nuclear weapons plants, said the board is encouraged by
Pantex's progress.
"They have been very responsive to that effort. We still have a
few to go, but generally we think they've done a good job,"
Eggenberger said Thursday.
According to information from BWXT Pantex, Pantex has averaged
more than 200 pit repacks per month since BWXT Pantex took over
the Pantex contract in 2001.
Several years ago, the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board
issued a formal recommendation to Pantex, urging officials to
repackage pits into safer containers. Safety studies showed most
Pantex storage drums contained packaging that could corrode metal
layers sealing the plutonium inside.
Mitch Carry, BWXT Pantex's program director for Campaigns and
Special Programs, said Pantex hopes to have remaining Pantex pits
repackaged by the end of fiscal year 2005.
"It has gone quite well," Carry said. "Our expectation is that
we will continue to be able to produce at our planned rate until
we have accomplished packaging the balance."
The contractor also has worked to cut costs and reduce worker
radiation exposures from repackaging, Carry said.
"From the beginning, we have been able to reduce our costs
associated with doing the work about 21 percent over what they
were in FY '02, and we have been able to reduce the radiation
exposure to our folks by about 50 percent," he said.
According to a defense board report, Pantex and the National
Nuclear Security Administration are reviewing two possible
designs for a pit shipping container.
One proposed design would require workers to remove pits now
stored in sealed-insert containers and repackage them. A second
proposed design would minimize repackaging and significantly
reduce worker radiation exposures, but it is not certified as an
acceptable shipping container.
Under government proposals, thousands of surplus Pantex pits
will be shipped to the Savannah River Site, where they will be
recycled into fuel rods for U.S. nuclear reactors. Other pits
will remain at Pantex, where they will be stored indefinitely.
Carry said no decisions about a possible pit shipping container
have been relayed to Pantex.
[http://www.amarillo.com/]
*****************************************************************
71 lamonitor.com: Story on warhead flaw said wrong
The Online News Source for Los Alamos
[http://www.lac-nm.us]
MONITOR STAFF REPORT
A copyright story claims that U.S. nuclear weapons experts are
debating whether there's a design flaw in a warhead important to
the U.S. nuclear arsenal. Weapons experts held a top-secret
meeting in Los Alamos in March to discuss whether the W76
submarine-launched warhead will work as it was designed,
according to the story in Thursday's Albuquerque Journal.
If the problem is real, it has "national security implications
for the United States," Everet Beckner, deputy chief of the
National Nuclear Security Administration's nuclear weapons
program, wrote in a letter in the fall.
Beckner and others willing to speak on the record said they are
confident the weapon is sound.
Beckner said a review was launched at the March meeting, but has
not been completed. A report is to be co-authored by one of the
weapons lab insiders who thinks the warhead has a problem, the
Journal reported. The effect of the potential problem is
classified. However, the available information suggests a problem
could cause the warhead to explode with less than its designed
yield.
Los Alamos National Laboratory officials concurred with Beckner's
assessment that there is no evidence of a problem. "The
laboratory is very confident in the performance of the Los
Alamos-designed W76," said the laboratory's official statement.
"This warhead, deployed on the Trident 1 and 2 missiles, was
developed and tested between 1973 and 1981. Its history of
underground nuclear tests in Nevada is one of the most extensive
of the weapons systems now in the U.S. inventory."
The statement said that the most recent assessment of the nuclear
weapons in the national stockpile, a letter of certification last
September, found no problems that would require further testing.
"Assessment for the September 2004 letter indicates no change in
that level of confidence," the lab's statement concluded.
There are about 2,300 W76s in the U.S. nuclear arsenal - more
than any other nuclear weapon.
The weapon meant to destroy hardened enemy missile silos is
designed to have a yield equivalent of approximately 100,000 tons
of TNT - about seven times more powerful than the bomb dropped on
Hiroshima, Japan in 1945.
The warhead was designed in the 1970s. The explosive yield of at
least one test was not what designers expected, according to
unclassified sources.
An independent panel of nuclear weapons experts with access to
classified test data concluded the W76 was working fine in the
mid 1990s.
Another review in the 1990s for Congress by a Lawrence Livermore
National Laboratory nuclear weapons designer also found no
problem.
After the problem test in the 1970s, a change was made to the
weapon and it was tested again, said Bob Peurifoy, a retired
Sandia National Laboratories weapons expert who participated in
the mid 1990s evaluation. The weapon "worked just fine" in a
second test after the adjustment, Peurifoy said.
© 2003 Los Alamos Monitor All Rights Reserved.
*****************************************************************
72 Paducah Sun: Suit now proceeds on cleanup challenge by plants neighbors
[http://www.paducahsun.com/]
Paducah, Kentucky Friday, July 09, 2004
By Joe Walker jwalker@paducahsun.com--270.575.8650
Attorneys will argue the merits of a lawsuit challenging a
cleanup agreement for the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant between
the state and federal governments now that a judge has refused to
dismiss the case.
On July 1, Franklin Circuit Judge Roger Crittenden rejected a
motion by U.S. Department of Energy lawyers to throw out the suit
on grounds that the agreement should have been challenged
administratively before going to court. They made the argument
even though the secretary of the Kentucky Environmental and
Public Protection Cabinet had already signed two final agreed
orders with DOE.
Crittenden ruled that exhausting administrative remedies is
unnecessary when the effort is futile, said Tom FitzGerald, an
attorney and director of the Kentucky Resources Council
environmental group. FitzGerald filed the case on behalf of plant
neighbors Ron Lamb and Al and Vivian Puckett, as well as Mark
Donham of Brookport, Ill.
The case now moves to the merits of the claim that the agreed
orders unlawfully depart from properly managing and regulating
hazardous waste at the plant, FitzGerald said.
The lawsuit was filed Nov. 3, a month after the two orders were
signed resolving hazardous-waste violations at the plant. They
required DOE to pay a $1 million fine to resolve state citations
of illegal waste storage and disposal, and paved the way for
another $30 million in federal money to help finish most of the
cleanup by 2019.
DOE officials said the orders allowed the agency to clean up the
greatest risks at the plant more quickly. The suit, which says
the neighbors' property "and other interests" are hurt by the
agreement, seeks to have the orders declared unconstitutional.
*****************************************************************
73 Oak Ridger: Your View: Remembers advocate of workers' rights
Story last updated at 11:05 a.m. on July 9, 2004
To The Oak Ridger:
Dr. Thomas Mancuso passed away on July 4, 2004, at the age of
92. Dr. Mancuso was one of the pioneers and advocates of
occuåpational health and safety. He was hired in 1965 by the
U.S. government to study the radiation records of over 225,000
workers in the U.S. atomic weapons industry. He also published a
controversial study of cancer and other illnesses in workers
exposed to beryllium. Dr. Mancuso served for a number of years
as medical consultant to the International Association of
Machinists. My own communications with him during this time
revealed his compassion for the workers who were being exposed
to toxins in their workplace. His concerns have proven very
real, as there are now over 200 cases of beryllium-related
illnesses, and over 10,000 federal compensation claims for
work-related conditions, from Oak Ridge Operations alone.
Dr. Mancuso's persistence in making public the workplace perils
of beryllium and low-level radiation came at a price. When he
would not retract his findings, his contract was withdrawn, and
his records confiscated. The beryllium industry, with help from
the Department of Defense and Department of Energy, mounted a
huge campaign to discredit Mancuso. Unfortunately, time has
proven Dr. Mancuso to be right.
Glenn Bell
Beryllium Victims Alliance
Oak Ridge
*****************************************************************
74 [du-list] DU in the news - 10th July 04
Date: Fri, 09 Jul 2004 20:22:12 -0700
ANDY D :
Depleted uranium - Trojan horse of nuclear war
Pravda - Moscow,Russia
I urge every PRAVDA.Ru reader to visit
http://globalresearch.ca/articles/MOR407A.html website to read Leuren
Moret's essay "Depleted Uranium: The Trojan Horse ...
'NO
radiation exposure' after airplane crash
Expatica - Netherlands
... The plane had depleted uranium on board and there were suggestions
after the crash that some of the uranium might have been burned, releasing
it into the ...
YOUR
letters
Ventura County Star - Ventura county,CA,USA
... injured. And what are the health consequences of the 1,100 to 2,200
tons of depleted uranium ordnance we are leaving behind? Many ...
NEGROPONTE,
Honduras and Iraq
ZNet - Woods Hole,MA,USA
... and condemned present and future generations to all kinds of disease
and illness and maiming as a result of exposure to depleted uranium and
contact with ...
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
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75 SF Chronicle: Dr. Thomas Mancuso, longtime advocate for workers' health
[http://sfgate.com]
[mtaylor@sfchronicle.com] Friday, July 9, 2004
Thomas F. Mancuso, a pioneering epidemiologist who became
embroiled in a controversy with the federal government over the
long-term health effects of low-level radiation on nuclear
weapons workers, died Sunday at an assisted living facility in
Oakland at the age of 92.
The cause of death was esophageal cancer, according to his
daughter, Margaret Mancuso. A professor emeritus at the
University of Pittsburgh, he and his wife had moved last month to
the Oakland facility from their home in Pennsylvania.
Dr. Mancuso was a longtime advocate for workers' health. During
World War II, he was instrumental in setting up public health
service organizations in Michigan and Oregon, and from 1945 to
1962 he was chief of the division of industrial hygiene in the
Ohio Department of Health.
His son, Thomas P. Mancuso, said his father decided before the
age of 10 that he wanted to be a doctor and became even more
determined when his oldest brother died at the age of 16 from
cardiac problems.
"He really saw it as a compassionate vocation," Mancuso said of
his father's life. He added that his father "never really wanted
to take a vacation. All he wanted to do was his work -- it was
everything to him."
Dr. Mancuso was born and raised in Brooklyn, N.Y. He studied at
Creighton University in Omaha, Neb., where he finished his
undergraduate education and went on to Creighton's medical
school, receiving his medical degree in 1937.
After 20 years of work in the field of industrial medicine for
the states of Michigan, Ohio and Oregon, Dr. Mancuso was hired by
the University of Pittsburgh as a research professor of
occupational health.
Bernard Goldstein, dean of the university's School of Public
Health, said Thursday that Dr. Mancuso "is one of my heroes."
In the 1960s, Dr. Mancuso "pioneered an approach that has an
enormous impact on public health," Goldstein said. Until then,
the major focus on workplace health dealt with on-the-job
injuries. Dr. Mancuso "developed techniques to look at the
long-term health effects of working," Goldstein said, and was the
first to discover the cancer-causing effects of beryllium, an
element used in nuclear reactors, and hexavalent chromium,
another metallic element used to harden alloys.
In 1964, Dr. Mancuso was contracted by the Atomic Energy
Commission to conduct a study on how low-level radiation affected
an estimated 500,000 workers in the nation's nuclear weapons
production plants. The Atomic Energy Commission was the
government agency responsible for nuclear weapons after the
Manhattan Project, the World War II program that created the
atomic bombs that leveled Hiroshima and Nagasaki and forced the
Japanese to surrender in August 1945. The nation's nuclear
weapons programs are now run by the Department of Energy.
In 1974, while Dr. Mancuso was still a professor at Pitt and was
continuing his research into the effects of radiation on workers,
an epidemiologist who worked for the state of Washington issued a
study saying that "former Hanford (Nuclear Reservation) workers
residing in the state were suffering a significant excess of
fatal cancers," according to a September 1990 report in the
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.
The Atomic Energy Commission pressured Dr. Mancuso to repudiate
those findings by endorsing a government press release that
criticized the report by the Washington researcher. Dr. Mancuso
refused. So the government cut off the funding for his study,
effectively firing him from the project.
In 1977, after his dismissal from the federal study, Dr. Mancuso
joined with British physician Dr. Alice Stewart and statistician
George Kneale for a study on the Hanford plant, published in
Health Physics Journal. The study reported that "Hanford workers
were dying of cancer from cumulative radiation exposures far
below the standards established as safe."
Dr. Mancuso also was vindicated when the government began paying
hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation to injured
workers.
Dr. Mancuso was also known for service as a medical consultant to
the International Association of Machinists. Deluged by health
questions from the union's members, Dr. Mancuso compiled his
answers into a union-published 1976 book titled "Help for the
Working Wounded." Dr. Mancuso retired from his full- time
professorship in 1982, but continued his research, publishing his
last paper about seven years ago.
Dr. Mancuso is survived by his wife, Raffaella Mancuso of
Oakland; a son, Thomas P. Mancuso of Los Angeles; two daughters,
Margaret Mancuso of Berkeley and Jo-Ellen Mancuso of Watertown,
Mass., and one grandson.
Mass will be said at 10:30 a.m. Monday at Our Lady of Lourdes
Catholic Church, 2808 Lakeshore Ave., Oakland.
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