*****************************************************************
08/10/04 **** RADIATION BULLETIN(RADBULL) **** VOL 12.190
*****************************************************************
RADBULL IS PRODUCED BY THE ABALONE ALLIANCE CLEARINGHOUSE
*****************************************************************
Send News Stories to news@energy-net.org with title on subject
line and first line of body
NUCLEAR POLICY
1 AFP: Iranian conservatives grill FM over nuclear dossier
2 Guardian Unlimited: Diplomacy sidelined as US targets Iran
3 WP: Iran: The Next Crisis
4 Guardian Unlimited: Nuclear Tests Vindicate Iran So Far
5 Xinhuanet: DPRK urges US to accept proposal of "reward for nuclear f
6 US: WSJ.com: Candidates Pursue Divergent Energy Paths
7 [southnews] IDF Prepares For Armageddon
8 AFP: Britain voices concern over Belarus expulsion
9 TheStar.com - Ontario to ease energy cost hikes
10 St. Petersburg Times: Russia not to raise nuclear fuel prices for Uk
NUCLEAR REACTORS
11 [NukeNet] pipe at Japanese plant not inspected since 1996
12 Japan NPP: What If Evacuation Was Needed? Japanese Reactors May Have
13 IPS-English ENERGY-JAPAN: Nuclear Accident Shakes Public
14 US: [CMEP] Coalition Demands Solution for Nuclear Reactor
15 Straits Times: Nuclear neglect -
16 The Australian: Demands for head of nuke chief
17 The Australian: Power plants a political paradox
18 AFP: Japan orders nuclear inspections after accident firm admits lap
19 AFP: Concern on Russia nuclear plants after Japan mishap - environme
20 US: NRC: Wolf Creek Nuclear Operating Corporation, Notice of Withdra
21 Reuters: Japan Nuke Accident Highlights Laxity, Aging Plants
22 US: NRC: Sunshine Notice
23 Las Vegas SUN: Japan Tries to Restore Nuclear Confidence
24 Seattle Times: Reactor down, with no start-up date in sight
25 Daily Yomiuri: Accident may put plans on hold
26 Daily Yomiuri: Pipe not checked at N-plant
27 Daily Yomiuri: N-accident tied to dilapidated equipment
28 US: Hampton Union Local News: Nuke plant ponders license for unused
29 BBC: Japan's shaky nuclear record
30 BBC: Japan nuclear firm investigated
31 BBC: Nuclear plant accident splits Japan
32 Guardian Unlimited: Japan's nuclear industry under fire as steam
33 US: Hanford News: Nuclear power plant remains shut down for repairs
34 WP: Accident at Nuclear Plant In Japan Kills Four Workers
35 Xinhuanet: Nuke plant leak rattles resources-strapped Japan
36 Japan Times: Kepco failed to inspect aging reactor pipe despite warn
37 US: Advocate: Feds reject state request for no-fly zone over Millsto
38 US: News 10 Now: Rally demands study of nuclear plants' vulnerabilit
39 RNW: Japan's nuclear neglect
40 ITAR-TASS: Accident at Japanese Mihama Nuclear Power Plant on Honshu
41 US: C Enquirer: Nuclear plant back on line (Davis-Besse)
42 US: Middletown Press: No fuss over nuke fuel
43 US: TheDay.com: Town To Take Part In Drill For Emergency Evacuation
44 US: PRN: Exelon, Federal Government Reach Agreement Over Spent Nucle
45 US: PRN: Nuclear Energy Institute Calls Exelon-DOJ Used Fuel Settlem
46 US: News-Gazette Online: UI removing radioactive material from resea
47 ThisisLondon: Stark truth about Energy stakebuilder
NUCLEAR SAFETY
48 Reuters: CHRONOLOGY-Nuclear Accidents Worldwide
49 US: Spectrum: Downwinder response is inadequate - Opinion -
50 US: Texas City Sun: Meeting on radioactive lab today
NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE
51 Las Vegas SUN: Kerry Talks Nuclear Waste in Las Vegas
52 Las Vegas SUN: Nevada asks NRC to reject Yucca Mountain license
53 UPI: Kerry pledges support for sound science -
54 Las Vegas RJ: Complaint: Yucca issues neglected
55 Las Vegas SUN: Yucca is lead issue as Kerry visits Las Vegas
56 RGJ: Kerry to make campaign stop in Vegas
57 News Sentinel: Anemic energy plans
58 KR Washington Bureau: Kerry promises to halt creation of nuclear-was
59 Progressive News: Yucca Mountain and the Plight of the Western Shosh
60 WP: Kerry Has Nevada's Ear on Yucca Mountain Plan
61 Nevada Appeal - Opinion: Yucca not only issue in presidential race
62 WP: Veterans Could Be Key to Nevada's Bigger Prize
63 Japan Times: MOX FACES THUMBS DOWN
64 Guardian Unlimited: Kerry Says Bush Broke Nuclear Waste Vow
65 fremontneb.com: Search for $141M under way
66 US: PE.com: Superfund listing sought
67 US: Berkshire Eagle: Water line plan to be debated in Williamstown
NUCLEAR WEAPONS
68 [southnews] Nagasaki remembers A- bomb, urges US to ban nuclear
69 [progchat_action] America's blind-eye to N-arms
70 [progchat_action] Nagasaki remembers a dark day in history
71 Daily Yomiuri: Govt to push CTBT ratification at September meet
72 Japan Times: Antinuclear plea the stuff of lip service
US DEPT. OF ENERGY
73 Daily Camera: Rocky Flats samples may be on hold
74 DOE: Environmental Management Site-Specific Advisory Board, Hanford
75 SFNM: Lab's 'missing' nuclear weapon disks never existed
76 Hanford News: Ecology may impose new rules
77 Hanford News: Sodium draining begins at FFTF
78 The State: Westinghouse fined for uraniu
79 Albuquerque Tribune: Nuke program flayed
80 U.S. Newswire - Powerful Results: Abraham Releases Report on
81 Oak Ridger: DOE facility gets 'Star' treatment
82 Oak Ridger: Can you hear me now? Not at Y-12
83 Paducah Sun: Bunning still trying to move compensation program to La
84 Oak Ridger: Our View: Protesters right to dissent ironic
85 Guardian Unlimited Senator: Los Alamos Disks May Not Be Lost
86 Oak Ridger: On Hiroshima anniversary, another viewpoint shared
87 Daily Texan - Opinion: UC alone didn't ruin Los Alamos -
OTHER NUCLEAR
88 [du-list] DU in the news - 10 Aug 04
*****************************************************************
*****************************************************************
FULL NEWS STORIES
*****************************************************************
*****************************************************************
1 AFP: Iranian conservatives grill FM over nuclear dossier
WAR.WIRE [http://www.spacewar.com/]
TEHRAN (AFP) Aug 10, 2004
Iran's conservative-controlled parliament on Tuesday put the
heat on Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazi for his alleged
mishandling of Iran's nuclear dossier.
"Why did we surrender to the demands of the Europeans and the
West?" asked Akbar Alami, a member of the Majlis foreign policy
and national security commission, in a debate carried live on
state radio.
"I have even heard that one member of our delegation to the Paris
negotiations told the Europeans that Iran would guarantee that it
would not leave the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) if the
Westerners did not take our case to the United Nations Security
Council," he added.
"These sort of approaches undermine Iran's sovereignty."
He was referring to talks last month between Iran and EU's "big
three" -- France, Germany and Britain -- during which the
Europeans continued their effort to have Iran renounce its work
on the sensitive nuclear fuel cycle.
Iran, however, has stood by its right to enrich uranium,
insisting that is is legal under the NPT if for peaceful
purposes.
Pending the completion an International Atomic Energy Agency
(IAEA) probe, Iran has nevertheless agreed to suspend enrichment
and has signed the additional protocol to the NPT that allows
reinforced UN inspections.
But another conservative deputy, Ali Ahmadi, asked Kharazi why
Iran had agreed to allow tougher inspections under the additional
protocol while the text has not yet been ratified by parliament.
The parliamentary commission on national security and foreign
affairs has also been working on a bill to force the reformist
government to resume uranium enrichment -- something that would
certainly spark a crisis at the
But in parliament, Kharazi defended his handling of the dossier,
and said overall responsibility in the negotiations was with
Hassan Rowhani, a powerful conservative cleric who heads Iran's
Supreme National Security Council.
"The nuclear issue in Iran gets special treatment. Dr Hassan
Rowhani, a well-known politician, is heading the case, while the
foreign ministry and the atomic organisation are helping him
out," Kharazi asserted.
"The Islamic republic of Iran will never give up its right to
peaceful nuclear technology, since we are not seeking production
of nuclear weapons," he added.
He also asserted it was "parliament which has the final say on
the ratification or the refusal of the protocol".
The Islamic republic's parliament fell into conservative hands
after most reformists were barred from contesting Majlis
elections held last February.
WAR.WIRE
*****************************************************************
2 Guardian Unlimited: Diplomacy sidelined as US targets Iran
Simon Tisdall
Tuesday August 10, 2004
The Guardian [http://www.guardian.co.uk]
The US charge sheet against Iran is lengthening almost by the
day, presaging destabilising confrontations this autumn and maybe
a pre-election October surprise.
The Bush administration is piling on the pressure over Iran's
alleged nuclear weapons programme. It maintains Tehran's decision
to resume building uranium centrifuges wrecked a long-running
EU-led dialogue and is proof of bad faith.
The US will ask a meeting of the International Atomic Energy
Agency on September 13 to declare Iran in breach of the nuclear
non-proliferation treaty, a prelude to seeking punitive UN
sanctions.
Iran's insistence that it seeks nuclear power, not weapons, is
scoffed at in Washington. John Bolton, the hawkish US
under-secretary of state for arms control, says there is no doubt
what Tehran is up to. He has hinted at using military force
should the UN fail to act. "The US and its allies must be willing
to deploy more robust techniques" to halt nuclear proliferation,
including "the disruption of procurement networks, sanctions and
other means". No option was ruled out, he said last year.
Last month in Tokyo, Mr Bolton upped the ante again, accusing
Iran of collaborating with North Korea on ballistic missiles.
Israel, Washington's ally, has also been stoking the fire. It is
suggested there that if the west fails to act against Iran in
timely fashion, Israel could strike pre-emptively as it did
against Iraq's nuclear facilities in 1981, although whether it
has the capability to launch effective strikes is uncertain.
The US has been pushing other countries to impose de facto
punishment on Iran. Japan has been asked to cancel its $2bn
(£1.086bn) investment in the Azadegan oilfield and Washington has
urged Russia to halt the construction of a civilian reactor.
Condoleezza Rice, the US national security adviser, said at the
weekend there was a new international willingness to confront
Tehran, but declined to rule out unilateral action if others did
not go along.
That will fuel speculation in Tehran and elsewhere that the Bush
administration may resort to force, with or without Israel, ahead
of November's election. Options include "surgical strikes" or
covert action by special forces.
Such a move would be a high-risk gamble for George Bush. After
the WMD fiasco, there would inevitably be questions about the
accuracy of US intelligence. In the past Iran has vowed to
retaliate. Although it is unclear how it might do so, the mood in
Tehran has hardened since the conservatives won fiddled elections
last winter.
"I think we've finally got the world community to a place, the
IAEA to a place, that it is worried and suspicious," Ms Rice said
in one of a string of interviews with CNN, Fox News and NBC
television. She vowed to aim some "very tough resolutions" at
Iran this autumn. "Iran will either be isolated or it will
submit," she said.
Officials in London say she exaggerated the degree of unanimity
on what to do next. Britain, France and Germany are the EU troika
which has pursued a policy of "critical engagement" with Iran,
despite US misgivings.
Jack Straw, the foreign secretary, has invested considerably in
resolving the issue, travelling to Tehran on several occasions. A
diplomatic collapse would be a blow.
"There has been no such decision at all," a Foreign Office
spokesman said yesterday of US efforts to take the dispute to the
security council. "The dialogue [with Iran] is ongoing and the
government still believes that negotiation is the way forward at
this stage." But Britain is in danger of being dragged down a
path of confrontation that it does not want to travel.
Nuclear weapons are not Washington's only worry. The US charges
include Iran's perceived meddling in Iraq, where the blame for
the surge in Shia unrest is laid partly at Tehran's door. It also
takes exception to Iran's ambiguous attitude to al-Qaida and
Tehran's backing for anti-Israeli groups such as Hizbullah. The
recent Kean report on 9/11 detailed unofficial links between some
of the al-Qaida hijackers and Iran.
Investigations into other terrorist attacks since 9/11, including
this year's Madrid bombings and failed plots in Paris and London,
point to an Iran connection, though the extent of any government
involvement is obscure.
While the Bush administration is set on a tougher line there is
no consensus even in Washington on what to do.
A report by the independent Council on Foreign Relations says
since Iran is not likely to implode any time soon, the US should
start talking.
"Iran is experiencing a gradual process of internal change," the
report says. "The urgency of US concerns about Iran and the
region mandate that the US deal with the current regime [through]
a compartmentalised process of dialogue, confidence building and
incremental engagement."
That suggestion was mocked by a Wall Street Journal editorial as
"appeasement". Hawks say the nuclear issue is too urgent to brook
further delay. And therein lies the rub. Bringing Iran in from
the cold is a time-consuming business. But the Bush
administration, as usual, is in a hurry.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004
*****************************************************************
3 WP: Iran: The Next Crisis
(washingtonpost.com)
By Fareed Zakaria Tuesday, August 10, 2004; Page A19
Who could have imagined that alliance management would be a hot
election issue? But it is. John Kerry's repeated pledge to
restore relations with U.S. allies has struck a chord. The
trouble is, if he is elected president, Kerry is going to find
that promise hard to keep -- at least with America's allies in
Europe. Most of them would be delighted to see Kerry win, but
that doesn't mean they will be more cooperative on policy issues.
Terrorism is understandably on everyone's mind, but there is yet
another growing danger over the horizon. Early into a Kerry
administration, we could see a familiar sight -- a transatlantic
crisis -- except this time it wouldn't be over Iraq but Iran.
The threat to the United States from Iraqi weapons of mass
destruction, if they ever existed, is in the past. Iran, on the
other hand, is the problem of the future. Over the past two
years, thanks to tips from Iranian opposition groups and
investigations by the International Atomic Energy Agency, it has
become clear that Iran is seeking to develop nuclear weapons. In
the words of the agency, Iran has "a practically complete
front-end of a nuclear fuel cycle," which leads most experts to
believe it is two to three years away from having a nuclear bomb.
European countries were as worried by this development as
Washington, and because the United States has no relations with
Iran, Europe stepped in last fall and negotiated a deal with
Tehran. It was an excellent agreement, under which Iran pledged
to stop developing fissile material (the core ingredient of a
nuclear bomb) and to keep its nuclear program transparent. The
only problem is, Iran has recently announced that it isn't going
to abide by the deal. As the IAEA's investigation became more
serious, Tehran became more secretive. One month ago the agency
condemned Iran for its failure to cooperate. Tehran responded by
announcing that it would resume work in prohibited areas.
That's where things stand, with the clock ticking fast. If Iran
were to go nuclear, it would have dramatic effects. It would
place nuclear materials in the hands of a radical regime that has
ties to unsavory groups. It would signal to other countries that
it's possible to break the nuclear taboo. And it would
revolutionize the Middle East. Saudi Arabia and Egypt would feel
threatened by Iran's bomb and would start their own search for
nuclear technology. (Saudi Arabia probably could not make a bomb
but it could certainly buy necessary technology from a country
such as Pakistan. In fact, we don't really know all of the buyers
who patronized Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan's nuclear
supermarket. It's quite possible Saudi Arabia already has a few
elements of such a program.) And then there is Israel, which has
long perceived Iran as its greatest threat. It is unlikely to sit
passively while Iran develops a nuclear bomb. The powerful
Iranian politician Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani has publicly
speculated about a nuclear exchange with Israel. If Iran's
program went forward, at some point Israel would almost certainly
try to destroy it with airstrikes, as it did on Iraq's reactor in
Osirak. Such an action would, of course, create a massive
political crisis in the region.
In the face of these stark dangers, Europe seems remarkably
passive. Having burst into action last fall, it does not seem to
know what to do now that Iran has rebuffed its efforts. It is
urging negotiations again, which is fine. But what will it tell
Iran in these negotiations? What is the threat that it is willing
to wield?
Last month the Brookings Institution conducted a scenario with
mostly former American and European officials. In it, Iran
actually acquires fissile material. Even facing the imminent
production of a nuclear bomb, Europeans were unwilling to take
any robust measures, such as the use of force or tough sanctions.
James Steinberg, a senior Clinton administration official who
organized this workshop, said that he was "deeply frustrated by
European attitudes." Madeleine Albright, who regularly convenes a
discussion group of former foreign ministers, said that on this
topic, "Europeans say they understand the threat but then act as
if the real problem is not Iran but the United States."
U.S. policy toward Iran is hardly blameless. Washington refuses
even to consider the possibility of direct talks with Iran, let
alone actual relations. Europeans could present Washington with a
plan. They would go along with a bigger stick if Washington would
throw in a bigger carrot: direct engagement with Tehran. This is
something Tehran has long sought, and it could be offered in
return for renouncing its nuclear ambitions.
But for any of this to happen, Europe must be willing to play an
active, assertive role. It must stop viewing itself merely as a
critic of U.S. policy and instead see itself as a partner,
jointly acting to reduce the dangers of nuclear proliferation.
And it should do this not as a favor to John Kerry but as a
responsibility to its own citizens and those of the world.
comments@fareedzakaria.com [comments@fareedzakaria.com]
*****************************************************************
4 Guardian Unlimited: Nuclear Tests Vindicate Iran So Far
From the Associated Press
[UP]
Tuesday August 10, 2004 6:46 PM
AP Photo WX109
By GEORGE JAHN
Associated Press Writer
VIENNA, Austria (AP) - New findings by the U.N. atomic agency
appear to strengthen Iran's claim it has not enriched uranium
domestically and weaken U.S. arguments that the country is hiding
a nuclear weapons program, diplomats said Tuesday.
The diplomats, who are familiar with Iran's nuclear dossier, told
The Associated Press that the International Atomic Energy Agency
has established that at least some enriched particles found in
Iran originated in Pakistan.
The origin of hundreds of other samples has not been established.
Still, the findings bolsters Tehran's assertion that all such
traces were inadvertently imported on ``contaminated'' equipment
it bought on the black market.
The findings also could hurt the case being built by the United
States and its allies, which accuse Iran of past covert
enrichment in efforts toward making nuclear weapons.
In Washington, the Bush administration said it was awaiting
hearing the full report on the U.N. agency's findings and was
unswayed in its suspicions about Iran's covert nuclear agenda -
regardless of whether it enriching uraniaum at home or obtaining
it elsewhere.
``Obviously, we think Iran has a weapons program, we think the
evidence points to that,'' said Adam Ereli, a State Department
spokesman. ``What's troubling is that there are not clear,
consistent answers that are provided in an open and transparent
way ... as promised.''
The origin of the enriched uranium has been a focus of
investigations by the IAEA as it has tried for months to
determine whether Iran violated the Nuclear Nonproliferation
Treaty.
Faced with evidence, Iran over the past year has acknowledged
clandestinely assembling a centrifuge program to enrich uranium
for what it says are plans to produce electricity, but it denied
actually embarking on the process.
Enrichment occurs when uranium hexaflouride gas is spun through
thousands of centrifuges in series to gain increasingly higher
levels of a compound that can reach weapons grade above 90
percent.
The U.N. nuclear watchdog refused to comment Tuesday. IAEA
spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said any new findings would be
contained in a report being prepared for a Sept. 13 meeting of
the agency's board of governors.
The report, being written by IAEA Director General Mohamed
ElBaradei, will review the agency's progress in answering
questions about nearly two decades of secret nuclear activities
by Iran that were first revealed in 2003.
Most suspicions focus on the sources of traces of highly enriched
uranium and the extent and nature of work on the advanced P-2
centrifuge, used to enrich uranium.
The diplomats, who spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity,
said the agency had only been able to conclusively link one
sample - with particles enriched to 54 percent - found at one
Iranian site to Pakistan. But another sampling enriched to a
lower degree might also have come on equipment bought from the
network headed by Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, they
said.
They said the findings strengthened Iran's hand ahead of the
September meeting, even if the agency still was far from
establishing the origin of hundreds of other traces of enriched
uranium found in Iran.
The diplomats said lack of clarity on that issue - as well as
Tehran's past cover-ups, spotty record of cooperation with the
IAEA, and insistence on the right to enrich uranium - keep it
high on the IAEA agenda.
``It's a boost for Tehran,'' one diplomat said of the enriched
uranium finding. ``But there are other things it still needs to
worry about.''
Still, experts said the reported findings could hurt U.S. hopes
that international impatience with Iranian foot-dragging could
translate into support for referring Iran to the U.N. Security
Council.
``This is definitely one for Iran's side, and it's a strike
against the hard-liners who want to make a case that Iran is
(consistently) lying,'' said David Albright, a former Iraq
nuclear inspector who runs the Washington-based Institute for
Science and International Security.
Washington's hopes received a boost last week with Iran's
continued insistence on its right to enrich uranium and other
demands alienated key European powers France, Britain and
Germany.
In a ``wish list'' presented to the European three and shared
with The Associated Press, Iran called on them to back its right
to ``dual use'' nuclear technology that has both peaceful and
weapons applications.
The Iranians also asked the European to sell them conventional
weapons and indirectly demanded they stick to any deal reached to
supply them with nuclear technology even if international
sanctions are later imposed on Tehran.
As well, the ``wish list'' called for a strong European
commitment to a non-nuclear Middle East and ``security
assurances'' against a nuclear attack on Iran - both allusions to
Israel, which is believed to have nuclear arms and destroyed
Iraq's nuclear reactor in a 1981 airstrike to prevent it from
making atomic arms.
France, Germany and Britain last year had held out the prospect
of supplying Iran with some ``dual use'' technology, but only in
the distant future, and only if suspicions that Tehran might be
seeking to make nuclear weapons were laid to rest.
With Iran still under investigation, the presentation of the wish
list stunned senior French, German and British negotiators,
according to an EU official familiar with the Paris meeting.
---
On the Net:
International Atomic Energy Agency: www.iaea.org
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004
*****************************************************************
5 Xinhuanet: DPRK urges US to accept proposal of "reward for nuclear freeze"
www.xinhuanet.com
www.chinaview.cn 2004-08-10 21:27:26
PYONGYANG, Aug. 10 (Xinhuanet) -- The Democratic People's
Republicof Korea (DPRK) has urged the United States to accept its
proposal of reward for nuclear freeze, the official Minju Joson
newspaper said Tuesday.
The newspaper said in a commentary that the DPRK has no
objection to the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.
"But the key to it is for the United States to abandon its
hostile policy towards the DPRK and take goodwill measures to
convince the DPRK of this," it said.
"Whether the United States is ready to accept our proposal of
'reward for freeze' or not is the touchstone showing whether it
truly has the intention to solve the nuclear issue or not," the
commentary said.
It urged the United States to lift economic sanctions and
blockades against the DPRK and remove it from the list of
"sponsors of terrorism."
"If the United States is not interested in the proposal for
'reward for freeze,' the two sides may go their own ways. The
United States should not dream of freeze without reward," the
commentary added.
In a July commentary published in the official Rodong Sinmun
newspaper, the DPRK urged the United States to provide the
countrywith two million kilowatts of electricity in energy aid.
The third round of the six-nation talks in Beijing in June
ended with no major breakthroughs toward freezing Pyongyang's
nuclear weapons program. The talks involved the United States,
China, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the DPRK.
At the talks, the DPRK offered to freeze its nuclear program
inexchange for energy, the lifting of US economic sanctions and
removal of its name from Washington's list of countries that
sponsor terrorism.
Earlier, Washington had demanded an unconditional end to the
DPRK's nuclear programs. Enditem
Copyright ©2003 Xinhua News Agency. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
6 WSJ.com: Candidates Pursue Divergent Energy Paths
[The Wall Street Journal
Monday, August 9, 2004
Bush's Plan to Spur Oil Production Contrasts With Kerry's
Emphasis on Reduced Demand
By JOHN J. FIALKA
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
President Bush's main answer to high oil prices is more supply:
promoting greater domestic-oil production by easing regulations
and offering tax breaks. John Kerry emphasizes reducing demand
and fostering alternative fuels such as solar and wind power.
That is the primary difference between the two presidential
candidates over a central issue in the 2004 campaign: how to
insulate the U.S. economy from sudden spikes in global energy
prices, such as the one that cooled growth and rocked financial
markets during recent weeks.
The Massachusetts senator has long placed "energy independence"
with health care and education as pillars of his domestic-policy
agenda. Taking advantage of last week's record oil prices, Mr.
Kerry made energy the theme of a campaign stop near Kansas City,
Mo., Friday, where he promoted developing fuel from agricultural
waste.
"God only gave us 3% of the world's oil reserves," he told the
small gathering of farmers. "We have to control our energy
future."
Thanks to Oil, Economy Faces Headwinds in Political Season
In a conference call with reporters arranged by the Bush
campaign, Texas Republican Rep. Joe Barton countered: "Unless he
can do something on the supply side, he's not going to do
anything about getting these high energy prices down." Mr.
Barton, chairman of the House Energy Committee, blamed Mr. Kerry
in particular for leading the fight in the Senate against Mr.
Bush's plan to drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife
Refuge. Sen. Kerry's opposition on other matters has stalled the
president's broader energy bill in Congress. Mr. Bush also wants
to encourage drilling for natural gas in sensitive areas of the
West, including under the Rocky Mountains.
Mr. Kerry opposed those efforts and has instead advocated
imposing higher standards for corporate average fleet economy on
the nation's auto makers. He has set a goal of requiring
vehicles to produce a fleet average of 36 miles per gallon by
2015, up from 27.5 mpg currently. Such a move, he says, would
save two million barrels of oil a day.
The two candidates also differ significantly over future uses of
nuclear power. The Bush administration is developing plans for a
new generation of smaller and safer nuclear-power plants. Mr.
Kerry's aides say he supports current nuclear plants, which
provide 20% of the nation's electricity but is opposed to
permanent storage of nuclear waste in Nevada's Yucca Mountain.
That position effectively blocks new plants, since Wall Street
won't finance more nuclear production without a clear option for
storing waste.
Sen. Kerry's approach to electricity needs includes a federal
mandate on utilities to produce 20% of their electricity from
so-called renewable resources by 2020, including solar, wind and
geothermal sources.
While this stance is hugely popular with environmental groups,
politicians from oil states are skeptical.
Because renewable sources produce only about 1% of the nation's
electricity supply, Oklahoma Republican Sen. Don Nickles says
raising that to 20% would impose "an enormous price tag" on
electricity consumers. "It's never going to happen," he says.
On many energy proposals, the candidates agree. They both stress
the need for clean-burning coal and a federal mandate to require
gasoline sellers to use an increasing percentage of fuel made
from corn, soybeans and agricultural residues by 2012. Both
candidates approve incentives for hybrid vehicles and
fuel-cell-powered vehicles that use hydrogen, which can be made
from coal, natural gas or electricity that comes from
hydroelectric power, nuclear energy or other sources that don't
require oil.
Such measures would, at best, lower energy prices only in the
long run, however.
Mr. Kerry's aides argue that he would be more able than
President Bush to lower short-term prices. First, they say, the
Democratic candidate would be more willing than the incumbent to
"jawbone" Saudi Arabia to boost production. They also blame Mr.
Bush for Middle East turmoil and hostility to the U.S. "A new
president, without all the baggage," says Roger Altman, one of
Mr. Kerry's economic advisers, would "quickly restore" stability
in world oil markets.
Independent analysts note that recent price increases have had
more to do with other factors, such as rising demand in China
and oil-industry disruptions in Russia.
Mr. Kerry also proposes to address short-term price spikes by
temporarily putting on hold plans to fill the Strategic
Petroleum Reserve, the government's emergency supply of oil
stored in hollowed-out salt domes along the U.S. Gulf Coasts.
The Bush administration aims to lift the current reserve supply
to 700 million barrels from 665.6 million barrels and announced
Friday a new oil-exchange contract that would provide incentives
to oil companies to continue filling the reservoir.
Critics say Mr. Kerry's proposal likely would have little effect
on prices, since it would free up just 120,000 barrels of oil
daily -- barely a drop in the almost 20 million barrels a day
the U.S. consumes. And the Bush campaign, on its Web site, says
that "using the SPR solely for political purposes to lower
gasoline prices would reduce our protection and weaken our
position" in countering terrorists.
The energy policies of both campaigns are shaped heavily by
politics -- particularly the local and regional interests of the
battleground states considered tossups in the election.
The emphasis by both candidates on agriculture-based fuels, for
example, is aimed at wooing voters in closely divided farm
states such as Iowa and Missouri. Kerry aides see his opposition
to White House plans for Yucca Mountain nuclear-waste storage as
a reason he could win Nevada, a state Mr. Bush carried narrowly
in 2000.
The Bush campaign has, in turn, played up Mr. Kerry's support
for fuel-economy standards in the swing state of Michigan,
saying the proposal "kills jobs." Even the strongly Democratic
United Auto Workers union has expressed concern about Mr.
Kerry's plans. So when the Kerry campaign unveiled its energy
plan Friday, aides softened his push for the standards, saying
that rather than mandate specific efficiency levels, Mr. Kerry
would "bring everyone to the table" and work out a compromise
standard with industry and consumer groups.
Coal drives votes in the battlegrounds of Ohio, West Virginia,
and Pennsylvania. Mr. Bush snatched long-Democratic West
Virginia from Vice President Al Gore in 2000, in part by arguing
his rival's environmental policies would hurt mining.
On a recent swing through eastern Ohio, Mr. Bush made clear he
plans to run on the same arguments this year, telling a rally:
"My opponent said -- he called coal a dirty energy source." The
remark drew boos from the crowd.
Mindful of those concerns, Mr. Kerry's plan includes a $10
billion, 10-year plan to develop "clean coal" technologies.
Write to John J. Fialka at john.fialka@wsj.com
*****************************************************************
7 [southnews] IDF Prepares For Armageddon
Date: Tue, 10 Aug 2004 01:30:05 -0500 (CDT)
------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~-->
Yahoo! Domains - Claim yours for only $14.70
http://us.click.yahoo.com/Z1wmxD/DREIAA/yQLSAA/7gSolB/TM
--------------------------------------------------------------------~->
The IDF Home Command will start to distribute an antidote to radiation
in areas close to the Nuclear Research Center in Dimona on Sunday.
Israeli Army To Distribute Radiation Antidote
Monday, 9 August 2004
Article: Translation by Sol Salbe
[No one has so far explicitly questioned the timing of the
announcement (Saturday night). Such questioning may be indeed forbidden
under Israel's censorship laws. It is noteworthy that the Hebrew Haaretz
carries a link to the archived story about Mordechai Vanunu's warning of
the Dimona reactor's susceptibility to earthquakes, right nest to this
story. Such a link does not appear (at this stage at least) in the
English edition. If you are interested the English version is at:
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/456461.html - Sol Salbe]
w w w . h a a r e t z . c o m
Last update - 22:46 07/08/2004
Army to distribute radiation antidote
By Nir Hasson, Haaretz Correspondent
The IDF Home Command will start to distribute an antidote to
radiation in areas close to the Nuclear Research Center in Dimona on
Sunday. The antidote is intended to protect residents from radioactive
fallout from any missile attack on the nuclear station, or in case of a
reactor accident.
The pills are iodine capsules that reduce the absorption of
radioactive iodine and bolster the body's immune system. They will be
distributed every day for the two weeks between 4 P.M. and 8 P.M.
The pills will be first distributed in Dimona, Yehorham, Ar'ara and
Kseifa, and the unrecognized Beduin villages Al-Hawashla, Abu-Krinat,
Al-Azzma and others in the Negev. In the second stage, a few weeks
later, the pills will be distributed in Arad and the towns and
communities of the Dead Sea and the Arava - Neveh Zohar, Hatzeva, Neot
Hakikar, Idan and Tamar.
The mayor of Arad, Motti Brill, objects to the pills being
distributed in his town. A former engineer in the Nuclear Research
Center, Brill says that based on his personal knowledge of the center,
there is no need for Lugol pills and the distribution would seriously
damage Arad's image.
Soldiers will provide each family with the pills and a leaflet in
Hebrew, Arabic, English, Russian and Amharic explaining their purpose
and how to keep them. The Home Front Command cautioned people not to
open the packages or take the pills unless they get explicit
instructions to do so.
Every person will get a pack of five Lugol capsules and family
packages will include extra tablets according to the IDF estimate of a
family's projected growth in the next five years, a Home Front officer
said. Packets of pills will be distributed to public institutions,
schools, hotels and plants. "Each citizen will have an extra pill
waiting for him somewhere in case the incident happens in the morning
when people are not home," the officer said.
ENDS
______________________________________________
Ex-deputy Mossad director accuses IDF of losing its morality
Haaretz 08/08/2004
Former deputy Mossad director, Shmuel Toledano, launched a harsh verbal
attack on Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Moshe Ya'alon on Sunday,
saying that the IDF under his leadership had lost its morality and
military ethics.
The attack took place during a lecture Ya'alon gave at the Council for
Peace and Security, a group of 1,000 top-level reserve generals,
colonels, and Shin Bet and Mossad officials.
During the lecture, Toledano asked the participants: "How can you like
the IDF the way it operates today?" He then turned to the Chief of Staff
and said: "What do you intend to do in order to return our IDF and not
your IDF, which is soulless and merciless. There is a feeling among the
public that the IDF under your command has entirely lost the sacred
value of military ethics following the death and destruction the IDF is
spreading at checkpoints". Toledano left the hall following
participants' protests and resigned from the council.
The Chief of Staff said in response that he was sorry certain people did
not understand the moral dilemmas the army is faced with. "I am sorry to
say that there are those who are nourished by the enemy's false
propaganda. We regret any damage caused to innocent people", Ya'alon said.
/hasen/objects/pages/PrintArticleEn.jhtml?itemNo=461995
The archives of South News can be found at
http://southmovement.alphalink.com.au/southnews/
Yahoo! Groups Links
<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/southnews/
<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
southnews-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
*****************************************************************
8 AFP: Britain voices concern over Belarus expulsion
WAR.WIRE [http://www.spacewar.com/]
LONDON (AFP) Aug 10, 2004
Britain voiced concern Tuesday over the expulsion from Belarus
of a British nuclear physics professor, saying it will keep
pressing the government in Minsk for a full explanation.
Alan Flowers, of Kingston University in Surrey, southeast
England, had been working on a youth democracy project in Belarus
as well as studying the effects of the Chernobyl nuclear accident
in 1986.
"I am concerned about the expulsion of Dr Flowers from Belarus,"
Britain's minister for Europe, Denis MacShane, said in a
statement.
"We will continue to seek clarification from the Belarusian
authorities for the reasons behind Dr Flowers's expulsion," he
said.
Flowers told AFP on July 31 that interior ministry officials had
told him that he would have to leave the country promptly, and
that he would be banned from returning for five years.
They refused to explain the decision, but Flowers said he
suspected the order was connected to his work over several years
with Belarusian members of the European Youth Parliament.
"The main reason I believe the Belarusian authorities are not
happy with my presence is that this organisation has become
stronger and stronger," he said.
Belarus' authorities have repeatedly been criticised by
international organisations for strong-arm tactics in dealing
with dissents -- real or imaginary.
Opposition leaders and human rights groups have also repeatedly
charged President Alexander Lukashenko with rights violations.
WAR.WIRE
*****************************************************************
9 TheStar.com - Ontario to ease energy cost hikes
Tue. Aug. 10, 2004. | Updated at 03:24 PM
Liberal bill aims to moderate prices
Opposition predicts pain for consumers
JOHN SPEARS BUSINESS REPORTER
Energy bills are probably going up, says Ontario Energy Minister
Dwight Duncan.
That's the bad news.
The good news: New rules introduced by Queen's Park for the
electricity market should make the price swings less violent.
Using Ontario's traditional, low-cost generators such as the big
hydro-electric station at Niagara Falls to moderate price hikes,
and controlling wild price swings through careful regulation,
will make the new prices easier to swallow, Duncan told a
legislative committee yesterday.
But he warned that Ontario residents and businesses must pay the
true cost of energy to attract the investment needed to replace
Ontario's rapidly aging fleet of generators.
And energy costs are rising on all fronts.
"World energy markets are very unstable; that should be a concern
to all Ontarians," Duncan said after making a presentation on the
new Electricity Restructuring Act.
Although the focus of the bill is the province's electricity
system, Duncan said all energy sectors are turbulent. "I can't
protect Ontario consumers from Iraq," he said.
Opposition critics said that Duncan's plans would only mean more
pain for consumers, however. "I think consumers should be
prepared for higher prices and more uncertainty," said
Conservative MPP John O'Toole (Durham).
Duncan said the new bill tries to smooth the natural turmoil in
the electricity market, which interacts with prices from other
energy sectors. "What I can say is we can produce an electricity
regime that is the by-product of many of these things that will
afford small consumers predictable rates and more stable rates
than they've seen."
The new bill sets up the Ontario Power Authority, which will be
charged with drawing up a long-term electricity plan for the
province and ensuring that an adequate supply of power is on hand
to fill the projected demand.
The Ontario Energy Board will devise a new formula for setting
consumer prices, blending the price from low-cost generators such
as the traditional hydro stations that produce power for less
than 2 cents a kilowatt-hour with the prices for higher-cost
generators, such as natural gas-fired plants that require prices
of 8 cents a kilowatt-hour or more to cover their costs,
depending on the volatile price of natural gas.
The province is also committed to widespread installation of
"smart meters" that can reward consumers by charging them lower
prices for power during off-peak hours and hit them with high
prices during peak demand periods when the system is under
strain.
Supply is a big issue because the Liberals have promised to shut
down Ontario's coal-fired generators by 2007, although they've
hedged by saying they won't risk security of supply.
Yesterday, New Democratic Party Leader Howard Hampton accused
Duncan of abandoning that promise. He noted the province has
started a bidding process for private firms interested in
replacing up to one-third of the capacity of the coal-fired
plants.
But the terms of the request for proposals state the new
generators may come into service as late as 2009, two years after
the promised coal shutdown, Hampton said.
"You're operating on a hope and a prayer," Hampton told Duncan.
Duncan said the new generators could be in service as early as
2006 under the terms of the government's rules, and "most" will
be ready by 2007.
Hampton also attacked the Liberals for breaking an election
promise by raising the consumer price of electricity from 4.3
cents a kilowatt-hour for the energy portion, which makes up
about half of the total bill. Consumers pay 4.7 cents for the
first 750 kilowatt-hours they use each month, and 5.5 cents a
kilowatt-hour for anything beyond that.
Hampton also predicted consumer prices would rise because of the
government's invitation to more private-sector firms to build
generators.
Duncan acknowledged that the Liberals made a mistake by promising
to maintain the 4.3 cent price freeze. But he said Ontario Power
Generation's heritage assets, such as the hydroelectric stations
that produce power for less than 2 cents a kilowatt hour, will be
used as a counterweight to more expensive energy sources.
The Ontario Energy Board has been ordered to devise a formula for
blending the various components of energy pricing into a stable
consumer price by April 30, 2005.
Duncan noted the province is also asking for proposals to produce
power from green and renewable sources. Duncan said new
conservation measures will be introduced this fall.
Protesters from Greenpeace stood outside the Legislature calling
for the province to clarify its stand on the future of nuclear
power.
The way the act is written, nuclear power could be considered an
alternative or green energy form, said Greenpeace spokesperson
Dave Martin. Duncan said nuclear's status will be clarified this
fall.
Legal Notice: Copyright Toronto Star Newspapers Limited. All
*****************************************************************
10 St. Petersburg Times: Russia not to raise nuclear fuel prices for Ukraine
RBC, 10.08.2004, Moscow 19:03:39.
Russia will not change its prices for nuclear fuel for Ukraine
despite an increase in prices for uranium, Anton Badenkov, the
Vice President of TVEL Corporation, Russia's nuclear energy
producer, made a corresponding statement in Kiev. According to
him, prices for uranium have advanced by 60 percent on
international markets this year.
Although Ukraine exports all its uranium (about 1,000 tons) to
Russia, this is only 30 percent of the uranium needed to produce
nuclear fuel for Ukrainian nuclear power stations.
All rights reserved. © 1995-2003 RosBusinessConsulting (095)
363-11-11
Dow Jones Indexes data provided by Dow Jones, Inc. Terms and
Conditions of Access
Send your notes and suggestions to max@rbc.ru [max@rbc.ru]
All rights reserved © 1995-2000 RosBusinessConsulting
*****************************************************************
11 [NukeNet] pipe at Japanese plant not inspected since 1996
Date: Tue, 10 Aug 2004 15:09:26 -0700
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB109212472717187403,00.html?mod=world_news_whats_news
Delayed Safety Checks Cited
In Japan's Nuclear Accident
Associated Press
August 10, 2004 5:22 a.m.
MIHAMA, Japan -- The faulty cooling pipe at the center of Japan's deadliest
nuclear power plant accident hadn't been inspected since 1996, despite a
warning last year that it was a safety threat, the plant operator said Tuesday.
The dangerously corroded pipe -- which carried boiling water and
superheated steam -- burst at the Mihama reactor Monday, burning to death
at least four workers and injuring seven others, two of them seriously. No
radiation was released, officials said.
The announcement came as dozens of police agents and nuclear energy
officials arrived Tuesday at the plant in Mihama, about 200 miles west of
Tokyo, to investigate operator Kansai Electric Power on suspicion of
negligence resulting in death.
The accident and suspected lapses deepened concerns about the safety of
Japan's 52 nuclear plants, which supply about a third of the country's
electricity. Two workers died in a radioactive leak at a plant northeast of
Tokyo in 1999.
It was unclear how the accident would affect the operation of Japan's other
nuclear plants. The country's nuclear agency was considering a call for all
plants to inspect their cooling pipes, a spokesman said.
Kansai Electric deputy plant manager Akira Kokado said private contractors
conducting inspections for the company notified management in April 2003
that the cooling pipe at the Mihama plant was overdue for a thorough safety
check.
Sections of the pipe were last checked in 1996 and deemed safe at that
time, said Koji Ebisuzaki, Kansai Electric's chief manager for quality
control. Last November, the plant scheduled an ultrasound inspection of the
pipe for Aug. 14 -- next Saturday.
"We thought we could delay the checks until this month," Kansai's deputy
plant manager said in a news conference. "We had never expected such rapid
corrosion." The national government in Tokyo -- which plans to build
another 11 nuclear power plants by 2010 -- called for a public
investigation of the accident as investigators headed to the site.
"Prime Minister Koizumi told me it is important that nothing be hidden from
the nation," said Economy, Trade and Industry Minister Shoichi Nakagawa.
Officials, however, balanced the call for an aboveboard probe with warnings
the accident shouldn't further dim the reputation of nuclear power in Japan.
"Nuclear power has a significant impact in our lives," Mr. Koizumi told
reporters Tuesday. "We have to pay close attention so that our lives won't
be affected by this accident."
Monday's leak was caused by a lack of cooling water in the reactor's
turbine. After the accident, Kansai Electric officials found a hole in a
condenser pipe. The water flowing through the pipe was about 150 degrees
Fahrenheit.
The plant's No. 3 nuclear reactor automatically shut down when steam began
spewing from the leak. Its two other reactors were operating normally.
Though the burst pipe had originally been 0.4 inch thick, the pipe had
eroded to as thin as 0.06 inch in the 28 years since the reactor was built
in 1976.
An ultrasound test might have detected the thinning, but Kansai never
carried out such inspections, Mr. Kokado said, adding the company may have
to review the way it conducts checks.
--
Subscribe to our free weekly list serve by
visiting:http://www.prwatch.org/cmd/subscribe_sotd.html
Diane Farsetta
Senior Researcher,
Center for Media & Democracy
520 University Avenue, Suite 227
Madison, WI 53703
phone: 608-260-9713
fax: 608-260-9714
email: diane@prwatch.org
http://www.prwatch.org/
_______________________________________________________________________
Subscribe/Unsubscribe Here: http://www.energyjustice.net/nukenet/
Change your settings at:
http://energyjustice.net/mailman/listinfo/nukenet_energyjustice.net
*****************************************************************
12 Japan NPP: What If Evacuation Was Needed? Japanese Reactors May Have To Be Shut Down For Inspection [Item#2]
Date: Wed, 11 Aug 2004 00:09:58 -0400
and there was no order for the 11,500 residents
of Mihama to evacuate.
Does anyone know what, if any plans exist for an
attempted evacuation from a Japanese NPP
accident/radiation release? Have any web sites
and/or other sources pertaining to this?
The second story belows refers to the
possibility of Japan shutting down it's commercial
reactors. Can they do this & still have enough
electricity to keep things running? If so, for how
long can they be shut down? Permenantly? A shorter
period of time? Any references?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/japan/story/0,7369,1280551,00.html
Nuclear plant admits inspection failure
Justin McCurry in Tokyo
Wednesday August 11, 2004
The Guardian
Japan's nuclear energy industry faced fresh
criticism yesterday after it emerged that a
severely corroded cooling pipe that caused
Monday's fatal accident at a nuclear power plant
had not been properly inspected for 28 years
despite warnings that it posed a safety threat.
Four workers died and seven others were injured
when the pipe, carrying super-heated water, sprung
a leak, sending scalding hot steam into a turbine
building inside the number three reactor at Mihama
nuclear power plant on the Japan Sea coast.
The admission by the plant's operator, Kansai
Electric Power, came as pressure mounted on the
government to improve safety in an industry hit by
a series of accidents and attempted cover-ups in
the past several years.
Although sections of the pipe had been inspected
in 1996, a Kansai Electric official said a
maintenance subcontractor had looked at it in
April 2003 and said it was in need of a thorough
inspection. But the check was put off until this
coming Saturday.
"We thought we could delay the checks until this
month," the plant's deputy manager, Akira Kokado,
told reporters. "We never expected such rapid
corrosion."
He admitted that an ultrasound inspection would
probably have uncovered the extent of the
corrosion.
The thickness of the pipe wall had shrunk from
10mm when it was installed in 1976 to 1.5mm at the
time of the accident, he said.
Local police are investigating Kansai Electric on
suspicion of negligence resulting in death and
believe the 11 affected workers were part of a
group of 200 hired specifically to prepare the
plant for this weekend's inspections.
Find travel guides at Concierge.com. Find hotel
and...
concierge.com
The four dead - named yesterday as Hiroya
Takatori, 26, Kazutoshi Nakagawa, 41, Tom oki
Iseki, 30, and Eiji Taoka, 46 - suffered severe
burns and heart and lung damage.
"The ones who died had stark white faces," said
Yoshihiro Sugiura, a doctor who treated them at
nearby Tsuruga city hospital. "This shows that
they had been rapidly exposed to heat."
No radioactive material was involved in the
accident, however, and there was no order for the
11,500 residents of Mihama to evacuate.
The government said it expected Kansai Electric to
carry out a thorough inquiry into the accident and
to release its findings in full.
But the prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi, said
the accident should not be allowed to jeopardise
the future of Japan's nuclear power industry.
Nevertheless, the accident, the worst since two
workers died at a uranium reprocessing plant in
September 1999, has raised doubts about the safety
of Japan's 52 nuclear power plants, many of which
were built more than 30 years ago.
The country relies on nuclear power for 34% of its
energy.
Some independent analysts said the accident could
force the government to shut down its nuclear
reactors for inspections.
``If the accident proves to have originated in a
critical system, the implications of the Aug. 9
non-radioactive steam leak will prove deep and
immediate, forcing the government to order another
round of safety inspections,'' said Strategic
Forecasting Inc, a U.S.-based consulting group.
``Early indications are that the bursting pipe
that released the steam was already through 28
years of its 30-year lifespan, raising the
possibility that similar pipes on all plants might
have to be replaced,'' it said in a report.
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-nuclear-japan-accident.html
Japan Nuke Accident Highlights Laxity, Aging
Plants
By REUTERS
Published: August 10, 2004
ARTICLE TOOLS
E-Mail This Article
Printer-Friendly Format
Most E-Mailed Articles
TIMES NEWS TRACKER
Track news that interests you.
Filed at 7:50 a.m. ET
TOKYO (Reuters) - An accident at a Japanese
nuclear plant that killed four workers occurred in
an area that was to be inspected this week for the
first time in 28 years, and months after a warning
of potential problems, the plant's operator said
on Tuesday.
The admission by Kansai Electric Power Co. is
likely to further dent public confidence in
Japan's nuclear policy, raising questions about
the condition of some of Japan's aging plants and
management's apparent laxity on safety matters.
Four workers were killed in Japan's deadliest
nuclear industry accident on Monday when
super-heated steam escaped from a ruptured pipe in
a building housing turbines for a reactor at the
Mihama nuclear power plant, 320 kmwest of Tokyo.
There was no radiation leak, but the accident
raised further concerns about Japan's nuclear
safety record.
``The pipe was to have been checked at an upcoming
regular inspection,'' said a Kansai Electric
official.
He said the pipe had not been checked since 1976
because it was not on an inspection list --
something Kansai Electric was notified of in
November by a maintenance sub-contractor.
Some independent analysts said the accident could
force the government to shut down its nuclear
reactors for inspections.
``If the accident proves to have originated in a
critical system, the implications of the Aug. 9
non-radioactive steam leak will prove deep and
immediate, forcing the government to order another
round of safety inspections,'' said Strategic
Forecasting Inc, a U.S.-based consulting group.
``Early indications are that the bursting pipe
that released the steam was already through 28
years of its 30-year lifespan, raising the
possibility that similar pipes on all plants might
have to be replaced,'' it said in a report.
The authorities have so far simply told power
companies to check whether inspections on reactors
that are of the same design as the Mihama plant
have been carried out properly.
An official at the Nuclear and Industry Safety
Agency said the regulator had not ordered
utilities to carry out physical inspections, which
could require that plants halt operations.
Kouji Yamashita, a government nuclear safety
inspector, said there were 22 other nuclear power
generators in Japan of the same design as the
Mihama reactor, 10 run by Kansai Electric, the
remainder operated by four other firms.
WIDER PROBLEMS
Kyodo news agency said police were investigating
whether the company neglected safety standards by
letting more than 200 workers prepare for an
annual inspection while the reactor, which was in
a separate building, was still running.
A police spokesman said investigations were
continuing.
Members of the public were critical of the
company.
``Maybe they didn't do enough on crisis management
... and there weren't enough steps taken against
dangers,'' said Motoyoshi Sakai, a 22-year-old
student working part-time for a private television
broadcaster in Tokyo.
Juro Ikeyama, an author on nuclear issues,
including a history of the anti-nuclear movement
in Japan, thought the accident could uncover
similar problems elsewhere.
``Management has been really lax,'' he said.
``It turns out the pipe was probably really
corroded, and the fact that it happened here
suggests the same kind of thing could happen
elsewhere,'' he said.
Japan depends on nuclear power for a third of its
energy requirements and has 52 nuclear reactors.
It imports virtually all of its oil, mostly from
the volatile Middle East.
Industry Minister Shoichi Nakagawa apologized to
victims, but added: ``We must not undermine trust
in nuclear energy policy.''
Tokyo Electric Power Co, the world's biggest
private utility, was forced to close all its 17
nuclear power reactors temporarily by April 2003
after admitting it had falsified safety documents
for more than a decade.
A number of towns have held referendums in the
past few years and voted against the construction
of nuclear plants.
But not everyone is opposed.
``There are limits to thermal and water power
generation so nuclear power generation is
needed,'' said Tetsuyuki Matsuda, a 58-year-old
company employee in Tokyo.
The worst previous incident at a Japanese nuclear
facility was at a uranium processing plant in
Tokaimura, north of Tokyo, in September 1999, when
an uncontrolled nuclear chain reaction was
triggered by three poorly trained workers who used
buckets to mix nuclear fuel in a tub.
The resulting release of radiation killed two
workers and forced the evacuation of thousands of
nearby residents.
The only previous fatal accident at a Japanese
nuclear power plant was in 1967, in a fire at a
plant in Ibaraki prefecture just north of Tokyo.
There was no radiation leak.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/10/international/asia/10CND-JAPA.html
Corrosion Cited in Burst at Japanese Nuclear Plant
By JAMES BROOKE
Published: August 10, 2004
Kyodo, via Associated Press
Steam billowed from the No. 3
reactor of the plant in Mihama, Japan, Monday
after a pipe burst. It was the country's worst
nuclear accident.
ARTICLE TOOLS
E-Mail This Article
Printer-Friendly Format
Most E-Mailed Articles
Reprints & Permissions
MULTIMEDIA
Video: Japan Nuclear Plant
Accident Kills Four
TIMES NEWS TRACKER
Topics
Alerts
Japan
Atomic Energy
Accidents and Safety
OKYO, Aug. 10 - A steam pipe that blew out Monday,
killing four workers at a Japanese nuclear power
plant, had not been inspected in 28 years and had
corroded from nearly half an inch to a thickness
little greater than metal foil, the authorities
said today.
"To put it bluntly, it was extremely thin - it
looked terrible even in the layman's view,"
Shoichi Nakagawa, Japan's minister of economy,
trade and industry, told reporters today after
touring the power plant in Mihama, about 200 miles
west of here.
Although the carbon steel pipe carried 300-degree
steam at high pressure, it had not been inspected
since the power plant opened in 1976. In April
2003, Nihon Arm, a maintenance subcontractor,
informed Kansai Electric Power Co., the plant
owner, that there could be a problem. Last
November, the power company scheduled an
ultrasound inspection for Aug. 14.
"We thought we could postpone the checks until
this month," Akira Kokado, the deputy plant
manager, told reporters at Mihama. "We had never
expected such rapid corrosion."
The police opened an investigation today to
determine why 221 workers were in the reactor
facility at the time of the accident. The
subcontractor has said the workers were preparing
for Friday's inspection shutdown.
On Monday, four days before the scheduled
shutdown, superheated steam blew a two-foot wide
hole in the pipe, scalding four workmen to death
and injuring five others seriously. The steam that
escaped was not in contact with the nuclear
reactor and no nuclear contamination has been
reported.
Initial measurements showed that the steam had
corroded the pipe from .4 inches to .06 inches,
less than one-third the minimum safety standard.
Kansai Electric said in a statement today that the
pipe showed "large-scale corrosion."
"We conducted visual inspections, but never made
ultrasonic tests, which can measure the thickness
of a steel pipe," Haruo Nakano, a Kansai Electric
spokesman, told reporters.
In response to the accident, Japan's Nuclear and
Industry Safety Agency ordered four other power
companies that own nuclear plants with the same
type of pressurized water reactors to conduct
ultrasound inspections of their pipes. The
inspections are to involve nearly half of the
country's 52 nuclear power plants.
After television news helicopters swarmed over the
plant on Monday, government officials jumped today
to assure the public that a full investigation
will take place.
"We must put all our effort into determining the
cause of the accident and to ensuring safety,"
Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi said. He added
that the government would respond "resolutely,
after confirming the facts."
But government leaders also tried to bolster
flagging public support for nuclear power.
"Nuclear power has a significant impact in our
lives," Mr. Koizumi told reporters today. "We have
to pay close attention so that our lives won't be
affected by this accident."
Mr. Nakagawa, the industry minister, said, "We
must not undermine trust in nuclear energy
policy."
The government has planned to build an additional
11 reactors this decade, increasing the nation's
reliance on home-based nuclear power to 40 percent
of electricity needs. Already slowed by local
opposition, this program may now be stalled.
"In Japan, it's virtually impossible to build new
nuclear facilities now," Asahi Shimbun, a liberal
newspaper, said in an editorial today. "But
facilities are wearing out, and there are worries
about increasing problems with corroding pipes,
rupturing valves and the reactor core."
The Nihon Keizai, a business daily, worried that
the accident could undermine public support in
Japan for nuclear power.
"We must find the cause of the accident and
urgently come up with measures to prevent such an
accident from happening again," the newspaper
editorialized. "This accident seriously damaged
public confidence in nuclear safety and our
nuclear measures."
The Yomiuri, a conservative newspaper, warned:
"Care must be taken not to overemphasize the
dangers involved in the operation of nuclear power
stations, which could lead to an overreaction.
Operations at other nuclear power plants must not
be undermined."
Japan has the world's third-largest nuclear power
industry, after the United States and France.
*****************************************************************
13 IPS-English ENERGY-JAPAN: Nuclear Accident Shakes Public
Date: Tue, 10 Aug 2004 15:06:01 -0700
ROMAIPS AP EN IP PR WD
ENERGY-JAPAN: Nuclear Accident Shakes Public Confidence
By Suvendrini Kakuchi
TOKYO, Aug 10 (IPS) - Japan's worst accident at a nuclear power
plant has shaken public confidence in the industry's safety record
with activists blaming the country's lax nuclear regulations for the
mishap that killed four and injured seven others at the plant west of
the capital.
''The lives of the workers could have been saved if proper checks
were carried out on the plant. The accident has revealed a blatant
disregard for protecting people from nuclear power accidents,''
Kazue Suzuki, a nuclear power expert at Greenpeace Japan, told
IPS.
The accident occurred on Monday after super-heated steam
leaked through a hole in a pipe that feeds steam in the turbine
facility of the Mihama Nuclear Power Plant, the second reactor
among three operated in Fukui Prefecture, 300 kilometers west of
Tokyo.
The pipe, according to the owner, Kansai Electric Power Company
(KEPCO), Japan's second largest utility company, had not been
checked since the plant began operating in 1976.
Hideyuki Ban, nuclear power researcher and head of the Tokyo-
based Citizen's Nuclear Information Center, said the ''accident is
serious and should be a severe warning to advocates of nuclear
power to stop immediately.''
He also refutes the claim by KEPCO and the government's
Nuclear and Industry Safety Agency that no radioactive leak took
place.
Immediately after the accident, officials said the steam was not
contaminated by radioactivity. No evacuations were ordered of the
town of Mihama, where the plant is situated.
''Radioactive materials weren't contained in the steam that leaked
out,'' an official for the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said at a
news conference.
KEPO said in a statement: ''This incident will have no radiation
effect on the surrounding environment.''
But the Citizen's Nuclear Information Center is sceptical.
''We doubt the official reports that say there was no radiation leak.
It is obvious the vicinity could have been affected even though we are
still not sure of the exposure of radiation levels to determine the risk
to residents,'' the center's Ban told IPS.
On Tuesday evening, residents and activists held a demonstration
in Japan's second largest city Osaka -- 110 kilometers from Fukui --
in front of the KEPCO headquarters
They waved placards calling for an end to nuclear power
development, and demanded that KEPCO take ''full responsibility''
for the accident.
''The accident is horrible and must never happen again. The
danger posed to people from nuclear power can never be erased,''
said Kyoko Shimada, head of
the Mihama Ooi Citizens Group Against Nuclear Power, based in
Osaka.
The worst previous incident at a Japanese nuclear facility was at a
uranium processing plant in Tokaimura, north of Tokyo, in
September 1999, when an uncontrolled nuclear chain reaction was
triggered by three poorly trained workers who used buckets to mix
nuclear fuel in a tub.
The resulting release of radiation killed two workers and forced the
evacuation of thousands of nearby residents.
This accident in Fukui prefecture, has prompted many to ask
whether Japan is over-reliant for its energy on a potentially
dangerous industry.
Japan imported its first commercial nuclear power plant from
Britain in 1966, and completed its first indigenous reactors in 1970.
It now has more than 50 in operation, which account for about 25
percent of its electricity needs. In the United States, in comparison,
nuclear power provides about 20 percent of the country's electricity.
But the cover-up culture in which Japanese employees show far
greater loyalty to their companies than to the public's right to know
is, now, being challenged.
''Before whenever an accident occurred (at a nuclear site) the
government and utility companies will make fervent promises to
increase checks and investigations on nuclear power reactors,'' Han
pointed out.
''But these are very seldom carried out,'' revealed the anti-nuclear
activist.
A case in point was in February 1991 where a leak of 55 tonnes of
radioactive water from the primary cooling system into the
secondary system of the same plant, where the accident occurred
Monday, was reported when a tube inside a steam generator broke.
But Japanese nuclear safety officials said on Monday it would be
impossible for the leaked steam to contain radioactivity because the
water in the steam turbines does not come in contact with water
used as a coolant for the reactor.
''Economic concerns have become a priority for utility companies
in a bid to keep costs down, a situation that does not warrant
constant high-level safety checks,'' Mihama Ooi Citizens Group's
Shimada told IPS. ''But when an accident occurs the risks are too
grave to calculate.''
The horrific nature of the deaths on Monday has also shocked
many Japanese.
Press reports quote witnesses who say the victims had severe
burns with their skin and clothes on fire.
A 65-year-old woman working in the canteen of the plant, said, ''the
staff rushed (into the canteen) screaming. I put in a container all the
ice I could find and gave it. This is the first time an incident like that
has happened in my 14 years of work here.''
Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi told reporters the accident was
regrettable and the government ''must do its utmost to ensure
nuclear safety.''
He currently faces criticism from opposition political parties, for not
setting up an emergency task force to deal with the accident. (END/
IPS/AP/EN/IP/PR/WD/SK/SI/04)
= 08101102 ORP002
NNNN
*****************************************************************
14 [CMEP] Coalition Demands Solution for Nuclear Reactor
Date: Tue, 10 Aug 2004 17:08:44 -0500 (CDT)
***please forward widely***
***apologies for cross-posting***
P R E S S R E L E A S E
Coalition Demands Solution for Nuclear Reactor Vulnerability to
Terrorist Attacks
For Immediate Release
August 10, 2004
Contact:
Brendan Hoffman
(202) 454-5130
Public Citizen
Deb Katz
(413) 339-5781
Citizens Awareness Network
Dr. Gordon Thompson
(617) 491-5177
Institute for Resource & Security Studies
Paul Gunter
(202) 328-0002
Nuclear Information & Resource Service
Today, a coalition of 45 national, regional, and local environmental,
public interest, and nuclear watchdog organizations petitioned the
Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to hold emergency enforcement
hearings on a significant structural vulnerability to terrorism existing
at 32 U.S. commercial nuclear power reactors located in 15 states.
"Nuclear reactors are pre-deployed weapons of mass destruction, said
Deb Katz, executive director of Citizens Awareness Network, a regional
group and one of the petitions authors. It is the NRCs job to
protect our health and safety and assure public confidence in the
regulatory process. Presently NRCs efforts are inadequate.
The petition spotlights the General Electric Mark I and Mark II boiling
water reactor (BWR) designs, 24 Mark I and 8 Mark II reactors, where
large inventories of highly radioactive waste used reactor fuel rods
are currently stored in densely packed elevated storage ponds, above
and outside the primary containment structure. The roof top nuclear
waste storage ponds are vulnerable to a variety of attacks from above,
below, and on three sides of the reactor designs.
The structural vulnerability at these reactors can no longer be
quietly tolerated, said Paul Gunter, director of the Reactor Watchdog
Project with Washington, D.C.-based Nuclear Information and Resource
Service (NIRS). NRC must stop protecting the nuclear industry from
the cost of security and assess the true cost of protecting these
reactors against terrorism.
An NRC study issued in October 2000 entitled Technical Study on
Spent Fuel Pool Accident Risk at Decommissioning Nuclear Power
Reactors, specifically identifies the structural vulnerabilities of
Mark I and II BWRs to aircraft penetration. Mark I and Mark II
secondary containments generally do not appear to have any significant
structures that might reduce the likelihood of aircraft penetration,
said the report.[1]The publicly available government report additionally
stated that the public health consequences of a nuclear fuel fire caused
by the loss of cooling water in the storage pond could result in tens of
thousands of deaths up to 500 miles from the damaged facility.
The nuclear security coalitions emergency petition comes on the
heels of congressional appropriators urging NRC to take immediate
steps to upgrade fuel pool safety and security and that the NRC
conduct further analyses of pool vulnerabilities, focusing on certain
types of terrorist attacks. The committee gave NRC 90 days to report
back. Since the September 11th terrorist attacks NRC has ignored
structural vulnerabilities and consequences of a successful attack on
reactor fuel pools, instead describing them as well engineered
and robust structures despite pre-September 11th findings to the
contrary.
Nuclear plant security is an extremely urgent issue right now,
said Wenonah Hauter, director of Public Citizens Critical Mass Energy
and Environment Program. The Bush Administration continues to hype
the terrorist threat while neglecting its duty to take concrete steps to
make the public safer. The danger these fuel pools pose is a prime
example of that.
The petition requests that the NRC take immediate action to address
these structural vulnerabilities to acts of terrorism in the nations
defenses. These actions include:
- Empowering an independent review of Mark I and II spent fuel pool
vulnerabilities;
- Developing a comprehensive plan for addressing the danger presented
by the Mark I and II fuel pools, including alternative storage options
for spent fuel as well as improvements in security and emergency
response;
- Establishing an open, democratic process which allows local
communities and the public to be involved in the evaluation of the risk
reduction measures;
- Issuing a Demand for Information to Mark I and II operators,
requiring them to provide the data necessary to conduct the emergency
review.
The request for process that is open, democratic, and inclusive of the
public and affected communities is central to the coalitions
petition. Since September 11, 2001, NRC has unilaterally neglected
input from the public interest groups, affected communities and other
government agencies, and instead allied itself with nuclear reactor
owners. NRCs response to the 9-11 attacks has been characterized by
secrecy, superficial improvements and public relations.
To read the petition, visit
http://www.citizen.org/documents/BWRpetition.pdf. To read the annex
to the petition, visit
http://www.citizen.org/documents/BWRpetitionannex.pdf.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[1] Transmittal of Technical Study on Spent Fuel Pool Accident Risk
at Decommissioning Nuclear Power Stations, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory
Commission, January 18, 2001, Section 3.5.2 Aircraft Crashes, page
-3-23. ADAMS Accession # ML010180413.
**********
If you would like to be removed from the CMEP ListServ, send an email to listserv@listserver.citizen.org with the words "unsubscribe CMEP" in the message.
Questions about the CMEP ListServ can be directed to CMEP-request@LISTSERVER.CITIZEN.ORG.
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
*****************************************************************
15 Straits Times: Nuclear neglect -
AUG 11, 2004 WED
Despite warnings, cooling pipe at Japanese plant had not been
checked in 28 years
By Kwan Weng Kin
TOKYO - It was an accident waiting to happen.
An injured worket at the nuclear plant being rushed to hospital
(above) after the cooling pipe broke at the Mihama facility,
leaking non-radioactive steam. -- AP
Despite warnings last November that an inspection was overdue,
the cooling pipe which caused Japan's deadliest nuclear power
plant accident, killing four people, had not been checked
properly since it was put into operation 28 years ago.
'We believed that the pipe did not have to be examined
immediately. But that proved to be wrong,' Mr Hiroshi Matsumura,
managing director of Kansai Electric Power Company (Kepco), told
a press conference yesterday.
'We believed that the pipe did not have to be examined
immediately. But that proved to be wrong.' -- MR HIROSHI
MATSUMURA, managing director of Kansai Electric Power Company
An injured worker at the nuclear plant being rushed to hospital
(above) after the cooling pipe broke at the Mihama facility,
leaking non-radioactive steam. -- AP
-- AFP
The four victims, employees of Kepco's Mihama plant, located
350km west of Tokyo, were killed on Monday by non-radioactive,
super-heated steam which erupted from the pipe in the ceiling.
Seven other workers are seriously injured.
Kepco president Yosaku Fuji yesterday visited the families of the
dead and injured workers to offer his condolences and sympathies.
The company also released pictures of the ruptured pipe, showing
how it had been corroded by pressurised coolant water from an
initial 10mm down to a mere 1.4mm, way below the legal minimum
safety standard. The pipe is supposed to have been replaced when
its wall thins to 4.7mm.
The company claimed it had made visual inspections in the past,
but not ultrasound tests which could have revealed any dangerous
thinning of the piping.
Badly-corroded pipes had been found at some of the company's
other reactors in the past and duly replaced.
The Kepco spokesman said the company was investigating why the
pipe at the Mihama plant had gone unchecked for so long.
Ironically, it was due to have been inspected as part of a
compulsory, three-month-long annual inspection exercise that was
to have begun this Saturday.
Reports here said Kepco was suspected of neglecting safety
standards by having more than 200 workers at the plant move in
tools and equipment ahead of the annual inspection while the
plant was still in operation.
Lashing out at the industry yesterday, Prime Minister Junichiro
Koizumi said: 'We must provide accurate data and take all safety
precautions so as not to alarm the people. Nuclear power has a
great impact on our lives and we must not allow our lives to be
affected by this accident,' he said.
The government plans to build 11 more nuclear power plants by
2010 and has no wish to erode public faith in the nuclear power
industry.
But the latest accident further increases public distrust in
Japan's power industry, which has been plagued by scandals, major
mishaps and even cover-ups by utility plants of safety
violations.
Kepco itself was guilty of previously altering inspection data
for 11 conventional power plants.
The Trade Ministry, which oversees the industry, has set up a
committee to investigate the Mihama accident.
If other plants have to be shut down for inspection, it could put
a squeeze on electricity supply in Japan, which has seen demand
for power shoot up recently due to the long heat wave this
summer.
The Straits Times print edition today. In it you
*****************************************************************
16 The Australian: Demands for head of nuke chief
[August 11, 2004]
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au
By Peter Alford, Tokyo correspondent
THE president of the company that owns Japan's Mihama nuclear
power plant is under pressure to resign following an admission
that a faulty pipe responsible for the deaths of four workers was
at least 15 months overdue for a safety inspection.
Yosaku Fuji, president of both Kansai Electric Power Co and the
national Federation of Electric Power Companies, yesterday
visited the hospital beds of two seriously burned workers and
implored relatives: "Please, pardon me."
But one relative replied: "An apology is not enough. You must
make sure this cannot happen again."
The four men were sprayed with super-heated steam from a corroded
cooling pipe at Mihama's No3 reactor on Monday afternoon, in
Japan's worst nuclear accident since an incident at Tokaimura
reprocessing plant in 1999 killed two workers and exposed more
than 100 to radiation.
There was no radiation leak at Mihama but the incident follows
five others in the past nine years, plus several serious safety
cover-ups, which have cast doubt on the competence of the
electricity companies to manage them safely.
Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi pledged a full
investigation.
"I came here to pray for the dead," Mr Fuji told reporters
outside the Fukui University medical school, where seven injured
workers were being treated.
There was anger yesterday in the town of Mihama-cho, 350km west
of Tokyo, where most of the plant workers live, following an
admission by deputy plant manager Akira Kokado that management
was told by contractors in April 2003 that the cooling pipes were
overdue for a thorough safety check.
The ultrasound check was scheduled for this Saturday.
"We though we could delay the checks until this month," Mr Kokado
told reporters. "We had never expected such rapid corrosion."
Police and nuclear safety authorities descended on Mihama
yesterday morning, amid reports that Kansai Electric had never
carried out an ultrasound check of the pipes in the 28 years the
facility has operated.
Kansai Electric is the second-largest of Japan's power companies,
which operate the 52 nuclear reactors that generate 35 per cent
of the country's electricity needs. Twenty of the reactors are
more than 25 years old.
Last year the largest operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co, was
forced to temporarily shut down its 17 reactors after admitting
it had falsified the results of safety inspections to hide the
detection of cracks in some reactor walls.
The Ministry of Economy Trade and Industry acknowledged last
month that it failed to make available a 1994 report showing the
cost of burying spent nuclear fuel rods was 30 per cent cheaper
than recycling it through the proposed Rokkasho reprocessing
plant in northern Honshu.
Completion of Rokkasho, which will deal with 60 per cent of
Japan's spent fuel, is more than two years behind schedule and
the facility has only just resumed taking delivery of rods
following the discovery of leaks in the holding pond wall.
Japanese power companies are among Australia's main customers for
uranium oxide fuel, buying about 2500 tonnes a year.
© The Australian
*****************************************************************
17 The Australian: Power plants a political paradox
[August 11, 2004]
[http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au
Japan and other nations might ignore public fears, writes
Bronwen Maddox
UKRAINE has just opened a new nuclear power station, its first
since Chernobyl blew up 18 years ago. President Leonid Kuchma has
made a personal pledge to restore his nation's proficiency in
nuclear power.
His enthusiasm does not seem to be shared by the Japanese public,
which has responded angrily to Monday's deaths of four workers at
a nuclear plant.
Although steam and not radiation was to blame, the accident
illustrates the contradictions of the politics of nuclear power.
Japan, like Ukraine, is one of the world's greatest users of
nuclear power -- but it is hardly one of the most enthusiastic,
even though its safety culture has been incomparably better.
That fits the pattern worldwide. For years, some countries have
been grabbing at nuclear power, building stations as fast as
possible, while others are recoiling, their politicians paralysed
by public distaste.
Yet several factors are coming together to tip the scales more in
favour of nuclear power. There is the soaring price of oil and,
even more important, the price of gas. There is a vague but
powerful public interest in "energy independence" from the Middle
East in some Western countries, even if that desire is not well
articulated.
There is, too, the question of combating global warming. The US
may have aggrieved its European allies by refusing to sign the
Kyoto protocol on curbing greenhouse gases, which as a result has
not come into force, but the European Union's scheme to cap
industrial emissions comes into force at the start of next year.
The International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN watchdog that
monitors civil nuclear power, noted in a recent report the new
enthusiasm for nuclear power, particularly in China and India.
At the moment, nuclear power makes up 16 per cent of world
electricity generation.
However, in Western countries many of the nuclear power stations
built at the height of enthusiasm for the technology are coming
to the end of their scheduled lives. Of the last 31 power plants
built and hooked up to national grids, 22 are in Asia, according
to the IAEA.
Why is it attractive in some countries and not in others? Partly,
it's politics: the "greener" the country, the more likely people
will have gibed at the problems of waste and safety. Chernobyl
did not help, although the cause of the explosion -- technicians
performing experiments in the middle of the night according to
misunderstood directions from Moscow -- owed much to the peculiar
weaknesses of the Soviet system.
Yet the IAEA, which is a low-key proselytiser for nuclear power,
emphasises there is no "one-size-fits-all" answer.
Director-General Mohammed ElBaradei says: "New nuclear plants are
most attractive where energy demand is growing and alternative
resources are scarce, and where energy security and reduced air
pollution and greenhouse gases are a priority."
Alan MacDonald, an IAEA specialist in the economics of nuclear
power, emphasises that "it is very much in competition with gas,
not oil".
Some countries have much easier access to gas than others, but
around the world, the price of gas has been rising sharply this
year. Industry analysts expect no relief for about four years, if
then.
The Times
© The Australian
*****************************************************************
18 AFP: Japan orders nuclear inspections after accident firm admits lapses
WAR.WIRE [http://www.spacewar.com/]
MIHAMA, Japan (AFP) Aug 10, 2004
Japan ordered power companies to inspect their nuclear stations
Tuesday after a plant operator confessed that a pipe which leaked
steam and killed four workers was not properly examined for 28
years.
The company admitted to lax safety inspections and said the
thickness of the pipe, which spewed non-radioactive steam Monday
in the deadliest accident at a Japanese nuclear plant, was way
below legal minimum safety standards.
"We conducted visual inspections, but never made ultrasonic
tests, which can measure the thickness of a steel pipe," said
Haruo Nakano, a spokesman for Kansai Electric Power Company,
which runs the plant in Mihama, 350 kilometres (220 miles) west
of Tokyo.
The broken pipe, which was 10 millimetres (four tenths of an
inch) thick when installed in 1976, measured just 1.4 millimetres
-- way below the legal minimum safety standard of 4.7
millimetres, he said.
"We are responsible" for slack management of plant inspection
data, said quality control manager Koji Ebisuzaki in a briefing
to reporters near the plant.
The pipe in a turbine room "showed large-scale corrosion at the
area in question," Kansai Electric said separately in a
statement.
The government's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency ordered
power companies across the nation to inspect their nuclear plants
following the admission.
It also said its probe at the Mihama plant would focus on the
thickness of the wall of the ruptured water pipe that was
connected to a steam turbine.
Among the seven also injured in the accident, two men were still
in critical condition late Tuesday, and three were listed as in
serious condition.
One 30-year-old workman with 80 percent burns was unconscious and
breathing with a respirator, a Fukui University Hospital
spokesman said.
Akira Kokado, the deputy plant manager at Mihama, told reporters
that subcontractors had warned Kansai Electric last November the
pipe was due for inspection, but "we thought we could postpone
the checks until this month."
The victims were among workers preparing for an inspection on
August 14 when the accident occured.
Kokado acknowledged that Monday's accident had hurt public
confidence in both nuclear power and Kansai Electric.
Fukui police said about 100 officers were investigating the
accident. Japanese police automatically look into whether there
is a case for bringing charges of negligence leading to death
when a fatal accident occurs.
Monday's accident was the first fatal accident directly involving
operations at a running nuclear plant in Japan, although in
September 1999 two workers were killed at the Tokaimura uranium
fuel-reprocessing plant northeast of Tokyo, regarded as the
world's worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl in
Satoshi Fujino, a spokesman for the Citizens' Nuclear Information
Center, an independent anti-nuclear group, blamed cost-cutting
for the failure by Kansai Electric to inspect the pipe
adequately.
"We should view this accident as the harmful result of the
pressure to cut inspection costs," he said.
Environmental group Greenpeace issued a statement saying Japan's
entire nuclear power program should be abandoned in the wake of
the accident.
"Japan should mark this tragic event by closing its nuclear
industry down," Greenpeace said.
It warned Japan could see more such accidents as the country's
nuclear power plants grow older.
Japan is the third-largest nuclear power producer after the
United States and France. Nuclear power accounts for more than 25
percent of its electricity supply, according to the Paris-based
Nuclear Energy Agency.
Local papers on Tuesday also demanded a thorough investigation of
the accident, with the business daily Nihon Keizai Shimbun saying
it dealt a serious blow to public confidence in Japan's nuclear
safety.
Japanese and French officials, however, said, Monday's accident
would have no bearing on Japan's bid to host the world's first
prototype nuclear fusion reactor.
Japan and the European Union are vying to host the 10 billion
dollar International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, a
test-bed for what is being billed as a clean, safe, inexhaustible
energy source of the future,
"This is totally unrelated," Takashio Hayashi, a science and
technology ministry official, said. "These are two completely
separate things."
WAR.WIRE
*****************************************************************
19 AFP: Concern on Russia nuclear plants after Japan mishap - environmentalists
WAR.WIRE [http://www.spacewar.com/]
MOSCOW (AFP) Aug 10, 2004
Most Russian nuclear power stations are old, poorly maintained
and pose serious risks of an accident at least as dangerous as
that which occurred Monday in Japan, Russian environmental
experts said.
"Nearly 70 percent of Russian reactors are approaching the end of
their planned service life," the Russian chapter of the
international environmental organization Greenpeace said Tuesday
in a statement.
"With each passing year, the risk of serious accidents grows. But
rather than shutting down dangerous reactors, the Russian Federal
Atomic Energy Agency extends their use," the statement added.
Russia's newest nuclear power plant, a single-reactor facility
brought online in 2001 and located in the southwestern city of
Volgodonsk, was temporarily shut down last November in an
automatic emergency procedure triggered by a short-circuit,
Greenpeace noted.
Another Russian environmental group, Ekozashchita, said
separately that "Russia may soon find itself in a situation much
more serious than Japan because Russian reactors are older."
Russian nuclear authorities are "playing with fire" by extending
the life of outdated reactors, the group said.
The operator of the Japanese facility at Mihama admitted Tuesday
that a pipe which leaked steam and killed four workers had not
been properly inspected in 28 years.
The site of the world's worst nuclear disaster, Chernobyl, is
located in Ukraine -- but at the time of the 1986 accident
Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union.
WAR.WIRE
*****************************************************************
20 NRC: Wolf Creek Nuclear Operating Corporation, Notice of Withdrawal
FR Doc 04-18215
[Federal Register: August 10, 2004 (Volume 69, Number 153)]
[Notices] [Page 48533] From the Federal Register Online via GPO
Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr10au04-139]
of Application for Amendment to Facility Operating License The
U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (the Commission) has granted
the request of Wolf Creek Nuclear Operating Corporation (the
licensee) to withdraw its application dated August 16, 2002, for
a proposed amendment to Facility Operating License No. NPF-42 for
the Wolf Creek Generating Station, Unit No. 1, located in Coffey
County, Kansas. The proposed amendment would have revised
Technical Specification 3.6.3, ``Containment Isolation Valves,''
by (1) deleting the Note and adding the abbreviation ``(CIV)''
for containment isolation valve in Condition A of the Actions for
the Limiting Condition for Operation, (2) revising the completion
time for Required Condition A.1 from 4 hours to as much as 7 days
depending on the category of the CIVs, (3) deleting Condition C,
and (4) renumbering the later Conditions D and E. The proposed
amendment is based on Topical Report WCAP-15791-P, ``Risk-
Informed Evaluation of Extensions to Containment Isolation Valve
Completion Times.'' The Commission had previously issued a Notice
of Consideration of Issuance of Amendment published in the
Federal Register on October 1, 2002 (67 FR 61686). However, by
letter dated June 4, 2004, the licensee withdrew the proposed
change.
For further details with respect to this action, see the
application for amendment dated August 16, 2002, and the
licensee's letter dated June 4, 2004, which withdrew the
application for license amendment. 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 O1 F21, 11555
Rockville Pike (first floor), Rockville, Maryland. Publicly
available records will be accessible electronically from the
Agencywide Documents Access and Management Systems (ADAMS) Public
Electronic Reading Room on the internet at the NRC Web site,
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]
. 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 by telephone at
1-800-397-4209, or 301-415-4737 or by e-mail to
pdr@nrc.gov [ pdr@nrc.gov] . Dated in Rockville, Maryland, this
30th day of July 2004.
For the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Jack Donohew, Senior Project Manager, Section 2, Project
Directorate IV, Division of Licensing Project Management, Office
of Nuclear Reactor Regulation.
[FR Doc. 04-18215 Filed 8-9-04; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 7590-01-P
*****************************************************************
21 Reuters: Japan Nuke Accident Highlights Laxity, Aging Plants
Tue Aug 10, 2004 07:50 AM ET
By Masayuki Kitano
TOKYO (Reuters) - An accident at a Japanese nuclear plant that
killed four workers occurred in an area that was to be inspected
this week for the first time in 28 years, and months after a
warning of potential problems, the plant's operator said on
Tuesday.
The admission by Kansai Electric Power Co. is likely to further
dent public confidence in Japan's nuclear policy, raising
questions about the condition of some of Japan's aging plants
and management's apparent laxity on safety matters.
Four workers were killed in Japan's deadliest nuclear industry
accident on Monday when super-heated steam escaped from a
ruptured pipe in a building housing turbines for a reactor at
the Mihama nuclear power plant, 320 km (200 miles) west of
Tokyo.
There was no radiation leak, but the accident raised further
concerns about Japan's nuclear safety record.
"The pipe was to have been checked at an upcoming regular
inspection," said a Kansai Electric official.
He said the pipe had not been checked since 1976 because it was
not on an inspection list -- something Kansai Electric was
notified of in November by a maintenance sub-contractor.
Some independent analysts said the accident could force the
government to shut down its nuclear reactors for inspections.
"If the accident proves to have originated in a critical system,
the implications of the Aug. 9 non-radioactive steam leak will
prove deep and immediate, forcing the government to order
another round of safety inspections," said Strategic Forecasting
Inc, a U.S.-based consulting group.
"Early indications are that the bursting pipe that released the
steam was already through 28 years of its 30-year lifespan,
raising the possibility that similar pipes on all plants might
have to be replaced," it said in a report.
The authorities have so far simply told power companies to check
whether inspections on reactors that are of the same design as
the Mihama plant have been carried out properly.
An official at the Nuclear and Industry Safety Agency said the
regulator had not ordered utilities to carry out physical
inspections, which could require that plants halt operations.
Kouji Yamashita, a government nuclear safety inspector, said
there were 22 other nuclear power generators in Japan of the same
design as the Mihama reactor, 10 run by Kansai Electric, the
remainder operated by four other firms.
WIDER PROBLEMS
Kyodo news agency said police were investigating whether the
company neglected safety standards by letting more than 200
workers prepare for an annual inspection while the reactor, which
was in a separate building, was still running.
A police spokesman said investigations were continuing.
Members of the public were critical of the company.
"Maybe they didn't do enough on crisis management ... and there
weren't enough steps taken against dangers," said Motoyoshi
Sakai, a 22-year-old student working part-time for a private
television broadcaster in Tokyo.
Juro Ikeyama, an author on nuclear issues, including a history of
the anti-nuclear movement in Japan, thought the accident could
uncover similar problems elsewhere.
"Management has been really lax," he said.
"It turns out the pipe was probably really corroded, and the fact
that it happened here suggests the same kind of thing could
happen elsewhere," he said.
Japan depends on nuclear power for a third of its energy
requirements and has 52 nuclear reactors. It imports virtually
all of its oil, mostly from the volatile Middle East.
Industry Minister Shoichi Nakagawa apologized to victims, but
added: "We must not undermine trust in nuclear energy policy."
Tokyo Electric Power Co, the world's biggest private utility, was
forced to close all its 17 nuclear power reactors temporarily by
April 2003 after admitting it had falsified safety documents for
more than a decade. Continued ...
c Reuters 2004. All Rights Reserved.
*****************************************************************
22 NRC: Sunshine Notice
FR Doc 04-18311
[Federal Register: August 10, 2004 (Volume 69, Number 153)]
[Notices] [Page 48533-48534] From the Federal Register Online via
GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr10au04-140]
Dates: Weeks of August 9, 16, 23, 30, September 6, 13, 2004.
Place: Commissioners' Conference Room, 11555 Rockville Pike,
Rockville, Maryland.
Status: Public and closed.
Matters To Be Considered: Week of August 9, 2004 There are no
meetings scheduled for the Week of August 9, 2004.
Week of August 16, 2004--Tentative Tuesday, August 17, 2004 9:25
a.m. Affirmation Session (Public Meeting) a. Private Fuel Storage
(Independent Spent Fuel Storage Installation) Docket No.
72-22-ISFSI b. Final Rule: Medical Use of Byproduct
Material--Minor Amendments: Extending Expiration Date for Subpart
J of Part 35 c. Tennessee Valley Authority (Watts Bar Nuclear
Plant, Unit 1, Sequoyah Nuclear Plant, Units 1 & 2, Browns Ferry
Nuclear Plant, Units 1, 2, & 3), Docket Nos. 50-390-CivP;
50-327-CivP; 50-328-CivP; 50-259- CivP; 50-260-CivP; 50-296-CivP;
LBP-03-10 (6/26/03) (Tentative) 9:30 a.m. Meeting with
Organization of Agreement States (OAS) and Conference of
Radiation Control Program Directors (CRCPD) (Public Meeting)
(Contact: John Zabko, 301-415-2308) This meeting will be webcase
live at the Web address--http://www.nrc.gov
[http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/leaving.cgi?from=leaving
FR.html&log=linklog&to=http://www.nrc.gov] 1 p.m. Discussion of
Security Issues (Closed--Ex. 1) Wednesday, August 18, 2004 9:30
a.m. Discussion of Security Issues (Closed--Ex. 1) Week of August
23, 2004--Tentative There are no meetings scheduled for the Week
of August 23, 2004.
Week of August 30, 2004--Tentative There are no meetings
scheduled for the Week of August 30, 2004.
Week of September 6, 2004--Tentative Wednesday, September 8, 2004
9:30 a.m. Discussion of Office of Investigations (OI) Programs
and Investigations (Closed--Ex. 7) 2 p.m. Discussion of
Intragovernmental Issues (Closed--Ex. 1-9) Week of September 13,
2004--Tentative Tuesday, September 14, 2004 9:30 a.m. Discussion
of Security Issues (Closed--Ex. 1) * The schedule for Commission
meetings is subject to change on short notice. To verify the
status of meetings call (recording)--(301) 415-1292. Contact
person for more information: Dave Gamberoni, (301) 415-1651.
* * * * * The NRC Commission Meeting Schedule can be found on the
Internet at:
http://www.nrc.gov/what-we-do/policy-making/schedule.htm
[http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/leaving.cgi?from=leaving
FR.html&log=linklog&to=http://www.nrc.gov/what-we-do/policy-makin
g/schedule.htm] . * * * * *
[[Page 48534]] The NRC provides reasonable accommodation to
individuals with disabilities where appropriate. If you need a
reasonable accommodation to participate in these public meetings,
or need this meeting notice or the transcript or other
information from the public meetings in another format (e.g.
braille, large print), please notify the NRC's Disability Program
Coordinator, August Spector, at 301-415-7080, TDD: 301-415- 2100,
or by e-mail at aks@nrc.gov [aks@nrc.gov] . Determiantions on
requests for reasonable accommodation will be made on a
case-by-case basis.
* * * * * This notice is distributed by mail to several hundred
subscribers; if you no longer wish to receive it, or would like
to be added to the distribution, please contact the Office of the
Secretary, Washington, DC 20555 (301-415-1969). In addition,
distribution of this meeting notice over the Internet system is
available. If you are interested in receiving this Commission
meeting schedule electronically, please send an electronic
message to dkw@nrc.gov [dkw@nrc.gov] . Dated: August 5, 2004.
Dave Gamberoni, Office of the Secretary.
[FR Doc. 04-18311 Filed 8-6-04; 9:28 am] BILLING CODE 7590-01-M
*****************************************************************
23 Las Vegas SUN: Japan Tries to Restore Nuclear Confidence
By AUDREY McAVOY ASSOCIATED PRESS
TOKYO (AP) -
0809japan-nuke The Japanese government worked to shore up public
confidence in the nuclear power industry Tuesday, a day after
the country's deadliest reactor accident killed four people.
Authorities launched an investigation, with dozens of police and
nuclear energy officials visiting the plant to determine whether
operator Kansai Electric Power was negligent. Politicians called
for a review of nuclear plant safety.
Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi urged an inquiry so that
"nothing be hidden from the nation." He told a Cabinet meeting
he didn't want the public to grow uneasy about nuclear energy,
the source of more than 30 percent of Japan's power.
But experts warned that the worn-out 28-year-old cooling pipe
that ruptured could be an omen of trouble ahead. A series of
mishaps at nuclear plants have tested public tolerance for
nuclear energy.
Four died Monday when the corroded pipe burst, spewing boiling
water and steam onto workers. Seven people were injured, two of
them critically.
Though there was no radiation leak, the accident rekindled
concerns about the safety of the country's 52 reactors. It also
raised questions about plans to build 11 reactors by 2010.
Government officials vowed thorough inspections of nuclear
reactors after learning the broken pipe at the Mihama No. 3
reactor, some 200 miles west of Tokyo, had not been checked
since 1996 despite a warning last year that it was a safety
threat.
"We must thoroughly investigate the cause of the accident. So
that this never recurs, we must carefully carry out inspections
- not just regularly scheduled ones," said Trade Minister
Shoichi Nakagawa. "I aim to somehow restore faith in our nuclear
and energy policy."
Proponents say nuclear power eases Japan's dependence on foreign
oil, more than 80 percent of which comes from the Middle East.
They say nuclear energy is also better for the environment
because it does not emit greenhouse gases.
Detractors say this offers little comfort to worried citizens.
"We've entered a difficult era," said Hideyuki Ban, a co-chair
of the Citizens' Nuclear Information Center, an anti-nuclear
group. "Like with the Mihama plant, many of Japan's reactors are
old, creating the conditions for trouble. The conditions are
being created for a very serious accident."
Fukushiro Nukaga, policy chief of the ruling Liberal Democratic
Party, said the company' s failure to conduct a safety
inspection sooner was a "disaster."
"I don't understand why this could not have been detected
earlier," he said. "Many other nuclear plants have been
operating for over 30-40 years. We have to review the safety
standards of these plants."
Japan's Nuclear and Industry Safety Agency said 22 other
reactors in Japan were the same model as Mihama No. 3.
In the most serious accident before Monday, two workers died in
1999 when they set off an uncontrolled nuclear reaction by
mixing excessive amounts of uranium in buckets instead of using
special mechanized tanks. Hundreds were exposed to radiation.
--
*****************************************************************
24 Seattle Times: Reactor down, with no start-up date in sight
Tuesday, August 10, 2004 - Page updated at 12:49 A.M.
By The Associated Press
YAKIMA — Washington state's only commercial nuclear reactor
remained out of service for the 11th consecutive day yesterday,
and operators could not say exactly when the reactor will be
restarted.
The Columbia Generating Station was shut down July 30 when a
pressure buildup was detected. The reactor then had to be
manually shut down when the automatic shutdown system failed to
work properly.
Technicians for Energy Northwest, which operates the reactor,
have been performing maintenance since then. Company officials
declined to speculate yesterday on when the reactor would be
restarted; they initially had estimated it could be this week.
"We're careful to do two things: One is to make certain that the
plant starts up as quickly as possible, and two is to see that it
doesn't start up until it's absolutely safe to do so," said Brad
Peck, Energy Northwest spokesman.
Columbia Generating Station is a boiling-water reactor that
produces 1,150 megawatts of electricity, which is sold to the
Bonneville Power Administration (BPA).
Mike Hansen, a BPA spokesman, said the regional power-marketing
agency has had no problem providing power for its customers.
However, the loss of power produced by the reactor means less
electricity to sell on the open market, he said.
As of last week, BPA calculated that the shutdown was costing
roughly $1 million each day, Hansen said.
The loss is significant given the high demand for electricity in
August. In California, operators of the state's power grid urged
residents to cut back on electricity usage yesterday.
"We don't have as much power to sell, so we're not going to be
able to help on a long-term basis," Hansen said.
The shutdown at Columbia Generating Station occurred after an
electronic device failed and closed one of the reactor's four
steam-flow valves. The valves channel nuclear-heated steam to the
turbines driving the generator.
The closed valve caused an increase in pressure inside the
reactor, and when the reactor attempted to automatically shut
down, a panel indicated that all 185 control rods had not been
fully inserted. The control rods are inserted into the reactor
during a shutdown.
The control-room crew then manually shut it down.
Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company
*****************************************************************
25 Daily Yomiuri: Accident may put plans on hold
Yomiuri Shimbun
Following Monday's bursting of a steam pipe at Mihama Nuclear
Power Plant in Mihamacho, Fukui Prefecture, that killed four
people and injured seven, an electric power industry official
said, "Depending on the cause, it's possible that the entire
pluthermal project may be suspended completely."
Tokyo Electric Power Co., the nation's largest power utility, was
forced in 2002 to shelve its plans for pluthermal, or
plutonium-thermal, energy after it was revealed that TEPCO had
covered up a series of problems, such as cracks in reactors, at
its nuclear plants.
The fallout from the scandal was so serious that the firm is
cautious about asking local communities to allow it to restart
work on pluthermal projects, a TEPCO officials said.
If a pluthermal project by Kansai Electric Power Co., which
operates the Mihamacho power plant, also is suspended, it is
likely all pluthermal projects in the nation will be put on
notice.
KEPCO, the country's second-largest power utility, had planned to
start using mixed uranium oxide and plutonium oxide fuel in a
nuclear reactor from fiscal 2007. The company also was planning
to build an intermediate storage facility for spent nuclear fuel
in Mihamacho with an eye to completing the nuclear fuel cycle.
Public confidence in KEPCO already was low following the
revelation in June that it had falsified many of the findings of
routine in-house inspections of its thermal power plants and
other facilities.
Copyright 2004 The Yomiuri Shimbun
*****************************************************************
26 Daily Yomiuri: Pipe not checked at N-plant
Yomiuri Shimbun
The cooling pipe that burst at the No. 3 reactor of the Mihama
Nuclear Power Plant in Mihamacho, Fukui Prefecture, was never
inspected by Kansai Electric Power Co. (KEPCO), although the pipe
should have been in an inspection list about 14 years ago, it was
learned Tuesday.
The broken pipe caused a pressurized steam blowout that killed
four workers and injured seven others Monday. All were employees
of Osaka-based Kiuchi Keisoku.
An inspection company pointed out the necessity of inspecting the
pipe in November, but KEPCO failed to include the pipe on its
inspection list.
KEPCO concluded the No. 3 reactor was safe after inspecting the
No. 1 and No. 2 reactors at Takahama Nuclear Power Plant, in
Takahamacho in the prefecture, which have cooling pipes with the
same structure as the No. 3 reactor, and therefore did not give
top priority to its inspection.
The Fukui prefectural police started inspections of the site
Tuesday afternoon on suspicion of professional negligence
resulting in death and injury.
According to KEPCO, it is possible that flow created by a
disc-shaped device that measures the flow of cooling water eroded
the pipe's inside wall.
Therefore, the pipe should have been registered in a list of
about 5,800 major inspection items in accordance with its
management guidelines for second-system pipes that the firm
established in 1990. However, the pipe was not included in the
list in 1991 made by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. that
configured a plant management system. KEPCO, therefore, had not
inspected the pipe since since 1976.
Experts pointed out that there was a high possibility that the
pipe was deformed after the inside of the pipe was eroded by a
stream of water. A KEPCO official said at a press conference
Tuesday that the pipe likely cracked due to deformation.
The firm said the carbon steel pipe was 10-millimeters thick in
1976, when the firm began operating it. However, the
investigation after the incident discovered that the pipe was as
thin as 1.4 millimeters. The leak blew a hole with a diameter of
about 50 centimeters in the pipe.
Last year, the the inspection subcontractor Nihon Arm Co. in Kita
Ward, Osaka, found the pipe was not on the inspection items list
and stressed the importance of inspecting the pipe to KEPCO in
November.
However, the firm concluded the pipe was secure, claiming the
past inspections on the Nos. 1 and 2 reactors at the Takahama
plant proved its safety.
A worker who was in a turbine building at the time of the
accident said he had heard a loud explosion.
KEPCO estimated that about 800 tons of cooling water leaked from
the broken pipe. According to reports, 1,700 tons of cooling
water per hour circulates in the pipe.
The firm said it might have been a simple mistake that kept the
pipe from being included in the inspection items. Erosion in
similar pipes at the No. 3 reactor at the Takahama plant and the
No. 1 reactor at Oi Nuclear Power Plant in Oicho in the
prefecture were discovered by the firm in 1998 and last year,
respectively. The firm then replaced them with stainless steel
pipes that are resistant to abrasion.
===
Employee mistake blamed
KEPCO revealed Tuesday that an employee at the Mihama Nuclear
Power Plant who was in charge of inspecting the facility that day
decided to keep the reactor in operation even after being
informed that the pipe that later burst had not been scheduled
for inspection.
"Postponing the inspection (of the pipe) was a mistake in
judgement," KEPCO President Yosaku Fuji said, admitting the
employee's mistake.
The company is making further in-house investigations into the
details of the accident by questioning the employee and his
immediate supervisor.
Copyright 2004 The Yomiuri Shimbun
*****************************************************************
27 Daily Yomiuri: N-accident tied to dilapidated equipment
Yomiuri Shimbun
The nation's worst nuclear power accident, which claimed the
lives of four people Monday, occurred despite a safety system
that was supposedly much stricter than those in force at thermal
and hydroelectric power plants.
What caused the accident at Mihama Nuclear Power Plant in Fukui
Prefecture, where another seven people were injured by
superheated steam that billowed out of a pipe? Were the lessons
from past accidents at nuclear power plants not learned?
The accident occurred following a blowout in a pipe connecting a
low-pressure feedwater heater, which preheats water before it is
sent to a steam generator, and a deaerator that removes oxygen
from the bubbling water.
During the operation of the plant, high-temperature,
high-pressure steam is generated by the steam generator using
heat from a nuclear reactor. This superheated steam is used to
turn a turbine, producing electricity. The steam is then cooled
with seawater in a steam condenser. The warm water is then
returned to the steam generator, and the cycle starts anew.
At Mihama Nuclear Power Plant's No. 3 reactor, this water is
preheated by five feedwater heaters before being returned to the
steam generator.
The burst occurred in the bend in a pipe connecting the fourth
feedwater heater to the deaerator, which precedes the fifth
feedwater heater in the system.
The water passing through this part of the system is heated to
about 140 C. It then goes to the deaerator, which removes oxygen
bubbles while heating the water.
The hot water that flows into the deaerator is rich in oxygen,
which has a rusting and corrosive effect on the inside of the
steam generator.
The piping between the fourth feedwater heater and the deaerator
is particularly susceptible to erosion due to the high pressure
of the water passing through it.
Therefore, maintenance workers at the plant pay special attention
to the condition of this section of piping, such as the thickness
of the pipe wall, especially at bends in the pipe where the water
pressure builds up.
Toru Ishii, who worked on the construction of the reactor as a
nuclear technology section chief for Mitsubishi Heavy Industries,
Ltd.'s Kobe Shipyard & Machinery Works, said: "This part should
be constantly checked, so I don't know how a blowout developed in
that section. I can't say anything without examining the site."
Mihama Nuclear Power Plant, which started operating in December
1976, is considered a veteran plant, one that has been in
operation for more than 25 years.
Kansai Electric Power Co. had scheduled the part of the pipe that
burst for a maintenance check during a routine inspection that
was to start this coming Saturday.
As it is difficult to get approval to build a new nuclear power
plant, nuclear power plant operators try to extend the working
life of existing reactors for as long as possible by ensuring
that the management and maintenance is of the highest level.
But the entire system might have been worn out. Monday's accident
may lead utility firms to reexamine the way aging nuclear power
plants are operated and inspected.
===
New battle for inspection reform
Officials of the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, an arm of
the Economy, Trade and Industry Ministry, were shocked by the
news of the accident, because they had helped revise the
inspection system at nuclear power plants.
"We were in the middle of gradually rebuilding public confidence
in nuclear power by reviewing the inspection system," an agency
official said.
Public confidence in nuclear power reached rock bottom after it
was reported that Tokyo Electric Power Co. concealed safety
infractions at its nuclear power plants two years ago.
This scandal prompted a sweeping revision of safety regulations
at nuclear plants.
A new inspection system went into force in October, under which
plant operators do not need to replace components, even if they
are cracked for instance, provided they are considered "safe" in
accordance with the latest engineering thinking. The new system
was intended to rationalize the inspection system by freeing up
inspection teams to look for potentially more serious flaws
rather than getting bogged down fixing superficial problems.
Other programs designed to enhance the overall quality of safety
also were introduced, such as spot inspections and better safety
education for workers.
The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency also is planning to
introduce a new system under which each nuclear plant will be
subjected to a custom-made inspection program, based on the
perceived risks at a given plant and its past history of troubles
and accidents.
But the accident at Mihama opened a new can of worms for the
agency before it had even managed to implement the new system.
The bend in the pipe was known to be a high-risk section of the
system where the steel pipe was being pushed to beyond the
material's ductility due to the extreme pressure and erosion
caused by the flow of water heated to more than 100 C.
As this was a known high-risk point, the real question is whether
the facility was properly managed.
"No matter how thorough an inspection system it is, it takes time
for it to be employed perfectly," a member of the Nuclear Safety
Commission said.
The nation deserves to be told the cause of Monday's accident--be
it unforeseen mechanical failure or human error--as soon as
possible.
It is vital that this be done swiftly and transparently if we are
to avoid another crisis of faith regarding nuclear power.
Copyright 2004 The Yomiuri Shimbun
*****************************************************************
28 Hampton Union Local News: Nuke plant ponders license for unused years
Tuesday, August 10, 2004
[http://www.seacoastonline.com/]
By Susan Morse smorse@seacoastonline.com
SEABROOK - The owners of the Seabrook Station nuclear power plant
are considering filing an extension of the plant’s 40-year
license to recapture four years lost after the plant was
completed and before it became operational.
"There has been no official filing," said spokesman Dave Barr,
"but we are considering the filing."
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission granted Seabrook’s license to
operate in 1986. The plant was held up from going on line until
1990 owing to legal proceedings, most notably from Massachusetts,
which was opposing the plant’s licensing because of what it
argued was an inadequate evacuation plan.
"Under the current license, we will only run 36 years," said
Barr.
The request to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to extend the
license four years to 2030 would be separate from a request to
extend the life of the plant, said Barr.
Twenty-three nuclear plants in the United States want license
renewals, according to the NRC.
It’s an option al* well-maintained" nuclear power plants have
taken, Barr said.
Other nuclear power plants that have filed for license extensions
have been operating for 20 to 30 years, Barr said.
Seabrook’s majority owner, FPL Energy Seabrook Station, has made
no formal request to either recapture the four years or to extend
the life of the plant, Barr said.
"It’s not official until we file to do so," said Barr. "It’s
never been a secret that it’s an option available to us."
Seacoast Online is owned and operated by Seacoast Newspapers.
Copyright © 2004 Seacoast Online. All rights reserved. Please
*****************************************************************
29 BBC: Japan's shaky nuclear record
Last Updated: Tuesday, 10 August, 2004
By Sarah Buckley BBC News Online
Japan's latest accident at a nuclear power plant, which coincided
with the anniversary of the 1945 atomic bombing of Nagasaki, will
further undermine the Japanese public's already shaky confidence
in the industry's safety record.
[Kansai Electric Power Co. President Yousaku Fuji makes a deep
bow at the start of a press conference at its head office at
Osaka, Monday August 9, 2004]
Japan's nuclear industry has suffered a string of PR disasters
The country, with few natural resources of its own to meet its
high energy demand, is already very reliant on nuclear power.
This latest incident, at the Mihama plant in Fukui prefecture,
has prompted analysts to ask whether Japan is over-reliant for
its energy on a potentially dangerous industry.
If the accident forced the even temporary closure of many of
Japan's aged power plants, it would leave the country with a
serious power shortage.
Japan imported its first commercial nuclear power plant from the
UK in 1966, and completed its first indigenous reactors in 1970.
It now has more than 50 in operation, which account for about 25%
of its electricity needs. In the US, in comparison, nuclear power
provides about 20% of the country's electricity.
While Japan holds a good reputation for public safety, its
nuclear industry has suffered several setbacks in recent years.
This includes an accident at a plant in Tokaimura in 1999 caused
by workers trying to save time by mixing excessive amounts of
uranium in buckets, which killed two people and injured hundreds,
and the temporary suspension of all 17 of Tokyo Electric Power
Co's (Tepco) plants in April last year after it admitted
falsifying safety records.
This prompted considerable alarm amongst the Japanese public,
reflected in the views of the Citizens' Nuclear Information
Centre (CNIC) in Tokyo, which was created in 1975 to monitor
nuclear safety.
Culture of secrecy
Satoshi Fujino, public relations officer at the CNIC, said the
roots of the problems were two-fold: inadequacy in government
regulation and a culture within the industry's management of
covering up mistakes.
Mr Fujino said the safety appraisal process, which takes place
before a power plant is even built, was extremely lax, while the
inspections carried out afterwards were "very haphazard".
[Workers check for radiation inside the Tokaimura plant] The
accident at Tokaimura in 1999 set off a self-sustaining nuclear
reaction
Certainly, in the latest incident, maintenance and safety
standards appear to have been poor.
Kepco, which manages the Mihama plant, has admitted since the
accident that it had not properly checked the pipe which burst,
fatally scalding four workers, since it was installed in 1976.
It admitted that the pipe had only been inspected visually rather
than by ultrasound. Because of this, the pipe had been allowed to
degrade until it was wafer thin.
Ironically, Japan's Kyodo news agency has reported that police
believe workers may have been neglecting safety standards in
order to prepare for their upcoming annual official inspection.
The industry's reputation for shaky safety has resulted in
popular opposition to the power plants - opinion polls show half
the public believe the number of nuclear facilities should be
reduced.
Public confidence was not improved by the Tepco scandal, which
demonstrated the culture of doctoring records within the
industry.
"Secrecy seems to be a characteristic of the nuclear industry,
especially in Japan, because society is very much reluctant to
talk about things. So information is fairly easily concealed,
because the social system supports that kind of culture," Mr
Fujino said.
But not all analysts agree.
John Shepherd, director of Nucnet, an independent emergency
reporting organisation, said that the industry appeared to be
learning from its mistakes.
Safety efforts 'improving'
While his group had difficulty determining the details of the
Tokaimura incident, this time Kepco had responded quickly, and
their account has been verified by three independent sources.
"From what I know of the industry, I think there's a real
concerted effort to make people aware that safety is the utmost
priority," he said, pointing to the launch of a new independent
body last year which monitors nuclear safety.
He also argued that public support for the industry was
improving, demonstrated by the approval earlier this year of Mox
(mixed-oxide fuel) at Takahama nuclear power station - something
which had been delayed by the Tepco scandal.
Mr Shepherd said that the approval was given by the local
governor only after wide public consultation.
He also disagreed with Mr Fujino's conclusion that safety
procedures were generally lax in Japan's nuclear industry.
"The time taken from when they first take a decision, to building
a plant, can take several years... it often involves public
seminars and meetings," he said.
"It's not like shelling peas."
Whatever progress has been made, this latest accident is likely
to fuel complaints that not enough has been done.
*****************************************************************
30 BBC: Japan nuclear firm investigated
Last Updated: Tuesday, 10 August, 2004
[A burst cooling pipe at the Mihama power station in Japan]
The plant operator had been warned the pipe was a safety risk
The Japanese company running a nuclear power plant where four
employees died on Monday is being investigated on suspicion of
negligence, police said.
Kansai Electric Power admitted it was told last year that a
cooling pipe which burst was a safety threat.
The pipe was not checked again because it was not expected to
corrode so quickly, and it had not been thoroughly checked since
1976, the company said.
Officials insist there was no radiation leak following the
accident.
Four people were killed and seven injured by escaping steam and
boiling water after the pipe burst in the plant in Mihama, Fukui
prefecture. At least one of the injured is in a critical
condition, with 80% burns.
It was the deadliest accident that a Japanese nuclear power plant
has suffered, and has again rocked confidence in the country's
accident-prone nuclear industry.
Police investigators were accompanied by regional and national
authorities as they arrived to inspect the plant on Tuesday, said
police spokesman Fuminaga Miyamoto.
"Police are investigating the company on suspicion of corporate
negligence resulting in death," he said.
The company, also known as Kepco, has already admitted that the
cooling pipe had dangerously corroded to just 1.4mm from its
original 10mm thickness. It said it has not properly inspected
the pipe since it was fitted in 1976.
"We conducted visual inspections, but never made ultrasonic
tests, which can measure the thickness of a steel pipe," said
spokesman Haruo Nakano.
After the accident, Kepco found a hole in the pipe, through which
steam from 150 degrees Celsius- (300 Fahrenheit-) water had
spewed.
Safety check due
Japan's Kyodo news agency cited investigation sources as saying
that police believe Kepco may have neglected safety standards by
allowing workers to prepare for an annual inspection while the
plant was still running.
The inspection was due to commence on Friday. Nuclear reactors
are supposed to be shut down for inspections, Kyodo said.
Kepco deputy plant manager Akira Kokado said the company had been
told by private contractors in April 2003 that the cooling pipes
needed a thorough safety check.
The examination had been scheduled for 14 August - this coming
Saturday.
"We thought we could delay the checks until this month," Mr
Kokado said.
"We had never expected such rapid corrosion."
The BBC's Tokyo correspondent, Jonathan Head, says the government
is now asking the operators of 22 other nuclear power plants
similar to the one in Mihama to check their past inspection
records.
Kepco spokesman Kenji Yamashita told BBC News Online that his
company's 11 nuclear plants would all be checked immediately, and
would be closed down if necessary.
Japan's Trade Minister Shoichi Nakagawa, who is responsible for
nuclear policy, apologised on Tuesday for the accident.
"We must not undermine trust in nuclear energy policy. We would
like to investigate the cause and make sure it does not happen
again," he said.
*****************************************************************
31 BBC: Nuclear plant accident splits Japan
Last Updated: Tuesday, 10 August, 2004
[Japanese consumers]
Concern over the safety of nuclear power is widespread in Japan
Japan's national dailies have been debating the latest blow to
the nuclear industry after four people died when a cooling pipe
burst at the Mihama plant on Monday.
Some papers express concern over the safety of Japan's nuclear
project in the light of the accident, while others call on the
Japanese public not to overreact.
"We should not fan people's fears about the safety of the nuclear
power plants by overreacting to the accident", says Yomiuri
Shimbun, Japan's largest daily.
The accident should not affect operations in Japan's other
nuclear plants, the paper adds.
"Accident at Mihama nuclear plant not linked to nuclear fuel
programme" argues a headline in the mass-circulation daily Sankei
Shimbun.
It reminds those who "try to take advantage" of the accident to
steer public opinion against Japan's nuclear programme that it
should not be regarded as a serious nuclear accident.
Despite the deaths, the paper adds, there was no radiation
leakage and therefore, the International Atomic Energy
Association is unlikely to react strongly.
'Blind spot'
In contrast, Japan's second-largest daily, Asahi Shimbun, points
out that in terms of fatalities, the accident is the worst ever
at a Japanese nuclear power plant and cannot be ignored.
"The accident will have a great impact on future nuclear power
development", it predicts.
And as nuclear plants in Japan become older, the paper warns,
accidents are likely to become increasingly frequent.
There is no doubt that the were flaws in safety measures Tokyo
Shimbun
The Mainichi Shimbun takes a similar view.
"We cannot ignore the impact the accident will have on Japan's
nuclear power plant development and nuclear energy policy as a
whole", it says in its lead editorial.
"Depending on the cause of the accident, all other facilities
will have to be inspected", it demands.
"There is no doubt that there were flaws in safety measures",
states the Tokyo Shimbun, referring to the condition of steam
pipes in nuclear facilities as a "blind spot".
Tokyo Shimbun, in tune with other Japanese papers, calls
primarily for an investigation into the cause of the accident.
All the papers stress that lessons must be learnt. In addition to
finding the reason why the four Mihama workers died, they agree
that nuclear plant inspections should be more thorough in future.
[http://www.monitor.bbc.co.uk] , based in Caversham in southern
England, selects and translates information from radio,
television, press, news agencies and the Internet from 150
countries in more than 70 languages.
*****************************************************************
32 Guardian Unlimited: Japan's nuclear industry under fire as steam
leak kills four
Justin McCurry in Tokyo
Tuesday August 10, 2004
The Guardian [http://www.guardian.co.uk]
Four Japanese electricity workers were killed yesterday and seven
others injured when turbine steam escaped at a nuclear power
plant in Mihama, on the Sea of Japan.
The reactor automatically shut down while rescue workers tried to
help the victims.
The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said there were no
radioactive materials in the steam and no radiation impact on the
environment.
The incident involved the highest number of fatalities at a
Japanese nuclear power plant, and it has heightened concern about
the nuclear industry. The dead, who have not been identified,
were severely burned and suffered heart and lung failure.
Officials of Kansai Electric Power, which runs the plant, said
its two other reactors were operating normally.
They said they had yet to determine the cause of the accident,
but the local media quoted a company official as saying that the
leak might have been caused by a lack of cooling water in the
pipe.
The managing director, Hiroshi Matsumura, apologised for the
accident at a news conference.
"This is very regrettable, he said. "I feel sorry for the victims
and their families. We are determined to find out what caused the
accident and to report our findings as soon as possible."
The prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi, promised that the
government would "do our best to investigate the cause, to
prevent a repeat and to implement safety measures".
Nobutake Masaki, a Mihama city official, said no radioactive
material was involved and that the steam had leaked only inside
the building.
About 200 people are believed to have been inside the building
when the leak occurred. All 11 of those affected were on the
second floor of the three-storey building, although it is not
clear what work they were doing at the time.
Anti-nuclear campaigners said the incident would strengthen
opposition to nuclear power.
Since an incident at a uranium reprocessing plant at Tokaimura in
1999 which killed two people and exposed 400 to radiation, a
number of communities have voted against the construction of
nuclear power plants.
"There is already widespread mistrust beneath the surface," said
Aileen Mioko Smith, director of Green Action.
"But when something like this happens, those feelings will come
to the fore."
She said that the continuing deregulation of the Japanese nuclear
power industry would encourage power companies to cut costs when
they should be investing more in safety.
"There have been fewer inspections and a reduction in the number
of items that are checked.
"If this continues, there are going to be more accidents."
Japan has more than 50 nuclear power plants, providing 34% of its
energy needs, but the industry has been dogged by a series of
accidents and attempted cover-ups.
Less than six months after the Tokaimura incident there was a
fire at the Onagawara nuclear power plant.
Two years ago the biggest power company, Tokyo Electric, was
forced to close its 17 nuclear power plants temporarily after
admitting that it had hidden dozens of cracks over 15 years.
In February eight nuclear workers were exposed to low-level
radiation when they were accidentally sprayed with contaminated
water.
The Mihama plant leaked 55 tonnes of radioactive water from its
No 2 reactor in 1991.
News guide
Japan: guide to best news websites
Useful links
Japan Today [http://www.japantoday.com/e/?content=home]
Japan Information Network [http://jin.jcic.or.jp/jd/]
Asahi.com [http://www.asahi.com/english/english.html]
Daily Yomuiri [http://www3.yomiuri.co.jp/index-e.htm]
Far Eastern Economic Review [http://www.feer.com/]
Fuji News Network [http://www.fnn-news.com/en/index.html]
Japan Times [http://www.japantimes.co.jp/]
Kyodo News [http://home.kyodo.co.jp/]
[UP]
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004
*****************************************************************
33 Hanford News: Nuclear power plant remains shut down for repairs
Home [http://www.hanfordnews.com]
This story was published Monday, August 9th, 2004
By Shannon Dininny, Associated Press Writer
YAKIMA, Wash. (AP) - Washington state's only commercial nuclear
reactor remained out of service for the 11th consecutive day
Monday, and operators could not say exactly when the reactor will
be restarted.
The Columbia Generating Station was shut down July 30 when a
pressure buildup was detected inside the reactor. The reactor
then had to be manually shut down when the automatic shutdown
system failed to work properly.
Technicians for Energy Northwest, which operates the reactor,
have been performing maintenance since then. Company officials
declined to speculate Monday on when the reactor would be
restarted; they had initially estimated it could be sometime this
week.
"We're careful to do two things: One is to make certain that the
plant starts up as quickly as possible, and two is to see that it
doesn't start up until it's absolutely safe to do so," said Brad
Peck, Energy Northwest spokesman.
Columbia Generating Station is a boiling water reactor that
produces 1,150 megawatts of electricity, which is sold to the
Bonneville Power Administration for the Northwest electricity
grid.
Mike Hansen, a BPA spokesman, said the regional power marketing
agency has had no problem providing power for its customers.
However, the loss of power produced by the reactor means less
electricity to sell on the open market, he said.
As of last week, BPA calculated that the shutdown was costing
roughly $1 million each day, Hansen said.
The loss is particularly significant given the high demand for
electricity in August. In California, operators of the state's
power grid urged residents to cut back on electricity usage
Monday due to soaring temperatures.
"We don't have as much power to sell, so we're not going to be
able to help on a long-term basis," Hansen said.
The shutdown at Columbia Generating Station occurred after an
electronic device failed and closed one of the reactor's four
steamflow valves. The valves channel nuclear-heated steam to the
turbines driving the generator.
The closed valve caused an increase in pressure inside the
reactor, and when the reactor attempted to automatically shut
down, a panel indicated that all 185 control rods had not been
fully inserted. The control rods are inserted into the reactor
during a shutdown.
The control-room crew then executed a manual shutdown.
The problems triggered an alert in which state agencies prepared
to respond if needed to help Benton and Franklin counties.
State emergency officials said there was no release of radiation
and no danger to the public.
Formerly known as the Washington Public Power Supply System No. 2
reactor, Columbia Generating Station is the only one of five
reactors started in the late 1970s to be completed before
construction was halted in 1982-83.
The reactor is located on land leased from the U.S. Department of
Energy within the boundaries of the Hanford nuclear reservation
in south-central Washington state, but is a separate entity.
© 2004 Tri-City Herald. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
34 WP: Accident at Nuclear Plant In Japan Kills Four Workers
(washingtonpost.com)
No Indication of a Radiation Leak, Officials Say
By Anthony Faiola Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, August 10, 2004; Page A15
TOKYO, Aug. 9 -- Four people were killed and seven injured Monday
by sprays of superheated steam at a nuclear power plant 200 miles
west of Tokyo, but officials familiar with the accident said
there was no indication of a radiation leak.
A spokesman for the plant, which is located in the picturesque
village of Mihama and run by Kansai Electric Power, told
reporters that the accident occurred when steam spewed from a
leak in a turbine building at one of the plant's reactors, with
bursts of the steam reportedly reaching temperatures as high as
300 degrees Fahrenheit. The accident automatically shut the
facility down.
Steam spewed from a leak in a turbine building at a nuclear power
plant in Mihama, a small town 200 miles west of Tokyo. The
accident immediately shut down the plant. (Reuters Via Kyodo News
Service)
The incident follows a number of attempted coverups, mishaps and
other problems that have plagued Japanese nuclear power plants in
recent years, raising concerns over the safety of the country's
52 nuclear power complexes. Japan, the world's second-largest
economy, relies on nuclear power for 30 percent of its
electricity.
The Japanese government launched an investigation as Prime
Minister Junichiro Koizumi told reporters that "we must put all
our effort into determining the cause of the accident and to
ensuring safety." He added the government would respond
"resolutely, after confirming the facts."
According to the Kyodo news service, the dead and injured
reportedly were subcontractors preparing for a regular
inspection. They were laboring under a 22-inch-wide pipe when it
apparently burst.
The leak was caused by a lack of cooling water in the reactor's
turbine and by metal erosion in a condenser pipe, according to
Kansai Electric.
The company told reporters that the broken pipe, originally 10
millimeters thick, had eroded to a thickness of only 1.4
millimeters. The pipe had not been replaced since it was first
installed 27 years ago.
"I'm sorry to have caused such trouble," Yosaku Fuji, Kansai
Electric's president, said at a news conference. "I cannot find
the words to say to the deceased and the bereaved family
members."
In February 1991, a tube inside a steam generator at another one
of the plant's reactors broke, causing 55 tons of radioactive
water to leak from the main cooling system into the secondary
system that powers the reactor's turbine.
During that accident, an emergency core-cooling system was
activated in Japan for the first time.
The Mihama plant, located near popular beach resorts, was the
first nuclear plant built by Kansai Electric. Its first reactor
began service in November 1970.
The Japanese public has grown increasingly alarmed by flaws and
failures at nuclear plants here. In 1999, a radiation leak caused
by human error at a fuel-reprocessing plant in Tokaimura,
northeast of Tokyo, killed two workers and forced the evacuation
of thousands of nearby residents.
A string of safety problems and attempted coverups followed. In
February, eight workers were exposed to low-level radiation at a
power plant when they were accidentally sprayed with contaminated
water, although the contamination levels were not considered
dangerous.
[The Reuters news agency reported two other incidents at nuclear
power plants in Japan on Monday. In one, Tokyo Electric Power --
Japan's biggest electricity producer -- said it had shut a
nuclear power generation unit at its Fukushima-Daini plant
because of a water leak. In the other, a garbage disposal site at
a nuclear power plant in Shimane prefecture in western Japan
caught fire, Chugoku Electric Power Co. said. The blaze was
quickly extinguished.]
Special correspondent Sachiko Sakimaki contributed to this
report.
The Washington Post Company
*****************************************************************
35 Xinhuanet: Nuke plant leak rattles resources-strapped Japan
www.xinhuanet.com
www.chinaview.cn 2004-08-10 20:32:10
By Hui Xiaoshuang
TOKYO, Aug. 10 (Xinhuanet) -- The deadly steam leak at a
nuclear power plant on Monday evoked strong reaction from both
government officials and the public, and raised concerns over
Japan's nuclear plant security.
The accident killed four workers and left seven others
injured.
Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi said: "The government must
do its utmost to ensure safety." He reportedly told Economy,
Trade and Industry Minister Shochi Nakagawa at a cabinet meeting
on Tuesday that as demands for power are expected to hit peak, he
hoped the accident would not bring impact and upset to the
Japanese people.
Top Japanese officials pointed out that a sweeping check
shouldbe carried out to make sure the reactors run safely.
"Although it is also important to maintain a stable power supply,
safety is the first and foremost thing for nuclear plants,"
Nakagawa said.
High-temperature steam erupted from broken tube when workers
were making preparation for a checkup on the cooling system of
the No. 3 reactor at the Mihama Nuclear Power Plant in Fukui
Prefecture.
All the victims were employees from another company which
provides technical services to power plants. They were believed
to suffer from burning. There were about 200 people in the
facility and the 11 were on the second floor, said Kansai
Electric Power Co.(KEPCO) that runs the plant.
The reactor shut down automatically immediately after the
leak and no radiation was detected, the company said.
Tube erosion and lack of maintenance are now believed to be
the main causes for the deadly accident. The company said Tuesday
that following a similar accident in the United States in 1986,
it decided to put the same type of tubes under surveillance.
However, a subcontractor found last April the tubes concerned
were not on the check list and alerted the KEPCO in November. But
the KEPCO decided to put check in abeyance until a regular one
scheduled for Aug. 14. The tube in question has been left
unchecked since the operation of the reactor in December 1976.
Nakagawa inspected the site on Tuesday and local police have
launched investigation on dereliction of duty.
Nuclear power is important to resources-strapped Japan. There
are more than 50 reactors in action and 12 more are expected to
come into play by 2015. Nuclear power accounted for around
one-third of the electricity output in 2002.
Although there have been no massive radiation leak accidents,
other minor troubles like fire and tube rupture at those plants
are also breathtaking considering that a major radiation blow
could inflict considerable casualties in this heavily populated
island country.
This is the fourth major accident in the plant and the
severestin terms of casualty since the start of Japan's nuclear
power industry in 1966.
In 1999, two employees of the Tokai office of JCO. Co., a
nuclear fuel-processing plant in Tokaimura, Ibaraki Prefecture,
were killed after being exposed to radiation. Residents within 10
kilometers in diameter were evacuated.
A turbine building at the Hamaoka nuclear power plant in
central Shizuoka Prefecture caught fire in February. Fortunately,
the reactor was not in operation and the flame was put out
immediately, leaving neither radiation leak nor casualty.
Monday's tragedy also came as a reminder of a cover-up
scandal in 2002 involving the Tokyo Electric Power Co.(TEPCO),
Japan's largest nuclear power provider. The company falsified a
safety report and was later forced to shut down all 17 reactors
to check in a bid to rebuild public trust.
Just in June, KEPCO President Yosaku Fuji announced to cut
his wage to take responsibility for a checkup data tampering from
2000to 2003.
"Electric power companies have stepped up efforts since the
TEPCO scandal to review their internal supervisory system.
However,Monday's incident shows that their efforts have been far
from successful," said the leading Yomiuri Shimbun in its
editorial on Tuesday. Enditem
Copyright ©2003 Xinhua News Agency. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
36 Japan Times: Kepco failed to inspect aging reactor pipe despite warning
Wednesday, August 11, 2004
Check was urged long before fatal steam accident
TSURUGA, Fukui Pref. (Kyodo) Kansai Electric Power Co. admitted
Tuesday it failed to check a reactor pipe in its Mihama nuclear
plant in Fukui Prefecture that burst and scalded four workers to
death with steam, even though it knew for months that it needed
inspection.
[News photo]
Shown here is a ruptured pipe at Kansai Electric Power Co.'s
nuclear plant in Mihama, Fukui Prefecture, where four workers
were scalded to death on Monday. PHOTO COURTESY OF KANSAI
ELECTRIC POWER CO.
The steam leak from the carbon steel pipe at Mihama's No. 3
reactor Monday afternoon also injured seven other workers. The
pipe had not been changed in 27 years of operation.
It was Japan's worst nuclear plant accident in terms of the
death toll, but there was no radiation leak.
Fukui Prefectural Police are looking for evidence that the
nation's second-largest utility committed professional negligence
resulting in death and injury, investigative sources said.
Kepco said after the accident that it found a hole in the
56-cm-diameter pipe that sends pressurized steam in the turbine
facility.
It said steam erupted from the ceiling of the second floor, onto
the 11 victims.
According to the sources, the section of pipe that was damaged
should have been part of an earlier inspection but was excluded
due to a Kepco error.
The utility was notified of the mistake by Nihon Arm Co., a
subcontractor that services its power plants, in November, but
did nothing about it, the sources said.
The sources said that although Nihon Arm noticed the omission in
April, it did not immediately tell Kepco. Nihon Arm meanwhile
says its staff informed Kepco in April.
Investigators said the thickness of the burst pipe is normally
10 mm, but it had been worn down to 1.4 mm in some places, most
likely due to the swirling of the coolant water inside.
Operators are required to change the pipes before their thickness
erodes to 4.7 mm. But Kepco had not conducted any ultrasound
inspections to check pipe thickness since the No. 3 reactor began
operations in December 1976.
After visiting the site, Shoichi Nakagawa, minister of economy,
trade and industry, told a news conference: "To put it flatly,
(the damaged pipe) was extremely thin. It looked terrible, even
to a layman."
Nakagawa, who is in charge of administrative measures to ensure
the safety of nuclear power, also apologized to local residents.
Kepco inspected other facilities and replaced the pipes at the
Takahama Nuclear Power Plant's No. 3 reactor and Oi Nuclear Power
Plant's No. 1 reactor, both in Fukui Prefecture, with stainless
steel ones between 1998 and 2003 because they had worn so thin
that they would not last another two years, the sources said.
Kepco said Tuesday that it will shut down its other nuclear
reactors for inspection if there are any major items that had not
been checked.
Police also suspect that Kepco violated safety regulations
stipulating the complete shutdown of reactors for annual checks
when it had more than 200 workers move in inspection equipment
while the reactor was still running, the sources said.
They suspect the utility tried to cut costs by keeping the
reactor in operation until the last possible minute before the
inspection, which was to start Friday.
Kepco officials said large numbers of workers are often inside
reactor facilities during preparations for annual inspections but
claimed there is no legal problem with the practice.
If it is proved that negligence took place, the accident will
further heighten public distrust in the country's nuclear power
industry, which has been rocked by accidents and scandals,
including utilities covering up safety violations and reactor
defects.
The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency on Tuesday instructed
four utilities that operate similar pressurized-water reactors to
check their facilities.
Kepco President Yosaku Fuji visited hospitals Tuesday where the
injured were being treated and met with relatives of the
deceased.
Although he apologized to the families for the accident, Fuji
said they told him the fiasco was "not something that can be laid
to rest by an apology."
Masao Takatori, uncle of 29-year-old Hiroya Takatori, one of the
four killed, said he felt anger and bitterness over his nephew's
death.
"He was frothing at the mouth -- I couldn't bear to look at the
body," he said, adding that the victim's parents stayed with the
body throughout the night.
Kazuo Nakagawa, a cousin of 41-year-old Kazutoshi Nakagawa, who
also died, noted that there are many in his neighborhood who work
in the nuclear power industry.
Kazutoshi "often said his job wasn't dangerous," he said. "We've
lost a good family man."
The Japan Times: Aug. 11, 2004 (C) All rights reserved
*****************************************************************
37 Advocate: Feds reject state request for no-fly zone over Millstone
Associated Press
HARTFORD, Conn. -- Federal homeland security
officials have rejected a request by Gov. M. Jodi Rell to
establish a no-fly zone over the Millstone nuclear power complex
in Waterford.
Federal officials told the state last week that there was no
"specific intelligence or credible threat information to warrant"
a temporary flight restriction over Millstone and the Indian
Point plants in Buchanan, N.Y., John Wiltse, a spokesman for
Rell, said Tuesday.
Rell requested the no-fly zone early last week after federal
authorities identified potential terrorist targets at financial
centers in New York City, Washington, D.C., and Newark, N.J.
Copyright © 2004, The Associated Press
© 2004, Southern Connecticut Newspapers, Inc.
*****************************************************************
38 News 10 Now: Rally demands study of nuclear plants' vulnerability
[News 10 Syracuse - Your news, all the time.]
8/10/2004 7:47 PM
By: Carmen Grant, News 10 Now Web Staff
Environmental groups around the US want the government to
seriously analyze the susceptibility of nuclear power plants to
attack. In Oswego, there are three such plants.
Nine Mile Point one and two and the James Fitzpatrick reactors
are right next to each other.
Outside the federal building in Syracuse Tuesday, protesters
expressed their concerns about the vulnerability of those plants.
One section in particular worries them - a series of pools that
contain radioactive materials.
"Those pools of water are six stories above ground, outside of
the protective containment structure. And basically what we're
concerned about is the fact that from both above and below, and
three sides of these pools, they're extremely vulnerable to being
attacked,” said Tim Judson of the Citizens Awareness Network. The
group wants a six-month study done as well as the governmental
distribution of safety concerns and emergency procedures.
A spokesperson for the Fitzpatrick plant says since the 9/11
attacks, they have considerably stepped up security.
Copyright ©2004 TWEAN News Channel of Syracuse, LLC, d/b/a News
*****************************************************************
39 RNW: Japan's nuclear neglect
http://www.rnw.nl
Tuesday, 10 August, 2004
by Robert Chesal and Tim Fisher, 10 August 2004
Monday's accident at a nuclear power plant in Japan, in which
four workers were killed, has focussed national and international
attention on the country's large nuclear industry and its ageing
facilities. Japan is the third largest producer of nuclear power
after the United States and France, with 52 reactors spread
across the densely populated nation.
On Tuesday, the Kansai Electric Power Company, which operates the
Mihama plant about 350 kilometres from Tokyo, admitted that the
pipe which burst - causing high-pressure non-radioactive steam to
escape - had not been properly inspected. The pipe, which was 10
millimetres thick when installed in 1976, measured just 1.4
millimetres when it burst on Monday. The minimum legal
requirement for such a pipe is a thickness of 4.7 millimetres.
Risk of a major accident
Although Monday's accident did not involve a nuclear leak, Eileen
Smith of anti-nuclear group Green Action says it could have been
much more serious:
"I think we came very close to something that would be of very
grave concern. This accident would not have occurred if Kansai
Electric had been properly inspecting the nuclear power plants.
They were warned about this pipe ten months ago, and they did
nothing about it. There are other pipes that Kansai Electric has
that are in more crucial areas of nuclear power plants, and they
did not deal with those. [...] If we continue this way, we might
end up with a major accident some day soon."
[mihama-(aerial-shot)]
Aerial shot of part of the Mihama facilities
Negligence
Nuclear accidents are not unknown in Japan; the country's worst
occurred just five years ago in September 1999 at the Tokaimura
plant, north of Tokyo. That incident involved an uncontrolled
nuclear chain reaction and, according to Eileen Smith, was "also
due to complete negligence." She says another accident occurred
some eight years ago at a fast-breeder reactor, which has been
shut down ever since.
Deregulation
With Kansai Electric now having admitted that its programme of
inspections was partly responsible for the latest accident - the
relevant pipe had not been inspected since it went into use in
1976 - a key question is just how tight are Japan's nuclear
safety checks. Ms Smith says they have become lax, and she puts
the blame on the profit factor:
"The electric utilities that have nuclear power plants have been
monopolies, but now with the deregulation of the electricity
market, they are under a lot of pressure to cut down costs, and
they've been cutting down on inspections. For example, the
accident that occurred yesterday would probably not have led to
deaths except that they were already inspecting parts of the
plant while the reactor was still operating, and not waiting
until they shut the reactor down."
With another 22 reactors of the same design currently operating
in Japan, there are now concerns about safety at those plants.
However, environmental campaigning organisation Greenpeace says
most of Japan's nuclear power plants are ageing rapidly, just
like the 28-year-old Mihama plant. Eileen Smith says the country
should be looking at alternative power sources:
"Thirty-five percent of Japan's electricity is produced by
nuclear power. However, there are a lot of other facilities that
could generate electricity, but they are running at lower
capacity, and that's why the dependence on nuclear power is so
great. If we change the system and we ran all those other power
plants at much [greater] capacity, then the dependence on nuclear
power would be less."
[Junichiro-Koizumi]
Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi
Fears revived
The accident, which occurred on the 59th anniversary of the
destruction of Nagasaki by an atomic bomb, has reawakened fears
about the possibility of a major nuclear incident occurring. On
Monday, Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi said: "The
cause of the accident must be clarified. Prevention efforts and
safety measures have to be fully enforced". But Eileen Smith says
his government is not doing enough to deal with the safety issue
or public concern, yet it's pressing ahead with more plans for
nuclear power:
"The government is trying to increase [the number of] nuclear
power plants, even today. And there's a lot of opposition in the
regions where the power plants are being planned. […] When the
government does surveys of the Japanese public, a large minority
of people are concerned about a serious accident occurring in
Japan. […] there's a lot of concern among the public about
nuclear power."
: Radio Netherlands
*****************************************************************
40 ITAR-TASS: Accident at Japanese Mihama Nuclear Power Plant on Honshu blamed
on personnel
10.08.2004, 11.29
TOKYO, August 10 (Itar-Tass) - Fukui police believe that the
accident at the Mihama Nuclear Power Plant on Honshu, that was
the most serious accident in the history of the Japanese nuclear
power engineering, was a result of professional negligence of
the station’s personnel. On Monday, an investigation has begun
into the accident in which four were killed and seven wounded.
The accident occurred in the section of the third nuclear
reactor on Monday where as many as 200 personnel were working. A
powerful steam discharge whose temperature rose to 270 degrees
Celsius caused the nuclear reactor to automatically shut down.
No radiation leak was reported, the Japanese Economics and
Industry Ministry said.
The third nuclear reactor was commissioned in 1976. The reactor
cooling system has neither been repaired not subjected to
maintenance checks since 1996 despite a warning about possible
defects in the station security system made last year, said
spokesman for Kansai Electric Power Company that owns the
nuclear station.
© ITAR-TASS. All rights reserved. You undertake not to copy,
*****************************************************************
41 C Enquirer: Nuclear plant back on line (Davis-Besse)
[http://www.cincinnati.com]
Tuesday, August 10, 2004
The Associated Press
OAK HARBOR, Ohio - The Davis-Besse nuclear power plant has
started producing electricity again following an unexpected
shutdown last week, FirstEnergy Corp. said Monday.
Workers began powering up the plant Sunday night and it was
connected to the grid Monday morning, said plant spokesman
Richard Wilkins.
The plant was to be at full power by the end of the day.
A blown fuse caused the outage during a routine test Wednesday.
The plant along Lake Erie in northern Ohio was closed for two
years after inspectors found corrosion on the reactor.
Leaking boric acid almost had eaten through a 6-inch-thick steel
cap, forcing the plant to undergo $600 million in repairs and
review its operations.
CINCINNATI.COM [http://www.cincinnati.com] | ENQUIRER
Copyright [http://cincinnati.com/copyright] 1995-2004. The
Cincinnati Enquirer [http://enquirer.com] , a Gannett Co. Inc.
*****************************************************************
42 Middletown Press: No fuss over nuke fuel
Tuesday 10 August, 2004
BY JOSH MROZINSKI Middletown Press Staff 08/10/2004
HADDAM -- During a public hearing held by Connecticut Yankee
Atomic Power Company about it’s decommissioning process, Paul
stood up and asked what would happen if a mortar was shot from
the woods into the dry casks storing the nuclear waste and spent
fuel.
The man’s concern, said Tim Smith, who has lived in Haddam Neck
near the plant during his entire life, was brushed aside. The
man, a retired nuclear engineer, Smith said, then asked about
what would happen if a plane was hijacked and flew into the
casks.
His concerns were again brushed aside, Smith said. And after the
Sept. 11 attacks, Smith said, he immediately thought about the
retired engineer and his question. The question was asked before
the attacks in September 2001.
"That’s the first thing I thought about after Sept. 11," Smith
said.
And yet he, like some of his neighbors on Monday evening,
expressed more concern about the line of cars that leave the
plant in the evening and early in the morning. They said they
feel secure or have grown used to living next to the plant.
The plant they live next to, which is more than 560 acres in
size, is now being decommissioned. Connecticut Yankee is tearing
down the site with the physical part -- demolishing buildings --
scheduled to be completed by the end of 2006. The waste and spent
fuel is now being transferred to a site three-quarters of a mile
from the plantwhere they will sit in dry casks until the federal
government takes them to Yucca Mountain in Nevada.
The last of the spent fuel will be moved to the hockey-rink-sized
staging area by the first half of 2005. It could sit there until
2010 or beyond, depending on when Yucca Mountain is complete.
Smith said he thinks about it every once in a while, but is used
to it. Eventually, while smoking a cigarette outside of his home,
he said the spent-fuel scared him when he thought more about it.
"I know that they’re there and I try not to think about it,"
Smith said. "I grew up here, I lived next to the power plant all
my life."
He said the increased National Guard and state police at the
plant makes him feel safer.
Greg Bartoszuk, who moved to his Haddam Neck home from New Haven
with his wife and son two-and-a-half years ago, said the risk
seems remote. The rush hours, he said, are worse.
While standing outside of his home with white paint still on his
hands from doing work, he said the dry storage is safer than
storing the material in a pool.
He said his mother asked if it was safe to live next to the
plant, and he responded: "You’ll know a second after us."
His wife, Anne, said they moved to Haddam Neck knowing about the
plant’s decommissioning, but didn’t know about the spent fuel and
waste storage.
Annie and Frank Catucci recently moved to Haddam Neck, and were
working on their house Monday evening. They came from Farmington,
seeking quiet and open space. Farmington, Annie Catucci said, was
becoming too crowded.
But they also said they wish the plant wasn’t there.
"The plant really doesn’t bother us," Frank Catucci said.
Al Carlson, while sitting on his patio in the setting sun, said
he has friends who work at the plant that tell him about the
redundancies that are built into the system to make it safe.
Carlson, who has been living near the plant since it was built in
1969, said it is as secure as it can be.
Nothing is absolutely secure, he said.
"They’re fairly secure down there," Carlson said. "They’ve been a
good neighbor over the years."
To contact Josh Mrozinski, call (860) 347-3331, ext. 222 or email
jmrozinski@middletownpress.com.
©The Middletown Press 2004
*****************************************************************
43 TheDay.com: Town To Take Part In Drill For Emergency Evacuation
Tuesday, Aug 10, 2004
Stonington
The town will participate today in a Millstone Power Station
emergency evacuation drill in preparation for the Sept. 14
Federal Emergency Management Agency evacuation drill.
The town is not within the 10-mile radius of the plant that is
considered a risk area. In the event of a real emergency, the
town would receive residents of Fishers Island by boat at the
Town Dock. Fishers Island is within the 10-mile radius.
1998-2004 The Day Publishing Co.
*****************************************************************
44 PRN: Exelon, Federal Government Reach Agreement Over Spent Nuclear
Fuel Storage Costs
[http://www.prnewswire.com/] [ /]
="http://www.exeloncorp.com"
WARRENVILLE, Ill., Aug. 10 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Exelon
Corporation (NYSE: EXC
[http://studio.financialcontent.com/Engine?Account=prnewswire&Pag
eName=QUOTE&Ticker=EXC] ) and the U.S. Department of Justice, in
close consultation with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), have
reached a settlement under which the government will reimburse
Exelon for costs associated with storage of spent fuel at the
company's nuclear stations pending DOE fulfilling its contractual
obligations to accept commercial spent nuclear fuel.
The settlement resolves all pending spent fuel litigation
brought against the federal government by Exelon and subsidiaries
Exelon Generation Company, Commonwealth Edison Company and
AmerGen Energy Company.
Under the agreement, Exelon will receive $80 million
immediately in gross reimbursements for storage costs already
incurred, with additional amounts reimbursed annually for future
costs. If a national repository opens by 2010 and DOE begins
accepting spent nuclear fuel as the department has said, gross
reimbursements to Exelon would eventually total about $300
million.
In all cases, reimbursements will be made only after costs
are incurred and only for costs resulting from DOE delays in
accepting the fuel. The department was to have begun accepting
fuel in 1998.
"We're pleased with the result," said Chris Crane, Exelon
Nuclear's president and chief nuclear officer. "It resolves the
litigation between the parties, it eliminates a financial
uncertainty for both Exelon and DOE and it allows the government
to meet its legal obligations to a sixth of the nation's nuclear
power plants."
Crane said the settlement cannot be considered a substitute
for permanent used fuel disposal at Yucca Mountain.
Exelon Corporation is one of the nation's largest electric
utilities with approximately 5.1 million customers and more than
$15 billion in annual revenues. The company has one of the
industry's largest portfolios of electricity generation capacity,
with a nationwide reach and strong positions in the Midwest and
Mid-Atlantic. Exelon distributes electricity to approximately
5.1 million customers in northern Illinois and Pennsylvania and
gas to more than 460,000 customers in the Philadelphia area.
Exelon is headquartered in Chicago and trades on the NYSE under
the ticker EXC.
SOURCE Exelon Corporation
Web Site: http://www.exeloncorp.com [http://www.exeloncorp.com]
Copyright © 1996-2004 PR Newswire Association LLC. All Rights
*****************************************************************
45 PRN: Nuclear Energy Institute Calls Exelon-DOJ Used Fuel Settlement
'Hugely Significant'
[http://www.prnewswire.com/] [ /] [ /]
[http://www.nei.org]
WASHINGTON, Aug. 10 /PRNewswire/ -- Exelon Corp. and the U.S.
Department of Justice announced today they have reached a
settlement under which the government will reimburse Exelon for
costs associated with storage of used nuclear fuel at the
company's nuclear power stations pending the Department of
Energy's fulfillment of its contractual obligations to accept
used nuclear fuel. The following is a statement by Nuclear
Energy Institute Executive Vice President Angie Howard regarding
the settlement:
"The settlement agreement announced today is hugely
significant and a direct result of the federal government's
failure to meet its statutory and contractual obligations to
begin disposing of used nuclear fuel from commercial nuclear
power plants. The agreement means that taxpayers in every state
-- including those who do not receive electricity supplies from
nuclear power plants -- are now officially paying the cost of the
federal government's failure to meet its obligations. The
government's willingness to enter into this settlement is the
fair thing to do since it hasn't met its obligation to Exelon and
the company's customers.
"Dozens of the nuclear power plants that supply electricity
to one of every five U.S. homes and businesses are running out of
storage capacity in their on-site used fuel pools because of the
government's failure to meet its obligation. Congress has it
within its power to minimize the impact of the government's delay
and ease this mounting burden on taxpayers.
Two notable steps that Congress can take are: one, to endorse the
Environmental Protection Agency's 10,000-year radiation
compliance standard for the planned Yucca Mountain repository in
the Nevada desert; and two, to enact funding reforms assuring
that monies put into the nuclear waste trust fund by ratepayers
are available in sufficient amounts so that, along with
congressional oversight, the Yucca Mountain repository will be
built in an efficient and safe way.
"The nuclear energy industry and our customers, the users of
electricity produced at nuclear power plants, have met our
obligation. Since 1983, including interest, we have paid roughly
$24 billion into the federal Nuclear Waste Fund for development
of an underground repository for used nuclear fuel. This
settlement is the result of the government's failure to meet its
obligation. From this day forward, until the Yucca Mountain
repository is open a minimum of six years from now, the meter
will continue to run, costs will climb, and the burden of
government inaction will continue to be borne by taxpayers from
coast to coast."
The Nuclear Energy Institute is the nuclear energy industry's
policy organization. This news release and additional
information about nuclear energy are available on NEI's Internet
site at
[http://www.nei.org] . SOURCE Nuclear Energy Institute Web Site:
[http://www.nei.org]
[http://www.prnewswire.com/media/]
*****************************************************************
46 News-Gazette Online: UI removing radioactive material from research lab
By JODI HECKEL
© 2004 THE NEWS-GAZETTE
Published Online August 10, 2004
URBANA – The University of Illinois will remove all
radioactive material from its nuclear research reactor so the
building that housed it can eventually be used for other
purposes.
The UI announced last week it was beginning the
decommissioning process for the reactor, which hasn't been used
since 1998. The decommissioning process can take years. UI
officials said they couldn't discuss specifics of the work, but
said the removal of material from the building could take a week
or more.
"Ultimately, what they will be doing is removing all
radioactively contaminated components and shipping those
components to a radioactive waste disposal site," said Jan
Strasma, spokesman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
"Essentially, the decommissioning involves removing all
radioactive materials from the facility so it can be released
for unrestricted use."
Those components could include pipes, valves and other
equipment associated with the reactor, as well as any parts of
the building that may have become contaminated. The material
will be shipped to a low-level radioactive waste disposal
facility for burial in either South Carolina or Utah.
The spent fuel rods will be removed to a Department of
Energy facility, Strasma said.
The process of removing contaminated materials involves
doing radiation surveys of what is there, following specific
procedures for removing the materials so radioactive contam-
ination is not spread, and packaging it properly for shipping to
a disposal site, Strasma said.
Some equipment may be able to be decontaminated, he said,
and if so, it could go to a landfill or a recycling center.
Strasma said the fuel rods would be handled "remotely," or
with equipment that would move them from where they are stored
into a shipping container.
Federal regulations govern shipping of such waste, including
security and safety requirements for drivers. Strasma said work
is usually done by companies specializing in radioactive
material transportation.
"The level of danger is such that they are shipped in
specially designed shielded casks that are designed to withstand
accidents during transport," Strasma said. "They provide
shielding to protect the public and truck drivers and are
strong, well-designed containers to withstand accidents as well."
But he said the work should not be a safety concern for
those in the area, as the requirements for such work include
providing protection against contamination for both workers
handling the material and anyone outside the facility. The
Nuclear Regulatory Commission conducts inspections and monitors
the status of activity throughout the decommissioning to ensure
safety requirements are being met.
In addition, research reactors operate at relatively low
levels. The UI's research reactor had a capacity of 1.5 thermal
megawatts. A nuclear power reactor would typically have a
capacity of several thousand thermal megawatts, Strasma said.
The reactor was built in 1958 and went online in 1960, and
it was used for research in a variety of areas.
It is one of a number of university research reactors that
are being decommissioned. They include reactors at the Georgia
Institute of Technology, Iowa State University, the University
of Washington and the University of Virginia.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved the UI's
decommissioning plan in 1999, but it has been on hold awaiting
federal funding to do the work, Strasma said.
Barclay Jones, a nuclear engineering professor and former
head of the nuclear engineering department, said he wasn't sure
of the amount the UI received from the U.S. Department of Energy
for the work, but "It's not a cheap process."
It cost the Georgia Institute of Technology $5.6 million to
decommission its research reactor in the late 1990s.
"We're disappointed it's the end of the life of the
reactor," Jones said. "It was such an integral and important
part of nuclear engineering. Some of us have not very warm
feelings about the rationale for shutting them down. Any time
you have uranium fuel, that's looked at as a proliferation. Of
course, what you lose is what a machine like that can do for
society and for the education program at the university."
Jones said the costs of operating the UI's reactor were
relatively low, in the $135,000 to $140,000 range annually, and
the UI could charge fees to outside researchers who wanted to
use the reactor.
"We were coming up to the end of a license, and it was sort
of decision time," Jones said. "The people in control at that
time made a decision. We objected, but typically administrative
decisions are hard to have reversed."
Jones said UI researchers can do some work with reactors at
national laboratories or other universities.
"As far as educating our students, it was sort of hands-on.
We could go into a more full demonstration," he said. "We're
doing some work now with computers and creating a virtual
reactor laboratory, but it's pretty sterile in comparison."
You can reach Jodi Heckel at (217) 351-5216 or via e-mail at
jheckel@news-gazette.com [jheckel@news-gazette.com] .
[http://www.news-gazette.com/sitemap.cfm]
Copyright 2004 News-Gazette, Inc.
*****************************************************************
47 ThisisLondon: Stark truth about Energy stakebuilder
thisislondon.co.uk
10 August 2004
BRIAN Stark, the enigmatic US citizen buying up shares in British
Energy, can be revealed as a £970m hedge fund guru.
He has built a 6.9% stake in BE in the past week through a
mixture of normal UK shares and US securities in the ailing
nuclear generator.
Stark and business partner Michael Roth specialise in a form of
trading that makes money from price differences between the
markets of various countries.
Originally trained in law at Harvard, Stark has been investing
since 1986 and has four funds including one focused on European
companies.
The reason for his interest in BE is unknown but it adds a
further dimension to the already complex situation at BE, where
5.6% shareholder Polygon is calling for a financial restructuring
to be overhauled.
*****************************************************************
48 Reuters: CHRONOLOGY-Nuclear Accidents Worldwide Mon Aug 9,
2004 11:45 AM ET
TOKYO (Reuters) - A steam leak at Japan's Mihama
nuclear plant in Fukui prefecture kills four workers, but
authorities say no radiation escapes in the accident, the worst
ever in terms of deaths at a Japanese nuclear facility.
Following is a chronology of major accidents at nuclear plants
since 1957.
Oct. 7, 1957 - Fire destroys the core of a plutonium-producing
reactor at Britain's Windscale nuclear complex -- since renamed
Sellafield. An official report says the leaked radiation could
have caused dozens of cancer deaths.
1957/8 - A serious accident occurs during the winter of 1957-58
near the town of Kyshtym in the Urals. A Russian scientist who
first reported the disaster estimates that hundreds die from
radiation sickness.
Jan. 1961 - Three technicians die at a U.S. plant in Idaho Falls
in an accident at an experimental reactor.
1965 - The U.S. Atomic Energy Commission deliberately produces a
low intensity radioactive cloud from a nuclear reactor over Los
Angeles.
Oct. 1966 - The core of an experimental reactor near Detroit
partly melts when a sodium cooling system fails.
Oct. 1969 - In Saint-Laurent, France, a fuel-loading error
sparks a partial meltdown at a gas-cooled power reactor.
Dec. 1975 - Fire breaks out at the Lubmin nuclear power complex
in former East Germany after an electrician's mistake. Some
reports say there was a near-meltdown of the reactor core.
March 1979 - America's worst nuclear accident occurs at the
Three Mile Island plant near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. A partial
meltdown of one of the reactors leaks radioactive gas.
Aug. 1979 - Uranium spews out of a top-secret nuclear fuel plant
in Tennessee. Around 1,000 people are contaminated with up to
five times normal annual radiation levels.
April 1981 - Some 45 workers are exposed to radioactivity during
repairs to a plant at Tsuruga, Japan.
Nov. 1983 - Britain's Sellafield plant accidentally discharges
radioactive waste into the Irish Sea, prompting environmentalists
to demand its closure.
Aug. 1985 - A blast devastates the Shkotovo-22 repair facility
which services Soviet navy nuclear-powered vessels. Ten are
killed and many die later of radiation exposure.
April 1986 - In the world's worst nuclear accident, an explosion
and fire at the Chernobyl nuclear plant in Ukraine spews
radiation over much of Europe. Thirty-one people die in the
immediate aftermath. Hundreds of thousands are evacuated and a
similar number suffer the effects of radiation.
Nov. 1992 - In France's most serious nuclear accident, three
workers are contaminated after entering a nuclear particle
accelerator in Forbach without protective clothing.
Nov. 1995 - At Chernobyl, serious contamination occurs when fuel
is being removed from one of the reactors.
Nov. 1995 - Two to three tons of sodium leak from the cooling
system of Japan's Monju prototype fast-breeder reactor.
Sept. 1999 - Two workers die at a uranium processing plant at
Tokaimura, 140 km (90 miles) northeast of Tokyo, and hundreds are
exposed to radiation after workers trigger an uncontrolled chain
reaction by using buckets to mix nuclear fuel in a tub.
Aug. 2004 - A steam leak at the Japanese Mihama nuclear plant in
Fukui prefecture kills four workers.
*****************************************************************
49 Spectrum: Downwinder response is inadequate - Opinion -
thespectrum.com
[http://www.thespectrum.com/index.html]
Tuesday, August 10, 2004
IN OUR VIEW
There hasn't been enough done to ease the plight of Southern Utah
residents who call themselves Downwinders.
Thousands lost their lives as a result of the nuclear testing
that took place at the Nevada Test site during the 1950s and
'60s. However, according to the Centers for Disease Control, as
many as 15,000 Americans nationwide succumbed to the fallout that
was released from the tests.
Dixie Regional Medical Center in St. George and Valley View
Medical Center in Cedar City are offering free screening for
those who believe they may have some health problems as a result
of the nuclear tests.
The magnanimous offer is welcome relief for many who are still
experiencing the effects of the poison that fell from our skies.
But what happens next?
Will newly diagnosed cancer sufferers have to wait for years
while their claims trudge through the bureaucratic red tape that
surrounds the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act Program?
More importantly, will they have to endure yet another round of
nuclear testing?
The push in Washington, D.C., is to develop new mini-nukes and
the so-called bunker buster bombs.
But the problem goes far beyond the boundaries of nuclear
testing.
A number of other American communities -- particularly Hanford,
Wash. -- also are waging war with the government over radiation
poisoning.
From 1944 to 1990, the Hanford Nuclear Facility produced
plutonium for U.S. nuclear weapons.
Now there are an unusual number of thyroid and other cancer cases
being reported. Thousands of Hanford residents exposed to
radiation filed lawsuits in 1990 against DuPont and GE, which
operated the plant from 1946-1965.
That court battle is ongoing, with another status conference set
for mid-September.
When the original RECA Program was set up, only uranium miners
and those with very specific types of cancer who lived in Utah,
Nevada and Arizona were eligible for compensation. Today,
however, we know through the CDC report that high doses of
iodine-131 fell across the entire nation.
While Southern Utahns rightfully fight their battles for
compensation, what will become of the thousands of others across
America who don't know they, too, are Downwinders?
Originally published Tuesday, August 10, 2004
*****************************************************************
50 Texas City Sun: Meeting on radioactive lab today
[daniel.huron@texascitysun.com]
Published August 10, 2004
A community meeting to discuss compensation for former
employees of Texas City Chemicals will be held today at 1 p.m. at
Carver Park Community Center, 6415 Park Ave. in Texas City.
In the 1950s, a lab was set-up at Texas City Chemicals to
investigate the separation of plutonium from fertilizer, said
Pete Tyler, a spokesman for US Congressman Nick Lampson (D—
Beaumont).
By 1965, the lab — which was located on property now
owned by BP Petroleum — was torn down.
The question of whether or not employees in the small lab
were exposed to nuclear wastes and qualified for government
compensation was raised four years ago. Lampson worked with the
former workers in their quest for compensation.
After determining the employees did qualify, they were
allowed to apply for compensation.
“All the people locally who applied have yet to get
through the process,” Tyler said.
The secrecy of the work the Texas City lab has also
slowed the process down.
Kevin Peterson of the US Department of Labor’s Division
on Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation will speak
at the meeting. Galveston County commissioner Stephen Holmes will
also be present at the public gathering.
What: 1965 radioactive lab health meeting.
When: 1 p.m. today.
Where: Carver Park Community Center 6415 Park Avenue,
Texas City.
[newsroom@texascitysun.com] : Have a tip for our staff?
© 2004 Texas City Sun. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
51 Las Vegas SUN: Kerry Talks Nuclear Waste in Las Vegas
By MARY DALRYMPLE ASSOCIATED PRESS
LAS VEGAS (AP) -
0807kerry Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry, seeking
votes in this swing state, told fire and rescue workers Tuesday
that he opposes storing nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain because
of the safety, security and economic risks it poses.
"But this isn't just a Las Vegas issue or a Nevada issue. It's
an American issue," Kerry said in prepared remarks. "Under the
Yucca Mountain plan, more than 50,000 shipments of waste would
travel just yards away from homes, hospitals, parks and
playgrounds in states across this country."
Kerry talked about nuclear waste after leaving his last stop in
Arizona, where he pledged that a Democratic White House would
listen and respond to financially strained families. He was
winding down a Southwestern train trek and steering his
coast-to-coast campaign into Nevada and California.
"There's some people working two or three jobs, trying to make
ends meet, put food on the table," Kerry said. "That's what this
fight is about."
Kerry's campaign made this stop in Kingman along the historic
Route 66 highway after five days aboard a train that cut through
the Midwest into the Southwest. Kerry is challenging Bush, who
plans to campaign in the state on Wednesday, for Arizona's 10
electoral votes.
Nevada, which went for Bush by about 4 percentage points in
2000, offers five electoral votes.
Repeating a frequent criticism of the president's economic
policies, Kerry said he would withdraw tax cuts given to the
richest 2 percent of the nation and funnel more money into
health care and education.
"We've got a Washington, D.C., that's running away under the
control of big money, big influence, and it's all coming out of
your pockets," he said. "We've got to fix this tax code. I'm
going to do it in a flash. Give me a nanosecond."
As part of Kerry's populist message to the crowd, he said he
knows the value of hard work and fairness, despite his own
privileged upbringing and said he understands the pressures
facing many families.
"They say, John, I'm working harder and harder. I work weekends.
I'm working 24-7. I still can't get ahead, and I don't have time
to be with my family. I don't have time to be with my kids,"
Kerry said.
"Twenty years ago, one breadwinner had the ability to be able to
pay the mortgage and pay for college, and you could have a
parent at home. That's gone."
Doug Wilson, the campaign's Arizona state director, said Kerry
hopes to appeal to the state's growing Hispanic population and
many Native Americans. He also hopes to make inroads among
moderate Republicans and the independents moving into Arizona
from places such as California.
"It's arriving as a real possibility for all Democrats," Wilson
said. "The challenge for Kerry in a place like this is to get
beyond the stereotypes" painted by opponents.
In Arizona, Kerry got off the train that took his two-week
coast-to-coast campaign from St. Louis into the Southwest. He
called it an "extraordinary" trip but also admitted the sight of
some riders on Harley-Davidsons made him yearn for his own
motorcycle.
---
On the Net:
Kerry campaign: http://www.johnkerry.com
[http://www.johnkerry.com]
Bush campaign: http://www.georgewbush.com
[http://www.georgewbush.com]
--
*****************************************************************
52 Las Vegas SUN: Nevada asks NRC to reject Yucca Mountain license
as incomplete
Today: August 10, 2004 at 11:32:42 PDT
ASSOCIATED PRESS
LAS VEGAS (AP) - The state of Nevada wants the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission to reject the government's plan to open a
national nuclear waste dump in the desert as incomplete, with
corners cut on technical issues.
Energy Department and Yucca Mountain spokesman Allen Benson said
Tuesday the Energy Department is moving properly toward seeking
a crucial Nuclear Regulatory Commission license to open the
repository 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas in 2010.
"We will honor all of our commitments," Benson said.
Bob Loux, head of the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects, urged
NRC Chairman Nils Diaz in a Monday letter to reject the Energy
Department application when it is submitted later this year
because it won't resolve all "key technical issues" about the
repository.
Energy Department and Nuclear Regulatory Commission officials
have identified 293 issues they agreed should be addressed
before licensing, including questions about corrosion of
waste-bearing canisters, earthquake and volcanic activity near
the site, and the chemical environment in the tunnels where
waste would be stored.
Benson said the Energy Department will address all key technical
issues prior to submitting the license application. But he
acknowledged that some questions may not be answered until after
the license application is filed.
"Once we submit the application, if the NRC has additional
questions, we will respond with the information they require,"
he said.
Loux focused on July 23 comments by Joseph Ziegler, the Energy
Department's Yucca Mountain project licensing director, that 105
technical issues were resolved and 159 were in review.
Ziegler told NRC officials that unresolved technical issues
would be answered after license paperwork is handed in.
Loux said that would violate NRC rules requiring "sufficient
information" for a complete license application when it is
filed.
The Energy Department wants to entomb in Nevada 77,000 tons of
the nation's most radioactive waste now stored at commercial,
industrial and military sites in 39 states.
Questions remain about whether the licensing process will be
stalled by a federal court ruling last month invalidating the
project's 10,000-year radiation safety standard.
---
On the Net:
Nevada's Agency for Nuclear Projects:
[http://www.state.nv.us/nucwaste]
Nuclear Regulatory Commission: [http://www.nrc.gov]
Yucca Mountain project: [http://www.ymp.gov]
--
*****************************************************************
53 UPI: Kerry pledges support for sound science -
(United Press International)
August 10, 2004
Las Vegas, NV, Aug. 10 (UPI) -- Democratic presidential candidate
John Kerry pledged to be guided by sound science when making
public policy in a campaign swing through Nevada Tuesday.
Using the proposed national nuclear waste storage site at Yucca
Mountain as a backdrop, Kerry promised to build a stronger
America by putting science and public safety ahead of policy or
ideology.
"I can sum up my stance on the Yucca Mountain Plan in four
words: not on my watch," Kerry said. "As a senator, I voted
against it. And as president, I will do everything in my power to
ensure that your backyard does not become America's nuclear waste
dump."
Yucca Mountain was one of several Bush initiatives cited by
Kerry, whose campaign accused the White House of, "Putting its
own interests ahead of sound science. From mercury pollution to
stem cells, it has put ideology and its political agenda ahead of
scientific fact."
Along with running mate John Edwards, Kerry "will ensure safety
and sound science come first," a campaign release said.
Kerry was in day 12 of a post-convention campaign trip that has
taken him to 18 states.
[UPI Perspectives]
*****************************************************************
54 Las Vegas RJ: Complaint: Yucca issues neglected
Tuesday, August 10, 2004
By STEVE TETREAULT
STEPHENS WASHINGTON BUREAU
WASHINGTON -- Nevada officials lodged a new complaint Monday
that the Department of Energy is cutting corners to license a
nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain.
DOE is "walking away" from a pledge to resolve 293 outstanding
technical issues before it files a repository license
application later this year, the state's nuclear director
charged in a letter to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Bob Loux, head of the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects,
focused on comments made earlier this summer by Joseph Ziegler,
the licensing director for the Yucca Mountain Project.
Ziegler told NRC officials in a July 23 letter that further
questions they might have about unresolved technical issues will
be answered in the department's license bid, or after the
license paperwork is handed in.
But Loux said that approach violates NRC rules that require the
agency be given "sufficient information" before DOE hands over a
licensing package.
Under those circumstances, Loux urged NRC chairman Nils Diaz to
reject the DOE's application when it is submitted. The NRC had
no immediate comment.
The Energy Department wants to file an application with the NRC
by the end of the year, although there are questions whether it
will be permitted to do so in the wake of a July 9 federal court
ruling invalidating the project's 10,000 year radiation health
standard.
Staffs for the DOE and NRC had developed a list of 293 issues
they agreed should be addressed before licensing, including
questions about corrosion of waste-bearing canisters, earthquake
and volcanic activity near the site, and the chemical
environment within repository tunnels where waste will be stored.
According to Ziegler, 105 of the technical issue agreements
were resolved, while another 159 were in stages of review. The
Energy Department planned to supply at least some information
about the remainder by the end of August, although NRC reviewers
generally ask followup questions.
Copyright Las Vegas Review-Journal
*****************************************************************
55 Las Vegas SUN: Yucca is lead issue as Kerry visits Las Vegas
By Cy Ryan < [cy@lasvegassun.com] > and Stephen Curran LAS VEGAS
SUN
Tickets for today's "Believe in America" rally can be picked up
at the Las Vegas Democratic Headquarters at 1325 E. Vegas Valley
Drive or downloaded at www.nvdems.com. The rally is at 6 p.m. at
the Thomas &Mack Center.
Yucca Mountain was expected to be front and center this morning
when Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry addressed a
group of community leaders and citizens living along the route
to the proposed nuclear waste dump.
Kerry was to speak to a group of invited people at a closed
forum at Ralph Cadwallader Middle School in northwest Las Vegas
this morning to discuss the economic and health effects of the
proposed repository.
It was the first event of a two-day stop in Las Vegas for the
Massachusetts senator, who has been in the state two times this
election season.
Kerry is scheduled to speak at a rally today at the Thomas
&Mack Center. The event begins at 6 p.m. and is expected to draw
between 8,000 and 10,000 people, Sean Smith, communications
director for Kerry's Nevada campaign, said.
Because of security checks, people are encouraged to arrive
early.
The Las Vegas visit comes on the 12th day of Kerry's "Believe
in America" tour, which has criss-crossed the country after last
month's Democratic National Convention in Boston.
Kerry was in Arizona on Monday, and his bus caravan drove into
Las Vegas late Monday night, arriving at the Bellagio. He is
expected to be in town through Wednesday morning.
Before leaving Wednesday afternoon, Kerry is scheduled to
address a group of Henderson seniors in another closed-door
forum, Smith said. The senator is expected to discuss his plan
to combat rising prescription drug costs.
Kerry will be followed into town by President Bush on Thursday.
Bush has been in town once this campaign season.
Nevada has garnered the attention, becoming a so-called
battleground state, because of the close vote in 2000, when Bush
beat then-Vice President Al Gore by 3.5 percentage points in
Nevada.
Yucca Mountain has been a key part of the debate in the state.
Democrats have criticized Bush for approving Yucca Mountain in
2002, and the party's national platform includes a plank
promising to "protect" Nevada against nuclear waste.
Kerry has pledged to stop the plans for the repository if he's
elected and has made that a key distinction in the state between
himself and Bush, who authorized the plan.
At a press conference in Minden on Monday, Sen. John Ensign,
R-Nev., conceded that the Democratic presidential nominee is
"getting some support" in Nevada for his opposition to the
nuclear dump at Yucca Mountain.
Ensign added that Nevadans should not trust Kerry because of
his flip-flops in the past on Yucca Mountain and other national
issues.
When campaigning in Nevada four years ago, Bush said he would
depend on "sound science" in making a decision. Democrats have
called Bush's statement a "lie."
Ensign is opposed to Yucca Mountain, and on the Aug. 2 edition
of the "Face to Face With Jon Ralston," Ensign said "on this one
issue, he's been better than George Bush, but that's on one
issue."
But Monday, Ensign said, "we don't know" if Kerry would change
his position on Yucca Mountain if he were elected president. His
record "is not as pure" as he makes it out to be, Ensign said.
As he has repeatedly in recent weeks, Ensign noted that Kerry
voted for the "Screw Nevada" bill that singled out this state as
the only one to be studied as a dump site. In 1996, Kerry
opposed more stringent environmental standards for Yucca
Mountain, and in 1997 he voted against an amendment by Sen.
Harry Reid, D-Nev., that would have given governors the right to
stop the transfer of nuclear waste through their states, Ensign
said.
Kerry also opposed an amendment to allow more money for more
oversight for the development of Yucca Mountain, Ensign said.
Smith disputed Ensign's charges.
"They're (Ensign's claims) laughable really," Smith said. "John
Kerry has a very clear record of opposing Yucca Mountain. He has
pledged to stop it if he's president. We're amused that he
(Ensign) keeps bringing this up."
Ensign said Yucca Mountain is not the only issue on which Kerry
has a credibility problem. At Monday's press conference, Ensign
launched into an echo of the Republican party line attack on
Kerry. Kerry voted for the Patriot Act and now he's against it,
and Kerry voted for No Child Left Behind but now he opposes it,
Ensign said.
At the news conference, a video was shown on Kerry's apparent
shifting position on Iraq.
"It seems he (Kerry) will say anything and do anything to get
elected," Ensign said. "But we really don't know where he stands
and that's why we cannot trust John Kerry when it comes to his
position on nuclear waste."
"It's one thing in your early career feeling one way and then
you change and evolve like that. But he evolves back and forth."
*****************************************************************
56 RGJ: Kerry to make campaign stop in Vegas
[http://www.rgj.com/]
Anjeanette Damon
[adamon@rgj.com] RENO GAZETTE-JOURNAL
8/10/2004 12:15 am
In two Las Vegas campaign stops today, U.S. Sen. John Kerry is
expected discuss his economic plans, policies for lowering health
care costs and his opposition to the nuclear waste dump at Yucca
Mountain.
His first scheduled appearance is before an invited group of
“parents, nurses, first responders, community leaders and local
citizens” at a Southern Nevada elementary school near the
proposed route radioactive waste would take on its way to Yucca
Mountain, campaign spokesman Sean Smith said.
Later he is expected to speak before a rally of about 9,000
people at the Thomas and Mack Center in Las Vegas.
President Bush is scheduled to visit Las Vegas on Thursday to
speak at the United Brotherhood of Carpenters International
Training Center. It will be the president’s second visit to
Nevada during his campaign.
Bush did not mention Yucca Mountain during a Reno campaign speech
in June, despite ongoing criticism from Democrats for his
approval of the project.
It will be Kerry’s third visit to Nevada, considered a
battleground state in the race for the presidency. Kerry has yet
to make it to Northern Nevada, despite visits by President Bush,
Vice President Dick Cheney and Karl Rove, Bush’s top political
adviser.
Washoe County Democrats said it is too early to say Kerry is
ignoring Northern Nevada, typically a Republican stronghold.
“If he doesn’t come here by Nov. 2, I will be disappointed,” said
Brian Hutchinson, who, as a delegate to the Democratic National
Convention, lobbied for a Northern Nevada visit from Kerry or his
running mate U.S. Sen. John Edwards. “I feel fairly confident we
will get somebody here. We’ve still got 80-some-odd days left.”
Smith said it was too difficult logistically to get Kerry to Reno
during this visit to Nevada, which comes on the 12th day of his
two-week “Believe in America Tour.” His next stop is Los Angeles.
The campaign hopes to bring Kerry to Northern Nevada before the
election.
“We’re fighting for every single vote in Nevada and we believe
the votes in Northern Nevada are Kerry-Edwards votes,” Smith
said.
© Copyright Reno Gazette-Journal, a Gannett
*****************************************************************
57 News Sentinel: Anemic energy plans
| 08/10/2004 |
Kerry plan falls very short by turning its back on nuclear-waste
repository.
Last week, Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry released
his energy plan, and it would seem the timing couldnt have been
better. Theres nothing like record oil prices to emphasize how
vulnerable a society that uses as much energy as the U.S. is to
fluctuations in these commodity prices.
It has this virtue: At least its noticeably different from the
plan that President George W. Bush has pushed, with limited
success, while in office.
Kerrys plan emphasizes conservation more than does the
presidents. Bush emphasizes increasing the domestic supply
through easing restrictions on drilling and providing still more
tax breaks for producers.
But however much lip service these men pay to the virtues of free
enterprise and market forces in other realms, they both seem to
forget those principles entirely when it comes to oil and gas.
Both emphasize this goal: keeping prices for energy low.
In reality, many of the reasons prices are rising lie beyond the
control of the White House. Our military involvement in the
Middle East is pegged as the culprit by many critics, but they
ignore the tremendous impact of Chinas booming industrialization
and increasing affluence. (An example: Car sales in China last
year increased 80 percent over sales the previous year.) Russia
has tremendous difficulty maintaining its oil operations. And
terrorist activity in both the Middle East and South America add
uncertainty to the oil market.
Rising prices alone, the surest sign that demand is beginning to
outrun supply, would accomplish what both mens plans set out to
do. In Kerrys case, when gasoline becomes more expensive, it
naturally motivates car buyers to tilt toward models that get
better mileage without a federally imposed increase in the
average fuel economy of automakers fleets. World carmakers wont
retool overnight, but those which can supply more economical cars
would prosper if consumers start seeking out such vehicles.
In Bushs case, when oil prices rise, oil companies will find
more and more reason to sink new wells and develop new extraction
technology.
If oil is cheap, why cut oil companies fresh tax breaks to drill
for less-accessible, more costly oil in the U.S.? And if oil gets
expensive, why dish up tax breaks to encourage drillers to do
what the market would goad them to do on their own?
The Kerry and Bush plans overlap in many respects, just as their
campaign swings have overlapped in recent days. To court
farm-state voters, both plans would subsidize research and
production of alternative fuels made from crops. Both would
subsidize research and development on fuel cells. And, to show
their support for conservation, both propose hefty tax breaks for
those who purchase extremely fuel-efficient cars, such as the
small gas-electric hybrids. And both Bush and Kerry place great
stock in underwriting research and development to make coal a
cleaner fuel, which plays nicely in the swing states of
Pennsylvania, Ohio and, particularly, West Virginia, where
coal-mining still employs tens of thousands of workers.
Kerry says he would set a goal of deriving 20 percent of U.S.
electricity from renewable resources such as solar and
geothermal by 2020.
Right now, about 2 percent of U.S. electricity comes from
renewable sources other than hydroelectric. Ratcheting that share
to 20 percent in a large and growing economy would come naturally
if the traditional sources of power get so expensive that private
companies can make a buck in alternative energy. If the
traditional sources are still cheaper than new technology, the
federal government would either have to subsidize green power, or
at least plow billions of dollars into applied research in
alternative energy.
Big, expensive federal energy projects feel like déjÀ vu, again
and again. Anybody out there remember President Richard Nixons
1973 announcement committing the U.S. to energy self-sufficiency
by 1980? Yes, we could use another fabulous win like that in the
21st century.
Our alternative to both plans is simple: Instead of trying to
keep prices low, as both candidates advocate, let the market
work. When oil and gas get expensive, alternatives are more
appealing for consumers and producers.
Or, if Americans came to believe that its important to develop
alternatives more quickly than naturally rising prices would
support, a bolder environmentalist than either Bush or Kerry
would raise the price of gasoline and other petroleum products
artificially, by imposing taxes on the fuels themselves.
There is one part of the energy plan where President Bush clearly
advocates the wiser approach and where Kerry sells the countrys
future seriously short in stumping for votes. Thats nuclear
power.
Nuke plants now provide roughly 20 percent of the countrys
electricity, and Kerry says he supports the continued use of
nuclear power. But he opposes building a national nuclear-waste
repository in Yucca Mountain, Nev., a location that Congress and
the president agreed on after nearly 20 years of site
examinations and research.
Its this simple: Without Yucca Mountain, the U.S. falls 20 years
behind in its search for a real solution to the problem of
nuclear waste. And without somewhere to store waste permanently,
there wont be much of a future for U.S. nuclear energy, let
alone the research into smaller, safer nuclear plants that Bush
advocates.
Shutting down the future prospects of the nuclear energy industry
in the U.S. would be an extraordinarily high price for Kerry to
pay in pursuit of Nevadas five electoral votes. But we shouldnt
be surprised. Both candidates plans are aiming more for quick
results Nov. 2 than for keeping Americas lights on in 2030.
By Bob Caylor for the editorial board
*****************************************************************
58 KR Washington Bureau: Kerry promises to halt creation of nuclear-waste dump in Nevada
| 08/10/2004 |
[http://www.knightridderscholars.com/]
[A sign posted to warn of uranium ore tailings is seen on the
banks of the Colorado River between two National Parks and the
town of Moab, Utah, June 2002.]
CHUCK KENNEDY / KRT
By Thomas Fitzgerald
Knight Ridder Newspapers
LAS VEGAS - Sen. John Kerry seized one of Nevada's hottest
political issues Tuesday by vowing to block the creation of a
national nuclear-waste dump at Yucca Mountain and accusing
President Bush of breaking a 2000 campaign promise to do the
same.
"This is not just a Nevada issue," Kerry said in a town-hall
meeting at a middle school alongside U.S. 95, the proposed route
that nuclear waste would take on its way to the mountain
repository. "It's about the relationship between the people who
lead, who govern, and you, the citizens ... about promises kept
and broken."
But of course Yucca Mountain is a local issue - and a potent
one. More than 70 percent of Nevadans oppose the project, and
even Republicans here acknowledge that it's a liability for the
president in what's shaping up as a close contest for the
state's five electoral votes. Bush won Nevada by 50-46 percent
in 2000.
The Democratic presidential nominee has stressed the
environment on the Southwest portion of his cross-country tour
by bus, train and boat. On Tuesday, he sought to attack the
president's credibility and turn around a criticism often flung
his way by suggesting that Bush had flip-flopped on Yucca
Mountain.
"The fact is the person I'm running against ... stood up before
Nevadans and promised that this waste would not come to Yucca
Mountain," Kerry said. "And in a matter of weeks, months, that
was reversed."
In fact, Bush in 2000 stopped just short of promising to veto
any nuclear-waste repository at Yucca Mountain. In September
2000 he vowed to veto any plan to store such waste there
temporarily. Once in the White House, he approved Yucca Mountain
as a permanent storage site.
Kerry offered no alternative solution to Yucca. The highly
radioactive nuclear waste is now temporarily stored at
nuclear-power plants and other sites around the nation. His
campaign said he would keep it where it was, with better
security, while convening a National Academy of Sciences panel
to work out a safer long-term plan.
"There is a good answer," said Paul Craig, an engineering and
applied sciences professor at the University of California at
Davis whom President Clinton appointed to the Nuclear Waste
Technical Review Board. "The cornerstone is that there's no
technological urgency (to bury the nuclear waste). All the
urgency is political, and a good politician can defuse that."
Craig said, "The science on Yucca Mountain remains uncertain;
the (radiation) standards on Yucca Mountain are currently
nonexistent because of a Supreme Court ruling. This is certainly
no time to go rushing ahead."
U.S. nuclear waste can be stored safely in dry casks for half a
century, Craig said. While some places, such as the Prairie
Island nuclear power plant in Welch, Minn., claim to be running
out of room to store waste, that's purely a legal-permit
situation - in which they need to get permission to store more
waste - instead of a technical problem, Craig said.
Reflecting the political pitfalls that come from having cast
thousands of votes in the Senate since 1985, Kerry at times has
supported legislation that moved the Yucca Mountain project
forward, including final passage of 1987 legislation designating
the site as the sole dump unless it was deemed unsafe by
government scientists. Locals here call that the "screw Nevada"
bill.
Kerry supporters say those were procedural votes, but
Republicans seized on them to cast doubt on his promise Tuesday.
It's "just another example of a candidate who tells voters what
they want to hear," said Steve Schmidt, spokesman for the Bush
campaign. "Nevada voters are not going to trust Kerry if he
continues to mislead them on this issue." He said Bush had
relied on sound science.
In 2002, Bush signed legislation to establish the desolate
ridge of volcanic rock and ash 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas
as the permanent burial place for 77,000 tons of the nation's
deadliest nuclear waste.
Now Nevada is a presidential-election battleground. Democrats
have just pulled to near-parity with Republicans in voter
registration, and three independent polls within the past two
weeks show Bush and Kerry tied. Moreover, a Mason-Dixon poll
last week found that 31 percent of undecided voters in Nevada
say they are "less likely" to vote for Bush because of his
support for Yucca Mountain.
In recent years, the National Academy of Sciences and the
General Accounting Office, among others, have found fault with
the scientific studies used to justify the choice of Yucca
Mountain. Among issues overlooked, those panels said: earthquake
activity in the region, the mountain's proximity to an aquifer
and unresolved issues of how to transport the waste safely
through 44 states.
"There is no way to protect the nation from terrorist attacks
using these mobile Chernobyls," U.S. Rep. Shelley Berkley,
D-Nev., whose district includes parts of Las Vegas, said of
plans to haul nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain.
(Fitzgerald reported from Las Vegas. Knight Ridder Newspapers
correspondent Seth Borenstein contributed to this report from
Washington.)
*****************************************************************
59 Progressive News: Yucca Mountain and the Plight of the Western Shoshone
by Rebecca Solnit
Tuesday August10, 2004
published by Tom Dispatch
Yucca Mountain and the Plight of the Western Shoshone
In July, the Feds handed down to Nevada its bitterest defeat and
sweetest victory in ages; the former, a termination of thousands
of years of Western Shoshone history; the latter, a reprieve from
an apocalyptic future as the world's biggest -- and maybe dumbest
-- nuclear waste dump. In one three-day period, Nevada's past got
cancelled while its future was salvaged. But this Indian war and
these nuclear politics are just part of a panoply of glaringly
weird things going on in the state; there's a gold rush, a water
war, and vast military operations, just for starters, and all of
them are ecological bad news.
Nevada's invisibility may be as alarming as the apocalyptic
dimensions of its plight. The state is a truly peculiar place, a
hole in public consciousness. Where else could you set off a
thousand nuclear bombs unhindered -- from 1951 to 1991 at the
Nevada Test Site -- while even most antinuclear activists were
arguing about nuclear war as a terrible possibility rather than
an ongoing regional catastrophe? Once nuclear testing went
underground in 1963, and American babies stopped having
fallout-induced radioactive milk teeth, Nevada fell off the map
even as the nuke-a-month program continued unimpeded for almost
three more decades.
Western Shoshone Showdown
Across the U.S., the contemporary Indian wars are invisible in
part because most non-Native Americans believe they all happened
in the picturesque past, in part because they're fought by other
means, in part because the mainstream media don't give a damn.
One of the most egregious of them has been the ongoing battle
between the Western Shoshone and the federal government for title
to most of Nevada. It began in 1848 when the U.S. government
claimed the Southwest from Mexico, heated up in the post--World
War II era when the Shoshone went to court to protect their
rights, and may have ended July 7, when President Bush signed
into effect the Western Shoshone Distribution Bill.
That bill dishes out money the government set aside a few
decades ago as payment for much of eastern and southern Nevada.
The area had looked so worthless to the bureaucrats of the
nineteenth century that they drew up a treaty letting the Western
Shoshone, unlike most indigenous nations, retain title to their
lands. The bureaucrats of the twentieth century realized that the
best way to seize title to Nevada was to pretend that the land
had already been taken -- back when it was more affordable. Of
course, you have to overlook the fact that, as Western Shoshone
bumper stickers say of their homeland, "Newe Sogobia is not for
sale." The price set was $26 million or 15 cents an acre,
discount prices even for the 1870s. (With interest, the sum to be
disbursed is now $145 million.)
Reasonably enough, the Western Shoshone point out that they
never offered their land for sale and many of them refuse to take
the money. The disbursement was made against their strenuous
opposition. (Others believe that $30,000 per person is the best
they'll ever get and are willing to settle up.) The case matters
in part because Western Shoshone "traditionalists" have
strenuously opposed mining, military operations -- 20% of all
military-controlled land is in Nevada -- and nuclear activities
on their land. Though environmentalists sometimes decry their
cattle-grazing as destructive to the desert, they look like far
better stewards of Nevada's arid lands than the federal
government ever has been. They have deep roots in the past and
are interested in the long-term future of the place. Then there's
the simple matter of justice: the Western Shoshone are being
stripped of their birthright and their rights just as surely as
any Palestinian on the wrong side of Israel's Great Wall of
Intolerance or the Iraqis whose resources have been redistributed
to various American corporations.
The corporations reaping twenty-first century profits from the
great Shoshone land grab and already engaged in a gold rush in
the heartland of Shoshone territory aren't even American in most
cases. An 1872 mining law allows virtually anyone to acquire
public land for pennies in order to mine it; the Toronto-based
Barrick Corporation, for instance, paid less than $10,000 for
land containing an estimated $8 billion in gold. Unfortunately,
we're not talking about the gold nuggets in pretty engravings of
the Forty-Niners. Barrick and the other mega-corporations are
mining microscopic gold, dispersed throughout the subterranean
rock along the Carlin Trend in northeastern Nevada, enough gold
to make the state the world's third most productive gold-mining
region.
To get it, you dig up huge hunks of the landscape, pulverize
them, and then run a cyanide solution through the resultant
heaps, which pulls the gold out. It takes about a hundred tons of
ore to produce an ounce of gold. Western Shoshone activist Carrie
Dann (whose ranchlands and family cemetery have been ravaged by
gold-mining) suggests that whenever Americans buy gold jewelry,
they should get the slag that goes with it as well -- a splendid,
many-ton toxic heap for a keepsake with every ring and ornament.
It's toxic because grinding up the bedrock releases other heavy
metals in the ground, which is why Nevada -- with less than 1% of
the nation's population -- was, until a court changed the
measurement standards in 2001, tops in the release of toxic
substances. Its annual half-billion tons of toxics amounts to 10%
of the nation's total, and a soaring 88.7% of its mercury
releases; to say nothing of the applied cyanide, which at least
is an organic compound that breaks down under the right
circumstances. Mercury is forever.
Water Wars
The environmental price of gold is pretty high, and that's not
even counting groundwater. But groundwater counts too. Much of
the Carlin Trend gold is underneath the water table, so the mines
pump out vast quantities of groundwater in this driest state in
the union and discard it. They are, in other words, mining water
as well as gold, and as recent attempts around the world to
privatize water -- by Bechtel in Bolivia, for example --
demonstrate, pure water is getting more and more valuable. The
elderly Western Shoshone activist and mystic Corbin Harney had a
vision about water scarcity long ago and has made it a focus of
his work ever since. In Nevada's gold-rush districts, water is
being contaminated or dispersed into nearby waterways, where it
will run away, never to return. According to Great Basin Mine
Watch, Nevada mines wasted enough water in 2001 to serve a city
of half a million people.
It takes thousands of years to recharge an aquifer. To drain
one, or even drop the water table, creates "drawdown," the drying
up of surface waters that would otherwise feed agriculture, rural
communities, and wildlife. That's one of the reasons why
environmentalists and rural citizens are up in arms about the
latest plans to suck out the water under White Pine, Lincoln, and
Nye counties, as well as rural Clark County for the benefit of
urban Clark County (aka Las Vegas). This conflict is already
being compared to the Los Angeles vs. Owens Valley water war
immortalized in Roman Polanski's movie Chinatown. What Polanski's
movie didn't show is the dry lake bed breeding dust storms, the
habitat drying up, the ecological disaster Los Angeles lawns and
carwashes demanded (and Mono Lake activists partially reversed in
recent years).
Currently, Las Vegas gets most of its water from the Colorado
River. In 1900, the city's population was in the single digits;
it had only made it to about half-a-million when I started
swinging through in the 1980s to protest the nuclear testing
taking place 60 miles to the north; the city now has 1.4 million
people, almost two-thirds of the state's population, and 5,000
new Vegans arrive every month -- which is why the entire Nevada
congressional delegation is behind the water grab. That's where
the votes are.
Even the usually environmentally respectable Senator Harry Reid
is so behind the bill to start building the two-hundred-mile
Lincoln-to-Vegas pipeline that he's threatening to attach it to
some larger piece of legislation bound to pass. "They have enough
water for the existing population," says Jan Gilbert, a longtime
state activist. "They don't for this explosive growth."
Pat Mulroy, general manager of the Southern Nevada Water
Authority, struck a different note when she said, "The notion
that we have a finite supply of water, and when that finite
supply is gone you stop growing, is in the past." Welcome to
Nevada, driest state in the union, where water is infinite; you
can wait until the late twentieth century to make things happen
in the nineteenth century; gold is cheap; and the future is
radioactively bright. Or was. Not all the news is bad.
Repealing the Apocalypse
Once again, it was the water that was the problem, only this
time it wasn't a shortage. Yucca Mountain, it turned out, was all
wet, and a truly lunatic place to put seventy-seven thousand tons
of high-level nuclear waste.
The government created the nuclear power industry with a promise
to reactor operators that the essential crisis of the industry,
the dangerous, exceedingly long-lived waste it produces, would be
taken off their hands. In all the subsequent decades of nuclear
power production, spent fuel rods have been piling up in "cooling
ponds" onsite, while the operators waited for the government to
make good on its promise to get rid of the stuff (mostly located
in the population-heavy, resource-light East). Three New England
reactors are already suing the government for failing to come up
with a dump.
For more than two decades, the Department of Energy (DOE) has
done everything it can to create one of the most scientifically
dubious dumpsites imaginable, at Yucca Mountain, about ninety
miles north of Vegas on the northern edges of the Nevada Test
Site, where all those nuclear bombs were detonated (and will be
again if Bush has his way).
The initial plan was to compare sites in three western states
and choose the safest one, but two of the states -- Texas and
Washington -- had the political clout to get out of the
competition. So the "comparative study" never studied anyplace
but Yucca Mountain, and yet the longer it was studied the less
suitable it seemed even for the mandated 10,000 years it was
supposed to keep us and the waste apart (forget the quarter
million years the stuff would actually remain dangerous).
Somehow, this never seemed to stop plans from proceeding. For a
lot of geologists, the fact that Yucca Mountain had, in
geological terms, recent volcanic activity and has very
contemporary seismic activity might be grounds enough for doubt.
But the DOE officials just kept lowering the standards, fudging
the facts, firing the dissenters, while spending nearly $100
billion to try to make it happen -- the cost of a nice, short
foreign war these days.
Nevada itself has fine activists who have stood up to some of
the atrocities, and the state itself has vociferously fought the
federal plan to make it into what might have been the world's
largest nuclear waste dump. And for now, this time, on this
issue, they won, which is no mean feat. The Yucca Mountain plan
was nicknamed early on the "Screw Nevada" bill, and the feckless
plans to send the stuff across the country from the mostly
eastern nuclear reactors is popularly known as "Mobile
Chernobyl." (Click here to see how close the stuff gets to your
house -- and within half a mile of fifty million other
Americans.)
Easterners imagine that the Wiley Coyote landscape of Nevada
means true inert dryness, and the New York Times has seldom been
able to resist coupling the adjectives "sterile, empty, barren,
and useless" to any description of the place. But underneath it
is a surprisingly high water table that could rise further in a
changed climate, and flowing through the mountain's billion
fissures is rainfall which leaches out the chemicals in the rock,
making a brew capable of eating through almost any metal,
including pretty much every metal proposed for nuclear-waste
containment.
Originally, the rock itself was supposed to isolate the stuff.
When it turned out that wet Yucca Mountain was uniquely unsuited
for the task, the idea was that the metal containers would
isolate the waste. When it turned out that the leaching would eat
them away, the plan switched to little titanium umbrellas on top
of each cask -- so we'd gone from protection by the thick mantle
of the earth to parasols in a couple of decades of study. And
they call it science.
The state's Nuclear Projects Office (which means anti-dump)
geologist, Steve Frischman, told me long ago that they picked
10,000 years as the period during which the waste must be
isolated because you can at least pretend to estimate geological
and climate changes over ten millennia; beyond that, it's the
utter unknown -- Nevada could be a rainforest; its ancient lake
beds could refill; and God knows who's going to look after the
stuff then. The Western Shoshone? Among the more surreal aspects
of the whole Yucca Project have been the many schemes to create
warning labels for the waste that would make sense to unknown
civilizations of the deep future.
But surprisingly, on July 9, two days after the Western Shoshone
Disbursement Bill was signed by Bush, a federal appeals court
ruled that the standards for Yucca Mountain were wrong: the
Environmental Protection Agency should have accepted a ruling by
the National Academy of Sciences that the safety standard should
be not 10,000 years but the point of peak radiation -- which
could be 300,000 years away, long after the metal containment
casks have corroded into irrelevancy. Joe Egan, an attorney for
the state of Nevada, told the Las Vegas Sun that this means "the
department will have to apply a standard that all their own
evidence says they can't meet."
This could mean the death of the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste
dump, though the decision could also be appealed in the next few
weeks and the Department of Energy is rushing to get the place
licensed by December in what might be a last hurrah for the Bush
Administration. Senator Kerry has taken a strong stand against
Yucca (while Edwards, from nuke-plant intensive North Carolina,
has waffled).
This is startlingly good news for Nevada. Scientists have always
said that Yucca Mountain was a disaster-in-the-making, even
leaving aside those 50 million Americans living within half a
mile of the shipment routes the Yucca-bound nuclear waste would
travel on for decades to come, or the 90 to 500 estimated
accidents of unknown scale that statistics suggest would take
place en route over the years. (Who needs terrorist dirty bombs
when our own tax dollars can supply them?)
When you consider the human rights abuses, the squandering of
resources for the benefit of the few, and the lunatic decisions
being made for the long-term future of the state, the war in Iraq
looks a little like a decoy from troubles at home, or a parallel
universe with all the same ingredients. Except that there's
almost no opposition to Nevada's impending catastrophes --
outside of Nevada. But you can bring back another perspective
from Iraq too. One is that Goliath doesn't always win: the David
of local activists and the Nevada State government has been
fighting Yucca for decades, and this round Goliath lost. Another
is that if you're tenacious enough, what looks like defeat can
change, and the Western Shoshone have patience and commitment on
their side.
Rebecca Solnit's 1994 book Savage Dreams dealt at length with
the Western Shoshone land wars and with nuclear testing in
Nevada. Her most recent book is Hope in the Dark: Untold
Histories, Wild Possibilities
Copyright C2004 Rebecca Solnit
[feedback@progressivetrail.org?subject=[FEEDBACK]] +
www.ProgressiveTrail.Org -->
*****************************************************************
60 WP: Kerry Has Nevada's Ear on Yucca Mountain Plan
(washingtonpost.com)
He Opposes Nuclear Waste Storage Project
By Jim VandeHei Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, August 11, 2004; Page A04
LAS VEGAS, Aug. 10 -- John F. Kerry told community leaders here
Tuesday that he strongly opposes burying nuclear waste at Yucca
Mountain, providing a contrast to President Bush on one of the
dominant political issues in this crucial state.
The Democratic presidential nominee said Bush is threatening the
security and the economic vitality of Nevadans with his plan to
ship spent nuclear waste from around the country for storage in
the mountain 90 miles northwest of here.
[Democratic Presidential Candidate John Kerry] Democratic
Presidential Candidate John Kerry addresses a group of teachers,
parents, first responders, and community leaders in Las Vegas.
(Hector Mata - AFP)
Kerry said that if he is elected he will cancel the project,
which has cost the federal government billions and eventually
could cost as much as $60 billion.
"Yucca Mountain to me is a symbol of the recklessness and the
arrogance for which they are willing to proceed with respect to
the safety issues and concerns of the American people," Kerry
said on the 12th day of his post-convention coast-to-coast swing
through battleground country. "When John Kerry is president,
there will be no nuclear waste at Yucca."
In the 2000 campaign, Bush said he would oppose the Yucca
Mountain site unless it was deemed scientifically safe, a
position state political analysts credited for helping the
Republican narrowly carry Nevada. One year after taking office,
however, Bush designated the mountain the final -- and
environmentally safe -- resting place for the nuclear waste
stored at more than 100 locations nationwide.
Sen. Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) told reporters here that Bush "lied"
in 2000 and would pay the price of losing Nevada this fall. "The
state of Nevada is going down the drain" for the GOP, he said.
Republican strategists concede that this issue alone could cost
Bush the state's five electoral votes in a close race. In a blow
to Bush, Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.) recently said Kerry would be
better for the state on this pivotal issue. Matthew Dowd, a top
Bush strategist, said the president will not lose the state over
Yucca Mountain because his polls show voters here are more
concerned about terrorism and the economy.
Politically speaking, Yucca Mountain is to Nevada what corn is to
Iowa or oil to Texas. It is a rare issue that unites Democrats
and Republicans alike and can turn an election. Bill Clinton
became an enthusiastic opponent of the Yucca site and carried the
state in the 1992 and 1996 presidential elections.
Kerry is hoping for the same result this year. While the
Massachusetts senator voted in 1987 to consider Yucca Mountain as
the exclusive storage site, he has generally opposed it on
environmental and safety grounds over the past decade.
Kerry's running mate, Sen. John Edwards (N.C.), has supported a
nuclear repository at Yucca Mountain during his first term in
office but now opposes it. Reid said Edwards called him the night
before being named the Democratic vice presidential candidate and
told him, "I am on the Yucca Mountain bandwagon."
In a statement, Ensign said: "Nevadans should not be fooled by
election-year pandering."
Outside the state, the larger issue of what to do with the
nation's highly radioactive nuclear waste from fuel rods and
other sources has vexed federal policymakers for more than two
decades. Most lawmakers want a single site to store tens of
thousands of metric tons of nuclear waste deep below Earth's
surface, where it will never contaminate land or water. But
nobody wants nuclear material buried in his back yard, and nobody
can guarantee that the nuclear material will not eventually seep
into groundwater or rise to the surface. Bush and supporters of
the Yucca plan say studies prove it is a safe and wise idea.
Further complicating matters is how to transport such dangerous
materials, in some cases across the country. An accident -- or
terrorist attack -- on a vehicle transporting nuclear waste could
prove disastrous. Since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks,
opponents of the Yucca Mountain plan have increasingly pointed to
this potential for terrorism to support their case that the waste
should stay in its current resting places. "The bottom line here
is to make America safe," Kerry said. "In an age of terror, we
need to make sure the movement [of the material] . . . is able to
be guarded" from attack.
If elected, Kerry would "establish an international, independent,
blue-ribbon panel to recommend world-class, state-of-the-art
scientific methods for nuclear waste storage," according to a
campaign policy paper. Only then, he said, would a Kerry
administration determine where the waste would be stored -- but
it would not be at Yucca.
*****************************************************************
61 Nevada Appeal - Opinion: Yucca not only issue in presidential race
August 10, 2004
Much is being made of comments by Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., on
how Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry is "better than
George Bush" on the issue of Yucca Mountain.
It is true the Bush approved the nuclear waste repository in
Nevada, arguably breaking his promise of using "sound science" to
make the decision. It is also true that Kerry voted against the
dump in 2000 and 2002, and has pledged to block it if he is
elected.
And if you believe Yucca Mountain is the only issue that affects
Nevada's future, then John Kerry is your man.
While the issue of a nuclear waste dump in this state is
important, it isn't the only issue. The federal government owns
nearly 87 percent of Nevada, and there are myriad issues which
directly affect Silver State residents: mining fees, grazing
regulations, environmental policies, etc.
Electing a president is also about setting a direction for the
entire country, not just what is happening in our own back yard.
There are serious issues of war and peace, the economy and health
care on the line in this election.
Nevada has been named a battleground state in this election, so
we will see more than our usual share of attention this political
season. It is important for all voters to carefully look at all
the issues before making their decisions. There is a huge amount
of information on each candidate for voters to use in their
decision making, and we encourage everyone to educate themselves.
Being right on one issue does not make someone the right pick for
Nevada.
All contents © Copyright 2004 nevadaappeal.com Nevada Appeal -
580 Mallory Way - Carson City, NV 89701
*****************************************************************
62 WP: Veterans Could Be Key to Nevada's Bigger Prize
By Terry M. Neal
washingtonpost.com Staff Writer
Monday, August 9, 2004; 10:30 p.m. ET
LAS VEGAS -- Michael Moody may be the past president of the local
Republican Men's Club here, but these days he's feeling more
affinity toward the "band of brothers" John F. Kerry trotted out
for the Democrats' nominating convention in Boston last month.
Despite his GOP roots, Moody joined a Veterans for Kerry rally in
July with about 75 other vets and their spouses. He explained
that he has grown alarmed by the Bush administration's approach
to Iraq and what Moody considers to be a hostile foreign policy
in general. So he has decided to work to put fellow Vietnam
veteran Kerry into the White House.
"I think Bush's policies have alienated us from our allies and
energized our enemies," said Moody, who was an unsuccessful
Republican candidate for governor here in 1982. "We have to elect
John Kerry to show the world that Americans all aren't like Bush.
...I'm coming over to this side."
President Bush's Iraq policy is issue number one here in Nevada,
one of about 18 crucial battleground states where both major
candidates are focusing efforts this year. Most political
pollsters and analysts view Iraq and the economy as the top two
issues in the country. But the economy in Nevada has been
relatively strong, making the Iraq issue even more prominent.
The state has posted strong economic figures in recent months,
including a 4.1 percent unemployment rate in May -- the lowest in
nearly four years and lower than the seasonally adjusted national
jobless rate of 5.6 percent. Jobs have grown in the leisure and
hospitality industry, professional and business services and
construction while the population in Clark County, which includes
Las Vegas, has more than tripled since 1986, to about 1.6 million
today, according to estimates compiled by a group of local
business boosters.
"I see Iraq as pretty high [among voter concerns] here now
because the economic stuff doesn't really matter that much here,"
Moody said. "The Nevada economy has been pretty strong. I
definitely think that Iraq and the issues around it that happen
between now and the election are it."
Other than Iraq, perhaps the biggest issue here is a regional
one: the Bush administration's plan to develop a nuclear waste
repository at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
The state's voters and most of its politicians in both major
parties oppose the plan. Kerry opposes the plan, and Democrats
have tied Iraq and Yucca Mountain together to make a single
point-Bush can't be trusted.
The GOP also is using Iraq to illustrate the president's
character: His willingness to buck international allies to
protect America demonstrates his resolve and toughness, they
argue. And they say it's a message that is resonating in this
military-heavy state.
"When I talk to people, what comes across is that people know
that the president has set a goal of what he's trying to do, and
he's not wavering from it," said Henderson resident Paul Adams, a
West Point graduate and chairman of Nevada Veterans for
Bush-Cheney. "When they contrast that to Kerry, whose positions
really aren't that different from the president's, they see a
difference between the two."
The Battleground
According to a series of polls conducted by Zogby International
for the Wall Street Journal, Bush and Kerry have been in a
statistical dead heat here since late May, with independent
candidate Ralph Nader rapidly increasing his standing to about 6
percent on July 12.
Bush pulled out a narrow victory here in 2000, winning by just
fewer than 4 percentage points. A switch of only about 11,000
votes would have given Al Gore a victory. Bill Clinton won the
state by narrow margins -- 2 percent and 1 percent in 1992 and
1996, respectively.
Nevada's current congressional members also reflect its
swing-state tradition. In fact, until the addition of a third
congressional district following the 2000 census, Nevada had two
Democrats in congress, Sen. Harry M. Reid and Rep. Shelley
Berkley, and two Republicans, Sen. John Ensign and Rep. Jim
Gibbons. Republican Jon Porter was easily elected in 2002 to the
newly created and evenly partisan Third District around Las
Vegas. And the state's Republican governor, Kenny C. Guinn, is in
his second term, giving the state an overall GOP tilt right now.
But Democrats are betting that the state's changing demographics
will give them a shot in November. Nevada is one of the fastest
growing states, complicating efforts to make predictions. For
instance, Nevada has one of the nation's fastest-growing Hispanic
populations, a group that tends to vote overwhelmingly for
Democrats. Latinos now make up about 20 percent of Nevada's
population, compared to around 12.5 percent nationally, according
to the 2000 Census.
But there is growth in another demographic that both the Bush and
Kerry campaigns are targeting -- the veterans who are drawn to
the state for the warm weather, relatively low taxes and low cost
of living.
Veterans account for 16 percent of the state's adult population.
Since 1990, Nevada's veteran population has increased by 30.8
percent -- the highest increase of any state-even as the national
percentage decreased by almost 4 percent. This crucial
demographic brings military issues such as the war on terror,
Operation Iraqi Freedom and combat pay to the forefront in this
battleground state.
The Challengers
Prior to traveling to the Democratic convention in Boston last
month, former Georgia senator Max Cleland, a veteran who lost
three limbs in Vietnam, appeared before a room full of fellow
veterans, railing on Bush and the GOP.
His message was a simple one: The Bush administration has
imperiled America's security by waging an irresponsible, poorly
managed war with Iraq, a country that was not an imminent threat
to the United States. More than 800 Americans have died, and
thousands more have been injured, while the bill is $200 billion
and counting.
Cleland blames the administration's blunders on hawkish idealism
born of a failure of the president and many of his top advisers
to serve in combat during Vietnam.
"I keep hearing these Republicans trying to dismiss the three
injuries Kerry got in Vietnam," Cleland said. "You know, I didn't
see Ann Coulter out there. I didn't see Rush Limbaugh out there.
I didn't see Dick Cheney, who got five deferments out there.
...They turn their slime machine on John Kerry. They did it to
John McCain. They did it to me. Don't let them do it to John
Kerry."
Cleland had the crowd's rapt attention as he told a story about
how Kerry flouted procedure to chase after a Viet Cong soldier
who had aimed a rocket-propelled gun at Kerry's boat.
Kerry "runs into the woods after the guy and killed him," Cleland
said of the incident that earned Kerry one of his medals. "So if
you think John Kerry won't go after the terrorists, you're
wrong."
Despite Kerry's early vote authorizing Bush to use force in Iraq,
the bottom line with Kerry supporters is that this is Bush's war,
a war of choice and not one in which a President Kerry would have
engaged.
"I truly believe that even though our troops have been
successful, this administration has been a failure," said John
Hunt, co-chairman of Nevada Veterans for Kerry. Hunt is an Air
Force veteran, and his stepson, William Harris, 22, is an Army
private based at Fort Bragg, N.C., who just returned from combat
in Iraq.
Hunt, who ran unsuccessfully as a Democrat for state attorney
general a few years ago, helped organize the event at the
Cambridge Recreation Center, a few miles from the fabled Las
Vegas Strip. He said he's been calling veterans all over Clark
County and finding what he describes as widespread disenchantment
with the president.
The Defense
There are, of course, people who believe just as strongly that
the president made the right call on Iraq. Even many of those who
are troubled by his handling of it, say he shouldn't be
criticized now that the United States is at war.
Among Bush's supporters is Ralph Ingle, a 75-year-old retired
Army sergeant who served in Korea and Vietnam. A couple months
ago, he received a call from state Sen. Terry Care, himself a
former Veteran volunteering for Kerry in Nevada. Care wanted to
know if Ingle would join Veterans for Kerry and work to get him
elected.
"He said, 'No thanks,'" Care said.
Ingle, a self-described independent who voted for Bush in 2000,
said that his support for the war has grown over the last year. "
I think it was sort of a bad deal going in there," he said. "But
once we're in there, I'm with the troops and the president all
the way. When the commander in chief sends us, you go. Once we're
in there, we don't go running scared. Otherwise these people,
whether it's the old Commies or these present-day terrorists, if
we go running from them, we'll be running forever."
Ingle, who lives near Nellis Air Force Base in suburban Clark
County, said he hasn't made up his mind on who he'll vote for
this time, but he's leaning toward Bush again.
But not even Bush's supporters here believe the war will help him
win Nevada. At best, they say, it'll be a wash.
When Vice President Cheney visited the state last month to speak
at a fundraiser in Henderson, he focused primarily on what he
described as a reviving economy. He made no direct mention of
Iraq.
"As all of us know, these past three-and-a-half years have
brought many challenges to America, and our economy has been
through a lot," Cheney said. "We have faced recession, terrorist
attack and the uncertainties that exist in a time of war."
Republican political consultant Sid Rogich predicted Bush would
win the state.
"I have not seen any evidence that people are any more
dissatisfied in Nevada than any other place" with the Iraq
situation, said Rogich, one of Bush's so-called "Rangers" who has
helped the campaign raise at least $200,000. "The war is
essentially a split issue here like in any other state."
Adams, the chairman of Bush's state veterans organization,
believes the war will help Bush. What voters are looking for in
today's uncertain, tense times, he says, is a leader who is
unwavering and unshakable in his resolve, someone who won't be
intimidated.
"When we talk to people in the discussions they recognize that
we're in war and these people are trying to destroy our way of
life," Adams said. "You know, terrorism, it's always in the back
of people's minds here. Las Vegas always comes up on the radar
screen as a potential target," he said. "Many people look at the
war as something that is being fought to keep that from happening
here locally."
He said his group has not sought to make an issue of Kerry's
service and whether he deserves the medals he received, but he
insisted many veterans say they won't vote for Kerry because he
criticized the war when he returned from Vietnam.
Washingtonpost.com videographer John Poole and producer Amy
Tennery contributed to this report.
© 2004 The Washington Post Company
*****************************************************************
63 Japan Times: MOX FACES THUMBS DOWN
Wednesday, August 11, 2004
Kepco cost-cuts proved fatal: protesters
By ERIC JOHNSTON Staff writer
OSAKA -- Antinuclear activists in Fukui and Osaka prefectures
said Tuesday the accident the day before at the Mihama atomic
plant was due to Kansai Electric Power Co.'s attempts to cut
costs and will negatively effect the utility's plans to burn MOX
fuel in the reactor.
As Kepco President Yosaku Fuji toured the Mihama power plant in
Fukui Prefecture on Tuesday, offering apologies, local
politicians and antinuclear activists who live nearby called for
Kepco to answer allegations that the accident was the result of
cost-cutting.
The accident occurred when a pipe carrying hot steam developed a
hole. Four workers with Kiuchi Keisoku, an Osaka-based Kepco
subcontractor, were killed and seven injured.
Kepco admitted Tuesday it had received warnings in November from
another subcontractor working at Mihama that the section of pipe
that broke Monday was in need of inspection. Kepco, however, did
not carry out any checks.
"Kepco officials put cost-cutting ahead of safety. And the
fundamental reason they were under so much pressure to cut costs
was because of deregulation of the electric power industry," said
Teruyuki Matsushita, a Mihama assembly member who has long
opposed nuclear power.
Michiko Ogiso, a longtime antinuclear activist in Fukui, said
the accident will probably further delay plans by Kepco to burn
mixed uranium-plutonium (MOX) fuel at the Mihama No. 3 reactor.
Kepco officials still hope to start the MOX program as soon as
possible, but Ogiso said public opinion in Fukui is turning
against the plan.
"There have been so many problems with nuclear power plants over
the years in Fukui. How many other plants were improperly
inspected or not checked at all? Kepco may have made cost-cutting
efforts at other plants as well," she said.
However, she added that things would basically remain the same
at the local political level.
"I don't think the accident will cause Fukui Gov. (Issei
Nishikawa) to become antinuclear. However, it will probably force
him to be more skeptical and not just trust Kepco when it claims
its power plants are safe," she said.
While Kepco officials were kept busy apologizing to Mihama and
Fukui residents, about 30 antinuclear activists held a protest in
front of the utility's headquarters in Osaka.
"This accident comes just a few years after Kepco admitted that
data related to a MOX fuel shipment from England had been
fabricated. Kepco has shown that it is not qualified to operate
nuclear plants," said Hideyuki Koyama, an Osaka-based activist.
Koyama and the other activists called on Kepco to hold a public
forum to discuss the cause of the accident. Kepco officials in
Osaka said only that they would pass along the request to the
appropriate authorities.
The Japan Times: Aug. 11, 2004 (C) All rights reserved
*****************************************************************
64 Guardian Unlimited: Kerry Says Bush Broke Nuclear Waste Vow
From the Associated Press
[UP]
Wednesday August 11, 2004 12:46 AM
AP Photo NVJC103
By NEDRA PICKLER
Associated Press Writer
LAS VEGAS (AP) - Democratic presidential challenger John Kerry,
making a play for a state that supported President Bush four
years ago, accused the president of breaking his word with a plan
to bury nuclear waste in Nevada.
Kerry said the president broke the promise he made in the 2000
race to ensure science and not politics determined his decision
whether to ship waste to Yucca Mountain. Bush approved Yucca
Mountain as the nation's nuclear dump site after winning the
presidency, even though many scientific studies remained
unfinished.
``It's about promises kept and promises broken,'' Kerry said.
He made his own campaign promise: ``When John Kerry is president,
there is going to be no nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain.
Period,'' he said.
Kerry remained focused on Yucca Mountain while campaigning in
Nevada, even as other events dominated the presidential campaign.
He let his advisers defend him from Bush's criticism of his
stance on the war in Iraq. And he did not speak about President
Bush's selection of Florida Rep. Porter Goss to head the CIA,
instead responding by written statement from his campaign
headquarters in Washington.
Kerry's statement called for quick Senate hearings on Goss'
nomination, but kept the heat on Bush to name a national
intelligence director and other recommendations of the Sept. 11
commission.
For years, Nevada has been fighting plans to move the nation's
used reactor fuel to Yucca Mountain.
Bush campaign spokesman Steve Schmidt accused Kerry of
flip-flopping on Yucca Mountain because Kerry has voted for some
measures that included provisions that would have allowed nuclear
dumps there. But every time he has faced the simple choice of
voting whether or not to send waste to Yucca, Kerry has voted
against it.
Kerry said he is concerned about the safety and security of
storing the waste 90 miles outside of Las Vegas at a mountain
that sits atop the region's major water supply. Kerry also noted
seismic activity has been measured at the mountain and could pose
a safety threat.
Kerry said he would leave waste at nuclear sites around the
country while he instructs the National Academy of Science to
study how the world should deal with nuclear waste and storage.
Kerry and Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., said Nevada voters should
choose Kerry for another reason - he saved the life of one of
their senators.
Kerry and Reid recalled how, on was July 12, 1988, Nevada
Republican Sen. Chic Hecht was attending a weekly GOP luncheon in
the Capitol when a piece of apple lodged in his throat. Kerry,
running late for the corresponding Democratic luncheon, was just
getting off an elevator when he saw Hecht buckled over in the
corridor. He rushed over and performed the Heimlich maneuver.
``I suspect that I was late for that meeting and I walked out of
that elevator because there was a higher power that said that was
the moment that I was blessed to be there for Chic Hecht,'' Kerry
said.
^---
On the Net:
Kerry campaign: http://www.johnkerry.com
Bush campaign: http://www.georgewbush.com
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004
*****************************************************************
65 fremontneb.com: Search for $141M under way
Fremont, Nebraska's Community Newspaper
LINCOLN (AP) — Now that Nebraska has agreed to pay $141 million
for blocking efforts to build a regional low-level radioactive
waste dump within its borders, lawmakers have to find the money.
"I have strong hope that we don't have to raise taxes — that we
can absorb it some way,' said Sen. Roger Wehrbein of Plattsmouth,
chairman of the budget-writing Appropriations Committee.
Nebraska is in the middle of an ongoing budget crisis and
lawmakers will use the legislative session that begins in January
to find the money.
"It won't be easy, but at least it will be behind us," Wehrbein
said.
The other members of the Central Interstate Low-Level Radioactive
Waste Compact — Kansas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana — voted
3-1 Monday to accept the settlement in their case against
Nebraska. Kansas voted against the settlement and Nebraska could
not vote.
The settlement ended a lawsuit in which U.S. District Judge
Richard Kopf in Lincoln ruled that former Nebraska Gov. Ben
Nelson, now a U.S. senator, engaged in a politically motivated
and orchestrated plot to keep the dump from being built in
Nebraska. Kopf ordered Nebraska to pay $151 million.
Nebraska agreed Monday to drop its appeal of that decision to the
U.S. Supreme Court.
Gov. Mike Johanns said Monday that the economy — and Nebraska's
tax revenues — are improving.
"I do believe I can deliver a budget not requesting a tax
increase to fund this" settlement money, he said.
Johanns stressed that the compact originally called for Nebraska
to be responsible for the entire $151 million judgment, plus
interest, bringing Nebraska's total obligation to $207 million.
The compact also had insisted that Nebraska was still obligated
to host a nuclear waste dump, and that Nebraska would not be
allowed to use the facility, Johanns said.
Under the settlement, Nebraska will not be obligated to allow a
dump in the state.
"Considering the potential downside of this, this is a good
settlement for the state," Johanns said.
Under terms of the settlement, Nebraska has the option of making
four annual payments of $38.5 million starting next year. With
interest, that would bring the total amount paid to $154 million.
But the amount Nebraska pays could be reduced to $130 million if
the compact and Nebraska successfully negotiate access for their
waste at a proposed site in Texas.
The Texas Legislature approved a bill last year that allows for
the licensing of two private waste disposal facilities.
Earlier, Nebraska offered to pay Texas a flat fee of $25 million
to take the compact's low-level radioactive waste, plus $5
million to cover any unforeseen expenses for storing the waste.
The Nebraska dump was to have been built in the northeast part of
the state and take waste from the compact.
Nebraska officials argued that they didn't license the dump
because of concerns about possible pollution and a high water
table at the proposed site — a process that Kopf ruled Nelson
tainted.
Nelson was overseas traveling on Monday and could not be reached
for comment.
His chief of staff, Tim Becker, said he was sure the settlement
will be an issue in Nelson's re-election bid in 2006, especially
if Johanns runs against him as expected.
"It has been a political issue — I suspect it will continue to be
a political issue," Becker said.
The dispute over the Nebraska waste site had its genesis in 1970,
when Nevada, South Carolina and Washington grew tired of
accepting low-level radioactive waste from the rest of the
country.
As a result, Congress told the rest of the states in 1980 to
build their own dumps or join regional groups to dispose of the
waste, which includes contaminated tools and clothing from
nuclear power plants, hospitals and research centers.
z Nebraska joined the Central Interstate compact, which voted in
1987 to put its waste in Nebraska. The fight began soon after,
with both sides wrangling in court on several issues.
No compact has yet built a dump.
Copyright © 2004 Fremont Tribune
*****************************************************************
66 PE.com: Superfund listing sought
| Inland Southern California | Corona-Norco
NORCO: Health concerns need to be addressed and getting that
status could help, backers say.
06:49 AM PDT on Tuesday, August 10, 2004
By BONNIE STEWART / The Press-Enterprise
Wyle Labs meeting
When: Aug. 16
Where: 3820 Clark Ave., Norco
Learning Center South
Open House: 5:30 p.m.
Meeting: 7 p.m.
Held by the California Department of Toxic Substances Control
The Wyle Labs Community Advisory Group asked Norco residents
Monday to lobby their legislators so that the hazardous test site
would be added to the federal Superfund list.
"We have to get it on the Superfund list to get our health
concerns addressed," the group's chairwoman, Jeanne Guertin, told
a group of about 45 people.
Last month, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced
that soil and groundwater pollution on Wyle Lab's 428 acres was
serious enough to rank it among the nation's most toxic sites on
its Superfund list.
The agency, however, declined to add the Wyle property to the
list because the state is overseeing its cleanup.
The EPA's yearlong investigation uncovered high levels of
pesticides, heavy metals, the rocket-fuel chemical perchlorate
and an industrial solvent known as TCE in the soil and the
groundwater.
Wyle Labs tested military products, electronics, and components
for space shuttles and rocket engines beginning in the 1950s.
A developer's proposal to build more than 300 homes on the land
has been slowed by the contamination issue.
Dozens of residents who have lived or attended school near Wyle
have blamed their cancer and thyroid disorders on the pollution.
Various tests have found chemicals in soil beyond Wyle's
property. This summer, traces of a suspected-cancer causing
solvent were found in soil samples from a nearby neighborhood,
although officials say the contamination poses no increased
cancer risk to residents.
Even if the Wyle property was added to the list, the EPA would
not look into health concerns from the past, said Betsy Curnow, a
section chief with the EPA's Superfund division.
But the community could apply for a technical assistance grant,
Curnow said in a telephone interview. Residents could use the
money to hire consultants to help them understand technical
documents but not to conduct health assessments, she said.
Sites are put on the Superfund list if the cleanup is too big or
too costly for a state, she said. In most of those cases, the
polluting companies no longer exist or have no funds to remove
the contamination.
"Our view of the situation is that the state has the project
under control," she said. And money for the cleanup isn't an
issue because the state has ordered Wyle Labs and the new
property owner to help pay for the bill, she said.
For Wyle to be added to the list, the governor or his appointee
would have to make the request, she said.
Several people at Monday's meeting were concerned that if Wyle is
put on the Superfund list, property values in Norco will fall
because of the stigma attached to being on the list.
A Superfund listing would hurt property owners, said Norco
resident Larry Jenkins.
Former EPA official Matt Hagemann said there are other ways Norco
residents can get help.
Now with the Santa Monica-based consulting firm, Soil Water Air
Protection Enterprise, or SWAPE, Hagemann told the group that
people dealing with health conditions that developed during
Wyle's 47 years at its Norco location may have to turn to
litigation.
"Sometimes it is necessary and the only way your needs can be
met," he said.
He also urged the citizens to make sure the state does an
in-depth health risk assessment of the area.
The state agencies are "totally competent to do risk assessments
just as rigorous as the U.S. EPA," Hagemann said.
State health officials are offering some health-related
assistance, including a training program for local doctors on the
health risks associated with the site, said Marilyn Underwood, a
toxicologist with the state's Department of Health Services.
In a phone interview, she said the department also plans to train
mental health workers to help people deal with the stress of
living near a contaminated property.
Reach Bonnie Stewart at (951) 368-9475 or bstewart@pe.com
[bstewart@pe.com] More headlines...
Superfund listing sought
[http://www.pe.com/localnews/corona/stories/PE_News_Local_wyle10.
a0ecd.html]
© 2004 Belo Interactive Inc.
*****************************************************************
67 Berkshire Eagle: Water line plan to be debated in Williamstown
August 10, 2004 Pittsfield, MA
By D. R. Bahlman
Berkshire Eagle Staff
WILLIAMSTOWN -- The Selectmen yesterday unanimously endorsed
Town Manager Peter Fohlin's proposal of a series of public
informational meetings to discuss the construction of a water
line along Cold Spring Road.
"Sufficient background information has been gathered to support
an intelligent public dialogue" about the project, Fohlin wrote
in a memorandum to the board.
Fohlin suggests that town officials and representatives of the
entities that would be among the primary beneficiaries of the
water line be invited to "fully explain the potential water line
project and its meaning to the town and to the Northern Berkshire
region" at sessions to be scheduled as part of regular
Selectmen's meetings, beginning Monday, Sept. 13.
Well contamination
Those entities, as listed in Fohlin's memo, are Northern
Berkshire Health Systems, the Sterling and Francine Clark Art
Institute and Mount Greylock Regional High School.
The question of whether public water service should be extended
to outer Cold Spring Road has its roots in an "enquiry
[concerning] bringing public water to the Clark's proposed art
restoration and conservation facility, Northern Berkshire Health
Systems' facility and the high school.
"These preliminary efforts took on a greater urgency" when the
chemical perchlorate was detected in the well serving the high
school, Fohlin wrote.
Noting that the five possible routes that could be traversed by
the water line are each projected to cost between $3 million and
$3.5 million, Fohlin said potential water sales to the three
entities might be sufficient to support about $600,000 of the
construction cost.
"That estimate is founded on the belief that all town residents
should pay the same price for water, and that existing water
customers should not see their rates increase as a result of this
project," the town manager wrote.
Williamstown's water system operates on an enterprise fund
comprised of proceeds from water sales; no money from the town's
general fund is involved. Fohlin said that while it is legally
possible to augment the enterprise fund with taxpayers' money,
such a move would require an override vote and a town meeting
appropriation.
Fohlin's memo declares that the financial well-being of Northern
Berkshire Health Systems "in a fragile market of a challenged
industry is crucial to the mental and physical well-being of us
all.
"The Sweetwood [assisted-living facility] expansion will go
forward because of its importance to NBHS and the North Adams
Regional Hospital," the town manager's memo reads. "The sale of
adjacent property to the Clark Art Institute and the Clark's
ongoing financial support will make it possible for NBHS to build
its critical expansion, and to do so without locating it on
Phelps' Knoll."
If Sweetwood cannot access an off-site water supply
economically, Fohlin wrote, "they will be forced to locate their
expansion on Phelps' Knoll so as to build outside the zone
surrounding their on-site wells. A water line will allow less
development on Phelps' Knoll than will be forced to occur
otherwise."
The perchlorate on the high school property, said Fohlin, "is
almost a side issue." While it is important to address the
matter, he said, "we would be having this discussion even if
perchlorate did not exist. The reconstruction of Mount Greylock
will require a sprinkler system, which is most economically and
effectively served by a public water system."
Adelphia contract
In other business, the Selectmen signed a seven-year contract
with Adelphia Communications. The contract, which is the product
of months of negotiation, includes $30,000 for WilliNet, the
town's public access cable TV station, 4 percent of annual
receipts from local subscribers and $5,000 for a special
technology fund. A system upgrade in the sixth year of the
contract also is provided for. The previous contract was for 10
years and included a $50,000 upfront payment.
Copyright ©1999-2004 New England Newspapers, Inc., a
*****************************************************************
68 [southnews] Nagasaki remembers A- bomb, urges US to ban nuclear
Date: Tue, 10 Aug 2004 01:30:12 -0500 (CDT)
------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~-->
Make a clean sweep of pop-up ads. Yahoo! Companion Toolbar.
Now with Pop-Up Blocker. Get it for free!
http://us.click.yahoo.com/L5YrjA/eSIIAA/yQLSAA/7gSolB/TM
--------------------------------------------------------------------~->
The mayor of Nagasaki urged the United States to help rid the world of
nuclear weapons, 59 years to the day after a US plane dropped an atomic
bomb over the Japanese city, effectively ending World War II.
Nagasaki remembers atomic bomb, urges US to ban nuclear weapons
AFP Monday August 9,
The mayor of Nagasaki urged the United States to help rid the world of
nuclear weapons, 59 years to the day after a US plane dropped an atomic
bomb over the Japanese city, effectively ending World War II.
The attack on the hilly port city on Kyushu island in southwest Japan
killed 74,000 people and came just three days after the United States
unleashed the world's first atomic bomb used in war on the city of
Hiroshima.
The intense heat, shock waves and ensuing fires completely destroyed all
structures for four kilometres (two-and-a-half miles) along the city's
heavily built-up Urakami Valley.
By the end of 1945, the number of dead from the initial blast plus those
who succumbed to burns and radiation sickness was 74,000, or one third
of the city's population, with another 75,000 injured.
The annual ceremony of commemoration began with a minute of silent
prayer at 11:02 am (0202 GMT), the exact time that the plutonium bomb
was dropped above the city August 9, 1945.
"So long as the world's leading superpower fails to change its posture
of dependence on nuclear weapons, it is clear that the tide of nuclear
proliferation cannot be stemmed," Iccho Ito said in his annual
declaration to more than 5,000 people at the city's peace park.
"People of America: The path leading to the eventual survival of the
human race unequivocally requires the elimination of nuclear arms. The
time has come to join hands and embark upon this path," he said,
speaking near the epicentre of the blast.
Standing at the foot of the Peace Statue -- a bronze figure of a man
pointing to the patch of sky from which the atomic bomb fell -- Ito
criticised Washington for continuing to possess 10,000 nuclear weapons.
He also criticised the United States for conducting subcritical nuclear
tests, which contain the ingredients of a nuclear warhead but have no
thermonuclear blast and in theory create no radioactive emissions.
"In addition, the so-called mini-nuclear weapons that are the subject of
new development efforts are intended to deliver truly horrific levels of
force," he noted, saying the radioactivity they would release would be
no different to that from the bomb dropped on Nagasaki.
"The city's increasingly elderly atomic bomb survivors continue to
suffer from the after-effects of the bombing as well as from health
problems induced by the stress of their experience," he said.
"We call upon the citizens of the United States to look squarely at the
reality of the tragedies that have unfolded in the wake of the atomic
bombings 59 years ago."
Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi attended the ceremony and pledged to
"make utmost efforts towards the abolition of nuclear weapons."
Masatoshi Tsunenari, who was 16 when the bomb was dropped, recalled the
horror immediately after the blast.
"People with burns too horrible to look at and people in agony from
severe injuries were desperately calling for help, he said.
On the anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing on Friday, city mayor
Tadatoshi Akiba lashed out at the United States and accused it of having
an "egocentric world view."
The Hiroshima bombing killed half the city's population -- some 140,000
people -- immediately or in the months after the attack due to radiation
injuries or horrific burns.
The loss of life among ordinary Japanese from the two attacks was
credited with forcing Japan to surrender six days later, ending World
War II.
During Monday's ceremony, the names of 2,707 survivors who died or were
confirmed dead in the past year as a result of illness from the bombing
was added to the Nagasaki memorial, bringing the cumulative death toll
associated with the effects of the attack to 134,592.
___________________________________________
You show yours, I'll hide mine
Guardian
by Simon Tisdall 08/06 2004
George Bush was not pulling his punches. In a definitive policy speech
earlier this year on preventing the spread of weapons of mass
destruction, the US president declared: "The greatest threat before
humanity today is the possibility of secret and sudden attack with
chemical or biological or radiological or nuclear weapons.
"America will not permit terrorists and dangerous regimes to threaten
us with the world's most deadly weapons," he went on. "We're
determined to confront those threats at source. We will stop these
weapons from being acquired or built. We'll block them being
transferred. We'll prevent them ever being used."
The US position, it seems, could hardly be clearer. So how to explain,
and how conceivably to justify, a little-noticed demarche last week by
Mr Bush's officials at the UN conference on disarmament in Geneva?
What the US did, in effect, was to torpedo a new global treaty banning
the production and supply of materials essential to the building of
nuclear weapons.
It is known as the fissile material cut-off treaty. It has been under
discussion for years, strongly supported by Britain and the EU. Its
main aim is to strengthen the nuclear non-proliferation Treaty (NPT),
the cornerstone of the international effort to curb the spread of WMD.
It is specifically aimed at nuclear-armed states such as India,
Pakistan and Israel which are not party to the NPT.
But by seeking a global halt to the production of highly enriched
uranium and plutonium for weapons, its wider overall aim is to reduce
the chance of such materials being obtained by irresponsible regimes
or non-state terror groups.
While dismaying, the Bush administration's stance was not totally
unexpected. Bill Clinton backed the fissile material treaty in 2000,
but once in office the Bush administration dragged its feet. Last year
in Geneva it announced a review of its position, thus delaying further
talks.
Last week the US ambassador to the conference, Jackie Wolcott Sanders,
finally gave the go-ahead for negotiations, but with a fatal caveat
attached.
The US would back the treaty in principle, but it would not support
the inclusion of binding monitoring, verification and inspection
provisions.
A state department statement said the proposed inspection regime
"would have been so extensive that it could compromise key
signatories' core national security interests, and so costly that many
countries will be hesitant to accept it".
But as the US knows very well, any new treaty is all but unenforcable
without effective monitoring and verification. Inspections are
essential, say arms control experts, if such treaties are to work.
That is a view with which the British government, for example,
wholeheartedly agrees.
"We believe that such a treaty should be established. We support it.
It is a useful step towards curbing global proliferation," a Foreign
Office spokesman said yesterday. "We continue to believe it should be
verified. We do not take the same position as the US."
In private, officials are hard put to conceal their disappointment at
the US stance.
Stated American concern about security and cost does not wholly
explain it. At the nub of the issue is Washington's fundamental
objection to opening up American military bases and industrial plants
to international, especially UN, inspection.
For the neo-conservatives and ideologues around Mr Bush this is a
visceral objection - even a matter of principle. Put plainly, they
appear content to place the safeguarding of an uncompromised,
untrammelled American sovereignty ahead of effective global arms control.
And they have plenty of form. In 2001, for this same basic reason, the
Bush administration scuppered a proposed inspections regime to police
the biological weapons convention, again to Britain's great dismay.
For much the same reason, perhaps, key aims of the 1997 chemical
weapons convention (CWC) remain unfulfilled. Between them the US and
Russia possess more than 97% of the world's known chemical weapons
material, but neither will remotely meet the 2007 deadline for its
full destruction, according to the US government accountability
office. It says more inspections are needed to enforce the CWC,
especially at dual-use chemical plants.
For much the same reason, the Bush administration has set aside the
comprehensive test ban treaty and is pressing ahead, beyond
international scrutiny and in defiance of the NPT, with the
development of new generation nuclear weapons.
Iranians and North Koreans are under intense US pressure to cooperate
with inspectors from the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency. But
to Mr Bush, it seems, international verification procedures are a
one-way street. What happened in Geneva last week underlined that.
The very same US government that went to war in Iraq because Saddam
Hussein did not fully comply with UN weapons inspections unilaterally
rejects similar control over its own WMD arsenal.
The archives of South News can be found at
http://southmovement.alphalink.com.au/southnews/
Yahoo! Groups Links
<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/southnews/
<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
southnews-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
*****************************************************************
69 [progchat_action] America's blind-eye to N-arms
Date: Tue, 10 Aug 2004 17:19:45 -0500 (CDT)
America's blind-eye to N-arms
By Jonathan Power | August 10, 2004
IN HIS forthcoming memoir on the India-Pakistan nuclear relationship,
Strobe Talbott, a former US deputy secretary of state, recounts the
surprise and alarm that swept the eighth floor of the State Department
on May 11, 1998, when the first reports came in over CNN that India had
tested a nuclear weapon.
One presumes the diplomats were reading the Indian press carefully. For
example, I have in front of me two articles, dated April 8 and 15, 1998,
from the influential Indian daily The Statesman maintainin that since
the nationalists of the Bharatiya Janata Party had come to power, India
was going nuclear quickly. The information was around for those who had
eyes and ears. It was as if Washington didn't want to know.
Similarly, the reports emerging today suggesting that Saudi Arabia may
be the latest Middle Eastern country to engage in a research program on
nuclear weapons recalls a report of the International Institute for
Strategic Studies published as long ago as 1989. This London-based body
remarked on the then-recent Saudi purchase of Chinese CSS-2 rockets:
"Missiles of such range are difficult to justify unless they carry
nuclear weapons."
"They are too elaborate and expensive to make sense for anything else,"
I was told at the time. "Controllable thrust engines, inertial guidance
systems, and heat shielding put up the cost to astronomical levels."
But Washington didn't want to know. It still doesn't. Not one senior
administration figure is talking about Saudi Arabian nuclear weapons
research despite the new and worrisome intelligence reports.
It is the same with US policy toward Israel's large stock of nuclear
weapons. Until recently the United States would not confirm on the
record what everybody knew -- that Israel has more than 200 nuclear weapons.
Washington prefers, when that is its immediate strategic interest (even
if not its long-term one), to put the telescope to its blind eye. It
couldn't allow itself to be too agitated about India's nuclear research
because it had kept quiet for so long about that of Pakistan, its close
ally. When the Soviet Army poured into Afghanistan during the Carter
administration, the United States suspended its nuclear nonproliferation
policy so Pakistan was sanctions-free and could receive the military and
economic aid the United States wanted it to have. Yet everyone knew that
Pakistan was developing its nuclear weapons capability at a fast rate.
And today we know that Pakistan's chief nuclear weapons scientist was
running a side-show, selling nuclear technology and equipment far and
wide -- to North Korea, Libya, Iran, and now, intelligence sources say,
a "fourth customer," which can only be Saudi Arabia.
How can Washington be a credible force for antiproliferation when this
is the recent historical record: doing little or nothing until too late?
Talbott gives a hair-raising ringside view of the Indian-Pakistani
nuclear crisis of 1999. He reports that President Clinton thought it
brought the antagonists closer to nuclear war than the United States and
the Soviet Union were at the time of the Cuban missile crisis.
We know, too, that when Saudi Arabia bought these Chinese missiles in
1988, Israel was nervous enough to warn Saudi Arabia that it would
engage in a preemptive nuclear strike if it ever had cause for suspicion
they would be used against it. Some close observers are still convinced
that only US pressure stayed the Israeli hand in the very nervous March
and April of 1988. (Saudi Arabia, for its part, attempted to reassure
Israel by saying it acquired the rockets for defense against Iran, not
Israel.) It is difficult for Washington to rally international opinion
behind a hard line on nuclear nonproliferation in North Korea and Iran
when its recent past performance is so ambiguous and inconsistent.
The Bush administration's credibility is further undermined by its
actions in securing "loose nukes" and near-nukes in Russia. Harvard
professor Graham Allison describes the attitude of the Group of Eight
industrialized nations toward this issue as "lackadaisical and
unfocused." Despite agreement in principle with Russia to work together
on the issue, less plutonium and highly enriched uranium have been
secured in the two years since Sept. 11, 2001, than the two years
before. President Bush does not give the issue his personal involvement.
Meanwhile, at home, rather than setting a good example by freezing
weapons development, the administration is seeking an increase in
research funding for two new kinds of nuclear weapons.
Is hypocrisy the tribute that vice pays to virtue? If so, where do we go
from here? Is the sauce that is good for the goose not good for the gander?
Jonathan Power is a columnist based in London.
--
) Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company
(Boston Globe)
to the source:
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2004/08/10/americas_blind_eye_to_n_arms?mode=PF
NOTICE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107,
this material is distributed without profit to those who
have expressed a prior interest in receiving this
information for research and educational purposes.
http://www.duckdaotsu.org
a proud mediachannel.org affiliate
International Progressive Publications Network
ask us about the freedom underground or subscribe to Taoist meditations
send an email with "subscribe" or "freeground" in the subject line
"The imposition of stigma is the most common form
of violence used in democratic societies." - R. A. Pinker
*****************************************************************
70 [progchat_action] Nagasaki remembers a dark day in history
Date: Tue, 10 Aug 2004 23:00:34 -0500 (CDT)
Nagasaki remembers a dark day in history
Nagasaki - Fifty-nine years after a nuclear bomb destroyed the
south-western city of Nagasaki, Mayor Itcho Ito asked the citizens of
the United States to destroy their nuclear weapons.
"We would like to ask American citizens to co-operate with us to
extinguish nuclear weapons," the Nagasaki mayor said at a peace
commemoration to mark the day.
He criticised the US government for maintaining about 10 000 nuclear
weapons.
It was the first time the mayor directed his remarks to Americans. The
US military dropped the bomb in 1945.
A minute of silence was observed at 11.02am, marking the time when "Fat
Boy" bomb devastated the south-western Japanese city.
"We call upon the citizens of the United States to look squarely at the
reality of the tragedies of the atomic bombings," the mayor said, citing
the 1996 opinion of the International Court of Justice that using or
threatening to use nuclear weapons is at odds with international law.
Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi reiterated Japan's commitment to the
global elimination of nuclear arms.
The total number of victims claimed by the nuclear bomb was 134 592,
including an estimated 74 000 people who died as a direct result of the
bombing by the end of 1945.
The US military dropped the bomb on Nagasaki three days after Hiroshima
- the first time ever in human history such a destructive weapon was
used. - Sapa-dpa
Quickwire
Published on the Web by IOL on 2004-08-09 06:12:02
--
copyright
) Independent Online 2004.
to the source:
http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?newslett=1&click_id=3&art_id=qw1092024722182B213&set_id=1
NOTICE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107,
this material is distributed without profit to those who
have expressed a prior interest in receiving this
information for research and educational purposes.
http://www.duckdaotsu.org
a proud mediachannel.org affiliate
International Progressive Publications Network
ask us about the freedom underground or subscribe to Taoist meditations
send an email with "subscribe" or "freeground" in the subject line
"The imposition of stigma is the most common form
of violence used in democratic societies." - R. A. Pinker
*****************************************************************
71 Daily Yomiuri: Govt to push CTBT ratification at September meet
Yomiuri Shimbun
Japan and other nations that have ratified the Comprehensive
Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) plan to hold a foreign ministers
meeting in New York in late September in a bid to facilitate the
early entry into force of the treaty, government sources said
Monday.
The government organized a similar meeting of foreign ministers,
the first of its kind, jointly with Australia and the Netherlands
in September 2002.
But there has been no prospect of the treaty coming into effect
since then, leading the government to conclude it would be
necessary to urge--on a political level--those countries that
have not signed or ratified the treaty to do so, the sources
said.
The government plans to hold the meeting to coincide with the
time general speeches are given at the U.N. General Assembly,
which will start on Sept. 21, the sources said.
Tokyo also plans to announce a joint declaration with other
nations that stipulates the need to persuade more countries to
ratify the treaty, and to establish an inspection system that
would assure they comply with it, the sources said.
According to the sources, countries such as Finland and those
that organized the first meeting have expressed interest in
jointly holding the September meeting.
The government expects more than 18 nations will participate in
the meeting, the sources said.
The CTBT, adopted by the U.N. General Assembly in September 1996,
stipulates that it will come into effect when ratified by 44
nuclear powers or nations with the capability to develop nuclear
weapons.
Only 32 such nations, including Japan, have ratified the treaty
so far.
At the meeting, the government plans to declare its intention to
urge nonratifying Asian nations among the 44, including Indonesia
and Vietnam, to ratify the treaty, the sources said.
Of the 44, nine countries, including the United States and China,
have signed but not yet ratified the treaty.
North Korea, Pakistan and India have not signed it.
Copyright 2004 The Yomiuri Shimbun
*****************************************************************
72 Japan Times: Antinuclear plea the stuff of lip service
Wednesday, August 11, 2004
TODAY'S THREATS SIDELINING NPT, CTBT
By SHINYA AJIMA
NAGASAKI (Kyodo) People in Hiroshima and Nagasaki once again
called for the total elimination of nuclear arms at this year's
memorial services marking the 59th anniversary of the 1945 U.S.
atomic bombings of their cities.
[News photo]
Antinuclear Activists arrive in Nagasaki after completing a
4,500-km walk between Australia and Japan.
But the gap appears to be widening between what they seek and
what the declared nuclear powers are able to accomplish toward
nonproliferation and disarmament.
In this year's peace declarations, the Hiroshima and Nagasaki
mayors again criticized the United States for its pursuit of
enhanced nuclear capabilities.
"The egocentric worldview of the U.S. government is reaching
extremes," Hiroshima Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba said. His Nagasaki
counterpart, Itcho Ito, said the U.S. "position of dependence on
nuclear weapons" could hinder nonproliferation efforts.
At their annual ceremonies, held in Hiroshima on Friday and in
Nagasaki on Monday, both mayors urged the Japanese government to
lead the global antinuclear movement.
Antiwar calls, as usual, were also part of the ceremonies this
year.
The mayors gave implicit warnings to Prime Minister Junichiro
Koizumi, who participated in both memorial services, over his and
other lawmakers' calls for the pacifist Constitution to be
revised.
Koizumi, who faced a cool reception and even boos in Hiroshima,
reiterated Japan's pacifist position but fell short of promising
his government would not seek to amend the Constitution -- a move
some say would put the charter more in line with today's
realities and Japan's global activities, including the current
deployment of Self-Defense Forces troops in Iraq on a
humanitarian mission.
Both mayors spoke of the Review Conference of the Nuclear
Nonproliferation Treaty, scheduled for May at United Nations
headquarters in New York, saying they hope the meeting will pave
the way for the total elimination of nuclear weapons.
The main focus of the conference will be to look at how much the
major declared nuclear powers -- Britain, China, France, Russia
and the United States -- have implemented "the unequivocal
undertaking" they pledged in the 2000 review meeting, said Luis
Alfonso de Alba, permanent representative of Mexico to U.N.
organizations in Geneva.
"So far, nuclear-weapon states have completely refused any
verification mechanism to enhance the transparency" of the NPT,
Alba said in a speech in Hiroshima.
In 2000, the signatories agreed on 13 steps to implement the
NPT, including speedy ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban
Treaty and a moratorium on all nuclear tests until the treaty
comes into force.
But the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush has
shown little sign of taking the steps agreed to by his
predecessor, Bill Clinton, who left office before 9/11 and before
threats started to mount that enemies who are hard to pinpoint
may target America or its allies with weapons of mass
destruction.
Undersecretary of State John Bolton spoke of the invalidity of
the undertaking earlier this year at preparation committees for
next year's conference, overshadowing the prospect of
international controls toward nuclear disarmament and eventual
atomic weapons abolition under the NPT.
The United States launched the Proliferation Security Initiative
in May 2003 to intercept weapons of mass destruction while being
transported. Japan and nine other countries joined the
initiative, and the membership has since expanded to 15. Japan
will host the next naval drills under the PSI.
The Hiroshima Municipal Government had asked the five declared
nuclear powers and India and Pakistan, as well as North Korea, to
send government representatives to the A-bomb memorial services
this year.
Only Russia and Pakistan sent representatives. The rest declined
and North Korea did not respond.
While admitting the need for nuclear nonproliferation, Russian
Ambassador to Japan Alexander Losyukov and Pakistani Ambassador
to Japan Kamran Niaz justified their nations' possession of
nuclear weapons on grounds of national security.
"There are terrorists as well as country leaders who cannot
adequately control nuclear arms," Losyukov told reporters in
Hiroshima.
In a separate news conference, Niaz said that concerns over
nuclear proliferation should be addressed "by those who
themselves have thousands of nuclear weapons and . . . the
ability to destroy."
"The goal of a nuclear weapons-free world is still a long way
off," U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan said in a written message
to Hiroshima.
Faced with this situation, Akiba and Ito, who lead Mayors for
Peace, an organization of 611 mayors in 109 countries, are
calling for global cooperation by municipal governments,
nongovernmental organizations and people.
They hope that mobilizing global public opinion against nuclear
arms will ensure no other nation will ever have to experience a
nuclear attack like Japan did.
Reading the Pledge for Peace before a crowd of thousands at the
Nagasaki ceremony, Masatoshi Tsunenari, representing A-bomb
survivors, quoted from the memorial Children Praying for Peace.
"Under the mushroom cloud, I clung to my mother and cried," he
said. "May the tragedy experienced by the children of Nagasaki
never occur again."
The Japan Times: Aug. 11, 2004 (C) All rights reserved
*****************************************************************
73 Daily Camera: Rocky Flats samples may be on hold
[newsroom@dailycamera.com] .
Cleanup group says it may be too expensive to run additional
tests
By Todd Neff, Camera Staff Writer August 10, 2004
A Rocky Flats cleanup oversight group might not take additional
soil samples from the former nuclear-weapons plant site, saying
the process could be too expensive and repetitive.
The U.S. Department of Energy and its main cleanup contractor,
Kaiser-Hill Co., plan to complete the $7.2 billion cleanup effort
by December 2006. At that point, all but 1,000 acres of the
roughly 6,300-acre site will be turned over to the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service to create the Rocky Flats National Wildlife
Refuge.
A group of Rocky Flats Coalition of Local Governments members
began work Monday to determine how to best "validate what they
said they'll do, they will do," as former Broomfield City
Councilman Hank Stovall put it.
Led by representatives from the city and county of Broomfield,
the Rocky Flats Coalition of Local Governments is investigating
how to independently verify that the site meets agreed-upon
cleanup standards.
Independent verification has helped in the past. It led to a
drastic lowering of soil radioactivity cleanup thresholds across
the Rocky Flats site. Stovall, who leads the independent
verification committee, took part in the previous effort, as
well.
Over the years, government samples haven't shown much
contamination in Rocky Flats "buffer zones," but some have
questioned the results.
An early draft of the committee's independent verification plans
said additional "measurements and/or samples will be collected at
selected locations and analyzed to confirm the accuracy and
adequacy of the data presented in the documents and plans."
But representatives from local governments now agree that
additional sampling — a time-consuming and expensive process —
would not be merited unless a consultant hired by the coalition
showed them to be necessary.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Colorado
Department of Public Health and Environment are regulating the
cleanup.
The Fish and Wildlife Service is making its own plans to make
sure the prospective wildlife refuge is clean.
The service expects to receive the results of tissue analyses
from about two dozen deer within the next couple of months, said
Andrew Todd, a contaminant biologist with the Fish and Wildlife
Service.
The deer had been culled to test for chronic wasting disease. But
the Fish and Wildlife Service has sent off the animals' remnants
to test for isotopes of plutonium, americium and uranium.
Todd also said the Fish and Wildlife Service is considering
taking soil samples on prospective trail routes as well as other
measures to ensure that "what we're taking isn't a lemon."
The Fish and Wildlife Service seeks to create up to 19 miles of
trails in the site's former buffer zone, although it has not
finalized plans for the future refuge.
Contact Camera Staff Writer Todd Neff at (303) 473-1327 or
nefft@dailycamera.com.
*****************************************************************
74 DOE: Environmental Management Site-Specific Advisory Board, Hanford
FR Doc 04-18245
[Federal Register: August 10, 2004 (Volume 69, Number 153)]
[Notices] [Page 48475-48476] From the Federal Register Online via
GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr10au04-54]
AGENCY: Department of Energy.
ACTION: Notice of open meeting.
SUMMARY: This notice announces a meeting of the Environmental
[[Page 48476]] Management Site-Specific Advisory Board (EM SSAB),
Hanford. The Federal Advisory Committee Act (Pub. L. 92-463, 86
Stat. 770) requires that public notice of these meeting be
announced in the Federal Register.
DATES: Thursday, September 9, 2004, 9 a.m.-5 p.m.; Friday,
September 10, 2004, 8:30 a.m.-4 p.m.
ADDRESSES: Double Tree Guest Suites, 16500 South Center Parkway,
Seattle, WA 98188, Phone: (206) 575-8220, Fax: (206) 575-4743.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Yvonne Sherman, Public
Involvement Program Manager, Department of Energy, Richland
Operations Office, 825 Jadwin, MSIN A7-75, Richland, WA, 99352;
Phone: (509) 376-6216; Fax: (509) 376-1563.
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Purpose of the Board: The purpose of
the Board is to make recommendations to DOE in areas of
environmental restoration, waste management, and related
activities.
Tentative Agenda: Thursday, September 9, 2004 Annual Face-to Face
Check-in with the Tri-Party Agreement Agencies End States
Workshop River Corridor Contract Hanford Solid Waste
Environmental Impact Statement Record of Decision Friday,
September 10, 2004 Tank Waste Fact Sheet Status of Technical
Assistance Request Board Leadership Public Participation: The
meeting is open to the public.
Written statements may be filed with the Board either before or
after the meeting. Individuals who wish to make oral statements
pertaining to agenda items should contact Yvonne Sherman's office
at the address or telephone number listed above. Requests must be
received five days prior to the meeting and reasonable provision
will be made to include the presentation in the agenda. The
Deputy Designated Federal Officer is empowered to conduct the
meeting in a fashion that will facilitate the orderly conduct of
business. Each individual wishing to make public comment will be
provided equal time to present their comments.
Minutes: The minutes of this meeting will be available for public
review and copying 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-Friday,
except Federal holidays. Minutes will also be available by
writing to Yvonne Sherman, Department of Energy, Richland
Operation Office, 825 Jadwin, MSIN A7- 75, Richland, WA 99352, or
by calling her at (509) 376-1563.
Issued at Washington, DC, on August 5, 2004.
Rachel M. Samuel, Deputy Advisory Committee Management Officer.
[FR Doc. 04-18245 Filed 8-9-04; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 6450-01-P
*****************************************************************
75 SFNM: Lab's 'missing' nuclear weapon disks never existed
Tue Aug 10, 2004 5:22 pm
[http://www.santafenewmexican.com
Larry Barker | KRQE
The presumed missing computer disks that forced the security
shutdown and political uproar at Los Alamos National Lab, appear
to not be missing at all.
KRQE News 13 has learned that the Federal Bureau of Investigation
has concluded the disks, thought to have contained nuclear weapon
secrets, were never missing.
In early July, lab officials announced that the disks were
missing, prompting a massive and unprecedented security shutdown
and consequent investigation. Nearly two dozen scientists and
administrators were placed on leave and virtually all lab
operations were suspended.
Now, sources tell KRQE News 13s Larry Barker that FBI
investigators have concluded the disks in question, generally
called 'Classified Removable Electronic Media' or C.R.E.M., were
never missing and may have never existed in the first place
The clerical error appears to center around the bar codes used to
track classified material. The bar code stickers that would have
been found on the supposed missing disks were instead discovered
still affixed to their original printed forms.
The FBI declined comment on this report and the lab says it will
release the findings of its investigation when appropriate .
Much of the lab's classified work is still shut down pending the
outcome of a Department of Energy review.
The shut down has called into question the University of
Californias management of the facility, made longtime political
supporters question lab practices and has cost taxpayers millions
of dollars.
(ed.note: special thanks to KRQE staff for granting permission
to post this story)
Copyright 2004 KRQE News 13. All rights reserved. This material
redistributed by special permission of KRQE News 13.
*****************************************************************
76 Hanford News: Ecology may impose new rules
[http://www.hanfordnews.com]
This story was published Tuesday, August 10th, 2004
By The Associated Press
TACOMA - The state wants to expand rules for hazardous waste
handlers after one company abandoned business and left taxpayers
with a more than $5.5 million cleaning bill.
Tacoma-based CleanCare Corp. left behind used oil, solvents,
antifreeze and other substances when it vacated almost five years
ago. The Environmental Protection Agency was dispatched to remove
above-ground barrels and tanks, but soil and groundwater were
fouled.
The damage and cost is an example of one of the most outrageous
failures in the hazardous waste business, say state Department of
Ecology regulators who proposed rule changes to prevent similar
debacles.
Proposed changes would require hazardous waste recyclers and
used-oil processors to carry liability insurance for spills or
other emergencies. They also would be required to show proof of
their ability to pay for cleanup or closing costs.
Current regulations require that companies prepare cleanup plans
and provide financial assurances only if they treat, store or
dispose of hazardous wastes. They do not cover activities such as
waste recycling and used-oil processing, the News Tribune
reported Monday.
Ecology also could ask a judge to shut down businesses that
violate hazardous waste handling laws, said Jim Sachet, an
Ecology manager responsible for the proposed revision.
The revision governs activities at 28 Washington businesses,
including six in Pierce County, he said.
"The rule change sends a strong message that we won't let a
situation like CleanCare happen again," said Darin Rice,
Ecology's hazardous waste program manager.
EPA took over CleanCare in late 1999. Officials found 1.6 million
gallons of used oil, solvents and other chemicals in leaking
drums and storage containers on the 4.2-acre site between the
Blair and Hylebos waterways.
Ecology had raised concerns over CleanCare's operation, but
inspectors said regulatory loopholes prevented additional
intervention. Just four months before closing, CleanCare was
fined $486,000 for multiple violations of hazardous waste laws.
Sachet said CleanCare was not alone.
In 2001, Ecology spent $150,000 to remove hazardous materials
from the site of Reflex Recycling, a defunct Tacoma company that
recycled solvents and processed used oil.
Amour Fiber Core, a Sultan fiberglass resin recycler closed in
2000, leaving $250,000 in cleanup costs. When SeaTac solvent
recycler SafeCo went out of business in the mid-1990s, it cost
$500,000 to clean up. And cleanup cost $4.5 million at Cameron
Yakima, which reclaimed contaminated carbon filters and shut down
in 1997.
Regulators could forestall such costly problems by requiring
companies to provide a minimum of $1 million in liability
insurance to cover spills or other emergencies.
"That's really the crux of how we prevent future CleanCares,"
Sachet said.
CleanCare had set aside only $35,000 for its closure, although
regulators had ordered $80,000.
Ecology plans to adopt the new rules by January. Affected
businesses would have up to a year to provide a closure plan and
cost estimate. They'd have until 2009 to fund the plan, Sachet
said.
Those in the industry are divided over the changes.
A Portland-based trade association representing used-oil
recyclers opposes the revision.
Jerry Bartlett, vice president of environmental affairs at
Emerald Recycling, said his company supports the change.
"It's been needed in our business for quite a few years. What we
see are businesses that don't have the financial wherewithal to
stay out of trouble, and the taxpayers end up paying the bill,"
Bartlett said.
The group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility
agreed the proposal is good, but said more is needed.
"The rule alone won't solve the problem. We also need prevention,
and that comes in part from adequate enforcement," said Lea
Mitchell, the group's Washington director.
© 2004 Tri-City Herald. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
77 Hanford News: Sodium draining begins at FFTF
Home [http://www.hanfordnews.com]
This story was published Tuesday, August 10th, 2004
By Annette Cary, Herald staff writer
Sodium began draining from a hole drilled in a primary cooling
loop of Hanford's Fast Flux Test Facility at 10:20 a.m. Monday.
By late afternoon 15,000 of the 150,000 gallons of liquid sodium
in the primary cooling loops had been drained from the research
reactor. Earlier this year, the secondary cooling loops were
drained.
"The sodium drain has given us no option to go forward," said
Benton County Commissioner Claude Oliver, who has fought for a
restart of the Department of Energy's newest reactor. Once sodium
is drained, a restart would be prohibitively expensive.
Both Republican and Democratic administrations have looked at
uses for the Hanford reactor over the last decade but found no
mission they believed was economically viable for the reactor.
"This is just another step in the deactivation process we've been
engaged in for some time," said Colleen Clark, spokeswoman for
DOE's Richland Operations Office. "The focus is on doing it
safely and on schedule."
Over the weekend, Gerald Pollet of Heart of America Northwest
sent an e-mail thanking those who had fought to have the reactor
permanently shut down. With the focus at Hanford on cleaning up
waste left from past production of plutonium for the nation's
nuclear weapons program, watchdog groups pushed for no new
waste-producing work at the nuclear reservation.
But in the Tri-Cities, a Monday night meeting that drew about 70
supporters of restarting the reactor was suffused with the gloom
of a wake.
"This is the most advanced, most safe, most efficient and, in my
opinion, most beautiful nuclear reactor in the world," said Wanda
Munn, a retired engineer who spent almost 20 years working at
FFTF. "This is a tragedy."
Supporters have proposed using the reactor to make tritium for
weapons and isotopes to power missions deep into outer space. But
the mission that drew the most fervent support called for using
the reactor to make radioactive isotopes for new nuclear medicine
procedures to more efficiently kill cancer cells.
In recent years, supporters have pushed for the commercialization
of the reactor, primarily to produce medial isotopes. DOE turned
down the latest proposal Friday, said John Deichman, chief
executive of Mirari Medical, a corporation formed to purchase the
reactor. Deichman is a former executive manager at Hanford.
The company had a goal of raising more than $1 billion and said
it had the Standard and Poors audit to prove it had a viable
plan. Mirari would have been profitable by its third year of
operation and would have paid for the eventual dismantling of the
reactor, Deichman said.
DOE is proceeding with the steps it needs to complete the
decommissioning of the reactor.
It has requested bid proposals from small businesses for the
estimated $500 million cleanup and closure of the reactor, which
operated from 1982-92. The field has been narrowed to three
proposals.
DOE also soon will be asking for public comment on how the
reactor should be decommissioned, including whether its core
should be left standing or torn down to the ground and what
should happen to its waste.
The sodium being drained from the reactor is being stored as a
solid in steel canisters at the FFTF complex. DOE plans to have
it processed into a caustic substance that can be reused in the
process of turning other Hanford waste into a glasslike substance
for permanent disposal.
© 2004 Tri-City Herald. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
78 The State: Westinghouse fined for uraniu
08/10/2
By SAMMY FRETWELL
Staff Writer
For eight years, nuclear safety experts thought little about the
atomic grime that glowed in a furnace at Columbias Westinghouse
nuclear fuel plant, federal records show.
They knew uranium-contaminated garbage burned inside the waste
incinerator.
But Westinghouse safety engineers figured the amount wasnt
dangerous, according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
It was a potentially deadly mistake and one that resulted in
an unprecedented fine for the Bluff Road factory.
Contrary to the companys long-held assumption, enough uranium
accumulated in the plants incinerator ash that it could have
resulted in an uncontrolled nuclear accident, the NRC said in a
recent release.
The possible burst of radiation would not have threatened
Columbia as a whole, but workers near the furnace could have
been sickened or killed.
If a sharp-eyed plant engineer had not discovered the problem
this past spring, the buildup could have gone undetected for
years.
This chilling scenario prompted the $24,000 federal fine against
Westinghouse, believed to be the largest penalty ever levied by
the NRC against the companys plant in Richland County.
The July 28 fine is the latest in a series of enforcement
actions by the NRC since 1993 over safety at Westinghouse, one
of Columbias biggest employers and a major player in the
nations commercial nuclear industry.
Much of the NRCs concern has centered on safety systems to
control criticality, an atomic reaction that occurs when
certain nuclear materials, such as uranium, are exposed in
sufficient amounts and configurations to other materials, such
as water. A key task is keeping these materials apart.
None of the federal concerns, however, is considered as serious
as the discovery this year that uranium concentrations were
building up beyond safe limits in the incinerators ash.
Although the NRC says the plant is safe, the agencys level 2
enforcement violations make up the most serious the agency has
ever noted there, records show. Level 2 violations are the
second highest on a scale of four in severity.
This isnt just a procedural concern, NRC inspector Deborah
Seymour said. They needed controls on ash in that incinerator.
A recent NRC inspection report found that Westinghouse exceeded
criticality safety limits in incinerator ash six times from 1996
to 2004. Westinghouse reported the safety limit violations March
5.
Westinghouse acknowledged the mistakes, but pledged to do
better.
The company will spend at least $3 million on a new waste
incinerator at the sprawling, 35-year-old fuel assembly factory.
The company, which has voluntarily closed its existing
incinerator, also will establish new procedures to improve
communication between employees.
We had a miss, but we found it, we shut down the incinerator
and we self-reported to the NRC, plant safety manager Sam
McDonald said.
Mark Fecteau, the plants manager, said safety is a priority for
Westinghouse. Company officials noted the facility has never had
a major accident that threatened the public in more than three
decades of operation.
Fecteau agreed, however, the company needs to improve. Its
assumption that a uranium buildup could not occur in the ash was
clearly a mistake, he said.
That was compounded by a lack of communication among employees,
according to the NRC.
Engineers who oversaw the incinerator knew of the uranium
accumulation, but Westinghouse nuclear safety engineers did not,
McDonald and NRC spokesman Roger Hannah said.
Both agreed the incinerator engineers and the safety engineers
didnt communicate.
This was a matter of one group not telling another group about
a particular aspect of the operation, Hannah said.
And since the safety engineers had calculated in 1996 that a
buildup couldnt happen, they were not checking uranium
concentrations, Hannah and Fecteau said.
There is a weakness in this organization, which we are
addressing, Fecteau said. In hindsight, you can see we had
opportunities to catch this.
Critics say Westinghouse could have done a better job of
ensuring worker safety, but the NRC is equally to blame.
The NRC is not being vigilant, said Arjun Makhijani, a
Washington, D.C., researcher familiar with the Westinghouse
plant. It is the job of government to make sure the public can
pursue life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. You cant do
that if there is a criticality accident in your
neighborhood. You have to give credit to Westinghouse; they had
somebody who was awake and the company listened to him. But the
NRC does not seem to need any credit.
Westinghouse Electric is one of the Columbia areas largest
employers, with more than 1,000 workers at the Bluff Road plant.
The 550,000-square-foot facility, built in 1969, produces about
half of the nuclear fuel used by the nations 103 atomic power
plants. Fuel fabricated at the plant is also used worldwide in
atomic power reactors.
Uranium, a natural element dug from mines, is processed and
shipped to the Westinghouse plant from other nuclear facilities.
Once in Columbia, it is transformed into pellets that are
stuffed into metal fuel rods, ready for use in power plants. The
rods create heat in atomic reactors that produce electricity.
Uranium, however, is radioactive. And though the form used at
Westinghouse isnt nearly as toxic as that used in atomic
weapons, it must be handled and managed carefully to make sure
no unintended nuclear reaction occurs.
Waste amounts of uranium wind up in the incinerator because
theyve become attached to disposable cloth, clothing and
equipment used in the plant. That material is burned at high
temperatures, but the uranium isnt destroyed. That leaves
uranium in the ashes of the burned waste. That ash must be
cleaned out of the furnace periodically.
David Ayres, chief of the NRCs fuel facility branch in Atlanta,
said the handful of other nuclear fuels plants across the
country also have had problems with safety compliance. But some
recent events have been more pronounced at the Columbia plant,
he said.
The NRC levied a $13,750 fine five years ago after finding
significant weaknesses in the companys nuclear safety
program. In 2001, the NRC also noted concerns with criticality
safety controls.
In addition to those issues, the NRC hit Westinghouse with a
violation in 2002 after a contractor falsified documents that
allowed uranium to be sent to a Kentucky nuclear plant.
Despite this, the companys management under Fecteau is making a
conscious effort to find safety problems and that makes a
difference, Ayres said.
What we are seeing in a lot of cases with Westinghouse is the
new management is so intent on rooting out the problem they are
finding things and telling us, he said. With the incinerator,
they found it and told us about it.
Reach Fretwell at (803) 771-8537 or [sfretwell@thestate.com] .
TheStateOnline
*****************************************************************
79 Albuquerque Tribune: Nuke program flayed
[http://www.abqtrib.com
August 10, 2004
Labs' testing capability is not where it should be, DOE finds
By Sue Vorenberg [svorenberg@abqtrib.com] Tribune Reporter
The United States might have a problem if it wants to restart
its nuclear testing programs, according to the Department of
Energy's Inspector General's Office.
Congress wants the department to be able to restart nuclear
testing in an 18 month timeframe, should the need arise. But the
Inspector General's Office found several problems and time gaps
in plans to do that.
An Aug. 3 report from the office said the National Nuclear
Security Administration, charged with planning for the tests, had
fallen significantly behind on deadlines to restore that ability
by September 2005.
"While we noted examples of schedule slippages that could
potentially impact the program, we were unable to determine
whether NNSA was on track to meet its Enhanced Test Readiness
goal," assistant inspector general Rickey Hass said in a memo.
The Department of Energy stopped all underground nuclear testing
in 1992 as part of a national moratorium on the practice. When it
stopped, Congress mandated the administration should be able to
resume the department testing programs, should the need arise, in
a 24- to 36-month timeframe.
In 2002 Congress decided to reduce the timeframe to 18 months as
part of the Enhanced Test Readiness Program. The program costs an
estimated $30 million a year over three years, but might not be
finished by the deadline, the report said.
Both Los Alamos and Sandia national laboratories are involved in
the testing activities and programs.
In response, Michael Kane, NNSA associate administrator for
management and administration, said most of the problems were
caused by funding delays which shut down planning for six months.
He said the administration has caught up in several areas since
the audit was performed.
The delays were not related to any of the recent classified
materials shutdowns at Los Alamos or Sandia, said John German, a
Sandia spokesman.
The two labs have continued programs for U.S. nuclear stockpile
stewardship after the 1992 nuclear test ban, but moved the bulk
of their testing to modeling and simulations on supercomputers.
Their programs predict the status of the U.S. stockpile of
nuclear weapons as they age. They are designed to make sure the
weapons still work.
Even though the computer models help, underground nuclear
testing is still the best way to assure those materials actually
do what scientists think they will do, experts at both labs have
said.
Should an emergency arise, the United States might need to
resume underground testing to get a better handle on the
stockpile, but it remains to be seen whether the administration
can meet Congress' mandate to resume those operations in a timely
fashion, Hass' memo said.
His report said organizations involved in testing hadn't
finished key work in three areas as part of its readiness
program.
The groups - including Los Alamos and Sandia - have not finished
preparing documents to assure protection of workers, the public
and environment; trained all workers needed to perform
underground tests; and prepared and maintained test materials or
equipment, the report said.
"Los Alamos National Laboratory and Lawrence Livermore National
Laboratory delayed the completion of a conceptual study on a
diagnostic capability," the report added.
That study, which would identify facilities and equipment needed
in the tests, is six months behind schedule, the report said.
Kane added the administration has already fixed most of the
problems found in the report.
To help meet the deadline, the administration will provide DOE
with an updated annual program plan, provide monthly updates,
continue to refine plans, develop a risk management program and
provide a detailed work breakdown structure, Kane said.
*****************************************************************
80 U.S. Newswire - Powerful Results: Abraham Releases Report on
Energy Department's Successful Efforts to Implement the
President's Management Agenda
8/9/2004 4:18:00 PM
To: National Desk, Energy Reporter
Contact: Mike Waldron of the U.S. Department of Energy,
202-586-4940
WASHINGTON, Aug. 9 /U.S. Newswire/ -- At the direction of
Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham, the U.S. Department of
Energy (DOE) today released a report detailing the results of its
department-wide effort to implement management reforms called for
under President Bush's Management Agenda (PMA). In July 2004, the
Department of Energy was ranked first among all cabinet agencies
in its efforts to implement the PMA.
"The Department of Energy's 116,000 employees and contractors
have transformed the department from an organization generally
thought to be one of the government's worst managed agencies, to
one of the very best. And we're continuing that mission," said
Secretary Abraham. "These bold reforms demonstrate that the
President is serious about transforming the federal government
into a responsive, effective entity that can meet the service
expectations of American taxpayers."
Deputy Secretary Kyle McSlarrow noted, "The improvements we've
made here at the Department of Energy are just an example of the
changes that are taking place as a result of the President's
leadership and genuine desire to improve the efficiency of the
federal government. It's important to keep in mind that we
ultimately work for the taxpayers."
The President's Management Agenda provides the overall strategy
for improving the management and performance of the federal
government through five government-wide and nine agency-specific
goals. These goals, designed to deliver tangible results to the
American people, include streamlining and improvements in areas
such as strategic management of human capital, competitive
sourcing, improved financial performance, expanded electronic
government, and budget and performance integration.
More specifically, today's report, entitled Energizing America
for a New Century - Results from Implementing the President's
Management Agenda, highlights management reforms that are
changing the way the department conducts business. Several
examples detailed in the report include:
-- Reviews conducted throughout the department to determine
whether the government or the private sector can most efficiently
carry out its functions. The expected savings from these reforms
is $37 million.
-- The security of 92 percent of the department's information
technology systems has been certified and processes have been
established to make more informed and appropriate technology
investments.
-- The department has begun to systematically use performance
data in departmental decision making. This commonsense reform
will help DOE more efficiently manage the department's multi-
billion dollar portfolio of projects.
In addition, the report details how management reforms called for
in the PMA are helping to achieve results in other areas,
particularly related to the nation's national and economic
security. These include:
-- Significant progress toward making America energy-
independent. This includes efforts moving toward a hydrogen
economy, developing clean coal technologies, encouraging the next
generation of nuclear power, and improving the reliability and
efficiency of supplies of electricity and natural gas.
-- The department's efforts to reach an agreement with Russia and
other countries to reduce nuclear stockpiles, to improve the
security at nuclear sites, and to develop the means to detect
nuclear materials at foreign and domestic border sites and
seaports.
-- An accelerated cleanup of nuclear weapons production sites,
resulting in a healthier environment and tens of billions of
dollars in estimated savings.
An electronic version of the report is available on the
department's Web site at http://www.energy.gov
[http://releases.usnewswire.com/redir.asp?ReleaseID=34505&Link=ht
tp://www.energy.gov] .
http://www.usnewswire.com/ [http://www.usnewswire.com/]
*****************************************************************
81 Oak Ridger: DOE facility gets 'Star' treatment
Story last updated at 12:09 p.m. on August 10, 2004
By: Paul Parson | Oak Ridger Staff paul.parson@oakridger.com
[paul.parson@oakridger.com]
It was an "all-star" event Monday afternoon as employees of Oak
Ridge Associated Universities and Oak Ridge Institute for Science
and Education celebrated a one-of-a-kind honor - at least
locally.
With Pollard Technology Conference Center as the setting, the
sound system blasted star-themed tunes by modern-day acts like
Smash Mouth and Moby as well as classic party themes by Kool &the
Gang.
The reason for the celebration was that ORISE recently became the
first Department of Energy site in the state of Tennessee to
receive a prestigious award for occupational health and safety
programs - an honor that makes it a Voluntary Protection Program
Star Site. ORISE is also the 21st DOE site nationwide to achieve
this recognition.
Paul Parson/Staff Ron Townsend, left, president of Oak Ridge
Associated Universities, helps hold a flag acknowledging a
recognition of the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education
as a Voluntary Protection Program Star Site. Also pictured are
David Smith and Gerald Boyd, both with the Department of Energy,
and U.S. Rep. Zach Wamp, R-3rd District.
"Our journey does not end here," said Ron Townsend, ORAU's
president. "It's just started. We have gone from zero accidents
by chance to zero accidents by choice."
The Star designation is the highest level attainable under the
Voluntary Protection Program, which recognizes and promotes
excellence in contractor programs composed of management systems
for preventing and controlling occupational health hazards.
Officials said the program was originally established by the
Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
U.S. Rep. Zach Wamp, R-3rd District, who attended Monday's
celebration, said the award speaks volumes about ORAU and how it
manages ORISE for the Energy Department. The congressman said the
recognition shows that ORAU values its workers' safety and health
and the cooperative approach that is needed to ensure a safe work
environment.
ORISE conducts research involving environmental risks, helps
train future generations of scientists and is home to Radiation
Emergency Assistance Center/Training Site - a 24-hour emergency
medical response program that consults and assists on all types
of radiation accidents or incidents.
In 2000, Oak Ridge's Manufacturing Sciences Corp., a BNFL Inc.
subsidiary, received the state of Tennessee's Volunteer Star
Award. BNFL is a DOE contractor.
*****************************************************************
82 Oak Ridger: Can you hear me now? Not at Y-12
Story last updated at 12:07 p.m. on August 10, 2004
PLANT CHIEF: 'We're still struggling with the advance of
technology and cell phones.'
By: Paul Parson | Oak Ridger Staff paul.parson@oakridger.com
[paul.parson@oakridger.com]
Movie theaters and Oak Ridge's nuclear weapons plant apparently
have something in common when it comes to cell phones.
For quite a while, audience warnings to turn off cell phones have
been playing before big-screen adventures. Now, the Y-12 National
Security Complex has issued a similar alert to the owners of
phones that are not issued by the federal government or BWXT Y-12
- the company that manages the plant.
According to a just-implemented policy, if an authorized private
vehicle is driven into Y-12, any personal cell phone within that
vehicle must be turned off for the duration of the vehicle's
presence within the site, secured within the automobile (glove
box or other similar storage area) and remain within the vehicle
at all times.
"We're still struggling with the advance of technology and cell
phones," Dennis Ruddy, BWXT Y-12's president and general manager,
said in a recent interview. "That recent policy is an attempt to
catch up and try to stay ahead of changes in the technology."
These days, according to Ruddy, phones can be used as cameras and
some have Global Positioning System capabilities - essentially
meaning devices can be used to pinpoint calls made from cell
phones.
"With all of these technologies coming together, we have to keep
rethinking what we allow people to bring into the plant," he
said.
Failure to abide by Y-12's policy could result in a security
infraction, termination or a refusal of site access.
Oak Ridge's other Department of Energy-related sites aren't as
strict with cell phone policies.
At the Oak Ridge K-25 site, personal cell phones are only banned
from a security area that encompasses the K-25 building and a
couple of other facilities, according to Dennis Hill, a spokesman
for Bechtel Jacobs Co. The site, which is currently part of a
massive environmental cleanup project, was formerly a World War
II-era complex that was used to enrich uranium through a gaseous
diffusion process.
Oak Ridge National Laboratory has no general restrictions on
visitors having or using a cell phone at the federal research
facility, according to spokesman Bill Cabage.
"In fact, that's why ORNL is improving its cell phone coverage
around the site," he explained. "The goal is for visitors to be
able to use their wireless devices, including cell phones, just
like if they were at a university campus."
ORNL is also encouraging the use of personal cell phones through
a stipend program. According to Cabage, employees are allotted a
monthly cell phone stipend to use their personal phones instead
of having an assigned government device.
"The only real restriction is on taking a cell phone into an area
where classified information is being processed," the lab
spokesman noted. "No cell phone - personal or government-issued -
can have a battery in it if it is taken into a limited classified
area, of which ORNL has very few."
And, at the Oak Ridge Federal Building, where DOE is
headquartered locally, both personal and government-issued cell
phones are allowed, according to DOE spokesman Steven Wyatt. Like
ORNL and K-25, though, there are some security areas where
personal cell phones are not allowed.
"All non-badged visitors go through the metal detector and their
items go through the X-ray machine, including cell phones," Wyatt
said.
*****************************************************************
83 Paducah Sun: Bunning still trying to move compensation program to Labor -
By Joe Walker jwalker@paducahsun.com--270.575.8650
[http://www.paducahsun.com/]
Tuesday, August 10, 2004
Kentucky's federal lawmakers and the Department of Energy are in
a tug of war over legislation to strip DOE of its backlogged
program to compensate sick nuclear workers.
Sen. Jim Bunning continues to meet with key members of the Senate
and House to try to influence the joint conference committee to
accept his amendment to the Defense Authorization Bill, which
passed the Senate in June. U.S. Rep. Ed Whitfield has persuaded
at least 30 members of the House to sign a support letter that
will be sent to conferees after Congress reconvenes Sept. 7.
"We're going to ask that conferees accept the Bunning amendment,"
Jeff Miles, Whitfield's press secretary, said Monday.
Bunning's legislation would eliminate a massive claims backlog by
moving the program from DOE to the Department of Labor, which has
handled other claims much faster. Instead of supporting similar
legislation by Whitfield, the House amended the defense bill to
eliminate a pay cap for DOE physician panelists in hopes of
accelerating claims. Conference committee members must work out
the differences in the two amendments.
The DOE program has a backlog of more than 24,000 workers'
compensations claims by those exposed to toxic substances at
nuclear plants. Even if DOE eliminated the backlog by the 2006
target, there is no way to force insurance companies or
self-insured employers to pay claims.
Despite the problem, the Bush administration opposes moving the
DOE program to the Labor Department, which would pay the claims.
A separate Labor Department program has paid about $900 million —
including $154 million at Paducah — to nuclear workers sickened
from exposure to radiation, beryllium and silicon.
Two weeks ago, the Energy Department submitted legislation to try
to hold onto its program by reimbursing current or former DOE
contractors and subcontractors, state workers' compensation
agencies or anyone else who would pay claims voluntarily. Only 14
claims have been paid since the DOE program started in 2001.
Some lawmakers say the Energy Department's proposal is an
improvement but not a solution because it would still not force
claims payments. There are also questions about funding.
Iowa Sens. Charles Grassley and Tom Harkin, who worked with
Bunning on the amendment, said in recent news releases that
considerable oversight and congressional pressure has been placed
on DOE. Grassley said he was "looking for maximum security" in
seeking to have the Labor Department pay the claims.
Given DOE's huge existing backlog, it's difficult to see how the
agency could manage reimbursing hundreds of current and former
contractors, subcontractors and insurance firms even if the
groups agreed to pay, said Richard Miller, policy analyst for the
Washington-based Government Accountability Project.
"What Sen. Bunning has done has really sort of pushed the Energy
Department into a corner," he said. "You're not seeing people
gravitate toward the DOE solution yet, if at all."
*****************************************************************
84 Oak Ridger: Our View: Protesters right to dissent ironic
Story last updated at 11:28 a.m. on August 10, 2004
Capistrano has its swallows and Oak Ridge, apparently, has its
protesters.
As in past years, a crowd of nuclear weapon opponents gathered at
the Y-12 National Security Complex on Sunday, coinciding their
protest and the celebration of their cause with the 59th
anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima Š
God love 'em, and God bless a country that allows such protests
to take place without fear of persecution or prosecution. At
least until an "illegal" action occurs, such as obstructing
traffic or attempting to actually enter the federal weapons plant
- which is, of course, a major no-no.
But, one cannot help but wonder if these protesters take into
consideration the lives sacrificed so they can stand in the
middle of the street or in the shadows of the plant and mock the
work of the past and present that continues on in Oak Ridge.
We believe this is important and vital work that makes these
rebels' very own lives and the lives of their loved ones safer in
this often nasty world.
Even now, men and women of the U.S. military - at home and abroad
- are laying all they have on the line. And, one of the results
of those efforts is providing protesters with the freedom to
cheer and jeer at events such as the one organized in Oak Ridge
each August.
Perhaps they never consider the irony. Perhaps at least the
younger ones don't understand the atrocities committed during
World War II, and the impact it had and still has on millions of
people throughout the world. Perhaps even older Americans have
lost that "institutional knowledge," as more and more WW II vets
pass on.
No sane person favors war over peace. However, the world in which
we live is far from being a fairy tale, and if people are going
to protest one way of doing something they should have an
alternative plan - that will work - for dealing with the Hitlers
and bin Ladens we often find ourselves up against.
Next year will mark the 60th anniversary of the bombing of
Hiroshima. Maybe between now and then some of this year's
protesters will reconsider their position - or provide more
viable options for peace. Or, at the very least be more solemn in
their acts of protest.
But, if not, we hope this country and the men and women who work
at Oak Ridge's various operations will still be able to provide
demonstrators with the freedom to dissent.
It's a freedom no one should take for granted.
***
What do you think? E-mail us at darrell.richardson@oakridger.com;
fax us at (865) 482-7834; or mail your letter to The Oak Ridger,
P.O. Box 3446. We want to hear from you.
*****************************************************************
85 Guardian Unlimited Senator: Los Alamos Disks May Not Be Lost
From the Associated Press
[UP]
Wednesday August 11, 2004 1:01 AM
By MARK EVANS
Associated Press Writer
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) - Two computer disks said to contain
classified information and thought to be missing from Los Alamos
National Laboratory may in fact never have been missing, a New
Mexico senator said Tuesday.
The disks' supposed disappearance may merely have been a ``false
positive'' that resulted from a failed inventory system at the
nuclear lab, according to Sen. Pete Domenici, R-New Mexico.
``It may be that what we have here is a false positive - the
system says something is missing when it is not,'' Domenici said
in a statement. ``And just as if it were a medical test, it is
better to find out the inventory was wrong than that the disks
were actually missing.''
The supposedly missing disks have been at the center of a scandal
that has forced the shutdown of nearly all classified work at the
nuclear lab.
Domenici toured the lab Monday and was briefed by Director Pete
Nanos. The pair ``reviewed step by step what probably happened to
the disks in question,'' Domenici said.
``I will tell you that whether or nor the disks were missing, Los
Alamos' system of tracking its classified inventory is clearly a
mess if we cannot tell if classified material is missing,'' he
said.
The scenario considered most likely is that the two disks never
existed at all, two sources speaking on condition of anonymity
told The Associated Press. The confusion apparently resulted from
two extra bar-code stickers left on a sheet of 20 that was used
to label 18 disks.
One of the sources said the other two bar codes may not have been
destroyed, so it appeared that there were two missing disks.
Kevin Roark, a spokesman for the lab, said Tuesday that the
investigation was ongoing and he declined comment, as did Bill
Ewell, an Albuquerque-based spokesman for the FBI.
Since the scandal broke in July, 23 workers at the lab have been
placed on leave, most in connection with the missing disks. Four
were suspended as part of a separate investigation involving an
intern at the lab who suffered an eye injury from a laser.
Federal officials have also put up the Los Alamos management
contract for the first time in the 61-year history of the lab,
which has been managed by University of California.
In suspending the workers last month, Nanos said they would not
be allowed back in until their cases are resolved. He did not
identify the workers at the time, but of the jobs they perform,
he said: ``Suffice to say it's all levels.''
^----
AP reporters Erica Werner in Washington and Sue Major Holmes in
Albuquerque contributed to this report.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004
*****************************************************************
86 Oak Ridger: On Hiroshima anniversary, another viewpoint shared
Story last updated at 11:55 a.m. on August 10, 2004
By: Ray Waldrop | Guest Editorial
EDITOR'S NOTE: As protesters once again visit Oak Ridge for the
anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima, Japan, Ray Waldrop of
Clinton, a long-time Y-12 employee and a World War II veteran who
served on the USS Salt Lake City, wanted to share excerpts from
an article titled "Japan was building an Atom Bomb, too," by Lee
Fleming Reese, M.A.
***
"Before another Aug. 6th comes around, unload any guilt you may
have, for Japan began building an atomic bomb even before Pearl
Harbor, to use on continental United States Š
"It was Germany that discovered nuclear fission in the 1930s.
During those years, Yoshio Nishima, studying in the laboratory of
Niels Bohr in Copenhagen, Denmark, learned how to build a
cyclotron. What's more, another student studied in Berkeley,
Calif., under E.O. Lawrence, who arranged for 200 ton, 60 inch
manget for a second cyclotron in 1937. That became the pride and
joy of Nishima, Japan's leading scientist.
"When Germany ordered increased production of heavy water in the
Vemork facility of Norway (Germany had invaded and occupied that
country on April 9, 1940), the Allies knew that it indicated
clearly that it was for atomic research. This hastened the
Manhattan Project which built the first atomic bomb.
"One of the most extraordinary scientific intelligence missions
in history - the Alsos Mission - led by Samuel A. Goudsmit, a
nationally prominent scientist, went in with the invasion of
Germany, seized uranium stocks and equipment and interviewed
scientists about the progress. That, too, had an important
bearing on our Manhattan Project.
"In the interim, little was known in Japan about their
scientists' being ordered to develop atomic weapons for military
use in 1940. That December, Nishima began consideration of a
commitment from the Sixth Technical Institute of the Japanese
Army which arranged for fairly large-scale research to begin at
Riken, Japan. (Bear in mind that this is more than a year before
Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor.)
"... the years 1940 and 1941 saw intense military interest in the
possibility of atomic weapons and War Minister Hideki Tojo
ordered a rising young Army Air Officer to investigate the
possibilities of fission weapons. This order was passed on to the
Riken laboratories. Now, all three services were involved, for in
late 1942 the Japanese Navy engaged the services of Riken also,
for the same reason.
"These inquiries led to the Physics Colloquium which met in 10
sessions December 1942 and March 1943, but their conclusion was
that it would be impossible to create an atomic bomb in so short
a time. However, the military viewed atomic weapons as something
to be pursued immediately, and it became the sole funding for the
work at Riken ...
"Had Japan proceeded faster and had her buildings escaped
destruction from Allied bombings, she would have surely built an
atomic bomb to use on the United States.
"Knowing this, those who may have worn hair shirts can remove
them now, for Japan was building an atomic bomb, too."
*****************************************************************
87 Daily Texan - Opinion: UC alone didn't ruin Los Alamos -
http://www.dailytexanonline.com]
Opinion | 8/10/2004
By Nick Schwellenbach
The latest rash of security problems at Los Alamos National
Laboratory has led many to concentrate on the culpability of the
University of California System.
Why?
First, as manager of the lab for the Department of Energy, UC is
the most obvious entity to point the finger at. Second, the lab's
management contract is up for competitive bid in 2005 for the
first time in more than 60 years. The UT, Texas A and UC systems,
along with 10 private companies (Lockheed Martin has since bowed
out of the race, citing the costs of the bid) have formally
expressed interest with the DOE.
These scandals at Los Alamos do not help UC in maintaining
management, and they make UC's competitors look like good
alternatives. The LA Times has called for UC not to even bother
with the embarrassment of competing, and a senator has written
legislation to prevent UC from bidding. But simply bashing UC
oversimplifies the complex problem.
Security problems at Los Alamos are not solely the fault of the
University of California; the National Nuclear Security
Administration, a semi-autonomous agency within the Energy
Department created to tighten security across America's nuclear
weapons complex, is also to blame.
At a congressional hearing in mid-July, just after Los Alamos
revealed that two zip disks with classified information were
missing, Rep. Jim Greenwood, R-Pa., said, "[T]oday's testimony
will demonstrate that the NNSA experiment has not been a great
success."
NNSA has largely escaped the wrath of the media that has plagued
the lab and UC, but the NNSA over the last four years has been
uncritical of the lab's security. It has repeatedly given Los
Alamos a "satisfactory" rating, the highest rating possible,
turning a blind eye to problems that continued through these
years. The NNSA isn't doing its job. It makes you wonder why, all
of a sudden, NNSA chief Linton Brooks is slamming the lab. Could
it be because Congress is starting to show its teeth?
Speaking to Congress about Los Alamos, Brooks has said, "They
devalue the things you need in order to do good science. They
devalue business management. They devalue security." If Brooks is
right, why hasn't the NNSA stepped in? Where were these
complaints before the zip disks went missing? Brooks also stated,
in what can be taken as a threat, "[T]here is something about the
Los Alamos culture that we have not beaten into submission." S.
Robert Foley, UC vice president for laboratory management, has
opined that at Los Alamos, "When they did something wrong, it was
'musical chairs': They could move from one job to another [at the
lab]. People didn't get fired ... and that's intolerable."
"Musical chairs" is an apt metaphor, but it's ironic that Foley
uses the phrase. UC, Foley's employer, has hired two former NNSA
officials to run aspects of the weapons program at Los Alamos -
men who oversaw the lab while in government service. The same
"culture of arrogance" at Los Alamos exists at NNSA and at UC,
preventing security at sites meant to provide national security.
To simplify the problems at Los Alamos is to avoid fixing them.
Although it may be politically savvy and easier for some to
concentrate on UC's responsibility for the long-standing
problems, the situation is much worse. Rather than delay fixing
the problems, we should widen the lens with which we see them.
Schwellenbach, a fellow at the Project On Government Oversight,
is a UT alum and former member of UT Watch. He has been active in
opposing a possible UT bid for Los Alamos.
*****************************************************************
88 [du-list] DU in the news - 10 Aug 04
Date: Tue, 10 Aug 2004 15:14:01 -0700
ABC News Repeats Smuggling Stunt
American Daily - Stow,OH,USA
... ABC investigative reporter Brian Ross told viewers of "Primetime Thursday"
that he had slipped fifteen pounds of depleted uranium past government
screeners. ...
<http://www.americandaily.com/article/2750>
WAR Crimes Tribunal on Iraq The case against Bush
Workers World - USA
... Testimonies will describe the use of prohibited weapons, including
cluster bombs and depleted uranium. The tribunal will expose ...
<http://www.workers.org/ww/2004/tribunal0812.php>
SHOULD Pak Army help Qaraqosh rule? - By Aslam Effandi
Hi Pakistan - Lahore,Pakistan
... During the Gulf War, the US dropped 100,000 depleted uranium bombs
on Iraqi civilians; these bombs were equivalent to one atomic bomb. ...
<http://www.hipakistan.com/en/detail.php?newsId=en70503&F_catID=&f_type=source>
To unsubscribe from this groups send a message to
du-list-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com. In the body of the message type
unsubscribe and send.
Yahoo! Groups Sponsor
ADVERTISEMENT
9e462.jpg
9e4ad.jpg
----------
Yahoo! Groups Links
* To visit your group on the web, go to:
*
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/du-list/
*
* To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
*
du-list-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
*
* Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the
Yahoo! Terms of Service.
Attachment Converted: 9e462.jpg: 00000001,7dca3314,00000000,00000000
Attachment Converted: 9e4ad.jpg: 00000001,7dca3315,00000000,00000000
*****************************************************************
NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 this
material is distributed without profit or payment to those who
have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for
non-profit research and educational purposes only. For more
information go to:
*****************************************************************