***************************************************************** 09/30/04 **** RADIATION BULLETIN(RADBULL) **** VOL 12.234 ***************************************************************** 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 AxisofLogic: U.S. Military: ''Iraq is full of WMD'' 2 JoongAng Daily: Atom agency to seek more Korean data 3 Xinhuanet: Chinese FM says six-party talks only option to DPRK nucle 4 US: US Policy Supports Nuclear Power Terrorism 5 US: insight mag: The Nuclear Option - 6 [NYTr] Nuclear Pakistan Snubs the IAEA 7 [NYTr] Israel's Nuclear Threat Should Not Be Ignored 8 Washington Times: IAEA chief requests 3rd term 9 US: KVBC: First Lady Laura Bush Makes Third Trip to Southern Nevada 10 The Australian: Brazil rejects nuclear black market claims 11 AFP: Kyrgyzstan blocks British, German nuclear imports NUCLEAR REACTORS 12 Sa News24: Nigeria gets nuclear reactor 13 US: NRC: NRC Annual Nuclear Safety Research Conference to Be Held Oc 14 US: Times-Standard: Commission wants PG to be accountable for missin 15 US: JOURNAL NEWS: Open house focuses on Indian Point emergency 16 Slovak news: EC proposes €237 million grant for Slovakia 17 Xinhuanet: UK needs nuclear power to meet demand, cut emissions 18 Japan Times: Malfunction closes Tepco nuke reactor 19 Japan Times: 2,500 in Tokai nuclear evacuation drill 20 US: Lincoln County News: Maine Yankee Answers Friends’ Cleanup Charg 21 US: PRN: Leading Nuke Watchdogs: New US Nuclear Security Plan May Ha 22 Sofia Morning News: Siemens Seeks to Join Belene N-plant Building 23 Whitehaven News: NO HOPE OF NEW NUCLEAR PLANTS 24 AFP: China approves 8 bln dlr nuclear power project in Guangdong 25 AFP: Nigeria launches first nuclear reactor NUCLEAR SAFETY 26 Depleted Uranium is nuclear proliferation_depopulating nations. 27 [southnews] Cancer cases in Iraq are increasing 28 Marshall Islands: Nuclear "Sacrifice Zone" 29 US: [NukeNet] Need To Conduct Real World Testing Of Fuel Laden 30 US: Las Vegas SUN: Federal Scientists Search for Lost H-Bomb 31 US: UPI: Ill soldier fathers baby with defects - 32 BBC: Kyrgyz 'plutonium' haul harmless 33 US: Democracy Now!: Daughter of Soldier Contaminated with Depleted U 34 US: Tewksbury Advocate: Boiling water problem NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE 35 Las Vegas RJ: Congressional candidates in Yucca duel 36 BBC: Nuclear fuel shipment reassurance 37 US: ABQjournal: DOE Pays $600,000 for WIPP Oversight 38 Courier-Journal: Silo cleanup begins at uranium processing plant nea 39 US: Gazette: Settlement looming in Cotter Corp. contamination case 40 u.tv: Pressure on govt over nuclear waste 41 NEWS.com.au: No N-dump for mainland 42 US: AU ABC: Ranger Mine warned before contamination. 43 AU ABC: Coalition rules out nuclear waste dump for the mainland 44 AU ABC: Tas seeks offshore nuclear dump assurance 45 US: Westford Eagle: DEP: Westford 'responsible' for water clean-up 46 NEWS.com.au: N-waste may be dumped on island 47 US: Westford Eagle: Editorial: Water and responsibility 48 US: Concord Journal: Soil sampling beginning at Starmet 49 Whitehaven News: SELLAFIELD BOSS ‘HIT UNION MAN’ NUCLEAR WEAPONS US DEPT. OF ENERGY 50 Salt Lake Tribune: Battles over nukes stall 2005 budget 51 Daily Camera: 903 Pad cleanup done OTHER NUCLEAR 52 BBC: Cern: The big in search of the small ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** FULL NEWS STORIES ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** 1 AxisofLogic: U.S. Military: ''Iraq is full of WMD'' [http://www.axisoflogic.com/artman/publish] By Paul Harris Sep 29, 2004, 20:27 The United States went to war against Iraq in 2003 on the basis that Iraq was chock-a-block with '‘weapons of mass destruction’' (WMD). Eventually, the Americans had to admit they were wrong and they just couldn’t find those weapons. Many skeptics suspect the Bush administration lied about the WMDs in Iraq to cover a desire to invade and steal Iraqi oil. Few understand that the United States is still lying. Iraq is full of WMDs, both used and unused, but the Bushoviks and their sycophantic media fail to alert the public because it is the Americans who are using them. The United States has a long history of manufacturing, storing, selling and deploying WMDs. As far back as World War II, there is clear evidence of use by the United States of several chemicals which meet the current U.S. definition of WMD. Most of us who point fingers at the Americans are best familiar with their exploits in Vietnam. Agent Orange and napalm are the best known WMDs used in Vietnam, although they also deployed Agents White, Blue, Purple, Pink and Green (the ‘'agents'’ were so named because of the color of distinguishing markers on their shipping containers). These products are actually herbicides, developed during the 1940s, but in Vietnam they became defoliants, used to strip away the trees and grasses in order to deny the enemy hiding places. Most of these products are known carcinogens and their extensive use in Vietnam has compromised the health of many who came in contact with them, including American forces. Napalm, or jellied gasoline, was also used as a defoliant in Vietnam but, unlike the Agents, it burned the vegetation and killed by incineration anyone unfortunate enough to get in the way. Napalm bombs were also dropped on Japan by Allied troops during World War II and were used in flamethrowers in Germany in the same war. Later, it was used by United Nations forces during the Korean War. Although its use was banned by the United Nations in 1980, the United States did not sign the agreement. The U.S. claimed to have destroyed its supplies of napalm by 2001 but that appears to be a matter of semantics rather than fact; current evidence shows they have used it as recently as 2003 in Iraq. A report carried in The Independent on August 10, 2003 quotes Colonel James Alles, commander of Marine Air Group 11: "We napalmed both those [bridge] approaches. Unfortunately, there were people there ... you could see them in the [cockpit] video. They were Iraqi soldiers. It's no great way to die. The generals love napalm. It has a big psychological effect." The Pentagon claims its denial of napalm use is not untrue because they have altered the petroleum distillate used and renamed the product the '‘Mark 77 firebomb'’. Its victims will surely appreciate the clarification. While the United States remains the only nation to actually drop an atomic bomb on an enemy, there have been four occasions in the past 15 years where the United States has actually engaged in nuclear war: in the Balkans, in Afghanistan, and in Gulf Wars I & II. American soldiers have dropped Depleted Uranium (DU) on enemy combatants since 1991. It is lethal; it is horrid, and although it doesn’t have the bluster and showmanship of a mushroom cloud, it is still a nuclear bomb. The use of DU is illegal under all international agreements, treaties, and covenants and it is illegal even under U.S. military law regarding WMDs. But in defiance of those international treaties, and its own laws, the United States continues to use this destructive material in full knowledge that its use could result in the slow annihilation of all species, including our own. Depleted uranium is a waste by-product of nuclear weapons and domestic nuclear power. It is used in weapons because it is cheap, ignites easily and burns fiercely on hitting a solid target. When it impacts, it releases an aerosol of fine uranium oxide that is breathable and spreads great distances by wind until weighted down by rain, where it falls to the ground and is absorbed into soil or water sources. It was first developed for the U.S. Navy in 1968 and DU weapons were supplied to, and used by, Israel during the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Since then, the U.S. has sold DU weapons to at least 29 countries. The plans for this substance, however, actually date back to 1943. A declassified document from the Manhattan Project is a blueprint for depleted uranium weapons. The Americans have given DU to weapons manufacturers free of charge. Scientists are quite certain on two points: DU is deadly; and the effects of this material will continue to contaminate the Earth long after humans are extinct. They are also fairly clear that continued use of DU will mean the future is going to move ahead without us. Euphemistically, some in military circles refer to DU as the Trojan Horse of nuclear war, the ultimate gift that keeps on giving. The half-life of the material is 4.5 billion years. This is very dangerous material: it meets the U.S. definition of a ''weapon of mass destruction'' and while the United States is prepared to invade sovereign countries on the basis they ''might'' have WMDs themselves and they ''might'' be willing to use them, the Americans actually have them and actually use them. And they use them in complete disregard for the people and nations on whom they are dropped, even in disregard for the health of their own and allied troops. In the three-week Gulf War in 1991, just 467 U.S. personnel were reported as wounded. Of the 580,400 GIs who served in that war, more than 11,000 are now dead and in excess of 400,000 are on permanent medical disability. New cases are arising by an astounding 43,000 per year. In a nutshell, more than 70% of those who served in the Gulf in 1990-91 now have medical problems. The only substances to which these troops are known to have been exposed are vaccines and depleted uranium. Vaccines do not cause the diseases these troops have contracted. In response to the mounting evidence of the hazards, the American response has been to use the same material in the Balkans, in Afghanistan, and for a second time in Iraq. This transcends mere politics: it has now gone on through three presidential administrations. Even worse, the Americans knew the deadly hazard inherent in this material before they ever started to use it. A military report prepared by the U.S. Department of Defense in 1974 stated: “In combat situations involving the widespread use of DU munitions, the potential for inhalation, ingestion, or implantation of DU compounds may be locally significant.” A contractor to the military, Science Applications International Corporation, noted in a July 1990 report that “aerosol DU exposures to soldiers on the battlefield could be significant, with potential radiological and toxicological effects.” Americans have cheered the successes of their military men and women in Iraq and Afghanistan and, to a lesser degree, in the Balkans. Most remain ignorant of the horrendous weapons their troops used to destroy such feeble enemies. Even more, they are almost completely ignorant of the hazards faced by their own troops from the toys at their disposal. There is no outrage in the U.S. for the dangers being faced by American troops, even less outrage for the innocent victims of this lethal onslaught. But America’s craven allies can offer no excuses for their silence. None of the information presented in this article is secret: it is readily available from a variety of sources. In several countries, there are victims of DU exposure who thought they were going to fight the good fight with their Yankee friends, little realizing that their best buddy was going to expose them to lethal substances, just because they could. The American decision to initiate the use of DU weaponry, and then to continue its use even when evidence mounted to thwart any lingering doubts about the hazards, is a despicable act. This has been a cold, calculated decision to inflict long-lasting harm on enemies with no regard for the innocent in those lands and no regard even for American and allied troops. There are few observers who would excuse any other nation behaving in this way from charges of war crimes. Depleted uranium appears to have been given the green light in 1990 for three reasons: to test the efficacy of fourth generation nuclear weapons still in their development stage, to blur the distinction between conventional and nuclear weaponry, and to facilitate the reintroduction of nuclear weapons into the American arsenal. And it has done a marvelous job of stopping the enemy. Unfortunately, the side effects on civilian populations and the long-lasting environmental effects are horrendous. If the use of this weaponry marks the future of American strategy, and given their proclivity for military adventures, the deleterious effects of DU on the environment and on the population of various countries is assured. More, the health of American and allied troops is also compromised. The continued use of DU weapons should be sufficient reason for America’s allies to decline invitations to future military excursions. Regardless of the peril presented by the enemy, America’s allies need to be concerned about the peril presented by America. [Paul Harris is self-employed as a consultant providing businesses with the tools and expertise to reintegrate their sick or injured employees into the workplace. He has traveled extensively in what is usually known as "the Third World" and has an abiding interest in history, social justice, morality and, well, just about everything. He lives in Canada.] Paul Harris encourages your comments: [pharris@YellowTimes.org] ***************************************************************** 2 JoongAng Daily: Atom agency to seek more Korean data [http://joongangdaily.joins.com] The International Atomic Energy Agency says it will dispatch another team of inspectors to South Korea this month to pursue an investigation into South Korea's nuclear research. Referring to South Korean scientists' experiments with plutonium and uranium, Mohamed ElBaradei, the chief of the UN nuclear watchdog, said Wednesday in Vienna that it was too early to draw any conclusions from recent IAEA surveys of South Korea's nuclear activities. "The important thing for us is to make sure that the experiments did not recur after the dates that were reported to us," he said. A second team of IAEA inspectors left South Korea on Sunday after a weeklong inspection of state-run research labs and other centers in the country. Last month, South Korea admitted its scientists had conducted plutonium extraction experiments in the early 1980s and had enriched a small amount of uranium in 2000 without government authorization. The reports prompted international criticism and complicated the negotiations with North Korea over that country's nuclear arms program. Mr. ElBaradei said the IAEA has not found any activities that South Korea did not report. The Science and Technology Ministry pledged full support to the international inspectors when they return to Seoul. Based on the samples and data collected from the inspections in South Korea, the IAEA plans to submit a report at its board of directors meeting in November. The board will then decide whether South Korea has committed a breach, violation or is in non-compliance with its international obligations on nuclear non-proliferation, in which case the latter would automatically lead to this issue being dealt with by the UN Security Council. Mr. ElBaradei will arrive in Seoul on Wednesday to attend the Pugwash Conference on Science and World Affairs, a meeting on disarmament. by Choi Jie-ho jieho@joongang.co.kr> 2004.09.30 ***************************************************************** 3 Xinhuanet: Chinese FM says six-party talks only option to DPRK nuclear issue www.xinhuanet.com www.chinaview.cn 2004-10-01 03:29:22 WASHINGTON, Sept. 30 (Xinhuanet) -- The resolution of the nuclear issue on the Korean peninsula through the framework of the six-party talks is the only "feasible and correct" option, visiting Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing said here on Thursday. "Actually all the parties who attend the Beijing six-party talks and actually the entire international community have expressed the view that the resolution of the nuclear issue on theKorean peninsula through the six-party talks is the only feasible and correct option," Li told reporters after his working lunch with US Secretary of State Colin Powell. The Chinese foreign minister said there have emerged "some new complicating factors and new difficulties" concerning the next round of the six-party talks. "This has required all of us to continue to adopt a more peaceful means to the nuclear issue on the Koran peninsula, through the framework of the six-party talks, because nothing is more precious than peace," he said. For his part, Powell said he believed the six-party talks framework will work. "I think that the six-party framework is what we should be concentrating on, and not any other means of dealing with this right now," Powell said. "I am quite confident that the six-party framework is a framework in which this matter will be dealt with for the foreseeable future because it serves the interests of all parties," Powell said. The United States said on Wednesday that it was still committedto the six-party process despite that the talks were not taking place this month as scheduled. "We remain committed to the six-party process. We think that isthe way to move forward," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said at a news briefing on Wednesday. "It makes sense to do it that way, it is the way to do it. It has shown that it is a process that can work," Boucher said. The United States has said that it would like to see another round of the six-party talks on the nuclear issue of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) take place and said it was continuing to work with the other parties to move the six-party process forward and "it is not something we are giving up on." Three rounds of the six-party talks, hosted by China, have beenheld. Enditem Copyright ©2003 Xinhua News Agency. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 4 US Policy Supports Nuclear Power Terrorism Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2004 04:26:52 -0400 ------- Forwarded message ------- From: CAN To: can@nukebusters.org Subject: Nukes and Terror Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2004 07:15:30 -0400 NRC petitioners seek reactor license suspensions By Kathryn Casa Vermont Guardian The nuclear power struggle in the Middle East has grave implications for security in and around commercial reactors in the United States, especially those of the vulnerable Mark I and II designs common to New England, according to a nuclear safety expert. "Nuclear power plants are strategic targets and should be considered as such in the context of national security," Gordon Thompson, executive director of the Institute for Resource and Security Studies in Cambridge, Mass., told the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Petition Review Board during a national conference call on Sept. 23. Thompson resurrected the specter of nuclear terrorism in his testimony on a broadly backed petition that calls upon the NRC to suspend the operating licenses for all Mark I and Mark II boiling water reactors pending development of an in-depth defense plan for each plant. The petition was signed by 45 organizations including the Union of Concerned Scientists, Greenpeace, the Sierra Club, and citizens groups including the Brattleboro-based New England Coalition and the Citizens Awareness Network in Rowe, Mass. More than three years after 9/11's catastrophic proof that commercial aircraft can become weapons of mass destruction, the NRC's line of defense is still aimed at ground-based attacks and is overly reliant on airport security and industry promises, Thompson and other critics charged. Thompson was referring to news reports last week in the Israeli daily Haaretz that Washington has agreed to sell Israel 500 one-ton "bunker-buster" bombs that would allow Israel to disable or forestall Iranian nuclear capability. Iran maintains that it is developing its nuclear program for peaceful purposes, and has vowed to react "most severely" to any U.S.-backed Israeli action. This means "that attacking nominally civilian nuclear facilities is,in effect, a declared option by the United States government," Thompson told the NRC panel. "In my view, that creates a situation in which, to put it bluntly, U.S. civilian nuclear facilities are put on the table as potential targets, not necessarily by the government of Iran, but by people who are not accountable to that government but are sympathetic to that position." In his testimony, Jim Riccio, nuclear policy analyst for Greenpeace, handed the panel what he said were 17 pages of documents listing U.S. airports within 10 miles of nuclear power plants. "Even more disturbing is that . when you actually read the documents, you realize that the analyses are sugarcoated because you're relying on commitments (from the nuclear industry)." "We are extremely frustrated at the inability of this agency to take action," he concluded. Diane Screnci, a Region I NRC spokeswoman in Boston, rebuffed the charges that the NRC has failed to act, saying security at the nation's 104 nuclear power plants has sharply increased since Sept. 11. "There was already security prior to 9/11," Screnci said, "and since then we've enhanced security drastically." Mark I and II reactor designs are particularly vulnerable to attack because the spent-fuel pools are elevated high above ground level with a hollow core beneath, and are unprotected from above; the reactor vessels are above ground level; and in the Mark I, the reactor containment is a thin, steel shell, according to the petition. Thirty-one U.S. reactors are Mark I or Mark II boiling water designs. In the Northeast they are: Vermont Yankee (Mark 1), Nine Mile Point 1 (Mark 1), Nine Mile Point 2 (Mark 2) and FitzPatrick (Mark 1) in Oswego, N.Y., Pilgrim 1 in Plymouth, Mass. (Mark 1), and Millstone 1 (Mark 1) in Connecticut. Although Millstone 1 was shut down in 1995, its storage pool still contains 24 years worth of spent fuel. With their large, flat planes and elevated spent-fuel pools, Thompson said Mark I and II reactors should be the NRC's highest security priorities. A forthcoming study by the National Academy of Sciences is expected to confirm that the NRC is not doing enough to safeguard spent-fuel pools, said CAN's Deb Katz. "The NRC is basically being proactive in protecting the (nuclear) industry," she charged. "I would disagree with that," the NRC's Screnci responded. "The role of the NRC is to insure that the public is protected while people use nuclear materials. It is a responsibility we take seriously and we work every day to carry it out." Katz reminded the panel that in 2002 attorneys general from 26 states including Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut and New York, wrote a letter to leaders in Congress about "the specific vulnerabilities of fuel pools to terrorism, and their grave concerns that not enough had been done to deal with this issue and the potential for sabotage." "The issues we are raising are concerns not just of people who live in these communities, but of the states who are going to be responsible and accountable for any catastrophic event that would devastate their state," Katz said. Another witness, Raymond Shadis of the New England Coalition on Nuclear Pollution, said measures the NRC has implemented, such as mixing less-dangerous old fuel rods with more vulnerable new ones, are insufficient. The NRC also has allowed plant operators to "rerack" their fuel pools, essentially narrowing the space between the rods as more spent fuel is produced. Shadis also charged that Vermont Yankee, on the shores of the Connecticut River in Vernon, remains highly vulnerable to an attack from the river. There is a state park and an unlit boat launch ramp directly opposite the plant on the New Hampshire side of the river, which he said is not patrolled at night, and are readily accessible from a major highway. "At this point there does not seem to be any apparent barrier that would prevent landing a boat on the shore underneath the structures of the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant," Shadis said. VY spokesman Rob Williams said the plant's parent company, Entergy, has entirely revamped plant security, with more than $8 million spent on security upgrades since 2001. "That includes guard towers at key vantage points, additional fencing, surveillance-equipped barriers, security staff, and weapons, as well as a new process of interaction with local law enforcement." Williams called VY "an industry leader, as well as a model for other facilities upgrading security." The Sept. 23 hearing was held to give petitioners the opportunity to provide additional explanations for their requests, PRB chairman Jim Lyons said. The petition calls on the NRC to conduct a six-month study on the structural integrity of Mark I and II reactors, hold a national conference on the design, develop a comprehensive plan to hear stakeholders' concerns, and create local oversight panels. The review board is expected to respond to the petition within 120 days. Deb Katz Citizens Awareness Network Box 83 Shelburne Falls, MA 01370 413-339-5781 can@nukebusters.org ***************************************************************** 5 insight mag: The Nuclear Option - Insight on the News - National [http://www.insightmag.com Posted September 30, 2004 By Mac Johnson Now we have fought a war. We fought it (in case it has gone on so long that you have forgotten) primarily to avoid one horrible vision. That nightmare is that one workday morning, as the cities of the East Coast awaken in the sleepy gray of another mindless commute, a bomb will sit unseen, precisely counting down the last in a long series of hours, minutes, and -ultimately- seconds. And this bomb is nuclear. Perhaps it sits in a warehouse, still in its crate, activated by GPS or satellite phone. Perhaps it lies in a ship or in an anonymous cargo plane. It doesn't matter. What does matter is that when it detonates, Manhattan is gone. The "Today" show doesn't rush to the scene of the blast; the "Today" show is gone. As is the rest of the media in the area, the stock market, the headquarters of untold corporations, the United Nations, and well over a 100,000 people. When the stunned survivors of the shock wave in New Jersey look out to where the Manhattan skyline stood just before, they see only the Atlantic Ocean. Lower Manhattan is a sandbar. And we know nothing. There is no return address to track, no trajectory to follow back to the launch site. No one claims credit. All over the world America's enemies report that this day we have reaped the bitter harvest of our "arrogance" and "hegemony". But no one with any cities to nuke in retaliation knows who the owners of the bomb were. In silos and airbases all over the world, America's nuclear weapons, capable of destroying the known world many times over, sit unused while New York smolders. That is the small-scale scenario. In the large-scale version, others -Washington, D.C., Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, and Seattle, follow the blast in New York. What do we do? Where do we shoot? Do we ever recover fully? For the longest time, such a scenario was not possible. All the world's nuclear weapons fell into two camps, Free World versus Communist Bloc, locked in the strange slow-motion sumo match of the Cold War. Any nuclear event inside one camp would have triggered a rain of Hellfire into the other. So thousands of warheads sat silent for years on end. The power of these weapons to make their bearers seemingly immune to direct assault did not go unnoticed. Others wanted the magic shield that came with the nuclear sword. First to achieve the prize was Israel, using a combination of scientists educated in America and Europe and a French-built nuclear reactor. With the exception of North Korea, some variation of these two tactics has figured into every proliferation of nuclear weaponry since (though often the foreign-built reactor is Russian). Fortunately for would-be genocidal maniacs the world over, the Universities of the West will teach nuclear physics to anyone with a passport and a checking account (and defend it as diversity) and France and Russia are the world's foremost nuclear prostitutes. If Satan were to ever clone a three-way hybrid of Hitler, Jeffrey Dahmer and Pol Pot and appoint him the head of a country named "Kill-America Stan", the University of California will teach him to split atoms and the French "Bureaucracy-Industrial Complex" will build him a nuclear reactor (and both will squeal like scalded monkeys if anyone says it is a bad idea). Thanks to the West's seemingly fearless attitude toward spreading the knowledge and components of Armageddon, Israel has been joined by South Africa, India and Pakistan, China now has the neutron bomb and accurate missiles to deliver it, Iran is within a few years of having nuclear bombs, and even stateless armies like Al Qaeda have hopeful nuclear ambitions. Meanwhile, North Korea, the one nation on Earth too socially retarded to play Swiss bank account diplomacy with the eager beavers of France, has now joined the nuclear club, using only Chinese and Russian education and components, leaving the French to lament yet another "failure of diplomacy". Every time another unstable nation acquires nuclear weapons, the likelihood that they will be used increases dramatically. More often than not, America will be the likely target of such weapons. This worldwide quest for a holocaust in a box leaves the United States with a few really quite bad options. We can ignore the coming inferno and hope bad people never get hold of really big bombs (by far the most popular approach thus far). We can take President Bush's approach and invade and obliterate perceived threats shortly before they fully mature. Or we could take President Clinton's approach and pay a modern Danegeld to any dictator with a bomb and a worthless piece of paper that says he won't use it. Ignoring it is slow suicide. Invasion is costly, controversial and eventually will come too late -resulting not in 20 dead Marines on a bad day, but in a lost Carrier battle group. And as North Korea has now taught us, paying off a nuclear thug just gives him money to build more weapons out of your sight. So is there anything we can do to protect ourselves that is less violent and costly than invasion and occupation of an entire country or less repulsive than paying protection money to a rabid midget with an Atomic switch-blade? (And no, getting the world's megalomaniacs to all sign a treaty saying that they will be nice to people and puppies or face a severe tut-tuting by the United Nations is not a real option.) I think there a few small things that we could do that would make the acquisition of nuclear weapons by our enemies noticeably less easy; things that would cost us relatively little and do not depend on the crap-shoot of war or the trustworthiness of our enemies. One is blindingly obvious: we can stop teaching foreigners how to build nuclear bombs (and other weapons of mass destruction). I would like to propose, somewhat modestly, that there are some things that a lot of people just don't need to know and -equally controversially- that the American University System exists for the benefit of Americans. The scale on which we facilitate the spread of weaponizable knowledge is immense. It is fair to say that America's graduate level scientific education system is now dependent upon foreign students. This is the result not of the pursuit of "diversity", but of a systematic effort to suppress the wages and stipends paid to student and post-doctoral level researchers. This statement may seem strange to those not involved in scientific research, but it will make more sense if one realizes how it is that science graduate schools make money. Unlike undergraduate schools or professional schools which make their money by charging tuition of students, scientific graduate schools make their money through competing for and receiving government research grants. The students and post-doctoral fellows that do the actual research are paid, since they are a moneymaking labor force. All other things being equal, the more students and fellows a laboratory has, the more money it can solicit from the American taxpayer. This problem is instantly recognizable to any capitalist and America's universities have borrowed a solution from the most exploitive tricks of amoral capitalism: they have decided that Americans earn too much, and so they have imported large numbers of underpaid foreigners to replace them. The results of this movement have been dramatic: in many areas, such as biotechnology related fields, a majority of post-doctoral fellows are now foreigners. As the law of supply and demand dictates, the salaries paid to entry level Ph.D.s have been suppressed to ridiculous levels (for example, a molecular biologist -having had more education than a physician- can expect to earn a whopping $26,000 per year at most Universities). Because of this and other exploitations, America has now lost an entire generation of American researchers. Many students choose not to enter such a system and many of those idealistic enough to do so choose to leave after receiving their degrees. As sad as such a situation is for aspiring American scientists, the important aspect for this discussion is that many to most of the people currently being taught to genetically engineer viruses, build nuclear reactors, engineer planes and missiles, develop new chemical compounds, and design computers are not Americans. This is a misuse of America's taxpayer funded higher-education system and especially disturbing given that America's sole military advantage in a very hostile world rests upon her technological superiority. When that superiority is gone, what will happen to America? The problem is so profound that I think it is fair to say that the American University system is now the world's premier proliferator of weapons of mass destruction, exceeding China, Russia, North Korea or France. The western democracies are training the foreign scientists and engineers that build the weapons we so fear on the battlefield and at home. Most non-American students are harmless, of course, other than the pressure they put on American wage levels, but we need to consider whether it is in America's best interests to give any knowledge to any foreign nationals in any number. This is no longer an issue of politeness and outreach. It is an issue of survival. To get an idea of the significance of the problem, consider just one institution: the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MIT. MIT is, for many fields, America's premier Science Institution. A less praiseworthy distinction is that MIT provided the graduate training for Qian Xuesen, head of China's missile program, Tu Shoue, designer of China's launch vehicles, Liang Shoupan, China's chief systems designer for ballistic missiles, and lecturer at the Military Engineering Academy of the People's Liberation Army, Khidhir Hamza, formerly Saddam Hussein's chief nuclear weapons designer, and Aafia Siddiqui, a neurological scientist currently sought by the FBI for questioning regarding links to Al Qaeda. This list is far from complete. Limiting access to certain classes of knowledge will not halt the spread of weapons technology, of course, since the laws of science can be worked out independently by clever people the world over, but it will slow it. Reinventing the wheel takes time. In addition, a nation mature enough to educate its own people to the highest levels is more likely to behave responsibly with the knowledge it acquires. Finally, for those of you that doubt that Western knowledge and components are the key ingredients in third world weapons proliferation, consider the following quote from a Time magazine interview with Abdul Qadeer Khan, the European-educated "Father" of Pakistan's nuclear bomb program regarding the cost of building nuclear bombs: "It does not cost much. We have learnt from you, from other countries, so we do not have to reinvent the wheel. Most of the things, scientific know-how and designs, are available. The money that I need for my program is less than the cost of a modern aircraft. You need more brains than money." Knowledge is power. We're giving it away with both hands. Disturbingly, Khan recently confessed to secretly selling nuclear knowledge and technology to Iran, Libya, and North Korea. The second domestic change that would make America substantially safer is an ambitious program of building nuclear power plants. This may seem counterintuitive, but it would accomplish two important things. First, it is the modern day version of killing the buffalo. Although the American Civil War was once famously described by a German military observer as nothing more than two armed mobs chasing one another about the countryside, it was in fact, a watershed event in the development of modern war. The war taught American military planners the importance of the economic aspects of war. When the Confederacy was defeated, it was for economic reasons: blockade, bisection along the Mississippi river, depopulation of the labor pool (free and slave), and destruction of infrastructure. All these factors negated and then reversed Southern success on the battlefield. Both sides understood this upon reunification. The first postbellum application of this lesson was in the Wars with the Plains Indians, as the wounded nation grew westward. Faced with a highly mobile, motivated enemy adept at guerilla warfare, and possessing superior knowledge of the remote battlefields, General Sherman ignored them. Instead he shot the buffalo. Environmentally, this is not a currently popular episode from our past. Militarily, it was effective. The plains Indians were fueled by, armed by, clothed in, and housed by the great herds. When the buffalo were gone, the Indians asked to surrender, starved, or were chased to violent impoverished ends. Every society exists upon specific economic foundations. Our current enemy is political Islam, a.k.a. Islamofascism or Islamic fundamentalism. This enemy is a product of Arab culture, rooted in the Middle East, and funded by oil. Oil is their buffalo. It buys Russian guns, North Korean jammers, Chinese missiles, American flight schooling, European medicines, Pakistani tribal protection, American computers, false passports etc. Oil is also what forces the two very different cultures of America and the Middle East to interact with one another. Were it not for Oil, the Middle East would be much like Africa: a black hole of poverty, authoritarianism, war, and famine into which America would occasionally drop food aid, but could otherwise ignore as hopelessly backward, difficult, and self-defeating. Abundant nuclear power could replace Middle Eastern oil. It is the only proven alternative to petropower. The President may talk about exploring fuel cells to power cars, but such fuel cells are charged by electrically driven processes. There are no hydrogen fields. It's converted oil, coal, gas, or nuclear power in the end. We must choose a source of power that shoots the enemy's buffalo. Think of it as "No Oil for Blood", if you like. The second benefit of a nuclear-rich America is that nuclear power plants burn the same fuel as atomic bombs. Fissionable material, for practical purposes, is -like oil- a non-renewable resource. Every kilogram of uranium (or the plutonium derived from it) used in a light water or fast-integral reactor power plant is not available for bomb making. As it is "burned", the total amount of uranium available for Armageddon decreases. Leave a light bulb on overnight, run the air-conditioner with the windows open, watch Geraldo on a big screen the size of his ego - and you have made the world a safer place. You have fractionally reduced the world supply of nuclear explosives. More important than the slow burn-down of fissionable material is the economic incentive that a huge increase in demand for uranium would provide America to find and acquire uranium for power. As the price of and demand for uranium increases, the economic incentive to channel surplus supplies into black-market deals decreases significantly. Capitalism will see to it that America will simply outbid many potential enemies for uranium stockpiles. An example of this sort of thinking in action is the "Megaton to Megawatts" program run by the US government in the wake of the cold war. In a nutshell, this program buys the enriched uranium out of decommissioned Soviet bombs (at ridiculously high prices) for processing into power plant fuel rods. The above-market prices once made the program controversial. But the fact is the uranium from these Soviet bombs is the most likely source for black-market weapons, and the material bought through this program will never be used to bomb America. And since the idiots at the State Department would have just given gobs of money to our "friends" in Russia anyway, I think it is a good deal, regardless of market prices. A nuclear run America could sequester huge amounts of uranium. The resultant drop in oil prices would also discourage the third world from pursuing nuclear technology for power, reducing the proliferation of dual-use technology. The United States needs to start making long-term plans for defeating the growing menace of nuclear proliferation before New York is turned into a National Memorial Park -plans that don't involve the military playing goalie at the last moment. If we don't slow the rate of spread, the day is coming when every nation larger than Trinidad and Tobago will have a nuclear bomb. Where do you think those bomb will be aimed? Together, the above-mentioned actions would be a small start toward increased long-term security. Other ideas will be needed as well. This is a very serious game we have finally admitted we're in, and we are in it for the long haul -hopefully. Mac Johnson is a freelance writer and medical researcher living in Cambridge, MA. [editor@insightmag.com?subject=Website editorial comment] ***************************************************************** 6 [NYTr] Nuclear Pakistan Snubs the IAEA Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2004 14:53:40 -0500 (CDT) Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit AFP via Yahoo - Sept 30, 2004 http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=1504&e=5&u=/afp/20040930/ts_afp/iaea_nuclear_pakistan_040930172314 Pakistan refuses to let UN nuclear watchdog interview Pakistani scientist VIENNA (AFP) - Pakistan has refused to let the UN atomic watchdog interview disgraced nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, ringleader of a smuggling network, agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei told the BBC. "We have not been allowed by Pakistan to talk to the man," ElBaradei, who is director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said in a BBC World Service interview aired Thursday and monitored by AFP. It was the first time the IAEA has admitted that Pakistan is refusing to let it see Khan, the father of Pakistan's atomic bomb and ringleader of a trafficking network that supplied Iran, Libya and North Korea (news - web sites) with sensitive nuclear technology. The IAEA has been asking Pakistan regularly to help it investigate the international black market run by Khan, who confessed last February to passing on nuclear secrets. Pakistan's cooperation with the probe is crucial in resolving how Iran, and other states like North Korea, have supplied themselves with nuclear parts and technology that can be used to make atomic weapons. Asked why Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf reportedly said that nobody had asked to question Khan, ElBaradei said: "I can tell my Pakistani friends that I will be happy to send a team tomorrow to talk to him if we can, absolutely." ElBaradei said Khan's network had "more than 30 companies and 30 countries all over the globe involved in this fantastic sophisticated illicit trafficking." But ElBaradei said "as far as I know Mr. Khan has not talked to any non-Pakistani until now." Pakistan's Foreign Minister Khurshid Mahmud said in Tehran in August that his country was cooperating with the IAEA probe into Iran's suspect nuclear programme but ruled out allowing international inspectors into Pakistan. He pointed out that Pakistan was not a signatory of the NPT (nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty), which mandates the IAEA to monitor compliance with international atomic safeguards. IAEA inspectors have found traces of highly-enriched uranium inside Iran, leading to suspicions that Iran has been trying to produce nuclear bombs and not just atomic energy as it insists. But Tehran maintains the traces found their way into the country on equipment bought from Khan's black market network. The IAEA wants to take so-called "environmental samples" from Pakistan to compare them with those found in Iran -- crucial in verifying Tehran's claims. Pakistan has supplied results from sampling it has conducted itself, but has not allowed IAEA inspectors into the country to do their own sampling, ElBaradei said in a report earlier this month. ElBaradei said the IAEA needed results from its own testing to be able to draw definitive conclusions. ElBaradei told the BBC that he did not think Iran was an "imminent threat" to make nuclear weapons and that "verification and diplomacy" remain "the only way to resolve" questions about Tehran's atomic ambitions. He said Iran was "as far away as any country that has the know-how to enrich uranium... maybe one year, maybe two years." Enrichment makes uranium fuel for civilian nuclear reactors but can also produce the explosive material for atomic bombs. * Search the NYTr Archives at: http://olm.blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/ To subscribe or unsubscribe or change your settings via the web, visit: http://olm.blythe-systems.com/mailman/listinfo/nytr ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= ***************************************************************** 7 [NYTr] Israel's Nuclear Threat Should Not Be Ignored Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2004 04:58:56 -0500 (CDT) Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit Sent by John Clancy Guardian Weekly - Sept 26, 2004 Israel is the real wild card in explosive Middle East pack Although Tehran's nuclear threat is generating concern, Tel Aviv's should not be ignored by David Hirst in Beirut When George Bush first identified the two Middle East members of his "axis of evil", Iran clearly ranked as a far more formidable adversary than Saddam Hussein's Iraq. But President Bush went after the easier target instead. So "did we invade the wrong country?" asks a leading commentator, Charles Krauthammer, speaking for many neo-conservative hawks as the US refocuses on Iran. >From their standpoint, it must look as if they did. For the neo-cons, overthrowing Saddam was nothing if not regional in purpose, the opening phase of a grand design to "transform" the entire Middle East. Yet it is hardly success in Iraq that accounts for the increasingly urgent concerns about Iran; it is more likely the spectre of catastrophic failure. For if the Islamic Republic was always the most dangerous of "rogue states", it is now more dangerous than it was at the outset of the Iraq adventure. It simply has to be subdued. Iran claims it is not developing nuclear weapons. But it wants to create the impression that it is acquiring the kind of firepower only weapons of mass destruction can supply. If Iran does not yet actually have the unconventional means to lend substance to its militant rhetoric, it does have conventional means in new and providential abundance. "Some military commanders in Iran," said the defence minister, Ali Shamkhani, "are convinced that preventive operations which the Americans talk about are not their monopoly. We too are present from Khost to Kandahar in Afghanistan, in the Gulf, and we can be in Iraq, where US forces won't be an element of strength, but our hostage." Then there is always Lebanon and Hizbullah. Quiescent of late, Hizbullah is ever ready to re-enter the jihadist arena, drawing on the arsenal of rockets with which, according to Israel, Iran has been systematically supplying it. "This", says the veteran Israeli military analyst Zeev Schiff, "is an Iran-Syria-Hizbullah array," and its use, almost certain in the event of an American or Israeli strike on Iran, could escalate into "all-out war". It is clear that the mullahs do not want a full-scale showdown; in parading their assets, they seek to deter rather than provoke. In fact they have always wanted better relations with the US, provided they get something in return. If anything, the urgency now lies on the other side; hence the urgings of pundits such as Krauthammer to "strike before Iran's nukes get hot". But perhaps the real wild card lies less in the Iranian "rogue state" than it does in what amounts to the Israeli one. Israel has repeatedly warned that it may take direct action to stop an Iranian nuclear bomb "going critical". As Amos Perlmutter, Michael I Handel and Uri Bar-Joseph recount in their book Two Minutes over Baghdad, the Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, was once part of a three-man inner circle that kept even the sympathetic administration of President Ronald Reagan completely in the dark as they planned and carried out the daring 1981 airstrike on Iraq's Osirak nuclear plant. That exploit had little visible fallout. But a repeat against Iran would be universally perceived as American in spirit, even if exclusively Israeli in execution, and the whole Middle Eastern mess that America came to Iraq to clean up would instantly cross a new threshold in scale, virulence and unpredictability. * Search the NYTr Archives at: http://olm.blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/ To subscribe or unsubscribe or change your settings via the web, visit: http://olm.blythe-systems.com/mailman/listinfo/nytr ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= ***************************************************************** 8 Washington Times: IAEA chief requests 3rd term September 30, 2004 NEW YORK  Mohamed ElBaradei is seeking a third term at the helm of the U.N. nuclear watchdog, a move opposed by the Bush administration. Mr. ElBaradei, the director-general of the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), this week circulated a letter to the 35 board members expressing his availability to serve another four-year term. But U.S. officials have said they don't believe that senior U.N. officials should serve more than two terms, and have made it clear they do not want to make an exception for the Egyptian nuclear physicist. ***************************************************************** 9 KVBC: First Lady Laura Bush Makes Third Trip to Southern Nevada September 29, 2004 Maria Silva Reporting [Msilva@kvbc.com] The First Lady is leaving Las Vegas this morning. Her next stop, Albuquerque, New Mexico to give a speech about the economy. Yesterday, Laura Bush was greeted in Henderson by a crowd of almost 2500 cheering supporters. Women's issues were the focus of her speech. Mrs. Bush also touched on other issues such as the War in Iraq, the economy, and why her husband should be given 4 more years. "My husband knows that there is more to do to make our country safer and stronger and more hopeful and he'll continue the work of leading America forward." Some supporters seemed a bit disappointed the First Lady didn't touch on more issues affecting Nevadans, such as the nursing shortage and the Yucca Mountain controversy. [http://www.worldnow.com] All content © Copyright 2000 - 2004 WorldNow and KVBC. All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 10 The Australian: Brazil rejects nuclear black market claims [October 01, 2004] [http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/ AP BRASILIA, Brazil: The Brazilian government lashed out yesterday at reports that it denied UN inspectors full access to its uranium enrichment facilities because it wanted to hide technology purchased on the nuclear black market. The Estado de Sao Paulo newspaper cited a former US Defense Department official as saying the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) suspects Brazil purchased its uranium centrifuges from Abdul Qadeer Khan, a Pakistani nuclear scientist who diverted nuclear technology to North Korea, Libya and Iran. The science and technology ministry denied the claim but did not refer directly to the charges. "The ministry repudiates news being released and attributed to anonymous sources without the support of any insititution or country, and that tries to associate decades of scientific and technological development with shielded proceedings or international scandals," the ministry said in a statement. The statement added that critics must prove their accusations. Estado cited Henry D. Sokolski, a former Pentagon official who heads the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, a think-tank based in Washington DC, who claims he learned of IAEA's fears through contacts with the UN agency he did not identify. Brazil claims that the centrifuges at its plant in Resende, about 100km north-west of Rio de Janeiro, use advanced technology that could be stolen by other countries if the inspectors are allowed to view it. But analysts doubt Brazil has developed technology that is radically different from what is used at other uranium enrichment plants and point out that technological advances are traditionally protected with patents. Last week, the government said it was near an agreement that would allow the IAEA to inspect its uranium enrichment facilities without granting inspectors full access. The deal reportedly would "preserve the country's technological and commercial secrets," the science and technology ministry said in a statement. According to the ministry, IAEA inspectors who plan to visit the plant in Rio de Janeiro state on October 18 will have access only to features essential to safeguards but not to the "body" of the centrifuges used to enrich uranium. Brazil expects its uranium enrichment plant to be ready in October. The government wants to use the enriched uranium to fuel its Angra I and II nuclear power plants, which produce 4.3 per cent of the nation's electricity. Brazil has the world's sixth-largest uranium reserves but currently must ship the ore out of the country to be processed for use in its nuclear power plants. AP privacy terms © The Australian ***************************************************************** 11 AFP: Kyrgyzstan blocks British, German nuclear imports [http://www.terradaily.com/] BISHKEK (AFP) Sep 29, 2004 Kyrgyzstan's government announced Wednesday it was blocking controversial plans to import nuclear waste from Britain and Germany for reprocessing. The government said it was banning imports of uranium-bearing graphite for treatment at the Kara-Balta ore reprocessing facility. "The ban on imports of uranium-bearing material to Kyrgyzstan applies not only to Britain but to other countries, including Germany," a Kyrgyz government spokeswoman told AFP. The announcement came after British media announced that British Nuclear Fuels would be sending 1,800 tonnes of such material from its first generation Magnox reactors to Kara-Balta. The ban also applies to a plan approved by a Kyrgyz government commission in June by which a German firm RWE NUKEM GmbH was to send 1,700 tonnes of a similar material for reprocessing at Kara-Balta. "The decision was made due to the absence of guarantees concerning the safe-keeping of the uranium-bearing material and in accordance with international security norms," the government's statement read. While environmental groups and Kyrgyz Prime Minister Nikolai Tanayev had opposed the imports, Kara-Balta's management said they anticipated much-needed funds from such deals with which they could renew the decaying facility. This impoverished country's Soviet-era nuclear sites are seen as threatening continued growth in the number of foreign tourists attracted to its spectacular mountain landscapes. All rights reserved. © 2004 Agence France-Presse [http://www.afp.com/] . Sections of the information displayed on ***************************************************************** 12 Sa News24: Nigeria gets nuclear reactor [http://www.news24.com 30/09/2004 22:03 - (SA) Kano - Nigeria launched its first nuclear reactor for scientific research on Thursday in the northern university city of Zaria, the research project director, Ibrahim Umar, said. The reactor, which is solely for scientific purposes and constructed with technical assistance from the International Atomic Energy Association (IAEA), was launched in Ahmadu Bello University, the largest university in northern Nigeria, Umar told AFP in a telephone interview. Umar, director of the university's centre for energy research and training, which is in charge of the project, said that the reactor was commissioned by Nigeria's science and technology minister in the presence of representatives of IAEA and Nigeria's energy commission. "The reactor will solely be applied for scientific research. This includes soil mapping to quantify different elements in the soil to boost agricultural production and to reduce the use of chemical fertilizer as well as for solid minerals identification in Nigeria," he said. "It will also be used in petroleum exploration and for identifying elements associated with diseases in the human body and other human-related research purposes", Umar said. He ruled out the possibility of expanding the project for research in nuclear weapons, saying the project is under the strict supervision of the IAEA. "We are not involved in strategic research like nuclear weapons because we are a university-based research centre, located within the university. "We have been doing this kind of research using other techniques which are just expanding using nuclear reactor," he said. According to Umar, the research centre would be liaising with ministries for science and technology, water resources, agriculture and petroleum for its research programmes. Edited by Elmarie Jack ***************************************************************** 13 NRC: NRC Annual Nuclear Safety Research Conference to Be Held Oct. 25-27 in Washington, D.C. News Release - 2004-12 U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION Office of Public Affairs Telephone: 301/415-8200 Washington, DC 20555-0001 E-mail: [opa@nrc.gov] No. 04-120 September 30, 2004 The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission will hold its final Nuclear Safety Research Conference (NSRC) on Oct. 25-27 in Washington D.C. This years session will cover technical research in materials aging and degradation, new reactors, fuels, probabilistic risk assessment infrastructure, radiation protection, codes and operating experience. These conference sessions will center on where weve been, where were going in terms of research efforts and where the NRCs research attention will be directed in the future, said Carl Paperiello, director of the agencys Office of Nuclear Regulatory Research. The conference, held annually since 1973, serves as a leading forum for experts to discuss the results and insights of the NRCs research program as well as to preview research activities of the future. It will be held at the Marriott Hotel at Metro Center from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Monday and Tuesday and from 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. on Wednesday. The Marriott Hotel is located at 775 12th St. N.W., adjacent to the Metro Center subway station. Guest speakers and panelists tentatively scheduled from the NRC include Chairman Nils Diaz, Commissioner Edward McGaffigan, Jr., and Commissioner Jeffrey S. Merrifield, as well as representatives from international organizations, industries, the research community and public interest groups. Those wishing to attend the conference can review the agenda and register in advance at [http://www.bnl.gov/nsrc] or by contacting Sue Monteleone at 631-344-7235or [susanm@bnl.gov] . In order to reach a larger audience, the NRCs Office of Nuclear Regulatory Research will be represented at the March 2005 Regulatory Information Conference (RIC), sponsored by the Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation, with topics including materials degradation, probabilistic risk assessment and new reactor research. Beginning in 2006, the NSRC and RIC will be integrated into a new conference. Last revised Thursday, September 30, 2004 ***************************************************************** 14 Times-Standard: Commission wants PG to be accountable for missing nuclear fuel [http://www.times-standard.com] Article Last Updated: Thursday, September 30, 2004 By Meghan Vogel The Times-Standard EUREKA -- It's still a mystery, and the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission wants to know what happened. At a public meeting on Wednesday night attended by a couple of dozen people, representatives from the commission and Pacific Gas and Electric met to discuss the possible whereabouts of nuclear fuel that remains unaccounted for at the Humboldt Bay Power Plant near King Salmon. PG is in the process of decommissioning the nuclear part of the plant, which was shut down in 1976 after it was discovered the plant was on a fault line. While conducting an inventory of the plant's spent fuel pool as part of the decommissioning process, it was discovered in June that three segments from a spent fuel assembly -- labeled as A-49 -- were missing. The segments contained enriched uranium oxide and weighed about 4 pounds total. The NRC was notified, and the spent fuel pool was searched to locate the A-49 segments and to collect other fuel fragments. An initial search of the pool was performed by PG and took about a month. A second search of hard-to-reach areas of the pool is now under way, along with an extensive search of historical records. "You have to exhaust all avenues to find it, and we expect you to continue searching for it," Bruce Mallet of the NRC told PG representatives. Gregory Rueger, PG's chief nuclear officer at the plant, assured the commission the investigation is in progress. "We will be thorough in our efforts to restore accountability," he said. Rueger said there are "gaps in the picture," but more information is being collected daily. PG's John Albers said it is possible the missing segments were shipped for off-site analysis. Currently, however, historic documents are conflicting. While one set of records states the segments were shipped, another states the shipment was canceled and the segments were placed back in the pool. Many records are on microfilm, and PG employees are pouring through the microfilm searching for any clues on the missing segments. So far, PG has found 40 fuel fragments in the plant's spent fuel pond. The fragments are being analyzed to see if they match the cuts to the A-49 segments. During the search, PG is also categorizing and taking inventory of all the other nuclear material at the plant as part of the decommissioning process. PG estimated the inventory will be complete by 2009, a date that didn't sit well with the NRC. "We need to help you speed up that process," Mallet said. Both PG and the commission assured the public the missing segments pose no threat to the community. Albers said it was highly unlikely the segments could have been extracted from the pool without the plant's alarms sounding and someone dying very quickly from exposure to the nuclear material. "We are confident that if the segments are not found in the pool, then they were transferred to a facility licensed to accept radioactive material," said Mark Satorius of the NRC. © 2004 Times - Standard ***************************************************************** 15 JOURNAL NEWS: Open house focuses on Indian Point emergency By JANE LERNER THE JOURNAL NEWS (Original publication: September 30, 2004) RAMAPO — Ken Miller and his wife, Dale Fisher, have taken steps to prepare for a nuclear disaster or some equally catastrophic event. They have stockpiles of food and water, face masks, duct tape, protective suits and other supplies kept in a safe place at their West Nyack home just in case the unthinkable happens. The couple want to learn all they can about the the Indian Point nuclear-power plant in Buchanan and the plans in place to deal with an emergency there. So Miller and Fisher attended an open house last night sponsored by the New York state Emergency Management Office to familiarize residents with the procedures already in place to protect the public. "We want to improve the dialogue between the state Office of Emergency Management and the people they are trying to protect," said Dan Maurer, an agency official who was at last night's open house. The first of two Rockland emergency planning open houses was held at the county's Fire Training Center in Ramapo. Other sessions have been held in Orange and Putnam counties. Additional sessions will be held in Westchester, but no dates have been set. The idea for the open house came from the well-known Witt report. The 2003 analysis prepared by former Federal Emergency Management Agency Director James Lee Witt was commissioned by the state. It concluded that evacuation plans for the four counties closest to Indian Point — Rockland, Westchester, Putnam and Orange — could not work in a nuclear emergency. The report also showed that residents want more information about Indian Point and the plans in place to deal with an emergency there. State and county officials set up exhibits at the open house detailing emergency information. Rockland Commissioner of Health Dr. Joan Facelle, for example, explained how potassium iodide pills can protect the thyroid gland from radiation. She also told residents how they can get supplies of the pills. Susan Meyer, spokeswoman for the Rockland County Department of Public Transportation, showed residents how they can use a computer program accessible through the county's Web site that shows them evacuation routes and other information. Other information was available, including lists of evacuation centers for schools and residents and suggested evacuation supplies. There was also information about how nuclear power works and the effects of radiation. "It sounds like they are doing all they can in terms of safety," said Bonnie Mavrommatis of New City. "But there are so many things out of their control that I still worry about." Send e-mail to Jane Lerner [jlerner@thejournalnews.com] Home [http://www.thejournalnews.com] -Business ***************************************************************** 16 Slovak news: EC proposes €237 million grant for Slovakia Slovakia's English language newspaper September 27 - October 3,2004, Volume 10, Number 37 THE EUROPEAN Commission has proposed a grant worth €237 million (Sk9.5 billion) to Slovakia for the decommissioning of two nuclear reactors. The proposed funding is part of a new budget plan for the period between 2007 and 2013, which is now being debated by EU member states, the TASR news agency reported. During the accession talks with the EU Slovakia agreed that between 2006 and 2008 it would decommission the V1 unit of its nuclear power plant in Jaslovské Bohunice. Compiled by Martina Jurinová from press reports The Slovak Spectator cannot vouch for the accuracy of the information presented in its Flash News postings. [9/30/2004 9:36:34 AM] Copyright © 1998-2003 The Rock spol. s r.o. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 17 Xinhuanet: UK needs nuclear power to meet demand, cut emissions www.xinhuanet.com www.chinaview.cn 2004-09-30 08:25:57 Elena Moya Beijing, Sept. 30 (Xinhuanet) --The UK, Western Europe's third- largest energy consumer, needs to build nuclear reactors to meet government emissions limits and rising demand, says the head of General Electric Corp's nuclear unit. According to Thursday's China Daily, Prime Minister Tony Blair's government is deliberating whether nuclear plants should replace 30-year-old reactors that generate a fifth of the UK's supply. Britain will miss a goal for 10 per cent of power to come from wind and renewable sources by 2010, a House of Lords committee said in July. The target was set to help meet emissions guidelines agreed in Kyoto, Japan. "It's vital for the UK to support nuclear energy," said Andrew White, chairman and chief executive officer of General Electric's global nuclear unit, in London. "I don't see a good energy policy in the UK to meet Kyoto and secure supplies." Nuclear plants may be needed soon to avoid blackouts because half of Britain's reactors will shut by 2010, according to the Adam Smith Institute, a London-based think-tank. New plants would reduce dependence on Russian and Norwegian imports as UK natural gas reserves dwindle, an Adam Smith report said last year. Blair said September 14 that while the government hasn't ruled out nuclear power, ministers aren't pushing for it. He said then the government won't make a decision until a report about nuclear waste is finished, expected in 2006. Environmental groups including Greenpeace oppose its use. A delegation of Finnish politicians and industry officials are visiting London this week to advise the UK government on how to gain popular support for nuclear energy and for a waste dump. They were scheduled to speak at the Labour Party conference in Brighton, England yesterday. Nuclear stations and renewable energy sources don't emit carbon dioxide, unlike coal and gas-fired plants. British Energy's Sizewell nuclear station, on the south east coast, can generate electricity for 2 million people, while the largest UK wind farm can supply about 30,000. Nuclear energy is opposed by some members of Blair's party who started their political careers as protesters with the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Margaret Beckett, secretary for the environment, and Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott are some of the opponents, The Guardian newspaper said last year. "I challenged the new energy minister in the House of Commons, he was sitting on the fence" about nuclear power, said Robert Key, a Conservative party member of parliament for Salisbury. The Committee for Radioactive Waste Management finishes a report about handling waste in 2006. Radioactive waste is the 3 per cent of uranium that can't be reused and has to be either reprocessed at a site such as Sellafield, in Northern England, or stored underground. England and France reprocess the uranium by keeping containers under water for as many as five years. Finland has dug a cavern at Olkiluoto some 500 metres beneath the earth's surface to store nuclear waste. The US is developing a similar site in the Yucca Mountain in Nevada. "Bury is the best option, because there's no chance of anybody attacking, stealing the material," said John Clarke, director of commercial operation at Sellafield. "The problem the government has is to find a site, because nobody wants a site near them." Britons mostly oppose nuclear power because the technology was first developed to build an atomic bomb, said Timo Seppala, communications manager at Posiva Oyj, Finland's nuclear waste-management company, which is building the Olkiluoto underground site. "Finland doesn't have the military legacy, that makes things easier" to win support for nuclear, Seppala said. Environmentalists including Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth oppose nuclear energy for being "dirty and dangerous," Greenpeace says on its website. Nuclear waste "has no solution" and will "threaten ourselves and future generations." Blair doesn't have to wait for the report on waste before deciding on nuclear energy, said Gordon Campbell, chairman of British Nuclear Fuels Plc, which owns the nuclear reprocessing plant in Sellafield. "Psychologically you may need a waste decision to decide on build-up, but not technically, the two aren't necessarily related," he said. "It's quite a difficult political decision. The government, from whichever party, is going to see people who oppose to it." Waiting for the report on disposing of nuclear waste also risks causing a shortage of engineers in the 5 billion-pound (US$8.9 billion) industry, which employs 60,000 people in Britain, mostly at British Energy Plc and BNFL. "The longer we wait, the more skills you lose, the harder it will be to get new build," said Clarke at his office in Sellafield, Cumbria. "The UK indigenous skills are getting fewer and fewer." (China Daily) Copyright ©2003 Xinhua News Agency. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 18 Japan Times: Malfunction closes Tepco nuke reactor Thursday, September 30, 2004 FUKUSHIMA (Kyodo) Tokyo Electric Power Co. said it shut down one of its nuclear reactors in Fukushima Prefecture on Wednesday evening following a malfunction. Tepco's No. 2 nuclear reactor at its Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant was shut down due to a problem with its reactor recirculation system pumps, it said. Tepco officials said that no external radiation leak was detected at the reactor, which is about 250 km north of Tokyo. An alarm indicated trouble in one pump system around 8:35 a.m. The pump was automatically switched off and the reactor's output fell to 540 megawatts from the normal level of 784 megawatts, they said. As engineers manually reduced the output to around 200 MW, another alarm indicated trouble in another pump system. Tepco then decided to shut down the reactor, they said. The trouble was detected in inverters that had been replaced during regular checkups earlier this year, they said. The Japan Times: Sept. 30, 2004 (C) All rights reserved ***************************************************************** 19 Japan Times: 2,500 in Tokai nuclear evacuation drill Friday, October 1, 2004 MITO, Ibaraki Pref. (Kyodo) Some 2,500 people took part in a large-scale evacuation drill Thursday to mark the fifth anniversary of Japan's worst nuclear radiation accident, which occurred at an atomic fuel reprocessing plant in Tokai, Ibaraki Prefecture. [News photo] Fire department officials conduct a radiation-exposure evacuation drill Thursday. In addition to the extensive evacuation and scanning for radiation exposure of residents, the drill included for the first time the transport by helicopter of plant employees exposed to radiation to the National Institute of Radiological Sciences in Chiba Prefecture, about 100 km away. The drill was aimed at raising awareness on disaster preparedness and crisis management in the event of a nuclear disaster. It involved about 500 residents and 2,000 staff members of the prefectural and municipal governments, as well as other organizations. The drill began at 8:30 a.m. under the scenario of a nuclear accident with external radioactive leakage having taken place at a reprocessing plant of the Japan Nuclear Cycle Development Institute in Tokai. The Japan Times: Oct. 1, 2004 (C) All rights reserved ***************************************************************** 20 Lincoln County News: Maine Yankee Answers Friends’ Cleanup Charges September 30, 2004 By Greg Foster Maine Yankee decided to personally address charges a Friends of the Coast spokesman raised at the recent Community Advisory Panel (CAP) meeting on hot spots in the cleanup at the Bailey Point site in Wiscasset. “The quality of the final status surveys conducted at Maine Yankee is an important element in maintaining public confidence,” wrote Mike Meisner, chief nuclear officer, in a letter to Ray Shadis, executive director of the Friends of the Coast environmental group. Meisner wrote to Shadis, member of the CAP representing Friends of the Coast as an intervenor, in response to a letter to the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) that Shadis read at the CAP meeting discussing his concerns in the letter point by point. “While your letter was addressed to the NRC, we felt that the subject matter was of wide interest and significant enough to take up quickly,” Meisner said. The first point concerned Shadis’ comment in his letter of Sept. 15 to Daniel Gillen, NRC deputy director. Shadis stated, “We became concerned when Maine Yankee, with NRC approval, decided to leave grossly contaminated piping in place in the Spray Building foundation.” As a result, Shadis argued that there is a breach of an agreement and between Friends of the Coast and Maine Yankee and license amendment. Shadis told Gillen that his belief that contact dose was eliminated from all pathways consideration by adopting the assumption that the piping, after burial, would be inaccessible. He said that dose from leaching of contaminants was averaged with that from piping in other relatively clean locations. In response, Meisner wrote, “Maine Yankee expended considerable time, money, and effort to decontaminate the Spray Building embedded piping. Ultimately, we reached the point of diminishing returns i.e., additional decontamination efforts removed little additional contamination.” Meisner explained that the company decided to separate out the spray pipe from its original survey unit. The unit contained the balance of plant embedded piping inventory, he said. “By doing so, we assured that the spray piping contribution to the dose calculated by the license termination plan (LTP) was explicitly identified and highlighted,” Meisner wrote. “And as you noted, this change was approved by the NRC.” In regards to concerns Shadis has about methodologies used to calculate area factors and accepted threshold radiation level, Meisner said that an NRC letter from Gillen to Maine Yankee that prompted Shadis’ concerns shows a misunderstanding of Maine Yankee’s license termination plan (LTP). “As a result, we believe that the concerns raised in Gillen’s letter are invalid,” Meisner said. “NRC will have to sort out this issue and we, like you, have urged them to come to a speedy resolution.” Another concern Shadis expressed is the belief that contaminated plant areas may be re-classified as needed to provide a more favorable area factor or radiation level reading as long as site dose factors are not exceeded. Meisner denied that as non-existent. “With one exception Maine Yankee has never downgraded the classification of a contaminated plant area,” he said. Furthermore, even if the unit were downgraded, the LTP process does not allow such changes, he said. A fourth main concern of Shadis is that in a significant number of cases, if a contaminated area does not pass a release survey, that survey is often performed again with a different type of survey instrument. To that statement in his letter, Meisner said, “The types of instrumentation used to perform final status surveys at Maine Yankee are defined by procedure based on the type of survey being performed and/or location of the survey unit.” Meisner went on to say, “This concern is troubling to us because, rather than a ‘significant number of cases’, Maine Yankee has never re-performed a failed final status survey with a different type of survey instrument.” In Meisner’s opinion, there seems to be some confusion about the different kinds of surveys the company conducts. Shadis made a fifth allegation that the areas that do not pass muster are sometimes re-classified as an area requiring a less rigorous survey method and cited one particular instance. Meisner reiterated what he already said about the fourth concern in that the only area that has gone through the re-classification or downgrade process is the containment foundation sump. A sixth concern is about an allegation that a “significant number of final survey status packages are incomplete, missing essential data such as review signatures, instrument calibration data, etc., and additionally some-times remain in a management review queue for over one year.” Meisner responded, “Given our approach of conducting some survey prior to LTP approval, it was inevitable that discrepancies would arise between assumptions made in the surveys and final assumptions in the approved LTP.” In anticipation of that situation, Meisner said that the company implemented a system to reconcile any discrepancies and document their resolution. “Other than editorial changes, documentation is available for each discrepancy and its resolution,” he said. He explained that while information that may appear missing compare to date sheets and other forms prepared for post-LTP approval surveys, “appropriate technical review is conducted and documented to address the discrepancy”. “When Maine Yankee submits release records to the NRC, no information ‘essential’ to demonstrate compliance with the LTP is missing from the release record,” he said. Shadis also charged in his letter to Gillen, “Late information received from a Maine Yankee employee indicates that your recent inspection activity has lead to a precipitous effort to review and complete packages that are, in some cases, over one year old.” Meisner expressed his reaction to the statement as “puzzling”. “For some time we have been working our pre-planned schedule for license termination,” he said. “There was no recent NRC inspection or other event that caused that work to turn ‘precipitous’.” A final concern of Shadis that Meisner addressed in his letter was that a comment that the Final Status Survey (FSS) organization is aware of the issues he raised and that FSS employees have raised concerns to no avail. “FSS supervisory personnel encourage their employees to raise issues and concerns,” Meisner said. “When issues are raised, supervisory personnel work to resolve them in a timely manner consistent with safety significance.” Meisner said that the company has a corrective action program. It expects all employees to document safety/compliance issues and concerns in Condition Reports that are reviewed by management in a daily morning meeting. Also, alternative confidential concern identification mechanisms are available, such as the company’s Worker Concerns Program and its NRC counterpart. Vol. 129 - No. 40 [ ***************************************************************** 21 PRN: Leading Nuke Watchdogs: New US Nuclear Security Plan May Harm, Not Help Security [http://www.prnewswire.com/] WASHINGTON, Sept. 30 /PRNewswire/ -- A group of the nation's leading nuclear watchdog organizations today issued strong, united criticisms of a new nuclear security plan being implemented this month at U.S. nuclear power plants. The groups, Project on Government Oversight, Union of Concerned Scientists, Nuclear Information and Resource Service, Public Citizen, U.S. Public Interest Research Group, and Service Employees International Union, have been the chief whistleblowers on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's misguided new plan to use the private security firm Wackenhut to train and Nayak. alt="PR Newswire for Journalists" border="0"> [http://www.prnewswire.com/media/] ***************************************************************** 22 Sofia Morning News: Siemens Seeks to Join Belene N-plant Building [Sofia News Agency] novinite.com Business: 30 September 2004, Thursday. German Siemens AG has declared willingness to take part in the construction of Bulgaria's second nuclear power plant. The company is to send a letter of intention to prime minister Simeon Saxe-Coburg and declare its willingness to join the building of Belene, Stoyan Neshev, Executive Director of the company for Bulgaria, said. Siemens already has experience in its record as it was one of the players in the modernization of Bulgaria's sole nuclear company Kozloduy. Bulgaria has recently revived the plan to build a second nuclear power plant on the Danube river a decade after it was shelved amid protests from environmentalists. The move came in response to the closure of two units at Kozloduy in 2002. The shut-down of the two oldest units came after many years of concern over their safety, strong pressure from the European Union, protests from the nuclear lobby and opposition parties that the reactors are economically necessary.[ width=] novinite.com Forum Google Tourism Business All Rights Reserved © Novinite Ltd., 2001-2004 - Copyright Novinite.com (thebulgariannews.com also) is unique with being a real time news provider in English that informs its readers about the latest Bulgarian news. The editorial staff also ***************************************************************** 23 Whitehaven News: NO HOPE OF NEW NUCLEAR PLANTS SELLAFIELD looks unlikely to be thrown any lifeline from potential new nuclear power stations in the near future. Margaret Beckett, secretary of state for the environment, food and rural affairs recently told ITV that the government has no plan to increase nuclear power capacity for at least 10 years. She said: “We certainly do not need extra nuclear in anything like a 10 or 15 year cycle. “We don’t see any need to come to a view on that probably in the run up to, say, 2015 or 2020.” Her comments seem to throw back statements in the Energy White Paper, last year, which said any decision on new nuclear plants was on hold for at just five years. [http://www.whitehavennews.co.uk/subscribe] [http://www.whitehavennews.co.uk/photos] ***************************************************************** 24 AFP: China approves 8 bln dlr nuclear power project in Guangdong [http://www.spacewar.com/]  WAR.WIRE
BEIJING (AFP) Sep 29, 2004 China's State Council, the country's cabinet, has approved an 8.0 billion dollar nuclear power project in southern Guangdong province, state press said Wednesday. State-owned power company China Guangdong Nuclear Power Holding Co. Ltd. would invest the money in the project, which would involve six generating units with a combined installed capacity of 6,000-9,000 megawatts, to be built at Yangjiang, the China News Service reported. Construction work of the project was expected to start soon, it said, citing Tang Xiaofeng, vice general manager of the China Guangdong Nuclear Power Holding Co. Ltd. The approval came down from the cabinet, on September 2, the report said. It was not clear if the plants would be built with international technology or be domestically made. China Guangdong Nuclear Power currently operates the Daya Bay nuclear plant and Phase I of Lingao nuclear plant with total installed capacity of 4,000 megawatts. China is planning to boost nuclear power development to meet the country's surging demand for electricity. The issue has become more urgent as the energy-hungry eastern provinces have been suffering from major power shortages. China put its first nuclear power plant into operation in 1991 at Daya Bay and now operates nine nuclear power plants with a total installed capacity of 7,000 megawatts, which represents about 1.8 percent of the country's total installed power generating capacity. According to government plans, a total of 32 new 1,000 megawatt reactors are expected to be brought on line by 2020. All rights reserved. © 2004 Agence France-Presse [http://www.afp.com/] . Sections of the information displayed on ***************************************************************** 25 AFP: Nigeria launches first nuclear reactor [http://www.spacewar.com/] KANO, Nigeria (AFP) Sep 30, 2004 Nigeria launched its first nuclear reactor for scientific research Thursday in the northern university city of Zaria, the research project director, Ibrahim Umar, said. The reactor, which is solely for scientific purposes and constructed with technical assistance from the International Atomic Energy Association (IAEA), was launched in Ahmadu Bello University, the largest university in northern Nigeria, Umar told AFP in a telephone interview. Umar, director of the university's Centre for Energy Research and Training, which is in charge of the project, said that the reactor was commissioned by Nigeria's science and technology minister in the presence of representatives of IAEA and the Nigeria's Energy Commission. "The reactor will solely be applied for scientific research which includes soil mapping to quantify different elements in the soil to boost agricultural production and to reduce the use of chemical fertilizer as well as for solid minerals identification in Nigeria", he said. "It will also be used in petroleum exploration and for identifying elements associated with diseases in the human body and other human-related research purposes", Umar said. He ruled out the possibility of expanding the project for research in nuclear weapons, saying the project is under the strict supervision of the "We are not involved in strategic research like nuclear weapon because we are a university-based research centre, located within the university. We have been doing this kind of research using other techniques which are just expanding using nuclear reactor," he said. According to Umar, the research centre would be liaising with ministries for science and technology, water resources, agriculture and petroleum for its research programmes. All rights reserved. © 2004 Agence France-Presse [http://www.afp.com/] . Sections of the information displayed on ***************************************************************** 26 Depleted Uranium is nuclear proliferation_depopulating nations. Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2004 21:42:02 -0500 (CDT) Ra Energy Fdn. Raleigh Myers Worksheet bio http://www.igc.apc.org/raenergy/bio.html Depleted Uranium is nuclear proliferation Genocide the Great Terrain robbery Smallpox blankets or DU. The PNAC is a designer manifest destiny strategy for depopulating the Middle East. http://groups.google.com/groups?q=PNAC+The+Mein+Kampf+of+the+Fourth+Reich&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&scoring=d King James as well as the settlers shamefully depopulated this continent with Blankets infected with Small Pox http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&q=SmallPox+Blankets+American+Indians&spell=1 and his distant relative Chancellor Bush has modernized genocide with Depleted Uranium. This strategy is now effecting our own military. If it continues the military may be quarantined in Iraq forever so as not to spread the DU in the US. http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&q=American+soldier+Child+Deformed+by+DU&spell=1 SING THE VOTE http://atomfilms.shockwave.com/contentPlay/shockwave.jsp?id=this_land&preplay=1&ratingBar=off DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE in song is the first step to a fascism free planet "THIS LAND IS YOUR LAND, THIS LAND IS MY LAND, THIS LAND IS MADE FOR YOU AND ME" IMAGINE: WE are children of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; WE ALL have a right to be here START SINGING THE PLANET'S ANTHEM AT ALL EVENTS TO SHOW HOW "WE" HAVE ALREADY VOTED. This would get some air time if we did it at GOP campaign events even in congress this Summer and fall and beyond after all it is the anthem of the Age of Aquarius no. We suggested that "THIS LAND" be the Global Village Planetary anthem at Woodies celebration in San Francisco at the Geary Theater in 1967. It was seconded by three ambassadors and has become the second third fourth etc. anthems to many countries. FOLKSAY(people say) ............ has become Our defacto Global Village Planetary anthem and in essence we voted for citizen empowerment as we sung it. Now let's get it officially on record by singing it everywhere as direct democracy. THE DAWNING OF THE AGE OF AQUARIUS is the reality at hand! The children of the universe, the right to be here generation _ the meek taking their prophetic inheritance out of probate is not a conspiracy. Ra Energy Fdn. Raleigh Myers http://raenergy.igc.org/raenergy.html Worksheet bio http://www.igc.apc.org/raenergy/bio.html Newsgroups beginning in the eighties Call to Action blog http://www.google.com/search?q=Global+Vote+raenergy&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&filter=02Eigc%2Eorg%2Faction%2Ehtml "Raleigh Myers" web http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=%22Raleigh+Myers%22 "Raleigh Myers" groups sort by date also http://groups.google.com/groups?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=%22Raleigh+Myers%22 raenergy web http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=raenergy raenergy groups sort by date also http://groups.google.com/groups?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=raenergy ***************************************************************** 27 [southnews] Cancer cases in Iraq are increasing Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2004 17:41:57 -0500 (CDT) ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> $9.95 domain names from Yahoo!. Register anything. http://us.click.yahoo.com/J8kdrA/y20IAA/yQLSAA/7gSolB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> The US is dropping dirty depleted uranium bunker bombs on Iraq and selling 500 of these devices to Israel. Committing a war crime Michael Jansen, Jordan Times Thursday, September 30, 2004 While Washington expresses concern that terrorists could explode a dirty bomb containing nuclear waste on a Western city, killing hundreds of people and leaving a radioactive residue which will cause cancer for years to come, the US is dropping dirty depleted uranium bunker bombs on Iraq and selling 500 of these devices to Israel. Depleted uranium (DU) is a radioactive by-product of uranium enrichment used in bunker-busting bombs, missiles, tank shells and armour piercing bullets. Radiation released by DU weapons is said to be 10 times more potent than that produced by nuclear testing. During the 1991 campaign in Iraq, the US and UK fired 944,000 DU rounds, or some 2,700 tonnes of DU tipped munitions, at Iraqi civilian and military targets. When they explode, DU weapons scatter fine radioactive particles which are carried by the wind and ingested by human beings, animals and plants. The indestructible particles last forever. Therefore, the areas where DU munitions has been deployed the Middle East, the northern Indian subcontinent and the Balkans have been contaminated with endlessly destructive radioactive dust. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) estimated that half a million people would die by the end of the 21st century due to radioactive debris and dust left in Iraq, which makes its way into the rivers, lakes and seas of the world and the atmosphere which surrounds it. While Jordan has expressed concern about possible contamination by airborne particles escaping from Israel's nuclear reactor, there is a far greater danger from DU dust blown across the desert from Iraq. Doug Rokke, ex-director of the US army's DU project in 1994 and 1995 and a former professor of environmental science at a Florida university, said: They're using it now, in Fallujah; Baghdad is chockablock with DU it's all over the place. An Iraqi doctor specialising in blood disease at one of the capital's universities told this correspondent that thousands of Baghdadis had developed cancer since 1991 and warned that incidence of the disease will rise due to the use of DU munitions during the 2003 war. Dr Jenan Ali, a senior specialist at the Basra College of Medicine, said that in the decade after the 1991 war there was a 100 per cent rise in child leukaemia and a 242 per cent increase in all cancers in the region. Birth defects are also much higher than normal. Malignancies and defects have also soared in Afghanistan since the 2001 US war, but no statistics are available in that chaotic country. While the Pentagon uses DU munitions to save the lives of its troops, DU may be killing more than the number who would have died if this munitions had not been deployed. The use of DU in 1991 and 2003 is also considered responsible for malignancies in US veterans and birth defects amongst their children. While only 467 US troops were wounded during the 1991 war, of the nearly 600,000 discharged personnel one third are receiving disability compensation and another 25,000 cases are pending. The figure does not include those who have died. Amongst the 169,000 veterans of the current conflict, 16 per cent had applied for treatment by July 2004. Rokke, who unsuccessfully attempted to clean up Iraq after the first Gulf War, is amongst the victims. He went to Iraq a fit soldier but returned home with respiratory problems, cataracts and crumbling teeth, the latter due to DU exposure. Twenty of the personnel working on the project died, most of the rest are ill. A Pentagon report revealed last month that eight out of 20 men who served together during the 2003 invasion of Iraq now have malignancies. This group was apparently exposed only to DU and vaccines which do not cause cancer. The New York Daily News reported that four out of nine military police repatriated from Iraq had tested positive for DU contamination. Rokke, who discovered that DU contamination cannot be cleaned up following the 1991 conflict, called the use of DU munitions a war crime. He stated: There is a moral point to be made here [about the deployment of these weapons in 2003]. This war was about Iraq possessing illegal weapons of mass destruction yet we are using weapons of mass destruction ourselves. Such double standards are repellent. According to an August 2002 UN report, the use of DU munitions breaches the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the UN Charter, the Genocide Convention, the Convention against Torture, the four Geneva Conventions of 1949, the Conventional Weapons Convention of 1980, and the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907. Rokke observed: A nation's military personnel cannot wilfully contaminate any other nation, cannot cause harm to persons and the environment and then ignore the consequences of their actions. This is precisely what three US administrations have done and continue to do. Since DU blockbusters are now being dropped on the restive towns of Fallujah, Samarra, Ramadi and Baqouba, death by cancer and leukaemia can be expected to linger in their streets and homes, the fields nearby, and to be carried far and wide by the prevailing winds and the Tigris River. The World Health Organisation says that the worldwide cancer rate could rise by 50 per cent by 2020, but (under pressure from the world's superpower?) claims that DU is not responsible. Experts critical of the use of this weapon insist that DU is a major factor. The most horrific aspect of the DU scandal is that the US military, the most powerful on the face of the earth, does not have to use DU weapons of mass destruction to defeat Washington's pathetic adversaries poorly armed Bosnian Serb forces, scratch Taleban militias, pathetic Iraqi units weakened by more than two decades of warfare and 13 years of sanctions. DU contamination is a war crime which does not need to be committed. http://www.jordantimes.com/thu/opinion/opinion2.htm _________________________________________________ The War's Littlest Victim. He was Exposed to Depleted Uranium.His Daughter may be Paying the Price. Juan Gonzalez September 29, 2004 - In early September 2003, Army National Guard Spec. Gerard Darren Matthew was sent home from Iraq, stricken by a sudden illness. One side of Matthew's face would swell up each morning. He had constant migraine headaches, blurred vision, blackouts and a burning sensation whenever he urinated. The Army transferred him to Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington for further tests, but doctors there could not explain what was wrong. Shortly after his return, his wife, Janice, became pregnant. On June 29, she gave birth to a baby girl, Victoria Claudette. The baby was missing three fingers and most of her right hand. Matthew and his wife believe Victoria's shocking deformity has something to do with her father's illness and the war - especially since there is no history of birth defects in either of their families. They have seen photos of Iraqi babies born with deformities that are eerily similar. In June, Matthew contacted the Daily News and asked us to arrange independent laboratory screening for his urine. This was after The News had reported that four of seven soldiers from another National Guard unit, the 442nd Military Police, had tested positive for depleted uranium (DU). The independent test of Matthew's urine found him positive for DU - low-level radioactive waste produced in nuclear plants during the enrichment of natural uranium. Because it is twice as heavy as lead, DU has been used by the Pentagon since the Persian Gulf War in certain types of "tank-buster" shells, as well as for armor-plating in Abrams tanks. Exposure to radioactivity has been associated in some studies with birth defects in the children of exposed parents. "My husband went to Iraq to fight for his country," Janice Matthew said. "I feel the Army should take responsibility for what's happened." The couple first learned of the baby's missing fingers during a routine sonogram of the fetus last April at Lenox Hill Hospital. Matthew was a truck driver in Iraq with the 719th transport unit from Harlem. His unit moved supplies from Army bases in Kuwait to the front lines and as far as Baghdad. On several occasions, he says, he carried shot-up tanks and destroyed vehicle parts on his flat-bed back to Kuwait. After he learned of his unborn child's deformity, Matthew immediately asked the Army to test his urine for DU. In April, he provided a 24-hour urine sample to doctors at Fort Dix, N.J., where he was waiting to be deactivated. In May, the Army granted him a 40% disability pension for his migraine headaches and for a condition called idiopathic angioedema - unexplained chronic swelling. But Matthew never got the results of his Army test for DU. When he called Fort Dix last week, five months after he was tested, he was told there was no record of any urine specimen from him. Thankfully, Matthew did not rely solely on the Army bureaucracy - he went to The News. Earlier this year, The News submitted urine samples from Guardsmen of the 442nd to former Army doctor Asaf Durakovic and Axel Gerdes, a geologist at Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany. The German lab specializes in testing for minute quantities of uranium, a complicated procedure that costs up to $1,000 per test. The lab is one of approximately 50 in the world that can detect quantities as tiny as fentograms - one part per quadrillionth. A few months ago, The News submitted a 24-hour urine sample from Matthew to Gerdes. As a control, we also gave the lab 24-hour urine samples from two Daily News reporters. The three specimens were marked only with the letters A, B and C, so the lab could not know which sample belonged to the soldier. After analyzing all three, Gerdes reported that only sample A - Matthew's urine - showed clear signs of DU. It contained a total uranium concentration that was "4 to 8 times higher" than specimens B and C, Gerdes reported. "Those levels indicate pretty definitively that he's been exposed to the DU," said Leonard Dietz, a retired scientist who invented one of the instruments for measuring uranium isotopes. According to Army guidelines, the total uranium concentration Gerdes found in Matthew is within acceptable standards for most Americans. But Gerdes questioned the Army's standards, noting that even minute levels of DU are cause for concern. "While the levels of DU in Matthew's urine are low," Gerdes said, "the DU we see in his urine could be 1,000 times higher in concentration in the lungs." DU is not like natural uranium, which occurs in the environment. Natural uranium can be ingested in food and drink but gets expelled from the body within 24 hours. DU-contaminated dust, however, is typically breathed into the lungs and can remain there for years, emitting constant low-level radiation. "I'm upset and confused," Matthew said. "I just want answers. Are they [the Army] going to take care of my baby?" We track soldiers' sickness For the last five months, Daily News columnist Juan Gonzalez has chronicled the plight of soldiers who have returned from Iraq with mysterious illnesses. His exclusive groundbreaking investigation began with a front-page story on April 4 that suggested depleted uranium contamination was far more widespread than the Pentagon would admit. At the request of The News, nine soldiers from a New York Army National Guard company serving in Iraq were tested for radiation from depleted uranium shells - and four of the ailing G.I.s tested positive. The day after Gonzalez's story appeared, Army officials rushed to test all returning members of the company, the 442nd Military Police, based in Rockland County. By week's end, the scandal had reverberated all the way to Albany, as Gov. Pataki joined the list of politicians calling for the Pentagon to do a better job of testing and treating sick soldiers returning from the war. Gonzalez's exposi sparked a huge demand for testing. By mid-April, 800 G.I.s had given the Army urine samples, and hundreds more were waiting for appointments. Two weeks later, the Pentagon claimed that none of the soldiers from the 442nd had tested positive for depleted uranium. But The News' experts found significant problems with the testing methods. ) 2004 Daily News, L.P. http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0929-11.htm ______________________________________________ Cancer cases in Iraq are increasing, doctors say Report, IRIN, 29 September 2004 BAGHDAD, 29 September (IRIN) - A bag hooked up to a metal pole on wheels delivers chemotherapy medicine to Sura Najim, 42, as she lies in a bed at the country's leading radiation hospital in the capital, Baghdad. Najim knows that later she will get sick and feel weak, unable to get out of bed. Right now, however, the college professor is calm - able to talk about the breast cancer she is trying to beat. Already, she has had surgery to remove the cancer in one breast and several courses of chemotherapy over the last four months to make sure it has not spread. "I discovered a mass in my body and went to the doctor," Najim told IRIN. "She discovered that it was malignant, so I had to have an operation." Iraq's health care system seems able to handle its cancer patients at the moment, Dr Thikra Najim, a specialist in gynaecology and obstetrics, told IRIN. But the number of cases appears to be rising rapidly, especially for breast cancer, Najim said. It's unclear why this is, although it could be because of radiation left over from the 1991 Gulf War, she added. "Now we're seeing three or four cases every week. I think the number is increasing," Najim said. "This is disastrous. We have to study it." In fact, doctors are now seeing many more cases of cancer in general. About 4,000 patients per year used to come through the doors of the radiation hospital in Baghdad. So far this year they have seen about 7,000 patients, Dr Ahmed Abdul Jabhar, deputy director of the hospital, told IRIN. Cancers in the patients streaming through the hospital's doors each day appear to be unrelated to each other, Jabhar said, reading from the hospital's entry log. One patient has a cancerous tumour in his mouth; another has a lump in her breast; a third has brain cancer. In addition, leukaemia (a form of bone marrow cancer marked by an increase in white blood cells) cases appear to be increasing in southern Iraq, Jabhar said. Gastro-intestinal tumours and thyroid problems also seem to be increasing in the centre of the country, he noted. "We don't know if the rise is because there actually are more cases, or because of new diagnosis capabilities available to us," Jabhar said. Doctors in recent months have noticed an increase in a variety of radiation-related diseases, but few reliable statistics exist. A cancer department at the Ministry of Health has only this year's statistics for example, making it impossible to compare what's happening now to what has happened in the past. In general, however, it takes more than 20 years for people to get sick through radiation-related diseases after they have been exposed, Jabhar said. But such diseases can progress more rapidly if the exposure is higher. Children can also be more vulnerable - and the number of cases of childhood leukaemia has risen in the last few years. "More people seem to have cancer, but I was very surprised when I found out I had it," Iman Rubi Mohammed, 44, told IRIN, as she waited for treatment for cancer of the cervix in the radiology room of the hospital. She said she went to the doctor after getting sharp pains in her abdomen. Now there is a two-to-three month waiting list to be treated by the radiology machines, Jabhar said, because the number of patients is increasing. Doctors also treat cancer with hormone therapy, he said, and they're always worried that they will run out of drugs. In Tuwaitha, 18 km south of Baghdad, where nuclear research went on for years, many residents appear to have suffered some ill effects, Bushra Ali Ahmed, director of the Radiation Protection Centre in Baghdad, told IRIN. Of 4,000 residents who had their blood tested in five villages surrounding Tuwaitha, about 2,000 were found to have higher than normal white blood cell counts, Ahmed said. She is also testing the blood of at least 10 residents in Baghdad to use them as a control group. "We can't say it's from radiation, but their immunity is lower," Ahmed said. "Radiation can come from many things. There are many sources of contamination in Iraq now." Ahmed has just finished a Ministry of Environment study about pollution in Iraq. The United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) is starting a US $4.7 million pilot project to investigate environment "hot spots" and help with cleaning them up, ranging from chemical spills to oil discharges. UN workers will help Iraq reduce pollution threats to human health, wildlife and the wider environment, Klaus Toepfer, UNEP's executive director, said in a statement. "It's not good to say something about this until you know for sure where the contamination is coming from," Ahmed said. "We need more machines and materials to study this." http://electroniciraq.net/news/1664.shtml 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/ ***************************************************************** 28 Marshall Islands: Nuclear "Sacrifice Zone" Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2004 00:20:22 -0500 (CDT) http://www.arktimes.com/040930coverstorya.html After declaring independence in 1989, the Republic of the Marshall Islands signed the Compact of Free Association with America to maintain military ties. Such ties have endured for over 50 years. Beginning in 1946, the U.S. --which then possessed the islands -- conducted nearly 70 atomic and thermonuclear weapons tests on varous atolls. By the end of the decade-long experiment, portions of the Marshalls where rendered into what is euphemistically known as a national sacrifice area. The mother of all bombs, the Bravo Shot was detonated on Bikini Atoll in March 1954. A thousand times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Bravo's fireball was three miles in diameter and carved a crater one mile wide, spewing radioactive debris over 50,000 square miles. "We were shaking with fear," says Hiram John whose island was downwind. "The horizon turned bright orange." While John says he has not yet contracted cancer, he expects to. Saimen Milne was also a young boy during the testing. He says radioactive fallout covered everything. "A friend of mine said he was playing in the yellow powder -- they didn't know what it was. They lost their hair. They got leukemia. Some of the women give birth to jelly -- deformed babies." "We'll never know how many died from acute radiation poisoning," says Holly Barker, senior political advisor to the Marshallese Embassy. "Government records have been systematically destroyed or disappeared. When the embassy petitioned for access to the documents, we were told none existed." Barker says islanders were also used like guinea pigs in radioactive experiments, which the government denied for decades. The Clinton administration finally confirmed such tests were conducted. "They had Marshallese drink radioactive substances to see what would happen to them," she says, "without their permission or consent. Marshallese were injected with radioactive material and exposed to radiation so that scientists could assess the physiological impacts of nuclear war." Today, although cancer rates among islanders are extreme, no cancer registry exists on the islands, nor are there oncologists. Dr. Neil Palofox is a professor of family medicine at the University of Hawaii. He takes care of Marshallese living in the islands and United States who are victims of weapons testing, a project he inherited from the Atomic Energy Commission, now the Department of Energy. "The testing destroyed a thriving subsistence culture," he says. Dr. Mark Thomas, chairman of the Department of Medicine at Washington Regional Medical Center in Fayetteville, was also under contract with the DOE to diagnose and treat radiation victims. "With regard to kinds of cancer to excess in the population, you will see thyroid, lung, and skin cancer," Thomas says. In 1988, the Marshall Islands Nuclear Claims Tribunal was established to grant compensation for personal injury caused by nuclear testing. Only $270 million dollars has been provided by the U.S. to victims and their families, less than $12 per person per month. But all compensation -- including medical treatment -- was terminated by the Bush administration. "And negotiations for any future compensation are stalled," says Holly Barker. "The whole world needs to remember that our people experienced nuclear war,"says Northwest Arkansas Marshallese Committee President, Carmen Chong Gum. Along with activists from the Omni Center for Peace and Justice in Fayetteville, Marshallese hold annual Bravo Day protests. Islanders perform traditional music, activists write letters to Congress and everyone shares a meal. "We bombed and radiated their homeland," says Omni founder, Dick Bennett. "And now we have the second largest population of islanders in the world living here. Hell, our protest is just a peep, but we must never forget what happened to these people." Marshallese exodus With an inadequate health system, cuts in U.S. compensation to radiation victims, and growing poverty, over six percent of the Marshall's population has been dislocated. Embassy secretary, Kristina Stegee, is keenly aware of the exodus. "The impact on our islands has yet to be determined, it's so new," she warns. "People are the islands' most valuable resource, and that resource is dwindling." Lumon Benjaman's family is from Bikini Atoll. "My sister recently died from cancer, and my mom is sick," Benjamin says, "so we came to Arkansas for medical purposes." Accustomed to cheap public health services back home, island immigrants with simple complaints often end up in hospital emergency rooms here. "With the exception of those who work in the plants, most of our people do not have insurance," says Carmen Chong Gum. "They go to the ER. Then they get all these bills and calls from collection agencies. So it's a problem." A majority of islanders retain their Marshall Islands citizenship, so are not eligible for Medicare or Medicaid, unless they are American-born islanders. Many with no insurance go to the Community Clinic at St. Francis House for care. Director, Kathy Grisham, oversees a staff of 20, including nurses, social workers, a volunteer physician, several dentists, and translator. They are funded primarily through donations. "The Marshallese are a kind, gentle and loving people," Grisham says. But according to nurse practitioner, Pam Crisco, islanders are suffering. Eighty-five percent of Marshallese adults have diabetes, many undiagnosed, and many children are behind on their immunizations. http://www.arktimes.com/040930coverstorya.html ***************************************************************** 29 [NukeNet] Need To Conduct Real World Testing Of Fuel Laden Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2004 14:57:17 -0700 With the memory of the World Trade Center's assumed ability to withstand the impact of an airliner, New York should consider spearheading a campaign for real-world testing [ of nuclear power reactors] because: CRAC-2 Report: http://www.mothersalert.org/crac.html Nuke Terrorism: http://www.tmia.com/sabter.html http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/26/opinion/opinionspecial/l26nuke.html A Crash Test for Indian Point? Published: September 26, 2004 ARTICLE TOOLS E-Mail This Article Printer-Friendly Format Most E-Mailed Articles TIMES NEWS TRACKER Topics Alerts New York State Atomic Energy World Trade Center (NYC) To the Editor: Re Indian Point (letters, Sept. 19) and all nuclear power plants, has our government ever conducted an actual crash test? Considering the price for not knowing the actual capability of the concrete dome to withstand the impact of an airliner, I would assume the costs for building a mock dome and utilizing a remote-controlled retired airliner may indeed prove more economical and prudent. As far as I know, the closest test was completed in the 1960's using an F-105 single-engine fighter. The fighter was launched into a concrete wall of the same material and thickness of those surrounding a nuclear reactor. But the aircraft was about one-tenth the weight and mass of a large airliner (and carrying a fraction of the fuel), and the wall was just a wall, not a dome anchored securely to the ground. With the memory of the World Trade Center's assumed ability to withstand the impact of an airliner, New York should consider spearheading a campaign for real-world testing. Larry Mussman Lake Worth, Fla. The writer is an airline pilot. _______________________________________________________________________ Subscribe/Unsubscribe Here: http://www.energyjustice.net/nukenet/ Change your settings at: http://energyjustice.net/mailman/listinfo/nukenet_energyjustice.net ***************************************************************** 30 Las Vegas SUN: Federal Scientists Search for Lost H-Bomb By RUSS BYNUM ASSOCIATED PRESS SAVANNAH, Ga. (AP) - The U.S. government is sending a team of 20 scientists to check out a report of unusual radiation readings that could be coming from a hydrogen bomb that was lost off the Georgia coast in 1958. A crippled B-47 bomber dumped the H-bomb into the Atlantic Ocean 46 years ago after the plane collided with a fighter jet during a training flight. Navy divers searched the shallow, murky waters near Tybee Island for nearly 10 weeks before declaring the bomb irretrievably lost. Derek Duke, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel who has been looking for the 7,600-pound bomb for five years, claimed recently that he found a football field-size area off the coast with higher-than-normal radiation levels. He suspects it marks the burial spot of the lost Mark-15 bomb. The scientists from the Pentagon and the National Labs met with Duke on Wednesday and plan to examine the area on Thursday. "Our goal is to survey this area that Mr. Duke has found and make a determination on what that source of radiation is," said Billy Mullins, a government nuclear weapons expert leading the investigation. "If we determine it is the Mark-15, we will have to determine what is the best course of action for that." He declined to comment about what the government's options would be - from removing the bomb to leaving it alone - if his team locates it. The investigators plan to take a boat into Wassaw Sound with an array of sophisticated equipment to measure radiation and take soil and water samples. "If it's not there, then I'll have to end up siding with the Air Force - it may be irretrievably lost," Duke said. "We'd all like to see this weapon recovered ... if it can be done safely." The bomb, believed buried in 10 to 15 feet of mud at the bottom of the sea, became one of 11 "Broken Arrows" - nuclear bombs lost during air or sea accidents, according to U.S. military records. The Air Force has long insisted that there is no risk of a nuclear blast from the Georgia bomb because the plutonium capsule needed to trigger one was removed before the ill-fated flight. "This bomb was not capable of causing a nuclear explosion in 1958 and it is not capable of an explosion today," said Lt. Col. Frank Smolinsky, an Air Force spokesman. Duke, who lives in Statesboro, has disputed that point over the years, citing a Pentagon memo from 1966 that referred to the bomb as a "complete weapon." The Air Force has said that memo was wrong. Duke approached Air Force officials more than three years ago, but they decided at the time not to renew the search for the bomb. The Air Force argued that it was better left undisturbed, because it contains uranium and 400 pounds of conventional explosives. -- ***************************************************************** 31 UPI: Ill soldier fathers baby with defects - (United Press International) September 29, 2004 Washington, DC, Sep. 29 (UPI) -- The wife of a U.S. soldier who served in Iraq and tested positive for depleted uranium gave birth to a baby missing three fingers and most of her right hand. Army National Guard Spec. Gerard Darren Matthew is one of several U.S. service members who requested the New York Daily News test their urine for the carcinogen, which the Defense Department uses in vehicle armor and certain "tank-buster" shells. Matthew's wife became pregnant shortly after he returned from Iraq with a sudden illness that caused migraines, blurry vision, blackouts and painful urination. "My husband went to Iraq to fight for his country," Janice Matthew said. "I feel the Army should take responsibility for what's happened." [UPI Perspectives] ***************************************************************** 32 BBC: Kyrgyz 'plutonium' haul harmless Last Updated: Thursday, 30 September, 2004 [Map of Kyrgyzstan] Suspect material recently seized by Kyrgyz police turned out to contain only harmless amounts of plutonium, a UN official has told BBC News Online. Initial reports spoke of two men being arrested on suspicion of trying to sell "plutonium containers" near the ex-Soviet republic's capital, Bishkek. But a spokesperson for the UN's nuclear watchdog said the containers were 55 old-fashioned Soviet smoke detectors. Such detectors contain a few micrograms of plutonium but are quite harmless. Melissa Fleming, a spokesperson for the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna, told the BBC on Thursday that Kyrgyz officials had confirmed the containers were stolen smoke detectors of a type produced 20 to 30 years ago in the USSR. The containers did not, she said, pose a threat "from the point of view of nuclear proliferation", and Kyrgyzstan did not appear to be any more dangerous than other countries in this respect. However, Ms Fleming added that the fact that there were clearly people who believed they could find buyers for plutonium on the black market continued to cause concern. The IAEA was calling for tighter controls over potential "ingredients" for illegal nuclear weapons, she said. The World Nuclear Association notes that a type of smoke detector commonly available in many countries uses the radiation from a small amount of radioactive material to detect the presence of smoke or heat sources. "Ion chamber" smoke detectors, as they are known, are popular because they are inexpensive and are sensitive to a wider range of fire conditions than other designs, the WNA adds. ***************************************************************** 33 Democracy Now!: Daughter of Soldier Contaminated with Depleted Uranium in Iraq Born with Deformities [http://www.democracynow.org/browsebydate.pl] Africa The New York Model: Indymedia and the Text Message Jihad By Jeremy Scahill A New Documentary featuring Amy Goodman! [mugs] Call 1 (800) 881-2359 or enter the store Thursday, September 30th, 2004 Welcome to Democracy Now!, I'm Amy Goodman in Albuquerque, New Mexico with Juan Gonzalez in New York. For the last five months Juan, you have chronicled the plight of soldiers who have returned from Iraq with mysterious illnesses. Your exclusive groundbreaking investigation in April found that depleted uranium contamination was far more widespread in the military than the Pentagon would admit. Well in a major expose in yesterday's Daily News, Juan you uncovered the story of how a new-born baby may have suffered deformities because her father was exposed to depleted uranium while deployed as a soldier in Iraq. Army National Guard Specialist Gerard Darren Matthew tested positive for uranium contamination after he returned from Iraq. He suffered constant migraine headaches, blurred vision, blackouts and a burning sensation whenever he urinated. Shortly after he returned home, his wife became pregnant. When his daughter, Victoria Claudette, was born on June 29 she was missing three fingers and most of her right hand. The family believes the deformities are a result of the depleted uranium contamination. The Daily News headlined the story "The War's Littlest Victim." Today, Gerard Darren Matthew joins us in our studio in New York. Welcome to Democracy Now! We are also joined by Staff Sgt. Ray Ramos who was deployed in Iraq with the 442nd Military Police. He is among the first confirmed cases of inhaled depleted uranium exposure from the current Iraq conflict. + Gerard Darren Matthew, Guardsman sent home from Iraq with mysterious illnesses. He tested positive for uranium contamination. Shortly after his return, his wife, Janice, became pregnant. On June 29, she gave birth to a baby girl, Victoria Claudette. The baby was missing three fingers and most of her right hand. + Ray Ramos, deployed in Iraq with the 442nd Military Police. He is among the first confirmed cases of inhaled depleted uranium exposure from the current Iraq conflict. + Juan Gonzalez, Democracy Now! co-host and columnist with the New York Daily News. His front-page piece in yesterday's paper is entitled "The war's littlest victim." ----------------------------------------------------------------- RUSH TRANSCRIPT This transcript is available free of charge, however donations help us provide closed captioning for the deaf and hard of hearing on our TV broadcast. Thank you for your generous contribution. Donate - $25, $50, $100, more... JUAN GONZALEZ: We're joined today by Gerard Darren Matthew. Welcome to Democracy Now!. GERARD DARREN MATTHEW: Thank you, sir. JUAN GONZALEZ: Gerard, can you tell me a little bit -- tell us, the listeners and viewers, a little bit about your experiences. When did you get to Iraq, what did do you when you were there, and how did your illnesses develop? GERARD DARREN MATTHEW: Well, I was deployed January 15 of 2003, and I moved out, shipped out, from Fort Dix, April 10, arrived in country April 11. Stayed over there, came home on emergency leave in August, and that's when I started receiving the problems. Initially, I was getting swelling and burning sensation, but I thought it was attributed to the heat, being in a high heat environment. As time went on, going back, I started getting worse. I started getting swelling in my face, blurred vision, because I'm a truck driver, and I felt like I saw my face two -- two different faces. If you put a cross section down the middle of my face it's like I'm seeing a right-side facial droop coupled with blurred vision. It was very traumatic because I've never had any problems before. I'm a very healthy person. I'm a runner, and to take this and now have a child with a problem, and getting a result, it's really traumatic. JUAN GONZALEZ: What did you do? You said you were a truck driver but where do you think the exposures might have come from? GERARD DARREN MATTHEW:Well, in shipment of exploded material, where it be tank parts, Humvee parts, you name it, from Kuwait going north back and forth. That could be attributed to what I have. Plus, I believe it could be from things that happened from the prior war that's been hidden, or mistargeted shrapnel that we inhaled. I mean I really and truly -- I'm still trying to -- I'm mind-boggled by the whole thing. JUAN GONZALEZ:The military gave you in May a 40% disability pension. What did they diagnose as what your problems were? GERARD DARREN MATTHEW: They gave me 30% for the migraines. They call it a -- and they gave me 10% for angioedema, which is the swelling on my face, which occurs off and on, and for the last -- since I've gotten this, I think -- I don't know if it's just my mind playing games, but it seems like every day under my eye it's swollen for some odd reason. JUAN GONZALEZ: And when did you learn that your baby was going to be born deformed? GERARD DARREN MATTHEW: March 12, at Lenox Hill Hospital, a doctor by the name of Michael Divon, is one of the best doctors rated in Newsweek. He found the anomaly and he told me about it, and they gave me options of having an abortion. And I figure with the child now being five months, it's like killing someone. I been over there in Iraq, I didn't kill anybody, and now I'm going to try to do something to my own daughter. Eventually, she conceived the baby, and it's healthy, except for the hand. We don't know if there's going to be any cognitive issues in the long run, but I mean, you could -- you should see the hand. It's just -- it's unbelievable. JUAN GONZALEZ: We're also joined by Staff Sergeant Ray Ramos, who was part of the group of soldiers that we tested in the Daily News actually earlier this year. Out of nine soldiers who had returned sick from Iraq, and was stationed at Fort Dix and the army couldn't tell him what was wrong with him. Ray was one them actually who was at Walter Reed medical center. Welcome to Democracy Now!. RAY RAMOS: Thank you, Juan. JUAN GONZALEZ: You've just recently have gotten out of the army, finally, I think in July. RAY RAMOS: Yes, July 31. JUAN GONZALEZ: What did they finally figure out was wrong with you? RAY RAMOS: They gave me a 30% disability, temporary disability, for my migraine headaches, and they linked it together with post traumatic stress disorder. The other illnesses they ruled out. They said they were medically acceptable, including the depleted uranium exposure. JUAN GONZALEZ: Right, and the army conducted several tests after the Daily News in our testing did find D.U. in your -- the army claims that their testing did not. In fact, I think they finally said that there were 77 soldiers that they tested as a result of the Daily News articles that came out, and requested testing, and they found no one positive, even though we found four out of nine that were positive for D.U. RAY RAMOS: Yes, they told me my levels were low. They were too low to even test, pick up the uranium. JUAN GONZALEZ: Now, let me ask you this: What was the reaction when you were still in the army at Walter Reed when they found out you had gone out for independent testing? Can you talk a little bit about that? RAY RAMOS: Yes. I was actually grilled for about a couple of hours. I was asked by Colonel Hack, Lieutenant Colonel Mercer. I was questioned as to why I felt that I was exposed to depleted uranium. I was asked if I was in any burning vehicles or I was around any vehicles that had been struck by uranium rounds. My response to them was that I was not aware of any exploded ordinance around me, although we had patrols that had gone out and had expressed that, you know, they would see things. It wasn't too receptive when they first started questioning me about it. JUAN GONZALEZ: And when they found out you'd gone to the Daily News? RAY RAMOS: Yes. They were very curious. They were like, why did I go seek independent help? And my answer to them was, when I asked to -- about the depleted uranium in Fort Dix, I was told that I didn't have anything to worry about, and that there was no known testing for depleted uranium. JUAN GONZALEZ: I'd like to ask Gerard also. You went to the army in April, and you did submit a urine sample and asked for it to be tested for D.U. What happened to the army's test? GERARD DARREN MATTHEW: It's so-called unfounded. They don't know where the specimen is, and I've been contacted since the article by Walter Reed and they're wanting to have me redo the test. They'll send the bottles at home and for me to send it to West Point, but in lieu of the articles that what has stirred the pot a little bit. JUAN GONZALEZ: In other words, they lost your sample, or they claim that they don't have a record that you ever gave it back in April? GERARD DARREN MATTHEW: Yes, Mr. Gonzalez. JUAN GONZALEZ: And now that the article came out, now they're calling you and saying they want to test you now. GERARD DARREN MATTHEW: Yeah, and I think it's kind of late. If one thing is already stating that I have it, what is the use of another test? It's still going to state that I have it. JUAN GONZALEZ: One of the interesting things obviously is that there has been a lot of, in New York, quite a few of the political leaders, Congressman Eliot Engel, Senator Hillary Clinton and Chuck Schumer have gotten involved and actually Senator Clinton got a new bill passed just this summer requesting systematic testing of all soldiers when they return from Iraq as well as when they leave, and yet we have a situation with you where the army has lost a test that you gave them, a sample that you gave them five months ago. Senator Clinton issued a statement yesterday saying that she's still troubled by the failure of the army to be able to adequately screen troops when they leave, and when they return from Iraq. So, we'll be continuing to cover this issue of depleted uranium. The military continues to insist that no soldiers that they have tested who have returned from Iraq have tested positive, and yet in the Daily News now, we have out of 10 soldiers that we've tested -- and I should add in your test, we actually sent three different samples to a lab in Germany, two of reporters and one of Gerard's and we didn't identify any of the three. The two reporters came back completely negative, only Gerard's came back positive. AMY GOODMAN: Juan, congratulations on once again stellar work in this investigation. Today -- yesterday in the New York Daily News when you did this, they went through the effects of this report. At the request of the news, nine soldiers from the New York Army National Guard serving in Iraq tested for radiation from depleted uranium shells. Four of the ailing G.I.s tested positive. The day after your story appeared, army officials rushed to test all returning members of the company, the 442nd Military Police based in Rockland County. By week's end, the scandal had reverberated all the way to Albany as Governor Pataki joined the list of politicians calling for the Pentagon to do a better job of testing and treating sick soldiers returning from the war. Your expose sparked a huge demand for testing. By mid-April, 800 G.I.'s had given the army the urine samples and hundreds more were waiting for appointments. Two weeks later, the Pentagon claimed that none of soldiers from the 442nd had tested positive for depleted uranium; but the news experts found significant problems with the testing methods. Finally, I wanted to just ask, Gerard Darren Matthew, what are you demanding now for your daughter? GERARD DARREN MATTHEW: Just take care of her. AMY GOODMAN: We'll go to that af -- Just to take care of her; and what has the army said about that? GERARD DARREN MATTHEW: The army is now willing to give her a test and my wife a test, all of a sudden, and my Tricare insurance runs out November 2nd, but they're willing to do whatever it takes in order to help...all of a sudden. AMY GOODMAN: Well, we want to thank you for being there, Gerard Darren Matthew, guardsman sent home from Iraq, suffering from mysterious illness; now his daughter born is missing three fingers, most of her right hand. Ray Ramos, deployed in Iraq with the 442nd military police. Thank you very much for being with us. This is Democracy Now!. We'll be back in a minute. [break] AMY GOODMAN: I'm Amy Goodman, broadcasting from Alburquerque, New Mexico. Juan Gonzalez is in New York as we talk about his most recent expose: depleted uranium exposure of U.S. soldiers in Iraq. Juan, this is such an important report. Our guest, Gerard Darren Matthews, who returned from Iraq. His wife got pregnant and born was Victoria Claudette, June 28. The baby is missing three fingers, most of her right hand. Ray Ramos with us, deployed with the 442nd military police. What's most stunning about the effect of the expose, Juan, is that in all of these cases, these men and their families have not been dealt with until you pushed. Ray Ramos, Juan was asking you this question before the break, but can you describe the scene when after the expose came out in the New York Daily News, you were brought into this room with -- at Walter Reed where they grilled you. I mean, how many doctors, military people, were in the room, and were they accusing you of going outside the military to do these tests? RAY RAMOS: Well, I was in a room with about three military personnel and a civilian. Basically, the questioning was to the effect of why I felt I was exposed. I didn't have anything to worry about unless I was in a burning vehicle that had just been hit with a uranium round. Who was I, who did I get the testing from, and how much did it cost me to get the testing done? Things to that effect. JUAN GONZALEZ: As I recall, there was one doctor in the room, one officer, who you had asked months before for testing and had turned you down, and you reminded them of that, that several months back, that was the very doctor that you had said, "Listen, I'd like to be tested," right? RAY RAMOS: Yes. At that time I got the same answer, that I didn't have anything to worry about, that unless I was, again, in direct contact with the uranium round, that I wouldn't be exposed. JUAN GONZALEZ: See, and I think this is important to understand, because the army in the spin that it is giving this story, Amy, continues to say, "Well, these soldiers were not in direct contact. They were national guardsmen who were doing basically support work for the combat troops." But it's precisely the fact that they were not in combat and yet many of them are turning up positive that would suggest that there's a much more widespread problem, especially among the combat troops who were directly involved. Many of these men were sleeping in their -- next to burned-out tanks or, in Darren's case, were transporting these burned-out tanks to bases in Kuwait. What about those soldiers who were even more closely involved in combat? The army's testing, the problem with the testing, according to the experts that I've consulted in nuclear medicine and in radiation, is that the army is continually referring when they do testing of soldiers to the total uranium content that they find in urine, of natural uranium. If that's not a high level, from their perspective, they don't even bother to look for depleted uranium. The experts that I have talked to say that all of us ingest uranium to one level or another in the food that we eat or in the water that we drink, but that uranium gets excreted within 24 hours from the body. However, if you breathe in depleted uranium and it gets into your lungs, it does not get excreted as quickly. It can stay in your lungs for years and emit alpha particles, intense radiation, to a very, very localized spot within the lung. That can lead to problems, as well as the toxic effects. Because depleted uranium has not only radiological effects, it also has toxic effects as a heavy metal to the kidney and other organs. So that the military is using the testing procedure just for natural uranium and is not even using the most sensitive equipment that could detect smaller parts of depleted uranium that might be a reflection of -- that the uranium has settled somewhere else in the body, especially the lungs. AMY GOODMAN: Darren, have other people in your unit been tested? Has everyone so far been tested? GERARD DARREN MATTHEW: I know of only one soldier who has been tested, and to believe me, he was the one that turned in his urine sample just before mine. That's why. And they have the results of him, but they don't have the results of me, which I find very intriguing. JUAN GONZALEZ: And your company was the 719th Transport Company? GERARD DARREN MATTHEW: Yes, 719 Transport out of Harlem, New York. AMY GOODMAN: Well, we want to thank you again very much for being with us. Gerard Darren Matthews, guardsman returned, his daughter born without most of her right hand. Ray Ramos, back from Iraq from the 442nd Military Police. And Juan, thanks for doing the report. here for our new online ordering or call 1 (800) 881-2359. ***************************************************************** 34 Tewksbury Advocate: Boiling water problem TownOnline.com - By Bethan L. Jones/ Staff Writer Wednesday, September 29, 2004Tewksbury and the state Department of Environmental Protection, close partners in looking into the perchlorate in Tewksbury's water, are finding it a little harder to see eye to eye now almost two months into the problem. At last Tuesday's selectmen's meeting, the group voted to send a letter to the DEP voicing their frustration with the current plan proposed to mix Tewksbury water with water from Andover and Lowell. The combination of the waters would bring Tewksbury's perchlorate count down below 1 part per billion and life the current ban on Tewksbury water, which is presently deemed unsafe for children under the age of 12, pregnant or nursing mothers, or those with thyroid problems. Selectmen chairman Joseph Gill called the plan "idiotic" and "foolhardy," and questioned whether the state DEP had a plan for removing the perchlorate from the Merrimack River. "Hopefully [Tewksbury] will not be required to dilute our water," said Gill. "DEP should be encouraged to do the job they need to do for us." State DEP representatives, however, disagree with the charge they are not doing an aggressive enough job on the issue. Deputy commissioner Ed Kunce said DEP is working hard to rectify the issue and the town needs to look at the perchlorate problem as a water emergency, the purpose for the interconnecting pipes to both Andover and Lowell. If the town did not have any water, then they would be utilized, he said, adding there should not be such a difference now. "I take strong exception to [the charge of the selectmen,]" said Kunce. A meeting was held on Friday between DEP, Tewksbury, Lowell, and Andover officials to examine the feasibility of piping in outside water. Tewksbury water treatment plant chief engineer Lewis Zediana said the meeting touched on the various options, including how the water would be brought in and what the ramifications would be. Lowell and Andover use different treatment chemicals and have a different water Ph than Tewksbury. Zediana said the mixing of water is "not as simple" as suggested and "must be done carefully." "It's all in the extremely early planning stages," he said, adding DEP was exploring as many avenues as possible to fixing the problem on multiple fronts. Kunce said the meeting highlighted the difference in approach between Tewksbury and the DEP. Tewksbury has elected for Camp Dresser and McKee, the town consultants, to look into the mixing of the water further. "If you have an emergency ... you take things by the horns," said Kunce, adding in his opinion the town was taking a slower path to recovery but it was the path which allowed them to "control their own destiny." While the question of mixing Tewksbury water is still unresolved, the state DEP will begin phase four testing this week. In response to the last round of tests which indicated a large amount of perchlorate exiting the Billerica and Lowell waste water treatment plants, the suspected source of the perchlorate, this next round will include the testing of water entering the plants, before the chlorination process, and the effluent waters to try and document where the perchlorate is being generated in the treatment of the water. Tests will also be taken of the Lowell water overflows, which includes runoff from the city of Lowell; Merrimack Street, which is opposite the water treatment plant; Warren Street near the Concord River; and the Beaver Brook near the University of Massachusetts at Lowell. Tests of the Merrimack River will also include a test on the south bank at River Road in Lowell. DEP will also be testing the Concord River at Lowell and Old Elm streets in Billerica and Route 133 in Lowell. The results of this next round of testing are expected early next week. State DEP has been meeting with representatives from both the Billerica and Lowell waste water treatment plants to utilize their knowledge of the sites to ensure the tests are done in the most effective way, said Kunce. Zediana praised the DEP in their efforts to locate the source, done in three rounds of testing, when the recharge area of the Merrimack River is over 24,000 square miles. "It's like a needle in a haystack spread over the entire state," he said. "It's not particularly easy ... looking for a compound of this type." © Copyright of CNC and Herald Interactive Advertising Systems, Inc. No portion of townonline.com or its content may be reproduced without the owner's written permission. Privacy ***************************************************************** 35 Las Vegas RJ: Congressional candidates in Yucca duel Thursday, September 30, 2004 Porter answers Gallagher ads suggesting challenger better suited to keep nuclear waste out of Nevada By STEVE TETREAULT STEPHENS WASHINGTON BUREAU WASHINGTON -- Skirmishing escalated Wednesday about whether Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., or Democratic challenger Tom Gallagher is better suited to protect Nevada from nuclear waste. Gallagher began running a TV ad last week challenging Porter's votes in 2003 for an energy bill that included incentives for utilities to build more nuclear power plants. On Wednesday, Porter hit back in their 3rd Congressional District race, which encompasses Henderson, Boulder City and rural Clark County. Porter's campaign tried to tie Gallagher to a hardball public relations blitz the nuclear industry initiated in 1992 to drum up support for the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository. Gallagher's law firm, Gibson, Dunn &Crutcher, had as a client the Edison Electric Institute, a utility group that helped finance the $8.7 million "Nevada Initiative." Planning for the campaign came to light in November 1991 with the leak of a memo written by Las Vegas consultant Kent Oram. Porter charged Gallagher as a partner shared profits from the nuclear industry client, "and partners know what other partners are doing." "This is a dirty little secret that Tom doesn't want to talk about." Porter said. "I felt the public needed to know that he is a hypocrite." Gallagher aide Mara Gassman said he played no role in the Nevada Initiative, and was not aware of it. Gibson, Dunn &Crutcher had 800 attorneys and 300 partners and Gallagher worked in New York in the early 1990s, she said. By the time the project would have gotten under way, Gassman said, Gallagher had left the firm. From 1988 until he left Gibson Dunn &Crutcher in 1992, Gallagher's sole client was entertainment mogul Merv Griffin, she said. "He's dredging up stuff that Tom didn't do 15 years ago," Gassman said. "Next Porter will want to be comparing their high school records. This is complete character assassination. "Porter is reaching because he knows we are gaining on him," Gassman said. "He is clearly grasping at straws." Porter said he raised the issue after Gallagher questioned his commitment against Yucca Mountain. "I turn on the TV and find it laughable he would imply I'm for nuclear waste after 20 years of fighting Yucca Mountain," Porter said. Organized by the American Nuclear Energy Council, the Nevada Initiative included media training for Energy Department scientists and formation of "an accuracy response team" to answer Yucca critics. The media campaign featured television commercials of former Las Vegas sportscaster Ron Vitto discussing nuclear waste transportation safety and other issues. The Nevada Initiative largely backfired as it was roundly denounced by Nevada leaders as transparent propaganda. Copyright Las Vegas Review-Journal ***************************************************************** 36 BBC: Nuclear fuel shipment reassurance Last Updated: Wednesday, 29 September, 2004 [BNF ship the Pacific Pintail] The Pacific Pintail is one of the two cargo ships being used People in South West England and the Channel Islands have been told that precautions have been taken to protect two ships taking plutonium to France. The shipment of weapons-grade material will pass within 16 miles (26km) of Cornwall and 31 miles (50km) of the Channel Islands en route to Cherbourg. Campaigners are worried it could be a terrorism target or have an accident. Shipment authorities said the vessels were armed and they had never suffered a radioactive discharge. It shouldn't be transport half-way across the world at any time Adrian Sanders MP The shipment is of 140kg of weapons-grade plutonium, enough to make 40 nuclear bombs. It is being transported on behalf of the US Department of Energy by two UK-registered vessels from shipping company Pacific Nuclear Transport Limited (PNTL), whose main shareholder is British Nuclear Fuel Limited (BNFL). The Pacific Teal and the Pacific Pintail left the US a week ago on their trans-Atlantic crossing. They should enter the English Channel by the weekend. The highly radioactive material has been taken directly from nuclear warheads, following disarmament agreements with Russia. Once in France, the plutonium will be transported to the south of the country to be processed and converted into mixed oxide (Mox) nuclear fuel. Campaign group Greenpeace claims the vessels pose a potential "environmental and terrorist threat" and former UK Atomic Weapons Establishment scientist Dr Frank Barnaby said an on-board accident could have serious consequences. Dr Barnaby also criticised the level of security being provided for the shipment by the company responsible for the transportation, Cogema-Areva Logistics. He said a warship should have been used to transport the nuclear material because of the risk of a terror attack. His view is shared by Torbay's MP, Liberal Democrat Adrian Sanders. Safety reassurances Mr Sanders said: "My concern is that this particular substance should be dealt with in the USA and turned into the fuel there. "It shouldn't be transported half-way across the world at any time, let alone in this heightened period of terrorist activity." Shaun Burnie from Greenpeace said the shipment "did not need to happen". He added: "This is bomb material that cannot be, and should not be, treated as if you're just handling bananas or something." West Cornwall MP Andrew George has written to the Home Secretary David Blunkett, asking for reassurance over safety. Cogema-Areva Logistics said fears were unjustified. It said the vessels had a squad of armed officers from the UK Atomic Energy Agency Constabulary and were also carrying naval cannons, had satellite monitoring and heavily reinforced hulls, plus back-up engines. A BNFL spokesman said PNTL had carried over 170 shipments for a total of about five million miles without any incidents. He added: "PNTL have got a huge experience of carrying all sorts of nuclear materials over the last 30 years. "These things don't just happen on a whim. They are carried out under very strict regulatory authorisations." ***************************************************************** 37 ABQjournal: DOE Pays $600,000 for WIPP Oversight September 30, 2004 The Associated Press CARSLBAD — The Carlsbad Environmental Monitoring and Research Center has been awarded $600,000 to help with oversight of the federal government's nuclear waste dump in southern New Mexico. The U.S. Department of Energy awarded the funding so the center can conduct environmental testing and monitoring of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant. Sen. Pete Domenici and Rep. Steve Pearce, both New Mexico Republicans, said Wednesday that the funding shows the DOE is serious about monitoring WIPP. "This money will ensure the safety and efficiency of WIPP and is the reason the residents of Carlsbad feel so secure with WIPP," Pearce said. "They know independent oversight and monitoring is important." The funding was needed to fill a gap between now and August 2005, when the DOE expects to award a $1.8 million contract for monitoring of the waste dump. For now, the Carlsbad Environmental Monitoring and Research Center replaces the Environmental Evaluation Group, an independent watchdog established in 1978. EEG shut down last spring after the DOE cut its budget. It operated for a number of years on $2 million a year under a contract with DOE. In 2003, DOE cut the group's funding to $1.6 million, then to $1.5 million this year. Matthew Silva, the group's director, has said the funding wasn't enough for the group to do its job. Copyright Albuquerque Journal ***************************************************************** 38 Courier-Journal: Silo cleanup begins at uranium processing plant near Cincinnati [http://www.courier-journal.com Thursday, September 30, 2004 By John Nolan Associated Press CINCINNATI The company handling the $4billion cleanup of radioactive wastes at the former Fernald uranium-processing plant has begun transferring waste from a 50-year-old concrete silo into holding tanks. The transfer marks a critical step toward trying to complete the cleanup by 2006. After some initial problems last week with hose connections and valves, the transfer began Monday, Fluor Fernald and union officials said Tuesday. Management hopes to finish removing the 9,000 cubic yards of waste in about four months from two silos, the aging and repaired repositories that have contained the waste since the 1950s. Gene Branham, president of the 13-union Fernald Atomic Trades and Labor Council, said that he was concerned that Fluor Fernald has encountered early problems with the transfer. But company officials said that they anticipated problems in the start-up and that they are now making progress. "The silo waste has not moved in 50 years," said Jeff Wagner, a Fluor Fernald spokesman. "Our closure will be defined by how quickly and safely we can remove silo wastes." On Sept. 16, the U.S. Department of Energy gave approval for Fluor Fernald to begin injecting water into the two silos to allow pumping of the clay-like wastes through metal piping into four, 750,000-gallon steel holding tanks inside a concrete building. The material is ultimately to be encased in concrete for hundreds of shipments by flatbed trucks in steel containers to the Energy Department's former atomic weapons testing site in the Nevada desert. Nevada has threatened a lawsuit to block shipment of the wastes. The dispute could threaten the 2006 completion date of the cleanup, which is costing taxpayers about $320million annually. Removal, treatment and disposal of the wastes in the two silos and powdery, radioactive wastes in a third silo on the 1,050-acre Fernald tract 18 miles northwest of Cincinnati is the largest remaining job in the cleanup. The plant processed uranium for almost 40 years for the government's nuclear weapons production until 1989. Most of the old production buildings have been demolished as part of the cleanup. The plan calls for the site eventually to be a wildlife area, with 123 acres housing permanent underground storage of lower-level radioactive wastes. Copyright 2004 The Courier-Journal. ***************************************************************** 39 Gazette: Settlement looming in Cotter Corp. contamination case [http://www.gazette.com/olive_feat] The Associated Press CANON CITY - After 13 years of legal battles, Cotter Corp. and a group of residents have reached a potential settlement over claims that company has contaminated an area neighborhood. The so-called Joseph Dodge plaintiffs, 51 former and current residents, claimed Cotter Corp. contaminated the Lincoln Park neighborhood, leading to health problems and damaging property values. According to a motion filed last week in U.S. District Court in Denver, attorneys for both sides have asked the court to seal all documents related to the settlement because it involves seven minors and one person who is mentally incompetent. Both sides also want the judge to approve the settlement on behalf of the minors and the incompetent person, said John Watson, an attorney representing Cotter Corp. He declined further comment. Cotter Corp., a wholly owned subsidiary of General Atomics, operates a uranium mill just south of Canon City. In 1984, the mill and part of the nearby Lincoln Park community were listed as a federal Superfund cleanup site because contamination from unlined tailings ponds had seeped into the groundwater. According to the court filing, there have been three jury trials involving the Dodge cases, each resulting in verdicts against Cotter. However, each judgment has been revered by the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Last year, a $43.3 million verdict against Cotter was overturned after the appellate judges concluded expert witness testimony should not have been allowed at trial. Cotter Corp. is also seeking permission to dispose of tons of contaminated soil from New Jersey at the mill. The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment rejected part of the plan earlier this year, saying Cotter had not shown it had adequate procedures in place to safely handle the material from the Maywood Chemical Superfund site. The waste is contaminated with thorium, which was used to make lantern mantles. ***************************************************************** 40 u.tv: Pressure on govt over nuclear waste [http://webmail.u.tv] [http://www.utvplc.com] THURSDAY 30/09/2004 08:58:45 The Irish government is coming under pressure to end the transport of hazardous nuclear waste through Irish waters. It comes as two ships are expected to carry weapons grade plutonium past the south coast of England today. The Department of the Environment has said it`s been assured that the ships will not enter Irish territorial waters. But leader of the Green Party Trevor Sargent says past records show that such diplomatic statements carry little credibility. And he says the consequence of an accident or attack on either ship is too terrible to contemplate: Copyright © 2004 UTV Internet and the UTV plc Group. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 41 NEWS.com.au: No N-dump for mainland (September 30, 2004) By Karen Michelmore THE Federal Government today ruled out building a commonwealth nuclear dump on mainland Australia in an attempt to allay political fallout in the coalition's most marginal seat. Environment Minister Senator Ian Campbell said the commonwealth would consider only offshore islands for storing its nuclear waste, ruling out the Northern Territory as a possible site. Earlier this week the federal government dismissed as obsolete a list of 22 mainland Australian sites drawn up for expert scrutiny. "The commonwealth is not pursuing any options anywhere on the mainland, so we can be quite categorical about that, because the NT is on the mainland," Senator Campbell told Darwin radio. "I think the reality of this is that there is no one on the mainland who particularly wants a nuclear waste dump in their backyard, that is why we are pursuing the practical option of going to an offshore island. Prime Minister John Howard had earlier refused to rule out the possibility of the waste being stored in the NT and elsewhere. Nuclear waste had been heating up as a key election issue in the knife-edge marginal Darwin seat of Solomon, held by the Country-Liberal Party's Dave Tollner by just 88 votes. Mr Tollner created a stir earlier this year when he said the NT would have an obligation to take the nuclear waste if it was determined to be the safest place for it. The NT's Labor Chief Minister Clare Martin recently hit the television airwaves in a series of election advertisements warning about the potential for a dump, and introduced legislation in an attempt to block any federal move to place a dump in the NT. But Senator Campbell accused Labor of attempting to scare voters in its anti-nuclear dump campaign. "They are desperate to try and do everything they can to win a federal election and they are prepared to scare people as a result. "Our policy is to store our waste on an offshore island and its been our policy every since I have been environment minister over two months ago." Ms Martin said today the federal government was all over the place on the issue. "With the election less than a week away the coalition is claiming they've ruled out all mainland sites," she said. "Nothing we have heard from the coalition so far gives us any comfort at all, they are all over the place on nuclear dumping." Meanwhile, West Australian Premier Geoff Gallop called on the federal government to immediately rule out using any of WA's 3,747 islands as a dump. And Mr Campbell's comments also caused concern in Tasmania, with Tasmanian Environment Minister Judy Jackson saying they created new uncertainties. "Senator Campbell must, as a matter of urgency, deliver a reassurance that none of Tasmania's islands are under consideration," she said in a statement. AAP Copyright 2004 News Limited. All times AEST (GMT+10). ***************************************************************** 42 AU ABC: Ranger Mine warned before contamination. 30/09/2004. ABC News Online Australian Broadcasting Corporation Online"> [http://www.abc.net.au/] Last Update: Thursday, September 30, 2004. 8:21am (AEST) [http://www.abc.net.au/reslib/200408/r28459_70965.jpg] Aerial view of Ranger uranium mine (ABC TV) It has been revealed the operators of the Ranger Uranium Mine in the Northern Territory were issued with a Government safety warning a month before a water contamination incident earlier this year. The ongoing concerns were detailed in a Territory Government report on the incident where workers drank water containing uranium. Northern Territory mining authorities have now laid charges against Energy Resources of Australia (ERA) over the water contamination in March. ERA has refused to comment but has issued a statement to the stock exchange acknowledging the charges. They are expected to be heard by a magistrate in November. The Department of Resource Development's own report says that a month prior to the incident it had warned ERA Ranger could be closed if safety was not improved. The report says the department had reached a level of frustration with safety issues, including ore spillage and other housekeeping problems. A Territory Government spokeswoman says ERA had started addressing the safety concerns by the time of the contamination incident a month later. Mike Burgess from the Department of Resource Development says it is hard to judge whether his department could have better regulated the facility. "That's difficult to say simply because of the established practices at the time," he said. "What we've identified coming out of the incident is a need to improve in some areas and that's what we're going to do." Energy Resources of Australia has been formally charged over a water contamination incident which could prompt claims for compensation from workers who claim they were exposed to radiation. [RealMedia 28k+ © 2004 Australian Broadcasting Corporation ***************************************************************** 43 AU ABC: Coalition rules out nuclear waste dump for the mainland "Australian Broadcasting Corporation Online"> [http://www.abc.net.au/] PM - Thursday, 30 September , 2004 18:38:00 Reporter: Anne Barker MARK COLVIN: The Coalition today categorically ruled out building a nuclear waste dump on the Australian mainland. For weeks the Government has refused to rule out anywhere in Australia, except South Australia, as a possible site for unwanted Commonwealth nuclear waste. The Government's announcement today was made on Darwin radio in Australia's most marginal seat where the local Labor candidate Jim Davidson has been running strongly on the anti-nuclear platform, and was about to launch his official campaign. But rather than be gazumped on one of his key policy planks, Mr Davidson is refusing to accept the Government's promise. Anne Barker reports. ANNOUNCER: Would you please welcome with me… ANNE BARKER: Today was Jim Davidson's big day. ANNOUNCER: …the next member for Solomon, Jim Davidson. (Sound of cheering and clapping from audience) ANNE BARKER: The official launch of his campaign to win Australia's most marginal seat for Labor – Solomon, based in Darwin, which the Coalition's Dave Tollner holds by just 88 votes. And a key plank of Jim Davidson's platform has been his Opposition to any plan for a Commonwealth nuclear waste dump in the Northern Territory. JIM DAVIDSON: But first, my position – and always has been – that the NT should not be the site for Australia's nuclear waste dump. (Sound of clapping from audience) ANNE BARKER: The question of a nuclear dump has become a big election issue in the NT, since the federal court in July overruled the Commonwealth's plan for a national waste dump in South Australia. The Federal Government had since refused to rule out the possibility of Commonwealth waste being stored in the Territory or elsewhere on the mainland, even though it said it would look also at islands offshore. (Sound of Jim Davidson's campaign TV advertisement: "…fighting to make sure Australia's nuclear waste is not dumped in the Territory…") ANNE BARKER: Jim Davidson has milked the issue for all its worth, including election ads on television, and at today's launch he even produced bumper stickers with "stop Tollner's nuclear dump". JIM DAVIDSON: You can attach them to the rear bumper of your car… ANNE BARKER: Yet today's launch came several hours after the Federal Environment Minister Ian Campbell announced on Darwin ABC radio this morning that the Commonwealth is now ruling out any site on the mainland. IAN CAMPBELL: The only options that we're pursuing are on offshore islands. I think the reality of this is that there's no one on the mainland who particularly wants a nuclear waste dump in their backyard, and that is why we're pursuing the practical option of going to an offshore island, so the Northern Territorians can take that as an absolute categorical assurance. ANNE BARKER: But with his campaign speech already written and the bumper stickers ready to go, Jim Davidson wasn't about to let that announcement ruin his launch. Instead he accused the minister of lying. JIM DAVIDSON: This Government will do anything, they'll tell any lie that they possibly can to get re-elected. ANNE BARKER: He's still given a guarantee though, hasn't he, that it won't be in the Northern Territory? JIM DAVIDSON: I don't trust him frankly. I don't believe that they have, that they will not come back and reconsider the waste dump issue. I think that the fact is that there are a number of sites in the Territory that remain on a list and they will end up continuing to include sites in the Territory as options for a nuclear waste site. ANNE BARKER: Isn't this just you refusing to be gazumped on a major plank in your policy? JIM DAVIDSON: Not at all. I'm just telling it like it is. ANNE BARKER: But Senator Campbell says it's Jim Davidson who's playing politics by beating up the issue simply to win votes. And even if the Coalition keeps its promise, the Minister's giving no clue about which of Australia's hundreds of islands could now be the target for a nuclear dump. IAN CAMPBELL: It's going to be an Australian offshore island. I'm not going to get into the business of ruling out every one of the thousand Australian islands, we're going to get the very best scientific advice which makes it a safe, secure environment on an offshore island for the future of Australia. MARK COLVIN: Federal Environment Minister, Ian Campbell, and that report from Anne Barker. [http://www.abc.net.au/privacy.htm] ***************************************************************** 44 AU ABC: Tas seeks offshore nuclear dump assurance "Australian Broadcasting Corporation Online"> [http://abc.net.au/] Friday, 1 October 2004 Tasmania is seeking assurances from the Federal Government that none of the State's offshore islands are being considered as sites for a nuclear waste dump. Senator Ian Campbell told Northern Territorians the Commonwealth was now pursuing what he called the "practical option" of establishing a national nuclear waste repository on an offshore island. His comments have startled Tasmania's Environment Minister Judy Jackson, who fears her federal counterpart may have set his sights on some of the more than 300 islands off Tasmania. She says in appeasing South Australia and now the Northern Territory, the minister has created uncertainty for Tasmanians, who she says also do not fancy the idea of a nuclear waste dump in their backyard. Ms Jackson has urged Senator Campbell to be more specific about his plans to avoid unnecessary concern. She has accused him of trying to dodge the issue on the mainland during an election campaign. [ more news ] Last Updated: 6:39:00 AM (AEDT) [http://www.abc.net.au/privacy.htm] ***************************************************************** 45 Westford Eagle: DEP: Westford 'responsible' for water clean-up TownOnline.com - By Carrie Simmons/ Staff Writer Thursday, September 30, 2004 Officials from the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection informed Town Manager Steve Ledoux Friday that they would be issuing the town a Notice of Responsibility (NOR) regarding the perchlorate contamination related to blasting for the new highway garage. The notice would hold the town at least partially responsible. Responsibility by Tresca Brothers Sand &Gravel, which conducted blasting at a quarry near the site of the new Highway garage for many years, has not been ruled out, as the DEP has not gained access to the Tresca property to do testing for perchlorate. The DEP's NOR will likely direct the town to take immediate measures to remediate the contamination at a number of locations in town. Eileen Pannetier, president of Comprehensive Environmental Inc. (CEI), an environmental engineering firm that deals with hazardous and solid waste, as well as water resources and wetlands, presented selectmen with a seven-step, $1.25 million-plan for short and long-term remediation Tuesday. Selectmen expressed frustration over being held responsible by the DEP for remediation when the town has no power to prohibit future use of perchlorate in blasting, which is regulated by the state Fire Marshal's office. "I am in absolute shock looking at these numbers," said Selectman Allan Loiselle. "$250,000 before we even get rolling and potentially $1 million to clean up the Cote Well for a chemical that there is no treatment standard for." "I understand there's contamination out there and DEP wants cleanup," said Loiselle. "But how can they say on one hand, dump in it the ground and on the other, pay $1.25 million to clean it up?" Selectmen Chairman Bob Jefferies said that the DEP has known about perchlorate contamination in other areas of the state and country for a long time. "In the spring they start testing, but they don't tell anybody," said Jefferies. "They don't issue any advisories or tell people to stop blasting. And now, all of a sudden, it is 'you have got to take care of this problem.'" CEI, which has conducted testing in town since perchlorate was initially detected by the Water Department, generated a map of bedrock fracture zones, along with the town's driller, using aerial photography. Pannetier told selectmen that perchlorate is coming from the highest area of Snake Meadow Hill, where bedrock has been blasted in the past and recently for the new Highway facility. "We believe it is sliding down the bedrock and into the Cote Well," said Pannetier. Further blasting could loosen perchlorate caught up in the intersections of numerous bedrock fractures, Pannetier said. Pannetier told selectmen that the DEP will immediately require that a temporary connection to town water be installed for the house at 1 Emily Way where a private well has been contaminated at high levels. Pannetier noted that the house is in a highly fractured area. An estimate by the Water Department indicated that a permanent hookup will cost about $31,000. Loiselle expressed frustration over the Water Department's refusal to waive the hookup fee, which totals more than $3,000, despite his recent request to do so. The second step of remediation would involve investigating what other homes might be susceptible based on fracture zones and to come up with the best prevention to keep those wells from contamination. "We don't have a good line around the contamination," said Pannetier. "We can tell that certain wells are going to be more susceptible. Wells with high pumping rates are more likely to bring in contamination." There is a chance that the treatment of the Cote Well, the most expensive phase of remediation, could be avoided, Pannetier said, if contamination of stormwater runoff is prevented before it reaches the nearby detention basin, which tested positive for perchlorate at 12 parts per billion, then 125 parts per billion in a second test. The detention basin drains the highway garage and gravel pits where historic blasting has occurred, Pannetier said. "If this hasn't gotten very far, then it's possible we can divert it through surface water drainage so the well doesn't become contaminated enough to require treatment," said Pannetier. "The source separation would prevent further surface water contamination." Pannetier said capping perchlorate-laden areas with asphalt and installing burms could keep the perchlorate in the area where it has been generated, preventing contaminated storm water from traveling towards the detention basin. Another step identified in CEI's proposal was to conduct additional sampling to help identify other parties that might be responsible. Although the DEP plans to do more testing, they will do sampling on their own timescale, Pannetier said. And if the town is identified as the first one on the list of responsible parties with the biggest portion of liability, it cannot afford to wait for DEP testing. Jefferies said a part of the investigation should identify the compound of perchlorate, whether it is ammonium perchlorate or potassium perchlorate, which was used in blasting for the highway garage. "That to me would be the smoking gun as to where it came from," said Jefferies. Of the seven steps, Pannetier recommended addressing the first four immediately, highlighting the Emily Way well because it could become a legal issue. The other tasks include identifying other homes that are susceptible and preventing contamination, and stormwater separation. Selectmen voted unanimously to amend Article 10 of the warrant to include $31,000 in capital requests to provide a hookup to town water for the well on Emily Way and $55,000 for other preliminary tasks within CEI's proposal. More money will likely be requested at Annual Town Meeting in the spring. "The irony of all of this is that the reason we moved the Highway garage up there was to get away from the Cote Well," said Jefferies. © Copyright of CNC and Herald Interactive Advertising Systems, Inc. No portion of townonline.com or its content may be reproduced ***************************************************************** 46 NEWS.com.au: N-waste may be dumped on island (October 1, 2004) By PAUL DYER The Howard Government has ruled out building a national nuclear waste dump on the Territory mainland. But Environment and Heritage Minister Senator Ian Campbell last night would not rule out building the dump on an island off the NT coast. "I am not going to go into speculation -- I am going to leave it to scientific experts," he told the Northern Territory News last night. "The last people you would need to be choosing what to do with nuclear waste are politicians." There are 887 islands off the Territory coast, most of which are unpopulated. With a total area of about 13,000sq km, they range from the size of a small rock to twice the size of the ACT. Senator Campbell said the "preferred option" was to build the dump on one of the thousands of Australian-owned islands. He said the process of finding an offshore solution had only just begun -- and could take up to two years to complete. "We will be tasking an expert panel to assess the best prospects for an offshore island -- once one has been chosen we will go into the fine detail," he said. Until yesterday the Federal Government had refused to rule out the Territory as a possible site for the intermediate-level waste dump. The ALP has been running a TV advertising campaign in the marginal CLP seat of Solomon warning that a Coalition government could build a nuclear dump in the NT. But Senator Campbell denied it was a backflip prompted by the threat of losing the seat, which is held by just 88 votes. Northern Territory News Copyright 2004 News Limited. All times AEST (GMT+10). ***************************************************************** 47 Westford Eagle: Editorial: Water and responsibility TownOnline.com - Opinion &Letters Thursday, September 30, 2004The Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection is expected to rule shortly that the town of Westford is at least partially responsible for the contamination of surface, ground and well water with high levels of perchlorate. The excessive amounts of perchlorate are thought to be from recent and past use of blasting materials that contain the chemical. Blasting took place most recently to prepare a site off North Street for a new Highway Department garage. It is estimated that more than 10,000 pounds of dynamite were used to clear the Highway Department garage site. When one considers that a giant bunker-busting bomb used against the Taliban in Afghanistan weighed in at 1,000 pounds, the 10,000-pound figure represents a significant amount of explosives. Nevertheless, even though the DEP has known about blasting in Westford and in other towns across the state for a long time, it only now asserts that the town is liable for the effects of the blasting on Westford's well water or ground water. It is estimated that it may cost as much as $1.25 million to "remediate" or resolve the water contamination problem. Selectmen are also concerned about legal liabilities with contamination of residents' wells and have voted unanimously to amend Article 10 of the warrant to include $31,000 in capital requests to provide a hookup to town water for a contaminated well on Emily Way and $55,000 for other preliminary remediation tasks. More money will likely be requested at Annual Town Meeting in the spring. What are DEP's due diligence notification procedures? Shouldn't they have issued warnings about blasting and the possibilities of perchlorate contamination? As for ultimate liability, we believe the Tresca property should be examined and tested to determine if blasting or other activities there created a perchlorate problem that spread beyond the Tresca property boundaries. Furthermore, state agencies including the DEP, the Department of Public Health and the state Fire Marshal's office need to review the policy of allowing construction firms to blast with materials that contain perchlorate. If perchlorate is found deleterious to the environment or the health of residents of the Commonwealth, blasting should be prohibited. Having clean and safe water is a right of residency. Let's hope the DEP and the town can agree on proper remediation of the contamination problem and that the responsibility issue be resolved so that residents can be assured of a safe water supply. © Copyright of CNC and Herald Interactive Advertising Systems, Inc. ***************************************************************** 48 Concord Journal: Soil sampling beginning at Starmet TownOnline.com - By Chris Cassidy/ Staff Writer Thursday, September 30, 2004Crews will begin sampling materials next week at the Starmet Superfund site in West Concord, a process expected to take about two months. Representatives from the Environmental Protection Agency, Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection and Department of Public Health held a public meeting at the Town House Tuesday night to update residents on the latest work to be carried out at the 46-acre former home of Nuclear Metals, Inc., which was designated as a federal Superfund site in 2001. Project Manager Bruce Thompson, from the national consulting firm de maximis told residents between 20 and 30 workers would begin sampling on Oct. 4 and would use a variety of drilling and probing vehicles to extract parts of the soil and groundwater. The samples will be sent back for laboratory analysis and review through March of 2005. Crews will return to the site around spring and summer of 2005 for the second round of groundwater sampling and to conduct more soil sampling, if needed. By the fall or winter of 2005, Thompson said he hopes to have results on any potential health risks associated with the site's contaminants. The risk assessment report is expected to be the next major milestone in the project after the sampling wraps up because it's expected to lay out any dangers and hazards on the site that can pose risks to human health. From there, the EPA will propose a plan and set forth the cleanup requirements for the site. The involved agencies plan to hold public meetings at major project milestones and post information on the project's Web site, www.NMISite.org. The U.S. Army has agreed to pay for the removal and disposal of more than 3,700 drums and containers of depleted uranium from the Nuclear Metals/Starmet site as part of a settlement reached with the Massachusetts attorney general's office in May. Tuesday night, some residents urged environmental officials to sample areas outside the boundaries of the Starmet site, to test for contaminants that may have drifted to neighboring properties, including the nearby Thoreau Hills neighborhood. Thompson said the best strategy would be to start in the area crews know is contaminated before moving outward. He also cited tight budgetary constraints and the expense of randomly sampling locations two or three miles away from the contamination site. When crews pull the samples, they will wear protective scuba tanks on the first day and vacuums to trap any contaminated air particles that may come up from the ground. Those samples will then be sent to a lab for overnight testing to ensure the air workers are breathing is safe. There will also be fences on the sides of working areas to sample the air and ensure its purity. © Copyright of CNC and Herald Interactive Advertising Systems, Inc. ***************************************************************** 49 Whitehaven News: SELLAFIELD BOSS ‘HIT UNION MAN’ Mike Rogan: Declined to name the alleged victim By David Siddall A SENIOR Sellafield manager who allegedly assaulted a trade union shopsteward at the nuclear plant has not been suspended from his duties despite the launch of two inquiries into the allegations. Mike Rogan, convenor for the Amicus Mechanical section, confirmed to The Whitehaven News: “There has been a serious allegation made by an Amicus member against a senior manager on site. As a result two investigations are underway in parallel with each other. One is by Sellafield senior management and the other by the UKAEA constabulary.” Although Mr Rogan would not comment further on the matter, asked if the alleged victim suffered any injury he added: “I construe this as a serious matter.” Mr Rogan declined to name the shop steward, saying: “Under medical advice he has been withdrawn from work areas. He’s shaken-up by the whole situation and is working with me in the union offices.” The News understands that the victim of the alleged assault is a senior shop steward, and the incident centred on the high level vitrification plant, where highly radioactive liquid waste is fused in high temperature furnaces with molten glass. The regional organiser for Amicus, Alan Westnedge, confirmed: “I understand there is an internal investigation on site.” In a statement, BNFL said: “We can confirm that we are investigating two allegations of inappropriate behaviour, one made against a manager and the other against two members of the workforce in one of the plants on site. “The investigations are ongoing to decide whether either allegation needs to be taken further and it would not be appropriate to make any additional comment at this time.” [http://www.whitehavennews.co.uk/ ***************************************************************** 50 Salt Lake Tribune: Battles over nukes stall 2005 budget Article Last Updated: 09/30/2004 02:05:41 AM Time out: A stopgap bill would keep funds flowing until after key elections By Christopher Smith The Salt Lake Tribune WASHINGTON - Congress appears incapable of resolving multiple battles over agency spending levels for the new federal fiscal year that begins Friday. So, lawmakers are working to pass a stopgap spending bill today, effectively postponing key votes on 2005 budgets until after the Nov. 2 election. Anti-nuclear proliferation lobbyists say the delay provides political cover for Sen. Bob Bennett and other members of the Senate Appropriations Energy Subcommittee because it puts off a vote on whether to slash spending on research into new versions of nuclear weapons and boosting the readiness of the Nevada Test Site. "This funding is definitely not going to get resolved before the election," said Jim Bridgeman of the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability, which delivered a report to Congress this week challenging the need for the weapons programs requested by the Bush administration. In June, the House over- whelmingly voted to eliminate funding for studies on developing "bunker buster" and "battlefield" nuclear weapons, and drastically reduced a White House request to put the Nevada atomic proving grounds at a state of readiness not seen since the Cold War. But the Senate version of the Energy Department budget has been stalled for months because of a standoff between Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Subcommittee Chairman Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M. Domenici wants to restore near-fatal cuts the House made to the 2005 budget for the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository while Reid is using his political muscle to kill the waste dump. Bennett's Democratic challenger, Paul Van Dam, has made a campaign in support of weapons research, arguing such programs open the door to a renewal of the nuclear arms race and the potential for resumed testing. Bennett doesn't believe the studies will ultimately require experimenting with a live weapon, and has introduced legislation setting health and safety requirements for nuclear tests and has posted on his Senate Web site letters and testimony from top Bush administration officials pledging no future testing plans. Anti-proliferation groups intend to keep pressure on Congress to cut the funding, especially lawmakers from the Mountain West whose constituents were subjected to downwind fallout from atmospheric nuclear bomb tests in Nevada during the 1950s and 1960s. "There are people in the West who remember those tests and the government lied to them about the safety risk so they are distrustful, as they should be," said Robert Norris of the Natural Resources Defense Council. "Just raising the specter [that] testing might be ahead sets off an emotional issue underneath the factual analysis and congressmen and senators are going to react to that." © Copyright 2004, The Salt Lake Tribune. ***************************************************************** 51 Daily Camera: 903 Pad cleanup done Area caused most contamination at Rocky Flats Mailing address: Broomfield Enterprise 1006 Depot Hill Road, Suite G Broomfield, CO 80020 By Todd Neff, For the Enterprise September 29, 2004 Afternoon winds ripped across Rocky Flats' former 903 Pad on Thursday. It was just like old times, except for the absence of highly contaminated soil to be blown toward Denver suburbs. Two years after workers began shipping what will amount to 97,800 tons of dirt to Utah, the cleanup of the former nuclear-weapons plant's notorious 903 Pad and its surrounding "lip area" is done. Marking the milestone Thursday, about 50 workers in hard hats and orange vests leaned against the gusts with officials from the U.S. Department of Energy, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. "We had to fight this for two years out here," said Michael Keating, project manager for the 903 Pad and lip-area cleanup for Kaiser-Hill. The company is leading the $7.2 billion Rocky Flats cleanup effort, scheduled for completion in late 2006. Plutonium at the 903 Pad caused more environmental contamination than anything else at Rocky Flats, and that includes serious fires in 1957 and 1969. More than 5,000 steel drums, most full of liquids tainted with plutonium or uranium, were stored on 3.5 acres of open ground from the mid-1950s until the late 1960s. Many corroded, seeping radioactivity into the soil before the barrels' eventual shipment to Idaho in 1967 and 1968. But winds like Thursday's blew plutonium-laced soil eastward by the time the 903 Pad was paved over in late 1969. The Department of Energy estimates the 903 Pad was responsible for up to 3 ounces of airborne plutonium, or more than 95 percent of the total through the site's history. Much of it landed within a 36-acre area immediately surrounding the 903 Pad, which came to be called the 903 lip-area. "903 was probably our biggest insult here at Rocky Flats over the years, and it's been one of the hardest to clean up," said Frazer Lockhart, the Department of Energy's Rocky Flats manager. The 903 Pad cleanup started in October 2002. In 13 months, workers removed 32,000 tons of contaminated soil and asphalt, much of the work done with heavy equipment under massive white tents. The 36.3-acre lip-area cleanup took nine months, and involved removing 66,000 tons of contaminated dirt. A good deal of it was still on site Thursday, packed in truck-bed-sized containers and dozens of massive white sacks packed with 10 tons of soil each. It's all waiting for trains — which began running last week — to carry them west to Envirocare of Utah Inc. A thick, coconut mesh blankets the stripped land, to slow erosion and foster regrowth of plant life. Steven Gunderson, Rocky Flats cleanup coordinator for the state health department, said all the surface soil remaining is below the maximum radioactivity permitted by regulators, 50-picocuries per gram, and that "in virtually all cases it would be way under 30" picocuries. Howard Roitman, the state health department's director of environmental programs, said his agency and the EPA were "confident that the cleanup met the standards agreed upon." "This was always out here as the elephant as far as the environmental restoration," Roitman said. Department of Energy officials say cleanup is complete at 75 percent of the environmental sites affected by the plant's 40-year history. [http://www.scripps.com] Copyright 2004, The Daily Camera ***************************************************************** 52 BBC: Cern: The big in search of the small Last Updated: Thursday, 30 September, 2004 [Cern lights up at night (AP)] Floodlights mark Cern's 50th birthday this week Our science correspondent David Shukman visits the huge underground complex of the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (Cern) in Geneva which is 50 years old this week. Cern is a lab like no other. The sheer internationalism of the place is striking: corridors and hallways are filled with a profusion of different backgrounds. The scale of the enterprise - the quest to probe deeper and deeper into the workings of the atom - lures scientists from around the world. Yet they are not foreigners to each other because between them a new language has developed, one involving strange names like neutrinos and quarks, and stranger concepts like the weak force and dark energy. But what really marks out Cern becomes clear as a giant lift descends beneath the Geneva suburbs. Pit of 'snakes' This is the largest underground lab in the world. Its main circular tunnel runs for 27km. It is so vast that the human eye cannot really see the tunnel bending, as it stretches into the distance, a long string of lights fading into darkness. In fact, everything about the place baffles the senses. [Atlas cavern, Cern] The work underground on the LHC is an immense task We climbed a narrow metal staircase to a vantage point. I stood at an opening of the tunnel just where it enters the gargantuan chamber that will harness the new CMS detector. It was on the scale of a cathedral and down in its depths, gangs of builders and engineers were at work on the latest phase of construction. The hiss of welding torches echoed off the walls. There was a chill in the air, and the dust of a hundred drills. On the floor was a snakepit of cables. Scientists have resorted to size in their bid to understand the miniscule building blocks of the Universe. Not only is the job of assembling this lab massive, running it will be too. We crossed the fields that straddle the French-Swiss border to reach the opposite side of the tunnel. The farmland remains unchanged despite the physics underway down below. The herds of cows are untroubled by the presence of so many high IQs. Levels of understanding In a building the size of a hangar stood something that was on the scale of a giant submarine. This was Alice, one of the new detectors, and Lewis Carroll would have been impressed. The technicians putting the machine together were dwarfed by the vast rings of its sensors. Soon it will be lowered underground and then be ready to absorb the unimaginable forces unleashed when particles are fired around the tunnel and forced to collide. The scientists were patient with my puzzled questions. Their conversation required new forms of understanding: antimatter, super-symmetry and multi-universes are not easily grasped. When the new machines, collectively known as the Large Hadron Collider, are fired up in 2007, the research will no doubt throw up new discoveries and new thinking. It may revolutionise science, but at ground level the farmers may scratch their heads and the cows will continue grazing. ***************************************************************** 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: *****************************************************************