***************************************************************** 12/14/04 **** RADIATION BULLETIN(RADBULL) **** VOL 12.297 ***************************************************************** 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 [du-list] A Letter of Apology to the People of Iraq 2 Asia Times: Iran not off the hook yet 3 US: [NukeNet] Nukes on the radio Wed 10 p.m. EST Rense.com 4 US: Las Vegas SUN: Editorial: EPA soon to take charge 5 US: asahi.com: EDITORIAL: Defense program outline 6 US: Las Vegas SUN: McCain Has 'No Confidence' in Rumsfeld 7 [du-list] It Wins Wars -- But at What Cost? 8 [du-list] Throw Away Soldiers & Disposable Civilians 9 [NYTr] US Determined to Get ElBaradei Out of IAEA 10 Australian: Howard must act to keep uranium riches in Australian han 11 BBC: S Asia rivals hold nuclear talks 12 The Australian: Downer doesn't want nuclear job 13 Daily Press: After $247 Million, What Is There to Show? 14 LR: The Revolt Against the Bush Administration's Nuclear Double Stan NUCLEAR REACTORS 15 US: Las Vegas SUN: Efficient nuke plants could lessen need for dumps 16 Xinhua: Nuclear power a key step to ease energy shortage 17 US: Nuclear Regulatory Commission: Semiannual Regulatory Agenda 18 CNA: China to decide on tenders for four nuclear reactors in Februar 19 US: Public Citizen: Court Allows NRC to Hold Informal Public Hearing 20 US: NRC: Indiana Michigan Power Company; Notice of Withdrawal of 21 US: NRC: Sunshine Act Notice NUCLEAR SAFETY 22 [DU-WATCH] How Dangerous Is Depleted Uranium? 23 US: [du-list] Danger Dismissed: How the Pentagon downplays the 24 [du-list] 'Silver Bullet,' Black Dust - Part One of the series 25 US: [du-list] The battlefield at home - SR Daily Press (Ch4) 26 US: Paducah Sun: NRC cites Paducah plant's safety despite setbacks - 27 US: Las Vegas SUN: Health Secretary Nominee May Cut Programs 28 US: Las Vegas RJ: Hospital sets up decontamination unit NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE 29 Las Vegas RJ: Senator frustrated Yucca project not moving faster 30 US: Tri-City Herald: Hot waste returns NUCLEAR WEAPONS 31 Vanunu Update - free article for publications US DEPT. OF ENERGY 32 UC loses nuclear weapons program (1/9) 33 Tri-City Herald: 'bulk vitrification' 34 Reid: Reid Statement On Nomination Of New Energy Secretary 35 36 US PREX: President Nominates Sam Bodman as Secretary of Energy 37 Las Vegas RJ: Test site proposed as backup for printing headquarters OTHER NUCLEAR ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** FULL NEWS STORIES ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** 1 [du-list] A Letter of Apology to the People of Iraq Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 19:14:35 -0800 A Letter of Apology to the People of Iraq tnimc.org by Larry E. Park 13 Dec 2004 http://www.tnimc.org/feature/display/3878/index.php A letter of apology to the Iraqi people from a Vietnam Army medic who cared for some of the most severely injured men, women, children and babies from both sides of that conflict in 1970 and 71. My arms have held the dead of war, and I understand the catastrophic toll in the present and the impact it will have on future generations. This is my personal sobering apology, and it may or may not reflect some of the feelings of the other 49 percent of Americans who voted for an anti-war candidate. While I was in Vietnam, four war protesting students at one of our universities named Kent State were shot and killed by American National Guardsmen, and it appears that the some of the Guards of justice have sacrificed national core values and integrity on the battlefields and in the military prisons of Iraq. I feel shame and outrage when like you, I have witnessed unimaginable acts against humanity. See link: http://www.spectacle.org/595/kent.html I feel shame that I did not raise my voice in dissent prior to this horrific conflict between cultures. I survived Vietnam with full understanding of what a guerilla war means and the futility of large, noisy, highly visible armies attempting to subjugate citizens by force instead of winning hearts and minds over to a more positive pursuit of happiness. With a great sense of doom I watched the events over the past three years as a complacent bystander, not knowing how to make a difference in public opinion. I was silent, not exercising my freedom of speech or finding creative means to make my voice against unjustified death and destruction heard effectively. I made a mistake in judgment and action. I knew better. I am very sad about what is happening in Iraq to the families, their homes, schools, hospitals, shops, and places where they work to support their families. I apologize for not defending your right to choose how you live and what style of leadership you support. I understood that my leaders prompted by public opinion had to deliver visible signs of revenge against Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, and most of the world seemed to support that conflict. But when I woke up one morning to the specter of my countrymen invading Iraq to make a regime change, I squirmed with discomfort. I, like you and most of the world, held the motivations of the United States to be suspect and driven by self interests in oil. Rhetoric about freeing the Iraqi people from an oppressive regime seemed righteously hollow and a revolution against Saddam Hussein's entrenched regime and all its supporters was not ours to wage. In most cases it is better that a country clean its own house and take responsibility for how the hard work is carried out and when the time is right for change. I apologize for our arrogance in thinking we knew what was the best course of social-political direction for Iraq and our subsequent military intervention in such a destabilizing and catastrophic manner. Our vision of the future is not yours, and you must as a group decide how you will help each other achieve and maintain basic freedom and your pursuit of happiness. I apologize for denying knowledge of your basic beliefs and belittling your ancient core cultural values. And from your perspective I understand why we are the barbarians on your land. Freedom is not a gift, it is a choice requiring daily action to reaffirm long term goals and guide one in the pursuit of happiness. Conflict on a personal or national level often ensues as differences in opinion emerge about how to equitably achieve goals within the context of the group's culture and the world at large. Freedom from uncontrolled selfish interests and greed can only be acquired by an attitude of the heart as shaped by personal internal core values. Coercion by threat of death may change observable behavior in the short run, but rarely changes core values that support long term behavior shifts. I apologize for our apparent ignorance concerning this key characteristic of human behavior. I am ashamed of our recent example of Democracy in the Presidential race for power. If we are attempting to persuade you to adopt our form of Democracy, then I am less than proud on how we spent billions to get out the vote and prompt individuals to exercise freedom of choice. Decisions seemed to be made based on whether or not a candidate hunts innocent winged creatures for sport or who tells the most convincing lies and makes the best promises that we all know can't be kept like, "Independence from foreign oil." I cast my first registered vote in 35 years since Vietnam for an antiwar candidate, but now I've drifted back into darkness in search for such a man with an honest face and heart. I was caring for the infected stump of a women's leg that had been amputated on the day in New York that has changed all of us on the planet and now many men, women, and children are missing parts of their bodies due to this horrific 9/11 event and the revengeful war that has followed. As a nurse it is my job to care for the wounds of childbirth, automobile accidents, gunshots, knives and surgery. With great sadness I remember all the wounded in Vietnam and I feel a great sense of empathy for those who have lost arms or legs. On 9/11 out of the darkness a predator delivered a savage whack to our head. Dazed, we feebly wiped the tears and blood from our eyes, struggled to our feet while peering into the forest of darkness. Shapes blended with shadow until with trembling hands we switched on the flashlight illuminating our attacker. Anonymous faces of dead suicide terrorists were replaced by world renowned organizations of men hell bent on upsetting the balance of power on the planet. These social-political shadow warriors using the tactics of guerilla warfare in a David and Goliath confrontation dealt a significant psychological blow. We plunged into the darkness, grouped for the enemy, halted their retreat, battered them blow after blow hardly feeling the pain of more injuries to ourselves. Like an old John Wayne slugfest started by drunks intoxicated with bravado unsure of who started what, all parties lay in an exhausted heap strewn across the bar room floor. Weary from the conflict without the long gone adrenaline rush of the initial hollow victory, we assess the damage to property and person. The man with the biggest stick can claim the high moral ground by mercifully suggesting a lasting peace based on freedom of choice to change our hearts versus fleeting pretensions under duress. A million more soldiers might force a temporary "peace," but the human revengeful heart rarely changes to the side of mercy and compassion in such circumstances. What kind of peace do we want? A peace driven by fear looking down the barrel of a Colt or a peace that emanates from hearts that have chosen to be helpful and nice to their immediate and global neighbors. I have seen the consequences of war and revenge and it is not pretty! History is replete with stories of rape, pillaging, burning, destruction of person and property and within the last ten years starting with the Gulf war, Desert Storm, we the United States of America introduced weapons of mass environmental and genetic destruction. I am ashamed of my ignorance about my government using depleted radioactive uranium munitions in Iraq. Standing two hours in the rain waiting to cast my first vote of a lifetime for our next President gave me ample time to angrily contemplate what the 70-year-old female election volunteer told me about deaths of Iraqi children, increased genetic defects among children of Desert Storm Vets and the hidden truth of "Gulf War Syndrome." Having my head in the sands of Iraq, I did not know that we were the first to manufacture and use weapons of mass habitat and genetic destruction using nuclear waste called depleted uranium in Desert Storm, Bosnia, etc., as found on the Internet upon my return home from voting as she recommended. See links concerning these issues. (http://www.iacenter.org/depleted/appeal.htm) (http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/MOR407A.html Since I always attempt to gather facts and then reach a balance of opinion, I searched the web with reserve due to the hidden agendas of most websites. Well, if even a portion of information available about armor piercing hardened artillery shells using radioactive depleted uranium is credible and documented damage to wheat crops, increased birth defects, Gulf War Syndrome, and death of Iraqis children by the tens of thousands after exposure is true, then that is a serious cover-up. A half-life of 4.4 billion years is a long time even if the material in question is depleted of isotopes. Looking for the splinter of WMD in the enemy's eye while being blinded by the railroad tie poisoned by depleted uranium sticking out of our heads must make us appear really outrageous in the eyes not afflicted around the globe. Obviously if there is any truth in this environmental military disaster, I understand why the press in general is afraid to address this radioactive subject, which maybe Rumsfeld was thinking about when he called the Abu Ghraib prison abuse situation "radioactive." Being a responsible citizen and taking a stand on issues that will affect the only planet we have is hard work even though now the sand in my eyes in retrospect did not hurt as much as the knowledge I have gained about the use of depleted uranium in the manufacturer of munitions. Having reviewed some of the documents available on the Internet posted by health and political organizations pertaining to this inhumane radioactive weapon, there seems to be more credible evidence indicating short and long term risks associated with the use of depleted uranium munitions than our government is willing to openly acknowledge. Little did I know that standing in line to vote would open such a big can of worms that might glow. I am outraged at the possibility of my tax dollars contributing to use of depleted uranium in munitions which might cause alterations in the genes of humans and plants. This is our weapon of mass destruction and I am downcast and ashamed! This knowledge shared with me by an old lady might well be part and parcel of the rage exhibited in the aggravated assault on the Twin Towers of 9/11. If I saw in our heartland fields mutated wheat standing just inches where heads on tall stalks ready for harvest should have proudly waved in the breeze, I would be very angry at the perpetrator of this ecological disaster. Bread is still one of the basic food sources for humans, so if any of the information about the devastating short and potential long term effects of using depleted uranium munitions is remotely true, then I am outraged and I apologize for not holding my government more accountable. The very life of the entire planet depends on all of its inhabitants being responsible for sustaining earth's ability to feed us. That means that we are all interdependent, and what we do or don't do affects us all. I apologize for being so selfish and wanting more than most families in Iraq have. If one believes in a Creator God called Allah who loves the Biblical people of Iraq so much that He buried some of the world's richest oil reserves below their barren deserts, then one would have to believe that He planned to care for their needs. Poverty in such an oil rich land where many of its inhabitants want for the basics can only be understood in the light of mismanagement and the greed of its ruling class. As an American I am ashamed to admit that even though our wealth is accumulated differently, we too have large numbers of disadvantaged and impoverish families. Those who have more always use overt or covert methods to suppress those who have less and when the status quo is upset, many are willing to fight to the death to regain their previous advantages and social standing. Right or wrong, I apologize for the manner in which my country has upset the balance of chaotic power in Iraq. I am outraged at the visible destruction of your mosques, hospitals, schools, homes, and infrastructure in our zeal to root out those who are attempting to protect their families and way of life. I am very sad when I think about how hard it will be and how long it will take for your people to rebuild their homes. It is obvious that powerful underground insurgent leaders have commanded loyal religious fanatics to strategically increase lethal attacks on fellow Iraqis and Coalition Forces, escalating strikes as Election Day marches closer. This anti-American campaign is more than just mere pre-election mud slinging, it's deadly! Instead of ads and other antics being measured in millions of dollars from unknown sources, the insurgents' campaign can be measured in lives ended and lifelong disabilities incurred by the survivors. Yes, this Iraqi pre-election campaign may be forgotten for cities ransacked, loss of helpful Foreign Aid workers, and the maiming and slaughter of men, women, children and babies by Coalition Forces, but Iraqis buried in pauper's mass graves will be remembered longer by their families. I feel intensely sad about the mess your people find themselves in when the sun rises every day and I apologize for not attempting to convince leaders of my country to pursue a more positive course of helpful interdependence. I mourn for all the families around the globe forever changed and damaged by conflicts that diminish their sense of hope. I feel ashamed by the darkness spread throughout your land by the American invasion and my hope for the future is that countries of such diverse cultural beliefs could at least agree to search for ways to be mutually beneficial and cordially interdependent without devastating conflict and long term damage to the environment. I carried a typewriter to Vietnam, not a gun, and instead of killing humans, I planted flowers and was awarded a Bronze Star medal for extending hope to others. I've seen the desert bloom and I fervently wish that the Iraqi people in the darkness of wartime death can find their way into the hopeful light of flowers again blooming in springtime. I know that this letter of apology would mean a lot more coming from my President or a great man of world renowned stature like Colin Powell, but George W. Bush can't and Colin Powell could speak his mind if he had not committed himself to a vow of silence. I fully understand that this letter of apology for some of my countrymen will be perceived as undermining the military forces of the Coalition who are following their orders from their Commander and Chief. I am exercising my rights to freedom of speech with full knowledge of increased personal risk and endangerment of my immediate family members, but as with all conflicts the price is always paid by families. The specter of danger seems insignificant in comparison to the horrific number of deaths and injuries already incurred by countless humans of different gender, race, culture, nationality, and age. I feel immensely sad that the leaders of my country seem not to remember the lessons learned by those who served in Vietnam and I apologize. I wish I could speak for the leaders of my country and tell you that, "Yes, we made a mistake and we won't do it again in your country or anywhere else on the planet ever again." Those words would only be spoken by a lying politician running for high office and probably not in my lifetime.They will have to speak for themselves and answer to the reality of history not their dreams. Apologetically; Larry E. Park TheDreamer (at) OceansRest.com -- Posted for educational and research purposes only, ~ in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 ~ NucNews Links and Expanded Archives - http://nucnews.net ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Need a home for your web domain? We recommend our provider, Hosting Direct https://support.hostingdirect.net/cgi-bin/affiliates/clickthru.cgi?id=nucnews ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Make a clean sweep of pop-up ads. Yahoo! Companion Toolbar. Now with Pop-Up Blocker. Get it for free! http://us.click.yahoo.com/L5YrjA/eSIIAA/yQLSAA/FGYolB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> To unsubscribe from this groups send a message to du-list-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com. In the body of the message type unsubscribe and send. Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/du-list/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: du-list-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ ***************************************************************** 2 Asia Times: Iran not off the hook yet Asia's most trusted news source for the Middle East Dec 15, 2004 www.atimes.com/ By Ritt Goldstein Speculation on potential US or Israeli military action has surrounded tense negotiations regarding Iran's nuclear program and ambitions. In light of the realities currently dominating US and Iranian politics, separate interviews with three leading American defense experts foresee the likelihood of either overt or covert US action against the Islamic Republic, questions of geopolitical power eclipsing those of nuclear and energy security. When asked what he envisaged would be the Bush administration's eventual answer to Iran's nuclear facilities, John Pike, president of the noted Washington-area defense think-tank Global Security, told Asia Times Online, "I think we're going to blow them up." He added that he believed the effort would be some time before the 2006 US elections. At the end of November, Britain, Germany and France - the "Big 3" - on behalf of the European Union succeeded in securing an agreement with Iran that it would voluntarily suspend uranium enrichment and other sensitive nuclear pursuits. Iran is seeking a package of incentives on security, trade and technology in return, and negotiations with the three are scheduled to resume some time this week. This is the second agreement reached between Iran and Europe, the first widely said to have foundered through US efforts. At issue are Iran's efforts to expand its nuclear capabilities vastly through the pursuit of new reactors and the creation of a self-sufficient nuclear fuel cycle, to which it is entitled under international treaty. But substantive questions of weapons ambitions exist, and elements within the administration of President George W Bush have proved problematic in finding an accommodation. "I think, in fact, the administration policy is designed to kill the agreement between Europe and Iran," a former US Energy Department official and current associate director of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace's non-proliferation program, Jon Wolfstahl, told this journalist. He pointedly added that "the deal will collapse and elements within the administration will get the confrontation with Iran that they desire". On December 12, the New York Times headlined, "US and Europe are at odds, again, this time over Iran". As of late 2002, Iran sat atop roughly 9% of the world's known petroleum reserves and concurrently held the planet's second-largest deposits of natural gas. A "who's who" of leading EU energy firms has established themselves in Iran, a country whose energy resources were long US-dominated, particularly from the 1953 Central Intelligence Agency-sponsored coup ousting Iranian leader Mohammed Mossadegh, installing the Shah ... until the 1979 Islamic Revolution. After the 1979 revolution, US sanctions precluded a return of the US energy industry's dominance. Beyond EU energy firms, China's Sinopec has recently completed extraordinarily sizable energy agreements with Iran for liquefied natural gas and oil. The agreements are variously estimated as worth between US$90 billion and $200 billion, and come at a time when Chinese oil imports have doubled within the past five years and risen 40% during the first eight months of 2004. An interview with the United States' leading authority on resource conflict, security-studies Professor Michael Klare of Hampshire College, substantively added dimension to the relationship between Iran's energy and ongoing events. Klare told this journalist that "the world is approaching a global energy crunch, right now". On December 8, Klare published an article titled "Looming energy crisis overshadows Bush's second term", also warning that "competition among major consumers for access to the remaining supplies will grow increasingly more severe and stressful". In reply to whether the administration was seeking confrontation with Iran for its energy assets, Klare said, "It's all about power, and the oil of the Persian Gulf is the most important geopolitical focus of power in the world." Klare defines control of the Persian Gulf as control of the global economy. He believes the Bush administration isn't necessarily pursuing Iran's resources for its own use, but to control them in order to "have the veto power over the allocation of Persian Gulf oil". Unaware of Klare's remarks but voicing a similar perspective, Pike separately added, "It's only incidentally about control of oil, it's about control of everything ... power. At the end of the Cold War we found ourselves like a colossus astride the Earth, and we basically concluded that it would be possible to make the world safe for America." Pike emphasized that the key Bush administration concern he perceived was "spreading the American peace". He added that there was a conviction that a few countries were "hostile to the 'new world order', and they're going to have to be brought into line". On December 3, in a speech given at the Nehru Foundation in New Delhi, Russian President Vladimir Putin was widely perceived to have chastised such US conduct, speaking of the dangers inherent in "a dictatorship in international affairs ... even if that dictatorship is coated in beautiful pseudo-democratic phraseology". Both Klare and Pike drew analogies to Ukraine and US action there, Klare specifically speculating on the use of covert action to "provoke a domestic uprising", this providing a mechanism to "open up Iran's oilfields to American companies" through regime change. Pike explicitly termed Iran "the frontline state in the anti-hegemonist camp", adding that both Russia and the US had also "decided to draw a line" in Ukraine, with it, too, having "emerged as a frontline state". Klare noted that an immense pipeline project China is considering, direct from Kazakhstan to China and bypassing the Persian Gulf, is an effort to ensure an unimpeded energy supply, a supply outside US control. And control, as well as its "enforcement", appears to be the key US issue. "The idea that Iran is going to sit idly by while its nuclear assets are destroyed, without taking some sort of counteraction, is, I think, hard to accept," warned Wolfstahl. He added that the belief "you can resolve the Iranian nuclear question through surgical military strikes, to my mind, isn't borne out by history, or by perception of what might happen in response to attacks". Klare perceived that if Iran were attacked, "the potential retaliation upon energy flows, the potential for an energy crisis, a world depression", should provide incentive for administration restraint. On September 24, Singapore's Straits Times headlined "Iran parades missiles in response to N-deadline". Speculation regarding potential targets for such reprisals includes US troops in Iraq, Israeli cities, Persian Gulf tanker traffic, or even Saudi Arabian oilfields. But while Iran could further strike at US or Israeli targets globally with asymmetrical warfare, Bush administration neo-conservatives do support military action. Arguably expressing sentiments shared by elements that are said to include US Vice President Dick Cheney and Under Secretary of State John Bolton, Pike downplayed the potential consequences of strikes: "They're [the Iranian leadership] just going to have to take it, because they have a lot of other things that they hold dear, and that are essential to the survival of their regime, that it is within our power to deprive them of." Pike later spoke of a potential "Khuzestan gambit", a ground assault to sever the geographically isolated Khuzestan province from Iran, capturing the vast bulk of Iranian oil in the process. With Khuzestan bordering Iraq, there has been recent speculation that such an act could be pursued relatively easily in an effort to ensure "regime change" by separating Iran from its wealth. The alternative, less provocative possibility of covert action was raised by all of those interviewed, with speculation running from "accidental fires" to regime change promoted by the Iranian group Mujahideen Khalq, an organization currently listed as a terrorist group, but which neo-conservatives are attempting to remove from the terror list. Notably, the National Council for Resistance (NCR) in Iran, the mujahideen's political arm, was instrumental in the 2002 revelation of Iran's hidden nuclear program. Since then, some of its further information has proved accurate, while other items are suggested as erroneous. But in a possible reflection of a potential change in the group's status, a series of US Congressional Research Service (CRS) reports on Iran's nuclear program stopped listing the NCR as a terror group, although earlier versions had. Iran has explained its nuclear ambitions by claiming a pursuit of nuclear power for electricity generation, its oil and gas resources being non-renewable and accounting for the vast bulk of its hard currency. This parallels efforts undertaken decades ago, according to a March 4 report by the CRS highlighting that Iran's nuclear program began in 1959. "The Shah's plan to build 23 nuclear power reactors by the 1990s may have been regarded as grandiose, but was not necessarily viewed as a 'back door' to a nuclear-weapons program," the CRS stated. It also noted current Iranian plans call for the nuclear capacity to generate 6,000 megawatts of electricity within 20 years. However, while the CRS observes that "Iran is years away from producing quantities of fissile material [highly enriched uranium or plutonium] that it could use in nuclear weapons", it pointedly adds that "the steady accrual of expertise in weapons-related areas is viewed with concern by many", highlighting one of the elements underlying present tensions. Another element is what Pike had termed "the consortium". While the black-market nuclear network of Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan of Pakistan exploded into world view about a year ago, what has remained somewhat obscured is a cooperative weapons program that began during the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, Khan said to be then representing but one participant's nuclear endeavors. "It's a trilateral technology consortium. It's Iran and it's Pakistan and it's North Korea - they're all in it together," said Pike in explaining how Iran could have acquired nuclear-weapons assets. Much of Pike's revelation was first broached in a March 11 CRS report titled "Weapons of mass destruction: Trade between North Korea and Pakistan". Last winter, it emerged that Libya had obtained plans for a nuclear weapon from Khan's group, and while the "UN's International Atomic Energy Agency [IAEA] has said it has no evidence of Iranian possession of such plans", Pike speculated that "they know how to build several different types of [nuclear] bombs", but with information obtained through "the consortium" - Khan. When queried as to the basis for his certainty that a nuclear-weapons program existed, Pike explained that it was "basically because they're building everything that Pakistan built as part of their weapons program". He again emphasized, "it's not so much that he [Khan] sold them the package deal, as that all three of them - Iran, Pakistan and North Korea - have been in concert for nearly a decade", adding this encompassed missile technology and uranium enrichment. Pike's appraisals are noteworthy in that they tend to provide an accurate barometer on how the dominant power centers within the US defense community are thinking. Providing example, the Autumn 2004 issue of the US Army War College's journal, Parameters, published a strategy paper titled "Iran in Iraq's Shadow: Dealing with Tehran's Nuclear Weapons Bid". While at no time has the IAEA said there is any hard evidence of a Tehran nuclear-weapons program, the War College paper not only starts from an assumption there is a weapons effort, its first paragraph notes that "prospects are dim ... without the [US] resort to force over the coming years". When queried as to why Iran might want nuclear weapons, Pike replied, "They have well-founded fears. Any sane Iranian leader would realize the urgent necessity of acquiring atomic bombs - as many as they can, and as fast as they can." The Parameters paper echoed, "Iranian clerics almost certainly want nuclear weapons to compensate for conventional military shortcomings to deter potential adversaries and enhance the security of their regime." The War College piece continued, noting that Iran could not have failed to observe that once a state is able to field nuclear weapons effectively, it escapes "military preemptive and preventive action by rival states". And it appears widely held that should Iran be seeking to acquire nuclear weapons, it is for defensive purposes. Iran's nuclear program was ongoing throughout the 1980s, and it claims that because of fears of further US sponsored sanctions, it did not declare its nuclear activities to the IAEA as required. The 1980s was also a period when, among other actions, US Navy ships pursued "re-flagging operations in the Persian Gulf", with the Parameters paper noting "the US Navy readily destroyed much of Iran's conventional naval capabilities". After the Iranian revolution of 1979, and given US support for Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq war, US-Iranian relations have been strained. As Pike saw it, Iran has a fundamentally different relationship with Europe than the United States - "they don't chant 'death to Belgium' at Friday prayers, they chant 'death to America', and 'death to the Zionist entity'". At the end of November, the Defense Science Board, a high-level Pentagon advisory body, issued a report highly critical of the Bush administration's conduct of the "war on terror", as well as its support for repressive Middle Eastern regimes, including countries such as Egypt, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. "Muslims do not hate our freedoms, but rather they hate our policies," the report charges. Sources within the administration were reported in mid-November as noting that either the US or Israel might pursue targeted air strikes on Iranian nuclear assets. And while this pronouncement was accompanied by assertions that Iran was seeking to develop a nuclear missile warhead, such assertions were made months previously, suggesting administration posturing. But the proposed sale to Israel of $139 million in bombs, including 500 so-called "Bunker-Busters", is seen as aimed at the Iranian facilities, with the actual purchase potentially already completed. Israeli pilots have been reported as practicing for an Iran mission, with both Likud and Labor members having branded the possibility of an Iranian nuclear weapon as unacceptable. Special "conformal" fuel tanks on F-15s and F-16s would provide the necessary range for the Israeli air force to pursue a strike. The March 4 CRS report noted that while Iran's known violations may be minor, "some argue that a pattern of deception is significant", and Iran has been accused by the IAEA of having engaged in a pattern of deception, delay and concealment prior to October 2003. A December 12 New York Times story described the IAEA's 2003 inspection of uranium-enriching centrifuges located behind a false wall at Tehran's Kalaye Electric Co. "We fully expect that there are going to be 'more shoes that are going to drop' in Iran. The things that haven't yet been disclosed, allegations of secret nuclear facilities, additional activities that haven't yet been reported - that's going to happen," Wolfstahl said. All of those interviewed for this article perceived at least an Iranian flirtation with nuclear weapons. Wolfstahl emphasized that given Iran's political, ideological and security concerns, it is "a country prime for acquiring nuclear weapons". It is, however, recognized that Iran's government does not act in a unitary manner, that different factions have a certain degree of functional independence. Potentially, nuclear decisions might have been made unilaterally by only one of Iran's dominant groups. Pike noted that if a weapons flirtation was a product of Revolutionary Guard zeal, with Iran's other two major power blocs led by Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani and President Mohammad Khatami not supporting it, he believed there was an opportunity to pursue a settlement of some kind. He also noted that should a weapons pursuit have been the product of "all major influential segments", then it was likely that Iran is "just not going to be talked out of it". From the Iranian perspective, in 2002 President Bush named it among the "axis of evil", targeting it for "regime change", and the United States has led attacks and occupations of two key energy states bordering it, Iraq and Afghanistan. "In many cases, the question of who should have and who shouldn't acquire these [nuclear] capabilities really comes down to a question of trust and perception and comfort. And that's what many people think is no longer an acceptable standard," said Wolfstahl. On December 3 in New Delhi, Putin observed, "Only a balanced system based upon international law and the international community's ability to fulfill all these norms, without exception, can lead us to resolution of the difficult missions that confront humanity." Ritt Goldstein is an American investigative political journalist based in Stockholm. His work has appeared in broadsheets such as Australia's Sydney Morning Herald, Spain's El Mundo and Denmark's Politiken, as well as with the Inter Press Service (IPS), a global news agency. (Copyright 2004 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Online, 4305 Far East Finance Centre, 16 Harcourt Rd, ***************************************************************** 3 [NukeNet] Nukes on the radio Wed 10 p.m. EST Rense.com Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 19:12:35 -0800 TMI Alert's Scott Portzline and avid pro-nuker Jim Hoerner will go at it tomorrow night (Weds) at 10 PM. Available, as far as I know, in our area only via the website - rense.com The call-in line is 1-800-876-4123. Questions on Salem/Hope Creek or Oyster Creek would be fine. Jim's pro-nuker buddies will be calling in, so please call in as well to keep things even. thanks norm ------- Forwarded message ------- From: "Jim Hoerner" To: Know_Nukes@yahoogroups.com Subject: [Know_Nukes] Nukes on the radio Wed 10 p.m. EST Rense.com Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 20:14:47 -0500 Hey folks. If any of y'all are suffering from insominia tomorrow night, you'll be please to know that Scott Portzline of TMI Alert and I are scheduled to be on the Jeff Rense program tomorrow (Wednesday) night beginning at 10:00 EST. Folks on the left coast can do the math. There should be a live webcast at http://www.rense.com/general57/notice.htm The call-in line is 1-800-876-4123. Don't tell Norm. Regards, Jim -- Oh man, tonight's subject is "eyewitness UFO reports." All of you that encouraged me to do this will be hearing from me shortly. :-) ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Make a clean sweep of pop-up ads. Yahoo! Companion Toolbar. Now with Pop-Up Blocker. Get it for free! http://us.click.yahoo.com/L5YrjA/eSIIAA/yQLSAA/JHYolB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Know_Nukes Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Know_Nukes/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: Know_Nukes-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ -- Coalition for Peace and Justice UNPLUG Salem Campaign; 321 Barr Ave, Linwood NJ 08221; 609-601-8583; cell 609-742-0982 ncohen12@comcast.net; www.unplugsalem.org _______________________________________________________________________ Subscribe/Unsubscribe Here: http://www.energyjustice.net/nukenet/ Change your settings at: http://energyjustice.net/mailman/listinfo/nukenet_energyjustice.net ***************************************************************** 4 Las Vegas SUN: Editorial: EPA soon to take charge LAS VEGAS SUN In June an employee of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, one of several government agencies sharing responsibility for the cleanup of an abandoned copper mine in Northern Nevada, was carrying a Geiger counter as he walked around the property. As Sun reporter Molly Ball recounted in a story from July of this year, the BLM employee observed a radiation reading that appeared to be too high. So he went ahead and obtained roughly 100 soil samples at the former Anaconda mine, located just outside of Yerington, a town of about 3,000 people who live 55 miles southeast of Reno. Subsequent tests revealed radiation levels that were 200 times normal. Although the radiation levels aren't high enough to cause radiation sickness in the short term, health problems can occur if there is long-term exposure. Excessive levels of radiation from uranium, which does occur natu rally in the Yerington area, hasn't been the only problem discovered. Testing also has found that mercury, arsenic, berylli! um, lead and other toxic substances have found their way into drinking water supplies. The discovery of the high radiation levels immediately resulted in renewed calls by an environmental group, Great Basin Mine Watch, for Gov. Kenny Guinn to designate the former Anaconda mine a Superfund site. Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., also asked Guinn to seek assistance under the Superfund law. Back in 2002 state officials had said that there was no immediate threat posed by the mine and that a Superfund designation carried such a negative connotation that it would have hurt the local economy in the Yerington area. Instead, the state Division of Environmental Protection, EPA and the U.S. Bureau of Land Management all continued to have an equal say in overseeing the work of Atlantic Richfield Co. (ARCO), which is responsible for cleaning up the site. It was just this shared responsibility, however, that resulted in inaction and a failure to get testing and a cleanup plan under way. What was needed was a single agency in charge to get things moving, something that the EPA had urg! ed the state to do in seeking a Superfund designation. The EPA believed ARCO was doing as few tests as possible and should have been doing a better job of coming up with a plan to clean up the site. Late last week the state had a change of heart. Guinn announced that, based on the new concerns about the potential for groundwater contamination, he would ask the EPA to take on the responsibility for ensuring the cleanup of any radioactive or toxic contamination at the site. Although it isn't precisely a Superfund designation, EPA's oversight would be triggered by a provision in federal law that deals with the Superfund. Both Reid and Great Basin Mine Watch are glad that Guinn has taken this action. It's a sad commentary that it took this long to get this far, but we're more hopeful now that the EPA is leading this effort. The bottom line is that immediate progress needs to occur at the site to protect the people who live in the Yerington area. ***************************************************************** 5 asahi.com: EDITORIAL: Defense program outline Is it really right for Japan to simply follow U.S.? Japan's defense policy has undergone radical change, as was graphically demonstrated by the new National Defense Program Outline adopted by the Cabinet on Friday. The new policy statement follows a decision to extend the term for stationing Self-Defense Forces in Iraq. It is the third policy outline to be adopted in the half century since the creation of the SDF. The 1976 program, implemented as the Cold War was raging between the United States and the Soviet Union, put emphasis on defending Japan against Soviet invasion. The 1995 program extended the areas of Japan's defense cooperation with the United States to ``peripheral regions'' of the Japanese archipelago in response to changes in the world situation following the end of the Cold War. The latest outline, however, does not deal with such geographical matters. Its emphasis is on having Japan's defense policy fit into Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's ``Japan-U.S. alliance in the context of the world.'' The key point concerns how Japan will cooperate with U.S. troops in their global realignment to cope with new threats like proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and international terrorism. The new policy statement states that the purpose of national security is to improve the international security environment as well as to eliminate threats to Japan. It says Japan intends to achieve this purpose by ``further enhancing cooperative relations with the United States.'' This posture is also evident in the kinds of weapons the SDF will be equipped with and the way Japanese forces will be organized in the years ahead. This includes the deployment of weapons for a missile defense system to meet the threat posed by North Korea and the creation of a permanent rapid reaction force that reports directly to the director-general of the Defense Agency in case of emergency, such as terrorist attacks. In addition, three longstanding principles banning arms exports were eased for the benefit of closer cooperation with the United States on missile defense. Referring to the transformation of U.S. military forces that the Bush administration is promoting, the defense program outline calls attention to ``the importance of the commonality of perception between Japan and the United States regarding the strategic purposes under a new environment.'' It emphasizes that the areas from the Middle East to East Asia, which the Americans refer to as an ``arc of instability,'' are also of critical importance to Japan. But should Japan blindly follow the United States as illustrated by the new defense program outline? Even though Japan and the United States are allies, it does not necessarily follow that it is in Japan's interest to accept U.S. military strategy without qualification. Nor should it simply cooperate with the American viewpoint on everything that happens-from the way of seeing external threats to concrete steps to be taken in response to them. Looking at present-day realities concerning the United States and the world, it would be simplistic to say everything will be all right if only the alliance between the two countries is strengthened. The world is in disarray over the war in Iraq that the United States started. The discord cannot be cured easily. Getting international cooperation back on track will not be achieved by simply following the United States. We also have to pay attention to way Japan is perceived by Asian countries. An even bigger problem is that the United States and the United Nations are at odds with each other. In the part dealing with Japan's basic policy, the new defense program outline says, ``We support the activities of the United Nations for maintaining international peace and security.'' But the rift between the United States and other members of the United Nations over the prohibition of nuclear tests, the establishment of the International Criminal Court and other key issues is very wide. That is an undeniable fact. Koizumi talks of ``the Japan-U.S. security arrangements in the context of the world.'' But the world does not exist in relation to the Japan-U.S. security arrangements alone. --The Asahi Shimbun, Dec. 11(IHT/Asahi: December 14,2004) ***************************************************************** 6 Las Vegas SUN: McCain Has 'No Confidence' in Rumsfeld By BETH DeFALCO ASSOCIATED PRESS PHOENIX (AP) - U.S. Sen. John McCain said Monday that he has "no confidence" in Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, citing Rumsfeld's handling of the war in Iraq and the failure to send more troops. McCain, speaking to The Associated Press in an hourlong interview, said his comments were not a call for Rumsfeld's resignation, explaining that President Bush "can have the team that he wants around him." Asked about his confidence in the secretary's leadership, McCain recalled fielding a similar question a couple weeks ago. "I said no. My answer is still no. No confidence," McCain said. He estimated an additional 80,000 Army personnel and 20,000 to 30,000 more Marines would be needed to secure Iraq. "I have strenuously argued for larger troop numbers in Iraq, including the right kind of troops - linguists, special forces, civil affairs, etc.," said McCain, R-Ariz. "There are very strong differences of opinion between myself and Secretary Rumsfeld on that issue." When asked if Rumsfeld was a liability to the Bush administration, McCain responded: "The president can decide that, not me." McCain, a decorated Navy veteran and former Vietnam prisoner of war, is a senior member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, which has oversight of military operations and considerable influence over the Pentagon budget. If Senate Republicans maintain their majority two years from now, McCain would be in line to become the committee's chairman, something he said he'd weigh when considering whether to run for president again. "In a couple of years I might give it some consideration, but not right now," he said of a 2008 presidential bid. Pentagon spokesman Larry Di Rita said McCain "has frequently expressed his views regarding troop levels in Iraq, and he is an important member" of the committee. Rumsfeld has "relied upon the judgment of the military commanders to determine what force levels are appropriate for the situation at hand," Di Rita said. Despite the troop levels, McCain believes military morale remains high, but he acknowledged that involuntary extensions of tours of duty were frustrating to soldiers. He said Iraq must have a functioning independent government before U.S. troops leave. "I believe we'll be in Iraq militarily for many years, which would not be a problem to the American people," he said. "I think what is not acceptable to the American people is an increasing flow of dead and wounded." --- On the Net: McCain's office: http://mccain.senate.gov/ [http://mccain.senate.gov/] -- ***************************************************************** 7 [du-list] It Wins Wars -- But at What Cost? Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 19:14:37 -0800 It Wins Wars -- But at What Cost? Chapter 3: The Silver Bullet. Daily Press BY BOB EVANS December 13, 2004 http://www.dailypress.com/news/specials/dp-du3,0,4750505.story?coll=dp-breaking-news The United States began developing depleted uranium weapons in the 1950s. But the first one wasn't fired in combat until the 1991 Persian Gulf War. It didn't take long for the weapons to show that the wait was worth it. Soldiers on the battlefield were so impressed, they quickly began calling depleted uranium "The Silver Bullet," in recognition of its seemingly magical capabilities and exterior metallic color. They also began calling it "DU." Although the U.S. tank gunners firing the weapons had never used them before - even in training - they were immediately able to hit and destroy heavy Soviet-made Iraqi tanks and armored vehicles from two miles away, military officials crowed in congressional hearings afterward. The weapon that it replaced, made from tungsten, wasn't effective from more than a mile and a half, they said. That's the equivalent of two boxers squaring off, one with 4-foot-long arms, the other with 3-foot-long arms. "What we want to be able to do is strike the target from farther away than we can be hit back, and we want the target to be destroyed when we shoot at it," Col. Jim Naughton, then-head of munitions for the Army Materiel Command, said just days before Operation Iraqi Freedom began last year. "And we don't want to fight even. Nobody goes into a war and wants to be even with the enemy. We want to be ahead, and DU gives us that advantage." This battlefield benefit might be in danger, though. A growing number of medical researchers are finding evidence that the residue of depleted uranium weapons might be deadly to our own troops. Every time that a depleted uranium weapon hits its target, it leaves behind millions of tiny pieces of black dust that are mildly radioactive. The vast majority of those pieces are small enough to be inhaled. Researchers have found evidence that even a single piece of the dust in direct contact with a human cell begins the kind of genetic transformations thought to be the first steps toward cancer. They've also found evidence that inhaled uranium can be transferred to the brain. A number of researchers think that proof of the dust's migration to the brain might explain some of the widespread neurological illness among veterans of the 1991 Gulf War. The Pentagon has dismissed this possibility, saying it's an unproven theory. As for the other risks, they say even the highest dose of depleted uranium dust likely to be experienced in battle isn't enough to hurt someone. The Army says a recently completed $6 million study of the effects of inhaled depleted uranium demonstrates that it isn't a significant health risk, especially when the other risks on a battlefield are part of the calculations. Theories and data abound to support both sides. No one disputes that the stakes are high. On one side is the huge advantage that the weapons provided in the Gulf War and last year's Operation Iraqi Freedom. Pentagon officials say many soldiers are alive today because of depleted uranium's effectiveness. On the other hand, there's the possibility that depleted uranium played a part in the illnesses suffered by many of the 697,000 men and women who fought in the 1991 war. More than 26 percent of that war's veterans are on disability, a rate nearly three times higher than experienced in any U.S. war in the past 60 years. Gulf War-related experiences don't account for all those disabilities, but the reason why so many are so sick remains a mystery. Some scientists suspect that it could be a combination of factors, including the black dust. WHY THE WEAPON IS SO POWERFUL The dust is an unavoidable result of depleted uranium weapons, which are especially effective arms for a number of reasons. Depleted uranium is extremely dense, which means it is very heavy relative to the space that it takes up. In the Gulf War, U.S. forces fired thousands of projectiles with depleted uranium - about 320 tons worth. That sounds like a lot, Naughton said, but if you squished it all together, it would make a cube only 8 feet long on each edge. This high density - 1.7 times that of lead - offers important offensive and defensive capabilities in warfare. On defense, it makes for nearly impenetrable armor. Slabs of depleted uranium sandwiched between sheets of tough steel are used in the main U.S. battle tank, the Abrams. Depleted uranium armor has never been penetrated in combat, only in testing under controlled conditions, the Pentagon says. The armor is so good that after the Gulf War, Pentagon officials were fond of telling members of Congress the story of a U.S. Abrams tank crew that suddenly found itself in point-blank proximity to three Russian-made Iraqi tanks in the fog of war. The Iraqis fired first, but their shots bounced off the Abrams' armor, causing at most a crease in the metal. The Abrams' crew then fired 1-2-3 and destroyed all three Iraqi tanks. The last shot went through a sand berm that completely concealed the enemy tank from view after it tried to run and hide, the story went. Lest the military value of depleted uranium be lost in the health controversy, the story is recounted on a Department of Defense Web site established in reaction to allegations that depleted uranium weapons are responsible for some Gulf War veterans' illnesses. Depleted uranium's high density also gives the weapons awesome power. Other than what's necessary to launch a depleted uranium weapon in flight toward a target, it carries no other explosive and isn't a "shell." It is simply a pointed rod of almost pure depleted uranium metal hurling through the air, with fins on the back to give it the stability necessary to ensure that it reaches the target. The deadly darts fired from Abrams tanks are about 2 feet long and less than an inch in diameter. They weigh from 8.5 to 10.6 pounds. Smaller guns equipped to use the weapon shoot even smaller sticks of depleted uranium. But they can be just as effective. The Air Force's A-10 "Warthog" tank-killer aircraft can spit out 4,200 rounds a minute, each about the size of a finger and weighing only two-thirds of a pound, Pentagon officials say. Each one of those fingers can destroy a tank. Launching depleted uranium weapons involves mounting them in cuplike fittings called sabots and then loading them into the weapon. The sabots give the depleted uranium rods a sort of vehicle to ride through the barrel of the gun and out of the muzzle, so the projectile can begin the journey to the target. Once the sabot and depleted uranium rod and its fins clear the muzzle, the sabot falls to the ground. About that point, the depleted uranium weapon is traveling at Mach 3, or three times the speed of sound, says Don Noble, a retired military munitions expert from Williamsburg who helped test the weapons in the 1970s. WHY THE WEAPON IS SO DEADLY Once a depleted uranium weapon reaches its target, the high density, small diameter of the projectile and all that speed means there's a lot of energy packed into a narrow space. Packing lots of energy into a small space is what power is all about. Noble notes that depleted uranium has some very special properties that enhance that power. Unlike most metals, a narrow, sharp-tipped depleted uranium rod doesn't get blunt when it strikes a hard object. It just gets sharper, shedding little bits of depleted uranium - like shavings in a pencil sharpener - as it plows through a hard object such as armor. Those little bits are also on fire - about 3,200 degrees Fahrenheit, a study by the Canadian armed forces found. Researchers call the tiny pieces "fireflies," and they're abundant and visible when a weapon hits the target. For a time, some of these flaming bits become liquid before cooling into tiny irregular-shaped pieces of dust. The depleted uranium rod itself, known as a penetrator, is also on fire at 3,200 degrees as it slides through the hard target, the study says. That's because depleted uranium is pyrophoric, which means that it's capable of igniting spontaneously in the air. If left alone and exposed to air, it will turn black over time. When it strikes something, its exterior bursts into flames but it retains its mass and relative shape, not getting blunt. By the time the weapon has penetrated its target, it's become a fireball that ignites any combustible material nearby - such as fuel, clothing or oxygen - leaving behind the black dust of incinerated particles of depleted uranium as it goes. "As the penetrator enters the crew compartment of the target vehicle, it brings with it a spray of molten metal, as well as shards of both penetrator and vehicle armor, any of which can cause secondary explosions in stored ammunition," a primer on the weapons for U.S. Marine and Navy medics reads. 'THE DUST AND THE ASHES COVERED EVERYTHING' That primer was written years after the Persian Gulf War, when a young soldier named Matt Rohman from York County - along with hundreds of other combat engineers - were handed the job of emasculating Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's military in the 1991 war. After the fighting stopped, U.S. military commanders knew that they'd have only a short time before they'd be ordered back to their barracks. They wanted to make sure that none of the munitions, tanks or vehicles they'd encountered could be used again by Saddam, whether those objects be intact or partly destroyed. So combat engineers like Rohman spent months speeding across the desert, rounding up things to blow up. They quickly came to recognize those struck by depleted uranium (as opposed to other weapons) by the small holes in the pierced armor. That and the dust were usually the only visible evidence of why the vehicles had exploded in fire, Rohman says. No one ever mentioned that the dust might be dangerous. Now Rohman, 40, is one of the thousands of Gulf War vets who are disabled by various maladies, including muscle and neurological problems, stomach disorders, and extreme pains in his head and joints. His medical problems began within weeks of his return from the war in 1991, and government and civilian medical doctors can't explain what caused them. He's been unable to work since 1997. Like many of the sick veterans from that war, there were many possible hazards to choose from. Life in the desert was hard, hot and dirty, Rohman says. A mixture of sand, depleted uranium dust and soot from continuing oil well fires in the area coated everything, including his skin, uniform and often his food. "For over 30 days, we did not wash and clean," Rohman wrote in a sworn affidavit in 1998, in an attempt to get veterans benefits after he'd been deemed physically unable to work at any job. "I stayed in the same uniform through our march, and usually, I was so dirty from the air, ashes and dust that I could not be identified. The dust and ashes covered everything on me and around us. We could not escape it." The dust and dirt was on their food, too, he says, and it was impossible to get it all out of your mouth. Rohman spent nearly four months that way, his military records show. FIRST, ROHMAN LOST HIS TEETH, AND THEN HE LOST HIS HEALTH Shortly after the war, Rohman's teeth started coming out. Military dentists yanked nine teeth in Germany before they sent him home. His records show the Army gave him an early honorable discharge and a 20 percent disability because of a knee injury that he'd suffered in the early days of the war, scrambling into an armored car during a missile attack on his outfit. By 1993, nearly all the other teeth were gone, he says. By then, he was going to Naval Medical Center Portsmouth for treatment. "The doctor over at Portsmouth told me that the only way they could all go that quick was if they'd come in contact with radiation," Rohman says. Losing teeth like that didn't run in his family, he adds. Before the war, "I didn't have a cavity." Rohman says the doctor at Portsmouth asked him whether he'd been exposed to radioactive materials. Rohman says he didn't know about depleted uranium back then, so he told the dentist that he didn't know. By the time Rohman learned that the black dust was mildly radioactive, all his teeth were gone, he had severe nerve damage in his hands and feet, almost daily migraine headaches and breathing problems, among other ailments. His lawyer filed in 1998 to get the dental and other records from the Naval Medical Center to help Rohman's claims for benefits. But the hospital sent a form letter, saying it had no records at all of Rohman being seen there for anything. Rohman has a stack of copies of medical records from Portsmouth, verifying visits and treatments there. But he has only some of his records, and none of the ones that he got and kept were for the dental work. He says the dentist who treated him wanted to put something about possible service-related exposure to radioactivity on one record but was overruled by a supervisor. He also says he saw some of his records shredded during one of his visits, but doesn't know what those papers contained. Now, Rohman says, he realizes that he might have been eating small bits of depleted uranium, and with the poor sanitation available, those bits of dust were stuck on and between his teeth for days and weeks. What he swallowed wasn't a big problem. Scientists know that nearly all the uranium that's swallowed passes through the intestines quickly, is excreted and causes no danger. What stayed in his mouth for a while is another matter. Rapid loss of teeth is a common result of direct radiation to the mouth and jaw from medical treatments or other sources, if preventive measures aren't taken, according to medical journals. Radiation affects the saliva glands, which in turn can't perform the natural cleansing that helps keep teeth and gums healthy and free of germs. There's also the danger of tissue damage to the gums from direct contact with radiation sources. When gums get weak, teeth fall out. While in the desert with the 3rd Armored Division, constantly on the move to collect and destroy all that hardware, there were days at a time when there was limited drinking water. Rohman recalls that everyone's mouth was dry and that brushing your teeth was out of the question. According to data compiled by the Veterans of Foreign Wars, loose teeth and gum problems are common among veterans of the Persian Gulf War. The American Legion also did a survey of members who'd been to the gulf during the war and found the same thing. But that survey was never handled as a scientific survey, says Steve Smithson, director of the legion's veterans affairs and rehabilitation division. Dental problems aren't on the list of typical Gulf War illnesses compiled by researchers and the Veterans Affairs Department, however. Mohamed B. Abou-Donia, a professor of pharmacology and cancer biology at Duke University, led a review of medical and scientific data on depleted uranium that was published this year. He says that he found no evidence of references to dental problems but that it might simply be one of many gaps in our knowledge about the veterans' health problems. THE PROBLEM GOES PUBLIC WITH A 1998 STATEMENT One of the big obstacles to figuring out the cause of these illnesses is the government's failure to accurately survey all those who served and to compare their experiences, Abou-Donia and other researchers say. If that data is ever collected, they say, they might gain many insights into the veterans' health problems and the causes. Given the circumstances that veterans like Rohman were working in during and after the war, "the teeth part could be related very directly to the depleted uranium," Abou-Donia says. He says it's also possible that few veterans got as high a dose as Rohman. At the time that Rohman says he got dental exams at Portsmouth, allegations of hazards from depleted uranium's use on the battlefield hadn't become known yet outside the group of people who develop weaponry for the military. Not until 1998 did the U.S. government publicly acknowledge that it shouldn't have let Rohman and hundreds of others work closely with the vehicles and other objects struck by those weapons without wearing masks or suits to protect them. The first government official appointed to oversee research on the cause of the veterans' health problems issued this statement: "Combat troops or those working in support generally did not know that DU-contaminated equipment, such as enemy vehicles struck by DU rounds, required special handling. The failure to properly disseminate such information to troops at all levels may have resulted in thousands of unnecessary exposures." The statement occurred after veterans' groups, members of Congress and others successfully pushed the Pentagon to admit that the illnesses suffered by the men and women who'd fought the war weren't simply the result of too much stress. It also occurred as government officials began to acknowledge that there was a significant problem that had to be addressed. CONCERNS WERE DOCUMENTED DURING THE 1980s The government and military were backpedaling in many areas. Within months, Pentagon and CIA officials acknowledged that earlier statements dismissing the presence of nerve gas and other toxins on the battlefield were erroneous and that there were widespread incidents that could have affected troops during the war and its aftermath. By the time that a presidential assistant acknowledged the failure to warn troops about the dangers of depleted uranium, the Army had issued a technical bulletin calling for troops in such situations to wear protective clothing, boots, and masks with filters to prevent breathing the dust. It called for them to be able to shower immediately afterward and remove any "contaminated clothing," not just after the day's work but "if feasible, at the site." The need to take those precautions wasn't a secret among the people who'd been working to develop the weapons more than a decade earlier. When Noble was part of a team evaluating depleted uranium weapons' ballistics in the 1970s, members examined the area with Geiger counters before entering areas where the projectiles hit targets, he says. Even after the Geiger counters showed low levels of radiation, his team wore protective suits and breather masks where the weapons hit, he says. They also took regular doses of aspirin because the drug was supposed to help cleanse their bodies of the toxins from the uranium and other chemicals that they worked with. Other military officials who helped develop depleted uranium weapons knew about the possible risk to soldiers' lungs and began trying to get a grasp on the problem a decade before the war. A study to figure out how much dust might be inhaled after a typical explosion - and what it would do once it got in the lungs and body - was conducted from 1981 to 1983 by the Air Force. Much of the work took place at the same New Mexico laboratory where rats now breathe uranium bits to test whether the uranium goes to their brains. The 1981-83 study by the Air Force was titled, "Preliminary Study of Uranium Oxide Dissolution in Simulated Lung Fluid." It tried to estimate how much radiation the lungs might be getting before the particles dissolved in the fluid and then into the bloodstream, where they would pose a possible toxicological danger to the kidneys and other parts of the body but also would be flushed out of the body in urine. The study pointed out lots of pitfalls that future researchers would run into while trying to settle the problem for good. It came to no firm conclusions about risks - in part because the uranium bits don't break down into predictable sizes and shapes. Much of the study resulted in educated guesses based on mathematical models. More work was needed, it said. Pentagon officials say the final reams of data on that topic were collected and published this year. Their five-year $6 million study involved shooting real depleted uranium weapons into a real tank, real tank hulls and turrets, and a real Bradley Fighting Vehicle. The depleted uranium dust that resulted was caught in filters, weighed, analyzed and soaked in simulated lung fluid to see how long it would take to dissolve halfway. For most of the particles, it took more than 100 days, which means there would be some mildly radioactive dust in the lungs or lymph nodes for years. The study said the smallest particles took the longest time to dissolve halfway. But it calculated that because they were so small, there shouldn't be a significant health risk from inhaling those particles, based on industrial standards for nuclear workers and government-approved standards for uranium intake. Soldiers like Rohman, who weren't in a tank hit with one of the weapons, would be able to enter hundreds to thousands of vehicles covered with the dust before reaching the threshold of risk, according to the study. The military not only dismisses the risk, it dismisses the statements of thousands of troops who say they were exposed. HOW MANY INHALED? NO ONE REALLY KNOWS Officially, the Pentagon says only a few hundred troops were involved in potentially dangerous duty involving depleted uranium in the 1991 war. Veterans and many researchers disagree. There might have been relatively few soldiers like Rohman officially assigned to work in and on the damaged tanks and other vehicles struck with depleted uranium, they say, but tens of thousands of others were likely exposed. Once the fighting stopped, just about anyone who came near a tank or other vehicle hit by depleted uranium scrambled over and into what was left to take a look. According to congressional testimony in 1997, a survey of more than 10,000 Gulf War vets showed that 85 percent of them had entered captured Iraqi vehicles. The reasons were many, ranging from official duties to getting their pictures taken or simply to satisfy curiosity. Some vehicles hit by depleted uranium were hauled back to areas far behind the combat zone for possible return to the United States. The depleted uranium dust came with them. According to a report to Congress by the Army Environmental Policy Institute, 19 U.S. tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles contaminated with depleted uranium dust were hauled back to King Khalid Military City in Saudi Arabia, far from the combat zone. The city was a central collection point for service personnel, media and others going to and from various parts of the war. The unit responsible for disposing those vehicles didn't know about the hazards of the contamination and stored them "in a recovery yard without controlled access," according to the institute's report. The contaminated vehicles were there for three weeks before proper precautions were taken, the report says. Tradition also might have played a part in spreading the black dust. Souvenirs - including parts from Iraqi tanks that had been hit by depleted uranium - were taken home in the bags and baggage of soldiers and units, the institute's report says. There were even attempts to bring back entire pieces of equipment as battle trophies. When officials caught on to what was happening, some of the larger items were screened, and at least three Iraqi vehicles that units hoped to take home with them were found to be contaminated with depleted uranium and rejected for shipment, the institute's report says. Items brought home without previous screening through official channels "may contain hazardous materials," the Army report says. There's no official count of how often pieces of metal, clothing or other items with black depleted uranium dust came home to soldiers' barracks, homes and families. Military officials say it's extremely unlikely that anyone who came in contact with depleted uranium dust under such circumstances would become sick from it. Soldiers in those situations just didn't get a big enough dose, they say. The same is true about soldiers who might have inhaled some depleted uranium dust well after the end of a tank battle, they add. That's because the documented cases of uranium poisoning in uranium millers and miners studied over the years show that exposures thousands of times greater than what could reasonably be inhaled in those scenarios must occur to cause the body harm, says Michael J. Kilpatrick, the Pentagon's doctor responsible for looking after the health of troops sent overseas. WHAT'S A SAFE DISTANCE FROM DEPLETED URANIUM? Anyone who stays at least 50 meters (165 feet) away from where depleted uranium struck an object has no risk of ill health from exposure, says one of the Pentagon's leading experts on the health effects of the weapons - Lt. Col. Mark Melanson, health physics program manager for the Army Center for Health Promotion and Preventive Medicine. "Most of it settles out within 50 meters of the vehicle" that's been hit, he says. "Is it possible for a single atom of depleted uranium to carry beyond 50 meters? Yes. Is it a significant health risk? No." Studies have found big differences regarding how much breathable dust depleted uranium weapons produce after they hit a target - and how far they might spread. The Army Environmental Policy Institute told Congress that the available research showed that anywhere from 18 percent to 70 percent of a depleted uranium projectile turns into breathable dust as it hits a target. It said 90 percent of the airborne depleted uranium would land within 50 meters of the explosion, in part because the dust is so heavy. But it also said that the dust particles that went beyond the 50-meter mark were generally all small enough to breathe in. Scientists say those are potentially the most dangerous. The environmental institute's report didn't go into how far the dust could go and what it would do in the heavy, sandstorm-driven winds of the Persian Gulf region. Much less how easily it could be kicked up by a moving truck or tank, then carried by one of those sandstorms. Melanson said later studies by the Army established the 50-meter standard. The United States fired the most depleted uranium in the Gulf War, but the British and other allies used it too. And breathed the air. Since then, veterans in those countries have demanded to know why they're so sick. The Royal Military College of Canada conducted its own testing after complaints by veterans. The publicly released version of its report didn't give a fixed distance from the site of an explosion, but it agreed that "at any distance from contaminated vehicles," the concentration of depleted uranium dust in the air "would be diluted to safe levels." It also found that 91 percent to 96 percent of the bits of dust left after an explosion "are easily respirable," and that "these particles can remain in the air for a significant period of time (hours to days), most of which will remain inside the target vehicles, but with some likely to escape into the atmosphere through open hatches or remain outside the target." Studies by the U.S., Canadian and Australian militaries found that though relatively heavy, depleted uranium dust particles are again suspended into the air when disturbed by vehicles, foot traffic or winds. DETECTING ITS PRESENCE WITH A MASS SPECTROMETER For much of the past 25 years, Leonard Dietz has been contemplating how far inhalable bits of depleted uranium can fly and how to detect it in the air and in soldiers' bodies. Dietz - a retired physicist in Schenectady, N.Y. - worked at the Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory, where General Electric did nuclear work for the Navy and the U.S. government years before the 1991 war. Dietz's primary expertise involves a device called a mass spectrometer. A mass spectrometer is used to analyze samples of unknown substances to figure out what they're made of. Dietz patented a device built into mass spectrometers that's used to identify radioactive objects such as uranium and plutonium. He designed and built three mass spectrometers used to analyze uranium, plutonium and other elements. General Electric had to monitor the air at the plant where Dietz worked. It also had to monitor the air around the perimeter of the plant's grounds to make sure that none of the substances it was using were escaping, Dietz says. One of his jobs was to figure out what was in the air filters to prove that his employer wasn't polluting. The plant where he worked didn't use depleted uranium. But in 1979, all 16 filters caught tiny bits of depleted uranium - small enough that a human could inhale them, Dietz says. "Every single filter contained depleted uranium." Dietz said, so they knew it wasn't a fluke. Dietz and his co-workers finally figured out that the particles were coming from a plant in Albany, N.Y., making depleted uranium weapons for the Air Force. The plant's smokestack was 26 miles from some of the filters, he says. State and federal regulators caught on to the problem about the same time. They closed the plant, and since 1984, the U.S. government has been spending millions of dollars a year to remove the dangerous remnants of uranium. The cleanup includes removing the top layer of soil from properties in a radius of about two-thirds of a mile from the plant, says James T. Moore of the Army Corps of Engineers, who's supervising the project. The soil was removed because it contained unacceptable quantities of small pieces of depleted uranium, small enough to be inhaled. Two-thirds of a mile is more than 1,000 meters, or a kilometer. In all, 53 nearby properties required soil removal. They included property in nearby Colonie, N.Y., and some railroad property, all of which "contain residual radioactive and chemical constituents above federal and state guidelines," according to a status report on the work by the Corps of Engineers. Dietz says the 26-mile mark just happened to be where three of his filters were. They were the farthest from the plant where the depleted uranium weapons were made. He says his calculations show that while the contamination from the plant near Colonie came from a high smokestack, similar heights could easily be reached by depleted uranium dust particles rising from the heat and smoke of an exploding tank. He says he has no doubt that depleted uranium particles from the weapons plant went much farther than 26 miles. Well-established laws of physics show that despite their heavy weight, inhalable-sized particles can carry for miles, can be kicked up and resuspended in the air, and can travel farther, depending on their shape, wind speed and other factors, he says. Naturally occurring electrostatic charges would also cause them to cling to other dust particles that are even more aerodynamic, he says. That would enable them to carry even further. "They have an unlimited range," he says. "They can go anywhere dust goes." Dietz wrote a technical paper for General Electric to document his findings on the airborne depleted uranium from the weapons plant. He retired a short time later but keeps following the trail of depleted uranium dust. In 1995, a Kuwaiti scientist, Firyal Bou-Rabee, published a paper on possible contamination of Kuwait's soil, air and water in the international journal Applied Radiation Isotopes. The Pentagon's Web site on depleted uranium cites the scientist's research to demonstrate that the weapons' use there during the 1991 war didn't create undue radiological hazards in that nation. Bou-Rabee's samples did show that the uranium in the air was about twice what you'd expect to find, given the level of uranium in the soils. He attributed this to "the relatively small contribution of depleted uranium dispersed after the Gulf War." His research was financed by the Kuwaiti government - which, at the time, depended on the United States for its defense against Iraq. Like most scientific papers, the data was included so other scientists could evaluate his findings and conclusions. Dietz says he used that data to compute how much depleted uranium was in a 2,500-square-kilometer (1,000-square-mile) area where battles were fought during the war. The result, he says, was 10 metric tons of depleted uranium that had been added to the environment. THE ONLY POSSIBLE SOURCE OF CONTAMINATION IS WEAPONS There's no other source of the depleted uranium but the residue of the weapons, he says, because the characteristics of depleted uranium aren't replicated in nature and there are no other sources of the materials. Bou-Rabee and the Pentagon pointed to the same data to show that because the total uranium in the air and soil was below government-established safety limits, there's no problem. The U.S. government sent its own people with Geiger counters and other devices to measure the radioactivity of soils in Kuwait. The same thing was done in Bosnia and parts of the former Yugoslavia, where depleted uranium weapons were used by U.S. and British forces in peacekeeping operations after the Persian Gulf War. The U.S. government and the U.N. World Health Organization say their studies of the soils in those former battlefields show levels of radioactivity and uranium below what should cause alarm. That's because they're within what's called the "natural background" levels that you'd find ordinarily. Melanson says he's participated in some of that research, including the work to gather samples. He and other government officials say there's no health risk there, even though thousands of small and large depleted uranium projectiles that missed their targets remain buried in the soil, mostly from the Air Force's A-10 aircraft. Children often find the projectiles, play with them and carry them around. A World Health Organization evaluation of the problem said that wasn't a good idea but wasn't an immediate health threat unless someone carried a projectile around for days or weeks. CALCULATED RISKS DEPEND ON THE CALCULATIONS USED Dietz says that he reviewed the data and methodology Melanson's lab used to produce these soil surveys and that the mass spectrometer it employed wasn't up to the job. He says it's incapable of accurately detecting depleted uranium in quantities of less than one part per million. That might sound like too small an amount to be concerned about, Dietz says, but when you're talking about particles measured in microns - one-millionth of a meter - it could mean a lot of uncounted depleted uranium. Measuring total radioactivity isn't the point anyway, Dietz and others say. That's because the natural background doesn't involve a high quantity of radioactive dust on the surface, blowing around in the air. Much of the uranium in nature is in the ground, buried, and not so susceptible to inhalation. There's plenty of natural uranium in Kuwait, but it wouldn't have the same health-threatening characteristics as the depleted uranium dust, Dietz and other scientists say. Naturally occurring uranium is dilute, locked up in sand and minerals. As a result, it would be relatively innocuous if inhaled. The depleted uranium dust, on the other hand, is concentrated and does not quickly dissolve. Once it gets into the lungs, even the smaller pieces last for years - which means the alpha radiation that they exude will be banging on nearby lung and lymph-node tissue, causing possible damage. Melanson says even if that's true, the total dose of uranium from these little pieces isn't enough to get close to the government's accepted standards for safe peacetime dosages. Scientists who think more research is needed say the standards that the Pentagon used for even its most recent calculations don't take into account the latest research. The standards used in the most recent government study, published this fall, were adopted in the 1970s. The Capstone Study made no attempt to explore what might be the additional risk if the "bystander effect" of depleted uranium on nearby human cells is taken into account. Dietz and other critics of the weapons say that even if the ultimate level of radioactivity isn't alarmingly high, it doesn't mean that the war and use of the weapons didn't increase the health risks. The natural-background uranium level set by government agencies is merely a range of measurements taken in various places. Colorado and Florida, for instance, have higher natural background levels than Virginia, overall. So it's a measurement of what exists, critics of depleted uranium weapons say - not necessarily what's safe. Risk and safety in warfare are difficult to measure, Melanson says. Compared with the other risks on a battlefield and the alternative of not using depleted uranium weapons, inhaling the amount of dust that's likely simply isn't a significant factor, he says. The normal risk of fatal lung cancer for all males in the United States is 23.6 percent. Smoking raises that to nearly 31 percent, he says. But according to the measurements and calculations in the Capstone Study, even the maximum dose of inhaled depleted uranium increases the risk less than 1 percent. -- Posted for educational and research purposes only, ~ in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 ~ NucNews Links and Expanded Archives - http://nucnews.net ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Need a home for your web domain? We recommend our provider, Hosting Direct https://support.hostingdirect.net/cgi-bin/affiliates/clickthru.cgi?id=nucnews ------------------------ Yahoo! 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Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ ***************************************************************** 8 [du-list] Throw Away Soldiers & Disposable Civilians Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 19:14:39 -0800 Throw Away Soldiers & Disposable Civilians Vive le Canada December 12 2004 http://www.vivelecanada.ca/article.php/2004121214584783 World Tribunal for Iraq The records have to be kept and, by definition, the perpetrators, far from keeping records, try to destroy them. They are killers of the innocent and of memory. The records are required to inspire still further the mounting opposition to the new global tyranny. The new tyrants, incomparably over-armed, can win every war - both military and economic. Yet they are losing the war (this is how they call it) of communication. They are not winning the support of world public opinion . More and more people are saying NO. Finally this will be the tyranny's undoing. But after how many more tragedies, invasions and collateral disasters? After how much more of the new poverty the tyranny engenders? Hence the urgency of keeping records, of remembering, of assembling the evidence, so that the accusations become unforgettable, and proverbial on every continent. More and more people are going to say NO, for this is the precondition today for saying YES to all we are determined to save and everything we love. John Berger, 18.06.2003, Paris - Mieussy World Tribunal Premeditated Death and Destruction Unleashed Against a Sovereign Nation and People by Niloufer Bhagwat Opening statement before the Iraq tribunal hearings at Tokyo, 11 Dec 2004 Honorable Judges , Prosecutors , Amici Curiae , witnesses of the satanic death and destruction of the people of Iraq , of homes and livelihood , of hospitals , schools and places of worship; concerned citizens of Japan . We live in strange times. For even as a war rages fiercely in Iraq which in epic terms can be compared to a "Mahabharat" , a fierce war between the forces of right and wrong , justice and injustice , occupation and national liberation ; we resume this trial in the dark shadows of an "Apocalypse" which is the continuing military occupation and the reduction of the entire population of Iraq into the inmates of a vast concentration camp unmonitored even by the Red Cross and other UN and other International humanitarian organizations. Unprecedented in the annals of legal history, evidence is being recorded in this trial even as crimes continue to be committed with impunity, bringing home to us the reality of human existence, that words are never enough to defeat a brutal tyranny and even those of us who use words as tools are speechless in the face of the deliberate and premeditated death and destruction unleashed against a sovereign nation and people ,a member state of the United Nations waged solely to capture its oil resources and with that objective to subjugate and eliminate its population through one strategy or another. Millions of people in the world including in the United States , even before the aggression and military occupation commenced , much before we commenced our slow and painstaking examination of evidence and precedents , sensing imminent and unprecedented danger to the peoples of the entire world including to soldiers recruited to defend Republics and parliamentary democracies proceeded to pronounce their verdict against the doctrine of "continuous war " against one nation or another ;against the conversion of domestic economies into "war economies" even as thousands and thereafter millions were rendered unemployed .The people across continents opposed the policy of "blood for oil" and declared their rejection of this strategy of pre-emptive war for the control of resources of other societies and nations . The International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War had estimated before the military onslaught that a fresh attack against Iraq would result in the deaths of anywhere between 48,000 to 260,000 Iraqi citizens and that post-war effects could take the lives of an additional 200,000 Iraqis excluding those killed in the 1991 attack on Iraq and those dead because of illegal sanctions imposed on the civilian population of Iraq by the Security Council and issue which I had dealt with in detail at Kyoto, quoting extensively from the statements of Mr. Dennis Halliday a former International Civil Servant of rare integrity who had resigned on the issues of sanctions claiming that it amounted to an illegal declaration of war on the civilian population. Now in the 19 month of the occupation by the military forces mainly drawn from the United States and UK along with other smaller contingents all members of the coalition of the aggressors ; Lancet Online Medical Journal based in the UK has published a study by American health experts and researchers at the John Hopkins School of Public Health, Columbia University and al Mustansiriya University Baghdad on the deaths of Iraqi civilians under the military occupation. The study confirms that : " Violent deaths were widespread….and were mainly attributed to coalition forces. Most individuals reportedly killed by coalition forces were women and children…" The report went on to say that: "Making conservative assumptions , we think that about 100,000 excess deaths , or more have happened since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Violence accounted for most of the excess deaths and air strikes of coalition forces accounted for most violent deaths." Les Roberts and Gilbert Burnham who collaborated on the research published informed the media that they had evidence of the use of air power in populated urban areas. Richard Horton editor of the Lancet in an editorial emphasized that the "findings also raise questions for those far removed from Iraq ­ in the governments of the countries responsible for launching a pre ­emptive war". The mounting evidence of the human catastrophe in Iraq not seen since the days of the Second World War prima facie indicates that the death toll may be more but not less than 100,000 and even the Lancet report however sincere has underestimated the death toll from all facets of the Occupation. In assessing the extent of Genocide it is necessary to focus on the destruction and attack on hospitals and health clinics to deny medical relief to those who could be saved if the Iraqi health service was not destroyed . This strategy was visible in the policy of organized looting and destruction of Iraqi hospitals in the weeks and months after the attack .The deliberate bombing of water pipes, the cutting off of water supplies to cities and town under siege by US, UK and other forces , destruction of sewage pipes and sanitary facilities , of electricity and heating have condemned millions in Iraq to consume contaminated water and food ,as a consequence the old, the feeble, and the children have been dying of diarrhea and related diseases caused by contamination of food and water with lack of medicines and health care leading to an increase in mortality. This is an indicator that apart from death by violence the Occupation has condemned people to death from malnutrition and lack of food , and water and food borne diseases with inadequate health care directly caused by the Occupation . The intrepid reporter Dahr Jamail reporting for a weekly in Alaska has disclosed that from what he had seen in six months in Iraq at close quarters , it was difficult to find any family in Iraq who had not had a member killed on account of the conditions arising from the Occupation. And what of the heroic city of Fallujah which dared to resist the mercenaries of US and UK Security Companies and Agencies, who have no combatant status under the Geneva Convention in any armed conflict , yet are to-day high profile in one war after another in Bosnia, in Kosovo , in Afghanistan and other theatres including in the trafficking in human beings as slaves .On 14th October 2004 sensing that the city of 300,000 was to be singled out for destruction as it had become a symbol of Resistance against the Occupation ; the people of Fallujah through several organizations of Teachers, Tribal Leaders, the Shura Council , the Bar Association, through the President of the Study Centre of Human Rights and Democracy forwarded an urgent appeal to the Secretary General of the United Nations in these words: " Your Excellency, It is obvious that the American forces are committing crimes of genocide every day in Iraq .Now while we are writing to Your Excellency , the American warplanes are dropping their most powerful bombs on the civilians in the city , killing and injuring hundreds of innocent people . At the same time their tanks are attacking the city with their heavy artillery…" "On the night of 13th October alone American bombardment demolished 50 houses on top of their residents. Is this a genocidal crime or a lesson about democracy? It is obvious that the Americans are committing acts of terror against the people of Fallujah for one reason only : their refusal to accept the Occupation." "Your Excellency and the whole world knows that the Americans and their allies devastated our country under the pretext of the threat of the Weapons of Mass Destruction .Now after the destruction and the killing of thousands of civilians , they have admitted that there were no weapons found .But they say nothing about all the crimes they have committed .Unfortunately everyone is now silent and will not dignify the murdered Iraqi civilians with words of condemnation .Are the Americans going to pay compensation as Iraq has been forced to do after the Gulf War……." " We know we are living in a world of double standards .In Fallujah , they have created a new vague target: AL ZARQAWI. This is a new pretext to justify their crimes, killing and daily bombardment of civilians. Almost a year has passed since they created this new pretext and whenever they destroy houses ….they said ‘We have launched a successful operation against AL Zarqawi. hey will never say that they have killed him because there is no such person. And that means the daily killings of civilians and the daily genocide will continue." "At the same time the representatives of Fallujah , our tribal leader has denounced on many occasions the kidnapping and killing of civilians , and we have no links to any group committing such inhuman behaviour." " Excellency , we appeal to you and to all the world leaders to exert the greatest pressure on the American administration to stop the crimes in Fallujah and withdraw their army….the city was quiet and peaceful when its people ran it ….We simply did not welcome the Occupation. This is our right according to the UN Charter , International Law and the laws of humanity. If the Americans believe in the opposite they should first withdraw from the UN and all its agencies before acting in a way contrary to the Charter they have signed" " It is very urgent that your Excellency along with the world leaders, intervenes in a speedy manner to prevent a new massacre…." This was the voice of the people of Fallujah appealing to the UN and to world leaders and what was the response? After the administration of the United States had taken care of the African-American voters and others through the Diebold electronic voting machines on the 8th November commenced the destruction of Fallujah which to the United States was a symbol of Iraqi resistance throughout the world. There is hardly a home intact in the city of Fallujah. The first attack by US forces with the Black Watch Regiments poised on the highways , was on the Fallujah hospitals and medical personnel who report the casualty figures and treat the wounded the messengers of the devastation and loss of lives .Dr Khamis al-Muhammadi of the Fallujan General Hospital has informed the media that she was seized and taken away by Occupation forces even as she was about to cut an unbilical cord during child birth; several doctors have been reported to have been killed and all hospitals and clinics destroyed. AL ZARQAWI like BIN LADEN was never captured despite the destruction of the entire city. Yet who can destroy the spirit of Fallujah which has survived many attempts of a whole century to crush it. Even as use of Depleted Uranium , of napalm, of banned chemicals spread throughout the world , Mr . Kofi Anan reacted to the appeal of Fallujah and pronounced what had already been known to millions that : "The Occupation of Iraq is illegal…" with the Japan Times subsequently reporting that the Secretary General of the United Nations would pay the price for this statement with calls for his resignation despite past services rendered and though the real price for the fraudulently conceived ‘FOOD FOR OIL’ program vests with the Security Council and the entire policy and its implementation was illegal as it sought to impose control over the resources of anther sovereign country to regulate production and distribution of Oil. With the war declared categorically illegal even by the Secretary General of the United Nations , on what basis does the US administration plan to increase troop levels .Why has it concealed from the world that it has already created four military bases in Iraq with the objective of permanent occupation . And what is the nature of the liberation of Iraq. Dahr Jamail reports that Baghdad after 19 months remains in shambles bombed out buildings sit as insulting reminders of unbroken promises of reconstruction 70 % of Iraqis at the very minimum are unemployed and there is a five mile petrol lines in an oil rich country.Engineers and doctors are unemployed and ply taxis .there are mass graves of innocent civilians in Fallujah and bodies with skins melted by napalm .bodies bloated and rotting devoured by dogs in the street after the complete destruction of the city of Fallujah water supply is frequently cut off from cities and towns targeted for attack children lie deformed by Depleted Uranium exposure in shattered hospitals from lack of treatment or even pain medication the Iraqi Red Crescent, other relief teams and the Red Cross has been obstructed in rendering aid mosques are bullet ridden with blood stained carpets." Even as governments and heads of State continue to deal with war criminals we must recall that the assault on Fallujah and other cities , towns and villages of Iraq are covered by article 6 (b) of the 1945 Nuremberg Charter and in the trials of the Far East or Tokyo trials among the war crimes defined include the" Wanton destruction of cities , towns or villages " crimes for which the Nazi leaders and other Generals and militarists were tried and executed .The acts perpetrated by US,UK forces in the onslaught on Fallujah constitutes a clear violation of the laws of Land War found in the US army Field Manual 27-10. What of the US, UK soldiers used as one half of the poor to kill the other half ;recruited from working class families from isolated and marginalized communities and towns affected by the economic recession and the downturn sweeping the United States and England with employment opportunities steadily decreasing. Christian Bollyn of the American Free Press , Washington D.C asked Lt.Col. Joe Yoswa if the US was using Depleted Uranium in Fallujah and received the reply that " DU is the standard round on the M-1 Abraham Tanks" which have been used in Fallujah. Because of the nature of poison gas exploded by the exploded DU shells, American Free Press asked Yoswa if the troops were protected from DU poisoning .Lt.Col. Joe Yoswa seemed unaware of the dangers posed by DU. Marion Falk a retired Nuclear scientist from Livermore Lab informed the media that US troops in DU contaminated battlefields are considered "throw away soldiers" who are dispensed with once exposed , and replaced by others who become throw away in their turn with risks of cancer ,deformed children from genetic damage and serious health problems. There is no higher purpose to fulfil for the "throw away soldiers" than the war and oil profits of the Corporations at stake from the continued occupation and the fear and unemployment at home; the bankrupting of the US economy are two sides of the same coin of which one side is the Occupation and the other side is the whipping up of fear and frenzy in the United States. Uranium Weapons There is a direct connection between the appropriation sought for the war at the cost of sweeping budget cuts and the steady elimination of social security funds and post office savings .There is also a direct connection between the nature of elections held in the United States , in Kabul where Mr.Hamid Karzai the representative of the UNOCAL Company cannot stir out of Kabul , and the elections proposed to be held in Iraq under conditions of Occupation and coercion . In all three countries the strategy is the same ; coerce the electorate and declare an election as "won" after which without a constitutional mandate enslave the majority of the people by obfuscating political ,economic and social rights reducing countries to garrisons .In recognition of these similarities and the impact of the illegal war on the people of the United States that the anti-war coalition has supported the "absolute right of the people of Iraq to resist the occupation of their country" and declared their own resistance to re-instate the draft and to prepare for resistance if conscription returns. In what has far reaching consequences for International Security the movement has declared that "it is incumbent on us to reject that notion that smaller countries must disarm and leave themselves defenseless at the demand of Bush and the Pentagon. Such demands are not only hypocritical , irrational and unjust , they amount to little more than a pretext for more invasions and occupations " . In the context of the fact that the resistance to the Iraq war has more than one front with the the military front in Iraq and the political front in the Americas it is necessary in view of the Security Council having acquiesced to the Occupation despite the fact that it is illegal that the General Assembly should be moved by a member of the United Nations to initiate moves for the vacating of the aggression against Iraq under Article 35 read with article 11 (2 ) . Any organization in which some powers have the hegemony of the veto can never fulfill the requirements of a new democratic international order . Prof. Niloufer Bhagwat 11 December, 2004 At Tokyo This article was posted at Crimes and Corruptions of the New World Order News -- Posted for educational and research purposes only, ~ in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 ~ NucNews Links and Expanded Archives - http://nucnews.net ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Need a home for your web domain? We recommend our provider, Hosting Direct https://support.hostingdirect.net/cgi-bin/affiliates/clickthru.cgi?id=nucnews ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> $4.98 domain names from Yahoo!. Register anything. http://us.click.yahoo.com/Q7_YsB/neXJAA/yQLSAA/FGYolB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> To unsubscribe from this groups send a message to du-list-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com. In the body of the message type unsubscribe and send. Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/du-list/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: du-list-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ ***************************************************************** 9 [NYTr] US Determined to Get ElBaradei Out of IAEA Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 00:54:12 -0600 (CST) Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit The New York Times - December 14, 2004 http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/14/politics/14baradei.html U.S. Presses for New Director of the U.N.'s Atomic Agency by Steven R. Weisman WASHINGTON, Dec. 13 - The Bush administration said Monday that it would continue to press for Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei to be replaced next year as head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, but European diplomats and some administration officials said they could not rule out his staying on if no suitable alternative emerges. Officials at the White House and the State Department repeated in nearly identical language on Monday that the administration adhered to the so-called Geneva rule, named after a group of 14 wealthy countries that subsidize the United Nations, that leaders of international organizations should serve only two terms and then retire. Dr. ElBaradei, an Egyptian lawyer who has tangled with the administration on Iraq and drawn criticism from conservatives for his failure to declare that Iran has a nuclear weapons program, began running the I.A.E.A., the United Nations nuclear monitoring agency, in 1997. His second four-year term ends next fall, and he has said he would like a third term. "Our view has always been, two terms is enough," said Richard A. Boucher, the State Department spokesman, adding that no decision had been made on who might replace Dr. ElBaradei. "With regard to any specific agency, we'll have to see who the candidates are. We'll make our decisions at that time." The administration's comments were prompted by a report in The Washington Post on Sunday that secret negotiations conducted by Dr. ElBaradei with Iran had been intercepted by American intelligence services, but that they did not reveal anything incriminating to strengthen the hand of conservatives in the administration seeking his ouster. Bush administration officials said they could not confirm that his conversations had been monitored, but several said they would not be surprised if that were the case. In August, Lt. Gen. Mike Hayden, head of the National Security Agency, testified before Congress that electronic surveillance was often carried out to give "tactical support to State Department negotiators." Despite the American position that Dr. ElBaradei should not have another term, European and other diplomats said he had proved effective in recent negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program. He repeatedly criticized the Tehran government for failing to disclose all its nuclear-related activities. He has also declared that Iran still needed to dispel doubts about its programs. Last month, Iran acceded to a request by Britain, France and Germany to suspend a major part of its nuclear program in return for discussions on possible future economic incentives. Talks with those countries are to resume this week. Bush administration hard-liners, led by John R. Bolton, under secretary of state for arms control and international security, have criticized Dr. ElBaradei's performance publicly and privately, particularly because of his refusal before the Iraq war to endorse the administration's view that Iraq had reconstituted its nuclear weapons program. Since the war and the failure to find evidence of such a program, Dr. ElBaradei has said many times that he has been vindicated by the facts, a statement that, while difficult to deny, rankled many throughout the administration. But others in the administration say Dr. ElBaradei, as a Muslim with a reputation for impartiality, has served American interests well on Iran and might well be the best person to help negotiate a resolution of the dispute over Tehran's nuclear program. "There are a lot of views in this administration, but frankly we could do a lot worse," said an American official, explaining that resentment of the Bush administration might well cause the nations that support the international agency to rally around someone even more skeptical of American claims. A European diplomat said that Dr. ElBaradei, who has called for a negotiated settlement to the Iran impasse, had played a constructive role and that the Geneva rule was "more of a habit than a rule." In addition, both France and Germany, for example, have not endorsed the American call for him to be replaced, officials from those countries said. Another Western diplomat involved in discussions at the United Nations said any overt attempt by the United States to push Dr. ElBaradei out would backfire among countries resentful of the war in Iraq and other American actions. "It's always dangerous for the United States to openly push for someone to get out of a job like this one, unless you're 100 percent sure you've lined up someone who is better," the diplomat said. According to the rules of the International Atomic Energy Agency, two-thirds of the agency's members must ratify the selection of a new director. The schedule calls for a decision to be made by next summer. A senior administration official said it was not impossible that Dr. ElBaradei would end up with a new term. "I don't think we've boxed ourselves in," the official said. "We're waiting to see who emerges between now and the time we have to decide." Another senior administration official said the sparring over Dr. ElBaradei was a sideshow, because the real problem in confronting Iran is the lack of support for such an approach by Europeans, Arab nations, Russia and China. Without their support for a tough approach, the administration's demands for an end to Iran's program cannot succeed, he said. Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company * 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 ================================================================= ***************************************************************** 10 Australian: Howard must act to keep uranium riches in Australian hands [December 15, 2004] IN just over 10 years Australia and Canada will control between 40 and 60 per cent of the world's uranium production and sales. Never before have two countries had such power over a significant and sensitive global energy source. Over the Christmas break John Howard and Peter Costello will have to make one of the most important decisions of their life: should the Australian share of this unprecedented world advantage be controlled by company based in a tax haven, and founded by rogue financier Mark Rich? The last time Treasurer Costello was faced with such a national interest decision, he blocked Shell from controlling the North West Shelf via Woodside on the grounds that Shell would give development priority to its other gas fields. It was a tough decision. The decision to block the company Rich founded from being the co-controller of the world's uranium will be much easier because the major customers the US, France, Japan and China will be outraged when they realise what Australia is in danger of doing. The facts are simple. Australia, via WMC, has the world's largest underdeveloped uranium resource about one-third of global reserves. Demand is set to rise sharply and within eight years Russian nuclear fuel produced from dismantled bombs will have dried up. WMC on its own will therefore control between 20 and 30 per cent of the global market. The Canadians will control a similar proportion. It will be shared between three companies, by far the largest of which is Cameco. Canadians realise Cameco has a unique global strategic position, so they require it to be Canadian-owned with similar restrictions to Qantas. No other major material in the world is dominated by two countries, let alone two companies. Canadian institutions understand just how much money Cameco is going to make and so have it on a price-earnings ratio (PE) of 27, even though its production is unlikely to rise substantially over the decade. Australian institutions simply have no idea of the unique global power of WMC, and its ability to increase uranium production almost threefold. They think it should be priced on a PE of seven a quarter of Cameco. The world's greatest mineral strategist, Mick Davis of Xstrata, naturally wants control over a huge chunk of the global uranium market. But Davis carries baggage a company known as Glencore controls around 40 per cent of his stock. More important, Glencore markets all Xstrata's metal production, including Australian copper and coal. Glencore was founded by Rich, who had been been a fugitive from US authorities since 1983 until pardoned by former president Bill Clinton immediately before he stepped down. Glencore is adamant that Rich has sold out, but many doubt this. Rich is the most influential citizen in the small Swiss village of Zug. Both Glencore and Xstrata are also part of "Zug Inc" and, as a result, pay little tax. I have no evidence that Rich is still able to influence Glencore but its chairman, Willy Strothotte, was personally hired by Rich in 1978 and worked with him for 15 years. Strothotte also chairs Xstrata. The Swiss company has been blasted in the Australian parliament because it closed its Windimurra vanadium mine in Western Australia, despite rising global prices for the substance. Xstrata's opponents allege that it was an attempt by Glencore to manipulate the global vanadium market and benefit Xstrata's South African mine. If you are proposing to be the most dominant company in world uranium, then you need to be squeaky clean. And, of course, if John Howard rings George Bush and asks him about Glencore, he will be told that US intelligence (correctly or incorrectly) linked Glencore to the food for oil scandal in Iraq. It was alleged that vouchers were given either as gifts or payments for goods imported into Iraq in violation of UN sanctions. The intelligence claims that Glencore traded 12 million barrels of oil with Iraq. I have no knowledge of whether this is true or untrue. But again, is this the company that Australia wants to put in charge of our controlling uranium position? Australian and Canadian dominance of uranium production carries a responsibility to our trading partners as uranium carries risks not present with other materials. Australia might have the right to approve export contracts but that is of no value when you deal with a Swiss trading group. I'm sure Canberra will do the right thing. And as we found with Woodside, when Costello did the right thing by Australia, he also did the right thing by Woodside shareholders. They are eternally grateful that he prevented the institutions, who had no idea of the long-term worth of the company, from selling out for a quick dollar. The same will apply to WMC. gottliebsenr@theaustralian.com.au © The Australian ***************************************************************** 11 BBC: S Asia rivals hold nuclear talks Last Updated: Tuesday, 14 December, 2004 [Meera Shankar and Tariq Osman] India's Meera Shankar opposite Pakistan's Tariq Osman Indian and Pakistani officials are holding talks on creating safeguards against possible nuclear conflict. The meeting in Islamabad is part of wider efforts to improve relations between the South Asian rivals. Officials from both sides will discuss putting in place safeguards to avert a possible nuclear conflict. The nuclear-armed rivals have fought three wars since independence, two over Kashmir. They embarked on a peace process in January. Important The BBC's Paul Anderson in Islamabad says that the talks have been broken down into two obvious and separate groups. The first, on Tuesday, focuses on building confidence in each other's nuclear programmes and the second on Wednesday will concentrate on conventional weapons. [Pakistani Hatf V missile launch] Pakistan and India routinely carry out missile tests Our correspondent says that the talks are an important part of an overall process of dialogue between the two, covering a range of disputes including water, arms, trade and in Pakistan's eyes, the biggest dispute - Kashmir. The Pakistani foreign ministry says one of the aims of the talks is to finalise a formal agreement on the prior notification of ballistic missile tests. Both countries have continued test launches on a routine basis despite the recent peace process. In 1998, both carried out nuclear tests that led to international condemnation and the imposition of sanctions. "India and Pakistan are nuclear weapon states and they have to be responsible nuclear weapon states," Pakistani foreign ministry spokesman Masood Khan said. "I look forward to a result-oriented process which will be in the interest of both our people and our governments," Indian diplomat Meera Shankar told journalists in Islamabad. Mutual concerns Analysts say the talks are aimed at building mutual trust that could reduce the risk of nuclear conflict. To become responsible nuclear nations the two countries need to do much more Pervez Hoodbhoy Nuclear physics professor "This is all part of confidence-building measures, but to become responsible nuclear nations the two countries need to do much more," Pervez Hoodbhoy, a nuclear physics professor at Islamabad's Quaid-e-Azam University told AFP news agency. The talks are being held amid mutual recriminations by both the countries over each others' conventional arm purchases. Our correspondent say these discussions are exploratory, so no big breakthrough agreements are expected. He says they are more problematic because they fall in the context of what many observers say is a full-blown arms race between the two South Asian rivals. The Indian government voiced its concern at the possibility of the US selling F-16 fighter aircraft to Islamabad during a visit last week to Delhi by US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. But Mr Khan said Islamabad's purchases were "modest" when compared to their neighbour's. "We do not want to match India gun-for-gun, missile-for-missile, aircraft-for-aircraft," Masood Khan said. Drugs agreement In separate talks in Delhi, India and Pakistan have committed themselves to work together in the fight against illegal drugs. The head of Pakistan's anti-narcotics force, Maj Gen Nadeem Ahmed said the talks centred on stemming the flow of opium from Afghanistan, the Press Trust of India reports. Latest estimates from the United Nations point to a huge increase in opium production in Afghanistan this year. ***************************************************************** 12 The Australian: Downer doesn't want nuclear job [December 15, 2004] By Lloyd Jones in Port Moresby ALEXANDER Downer said today he was not interested in taking up the job of the UN's nuclear watchdog following reports the US administration wanted him in the role. Speaking in the Papua New Guinea town of Lae, Mr Downer last night told reporters he was happy with the job he had. The Washington Post newspaper reported the US administration believed current International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) head Mohamed ElBaradei was too soft and wanted Mr Downer to take the job. "I've not taken up the opportunity to demonstrate a great deal of interest in this job," ABC radio reported him saying. "Speculation, consideration of people for these sorts of jobs happens the whole time. "But I'm the foreign minister of Australia, and a member for Mayo, and I'm happy with what I've been doing and I've only just been re-elected." Prime Minister John Howard said today he did not want his foreign minister to leave the job and take up the UN position as he was doing an excellent job in his current role. Mr Downer arrived in Lae yesterday with six other federal ministers and a parliamentary delegation for the 16th Australia-PNG ministerial forum tomorrow. Mr Howard said Mr Downer would not be going anywhere if he had anything to do with it. "I have no desire to see Alexander Downer leave his present position, none what so ever," he told ABC radio earlier. "He's doing an excellent job where he is now." Mr Howard said while reports had been circulating of an approach to Mr Downer, he doubted anything would come it. "I do know that some people have spoken about the possibility of it, but I don't think it's going to come off," he said. Mr Howard said no one in the US administration had spoken to him about Mr Downer taking the IAEA job but he was aware Washington was keen for officials like Dr ElBaradei to move on after two terms in their job. "They've put that view to me (but) as to talking specifically, directly, in a formal way to me about Mr Downer, no," he said. "But I am aware that they regard him highly and would certainly be quite positive if he were to be interested in the position." Environmental group Greenpeace, however, thinks Mr Downer is highly unsuitable because of Australia's record on nuclear issues. Greenpeace last month accused the government of supporting the Lucas Heights-based company Silex Systems Ltd in its research into laser-based uranium enrichment. A report by the environmental group claimed research by Silex, which has a facility at the taxpayer-funded Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) site, could inadvertently foster the spread of nuclear weapons. Defence Minister Robert Hill subsequently admitted Australian companies could have innocently exported materials used overseas in weapons of mass destruction programs. Greenpeace nuclear campaigner James Courtney said the issue meant Mr Downer would be an inappropriate person to head the IAEA. "It would be totally inappropriate for Alexander Downer to head the most important global nuclear watchdog when he, as foreign minister, has presided over the development of dangerous dual-use nuclear technology in Australia," Mr Courtney said. privacy terms © The Australian ***************************************************************** 13 Daily Press: After $247 Million, What Is There to Show? [http://dailypress.com/] HAMPTON ROADS, VA. December 14, 2004 8:52 PM After winning the 1991 Persian Gulf War in a few days, veterans have spent more than a decade fighting to get relevant research done to determine why they're so ill. bevans@dailypress.com 247-4758 Chapter 4: The battlefield at home BY BOB EVANS bevans@dailypress.com [bevans@dailypress.com] 247-4758 For 20 years and two days, Steve Robinson was a soldier. He jumped from airplanes, trained to fight and prepared to die for his country. He was tough and resourceful enough to win the beret of an Army Ranger. Now he fights in Washington, D.C. Often against the same outfit that trained him. For the past few years, Robinson has been executive director of the Gulf War Resource Center Inc., a small-budget nonprofit group devoted to working on issues important to veterans of the 1991 war and active-duty troops in the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The center operates out of the offices of the Vietnam Veterans of America organization near Washington. Robinson's last assignment in the Army was at the Pentagon, working for the officials in charge of looking out for the veterans of the 1991 war. He says their willingness to put the Pentagon's public-relations ratings ahead of veterans' health prompted his career switch. For the past few years, he's been one of the most public and persistent critics of the Pentagon's insistence that depleted uranium weapons are not a significant health risk to troops on the battlefield. Robinson says he doesn't know whether depleted uranium weapons should be banned. But he says the Pentagon is so enamored with them and so concerned about its image, officials won't pay attention to the mounting evidence that they might be more harm than good. The ultra-effective anti-tank weapons are crucial aspects of the U.S. arsenal, and Pentagon officials say it would be a huge loss if they were deemed too dangerous. Every time that the weapons hit a hard target, they create thousands of particles of mildly radioactive toxic dust, small enough to be inhaled. A growing number of scientists are finding that the dust - even in small quantities - can cause genetic damage that they think might lead to cancer and other problems. Early research also indicates that the dust can migrate to the brain of rats forced to breathe small quantities of the dust, raising the possibility that some veterans' neurological problems are linked to the weapons. Robinson says one of the most important ways that the Pentagon has tried to sweep the issue out of sight involves its handling of millions of dollars used to investigate the cause of the illnesses suffered by Gulf War vets. Instead of pursuing the cause of the veterans' health problems, he says, Pentagon officials have put the bulk of their efforts and money on studies that would discount the problem or show that the illnesses are mental, not physical. Robinson isn't alone in that criticism. After $247 million, a cause has yet to be found According to Congress' Government Accountability Office, $247 million has been spent in the past 12 years to research the causes and possible cures of Gulf War vets' illnesses. Most was spent on work that would demonstrate or augment the Pentagon's original theory - that stress and people unable to handle it are the problem, not any of the weapons, pills or chemicals that the Pentagon produced, according to congressional testimony in June. The Pentagon has controlled 74 percent of that $247 million, with the Department of Veterans Affairs and other federal agencies spending the rest, says the accountability office, commonly known as the GAO. The military and U.S. government also controls the availability of depleted uranium for use in experiments by outside researchers, though there are chemical substitutes that can be used. Pentagon officials have rebuffed attempts to give experts at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or CDC, and other agencies a bigger role in researching the possible effects of depleted uranium, even though those agencies are more experienced in that work, according to congressional testimony. Several Nobel Prize winners have told Congress that researchers who might be interested in getting involved have been discouraged by the military's stranglehold over the money to finance the work and the way it controls other information about Gulf War veterans. Some of the $247 million went to explore legitimate theories that proved invalid - a natural and unavoidable result of that kind of work, many researchers say. For instance, government officials in July ended years of research into whether a bacterial infection could be causing the neurological problems the veterans suffer. Other expensive efforts were doomed from the beginning because they were poorly designed or set out to do the impossible, the GAO says. Poor planning, execution mean $13.7 million wasted One recent example is an investigation into how many troops were possibly exposed to chemical weapons and other dangers as a result of a fire at an Iraqi munitions depot in Khamisiyah in 1991. According to the most recent official government account of the incident, the CIA warned the military before the war that chemical weapons were stored there, but the word never filtered to commanders in the field. Military officials ordered the depot destroyed, and a potentially lethal cloud of debilitating chemicals might have been launched into the air. In 1993, the Pentagon and CIA said no one was exposed. In 1996, after news-media and congressional investigations, they acknowledged that there might be a problem, albeit a small one. At first, the two government agencies said hundreds of troops might be affected and that the amount of chemical poison was so small as to be inconsequential. Then a copy of a classified document was leaked, and the government called a news conference and announced that it was really thousands of troops, congressional testimony said. Finally, in 2000, the government's official estimate was upped to 101,752 troops, the GAO says. But even that number was suspect. So to get a better handle on the facts, the Pentagon paid consultants $13.7 million to develop computer models and do other work. It also spent untold dollars and man-hours on the project with its own staff, so the true cost of this study can't be established, the GAO reported in June. What resulted was a study so poorly conceived and done, it's worthless, the GAO says. Part of the problem is that some of the data necessary to do it right just isn't obtainable because no one was keeping reliable records on weather and wind conditions in Iraq at the time of the explosion. As a result, no one can say how far - or in what direction - the windborne chemicals might have gone. And there's no reliable information on exactly what was in the depot when it was blown up. A similar incident occurred at the Blackhorse Army base in Doha, Kuwait, on July 11, 1991. In that case, more than 7,000 pounds of depleted uranium weapons were destroyed in smoke and flames, along with four Abrams tanks and millions of dollars of other equipment and armaments. The heater for a munitions truck malfunctioned, caught fire and caused a series of explosions and fires in the base motor pool, the Pentagon's report on the incident says. As recently as last year, microscopic bits of depleted uranium could be found in the sand and debris there, other studies found. Troops had no warning of danger after 1991 fire Pentagon records show that within hours of the fire, officers in the chain of command at Doha received the first of several notices about potential health hazards from the burning depleted uranium. The warnings contained specific directions about precautions that should be taken in the cleanup. None of those precautions were taken. The soldiers on the ground weren't told about the problem until 1998. The Army says the commanding officer didn't recall getting the warnings. The Pentagon offered no explanation for why soldiers involved in the four-month cleanup after the fire were allowed to handle materials with their bare hands and no precautions. After 1998, a government-maintained laboratory studied the situation. Despite the lack of adequate data and that "large uncertainties exist," it concluded none of the troops incurred a significant health problem by inhaling the depleted uranium dust created by the fire. That lab used many of the same techniques employed in the Khamisiyah analysis. No GAO examination of Doha has been requested. The Doha base is still used by U.S. troops today, though the site of the fire is a restricted area. Troops from Fort Eustis deployed to the region visit there frequently. Doha is one of the major embarkation points for U.S. troops entering the Iraqi theater of war. It also has an amusement park and post exchange, making it a popular spot for off-duty troops to visit when they have a day off. The Army says the site, which is near a refinery, is safe. Basic fact-finding wasn't done, epidemiologist says Critics of the government's efforts to find the cause of Persian Gulf War veterans' health problems say these examples aren't the most important oversights or missteps. Despite all the research spending, the military and government have yet to do a responsible epidemiological study that includes some of the fundamental data necessary to unravel the problem, says Robert Haley, a former CDC official. Haley is now chief of the department of epidemiology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas and author of important studies on Gulf War veterans' health problems. A good epidemiological study would give researchers a handle on how many veterans are ill with undiagnosed problems, where they were during the war, what vaccinations they were given, what they did while deployed and other data, Haley says. It should have been done more than a decade ago as one of the first steps after they realized a problem existed, he says. Haley's criticisms are echoed by a number of scientists, but his background in tracking down the causes of high-profile illnesses sets him apart. At the CDC, he helped lead the investigation into toxic shock syndrome in the late 1970s, showing how women were getting critically ill because of the new generation of tampons they were using. He got involved in looking at Gulf War veterans' illnesses in the mid-1990s, after Texas businessman Ross Perot asked the dean of the Dallas medical center how much money it would take to start looking at reasons for the maladies that so many veterans were suffering. Perot said he'd been hiring former military personnel for years and just wasn't buying the Pentagon's line that these men and women were merely weak of body, will or mind, Haley recalls. The first thing that Haley did was look at the available data on the disease. He says he was surprised to find out that the basics of figuring out an epidemiological puzzle hadn't been done, despite all the money and time the government had spent. Instead of starting by spending a lot of money to prove one or two possible theories for the cause, he says, a good epidemiologist will start gathering some basic facts. Those facts would include who's involved (the sick people and people just like them who aren't sick), what they did during the war, where they were and other factors. That way, the epidemiologist can see what's common among the people who are sick and the people who aren't. Usually, he says, there will be only one or two things that the sick people have in common that turn out to be statistically significant and worth pursuing with research money. Epidemiology 101: The case of suspicious potato salad A classic example is figuring out why some people got sick at a church picnic, he says. A good epidemiologist would interview the people who went to the picnic (those who got sick and those who didn't). She'd find out what games they played, what food they ate and where they were at the picnic. Then all that data would be compared, and you'd typically find a common thread - for instance, all the sick people ate potato salad and none of the well people ate it. Only then would you spend the money to take the potato salad to the lab to examine it, he says. But the government didn't do that - and still hasn't done it - Haley says. Instead, it did three studies that said the vets weren't really sick or, at least, they were no worse off than most people their age. The only difference it found was a slight increase in accidental deaths among the Gulf War vets. "They were so convinced that they would find nothing that they found nothing and published the data," he says. Haley took the numbers the government-sponsored epidemiologists used in those studies to demonstrate just the opposite. He showed where researchers made questionable assumptions and how the same data could point in the opposite direction if other, more logical assumptions were used. A big mistake here, he says, is the government studies assumed that military personnel deployed for the war were just as healthy as anyone else in the military or the general public. So after the war, when they were found to be just as likely to die or get sick as other people, the government concluded that there was no problem. But the deployed soldiers were probably much healthier than those other groups to start with because they had to pass a rigorous physical exam to be considered for deployment overseas, Haley says. In that war, many troops were deemed not deployable because they were HIV-positive, were injured or otherwise in questionable health. Well before the Gulf War, epidemiologists had a stock phrase to describe this phenomenon: the "healthy warrior effect." The government's researchers should have been familiar with it, Haley says. There were other problems, too. Haley and others noted that the data the government used in claiming only normal rates of death, cancer, infant deformities and other problems among Gulf War veterans came solely from military and VA hospitals. That left out most of the people who'd served in the war, Haley says - people who were reservists or got out of the military and weren't eligible for treatment in government hospitals. It wasn't surprising that data collected about active-duty military personnel using military hospitals showed they weren't sick; the sick ones had been forced out of uniform, Haley says. Members of Congress and others have latched onto that work and similar studies to force changes in the way the Defense Department, VA and other government agencies handle research, Haley and others say. Some new faces, some old problems In 2002, Haley, Robinson and other critics of the government's handling of the research were appointed to a new panel of experts that advises the head of the VA on the research that should be conducted to find the cause of the vets' illnesses. Haley says he's encouraged that the government is slowly turning around to face the problem. In the past couple of years, he says, meaningful research has begun to trickle in, and the research is becoming better focused. A proper epidemiological study is scheduled to begin in January, he notes. There are still problems from within government agencies that have fought an honest approach to the problem, Haley, Robinson and others on the advisory panel say. Some of the bureaucrats who have thwarted progress are gone or shunted aside, they say, but others remain. The GAO reported in June that the advisory panel was having problems getting reliable information from the Pentagon and even from officials within the VA. Panel members aren't consistently being told about research being considered for financing, so they can help ensure that money is directed to the greatest needs, the GAO said. The panel also wasn't even being told about research when it was finished, the agency said. As of Sept. 23, 2003, about 80 percent of the 240 federally financed medical research projects for Gulf War illnesses had been completed, the GAO said in June. Yet the last time the VA reviewed this research to determine whether there were gaps and where there were opportunities that needed to be pursued was in 2001, the report said. The VA's inaction is important because it's responsible for coordinating the government's Gulf War illness research, even though it's not been given the bulk of the money to do that work. The VA has also been slow to act in other ways. In June, VA officials admitted to Congress that they had allocated only $450,000 of the $20 million budgeted for Gulf War illness research for the year. By then, three-fourths of the budget year was over. VA officials acknowledge that they need to do a better job. The government's Gulf War research coordinating group (a separate panel from the advisory committee) hadn't met since August 2003, the GAO said in its June report. The GAO said that when it checked with the coordinating group in April 2004, it found that there were no plans to meet again. Jim Binns, chairman of the VA secretary's Gulf War advisory committee, told Congress in June that he was concerned that the Defense Department had no plans to spend money on new Gulf War illness research in coming years. He said that meant total government research spending on Gulf War illnesses would drop from $35 million a year to $11 million, just as promising developments in research needed to be followed up. Most of the $11 million will have limited scope, too, because VA administrators can't spend money for research that isn't directly related to VA patients. The work on depleted uranium research that many scientists say is necessary thus isn't eligible. Michael E. Kilpatrick, the Pentagon's deputy director for health issues involving deployed forces, says that doesn't mean the Pentagon is putting a halt to all this research. He says the military will continue to pursue the studies that are underway until they're concluded. With money tight, he says, the Pentagon must use more of its healthcare budget to benefit soldiers fighting current and future wars, not those of the past. Research money becoming harder to find these days That decision was made in 2002, Kilpatrick says, when only one in six vets of the 1991 war was still in uniform. None of the active-duty troops from the 1991 war have the health problems targeted by Gulf War illness research. With a war on, members of Congress pushing veterans' issues say it will be hard to beef up money for research in the VA or other budgets. VA medical centers are starting to feel the effects of caring for troops from the continued fighting overseas. Binns notes that the VA, even in recent years, hasn't been very good about making sure that the money it has for research in this area is well spent. "As recently as 2003, the VA budget in that year - according to the most recent report to Congress - provided for about $4.1 million in Gulf War illness research. Of that amount, 57 percent went to study stress and other psychological causes, 17 percent went to study things like Web-based training for VA physicians and bioterrorism events," he says. Only 17 percent of the money went to things that the advisory committee thinks are directly linked to the soldiers' suffering, Binns says. Alexandra Miller is a government scientist who's carried out some of the most important research into the health effects of depleted uranium. She says Pentagon money for pursuing the results of that work has started to dry up in recent years. "There's not enough money to complete the research," she says, just as science is close to closing the loop on whether depleted uranium is dangerous. She and Vernon Walker - a cancer biologist in New Mexico who's conducted experiments linking inhaled uranium to cellular mutations in rats - say completing the research would take only $5 million if the right projects were financed. That could truly determine whether, once and for all, inhaled depleted uranium is a hazard on the battlefield, they say. "We could be answering these questions, and we wouldn't have to have these kinds of conversations four years from now," Miller says. Richard Albertini, one of the nation's leading cancer researchers, says access to money isn't the only thing that hampers research. He's one of more than a dozen doctors and scientists involved in a continuing medical study assessing the effect of depleted uranium shrapnel in veterans of the 1991 war. The Pentagon has called this study "the gold standard" of whether adverse health can result from exposure to depleted uranium on the battlefield and frequently points to its findings as support for its arguments that the weapons are safe. In the most recently published version of the study, Albertini says, three veterans showed an increased rate of mutations in a gene that doctors think is a "marker" for cancer. A marker for cancer isn't cancer itself but a warning signal that something might be wrong. In this case, the genes were in the white blood cells of the soldiers. Based on that finding, Walker exposed rats to air with very small particles of depleted uranium, to see whether the same kind of mutations would develop. The rats did develop these mutations, which supports the idea that inhaling depleted uranium dust can cause cancer, Albertini and Walker say. The mutations in the marker become less pronounced over time, Albertini says, so it's important to have blood samples from veterans of the more recent war to see whether these mutations continue and to do more research. So far, he says, the military and VA say samples aren't available, even though obtaining them isn't difficult and costs less than $100 apiece, he says. This isn't an idle academic exercise, Albertini says: Researchers might be close to finding a chemical that can halt the mutations, which might mean development of a pill or drug soldiers could take on the battlefield to reverse or arrest the mutations soon after their exposure. Experiments using chickens have been successful in halting the mutations in a test tube, Albertini says. He and Walker say that work could lead to antidotes to "dirty bombs," - explosives made of low-grade nuclear materials such as depleted uranium. Government officials have repeatedly said the nation's urban areas are vulnerable to such attacks if terrorists can obtain a sufficient quantity of the right radioactive materials. A legacy of mistrust from previous wars Robinson and other veterans' advocates say they're afraid that the Pentagon's attitude toward soldiers' health and the failure to properly address illnesses from the 1991 Gulf War will be equaled in the new war. They say a pattern has developed that will make it difficult for any veteran to believe what the government says. Soldiers, sailors and civilians were often used as guinea pigs in experiments of how nuclear blasts might affect human beings in the years after World War II. The government never told them what was happening, then denied it - then denied that they were at risk until recently. "It took 40 years for them to get treatment and care, " Robinson says. Then came the Vietnam War and Agent Orange, a chemical used to kill acres and acres of jungle foliage, to make it easier for U.S. troops to find and kill the enemy. The government insisted for years that the chemical wasn't a problem, then finally admitted it was. Documents show that U.S. leaders knew the truth in 1972 - maybe earlier - but continued using it anyway, Robinson says. He says the same thing might be happening with depleted uranium and other possible causes of the Gulf War vets' ill health. Part of the problem of getting to the truth of Gulf War veterans' illnesses is that too many people use the issue for ideological purposes, he says. Critics of the weapon on the left use the radiological properties of depleted uranium "to scare people: Depleted uranium is the holocaust," Robinson says. "Then you have the Department of Defense on the right," saying there's no problem and questioning the motives and patriotism of critics, he says. A week before launching Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003, the Pentagon briefed reporters to reiterate the safety of depleted uranium weapons and note the failure of anyone to conclusively link them to any of the health problems from the Persian Gulf War. Col. James Naughton, then the Army's director of munitions, was brought out to speak. According to a transcript issued by the Pentagon, he talked about how much of a battlefield advantage the weapon is. "So we don't want to give that up," he said, "and that's why we use it." One of the reporters asked him why giving up the weapon was even being raised, if the weapon was so safe. "Well, you need to look at the environment of the context where people are asking us questions - who's asking the question?" Naughton replied. "The Iraqis tell us, 'Terrible things happened to our people because you used it last time.' "Why do they want it to go away? They want it to go away because we kicked the crap out of them - OK?" Later in the briefing, Naughton made it clear he thought that Iraq "and other countries that are not friendly to the United States" were behind criticism of the weapon. With those kinds of extremes, not much has happened in the middle, Robinson says. "In the middle," he says, "is the science that has not been conducted." Copyright ©2004 Daily Press ***************************************************************** 14 LR: The Revolt Against the Bush Administration's Nuclear Double Standard by Lawrence S. Wittner [http://www.lewrockwell.com] by [wittner@albany.edu] by Lawrence S. Wittner In late November, when Congress refused to appropriate money to fund so-called "bunker busters" and "mini-nukes," this action represented not only a serious blow to the Bush administration's plan to build new nuclear weapons, but to the administration's overall nuclear arms control and disarmament policy. That policy has been to prevent the development of nuclear weapons by nations the Bush administration considers "evil." The military invasion of Iraq, like the gathering confrontation with Iran and North Korea, reflects, at least in part, the administration's obsession with preventing nations potentially hostile to the United States from acquiring a nuclear capability. This focus upon blocking nuclear weapons development in other countries has some legal justification for, in the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) of 1968, non-nuclear nations agreed not to develop nuclear weapons. But the NPT also calls for nuclear nations to rid themselves of the nuclear weapons they possess. Indeed, in the meetings that fashioned the treaty, the non-nuclear weapons states demanded a commitment to nuclear disarmament by the nuclear powers. And they received it – not only in the form of the treaty's provisions, but in the formal pledges made by the nuclear powers at the periodic treaty review conferences that have been held since the NPT went into effect. It is in this area that the Bush administration has revealed itself as the proponent of a double standard. At the same time that it has assailed selected nations for developing nuclear weapons, it has withdrawn the United States from the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty, effectively destroyed the START II treaty, and refused to support ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. It has also raised the U.S. nuclear weapons budget to new heights and proposed the building of new U.S. nuclear weapons, including the "bunker busters" and "mini-nukes." As Senator Kerry pointed out during the recent presidential campaign, this is not the kind of policy that will encourage other nations to abide by their commitments under the NPT. The surprising congressional move to block the Bush plan for new nuclear weapons is but one of numerous signs that this double standard cannot be sustained. As a special high-level U.N. panel has just warned: "We are approaching a point at which the erosion of the non-proliferation regime could become irreversible and result in a cascade of proliferation." Nor is the breakaway from the NPT limited to the non-nuclear nations. Just the other day the Russian government announced its development of a new nuclear missile. Appropriately enough, the U.N. panel condemned the nuclear powers for failing to honor their commitments, and called upon them to restart the nuclear disarmament process. Furthermore, of course, terrorists have been actively seeking nuclear weapons, and might well obtain them. Thousands of tactical nuclear weapons – many of them small, portable, and, therefore, ideal for terrorist use – are still maintained by the U.S. and Russian governments. No international agreements have ever been put into place to control or eliminate them. In fact, it remains unclear how many of these tactical nuclear weapons exist or where they are located. In Russia, at least, they are badly guarded and, in the disorderly circumstances of the post-Soviet economy, they seem ripe for sale or theft. The revolt against the Bush administration's double standard could come to a head in May 2005, when an NPT review conference opens at the United Nations, in New York City. Nuclear and non-nuclear nations are sure to exchange sharp barbs about non-compliance with NPT provisions. Furthermore, more than a hundred mayors from the Mayors for Peace Campaign, which has drawn together the top executives from 640 cities around the world, are expected to come to the U.N. to lobby for nuclear disarmament. They will be joined by United for Peace and Justice, the largest peace movement coalition in the United States, and over 2,000 organizations in 96 different countries. Together, they have launched Abolition Now, a campaign calling on heads of state to begin negotiations in 2005 on a treaty to eliminate all nuclear weapons. [http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0804748624/lewrock well/] Ultimately, then, the Bush administration might be forced into accepting a single standard for dealing with the threat posed by nuclear weapons – one designed to lead to a nuclear-free world. Certainly, there are plenty of signs that people and nations around the globe believe that what is sauce for the goose is also sauce for the gander. December 14, 2004 Lawrence S. Wittner [ [wittner@albany.edu] ] is Professor of History at the State University of New York/Albany. His latest book is [http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0804748624/lewrock well/] (Stanford University Press). This article originally appeared on the [http://hnn.us] . Reprinted with permission of the author. Copyright © 2004 [http://hnn.us/] . Reprinted with author's permission. ***************************************************************** 15 Las Vegas SUN: Efficient nuke plants could lessen need for dumpsite, Domenici says Today: December 14, 2004 at 11:12:00 PST By Mary Manning LAS VEGAS SUN Nevada is locked in the middle of a nuclear waste disposal debate that could ease with a new generation of smaller, more efficient nuclear power plants necessary to a stable energy future for the nation, Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., said. Yucca Mountain, the proposed national repository for 77,000 tons of highly radioactive spent fuel, is "kind of the buck stops here," Domenici told more than 200 people packed into the Atomic Testing Museum on Flamingo Road and Swenson Street Monday night. Domenici said nuclear waste should be stored, not buried permanently, until a technique for reprocessing and reusing it comes along. Domenici, who chairs the Senate's Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said while reprocessing nuclear fuel eventually will become necessary, since uranium is a limited resource like gas and coal, a Yucca Mountain repository is still needed but should be temporary. Scientists are working on nuclear technology to build smaller nuclear reactors that can't burn up. "Then there's no 'China Syndrome,' " Domenici said, referring to the 1970s movie starring Jane Fonda that described a reactor core meltdown. "We're just behind in the game," the senator, who has been in Congress 32 years, said. Domenici has written a book, "A Brighter Tomorrow: Fulfilling the Promise of Nuclear Energy," in which he presents a case for nuclear power contributing energy to allow this nation and other countries to grow. "You can't do it without energy," the senator said. The senator noted that while the U.S. relies on nuclear power for 20 percent of its electricity, France supplies 80 percent of its power from the atom and China has ordered 20 new nuclear reactors. "It's pathetic that in a country as powerful and smart as ours it's still a problem," he said, referring to fears about the dangers of nuclear power. Domenici peppered his speech with salty remarks. At one point he asked, "Did any of you come out here to express some anti-nuclear feelings?" At least one person who attended did. Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., said that Congress should find and fund a better method for handling, shipping and storing nuclear waste. "I agree with the senator that we don't want to be beholden to Middle East dictators," Berkley said of U.S. reliance on foreign oil after the speech. The Energy Department estimates it will cost $308 billion to ship the waste from 103 reactor sites by road and rail to Yucca Mountain, she said. Instead, put the funding into solar and wind power and leave nuclear waste in place stored inside dry casks. "I don't think nuclear is the way to go," Berkley said. "Let's harness that sun, let's harness the wind." Most of those attending Domenici's speech and book signing agreed with the senator's vision for nuclear energy. "We are not reprocessing commercial nuclear fuel yet," Anthony Hechanova, in charge of the Transmutation Research Program at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, said. The bulk of spent fuel -- 70,000 tons -- destined for Yucca Mountain, if it is approved, is from commercial reactors. The United States has reprocessed small amounts of weapons-grade plutonium, Hechanova said. "It works," he said. University of Nevada, Las Vegas students participated in stripping a small batch of spent nuclear fuel to almost pure uranium in 2002 inside an Energy Department laboratory, said Denis Beller, coordinator for the Department of Energy's Advanced Accelerator Applications program at Los Alamos National Laboratory, who is working at UNLV. "We've got a lot of research and development to do" before developing a process that is efficient, cleaner and economical for reducing nuclear waste, Beller said. But it would be worth it, he said. The research on transforming nuclear waste into reuseable fuel needs up to $1 billion a year, he said. Recycling nuclear fuel would cost the average power customer an extra 75 cents a month. "That's all it takes is a policy change," Beller said. Domenici declined to elaborate on future strategies to change nuclear waste policy. As for progress on licensing Yucca Mountain by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Domenici said he had "some new ideas" to propel the repository forward. The senator expects "a full battle about funding for the future: do we fund it every year or no?" ***************************************************************** 16 Xinhua: Nuclear power a key step to ease energy shortage www.xinhuanet.com www.chinaview.cn 2004-12-14 09:35:54 BEIJING, Dec. 14 -- The central government's efforts to step up the country's capacity to generate nuclear power will soon be embodied in the formation of a new nuclear technology company. According to the office preparing to open this corporation, which began work in September, it will play a leading role in the tendering, technology transfer, negotiation and signing of contracts for nuclear power projects. The tendering of new nuclear power projects based in Zhejiang and Guangdong provinces has actually attracted several heavyweights of the industry from the United States and Europe. This is a significant step to enhance China's self-reliance in the field of nuclear power. With a company owned by the central government to deal with nuclear power businesses, the country's nuclear power industry would have a handy instrument in drawing the overall map of developing nuclear power. The new round of energy shortages across the country, which began last year and is ongoing, is a real problem that needs to be settled. If tapped properly, nuclear energy can play an important role in alleviating the country's energy plight. China has acquired the ability to build nuclear power plants. According to Vice-Premier Zeng Peiyan, in certain important fields, the country has approached or reached international levels in the construction of nuclear power stations. As long as the country's existing mechanism on safety and accident prevention is in place, nuclear power plants offer an environment-friendly, safe and efficient solution to ease the nation's energy shortage. As well as offering more electricity with less pollution, the development of nuclear power plants also bears remarkable significance in safeguarding the country's energy security and the sound growth of the economy. Of course, there are still many other concerns to be addressed in developing nuclear power, including safety in the operation of the power plants and the processing of nuclear waste. It is believed that these concerns will be carefully addressed once the nuclear technology corporation starts to operate. (Source:China Daily) Copyright ©2003 Xinhua News Agency. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 17 Nuclear Regulatory Commission: Semiannual Regulatory Agenda [December 13, 2004 (Volume 69, Number 238)] [Unified Agenda] From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [frwais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID: f:ua041260.wais] [Page 74244-74257] Part LX [[Page 74244]] NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION (NRC) _______________________________________________________________________ NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION 10 CFR Ch. I Unified Agenda of Federal Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions AGENCY: Nuclear Regulatory Commission. ACTION: Semiannual regulatory agenda. _______________________________________________________________________ SUMMARY: The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is publishing its semiannual regulatory agenda in accordance with Public Law 96-354, ``The Regulatory Flexibility Act,'' and Executive Order 12866, ``Regulatory Planning and Review.'' The agenda is a compilation of all rules on which the NRC has recently completed action or has proposed or is considering action. This issuance updates any action occurring on rules since publication of the last semiannual agenda on June 28, 2004 (69 FR 38628). ADDRESSES: Comments on any rule in the agenda may be sent to the Secretary of the Commission, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC 20555-0001, Attention: Rulemakings and Adjudications Staff. Comments may also be hand delivered to the One White Flint North Building, 11555 Rockville Pike, Rockville, Maryland, between 7:30 a.m. and 4:15 p.m., Federal workdays. Comments received on rules for which the comment period has closed will be considered if it is practical to do so, but assurance of consideration cannot be given except as to comments received on or before the closure dates specified in the agenda. The agenda and any comments received on any rule listed in the agenda are available for public inspection and copying for a fee at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Public Document Room, One White Flint North, 11555 Rockville Pike, Room O-1F21, Rockville, Maryland. FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: For further information concerning NRC rulemaking procedures or the status of any rule listed in this agenda, contact Michael T. Lesar, Chief, Rules and Directives Branch, Division of Administrative Service, Office of Administration, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC 20555-0001, telephone 301-415- 7163 (e-mail: mtl@nrc.gov). Persons outside the Washington, DC, metropolitan area may call, toll-free: 1-800-368-5642. For further information on the substantive content of any rule listed in the agenda, contact the individual listed under the heading ``Agency Contact'' for that rule. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The information contained in this semiannual publication is updated to reflect any action that has occurred on rules since publication of the last NRC semiannual agenda on June 28, 2004, (69 FR 38628). Within each group, the rules are ordered according to the Regulation Identifier Number (RIN). The information in this agenda has been updated through September 24, 2004. The date for the next scheduled action under the heading ``Timetable'' is the date the rule is scheduled to be published in the Federal Register. The date is considered tentative and is not binding on the Commission or its staff. The agenda is intended to provide the public early notice and opportunity to participate in the NRC rulemaking process. However, the NRC may consider or act on any rulemaking even though it is not included in the agenda. The NRC agenda lists all open rulemaking actions. Three rules affect small entities. Dated at Rockville, Maryland, this 24th day of September 2004. For the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Michael T. Lesar, Chief, Rules and Directives Branch, Division of Administrative Services, Office of Administration. Nuclear Regulatory Commission--Proposed Rule Stage ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Regulation Sequence Title Identifier Number Number ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4129 Control of Solid Material............................................................. 3150-AH18 4130 Large Break Loss-of-Coolant Accident (LB-LOCA) Redefintion............................ 3150-AH29 4131 Elimination of Requirement To Submit Annual Financial Report.......................... 3150-AH39 4132 Collection, Reporting, or Posting of Information...................................... 3150-AH40 4133 Export and Import of Nuclear Equipment and Materials.................................. 3150-AH44 4134 Codification of EA-03-009 RPV Head and Penetration Inspection Requirements............ 3150-AH46 4135 National Source Tracking.............................................................. 3150-AH48 4136 Post-Fire Operator Manual Actions..................................................... 3150-AH54 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Nuclear Regulatory Commission--Final Rule Stage ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Regulation Sequence Title Identifier Number Number ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4137 Early Site Permits; Standard Design Certifications; and Combined Licenses for Nuclear 3150-AG24 Power Plants.......................................................................... 4138 Risk-Informed Categorization and Treatment of Structures, Systems and Components for 3150-AG42 Nuclear Power Reactors................................................................ 4139 Changes to Emergency Action Levels and Exercise Requirements for Co-Located Licensees-- 3150-AH00 Appendix E............................................................................ 4140 Security Requirements for Portable Gauges Containing Byproduct Material............... 3150-AH06 4141 Public Records........................................................................ 3150-AH12 4142 Options for Addressing Training and Experience Issues Associated With Recognition of 3150-AH19 Specialty Boards by NRC............................................................... [[Page 74245]] 4143 Incorporation by Reference of ASME BPV Code Cases..................................... 3150-AH35 4144 Address Change of NRC Region III Offices.............................................. 3150-AH49 4145 Export and Import of Nuclear Equipment and Material: Nuclear Grade Graphite........... 3150-AH51 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Nuclear Regulatory Commission--Long-Term Actions ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Regulation Sequence Title Identifier Number Number ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4146 Update Fuel Performance Considerations and Other Fuel Cycle Issues.................... 3150-AA31 4147 Disposal by Release Into Sanitary Sewerage............................................ 3150-AE90 4148 Fitness for Duty Programs............................................................. 3150-AF12 4149 Advance Notification to Native American Tribes of Transportation of Certain Types of 3150-AG41 Nuclear Waste......................................................................... 4150 Integrated Rulemaking for Decommissioning Nuclear Power Reactors...................... 3150-AG47 4151 Reevaluation of Power Reactor Physical Protection Regulations and Position on a 3150-AG63 Definition of Radiological Sabotage................................................... 4152 Transfers of Certain Source Materials by Specific Licensees........................... 3150-AG64 4153 Entombment Options for Power Reactors................................................. 3150-AG89 4154 Modifications to Pressure-Temperature Limits.......................................... 3150-AG98 4155 Distribution of Source Material to Exempt Persons and General Licensees and Revision 3150-AH15 of 10 CFR 40.22 General License....................................................... 4156 Acceptable Criteria for Emergency Core Cooling Systems for Light-Water Nuclear Power 3150-AH22 Reactors.............................................................................. 4157 Implement US-IAEA Safeguards Agreement................................................ 3150-AH38 4158 Exemptions from Licensing and Distribution of Byproduct Material; Licensing and 3150-AH41 Reporting Requirement................................................................. 4159 Performance-Based ECCS Acceptance Criteria............................................ 3150-AH42 4160 Decoupling of Assumed Loss of Offsite Power from Loss-of-Coolant Accidents (LOCA)..... 3150-AH43 4161 Reduce the Likelihood of Funding Shortfalls for Decommissioning Under the License 3150-AH45 Termination Rule...................................................................... 4162 Certification That Procedures Under 10 CFR Parts 25 and 95 for Access Authorization 3150-AH52 and Facility Security Clearance Are Available in Connection With Activities Under Parts 60 and 63....................................................................... ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Nuclear Regulatory Commission--Completed Actions ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Regulation Sequence Title Identifier Number Number ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4163 Performance-Based, Risk-Informed Fire Protection...................................... 3150-AG48 4164 Nuclear Power Plant Worker Fatigue.................................................... 3150-AG99 4165 Industry Codes and Standards; Amended Requirements.................................... 3150-AH24 4166 Licensing Proceedings for the Receipt of High-Level Radioactive Waste at a Geologic 3150-AH31 Repository: Licensing Support Network, Submissions to the Electronic Docket........... 4167 Medical Use of Byproduct Material; Minor Amendments; Extending Expiration Date for 3150-AH47 Subpart J............................................................................. 4168 List of Approved Spent Fuel Storage Casks: NAC-UMS Revision (Amendment 4)............. 3150-AH50 4169 Criminal History Check: Assessment of Application Fee................................. 3150-AH53 4170 Adjustment of Civil Penalties for Inflation........................................... 3150-AH55 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- _______________________________________________________________________ Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) Proposed Rule Stage _______________________________________________________________________ 4129. CONTROL OF SOLID MATERIAL Priority: Substantive, Nonsignificant Legal Authority: 42 USC 2201; 42 USC 5841 CFR Citation: 10 CFR 20 Legal Deadline: None Abstract: The proposed rule would amend the Commission's regulations to evaluate alternatives for the control of solid materials with very low, or no, levels of radioactivity. There are currently non-codified guidance and practices for the control of solid materials. Current practice is to apply, on a case-by-case basis, either Regulatory Guide 1.86 surface contamination values or no detectable [[Page 74246]] activity using environmental measurements methods. In addition, there are no current release levels established generally for volumetrically contaminated materials. An examination of approaches to the control of solid materials would help the NRC staff evaluate the cost effectiveness of means to handle requests for clearance of materials during both operations and decommissioning. Timetable: ________________________________________________________________________ Action Date FR Cite ________________________________________________________________________ NPRM 05/00/05 Regulatory Flexibility Analysis Required: Yes Small Entities Affected: Governmental Jurisdictions Government Levels Affected: Federal, State Agency Contact: Frank Cardile, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards, Washington, DC 20555-0001 Phone: 301 415-6185 Email: fpc@nrc.gov RIN: 3150-AH18 _______________________________________________________________________ 4130. LARGE BREAK LOSS-OF-COOLANT ACCIDENT (LB-LOCA) REDEFINTION Priority: Substantive, Nonsignificant Legal Authority: 42 USC 2201; 42 USC 5841 CFR Citation: 10 CFR 50 Legal Deadline: None Abstract: The proposed rule would amend the Commission's regulations to allow for a risk-informed alternative to the present maximum loss-of- coolant accident (LOCA) break size. This rulemaking would grant in part a petition for rulemaking submitted by the Nuclear Energy Institute (PRM-50-75). Timetable: ________________________________________________________________________ Action Date FR Cite ________________________________________________________________________ NPRM 12/00/04 Regulatory Flexibility Analysis Required: No Small Entities Affected: No Government Levels Affected: None Agency Contact: Richard F. Dudley, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation, Washington, DC 20555-0001 Phone: 301 415-1116 Email: rfd@nrc.gov RIN: 3150-AH29 _______________________________________________________________________ 4131. ELIMINATION OF REQUIREMENT TO SUBMIT ANNUAL FINANCIAL REPORT Priority: Substantive, Nonsignificant Legal Authority: 42 USC 2201; 42 USC 5841 CFR Citation: 10 CFR 50 Legal Deadline: None Abstract: The proposed rule would amend the Commission's regulations to eliminate the reporting requirement in 10 CFR 50.71(b), which requires that licensees for production and utilization facilities submit annual financial reports, including certified financial statements, to the Commission. The proposed rule would eliminate the costs to licensees of submitting their annual financial reports and the costs to the NRC of processing those submittals. The cost savings are relatively small but it is expected that the costs associated with the rulemaking will be justified by the cost savings from eliminating the reporting requirement. The elimination of the report will also serve to fulfill a Congressional mandate to address outdated or paperwork oriented requirements. Timetable: ________________________________________________________________________ Action Date FR Cite ________________________________________________________________________ NPRM 03/00/05 Regulatory Flexibility Analysis Required: No Small Entities Affected: No Government Levels Affected: None Agency Contact: William D. Reckley, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation, Washington, DC 20555-0001 Phone: 301 415-1323 Email: wdr@nrc.gov RIN: 3150-AH39 _______________________________________________________________________ 4132. COLLECTION, REPORTING, OR POSTING OF INFORMATION Priority: Substantive, Nonsignificant Legal Authority: 42 USC 2201; 42 USC 5841 CFR Citation: 10 CFR 19; 10 CFR 20; 10 CFR 50 Legal Deadline: None Abstract: The proposed rule would amend the Commission's regulations to clarify or revise the regulations such that (1) licensees would not be required, unless a specific request was made by a worker, to provide an annual report to a worker of their radiation dose if a worker received less than two percent of the limits defined in 10 CFR part 20; (2) licensees for production and utilization facilities governed by 10 CFR part 50 would not need to label containers in accordance with 10 CFR 20.1904, ``Labeling containers,`` if the containers met conditions such as being clearly identifiable as containing radioactive materials, being accessible only to trained individuals, and being located in an area posted pursuant to 10 CFR 20.1902, ''Posting requirements``; and (3) licensees would no longer need to attempt to obtain records of a worker's cumulative radiation dose unless the worker was to be involved in a planned special exposure. In addition, the staff is considering using this opportunity to propose a change to 10 CFR 20.1003, ``Definitions,'' to clarify the definition of total effective dose equivalent (TEDE). Timetable: ________________________________________________________________________ Action Date FR Cite ________________________________________________________________________ NPRM 12/00/04 Regulatory Flexibility Analysis Required: No Small Entities Affected: No Government Levels Affected: None Agency Contact: William D. Reckley, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation, Washington, DC 20555-0001 Phone: 301 415-1323 Email: wdr@nrc.gov RIN: 3150-AH40 _______________________________________________________________________ 4133. EXPORT AND IMPORT OF NUCLEAR EQUIPMENT AND MATERIALS Priority: Substantive, Nonsignificant Legal Authority: 42 USC 2201; 42 USC 5841 CFR Citation: 10 CFR 110 Legal Deadline: None Abstract: The final rule amends the Commission's regulations to require [[Page 74247]] specific export and import licenses for high-risk radioactive material. The final rule is necessary to reflect recent changes to the nuclear material security policies of the Commission and the Executive branch. Timetable: ________________________________________________________________________ Action Date FR Cite ________________________________________________________________________ NPRM 09/16/04 69 FR 55785 NPRM Comment Period End 11/30/04 Final Rule 06/00/05 Regulatory Flexibility Analysis Required: No Small Entities Affected: No Government Levels Affected: None Federalism: Undetermined Agency Contact: Suzanne Schuyler-Hayes, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Office of International Programs, Washington, DC 20555-0001 Phone: 301 415-2333 Email: ssh@nrc.gov RIN: 3150-AH44 _______________________________________________________________________ 4134. CODIFICATION OF EA-03-009 RPV HEAD AND PENETRATION INSPECTION REQUIREMENTS Priority: Substantive, Nonsignificant Legal Authority: 42 USC 2201; 42 USC 5841 CFR Citation: 10 CFR 50 Legal Deadline: None Abstract: The proposed rule would amend the Commission's regulations to codify the inspection requirements of Order EA-03-009 regarding inspections of reactor pressure vessel heads and head penetrations in pressurized water reactors into 10 CFR part 50.55a. Timetable: ________________________________________________________________________ Action Date FR Cite ________________________________________________________________________ NPRM 04/00/05 Regulatory Flexibility Analysis Required: No Small Entities Affected: No Government Levels Affected: None Federalism: Undetermined Agency Contact: Joseph L. Birmingham, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation, Washington, DC 20555-0001 Phone: 301 415-2829 Email: jlb4@nrc.gov RIN: 3150-AH46 _______________________________________________________________________ 4135. NATIONAL SOURCE TRACKING Priority: Substantive, Nonsignificant Legal Authority: 42 USC 2201; 42 USC 5841 CFR Citation: 10 CFR 20; 10 CFR 30-40; 10 CFR 70; 10 CFR 70 Legal Deadline: None Abstract: The proposed rulemaking would amend the Commission's regulations to establish the regulatory foundation for a new national source tracking system for high-risk sources, as designated in the IAEA Code of Conduct (Category 1 and 2 sources). The tracking system is intended to track the high-risk sources from cradle-to-grave. Licensees will be required to report creation of new sources, transfer of sources, receipt of sources and end-points for sources (e.g. export, destruction, loss, disposal). Timetable: ________________________________________________________________________ Action Date FR Cite ________________________________________________________________________ NPRM 06/00/05 Regulatory Flexibility Analysis Required: No Small Entities Affected: No Government Levels Affected: None Federalism: Undetermined Agency Contact: Merri Horn, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards, Washington, DC 20555-0001 Phone: 301 415-8126 Email: mlh1@nrc.gov RIN: 3150-AH48 _______________________________________________________________________ 4136. POST-FIRE OPERATOR MANUAL ACTIONS Priority: Substantive, Nonsignificant Legal Authority: 42 USC 2201; 42 USC 5841 CFR Citation: 10 CFR 50 Legal Deadline: None Abstract: The proposed rule would amend the Commission's regulations revising fire protection requirements in Appendix R to 10 CFR part 50, along with associated guidance, to allow manual actions when those actions meet appropriate acceptance criteria. The staff will develop an interim enforcement policy to deal with compliance issues until the rulemaking is complete and final revisions to the regulations and the guidance are effective. Timetable: ________________________________________________________________________ Action Date FR Cite ________________________________________________________________________ NPRM 11/00/04 Regulatory Flexibility Analysis Required: No Small Entities Affected: No Government Levels Affected: None Federalism: Undetermined Agency Contact: David T Diec, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation, Washington, DC 20555-0001 Phone: 301 415-2834 Email: dtd@nrc.gov RIN: 3150-AH54 [[Page 74248]] _______________________________________________________________________ Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) Final Rule Stage _______________________________________________________________________ 4137. EARLY SITE PERMITS; STANDARD DESIGN CERTIFICATIONS; AND COMBINED LICENSES FOR NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS Priority: Substantive, Nonsignificant Legal Authority: 42 USC 2201; 42 USC 5841 CFR Citation: 10 CFR 2; 10 CFR 20; 10 CFR 50; 10 CFR 51; . . . Legal Deadline: None Abstract: The proposed rule would amend the Commission's requirements for early site permits, standard design certifications, and combined licensees for nuclear power plants, and for other licensing processes. The amendments are based on the NRC staff's experience with the previous design certification reviews and on discussions with stakeholders about the early site permit (ESP), design certification, and combined license (COL) processes. This action is expected to improve the effectiveness of the licensing processes for future applicants. The rulemaking also would make conforming clarifications and corrections to the NRC's regulations. The NRC is proposing to reorganize 10 CFR part 52 to establish a separate section for each of the seven licensing processes currently described in 10 CFR part 52 (early site permits, early site reviews, standard design certification, standard design approvals, combined licenses, manufacturing licenses, and duplicate design licenses). The purpose of this reorganization is to clarify that each licensing process has equal standing. In addition, several subparts would be reserved for future licensing processes. No substantive changes are intended by the incorporation of current appendices M, N, O, and Q into the new subparts in 10 CFR part 52. The NRC is also proposing to retitle 10 CFR part 52 as Additional Licensing Processes for Nuclear Power Plants to clarify that the licensing processes in 10 CFR part 52 are in addition to and supplement the two-step licensing process in 10 CFR part 50 and the license renewal process in 10 CFR part 54, and are not limited to the early site permit, standard design certification, and combined license processes as the current title implies. Timetable: ________________________________________________________________________ Action Date FR Cite ________________________________________________________________________ NPRM 07/03/03 68 FR 40025 NPRM Comment Period End 09/16/03 Final Rule 08/00/05 Regulatory Flexibility Analysis Required: No Small Entities Affected: No Government Levels Affected: None Additional Information: The proposed rule would amend section 52.1 to clarify that all seven licensing processes are within the scope of 10 CFR part 52. Sections within current appendices M, N, O, and Q would also become new sections of the revised part. In addition, the proposed rule would reserve sections for future licensing processes. In doing so, the NRC hopes to convey that 10 CFR part 52 is the preferred location in 10 CFR for nuclear power plant licensing processes. The proposed rule subsumed the rulemaking, ``Standardized Plant Designs, Early Review of Sites Suitability Issues; Clarifying Amendments`` (RIN 3150-AE25), that would remove redundant appendices M, N, O, and Q from part 50. The part 52 rulemaking plan (SECY-98-282) was approved by the Commission on January 14, 1999. Agency Contact: Jerry N. Wilson, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation, Washington, DC 20555-0001 Phone: 301 415-3145 Email: jnw@nrc.gov Nanette Giles, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation, Washington, DC 20555-0001 Phone: 301 415-1180 Email: nvg@nrc.gov Related RIN: Merged with 3150-AE25 RIN: 3150-AG24 _______________________________________________________________________ 4138. RISK-INFORMED CATEGORIZATION AND TREATMENT OF STRUCTURES, SYSTEMS AND COMPONENTS FOR NUCLEAR POWER REACTORS Priority: Substantive, Nonsignificant Legal Authority: 42 USC 2201; 42 USC 5841 CFR Citation: 10 CFR 50 Legal Deadline: None Abstract: The proposed rule would provide an alternative, risk-informed approach for special treatment requirements in the current regulations. Special treatment requirements are requirements imposed on structures, systems, and components (SSCs) that provide additional confidence that these SSCs are capable of meeting design basis functional requirements. The contemplated risk-informed approach would categorize SSCs and vary the associated regulatory treatment based on the SSC's safety significance. This action is a result of the Commission's continuing efforts to risk-inform its regulations. The staff provided the Commission the proposed rule package on September 30, 2002. In a Staff Requirements Memorandum for SECY-02-0176, dated March 28, 2003, the Commission directed the staff to publish the proposed rule in the Federal Register for public comment. The staff resolved public comments and provided the final rule to the Commission on June 30, 2004. Timetable: ________________________________________________________________________ Action Date FR Cite ________________________________________________________________________ ANPRM 03/03/00 65 FR 11488 ANPRM Comment Period End 05/17/00 NPRM 05/16/03 68 FR 26511 NPRM Comment Period Extended 07/30/03 68 FR 44672 Final Rule 11/00/04 Regulatory Flexibility Analysis Required: No Small Entities Affected: No Government Levels Affected: None Agency Contact: Tim Reed, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation, Washington, DC 20555-0001 Phone: 301 415-1462 Email: tar@nrc.gov RIN: 3150-AG42 _______________________________________________________________________ 4139. CHANGES TO EMERGENCY ACTION LEVELS AND EXERCISE REQUIREMENTS FOR CO-LOCATED LICENSEES--APPENDIX E Priority: Substantive, Nonsignificant Legal Authority: 42 USC 2201; 42 USC 5841 CFR Citation: 10 CFR 50 Legal Deadline: None Abstract: The proposed rule would resolve an ambiguity in the regulations [[Page 74249]] regarding NRC approval of nuclear power plant licensee-initiated changes to emergency action levels (EALs). The proposed rule would allow licensees to make minor changes to EALs without prior NRC approval. The proposed rule would also establish emergency planning exercise requirements for co-located licensees. Timetable: ________________________________________________________________________ Action Date FR Cite ________________________________________________________________________ NPRM 07/24/03 68 FR 43673 NPRM Comment Period End 10/07/03 Final Rule 11/00/04 Regulatory Flexibility Analysis Required: No Small Entities Affected: No Government Levels Affected: None Agency Contact: Michael T. Jamgochian, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation, Washington, DC 20555-0001 Phone: 301 415-3224 Email: mtj1@nrc.gov RIN: 3150-AH00 _______________________________________________________________________ 4140. SECURITY REQUIREMENTS FOR PORTABLE GAUGES CONTAINING BYPRODUCT MATERIAL Priority: Substantive, Nonsignificant Legal Authority: 42 USC 2201; 42 USC 5841 CFR Citation: 10 CFR 30 Legal Deadline: None Abstract: The proposed rule would amend the Commission's regulations governing the use of byproduct material in specifically licensed portable gauges. The proposed rule would require a licensee to provide a minimum of two independent physical controls that form tangible barriers to secure the gauge from unauthorized removal whenever the portable gauges are not under the control and constant surveillance of the licensee. Timetable: ________________________________________________________________________ Action Date FR Cite ________________________________________________________________________ NPRM 08/01/03 68 FR 45172 NPRM Comment Period End 10/15/03 Final Rule 12/00/04 Regulatory Flexibility Analysis Required: No Small Entities Affected: No Government Levels Affected: None Agency Contact: Lydia Chang, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards, Washington, DC 20555-0001 Phone: 301 415-6319 Email: lwc1@nrc.gov RIN: 3150-AH06 _______________________________________________________________________ 4141. PUBLIC RECORDS Priority: Substantive, Nonsignificant Legal Authority: 42 USC 2201; 42 USC 5841 CFR Citation: 10 CFR 9 Legal Deadline: None Abstract: The proposed rule would amend the Commission's regulations to reflect changes in officials who initially deny access to records or deny access to records whose initial denial has been appealed, and to reflect a change in an appellate official due to a reorganization. The amendment would allow the Executive Assistant to the Secretary of the Commission, rather than the Assistant Secretary, to make the initial determination to deny NRC records in whole or in part under the Commission's regulations. Also, an appeal of a denial of a request for a waiver or reduction of fees, or denial of a request for expedited processing would be appealed to the Executive Director for Operations rather than the Secretary of the Commission. Timetable: ________________________________________________________________________ Action Date FR Cite ________________________________________________________________________ NPRM 04/27/04 69 FR 22737 NPRM Comment Period End 07/12/04 Final Rule 03/00/05 Regulatory Flexibility Analysis Required: No Small Entities Affected: No Government Levels Affected: None Agency Contact: Carole Ann Reed, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Office of the Chief Information Officer, Washington, DC 20555 Phone: 301 415-7169 Email: car2@nrc.gov RIN: 3150-AH12 _______________________________________________________________________ 4142. OPTIONS FOR ADDRESSING TRAINING AND EXPERIENCE ISSUES ASSOCIATED WITH RECOGNITION OF SPECIALTY BOARDS BY NRC Priority: Substantive, Nonsignificant Legal Authority: 42 USC 2201; 42 USC 5841 CFR Citation: 10 CFR 35 Legal Deadline: None Abstract: The proposed rule would amend the Commission's regulations modifying the training and experience requirements based on recommendations submitted by the Advisory Committee on the Medical Uses of Isotopes (ACMUI), contained in SECY-02-0194 (October 30, 2002, ``Staff Requirements--SECY-02-0194--Options for Addressing Part 35 Training and Experience Issues Associated with Recognition of Specialty Boards by NRC'' (February 12, 2003). The Commission approved an option that includes posting on the NRC's web site the names of boards whose certifications are recognized as meeting revised criteria for training and experience rather than including the names in regulations. The Commission directed that the staff develop the proposed rule based on the ACMUI's recommendations, with certain qualifications in SRM-02- 0194, including clarifications about the meaning of terms in preceptor statements--the retention of which was required by the Commission. Timetable: ________________________________________________________________________ Action Date FR Cite ________________________________________________________________________ NPRM 12/09/03 68 FR 68549 NPRM Comment Period End 02/23/04 Final Rule 11/00/04 Regulatory Flexibility Analysis Required: No Small Entities Affected: Governmental Jurisdictions Government Levels Affected: State Agency Contact: Roger W. Broseus, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards, Washington, DC 20555-0001 Phone: 301 415-7608 Email: rwb@nrc.gov RIN: 3150-AH19 [[Page 74250]] _______________________________________________________________________ 4143. INCORPORATION BY REFERENCE OF ASME BPV CODE CASES Priority: Substantive, Nonsignificant Legal Authority: 42 USC 2201; 42 USC 5841 CFR Citation: 10 CFR 50 Legal Deadline: None Abstract: The proposed rule would amend the Commission's regulations to incorporate by reference the latest revisions of two previously incorporated regulatory guides which address NRC review and approval of Code cases published by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME). The Code cases listed in these regulatory guides have been reviewed by the NRC and found to be acceptable for use as alternatives to requirements in the ASME Boiler and Pressure Vessel Code pertaining to the construction and inservice inspection of nuclear power plant components. Timetable: ________________________________________________________________________ Action Date FR Cite ________________________________________________________________________ NPRM 08/03/04 69 FR 46452 NPRM Comment Period End 10/18/04 Final Rule 01/00/05 Regulatory Flexibility Analysis Required: No Small Entities Affected: No Government Levels Affected: None Agency Contact: Harry S. Tovmassian, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation, Washington, DC 20555 Phone: 301 415-3092 Email: hst@nrc.gov RIN: 3150-AH35 _______________________________________________________________________ 4144. ADDRESS CHANGE OF NRC REGION III OFFICES Priority: Substantive, Nonsignificant Legal Authority: 42 USC 2201; 42 USC 5841 CFR Citation: 10 CFR 1; 10 CFR 20; 10 CFR 30; 10 CFR 40; 10 Legal Deadline: None Abstract: The final rule amends the Commission's regulations to reflect the change of address for the NRC Region III Office in Lisle, Illinois. Timetable: ________________________________________________________________________ Action Date FR Cite ________________________________________________________________________ Final Rule 11/00/04 Regulatory Flexibility Analysis Required: No Small Entities Affected: No Government Levels Affected: None Federalism: Undetermined Agency Contact: Michael K Williamson, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards, Washington, DC 20555- 0001 Phone: 301 415-6234 Email: mkw1@nrc.gov RIN: 3150-AH49 _______________________________________________________________________ 4145. EXPORT AND IMPORT OF NUCLEAR EQUIPMENT AND MATERIAL: NUCLEAR GRADE GRAPHITE Priority: Substantive, Nonsignificant Legal Authority: 42 USC 2201; 42 USC 5841 CFR Citation: 10 CFR 110 Legal Deadline: None Abstract: The direct final rule amends the Commission's regulations by revising its export/import regulations to remove the NRC's export licensing requirements for nuclear grade graphite for non-nuclear end use. The purpose of this change is to remove from NRC export licensing jurisdiction nuclear materials which are not of significance from a nuclear proliferation perspective. The responsibility for the licensing of exports of nuclear grade graphite for non-nuclear end use will be transferred to the Department of Commerce (DOC). The DOC, which has concurred in this rule, will issue a direct final rule that will place these exports under its jurisdiction. The DOC direct final rule, will be published concurrently, will become effective on the same date as the NRC's direct final rule. Timetable: ________________________________________________________________________ Action Date FR Cite ________________________________________________________________________ Direct Final Rule 11/00/04 Regulatory Flexibility Analysis Required: No Small Entities Affected: No Government Levels Affected: None Federalism: Undetermined Agency Contact: Suzanne Schuyler-Hayes, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Office of International Programs, Washington, DC 20555-0001 Phone: 301 415-2333 Email: ssh@nrc.gov RIN: 3150-AH51 _______________________________________________________________________ Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) Long-Term Actions _______________________________________________________________________ 4146. UPDATE FUEL PERFORMANCE CONSIDERATIONS AND OTHER FUEL CYCLE ISSUES Priority: Substantive, Nonsignificant Legal Authority: 42 USC 2011; 42 USC 2201; 42 USC 4321; 42 USC 5841; 42 USC 5842 CFR Citation: 10 CFR 51 Legal Deadline: None Abstract: The proposed rule would amend the Commission's regulations by addressing uranium fuel cycle environmental data (Table S-3) and the environmental effects of transportation of fuel and waste data (Table S-4). In section 51.51, the environmental data would be re-estimated and reflect changes in the structure and activities of the fuel cycle and the availability of better data. Estimates of releases of Radon-222 and Technetium-99 would be added to Table S-3. The addition of a specific value for Radon-222 would address the outstanding portion of petition for rulemaking PRM-51-1, submitted by the New England Coalition on Nuclear Pollution. To provide immediate relief to the petitioners' request, the Commission published a final rule on March 14, 1977 (42 FR 13803), that removed the original value for Radon-222 from Table S-3 so that it became subject to case-specific litigation. It was anticipated that the Commission would add a specific value for Radon-222, but the Commission deferred action until a general updating of Table S-3 is [[Page 74251]] undertaken. For section 51.52, the environmental impact estimates would be re-estimated to reflect the use of more highly enriched fuel and discharge of more highly irradiated fuels from a reactor; as well as many changes needed to update fuel cycle process and technologies. This rulemaking would result in current and more accurate estimates of the environmental impact of licensing a new plant, and would eliminate the requirement to review the contribution to environmental impacts from Radon-222 and Technetium-99 in individual plant reviews. This rule is being reissued as a proposed rule, and would update the initial rulemaking effort to address newly emerging issues and research. Timetable: ________________________________________________________________________ Action Date FR Cite ________________________________________________________________________ NPRM 03/04/81 46 FR 15154 NPRM Comment Period End 05/04/81 Second NPRM To Be Determined Regulatory Flexibility Analysis Required: No Small Entities Affected: No Government Levels Affected: None Agency Contact: Stewart Schneider, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation, Washington, DC 20555 Phone: 301 415-4123 Email: ssx4@nrc.gov RIN: 3150-AA31 _______________________________________________________________________ 4147. DISPOSAL BY RELEASE INTO SANITARY SEWERAGE Priority: Substantive, Nonsignificant Legal Authority: 42 USC 2201; 42 USC 5841 CFR Citation: 10 CFR 20 Legal Deadline: None Abstract: The advance notice of proposed rulemaking (ANPRM) was published to request public comment, information, and recommendations on contemplated amendments to the Commission's regulations governing the release of radionuclides from licensed nuclear facilities into sanitary sewer systems. The Commission believes that by incorporating current sewer treatment technologies, the contemplated rulemaking would improve the control of radioactive materials released to sanitary sewer systems by licensed nuclear facilities. The Interagency Steering Committee on Radiation Standards (ISCORS), the NRC and the Environmental Protection Agency conducted a joint survey of sewage treatment plants. The need for and the extent of a rulemaking will be evaluated pending the result of the survey and the associated dose assessment. This rulemaking would also address a petition for rulemaking submitted by the Northeast Ohio Sewer District (PRM-20-22). Timetable: ________________________________________________________________________ Action Date FR Cite ________________________________________________________________________ ANPRM 02/25/94 59 FR 9146 ANPRM Comment Period End 05/26/94 NPRM To Be Determined Regulatory Flexibility Analysis Required: No Small Entities Affected: No Government Levels Affected: None Agency Contact: Charlotte Abrams, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards, Washington, DC 20555-0001 Phone: 301 415-7293 Email: cea2@nrc.gov RIN: 3150-AE90 _______________________________________________________________________ 4148. FITNESS FOR DUTY PROGRAMS Priority: Substantive, Nonsignificant Legal Authority: 42 USC 2201; 42 USC 5841 CFR Citation: 10 CFR 26 Legal Deadline: None Abstract: The proposed rule would amend the Commission's regulations to ensure compatibility with the Department of Health and Human Services guidelines, reduce unnecessary regulatory burden in some areas, clarify the Commission's original intent of the rule, and improve overall program effectiveness and efficiency and establish threshold for the control of working hours at nuclear power plants to ensure that working hours in excess of the thresholds are controlled through a risk- informed deviation process (per SRM-COMSECY-04-0014, dated May 25, 2004, directing combination of RIN-3150-AF12 and RIN-3150-AG99). Because of the issues raised in response to the earlier affirmed (FFD) rule, a new proposed rule will be published, including provisions to provide significantly greater assurance that worker fatigue does not adversely affect the operational safety of nuclear power plants. This rulemaking would address the petition for rulemaking submitted by the Virginia Electric and Power Company (VEPCO) (PRM-26-1) and a petition for rulemaking submitted by Barry Quigley (PRM-26-2) related to worker fatigue. Timetable: ________________________________________________________________________ Action Date FR Cite ________________________________________________________________________ NPRM 05/09/96 61 FR 21105 NPRM Comment Period End 08/07/96 Second NPRM 12/00/05 Final Rule 05/00/07 Regulatory Flexibility Analysis Required: No Small Entities Affected: No Government Levels Affected: None Agency Contact: Rebecca L. Karas, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation, Washington, DC 20555-0001 Phone: 301 415-3711 Email: rlk@nrc.gov Related RIN: Related to 3150-AG62 RIN: 3150-AF12 _______________________________________________________________________ 4149. ADVANCE NOTIFICATION TO NATIVE AMERICAN TRIBES OF TRANSPORTATION OF CERTAIN TYPES OF NUCLEAR WASTE Priority: Substantive, Nonsignificant Legal Authority: 42 USC 2201; 42 USC 5841 CFR Citation: 10 CFR 71; 10 CFR 73 Legal Deadline: None Abstract: The advance notice of proposed rulemaking (ANPRM) invited early input from affected parties and the public on the issues associated with the advance notification of Indian tribes of spent fuel shipments. The Department of Energy (DOE) has indicated that it intends to comply with NRC's physical protection requirements for shipments under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act; however, its current practices conflict with NRC regulations. For example, DOE has asked for and will continue to ask for exemptions from the shipment itinerary information requirements of foreign research reactor fuel. DOE, as a courtesy, provides Indian tribes with notification of spent fuel shipments. NRC's current [[Page 74252]] regulations do not address notification of Indian tribes. Further, DOE has developed a satellite tracking system to monitor the status of spent fuel shipments at all times. Distribution of this status information to parties other than Governors' designees is also not compatible with NRC regulations. A rulemaking plan was approved by the Commission on February 20, 2001. This rulemaking was put on hold by the Commission pending review of NRC rules in response to events of September 11, 2001. Timetable: ________________________________________________________________________ Action Date FR Cite ________________________________________________________________________ ANPRM 12/21/99 64 FR 71331 ANPRM Comment Period End 07/05/00 65 FR 18010 NPRM To Be Determined Regulatory Flexibility Analysis Required: No Small Entities Affected: No Government Levels Affected: None Agency Contact: Roger W. Broseus, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards, Washington, DC 20555-0001 Phone: 301 415-7608 Email: rwb@nrc.gov RIN: 3150-AG41 _______________________________________________________________________ 4150. INTEGRATED RULEMAKING FOR DECOMMISSIONING NUCLEAR POWER REACTORS Priority: Substantive, Nonsignificant Legal Authority: 42 USC 2201; 42 USC 5841 CFR Citation: 10 CFR 50 Legal Deadline: None Abstract: A staff requirements memorandum dated June 23, 1999, directed the NRC staff to consider an integrated, risk-informed decommissioning rule rather than individual rulemakings to address emergency preparedness, insurance, safeguards, operator staffing, and backfit for nuclear power plants that are being decommissioned. SECY-99-168, dated June 30, 1999, recommended that the integrated approach be approved and outlined staff plans for pursuing such a rulemaking. Accordingly, the staff has subsumed previous rulemaking activities in the areas of emergency planning, insurance, safeguards, operator staffing, and backfit into one integrated rulemaking effort. This rulemaking would apply to licensees who certified, pursuant to 10 CFR 50.82(a), that they have permanently ceased facility operation(s) and have permanently removed fuel from the reactor vessel. The Commission approved this approach in an SRM dated December 21, 1999. This rulemaking also would address a petition for rulemaking submitted by the North Carolina Public Utility Commission (PRM-50-57). Timetable: ________________________________________________________________________ Action Date FR Cite ________________________________________________________________________ NPRM To Be Determined Regulatory Flexibility Analysis Required: No Small Entities Affected: No Government Levels Affected: None Additional Information: In SECY-00-0145, dated June 28, 2000, the NRC staff recommended a decommissioning rulemaking plan in the areas of emergency planning, insurance, safeguards, operator staffing, and backfit (the integrated decommissioning rulemaking plan). The rulemaking plan relied on a draft decommissioning risk study as the basis for its recommendations. The Commission returned the rulemaking plan to the staff for rework in September 2000, based on changes to the decommissioning risk study findings. The decommissioning risk study, NUREG-1738, was issued in January 2001. After assessing the findings in the risk study, the staff presented a policy options paper to the Commission, SECY-01-0100, dated June 4, 2001, that provided options and made recommendations on issues to be addressed in the integrated rulemaking. Following the terrorist events of September 11, 2001, the NRC staff recommended and the Commission approved the withdrawal of SECY-01-0101 because of the likely changes in the staff's position on decommissioning plant safeguards. The decommissioning policy position will be revisited when a broad-scope NRC safeguards policy is developed in response to potential terrorist acts at nuclear facilities. The schedule for the integrated rulemaking cannot be determined at this time. Agency Contact: Anthony N. Tse, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards, Washington, DC 20555-0001 Phone: 301 415-6233 Email: ant@nrc.gov RIN: 3150-AG47 _______________________________________________________________________ 4151. REEVALUATION OF POWER REACTOR PHYSICAL PROTECTION REGULATIONS AND POSITION ON A DEFINITION OF RADIOLOGICAL SABOTAGE Priority: Substantive, Nonsignificant Legal Authority: 42 USC 2201; 42 USC 5841 CFR Citation: 10 CFR 73 Legal Deadline: None Abstract: The proposed rule would amend the Commission's regulations to incorporate the Commission actions taken as a result of September 11, 2001. The proposed rulemaking would (1) require power reactor licensees to conduct drills and exercises to evaluate their protective strategy against a simulated design basis threat (DBT) of radiological sabotage; (2) incorporate requirements of Commission Orders issued February 25, 2002, January 7, 2003, and April 29, 2003; (3) require the development and implementation of an integrated response plan; (4) consider appropriate information obtained as a result of on-going vulnerability assessments; (5) consider appropriate aspects of access authorization program changes; (6) codify the applicable requirements from the Commission Orders (and revisions to section 73.55) as part of the licensing and design regulations applicable to future/new reactor applications/designs (part 50) (SRM to SECY-03-0157); and (7) codify the applicable requirements from the Commission Orders as part of the licensing and design regulations applicable to Early Site Permits (ESPs). In conjunction with this rulemaking effort, all associated regulatory guidance documents such as regulatory guides, NUREGs, Information notices, etc., would require review and revisions as appropriate. Timetable: ________________________________________________________________________ Action Date FR Cite ________________________________________________________________________ NPRM To Be Determined Regulatory Flexibility Analysis Required: No Small Entities Affected: No Government Levels Affected: None [[Page 74253]] Agency Contact: Scott A. Norris, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Office of Nuclear Security and Incident Response, Washington, DC 20555 Phone: 301 415-7083 Email: sam1@nrc.gov RIN: 3150-AG63 _______________________________________________________________________ 4152. TRANSFERS OF CERTAIN SOURCE MATERIALS BY SPECIFIC LICENSEES Priority: Substantive, Nonsignificant Legal Authority: 42 USC 2201; 42 USC 5841 CFR Citation: 10 CFR 40 Legal Deadline: None Abstract: The proposed rule would amend the Commission's regulations to require NRC approval for transfers from licensees of unimportant quantities of source material (less than 0.05 percent by weight) to persons exempt from licensing requirements. The objective of this proposed action is to ensure that the regulations regarding transfers of materials containing low concentrations of source material are adequate to protect public health and safety. Publication of the final rule is being delayed until certain recent related issues are resolved to minimize the possibility of future inconsistencies in the regulations. Timetable: ________________________________________________________________________ Action Date FR Cite ________________________________________________________________________ NPRM 08/28/02 67 FR 55175 NPRM Comment Period End 11/12/02 Final Action To Be Determined Regulatory Flexibility Analysis Required: No Small Entities Affected: No Government Levels Affected: None Agency Contact: Gary Comfort, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards, Washington, DC 20555-0001 Phone: 301 415-8106 Email: gcc1@nrc.gov RIN: 3150-AG64 _______________________________________________________________________ 4153. ENTOMBMENT OPTIONS FOR POWER REACTORS Priority: Substantive, Nonsignificant Legal Authority: 42 USC 2201; 42 USC 5841 CFR Citation: 10 CFR 20; 10 CFR 50 Legal Deadline: None Abstract: The advance notice of proposed rulemaking (ANPRM) was published seeking stakeholder input on three proposed regulatory options and whether entombment was a viable decommissioning alternative. In SECY 02-0191 (October 25, 2002), NRC staff proposed deferring the rulemaking until the Office of Nuclear Regulatory Research has conducted research to develop a sound technical basis for an entombment option, estimated in 2005. The Commission, in a Staff Requirements Memorandum dated November 26, 2002, did not object to staff's proposal, and requested information regarding the scope and type of research needed to support any entombment option. This information was provided to the Commission on May 14, 2003. Timetable: ________________________________________________________________________ Action Date FR Cite ________________________________________________________________________ ANPRM 10/16/01 66 FR 52551 ANPRM Comment Period End 12/31/01 NPRM To Be Determined Regulatory Flexibility Analysis Required: No Small Entities Affected: No Government Levels Affected: None Agency Contact: Patricia Eng, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards, Washington, DC 20555-0001 Phone: 301 415-7206 Email: ple@nrc.gov RIN: 3150-AG89 _______________________________________________________________________ 4154. MODIFICATIONS TO PRESSURE-TEMPERATURE LIMITS Priority: Substantive, Nonsignificant Legal Authority: 42 USC 2201; 42 USC 5841 CFR Citation: 10 CFR 50 Legal Deadline: None Abstract: The proposed rule would amend the Commission's regulations to eliminate those requirements for pressure-temperature limits that are related to the metal temperature of the reactor pressure vessel closure head flange and vessel flange areas. The proposed rule would amend footnotes 2 and 6 to table 1 of appendix G, and simplify restructuring of the table. Also, this rulemaking would address the petition for rulemaking submitted by Westinghouse Electric Company (PRM-50-69). Timetable: ________________________________________________________________________ Action Date FR Cite ________________________________________________________________________ NPRM To Be Determined Regulatory Flexibility Analysis Required: No Small Entities Affected: No Government Levels Affected: None Agency Contact: Matthew Mitchell, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation, Washington, DC 20555-0001 Phone: 301 415-3303 Email: mam4@nrc.gov RIN: 3150-AG98 _______________________________________________________________________ 4155. DISTRIBUTION OF SOURCE MATERIAL TO EXEMPT PERSONS AND GENERAL LICENSEES AND REVISION OF 10 CFR 40.22 GENERAL LICENSE Priority: Substantive, Nonsignificant Legal Authority: 42 USC 2201; 42 USC 5841 CFR Citation: 10 CFR 40 Legal Deadline: None Abstract: The proposed rule would amend the Commission's regulations to improve the control over the distribution of source material to exempt persons and to general licensees in order to make part 40 more risk- informed. The proposed rule also would govern the licensing of source material by adding specific requirements for licensing of and reporting by distributors of products and materials used by exempt persons and general licensees. Source material is used under general license and under various exemptions from licensing requirements in part 40 for which there is no regulatory mechanism for the Commission to obtain information to fully assess the resultant risks to public health and safety. Although estimates of resultant doses have been made, there is a need for ongoing information on the quantities and types of radioactive material distributed for exempt use and use under general license. Obtaining information on the distribution of source material is particularly difficult because many of the distributors of source material to exempt persons and generally licensed [[Page 74254]] persons are not currently required to hold a license from the Commission. Distributors are often unknown to the Commission. No controls are in place to ensure that products and materials distributed are maintained within the applicable constraints of the exemptions. In addition, the amounts of source material allowed under the general license in 10 CFR 40.22 could result in exposures above 1 mSv/year (100 mrem/year) to workers at facilities that are not required to meet the requirements of parts 19 and 20. Without knowledge of the identity and location of the general licensees, it would be difficult to enforce restrictions on the general licensees. This rule also would address PRM-40-27 submitted by the State of Colorado and organization of Agreement States. Timetable: ________________________________________________________________________ Action Date FR Cite ________________________________________________________________________ NPRM To Be Determined Regulatory Flexibility Analysis Required: Yes Small Entities Affected: Governmental Jurisdictions Government Levels Affected: State Agency Contact: Gary Comfort, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards, Washington, DC 20555-0001 Phone: 301 415-8106 Email: gcc1@nrc.gov RIN: 3150-AH15 _______________________________________________________________________ 4156. ACCEPTABLE CRITERIA FOR EMERGENCY CORE COOLING SYSTEMS FOR LIGHT- WATER NUCLEAR POWER REACTORS Priority: Substantive, Nonsignificant Legal Authority: 41 USC 2201; 42 USC 5841 CFR Citation: 10 CFR 50 Legal Deadline: None Abstract: The proposed rule would amend the Commission's regulations in section 50.46 to develop performance-based acceptance criteria for fuel cladding performance during loss-of-coolant accidents. The proposed amendment would eliminate the agency's practice of approving the use of M5, a zirconium-niobium alloy, by exemptions. This rulemaking would address a petition for rulemaking submitted by the Nuclear Energy Institute (PRM-50-71). This action is intended to increase NRC's effectiveness and efficiency and to reduce unnecessary regulatory burden for licensees without adversely affecting public health and safety. Timetable: ________________________________________________________________________ Action Date FR Cite ________________________________________________________________________ NPRM 03/00/06 Final Rule 03/00/07 Regulatory Flexibility Analysis Required: No Small Entities Affected: No Government Levels Affected: None Agency Contact: Peter C. Wen, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation, Washington , DC 20555-0001 Phone: 301 415-2832 Email: pxw@nrc.gov RIN: 3150-AH22 _______________________________________________________________________ 4157. IMPLEMENT US-IAEA SAFEGUARDS AGREEMENT Priority: Substantive, Nonsignificant Legal Authority: 42 USC 2201; 42 USC 5841 CFR Citation: 10 CFR 40; 10 CFR 50; 10 CFR 60; 10 CFR 61, 1 Legal Deadline: None Abstract: The final rule will amend the Commission's regulations to implement the additional reporting and complementary access requirements contained in the US/IAEA Additional Protocol for the application of safeguards in the United States of America. Timetable: ________________________________________________________________________ Action Date FR Cite ________________________________________________________________________ Final Rule To Be Determined Regulatory Flexibility Analysis Required: No Small Entities Affected: No Government Levels Affected: None Agency Contact: Mary Adams, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation, Wshington, DC 20555-0001 Phone: 301 415-7249 Email: mta@nrc.gov RIN: 3150-AH38 _______________________________________________________________________ 4158. EXEMPTIONS FROM LICENSING AND DISTRIBUTION OF BYPRODUCT MATERIAL; LICENSING AND REPORTING REQUIREMENT Priority: Substantive, Nonsignificant Legal Authority: 42 USC 2201; 42 USC 5841 CFR Citation: 10 CFR 30; 10 CFR 31; 10 CFR 32 Legal Deadline: None Abstract: The proposed rule would amend the Commission's regulations to use the results of the reevaluation of exemptions to make parts 30, 31, and 32 more risk-informed, less prescriptive, and better ensure safety. This goal would include considering a new exemption to cover a number of types of devices that are currently used under specific or general license. Some issues related to the distribution of generally licensed devices also would be considered. This rulemaking would subsume RM 526, ``Use of Exempt Sources in Devices, 10 CFR 30.18,`` which has been terminated. Timetable: ________________________________________________________________________ Action Date FR Cite ________________________________________________________________________ NPRM To Be Determined Regulatory Flexibility Analysis Required: No Small Entities Affected: No Government Levels Affected: None Agency Contact: Catherine R. Mattsen, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards, Washington, DC 20555- 0001 Phone: 301 415-6264 Email: crm@nrc.gov RIN: 3150-AH41 _______________________________________________________________________ 4159. PERFORMANCE-BASED ECCS ACCEPTANCE CRITERIA Priority: Substantive, Nonsignificant Legal Authority: 42 USC 2201; 42 USC 5841 CFR Citation: 10 CFR 50 Legal Deadline: None Abstract: The proposed rule would amend section 50.46 to develop performance-based acceptance criteria for fuel cladding performance during loss-of-coolant accidents. Existing provisions of section 50.46 applicable to certain zirconium-based cladding materials would be supplemented by [[Page 74255]] performance-based standards for maximum peak cladding temperature and oxidation limit. The supplementary performance standard would allow licensees to use alternative cladding materials, without seeking an exemption, provided that (1) testing demonstrated that adequate ductility would be maintained, and (2) ECCS analyses showed that the new performance criteria would be satisfied. This rulemaking would also address a petition for rulemaking submitted by the Nuclear Energy Institute (PRM-50-71). Timetable: ________________________________________________________________________ Action Date FR Cite ________________________________________________________________________ NPRM 03/00/06 Regulatory Flexibility Analysis Required: No Small Entities Affected: No Government Levels Affected: None Agency Contact: Peter C. Wen, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation, Washington , DC 20555-0001 Phone: 301 415-2832 Email: pxw@nrc.gov RIN: 3150-AH42 _______________________________________________________________________ 4160. DECOUPLING OF ASSUMED LOSS OF OFFSITE POWER FROM LOSS-OF-COOLANT ACCIDENTS (LOCA) Priority: Substantive, Nonsignificant Legal Authority: 42 USC 2201; 42 USC 5841 CFR Citation: 10 CFR 50 Legal Deadline: None Abstract: The proposed rulemaking would amend the Commission's regulations to eliminate, based upon appropriate risk considerations, the assumption of a coincident loss of offsite power for postulated large-break (low frequency) loss-of-coolant accidents (LB-LOCA) in General Design Criterion (GDC) 35. The proposed rule would provide a voluntary alternative to existing requirements where specified acceptance criteria are satisfied, and would address a petition for rulemaking submitted by Bob Christie Performance Technology) (PRM-50- 77). Timetable: ________________________________________________________________________ Action Date FR Cite ________________________________________________________________________ NPRM To Be Determined Regulatory Flexibility Analysis Required: No Small Entities Affected: No Government Levels Affected: None Agency Contact: Peter C. Wen, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation, Washington , DC 20555-0001 Phone: 301 415-2832 Email: pxw@nrc.gov RIN: 3150-AH43 _______________________________________________________________________ 4161. REDUCE THE LIKELIHOOD OF FUNDING SHORTFALLS FOR DECOMMISSIONING UNDER THE LICENSE TERMINATION RULE Priority: Substantive, Nonsignificant Legal Authority: 42 USC 2201; 42 USC 5841 CFR Citation: 10 CFR 20; 10 CFR 30; 10 CFR 40; 10 CFR 70; 1 Legal Deadline: None Abstract: The proposed rule would amend the Commission's regulations by examining the addition and revision of requirements for (a) financial assurance and (b) licensee monitoring, reporting, and remediation to reduce the potential for sites that could have funding shortfalls or contamination that would complicate future decommissioning (i.e., create a future legacy site). Timetable: ________________________________________________________________________ Action Date FR Cite ________________________________________________________________________ NPRM To Be Determined Regulatory Flexibility Analysis Required: No Government Levels Affected: None Federalism: Undetermined Agency Contact: Mark Delligatti, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards, Washington, DC 20555 Phone: 301 415-8518 Email: msd@nrc.gov RIN: 3150-AH45 _______________________________________________________________________ 4162. CERTIFICATION THAT PROCEDURES UNDER 10 CFR PARTS 25 AND 95 FOR ACCESS AUTHORIZATION AND FACILITY SECURITY CLEARANCE ARE AVAILABLE IN CONNECTION WITH ACTIVITIES UNDER PARTS 60 AND 63 Priority: Substantive, Nonsignificant Legal Authority: 42 USC 2201; 41 USC 5841 CFR Citation: 10 CFR 25; 10 CFR 95 Legal Deadline: None Abstract: The direct final rule amends the Commission's regulations to clarify that persons who need access to classified information in connection with activities under 10 CFR parts 60 and 63 are included within the scope of part 25 and may apply for the necessary security clearances. The NRC is also amending its regulations to clarify that persons who have a need to use, process, store, reproduce, transmit, transport, or handle NRC classified information at any location in connection with NRC-related activities under parts 60 and 63 are included within the scope of part 95 and may request an NRC facility security clearance. Timetable: ________________________________________________________________________ Action Date FR Cite ________________________________________________________________________ Direct Final Rule To Be Determined Regulatory Flexibility Analysis Required: No Small Entities Affected: No Government Levels Affected: None Federalism: Undetermined Agency Contact: Anthony N. Tse, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards, Washington, DC 20555-0001 Phone: 301 415-6233 Email: ant@nrc.gov RIN: 3150-AH52 [[Page 74256]] _______________________________________________________________________ Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) Completed Actions _______________________________________________________________________ 4163. PERFORMANCE-BASED, RISK-INFORMED FIRE PROTECTION Priority: Substantive, Nonsignificant CFR Citation: 10 CFR 50 Completed: ________________________________________________________________________ Reason Date FR Cite ________________________________________________________________________ Final Rule 06/16/04 69 FR 33536 Final Rule Effective 07/16/04 Regulatory Flexibility Analysis Required: No Small Entities Affected: No Government Levels Affected: None Agency Contact: Joseph L. Birmingham Phone: 301 415-2829 Email: jlb4@nrc.gov RIN: 3150-AG48 _______________________________________________________________________ 4164. NUCLEAR POWER PLANT WORKER FATIGUE Priority: Substantive, Nonsignificant CFR Citation: 10 CFR 26 Completed: ________________________________________________________________________ Reason Date FR Cite ________________________________________________________________________ Subsumed into RIN 3150-AF12 07/30/04 Regulatory Flexibility Analysis Required: No Small Entities Affected: No Government Levels Affected: None Agency Contact: David Desaulniers Phone: 301 415-1043 Email: drd@nrc.gov RIN: 3150-AG99 _______________________________________________________________________ 4165. INDUSTRY CODES AND STANDARDS; AMENDED REQUIREMENTS Priority: Substantive, Nonsignificant CFR Citation: 10 CFR 50 Completed: ________________________________________________________________________ Reason Date FR Cite ________________________________________________________________________ Final Rule 10/01/04 69 FR 58804 Final Rule Effective 11/01/04 Regulatory Flexibility Analysis Required: No Small Entities Affected: No Government Levels Affected: None Agency Contact: Stephen A. Tingen Phone: 301 415-1280 Email: sgt@nrc.gov RIN: 3150-AH24 _______________________________________________________________________ 4166. LICENSING PROCEEDINGS FOR THE RECEIPT OF HIGH-LEVEL RADIOACTIVE WASTE AT A GEOLOGIC REPOSITORY: LICENSING SUPPORT NETWORK, SUBMISSIONS TO THE ELECTRONIC DOCKET Priority: Substantive, Nonsignificant CFR Citation: 10 CFR 2 Completed: ________________________________________________________________________ Reason Date FR Cite ________________________________________________________________________ Final Rule 06/14/04 69 FR 32836 Final Rule Effective 07/14/04 Regulatory Flexibility Analysis Required: No Small Entities Affected: No Government Levels Affected: None Agency Contact: Francis X. Cameron Phone: 301 415-1642 Email: fxc@nrc.gov RIN: 3150-AH31 _______________________________________________________________________ 4167. MEDICAL USE OF BYPRODUCT MATERIAL; MINOR AMENDMENTS; EXTENDING EXPIRATION DATE FOR SUBPART J Priority: Substantive, Nonsignificant Legal Authority: 42 USC 2201; 42 USC 5841 CFR Citation: 10 CFR 35 Legal Deadline: None Abstract: The final rule revises the Commission's regulations to extend the expiration date for training and experience requirements to be superceded for 1 year, from October 24, 2004, to October 24, 2005. Timetable: ________________________________________________________________________ Action Date FR Cite ________________________________________________________________________ Final Rule 09/16/04 69 FR 55736 Final Rule Effective 10/22/04 Regulatory Flexibility Analysis Required: No Small Entities Affected: No Government Levels Affected: None Federalism: Undetermined Agency Contact: Anthony N. Tse, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards, Washington, DC 20555-0001 Phone: 301 415-6233 Email: ant@nrc.gov RIN: 3150-AH47 _______________________________________________________________________ 4168. LIST OF APPROVED SPENT FUEL STORAGE CASKS: NAC- UMS REVISION (AMENDMENT 4) Priority: Substantive, Nonsignificant Legal Authority: 42 USC 2201; 42 USC 5841 CFR Citation: 10 CFR 72 Legal Deadline: None Abstract: The direct final rule amends the Commission's regulations that apply to storage of spent fuel by revising the NAC International Inc., NAC-UMS cask system listing within the ``List of Approved Spent Fuel Storage Casks'' to include Amendment No. 4 to Certificate of Compliance Number 1025. Amendment No. 4 modifies the present cask system design to incorporate vacuum drying enhancements under a general license. Specifically, the amendment increases vacuum drying time limits, delete canister removal from concrete cask requirements, revises surface contamination removal time limits, and revises allowable contents fuel assembly limits. Timetable: ________________________________________________________________________ Action Date FR Cite ________________________________________________________________________ NPRM 08/13/04 69 FR 50089 Direct Final Rule 08/13/04 69 FR 50053 Confirmation of Effective Date 10/24/04 69 FR 61592 Direct Final Rule Effective 10/27/04 Regulatory Flexibility Analysis Required: No Small Entities Affected: No Government Levels Affected: None Federalism: Undetermined Agency Contact: Jayne M. McCausland, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards, Washington, DC 20555- 0001 Phone: 301 415-6219 Email: jmm2@nrc.gov RIN: 3150-AH50 _______________________________________________________________________ 4169. CRIMINAL HISTORY CHECK: ASSESSMENT OF APPLICATION FEE Priority: Substantive, Nonsignificant Legal Authority: 42 USC 2201; 42 USC 5841 CFR Citation: 10 CFR 73 Legal Deadline: None Abstract: The final rule amends the Commission's regulations to reflect an [[Page 74257]] administrative change in the method of calculating the agency's application fee for criminal history checks requested by licensees. The amendment establishes the application fee amount as the sum of the user fee charged by the Federal Bureau of Investigation for performing criminal history checks on fingerprint records and an NRC handling charge assessed to ensure full recovery of NRC's administrative costs related to fingerprint record processing. The amendment also provides for the NRC to publish its current criminal history check fee on the NRC public website, and notify licensees by e-mail whenever the application fee is adjusted. Timetable: ________________________________________________________________________ Action Date FR Cite ________________________________________________________________________ Final Rule 10/01/04 69 FR 58820 Final Rule Effective 10/01/04 Regulatory Flexibility Analysis Required: No Small Entities Affected: No Government Levels Affected: None Federalism: Undetermined Agency Contact: Patricia A. Smith, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Office of Administration, Washington, DC 20555 Phone: 301 415-7739 Email: pas5@nrc.gov RIN: 3150-AH53 _______________________________________________________________________ 4170. ADJUSTMENT OF CIVIL PENALTIES FOR INFLATION Priority: Substantive, Nonsignificant Legal Authority: 42 USC 2201; 42 USC 5841 CFR Citation: 10 CFR 2 Legal Deadline: None Abstract: The final rule amends the Commission's regulations to adjust the maximum Civil Monetary Penalties (CMPs it can assess under statutes in NRC's jurisdiction. These changes are mandated by Congress in the Federal Civil Penalties Inflation Adjustment Act of 1990, as amended the the Debt Collection Improvement Act of 1996. The NRC's Rules of Practice are amended by adjusting the maximum CMP for a violation of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, as amended (AEA), or any regulation or order issued under the AEA from $120,000 to $130,000 per violation per day. Timetable: ________________________________________________________________________ Action Date FR Cite ________________________________________________________________________ Final Rule 10/26/04 69 FR 62393 Final Rule Effective 11/26/04 Regulatory Flexibility Analysis Required: No Small Entities Affected: No Government Levels Affected: None Federalism: Undetermined Agency Contact: Shelly D Cole, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Office of the General Counsel, Washington, DC 20555-0001 Phone: 301 415-2549 Email: sdc1@nrc.gov RIN: 3150-AH55 [FR Doc. 04-22104 Filed 12-10-04; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 7590-01-S ***************************************************************** 18 CNA: China to decide on tenders for four nuclear reactors in February Channel news asia Channelnewsasia.com A worker rides past coal-fueled cooling towers at a power plant in Guangan, Sichuan Posted: 14 December 2004 1939 hrs BEIJING: China will kick-off an ambitious plan to more than double its nuclear generating capacity by announcing in February the winners of two contracts to build four 1,000 megawatt reactors, state press said. US-based Westinghouse, France's Areva and Russia's AtomStroyExport are vying for the two multi-billion dollar contracts, each of which will be for two of the nuclear reactors, the China Daily said. The three companies have been competing for the projects since the central government gave the go ahead for construction earlier this year, but no timetable for awarding the contract had been put forward until now. Two of the reactors will be built in Sanmen in eastern Zhejiang province and the others in Yangjiang in south Guangdong province. China plans to increase its nuclear generating capacity from the present 8,700 megawatts to 36,000 megawatts by 2020, a plan that calls for the building of at least one 1,000 megawatt nuclear reactor a year over the next 16 years. The ambitious plan is being implemented in an effort to overcome ongoing energy shortages and to build up alternatives to rampant coal use which is causing serious air pollution, acid rain and global warming, the paper said. By 2020, about four percent of China's total power output will be from nuclear power, up from just under two percent today, the paper said. China currently has nine nuclear power reactors in operation, with two 1,000 megawatt Russian reactors expected to go online in the coming months. - AFP ***************************************************************** 19 Public Citizen: Court Allows NRC to Hold Informal Public Hearings in Reactor Licensing Proceedings Dec. 13, 2004 But Court Makes Clear That Challenges Can Be Made WASHINGTON, D.C.  The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) can hold informal public hearings during reactor licensing proceedings, but parties can file case-by-case challenges where such procedures fall short of ensuring a fair hearing, the 1st Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in Boston has ruled in a case filed by Public Citizen and the Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS). Until the NRC modified its 10 C.F.R. Part 2 regulations last Feb. 13, the public had the right to full, on-the-record hearings in all reactor licensing proceedings. These hearings were similar to federal court trials, and included discovery and cross-examination of witnesses. On Feb. 20, Public Citizen and NIRS challenged these new Part 2 regulations, charging that they violate the Atomic Energy Act by eliminating the right to these formal hearings in most agency adjudicatory proceedings. According to the courts decision, Should the agencys administration of the new rules contradict its present representations or otherwise flout this principle [of full and true disclosure of the facts], nothing in this opinion will inoculate the rules against future challenges. The court does not say that the NRC can scuttle the process required by federal law, said Wenonah Hauter, director of Public Citizens Critical Mass Energy and Environment Program. In fact, the decision makes it clear that NRC must permit the necessary procedures, including cross-examination, for a fair hearing decision.  The court upheld the NRCs ability to limit discovery and cross-examination, but rejected the idea that those can be eliminated, saying that the Commissions new rules may approach the outer bounds of what is permissible under the Administrative Procedures Act. It is extremely unfortunate that the court agrees that the new rules could result in less information available to the public and that the NRCs explanation for limiting discovery is thin, yet chose to give such a high degree of deference to the NRC, said Michael Mariotte, executive director of NIRS. At the same time, the decision draws a line in the sand and prevents the NRC from distorting the public hearing process any further. The court stated that the NRC came perilously close to violating [the Administrative Procedures Act] here, with [&] unfortunate consequences for efficient administrative process and effective appellate review. The court concluded, There is a victory here for the NRC, but it should be a cause for self-examination rather than jubilation. Other petitioners in this case include Citizens Awareness Network and the National Whistleblower Center.   Attorneys general from Massachusetts, New York, California, New Hampshire, Wisconsin and Connecticut filed an amicus brief in support of the petitioners.  [http://www.citizen.org/ ***************************************************************** 20 NRC: Indiana Michigan Power Company; Notice of Withdrawal of FR Doc 04-27325 [Federal Register: December 14, 2004 (Volume 69, Number 239)] [Notices] [Page 74542] From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr14de04-102] Application for Amendment to Facility Operating License The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (the Commission) has granted the request of the Indiana Michigan Power Company (the licensee) to withdraw its February 14, 2004, application for proposed amendment to Facility Operating License Nos. DPR-58 and DPR-74 for the Donald C. Cook Nuclear Plant, Units 1 and 2, located in Berrien County, Michigan. The proposed amendment would have revised the Technical Specifications (TSs) governing containment penetrations and the Containment Purge and Exhaust Isolation System, which are applicable during core alterations and movement of irradiated fuel, such that those TSs would only be applicable during the movement of recently irradiated fuel. The Commission had previously issued a Notice of Consideration of Issuance of Amendment published in the Federal Register on May 11, 2004 (69 FR 26191). However, by letter dated November 4, 2004, the licensee withdrew the proposed change. For further details with respect to this action, see the application for amendment dated February 14, 2004, and the licensee's letter dated November 4, 2004, which withdrew the application for license amendment. Documents may be examined, and/or copied for a fee, at the NRC's Public Document Room (PDR), located at One White Flint North, Public File Area O1 F21, 11555 Rockville Pike (first floor), Rockville, Maryland. Publicly available records will be accessible electronically from the Agencywide Documents Access and Management Systems (ADAMS) Public Electronic Reading Room on the internet at the NRC Web site, [http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/leaving.cgi?from=leaving FR.html&log=linklog&to=http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/adams/html] . Persons who do not have access to ADAMS or who encounter problems in accessing the documents located in ADAMS, should contact the NRC PDR reference staff by telephone at 1-800-397-4209, or 301-415-4737 or by e-mail to [ pdr@nrc.gov] . Note: Public access to ADAMS has been temporarily suspended so that security reviews of publicly available documents may be performed and potentially sensitive information removed. Please check the NRC Web site for updates on the resumption of ADAMS access. Dated at Rockville, Maryland, this 15th day of November 2004. For the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Carl F. Lyon, Project Manager, Section 1, Project Directorate III, Division of Licensing Project Management, Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation. [FR Doc. 04-27325 Filed 12-14-04; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 7590-01-P ***************************************************************** 21 NRC: Sunshine Act Notice FR Doc 04-27404 [Federal Register: December 14, 2004 (Volume 69, Number 239)] [Notices] [Page 74542-74543] From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr14de04-103] Date: Weeks of December 13, 20, 27, 2004, January 3, 10, 17, 2005. Place: Commissioner's Conference Room, 11555 Rockville Pike, Rockville, Maryland. Status: Public and closed. Matters to be Considered: Week of December 13, 2004 Tuesday, December 14, 2004: 12:55 p.m. Affirmation Session (Public Meeting) (Tentative). a. HYDRO RESOURCES, INC. Petition for Review of LBP-04-23 (Final Environmental Impact Statement Supplementation) (Tentative). 1 p.m. Briefing on Emergency Preparedness Program Initiatives (Public Meeting) (Contact: Nader Mamish, 301-415-1086). This meeting will be webcast live at the Web address--http://www.nrc.gov [http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/leaving.cgi?from=leaving FR.html&log=linklog&to=http://www.nrc.gov] Week of December 20, 2004--Tentative There are no meeting scheduled for the week of December 20, 2004. Week of December 27, 2004--Tentative There are no meetings scheduled for the week of December 27, 2004. Week of January 3, 2005--Tentative There are no meetings scheduled for the week of January 3, 2005. Week of January 10, 2005--Tentative There are no meetings scheduled for the week of January 10, 2005. Week of January 17, 2005--Tentative Wednesday, January 19, 2005: 9:30 a.m. Briefing on Human Capital Initiatives (Closed--Ex. 2). The schedule for Commission meetings is subject to change on short notice. To verify the status of meetings call (recording)--(301) 415- 1292. Contact person for more information: Dave Gamberoni, (301) 415- 1651. * * * * * The NRC Commission Meeting Schedule can be found on the Internet at: http://www.nrc.gov/what-we-do/policy-making/schedule.html [http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/leaving.cgi?from=leaving FR.html&log=linklog&to=http://www.nrc.gov/what-we-do/policy-makin g/schedule.html] . * * * * * The NRC provides reasonable accommodation to individuals with disabilities where appropriate. If you need a reasonable accommodation to participate in these public meetings, or need this meeting notice or the transcript or other information from the public meetings in another format (e.g. braille, large print), please notify the NRC's Disability program Coordinator, August Spector, at 301-415-7080, TDD: 301-415- 2100, or by e-mail at aks@nrc.gov [aks@nrc.gov] . Determinations on requests for reasonable accommodation will be made on a case-by-case basis. * * * * * This notice is distributed by mail to several hundred subscribers; if you no longer wish to receive it, or would like to be added to the distribution, please [[Page 74543]] contact the Office of the Secretary, Washington, DC 20555 (301-415- 1969). In addition, distribution of this meeting notice over the Internet system is available. If you are interested in receiving this Commission meeting schedule electronically, please send an electronic message to dkw@nrc.gov [dkw@nrc.gov] . Dated: December 9, 2004. Dave Gamberoni, Office of the Secretary. [FR Doc. 04-27404 Filed 12-10-04; 9:22 am] BILLING CODE 7590-01-M ***************************************************************** 22 [DU-WATCH] How Dangerous Is Depleted Uranium? Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 00:00:10 -0600 (CST) DU Profiling a Serial Killer To identify, capture, convict a serial killer, identify all aspects of the killer's modus operandi. That nefarious insidious, indiscriminate living rock of death, depleted uranium [DU] is a serial killer, an approach inspired by John Douglas' "Mind Hunter." Widespread myth on information super highway: U238 does not fission. Fissile is a nuclear engineering term describing materials [U235] that by human intention undergoes fission chain reactions. DU is not fissile. U238 IS fissionable; self-fissioning! Ask the Army: http://www.per.hqusareur.army.mil/services/safetydivision/radiation/_pri vate/u238.htm "USAREUR Safety " ISOTOPE U-238 (Depleted Uranium (DU)) Alpha emitter/ Self Fissioning Ask the author of "Dark Sun": http://www.mcgoodwin.net/pages/otherbooks/rr_darksun.html "for U238. . . spontaneous fission rate is 35x higher than U235 at 5.51 fissions/sec-kg. Recent wars are not the first use of DU in weapons or weapons tests. Ask the government: http://www.okgeosurvey1.gov/level2/nuke.cat.html "fusion second stage, possibly many or most . . . have a U238 fission "third" stage." Ask Greenpeace: http://archive.greenpeace.org/comms/nukes/nukes.html "The depleted uranium (U238) by- product can be used as part of the fissile core of a nuclear warhead, first to contain the nuclear process and, instants later, contributing to the fission energy release. . . . (contributing up to 50+% of final yield)." In conclusion: U238 fissions spontaneously and under extreme conditions U238 can be made to fission, as well. When a DU projectile impacts a target or penetrates a tank, it ignites, incinerates; a great deal of kinetic energy is added to the situation. Here we have extreme conditions, and possibly extreme enough to induce substantial nuclear fission. Fission of U238 would mean there would be fallout of fission product in and around destroyed targets and in the aerosol mix, as well. My understanding of physics is not sophisticated enough for me to work out the thermodynamics. However the presence of fission products would help to explain the some horrendous birth defects that have been seen. In the United States deaths due to birth defects increased nationwide during the atmospheric testing of thermonuclear weapons at Nevada Test Site [these data are not currently available to me, however they were gathered by me from annual reports from US Vital Statistics on Mortality and Morbidity, perinatal statistics, covering the years from the early 1940's to the late 1980's]. It would help explain the yet unexplained plight and illnesses of soldiers in this horrific modern-day warfare. In addition, any uranium exposure-related studies, such as for drinking water, miners, even industrial workers will not work as comparisons to the use of uranium in extreme conditions such as are a happening with DU munitions. All tanks have radio-luminous dials on their instrument panels. The radioactive materials used are radium or tritium. When DU succeeds in incinerating a tank, it also succeeds in liberating these radioactive materials into the environment, adding to the mix of what is contaminating Land and Life. The clouds of fallout from use of DU go downwind. Let's call it a nuclear war. ElaineA. Hunter, D.Sc.,D.Ac., Indepentdent Researcher, Nuclear, Environmental & Birth Defects Issues <> ><> ><> Here's the full version: Depleted Uranium Munitions: Profiling a Serial Killer Where Physics meets Epidemiology so Lets Call it a Nuclear War [From internet searcheslinks included] In order to identify, capture and convict a human serial killer, it is essential to consider all aspects of the killers modus operandi. It is essential to study all clues available. That nefarious insidious, indiscriminate living rock of death, depleted uranium [DU], is like unto a serial killer. This idea of profiling DU as a serial killer was inspired by John Douglas book Mind Hunter. The information super highway is littered with misinformation, misdirection and myths about DU. However lurking out there are also some basic science and facts. Uranium and DU are not subjects that can be put in simple term, yet its still possible with digging deeper to get past the myths. Myth #1: DU is Uranium238 [U238] and emits only alpha radiation. While thats generally true when it is freshly minted into the metal that goes into fabrication of munitions [even then it will contain other radioactive contaminates, notably U235, U234 and others if the feed stock came from reprocessed fuel rods]. This is where the living rock aspect of this serial killers profile comes into play. By the time DU munitions get to the field the radioactive daughters of DU have grown in. Those daughters are Thorium234 [Th234] and Protactinium234 [Pa234], which emit beta radiation. Not only do they emit beta radiation, they do it very quickly. The half-life of Th234 is about 24 days. Pa234 is a now-you-see-it, now-you-dont villian with two modes of decay, mostly the half-life is less than 2 minutes, the other component is about 6 days. Thus a particle of DU dust that is inhaled, if and when it undergoes radiative decay will produce not just one damaging event, but a quick series of damaging ionizing radiation to the surrounding tissues; a scatter gun effect. When half-life is short the radiation is given off quickly. When half-life is long, that radioactive element gives off its radiation slowly. In addition, the inhaled particles might be in the Th234 stage of decay and Th234 is a biohazard as a toxic chemical and a radioactive element. DU also emits gamma radiation and x-rays due to something called Bramsstrahlung [look it up!] The most important clue, the most important modus operandi of the serial killings of DU that is being overlooked is that U238 fissions. For some reason the myth is widespread that U238 does not fission and it time to explode that myth with some truth. Fissile is a term used by nuclear engineers to describe materials such as U235 that can be cause human intention to undergo a nuclear fission chain reaction. The result? Bombs with immense bang for the buck and nuclear power plants and an enormous amount of waste that nobody really knows what to do about. Enter DU, the most substantial portion of the waste, the leftovers. DU is not fissile. But wait a moment, U238 IS fissionable! It is in fact self-fissioning! Evidence as follows: Lets ask the Army: http://www.per.hqusareur.army.mil/services/safetydivision/radiation/_pri vate/u238.htm USAREUR Safety " ISOTOPE U-238 (Depleted Uranium (DU)) PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS: Alpha emitter/ Self Fissioning Biological Half Life =6 to 5000 days You see, even they have convinced themselves its just U238. Lets ask the author of Dark Sun: http://www.mcgoodwin.net/pages/otherbooks/rr_darksun.html for U238, half life is 4.51 billion years (predominantly alpha), . . . spontaneous fission rate is 35x higher than U235 at 5.51 fissions/sec-kg. [FAQ: fission of U releases 180 MeV immediately and 2.52 neutrons for U235 or 2.95 neutrons for Pu 239. Capture of even a slow n by U235 always leads to fission ("slow fission" of "fissile" material), whereas U238 must be struck by a fast neutron with KE > 1MeV to undergo fission ("fast fission" of fissionable material). The kinetic energy of fission neutrons varies from 0.5 MeV to more than 4 MeV, with a most probable energy = 0.75 MeV, the average (and median) is 2 MeV. ]. A U bomb requires separation (enrichment) of U235 from U238 (i.e., enriched from usual 0.7% to 80% or more), since a fast neutron chain reaction in natural uranium is not possible. While Gulf War I saw the first widespread use of DU as an outstanding munition for penetrating the armor of tanks [including our own; friendly fire-- put that t the top of the list of oxymorons!], it is in no way the first use of DU in weapons or weapons tests [the undeclared war on Humanity and Nature]. Lets ask the government: http://www.okgeosurvey1.gov/level2/nuke.cat.html ??=two stage, fusion second stage, possibly many or most of these will have a U238 fission "third" stage. DU has been used in thermonuclear weapon because it fissions, because it doubles the yield by fissioning. Lets ask Greenpeace: http://archive.greenpeace.org/comms/nukes/nukes.html The depleted uranium (U238) by- product can be used as part of the fissile core of a nuclear warhead, first to contain the nuclear process and, instants later, contributing to the fission energy release. Further increase in the nuclear yield is gained if the energy from the fusion stage is applied to fissioning a mantle of depleted uranium (U238). Advantages As the mantle in final stages of thermonuclear weapon fissions under extreme conditions, providing yield 'bonus' at little cost (contributing up to 50+% of final yield). Disadvantages Heavy metal toxin, slightly radioactive and difficult contaminant to clear, readily ignites in metal form. Consider for example a 200kt nuclear device in which it is reasonable to assume that about 50% of the yield derives from the fusion of deuterium and tritium (D+T) atoms and the remainder 100kt from fissioning of the depleted uranium U-238 mantle. In conclusion: U238 fissions spontaneously; under extreme conditions U238 can be made to fission, as well. When a DU projectile impact a target or penetrates a tank, it ignites, incinerates; a great deal of kinetic energy is added to the situation. Here we have extreme conditions, and possibly extreme enough to induce substantial nuclear fission. Fission of U238 would mean there would be fallout of fission products in and around destroyed targets and in the aerosol mix. My understanding of physics is not sophisticated enough for me to work out the thermodynamics. However the presence of fission products would help to explain the some horrendous birth defects that have been seen. In the United States deaths due to birth defects increased nationwide during the atmospheric testing of thermonuclear weapons at Nevada Test Site [these data are not currently available to me, however they were gathered by me from annual reports from US Vital Statistics on Mortality and Morbidity, perinatal statistics, covering the years from the early 1940s to the late 1980s]. It would help explain the yet unexplained plight and illnesses of soldiers in this horrific modern-day warfare. In addition, any uranium exposure-related studies, such as for drinking water, miners, even industrial workers would not go very far as comparisons to the use of uranium in extreme conditions such as are a happening with DU munitions. One more factor that must be considered in the mix of radioactive materials being spewed upon Iraq, Afghanistan, its citizens, and the occupying soldiers is this: all tanks have radio-luminous dials on their instrument panels. The radioactive materials used are radium or tritium. When DU succeeds in incinerating a tank, it also succeeds in liberating these radioactive materials into the environment, adding to the mix of what is contaminating Land and Life. And the clouds of fallout from use of DU do go downwind. Lets call it a nuclear war. Rev. Elaine Hunter, D.Sc., D.Ac. Independent Researcher, Nuclear, Environmental & Birth Defect Issues Fellow Royal Complementary Practioners Member Medicina Alternativa Invitee, Women of Vision Conference [1994] B.S. General Biology, University of Arizona [1982] [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> $4.98 domain names from Yahoo!. Register anything. http://us.click.yahoo.com/Q7_YsB/neXJAA/yQLSAA/Sj.0lB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> [Brought to you by HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK] Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/du-watch/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: du-watch-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ ***************************************************************** 23 [du-list] Danger Dismissed: How the Pentagon downplays the Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 19:14:29 -0800 Danger Dismissed: How the Pentagon downplays the risks of depleted uranium weapons Uranium Dust Leaves a Trail dailypress.com December 12, 2004 http://www.dailypress.com/news/specials/dp-du-day1super,0,588771.htmlstory?coll=dp-breaking-news While U.S. forces fight in the streets of Iraq, scientists are finding more evidence that the depleted uranium weapons we've given them to defeat the enemy are a hazard to friend and foe. The weapons, first used in the Persian Gulf War, provide a decided battlefield advantage. But the mildly radioactive toxic dust that results when they're used successfully also might be why veterans of the 1991 war have a disability rate three times as high as those for Vietnam and World War II vets. The Pentagon dismisses any link between those illnesses and depleted uranium. This week, the Daily Press takes an in-depth look at the latest science. You'll see why some experts think now is too soon to pull the plug on research into whether cancers and brain damage result from breathing the dust. You'll find out why the U.S. military uses an inferior process to identify whether our forces have depleted uranium in their bodies and how British vets are signing up for a better test. You'll meet Matt Rohman of York County, a Gulf War veteran who's lost all feeling in his feet and fingers, living every day in pain. Government doctors say his problems are related to the war, but they don't know how or why. Will a new generation of warriors meet the same fate? -- Posted for educational and research purposes only, ~ in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 ~ NucNews Links and Expanded Archives - http://nucnews.net ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Need a home for your web domain? We recommend our provider, Hosting Direct https://support.hostingdirect.net/cgi-bin/affiliates/clickthru.cgi?id=nucnews ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> $4.98 domain names from Yahoo!. Register anything. http://us.click.yahoo.com/Q7_YsB/neXJAA/yQLSAA/FGYolB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> To unsubscribe from this groups send a message to du-list-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com. In the body of the message type unsubscribe and send. Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/du-list/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: du-list-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ ***************************************************************** 24 [du-list] 'Silver Bullet,' Black Dust - Part One of the series Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 19:14:32 -0800 'Silver Bullet,' Black Dust - Chapter 1: Looking for a cause, looking for a cure. Many vets suspect the magic weapon of the 1991 Persian Gulf War caused their continuing health problems. The Pentagon dismisses the dangers. dailypress.com BY BOB EVANS December 12 2004 http://www.dailypress.com/news/specials/dp-du1,0,6357027,print.story?coll=dp-breaking-news For Matt Rohman, the symptoms began about the time that his unit returned to its barracks in Germany after the 1991 Persian Gulf War. First came a fatigue that sleep couldn't cure. Then severe pains in his joints. His teeth started falling out; his hands and feet went numb. Asthma grabbed his lungs. Debilitating migraine headaches squeezed his skull for days at a stretch. Sleeplessness and other symptoms followed. Now every day for Rohman, 40, begins the same: waking up in his York County home and trying to figure out how many of the pills and inhalers from the Veterans Affairs hospital he'll have to use. He wants to swallow just enough to keep his lungs working and the pain at tolerable levels. He's willing to ignore some of his problems to keep some of the drugs in their bottles. That way, his wife, 22-month-old son, 11-year-old daughter and what's left of his life don't disappear into a medicinal fog. At best, he'll spend the day with no feeling in his feet or hands, watching his kids play, pretty much stuck to a chair or the couch. You could stub out a lit cigarette on any of his fingers or toes, and he wouldn't feel it because of the neuropathy - a nerve disorder that leaves him unable to feel anything. On a good day, he's able to hobble across the room or maybe go out with his family for an hour or two. The bad days bring pain in his head too intense for him to be much help to his family or himself. Those days can also mean swelling in his extremities so severe, the tips of his toes and fingers look like toadstools and he can't walk at all. After years of testing and examinations, doctors from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs have concluded that something happened to Rohman's brain or central nervous system during the war. The neurological and other symptoms make that clear. Repeated tests, including brain and body scans, show that his brain is swollen. But there's no evidence of a physical injury or cause, those doctors' reports say, leaving them stumped about why he's so debilitated. The neurological and other symptoms that Rohman suffers are mirrored in tens of thousands of others who served in the war. When Rohman filed his final plea for VA benefits related to wartime service, the document noted that Rohman had 11 of the 13 officially recognized symptoms consistent with Gulf War service-related illness. One of the 13 applied only to women. The government lists 20 active theories of what caused these problems. But it provides no answers. It doesn't even know how many veterans have these problems or where they live. All that's known is that of the 697,000 who deployed in the war, more than 183,000 had service-related disabilities at the end of 2003, with thousands more applications pending. That's 26 percent of the total, three to five times higher than the rate of disability after World War II (9 percent), the Korean War (5 percent) and the Vietnam War (9 percent) for a comparable period. All from a war that lasted 100 hours, while the others went on for years. Why? Perhaps it was the highly potent bug repellent that the military used to keep away the sand fleas and other pests in the deserts of Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Perhaps it was the experimental pills that troops were ordered to take to ward off the effects of disease and chemical weapons. Perhaps it was the residue of their own government's most effective weapon for defeating enemy armor - the tank-killing projectiles made from depleted uranium. In the past few years, while the media and public have been paying attention to another war in the region, doctors and researchers have been finding out more about depleted uranium and how it might be responsible for some of the problems suffered by veterans of the Gulf War. Some of this research hasn't been made public yet, while other findings made ripples only among doctors and professors still in the hunt for a cause and a cure. There's now physical evidence that depleted uranium, once in the body, migrates to the brain, lungs, bones and testicles of rats and mice. Researchers have found that even a single particle placed in contact with human bone cells can set off a chain reaction of cell and chromosomal abnormalities of the type thought to cause cancer. They've also found that rats with depleted uranium in their bodies develop tumors and cellular mutations consistent with cancer. And that mice who breathe in tiny bits of the metal - just like the soldiers on the battlefield - get genetic mutations thought to be indicative of cancer. PENTAGON UNWILLING TO FUND NEW RESEARCH INTO ILLNESS Despite their efforts, these researchers haven't been able to show why brain scans on Gulf War vets show abnormalities that don't appear in scans of other servicemen and women who didn't go to the war. They just know that it's further proof that there's a real problem among those vets. They also can't say why men and women who deployed in the Gulf War are twice as likely as others their age to get a fatal neurological disorder known as ALS - Lou Gehrig's disease. The questions demand answers. To get them, more money and scientific patience is needed, these scientists say. But the main source of that money for the past 13 years - the Pentagon - says it isn't interested in pursuing new research into the health problems of its former soldiers. Especially when it comes to studying the health effects of using depleted uranium on the battlefield, a use that gives the United States and its allies a lopsided advantage in ground wars. Pentagon officials have long dismissed the possibility that any of the veterans' problems are the result of the radioactive toxic dust that results when depleted uranium weapons hit hard targets. This fall, they released a $6 million study that they labeled "Capstone" - a title picked because they say it should close the book on whether inhaling depleted uranium on the battlefield is a health risk worth considering. A number of scientists say it's too soon to stop investigating the possible dangers of these weapons, especially when there have been so few experiments that show what happens when animals or humans inhale the special type of dust created when depleted uranium weapons hit their targets. None of the recent research that points to possible problems with the weapons was included or addressed in Capstone, not even the work performed by government scientists or researchers financed by the Army and Department of Defense. The Army officer who oversaw the study says that's because there was a conscious effort to base the work on "mainstream science," instead of "preliminary data." Critics say that's the government's way of simply ignoring the emerging and potentially damning evidence on the subject. With the building body of data, they say, this is no time to label something the final word on depleted uranium's dangers. The skeptics include a panel of scientists, doctors and veterans appointed by the Bush administration to study the nature and status of research into the cause of the veterans' illnesses. The panel issued its first report last month and said more research into possible health effects from depleted uranium was needed. "We're not finished," says Lea Steele, the panel's scientific director. The committee's report says poorly planned and administered research programs are partly to blame for having so little to show for the $247 million spent on research into Gulf War illnesses so far. It points no fingers, but it does note that 74 percent of that money has been controlled by the Pentagon and that most of it has gone to support the now-discounted idea that stress and psychological problems account for the physical symptoms that vets suffer. Steve Smithson is a member of the panel and the assistant director of the American Legion's Veterans Affairs and Rehabilitation Division. He says the Pentagon has been trying to prematurely end the debate about possible health hazards from depleted uranium for years. "These are very effective weapons," he says, "and they want to keep them." WEAPONS' POTENTIAL DANGERS WERE KNOWN FOR DECADES Depleted uranium was used in combat for the first time in the Gulf War. The weapons proved so effective, troops began calling them "The Silver Bullet," in honor of their near-magical ability to kill the enemy. The weapons enable U.S. tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles to fire accurately and decisively from much greater distances than other anti-tank weapons used in ground combat. That means U.S. troops can kill the enemy before the enemy can fight back. Last year, when Operation Iraqi Freedom began, the weapons' effectiveness played a big role. It was a reason commanders said they could whip Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein with a smaller, lighter - but more mobile - force than they used in the 1991 Gulf War. Before that, many people thought that depleted uranium wasn't much more than low-level nuclear garbage. Depleted uranium is the byproduct of making "enriched uranium" for nuclear weapons and fuel. The process involves stripping natural uranium of its most radioactive components for use in bombs and power plants. What's left is "depleted" uranium. In the early days of making nuclear weapons, this byproduct was considered a problematic waste. But almost immediately, weapons researchers began trying to make something with it. It took more than 20 years, but by the late 1970s, they'd succeeded. The Army, Navy and Air Force each had a weapon using the material. But they had to wait to see their creation anywhere except a test range. The first war that involved U.S. forces using tanks against hostile forces who also had tanks was the Persian Gulf War. One of the weapons' special properties creates what all acknowledge is the downside of these weapons. When those weapons strike something hard, they slice through the target, getting sharp where other metals get dull. They get sharper by shedding millions and millions of tiny bits of flaming depleted uranium, spitting out the bits like shavings from a pencil in a high-speed sharpener. Once cool, those bits become mildly radioactive toxic black dust particles, most of them small enough to inhale deep into the lungs. The Capstone study says those toxic particles will likely remain in the lungs for years. U.S. researchers have known that the weapons' use created a long-lived radiological risk to the lungs since at least the early 1980s. They've also known that these tiny bits of black dust pose a potentially catastrophic health hazard for troops on a battlefield. None of that was revealed publicly when the weapons were put to use. It wasn't until the mid-1990s that the government officially and publicly acknowledged that troops in the Gulf War had been exposed to this hazard and should have been warned and trained about the dangers beforehand. By then, thousands and thousands of troops had started suffering the debilitating pains, neurological problems and other symptoms. Rohman was one of them. 'WE ACTUALLY SLEPT UNDENEATH DESTROYED TANKS ...' For three months after the fighting stopped, Rohman and his buddies in a 3rd Armored Division combat engineer squadron were ordered to crawl around in the black dust left over from successful shots of depleted uranium. He was ordered to live and breathe in it while finishing the job of destroying damaged Iraqi tanks and munitions, to make sure that the enemy's equipment couldn't be used again. "We actually slept underneath destroyed tanks and stuff because we figured they wouldn't fire at their own destroyed vehicles," Rohman says. For months, the black dust covered many of those vehicles, rubbing off on Rohman's clothing, getting on his skin and often into his food and water. Hundreds of other soldiers were ordered to do the same work, while thousands of others might have come in contact with the dust through curiosity or happenstance. Neither Rohman nor the military can say how many of them got sick like he did. Rohman says none of the other soldiers from his unit came from nearby towns or cities, so he lost touch with them while focusing on his own deteriorating health. Researchers say the military didn't keep, or pursue, the kind of information that would help them make such determinations. They also say one of the biggest obstacles to solving the riddle of the illnesses is that people who appear to have the same experiences reacted differently - some getting ill and others staying well. Many soldiers didn't pay the black dust any notice during the war because the military had never told them about the dangers. "We didn't know any different," Rohman says. The Pentagon acknowledged seven years after the war was over that it should have provided training that advised troops to avoid contact with the dust or to use safety masks and suits in the situations that Rohman described. Instructions on depleted uranium weren't added to the Army's regular training program until the late 1990s. Since then, the requirements for telling troops about depleted uranium have been gradually relaxed for troops who don't fire or handle the weapons. The Army has a long list of medical and training requirements that must be met before a soldier is supposed to be sent off to war. The checklist for Transportation Corps soldiers deploying from Fort Eustis to Iraq is long. But for the past two years, it hasn't included a requirement that soldiers in transportation units receive depleted uranium hazard training, even though the Army's own radiological experts said in 1997 that they should. Military and medical officials say it's too early to tell what the effect will be on troops involved in the continuing fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq. Department of Defense policy - spurred by members of Congress critical of the way that the military handled health complaints after the Gulf War - requires all soldiers, sailors and airmen who come home from overseas wars to fill out a multipage questionnaire about their health and what they experienced. The only specific mention of depleted uranium exposure on the questionnaire involves one item near the end of a list of 22 possible exposure risks. The list includes such mundane items as "paints," "sand/dust" and "vehicle or truck exhaust fumes." Some soldiers returning from Iraq say that because they were never given instruction on the possible hazards, they didn't know what to choose when given the options of "No," "Sometimes" or "Often" on this question. Army, Air Force and Navy officials say anyone who checks "Sometimes" or "Often" is questioned further and tested, if necessary. They also say any man or woman in the military who deployed and asks for a test for depleted uranium will be given the test, no further questions asked. Department of Veterans Affairs officials say the same applies to those who served in the Persian Gulf War. PROMISE TO PERFORM TESTS NOT FULFILLED FOR VETERANS Yet, Rohman's medical records show that he made VA officials aware of his exposure to depleted uranium six years ago. He's sure that he told them earlier, but many of his records have been lost, and the earliest date that he can document is 1998. When the Daily Press called the VA administrator responsible for the local testing program to find out why this problem persisted, she immediately agreed that a mistake had been made and took steps to bring Rohman in for evaluation. He still hasn't been tested. It isn't clear whether things have gotten any better for veterans of the more recent fighting in Iraq. The Government Accountability Office, Congress' investigative arm, checked in the past year the health forms filled out by more than 1,000 troops who'd returned from the Gulf War. It found that very few of those who'd chosen "Sometimes" or "Often" got tested, said Dan Fahey, a congressional adviser who participated in a briefing on the study. Steve Robinson, executive director of the National Gulf War Resource Center, a veterans advocacy group, says he's talked to dozens of soldiers just back from the current war who told him that doctors can't diagnose their ills but have refused to test them for depleted uranium exposure. The soldiers even showed him medical records and other paperwork to prove it, he says. They won't go public for fear retaliation from the military. Robinson and Smithson say they won't be surprised if there are thousands of veterans with undiagnosed, unexplained illnesses once the totals are in from Operation Iraqi Freedom and its aftermath. Rohman says he won't be surprised, either. He wonders whether this new generation of warriors will succumb to the same undetected poisons that he believes hit him. His brothers still wear military uniforms and could be called to combat tomorrow - one a Marine the other in the Army. PENTAGON: WE'RE CONVINCED OUR METHOD IS ACCURATE The Pentagon will say only that as of October, 20,000 troops had been evacuated from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for noncombat-related illnesses and injuries and that, on average, about 5,800 troops are on "medical hold" each day because military doctors haven't finished diagnosing or treating them. Only five people have tested positive for depleted uranium from the most recent war - all victims of friendly fire who had depleted uranium shrapnel in their bodies, the Pentagon says. Getting tests for depleted uranium exposure from the U.S. military and VA might be a waste of time, anyway, say Robinson and experts who have developed those tests for other countries. "Even the test they offer is a less-than-respected test," Robinson says. Scientists overseas have spent years creating a more accurate method of detecting whether there are even tiny amounts of depleted uranium in the human body. They say the U.S. government relies on testing procedures and equipment that have a high margin of error and are capable of discerning the presence of depleted uranium only in limited circumstances. They say it's not much of a test if you really want to find radioactive and toxic dust in particles small enough to the inhaled. The British government officially takes the same stance as the United State on the dangers of depleted uranium, but it's financed a much more exacting test capable of finding out whether someone has even small quantities of depleted uranium in their system. It doesn't settle whether the depleted uranium is harmful, but it can identify the veterans' who definitely have it in their bodies. That would be an important step forward, several researchers say. British veterans of the Persian Gulf War began signing up for the tests in late September. Rohman would like to take it, but the U.S. military says it has no need to use it or even find out how it works. "We're convinced that our method is sufficiently sensitive and accurate enough," said Lt. Col. Mark Melanson, manager of the health physics program at the U.S. Army Center for Health Promotion and Preventive Medicine, the Army's public health agency. 'OUR HUMAN RESEARCH ... HAS A LOT OF SEVERE LIMITATIONS' He says the government labs used to identify soldiers with depleted uranium in their bodies can detect the substance as long as there are at least 3 to 5 nanograms of uranium per liter in a day's worth of urine. The British test also involves a 24-hour urine sample. But it can accurately detect depleted uranium when only 0.1 nanogram of uranium per liter is present, making it capable of detecting amounts 30 times smaller or more. The British also say their degree of uncertainty at these lower levels is less than 1 percent, a much smaller margin of error than the U.S. tests. Melanson and other U.S. officials say anything below 3 nanograms of uranium in such a sample is clearly inconsequential. They cite studies of the known, respected science involving the health effects of uranium, specifically studies by the U.S. Institute of Medicine and the World Health Organization. But the co-author of the Institute of Medicine study, as well as an epidemiologist who was asked to review it to make sure it was scientifically sound, say that wouldn't be an accurate reading of the work at all. Establishing a lower limwit for inhalation of depleted uranium hasn't happened, they say, because too little is known about how the substance reacts with tissues in various parts of the body. "We have no idea," said Carolyn Fulco, the co-author of the Institute of Medicine study. Beate Ritz, an epidemiologist and expert on cancer at the University of California, Los Angeles, agrees: "Our human research, as valuable as it is, has a lot of severe limitations." Ritz, one of the scientists and health experts whom the institute asked to review its work to ensure accuracy, says it might take decades of following Gulf War veterans to have even a hazy picture when it comes to cancer. Fulco and others note that the Institute of Medicine and the World Health Organization said explicitly that the data on depleted uranium's health effects were limited and that more research needed to be done. Still, Melanson thinks that the 50 years of research considered by the studies is enough to show that low levels of uranium or depleted uranium in a human's blood, lungs and other body tissue isn't a problem. Most of that research involved uranium millers, miners and processors. It fed the government health standards that the Pentagon used in the Capstone study to establish that inhaling or breathing the dust from the weapons shouldn't be considered a significant health risk on the battlefield. Alexandra Miller, a radiobiologist at the Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute, says using that research to dismiss the possible health effects of depleted uranium weapons is a mistake. There are many studies of uranium miners' health that indicate problems, she says. In addition, she says, the studies of miners and millers are, in many ways, irrelevant to the experiences of soldiers on the battlefield. When it comes to depleted uranium, she says, there simply hasn't been enough research on animals to know what happens when rats or humans inhale the dust from these weapons. The amount of depleted uranium dust that can be inhaled without harm simply isn't known yet, she says. "We don't really know," she said. "Not even for a rat." ----- Of Rodents and Radiation - Chapter 2:From the nose to the brain. Experiments with rats find that inhaling dust from depleted uranium weapons can cause genetic mutations. dailypress.com BY BOB EVANS December 12 2004 http://www.dailypress.com/news/specials/dp-du2,0,6750244,print.story?coll=dp-breaking-news In a New Mexico laboratory, researchers have been sliding rats into clear Plexiglas tubes with small holes at the end, openings just big enough for the animals' noses to poke through. Once in the tubes, the rats' noses jut into a central space called a plenum. All the air that they breathe comes through that space. The plenum sits at the center of the tubes, like the hub of a big Plexiglas wheel. When the experiment begins, the air in the plenum is laced with carefully measured, breathable specks of depleted uranium. Depending on the dose, the rats spend 15 minutes to six hours in the tubes, breathing the uranium-infused air. The researchers carefully have determined the amount of uranium and the length of time to mimic what happens to soldiers on a battlefield. Afterward, some rats are dissected to find out whether the uranium that they breathed shows up in their brains, lungs, livers, larynxes, tracheas or bronchial lymph nodes. The rest of the rats will meet the same fate a few days, weeks or a year later - to test long-term effects from the same exposure. The goal is to see whether the tiny pieces of uranium have migrated through their bodies into places that might explain the illnesses suffered by veterans of the 1991 Persian Gulf War. Lovelace Respiratory Research Institute in New Mexico, home of the Plexiglas tubes and the rats, is one of the few places in the world where scientists are able to accurately simulate what happens when impurities in the air are inhaled. Some of the groundbreaking research on the effects of air pollution has been done there, and the U.S. military has turned to this lab since the 1970s to try to determine the health effects of inhaling depleted uranium. Lovelace's labs typically are used to investigate hazards to the lungs. Government engineers and scientists have known for decades that the tiny bits of depleted uranium created when the weapons are used pose a health hazard in the lungs and kidneys. They've used computers and other methods to try to determine the details. The Pentagon has spent millions of dollars to prove that there's no significant radiological or toxicological risk from the pieces of depleted uranium on a battlefield that are small enough to be inhaled. Their studies have focused on potential damage to the kidneys and lungs, where decades of science based on studies of uranium miners, millers and processors predict the most significant effects will be shown. Scientists in New Mexico are looking at those organs, but they have their eye on a different, more important target this time: the brain. In the controversy over depleted uranium weapons, nearly everyone agrees that soldiers and others in the immediate area of a blast at the time of impact might be endangered. They also agree that people who later crawl around in the dust or on the destroyed vehicles should use protective gear. The big disagreement involves whether the dust can simply blow around in the desert away from the explosion, be inhaled, and kill people or make them sick. If this type of minimal contact is harmless, it means depleted uranium is an unlikely cause of the debilitating illnesses suffered by many Gulf War veterans. If inhaling just a little bit is shown to cause dysfunction in the brain, central nervous system or other parts of the body, the U.S. military might be forced to give up using one of its most effective weapons for land warfare. The Pentagon has dismissed this danger repeatedly and says there's no serious harm from inhaling depleted uranium on the battlefield - not when someone is in a tank struck by one of the weapons and certainly not afterward, from the dusty residue. A number of scientists say that's a premature conclusion and that important questions need to be answered first. SIMULATED MARCH THROUGH DESERT YIELDS A SURPRISE One of those scientists, professor Johnnye L. Lewis of the University of New Mexico's College of Pharmacy, is trying to find out what happens to the brain and other parts of the central nervous system when someone inhales a lot of the dust and what happens when they inhale a little. Unless there's evidence that depleted uranium is somehow getting into the brain or central nervous system, it's unlikely to be linked to the neurological and physical problems that many Gulf War veterans suffer. Doctors haven't been able to figure out why the veterans have those medical problems, and little is known about the effect that depleted uranium has on the brain. The Army officially says depleted uranium is entirely safe in these scenarios, but it does want to know more. So it's financing Lewis' work. Some of the tasks in Lewis' experiment are done with colleagues at Lovelace. But most take place in her lab at the university, a few miles away. Before exposing the rats to uranium, Lewis and her colleagues spent months analyzing data, reading research reports and talking to Army generals about how troops move around during a war. They had to find other labs, such as Lovelace and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, where the different parts of the experiment and analysis could be authoritatively done. The goal was to design experiments that duplicated, as accurately as possible, what real soldiers on a battlefield encountered, Lewis says. Once the scientists were satisfied, the Lovelace rats went to work. In the first year, Lewis and her co-workers tested what they called the "tank-impact scenario," which involved exposing several groups of rats to very high doses of uranium (500 milligrams per cubic meter of air) for 15 minutes. That experiment simulated what would happen to someone in an enclosed area, such as a tank, when a depleted uranium weapon struck it. What came next - detecting the very small quantities of uranium that entered the rats' bodies - takes specialized equipment, Lewis says. To analyze the rats' brains, for instance, Lewis and her co-workers used a machine to cut the brains into slices thinner than 4/10,000th of an inch. She also had to find another lab capable of detecting small quantities of depleted uranium in such small samples without destroying them. Lewis picked Livermore, where a particle accelerator the size of a football field bombards the brain slices with protons. The barrage of protons produces X-ray signals and other readings that allow scientists to determine the presence or absence of uranium and other substances, as well as how much there is in the sample being tested. When the Livermore scientists did their analysis during the first stage of the experiment, they found no evidence of uranium in the rats' brains, Lewis says. Some of the rats died from kidney damage before they were scheduled to be sacrificed and analyzed, but this was not too surprising. Years of research on uranium miners, millers and processors showed that the kidneys are particularly vulnerable during exposure to uranium dust. Then the scientists began testing what they call the "march-through scenario," simulating what might happen if soldiers were ordered to walk through an area where tanks or other equipment had been hit with depleted uranium weapons. In this scenario, the rats are exposed to very small quantities of uranium (only 1 milligram per cubic meter of air) for six hours, Lewis says. Nothing remarkable happened. The next phase involved finding out what happened if the insides of the rats' noses had been irritated by dust, like the small-grained Iraqi desert sand, before the animals are exposed to the uranium. To do this, the lab used a component of bacteria that produces the same kind of bodily reaction as the powdery sand that blasts at troops in the Iraqi desert. After the irritation, the rats got the low dose of uranium in their air tubes. This time, the rats had an important story to tell. "In that case, in a small subset of animals, we did see uranium in the brain," she says. The depleted uranium was even tracked from one part of the brain to another, linked by a neural pathway. That means it could go deeper in the brain, Lewis says. The results are preliminary and involved only two of six rats in one group, But Lewis says the implications could be very important as the experiment is repeated and if the same results occur. She says it will be at least a year or more before she can say for sure how significant her findings are. Lewis expects this phase to produce the best test of what most soldiers experienced in the war. "If somebody's inhaling dust in the desert, they're likely to get some sort of irritation," she says. Later, when they walk or drive near battle sites, the dust would have been kicked up by others walking or driving ahead of them or by the winds, she says. EXPERIMENTS COULD EXPLAIN HARM TO NERVOUS SYSTEMS Scientists generally think that the body has a natural protective barrier called the blood/brain barrier. When impurities, such as toxins, get into the body, they are generally absorbed into the bloodstream. Blood cells, enzymes and other factors then break down those toxins before they get to the brain, protecting it from harm. It appears that the uranium found in those two rat brains bypassed that process and is the result of direct neural transfer, Lewis says. That means the uranium probably went directly from nerve endings in the nose to the olfactory tissue in the brain, bypassing cleansing agents in the blood. "I feel some confidence that this is a plausible pathway," Lewis says. If so, toxic aspects of inhaled uranium might also be carried directly from nerves in the nose to other parts of the brain to do damage elsewhere - and might explain many of the problems that Gulf War veterans are having, she says. Those organs and parts haven't been looked at yet, she says. If the migration of uranium to the brain can be repeated with more rats, the next step is to see how far into the brain the uranium can go, whether it reaches the spinal cord and central nervous system, and what effect it has, Lewis says. The big question is whether depleted uranium can be linked to the neurological problems experienced by Gulf War veterans. Mohamed B. Abou-Donia and other Duke University researchers tested that possibility with rats and found evidence that the answer is yes. Because of tight restrictions placed on depleted uranium (the military and Department of Energy strictly regulate its ownership and use), they used a chemical compound very similar to the toxicity and radiological properties of what's used in military weapons. The substitute, uranyl acetate, is frequently used by military and other government researchers as a substitute for depleted uranium in experiments. Abou-Donia and the scientists at Duke injected rats with various concentrations of the compound and found that high doses killed the rodents. Low doses significantly affected their ability to perform several sensory and motor-skills tests, such as gripping and walking on a beam. When they examined those animals' brains, they found changes in chemicals that affect how well the brain could function. "The present results suggest that low-dose multiple exposure with uranyl acetate causes long-term neurobehavioral deficits after the initial exposure has ceased," the Duke scientists wrote in the journal Pharmacology, Biochemistry and Behavior in 2002. They said the work showed that the weapons' use could affect the central nervous system, as well as the peripheral or neuromuscular system of the body, and that more research was needed. SCANS OF THE BRAIN SHOW REDUCED CHEMICAL LEVELS Rats and mice can tell us much about how chemicals will affect the human body. But sometimes, exposures that cause damage to the little animals do nothing to humans. Do the illnesses suffered by Gulf War vets have a link to the brain? A number of researchers have used brain-scanning equipment to study that question and say the answer is yes. Using the scanners to look at the brains of sick Gulf War veterans, they've consistently found evidence of reduced levels of chemicals required for proper brain functions. In the veterans, the scans zeroed in on parts of the brain thought related to chronic fatigue syndrome and the veterans' neurological problems. Researchers say it's unlikely that these brain abnormalities existed before the war because the soldiers' behavior, physically and mentally, would have been noticeably impaired and prevented deployment. But the tests can't confirm what caused the problems or exactly when they began. The suspects for the cause include depleted uranium dust, the use of heavy-duty bug spray, experimental anti-chemical-warfare medicine, vaccinations for diseases peculiar to the Persian Gulf region, genetics and exposures to toxins after the war. Some of those are known to affect the brain; others are being evaluated. So far, the uranium in Lewis' experiments has shown up only in the olfactory bulbs of the rats' brains, an area where damage isn't likely to cause the symptoms that Gulf War vets suffer. The smaller particles might be more dangerous, she says, because they're more likely to end up in the nose and therefore are available for transport into the brain. These smaller, lighter particles are also the ones more likely to be in the air - at nose level - hours, days or months after use of depleted uranium weapons, kicked up by vehicles, boots or winds. Lewis suspects that in subsequent experiments, with longer exposures or higher doses, there will be evidence of depleted uranium migrating deeper and deeper into the brain, past the olfactory bulb and into places that might be linked to the debilitation that some of the veterans have experienced. It's possible some people, and some rats, are more capable of withstanding the onslaught of the dust or uranium, perhaps because of stress, genetics or a combination of factors, she says. That would explain why some rats' brains succumbed to the one-two punch of dust and uranium and others didn't. It might also explain why some soldiers have come down with these symptoms, while others in their unit didn't. SUSPECTED PREDICTOR OF CANCER FOUND IN VETS' BLOOD Lewis says she hasn't completed the part of her research that involves looking at whether the inhaled uranium changes the neurochemicals in the brain - the chemicals that make the brain function well or poorly. That would help show whether inhaled uranium affected the neurological health of veterans exposed to it. Her research follows work by other scientists who found that tiny pellets of depleted uranium implanted in the bodies of rats have resulted in collections of uranium in the brains, bones, kidneys, testicles and lymph nodes. Terry C. Pellmar, a researcher at the Armed Forces Radiobiological Research Institute, found evidence of changes in the brain as a result of those depleted uranium implants. Some of the rats initially exhibited loss of mental function, but the effects weren't substantial or long-term, she says. Tests given to Gulf War vets with shrapnel in their bodies have shown no demonstrable evidence of impairment in their mental capacities either, she says. Memory loss, confusion and other mental impairments are among the symptoms that other veterans of the war complain of. The Pentagon and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs have been following several dozen Gulf War veterans who have small pieces of depleted uranium shrapnel in their bodies, testing them periodically for various health problems and indicators of carcinogenic and genetic abnormalities. A few soldiers thought to have inhaled depleted uranium dust are also in the study. The most recent installment of this continuing study said no significant harm to the soldiers had been found, other than the obvious wounds of war that they'd suffered. The Pentagon often points to this research when asked about the health effects of the weapons, noting that these veterans likely have larger quantities of depleted uranium in their bodies than anyone who inhaled some dust on a battlefield. What Pentagon officials don't mention is what some researchers in the program think is a potentially important finding. Richard J. Albertini of the University of Vermont's Vermont Cancer Center is one of several co-authors of the shrapnel study. His part of the work included examining cells taken from the veterans to look for genetic changes that might prove harmful. Albertini's specialty involves research into the hypoxanthine-guanine phosphoribosyl transferase, or HPRT, gene, one of the 30,000 genes that every human being has in their cells. Albertini is particularly interested in HPRT genes in T-lymphocytes - white blood cells important to the body's ability to ward off diseases, including cancers. Albertini said blood samples from three of the 39 veterans in the most recently published shrapnel study showed an increased frequency of mutations of the HPRT gene, compared with earlier samples. The three-out-of-39 ratio is a statistically significant number, the study says. Many scientists think that increased frequency of mutation in HPRT genes is a predictor of cancer. That's why HPRT was included in the study. Albertini says the link between HPRT mutations and cancer hasn't been proven. A much larger study than those available to date would be needed to know for sure. Then would come research to determine what rate of increase might be indicative of a greater risk of cancer. Right now, he says, "it's a canary in a coal mine. Just because the canary dies does not mean the miner is going to die, but it's a warning." Cancer isn't one of the documented problems experienced by Gulf War veterans, Albertini says. Experts say it's too early to tell whether increased rates of cancer will be part of the problems those veterans suffer, though some forms might become evident now. RATS THAT INHALED PARTICLES, DEVELOPED MUTATIONS At this point, what's important about the mutation-rate increase is that it might indicate the possibility that veterans exposed to depleted uranium face increased risk of cancer in the future, Albertini says. The increased mutations in the HPRT gene among veterans spurred another researcher in New Mexico, Vernon Walker, to hook up more rats to tubes to breathe in uranium. "Lo and behold, he did get an increase in the frequency" of mutations of the HPRT genes in the rats, Albertini says. "So we think this sort of confirmed our hypothesis." That hypothesis says "the important exposures are from inhalation, where all blood cells can be exposed, not from the shrapnel in a few where the exposure is local," Albertini adds. All blood flows through the lungs and lymph nodes as part of the process of carrying oxygen to all parts of the body, while only a small fraction of someone's blood would come close enough to the tiny pieces of embedded shrapnel in veterans, Albertini says. He says it makes sense that even a tiny piece of radioactive dust in someone's lung would have the potential to alter the genetics of more blood cells than shrapnel or a pellet. That's why he thinks the potential for long-term harm from inhaled uranium dust is greater than that from shrapnel, especially given the small pieces the military leaves in the body when its doctors decide that more damage would result from surgery. Albertini says he'd like to test that theory further, but so far, the military hasn't made any samples available from troops with more recent exposures. Obtaining newer samples is crucial for determining whether there's a link between depleted uranium weapons and the mutations and, ultimately, cancer, Albertini says. The rate of mutations in HPRT genes returns to normal after a period of time, he says, so the veterans of the 1991 war won't exhibit this warning sign forever. In the most recent examination of the veterans with shrapnel, he says, only two people exhibited the increased mutations seen in the earlier study. That doesn't mean the other soldiers aren't at a higher risk of getting cancer, he says. The HPRT gene mutations are a marker that indicates that the radiation is having an effect on the blood. But they aren't the mutations suspected of causing cancer themselves. Those mutations are likely continuing, if the theory is correct, and could cause the chain reaction of effects that result in cancer, Albertini says. Samples from troops exposed to depleted uranium dust in Operation Iraqi Freedom haven't been made available yet, but Albertini says further studies of how HPRT genes react in relation to depleted uranium are being planned. The object is to determine whether the relatively weak alpha radiation from small pieces of inhaled depleted uranium cause the type of mutations in the HPRT genes that were seen in the veterans, Albertini says. Other researchers have seen similar genetic effects from exposure to depleted uranium. A German study found that 16 British soldiers who reported inhaling depleted uranium during their wartime service had five times the frequency of chromosomal aberrations as a group of 40 people who hadn't been exposed to the dust. The aberrations were of the type known to be indicative of radiation that alters the atomic structure of matter, the study said. None of the British veterans had depleted uranium shrapnel wounds. Whether those veterans actually inhaled depleted uranium - and how much of it is left in their bodies all these years later - is unknown, the German scientists wrote. At the time of their research, there was no reliable way to measure whether someone had inhaled very small amounts. The German researchers noted that studies had found the type of uranium that results in the black dust from depleted uranium weapons remains in rat lungs longer than other forms of uranium. The high, intense heat that's part of forming the depleted uranium dust makes the particles not as prone to be dissolved by the blood and other fluids. On one of the few occasions when scientists have been able to perform an autopsy on a Gulf War veteran thought to have inhaled the black dust, lymph nodes related to the lungs showed unexpectedly high concentrations of particles from the decay of uranium, the German study says. RESEARCH INDICATES A LONG LIFE IN THE LUNGS Depleted uranium dust created after the weapons' use and small enough to inhale lasts for years in simulated lung fluid, according to a Pentagon study released this fall. The study says the smaller pieces tended to take longer to dissolve half their mass. That means those bits, though small, are in contact with living tissue for a long time. Researchers concerned with the safety of the weapons say that could prove important, as the conventional wisdom in science says that chemical toxicity, not radioactivity, is the likely source of any possible ills from inhaled depleted uranium. Like other heavy metals (such as mercury, zinc and lead), uranium is a toxic chemical. Like those other metals, it's also a naturally occurring element. Nature puts a certain level of those metals into the food chain, the air we breathe and the water we drink. Mankind and modern life has added more, via air pollution and working with what's found in nature to create plumbing, machines, weapons and other tools. As a result, our bodies and their waste products, including urine, contain some degree of all these metals. How much is a safe level and how much is too much is the question, whether it be figuring out safe levels of mercury in fish or how much black depleted uranium dust a soldier can inhale without incident. The toxic effects of these metals typically act like poisons carried through the bloodstream. They collect in parts of organs - often the kidneys or liver - and can destroy them. Uranium miners, millers and processors exposed to too much uranium dust typically have kidney damage; little tubes in the organs break down and malfunction. Depleted uranium's radiological properties act differently. Until very recently, scientists thought that the effects of radioactivity occurred in very predictable paths and patterns, depending on the material, how big it was and whether it was emitting alpha, gamma or X-rays. Like all uranium, depleted uranium emits mostly alpha radiation. Typically, alpha radiation isn't considered very dangerous because its power doesn't go very far and is easily blocked by a sheet of paper, clothing, the top layers of skin and other mundane items. But once an alpha radiation source gets in the body, it's another story. Then there's no shield to protect the cells and tissue. The radius of alpha radiation is relatively short, but it's long-lasting and therefore powerful. STUDY ANSWERS ALL QUESTIONS, PENTAGON SAYS Pentagon and other government officials say risk from that radiation is negligible because the soldiers, even those caught in a tank hit with the weapons, wouldn't inhale enough depleted uranium dust to create a problem. The military spent five years and $6 million to gather data on what actually happens when tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles are hit with depleted uranium. It released the data and its findings this fall in what it called the Capstone Study - a title designed to tell people that their research was the final word on the subject. Real vehicles and vehicle parts were hit with depleted uranium weapons in a large building in Aberdeen, Md. Sophisticated machines capable of gathering and counting millions of tiny pieces of dust recorded the data. Researchers with respirators, wearing devices that could also collect the depleted uranium and other dust particles in the air, wiped the vehicles down afterward and examined the insides. It was the most complete and sophisticated examination of what happens when depleted uranium weapons strike a vehicle, Lt. Col. Mark Melanson says. He manages health physics programs at the Army's public health agency, which commissioned the study. Using the established government standards for acceptable levels of uranium inhalation and ingestion, the researchers in Capstone found that even under the worst circumstances, people in a tank or Bradley Fighting Vehicle hit by a depleted uranium weapon would incur no significant health risk. They wouldn't inhale enough for there to be a toxicological danger to their kidneys or other organs, the study says. And the tiny bits that remained in the soldiers' lungs, even the ones that stayed there for years and years, would not be of sufficient quantity to pose a radiological hazard anywhere near as great as smoking cigarettes, it says. Possible radiological problems from the weapons have been dismissed by many in the military for years. "The issue is chemical, not radiologic, risk," says Melissa A. McDiarmid of the University of Maryland School of Medicine and the VA hospital in Baltimore. McDiarmid directs the government's monitoring of Gulf War veterans with shrapnel in their bodies and has participated in other government-financed research. McDiarmid says the tiny amount of black depleted uranium dust that a soldier could inhale several hundred feet away from an explosion is inconsequential. Even if particles are inhaled in that scenario, they wouldn't constitute a big enough dose of radiation or toxic chemical to change lives, she says. Fifty years of research based on the experiences of workers in the uranium mining, milling and processing industries prove that scientists have good models to use to compute what is - and isn't - a harmful dose of inhaled uranium, whether it's depleted or not, she says. CHALLENGING THE MODEL ABOUT HOW RADIATION HARMS The government standards used in the Capstone Study are based on the research on those occupations and its hazards. Scientists then develop a model of what's safe and unsafe, using computers and theories. Many well-respected scientists say the models are fine but aren't a substitute for testing the models' assumptions out on living creatures or cells. Tests on animals often prove that the models are wrong, they say. Alexandra Miller is a scientist at the Armed Forces Radiobiological Research Institute. Miller has spent much of the past 10 years testing whether very small particles of alpha radiation can have lasting and catastrophic effects on cells. She and others around the world are challenging the conventional wisdom that it takes large doses of radiation - either in a single blast or prolonged exposure - to make someone sick or die. The research on uranium industry workers used to support the argument that depleted uranium dust in battlefield situations isn't a significant hazard is limited, Miller and these scientists say. There are studies that contradict each other, that are poorly done and don't really match up with what troops in the 1991 war experienced, they say. Their point isn't that the weapons are more dangerous than the military says. They simply say that now is too early to reach a conclusion about safety and that more work needs to be done. In one recent experiment, Miller exposed human bone cells to alpha particle radiation from depleted uranium and other forms of uranium. Scientists have known for years that when uranium or depleted uranium gets in the body, more of it tends to migrate to the kidneys and bone than any other parts. Miller says her experiments with the bone cells had two significant findings. First, she found that the cells went through transformation from normal cells to cancer cells. When those cells were then injected into animals, tumors developed. A genetically similar group of animals used for comparison didn't develop those tumors, she says. Although the precise cause of cancers isn't known yet, scientists think that these sorts of transformations get the carcinogenic ball rolling, Miller says. The results of that experiment weren't too surprising, she says, though they were important. The surprise came when she started counting how many cells turned to cancer cells and noticed how far away they were from the source of the radiation. "BYSTANDER EFFECT" BRINGS UNEXPECTED DAMAGE TO CELLS Scientists have been working with uranium long enough to be able to say with certainty how much alpha radiation a given piece of uranium or depleted uranium holds. Extremely sensitive devices can measure it. Scientists therefore think that they can predict in advance how far away the radiation effects can be felt. But when Miller applied those rules of science to the cells in her laboratory, the rules didn't work. Those same rules underlie the Pentagon's Capstone Study. "We actually got more damage to chromosomes than we expected, based on the number of alpha particles," she says. "That was the first surprise to me, as a scientist." Other scientists and other experiments have made similar discoveries. Now they're trying to figure out what it means and why it happens. Miller says the transformations might result from uranium's toxicity, not its radioactivity. But she suspects that it's a combination of radiation and toxicological effects. The radiation starts the damage, and the toxicological properties carry it further, she theorizes. The radiation causes another change, and the process is repeated, over and over, until many more cells are altered. Another possible explanation is that the cells damaged by the initial radiation excrete a hormone or other chemical that spreads to a nearby cell and damages it, Miller says. The damage gets repeated, over and over. No one is sure of the cause, but scientists do have a name for it: the "bystander effect." That simply means cells, chromosomes and genes that are nearby - but not in the path of actual radiation - are affected. The effect seems to be more pronounced with alpha radiation, as opposed to the other varieties, Miller says. "It's actually changed radiobiology dogma in the past four to five years," providing a new look at a hundred years of science, she says. Whether it will also change what science considers a healthy or unhealthy dose of radiation remains to be seen. So far, the government agencies and industrial groups that set what are deemed to be safe levels of exposure haven't revamped their standards in light of the bystander effect, Miller says. Now is probably too early for that, she says, but by the same token, it's too early to say we know enough about depleted uranium to decide what's safe. When Miller published her first paper on how uranium might damage cells, it was 1998. She says only two other scientists had published experiments on the topic before that. More work needs to be done, she says. Similarly, Miller says, more work needs to be done on inhalation of depleted uranium, as opposed to ingestion. When uranium is swallowed, most of it passes immediately through the digestive system and is eliminated in body waste. But when a particle small enough to be inhaled directly lands on lung tissue - with no clothing, paper or outer layers of skin to block the path of the alpha radiation - what happens to that lung tissue? "We simply don't know," she says. "The body of data out there on uranium is limited." McDiarmid thinks that we do know enough to reach the conclusion that inhaled depleted uranium isn't a significant radiological danger. And she thinks that the failure to acknowledge this might be hurting ill veterans from the Persian Gulf War. "What we have here is a witch hunt for an explanation," she says, fed by the public's fear of radiation and fanned by opponents of the weapon and ignorance of the actual science. "The thing I'm worried about with everybody chasing depleted uranium is that we're missing the boat," she insists. With so much attention on depleted uranium, other possible causes for the veterans' illnesses go unexplored and the veterans aren't helped. Her most recent research paper about the veterans with shrapnel in their bodies also points to another risk of pursuing this line of inquiry into depleted uranium, known by scientists and others as "DU." "Questions regarding the long-term health consequences of these exposures have fueled considerable debate regarding continued use of DU in combat," it says. If the weapons are proven to create toxic dust that swirls around the desert and contaminates the air in virtual perpetuity, the United States, Great Britain and their allies might be forced to give the weapons up. They might also be forced to spend billions of dollars cleaning the dust up and taking it out of the desert. Lurking in the background of this scenario is the argument by some antinuclear activists, Iraqi physicians - and the former régime of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein - that the black dust left behind from the Persian Gulf War caused deformities, cancers and death for thousands of Iraqi children since 1991. So far, those statements have been buried behind the curtain of Saddam's tyranny, beyond verification by credible groups. Now that Iraq is open to outsiders and run by a friendly interim government, credible medical and scientific experts have started work to figure out whether these stories are propaganda - or the worst sort of bad news. The United Nations and other organizations recently began financing studies to determine whether the depleted uranium left behind in Iraq and Kuwait in the two wars are linked to health problems in the two countries. The head of the U.N. effort - Pekka Haavisto, a former Finnish minister of the environment - said this fall that the British government gave his workers information on places where it used depleted uranium weapons but that the U.S. government hadn't. U.S. military munitions experts say losing depleted uranium from this country's arsenal would be a disaster - and might cost more soldiers' lives in combat than scrapping the weapons might save. ----- How Dangerous Is Depleted Uranium? Some Say Radioactive Arms Cause Gulf War Syndrome Hearst Newspapers December 10, 2004 http://www.thechamplainchannel.com/helenthomas/3989401/detail.html The Pentagon claims that American forces and Iraqis are not at risk from contact with depleted uranium, which is used in armor-piercing munitions and protective tank plating. That's baloney to some scientists who insist the widespread use of depleted uranium during the American-led invasion and occupation of Iraq poses a grave danger. Despite attempts to reassure the public, the Pentagon remains on the defensive. Depleted uranium, or DU, is a radioactive by-product from the industrial process used to enrich uranium. It is the leftover uranium-238 that results when scientists seek to transform naturally occurring uranium into uranium-235, which is used to produce nuclear energy. The Army values munitions manufactured from depleted uranium because, when fused with metal alloys, they are considered the most effective warhead for penetrating enemy tanks. Also, because depleted uranium is twice as dense as lead, the Army uses DU as armor plating. Once a depleted-uranium round strikes its target, the projectile begins to burn on impact, creating tiny particles of radioactive U-238. Winds can transport this radioactive dust many miles, potentially contaminating the air that innocent humans breathe. This inhalation may cause lung cancer, kidney damage, cancers of bones and skin, as well as birth defects and chemical poisoning. The 1991 Persian Gulf War was the first conflict to see the widespread use of depleted uranium, both in armor-piercing projectiles and in the protective armor of the new generation of Abrams tanks. Studies by the Pentagon and the National Academy of Sciences established no linkage between DU and the "Gulf War Syndrome" ailments after the first Gulf War. Some 70 people are still under study for the effects of contact with DU, with particular emphasis on what happens when people breathe the air where DU projectiles have vaporized. Dr. Helen Caldicott has dedicated her life to warning about the hazards of nuclear war and the effects of DU. Born in Melbourne, Australia, she first became interested in nuclear hazards when she saw the movie "On the Beach" at the age of 15. The film deals with a nuclear accident that leads to a global nuclear war. Growing up, she led a movement in Australia against the French atmospheric nuclear tests in the Pacific and tried to win a ban on Australian uranium mining. She became a medical doctor and later founded Physicians for Social Responsibility, which won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1985. She also has been a nominee for the same prize. She is a strong, vocal antiwar activist. In her book, "The New Nuclear Danger: George W. Bush's Military-Industrial Complex," Caldicott claims that DU qualifies as a nuclear weapon because of its low-level radioactivity. She said that huge quantities of DU were created during the Cold War when the United States made thousands of nuclear weapons. "Weapon researchers and developers have now succeeded in putting this toxic 'nuclear waste' to use through the creation of depleted uranium bullets and shells," she added. The weapons can cause enormous damage in Iraq, she said. Depleted uranium particles are soluble in water and the waters around the battlefields, as in Iraq and Kuwait, are at risk of radioactive pollution, Caldicott said. She warned that DU maintains radioactivity for billions of years and can concentrate in the food chain, with children and babies more vulnerable to the carcinogenic effects of ingested radiation than adults. Medical reports from Iraq indicate that childhood malignancies are seven times more frequent than they were before the first Gulf War. The complaints of the veterans of the first Gulf War are "surprisingly similar in pattern to the various pathologies induced by uranium exposure as described by the U.S. military," Caldicott said. Some 50,000 to 80,000 veterans were afflicted with Gulf War Syndrome during that war, and there has been no definitive answer -- but a lot of dispute -- as to the cause. The military use of depleted uranium is still being questioned. But one thing is certain: War is dangerous to your health. (Helen Thomas can be reached at the e-mail address hthomas@hearstdc.com). Discuss Helen Thomas' Opinion ----- Controlled Press Ignores Criminal Obliteration of Fallujah American Free Press Christopher Bollyn 12/12/2004 URL : http://www.anti-imperialism.net/lai/texte.phtml?section=CE&object_id=23321 Medias and disinformation The controlled press has scrupulously avoided discussing the devastation and prima facie evidence of war crimes committed during the U.S. siege and assault of Fallujah. As Americans prepared for Thanksgiving, an estimated 100,000 residents of the besieged Iraqi city of Fallujah, trapped in their homes, struggled to survive without fresh food, water or electricity, reportedly cut off by U.S. forces on November 8. Meanwhile, on the streets of Fallujah, a city of more than 350,000, dogs gnawed on bloated and rotting corpses that remained unburied for weeks. Thousands of families in Fallujah were reported to be in a critical humanitarian situation after U.S. forces prevented the delivery of relief supplies. An Iraq Red Crescent Society (IRCS) humanitarian aid convoy, reportedly blocked by U.S. troops for more than two weeks, was allowed to deliver aid to residents in the heart of the city on November 25. On Thanksgiving, U.S. forces permitted the IRCS convoy carrying thousands of food parcels, blankets, tents and medical supplies to enter the city and allowed one of the clinics to be converted into a temporary hospital to treat the injured. Rana Sidani of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Geneva, Switzerland however, told American Free Press on Nov. 30 that "many civilians" were still prevented from receiving aid or medical care. At the beginning of the U.S. operation in Fallujah on Nov. 5, a hospital in the central Nazzal district of Fallujah was "reduced to rubble" as a result of U.S. air and artillery bombardment. "Only its façade, with a sign reading Nazzal Emergency Hospital, remained intact," Reuters reported. "A nearby compound used by the main Falluja Hospital to store medical supplies was also destroyed," witnesses told Reuters. Fallujah's main hospital was occupied by U.S. forces when the ground offensive began. These actions are apparent violations of international humanitarian law. "Bodies can be seen everywhere and people were crying when receiving the food parcels," Muhammad al-Nuri, a spokesman for the IRCS in Baghdad, said. "It is very sad. It is a human disaster." Al-Nuri said that it is difficult to move in the city due to the large number of dead bodies in the streets. The ICRS estimates there are more than 6,000 dead in Fallujah, al-Nuri said. AFP asked Major Jay Antonelli at the Coalition Press Information Center (CPIC) in Baghdad if the ICRS estimate of 6,000 dead in Fallujah was credible. "We do not keep a count of dead Iraqis," Antonelli said. Asked the same question, the ICRC's Sidani said, "We don't know." Antonelli said, "U.S. forces never blocked aid convoys from reaching the wounded. We only recommended to the aid convoys that they should not enter the city because the MNF [Multi-National Forces] could not guarantee their security or safety." "The ICRC is very worried about the humanitarian situation in Falluja," Sidani said. Asked what the ICRC was doing to alleviate the suffering in Fallujah, Sidani said: "We are reminding the parties of their responsibilities under international humanitarian law." It should be noted that the U.S.A. and Britain, the belligerent occupying powers in Iraq, are the two largest contributors to the ICRC, providing more than 42 percent of its budget for field operations. A second convoy from Baghdad, headed by Dr. Said Ismael Haki, the IRCS president, delivered aid to Fallujah on Nov. 26. "There are no houses left in Fallujah, only destroyed places." Haki said. "I really don't know how the people will return to the city. No one will find their homes." As U.S. troops in Fallujah engaged in what has been described as the most intense urban combat since Vietnam, the controlled press scrupulously avoided discussion or footage of the devastation of the rebellious Sunni city. For example, during the second week of the attack, rather than discuss the widespread devastation of Fallujah, U.S. television news programs focused largely on a brawl between basketball players and fans in Detroit. Lt. Col. Brandl, commander of the 1st Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment, was filmed giving a "pep talk" to his marines: "The enemy has got a face ­ he's called Satan," Brandl said. "He's in Fallujah, and we're going to destroy him." At least 136 U.S. soldiers were killed during November in Iraq, and more than 800 were wounded, most of them in Fallujah, making it the most costly month, and operation, in terms of U.S. lives lost since the invasion of Iraq began in March 2003. FOR WHAT CAUSE? Michael Ware, Baghdad bureau chief for Time magazine, who has been in Fallujah during the fighting, said U.S. actions in Fallujah are "creating the nightmare that we are seeking to prevent." "I stood there as I saw American boys die," Ware told Chris Matthews of MSNBC on Nov. 24, "I mean, a man shot at close range, blown apart by a rocket propelled grenade. He dies there in front of you and I can't help but think why? For what cause? "I see us creating the very thing that the president said we went there to prevent," Ware said, "…subsequent to this invasion and the occupation and the guerrilla war that is currently underway, we are the midwives of the next generation of al Qaida and Islamic terrorist." Ware, who has interviewed senior insurgent leaders, said they study the writings of the Vietnamese general Vo Nguyen Giap, Che Guevara, and Mao Zedong. "They're bringing it straight from the Vietnam, and the broader insurgency playbook," Ware said. "The name of the game is deny the population to the insurgents," Ware said. "That's what we're trying to do, win hearts and minds. But we're not winning them." The U.S. struggle to win Iraqi hearts and minds suffered a further set back when NBC TV broadcast footage of a U.S. marine executing a wounded and unarmed Iraqi in a Fallujah mosque. The much-publicized shooting, apparently part of a massacre of a group of wounded resistance fighters, "was a rare crack in the façade that Washington, with the complicity of most of the corporate media, has tried to present to the world of its brutal assault on the rebel Iraqi city," Rohan Pearce wrote in The Greenleft Weekly Australia on Nov. 24. The New York Times has reported actions taken by U.S. forces in Fallujah, which appear to be prima facie evidence of war crimes, without mentioning that the actions constitute clear violations of the Laws of Land War found in the U.S. Army Field Manual 27-10. For example, a Nov. 20 Times article by Edward Wong, with two correspondents in Fallujah, reports that U.S. marines had transformed a mosque into a fortress with snipers and machine gunners perched on the roof. Then, using the passive form, Wong goes on to say that "no neutral group has been able to enter the city," without mentioning that U.S. forces blocked humanitarian aid convoys. Likewise, Wong wrote, "Electricity and water had been cut off." The Times, whose motto is "All the news that's fit to print," apparently didn't think that it's readers needed to know the U.S. forces had cut off the water and power to a city of 340,000 people. Asked if U.S. forces had cut power and water to Fallujah, Maj. Jay Antonelli of CPIC wrote: "MNF did, with approval of the Interim Iraqi Government, cut off electricity to the city of Fallujah as Operation Al-Fajr began. Water was not cut off intentionally, however the water system did sustain some kinetic damage during strikes." American Free Press asked the Pentagon's Lt. Col. Joe Yoswa if it is true that U.S. forces were using mosques as fortresses. "It's not possible," Yoswa said. "Under no circumstances. We would not set up snipers in a mosque in an offensive position." CPIC's Antonelli said: "MNF would not use a mosque as a 'fortress.' MNF and Iraqi security forces would only fire from a mosque if they were being fired upon and were firing back in self-defense." Abu Sabah, a refugee from Fallujah, reported seeing phosphorus bombs: "They used these weird bombs that put up smoke like a mushroom cloud. Then small pieces fell from the air with long tails of smoke trailing behind them. These exploded on the ground with large fires that burnt for half and hour," Abu Sabah said. "When anyone touched these fires their bodies burnt for hours." Eyewitnesses from Fallujah also reported seeing "melted" bodies. "THROW-AWAY SOLDIERS" Having seen what appeared to be a depleted uranium (DU) missile fired at a building in Fallujah on CNN during the first week of the fighting, AFP asked the Pentagon if DU weapons are being used in Fallujah. "Yes," Yoswa said, "DU is a standard round on the M-1 Abrams tank." Because U.S. marines in Fallujah are very close to the poison gas produced by exploded DU shells, AFP asked Yoswa if anything was being done to protect the troops from DU poisoning. Yoswa seemed unaware of the dangers posed by the use of DU. Marion Fulk, a retired nuclear scientist from Livermore National Lab told AFP that U.S. troops in DU contaminated battlefields are considered "throw-away soldiers." The Marines exposed to DU in Fallujah, and elsewhere, face greatly increased risks of cancer, deformed children, and other health problems in the future. OBLITERATION OF FALLUJAH The "obliteration of Fallujah" is a serious war crime, according to Francis A. Boyle, a professor of international law at the University of Illinois. "The obliteration of Fallujah continues apace," Boyle wrote in his Nov. 15 article, A War Crime in Real Time: Obliterating Fallujah. "Article 6(b) of the 1945 Nuremberg Charter defines a Nuremberg War Crime in relevant part as the 'wanton destruction of cities, towns or villages.' According to this definitive definition, the Bush administration's destruction of Fallujah constitutes a war crime for which Nazis were tried and executed." -- Posted for educational and research purposes only, ~ in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 ~ NucNews Links and Expanded Archives - http://nucnews.net ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Need a home for your web domain? We recommend our provider, Hosting Direct https://support.hostingdirect.net/cgi-bin/affiliates/clickthru.cgi?id=nucnews ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Make a clean sweep of pop-up ads. Yahoo! Companion Toolbar. Now with Pop-Up Blocker. Get it for free! http://us.click.yahoo.com/L5YrjA/eSIIAA/yQLSAA/FGYolB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> To unsubscribe from this groups send a message to du-list-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com. In the body of the message type unsubscribe and send. Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/du-list/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: du-list-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ ***************************************************************** 25 [du-list] The battlefield at home - SR Daily Press (Ch4) Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 14:44:01 -0800 After $247 Million, What Is There to Show? http://www.dailypress.com/news/specials/dp-du4,0,4816042.story?coll=dp- breaking-news Chapter 4: The battlefield at home. After winning the 1991 Persian Gulf War in a few days, veterans have spent more than a decade fighting to get relevant research done to determine why they're so ill. BY BOB EVANS 247-4758 December 14, 2004 For 20 years and two days, Steve Robinson was a soldier. He jumped from airplanes, trained to fight and prepared to die for his country. He was tough and resourceful enough to win the beret of an Army Ranger. Now he fights in Washington, D.C. Often against the same outfit that trained him. For the past few years, Robinson has been executive director of the Gulf War Resource Center Inc., a small-budget nonprofit group devoted to working on issues important to veterans of the 1991 war and active-duty troops i n the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The center operates out of the offices of the Vietnam Veterans of America organization near Washington. Robinson's last assignment in the Army was at the Pentagon, working for the officials in charge of looking out for the veterans of the 1991 war. He says their willingness to put the Pentagon's public-relations ratings ahead of veterans' health prompted his career switch. For the past few years, he's been one of the most public and persistent critics of the Pentagon's insistence that depleted uranium weapons are not a significant health risk to troops on the battlefield. Robinson says he doesn't know whether depleted uranium weapons should be banned. But he says the Pentagon is so enamored with them and so concerned about its image, officials won't pay attention to the mounting evidence t hat they might be more harm than good. The ultra-effective anti-tank weapons are crucial aspects of the U.S. arsenal, and Pentagon officials say it would be a huge loss if they were deemed too dangerous. Every time that the weapons hit a hard target, they create thousands of particles of mildly radioactive toxic dust, small enough to be inhaled. A growing number of scientists are finding that the dust - even in small quan tities - can cause genetic damage that they think might lead to cancer and other problems. Early research also indicates that the dust can migrate to the brain of rats forced to breathe small quantities of the dust, raisi ng the possibility that some veterans' neurological problems are linked to the weapons. Robinson says one of the most important ways that the Pentagon has tried to sweep the issue out of sight involves its handling of millions of dollars used to investigate the cause of the illnesses suffered by Gulf War vet s. Instead of pursuing the cause of the veterans' health problems, he says, Pentagon officials have put the bulk of their efforts and money on studies that would discount the problem or show that the illnesses are mental, not physical. Robinson isn't alone in that criticism. AFTER $247 MILLION, A CAUSE HAS YET TO BE FOUND According to Congress' Government Accountability Office, $247 million has been spent in the past 12 years to research the causes and possible cures of Gulf War vets' illnesses. Most was spent on work that would demonstrat e or augment the Pentagon's original theory - that stress and people unable to handle it are the problem, not any of the weapons, pills or chemicals that the Pentagon produced, according to congressional testimony in June . The Pentagon has controlled 74 percent of that $247 million, with the Department of Veterans Affairs and other federal agencies spending the rest, says the accountability office, commonly known as the GAO. The military an d U.S. government also controls the availability of depleted uranium for use in experiments by outside researchers, though there are chemical substitutes that can be used. Pentagon officials have rebuffed attempts to give experts at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or CDC, and other agencies a bigger role in researching the possible effects of depleted uranium, even t hough those agencies are more experienced in that work, according to congressional testimony. Several Nobel Prize winners have told Congress that researchers who might be interested in getting involved have been discouraged by the military's stranglehold over the money to finance the work and the way it controls o ther information about Gulf War veterans. Some of the $247 million went to explore legitimate theories that proved invalid - a natural and unavoidable result of that kind of work, many researchers say. For instance, government officials in July ended years of res earch into whether a bacterial infection could be causing the neurological problems the veterans suffer. Other expensive efforts were doomed from the beginning because they were poorly designed or set out to do the impossible, the GAO says. POOR PLANNING, EXECUTION MEANS $13.7 MILLION WASTED One recent example is an investigation into how many troops were possibly exposed to chemical weapons and other dangers as a result of a fire at an Iraqi munitions depot in Khamisiyah in 1991. According to the most recent official government account of the incident, the CIA warned the military before the war that chemical weapons were stored there, but the word never filtered to commanders in the field. Military officials ordered the depo t destroyed, and a potentially lethal cloud of debilitating chemicals might have been launched into the air. In 1993, the Pentagon and CIA said no one was exposed. In 1996, after news-media and congressional investigations, they acknowledged that there might be a problem, albeit a small one. At first, the two government agencies said hundreds of troops might be affected and that the amount of chemical poison was so small as to be inconsequential. Then a copy of a classified document was leaked, and the govern ment called a news conference and announced that it was really thousands of troops, congressional testimony said. Finally, in 2000, the government's official estimate was upped to 101,752 troops, the GAO says. But even that number was suspect. So to get a better handle on the facts, the Pentagon paid consultants $13.7 million to develop computer models and do other work. It also spent untold dollars and man-hours on the project with its own staff, so the true cost of this study can't be established, the GAO reported in June. What resulted was a study so poorly conceived and done, it's worthless, the GAO says. Part of the problem is that some of the data necessary to do it right just isn't obtainable because no one was keeping reliable records on weather and wind conditions in Iraq at the time of the explosion. As a result, no one can say how far - or in what direction - the windborne chemicals might have gone. And there's no reliable information on exactly wh at was in the depot when it was blown up. A similar incident occurred at the Blackhorse Army base in Doha, Kuwait, on July 11, 1991. In that case, more than 7,000 pounds of depleted uranium weapons were destroyed in smoke and flames, along with four Abrams tanks and millions of dollars of other equipment and armaments. The heater for a munitions truck malfunctioned, caught fire and caused a series of explosions and fires in the base motor pool, the Pentagon's report on the incident says. As recently as last year, microscopic bits of dep leted uranium could be found in the sand and debris there, other studies found. TROOPS HAD NO WARNING OF DANGER AFTER 1991 FIRE Pentagon records show that within hours of the fire, officers in the chain of command at Doha received the first of several notices about potential health hazards from the burning depleted uranium. The warnings contained specific directions about precautions that should be taken in the cleanup. None of those precautions were taken. The soldiers on the ground weren't told about the problem until 1998. The Army says the commanding officer didn't recall getting the warnings. The Pentagon offered no explanation for why soldiers involved in the four-month cleanup after the fire were allowed to handle materials with their b are hands and no precautions. After 1998, a government-maintained laboratory studied the situation. Despite the lack of adequate data and that "large uncertainties exist," it concluded none of the troops incurred a significant health problem by inhali ng the depleted uranium dust created by the fire. That lab used many of the same techniques employed in the Khamisiyah analysis. No GAO examination of Doha has been requested. The Doha base is still used by U.S. troops today, though the site of the fire is a restricted area. Troops from Fort Eustis deployed to the region visit there frequently. Doha is one of the major embarkation points for U. S. troops entering the Iraqi theater of war. It also has an amusement park and post exchange, making it a popular spot for off-duty troops to visit when they have a day off. The Army says the site, which is near a refiner y, is safe. BASIC FACT-FINDING WASN'T DONE, EPIDEMIOLOGIST SAYS Critics of the government's efforts to find the cause of Persian Gulf War veterans' health problems say these examples aren't the most important oversights or missteps. Despite all the research spending, the military and government have yet to do a responsible epidemiological study that includes some of the fundamental data necessary to unravel the problem, says Robert Haley, a former CD C official. Haley is now chief of the department of epidemiology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas and author of important studies on Gulf War veterans' health problems. A good epidemiological study would give researchers a handle on how many veterans are ill with undiagnosed problems, where they were during the war, what vaccinations they were given, what they did while deployed and othe r data, Haley says. It should have been done more than a decade ago as one of the first steps after they realized a problem existed, he says. Haley's criticisms are echoed by a number of scientists, but his background in tracking down the causes of high-profile illnesses sets him apart. At the CDC, he helped lead the investigation into toxic shock syndrome in t he late 1970s, showing how women were getting critically ill because of the new generation of tampons they were using. He got involved in looking at Gulf War veterans' illnesses in the mid-1990s, after Texas businessman Ross Perot asked the dean of the Dallas medical center how much money it would take to start looking at reasons for the maladies that so many veterans were suffering. Perot said he'd been hiring former military personnel for years and just wasn't buying the Pentagon's line that these men and women were merely weak of body, will or mind, Ha ley recalls. The first thing that Haley did was look at the available data on the disease. He says he was surprised to find out that the basics of figuring out an epidemiological puzzle hadn't been done, despite all the money and time the government had spent. Instead of starting by spending a lot of money to prove one or two possible theories for the cause, he says, a good epidemiologist will start gathering some basic facts. Those facts would include who's involved (the sick people and people just like them who aren't sick), what they did during the war, where they were and other factors. That way, the epidemiologist can see what's common among the people who are sick and the people who aren' t. Usually, he says, there will be only one or two things that the sick people have in common that turn out to be statistically significant and worth pursuing with research money. EPIDEMIOLOGY 101: THE CASE OF SUSPICIOUS POTATO SALAD A classic example is figuring out why some people got sick at a church picnic, he says. A good epidemiologist would interview the people who went to the picnic (those who got sick and those who didn't). She'd find out wha t games they played, what food they ate and where they were at the picnic. Then all that data would be compared, and you'd typically find a common thread - for instance, all the sick people ate potato salad and none of th e well people ate it. Only then would you spend the money to take the potato salad to the lab to examine it, he says. But the government didn't do that - and still hasn't done it - Haley says. Instead, it did three studies that said the vets weren't really sick or, at least, they were no worse off than most people their age. The only difference it found was a slight increase in accidental deaths among the Gulf War vets. "They were so convinced that they would find nothing that they found nothing and published the data," he says. Haley took the numbers the government-sponsored epidemiologists used in those studies to demonstrate just the opposite. He showed where researchers made questionable assumptions and how the same data could point in the op posite direction if other, more logical assumptions were used. A big mistake here, he says, is the government studies assumed that military personnel deployed for the war were just as healthy as anyone else in the military or the general public. So after the war, when they were found to be just as likely to die or get sick as other people, the government concluded that there was no problem. But the deployed soldiers were probably much healthier than those other groups to start with because they had to pass a rigorous physical exam to be considered for deployment overseas, Haley says. In that war, many troops were deemed not deployable because they were HIV-positive, were injured or otherwise in questionable health. Well before the Gulf War, epidemiologists had a stock phrase to describe this phenomenon: the "healthy warrior effect." The government's researchers should have been familiar with it, Haley says. There were other problems, too. Haley and others noted that the data the government used in claiming only normal rates of death, cancer, infant deformities and other problems among Gulf War veterans came solely from milit ary and VA hospitals. That left out most of the people who'd served in the war, Haley says - people who were reservists or got out of the military and weren't eligible for treatment in government hospitals. It wasn't surp rising that data collected about active-duty military personnel using military hospitals showed they weren't sick; the sick ones had been forced out of uniform, Haley says. Members of Congress and others have latched onto that work and similar studies to force changes in the way the Defense Department, VA and other government agencies handle research, Haley and others say. SOME NEW FACES, SOME OLD PROBLEMS In 2002, Haley, Robinson and other critics of the government's handling of the research were appointed to a new panel of experts that advises the head of the VA on the research that should be conducted to find the cause o f the vets' illnesses. Haley says he's encouraged that the government is slowly turning around to face the problem. In the past couple of years, he says, meaningful research has begun to trickle in, and the research is be coming better focused. A proper epidemiological study is scheduled to begin in January, he notes. There are still problems from within government agencies that have fought an honest approach to the problem, Haley, Robinson and others on the advisory panel say. Some of the bureaucrats who have thwarted progress are gon e or shunted aside, they say, but others remain. The GAO reported in June that the advisory panel was having problems getting reliable information from the Pentagon and even from officials within the VA. Panel members aren't consistently being told about research being considered for financing, so they can help ensure that money is directed to the greatest needs, the GAO said. The panel also wasn't even being told about research when it was finished, the agency said. As of Sept. 23, 2003, about 80 percent of the 240 federally financed medical research projects for Gulf War illnesses had been completed, the GAO said in June. Yet the last time the VA reviewed this research to determine whether there were gaps and where there were opportunities that needed to be pursued was in 2001, the report said. The VA's inaction is important because it's responsible for coordinating the government's Gulf War illness research, even though it's not been given the bulk of the money to do that work. The VA has also been slow to act in other ways. In June, VA officials admitted to Congress that they had allocated only $450,000 of the $20 million budgeted for Gulf War illness research for the year. By then, three-fourths of the budget year was over. VA officials ack nowledge that they need to do a better job. The government's Gulf War research coordinating group (a separate panel from the advisory committee) hadn't met since August 2003, the GAO said in its June report. The GAO said that when it checked with the coordinating g roup in April 2004, it found that there were no plans to meet again. Jim Binns, chairman of the VA secretary's Gulf War advisory committee, told Congress in June that he was concerned that the Defense Department had no plans to spend money on new Gulf War illness research in coming years. He said that meant total government research spending on Gulf War illnesses would drop from $35 million a year to $11 million, just as promising developments in research needed to be followed up. Most of the $11 million w ill have limited scope, too, because VA administrators can't spend money for research that isn't directly related to VA patients. The work on depleted uranium research that many scientists say is necessary thus isn't elig ible. Michael E. Kilpatrick, the Pentagon's deputy director for health issues involving deployed forces, says that doesn't mean the Pentagon is putting a halt to all this research. He says the military will continue to pursue t he studies that are underway until they're concluded. With money tight, he says, the Pentagon must use more of its healthcare budget to benefit soldiers fighting current and future wars, not those of the past. RESEARCH MONEY BECOMING HARDER TO FIND THESE DAYS That decision was made in 2002, Kilpatrick says, when only one in six vets of the 1991 war was still in uniform. None of the active-duty troops from the 1991 war have the health problems targeted by Gulf War illness resea rch. With a war on, members of Congress pushing veterans' issues say it will be hard to beef up money for research in the VA or other budgets. VA medical centers are starting to feel the effects of caring for troops from the c ontinued fighting overseas. Binns notes that the VA, even in recent years, hasn't been very good about making sure that the money it has for research in this area is well spent. "As recently as 2003, the VA budget in that year - according to the most recent report to Congress - provided for about $4.1 million in Gulf War illness research. Of that amount, 57 percent went to study stress and other psychological causes, 17 percent went to study things like Web-based training for VA physicians and bioterrorism events," he says. Only 17 percent of the money went to things that the advisory committee thinks are directly linked to the soldiers' suffering, Binns says. Alexandra Miller is a government scientist who's carried out some of the most important research into the health effects of depleted uranium. She says Pentagon money for pursuing the results of that work has started to dry up in recent years. "There's not enough money to complete the research," she says, just as science is close to closing the loop on whether d epleted uranium is dangerous. She and Vernon Walker - a cancer biologist in New Mexico who's conducted experiments linking inhaled uranium to cellular mutations in rats - say completing the research would take only $5 million if the right projects wer e financed. That could truly determine whether, once and for all, inhaled depleted uranium is a hazard on the battlefield, they say. "We could be answering these questions, and we wouldn't have to have these kinds of conversations four years from now," Miller says. Richard Albertini, one of the nation's leading cancer researchers, says access to money isn't the only thing that hampers research. He's one of more than a dozen doctors and scientists involved in a continuing medical study assessing the effect of depleted uranium shrapnel in veterans of the 1991 war. The Pentagon has called this study "the gold standard" of whether adverse health can result from exposure to depleted uranium on the battlefield and frequently points to its findings as support for its arguments that the weapons are safe. In the most recently published version of the study, Albertini says, three veterans showed an increased rate of mutations in a gene that doctors think is a "marker" for cancer. A marker for cancer isn't cancer itself but a warning signal that something might be wrong. In this case, the genes were in the white blood cells of the soldiers. Based on that finding, Walker exposed rats to air with very small particles of depleted uranium, to see whether the same kind of mutations would develop. The rats did develop these mutations, which supports the idea that inhaling depleted uranium dust can cause cancer, Albertini and Walker say. The mutations in the marker become less pronounced over time, Albertini says, so it's important to have blood samples from veterans of the more recent war to see whether these mutations continue and to do more research. So far, he says, the military and VA say samples aren't available, even though obtaining them isn't difficult and costs less than $100 apiece, he says. This isn't an idle academic exercise, Albertini says: Researchers might be close to finding a chemical that can halt the mutations, which might mean development of a pill or drug soldiers could take on the battlefield to reverse or arrest the mutations soon after their exposure. Experiments using chickens have been successful in halting the mutations in a test tube, Albertini says. He and Walker say that work could lead to antidotes to "dirty bombs," - explosives made of low-grade nuclear materials such as depleted uranium. Government officials have repeatedly said the nation's urban areas are vulnerable to such attacks if terrorists can obtain a sufficient quantity of the right radioactive materials. A LEGACY OF MISTRUST FROM PREVIOUS WARS Robinson and other veterans' advocates say they're afraid that the Pentagon's attitude toward soldiers' health and the failure to properly address illnesses from the 1991 Gulf War will be equaled in the new war. They say a pattern has developed that will make it difficult for any veteran to believe what the government says. Soldiers, sailors and civilians were often used as guinea pigs in experiments of how nuclear blasts might affect human beings in the years after World War II. The government never told them what was happening, then denied it - then denied that they were at risk until recently. "It took 40 years for them to get treatment and care, " Robinson says. Then came the Vietnam War and Agent Orange, a chemical used to kill acres and acres of jungle foliage, to make it easier for U.S. troops to find and kill the enemy. The government insisted for years that the chemical wasn 't a problem, then finally admitted it was. Documents show that U.S. leaders knew the truth in 1972 - maybe earlier - but continued using it anyway, Robinson says. He says the same thing might be happening with depleted uranium and other possible causes of the Gulf War vets' ill health. Part of the problem of getting to the truth of Gulf War veterans' illnesses is that too many people use the issue for ideological purposes, he says. Critics of the weapon on the left use the radiological properties of depleted uranium "to scare people: Depleted uranium is the holocaust," Robinson says. "Then you have the Department of Defense on the right," saying there's no problem and questioning the motives and patriotism of critics, he says. A week before launching Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003, the Pentagon briefed reporters to reiterate the safety of depleted uranium weapons and note the failure of anyone to conclusively link them to any of the health pro blems from the Persian Gulf War. Col. James Naughton, then the Army's director of munitions, was brought out to speak. According to a transcript issued by the Pentagon, he talked about how much of a battlefield advantage the weapon is. "So we don't want to give that up," he said, "and that's why we use it." One of the reporters asked him why giving up the weapon was even being raised, if the weapon was so safe. "Well, you need to look at the environment of the context where people are asking us questions - who's asking the question?" Naughton replied. "The Iraqis tell us, 'Terrible things happened to our people because you used it last time.' "Why do they want it to go away? They want it to go away because we kicked the crap out of them - OK?" Later in the briefing, Naughton made it clear he thought that Iraq "and other countries that are not friendly to the United States" were behind criticism of the weapon. With those kinds of extremes, not much has happened in the middle, Robinson says. "In the middle," he says, "is the science that has not been conducted." ---------------------------------------------------------------------- stichting Laka Laka foundation documentatie en onderzoeks- documentation and research centrum kernenergie centre on nuclear energy Ketelhuisplein 43 Ketelhuisplein 43 1054 RD Amsterdam NL-1054 RD Amsterdam tel: 020-6168294 Netherlands fax: 020-6892179 tel: +31-20-6168294 fax: +31-20-6892179 www.laka.org laka@antenna.nl ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> $4.98 domain names from Yahoo!. Register anything. http://us.click.yahoo.com/Q7_YsB/neXJAA/yQLSAA/FGYolB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> To unsubscribe from this groups send a message to du-list-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com. In the body of the message type unsubscribe and send. Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/du-list/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: du-list-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ ***************************************************************** 26 Paducah Sun: NRC cites Paducah plant's safety despite setbacks - Joe Walker jwalker@paducahsun.com [jwalker@paducahsun.com] 270.575.8656 [http://www.paducahsun.com/] Paducah, Kentucky A strike and USEC plans to close the plant didn't seem to affect safety. Tuesday, December 14, 2004 Despite a five-month strike and an announcement of a closure that could have affected worker morale, the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant has been safe during the past two years, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission says. "The plant is operating safely, and we do see indications that things are improving," said Jay Henson, NRC chief fuel facility inspector in Atlanta. The NRC and plant operator USEC Inc. held a public meeting Monday at the Paducah Information Age Park Resource Center to discuss the plant's safety performance from Jan. 1, 2003, to Sept. 25 of this year. During that time: Nearly half of the approximately 1,300 employees were on strike from Feb. 2 to June 25, 2003. Salaried personnel ran the factory until the plant nuclear workers' union reached a new contract that will last until July 31, 2011. USEC announced Jan. 12 that it will close the outdated Paducah plant starting in 2010 and replace it with a gas centrifuge factory in Piketon, Ohio. Henson said the NRC has not identified any trends suggesting a laxity in safety as a result of the strike or closure announcement. After the strike, USEC put union workers through extensive training to ensure they were ready to return to work, he said. "Sometimes in those types of situations you may have a work force that wants to increase the number of concerns expressed to the NRC," he said. "We haven't seen that." Russ Starkey, plant general manager, said the number of employee safety allegations to the NRC dropped from 49 in 2000 to nine during the first 11 months of this year. The number of discrimination complaints declined from 12 to only one during the comparative periods, he said. Starkey credited union and salaried workers with improving plant safety during the stressful two-year period. "Our people are doing it," he said. "We're doing extremely well, not only in the relationship between workers and management, but in the way the plant is performing." Because of the work, the 52-year-old plant has set records for efficiency and equipment operating to enrich uranium for use in nuclear fuel, he said. In its review, the NRC said the plant needs more improvement in the procedures regarding operations and operator attentiveness; nuclear criticality safety analysis and documentation; and identifying and correcting problems. During the meeting, Starkey outlined steps to improve those areas. In November 2003, a plant operator was suspended with pay for falling asleep in a building where a hazardous chemical is withdrawn from production. Eight months earlier, during the strike, an operator was warned, disciplined and allowed to resume work after nodding off in one of the enrichment buildings. The most recent episode of inattentiveness took place last month, when an operator in a truck, working near some of the plant's cooling towers, didn't immediately respond when spoken to by another worker. The operator — who apparently was not asleep and had recently been in contact with others in the plant — was disciplined, plant Public Affairs Manager Georgann Lookofsky said. Starkey said there is no common reason for inattentiveness and the plant has taken several steps to cut down on it, including "fitness for duty" training, procedures revision and a senior management oversight program. Since January 2003, workers have decreased procedure-related human errors and, depending on the type of procedure, decreased or maintained a low number of procedural violations, he said. ***************************************************************** 27 Las Vegas SUN: Health Secretary Nominee May Cut Programs By MARK SHERMAN ASSOCIATED PRESS WASHINGTON (AP) - 1213bush-hhs Michael Leavitt, President Bush's choice to be secretary of Health and Human Services, may have to cut billions of dollars from the government's mammoth health programs for the elderly, poor and disabled to pare the budget deficit. The Medicare and Medicaid programs, consuming nearly $500 billion a year and growing quickly, could be vulnerable in the context of last year's $413 billion budget deficit, the ongoing war in Iraq, costly domestic security commitments and administration plans to revamp Social Security without raising taxes. Bush selected Leavitt, the Environmental Protection Agency chief, on Monday, filling one of the last two openings in his second-term Cabinet. Bush praised Leavitt as a "fine executive" and "a man of great compassion ... an ideal choice to lead one of the largest departments of the United States government." Leavitt, Utah's governor for 11 years before joining the administration in late 2003, would succeed Tommy Thompson if confirmed by the Senate. Before becoming governor, he was chief operating officer of the Leavitt Group, a family insurance firm in which he maintains an investment worth between $5 million and $25 million, according to a financial disclosure report he filed in 2003. The company owns 100 independent insurance agencies that sell supplemental Medicare policies, among other insurance products, according to company literature. The Medigap policies account for less than 1 percent of company revenues, said Dane Leavitt, the president and CEO. He is Michael Leavitt's brother. "I have never had a discussion with him on any of those topics and I don't anticipate having one," Dane Leavitt said. Michael Leavitt also has small stakes in pharmaceutical makers Johnson &Johnson and Merck &Co., and in medical equipment maker Medtronic Inc. Each investment was worth less than $15,000, according to the 2003 disclosure. White House spokesman Trent Duffy said, "We're confident that Gov. Leavitt will take the necessary steps to avoid any conflicts of interest." Meanwhile, John Walters, the national drug policy director, plans to stay in his post, White House officials said. Bush still must name a new head of the Homeland Security Department to take the place of Bernard Kerik, who abruptly withdrew Friday night, citing immigration problems with a family housekeeper. "He himself said he should have brought it to our attention sooner," said White House spokesman Scott McClellan. "Commissioner Kerik pointed out that this was a mistake." After failing to disclose the nanny problem during an initial screening, Kerik acknowledged it during a subsequent vetting phase as he filled out a clearance form, McClellan said. Among the names mentioned as possible candidates for the post are Asa Hutchinson, the department's undersecretary for transportation and border security; White House homeland security adviser Fran Townsend; White House deputy chief of staff for operations Joseph Hagin, and Robert Bonner, commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Potential successors to Leavitt at EPA include Idaho Gov. Dirk Kempthorne, who was a leading candidate before Leavitt's appointment; Douglas H. Benevento, executive director of the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment; David Struhs, head of the Florida Department of Environmental Protection under Gov. Jeb Bush, and a brother-in-law to Bush's chief of staff, Andrew Card, and Barry McBee, former chairman of the Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission. At Monday's White House announcement, Leavitt, 53, thanked Bush for showing confidence in him, though he also said, "I feel a real sense of understandable regret" about leaving EPA. He said the Department of Health and Human Services plays a vital part in the lives of every American. "I look forward ... to the implementation of the Medicare prescription drug program in 2006, medical liability reform and finding ways to reduce the cost of health care," Leavitt said. Leavitt also has experience with the Medicaid program from his time as Utah governor. The Bush administration granted Utah a rules waiver that Leavitt said Monday resulted in health insurance for thousands of working families. Critics have said the waivers have produced minimal increases in Medicaid enrollment, but have cut benefits and increased costs to others who receive Medicaid. The HHS secretary also oversees the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health and the Indian Health Service. In all, the agency has a budget of more than $500 billion and 67,000 employees. If Congress undertakes serious budget cutting next year, Medicare and Medicaid would be unlikely to escape, senior Republican congressional aides said last week. Ron Pollack, executive director of the consumer group Families USA and an administration critic, said the costs of Bush's second-term agenda coupled with his opposition to tax increases "points to Medicaid potentially taking a very large hit." Dr. Mark McClellan, the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, had been a leading candidate for the HHS job. He is the brother of the White House spokesman. But Mark McClellan is overseeing the new Medicare prescription drug benefit, which takes full effect in 2006, and Bush was said to have been reluctant to take him from his post. Leavitt shares Bush's enthusiasm for market-based approaches to fixing problems. Former HHS Secretary Donna Shalala, a Democrat, called him "a very skillful administrator and manager." Leavit, a Mormon and father of five, moved to Washington in the past year with his wife, Jacalyn, and a son who is in high school. -- ***************************************************************** 28 Las Vegas RJ: Hospital sets up decontamination unit Tuesday, December 14, 2004 MEDecon 3L trailer at Sunrise ready for operations By PAUL HARASIM REVIEW-JOURNAL Richard Mumford stands Monday outside a new decontamination trailer at Sunrise Hospital and Medical Center. Photo by John Gurzinski. Sunrise Hospital and Medical Center officials showed off new shower facilities Monday that they hope no one will ever have to use. The showers, dedicated largely for use by the elderly, disabled, and children and their caregivers, are the centerpiece of the MEDecon 3L, a fully self-contained, three-lane decontamination trailer. Designed to wash away the effects of the work of terrorists engaging in chemical, biological or nuclear warfare, the showers are just one more part of Sunrise's evolving emergency preparedness plan in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. "You have to be ready in today's world," hospital spokeswoman Amy Stevens said. Sunrise already had installed decontamination showers in a parking garage in 2003 that can take care of up to 500 people who are fully ambulatory. In an emergency situation, a sprinkler-kind of system can be activated and tarps come down to give patients compartmentalized privacy. The trailer can be used by people in industrial chemical or nuclear accidents. Christopher Lake of the Nevada Hospital Association said the catalyst for decontamination units sprouting across the United States was the anthrax scare that gripped the country after the terrorist attacks. In 2001, anthrax-laced letters killed five people and sickened 17 others. Sunrise is the first U.S. hospital not connected with the Veterans Administration to receive such a decontamination trailer. The $40,000 cost of the mobile unit is covered by a federal grant for homeland security. Seven other hospitals in the Las Vegas Valley will receive units in the coming months, according to Lake. The decontamination units work like this: Three people can enter the trailer at once. They are met by emergency responders who look like someone wearing a spacesuit. The responders give the patient a package that contains bags for clothing and valuables as well a poncho-gown and footies to wear. The decontamination process is an assembly line operation, where patients disrobe, step into the shower area, and then put on clean clothes. Because each section is compartmentalized, up to nine people (or more if people are with small children) can e going through the trailer at once. As many as 75 people could go through in an hour, depending on how mobile they are, according to Robert Denser, who works for Global Protection, distributor of decontamination products. The shower consists of a special soap and water rinse. The unit will sit outside the emergency department of Sunrise. "It is critical that patients be decontaminated before they enter the hospital," said Lake. "If they are contaminated, then they can infect the hospital workers and other patients and cannot do the good they are trying to do." Lake said that in 1995 a nerve gas attack on a Tokyo subway had ramifications on the hospital where all the victims were taken. Because they were not decontaminated prior to entering the hospital, he said that the nerve agent had an effect on hospital workers. "We want to make sure with decontamination units that people who need help aren't hurting those who are trying to help them," Lake said. Copyright Las Vegas Review-Journal ***************************************************************** 29 Las Vegas RJ: Senator frustrated Yucca project not moving faster Tuesday, December 14, 2004 Domenici says delay slowing expansionof nuclear plants By KEITH ROGERS REVIEW-JOURNAL Pete Domenici Senator attends book-signing at Desert Research Institute Sen. Pete Domenici, the powerful Republican from New Mexico who wants to get the ball rolling on burying nuclear waste in Yucca Mountain, said Monday he's frustrated the project doesn't get more funding, because it leaves expansion of U.S. plants mired while other countries are becoming more reliant on nuclear power. "The frustration is why has it taken so long? Why does it seem elsewhere to be so easy and here to be so tough?" he said before signing copies of his book, "A Brighter Tomorrow: Fulfilling the Promise of Nuclear Energy." Domenici, chairman of the Senate Energy Committee who also chairs the subcommittee that writes funding bills for energy and water projects, attended the book-signing at the Atomic Testing Museum on the Desert Research Institute campus. Earlier in the day, he met for several hours with officials at the Energy Department's Office of Repository Development after first meeting with a group on water desalination in Las Vegas. The senator noted that although the United States relies on nuclear power for 20 percent of its electricity, France has an 80 percent reliance and China has ordered 20 new power reactors. "So my frustration is, `Why not in America?' " he asked. Currently, the $58 billion project to build a maze of tunnels inside Yucca Mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, and entomb highly radioactive spent fuel assemblies there is creeping along at a $577 million annual funding pace. Despite the fact there's $12.6 billion in a ratepayers' fund to finance the effort, the Department of Energy has missed its target to submit a license application for review this year, and it's questionable if plans and methods to begin hauling the waste will be in place by 2010. Among the apparent roadblocks is an appeals court ruling this summer that the Environmental Protection Agency's 10,000-year radiation protection standard needs to be extended to hundreds of thousands of years in the future. Asked if he intends to pass legislation next year to keep the current standard intact, Domenici said, "We're looking very carefully at what that court decision means." He said legislation to skirt the court's ruling might not be needed, but "we'll see." In his book, Domenici urges the United States and other countries to rely more on nuclear power and to follow through on the government's commitment to dispose of spent fuel in a permanent site where it can be retrieved for reprocessing and reduction in the amount of waste as technology permits. In essence, Yucca Mountain is an interim solution to a long-term problem that eventually will be resolved through reprocessing and transforming the waste, he said. "But we're late in the game because of past executive orders by presidents like Carter." Copyright Las Vegas Review-Journal ***************************************************************** 30 Tri-City Herald: Hot waste returns This story was published Tuesday, December 14th, 2004 By Annette Cary Herald staff writer A shipment of waste from Hanford to a permanent repository in New Mexico was stopped Friday in Colorado because one of the drums of waste may have been too radioactively hot. It's the first time any shipment has had a drum with a radiation reading too high to be accepted at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant -- a permanent underground repository for transuranic waste in the New Mexico desert, said Kerry Watson, the Department of Energy director for the office of characterization and transportation in Carlsbad, N.M. The drum had been measured at Hanford with a combined beta and gamma radiation reading at the surface of the drum of 200 millirems per hour. No neutron radiation reading was detected. But because instruments cannot detect radiation below 0.2 millirems per hour, there could have been a neutron dose of up to 0.2 millirems, Watson said. That would have put the overall radiation dose slightly above the maximum allowed of 200 millirems per hour. "We couldn't say it would. We couldn't say it wouldn't," Watson said. The possible problem was discovered when paperwork was being inspected in New Mexico as the shipment was already en route, Watson said. A truck carrying two shipping containers that hold up to 14 drums each was stopped near Fort Collins, Colo. The truck returned Saturday to Hanford. Another survey of the drum's radiation levels on Sunday again found 200 millirems per hour of beta and gamma radiation and an undetectable level of neutron radiation, said Colleen French, spokeswoman for the Department of Energy in Richland. The drum contains transuranic waste, which typically is used equipment, protective clothing or other debris contaminated with plutonium. The waste in the drum came from the Plutonium Finishing Plant and the PUREX reprocessing plant at Hanford. The PUREX plant was used to extract plutonium from fuel irradiated in Hanford reactors for the nation's nuclear weapons program. The Plutonium Finishing Plant turned the plutonium into metal buttons to ship to the nation's weapons production plants. Officials at Hanford and WIPP, the New Mexico repository, are discussing what to do with the rogue drum and how to prevent the problem from occurring again, French said. The drum may be repacked, or it could be encased in an overpack to reduce the radiation dose at its surface, she said. Before being loaded onto trucks, the drums are packed into a shipping container, called a TRUPACT-II, that has substantial radiation shielding, she said. "There was never any health or safety concern" for the public en route, she said. At the surface of the shipping container, 0.5 millirems per hour of beta and gamma radiation was detected. That's far below the U.S. Department of Transportation limit, which also is 200 millirems per hour. The returned shipping containers are being held at Hanford, awaiting approval to ship them again. Hanford has shipped 3,838 drums in 124 shipments to WIPP since 2000. The returned shipment would have been the 125th. "Two more shipments are scheduled this week, so it's even more important to get this resolved," French said. © 2004 Tri-City Herald, Associated Press &Other Wire Services ***************************************************************** 31 Vanunu Update - free article for publications Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 19:14:33 -0800 Free Mordechai Vanunu - Info & Action Alert #42 - December 14, 2004 From the U.S. Campaign to Free Mordechai Vanunu http://www.vanunu.com and http://www.nonviolence.org/vanunu/ ** PLEASE FORWARD TO SYMPATHETIC LISTS ** 1. Help spread the word 2. Article: "Mordechai Vanunu, Israeli Nuclear Whistleblower - Released from Prison But Not Yet Free", by Felice Cohen-Joppa ---------------- 1. You can help spread the word about Mordechai Vanunu's current situation - The article below is also available as a flyer. You can request the flyer in a .pdf format by emailing freevanunu@mindspring.com or request a flyer via post (U.S. Campaign to Free Mordechai Vanunu, PO Box 43384, Tucson, AZ 85733 U.S.) The flyer will also soon be available for download from our website at http://www.vanunu.com 2. [This article is offered free for publication, with credit to author and contact information for U.S. Campaign to Free Mordechai Vanunu included. Questions? Contact Felice at 520-323-8697, freevanunu@mindspring.com] ~890 words "My message today to all the world is 'Open Dimona reactor for inspection'.... I will continue to speak against all kinds of nuclear weapons." Mordechai Vanunu speaking to the press immediately after his release from prison on April 21, 2004 MORDECHAI VANUNU, ISRAELI NUCLEAR WHISTLEBLOWER - RELEASED FROM PRISON, BUT NOT YET FREE by Felice Cohen-Joppa On April 21, 2004, Mordechai Vanunu was released from Israel 's Ashkelon Prison. In spite of the fact that he served his entire 18 year sentence (more than 11 1/2 years spent in solitary confinement), Israel has imposed severe restrictions that unjustly limit his speech and movement - including forbidding his contact with foreigners, controlling his movements inside Israel, and forbidding him to leave Israel. With these restrictions, Israel has created a special prison just for Mordechai Vanunu. At the height of the Cold War and a global nuclear disarmament movement, Mordechai Vanunu was a lab technician at the Dimona nuclear facility in the Negev Desert. He later, in 1986, told his story and gave photos he had taken inside the factory to the London Sunday Times, in an act of conscience. He believed the world had the right to know about Israel 's undisclosed nuclear weapons program. Days before his story and photos were published, Israeli agents lured Vanunu from London, kidnapped him in Rome, and smuggled him back to Israel for a secret trial where he was convicted of espionage and treason. His revelations gave the world its first solid evidence of Israel's secret and sizable nuclear arsenal. Israel insists Vanunu still has more secrets he intends to reveal, and is therefore a danger to state security. But Vanunu told everything he knew to the Sunday Times over 18 years ago. In July 2004, the Israeli Supreme Court rejected an appeal of the restrictions, and at a six-month review in October, the restrictions were renewed. The next review will occur on the first anniversary of his release from prison. On November 11, thirty armed police stormed St. George 's Anglican Cathedral in East Jerusalem and rearrested Vanunu (he was given sanctuary at the Cathedral after his release and has been living there since). They seized his laptop computers and cell phone, and questioned him about interviews he 'd given to foreign press, before releasing him that evening to seven days of house arrest. When Vanunu was released from custody, he told the press, "They cannot punish me for the same crime, twice, three times. How many times [do] they want to punish me??" Mordechai Vanunu wants to leave Israel and rebuild his life. The U.S. Campaign is working with the international campaigns and Mordechai's supporters in other countries, and with anti-nuclear and human rights groups worldwide for an immediate lifting of the restrictions and Vanunu's full freedom. HOW YOU CAN HELP Make sure Israel knows that the whole world is watching. *Write to these officials, urging them to lift Vanunu 's restrictions and let him leave Israel immediately. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon 3 Kaplan St. Hakirya, Jerusalem 91007 ISRAEL Fax: +972 2 566 4838 Email: rohm@pmo.gov.il Tommy Lapid Minister of Justice 29 Salah al-Din St. Jerusalem 91010 ISRAEL Fax: +972 2 628 5438 Email: sar@justice.gov.il Tzahi Hanegbi Minister of Internal Security P.O. Box 18182 Jerusalem 91181 ISRAEL Fax: +972 2 581 1832 Email: sar@mops.gov.il Ambassador of Israel 3514 International Drive NW Washington, DC 20008 US Fax: 202-364-5607 Email: ambassador_sec@israelemb.org * Write a note of support to Mordechai Vanunu, c/o Cathedral Church of St. George, 20 Nablus Road, PO Box 19122, Jerusalem 91191, Israel, or email vanunumvjc@hotmail.com * Nominate Vanunu for honors, awards and honorary doctorates. He 's been repeatedly nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, received the Lennon-Ono Peace Grant in October, and while imprisoned was honored with the Right Livelihood Award, Nuclear Free Future Award, and received an honorary doctorate from Tromso University in Norway, among many other honors. * Visit the campaign website at www.vanunu.com, sign the online petition, and encourage others to do so. You can also receive email updates and alerts by sending a blank email to free_vanunu-subscribe@yahoogroups.com and following the confirmation instructions that will be emailed back to you. * Make a donation to the campaign. We need to continue our efforts until Mordechai Vanunu is truly free, and financial support is crucial. After he is allowed to leave Israel, the remainder of campaign funds will be given to him to help him rebuild his life. So please give as generously as you can! * Make a donation now to help Vanunu rebuild his life. He was locked away from the world for almost 18 years - a very large price to pay for his courageous act of whistleblowing. There is much that Vanunu needs as he readjusts to life outside of prison, and he will be very grateful for our support.s Checks and money orders made payable to the U.S. Campaign to Free Mordechai Vanunu should be mailed to the address below. Please indicate on the check's memo line if this donation is meant for campaign expenses ("for campaign ") or the Mordechai Vanunu post-release account ("for Mordechai"). You can also donate by credit card or direct withdrawal online via Pay-pal 's secure service at our website. For more information, contact The U.S. Campaign to Free Mordechai Vanunu, P.O. Box 43384, Tucson, AZ 85733 U.S., phone/fax (520)323-8697, email - freevanunu@mindspring.com, website address: www.vanunu.com Felice Cohen-Joppa Coordinator U.S. Campaign to Free Mordechai Vanunu POB 43384 Tucson, AZ 85733 Phone/Fax 520-323-8697 freevanunu@mindspring.com www.nonviolence.org/vanunu ***************************************************************** 32 UC loses nuclear weapons program (1/9) Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 21:00:18 -0600 (CST) http://www.sfbayview.com/091504/ucregents091504.shtml UC Regents lose control of nuclear weapons program Five admirals, Carlyle Group and Rand take over Part 1 by Leuren Moret This windowless building at the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard was headquarters for the super secret National Radiological Defense Laboratory. San Francisco Bay lies in the foreground with the Hunters Point neighborhood, heavily impacted by radioactive and toxic contamination, in the background. Fifteen years after the shipyard was declared a Superfund site, the Navy still has not decontaminated even the cleanest part. Photo: Maurice Campbell, www.mecresources.com "I think some of these folks would put nuclear tips on ice cream cones if they could." - U.S. Rep. Ellen Tauscher, D-Calif., on efforts by Bush administration officials to repeal a research ban on low-yield nuclear weapons, quoted in Global Security Newswire May 19, 2003 UC and nuclear weapons: the kiss of death The top-secret Manhattan Project was laid out by Robert Oppenheimer the night Ernest Lawrence took him to the Bohemian Club during World War II. It was a part of Californias brutal rise to economic and political power described in Imperial San Francisco: Urban Power, Earthly Ruin by Gray Brechin. In 1939, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Niels Bohr had argued that building an atomic bomb can never be done unless you turn the United States into one huge factory. Years later, he told his colleague Edward Teller, I told you it couldnt be done without turning the whole country into a factory. You have done just that. That was after Edward Teller had stuck the proverbial knife in Oppenheimers back, and pulled his security clearance. This 46-acre landfill at the Hunters Point Shipyard, lying across a cove from the 49ers Candlestick Park stadium, is filled with radioactive and toxic waste and explosive gases. Mayor Newsom wants to give the land right beside the landfill next month to Lennar Corp. to build 1,600 new homes. Photo: Maurice Campbell, www.mecresources.com Teller - also known as Dr. Strangelove - went on to promote a grandiose U.S. nuclear weapons program for decades at the nuclear weapons labs: Berkeley, Livermore and Los Alamos. The program remained under a no-bid University of California management contract for 61 years. In a stealth takeover by the Carlyle Group, facilitated by five admirals, the management contract will be transferred next year to the University of Texas, where the military and the Carlyle Group will have control. A new ramping up of the nuclear weapons program is underway, with program funding at the highest level ever - even higher than during the Cold War extending nuclear weapons into outer space, into the very atmosphere that makes life on earth possible, and with no real enemy in sight. Estimating the cold war mortgage In 1995 dollars, according to the Department of Energy (DOE), the U.S. has spent approximately $300 billion on nuclear weapons research, production and testing. Today in the nuclear weapons complex there are 10,500 contaminated sites, 2.3 million acres under DOE ownership, and 120 million square feet of buildings. The DOE Environmental Management program estimates that the 1995 high base cost to clean up the environmental legacy is $350 billion. That excludes the Nevada Test Site, Hanford, the Savannah and Clinch rivers and the Columbia River, which are considered to be national sacrifice zones because the technology does not exist to clean them up. That was the cost for cleaning up the environment. The damage to the human health, not only of Americans but also to the global population, was predicted by the European Committee on Radiation Risk (ECRR) in a 2003 independent report on low level radiation for the European Parliament to be 61,600,000 deaths by cancer, 1,600,000 infant deaths, and 1,900,000 fetal deaths. In addition, the ECRR committee predicts a 10 percent loss of life quality integrated over all diseases and conditions in those who were exposed over the period of global weapons fallout. The cost to the predominantly Black community living near the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard in San Francisco is much greater. Shortly after the bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Navy established the secret Naval Radiological Defense Laboratory (NRDL) at the shipyard to study the biological effects of ionizing radiation. The premier military radiation research facility of the post-World War II era, the lab operated at the shipyard until 1969. Operation Crossroads ships returning to the Hunters Point Shipyard following exposure to detonation of radioactive blasts were researched and decontaminated, and secret experiments exposing animals, plants, military personnel, prisoners and local residents to radiation were conducted at the NRDL, where 550 civilian scientists worked with 65 Navy officers. The radioactive waste and dead animals from the lab were dumped on the base, which lies along the shore of San Francisco Bay. The shipyards largest dump, filling a stream gorge, is now a 46-acre toxic and radioactive landfill. More waste was sunk offshore not far from the Golden Gate Bridge in a battleship and 55-gallon drums, contaminating one of the richest fisheries in the world. Studies by the San Francisco Department of Public Health have documented an inexplicably high incidence of breast cancer among Black women under the age of 40, suggesting environmental causes. Dr. Janette Sherman became a medical doctor because of her concern about radiation after experimenting with radiation on lab animals at the NRDL as a researcher there in the 1950s. Her book, Lifes Delicate Balance Causes and Prevention of Breast Cancer, identifies ionizing radiation as one of the main causes of breast cancer. Even worse, the Radiation and Public Health Project (RPHP), while conducting studies on infant mortality and cancer around nuclear power plants, discovered that milk contaminated with radiation has been shipped into Black inner city communities a genocidal plan which explains why Blacks have the highest cancer rates, infant mortality and asthma in the U.S., which has been blamed on poverty. The studies using U.S. government data on radiation in milk revealed that at the time of Chernobyl the Pennsylvania Milk Board had been selectively shipping radioactive contaminated milk from dairies around the Three Mile Island and Peachbottom reactors into Black inner city communities on the East Coast (see Jay Gould, Infant Mortality and Milk, a chapter in Deadly Deceit: Low Level Radiation, High Level Coverup). An RPHP study on health improvements by race in San Francisco County after the shutdown of the Rancho Seco nuclear power plant in 1989 reports that health improved for all ages, diseases and races except for Blacks. Black infant mortality also increased after startups and accidents, but unlike improvements in infant mortality for whites and Asians, which decreased after the 1989 shutdown, Black infant mortality continued to reflect startups and shutdowns at other nuclear power plants in California. UC Regents meeting May 15, 2003: the point man One year ago, Admiral Linton Brooks, administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) under DOE, informed California Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante and the UC Regents that the management contract for the nuclear weapons labs would be put up for competitive bid for the first time, with the award to be made in 2005. When a Regent asked if it would be for all the labs or just Los Alamos, he replied that it would be for Los Alamos. Later another Regent questioned him again, and this time he said, It would be inconceivable for just one lab. He requested a competitive bid from UC, but the Regents were now leery of the politics involved, and Brooks was challenged by a fiery Bustamante. The lieutenant governor demanded to know why UC should waste millions of dollars preparing a bid when the University of Texas was the most favored institution to get the award and had a member on the blue ribbon panel making the award decision. Admiral Brooks also informed the Board of Regents that were back in the bomb business because Los Alamos had just produced the first plutonium pit since Rocky Flats closed down. He indicated that they would be making mini-nukes only, and nuclear weapons testing would start at the Nevada Test Site in 2005. An hour later, and 45 miles away, he announced to Livermore employees that were back in the bomb business and they would be making big ones, little ones and more. By this time it seemed to me that Admiral Brooks was a slippery character, and I began to wonder why an admiral was involved. UC Regents meeting Aug. 17, 2004: two admirals stage the setup On Aug. 4, 2004, UC President Dynes, a physicist and consultant to Los Alamos and former chancellor of UC San Diego, and UC Regents Chair Gerald Parsky visited Los Alamos and met with employees over chronic and recent security and safety lapses at the lab. Parsky told them: The regents will be left with no choice about the contract competition if we do not feel confident that you understand the importance of security, procedures and safety at the lab. If we feel that you understand this and that steps are being taken to address these issues, the regents will not only endorse competing for this contract we will compete to win. During three minutes of public comment before the Regents on Aug. 17, I informed them that the lab contract was going to the University of Texas; it was a done deal. I told them that the management contract change was a chess move the Carlyle Group was making to privatize the nuclear weapons program, that Carlyle owned 70 percent of Lockheed Martin Marietta, and that Lockheed a year ago had bought Sandia Labs - they make the trigger for nuclear weapons. When Carlyle was mentioned, I noticed that the chair, Gerald Parsky, and the vice chair, Richard Blum, who is married to Sen. Dianne Feinstein, started shifting around in their chairs. Body language can say a lot. They began a disruptive and loud conversation carried on through the rest of my comments. As a Livermore whistleblower, I commented that the loss of computer discs with classified information and missing keys had happened almost daily for 61 years under sloppy UC management, and that science fraud as well as health and safety violations had been just as bad. During my week of security briefing at Livermore in 1989, we had been told the story of a scientist taking classified material home in his briefcase who did not notice it had fallen off the back of his bike. A merchant found the battered briefcase in an intersection, and several days later a horrified lab security employee found that every page of a lengthy report with CLASSIFIED stamped on each page had been taped in the window of the merchants shop hoping the owner would claim his lost secret documents. What was even more egregious, I pointed out, was an article in the July 10, 2004, issue of the Daily Mirror about the murder by the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad of Robert Maxwell, a British publisher. It revealed that Maxwell, who was the former owner of the Daily Mirror, was a high level Mossad agent and had sold PROMIS software to Los Alamos with a back door for the Mossad to spy on the lab. In closing, I told the Regents that no matter who got the contract award, The University of California would forever be known as the university that poisoned the world. References for Part 1 Imperial San Francisco: Urban Power, Earthly Ruin by Gray Brechin, UC Press, January 1999. Estimating the Cold War Mortgage: The 1995 Baseline Environmental Management Report, U.S. DOE Office of Environmental Management Executive Summary, March 1995. Closing the Circle on the Splitting of the Atom: The Environmental Legacy of Nuclear Weapons Production in the U.S. and What the DOE is Doing About It, U.S. DOE Office of Environmental Management, January 1996. ECRR: 2003 Recommendations of the European Committee on Radiation Risk Health Effects of Ionizing Radiation Exposure at Low Doses for Radiation Protection Purposes, Regulators Edition: Brussels, 2003, http://www.euradcom.org. Lifes Delicate Balance: Causes and Prevention of Breast Cancer by Dr. Janette Sherman, 2000, http://www.janettesherman.com. Asthma; Infant Mortality; Recruiting Foster Parents by Lynda Crawford, Gotham Gazette, May 5, 2003, http://www.gothamgazette.com/article/children/20030506/2/379. Deadly Deceit: Low Level Radiation, High Level Coverup by Jay Gould and B. Goldman, 1990, http://www.radiation.org, http://www.thebulletin.org/issues/1990/s90/s90reviews.html#anchor203469. Letter to Employees of University of California-managed National Labs, Today at Berkeley Lab, Aug. 6, 2004, http://www.lbl.gov/today/2004/Aug/06-Fri/letter-jump.html. A Career in Microbiology Can Be Harmful to Your Health: Death Toll Mounting as Connections to Dyncorp, Hadron, PROMIS Software and Disease Research Emerge by Michael Davidson and Michael C. Ruppert, Feb. 14, 2002, http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/02_14_02_microbio.html. Media coverage of Los Alamos security lapse, July 2004, http://www.4law.co.il/lanl1.htm. NASA plans to read terrorists minds at airports by Frank J. Murray, Washington Times, Aug. 17, 2002, http://www.washtimes.com/national/20020817-704732.htm. Air Travel Privacy FOIA Documents: NASA Ames Research Center Northwest Airlines Briefing December 10-11, 2001, Electronic Privacy Information Center, http://www.epic.org/privacy/airtravel/foia/foia1.html. Stop Carlyle! website, http://isuisse.ifrance.com/stopcarlyle/enindex.htm. Parts 2-4 of this expos will appear in the Bay View in the coming weeks. The entire article is available at www.sfbayview.com. Email Leuren Moret at leurenmoret@yahoo.com ***************************************************************** 33 Tri-City Herald: 'bulk vitrification' This story was published Tuesday, December 14th, 2004 By Annette Cary Herald staff writer A new test facility could be turning radioactive wastes into glass a year from now, using a process that officials hope will save millions of dollars and shave years off Hanford's environmental cleanup. On Monday, the state agreed to allow up to 300,000 gallons of the waste to be vitrified, or turned into glass, to test a new method for stabilizing radioactive waste. Under the permit, the Department of Energy may test so-called "bulk vitrification" at a full-scale pilot plant in central Hanford. The permit allows the test facility to operate for up to 400 days. "The key thing about this is vitrifying actual tank waste by this time next year and collecting the data we'll need to make a decision with the regulators on using this technology, along with the Waste Treatment Plant," said Roy Schepens, director of DOE's Office of River Protection in Richland. Hanford has 53 million gallons of radioactive and chemical wastes now stored in huge underground tanks. The wastes date back to the 1940s and are a legacy of making plutonium for the nation's nuclear weapons program. DOE is building a $5.8 billion vitrification plant to turn much of that waste into glass for permanent burial elsewhere. But the Waste Treatment Plant will be able to treat only up to two-thirds of the waste by a 2028 deadline. DOE wants to test bulk vitrification as one of two alternate methods being investigated for handling the remaining wastes. It might treat up to 26 million gallons of waste, and like the vitrification plant, it would turn radioactive and chemical waste into glass. But while the vitrification plant would produce logs of high-level radioactive waste and logs of low-activity waste, bulk vitrification would be used only for low-activity radioactive waste. In the process, waste would be dried, mixed with silica-rich dirt and packed into insulated boxes up to 24 feet long. Electrodes would be inserted into the mixture to heat and melt it into a huge brick of glass that would be permanently buried -- container, electrodes and all. The state will continue to have substantial regulatory control at the test plant. DOE contractor CH2M Hill Hanford Group has subcontracted with AMEC to make up to 50 blocks of glass from waste drawn from one of Hanford's 177 underground tanks, Tank S-109. The process will be varied slightly to produce each block to determine the best way to make the glass. CH2M Hill projects that using bulk vitrification to treat some of the waste would cost about 35 percent less than extending the life of the vitrification plant past the 2028 treatment deadline or expanding the vitrification plant with a second low-activity waste treatment facility. The bulk vitrification project would cost about $1.4 billion. The state must approve each test based on how parameters would be varied and what would be contained in off-gases and secondary waste produced by the tests. If the tests show bulk vitrification cannot safely produce a high-quality glass, other options will be considered. Those could include expanding the Waste Treatment Plant or using the second alternate technology being considered, steam reforming. That would use high-pressure steam to turn a mixture of clay and waste into BB-sized particles. During the public comment period before the bulk vitrification demonstration permit was issued, the state heard concerns about whether gases produced when the waste is heated would be adequately captured. The state is satisfied that the off-gas system has redundancies that will protect the environment, said Suzanne Dahl, tank waste disposal project manager for the Washington State Department of Ecology. The state also is satisfied that the proposed method to separate low-activity waste from high-level radioactive waste in Tank S-109 should work well, Dahl said. DOE plans pretreatment within the tanks and then will use a second separation method to remove more high-level waste when the waste is out of the tank. If bulk vitrification is approved after tests are completed as a way to treat large amounts of radioactive waste, the waste would be separated into a low-activity stream at the vitrification plant that's under construction. Construction on the pilot plant will begin in January. By July, AMEC should be ready to do tests with simulated, nonradioactive waste, Schepens said. The first block of glass should be made from actual tank waste in December 2005. Bulk vitrification has been used by others, including a Texas project to treat some commercial waste with low levels of radioactivity contaminated with PCBs. But Hanford's tank waste is chemically different than most forms of waste, requiring a rigorous testing program to determine the ability of the glass to capture waste and prevent it from reaching the environment. "(The state permit) is a significant step in our process to evaluate bulk vitrification," Ed Aromi, president and general manager of CH2M Hill Hanford Group, said in a prepared statement. "This technology holds great promise to safely and effectively treat Hanford tank waste." © 2004 Tri-City Herald, Associated Press &Other Wire Services ***************************************************************** 34 Reid: Reid Statement On Nomination Of New Energy Secretary Senator Harry Reid - Assistant Democratic Leader From Nevada"> [http://reid.senate.gov] Friday, December 10, 2004 WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senator Harry Reid released the following statement today on the nomination of Sam Bodman to serve as Secretary of Energy: “Dr. Sam Bodman has a distinguished academic and political background, and a proven track record leading large government agencies, having twice been confirmed by the Senate to positions at the Department of Commerce and Department of Treasury. “As Secretary of the Department of Energy, he will have his hands full meeting the challenges our country currently faces. I look forward to a thorough nomination process to determine how Dr. Bodman plans to reduce the skyrocketing cost of oil and natural gas, secure our energy infrastructure, ensure our electrical grid is modern, reliable and safe, and ensure that our nation’s nuclear weapons stockpile is safe and reliable. “I had a long and productive conversation with Dr. Bodman early this morning. During our conversation, I asked him to keep an open mind about the wide array of issues facing the Department. I stressed to Dr. Bodman that, while I understand he serves at the pleasure of a President who supports the project, I hoped he would take a fresh look at alternatives to the proposed nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain. He agreed to do so.†### ***************************************************************** 35 [December 13, 2004 (Volume 69, Number 238)] [Unified Agenda] From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [frwais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID: f:ua041207.wais] [Page 73106-73118] Department of Energy ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Part VII ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Semiannual Regulatory Agenda [[Page 73106]] DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY (DOE) _______________________________________________________________________ DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY 10 CFR Chs. II, III, and X 48 CFR Ch. 9 Regulatory Agenda AGENCY: Department of Energy. ACTION: Semiannual regulatory agenda. _______________________________________________________________________ SUMMARY: The Department of Energy has prepared and today is publishing its semiannual regulatory agenda pursuant to Executive Order 12866 ``Regulatory Planning and Review,'' 58 FR 51735, and the Regulatory Flexibility Act, 5 U.S.C. sections 601-612 (1988). FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: For further information about any particular item on the regulatory agenda, please contact the individual listed under that item. For further information on the regulatory agenda in general, please contact: Richard L. Farman, Room 6E-078, Forrestal Building, 1000 Independence Avenue SW., Washington, DC 20585, (202) 586-8145. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Entries appended to this notice reflect the status of activities as of approximately September 30, 2004. They are divided into categories first by subagencies and then according to their stage of rulemaking action: prerule, proposed rulemaking, final rulemaking, long-term action, or completed action. For this edition of the Department of Energy's regulatory agenda, the most important significant regulatory actions are included in The Regulatory Plan, which appears in part II of this issue of the Federal Register. The Regulatory Plan entries are listed in the table of contents below and are denoted by a bracketed bold reference, which directs the reader to the appropriate sequence number in part II. A draft of this regulatory agenda has been transmitted to the Chief Counsel for Advocacy of the U.S. Small Business Administration for comment, if any, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 602(b). Issued in Washington, DC, on November 18 2004. Lee Liberman Otis, General Counsel. National Nuclear Security Agency--Proposed Rule Stage ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Regulation Sequence Title Identifier Number Number ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 860 Computer Security: Access to Information on National Nuclear Security Administration 1994-AA01 Computer Systems...................................................................... ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- National Nuclear Security Agency--Long-Term Actions ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Regulation Sequence Title Identifier Number Number ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 861 Initial Parts of NNSA Acquisition Regulation (NAR).................................... 1994-AA00 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy--Prerule Stage ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Regulation Sequence Title Identifier Number Number ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 862 Determination for High-Intensity Discharge Lamps...................................... 1904-AA86 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy--Proposed Rule Stage ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Regulation Sequence Title Identifier Number Number ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 863 Energy Efficiency Code for New Federal Residential Low-Rise Buildings................. 1904-AA53 864 State and Local Incentives Program: Alternative Fuels................................. 1904-AA66 865 Energy Efficiency Standards for Residential Furnaces and Boilers (Reg Plan Seq No. 36) 1904-AA78 866 Energy Efficiency Standards for Electric Distribution Transformers (Reg Plan Seq No. 1904-AB08 37)................................................................................... 867 Energy Efficiency Standards for Commercial Unitary Air Conditioners and Heat Pumps 1904-AB09 (Reg Plan Seq No. 38)................................................................. 868 Energy Standards for New Federal Commercial and Multi-Family High-Rise Residential 1904-AB13 Buildings............................................................................. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- References in boldface appear in the Regulatory Plan in part II of this issue of the Federal Register. [[Page 73107]] Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy--Final Rule Stage ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Regulation Sequence Title Identifier Number Number ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 869 Test Procedures for Residential Central Air Conditioners and Heat Pumps--Amendments... 1904-AA46 870 Test Procedures for Electric Distribution Transformers................................ 1904-AA85 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy--Long-Term Actions ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Regulation Sequence Title Identifier Number Number ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 871 National Voluntary Residential Energy Efficiency Rating Guidelines.................... 1904-AA74 872 Determination for Small Electric Motors............................................... 1904-AA87 873 Energy Efficiency Standards for Clothes Dryers and Dishwashers........................ 1904-AA89 874 Energy Efficiency Standards for Pool Heaters and Direct Heating Equipment............. 1904-AA90 875 Energy Efficiency Standards for 1-200 HP Electric Motors.............................. 1904-AA91 876 Energy Efficiency Standards for Fluorescent and Incandescent Lamps.................... 1904-AA92 877 Coverage of Certain Types of Commercial Refrigeration Equipment (Reach-In Freezers, 1904-AB14 Reach-In Refrigerators, Vending Machines, and Beverage Merchandisers)................. 878 Coverage of Certain Incandescent Reflector Lamps, Torchieres, and Ceiling Fans........ 1904-AB15 879 Energy Efficiency Standards for Commercial 3-Phase Air Conditioners and Heat Pump Less 1904-AB16 Than 65 kBtu/h........................................................................ 880 Energy Efficiency Standards for Commercial Packaged Terminal Air Conditioners and Heat 1904-AB17 Pumps; Commercial Oil- and Gas-Fired Package Boilers; and Tankless Gas-Fired Water Heaters............................................................................... 881 Energy Efficiency Standards for Commercial Single Packaged Vertical Air-Conditioners 1904-AB44 and Heat Pumps........................................................................ ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy--Completed Actions ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Regulation Sequence Title Identifier Number Number ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 882 Test Procedures for Commercial Water Heaters.......................................... 1904-AA95 883 Test Procedures for Commercial Warm Air Furnaces...................................... 1904-AA96 884 Test Procedures for Commercial Air Conditioning Equipment............................. 1904-AA97 885 Test Procedures for Commercial Package Boilers........................................ 1904-AB02 886 Energy Efficiency Standards for Residential Central Air Conditioners and Heat Pumps... 1904-AB46 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Defense and Security Affairs--Proposed Rule Stage ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Regulation Sequence Title Identifier Number Number ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 887 Counterintelligence Evaluation Regulations............................................ 1992-AA33 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Defense and Security Affairs--Final Rule Stage ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Regulation Sequence Title Identifier Number Number ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 888 Procedural Rules for the Assessment of Civil Penalties for Security Violations........ 1992-AA28 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Defense and Security Affairs--Long-Term Actions ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Regulation Sequence Title Identifier Number Number ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 889 Physical Protection of Security Interests............................................. 1992-AA23 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [[Page 73108]] Departmental and Others--Proposed Rule Stage ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Regulation Sequence Title Identifier Number Number ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 890 Freedom of Information Act............................................................ 1901-AA32 891 Research Misconduct................................................................... 1901-AA89 892 Occupational Radiation Protection..................................................... 1901-AA95 893 Worker Safety and Health (Reg Plan Seq No. 39)........................................ 1901-AA99 894 Guidelines for Voluntary Greenhouse Gas Reporting..................................... 1901-AB11 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- References in boldface appear in the Regulatory Plan in part II of this issue of the Federal Register. Departmental and Others--Final Rule Stage ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Regulation Sequence Title Identifier Number Number ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 895 Radiation Protection of the Public and the Environment (Reg Plan Seq No. 40).......... 1901-AA38 896 Economic Development Transfers of Real Property....................................... 1901-AA82 897 Federal Policy for the Protection of Human Subjects................................... 1901-AB14 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- References in boldface appear in the Regulatory Plan in part II of this issue of the Federal Register. Departmental and Others--Long-Term Actions ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Regulation Sequence Title Identifier Number Number ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 898 Annotation of Land Records for Remediated Properties in the Uranium Mill Tailings 1901-AA57 Remedial Action Project (UMTRA)....................................................... 899 Guidelines for Physician Panel Determination on Worker Requests for Assistance in 1901-AB13 Filing for State Worker's Compensation Benefits; Procedural Amendments................ ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Office of Procurement and Assistance Management--Proposed Rule Stage ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Regulation Sequence Title Identifier Number Number ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 900 DEAR: Make or Buy Plans............................................................... 1991-AB63 901 DEAR Changes to Provisions for Facilities Management, Work Authorization, Contractor's 1991-AB65 Organization, Contractor Relations, and Laws, Regulations, and Directives............. 902 Cooperative Audit Strategy............................................................ 1991-AB67 903 DEAR: Biobased Content Products....................................................... 1991-AB68 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Office of Procurement and Assistance Management--Final Rule Stage ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Regulation Sequence Title Identifier Number Number ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 904 Organizational Conflict of Interest Disclosure........................................ 1991-AB52 905 Department of Energy Acquisition Regulation: Management Contractor Compensation for 1991-AB61 Personal Services..................................................................... 906 Technical Amendment of the Department of Energy Acquisition Regulation................ 1991-AB62 907 DEAR: Work for Others................................................................. 1991-AB64 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [[Page 73109]] Office of General Counsel--Final Rule Stage ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Regulation Sequence Title Identifier Number Number ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 908 Conduct of Employees.................................................................. 1990-AA19 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Office of General Counsel--Long-Term Actions ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Regulation Sequence Title Identifier Number Number ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 909 Claims for Damages Against Department of Energy Employees............................. 1990-AA26 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- _______________________________________________________________________ Department of Energy (DOE) Proposed Rule Stage National Nuclear Security Agency (NNSA) _______________________________________________________________________ 860. COMPUTER SECURITY: ACCESS TO INFORMATION ON NATIONAL NUCLEAR SECURITY ADMINISTRATION COMPUTER SYSTEMS Priority: Substantive, Nonsignificant Legal Authority: 42 USC 7101 et seq; 42 USC 2001 et seq; 50 USC 2425; 50 USC 2483(c) CFR Citation: Not Yet Determined Legal Deadline: None Abstract: This action would codify rules governing access by any individual to information on National Nuclear Security Administration computer systems. Timetable: ________________________________________________________________________ Action Date FR Cite ________________________________________________________________________ NPRM 01/00/05 Final Action 06/00/05 Regulatory Flexibility Analysis Required: No Small Entities Affected: No Government Levels Affected: None Agency Contact: Catherine McCulloch, Department of Energy, National Nuclear Security Administration, 1000 Independence Avenue SW., Washington, DC 20585 Phone: 202 586-2515 RIN: 1994-AA01 _______________________________________________________________________ Department of Energy (DOE) Long-Term Actions National Nuclear Security Agency (NNSA) _______________________________________________________________________ 861. INITIAL PARTS OF NNSA ACQUISITION REGULATION (NAR) Priority: Substantive, Nonsignificant. Major status under 5 USC 801 is undetermined. CFR Citation: 48 CFR ch 11 Timetable: Next Action Undetermined Regulatory Flexibility Analysis Required: No Small Entities Affected: No Government Levels Affected: None Agency Contact: James J. Cavanagh Phone: 202 586-8559 RIN: 1994-AA00 _______________________________________________________________________ Department of Energy (DOE) Prerule Stage Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EE) _______________________________________________________________________ 862. DETERMINATION FOR HIGH-INTENSITY DISCHARGE LAMPS Priority: Substantive, Nonsignificant Legal Authority: 42 USC 6317 CFR Citation: 10 CFR 430 Legal Deadline: Other, Statutory, April 24, 1995, Determination Notice. Abstract: The Energy Policy Act of 1992 requires the Department to prescribe test procedures and efficiency standards for high-intensity discharge lamps for which the Secretary makes a determination that energy conservation standards would be technologically feasible and economically justified, and would result in significant energy savings. Timetable: ________________________________________________________________________ Action Date FR Cite ________________________________________________________________________ Determination Notice 04/00/05 Regulatory Flexibility Analysis Required: No Government Levels Affected: None Additional Information: The timetable for this action reflects program priorities, which were established with significant input from the public. The Department is gathering information and conducting analysis in preparation for a determination under 42 U.S.C. 631(b). Agency Contact: Bryan Berringer, EE-2J, Department of Energy, Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, [[Page 73110]] Office of Building Technologies Program, 1000 Independence Avenue SW., Washington, DC 20585 Phone: 202 586-0371 Fax: 202 586-4617 Email: bryan.berringer@ee.doe.gov RIN: 1904-AA86 _______________________________________________________________________ Department of Energy (DOE) Proposed Rule Stage Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EE) _______________________________________________________________________ 863. ENERGY EFFICIENCY CODE FOR NEW FEDERAL RESIDENTIAL LOW-RISE BUILDINGS Priority: Other Significant Legal Authority: 42 USC 6834 CFR Citation: 10 CFR 435 Legal Deadline: Final, Statutory, October 24, 1994. Abstract: Title III of the Energy Conservation and Production Act as amended by the Energy Policy Act of 1992 directs DOE to establish Federal building energy standards that require in new Federal buildings those energy efficiency measures that are technologically feasible and economically justified. The standards for Federal buildings are intended to parallel closely the voluntary building energy codes of the Energy Policy Act for private sector construction. Interim energy performance standards which DOE had issued before enactment of the Energy Policy Act are to remain in effect for the Federal sector until the new Federal building energy standards become effective. Timetable: ________________________________________________________________________ Action Date FR Cite ________________________________________________________________________ NPRM 05/02/97 62 FR 24164 NPRM Comment Period End 07/14/97 Supplemental NPRM 05/00/05 Final Action 05/00/06 Regulatory Flexibility Analysis Required: No Government Levels Affected: Federal Agency Contact: Stephen P. Walder, EE-2J, Department of Energy, Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Office of Building Technologies Program, 1000 Independence Avenue SW., Washington, DC 20585 Phone: 202 586-9209 Fax: 202 586-4617 Email: stephen.walder@ee.doe.gov RIN: 1904-AA53 _______________________________________________________________________ 864. STATE AND LOCAL INCENTIVES PROGRAM: ALTERNATIVE FUELS Priority: Other Significant Legal Authority: 42 USC 13235 CFR Citation: 10 CFR 409 Legal Deadline: Final, Statutory, April 24, 1993. Abstract: The Energy Policy Act of 1992 requires DOE to issue regulations establishing the State and Local Incentives Program. Under this program DOE may grant financial assistance to States for projects in DOE-approved State plans to promote use of alternative fuels and alternative-fueled vehicles. With the publication of an integrated State Energy Program (61 FR 35890), the alternative fuel grant programs may be a part of the State grant special projects, depending on funding availability. The next action will be a cancellation notice of any separate State grant program. Timetable: ________________________________________________________________________ Action Date FR Cite ________________________________________________________________________ NPRM 03/21/95 60 FR 15020 Withdraw NPRM 03/00/05 Regulatory Flexibility Analysis Required: No Government Levels Affected: State, Local Agency Contact: Dorothy Wormley, Department of Energy, Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Office of Weatherization and Intergovernmental Programs, 1000 Independence Avenue SW., Washington, DC 20585 Phone: 202 586-7028 RIN: 1904-AA66 _______________________________________________________________________ 865. ENERGY EFFICIENCY STANDARDS FOR RESIDENTIAL FURNACES AND BOILERS Regulatory Plan: This entry is Seq. No. 36 in part II of this issue of the Federal Register. RIN: 1904-AA78 _______________________________________________________________________ 866. ENERGY EFFICIENCY STANDARDS FOR ELECTRIC DISTRIBUTION TRANSFORMERS Regulatory Plan: This entry is Seq. No. 37 in part II of this issue of the Federal Register. RIN: 1904-AB08 _______________________________________________________________________ 867. ENERGY EFFICIENCY STANDARDS FOR COMMERCIAL UNITARY AIR CONDITIONERS AND HEAT PUMPS Regulatory Plan: This entry is Seq. No. 38 in part II of this issue of the Federal Register. RIN: 1904-AB09 _______________________________________________________________________ 868. ENERGY STANDARDS FOR NEW FEDERAL COMMERCIAL AND MULTI-FAMILY HIGH- RISE RESIDENTIAL BUILDINGS Priority: Substantive, Nonsignificant Legal Authority: 42 USC 6834 CFR Citation: 10 CFR 434 Legal Deadline: None Abstract: Section 305(a)(1) of the Energy Conservation and Production Act, as amended, requires the Department to establish by rule building energy efficiency standards for all new Federal commercial and multi- family high-rise residential (over three stories in height above ground) buildings. In developing this rule, DOE is directed to consult with other Federal agencies as well as private, State, and other appropriate entities. Timetable: ________________________________________________________________________ Action Date FR Cite ________________________________________________________________________ NPRM 05/00/05 Final Action 11/00/05 Regulatory Flexibility Analysis Required: No Government Levels Affected: None Agency Contact: Cyrus Nasseri, EE-2J, Department of Energy, Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Office of Building Technologies [[Page 73111]] Program, 1000 Independence Avenue SW., Washington, DC 20585 Phone: 202 586-9138 Email: cyrus.nasseri@ee.doe.gov RIN: 1904-AB13 _______________________________________________________________________ Department of Energy (DOE) Final Rule Stage Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EE) _______________________________________________________________________ 869. TEST PROCEDURES FOR RESIDENTIAL CENTRAL AIR CONDITIONERS AND HEAT PUMPS--AMENDMENTS Priority: Substantive, Nonsignificant Legal Authority: 42 USC 6293 CFR Citation: 10 CFR 430 Legal Deadline: None Abstract: These revisions to the test procedures for central air conditioners and heat pumps in accordance with the Energy Policy and Conservation Act will reorganize the test procedure regulations to place them in a logical order and also will update the references. The revisions include an updated nomenclature compatible with the test procedure for combined (domestic hot water and central air conditioners or heat pumps) appliances, additional tables listing test tolerances, a clearer specification for the demand defrost credit, and test methods for ECM (electronically commutated motor) blowers and history-dependent defrosts. Timetable: ________________________________________________________________________ Action Date FR Cite ________________________________________________________________________ NPRM 01/22/01 66 FR 6768 Final Action 05/00/05 Regulatory Flexibility Analysis Required: No Small Entities Affected: No Government Levels Affected: None Agency Contact: Michael Raymond, EE-2J, Department of Energy, Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Office of Building Technologies Program, 1000 Independence Avenue SW., Washington, DC 20585 Phone: 202 586-9611 Email: michael.raymond@ee.doe.gov RIN: 1904-AA46 _______________________________________________________________________ 870. TEST PROCEDURES FOR ELECTRIC DISTRIBUTION TRANSFORMERS Priority: Substantive, Nonsignificant Legal Authority: 42 USC 6317 CFR Citation: 10 CFR 430 Legal Deadline: Other, Statutory, April 24, 1995, Determination Notice. Abstract: The Energy Policy Act of 1992 requires the Department to prescribe testing requirements for electric distribution transformers for which the Secretary makes a determination that energy conservation standards would be technologically feasible and economically justified, and would result in significant energy savings. Timetable: ________________________________________________________________________ Action Date FR Cite ________________________________________________________________________ Determination Notice 10/22/97 62 FR 54809 NPRM 11/12/98 63 FR 63359 Supplemental NPRM 07/29/04 69 FR 45506 Final Action 09/00/05 Regulatory Flexibility Analysis Required: No Government Levels Affected: None Agency Contact: Cyrus Nasseri, EE-2J, Department of Energy, Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Office of Building Technologies Program, 1000 Independence Avenue SW., Washington, DC 20585 Phone: 202 586-9138 Email: cyrus.nasseri@ee.doe.gov RIN: 1904-AA85 _______________________________________________________________________ Department of Energy (DOE) Long-Term Actions Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EE) _______________________________________________________________________ 871. NATIONAL VOLUNTARY RESIDENTIAL ENERGY EFFICIENCY RATING GUIDELINES Priority: Substantive, Nonsignificant CFR Citation: 10 CFR 437 Timetable: ________________________________________________________________________ Action Date FR Cite ________________________________________________________________________ NPRM 07/25/95 60 FR 37949 Final Action To Be Determined Regulatory Flexibility Analysis Required: Undetermined Government Levels Affected: Undetermined Agency Contact: Stephen P. Walder, EE-2J Phone: 202 586-9209 Fax: 202 586-4617 Email: stephen.walder@ee.doe.gov RIN: 1904-AA74 _______________________________________________________________________ 872. DETERMINATION FOR SMALL ELECTRIC MOTORS Priority: Substantive, Nonsignificant CFR Citation: 10 CFR 431 Timetable: ________________________________________________________________________ Action Date FR Cite ________________________________________________________________________ Determination Notice 03/00/06 Regulatory Flexibility Analysis Required: No Government Levels Affected: None Agency Contact: James Raba, EE-2J Phone: 202 586-8654 Email: jim.raba@ee.doe.gov RIN: 1904-AA87 _______________________________________________________________________ 873. ENERGY EFFICIENCY STANDARDS FOR CLOTHES DRYERS AND DISHWASHERS Priority: Economically Significant. Major under 5 USC 801. CFR Citation: 10 CFR 430.32 Timetable: Next Action Undetermined Regulatory Flexibility Analysis Required: No Government Levels Affected: Local, State Agency Contact: Barbara Twigg, EE-2J Phone: 202 586-8714 [[Page 73112]] Email: barbara.twigg@ee.doe.gov RIN: 1904-AA89 _______________________________________________________________________ 874. ENERGY EFFICIENCY STANDARDS FOR POOL HEATERS AND DIRECT HEATING EQUIPMENT Priority: Economically Significant. Major under 5 USC 801. CFR Citation: 10 CFR 430 Timetable: Next Action Undetermined Regulatory Flexibility Analysis Required: No Government Levels Affected: Local, State Agency Contact: Cyrus Nasseri, EE-2J Phone: 202 586-9138 Email: cyrus.nasseri@ee.doe.gov RIN: 1904-AA90 _______________________________________________________________________ 875. ENERGY EFFICIENCY STANDARDS FOR 1-200 HP ELECTRIC MOTORS Priority: Economically Significant. Major under 5 USC 801. CFR Citation: 10 CFR 431 Timetable: Next Action Undetermined Regulatory Flexibility Analysis Required: No Government Levels Affected: None Agency Contact: James Raba, EE-2J Phone: 202 586-8654 Email: jim.raba@ee.doe.gov RIN: 1904-AA91 _______________________________________________________________________ 876. ENERGY EFFICIENCY STANDARDS FOR FLUORESCENT AND INCANDESCENT LAMPS Priority: Economically Significant. Major under 5 USC 801. CFR Citation: 10 CFR 430.32 Timetable: Next Action Undetermined Regulatory Flexibility Analysis Required: No Government Levels Affected: Local, State Agency Contact: Bryan Berringer, EE-2J Phone: 202 586-0371 Fax: 202 586-4617 Email: bryan.berringer@ee.doe.gov RIN: 1904-AA92 _______________________________________________________________________ 877. COVERAGE OF CERTAIN TYPES OF COMMERCIAL REFRIGERATION EQUIPMENT (REACH-IN FREEZERS, REACH-IN REFRIGERATORS, VENDING MACHINES, AND BEVERAGE MERCHANDISERS) Priority: Substantive, Nonsignificant CFR Citation: 10 CFR 431 Timetable: ________________________________________________________________________ Action Date FR Cite ________________________________________________________________________ NPRM 12/00/06 Final Rule To Be Determined Regulatory Flexibility Analysis Required: No Government Levels Affected: None Agency Contact: Linda Graves, EE-2J Phone: 202 586-1851 Email: linda.graves@ee.doe.gov RIN: 1904-AB14 _______________________________________________________________________ 878. COVERAGE OF CERTAIN INCANDESCENT REFLECTOR LAMPS, TORCHIERES, AND CEILING FANS Priority: Substantive, Nonsignificant CFR Citation: 10 CFR 430 Timetable: ________________________________________________________________________ Action Date FR Cite ________________________________________________________________________ NPRM 12/00/06 Final Rule To Be Determined Regulatory Flexibility Analysis Required: No Government Levels Affected: None Agency Contact: Linda Graves, EE-2J Phone: 202 586-1851 Email: linda.graves@ee.doe.gov RIN: 1904-AB15 _______________________________________________________________________ 879. ENERGY EFFICIENCY STANDARDS FOR COMMERCIAL 3-PHASE AIR CONDITIONERS AND HEAT PUMP LESS THAN 65 KBTU/H Priority: Substantive, Nonsignificant. Major status under 5 USC 801 is undetermined. CFR Citation: 10 CFR 431 Timetable: ________________________________________________________________________ Action Date FR Cite ________________________________________________________________________ Workshop 11/00/05 Final Action 03/00/06 Regulatory Flexibility Analysis Required: No Government Levels Affected: Local, State Agency Contact: Maureen Murphy, EE-2J Phone: 202 586-0598 Fax: 202 586-4617 Email: maureen.murphy@ee.doe.gov RIN: 1904-AB16 _______________________________________________________________________ 880. ENERGY EFFICIENCY STANDARDS FOR COMMERCIAL PACKAGED TERMINAL AIR CONDITIONERS AND HEAT PUMPS; COMMERCIAL OIL- AND GAS-FIRED PACKAGE BOILERS; AND TANKLESS GAS-FIRED WATER HEATERS Priority: Substantive, Nonsignificant. Major status under 5 USC 801 is undetermined. CFR Citation: 10 CFR 431 Timetable: ________________________________________________________________________ Action Date FR Cite ________________________________________________________________________ Workshop 11/00/05 Final Action 03/00/06 Regulatory Flexibility Analysis Required: No Government Levels Affected: Local, State Agency Contact: Maureen Murphy, EE-2J Phone: 202 586-0598 Fax: 202 586-4617 Email: maureen.murphy@ee.doe.gov RIN: 1904-AB17 _______________________________________________________________________ 881. ENERGY EFFICIENCY STANDARDS FOR COMMERCIAL SINGLE PACKAGED VERTICAL AIR-CONDITIONERS AND HEAT PUMPS Priority: Substantive, Nonsignificant. Major status under 5 USC 801 is undetermined. CFR Citation: 10 CFR 431 Timetable: ________________________________________________________________________ Action Date FR Cite ________________________________________________________________________ Workshop 11/00/05 Final Action 03/00/06 Regulatory Flexibility Analysis Required: No Small Entities Affected: No Government Levels Affected: Local, State Agency Contact: Maureen Murphy, EE-2J Phone: 202 586-0598 Fax: 202 586-4617 [[Page 73113]] Email: maureen.murphy@ee.doe.gov RIN: 1904-AB44 _______________________________________________________________________ Department of Energy (DOE) Completed Actions Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EE) _______________________________________________________________________ 882. TEST PROCEDURES FOR COMMERCIAL WATER HEATERS Priority: Substantive, Nonsignificant CFR Citation: 10 CFR 431 Completed: ________________________________________________________________________ Reason Date FR Cite ________________________________________________________________________ Final Action 10/21/04 69 FR 61974 Regulatory Flexibility Analysis Required: No Government Levels Affected: None Agency Contact: Mohammed Kahn, EE-2J Phone: 202 586-7892 Email: mohammed.kahn@ee.doe.gov RIN: 1904-AA95 _______________________________________________________________________ 883. TEST PROCEDURES FOR COMMERCIAL WARM AIR FURNACES Priority: Substantive, Nonsignificant CFR Citation: 10 CFR 431 Completed: ________________________________________________________________________ Reason Date FR Cite ________________________________________________________________________ Final Action 10/21/04 69 FR 61916 Regulatory Flexibility Analysis Required: No Government Levels Affected: None Agency Contact: Mohammed Kahn, EE-2J Phone: 202 586-7892 Email: mohammed.kahn@ee.doe.gov RIN: 1904-AA96 _______________________________________________________________________ 884. TEST PROCEDURES FOR COMMERCIAL AIR CONDITIONING EQUIPMENT Priority: Substantive, Nonsignificant CFR Citation: 10 CFR 431 Completed: ________________________________________________________________________ Reason Date FR Cite ________________________________________________________________________ Final Action 10/21/04 69 FR 61962 Regulatory Flexibility Analysis Required: No Government Levels Affected: None Agency Contact: Mohammed Kahn, EE-2J Phone: 202 586-7892 Email: mohammed.kahn@ee.doe.gov RIN: 1904-AA97 _______________________________________________________________________ 885. TEST PROCEDURES FOR COMMERCIAL PACKAGE BOILERS Priority: Substantive, Nonsignificant CFR Citation: 10 CFR 431 Completed: ________________________________________________________________________ Reason Date FR Cite ________________________________________________________________________ Final Action 10/21/04 69 FR 61949 Regulatory Flexibility Analysis Required: No Government Levels Affected: None Agency Contact: Mohammed Kahn, EE-2J Phone: 202 586-7892 Email: mohammed.kahn@ee.doe.gov RIN: 1904-AB02 _______________________________________________________________________ 886. ENERGY EFFICIENCY STANDARDS FOR RESIDENTIAL CENTRAL AIR CONDITIONERS AND HEAT PUMPS Priority: Substantive, Nonsignificant CFR Citation: 10 CFR 430 Completed: ________________________________________________________________________ Reason Date FR Cite ________________________________________________________________________ Final Action 08/17/04 69 FR 50997 Regulatory Flexibility Analysis Required: No Government Levels Affected: None Agency Contact: Michael Raymond, EE-2J Phone: 202 586-9611 Email: michael.raymond@ee.doe.gov RIN: 1904-AB46 _______________________________________________________________________ Department of Energy (DOE) Proposed Rule Stage Defense and Security Affairs (DSA) _______________________________________________________________________ 887. COUNTERINTELLIGENCE EVALUATION REGULATIONS Priority: Substantive, Nonsignificant Legal Authority: 42 USC 2011 et seq; 42 USC 7101 et seq; 42 USC 7383h- 1; 50 USC 2401 et seq CFR Citation: 10 CFR 709; 10 CFR 710 Legal Deadline: None Abstract: The purpose of this action is to promulgate new counterintelligence polygraph regulations consistent with section 3152 of the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2002. Timetable: ________________________________________________________________________ Action Date FR Cite ________________________________________________________________________ NPRM 04/14/03 68 FR 17886 Correction to NPRM 04/18/03 68 FR 19166 Revised NPRM 11/00/04 Regulatory Flexibility Analysis Required: No Small Entities Affected: No Government Levels Affected: None Agency Contact: Douglas Hinckley, Program Director, Department of Energy, Office of Counterintelligence, 1000 Independence Avenue SW., Washington, DC 20585 Phone: 202 586-5901 RIN: 1992-AA33 [[Page 73114]] _______________________________________________________________________ Department of Energy (DOE) Final Rule Stage Defense and Security Affairs (DSA) _______________________________________________________________________ 888. PROCEDURAL RULES FOR THE ASSESSMENT OF CIVIL PENALTIES FOR SECURITY VIOLATIONS Priority: Substantive, Nonsignificant Legal Authority: 42 USC 2011 et seq; 42 USC 7101 et seq; 42 USC 2282(b) CFR Citation: 10 CFR 824 Legal Deadline: None Abstract: This action would define the process for the imposition of civil penalties on contractors for violations relating to the safeguarding or security of classified or sensitive data. Timetable: ________________________________________________________________________ Action Date FR Cite ________________________________________________________________________ NPRM 04/01/02 67 FR 15339 NPRM Comment Period End 07/01/02 Final Action 12/00/04 Regulatory Flexibility Analysis Required: No Small Entities Affected: No Government Levels Affected: None Agency Contact: Geralyn C. Praskievicz, Department of Energy, Office of Security, 1000 Independence Avenue SW., Washington, DC 20585 Phone: 202 586-4451 RIN: 1992-AA28 _______________________________________________________________________ Department of Energy (DOE) Long-Term Actions Defense and Security Affairs (DSA) _______________________________________________________________________ 889. PHYSICAL PROTECTION OF SECURITY INTERESTS Priority: Substantive, Nonsignificant CFR Citation: 10 CFR 1046 subpart A; 10 CFR 1046 subpart B Timetable: ________________________________________________________________________ Action Date FR Cite ________________________________________________________________________ NPRM 04/14/03 68 FR 17886 NPRM Correction 04/18/03 68 FR 19166 NPRM Comment Period End 06/13/03 Revised NPRM 01/00/06 Final Action 08/00/06 Regulatory Flexibility Analysis Required: No Government Levels Affected: None Agency Contact: John Cronin Phone: 301 903-6209 RIN: 1992-AA23 _______________________________________________________________________ Department of Energy (DOE) Proposed Rule Stage Departmental and Others (ENDEP) _______________________________________________________________________ 890. FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT Priority: Other Significant Legal Authority: 5 USC 552 CFR Citation: 10 CFR 1004 Legal Deadline: None Abstract: The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), as amended, permits any person to request access to agency records. The DOE has promulgated a regulation at part 1004 of title 10 of the Code of Federal Regulations to implement the FOIA. The DOE will revise its FOIA regulation to reflect current procedures for processing requests for information that are submitted to the agency, to ensure compliance with the Electronic Freedom of Information Act Amendments of 1996, and to make the regulation more user friendly. Timetable: ________________________________________________________________________ Action Date FR Cite ________________________________________________________________________ NPRM 02/00/05 Final Action 10/00/05 Regulatory Flexibility Analysis Required: No Government Levels Affected: None Agency Contact: Abel Lopez, Director, FOIA and Privacy Act Division, Department of Energy, 1000 Independence Avenue SW., Washington, DC 20585 Phone: 202 586-5955 Email: abel.lopez@hq.doe.gov RIN: 1901-AA32 _______________________________________________________________________ 891. RESEARCH MISCONDUCT Priority: Substantive, Nonsignificant Legal Authority: 42 USC 2201; 42 USC 7101 et seq; 50 USC 2401 et seq CFR Citation: None Legal Deadline: None Abstract: This action would establish policies and procedures for handling research misconduct allegations. Timetable: ________________________________________________________________________ Action Date FR Cite ________________________________________________________________________ NPRM 02/00/05 Final Action 07/00/05 Regulatory Flexibility Analysis Required: No Government Levels Affected: Federal Agency Contact: William J. Valdez, Director, Office of Planning and Analysis, Department of Energy, Office of Science, 1000 Independence Avenue SW., Washington, DC 20585 Phone: 202 586-9942 Fax: 202 586-7719 Email: bill.valdez@science.doe.gov RIN: 1901-AA89 _______________________________________________________________________ 892. OCCUPATIONAL RADIATION PROTECTION Priority: Substantive, Nonsignificant Legal Authority: 42 USC 2201; 42 USC 7191 CFR Citation: 10 CFR 835 Legal Deadline: None Abstract: This action would amend the Department of Energy's occupational radiation protection regulations to provide additional flexibility in meeting requirements, to update the dosimetric models and dose terms, to establish certain concentration values and limits, and to clarify requirements for radioactive material transportation not subject to DOT regulations. Timetable: ________________________________________________________________________ Action Date FR Cite ________________________________________________________________________ NPRM 12/00/04 Regulatory Flexibility Analysis Required: No [[Page 73115]] Small Entities Affected: No Government Levels Affected: None Agency Contact: Peter O'Connell, Department of Energy, Office of Worker Protection Policy and Programs, 1000 Independence Avenue S.W., Washington, DC 20585 Phone: 301 903-5641 RIN: 1901-AA95 _______________________________________________________________________ 893. WORKER SAFETY AND HEALTH Regulatory Plan: This entry is Seq. No. 39 in part II of this issue of the Federal Register. RIN: 1901-AA99 _______________________________________________________________________ 894. GUIDELINES FOR VOLUNTARY GREENHOUSE GAS REPORTING Priority: Other Significant Legal Authority: 42 USC 13385(b) CFR Citation: 10 CFR 300 Legal Deadline: None Abstract: This action would revise the procedures and reporting requirements for the Voluntary Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program under section 1605(b) of the Energy Policy Act of 1992. The revisions would enhance the measurement accuracy, reliability, and verifiability of reported data. Timetable: ________________________________________________________________________ Action Date FR Cite ________________________________________________________________________ NPRM 12/05/03 68 FR 68204 NPRM Comment Period End 02/17/04 Supplemental NPRM With Technical Guidelines 12/00/04 Final Action 03/00/05 Regulatory Flexibility Analysis Required: No Small Entities Affected: No Government Levels Affected: None Agency Contact: Mark Friedrichs, Office of Policy and International Affairs, Department of Energy, 1000 Independence Avenue, SW., Washington, DC 20585 Phone: 202 586-0124 RIN: 1901-AB11 _______________________________________________________________________ Department of Energy (DOE) Final Rule Stage Departmental and Others (ENDEP) _______________________________________________________________________ 895. RADIATION PROTECTION OF THE PUBLIC AND THE ENVIRONMENT Regulatory Plan: This entry is Seq. No. 40 in part II of this issue of the Federal Register. RIN: 1901-AA38 _______________________________________________________________________ 896. ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT TRANSFERS OF REAL PROPERTY Priority: Substantive, Nonsignificant Legal Authority: PL 105-85, sec 3158 CFR Citation: 10 CFR 770 Legal Deadline: None Abstract: This action would establish procedures for indemnifying and disposing of real property by sale or lease at the Department's defense nuclear facilities for the purpose of permitting economic development. It would also establish procedures for reporting actions to Congress, informing those acquiring the property of the availability of indemnification for injury to people or property from releases or threatened releases of hazardous materials, requesting indemnification, and making claims for indemnification. Timetable: ________________________________________________________________________ Action Date FR Cite ________________________________________________________________________ Interim Final Rule 02/29/00 65 FR 10685 Final Action 02/00/05 Regulatory Flexibility Analysis Required: No Government Levels Affected: None Agency Contact: Andrew Duran, Realty Officer, ME-90, Department of Energy, 1000 Independence Avenue SW., Washington, DC 20585 Phone: 202 586-4548 Email: andrew.duran@hq.doe.gov RIN: 1901-AA82 _______________________________________________________________________ 897. FEDERAL POLICY FOR THE PROTECTION OF HUMAN SUBJECTS Priority: Other Significant Legal Authority: 42 USC 289; 5 USC 301; 6 USC 551 to 559 CFR Citation: 10 CFR 745 Legal Deadline: None Abstract: This action would require each institution engaged in research covered by this policy to provide written assurance that it will comply with all Federal requirements. Timetable: ________________________________________________________________________ Action Date FR Cite ________________________________________________________________________ Final Action 06/00/05 Regulatory Flexibility Analysis Required: No Small Entities Affected: No Government Levels Affected: Federal Agency Contact: Marvin E. Frazier, Director, Life Sciences Division, Department of Energy, 1000 Independence Avenue SW., Washington, DC 20585 Phone: 301 903-5468 RIN: 1901-AB14 [[Page 73116]] _______________________________________________________________________ Department of Energy (DOE) Long-Term Actions Departmental and Others (ENDEP) _______________________________________________________________________ 898. ANNOTATION OF LAND RECORDS FOR REMEDIATED PROPERTIES IN THE URANIUM MILL TAILINGS REMEDIAL ACTION PROJECT (UMTRA) Priority: Substantive, Nonsignificant CFR Citation: Not Yet Determined Timetable: ________________________________________________________________________ Action Date FR Cite ________________________________________________________________________ NPRM 04/14/89 54 FR 29732 Final Action To Be Determined Regulatory Flexibility Analysis Required: No Government Levels Affected: Federal, State Agency Contact: Christopher J. Clayton Phone: 202 586-9034 RIN: 1901-AA57 _______________________________________________________________________ 899. GUIDELINES FOR PHYSICIAN PANEL DETERMINATION ON WORKER REQUESTS FOR ASSISTANCE IN FILING FOR STATE WORKER'S COMPENSATION BENEFITS; PROCEDURAL AMENDMENTS Priority: Substantive, Nonsignificant. Major status under 5 USC 801 is undetermined. CFR Citation: 10 CFR 852 Timetable: ________________________________________________________________________ Action Date FR Cite ________________________________________________________________________ Interim Final Rule 03/24/04 69 FR 13709 Interim Final Rule Comment Period End 04/24/04 To Be Determined To Be Determined Regulatory Flexibility Analysis Required: No Small Entities Affected: No Government Levels Affected: None Agency Contact: Judy Keating Phone: 202 586-7551 RIN: 1901-AB13 _______________________________________________________________________ Department of Energy (DOE) Proposed Rule Stage Office of Procurement and Assistance Management (PR) _______________________________________________________________________ 900. DEAR: MAKE OR BUY PLANS Priority: Substantive, Nonsignificant Legal Authority: 42 USC 2201; 42 USC 7101; 50 USC 2401 CFR Citation: 48 CFR 901; 48 CFR 970 Legal Deadline: None Abstract: The requirement for detailed Make or Buy Plans under all DOE management contracts is being eliminated. Make or buy analysis will be retained for major systems acquisitions. A new clause entitled Performance Improvement and Collaboration is being added. It provides for collaboration among DOE's management contractors and the Department to identify possible improvements in contract performance. Timetable: ________________________________________________________________________ Action Date FR Cite ________________________________________________________________________ NPRM 11/00/04 Final Action 05/00/05 Regulatory Flexibility Analysis Required: No Government Levels Affected: None Agency Contact: Irma Brown, Procurement Analyst, Department of Energy, Office of Procurement and Assistance Management, ME-61, 1000 Independence Avenue SW., Washington, DC 20585 Phone: 202 287-1374 Email: irma.brown@hq.doe.gov RIN: 1991-AB63 _______________________________________________________________________ 901. DEAR CHANGES TO PROVISIONS FOR FACILITIES MANAGEMENT, WORK AUTHORIZATION, CONTRACTOR'S ORGANIZATION, CONTRACTOR RELATIONS, AND LAWS, REGULATIONS, AND DIRECTIVES Priority: Substantive, Nonsignificant. Major status under 5 USC 801 is undetermined. Legal Authority: 42 USC 2201; 42 USC 7101; 50 USC 2401 CFR Citation: 48 CFR 907; 48 CFR 952; 48 CFR 970 Legal Deadline: None Abstract: This action would delete 48 CFR part 970.5237-2, Facilities Management; add new clauses dealing with work authorization and government-contractor relations; and incorporate other revisions that would emphasize the contractor's responsibility for effective cost management in flowing down prime contract requirements to its subcontractors. Timetable: ________________________________________________________________________ Action Date FR Cite ________________________________________________________________________ NPRM 01/00/05 Final Action 04/00/05 Regulatory Flexibility Analysis Required: No Small Entities Affected: No Government Levels Affected: None Agency Contact: Michael Fischetti, Procurement Analyst, ME-61, Department of Energy, Office of Procurement and Assistance Management, 1000 Independence Avenue SW., Washington, DC 20585 Phone: 202 287-1330 RIN: 1991-AB65 _______________________________________________________________________ 902. COOPERATIVE AUDIT STRATEGY Priority: Substantive, Nonsignificant Legal Authority: 42 USC 2201; 42 USC 7101; 50 USC 2401 CFR Citation: 48 CFR 970 Legal Deadline: None Abstract: The Department of Energy is amending its acquisition regulation to more fully describe the audit procedures to be followed under its management and operating contracts. The revised procedures call for an annual audit plan and audit report as explained under the Accounts, Records and Inspection clause at 48 CFR 970.5232-3. Timetable: ________________________________________________________________________ Action Date FR Cite ________________________________________________________________________ NPRM 02/00/05 Regulatory Flexibility Analysis Required: No Small Entities Affected: No Government Levels Affected: None Agency Contact: Richard B. Langston, Procurement Analyst, Department of Energy, Office of Procurement and Assistance Management, 1000 Independence Avenue SW., Washington, DC 20585 [[Page 73117]] Phone: 202 287-1339 Email: richard.langston@pr.doe.gov RIN: 1991-AB67 _______________________________________________________________________ 903. DEAR: BIOBASED CONTENT PRODUCTS Priority: Substantive, Nonsignificant. Major status under 5 USC 801 is undetermined. Legal Authority: 42 USC 2201; 42 USC 7101; 42 USC 2401 CFR Citation: 48 CFR 923; 48 CFR 952; 48 CFR 970.23; 48 CFR 970.2370 Legal Deadline: None Abstract: This action would update the Department of Energy Acquisition Regulation coverage of environmentally preferred products to promote the use of biobased content products. Timetable: ________________________________________________________________________ Action Date FR Cite ________________________________________________________________________ NPRM 12/00/04 Regulatory Flexibility Analysis Required: No Small Entities Affected: No Government Levels Affected: None Agency Contact: Richard B. Langston, Procurement Analyst, Department of Energy, Office of Procurement and Assistance Management, 1000 Independence Avenue SW., Washington, DC 20585 Phone: 202 287-1339 Email: richard.langston@pr.doe.gov RIN: 1991-AB68 _______________________________________________________________________ Department of Energy (DOE) Final Rule Stage Office of Procurement and Assistance Management (PR) _______________________________________________________________________ 904. ORGANIZATIONAL CONFLICT OF INTEREST DISCLOSURE Priority: Substantive, Nonsignificant Legal Authority: 42 USC 7254 CFR Citation: 48 CFR 909; 48 CFR 970 Legal Deadline: None Abstract: This action would amend provisions that cover organizational conflicts of interest and purchases from affiliated sources to protect the Department in transactions involving a DOE M&O contractor and its affiliates. Timetable: ________________________________________________________________________ Action Date FR Cite ________________________________________________________________________ NPRM 10/13/99 64 FR 55453 Final Action 02/00/05 Regulatory Flexibility Analysis Required: No Government Levels Affected: None Agency Contact: Robert M. Webb, Procurement Analyst, Department of Energy, Office of Procurement and Assistance Management, 1000 Independence Avenue SW., Washington, DC 20585 Phone: 202 287-1338 RIN: 1991-AB52 _______________________________________________________________________ 905. DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY ACQUISITION REGULATION: MANAGEMENT CONTRACTOR COMPENSATION FOR PERSONAL SERVICES Priority: Substantive, Nonsignificant Legal Authority: 42 USC 2201; 42 USC 7101; 50 USC 2401 CFR Citation: 48 CFR 970.22; 48 CFR 970.31; 48 CFR 970.52 Legal Deadline: None Abstract: This action would amend the policy and procedures regarding compensation for personal services under contracts for management of Department of Energy facilities. Timetable: ________________________________________________________________________ Action Date FR Cite ________________________________________________________________________ Interim Final Rule 01/00/05 Regulatory Flexibility Analysis Required: No Government Levels Affected: None Agency Contact: Richard B. Langston, Procurement Analyst, Department of Energy, Office of Procurement and Assistance Management, 1000 Independence Avenue SW., Washington, DC 20585 Phone: 202 287-1339 Email: richard.langston@pr.doe.gov RIN: 1991-AB61 _______________________________________________________________________ 906. TECHNICAL AMENDMENT OF THE DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY ACQUISITION REGULATION Priority: Substantive, Nonsignificant Legal Authority: 42 USC 2201; 42 USC 7101; 50 USC 2401 CFR Citation: 48 CFR 030; 48 CFR 952; 48 CFR 970 Legal Deadline: None Abstract: This action would make technical amendments and corrections to various parts of the Department of Energy Acquisition Regulations. Timetable: ________________________________________________________________________ Action Date FR Cite ________________________________________________________________________ Final Action 12/00/04 Regulatory Flexibility Analysis Required: No Government Levels Affected: None Agency Contact: Stephen Zvolensky, Department of Energy, Office of Procurement and Assistance Management, ME-61, 1000 Independence Avenue SW., Washington, DC 20585 Phone: 202 287-1307 Email: stephen.zvolensky@hq.doe.gov RIN: 1991-AB62 _______________________________________________________________________ 907. DEAR: WORK FOR OTHERS Priority: Substantive, Nonsignificant Legal Authority: 42 USC 2201; 42 USC 7101; 50 USC 2401 CFR Citation: 48 CFR 970.1707; 48 CFR 970.5217-1 Legal Deadline: None Abstract: This action would amend the Department of Energy Acquisition Regulations (DEAR) to provide policies and procedures regarding work for non-DOE entities performed by DOE contractors who manage and operate DOE owned or leased facilities. These procedures are being relocated from the DOE Directives to the DEAR as part of a larger effort to decrease overly prescriptive guidance. The contractor requirements previously found in DOE order 481.1B are being relocated to the DEAR. Timetable: ________________________________________________________________________ Action Date FR Cite ________________________________________________________________________ Interim Final Rule 11/00/04 Regulatory Flexibility Analysis Required: No [[Page 73118]] Government Levels Affected: None Agency Contact: A. Scott Geary, Program Analyst, Department of Energy, Office of Procurement and Assistance Management, 1000 Independence Avenue SW., Washington, DC 20585 Phone: 202 287-1507 RIN: 1991-AB64 _______________________________________________________________________ Department of Energy (DOE) Final Rule Stage Office of General Counsel (OGC) _______________________________________________________________________ 908. CONDUCT OF EMPLOYEES Priority: Info./Admin./Other Legal Authority: 42 USC 7211 et seq; PL 103-160, sec 3161; EO 12674 CFR Citation: 10 CFR 1010; 5 CFR 2635 Legal Deadline: None Abstract: The DOE regulation on conduct of employees needs to be revised to reflect the issuance of the Standards of Ethical Conduct for Employees of the Executive Branch (5 CFR 2635) and the repeal of conflict-of-interest provisions formerly applicable to DOE employees. Timetable: ________________________________________________________________________ Action Date FR Cite ________________________________________________________________________ Interim Final Rule 07/05/96 61 FR 35085 Final Action 01/00/05 Regulatory Flexibility Analysis Required: No Government Levels Affected: Undetermined Agency Contact: Susan Beard, Assistant General Counsel for General Law, Department of Energy, Office of General Counsel, 1000 Independence Avenue SW., Washington, DC 20585 Phone: 202 586-1522 RIN: 1990-AA19 _______________________________________________________________________ Department of Energy (DOE) Long-Term Actions Office of General Counsel (OGC) _______________________________________________________________________ 909. CLAIMS FOR DAMAGES AGAINST DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY EMPLOYEES Priority: Substantive, Nonsignificant CFR Citation: 10 CFR 1014 Timetable: ________________________________________________________________________ Action Date FR Cite ________________________________________________________________________ Interim Final Rule To Be Determined Regulatory Flexibility Analysis Required: No Government Levels Affected: None Agency Contact: Susan Beard Phone: 202 586-1522 RIN: 1990-AA26 [FR Doc. 04-26232 Filed 12-10-04; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 6450-01-S ***************************************************************** 36 US PREX: President Nominates Sam Bodman as Secretary of Energy For Immediate Release Office of the Press Secretary December 10, 2004 The Roosevelt Room THE PRESIDENT: Thank you. Good morning. Today I am announcing my nomination of Sam Bodman as Secretary of Energy. I am pleased to welcome Sam's wife, Diane, and all his family members -- I emphasize "all" -- who have come today. Welcome to the White House. Sam Bodman is an experienced executive who has served in my administration as Deputy Secretary of Commerce and Deputy Secretary of the Treasury. During his varied and distinguished career in the private sector, Sam has been a professor at MIT, president of an investment firm, the chairman and CEO of an industrial company with operations worldwide. In academics, in business, and in government, Sam Bodman has shown himself to be a problem solver who knows how to set goals and he knows how to reach them. He will bring to the Department of Energy a great talent for management and the precise thinking of an engineer. I thank him for agreeing to serve once again. [Samuel W. Bodman speaks after his announcement by President George W. Bush as nominee for Secretary of Energy on Friday December 10, 2004 in the Roosevelt Room of the White House. White House photo by Paul Morse.] The Department of Energy has responsibilities that directly affect all Americans, from the security of nuclear facilities to reducing the risk of nuclear proliferation around the world to environmental clean up to enhancing conservation and developing new sources of energy for the future. Every day, employees at the Department of Energy are working to protect the American people and to ensure that our country's homes and businesses have reliable, safe and affordable supplies of energy. During the last four years, the Department of Energy has been active and effective and has delivered important results for the American people. We've taken vital steps to upgrade the nation's energy infrastructure. We have begun an ambitious research program to develop a viable hydrogen powered automobile. We have strengthened cooperation between the United States and foreign governments, to safeguard nuclear materials and to fight proliferation. For these achievements, and more, the nation is grateful to Secretary Spencer Abraham. As a United States Senator, and a Cabinet Secretary, Spence has shown himself to be a man of integrity and wisdom. He's a good man, a superior public servant and a friend, and I thank Spence for leading his department so ably. And I wish him and Jane all the best. During the next four years, we will continue to enhance our economic security and our national security through sound energy policy. We will pursue more energy close to home, in our own country and in our own hemisphere, so that we're less dependent on energy from unstable parts of the world. We will continue improving pipelines and gas terminals and power lines, so that energy flow is reliable. We will develop and deploy the latest technology to provide a new generation of cleaner and more efficient energy sources. We will promote strong conservation measures. In all these steps, we will bring greater certainty of costs and supply, and that certainty is essential to economic growth and job creation. And we will continue to work closely with Congress to produce comprehensive legislation that moves America toward greater energy independence. I'm optimistic about the task ahead, and I know Sam Bodman is the right man to lead this important and vital agency. So I urge the Senate to confirm his nomination without delay. Congratulations, Sam. MR. BODMAN: Thank you, Mr. President. President, with me today is my wife Diane, my daughters, Beth and Sarah, their husbands, Charles Mott and Bob Greenhill, my stepson, Perry Barber, and five of our eight grandchildren, Sam, Colin, Eliza, Liza, and Lindsey. On behalf of my entire family, Mr. President, I thank you for the opportunity to continue serving you as a member of your administration. I also want to thank the extraordinary employees of the Department of Treasury and the Department of Commerce, with whom I have served these past four years. Their dedication and efforts on behalf of your administration, sir, have allowed Secretary Snow and Secretary Evans and me to do our jobs that much better. Mr. President, the job as Energy Secretary, in many ways, combines all aspects of my life's professional work. I started as a teacher in chemical engineering at MIT, spent 17 years helping create and manage Fidelity Investments, and then spent 14 years managing Cabot Corporation, a globally-deployed chemical company. Each of these activities dealt with the financial markets and the impact of energy and technology on those markets. Mr. President, in May of 2001, you presented to our country the first comprehensive national energy plan in a decade, that promoted affordable, reliable, and secure energy supplies through conservation, investment in new technology, and finding and producing new domestic sources of energy. Thanks to your leadership, sir, and the work of so many, particularly Secretary Abraham, nearly 75 percent of the recommendations put forward in your energy plan have been implemented, and our nation is the better for it. I have tremendous respect for Secretary Abraham, and I look forward to building upon his outstanding record at the Department of Energy. If confirmed by the Senate, my colleagues and I at the Department of Energy stand ready to carry forward your vision of sound energy policy to ensure a steady supply of affordable energy for America's homes and businesses, and to work toward the day when America achieves energy independence. Mr. President, thank you for this great honor and opportunity and for your continued confidence and trust in me. I appreciate it, very much. END 9:50 A.M. EST ***************************************************************** 37 Las Vegas RJ: Test site proposed as backup for printing headquarters Tuesday, December 14, 2004 By STEVE TETREAULT STEPHENS WASHINGTON BUREAU Bruce James Nevadan who is the nation's public printer sees test site as second printing site WASHINGTON -- The government's printing agency is eyeing the Nevada Test Site for a digital production center that would generate passports and sensitive documents and provide a secure backup for printing during national emergencies. A planned Western branch of the U.S. Government Printing Office was disclosed in a five-year strategy announced Monday by Bruce James, the nation's public printer, who is from the Northern Nevada town of Crystal Bay. James said he expects the Nevada site to be producing documents by July 2006 as part of an agency-wide modernization. The GPO is eyeing a piece of land near the test site gate at Mercury for a facility the size of a Costco or a Sam's Club that would employ high-tech printing equipment, a test site spokesman said. The agency has hired The Staubach Company, a property firm headed by former Dallas Cowboys quarterback Roger Staubach, to determine project details including facility size and location and personnel needs, James said. Initial estimates put costs at about $20 million for construction and another $10 million for equipment, GPO spokeswoman Veronica Meter said. James said the GPO is seeking a guarded site to design, produce and distribute passports, travel documents and immigration forms that will incorporate electronic security for fraud and counterfeit protections. The printing plant also will produce the daily Federal Register and the Congressional Record for distribution in the Western states, he said. The Nevada branch would duplicate the technology that James is installing in a new Washington headquarters for the venerable GPO, one of the oldest federal departments. It also would serve as an emergency backup should disaster befall headquarters, James said. "When I walked in here I realized we do not have a second facility to manufacture U.S. passports and in the world we live in this is not a preferable way to do things," James said Monday. "I have been looking at the possibility to put a supply in the mountains out West if we lost our ability to produce in Washington," he said. The GPO's strategic plan said the test site, about 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas, was chosen as "one of the most secure federal locations." Meter added the facility "is operated by a federal contractor who can get us up and going quickly." The five-year plan lays out a James vision to reinvent the GPO in an age when fewer documents are being printed on paper in favor of electronic reproduction and distribution. It also represents a new step in the diversification of the test site since the government invoked a nuclear testing moratorium in 1992. Once limited to nuclear weapons development, the 1,400-square-mile range hosts programs dedicated to hazardous materials cleanup, counterterrorism training, conventional weapons testing and environmental technology as well as management of the nuclear weapons stockpile. "The new facility would expand and build on the important role the test site plays in our national security efforts," Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., said in a statement. Rep. John Ensign, R-Nev., said the GPO proposal was a "visionary approach" to securing the nation's document production. The printing agency has requested room to build a facility about 100,000 square feet. The structure will contain the most modern printing technology, able to churn out thousands of documents and publications on machinery much smaller than commercial presses, James said. "There is no question this facility will have some of the highest technology in the world," James said. "There will be imaging going on at that facility, not the heavy iron you see in newspaper-style presses." The Department of Energy would continue to own the site and would lease it to GPO, Energy Department spokesman Darwin Morgan said. Bechtel Nevada, the test site's management contractor, would build the facility under GPO contract. Copyright Las Vegas Review-Journal ***************************************************************** 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. 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