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NUCLEAR POLICY
1 [du-list] Iraq Pays Terrible Price For America's Choices
2 [NukeNet] Russia Says Hopes to Sign Iran Deal in January
3 Daily Times: Pakistan urges India to decide on Iran pipeline
4 YWS: U.S. Policy on N.K Nuke Not Effective, but Best Option - Oberdo
5 YWS: Giddens Urges Urgent Global Efforts to Stop N.K. Nuke Program
6 US: The Reporter - Editorial: Fueling an energy policy
7 As Nuclear Secrets Emerge in Khan Inquiry, More Are Suspected-
8 Vanunu Detained on Way to Bethlehem; Released to 5 Days House
NUCLEAR REACTORS
9 [NukeNet] Russian Electric Utility to Be Broken Up in
10 US: Patriot-News: Group to survey day cares near TMI
11 US: [NukeNet] Exelon backs PSEG on not fixing the B pump
12 Daily Times: Tsunami may have damaged Indian nuclear plant
13 ePolitix.com: EU 'must end love affair with nuclear power'
14 Alaska Journal of Commerce: Galena opens the door to nuclear project
15 The Telegraph: plant safe, but workers move out
16 asahi.com: IAEA inspectors to vet nuke transit standards
17 The Herald: Row looms over new nuclear stations
NUCLEAR SAFETY
18 Radiation: Paradoxical Dose/Response Discovered
19 [du-list] U.S. using chemical weapons against civilians: Iraqi
20 [du-list] Rokkasho
21 US: [NukeNet] Planned Human Deaths By Nuclear Power Industry
22 ITAR-TASS: Expo “Centenary of submarine fleet” opens in Russian Far
23 BBC: Asia confronts quake catastrophe
NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE
24 US: [du-list] Debris removed from Concord, NH polluted site
25 [NukeNet] New Mexico Uranium Enrichment Plant Comment Period
26 US: [NukeNet] Utah: Envirocare nuke dump sold
27 [NukeNet] Canada's Yucca Mountain Planned for Great Lakes
28 US: DenverPost.com: editorial Right call on N.J. nuke waste
NUCLEAR WEAPONS
US DEPT. OF ENERGY
29 [NukeNet] INEEL's plutonium plans draw skeptics
30 DOE: ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY
31 TheNewMexicoChannel: Future Of Los Alamos Uncertain
32 Platts: DOE nuclear research grants awarded to 25 universities
OTHER NUCLEAR
33 [du-list] 12/21 US Military Watch: Guantanamo Bay-More
34 DU: Danger Dismissed: SPECIAL REPORT - IN FULL
35 [du-list] DU in the news - 24th Dec. '04
36 [du-list] DU in the news -25th Dec. '04
37 ZPEnergy.com: Why 'Free-Energy' Investigation Makes Sense
38 Las Vegas SUN: Editorial: Solar energy has potential for Nevada
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FULL NEWS STORIES
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1 [du-list] Iraq Pays Terrible Price For America's Choices
Date: Mon, 27 Dec 2004 14:22:33 -0800
Swords Into Plowshares
Iraq Pays Terrible Price For America's Choices
By JOSEPH MURRAY
Published on 12/26/2004 The Day (Connecticut)
http://www.theday.com/eng/web/news/re.aspx?re=85F42006-D885-4BFC-814D-A9E09CFD7C24
Our success in breaking the back of the resistance in
Fallujah should not be tarnished by the collateral civilian
deaths there — no more than a thousand or so — that some
have blamed on our use of cluster and phosphorous bombs.
Cluster bombs, of course, release multiple thousands of tiny
razor-like steel fragments from hundreds of bomblets.
Covering an area of a couple of football fields, they
explode in midair and strike with such velocity that they
rupture spleen and intestines and shred human limbs like
spaghetti. That is what they were designed to do.
Unfortunately as many as 30 percent remain unexploded, until
kids pick them up thinking they are toys. Although they kill
somewhat indiscriminately, they have proven remarkably
effective.
Phosphorous, like cluster bombs, was used in Vietnam and
Laos, and we now have phosphorous in the form of ground
ammunition. Like napalm it transforms victims into roaring
human torches that cannot be extinguished, slowly melting
flesh from bones. The Pentagon assures us, however, that
phosphorous, napalm, and other chemical and radioactive
ordnance are employed only when the enemy is especially
difficult to eliminate.
A word about depleted uranium, which is an essential
ingredient in much of our ammunition. Critics point to an
unusually high number of deformities, leukemia and other
cancers found in children whose parents were exposed to
depleted uranium in the first Gulf war and in the war in
Afghanistan. Veterans from those wars claim that their own
children have been similarly stricken. The International
Atomic Energy Agency as well as a group of international
researchers put the blame squarely on depleted uranium.
There is now some concern about current Iraq veterans, whose
debilitating illnesses Department of Defense doctors cannot
diagnose. Although independent tests performed in Germany on
these soldiers reveal high levels of radioactive depleted
uranium in the urine, the Pentagon insists that the tests
are unreliable, that the IAEA research is flawed, and that
depleted uranium is safe. Without conclusive proof we should
withhold judgment, so as not to hinder the war effort.
Weapons that disperse radioactive dust as well as cluster
and phosphorous bombs are accused of being in violation of
international law. Although such WMD are indeed banned
worldwide, the prohibition legally applies only to a
conventional war, not to a war on terrorism, where different
rules apply.
Thank God civilian deaths in Iraq have been limited to
100,000 or so. Compared with Vietnam this is a cakewalk.
Military and political analysts agree that we will remain in
Iraq for at least six more years — worst case, 10. Depending
on how many other cities will have to be pacified, best
estimates put total deaths at no more than a few hundred
thousand with perhaps ten times that number of wounded.
We should not, however, become distracted by the numbers.
Iraqis continue to resist legitimate occupation not only
illegally but violently. International law sanctions one
country's invasion of another if it is to the long-term
benefit both of the occupied (e.g., a new government modeled
on the occupier's) as well as of the occupier (e.g,
plentiful supplies of cheap oil).
Environmentalists suggest that, if we replaced our
eight-cylinder SUVs and trucks with four-cylinder
conventional cars and hybrids, we could be independent of
Mideast oil. What the greeniacs don't realize is that SUVs
and trucks are essential to our way of life. The days of
whimpie cars are over. It is further argued that, if we also
turned down our winter thermostats a few degrees and our
summer ones up a few, domestic reserves would actually be 10
percent higher than we need. Iraq would be no more important
to us, they say, than Zimbabwe. Liberal propaganda.
In the end, Iraq — indeed the whole world — will owe a debt
of gratitude to the thousands of Americans who gladly died
and the few hundred thousand who accepted their wounds in
order to free Iraq from tyranny.
•••
That debt will never be paid, and for two reasons. The down
payment will have been the slaughter of hundreds of
thousands of the innocent along with the silent genocide of
an estimated half million more, according to IAEA, who will
die in this century due to the radioactive debris we have
left behind in Iraq. Second, Saddam's tyranny will have been
replaced by a more vicious tyranny, that of unfettered free
enterprise American style — exclusively profit driven, blind
to injustice, oppressive of the underclass. Third, the true
cost of this immoral war has been a renege on our promises
to feed millions of the world's hungry.
The really bad news is that, one way or another, we will be
driven out of Iraq, as the Brits were in the early part of
the last century and as we were out of Vietnam. The passion
of the occupied for freedom and independence demands the
refusal to accept occupation. The will of the freedom
fighter to resist to the death is unbreakable. No military
might is stronger. The smart generals know this, because
they know their history. The politicians — those that bother
to read — are not interested in the lessons history has to
teach, because they have nothing to learn.
The only question then is, how many more barrels of cheap
blood (poor white and Latino and Iraqi and African-American)
are we willing to see poured out before we face up to our
complicity — yours and mine — in these war crimes? Remember,
we said Yes to the politics of fear and the candidates of
war. We said No to the politics of reason and the candidates
of peace.
The good news is that it is not too late to change your vote to:
No more crimes against humanity, no more blood spilled in my
name! But we cannot wait on a craven Congress to act for us.
We must organize a national blue-red peace movement and,
like the Ukrainians, march by the tens of thousands — no, by
the millions — on the White House and the Capitol and the
Supreme Court and the Pentagon to demand that we get out of
Iraq.
Now.
Joseph Murray, formerly active in the Howard Dean
presidential campaign, is a poet living in Waterford.
Photos:
Mohammed Uraibi
A father comforts his six-year-old daughter who was shot
during a firefight between Iraqis and coalition forces in May.
http://www.theday.com/_gbl/media/dynamic/lrgimages/IRAQFATHERPERSP122604.jpg
Associated Press
This 10-year-old Iraqi girl and her two sisters where
severely burned during an April firefight between U.S.
troops and insugents in Baghdad.
http://www.theday.com/_gbl/media/dynamic/lrgimages/IRAQGIRLPERSP122604.jpg
--
Posted for educational and research purposes only,
~ in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 ~
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2 [NukeNet] Russia Says Hopes to Sign Iran Deal in January
Date: Mon, 27 Dec 2004 14:17:14 -0800
NukeNet Anti-Nuclear Network (nukenet@energyjustice.net)
Mothersalert: http://www.mothersalert.org
http://www.mothersalert.org/moreinfo.html
Videos, Including Space Nuclearization,
Weaponiztion: http://www.envirovideo.com
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-nuclear-russia-iran.html?oref=login
Russia Says Hopes to Sign Iran Deal in January
By REUTERS
Published: December 24, 2004
Filed at 9:35 a.m. ET
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia hopes to sign a key deal
with Iran in January for the start-up of a
Moscow-built nuclear reactor, a senior official
said, but diplomats were doubtful after signing
has already been delayed for years.
Russia and Iran promised the United States --
which says Iran wants to acquire illegal nuclear
weapons -- not to start up the Bushehr reactor
before they sign a bilateral deal committing
Tehran to return all spent nuclear fuel to Russia.
Advertisement
But signing has been delayed for years because of
what many diplomats say is Russia's indecisiveness
over whether it wants to forge warmer ties with
Washington.
``I think the contract will be signed in
January,'' Alexander Rumyantsev, head of Russia's
Atomic Energy Agency, was quoted as saying by
Interfax news agency. ``The probability of that is
very high.''
The launch of the Bushehr plant -- slated for late
2005 or early 2006 -- would have to be put off
again should the deal not be signed in early 2005,
experts say. Iran says it wants the plant solely
to generate more electricity.
The United States, which believes Iran can make
atomic weapons from spent fuel, says sending the
material back to Russia is not enough and has
urged Russia to ditch the $1 billion project
altogether.
``They've delayed signing so many times that
frankly, I don't believe they would go ahead and
sign it as soon as January,'' said one diplomat in
Moscow who follows the issue closely.
Russia has long defied U.S. opposition to its
construction of Bushehr, and has defended Iran by
saying it was impossible to make nuclear weapons
using the know-how Russia was providing.
But in September, Russia noticeably toughened its
stance on Iran and urged its nuclear partner to
improve its relations with the U.N. nuclear
watchdog. That led to further delays to the
signing of the agreement, previously scheduled for
November.
_______________________________________________________________________
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Change your settings or access the archives at:
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3 Daily Times: Pakistan urges India to decide on Iran pipeline
December 28, 2004
* Indian foreign secretary meets Kasuri
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan urged India on Monday to decide whether to
join a pipeline project to bring gas from Iran, as Iranian
Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi arrived in Islamabad for talks on
the pipeline and other issues. The proposal for a $4 billion
pipeline from Iran to India through Pakistan has been discussed
for years but India has been lukewarm given its troubled
relations with Pakistan.
At a weekly news briefing, Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry spokesman
Masood Khan reiterated that Islamabad would welcome India’s
participation, but added, “Iran is on board, Pakistan is on
board, India has to make up its mind.” Pakistan says it is
talking to several countries as well as India about the project.
Mr Kharrazi met Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf but details
were not immediately available. He was due to stay until today
(Tuesday) and meet other Pakistani leaders. Masood Khan said that
aside from the gas pipeline, Mr Kharrazi would brief Pakistani
leaders on Iran’s talks with the International Atomic Energy
Agency and European countries on a nuclear black market once run
by Pakistani scientist AQ Khan.
Meanwhile, the visiting Indian foreign secretary, Shayam Saran,
called on Pakistani Foreign Minister Khurshid Kasuri on Monday
and briefed him about the progress made in the foreign
secretary-level talks. He reiterated the Indian government’s
commitment to make progress in the composite dialogue aimed at
addressing all issues including Kashmir. Mr Kasuri reiterated
Pakistan’s position for a result-oriented dialogue and tandem
progress in confidence building measures and the resolution of
Kashmir, saying it was important to associate Kashmiris in the
dialogue process so that the issue could be resolved in
accordance to the wishes of Pakistan, India and Kashmiris. Mr
Kasuri and the Indian foreign secretary also talked about
Baglihar Dam, the strengthening of economic relation,
facilitation of visas and progress in the commencement of the
Srinagar-Muzaffarabad bus service. agencies Home | National
Daily Times - All Rights Reserved
and hosted by WorldCALL Internet
*****************************************************************
4 YWS: U.S. Policy on N.K Nuke Not Effective, but Best Option - Oberdorfer
YONHAPNEWS WORLD SERVICE::ENGLISH NEWS
Tuesday, December 28, 2004
www.yonhapnews.co.kr/
WASHINGTON, Dec. 27 (Yonhap) -- Although the ongoing six-way
talks on North Korea's nuclear weapons program have made no big
progress, they are moving in the right direction, a U.S. scholar
said in a New Year interview with the Yonhap News Agency.
"I think they have carved out a method, a way, to move toward
the resolution of the problem," Donald Oberdorfer, a professor at
Johns Hopkins University, said.
*****************************************************************
5 YWS: Giddens Urges Urgent Global Efforts to Stop N.K. Nuke Program
YONHAPNEWS WORLD SERVICE::ENGLISH NEWS
Tuesday, December 28, 2004
www.yonhapnews.co.kr/
LONDON, Dec. 28 (Yonhap) -- The international community should
join hands in trying to resolve the nuclear tension on the Korean
Peninsula, because it is no longer a regional issue, a renowned
British scholar said in a New Year interview with the Yonhap News
Agency.
Citing North Korea's efforts to develop nuclear weapons, Anthony
Giddens, director of the London School of Economics and Political
Science, warned that proliferation of nuclear states in Asia
poses great threats for the world.
*****************************************************************
6 The Reporter - Editorial: Fueling an energy policy
December 27, 2004 Vacaville, CA
Report could spark necessary action to conserve, develop energy
Everybody says the United States needs a national energy policy,
but neither Congress nor President George Bush has managed to
come up with one. But a bipartisan committee of people outside
government has done the job.
Earlier this month, the privately funded National Commission on
Energy Policy issued its report after three years of work. It's
an integrated plan that is neither a sell-out to the Texas
oiligarchs nor a hippie environmental manifesto. Instead, it's a
sensible, balanced approach.
It proposes to both expand and diversify international oil
supplies, while also significantly raising federal fuel economy
standards for cars and trucks and appliance efficiency. It would
introduce mandatory tradable emissions permits to reduce
greenhouse gases and also create incentives for new generations
of nuclear reactors, coal-gasification and advanced biomass
technologies.
That's just a sample of the recommendations in the report.
Congress and the president should look to it as a basis for
reform, much as they have used the 9/11 Commission Report to
spur repairs of the nation's intelligence services. After all,
the first goal of the energy commission was to end the current
stalemate over a national energy policy.
Of particular interest to Western states is a proposal to
provide 10 percent to 20 percent more funds to the Bureau of
Land Management and U.S. Forest Service to evaluate and manage
access to natural gas on public lands. The commission also urges
$4 billion in incentives over 10 years to spur deployment of
advanced coal technologies. One of these would gasify coal using
a chemical process and then burn the resulting synthetic gas to
fuel a combustion turbine. The process is more efficient than
generating electricity with a steam turbine, as is done today,
and it reduces harmful emissions, including mercury.
The commission also would pump $2 billion over 10 years into
researching and building one or two new advanced nuclear power
plants. Without expansion of nuclear power generation, American
energy dependency on fossil fuels will increase, and natural gas
supplies will be exhausted in order to generate electricity. But
to succeed, the federal government must resolve concerns about
nuclear waste management and proliferation. Find the full report
at www.energycommission.org.
We hope that members of Congress and the Bush administration
will log onto that site. It is hard to think of a policy
gridlock that is more of a threat to national security and the
economy than this one.
*****************************************************************
7 As Nuclear Secrets Emerge in Khan Inquiry, More Are Suspected-
Date: Mon, 27 Dec 2004 14:22:13 -0800
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/26/international/asia/26nuke.html?oref=login&hp&ex=1104123600&en=18c481dad4bd841
As Nuclear Secrets Emerge in Khan Inquiry, More Are Suspected
By WILLIAM J. BROAD and DAVID E. SANGER
spacer24.gif
Published: December 26, 2004
w1.gifhen experts from the United States and the International Atomic
Energy Agency came upon blueprints for a 10-kiloton atomic bomb in the
files of the Libyan weapons program earlier this year, they found
themselves caught between gravity and pettiness.
The discovery gave the experts a new appreciation of the audacity of the
rogue nuclear network led by A. Q. Khan, a chief architect of Pakistan's
bomb. Intelligence officials had watched Dr. Khan for years and suspected
that he was trafficking in machinery for enriching uranium to make fuel for
warheads. But the detailed design represented a new level of danger,
particularly since the Libyans said he had thrown it in as a deal-sweetener
when he sold them $100 million in nuclear gear.
"This was the first time we had ever seen a loose copy of a bomb design
that clearly worked," said one American expert, "and the question was: Who
else had it? The Iranians? The Syrians? Al Qaeda?"
But that threat was quickly overshadowed by smaller questions.
The experts from the United States and the I.A.E.A., the United Nations
nuclear watchdog - in a reverberation of their differences over Iraq's
unconventional weapons - began quarreling over control of the blueprints.
The friction was palpable at Libya's Ministry of Scientific Research, said
one participant, when the Americans accused international inspectors of
having examined the design before they arrived. After hours of tense
negotiation, agreement was reached to keep it in a vault at the Energy
Department in Washington, but under I.A.E.A. seal.
It was a sign of things to come.
Nearly a year after Dr. Khan's arrest, secrets of his nuclear black market
continue to uncoil, revealing a vast global enterprise. But the inquiry has
been hampered by discord between the Bush administration and the nuclear
watchdog, and by Washington's concern that if it pushes too hard for access
to Dr. Khan, a national hero in Pakistan, it could destabilize an ally. As
a result, much of the urgency has been sapped from the investigation,
helping keep hidden the full dimensions of the activities of Dr. Khan and
his associates....
Cooperation between the United Nations atomic agency and the United States
has trickled to a near halt, particularly as the Bush administration tries
to unseat the I.A.E.A. director general, Mohamed ElBaradei, who did not
support the White House's prewar intelligence assessments on Iraq....
The entire article is well worth reading.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/26/international/asia/26nuke.html?oref=login&hp&ex=1104123600&en=18c481dad4bd841
Attachment Converted: spacer24.gif: 00000001,3d06048b,00000000,00000000
Attachment Converted: w1.gif: 00000001,3d06048c,00000000,00000000
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8 Vanunu Detained on Way to Bethlehem; Released to 5 Days House
Date: Mon, 27 Dec 2004 14:21:58 -0800
Free Mordechai Vanunu - Info & Action Alert #45 - December 25, 2004
From the U.S. Campaign to Free Mordechai Vanunu
http://www.vanunu.com and http://www.nonviolence.org/vanunu/
Happy holidays to all - Wishes for peace in the new year, and full freedom
for Mordechai Vanunu -
** PLEASE FORWARD TO SYMPATHETIC LISTS **
1) Vanunu Detained on Way to Church of the Nativity, Bethlehem
2) Vanunu Released to 5 Days of House Arrest
3) Send holiday greetings to Mordechai Vanunu
==========================================
1) Vanunu Detained on Way to Church of the Nativity, Bethlehem
Vanunu held over Bethlehem trip
Israeli former nuclear technician Mordechai Vanunu has been detained trying
to enter Bethlehem in the West Bank in defiance of a travel ban. Vanunu, a
Christian convert, had wanted to pray at the Church of the Nativity on
Christmas Eve, police said.
Vanunu was released in April after 18 years in jail for disclosing details
of Israel's nuclear weapons programme. Israel insists Vanunu still poses a
security threat and he is banned from the West Bank and Gaza Strip. He is
banned from leaving Israel or talking to foreigners without permission.
'Knew it was illegal'
Police said Vanunu was stopped in a Volkswagen van bearing the letters TV -
indicating a press vehicle - at a checkpoint between Jerusalem and
Bethlehem. Police said a vehicle search had revealed only a Father
Christmas hat.
"He said he wanted to pray at the Church of the Nativity on Christmas Eve,
even though he knew it was illegal for him to leave Israel," Gil Kleiman
said, according to AP news agency.
"He was detained by officers then moved to a police station for further
questioning." Vanunu remained in police custody, Mr Kleiman said.
Vanunu was briefly arrested for breaching restrictions on talking to
foreign media six weeks ago. Following his detention and subsequent order
to remain under house arrest, some high-level supporters including the
Anglican Bishop of Jerusalem and UK politicians accused the Israeli
government of harassment.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://
news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/middle_east/4124597.stm
Published: 2004/12/24 21:24:59 GMT
© BBC MMIV
-=-=-=-=
Posted on Fri, Dec. 24, 2004
Israeli Nuclear Whistleblower Detained
Associated Press
JERUSALEM - Israeli police detained nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu
at a checkpoint as he tried to travel to the West Bank town of Bethlehem on
Friday, preventing him from attending midnight Mass in the traditional
birthplace of Christ, a police spokesman said.
Vanunu, a Jewish convert to Christianity, was released from an Israeli
prison in April after completing an 18-year sentence for revealing secrets
of Israel's nuclear program to the Sunday Times newspaper in London.
Under the terms of his release, the former technician at the Israeli
nuclear facility in the Negev desert town of Dimona was barred from leaving
Israeli territory and contacting foreigners.
Police spokesman Gil Kleiman said Vanunu was stopped at a checkpoint
between Jerusalem and Bethlehem, which is four miles away. Kleiman said
Vanunu was in a Volkswagen van emblazoned with the letters "TV" - commonly
used to identify press vehicles - and had a Santa Claus hat in his possession.
"He said he wanted to pray at the Church of the Nativity on Christmas Eve,
even though he knew it was illegal for him to leave Israel," Kleiman
said. "He was detained by officers then moved to a police station for
further questioning." He said Vanunu remained in policy custody late Friday.
Since his release from prison in April, Vanunu has been living at a
Jerusalem Church compound. Last month he was briefly detained by police on
suspicion of revealing classified information before being freed. Vanunu
denied those charges, saying he has no more secrets to disclose.
http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/consumer_news/10493973.htm?1c
==============
2) Vanunu Released to 5 Days of House Arrest
From Rayna Moss, Israel:
After being arrested by police on his way to Mass in Bethlehem on the
evening of December 24, Mordechai Vanunu was questioned and released at
2:00 a.m. on December 25 to five days of house arrest. He is now confined
to St. George's Cathedral.
Vanunu's arrest for violating the restrictions which prohibit him from
leaving his city of residence without permission from Israeli authorities
and from entering the Palestinian territories was widely reported in
Israeli and international media. Vanunu is now celebrating Christmas with
the community of St. George's Cathedral.
Israeli Whistleblower Vanunu Freed Without Charge
December 25, 2004
By REUTERS Filed at 7:12 a.m. ET
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu was
freed on Saturday after being detained trying to get into the Palestinian
town of Bethlehem for Christmas in defiance of restrictions, police said.
Police said Vanunu, a convert to Christianity from Judaism, had defied
travel restrictions imposed after his release in April from an 18-year
prison term for treason. He was detained for questioning on Thursday.
Vanunu was ordered to post bail of 50,000 shekels and to remain at his
lodgings at Saint George's Anglican cathedral in Jerusalem for the next
five days. "We are not planning to charge him," a police spokeswoman said.
Vanunu's revelations to a British newspaper led experts to conclude that
Israel had between 100 and 200 nuclear weapons.
Under restrictions imposed after his release from jail, he is banned from
the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Vanunu is also forbidden to speak to
journalists. Six weeks ago he was arrested for breaking this restriction,
but released after a few hours.
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-israel-vanu
nu.html?ex=1104978963&ei=1&en=b77f22b01b288e99
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company
==============
3) Write to Mordechai
Mordechai would love to hear from his friends and supporters. You can send
him Christmas and New Year's greetings at:
Mordechai Vanunu
c/o Cathedral Church of St. George
20 Nablus Road
PO Box 19018
Jerusalem 91190
Israel
and email him at
=================
If you would like to receive these alerts directly, please subscribe by
sending a blank e-mail to free_vanunu-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
-end-
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
*****************************************************************
9 [NukeNet] Russian Electric Utility to Be Broken Up in
Date: Mon, 27 Dec 2004 14:24:14 -0800
NukeNet Anti-Nuclear Network (nukenet@energyjustice.net)
Ticking Time Bomb:
http://tinyurl.com/6pla3
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/25/business/worldbusiness/25power.html
Russian Electric Utility to Be Broken Up in
Deregulation
By BLOOMBERG NEWS
Published: December 25, 2004
y Bloomberg News
The Russian government approved plans to break up
Unified Energy System, the world's largest
electric utility, in an effort to deregulate the
country's power market to attract foreign
investment and reduce costs for manufacturers.
"The shareholders will get all the assets," the
company's chief executive, Anatoly Chubais, said
yesterday in Moscow.
Advertisement
President Vladimir V. Putin, who is widely thought
to be extending state dominance of the oil
industry through the maneuverings involving Yukos
Oil, is cutting the government's role in power
production to end household subsidies.
The industry minister, Viktor Khristenko, said the
utilities would be split into generation, sales
and grid companies, with Russia holding 52 percent
of the generating businesses.
Russia needs to spend as much as $50 billion to
upgrade its aging generators and power grid, much
of it dating from the Soviet era, Mr. Chubais,
said.
Yesterday's decision may attract international
investors to Russia's generation industry, said
Vadim Kleiner, head of research at Hermitage
Capital Management, which has U.E.S. shares among
$1.6 billion in Russian assets.
"During the restructuring process, they are
building pretty big companies, which we believe
will be of market interest and can be run as
sustainable businesses," said Mr. Kleiner, who
also sits on the restructuring committee that
advises the U.E.S. board.
Russia's plan seeks to end nearly 60 billion
rubles ($2.2 billion) in subsidies that reduce
home electricity prices at the expense of
manufacturers, hurting their ability to compete
against international rivals, the government said
in a statement.
Power producers formed from the breakup of
regional utilities will be transferred to U.E.S.
shareholders in return for their stock by the end
of 2006, the government said.
"The government will have a dominant stake in the
hydropower plants," though all thermal holdings
will be sold, Mr. Khristenko said. "It will own
100 percent of nuclear power companies."
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10 Patriot-News: Group to survey day cares near TMI
Date: Mon, 27 Dec 2004 14:24:51 -0800
Group to survey day cares near TMI
Friday, December 24, 2004
BY GARRY LENTON
Of The Patriot-News
A local public interest group wants to know how well prepared child
day-care centers are for an emergency evacuation like the one that occurred
25 years ago around Three Mile Island.
The EFMR Monitoring Group is sending a one-page questionnaire to 72 child
care centers within 10 miles of the TMI nuclear power plant in Londonderry
Twp.
From Our Advertiser
EFMR is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that maintains a series of
radiation monitors around the TMI and Peach Bottom nuclear plants to
independently track radiation releases.
The one-page survey mostly asks about the level of assistance the centers
have received from state and local government agencies, particularly when
it comes to planning for transportation and relocation shelters.
"All we're trying to do is assess the level of preparedness, and help the
day cares better plan for an evacuation. That's it," said Eric Epstein,
founder of EFMR.
Epstein and New Cumberland resident Larry Christian alleged in September
that the state was violating federal rules that require it to provide
emergency planning to child care centers within 10 miles of a nuclear plant.
The claims came after Christian, the father of two small children,
discovered two years ago that child day-care centers near nuclear plants in
Pennsylvania were not included in emergency planning.
Christian's discovery resulted in a law, passed this year, that requires
all for-profit day-care centers to develop emergency evacuation plans. The
law exempted nonprofit centers.
Christian and Epstein alleged in letters written to the U.S. Nuclear
Regulatory Commission, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and Gov. Ed
Rendell that the law's exemption violated the federal law.
Also maintained was that state and local government agencies were
responsible for providing resources, such as buses, to be used to evacuate
children.
The NRC and FEMA have yet to respond to the claims.
If they agree, it could call into question the validity of the operating
licenses granted to the state's nuclear power stations.
Federal law requires the NRC to determine that the public will be protected
in a radiological emergency before it grants a license to open a nuclear
plant.
Exempting nonprofit day cares from the emergency planning requirement was
done at the request of Senate and House Republican leaders who did not want
to place burdens on church-run facilities.
The move drew criticism from Rendell, who allowed the bill to pass into law
without his signature, and from the Pennsylvania Child Care Association.
"The Legislature has passed a law ... that splits child care into
nonprofits and for-profits," said Terry Casey, executive director of PCCA.
"We would like to see a resolution" [of that division], she said.
Casey would not comment on the EFMR survey.
The questionnaires will be mailed to 72 centers in Dauphin, Cumberland,
Lancaster and York counties.
GARRY LENTON: 255-8264 or glenton@patriot-news.com
*****************************************************************
11 [NukeNet] Exelon backs PSEG on not fixing the B pump
Date: Mon, 27 Dec 2004 14:16:58 -0800
NukeNet Anti-Nuclear Network (nukenet@energyjustice.net)
So now we know why Chris Bakken was so adament about not replacing the B
pump. Exelon's first
move does not inspire us to consider Exelon as a "safety-first" company.
Clearly they too are
a 'short-term profits first' company, just like PSEG.
Norm
http://www.delawareonline.com/newsjournal/local/2004/12/23exelonbackspseg.html
Exelon backs PSEG on Hope Creek
Merger partner believes problems with pump should not stop restart
By JEFF MONTGOMERY / The News Journal
12/23/2004
Exelon Corp. has sided with merger partner PSEG in a plan to restart the
Hope Creek nuclear plant without first overhauling a damaged cooling-water
recirculation pump, a company spokesman confirmed Wednesday.
Exelon and PSEG's directors Monday announced a $12 billion merger deal
that would create the nation's largest utility and nuclear power company.
In January, Exelon's nuclear unit plans to begin managing under contract
the Salem/Hope Creek nuclear generating station on Artificial Island in
New Jersey opposite Augustine Beach.
"We believe that pump is in proper shape to restart and we concur in the
PSEG decision," Exelon chief executive John W. Rowe said in a transcript
provided by Exelon on Wednesday.
A nuclear power watchdog group has said the pump's problems could cause a
breakdown or major cooling water leak that would set in motion emergency
systems in the plant, which has a history of maintenance and management
troubles. New Jersey's top nuclear oversight director also has called for
replacement of the pump.
At a news conference Tuesday in Chicago, Rowe said the company backs the
Hope Creek restart plan, now under Nuclear Regulatory Commission review.
Federal officials grilled PSEG managers on problems with the pump -
including cracking and a bend in the 20-foot-high pump system's drive
shaft - during a meeting Friday in Rockville, Md.
PSEG has said that an inspection found the system suitable for another
18-month cycle, and committed to replace the equipment in 2006, during its
next shutdown for refueling. Company managers described the decision as a
business risk, rather than taking a chance on public safety.
One former PSEG employee who filed a whistleblower complaint against the
company questioned Exelon's position, and said that another worker had
reported grave concerns about the recirculation pump 11 months ago.
"I do not believe this is "proper," since Exelon clearly is relying on
PSEG-supplied information - which has been skewed heavily towards
supporting the company's position," said Nancy Kymn Harvin, a PSEG manager
who was fired in 2003.
Harvin filed a complaint with the commission last year accusing PSEG of
retaliating against her for raising safety concerns.
Commission spokeswoman Diane Screnci said Wednesday the agency could
neither confirm nor deny the report of an earlier safety warning.
Hope Creek shut down Oct. 10 after a steam pipe break. During the
shutdown, workers encountered problems with one of the plant's main
emergency backup systems.
The commission, which has authority to block the restart, said Friday it
has not placed any restrictions on the Hope Creek plan, but still has
questions about the pump problem. An agency official said last week that
regulators expect that "the right actions will be taken to ensure the
plant can operate safely over the next cycle."
Federal regulators have said they plan to hold a public meeting before the
Hope Creek plant restarts.
Contact Jeff Montgomery at 678-4277 or jmontgomery@delawareonline.com
--
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
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12 Daily Times: Tsunami may have damaged Indian nuclear plant
Tuesday, December 28, 2004
NEW DELHI: Huge waves that battered the Indian coastline after an
earthquake in Indonesia may have damaged a nuclear power plant in
southern Tamil Nadu state, the government said on Monday. The
Press Trust of India news agency said Indian Prime Minister
Manmohan Singh had called a meeting on Tuesday to review any
damage to the plant. Authorities on Sunday shut down the Indira
Gandhi Atomic Energy Centre in Kalpakkam, 80 kilometres south of
Tamil Nadu capital Madras as a precaution.
Water seeped into the facility, which is located on the coast,
after the tsunami hit following Sunday’s earthquake. “Information
reaching here suggests that facilities at Kalpakkam nuclear
station may have been affected by the tidal waves,” said a
spokesman from the prime minister’s office. The private NDTV news
channel said 1,500 families in the Kalpakkam township of Tamil
Nadu had been evacuated by government relief agencies. afp Home |
Main
Tsunami devastates Asian coasts, 23,700 dead
Tsunami may have damaged Indian nuclear plant
Indian visas to elderly and children at Atari
Natwar says no ‘quick fix’ solutions to India-Pakistan
problems
India agrees to discuss Kashmir: FO
Pakistan Muslim League divided on talks with MMA
2 Aga Khan workers shot dead in Chitral
President raises pensions
Daily Times - All Rights Reserved
and hosted by WorldCALL Internet
*****************************************************************
13 ePolitix.com: EU 'must end love affair with nuclear power'
In an article first published in the Parliamentary Monitor
magazine, Green Party MEP Jean Lambert calls on the EU to do more
to promote renewable sources of energy.
The news that a sudden jump in global CO2 levels unlinked to
industrial emissions has been detected by scientists in Hawaii is
devastating. How to provide for peoples’ needs and their
supplementary desires in a way that does not destroy our planet
is becoming ever more crucial.
If we believe, as a report for the Pentagon has suggested, that
climate change will make disruption and conflict "endemic", then
we should now be in no doubt that an urgent new approach is
needed by the EU on energy policy.
The EU has been a driving force in keeping alive the Kyoto
Protocol on reducing greenhouse gas emissions, having set a
reduction level of an average eight per cent for the EU15 from
1990 levels, to be achieved over the period 2008 to 2012. This is
a modest target. However, even that is not being met for a
variety of reasons – one of which is rising demand.
Spain has seven per cent of its electricity needs met by wind
power but the growing numbers of mainly British and German
citizens retreating to the Spanish Mediterranean coast means
extra demand and so no reduction in emissions. Similarly,
improving car exhaust emissions means no overall impact on air
quality if we have an ever-greater number of vehicles in use.
So reducing demand for fossil fuel energies is crucial to
combating climate change, as is increasing electrical production
from renewable energies. The EU expects member states to produce
10 per cent of electrical needs from renewables by 2012. The
gains in jobs alone could be enormous – Germany currently has
about 100,000 people employed in the field while the UK has about
4,000.
However, we are not going to meet those targets without
consistent pricing for input to the grid and incentives to
improve public uptake. The EU could do some serious work to push
"green" training, so that consumers could find qualified plumbers
and electricians, for example, to install and maintain solar
heating systems and energy efficient condensing boilers.
The EU also has to end its love affair with nuclear power. We are
seeing the nuclear industry re-branding itself as environmentally
friendly and low emission – unfortunately not in radioactive
waste materials – in greenhouse gas emissions over a full life
cycle. The chance to drop the preferential treatment of the
nuclear industry was only partially won in the new constitutional
treaty. The Euratom treaty, which contains a commitment for the
EU to "promote" nuclear power is now a protocol so at least you
no longer have to sign up to join the union. This is good news
for those who opposed Turkish proposals to build a nuclear power
plant on an earthquake fault line.
However, the Commission has got to sort out the state companies,
like EDF, who have used their nuclear decommissioning money to
buy up utilities elsewhere – like in London. This is not a
level playing field and makes life more difficult for smaller
companies.
The EU has also got to look seriously at introducing green taxes.
It could start with taxing aircraft fuel, currently tax free
unlike the fuel for cars, buses or trains. Increased air travel
is the fastest growing source of gas emissions. The EU needs a
comprehensive policy towards reducing air travel. The European
parliament's petitions committee is already having to deal with
appeals about expanding airports in Madrid, Frankfurt and
Amsterdam.
It is clear that across a range of key energy areas, the EU has a
significant role to play in promoting a pro-environment agenda in
the 25 member states. There is currently a huge variation in
approaches, and more can be done to promote a consistent policy
that encourages clean sources of fuel and works towards reducing
demand.
In Britain, the government promises that tacking global warming
will be one of its key priorities when it takes over the EU
presidency in the second half of next year. Encouraging
sustainable development should form a key part of its strategy,
and energy policy has a key role to play within that approach.
Jean Lambert is Green Party MEP for the London region Published:
Tue, 28 Dec 2004 00:01:00 GMT+00
©2004 ePolitix.com
*****************************************************************
14 Alaska Journal of Commerce: Galena opens the door to nuclear project
-->Web posted Sunday, December 26, 2004
By Tim Bradner Alaska Journal of Commerce
Galena's city council unanimously approved a resolution Dec. 14
tentatively accepting an offer by Japan's Toshiba Corp. to
install a small-scale 10 megawatt nuclear power plant in the
community as a demonstration project.
That is provided Toshiba can secure licensing from the U.S.
Nuclear Regulatory Commission for the project, according to
Galena city manager Marvin Yoder. Galena is a small community
west of Fairbanks, on the Yukon River.
The resolution directed Yoder to work with the community's
Washington, D.C.-based attorney and Toshiba in developing the
application to the NRC.
The 4S reactor unit is referred to as a battery because it does
not have moving parts, and once installed, its fuel will not need
to be replaced as in conventional nuclear reactors.
The reactor unit is 50 feet to 60 feet tall and 6 to 8 feet in
diameter. It will be built outside of Alaska, installed in the
Yukon River community, encased in several tons of concrete and
not be opened during its operating life, which is now estimated
at 30 years.
Licensing will be an involved process that will take several
years and substantial funding by Toshiba, Yoder said. It will
also include development of a federal environmental impact
statement.
"It is in the public interest to pursue the siting of a Toshiba
4S nuclear battery in Galena," the resolution said. The council
further directed Yoder to "establish a process and timeline
leading to evaluations, industrial partners, and financial and
contractual arrangements necessary to bring the economic and
environmental benefits of the 4S to Galena."
Toshiba has offered to install the reactor at Galena free of
cost if the licensing is approved as a commercial demonstration
of the "nuclear battery" in a remote location.
Once the technology is approved for use in the United States,
Toshiba believes there will be opportunities for sales worldwide,
and elsewhere in rural Alaska, according to Robert Chaney, a
researcher with Science Applications International Corp.
SAIC coordinated a U.S. Department of Energy study of long-term
energy supply options for Galena, including the Toshiba battery.
The University of Alaska and Idaho National Engineering and
Environmental Laboratory worked with SAIC in the study.
The study showed the Toshiba battery can supply electricity to
the community for about one-fourth of the cost of conventional
diesel fuel.
Chaney said the DOE study weighed the cost benefits of nuclear
against other ways of providing Galena with improved energy,
including more efficient diesel generation, a small coal-fired
power plant, and wind, solar and hydro-power from the nearby
Yukon River.
Wind, solar and hydro-power were taken off the list as primary
power sources when it was determined that site conditions in
Galena did not make those options practical, Chaney told an
Alaska Miners Association group in a Dec. 17 briefing on the
project.
The analysis showed that, presuming the nuclear battery went
into operation in 2010, by 2020 it could supply electricity to
Galena for 5 to 14 cents a kilowatt hour (kWh), assuming the
reactor is a gift from Toshiba and the community pays only
operating costs.
In comparison, improved diesel generation could provide Galena
power for 25 cents to 35 cents per kWh. Coal-fired power comes in
as a serious alternative in the study, at 21 cents to 26 cents
per kWh, Chaney told the mining group. A small coal-powered plant
could use coal extracted from a thick coal seam about 12 miles
from the community.
The nuclear option looks good even if Galena were to pay for the
reactor. In that case the power costs were estimated at 15 cents
to 25 cents per kWh in the study, Chaney said. Toshiba has
estimated the cost of the 4S reactor at $25 million. Galena's
power is now 28 cents per kWh.
However, the nuclear costs vary so much because of uncertainty
over the number of security guards the federal NRC may require at
the site, Chaney said. Toshiba told SAIC that if the NRC's
current regulations are followed, 34 security guards would be
needed at the Galena site.
Chaney said a terrorist attack in a small, isolated rural
community like Galena is unlikely because an unknown outsider
would quickly be recognized. The 4S unit would be encased under
several feet of concrete, "and if people show up with
jackhammers, everyone in town will be aware of it."
A more appropriate staffing for security might be 4 guards,
augmented by a state trooper and Galena city police who are
nearby, Chaney said. If the NRC accepts that, the operating costs
will be low enough to deliver electricity for 5 cents, according
to the study.
The 4S unit will supply far more electricity than Galena now
uses, but if it is installed there will be ample, inexpensive
power available for local residents to convert homes from heating
with expensive fuel oil to more affordable electricity.
Even then, there will be substantial excess power, enough to
operate greenhouses that can grow vegetables and fruit
year-around for the community, Chaney said.
There are, however, always risks with new technology, according
to Ron Johnson, a professor of engineering at University of
Alaska Fairbanks who is working with engineering aspects of the
DOE study. One issue with the Toshiba 4S reactor is the use of
liquid sodium as a heat transfer medium, Johnson said. And as
with any nuclear power plant, long-term disposal of radioactive
waste is always an issue, although the nuclear materials would
not be removed from a unit in Alaska.
Johnson was also cautious on whether the 4S is a total solution
for rural village power needs. "If the technology is successfully
deployed in Galena, its economic viability in other Alaska
villages and elsewhere depends on the actual life-cycle costs,
which are yet to be quantified," he said.
Chaney said that if the 10 megawatt design for the 4S is
approved and works as expected, Toshiba or other companies should
be encouraged to work on smaller versions of it. A 2 megawatt or
4 megawatt version might be sized more appropriately for small,
remote communities in Alaska.
Alaska miners are interested in the Galena project because if
the NRC approves Toshiba's proposal, larger nuclear batteries
could provide power to remote mines. Toshiba does have a 50
megawatt version of the 4S design, which would be useful at an
operating mine in a remote location.
The cost and difficulty of supplying power are currently major
obstacles to two large but remote mining projects now being
studied - the Donlin Creek gold project near the Kuskokwim River
and the Pebble gold-copper prospect on the Alaska Peninsula.
© 2004 The Alaska Journal of Commerce and Morris Communications Corp.
*****************************************************************
15 The Telegraph: plant safe, but workers move out
Tuesday, December 28, 2004
- 2000 evacuated from kalpakkam shoreline
M.R. VENKATESH
Sonia Gandhi comforts a tsunami victim in Parka village on Car
Nicobar island. (AFP)
Kalpakkam, Dec. 27: Nearly 2,000 people have been evacuated from
near the shoreline in Kalpakkam, which was hit by tsunami
yesterday in the wake of the devastation, though the nuclear
plant escaped damage.
“The nuclear power plant (Kalpakkam has two units of 220 MW each
besides a research reactor and the Fast Breeder Test Reactor at
IGCAR) is absolutely safe as, within minutes of the undersea
earthquake striking Sumatra in Indonesia, the plant was shut
down as our seismograph can pick up these signals,” said a
scientific officer at Kalpakkam.
The situation in the residential colony, which was cut off from
the rest of Kalpakkam, is a different story.
Pudupattinam, where several scientific officers of the Madras
Atomic Power Station and the Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic
Research live, resembled a graveyard today.
Two thousand people, including employees of the nuclear plant
and their family members, were transported to a makeshift camp
at Anupuram — a short distance from the Kalpakkam plant — where
quarters had been constructed for officers and scientists
working in new projects, including the prototype fast breeder
reactor.
Most residences close to the shoreline in Pudupattinam were
locked early today as people had been advised by the Madras
Atomic Power Station authorities to move out to either the less
affected part of the residential colony or the camp at Anupuram.
“Fortunately, the army and the Central Industrial Security Force
took charge last night and prevented antisocials from plundering
our houses,” said Arun, a scientific officer.
The receding waters left behind a trail of destruction —
overturning scores of cars and trapping two-wheelers in the
silt.
The ground-floor homes were covered in silt pushed in by the
tsunami. Furniture, electronic appliances and other household
items were mostly damaged.
Copyright © 2002 The Telegraph. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
16 asahi.com: IAEA inspectors to vet nuke transit standards
[asahi.com]
The Asahi Shimbun
Keen to ensure safety standards are not lagging, Japan has asked
the agency to start as soon as possible.
The government has asked the International Atomic Energy Agency
(IAEA) to inspect and assess safety precautions used when
nuclear material is being shipped into and around Japan, sources
said over the weekend.
The inspection, which comes with a 30 million yen price tag, is
slated for next fiscal year. It will also cover the
transportation of fuel to be used in nuclear power plants, the
sources said.
Six countries, including Britain and France, have already
undergone similar inspections.
The sources said Japan was keen not to be out of step with other
developed countries when it came to nuclear safety and hoped the
review would get under way as soon as possible.
The inspection will be carried out according to the IAEA's
safety standards.
If problems are found, the IAEA will make recommendations. The
agency does not, however, have the authority to ensure those
changes are carried out.
The inspection will include safety measures for nuclear material
transported by land and sea.
It will also cover the transit of radioactive material used at
research institutions, the sources said.
The safe transportation of nuclear material is likely to become
an even greater issue if a spent nuclear fuel reprocessing plant
in Rokkasho, Aomori Prefecture, becomes operational.
The Rokkasho plant will cater to some of the nation's nuclear
power plants.
There, plutonium will be extracted and sent to another facility
where it will be mixed with uranium to produce nuclear
fuel.(IHT/Asahi: December 27,2004)
[Copyright Asahi Shimbun. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
17 The Herald: Row looms over new nuclear stations
Web Issue 2167 December 27 2004
DOUGLAS FRASER December 27 2004
SCOTLAND'S coalition parties are heading towards a clash in
the next two years over the construction of new nuclear power
stations.
The stakes were raised yesterday by Allan Wilson, the Labour
junior enterprise minister, making the case for replacement
nuclear power stations to be considered.
Brian Wilson, the former Labour energy minister, who supports
that argument, said last night that a decision would be needed
within two years if there was to be continuity of supply and
skills are to be kept in Britain while other countries build new
nuclear capacity.
The Scottish Conservatives have also given the nuclear lobby
their backing, with a warning that "there could be more black
Christmases than white in the future" unless Scotland addresses
the need for a more diverse range of electricity-generating
options.
While the Scottish National Party is opposed to replacements
for nuclear power stations, the Liberal Democrats' position in
the Holyrood governing coalition give them the ability to block
such developments.
Nora Radcliffe, the LibDem environment spokeswoman, agreed with
Allan Wilson that there should be a mature debate, claiming she
would relish one, but added that she did not expect to be
convinced of the case for more nuclear power.
The LibDems have said they are against new plants unless the
problem of storing waste is resolved. The party also claims the
proposal will founder because no private company is bidding to
build.
At present, there are four Scottish sites licensed for nuclear
power. Torness in East Lothian has a licence to keep operating
until 2023. Hunterston on the North Ayrshire coast has only six
years left. Chapelcross in Dumfriesshire is being decommissioned
while Dounreay in Caithness had two research reactors that are
also being decommissioned.
Allan Wilson, whose constituency includes Hunterston, has
questioned the growing dependence on carbon-based generation,
particularly as gas will have to be piped from unstable parts of
the world.
*****************************************************************
18 Radiation: Paradoxical Dose/Response Discovered
Date: Mon, 27 Dec 2004 11:02:07 -0600 (CST)
(this is also likely applicable to healthy cells, with ominous
implications for medical x-ray and DU-exposed populations, for
instance)
http://interactive.snm.org/index.cfm?PageID=3115&EID=1191401
Study Finds Low Dose Radiation More Effective at Killing
Cancer Cells than Higher Doses
Posted October 5, 2004
Source: Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions
A new study shows that lower doses of radiation elude a damage
detection "radar" in DNA and actually kill more cancer cells than
high-dose radiation. With these findings, scientists believe they
can design therapy to dismantle this "radar" sensor allowing more
radiation to evade detection and destroy even greater numbers of
cancer cells.
Researchers at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center tested the
low-dose radiation strategy on cultured prostate and colon cancer
cell lines and found that it killed up to twice as many cells as
high-dose radiation. The extra lethality of the low-dose regimen
was found to result from suppression of a protein, called ATM (ataxia
telangiectasia mutated) which works like a radar to detect DNA
damage and begin repair.
Theodore DeWeese, MD, who led the study, speculates that cells hit
with small amounts of radiation fail to switch on the ATM radar,
which prevents an error-prone repair process. DeWeese, chairman of
the Department of Radiation Oncology and Molecular Radiation Sciences
at Johns Hopkins, presented his evidence at the annual meeting of
the American Society for Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology (ASTRO)
on October 5 in Atlanta.
"DNA repair is not foolproofit can lead to mistakes or mutations
that are passed down to other generations of cells," DeWeese
explained. "A dead cell is better than a mutant cell, so if the
damage is mild, cells die instead of risking repair."
Higher doses of radiation cause extreme DNA damage and widespread
cell death, so the ATM damage sensor is activated to preserve as
many cells as possible, protecting, ironically, the cancer cells
targeted for destruction by the radiation.
While the low-dose regimen works in cultured cells, it has not
proved successful in humans. This has lead to effort by Hopkins
scientists to study ways to use viruses that can deliver ATM-blocking
drugs to the cells. Tests in animals are expected to begin soon.
In the current study, colon and prostate cancer cell lines were
treated with either high levels of radiation or small amounts spread
over many days. Low-level radiation is defined as 10 times more
stronger than normal background exposure, while high doses are 1,000
times stronger. Approximately 35 percent of colon cancer cells
survived low-dose radiation as compared to 60 percent receiving
high-dose. In prostate cancer cell lines, half of the cells survived
low-dose radiation, while 65 percent survived higher doses.
In the low-dose group, ATM activation was reduced by 40 to 50
percent. The researchers proved ATM inactivation was the culprit
since low-dose irradiated cells fared better after ATM was reactivated
with chloroqine, best known as a treatment for malaria.
"Tricking cancer cells into ignoring the damage signals that appear
on its radar could succeed in making radiation more effective in
wiping out the disease," says DeWeese.
This research was funded by the National Cancer Institute.
Research participants from Johns Hopkins include Spencer Collis,
Julie Schwaninger, Alfred Ntambi, Thomas Keller, Larry Dillehay,
and William Nelson.
*****************************************************************
19 [du-list] U.S. using chemical weapons against civilians: Iraqi
Date: Mon, 27 Dec 2004 14:22:35 -0800
http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/thscrip/print.pl?file=2004122104311200.htm&date=2004/12/21/&prd=th&
HYDERABAD, DEC. 20. "The Americans are losing the war in Iraq and in their
frustration have started using chemical weapons and napalm bombs on
civilian populations," alleges Khudur al-Azawi of the Iraq National
Democratic Party.
Speaking to The Hindu on the sidelines of the recently-held Anti-War
Assembly in Hyderabad, Mr. Azawi dismissed media accounts of the war in
Iraq as "U.S. propaganda".
He denied there were divisions within Iraqis on sectarian and ethnic lines.
"When the Shia city of Najaf was attacked, more than 300 fighters from
Falluja came to fight with them. Similarly, Falluja refugees are being
provided shelter by Shias," he said. The resistance is organised into two
groups, the Iraqi National Resistance and the Iraqi Islamic Resistance.
"Cooperation, rather than disunity, mark their relations," he said.
"Everyone recognises one enemy - U.S. occupation," he said. It is not just
the violence and killings, it is the humiliation of a proud people, he
added. "They even used the stones from the ruins of Babylon to make the
gate of their army camp."
"The U.S. Army admits that there are about 125 military operations
everyday. Even if one soldier is dying in 10 operations, that would mean
more than 12 U.S. soldiers are killed by Iraqi resistance every day, " he
argued.
Mr. Azawi claimed that Iraqi resistance had discovered and identified mass
graves of occupation soldiers in Iraq. "They are hiding their dead." This
massive loss of personnel was forcing the U.S. Army to mobilise another
40,000 troops in Iraq, he said.
"We are willing to take any journalist and scientist to Iraq and show them
the evidence on the ground," he said and assured that "the Resistance will
provide you security and bring you back safely."
© Copyright 2000 - 2004 The Hindu
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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20 [du-list] Rokkasho
Date: Mon, 27 Dec 2004 14:16:54 -0800
1- NUCLEAR FUEL RECYCLING: Acid test
2- U.S. uranium loaded into controversial Japanese plutonium
reprocessing plant
3- Problems on road to Japan's plans to recycle Uranium
--
NUCLEAR FUEL RECYCLING: Acid test
The Asahi Shimbun
(IHT/Asahi: December 21,2004)
http://www.asahi.com/english/nation/TKY200412210161.html
The Rokkasho reprocessing plant begins a crucial test to
determine the viability of extracting plutonium from spent
nuclear fuel.
`There is no risk of a chain reaction occurring (with
depleted uranium) ... .'
JAPAN NUCLEAR FUEL OFFICIAL Discussing the safety of the test
The government's program to recycle spent nuclear fuel kicks
into high gear today when the country's first commercial
reprocessing plant in Rokkasho, Aomori Prefecture, finally
begins tests using uranium.
Much attention is focused on the tests: Any flaws or
accidents that reveal the potential for radioactive
contamination could jeopardize the entire recycling plan.
Over the next year, the plant, built and operated by Japan
Nuclear Fuel Ltd., is expected to run tests using about 53
tons of depleted uranium left over from the enrichment of
natural uranium to make fuel.
Originally scheduled to begin in June of last year, the
tests were delayed by the discovery in 2002 of construction
flaws in the pool used to store spent fuel.
The reprocessing facility, built at a cost of 2.14 trillion
yen, is located on a vast 3.8-million-square-meter compound
in a remote site in the northern part of the prefecture. In
its final stage, the test will involve extracting plutonium
from spent fuel that is cut into small pieces several
centimeters in size and chemically treated with nitric acid.
Because the plutonium can then be used as fuel in reactors,
the recycling program has been hailed as an answer to the
nation's problem of energy security.
The hope is to process up to 800 tons of the 900 to 1,000
tons of spent fuel produced at power plants every year,
yielding about 4.5 tons of plutonium.
Initially, the plutonium was meant for use in fast-breeder
reactors, but plans changed after an accident at the
nation's sole prototype fast-breeder reactor, Monju, in
1995. Now, the plan is to mix plutonium with uranium for use
as a fuel in conventional light-water reactors.
Since its major facilities were completed in 2001, the
Rokkasho plant has geared up for operations in stages, first
by running tests with water and chemicals. The latest test
involving depleted uranium will determine whether the spent
fuel can be safely cut up into pieces and dissolved in
nitric acid.
The final stage, called the active test, in which spent fuel
is actually reprocessed, is scheduled to begin in December 2005.
This month, Japan Nuclear Fuel sought to reassure locals in
leaflets handed out to each of the 4,000 households in the
Rokkasho area. The company says that the test will only
raise by an estimated one-10,000th the level of naturally
existing radioactivity in the area.
The company also took the unusual step of posting on its Web
site 190 potential emergency scenarios, including possible
leaks of low-level radioactive wastewater from pipe joints
and breakdowns of the machinery used to cut the spent fuel
into pieces.
In each case, however, the company concluded that the
environment would not be seriously affected.
The depleted uranium to be used in the test contains less
fission-prone uranium-235 than does natural uranium and is
thus easier to handle.
``There is no risk of a chain reaction occurring (with
depleted uranium) and no need to even think about people
being seriously exposed to radioactivity,'' said an official
with Japan Nuclear Fuel.
Because of the low risk, depleted uranium has been used in
tests at other nuclear facilities. However, when the Tokai
Reprocessing Plant for research and development, run by the
Japan Nuclear Cycle Development Institute in Ibaraki
Prefecture, conducted a uranium test for 19 months from
1975, 39 incidents of minor trouble involving the substance
were reported.
Government officials are eager to avoid a repeat of the
sodium leaks that plagued the Monju prototype fast-breeder
reactor in the 1995 accident. It was that accident that led
the government to suspend development of fast-breeder
reactors for commercial use.
A similar serious accident at Rokkasho could spell the end
of the nation's nuclear fuel recycling program.
In June, the government's Atomic Energy Commission brought
together experts to debate whether the current nuclear fuel
recycling plan should proceed.
They concluded last month that although the current plan is
more costly than not recycling spent nuclear fuel at all, it
was a good plan and should proceed.
But some nuclear experts warn it will take two to three
years to fix problems that may arise during the uranium test
and that the Rokkasho facility may miss the target date of
July 2006 to start operations.
The Rokkasho facility can anticipate running into trouble.
The French company Cogema, which offers technical support to
Japan Nuclear Fuel, has reported about 1,500 troubling
incidents of some kind at the company's nuclear recycling
plants since the 1990s.
Hideyuki Ban, co-director of the Citizens' Nuclear
Information Center, cautioned the Atomic Energy Commission's
panel that the Rokkasho facility may fail to function even
up to half of its capabilities.
And unless the uranium test is an overwhelming success, the
power companies may once again urge that the recycling
program be scrapped altogether.
Because it requires such careful handling to prevent
radioactive contamination, utilities operating nuclear power
plants have been concerned about taking the next step of
reprocessing actual spent nuclear fuel.
Decommissioning costs also begin to mount. It is estimated
it would cost 450 billion yen to decommission Rokkasho after
the uranium test. But the cost jumps to an estimated 1.55
trillion yen if spent fuel is processed.
----
U.S. uranium loaded into controversial Japanese plutonium
reprocessing plant
Greenpeace calls for cancellation of dangerous program
[21 December 2004, Rokkasho, Aomori, Japan]
http://www.greenpeace.or.jp/press/2004/eng/20041221_html
Activists from Greenpeace protested this morning at the
Rokkasho Nuclear Reprocessing plant, located in northern
Japan, as the operator introduced nuclear material into the
plant for the first time. The plant will eventually be used
to produce plutonium, a key component of nuclear weapons.
Japan already has approximately 40 tons of plutonium, but
does not have a reactor that burns plutonium fuel. The
Greenpeace banner reads "Do not start reprocessing" in
Japanese and English. Japanese Nuclear Fuel Limited, the
plant operator announced that they will start uranium tests
on December 21st. Some 150 protesters from all over Japan
got together to protest against the plant's commissioning.
"Start of the uranium commissioning means the start of
radioactive contamination. We should stop reprocessing
before the contamination gets worse. There is no concrete
plan to use plutonium produced from Japanese reprocessing.
There is no justification to produce plutonium." Said Atsuko
Nogawa, nuclear campaigner of Greenpeace Japan.
Some 30 tons of depleted uranium arrived by ship in the
morning of 20th. Some of uranium was originally supplied by
the United States, despite warnings that it is sanctioning
plutonium proliferation. Additional Japanese origin depleted
uranium will also to be used for the commissioning.
"Plutonium production by Japan must stop, and spent nuclear
fuel should be treated as nuclear waste. We already have
stockpiled several thousands nuclear weapons worth of
Plutonium (about 40 tons). If full scale operation of
Rokkasho reprocessing starts it will keep adding 7,000-8,000
kilograms of plutonium yearly. The Bush administration has
signed off on these tests, despite knowing the dangers in
this region from nuclear proliferation. Both the Japanese
government and U.S. administration need to rethink their
dangerous plans, before it's too late" Nogawa ATSUKO continued.
The Rokkasho plant has taken 20 years to build and is a
relic before it even opens. While it was being built, the
use of plutonium to generate electricity has proven to be a
failure by other countries on economic, environmental and
proliferation grounds. Commercial scale of reprocessing is
already done by UK and France. The French plant operated by
Areva/COGEMA has failed to secure contracts with its
national utility, EDF beyond 2007. Rokkasho was built with
French technology and workers.
Uranium commissioning is expected to take 12 months, to be
followed by spent fuel tests, scheduled for December 2005.
However, given the many problems experienced over the years
during construction of the multi-billion dollar plant, it is
expected that there will be further delays.
For background information see: http://www.stop-plutonium.org/
For further information, please contact:
Greenpeace Japan
Atsuko Nogawa, Nuclear campaigner +813 5338 9800,
mobile phone +81 903654 4035
Kazue Suzuki, Campaign Director +81 90 2249 1502
Keiko Shirokawa, Media Officer, +81 90-3470-7884
----
Problems on road to Japan's plans to recycle Uranium
BY TOSHIAKI SATO AND TATSUO NAKAJIMA
The Yomiuri Shimbun Wed, Dec. 22, 2004
http://www.duluthsuperior.com/mld/duluthsuperior/news/world/10479033.htm
TOKYO - (KRT) - The initial test operation that started
Tuesday at Rokkashomura, Aomori Prefecture, in preparation
for recycling spent uranium faces many hurdles that must be
cleared before a nuclear fuel cycle can be established in
2006 as planned.
The test run at the reprocessing plant being built in the
Pacific coast village is scheduled to last a year. During
this period, Japan Nuclear Fuel Ltd. will seek to eliminate
any problems and develop safety procedures involving an
active test that will be conducted using spent nuclear fuel.
The material being used in the first phase of the test is
depleted uranium, a low-radioactive by-product of the
uranium enrichment processes at a nuclear fuel processing
plant in Tokaimura, Ibaraki Prefecture.
The reprocessing plant, scheduled to go online in July 2006,
will extract uranium and plutonium from spent nuclear fuel
generated at nuclear power plants across the county for
reuse as fuel.
Prior to the launch of full-scale reprocessing, a number of
preparatory steps must be taken, including the initial test
run that started Tuesday. In the first phase of the test
run, JNFL will examine the facility's equipment for any
defects and problems by conducting an experiment using a
dummy fuel assembly and pulverized depleted uranium from
Tokaimura, company officials said.
JNFL is jointly owned by the nation's 10 electric power
companies that operate nuclear plants and 87 other companies.
The initial test run is of essential importance in
identifying potential dangers in reprocessing spent nuclear
fuel, which contains high-level radioactive substances,
including plutonium and uranium.
The level of radioactivity of the pulverized spent uranium
being used for the initial test run is extremely low, about
one-millionth that of spent nuclear fuel, JNFL said.
The type of radioactivity emitted by spent uranium is
relatively easy to shield against in the event of leakage,
meaning that any repairs required during the test run could
easily be made.
In advance of the test run, JNFL drew up a list of 190
possible problems, including the leakage of small amounts of
radioactive substances from pipe joints and valves, which
occurred during similar tests conducted by Britain and
France, noting that the initial test is designed to identify
possible causes of problems to minimize risks when
full-scale operations begin at the Rokkashomura reprocessing
plant.
The officials said JNFL had scrutinized about 1,200
accidents and other operational troubles at reprocessing
plants in Britain and France.
Following the one-year initial test run, the operation will
move on to an active test. This will involve processing
spent nuclear fuel using large-scale equipment and devices
in a room called a cell, constructed with walls made of
one-meter thick ferroconcrete.
The operation of the nuclear fuel recycling plant is
extremely complex, with the process being undertaken in four
major stages starting with dissolving spent nuclear fuel,
which has been cut into tiny fragments after being cooled
with water, in nitric acid (as shown in the diagram).
PLUTHERMAL PLAN AT A STANDSTILL
Before Japan can achieve a nuclear fuel cycle, two major
problems must be addressed.
One is the cost of building and operating the Rokkashomura
reprocessing plant.
Construction on the plant began in 1993 with technological
assistance from France. Because of unforeseen expenditures,
mostly for increasing safety at the plant, building costs
have ballooned to 2.2 trillion yen, three times the initial
estimate.
In addition, investigations by the Cabinet's Atomic Energy
Commission have revealed that the cost of recycling fuel at
Rokkashomura will cost more than simply burying it deep
underground.
The AEC, however, decided in November to maintain the
government's nuclear fuel cycle policy to make the most
effective use of resources.
A tougher problem is the current moratorium on pushing ahead
with the government-envisioned Pluthermal Project for
burning plutonium in lightwater reactors in the form of
mixed oxides (MOX) of uranium and plutonium. This plan has
ground to a halt because of a series of accidents and
breakdowns of pluthermal-related systems.
The halting of the project means there is no way to consume
reprocessed nuclear fuel produced by the Rokkashomura plant.
Another program for the use of recycled nuclear fuel, using
MOX for running a fast breeder reactor, has been on hold
since operations of the prototype reactor Monju were
suspended in December 1995 following leakage of the
reactor's coolant, although there were no casualties in the
incident.
Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.
--
Posted for educational and research purposes only,
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21 [NukeNet] Planned Human Deaths By Nuclear Power Industry
Date: Mon, 27 Dec 2004 14:22:37 -0800
NukeNet Anti-Nuclear Network (nukenet@energyjustice.net)
Premeditated Killing By The Nuclear Industry,
Approved By NRC:
Dr. John W. Gofman has stated in front of federal
judges in U.S. Federal courts that this
constitutes "planned deaths":
Question by the court:
"What does ALARA..."
Answer:
"It permits deaths."
Question:
"Permits human deaths?"
Answer:
"Yes, because ALARA does not say -- see, the only
way you could avoid deaths from the nuclear fuel
cycle is to have zero releases. ALARA says keep
the releases as low as you can reasonably achieve
with the economics that you want to spend on it,
and the equipment that you have available and so
forth. So it is a planned emission of
radioactivity, and that in effect means planned
deaths." -- Dr. John Gofman, in conversation with
the court, October 2nd, 1978, Jeannine Honicker
versus the United States Nuclear Regulatory
Commission in Federal Court, Nashville, Tennessee,
seeking an injunction to shut down the nuclear
fuel cycle.
http://www.mothersalert.org/chernobyl.html
COMMENTARY ON
CHERNOBYL VICTIMS
Russell Hoffman and Pamela O'Brien
The theory that the Ukrainian Ministry of Heath
inflates the number of dead from Chernobyl in
order to increase funding to them is false.
First, we now have plenty of data to show that
there are significantly increased rates of
radiation-induced diabetes, thyroid cancer
(especially in children), leukemia, chromosome
aberrations and a long list of other illnesses
(thyroid cancer in children has increased ten-fold
around Chernobyl, for example).
Second, the idea that the Ukrainian Ministry of
Health was exaggerating the deaths is an idea
being pushed within the official halls of the
nuclear mafia because the truth was and is so
devastating to their industry. Indeed, Alla
Yaroshinskaya in her book "Chernobyl: The
Forbidden Truth" (Jon Carpenter Publishing Co.,
PO Box 129, Oxford, OX1 4PH England, distributed
in the U.S.A. by InBook, PO Box 120261, 140
Commerce St., East Haven, CT 06512) provides what
I think is ample documentation to indicate that
deaths and other health effects have been
purposefully and seriously UNDERestimated around
Chernobyl (the book has a forward by eminent
physician Dr. John W. Gofman).
Epidemiological data is available from the Belarus
Institute for Hereditary Diseases in Minsk (zip
code 220053), and published in the Japanese
publication Gijutsu-To-Ningn #283, January -
February 1998. (Hiroshima Bunker Woman's Junior
College helped with the document, at Asaminami -
Ku in Hiroshima.)
It is entirely possible that the true number of
dead far exceeds the numbers estimated by even the
Ukrainian Ministry of Health, who after all are
only counting the deaths within a very localized
area. They are not counting the random cancers,
leukemias and birth defects that occur an
extremely difficult-to-measure (low) rates around
the world, but among billions and billions of
people.
The Ukrainian Ministry of Health estimates are
stunning: From Page 8, Permanent Peoples'
Tribunal Session on Chernobyl: Environmental,
Health and Human Rights Implications, Vienna,
Austria, 12-15 April, 1996:
"The minister of health for the Ukraine has
estimate that about 125,000 deaths attributable to
the disaster have occurred over the last 10
years".
The panel was full of distinguished persons and
the testimony was likewise from highly qualified
individuals -- the list goes on for pages and
pages. The Tribunal also explored in detail the
worldwide cover-up about the effects of all forms
of radiation. And the deaths go on and on
too --150,000 by now? Probably that many, if not
more.
WHO alone is insufficient to produce yet another
report. We need outside experts in the medical,
biological, environmental and financial
consequences of radiological dispersals. WHO are
part of the global structure that, as Pamela put
it, "hasn't exactly come out condemning the entire
global nuclear situation in a loud voice".
ALARA stands for "As Low As Reasonably
Achievable". It's definition is in part 20 of the
U.S. code of Federal Regulation of the U. S. NRC
for exposure to radiation. All ALARA means is
that, depending on the amount of money that any
nuclear industry wishes to spend on protection of
the environment and people, and depending on
available technology, that is what they can use!
So if you say, as a nuclear producer, "I only
intend to spend $10 on keeping emissions as low as
reasonably achievable, and that's all the
technology that is available" its OKAY!
Dr. John W. Gofman has stated in front of federal
judges in U.S. Federal courts that this
constitutes "planned deaths":
Question by the court:
"What does ALARA..."
Answer:
"It permits deaths."
Question:
"Permits human deaths?"
Answer:
"Yes, because ALARA does not say -- see, the only
way you could avoid deaths from the nuclear fuel
cycle is to have zero releases. ALARA says keep
the releases as low as you can reasonably achieve
with the economics that you want to spend on it,
and the equipment that you have available and so
forth. So it is a planned emission of
radioactivity, and that in effect means planned
deaths." -- Dr. John Gofman, in conversation with
the court, October 2nd, 1978, Jeannine Honicker
versus the United States Nuclear Regulatory
Commission in Federal Court, Nashville, Tennessee,
seeking an injunction to shut down the nuclear
fuel cycle.
The judge found out that he had no jurisdiction
and that it had to go instead in front of the U.S.
Atomic Energy Commission/NRC judges. The petition
was denied. (It can be found in "Shut Down:
Nuclear Power on Trial: Experts Testify in Federal
Court" ISBN 0-913990-21-3, published in 1979 in
the U. S. by The Book Publishing Company, 156
Drakes Lane, Summertown, Tennessee, 38483.)
--------------------------------------------------
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22 ITAR-TASS: Expo “Centenary of submarine fleet” opens in Russian Far East
27.12.2004, 12.35
VLADIVOSTOK, December 27 (Itar-Tass) - More than 200 exhibits
are on view at the exposition “One Hundred years of the
submarine fleet in the Far East” that opened in Vladivostok on
Monday.
One of the exhibits is an original 1904 order from the archives
of the Vladivostok military fortress: it deals with the creation
of “a detachment of torpedo boats”, the term that was used at
that time and was later replaced with the word “submarines”.
Historians believe that the detachment kept the Japanese
squadron off Vladivostok even after the Russian navy suffered
its defeat at Tsushima.
The exposition can also boast a large display of literature
about the history of the Russian and Soviet submarine fleet,
postcards and photographic pictures of different vessels dating
back to 1904. a nuclear submarine clock, silver plates used in
the laying of the keel of a new ship, and many other relics.
The exposition venue was chosen at the Far Eastern Technical
University’s House of Museums because university graduates have
been making considerable contributions since the 1930s to the
submarine building at the Vladivostok-based famous Dalzavod
shipyard and then in Komsomolsk-on-Amur.
One of the best-known class 1932 graduates was Pavel Pustyntsev,
a gifted engineer and designer who devoted his whole life to the
building of diesel-powered and then nuclear-powered submarines.
© ITAR-TASS. All rights reserved. You undertake not to copy,
*****************************************************************
23 BBC: Asia confronts quake catastrophe
Last Updated: Monday, 27 December, 2004
[Local residents wade through a flooded street in Galle, Sri
Lanka]
Around a million are now homeless in Sri Lanka
The scale of devastation wrought by sea surges that killed about
23,000 people on Asia's shores is starting to emerge.
The death toll is still climbing, thousands are missing and
millions have been made homeless by the world's worst earthquake
in 40 years.
At least 10 countries have been affected, with Sri Lanka,
Indonesia, India and Thailand among the worst hit.
International aid efforts have begun amid fears that disease
could spread through the disaster zone.
Survivors may have little clean water or sanitation after
Sunday's 9.0 magnitude earthquake sent huge waves from Malaysia
to Africa.
DISASTER TOLL Sri Lanka: 13,000 dea
Indonesia: 4,500 dead India: 3,500 dead Thailand: 866 dead
Maldives: 52 dead Malaysia: 44 dead Burma: 30 dead
Bangladesh: 2 dead
Eyewitness accounts In pictures: Quake disaster
At-a-glance: Countries hit
Many places are still affected by flooding and communications
remain disrupted, with contact not yet made with some remote
regions.
The United Nations says the international relief operation is
likely to be the biggest in history.
Though it was not the biggest tsunami wave ever recorded, "the
effects may be the biggest ever because many more people live in
exposed areas than ever before", said UN emergency relief
co-ordinator Jan Egeland.
He said the relief operation would probably cost "many billions
of dollars".
Digging for the dead
Communities were swept away and homes engulfed by waves up to
10m high after the quake created a wall of water that sped
across the oceans.
The number of dead has climbed well into the thousands in Sri
Lanka, India and Indonesia, and thousands are feared to have
been killed on the Andaman and Nicobar islands, where reports
say several islands have been submerged.
The waves flattened entire areas
In northern Indonesia, nearest to the epicentre of the undersea
quake, the vice-president said he feared fatalities in the
worst-hit province of Aceh could rise as high as 20,000.
Jusuf Kalla appealed for urgent international aid.
"It's very, very bad," he told reporters after a trip to the
area. "We need help fast."
Packed holiday resorts in Thailand were also badly hit, and
walls of water killed people in Malaysia, the Maldives, Burma
and Bangladesh.
Waves also swept the Somali coastline after nightfall on Sunday,
where hundreds are feared drowned and thousands made homeless,
officials said.
In Sri Lanka, about a million are now homeless.
The BBC's Roland Buerk in the southern town of Galle says people
all along the coast have been digging - for food, water,
belongings - and the dead.
Searches have also been continuing off southern India for those
swept away from beaches or in fishing boats.
Schools and temples have been converted into shelters along the
coastal belt, but correspondents say they are already
overcrowded.
GIANT EARTHQUAKES
1960 - Chile, 9.5 magnitude
1964 - Alaska, 9.2
1957 - Alaska, 9.1
1952 - Russia, 9.0
2004 - Indonesia, 9.0
Thai officials doubled the death toll as rescue teams said
foreign tourists from 13 countries were among those killed.
A national disaster has been announced in the low-lying Maldives
islands, more than 2,500km (1,500 miles) from the quake's
epicentre, after they were hit by severe flooding.
Aid promises
UN teams are on their way to Sri Lanka and the Maldives to
assess immediate priorities.
Sri Lanka says it urgently requires several million water
purification tablets, food, tents and blankets as well as
medical supplies.
International organisations and countries have already made
pledges to help the victims.
+ The International Monetary Fund promised "whatever possible
assistance"
+ The Red Cross launched an appeal for 5m euros (Ł3.5m; $6.8m)
+ The European Union pledged 3m euros (Ł2.1m; $4.1m)
+ The US promised $15m (Ł7.8m)
+ Australia pledged 10m Australian dollars (Ł4m; $7.7m) and
sent two planes carrying drinking water and purification
equipment to Indonesia
+ Russia sent 25 tons of humanitarian aid to Sri Lanka
+ The UK was due to send a plane to Sri Lanka with plastic
sheeting and tenting
+ France sent a plane with 100 rescue workers, doctors and
five tonnes of aid to Sri Lanka. The French Foreign Minister was
to accompany another aid flight.
Sunday's tremor - the fifth strongest since 1900 - had a
particularly widespread effect because it seems to have taken
place just below the surface of the ocean, analysts say.
Experts say tsunamis generated by earthquakes can travel at up
to 500km/h.
IMPACT OF THE EARTHQUAKE [Map of
southern Asia showing areas hit by the quake and tsunamis]
*****************************************************************
24 [du-list] Debris removed from Concord, NH polluted site
Date: Mon, 27 Dec 2004 14:22:31 -0800
Debris removed from Concord, NH polluted site
Metal samples, drum remnants to be analyzed
By Davis Bushnell, Boston Globe Correspondent | December
23, 2004
http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2004/12/23/debris_removed_from_polluted_site/
CONCORD -- A cleanup crew spent the last few weeks removing
metal debris and remnants of some 60 underground drums from
a small area on the Starmet Corp. Superfund site in West
Concord.
Samples of the material, taken from a 150-by-200-foot area
near a holding basin and cooling-water pond, have been sent
to General Engineering Laboratory in Charleston, S.C., for
analysis, said Bruce Thompson, Starmet project coordinator
for De Maximis Inc. of Weatogue, Conn. The firm is
conducting an investigation on how to clean up the 46-acre
property off Route 62 for the five parties cited by the US
Environmental Protection Agency in June 2003 for
contaminating the site. In June 2001, the property went on
the EPA's Superfund list, which designates hazardous-waste
sites that pose a health risk.
Starmet's predecessor company, Nuclear Metals Inc., made
uranium-tipped bullets for the Army from 1970 to 1999.
The material removed could be uranium dust and beryllium, a
lightweight metallic element, Thompson said, emphasizing
that monitors installed around the property's perimeter are
indicating that no contaminants have been released into the air.
Concord Deputy Fire Chief Chris Kelley and James West, a
member of an activist group, praised the efforts of
Thompson's firm.
"I'm impressed by De Maximis's professionalism," Kelley
said, adding that his department has reviewed and made minor
revisions to a comprehensive safety plan.
West, a technical assistance coordinator for the Citizens
Research and Environmental Watch group of Concord, said,
"Members of our group are really pleased that the buried
material has been removed" without incident.
Meanwhile, the state Department of Environmental Protection
has set a Jan. 22 deadline for receiving proposals to remove
more than 3,700 barrels of depleted uranium that are now
being stored in Starmet buildings. The Army has agreed to
pay for the removal of these barrels, which contain low
levels of radioactive material.
--
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25 [NukeNet] New Mexico Uranium Enrichment Plant Comment Period
Date: Mon, 27 Dec 2004 14:17:02 -0800
NukeNet Anti-Nuclear Network (nukenet@energyjustice.net)
New Mexico Uranium Enrichment Plant Comment Period Extended
WASHINGTON, DC, December 23, 2004 (ENS) - The public will have more time to
comment on a proposed uranium enrichment plant to be built in Eunice, New
Mexico.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has extended until January 7, 2005
the public comment period for the draft environmental impact statement for
the plant because public access to documents concerning the license
application of Louisiana Energy Services for the proposed facility was
limited after the Commission shut down its online documents library for a
security review.
The agency is placing on its website redacted versions of the draft
environmental impact statement, the environmental report submitted by
Louisiana Energy Services (LES) as part of its application, and LES’s
responses to NRC staff requests for additional information related to the
environmental report.
These documents will be available no later than today at:
http://www.nrc.gov/materials/fuel-cycle-fac/lesfacility.html
The redactions withhold potentially sensitive information relating to the
security of the proposed facility.
The LES partnership is made up of Urenco, Exelon, Duke Power, Entergy, and
Westinghouse. The partnership intends to use Urenco's sixth generation gas
centrifuge technology that is now being used in Europe, but has not been
used in the United States to date. Currently, Urenco has a capacity of
about 15 percent of the world's enrichment market.
Enrichment of uranium is necessary because the fuel for nuclear reactors
has to have a higher concentration of U-235 than exists in natural uranium
ore. U-235 is the key ingredient that starts a nuclear reaction and keeps
it going. Normally, the amount of the U-235 isotope is enriched from 0.7
percent of the uranium mass up to about five percent.
The environmental impact of the proposed uranium enrichment facility would
be small to moderate, according to the draft Environmental Impact Statement
(EIS) issued by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in October. A final EIS
is supposed to be ready by June 2005.
The proposed location in the town of Eunice, is near one other major
industrial facility, the Lea Refining Corporation. A working class
community of about 2,500 people in which 18 percent of the population lives
below the poverty level, Eunice has lost about a third of its population
over the past 20 years due to its dependence on the one refinery. Many of
the state and local officials and citizens want to diversify the economic
base of the area.
At a public meeting October 14, Eunice Mayor James Brown expressed his
support for the enrichment facility, which he said would have "a positive
impact and that is an increase in population and jobs."
In a statement, U.S. Senator Jeff Bingaman, a New Mexico Democrat, said he
supports the LES facility because it will help increase competition in the
nuclear energy industry.
Rose Gardner, a Eunice resident and member of the Nuclear Resource and
Information Service and Public Citizen, told the public hearing that she is
worried that a terrorist attack might rupture the tanks of nuclear waste
produced by the plant. "A ruptured container can cause death and excessive
radioactive materials are released to the air and surrounding environment.
What would happen if at some point all 15,727 containers ruptured due to a
possible terrorist attack? This is an item not covered in the EIS."
She asked for proof that the waste would be disposed of properly, and
expressed concern about the amount of the area's scarce water the
enrichment plant would use.
Gardner pointed out that the New Mexico Environment Department and New
Mexico Attorney General’s Office had been left out of the hearing process
although New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, who served as Energy
Secretary in the Clinton administation, had requested participation for
those two offices.
Read a transcript of the October 14 public meeting at:
http://www.nrc.gov/materials/fuel-cycle-fac/ml043090069.pdf
Access to other documents is at:
http://www.nrc.gov/materials/fuel-cycle-fac/lesfacility.html
Comments on the Draft Environmental Impact Statement should be postmarked
by January 7, 2005 and sent to Chief, Rules Review and Directives Branch,
Mail Stop T6-D59, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, D.C.
20555-0001. Comments may also be submitted by e-mail to nrcrep@nrc.gov or
by fax to (301) 415-5397, attention: Anna Bradford. Please note Docket
Number 70-3103 on all submissions.
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26 [NukeNet] Utah: Envirocare nuke dump sold
Date: Mon, 27 Dec 2004 14:25:03 -0800
NukeNet Anti-Nuclear Network (nukenet@energyjustice.net)
http://www.shundahai.org/nfgb_news_121604_2.htm
Huntsman stresses: No hotter N-waste
By Joe Bauman
Deseret Morning News
Thursday, December 16, 2004
Gov.-elect Jon Huntsman Jr. emphatically reiterated his stance on nuclear
waste disposal Wednesday: No Class B or C radioactive waste is to be
disposed of in Utah while he is in office.
"I will commit to you it won't happen under my watch," Huntsman told the
Deseret Morning News on Wednesday.
Anti-nuclear activist Jason Groenewold has called for Huntsman take action
to prevent any material from coming in that is hotter than the Class A
waste Envirocare of Utah disposes at its Tooele County site. Although B and
C are considered low-level radioactive, they are more dangerous than Class
A waste.
Charles Judd, president of Cedar Mountain Environmental Inc., a planned
disposal facility in Tooele County, has said the company might seek to
import B and C waste. The property, where no construction has yet taken
place, is adjacent to Envirocare, about halfway between Salt Lake City and
Wendover.
B and C waste may not be disposed of in Utah without state permits and
specific approval from the Legislature and governor. In a Nov. 17 press
release, Huntsman took a strong stand against importation of waste hotter
than Class A.
Groenewold, director of Healthy Environment Alliance of Utah, called for
Huntsman to sign an executive order once he is in office to prevent that
importation.
"Utah's going to be continue to be targeted as a nuclear waste dumping
ground as long as we leave the door open," he said.
Once he is sworn in, he said, Huntsman will have the power to prevent the
waste arriving here for disposal. "All it takes is his signature" on an
executive order.
"Huntsman gets the key to the office on Jan. 3. He could kill this thing on
day one," he added.
Groenewold is concerned about the issue because Class B and C wastes are
"hundreds to thousands of times more radioactive than Class A waste," he
said, citing the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. He said the NRC estimates
that a 20-minute exposure to Class C material without proper protection "is
enough to cause a lethal dose of radiation. . . . It gives you a sense of
how hot we're talking."
He worried that a mishap could cause harm.
Huntsman made it clear Wednesday he is not backing down on the waste issue.
His position is the same as it was during the campaign, he said in a
Morning News telephone interview.
"That is, I will use whatever force of office I have to keep B and C waste
out of the state," he said.
A law is already in place with safeguards, he noted.
If he needs to take action to "effectively nullify" any attempt to bring B
and C waste into the Beehive State, Huntsman added, he will. Meanwhile, he
needs to review options to accomplish that, checking his legal tools.
"I would want to understand what I had at my disposal," Huntsman said.
http://www.shundahai.org/nfgb_news_121604.htm
Envirocare owner cashes out
Sale triggers new worries about N-waste disposal in Utah
By Patty Henetz
The Salt Lake Tribune
12/16/04
Containers of hazardous waste wait for disposal at the Envirocare facility
in the west desert. The company Wednesday announced it has been sold to a
group of investors. (Steve Griffin/The Salt Lake Tribune)
Khosrow Semnani, the owner of Envirocare of Utah, has sold the
radioactive-waste disposal company to a New York investment firm and a Utah
businessman who once pushed to bring high-level nuclear waste to the state.
The sale announced Wednesday caps Semnani's 17 tumultuous years as head of
one of the state's most successful and most controversial businesses and
raises questions about what the new owners - Lindsay Goldberg & Bessemer
and Steve Creamer of Creamer Investments - plan for the facility.
Envirocare officials released few details about the sale but promised to
reveal more at a news conference sometime after Jan. 1. The Wednesday
announcement was crafted because "both Mr. Semnani and the new owners felt
the public should be aware of the process," said Envirocare Senior Vice
President Tim Barney.
While the selling price wasn't revealed, and probably won't be,
knowledgeable observers estimated it at as much as $500 million, a price
one observer said indicated the new owners believed the Tooele County
facility has room to grow.
That could mean pursuing hotter nuclear waste than already is accepted at
the desert landfill 80 miles west of Salt Lake City, said David Yuschak, a
senior equity analyst with Sanders Morris Harris, a Houston-based financial
services holding
"Anybody who's buying this is not going to be looking at living off just
what is coming in now. You're going to be looking for ways to grow the
business," Yuschak said.
A federal General Accounting Office study this summer concluded 36 states
will have nowhere to send waste labeled B and C when a South Carolina
facility closes in 2008. Envirocare's existing regulatory permit to accept
Class B and C waste, hotter and more dangerous than the Class A waste the
facility already takes, sweetened the sale, Yuschak said.
"That's an important asset for the new owners to get ramped up on," he
said. "It increased the value of the asset being acquired."
Rep. Steve Urquhart, R-St. George, agreed.
"I would expect this new firm would probably continue to push for B and C
waste, because they would feel they could handle it properly, it needs to
be disposed of somewhere and they could make some good money doing it," he
said.
Lindsay Goldberg & Bessemer invests primarily in privately held businesses
with long-term potential, according to Envirocare's announcement. The firm
probably would hand off on-site management to Creamer, whose ISG Resources,
Inc., of South Jordan, is the nation's largest recycler of coal combustion
products.
Creamer was among a small group of Utah political insiders - including
state Republican Chairman Joe Cannon, Envirocare lobbyist Spencer Stokes
and lobbyist Nancy Sechrest, a former Department of Environmental Quality
employee - who advanced the so-called Plan B for bringing high-level
nuclear waste to the state for temporary storage before it went to a
federal repository. That plan died quickly in the face of fierce opposition
from then-Gov. Mike Leavitt.
Jason Groenewold, spokesman for the nonprofit Healthy Environment Alliance
and one of Envirocare's most vocal critics, said he had reservations about
Creamer, who made millions by developing the gigantic East Carbon
Development Co. commercial landfill in central Utah.
Creamer's apparent role as the local manager of the new Envirocare "isn't
welcome news," Groenewold said. "It raises a lot of issues about nuclear
waste disposal in the state."
But other lawmakers and Gov.-elect Jon Huntsman Jr. repeated what they have
long said: There is no place in Utah for hotter radioactive waste than what
is already accepted.
Sen. Curtis Bramble, R-Provo, said Semnani telephoned him Wednesday morning
to tell him of the sale. Bramble said he wasn't shocked because there have
been rumors swirling about a possible sale for some time, and predicted it
wouldn't affect Envirocare's dealings with the state.
Class B and C waste is illegal in Utah, he said, "and it will be illegal
tomorrow."
"Radioactive waste policy has not been driven by Semnani. It has been
driven by good public policy."
Currently, state law requires the consent of both the governor and the
Legislature to allow B and C waste in Utah. Some have taken that to mean
the material is illegal, though there is no statutory ban on the books and
the state Department of Environmental Quality has issued the regulatory
permit to Envirocare allowing the waste.
That permit includes a clause that says the Legislature or governor must
also approve or the permit is canceled.
Huntsman on Tuesday said through a spokesman that action such as a letter
spelling out his opposition wouldn't be necessary because the hotter wastes
already are illegal.
In an earlier statement still posted on his campaign Web site, Huntsman
said, "If elected, I shall use the full force of my office to oppose all
efforts to bring into our state any radioactive waste other than what is
currently permitted."
On Wednesday, his spokeswoman, Tammy Kikuchi, said Huntsman got a courtesy
"heads-up" about the impending Envirocare sale "a couple of weeks ago" but
didn't hear officially until Wednesday. Kikuchi said she didn't know who
offered the advance information. She said that Huntsman remains "adamantly
opposed" to B and C waste.
Semnani built Envirocare through aggressive business practices - including
payments to a key state regulator, who Semnani claimed was extorting him -
and carefully cultivated political connections, as well as earning good
will through large contributions to various charities.
Bramble credited Semnani for being "a very real part of the community. He
has contributed millions to causes."
Semnani also contributed generously to Democratic and Republican
politicians and spent more than $1 million to defeat an initiative two
years ago that would have banned hotter waste and imposed higher taxes on
the industry in Utah.
Envirocare's sale means the state must re-examine its operations, said
Senate President John Valentine, R-Orem.
"We want to make certain it continues as a safe depository," he said. "I
think [the sale] is going to create a lot of uncertainties."
Dane Finerfrock, director of the Division of Radiation Control, said the
state would require from the new owners a description of the changes they
will be making, especially regarding radiation safety, before transferring
Envirocare's operating permit to them.
Yuschak said Semnani's decision to sell is probably good news for the industry.
"Semnani was getting headlines out there that weren't the best headlines,
given the kind of business he was in," he said. "Any time you get that kind
of distraction it makes it difficult to make what you're doing more
productive."
---
Tribune reporter Matt Canham contributed to this report.
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27 [NukeNet] Canada's Yucca Mountain Planned for Great Lakes
Date: Mon, 27 Dec 2004 14:25:05 -0800
NukeNet Anti-Nuclear Network (nukenet@energyjustice.net)
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20041224/ONTNUCLEAR24/TPEnvironment/
Nuclear-waste plan splits Lake Huron community
By COLIN PERKEL
Canadian Press
Friday, December 24, 2004 - Page A12
A group of residents in and around the scenic Lake Huron town of Kincardine
claim that the province's publicly owned electricity generator is bribing
the town to support Canada's first permanent burial of radioactive nuclear
waste.
They also say a planned telephone poll to gauge local backing for the
project is a sham and want the provincial government to step in.
Under a recent "hosting" agreement with council that critics say was inked
in secrecy, Ontario Power Generation will pay Kincardine and four
surrounding municipalities more than $35-million over 30 years.
The money is conditional on community support for the plan to bury the
waste near the shoreline at the Bruce nuclear power plant.
"This whole process is ethically and morally reprehensible," said Bob
MacKenzie, a businessman in nearby Tiverton. "It smacks of hush money and
inappropriate procedure."
OPG spokesman John Earl dismissed that statement, saying the project is
being advanced on request from the community through its council.
"The model for this hosting agreement is a model that is used elsewhere in
the world," he said. "It's to have the knowledge that we have a community
that is aware of, and supportive of, the process."
The $1-billion proposal for a "deep geologic rock repository" would bury
low- and intermediate-level radioactive waste from the province's three
main nuclear reactors starting around 2017.
It involves building 38 rock vaults 660 metres below ground, then filling
them with anything from mop heads and disposable clothing to filters or
other contaminated reactor components, some of which stay hazardous for
thousands of years.
About 62,000 cubic metres of such waste is in surface storage at the Bruce
site, and as much as 7,000 more is generated each year.
Kincardine Mayor Glenn Sutton said the community "understands the nuclear
industry," and permanent burial would protect the health of the 11,000
residents, many of whom benefit economically from the Bruce plant.
Environmentalists worry about radiation or surface contaminants poisoning
groundwater or Lake Huron.
"It's a mistake to put it deep underground," said Dave Martin of
Greenpeace. "You simply cannot guarantee the integrity of any deep-rock
disposal option."
The poll, to be conducted over 10 days next month, will now include all
Kincardine adults after complaints that only heads of households would be
surveyed.
Still, critics say many seasonal residents will be missed, and there is not
enough information to make an informed decision.
"Support for this agreement shouldn't be based on money," said Jennifer
Heisz of the local group Women's Legacy. "It should be based on health and
safety studies and appropriate site selection. Those questions have never
been addressed."
Ms. Heisz's group has begun a petition to the provincial government calling
for a full-scale municipal referendum.
While an environmental assessment is planned, critics worry it will be
neither thorough nor independent.
http://www.canoe.ca/NewsStand/LondonFreePress/News/2004/12/24/795763-sun.html
Plan to bury nuclear waste alarms critics
Radioactive materials from the Bruce plant would be buried near Kincardine.
COLIN PERKEL, CP 2004-12-24 02:08:09
TORONTO -- A group of residents in and around the scenic Lake Huron town of
Kincardine says Ontario's publicly owned electricity generator is bribing
the town to back Canada's first permanent burial of radioactive nuclear
waste. They also say a planned telephone poll to gauge local support for
the project is a sham and they want the province to step in.
Under a recent "hosting" agreement with council that critics say was signed
in secrecy, Ontario Power Generation will pay Kincardine and four
surrounding municipalities more than $35 million over 30 years.
The money is conditional on community support for the plan to bury the
waste near the shoreline at the Bruce nuclear power plant.
"This whole process is ethically and morally reprehensible," said Bob
MacKenzie, a businessperson in nearby Tiverton.
"It smacks of hush money and inappropriate procedure."
OPG spokesman John Earl dismissed that statement, saying the project is
being advanced on request from the community through its council.
"The model for this hosting agreement is a model that is used elsewhere in
the world," Earl said.
"It's to have the knowledge that we have a community that is aware of, and
supportive of, the process."
The $1-billion "deep geologic rock repository" proposal would bury low- and
intermediate-level radioactive waste from the province's three main nuclear
reactors starting around 2017.
It involves building 38 rock vaults 660 metres below ground, then filling
them with anything from mop heads and disposable clothing to filters or
other contaminated reactor components, some of which stay hazardous for
thousands of years.
About 62,000 cubic metres of such waste is in surface storage at the Bruce
site, with up to 7,000 more generated each year.
Kincardine Mayor Glenn Sutton said the community "understands the nuclear
industry," and permanent burial would protect the health of the 11,000
residents, many of whom benefit economically from the Bruce plant.
But environmentalists worry about radiation or surface contaminants
poisoning groundwater or Lake Huron.
"It's a mistake to put it deep underground," said Dave Martin of
Greenpeace. "You simply cannot guarantee the integrity of any deep-rock
disposal option."
The poll, to be conducted over 10 days next month, will now include all
Kincardine adults after complaints that only heads of households would be
surveyed.
Still, critics say many seasonal residents will be missed, and there's not
enough information to make an informed decision.
"Support for this agreement shouldn't be based on money," said Jennifer
Heisz of the local group Women's Legacy.
"It should be based on health and safety studies and appropriate site
selection. Those questions have never been addressed."
Heisz's group has begun a petition to the provincial government calling for
a full-scale municipal referendum.
While an environmental assessment is planned, critics worry it will be
neither thorough nor independent.
OPG said it will be up to the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission to decide
whether a full-scale assessment is needed.
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28 DenverPost.com: editorial Right call on N.J. nuke waste
Published: Monday, December 27, 2004
The state health department did right by again rejecting a plan
to ship radioactive wastes from New Jersey to Colorado. The
process worked, though, because the legislature had given health
officials the right tools.
Lakewood-based Cotter Corp. wanted to bring 450,000 tons of
thorium-laced soil from a New Jersey Superfund site to its
uranium mill near Cańon City. Cotter would have earned fees for
the wastes. But Cotter repeatedly has violated environmental
rules governing the cleanup and storage of radioactive material
already at the mill. And, if Cotter took the New Jersey wastes,
it wouldn't have room to store the waste and rubble from its own
mill.
Yet Colorado couldn't just say no to the plan, as the U.S.
Constitution says only Congress sets interstate commerce rules.
Colorado can, however, impose reasonable restrictions to protect
public health and quality of life. In 2002, the state
legislature gave the Colorado Department of Public Health and
Environment the power to gather public comment and consider
economic and social impacts. That law led the department to
first reject Cotter's plan last summer, and to reaffirm the
decision this month. Cotter's five-year license to do its own
mill cleanup was renewed, but it was barred from taking the New
Jersey wastes.
The precedent is important, as radioactive waste storage will be
a recurring issue. UMETCO, which is cleaning up a radium site
near Uravan in western Colorado, has in the past inquired about
taking additional wastes to defray costs. And after years of
slump, higher uranium prices have led mines to reopen, and the
mines and mills will have to find places to store wastes.
Fortunately, the health department's handling of the Cotter case
set the stage for how Colorado copes with future waste storage
requests.
All contents Copyright 2004 The Denver Post or other copyright
*****************************************************************
29 [NukeNet] INEEL's plutonium plans draw skeptics
Date: Mon, 27 Dec 2004 14:21:56 -0800
NukeNet Anti-Nuclear Network (nukenet@energyjustice.net)
INEEL's plutonium plans draw skeptics ... Some residents
worry about plutonium production being consolidated in Idaho
Originally published Thursday, December 9, 2004
The Associated Press
http://www.magicvalley.com/home/archives/index.asp?DateID=12/9/2004&StoryID=13195&theDB=local_state_news&theIMG=LOCAL_STATE_NEWS
IDAHO FALLS -- Residents are wary of a Department of Energy
plan to start producing plutonium-238 at the Idaho National
Engineering and Environmental Laboratory.
"Aren't you giving Idaho the dirty part of it?" Paul Bacca
asked energy department representatives this week at the
first of seven public meetings to be held on the matter in
Idaho, Wyoming, New Mexico, Tennessee and Washington, D.C.
The batteries that use plutonium-238 to power space travel
are already assembled in Idaho, at Argonne-West. But
production and isolation of the nuclear fuel is currently
done at laboratories in South Carolina, Tennessee and New
Mexico.
The Department of Energy wants to consolidate the operations
in Idaho to save on costs and eliminate security issues
involved in transporting nuclear power across roughly 8,000
miles.
But Bacca, a former Argonne National Laboratory-West worker
who researched plutonium, questioned the benefit on
contaminating another building when the facility that the
energy department now uses will be functional for 20 or 30
years.
Tim Frazier, who oversees the energy department's
radioisotope power systems project, agreed that the
production and isolation of plutonium-238 creates the most
nuclear waste.
"The least dirty parts are already out there," at Argonne
National Laboratory-West, he said. "The other parts of the
process are dirty by nature."
If the project is consolidated in Idaho, the energy
department has said it will build a new $230 million
processing facility. That would be a unique opportunity for
the program, which so far has moved into existing buildings,
Frazier said.
Other residents said they worry that if the local laboratory
gets the plutonium operation, it could be excluded from
getting other energy department programs in the future. Some
also fear the operation would take up too much space in the
Advanced Test Reactor to allow for the current production of
medical isotopes.
But two people at the meeting voiced support for moving
plutonium production to Idaho because of its importance to
space exploration.
"When I heard the DOE wanted to move the plutonium-238
program to Idaho, I said 'Whoopee,' because I knew exactly
what those (space batteries) did," said Nick Nichols, an
amateur astronomer and a former INEEL communications manager.
Meeting tonight
A public meeting on proposed plutonium production at INEEL
will be held from 7 to 9:30 p.m. today in the Twin Falls B
Meeting Room of the Shilo Inn, located at 1586 Blue Lakes Blvd.
Here's some other helpful information on how to offer your
comments:
* The public comment period ends Jan. 31, 2005.
* Contact: Timothy A. Frazier, program director of
radioisotope power systems for the DOE.
* By phone: (301) 903-9420.
* By fax: (800) 919-3765.
* By e-mail: ConsolidationEIS@nuclear.energy.gov.
* By mail: NE-50/Germantown Building, Office of Space and
Defense Power Systems, Office of Nuclear Energy, Science and
Technology, U.S. Department of Energy, 1000 Independence
Ave. S.W., Washington, D.C. 20585-1290
* For more information: Visit the DOE's Web site at
http://ConsolidationEIS.doe.gov
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30 DOE: ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY
FR Doc 04-28201
[Federal Register: December 27, 2004 (Volume 69, Number 247)]
[Notices] [Page 77228-77230] From the Federal Register Online via
GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr27de04-38]
NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE National
Institute of Standards and Technology DEPARTMENT OF INTERIOR
Geological Survey DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES Food
and Drug Administration [Docket No. OAR-2004-0096; FRL-7851-8]
Multi-Agency Radiological Laboratory Analytical Protocols Manual
AGENCIES: Department of Defense; Department of Energy; Department
of Homeland Security; Environmental Protection Agency; Nuclear
Regulatory Commission; National Institute of Standards and
Technology, Commerce; United States Geological Survey, Interior;
and Food and Drug Administration, HHS.
ACTION: Notice of availability.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
------
SUMMARY: The participating agencies are announcing the
availability of the ``Multi-Agency Radiological Laboratory
Analytical Protocols'' (MARLAP) Manual. The MARLAP Manual
provides guidance for the planning, implementation, and
assessment phases of projects that require the laboratory
analysis of radionuclides. MARLAP's basic goal is to provide
guidance for project planners, managers, and laboratory personnel
to ensure that radioanalytical laboratory data will meet a
project's or a program's data requirements. The manual offers a
framework for a performance-based approach to achieving data
requirements that is both scientifically rigorous and flexible
enough to be applied to diverse projects and programs. This
framework will promote national consistency in the generation of
radioanalytical data of known quality that are appropriate for
its intended use. Examples of radiological data collection
activities that MARLAP supports include: site characterization,
site cleanup and compliance demonstration, decommissioning of
nuclear facilities, emergency response, remedial and removal
actions, decontamination activities, effluent monitoring of
licensed facilities, environmental site monitoring, background
studies, and waste management activities. The MARLAP Manual, now
finalized, is a multi-agency consensus document. The agencies
previously sought public comment in order to receive feedback
from the widest range of interested parties and to ensure that
all information relevant to developing the document was received
and addressed to the extent possible. The interagency MARLAP work
group reviewed all public comments received as well as comments
from a concurrent, independent technical peer review. Suggested
changes were incorporated, where appropriate, in response to
those comments.
ADDRESSES: Copies of the draft and the final MARLAP Manual, along
with public and technical peer review comments received, may be
examined or copied for a fee at the EPA Public Reading Room, Room
B102, EPA West Building, 1301 Constitution Avenue, NW.,
Washington, DC 20004. The room is open to the public on all
Federal Government work days from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Printed
and CD-ROM versions of MARLAP (NTIS PB2004-105421) may be
purchased from the National Technical Information Service (NTIS).
NTIS may be accessed online at . The NTIS Sales Desk can be
reached between 8:30 a.m. and 6 p.m. Eastern Time, Monday through
Friday, at 1-800-553-6847; TDD (hearing impaired only) at
703-487-4639 between 8:30 a.m. and 5 p.m. Eastern Time, Monday
through Friday; or fax at 703-605-6900.
The manual is also available through the Internet at or .
The NRC document number is NUREG- 1576, and the EPA document
number is EPA 402-B-04-001A-C (in three volumes).
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: EPA: John Griggs, U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Radiation and Indoor
Air, NAREL, 540 South Morris Avenue, Montgomery, AL 36115-2601,
(334) 270-3450, ; Eric Reynolds, U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency, Office of Superfund Remediation and Technology Innovation
(5204G), 1200 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW.,
[[Page 77229]] Washington, DC 20460, (703) 603-9928, . DoD/Air
Force: Dale Thomas, Detachment 1, Human Systems Center/OEBA, 2402
E.
Drive, Brooks AFB, TX 78235-5114, (210) 536-5816, . DoD/Army:
Ronald Swatski, U.S. Army Center for Health Promotion and
Preventive Medicine, Attn: MCHB-TS-LRD, 5158 Blackhawk Road APG,
MD 21010-5403, (410) 436-3983, . DoD/Navy: Commander William
Adams, Navy Sea Systems Command, SEA 04N, 1333 Isaac Hull Ave.,
SE., Washington, DC 20376-4120, (202) 781-2414, . Army Corps of
Engineers: Jan Dunker, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, (Attn:
CENWO-HX- C), 12565 West Center Road, Omaha, NE 68144-3869, (402)
697-2566, . DHS: Carl V. Gogolak, U.S. Department of Homeland
Security, Environmental Measurements Laboratory, 201 Varick
Street, 5th Floor, New York, NY 10014, (212) 620-3635, .
DOE: Mary Verwolf, U.S. Department of Energy, National Analytical
Management Program, MS4149, 850 Energy Drive, Idaho Falls, ID
83402, (208) 526-7001, ; Emile Boulos, U.S. Department of Energy,
Office of Air, Water and Radiation Policy and Guidance (EH-41),
Room 3G-089, 1000 Independence Avenue, SW., Washington, DC 20585,
(202) 586-1306, . NRC: Rateb (Boby) Abu Eid, U.S. Nuclear
Regulatory Commission, Mail Stop T-7J8, Washington, DC 20555,
(301) 415-5811, . NIST: Kenneth Inn, National Institute of
Standards and Technology, Building 245, Room C114, MS 8462,
Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8462, (301) 975-5541, .
USGS: Ann Mullin, U.S. Geological Survey, National Water Quality
Laboratory, PO Box 25046, Denver Federal Center, Bldg. 95 Ent E3,
Mail Stop 407, Denver, CO 80225-0046, (303) 236-3480, .
FDA: Edmond Baratta, U.S. Food and Drug Administration,
Winchester Engineering and Analytical Center, 109 Holton Street,
Winchester, MA 01890, (781) 729-5700 (x728), .
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The MARLAP Manual provides guidance
for the planning, implementation, and assessment phases of those
projects that require the laboratory analysis of radionuclides.
This guidance is intended for project planners, managers, and
laboratory personnel.
MARLAP was developed collaboratively over the past eight years by
the technical staffs of eight Federal agencies. State
participation in the development of the manual involved
contributions from representatives from the Commonwealth of
Kentucky and the State of California.
Contractors of the DOE, EPA, and NRC, and members of the public,
have been present during the open meetings of the MARLAP work
group and were provided opportunities for input.
MARLAP is organized into two parts. Part I, intended primarily
for project planners and managers, provides the basic framework
of the directed planning process as it applies to projects
requiring radioanalytical data for decision making. Part II is
intended primarily for laboratory personnel. Seven appendices
provide complementary information and additional details on
specific topics.
Because of its length, the printed version of MARLAP is bound in
three volumes. Volume I (Chapters 1 through 9 and Appendices A
through E) contains Part I. Part II is split between Volumes II
and III. Volume II (Chapters 10 through 17 and Appendix F) covers
most of the activities performed at radioanalytical laboratories,
from field and sampling issues that affect laboratory
measurements through waste management. Volume III (Chapters 18
through 20 and Appendix G) covers laboratory quality control,
measurement uncertainty and detection and quantification
capability. Each volume includes a table of contents, list of
acronyms and abbreviations, and a complete glossary of terms.
The MARLAP Manual benefitted from extensive internal, public, and
technical peer reviews. Before the publication of the draft
version for public comment, the participating agencies conducted
internal reviews.
These internal review comments were addressed before public
comments were requested. The public review was a necessary and
important step in the development of the final multi-agency
consensus document. The document also received formal technical
peer review under the auspices of the EPA Science Advisory Board
(SAB). SAB's comments and EPA's responses are available at .
In addition to commenting on individual chapters and appendices,
reviewers were requested to address the following questions while
reviewing the MARLAP Manual: (1) Is the performance-based
approach for the planning, implementation, and assessment phases
of projects technically sound, and is the approach reasonable in
terms of ease of implementation by project managers and
laboratories? Does the approach effectively link the three phases
of a project, and is the guidance on quality control appropriate
and supportive of a performance-based approach? (2) Is the
guidance on laboratory operations in Part II technically accurate
and useful? (3) Are the concepts covered under measurement
statistics, specifically measurement uncertainty and detection
and quantification capability, presented accurately and
appropriately? (4) Is the information understandable and
presented in a logical sequence? How can the presentation of
material be modified to improve the manual? The participating
agencies continue to solicit comments arising from review and use
of the final MARLAP Manual. Comments will be reviewed
periodically by the participating agencies, resolved as
appropriate, and incorporated into future revisions of the
manual.
Members of the public are invited to submit written comments to:
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, EPA Docket Center (EPA/DC),
Air and Radiation Docket and Information Center, Docket No.
OAR-2004-0096, MC 6102T, 1200 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW,
Washington, DC 20460.
Comments may be submitted electronically at .
Compliance With the Small Business Regulatory Enforcement
Fairness Act of 1996 (5 U.S.C. 601 et seq.) NRC has determined
that this action is not a major rule and has verified this
determination with the Office of Information and Regulatory
Affairs, Office of Management and Budget.
[[Page 77230]] For the Department of Defense, dated this 10th day
of December, 2004.
Alex A. Beehler, Assistant Deputy Under Secretary of Defense
(Environment, Safety and Occupational Health).
For the Department of Energy, dated this 17th day of August,
2004.
Andy Lawrence, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Environment.
For the Department of Homeland Security, dated this 11th day of
August, 2004.
Bert M. Coursey, Director, Office of Standards, DHS/S
Directorate.
For the Environmental Protection Agency, dated this 11th day of
August, 2004.
Elizabeth Cotsworth, Director, Office of Radiation and Indoor
Air.
For the National Institute of Standards and Technology, dated
this 6th day of August, 2004.
Lisa R. Karam, Chief, Ionizing Radiation Division.
For the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, dated this 6th day of
August, 2004.
John T. Greeves, Director, Division of Waste Management and
Environmental Protection, Office of Nuclear Material Safety and
Safeguards.
For the U.S. Geological Survey, dated this 16th day of August,
2004.
Robert M. Hirsch, Associate Director for Water, U.S. Geological
Survey. For the Food and Drug Administration, dated this 29th day
of September, 2004.
Thomas S. Savage, Acting Director, Division of Field Science,
Office of Regulatory Affairs.
[FR Doc. 04-28201 Filed 12-23-04; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 6560-50-P
*****************************************************************
31 TheNewMexicoChannel: Future Of Los Alamos Uncertain
POSTED: 9:12 am MST December 27, 2004UPDATED: 9:17 am
MST December 27,
2004LOS ALAMOS, N.M. -- Officials are pondering the future of a
Los Alamos National Laboratory facility as the Department of
Energy clears out its nuclear material and builds a Nevada
facility to take its place.
Scientists have used the Los Alamos Critical Experiments Facility
to conduct experiments on nuclear criticality -- the point at
which a nuclear reaction is self-sustaining.
But concerns over its vulnerability to terrorist attack have
prompted the government to decide to move the area's highly
enriched uranium and plutonium to the Nevada Test Site.
Lab spokeswoman Nancy Ambrosiano said the future of the area
after the nuclear material is gone remains unclear.
She said the building could be decontaminated and closed or
turned into a space for something else.
In other news, Los Alamos National Laboratory officials are
disputing key findings of a recent federal audit that questioned
the reliability and useful life of a particle accelerator once
considered the flagship of the nation's nuclear science effort.
It found the accelerator is failing and works only about 77
percent of the time -- 8 percent below the national standard for
such machines.
Paul Lisowski, the division director of the lab's Neutron
Science Center where the accelerator is located, said the DOE
had agreed it would be funded to operate at only 75 percent
reliability this past year.
By achieving 77 percent reliability, he said the lab
outperformed DOE expectations.
Copyright 2004 by TheNewMexicoChannel.com. The Associated Press
contributed to this report. All rights reserved. This material
may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
© 2004, Internet Broadcasting Systems, Inc.
*****************************************************************
32 Platts: DOE nuclear research grants awarded to 25 universities
[The McGraw-Hill Companies]
+ Thirty-five DOE nuclear research grants totaling $21-million
have been awarded to 25 U.S. universities for work related to
major nuclear energy research and development programs, Energy
Secretary Spencer Abraham said today.
The work reflects DOE's restructured Nuclear Energy Research
Initiative, which now provides for direct university
participation in DOE efforts to develop new nuclear technologies.
Universities will be participating in such R programs as the
Advanced Fuel Cycle Initiative, the Generation IV Nuclear Energy
Systems Initiative, and the Nuclear Hydrogen Initiative, DOE
said.
The awards "will bring us a step closer to a better, more secure
energy future and also help develop the scientists and engineers
that will keep the United States at the forefront of the
technology well into the future," Abraham said. Most of the
awards are for a three-year period and range from $299,000 to
$914,000. A list of the projects can be found at
(http://www.nuclear.gov).
Washington (Platts)--23Dec2004
Copyright © 2004 - Platts, All Rights Reserved
[The McGraw-Hill Companies]
*****************************************************************
33 [du-list] 12/21 US Military Watch: Guantanamo Bay-More
Date: Mon, 27 Dec 2004 14:17:11 -0800
Guantanamo Bay-More Allegations of Torture by ACLU
December 21, 2004
US Military Watch - Part of Peace No War Network
URL: _www.PeaceNoWar.net_ (http://www.peacenowar.net/)
ACLU: FBI Ruse Used in Guantanamo Abuse
By JOHN J. LUMPKIN
.c The Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) - A civil liberties group is charging that military
interrogators at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, some posing as FBI
agents,
humiliated and abused detainees, including inserting lit cigarettes in
their ears.
Releasing e-mails obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, the
American Civil Liberties Union said Monday one detainee was wrapped in an
Israeli
flag and some were shackled hand and foot in fetal positions for 18 to 24
hours, forcing them to soil themselves.
The ACLU said e-mails suggested ``inhumane interrogation methods'' approved
by President Bush - a charge the White House vigorously denied.
The military operation at Guantanamo Bay has come under increased scrutiny
as former prisoners have alleged they were tortured. The Pentagon
maintains it
runs a humane operation there and investigates all allegations of abuse.
The e-mails released by the ACLU include a report by an FBI agent who
witnessed ``numerous physical abuse incidents of Iraqi civilian detainees''
including choking, beatings and placing lighted cigarettes inside ears. One
detainee, according to an e-mail report, had been left in a room at near
100 degrees
and had pulled out his hair during the night.
One detainee was interrogated while wrapped in an Israeli flag and bombarded
with loud music and strobe lights, according to an FBI agent's account
contained in an e-mail posted on the ACLU Web site.
According to the e-mails, FBI officials disapproved of the practice of
military interrogators posing as federal agents.
Posing as FBI agents is not on a list of interrogation methods approved by
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said.
The Pentagon is investigating the allegations.
The White House denied a suggestion in an FBI e-mail dated May 22, 2004,
that Bush personally signed off on certain interrogation techniques in an
executive order.
The ACLU's disclosures primarily constitute e-mails between FBI officials
whose names the government removed before releasing them. In several, the
writers describe and criticize various interrogation techniques they say they
witnessed at Guantanamo.
A Guantanamo prisoner has, in a court petition, described detainees wrapped
in Israeli flags, among other allegations. At the time, a Guantanamo Bay
spokesman denied his statements.
While military interrogators are performing much of the questioning at
Guantanamo, the FBI and CIA also have operations there.
Anthony Romero, executive director of the ACLU, said the FBI documents
continue to show the U.S. government was ``torturing individuals in some
instances'' and demonstrates a major rift between FBI agents and
the military over
proper interrogation techniques.
``There was real concern within our law enforcement community about whether
we are torturing individuals,'' Romero said.
In other developments, a military review found a second Guantanamo prisoner
wrongly classified as an enemy combatant, and he will be released soon to his
home country, Navy Secretary Gordon England said Monday.
The newest prisoner to face release would be the second freed under a
military process instituted after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled last summer
that
prisoners at Guantanamo could challenge their detentions through the U.S.
court
system.
To bolster its case for each of the prisoners against any such challenge,
the Pentagon set up tribunals to review circumstances of each man's
capture to
determine whether they are properly held.
Of the roughly 200 detainees already released, at least a dozen have
returned to the battlefield. More than 300 additional cases are still being
reviewed.
Separately Monday, a federal judge in New York said he would deny a
government request to delay a review of whether certain CIA internal files
related to
Iraq should be made public.
Judge Alvin Hellerstein's comments marked a victory for the ACLU and other
groups seeking information about the treatment of detainees at Guantanamo and
in Iraq.
Associated Press Writer Curt Anderson contributed to this report.
On the Web:
American Civil Liberties Union: _www.aclu.org_ (http://www.aclu.org/)
12/21/04 14:12 EST
Photos of U.S. Military Torture in Abu Ghraib Prison
_http://www.peacenowar.net/Iraq/News/April%2004-Photos/Abu%20Ghraib.htm_
(http://www.peacenowar.net/Iraq/News/April%2004-Photos/Abu%20Ghraib.htm)
For more photos and Videos from Iraq, visit:
"Report from Baghdad" July, 2003
_http://www.actionla.org/Iraq/IraqReport/intro.html_
(http://www.actionla.org/Iraq/IraqReport/intro.html)
=============================================================
Peace, No War
War is not the answer, for only love can conquer hate
Not in our Name! And another world is possible!
Information for antiwar movements, news across the World, please visit:
http://www.PeaceNoWar.net
Please Join PeaceNoWar Listserv, send e-mail to:
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34 DU: Danger Dismissed: SPECIAL REPORT - IN FULL
Date: Mon, 27 Dec 2004 04:34:49 -0600 (CST)
DEPLEATED URANIUM: Danger Dismissed: SPECIAL REPORT - IN FULL - ALL SIX
PARTS HERE
------
12.12.2004
Daily Press
www.dailypress.com
http://www.dailypress.com/news/specials/dp-du-day1super,0,588771.htmlstory?c
oll=dp-break
SPECIAL REPORT
Danger Dismissed:
How the Pentagon downplays the risks of depleted uranium weapons
Uranium Dust Leaves a Trail
Matt Rohman returned from the Gulf War with many medals and a long list of
unexplained health problems. He says he encountered depleted uranium dust.
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?
Part One of the series
http://www.dailypress.com/news/specials/dp-du1,0,4619431.story?coll=dp-break
Danger Dismissed: How the Pentagon downplays
the risks of depleted uranium weapons
'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.
BY BOB EVANS
247-4758
December 12 2004
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."
Chapter Two: Of Rodents and Radiation
Copyright ) 2004, Daily Press
http://www.dailypress.com/news/specials/dp-du2,0,4684968.story?coll=dp-break
Danger Dismissed: How the Pentagon downplays
the risks of depleted uranium weapons
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.
BY BOB EVANS
247-4758
December 12 2004
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 rigime 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.
Copyright ) 2004, Daily Press
http://www.dailypress.com/news/specials/dp-du3,0,4750505.story
Danger Dismissed: How the Pentagon downplays
the risks of depleted uranium weapons
It Wins Wars -- But at What Cost?
Chapter 3: The Silver Bullet.
The fight over depleted uranium weapons isn't about how well they work. It's
about how safe they are when the fighting is finished.
BY BOB EVANS
247-4758
December 13 2004
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.
Copyright ) 2004, Daily Press
http://www.dailypress.com/news/specials/dp-du4,0,4816042.story
Danger Dismissed: How the Pentagon downplays
the risks of depleted uranium weapons
After $247 Million, What Is There to Show?
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 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 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 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
http://www.dailypress.com/news/specials/dp-du5,0,4881579.story
How Good Is Good Enough?
Chapter 5: The best test
The world's most accurate test for depleted uranium exposure is now
available - but only in Britain and Germany. The Pentagon says U.S. vets
don't need it.
BY BOB EVANS
247-4758
December 15 2004
In Great Britain, veterans of the 1991 Gulf War are signing up to take the
world's most precise test for determining exposure to depleted uranium.
The U.S. government advertises a test for its veterans of that war too. But
the test that it offers can't detect uranium in low amounts, has a high
error rate and uses equipment that's less sensitive and accurate than the
machines the British are using. U.S. vets and soldiers who've had this test
say they've been told they weren't exposed when, in fact, the tests were
simply incapable of detecting whether depleted uranium was present.
Members of Congress have asked the Pentagon to look into testing programs in
other countries. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff promised to do
that in April. But after that promise was made, the officer in charge of
U.S. testing said he had no reason to gather such data because his test was
good enough.
"Our labs would easily detect depleted uranium levels approaching U.S.
peacetime safety standards," says Lt. Col. Mark Melanson, who runs the
health physics program at the Army Center for Health Promotion and
Preventive Medicine.
One of those labs handles all depleted uranium testing for the Department of
Veterans Affairs.
Randall Parrish, a scientist who played a big role in developing the British
test, says he can't understand why the United States is satisfied with an
inferior test.
"It is incorrect to assume that a low concentration of uranium in urine
means there is no contamination," he says, because there's no good data to
support that conclusion.
The U.S. government's refusal to adopt a state-of-the art test also prevents
researchers from finding out why tens of thousands of veterans of the Gulf
War have debilitating illnesses, says Mohamad B. Abou-Donia, a researcher at
Duke University.
Abou-Donia has conducted many significant experiments into the causes of
illnesses suffered by Gulf War vets. He also recently published a study that
reviewed available scientific work on the health effects of depleted
uranium.
Knowing which veterans were definitely exposed to depleted uranium - not
just those who might have been exposed to huge doses - would fill a huge gap
in the research, he says.
But until a better test is adopted and used on a larger number of vets, that
data isn't available, he says.
So there's no certainty about who was exposed and who was not. Until
scientists can reliably determine who was exposed and who was not, they
can't prove or disprove links between depleted uranium and individual
veterans' health problems, Abou-Donia says.
Veterans and scientists have questioned for several years whether the use of
depleted uranium weapons in the Gulf War is one of the reasons that so many
veterans of that war came home weak and full of pain.
The weapons provided a decisive edge in tank warfare in the 1991 and 2003
battles in the Persian Gulf region. They also left behind millions and
millions of pieces of easily inhalable black dust that's toxic and mildly
radioactive. The dust is a necessary result of using the weapons to hit and
destroy hard targets.
In recent years, researchers have shown that laboratory animals that inhaled
depleted uranium dust developed cancerous tumors. They've also found that a
single particle of depleted uranium can alter the genetic structure of
nearby cells in ways consistent with widely held scientific beliefs about
the way cancer starts in the human body. And they've found evidence that
once depleted uranium gets in the body, it migrates through the bloodstream
to the brain, testicles, lungs, kidneys and bones, where it can reside for
years.
But all that research constitutes preliminary steps toward figuring out how
big a problem the dust from depleted uranium weapons might be, researchers
say. Meanwhile, the military plans to significantly reduce its
investigations into possible health effects resulting from depleted uranium,
as well as other possible causes of Gulf War-related illnesses.
IN BRITAIN, SAME COMPLAINTS PROMPTED DIFFERENT RESPONSE
The government's attitude toward critics of the weapon isn't much different
in Britain. British and U.S. troops are among the few who actually used
depleted uranium weapons in battles. A large number of British vets have
also been complaining about health problems similar to those experienced by
U.S. armed forces from that war.
Parrish says his government paid to develop the more accurate tests for
veterans in part because of political pressure and in part because of
medical experts' suspicions that existing tests yielded inconclusive and
inadequate evidence of exposure.
Those tests were being used to dismiss the veterans' benefits claims. Some
British veterans went to independent labs and received results that proved
depleted uranium was in their urine. Analysis of 24 hours' worth of urine is
the commonly accepted method of determining whether someone has been exposed
to uranium of any kind.
The British veterans' pleas for a better depleted uranium test also got
support from the British Royal Society, an invitation-only group of
prominent scientists. The Royal Society carries clout in Britain: It dates
to 1660, and its members are readily acknowledged as among the best
scientific minds in the country. Society members decided to tackle the
problem of Gulf War illnesses independent of the government, and after
several years, they issued a series of findings.
While those findings didn't contradict the government's official viewpoint
in many ways, the society did call for a testing program that could more
accurately detect whether someone had depleted uranium in their body. That,
coupled with activism by veterans groups, left the government little
political choice.
It took about two years to develop the highly accurate tests, says Parrish,
a professor of isotope geology at the University of Leicester.
In addition to his teaching, he runs a laboratory at the British Geological
Survey supported by Britain's Natural Environment Research Council. The
council is independent of the government and is similar to the National
Science Foundation in the United States, Parrish says.
Parrish and David Coggon, a scientist and chairman of the board that runs
the testing program, say there are only four labs (three in England, the
other in Germany) that have adopted the more rigorous testing regimen so
far.
Part of the difficulty of testing for depleted uranium in someone's body is
that you can't cut up a person and look for the uranium like you would if it
were in a rock, soil sample or lab rat. That's why scientists look for it in
urine. While not a perfect source, it's the best available right now,
Parrish and others say. Even the U.S. military agrees.
Finding depleted uranium in the body gets complicated. Natural uranium is in
everyone's body because it's in the food and water we ingest. Therefore,
there's natural uranium in everyone's urine. It's difficult to accurately
identify the depleted uranium as opposed to the natural uranium, in part
because the amounts of both are so small.
Once obtained, the uranium in a 24-hour urine sample is typically measured
in nanograms. A nanogram is one-billionth of a gram or one billion times
lighter than a dollar bill. If a total of 1 nanogram of natural and depleted
uranium are involved, the quantities of each are even lower. It takes
extremely sophisticated machines to help find and identify the microscopic
bits of depleted uranium.
The British and U.S. governments have been giving veterans and soldiers
urine tests for depleted uranium for years. But unless the soldiers had
relatively large quantities of uranium in their bodies, the tests couldn't
detect depleted uranium apart from natural uranium without a high margin of
error, Parrish and other scientists say.
LIMITATIONS ON TESTS CREATE QUESTIONABLE RESULTS
U.S. military testing officials say that unless a sample has a relatively
high total uranium level, no attempt is made to determine how much uranium
is natural and how much is depleted uranium. The level is deemed safe, and
there's no need to tell the difference, they say.
As a result, U.S. and British veterans have been told for years that they
tested negative for depleted uranium, Parrish and others say. Instead, all
that had been demonstrated was that the methods used in testing were
incapable of detecting depleted uranium in such small quantities.
Painstakingly careful methods to collect the urine and separate the uranium
from the liquid and other chemicals in the sample are important, Parrish
says.
Axel Gerdes, a German scientist who worked with Parrish to develop the
tests, says a crucial difference involves the methods used to concentrate
the uranium in urine before it's analyzed.
He says the labs used by the U.S. Army dilute the urine with water, which
makes it easier to examine, and take other shortcuts that reduce the time
and manpower to do the tests. That comes at the cost of losing the ability
to detect small quantities with accuracy, he says, by a factor of about
1,000.
SUPERIOR SPECTROMETER USED BY BRITISH LABORATORIES
The British testing program also calls for using superior hardware to aid
the analysis, Gerdes and Parrish say.
Several machines are employed for that task, they say, including a
multicollector ICP mass spectrometer. A mass spectrometer is a machine used
to determine the contents of an unknown substance. A multicollector ICP mass
spectrometer is an even more sophisticated version that's specially equipped
to accurately measure minute quantities of radioactive substances, including
the various forms of an element known as isotopes. The way that scientists
tell the difference between natural uranium and depleted uranium in a sample
is by counting these isotopes, a process that at times involves tiny amounts
of an element.
Scientists using the procedures and hardware developed for the British test
are now able to reliably identify the difference between depleted uranium
and regular uranium in samples with as little as 0.1 nanogram of total
uranium per liter of urine, Parrish says. That's 10 billion times lighter
than a dollar bill. All this is done with a margin of error of less than 1
percent, making it a very accurate test.
Lt. Col. Melanson, who oversees much of the Pentagon's scientific research
into the health hazards of depleted uranium, says the most exacting lab test
used on U.S. veterans and active-duty military personnel must have at least
3 nanograms of total uranium to examine per liter of urine. That's 30 times
more than the minimum for the new British test.
The most sophisticated U.S. testing labs use a quadruple ICP mass
spectrometer, Melanson says. Parrish and other experts in using mass
spectrometry to identify materials say that's a much less capable machine
than the multicollector type that the British are using, a machine that's
been available for about 10 years.
Gerdes now works at a university in Germany and does testing there for
privately financed groups. He has an even more sensitive version of the
machine than the British labs do. He says it enables his lab to accurately
detect even smaller quantities of depleted uranium.
Earlier this year, nine soldiers from a New York-based National Guard unit
who had health problems after serving in Operation Iraqi Freedom had their
urine tested at Gerdes' lab at the University of Frankfurt.
Gerdes says the nine veterans had anywhere from 1.6 to 5.7 nanograms per
liter of uranium in their urine. Of those, five had little or no depleted
uranium in their samples, while the others' samples contained 1.2 percent to
8.2 percent depleted uranium.
After publicity about the tests in the New York Daily News, those veterans
were tested by the labs used by the U.S. military, says Michael J.
Kilpatrick, deputy director for the Pentagon's office of health protection
for deployed troops. None had enough total uranium in their urine to be
concerned about, Kilpatrick says, and the U.S. labs didn't find any depleted
uranium. The cause of the soldiers' illnesses remain undiagnosed.
Gerdes says the use of total uranium as a guide to the level of depleted
uranium in someone's body is a mistake because there's often no correlation
between how much total uranium is in a sample and what percentage of it was
depleted uranium. That's an important point that the U.S. military seems to
overlook, he says. The U.S. military says the only difference is that
depleted uranium is less radioactive and therefore less harmful.
After initial reports about the results from Gerdes' lab involving the New
York veterans, several members of Congress questioned whether the U.S.
military should be looking at more rigorous testing. They directed the
questions to Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in a
congressional hearing April 20.
They specifically asked about tests being developed in other countries, in
light of the different results involving the New York National Guard unit.
JOINT CHIEFS CHAIRMAN SAID STAFF WOULD LOOK INTO TESTS
Myers told them he didn't know about the other countries' testing but that
he would look into the matter.
Coggon, head of the board that oversees the British testing, says he's not
aware of any effort from the United States to get information about the
processes or procedures developed there. Melanson, the U.S. military
official deemed the most knowledgeable about depleted uranium testing, says
he's not familiar with the British program and sees no need to inquire.
The tests available in the United States are good enough, he says, and are
capable of determining the presence of depleted uranium at levels nearly
1,000 times lower than the health safety standards established in the United
States.
When U.S. troops or veterans are tested, they're usually told that their
results didn't contain uranium outside the normal background levels of
uranium intake and therefore aren't considered a health risk.
That standard is set by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and is based
on a representative sample of 1,006 people given urine tests collected and
analyzed by another federal agency. But the NRC attaches a warning to those
standards, noting it's "unknown" whether the levels of uranium in the survey
"represent cause for health concern." It's merely a level of uranium in
urine for a cross section of the population 6 years and older and says
nothing of how healthy or unhealthy they are or will be, the NRC says.
The NRC further cautions that "more research is needed" to determine what
the healthy level is.
In the draft of a 2002 report outlining the issues involved in using urine
testing for soldiers' exposure to depleted uranium, Melanson's own staff
pointed out those same limitations and warnings.
One thing everyone agrees on is that no one has been able to credibly
determine how much depleted uranium is in someone based on the level of
depleted uranium in their urine.
Research shows pretty clearly that when any uranium is swallowed, it passes
through the intestines and is excreted quickly. Particles created by the use
of depleted uranium weapons, when inhaled, stay in the body much longer,
Pentagon research shows.
The tiny bits of depleted uranium created when the weapons hit hard targets
tend to be what chemists call ceramic, which means they don't easily break
down in liquid. Various forms of uranium have a wide range of solubility,
Parrish says. The effect of the high heat from the explosions and other
factors make this particular kind of uranium a big unknown regarding how
much and how fast it breaks down in the body and enters the blood and urine.
DUST IN LUNGS DOESN'T DISSOLVE QUICKLY, STUDY FINDS
The Army's recently completed five-year $6 million Capstone study of those
tiny pieces of depleted uranium concluded that there's "a significant source
of uncertainty" regarding how fast inhaled particles would dissolve in
simulated lung fluid. Still, the study concluded, there was no significant
health risk from inhaling particles of depleted uranium that result from use
of the weapons in combat.
The Capstone study said the vast majority of the particles created from use
of the weapons and small enough to be inhaled took 100 days or more before
dissolving halfway in simulated lung fluid. Generalizations were not easy,
it said, but the smallest particles tended to be the least soluble. That
means that pieces more likely to get more deeply into the lungs last longer.
Anywhere from less than 1 percent to 35 percent of the inhalable-sized
pieces tested in Capstone dissolved halfway in 10 days or less, the study
found, while 58 percent to 99 percent took more than 100 days to dissolve
half their mass. Dissolution of half of the mass of a contaminant is the
government's standard measure of how long it might take to clear something
from the lungs after occupational exposures.
That data indicates that even the smallest particles could stay in the lungs
for several years, Melanson says, though he doubts that they would pose any
significant health risk.
So far, the British have tested only about 30 troops as part of making sure
that their procedures are accurate. None of those people had depleted
uranium in their samples.
Parrish says it's possible that by now, all the inhaled depleted uranium
that will ever dissolve in these soldiers' lungs has dissolved and the rest
will remain inside without a way to detect it. He also says it's possible
that all the uranium is dissolved.
That's one reason why the testing program is so important, he says - to find
out, instead of speculating.
U.S. government scientists still find evidence of depleted uranium in the
urine of troops with shrapnel wounds. But those larger particles tend to be
more soluble than the dust that's inhaled, the Capstone study says.
Some researchers say the relatively lower solubility of depleted uranium
dust could spell even more trouble for the veterans than thought. If those
little pieces in the lungs and nearby lymph nodes aren't dissolving quickly
and getting flushed out of the body through the blood and urinary tract,
then they're sitting next to live tissue and blood cells, emitting
DNA-altering alpha particles for years.
Under this theory, it would be extremely important to know how much of the
uranium in someone's body is natural uranium, as opposed to depleted
uranium, even if there are small quantities involved. That's because the
level of natural uranium in someone's body is mostly swallowed, and more
than 90 percent of it is flushed from the body within a day or two through
excretory systems. The swallowed uranium therefore doesn't stay in one place
to irradiate tissue or blood for hundreds of days.
Richard J. Albertini, a cancer researcher at the University of Vermont, says
those pieces of radioactive dust in the lungs, as opposed to the digestive
system, are important for another reason.
LOCATION OF THE METAL MAKES A BIG DIFFERENCE
Research indicates that inhaled depleted uranium can cause genetic mutations
in blood, he says. Those mutations signal what very well might be the first
step toward cancer. Because all of a person's blood passes through the lungs
to pick up oxygen to be distributed throughout the body, large quantities of
blood are subject to mutations from exposure to depleted uranium. In
contrast, he says, veterans with shrapnel in isolated parts of the body
aren't irradiating as much of their blood because their wounds are rarely in
places where most blood circulates.
Kilpatrick dismisses these arguments, in part because natural uranium is
even more radioactive than depleted uranium. He also dismisses a possible
link between inhaling depleted uranium and the neurological problems that
seem to form the bulk of complaints by Gulf War veterans.
None of the neurological problems associated with those vets has been noted
in the 50 years of research involving workers in the uranium industry, he
says. So if the quantities of either form of uranium are lower than the
Pentagon testing program shows, there shouldn't be a problem, he says.
The British Royal Society's final report on the hazards of depleted uranium
basically agreed with the Pentagon's views of the health risks. But it
called for better testing to help scientists get a better understanding of
the relationship between intake and risks, as well as help figure out what
might be ailing individual veterans.
Abou-Donia, the Duke University scientist who recently published a survey of
available research on depleted uranium, says data from better tests - such
as the ones being done in Britain - could prove very helpful. "Absolutely.
Any monitoring of this chemical would be helpful," he says.
Abou-Donia has been conducting experiments and other studies on various
possible causes of Gulf War veterans' illnesses for several years. One of
the biggest problems that scientists have in that field is a lack of
fundamental data, he says.
If thousands of veterans in the United States got the new tests, the lack of
data regarding depleted uranium might be eased, he says.
Scientists might be able to tell, for example, whether veterans who
definitely have depleted uranium inside them also have a type of brain
abnormality thought to be characteristic of the neurological symptoms among
Gulf War veterans, he says.
But until now, no one has had a test considered reliable enough to detect
small enough quantities to determine who was probably exposed and who
wasn't.
Scientists don't know what causes the brain abnormalities in those vets,
Abou-Donia says. But unlike other chemicals and causes under suspicion, the
depleted uranium in urine is measurable and might still be in the body.
The level of exposure to chemical weapons, bug spray and other suggested
causes of the veterans' illnesses isn't detectable at this late date because
those toxins are long gone from the body and no one kept accurate records of
doses and other information on the 1991 battlefield, Abou-Donia says. Those
toxins have done their damage and are gone. That's one reason that finding
the cause of the veterans' complaints has been so difficult.
ACTUAL BENEFITS OF NEW TESTS NOT DETERMINED YET
Gerdes, an environmental geochemist, says he questions whether there's a
link between depleted uranium exposure and the illnesses suffered by
veterans. But doing the science and the testing is an important step toward
understanding the problem. "There is simply a need to do further research in
this topic," he says.
Parrish says he's not sure what the testing is going to find. He notes that
though the British government agreed to finance use of the new tests for
veterans of the Persian Gulf War and peacekeeping missions in Bosnia and
Kosovo, veterans of the continuing war in Iraq are tested with the less
precise measurement.
A British Ministry of Defense spokesman says the new testing is considered
important for veterans of the other wars because of the long period that's
elapsed since the exposure and therefore the need to identify what might be
smaller quantities.
He says the military is satisfied with the less-exact testing for veterans
of the current fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, though some will be given
the more sophisticated tests as an expedience.
The new testing program for the British veterans is just starting.
Advertisements and notices directed at veterans started in late September,
and about 300 people have signed up so far, Coggon says. About 1,500 are
expected to sign up, says Charles Williams, a spokesman for the Ministry of
Defense.
Williams and Parrish say it will probably take six months to a year before
enough tests are concluded to get an accurate picture of how many vets have
been exposed and at what level.
Parrish says that as long as Britain and the United States refuse to let
outside independent laboratories handle the testing, there will be
suspicions that the truth about exposures and possible problems are being
concealed.
The two labs in Britain performing the tests are considered independent.
He says he and other lab workers do the testing and analysis, but they don't
know whether they're working on "dummy" samples or actual veterans' urine.
That's one of the many levels of exactitude they've built into the process
to help ensure accuracy. Some dummy samples might be "spiked" with known
quantities of uranium and depleted uranium in another lab and sent out with
the vets' samples, but others are taken from people known to have no
depleted uranium in their urine. That keeps the labs on their toes, Parrish
says.
In the United States, the most precise testing that the Pentagon does is
handled at a national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention laboratory,
Melanson says.
When that federal agency does testing for the military, it won't release any
information about the tests conducted there and won't even answer questions
about the procedures, error rates or scientific standards for the tests,
says Kathy Harben of the disease control agency.
She referred all questions about the agency's testing for the military to
the Pentagon.
VETS SAY U.S. DOESN'T WANT TO PAY FOR BETTER TESTING
Steve Robinson, executive director of the Gulf War Resource Center Inc., a
veterans rights group, says he suspects there are two reasons that the
United States uses the less sophisticated testing method.
First, he says, is the cost.
Pentagon officials say their tests cost $200 to $400 a sample, depending on
whether there's enough total uranium in the urine sample for the government
to attempt to determine whether it contains depleted uranium.
Melanson initially refused to divulge the cost of this testing, saying it
wasn't a factor in his decision-making.
Parrish says his test costs about $1,000 each.
Robinson and other veterans advocates say the second reason that the U.S.
government doesn't want to use the more sophisticated tests is they're
afraid the tests might help show possible links between the highly valued
depleted uranium weapons and veterans' health problems.
"These are very effective weapons, and they want to keep them," says Steve
Smithson, assistant director of the American Legion's Veterans Affairs and
Rehabilitation Division.
Kilpatrick says the critics are wrong.
He and Melanson say there's no need to identify the low levels of depleted
uranium that the British can find because the tests that the United States
uses can detect depleted uranium 1,000 times less than what's dangerous to
health.
They cite World Health Organization, or WHO, and U.S. Institute of Medicine
reports as authorities, based on 50 years of health research involving
uranium miners, millers and processors. The Institute of Medicine is part of
the National Science Foundation and is considered the country's best
impartial health research organization. Kilpatrick and Melanson also cite
the recently completed Capstone study. It involved measurements of
inhalable-sized particles of depleted uranium that resulted from test-range
firing of the weapons into a real tank, the hulls and turrets of tanks, and
other combat vehicles.
Kilpatrick and Melanson say the Capstone research got its title because
officials think that it provides the last pieces of data necessary to
determine the health effects of depleted uranium.
Scientists who have been working outside the Pentagon to answer that
question say there are still some important pieces missing before drawing
such final conclusions.
Carolyn Fulco is one of the authors of the Institute of Medicine's reports
on Gulf War illnesses. She says it would not be accurate to say her
organization was as conclusive as the Pentagon officials when it comes to
how much depleted uranium can harm someone.
"There was almost no literature on depleted uranium," she says. Nearly all
of it was on uranium before it became depleted and in circumstances very
different from the possible exposure resulting from use of the weapons, she
says.
As a result, the institute recommended additional study into nearly all the
health questions raised by the use of depleted uranium in warfare. The WHO
report says the same.
Beate Ritz is an epidemiologist at the University of California, Los
Angeles, who specializes in how internal radiation sources cause cancer.
She's also the primary author of several of the most recent studies of the
health effects of working with uranium.
SCIENTISTS SAY SAFE LEVEL OF EXPOSURE ISN'T REALLY KNOWN
When the Institute of Medicine needed an expert to review the report that
Melanson cited to support his view that the U.S. testing program is
adequate, it turned to her for approval. That's because she's one of the few
people in the world qualified to pass judgments of that type, Fulco says.
Ritz now sits on an advisory panel for the institute's continuing review of
possible causes of the illnesses suffered by Gulf War vets.
She says no one knows what the safe level of depleted uranium is inside
someone's body when it comes to cancer and risk from radiation.
The field is rife with errors and misclassifications because actual testing
to settle the matter with scientific assurance is almost impossible, she
says.
"When you're looking at humans, you need large numbers of subjects," to make
sure that you have accurate results, she says. "But you can't cage humans
and feed them uranium and count the exposure for 20 years."
The next best thing is to pick an animal - and hope that you've picked the
right one, she says.
Even then, rats, mice and monkeys often have genetic and other differences
that can't tell you whether a human will react the same way, she says.
So to be sure, you have to try things out on humans. Or see what happens to
them after exposure.
Lots of them.
Kilpatrick, Melanson and others say 50 years of experience watching the
health and health problems of people who have worked as uranium miners,
millers and processors during the Nuclear Age give them the number of people
and the confidence to say that enough research has been done. They point out
that they add in a large margin of error to make sure they're right.
They also dismiss the idea that depleted uranium exposures resulting from
combat can be a serious radiation or cancer risk.
Ritz and Alexandra Miller, a researcher at the Armed Forces Radiobiological
Research Institute, say that isn't a justified conclusion, as far as science
goes.
"I don't see the data that supports that at all," Miller says.
The studies on people who worked in the uranium industry are often flawed
and don't involve the same issues and exposures as soldiers on the
battlefield, Miller says. The Institute of Medicine's report says the same
thing, and so does the Department of Veterans Affairs' educational program
for physicians and other health care workers.
Using uranium industry workers' health experiences as a benchmark might not
be a good measure either, say critics of the military's dismissal of the
health threat from depleted uranium.
Several studies by Congress' Government Accountability Office, or GAO, note
that getting an accurate picture of nuclear workers' health is difficult.
That's in part because for years, the government encouraged its contractors
and managers to refuse to acknowledge work-related diseases and health
problems. This helped mask the true death and illness rate to researchers.
As for whether the health standards are adequate, there's also a great deal
of debate. The GAO says the government will probably need to spend more than
$1 billion this decade to compensate nuclear workers for health problems - a
higher cost than estimated because the number of workers with legitimate
claims keeps rising.
In addition, the GAO says, there's little or no scientific agreement on what
constitutes an acceptable radiation risk, even among U.S. government
agencies.
SCIENTIFIC MODELS NEED TESTING TO PROVE ACCURACY
Kilpatrick and Melanson say the Capstone study's data-gathering enabled them
to determine how much depleted uranium dust would be inhaled in the worst of
battle circumstances. They say the calculations on that volume of dust,
using mathematical and other models of human health adopted by government
occupational and safety agencies, prove little or no adverse health effect
from use of the weapons.
Those calculations create a new standard for discussing the issue,
Kilpatrick says.
Ritz and Miller say the Capstone work doesn't change the fact that there has
been insufficient experimentation on animals to prove or disprove the
assertions of safety.
The calculations and models that the Pentagon points to are nothing more
than theory waiting to be tested, they and other scientists say.
"You know the problem with models, don't you?" Ritz asks. "You get out of
them what you put in."
The type of models that the Capstone study relies on for its conclusions are
frequently shown to be flawed, she says. That's much of what health science
is all about - testing the models and showing whether they work.
A recent example of how these models can be flawed occurred with the
chemical paraquat, Ritz says.
For decades, the U.S. government had been using it - and giving it to other
countries - to eradicate marijuana and other plants used to make drugs.
Critics questioned the wisdom of those programs, noting that the possible
effects of ingesting the drugs were not known.
Government officials dismissed the caution warnings.
For one thing, they noted that long-established scientific models said
paraquat couldn't cause brain damage because its chemical composition kept
it from penetrating through a layer of cells that protect the brain from
impurities in the blood.
The layer of cells is called the "blood-brain" barrier.
"All that was true," Ritz says. But just a few years ago, one of her
colleagues found that paraquat could get into the brain anyway.
Like other parts of the body, the brain needs amino acids to make proteins
to keep going.
The brain has special nerves to directly transfer those acids to the brain,
bypassing the brain-blood barrier. Paraquat is made of molecules that look
like amino acids.
So the brain sucks up the paraquat molecules, thinking that they're amino
acids, she says. "And it can cause brain damage when it happens."
That's one of many examples where the models aren't good enough.
And it's why sufficient research involving human cells and animals should be
done to test the models thoroughly before declaring something safe, she and
Miller say.
Vernon Walker, a cancer biologist at the Lovelace Respiratory Research
Institute in New Mexico, conducted a study that found that when rats inhaled
depleted uranium, they developed genetic mutations indicative of cancer.
He says the government exposure standards and scientific models used to
determine workplace safety - the barometers of safety used in the Capstone
study - don't include the potential for developing cancer in the way that
his experiments showed is likely.
The military has drugs, developed in the World War II era for troops exposed
to radiation, that can reduce those mutations to safer levels, he says.
Experiments are being conducted to see whether they have the same effect on
depleted uranium inhaled from the battlefield, as well as from shrapnel.
He says that based on his experiments and what he's seen from other science
on the subject, he'd be taking those drugs if he were a soldier in Iraq and
was exposed - especially if he were hit by depleted uranium shrapnel.
"I'd be taking the pills for the rest of my life," Walker says.
Miller says her research has found that a single particle of depleted
uranium can deform cells and DNA, the basic building block of life, in ways
thought to lead to cancer.
Others have shown that uranium in the body and inhaled uranium can make its
way to the brain.
Those findings haven't solved the riddle of Gulf War vets' illnesses, but
they're far from comforting about how safe the black dust from the
explosions must be, Miller says.
Someone practicing good science shouldn't be closing the book on the subject
and declaring a particular level of exposure safe under those
under-researched circumstances, she says.
TOO FEW PEOPLE HAVE BEEN STUDIED TO KNOW THE TRUTH
Ritz says the same thing about the possibility that cancer risks might
increase after inhalation of depleted uranium.
"Our human research, as valuable as it is, has a lot of severe limitations,"
she says.
At most, she says, it proves that we've been unable to detect anything, not
that there's no risk.
There might be 6,000 people involved in the studies that the government is
relying on, she says.
Perhaps that's enough to figure out whether something's toxic, she says, but
it's far from enough to determine whether it's carcinogenic.
For cancer, if you had a million people and followed them for 50 years, you
might be able to determine a safe level of exposure with confidence, she
says.
But no study has ever attempted to follow uranium workers on that large a
scale, not to mention people exposed to depleted uranium, she says.
After the Pentagon tested the New York reservists and announced that the
soldiers tested negative for depleted uranium, a news briefing was called.
William Winkenwerder Jr., a physician who is assistant secretary of defense
for health affairs, told reporters that 10 years of health studies found
that "low levels of depleted uranium that our troops would be exposed to are
neither a radiological or chemical health threat to our service members."
He also said there was no evidence linking depleted uranium to
radiation-induced illnesses such as leukemia and cancers.
But Ritz says the failure to find a link to cancer at this point isn't
surprising at all.
It will take about 30 more years before soldiers from the Persian Gulf War
could reasonably be expected to start showing evidence of most cancers
spawned as recently as 1991, she says.
Lung cancer - which many researchers say is the most likely form that might
result from inhaling depleted uranium - would take a few years longer to
show up, she says.
Some forms of leukemia and lymphomas might have started showing up in the
past year or two, she says.
Those forms of cancer have also been identified as possible problems because
lymph nodes are vulnerable when particles are inhaled.
Even if an outbreak of leukemia and lymphomas has begun among veterans of
the Gulf War, it's unlikely that the data to prove it would have been
collected and that anyone would know about it, the GAO says.
No one is comparing a list of cancer deaths in the 50 states with the names
or Social Security numbers of veterans from the Gulf War, the GAO says.
And no one is likely to begin doing it anytime soon because the money has
not been made available, the agency says.
NO MONEY TO TRACK VETS' CANCER RATE ANYWAY
In the past 13 years, only two studies have been financed to determine
cancer incidence among Gulf War veterans, the GAO says, and both of them had
limited ability to study the problem.
The studies' access to data is being curtailed as a result of financial and
legal issues, the report says. Veterans in only a few states were included.
VA officials say they're studying ways to fill this gap in the data.
In the meantime, Ritz says, the best that we can do is guess what a safe
level of exposure to depleted uranium might be.
Depleted uranium isn't alone in this respect.
Of all known carcinogens, "none of those in the carcinogenic fields have
accepted a threshold level," where safe and unsafe can be identified with a
measurable number, Ritz says.
Threshold levels are set by government agencies, not scientists, Ritz says.
"These are all policy decisions about what is acceptable," not to be
confused with scientific proof, she says.
There are many critics of the military's approach to establishing safety
levels and standards, but there are also many scientists who agree with how
Kilpatrick, Melanson and others have handled the problem that they're faced
with.
Terry C. Pellmar - who works at the same lab as Miller - co-authored the
first research paper citing that depleted uranium from pellets embedded in
the bodies of rats might migrate to their brains.
Still, she says, she doubts that depleted uranium is responsible for the
neurological problems suffered by veterans of the Persian Gulf War. And she
doubts that the government is making a mistake in the policies it's
established regarding the safety of depleted uranium on the battlefield.
"As a scientist, I'm not sure of anything" that could be deemed absolutely
safe, she says.
"As an individual, I would have no personal concerns."
Knowing the science as well as she does, she thinks that a soldier can trust
the Pentagon's assessment of the risks.
If she were a soldier on a battlefield, she says, she would feel safe, as
far as the danger from inhaling depleted uranium dust.
"We all live in a world that's filled with things that increase the chances
of getting cancer," Pellmar says.
Even if Miller's research shows that a single particle of inhaled depleted
uranium might increase the risk of cancer, that degree of increased risk is
accepted by people all the time in everyday life. There's an increased risk
of cancer if you spend time in smoky bars, she says. "Yet, we all walk into
smoky bars."
Similarly, she says, there's increased risk from living in Colorado, for
instance, because there's more uranium in the environment there naturally,
compared with most states.
Yet thousands of people have been moving to Colorado for years.
So given the battlefield advantages that depleted uranium gives soldiers,
she says, taking that little extra risk might be a good bet.
Copyright ) 2004, Daily Press
http://www.dailypress.com/news/specials/dp-du6,0,4947116.story
Other Substances, Many Possibilities
After more than a decade, there are still questions than answers about the
cause of illnesses suffered by veterans of the 1991 Persian Gulf War.
CHAPTER 6: PART OF THE MIX
BY BOB EVANS
247-4758
December 16 2004
Stress. Pyridostigmine bromide. Bug spray. Permethrin. Sarin. Sand.
Depleted uranium.
Matt Rohman was exposed to all of them.
It happened in the 1991 Persian Gulf War, after Rohman enlisted and left his
home in York County.
Now he's left to wonder whether one of those suspected dangers, several of
them - or none of them - are why his once-strong body has been falling apart
ever since.
The pain and problems began when he was 28, just back from battle. He hasn't
been able to work since age 33. Now he's 40, unable to feel anything in his
hands or feet, unable to breathe without drugs and unable to play ball with
his young son.
Rohman's not alone. More than 183,000 veterans of the Gulf War are on some
form of disability, and many of them have no idea what made them sick.
The Pentagon and government wrote off the problem as "stress" until public
complaints, a few scientists and members of Congress raised a fuss and
brought a change in direction a few years ago. Since then, some serious
science has taken place in labs spanning the nation, giving many people
involved some hope of progress.
Researchers in Mississippi used high-tech brain-imaging equipment to
identify a type of dysfunction that appears to be consistent among sick Gulf
War veterans.
Scientists in San Francisco found that the veterans who had health problems
had experienced reduced levels of a chemical necessary for good brain
functioning.
Doctors at Duke and in Dallas learned that many of the sick veterans had
naturally low levels of an enzyme that helps the body fight off the
debilitating effects of nerve gas.
In New Mexico, scientists found two problems when rats breathed air
containing tiny bits of depleted uranium dust. In one group of animals, the
depleted uranium migrated to the brain. Tests on another group revealed
genetic mutations thought to be indicative of cancer.
The particles that the animals breathed were similar to the pieces of black
dust resulting from using depleted uranium "tank-killing" weapons. The dust
is toxic, mildly radioactive and easily inhaled. But scientists disagree on
whether it could be responsible for the neurological and physical problems
suffered by so many veterans of the war.
Pentagon officials dismiss the notion that the dust can cause health
problems. They say the weapons are important and give U.S. troops a big
advantage on the battlefield.
Rohman suspects that depleted uranium might have played a role in the loss
of his health, but he also considers exposure to nerve gas, the bug spray he
was given and other chemicals issued by the Army to be possible sources of
the evils he's suffered.
So do doctors and researchers.
And that's part of the problem.
According to a June report on the problems of sick Gulf War vets by the
Government Accountability Office, or GAO, 21 research questions remain
unresolved. This is despite $247 million in research since 1994.
New technology provides a new look at vets' brains
With so many possible alternatives for what happened and so little hard
evidence of who was exposed to the suspected causes, researchers are
scrambling for good data, Robert Haley says. He's an epidemiologist and
researcher who serves on a Department of Veterans Affairs advisory panel for
Gulf War illnesses.
He and Duke University researcher Mohamad B. Abou-Donia say they don't even
have an answer for simple questions, such as which drugs were given to which
soldiers and where those soldiers were during the war.
Haley says a research effort to finally get a handle on the basic data of
exposure is being prepared now and should begin in January. It should have
been done years ago, he says.
Government officials almost started the project, but Haley and other
researchers saw the questionnaire that they were going to use and recognized
it wasn't adequate. It lacked a number of basic questions that will help
researchers establish what hazards veterans might have come in contact with
during the war.
Among the deficiencies, he says, were questions that would have helped
define possible exposure to depleted uranium.
Haley is a former official at the national Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention and now is chief of epidemiology at the University of Texas
Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. He says some of the most important
recent research was made possible by brain-imaging equipment invented after
the vets came home sick and weak from the 1991 war.
Armed with this technology, researchers now can get pictures of what's
happening in the veterans' brains.
Those pictures show that veterans who had the characteristic problems that
some people label "Gulf War illness" consistently have lower levels of NAA.
NAA is a chemical in neurons, the switches in the brain that permit thinking
and processing, including muscle movement, strength and fatigue.
NAA is an indicator of how well neurons are functioning. The sick veterans
had about 20 percent less NAA than veterans who didn't have health
complaints.
Anyone who'd had such low levels of NAA before the war would have been
noticeably impaired and wouldn't have been allowed to serve, Haley says. So
it's relatively safe to think that this change happened during their
service.
That doesn't prove what caused the NAA level to go down though.
Haley and many others think the most likely candidate for the cause of the
illnesses is the nerve gas sarin. The Iraqi army used it against Iran in an
earlier war and had stockpiles in 1991, the Central Intelligence Agency, GAO
and other U.S. government agencies reported.
After U.S. troops went to Iraq and Kuwait in 1990 and 1991, their
chemical-weapons alert systems frequently indicated that sarin was present,
the GAO says. But that equipment was often unreliable to prove exposure and
prone to false alerts.
Government officials later found that many of the chemical-protection suits
given to soldiers were also defective, the GAO says.
Even if the Iraqis didn't intend to use sarin, many experts say they're sure
that it was in the air - probably because our own troops put it there.
The GAO says CIA and Pentagon officials have acknowledged that several Iraqi
munitions dumps thought to contain sarin were destroyed by the U.S. military
during the war. The troops involved didn't know what they were dealing with,
the GAO says, and the explosions put an untold amount of sarin gas into the
air each time.
'WE PUT THEM IN A BIG CIRCLE AND BLEW THEM UP'
Rohman says that he participated in operations to destroy equipment at some
of the sites identified by the CIA and that he worked near others. He also
spent about three months blowing up Iraqi munitions and equipment in other
places.
"In one incident, we found a convoy in Iraq, several hundred vehicles filled
with rockets and ammunition," he says. U.S. Air Force A-10 "Warthog"
aircraft firing depleted uranium weapons had attacked the convoy and
scattered the vehicles. "We put them in a big circle and blew them up."
In another operation, Rohman says, he and others lined up Iraqi rockets and
other munitions in a mile-long stack like firewood and blew them up.
The effort to destroy all those munitions and equipment went too fast to
examine the individual items to determine what they were, he says. His unit
was moving, moving, moving - ordered to find all that it could and blow it
up before the Army had to leave Iraq after combat stopped and diplomats took
over.
Now he thinks it's quite likely that some of those shells contained poison
gas. But he doesn't know for sure.
Some scientists dismiss the sarin theory, saying there simply weren't the
deaths and classic symptoms that the chemical is known for.
But others say the expected reactions didn't happen because the chemical was
dispersed in those explosions and resulted in small doses over a large area.
They say the chemical still got into the soldiers' blood through the skin,
nose and mouth and did its damage, then disappeared from the bloodstream
before testing could find it.
The human body has an enzyme that attacks sarin and staves off the effects,
Haley says. Some people naturally have more of it, and some have less, but
the level that someone has in their body doesn't change over time, and it
can't be added later to rid the body of a toxin that's caused damage.
If the sarin from exploded munitions went into the air, it then fell on the
soldiers in minute quantities for days, Haley says. He theorizes that
soldiers with lower levels of the protective enzyme started experiencing
weakness and reduced neurological functions that were barely noticeable,
then continued to get worse. Other soldiers, with high levels of the enzyme,
went home fine.
This would help explain why veterans with nearly identical experiences came
home with totally different health prospects, Haley says.
Rohman and other veterans say their problems did begin with weakness,
followed by more debilitating problems as time went on.
ONE TYPE OF PESTICIDE LINKED TO PROBLEMS, IF DOSES HIGH
Sarin is a chemical known as an organophosphate, which simply means that
it's an organic derivative of phosphoric or similar acids. Agent Orange, the
now-infamous weed killer that caused problems for veterans of the Vietnam
War, is also an organophosphate.
Organophosate pesticides were also used during the Persian Gulf War to ward
off sand fleas and other biting and infectious bugs in the desert. Soldiers
frequently doused themselves, their tents and the sand around them with the
chemicals.
In high doses, they've been proven to cause neuromuscular disorders.
Scientists aren't sure whether smaller doses cause serious harm as well.
Haley says studies have found that farmers and pesticide workers who use
organophosphates have higher-than-expected rates of the neuromuscular
disease ALS, commonly known as Lou Gehrig's disease.
So have Gulf War veterans. According to the Veterans Affairs Department,
they have a much higher rate of ALS at early ages than that of the general
population. Haley says that gives some credence to the theory the
organophosphates might play a role in Gulf War vets' problems.
Other researchers say chemicals troops used to prevent insect bites, and ate
to ward off the possible effects of chemical weapons (including
pyridostigmine bromide and permethrin) might be the problem. In the rush to
battle after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, Pentagon planners began worrying
about the possibility of a chemical war and realized that they had only
experimental drugs to give troops. A decision was made to give the drugs out
anyway, and some caused severe reactions.
Pyridostigmine bromide pills gave many vets sudden, violent reactions.
"When I started taking those pills, my hands went completely numb," Rohman
says. "I couldn't hold things. So I just quit taking them."
The U.S. government maintains that soldiers didn't get a high enough dose of
any of those pills to be harmed.
Haley, Abou-Donia and others say a mounting body of evidence about toxic
chemicals shows the problem might not be that simple.
Scientists have known for years that a person under psychological or
physical stress is much more susceptible to illnesses of many kinds than
someone who isn't under stress, Abou-Donia says.
The sandstorms and extremely fine sand of the Persian Gulf region add to
that stress on the body by irritating the eyes, breathing and other bodily
functions.
Add the mixture of chemicals that the soldiers were exposed to, and the
result could be demonstrable neurological problems from what might otherwise
be insignificant doses of chemicals, Abou-Donia and Haley say.
Abou-Donia and other researchers demonstrated that principle in a scientific
paper published earlier this year. They found that the combination of
several of those chemicals, coupled with stress and exposure to silica from
sand, resulted in measurable changes to important parts of the brain in
laboratory animals.
The study included exposing the animals to high-strength DEET, a bug
repellent used by many troops in the war. Products containing DEET are the
most commonly used bug repellents in the United States. In low and limited
doses, DEET is recommended to prevent various diseases from ticks,
mosquitoes and other pests.
Abou-Donia's experiment involving DEET and other chemicals didn't include
exposing animals to depleted uranium. But he says he thinks the weapons'
dusty residue on the battlefield is a likely suspect in the parade of toxins
that soldiers were exposed to - and which caused them to come home sick.
"I would think it is part of the mix," he says.
Area veteran tried for years to get depleted uranium test
Even though much more is now known about the nature of their illnesses and
possible causes, Gulf War veterans still are having trouble getting adequate
attention to their needs, say leaders of the American Legion and the
National Gulf War Resource Center Inc., a veterans rights group.
Steve Robinson, executive director of the resource center, says doctors and
clinicians at military bases and Veterans Affairs hospitals all over the
country haven't been properly trained or educated about possible exposure to
depleted uranium. The information that those clinicians are given doesn't
include research later than 1999, he told Congress earlier this year, and
what they're taught is often biased. As a result, he says, many veterans'
problems are being ignored.
Rohman's medical records show he's had that problem at the Hampton VA
Medical Center.
He says he's been trying to get officials there to give him a test for
depleted uranium for years. Many of his medical records have been misplaced,
lost or destroyed by the government agencies that handled them, but his own
copies demonstrate that he told VA physicians about his exposure at least as
early as 1998.
Kay Reid, who runs the Gulf War program at the Hampton VA hospital, says
that should have been enough to trigger an examination for exposure to
depleted uranium - and, given Rohman's description of his war experiences, a
urine test.
She says she's not sure why it didn't happen then. Just as she doesn't know
why it didn't happen this spring, when a doctor at the hospital put a note
in Rohman's medical records March 9 that said Rohman "had requested a
uranium exposure test."
The medical records show that messages were supposed to be sent from the
doctor, notifying Reid that Rohman was in need of evaluation. Reid says she
never got that message.
Rohman says he was given Reid's name and office telephone number to set up
an appointment for the test. He says he called several times and left
messages but never got a response.
When the Daily Press contacted Reid in July, she said she didn't know about
his calls. She promised to follow up. Reid phoned Rohman that day to begin
screening him for a test. Rohman says he still hasn't been tested, however.
Rohman's problems getting testing are similar to other veterans'
experiences, based on a 2000 report by the GAO, the investigative arm of
Congress.
The study found that more than 14 percent of the veterans selected for a
depleted uranium testing program hadn't received testing because VA
officials hadn't processed the referrals and made appointments.
The steps for screening vets who want a DU test
Reid says that as of Nov. 12, 603 men and women from southeastern Virginia
and eastern North Carolina had been placed in a nationwide registry of
veterans who served in the Persian Gulf region from 1991 to the present. The
government began the registry in the early 1990s as an attempt to track
health trends among the veterans, after persistent complaints about
undiagnosed health problems. Nationwide, 86,000 veterans are in the
registry.
Over the years, eligibility for the registry has changed, Reid says. Now
anyone who served in the Persian Gulf region since 1990 - regardless of
their health or whether they were there when a shot was fired - can ask to
be included. As of mid-November, five people who served in the more recent
fighting there have been placed in the registry by the Hampton hospital,
though others are being evaluated and tested and will likely join them, she
says.
Between 20 percent and 25 percent of the local veterans in the registry have
health problems that are observable but not diagnosed, which mirrors the
nationwide average, she says.
When veterans enter the registry and ask for a depleted uranium test, they
first see a VA clinician like Reid. She says she goes through a 10-page
questionnaire with each vet to get an idea about their exposures and
experiences.
Then they're examined by a nurse practitioner, who makes a referral to a
doctor, if that's called for, Reid says. At the Hampton hospital, Reid is
the nurse practitioner who usually does the exams.
Reid says about half the veterans from the Persian Gulf War whom she's put
into the registry in Hampton have asked for a test for depleted uranium.
"They think they may have been exposed to depleted uranium," she says, "but
after we go over the criteria, they change their mind."
Reid says she asks people what jobs they had in the war and what kind of
contact they had with enemy and allied tanks and armored vehicles struck by
depleted uranium. If they weren't on or near the tanks very soon after a
weapon struck, they're not likely candidates for exposure, she says.
If they were around a tank three days later, she says, there would be no
exposure or minimal exposure - unless they went in the tank for extended
periods.
"It's not something that's just floating in the air," she says. "You have to
be around the tank within an hour of it being hit."
The Army's Environmental Policy Institute told Congress that bits of
depleted uranium have been found as far as 400 meters (1,320 feet) downwind
from experimental explosions.
The Canadian military's testing found that the particles can be suspended in
the air for hours after an explosion.
U.S. military training programs say anyone going within 50 meters of a
vehicle struck by a depleted uranium weapon should wear protective clothing
and a breather mask, no matter how long after the explosion.
Ultimately, Reid says, she decides to give the tests to only 1 percent or 2
percent of the vets. If they insist, they can get the test, anyway.
Of those tested through her office, "We have not identified anyone here who
actually had depleted uranium in their system," she says.
'If you don't look, you won't find'
Pentagon officials say the vast majority of the samples that they get don't
contain enough total uranium, depleted or otherwise, to warrant further
examination to determine whether depleted uranium is present. The military's
testing program is also incapable of identifying small quantities of
depleted uranium in veterans' urine samples and can never be used as a
definitive test of exposure - only a test of what the military has deemed
potentially unhealthy exposure.
Labs in Britain and Germany have developed methods much more capable of
detecting depleted uranium, but the U.S. military isn't interested in
copying them. Robinson and other critics of the military's handling of
exposure issues say this is an important part of the problem.
The military has been telling people for years that the tests showed no
exposure to depleted uranium when all that can be said for sure is that the
tests chosen by the U.S. government are unable to detect it.
"If you don't look, you won't find," Robinson says.
Robinson and other veterans advocates say the problem is being repeated in
the current war, with inadequate testing of troops before and immediately
after deployment. This means scientists will once again be lacking important
data if health problems arise a year or more from now, they say.
Rep. Christopher Shays, R-Conn., is chairman of the subcommittee on national
security, veterans affairs and international relations of the House
Committee on Government Reform. He says the Pentagon failed to set up the
testing and health assessments that Congress demanded after realizing what
happened during the Persian Gulf war.
Michael J. Kilpatrick, the Pentagon's deputy director for looking after the
health of troops deployed to war, says the current system might not be
perfect. But, he says, the military has made marked improvement in
collecting data and keeping records that would prove beneficial to
researchers if there's a repeat of the parade of ill, undiagnosed veterans
from Operation Iraqi Freedom.
He says military officials routinely take measurements and test the air,
water and soil of where troops are stationed and fighting. Health records
are being computerized, he says, so shots, illnesses and other records can
be tracked later.
But, Kilpatrick says, the realities of the modern battlefield don't make it
possible to say where every soldier was and what the air, water and soil
were like at that time. The equipment used for this work also isn't capable
of detecting depleted uranium, except in very large quantities, he says.
One of the improvements in baseline health monitoring that Congress demanded
in its 1998 law to protect servicemen and women involves a requirement that
the Pentagon store blood samples taken from everyone before deployment.
That's so researchers can examine the samples later to help compare
before-and-after characteristics, in case there are health problems.
But the Pentagon surprised many sponsors of the bill by not doing what was
expected.
Rep. Stephen E. Buyer, R-Ind., is a Gulf War vet who helped write the law.
He's been critical of the military's response to the requirements. He says
Congress spent a lot of time crafting a law to protect the troops and create
a baseline of accurate medical information on every soldier deployed, only
to see the Department of Defense, or DoD, water it down.
"We've got DoD going out there, doing their own thing," he said in a
congressional hearing last year.
The most obvious deviation from the law's intent, Buyer and other members of
Congress say, involves medical attention to troops before and after they
deploy.
Buyer is chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Subcommittee on Oversight
and Investigations. He says he and other members of Congress expected every
soldier, sailor, Marine and airman to get a hands-on physical exam from a
doctor when they mandated a "medical examination" for everyone before
deployment.
Instead, the Pentagon decided that giving soldiers a two-page questionnaire,
asking them to report any health problems, would be sufficient.
"The intent of Congress was an examination," said Rep. John R. Boozman,
R-Ark., during a hearing last year. "And really, the reality is these young
men and women basically got less than, you know, a cheerleader or a football
player does every couple of years."
Buyer also pointed out that the law required "the drawing of blood samples
to accurately record the medical condition of members before their
deployment and any changes in their medical condition during the course of
their employment."
The Pentagon used blood serum from the standard AIDS test, a part of the
blood that doesn't allow doctors to do many before-and-after comparisons to
see whether chemical exposures have affected someone.
PENTAGON BYPASSES $100 WHITE-BLOOD-CELL STORAGE
Kilpatrick says the Pentagon is doing everything the law requires.
He acknowledges that the blood serum being stored is of limited value and is
only part of the blood taken in a sample. It doesn't contain parts of whole
blood that would enable researchers to compare the rate of DNA mutations or
many other important attributes with samples taken after the troops return
from war.
Right now, he says, "there is no single blood test that would prove useful
in screening all service members who have deployed." So the serum is all
that's saved. Anything else isn't practical, Kilpatrick says.
Richard Albertini is a cancer researcher at the University of Vermont who's
been part of the research into soldiers with depleted uranium shrapnel from
the Gulf War. He says the Pentagon missed a chance to gather samples of
white blood cells that could prove very important.
A few veterans with the shrapnel have shown increased rates of genetic
mutations thought to be a warning sign of possible cancer, he says. To see
whether this might be because of depleted uranium, researchers exposed rats
to air with depleted uranium dust, and the rats showed the same type of
mutations, he says. They also developed tumors.
But unless you can have a before-and-after sample of the veterans' white
blood cells, you can't determine whether the change in mutations is the
result of something that happened during their deployment or from some other
factor, Albertini says. That would be one of the items that he'd identify as
valuable, if keeping data for a baseline of health was the goal.
It isn't difficult and isn't very expensive to keep those white-blood-cell
samples either, he says. "We do it all the time," he says, and it costs less
than $100 a sample. Several members of Congress tried to put more specific
requirements for blood samples into law this year, in response to the
Pentagon's decisions. But a majority were concerned with putting too many
mandates on the military in the midst of a war, so there was little specific
guidance enacted for the blood-storage program.
Kilpatrick acknowledges that the system for protecting troops is evolving
and isn't as good as it should be yet.
But when it comes to keeping records and data on health issues, he says, "we
are light-years ahead," compared with the 1991 Persian Gulf War.
Copyright ) 2004, Daily Press
-----------------
END OF SERIES
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35 [du-list] DU in the news - 24th Dec. '04
Date: Mon, 27 Dec 2004 14:16:56 -0800
Thursday, December 23, 2004 11:23 AM PST
Your Keyword News Alert for [depleted uranium]
matched the following stories:
Pioneer Press, Wed, 22 Dec 2004 5:56 PM PST
Problems on road to Japan's plans to recycle Uranium
http://www.twincities.com/mld/twincities/news/nation/10479033.htm
TOKYO - (KRT) - The initial test operation that started Tuesday at
Rokkashomura, Aomori Prefecture, in preparation for recycling spent uranium
faces many hurdles that must be cleared before a nuclear fuel cycle can be
established in 2006 as planned.
Democracy Now!, Thu, 23 Dec 2004 7:47 AM PST
Homeless Veterans: Soldiers Go From Fighting in Iraq to Fighting A New War
At Home http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/12/23/1541248
Two soldiers who recently returns from Iraq talk about how they faced
another battle after they returned home from war.
International Action Center, Wed, 22 Dec 2004 12:35 PM PST
The International Criminal Tribunal for Iraq Judgment 12 December 2004
http://www.iacenter.org/iraq-icti-2004.htm
in March 2005.
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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36 [du-list] DU in the news -25th Dec. '04
Date: Mon, 27 Dec 2004 14:17:18 -0800
Independent Media TV, Fri, 24 Dec 2004 5:27 AM PST
Welcome to www.independent-media.tv
http://www.independent-media.tv/category.cfm?fcategory_id=1&fcategory_desc=Under%20Reported&fdate_posted=%7bts%20'2004-12-24%2000:00:00'%7d
''THANKS TO a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union and other human
rights groups, thousands of pages of government documents released this
month have confirmed some of the painful truths about the abuse of foreign
detainees by the U.S. military and the CIA -- truths the Bush
administration implacably has refused to acknowledge.
Strategy Page, Fri, 24 Dec 2004 4:32 AM PST
Dirty Little Secrets Who's Got the Best Tank? StrategyPage.com
http://www.strategypage.com/messageboards/messages/478-183.asp
Who's Got the Best Tank? Most people would say it's the American M-1
Abrams. Their reasoning would be simple; the M-1 has actually fought in two
wars since 1991 and handily defeated whatever was sent against it. Tank
buffs, however, tend to look more closely at details casual observers ignore.
NEWS.com.au, Thu, 23 Dec 2004 3:29 PM PST
Iran tells UN: sites off limits
http://www.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,11597334%255E401,00.html
IRAN said today it was not obliged to allow UN atomic energy agency
inspectors to visit military sites alleged to be involved in secret nuclear
weapons work, but that it was willing to discuss the issue.
San Francisco Bay View, Thu, 23 Dec 2004 5:01 PM PST
UC Regents lose nuclear weapons program, Part 10
http://www.sfbayview.com/122204/decentralize122204.shtml
Our energy choices in the past century have brought devastation to the
health of the environment and to public health globally through pollution
and militarism. The nuclear weapons program exists for the oil companies.
See more news stories that match your keyword at:
http://search.news.yahoo.com/search/news/?c=&p=depleted+uranium
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37 ZPEnergy.com: Why 'Free-Energy' Investigation Makes Sense
+ (January 13, 2005 - January 16, 2005) TAM3
+ (April 13, 2005 - April 15, 2005) International Congress on
EE &RES in Industry &Construction - Bulgaria
[General] Chris Zell writes (free_energy yahoo list): It is
likely that 99% of the devices claimed to provide 'free-energy'
are fakes or simply the result of measurement errors.
.. but if that was true, we would still be wise to explore the
remaining 1%, wouldn't we?
The idea that no useful device could exist because of lack of
development seems to be sheer nonsense to me. Market forces are
powerful - but not perfect, in bringing practical inventions into
public view. Just because you can't buy it at Walmart, doesn't
mean it was never real.
Posted by vlad on Monday, December 27 @ 18:35:18 PST (29 reads)
Global Scaling Theory introduction in one paper
[Science] Anonymous writes: Andre Waser has compiled scattered
information of Global Scaling Theory into one document. It can
be downloaded from here
http://www.aw-verlag.ch/Documents/GlobalScalingTheory01.pdf.
Posted by rob on Monday, December 27 @ 00:32:49 PST (37 reads)
(comments? | Score: 0)
Hydrogen Fusion Breakthrough Announcement
[Science] From ABRI News: In the wake of the negative 2004 DoE
Report on the 2004 Cold Fusion Review submitted by Hagelstein et
al, the Correas - at the Aurora Biophysics Research Institute
Laboratories - have decided to make public their breakthrough
solution to the vexing problem of the so-called Cold Fusion/LENR
phenomenon. In a communication ("The Correa Solution to the Cold
Fusion Enigma") that severely criticizes both the DoE panelists
and the five presenters of the submitted review for having done
such a poor job in their re-examination of the matter, the
Correas argue that the erratic results that continue to bedevil
the field stem from the actual lack of understanding of nuclear
processes that plagues modern physics and, in particular, the
specific slant of the five presenters of the submitted review.
Posted by vlad on Sunday, December 26 @ 15:49:32 PST (487
reads)
(Read More... | 2316 bytes more | comments? | Score: 4.83)
SEG Replication Update
[Devices] Jaro (Transworld) wrote (Sweet-VTA yagoo group): Dear
Group,
I've updated the AG Group website with pictures of steel magnet
molds that we had made. We now have a 20-ton press, kiln, steel
molds, and a few kilos of magnet powders, so we're ready to
start making experimental magnets for the 18" SEG. I'd like to
thank all those who contributed to our SEG-replication effort so
far.
Posted by vlad on Sunday, December 26 @ 15:42:11 PST (147
reads)
(Read More... | 1379 bytes more | comments? | Score: 1)
ZPE Tapped, captured and applied to a load
[Science] pulsed_ignition writes: In a 12/20/04 radio interview
I explained what was happening within my Plasma chamber. The
auxiliary DC motor/collector/battery collects released
Interdimensional energy (ZPE) and the DC motor increases in
speed from higher voltage being applied to the battery. There is
no electrical connection between the DC motor/collector/battery
and the plasma system - therefore the energy is being
transferred by radiant energy.
Posted by vlad on Sunday, December 26 @ 10:30:04 PST (338
reads)
Plasma devices to guide and collimate a high density of MeV
electrons
[Devices] by R. KODAMA et al.
Nature 432, 1005 - 1008 (23 December 2004);
doi:10.1038/nature03133
The development of ultra-intense lasers has facilitated new
studies in laboratory astrophysics and high-density nuclear
science, including laser fusion. Such research relies on the
efficient generation of enormous numbers of high-energy charged
particles.
Posted by vlad on Saturday, December 25 @ 14:11:06 PST (122
The Conceptual Design of a Constellation Class Starship
[Science] Anonymous writes: You are invited to read my Ph.D
dissertation at the University of Texas at Austin Department of
Aerospace Engineering, called "The Conceptual Design of a
Constellation Class Starship." It is now available as an ebook
or as an bound 8.5 x 11 volume at:
LuLu.Com
The ebook is FREE and the 225 page document is only $9.30.
Posted by vlad on Saturday, December 25 @ 13:56:57 PST (151
Richard Hoagland and Tim Ventura will be the guests on C2C
[Testimonials] Tuesday December 28th, 2004
Host: George Noory
Guests: Richard C. Hoagland, Tim Ventura
-Anti Gravity- Richard Hoagland Tim Ventura.
Richard Hoagland of Enterprise Mission and Tim Ventura, the
creator of the American Antigravity website, will join together
to talk about experiments in antigravity and how they could
revolutionize the space program.
Posted by vlad on Thursday, December 23 @ 22:52:58 PST (170
reads)
GWE, now Genesis Scientific...has updated their progress
[Devices] Anonymous writes: A bucketload of new information is
on the new GWE web site. Wonder why they changed their name?
http://www.genesis-scientific.org/gen_progress.htm
(See an extract below)
Posted by vlad on Thursday, December 23 @ 20:18:09 PST (784
An Energy Role Model
[General] Posted by David Appell at:
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/blog.asp?blogID=1685=nl
Germany is showing how to get alternative energy done. Wind and
solar, combined with higher taxes on carbon fuels, all while
creating jobs and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
The biggest solar energy power plant in the world just went
online in Bavaria, and is expected to quickly turn a profit.
16,000 windmills generate 39 percent of the world’s wind energy;
wind and solar now provide more than 10 percent of the country’s
electricity, a number expected to double by 2020. 60,000 people
are employed in the design and manufacturing of wind and solar
equipment. (Germany’s population is 83 million.)
Posted by vlad on Wednesday, December 22 @ 22:45:33 PST (186
Self-Running Magnetic Motor a Hoax!
[Devices] Steve Elswick, Publisher/Editor - ExtraOrdinary
Technology wrote: "...As of today [Dec 22, 2004], I have been
informed by a reliable source that a principle within GMC has
admitted that the GMC machine has never self-run. Furthermore,
all of the claims of super efficiency are based on incremental
gains. They extrapolated that these gains will overcome all of
the energy lossess at a some future energy point. In short, this
is NOT a self-running device! .... Keep your hands on your
wallet!..."
Source: http://www.teslatech.info/ttservices/news.html
Posted by vlad on Wednesday, December 22 @ 22:24:18 PST (325
Unitel-Aerospace ZPE Prototypes
[Devices] From the freenergynews.com: "Abrupt electromagnetic
bucking waves represent a direct interaction with the ZPE (or
Zero Point Energy) field."
Site: http://www.unitel-aerospace.com/prototyp/test1a.htm
"...The projected pulsed laser plasma produced by the Prototype
1-A will be used to polarize the ZPE, thus organizing a
fundamentally chaotic system.
Posted by vlad on Tuesday, December 21 @ 21:21:41 PST (471
To Butch, and all Inventors
[Testimonials] In the free-energy yahoo group Paul
(metalspiderkiller) writes: Butch,
I am a little insulted you make it sound as if I don't want to
get my device out to the world. I have spent 700k and will spend
500K to insure just that. It took me 35 million to bring my
insecticide to market with wonderful results. You and everyone
else who is working on some type of "free energy device" needs
to relies the unit cost to produce the device compared to the
already existing price of the KW will determine the success.
Posted by vlad on Monday, December 20 @ 22:14:03 PST (364
Cycloid motion of electrons
[Science] Roland and Leo C. wrote (free-energy yahoo group): Hi
all
Herewith a strategy to obtain electric power from electron
emission in a vacuum.
This is not new, it has been covered by:
http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Lab/9222/magele.pdf and
sundry others.
The principle is simple and well analysed. Charged particles in
the presence of perpendicular magnetic (B) and electric fields
(E) undergo cycloid motion, whereby they travel at a(n average)
drift speed (E/B) perpendicular to both the electric and
magnetic fields, while describing a cycloid motion.
Posted by vlad on Monday, December 20 @ 22:02:10 PST (292
New from Akronos: WHAT IS DARK ENERGY?
[Science] Dear Friends,
Akronos Publishing is pleased to announce the addition to its
website of the following feature:
WHAT IS DARK ENERGY? (What Is, and Is Not, Dark Massfree Energy)
by Paulo N. Correa and Alexandra N. Correa
http://www.aetherometry.com/dark_energy.html
Posted by vlad on Sunday, December 19 @ 11:00:43 PST (500
Problems cannot be solved at the same level of awareness that
created them.
-- Albert Einstein
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38 Las Vegas SUN: Editorial: Solar energy has potential for Nevada
Today: December 27, 2004 at 9:36:39 PST
LAS VEGAS SUN
There is good news for Nevada on the solar energy front. Sandia
National Laboratories has announced that tests at its research
facility in New Mexico show that energy from the sun can be
produced far more cheaply than energy from natural gas. The
potential for Nevada, which has the necessary open land and
ideal sun, is endless.
A movement for massive solar farms in Southern Nevada sprang up
in the early 1990s. The plan then was to arrange thousands of
solar collectors, resembling gigantic satellite dishes, in the
desert and use the power from the sun to separate hydrogen from
water. Proponents, including Sen. Harry Reid, foresaw the day
when hydrogen, not oil, would be the main source of energy.
While they were right in sensing that inevitability, researchers
began favoring other methods of producing hydrogen.
That was partly because the cost then of generating solar
energy was not competitive with the cost of producing energy
from other sources. Yet research continued and last month Sandia
announced that it now believes "solar farms" -- featuring as
many as 20,000 solar dishes -- could produce energy at a far
lower price than natural gas. The mission of the farms would be
different. Instead of producing hydrogen, they would produce
energy for those peak periods when coal and nuclear plants
cannot meet the demand.
Currently, energy from natural gas is used during those peak
periods. But that energy costs anywhere from 10 cents to above
30 cents per kilowatt hour. Sandia officials have announced now,
however, that they believe they can build solar farms that could
provide energy in sufficient quantity for those peak periods at
about 6 cents per kilowatt hour.
The technology for producing solar energy at this highly
competitive rate should be perfected in about three years.
Nevada should use this time to investigate the potential of
establishing the solar farms here. The state could also be home
to the manufacturing plants that would produce the thousands of
dish-shaped collectors that would be needed, which individually
stand 3 stories tall. The state has already committed itself to
clean energy by requiring that Sierra Pacific, parent company of
Nevada Power, provide 15 percent of its power from renewable
sources by 2013. A deal to set up solar farms, perhaps at the
Nevada Test Site, would be the ultimate commitment.
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