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NUCLEAR POLICY
1 Guardian Unlimited: The five deceptions of Tony Blair
2 Guardian Unlimited: Iran Not Seen Accepting Nuclear Incentives
3 Guardian Unlimited N.Korea: Prospects for Nuke Talks 'Gloomy'
4 US: Mount Shasta Herald: Senator's Mount Shasta visit a first
5 US: Tom Maertens: Trust that Bush won't bring back the draft? Bad id
6 US: CS Monitor: Battle for the 'Cactus Corridor'
7 Nuclear Nightmare* By Robert Samuelson
8 Independent: Nuclear fallout
9 BBC: Iran to continue EU nuclear talks
10 PTI: India to lease N-submarine from Russia
11 Xinhuanet: IAEA to accept Brazilian proposal over nuclear inspection
NUCLEAR REACTORS
12 US: NRC: Notice of Availability of Environmental Assessment and Find
13 US: YubaNet.com: Wave of Nuclear Plant Relicensing
14 Xinhuanet: China, U.S. close to reactor deal
15 Independent: We need nuclear power to save the planet
16 Al-Ahram Weekly: Dumping the nuclear option?
17 UK Independent: Global warming row goes nuclear as bishop quits
18 Scotsman: Normandy Chosen for New Nuclear Plant
19 AFP: French plan for new nuclear plant draws fire
20 US: TheDay.com: NRC Says Dominion Is On The Right Track In Planning
21 US: EWG Action Fund Report: Nuclear Relicensing
22 US: Brattleboro Reformer: Delegates ask NRC to hasten VY report
23 US: NRC: NRC Staff to Meet with Energy Northwest to Discuss Columbia
24 AFP: France says future is nuclear with new generation of power-plan
NUCLEAR SAFETY
25 [du-list] "..non-combat injuries and illnesses.... now upwards
26 [du-list] What Deployment Health teaches about DU
27 INSIDE JoongAng Daily: Depleted uranium once used in weapons
28 Interfax: India to lease nuclear submarine from Russia
29 US: CNNN: Radioactive material found in clinic chief's chair
30 ITAR-TASS:International conference on nuclear safety to be held in c
31 Scotsman.com News: Radiation dangers higher than thought
NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE
32 US: deseret news: No outright ban on nuclear waste
33 Nevada Appeal: Kerry sets Nevada hopes on Yucca discontent
34 Las Vegas RJ: Report: Yucca Mountain to be at capacity before openin
35 US: deseretnews: Matheson, Swallow cross swords
36 Las Vegas SUN: Report: Waste to exceed Yucca's limit
37 US: Bradenton Herald: Tallevast residents say no to county's clean-u
38 US: NBC 4: Environmentalists To File Lawsuit Over Former Nuclear Sit
39 US: Daily Press: Nuclear waste storage still an issue
40 Guardian Unlimited: Bush faces nuclear fallout in Nevada over
41 Arizona Daily Sun: Waste to go by truck or train to Yucca
42 Arizona Daily Sun: Yucca Mtn. tour underscores Flag challenge
43 US: WAVY: Report: Virginia will store more radioactive waste than al
44 US: Wilmington Advocate: The latest perchlorate results are in,
45 US: Billerica Minuteman: Perchlorate found in plant discharge
NUCLEAR WEAPONS
US DEPT. OF ENERGY
46 Seattle Times: Hanford tests plans for nuclear waste
47 Tri-City Herald: Vitrification test proves successful
48 Tri-City Herald: Review gives Framatome thumbs up
49 amarillo.com: Pantex improves training, tooling after incident revie
50 lamonitor.com: Lab's go-go years brought problems
51 PISJ: DOE dedicates new facility at INEEL
52 Scripps: Work begins to tear down WWII relics in Oak Ridge
OTHER NUCLEAR
53 [du-list] CADU News 18
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FULL NEWS STORIES
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1 Guardian Unlimited: The five deceptions of Tony Blair
Comment
Whether the prime minister lied over Iraq is a red herring - we
now know categorically that he deceived us
John Kampfner
Wednesday October 20, 2004
[http://www.guardian.co.uk]
Did Tony Blair know the information going into the September 2002
dossier was wrong? Did he lie? These questions are difficult to
answer as they rest on personal motive. They raise the bar too
high. And yet the answers fit in to a pattern of other deceptions
that began a year before the war and have continued to this day.
Back in April 2002, the prime minister committed himself in
principle to backing George Bush's plans to remove Saddam
Hussein, come what may. Recently leaked documents have confirmed
this, and should be set against repeated statements by Blair and
his ministers in the run-up to war that military conflict was
"not inevitable". Five key deceptions followed Blair's
commitment.
1) Saddam could be peacefully disarmed
This focuses on Iraq's 12,000-page declaration handed to Hans
Blix and his UN weapons inspections team in December 2002. The
idea publicly encouraged by Blair in advance of the declaration
was that if only Saddam would "come clean" on weapons of mass
destruction, war would be avoided. As the Iraq Survey Group (ISG)
has confirmed, Saddam did comply in large measure, if not in all
detail, and had, up to a decade before, rid himself of WMD.
Therefore the declaration was not the act of defiance and breach
of UN resolutions portrayed by Blair and Bush.
2) Foreign governments agreed on the intelligence
This has been one of the UK government's favourite themes but it
is simply not true. Many of the primary sources in Iraq were
pooled, and much of the raw intelligence - which we now know to
have been of dubious quality - was shared. But analysts from
foreign intelligence services drew different assessments. The
French and Germans had no evidence to show that any of the
alleged munitions were even close to being weaponised and they
told the British.
3) The war was waged to protect the authority of the UN
This is the new fallback position, the last remaining attempt at
a casus belli: that Saddam was in breach of UN resolutions and
was thereby bringing the organisation into disrepute. Most UN
members preferred Blix to be the judge of that. And in any case,
which resolutions was Saddam actually in breach of if he did not
have the WMD? Certainly not 1441, which was passed in November
2002. Indeed the non-existence for a decade of WMD raises
questions about the lawfulness not just of this war, but also of
Blair's first military venture, the Operation Desert Fox air
strikes on Iraq in December 1998.
4) The French scuppered the second UN resolution
This arose from a television interview given by President Chirac
a week before the war, in which he said: "Whatever the
circumstances, France will vote 'no' because she considers this
evening that there are no grounds for waging war in order to
achieve the goal we have set ourselves, that is to disarm Iraq."
Chirac's position was wilfully misconstrued by Blair and by Jack
Straw, who had been informed by Sir Jeremy Greenstock, Britain's
then ambassador to the UN, that attempts to secure a majority on
the security council for a second resolution had foundered. Blair
needed a scapegoat for his diplomatic failure, even though he
knew France's position was no longer pivotal. When the French
ambassador confronted the political secretary of the Foreign
Office, Peter Ricketts, he was told: "It's such a gift, we won't
stop there." They didn't stop there. Britain went on to assert,
as we now know again falsely, that if France and one other
permanent member of the security council had come on board, the
pressure would have been unsustainable and Saddam would have to
have "disarmed".
5) The threat posed by Saddam's WMD was growing
In his address to the nation at the start of the war, Blair
stated that the threat posed by Saddam "is real, growing and of
an entirely different nature to any conventional threat to our
security that Britain has faced before". Blair might have been
excused for overstating the intelligence in September 2002, but
by the eve of war, as one official told me at the time, the
evidence was "going away". The briefing given to Robin Cook in
late February by John Scarlett, then head of the Joint
Intelligence Committee, confirmed this.
The last formal JIC assessment of WMD had been in December 2002.
Blair was happy to make a categorical statement even though he
had declined to order a fresh analysis for three months. Lord
Butler, in one of the most damaging passages of his report in
July, recorded his surprise "that policy makers and the
intelligence community did not, as the generally negative results
of UNMOVIC inspections became increasingly apparent, re-evaluate
in early 2003 the quality of the intelligence."
The British and the Americans knew that Blix's "failure" to find
WMD was not the result of lack of effort. They were increasingly
concerned that the weapons might after all not exist. In public
they did not say so, knowing the damage that would cause
politically and legally.
Within a couple of months of war ending, Straw was already
admitting that stockpiles would not be found. Blair held out with
the line: wait until the ISG has reported. For all the apologies,
non-apologies and semi-apologies about the intelligence on WMD,
the ISG's report, the Butler findings and other evidence show
that the falsehoods in the September 2002 dossier were anything
but an aberration.
· John Kampfner is political editor of the New Statesman and
author of Blair's Wars
[http://www.jkampfner.net]
Chronology
[http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/page/0,12438,1151021,00.html]
[http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/page/0,12438,793802,00.html]
More special reports Politics and Iraq International aid and
development Iraq and the media The anti-war movement
Useful links [http://www.rebuilding-iraq.net/]
[http://www.i-acci.org/main.shtml]
[http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/01/28/kay.transcript/]
[UP]
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004
*****************************************************************
2 Guardian Unlimited: Iran Not Seen Accepting Nuclear Incentives
From the Associated Press
[UP]
Thursday October 21, 2004 7:01 PM
AP Photo VAH104
By WILLIAM J. KOLE
Associated Press Writer
VIENNA, Austria (AP) - Iran is unlikely to accept European
incentives aimed at getting it to suspend uranium enrichment,
diplomats said Thursday, raising the prospect of a showdown next
month between Tehran and the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency.
Envoys from Britain, France and Germany offered civilian nuclear
technology and a trade deal to the Iranians in a private meeting
at the French mission to international organizations in Vienna.
But Western diplomats said they doubt Iran will back down easily.
Iran did not immediately respond to the incentives, which
included the promise of lucrative trade, a light-water nuclear
research reactor and the chance to buy nuclear fuel from the
West.
An Iranian diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity, said
Thursday's meeting did not involve detailed negotiations, merely
the formal presentation of the European offer.
Amir-Hossein Zamaniyan, director-general of international affairs
for Iran's Foreign Ministry, would take the proposal back to his
government for study, the diplomat said.
The offer came a day after President Mohammad Khatami said Iran
would not give up uranium enrichment, which can be used both to
generate electricity or build a nuclear weapon.
Iran insists its nuclear activities are peaceful and geared
solely toward generating electric power. The United States
contends it is running a covert atomic weapons program.
On Nov. 25, the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency's
35-nation board of governors will deliver a fresh assessment of
Iran's cooperation with the nuclear agency. The United States is
pressing to report Iran's noncompliance to the U.N. Security
Council, which has the power to impose sanctions.
Iran is unlikely to cave in quickly to demands that it suspend
enrichment, a Western diplomat familiar with the nuclear agency's
dealings with Tehran told The Associated Press. The official was
not directly involved in Thursday's meeting.
Although the IAEA had no hand in the European offer, agency chief
Mohamed ElBaradei has said he welcomes any attempt to negotiate
an end to the standoff - so long as Iran consents to continued
comprehensive inspections that can verify it does not pose a
nuclear proliferation threat.
The Bush administration - which labeled Iran part of an ``axis of
evil'' along with North Korea and Iraq when it was still ruled by
Saddam Hussein - said this week it did not endorse the European
allies' plan.
State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said the Iranians
``have shown a pattern of not being willing to comply and of not
being willing to be transparent and open about their intentions
and programs.''
The British and German foreign ministers have urged Iran to
suspend its nuclear program indefinitely. Iran has resumed
testing, assembling and making centrifuges used to enrich
uranium, heightening U.S. concerns that its sole purpose is to
build a bomb.
Iran's long-range ballistic missile capabilities, combined with
its nuclear know-how, pose a threat not only to Israel but to
Europe, Israeli President Moshe Katsav said Thursday in Vienna.
``Why does Iran need rockets with a range of 3,000 kilometers
(1,800 miles)? Why is Iran investing money in the development of
weapons of mass destruction?'' Katsav said during the first visit
to Austria by an Israeli head of state.
If Tehran does not accept the European incentives, suspend
enrichment and agree to IAEA verification that it has done so,
Britain, France and Germany likely would back the U.S. push to
report its defiance to the Security Council, diplomats said.
Experts say Iran has been building a heavy-water reactor, which
would use plutonium that also could be used in a nuclear weapon.
A light-water research reactor, by contrast, uses a lower grade
of plutonium.
---
On the Net:
IAEA: www.iaea.org
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004
*****************************************************************
3 Guardian Unlimited N.Korea: Prospects for Nuke Talks 'Gloomy'
From the Associated Press
[UP]
Thursday October 21, 2004 11:46 AM
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - North Korea said Thursday that
prospects for talks on its nuclear weapons program looked
``gloomy,'' and vowed to boost its ``war deterrent force.''
International efforts to persuade North Korea to abandon its
nuclear ambitions are stumbling as North Korea refuses to attend
talks, citing what it calls Washington's ``hostile policy''
toward the communist country.
``It was agreed at the third round of the six-party talks to hold
the fourth round of the talks in September. But its prospect
remains gloomy,'' said the North's official news agency, KCNA.
North Korea has made similar statements before. The country often
escalates its harsh rhetoric ahead of crucial negotiations.
Three rounds of six-nation talks have taken place in Beijing
without much success in curbing North Korea's nuclear ambitions.
The fourth round of talks scheduled for September never took
place because North Korea refused to attend.
The six parties involved in the negotiations are the United
States, the two Koreas, Japan, China and Russia.
The KCNA commentary was released to mark the 10th anniversary of
the so-called 1994 ``agreed framework'' deal between the United
States and North Korea that froze the North's nuclear facilities
in return for energy aid.
That deal collapsed in late 2002 when U.S. officials accused the
North of violating the accord by pursuing a secret nuclear
program.
The North denied the charge, withdrew from the Nuclear
Nonproliferation Treaty and restarted its frozen nuclear
facilities.
On Thursday, KCNA also said a new U.S. law aimed at improving
human rights in the North proved that Washington was seeking to
topple its regime. The North Korean Human Rights Act was signed
by U.S. President George W. Bush earlier this week.
``The DPRK will bolster its war deterrent force both in quality
and quantity to be strong enough to defeat any aggressor at a
single stroke, given that the U.S. is foolishly attempting to
contain the DPRK by force, while seeking a 'regime change,'''
KCNA said.
DPRK stands for Democratic People's Republic of Korea, North
Korea's official name.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004
*****************************************************************
4 Mount Shasta Herald: Senator's Mount Shasta visit a first
By Paul Boerger Updated: Thursday, October 21, 2004 9:00
AM PDT
Senator Barbara Boxer came to Mount Shasta last week to get
out the vote for John Kerry and her senatorial campaign.
Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer came to Mount Shasta October
13th and, by audience consensus, Boxer is the first United States
Senator to ever visit the city. Boxer's stop at the Stage Door
Cabaret Coffeehouse was the first stop of a campaign swing and to
get out the vote for John Kerry.
"Never?" Boxer said of her historic visit. "I'm so proud."
Boxer took the Bush administration to task on the environment,
the Iraq war and urged Democrats to get out the vote.
"It greatly concerns me there is no spirit of let's come
together," Boxer said of the president. "This administration has
divided the county in many ways. When I was growing up, certain
values tied us together."
Boxer said the administration has rolled back 350 environmental
protections and has blocked stem cell research that has "the
possibility of lifting the pain."
On the Iraq war, Boxer said president Bush "is going it alone."
"I think that's wrong," Boxer said. She also criticized Bush for
planning $900 million in cuts for veterans benefits.
"Write down what makes this country great," Boxer said. "I think
you'll find those things under assault."
On the economy, Boxer said Bush inherited a surplus and it "took
this president about 15 minutes to get a deficit."
Boxer accused the administration of spending like a "drunken
sailor."
"It was the Democrats that balanced the budget and the
Republicans say they did it," Boxer said. "If you say something
wrong enough, people will believe it."
In response to questions, Boxer said she would investigate
reports of health problems for veterans exposed to depleted
uranium munitions.
Boxer urged the audience not to spend energy worrying about voter
fraud.
"Your time is better spent on winning by a big margin," Boxer
said. "Put your energy into getting out the vote."
Boxer said the Democrats learned in Florida last year that "every
vote counts."
Boxer assured the audience, however, that attorneys would be
watching for irregularities in the closely contested states.
Boxer thanked the crowd for "lifting my spirits on the first stop
of my victory tour."
[http://www.mtshastanews.com/
Copyright © 2004 Mt. Shasta News. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
5 Tom Maertens: Trust that Bush won't bring back the draft? Bad idea
[http://www.startribune.com]
contact info Last update: October 21, 2004 at 7:14 PM
Tom Maertens October 22, 2004 MAERTENS1022
In a recent Newsweek poll, 38 percent of respondents thought
President Bush would reinstitute the draft if reelected. In a
Time poll, 42 percent expected a draft. Both polls were taken
before John Kerry raised the issue.
The president has adamantly denied the draft story. He has even
asserted that reelecting him is the best way to prevent a new
draft. Bush is speaking out of both sides of his mouth on the
issue, however: He portrays himself as more intent on prosecuting
the war in Iraq than Kerry, which would logically make a draft
more likely.
Are Bush's campaign promises credible?
In the 2000 campaign George W. Bush said that he would support
allowing Americans to buy prescription drugs from Canada, he
would not raid the Social Security Trust Fund, and he would veto
temporary storage of nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain. He broke
all three promises.
In the same campaign Bush said that he would not only balance the
budget but pay down a record amount on the national debt. He also
claimed he opposed government intervention regarding same-sex
marriage. He said the nation would have a $5.6 trillion surplus
and that he would have a humble foreign policy. Does anybody
remember those whoppers?
In the 2000 campaign, Bush said that he opposed nation-building,
that he would end partisan bickering in Washington, and he blamed
Bill Clinton for high oil prices. Whom would he blame for
$55-per-barrel oil today?
Now Bush says that he plans to fight the war in Iraq with an
all-volunteer force. This sounds like a faith-based, or maybe
hope-based, policy.
It's common knowledge there aren't enough troops to maintain
security in Iraq, much less to reverse the military
deterioration. Two-thirds of U.S. servicemen polled by the
Annenberg Public Policy Center recently said they believed
President Bush "had underestimated the number of troops needed in
Iraq." In other words, count on more troops -- after the
election.
The Army has 33 combat brigades. Typically, two-thirds are
stationed in the States and one-third overseas. Because of Iraq
the situation is reversed and two-thirds are now stationed
outside the country. All have been rotated into combat in Iraq or
Afghanistan at least once, and some have served two tours there
already. Reserve and National Guard units have been used to make
up the shortfall, constituting almost 40 percent of the troops on
the ground at present.
The manpower shortage is sufficiently acute that thousands of
Guard and Reserve soldiers have been prevented from leaving the
supposedly all-volunteer force when their enlistments are up.
This is a "back-door draft," the administration's stopgap
solution, at least until after the election.
Such coercive policies, predictably, are driving retention rates
down. This makes a draft even more likely. The Army Research
Institute projects that only 27 percent of Guard and Reserve
soldiers intend to reenlist -- an all-time low. The Army National
Guard fell nearly 10 percent short of its 2004 recruiting goal of
56,000 enlistees. In addition, many former soldiers mobilized
under a special program have refused to report; they've been to
Iraq and don't want to go back. The pool of young people who have
committed to join the Army next year is only 18 percent of the
total required.
The United States maintains troops in 130 countries, including
146,000 combat troops in Iraq and 9,000 in Afghanistan.
We also have 119,00 military personnel in Europe, 43,000 in
Japan, 37,000 in Korea and other forces elsewhere. To maintain
these commitments while continuing to rotate troops out of Iraq
every 12 months stretches our forces to the limit. The present
level of combat in Iraq is unsustainable with our current forces.
Maybe Bush sees a light at the end of the tunnel.
The head of the Selective Service told CBS News that he could
start drafting people quickly. "I think we could do it in less
than six months if we got the call," said Selective Service
Director Jack Martin.
Bush says there won't be a draft to fight the war in Iraq while
he is president. Unfortunately, his credibility on Iraq is no
better than his record on campaign statements.
Anyone who can read now knows that the administration's claims
about WMD and about Saddam Hussein's ties to 9/11 and Al-Qaida
were false. The assurances that we would be welcomed as
liberators and could use Iraq's oil money to finance
reconstruction were patently absurd. It is public knowledge that
the administration used forged documents and phony intelligence
to claim Saddam was pursuing nuclear material from Niger and
specialty aluminum for centrifuges.
Vice President Dick Cheney continues to claim that Saddam
protected Abu Nidal, supposedly proof he supported terrorists,
even though Saddam had had Abu Nidal assassinated well before the
U.S. invasion. To make the same point, the administration
routinely claims that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was working with
Sadddam even though the evidence is that Al-Zarqawi came into
Iraq after the invasion.
The administration's litany of misrepresentations and outright
falsehoods on Iraq is so pervasive that nothing it says can be
taken at face value.
Yes, George Bush says there will be no draft while he is
president, but don't bet your life on it.
Tom Maertens' writing on national security issues can be seen at
www.tommaertens.com [http://www.tommaertens.com] . Return to top
Story tools Email this story +http://www.startribune.com/stories/
[Star Tribune] © 2004 Star Tribune. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
6 CS Monitor: Battle for the 'Cactus Corridor'
| csmonitor.com
from the October 22, 2004 edition
[(Photograph)]
As electoral votes line up, Bush and Kerry fight over how to
win in a changing West.
By Liz Marlantes | Staff writer of The Christian Science
Monitor
LAS VEGAS Walter and Louanne LeBeau remember a time when most
of their neighbors were conservative like them. Staunch
supporters of President Bush, the LeBeaus back his tax cuts and
support him on "the moral issues." While they have questions
about Iraq, they feel Mr. Bush is the best candidate to "get
this thing settled," says Walter, who works for a car company.
Help the Monitor bring you insightful, global news coverage by
donating now. Please support independent journalism
[http://www.csmonitorservices.com/csmdonations?D-InStorySupportIJ
End] .
But lately, "we feel like we're in the minority," says Louanne,
eating at an In-N-Out Burger on the outskirts of Las Vegas. Over
the past few years, many Californians have moved into the area,
she says, bringing more liberal views with them - and turning
this once reliably Republican state into one of the most
competitive battlegrounds in the nation.
With fewer states in play as the race enters its final days -
and whole regions of the country now largely uncontested - the
campaigns are still focusing intently on no fewer than three
Western states: New Mexico, Colorado, and Nevada. It was no
accident that Bush and Sen. John Kerry both went to Las Vegas
after their third debate; in the past week alone, Nevadans have
also been treated to visits from Laura Bush and Elizabeth
Edwards, with Senator Kerry scheduled to stop in Reno again
Friday.
The competitiveness of the "Cactus Corridor" was foreshadowed in
2000: Despite all the attention paid to Florida, New Mexico was
the most narrowly decided state, with Al Gore squeaking out a
surprise win by just 366 votes. Driving that victory was a churn
of demographic change - including an influx of retirees, young
workers, Hispanics, and military families - that has been
reshaping the face, and increasingly the politics, of the entire
region.
And Nevada is the fastest-growing state of them all. During the
1990s, the Silver State grew by an astonishing 67 percent; since
2000 alone, it has gained some 200,000 new residents - making
its political leanings harder and harder to predict. After
voting Republican in every presidential election since 1968,
Nevadans narrowly went for Bill Clinton in 1992 and 1996 (in
part because of strong support for Ross Perot). This year, most
analysts tend to give Bush a slight edge - he won here in 2000,
albeit by a mere 22,000 votes, and most polls have shown him
holding onto a slim lead. But nearly everyone agrees the results
will hinge on how many new residents show up to vote.
"Ultimately, it comes down to turnout," says David Damore, a
political scientist at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas
(UNLV). "If the Democrats can get their newly registered voters
to the polls, they have a chance of winning."
Stark dichotomies and clashing views
Like most battleground states, Nevada is highly polarized - and
for both sides, winning means generating high turnout in their
strongholds to offset losses elsewhere. Bush's strongest support
comes from the rural parts of the state, among ranchers and
miners who typify Nevada's longtime antitax, antiregulation
conservatism. Kerry's chances, on the other hand, lie in Clark
County, which includes Las Vegas and holds some two-thirds of
the state's total population. It tilts slightly Democratic -
though not overwhelmingly so.
"The state is really tight right now," says Sig Rogich, a
longtime Republican strategist. He estimates that Bush will gain
a plurality of at least 70,000 votes from the rural parts of the
state - "which means Kerry would have to beat Bush in Clark
County by 12 or 13 percent" to win overall, a task Mr. Rogich
sees as difficult but not impossible.
Yet even within Las Vegas, the political dialogue seems
unusually stark - reflecting the nation's mood, perhaps, but
also the effects of a community of newcomers, in which most
political views were shaped elsewhere and now seem to clash
rather than meld.
Sitting two booths away from the LeBeaus at the In-N-Out Burger,
Irwin and Annette Foster offer a sharply different take on the
presidential campaign. Retirees from Los Angeles, they think the
UN needs to take a bigger role in Iraq, are aghast that the
administration "outsourced" the manufacturing of the flu
vaccine, and offer a ready list of things they dislike about
Bush: "His lack of knowledge," Annette says.
"His refusal to admit when he's wrong," says Irwin. "He's the
first president in my lifetime that I don't trust."
With early voting already underway, both sides are doing what
they can to ratchet up intensity even further. Along with
candidate stops, there have been visits by surrogates -
including filmmaker Michael Moore, who held a rally last week at
UNLV. Events are playing on emotions, too: Local headlines have
been dominated by a recent scandal involving a
voter-registration firm that allegedly tore up Democratic
registrations.
A strong sense of who they want
Interviews with voters in and around Las Vegas turn up almost no
one who's undecided - though a few have switched allegiance from
last time around. Pushing their two daughters in a stroller at a
weekend art festival in Summerlin, Denise and Tim Haines say
they both voted for Bush in 2000 - but are strong Kerry
supporters now. Denise has gone so far as to coordinate a "Moms
for Kerry" rally in the area.
The 2000 election was the first time she had voted, she
explains, and among her colleagues, it seemed like "there were
just so many people that were going for Bush," that she went
along with them.
But since then, both she and her husband have become
disillusioned with Bush's policies, from the war in Iraq to his
opposition to stem-cell research. Indeed, they express suspicion
of the president's motives and intentions. Both believe the
draft will be reinstated if Bush wins, and they raise questions
about his family's ties to Saudi Arabia. Tim criticizes the way
the president handled the aftermath of 9/11 - including allowing
Osama bin Laden's relatives to leave the country. "Everyone
watches 'C.S.I.' - and crime scenes are handled a certain way,"
he says. "Why wasn't this handled that way?"
Others are just as firmly in the president's camp. Watching her
daughter cheer for the football team at Meadows school, Cheryl
Smelser says she supports Bush for his belief in "faith and
family," as well as for his stands on most issues. She believes
the president has done a good job protecting America from
terrorism - "we haven't had any more incidents since 9/11, so
we're doing something right," she says. And she backs him on
domestic issues: A nursing assistant who is currently without
health insurance, she says that while she knows she "might
benefit" from Kerry's healthcare plan, she thinks it would be
bad for the country - and unaffordable. "Somebody's got to pay
for it somewhere," she notes, suggesting higher taxes would be
the end result.
As in much of the country, the top issues for voters here are
national ones - the war, or healthcare, though they resonate
slightly differently.
With so many veterans and military families in the state,
support for Iraq has stayed above 50 percent here, likely
boosting Bush's chances. Likewise, unemployment hasn't been a
problem - aside from a slight dip in tourism after 9/11, Nevada
has had one of the best economies in the nation. Healthcare is
an issue for many here, but often seems to play along party
lines.
Some local issues might factor into the equation - most notably,
Yucca Mountain. Bush's decision to go forward with plans to
store nuclear waste at the site 90 miles outside Las Vegas has
been seen by some residents here as reneging on a promise.
(During the 2000 campaign he said he would wait for a scientific
seal of approval).
Mr. Rogich cites Kerry's call for a tax on mining - a plan that
local newspapers have said would cost the state some 40,000 jobs
- as a motivating issue in rural areas. There's also a ballot
measure to raise the minimum wage, which some believe could
drive more Democratic-leaning voters to the polls.
Yet overall, voters seem far more focused on the broader
national themes, or on the candidates' personal traits, with
many expressing strong opinions about the characters of both
men.
What's still unclear is what impact this disparity of views will
have on turnout. Certainly, stronger feelings among partisans on
both sides could produce higher numbers at the polls. Yet in a
place as transient as Las Vegas, the lack of a coherent thread
tying the community together can also lead to a lack of civic
participation - and lower voting rates. That's particularly true
among the more Democratic-leaning voters, people like single
working women, or minorities, who often are among the least
ensconced in the community.
The biggest question mark on that front, analysts agree, is the
Hispanic vote - the fastest-growing minority population here,
and one that both parties have made huge efforts to reach,
although Hispanics tend to lean Democratic. Significantly,
Nevada is using touch-screen voting machines for the first time
this year, and offering ballots in both English and Spanish.
Still, it's unclear how many Hispanics will actually vote. On
the first day of early voting last weekend, over a few hours at
Las Vegas's Meadows mall, large groups of Hispanics wandered in
and out of shops - but only a handful were spotted among the
lines of would-be voters. Special Offer: Subscribe to the
www.csmonitor.com | Copyright © 2004 The Christian Science
Monitor. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
7 Nuclear Nightmare* By Robert Samuelson
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 2004 19:03:16 -0700
----- Original Message -----
From: "FoE Sydney - Nuclear Campaign"
<nonukes@foesyd.org.au>
washingtonpost.com*
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/>
*Nuclear Nightmare*
By Robert Samuelson
Wednesday, October 20, 2004; Page A27
The world now has about 20,000 nuclear weapons; there were once 65,000.
It must be counted as a major miracle of the modern age that in the 59
years since Hiroshima and Nagasaki none of them has been used in anger.
With hindsight, history may conclude that the major threat facing the
United States -- and the world -- in 2004 was not the war in Iraq or the
immediate danger of terrorism. It was the impending breakdown of the
global system that for six decades kept nuclear holocaust at bay.
Put differently: Despite this campaign's focus on Iraq and terrorism,
the next president's major foreign policy problem may involve what can
be done about Iran and North Korea.
North Korea already claims to have nuclear weapons; estimates are from
six to eight, though the claims and estimates could be wrong. Iran
denies pursuing nuclear weapons, but its denials are doubted by outside
experts and undermined by Iran's incomplete compliance with nuclear
inspections.
There are now eight nuclear powers: the United States, Russia, China,
India, Pakistan, Israel (suspected), Britain and France. The danger is
not mainly increasing that number by two. It is that if North Korea and
Iran gain nuclear weapons, other countries -- possibly many of them --
would ultimately go nuclear. Then, every nuclear danger would rise
dramatically: miscalculation, preemptive attacks, theft, a global market
in weapons technology, and use by terrorist groups.
Since the 1950s, a two-part system has prevented nuclear horror.
The first is "mutual assured destruction." The Americans and Soviets
didn't attack each other, because both knew they faced annihilation.
Over time, other safeguards (the Washington-Moscow "hotline," for
example) emerged to minimize miscalculations. One side effect was that,
aside from Britain and France, few advanced countries that could have
developed nuclear weapons did so. Most lived under the U.S. nuclear
umbrella. If they were attacked, they knew (or thought) the United
States would retaliate.
The second pillar is the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
This now commits five major nuclear powers (the United States, Russia,
China, Britain and France) not to transfer weapons technology to other
countries. All other signatories, numbering more than 170, disavow
nuclear weapons and permit inspections by the International Atomic
Energy Agency. North Korea and Iran signed the NPT; India, Pakistan,
Israel and Cuba did not.
If North Korea and Iran go nuclear, this system would be in tatters. The
NPT would seem toothless, and the residual self-restraint of "mutual
assured destruction" might evaporate.
Would Japan (or South Korea) trust the United States to retaliate
against North Korea? Doubts might inspire Japan (or South Korea) to go
nuclear. Would Indonesia, Asia's third-largest country, want nuclear
weapons? If Iran went nuclear, would Turkey, Egypt or Saudi Arabia
follow suit? Would Europe want a bigger nuclear arsenal? The point: If
North Korea and Iran permanently go nuclear, we will cross a threshold
with unpredictable and frightening consequences.
Unfortunately, it's unclear how we can prevent this. Airstrikes can no
longer eliminate North Korea's nuclear weapons because, as Nicholas
Eberstadt of the American Enterprise Institute says, "we don't know
where they are." Military strikes might have worked in the early 1990s
(eliminating the capacity to produce weapons), but the risk was that
North Korea would attack South Korea.
In their book "Crisis on the Korean Peninsula," Michael O'Hanlon and
Mike Mochizuki report that the North Korean military has 1.1 million
troops; 12,000 artillery pieces, 500 of which can hit Seoul; 500
ballistic missiles; 20 tunnels under the South Korean border; and 5,000
tons of chemical weapons. "North Korea would probably begin any war with
a massive artillery barrage of South Korean and U.S. positions . . . and
likely of Seoul itself," they write. "Chemical weapons might well be used."
American airstrikes -- or perhaps Israeli -- might destroy Iran's
bomb-making capabilities. But at what cost? Iran might retaliate by
sponsoring anti-U.S. terrorism. After an attack or economic sanctions,
it might curb oil production.
It's not obvious (to me, at least) whether George Bush or John Kerry
could best handle the nuclear threat. Britain, France and Germany have
urged Iran to abandon plans to enrich nuclear fuel (from which bombs can
be made) in return for assured fuel supplies for its reactors and
pledges of economic aid. Kerry has endorsed such an approach, and the
Bush administration has backed it, through skeptically. Kerry might work
better with the Europeans and Iranians (whom he hasn't labeled part of
the "axis of evil''). The case for Bush is that he's scarier. Iran might
accept a diplomatic solution if it stood to lose its nuclear facilities
through airstrikes.
On North Korea, O'Hanlon and Mochizuki suggest a similar bargain. North
Korea surrenders its weapons and submits to inspections; in return, it
receives security guarantees from the United States, diplomatic
recognition and economic aid. The idea is to bribe a country from going
nuclear. Operating on that theory, the Clinton administration signed a
less far-reaching agreement with North Korea in 1994, but the North
Koreans ultimately cheated. None of these bargains will work if either
country's true aim is to possess nuclear weapons and not simply use them
as negotiating chips.
Bush and Kerry haven't debated these issues in detail, because each
realizes that the victor's practical choices are bleak. If there's any
hope, it lies in this paradox: A country with nuclear weapons enhances
its power enormously -- and its chances of annihilation. The next
president must somehow convince the North Koreans and Iranians that they
are taking themselves, and everyone else, down a path of madness.
© 2004 The Washington Post Company
*****************************************************************
8 Independent: Nuclear fallout
October 20, 2004
Council told Dineh not being compensated for exposure
By Kathy Helms Diné Bureau
SHIPROCK On Dec. 10, 1967, in a sandstone formation
approximately 4,240 feet down in the San Juan Basin near
Farmington, El Paso Natural Gas Co., the Atomic Energy
Commission, and the U.S. Interior's Bureau of Mines exploded a
29-kiloton nuclear device.
The joint venture, known as the Gasbuggy experiment, was part of
Project Plowshare and was designed to test the feasibility of
using nuclear explosives to stimulate the production of natural
gas in tight sandstone formations, which otherwise was not
economically viable.
The explosion produced a cavity approximately 80 feet wide and
335 feet high. That cavity filled with natural gas, as apparently
had been the plan; however, the gas was too radioactive to be
distributed commercially by public utilities.
Radioactive rain Gasbuggy produced up to 295 million cubic feet
of gas which news reports indicate were burned off through 1973
during production tests. But burning, or "flaring" the
contaminated gas did not get rid of the radioactivity, which fell
to earth downwind of the Gasbuggy site in the form of radioactive
tritium, Iodine 131, Cesium 137 and Krypton-85.
The Farmington-area nuclear test was just one of many that sent
radioactivity raining down in the vicinity of the Navajo Nation.
As early as April Fool's Day in 1952, a cloud from a 1-kiloton
nuclear test dubbed "Able" sent radioactive elements 16,000 feet
into the air before they settled on a portion of the Navajo
Reservation in Utah and around Mexican Hat.
Another test, this one a 31-kiloton weapon, was detonated April
22, 1952, and sent radioactivity 42,000 feet into the air before
it landed on the Zuni Reservation, Grants, the Grand Canyon and
Flagstaff, according to Richard L. Miller, a Texas author who has
chronicled the decades of nuclear testing in his book, "Under the
Cloud."
Between 1951 and 1963, the U.S. government conducted more than
100 above-ground atomic tests at Nevada Test Site. Despite
evidence that fallout has reached the Navajo people and others
residing in the paths of the blasts, only 12 Navajo "Downwinders"
have been compensated under the Radiation Exposure Compensation
Act seven living and five deceased, according to Phil Harrison,
longtime advocate for uranium victims.
A plaque in Carson National Forest in New Mexico marks the site
of ground zero and warns against excavating, drilling, or
removing materials from surface level to 1,500 feet down within a
100 foot radius. The plaque issues similar warnings from 1,500 to
4,500 feet down within a 600-foot radius.
The nuclear device detonated in Gasbuggy was designed by Lawrence
Livermore and marked the beginning of Livermore's work with the
U.S. oil and gas industry. Since Gasbuggy, in the 1970s and 1980s
laboratory researchers conducted large-scale demonstrations of
in-situ coal gasification and oil extraction from shale.
Harrison was one of several "advocates" displaced this past April
after the feds directed that anyone helping file a claim for a
uranium victim or downwinder must either be an attorney or
certified by the tribe. Since that time, he has teamed up with a
Colorado legal firm to continue helping radiation victims.
Compensation disparitiesFor uranium workers and downwinders,
there are extreme disparities in compensating uranium victims,
some of which might be attributable to cultural injustices,
Harrison said.
"What we have found out, too, was there were 7,785 downwinders
(nationally) that were approved. There's 2,479 that were denied,
and 1,527 that were pending. Over all, there are 840 uranium
workers that got paid; 754 were denied and 306 are pending. That
brings us around to only 12 downwinders from the Navajo Nation
who got paid, for 3 percent," Harrison said.
"Also, if you look at the 840 approved we have over 5,000 uranium
cases right now, that's like 20 percent that got paid. So to me,
we have a problem with the legislation. That just tells us that
we have a legitimate concern, we have the public outcry. It just
makes sense that the Navajo Nation needs to change these numbers.
If we had numbers more than 70 percent, I wouldn't be hanging
around here," he said.
Harrison was among a delegation of Navajo Nation representatives
who participated in a roundtable discussion in Washington, D.C.,
three weeks ago to address uranium issues plaguing the Nation.
The roundtable discussion was hosted by Arizona Rep. Rick Renzi,
R-1st District.
"I think the trip was worth it. What we wanted to hear, I think
is what we heard. Now, in order for this to move, the plan is to
get it on the Navajo Nation Council agenda. We missed it by two
days, getting it on the fall agenda," Harrison said. Now,
introduction will have to wait until winter session.
Banning uranium miningNavajo Nation President Joe Shirley Jr.,
during his State of the Nation speech to council on Monday,
called for an end to uranium mining on Navajoland and said he is
looking forward to seeing legislation which would address the
problem.
Resources Committee Chairman George Arthur, who represents
Burnham/San Juan/Nenanezad Chapters, told the president and
council that he has legislation in the works which would prohibit
further uranium mining.
"It's just about finalized and ready for me to put into the
review process or referral process," Arthur said Tuesday
afternoon during the second day of council's fall session. "I
have had a strong position for many years in respect to the
uranium development in or around the Navajo Nation. I think that
we need to send a strong message to individuals that have a
desire to seek economic fortunes on Navajoland by virtue of
developing uranium resources,
"I don't believe that we can support those type things and at the
same time go to Congress or to national leadership and advocate
for the wrong that was done to our people," Arthur said. "I don't
think the Navajo Nation's leaders can consciously support any of
those economic developments because our loss is too great and too
devastating to offset the economic impacts. That's how strong I
feel about it."
Harrison said that in order for and legislation to work, to amend
the list of illnesses compensated under RECA and to increase
coverage for downwinders and uranium workers, that the Nation
would need the support of congressional members and the grass
roots people.
"We have the grass roots support. The Navajo people are aware of
what's going to happen and what needs to take place and they're
looking forward tochanges in the legislation. Now, the council
has to deliver. The council hasto listen to the report and then
act on it.
"One of the recommendations that we are looking into is to hire a
lobbying firm and to also seek funding," Harrison said. "I don't
know how it's going to go from there, but we probably will be
looking back at Renzi and Tom Udall to sponsor legislation."
Should Renzi not be returned as 1st District representative,
Harrison said, "that would set us back."
Wednesday October 20, 2004 Selected Stories: Kerry's sister
accepts Council endorsement Nuclear fallout Lawmaker urges
district to bus in students School district explains legal fees
Nation, Utah schools take a stab at fixing classes again Milan
scares up spook house for Halloween Deaths | Home | Daily News |
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9 BBC: Iran to continue EU nuclear talks
Last Updated: Thursday, 21 October, 2004
[Preliminary installation of a turbo generator at Iran's Bushehr
nuclear power plant]
Iran denies claims that it wants to build nuclear weapons
Iran says it will continue a dialogue with three European
countries, after holding talks with them in Vienna on concerns
over its nuclear programme.
In closed-door talks Britain, France and Germany offered
incentives to Iran to give up its plans to enrich uranium.
An Iranian official said Tehran will consider the European offer,
but gave no sign it is about to accept.
The meetings took place a month before the UN rules on whether or
not the country is co-operating.
Sirius Naseri, a spokesman for the Iranian delegation said the
talks were in the initial stages and had taken place in a good
atmosphere.
"We will go back to our capital to try to find a compromise which
is acceptable to both sides," he said.
Iranians' nuclear views
Iran's press stands firm
Abandonment of enrichment - a key process for the production of
atomic bombs - is a central demand on the European side.
The United States has led international concern over Iran's
intentions, questioning why a country rich in oil and gas
deposits would require nuclear energy too.
The BBC's Kerry Skyring in Vienna says Western diplomats close to
the talks say there is not much hope Tehran will suspend its
enrichment programme.
Reactor offer
Foreign ministry officials from the three European countries met
an Iranian envoy at a secret location in Vienna to avoid media
attention.
The Austrian capital is home to the International Atomic Energy
Agency, due to rule on 25 November on the level of Iran's
co-operation.
A negative decision could lead to the issue being referred to the
UN Security Council with the threat of sanctions.
[Iranian Shahab-3 missile at a military parade in Tehran] A day
before the talks, Iran tested a missile thought nuclear capable
According to a document leaked to news agencies, incentives
likely to be offered on Thursday include an offer of nuclear
technology such as a light-water reactor in return for proof that
Tehran is not covertly trying to build weapons.
The US state department has queried the wisdom of offering Iran -
which largely relies on Russia for its programme - further new
technology.
Speaking to reporters, spokesman Richard Boucher remarked:
"We don't see the economic or any other rationale for a country
like Iran to try to generate power with nuclear energy, given
that... they flare off way more gas every year than they could
get energy from nuclear power plants of the kind that they're
talking about."
Iranian President Mohamed Khatami has been saying his country
will render any kind of co-operation to prove to the outside
world it is not moving towards a weapons programme.
But he said his country's "legitimate rights... to nuclear
technology" had to be respected.
*****************************************************************
10 PTI: India to lease N-submarine from Russia
By: PTI
October 21, 2004
Moscow: India is to lease a multi-role nuclear submarine from
Russia for 10 years under a deal signed earlier this year,
according to the defence industry sources.
"The two nations have inked the deal for the 10-year lease of the
submarine of project 971 (Nato name Akula-II)," Itar-Tass
reported, quoting unnamed defence industry sources.
The Akula-II class third generation nuclear powered submarine was
inducted by the Soviet Navy in 1984 and is said to be superior to
the deadly US 'Los Angeles' class nuclear submarines.
According to Itar-Tass, a similar N-submarine "Vepr" (Boar),
built in 1996, recently took part in the first ever war games
with France.
The submarine to be leased by India is a Project 971 'Nerpa' (Sea
Seal) nuclear submarine, which is being constructed at the Amur
ship building facility, Komsomolsk-on-Amur town right across the
Chinese border.
"It is 85 per cent ready right now," another source was quoted as
saying by Interfax agency.
India and Russia had agreed on the leasing deal at the beginning
of this year, Interfax reported, quoting an unnamed official.
The submarine is expected to be ready by 2007. An Indian crew
will then arrive in Russia for the training.
According to experts, India would be paying tens of millions of
dollars annually for the lease.
In 1990s, India and Russia had agreed on a package to boost
Indian Navy's blue water capability, which included the
simultaneous acquisition of Admiral Gorshkov aircraft carrier,
lease of two Akula class nuclear submarines and four Tu-22M3
(Nato name Backfire) strategic bombers.
In January last, the two countries had announced inking of
Gorshkov deal in New Delhi paving the way for progress on other
components of the package.
Voices | 25th Anniversary © 2004 Mid-Day Multimedia Ltd.
[http://www.middaymultimedia.com/] All rights reserved
*****************************************************************
11 Xinhuanet: IAEA to accept Brazilian proposal over nuclear inspections
www.xinhuanet.com
www.chinaview.cn 2004-10-21 10:01:44
RIO DE JANEIRO, Oct. 20 (Xinhuanet) -- Brazil believed that
the conditions it proposed for the International Atomic Energy
Agency (IAEA) to inspect a uranium-enrichment plant in the
southeastern part of the country had been satisfactory to the
inspectors, Brazilian officials said Wednesday.
Three IAEA inspectors visited the nuclear-fuel plant in
Resende,Rio de Janeiro state, on Tuesday, but they only saw tubes
and valves leading to the centrifuges.
All the conditions proposed by Brazil were met and the IAEA
experts did not present new demands for access to the
centrifuges,a key element in an efficient uranium enrichment
process solely developed by Brazil, said officials of the
Brazilian Nuclear Energy National Commission.
Under the proposed conditions, the UN nuclear agency could
inspect the natural uranium and the enriched uranium at the
Resende plant through checking ducts and pipes so as to ensure
that the material is not for other uses.
Uranium enriched to low levels is used for fuel to generate
power, but more highly enriched, weapons-grade uranium can be
usedto produce nuclear bombs.
The inspectors from South Africa, France and the United
States will submit a detailed report to the Vienna-based IAEA,
which willmake a decision on the inspections in Brazil within 30
days.
Defense Minister Jose Viegas said on Tuesday that Brazil is
calm as the "visit of the IAEA mission proves Brazil has nothing
to hide in nuclear material."
For almost a year, the IAEA has been discussing with the
Brazilian government conditions for access of inspectors to its
nuclear facilities.
Brasilia said it wants to keep secret the advanced technology
at the Resende plant, which can not start operation without IAEA
permission. Enditem
Copyright ©2003 Xinhua News Agency. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
12 NRC: Notice of Availability of Environmental Assessment and Finding
FR Doc 04-23562
[Federal Register: October 21, 2004 (Volume 69, Number 203)]
[Notices] [Page 61874-61875] From the Federal Register Online via
GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr21oc04-142]
of No Significant Impact for License Amendment for Seiko
Corporation of America's Facility in Mt. Olive, NJ AGENCY:
Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
ACTION: Notice of availability.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Donna M. Janda, Nuclear
Materials Safety Branch 2, Division of Nuclear Materials Safety,
Region I, 475 Allendale Road, King of Prussia, Pennsylvania,
19406, telephone (610) 337-5371, fax (610) 337-5269; or by
E-mail: dmj@nrc.gov [dmj@nrc.gov] .
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: I. Introduction The Nuclear Regulatory
Commission (NRC) is issuing a license amendment to Seiko
Corporation of America (Seiko) for Materials License No.
29-19080-01, to authorize release of its facility in Mt. Olive,
New Jersey for unrestricted use. NRC has prepared an
Environmental Assessment (EA) in support of this action in
accordance with the requirements of 10 CFR Part 51. Based on the
EA, the NRC has concluded that a Finding of No Significant Impact
(FONSI) is appropriate.
The amendment will be issued following the publication of this
Notice.
II. EA Summary The purpose of the action is to authorize the
release of the licensee's Mt. Olive, New Jersey facility for
unrestricted use. Seiko was authorized by NRC from 1985 for
possession and storage of timepieces, hands, and dials containing
radioactive material at the site prior to distribution. On June
9, 2004, Seiko requested that NRC release the facility for
unrestricted use. Seiko has conducted surveys of the facility and
provided information to the NRC to demonstrate that the site
meets the license termination criteria in Subpart E of 10 CFR
Part 20 for unrestricted release. Seiko will continue licensed
activities at another location.
The NRC staff has prepared an EA in support of the license
amendment. The facility was remediated and surveyed prior to the
licensee requesting the license amendment. Therefore, the staff
considered the impact of the residual radioactivity at the
facility and concluded that since the residual radioactivity
meets the requirements in Subpart E of 10 CFR Part 20, a Finding
of No Significant Impact is appropriate.
III. Finding of No Significant Impact The staff has prepared the
EA (summarized above) in support of the license amendment to
release the facility for unrestricted use.
The NRC staff has evaluated Seiko's request and the results of
the surveys and has concluded that the completed action complies
with the criteria in Subpart E of 10 CFR Part 20. The staff has
found that the environmental impacts from the action are bounded
by the impacts evaluated by NUREG- 1496, Volumes 1-3, ``Generic
Environmental Impact Statement in Support of Rulemaking on
Radiological Criteria for License Termination of NRC- Licensed
Facilities'' (ML042310492, ML042320379, and ML042330385). On the
basis of the EA, the NRC has concluded that the environmental
impacts from the action are expected to be insignificant and has
determined not to prepare an environmental impact statement for
the action.
IV. Further Information Documents related to this action,
including the application and supporting documentation, are
available electronically at NRC's Electronic Reading Room at
http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/adams.html
[http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/leaving.cgi?from=leaving
FR.html&log=linklog&to=http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/adams.html]
. From this site, you can access the NRC's Agencywide Document
Access and Management System (ADAMS), which provides text and
image files of NRC's public documents. The ADAMS accession
[[Page 61875]] numbers for the documents related to this Notice
are: The Environmental Assessment (ML042520508), Letter dated
June 9, 2004 requesting amendment (ML041610364), Letter dated
July 8, 2004 providing additional information (ML042030186), and
Letter from NJDEP dated July 29, 2004 (ML042290012). Persons who
do not have access to ADAMS or who encounter problems in
accessing the documents located in ADAMS, should contact the NRC
PDR Reference staff by telephone at (800) 397-4209 or (301)
415-4737, or by e-mail to pdr@nrc.gov [pdr@nrc.gov] . These
documents may be viewed electronically at the NRC Public Document
Room (PDR), O 1 F21, One White Flint North, 11555 Rockville Pike,
Rockville, MD, 20852. The PDR reproduction contractor will copy
documents for a fee. The PDR is open from 7:45 a.m. to 4:15 p.m.,
Monday through Friday, except on Federal holidays.
Dated in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania this 14th day of October,
2004.
For the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
John D. Kinneman, Chief, Nuclear Materials Safety Branch 2,
Division of Nuclear Materials Safety Region I.
[FR Doc. 04-23562 Filed 10-20-04; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 7590-01-P
*****************************************************************
13 YubaNet.com: Wave of Nuclear Plant Relicensing
"I never give them hell. I just tell the truth and they think
it's hell." - Harry Truman
Yucca Mountain Approval Followed by Rapid Extension of Reactor
Licenses
By: Environmental Working Group Action Fund
Published: Oct 21, 2004
WASHINGTON — A new analysis of Department of Energy (DOE) figures
shows that in the wake of the 2002 Senate vote to approve the
Yucca Mountain dumpsite, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission
quickly and quietly approved license extensions at nuclear
reactors nationwide.
The EWG Action Fund analysis shows that the rate of nuclear power
plant relicensing doubled after Congress approved the nuclear
waste dumpsite in Yucca Mountain. Currently there are renewal
applications pending for 18 more reactors. No application to date
has been denied, making it a virtual certainty that these pending
applications will be approved.
These plants will produce thousands of tons more waste, ensuring
large or larger stockpiles near local power plants, much of which
- after cooling on-site for decades - will probably come to
Nevada to the Yucca Mountain dumpsite.
According to EWG Action Fund, if Yucca Mountain opens for storage
on the day it is proposed to, its storage space will be fully
claimed. Shortly thereafter, an additional 9,000 tons of nuclear
waste will be waiting to come to Yucca and even more waste will
sit at plants around the country. Therefore, Congress must either
expand Yucca Mountain from its very first day of operation or
allow nuclear waste to continue to pile up at 79 sites in 35
states.
"This analysis confirms what we suspected, but what the public
was never told, that the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste site is
really a nuclear expansion plan in disguise," said Richard Wiles
of EWG Action Fund.
Recent court decisions will require reconsideration of radiation
containment standards at Yucca Mountain. Congress is likely to
revisit this issue in response to the judicial action.
EWG Action Fund's interactive website, available at www.ewg.org,
lists each reactor around the country that has been or will soon
be relicensed and for how long, along with how many tons of waste
it will generate while in continued operation. Visitors to the
site can see how much waste that reactor is permitted to send to
Yucca, and how much will be left on site. Shipping the extra
waste to Yucca will take either 6,000 more truck shipments or
1,050 train shipments through communities in Nevada.
Communities near each of the power plants were subjected to an
aggressive public relations campaign by the nuclear industry and
the Department of Energy that pushed the idea that the Yucca
Mountain dumpsite would get rid of their waste. The relicensing
wave means that most of these communities will see large or
larger amounts of waste sitting on site for decades before being
shipped to Nevada.
Copyright © 2004 YubaNet.com [http://yubanet.com] , all
rights reserved. YubaNet.com [http://www.yubanet.com]
*****************************************************************
14 Xinhuanet: China, U.S. close to reactor deal
www.xinhuanet.com
www.chinaview.cn 2004-10-21 13:53:06
BEIJING, Oct. 21 (Xinhuanet) -- The White House was likely to
give the nod to the first-ever sale of its nuclear reactors to
China in the next couple of months, said Nils Diaz, chairman of
the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Tuesday.
¡°My understanding is that China is looking for an advanced
reactor that provides graded assurance of safety,¡± Diaz said
during a trip to Beijing. ¡°They¡¯re looking, I think, for
something that is state-of-the-art, and the AP1000 is a
state-of-the-art reactor.¡±
¡°The commission will actually vote on this issue hopefully
in the next couple of months. We don¡¯t foresee any problems with
the AP1000 license because most of the problems have already been
solved.¡± he said.
¡°I cannot predict what the voting of my fellow commissioners
is, but I haven¡¯t heard any significant opposition to the
issue.¡±
China had begun accepting bids to build a few new reactors,
Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Zhang Qiyue said.
Whether the country would buy American technology depended on
¡°the result of the bidding as well as the requirements of the
Chinese companies,¡± she said.
AP1000 is developed by Pittsburgh-based Westinghouse
Electric, a subsidiary of British Nuclear Fuels Ltd., which
applied to the U.S. regulator in February to build two reactors
in China.
In 1995, the company signed an agreement to provide two
650-megawatt steam turbines, considered non-nuclear systems, for
China¡¯s Qinshan Nuclear Power Plant. Its archrivals in the
Chinese market include France¡¯s Areva, Siemens AG of Germany and
AtomStroyExport of Russia.
China has nine nuclear power plants in operation with a
combined capacity of 7,010 megawatts. It plans to increase
capacity to about 36,000 megawatts by 2020.
(Shenzhen Daily-Agencies)
Copyright ©2003 Xinhua News Agency. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
15 Independent: We need nuclear power to save the planet
from looming catastrophe
Hugh Montefiore:
[http://news.independent.co.uk/]
I've been a Friends of the Earth trustee for 20 years, but I am
told it is incompatible with being pro nuclear energy
22 October 2004
The dangers of global warming are greater than any other facing
the planet. The rise in ocean levels, melting ice fields and the
death in Europe of 25,000 from last year's heatwave are pointers
to what may lie ahead, and the Government's chief scientific
adviser has warned us that future climate change is a worse
threat than terrorism.
As a theologian, I believe that we have a duty to play our full
part in safeguarding the future of our planet, and I have been a
committed environmentalist for many years. It is because of this
commitment and the graveness of the consequences of global
warming for the planet that I have now come to the conclusion
that the solution is to make more use of nuclear energy.
This belief, and my wish to make it clear in this article, has
led me to sever my ties with the campaign group Friends of the
Earth. I have been a trustee of Friends of the Earth for 20 years
and when I told my fellow trustees that I wished to write on
nuclear energy, I was told that this is not compatible with being
a trustee. I have therefore resigned because no alternative was
open to me. The future of the planet is more important than
membership of Friends of the Earth.
The Royal Commission on Pollution and the International Panel on
Climate Change has told us that a 60 per cent reduction of global
warming gas emissions by 2050 has to be achieved if we are to
keep the planet comfortable for life. But how are we to do this?
As a first step towards this goal, our Government has set itself
the target of supplying 10 per cent of electricity from
"renewables" by 2010, a target, incidentally, endorsed by Michael
Howard who dislikes the main means by which it is hoped to
achieve this - literally thousands more highly subsidised wind
turbines that will scar the landscape and coastline, to say
nothing of the problems caused to radar.
At present, 20 per cent of our electricity comes from nuclear
reactors. But given that the Government has decided not to
replace our nuclear reactors when they become obsolete, and as
the chairman of the British Wind Energy Association is only
confident of wind contributing 5.5 per cent of the 10 per cent
required from renewables, it seems very unlikely that the
Government's 2010 target will be reached - especially as steps
need to be taken to ensure household and commercial economies of
energy or the reduction of carbon dioxide emitted from motor
vehicles.
This needs to be rigorously followed up if the 60 per cent
reduction of global warming gases is to be achieved in time. So
our Government has further set itself the "aspiration" of 20 per
cent of electricity from renewables by 2020. Yet there seems to
be little idea how this second target can be achieved. Presumably
by then, there will be greater household and commercial
economies, and long before then cheap air travel will surely be
stopped by a tax imposed on aircraft fuel.
No doubt it is hoped that fresh forms of renewable energy will by
then come on stream. Biomass is one kind, the burning of straw
and wood (and chicken litters but not chicken feathers!). But
carbon dioxide would be emitted in bringing great amounts of
biomass long distances to be burnt. Solar power is unlikely to
bring large-scale returns at Britain's latitude. As for wave
power, marine technologies and nuclear fusion, they are nowhere
near commercial viability and the chief executive of the
Renewable Power Association has said there is no coherent
long-term development programme.
Clean coal technology with the reduction of carbon is certainly
attractive, but it is very far from being commercially viable.
There would be problems with yet more installation of wind
turbines, which would mean further traditional sources of
electricity would then be required as back-up. It might be
possible by 2010 for hydrogen to be available for transport, but
the making of hydrogen involves carbon dioxide, unless
electricity from renewables is used.
It is crucial if the world is to be saved from catastrophe that
non-global warming sources of energy should be increasingly
available after 2010. Petrol will begin to be in ever costlier
and shorter supply, especially with the industrialisation of
China. By then, oil supplies may even have peaked. Gas will
become more expensive and huge supplies will have to be obtained
from abroad. For security of supply as well as for the
environment, it will be essential to have other sources of
energy.
This is why nuclear energy is the most viable alternative, but
the problem is that it takes several years between a decision to
build a nuclear reactor and its commercial operation. If we are
to have more nuclear energy soon after 2010, we must plan now.
The Government has said that it is keeping open the nuclear
option, but the question remains: why aren't our nuclear reactors
being replaced as they become obsolete? Nuclear energy provides a
reliable, safe, cheap, almost limitless form of pollution-free
energy. The Government says it is too expensive.
The real reason why the Government has not taken up the nuclear
option is because it lacks public acceptance, due to scare
stories in the media and the stonewalling opposition of powerful
environmental organisations. Most, if not all, of the objections
do not stand up to objective assessment. Four hundred and forty
two reactors across the globe produce 16 per cent of the world's
electricity. Modern nuclear reactors are of vastly improved
design, approved by the International Atomic Energy Agency. The
permissible dose for reactor operatives is far less than the
natural radiation in Cornwall!
Then there is the problem of nuclear waste. In Britain,
short-lived and intermediate wastes are safely contained in
trenches of glacial clay, compacted, containerised and capped
with water-resistant clay. Long-lived wastes which last for
thousands of years need more extensive treatment. The total
amount of these since Britain began using nuclear energy is only
the size of a 10-metre cube in volume. After cooling, the waste
components need to be compacted into a vitrified solid, sealed in
a metallic container, together with a metallic or ceramic
"overpack", and placed in stable rock at least 300 metres deep
together with a backfill to minimise any water movement. How safe
is this? A former natural nuclear reactor has been found in Gabon
which has remained undisturbed for thousands of years. There is
minimal risk of danger to posterity.
The advantages far outweigh any objections, and I can see no
practical way of meeting the world's needs without nuclear
energy. The predictions of the world's scientists are dire and
the consequences for the planet of global warming are
catastrophic. This is why I believe we must now consider nuclear
energy. The subject is so important that it should be a matter of
informed public debate.
The author is the former Anglican Bishop of Birmingham. A longer
version of this article appears in 'The Tablet' tomorrow
[http://www.independent.co.uk/portfolio/]
*****************************************************************
16 Al-Ahram Weekly: Dumping the nuclear option?
[http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/] 21 - 27 October 2004
Issue No. 713 Egypt [http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/] Previous
issue [http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/issues.htm]
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875
Does a 15km plot of North Coast desert hold the key to Egypt's
nuclear future?
1959 file photo of the Anshass nuclear reactor
In 1981, Presidential Decree no.309 announced the construction
of a nuclear energy plant in Al- Dabaa on the North Coast. LE150
million was sunk into qualification testing between 1978 and
1984, which proved that the site -- located approximately 100km
west of Alexandria -- was optimal. According to the project
manager, an additional LE350 million has since been spent on
environmental labs, training simulation, administrative matters,
and metallurgical, sedimentation and other technical surveys.
But no nuclear energy plant has materialised. Instead, early
this month, officials from Al- Dabaa's City Council visited the
site, accompanied by foreign businessmen. The buzz is that the
government is planning to sell the plot to make way for tourism
development. Last month, a protocol was signed with a major
multinational tourism company to develop a massive area on the
North Coast into a mega tourism project involving several
resorts.
It is yet another stage in the uncertain path towards the
nuclear energy option -- a path which began in 1955 when the
Atomic Energy Council was established and headed by President
Gamal Abdel-Nasser himself. This led to the establishment of the
Atomic Energy Organisation in 1957, and the subsequent
construction of two nuclear reactors at Anshass: the first a
two-megawatt facility built by the Russians in 1961; and the
second a 22-megawatt facility built by the Danes in 1978.
However, attempts to take nuclear energy into the realm of
public use have thus far failed to materialise. In 1964, a North
Coast location -- Sidi Kreir -- was chosen for a 150-megawatt
plant. Westinghouse won the international bid for the project,
but the June 1967 defeat before Israel put the plan on hold.
The plan for a nuclear power plant was renewed after the October
1973 war, and in 1976 then Minister of Electricity Ahmed Sultan
announced to parliament that a 600-megawatt plant would be
constructed, and become operational by 1981. Westinghouse again
won the bid, but before the signing of the contract in 1978, the
US asked for the right to inspect the plant, a request denied by
President Anwar El-Sadat. When pressure was later brought to
bear, Egypt signed the non-proliferation treaty in 1981, and the
Sidi Kreir file was conveniently shelved.
Finally, in 1983, a bid for the construction of a 1000-megawatt
plant in Al-Dabaa was proffered. Egyptian nuclear scientists
have claimed that pressure was again applied by the Americans to
halt the project, and that before the final stage of the bid
process took place, the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster made it
-- once again -- convenient to shelve the nuclear energy idea.
According to Mustafa Kamal Sabry, former minister of electricity
and energy (1968-1970) and current head of the Energy Committee
at the National Specialised Councils, Egypt realised early on
the importance of turning to nuclear energy. "However, partially
because of international pressures, and partially as a result of
behind-the-scenes local politics, we have been incapable of
realising this goal."
It is understood by all those concerned that a political
decision has always been the necessary prerequisite for moving
forward with the nuclear energy option. And while the proponents
of nuclear energy are willing to wait for that to occur, they
are unwilling to concede the Al-Dabaa site. "The site is optimal
in terms of its location for such a project," explained Mounir
Megahid, director of the Al-Dabaa Project. "There is no other
site in Egypt that can replace this one. If we give up on this
site, we give up on the nuclear energy option, not only for
ourselves, but for future generations."
Sabry concurred that "if this site [Al-Dabaa] is lost, it will
make the construction of a nuclear energy plant in Egypt
virtually impossible. This kind of facility requires close
proximity to the sea, as well as very specific land, wind and
other requirements. With the extensive construction that has
taken over our coastline, it would be very difficult to find
another suitable location."
In an interview with London-based daily Asharq Al-Awsat this
week, Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif said it was "not within the
state's plan to build it [Al-Dabaa] within the current phase".
He also said that those who claim that hundreds of millions had
been spent on the project must review their figures. He did not,
however, provide any specific figures himself.
Those who argue for the development of a nuclear energy option
explain that fossil fuel production is on the downslide, natural
gas is by definition a finite resource, water energy in Egypt
has already been used to the maximum, and other renewable energy
sources are very costly. "The fact that our other energy sources
are either too expensive or not everlasting means that the
nuclear energy option is inevitable for Egypt," Sabry said.
"Fossil fuels are best used in petrochemical industries, where
they are irreplaceable," argued Megahid. He said uranium, on the
other hand, had no other uses, and was thus "more efficient to
use in the generation of energy and electricity".
It is estimated that the power that would be generated by a
nuclear plant at Al-Dabaa could be around 20 per cent cheaper
than conventionally produced electricity, if current subsidies
on electricity production were removed.
And while some might make light of Egypt's ability to manage a
safe and efficient nuclear plant, Megahid said, "we have
experience in both running nuclear facilities [Anshass], and in
running large electrical power plants. When we put our minds to
it, we can manage large projects to the highest international
standards. The Suez Canal, the High Dam and others are examples.
To remain backward does not really have to be our fate."
A campaign to bring Al-Dabaa and the nuclear energy debate into
the public light was launched immediately following the visit
made by the unknown businessmen earlier this month. But the
detailed e-mail bulletins, public debates at various syndicates,
and reports in the opposition press have all gone unanswered,
with the exception of the Nazif interview in Asharq Al-Awsat.
The prime minister said, "we adopt a policy of total
transparency, and we will announce anything... they said we are
going to turn the site into a tourist area; we are still
studying our options."
But according to one activist who preferred anonymity, "it's
like fighting shadows. No official decision is announced, yet
the wheels are put in motion to remove one project for another,
one policy option for another. All without consulting those
involved. All concerning resources and policy issues that have
dire consequences for generations to come."
© Copyright Al-Ahram Weekly. All rights reserved
[http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/issues.htm]
*****************************************************************
17 UK Independent: Global warming row goes nuclear as bishop quits
Friends of the Earth
By Michael McCarthy, Environment Editor
22 October 2004
By Michael McCarthy, Environment Editor
22 October 2004
He's the nearest thing Britain has to an eco-bishop, having
campaigned on environmental issues for more than 30 years.
Yet now the Right Rev Hugh Montefiore, the former Bishop of
Birmingham, has been kicked off the board of Friends of the Earth
(FoE), the leading environmental group, for saying publicly that
the fight against global warming should involve using nuclear
power.
The outspoken prelate, one of the most colourful figures in the
Church of England, has been an FoE trustee for two decades, and
chaired the group from 1992 to 1998. But in an extraordinary and
acrimonious row, he has been forced to sever his links with the
organisation because of an article on climate change which he has
written for tomorrow's edition of The Tablet, the Catholic
weekly.
In it, Bishop Montefiore says that the dangers of global warming
are greater than any others facing the planet, and that the
solution is to make more use of nuclear energy. Nuclear does not
produce the carbon dioxide (CO2) that comes from coal, gas and
oil-fired power stations - global warming's main cause.
In doing so he becomes the second major green figure this year to
advocate a radical step that is deeply unpalatable to most of the
environmental movement, which opposes nuclear power as almost an
article of faith. It was first put forward in May by James
Lovelock, the independent scientist and green guru behind the
celebrated Gaia hypothesis (the idea that the whole earth behaves
like a single living organism).
Writing in The Independent, Professor Lovelock set off an
international argument when he said that climate change was now
proceeding so fast that there was simply not enough time for
renewable energy, such as wind, wave and solar power - the green
movement's favoured solution - to take the place of conventional
power stations burning fossil fuels. Only a huge expansion of
nuclear energy could check a possible runaway warming which would
be disastrous for the world, he said.
Bishop Montefiore's article for The Tablet comes to the same
conclusion in a similar way. He goes through the renewable
options and says he does not believe they can do the job in time.
He writes: "The real reason why the Government has not taken up
the nuclear option is because it lacks public acceptance, due to
scare stories in the media and the stonewalling opposition of
powerful environmental organisations. Most, if not all, of the
objections do not stand up to objective assessment."
The bishop, who says he has been "a committed environmentalist
for many years," makes it clear at the outset that writing the
piece is costing him his long-standing place on the FoE board. "I
have been a trustee of FoE for 20 years and when I told my fellow
trustees that I wished to write for The Tablet on nuclear energy,
I was told that this is not compatible with being a trustee," he
writes. "I have therefore resigned because no alternative was
open to me."
He adds stingingly: "The future of the planet is more important
than membership of Friends of the Earth."
Bishop Montefiore, who is retired but is still an honorary
assistant bishop in the diocese of Southwark, has impeccable
green credentials. In the 1970s, when he was a suffragan bishop
of Kingston-upon-Thames, he was much involved with campaigns for
environmentally friendly transport, and protested against
Concorde and excessive aircraft movement in and out of Heathrow.
He was also anti-nuclear. As Bishop of Birmingham from 1978-87 he
had an agenda of helping the poor and was regarded as being very
much an anti-Thatcherite.
He comes from a famous Jewish family and converted to
Christianity when he was a pupil at Rugby School. He has been a
lecturer in New Testament studies at Cambridge, and dean of
Gonville and Caius College.
He declined yesterday to talk in detail about his row with FoE
but he said that "of course" he felt sad about what had happened.
"I have great admiration for FoE in many ways," he said. "But
they don't seem to think it's appropriate to have nuclear and I
do. I think it's the only way to get out of this mess."
He said he had once been an opponent of nuclear power. "I was
against it. I thought it wouldn't be necessary. But I've changed
my view. I just don't see it [the fight against climate change]
happening without nuclear."
Tony Juniper, director of Friends of the Earth, said last night:
"Hugh has been a very valuable member of our board of trustees
for two decades, and has made an enormous contribution to Friends
of the Earth's work.
"But having analysed the energy choices and different options
that we have as a society, we are firmly of the view that we can
and should fight climate change without relying on nuclear power,
and that has led - sadly - to a parting of the ways.
"To have us saying one thing and a member of the board of
trustees saying the opposite is clearly unworkable in practice.
We can't have the organisation saying two things at once."
UK Independent Ltd.
*****************************************************************
18 Scotsman: Normandy Chosen for New Nuclear Plant
Thu 21 Oct 2004
"PA"
France has chosen a Normandy coastal town as the site for the
first in a new generation of nuclear power plants.
The plant, billed as more efficient, safer and environmentally
friendly than current models, will be constructed in Flamanville,
on the Atlantic coast, which already has a nuclear plant.
The project has drawn protests from opponents of government plans
to replace ageing nuclear plants with a new generation of
reactors known as the European Pressurised Water Reactor, or EPR.
France’s 58 nuclear reactors produce 78.2% of the country’s
electricity. However, about 30 of the reactors will be between 40
and 50 years old by 2020 and in need of replacement.
Construction of the plant is expected to take eight years. If
acceptable, a series of EPR plants could be built and put into
service by 2020. Finland is the only other European country that
has announced plans for an EPR plant.
Environmental group Out of Nuclear criticised the plan and vowed
protests, saying it means the nuclear industry has further
“colonised†the region.
The Manche region of Normandy is already home to a nuclear plant,
a nuclear reprocessing factory, and a nuclear stockpiling site.
*****************************************************************
19 AFP: French plan for new nuclear plant draws fire
The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse
Friday,
October 22, 2004
France announced Thursday that it would build the first of a new
generation of electricity-generating nuclear plants in Normandy..
The plant - billed as more efficient, safer and environmentally
friendly than current models - is planned for the town of
Flamanville on the Atlantic coast, which already has a nuclear
facility..
The project has drawn protests from opponents of government plans
to replace aging nuclear plants with a new generation of
reactors, known as the European Pressurized Water Reactor, or
EPR..
France's 58 nuclear reactors produce 78.2 percent of the
country's electricity. However, about 30 of the reactors will be
between 40 and 50 years old by 2020 and in need of replacement..
Construction is due to start in 2007, with the first electricity
being produced five years later, the state-owned generator
company EDF said in a statement..
Built at a cost of €3 billion, or $3.8 billion, the reactor will
be the first of a so-called "third generation" of nuclear power
stations. The earliest "second generation" plant, at Fassenheim
near the German border, went into service in 1977. Those plants
have a life expectancy of about 40 years..
The "first generation" plants were the prototypes built in the
1950s and 60s.. While the pressurized water technology does not
mark a major innovation, the EPR design, conceived over 10 years
by Siemens of Germany and the French company Areva, is intended
to provide electricity more efficiently and more safely than
current models..
Electricite de France, the power utility, said the reactor should
reduce the risk of accidents by tenfold and be able to withstand
the impact of an aircraft flown by terrorists..
The design also means that even if there is a disaster, the
reactor core will collapse in on itself to contain radiation
leaks..
The EPR reactor should also generate 1,600 megawatts of
electricity, compared to 900 for most current reactors, need less
regular re-charging and have a life span of 60 years. .
However, opponents of nuclear power say official statements about
the safety of EPR are not to be believed. "The EPR reactor offers
no greater guarantee against terrorism than any other reactor,"
said Stephane Lhomme of the Get out of Nuclear collective..
A statement by the environmental group Greenpeace said the money
is being invested "in a technology that is almost obsolete for
political reasons that have no connection with a rational,
properly thought-out energy policy," . France's center-right
government took the decision in May to press ahead with the new
generation of nuclear reactors, arguing that it is the best
response to the likely long-term increase in petrol prices as
well as demands for a cleaner environment..
Two other sites, one in northern Normandy and the other in
southeast France, had been under consideration for the project..
"On the environmental front, the reactor reinforces France's
preeminence in the fight against climate change, and economically
it will allow us to ensure supply and limit the effects of a
rapid increase in oil prices," said Patrick Ollier, chairman of
the National Assembly's economic affairs committee..
Development of the EPR is also seen as a crucial way of
maintaining France's technological edge in the highly competitive
nuclear energy market. . Earlier this month, President Jacques
Chirac was lobbying hard in China for contracts in the country's
ambitious nuclear program.. France also hopes to be chosen as the
site for the future International Thermonuclear Experimental
Reactor, which aims to develop the creation of energy through
nuclear fusion by mid-century..
Herald Tribune All Rights Reserved
Site Feedback [webhelp@iht.com]
*****************************************************************
20 TheDay.com: NRC Says Dominion Is On The Right Track In Planning For Aging Systems
Thursday, Oct 21, 2004
By PATRICIA DADDONA
Day Staff Writer, Waterford
Waterford The owner of Millstone Power Station is effectively
managing and planning for the aging of its nuclear reactors,
federal inspectors say a finding that matches the claims made
in the company's application for re-licensing.
Dominion has applied to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for
permission to extend the original 40-year licenses another 20
years from 2015 to 2035 for Millstone 2 and from 2025 to 2045
for Millstone 3. A third reactor is closed and being
decommissioned.
The conclusions follow three weeks of inspections by a
five-person team led by Michael Modes, a senior NRC reactor
inspector for Region 1, which covers the Northeast. Modes and
Wayne Lanning, regional director of reactor safety for the NRC,
publicly presented their conclusions to Dominion Nuclear
Connecticut on Wednesday.
It's a good report card, Lanning said.
About 12 residents and public officials attended the meeting.
In its application, Dominion outlines how it is minimizing the
effects of aging on structural components and systems in the two
power plants. Dominion also defines monitoring programs meant to
help prevent problems now and in the future.
Corrosion and cracking in the metal materials used to build and
operate reactors are two common concerns in the industry. Such
degradation could lead to plant malfunctions or increase the cost
of upkeep. Methods used to keep oxygen levels low in water used
to cool the reactor are one area inspectors evaluated, since high
oxygen levels lead to more cracking, Modes said.
In the first week of inspections, Modes' team examined reactor
components that would affect plant safety, such as when and how a
water pump turns on, and how the company handles that function.
The inspection team found no inconsistencies and was reasonably
assured that equipment and systems at the two plants are working
properly, Modes said.
During the second two weeks, inspectors evaluated aging of the
reactors with respect to existing programs; programs that have
required some changes; and new or proposed programs that would be
in operation during the proposed license extensions.
They did not look at wear and tear on equipment, since the
industry has good engineering models that predict those types of
aging effects, Modes said. Instead they scrutinized such
procedures as steps taken to reduce aging effects, programs for
monitoring trends or immediately fixing problems, standards,
corrective programs and how the company double-checks its work.
The inspectors randomly chose 20 of 25 aging management programs
to evaluate while in action, including chemistry control, fire
protection, work control procedures. Once again, inspectors
concluded that Dominion is satisfactorily handling these issues,
and that data is available to verify those findings, he said.
z The aging inspections are a key part of the re-licensing
approval process, which is expected to conclude in July 2006.
Environmental and safety reviews, which are continuing, are also
part of that process.
The only question from the public in attendance Wednesday was a
request for clarification about the inspection process.
Detailed results will be available in Reports No. 9 and 10,
Modes said, on the NRC Web site at
http://www.nrc.gov/reactors/operating/licensing/renewal/applicati
ons/millstone.html
[http://www.nrc.gov/reactors/operating/licensing/renewal/applicat
ions/millstone.html] .
p.daddona@theday.com
About The Day Publishing Company
1998-2004 The Day Publishing Co.
*****************************************************************
21 EWG Action Fund Report: Nuclear Relicensing
PROLONGING THE RADIOACTIVE
WASTE PROBLEM
Executive Summary
1. Nuclear Waste Storage Problem
2. Nuclear Waste Transport 101
3. Nuclear Waste Transport Risks
4. Ongoing Legislative/Legal Issues
Map: Relicensed Reactors
Table: Waste Generated via Relicensing
News Release (20 OCT 04)
Related News Coverage
NUCLEAR WASTE IN YOUR STATE
State Summaries
Shipments Through Your State
How Close Are You?
Schools &Hospitals Near Route
Train Wreck Facts
Truck Wreck Facts
Accident Scenarios
THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
DOE Environmental Impact Statement Maps
About MapScience
Provided by Google [http://www.google.com/search]
For Embargoed Release:
October 20, 2004, 6:00 PM EDT
Contact: Lauren Sucher 202/667-6982
Wave of Nuclear Plant Relicensing
Will Mean Steep Increase
in Local Waste Stockpiles and Shipments to Nevada
Yucca Mountain Approval Followed by
Rapid Extension of Reactor Licenses
WASHINGTON — A new analysis of Department of Energy (DOE)
figures shows that in the wake of the 2002 Senate vote to
approve the Yucca Mountain dumpsite, the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission quickly and quietly approved license extensions at
nuclear reactors nationwide.
The EWG Action Fund analysis shows that the rate of nuclear
power plant relicensing doubled after Congress approved the
nuclear waste dumpsite in Yucca Mountain. Currently there are
renewal applications pending for 18 more reactors. No
application to date has been denied, making it a virtual
certainty that these pending applications will be approved.
These plants will produce thousands of tons more waste, ensuring
large or larger stockpiles near local power plants, much of
which - after cooling on-site for decades - will probably come
to Nevada to the Yucca Mountain dumpsite.
According to EWG Action Fund, if Yucca Mountain opens for
storage on the day it is proposed to, its storage space will be
fully claimed. Shortly thereafter, an additional 9,000 tons of
nuclear waste will be waiting to come to Yucca and even more
waste will sit at plants around the country. Therefore, Congress
must either expand Yucca Mountain from its very first day of
operation or allow nuclear waste to continue to pile up at 79
sites in 35 states.
"This analysis confirms what we suspected, but what the public
was never told, that the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste site is
really a nuclear expansion plan in disguise," said Richard Wiles
of EWG Action Fund.
Recent court decisions will require reconsideration of radiation
containment standards at Yucca Mountain. Congress is likely to
revisit this issue in response to the judicial action.
EWG Action Fund's interactive website, available at www.ewg.org,
lists each reactor around the country that has been or will soon
be relicensed and for how long, along with how many tons of
waste it will generate while in continued operation. Visitors to
the site can see how much waste that reactor is permitted to
send to Yucca, and how much will be left on site. Shipping the
extra waste to Yucca will take either 6,000 more truck shipments
or 1,050 train shipments through communities in Nevada.
Communities near each of the power plants were subjected to an
aggressive public relations campaign by the nuclear industry and
the Department of Energy that pushed the idea that the Yucca
Mountain dumpsite would get rid of their waste. The relicensing
wave means that most of these communities will see large or
larger amounts of waste sitting on site for decades before being
shipped to Nevada.
# # #
EWG Action Fund is a nonprofit legislative advocacy organization
based in Washington, DC that uses the power of information to
protect the environment and human health. [stattrax.com]
www.ewg.org [http://www.ewg.org/] is the website for both
Environmental Working Group and EWG Action Fund
Copyright 2004, EWG Action Fund. All Rights Reserved.
Headquarters 1436 U St. N.W., Suite 101 | Washington, DC 20009
|| Contact Us [http://www.ewg.org/about/contact.php]
*****************************************************************
22 Brattleboro Reformer: Delegates ask NRC to hasten VY report
October 21, 2004 Brattleboro, VT
By Carolyn Lorié Reformer Staff
BRATTLEBORO -- Vermont's congressional delegation has asked the
Nuclear Regulatory Commission to step up the release of the
Vermont Yankee engineering inspection report.
The inspection was completed in September and a public exit
meeting is tentatively planned for Nov. 9, at which time the
report's preliminary findings will be made available to the
public. The full report, however, will not be available until 45
days after the meeting.
In their letter, the delegation voiced support for more public
and state input for the final report.
"We believe that the State of Vermont and the public should have
time to review the independent engineering inspection report
before it is made final, and be provided an opportunity to hear
from and interact with the inspection team members regarding its
contents," wrote Sens. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and James Jeffords,
I-Vt., and U.S. Rep. Bernard Sanders, I-Vt.
They also asked that the two parties -- the New England Coalition
and the Vermont Department of Public Service -- petitioning to
intervene in the Vermont Yankee uprate case have access to the
report so that they can amend their petitions, if necessary.
Vermont Yankee is seeking to increase its power output by 20
percent.
Petitions to intervene had to be filed by Aug. 30. The state
made the deadline after the NRC refused to grant a deadline
extension. In its filing, however, the state maintained its right
to amend the contentions, depending on the findings in the
inspection report.
Amendments to NRC filings must pass very specific criteria and
it is unclear if the state will be able to meet those criteria.
Finally, the delegation noted that the public will be barred
from speaking during today's oral arguments before the Atomic
Safety and Licensing Board, which is part of the NRC. The state,
the coalition, Vermont Yankee and NRC officials will present
arguments on whether hearings in the uprate case should be
granted.
Members of the public can submit comments in writing but will
not be allowed to speak or ask questions. The NRC also plans to
bar signs larger than 18 inches square and will not permit them
to be waved or held up during the proceedings.
The NRC has stated, however, that the public will have
opportunities in the future to comment on the uprate, including
the exit meeting on the inspection.
"We expect the NRC to adhere to this promise, and ensure that
the exit meeting is a participatory public meeting, allowing our
constituents to learn about the results of the independent
engineering assessment, to make statements, and to ask questions
about the independent engineering assessment," wrote Leahy,
Jeffords and Sanders.
Copyright ©1999-2004 New England Newspapers, Inc.,
*****************************************************************
23 NRC: NRC Staff to Meet with Energy Northwest to Discuss Columbia Generating Station
Issues
News Release - Region IV - 2004-04 U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY
COMMISSION
Office of Public Affairs, Region IV No. IV-04-043
October 21, 2004 CONTACT: Victor Dricks Phone: 817-860-8128
E-mail: opa4@nrc.gov [opa4@nrc.gov]
Officials of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission will meet
with Energy Northwest management on October 28, in Richland,
Wash., to discuss operational issues at Columbia Generating
Station. Energy Northwest operates the nuclear plant, located
near Richland.
Among the issues to be discussed are three plant shutdowns in
July and August involving operator performance issues. One of
the shutdowns in July prompted the declaration of an Alert at
the plant, the second lowest of NRCs four emergency
classifications.
The plant continues to operate safely, said Bruce Mallett, NRC
Region IV Administrator. The company requested to meet with us
to discuss steps it is taking to address operational issues that
contributed to recent shutdowns.
The meeting will be held at the Energy Northwest Office Complex,
Walkley Room, 3000 George Washington Way from 3:00 to 5:00 p.m.
The public is invited to observe the meeting and NRC staff will
be available for comments and questions from the public before
the meeting adjourns.
Last revised Thursday, October 21, 2004
*****************************************************************
24 AFP: France says future is nuclear with new generation of power-plants
[http://www.terradaily.com/]
PARIS (AFP) Oct 21, 2004
France staked its claim to remain a world leader in atomic
energy Thursday by announcing that it will build the first of a
new generation of pressurised water nuclear plants at a site on
the Normandy coast.
Construction of the EPR (European Pressurised Water Reactor) is
due to start in 2007 at Flamanville near Cherbourg on the
Cotentin peninsula, with the first electricity being produced
five years later, the state-owned generator EDF said in a
statement.
Built at a cost of three billion euros (3.8 billion dollars), the
reactor will be the first of a so-called "third generation" of
nuclear power stations intended to take over from France's
existing stock of 19 plants -- including 58 reactors -- over the
next two decades.
France currently produces more than 75 percent of its electricity
from "second generation" nuclear installations. The earliest at
Fassenheim near the German border went into service in 1977, and
their life expectancy is around 40 years.
The "first generation" were the prototypes built in the 1950s and
60s.
While the pressurised water technology does not mark a major
innovation, the EPR design, conceived over ten years by Siemens
of Germany and the French company Areva, is intended to provide
electricity more efficiently and more safely than current models.
According to EDF, the reactor should reduce the risk of accident
by ten and its double casing be able to withstand the impact of
an aircraft flown by terrorists. The design also means that even
if there is a disaster, the reactor core will collapse in on
itself to contain radiation leaks.
The EPR reactor should also generate 1,600 megawatts of
electricity -- compared to 900 for most current reactors -- need
less regular re-charging, and have a life span of 60 years.
However opponents of nuclear power say official statements about
the safety of EPR are not to be believed. "The EPR reactor offers
no greater guarantee against terrorism than any other reactor,"
said Stephane Lhomme of the Get out of Nuclear collective.
"We are investing three billion euros in a technology that is
almost obsolete for political reasons that have no connection
with a rational, properly thought-out energy policy," said
Greenpeace in a statement.
France's centre-right government took the decision in May to
press ahead with the new generation of nuclear reactors, arguing
that it is the best response to the likely long-term increase in
petrol prices as well as demands for a cleaner environment.
Two other sites, one in northern Normandy and the other in
southeast France, had been under consideration for the project.
"On the environmental front the reactor reinforces France's
preeminence in the fight against climate change, and economically
it will allow us to ensure supply and limit the effects of a
rapid increase in oil prices," said Patrick Ollier, chairman of
the National Assembly's economic affairs committee.
Development of the EPR is also seen as a crucial way of
maintaining France's technological edge in the highly competitive
nuclear energy market. Earlier this month President Jacques
Chirac was lobbying hard in China for contracts in the country's
ambitious nuclear programme.
France also hopes to be chosen as the site for the future
International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) which
aims to develop the creation of energy through nuclear fusion by
mid-century. However the bid from the research station at
Cadarache in southern France faces stiff opposition from Japan.
All rights reserved. © 2004 Agence France-Presse
[http://www.afp.com/] . Sections of the information displayed on
*****************************************************************
25 [du-list] "..non-combat injuries and illnesses.... now upwards
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 2004 19:03:27 -0700
The Unknown Soldiers
By Lakshmi Chaudhry, AlterNet. Posted October 21, 2004.
The reality of the suffering in Iraq has been rendered invisible by
media hype and partisan battle. One doctor, who has treated some of the
thousands, speaks about the war wounded.
Gene Bolles has seen more than his fair share of human suffering. Two
years in Landstuhl Regional Medical Center - the U.S. military hospital in
Germany that receives all injured soldiers evacuated from Iraq and
Afghanistan - is no doctor's dream job, especially not if you are a
neurosurgeon who specializes in brain and spinal injuries - the kind that
can destroy a 19-year-old kid's life. Yet as he speaks of the shattered
soldiers who were once his charge, Bolles is neither overwrought nor angry.
The soft-spoken 62-year-old civilian speaks not of politics but of humanity
- the terrible toll imposed by all wars, unjust or otherwise, on all
involved, soldier or civilian. He speaks not of blame but of compassion and
duty - our duty as a nation to pay attention and tend to the young men and
women we ask to sacrifice life or limb in battle. At a time when the
reality of the suffering in Iraq has been rendered invisible by media hype
and partisan battle, Gene Bolles remains a steadfast advocate for the
scarred, the maimed, and the tormented - whose numbers are far, far greater
than what the Bush administration would like to admit.
So how did you end up working at Landstuhl hospital?
I am a neurosurgeon and have been in the practice for 32 years. I was
approached to consider working for the Department of Defense and going to
Landstuhl right after 9/11. So I took a leave of absence from my hospital
and became the chief of neurosurgery in Germany.
That was right at the time the war in Afghanistan began and carried through
Feb. 1, 2004.
Were the 9/11 attacks part of the reason why you agreed to go to Landstuhl?
Sure, in part. I had been in the military years ago, during the Vietnam
era. I'd had that experience. So when this came up, I felt honored to have
an opportunity to go help out and do what I could.
What kind of cases did you treat in Landstuhl? And these were mostly kids,
right?
Well, I call them that since I'm 62 years old. And they were 18, 19, maybe
21. They all seemed very young. Certainly younger than my children.
As a neurosurgeon I mostly dealt with injuries to the brain, the spinal
cord, or the spine itself. The injuries were all fairly horrific, anywhere
from loss of extremities, multiple extremities, to severe burns. It just
goes on, and on, and on. There were just a lot of serious injuries.
As a doctor myself who has seen trauma throughout his career, I've never
seen it to this degree. The numbers, the degree of injuries. It really
kinda caught me off-guard.
What about the soldiers themselves?
The soldiers, initially because of how they're trained, don't think of
themselves. They're thinking of the buddies they've left behind. Almost all
of them don't accept the reality of what's happened to them. They're still
back in the war zone. And they care about their buddies so much.
And this is what makes the soldiers do what they do so gallantly - this
feeling for each other. So when they get injured, they first feel guilty
that they're not still back with their buddies. But then as time goes on,
they realize that the price they paid for the war and then there is anger.
And then there is frustration, then sadness, then depression. They realize
they may never walk again or are so disfigured that the rest of their life
is going to be very difficult.
But when they're going through this depression, we don't write about them
so much. We don't display them. We want to only look at those soldiers who
have either recovered from it or those who are acting as though nothing has
happened. It's because we want to look at them as heroes. And they are
heroes. But it's a reality that is not talked about much.
One of the soldiers interviewed in a recent documentary said that
post-traumatic stress disorder is going to be to the Iraq War what Agent
Orange was to the Vietnam War. Do you agree?
Yes. I have talked to many people who've been in the war zone. Perhaps I
had a unique relationship with these soldiers because I was not an officer
but a civilian; I didn't have direct control over them. Many of them felt
more comfortable in allowing themselves to talk to me. They would talk
about the nervousness they constantly felt, especially after the first part
of the war ended and it became more a guerilla war. And they'd get attacked
while sitting around waiting for orders to come in or just driving along
the road. It started driving them batty. They were afraid and unsettled -
it was different from charging ahead.
Many would break down talking about seeing their buddy get hurt or killed.
They would even talk about the Iraqi soldiers - how awful it was, all that
carnage. One guy hadn't slept for a long time because of nightmares because
of what he saw early in the war, when we were killing high numbers of
Iraqis. And he saw some of them got run over by tanks. He just couldn't get
those images out of his mind.
They talk about hearing screams of comrades or enemies or civilians, or
children. To see it and be there creates a lot of reaction. Sometimes they
might initially act really tough, but underneath it all most soldiers have
a lot of humane feeling. They feel this horror very deeply - more than many
are willing to admit.
Do you think that soldiers who suffer from psychological damage get enough
help? Their injuries may not look as "bad," but they've suffered terrible
emotional damage because of the sheer horror of war.
I've seen experienced officers break down because of what they've seen just
as much as young recruits. They're covering up and carrying such deep
emotions. A soldier doesn't want to show that emotion. He is fearful that
if he does, others will perceive him as weak. And there is some truth to that.
So even when they are going through emotional upheaval, they won't seek out
help or admit that they are having these feelings. A lot of it doesn't come
out until after they're discharged.
Are they prepared to deal with or not? Probably not. But they are trying to
do better than what happened during the Vietnam era.
No I don't think they receive enough help. At the same time, I don't want
to be critical of the present system. All of us are learning how to deal
with this. What is important is that people need to be made aware of this
issue. Rather than attack the system, I would much prefer to raise
awareness of this issue and how it affects the soldiers. We're going to see
as much if not more as what happened after the Vietnam War. The incidences
of alcoholism, substance abuse, homelessness, inability to work, marriages
that crumble, and so on. So we need to do something right now.
But many of these soldiers are not included in the numbers put out by the
Pentagon for soldiers wounded in action in Iraq, which is right now around
7,500. Is there an important distinction between combat and non-combat
related injuries?
Well, you should probably look up a military manual to get the definitions
exactly right, but here's how I understand it: Say you're on duty,
something blows up or you get shot, that's what they call a combat injury.
But if you get in a truck accident or a Humvee rolls over you, that's
defined as non-combat. So you can get a Purple Heart for the former and not
for the latter.
And yes, we don't hear about the non-combat injuries and illnesses. I've
seen figures that are now upwards of 30,000. I know that at least 20,000
have been air-evacuated into the Landstuhl system. These are also people
who have suffered doing what we as a country are asking of them. As to why
they're not recognized, they seem to be of lesser importance in that
they're not mentioned. I don't think that's fair.
The numbers are even higher when you look at the numbers once the soldiers
return to the country from Iraq or Afghanistan. According to some of the
veteran groups, 33,000 have sought VA care, 26,000 have filed VA disability
claims, and 10,000 have sought VA counseling. When you look at these huge,
huge numbers, what do they indicate?
It's just starting and it's only going to get worse. Those numbers are
going to do nothing but increase. You have the physical injuries which
speak for themselves. I've seen the breakdown of that 33,000 number (who've
sought VA care) and they include a significant percent of spine injuries.
As a neurosurgeon, I saw all the complaints in that area and I can only say
that there's an overwhelming number of them.
These are people in a lot of chronic pain. They're seeking help from our VA
system, which is undergoing changes and is still under-funded. So these
people don't get the help they really need. There's a lot of people
suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome - that number is going to go
up, and up, and up as time goes on.
So what is at stake in this undercounting of the casualties in Iraq - in
not making clear what the toll of the war has imposed on our soldiers?
I really don't know why it's not out there for all of us to see. The
question is why isn't our news media reporting this night after night so
the American people can know about it. If you know about it, then why isn't
CNN or NBC pushing this stuff?
What you see on TV and what you see in reality, is like night and day. The
embedding of the journalists seemed to sterilize the war. When I heard them
report, it was like it was a football game. The true effects of war are
just awful. I'm now hearing estimates of upward of 30,000 in terms of
civilian deaths. Let alone, all the Iraqis who have been injured.
Do you get the sense with this administration that even talking about the
costs of the war is equivalent to challenging it?
I think wars should be challenged because they're absolutely devastating.
The way it's made out is that if you're against what's happening in Iraq,
you're against the present government or against the soldiers. And no, it
doesn't have to be that way at all.
Why does the government make these differentiations? Why do they not talk
about the reality of war? I suspect it's because they don't want upset all
of the people who may then turn against the war. This is a war that has
been debatable from the beginning.
But the soldiers don't seem to be questioning the war even though the
initial reasons for the war such as WMDs have crumbled. I saw a CNN report
on how many of them now see the reason for doing their job is to take care
of their buddies - to make sure that everyone gets to go home in one piece.
My personal feeling is that the average soldier doesn't go to war because
of the country. The reality is that the reason why they fight is the
community that they've been a part of in the military. They don't look at
the rationale or reason for war with that degree of depth. Maybe many
soldiers would argue with me, I didn't really hear that in my conversations
with them. It's more about their buddies. So it makes sense that it's more
so now than ever.
But maybe now we're seeing some cracks. Depending on how this ends up -
maybe not if the war ends better than we expect - but I suspect we're going
to see a lot of anger among the GIs and veterans when they come back.
How have these very emotional years affected you?
I think about it a lot when I go to bed at night. I can't get it out of my
head. It haunted me then and it haunts me now - the horrific, horrific
injuries that these young people will now have to deal with for their rest
of their lives. And I don't know if I'll ever stop thinking about them. I
just feel a tremendous sadness - and that's just the way it is. I just hope
everything in the world can be done to make what they have left for the
rest of their lives as positive as possible. I sometimes fear that once
they come back - with all the injuries and damage - they'll be forgotten
about very quickly.
Lakshmi Chaudhry is senior editor of Alternet
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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26 [du-list] What Deployment Health teaches about DU
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 2004 19:04:15 -0700
http://www.deploymenthealth.mil/downloads/CENTAF_DU_Brief.pdf
Link above is 19 pages pdf PowerPoint Brief on DU. Took way long to
download. My rural phone line eeks me out 14-16kb/s or rarely even
20. But worth a review.
[I'm doing keyword searches for "uranium leukemia"].
The description of what DU is at beginning seems nonsensical.
Elaine.
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27 INSIDE JoongAng Daily: Depleted uranium once used in weapons
[http://joongangdaily.joins.com
October 22, 2004 KST 10:54 (GMT+9
October 22, 2004 ¤Ñ Representative Cho Seung-soo of the
Democratic Labor Party and the environmental group Green Korea
United said yesterday that the Korea Atomic Energy Research
Institute had produced anti-tank shells in the 1980s made from
depleted uranium, alloyed with titanium.
They claimed that the Ministry of Science and Technology had
hidden the fact.
In response, the ministry said, "We applied for an inspection
waiver for development of uranium armaments and received
permission in 1987." The ministry said that it has discussed the
production with the United States from an early stage.
The ministry said the shells were destroyed in 1989 with U.S.
Embassy officials present when they no longer had commercial
value. Depleted uranium is a dense, non-fissile metal.
[http://joongangdaily.joins.com/faq.html]
*****************************************************************
28 Interfax: India to lease nuclear submarine from Russia
Interfax.com [http://www.interfax.com]
Oct 21 2004 11:12AM
MOSCOW. Oct 21 (Interfax) - The Indian Navy will lease a nuclear
powered submarine from Russia.
"Moscow and Delhi signed a contract, according to which, India's
Navy will lease a Project 971 nuclear powered submarine [from
Russia] for ten years," a high ranking source at the defense
manufacturing complex told Interfax.
He said that the contract was signed in the beginning of 2004.
The submarine to be leased is a Project 971 Nerpa nuclear
submarine, which is being constructed at the Amur ship building
facility, Komsomolsk-na-Amure.
"It is 85% ready right now," the source said.
The submarine should be finished by 2007. An Indian crew will
then arrive in Russia to train on the submarine.
According to independent experts, profits from the use of the
submarine could be as much as tens of millions dollars a year.
© 1991-2004 Interfax
All rights reserved
*****************************************************************
29 CNNN: Radioactive material found in clinic chief's chair
Police in Florida probing incident as possible theft and assault
[http://www.cnn.com/]
International Edition |
(CNN) -- Police in Florida are investigating the discovery of
three packets of radioactive material in the chair cushion of a
Naples medical clinic administrator.
Police and state health officials said the administrator sat on
the chair for three or four hours, but was exposed to only low
levels of radiation and should not suffer any health
consequences.
Nevertheless, police are investigating the incident as a possible
theft and assault by a disgruntled employee.
"That's what it looks like. We have to prove it now; that's going
to be the tough part," said Capt. Bruce Davidson of Naples Police
and Emergency Services.
No arrests have been made, he said. Naples is on the southwest
coast near Fort Myers.
The Naples Diagnostic Imaging Center notified police last Friday
that three packets of Germanium 68 were missing from a General
Electric PET CT Hybrid Imaging device.
Florida health officials said the radioactive materials are kept
in a small, shielded container in the machine and are used to
calibrate the PET scanner, a kind of high-tech X-ray device.
Areas in medical facilities that use radioactive packets are
required to be restricted and must be secured when people are not
there, said Bill Passetti, health physicist for the Florida
Department of Health.
Police said there was no sign of a break-in.
Officials said the estimated exposure to the supervisor was 60
millirem (mR), based on a four-hour exposure.
The yearly allowable exposure is 100 mR -- or 5,000 mR for people
who work in the medical radiation field, Passetti said.
"It's well below any accepted limits," Passetti said. Because the
small size of the source, and the fact it decays over time,
"there's really not the potential to receive a dose that would be
considered a health hazard," he said.
But David Albright of the Institute for Science and Intelligence
Security said the amount is "not a trivial amount" and could have
increased the victim's chances of getting cancer had it not been
discovered.
"It's not guaranteed cancer, but this should be seen as the
equivalent of a physical attack that jeopardized his safety," he
said.
[start quote] It's not guaranteed cancer, but this should be
seen as the equivalent of a physical attack that jeopardized his
safety.[end quote] -- David Albright, Institute for Science and
Intelligence Security
"Even if it was only a 10 percent increase, he should not have
to suffer that. It is a malicious act that should be interpreted
as somebody trying to do you bodily harm."
The apparent target of the incident, Michael Conrath, the
administrator of the chain clinic, said he does not know who
moved the material, nor would he guess about the motive.
"I'm trying to let the police do the figuring. My position is, I
don't know and I'm not going to venture a guess at this point,"
Conrath said.
As for health consequences, he said, "I'm going to undergo some
medical testing so I can determine that myself. I don't know if
it can be determined with any certainty."
Asked if he is concerned, he said, "Not terribly. It's evidently
not a tremendous amount of radiation. The state physicist is
very reassuring."
© 2004 Cable News Network LP, LLLP.
*****************************************************************
30 ITAR-TASS:International conference on nuclear safety to be held in city of
Kurchatov
21.10.2004, 13.20
KURCHATOV (Kursk region), October 21 (Itar-Tass) - - Participants
in the international scientific-technical conference, which
opened in the city of Kurchatov of the Kursk region on Thursday,
will discuss the experience of the Kursk nuclear power plant in
the field of raising nuclear safety while exploiting channel
reactors.
A two-day conference “Channel reactors: problems and solutions”
began in Moscow on October 19. Its technical round will be held
in Kurchatov.
The Scientific and Research and Design Institute of Power
Engineering and the branch of Rosenergatom - - Kursk nuclear
power plant with support of the Federal Nuclear Power Agency are
the organizers of the conference.
Apart from home specialists of enterprises and scientific and
research institutions of the nuclear branch, scientists from
Canada, Holland, Great Britain, Italy, Germany and Lithuania will
take part in the conference.
As director of the Kursk nuclear power plant Yuri Slepokon told
Itar-Tass, the program of the technical round includes reports on
achievements of the Kursk nuclear power plants in the field of
raising nuclear safety and on the experience of the first stage
of the plant’s upgrading.
Participants in the conference will also visit the upgraded first
and second power units, as well as the 5th power unit, which is
being built now.
© ITAR-TASS. All rights reserved. You undertake not to copy,
*****************************************************************
31 Scotsman.com News: Radiation dangers higher than thought
Thu 21 Oct 2004
JOHN INNES
TIGHTER restrictions may have to be imposed on the nuclear
industry as a precaution against health risks from radioactive
particles.
Professor Dudley Goodhead made the prediction after it was
revealed that low-level radiation from nuclear plants could be
ten times more hazardous than had previously been estimated.
New scientific evidence suggested that no-one could be sure about
the dangers from swallowing or breathing in nuclear particles. In
some cases the risk might be almost negligible - but in others,
notably children living near nuclear installations, it could be
ten or more times higher than experts had previously assumed.
Prof Goodhead said: "It’s really for the policy makers to make
that decision. They’ve got to recognise the uncertainties and
say we can’t work with best estimates.
"To me, that would mean tighter restrictions on some of the
radionuclides [particles] that we know least about."
*****************************************************************
32 deseret news: No outright ban on nuclear waste
[deseretnews.com]
Wednesday, October 20, 2004
By Joe Bauman Deseret Morning News
After nearly four hours of discussion and some fierce public
comments, a legislative task force voted Tuesday against
recommending an outright ban on future shipments of certain types
of radioactive waste into Utah.
A sign along U-196 near the Goshute reservation warns agains the
transport of high-level nuclear waste.
Douglas C. Pizac, Associated Press
Present state law requires an act of the Legislature and
concurrence of the governor before types B and C low-level
radioactive waste can be imported for disposal. Proponents of
stronger language wanted an outright ban without the option of
company going to the Legislature and seeking that permission.
They charged that instead of banning those wastes,
present law sets up a mechanism for petitioning to import it.
The joint task force on Hazardous Waste Regulation and
Tax Policy nearly passed a recommendation that the tougher
language be incorporated into law. By one vote, House of
Representative members voted for it, and by one, the Senate
members opposed.
The split meant the task force could not recommend that
bill.
Instead, the group voted to adopt a draft report crafted
over the past two years, leaving intact the present requirement.
It also asks for more oversight by the Division of Environmental
Quality into the record-keeping by waste handlers and more
control over hazardous but non-radioactive waste.
The panel recommended that mixed wastes received from the
federal government should no longer be exempt from state tax.
Mixed waste has both hazardous chemicals and radioactive
elements. Material of this type coming from the national
government is a relatively small part of the operation of
Envirocare of Utah.
The main battle concerned the variety of low-level
radioactive waste labeled B and C grade, which are "hotter" than
the A material accepted by Envirocare at its Tooele County
disposal site.
B and C waste are classified as low-level radioactive,
but activist Jason Groenewold of HEAL Utah said, "It's not low
hazard. It can be quite dangerous." A and B waste have
contaminated parts of nuclear power plants but aren't as highly
radioactive as spend fuel rods, he said.
He contended the task force should have taken strong
action on B and C waste and tightened regulatory rules.
"I'm very disappointed" in the task force's action, said
Sen. Patrice M. Arent, D-Salt Lake. Leader of the battle for a
bill banning B and C waste, she vowed to keep fighting.
"The fact is, B and C waste is banned today," said Sen.
Curtis S. Bramble, R-Provo, co-chairman of the group. "It is
illegal to bring it in."
Bramble cited these concerns with the proposed ban:
questions about the constitutionality of trying to tie the hands
of future Legislatures, questions about whether the state can
interfere with interstate commerce, and threats of litigation by
the industry.
If the existing rule isn't sufficient, he said, "then
nothing else we could do, including the bill today, could make
any difference."
Robert Rees, the Legislature's associate general council,
said he did not think a ban would pose a serious constitutional
problem.
Tim Barney, senior vice president of Envirocare, said the
task force "took a lot of actions adverse to us. They raised our
taxes, they imposed additional regulatory restraints and they
drew a box around our business" concerning what kind of material
Envirocare could accept.
Barney said he thought panel members were sincere and
cared deeply about the issues.
During the debate, Rep. David L. Hogue, R-District 52,
said Envirocare is not the evil empire. "We produce B and C
waste" in Utah, he said.
"I feel a little bad because this discussion now is aimed
at Envirocare and what they're doing," said Rep. Joseph G.
Murray, R-District 8. The panel has seen the company's operation
and feels good about what they do with Class A waste.
"But this is another ball game," he said, referring to B
and C. The people, the Legislature and the governor do not want
it, he added.
Arent said, "I am not trying to beat up on any company. .
. . I don't care what company wants to bring this in. I don't
want it."
Heidi Gillette, a Salt Lake mother, said Utahns expect
the Legislature "to put the strongest possible language" into
law, barring B and C. Also, for other waste that is accepted,
she said, "we should raise the fees to the highest possible"
level, consistent with what other states are doing. "We are not
a dumping ground."
James O'Neal, a political consultant from Provo, said the
recommendation ultimately approved was "lukewarm."
If the proposal was to allow gambling, task force members
would be out on the street screaming and carrying placards, he
said. Tax on radioactive waste is blood money and cancer money,
he charged.
E-mail: bau@desnews.com [bau@desnews.com]
© 2004 Deseret News Publishing Company
*****************************************************************
33 Nevada Appeal: Kerry sets Nevada hopes on Yucca discontent
Associated Press
October 21, 2004
A high-level nuclear waste site 90 miles outside Las Vegas may
be Sen. John Kerry's main hope for beating President Bush in
Nevada.
The economy may not be as potent an issue as elsewhere, not with
90,000 more jobs than when Bush took office. But a weak economy
in other states reduces tourism, the key to Las Vegas' health.
The state's demographics could help Kerry, because the
Democratic-leaning Hispanic population is booming. But the
president's team believes Bush can cut into Kerry's margins among
Hispanics, and make up for any lost ground in the growing
GOP-leaning suburbs around Las Vegas.
Nevada is fighting the Bush administration over a decision to put
a big nuclear waste site at Yucca Mountain outside Las Vegas.
Kerry has voted against it. Bush supports it. Kerry says Bush's
stance broke a 2000 campaign promise; Bush's campaign says the
president is following scientists' best advice.
Despite the controversial nature of the site, polls suggest that
it's not the top issue for Nevada voters. Homeland security and
the war on terror rank higher, and those are Bush's political
strengths. But Kerry's team says his ratings in Nevada spike
every time he visits the state and makes an issue of the dump.
They plan to increase their criticism of Bush's position, using
it to argue more broadly that Bush's word can't be trusted.
Bush beat Democrat Al Gore in Nevada by 4 percentage points in
2000. Polls show the race this year is close, with Bush clinging
to a slender lead in some surveys.
The state is part of the so-called cactus caucus, along with
Arizona, Colorado and New Mexico. Arizona is leaning Bush while
Colorado (won by Bush in 2000) and New Mexico (won by Gore) are
up for grabs.
All contents © Copyright 2004 nevadaappeal.com Nevada Appeal -
580 Mallory Way - Carson City, NV 89701
*****************************************************************
34 Las Vegas RJ: Report: Yucca Mountain to be at capacity before opening
Thursday, October 21, 2004
License extensions results in more waste
By KEITH ROGERS REVIEW-JOURNAL
More nuclear waste than the planned repository at Yucca Mountain
can hold will pile up at reactor sites as the government
continues to approve license extensions for power plants, an
environmental research organization claimed in a study to be
released today.
If a repository is built by 2010 in the mountain, 100 miles
northwest of Las Vegas, its 77,000-ton capacity will be filled by
existing spent fuel awaiting shipment. That's not counting
another 9,900 tons that will have accumulated in the meantime
from license extensions, according to the study by the
Environmental Working Group.
"A more realistic estimate based on the 20-year average license
extensions being granted, means that over 18,000 more metric tons
(19,800 tons) of nuclear waste will cross the country to Nevada
for disposal than estimated," the group's report states,
referring to estimates by the Department of Energy.
"To accommodate all this high-level nuclear waste, Yucca
Mountain will have to be expanded, and getting it there, by
whatever means, will take decades longer than even the
government's longest predictions," according to the study.
The increased inventory of spent fuel stems from reactor license
extensions that were "quickly and quietly approved" by the
Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the group claims.
The group said nuclear power plant re-licensing doubled after
Congress approved the Yucca Mountain repository in 2002. There
are renewal applications pending for 18 more reactors.
That means there will be more waste to store at reactor sites or
above-ground facilities and more risks involved with thousands of
more waste shipments than DOE has calculated, said Richard Wiles,
senior vice president of the nonprofit group. "The risk compounds
itself, and they're not being truthful with the public about what
their real plans are for the waste," Wiles said.
Allen Benson, a spokesman for DOE's Office of Repository
Development in Las Vegas, noted that between 2007 and 2010 the
agency is required to report to Congress on the need for
additional disposal capacity.
In September 2002, two months after Congress approved the
repository, DOE officials acknowledged there will be more
high-level waste than space for it in Yucca Mountain as liquid
waste in tanks at nuclear weapons facilities is converted into
glass logs. Agency spokesman Joe Davis said at the time that
Congress would have to decide on expanding the repository, if
it's built, or finding a site for a second one. DOE figures show
that once the conversion task is completed in 2035, only 8,275
glass logs out of 23,475 will fit in the repository. The cost of
converting liquid waste into glass logs will be $9 billion more
than the repository's $58 billion price tag.
Wiles said the solution to the capacity dilemma is to stop
making more waste and explore on-site storage at reactors as
compared to risks involved with hauling it to Yucca Mountain.
"We're not saying shut down all the reactors today because we're
too dependent on them as an energy source," he said.
Reliance on nuclear power can be reduced through more efficient
use of electrical power and through environmentally sound
operation of coal and natural gas plants until alternative energy
sources are developed, he said.
The DOE contends that for security reasons it's better to put
all the waste at a single location rather than have it scattered
across the country.
Critics, including Nevada's delegation, have said that logic is
flawed because some amount of spent fuel always will be at
reactor sites as they continue to operate.
Copyright Las Vegas Review-Journal
*****************************************************************
35 deseretnews: Matheson, Swallow cross swords
[deseretnews.com]
Thursday, October 21, 2004
By Nancy Perkins Deseret Morning News
ST. GEORGE — Flanked by elected Washington County Republicans and
other supporters, John Swallow accused Rep. Jim Matheson, D-Utah,
Wednesday of misleading 2nd Congressional District voters when it
comes to Swallow's stance on nuclear weapons tests.
Jim Matheson
John Swallow
"I am opposed to any resumed testing of nuclear weapons in
Nevada," Swallow said.
"We cannot change the past, but we can dictate the
future,"Swallow said during a short press conference held on the
Dixie State College campus an hour before a scheduled debate
with Matheson.
"In the past, St. George was very small and no one seemed
to give much thought to us," he continued. "Jim Matheson says
they (the federal government) lied to us, maybe they did, I
don't know . . . maybe they just didn't know. But today more
than ever the destiny of this community demands change."
Swallow provided a letter, which he said was signed by
Republican leaders holding office throughout southern Utah, that
calls on Matheson to apologize to Utahns and his opponent for
trying to "scare" voters.
"Your attempt to portray John Swallow as being tolerant
of renewed nuclear testing is simply untrue," states the letter,
which is addressed to the Utah congressman.
But Matheson said Swallow is being na•ve if he believes
his support of nuclear weapons research wouldn't lead to nuclear
weapons testing at some unknown point in the future.
"You can't have it both ways," Matheson said, adding
there are many physicists and others who believe any such
research would culminate in nuclear weapons tests.
Michelle Thomas, a St. George resident and downwinder who
has suffered from numerous cancers brought on by exposure to
nuclear radiation, was tearful before Wednesday's debate.
"It's awful when you become the poster child for
something like this," said Thomas, who supports Matheson and his
opposition to nuclear weapons research and testing. "How can
Swallow say doing nuclear weapons research won't lead to future
tests? The government lied to us before, and we shouldn't be
asked to trust them again."
The question of nuclear weapons didn't surface at the
debate, which was hosted by the St. George Area Chamber of
Commerce and televised on a local station.
Among the questions posed to each candidate were rising
health care costs, use of public lands to fund education, rural
economic development, illegal immigration, and homeland security
needs versus personal privacy rights.
"Putting Utah's priorities first and making decisions
based on the merits of each proposal before me is what I do
every day," said Matheson, who outlined several bills he has
supported with Utah's Republican delegation.
Swallow reinforced his Republican roots and accused
Matheson of voting for one thing and then voting with another
group the next time around.
"I think Jim is just caught in a quagmire, being in
Washington. It's difficult to be a Democrat there and represent
Utah," he said. "Anybody who knows me and those who support me
know I am committed to strong relationships with members of my
party, and even those from the other side of the isle."
Reforming the nation's medical system and reigning in
health care costs will take significant work from both parties,
Matheson said.
"We've got to step aside on partisan politics to solve
this. John Swallow voted against CHIP, the state's health
insurance program for children," he said. "I voted for President
Bush's Medicare prescription drug card program, and I voted for
tort reform. It's a complex issue and we have to come together
as a country to solve this problem."
It's critical to open up some of the state's vast natural
resources and harvest the timber or mine the coalfields, Swallow
said.
"The sweet spot of our economy in Utah is access to
public lands and resources," he said. "If we do not open up our
public lands, and get our fair share so we can educate our
children, if we don't do that, our taxes will go up."
Matheson said he supports exchanging some of the
landlocked pieces of state land for federal parcels, which can
then be sold and developed to pay for Utah's education system.
"The federal government said it would fund special
education up to 43 percent, but they never have. The most
they've given is 17 percent. The federal government needs to pay
its share so Utahns don't have to make up the difference," he
said.
Swallow said he is pulling closer to Matheson in the race
and expects to win on election day.
"Our polls show we're within one-digit numbers of Jim,"
said Swallow. "I'm getting a lot of 'atta-boys' and 'It's about
time,' comments from people down here who say they're glad I'm
going after Jim's record."
For his part, Matheson said he's proud of his work in
Congress and is happy to discuss his record anytime with anyone.
"I'm not really caught on one side in Washington. I'm
caught on your side and that's where I would like to stay,"
Matheson said in his closing remarks.
E-mail: nperkins@desnews.com [nperkins@desnews.com]
© 2004 Deseret News Publishing Company
*****************************************************************
36 Las Vegas SUN: Report: Waste to exceed Yucca's limit
Nuclear board extends power plants' licenses
By Suzanne Struglinski < [suzanne@lasvegassun.com] > SUN
WASHINGTON BUREAU
WASHINGTON -- A rise in nuclear power plant relicensing since
2002, when Congress approved a repository at Yucca Mountain,
shows there will be thousands more tons of nuclear waste
produced than the site can legally hold, a new report says.
The report, done by the Environmental Working Group Action
Fund, argues that with new nuclear power production, the problem
of nuclear waste won't go away, repeating an argument Nevada's
congressional delegation and other critics of the site have used.
"The public never really gets the full story and is never
really told what is going on," said Richard Wiles, senior vice
president of the Environmental Working Group Action Fund. "They
are not being told the truth about Yucca Mountain or nuclear
waste in their communities."
He said the Energy Department claims Yucca Mountain, 90 miles
northwest of Las Vegas, will solve the waste problem, but as
plants renew their licenses, that just means more waste will be
generated on site. He said the real way to take care of the
waste is to stop licensing plants.
"Then we'll know when the end is," he said.
Nuclear power is part of the administration's energy plan. The
Energy Department and the industry point out that federal law
already aims to rectify the problem.
"The law contemplated Congress would have to deal with this on
an ongoing basis," said Steve Kraft, director of waste
management at the Nuclear Energy Institute. "Things change.
Congress will have ample time to evaluate it."
Under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, the Energy Department can
only store 70,000 metric tons at the repository, but has to go
back to Congress between 2007 and 2010 to say what it plans to
do with the rest of the waste. It can either expand storage at
Yucca or decide to create a new site.
The Environmental Working Group Action Fund's report says said
the Nuclear Regulatory Commission "quickly and quietly" started
renewing more reactor licenses after Congress said the Yucca
project could move forward.
The report, titled "X Marks the Spot," found that from March
2000 through June 2002 the Nuclear Regulatory Commission
extended the licenses at five power plants, beginning with the
Calvert Cliffs nuclear power plant in Maryland.
But from July 2002 through May 2004 the commission approved 10
similar license renewals. The report lists a state-by-state
breakdown of plants with new licenses and how much more waste
would be sent to Nevada.
"When approved and currently pending relicensing applications
are considered together more than three times as many reactors
were relicensed or applied for relicensing after the July 2002
vote, than before -- 34 versus 10," according to the report.
Nine power plants in seven states have renewals pending for 18
reactors. If those are renewed, they would generate 6,600 metric
tons of spent fuel that would need to be stored at Yucca.
The group found that 26 reactors at 15 nuclear power plants
have been relicensed since 2000. They will generate an
additional 9,000 metric tons of nuclear waste during their
20-year extensions.
NRC spokesman David McIntyre said the commission issues
multiple press releases when renewals are approved and nothing
there is secret.
McIntyre said there is "no explicit or implied link" between
Congress's approval of Yucca Mountain and the commission's
approval of applications.
Congress voted to approve Yucca in July 2002. The first renewal
after that was approved in March 2003, he said. All of the
plants renewed after the vote also applied for their renewals
well before the vote, he said. A renewal can take two years to
complete in some cases.
Kraft said it is "purely serendipitous" that more renewals took
place after the approval. He said the commission made a
determination before the 2002 vote that waste disposal did not
need to be included in a renewal application because a plan
already existed for it.
Wiles said the finding confirmed his belief that the Yucca
project is a "nuclear power expansion plan in disguise."
But Kraft called that claim "ridiculous."
"Yucca Mountain serves a lot of interests," he said. "Was Yucca
Mountain a boost to the future of this industry? Yes, but Yucca
Mountain would have been needed if this industry was going to
stop. You would still need to dispose of it (nuclear waste)."
The report says that "virtually none of this newly generated
waste can be shipped to Yucca Mountain without a formal, legal,
expansion of the repository."
Kraft said nuclear power plants now hold about 46,000 tons of
waste and have about 56,000 tons on site by the time Yucca is
set to open in 2010. He said it would be 2030 before Yucca
Mountain would reach the 70,000 metric ton capacity, but the
bigger issue is how quickly the waste will be moved from the
site to Nevada.
"One thing we know how to do is put it in geologic disposal. We
owe it to future generations to do at least that," he said.
"Although there is potential for future innovations we don't
know about yet, but we can't bank on it."
*****************************************************************
37 Bradenton Herald: Tallevast residents say no to county's clean-up offer
| 10/21/2004 |
AIMEE JUAREZ
Herald Staff Writer
TALLEVAST - Tallevast residents told county utility workers to
take their plans back to the drawing board if they want to
correct a groundwater pollution problem that's plagued the
neighborhood for a little more than 40 years.
During a meeting with residents Wednesday at Mount Tabor
Missionary Baptist Church along Tallevast Road, county utility
officials proposed using 15-feet of each homeowner's property
along 16th Street East and 18th Street East to create an easement
that would allow the county to properly install temporary water
hook-ups.
But calm began to unravel as residents questioned the county's
offer. Not immediately warming up to the idea, residents asked
officials to consider other methods of installing the pipes,
including laying the new hook-ups along a vacant stretch of land
next to a railroad line.
County officials, who said they had not spoken with
representatives of the railroad company, told residents it was
too time-consuming to ask the railroad company to allow the
county to create the new hook-ups along the company's property.
Tension continued to escalate among residents as the conversation
turned to cost. Some pointed a finger at Lockheed Martin, the
Maryland-based defense contractor that accepted responsibility
for the clean-up after it purchased the American Beryllium plant,
claiming they should shoulder some of the cost.
"Why are they getting off so easy?" asked resident Laura Ward.
"We have to have the temporary hook-ups because of them, not
because of something that we did."
Tom Yarger, a project manager with the Manatee County Project
Management Department, told residents that the county would have
made the same request as part of the Community Development Block
Grants.
"What we're doing is, we're pulling a piece of the CDBG project
out and doing it earlier than we anticipated because of the
urgency that has expressed itself with the contamination of the
wells," Yarger said. "If your wells hadn't been contaminated or
the water hadn't been contaminated, then we would have been going
along the same process."
Private wells on the property of many homes in the Tallevast
neighborhood were in close proximity to the former American
Beryllium plant. Tests found that some of the wells contained
poisons leaked from the plant.
Resident Beverly Bradley, who voiced her concerns during the
meeting, felt disillusioned at the meeting's outcome.
"I don't feel like I owe Manatee County anything," Bradley said.
"Manatee County owes us. We've waited this long and giving up my
property is not going to be an issue or something that's going to
determine whether they do this or not. We'll probably have to
wait another 10 years to get the same thing they're talking about
today."
*****************************************************************
38 NBC 4: Environmentalists To File Lawsuit Over Former Nuclear Site
Cleanup
[http://www.ibsys.com/]
Current Cleanup Plan Would Cost $85 Million
UPDATED: 7:52 am PDT October 21,
2004
LOS ANGELES -- Los Angeles and two environmental groups plan to
sue the government Thursday, challenging the Energy Department's
plans for cleaning up the site of a former nuclear testing
laboratory between Simi Valley, Calif., and Chatsworth, Calif.
The suit is scheduled to be filed in federal court in San
Francisco by City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo, the Natural
Resources Defense Council and the Committee to Bridge the Gap.
The plaintiffs will hold a news conference at City Hall early
Thursday afternoon to discuss the action.
U.S. agencies and private contractors carried out nuclear
research and tested rockets at the 2,800-acre Santa Susana Field
Laboratory for nearly 40 years until 1988. The property is owned
by Boeing Corp's Rocketdyne division.
"The site is not very far from the Los Angeles city boundaries
and contamination knows no borders. We are joining this lawsuit
because the Department of Energy has failed in its duty to
protect the public," Assistant City Attorney Cecilia Estolano
told the Los Angeles Times.
A small nuclear reactor that once helped power the Ventura
County city of Moorpark experienced a partial meltdown in 1959,
releasing radioactive contamination, according to The Times.
Numerous other pollutants also tainted the soil and groundwater,
including the rocket fuel component perchlorate, which has been
linked to developmental damage in children.
The Energy Department has proposed a cleanup that it says would
allow the land to be safely reused for any purpose, including
residential development.
But environmental groups argue that the plan would leave behind
99 percent more radioactive soil than an alternative proposal,
exposing any future residents at the site to higher risks of
cancer.
The current cleanup plan would cost $85 million, while the more
thorough alternative would add $195 million, The Times reported.
The suit accuses the Energy Department of failing to comply with
federal environmental laws and seeks to require a more thorough
assessment of contamination dangers, according to The Times.
It also accuses the department of unlawfully reneging on a 1995
agreement to clean up old nuclear sites consistent with standards
set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Superfund
program, the newspaper reported.
Copyright 2004 by NBC4.tv [webstaff@nbc4.tv] . All rights
reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast,
rewritten or redistributed.
© 2004, Internet Broadcasting Systems, Inc
[http://www.ibsys.com/] .
*****************************************************************
39 Daily Press: Nuclear waste storage still an issue
[http://dailypress.com/]
HAMPTON ROADS, VA.
October 21, 2004 10:04 PM
Virginia is projected to have the second most leftover nuclear
waste of any state in the country.
[cflores@dailypress.com] 247-4738
The debate over what to do with waste left over from nuclear
power plants heated up after a report released Wednesday detailed
how much used fuel will be left at sites once the nation's
permanent repository is full.
The Environmental Working Group said Virginia will be second in
the nation only to South Carolina in tonnage of nuclear waste
left over. That's because both of Virginia's Dominion
Resources-owned nuclear sites, Surry Power Station in Isle of
Wight and North Anna outside Richmond, already have gotten
licenses to run an extra 20 years.
Congress approved in 2002 a permanent spot to bury nuclear waste
in Yucca Mountain, Nev. But all the space at Yucca was spoken for
prior to the approval of license extensions at the Virginia
nuclear sites and 13 others nationwide that will create another
20 years of waste.
"You hear it wouldn't be a big deal to expand Yucca, but those
discussions haven't been had yet," said Jon Corsiglia a spokesman
for the environmental group.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has approved license extensions
for 26 nuclear reactors at 15 sites since March 2000 and denied
none. Surry and North Anna each have two reactors. Companies that
own 18 reactors at nine sites also have applied for renewal.
The environmental group estimates the re-licensed plants will
produce almost 19 tons of new waste each year.
The group said there will be at least 21,000 more tons of waste
from the plants with accepted and pending license renewals.
The federal government has projected that Yucca will open in
about 2010 and will take deliveries of waste through 2048. The
allocated space in Yucca is only enough to dispose of the amount
of waste that will exist when the repository opens in 2011.
There wasn't even enough room for the waste from reactors if they
just operated through the end of their current licenses.
"We're already at a point where Yucca Mountain will be filled to
capacity by the time the waste is delivered there," said
Corsiglia. "The wave of re-licensing seems to be making that
problem worse."
Steve Kerekes at the Nuclear Energy Institute said the Department
of Energy originally estimated Yucca is large enough to
accommodate about 132,000 tons. Kerekes said Congress can't get
an energy bill passed in the middle of a "full-blown energy
crisis," so it's not surprising or easy to understand why only
70,000 metric tons of space was approved.
"This is not at the top of Congress's priority list," said
Kerekes.
The environmental group says the approval of Yucca encouraged
more companies to get license renewals for their reactors because
the waste currently on site can be disposed of. But as more
licenses get renewed, the extra waste nationwide that won't fit
at Yucca will grow.
Dusty Horwitt, an analyst at the environmental group, sees the
growing waste problem as a reason to abandon nuclear power in
favor of other alternatives. The group wants Congress to move
away from nuclear power by the time the current licenses run out.
"There's not an ideal way to dispose of high-level nuclear
waste," said Horwitt, "but we ought to stop making more of it.
That's just making the problem worse."
Dominion disagrees with that idea, said Dominion spokesman Rick
Zuercher. There is a place for nuclear power alongside renewable
energy sources like wind and solar. Dominion also has plenty of
plants that burn fossil fuels, which pollute the air and have
become very expensive of late.
"The crux of this is where will we go in the country in terms of
meeting this country's energy needs," said Zuercher.
But as long as nuclear power remains in the mix, there are still
some serious waste decisions to be made.
Government projections of the amount of waste going to Yucca and
time frame for delivery was based on an assumption that reactors
will only get 10-year extensions. So far, 24 reactors got 20-year
extensions and two others got 18- and 19-year licenses.
Surry currently has almost 1,060 tons of nuclear waste stored
on-site in an underground pool and steel cylinder casks that are
about 16 feet high and 8 feet in diameter. Radioactive fuel
assemblies - rods filled with uranium pellets - go into the pool
to cool for at least five years.
About 32 fuel assemblies are loaded underwater into each cask and
a lid is put on top of the container. After the cask is removed
from the pool, it is filled with helium gas, bolted down and
placed on a concrete pad.
"It has a monitoring device and if there is any leak of helium,
we can detect it and make any repairs necessary," said Zuercher.
Virginia may drop in the rankings of states with leftover waste
in the future. Companies have either gotten, asked or intend to
ask for a license extension for at least 73 nuclear reactors out
of 103 reactors nationwide.
Copyright ©2004 Daily Press
*****************************************************************
40 Guardian Unlimited: Bush faces nuclear fallout in Nevada over
£60bn mountain of radioactive waste
Dan Glaister in Las Vegas
Friday October 22, 2004
The Guardian [http://www.guardian.co.uk]
Roadworks slow progress along the strip in Las Vegas. In the
distance, poking between the mock Eiffel Tower and the mock
pyramid at Luxor, cranes stand out against the autumn sky,
building the next phase of America's seemingly permanent boom
town.
But 95 miles north-east of this city, the powerhouse of Nevada
with 36 million visitors a year, lies another construction site.
Yucca Mountain, projected to cost around $60bn (£32.8bn), has
been chosen by the Bush administration to be the nation's nuclear
waste repository, set to hold the existing 40,000 tons of waste
produced to date by the country's nuclear power stations.
"This material is the deadliest substance known to mankind," said
Peggy Maze Johnson, executive director of Citizen Alert, a local
group that has campaigned against the repository. "It's one
million times more radioactive when it comes out of the reactor
core than when it went in."
In February 2002, just over a year after taking office, President
Bush recommended the Yucca Mountain site to Congress. But many
voters remembered that, as a candidate in September 2000, Mr Bush
promised not to approve the site until it had been "deemed
scientifically safe", a formulation that is credited with helping
him win the state.
Four years on, and with the project stalled by legal challenges
to its scientific justification, those words may come back to
haunt the president in what has become a swing state. A recent
poll showed that Yucca Mountain was the top issue for 3% of
registered voters. "Given what's going on in this country, 3% is
huge," said Ms Maze Johnson.
The polls in Nevada have ranged between a 10% lead for Mr Bush to
a 1% lead for Mr Kerry. In 2000 Mr Bush won the state by 3.5%, or
22,000 votes, but Nevada has changed since then. The
fastest-growing state in the US in 2003, its population has risen
by 300,000 in the past four years to reach 2.4 million. For this
election, there will be 1.1 million registered voters, 66,000 of
them Hispanics, who traditionally lean toward the Democratic
party. The increase in population means that Nevada now
contributes five votes to the electoral college, one more than in
2000. Accordingly, the state has become an increasingly important
and hard-fought battleground in this year's electoral race.
"In 2000 there was no campaign here; the Democrats conceded,"
said David Damore, assistant professor of political science at
the University of Nevada at Las Vegas. "But this year there's
been a strong effort to get new voters registered. The electorate
looks very different to the way it did four years ago."
While voters in the state are likely to be swayed by the same big
issues as the rest of the country - the economy, the war in Iraq
- Nevada is one swing state where the debate about the
environment, thanks to Yucca Mountain, is being aired.
John Kerry has been swift to side with opponents of the plan. In
an article published in the Las Vegas Review-Journal in May, Mr
Kerry accused Bush of "placing the profits of the nuclear power
industry above the safety of Nevada families ... I voted against
the plan to dispose of waste at Yucca Mountain," he wrote, "and
as president I will fight against it."
Republicans chose to use the Yucca Mountain issue as an
opportunity to depict Mr Kerry as a "flip-flopper", pointing out
that he had voted in favour of a 1987 bill, nicknamed the Screw
Nevada bill, which authorised consideration of Yucca Mountain as
the nation's repository for nuclear waste.
In August Mr Kerry defended his position, saying: "Back in 1987
the idea of a national repository seemed like a reasonable thing
... [but] the more I have looked at the issue, the more I have
learned about it, the less safe, the less comfortable I am with
the possibility."
Also in August, Mr Bush told a rally in Las Vegas: "I said I
would make a decision based upon [sound] science, not politics
... and that's exactly what I did."
Ms Maze Johnson said: "The president called it sound science. I
call it botched science. We're not partisan, but Kerry has been
with us when we've needed his vote, which isn't easy for someone
from the north-east."
The north-east of the US is home to the bulk of the country's
nuclear energy industry. At present nuclear waste is stored on
site: across the US, 161 million people live within 75 miles of
temporarily stored nuclear waste.
Local residents and politicians are keen to see it moved as far
away as possible, and the sparsely-populated deserts of Nevada
seemed as good an idea as any. Those opposed to the repository
are also concerned about the transport of waste. It is, critics
say, a disaster waiting to happen, mobile Chernobyls offering the
perfect terrorist target.
"We are a one-industry state," said Ms Johnson, referring to
Nevada's dependence on tourism. "If something stopped people
coming, what would that do to the economy?"
At the Yucca Mountain Information Centre, videos and wallcharts
trumpet the efforts to ensure that the site is safe.
No mention is made of the native American name for the mountain,
Moving Hill, nor scientists' nickname for it, Old Leaky. Nor is
there space for a Geological Society of America report which
warned that should moisture enter the mountain where nuclear
waste is stored in bundles of rods, "radioactive volcanoes could
form on the surface".
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41 Arizona Daily Sun: Waste to go by truck or train to Yucca
[http://www.azdailysun.com]
Thursday, October 21, 2004
High-level radioactive nuclear waste slated to go to the proposed
repository at Yucca Mountain will be transported by train or by
truck, according to information from the U.S. Department of
Energy.
During the 25-year lifespan of the repository, approximately
3,200 train and 1,100 truck shipments are anticipated.
The radioactive material will be placed in transportation "casks"
whose design was approved by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
These casks, made of stainless steel with lead shielding to
prevent the escape of radioactivity, have been subjected to a
variety of tests that include hitting a hard surface at a speed
of 120 mph, attempting to puncture the container with a shaft 6
inches in diameter and setting the cask on fire and burning it at
1,450 degrees Fahrenheit for 30 minutes.
[http://services.azdailysun.com/adserver/redirect/clickthru.cfm?u
=0.56216752&id=90&href=http://www.azcleanelections.gov/?ovmkt=HA2
IIFGOU5QHLI5S2ASLQMF9EK&theLocation=http://www.azdailysun.com/non
_sec/nav_includes/story.cfm]
Additional tests included running a truck carrying a cask into a
brick wall at 80 mph and running a train into a truck carrying a
cask. Failure rate of the casks was not specified in DOE
material.
During transport, trucks and trains will have armed escorts and
will be tracked on satellite.
Advance arrangements will be made with law enforcement agencies
along the route, and emergency management teams along the route
will be notified.
The route must be approved by the NRC, and all shipments must be
inspected prior to departure and during the route.
Also, according to DOE, more than 2,700 hundred shipments of
high-level nuclear waste have been made without the release of
radioactive material since 1965. In that time, there have been
four highway and four rail accidents involving nuclear waste.
None resulted in a breach of the cask.
-- Larry Hendricks, Sun staff reporter
[http://www.azdailysun.com/
Site last updated: 10/21/2004, 05:41 AM
© 2000-2004 Arizona Daily Sun
*****************************************************************
42 Arizona Daily Sun: Yucca Mtn. tour underscores Flag challenge
[http://www.azdailysun.com]
By LARRY HENDRICKS Sun Staff Reporter 10/21/2004
YUCCA MOUNTAIN, Nev. -- At the top, cold wind cuts to the bone.
Creosote bush grabs defiantly to parched soils of a dozen
different shades of brown. Desolation abounds in spartan
splendor.
The nearly three dozen visitors from Coconino County stare in one
direction Tuesday morning at the Nevada Test Site, where hundreds
of atomic bombs have been detonated over the years. In another
direction, they see a mountain range that shrouds Groom Lake,
also known as Area 51, in mystery. Death Valley is beyond another
mountain range to the southwest.
And 1,000 feet below them, through dense and sometimes porous
volcanic rock called "tuff," a 5-mile tunnel runs through the
mountain. They stand on the site proposed (but yet to be licensed
to operate) as a repository of all high-level radioactive waste
in the country.
Three Flagstaff elected officials are among the crowd atop Yucca
Mountain. Based on what they've heard by staff under contract
with the U.S. Department of Energy, they said the repository
appears to be a done deal. What concerns them is not the safety
of the repository itself, which has more than a decade of
scientific study to its credit, but the fact that tons of the
radioactive waste to be stored here -- tentatively scheduled to
begin in 2010 -- will have to come through Coconino County and
Flagstaff to get here.
Mayor Joe Donaldson took the trip for a better understanding of
the repository. "I know enough now to take a solid position on
it," he said, adding that he supports the site's completion.
"Doesn't it make sense to bring (high-level radioactive waste) to
one location? It certainly does to me," Donaldson said. "There
has to be some place for it."
According to information from DOE, nearly 50,000 tons of
high-level radioactive waste sit in 131 locations in 39 states.
All of that material is above ground and within 75 miles of more
than 160 million citizens, posing vast environmental hazard and
making the material potentially vulnerable to sabotage or theft.
Yucca Mountain is an effort to put all of that radioactive waste
in one spot, deep under ground.
If Yucca Mountain gets licensed by the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission to be built and operate, tons of deadly radioactive
waste will be transported by rail or by truck through Coconino
County and Flagstaff.
Jim Driscoll, emergency services coordinator for Coconino County,
said the trip was organized for the benefit of the county's Local
Emergency Planning Committee as part of the federal Community
Right-to-Know Act. The LEPC is responsible for developing local
hazardous material plans, and the act requires that communities
to be informed of all hazardous materials that go into and
through a community -- including high-level radioactive waste.
The Flagstaff Fire Department has radiation response capability,
Driscoll said. The county also has hazardous materials emergency
response plans in place, to include radioactive waste. And
radioactive waste of a much lower level than the waste proposed
to be stored at Yucca Mountain already gets transported through
the city on a regular basis to a low-level nuclear waste site
near Carlsbad, N.M.
"Our main concern is transport, and the transport of those
materials through Coconino County," Driscoll said. "(The Yucca
trip) gives us the opportunity to see the safety measures for its
storage."
Among the agencies that sent staff on the trip were the Coconino
County Department of Health Services, Flagstaff Medical Center,
Flagstaff Fire Department, Flagstaff Police Department, Coconino
County Sheriff's Office, Williams Police Department and the
Arizona Department of Environmental Quality.
Transportation safety is what concerns Donaldson and city
councilmembers Karen Cooper and Kara Kelty, who also took the
trip to Yucca Mountain. During the trip, Donaldson began planning
with Driscoll on setting up a demonstration in the near future
for city residents to see how high-level radioactive waste will
be transported through the city.
Cooper said her next order of business on the issue is to get
busy educating herself on who to lobby for railroad and highway
safety and maintenance to ensure deadly loads like those going to
Yucca Mountain make it to their destination.
Although transportation issues were addressed and information was
made available by the DOE contractor (see related story), the
focus of the tour was on the safety of the repository and how
much money was spent on the project so far: in excess of $5
billion.
Kelty said the tour had a "propaganda feeling." Cooper
characterized the tour as a "concerted selling effort."
Donaldson, Cooper and Kelty all said they were impressed with the
amount of study and science that has gone into the project. The
trip has increased their knowledge about the project and their
ability to talk about the project with Flagstaff residents.
The tour began with a visit to the Yucca Mountain Science Center,
located in downtown Las Vegas. The center contains volumes of
literature about the site and has dozens of displays on how the
site is supposed to work. The displays explain how nuclear
reactors work, why Yucca Mountain is a good choice for a
repository, how a repository would work -- and how radioactive
materials would be transported to the repository.
Max Powell, with the company Bechtel, the contractor for DOE,
acted as tour guide for the group.
"It's the most studied piece of real estate in the world," he
said during the two-hour bus ride across the Nevada desert from
Las Vegas.
That study has focused on storing, for at least 10,000 years,
high-level radioactive waste, Powell said. That waste includes
used nuclear fuel rods from civilian power plants and military
vessels and material left over from making nuclear weapons.
In the early 1980s, Congress passed the Nuclear Waste Policy Act,
which made the federal government responsible for the waste. To
fund the creation of a national repository, citizens who used
power from nuclear power plants were taxed on the electricity
used, creating a surplus of more than $20 billion to find a site,
conduct studies, build a repository, operate it until full, then
monitor it. The military portion of the waste will be covered in
the federal budget.
Currently, there is about 50,000 tons of solid radioactive waste
slated to make the journey to a repository, Powell said. The
Yucca Mountain project makes accommodation for more than 70,000
tons of waste, and if it becomes operational, will remain open,
at present calculations, for approximately 25 years, with
approximately 175 rail and truck shipments to the site per year.
Because there is no railway to the site, more than 300 miles of
track will have to be laid. And roads will have to be paved for
trucks bearing shipments of waste.
Powell said the U.S. government was to take possession of all
radioactive waste to be placed in a national repository by 1998.
That did not happen, and several companies that operate nuclear
power plants have sued for breach of contract.
Several sites in eight states were selected for study. That
number was reduced to one in 1987 -- Yucca Mountain, Powell said.
Although President George Bush has approved Yucca Mountain to be
developed, the site must still get a license to build and operate
from the NRC. The license application is anticipated to be
submitted in December. After that come years of public hearings
on the public safety and environmental impacts the site might
pose.
Critics have already voiced opposition to Environmental Impact
Statements for the site that only went out 10,000 years into the
future. The lifespan of the danger posed by radioactive material
is much, much longer.
If the license is granted, DOE anticipates the first shipments of
radioactive material to arrive in 2010.
If the license is not granted, the site will be abandoned, Powell
said. The ball will be back in the court of Congress to decide
what to do next.
The site currently consists of a huge 5-mile tunnel bored into
Yucca Mountain at a depth of 1,000 feet. The tour stopped at the
south end of the tunnel, called the south portal, to view the
huge 25-foot diameter drilling machine used to bore the hole over
a three-year period.
Bruce Reinert, an engineer with the Los Alamos Test Lab, who met
the tour at the north portal into the mountain, said the north
portal will be where rail and truck shipments will deposit the
radioactive waste for storage.
Because the tunnel was undergoing maintenance, the tour was not
allowed inside.
Reinert explained the scientific study that has gone into the
site.
"Our main enemy in the mountain is water," Reinert said. The type
of rock, coupled with the areas slight rainfall, and making the
containers that hold the nuclear material out of material that is
nearly impossible to corrode will ensure that the water table
1,000 feet below the repository doesn't get contaminated. T
The geology of the mountain is also stable with very few fault
lines for water to flow into the water table, which is a slow
moving, ancient body of water that is not used by the closest
population centers. The area is not prone to earthquakes or
vulcanism.
Another concern is the heat, Reinert said. When radioactive
material breaks down, it creates heat as a by-product.
"We're really going to heat the mountain up," Reinert said.
For instance, inside the tunnels where the waste is to be kept,
the temperature is expected to increase to 212 degrees Fahrenheit
-- the boiling point of water -- and will stay that way for
hundreds of years. Such heat will increase the surface
temperature at the top of the mountain by 1 degree. A section of
the tunnel has been fitted with heaters to simulate the effect of
the heat on the rock. So far, so good, Reinert said.
Needless to say, people will not be able to enter the tunnels
where the waste is stored after they are sealed, which will
require robotic monitoring to ensure that no breaches of the
containers occur, Reinert said.
After the tour, Donaldson said that the presentations about the
testing affirms for him the quality of the work that has gone
into the site, and he is satisfied Yucca Mountain appears to be,
at this time, the best place to put the repository.
Cooper said she was impressed, and sometimes startled, by the
frank explanations of the testing that has gone into the site.
She expressed concern about the theories and the methodologies
that spanned a 10,000-year period without mention of differing
thoughts on alternative concepts to treat the waste -- like
reprocessing it.
Kelty said she was impressed by the ingenuity of the science used
to address the problem of what to do with the nuclear waste.
"But at the same time, I was disheartened by the path this
ingenuity put us on," Kelty said.
She said she felt that during the tour the issue of controlling
the use of energy through sustainable living was not addressed.
Instead, the project, to her, appeared an effort to ensure
unrelenting use of energy.
There are already plans in place for the repository to grow and
stay open hundreds of years longer, according to DOE contractor
staff on the tour. And at some point in the future, the issue of
what to do with nuclear waste will have to be addressed again.
Reporter Larry Hendricks can be reached at
lhendricks@azdailysun.com or 556-2262.
On the web at: www.ymp.gov
[http://www.azdailysun.com
Site last updated: 10/21/2004, 05:41 AM © 2000-2004 Arizona
Daily Sun
*****************************************************************
43 WAVY: Report: Virginia will store more radioactive waste than all but S.C.
October 21, 2004
WASHINGTON A national report shows that in the upcoming years,
Virginia will store more radioactive waste from nuclear power
plants than any other state except South Carolina.
The Environmental Working Group analyzed figures from the U-S
Department of Energy and found that the recent relicensing of
Virginia's Surry and North Anna reactors will allow them to
generate more than 14-hundred tons of nuclear waste.
South Carolina will have 24-hundred tons.
The public interest group says waste can't be stored in Nevada's
proposed Yucca Mountain repository, because that site limits how
much waste it stores.
By law, the Yucca Mountain site is limited to 70-thousand metric
tons of waste. The group says that's roughly equal to the amount
of waste that U-S reactors will have stored at their sites by the
time the repository opens in 2010.
Copyright 2004
Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be
published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
[http://www.worldnow.com] All content © Copyright 2000 -
2004 WorldNow and WAVY. All Rights Reserved.
*****************************************************************
44 Wilmington Advocate: The latest perchlorate results are in,
and bring little resolution to the problem plaguing Tewksbury's
drinking water.
TownOnline.com -
Lowell: zero, Billerica: 670
By Bethan L. Jones/ Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 20, 2004
Tests of the Billerica and Lowell waste water treatment
plants on Oct. 8 vindicated Lowell, which tested below 1 part per
billion in all reports. State officials are now turning their
focus to Billerica, which showed levels of perchlorate far
exceeding the guidelines by the state Department of Environmental
Protection.
"We're fairly confident ... the Lowell plant does not appear
to be a significant source of perchlorate," said Ed Coletta,
spokesman for the state DEP.
The Billerica waste water treatment plant has received two
recent rounds of testing, once on Sept. 28 as part of phase four
testing which was later postponed due to heavy rain, and on Oct.
8 when it was tested again to be in accordance with the rest of
the testing done at that time.
On Sept. 28, the influent water showed 480 ppb and effluent
water 280 ppb. Water prior to chlorination tested at 250 ppb, a
drop consistent with the claim the water purification process can
remove up to 50 percent of the perchlorate.
On Oct. 8, however, water entering the Billerica plant
showed 140 ppb but 670 ppb upon leaving, with water prior to
chlorination testing at 650 ppb.
These results have made a few things very clear, debunking
the theory the perchlorate was a result of the bleach used in the
chlorination process and requiring the state DEP to investigate
the Billerica storm water system and the process within the plant
prior to chlorination.
"[The most recent results] tell us ... that we'll really be
looking at the Billerica waste water treatment plant," said
Coletta. "Our thinking ... it couldn't be the hypochlorate
[bleach]."
Coletta said the state DEP is still formulating a testing
schedule for additional results but will be looking at the storm
water system to see how and where water enters the system to try
and determine if some business or other enterprise is bringing in
the perchlorate, a chemical found in explosives, fertilizers,
leather tanning, and air bags. The DEP also plans to test within
the plant, this time focusing on the water prior to bleaching.
Billerica has been testing their drinking water but so far
have not found any traces perchlorate. If none is found in the
next round of testing, Billerica expects to return to the normal
quarterly testing of their water.
Tewksbury has been experiencing a voluntary ban for children
under the age of 12, pregnant or nursing mothers, and those with
hypothyroidism on public drinking water since early August when
perchlorate levels over the state mandated 1 ppb were discovered.
It is thought the water coming from the Billerica waste water
treatment plant, which enters into the Concord River and then the
Merrimack, where the town draws its drinking water, could be the
cause of Tewksbury's perchlorate problem.
© Copyright of CNC and Herald Interactive Advertising Systems,
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45 Billerica Minuteman: Perchlorate found in plant discharge
By Esther Friedman/ Staff Writer
TownOnline.com -
Thursday, October 21, 2004Tests have yet to determine whether
perchlorate flowing from Billerica's wastewater treatment plant
is a factor in the chemical's presence in the Concord River.
The state Department of Environmental Protection reported
this week tests confirming perchlorate had come from water
discharged by the plant.
But more tests must be done to determine the source of
perchlorate found where the Concord and Merrimack rivers meet,
raising concern about neighboring Tewksbury's drinking supply.
"The concern is what's going into the plant and what happens
once the water is inside the plant," said Ed Coletta, spokesman
for the department. He added, "Tewksbury's intake [of drinking
water] is fairly close to the confluence of the Concord and
Merrimack [Rivers.] We are looking at Billerica as a key spot
right now."
"We're not sure what this means," Town Manager Richard
Montuori said, adding he intends to discuss the news this week
with Department of Public Works staff.
He said the state requires testing of drinking water but not
of water from waste treatment plants.
To date, no trace of the chemical has been found during
three weeks of tests conducted on Billerica's drinking water
since the discovery of perchlorate in the Concord River.
The DEP tested the water flowing through the Billerica waste
water treatment plant on Sept. 28 and Oct. 8. In both tests,
water leaving the plant after passing through the plant's
chlorinating process was found to have higher perchlorate levels
than before entering the plant.
In the next phase of testing, the DEP will examine storm
water in Billerica and its progress through the treatment system,
as well as whether businesses in town may be contributing to the
problem, Coletta said.
The Sept. 28 tests revealed perchlorate at 280 parts
perchlorate per 1 billion parts water. The Oct. 8 tests showed
higher levels of 670 parts perchlorate per 1 billion parts water.
State officials have been analyzing the data to determine an
official maximum contaminate level. Meanwhile it has mandated
that towns notify residents when perchlorate levels raise over 1
part perchlorate per billion parts water, which could be compared
to a grain of salt in a billion grains of sugar.
The DEP is conducting similar tests on water passing through
Lowell's waster water treatment plant.
Billerica is one of several area communities testing for
perchlorate after reports of the chemical's presence in some
water sources.
Percholorate is found in tanneries, weapons manufacturing,
rocket propellants, fireworks, and car air bags.
The DEP sent a letter in January, 2004 to state public water
suppliers outlining emergency regulations requiring communities
to monitor their water systems for a year between February 2004
and February 2005. The data collected will determine whether
communities should continue testing after February 2005.
The DEP warns pregnant woman and children under 12 should
not consume water that exceeds this level, and that no one should
consume water that exceeds 18 parts perchlorate per billion parts
water.
The chemical is associated has been associated with some
health risks, including interference with metabolism and damage
to the thyroid gland.
Health experts also warn that it can hurt to physical
development, behavior, movement, speech, hearing, vision and
intelligence.
Staff writer Bethan Jones contributed to this article.
© Copyright of CNC and Herald Interactive Advertising Systems,
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46 Seattle Times: Hanford tests plans for nuclear waste
Thursday, October 21, 2004 - Page updated at 06:05 P.M.
By SHANNON DININNY The Associated Press
YAKIMA — Scientists have completed another round of tests on a
process that would turn nuclear waste stored in underground tanks
at the Hanford nuclear reservation into glass for long-term
disposal.
About 53 million gallons of highly radioactive waste from World
War II and Cold War-era plutonium production sit in 177 aging
underground tanks at Hanford, less than 10 miles from the
Columbia River.
Plans call for using a process called vitrification to turn the
high-level waste into glass logs for long-term disposal in a
nuclear-waste repository. Construction already is under way on a
plant to treat the high-level waste.
But the plant was not designed to treat the less-radioactive
waste also found in the tanks, and researchers have been studying
a similar process called bulk vitrification to treat that
material.
The highly radioactive waste would be filtered from the
lower-level waste as it flowed into the vitrification plant.
Bulk vitrification requires electric currents to be passed
between electrodes in a mixture of soil and tank waste. The aim
is for the soil to then capture the waste as it melts into glass.
Using about 2 gallons of liquid waste from one of the Hanford
tanks — the largest quantity of actual tank waste to be used in
the bulk-vitrification testing to date — scientists completed an
engineering-scale test the week of Oct. 11.
CH2M Hill Hanford Group, the contractor hired to handle
tank-waste cleanup, termed the test a successful "melt,"
resulting in a 220-pound slab of radioactive glass.
Detailed tests on the glass remain to be completed to confirm
that the mixture meets standards for long-term disposal, said
Rick Raymond, director of supplemental treatment for CH2M Hill.
"It's not a done deal, but it looks very promising," Raymond said
yesterday. "We need to collect more information before any
decision can be made."
The next step would be a full-scale test of the treatment
process. Such a test would provide a solid technical foundation
for evaluating the viability of the technology, said Roy
Schepens, manager of the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of
River Protection, which manages tank-waste cleanup.
The Energy Department has applied for a permit to build and
operate a pilot test facility to treat as much as 200,000 gallons
of low-level waste. Public comment already has been accepted on
the proposal, but the state Department of Ecology has not yet
issued the permit.
For 40 years, the Hanford reservation made plutonium for the
nation's nuclear-weapons arsenal. Today, work there centers on a
$50 billion to $60 billion cleanup, to be finished by 2035.
Much of the cleanup involves retrieving and treating the tank
waste, composed of radioactive liquid, sludge and salt cake. Most
critical was the liquid waste in 149 tanks that had a single-wall
construction, making them more susceptible to leaks as they aged.
An estimated 67 of the tanks leaked radioactive brew into the
soil, contaminating the aquifer and threatening the Columbia
River.
Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company
Times Company [http://www.seattletimescompany.com/]
*****************************************************************
47 Tri-City Herald: Vitrification test proves successful
This story was published Thursday, October 21st, 2004
By Annette Cary Herald staff writer
Two gallons of radioactive and chemical waste from Hanford's
underground tanks have been successfully turned into glass using
a process proposed to treat up to 26 million gallons of the
waste.
It is the first engineering test of bulk vitrification equipment
using real waste, the Department of Energy and its contractor
CH2M Hill Hanford Group announced Wednesday.
"This holds a lot of promise," said Rick Raymond, director of
supplemental treatment for CH2M Hill. "It behaved the same way
with real tank waste as it did with simulants."
Small amounts of tank waste have been vitrified, or turned to
glass, in laboratory ovens about a half-cupful at a time. The
engineering process also has been tried before, but using a
nonradioactive chemical mixture meant to simulate the tank waste.
The engineering test completed this month on real waste produced
a block of glass within a container about the size of a small
refrigerator. It's about one-sixth the size of the containers
that are proposed for the bulk vitrification project.
Huge underground tanks at the Hanford nuclear reservation hold 53
million gallons of radioactive and chemical waste left from more
than 40 years of making plutonium for the nation's nuclear
weapons program.
DOE is building a $5.7 billion vitrification plant to turn much
of that waste into glass for permanent burial. But the Waste
Treatment Plant only will be able to treat up to two-thirds of
the waste by a 2028 deadline.
DOE is looking at two alternate processes that could be used to
treat the additional waste. Steam reforming, which would use
high-pressure steam to turn a mixture of clay and waste into
BB-sized particles, is being studied at the Idaho National
Engineering and Environmental Laboratory near Idaho Falls.
Hanford is studying the second process, bulk vitrification, that
like the vitrification plant would turn the tank waste into
glass.
Waste would be dried, mixed with silica-rich dirt and packed into
insulated boxes up to 24 feet long. Electrodes would be inserted
into the mixture to heat and melt it into a huge brick of glass
to be permanently buried -- container, electrodes and all.
The process only would be used for some of the low-activity
radioactive wastes separated from the tanks. All the high-level
waste would be treated at the vitrification plant under
construction.
CH2M Hill is projecting that using bulk vitrification to treat
some of the waste would cost about 35 percent less than extending
the life of the vitrification plant past the 2028 treatment
deadline or expanding the vitrification plant with a second
low-activity waste treatment facility.
The bulk vitrification project would cost about $1.4 billion.
The next major step in the bulk vitrification project is to build
a full-scale test plant in central Hanford. The engineering scale
test was done at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory's
Radiochemical Processing Laboratory in the 300 Area in southern
Hanford.
Building and operating a test plant for 400 days to treat up to
200,000 gallons of tank waste requires a state permit for
research, development and demonstration.
The state is reviewing public comment on the permit request.
Public comment was extensive and "fairly strongly worded," said
Sheryl Hutchison, spokeswoman for the Washington state Department
of Ecology on Wednesday.
If the permit is awarded, full-scale testing could begin next
fall, Raymond said.
"When we complete the full-scale test we will have a solid
technical foundation for evaluating the viability of the
technology," said Roy Schepens, manager of DOE's Office of River
Protection, in a prepared statement.
Bulk vitrification has been used by others, including a Texas
project to treat some commercial waste with low levels of
radioactivity contaminated with PCBs.
But Hanford's tank waste is chemically different than most forms
of waste, requiring a rigorous testing program to determine the
ability of the glass to capture waste and prevent it from
reaching the environment, Raymond said.
"Both the state and we need to be convinced it is as protective
of the environment and as good as the Waste Treatment Plant's
glass," he said.
With the successful completion of the engineering test, the glass
produced will be subjected to a scientific analysis to confirm
the soil mixture and waste behaved as predicted and meet strict
quality standards. Preliminary results of the analysis are
expected in December.
"We're trying hard to meet the 2028 commitment, and this is one
way we might do it," Raymond said.
© 2004 Tri-City Herald, Associated Press &Other Wire Services
*****************************************************************
48 Tri-City Herald: Review gives Framatome thumbs up
This story was published Thursday, October 21st, 2004
By Annette Cary, Herald staff writer
A Nuclear Regulatory Committee review of safety performance of
the Richland plant that produces commercial nuclear fuel found
that it has corrected problems found in a 2003 emergency
exercise.
The NRC plans a public meeting at 1 p.m. Oct. 28 in Richland to
discuss the safety performance of Framatome ANP, also called
Areva, from May 1, 2002, through July 31, 2004.
The review found that Framatome continued to conduct its
activities safely. A July 2004 emergency exercise demonstrated
that deficiencies found in an October 2003 emergency exercise had
been resolved, according to the NRC.
During the earlier drill with a scenario in which a radiation
release went off-site, workers either were unfamiliar with some
procedures or did not follow them and needed more training,
according to the NRC.
Members of the emergency response team responded without
communication equipment or self-reading dosimeters, according to
the NRC. It also criticized the drill for giving out all
radiation release information at one time rather than throughout
the exercise.
Problems of lack of scenario development, control of the exercise
and lack of training have been resolved, the NRC said in a Sept.
30 letter to Framatome. However, it will continue to monitor the
improvements.
It's also recommending continued improvement in the communication
of criticality safety information to workers and control of
criticality safety documentation. It found a couple of missing
postings among more than 100 that are required. A criticality is
an uncontrolled nuclear reaction that can release bursts of
potentially dangerous radiation.
The public meeting will be in Conference Room 5 of Framatome at
2101 Horn Rapids Road.
© 2004 Tri-City Herald, Associated Press &Other Wire Services
*****************************************************************
49 amarillo.com: Pantex improves training, tooling after incident review
10/21/04
[Amarillo Globe News]
By JIM McBRIDE jim.mcbride@amarillo.com
The Pantex Plant has beefed up worker training and safety
procedures for handling damaged high explosives since a January
incident when workers taped and moved a cracked high-explosive
charge, officials said.
Contractor BWXT Pantex recently completed its investigation,
which was submitted to the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety
Board for review.
Safety Board Chairman John Conway said the plant has taken some
corrective steps since the Jan. 8 incident, which occurred while
Pantex workers were dismantling a W-56 warhead, a type of nuclear
weapon normally carried on a Minuteman intercontinental ballistic
missile.
"They did make some changes in how they handle things,
particularly on what they consider trivial and not trivial with
regard to evidence of cracking," he said. "Administratively, they
are tightening up."
Conway said, however, he could say little about the report's
conclusion's because the National Nuclear Security Administration
has deemed it for "Official Use Only."
"Basically they are still not sure when the cracking started,
whether it's old cracks or new," Conway said. "They believe the
cracks were fairly new, but then they have a caveat saying that
they could have been from awhile back, so it's not conclusive."
After the incident, the safety board sent a letter to NNSA
officials citing concerns that workers could have dropped the
charge, increasing the potential for "a violent reac-tion."
"The prudent response of the production technicians as they saw
unexpected behavior of the explosive provided the only effective
barrier preventing a drop of explosives with potentially
unacceptable consequences," the safety board said in a January
letter.
BWXT Pantex Deputy General Manager Dan Swaim said in a statement
Wednesday that the incident couldn't have caused an accidental
high-explosive blast. The investigation, he said, confirmed that
workers followed proper procedures and stopped the operation when
they observed unexpected conditions.
"There was never a realistic possibility of an accidental
high-explosive detonation during this event. The national
laboratory responsible for the design has concurred with this
conclusion," Swaim said. "However, any abnormality associated
with the handling of high explosives is taken seriously and our
actions taken in response have improved our dismantlement
process."
Pantex has modified some tooling used in dismantlement work,
revised its technical procedures and improved worker training
after the incident review, Swaim said.
The plant trained workers on new tooling and procedures, Swaim
said, and BWXT Pantex and the NNSA's Pantex Site Office conducted
formal readiness reviews before resuming dismantlement work.
The plant also has beefed up its unreviewed safety question
process, Swaim said.
[http://www.amarillo.com/]
*****************************************************************
50 lamonitor.com: Lab's go-go years brought problems
The Online News Source for Los Alamos
[http://www.lac-nm.us]
ROGER SNODGRASS, roger@lamonitor.com [roger@lamonitor.com] ,
Monitor Assistant Editor
EDITOR'S NOTE: This is the second of a four-part series about the
process going on to see who will manage the lab. In the near
future the Department of Energy intends to publish a request for
proposal, a procurement document by which the next manager of Los
Alamos National Laboratory will be chosen.
The competitive process raises the possibility that the next
manager will be something other than the University of
California, which has yet to decide if it will enter the fray.
Lab Direct G. Peter Nanos has made the point that six decades ago
nobody could have described a contractual arrangement that would
have carried the laboratory through its many changes to the
institution that exists today.
Some, who hold the university responsible for the multiple series
of problems that have beset the laboratory the last two years,
have said the Department of Energy should be able to find a
better alternative; others, including many current laboratory
employees and managers, believe it can do far worse. In 1943, the
UC began a sketchily defined collaboration with a research
facility located in Los Alamos, New Mexico, an institution with a
life and spirit of its own.
By the next decade, taking hold on its own reins, Los Alamos
Scientific Laboratory, as it was called at first, was well on its
way to becoming a global brand name. With the twin engines of big
science and high technology under its hood, the lab would enjoy a
virtual blank check during times of plenty for its role in
national security.
As anthropologist Laura McNamara, a student of the lab, said in a
recent interview, scientists of that time were like priests of a
new religion, saving and uplifting lives with their new
technologies.
"From '48 through the '60s, science is the saving grace. It was
going to bring us into the future and help us defeat the
Russians," she said.
Hard work earned many notable scientific achievements - starting
the human genome project, discovering gamma rays, and developing
meson physics, to name a few. The lab's status as chief nuclear
weapon designer was taken almost for granted.
Former lab director Harold Agnew described the UC's role during
his tenure in the '70s as quiet and supportive.
"Regents who were outstanding leaders would come once or twice a
year," he said. "I always felt they made a real difference in
recruiting. Scientists and engineers would like to be in a
university climate. The labs are sort of half-way there."
During most of the '70s, according to an article in Science
magazine, Sept. 12, 1980, UC faced criticism for its laboratory
management. Beating back an attempt by Gov. Jerry Brown, the UC
regents had decided not to end the relationship. In 1977, DOE
resisted an effort by several other universities in the region to
participate in the opportunities available on the hill.
The article says, "In the AEC days, when many things were
simpler, the dominant style in dealing with the labs was
laissez-faire."
And it concludes, "So far, DOE has not found a way to make an
effective general evaluation of the work done at Los Alamos."
Some writers and observers date the beginning of a tidal change
in the nation's relationship with Los Alamos to Rachel Carson's
Silent Spring in 1962 and the rise of environmentalism. The
partial meltdown of the Three-Mile Island nuclear plant in March
1979 and the total meltdown of the Soviet Union's Chernobyl Unit
4 in April 1986 are frequently cited examples of growing national
skepticism with the nuclear field in general.
President Kennedy's Cuban Missile Crisis of the '60s, the
Non-proliferation Treaty signed at the end of President Johnson's
term, and "Nuclear Winter" - a widely publicized scenario of
nuclear holocaust, introduced by Carl Sagan and others in a
scientific journal in 1983 - can be cited as early milestones of
a shift in attitudes toward nuclear weapons.
Those weapons were put on a schedule toward reduction by the
START I treaty signed by President Reagan in 1986, the same year
the Challenger explosion dramatized catastrophic safety problems
in large-scale government science programs.
When atomic testing came to a close with President George Bush's
tacit acceptance of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty in 1989,
the laboratory gradually adapted and then began to thrive in the
role of overseeing, that is "stewarding," a share of the tens of
thousands of nuclear weapons that had been built during the Cold
War.
Stockpile stewardship turned out to be practically a new lease on
life. After a few years of adjustment during the early '90s,
LANL's budget grew steadily, blessed with the political influence
of Sen. Pete Domenici, R-NM.
During the 1990s, however, the prominence of countervailing
national concerns including environmental safety and health came
to the fore.
When a DOE Secretary James Watkins dispatched "Tiger Team," to
Los Alamos in November 1991 by, it reported multiple violations
of federal regulations, including the discharge of radioactive
waste that had reached the Rio Grande, and waste and air emission
monitoring failures.
Former LANL Director Siegfried Hecker related at a Senate
Committee on Energy and Natural Resources hearing in June 2003.
The laboratory's relationship with DOE began to change at that
time, becoming ever more "compliance driven," relying upon
additional DOE overseers and auditors.
Hecker said they "blurred lines of responsibility instead of
improving safety."
Admittedly he added, the laboratories "were slow to adapt to
changing requirements and public expectations."
Speaking before the same committee in July 2003, Paul Fleury,
Dean of Engineering at Yale University, specifically cited the
Tiger Teams. "In their wake was left a seemingly unending set of
orders, rules, directives and procedures, indicative of an
approach DOE was to follow for years hence: increased audits and
paperwork, a mode of compliance rather than cooperation," he
said.
He saw the immediate consequences as a vice president at Sandia
National Laboratories in 1992-93.
"This approach led to decreased scientific and technological
productivity, increased staff both inside and outside the lab
dedicated to preparing for endless audits and policing
compliance, confusion about lines of authority and accountability
and a noticeable erosion of the sense of trust and teamwork so
necessary for a productive partnership," he said.
By the 1990s, uneasy with its regulatory relationships, LANL was
showing signs not only of its age and stressful line of work, but
also tensions with deeper changes in the country.
Not all at once, but at least over the last decade or so and
increasingly over the last five years, the laboratory became a
problem.
And then, the turn of the new century delivered three staggering
blows: the case of Wen Ho Lee, the LANL computer scientist
imprisoned for nine months on charges that all but vanished
before his trial began; the Cerro Grande Fire that destroyed
hundreds of homes, disrupted the community and narrowly avoided
seriously damaging the laboratory; and the missing hard drives,
containing top secret nuclear information, found later behind a
copying machine.
NEXT: Problems at the lab.
© 2003 Los Alamos Monitor All Rights Reserved.
*****************************************************************
51 PISJ: DOE dedicates new facility at INEEL
Pocatello Idaho State Journal:
By Dan Boyd [dboyd@journalnet.com] - Journal Writer
POCATELLO - So much for baby steps.
The Department of Energy dedicated a new facility in Idaho
Wednesday that will help power a mission to Pluto as its first
major mission.
The Space and Security Power Systems Facility at the Argonne West
site, located adjacent to the Idaho National Engineering and
Environmental Laboratory, is now officially operational and ready
to rocket.
"There's a real sense of mission here that's palpable," said
Deputy Secretary of Energy Kyle McSlarrow. "It feels like the
pace of things is picking up." McSlarrow was at the site for the
first time Wednesday, having had three previous visits canceled
due to crises.
When he finally made it, he was obviously impressed. "Seeing the
facility, it's obvious that there are first-class people and
first-class facilities," he said.
The Space and Security Power Systems Facility will provide
radioisotope power systems to NASA in the form of Radioisotope
Thermoelectric Generators, or RTGs, that help heat and propel
spacecrafts. The power in the devices comes from a scientific
process involving the radioactive decay of plutonium-238.
"It's very consistent and lasts for years and years ... into the
decades," said DOE spokesman Tim Jackson. "It gives the Idaho
site a very important place in the space mission and we're very
excited about that."
The space mission Jackson referred to will dovetail with a larger
nuclear research mission that promises to put the new Idaho
National Laboratory, which combines INEEL and Argonne West, at
the forefront of science in the 21st century.
"We see this site as a flagship," McSlarrow said. "The nuclear
research and development role, I think, will only grow."
Previously, a site in Ohio had produced the generators for space
missions, such as the Cassini Spacecraft that entered the orbit
of Saturn on June 30.
Now, such technology will be produced in Idaho.
Dan Boyd - Journal Writer"> The Department of Energy dedicated a
new facility in Idaho Wednesday that will help power a mission to
Pluto as its first major mission.">
McSlarrow said the Idaho Congressional delegation and Gov. Dirk
Kempthorne have been indefatigable proponents in bringing the
nuclear mission to Idaho.
"Three and a half years ago there were some question marks," he
said. "Now, there's a unified vision.
"We've coasted on decisions we've made 30 to 40 years ago and now
we need to get to the next generation."
Dan Boyd [dboyd@journalnet.com] covers higher education,
politics and natural resource issues for the Journal. He can be
reached at 239-3168 or by e-mail at dboyd@journalnet.com
[dboyd@journalnet.com] .
This document was originally published online on Thursday,
October 21, 2004
Copyright © 2004 Pocatello Idaho State Journal
P O Box 431 Pocatello, ID 83204-0431
*****************************************************************
52 Scripps: Work begins to tear down WWII relics in Oak Ridge
By FRANK MUNGER Scripps Howard News Service October 24, 2004
OAK RIDGE, Tenn. - It's been called the final leg of the
Manhattan Project.
Workers here are dismantling K-25, one of the engineering
marvels of World War II, a mile-long, four-story piece of atomic
history.
At the time of its urgent construction in 1943, K-25 was
the world's biggest building under one roof. The first-of-a-kind
facility used a gaseous process to separate isotopes of uranium
and to concentrate fissile U-235 for atomic bombs and an early
generation of nuclear reactors.
Tearing down K-25 and its companion plant, K-27, will be
almost as complex, and nearly as challenging, as building them in
the first place. And, oddly enough, the cleanup will take longer
than the construction.
About 500 workers are engaged in the project and that
work force will grow in the months ahead.
"We're moving on out," said Greg Eidam, who's overseeing
the work for Bechtel Jacobs Co., the government's cleanup manager
in Oak Ridge. The decommissioning and demolition of old
facilities are supposed to be completed by late 2008.
The scale of the cleanup project can be described with
numbers, beginning with a price tag that's likely to exceed $400
million. But the site almost has to be seen for one to comprehend
the enormity of the task at hand.
K-25 covers 44 acres, with 1.64 million square feet of
floor space. Inside the building are miles and miles of
industrial processing equipment. The steel jungle was used to
separate atoms of U-235 from the U-238, pumping a gaseous mixture
of uranium hexafluoride through the system's highly classified
barrier filters.
Each wing of the U-shaped building is nearly a half-mile
long. The building has four levels, including a basement and
three stories above ground.
The uranium-enrichment "cascade" has 3,108 stages. Each
of those room-sized stages includes two compressors, a converter
and associated piping. The converters - weighing up to 12,500
pounds apiece - were where the actual separation of uranium
isotopes took place.
The smaller, rectangular K-27 building was constructed in
1945, and its enrichment cascade consists of 540 stages. The
interior equipment is essentially the same as that of the K-25
arrangement.
Both the K-25 and K-27 operations were shut down in 1964,
when the U.S. government decided it had stockpiled a sufficient
amount of highly enriched uranium for weapons purposes. Other
parts of the Oak Ridge plant continued to operate until 1985,
enriching uranium to lower levels as needed for fuel in nuclear
reactors.
Although K-25 was built during the World War II Manhattan
Project, it didn't produce the enriched uranium used in the
A-bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan. That was primarily
accomplished at another Oak Ridge plant, Y-12, which employed a
competing technique that separated uranium's isotopes with
electromagnets.
After the war, however, K-25's gaseous diffusion became
the favored method of enriching uranium, and the Oak Ridge plant
was a model for Cold War plants at Paducah, Ky., and Portsmouth,
Ohio, constructed in the 1950s. The Paducah plant is still in
operation.
The dismantling of the K-25 and K-27 building is expected
to generate about 450,000 cubic yards of waste, much of it
contaminated with radioactive uranium and other hazardous
elements.
Dennis Hill, a spokesman for Bechtel Jacobs, said more
than 90 percent of the wastes will be buried in Oak Ridge, either
at DOE's nuclear disposal site on Bear Creek Road or a sanitary
landfill at the Y-12 National Security Complex.
Some of the hotter items, especially those contaminated
with radioactive technetium-99, will be shipped to the
government's Nevada Test Site for disposal.
(Contact Frank Munger of The Knoxville News Sentinel in Tennessee
at http://www.knoxnews.com.)
*****************************************************************
53 [du-list] CADU News 18
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 2004 19:03:50 -0700
CADU NEWS
ISSUE 18
September 2004
Campaign Against Depleted Uranium, Bridge
5 Mill, 22a Beswick St, Ancoats, Manchester
M4 7HR
Tel/Fax: +44 (0)161 273 8293
email: info@cadu.org.uk
website http//: www.cadu.org.uk
Coming Soon - The
Third
International Day of
Action
November 6th will see the International Day of Action to
Ban Uranium Weapons.
Long term CADU supporters will remember the success of the
last two years’ International Days of Action Against Depleted
Uranium Weapons, in which actions took place all over the
world. This year the day will have an even more international
flavour as it is being supported through the International
Coalition to Ban Uranium Weapons (ICBUW), of which
CADU is a founding member.
November 6 has been set by UN as the International Day for
Preventing the Exploitation of the Environment in War and
Armed Conflict. ICBUW is therefore asking all groups and
individuals to
organise actions to ban uranium weapons. Just having a small-
scale study meeting or doing a one-person petition on the
street will contribute a lot to gathering momentum for the
international campaign. So please join us!
So far actions are being planned by groups in Belgium, Italy,
Great Britain, Japan, The Netherlands and the United States.
To give you some ideas here are a selection of what is being
planned:
In Belgium the Belgian Coalition to Ban Uranium Weapons
will visit the Prime Minister, and the Ministries of Defence and
Foreign Affairs, to hand over a copy of collected petition
signatures.
In Italy PeaceLink are organising a march and event in
Florence for soldiers and their families, scientists and people
from Iraq and Bosnia to tell their stories.
In Japan the NO DU Hiroshima Project are organising a
gathering at a park by the A-bomb Dome in Hiroshima, with
music performance and speeches as well as a mini photo-
exhibition on the Iraq war and the DU damage.
In Manchester we at CADU are organising a public meeting
in Manchester on November 3rd and on November 6th we will
be having a stall and some street theatre in Manchester City
Centre. We would love people to come and be involved with
us or to organise their own actions. We can supply leaflets and
publicity materials for groups and individuals who are
interested. If you are interested please contact us at 0161 273
8292 or email us at info@cadu.org.uk
Launch of International Petition
Campaign
ICBUW has launched an international petition to ban uranium
weapons. It can be signed online at
www.bandepleteduranium.org or paper copies are available
from CADU (maybe having a stall and collecting signatures
would be a good event for the Day of Action?). Please sign it
yourself right away and urge your friends to do so, too.
This petition campaign will continue until the realisation of a
treaty to ban uranium weapons, but we have set our first
deadline on February 15, 2005, so that we can appeal to the
EU Parliament or to the UN Disarmament Committee to be
held in Geneva next spring.
The petition states:
We, the people, need to let governments and the United
Nations know that these weapons can have no part in a
humane and caring world. Every signature counts!
We call for your support to demand:
1. An immediate end to the use of
uranium weapons.
2. Disclosure of all locations where uranium weapons have
been used and immediate removal of the remnants and
contaminated materials from the sites under strict control.
3. Health surveys of the 'depleted' uranium victims and
environmental investigations at the affected sites.
4. Medical treatment and compensation for the 'depleted'
uranium victims.
5. An end to the development, production, stockpiling, testing,
trade of uranium weapons.
6. A Convention for a Total Ban on Uranium Weapons.
UK DU Test for Veterans “Too
Little, Too Late”
The National Gulf Veterans and Families Association has
accused the Ministry of Defence of deliberately dragging its
feet in waiting 14 years to implement a screening test to detect
uranium in the bodies of Gulf war soldiers.
After the announcement by the MoD that a new test would be
offered to 500 military and civilian personnel who served in the
Gulf war, veterans are saying that the procedure is too little,
too late for the thousands who have suffered unexplained ill-
health for years.
Many veterans who had been exposed to radiation from
battlefield shells believe they may have levels of depleted
uranium in their bodies that can no longer be detected, and that
may have caused kidney failure or leukaemia.
The MoD set up an independent committee of scientists’ and
veterans' representatives in 2001 - the Depleted Uranium
Oversight Board - to develop a screening process.
Three years later, they are ready to take applications from
those who served in the Gulf area between August 1990 and
July 31 1991. The test will also be made available to those who
served in Kosovo from August 5 1994. The results will take
three months to come back.
The four clinics at which testing will be done are St Thomas'
hospital in London, the Glasgow Royal Infirmary, Southmead
Hospital in Bristol and the University of North Tees in
Stockton-on-Tees.
Leading Radiation Scientist Speaks
Out On Government Scientists
Downplaying DU Risks
Dr Keith Baverstock the World Health Organisation's senior
radiation adviser in Europe spoke out at a conference on low
level radiation in Edinburgh, about the pressures to ignore the
dangers posed by radioactivity. Using examples of
compensation to veterans of nuclear tests and DU weapons he
argued that by downplaying the risks from radiation,
government agencies had undermined public trust in science
and technology.
As reported in CADU News 17 Dr Baverstock wrote a paper
while at the WHO on the cancer risk posed by DU weapons
which was suppressed. In Edinburgh he explained that he
outlined in the paper possible mechanisms by which DU posed
a cancer risk that were ignored by the International Committee
on Radiation Protection (ICRP), the International Atomic
Energy Agency (IAEA) and the World Health Authority.
He argued that insoluble DU retained in the lung over a long
period can cause ‘genotoxicity’, through a combination of its
radioactive and chemical properties. The uranium binds to
DNA and proteins and is slowly transferred from the lung
tissue to the blood, from where it can move around the
body, particularly to the bones, before finally being excreted
to the kidney. Another potential cancer risk is from the
‘bystander’ effect, which shows that irradiated cells pass on
damage to surrounding healthy cells.
“When the WHO were advised of these potential mechanisms
they ignored the information in the preparation of a
Monograph on the health effects of DU published in 2001 and
subsequently suppressed the publication of a paper postulating
these three mechanisms.” Baverstock argued. “In an ideal
world the WHO would have alerted the IAEA and ICRP to the
potential hazard of DU oxide dusts in Iraq.”
His paper is now available online at
http://www.mindfully.org/Nucs/DU-Radiological-Toxicity-
WHO5nov01.htm or is available in paper format from the
CADU office.
Exemption to Labeling of DU
Munitions Not Renewed
In CADU News 16 we reported on a campaign by US groups
to force labelling of DU munitions in transportation.
Previously DU munitions were subject to a special U.S.
Department of Transportation (DOT) exemption, DOT-E
9649, which allows the shipment of depleted uranium
munitions without a DOT “Radioactive” placard displayed on
the shipment. This potentially put emergency services and
the public at risk as responding services would not have
known to implement special protective measures in case of
an accident. The exemption ran out on the 30th June and
so far has not been renewed, although the U.S. Army
Military Surface Deployment and Distribution Command
(SDDC, formerly MTMC), which manages the shipment of
depleted uranium munitions, has been granted a time
extension in order to provide information requested by the
DOT. Campaigners are still being urged to send letters to
the Department of Transportation to ensure a future
exemption is ruled out.
For more information see: http://www.traprockpeace.org/
Civilian DU Worker Wins Legal
Aid to Sue Honeywell
A civil engineer in the aerospace industry in Yeovil, UK, Mr
Richard 'Nibby David', has won legal aid to take his case to the
High Court. The case will be heard from the 6th to the 17th
December 2004. The awarding of legal aid in a personal injury
case is extremely unusual, but Mr David’s case was judged to
be “in the wider public interest”.
>From 1985 to 1995, Richard ‘Nibby’ David worked as a civil
engineer in the aerospace industry in Yeovil, UK, for the
company Normalair Garrett, now owned by the US company
Honeywell. Mr David suffers from severe illnesses, which he
claims he contracted on the work floor, handling aircraft
components containg DU .
One of the proofs of the effects of possible poisoning with DU
was delivered by Dr. W. Hoffman of the Bremen Institute for
Prevention, Research and Social Medicine, who carried out
tests which proved Nibby to have an increased rate of dicentric
and ring chromosome mutations in his lymphocytes. These
mutations are known to be caused by exposure to ionising
radiation.
Subsequent genetic examination and analysis was done by Dr.
Beaman at the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital. It showed
Mr. David had developed the exceedingly rare Gitelmans
syndrome. This is a genetic condition which affects the kidneys
from birth and depends on the genes involved being inherited
from both the mother and the father (in itself a rare
occurrence). Usually the syndrome is active from birth, but Mr.
David developed it in his 40’s. Dr. Beaman says the actual
cause of the genetic mutation and mature onset is out of his
range of expertise.
The hearing was originally scheduled for October but has been
postponed in order to allow more time to compile the
evidence. The NDDU DU Support Group has been set up to
help Mr David. To make a donation or to find out more about
Mr David’s case please visit www.bandepleteduranium.org
where details of how to donate online are given.
Independent Gulf War Syndrome
Inquiry in London
An independent inquiry into Gulf War Syndrome has been set
up in London to establish the facts about Gulf war illnesses and
resolve the long-standing dispute over their causes. The
independent inquiry is funded by an anonymous donor and
headed by former law lord, Lord Lloyd of Berwick.
The inquiry will consider all aspects of potential harm to
soldiers, including vaccines, chemical
weapons and depleted uranium. The announcement of the
inquiry has been very embarrassing for the government which
has always refused to hold a public inquiry. The Government
responded by saying it would be inappropriate for ministers to
give evidence and by writing to scientists paid to research
illnesses in veterans warning them not to reveal ongoing
findings.
The kind of obstructive behaviour shows the arrogance of the
government, more interested in saving face than finding the
truth about what happened to soldiers who served in the war.
Lord Lloyd will announce shortly when he will reveal his
findings.
Italy: Justice for a veteran's family
in DU
related case
A court in Rome ordered the Italian Ministry of Defence to
compensate the family of Stefano Melone, a soldier who died
of a malignant vascular tumour. According to the court, Mr
Melone's death was "due to exposure to radioactive and
carcinogen substances" on missions in the Balkans.
Stefano Melone was suddenly, in February 2000, diagnosed
with cancer (Epithelioid Hemangioendothelioma of the bone,
lung and pleura). In August 2000 a military commission
acknowledged the link between his illness and the military
service abroad, so he applied for a pension. However, after
many surgical operations, he died on 8th November 2001 in
Milan, at the age of 40.
Since then, his wife has been engaged in a battle to obtain
compensation from the Ministry of Defence, together with
many other soldiers and families in similar situations. Before
dying, Stefano had asked his wife to do this, so that their
children and all the other families could safeguard a future in
spite of the terrible pain and loss. To date, 27 Italian soldiers
have died of lymphoma, cancer or leukaemia, and 260 are
currently ill, after their missions abroad. Many of these
missions took place in countries where DU has been used,
including Bosnia, Kosovo, and Iraq.
After three reports and many mistakes, a commission
nominated by the Ministry of Defence, has eventually
acknowledged an increase in lymphoma among soldiers
assigned to missions in the Balkans. In spite of that, the Italian
Ministry of Defence refuses to give compensation to their
families, let alone to admit that DU has a role in these cases.
Hardly any information is given to soldiers currently on
missions abroad about the risks the are facing, and whoever
complains about this lack of information is treated as a traitor
and marginalised. It is too expensive and difficult to obtain
medical tests and therapies for these kinds of health problems.
Only a few soldiers or families have the courage to stand up
and ask for compensation after illness or death.
On the 26th of June, in Rome, the magistrates of a local court
have ruled that the Ministry of Defence must pay 500.000
Euros in compensation to Stefano Melone's family.
By Francesco Iannuzzelli of Peacelink, Italy
(http://www.peacelink.it/).
New Paper from Dr. Rosalie
Bertell
As her testimony to the Hiroshima World Tribunal on Iraq the
wonderful Dr Rosalie Bertell has written a new paper “The
Use of DU Weapons in War”. It is available from the CADU
website and in paper form from the office
Free Huda Ammash
Female Iraqi scientist Huda Ammash has been held by US
forces after claims that she was involved in Iraq’s WMD
programme. Now that the Iraq Survey Group has found that
there were no missiles, or indeed WMD programmes, CADU
believes Dr Ammash, who in the past has spoken out about
DU, must be released. CADU opposes all imprisonment
without trial or evidence.
Vieques Bomb Targets Proposed
for Superfund Listing
The Atlantic Fleet Weapons Training Area (AFWTA) on and
around the islands of Vieques and Culebra, Puerto Rico used
for live fire training for 100 years may soon be declared a
Superfund site.
Responding to the request of Puerto Rico Governor Sila
Calderon, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
Friday proposed to add the area to the list of the country’s
most contaminated hazardous waste sites.
The listing would make the site eligible for federal cleanup
funding. Contaminants of the land and water may include
depleted uranium, mercury, lead, copper, magnesium, lithium,
perchlorate, TNT, napalm, PCBs, solvents and pesticides, the
EPA said. Protesters camped, demonstrated and were arrested
repeatedly until the Navy agreed to cease the live fire practice
in 2003.
UNEP to Study Environmental
Hotspots in Iraq
Since the attack on Iraq in 2003 the United Nations
Environmental Programme has been wanting to go into Iraq to
study the environmental effects of the conflict. The United
States and UK governments have not allowed this to happen,
citing the security situation as the reason. UNEP has now
announced a revised programme by which it will work with
Iraqi scientists, from the Iraqi Ministry of the Environment, to
carry out a study of a variety of environmental hotspots in Iraq
and samples will be sent back to Europe for analysis.
The study of depleted uranium is conspicuously missing from
the press release announcing the project, which cites other
areas of concern such as sulphur mines and chemical refinery
sites. However in an interview with Pekka Haavisto, 46, a
former Finnish environment minister who now chairs the U.N.
Environment Program’s post-conflict environmental-
assessments task force on Iraq, said “And of course, DU also
is a concern, because some of these vehicles, especially tanks,
may have been targeted with DU weapons. Our experience
from the Balkans is you have to clean the DU from the tanks
before you recycle the metal. This is a high priority....Then if
you speak of the Gulf War of 1991, there are figures indicating
that up to 280 tons of DU munitions were used. If you
compare that with Kosovo, where 9 tons of DU was used, and
with Bosnia where 3 tons was fired, the amount used in Iraq is
quite big.
DU Round Found on Military Base
Where it Was ‘Never Used’
Army contractors uncovered a DU round at the Cape Edwards
military, New England, USA, base. Army officials have long
said DU was never fired on Camp Edwards. But some Upper
Cape base activists said the military didn't always monitor
defense contractors who improved and developed weapons.
Investigators concluded it was a depleted uranium round after
testing it with a machine that measures radioactivity, said
groundwater program manager Kent "Hap" Gonser. James
Kinney of Sandwich, a member of the citizen panel that
monitors the Camp Edwards cleanup, "I don't think anyone
just happened to have one depleted uranium round out there
that fell out of their pocket," Kinney said. "If there was one,
I'm sure there were more." It makes us wonder how many
other military bases have used DU in secret?
Draft Convention to Ban Uranium
Weapons Now Ready
A draft convention to ban uranium weapons has now been
prepared by Manfred Mohr and A. Samsel of IALANA. The
convention has been adopted by ICBUW and can now be used
in campaigning work to advance its progress into the United
Nations as a treaty. Entitled a “Draft Convention on the
prohibition of development, production, stockpiling, transfer
and use of uranium weapons and on their destruction”.
The Draft Convention contains a general and comprehensive
prohibition of the development, production, transport, storage,
possession, transfer and use of uranium ammunition, uranium
armour-plate and of any other military use of uranium. The
Convention also outlines obligations concerning the abolition
of uranium weapons and the destruction of uranium weapons
construction facilities. The Convention obliges signatories to
decontaminate or to ensure a rapid decontamination of
contaminated areas at most five years after its entry into force,
emphasising the protection of and assistance to civilians living
in these areas. Each State Party that uses uranium weapons in
a conflict is responsible for the consequences, including
compensation of the victims.
Please contact CADU for more details.
CERRIE Fails to Find Agreement
The Committee Examining Radiation Risks from Internal
Emitters (CERRIE), which was set up by former environment
minister Michael Meacher to review models used to estimate
health risks from radioactive materials, has failed to include the
minority report of dissenting scientists from ‘The Low Level
Radiation Campaign’ (LLRC). Scientists representing
Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth were among those who
agreed not to include the opinion of LLRC and the exact
reasons their opinion was not included are not clear at this
point.
Michael Meacher has reacted angrily to the news, accusing the
final report of giving a one-sided establishment opinion. What
is clear is that the failure of CERRIE to reach a position on the
dangers of low level radiation is a grave disappointment for all
those who campaign on the issue and were hoping it
represented a unique opportunity for an authoritative new
understanding of the issue. The minority report is being
released by LLRC and copies can be obtained by emailing
bramhall@llrc.org
CADU at the Boston Social Forum
This July I was invited to speak at the International Peace
Conference which was organised by the American Friends’
Service Committee and our friend Joseph Gerson. At the same
event, US groups had organised a workshop on DU and kindly
invited me to speak and share in the workshop. I explained the
history of our own organisation and the progress we were
making in the UK, not to mention our dismay when we knew
that the UK and the US had again dared to use DU in the
recent Gulf War. I was also keen to emphasise the international
character of the campaign now and the strength of the newly
formed ICBUW. It was so useful to be meeting up in the US
with our campaigning friends there; after all it is only the US
and the UK governments who have used these radiological
weapons. It was so cold in Boston that all the meeting rooms
were chilly, but I was told even the air conditioning couldn’t be
adjusted! This is even more chilling when you consider the
advanced technological weapons the US military has under its
command...But the workshop got a good audience with some
new folks to the campaign. Our thanks to the Military Toxics
Project for setting up the meeting.
Rae Street- CADU
Support CADU Through Using
Your Telephone!
CADU has a partnership with the ethical phone provider, The
Phone Coop which allows CADU supporters to support
CADU while accessing a great and cheap phone service. The
Phone Coop has a new 1p anytime and 1p evenings &
weekends offer which not only makes it highly competitive but
means CADU receives a proportion of all profits. If you are
interested in becoming a member please contact us at the
office.
A Message to All CADU
Supporters
CADU is very pleased to announce that we have received
funding for a part time worker from the Joseph Rowntree
Reform Trust Limited. This gives us the security to carry on
planning our work for the year ahead. As our supporters know
the last year has been a difficult time for CADU financially and
without donations from individuals and groups we would not
have been able to carry on. Thank you for all your support
over the years which has allowed us to reach the position
we have.
Subscribe to CADU News - by affiliating to CADU
Affiliation rates (including a paper copy of CADU
News four times a year) are £8 per year
(unwaged/student) £10 per year (waged) and £30
(groups), but please consider donating more than this
if possible.
Please send a cheque or a request for a standing order
to:
CADU, Bridge 5 Mill, 22a Beswick St, Manchester M4 7HR
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