***************************************************************** 01/19/05 **** RADIATION BULLETIN(RADBULL) **** VOL 13.13 ***************************************************************** RADBULL IS PRODUCED BY THE ABALONE ALLIANCE CLEARINGHOUSE ***************************************************************** Send News Stories to news@energy-net.org with title on subject line and first line of body NUCLEAR POLICY 1 BBC: UN seeks return to Iranian site 2 ITAR-TASS: All opportunities for settling Iran's nuclear problem - L 3 Independent: Why the hawks are circling over Iran 4 Korea Herald: [EDITORIAL] Start compensation process 5 Xinhua: US hopes DPRK to return to six-party talks 6 Korea: Digital Chosunilbo: Korean A-Bomb Victims Awarded Compensatio 7 US: [NukeNet] Letters to the Editor Needed 8 US: Las Vegas SUN: Nuke Suspect: Feds Exaggerate Charges 9 US: FOXNews.com: Few Tough Challenges at Confirmation Hearings 10 Bellona: Belgium to allocate $66m for nuclear co-operation with Russ NUCLEAR REACTORS 11 US: [NukeNet] Editorial: Three Mile Island record bodes ill for 12 [NukeNet] Prevent 3 Or 4 Chernobyls At Once: Demand Stricter 13 [NukeNet] Galena council approves nuclear power plant 14 US: Racial Discrimination Reactor Appeal Denied 15 US: Alert: Comments needed by 1/24 to improve reactor security 16 US: NRC: NRC to Meet with Nebraska Public Power District to Discuss 17 US: NRC: News Release - 2005-011 - NRC’s Advisory Committee on 18 US: NRC: NRC Cancels Public Meeting Scheduled for Jan. 19 in Mineral 19 US: NRC: Sunshine Act Meeting 20 US: NRC: [License Nos. 37-00030-02, 37-00030-08, EA-04-148] 21 US: NRC: Environmental Assessment and Finding of No Significant Impa 22 US: chillicothe gazette: NRC opens up to public - 23 CANOE: Internet AECL expands Candu joint engineering agreement 24 Independent: Misery of fathers, Nuclear power risks and others 25 US: Brattleboro Reformer: Disaster plan criticized 26 Xinhua: Nigeria seeks IAEA assistance on nuclear power plants 27 US: APP: Exelon's Three Mile Island record bodes ill for Oyster Cree 28 US: APP: Radiation data sent to 100,000 living near Oyster Creek 29 US: Las Vegas SUN: Bush Appoints Two to NRC NUCLEAR SAFETY 30 US: [du-list] Fw: [Bananas] Hanford downwinders burden of proof 31 US: peoples networks: White House Science Phobia, Spin Taint News of NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE 32 US: Deseret news: Fight over 'hot' waste may lose its sizzle 33 Las Vegas SUN: Railroad crews rebuild washed-out tracks in southern 34 US: Rocky Mountain News: Chemical found in testing well 35 US: Deseret News: New vision in Utah's old statehouse 36 US: The Spectrum: Legislators visit state's heart to set new course 37 Las Vegas RJ: Rail line could be back up Monday 38 Las Vegas SUN: Letter: Yucca's risks outweigh benefits 39 Las Vegas SUN: Administration pressed on Yucca budget 40 US: star tribune Editorial: Toxic cargoes, needless calamity 41 US: Platts: NRC rules depleted uranium can be considered low-level w 42 Salt Lake Tribune: Borders of Utah may shut for hot waste 43 US: TheNewMexicoChannel: Eunice Uranium Plant Takes Another Step For 44 ITAR-TASS: Radioactive cargo detected on Russia-Georgia border 45 US: St. Cloud Times: Xcel asks to store more nuclear waste in Montic 46 US: AU ABC: Rio Tinto reports uranium production boost. NUCLEAR WEAPONS US DEPT. OF ENERGY 47 [du-list] Hearing Jan 18, 2005 in Piketon] 48 [NukeNet] Nuclear Watchdogs Partner to Prepare Bid for LANL; 49 DenverPost: Senators get weapons pledge 50 lamonitor.com: Energy committee assesses Bodman 51 CBS: Senate panel warmly receives energy nominee Bodman - 52 Albuquerque Tribune: Bingaman, Domenici should grill energy secretar OTHER NUCLEAR 53 BBC: Germany honours Einstein's genius ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** FULL NEWS STORIES ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** 1 BBC: UN seeks return to Iranian site Last Updated: Wednesday, 19 January, 2005 By Bethany Bell BBC News, Vienna [Detail of Parchin complex (photo: DigitalGlobe/Isis)] The US says Parchin shows suspicious structures (photo: DigitalGlobe/Isis) The United Nations nuclear watchdog, the IAEA, wants its inspectors to return to Iran's Parchin military site. The United States says it believes work on a secret nuclear weapons programme may have been carried out there. IAEA inspectors went to Parchin last week, several months after first asking Iran for permission to visit it. They took environmental samples to test for traces of nuclear materials but did not get full access to the site. Now diplomats say the inspectors want to visit another part of the Parchin complex. The US accuses Iran of trying to develop nuclear weapons. It suspects that the Parchin site - a centre for munitions work - could have been used to test explosive components for an atomic bomb. Iran denies the charge, saying its nuclear activities are entirely for peaceful purposes. So far, the IAEA has found no clear evidence of a nuclear weapons programme in Iran but the head of the agency, Mohamed ElBaradei, says the jury is still out on the matter. ***************************************************************** 2 ITAR-TASS: All opportunities for settling Iran's nuclear problem - Lavrov 19.01.2005, 14.31 "As for Iran, I foremost wish to underline that all the main participants in the talks and contacts aimed at settling Iran's nuclear problem, proceed from the settlement by political methods," Lavrov told a news conference in Moscow on Wednesday. "There are all opportunities for it," he added. It was confirmed by the board of the International Atomic Energy Agency. Moscow backed the accords, which had been reached - to freeze the uranium enrichment program and promote close cooperation between Iran and the IAEA, the Russian diplomat said. "If the parties continue the dialogue, I'm sure we'll attain the desired result. I don't think it's possible to talk about other methods of resolving this issue," he underlined. A peaceful settlement is possible on the basis of mutual interests, accords and mutual trust, Lavrov said. Moscow will be making all efforts to make sure that the accords, which have been reached, are implemented, the Russian foreign minister said. © ITAR-TASS. All rights reserved. You undertake not to copy, ***************************************************************** 3 Independent: Why the hawks are circling over Iran [http://www.independent.co.uk] Why the hawks are circling over Iran As George W Bush prepares for a second term, his administration is setting its sights on Iran. But, Rupert Cornwell reports, a new foreign policy adventure could be disastrous 19 January 2005 The warning signs are aligned, as the stars in the heavens portending a great event. There are stirrings in Congress and intensified contacts with exile groups from the Middle Eastern country in question. Once more, President George W. Bush is warning that he has not ruled out the use of force to make sure that a regime linked to terrorism does not acquire weapons of mass destruction. Most sensationally of all, a highly regarded magazine carries a detailed, only partially denied report that US special force units are already carrying out missions on the ground inside that country, pinpointing sites that could be hit by air-strikes or commando raids. Back in mid 2002, all these things were happening as Washington prepared to demolish Saddam Hussein. This time however, the sights of the US are trained elsewhere. Two years after invading Iraq, is America about to go to war with Iran? The issue scarcely featured in the election campaign, but ever since Mr Bush defeated John Kerry last November, it has been clear that the Iran will be a crucial challenge of his second term. Even as US policymakers struggle to find an exit strategy from Iraq, they are obsessed by Iran. Iran, not Iraq, is the issue likely to dominate Mr Bush's fence-mending visit to Brussels next month. Even more than Iraq, Iran has the potential to divide both the Bush administration and the Atlantic alliance. "Only wimps stop at Baghdad," was the boast of the neo-conservatives in their hour of greatest glory, as US forces swept Saddam from power in a dazzling military campaign. Why be content with Baghdad, they argued. Why not carry the torch of freedom and democracy across the border to Tehran, that other founder member of Mr Bush's "axis of evil", toppling another dangerous and repressive regime. But as even slightly chastened neo-cons now admit, Iran is quantitatively and qualitatively in a different league. For one thing, unlike Iraq, it represents a genuine WMD threat. Saddam's chemical and biological weapons - not to mention his nuclear programme - proved a figment of the Western intelligence services' imagination. By contrast, inspectors from the IAEA, the nuclear watchdog agency of the United Nations, have been in Iran all along, and what they have encountered - a sophisticated, allegedly civilian, but largely impenetrable, nuclear programme, as well as dissembling and downright lies from the Islamic regime - has been extremely worrying. Almost no-one doubts that Iran wants the bomb. Most experts believe it is roughly three years away from getting it. Secondly, unlike Saddam's Iraq, the Iranian regime has proven ties with various Middle East terrorist groups, if not with al-Qa'ida itself, is explicitly committed to the destruction of Israel and has far more credible ambitions than Saddam ever had of becoming the dominant power in the Gulf, home of two thirds of proven oil reserves on the planet. Thirdly, as a potential foe, Iran is on a different scale to Iraq. It is nearly three times as populous and its potential for mischief-making is unrivalled. Unlike Iraq, it could block the Straits of Hormuz, passage for 40 per cent of the world's traded oil. Iran is a Shia country, with close ties to, and potentially disruptive influence on, the Shia majority in Iraq. For all these reasons, the US has held back. At present Washington is engaged in a "good cop, bad cop" routine with the help of the Europeans. Britain, France and Germany are leading a EU effort to strike a grand bargain with Iran, offering long-term economic and technological and diplomatic assistance to Iran in return for "objective guarantees" that Tehran has no military nuclear ambitions. With studied reluctance, Washington has thus far gone along, maintaining its harsh rhetoric and strict trade sanctions, but allowing others to lead the way. "We've sanctioned ourselves out of influence with Iran," Mr Bush admitted at his pre-Christmas press conference. "In other words, we don't have much leverage with the Iranians right now." But the bad cop is sending another message to Tehran: If negotiations fail force is very much an option. A nuclear-armed Iran is "unacceptable," Mr Bush has repeatedly said - and as the mullahs and the whole world knows, when the 43rd president says something, he means it. At her confirmation hearings yesterday, Condoleezza Rice, the incoming Secretary of State, sounded a similar note: "We must remain united in insisting that Iran [and North Korea] abandon their nuclear weapons ambitions." Meanwhile the familiar precursors of "regime change" are visible. The Pentagon is working with an Iranian exile group based in Iraq. In the US, exiles are forming organisations of their own, most notably the ADI or "Alliance for Democracy in Iran", which wants the Iranian people to hold a referendum to restore the monarchy, overthrown in 1979, under the former Shah's son, Reva Pahlavi (a resident of Washington's Virginia suburbs). For Ahmad Chalabi, the Pentagon's pre-war poster boy for Iraqi "democracy", read Kamal Azari, president of the ADI. On Capitol Hill, conservative Republicans are pushing an Iran Freedom and Support Act, shades of the 1998 Iraq Liberation Act. Then came this week's New Yorker article by Seymour Hersh, the investigative reporter who broke the Abu Ghraib prison scandal. Hersh claims that US commandos have already conducted missions inside Iran, dispatched by a Pentagon unabashed by the growing difficulties in Iraq and which, according to Hersh, has won its long battle with the CIA for control of US special force operations. The Pentagon issued a scornful dismissal of the story, but stopped well short of a full denial. Just as before the Iraq war, the neo-conservatives, especially strongly represented in the Pentagon's civilian leadership, loudly demand action against Iran now. In their view, the EU initiative will fail - just as they were convinced the UN inspection would fail in pre-invasion Iraq. At that point however, the scenarios diverge. The diplomatic uproar over an attack on Iran would eclipse the Iraq controversy. If the US went into Iran, it would do so virtually alone, with not even the semblance of the "Coalition of the Willing" that unseated Saddam. Even Britain would be missing. Instead Israel - the one country that could never go to war with Iraq - might be America's only ally, inflicting yet more damage, were that possible, to the standing of the US in the Islamic world. The military attack itself would pose daunting problems. True, US forces are now based in Afghanistan and Iraq. But its military is overstretched and the 150,000 troops in Iraq (a third of them reservists and national guard) are tied down by the insurgency. If attacked, Iran would pull every lever to cause trouble in Iraq, and redouble its support for terrorist groups. There is a second option, of smaller strikes from the air or commando raids aimed specifically at suspected nuclear sites and/or key military installations. These might be carried out with the help of Israel, which has warned that it cannot tolerate a nuclear-armed Iran. The implication is that Tel Aviv is ready to go ahead on its own, with (or perhaps even without) the tacit blessing of the US. But even a smaller-scale attack is riddled with difficulties. Iran's nuclear sites are scattered and, by all accounts, well protected. This would be no repeat of 1981, when Israeli jets destroyed Saddam's reactor at Ozirak, setting back his nuclear ambitions by a decade. And would the humiliation of an attack, large-scale or small, really make the Iranian population rise up, as the neo-cons believe, to overthrow the detested mullahs? That calculation bids fair to join the long list of US misjudgements over Iran - from the coup that overthrew Mohammad Mossadegh, the nationalist prime minister, in 1953 and the failure to foresee the overthrow of the Shah in 1979. The lessons of Iraq, including the debacle over non-existent WMD and the rush to embrace Chalabi, display the limits of US understanding of that country. Why should Iran be any different? If the post-war occupation and the absence of an "exit strategy" have been disasters in Iraq, they will be surely be double disasters in Iran. Last autumn, at the height of the election campaign, the Atlantic Monthly organised a fascinating war game. At its centre was a mock "principals" meeting on Iran to examine America's military options and and recommend the most suitable. Its conclusions were sombre. The magazine warned that next President - whom we now know to be Mr Bush - "must through bluff and patience, change the actions of a government whose motives he does not understand well, and over which his influence is limited." Sam Gardiner, who for two decades has conducted such exercises at the National War College and who played the role of National Security Adviser, summed up its judgements in two blunt sentences. Mr President, "you have no military solution for the issues of Iran. You have to make diplomacy work". The indications are that Mr Bush may grasped this reality; in other words a President who prides himself on telling it like it is, may for once be bluffing. Certainly his pre-inauguration deeds, as well as his words, tilt toward a strategy of negotiation. It may be true that the most prominent foreign policymakers to depart the administration - Colin Powell and his deputy Richard Armitage - have been moderates, while the civilian architects of the Iraq mess, including the Deputy Defense Secretary, Paul Wolfowitz, and the Pentagon's Undersecretary for Policy, Douglas Feith, have kept their jobs. But Condoleezza Rice is no neo-con and her deputy, Robert Zoellick - while a vigorous defender of US interests - comes from the old pragmatic and multilateralist Republican foreign policy mainstream. For the moment at least, John Bolton, the hawkish former Under Secretary of State whom many feared might be promoted to the No 2 job at State, is nowhere to be seen. Moreover, the proclaimed policy of rebuilding fractured alliances with Europe and other allies would be a sham - and Mr Bush would know it to be - if he had already made up his mind to attack Iran. But somehow America must deal with Iran. This administration's heart may say attack, but its head, it seems, says negotiate. This time the stick may have to be replaced by the carrot - an offer to Iran that combines economic aid from Europe with diplomatic recognition and a relaxing of sanctions by the US. Maybe a grand bargain can be struck. But, in the end, Washington may have no choice but to live with its nightmare: an Islamic theocracy which possesses nuclear weapons. ©2005 Independent News &Media (UK) Ltd. ***************************************************************** 4 Korea Herald: [EDITORIAL] Start compensation process 2005.01.20 [http://www.voiceware.co.kr] It is anyone's guess how much it will cost to compensate Korean victims of Japan's colonial rule in 1910-45 for their sufferings. Unofficial estimates range from trillions of won to tens of trillions of won. First of all, it is difficult to determine how many victims are eligible for compensation. There are those mobilized for forced labor, those conscripted as soldiers, those forced into sexual slavery and the victims of U.S. nuclear bombs dropped to end World War II. During negotiations with Japan, which led to the 1965 signing of an agreement on normalizing relations, Korea put the figure at 1,032,864. But estimates by academicians go up to 4 million people. Another difficulty lies in determining what will be the proper level of compensation. Payments to "comfort women" may serve as a guide. One receives 600,000 won per month in addition to a lump sum payment of 43 million won. The Korean government will have to foot the entire bill because, as recently declassified documents show, it mistakenly renounced individual claims to the Japanese government in return for $300 million in grants, $200 million in soft loans and another $300 million in commercial loans. But it is of little use to denounce the Korean government now for its past wrongdoing. Instead, solace can be found in the fact that the grants and loans were used as seed money for economic development, instead of finding their way into the pockets of corrupt politicians. The money was used to help finance construction of the Seoul-Busan express way, POSCO's integrated steel mill and other projects. To spend tens of trillions of won will put an enormous financial strain on the Korean government, given its 2005 main budget of 131 trillion won. But this should not keep it from launching the process of making compensation payments soon. It will have to start receiving compensation applications from the victims and survivors immediately. 2005.01.20 ***************************************************************** 5 Xinhua: US hopes DPRK to return to six-party talks www.xinhuanet.com www.chinaview.cn 2005-01-20 06:15:28 WASHINGTON, Jan. 19 (Xinhuanet) -- The United States said on Wednesday that it is hopeful the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) will return to the six-party nuclear talks. "We remain hopeful that North Korea will come back to the six-party talks very soon. It is important that we move forward on the multilateral approach that this administration is pursuing," White House spokesman Scott McClellan said at a news briefing. McClellan said that the proposal put forward by the United States at the last round of talks should be a "good place" to move forward the six-party talks. "It's important that, when we come back to the talks, we talk about how we can move forward in a substantive way on that proposal. We believe that was a proposal that addresses all the concerns of the various parties and is a good place to begin moving forward to resolving North Korea's pursuit of nuclear weapons," McClellan said. The DPRK has signalled that it will return to the six-party talks stalled since June last year. Three rounds of talks, hosted by China, have been held to try to solve the nuclear confrontation between the DPRK and the United States. Enditem Copyright ©2003 Xinhua News Agency. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 6 Korea: Digital Chosunilbo: Korean A-Bomb Victims Awarded Compensation Updated Jan.19,2005 18:45 KST TOKYO - A Japanese high court has called on Japan¡¯s government to compensate Korean conscripted laborers affected by nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. Japan's Kyodo News said Wednesday the high court decision was the first recognizing the Japanese government's responsibility to pay damages to atomic bomb victims living abroad. The Hiroshima High Court, overturning a decision by a lower court, ordered that 40 Korean survivors of the bombing, including 78-year-old Lee Geun-mok, be paid Y1.2 million a head in compensation in their suit against the Japanese government and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. The plaintiffs were all conscripted laborers taken to Japan from Korea to work at a Mitsubishi Heavy Industries plant in Hiroshima. They were affected when the U.S. dropped an atomic bomb on the city at the end of World War II. The Japanese government had paid compensation including allowances to foreign A-bomb victims, but excluded Lee and the other 40 plaintiffs because they lived abroad. The victims brought a suit arguing exclusion on these grounds was unfair. In the first decision, Hiroshima District Court threw out the case, ruling the Japanese government could not be held accountable for acts committed under a previous constitution. But the appellate court in its decision said it was a mistake to exclude victims because they left the country and ordered the government to pay compensation for emotional suffering to the plaintiffs. However, the bench refused to recognize claims against the government for illegal labor conscription because the statute of limitations has elapsed. It also rejected a claim against Mitsubishi Heavy Industries citing the statute of limitations. Japan began paying support to overseas victims of the atomic bombings after Korean survivor Kwak Kwi-hun won a landmark case in the Osaka High Court in December 2002. (englishnews@chosun.com ) ***************************************************************** 7 [NukeNet] Letters to the Editor Needed Date: Wed, 19 Jan 2005 14:52:55 -0800 NukeNet Anti-Nuclear Network (nukenet@energyjustice.net) Exelon's mass mailing on radiation (see today's story below), huge ads in the paper, "community meetings", last week's security tour of the plant to the media, are examples of the Exelon's greenwashing tactics--an effort to mislead the public about the real risks of the plant's operation. Today's article is the perfect opportunity for the public to submit letters to the editor and opinion editorials highlighting Exelon public relations campaign. Please take part of your day today and write up a short letter to the editor (250 words or less) or a longer opinion editorial (250-600 words) and submit it to the Asbury Park Press. Make sure to include your name and all of your contact information, including your address. If it is a letter to the editor, email to: yourviews@app.com and then call Larry Benjamin to check to see when it will be printed at 732 922 6000 (x1 and then x4262). If it is an opinion editorial, email to: rbergmann@app.com and then call Randy Bergmann to check to see when it will be printed at 732 922 6000 (x1 and then x4034). Thanks for all of your support and feel free to call or email me if you need help or have questions. Best, Suzanne Radiation data sent to 100,000 living near Oyster Creek Published in the Asbury Park Press 1/19/05 By NICHOLAS CLUNN MANAHAWKIN BUREAU LACEY -- Operators of the Oyster Creek nuclear power plant want their neighbors to know that radiation is everywhere -- in the air, in the soil and even in their bodies. This fact, along with others about the particles yielded by nuclear fission, have shown up in about 100,000 mailboxes at homes within 10 miles of the oldest commercial reactor in the country, according to plant spokeswoman Gina Scala. AmerGen officials sent the rare mailing -- a one-page sheet in black and white -- to help the company meet federal requirements mandating that reactor owners teach the public about radiation and its effects, she said. News of the mailing prompted a lunchtime conversation Tuesday among the beauticians working at Action Headquarters, a salon off Charles Drive in Dover Township. "If I would have seen something about radiation in the mail, I would have looked at it because radiation is a scary thing," said Jodie Fogler of Dover. "It's scary," agreed manicurist Debbie Jones of Howell, who had never heard of Oyster Creek before Monday. "But we don't really have control over the plant." Scala could not provide information about the cost of the mailing. The mailing coincides with a push by AmerGen to educate the public and the media about plant operations. The company is preparing to apply for a 20-year license renewal in July. The plant would likely close in 2009 without the extension. AmerGen wrote that according to the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements radiation from reactors contributes about 1 millirem of the 360-millirem dose absorbed annually by most Americans. While prominent figures in science and government have denounced claims that link cancer with long-term exposure to low-level radiation, other scientists have called for more studies on the subject after finding tenuous correlations. Two interest groups have asked scientists to continue researching the connection in studies released last year -- the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, and the Radiation and Public Health Project. The latter organization published the Tooth Fairy Project which said a correlation between childhood cancer and nuclear plants was found by analyzing baby teeth from homes both near to and far from reactors. Lacey resident George Chowanec said he lost his wife, Lillian, eight years ago to lung cancer. Though he could never prove that radiation from Oyster Creek killed his wife, who stayed cleared of cigarettes and alcohol, Chowanec said he has suspicions. "Is it possible?" he asked. "Yes, it is possible." Residents within the 10-mile "emergency preparedness zone" received the mailing. Emergency management officials have plans to evacuate people inside that area if a radioactive release ever threatened the population. About 125,000 people live in the zone year-round. That number increases to about 188,000 during the summer, according to the State Police Office of Emergency Management. Nicholas Clunn: (609) 978-4597 or nclunn@app.com Suzanne Leta Energy Associate NJPIRG 11 N. Willow St Trenton, NJ 08608 609 394 8155 x310 sleta@njpirg.org _______________________________________________________________________ Subscribe/Unsubscribe Here: http://www.energyjustice.net/nukenet/ Change your settings or access the archives at: http://energyjustice.net/mailman/listinfo/nukenet_energyjustice.net ***************************************************************** 8 Las Vegas SUN: Nuke Suspect: Feds Exaggerate Charges By MATT APUZZO ASSOCIATED PRESS NEW HAVEN, Conn. (AP) - A businessman suspected of supporting Iran's nuclear missile program accused federal prosecutors Wednesday of trumping up charges against him and ruining his reputation. Mohammad Farahbakhsh, 43, an Iranian-born U.S. citizen, is being held on charges of illegally exporting temperature and pressure sensors to Iran. Prosecutors say he also did business with companies connected to the Iranian nuclear program. They plan to charge him with that next month. In court documents filed Wednesday, Farahbakhsh's attorney said prosecutors have mischaracterized the case in the media, leaving his children to walk home past television cameras. "After three months of investigation, the government was forced to resort to speculation and inflammatory name-calling in its effort to garner press and unfairly label Mr. Farahbakhsh as a supporter of the Iranian nuclear or military program," attorney Kristan Peters wrote. U.S. Attorney Kevin O'Connor called the motion "incendiary." "We stand by the statements we made in court," O'Connor said. "We're not going to engage in an extrajudicial tit for tat." The documents filed Wednesday are part of Farahbakhsh's effort to be released while he awaits trial. His attorneys are trying to show he poses neither a flight risk nor a danger to the community. Prosecutors argue that Farahbakhsh would return to Iran and avoid prosecution, but Peters said Farahbakhsh finds the Iranian government intolerable. -- ***************************************************************** 9 FOXNews.com: Few Tough Challenges at Confirmation Hearings Wednesday, January 05, 2005 By Sharon Kehnemui Liss WASHINGTON — Few of President Bush's (search) nominees for Cabinet posts in his second term are likely to face much criticism from the Senate, but that doesn't mean they all will skate through the hearing process. Alberto Gonzales (search), the president's White House counsel, is expected to have the hardest time. He goes before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday for a confirmation hearing for the open spot as attorney general. The hearing could last one to two days and is expected to feature some fireworks over several memos Gonzales wrote about the detention and prosecution of terror suspects. In those memos, which have now been rejected by the White House, Gonzales advised President Bush that he could exempt Al Qaeda and Taliban prisoners from Geneva Convention (search) protections. Critics like Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., the ranking member on the Judiciary Committee, said the memos damaged America's reputation for the humane treatment of prisoners. "Many of the military felt that this opened the door for things that are going to scar us, scar the U.S. for years and years to come," Leahy said. But lawmakers don't expect Gonzales' nomination to be shut down by the Senate, which now has 55 Republicans, 44 Democrats and one Democrat-leaning independent. That's not enough GOP support for controversial candidates to overcome a filibuster, but Gonzales is not expected to be caught in such a morass. A vote on the nomination could come as early as Jan. 20, a congressional source told FOXNews.com. For many, Gonzales embodies the American dream. He's one of eight kids from Mexican immigrant parents, he graduated from Harvard Law School, served on the Texas Supreme Court and is now one of the most powerful lawyers in the land. He would be the nation's first Latino attorney general. A vote on his nomination could come as early as next week. But even if he does get the job, Gonzales may not be able to go further. For instance, he's been mentioned as a potential Bush pick should a Supreme Court justice retire during the president's second term. Both supporters and opponents acknowledge that nomination would become a sticking point for the counselor. "This is all part of a process to bloody up this honorable nominee, somebody who will be confirmed, to do political damage to the president or perhaps a subsequent confirmation hearing," said Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, one of Gonzales' backers. Rice to Face Scrutiny Another nominee expected to face considerable scrutiny is National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice (search). Later this month, Rice will face two days of testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in what is expected to be a very contentious set of hearings. If confirmed, Rice will have the responsibility of garnering more support for the U.S.-led efforts in Iraq, particularly as the country tries to form a government after the Jan. 30 election. Rice will also be the United States' top negotiator in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as the Palestinians pick a new leader who will be required to negotiate a statehood deal. Rice is a close friend and valued adviser to the president and is known for her loyalty to the administration and for running a tight-lipped ship. As national security adviser, she has been instrumental in developing U.S. policy toward Iraq, and that is where she is expected to face trouble with some senators. Her original confirmation hearing was delayed from December to the end of January at the request of the White House, but Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard Lugar, R-Ind., said he did not expect her confirmation to be a problem. Lugar did say that as a result of her taking the post, changes may or may not come in the way the United States conducts foreign policy. "Well, I don't see that for the moment, but, you know, this is an evolving situation," he said. "The administration is going to have to think through Iran, a lot of thinking about Iraq and certainly Ukraine and Russia." A former provost of Stanford University, Rice is an expert on the former Soviet Union and served as the top security adviser on that nation to President George H.W. Bush. After the Sept. 11 attacks, administration critics were quick to pounce on her Cold War background, charging that she did not have the goods to take on Islamic extremism, but now her experience may fit a different challenge  the backsliding between U.S. and Russian relations. "My understanding is she does see Russia through those Cold War lenses," said Andrew Jack, Moscow bureau chief at The Financial Times and author of "Inside Putin's Russia: Can There Be Reform Without Democracy?" "That means there's an instinctively more confrontational approach, an older approach to looking at relations," Jack told FOXNews.com. Mostly Clear Sailing Ahead Luckily for Bush, not all his Cabinet choices are not expected to face such scrutiny as Rice and Gonzales. The first confirmation hearing, for Carlos M. Gutierrez (search), to be secretary of commerce, is scheduled for Wednesday in the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee. Gutierrez, the CEO of Kellogg, Inc., was the surprise choice to replace retiring Secretary Donald Evans. Gutierrez, a Hispanic of Cuban ancestry, will be in charge of making U.S. companies more competitive abroad. His record at Kellogg, which includes a slim trail of political donations as well as a nearly clean slate on major environmental or worker safety issues, makes him an attractive choice for the post. "He is the most international person ever to be commerce secretary," Former Michigan Gov. John Engler, now head of the National Association of Manufacturers (search), said after Gutierrez's nomination was announced. "He really knows what is happening in markets around the world." Other candidates for Cabinet posts are not likely to face harrowing confirmation hearings. The nominees are:  Samuel W. Bodman (search), deputy secretary of the treasury, to be secretary of energy, replacing retiring Secretary Spencer Abraham. Bodman's major challenge will be to get Congress to enact energy legislation. He will also be responsible for initiating upgrades to the nation's energy grid, untangling both legal and budget problems that have threatened the building of the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste repository in Nevada, and assuming responsibility for several nuclear weapons labs.  Mike Johanns (search), Nebraska governor, to be secretary of agriculture, replacing retiring Secretary Ann Veneman. Johanns will continue the work of promoting school nutrition programs, helping prevent the spread of mad cow disease (search), and working to secure the nation's food supply against bioterrorism threats.  Michael O. Leavitt (search), Environmental Protection Agency administrator, to be secretary of Health and Human Services, replacing retiring Secretary Tommy G. Thompson. The HHS secretary oversees Medicare and Medicaid, the mammoth government health programs for the elderly, poor and disabled, as well as the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health and the Indian Health Service. Leavitt will help the administration implement its new Medicare prescription drug benefit program, work to help fund faith-based groups, pursue sound medical research and protect the country against any sort of biological or other attack.  Jim Nicholson (search), current U.S. ambassador to the Vatican, to be secretary of Veterans Affairs to replace retiring Secretary Anthony Principi. A former Republican National Committee chairman as well as decorated Army veteran, Nicholson will oversee 230,000 employees responsible for ensuring that the nation's veterans receive proper health care and other benefits.  Margaret Spellings (search), Bush's domestic policy adviser, to be secretary of education, replacing retiring Secretary Rod Paige. She will be responsible for implementing the No Child Left Behind rules for primary and secondary schools and is in fact responsible for building the model in Texas on which the federal law was molded. Spellings will also deal with the teachers unions  the largest of which has a cold relationship with the administration  school vouchers, and expanding college opportunities for students. The president still needs to find a replacement for retiring Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge. Ridge said he would leave on Feb. 1 or whenever a successor is confirmed, whichever comes first. Bush had named former New York City Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik for the post, but a series of embarrassing rumors as well as a problem over the immigration status of his nanny forced Kerik to withdraw from consideration. The president also has to replace certain key posts, including his chief economic adviser and his ambassador to the United Nations. Another challenge for the president and the 109th Congress will be appointing judges to the federal bench. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said he was going to try to keep things from getting ugly. "It is in my dreams and hopes and my conviction that we can do a much better job here in D.C. uniting around the common causes," Frist said. FOX News' Carl Cameron, Caroline Shively, Liza Porteus and Jane Roh contributed to this report. [politics@foxnews.com] ***************************************************************** 10 Bellona: Belgium to allocate $66m for nuclear co-operation with Russia The government of Belgium has approved Foreign Minister Karel de Gucht's tentative bill on ratification of the framework agreement on the multilateral nuclear ecological program in Russia and the attendant protocol. 2005-01-19 14:31 The government of Belgium says in the press communiqué that these documents fix the legal framework for international co-operation with the Russian Federation in the nuclear field, RIA-Novosti reported. The agreement on the multilateral nuclear ecological program in Russia with the attendant claims protocol was signed in May 2003 in Stockholm by another nine countries of the European Union (Belgium included), and the United States. The agreement intends to decommission Russian laid-up nuclear submarines and provides for the building of a storage facility for radioactive waste and empty reactor units on the Kola peninsula. The agreement allocates $66 million for Russia. Publisher: [bellona@bellona.no] , President: [frederic@bellona.no] Information: [info@bellona.no] , Technical contact: [webmaster@bellona.no] Telephone: +47 23 23 46 00 Telefax: +47 22 38 38 62 * P.O.Box 2141 Grunerlokka, 0505 Oslo, Norway ***************************************************************** 11 [NukeNet] Editorial: Three Mile Island record bodes ill for Date: Wed, 19 Jan 2005 14:52:57 -0800 QoysterXcreekXwork X-Spamprobe: ham-extreme 0.0000277 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.0.2 (2004-11-16) on darwin.ctyme.com X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-15.0 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,FORGED_RCVD_HELO, FROM_ORG,SAVE_MONEY,SP_HAM_EXTREME,SUBJ_GROUP,US_DOLLARS_2, WHITE_PHRASE autolearn=ham version=3.0.2 NukeNet Anti-Nuclear Network (nukenet@energyjustice.net) Exelon's Three Mile Island record bodes ill for Oyster Creek work Published in the Asbury Park Press 1/19/05 By THOMAS J. CERVASIO The Oyster Creek nuclear generating plant in Lacey and the Three Mile Island 1 nuclear reactor in Pennsylvania have at least two things in common: both are owned by Exelon and both were purchased at bargain-basement prices. In 1999, Exelon acquired Three Mile Island for $99 million. The assessed valuation was $512 million. By the end of 2001, Exelon had eliminated more than 1,100 jobs. In January 2002, it announced it was cutting 15 percent of its work force by the end of the year. Finally in 2003, it announced it would eliminate 1,900 more jobs by 2006, or another 10 percent of its work force. Oyster Creek was another bargain. It acquired 860 acres -- including a mile or two of prime waterfront, obligingly rezoned for future commercial waterfront use by friendly Lacey zoning boards -- the nuclear plant, two existing oil- and gas-burning turbines, and a huge escrow fund all for $10 million. It was valued then at $886 million. Is that a deal or what? And who is overseeing the use of the Oyster Creek escrow money? Did it become every Exelon plant's escrow by default? The toll on the workers has been devastating. How can you be faithful to a corporation that has only one thing in mind, and it isn't safety or respect for your value as an employee? A company that ruins your hope of job security and fair wage increases. A company that savages your health benefits. All to satisfy the faceless shareholders of what is called a public utility. What is the bottom line for safety vs. another dime of dividend income? We'll never know because according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, it is not allowed to consider economics when evaluating a plant. The definition of economics here is presumably how many workers can you get rid of before plant safety suffers. During the last strike at Oyster Creek, many safety issues were raised and have not yet been answered. How can you safely run an operation like that by cutting an experienced work force to the bone to satisfy the shareholders, only to provide retirement packages to CEOs such as Exelon executive Corbin A. McNeill Jr., who carted off an obscene package of almost $30 million? Now Exelon wants to merge with PSEG, another "public service" corporation, one grappling with severe problems with its own reactors and one that has spent a decade downsizing to save money. Not to worry, though. We are told that Exelon will make them safe to run, despite all those missing skilled workers. And PSEG CEO Jim Ferland, after feathering his annual $15 million nest for more than a decade, will retire next year with his own package of booty, earned by eradicating jobs and benefits and playing hardball against cost-of-living increases for workers and retirees. The federal government denied money to New Jersey to replace the aging radiation monitoring devices at Oyster Creek, but again we are told not to worry: Oyster Creek has its own devices and will tell us all about it if a release of radioactivity occurs. The state Department of Environmental Protection has no regulatory power over nuclear power plants, which is alarming. This should be rectified on a state and federal level. The objection of Lacey officials toward consideration of closing the plant is not responsible. An incident at this plant will affect the health and lives of more than 3.5 million people for a radius of 50 miles. It will contaminate the air, water and land, and render worthless everything we own. Lacey must remove itself from being a "company" town and consider the real objections of millions of others exposed to this danger. Despite "the sky is falling" threats regarding taxes, Lacey residents are protected from losing the income for housing this plant. If an incident were to occur tomorrow, the value of homes would plunge and remain static for many years, a far bigger loss than any mythical tax increase. Also, if the reactor were to be dismantled, the Oyster Creek property would remain usable for other safer forms of energy such as the existing turbines all ready on site. Except for high-level management people who create their own wages and benefits, few plant workers have job security. The decommissioning of the plant will take many years, allowing workers to find other jobs in the industry or elsewhere, with many of them working throughout the closing period. Lacey business owners worry about losing money if the workers move on. But unless a catastrophe happens and the plant crashes and is vacated immediately, in which case we are all doomed, the population will continue to grow and need the services and goods they sell. Maybe the "in" people who do some sort of business with the plant will suffer, but they've had a long run. And in the long run, it is for the good of the people that this aging plant be closed before a catastrophe occurs. Thomas J. Cervasio is chairman of EnviroWatch, an environmental group based in Berkeley. Suzanne Leta Energy Associate NJPIRG 11 N. Willow St Trenton, NJ 08608 609 394 8155 x310 sleta@njpirg.org _______________________________________________________________________ Subscribe/Unsubscribe Here: http://www.energyjustice.net/nukenet/ Change your settings or access the archives at: http://energyjustice.net/mailman/listinfo/nukenet_energyjustice.net ***************************************************************** 12 [NukeNet] Prevent 3 Or 4 Chernobyls At Once: Demand Stricter Date: Wed, 19 Jan 2005 14:54:31 -0800 QnuclearXsafetyXstandards X-Spamprobe: ham-extreme 0.0000263 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.0.2 (2004-11-16) on darwin.ctyme.com X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-17.0 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,FORGED_RCVD_HELO, FROM_ORG,SP_HAM_EXTREME,SUBJ_GROUP,WHITE_PHRASE autolearn=ham version=3.0.2 NukeNet Anti-Nuclear Network (nukenet@energyjustice.net) ----- Original Message ----- From: Martin Butcher To: smirnowb@ix.netcom.com Sent: Wednesday, January 19, 2005 2:07 PM Subject: Demand Stricter Nuclear Safety Standards PSR Los Angeles in conjunction with the NUCLEAR INFORMATION AND RESOURCE SERVICE and COMMITTEE TO BRIDGE THE GAP NUCLEAR POWER INSECURITY Protect the Public from Nuclear Power Disaster Following an Attack Nuclear Regulatory Commission Petitioned to Upgrade Safety Requirements: Comments Needed by January 24, 2005 If a nuclear plant's containment shell and reactor core, or spent fuel pools, are ever breached, a terrible explosion of radioactivity, on a par with the Chernobyl accident, would ensue. Millions of Americans would be placed in harm's way. Unfortunately, America's nuclear plants are highly vulnerable to attack. Fortunately, such a cataclysm is preventable. We ask for your support of a new petition before the Nuclear Regulatory Agency. Harvard professor and Clinton Administration arms control expert, Graham Allison, soberly discusses the problem of nuclear power plant vulnerabilities: The American Airlines flight that struck the North Tower of the World Trade Center could just as readily have hit the Indian Point nuclear power plant, forth miles north of Times Square . . .. The consequences of an attack on a nuclear plant would depend largely on where the plane hit. If the aircraft penetrated the containment dome, the attack could cause the reactor to melt down, releasing hundreds of millions of curies of radioactivity into the surrounding environment, hundreds of times that released by the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs. We already know what such an incident would look like. In April 1986, an accident explosion inside the Soviet nuclear reactor at Chernobyl ignited a powerful fire that raged for ten days. The resulting radiation forced the evacuation and resettlement of over 350,000 people and caused an estimated $300 billion of economic damage, and is likely to lead ultimately to tens of thousands of excess cancer deaths among those exposed to the fallout. An even more vulnerable target at a nuclear plant is the building that houses the spent fuel rods, which are stored in pools of water to prevent the heat from their residual radioactivity from melting them. Designed to remain intact in case of an earthquake, these structures are open to the air in some instances and housed in only light-duty buildings in others, which means that a plane attacking from above might drain the pool, destroy backup safety systems, and ignite the fuel. The resulting fire would spew radioactivity into the environment in amounts that could reach three or four Chernobyls. Such threats are real possibilities. In November 1972, three Americans with pistols and hand grenades commandeered a Southern Airlines Flight 49, and ordered the plane to fly to Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and threatened to plow the plane into a reactor unless their ransom was met. And on February 7, 1993, a distraught intruder drove his station wagon onto Three Mile Island nuclear power station property, crashing through gates in the "protected" area of the nuclear facility before wrecking the vehicle into the turbine building. He evaded security for several hours before being arrested. Fortunately, he carried no explosives. Last year, our friends at Committee to Bridge the Gap (CBG) filed a Petition for Rulemaking to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (posted in the Federal Register on November 8, 2004, Volume 69, Number 215) for "Upgrading the Design Basis Threat Regulations for Protection Against Terrorist Attacks on Nuclear Reactors." The nuclear agency has now opened the petition for public comment. The NRC needs to hear your concerns about vulnerabilities at America's nuclear power plants. The petition most crucially requests that NRC upgrade the Design Basis Threat (DBT) for U.S. nuclear power stations revising DBT regulations to require NRC and the nuclear power industry to contemplate and prepare for an attack of nuclear power stations by air by constructing shields consisting of (inexpensive and quick-to-assemble) steel I-beams and steel cabling to obstruct the angle of air attack at stand-off distances from the reactor building, fuel pool and other safety-related assets so that hijacked, rented or private aircraft (potentially carrying explosives) attempting to deliberately crash into a reactor site would be torn up in the "Beamhenge" shield effectively reducing the impact and penetration force on safety-related structures. The shield effort is focused on reasonably reducing the public's risk of terrorists successfully using nuclear power stations for radiological-enhanced sabotage. In 1998, at the behest of industry, NRC management zeroed out the budget for the OSRE program only to be restored through media exposure by an agency whistleblower, CBG, and action by President Clinton. However, the nuclear industry continued to stonewall security upgrades as unnecessarily sophisticated and overly expensive, culminating in a draft NRC policy to turn over security testing to an industry self assessment program to begin its pilot phase in September 2001. In the aftermath of the September 11 attack, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has attempted some reforms but they are far from protective. In September 2004, a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report concluded that NRC's new security initiatives were "largely a paper review." The NRC did not visit sites to verify compliance nor request facilities to submit documents that supported security upgrades. In fact, GAO concluded it will be at least three more years before NRC will have data to validate whether site-specific upgraded security plans are adequate. Your comments to NRC is urgently needed. The deadline is January 24, 2005. Please don't delay. Send your comments by email to the Secretary at SECY@nrc.gov or by mailing to: Secretary U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Washington, DC 20555-0001 ATTN: Rulemakings and Adjudications Staff We are committed to protecting your privacy, so your email address will NEVER be sold or exchanged. If you would like to unsubscribe from this newsletter, please reply to this message with "Remove" in the subject line. _______________________________________________________________________ Subscribe/Unsubscribe Here: http://www.energyjustice.net/nukenet/ Change your settings or access the archives at: http://energyjustice.net/mailman/listinfo/nukenet_energyjustice.net ***************************************************************** 13 [NukeNet] Galena council approves nuclear power plant Date: Wed, 19 Jan 2005 14:54:12 -0800 NukeNet Anti-Nuclear Network (nukenet@energyjustice.net) This article is a few weeks old, but important nonetheless because it's getting so little attention outside alaska. >Galena council approves nuclear power plant > >Tuesday,! December 28, 2004 - The Associated Press > >ANCHORAGE--Galena city officials have approved plans to build a >10-megawatt nuclear power plant there as a test case in providing cheap >power to rural communities. > >City representatives and Toshiba Corp. officials will now develop an >application to federal regulators for a license for the small-scale >reactor near the Yukon River community, a process that could take several >years. > >The reactor unit would be 50 feet to 60 feet tall and 6 to 8 feet in >diameter. It would be built outside of Alaska and be encased in several >tons of concrete not to be opened during its operating life, estimated at >30 years. > >The plant, called a battery, would be able to supply the community's >electricity for about a quarter of the cost of diesel fuel, according to a >U.S. Department of Energy study. > >The 4S reactor unit is referred to as a battery because it does not have >moving parts, and once installed, its fuel will not need to be replaced as >in conventional nuclear reactors. > >The Galena city council directed city manager Marvin Yoder to "establish a >process and timeline leading to evaluations, industrial partners, and >financial and contractual arrangements necessary to bring the economic and >environmental benefits of the 4S to Galena." > >The council's resolution directed Yoder to work with the community's >Washington, D.C.-based attorney and Toshiba in developing the application >to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. > >Licensing will be an involved process that will take several years and >substantial funding by Toshiba, Yoder said. > >Toshiba has offered to install the reactor at Galena free of cost if the >licensing is approved as a commercial demonstration of the nuclear battery >in a remote location. > >If the technology is approved for use in the United States, Toshiba >believes there will be opportunities for sales worldwide, and elsewhere in >rural Alaska, according to Robert Chaney, a researcher with Science >Applications International Corp. > >SAIC coordinated the Department of Energy study of long-term energy supply >options for Galena, including the Toshiba battery. The University of >Alaska and Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory worked >with SAIC in the study. > >Chaney said the DOE study weighed nuclear power against other ways of >providing Galena with improved energy, including more efficient diesel >generation, a small coal-fired power plant, and wind, solar and hydropower >from the nearby Yukon River. > >Wind, solar and hydropower were determined not to be practical options for >Galena, Chaney told an Alaska Miners Association group in a Dec. 17 >briefing on the project. > >If the nuclear battery went into operation in 2010, by 2020 it could >supply electricity to Galena for 5 to 14 cents a kilowatt hour, assuming >the community pays only operating costs, the analysis showed. > >Galena's power is now 28 cents per kilowatt hour. > >The costs could vary depending on the level of security federal regulators >require at the site, Chaney said. > >The plant would supply far more electricity than Galena now uses, but >could enable local residents to convert their home heating from homes from >expensive fuel oil to more affordable electricity and operate greenhouses >to grow produce year-round, Chaney said. > >The risks include the use of liquid sodium as a heat transfer medium and >the long-term disposal of the radioactive waste, according to Ron Johnson, >a professor of engineering at University of Alaska Fairbanks who is >working with engineering aspects of the DOE study. > >Johnson said small nuclear plants may not be the answer for rural power, >regardless of the fate of the Galena experiment. > >"If the technology is successfully deployed in Galena, its economic >viability in other Alaska villages and elsewhere depends on the actual >life cycle costs, which are yet to be quantified," he said. > _______________________________________________________________________ Subscribe/Unsubscribe Here: http://www.energyjustice.net/nukenet/ Change your settings or access the archives at: http://energyjustice.net/mailman/listinfo/nukenet_energyjustice.net ***************************************************************** 14 Racial Discrimination Reactor Appeal Denied Date: Wed, 19 Jan 2005 11:28:36 -0500

NEWS FROM NIRS

Nuclear Information and Resource Service News Release

 

For Immediate Release:                                     Contact: Linda Gunter, NIRS, (202) 328-0002

Wednesday, January 19, 2005                                          Erica Hartman, PC, (202) 454-5174

 

Groups Condemn NRC Decision to Deny Racial Discrimination Appeal

Over Mississippi Reactor

 

WASHINGTON, DC, January 19 – Just one day after the country celebrated the memory of Dr. Martin Luther King, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) on Tuesday rejected concerns over racial discrimination around a proposal to build a nuclear reactor in a poor Mississippi community of color.

The commission denied an appeal submitted by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’s (NAACP) Claiborne County, Mississippi chapter, Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS), Public Citizen and Sierra Club of Mississippi that showed how the proposed construction of additional reactors on the current Grand Gulf site in Port Gibson would result in racial discrimination. The application for an Early Site Permit, filed by Entergy, owner of Grand Gulf, would double the risk but provide no substantial benefit to a minority population already ill equipped to cope with the environmental and health consequences of a nuclear accident, sabotage or routine radioactive releases.

“NRC once again has bowed to its master – the nuclear industry – to pave the way for construction in an area where they expect the least resistance,” said A.C. Garner, spokesperson for the NAACP Claiborne County Chapter. “This decision amounts to posting a ‘WHITES ONLY’ sign on the hearing room door,” he added.

Claiborne County is 84% African American with 32.4% of the population living below the poverty line. In an unprecedented move, a predominately white state legislature passed a bill in 1986, a year after the reactor opened, to gradually reallocate up to 70% of the county tax assessment levied on Grand Gulf to 47 other Mississippi counties in Entergy’s electrical distribution network. This left the economically deprived county to face nuclear catastrophe with a crumbling hospital that is not open 24 hours, inadequately equipped police force and washed-out, impassible reactor evacuation routes that it cannot afford to fix. In a dismissively worded decision, the NRC denied the petitioners’ environmental justice contentions were litigable and stated, “our boards do not sit to ‘flyspeck’ environmental documents.”

“The decision this week by a commission sitting in its ivory tower trivializes Dr. King’s legacy,” said Paul Gunter, director of the Reactor Watchdog Program at NIRS. “The decision shows that racial discrimination is alive and well in this country, and worse still in Mississippi, the cradle of the civil rights movement.”

The NRC has recently changed its policy on environmental justice to make it unlikely that issues of racial discrimination, fairness and economic equity would be considered as a litigable issue in licensing proceedings.

“The NRC has callously dismissed the concerns of an already disenfranchised community,” said Wenonah Hauter, director of Public Citizen’s Energy Program. “This is the latest example of the agency’s determination to promote nuclear profit over citizens’ rights.”

 

###

 

Petitioners:

NAACP, Claiborne County: A.C. Garner (601) 437 4690

NIRS: Paul Gunter, (202) 328-0002

Public Citizen: Michele Boyd, (202) 454-5134

Sierra Club of Mississippi, Becky Gillette, (228) 872-3457\

 

Photos also available upon request

 

 

 

 

 

Linda Gunter is Director of Development and Media Relations at NIRS. She can be reached at: 202-328-0002 ext. 23.

 

 ***************************************************************** 15 Alert: Comments needed by 1/24 to improve reactor security Date: Wed, 19 Jan 2005 14:54:35 -0800 ALERT URGENT ACTION NEEDED TO PROTECT REACTORS FROM TERRORIST ATTACK NRC COMMENT PERIOD ENDS MONDAY, JANUARY 24 The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has published in the Federal Register a REQUEST FOR comments on a Petition for Rulemaking by the Committee to Bridge the Gap (CBG) to upgrade protections against terrorist attacks on nuclear facilities. Current security regulations are woefully inadequate. The comment period expires January 24. Please take a moment now and submit a comment in support of the DBG rulemaking petition. Comments can be sent via email to SECY@nrc.gov. The CBG proposal would do two things. First, it would require protection of nuclear facilities against air attack. Astonishingly, three years after 9/11, there still is no such protection. The proposal recommends construction of "Beamhenge" shields, constructed of steel I-beams, with cabling between them, at stand-off distances from sensitive reactor structures, so that an incoming plane crashes into the shield rather than the reactor, spent fuel pool, or critical support facilities, preventing massive radioactive release. The second component of the Rulemaking Petition is to upgrade the Design Basis Threat (DBT) regulations to require protection against at least the number and capabilities of the attackers on 9/11. Current DBT regulations -- unchanged for a quarter of a century -- require protection against only three attackers on foot, acting as a single team, with weapons no greater than hand-carried automatic weapons, plus the possible assistance of one insider. NRC in 2003 did issue secret "Orders" that marginally increased the DBT, but the legality of doing so in negotiation with the industry while the public was frozen out of the process completely has been challenged in court, and the Commission has conceded that the DBT in the Orders still does not approach 9/11 levels. The Rulemaking Petition would rectify this deficiency by requiring protection against attackers in at least the numbers and with at least the capabilities seen on 9/11. It seems a no-brainer. The full Petition for Rulemaking and the associated NRC Federal Register notice can be found at http://ruleforum.llnl.gov/cgi-bin/library?source=*&library=ctbg_prm_lib&file=*&st=petitions-a. Background information can be found in recent Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists articles on the subject at http://www.thebulletin.org/issues/2002/jf02/jf02hirsch.html and http://www.thebulletin.org/article.php?art_ofn=mj03hirsch. Comments can be submitted to NRC via email at SECY@nrc.gov, or through their website at http://ruleforum.llnl.gov/cgi-bin/library?source=*&library=ctbg_prm_public&file=*&st=petitions-a, or via fax at (310) 415-1011. Put in the subject heading: PRM-73-12. SEND IN YOUR COMMENT TODAY! Thank you! Dan Hirsch, Committee to Bridge the Gap Paul Gunter, NIRS (pgunter@nirs.org) ***************************************************************** 16 NRC: NRC to Meet with Nebraska Public Power District to Discuss Performance Improvement Actions at Cooper Nuclear Station News Release - Region IV - 2005-00 U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION Office of Public Affairs, Region IV No. IV-05-003 January 19, 2005 CONTACT: Victor Dricks Phone: 817-860-8128 E-mail: opa4@nrc.gov [opa4@nrc.gov] Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff will meet with representatives of Nebraska Public Power District on Tuesday, January 25, to discuss the status of actions set out in a Confirmatory Action Letter (CAL) issued on January 30, 2003, to the Cooper Nuclear Station. The meeting, which will be open to public observation, is scheduled to begin at 7 p.m. at Brownville Concert Hall, Atlantic Avenue and Second Street, Brownville, Neb. Before the session is adjourned, NRC staff will be available to answer questions from the public about the safety performance of the plant and the role of the NRC in ensuring its safe operation. Cooper has been subject to increased NRC oversight since April 2002. The CAL describes steps Nebraska Public Power District officials committed to take to improve plant performance, which have been subject to NRC inspection. In a Sept. 2, 2004, letter to the NRC, Nebraska Public Power District officials informed the NRC that they had completed all of the steps outlined in the CAL. The NRC has been independently verifying that Nebraska Public Power District has completed all of the actions described in the CAL to improve plant performance, NRC Region IV administrator Bruce S. Mallet said. At the meeting, we plan to discuss with the licensee whether we can close the CAL as an oversight tool and the steps they will take to ensure improved performance for the long term. The CAL can be found in the agencys electronic document system (ADAMS) which can be accessed through the NRCs web site at www.nrc.gov. Help in using ADAMS is available by contacting the NRC Public Document Room at 1-800-397-4209. Last revised Wednesday, January 19, 2005 ***************************************************************** 17 NRC: News Release - 2005-011 - NRC’s Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards Elects New Chairman, Vice Chairman and Member-At-Large NRC NEWS U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION Office of Public Affairs Telephone: 301/415-8200 Washington, DC 20555-0001 E-mail: opa@nrc.gov [opa@nrc.gov] www.nrc.gov No. 05-011 January 19, 2005 The Nuclear Regulatory Commissions Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards (ACRS) has elected Dr. Graham B. Wallis as Chairman, Dr. William J. Shack as Vice-Chairman, and John D. Sieber as Member-at-Large. The ACRS advises the Commission independently from the NRC staff on the safety and safeguards aspects of nuclear facilities and the adequacy of safety standards. Dr. Wallis was appointed to the ACRS in 1998. He received his bachelors degree in 1957 in mechanical sciences from Cambridge University. He received his master of science degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and later earned M.A. and Ph.D. degrees at Cambridge University. Dr. Wallis is the emeritus Sherman Fairchild Professor of Engineering, Thayer School of Engineering, Dartmouth College. Previously, hed served in a variety of academic positions in the U.S. and abroad, including several positions at Dartmouth, where he also served as interim dean of engineering from 1994-1995. His consulting experience includes Creare, Inc. and Hypertherm, Inc. Dr. Shack was appointed to the ACRS in 1993. He received a bachelors degree in civil engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in applied mechanics from the University of California-Berkeley. Previously, Dr. Shack was an assistant professor in the Mechanical Engineering Department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and later joined the Argonne National Laboratory, where he is currently associate director of the Energy Technology Division. His work has included measurement and modeling of residual stresses, fracture mechanics analyses of stress corrosion crack growth, assessment of leak-before-break behavior in piping systems, and fatigue of reactor materials. Sieber was appointed to the ACRS in 1999. He received his B.S. M.E. degree from Carnegie Mellon University. He also attended Purdue University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has served as a member or director of: Electric Power Research Institute, Nuclear Electric Insurance Limited, Nuclear Energy Institute, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, and the Westinghouse Owners Group. He was senior vice president and chief nuclear officer at Duquesne Light Co. prior to retirement. Sieber has been the president of Northmont Consulting, Inc., since 1994. His primary activities include nuclear plant assessments, management oversight, event analysis, root cause determinations, and operational and human performance analysis. The other members of the ACRS are: Dr. George E. Apostolakis, professor, Nuclear Engineering Department, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Mass.; Dr. Mario V. Bonaca, retired director, Nuclear Engineering Department, Northeast Utilities, Conn.; Dr. Richard S. Denning, senior research leader and adjunct professor, Battelle Memorial Institute and The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio; Dr. F. Peter Ford, consultant and retired program manager, General Electric Research and Development Center, Schenectady, N.Y.; Dr. Thomas S. Kress, retired head of Applied Systems Technology Section, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, Tenn.; Dr. Dana A. Powers, senior scientist, Nuclear Facilities Safety Department, Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque, N.M.; Dr. Victor H. Ransom, professor emeritus, Purdue School of Nuclear Engineering, West Lafayette, Ind.; and Mr. Stephen L. Rosen, retired manager, risk management and industry relations, STP Nuclear Operating Company at South Texas Project Electric Generating Station, Lake Jackson, Texas. Last revised Wednesday, January 19, 2005 ***************************************************************** 18 NRC: NRC Cancels Public Meeting Scheduled for Jan. 19 in Mineral, Va., Due to Local Weather Conditions News Release - 2005-01 U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION Office of Public Affairs Telephone: 301/415-8200 Washington, DC 20555-0001 E-mail: opa@nrc.gov No. 05-012 January 19, 2005 The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has cancelled its scheduled public meeting tonight in Mineral, Va., because of local weather conditions. The county school system closed, and therefore the planned meeting room is unavailable. The meeting, which was scheduled to be held from 7:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. at the Louisa County Middle School, 1009 David Highway, in Mineral, would have received public comments on the draft environmental impact statement for a proposed Early Site Permit (ESP) at the North Anna site in Louisa County, about 40 miles northwest of Richmond. The new meeting date will be announced once it is re-scheduled. Last revised Wednesday, January 19, 2005 ***************************************************************** 19 NRC: Sunshine Act Meeting FR Doc 05-1087 [Federal Register: January 19, 2005 (Volume 70, Number 12)] [Notices] [Page 3074] From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr19ja05-96] Agency Holding the Meetings: Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Dates: Weeks of January 17, 24, 31, February 7, 14, 21, 2005. Place: Commissioners' Conference Room, 11555 Rockville Pike, Rockville, Maryland. Status: Public and closed. Matters To Be Considered: Week of January 17, 2005 Tuesday, January 18, 2005 9:55 a.m., Affirmation Session (Public Meeting) (Tentative). a. System Energy Resources Inc. (Early Site Permit for Grand Gulf Nuclear Site), Docket Number 52-009, Appeal by National Association for the Advancement of Colored People--Claiborne County, Mississippi Branch, Nuclear Information Service, Public Citizen, and Mississippi Chapter of the Sierra Club from LBP-04-19 (Tentative). b. Louisiana Energy Services, L.P. (National Enrichment Facility) (Tentative). Week of January 24, 2005--Tentative Monday, January 24, 2005 9:30 a.m., Discussion of Security Issues (Closed--Ex. 1). 1:30 p.m., Discussion of Security Issues (Closed--Ex. 1, 2, 3, & 4). Tuesday, January 25, 2005 9:30 a.m., Discussion of Security Issues (Closed--Ex. 1). Week of January 31, 2005--Tentative Thursday, February 3, 2005 9:30 a.m., Briefing on Human Capital Initiatives (Closed--Ex. 2). Week of February 7, 2005--Tentative There are no meetings scheduled for the week of February 7, 2005. Week of February 14, 2005--Tentative Tuesday, February 15, 2005 9:30 a.m., Briefing on Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards Programs, Performance, and Plans--Waste Safety (Public Meeting) (Contact: Jessica Shin, (301) 415-8117). This meeting will be Webcast live at the Web address--http://www.nrc.gov [http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/leaving.cgi?from=leaving FR.html&log=linklog&to=http://www.nrc.gov] . 1:30 p.m., Briefing on Emergency Preparedness Program Initiatives (Closed--Ex. 1). Week of February 21, 2005--Tentative Tuesday, February 22, 2005 9:30 a.m., Briefing on Status of Office of the Chief Information Officer (OCIO) Programs, Performance, and Plans (Public Meeting) (Contact: Patricia Wolfe, (301) 415-6031. This meeting will be Webcast live at the Web address--http://www.nrc.gov [http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/leaving.cgi?from=leaving FR.html&log=linklog&to=http://www.nrc.gov] . Wednesday, February 23, 2005 9:30 a.m., Briefing on Status of Office of the Chief Financial Officer (OCFO) Programs, Performance, and Plans (Public Meeting) (Contact: Edward New, (301) 415-5646. This meeting will be Webcast live at the Web address--http://www.nrc.gov [http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/leaving.cgi?from=leaving FR.html&log=linklog&to=http://www.nrc.gov] . Thursday, February 24, 2005 1 p.m., Briefing on Nuclear Fuel Performance (Public Meeting) (Contact: Frank Akstulewicz, (301) 415-1136. This meeting will be Webcast live at the Web address--http://www.nrc.gov [http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/leaving.cgi?from=leaving FR.html&log=linklog&to=http://www.nrc.gov] . *The schedule for Commission meetings is subject to change on short notice. To verify the status of meetings call (recording)--(301) 415- 1292. Contact person for more information: Dave Gamberoni, (301) 415- 1651. * * * * * The NRC Commission Meeting Schedule can be found on the Internet at: http://www.nrc.gov/what-we-do/policy-making/schedule.html [http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/leaving.cgi?from=leaving FR.html&log=linklog&to=http://www.nrc.gov/what-we-do/policy-makin g/schedule.html] . * * * * * The NRC provides reasonable accommodation to individuals with disabilities where appropriate. If you need a reasonable accommodation to participate in these public meetings, or need this meeting notice or the transcript or other information from the public meetings in another format (e.g., braille, large print), please notify the NRC's Disability Program Coordinator, August Spector, at (301) 415-7080, TDD: (301) 415- 2100, or by e-mail at aks@nrc.gov [aks@nrc.gov] . Determinations on requests for reasonable accommodation will be made on a case-by-case basis. * * * * * This notice is distributed by mail to several hundred subscribers; if you no longer wish to receive it, or would like to be added to the distribution, please contact the Office of the Secretary, Washington, DC 20555 (301) 415-1969. In addition, distribution of this meeting notice over the Internet system is available. If you are interested in receiving this Commission meeting schedule electronically, please send an electronic message to dkw@nrc.gov [dkw@nrc.gov] . Dated: January 13, 2005. Dave Gamberoni, Office of the Secretary. [FR Doc. 05-1087 Filed 1-14-05; 9:47 am] BILLING CODE 7590-01-M ***************************************************************** 20 NRC: [License Nos. 37-00030-02, 37-00030-08, EA-04-148] FR Doc 05-987 [Federal Register: January 19, 2005 (Volume 70, Number 12)] [Notices] [Page 3070-3072] From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr19ja05-94] In the Matter of Safety Light Corporation, Bloomsburg, PA; Order Suspending License (Effective Immediately) Safety Light Corporation (the Licensee or SLC) is the holder of two Byproduct Material Licenses issued by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC or Commission) pursuant to 10 CFR part 30 for the facility at 4150-A Old Berwick Road near Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania. License No. 37- 00030-02 authorizes the Licensee to characterize and decommission its contaminated facilities, equipment, and land. License No. 37-00030-08 authorizes, among other things, the Licensee to manufacture self- luminous signs and foils using tritium. The licenses were last renewed on December 28, 1999, and are due to expire on December 31, 2004. On December 28, 1999, License Nos. 37-00030-02 and 37-00030-08 were renewed. As part of these renewals, License Conditions were included that exempted the Licensee from certain of the Commission's financial assurance requirements and required the Licensee to develop plans which would address the License Termination Rule (10 CFR part 20, subpart E). This exemption was granted in response to the Licensee's request to the Commission to exempt the Licensee from the financial assurance decommissioning requirements set forth in 10 CFR 30.32 and 10 CFR 30.35, based on the lack of sufficient funds available at the time to assure that adequate financial ability existed to decommission the facility. In lieu of complying with 10 CFR 30.35, the Licensee committed to (1) develop a schedule and plan, for NRC review and approval, for additional site characterization and to develop revised cost estimates including strategies for site decommissioning that would comply with the criteria specified in the license termination rule, 10 CFR 30.36, and (2) contribute specified monthly payments ($7,000 per month in 2000; $8,000 per month in 2001 and 2002; and $9,000 per month in 2003 and 2004) to a decommissioning trust fund over the life of the license to support decommissioning activities. The NRC specifically approved an exemption, in Condition 16 of Amendment No. 51 for License 37-00030-02 and Condition 20.A of Amendment No. 13 for License 37- 00030-08, provided that the licensee make the specified monthly payments into a decommissioning trust fund. The NRC granted the renewal of the two licenses based on the Licensee's continued ability to provide sufficient remediation funding and adequate security of radioactive materials at the facility. On November 21, 2003, the NRC learned, during telephone conversations with Licensee management, that the Licensee had not made all payments into its decommissioning trust fund, as required by Condition 16 (License No. 37-00030-02) and Condition 20.A (License No. 37-00030-08). The Licensee failed to make several prescribed deposits into the decommissioning trust fund over the period from May 2001 to December 2002. The Licensee made all overdue payments by February 2003 to address the deficit that existed at the end of 2002. However, starting in January 2003, the Licensee again failed to make the total prescribed payments into the decommissioning trust fund, resulting in a deficit of $81,000 by the end of November 2003. Upon learning of the foregoing, on December 19, 2003, the NRC issued a Demand for Information to SLC which required the Licensee to submit to the NRC the following information: 1. Detailed schedule for making all overdue payments, with interest, to the decommissioning trust fund; 2. Reasons why the Licensee did not make the required payments, as scheduled, to the decommissioning trust fund; 1. Reasons why the NRC should have confidence that the Licensee will, in the future, make the required monthly deposits to the decommissioning trust fund; 2. Assurance from the Licensee, that, should it encounter any difficulty making required monthly deposits in the future, it will promptly notify the NRC that there will be a delay in making a specific deposit, and provide the reasons for the delay; 3. Reasons why the NRC should have confidence that in the future, the Licensee will adhere to license conditions and applicable NRC requirements; 4. Reasons why, in light of the Licensee's past failure to make all required payments to the trust fund, License Nos. 37-00030-02 and 37- 00030-08 should not be modified, suspended, or revoked. On January 16, 2004, the Licensee responded to the Demand for Information and indicated, in part, that the Licensee could not submit a detailed schedule for making overdue payments given the Licensee's inability to [[Page 3071]] accurately predict future sales and cash flow. The Licensee also indicated that a slowdown in the Licensee's business activity caused by a general economic downturn made it impossible to stay current with the Licensee's payment obligations. At the same time, the Licensee indicated that aggressive marketing efforts, along with an improving economy, led to an increase in order activity which it expected to translate into an upturn in business. The Licensee made all of the prescribed deposits from December 2003 through November 2004. In addition, the Licensee made payments of amounts in arrears in December 2003, February 2004, and October 2004, resulting in a deficit of $36,000 plus interest to the decommissioning trust fund as of November 30, 2004. The Licensee submitted license renewal applications for License Nos. 37-00030-02 and 37-00030-08 on April 22, 2004. As noted in the letter transmitting this Order to the Licensee, the NRC denied the renewal applications based on the Licensee's failure to demonstrate compliance with the requirements of 10 CFR 30.35, as well as the Licensee's violation of several conditions of its licenses, including the failure to make the required monthly payments into the decommissioning trust fund. The NRC Office of Investigations conducted an investigation into the Licensee's failure to make the required monthly payments to the decommissioning trust fund, and concluded that the Licensee's management had deliberately violated the requirement to make the prescribed payments to the trust fund. In a July 1, 2004 letter, the NRC informed the Licensee of this apparent deliberate violation of the License Conditions and invited the licensee to a predecisional enforcement conference to discuss this matter. At the pre-decisional enforcement conference held on July 20, 2004, SLC management stated that a general downturn in business conditions led to the Licensee's failure to make payments. Nonetheless, the NRC maintains that the violation was deliberate in that the Licensee admitted knowledge of the requirement to make payments to the trust fund, yet failed to do so. The obligation to make the specified payments set forth in the license conditions is unqualified and is not subject to the state of SLC's business conditions, and was material to the granting of an exemption to the Licensee in connection with the renewal of its licenses in 1999. The Licensee's deliberate failure to make the required payments to the trust fund, as required by license conditions 16 and 20.A, voided the exemption from the financial assurance requirements of 10 CFR 30.35, and placed the Licensee in continued violation of these license conditions and 10 CFR 30.35. This deliberate failure by the Licensee has significant health and safety implications in that these regulatory requirements are intended to ensure the availability of adequate funds for characterization, packaging, and disposal of radioactive waste from the Licensee's site. Based on the Licensee's willful failure to make the required scheduled payments into the decommissioning trust fund as required by its licenses, and the resultant implication for public health and safety, I lack the requisite reasonable assurance that the Licensee's current operations can be conducted under License Nos. 37-00030-02 and 37-00030-08 in compliance with the Commission's requirements and that the health and safety of the public, including the Licensee's employees, will be protected. Therefore, the public health, safety, and interest require that License Nos. 37-00030-02 and 37-00030-08 be suspended and that the Licensee must develop a plan for the orderly shutdown of its licensed activities. Furthermore, pursuant to 10 CFR 2.202, I find that given the willful nature of the violation of Conditions 16 and 20.A. of License Nos. 37-00030-02 and 37-00030-08, respectively, and 10 CFR 30.35, as well as the related effect on public health and safety, this Order shall be immediately effective. In accordance with 10 CFR 30.36 (b) and (c), these licenses will continue in effect beyond the expiration date with respect to possession of byproduct material until the Commission notifies the Licensee in writing that the licenses are terminated. During this time, the Licensee shall limit actions involving byproduct material to those related to decommissioning and continue to control entry to restricted areas until they are suitable for release in accordance with NRC requirements. The Licensee is not authorized to receive any additional licensed material beyond the license expiration date but shall continue to take such actions as are needed to facilitate the decommissioning of the site, including the processing of the existing inventory of tritium to produce devices for transfer to authorized recipients. These actions are described in Section V below. Accordingly, pursuant to Sections 81, 161b, 161i, 161o, 182 and 186 of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, as amended, and the Commission's regulations in 10 CFR 2.202 and 10 CFR part 30, It is hereby ordered, effective immediately, that: A. License Nos. 37-00030-02 and 37-00030-08 are suspended on January 1, 2005, excepting those activities addressed in the shutdown plan prepared in accordance with item B. below and 10 CFR 30.36(b) and (c), pending further Order. B. The Licensee shall, by December 20, 2004, submit to the Regional Administrator, Region I, for approval, a plan for the orderly shutdown of its licensed activities over a period beginning on January 1, 2005, to be completed by March 31, 2005. This plan shall include provisions to: 1. Cease receipt of licensed material at the Licensee's Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania site; 2. Process existing inventory of licensed material into finished products for transfer to authorized recipients; 3. Transfer, or maintain in secure storage, the remaining inventory of tritium at the site; 4. Notify SLC customers of exit signs, or other devices containing licensed material, that they may not return these signs or devices to the licensee's Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania facility; 5. Provide continued security for the Licensee's Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania facility to assure safe conditions at the site; and 6. Provide continued heating, electrical power and other utility service. The Regional Administrator, Region I, may, in writing, relax or rescind this order upon demonstration by the Licensee of good cause. In accordance with 10 CFR 2.202, the Licensee must, and any other person adversely affected by this Order may, submit an answer to this Order, and may request a hearing on this Order, within 20 days of the date of this Order. Where good cause is shown, consideration will be given to extending the time to request a hearing. A request for extension of time must be made in writing to the Director, Office of Enforcement, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC 20555, and include a statement of good cause for the extension. The answer may consent to this Order. Unless the answer consents to this Order, the answer shall, in writing and under oath or affirmation, specifically admit or deny each allegation or charge made in this order and set forth the matters of fact and law on which the Licensee or other person adversely affected relies and the reasons as to why the Order should not have been issued. Any answer or request for a hearing shall be submitted to the Secretary, U.S. Nuclear [[Page 3072]] Regulatory Commission, ATTN: Rulemakings and Adjudications Staff, Washington, DC 20555. Copies of the hearing request also should be sent to the Director, Office of Enforcement, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC 20555, to the Assistant General Counsel for Materials Litigation and Enforcement at the same address, to the Regional Administrator, NRC Region I, 475 Allendale Road, King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, and to the Licensee. Because of continuing disruptions in delivery of mail to United States Government offices, it is requested that answers and requests for hearing be transmitted to the Secretary of the Commission either by means of facsimile transmission to 301-415-1101 or by e-mail to hearingdocket@nrc.gov [hearingdocket@nrc.gov] and also to the Office of the General Counsel either by means of facsimile transmission to 301-415-3725 or by e-mail to OGCMailCenter@nrc.gov [OGCMailCenter@nrc.gov] . If a person other than the Licensee requests a hearing, that person shall set forth with particularity the manner in which his interest is adversely affected by this Order and shall address the criteria set forth in 10 CFR 2.309(d). If a hearing is requested by the Licensee or a person whose interest is adversely affected, the Commission will issue an Order designating the time and place of any hearing. If a hearing is held, the issue to be considered at such hearing shall be whether this Order should be sustained. Pursuant to 10 CFR 2.202(c)(2)(i), the Licensee, or any other person adversely affected by this Order, may, in addition to demanding a hearing, at the time the answer is filed or sooner, move the presiding officer to set aside the immediate effectiveness of the Order on the ground that the Order, including the need for immediate effectiveness, is not based on adequate evidence but on mere suspicion, unfounded allegations, or error. In the absence of any request for hearing, or written approval of an extension of time in which to request a hearing, the provisions specified in Section V above shall be final 20 days from the date of this Order without further order or proceedings. If an extension of time for requesting a hearing has been approved, the provisions specified in Section V shall be final when the extension expires if a hearing request has not been received. A request for hearing shall not stay the immediate effectiveness of this order. For the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Dated this 10th day of December 2004. Margaret V. Federline, Acting Director, Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards. [FR Doc. 05-987 Filed 1-18-05; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 7590-01-P ***************************************************************** 21 NRC: Environmental Assessment and Finding of No Significant Impact FR Doc 05-988 [Federal Register: January 19, 2005 (Volume 70, Number 12)] [Notices] [Page 3072-3074] From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr19ja05-95] for Consumers Energy's Request To Modify Existing Sec. 20.2002 Authorization, for Big Rock Point, License DPR-006, Charlevoix County, MI AGENCY: Nuclear Regulatory Commission. ACTION: Environmental Assessment and Finding of No Significant Impact. FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: James Shepherd, Division of Waste Management and Environmental Protection, Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Mail Stop T7E18, Washington, DC 20555-0001. Telephone: (301) 415-6712; e-mail jcs2@nrc.gov [ jcs2@nrc.gov] . SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: I. Introduction The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is considering approval of a request to dispose of demolition debris contaminated with polychlorobiphenyl (PCB) in accordance with Title 10 of the Code of Federal Regulations (10 CFR) Section 20.2002 for Facility Operating License No. DPR-6, issued to Consumers Energy Company, ((CE) or the licensee), for the possession of the Big Rock Point (BRP) Plant, located in Charlevoix County, Michigan. This authorization will revise CE's existing authority to dispose of low-contamination material in a State of Michigan Type II landfill in accordance with 10 CFR 20.2002 by authorizing CE to dispose of such waste that also has PCB at a landfill licensed to accept PCBs. This proposed action would also exempt the low-contaminated material authorized for disposal from further Atomic Energy Act (AEA) and NRC licensing requirements. The NRC has prepared an Environmental Assessment (EA) in support of this proposed action in accordance with the requirements of 10 CFR part 51. Based upon the EA, the NRC has determined that a Finding of No Significant Impact (FONSI) is appropriate. II. Environmental Assessment Background On March 14, 2001, in accordance with 10 CFR 20.2002, the licensee submitted a request to dispose of low-activity demolition debris from the Big Rock Point (BRP) Restoration Site in a Type II sanitary landfill approximately 100 km (60 mi) from the site, licensed by the State of Michigan, in accordance with 10 CFR 20.2002. The licensee later revised the request on May 18, 2001 and June 20, 2001. NRC approved the request in May, 2002, and BRP began shipping material to the landfill. Subsequently, debris coated with polychlorobiphenyl (PCB)- contaminated paint, mainly structural steel, was identified during demolition. The State of Michigan Type II landfill that is currently accepting the debris contaminated with residual radioactivity does not accept PCB bulk product waste. Therefore, on September 15, 2004, the licensee submitted a revised request to dispose of about 1.4 million kilograms (three million pounds) of low-activity PCB bulk product waste in an alternate landfill, approximately 445 km (275 mi) from the site, licensed by the State of Michigan and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to accept PCBs. The licensee will continue to ship low-activity demolition debris that is not contaminated with PCB to the original Type II landfill. A comparison of the estimates of waste to be disposed and the time for disposal is given in the table below. As discussed below, there will be lighter loads, thus a slightly lower dose rate for the drivers, but more total shipments than was estimated in the 2001 request. Because of the increase in total waste, there will also be slight increases in dose rate to the landfill workers and postulated resident farmer compared to the 2001 estimates. Table 1.--Comparison of Waste Estimates Item 2001 2004 Total Waste........... 38.3 million kg (84.5 51.3 million kg (113 million lbs). million lbs). Rad Waste (remaining). 38.3 million kg 84.5 22.1 million kg (48.7 million lbs).million lbs). PCB Waste............. 0.................... 1.4 million kg (3 million lbs). Total shipping time... 1 year............... 3 years. Review Scope The purpose of this EA is to assess the environmental impacts of CE's request to modify its existing authority to dispose of low- contaminated waste in a licensed landfill that would allow it to dispose of similar waste that is also contaminated with PCBs in another landfill licensed to receive PCBs. The scope of this EA is limited to evaluating potential environmental effects due to the longer shipping distance to the PCB-licensed landfill. Identification of the Proposed Action The proposed action would approve the disposal of BRP Plant demolition debris that could contain trace quantities of licensed materials and PCB at a landfill licensed by the State of Michigan and the (EPA) to accept PCBs. An approval would also exempt the low- contamination material from further Atomic Energy Act (AEA) and NRC licensing requirements. The material comprises structural steel coated with PCB-contaminated paint, potentially including exterior steel from the containment building, classified by the EPA as PCB bulk product waste, originating from decommissioning activities. The existing radiological survey process will be used to determine if the debris is acceptable for landfill disposal. The licensed disposal site is located approximately 445 km (275 mi) from Big Rock Point. Landfill design and institutional controls for this facility are equal or more restrictive than the requirements placed on a State of Michigan licensed Type II landfill currently used. The proposed action is in accordance with the licensee's application requesting approval dated September 15, 2004. The Need for the Proposed Action The proposed action is needed to dispose of structural steel coated with PCB-contaminated paint, potentially including exterior steel from the containment building, classified by the EPA as PCB bulk product waste, that may contain trace quantities of licensed material in a landfill licensed by the State of Michigan and EPA to accept PCBs prior to license termination. Currently, the BRP Plant is authorized to dispose of material at a State of Michigan Type II landfill. However, this landfill is not licensed to accepted PCBs. Therefore, BRP is seeking to modify its existing Sec. 20.2002 authorization granted in 2002, so it can dispose of materials with PCB-contaminated paint in a landfill licensed to receive it. Environmental Impacts of the Proposed Action The NRC has completed its evaluation of the proposed action, and concludes that the environmental impacts of disposing up to 1.4 million kilograms (3 million pounds) of painted structural steel in which non- liquid PCBs are contained within the dried paint matrix, at a disposal facility licensed to accept PCB waste, are bounded by the previous EA (ADAMS Accession No. ML013370344). Adherence to the radiological survey process ensures that the potential radiological dose posed by the demolition debris to a transport worker, a landfill worker, or a member of the public is conservatively estimated at less than 10 [mu]Sv/yr (1 mrem/yr). The transportation worker scenario results in revised doses of 3.20 [mu]Sv/yr (0.320 mrem/yr), because of the lighter loads for a driver to the current State of Michigan licensed Type II landfill, and 1.78 [mu]Sv/yr (0.178 mrem/yr) for a driver to the alternate licensed PCB landfill. The landfill worker scenario results in revised doses of 2.91 [mu]Sv/yr (0.291 mrem/yr) for a worker at the current State of Michigan licensed Type II landfill, and 0.182 [mu]Sv/yr (0.0182 mrem/ yr) for a worker at the alternate licensed PCB landfill because of the small amount of radioactive waste to be disposed at this landfill. The calculated doses for the landfills are 0.178 [mu]Sv/yr (0.0178 mrem/yr) for a resident living at the Type II landfill site, and 0.01 [mu]Sv/yr (0.001 mrem/yr) for a resident living at the licensed PCB landfill site. Disposal of the demolition debris in the manner proposed is protective of public health and safety, is consistent with as low as reasonably achievable, complies with EPA requirements, and is the most cost-effective alternative. The proposed action and attendant exemption of the material from further AEA and NRC licensing requirements will not significantly increase the probability or consequences of accidents, no changes are being made in the types of any effluents that may be released off site, and there is no significant increase in occupational or public radiation exposure. Therefore, there are no significant radiological environmental impacts associated with the proposed action. With regard to potential nonradiological impacts, the proposed action does not involve any historic sites. It does not affect nonradiological plant effluents and, because the waste will be disposed in a facility licensed to receive PCBs, it has no other environmental impacts. Therefore, there are no significant nonradiological environmental impacts associated with the proposed action. Accordingly, the NRC concludes that there are no significant environmental impacts associated with the proposed action. Environmental Impacts of the Alternatives to the Proposed Action As an alternative to the proposed action, the staff considered denial of the proposed action (i.e., the ``no-action'' alternative). Denial of the application would result in handling the debris as low level radioactive waste and shipping it to a low level waste facility. The environmental impacts of the proposed action and the alternative action are similar. Alternative Use of Resources This action does not involve the use of any resources not previously considered in BRP's Environmental Report for Decommissioning, dated February 27, 1995, or in the ``Generic Environmental Impact Statement on Decommissioning of Nuclear Facilities'' (NUREG-0586, Supplement 1). Agencies and Persons Consulted On December 29, 2004, the staff consulted with the Michigan State official, Mr. Pete Quackenbush of the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, Waste and Hazardous Materials Division regarding the environmental impact of the proposed action. The State official had no comments. III. Finding of No Significant Impact On the basis of the environmental assessment, the NRC concludes that the proposed action will not have a significant effect on the quality of the [[Page 3074]] human environment. Accordingly, the NRC has determined not to prepare an environmental impact statement for the proposed action. IV. Further Information For further details with respect to the proposed action, see the licensee's letter dated September 15, 2004 (ADAMS Accession No. ML042640208). As of October 25, 2004, the NRC initiated an additional security review of publicly available documents to ensure that potentially information is removed from the ADAMS database accessible through the NRC's web site. Interested members of the public may obtain copies of the referenced documents for review and/or copying by contacting the Public Document Room pending resumption of public access to ADAMS. The NRC Public Documents Room is located at NRC Headquarters in Rockville, MD, and can be contacted at (800) 397-4209. Documents may be examined, and/or copied for a fee, at the NRC's Public Document Room (PDR), located at One White Flint North, 11555 Rockville Pike (first floor), Rockville, Maryland. Publicly available records will be accessible electronically from the Agencywide Documents Access and Management System's (ADAMS) Public Library component on the NRC Web site, http://www.nrc.gov [http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/leaving.cgi?from=leaving FR.html&log=linklog&to=http://www.nrc.gov] (the Public Electronic Reading Room). Persons who do not have access to ADAMS or who encounter problems in accessing the documents located in ADAMS should contact the NRC PDR Reference staff by telephone at 1-800-397-4209, or 301-415-4737, or by e-mail at pdr@nrc.gov [ pdr@nrc.gov] . Dated at Rockville, Maryland, this 11th day of January, 2005. For the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Daniel M. Gillen, Deputy Director, Division of Waste Management and Environmental Protection, Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards. [FR Doc. 05-988 Filed 1-18-05; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 7590-01-P ***************************************************************** 22 chillicothe gazette: NRC opens up to public - www.chillicothegazette.com Wednesday, January 19, 2005 By Daniel Prazer, dprazer@nncogannett.com Gazette Staff Writer PIKETON -- Area residents and folks from around the region packed into a school cafeteria Tuesday night to talk to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. In the midst of the licensing process for United States Enrichment Corp.'s proposed $1.5 billion centrifuge plant, the NRC wanted to get comments from the public on the scope of an environmental review it's required to complete. Yawar Faraz, senior project manager in charge of the proposed plant's licensing process, said by asking people what the commission should be including in the review, they're often able to see issues they may have overlooked or underestimated. "Clearly, the scoping is an essential part of the process," Faraz said. "That's one way of the NRC getting input to better focus the issues of concern." Of the people taking a turn at the podium, supporters of the project outnumbered opposition by a nearly 2-to-1 margin. Compared to a meeting last summer where the opposition was more vocal, Tuesday's meeting shows the true level of support in the community for the project, said Blaine Beekman, director of the Pike County Chamber of Commerce. "I think the NRC came out of that first meeting really questioning what is the community's level of support," he said. "The minority seems to yell louder and rely on unsubstantiated statements that haven't seen the light of day." But Meigs County resident Alecia Young was one of about five people to voice concerns over the proposed plant. As a taxpayer, she doesn't want to foot any cleanup bills that may be created by the centrifuge plant, she said, and wanted to make sure a contract was in place to dispose of the waste before the NRC granted a license. Geoffry Sea, a writer working on a book about the plant and currently moving from New York to Piketon, said the NRC ought to be considering the possible impact of the plant being constructed and run, but ultimately failing. After having to clean up the buildings contaminated in the 1980s by an abandoned centrifuge plant, he said he's having a sense of deja vu. Originally published Wednesday, January 19, 2005 ***************************************************************** 23 CANOE: Internet AECL expands Candu joint engineering agreement with Chinese nuclear institute [http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/home.html] January 19, 2005 TORONTO (CP) - Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd., having just lost a crucial partnership in the United States, announced Wednesday that it is expanding an engineering relationship in China. AECL and the Shanghai Nuclear Engineering Research and Design Institute have agreed to undertake joint development of advanced technology and products related to the Candu nuclear reactor. The agreement "provides a platform to promote the localization and further development of Candu technology in China," stated Ken Petrunik, chief operating officer of the federal Crown corporation. China has two late-model Candu 6 reactors, which entered service in 2002 and 2003, and the Shanghai institute "has gained considerable experience with the Candu design through the Qinshan Candu project," Xia Zhiding, chief engineer of SNERDI, said in a statement from Shanghai. Wednesday's agreement envisages joint engineering work on Candu operational areas including plant life management, maintenance and inspection; co-operation on development projects including the Advanced Candu Reactor, or ACR; and refinement of AECL's engineering techniques. The Chinese agreement followed word that a U.S. nuclear industry group led by Dominion Resources has abandoned an arrangement to partner with AECL and has chosen General Electric to supply an advanced reactor. Dominion, one of the largest power generators in the United States and owner of three nuclear plants, made its break with AECL last week, withdrawing from a co-operative effort to win U.S. regulatory approval for an Advanced Candu Reactor. AECL said then that it would continue trying to get licences in the United States, as well as in Canada, China and Britain, for the ACR, which is under development in 750-megawatt and 1,200-megawatt versions. ***************************************************************** 24 Independent: Misery of fathers, Nuclear power risks and others [http://www.independent.co.uk] 20 January 2005 Sir: I agree entirely with Joan Smith's view of the political posturing over divorced or separated parents' access to their children ("Are divorced fathers really getting a raw deal?", 19 January). The rest of her article is unfortunately very one-sided and blinkered. She does not understand the real issue. It may be true that nine out of 10 divorced couples come to arrangements on access without a court order, but arrangements are not always implemented and, without some legal sanction, the non-resident parent has no means of ensuring he or she gets access. Even where a court order exists, it is easy for the parent with care to place sufficient obstacles in the way of reasonable access without breaking the terms of the order. Until you have experienced the gut-wrenching misery of a parent whose children have been taken from them, the ritual humiliation of being made to wait on the doorstep of the new partner's house for the children to be brought out or the indignity of having to go to court to justify being granted a few hours of access time every month and the Kafkaesque experience of dealing with the CSA, you do not know what a raw deal is. Not all absent fathers are wife-beating, child-abusing thugs who dodge their financial responsibilities. If Fathers 4 Justice trivialises the issue, so does Joan Smith's article. ANDREW WHITELEY Andover, Hampshire Sir: The most telling aspect of Joan Smith's man-hating polemic is the casual cruelty of her dismissal of men's experiences of being deprived of contact with their children with the words that it is "not happening in such numbers as to require punitive new rules". If we take one of her figures at face value, one in 10 of the 200,000 couples splitting each year require a court order to try to ensure that children remain in contact with both of their parents. That means that each year it affects up to 20,000 fathers. For almost all of these there is a couple of grandparents, plus aunts, uncles and cousins. Does Joan Smith seriously expect us to believe that if up to 20,000 mothers and their families were being deprived of contact with their children each year she would accept this without complaint? Threatening to "tag" obstructive parents is just posturing by New Labour. It will be thrown out by Parliament and is a distraction from the real issue, which is public and political acceptance that following family breakdown a presumption of shared parenting should be the norm. Dr LES MAY Rochdale, Lancashire How the public sees nuclear power risks Sir: Sir David King, Chief Scientific Adviser to the Government, says: "Chernobyl created a negative view of nuclear technology. I don't think it's the right view; the number of deaths from coal production vastly exceeds the number from all accidents in nuclear power production," (Monday Interview, 17 January). "Public acceptability" is a problem. If Chernobyl had happened in England then a large slice of our green and pleasant land would be an "exclusion zone" for a few thousand years. Sir David is equally frustrated that the Americans still take a "negative view" of the industry 26 years after the accident at Three Mile Island very nearly irradiated Detroit. I think the public does have the right view. The type of risk in coal mining is different. The possibility of a runaway accident in a mine threatening millions of people does not exist. A 9/11-type attack on a nuclear power plant would be a catastrophe. There is no equivalent risk with a coal mine. Sir David's comparison is no more helpful than an airline boss pointing out how much safer air travel is than driving. It's true but irrelevant. Most people are not rational and calculating; perception is more important than actuality. Sir David's other problem is nuclear waste. Has he considered the possibility that there is no solution to this problem? That the industry has a fatal flaw, which will for ever render it unviable? The UK nuclear industry only exists because of taxpayer bailouts. The private sector will not consider building a nuclear power plant without a government "guarantee". We should cut our losses with this failed and dangerous industry. All we need is the political will. ROBERT HANDYSIDE Swarland, Northumberland Sir: Martin Parkinson (letter, 18 January) acknowledges that we need nuclear power if we are to avoid massive blackouts but says that, for reasons undisclosed, new reactors can only be a short-term solution. May I make the alternative case, accepted by the peoples of France, Russia, China, Japan and India among others? We have sufficient known resources of uranium to keep current nuclear generation going for 4.5 billion years. Nuclear power has a safety record far surpassing that of any other major world industry. Since the 43 deaths at Chernobyl there have been four accidental deaths, all in Japan, in an industry that provides 20 per cent of the world's electricity. By comparison, with coal, we tolerate over 100,000 deaths from black lung and emphysema every year. High-level reactor waste amounts to only a cubic metre per reactor year. Because of the short half-life inherent in high radioactivity it is, in 50 years, normally down to the level of the ore it was mined from. It is the only possible system which can permanently generate enough to give everybody in the world the amount of power, and therefore a substantial fraction of the standard of living, we currently enjoy. This would take 5,500 reactors, which if mass produced would be very much cheaper than the current bespoke system. World-wide waste over 50 years would be equivalent to a single cube 65 metres on a side. If allowing all our fellow members of the human race a decent standard of living were considered desirable, and I so consider it, a permanent commitment to expanded nuclear power would be an absolute requirement. NEIL CRAIG Glasgow Sir: Sir David King noted that Britain's White Paper on energy has not ruled out building nuclear power stations and suggested that, if needed, nuclear rebuilds might be the subject of a further White Paper. If CO2 reduction targets are to be met, an exploration of nuclear power cannot be off of the agenda. Judging by Defra's latest document on climate change, which failed to address the nuclear option, the British government appears content to ignore the issue in the hopes that it will go away, at least until after the next election. Policy makers need to work closely with social scientists to analyse countries such as Sweden and Finland, where the public have been actively engaged in the nuclear debate and policy making, who have better handled nuclear issues of late. In the UK, it appears to be a forgone conclusion that the public holds a negative view of nuclear technology. King only hit the tip of the iceberg with his emphasis on the assessment of public acceptability of nuclear energy. Public expectations and preferences need to be counterbalanced by an understanding of decision-makers' perception of public opinion. Research consistently illustrates that decision-makers' perceptions are inaccurate and often contradict public opinion. If the UK government hopes to act responsibly, it should explore non-fossil fuel options, including nuclear, while actively engaging the public, stakeholders, policy makers and industry on climate change. Dr BROOKE ROGERS The King's Centre for Risk Management, King's College London ©2005 Independent News &Media (UK) Ltd. ***************************************************************** 25 Brattleboro Reformer: Disaster plan criticized [http://www.reformer.com/] January 19, 2005 Brattleboro, VT By CAROLYN LORIÉ Reformer Staff BRATTLEBORO -- Nuclear-Free Vermont is spearheading a public letter-writing campaign that urges Gov. James Douglas to refuse to send a letter to the Federal Emergency Management Agency that signs off on the emergency evacuation plan. Though the evacuation plan is designed for any emergency, most of the concern is focused on the radiological emergency response plan should an accident occur at the Entergy Nuclear Vermont Yankee power station. The anti-nuclear group, a long-standing critic of the plan, calls it undoable and unrealistic. Recently, members presented local selectboards with a 10-point list of how they believe the plan could be improved. The Dummerston, Halifax and Guilford boards agreed with the recommendations, while Brattleboro signed off on more than half of them. With the exception of Vernon, where the nuclear power station is located, none of the towns in the emergency planning zone (EPZ) has certified the evacuation plan in recent years. "We are asking the governor to join with the selectboards in the emergency planning zone that decided to not sign the evacuation plans," said Ed Anthes of Nuclear-Free Vermont. Jason Gibbs, press secretary for the governor, said that Douglas is working with the commissioner of the Department of Public Safety to ensure the evacuation plan meets all FEMA requirements. If it does, said Gibbs, the letter will be sent. While the NRC regulates action taken on plant grounds during an accident, the Federal Emergency Management Agency oversees plans implemented by towns in the emergency planing zone. FEMA is responsible for certifying that states have evacuation plans in place. Every year, the state sends FEMA officials a letter that is signed by the director of Vermont Emergency Management and the commissioner of the Department of Public Safety. The governor, however, does have the authority to withhold the letter. According to VEM director Albert Lewis, the annual letter is merely a description of what was done in the previous year, such as training, exercises, improvements and what will be done in the upcoming year. It does not, he said, certify that the towns in question have adopted the plan. In recent years, communities in the EPZ of Indian Point Nuclear power station in New York refused to sign off on their evacuation plan, claiming that it was not workable and would not protect residents in the event of a radiological release. New York Gov. George Pataki commissioned a study of the plan, which exposed a number of weaknesses. After the study was completed, the governor also refused to certify the plan. Unlike Vermont, however, New York is a home-rule state, meaning that local and state government have a greater degree of autonomy. The New York State Emergency Management Office is required to certify that the evacuation plan was considered adequate. When the office refused, FEMA certified the plan without the state's cooperation or consent. A similar standoff could not occur in Vermont, which is not a home-rule state. Douglas could, however, make a political statement by refusing to send the letter. The evacuation plan has been under intense scrutiny recently after an unsuccessful school evacuation on Dec. 16, 2004. Although it was an announced drill, it was poorly executed and considered a failure by many. School officials are planning to hold another drill on Feb. 15. Gibbs said Douglas has taken steps to ensure that the problems that plagued the first drill are not repeated. Among the improvements Nuclear-Free Vermont recommended is that all bus drivers and others involved in transportation wear pagers. The group also advocated for the addition of sirens in Guilford, Halifax and Dummerston, as well as areas of Brattleboro where the already existing sirens cannot be heard; that a radioactive plume monitoring team and van be stationed in Brattleboro; and that emergency alert radios be upgraded so they are preprogrammed for the correct station. In November 2004, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission found that Vermont Yankee officials were not in compliance with their emergency notification system. According to the NRC report, plant officials did not keep an adequate data base on how many residents received a tone alert radio nor did they insure that everyone within the emergency planning zone could be successfully notified if an accident did occur. Entergy officials have since taken steps to remedy problems with its notification system and disagreed with Nuclear-Free Vermont's assessment of the evacuation plan. "We see no reason for the plans to be withheld. The state is participating in drills and exercises and is working continuously to improve the emergency plan," said Entergy spokesman Rob Williams. The NRC finding coupled with the recently failed school evacuation prompted another local anti-nuclear group, the New England Coalition, to file a petition with the NRC. In it the group requests that the agency close down the nuclear reactor immediately, until plant officials could verify the effectiveness of its emergency notification system. Members of Nuclear-Free Vermont participated in the conference call with the NRC, when the petition was under initial review. The NRC chose not to close the plant, but did accept the petition for review and possible action. Copyright ©1999-2005 New England Newspapers, Inc., a ***************************************************************** 26 Xinhua: Nigeria seeks IAEA assistance on nuclear power plants www.xinhuanet.com www.chinaview.cn 2005-01-20 00:45:54 LAGOS, Jan. 19 (Xinhuanet) -- Nigeria is seeking the assistance ofthe International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to develop its two full-scale 1,000 megawatt nuclear power plants, state media reported Wednesday. Nigerian Minister of Science and Technology Turner Isoun made the request while welcoming visiting IAEA chief Mohamed El Baradeiin capital Abuja, according to the News Agency of Nigeria. "We are seeking the assistance and support of the IAEA toward the development of two nuclear power plants for the generation of electricity," Isoun said. "When produced it will largely serve as the nation's baseline electrical power." The Nigerian government has announced that it will increase power generation to 10,000 megawatt by 2007 from the current level of about 3,000 megawatt in a bid to achieve an end to the frequent power interruption in Africa's most populous country. The minister said that the collaboration between the Nigerian government and the agency had culminated in the supply and installation of the first Nigerian nuclear research reactor at theCenter for Energy Research and Training in the northern city of Zaria. He further reiterated Nigeria's support to the noble ideals of the IAEA and its leadership in promoting and achieving developmental objectives through the peaceful application of nuclear energy. The IAEA chief, who arrived in Abuja Monday and held discussions with President Olusegun Obasanjo Tuesday, is expected to depart the west African country Thursday for Ghana. Enditem Copyright ©2003 Xinhua News Agency. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 27 APP: Exelon's Three Mile Island record bodes ill for Oyster Creek work [http://www.app.com/] ASBURY PARK PRESS Published in the Asbury Park Press 1/19/05 By THOMAS J. CERVASIO The Oyster Creek nuclear generating plant in Lacey and the Three Mile Island 1 nuclear reactor in Pennsylvania have at least two things in common: both are owned by Exelon and both were purchased at bargain-basement prices. In 1999, Exelon acquired Three Mile Island for $99 million. The assessed valuation was $512 million. By the end of 2001, Exelon had eliminated more than 1,100 jobs. In January 2002, it announced it was cutting 15 percent of its work force by the end of the year. Finally in 2003, it announced it would eliminate 1,900 more jobs by 2006, or another 10 percent of its work force. Oyster Creek was another bargain. It acquired 860 acres -- including a mile or two of prime waterfront, obligingly rezoned for future commercial waterfront use by friendly Lacey zoning boards -- the nuclear plant, two existing oil- and gas-burning turbines, and a huge escrow fund all for $10 million. It was valued then at $886 million. Is that a deal or what? And who is overseeing the use of the Oyster Creek escrow money? Did it become every Exelon plant's escrow by default? The toll on the workers has been devastating. How can you be faithful to a corporation that has only one thing in mind, and it isn't safety or respect for your value as an employee? A company that ruins your hope of job security and fair wage increases. A company that savages your health benefits. All to satisfy the faceless shareholders of what is called a public utility. What is the bottom line for safety vs. another dime of dividend income? We'll never know because according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, it is not allowed to consider economics when evaluating a plant. The definition of economics here is presumably how many workers can you get rid of before plant safety suffers. During the last strike at Oyster Creek, many safety issues were raised and have not yet been answered. How can you safely run an operation like that by cutting an experienced work force to the bone to satisfy the shareholders, only to provide retirement packages to CEOs such as Exelon executive Corbin A. McNeill Jr., who carted off an obscene package of almost $30 million? Now Exelon wants to merge with PSEG, another "public service" corporation, one grappling with severe problems with its own reactors and one that has spent a decade downsizing to save money. Not to worry, though. We are told that Exelon will make them safe to run, despite all those missing skilled workers. And PSEG CEO Jim Ferland, after feathering his annual $15 million nest for more than a decade, will retire next year with his own package of booty, earned by eradicating jobs and benefits and playing hardball against cost-of-living increases for workers and retirees. The federal government denied money to New Jersey to replace the aging radiation monitoring devices at Oyster Creek, but again we are told not to worry: Oyster Creek has its own devices and will tell us all about it if a release of radioactivity occurs. The state Department of Environmental Protection has no regulatory power over nuclear power plants, which is alarming. This should be rectified on a state and federal level. The objection of Lacey officials toward consideration of closing the plant is not responsible. An incident at this plant will affect the health and lives of more than 3.5 million people for a radius of 50 miles. It will contaminate the air, water and land, and render worthless everything we own. Lacey must remove itself from being a "company" town and consider the real objections of millions of others exposed to this danger. Despite "the sky is falling" threats regarding taxes, Lacey residents are protected from losing the income for housing this plant. If an incident were to occur tomorrow, the value of homes would plunge and remain static for many years, a far bigger loss than any mythical tax increase. Also, if the reactor were to be dismantled, the Oyster Creek property would remain usable for other safer forms of energy such as the existing turbines all ready on site. Except for high-level management people who create their own wages and benefits, few plant workers have job security. The decommissioning of the plant will take many years, allowing workers to find other jobs in the industry or elsewhere, with many of them working throughout the closing period. Lacey business owners worry about losing money if the workers move on. But unless a catastrophe happens and the plant crashes and is vacated immediately, in which case we are all doomed, the population will continue to grow and need the services and goods they sell. Maybe the "in" people who do some sort of business with the plant will suffer, but they've had a long run. And in the long run, it is for the good of the people that this aging plant be closed before a catastrophe occurs. Thomas J. Cervasio is chairman of EnviroWatch, an environmental group based in Berkeley. ***************************************************************** 28 APP: Radiation data sent to 100,000 living near Oyster Creek [http://www.app.com/] ASBURY PARK PRESS Published in the Asbury Park Press 1/19/05 WHEN: 5 to 8 p.m., Feb. 16. WHERE: Manchester Civic Center, 1 Colonial Drive. --> By NICHOLAS CLUNN MANAHAWKIN BUREAU LACEY -- Operators of the Oyster Creek nuclear power plant want their neighbors to know that radiation is everywhere -- in the air, in the soil and even in their bodies. This fact, along with others about the particles yielded by nuclear fission, have shown up in about 100,000 mailboxes at homes within 10 miles of the oldest commercial reactor in the country, according to plant spokeswoman Gina Scala. AmerGen officials sent the rare mailing -- a one-page sheet in black and white -- to help the company meet federal requirements mandating that reactor owners teach the public about radiation and its effects, she said. News of the mailing prompted a lunchtime conversation Tuesday among the beauticians working at Action Headquarters, a salon off Charles Drive in Dover Township. "If I would have seen something about radiation in the mail, I would have looked at it because radiation is a scary thing," said Jodie Fogler of Dover. "It's scary," agreed manicurist Debbie Jones of Howell, who had never heard of Oyster Creek before Monday. "But we don't really have control over the plant." Scala could not provide information about the cost of the mailing. The mailing coincides with a push by AmerGen to educate the public and the media about plant operations. The company is preparing to apply for a 20-year license renewal in July. The plant would likely close in 2009 without the extension. AmerGen wrote that according to the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements radiation from reactors contributes about 1 millirem of the 360-millirem dose absorbed annually by most Americans. While prominent figures in science and government have denounced claims that link cancer with long-term exposure to low-level radiation, other scientists have called for more studies on the subject after finding tenuous correlations. Two interest groups have asked scientists to continue researching the connection in studies released last year -- the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, and the Radiation and Public Health Project. The latter organization published the Tooth Fairy Project which said a correlation between childhood cancer and nuclear plants was found by analyzing baby teeth from homes both near to and far from reactors. Lacey resident George Chowanec said he lost his wife, Lillian, eight years ago to lung cancer. Though he could never prove that radiation from Oyster Creek killed his wife, who stayed cleared of cigarettes and alcohol, Chowanec said he has suspicions. "Is it possible?" he asked. "Yes, it is possible." Residents within the 10-mile "emergency preparedness zone" received the mailing. Emergency management officials have plans to evacuate people inside that area if a radioactive release ever threatened the population. About 125,000 people live in the zone year-round. That number increases to about 188,000 during the summer, according to the State Police Office of Emergency Management. Nicholas Clunn: (609) 978-4597 or nclunn@app.com [nclunn@app.com] INFORMATION FAIR The public can learn more about the Oyster Creek nuclear power plant from the technicians and engineers who run the AmerGen facility. Plant officials want to calm fears surrounding nuclear power through education and to convince the public that AmerGen can live up to its motto: Safe, Clean and Reliable. WHEN: 5 to 8 p.m., Feb. 16. WHERE: Manchester Civic Center, 1 Colonial Drive. Go Back | Subscribe to the Asbury Park Press [http://marketing.injersey.com/subscriptions.html] ***************************************************************** 29 Las Vegas SUN: Bush Appoints Two to NRC By H. JOSEF HEBERT ASSOCIATED PRESS WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush on Wednesday appointed two new members to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, including the science adviser to Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., a leading opponent of a proposed nuclear waste site in the state he represents. Bush named Gregory Jaczko, Reid's adviser on nuclear issues, and Peter Lyons, science adviser to Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., to fill the two vacancies on the five-member commission. Reid has fought for years to keep the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste site out of Nevada. Domenici, chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, is among its staunchest supporters. Lyons was named to the NRC after retired Vice Admiral Albert Konetzni withdrew his name from consideration. Bush had nominated Konetzni to the NRC last year, but Reid blocked his nomination - and scores of other Bush nominations - until he received assurance that Jaczko's nomination would go through. Reid has called Jaczko "eminently qualified" and said he "has the background and experience necessary to evaluate information objectively." A deal brokered in November cleared the way for recess appointments of Jaczko and Konetzni to the NRC. Such appointments do not require a Senate hearing. In recent weeks, Konetzni, a Republican, expressed second thoughts about the NRC post when it became apparent he would not be elevated to chairman later this year. The current chairman, Republican Nils Diaz, has made it clear he wants to remain chairman through his term, which ends in July 2006. Some Senate Republicans and the nuclear industry had opposed Jaczko's nomination, fearing he would work to further Reid's desire to kill the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste project, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. Reid, the top Democrat in the new Senate, has been its strongest voice against the Yucca project and has fought for years to block it or limit its funding. Domenici hailed Lyons' appointment. "His experience and expertise on nuclear matters is unsurpassed," said Domenici. Lyons, a nuclear physicist, spent 28 years at the federal Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. Since 1997 he has worked as an adviser to Domenici on technology and science issues. By law, three of the five commissioners at the NRC must be of the same party as the president. The commission currently has two Republican members and one Democratic member. The NRC is expected to begin considering a license for the Yucca Mountain facility later this year. The licensing process is expected to take at least three years. -- ***************************************************************** 30 [du-list] Fw: [Bananas] Hanford downwinders burden of proof Date: Wed, 19 Jan 2005 14:53:02 -0800 --- Original Message ----- From: Jeremy Maxand To: bANAnas Sent: Monday, January 17, 2005 12:04 PM Subject: [Bananas] Hanford downwinders burden of proof Find a job » Find a car » Find Real Estate » Downwinders ask for same settlement New rule changes standard for cancer risk Karen Dorn Steele Staff writer January 13, 2005 The federal government has recently changed its rules for compensating cancer-stricken nuclear workers, and the new standard of proof should also apply to others exposed to radiation from Hanford starting in the 1940s, attorneys for Hanford downwinders argued Wednesday in Spokane. The U.S. Department of Energy's old rule barred sick workers from qualifying for a $150,000 compensation payment unless they could prove that they wouldn't have gotten cancer "but for" their on-the-job exposure. Now, the Energy Department and the U.S. Department of Labor, which announced this week that it will take over the workers' compensation program, use a less stringent compensation standard - that the radiation the workers were exposed to was a "significant factor" in increasing their cancer risk. "This whole field has evolved. . Any radiation will create some risk to human cells," attorney Tom Foulds of Seattle told U.S. District Judge William F. Nielsen. That is the burden of proof that should be used in the upcoming Hanford downwinders' trial that starts April 11, said Spokane attorney Dick Eymann after the hearing before Nielsen. Eymann will be the lead trial attorney in the case. "Downwinders are entitled to the same standard. How can you have one standard for workers and a stricter one for the general public? It's inconsistent for the nuclear contractors to be arguing this because the government is indemnifying them," Eymann said. Thousands of people exposed to emissions of radioactive iodine-131 from Hanford have sued the major Hanford contractors. Attorneys representing the contractors argued that a strict burden of proof should still be used to determine who stays in and who is eliminated from the big toxic tort case. If a lesser standard is used, "we are going to be here for decades sorting through these cases," said Kevin Van Wart of Kirkland & Ellis of Chicago, lead attorney for the Hanford contractors, including General Electric and Dupont. Van Wart also called for the burden of proof to focus on epidemiological studies and statistics to determine which plaintiffs "more likely than not" were harmed by Hanford emissions. "This case turns on epidemiology. A slight increase in risk doesn't prove Hanford more likely than not caused their problem," Van Wart said. It's absurd to say the burden of proof should be limited to epidemiology, which focuses on population groups and not on individuals, said attorney Peter Nordberg of Philadelphia, arguing for the plaintiffs. "There is no requirement in Washington law that requires the plaintiffs to use statistical or mathematical proof," Nordberg said. He called that approach "the wave of the past." Hanford studies that attempted to reconstruct the iodine-131 doses to exposed people who drank tainted milk were based on spotty data and unreliable memories of milk consumption, and the burden of proof should also include clinical information on individual plaintiffs, Nordberg said. Iodine-131 accumulates in the thyroid gland, where it can cause cancer or nodules. It will be up to Nielsen to decide which standard of proof applies to the case. It was filed in 1991 by thousands of people who claim they developed thyroid cancer and other diseases after being exposed to radiation from Hanford's plutonium factories. Some of the burden of proof issues have already been heard by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which in 2002 overruled a decision by U.S. District Judge Alan McDonald to disqualify hundreds of plaintiffs who couldn't prove they'd received a radiation dose that doubled their cancer risk. McDonald recused himself from the complex case in 2003 after a dispute over an orchard he'd purchased at Ringold in one of the areas most heavily exposed to Hanford's radiation clouds. Nielsen took over the case last year. Gwen Klein of Spokane, a plaintiff in the 14-year-old case, spent hours on Wednesday listening to the complex courtroom arguments. She grew up on a wheat farm in Dusty, Wash., and had thyroid disease as a child. Six years ago, the 53-year-old singer said she was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. "I've had a rollercoaster of symptoms, but I'm one of the lucky ones because I survived and I'm getting better. I was so discouraged by this case, but now I'm encouraged because it's getting a lot of attention again," Klein said. She said her cousin Shannon Rhodes, who also grew up on a farm near Dusty, is one of the 11 "bellwether" cases scheduled for trial April 11. That trial is likely to determine the outcome of the case for over 2,000 other plaintiffs. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> What would our lives be like without music, dance, and theater? Donate or volunteer in the arts today at Network for Good! http://us.click.yahoo.com/TzSHvD/SOnJAA/79vVAA/FGYolB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> To unsubscribe from this groups send a message to du-list-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com. In the body of the message type unsubscribe and send. Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/du-list/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: du-list-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ ***************************************************************** 31 peoples networks: White House Science Phobia, Spin Taint News of Chemical Dangers peoplesnetworks.net [Independent. Nonprofit. Anticommercial. Uncompromised.] Watchdog groups say scientists advising the Bush administration are at it again: this time under Pentagon pressure to argue that the thyroid-affecting chemical perchlorate is safer in drinking water than the EPA has found. Jan 19 - The Bush administration conspired with defense contractors, documents show, to undermine scientific investigations into a toxic chemical that is especially dangerous to children and developing fetuses. Experts say that a rocket fuel ingredient called perchlorate is a serious threat to the ecology and public health. Yet environmental groups contend that the White House and the Defense Department have engaged in a "brazen effort" to "manipulate" attempts by federal scientists to analyze and address the threat. "It was a highly coordinated and very well-funded strategy to try to influence the outcome of the National Academy of Sciences panel," said Dr. Jennifer Sass, a senior scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a private, nonprofit research organization that conducts research on behalf of the federal government. The White House held a secret meeting with perchlorate- producing defense contractor Lockheed-Martin; and the Pentagon used "talking points" written by another corporation for lobbying purposes. The NRDC charges that constant secret pressure and bullying backroom tactics from the top influenced an NAS report on the chemical at every step. Evidence the group obtained through Freedom of Information Act lawsuits shows efforts to stack the NAS committee, extensive lobbying from industry to downplay the dangers of industrial perchlorate use, and systematic involvement from White House officials who are not trained in the science at issue. The documents paint a clear picture of Bush administration officials and industry lobbyists attempting to undermine the federal Environmental Protection Agency's tougher recommendations on perchlorate. Beyond actively trying to distort the science, another advocacy organization says, public relations spin coming from the federal government appears to willfully distort even the more lenient NAS report's findings in favor of industrial interests. A Scientific Consensus: Perchlorate's Dangers Are Real Perchlorate is uniformly acknowledged to harm the human thyroid gland, which is essential for brain and organ development. Over decades, Pentagon contractors have used the chemical to build rockets and create fuel, resulting in water and soil contamination that affects tens of millions of Americans. NRDC says that water supplies for more than twenty million people have been deemed tainted with perchlorate. In fact, a study by the Environmental Working Group, a research and advocacy organization specializing in environmental and public health issues, found that the chemical impacted drinking water for seven million people in California alone. The issue, scientists agree, is not whether prechlorate is dangerous, but at what levels the chemical poses real threats. "Despite what some others have been saying, there is a scientific consensus that any perchlorate drinking water standard should be in the very low parts per billion," said Renee Sharp, a senior analyst with the Environmental Working Group. Sharp's organization contends that standard should be lower than one part per billion (ppb) to minimize health risks, but for decades, industry foot-dragging has hamstrung the push for safety. The Pentagon has supported allowing 200 ppb of perchlorate in water, a stance Sharp calls "beyond ridiculous." Even a short-term exposure to the chemical for children or pregnant women can cause serious long-term harm. The EPA snubbed the defense industry in January 2002 when its third draft statement on perchlorate suggested a restrictive standard, allowing no more than one part perchlorate in each billion parts of water. In response, defense lobbyists and the White House fought hard against the assessment, ultimately tasking the National Academy of Sciences in 2003 with developing new recommendations -- a move that shocked EPA staff, who say they were not informed beforehand. Environmentalists believed at the time that the switchover was merely a stalling tactic designed to delay new regulations. What occurred, they now say, was much more sinister. Stacking The Deck Against Public Health NRDC representatives say that from the beginning, the White House and the Pentagon worked with corporations involved in the rocket industry to shape the national academy's findings. Sass, of the NRDC, said industry groups paid lobbyists and science-for-hire groups to bombard the committee with data and employed other manipulative strategies. "The NAS committee heard 99.9 percent of its information and input from one side," Sass told The NewStandard. "Did it influence them? I don't know -- but I do know that Lockheed-Martin seems very happy with the results." Though authorities either withheld or blanked out thousands of pages among documents requested by NRDC in its FOIA petition, some crucial points slipped through. They show that at every step in the process, Defense Department officials actively attempted to limit the scope of the National Academy's inquiry, objecting even to the panel's initial work statement, according to one of the indexes of documents and internal emails withheld. Another index reports that Defense Department officials helped decide who would sit on the NAS committee. Unsurprisingly, several chairs on the fifteen-member perchlorate panel were occupied by industry-friendly figures with financial ties to perchlorate producers. These included three corporate consultants: Charles Capen, who worked as a paid adviser on perchlorate to the aerospace industry; James Lamb of The Weinberg Group, whose self-described function is to protect its clients "when their products are at risk"; and Michael McClain, who reviewed perchlorate studies for private sector clients. A fourth was Richard Bull, who was employed by aerospace giant Lockheed-Martin as an expert witness in perchlorate trials. Bull publicly claimed that perchlorate was not harmful at low levels. He resigned from the committee late in the game, in June 2004. Political officials from the White House with no scientific training -- including nearly a dozen from the Office of Management and Budget, whose responsibilities include revenue and regulation, not environmental science -- are noted as having reviewed and commented upon highly technical documents. The Pentagon lobbied the federal government in conjunction with perchlorate manufacturers, and then worked to cover it up, according to indexed documents from both the Defense Department and the Office of Management and Budget. For example, the White House held a secret meeting with perchlorate-producing defense contractor Lockheed-Martin concerning the investigation; and Kerr-McGee, an energy corporation that was once the nation's largest perchlorate producer, developed a series of "talking points" for lobbying purposes -- documents the Defense Department refuses to release. In one apparent instance of the success achieved by pro-industry lobbyists, the most crucial element of the EPA report's recommendations has vanished from the federal agency's website. It is as if the EPA’s suggested standard of one part per billion never existed. But NRDC has preserved the original version; it is available on the advocacy group's own website and can be contrasted with the "cleansed" version here. "This process has been bombarded with politics -- and it was supposed to be a hands-off process," said Sass. "I think the National Academies should protect the credibility and objectivity of their scientific committee by barring this type of coordinated barrage of information ... to me, this is akin to tampering with a jury." Even Manipulated Science Supports Tough Regulations Independent of whether the industry campaign skewed the NAS's findings, critics see other problems with the panel’s report. The findings are based on a single two-week study of adults -- one that was not designed to assess health effects for those most vulnerable. Significantly, contends Sharp of the Environmental Working Group, the National Academy's recommendations are not at all the victory for industry that some claim. While the EPA report recommended a drinking water standard, the NAS report did not. Both came up with a "reference dose," considered a rough guideline for the total amount safe for daily consumption, but based their measurements on different studies, using different criteria to determine unhealthy affects of the chemical, and applying widely different margins of error. Sharp says this makes the NAS's public relations spin -- which was kicked off by a press release that trumpets findings "more than 20 times" as lenient as the EPA's study -- a fundamentally misleading comparison of apples to oranges. Though she suspects the National Academy's recommendations were likely subject to significant political pressure and are too weak as a result, Sharp points out that even the hand-picked, pro-industry panel’s findings would not justify allowing more than 2.5 parts per billion of perchlorate into drinking water. Sharp believes that the total amount of the chemical considered safe for daily consumption by the NAS "is not as low as it could or should be to be health protective." The charge of White House manipulation "may be true," she added, "and I would guess it probably is true -- but even if it is true, and you take the NAS results at face value, and you translate them into a drinking water standard, you would end up with a standard in the low parts-per-billion." Here is why: The NAS’s reference dose is derived from a very small study of healthy adults, not those at greatest risk. And while the Academy did claim to adjust for consumption by the most sensitive populations -- in this case infants and developing fetuses -- Sharp and Sass content that the NAS did not take into account infants' smaller bodies and greater water consumption relative to adults. Additionally, explained Sass, the study on which the NAS based its findings was so limited that the Academy should have, but failed to dilute its recommendations even further. Without a series of simple but critical mathematical adjustments, Sharp argues, the raw numbers from the National Academy have little practical meaning. Sharp said that, with the adjustments recommended by the Environmental Working Group, following NAS's guidance would result in water quality standards more than less than three times more lenient than what the EPA report offered -- still more lax, but by a factor of about 2.5 rather than the 20-something implied by the NAS press release, according to Sharp. This exaggerated discrepancy, in Sharp’s words, led to "uncalled for" and utterly misleading media spin. NAS was "basically asking to be misinterpreted," Sharp said. "They emphasized the differences [between the two reports] when they could have emphasized the similarities. The media got it wrong because the NAS allowed them to." The next day, some NAS scientists held a press conference to clarify what the report actually says. But "it was too little, too late," Sharp insisted, speculating that scientists may not have felt comfortable with claims contained in news accounts. The National Academy of Sciences and the Office of Management and Budget did not return calls and emails seeking comment. The perchlorate episode is the latest -- and, watchdog groups say, one of the most shocking -- in a series of examples where the Bush administration has undermined independent scientific inquiry. Prominent former EPA officials and thousands of scientists have all criticized the White House for political meddling in basic research. More than 6,000 professionals, including Nobel Laureates, have signed on to a Union of Concerned Scientists letter alleging that the administration has a pattern of distorting and censoring important scientific work for partisan political gain. Indeed, hundreds of NAS members have also signed the letter, titled "Restoring Scientific Integrity in Policy Making," which accuses the administration of "manipulation of the process through which science enters into its decisions." © 2004 The NewStandard. See our reprint policy . ***************************************************************** 32 Deseret news: Fight over 'hot' waste may lose its sizzle [deseretnews.com] Wednesday, January 19, 2005 Utah official says Envirocare backs ban of Class B, C waste By Bob Bernick Jr. and Joe Bauman Deseret Morning News The call by Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. to ban importation of Class B and C radioactive waste in Utah may take the sizzle out of what had seemed one of the hottest environmental battles facing the Legislature. Jason Chaffetz, Huntsman's chief of staff, said in an interview Tuesday that the governor not only would call for the ban, but that it would be supported by the new buyers of Envirocare, the only disposal facility in Utah licensed to handle radioactive waste. "It should be clear to anyone" who has listened to Huntsman over the last year "that the governor will do all he can to keep these higher level of wastes out of Utah," Chaffetz said. Envirocare is the West Desert firm that now is licensed to handle Class A wastes — low-level radioactive material, largely contaminated dirt. Envirocare has an application pending to import B and C wastes, "hotter" material but still considered low-level. "We will prohibit Class B and C wastes in this (legislative) session," Chaffetz said. And that will be done with the agreement and understanding of Envirocare's new owners, he added. Envirocare is in the midst of an announced sale to a consortium that includes Steven Creamer, a Salt Lake entrepreneur. Earlier this month, Huntsman was severely criticized for accepting $40,000 in campaign donations from Creamer, and returned the money. Envirocare officials have said they do not intend to import B and C waste. Creamer said he couldn't comment on the reported agreement. Under state law, B and C waste cannot be brought into Utah without specific permission of the Legislature and the governor. But activists want more, demanding that Huntsman immediately issue an executive order banning it. Members of a legislative joint task force on radioactive waste recently voted not to call for a legal ban on B and C. The main argument against a ban, according to Sen. Curtis Bramble, R-Provo, is that it could throw the debates into the courts, should Envirocare object. In the judicial arena, the Legislature could lose control of the matter, he argued. The reason a suit could be filed is that Envirocare spent a considerable sum pursing a permit under the present setup, and could take legal action if it still wanted to import B and C and the rules were changed while its application was pending. Without the potential of a legal objection from Envirocare, the decks would be cleared for the Legislature to ban B and C, waste experts have said. However, Charles Judd, former president of Envirocare and now the president of a competing waste disposal company called Cedar Mountain Environmental Inc. — whose site is adjacent to Envirocare's near Clive, Tooele County — told the Deseret Morning News earlier that he is considering seeking to dispose of the B and C waste. If Envirocare were to withdraw its application, the chances are high that Cedar Mountain would seek its own permit. The issue of B and C wastes barely surfaced Tuesday in a meeting of the Senate Revenue and Taxation Standing Committee, which endorsed SB24, the bill incorporating the task force recommendations. Bramble, co-chair of the Hazardous Waste Regulation and Tax Policy Task Force, said the B and C issue was not part of this bill. That matter "was pushed off to be run separately," he said. That bill, sponsored by Sen. Patrice Arent, D-Salt Lake City, "Prohibition Against Class B and C Low-level Radioactive Waste," has not yet been scheduled for committee review. SB24 calls for the state's Solid and Hazardous Waste Control Board to review and report to the Legislature on the adequacy of financial assurances that a commercial hazardous waste facility will be adequately funded for its closure and its safety after closure. That applies to non-radioactive waste as well as radioactive material. It also requires taxing disposal of federal mixed waste, material with both radioactive and hazardous non-radioactive contamination. Until now that classification had been free of state tax. Only two speakers testified before the taxation committee, which unanimously sent the bill to the Senate floor for debate. While Bill Sinclair, deputy director of the Utah Department of Environmental Quality, said his department supported the measure, Lowell Peterson, a former state legislator and present lobbyist for Clean Harbors Environmental Services, wondered how the "perpetual care" provision in the bill might affect his business. Clean Harbors operates a non-nuclear hazardous waste facility in Tooele County. Bramble said a $400,000 fund was set up through which Envirocare would guarantee the future safety of its site. This was done with bipartisan support, and the figure was negotiated with Envirocare. The bill would expand the law so other companies besides Envirocare were covered. SB24 requires the DEQ to decide about future needs to protect residents after a facility closes, Bramble said. The task force wanted to make sure residents were not saddled with long-term costs after a facility closes, as happened with the Vitro and Atlas radioactive tailings. Also, the department will check to see whether the Envirocare fee is inadequate or excessive for long-term needs. "If Clean Harbors is doing its job, that shouldn't be a fear," Bramble said. He noted that visits to hazardous waste disposal sites had impressed lawmakers. E-mail: bbjr@desnews.com [bbjr@desnews.com] ; bau@desnews.com [bau@desnews.com] © 2005 Deseret News Publishing Company ***************************************************************** 33 Las Vegas SUN: Railroad crews rebuild washed-out tracks in southern Nevada Today: January 19, 2005 at 18:33:36 PST By KEN RITTER ASSOCIATED PRESS CALIENTE, Nev. (AP) - Round-the-clock work continued Wednesday in an isolated southern Nevada canyon to rebuild washed-out tracks and restore rail freight service on a key Union Pacific line to the West Coast. Railroad officials touring the 85-mile work zone declared repairs 40 percent complete and said they intend to restore limited freight service Monday between the Midwest and the storm-battered West. The railroad also set a Monday goal to resume service on the Coast Line, a north-south California rail line linking Los Angeles and San Francisco for freight and passenger service. Heavy rain and surf triggered washouts, sinkholes and covered the track with mud over a 139-mile stretch that runs next to the Pacific Ocean between Guadalupe and Moorpark, Calif. In Nevada, flooding last week washed away one-half mile of track near this railroad town, about 150 miles northeast of Las Vegas. The flooding toppled about a third of the 67 cars of one train parked on a creek-side siding. It washed away telephone poles and electric lines, severed canyon access roads, stranded another 80-car train hauling tractor-trailer boxes, and forced Union Pacific to suspend traffic on the main line from Salt Lake City through Las Vegas to California. Farther up the tracks, rushing water undercut rail lines in 20 locations. "Part of the story is the Herculean effort here," said Dennis Duffy, the railroad's Omaha, Neb.-based executive vice president of operations. He watched giant earth-moving machines and dump trucks hauling rock to shore up embankments so track-laying machines could creep forward. "But another part is the economy," he said. "We lost one-third of our capacity to Los Angeles ports." Twenty-four percent of Union Pacific shipments originate from or are destined for Los Angeles, company officials said. The route through the normally dry Meadow Valley Wash usually carries about 25 trains a day - some about two miles long. Officials called the economic effect of a halt in train traffic significant but undetermined - even by the Union Pacific accountants working nearby in a trailer camp resembling a field army base. "This has national implications," Duffy said. "We're going to do everything we can to mitigate it. We have 650 customers in Las Vegas alone." A limited number of customers awaiting coal, lumber, grain, automobiles, and liquefied chlorine for drinking water purification were being served by a slow 515-mile detour through northern Nevada and the snowbound Sierra Nevada. The rest will have to wait for repairs to be completed by crews working 12-hour shifts and sleeping in Pullman-style tractor-trailers. More than 70 cranes, bulldozers, graders and trucks gulping 4,000 gallons of diesel fuel a day were on the job. Tractors spun their tracks in mud dragging an empty 70-foot box car out of the still-rushing muddy brown water. A blue boxcar containing kitchen stoves and microwaves lay on its side, several hundred yards downstream. Upstream, workers used hand shovels to unearth a trestle buried under 6 feet of silt, dirt and rock. "It was a tsunami of sand," said Paul Dannelly, Salt Lake City-based coordinator for the repairs. Dannelly compared the rebuilding to the first time tracks were laid through the canyon and to a yearlong project in 1910 to replace them after heavy flooding. Surveyors found no suitable alternate route, so the tracks were rebuilt along the same wash. "For a guy like me, this is the ultimate event," he said. "This is a disaster, don't get me wrong. But it wasn't caused by anybody. And it didn't hurt anybody." --- On the Net: Union Pacific Railroad: www.up.com -- ***************************************************************** 34 Rocky Mountain News: Chemical found in testing well By Bill Scanlon, Rocky Mountain News January 19, 2005 A monitoring well at an old explosives site in Douglas County contains concentrations of the rocket-fuel chemical perchlorate at 20 times the levels recommended by a prestigious national panel. The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment tested the two nearest wells that are used for drinking water and found they contained no perchlorate, Gary Baughman, director of hazardous materials and waste management for the department, said Tuesday. Another well at the DuPont Louviers industrial site tested at about twice the level recommended last week by the National Academy of Sciences, while the 11 other tested wells were below. "That definitely has our attention," Baughman said of the wells with the two highest readings. "But we believe it's reasonably confined and not affecting any water being used for drinking." Too much perchlorate in drinking water can slow down the thyroid gland, inhibiting growth in infants and children. The findings have one local environmental activist calling for extensive testing of the wells in the area around Louviers and Highlands Ranch. "This whole area should be a Superfund site," said Adrienne Anderson, who has campaigned against toxic chemicals for decades. But Baughman said residents have no reason for worry. He said nearby Plum Creek was tested and found to contain no perchlorate. That was expected because Plum Creek, which feeds Chatfield Reservoir, leaches water into groundwater, rather than picking up groundwater. There are no national or state standards for perchlorate. The Environmental Protection Agency proposed a standard that would equate to about 1 part per billion in drinking water. But the National Academy of Sciences' National Research Council said even the most sensitive populations - pregnant women and infants, for example - would be safe ingesting 20 times that amount. A clay formation ensures that water doesn't migrate from the shallow groundwater to the deep groundwater, Baughman said. The site, near Santa Fe Drive, south of County Line Road, was used for making rocket fuel, detonation cords and explosives for much of the last century. One part of the site was owned by Ensign-Bickford until it was acquired in recent years by Dyno Nobel Inc. © The E.W. Scripps ***************************************************************** 35 Deseret News: New vision in Utah's old statehouse deseretnews.com Wednesday, January 19, 2005 By Lisa Riley Roche Deseret Morning News FILLMORE — Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. promised Tuesday to continue to focus on four "common-sense fundamentals" during his first State of the State address, delivered in Utah's territorial capitol. More than 150 lawmakers, state officials and others gathered in the stately stone building for the half-hour speech that touched on economic revitalization, education, quality of life and governance. Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. holds up a laminated card listing his four "common-sense fundamentals" during his State of the State address. Jason Olson, Deseret Morning News Huntsman surprised some by suggesting that hotter levels of nuclear waste could be banned from Utah once and for all during this session of the Legislature. "My position on this is clear: B and C waste will not be dumped in Utah," the governor said, adding that by the time the session is over, "we should no longer be discussing the possibility" of the hotter waste coming to Utah. Huntsman emphasized economic development, just as he did during his campaign. "When it comes to economic development, treading water will not be acceptable in my administration," he said. Tax reform, the governor said, will create "an environment of opportunity" that will help raise Utah wages. He reiterated his call for a change in the formula used to calculate corporate income taxes, eventually eliminating them altogether. "The last time we had a major revision in the tax code was 1959 — before I was born," the 44-year-old leader said. "It is time for a change." Also on his agenda is raising the salaries of schoolteachers and state workers. Elementary school teachers would also receive an additional $300 for classroom supplies, Huntsman said. Ethics reform — at least for the executive branch — also earned a place in the speech. That includes full disclosure, campaign-finance reform and a mandatory, one-year cooling-off period before the governor's appointees can become lobbyists. The only prop Huntsman relied on was a laminated card listing his priorities. "Each one of these priorities has purpose in helping shape our tomorrow, each a reminder of our common destiny." Key points [http://www.adobe.com/prodindex/acrobat/readstep.html] He also spoke briefly about choosing to give his annual speech outside of Salt Lake City. Usually, it's delivered in the state Capitol, but it is closed for renovations. The reason Huntsman was in Fillmore, however, has more to do with his family's roots and his effort to reach out to rural Utah. The governor was interrupted by applause just five times during his speech — twice during the portion dealing with halting hotter nuclear waste. That's less than is typical of a State of the State address. Huntsman said he had hoped for more applause but may not have left his audience enough time to clap. The waste statement also brought applause from Jason Groenewold, director of HEAL (Healthy Environment Alliance of Utah). He called the governor's statements encouraging but still wonders why Huntsman hasn't signed an executive order to that effect. "What I'm concerned about is that in 45 days, if the Legislature doesn't take formal action, and the governor hasn't issued an executive order . . . then the issue is going to be the monkey on Utah's back for centuries to come," he said. Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. greets Fillmore resident Lawral Bunker as he hands out burgers and fries to lawmakers after his speech. Jason Olson, Deseret Morning News Envirocare, a western desert firm licensed to handle low-level Class A radioactive waste, has an application pending to import "hotter" B and C wastes, which it says it has not pursued in years. The company is being sold; Huntsman chief of staff Jason Chaffetz told the Deseret Morning News Class B and C wastes prohibition would be done with the agreement and understanding of the new owners. Envirocare senior vice president Tim Barney said the company respects the governor's positions, which were made clear during Huntsman's campaign. Legislative leaders on hand for Huntsman's speech said they were pleased with what they heard, but Senate President John Valentine, R-Orem, and House Speaker Greg Curtis, R-Sandy, said there were some areas they wished the governor had spent more time talking about, such as transportation. The governor did mention the controversial Legacy Highway project in Davis County. "Let's build it," he said, calling for promises to be kept. And, Huntsman said, the same goes for commuter rail. But the legislative leaders said they wanted more specifics. "You can't have too many ideas out there or you can't get anything done," Huntsman said after the speech while passing out hamburgers and fries to lawmakers and other well-wishers at a local fast-food restaurant. Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. and his wife, Mary Kaye, visit the grave of Huntsman's grandfather in the Fillmore City Cemetery prior to the State of the State speech on Tuesday. Jason Olson, Deseret Morning News Human services and colleges and universities weren't singled out in the governor's address. Ron Stromberg, acting director of the Department of Human Services, said Huntsman's budget "does mention human services and speaks for itself" with a whopping $20 million increase. But Rich Kendell, commissioner of the Utah System of Higher Education, hopes encouraging higher education and investing in research and development can become a central part of Huntsman's economic development plans. Such investments have been key in other states' economic recovery plans, he said. "We're hopeful he will work with us on a plan that will make these things a reality," Kendell said. When it came to the governor's discussion on ethics reform, lawmakers said they supported making changes in the executive branch but wanted to see any specific proposals aimed at legislators before commenting. House Minority Leader Ralph Becker, D-Salt Lake, said Democrats have already advocated much of what the governor outlined over the years. "Good ideas are not for one party," Becker said. Although there had been "some grumbling" among lawmakers about having to make the trip to Fillmore, Valentine said it was worth it. He introduced the governor's speech, carried live on television, calling Huntsman the "governor and my friend." Contributing: Jennifer Toomer-Cook E-mail: [lisa@desnews.com] © 2005 Deseret News Publishing Company ***************************************************************** 36 The Spectrum: Legislators visit state's heart to set new course thespectrum.com Wednesday, January 19, 2005 Fillmore welcomes governor, Utah's lawmakers for State of State address By ED KOCIELA ekociela@thespectrum.com Douglas C. Pizac / AP Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr., right, shakes hands with House Speaker Greg Curtis after delivering his State of the State speech in Utah's original territorial statehouse Tuesday in Fillmore. Senate President John Valentines, rear, looks on. FILLMORE -- The sign outside of Larry's Drive-In read: "Welcome, Gov. Huntsman." Inside of Larry Paxton's fast food eatery, just off Interstate 15, instead of serving quarter-pound burgers and fries to hungry truckers and tourists, the staff was preparing a chocolate-marshmallow milkshake for Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. who came to Fillmore on Tuesday to deliver his first State of the State address. The tiny town of about 1,200 residents was a time warp within a time machine. Up-link satellites used by television crews pointed skyward next to the Territorial Statehouse where Brigham Young gave the opening address 150 years ago at the territory's first legislative session. In the quiet, small-town setting, next to snow-covered mountains and sprawling fields, Huntsman drove home a bipartisan message that hit hard on the four elements of his campaign - economic revitalization, education, quality of life issues and governance. His economic message was as straightforward as it was during the campaign. "No longer is the marketplace along Main Street as it was for my grandfather here in Fillmore," he said. "Today the marketplace is regional, national and global -- with a level of speed and complexity not seen before in human history. With capital flows that are instantaneous, our competition isn't just Colorado, Nevada and California, but also China, India and Canada." Huntsman made it clear that he will not settle for the status quo, insisting that the state's job growth keep pace with the population and provide "good-paying jobs that allow people to support a family and cover a mortgage." One of the biggest bursts of applause from legislators came when Huntsman, speaking of keeping up with modern commerce, proclaimed, "It is time for change." The governor also was soundly applauded when he followed the lead of former Gov. Mike Leavitt and drew a line in the sand regarding nuclear waste being stored in Utah. "I will do everything in my power to keep hotter levels of nuclear waste out," he said. He announced an ethics reform proposal that would, he said, "minimize politics and maximize service," keep elected officials and members of the executive branch from becoming lobbyists until they have separated from their jobs for one year and promised tax reforms to make the state more competitive. His budget, Huntsman said, will also include $5.5 million in new money for the state educational system, which would translate into an additional $300 per elementary school classroom. In the end, legislators seemed to warm up to their new governor, something Fillmore residents had already done. Huntsman, who is known simply as "Jon" to those familiar with his roots in Fillmore, is a regular at Larry's, stopping in whenever he travels up and down the state. "I've fed every governor since Cal Rampton, but this is the first time I've known one personally, the first one I can call a friend," Paxton said before Huntsman's speech. "He just had a shake now, but I guarantee tonight, when he comes back after his State of the State, he'll have a quarter-pound cheeseburger and small fries." The day of nostalgia, where Huntsman visited the grave sites of ancestors, spoke to family members and old friends and gave his address before the Legislature, which was bused in from Salt Lake City, was, Fillmore Mayor Sam Starley said, not only the hottest ticket in town, but the only ticket in town. "This is kind of exciting," said Arva Dale Ashman, who with her husband, Joe, owns the Pioneer Market. "I know a lot of the Huntsmans. It's exciting that he thinks of the little towns. We'll see how this translates, but, it's good to be remembered." Suzy Havron, who works at Larry's, said she enjoys visiting with Huntsman when he comes through town. "Last time he was here, he spent nearly an hour talking to us," she said. "Of course, there was no press here." The governor also has young admirers. Chelsea Engstrom, 11, hurried from her classroom to perch on the railing outside of Deano's Pizza -- near the town square where Huntsman gave his address -- just for a glimpse of the governor. "The principal made an announcement at school that the governor was coming," she said. "I wanted to see someone important, so I came here." Originally published Wednesday, January 19, 2005 ***************************************************************** 37 Las Vegas RJ: Rail line could be back up Monday Wednesday, January 19, 2005 Partial service likely in Lincoln County By HUBBLE SMITH REVIEW-JOURNAL Union Pacific expects to have its flood-damaged railroad tracks near Caliente repaired and reopened for partial service by Monday, a company spokesman said. An embargo limiting rail traffic into California and Southern Nevada remains in effect. Union Pacific mobilized 200 people to work around-the-clock to repair storm damage over an 80-mile stretch in a remote canyon south of Caliente, about 130 miles northeast of Las Vegas in Lincoln County. They used 60 pieces of heavy equipment to restore the roadbed, which had washed out under the weight of a parked train, derailing 20 to 25 cars. All but one were empty. Crews are also working to build a new bridge to replace the Cottonwood Wash Bridge, which is buried under six feet of mud and rock. The track will be raised 10 feet in that area. "Railroads are renowned for their ability to rebound from disaster," spokesman John Bromley said from Union Pacific's headquarters in Omaha, Neb. "If an eight-lane freeway washed out, it would take months and months to get it back in order." Union Pacific crews had to rebuild washed-out access roads to reach some parts of the track. Seven work trains are hauling rock to fill the washouts from both ends of the canyon. Bromley had estimated it would take two weeks to repair the line that serves as an important freight link between Los Angeles, Las Vegas and Salt Lake City. Trains using Union Pacific's main line from Salt Lake City to Los Angeles have been detoured through Northern Nevada to Bakersfield and Barstow in California and then into Las Vegas because of the washed out tracks near Caliente. The rail problems have not caused significant problems locally, and many local businesses predicted little effect on supplies and prices if the repairs were completed soon. Some Las Vegas businesses that depend on the railroad for supplies and raw materials have ordered truck shipments while the track is shut down for repairs. "We have been working closely with our customers to assure that critical chemical, grain and coal shipments into the affected areas are being handled," Union Pacific Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Dick Davidson said in a company statement. Railroad crews also repaired storm damage in Southern California, reopening critical rail links to the Los Angeles Basin. Copyright Las Vegas Review-Journal ***************************************************************** 38 Las Vegas SUN: Letter: Yucca's risks outweigh benefits "For A Better Nevada" is an organization that does not have the courage of its convictions. If it did, its members would admit they are pro-Yucca Mountain. How else can you negotiate for benefits, jobs and funding, unless the federal government builds this toxic dump? Its members should also admit that they realize this is about politics and political expediency and has little to do with science and the scientific suitability of Yucca Mountain as a safe and secure nuclear waste repository. Why, after the state of Nevada has been successful in court action, would this misguided organization and its members give Congress a talking point against Nevada? It was bad enough that we had to contend with ex-Gov. Robert List and his "benefits and jobs" spiel. For a better Nevada and America, Yucca Mountain should be abandoned and the recent scientific panel suggestion that dry cask storage on the east and west of the Mississippi should be established. Dry cask storage has almost a 60-year safe history. Nevadans should never trade "benefits" for ill health and safety risk. Never throw in the towel. FRANK PERNA ***************************************************************** 39 Las Vegas SUN: Administration pressed on Yucca budget ASSOCIATED PRESS WASHINGTON -- The top Democrat on the House Energy Committee pressed the Bush administration Tuesday on its plans to fund the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump in the 2006 budget. Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., a supporter of the Yucca Mountain project, released a letter to the director of the Office of Management and Budget asking whether the administration planned to pursue the same funding scheme for next year as did for 2005. The 2005 plan linked most of the funding request for Yucca Mountain to congressional passage of legislation assuring that money collected through a special nuclear waste fund was spent for the project. The legislation never passed, and Congress approved only $577 million of the $880 million Bush requested for Yucca Mountain. "During the last Congress, the administration undertook unsuccessfully to achieve adequate funding for Yucca Mountain by linking a relatively low budget request and the legislative proposal," Dingell wrote. "I would observe that such a strategy is unlikely to be any more successful this year than last." Chad Kolton, a spokesman for the Office of Management and Budget, declined to give details on how the administration plans to treat the nuclear waste dump in the 2006 budget, to be released Feb. 7. "The administration's support for moving forward with Yucca Mountain is well known, and we're pleased Congressman Dingell supports moving forward with Yucca Mountain, as well," Kolton said. He said Dingell's letter was under review. The federal government plans to bury 77,000 tons of radioactive waste beneath Yucca Mountain. But its goal to open the dump in 2010 appears uncertain. In addition to lower-than-requested funding, an unfavorable appeals court ruling last summer said the government's plans did not go far enough to protect people from potential radiation hazards. ***************************************************************** 40 star tribune Editorial: Toxic cargoes, needless calamity [http://www.startribune.com] January 19, 2005 ED0119A As recent calamities go, it may seem small potatoes when a ruptured rail tanker gases nine people to death, sends a couple of hundred to the hospital and forces 5,000 more to flee their homes. On the other hand, the suffering recently visited on Graniteville, S.C., was entirely preventable -- even predictable. Indeed, this derailment occurred in circumstances so ordinary that recurrences seem inevitable. Huge amounts of hazardous material are perpetually moving over the nation's 170,000-mile railway freight network. If a train happens to be carrying nuclear waste, in virtually rupture-proof containers, precautions against derailment or sabotage are automatic. Federal rules insist upon this, as an assurance to state and local governments that would otherwise block the shipments. But such safeguards are driven more by politics than risk. Shipments of chlorine, anhydrous ammonia and many another industrial chemical may pose a much more serious threat to life and limb. But these rumble along in vulnerable tankers -- and in a regulatory environment that Rep. Edward Markey of Massachusetts, stirred by the Graniteville deaths, has fairly described as a black hole. Graniteville lies in that half of the rail network known as "dark territory," where switching is unmonitored by modern electronic methods. Entirely manual, it is utterly vulnerable to human errors like the one in Graniteville that sent a 42-car train at full speed onto a spur line. It is also susceptible to sabotage. As it happens, the chlorine tanker that burst in Graniteville was of modern, heat-treated construction -- stronger than older cars, though obviously not rupture-proof. But this puts it in a minority. Nearly a year ago, the National Transportation Safety Board reported than more than half the 60,000 pressurized rail tankers in use were built before 1989, when heat-treating was required. The railroads say upgrading is the responsibility of the chemical companies, which own the cars. The chemical companies say it's up to the railroads to move the tankers safely and guard them against sabotage. But there is one point of agreement: Both industries continue to resist calls for rerouting hazardous cargo away from major population centers, because of increased costs. Railway security is one sector of the world where everything has not changed since Sept. 11, 2001. Although the FBI has reported finding Al-Qaida intelligence on U.S. rail equipment and corridors, although a variety of law enforcement and homeland security reports have outlined chilling scenarios of terrorists using tankers as massive antipopulation bombs, little has been done to address these risks. A former official of the Federal Railroad Administration, interviewed after the Graniteville wreck, told of investigating railyard security in Las Vegas in early 2004, after learning of a credible terrorist threat. He wandered unchallenged through three of these, finding plenty of chemical tankers left unguarded. It seems fair to say the Graniteville accident was enabled by a regulatory calculus that weights the cost of upgraded tankers and railyard security more heavily than the occasional accident that kills, say, nine people in South Carolina, or three people near San Antonio (2004) or one person in Minot, N.D. (2002). But much more can be done, and should be done, to armor this system against both mishap and malice before it produces a much larger catastrophe. We are thinking, for example, of the train that caught fire and burned for days in a tunnel under Baltimore in July 2001, forcing evacuation of downtown businesses and disrupting East Coast rail traffic. Emergency officials counted the city lucky that the ruptured tankers were carrying only petroleum products and hydrochloric acid, instead of chlorine. Return to top Story tools Email this story +http://www.startribune.com/stories/ 561/ 5193116" class=iconlink>AIM this story Print this story Make us [Star Tribune] © 2005 Star Tribune. All rights reserved. 425 Portland Av. S., Minneapolis, MN 55488 Map ***************************************************************** 41 Platts: NRC rules depleted uranium can be considered low-level waste [The McGraw-Hill Companies] + The NRC commission today handed LES a victory when it ruled that depleted uranium produced at the Urenco-led enrichment consortium's proposed New Mexico enrichment plant can be considered low-level waste. This means that DOE, if requested, would have a legal obligation under the 1996 USEC Privatization Act to accept the depleted uranium for disposal. This would constitute a "plausible strategy" for disposing of depleted uranium and undercut a key challenge to the construction of the New Mexico plant. Intervenors Public Citizen and the Nuclear Information &Resource Service had argued that depleted uranium was radioactive enough to require burial in a deep geologic repository. Even if that were true, the commission said, depleted uranium would still be considered low-level waste, thus triggering DOE's obligations. LES has said, however, that it is pursuing a private-sector solution and does not anticipate making any disposal requests to DOE. The plausibility of LES' private disposal option is still before a licensing board. Washington (Platts)--18Jan2005 Copyright © 2005 - Platts, All Rights Reserved ***************************************************************** 42 Salt Lake Tribune: Borders of Utah may shut for hot waste Article Last Updated: 01/19/2005 12:08:53 PM Prospective Envirocare owner indicates he could give up the Class B and C radiation permit By Patty Henetz The Salt Lake Tribune Envirocare of Utah purchaser Steve Creamer will give up his regulatory permit to accept the hotter Class B and C radioactive waste should the company's sale go through, sources on and off Capitol Hill say. Jason Chaffetz, Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr.'s chief of staff, on Tuesday said he has had some "indirect conversations" with the purchasers, and has spoken with legislators who said Creamer would relinquish the permit once the sale closes. ''There certainly have been a number of signals in that direction and we're encouraged by the possibility,'' Chaffetz said. Since last month's announcement that Creamer and New York investors had bought the waste firm, several sources have told The Salt Lake Tribune that Creamer wouldn't keep the permit to accept Class B and C waste, which can be thousands of times more radioactive than the Class A waste that is the only low-level type now allowed for disposal in Utah. In his State of the State address Tuesday night, Huntsman vowed that B and C waste ''will not be dumped in Utah.'' The most effective way to ensure that, Huntsman said, would be to work with lawmakers to pass tough legislation. By the time the session is finished, he said, ''we should no longer be discussing the possibility of B and C waste entering the state.'' Chaffetz said the governor's ultimate goal is to ban the waste altogether, but only in partnership with the Legislature. ''He'd much rather build bridges and coalitions than bulldoze his way through an issue,'' Chaffetz said. State law now requires the consent of the governor and the Legislature to allow B and C waste into Utah. Some lawmakers, including Sen. Curtis Bramble, R-Provo, who headed a two-year task force studying waste issues, insist that means the waste already is illegal, even though there is no statutory ban. State regulators in 2001 approved Envirocare's technical plan for taking B and C wastes. A clause in the state permit allows the governor to kill it via written disapproval, which could be an executive order or just a signed letter. Jason Groenewold, an Envirocare critic and spokesman for Healthy Environment Alliance Utah, said his group would continue to pressure Huntsman to use his executive power to keep the waste out of the state. "We appreciate the governor's leadership and call to action, but if the Legislature fails to get the law done, he can step in at any time and kill the license for hotter waste with the stroke of his pen," Groenewold said. Creamer, who is bound by a confidentiality agreement, has said he can't comment on matters pertaining to the sale. He did not return a call seeking comment Tuesday. In December, he predicted the sale would close by the end of January, and said he thought "everybody will be very happy" with how the new management ran the company. Two weeks ago, Huntsman returned to Creamer $40,000 in political donations after first indicating he would keep the money, then declaring through Chaffetz that access to his office was not for sale. During the campaign for the Republican nomination, Huntsman criticized opponent Nolan Karras' close ties to Envirocare's current owner, Khosrow Semnani, whose 17 years with the business included giving payments to the former state Department of Environmental Quality director as well as earning good will by large contributions to various charities. State regulators have approved management plans Creamer and the New York firm Lindsay Goldberg &Bessemer have offered up, but have yet to approve the financial guarantees for the waste site's closure and post-closure costs. Division of Radiation Control Director Dane Finerfrock said Tuesday that he thought the sale was on track to close by the end of the month. Tuesday morning, the Utah Senate Revenue and Taxation Committee advanced amendments to the state's environmental quality and radioactive waste tax codes that would increase regulatory oversight of hazardous waste sites and fines for violations. Sen. Patrice Arent, D-Murray, a member of the waste task force, is preparing a bill that would ban B and C waste altogether. She had tried unsuccessfully at the panel's final meeting in October to get the task force to approve such a bill. Sen. Ron Allen, D-Stansbury Park, said Tuesday that Arent's bill was written in haste at the last minute, which didn't give the task force members, who defeated Arent's proposal by one vote, proper time to consider it. © Copyright 2005, The Salt Lake Tribune. ***************************************************************** 43 TheNewMexicoChannel: Eunice Uranium Plant Takes Another Step Forward [TheNewMexicoChannel.com] [News] POSTED: 7:16 am MST January 19, 2005UPDATED: 7:22 am Regulatory Commission concluded Tuesday that depleted uranium from a proposed uranium factory near Eunice is low-level radioactive waste. The decision is important for Louisiana Energy Services, which wants to build a $1.2 billion facility in Eunice to refine uranium for nuclear reactors. Two conservation groups have intervened to protest the proposed plant, challenging the company's strategy for disposing of waste from the enrichment process. State officials and others have also raised concerns because the uranium enrichment process produces a type of waste that cannot be disposed of anywhere in the United States. With the low-level waste designation, the way is now clear for LES to turn over the waste to the U.S. Department of Energy. Copyright 2005 by The Associated Press. All rights reserved. © 2005, Internet Broadcasting Systems, Inc ***************************************************************** 44 ITAR-TASS: Radioactive cargo detected on Russia-Georgia border 19.01.2005, 03.17 VLADIKAVKAZ, January 19 (Itar-Tass) -- A cargo of radioactive chemicals was detected on the Russian-Georgian border, a source in the North Ossetian Emergencies Ministry told Itar-Tass on Tuesday. The attempt to carry away 85 kilogrammes of chemicals, radiation of which five times exceeded the safe level, took place at the Verkhny Zaramag customs checkpoint. Border guards found 42 sacks of hydrate potassium oxide and eleven barrels filled with aluminum powder in a Mercedes vehicle at the checkpoint. When they examined the vehicle, which was on the way from Pyatigorsk to Georgia, the radiation alarm system signaled a high radiation level. The vehicle is driven away to a safe place. The driver is detained and questioned. © ITAR-TASS. All rights reserved. You undertake not to copy, ***************************************************************** 45 St. Cloud Times: Xcel asks to store more nuclear waste in Monticello [http://www.usaweekend.com/] Wed, Jan. 19, 2005 By [kmarohn@stcloudtimes.com] kmarohn@stcloudtimes.com MONTICELLO -- Xcel Energy has applied to store additional nuclear waste above the ground at its Monticello plant. The company submitted an application Tuesday to the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission to build a storage facility similar to one at its Prairie Island plant. Xcel needs more storage space for the high-level radioactive waste to continue operating at the Monticello plant. The plant stores spent fuel rods in a cooling pool inside the plant. That pool will be full in 2010. The company announced in September that it plans to ask the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission to extend the plant's 40-year license for another 20 years. If it gets approval from the Public Utilities Commission, Xcel would build a 200-foot by 400-foot storage building near the Monticello reactor, said Jim Alders, manager of regulatory projects for Xcel. The spent fuel rods would be stored in reinforced concrete vaults, he said. The state Environmental Quality Board is working on an environmental review. Once that's complete, the Public Utilities Commission will conduct public hearings and make a decision sometime in 2006. Legislative authorization is not required. Scott Elkins, state director of the Sierra Club, said he was "disappointed" in Xcel's application. It goes against the company's 1994 pledge to move toward renewable sources, he said. "If they had made the steps that they needed to do, we wouldn't need to expand storage on the Mississippi River today," Elkins said. "We're increasing our number of problems and places where we have problems." Xcel spokespeople have said the storage space is needed because a federal repository for nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, Nev., isn't ready. They say operation of the two nuclear plants will keep customers' electricity costs lower and result in fewer air emissions than fossil fuel-powered plants. Governor addresses the state Officials deny merits of plan Wetland protection debated in studies of Service (updated 12/31/2002) © 2005 St. Cloud Times. All ***************************************************************** 46 AU ABC: Rio Tinto reports uranium production boost. 19/01/2005. ABC News Online ="Australian Broadcasting Corporation Online"> [http://www.abc.net.au/] [contact and search links] Mining giant Rio Tinto has reported a 16 per cent increase in uranium production for the last three months of 2004, over the same period in 2003. The report shows Rio Tinto's Ranger mine in the Northern Territory produced more than 3,500 tonnes of uranium last year. Rio Tinto's Rossing mine in Namibia produced 2,500 tonnes, an increase of 800 tonnes on the previous year. © 2005 Australian Broadcasting Corporation This service may include material from Agence France-Presse (AFP), AAP(International), APTN, Reuters, CNN and the BBC World Service which is copyright and cannot be reproduced. \ ***************************************************************** 47 [du-list] Hearing Jan 18, 2005 in Piketon] Date: Wed, 19 Jan 2005 14:54:09 -0800 From Vina Colley..... release January 18, 2005 Portsmouth/Piketon Residents for Environmental Safety and Security (PRESS) was formed to educate, organize and empower residents and workers affected by the Portsmouth Uranium Enrichment site, locate in Piketon, Ohio and to represent their interest in economic vitality, environmental quality, health, and justice. PRESS is a nonprofit organization 5013c. Members are from the community and workers that have been affected by the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion plant. We watchdog the activities of the Piketon Plant. Members of PRESS participation in local meetings, which have help, get the plant to admit to environmental and worker exposure. We watchdog the activities of the Piketon Plant. Members of PRESS participation in local meetings, which have help, get the plant to admit to environmental and worker exposure. Press's documents help exposed the deadly Plutonium on site that put the worker in harms way in which help started the compensation bill EEOICPA act of 2000. PRESS was formed in the late 80's to represent the interest in economic vitality, environmental quality, health, and justice. PRESS is a nonprofit organization 5013c. Members are from the community and workers that have been affected by the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion plant. Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion plant has been operating under a policy of production priority, the safety of workers, and near by resident, and the environment have been relegated as secondary, leaving a legacy of uncertainty for working and living conditions. I am Vina K. Colley president of PRESS and Co-Chair of NATIONAL NUCLEAR WORKERS FOR JUSTICE (NNWJ) and a victim of past practices and I know first hand about the poor safety practices from the contractors working for the Department of Energy and the Department of Defense. January 18, 2005 NRC EIS scope USEC's request for ACP plant license Pursuant to the Federal register notice by NRC The purpose of the National Environmental Policy Act (42usc4321etseq) is to promote efforts to prevent or eliminate damage to the environment and biosphere and stimulate public health, as well as enrich the understanding of the workings of ecological systems and natural resources. NEPA requires the preparation of and EIS for all major federal actions having a significant effect on the quality of the human environment. The President's Council on Environmental Quality describes an EIS as an "action forcing device," whose purposes are to provide "full and fair discussion of significant environmental impacts" and to "inform decision makers and the public of the reasonable alternatives which would avoid or minimize adverse impacts or enhance the quality of the environment." (40cfr1502.1) These impacts and alternatives must be addressed before action is taken, "rather than justifying decisions already made." (40CFR1502.2g) The scope of NRC'S Environmental Impact Statement should be expanded to include the following issues not adequately covered in USEC'S Environmental Report1) DOE wants to relax its site-wide cleanup standards on the presumption that the site will be dedicated to new nuclear production under the USEC agreement. Therefore the USEC project must be considered as having the impact of the relaxation of these standards, since with no ACP, the old standards would have to be honored for the sake of community reuse. NRC should examine the impact of ACP on site-wide cleanup standards. 2) If ACP proceeds, it will close the whole site off to alternate use because of required security restrictions. This will change or eliminate possibilities for cleanup and reuse of certain facilities outside of USEC's lease agreement, for example the old shops and warehouse facilities at the GDP site, public use of the perimeter road, or opening undeveloped parts of the site to public use. 3) In the section that describes the "no action alternative," USEC states that if the ACP is not built at Piketon, the site will be unaffected this is simply a lie and it undercuts USEC's credibility on every other issue. The whole projected DOE end-state for the site is based on new nuclear production--just look at the highway signs for ACP. By telling this lie, USEC avoids discussion of the benefits to the site and community from early project cancellation. 4) Whether ACP succeeds or fails, it will turn the rest of the site into a dumpsite by encouraging DOE to invite in waste from other sites. This has already started. In the last two years, DOE has transferred uranium waste in large quantities to Piketon from three other sites--Fernald, Oak Ridge and Paducah. These transfers would not happen without ACP, and that is the real impact of ACP because the project will likely fail, and all that transferred waste would be its legacy. 5) NRC must examine the relationship between DOE (a government agency) and USEC (a supposedly private company), a relationship that is unclear, unexamined, and untested. USEC makes constant reference to the privatization legislation and to "Congressional intent" as if it had nothing to do with creating that legislation--a circular argument. In its licensing process, NRC should therefore examine the entire DOE-USEC relationship and the full range of impacts that the relationship entails. 6. PRESS supports the need for a separate cultural resource assessment by NRC, with its own scoping process. That is required because DOE has never complied with the National Historic Preservation Act at the Piketon site, and the site has tremendous historic and prehistoric value that has never been studied. 7. Because USEC's future and ACP's future are both extremely uncertain, NRC must examine the impact of the project's failure at various future dates. For example, if the project proceeds through the next four years, with contamination of the existing building from the Lead Cascade, and the construction of two new buildings for ACP, and then USEC collapses after the next presidential election, where does that leave the community? DOE already allowed the contamination of those centrifuge buildings in 1985 by a "test run" of uranium, even after Congressional funding for the GCEP project was cut. NRC cannot allow the same thing to happen again. We would like to thank you for this opportunity to comment and look forward to reviewing the report that will come next. Please send us what is published next so we have time to review for input. Sincerely Vina K Colley 3706 McDermott Pond Creek McDermott, Ohio 45652 740-259-4688 740-353-2275 cell 740-357-8916 President of PRESS Co Chair of NNWJ [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> What would our lives be like without music, dance, and theater? Donate or volunteer in the arts today at Network for Good! http://us.click.yahoo.com/TzSHvD/SOnJAA/79vVAA/FGYolB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> To unsubscribe from this groups send a message to du-list-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com. In the body of the message type unsubscribe and send. Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/du-list/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: du-list-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ ***************************************************************** 48 [NukeNet] Nuclear Watchdogs Partner to Prepare Bid for LANL; Date: Wed, 19 Jan 2005 18:41:20 -0800 QwhistleblowersXspeakXout X-Spamprobe: ham-extreme 0.0000256 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.0.2 (2004-11-16) on darwin.ctyme.com X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-13.6 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,FORGED_RCVD_HELO, FROM_ORG,ONLY_COST,PLEASE_VISIT_US,SP_HAM_EXTREME,SUBJ_GROUP, US_DOLLARS_2,US_DOLLARS_3,WHITE_PHRASE autolearn=ham version=3.0.2 NukeNet Anti-Nuclear Network (nukenet@energyjustice.net) Dear colleagues: Below are three items prepared for the upcoming Jan. 20, 2005 news conference at the UC Regents meeting in San Francisco. First, you will find a copy of Tri-Valley CAREs' press release (with Nuclear Watch of New Mexico). That is followed by attorney Gary Gwilliam's press release and his more detailed media statement. These are all worth reading for a number of reasons. The common theme is the serious, deeply entrenched management problems at the Department of Energy nuclear weapons labs. Much needs to be done to improve whistleblower protections, worker and community health and safety, and much, much more (including enhancing openness and shifting the mission of the weapons labs). Read on for two unique perspectives on some of the same questions. --Marylia Kelley ** Please Post or Forward as Appropriate ** FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: January 19, 2004 CONTACT: Tara Dorabji, Tri-Valley CAREs, Livermore, CA (925) 443-7148 Scott Kovac, Nuclear Watch of New Mexico (505) 989-7342 NUCLEAR "WATCHDOGS" ANNOUNCE PARTNERSHIP TO PREPARE BID FOR LOS ALAMOS NUCLEAR WEAPONS LAB WHAT: Press Briefing prior to University of California (UC) Regents Meeting WHEN: Thursday, January 20, 2005 at 9:15 AM WHERE: UC San Francisco - Laurel Heights Campus, 3333 California St., San Francisco (map: http://www.ucsf.edu/maps/lhts.html), outside the public entrance to the conference room. WHO: Tri-Valley CAREs, UC students, faculty and trial lawyers who have defended whistleblowers at the Department of Energy's nuclear weapons labs California's premier nuclear weapons "watchdog" organization will announce on January 20, 2005 that it has joined a New Mexico non-profit to prepare a bid to manage the troubled Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), which is currently managed by the UC Regents. Tri-Valley CAREs (Communities Against a Radioactive Environment), will hold a news conference to discuss its plans just before the Board of Regents meeting on Thursday morning at the UC San Francisco Laurel Heights Campus. The group will partner with Nuclear Watch of New Mexico to prepare the bid. Nuclear Watch is a Santa Fe-based group that is responding to the draft "Request for Proposals" to manage Los Alamos. Tri-Valley CAREs will be joined by the Coalition to Demilitarize the University of California, UC student leaders, faculty and others who are supporting the groups' plans. "Our bid to run Los Alamos will demonstrate how laboratory managers can work with community members and facility employees to safeguard public health and clean up the environmental mess caused by nuclear weapons development," explained Tara Dorabji, Outreach Director for Tri-Valley CAREs, which monitors the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. "The University of California has left contamination stemming from leaks, spills and accidents at Los Alamos. We will show that the manager's role should be to clean up, not cover up." "By joining forces with Nuclear Watch of New Mexico and preparing a bid, we believe we will be in an excellent position to influence the entire process," said Marylia Kelley, Tri-Valley CAREs' Executive Director. Specifically, the non-profit consortium's goals include influencing the LANL management contract in four ways. "We seek to ensure that the new management contract will increase openness, improve health and safety provisions for workers and communities, strengthen whistleblower protections, and provide incentive points for bringing more civilian science to LANL," Kelley explained. Josh Kearns, a graduate student in environmental science at UC Berkeley, added, "Current weapons projects at LANL are contrary to the University of California's mission to provide a public service. Moreover, they undermine the University's reputation. Under the 'watchdog' consortium's direction, LANL's research will focus on projects to reduce the damage from climate change, develop sustainable alternative energy sources, and protect the public from the lab's contaminated soil, water and air." UC has managed Los Alamos for the Department of Energy (DOE) and predecessor agencies, since the lab's creation in 1943. After repeated security and fiscal management scandals, DOE decided in April 2003 to open competition for the Los Alamos contract for the first time. UC's current contract expires on September 30, 2005. The University is expected to bid to continue its management role, though it has yet to make a formal decision. Scott Kovac, Operations Director of Nuclear Watch of New Mexico, welcomed the California group to the new team bidding to manage Los Alamos. "Excellent science with a focus on environmental cleanup will be at the center of our proposal. The addition of Tri-Valley CAREs will strengthen our bid as we move forward." UC Berkeley physicist, Professor Emeritus Charlie Schwartz endorsed the consortium's bid. "UC's role has been to provide a cloak of academic respectability to the development of weapons of mass destruction. Recently U.S. government officials have found UC's management skills to be inadequate and sought competing proposals. The idea of converting the weapons lab to a center for constructive civilian research makes great sense, and it should appeal to many of those who now work at the Los Alamos bomb factory." After Tri-Valley CAREs and the Coalition to Demilitarize the University of California outline the consortium's goals and next steps in the bidding process, trial attorney Gary Gwilliam, will document some of UC's failures to protect whistleblowers and safeguard workers. Gwilliam, a senior partner in the Oakland-based firm of Gwilliam, Ivary, Chiosso, Cavalli and Brewer, has represented many Lawrence Livermore employees who claim to have experienced retaliation for exposing hazards, fraud and discrimination. Tri-Valley CAREs was founded in Livermore in 1983 to monitor activities in the DOE nuclear weapons complex, with a special focus on the nearby Lawrence Livermore Lab. The group's 4,500 members work to promote nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation, ensure cleanup of the Cold War legacy of radioactive and toxic pollution, safeguard the environment from further contamination, and enhance worker and public participation in decision-making. (www.trivalleycares.org) The Coalition to Demilitarize the University of California consists of student groups on UC campuses at Berkeley, Santa Cruz, San Diego, Santa Barbara and Los Angeles, as well as the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, the Western States Legal Foundation, Nevada Desert Experience, and Tri-Valley CAREs. Nuclear Watch of New Mexico provides information to the public on nuclear issues in the Southwest and encourages effective citizen involvement around these concerns. The group promotes environmental protection, safe disposal of radioactive wastes, and federal policy changes to curb the proliferation of nuclear weapons. (www.nukewatch.org) -- 30 -- Below is a copy of attorney Gary Gwilliam's press release and then his longer press statement Press Release Source: Gwilliam, Ivary, Chiosso, Cavalli & Brewer Lab Workers Call for Regents to Make Changes, Contending Unfair and Illegal Treatment News Conference Thursday, January 20, 2005, 9:15 A.M. UC San Francisco - Laurel Heights Campus, 333 California St., San Francisco (map: http://www.ucsf.edu/maps/lhts.html ), Outside the Public Entrance to the Conference Room OAKLAND, Calif., Jan. 18 /PRNewswire/ -- The Regents of the University of California are meeting on January 20, 2005, to discuss issues relating to bidding on new contracts for the nuclear weapons labs at Los Alamos and possibly the Livermore Lab. They are also considering various issues including claims by workers at the Lab who have cases for unfair treatment and wrongful termination. Attorney J. Gary Gwilliam has issued a media statement with regard to numerous court cases showing an ongoing pattern of unfair and illegal treatment of employees, particularly at the Lawrence Livermore Lab, as well as the Los Alamos Lab. (See the media statement below.) The University of California (UC), which manages the Labs, needs to look at these issues and institute management reforms, particularly with regard to the human resources practices at Livermore and the way the in-house Lab counsel handles these matters. Dee Kotla and Tristan Pico will be present at the news conference to discuss their experiences. Both these women have won wrongful termination cases after long jury trials. The Lab has appealed both of their cases. Dee Kotla was fired after she testified against them in a sexual harassment case. Tristan Pico was fired while on disability and won a disability discrimination lawsuit for wrongful termination. In short, we are calling for the Livermore Lab to institute and implement new policies with regard to fair, decent and legal treatment of their employees. This would include: -- Implementing current laws for whistleblowers -- Strictly enforcing all discrimination laws -- A complete change in the Human Resources Department, which for years has done nothing to protect the workers -- Make changes in the legal counsel's office for the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory - The Laboratory counsel's office has consistently supported Human Resources and management in all their terminations and denials of retaliation claims and not performed their independent duty to make sure the workers are treated fairly - Lab counsel was found liable for retaliation against Dee Kotla in a jury trial in 2002 and was never disciplined - Janet Tulk, Associate Director, Administration & Human Resources, and senior legal counsel, has done nothing to change these practices. -- The Lab needs to stop wasting money on litigation - Congress, U.S. Department of Energy Inspector General's Office, The General Accounting Office, as well as some members of Congress, have continually questioned the policy of the Department of Energy reimbursing UC and the Lab for all litigation expenses. This policy encourages the Lab and UC to spend an endless amount of money on attorneys and costs in litigation that is unnecessary The press conference will take place in conjunction with the Livermore, CA-based Tri-Valley CAREs (Communities Against a Radioactive Environment) and other member organizations of the Coalition to Demilitarize the University of California. These UC and Department of Energy "watchdog" organizations will announce their partnership with Nuclear Watch of NewMexico to bid for the management contract for the Los Alamos National Laboratory. The non-profit consortium's goals include influencing the LANL management contract in four ways: increasing openness, improving health and safety provisions for workers and communities, strengthening whistleblower protections, and providing incentive points for bringing more civilian science to the lab. ****************************** MEDIA STATEMENT U.C. Has Failed to Reform Livermore Lab Management; New Contractor May Be Needed, Leading Attorney Says University of California (UC) mismanagement of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) has created "an intolerably hostile and discriminatory workplace" for its employees, says Atty. J. Gary Gwilliam, who stated that UC must remedy the problem if they are to have any chance at being successful in competing for the new contract at the Lawrence Livermore Lab. The University of California has had a no-bid contract with the Department of Energy to run the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory for 53 years. However, it is likely that will change and the Lab will be up for bid with other contractors in the year 2006. LLNL supervisors and the Human Resources Department routinely "retaliate against employees who report security violations, health and safety hazards, financial irregularities, sexual discrimination and harassment as well as routinely engage in racial, sexual, age, and disability discrimination," Atty. Gwilliam said. "Instead of fixing problems, management goes into denial, wasting millions of taxpayer dollars on legal battles seeking immunity instead of attempting to resolve the problem" "The outrageous and unfair treatment of these employees continues to this date as shown by the evidence from numerous cases," he said. "The evidence makes plain that the mismanagement continues unabated." Atty. Gwilliam is senior partner in the Oakland-based law firm of Gwilliam, Ivary, Chiosso, Cavalli and Brewer. He is past president of Consumer Attorneys of California (formerly the California Trial Lawyers Association), and immediate past national president of Trial Lawyers for Public Justice. He cited examples from some cases he has worked on to prove his point regarding UC mismanagement of LLNL: "Livermore lab management tolerates sexual harassment and punishes those who speak up against it." See the case of Dee Kotla v. Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, Alameda County Case No.: CV014799, set for trial on February 10, 2005. "Ms. Kotla was fired after she testified as a witness for a fellow employee who had been subjected to sexual harassment by a manager," Atty. Gwilliam said. Management claimed it was justified in discharging Ms. Kotla because she incurred $4.30 of personal phone charges. A jury found UC liable for retaliation and rejected management's claims of computer misuse. UC spent more than $1 million on outside counsel opposing Ms. Kotla, who won a jury verdict including damages, costs and attorney's fees, which added up to more than $2.1 million. An appeals court overturned the verdict on a technicality not affecting the merits of the case. It is clear from the evidence that another jury will probably reach the same result in the second trial and the taxpayers will have to pay millions of more dollars for litigation expenses including attorney's fees and costs for both sides." "The lab covers up potentially dangerous defects, muzzling honest employees, even in its biggest boondoggle, the multi-billion-dollar Nuclear Ignition Facility (NIF)." See Miklosy and Messina v. Lawrence Livermore Lab, Alameda County Case No. RG 04140484 is a good example. "Les Miklosy was fired and Luciana Messina was forced out of her job after they reported costly and potentially hazardous flaws in the giant NIF project. The head of the Human Resources Department and LLNL counsel conspired with top executives to silence my clients and sweep their scandal under the rug. California has the nation's strongest whistleblower protection law, which UC emasculates by saying lab employees may not sue without lab management's permission. "The University of California and the DOE should support the Whistleblowing Law instead of trying to find legal loopholes to avoid it" Atty. Gwilliam said. "In this case, UC filed a demurrer to the complaint. According to the demurrer, just because management had made a finding against the employees internally (with no hearing, nor participation by Miklosy and Messina's attorney), UC alleged that, under the technical language of the law, they could automatically have the case dismissed. Unfortunately, a lower in Alameda County bought into this technicality and the matter is on appeal. This is simply bad policy and the Legislature should take immediate action to resolve the matter." "The Lab retaliates against employees who report financial mismanagement." An example is the case of Michele Doggett - Doggett v. Regents of the University of California, Alameda County Case No. 829359-4. "Management misuses millions of dollars of taxpayer funds, and gets rid of anyone who dares to tell the truth about it," Atty. Gwilliam said. "Michelle Doggett, a resource manager, was fired after she complained of financial irregularities at Livermore. UC paid $815,900 for outside counsel to fight her claim, but later settled and paid $990,000 for her damages and costs. The lab said the misappropriated funds she disclosed amounted to 'only $32,000' but, soon after settling her case, they admitted it was in the millions." "The lab disdains nuclear safety and retaliates against those who speak up about serious violations." For example, nuclear engineer David Lappa (David Lappa v. LLNL, Alameda County Case No. V-015785-4), an expert on human factor analysis in plutonium operations, was demoted after he refused to cover up evidence of willful violation of plutonium safety regulations. The U.S. Department of Labor ordered the lab to reinstate Mr. Lappa to his former position and awarded back pay and other monetary damages. Management then stepped up its retaliation, forcing Mr. Lappa out of his job. UC spent about $1 million opposing his lawsuit in court, but later agreed to a substantial monetary settlement. "The lab discriminates against the disabled, firing good employees instead of providing the reasonable accommodation that the law mandates." For example, see Tristan Pico v. Regents of the University of California, Alameda County Case No. 2002-060035). "Tristan Pico, an environmental engineer, was denied reasonable accommodation and was fired without cause. UC could have settled the case for a reasonable sum, but instead went to a six- week trial -- resulting in a jury verdict for the plaintiff, who won damages of $200,000 and attorneys' fees and costs of almost $800,000. This verdict was rendered on June 29, 2004. Adding costs and fees for the UC attorneys, it appears that UC spent almost $2 million spent on this case." "The lab has discriminated against women employees and underpaid them for many years." In the case of Singleton, et al. v. U.C. Regents, a class action representing almost 3,000 women, "it was clearly proved that the lab had paid men more than women for at least 25 years. This significant pay-equity, gender discrimination case eventually settled for approximately $17 million. The settlement terms included injunctive relief to ensure that there would be no further pay inequity or discrimination. As a result of this case, the way women employees are evaluated for pay raises was significantly changed. UC spent $13,732,507 for outside counsel to oppose unequal-wage claims by Mary Singleton and other female employees in this major class action. And yet there are indications that mistreatment of women in the Lab persists to this day." Other LLNL mismanagement cases have include these: "The lab has retaliated against and fired police officers who pointed security problems at the lab." SWAT team members Mathew Zipoli and Charles Quinones, officers of the LLNL Protective Service Officers Association, were fired after they complained about safety and security deficiencies. An arbitrator ordered LLNL to reinstate Mr. Zipoli in his job. He later left the lab when he and Mr. Quinones received a monetary settlement from UC. "The lab has discriminated against racial minorities for decades." Asian Pacific employees filed a class action charging wage discrimination. They have been engaged in settlement talks after going to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Department of Fair Employment and Housing to complain about this longstanding pattern of discrimination. "Livermore Lab management continues to disregard the health and safety of employees and the community." New cases reportedly are being brought by a 911 dispatcher discharged for complaining about workplace health and safety violations, and a technology group leader demoted for reporting mismanagement in the lab's plutonium building. UC also mismanages its other nuclear weapons lab: Similar management problems have been highly publicized at LLNL's sister lab in New Mexico, the Los Alamos National Laboratory LANL), also operated by UC. Atty. Gwilliam was co-counsel in the case of Glenn Walp, who won a settlement of almost $1 million. Mr. Walp, head of the LANL Office of Security Inquiries, and investigator Steve Doran, had been wrongfully discharged after they reported security breaches and financial irregularities. In an infamous case at Los Alamos, officials trumped up spy allegations against an Asian American scientist, Wen Ho Lee. CONCLUSION: "I have been a plaintiff's lawyer for more than 35 years and have handled many employment cases," Atty. Gwilliam says. "The conduct by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory management, in my opinion, is the most outrageous example of ongoing retaliation, discrimination and harassment of employees that I have ever seen. "They abuse their employees, they waste public funds fighting legitimate claims and, even when they lose, they refuse to admit wrongdoing or take proper corrective actions. "In dozens of cases, UC has argued that it is immune from being sued for wrongdoing. This claim of immunity is terrible policy for a public university managing our nation's nuclear facilities. These labs should be managed by people who will meet a higher standard of public trust. "Unfortunately, UC has no accountability for the attorney's fees and costs in these cases, since they are routinely paid by the U.S. Department of Energy. Therefore, there is no incentive for UC to enter into reasonable settlement negotiations, nor to correct the problems addressed by the claims. "The cases and examples I have cited are only the tip of the iceberg," Atty. Gwilliam said. "They involve cases that our firm has dealt with or had knowledge of. I'm certain that there are many other cases of which I am unaware. It's obvious that there are many other employees who have been treated just as badly as the ones in these cases, but who have never come forward for fear of retaliation. The publicly known cases are a small fraction of the iceberg of a monumental employee relations problem at the Lawrence Livermore Lab. "I have taken the depositions of all the human resources people in the Lab and many of the management people. I have also had extensive dealings with the in-house counsel for the Lab. There has to be some significant reform of these departments in order for the Lab and UC to begin to make needed major changes in the way they deal with their employees. It has to start with a new Human Resources Director and a commitment to dealing fairly with the employees. If that cannot be accomplished then new contractor to manage the Lab may be the only answer." Source: Gwilliam, Ivary, Chiosso, Cavalli & Brewer ends Marylia Kelley Executive Director Tri-Valley CAREs (Communities Against a Radioactive Environment) 2582 Old First Street Livermore, CA USA 94551 - is our web site address. Please visit us there! (925) 443-7148 - is our phone (925) 443-0177 - is our fax _______________________________________________________________________ Subscribe/Unsubscribe Here: http://www.energyjustice.net/nukenet/ Change your settings or access the archives at: http://energyjustice.net/mailman/listinfo/nukenet_energyjustice.net ***************************************************************** 49 DenverPost: Senators get weapons pledge Published: Wednesday, January 19, 2005 Mustard-agent items at Pueblo depot won't be moved, Pentagon says By Erin Emery Denver Post Staff Writer The Pentagon promised U.S. Sens. Wayne Allard and Ken Salazar of Colorado on Tuesday that mustard-agent weapons stored at the Pueblo Chemical Depot will not be transported to another site for disposal. Pueblo leaders were outraged last week after learning that the Pentagon planned not to begin funding construction of a plant to destroy the weapons until at least 2011. A separate Dec. 21 memo said the Pentagon should consider minimizing risk, including "relocation." During an hour-long meeting, Allard and Salazar talked to Patrick Wakefield, deputy assistant to the secretary of defense, and Dale Klein, assistant secretary for nuclear and chemical and biological weapons. The senators said they were assured that the weapons would not be incinerated, as some in Pueblo have feared, but would be neutralized with water followed by biodegradation, which introduces bacteria to devour toxics. Confirmation of the agreements is due from the Pentagon this week. The senators will meet monthly with defense officials for updates. "So I'm glad to hear what they said. It doesn't make me any less concerned or vigilant," said Ross Vincent, a Pueblo resident and Sierra Club member. "The key question now is, how soon are they going to start construction." Pueblo broke ground in September on a plant, but only a few days after the ceremony, the Army halted design work for nine months because the government believed the project would be too expensive. The project was originally expected to cost $1.6 billion. Allard said the group talked "in general" about the Pentagon's plan not to fund construction but reached no agreement about the proposed budget. Salazar said he is "cautiously optimistic that the meeting here in Sen. Allard's office will result in clarification and a sense that things are still on track." Staff writer Erin Emery can be reached at 719-522-1360 or eemery@denverpost.com [eemery@denverpost.com] . All contents Copyright 2005 The Denver Post or other copyright ***************************************************************** 50 lamonitor.com: Energy committee assesses Bodman The Online News Source for Los Alamos [http://www.lanl.gov/worldview] [http://www.lac-nm.us] ROGER SNODGRASS, [roger@lamonitor.com] , Monitor Assistant Editor The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee takes up the nomination of Samuel Bodman for the position of Secretary of Energy today. Sen. Pete Domenici, R-NM, is chairman of the committee and Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-NM, is the ranking member. Domenici returned to Washington after a weekend visit to New Mexico, where he attended a ground breaking for a new facility for the International Law Enforcement Academy in Roswell. Currently Deputy Secretary of the Treasury and former Deputy Secretary of Commerce, Bodman's nomination surprised many in the energy sector, including The Oil Daily, which called his selection a "surprise nod," in its headline last month. Others have called him a "mystery man" and an "unknown." Beginning today, the country will have a closer look at the man who has been picked to replace Secretary Spencer Abraham. While not a household name, Bodman had a successful career as a corporate executive and played key roles during President Bush's first term. Deputy secretaries in the Bush administration have been given the roles of chief operating officers of their departments. Before that, Bodman, a chemical engineer, MIT associate professor and venture capitalist, had 31 years of experience in the private sector. Immediately prior to entering government he was chairman and CEO of Cabot Corp., a global concern that specializes in chemicals. Tasked by Bush especially to increase domestic energy production, Bodman's chemical training has been praised by the Chemical industry in the Chemical Week trade paper under an opinion piece headlined, "Things Keep Getting Better." The Senate energy committee will hold a one-day conference next Monday to make suggestions on what to do about predicted shortages of natural gas. Thirty-two different groups will be making two-minute proposals, followed by discussion and debate on six topics, including how to increase domestic supplies. Environmentalists have called attention to Cabot Corporation's environmental shortcomings while Bodman was at the helm. A June 2001 report by the National Resources Defense Council, identified him as one of the "players in the "Bush-Cheney Energy Plan," with connections to Bush going back to when the President was governor of Texas. Bodman's position on nuclear issues is not as well known. Michael Roston, editor of Nuclear Test Watch, has pointed out that Abraham was associated with new nuclear weapons initiatives and preparations for resumption of nuclear tests. In his statement, coinciding with the hearings, Roston urged New Mexico's Senator's to obtain specific information on Bodman's position on nuclear testing. In his regular "Access" radio program, Domenici discounted LANL employees "incessant worries" about what will happen to their benefits and pensions under new management. "We're fully aware of the benefits, of the pensions, of the health care, and so is the laboratory, and so will bids and proposals provide for that,"Domenici said. "If they don't, they are going to be turned down. I don't believe in the end that is going to happen. "So I think people ought to settle down," he added. © 2003 Los Alamos Monitor All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 51 CBS: Senate panel warmly receives energy nominee Bodman - cbs.marketwatch.com Energy nominee welcomed in Senate Bodman fields queries on oil, energy bill, nuclear issues By Stephanie I. Cohen, CBS MarketWatch Last Update: 5:25 PM ET Jan. 19, 2005 WASHINGTON (CBS.MW) - Energy Secretary nominee Samuel Bodman faced a warm, bipartisan reception from the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee on Wednesday and promises from lawmakers of support for his confirmation to the post. Bodman fielded questions from lawmakers at his confirmation hearing on a range of issues including international nuclear nonproliferation efforts, funding for federal laboratories, progress on nuclear waste storage plans, and domestic energy supplies. The panel is expected to approve his nomination at a meeting on Jan. 26. Bodman, a seasoned administration official who has served in top positions at both the Treasury and Commerce Departments, had met with most of the members of the panel during the past six weeks following the announcement of his nomination to discuss concerns and interests. Bodman would become steward of 24 national research laboratories and a $24 billion budget as Energy Secretary. At the hearing, Bodman said pursuing clean coal initiatives proposed by the administration will be a top priority. "You have my commitment this will have a very high place in my hierarchy of issues to pursue," Bodman told the members of the panel. "Public private partnerships are central to the strategy of this department...and the [Clean Coal Power Initiative] is a good example of that and I would expect to continue that in the years ahead," Bodman said. Advocate for opening Alaskan refuge A number of senators peppered Bodman with questions on his commitment to opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge on Alaska's North Slope to oil and gas exploration. Republicans in Congress have spent the past three years unsuccessfully trying to overturn an existing ban on the leasing of land in the refuge to oil companies and are expected to renew these efforts this year. Bodman said he will be an advocate for overturning the current ban on oil and gas development in the refuge. "[The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge] has been part of the energy policy that this administration has proposed and I would expect to be an energetic advocate for it," Bodman said. "I think that it can be done." Bodman will also spend time dealing with a number of nuclear issues, including the proposal to move nuclear waste to the Yucca Mountain geological repository and the administration's 2010 Program to jumpstart the development of next generation nuclear power plants in the U.S. "There are a number of [nuclear] initiatives that I believe make sense," Bodman said. Bodman acknowledged that the administration must make progress on the legal hurdles blocking the movement of the nation's spent nuclear fuel to Yucca Mountain. Bodman said he also "remains quite enthused" about a number of renewable energy sources, particularly wind power. Bodman entered the Bush administration in 2001 as a deputy secretary at the Commerce Department. He served in that agency for two years before jumping to the No. 2 position at the Treasury Department for the past year. In addition to his tenure in government, Bodman previously served as president and chief operating officer of Fidelity Investments, head of Cabot Corp. (CBT: news, chart, profile) , and worked as a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Stephanie I. Cohen is a reporter for CBS MarketWatch in Washington. ***************************************************************** 52 Albuquerque Tribune: Bingaman, Domenici should grill energy secretary on nuke policy By Michael Roston January 18, 2005 COMMENTARY In his statement after the resignation of Spencer Abraham, President Bush praised the outgoing energy secretary for his "pivotal role in keeping the most dangerous weapons out of the hands of the most dangerous people." While the president is correct in that the Energy Department has recorded impressive accomplishments in securing nuclear materials, Abraham sat astride a series of revolting developments in American nuclear force planning that actually have made the world a more dangerous place. Although Abraham was one of the first Cabinet officials to resign, the nomination of Deputy Treasury Secretary Samuel Bodman on Dec. 10 was one of the last selections for President Bush's second-term Cabinet. The lengthy delay in this choice suggests the administration had to work through the many implications of the nomination. One that must not be downplayed is how Bodman and Bush will reassure the world that America is not bent on a nuclear policy that threatens international security. During Bodman's confirmation hearings this week before the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, members of the Senate - especially New Mexico's Sens. Pete Domenici and Jeff Bingaman, who should be the lead interrogators - must ask tough questions. They must bring the plans of Bush and his nominee on America's nuclear weapons infrastructure out into the open. Some earlier names mentioned for energy secretary had clear implications for the nation's nuclear plans, because the potential nominees had made previous statements on the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. In contrast, Bodman's perspectives on anything involving nuclear weapons are ambiguous. His prior work in the chemical engineering industry had no apparent relevance to nuclear weapons. His job in the Bush administration was not concerned with national security issues. That Bodman is an engineer by training will likely make him more comfortable communicating with scientists in America's nuclear weapons laboratories than were some previous secretaries. He should be more capable of seeing the junk nuclear science that they sometimes produce. But the selection of an individual from within the existing administration suggests that Bush wants a loyal secretary. This could mean that Bush's dangerous nuclear posture will continue. Over the course of his first four years, the United States has signaled its intent to pursue a more aggressive nuclear posture. The Energy Department has played a central role in the planning and preparation of nuclear weapons developments that other nations interpret as flouting international nonproliferation. Specifically, DOE has worked to repeal restrictions on research for the development of new, low-yield nuclear weapons. Fortunately, funding for these weapons have been blocked by Congress and the Bush administration decided then that his "political capital" was not worth spending on these weapons. But uncertainties remain. Notably, Abraham promoted efforts to significantly shorten the time it would take for the United States to resume nuclear tests. So far, Bush has indicated that testing is not expected. Still, the world worries about America's true intentions. It is difficult to imagine anything in the next four years that would destabilize international order more than the United States resuming the testing of nuclear weapons. Such tests would create an action-reaction cycle, rapidly shaking what remains of the nonproliferation treaty system to pieces. Russia and China likely would withdraw their membership in the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and conduct nuclear tests of their own. India, looking nervously to the east, would follow China and Pakistan would respond in kind. North Korea also likely would hop into the game as well. Most of the world's middle powers, capable of constituting some sort of nuclear program, would see that the atom bomb had become the currency of the day. A deadly era of nuclear proliferation, cold hostility and unpredictable conflict could ensue. It is not an overstatement to say that the nuclear test moratorium is the bedrock of America's commitment to the nonproliferation of nuclear weapons. For this reason, the senators' questioning of Bodman have an important role to play in our nonproliferation credibility. The Energy and Natural Resources Committee, led by Domenici and Bingaman, must prepare a tough grilling of Bodman on his nuclear weapons policy views. A strong public declaration by Bodman against resuming nuclear testing would be a powerful signal an enduring commitment to nuclear nonproliferation. It would create international good will and boost America's leverage in its negotiations with states like North Korea and Iran. He should promote critical nonproliferation reforms, such as Bush's worthy proposals for the International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards system. But after four years of Abraham's push for nuclear weapon development, America's nonproliferation credibility is low. The Senate hearings are an opportunity to re-emphasize America's commitment to an international norm against nuclear proliferation in these uncertain times. Roston is a graduate student at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs, and the editor of Nuclear Test Watch. [http://www.scripps.com] ***************************************************************** 53 BBC: Germany honours Einstein's genius Last Updated: Wednesday, 19 January, 2005 By Roland Pease BBC science correspondent [Undated file photograph of Albert Einstein] Einstein emerged as an important figure in 1905 German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder is due to launch the World Year of Physics, celebrating 100 years since Albert Einstein made his first great discovery. Educational bodies such as Unesco are hoping Einstein's achievements will inspire schoolchildren of today to pursue a career in physics. The year 1905 was truly extraordinary - for science and for Albert Einstein. In a handful of papers, he established the existence of atoms and determined their size, he laid the ground work for one of the most fruitful branches of modern physics, called quantum theory, and he introduced his theory of relativity to the world - a revolutionary description of the nature of space and time. Genius Einstein also discovered that most legendary of scientific equations, E=mc², which relates the energy of matter to its mass and the speed of light. The destructive power of nuclear bombs is often attributed to this equation, though it has many positive uses, too. At the start of 1905, Einstein's genius was invisible to all but a few close friends. By the end, his name was familiar to the best scientists across the world. Fifteen years later, Einstein became the world's first superstar of science, when one of the more bizarre predictions of his theories was proved. His image was splashed across newspaper front pages around the world. Today, he remains the most recognised of scientists, despite - or perhaps because of - the sheer complexity of his ideas. ***************************************************************** NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 this material is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. For more information go to: *****************************************************************