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                         NUCLEAR POLICY
 
1 US: Las Vegas SUN: Bush: U.S. to Bear Burden of Iraq Costs
2 asahi.com: EDITORIAL : U.S. intelligence report
3 FT.com: US and Iran oppose plan for nuclear moratorium
4 AFP: Iran still hopes for deal with Europeans on peaceful use of
5 US: Science for Sale
6 Daily Times: Fallout shelters are reminders of history
7 Sofia News: Reading Room: Healing the Bulgaria – Romania divide - 
 
                         NUCLEAR REACTORS
 
8 US: Exelon rejects NAS report; "Money not an issue"
9 US: NRC: Entergy Operations, Inc.; Waterford Steam Electric Station,
 
                          NUCLEAR SECURITY
 
10 [NYTr] Nuke-Loving Pope
11 [du-list] Bliar as arms salesperson - Pilger
12 IPS-English IRAQ CONFLICT: White House was wrong all along,
13 US: [NukeNet] USA's Main N-Warhead May Be A Dud
14 US: [toeslist] US military DU regs
15 US: Guardian Unlimited: Congress Weighs Money for Missile Defense
16 Guardian Unlimited: Pacific power play puts Japan and China 
17 HindustanTimes.com: Nuclear Deterrence in Southern Asia
18 INSIDE JoongAng Daily: NK delegates discuss nuclear talks in China
19 BBC: Iran hopes for EU nuclear accord
20 Xinhua: US remains concerned about Iran's nuclear program   
 
                          NUCLEAR SAFETY
 
21 [du-list] USUK Fulluja massacre and other bombing
22 US: NRC to Discuss Siren Failures; Request for Enforcement Action
23 AxisofLogic: Depleted uranium: A death sentence here and abroad 
24 HSC: HSE appoints directors of nuclear safety and hazardous installa
 
                         NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE
 
25 [du-list] Nuclear Waste Shipment in the Tasman
26 [NukeNet] More On Yucca Fraud
27 US: [NukeNet] Groups Affirm Opposition to Private Nuke Dump
28 [NukeNet] Yucca: E-Mails Reveal Fraud
29 US: All Nuclear Waste Storage Options in Doubt
30 San Luis Obispo Tribune: Letter: Yucca Trash
31 Las Vegas RJ: YUCCA MOUNTAIN: Workers describe sabotage 
32 Scotland: The Herald: Six sites earmarked for burial of radioactive 
33 Bellona: UK nuclear decommissioning efforts now answerable to Nuclea
34 BBC: Warning on nuclear waste disposal
35 Las Vegas SUN: Yucca e-mails show widespread problems
36 Las Vegas SUN: Workers claim retaliation in Yucca Mountain water pip
37 US: NRC: Procedures; Notice of Meeting
38 US: EA: New alloy verified for safer disposal of spent nuclear energ
39 US: Madison courier: Judge: Army taking too long on JPG plan
40 Las Vegas SUN: DOE memos: Yucca Mountain e-mails not likely to discr
41 AU ABC: NZ seeks to stop nuclear waste ship from entering its waters
42 US: KRNV: EPA issues initial order in Yerington mine cleanup
43 US: Minot Daily News: Nuclear storage solution -       
44 US: NRC: NRC Renews License for Dry-Cask Nuclear Spent Fuel Storage 
 
                           PEACE
 
 
                        US DEPT. OF ENERGY
 
45 Bradenton Herald: Toxin screenings begin today
46 lamonitor.com: Watchdogs plan to appeal open burn permit 
47 lamonitor.com: NMED calls for cleanup 
48 DOE: Meeting SRS EMSSAB board
*****************************************************************
*****************************************************************
                         FULL NEWS STORIES
*****************************************************************
*****************************************************************
 1 Las Vegas SUN: Bush: U.S. to Bear Burden of Iraq Costs

Today: April 04, 2005 at 17:44:44 PDT 

 By NEDRA PICKLER ASSOCIATED PRESS 

WASHINGTON (AP) - 

President Bush said Monday that seeing Iraq through
reconstruction to a stable and secure democracy is a worthy
cause that the United States will press regardless of whether
its coalition partners remain there. 

"The fundamental question is: Is it worth it? And the answer is,
'Absolutely, it's worth it for a free Iraq to emerge'," said
Bush, standing alongside visiting Ukrainian President Viktor
Yushchenko, who is pulling his country's 1,650 troops out of the
country to fulfill a campaign promise. 

"I fully understand that," Bush said. "But he also said he's
going to cooperate with the coalition in terms of further
withdrawals. And I appreciate that." 

Two years after the U.S.-led invasion toppled Saddam Hussein,
the coalition has been crumbling. Dozens of countries have
pulled out or begun bringing home troops. 

Italy's prime minister announced plans last month to start draw
down his country's 3,000-strong contingent in Iraq in September.
Poland is withdrawing about a third of its 2,400 troops. Last
year, Spain's new Socialist government withdrew its 1,300
troops. 

Ukraine sent some 1,650 troops to Iraq in a move widely seen as
an attempt to smooth relations. However, the deployment was
widely unpopular at home and Ukraine has begun withdrawing
troops. Yushchenko said the pullout likely will be completed in
the fall, fulfilling his campaign promise. 

Yushchenko was elected in December after surviving dioxin
poisoning that left his face disfigured. He blames the poisoning
on the regime of his predecessor, Leonid Kuchma, who had
supported Yushchenko's opponent in the election. 

On another subject, Bush said he welcomed Syria's vow to fully
remove its forces from the country. 

"That not only means troops, but it means security forces, far
as I'm concerned. When they say, 'We're going to leave the
country,' we expect troops and security forces to leave'," he
said. 

"Secondly, it's important for this election to take place on
time," Bush added. 

Syria has said that it plans to pull all its troops and
intelligence agents from Lebanon by April 30. 

A United Nations team could be dispatched to verify the
withdrawal, a U.N. envoy said Sunday after meeting President
Bashar Assad. 

"We look forward to continuing to work with our friends and
allies to make sure Lebanon is truly free," Bush said. 

The president said the U.S.-led coalition's strategy in Iraq
remains to train Iraqi soldiers and security forces so they can
defend their own country. 

Bush said he appreciated the job that Ukrainian forces have
done, including helping to protect Iraqis vote in January. 

Bush promised to support Ukraine's bid to join the World Trade
Organization by the end of this year and to seek to persuade
Congress to lift remaining trade restrictions on Ukraine that
are a vestige of the Cold War. 

Bush was less committal on Ukraine's bid to join NATO, although
he said, "There is a way forward ... to become a partner of the
United States and other nations in NATO." 

"It is a path and we want to help Ukraine get on that path as
quickly as possible," Bush said. 

Bush called Yushchenko a courageous leader, "a friend to our
country and an inspiration to all who love liberty." 

"The world is changing. Freedom is spreading," Bush said, citing
Ukraine, Afghanistan and Iraq as examples of fledgling
democracies. 

For his part, Yuschenko said, "Our ideals are simple and
eternal. We want democracy and freedom." 

He said that ending corruption and easing poverty remain top
priorities. He asserted that he was committed to nourishing the
rule of law and human rights in his country. 

Yushchenko has promised a thorough investigation of corruption
and misdeeds that allegedly flourished during his predecessor's
10 years as president. 

Yushchenko, who will address the Congress later in the week, is
here to lobby for aid and investment, win Washington's support
for joining NATO, and greet Ukrainian-Americans on an itinerary
that takes him to New York, Chicago and Boston, accompanied by
his wife Kateryna, an American-born Ukrainian. 

Bush frequently cites Yushchenko's peaceful rise to power as an
example of the march of freedom throughout the world and has
pledged to help him make further democratic reforms. 

Yushchenko told The Associated Press before leaving for
Washington that he and Bush would review steps to end illicit
arms sales from his country. 

Relations deteriorated after Washington accused Kuchma's regime
of selling radar systems to Iraq in violation of international
sanctions. 

--- 

On the Net: 

http://www.whitehouse.gov

*****************************************************************
 2 asahi.com: EDITORIAL : U.S. intelligence report

04/04/2005
  
Commission finds poor advice led to Iraq war. 

Although a U.S. fact-finding mission sent to Iraq concluded in
October 2004 that the country possessed no weapons of mass
destruction, why did the United States continue to insist that
such weapons existed? 

An independent nonpartisan commission established by U.S.
President George W. Bush to examine that issue reported last
Thursday, after a year-long probe, that the country's
intelligence agencies did a terrible job. In fact, they passed
on unfounded data to the top levels of the U.S. government. 

Whether or not many nations agreed with the idea of invading
Iraq, they believed the United States had based its momentous
decision to go to war on reliable, credible information. It is
simply astounding to hear that the country's intelligence
agencies failed so completely in their duty. 

The allies who followed the U.S. lead and sent their troops to
Iraq must be shocked at the report's conclusions. 

There is now serious question about U.S. intelligence
capabilities, and the resulting analyses and judgments that were
made based on that wrong information. 

Now, the international community faces difficult decisions on
how to deal with allegations of nuclear development in North
Korea and Iran, but can we trust the intelligence data? The
latest report creates great anxiety in Japan and other allies
that depend on data from the United States government. 

The commission's nearly 700-page report lists numerous
outrageous blunders. In addition, it criticizes the Central
Intelligence Agency for collecting too little information or
data that was meaningless and irrelevant. 

Before invading Iraq, Bush received daily intelligence
assessments at the White House. However, the recent findings
concluded that the reports lacked calm judgment and were
disastrously one-sided. Questions also have arisen as to whether
government pressure on the CIA resulted in biased assessments.
The report, however, didn't even touch that issue, saying it lay
beyond its authority. 

Nevertheless, as long as the Bush government accepted bad
information and made the ultimate decision to go to war, it is
responsible and must be held accountable. 

To our amazement, Bush praised the report. He stayed on the
sidelines and said that the central conclusion was one that he
shared, agreeing that the U.S. intelligence agencies needed
fundamental reforms. Bush talked as if it was not his
responsibility that the decision to go to war was made. 

Since the war began about two years ago, about 20,000 Iraqis and
more than 1,600 coalition soldiers, mainly from the United
States and Britain, have been killed. Many foreign civilians
have also been captured and slain by insurgents. 

The commission also studied the credibility of information about
countries suspected of developing nuclear weapons, including
North Korea and Iran. The sections dealing with those results
are classified and were not disclosed, but the report expressed
disappointment with the surprisingly limited quality of the
information about those nations' weapons programs as well. 

The proliferation of weapons of mass destruction threatens the
entire world. It is of course impossible to always gather
accurate intelligence, but the world remains too dependent on
the United States to gather such information. The report gives
the international community much to consider. 

--The Asahi Shimbun, April 2(IHT/Asahi: April 4,2005) 
  
[Copyright Asahi Shimbun. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
 3 FT.com: US and Iran oppose plan for nuclear moratorium
 
By Guy Dinmore in Washington 
Published: April 5 2005 00:45 | Last updated: April 5 2005 00:45

The US has rejected a proposal by the head of the International 
Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) for a five-year, global moratorium on 
the construction of new facilities for enriching uranium and 
reprocessing plutonium.

 One month before a conference to review the nuclear weapons
non-proliferation treaty (NPT), the US and Iran find themselves
in uncommon agreement in their joint opposition to the plan put
forward by Mohamed ElBaradei.

 According to diplomats in Vienna, where the UN nuclear watchdog
agency is based, the US wants to expand its private civilian
nuclear power industry, while Iran insists it should not be
denied access to such technology. 

Mr ElBaradei argues that the world already has more than enough
capacity to fuel its nuclear power plants and research
facilities. His proposed moratorium is intended to give the
international community a breathing space to work out revisions
to the treaty, widely acknowledged to be in danger of collapse. 

North Korea quit the NPT in 2003 and later admitted possession
of nuclear weapons. Iran is among several countries suspected of
developing a clandestine nuclear weapons capability while
remaining party to the treaty, which allows member states to
develop nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.

 One diplomat in Vienna said the White House had agreed to the
proposed moratorium on condition that it did not apply to the
US. France and Japan also oppose the plan. â€œThe moratorium is
going nowhere,â€ the diplomat said. The US State Department
declined to comment.

 The US and the European Union are demanding that Iran abandon
its uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing programmes.
Iran refuses but it has largely frozen related activities for
the past 18 months. 

President George W. Bush marked the 35th anniversary of the
treaty with a statement last month demanding closure of
â€œloopholes that allow states to produce nuclear materials that
can be used to build bombs under the cover of civilian nuclear
programmesâ€. 

Mr Bush has also proposed that uranium and plutonium facilities
be denied to those states that have not already developed them.
Instead, they could be given access to fuel from a market of
nuclear suppliers. Iran rejected the idea, and Mr ElBaradei has
suggested the IAEA act as a guarantor of supplies through
international consortia.

 These various proposals are expected to be discussed at the
five-yearly NPT review conference, to be held New York from May
2 to 27. 

Controversy over the moratorium idea is symptomatic of serious
differences among the five nuclear weapons states that are
signatories to the treaty and many other states that accuse them
of not living up to their disarmament commitments. A senior UN
official said the conference was heading for a â€œtrain
wreckâ€. A preparatory committee has failed to agree on an
agenda. 

  [ height=]     Â© Copyright The Financial Times Ltd 2005. "FT"
and "Financial Times" are trademarks of the Financial Times.
*****************************************************************
 4 AFP: Iran still hopes for deal with Europeans on peaceful use of
nuclear energy - 

Monday April 4, 05:45 PM 

VIENNA (AFP) - Iran still hopes to strike a deal with the 
European Union on its peaceful use of nuclear energy and assuage 
fears that it is trying to develop atomic weapons, President 
Mohammad Khatami said here. 

Khatami said on a visit to Vienna that the two sides were 
working "to find a solution to the right of our land for the 
peaceful development of nuclear energy and also to overcome the 
worries of our European colleagues" about Tehran's nuclear 
program. 

Iran has been negotiating since December with Britain, France 
and Germany to win trade, security and technology rewards in 
return for giving guarantees that it is not trying to develop 
nuclear weapons. 

The talks are deadlocked over the Islamic republic's refusal to 
abandon uranium enrichment, the key process which makes fuel for 
civilian reactors but also what can be the explosive core of 
atom bombs. 

The EU is currently considering, ahead of a meeting next week 
with Iranian negotiators in Geneva, a proposal by Tehran to 
allow it to produce enriched uranium on a small scale. 

Iran made the written proposal to be allowed to run a pilot 
centrifuge enrichment project at a meeting in Paris in March 
with the three EU negotiating states. 

But European diplomats say their position remains that Iran 
must abandon all enrichment activities. 

A Western diplomat told AFP that the United States will only 
back the EU initiative, as it currently does, if Europe 
maintains its demand for a permanent cessation of enrichment. 

Otherwise, Washington will seek to take Iran before the UN 
Security Council, where it could face possible economic and 
other sanctions. 

Khatami told reporters after meeting with Austrian President 
Heinz Fischer that he hoped Austria could help Iran in the talks 
due to its important role within the EU. 

Austrian Foreign Minister Ursula Plassnik said after meeting 
with her Iranian counterpart Kamal Kharazi that she expected the 
talks in Geneva to yield progress on human rights concerns 
expressed by Europe. 

The talks will take place in three groups covering nuclear and 
technology issues, political and security concerns and trade. 

Diplomats have said however that there will be no progress 
until the nuclear issue is resolved. 

Khatami said his country opposed, as other nations do, "the 
gross misuse of this (nuclear) technology, which is (the 
development of) fearsome atomic weapons." 

But he said that even oil-rich Iran needs peaceful nuclear 
technology. 

Oil is an important resource and Iran must protect what it has 
"for our future generations," he said. 

Khatami also said that "many European and Asian nations" are 
worried about the negative environmental effects of using oil 
"and therefore we must seek alternatives." 

Iran "does not want anything other than what law and the 
international community agree to," Khatami said. 

He insisted that Iran has "a national right to the peaceful use 
of nuclear energy" and worked closely on this with the UN 
nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). 

Iran claims this right under the nuclear Non-Proliferation 
Treaty (NPT), which it has signed. 

The Vienna-based IAEA has been investigating Iran for two years 
on US charges that Tehran is secretely developing nuclear 
weapons but IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei has said "the jury is 
still out" on whether this is true. 

Khatami said Iran felt that the IAEA has already confirmed that 
Iran has not "planned anything or done anything" that shows it 
is diverting nuclear material for military purposes. 

Copyright © 2005 AFP AFP. All rights reserved. 
*****************************************************************
 5 Science for Sale
 
Date: Mon, 04 Apr 2005 15:30:02 -0700

 
<x-flowed>
Science for Sale:
           TMI and the University of Pittsburgh

                 by Eric Joseph Epstein


     The University of Pittsburgh¹s most recent ³health study, released on
Halloween, is essentially a recitation of discredited protocol and disputed
data. Re-released on October 31, 2002, the Study actually acknowledged an
increase in lymphatic and blood cancers among men. However, as in previous
of University Pittsburgh Studies conducted by the same group of researchers,
e.g., (Evelynn Talbott et al; 2000), this survey relied on government and
nuclear industry sponsored 'health studies' were completed in the early
1980s. These studies were based on inaccurate dose projections, did not
factor data only available in 1985  regarding the severity and conditions of
the partial-core meltdown at Three Mile Island Unit-2, and did not factor
the prevailing weather conditions and wind patters in march-April, 1979.

     Nor did any of these studies evaluate the health impact to members of
our community who defueled Three Mile Island.  In fact, General Public
Utilities  choose not maintain a health or cancer registry, despite the
fact, that  from 1979-1989, 5,000 clean-up workers received 'measurable
doses' of  radiation exposure.

     Moreover, the University of Pittsburgh¹s Study relied heavily on the
much maligned Pennsylvania Department of Health¹s seventeen year-old survey
released in September, 1985. That study¹s protocol was ridiculed and
criticized by epidemiologists at Harvard (Dr. George Hutchison), and Penn
State (Dr. Robert A Hultquist) for ³diluting² increases in cancer by
³expanding² the population base to include people living outside of ten-mile
study-zone. (October; 1985).

                              1

          A great deal of radiation was indeed released by the partial core
melt at TMI.  The President's commission estimated about 15 million curies
of radiation were released into the atmosphere.  A review of dose
assessments, conducted by Dr. Jan Beyea, (National Audubon Society; 1984)
estimated that  from 276 to 63,000 person-rem  were delivered to the
general population within 50 miles of TMI.  More recently, David Lochbaum of
the Union of Concern Scientists, estimated between 40 million curies and 100
million curies escaped during the accident.

      For 11 days, in June-July, 1980,  Met Ed illegally vented 43,000 curies
of radioactive Krypton-85 (beta and gamma; 10 year half life) and other
radioactive gasses into the environment without having scrubbers in place
And by 1993,  TMI-2  evaporated  2.3 million gallons of accident generated
radioactive generated water, including tritium a radioactive form of
hydrogen (half life; 12. 5 years),  into the atmosphere despite legal
objections from community-based organizations

       The plant's owners,  co-defendants and  insurers have paid over $80
million in health, economic and evacuation claims, including a $1.1 million
settlement for a baby born with Down's Syndrome. (In 1985, TMI¹s owners and
builders paid more than $14 million for out-of-court settlements of personal
injury lawsuits. The largest settlement was for a child born with Down¹s
Syndrome.) In June 2000, the United States Supreme Court remanded 1,990
unsettled health suits from the TMI-accident back to Federal Court. (GPU V.
Abrams; Dolan v. GPU.)










          In August 1996, a study by the University of North Carolina-Chapel
  Hill, authored by Dr. Steven Wing, reviewed the Susser-Hatch study
  (Columbia University; 1991). Dr. Wing reported that "...there were reports
  of erythema, hair loss, vomiting, and pet death near TMI at the time of the
  accident...Accident doses were positively associated with cancer incidence.
  Associations were largest for leukemia, intermediate for lung cancer, and
  smallest for all cancers combined...Inhaled radionuclide contamination
could differentially impact lung cancers, which show a clear dose-related
  increase."
                               2

     Today, TMI-2 remains a high level radioactive waste in the middle of the
Susquehanna River. There was no decommissioning fund established for TMI at
the time of the accident. The site of the nation¹s worst commercial nuclear
accident has not been decontaminated or decommissioned. There has not been a
human entry in the basement of the reactor building since March, 1979...


      Mr. Epstein is the Chairman of Three Mile Island Alert , Inc., a
safe-energy
organization based in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania and founded in 1977.
http://wow.tmia.com.

      He is also the  Coordinator of the EFMR Monitoring group, a
non-partisan community based organization that monitors Peach Bottom and
Three Mile Island nuclear generating stations.
http://www.enviroweb.org/efmr/newsletters.html














                             3

</x-flowed>
*****************************************************************
 6 Daily Times: Fallout shelters are reminders of history

www.delmarvanow.com
 
   Monday, April 4, 2005   
 
By Tristan Schweiger Daily Times Staff Writer 
  
Times Photo by Brice Stump
 
Now used for storage, a former fallout shelter in the old 
Wicomico courthouse is inspected by Frank Buob.   

SALISBURY -- On the Main Street side of the building that houses
the Wicomico County Circuit Court Clerk's office hangs a sign
with ominous yellow triangles indicating the building has a
fallout shelter.

It does. Or rather, it used to.

"We have one in the old courthouse, what we call the
'catacombs,' " said Frank Buob, general services director for
Wicomico County.

Although fallout shelters in public buildings, once sponsored by
the federal government, used to be stocked with water and food
in preparation for the after-effects of nuclear war, Buob said
he can't remember anything like that being stored down there in
his 20 years with general services.

"The little rooms off it are just storage," Buob said. "It's so
damp down there and everything else, we don't use it for much."

Once built in the basements of schools, churches and government
buildings, as well as in the back yards of people with enough
money to afford one, the fallout shelter has largely become a
curious piece of Cold War history. But in the 1950s and early
1960s, as Americans lived with the ever-present threat of war
with the Soviet Union, spaces in buildings across the country
were devoted to providing refuge in the event that World War III
broke out.

Dean Kotlowski, a history professor at Salisbury University,
said that when his parents built their first house in suburban
Buffalo, N.Y., in 1967, they were given the option of having a
shelter installed under their front porch.

"I think people at the time, in the 1950s and into the early
1960s, believed that we could somehow prevail in a nuclear war,"
Kotlowski said. "That's a very innocent and naive belief."

The slim chance of surviving a nuclear exchange is part of the
reason building the structures fell out of favor, according to
Bill Walters, a chemistry professor at the University of
Maryland College Park. The first -- and only -- uses of a
nuclear weapon during a conflict occurred when America bombed
the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of
World War II.

Those devices produced massive destruction, but their blasts
were weak in comparison to the damage that could be caused by a
hydrogen bomb, a much more powerful weapon that both the United
States and the Soviet Union developed in the '50s. Whereas a
bomb like the one dropped on Hiroshima might have a yield
equivalent to tens of thousands of tons of TNT, a hydrogen bomb
could have a yield closer to tens of millions of tons.

"It's a thousand times bigger bomb," Walters said. "These things
were going to do so much damage to the social infrastructure
that being in a fallout shelter wouldn't do you much good,
because when you came out there wasn't going to be anything
left."

And fallout shelters weren't intended to offer citizens
protection from a direct hit by a Soviet warhead. Rather, they
offered shielding from fallout, radioactivity spread far from
the site of a nuclear blast by dust and other particles kicked
high into the atmosphere in the mushroom cloud.

Walters said many of the structures built during the Cold War
would actually do a decent job of protecting people from this
effect.

"If you put a fallout shelter a couple of feet below ground,
radiation doesn't get to you," he said.

While more powerful weapons meant widespread construction of
shelters declined as the Cold War dragged on into the 1970s and
1980s, it wasn't until the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union
disintegrated that the federal government abandoned its support
of public shelters. Don Jacks, a spokesman for the Federal
Emergency Management Agency, said government support for the
idea ended in the early 1990s.

"It's my understanding that there was just a new look at the
world, and a thought that these shelters would not be needed
anymore because the Soviet Union was no longer," Jacks said.

Created in 1979, FEMA took over civil defense responsibilities
from one of the agencies incorporated into it.

Wicomico County used to have shelters in other public buildings
than the old courthouse, such as at the now-demolished North
Salisbury Elementary. But shelters aren't part of the county's
current emergency planning.

"To my knowledge, there are no fallout shelters," said Doug
Jones, emergency management coordinator for Wicomico.

Of course, the threat of a nuclear strike has not disappeared.
In fact, a lot of national discussion in recent years has
focused on the development of nuclear weapons by countries that
didn't use to have them, like North Korea. But the threat of a
massive exchange by two nations each possessing huge numbers of
nuclear weapons doesn't seem as real as it once did, according
to Maarten Pereboom, chairman of SU's history department.

"The possibility still exists, but its harder to imagine the
political circumstances in which there would be an all out
nuclear attack of one country against another," said Pereboom,
whose father-in-law built a shelter in the 1960s.

And while terrorism has emerged as a new threat, Pereboom said
it doesn't create the same anxiety that was caused by the threat
of nuclear war with the Soviet Union.

"For me, at least, the threat of terrorism is not really
comparable to the type of fear I had as a child of nuclear war,"
he said.


+ Reach Tristan Schweiger at 410-845-4655 or
tschweiger@salisbury.gannett.com. 

Originally published April 4, 2005 

*****************************************************************
 7 Sofia News: Reading Room: Healing the Bulgaria – Romania divide - 

April 05, 2005

Albena Shkodrova, Marian Chirac [

MORE than a decade after the Soviet bloc disintegrated in
Eastern Europe, Bulgaria and Romania have remained strangers to
each other. United by geography, these Balkan neighbours have
been divided by almost everything else. Until recently, a legacy
of economic and environmental disputes, internal problems and
the negative images each country cherished about the other,
prevented them from co-operating. 

But in the past two years, things have changed and there are
signs that decades-old quarrels and stereotypes that date back
generations are crumbling. Several important joint projects and
growing co-operation between civic and business groups are
reversing old trends and changing the two nations’ perceptions
of each other. 

There is a long way to go, for millions of Bulgarians and
Romanians still view each other through spectacles coloured by
historic prejudice. Moreover, recent rows over pollution and
energy, in particular, have not been solved entirely. But the
pressure of their future joint membership of the European Union
as well as their own political and economic interests are
bringing the two peoples closer together for first time in a
century. 

Era of fake fraternity under communism leaves disputes
unresolved 

From the end of World War 2 until 1989, Bulgaria and Romania
were both part of the Soviet bloc. While the communist regimes
in both countries proclaimed their desire for bilateral
co-operation, the superficial nature of these proclamations
became obvious at the end of the communist era, when the two
countries found their relations bedeviled by disputes. From 1965
to the end of 1989, Romania was ruled by Nicolae Ceausescu under
a regime characterised by dictatorial centralisation, a
personality cult and a form of nepotism that Romanians nicknamed
“Socialism in one family”. 

Todor Zhivkov’s regime in Bulgaria was equally dictatorial, and
as a fervent ally of the Soviet Union, Bulgaria sought to comply
with Moscow’s policy of promoting close multilateral relations
within the bloc. To show solidarity between the two neighbouring
dictators, they staged regular official visits to each other,
while Zhivkov even had a special wing for Ceausescu family built
near his border town residence at Rousse. At the same time, the
two countries diplomatically played down differences between
their regimes - Romania being the more totalitarian of the two,
while Bulgaria was the more loyal member of the Warsaw Pact. 

For all the surface harmony, the Ceausescu -Zhivkov axis was
unproductive and temporary. For more than a decade, the only big
common project was the construction in the mid-1950s of the
“Friendship Bridge” over the Danube, linking the Romanian town
of Giurgiu with Rousse in Bulgaria. 

Relations became strained in the 1980s by Romania’s independent
foreign policy, its opposition to Mikhail Gorbachev’s policy of
“perestroika” and by mutual accusations of environmental
pollution. Deteriorating personal relations between Zhivkov and
Ceausescu contributed to the decline in their two countries’
friendship. But in the name of Warsaw Pact solidarity, the
Zhivkov regime subdued criticism of its neighbour, especially of
the chemical pollution emanating from Romanian plants across the
Danube. 

After the regime changes of 1989, these suppressed quarrels came
to the surface and the environment emerged as a serious issue.

As accusations became more strident on both sides, joint
commissions formed in 1991 attempted to reach a compromise on
the environmental issue and restore the pragmatic, relatively
amicable, post-war relationship. But this was not immediately
fruitful. The pains of the democratisation and economic reform
processes absorbed most political energies in both countries and
diverted their attentions inward. Even the joint political goal
of EU membership failed to bring them together. 

The decision by Brussels to separate Bulgaria and Romania from
other East European candidate countries and let them join
together, three years later than the others, in 2007, ought to
have bound Sofia and Bucharest in a new kind of partnership. But
only in the last few years has this partnership become
meaningful. For several years, it seemed more like a
competition. 

A long legacy of mutual ignorance 

As cross-border trade has increased by a factor of seven from
1998 to 2004, business people on both sides have taken a leading
role in bringing the two countries closer together. But
dismantling the legacy of mutual ignorance has not been simple.
As Emil Vutchev, manager at the Bulgarian office of S, an
information technology company, said, “My first meeting with my
Romanian colleagues was a surprise as I half expected to see men
with beards wearing sheep wool coats”. 

Vutchev added, “What I met were sophisticated people with
polished English and classy manners. Later, I found they had had
the same initial suspicions of me as I had had of them”. 

A Bulgarian journalist, Georgi Kalenderov, agrees that the wall
of mutual suspicion dividing Bulgaria and Romania reflects a
general ignorance of each other’s culture and history. 

“If the two nations treat each other with arrogance, it is
because they don’t know each other,” Kalenderov said. He said
that most Bulgarians knew more about the US, several thousand
kilometres away, than they do about the country on the other
side of the Danube. Both peoples continue to draw on traditional
Balkan stereotypes, which were reinforced in the recent
Socialist era but which stem from much older folk memories. 

Take their nicknames for one another: Romanians call Bulgarians
“cu capul mare”, meaning “hard heads”, while Bulgarians call
their neighbours “mamaligari”, named after the Romanian
traditional food of “mamaliga”, a corn flour dish that
Bulgarians see as a poor man’s diet. 

“We think of Romanians the same way they think of us,” said
Kalenderov. 

“They tell the same jokes about us that we tell about them -
only where we say ‘Romanian’, they say ‘Bulgarian’.” 

Pejorative nicknames reflect the two nations’ different
histories. Romanians are intensely conscious of being a Latin
island in a sea of Slavs. Bulgarians, on the other hand, view
Romanians mainly as poverty-stricken peasants. 

There have also been serious territorial disputes, especially
over the southern Dobrudja region, which Romania seized from
Bulgaria in 1913 and was forced to return after World War 2. 

“There is almost no difference between the stereotypes from one
century ago and those from today,” said Daniel Cain, an
historian from the Nicolae Iorga Institute of History in
Bucharest. Cain, who has also studied in Bulgaria, said, “It’s
hard to understand how poor their knowledge is about each other,
given that these two peoples have been neighbours for
centuries”. 

Mutual prejudices faded briefly in the 1980s, when Romanians -
groaning under the Ceausescu regime - began to look more
favourably on their southern neighbour as the more developed and
liberal of the two. 

As food and energy were subjected to ever worse rationing in
Romania, (part of Ceausescu’s policy of eliminating foreign
debt) Romanians living near the border began crossing the Danube
to Rousse to buy food, oil and other products. They also began
watching Bulgarian television, to evade state-run Romanian
television’s turgid diet of Ceausescu speeches and communist
propaganda. 

The coming of democracy just makes things worse 

The coming of political freedom to both Romania and Bulgaria in
1989, ironically, ended this period of tentative rapprochement.
Difficult internal reforms absorbed both nations’ energies to
the exclusion of almost everything else and further divided
them. 

As both countries began competing for the approval of the EU and
the US, they paid less and less attention to each other. When
the media on either side wrote about the neighbouring state, it
was usually in negative terms, to describe their neighbour’s
economic and political problems. 

The Romanian press developed the notion that Bulgaria was a poor
country that had come to depend on EU financial support. This
bolstered feelings of superiority and arrogance in Romania. The
Bulgarian media also concentrated on their neighbour’s
misfortunes and adopted a similar superior note. One favourite
implication was that Romania survived only on the support of
other Latin states, such as France, Italy, Spain and Portugal. 

Growing concentration in both countries on EU membership failed
to unite them. Instead, the media on both sides emphasised the
element of competition in reaching a common goal. 

During the EU negotiation process, for example, the Bulgarian
media protested against the decision to place their country in
the same category as Romania, saying the slower progress of
their neighbour might delay Bulgaria’s own admission to the
club. They suggested Bulgaria was dragging Romania into the EU. 

When Romania completed its negotiations, the Bulgarian media put
an unfavourable spin on this, too, saying Romania had signed up
to a bad package of terms simply to conclude the EU talks in
time. 

Against a background of negativity and competition, however, the
two nations have gradually found themselves co-operating more,
and in the process discarding their inadequate and stereotypical
images. 

As Vutchev said, “On my first trip to Romania, I played a game:
find the 10 differences. Then I concluded that in fact there
were no dramatic differences. For instance, Bulgaria has better
roads but Romania has better hospitals”. 

Europe helps solve row over pollution 

One project that symbolises the coming together of Romania and
Bulgaria under EU auspices is the formation of a so-called
“Euro-Region” linking the Romanian city of Giurgiu and Rousse in
Bulgaria. 

Created in 2001, it involves a package of co-operative measures
between the two cities, consisting mainly of joint ecology and
health commissions that handle a range of environmental, health
protection and animal protection issues. The commissions meet
every three months to hammer out all problems over a dinner and
issue recommendations to the local administrations on how to
deal with them. One initiative has been 
to develop a harmonised city plan for both Rousse and Giurgiu,
which will mean drawing up joint infrastructure plans. 

It all marks a stark change from the rancour of the 1990s, when
the two cities were locked in what seemed a never-ending dispute
over air pollution. 

Then, Rousse, Nikopol and Svisthov in Bulgaria accused Giurgiu,
Turnu Magurele and Zimnicea across the Danube of systematically
poisoning their air - and vice versa. 

Romania and Bulgaria have a long tradition of tit-for-tat
accusations about pollution from industrial plants on the
Danube, which dates back to the communist era, when both
countries engaged in rapid industrialisation. 

For years, Bulgaria and Romania traded especially angry words
over the activity of a Romanian chemical plant in the Danube
port of Turnu Magurele. 

Bulgarian media and local officials in Nikopol insisted that the
high level of ammonia in the air was the result of activity from
the Romanian plant. 

Romania played down complaints, saying the Bulgarians were
exaggerating the problem. They also retaliated by claiming toxic
clouds from Bulgaria were drifting over the Romanian Danube port
of Zimnicea. 

As recently as 2000, the Romanian environment ministry claimed
pollution from hydrogen sulphide from the textile mill in the
Bulgarian town of Svishtov was drifting across the river and
damaging Zimnicea. 

But after about 15 years of verbal jousting over air and water
pollution, Europe is now helping to put an end to this rancorous
dispute. The solution lies not in deciding “who is right” but in
the imposition of higher environmental standards on both
partners. Under pressure from Brussels, both Bulgaria and
Romania have had to upgrade their environmental controls. As a
result, the plant in Turnu was closed for months while its
equipment was improved and when it was privatised, the new
owners were obliged to comply with EU anti-pollution standards. 

The same standards are now being applied to all factories on
both sides of the Danube river border if they wish to remain
open after the two states join the EU in 2007. 

An end at last to wasteful energy wars 

Energy is another traditional battlefield between the two
countries. It still remains a source of controversies. But a
cross-border dialogue has been launched on a number of cases
that raises the hope of more positive developments and is an
example of how bilateral relations can benefit from EU-oriented
reforms. 

As with pollution, tension over energy increased at the start of
the 1990s. The immediate case was the EU’s demands for Bulgaria
to close four of the six reactors at its Kozlodui nuclear power
plant. This was stipulated as a pre-condition to launch
accession talks. 

The EU said the reactors were old and could not be upgraded. But
the demand was a shock to Bulgaria as it gets more than 40 per
cent of its energy from the plant, on the northern border with
Romania, and its output is important both to Bulgarian consumers
and to the country’s exports, as it supplies power to Greece,
Turkey, Albania and Macedonia. 

While Bulgaria viewed the early closure of most of the reactors
at Kozlodui as a blow, Romania tried to exploit the situation,
to take over the regional energy market. 

Bucharest promptly announced that for years Sofia had blocked
Romanian plans to export electricity to the Balkans, keeping it
out of the regional market by setting excessively high charges
for the transit of energy across its territory. 

In response, Bulgaria accused Romania of waging a smear campaign
and denounced the demand for the closure of Kozlodui as part of
a Western conspiracy. 

The Bulgarian-language daily 24 Chassa, for example, in 1999
claimed that French and Canadian companies planned to invest in
Romania’s nuclear plant at Cernavoda to ensure Romania “replaces
Bulgaria as a Balkan energy supplier”. Many other media echoed
this speculation. 

Bulgarian newspapers pointed also to Romania’s poor record on
child protection and market reforms - both EU criteria for
accession talks - insisting that Romania take action there
before intervening in Bulgaria’s energy problems. In the end,
Bulgaria agreed to close the four old reactors at the plant. 

However, determined to prevent the regional energy market from
falling into Romanian hands, it announced plans to build a new
plant at Belene, 13 km from the Romanian border. 

Although most local observers doubted whether there were sound
economic reasons for such an endeavour, Sofia pushed on with
preparing an assessment of the enterprise’s environmental
impact. 

Romania responded with anger. In September 2004, Romanian NGOs
demonstrated against the planned Belene nuclear plant,
denouncing the prospect of “another Chernobyl”. 

Bucharest remains concerned about the environmental impact of
the planned project and insists it must meet European standards.
But as with the pollution row, the key appears to lie in
harmonising standards on both sides to European requirements.

When it joins the EU in 2007, Bulgaria will not be able to
continue building the new plant unless it complies with high
safety standards. At the same time, Sofia will not be able to
continue to block Romanian penetration of the Balkan energy
market. One sign that relations are now improving over this
thorny issue came late last year, with the formation of a joint
expert group to analyse Bulgaria’s nuclear power plant project. 

The year before, in late 2003, the two states also agreed to
deregulate their energy markets, starting in mid-2004, and to
allow each other’s utilities access to the other’s
infrastructure. Plans were also announced to link the entire
Balkan energy grid to the main EU grid (to which Romania is
already connected). 

Despite provisionally closing their energy negotiations, Romania
and Bulgaria still have to work on the issue, according to the
European Commission update report of October 2004. 

But both countries are making strides to modernise their nuclear
facilities with strong support from the EU. In December 2002,
Bulgaria stopped units 1 and 2 at Kozlodui and it will close
units 3 and 4 in 2006. In the meantime, it is modernising the
two newer reactors with EU financial support to the tune of 500
million euro. 

Romania’s sole nuclear power plant in Cernavoda on the Danube,
which provides about 10 per cent of the country’s power, will
also be completed and upgraded, with a second unit expecting to
start operation in 2007. In March 2004, the EC approved a 223.5
million euro loan to support Romania’s nuclear power operator. 

The second bridge over the Danube 

A third area of conflict, which a combination of EU help,
pressure and mediation is helping to solve, concerns the
long-awaited second bridge over the Danube. 

Bulgaria and Romania, remarkably, possess only a single bridge
across their 500 km river border and this facility is also their
sole road connection. 

This lone monument to Romanian-Bulgarian socialist friendship is
now 50 years old and is heavily congested - the two road and
rail lanes being wholly inadequate for increased volumes of
traffic. 

South of Bucharest but about 300 km east of Sofia, its location
is highly inconvenient for Bulgarians trying to access Central
Europe through Romania. As a result, most Bulgarians, as well as
most travellers from Asia Minor and the Middle East, take the
route through Serbia and Montenegro. The two countries started
plans to build a second bridge more than 10 years ago but
disagreements and lack of funds long impeded the project. 

Work was put off for eight years while Bulgaria and Romania
argued about its location. Bulgaria wanted an upstream site and
Romania a site downstream, each country hoping to boost the
level of road traffic through its own territory. 

Again, EU pressure coupled with financial assistance have
resulted in an agreement being reach in 2003 linking Vidin in
Bulgaria and Calafat in Romania. The bridge is estimated to cost
230 million euro and is due for completion in 2006. In February
this year the European Union announced it will grant Bulgaria 70
million euro to help it build the new bridge, from the EU’s
Instrument for Structural Policies for Pre-Accession, ISPA,
which supports infrastructure projects in applicant states. 

The Vidin-Calafat bridge will have two motorway lanes and a
railway line running in each direction. (Editor’s note: The
adjoining railway infrastructure is 11.5 km long and a new dual
carriage way road six km long will link with the existing bypass
of Vidin). It will form part of a major EU transport corridor,
Corridor IV, connecting Dresden in Germany with Thessaloniki in
Greece and Istanbul, in Turkey. 

Business people like Ivan Zhuvetov, owner of an antique shop in
Vidin on the Bulgarian side, await the new connection eagerly.
He often travels to Calafat but currently has a choice only of a
small Bulgarian ferry, which runs without a schedule and an old
Romanian boat. “Boarding that is more suited to lovers of
extreme sports than businessmen,” he said. 

Residents of Vidin stand to benefit greatly from the increased
traffic and co-operation that will stem from opening the new
bridge. 

In Calafat, gloom over most local people’s poverty overshadows
most public enthusiasm for a new bridge. “It’s good news for the
politicians but not for me,” said Gabriela Mocanu, a local
housewife. 

But if many locals are indifferent, businesses are not. News of
the construction of the second bridge has sent the price of real
estate soaring on the Romanian side. “We expect increased
interest from foreign investors buying property or starting
business in the region,” said Petre Calin, a local estate agent. 
“I hope integration into the EU will bring back the prosperity
that Romania had before,” said Ion Popica, a taxi driver in
Calafat. 

“I hope soon to cross the new bridge and make some good money
transporting tourists and businessmen.” 

Two neighbours discover each other in Europe 

Pollution, power and the Danube bridge are only some of the
areas where a common involvement in the European project has
helped two neighbouring states, long divided by suspicion,
prejudice and a wall of ignorance, to overcome differences and
work together. 

Opinion polls show that the desire for a common European future
unites both peoples. More than two-thirds of Romanians and
Bulgarians support EU accession, mainly because they both see it
as a guarantee of future security and growth after 40 years of
communism left them trailing behind Western Europe. 

But while both countries are discovering (or rather
rediscovering) their links to the wider European family, they
are also discovering each other - perhaps for the first time. A
combination of EU political pressure, common goals and a common
reforming agenda has brought about this positive change. 

For the time being, the change remains largely politically or
business-driven, but there are important signs that interest is
growing between the two nations at the level of ordinary people,
too. 

“We need a revival of economic activity between Romania and
Bulgaria,” said Cain. “Infrastructure and investment is what is
most needed in the region now and the EU has to play the main
role in this process. The good years are yet to come.” 

Albena Shkodrova and Marian Chiriac are IWPR programme managers
in Sofia and Bucharest respectively. They are also directors of
IWPR’s newly localised Balkan Investigative Reporting Network,
BIRN. Vanya Miteva, a freelance journalist in Vidin, contributed
to this report. This article originally appeared in the Balkan
Crisis Report, produced by the Institute for War and Peace

Reporting, http://www.iwpr.net/

*****************************************************************
 8 Exelon rejects NAS report; "Money not an issue"
 
Date: Mon, 04 Apr 2005 15:34:59 -0700

 
<x-flowed>
   Home                         Friday, April 1, 2005
                 By Robert Manor, Tribune staff reporter.

     Exelon: No plans to change its storage of nuclear waste
             Science group cites risk of terror attack

      Despite recommendations by the National Academy of Sciences,
Chicago-based Exelon Corp. says it has no plans to store radioactive nuclear
waste from its reactors in heavily armored containers.

     It was disclosed earlier this week that the academy, which advises the
federal government on scientific issues, is suggesting that spent nuclear
fuel be stored in dry casks--massive concrete and steel containers nearly
the size of a truck trailer. Nearly all such highly radioactive waste is now
stored in pools of water, which the academy indicates are at risk of
terrorist attack.

     On Thursday, Exelon Chief Executive John Rowe said his company, the
largest operator of nuclear plants in North America, does not intend to
empty its numerous spent-fuel pools and transfer the waste to dry casks.
"There is not such a plan at the moment," Rowe said.

     Other company executives said they have not had a chance to see the
academy report. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has held up its release,
though a partial summary is available. The NRC has said the pools are
adequate for storing spent fuel, and it is not necessary to store nuclear
waste in dry casks.

     Exelon says that moving the spent waste from storage pools to dry casks
involves exposing workers to some radiation, a practice it avoids whenever
possible.

     Money is apparently not an issue. An Exelon spokesman said the
government will reimburse the company for the costs of storing waste in dry
casks because the federal repository in Yucca Mountain is unable to accept
waste for permanent storage.
                             1
     Critics of the nuclear industry say Exelon's oldest reactors, General
Electric Mark 1 and Mark 2 models, pose the worst threat because their
spent-fuel pools are especially vulnerable to terrorist attack, with the
potential for a catastrophic release of radiation into the atmosphere over a
wide area. General Electric maintains the facilities are safe.

     Those reactor models store their spent fuel in deep pools of water
mounted atop the reactor, in some cases more than 100 feet in the air. The
pools are enclosed by sturdy rooms, but are located outside the massive
containment structure that protects the reactor and could not resist an
aerial attack like that of Sept. 11.  "The Mark 1 and Mark 2 are so
vulnerable, the fuel has to be removed," said Deb Katz, executive director
of the Citizens Awareness Network.

     Other reactor models store their waste in pools set into the ground,
reducing their profiles as a target.

     In Illinois, Exelon has a total of six above-ground spent-fuel pools: at
the Dresden 2 and 3 nuclear plant near Morris, the LaSalle 1 and 2 plant in
LaSalle County, and the Quad Cities 1 and 2 plant near Cordova.

     It has one elevated spent-fuel pool at the Oyster Creek plant in New
Jersey and four at the Limerick and Peach Bottom plants in Pennsylvania.

     Nuclear waste was originally intended to remain in the spent-fuel pool
for five years or so to allow its temperature and radioactivity to decline.
Then it was to be removed for permanent disposal. "The pools were designed
to hold very small amounts of fuel," said Gordon Thompson, executive
director of the Institute for Resource and Security Studies.

     But because the nation has no permanent storage site for spent nuclear
fuel, the pools contain nearly all the waste generated by the plants over
their lifetime, in some cases more than 30 years. Thus, they contain far
more radioactive material than the reactor core.
                             2

     The waste is kept cool only by the pool's water. Were that water to
drain away, Thompson said, the spent fuel would heat up and eventually
ignite.  "It would be exceedingly difficult, impossible even, to put out the
fire," Thompson said. "All this has been known for many years."

     Last year, nuclear physicist Jan Beyea released a paper estimating the
cost if spent nuclear fuel were to burn at selected plants, among them
Illinois' LaSalle.

     He said that under one optimistic analysis, a fire at a LaSalle
spent-fuel pool would cause $270 billion in property damage and
decontamination expense. He estimated 6,400 people would die of cancer.

     Craig Nesbit, a spokesman for Exelon's nuclear arm, said the prevailing
belief is that the spent-fuel pools are just as safe as dry casks.  "I don't
think most people even worry about it one way or the other," Nesbit said.

     Exelon does put spent nuclear waste into dry casks at two of its plants
because the spent-fuel pools there are full. But the pace of the work is
such that the pools are always full. As new spent fuel comes out of the
reactor and into the water, older fuel is transferred into dry casks.

     The report by the highly respected National Academy of Science has been
held up by the NRC, which has stopped releasing information that it says
could aid terrorists in attacking a nuclear plant.

     But some details about the report's conclusions were revealed in a
letter and report sent by NRC Chairman Nils Diaz to Sen. Pete Domenici
(R-N.M.) in March. For example, the academy wants the NRC to examine
scenarios such as terrorists crashing an airplane into a spent-fuel storage
facility. The NRC said such "unrealistic scenarios" might "cause confusion
among the public and other stakeholders."


                             3


     Eliot Brenner, spokesman for the NRC, said the agency actually agrees
with many of the academy's suggestions and observations. He said
negotiations with the academy have yielded a tentative agreement to release
the report, probably next week.

----------

rmanor@tribune.com

Captions: PHOTO: Exelon CEO John Rowe says "there is not such a plan at the
moment" to transfer nuclear waste to dry casks. Tribune photo by Chuck
Berman.









                             4

</x-flowed>
*****************************************************************
 9 NRC: Entergy Operations, Inc.; Waterford Steam Electric Station, Unit
 
                         FR Doc E5-1478 
[Federal Register: April 4, 2005 (Volume 70, Number 63)] 
[Notices] [Page 17128-17133] From the Federal Register Online via 
GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr04ap05-142] [[Page 
17128]]
 
3, Final Environmental Assessment and Finding of No Significant 
Impact, Related to the Proposed License Amendment To Increase the 
Maximum Reactor Power Level AGENCY: Nuclear Regulatory Commission 
(NRC).
 
 
SUMMARY: The NRC has prepared a final environmental assessment as 
its evaluation of a request by Entergy Operations, Inc., Entergy, 
the licensee) for a license amendment to increase the maximum 
thermal power at the Waterford Steam Electric Station, Unit 3 
(Waterford 3) from 3441 megawatts thermal (MWt) to 3716 MWt. This 
represents a power increase of approximately 8 percent for 
Waterford 3. The NRC staff has the option of preparing an 
environmental impact statement if it believes a power uprate will 
have a significant impact on the human environment.
 
The NRC staff did not identify any significant impact from the 
information provided in the licensee's extended power uprate 
(EPU) application for Waterford 3 or the NRC staff's independent 
review; therefore, the NRC staff is documenting its environmental 
assessment.
 
The final environmental assessment and finding of no significant 
impact is being published in the Federal Register.
 
Environmental Assessment Background Plant Site and Environs The 
NRC is considering issuance of an amendment to Facility Operating 
License No. NPF-38, issued to Entergy for Waterford 3 which has 
been in operation since March 4, 1985. The facility is located on 
the west (right descending) bank of the Mississippi River, 
approximately 40 kilometers (25 miles) west of New Orleans on 
Louisiana Highway 18 (River Road) in St. Charles Parish, in the 
city of Killona, Louisiana. The plant's topography, except for 
the levee along the Mississippi River, is generally flat with an 
elevation of 8 to 16 feet above mean sea level. Electricity is 
generated using a pressurized water reactor and steam turbine 
with a maximum generating capacity of 1,104 Megawatts electric. 
The fuel source for the unit is enriched Uranium-235. The exhaust 
steam is condensed using a once-through circulating water system 
with the Mississippi River as a heat sink.
 
Additionally, the component cooling water system serves as the 
station's ultimate heat sink and is designed to remove heat from 
the plant during normal operation, shutdown, or emergency 
shutdown.
 
Three-quarters of a mile downstream from the Waterford 3 site is 
the Bonnet Carr[eacute] Spillway. The Bonnet Carr[eacute] 
Spillway is a vital element of the comprehensive plan for flood 
control in the Lower Mississippi Valley. It is located on the 
east bank of the Mississippi River, approximately 25 miles above 
New Orleans and was constructed to divert approximately 250,000 
cubic feet per second of floodwaters from the Mississippi River 
to Lake Pontchartrain to prevent overtopping of levees at and 
below New Orleans, assuring the safety of New Orleans and the 
downstream delta area during major floods on the Lower 
Mississippi.
 
Identification of the Proposed Action By letter dated November 
13, 2003, Entergy proposed to increase the maximum thermal power 
level of Waterford 3 by approximately 8 percent, from 3441 MWt to 
3716 MWt. The change is considered an EPU because it would raise 
the reactor core power level more than 7 percent above the 
originally licensed maximum power level. The NRC originally 
licensed Waterford 3 on March 16, 1985, for operation at a 
reactor core power not to exceed 3390 MWt. On March 29, 2002, the 
NRC staff approved a power increase of approximately 1.5 percent 
allowing Waterford 3 to operate at a core power level not to 
exceed 3441 MWt. Therefore, this proposed action would result in 
a total increase of approximately 9.6 percent over the originally 
licensed maximum power level. The amendment would allow the heat 
output of the reactor to increase, which would increase the flow 
of steam to the turbine. This would allow the turbine generator 
to increase the production of power as well as increase the 
amount of heat dissipated by the condenser. Moreover, this would 
result in an increase in temperature of the water being released 
into the Mississippi River.
 
Need for the Proposed Action Entergy is requesting an amendment 
to the operating license for Waterford 3 to increase the maximum 
thermal power level, thereby increasing the electric power 
generation. The increase in electric power generation provides 
Entergy with lower cost power than can be obtained in the current 
and anticipated energy market.
 
Environmental Impacts of the Proposed Action This assessment 
summarizes the non-radiological and radiological impacts on the 
environment that may result from the licensee's amendment request 
application dated November 13, 2003.
 
Non-Radiological Impacts Land Use Impacts The potential impacts 
associated with land use for the proposed action include impacts 
from construction and plant modifications. The Waterford 3 
property is made up of 52 percent wetlands and 22 percent of the 
land is used for agriculture. There is no residential or 
recreational land on the property. There is no plan to construct 
any new facilities or expand buildings, roads, parking lots, 
equipment storage, or laydown areas. No changes to the onsite 
transmission and distribution equipment, including power line 
rights-of-way, are anticipated to support this action. No new 
construction outside of the existing facilities will be 
necessary.
 
The proposed EPU will require a modification to the high pressure 
turbine. The turbine is located within the turbine building, and 
the modification will not require any land disturbance. The EPU 
would not significantly affect material storage, including 
chemicals, fuels, and other materials stored aboveground or 
underground. There is no modification to land use at the site, 
and no impact on the lands with historic or archeological 
significance. The proposed EPU would not modify the current land 
use at the site significantly over that described in the Final 
Environmental Statement (FES).
 
The licensee has stated that the proposed EPU will not change the 
character, sources, or energy of noise generated at the plant.
 
Modified structures, systems, and components necessary to 
implement the power uprate will be installed within existing 
plant buildings and no noticeable increase in ambient noise 
levels within the plant is expected.
 
Therefore, the NRC staff concludes that the environmental impacts 
of the proposed EPU are bounded by the impacts previously 
evaluated in the FES.
 
Transmission Facility Impacts The potential impacts associated 
with transmission facilities for the proposed action include 
changes in transmission line corridor right-of-way maintenance 
and electric shock hazards due to increased current. The proposed 
EPU would not require any physical
 
[[Page 17129]] modifications to the transmission lines. Entergy's 
transmission line right-of-way maintenance practices, including 
the management of vegetation growth, would not be affected. No 
new requirements or changes to onsite transmission equipment, 
operating voltages, or transmission line rights-of-way would be 
necessary to support the EPU.
 
The main plant transformers will be modified and replaced to 
support the uprate; however, replacement of the transformers 
would have been required before the end of plant life as part of 
the licensee's ongoing maintenance program. Therefore, no 
significant environmental impact beyond that considered in the 
FES is expected from this kind of replacement of onsite 
equipment.
 
The National Electric Safety Code (NESC) provides design criteria 
that limit hazards from steady-state currents. The NESC limits 
the short-circuit current to ground to less than 5 milli-ampere.
 
There will be an increase in current passing through the 
transmission lines associated with the increased power level of 
the proposed EPU.
 
The increased electrical current passing through the transmission 
lines will cause an increase in electromagnetic field strength. 
Since the increase in power level is approximately 8 percent, the 
increase in the electromagnetic field will not be significant. 
The licensee's analysis shows that the transmission lines will 
continue to meet the applicable shock prevention provisions of 
the NESC. Therefore, even with the slight increase in current 
attributable to the EPU, adequate protection is provided against 
hazards from electric shock.
 
The impacts associated with transmission facilities for the 
proposed action will not change significantly over the impacts 
associated with current plant operation. There are no physical 
modifications to the transmission lines; transmission line 
right-of-way maintenance practices will not change. There are no 
changes to transmission line rights-of-way or vertical clearances 
and the electric current passing through the transmission lines 
will increase only slightly. Therefore, the NRC staff concludes 
that there are no significant impacts associated with 
transmission facilities for the proposed action. The transmission 
lines are designed and constructed in accordance with the 
applicable shock prevention provisions of the NESC.
 
Water Use Impacts Potential water use impacts from the proposed 
action include hydrological alterations to the Mississippi River 
and changes to the plant water supply. The Mississippi River is 
the source of water for cooling and most auxiliary water systems 
at Waterford 3. The cooling water is withdrawn from the 
Mississippi River via an intake canal approximately 49 meters (m) 
(162 feet (ft)) long leading from the river to an intake 
structure containing four water pumps. The cooling water for the 
circulating water system (CWS) is pumped through the condenser to 
condense the turbine exhaust steam to water. The water then flows 
to the discharge canal approximately 29 m (95 ft) long and is 
returned to the river through the discharge structure. The water 
from the CWS is also used in the turbine system heat exchangers 
and the steam generator blowdown system.
 
The Mississippi River is the principal water source of all 
municipal, industrial, and agricultural use for towns and water 
districts downstream of Baton Rouge, Louisiana. All of the water 
required for plant operation, except potable water, will be 
withdrawn from the Mississippi River. The rate of withdrawal will 
not increase as a result of the EPU. As a result, operation of 
Waterford 3 will not affect the availability of water to 
downstream water users.
 
Groundwater is not used in plant operations; therefore, there are 
no impacts to onsite groundwater use. The NRC staff concludes 
that the EPU would not have a significant impact on water usage 
as a result of hydrological alterations or changes in the plant 
water supply.
 
Discharge Impacts The potential impacts to the Mississippi River 
from the plant discharge include turbidity, scouring, erosion, 
and sedimentation.
 
These impacts can occur as a result of significant changes in the 
thermal discharge, sanitary waste discharge, and chemical 
discharge.
 
1. Thermal Discharge: Surface water and wastewater discharges at 
Waterford 3 are regulated by the State of Louisiana via a 
Louisiana Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (LPDES) Permit. 
This permit is periodically reviewed and renewed by the Louisiana 
Department of Environmental Quality (LDEQ). The EPU is expected 
to increase the temperature of the water discharged to the 
Mississippi River.
 
The LPDES Permit (1) restricts the temperature rise in the 
discharge water to five degrees Fahrenheit over the temperature 
of the river water and (2) limits the temperature of the 
discharge water to 118 degrees Fahrenheit. The licensee has 
calculated the increased heat load delivered to the CWS under EPU 
conditions and estimated an expected increase in the discharge 
water temperature of 2.2 degrees Fahrenheit. Based on this 
expected temperature increase from power uprate, the temperature 
limits defined in the LPDES Permit are adequate, and no changes 
to the LPDES Permit are necessary.
 
2. Chemical Discharge: Wastewater treatment chemicals that are 
currently regulated and approved by the State of Louisiana 
through the LPDES Permit for use in the once-through cooling 
water will not change as a result of the power uprate. The 
concentration of pollutants in the once-through effluent stream 
will remain the same and have insignificant impact.
 
3. Sanitary Waste Discharge: Sanitary wastes at the Waterford 3 
facility are discharged at two different locations. Sanitary 
wastes from the training center are collected and discharged from 
an onsite sewage treatment plant that is regulated through LPDES 
Permit LA0007374. Sanitary wastes from all other site facilities 
are collected in one of seven sewage lift stations located around 
the plant site and then ultimately transferred to St. Charles 
Parish Killona sewage treatment facility. Since there will be no 
increase in the Waterford 3 staffing levels as a result of the 
power uprate, there will also be no increase in sanitary waste. 
The use of chemicals will not change as a result of the power 
uprate, and the power uprate will have no impact on current water 
chemical usage.
 
Therefore, the NRC staff concludes that the environmental impacts 
associated with the plant discharge will not be significant.
 
Impacts on Aquatic Biota The potential impacts to aquatic biota 
from the proposed actions include impingement and entrainment, 
thermal discharge effects, and changes associated with the 
transmission line rights-of-way.
 
Aquatic species found in the vicinity of Waterford 3 are 
associated with the Mississippi River. The river near the 
Waterford 3 site region supports aquatic biota ranging from 
microorganisms and various plankton to large commercial finfish. 
The more abundant fish near the site area include blue catfish, 
channel catfish, freshwater drum, and striped mullet.
 
There are no unique fish habitats in the river near Waterford 3.
 
1. Impingement and Entrainment: Fish and other organisms removed 
from the cooling water by the traveling water screens are washed 
to a trough to a point downstream of the intake. The EPU will not 
increase the withdrawal rate or change current pumping
 
[[Page 17130]] operations. Therefore, the water velocity through 
the traveling screens will not change as a result of the EPU. The 
flowrate of water being withdrawn from the intake canal at the 
intake structure would not increase and no change would be made 
in the design of the intake structure screens. Therefore, changes 
in the entrainment of aquatic organisms or in the impingement of 
fish are not anticipated as a result of the EPU.
 
2. Thermal Discharge Effects (Heat Shock): Entergy has conducted 
thermal studies in the Mississippi River in the vicinity of the 
Waterford 3 discharge for over 25 years and no adverse impacts on 
fish have been observed. The temperature of the water discharged 
to the river will remain within the limits of the LPDES Permit. 
The LPDES Permit states that the bounding thermal limit 
adequately regulates the amount of heat discharged to the 
Mississippi River from this facility such that it protects the 
balanced indigenous population.
 
3. Transmission Line Rights-of-Way: There will not be changes in 
transmission line right-of-way maintenance practices associated 
with the EPU. Therefore, no changes are expected in the amount of 
water or in the water quality of the water run-off to the streams 
or the river.
 
The EPU will not increase the flow of the water withdrawn from 
the river, and the amount of heat discharged to the Mississippi 
River will remain within the thermal limit specified by the LPDES 
Permit.
 
There are no changes in transmission line right-of-way 
maintenance practices associated with the proposed action. 
Therefore, the NRC staff concludes that there are no significant 
impacts to aquatic biota for the proposed action.
 
Impacts on Terrestrial Biota The potential impacts to terrestrial 
biota from the proposed action include construction activities 
and changes associated with the transmission line right-of-way 
maintenance. The power uprate will not disturb land, and no 
construction activities are planned for the EPU.
 
The proposed EPU will not change the land use at Waterford 3, and 
no habitat of any terrestrial plant or animal species will be 
disturbed as a result of this power uprate. In addition, none of 
Entergy's transmission line rights-of-way maintenance practices 
will change.
 
Therefore, the NRC staff concludes that there will be no 
significant impact to the habitat of any terrestrial plant or 
animal species as a result of the EPU.
 
Threatened and Endangered Species Potential impacts to threatened 
and endangered species from the proposed action include the 
impacts assessed in the aquatic and terrestrial biota sections of 
this environmental assessment.
 
These impacts include impingement and entrainment, thermal 
discharge effects, and impacts due to transmission line 
right-of-way maintenance for aquatic species, and impacts to 
terrestrial species from transmission line right-of-way 
maintenance and construction activities.
 
There are five species listed as threatened or endangered under 
the Federal Endangered Species Act within St. Charles Parish, 
Louisiana.
 
These are the bald eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus), brown 
pelican (Pelecanus occidentalis), gulf sturgeon (Acipenser 
oxyrinchus desotoi), pallid sturgeon (Scaphirhynchus albus), and 
the West Indian manatee (Trichechu manatus). There have been 
reported sightings of the bald eagle (H. leucocephalus), gulf 
sturgeon (A. oxyrinchus desotoi), and the pallid sturgeon (S. 
albus) in St. Charles Parish. Thermal studies documented in the 
LPDES fact sheet found that no threatened or endangered species 
were present near Waterford 3.
 
In a letter dated March 15, 2004, the Louisiana Fish and Wildlife 
Service (LFWS) commented on the endangered species in the 
vicinity of the station. The pallid sturgeon was identified as an 
endangered fish found in both the Mississippi and Atchafalaya 
Rivers. The West Indian manatee (T. manatus) was also listed as a 
federally protected species known to inhabit Lakes Pontchartrain 
and Maurepas and associated coastal waters and stream during 
summer months. The LFWS did not identify any critical habitat in 
the vicinity of the site.
 
According to Entergy, the impacts from the Waterford 3 EPU to 
these species is insignificant because: (1) The EPU for Waterford 
3 will not result in a decline of suitable habitat for these 
species; and (2) sightings of these species are rare and 
infrequent. Therefore, the NRC staff concludes that the proposed 
EPU would not affect threatened and endangered species 
significantly over the effects described in the FES.
 
Social and Economic Impacts Potential social and economic impacts 
due to the proposed action include changes in tax revenue for St. 
Charles Parish and changes in the size of the workforce at 
Waterford 3. The NRC staff has reviewed information provided by 
the licensee regarding socioeconomic impacts.
 
Waterford 3 is a major employer in the community with 
approximately 750 full-time employees. Entergy is also a major 
contributor to the local tax base. Entergy personnel also 
contribute to the tax base by paying sales taxes. Because the 
plant modifications needed to implement the EPU would be minor, 
any increase in sales tax and additional revenue to local and 
national business will be negligible relative to the large tax 
revenues generated by Waterford 3. It is expected that the 
proposed uprate will reduce incremental operating costs, enhance 
the value of Waterford 3 as a power-generating asset, and lower 
the probability of early plant retirement. Early plant retirement 
would be expected to have a significant negative impact on the 
local economy and the community as a whole by reducing tax 
revenues and limiting local employment opportunities, although 
these effects could be mitigated by decommissioning activities in 
the short term. The proposed EPU would not significantly affect 
the size of the Waterford 3 labor force and would have no 
material effect upon the labor force required for future outages 
after all stages of the modifications needed to support the EPU 
are completed.
 
Summary In summary, the proposed EPU would not result in a 
significant change in non-radiological impacts in the areas of 
site, land use, transmission facility operation, water use, 
discharge, aquatic biota, terrestrial biota, threatened and 
endangered species, or social and economic factors. No other 
non-radiological impacts were identified or would be expected. 
Table 1 summarizes the non-radiological environmental impacts of 
the proposed EPU at Waterford 3.
 
 
[[Page 17131]] Table 1.--Summary of Non-Radiological 
Environmental Impacts 
----------------------------------------------------------------- 
------- 
----------------------------------------------------------------- 
------- Land Use.....................  No change in land use or 
aesthetics; will not impact lands with historic or archeological 
significance. No significant impact due to noise.
 
Transmission Facilities......  No physical modifications to the 
transmission lines and facilities; no changes to rights-of-way; 
no significant change in electromagnetic field around the 
transmission lines; shock safety requirements will be met.
 
Water Use Surface Water......  No increase in the water 
withdrawal rate from the river. Water withdrawal rate remains 
consistent with previous levels.
 
Groundwater..................  No change in groundwater use. 
Discharge Thermal Discharge..  No significant increase in 
temperature or heat load. Current LPDES Permit has adequate 
limits to accommodate any expected temperature and heat load 
increases.
 
Chemical and Sanitary          No expected change to chemical use 
and Discharge.                     subsequent discharge, or 
sanitary waste systems; no change in pollutants to once- through 
cooling water effluent.
 
No changes to sanitary waste discharges.
 
Aquatic Biota................  No expected increased impact on 
aquatic biota.
 
Thermal Discharge (Heat        Historically not a problem.
 
Additional Shock).                        heat is not expected to 
affect frequency of heat shock events or significantly increase 
the impact to aquatic biota.
 
Terrestrial Biota............  No additional impact on 
terrestrial biota.
 
Threatened and Endangered      No expected increased impact on 
Species.                       threatened and endangered species 
as a result of the EPU.
 
Social and Economic..........  No significant change in size of 
Waterford 3 workforce.
 
----------------------------------------------------------------- 
------- Radiological Impacts Radioactive Waste Systems Waterford 
3 uses Waste Treatment Systems designed to collect, process, and 
dispose of radioactive gaseous, liquid, and solid wastes in 
accordance with the requirements of Title 10 of the Code of 
Federal Regulations (10 CFR) part 20 and 10 CFR part 50, Appendix 
I. The NRC staff concludes that the proposed power uprate will 
not result in changes to the operation or design of equipment 
used in the radioactive gaseous, liquid, or solid waste systems.
 
Gaseous Radioactive Waste The Waterford 3 Gaseous Waste Treatment 
System is designed to collect, process, and dispose of 
radioactive gaseous waste in accordance with the requirements of 
10 CFR part 20 and 10 CFR part 50, Appendix I.
 
The licensee calculated that the EPU will increase the potential 
doses to the public from gaseous effluents by less than 0.1 
millirem per year over current doses, which are less than one 
millirem per year.
 
These potential doses are well within the dose design objectives 
of 10 CFR part 50, Appendix I and the annual doses projected in 
the FES.
 
Therefore, the estimated increase in the offsite dose from 
gaseous effluents due to the EPU will be small with no 
significant impact on human health.
 
Liquid Radioactive Waste The Waterford 3 Liquid Waste Treatment 
System is designed to collect, process, and dispose of 
radioactive liquid waste in accordance with the requirements of 
10 CFR part 20 and 10 CFR part 50, Appendix I.
 
The licensee calculated that the EPU will increase the potential 
doses to the public from liquid effluents by approximately 10 
percent over the current doses, which are less than 0.01 millirem 
per year.
 
These potential doses are well within the dose design objectives 
of 10 CFR part 50, Appendix I and the annual doses projected in 
the FES.
 
Therefore, the estimated increase in the offsite dose from liquid 
effluents due to the EPU will be small with no significant impact 
on human health.
 
Solid Radioactive Waste The Solid Radioactive Waste System 
collects, monitors, processes, packages, and provides temporary 
storage facilities for radioactive solid wastes prior to offsite 
shipment and permanent disposal.
 
From 1998 through 2002, approximately 22,520 cubic feet of low 
level radioactive waste was generated, for an average of about 
4,500 cubic feet per year.
 
There are three types of solid radioactive waste: wet waste, dry 
waste, and irradiated reactor components. The typical 
contributors to solid radioactive wet waste are secondary and 
primary resin, contaminated filters, oil, and sludge from various 
plant systems. The EPU will not change either reactor water 
cleanup flow rates or filter performance. However, the increased 
core inventory of radionuclides may lead to slightly more 
frequent replacement of filters and resins.
 
Therefore, implementation of the EPU will not have a significant 
impact on the volume or activity of solid radioactive wet waste 
generated at Waterford 3.
 
Dry radioactive waste consists primarily of air filters, paper 
products, rags, clothing, tools, equipment parts that cannot be 
effectively decontaminated, and solid laboratory wastes. No 
significant change in the amount of dry waste is expected as a 
result of the EPU.
 
Irradiated reactor components such as in-core detectors and fuel 
assemblies must be replaced periodically. The volume and activity 
of waste generated from spent fuel assemblies and in-core 
detectors will increase slightly with the EPU conditions. The EPU 
would increase the number of fresh fuel bundles needed during 
each refueling cycle by four. This increase in the number of 
bundles will result in a slight increase in spent fuel discharge 
to the spent fuel pool.
 
The NRC staff concludes that any projected increases in solid 
waste generation under the EPU conditions will not be 
significant.
 
Direct Radiation Dose The licensee evaluated the direct radiation 
dose to the unrestricted area and concluded that it is not a 
significant exposure pathway. Since the EPU will slightly 
increase the core inventory of radionuclides and the amount of 
solid radioactive wastes, the NRC staff concludes that direct 
radiation dose will not be significantly affected by the EPU and 
will continue to meet the limits in 10 CFR part 20.
 
Occupational Dose Occupational exposures from in-plant radiation 
primarily occur during routine maintenance, special maintenance, 
and refueling operations. An increase in power at Waterford 3 
could increase the radiation levels in the reactor coolant 
system. However, plant programs and administrative controls such 
as shielding, plant chemistry, and the radiation protection 
program will help compensate for these potential increases. The 
average collective worker dose at Waterford 3 over the five-year 
period from 1998 to 2002 was 80.3 person-rem/yr. Conservatively 
assuming
 
[[Page 17132]] a linear increase in the occupational exposure due 
to the EPU, the projected in-plant occupational exposure would 
increase to approximately 88 person-rem/yr, which is well below 
the 1300 person- rem/yr estimated in the Waterford 3 FES. The 
increase is based on the power uprate ratio of .096 ((3716-3390) 
MWt/3390 MWt). Therefore, no significant occupational dose 
impacts will occur as a result of the EPU.
 
The EPU will not result in a significant increase in normal 
operational radioactive gaseous and liquid effluent levels, 
direct doses offsite, or occupational exposure. Potential doses 
to the public from effluents will continue to be well within the 
dose design objectives of 10 CFR part 50, Appendix I and the 
annual doses projected in the FES. Any increase in direct doses 
offsite will continue to be within the limits of 10 CFR part 20 
and the slight potential increase in occupational exposure will 
be well within the FES estimate.
 
Postulated Accident Doses As a result of implementation of the 
proposed EPU, there will be an increase in the source term used 
in the evaluation of some of the postulated accidents in the FES.
 
The inventory of radionuclides in the reactor core is dependent 
on power level; therefore, the core inventory of radionuclides 
could increase by as much as 9.6 percent. The concentration of 
radionuclides in the reactor coolant may also increase by as much 
as 9.6 percent; however, this concentration is limited by the 
Waterford 3 Technical Specifications and is more dependent on the 
degree of leakage occurring through the fuel cladding. The 
overall quality of fuel cladding has improved since the FES was 
published and Waterford 3 has been experiencing very little fuel 
cladding leakage in recent years.
 
Therefore, the reactor coolant concentration of radionuclides 
would not be expected to increase significantly. This coolant 
concentration is part of the source term considered in some of 
the postulated accident analyses.
 
For those postulated accidents where the source term increased, 
the calculated potential radiation dose to individuals at the 
site boundary (the exclusion area) and in the low population zone 
would be increased over the values presented in the FES. However, 
the calculated doses would still be below the acceptance criteria 
of 10 CFR part 100, ``Reactor Site Criteria,'' and the Standard 
Review Plan (NUREG-0800).
 
Therefore, the NRC staff concludes that the increased 
environmental impact in terms of potential increased doses from 
the postulated accidents are not significant.
 
Fuel Cycle and Transportation The environmental impacts of the 
fuel cycle and transportation of fuels and wastes are described 
in Tables S-3 and S-4 of 10 CFR 51.51 and 10 CFR 51.52, 
respectively. An additional NRC generic environmental assessment 
(53 FR 30355, dated August 11, 1988, as corrected by 53 FR 32322, 
dated August 24, 1988) evaluated the applicability of Tables S-3 
and S-4 to higher burnup cycle. The assessment concluded that 
there is no significant change in environmental impacts for fuel 
cycles with uranium enrichments up to 5.0 weight-percent U-235 
and burnups less than 60 gigawatt-day per metric ton of uranium 
(GWd/MTU) from the parameters evaluated in Tables S-3 and S-4. In 
an amendment dated July 10, 1998, Waterford 3 was granted the 
ability to increase the fuel enrichment from 4.9 percent to 5.0 
percent. Since the fuel enrichment for the power uprate will not 
exceed 5.0 weight-percent U-235 and the rod average discharge 
exposure will not exceed 60 GWd/MTU, the environmental impacts of 
the proposed power uprate will remain bounded by these 
conclusions and will not be significant.
 
Summary The proposed EPU would not result in a significant 
increase in occupational or public radiation exposure, would not 
significantly increase the potential doses from postulated 
accidents, and would not result in significant additional fuel 
cycle environmental impacts.
 
Accordingly, the Commission concludes that there are no 
significant radiological environmental impacts associated with 
the proposed action.
 
Table 2 summarizes the radiological environmental impacts of the 
proposed EPU at Waterford 3.
 
Table 2.--Summary of Radiological Environmental Impacts 
----------------------------------------------------------------- 
------- 
----------------------------------------------------------------- 
------- Radiological Waste Stream....  No change in design or 
operation of waste streams.
 
Gaseous Waste................  Slight increase in amount of 
radioactive material in gaseous effluents; within FES estimate; 
offsite doses would continue to be well within NRC criteria.
 
Liquid Waste.................  Slight increase in amount of 
radioactive material in liquid effluents; within FES estimate; 
offsite doses would continue to be well within NRC criteria.
 
Solid Waste..................  No significant change in 
radioactive resins; no significant changes in dry waste; no 
significant changes in irradiated components.
 
Dose Impacts Occupational      Up to 9.6 percent increase in 
collective Dose.                          occupational dose 
possible; well within FES estimate.
 
Offsite Direct Dose..........  Slight increase possible; not 
significant; offsite doses would continue to be within NRC 
criteria.
 
Postulated Accidents.........  Up to 9.6 percent increase in 
calculated doses from some postulated accidents; calculated doses 
within NRC criteria.
 
Fuel Cycle and Transportation  Increase in bundle average 
enrichment.
 
Fuel enrichment and burnup would continue to be within bounding 
assumptions for Tables S-3 and S-4 in 10 CFR Part 51, 
``Environmental Protection Regulations for Domestic Licensing and 
Related Regulatory Functions;'' conclusions of tables regarding 
impact would remain valid.
 
----------------------------------------------------------------- 
------- Alternatives to Proposed Action As an alternative to the 
proposed action, the NRC staff considered denial of the proposed 
EPU (i.e., the ``no-action alternative''). Denial of the 
application would result in no change in the current 
environmental impacts; however, other fossil-fuel generating 
facilities may need to be built in order to maintain sufficient 
power-generating capacity. As an alternative, the licensee could 
purchase power from power generating facilities outside the 
service area. The additional power would likely also be generated 
by fossil fuel facilities.
 
Construction and operation of a fossil-fueled plant would create 
impacts in air quality, land use, and waste management 
significantly greater than those identified for the EPU at 
Waterford 3.
 
Implementation of the proposed EPU would have less impact on the 
environment than the construction and operation of a new 
fossil-fueled generating facility or the operation of fossil 
facilities outside the
 
[[Page 17133]] service area. Furthermore, the EPU does not 
involve environmental impacts that are significantly different 
from those presented in the 1981 FES for Waterford 3.
 
Alternative Use of Resources This action does not involve the use 
of any resources not previously considered in the 1981 FES for 
Waterford 3.
 
Agencies and Persons Consulted In accordance with its stated 
policy, on December 21, 2004, the NRC staff consulted with the 
Louisiana State official, Ms. Nan Calhoun of the LDEQ, regarding 
the environmental impact of the proposed action.
 
The State official had no comments.
 
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 
human environment. Accordingly, the NRC has determined not to 
prepare an environmental impact statement for the proposed 
action.
 
For further details with respect to the proposed action, see the 
following: (1) The FES, dated September 1981 (NUREG-0779), (2) 
the EPU application dated November 13, 2003 (ADAMS Accession No.
 
ML040260317), and (3) the April 15, 2004 (ML041110527), response 
to the request for additional information dated March 6, 2004. 
Documents may be examined and/or copied for a fee at the NRC's 
Public Document Room, at One White Flint North, 11555 Rockville 
Pike (first floor), Rockville, Maryland.
 
Publicly available records will be accessible electronically from 
the Agencywide Document Access and Management System (ADAMS) 
Public Electronic Reading Room on the NRC Web site, 
http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/adams.html. Persons who do not have 
access to ADAMS or who encounter problems in accessing the 
documents located in ADAMS should contact the NRC Public Document 
Room Reference staff by telephone at 1- 800-397-4209, or 
301-415-4737, or by e-mail at pdr@nrc.gov. FOR FURTHER 
INFORMATION CONTACT: N. Kalyanam, Office of Nuclear Reactor 
Regulation, Mail Stop O-7D1, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, 
Washington, DC 20555-0001, by telephone at (301) 415-1480, or by 
e-mail at nxk@nrc.gov. Dated in Rockville, Maryland, this 28th 
day of March, 2005.
 
For the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
 
Michael K. Webb, Acting Chief, Section 1, Project Directorate IV, 
Division of Licensing Project Management, Office of Nuclear 
Reactor Regulation.
 
[FR Doc. E5-1478 Filed 4-1-05; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 7590-01-P

 
*****************************************************************
 10 [NYTr] Nuke-Loving Pope
 
Date: Mon, 4 Apr 2005 10:48:36 -0500 (CDT)

 
Via NY Transfer News Collective  *  All the News that Doesn't Fit
 
sent by Andy Pollack

The NY Daily News - Apr 4, 2005
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/special/v-pfriendly/story/296373p-253790c.html

Pontiff OK'd Reagan's nuke plans, diplo says 

BY JAMES GORDON MEEK
DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU 

WASHINGTON - Pope John Paul II gave his blessing to the late President
Ronald Reagan's plans to put nuclear missiles across Western Europe, a
former U.S. representative at the Vatican said yesterday.

Though European leaders were "weak-kneed" about confronting the Soviet
nuclear empire, Reagan won the Pope's support for matching the Communists
nuke for nuke along the Iron Curtain, said Jim Nicholson, who served until
recently as President Bush's ambassador to the Holy See.

The purpose of the pontiff's secret approval was to confront the Soviet
Union's placement of its growing arsenal in Eastern Bloc states near free
European nations, said Nicholson, now the Veterans Affairs secretary.

Nicholson said Reagan "regularly" sent military emissaries to show the
pontiff satellite imagery of Soviet missiles spreading across occupied
Europe.

"The Pope supported us in putting cruise missiles into Europe at that time,
which few people know," Nicholson told "Fox News Sunday."

A top U.S. general who spoke Polish would be dispatched to the Vatican
"regularly and lay this out and tell the Pope what was going on militarily,"
Nicholson recalled.

"And the Pope said to President Reagan, 'They are needed; you should do
it,'" Nicholson said.

Experts and former defense officials said they were unaware of the Pope's
backing of America's nuclear buildup in Europe - but were hardly surprised,
given his anti-Communist stance.

"I think it's true," said Lawrence Korb of the Center for American Progress,
who was a senior Pentagon official in the Reagan administration. "It does
seem logical. That was a tough time to get the missiles in."

John Pike, a defense analyst at GlobalSecurity.org, said John Paul II was
"thick as thieves" with the CIA in trying to bring down communism in his
native Poland, and he might have endorsed the confrontation.

"I wouldn't put it past him" to support Reagan's missile plan, Pike said.

But one group it might have surprised was the U.S. National Conference of
Catholic Bishops, which denounced nuclear proliferation in the 1980s as
immoral.
       
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*****************************************************************
 11 [du-list] Bliar as arms salesperson - Pilger
 
Date: Mon, 04 Apr 2005 15:26:22 -0700

 
<x-flowed>
Blair's Bloody Hands

Sunday April 03 2005 16:33:19 PM BDT


by John Pilger

http://www.bangladesh-web.com/news/view.php?hidDate=2005-04-04&hidType=HIG

Url:http://www.antiwar.com/

A study by ActionAid reveals that the Blair government has sold weapons to 
14 impoverished African countries where there is internal conflict. The 
people of Aceh, stricken by last year's tsunami, have been terrorized by 
British-supplied Hawk fighter jets, machine guns, and ammunition. Britain 
is a world leader in the export of small arms, even depleted uranium.

******************************
Blair's Bloody Hands
********************************

Almost eight years ago, the choir of British liberalism celebrated a new 
age. Tony Blair, wrote the liberal thinker Hugo Young, "wants to create a 
world none of us have known," a world which "ideology has surrendered 
entirely to 'values' [and where] there are no sacred cows . no fossilized 
limits to the ground over which the mind might range in search of a better 
Britain." Besotted minds ranged far.

In a Tonier-than-thou piece for the Guardian, Martin Kettle hilariously 
declared Blair an honorary Australian. "He is not in awe of the past," he 
wrote. "He is not intimidated by class. He is a meritocrat, a doer. . He is 
simply happy making his own history. . It would be nice to think that one 
day these would be thought of as British characteristics, too." Former 
Labour Party deputy leader Roy Hattersley described one of the most 
ideological regimes in modern British history as "untainted by dogma"; 
Blair was "taking the politics out of politics.""Goodbye, xenophobia," was 
the Observer's postelection front page, and "The Foreign Office says, 
'Hello world, remember us?'" The Blair government, said the paper, would 
push for "new worldwide rules on human rights" and implement "tough new 
limits on arms sales."

Let's pause to consider the truth. When Blair demonstrably lied about 
weapons of mass destruction in order to help an extremist regime launch an 
unprovoked attack on Iraq, a defenseless country, the Foreign Office's 
deputy legal adviser Elizabeth Wilmshurst resigned, calling it, correctly, 
a "crime of aggression." The blood shed by more than 100,000 civilians 
killed and 300,000 injured is her and our witness. Now consider the "tough 
new limits on arms sales."

A study by ActionAid reveals that the Blair government has sold weapons to 
14 impoverished African countries where there is internal conflict. The 
people of Aceh, stricken by last year's tsunami, have been terrorized by 
British-supplied Hawk fighter jets, machine guns, and ammunition. Britain 
is a world leader in the export of small arms, even depleted uranium.

Almost everything about a Blair regime was known before it was elected. 
Blair's Vichy-like devotion to Washington was known: read his speeches 
about a new order led by America . His devotion to Rupert Murdoch, who flew 
him and Cherie Booth around the world first class, was known. His devotion 
to an extreme neoliberal Thatcherite economics was known, spelled out in 
Peter Mandelson's and Roger Liddle's The Blair Revolution: Can New Labour 
Deliver?, in which Britain's "economic strengths" are listed as 
multinational corporations, the "aerospace" (arms) industry and "the 
preeminence of the City of London." His class contempt for the poor was 
known; his pre-election attacks on single mothers passed quickly into law, 
assisted by the majority of his new, opportunistic female MPs.

Those trying to cover for Blair and "move on" from Iraq refer to the 
reduction of poverty as one of his "achievements." In fact, relative 
poverty in childless households in the UK has reached record levels under 
Blair, up to 13 percent - and a greater number than under Margaret Thatcher 
or John Major. A certain PC-ism, such as the sound and fury over dropping 
the gay age of consent, adds to the illusion of a Labour government that, 
had it not fallen in with the awful Bush, would be celebrated as 
"progressive." Tell that to the people of a faraway country, more than half 
of whom are children, whose lives have been devastated by the fanatical 
Blair and his court of apologists. Read the robotic Hoon's statement on the 
use of cluster bombs - how Iraqi mothers would one day be "grateful" for 
the use of weapons that killed their children - and Ministry of Defense 
letters to the public that lie about depleted uranium and its Hiroshima 
effect. The silence of those who regard themselves as commissars of this 
country's and Europe's respectable, moral, liberal class is quite disgusting.

In a superb piece in the Guardian on Feb. 24, Victoria Brittain asked: "How 
can it be that not one mainstream public figure in Europe has denounced 
[Bush's systematic torture regime]?" She points out that The Torture Papers 
- more than 1,200 pages of government memos and reports, edited at New York 
University - shows systematic torture, approved and directed from on high. 
Such is the regime of a man with whom Blair "shares values." I thought of 
this when I noted the current debate in the Church of England about the 
"rift" caused by the "issue" of gay marriage. Compare that with the "issue" 
of the slaughter of tens of thousands of innocent people, about which not a 
word is heard from those who claim moral courage as a deity. Read the 
searing account of Dr. Salam Ismael, who took aid to Fallujah in January. 
He describes the ordeal of a 17-year-old girl, Hudda Fawzi. Her father 
opened the door to U.S. Marines who shot him and a friend dead, then shot 
her elder sister, having beaten her senseless, then destroyed the family's 
furniture. Wounded people were dragged from their homes and run over by 
tanks; a clinic was destroyed by missiles. "It became clear to us," Ismael 
wrote, "that we were witnessing the aftermath of a massacre, the 
cold-blooded butchery of helpless and defenseless civilians."

It is not surprising that the Blair government has refused Ismael fresh 
permission to visit and speak out in Britain. His testimony, and that of 
many other reliable witnesses, is known and feared. Last April, the U.S. 
command agreed that it may well have slaughtered as many as 600 people in 
Fallujah. When a listener asked Judy Swallow, presenter of the BBC World 
Service Newshour program, why the BBC continued to suppress this truth, 
Swallow sent this e-mail to a colleague: "Oh God, Mike - do you take care 
of these sorts of things, or do we ignore them?" On the BBC Web site, she 
describes Newshour as "exposing injustice and challenging lies." The 
silence is almost never broken by those paid to "expose injustice and 
challenge lies," let alone set the record straight. On Channel 5, a member 
of the public, Neil Coppendale from Shoreham-by-Sea, confronted Blair with 
this question: "Bearing in mind that tens of thousands of innocent men, 
women, and children have died as a result of the invasion of Iraq, how do 
you sleep at night, Mr. Blair?" When did a journalist, one with privileged 
access to Blair, ever ask that? For their part, the BBC's Downing Street 
man Andrew Marr (apparently together with his wife) and his colleague from 
the Today program James Naughtie have been over to the prime minister's 
country home,Chequers, to sup with the killer Blair. It was Marr who, at 
the fall of Baghdad, told viewers that Blair had "said they would be able 
to take Baghdad without a bloodbath, and in the end the Iraqis would be 
celebrating, and on both these points he has been proved conclusively 
right." And it is Naughtie who has played a leading role in the British 
American Project, set up by Ronald Reagan to find a "successor generation" 
to those who propagated the Cold War on America's behalf.

If shame has no place in what is called "public life," then the rest of us 
should break their silence for them. The Guardian says the electorate is 
"cross" with Blair. Cross? Such a genteel word. Supporting Blair, in his 
propaganda and his contemptuous need for another term of office, is 
supporting mass murder.

Courtesy : http://www.antiwar.com/

To read more on John Pilger:http://pilger.carlton.com/print
******************************************
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</x-flowed>
*****************************************************************
 12 IPS-English IRAQ CONFLICT: White House was wrong all along,
 
Date: Mon, 04 Apr 2005 15:24:55 -0700

 
<x-flowed>
  LA PR HD IP
IRAQ CONFLICT: White House was wrong all along, says UAE paper
Att.Editors: The following item is from the Emirates News Agency (WAM)

ABU DHABI, Apr. 2 (WAM) - A major United Arab Emirates (UAE) English daily
today commented on the U.S. report which confirmed that the intelligence on
which the White House used to invade Iraq was dead wrong.

    Commenting on this under the title "White House was wrong all along", the
Dubai-based 'Gulf News' said: "Dead wrong. No room for doubt, no space to
manoeuvre, no allowance possible for a different, more flattering
interpretation.

    "U.S. intelligence prior to the Iraq invasion descended to the level of
farce and the damage to U.S. credibility will take 'years to undo',
according to a report issued by the presidential commission on intelligence.

    "The report targeted the ineptitude of not one but 15 different spy
agencies. The United States, the report says, apart from knowing little
about Iraq, 'knows disturbingly little of nuclear threats posed by many of
its most dangerous adversaries'. This is chilling.

    "It is not just that four years after the crime against humanity that was
9/11 U.S. intelligence is all at sea. A war was launched on false pretences
and resources were diverted from hunting down those responsible for 9/11 to
take out a leader who, obnoxious as he was, posed no threat to the United
States. This decision resulted in the loss, by some accounts, of the lives
of 100,000 Iraqis.

    "Yet, the Bush White House, considering the mess, comes out of the report
surprisingly well. While the report targets the incompetence of the CIA it
does not set its sights on the White House or the Pentagon. The report says
there was no evidence of political pressure to influence the intelligence
community's pre-war assessments of Iraq's weapons programmes.

    "This is remarkably lenient, considering that the White House set the
tone and made it crystal clear it wanted to topple Saddam Hussain.
Intelligence reports that threw doubt on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction
were ridiculed. The atmosphere was set by a White House unwilling to listen
and unable to question its own certainties. It was gunning for war. Reasons
were not needed, excuses were.

    "The intelligence was bad but we know the White House was wrong. It was
dead wrong," concluded the paper. (WAM)




  

</x-flowed>
*****************************************************************
 13 [NukeNet] USA's Main N-Warhead May Be A Dud
 
Date: Mon, 04 Apr 2005 15:30:34 -0700

 
<x-flowed>
NukeNet Anti-Nuclear Network (nukenet@energyjustice.net)


   Greatest Threat To Life On Earth:
http://www.heatisonline.org

    Videos On Space Weaponization, Nuclearization,
More: http://www.envirovideo.com



http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/03/science/03nuke.html?

A Fierce Debate on Atom Bombs From Cold War
By WILLIAM J. BROAD

Published: April 3, 2005


or over two decades, a compact, powerful warhead
called the W-76 has been the centerpiece of the
nation's nuclear arsenal, carried aboard the fleet
of nuclear submarines that prowl the Atlantic and
Pacific Oceans.

But in recent months it has become the subject of
a fierce debate among experts inside and outside
the government over its reliability and its place
in the nuclear arsenal.

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The government is readying a plan to spend more
than $2 billion on a routine 10-year overhaul to
extend the life of the aging warheads. At the same
time, some weapons scientists say the warheads
have a fundamental design flaw that could cause
them to explode with far less force than intended.

Although the government has denied that assertion,
officials have disclosed that Washington is
nevertheless considering replacing the W-76
altogether.

"This is the one we worry about the most," said
Everet H. Beckner, who oversees the arsenal as
director of defense programs at the National
Nuclear Security Administration.

Some arms-control advocates oppose the 10-year
overhaul program, saying it could produce not only
refurbishments but also deadly new innovations.
They like the replacement option even less, saying
it could prompt the government to conduct
underground detonations that would undo the global
ban on nuclear testing and start a new arms race.
Moreover, some argue that nuclear weapons are
dinosaurs that have little use in American
military strategy and that it makes no real
difference if the W-76 is ineffective.

"That's why people are so passionate about this,"
said Daryl G. Kimball, executive director of the
Arms Control Association in Washington.

The W-76, developed in the early 1970's for
destroying large targets like military bases, now
sits packed in clusters of up to eight atop
hundreds of missiles in a dozen nuclear
submarines. While the exact figures are secret,
federal officials and private weapons experts
agree that it is the nation's leading weapon by
virtue of sheer numbers. The experts say that of
5,000 active warheads in the arsenal, 1,500 are
W-76's. Each is meant to be about seven times as
powerful as the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima.

The W-76's importance is rising as the nation's
nuclear force relies more on submarines and less
on bombers and land-based missiles. "It's by far
the most numerous" warhead, said Hans M.
Kristensen, a weapons expert at the Natural
Resources Defense Council, a private group in
Washington that monitors nuclear trends. "It's the
workhorse in terms of targeting."

Several factors lie behind the current worries and
repair plans. The W-76 is one of the arsenal's
oldest warheads. As warheads age, the risk of
internal rusting, material degradation, corrosion,
decay and the embrittling of critical parts
increases.

The overhaul to forestall such decay is scheduled
to go from 2007 to 2017. In all, it is expected to
cost more than $2 billion, say experts who have
analyzed federal budget figures.

Questions also surround the weapon's basic design.
Four knowledgeable critics, three former
scientists and one current one at the Los Alamos
National Laboratory in New Mexico, which designed
the W-76, have recently argued that the weapon is
highly unreliable and, if not a complete dud,
likely to explode with a force so reduced as to
compromise its effectiveness.

Federal officials, while denying that, disclosed
in interviews that the warhead is being considered
for a new program that intends to replace old
warheads with more reliable ones. Congress and
future administrations would have to approve a
replacement for the W-76.

Officials would give no estimate for that
endeavor's cost or length of time. But they
acknowledged that they have carefully weighed the
W-76's potential problems and the alternatives for
fixing them.

"I've spent a lot of personal time on this," said
Dr. Beckner, of the National Nuclear Security
Administration.

The W-76, and its troubles, were born during the
cold war, when American bomb makers sought to win
the arms race with designs that made nuclear arms
lightweight, very powerful and in some cases so
small that a dozen or more could fit atop a
slender missile.




Where most nuclear powers had to make do with
weapons that were ponderous if dependable, the
W-76 epitomized the American edge. It was a
hydrogen warhead - known as thermonuclear because
a small atom bomb at its core worked like a match
to ignite the hydrogen fuel. Standing shorter than
a man, it had undergone an extraordinary degree of
miniaturization.

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"It was the tightest design we had," said one top
nuclear scientist who did not want his name used
for fear of retaliation for releasing confidential
information. . "They crammed in everything with a
shoehorn."

Tensions ran high, especially for senior designers
like Charles C. Cremer, the leader of
thermonuclear design at Los Alamos. In 1974, as
W-76 plans took shape, Mr. Cremer committed
suicide.

Richard L. Morse, a physicist at the weapons
laboratory who directed advanced concepts for bomb
design as well as a separate group devoted to
laser fusion, said in an interview that much
tension centered on the weapon's so-called
radiation case. In usual fashion, it was to be
made of uranium, which is nearly twice as heavy as
lead.

Leaders at Los Alamos wanted the case to be as
lightweight as possible, so they envisioned it as
extraordinarily thin - in places not much thicker
than a beer can (albeit with plastic backing for
added strength).

Its physical integrity was vital. The case had to
hang together for microseconds as the exploding
atom bomb generated temperatures hotter than the
surface of the sun, forcing it to emit radiation
that kindled the thermonuclear fire. If the case
deformed significantly or shattered prematurely,
the weapon would fail, its thermonuclear fuel
unlit.

 >From 1978 to 1987, about 3,400 W-76's rolled off
the production line, said Mr. Kristensen, of the
defense council. The design was considered so good
that Britain made a variant of the W-76 for its
submarines.

Even with their seeming success, arms designers
continued to do underground tests to determine how
cases would behave in the first milliseconds after
the atomic blast. But in 1992, after the cold war,
the United States joined a global moratorium on
nuclear tests. It was no longer possible to
detonate weapons to check their reliability.

In secret, experts and officials say, debate on
the W-76 began almost immediately after the test
ban; suggestions included an alternative design
that would thicken the radiation case and give the
new warhead a much longer life. By 1995, the work
had become formalized in a joint effort between
the Navy and the nation's nuclear weapons complex.

As the test ban persisted, American nuclear
officials singled out the W-76 as the first
warhead to undergo precautionary scrutiny. The
program employed teams from Los Alamos and
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, its
archrival. Usually, the meetings were cordial.

But a vocal dissenter emerged. It was Dr. Morse,
who had left Los Alamos in 1976 for the University
of Arizona but returned in 1996 and aided the W-76
assessment.

Dr. Morse specialized in scientific explanations
for the complex flows that curl through the
extraordinarily hot gases known as plasmas, which
lie at the heart of an exploding nuclear weapon.
His main goal was to help scientists develop a
giant laser that, in lieu of an atomic match,
would fire on a tiny radiation case surrounding an
even tinier pellet of hydrogen fuel, releasing a
burst of nuclear energy. Heat from such miniature
hydrogen bombs was envisioned as one day being
used to make electricity.

But Dr. Morse found that nature had erected tricky
barriers to that goal. In particular, he
documented how a form of turbulence known as
Rayleigh-Taylor instability (named after the
physicists Lord Rayleigh and Geoffrey Taylor)
could perturb the expanding plasma of the very hot
radiation case, forming waves, ripples and whorls
that blocked ignition of the thermonuclear fuel.
He also found that extremely small variations in
the case were responsible for the onset of
turbulence, making it hard to eliminate.

In 1996, Dr. Morse brought similar analyses to
bear on the W-76's thin case, arguing that it
would probably fail. He said that for decades,
officials had swept the issue under the rug and
that Mr. Cremer, the designer, had struggled with
the problem.

In an interview, Dr. Morse said he was soon
"disinvited" from the evaluation and left Los
Alamos for Sandia National Laboratories in
Albuquerque. But he added that concerns about the
W-76 only grew.

Dr. Beckner disagreed. He said the joint review
found that the W-76 "looks like a pretty good
weapon."

Even so, the government began preparing for an
extensive refurbishment of the warhead in a bid to
extend its life by 30 years. The planning started
around 2000 and foresaw the installation of new
fuses, electronics, batteries, cables, valves and
the conventional high explosives that light the
atomic match. It also sought to increase the
warhead's accuracy and flexibility in targeting.

In 2003, amid preparations for the refurbishment,
Dr. Morse once again sought to stir debate. He
says he felt compelled to do so because of the
W-76's rising importance to the nation's nuclear
forces.

At a secret meeting in March 2004 at Los Alamos,
Dr. Morse led four critics who laid out their
concerns to lab and federal officials, including
Dr. Beckner. Dr. Morse characterized the
discussion as acrimonious.

"It was a verbal mud-wrestling match," he
recalled. The lab and federal officials "would not
be candid with us. We told them things they didn't
know. It was very, very disappointing."

In contrast, Dr. Beckner said the meeting and
subsequent analyses left him with "high confidence
that this nuclear weapon is a good design, was
built properly and will function if required."

In early July, news reports in New Mexico began to
describe the dispute, and the director of Los
Alamos days later scheduled a secret lab symposium
to review the "technical challenges" to
understanding how radiation cases act in the first
microseconds of a nuclear blast, according to a
synopsis of the planned meeting.

As the number of news reports grew, officials
denied that there was any problem with the W-76.
They cited a history of detonations of the weapon
at the Nevada Test Site.

In late November, the dependability issue emerged
nationally as Congress approved a small budget
item that began a new weapons design effort known
as the Reliable Replacement Warhead program. Its
goal is to have weapons scientists design a new
generation of nuclear arms that are more reliable
and more durable, reversing the cold war trend of
making small, lightweight, powerful weapons. If
possible, the effort is to proceed without nuclear
testing.

Dr. Beckner, of the nuclear administration, said
the W-76 is a candidate for redesign. The current
work to extend the warhead's life, he said, could
expand to include more fundamental design changes.
"That is not the plan at present, but that could
happen," he said, adding that he could not discuss
the issue of thickening the radiation case.

Thomas B. Cochran, a senior scientist at the
Natural Resources Defense Council, said a thicker,
heavier case for the W-76 might force compensating
cuts in the weight of the weapon's hydrogen
capsule. And that, he added, would reduce the
weapon's overall force.

Dr. Morse applauded the new federal interest.
"What's out there in those boats," he said, "is at
best unreliable and probably much worse."


Sandra Blakeslee and Kenneth Chang contributed
reporting for this article.



       Home Delivery of




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*****************************************************************
 14 [toeslist] US military DU regs
 
Date: Mon, 4 Apr 2005 11:39:10 -0500 (CDT)

 
Traprock Peace Center 103A Keets Road, Deerfield, MA 01342 (413)
773-7427 www.traprockpeace.org<http://traprockpeace.org/>

Together We Explore Nonviolence, Foster Community, Work to end war,
Promote Communication & Take Initiatives on Environmental and Justice
issues

Does US military acknowledge its own regulations on DU?

Will it comply with environmental and health care mandates for both
US and Iraq?

Retired Major Doug Rokke, Ph.D. (USAR, retired), who was an Army
health physicist during the Gulf war and was then responsible for
trying to 'clean up' radiologically contaminated US equipment (RCE's)
there, has been calling on the military to follow its own
regulations<http://www.traprockpeace.org/rokke_du_3_ques.html>. He
and Damacio Lopez
continue<http://www.traprockpeace.org/doug_rokke_damacio_lopez.html> to
make this call.

These Army regulations<http://traprockpeace.org/du_pam_700-48.pdf>
and the "Handling Procedures<http://www.traprockpeace.org/p700_48.pdf>
for Equipment Contaminated with Depleted Uranium or Radioactive
Commodities" specify stringent requirements for handling RCE's, as
well as providing medical surveillance, training, and environmental
protection among other requirements.

[You may also download the Procedures at the military's
site<http://www.army.mil/usapa/epubs/pdf/p700_48.pdf>]. For instance,
the regulations require protecting the environment in the war zone
- Iraq in this case - (Army Regulation 700-48, 2-4) and medical
care for any "individual" who "may have been exposed" to DU
contamination. (Army Regulation 700-48, 2-5).

(The US has used DU in many US states and other countries; we focus
on Iraq here, given the current crisis and the huge amounts of DU
used. The regulations apply wherever DU has been used.)

Reading these regulations and procedures, one must wonder how the
US can justify - morally or legally - using such a weapon. (See the
Karen Parker, J.D., article on the
illegality<http://traprockpeace.org/karen_parker_du_illegality.pdf> of
DU Weaponry under international humanitarian law.)

Very recently, two US military publications have taken notice of
the regulations. But again, what of the Iraqis - a people who will
be left to live with what the US has left behind? And, will the
military follow these reminders of their regulations, even concerning
US soldiers?

The Nov-Dec, 2004 issue of the US military's Hazardous Technical
Information Services Bulletin, VOL. 14 NO. 6; pages 7-8, references
requirements for the "Management and Handling of Equipment Contaminated
With Depleted Uranium or Radioactive Commodities." You may download
the entire Bulletin here<http://www.traprockpeace.org/nov-dec04.pdf>
or at the original military site -
http://www.dscr.dla.mil/userweb/htis/nov-dec04.pdf (We offer a local
download option because sometimes government documents disappear,
and because some people do not like to pick up cookies at military
websites.)

Dr. Abdul H. Khalid, Chemical Engineer, HTIS, writes:

The U.S. Department of Army (DA) Regulation (AR 700-48) outlines
formal policy and procedures for the management of equipment
contaminated with depleted uranium (DU) or radioactive commodities.
This publication is available online at:

http://traprockpeace.org/du_pam_700-48.pdf<http://traprockpeace.org/du_pam_70
0-48.pdf>

The DA Pamphlet (PAM 700-48) recommends handling procedures for
equipment contaminated with depleted uranium (DU) and/or other
low-level wastes (LLRW).

PAM 700-48 applies to DA commands, installations, and activities.
The current revision updated symbols, removed obsolete publications,
and added technical references. This publication is available at
http://www.army.mil/usapa/epubs/pdf/p700_48.pdf<http://www.army.mil/usapa/epu
bs/pdf/p700_48.pdf>

These documents are of great help to generators of excess radioactive
materials who wish to collect and consolidate these materials in
preparation for removals off-post.

He goes on to give contact information for Radioactive Waste Disposal
Offices in order to receive "guidance on radioactive waste materials,
their proper disposal procedures, and technical information on
LLRW." See the Bulletin, pages 7-8, for the complete
article<http://www.traprockpeace.org/nov-dec04.pdf>.

We note, though, that a regulation more than just "outlines formal
policy and procedures..." Federal regulations are federal law. The
regulation states "By order of the Secretary of the Army...This
regulation prescribes policy and procedures for the management of
equipment contaminated with Depleted Uranium or radioactive
commodities." (emphasis added)

In January, 2005, the Central Region Review - U.S. Army Environmental
Center, Central Regional Office, Kansas City, MO January, 2005 -
Regions 6 & 7 picks up this thread. See the section Federal Actions
- Other Regulatory Activity and General Information, page 27. (The
regulation is not exactly highlighted as it was put on page 27, but
it's there nonetheless). Download it
here<http://www.traprockpeace.org/c0501.pdf> or at the government
site - http://aec.army.mil/usaec/reo/c0501.pdf

The January note validates Mr. Khalid's article, as well as what
Doug Rokke has been saying for years, to a point. I say "to a point"
because it also understates the force of the regulations, turning
law into mere policy. The January note reads:

Handling Procedures for Equipment Contaminated with Depleted Uranium
or Radioactive Commodities (DA PAM 700<ETH>48) and Management of
Equipment Contaminated with Depleted Uranium or Radioactive Commodities
(AR 700-48). Department of the Army pamphlet PAM 700-48 provides
recommended handling procedures for equipment contaminated with
depleted uranium and other low-level radioactive materials or wastes.
Army Regulation, AR 700-48, outlines formal procedures and policies
for the management of handling contaminated equipment. These documents
can be accessed at
http://www.army.mil/usapa/epubs/pdf/p700_48.pdf<http://www.army.mil/usapa
/epubs/pdf/p700_48.pdf> and
http://www.traprockpeace.org/du_pam_700-48.pdf<http://www.traprockpeace.org/d
u_pam_700-48.pdf>. Guidance on radioactive waste material, proper
disposal techniques, and technical information is available from
the following points of contact: Defense Logistics Agency (DLA)
Headquarters, 8725 John J. Kingman Highway, Suite 2533, Fort Belvoir,
Virginia 22060, or telephone (703) 767-6331; Department of Defense,
Army Industrial Operations Command Executive Agency, ATTN: AMSIO-SF,
Rock Island, Illinois, or telephone (309) 782-2033; US Air Force,
IERA/SDRH, 2402 E. Drive Brooks AFB, Texas, or telephone (210) 536
3489;

Naval Sea Command Detachment, Radiological Affairs Support Office,
PO Drawer 260, Yorktown, Virginia, or telephone (757) 887-4692.

[Please note: I did not add a link to the Traprock website in either
of the above two military documents. They did indeed cite Traprock
for a copy of the military's own regulations. We're flattered but
surprised to be an official source of federal law.]

Finally, someone in the military has taken note of the military's
own regulations. Thank you Dr. Khalid. Still, the force of the
mandate has been understated. Even if the military were encouraged
to act concerning US soldiers posts, and what about the mess that
the US (and the UK, to a lesser degree) have left in Iraq? The land
and air are contamined by radioactive dust and debris from hundreds
of tons of uranium muntions that have been used in Iraq since the
first Gulf War.

We don't know how much DU was used in the current war. Estimates
range from the military's figures of 100 plus tons, to about 2000
tons if DU was used in bunker busters. The US is not helping much
to get to the bottom of this, as it has refused (unlike the UK) to
divulge where it has used DU in Gulf War II.

Even accepting US figures, about 450-500 tons would be a convervative
estimate of the amount used since the first Gulf War. (I suspect
it is much
higher<http://traprockpeace.org/bunker_busters_kilpatrick.html>.)
Additionally, hundreds of Iraqi vehicles have been left behind, in
violation of Army regulations.

Army Regulation 700-48, Section 2-4 (my emphasis added)

c. Handling.

(1) The unit/team/individual responsible for the equipment, whether
friendly or foreign, at the time of damage or contamination is
responsible for taking all action consistent with this regulation
and DA PAM 700-48.

..

(6) All equipment, to include captured or combat RCE, will be
surveyed, packaged, retrograded, decontaminated and released IAW
Technical Bulletin 9-1300-278, DA PAM 700-48 and other relevant
guidance.

Further, the dumping (abandonment) of much of this equipment in
open air 'grave yards' violates 700-48, 2-4:

e. Disposal.

(1) In general, environmental impact must be considered prior to
equipment retrograde. Retrograde operations must minimize the spread
of contamination preventing further harm to personnel and damage
to equipment.

(2) Radioactive material and waste will not be locally disposed of
through burial, submersion, incineration, destruction in place, or
abandonment without approval from overall MACOM commander. If local
disposal is approved, the responsible MACOM commander must document
the general nature of the disposed material and the exact location
of the disposal. As soon as possible the MACOM commander must forward
all corresponding documentation to the Chief, Health Physicist,
AMCSF-P, HQAMC. (emphasis added)

In the photo at right, Tedd Weyman of the Uranium Medical Research
Center<http://www.umrc.net/> inspects an Iraqi tank destroyed by
DU, at a 10 hectare open air dump for destroyed Iraqi equipment,
including RCE's. The photo is a copyrighted screen shot from the
award-winning German public television documentary, "The Doctor,
the Depleted Uranium and the Dying Children." photo ) 2003 Telepool
http://www.telepool.de<http://www.telepool.de/>

US HAS ADMITTED HEALTH RISKS

We, in the anti-DU activist community, hear from US military
apologists all the time that there is no evidence of adverse health
effects. They're spinning rubbish. Without citing all of the
scientific evidence here (that's a whole book - see the
proceedings<http://traprockpeace.org/depleted_uranium_hamburg03.html> of
the World Uranium Weapons Conference), the military's own documents
condemn their argument. For example,

*Occasionally, a US government memo becomes public - such as the
Los Alamos memo (where proponency - lying - is the order of the
day), or the Defense Nuclear Agency memo that admits to DU's threat
to health -
http://traprockpeace.org/twomemos.html<http://traprockpeace.org/twomemos.html

*Or, a military figure says some truth about DU in a non-public
setting, such as a presentation to manufacturers
http://traprockpeace.org/wakayama2.pdf<http://traprockpeace.org/wakayama2pd
f>

*Or a Pentagon scientist, such as Dr. Alexandra Miller, reports
some uncomfortable research (about chromosomal damage and bystander
effects) as she did at MIT. Her presentation on the DU health panel
at MIT, with Dr. Thomas Fasy, is available at
http://traprockpeace.org/mit_health.html<http://traprockpeace.org/mit_health.

html>

*And sometimes GI's talk about the horror of fiendish DU fire - as
happened after A-10's attacked Marines at An Nasiriyah with 30 mm
DU rounds -
http://traprockpeace.org/du_friendly_fire.html<http://traprockpeace.org/du_fr
iendly_fire.html>

Here's a quote from a Marine field historian who heard these
testimonies:

"It's bad enough to be shot, but to be shot with a depleted uranium
round that basically turns you into a handful of mush."

- Col. Reed Bonadonna, field historian, talking to NPR's Jackie
Northam

*And, sometimes, a freedom of information act request turns up an
astonishing admission of 14 years of knowledge of DU's hazard to
health.<http://traprockpeace.org/depleted_uranium_milner.html>

The Department of Defense is a huge organization. It can't control
all information, and occasionally some truth gets out. It's up to
us to act on that truth.

ACT

Call your elected officials and tell them (they work for you) to
take action to abolish uranium weapons. And please call your favorite
media and ask that they cover the issue. Some media have given
excellent coverage (RNNTV in metro NYC; WAMC in Albany; the Christian
Science Monitor; Vanity Fair; King TV5 in Washington State; and the
Seattle Post-Intelligencer to name a few. But where are NPR, the
New York Times and the Washington Post? Has your local media covered
DU?

If media, a Congressional aide, or your organization is looking for
an expert on DU, please call us - we'd be happy to offer suggestions.

Charles Jenks Traprock Peace Center Deerfield, MA 413-773-7427 (ask
for Sunny Miller, Executive Director, re: recommendations on experts)

April 1, 2005

You can make a difference - please donate so we may continue this
work.

Please donate online  or donate by
mail<http://www.traprockpeace.org/donation_form.html> to help us
keep doing this work.

Traprock Peace Center, founded in 1979, is a 501 c 3 charitable
educational non-profit organization.

Donations are tax deductable.

Please call (413) 773-7427 or email us<mailto:charles@mtdata.com>
if you have any questions about Traprock Peace Center

March 12, 2005 - page created by Charlie Jenks<mailto:charles@mtdata.com>

Traprock Peace Center 103A Keets Road, Woolman Hill Deerfield, MA
01342

Phone: (413) 773-7427; Fax:(413)773-7507

[demime 0.98e removed an attachment of type image/gif which had a
name of logo.gif]

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*****************************************************************
 15 Guardian Unlimited: Congress Weighs Money for Missile Defense
 
From the Associated Press        

[UP] 

Monday April 4, 2005 12:46 PM

By LIZ SIDOTI 

Associated Press Writer 

WASHINGTON (AP) - At a time of budget deficit pressures,
Congress is weighing how much to invest in a fledgling but
expensive ballistic missile defense system that has suffered
setbacks and whose ultimate cost right now is a big question
mark. 

The system is the most costly defense research and development
program under way. President Bush wants lawmakers to approve $9
billion for the system in the 2006 budget year - $1 billion less
than the administration previously planned. 

Lawmakers of both parties are nervous about whether the nation
is adequately protected against nuclear attack. But many also
are concerned about the costs. 

The government has spent about $92 billion on missile defense
since 1983. The administration expects to spend $58 billion more
over the next six years. But officials have not put an overall
price tag on the system. 

On the other hand, outside experts expect it to far surpass $150
billion. Groups favoring arms reductions claim the overall price
tag could range from $800 billion to $1.2 trillion. 

``No doubt, it's going to end up being higher. If they keep
spending the way they have been spending on this, absolutely,''
said Victoria Samson, an analyst at the Center for Defense
Information. 

The program is meant to protect the country by launching
interceptors from land or sea to shoot down missiles fired from
overseas. The system is a substantially downscaled version of
President Reagan's effort in the mid-1980s, which critics dubbed
``Star Wars'' for its futuristic weaponry. 

Its first eight interceptors have been installed in underground
bunkers in Alaska and California. Testing of the system and
production of more missiles are continuing. 

At a time of worries over the weapons programs of North Korea
and Iran, many Republicans and Democrats say they think the
system will eventually be an effective line of defense and that
a limited ability to shoot down missiles is better than none.
These lawmakers fear Bush's latest request won't be enough to
continue developing it at the current pace. 

``The threat remains real. The American people want their
homeland defended, and if they felt these reductions would
jeopardize them, they would not be happy with us,'' said Sen.
Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., chairman of the Senate Armed Services
strategic forces subcommittee. 

Rep. Terry Everett, R-Ala., chairman of the House Armed Services
subcommittee that oversees missile defense, compared the
program's expense to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. 

``One strike against this country cost us about $83 billion, not
counting the human suffering,'' Everett said, using an estimate
by the General Accountability Office, an investigative agency of
Congress. Still, he acknowledged, ``This stuff costs an awful
lot of money and we have to have results.'' 

Such lawmakers outnumber critics, mainly Democrats, who question
the cost and whether the system ever will work properly. They
say more testing is needed after recent failures. 

Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, senior Democrat on the Senate Armed
Services Committee, opposes producing more interceptors unless
test results show they can hit incoming targets. 

``I just simply want to make sure that ultimately it works,''
said another Democrat on that panel, Sen. Ben Nelson of
Nebraska. ``We don't know that yet.'' 

Rep. Silvestre Reyes of Texas, top Democrat on Everett's
subcommittee, called himself a strong supporter of missile
defense, but said, ``I do not think we should give it a blank
check or allow it to avoid thorough testing.'' 

Missiles have twice failed to launch from their underground
silos during tests. Canada has refused to join the effort. The
administration did not declare the system operational by the end
of 2004, as it had hoped. 

Six interceptor missiles are underground at Fort Greely, Alaska,
and two are at Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif. The Pentagon
wants a total of 18 underground by year's end and hopes to
produce 10 more by the end of 2007. 

Navy ships aren't yet outfitted with interceptors meant to take
down short- and mid-range missiles, although two cruisers may be
by the end of this year. Several tests of interceptors launched
from a ship have been successful, most recently in February. 

At a recent hearing, Air Force Lt. Gen. Henry A. Obering,
director of the Missile Defense Agency, asked Congress to be
patient. He acknowledged what he called a few disappointments
but said they weren't major setbacks. 

``We may stub our toe here or there, but for the most part the
program is on track,'' Obering said. 

^----- 

On the Net: 

Missile Defense Agency:
http://www.acq.osd.mil/mda/mdalink/html/mdalink.html 
		 	 	   
      Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005
*****************************************************************
 16 Guardian Unlimited: Pacific power play puts Japan and China 
between a rock and a hard place
 
Simon Tisdall
Tuesday April 5, 2005
 		
An uninhabited Pacific reef 1,000 miles due south of Tokyo makes 
an unlikely battlefield. But wars have been fought over less. And 
Okinotori Shima, as this hazard to shipping is known, is rapidly 
becoming a focal point of rising tension between China and Japan. 

Only two small outcrops of the reef, sovereign Japanese territory 
that is administratively part of Tokyo, remain above water at 
high tide. 

But Japan says that is enough to make it legally an island. To 
underpin its position, it has spent $250m shoring up Okinotori's 
twin peaks with cement. 
 			 		 			 		 Japan claims an exclusive economic zone around
Okinotori stretching hundreds of miles in every direction under
the 1982 Law of the Sea. The total area is bigger than the whole
of Japan. 

But China says Okinotori is just a rock. In its view, Tokyo's
attempt to control a vast area of the Pacific and its
potentially rich seabed and fishing resources on the basis of a
couple of wet boulders has no legal bottom. 

Other east Asian maritime disputes such as that over the Senkaku
(Diaoyutai) archipelago, north-east of Taiwan, are more
immediately explosive. China and Japan are at odds over seabed
gas exploration rights there. Tokyo issued an ultimatum to
Beijing last week, demanding it halt test drilling or face
unspecified consequences. 

Yet China's Okinotori objections have a larger, strategic and
military dimension. The reef lies between Taiwan and the US
naval base on Guam. 

It is in these waters that Chinese submarines might one day
intercept American aircraft carriers and warships attempting to
deter or repulse an attack on Taiwan. Hence Beijing's dislike of
reported Japanese plans to install radar on the reef. 

In this broader sense, Okinotori is but one piece in a much
bigger contest being fought out across east Asia and beyond. 

One significant move in this Pacific power play was a recent
US-Japan declaration of common strategic objectives that
included the maintenance of peace in the Taiwan Strait. China
denounced the agreement as a threat to its sovereignty. 

In the face of China's military build-up, Japan is also pursuing
enhanced military collaboration with South Korea and Australia. 

But according to Chong-Pin Lin, a leading China scholar based in
Taipei, the developing China-Japan regional standoff is merely a
warm-up act. The main event was the looming struggle over
China's accelerating and increasingly skilful drive to replace
the US as the dominant political, economic and military power in
east and south-east Asia. 

"Chinese president Hu Jintao's long-term goal is squeezing out
US influence," Professor Lin said. "One element is China's
neighbour policy - making neighbouring countries feel safe,
friendly and wealthy. For this they use tools like aid,
investment, trade agreements and access to China's markets. 

"Another element is China's military. The strategy says the
military must prepare to fight but preferably not be used. China
is developing a survivable nuclear deterrent with three new
ballistic missile submarines carrying a total of 144 long-range
nuclear missiles. This sends an obvious message to the US." 

Further afield, China's strategy included "oil diplomacy" in
Africa and Latin America to boost its energy supplies; and
actively enticing a trade-hungry Europe to act as a
counterweight to the US, for example by lifting the EU arms
embargo. 

China's main objectives were protection and reunification of the
"motherland" and economic development, Prof Lin said. But
neutralising US regional power was its ultimate aim. 

In this respect, Beijing believed it had time on its side, as
internal People's Liberation Army documents showed. 

Francis Kan of the National Chengchi University said China's
rise was forcing the US, Japan, South Korea and others into a
closer strategic partnership aimed at "containing" China. 

"It's not yet an official kind of alliance like Nato, it's not
mature yet. But we will see more informal cooperation like
weapons harmonisation and assigning tasks," Dr Kan said. 

But he expressed scepticism that if conflict came to the Taiwan
Strait, the main regional flashpoint, any country other than the
US would take up arms against China. 

Speaking in Tokyo last month, the US secretary of state,
Condoleezza Rice, appeared to gloss over the China challenge.
"America has reason to welcome the rise of a confident,
peaceful, prosperous China," Ms Rice said. Washington wanted
Beijing as a "global partner", not a strategic competitor. 

Such statements, coupled with the recent US refusal to condemn
China's human rights record before the UN commission in Geneva,
have left China-watchers wondering whether Washington
understands how high the stakes really are in east Asia's 21st
century great game. 

Like the Japanese in Okinotori, they say, a distracted and
complacent US risks being caught between a rock and a hard place.
 	
[UP] 

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005
*****************************************************************
 17 HindustanTimes.com: Nuclear Deterrence in Southern Asia

Arpit Rajain
Sage Publications 2005 International Politics  Pages: 495 Price: 
Rs 480 ISBN: 0761932844 Paperback

Since the time both India and Pakistan conducted their nuclear
tests in 1998, a new strategic scenario has emerged in Southern
Asia involving not just these two countries but also China. This
has altered the security architecture of Asia as a whole, and
has given rise to a unique triangular relationship. This
triangularisation of nuclear power calls for new
understandings which go beyond the bilateral dialogues of the
erstwhile Cold War era.

In this important and topical book, Arpit Rajain examines the
triangular relationship of Chin, India and Pakistan through the
prism of nuclear deterrence. He highlights the interplay and
role of strategic culture, nuclear weaponisation and deployment,
command and control, arms control, non-state actors and foreign
and policy issues which affect relations between the three
countries. 

With two main purposes  a conceptual investigation into the
notion of deterrence, and a study of the theory and practice of
limited war  this book addresses the strategic, political and
military dimensions of the role of nuclear weapons through
examples of the only cases of nuclear weapon through examples of
the only cases of nuclear weapon states having gone into armed
conflict-the Cuban missile crisis, the Ussuri river clashes and
the Kargil conflict;

It also discusses the various pressures exerted on decision
makers in the context of the notion of deterrence, the rational
deterrence model, and a limited war under a nuclear umbrella.


  The book releases on Monday, April 4 at 1830 pm in Delhi's
India Habitat Centre.  

The book also evaluates all three countries with regard to their
strategic culture, the role of nuclear weapons in their military
strategy, the nature of public opinion and political rhetoric,
responses to the various arms controls treaties, and foreign
policy choices. 

Based on a variety of sources, including interviews with key
individuals in various sectors, this is the first book-length
study of the triangular relationship between China, India and
Pakistan. It will attract the attention of all those interested
in security issues, arms control and disarmament, foreign policy
and international relations.   
    
*****************************************************************
 18 INSIDE JoongAng Daily: NK delegates discuss nuclear talks in China
 
April 5, 2005 KST 14:09 (GMT+9)                                                          
                       
  April 05, 2005 ¤Ñ A group of top North Korean Foreign Ministry
officials has been meeting with senior Chinese officials in
Beijing to discuss North Korea's position on resuming the
stalled six-party nuclear disarmament talks, diplomatic sources
in China said yesterday. 

Kang Sok-ju, first vice-minister of foreign affairs, is leading
the five-member delegation, which arrived in Beijing Saturday
and met with Vice Foreign Minister Wu Dawei and Ning Fukui,
Chinese ambassador on Korean peninsula affairs, sources said. 

Mr. Kang is Pyongyang's point man for nuclear diplomacy. The
North Koreans are reportedly scheduled to return to Pyongyang
today. 

The visit to Beijing came after Pyongyang demanded last week
that the six-party talks be transformed into comprehensive
disarmament negotiations.   
	  
Copyright by Joins.com, Inc. Terms of Use |


*****************************************************************
 19 BBC: Iran hopes for EU nuclear accord
 
Last Updated: Monday, 4 April, 2005
 
By Bethany Bell BBC News, Vienna   

[Iranian President Mohammad Khatami ]                           

Khatami insists on Iran's right to develop nuclear energy                                                               

Iranian President Mohammad Khatami has said he is hopeful a 
solution can be found with the EU over the issue of Iran's 
controversial nuclear programme. 

Iran has been negotiating with the UK, France and Germany for 
trade and technology benefits. 

In return Iran would provide guarantees it is not developing 
nuclear weapons. 

He said Europe and Iran were working on a solution that would 
acknowledge Iran's right to the "peaceful development of nuclear 
energy". 

This solution would also aim to overcome the worries of the 
Europeans, he said. 

President Khatami was speaking after talks with Austrian leaders 
in Vienna. 

He said Iran opposed the gross misuse of nuclear technology to 
make atomic weapons and that Tehran was working closely with the 
UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency. 

The talks between the Europeans and Iran are deadlocked over 
Tehran's refusal to give up its uranium enrichment programme. 

Enriched uranium can be used to produce fuel for nuclear power 
plants or atomic weapons. 

The US has accused Iran of using its civilian nuclear programme 
as a cover to develop nuclear weapons, a charge Tehran denies.
		 	 		 	 	 



*****************************************************************
 20 Xinhua: US remains concerned about Iran's nuclear program   

  www.xinhuanet.com

  www.chinaview.cn 2005-04-05 06:48:23   

¡¡  WASHINGTON, April 4 (Xinhuanet) -- The United States said on
Monday that it continues to be concerned about Iran's nuclear
weapon program and urged Teheran to cooperate with the
International Atomic Energy Agency. 

    White House spokesman Scott McClellan said at a news
briefing that "we believe it is very important that Iran
cooperate fully with the International Atomic Energy Agency and
provide the agencyaccess to their sites, so they can fully
inspect." 

    The United States has been accusing Iran of developing a
nuclear weapon program and threatens to refer the matter to the
United Nations Security Council, but Iran has insisted that its
nuclear program is for civil purposes only. Enditem 

  Copyright ©2003 Xinhua News Agency. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
 21 [du-list] USUK Fulluja massacre and other bombing
 
Date: Mon, 04 Apr 2005 15:29:54 -0700

 
<x-flowed>
     April 01, 2005


       Independent journalist Dahr Jamail:"Life in Falluja is a horror story"

Interview with ERIC RUDER, Socialist Worker Magazine

April 1, 2005 - DAHR JAMAIL spent eight months working as an independent
journalist in Iraq. As one of the few journalists not "embedded" with
U.S. forces, his reports earned a reputation for being an uncompromising
look at life under occupation.

Currently, Jamail is back in the U.S. on a speaking tour that will take
him to several West Coast cities. He spoke to Socialist Worker's ERIC
RUDER about the destruction unleashed on Iraq by the U.S. during two
years of occupation.

ER-YOUR REPORTS have given a radically different view of what's going on
in Iraq compared to the other media. Can you talk about what you saw?

DJ-I HAD done a little bit of journalism before, not a whole lot, and I
was watching the discrepancies in reporting between the mainstream here
in the U.S., and independent journalists, the alternative media and the
foreign media. I grew more and more disturbed by this huge discrepancy,
and so I decided to head over to Iraq to report on it myself. My first
trip was in November 2003.

I was in Falluja during the April siege last year for a couple of days,
and then I went back in May several times to report on what happened.
But I didn't go in November, because the military cordoned off the city
and maintains that cordon to this day. They're not letting any
journalists in there. I've been getting information by interviewing
refugees, or through some of my colleagues who have been in and out of
the city several times.

Life there is horrendous. At least 65 percent of the buildings have been
bombed to the ground, and what's left has been severely damaged. There's
no water, no electricity and, of course, no jobs. And when people go
back into the city, they have to get a retina scan and get
fingerprinted, and then they're issued an ID card.

Then they go inside to find what's left of their homes, and in a really
horrible situation in which the military remains in total control of the
town. There are snipers everywhere, and the ambulances aren't able
really to run--they're still being targeted by the military. The one
remaining hospital--Falluja General Hospital--is barely functioning,
because people have to go through checkpoints to get there.

Life in Falluja is really a horror story. Most of the city's residents
are refugees and will continue to be refugees for quite some time.
They're scattered in small towns on the outskirts of Falluja, as well as
Baghdad and other cities. The last estimate I heard was about
25,000--maybe a little bit more than that--had returned back to a city
that once had a population of 350,000.

ER-WHEN THE U.S. announced its assault on Falluja, it claimed its goal
was to root out the resistance. Can you talk about the strategic goal
that the U.S. set for itself and also whether it succeeded?

DJ-I BASICALLY heard two reasons for going in and doing what they did to
Falluja: what you mentioned, as well as another primary goal--providing
"security and stability" for the January 30 elections.

What happened was that most of the fighters in the city left even before
the siege began--even the military admitted to that. So of the roughly
3,000 people killed, the vast majority were civilians. Falluja was
declared a "free-fire" zone for the military, meaning that they were not
distinguishing between civilians and fighters, which is, of course, a
violation of international law in a city where there might be civilians.

As far as accomplishing this goal of "rooting out fighters" and/or
providing "security and stability" for the January 30 election, we can
see that neither have been accomplished.

They have effectively spread the resistance further around the country.
We have another sort of "mini-Falluja" situation in Ramadi, where rather
than sectioning off the entire city and doing what they did to Falluja,
they're doing it neighborhood by neighborhood. In essence, any fighters
who are there are moving to a different neighborhood when one is being
hit, and then moving back when the military goes to another neighborhood.

They're going to have to employ the same strategy in Samarra, in Baquba,
in Bayji, in Mosul and even in parts of Baghdad. It's a strategy that
the U.S. military has been using since almost the beginning of the
occupation--using very heavy-handed tactics to fight the resistance. But
by doing so, they're just spreading the resistance to other areas around
the city or the country, and essentially creating more resistance.

ER-WHEN YOU say the U.S. is spreading the resistance, is that because
actual individuals go to other cities and start recruiting and
organizing there? Or, is it because the horrors that the U.S. has caused
have angered people who then join the resistance?

DJ-IT'S BOTH. Most fighters know when the U.S. is going to launch a new
offensive, so they take off. It's a guerrilla war. Some of the basics of
guerrilla warfare are that you don't attack when you're expected to
attack, and you do attack when you're not expected. They're not going to
try to go toe to toe with the U.S. military, so they take off.

Plus, if you and I are brothers, and we're living in a predominantly
tribal culture like Iraq, and someone kills you, if I don't go avenge
your death, then I dishonor the family. In that way, when we look at the
fact that well over 100,000 Iraqis are estimated to have died during the
occupation--the vast majority of them at the hands of occupation
forces--it's a simple matter of doing the math to figure out how many
people are in the resistance.

ER-LAST WEEK, there was triumphant talk by U.S. officials of an assault
on an insurgent camp led by Iraqi ground forces with U.S. air support.
Do you think this is a new turn in the occupation?

DJ-NO, ACTUALLY I think it's an old propaganda tactic being used by the
military in Iraq, and being trumpeted by the media here in the U.S.
We're already seeing massive discrepancies in the reporting on this
situation.

It's similar to a situation I reported on back in December 2003, which
happened in Samarra, where the U.S. military claimed that they were
attacked by a large contingent of resistance and killed 48. Then,
magically, the number went up overnight to 54.

I went up to Samarra myself to report on that. I interviewed doctors at
the hospital. I went to the morgue. I interviewed civilians at the
scene. Everyone said that eight people were killed, and they were all
civilians. It was simply a propaganda smokescreen spewed out by the
military to try to cover up the fact that they made a mistake, they were
attacked and they killed some civilians.

Already, with the situation you just discussed, Reuters initially
reported that Iraqi government commandos attacked an isolated camp 100
miles north of Baghdad. But there have been discrepancies in different
reports coming from the military, from Reuters, from the Associated
Press, Agence France Presse, which dispute where this took place, when
exactly this took place, and how many people were killed.

There's much confusion, and it's going to take some time to get to the
actual truth of it. But it does look pretty clear already that the truth
will be quite a bit different than the initial report released by the
military.

ER-MEANWHILE, ONE of the things missing from the U.S. media is reporting
on the increasingly frequent bombing of Iraq by the U.S.

DJ-THAT'S A very important point. It definitely is one of the most
underreported things in Iraq. Daily, there are many, many air missions
being flown, and huge amounts of bombs being dropped. In fact, the vast
majority of Iraqi civilians killed have died as a result of U.S.
warplanes dropping bombs.

For example, in Falluja, it's pretty safe to say that a large percentage
of the estimated 3,000 people killed there were killed by U.S.
warplanes. I can't tell you how many reports I heard from refugees
discussing how entire houses, entire blocks of houses, were bombed to
the ground by U.S. warplanes. Even to this day, bodies lay under the
rubble of houses because of this.

This is without a doubt the leading cause of the civilian casualties.
They think that they're bombing fighters, and they think that by doing
this, they're sending a message that if you continue to resist the
occupation, you will be bombed, and anyone around you will be bombed.

It's a form of collective punishment, and it is definitely intended to
send a clear message that if you mess with the U.S. military, you and
anyone around you is going to be blown out of existence. More often than
not, it's the case that when these bombs drop, it's civilians who are
caught in them, not the fighters.

For example, several people reported to me that the way the U.S.
military was getting its intelligence on where to bomb in Falluja prior
to the siege of the city in November was that any Iraqi could literally
go up to the U.S. base outside of Falluja and say, "Yes, in this house,
there's a fighter." They were paid between $100 and $500, and then that
house was bombed. So this was a method that many people used to settle
old scores and make some cash.

On the flip side, of course, sometimes, they were right. Sometimes,
there were fighters there, and they would be killed. But more often than
not, as you can imagine, that wasn't the case.

ER-THE BUSH administration says the Iraqi elections show that "democracy
is on the march," and that this is justification enough for the invasion
and occupation.

DJ-WE CERTAINLY can't say that there's democracy in Iraq just because
there's been an election, or something resembling an election. An
election does not mean democracy. Democracy means the will of the people
is being carried out by the government that they voted into place. And
so far in Iraq, that isn't happening.

If we're going to measure success in Iraq, I think we could measure it
by how many promises of the Bush administration have come to reality on
the ground. Promises like bringing Iraqis jobs and a better life.
Letting them rebuild their country. And letting them have a truly
representative government--a government of their choosing.

None of this has happened. Electricity remains far below prewar levels.
The amount of oil being pumped out remains far below prewar levels.
Security is an abomination. There's a gasoline crisis in Iraq, something
that never existed before. People are struggling every day just to get by.

On just about every level you would measure it, things are worse now in
Iraq than they were prior to the invasion. It's two years into the
occupation, and there's certainly been enough time for the U.S. to get
its act together and try to provide some of these things.

People ask me, "What are the success stories," or "What good has come of
it?" I've heard Iraqis say that the only thing good that has come from
the invasion is the fact that Saddam Hussein has been removed. But aside
from that--and I'm just quoting Iraqis here--in every other aspect,
things on the ground there have gotten worse since the invasion.

ER-ONE FEATURE of mainstream media coverage has been the idea that there
is a deep-seated antagonism in Iraq between Sunni and Shiite Muslims. Do
you think Iraq is moving toward civil war?

DJ-THERE IS definitely an over-focus in the Western media about this
threat of civil war between the Shia and the Sunni. There are some
politicians and some religious leaders in Iraq who think it is
definitely a possibility, but most other people--and certainly the
common people I interviewed--said, "No, this is really not a threat.
We've never had a civil war."

In fact, when I would ask people if they were Shia or Sunni, the most
common response was, "I am Muslim, and I am Iraqi," and they wouldn't
even tell me.

Another thing to keep in mind is that Iraq is primarily a tribal
culture. Many of these tribes are half-Shia and half-Sunni, and so many
marriages are [between] Shia and Sunni. When I would ask them what they
thought of the potential for civil war, people would joke with me, "Oh,
civil war? That means I would have to attack my wife?" They laughed at it.


_______________________________________________
More writing, photos and commentary at http://dahrjamailiraq.com

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</x-flowed>
*****************************************************************
 22 NRC to Discuss Siren Failures; Request for Enforcement Action
 
Date: Mon, 04 Apr 2005 15:26:32 -0700

 
<x-flowed>
Media Advisory

For Release:     April 4, 2005

Contact:
Eric Epstein, Three Mile Island Alert, #717-541-1101
Paul Gunter, Nuclear Information and Resource Service, #202 328 0002

U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Review Board to meet with public
petitioners regarding request for enforcement action on widespread
and recurring emergency notification siren failures around nuclear
power stations

When:
Tuesday, April 05, 2005, 1:00­3:00 PM (EST)

Where:
U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Headquarters
Room 0-7B4, Rockville, Maryland

Participate by toll free telephone bridge line:
1-800-532-3469
€  View NRC meeting notice
http://www.nrc.gov/public-involve/public-meetings/index.cfm?fuseaction

€ View the emergency enforcement petition filed with NRC on February 23,
2005 and a listing of known impacted reactor sites including Limerick 1 & 2
(Pottstown), Peach Bottom 2 & 3 (Delta), Susquehanna 1 & 2 (Berwick):

http://www.nirs.org/reactorwatch/emergency/ep2206petitionsirens02232005.pdf


-----
                Siren Problems at Peach & Three Mile Island

    ˆ  On January 11, 2002, siren testing at Three Mile Island (TMI)
encountered
numerous problems: all 34 sirens in York County failed to activate and one
siren
failed in Lancaster County. AmerGen attributed the failures to computer
malfunctions;

    ˆ On March 3, 2002, a siren malfunctioned  in York County again;

    ˆ  On June 25, 2002, ³...station emergency preparedness personnel [at
TMI]
discovered that the emergency planning siren base station at the site, was
unable
to communicate with the off site sirens, due to external radio frequency
noise in
the area²  (IR-50-277/02-05; 50-278/02-05);

      ˆ  On December 12, 2002, TMI sirens malfunctioned in Cumberland  and
York
counties. In Dauphin County, 28 sirens malfunctioned due to the
³inadvertent²
discharge of the ³space bar² by a computer operator;

     ˆ  On August, 15, 2001, the NRC¹s Office of Investigation documented
criminal
behavior by two of Exelon¹s Emergency Preparedness personnel. The NRC found
that the ³technicians fabricated siren testing maintenance records,
performed
deficient siren tests on the off site EP response sirens and intentionally
installed
jumper wires in the siren boxes disabling important system functions.²
(Wayne D. Lanning, NRC, Director of Reactor Safety.)

       ˆ  August 22, 2001, the NRC determined that a white ³finding²
(Violation)
was warranted for the following infractions relating to the plants Public
Address
(PA) system and evacuation alarm/siren (EA) system. Hubert J. Miller, NRC,
Regional Administrator concluded:

     1.  From 1992 to December 19, 2000, approximately 47% of the PA system¹s
speakers were either inaudible or degraded to the point that personnel were
not able to clearly hear instructions;

     2. From January 19, 2001 to February 13, 2001, and again from March 20,
2001 to April 17, 2001, the plant PA system was operated only on the backup
power breaker, which would have tripped after about 49 seconds of evacuation
alarm actuation on the first sequence (The primary breaker had tripped
following
the monthly test the beginning of each period); and,

    3. On February 13 and April 17, 2001, the plant PA/EA system would not
properly
function in that both the primary and the backup breakers were tripped for
periods
of 4.5 hours and 1.5 hours resulting in no system capability to provide
instruction
or sound the evacuation alarm. (Hubert J. Miller, NRC. Regional
Administrator.)

    - October 5-9, 2001, at TMI, ³Licensee sirens in Lancaster County were
inoperable
October  5 through October 9, 2001, due to a radio transmitter being
deenergized
at the county facility. The transmitter is part of the siren actuation
system. This issue
is unresolved pending further investigation into the lines of  ownership and
maintenance of the actuation system² (IR 50-289/01-07.)

    - May 2, 2000 - ³...a supervisor at the York County Œ911¹ center
inadvertently
activated the York County portion of the alert and notification sirens²
(IR 05000277 & 278/2000-002).

</x-flowed>
*****************************************************************
 23 AxisofLogic: Depleted uranium: A death sentence here and abroad 

U.S. Military
 
Letters/Articles to Editor

By Leuren Moret

 Apr 4, 2005, 20:02

“Military men are just dumb stupid animals to be used as pawns
in foreign policy.” - Henry Kissinger, quoted in “Kiss the Boys
Goodbye: How the United States Betrayed Its Own POW’s in
Vietnam” 
Vietnam was a chemical war for oil, permanently contaminating
large regions and countries downriver with Agent Orange, and
environmentally the most devastating war in world history. But
since 1991, the U.S. has staged four nuclear wars using depleted
uranium weaponry, which, like Agent Orange, meets the U.S.
government definition of Weapons of Mass Destruction. Vast
regions in the Middle East and Central Asia have been
permanently contaminated with radiation. 

And what about our soldiers? Terry Jemison of the Department of
Veterans Affairs reported this week to the American Free Press
that “Gulf-era veterans” now on medical disability since 1991
number 518,739, with only 7,035 reported wounded in Iraq in that
same 14-year period. 

 The American Free Press dropped a “dirty bomb” on the Pentagon
by reporting that eight out of 20 men who served in one unit in
the 2003 U.S. military offensive in Iraq now have malignancies.
That means that 40 percent of the soldiers in that unit have
developed malignancies in just 16 months. 

Since these soldiers were exposed to vaccines and depleted
uranium (DU) only, this is strong evidence for researchers and
scientists working on this issue, that DU is the definitive
cause of Gulf War Syndrome. Vaccines are not known to cause
cancer. One of the first published researchers on Gulf War
Syndrome, who also served in 1991 in Iraq, Dr. Andras
Korényi-Both, is in agreement with Barbara Goodno from the
Department of Defense’s Deployment Health Support Directorate,
that in this war soldiers were not exposed to chemicals,
pesticides, bioagents or other suspect causes this time to
confuse the issue. 

This powerful new evidence is blowing holes in the cover-up
perpetrated by the Pentagon and three presidential
administrations ever since DU was first used in 1991 in the
Persian Gulf War. Fourteen years after the introduction of DU on
the battlefield in 1991, the long-term effects have revealed
that DU is a death sentence and very nasty stuff. 

Scientists studying the biological effects of uranium in the
1960s reported that it targets the DNA. Marion Fulk, a nuclear
physical chemist retired from the Livermore Nuclear Weapons Lab
and formerly involved with the Manhattan Project, interprets the
new and rapid malignancies in soldiers from the 2003 war as
“spectacular ... and a matter of concern.” 

This evidence shows that of the three effects which DU has on
biological systems - radiation, chemical and particulate - the
particulate effect from nano-size particles is the most dominant
one immediately after exposure and targets the Master Code in
the DNA. This is bad news, but it explains why DU causes a
myriad of diseases which are difficult to define. 

In simple words, DU “trashes the body.” When asked if the main
purpose for using it was for destroying things and killing
people, Fulk was more specific: “I would say that it is the
perfect weapon for killing lots of people.” 

Soldiers developing malignancies so quickly since 2003 can be
expected to develop multiple cancers from independent causes.

This phenomenon has been reported by doctors in hospitals
treating civilians following NATO bombing with DU in Yugoslavia
in 1998-1999 and the U.S. military invasion of Iraq using DU for
the first time in 1991. Medical experts report that this
phenomenon of multiple malignancies from unrelated causes has
been unknown until now and is a new syndrome associated with
internal DU exposure. 

Just 467 U.S. personnel were wounded in the three-week Persian
Gulf War in 1990-1991. Out of 580,400 soldiers who served in
Gulf War I, 11,000 are dead, and by 2000 there were 325,000 on
permanent medical disability. This astounding number of disabled
vets means that a decade later, 56 percent of those soldiers who
served now have medical problems. 

The number of disabled vets reported up to 2000 has been
increasing by 43,000 every year. Brad Flohr of the Department of
Veterans Affairs told American Free Press that he believes there
are more disabled vets now than even after World War II. 

They brought it home 

Not only were soldiers exposed to DU on and off the
battlefields, but they brought it home. DU in the semen of
soldiers internally contaminated their wives, partners and
girlfriends. Tragically, some women in their 20s and 30s who
were sexual partners of exposed soldiers developed endometriosis
and were forced to have hysterectomies because of health
problems. 

In a group of 251 soldiers from a study group in Mississippi who
had all had normal babies before the Gulf War, 67 percent of
their post-war babies were born with severe birth defects. They
were born with missing legs, arms, organs or eyes or had immune
system and blood diseases. In some veterans’ families now, the
only normal or healthy members of the family are the children
born before the war. 

The Department of Veterans Affairs has stated that they do not
keep records of birth defects occurring in families of veterans. 
How did they hide it? 

Before a new weapons system can be used, it must be fully
tested. The blueprint for depleted uranium weapons is a 1943
declassified document from the Manhattan Project. 

Harvard President and physicist James B. Conant, who developed
poison gas in World War I, was brought into the Manhattan
Project by the father of presidential candidate John Kerry.

Kerry’s father served at a high level in the Manhattan Project
and was a CIA agent. 

Conant was chair of the S-1 Poison Gas Committee, which
recommended developing poison gas weapons from the radioactive
trash of the atomic bomb project in World War II. At that time,
it was known that radioactive materials dispersed in bombs from
the air, from land vehicles or on the battlefield produced very
fine radioactive dust which would penetrate all protective
clothing, any gas mask or filter or the skin. By contaminating
the lungs and blood, it could kill or cause illness very
quickly. 

They also recommended it as a permanent terrain contaminant,
which could be used to destroy populations by contaminating
water supplies and agricultural land with the radioactive dust. 
The first DU weapons system was developed for the Navy in 1968,
and DU weapons were given to and used by Israel in 1973 under
U.S. supervision in the Yom Kippur war against the Arabs. 

The Phalanx weapons system, using DU, was tested on the USS
Bigelow out of Hunters Point Naval Shipyard in 1977, and DU
weapons have been sold by the U.S. to 29 countries. 

Military research report summaries detail the testing of DU from
1974-1999 at military testing grounds, bombing and gunnery
ranges and at civilian labs under contract. Today 42 states are
contaminated with DU from manufacture, testing and deployment. 

Women living around these facilities have reported increases in
endometriosis, birth defects in babies, leukemia in children and
cancers and other diseases in adults. Thousands of tons of DU
weapons tested for decades by the Navy on four bombing and
gunnery ranges around Fallon, Nevada, is no doubt the cause of
the fastest growing leukemia cluster in the U.S. over the past
decade. The military denies that DU is the cause. 

The medical profession has been active in the cover-up - just as
they were in hiding the effects from the American public - of
low level radiation from atmospheric testing and nuclear power
plants. A medical doctor in Northern California reported being
trained by the Pentagon with other doctors, months before the
2003 war started, to diagnose and treat soldiers returning from
the 2003 war for mental problems only. 

Medical professionals in hospitals and facilities treating
returning soldiers were threatened with $10,000 fines if they
talked about the soldiers or their medical problems. They were
also threatened with jail. 

Reporters have also been prevented access to more than 14,000
medically evacuated soldiers flown nightly since the 2003 war in
C-150s from Germany who are brought to Walter Reed Hospital near
Washington, D.C. 

Dr. Robert Gould, former president of the Bay Area chapter of
Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR), has contacted three
medical doctors since February 2004, after I had been invited to
speak about DU. Dr. Katharine Thomasson, president of the Oregon
chapter of the PSR, informed me that Dr. Gould had contacted her
and tried to convince her to cancel her invitation for me to
speak about DU at Portland State University on April 12.

Although I was able to do a presentation, Dr. Thomasson told me
I could only talk about DU in Oregon “and nothing overseas ...
nothing political.” 

Dr. Gould also contacted and discouraged Dr. Ross Wilcox in
Toronto, Canada, from inviting me to speak to Physicians for
Global Survival (PGS), the Canadian equivalent of PSR, several
months later. When that didn’t work, he contacted Dr. Allan
Connoly, the Canadian national president of PGS, who was able to
cancel my invitation and nearly succeeded in preventing Dr.
Wilcox, his own member, from showing photos and presenting
details on civilians suffering from DU exposure and cancer
provided to him by doctors in southern Iraq. 

Dr. Janette Sherman, a former and long-standing member of PSR,
reported that she finally quit some time after being invited to
lunch by a new PSR executive administrator. After the woman had
pumped Dr. Sherman for information all through lunch about her
position on key issues, the woman informed Dr. Sherman that her
last job had been with the CIA. 

How was the truth about DU hidden from military personnel
serving in successive DU wars? Before his tragic death, Sen.
Paul Wellstone informed Joyce Riley, R.N., B.S.N., executive
director of the American Gulf War Veterans Association, that 95
percent of Gulf War veterans had been recycled out of the
military by 1995. Any of those continuing in military service
were isolated from each other, preventing critical information
being transferred to new troops. The “next DU war” had already
been planned, and those planning it wanted “no skunk at the
garden party.” 

The US has a dirty (DU) little (CIA) secret 

A new book just published at the American Free Press by Michael
Collins Piper, “The High Priests of War: The Secret History of
How America’s Neo-Conservative Trotskyites Came to Power and
Orchestrated the War Against Iraq as the First Step in Their
Drive for Global Empire,” details the early plans for a war
against the Arab world by Henry Kissinger and the neo-cons in
the late 1960s and early 1970s. That just happens to coincide
with getting the DU “show on the road” and the oil crisis in the
Middle East, which caused concern not only to President Nixon.
The British had been plotting and scheming for control of the
oil in Iraq for decades since first using poison gas on the
Iraqis and Kurds in 1912. 

The book details the creation of the neo-cons by their
“godfather” and Trotsky lover Irving Kristol, who pushed for a
“war against terrorism” long before 9/11 and was lavishly funded
for years by the CIA. His son, William Kristol, is one of the
most influential men in the United States. 

Both are public relations men for the Israeli lobby’s
neo-conservative network, with strong ties to Rupert Murdoch.
Kissinger also has ties to this network and the Carlyle Group,
who, one could say, have facilitated these omnicidal wars
beginning from the time former President Bush took office. It
would be easy to say that we are recycling World Wars I and II,
with the same faces. 

When I asked Vietnam Special Ops Green Beret Capt. John
McCarthy, who could have devised this omnicidal plan to use DU
to destroy the genetic code and genetic future of large
populations of Arabs and Moslems in the Middle East and Central
Asia - just coincidentally the areas where most of the world’s
oil deposits are located - he replied: “It has all the
handprints of Henry Kissinger.” 

In Zbignew Brzezinski’s book “The Grand Chessboard: American
Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives,” the map of the
Eurasian chessboard includes four regions strategic to U.S.
foreign policy. The “South” region corresponds precisely to the
regions now contaminated permanently with radiation from U.S.
bombs, missiles and bullets made with thousands of tons of DU. 
A Japanese professor, Dr. K. Yagasaki, has calculated that 800
tons of DU is the atomicity equivalent of 83,000 Nagasaki bombs.

The U.S. has used more DU since 1991 than the atomicity
equivalent of 400,000 Nagasaki bombs. Four nuclear wars indeed,
and 10 times the amount of radiation released into the
atmosphere from atmospheric testing! 

No wonder our soldiers, their families and the people of the
Middle East, Yugoslavia and Central Asia are sick. But as Henry
Kissinger said after Vietnam when our soldiers came home ill
from Agent Orange, “Military men are just dumb stupid animals to
be used for foreign policy.” 

Unfortunately, more and more of those soldiers are men and women
with brown skin. And unfortunately, the DU radioactive dust will
be carried around the world and deposited in our environments
just as the “smog of war” from the 1991 Gulf War was found in
deposits in South America, the Himalayas and Hawaii. 

In June 2003, the World Health Organization announced in a press
release that global cancer rates will increase 50 percent by
2020. What else do they know that they aren’t telling us? I know
that depleted uranium is a death sentence ... for all of us. We
will all die in silent ways. 

http://www.sfbayview.com/081804/Dep...

*****************************************************************
 24 HSC: HSE appoints directors of nuclear safety and hazardous installations 

HSC press release E048:05 - 4 April 2005 

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) today announced
appointments to two of its Board roles with the news that Mike
Weightman is to become HSEs Director of Nuclear Safety and HM
Chief Inspector of Nuclear Installations, and that Kevin Myers
is to be Director of Hazardous Installations. 

Kevin Myers joined HSE in 1976 as a factory inspector. Following
a range of operational posts in the field he transferred to HSEs
London headquarters to support the Deputy Director General. In
1991 he moved to the Offshore Safety Division to support its
establishment in HSE following the transfer of regulatory
responsibility from the Department of Energy. He was seconded to
the European Commission in Brussels in March 1993 to work on the
development of the Seveso Directive. He returned to HSE in 1995
to help set up a new Chemical and Hazardous Installations
Division and was subsequently posted to it as unit manager for
the South, South East and East Midlands. In 1998 he was promoted
to the post of Regional Director in HSEs Field Operations
Directorate. He has been Chief Inspector of Construction since
January 2000. Kevin, 50, is married with five children and lives
in Essex. 

Mike Weightman joined HSE in 1988 after working in the nuclear
industry for 13 years in a variety of roles in research,
operations and engineering projects. In HSE he initially acted
as a site inspector for a variety of nuclear sites. Mike headed
up a policy unit in HSEs Rose Court headquarters before
returning to Bootle to set up a strategy unit in NSD. Later he
ran a site inspection unit covering Ministry of Defence nuclear
facilities. On promotion to Deputy Chief Inspector, Mike was in
charge of the NSD Division regulating BNFL and nuclear chemical
sites, and later moved over to head up the regulation of
operating nuclear power stations. Since 2002 he has also chaired
the independent board overseeing the HSE investigation into the
Potters Bar derailment. He is a Chartered Engineer and Chartered
Physicist. Mike, 56, is married with two sons, aged 19 and 22,
and lives in south Cheshire. 

Timothy Walker, HSEs Director General, said: 

I welcome both appointments to the Board. Mike Weightman brings
great experience and knowledge of the nuclear sector and is
widely respected in the industry. I am sure that he will provide
the right leadership for the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate
so it maintains its role in securing nuclear safety. 

Kevin Myers brings with him a wealth of experience from
regulating a range of industries and is well placed to continue
our work of ensuring that the risks from major hazards are
properly managed. 

Public Enquiries : Call HSE's InfoLine, tel: 08701 545500, or
write to: HSE InfoLine, Caerphilly Business Park, Caerphilly
CF83 3GG. 

Press Enquiries : Journalists only : Mark Wheeler 020 7717 6905 

*****************************************************************
 25 [du-list] Nuclear Waste Shipment in the Tasman
 
Date: Mon, 04 Apr 2005 15:29:57 -0700

 
<x-flowed>
      http://www.greenpeace.org.nz/news/news_main.asp?PRID=792

        ( This  circuitous shipping route of  lethal nuclear waste around 
the globe,  from  Japan to France and back, round the bottom of Australia 
is partly determined by the refusal of many governments  to allow passage.
       db)

       Nuclear Waste Shipment in the Tasman: Greenpeace warns
       Friday, April 01, 2005


             [Image Gallery]

       A ship carrying high level radioactive waste is expected to be going 
through the Tasman as early as this weekend, Greenpeace warned today.

       The Pacific Sandpiper's lethal cargo consists of five casks holding 
124 canisters of deadly glassified nuclear waste. It departed from 
Cherbourg, France, on February 17, and is expected to travel through the 
Tasman between Australia and New Zealand as early as this weekend.

       "This waste is the most radioactive material ever produced and, if 
released into the environment, would be around for thousands of years. The 
release of even a small fraction of this cargo from either an accident or a 
deliberate attack could lead to an environmental and public health 
catastrophe," said Cindy Baxter, Greenpeace Campaign Manager.

       The waste is a by-product from plutonium reprocessing at La Hague, 
France, using Japanese irradiated nuclear fuel. It is being transported 
through the Tasman by British Nuclear Fuels.

       The nuclear industry is touting nuclear power as the answer to 
climate change, but the reality is that the safety, security, and 
proliferation costs of high level waste are enormous compared with clean, 
renewable energy such as wind.

       "Nuclear power is no solution to climate change. It swaps one 
environmental nightmare for another. Nuclear power produces spent fuel, 
which contains nuclear weapons usable plutonium and high level radioactive 
waste such as this. Not only is it a huge risk to the environment but it's 
also a security risk through such shipments and from the plutonium it 
produces."

       Moreover, while financial costs for nuclear power continue to 
increase, costs for renewable energy are falling rapidly. In the last ten 
years, the cost per kilowatt hour of wind energy fell by 50% and solar from 
photovoltaics by 30%.

       Nuclear energy is a total non-starter in New Zealand. Aside from the 
unresolved issue of how to deal with the highly toxic waste it produces, 
New Zealand has neither the huge and costly infrastructure nor the 
skill-base to handle nuclear energy. Moreover, the size of nuclear reactors 
would be too big for our electricity system.

       Greenpeace has alerted the New Zealand Government and Pacific Island 
countries to this shipment. Pacific Island countries have repeatedly called 
for a stop to such shipments, yet no country along the route has been told 
about the Pacific Sandpiper.

       Notes: (1) Japan currently has a plutonium stockpile of more than 
38,000kg of plutonium. As little as 5kg of this would be sufficient for one 
nuclear weapon. Both Areva of France and British Nuclear Fuels are trying 
to secure new plutonium fuel (MOX) contracts with Japanese clients which 
would lead to many tens of plutonium transports over the next 20 years, 
most likely to transit the Tasman Sea and South Pacific. Greenpeace is 
campaigning for comprehensive fissile material treaty that would prohibit 
all production of weapons usable material - plutonium and highly enriched 
uranium.


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*****************************************************************
 26 [NukeNet] More On Yucca Fraud
 
Date: Mon, 04 Apr 2005 15:26:18 -0700

 
<x-flowed>
NukeNet Anti-Nuclear Network (nukenet@energyjustice.net)


  Mothersalert:
http://www.mothersalert.org/moreinfo.html


http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/sun/2005/apr/02/518542262.html?&quot;yucca%20mountain&quot;
  April 02, 2005

Editorial: 'Make up more stuff '
LAS VEGAS SUN

WEEKEND EDITION

April 2 - 3, 2005

On Tuesday a House subcommittee, chaired by Rep.
Jon Porter, R-Nev., will hold a hearing into
allegations that scientific records involving the
Yucca Mountain project were falsified. Last month
the Energy Department disclosed the existence of
e-mails sent by U.S. Geological Survey employees
working on the Yucca Mountain project's quality
assurance program, messages that discussed
fabricating scientific information about how water
moves through the mountain. On Friday the
Associated Press disclosed the content of some of
the e-mails, which, to put it simply, are
chilling.

"I don't have a clue when these programs were
installed. So I've made up the dates and names," a
U.S. Geological Survey employee wrote in one
e-mail. "This is as good as it's going to get. If
they need more proof, I will be happy to make up
more stuff." In yet another e-mail, the AP
reported, the same employee wrote to a colleague
about what appear to be his sentiments about
quality assurance: "In the end I keep track of 2
sets of files, the one that will keep QA happy and
the ones that were actually used."

How damaging the e-mails are to the Yucca Mountain
project's credibility -- and its future -- can't
be overstated. After all, a federal employee is
blithely discussing tampering with scientific work
that goes to the very heart of whether Yucca
Mountain can safely contain nuclear waste. If, as
Nevada officials have contended, water can travel
more rapidly through the mountain than the Energy
Department asserts, then there is a real
likelihood of the water corroding the canisters
holding the nuclear waste, enabling the deadly
substance to escape. Such a finding would be a
show-stopper, resulting in Yucca Mountain being
unable to receive a license to operate from the
Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

When Yucca Mountain eventually meets its demise,
we'd suggest that a fitting epitaph could come
from one of the aforementioned e-mails. Our
favorite: "If they need more proof, I will be
happy to make up more stuff." We can't think of a
more apt description for the absolute disregard
for science at Yucca Mountain.



http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/sun/2005/apr/01/518539018.html?&quot;yucca%20mountain&quot;

  April 01, 2005


Yucca e-mails called damning
By Suzanne Struglinski
<suzanne@lasvegassun.com>
SUN WASHINGTON BUREAU

WASHINGTON -- Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., called
e-mails on the alleged falsified information on
the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump
"damning" but would not discuss details to avoid
compromising ongoing criminal investigations.

Porter complained today the Energy and Interior
departments have not cooperated in giving his
House subcommittee redacted documents so the
public could access some information on the most
recent Yucca controversy.

"My goal was to not interfere with the criminal
investigation," Porter said. "They have not
complied with my request so we are doing it
ourselves."

The Energy Department announced its discovery of
potential falsified documents on the Yucca
Mountain project March 16, based on e-mails
written between 1998 and 2000 by a U.S. Geological
Survey employee.

Porter said the documents indicate a "very serious
breach of trust" but would not comment on specific
details.

The FBI and the inspector generals of both
department are investigating the situation.

The House Federal Workforce and Agency
Organization subcommittee, chaired by Porter,
received a set of unredacted e-mails documents
this week, which Porter reviewed Thursday night.

Redacted document were supposed to be made
available at 9 a.m. PST today, but were delayed
because Porter's subcommittee attorney had to
redact documents themselves.

Porter said he is prepare to subpoena any
additional document either department does not
turn over. There is some overlap between the two
departments' documents but each mainly has
different information related to the alleged
falsification.

"Our first priority is the public," Porter said.
"I'm prepared to do whatever it takes for the
public to have access to this information."

He said the redacted documents would contain
useful information.

Porter will hear from both departments' inspector
generals at a hearing Tuesday as well as Nevada
Gov. Kenny Guinn, Attorney General Brian Sandoval
and other state officials.

Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., who will also testify
Tuesday, called on the Energy Department to stop
its work on the project's license application as
the investigations take place.

Meanwhile, the Senate Energy and Natural Resources
Committee has postponed its hearing focusing on
the status of the Yucca project until further
notice. Committee spokeswoman Angela Harper said
the committee already had a full schedule for the
week with a conference on water challenges and
moving forward with the Energy Bill. A House panel
will begin marking up its version of the bill next
week.



http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/sun/2005/mar/31/518532895.html?&quot;yucca%20mountain&quot;

March 31, 2005


FBI steps into Yucca document investigation
By Suzanne Struglinski
<suzanne@lasvegassun.com>
SUN WASHINGTON BUREAU


WASHINGTON -- The FBI is examining the documents
allegedly falsified by government employees
working on the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste
repository, a federal official says.

Chad Bungard, deputy staff director and chief
counsel at a House Government Reform subcommittee,
said he was told from the beginning of the
inspector general investigations at the Interior
and Energy departments that the FBI would also be
involved.

The FBI press office would not confirm the
agency's involvement or comment on the matter. The
inspector general offices at each department also
would not comment due to ongoing investigations.

Bungard said this will be pursued as a criminal
matter until the Justice Department finds
otherwise.

"That is why we are only giving our redacted
information on Friday. We don't want to compromise
anything," Bungard said.

The House Federal Workforce and Agency
Organization Subcommittee, of which Rep. Jon
Porter, R-Nev., is chairman, is to hold a hearing
April 5 looking at the department's discovery
earlier this month of e-mails sent by U.S.
Geological Survey employees that suggest they
falsified scientific information on how water
moves through the mountain.

Water movement is a key issue in determining the
proposed repository's safety because it can help
radiation move through the mountain and possibly
into the groundwater under the mountain.

Porter will review the documents today when he
returns to Washington. The department handed them
over on Tuesday.

"My instincts tell me this is the tip of the
iceberg," Porter said.

The "sound science" argument has been used all
along to convince Congress -- and the public --
that the dump plan is safe, but Porter said if the
data has been tampered with, it puts the whole
project in jeopardy. Porter said that at his
hearing he will seek answers to such questions as
how long the departments knew about these problems
and why changes to data were made.

Rep. Shelley Berkely, D-Nev., said that like
Porter she suspects the problems unveiled by the
Energy Department go beyond what is known right
now, which proves arguments for the last two
decades that the project should not move forward.

She said she believes she knows the motives for
the alleged falsification.

"When the science didn't match the reality, they
used politics to change the science in order to
match the reality," she said.

She welcomed the FBI's involvement because
tampering with scientific data threatens the
future health and safety of Nevadans.

"That someone or a group of people colluded to
falsify the scientific data on which the entire
Yucca Mountain project is based is nothing less
than criminal and should be prosecuted to the
fullest extent of the law. There is no excuse for
it," Berkley said, adding that those responsible
should be "put away for a good long time."

Jack Finn, spokesman for Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev.,
said Ensign was pleased the FBI was involved,
since that is what the senators asked for.

Ensign and Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid,
D-Nev., sent a letter to Attorney General Alberto
Gonzales and FBI Director Robert Mueller a day
after the Energy Department's announcement about
the e-mails asking for an investigation and for
protection of the documents involved.

Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., believes the FBI will be
an "impartial and unbiased" investigator, said
spokeswoman Amy Spanbauer. She said the issue is
obviously a serious matter that brings the whole
integrity of the project into question.

The investigation is the latest stumbling block
for Yucca Mountain, which has hit a series of
troubles with funding and its planned license
application since being approved as the nation's
nuclear waste repository.

A federal appeals court found that the
Environmental Protection Agency did not follow the
law when determining how long the mountain should
hold radiation, a key scientific standard. The EPA
is now reworking the standard.



http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/sun/2005/mar/31/518532462.html?&quot;yucca%20mountain&quot;

  March 31, 2005


Porter calls for punishment of falsifiers of Yucca
work
By Cy Ryan
<cy@lasvegassun.com>
SUN CAPITAL BUREAU

CARSON CITY -- Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., said
Wednesday that if federal employees did indeed
falsify Yucca Mountain nuclear dump documents they
should at least be fired and could also be charged
criminally.

"If Congress has been lied to, Congress will take
whatever steps are necessary to make sure they are
penalized to the fullest extent of the law,"
Porter told reporters after addressing a joint
session of the Legislature.

Any firing would have to be done by the Bush
administration, however, he conceded.

In his address, Porter noted that as chairman of a
subcommittee that has jurisdiction over all
federal agencies, he will ensure that a hearing
April 5 in Washington seeks the whole truth
regarding the allegedly doctored documents
involving water seepage studies at Yucca Mountain.

The inspector generals in the Energy and Interior
departments are already investigating the matter,
and the FBI also has reportedly become involved.

Porter said his office has secured all of the
documents and he will release them Friday in
advance of the hearing next Tuesday. He said he
expects further revelations will emerge from the
documents but he has not had a chance to review
them.

"We're going to expose any and all improprieties
having to do with the documents that members of
Congress have based their decision on," he said.
"The scientific data that Congress has used is
based on faith and trust in these federal
agencies.

"If in fact those documents are falsified and have
impacted the science and the delivery of
information to the federal court and to members of
Congress, we will take action regarding the
falsification of documents."

Congress passed a plan to put the nation's nuclear
waste at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las
Vegas, based on scientific work done by the
government. President Bush signed off on the plan,
citing "sound science." Critics of the plan say
this is proof that the project isn't based on
sound science.

In other comments to the Legislature, the
second-term congressman from Las Vegas also urged
the Legislature to pass all-day kindergarten.

"There is no question we need it," he said.

He said he knew it was a challenge to find the
money for the all-day kindergarten, but he added
he is looking for federal grants to help the
state.

He also told the lawmakers the federal government
needs to reduce the unfunded federal mandates on
state and local governments. Asked later to name
one unfunded federal mandate that has been
eliminated, he said there were some, but he could
not name them.

He said a committee is looking at 150 unfunded
mandates for possible elimination.

Asked about removing the statue of Sen. Patrick
McCarran from the Capitol's National Statuary
Hall, Porter said.

"That's up to the Nevada Legislature, and if the
Legislature thinks it's the right thing to do, we
should do it.

"The new revelations of the some of the things of
his past put into question whether he should
remain a statue in statuary hall, but I have
confidence in the Legislature," he said.

A new biography of McCarran paints him as a
vindictive racist who was the man behind Sen. Joe
McCarthy's red scare witch hunt .






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</x-flowed>
*****************************************************************
 27 [NukeNet] Groups Affirm Opposition to Private Nuke Dump
 
Date: Mon, 04 Apr 2005 15:26:40 -0700

 
<x-flowed>
NukeNet Anti-Nuclear Network (nukenet@energyjustice.net)

*** P R E S S    R E L E A S E ***

For Immediate Release: April 4, 2005
Contact: Melissa Kemp, PC (202) 454-5176; Kevin Kamps, NIRS (202)
328-0002 x. 14

Opposition to Private Fuel Storage Mounts from Public Interest Groups
and Tribes

Citing National Security and Environmental Justice Concerns, Groups
Urge Nuclear Agency to Listen to Utah's Appeal

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Public interest groups and spokespersons from
indigenous tribes today charged that the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory
Commission (NRC) is exacerbating the nation's nuclear waste problems --
and endangering national security -- by preliminarily approving a
so-called temporary waste dump in Utah known as Private Fuel Storage
(PFS).

The proposal to build the dump on the Skull Valley Goshute Reservation
in Utah, 45 miles southwest of Salt Lake City, is led by a private
consortium of eight commercial nuclear utilities, which plans to
"temporarily" store 44,000 tons of irradiated fuel in dry cask
containers above ground.  According to the utilities, this site will not
serve as a permanent resting place for the nation's waste, but rather
would be an interim storage site until Yucca Mountain is opened.

But PFS poses a national security risk because the high-level nuclear
waste would travel on railways through highly populated regions across
the United States with little to no preparation or training for states
and cities, the groups said. Moreover, questions about the integrity of
the waste casks in a crash remain unresolved.  Nuclear waste remains
dangerous to human health and the environment for hundreds of thousands
of years.  Further, if Yucca Mountain, which is beleaguered by
controversy, never opens, PFS would be poised to become a de facto
permanent storage site.

"This plan is a fatally flawed shell game, unnecessarily risking
transport of dangerous radioactive waste across the country to a
temporary dump, only to have it moved again someday to someplace else,"
said Kevin Kamps, nuclear waste specialist at the Nuclear Information
and Resource Service (NIRS).  "Once parked at Skull Valley, the 4,000
containers of waste would be a radioactive bull's eye for terrorists
directly upwind of Salt Lake City."

"Private Fuel Storage is just another industry-driven scheme to further
energy companies' goals of a nuclear-powered future," said Wenonah
Hauter, director of Public Citizen's energy program.  "We urge the U.S.
Nuclear Regulatory Commission to rein in this misguided plan and listen
carefully to the state of Utah's legitimate concerns about why its
residents should not bear the burden of hosting 44,000 tons of
radioactive waste in their backyard."

Utah has been fighting the proposal since 1997.  There are no nuclear
power plants within Utah's borders, yet Utah's residents are being
targeted to bear the burden of 80 percent of the country's commercial
high-level radioactive waste.  Further, the private project is sited on
a small, impoverished Indian reservation, which raises serious
environmental justice concerns, an issue the NRC has been negligent in
addressing in recent years.

"Yet again, like the Mescalero Apache in New Mexico that fought off PFS
years ago, and dozens of other tribes before us, our sovereign
reservation is being targeted by aggressive, giant energy corporations
and complicit government agencies," said Margene Bullcreek, a leading
Skull Valley Goshute opponent to PFS. "We do not want this radioactive
waste dump on our sacred land."

On Wednesday, Utah will present oral arguments in its appeal of the NRC
licensing board's recent decision to dismiss Utah's safety concerns. The
oral arguments will be made at a 1 p.m. hearing at the NRC's Rockville,
Md., headquarters that is open to the public.

###

For more information about Public Citizen, please visit
www.citizen.org.

For more information about Nuclear Information and Resource Service,
please visit www.nirs.org.

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</x-flowed>
*****************************************************************
 28 [NukeNet] Yucca: E-Mails Reveal Fraud
 
Date: Mon, 04 Apr 2005 15:30:36 -0700

 
<x-flowed>
NukeNet Anti-Nuclear Network (nukenet@energyjustice.net)


   Mothersalert Home: http://www.mothersalert.org


http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/02/politics/02yucca.html

E-Mails Reveal Fraud in Nuclear Site Study
By MATTHEW L. WALD

Published: April 2, 2005


ASHINGTON, April 1 - Government employees studying
whether Yucca Mountain in Nevada would be a
suitable place to bury nuclear waste acknowledged
in e-mail messages to each other that they had
made up details about how they had done their
research in order to appear to meet quality
standards, according to some of the messages made
public on Friday.

Some of the frank exchanges included instructions
to erase them. The Energy Department, which is
trying to open a waste repository at the mountain,
100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, disclosed the
existence of the e-mail messages two weeks ago. On
Friday, a subcommittee of the House Committee on
Government Reform released dozens of pages of the
messages.

One analyst wrote that a computer program had
generated data he could not explain, so he
withheld it from the quality assurance department,
known as QA.

"Don't look at the last 4 lines. Those are a
mystery," wrote the scientist, who the
subcommittee said was an employee of the United
States Geological Survey, a part of the Interior
Department. "I've deleted the lines from the
'official' QA version of the files."

"In the end I keep track of 2 sets of files, the
ones that will keep QA happy and the ones that
were actually used," he wrote. The message was
dated November 1999.

B. John Garrick, the chairman of the Nuclear Waste
Technical Review Board, a group of independent
experts established by Congress to monitor the
Energy Department, said that it was too soon to
draw conclusions but that "it is disturbing to see
such loosely framed discussions between
scientists."

Before releasing the messages, the subcommittee
removed the names and titles of the senders and
the recipients, and deleted other words that made
the full context of some of the messages difficult
to ascertain. But the theme was that employees
were performing work they did not believe would
meet standards set by the quality assurance
inspectors, and were sometimes falsifying their
work in ways that they believed would satisfy the
inspectors.

In a message dated April 22, 1999, a scientist
wrote that he did some calculations by hand and
that the computer program he wrote, presumably to
do those calculations, "is not in the system." He
wrote that he feared he would be "taken to the
cleaners" by the inspectors because his work did
not refer to an established procedure laid out in
a scientific notebook, and he asked if he should
create such a notebook "and back-date the whole
thing??"

The author of another message noted in January
2000 that he could not document the way certain
work was done. "I can start making something up,
but then the (deleted) projects will need to go on
hold," he wrote.

In an e-mail message in March 2000, a government
worker wrote that he did not know when software he
had used had been installed. "So I've made up the
dates and names," he wrote. "If they need more
proof I will be happy to make up more stuff, as
long as its not a video recording of the software
being installed."

The chairman of the panel that released the
messages, Representative Jon Porter, Republican of
Nevada, pointed out that the Energy Department and
the White House had repeatedly said that their
recommendation of the Yucca Mountain site was
based on "sound science."

"If the project has been based upon science, and
the science is not correct, it puts the whole
project in jeopardy," said Mr. Porter, a longtime
opponent of Yucca Mountain plan. "I believe these
e-mails show science is not driving the project;
it's expedience to get the job done."

In a well-done scientific investigation, he said,
the methods used to derive predictions about
crucial factors like water infiltration should be
transparent and reproducible.

A lawyer who represents the State of Nevada,
Joseph Egan, said that after reading the messages,
"you can't even say it's wrong; you have to say
it's not reliable."

"You don't know how badly they've fudged this
stuff," Mr. Egan said.

Some of the correspondents explicitly discuss
problems and say they do not believe that they
make any material difference to the ability of the
mountain, a volcanic structure on the edge of the
Nevada Test Site, to hold the waste for thousands
of years.

But the issue of quality control is crucial to the
Energy Department because to open a repository, it
must win the approval of the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission, which has scuttled some projects
because of quality assurance problems. In one case
in the 1980's, the commission forced the owners of
a nuclear reactor to abandon their project, after
they had spent nearly $2 billion and when the
reactor was said to be 98 percent complete,
because of questions about whether some welds had
been made properly and inspected adequately by
qualified inspectors.

The subcommittee on the federal work force, which
released the e-mail messages, plans to hold a
hearing on Yucca Mountain on Tuesday. The
witnesses include several prominent opponents,
including Gov. Kenny Guinn of Nevada and Senator
Harry Reid, also of Nevada, the Democratic leader.






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</x-flowed>
*****************************************************************
 29 All Nuclear Waste Storage Options in Doubt
 
Date: Mon, 04 Apr 2005 15:26:46 -0700

 
<x-flowed>


All Nuclear Waste Storage Options in Doubt

In the past month options for safe, secure and permanent storage have 
narrowed to zero. Its time to plan for a non-nuclear energy future in 
California

In the last weeks, the nation has learned:
    * Yucca documents were falsified;
    * The National Academy of Sciences issued a report that questions 
safety of onsite spent fuel pools;
    * Utah officials are gathing support to prevent Skull Valley from opening.
All Nuclear Waste Storage Options in Doubt
 
Date: Mon, 04 Apr 2005 15:26:46 -0700

 
<x-flowed>


All Nuclear Waste Storage Options in Doubt

In the past month options for safe, secure and permanent storage have 
narrowed to zero. Its time to plan for a non-nuclear energy future in 
California

In the last weeks, the nation has learned:
    * Yucca documents were falsified;
    * The National Academy of Sciences issued a report that questions 
safety of onsite spent fuel pools;
    * Utah officials are gathing support to prevent Skull Valley from opening.

Yet renewable energy provides hope for California's energy future.

The government is finally beginning to admit that its program to store 
high-level radioactive waste is a debacle. The question for California 
residents - should our state allow continued operation of nuclear plants 
sited on vulnerable earthquake active coastal zones?

Nuclear plants that daily produce lethal radioactive waste which is stored 
on coast bluffs is not in our state's best interest. Planning to replace 
this radioactive generation must begin now. We can save multi-billion 
dollar investments in steam generators and other failing components at 
California's nuclear plants. We can use these ratepayers dollars to create 
electric generation that will benefit our state with new jobs, new property 
taxes, and clean energy.

Phasing out aging and dilapidating nuclear plants is possible and we invite 
California residents to work with us towards an energy legacy we can 
proudly leave our children.

4f512.jpg

Rochelle Becker Executive Director Alliance for Nuclear Responsibility
Please support our mission. Donations can be sent to PO 1328, San Luis 
Obispo, CA 93406-1328. <http://a4nr.org/elements/donate>Join the Alliance 
for Nuclear Responsibility and make our state safer NOW.


Breaking News

Here's the latest news
    * Renewables are the option for our future
    * Renewable energy is competitive
    * <http://a4nr.org/news/1.renewablesarecosteffective>Read more
    * NRC Hides National Academy of Sciences Report
    * National Academy Disputes Safety of Spent Fuel Pools at Reactor Sites
    * <http://a4nr.org/news/2.nationalacademyscience>Read more
    * Documents on Yucca may have been falsified
    * The Government Announces Yucca Mountain documents may have been 
falsified
    * <http://a4nr.org/news/3.yuccafalsifieddocuments>Read more
    * Utah Nuclear Waste Storage in Doubt
    * Nation's only nuclear waste back up to Yucca Mountain hitting snags
    * <http://a4nr.org/news/4.utahsiteindoubt>Read more


What you can do to help?

There are several ways you can help the Alliance...
    * How To Help
    * To help the Alliance, come to a4nr.org and make a donation, join our 
mailing lists, or become a Supporter.
    * <http://a4nr.org/elements/howToHelp/help1>Read more


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can Replace Polluting and Dangerous Energy Sources
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 30 San Luis Obispo Tribune: Letter: Yucca Trash

| 04/01/2005 | 

Letters to the Editor
 
The public's right to know 

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, we're talking about trash. 

Spent nuclear fuel is trash, garbage. What is top secret about
garbage? 

One single fuel rod's got enough radiation to kill a person
inside of three minutes. 

I don't think you have to worry about anybody obtaining uranium
fuel rods, or parts of fuel rods. 

All the secrecy surrounding nuclear waste is ridiculous, as you
suggest in your March 30 editorial, "What's the NRC hiding?" 

We the people are the ones who have to live with these materials
in our midst, and we have a right to know what they are. 

I believe everything involving nuclear waste must be
transparent. When we measure 10,000 millirem coming at us, we
have a right to know what's most probably causing it. 

There's a fight going on in Nevada right now about classifying
some wastes to go in Yucca Mountain, and I've put my two cents
worth in that issue. 

Secrecy is nothing but a way to hide what the people have a need
and a right to see, and I hope we won't fall for the excuse that
terrorists might use the so-called confidential information to
obtain nuclear materials. 

Ron Bourgoin 

North Carolina 

*****************************************************************
 31 Las Vegas RJ: YUCCA MOUNTAIN: Workers describe sabotage 
 
Monday, April 04, 2005

Whistle-blower case lists efforts to bypass water meter, violate
EPA guidelines 

By KEITH ROGERS REVIEW-JOURNAL
 
Graphic by Mike Johnson.   

Pipe fitters on the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste project were
told by a foreman two years ago to sabotage the tunnel's main
water line and make a special pipe to bypass a meter that
measures how much of the state's water is used.
 
 That's according to a claim made in a Labor Department
whistle-blower case and in interviews last month with former
contract workers at the site, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
 
 Before Ronald Dollens of Pahrump was fired in May 2003 by Yucca
Mountain Project contractor Bechtel SAIC, he said he endured "a
lot of harassment" for reporting what he perceived as violations
of worker safety laws and Environmental Protection Agency laws,
including the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act.
 
 It's unclear whether the bypass was ever installed, but a labor
investigator has recommended that Bechtel SAIC pay Dollens
$250,000 for retaliating once he raised the complaints.
 
 "There was sabotage that went on. A pipe that went into the
portal was purposely broke for overtime," Dollens said.
 
 In a separate incident, he said, pipe fitters made a special
pipe section so that groundwater, pumped from a well near Yucca
Mountain, could be installed temporarily to bypass the place
where the state's water is measured.
 
 Later that year, in November 2003, Nevada State Engineer Hugh
Ricci denied the Department of Energy permanent rights to 140
million gallons per year of groundwater to build and operate a
repository at Yucca Mountain for the nation's spent nuclear fuel
and highly radioactive defense wastes. 
During federal court proceedings over the water issue, however,
the state agreed to allow temporary use of water at Yucca
Mountain to refill four potable water storage tanks for restroom
facilities and emergencies.
 
 In a statement that Dollens filed for a Labor Department
investigation into his wrongful termination claim, he said his
foreman, Mike Oettinger, asked him and co-worker Dale Cain in
November 2002 "to purposely break a line that ran into the
tunnel just so we could get overtime pay fixing the pipe that
would be broken."
 
 "I told Mike, 'You're crazy,' and so did Dale. We then left
and, when we came back to work on Monday, and in the Plan of the
Day meeting, they told everyone to thank Mike Oettinger for
coming in on his day off to fix a broken pipe. ... I asked Mike
Oettinger if he had broken the pipe, and he just laughed and
said, 'Don't ask,' " Dollens stated in his affidavit. "Nothing
ever happened for this pipe sabotage."
 
 Reached Friday at his home in Amargosa Valley, Oettinger
wouldn't comment on the case or the allegations. 
A spokesman for Bechtel SAIC, Jason Bohne, also wouldn't comment
on the allegations, citing ongoing litigation.
 
 Cain said he was frustrated by the situation and doesn't stand
to gain anything for confirming Dollens' story.
 
 "I'd just like to see those people tell the truth for a change.
There's nothing they can do to me," he said in a telephone
interview Thursday.
 
 In a previous interview, Cain described how Oettinger discussed
a plan with them for bypassing the water meter at the pumphouse
for well J-13 at the Nevada Test Site.
 
 "His plan was that the water was metered at a certain point,
and they would be able to tell when he turned the pumps on,"
Cain said. 
"If you eliminate the piece with the meter and then put a
straight, spool piece in it, then you could bolt it up on two
ends and then unbolt it, put the meter back in and nobody knew,"
he said.
 
 "That was exactly how the idea was explained to us. Me and
(Dollens) knew what was right and wrong," Cain said.
 
 Cain and Dollens said they never saw the bypass piece installed.
 
 "I observed the piece being made and delivered. Whether it got
used, who knows?" Cain said. 
Cain was laid off in December 2003 for an unrelated incident.
Cain said it was Oettinger who initiated proceedings that led to
that termination.
 
 Last year on April 1, Christopher Lee, deputy regional
administrator for the Labor Department's Occupational Safety and
Health Administration in San Francisco, recommended Dollens
receive a $250,000 punitive award from Bechtel SAIC for
"reckless conduct indifferent to the rights of the
whistle-blower."
 
 The penalty, Lee wrote in a letter to Dollens' attorney,
Sangeeta Singal, and Bechtel SAIC's attorney, Mark Ricciardi,
"appears appropriate to act as a deterrent to any such further
retaliatory actions."
 
 Bechtel SAIC's attorneys objected to the suggested punitive
award, and the case is now before Administrative Law Judge
William Dorsey. A trial date has not been set. 
Singal claimed Bechtel SAIC had created a hostile work
environment for Dollens because, among other things, he
protested "when a supervisor instructed the workers to steal
water from the state of Nevada and change the water spools to
bypass the state's water meter," according to Lee's letter, 
That, Singal said, was in addition to protests Dollens lodged
when a supervisor instructed pipe fitters to purposely punch
holes in air conditioning systems to vent Freon, a toxic
refrigerant. That was also in addition to purposely damaging the
main water line to the tunnel so they would have to work
overtime to repair it.
 
 Lee wrote that, because of inadequate information, he could not
establish if water line sabotage, air conditioning tampering and
theft of the state's water had in fact occurred.
 
 Nevertheless, the investigation found that Dollens had been
humiliated on March 23, 2003 for reporting an unsafe condition
at the site's 1-million-gallon potable water tank. Lee said the
humiliation took the form of yelling at Dollens.
 
 A month later, on April 24, 2003, Dollens called for a "stop
work" order after Oettinger told him and another pipe fitter to
work on some valves in the J-13 pumphouse.
 
 The workers were worried that if they opened the wrong valve,
they could possibly spill radioactive-laced water from old tanks
at the test site. 
"These tanks are old, and I did not want to be the cause of
contaminating the area," Dollens' affidavit says.
 
 Lee's findings state, "This event led to a subsequent
confrontation with his supervisor."
 
 Dollens blames a heart attack he suffered on the stress from
the confrontation. 
That eventually led to Dollens' firing, according to the
investigator.
 
 Singal also is representing three other former Yucca Mountain
contract workers -- Greg Dann, Lon Fuller and Tom Koscik -- who
claim they were fired by Bechtel SAIC because they refused to
sign affidavits for the company in the Dollens case.
 
 
Copyright Las Vegas Review-Journal
*****************************************************************
 32 Scotland: The Herald: Six sites earmarked for burial of radioactive waste   
 
Web Issue 2237     April 04 2005      
    
  ALAN MacDERMID     April 04 2005   
    
  FOUR options for the disposal of nuclear waste, including
shallow burial at six sites in Scotland, are being published by
government advisers today. 

The UK will have produced 470,000 cubic metres of radioactive
waste  enough to fill the Albert Hall five times  over the
space of 100 years. 

The radioactive material comes not only from nuclear power
stations, but from the manufacture and decommissioning of
nuclear weapons and submarines, and the use of nuclear
technology in hospitals, laboratories, and industry.

 A recent study found that on average people live about 26 miles
from one of more than 30 waste sites in the UK.

 In consultation with interested parties and members of the
public, the Committee on Radioactive Waste Management came up
with the following four options.

 Deep disposal ensures waste is permanently buried between 300
metres and 2km underground where suitable rocks act as the
protective chamber.

 Phased deep disposal entails the same process, except the waste
will be retrievable if something goes wrong.

 Shallow burial of short-lived waste sees it placed just below
the surface, for which thirty sites have been suggested,
including Dounreay, Hunterston, Faslane, Rosyth, Torness and
Chapelcross.

 Lastly, interim storage, a temporary solution, means waste
could be stored above or just below ground.. 

However, Friends of the Earth warned against making an
irreversible decision. Roger Higman, a nuclear campaigner, said:
"The one option that needs more looking at is indefinite
storage. Most radioactive waste is going to be high level in
1000 years so whatever happens, we have got a problem."
   
  Copyright © Newsquest (Herald & Times) Limited. All Rights
*****************************************************************
 33 Bellona: UK nuclear decommissioning efforts now answerable to Nuclear 
Decommissioning Authority
 

SELLAFIELD, England—The British nuclear industry has just taken 
the first step to undergo its biggest shift since its post war 
effort to develop the atom bomb in the late 1940s. That effort 
involves, by and large, the decommissioning of those facilities 
at sites that were designed to manufacture Britains nuclear 
capability in the first place.

  The sun setting over West Cumbira's Sellafield nuclear site.   
  Nils Bøhmer/Bellona   

Charles Digges, 2005-04-04 11:37

By a 2004 order of the British Government’s Department of Trade
and Industry, the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) came
into existence on Friday April 1st, and ownership of the UK’s
main nuclear sites, including Sellafield and Dounreay were
passed into the new organsation. It will now be the NDA’s job to
contract out clean-up operations for those sites at the most
cost effective dividend for UK taxpayers 

Many facilities at these sites, most notably Sellafield—where
Britain’s post war effort to develop the bomb began—are
approaching the end of their engineered life spans, and cannot
simply be knocked down. They must be meticulously
decommissioned, a processes that has already started at many of
Sellafield’s aging sites and is a process that could take some
100 years.

  The Windscale AGR, or "Golf Ball," reactor.   
  Nils Bøhmer/Bellona   

Such sites include Windscale Pile 1 and 2 that manufactured the
plutonium for Britains first atomic bomb, the defunct Calder
Hall plutonium production facility, the B29 and B30 storage
ponds, the elder reprocessing facilities, the Windscale AGR
reactors, among others. These facilities have been the target of
environmental criticism for decades and ecologists are
applauding moves that would speed up their clean up and
dismantlement. 

A recent visit to Sellafield by Bellona revealed that measures
were already underway to decommission these sites. The Windscale
AGR reactor—known to plant workers as the “Golf Ball” for its
distinctive dome-shaped outer bio-shield—came on line in 1962
and was shut down in 1981. It is the centerpiece of the UK
Atomic Energy Authority’s (UKAEA’s) decommissioning efforts. The
last parts of the reactors core were removed in 2003 but the
entire decommissioning process will not be completed until 2130,
when radioactivity levels are sufficiently low to dismantle its
remain support structures. Current decommissioning cost
estimates lie at some £80m.

  A cooling tower at Sellafield's Calder Hall site.   
  Nils Bøhmer/Bellona   

Robotic technologies are of special importance to cleansing the
B29 and B30 pools, which have been receptacles for spent nuclear
fuel since the 1950. During that time, much of the fuel’s
cladding has eroded, leaving highly radioactive sludge, in the
words of British nuclear specialists, which has to be carefully
removed before the ponds—whose water holds in the
radioactivity—can be drained. As a consequence, storage
facilities for this waste are under development for this and
other high and intermediate level waste that will come from
Sellafield’s various decommission operations. 

The waste will be stored in these prospective storage sites
until it can be permanently interred in a geologic repository,
though no country on earth is currently running such a facility. 

The birth of the NDA 
The Government’s solution to the problem has been to create the
West-Cumbria based NDA, which came into existence on April 1. 

Ownership of the UK’s main nuclear sites, including Sellafield
and Dounreay, will pass to the new organisation. It will be the
NDA’s job to hand out contracts to clean up those sites, at the
best possible price and with the highest safety standards and
technology. 

One of the companies that will be bidding for those contracts is
British Nuclear Group (BNG), a newly formed subsidiary of
British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL). The idea is that the by
introducing competition for the clean-up contracts, the work
will be done more quickly have a lower end cost. 

So why does British Nuclear Fuels need such an overhaul? BNG’s
chief executive Lawrie Haynes, in a recent interview with the
London Times, said that forming a new subsidiary in the form of
BNG was necessary to create a clear focus for the group. A
recent visit by Bellona to the Sellafield site, where
decommissioning efforts at several key installations within the
sprawling complex are already underway, showed that theory has
been put into practice. 

“We have to show that we can turn ourselves around from being an
owner of the assets, to being a contractor with a customer to
serve,” said Haynes, “The whole point was to get away from the
idea that we are the owner and we will do it at our pace. The
NDA requires a fundamental change in the attitudes of the
business.” 

By 2008, half of Britain’s 18 nuclear sites will be put out to
competition. However, it will be at least four more years before
Haynes’s BNG will have to compete with rivals for the job of
cleaning up Sellafield.

  Sellafield status update: Pile 1 decommissioning plans moving
slowly but steadily forward   
  
  Pile 1 is proving harder to take down than to put up. It was
shutdown after a fire October 10th 1957. Immediately following,
its twin, Pile 2, was shut down as well. Essentially,
decommissioning work has been underway in fits and starts at
Pile 1 for the past 48 years. In the three years following the
fire, the air-cooled reactor’s air and exhaust ducts were
closed, all apertures in the charge face, into which fuel was
inserted, were sealed, peripheral equipment was removed, and the
reactor was put in a monitoring and surveillance mode until the
mid 1980s.

But is it worth all the expense and upheaval? “I have absolutely
no doubt,” Haynes said. “Just the threat of the NDA arriving
brought about a huge change. The onset of competition has
focused a lot of people on delivery. Our innovation units are a
direct response.” 

Nonetheless, the wind-down of work will be slow and cost several
thousand of the 12,000 jobs at the Sellafield site over the next
10 years. The Government has pledged massive support to the West
Cumbria area, where Sellafield is situated, after the NDA begins
work. 

Cleaning up the nuclear industry’s many sites will cost about
£50 billion. But Haynes said that if the programme, which would
take about 100 years, could be reduced by even 10 percent, it
would add up to a saving of £5 billion pounds. The savings, he
said, would start small but add up over the years, and said that
some the clear targets he has set will come immediately 

For example, BNG—which sub-contracts to many companies including
Fluor, Jacobs and Amec—wants to reduce supply-chain costs by
about 30 per cent. That will result in a saving of £45 million
this year and £75 million next year. 

One big change looming for BNG is that in future it will work
with some big private-sector names as partners rather than as
suppliers. There are good reasons for this. For instance, BNG
wants to tap into the experience in the US, where
decommissioning has been under way for about 15 years. 

The US spent $150 billion (£80 billion) on its clean-up and
Haynes said that it is debatable whether or not good value was
obtained from it. 

BNG has assessed its own skills and looked at those of its
suppliers, which on Friday became both rivals and potential
partners. 

BNG is holding conversations with the likes of Serco, Lockheed,
Bechtel, WGI, Fluor, and Jacobs about becoming partners at the
so-called Tier 2 level, Haynes said. 

In months to come it will have discussions about partnerships at
the Tier 1 level. Those partnerships are likely to be
revenue-sharing joint ventures. Down the line, special-purpose
robotic clean-up vehicles may be set up to win contracts for
specific sites, such as Sellafield and Dounreay. Indeed
Sellafield is already making use of much robotic technology. 

But the arrival of the NDA has been blighted by a row over state
help to Sellafield owner BNFL. The European Commission (EC)
called into doubt a proposed £40bn transfer of liabilities from
BNFL to the NDA. 

Specifics of company structure at Sellafield and employment
arrangements 
According to documents furnished to Bellona Web by BNFL, a new
holding company for the BNFL group will retain the name of
British Nuclear Fuels plc—that is, BNFL. Four other BNFL
subsidiaries that were launched as registered companies on
Friday were BNG, which was established to hold the shares in
British Nuclear Group Sellafield and Magnox Electric LTD; BNG
Project Services Ltd; Nexia Solutions Ltd, and Energy Sales and
Trading Ltd. 

Westinghouse was also retained and will be used as the brand
identity for Westinghouse Electric UK Ltd, which has been
established as a BNFL group subsidiary to hold the shares in
Springfield Fuels Ltd. 

The BNFL Group parent company will manage corporate governance
and shareholder relations, establish company policy, top level
performance indicators and provide mandatory plc oversight
functions. 

Site management companies (SMCs) will be those companies that
win NDA contracts to operate UK nuclear sites and provide a
leadership team for the contract’s duration. BNFL, as of Friday,
has two SMCs operating in the UK: British Nuclear Group Limited
and Westinghouse Electric Limited. 

Site licensing companies (SLCs) will be those companies holding
a licence, issued by Britain’s Nuclear Installations
Inspectorate, to operate a particular site. The SLC will also
hold environmental authorisations from the UK’s environment
Agency and the Scottish Environment Protection Agency. Any given
SLC will operate under the same identification as the SMC. 

As of Friday, three SLCs were established as Tier 1 companies:
BNG Sellafield Ltd; Magnox Electric Ltd, and Springfield
Electric Ltd. 

Tier 2 companies with no operate under contract from the NDA but
rather will provide services to the SLC’s and elsewhere, as
subcontractors. These companies include: BNG Projects Ltd;
Uranium Asset Management limited, which is the uranium transport
supply to Springfield Fuels, and Nexia Solutions. Nexia
solutions, however will also operate as a Tier 1 business, for
example, in managing and operating the BNFL Technology Centre at
Sellafield. 

An important feature of the SMC/SLC model, according to BNFL
officials, is that it allows both Westinghouse and BNG to
transfer its employees to provide skills within the SLCs. BNG
intends to use secondments for this purpose. Key employees
seconded from an SMC to an SLC would then be returned to the SMC
at the end of contract, thus retaining skill and expertise in
BNG, which is a crucilal element of the company’s future
competitiveness.

  The Windscale AGR (left)and the tower of Pile 1.   
  Nis Bøhmer/Bellona   

Future employment cuts 

Come 2008, BNG will be but one of many contending potential
international contractors, like Cogema, Lockheed, Serco and
Bechtel to continue decommissioning work at Sellafield. BNG’s
information officer Stephen Stagg speculated that by 2008,
companies like these will be included in the bidding process,
but that whether they will work onsite at Sellafield will be
left to the discretion of the NDA. This could imply management
changes at the top, said Stagg. 

But an interview with Derek Simpson, general secretary of the
Amicus trade union that that Sellafield workers belong to
predicted higher long term layoffs in an interview with the BBC,
from a current 12,000 permanent staff members to 4000 by 2011. 

Amicus has also called for permanent staff to be retrained to
carry out the decommissioning work and plans to oppose the
outsourcing of any core work. 

"We need to maximise the number of job opportunities available
through the decommissioning process by re-skilling Sellafield
workers,” he told the BBC. 

"Unless we start training people now, we are in danger of
damaging the whole of UK manufacturing and disadvantaging
Sellafield workers and the whole Cumbrian economy. Amicus is
committed to maintaining our members' terms and conditions at
Sellafield—ensuring that pay and pensions provision are not
threatened by the outsourcing of work." 

The government has pledged to create "high quality jobs" to
replace those lost during and after the decommissioning process
at Sellafield the BBC reported. 

Bellona Web interviews on the ground with BNG workers on the
Sellafield site confirmed that they viewed the coming of the NDA
as more a cosmetic and management related than ground shifting.
But if Amicus’ Stimpson is correct, the bulk of these workers
will face unemployment lines unless drastic measures are taken. 

BNG public relations officer Stagg, a BNFL veteran of more than
two decades, was not so sure how the employment situation would
change. 

“Certainly, I hope that BNG will remain among the main
contractors at [Sellafield] for continuity’s sake,” he said. He
envisioned a situation after 2008 in which several contractors
would be bidding and eventually working on various
decommissioning projects “but whether these contractors will be
on site will be at the discretion of the NDA.”   

  Publisher: Bellona Foundation, President: Frederic Hauge 
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
*****************************************************************
 34 BBC: Warning on nuclear waste disposal
 
Last Updated: Monday, 4 April, 2005
 
[Storage containers for vitrified waste     
Image: BNFL]                           
There will be further consultations on the nuclear waste question                                                          

Proposals to send Britain's nuclear waste into space or to the 
bottom of the sea are impractical, a government advisory 
committee has warned. 

The Committee on Radioactive Waste Management (CORWM) recommends 
waste be either buried underground or stored temporarily in 
facilities above ground. 

Nuclear power plants and weapons have left the UK with a 
radioactive legacy which presently has nowhere to go. 

There will be yet more waste when nuclear stations are 
decommissioned. 

Locations undecided 

The committee has consulted experts and the public over the past 
18 months, and has come up with four options which it considers 
viable. 

They are: deep disposal, phased deep disposal, shallow burial of 
short-lived waste and interim storage. 


+ Deep disposal is the process of permanently burying the waste 
between 300m (980ft) and 2km (1.2 miles) underground in an area 
of suitable geology; where the rocks act as a protective chamber. 
+ Phased deep disposal is the same process except the waste will 
be retrievable. + Shallow burial of short-lived waste refers to 
burying waste that is radioactive only for a short time just 
below the surface. + Interim storage is a temporary management 
solution. Waste could be stored above the ground or just below 
the surface but it must be outside the biosphere.There is no 
recommendation on where the sites should be located. 

Alternatively, the waste could be put in secure storage above 
ground until better technologies become available. 

These options will now go for further consultation. 

But the committee excluded from its shortlist blasting waste into 
space, storing it on ice sheets or below the sea. 

The total volume of nuclear waste in the UK is 470,000 cubic 
metres when conditioned and packaged - enough to fill the Albert 
Hall five times over. 

This includes waste that will arise in the next 100 years from 
existing nuclear power stations and their decomissioning. 

Debate re-opened 

The final CORWM report will be submitted next summer to the UK 
government, as well as authorities in Wales, Scotland and 
Northern Ireland. 

Committee chairman Gordon MacKerron commented: "We want to listen 
to everyone's thoughts - be they members of the public, 
environmental groups, local authorities, waste managers or 
regulators. 

[Nuclear waste barrel at a depth of 103 metres in the English 
Channel Image: PA/Greenpeace/Gavin Newman] Barrels of nuclear 
waste were tipped into the sea in the 1950s and 60s                                                           

"Now we can start to focus on the best options and see which will 
work and which won't." 

However, Friends of the Earth warned against making an 
irreversible decision on nuclear disposal. 

Campaigner Roger Higman said: "The simple, most important thing 
we have been calling for is for whatever we do to be retrievable 
and reversible. 

"The most radioactive waste is going to be high level in a 
thousand years' time so whatever happens, we have got a problem. 

UK NUCLEAR WASTE VOLUMES                 

High-level waste 2,000 cubic metres Intermediate-level waste - 
350,000 cubic metres Low-level waste - 30,000 cubic metres Spent 
fuel - 10,000 cubic metres Plutonium - 4,300 cubic metres Uranium 
- 75,000 cubic metres    

"There is no safe way of disposing of nuclear waste and one of 
the most important lessons is not to create any more, which means 
we should not have nuclear power plants." 

Nuclear waste comes from the process used to generate electricity 
via nuclear power, from making and maintaining nuclear weapons, 
and using nuclear technology in hospitals, laboratories and 
industry. 

A recent study found that, on average, people in Britain live 
about 42km (26 miles) away from one of more than 30 radioactive 
waste sites, including power plants and military bases, in the 
UK. 

An existing site at Drigg, in Cumbria, for example, allows only 
for the disposal of low-level radioactive waste. 

Some scientists question the need for CORWM at all. 

They say it is simply re-opening a debate which Britain has 
already been through, and which they believe many other countries 
have successfully resolved. 

		 	 		 	 	 



*****************************************************************
 35 Las Vegas SUN: Yucca e-mails show widespread problems

Today: April 04, 2005 at 11:10:59 PDT 

Correspondence indicates falsification of data

 By Suzanne Struglinski <> SUN WASHINGTON BUREAU

Yucca E-mails

 Excerpts of some of the government e-mails about scientific
testing at Yucca Mountain. The names and positions of the people
involved have not been released,'but the e-mails come from the
U.S. Geological Survey and the Energy Department.

 
+ "Still don't know quite how to handle the air temp glitch. I'm
continuing to keep mum about this, but, from a scientific
integrity standpoint, it is tempting to let the end users know
exactly what was provided to them in terms of effectively cooler
future climate simulations. Problem is, I don't know how to do
this without looking bad." E-mail May 11, 1998

 
+ "Like you've said all along, YMP (Yucca Mountain Project) has
now reached a point where they need to have certain items work
no matter what, and the infiltration maps are on that list. If
USGS (U.S. Geological Survey) can't find a way to make it work,
(redacted) will (but for now they are definately (sic) counting
on us to do the job.) E-mail Dec. 17, 1998

 
+ "Science by peer pressure is dangerous but sometime (sic) it
is necessary." E-mail April 2, 1999

 
+ "Some nights I have a hard time going to sleep because I
realize the importance of trying to get the right answer, and I
now how many serious unknowns are still out there and how many
quick fixes are still holding things together... I'm looking
forward to putting the YMP nonsense far behind me." E-mail April
4, 1999

 
+ "Don't look at the last 4 lines. Those lines are a mystery
that I believe somehow relate to the work (redacted) was doing
in entering the 1994 data. These lines are not used by
(redacted) (we stop at 9/30/84). I've deleted the lines from the
"official" QA version of the files (which do have headers). In
the end I keep track of 2 sets of files, the one that will keep
QA happy and the ones that were actually used." E-mail Nov. 15,
1999

 
+ "Please do not tell anyone how this was done because then we
will need to get this whole thing through software QA!" E-mail
Feb. 17, 2000

 
+ "I can fudge the attachment for (redacted) for now but
eventually someone may want to run (redacted) to see what
numbers come out and at that point there will be problems,
although it is my belief for now that an impact analysis would
reveal that the differences are not critical to the end result."
E-mail March 6, 2000

 
+ "The programs, of course, are all already installed otherwise
the (redacted) would not exist. I don't have a clue when these
programs were installed. So I've made up the dates and names
(see red edits below). This is as good as its (sic) going to
get. If they need more proof, I will be happy to make up more
stuff, as long as its (sic) not a video recording of the
software being installed." E-mail March 30, 2000   



WASHINGTON -- Questions about the quality assurance program at
Yucca Mountain have been raised before, but the contents of
government employee e-mails, released Friday, suggest blatant
falsification of data and create a whole new set of problems.

 Changing data in water studies and maintaining two sets of
quality assurance reports, as the e-mails indicate, are more
than just paperwork errors, experts say. A poor quality
assurance program alone can shut down a project, but the data
mistakes could also have caused serious miscalculations and
could affect other areas of the project, experts said.

 Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., who released 93 pages of redacted
internal e-mails through his House Federal Workforce and Agency
Organization subcommittee, said the Energy Department had led
Congress all along to believe the project was based on "sound
science" and that it was safe, but his review of the e-mails
lead him to believe this was clearly not the case.

 "The general theme is, 'Let's rush to get the project done,' "
Porter said.

 Porter said as he reviewed the unredacted documents it became
clear that information had been deliberately falsified over a
period of years.

 "It literally makes me sick to my stomach," Porter said.

 The Energy Department continues work on the license application
for the proposed nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, 90
miles northwest of Las Vegas, a spokeswoman said. But Yucca
critics say these latest revelations will be the hardest
obstacle for the Energy Department to overcome.

 "I've never seen anything like this," said Joe Egan, a lawyer
who handles Yucca issues for the state. "I think it is
unprecedented in the nuclear industry and I think it is going to
profoundly affect this project."

 The e-mails contain conversations by unnamed employees from
1998 through 2000 complaining about problems with water
infiltration data, project funding, work hours and the project's
management. The text implies, and at times clearly states, how
they worked around the project's quality assurance program.

 The quality assurance program was supposed to guarantee that
the science used to ensure that the nuclear dump doesn't
endanger the public is sound and that the data results can be
traced back and justified.

 The e-mails tell a different story, however.

 
                               •••


 "They may be expecting to see something that at least looks
like a scientific notebook documenting work in progress. I can
start making something up but then the (redacted) projects will
need to go on hold," according to a January 2000 e-mail.

 
                               •••


 "Like you've said all along, YMP (Yucca Mountain project) has
now reached a point where they need to have certain items work
no matter what, and the infiltration maps are on that list,"
according to a December 1998 e-mail.

 
                               •••


 "Ideally, one would assume that the more information you
provide QA (quality assurance), the better the QA. In reality,
it seems that the opposite is true. At any rate, its a damn
shame to be wasting time with this sort of thing," from an April
1999 e-mail.

 
                               •••


 "In the end I keep track of 2 sets of files, the ones that will
keep QA happy and the ones that were actually used," according
to a November 1999 message.

 
                               •••


 "I don't want to be too critical here -- I could probably tear
apart any of our models. Did somebody say seepage?," an April
1998 Energy Department memo notes.

 The internal documents described how the employees "fudge" data
and reflect a disdain for the quality assurance program. An
August 1999 e-mail in the Energy Department's file says "Piss on
QA."

 Egan said he doubts the problems illustrated in the e-mails are
limited only to these employees.

 "If QA is that bad here, it is very likely that bad elsewhere,"
Egan said.

 Egan said he has seen nuclear power plant projects stopped
because of quality assurance problems. Yucca critics point to a
nuclear power plant in Ohio that was nearly completed in the
1980s, but because some construction documents were not in
order, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission refused to issue an
operating license. Plant owners refitted it into a coal plant.

 "You just can't take safety for granted," Egan said. "This is
nuclear safety we're talking about. I think there is a distinct
possibility they will not submit a license application."

 The Energy Department announced the discovery of the e-mails
last month. Department officials discovered them while reviewing
documents to go into the License Support Network, a database of
the repository project's documents that will be used during the
license hearings.

 Egan pointed out that the Atomic Safety Licensing Board's
rejection of the department's first attempt at its document
collection, prompted by complaints from Nevada, led to this
discovery. The first collection, submitted last June, did not
contain volumes of e-mails the state felt needed to be included
but the department said was not relevant.

 Egan did not know specifically what he would find in the
released e-mails, but knew something in the documents would be
useful to the state.

 "In litigation e-mails are always the best source," Egan said.
"People are very candid in e-mails. It looks like they thought
they were deleting them. They attempted to destroy the evidence."

 Several e-mails advise recipients to "destroy this memo."

 Egan and other Nevada officials as well as Energy and Interior
Department officials will testify at a House Federal Workforce
and Agency Organization subcommittee hearing, chaired by Porter,
on Tuesday.

 Porter reviewed unaltered e-mails, the Interior and Energy
departments sent to the subcommittee early last week but
released redacted versions Friday in advance of the hearing.

 Porter complained that neither department cooperated in giving
redacted copies as well, forcing his committee to go through the
documents and take out information that could compromise ongoing
investigations by the FBI and both departments' inspector
generals.

 It is a criminal investigation until the Justice Department
says otherwise. According to the United States Code, anyone who
"knowingly and willfully falsifies, conceals or covers up by any
trick, scheme or device a material fact ..." from the government
can be fined and serve up to five years in prison.

 The Energy Department said it did not redact e-mails for public
release nor discuss the e-mails due to the ongoing
investigations.

 "The department determined it would not be possible to redact
the documents in a way that would allow us to say with any
certainty that their release would not compromise the ongoing
investigations," Anne Womack Kolton, department spokeswoman,
said.

 Porter's press release included an undeleted internal Energy
Department memo that said, "These e-mails describe deliberate
failures to follow quality assurance procedures and
irreproducible results related to the infiltration of water into
the repository... Depending on the current status of the work to
which he (the author of the e-mails) contributed, these e-mails
may create a substantial vulnerability for the program."
 
*****************************************************************
 36 Las Vegas SUN: Workers claim retaliation in Yucca Mountain water piping case
 
ASSOCIATED PRESS 

LAS VEGAS (AP) - Pipe fitters at Yucca Mountain say they were
instructed to damage the tunnel's main water line and install a
pipe to bypass a state water meter at the federal nuclear waste
repository site. 

The claims are made in a federal Labor Department whistle-blower
case and in interviews with former contract workers at the site,
the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported Monday. 

Ronald Dollens of Pahrump said he was harassed before Yucca
Mountain project contractor Bechtel SAIC fired him in May 2003
by for reporting what he claimed were violations of worker
safety and Environmental Protection Agency laws including the
Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act. 

It was not clear whether the bypass was installed. A labor
investigator has recommended that Bechtel SAIC pay Dollens
$250,000 for retaliating after he complained. 

Bechtel SAIC has appealed. No trial has been set before an
administrative law judge. 

"There was sabotage that went on. A pipe that went into the
portal was purposely broke for overtime," Dollens told the
Review-Journal. 

Dollens said pipe fitters made a pipe in 2003 to reroute
groundwater pumped from a nearby well around a state water
meter. 

In November 2003, Nevada State Engineer Hugh Ricci denied the
Energy Department permanent rights to 140 million gallons per
year of groundwater to build the repository to entomb the
nation's most highly radioactive commercial and military waste. 

But the state agreed in federal court to let Yucca Mountain
project officials refill four water storage tanks for restroom
facilities and emergencies. 

In a statement Dollens filed with the Labor Department in his
wrongful termination claim, he said foreman Mike Oettinger asked
him and co-worker Dale Cain in November 2002 to purposely break
a water line so they could get overtime pay fixing the pipe. 

Dollens said the workers refused. But several days later,
Oettinger was credited with working overtime to fix a broken
pipe. 

"I asked Mike Oettinger if he had broken the pipe, and he just
laughed and said, 'Don't ask,'" Dollens stated in his affidavit.
"Nothing ever happened for this pipe sabotage." 

Oettinger, reached Friday at home in Amargosa Valley, declined
comment. 

A spokesman for Bechtel SAIC, Jason Bohne, also declined
comment, citing ongoing litigation. 

Cain said he was frustrated and doesn't stand to gain by
confirming Dollens' story. 

"I'd just like to see those people tell the truth for a change.
There's nothing they can do to me," he told the Review-Journal. 

Cain said Oettinger discussed a plan to bypass the water meter
at the Nevada Test Site surrounding Yucca Mountain. 

Cain and Dollens said they never saw the bypass pipeline
installed. 

"I observed the piece being made and delivered. Whether it got
used, who knows?" Cain said. 

Cain was laid off in December 2003. 

In April 2004, Christopher Lee, deputy regional administrator
for the Labor Department's Occupational Safety and Health
Administration in San Francisco, recommended Dollens get a
$250,000 punitive award from Bechtel SAIC for "reckless conduct
indifferent to the rights of the whistle-blower." 

Lee wrote that he could not establish if water line sabotage,
air conditioning tampering and theft of state water had
occurred. 

The investigation found Dollens was humiliated on March 23,
2003, for reporting an unsafe condition at the site's
1-million-gallon potable water tank, and confronted April 24,
2003, after protesting plans to open valves from old water
tanks. He was fired the following month. 

Dollens' lawyer, Sangeeta Singal, also represents three other
former Yucca Mountain contract workers who claim they were fired
by Bechtel SAIC because they refused to sign affidavits for the
company in the Dollens case. 

--- 

Information from: Las Vegas Review-Journal, http://www.lvrj.com

-- 


 
*****************************************************************
 37 NRC: Procedures; Notice of Meeting
 
                         FR Doc E5-1477 
[Federal Register: April 4, 2005 (Volume 70, Number 63)] 
[Notices] [Page 17133] From the Federal Register Online via GPO 
Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr04ap05-143]
 
The Advisory Committee on Nuclear Waste (ACNW) will hold a 
Planning and Procedures meeting on April 18, 2005, Room T-2B3, 
11545 Rockville Pike, Rockville, Maryland. The entire meeting 
will be open to public attendance, with the exception of a 
portion that may be closed pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 552b(c)(2) and 
(6) to discuss organizational and personnel matters that relate 
solely to internal personnel rules and practices of ACNW, and 
information the release of which would constitute a clearly 
unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.
 
The agenda for the subject meeting shall be as follows: Monday, 
April 18, 2005--8:30 a.m.-10:30 a.m. The Committee will discuss 
proposed ACNW activities and related matters. The purpose of this 
meeting is to gather information, analyze relevant issues and 
facts, and formulate proposed positions and actions, as 
appropriate, for deliberation by the full Committee.
 
Members of the public desiring to provide oral statements and/or 
written comments should notify the Designated Federal Official, 
Mr.
 
Richard K. Major (Telephone: 301/415-7366) between 8 a.m. and 
5:15 p.m. (e.t.) five days prior to the meeting, if possible, so 
that appropriate arrangements can be made. Electronic recordings 
will be permitted only during those portions of the meeting that 
are open to the public.
 
Further information regarding this meeting can be obtained by 
contacting the Designated Federal Official between 8:30 a.m. and 
5:15 p.m. (e.t.). Persons planning to attend this meeting are 
urged to contact the above named individual at least two working 
days prior to the meeting to be advised of any potential changes 
in the agenda.
 
March 29, 2005.
 
Michael L. Scott, Branch Chief, ACRS/ACNW.
 
[FR Doc. E5-1477 Filed 4-1-05; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 7590-01-P

 
*****************************************************************
 38 EA: New alloy verified for safer disposal of spent nuclear energy fuel
 
EurekAlert! 

 4-Apr-2005

 Contact: Kurt Pfitzer kap4@lehigh.edu 610-758-3017 Lehigh 
University

 
Scientists verify critical fabrication properties of
gadolinium-nickel alloy

 A new alloy developed and patented by researchers at Lehigh 
University, Sandia National Laboratory and Idaho National 
Laboratory could help the U.S. dispose more safely of 50,000 tons 
of spent nuclear energy fuel that are now stored at 125 sites in 
39 states. 

John DuPont, professor of materials science and engineering at 
Lehigh and principal investigator on the project, said that a 
nickel-based alloy with added gadolinium showed far greater 
ability than any other alloy to absorb the deadly radioactive 
neutrons emitted by nuclear waste. 

The researchers found that the gadolinium-nickel alloy passed an 
important test - it can be fabricated in large quantities using 
conventional ingot metallurgy and fusion welding techniques. 

The researchers' discovery, which was announced in an article in 
the December 2004 issue of the American Welding Society's Welding 
Journal, caps a four-year study funded by the U.S. Department of 
Energy's (DOE) Spent Nuclear Fuel Program. 

The article, titled "Physical and Welding Metallurgy of 
Gadolinium-enriched Austenitic Alloys for Spent Nuclear Fuel 
Applications - Part II," won the society's Warren F. Savage Award 
for advancing the understanding of welding metallurgy. 

The article comes amidst a controversy over plans by the Bush 
Administration and Congress to transport the nation's spent 
nuclear fuel to Nevada and deposit it inside Yucca Mountain about 
90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. 

In 2002, over the objections of Nevada Governor Kenny Guinn, 
Congress passed, and President Bush signed into law a resolution 
approving Yucca Mountain as the storage site for the nation's 
spent nuclear fuel. 

DOE's application for a license to build the project is pending 
before the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The state of 
Nevada, contending that the Yucca Mountain project is 
environmentally and geologically unsafe, has filed lawsuits 
against DOE, NRC, Bush and former DOE Secretary Spencer Abraham. 

Gadolinium, a silvery-white metal. occurs naturally in several 
different minerals. The collaborative research conducted by 
Lehigh and the two national labs demonstrated that gadolinium can 
be added to specific nickel alloys and retain its malleability 
and ductility, as well as its ability to be heat-treated, shaped 
and fabricated readily into a desired shape. 

More importantly, says DuPont, gadolinium has a 
neutron-absorption cross- section of 48,800 barn units, more than 
60 times greater than the 765-barn cross-section for boron. 
(Cross-section, the measure of the probability of an interaction 
between a particle and a target nucleus, is expressed in barn 
units, with one barn equal to 10-24 cm2.) Borated stainless steel 
is the material commonly used in conventional nuclear-waste 
containers. However, borated stainless steel is not capable of 
housing some of the nations highly radioactive spent fuel. 

The higher neutron-absorption capacity of gadolinium, says 
DuPont, means that highly radioactive fuel can now be safely 
transported to and stored at a permanent facility. 

The research group, which includes DuPont at Lehigh and 
scientists from Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico and 
the Idaho National Laboratory (formerly the Idaho National 
Engineering and Environmental Laboratory), conducted laboratory 
tests to determine the optimum amount of gadolinium to add to the 
nickel-based alloy. 

The tests involved mixing the constituent elements of the alloy, 
heating and melting the mixture, and allowing it to cool and 
solidify. The alloy was then heated and rolled into 
half-inch-thick sheets, and subjected to strength and ductility 
tests. 

"We designed and developed various alloys to determine the 
quantity of gadolinium that could be added while still 
maintaining the desired properties," says DuPont. "We needed to 
be able to heat-treat the final material, weld it and fabricate 
it." 

A specification has been approved for the alloy by ASTM (the 
American Society of Testing Materials), which sets technical 
standards for materials, products, systems and services. The 
alloy is being reviewed by the American Society of Mechanical 
Engineers, which also sets standards for the use of new products. 
Neutronics (neutron-absorption) tests on the alloy were performed 
at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. 

The research team was awarded a U.S. patent for the alloy last 
year. 

Prior to its work with the gadolinium-nickel alloy, the 
researchers spent a year investigating gadolinium-enriched 
stainless-steel alloys for spent nuclear fuel storage 
applications before coming up against major obstacles to the 
production of those alloys using conventional hot working 
techniques. 

### 
*****************************************************************
 39 Madison courier: Judge: Army taking too long on JPG plan
                 
http://www.madisoncourier.com

  4/4/2005 3:00:00 PM

By: Peggy Vlerebome</B></FONT> Courier Staff Writer

A federal administrative judge says that Save the Valley and the
people who live around Jefferson Proving Ground have had to wait
too long to find out what the Army intends to do about the
radioactive depleted uranium it left behind after testing
munitions.

The judge, Alan S. Rosenthal, wrote in a memo Thursday that the
“responsibility for this state of affairs cannot be laid at the
doorstep of (Save the Valley). Rather, it has been brought about
by the conduct of the (Army) over the course of the past five
years, conduct that has received to a significant extent the
seeming indulgence of the (Nuclear Regulatory Commission) staff.”

Rosenthal, who is with the NRC’s Atomic Safety and Licensing
Board Panel, wrote the memo to bring his concerns to the
attention of the appointed commission. He wrote that he and Paul
B. Abramson, special assistant and also an administrative judge,
do not have the authority to tell the Army or the NRC staff what
to do. The Army had obtained a license from the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission in order to test depleted uranium at JPG.

The Army has changed its approach for dealing with the depleted
uranium several times, and the NRC staff has repeatedly said it
needs more information from the Army for the various proposals.

The NRC staff announced in late 1999 that a hearing could be
requested on a license-decommissioning plan the Army had
submitted, and Save the Valley’s request for such a hearing was
granted in 2000. 

“It is now five years later and there has yet to be a single
filing by any party addressed to (Save the Valley’s) quite
legitimate concerns regarding what disposition is to be made of
the amassed DU munitions on the JPG site,” Rosenthal wrote.
“And, perhaps of still greater significance, more than a decade
has now passed since the testing activities were brought to an
end.”

When Save the Valley requested a hearing, the Army asked that
scheduling of a hearing be put off because it was thinking about
changing what it proposed to do.

More than a year later, the Army submitted a new plan, but the
NRC staff said it needed more information, some of it
site-specific data that the Army would have to gather at the
former proving ground for a part of the process called
site-characterization. 

The Army, however, said it would be too dangerous to collect the
information because of the presence of unexploded ordinance in
the same area as the depleted uranium.

“Some eleven years have now elapsed since the licensee (the
Army) terminated testing activities on its JPG site that left
behind an accumulation of DU munitions,” Rosenthal wrote.
“Perhaps more to the point, this past March 23 was the fifth
anniversary of the grant of the hearing request of Petitioner
(Save the Valley), an organization with members who live in
proximity to that site and who profess concern about the site’s
condition — a concern scarcely unreasonable given that,
according to what the licensee (the Army) apparently represented
to the staff, the site cannot now be even characterized without
subjecting the personnel and that of contractors to an
unacceptable safety risk.”

The Army withdrew that plan in mid-2003 and proposed an approach
that never has been tried anywhere. Called a possession-only
license, it would be renewable every five years until technology
or science enabled the Army to safely gather the data the NRC
staff said was needed.

“As a result of its failure over an extended period — justified
or unjustified — to provide the information the staff requested,
the licensee (the Army) has, in effect, possessed the very POLA
(possession-only license) that is the subject of the present
proceeding,” Rosenthal wrote. “Indeed, it might be reasonably
said that it has had the equivalent of such a license for the
entire eleven years or so since it ceased the testing of the DU
munitions. It seems highly unlikely that such was the
contemplation of the staff or the commission at the time of the
grant of the materials license under which the testing was
performed — to the contrary, we think it most probable that the
expectation was that, upon cessation of operations at the JPG
site, a decommissioning plan would be forthcoming in relatively
short order.”

The NRC staff says it needs more information before it can
proceed with its review of proposal for a possession-only
license.

But the Army also told the regulatory commission staff in
January that it would submit a letter to clarify its “planned
path forward,” as the Army was again considering a change.

Richard Hill, president of Save the Valley, said of Rosenthal:
“I believe that he has run out of patience.”

Hill said Save the Valley and its attorneys are “looking into
what it does all mean.

“Obviously, it does mean that years have gone by now,” Hill
said. “There should have been some concrete direction that they
should be going in. It keeps changing all the time.

“The way things are going, nothing is being done.”

Copyright 2005, The Madison Courier 310 Courier Square, Madison, 
IN 47250 (812) 265-3641 (800) 333-2885 Software © 1998-2005
*****************************************************************
 40 Las Vegas SUN: DOE memos: Yucca Mountain e-mails not likely to discredit project
 
 By ERICA WERNER ASSOCIATED PRESS 

WASHINGTON (AP) - Internal Energy Department memos say that
e-mails indicating workers on Yucca Mountain may have falsified
documents "are not likely to discredit or bring into question"
key scientific conclusions about the proposed nuclear waste dump
site. 

But the memos, released late Monday by a congressional committee
investigating the issue, also indicate department officials
learned about the problem in early December - more than three
months before making it public. 

And while contending that "the potential for significant
technical impacts is believed to be low," the memos acknowledge
that "the credibility and defensibility of the (U.S. Geological
Survey) technical work supporting the project is brought into
question." 

At issue are dozens of emails written between 1998 and 2000 by
USGS workers studying how water moves through the proposed site.
The emails, portions of which were released earlier, showed
workers discussing making up data and keeping two sets of
figures - one for themselves and one to show quality assurance
officers. 

-- 
*****************************************************************
 41 AU ABC: NZ seeks to stop nuclear waste ship from entering its waters

Radio Australia - News - 

04/04/2005, 16:35:51 

New Zealand is seeking to prevent a shipment of radioactive 
nuclear waste, which is expected to pass through the Tasman Sea, 
from entering New Zealand waters. 

The British Nuclear Fuels shipment is carrying containers of 
nuclear waste, which Japan sends to France for reprocessing.

The British government had notified New Zealand authorities about 
Pacific Sandpiper's shipment. 

It left the French port of Cherbourg on February 17, and has 
travelled via the Cape of Good Hope, off southern Africa, through 
the Indian Ocean and past Australia's southern coast. 

International environmental group Greenpeace says the waste is a
by-product from plutonium and would be around for thousands of
years if it was released into the environment. 

*****************************************************************
 42 KRNV: EPA issues initial order in Yerington mine cleanup

April 5, 2005   

The US Environmental Protection has issued an order outlining
preliminary measures for cleaning up an old copper mine in
Yerington contaminated with radioactive and cancer-causing
byproducts. 
   
The order issued Thursday replaces orders previously issued by
the Nevada Department of Environmental Protection. The state
agency asked the federal EPA to assume oversight of the mine in
December. 
   
The EPA says much of the work directed in the order is already
being carried out by Atlantic Richfield Company, which owns the
Anaconda mine. 
   
But it also directs additional measures be taken, including
securing the site, identifying contaminated areas and preparing
plans to monitor air for radiological contamination. 
   
Latest tests show elevated radiation levels and concentrations
of radionuclides in the mine's processing area. Experts say
readings at a few isolated spots are more typical of uranium
mills where the raw material used to fuel nuclear reactors,
yellowcake uranium, was the target of the mining operation, not
a byproduct of processing copper. 
   
Residents fear the poisons spread off the site in wind-blown
dust or leaked through unlined evaporation ponds into
groundwater supplies used for drinking water and irrigation. 
   
(Copyright 2005 by The Associated Press.  All Rights Reserved.) 
 
News 4

      All content © Copyright 2001 - 2005 WorldNow and KRNV. All
*****************************************************************
 43 Minot Daily News: Nuclear storage solution -       

  Monday, April 04, 2005     — Time: 12:49:16 PM EST   

Nuclear waste is being stored "temporarily" at 126 sites
throughout the United States. We can think of few more potent
recipes for an environmental disaster. Yet a reasonable plan to
store the waste in one secure location, under study since 1978,
continues to be blocked.Federal officials hope to establish a
repository for nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, Nev. Studies
have indicated that placing the waste in carefully designed
containers deep inside the mountain could provide protection
from it for at least 10,000 years.

 Critics of the proposal have used lawsuits to delay its
implementation for years. The state of Nevada is among the
obstructionists, probably because of the NIMBY - not in my back
yard - syndrome.

 The thought of all the nation's nuclear waste buried inside a
mountain in one's home state certainly isn't appealing - but it
is the best option available for dealing with a serious
challenge. Even the most strident critics of the Yucca Mountain
plan have conceded that, according to their extremely
pessimistic estimates, nuclear waste would be safe there for at
least 200 years.

 Until something is done about the problem, nuclear waste will
remain stored "temporarily" throughout the nation. Left there,
it poses a far more serious threat than it would at Yucca
Mountain. Even the challenge of transporting the waste pales in
comparison to the threat of leaving it in place - at sites where
the danger of leakage or theft is measured in months and years,
not centuries and millennia.

 It's time to face reality and adopt the Yucca Mountain
proposal.        						   
			 
THE MINOT DAILY NEWS PO Box 1150 Minot. ND 58702
                                
  www.minotdailynews.com, please contact the Webmaster. For all
 to The Minot Daily News.

*****************************************************************
 44 NRC: NRC Renews License for Dry-Cask Nuclear Spent Fuel Storage Installation at H.B. Robinson Plant
 
News Release - 2005-05
U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION   
  Office of Public Affairs     Telephone: 301/415-8200   
  Washington, DC 20555-0001     E-mail: opa@nrc.gov  
  No. 05-059     April 4, 2005   
  


The Nuclear Regulatory Commission on March 30 issued a new
40-year license to Progress Energy Carolinas, Inc., for the
dry-cask independent spent fuel storage installation at its H.B.
Robinson nuclear power plant near Florence, S.C. 

This is the second dry-cask independent spent fuel storage
installation to be re-licensed by the NRC. Earlier this year,
the agency re-licensed the dry-cask installation at Dominion
Generations Surry nuclear power plant in Virginia for 40 years.
Both licenses require inspections and strict monitoring to guard
against the potential effects of aging on the casks. 

H.B. Robinson uses the NUHOMS horizontal storage module design.
There are eight modules storing spent nuclear fuel at the H.B.
Robinson site. 

Storage of spent fuel for an additional 40 years in the dry
casks is considered an interim or temporary measure until a
permanent repository is available for disposal of high-level
nuclear waste.   



  


 	Last revised Monday, April 04, 2005 	   
*****************************************************************
 45 Bradenton Herald: Toxin screenings begin today

| 04/04/2005 | 

DONNA WRIGHT

 Herald Staff Writer

The U.S. Department of Energy will start testing former American
Beryllium Co. employees today for a serious lung condition. 

U.S. Rep. Katherine Harris and Energy Department officials will
be on hand to observe the blood tests that may reveal if
employees have become sick due to exposure to toxic dust. 

Dr. Donna Cragle of the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and
Education will oversee the blood tests that will measure if
employees have developed an allergy or sensitivity to toxic
beryllium dust. 

The tests will be given by appointment only at U.S. Healthworks
Clinic, 1105 53rd Ave. E. in Bradenton. 

Harris' office reported Friday that 93 former workers have been
scheduled for testing through Wednesday. 

Cragle and Energy officials have been trying to locate former
workers from a roster of nearly 1,200 names prepared by Terry
Owen and Jim Huff, former union officials at the Tallevast
plant. 

Many still need to be found, Owen said. 

"It's distressing because I know of at least 100 employees who
are eligible for the free test but we can't find out their
current addresses," Owen said. 

Owen is banking on the help of ORISE, which is trying to locate
workers by using their Social Security numbers. 

Owen said it is not too late for workers to register for tests
this week or another screening scheduled for late April. 

Harris, along with U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, lobbied the Department
of Energy to extend its free screening program to American
Beryllium workers. 

Formerly the screening program was available only to direct
employees of the Department of Energy or its contractors. 

American Beryllium was a subcontractor on energy projects during
the Cold War. Employees machined the beryllium to create parts
for atomic weapons and missile guidance systems and nuclear
energy projects. 

Exposure to beryllium can cause an allergic reaction in some
people that can, over time, lead to a chronic and often fatal
lung disease if not treated. 

Assistant Secretary of Energy John Shaw was instrumental in
extending the free testing program to American Beryllium
workers. 

In a press release Friday, Harris commended Shaw for his efforts
to help former workers who were employed at the Tallevast plant. 

Workers employed between 1967-68 and from 1980 through 1989 are
eligible for the free screening. Those who test positive may be
eligible for a government benefit/compensation program. 

Donna Wright, health and social services reporter, can be
reached at 745-7049 or at dwright@HeraldToday.com. 

Today's story is part of The Herald's continuing coverage of
contamination in the Tallevast community.   

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 46 lamonitor.com: Watchdogs plan to appeal open burn permit 

The Online News Source for Los Alamos
 
ROGER SNODGRASS, roger@lamonitor.com, Monitor Assistant Editor

The New Mexico Environment Department issued permits on
Wednesday for open-air burning at three sites on the
southwestern edge of Los Alamos National Laboratory, stirring
opposition from environmental groups in neighboring communities. 
Representatives of Citizens Concerned for Nuclear Safety and the
Embudo Valley Environmental Monitoring Group said they had only
a few days to respond to NMED's two draft permits and were
disappointed with the final versions issued two days after their
comments were due.

The permits apply to detonation and burning at the LANL Dynamic
Experimentation Division Sled Track in Technical Area 36, and
burning at the wood and fuel fire site's drop tower in Technical
Area 11 and at the flash pad located at Technical Area 16. 

Under a new state law, LANL must submit to a public process to
obtain the permits, but the community groups complained that
their technical objections were not adequately addressed.

They also questioned the lack of a renewal date and what they
considered vague language in the permits. 
At LANL, tests are performed to determine the integrity of
transportation containers carrying high explosives, depleted
uranium and weapons components, said Jean Dewart, who leads the
lab's air quality group.

She said the flash pad is specifically used for burning off any
remaining traces of high explosives (HE). 
The permits authorize burning no more than 5 pounds of HE per
day at the flash pad, which must be visually monitored by
laboratory staff.

The sled track may conduct eight tests per year, each test
burning a maximum of 2000 pounds of wood, 99 pounds of HE and 88
pounds of depleted uranium.

Five burns each year are allowed at the wood and fuel fire sites
at TA-11, that could burn up to 37.5 tons of wood, 4,000 gallons
of fuel oil, 1000 pounds of HE and 1,666 pounds of DU, according
to the permit.

"These are all operations we've had in the past," Dewart said.
"We haven't used the TA-11 facility in a decade, but we want to
maintain the capability should we have the programmatic
capability to use it again."

CCNS, a persistent critic of air quality issues at the
laboratory, criticized the permit for authorizing burning
activities without adequate air quality monitoring.

Sheri Kotowski of the Embudo Valley Environmental Monitoring
Group said the laboratory is not required to keep records of
these emissions for more than two years.

"We need to have an accurate record of all these activities, so
we can trace effects," she said. "Otherwise, there is
insufficient information for dose reconstructions."

Joni Arends, executive director of CCNS, said air monitoring
would be inadequate because the laboratory, after closing two of
three air samplers in the area during 2004, closed the last
sampler this year.

A laboratory program update explained that the last sampler,
which was located at TA-36 was positioned on top of a depleted
uranium source, did not provide representative data.

Dewart said airnet network is focused on the public access areas
adjacent to the laboratories and that soil sampling supplements
the air monitoring.

"We have gathered data years and years now," she said. "We have
no data exceeding 5 percent of the Environmental Protection
Agency standards. We'll continue to comply with the national
ambient air quality standards, so we'll continue to protect the
public."

At a press conference Thursday, Arends and Kotowski emphasized
the negative health affects of HE and DU.

A study of risks from the Cerro Grande Fire found high levels of
HE in fish tissue at Cochiti Lake about 15 miles away.

The groups also cited a new report by the Institute for Energy
and Environmental Research, released last month, suggesting that
radiological and toxicological risks from DU may be
significantly underestimated in current federal regulations.

Arends said the groups will appeal the issuance of the permits
to the Environmental Improvement Board at their next meeting.   

  © 2003 Los Alamos Monitor All Rights Reserved.   
*****************************************************************
 47 lamonitor.com: NMED calls for cleanup 

The Online News Source for Los Alamos
 
ROGER SNODGRASS, roger@lamonitor.com, Monitor Assistant Editor

New Mexico Environment Secretary Ron Curry has asked the
Department of Energy to include a provision for evaluating
environmental restoration capabilities in the competition to
manage Los Alamos National Laboratory. 
Curry wrote to Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman Wednesday
expressing concern and disappointment that the draft request for
proposals does not contain any scoring criteria for
environmental cleanup.

The current proposal criteria offers a maximum total of 1,000
points in 8 areas: science and technology (325 points),
laboratory operations (175 points), business operations (75
points), laboratory organization (75 points), key personnel (150
points), oral presentation (100 points), past performance (75
points) and transition plan (25 points). 

Included in laboratory operations are two sub categories,
safeguards and security and environmental safety and health.

Curry pointed out that the environmental safety and health "is
focused on worker safety, not on cleanup." 
Considering the execution of a site-wide cleanup agreement
between NMED and DOE and LANL on March 1, Curry wanted Bodman to
be aware of what a major task it would be for the next operator.

"Since environmental clean up will be a vitally important part
of the next LANL contractor's work at the lab, I believe it is
imperative for it also to be substantially weighted in the
scoring criteria," Curry wrote. 
A DOE manager estimated this week that the cleanup may cost
nearly $900 million over the next 10 years.

That would represent about 4 percent of the laboratory's budget.

DOE has indicated its intention to spin-off the remediation work
at the laboratory into a separate contract, beginning with
fiscal year 2007.

NMED Communication Director Jon Goldstein said the next manager
will be responsible for the investigations and corrective
actions until any change is made.

"As with all things, you don't know for sure until the change
occurs," he said.

New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson has said he favors the
University of California to continue as managers of the
laboratory contract, but Curry's letter does not side with any
particular contractor.

"The governor has said whom he favors in the process," said
Goldstein. "But as a regulator, it is not appropriate for us."   

  © 2003 Los Alamos Monitor All Rights Reserved.   
*****************************************************************
 48 DOE: Meeting SRS EMSSAB board

 
                         FR Doc 05-6596 
[Federal Register: April 4, 2005 (Volume 70, Number 63)] 
[Notices] [Page 17077-17078] From the Federal Register Online via 
GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr04ap05-74]
 
AGENCY: Department of Energy.
 
ACTION: Notice of open meeting.
 
SUMMARY: This notice announces a meeting of the Environmental 
Management Site-Specific Advisory Board (EMSSAB) Chairs. The 
Federal Advisory Committee Act (Pub. L. 92-463, 86 Stat. 770) 
requires that public notice of these meetings be announced in the 
Federal Register.
 
 
DATES: Thursday, April 28, 2005, 8:30 a.m.-5:15 p.m.; Friday, 
April 29, 2005, 8:30 a.m.-12 p.m.
 
ADDRESSES: Augusta Towers Hotel & Conference Center (formerly the 
Sheraton Hotel), 2651 Perimeter Parkway, Augusta, GA 30909, (706) 
855- 8100.
 
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Jay Vivari, Program Management 
Specialist (EM-30.1), Department of Energy, 1000 Independence 
Avenue, SW., Washington, DC 20585, (202) 586-5143.
 
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Purpose of the Board: The purpose of 
the EMSSAB is to make recommendations to DOE and its regulators 
in the areas of environmental restoration, waste management, and 
related activities.
 
Tentative Agenda Thursday, April 28, 2005 8:30 a.m. Welcome and 
Overview. Jean Sulc, Savannah River Site (SRS) CAB Chair, welcome 
and introductions; Sandra Waisley, Designated Federal Officer, to 
open, followed by Mike Schoener, Facilitator, to review meeting 
objectives, agenda, and ground rules 8:45 a.m. Round Robin 1: Top 
Three Issues for Each Site-Specific Advisory Board Each Board has 
five minutes, followed by 30 minutes for questions and answers, 
and discussion 10 a.m. Break 10:15 a.m. Planning for the National 
Stakeholder Forum; members will discuss ideas for developing and 
conducting the National Stakeholder Forum on Waste Disposition 
10:45 a.m. Stewardship Outreach; Presentation of the Oak Ridge 
Stewardship Education Resource Kit, followed by general 
discussion of stewardship outreach efforts across the complex 
11:45 a.m. Public Comment Period 12 p.m. Lunch 1 p.m. Briefing by 
Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary Paul Golan (Tentative) and 
Chairs Discussion. Mr. Golan or his designee(s) will brief the 
Chairs on Accelerated Cleanup, the End States initiative and on 
Safety at EM Cleanup Sites. A discussion between Mr. Golan and 
the Chairs will follow the briefings 2:45 p.m. Break 3 p.m. Round 
Robin 2: Future of the EMSSAB (Part One). Site/SSAB Transfers 
from EM to Other DOE Offices. Each Board will have five minutes 
to describe the status of their individual site, indicating 
whether a transfer has or will soon occur from EM to another 
office within DOE, and the impact this transfer might have on the 
Board's future operation 3:45 p.m. Round Robin 2: Future of the 
EMSSAB (Part Two). General Discussion on the Impact of Site 
Transfers. Based on the information presented in Part One, the 
Chairs will discuss the impacts of these transfers on the EMSSAB 
as a whole 4:45 p.m. Public Comment Period 5 p.m. Review of Day 
One Discussions and Next Steps. Facilitated discussion of 
preliminary reactions to the information presented Friday, April 
29, 2005 8:30 a.m. Opening; Welcome and Overview of Day Two 
Discussions 8:45 a.m. Consideration of National Forum Structure. 
Facilitated discussion to consider the structure
 
[[Page 17078]] of the proposed National Forum on Waste 
Disposition 9:30 a.m. Planning for Future Chairs 
Meetings/Workshops 10 a.m. Break 10:15 a.m. DOE Organizational 
Updates. New Positions, Personnel and Budget, Acquisition 
Strategy (including A-76 Program: Competitive Sourcing) 11:30 
a.m. Public Comment Period 11:45 a.m. Meeting Wrap-Up, Jean Sulc, 
SRS CAB Chair, Closing Remarks 12 p.m. Adjourn Public 
Participation: The meeting is open to the public.
 
Written statements may be filed with the Board either before or 
after the meeting. Individuals who wish to make oral statements 
pertaining to agenda items should contact Jay Vivari at the 
address above or by telephone at (202) 586-5143. Requests must be 
received five days prior to the meeting and reasonable provision 
will be made to include the presentation in the agenda. The 
Designated Federal Officer is empowered to conduct the meeting in 
a fashion that will facilitate the orderly conduct of business. 
Individuals wishing to make public comment will be provided a 
maximum of five minutes to present their comments.
 
Minutes: Minutes of this meeting will be available for public 
review and copying at the Freedom of Information Public Reading 
Room, 1E-190, Forrestal Building, 1000 Independence Avenue, SW., 
Washington, DC 20585 between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m., Monday-Friday 
except Federal holidays. Minutes will also be available by 
calling Jay Vivari at (202) 586-5143.
 
Issued at Washington, DC on March 29, 2005.
 
Carol Matthews, Acting Advisory Committee Officer.
 
[FR Doc. 05-6596 Filed 4-1-05; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 6450-01-P

 
    
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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: 
<http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml> 
    
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