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NUCLEAR POLICY
1 BBC: Iran issues fresh nuclear warning
2 Las Vegas SUN: Iran to Resume Nuke Program if Talks Fail
3 Xinhua: Japan, US agree on need to resume six-party talks
4 US: Platts: NEI welcomes Bush's proposal to increase nuclear product
5 US: SF Chronicle: Nuclear is key to energy future
6 US: Deccan Herald: US defends small nuclear bombs -
7 US: LA Times: Bush to Highlight Energy Policy Tonight
8 [du-list] MP calls for Bliar war crimes trial
9 RIA Novosti: RUSSIA FOR ELBARADEI'S RE-ELECTION AS IAEA DIRECTOR GEN
10 Economist.com: Energy policy
NUCLEAR REACTORS
11 Independent: Chernobyl Threatens to Blow Again
12 US: NRC: Media Advisory
13 US: NRC: NRC to Meet with Progress Energy Officials to Discuss Safet
14 US: NRC: NRC Issues Confirmatory Order to Virginia Firm in Whistlebl
15 US: Sun News: Talks to float new S.C. nuclear plant
16 BBC ON THIS DAY | 28 | 1986: Soviets admit nuclear accident
17 Bellona: Unplanned turbo generator shutdowns at Kursk NPP
18 RIA Novosti: CHERNOBYL NUCLEAR ACCIDENT - 19 YEARS ON
19 US: Las Vegas SUN: Editorial: No more nuke plants
20 US: Las Vegas SUN: DOE deal with nuke plant may get ax
21 Mail &Guardian Online: Greens see red over reactor contract
22 Independent: Cracks in decaying shell of Chernobyl reactor threaten
23 US: SouthBendTribune.com: Cook unit completes refueling
24 Slovak news: Slovakia wants more money for closure of V1 A-power pla
25 US: NRC: TXU Generation Company, LP; Notice of Withdrawal of Applica
26 US: NRC: System Energy Resources, Inc.; Notice of Availability of th
27 US: NRC: Entergy Operations, Inc.; Notice of Issuance of Amendment t
28 In These Times: No Reason to Exist -- (Chernobyl)
29 US: NRC: Industry could save billions with new 50.46
30 US: Public Citizen: Bush’s Push for Nuclear Power Would Unfairly
31 US: PPL: Susquehanna Unit 2 Shutdown
32 CBC New Brunswick: Lepreau repairs will take more time
33 News & Star: Nuclear leak repairs ‘may take months’
NUCLEAR SECURITY
34 Bunker-busting nukes could devastate civilians
35 [NYTr] Zarqawi attack on inspector cut short the hunt for WMD
36 Guardian Unlimited: N. Korea Refusal to Talk Called a Problem
37 Guardian Unlimited: Putin Warns Iran Against Atomic Arms
38 BBC NEWS: Iraq war legal advice published
39 Oakland Tribune: Penetrating nukes could kill millions
40 Guardian Unlimited Officials: N. Korea Missile Years Away
NUCLEAR SAFETY
41 US: News Release: Fallout Report Released
42 US: Las Vegas SUN: EPA finds no radiation concerns in Nevada town ne
43 Coastal Post Online: Horror Of Depleted Uranium Not Limited To Iraq
44 BN: 11,000 US Soldiers Dead from DU Poisoning
45 US: Hawk Eye: Board again backs speedy aid checks
46 US: Guardian Unlimited: U.S. Panel: Open Door to Radiation Claims
47 US: KTVB.COM: Idaho downwinders express concerns about report
48 US: Hawk Eye: IAAP definition
49 US: Hawk Eye: IAAP Senators' comments
50 US: Hawk Eye: Former IAAP workers learn to wait
51 US: PISJ: Public TV show to focus on downwinders
52 US: DailyBulletin.com: Parents want buildings near Wyle Laboratories
53 US: KATC: Committee approves free screening for exposure to uranium
NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE
54 The Washington Times: Editorials/OP-ED: Safety problems at Yucca
55 Las Vegas RJ: Tribe fights Yucca in court
56 Las Vegas RJ: Energy adviser to governor dies
57 Las Vegas RJ: Resolution urgesgovernment to endnuclear waste plan
58 Las Vegas RJ: Utility contract may be voided
59 Las Vegas SUN: Tourism decline cited in Yucca proposal
60 Las Vegas SUN: Shoshone Nation aims to stop Yucca dump
61 Guardian Unlimited: Tribe's Lawyer Argues Yucca Mountain Case
62 RGJ: Resolution urges rejection of Yucca plan
63 US: ICT: Coming clean on uranium at Navajo
64 US: NIGER: Residents of uranium mining town fear they're being
65 US: San Bernardino County Sun: Rialto, water district unable to mend
PEACE
66 FCNL: Help Strengthen Nuclear Nonproliferation
67 NEWS.com.au: UN asks India to sign nuclear treaty
68 Las Vegas SUN: Delegation from Japan visits Atomic Testing Museum in
69 Las Vegas RJ: OUT OF PAST,ATOMIC FEARSHAUNT PRESENT
US DEPT. OF ENERGY
70 The State: Savannah River Site in Aiken C
71 Tri-City Herald: Questions surround K Basins sludge
72 Daily Bruin: Plutonium restrictions may fall
73 DentonRC.com: UT System renews interest in Los Alamos
74 PRN: SPSE Calls for UC to Pay Jury Award
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FULL NEWS STORIES
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1 BBC: Iran issues fresh nuclear warning
Last Updated: Thursday, 28 April, 2005
[Iran nuclear plant]
Tehran says its right to nuclear power is non-negotiable
Iran will resume nuclear enrichment if its talks with leading EU
nations fail, says the country's foreign minister.
Kamal Kharrazi said Tehran would have no other choice if no
agreement was reached at Friday's negotiations with France,
Germany and the UK.
The group - known as the EU Three - want Iran to abandon its
uranium enrichment and reprocessing activities.
They are offering Tehran economic, political and technological
incentives for giving up the programme.
A previous round of talks in March ended with no agreement.
Delay
Mr Kharrazi was speaking in The Hague after talks with his Dutch
counterpart, Bernard Bot.
"Iranian people fear a delay," Mr Kharrazi told reporters after
the talks.
"They believe it is their inalienable right to have access to
this technology for peaceful purposes."
The Europeans have warned they would back US moves to take Tehran
to the UN Security Council if Iran breaches agreements or resumes
uranium enrichment during the talks.
Iran maintains its nuclear programme is entirely peaceful, but
Washington suspects it of secretly trying to build a nuclear
weapon.
*****************************************************************
2 Las Vegas SUN: Iran to Resume Nuke Program if Talks Fail
By ANTHONY DEUTSCH ASSOCIATED PRESS
THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) -
0428iran-nuclear Iran threatened on Thursday to resume its
uranium enrichment program if talks with European nations this
week fail.
The comments put pressure on European negotiators before Iran's
talks in London on Friday with political leaders from France,
German and Britain.
Speaking after a meeting with his Dutch counterpart, Iranian
Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi said Friday's talks were
critical.
"If talks with European Union are not successful tomorrow,
negotiations will collapse and we will have no choice but to
restart the uranium enrichment program," Kharrazi said Thursday.
France, Britain and Germany have been negotiating with Iran,
seeking guarantees that it won't use its nuclear program to make
weapons, as Washington suspects. Tehran insists the program -
kept secret for two decades - is only for peaceful energy
purposes.
Iran agreed in November to freeze uranium enrichment, but
insists the move is temporary.
The European countries have been trying to get Iran to make it
permanent. But last week, a spokesman for Iran's Foreign
Ministry said the country plans to resume uranium enrichment
regardless of what comes out of the negotiations. Hamid Reza
Asefi said then the freeze was not "a matter of a year, but
months."
Kharrazi said Iran is not willing to accept what he called
"delay tactics" by the Europeans and that his country has a
right to nuclear technology.
Dutch Foreign Minister Ben Bot said Europe wanted "objective
guarantees that Iran's uranium program is exclusively for
peaceful purposes."
Iran has argued that the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, of
which it is part, allows it to pursue a peaceful nuclear
program, including enriching uranium. Uranium enriched to low
levels can be used as fuel in nuclear reactors to generate
electricity, but further enrichment makes it suitable for a
nuclear bomb.
Kharrazi said Thursday that his country "has no weapons program"
and that the International Atomic Energy Agency had found no
proof to the contrary.
--
*****************************************************************
3 Xinhua: Japan, US agree on need to resume six-party talks
www.xinhuanet.com
www.chinaview.cn 2005-04-28 20:02:12
TOKYO, April 28 (Xinhuanet) -- Senior Japanese and US
officials reaffirmed on Thursday that the six-party talks are
the best way to resolve issues over the nuclear issue on the
Korean Peninsula.
After talks with Japanese Vice Foreign Minister Shotaro
Yachi, US Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill said
that they agreed on the need to get the Democratic People's
Republic of Korea (DPRK) "back to the talks and really to
invigorate the process," Kyodo News reported.
"We're not going to walk away," Hill said. But he was
reluctantto set "an artificial deadline" for the resumption of
the talks, which were last held in June last year in Beijing.
Hill also discussed the nuclear issue with Japanese Chief
Cabinet Secretary Hiroyuki Hosoda earlier on Thursday and with
Kenichiro Sasae on Wednesday who heads the Japanese team to the
six-party talks.
Three rounds of six-party talks have been held to try to
resolve the nuclear issue on the Korean Peninsula. The talks
have been stalled since June last year when the DPRK accused the
United States of adopting hostile policy toward it. Enditem
Copyright ©2003 Xinhua News Agency. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
4 Platts: NEI welcomes Bush's proposal to increase nuclear production
+ The Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) applauded President George
W. Bush's proposal today to increase nuclear production.
In a speech at the U.S. Small Business Administration's national
small business conference in Washington, Bush called nuclear
power "one of the most promising" energy sources.
Included in a broad package of proposals designed to promote
greater domestic energy independence, Bush wants to offer federal
insurance to cover the risk of delays that are beyond the control
of companies that build the next four new nuclear power plants.
For more details, see the April 28 Nucleonics Week. NEI
President/CEO Frank "Skip" Bowman said the nuclear industry hoped
the risk insurance would never need to be used but that its
existence would give confidence to investors and financiers.
"This is an example of how the federal government can act as a
catalyst for advanced energy technologies that are clearly in the
national interest," Bowman said. Bush's speech is at
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/04/20050427-3.html.
Washington (Platts)--27Apr2005
Copyright © 2005 - Platts, All Rights Reserved
[The McGraw-Hill Companies]
*****************************************************************
5 SF Chronicle: Nuclear is key to energy future
OPEN FORUM
John Ritch
Thursday, April 28, 2005
In the current debate over the energy bill, one important factor
is being all but ignored: A global renaissance in nuclear energy
is gaining momentum, and it could have greater implications than
any of the other proposed methods for dealing with our energy
problems.
Some 440 civil nuclear reactors, in 30 countries comprising
two-thirds of the world's population, produce 16 percent of the
world's electricity. Under current plans, these nations will
construct several hundred more reactors by 2030.
China and India will lead the way, but the expansion will be
broad-based. Nuclear power will also extend to new countries as
diverse as Poland, Turkey, Indonesia and Vietnam. Meanwhile,
nuclear "phaseouts" in countries such as Italy and Germany seem
sure to be reversed.
Around the world, there is a new realism about nuclear energy, a
recognition of its essential virtue: its capacity to deliver
power cleanly, safely, reliably and on a massive scale. This
thinking is eclipsing old-school anti-nuclear environmentalism.
Increasingly, thoughtful environmentalists see anti-nuclearism
as counterproductive. They worry not about the growth of nuclear
energy but about the likelihood that it is not growing rapidly
enough to produce the clean- energy revolution the world
urgently needs.
Carbon fuel emissions -- 900 tons each second -- continue
unabated, even as science warns that we are fast reaching a
point of irreversible global warming with consequences for sea
levels, species extinction, epidemic disease, drought and severe
weather events that will disrupt all civilization.
To avert climate catastrophe, greenhouse emissions must be
reduced over the next 50 years by 60 percent -- even as
population growth and economic development are combining to
double or triple world energy consumption.
Every authoritative energy analysis points to an inescapable
imperative: Humankind cannot conceivably achieve a global
clean-energy revolution without a rapid expansion of nuclear
power to generate electricity, produce hydrogen for tomorrow's
vehicles and drive seawater-desalination plants to meet a fast-
emerging world water crisis.
This reality requires a tenfold increase in nuclear energy
during the 21st century. Fortunately, advances in technology and
practice can facilitate this expansion by meeting legitimate
public concerns:
-- Safety: In the two decades since Chernobyl, the global
nuclear industry has built an impressive safety record that
draws on 12,000 reactor- years of practical experience. A
network of active cooperation on operational safety now links
every nuclear power reactor worldwide.
-- Arms proliferation: Illicit weapons programs of rogue regimes
pose an ever-present risk. But strong, universal safeguards can
ensure that civil nuclear facilities do not increase that risk.
Security for the environment and against terrorism need not
conflict.
-- Cost: Steady reductions in operational and capital costs have
already made nuclear energy highly competitive. Once governments
begin to impose a real price on environmental damage -- through
emissions trading or carbon taxes -- the balance will tilt
decisively toward nuclear.
-- Waste: In truth, waste is nuclear power's greatest
comparative asset. Unlike carbon emissions, the volume is
minimal and can be reliably contained and managed. For a
half-century, the civil nuclear industry has safely stored and
transported all end products from electricity generation. For
long-term storage, a scientific consensus favors deep geological
repositories. Governments worldwide must follow the lead of
Finland, Sweden, the United States and France by moving to
construct such sites.
The scope of the environmental crisis requires that governments
accelerate the nuclear renaissance. One essential element will
be a comprehensive post-Kyoto treaty on climate. It must include
all major nations and yield a steady, long-term contraction in
global emissions. The key is an emissions-trading mechanism that
yields efficiency in clean-energy investment and a net flow of
investment from north to south. This economic assistance will be
the most cost-effective in history if it prevents the globally
destructive greenhouse emissions that will otherwise occur in
the developing world.
Another key is investment. Full-scale nuclear investment is
still impeded by the absence of carbon penalties, the short-term
bias of deregulated energy markets and the fact that
21st-century nuclear reactors have not yet achieved economies of
scale. Governments must prime the pump using start-up aids, such
as loan guarantees and tax credits for first-of-a-kind
engineering costs.
We need multinational investment, too. Today the major U.N.
development institutions reflexively embrace unscientific
prejudice while the International Atomic Energy Agency works
alone to promote the peaceful uses of nuclear energy.
Governments must now direct the World Bank and the U.N.
Development and Environment Programs to pursue a clean-energy
vision with nuclear power in a central role.
Technology today is spurring a growth in world population and
energy consumption that jeopardizes the future of our biosphere.
Wisely used, modern technology can also be our salvation.
John Ritch, director general of the World Nuclear Association,
was U.S. ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency
and other U.N. agencies in Vienna from 1993 to 2001. This
commentary appeared originally in the Washington Post.
Page B - 9
©2005 San Francisco Chronicle | Feedback | RSS Feeds | FAQ |
Contact [http://www.sfgate.com/staff/]
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6 Deccan Herald: US defends small nuclear bombs -
Friday, April 29, 2005
From L K Sharma
DH News Service Washington:
The Pentagon’s current arsenal is incapable of destroying
strategic assets that many countries keep deeply buried under
the earth.
The Bush administration wants US Congress to let it research a
nuclear bomb that penetrates the earth before exploding.
The Congress denied the funding for this bunker-buster last year
but Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told a subcommittee that
70 countries were burying their strategic assets underground to
be beyond the enemys reach.
At the present time, we dont have a capability of dealing with
that. We cant go in there and get at things in solid rock
underground, Mr Rumsfeld said. The only thing we have is very
large, very dirty, big nuclear weapons. So. . . do we want to
have nothing and only a large, dirty nuclear weapon, or would we
rather have something in between? Those who believe in options
will find it hard to argue but some Congressmen are worried
about the death and destruction that even smaller nuclear
weapons will cause above the ground.
A study mandated by the Congress found that earth-penetrating
nuclear bombs would also inflict massive casualties at ground
level. Such a bomb could cause more than a million deaths,
depending on the yield, the report said. It seems in nuclear
weaponry, even small is not beautiful!
An expert associated with the report said: You can use a much
smaller weapon if you use an earth penetrator, may be 20 times
smaller, but you will kill a lot of people, because it puts out
a huge amount of radioactive debris. Casualties from an
earth-penetrator weapon would be equal to that from a surface
burst of the same weapon yield, causing from thousands to more
than a million deaths in an urban area, and hundreds to
thousands of deaths in lightly populated areas with unfavourable
winds.
Health hazards
The Congress had wanted a study to examine the health and
environmental effects of the bombs.
Notwithstanding the results of the study, the Bush
administration has renewed its budgetary demand for $ 8.5
million for resuming Pentagon and Energy Department studies of
bunker-buster nuclear warheads.
A Democrat senator from California, Dianne Feinstein, told the
Defence Secretary: It is beyond me as to why youre proceeding
with this programme when the laws of physics wont allow a
missile to be driven deeply enough to retain the fallout, which
will spew in hundreds of millions of cubic feet if its at 100
kilotonnes.
Mr Rumsfeld said the Pentagons current arsenal is incapable of
destroying such deeply buried targets.
He didnt talk of the deep caves in Afghanistan housing
terrorists but he did say that many countries have acquired the
technology to dig deep and fast under rocks that makes their
strategic assets safer from conventional aerial bombardment.
Copyright 2005, The Printers (Mysore) Private Ltd., 75, M.G.
Road, Post Box No 5331, Bangalore - 560001
Tel: +91 (80) 25880000 Fax No. +91 (80) 25880523
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7 LA Times: Bush to Highlight Energy Policy Tonight
[Los Angeles Times - latimes.com]
2:15 PM PDT, April 28, 2005 E-mail story Print Most
By Warren Vieth and Edwin Chen, Times Staff Writers
WASHINGTON
President Bush, under pressure to do something about high energy
prices, called Wednesday for new efforts to harness the
"transformational power of technology" to wean the United States
from its dependence on oil and gas.
He has scheduled a news conference for 5 p.m. PDT tonight, a
half-hour earlier than originally announced, to explain his
energy plan.
In his second major energy policy address in a week, Bush
Wednesday proposed several initiatives he said would help
address long-term problems contributing to price increases and
constraining energy production.
They include government-provided risk insurance for new nuclear
power plants, expanded federal authority to approve liquefied
natural gas terminals, possible construction of oil refineries
on closed military bases and a new tax break for people who buy
diesel-powered cars.
But for the most part, the president expressed a bedrock belief
in the ability of the private sector to expand energy supplies
and promote conservation, with modest government involvement to
start.
"In the years ahead, technology will allow us to create
entirely new sources of energy in ways earlier generations could
never dream," Bush said. "Technology is this nation's ticket to
greater energy independence."
Bush's remarks appear to reflect a delicate balancing act on
the part of the White House, analysts said.: As an accomplished
politician, they said, Bush knows he must ratchet up his
rhetoric to convince Americans that he too feels the sting of
high prices. But as a former oilman and business executive, they
said, he wasis hesitant to embrace solutions that involved
extensive federal intervention in the energy sector.
"He's trying to convey to the public a sense that he's on the
job, that he's concerned about high prices and that he's trying
to find a way to get more energy to the country as quickly as
possible," said Stuart Rothenberg, an independent political
analyst in Washington.
"It's a tough place to be if you're a politician," said Kim
Wallace, chief political analyst for Lehman Brothers. "It's
probably tougher for this president because he's a
market-oriented president and an energy-oriented president. The
sensitivities are a little bit higher."
Speaking at a Washington conference sponsored by the Small
Business Administration, Bush cited a long list of
administration proposals contained in the comprehensive energy
strategy drafted by Vice President Dick Cheney in 2001.
He criticized Congress for not enacting his plan and urged the
Senate to begin work soon on its version of energy legislation
passed by the House last week. The House measure contains many
of the administration's initiatives.
Bush acknowledged that none of his proposals, including the
measures he outlined Wednesday, would have much immediate effect
on prices at the gas pump. But he said they would help lead the
way toward a more diversified energy supply and reduced U.S.
reliance on foreign crude oil.
As an example, Bush cited the administration's efforts to
promote development of hydrogen as a fuel source for cars and
trucks. Pointing to two young people in the audience, he said he
wanted them "to be able to take your driver's test in a
completely pollution-free car that will make us less dependent
on foreign sources of energy."
Bush said he wanted "to reduce uncertainty in the nuclear plant
licensing process, and also provide federal risk insurance that
will protect those building the first four new nuclear plants
against delays that are beyond their control."
After pointing out that no new oil refineries have been built in
the United States since 1976, Bush said he would "will direct
federal agencies to work with states to encourage the building
of new refineries on closed military facilities, for example
and to simplify the permitting process for such construction."
Energy analysts said most of the president's new proposals
appeared to be modest expansions of previous administration
initiatives and did not represent a significant expansion of the
government's role in energy production or consumption.
They said Bush's efforts to spur construction of new oil
refineries and nuclear power plants might prove beneficial, but
predicted that the pace of future development would be dictated
more by economic fundamentals than by regulatory changes.
"At the end of the day, there's very little that policy can do
for the short -term," said David Pursell, a principal at
Pickering Energy Partners, a Houston research firm.
Still, the bully pulpit crusade might yield bigger results than
a raft of new proposals if it generates public pressure for
passage of Bush's energy bill, which contains tax breaks and
other incentives to increase production and promote
conservation. One controversial provision would open Alaska's
Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling.
Christine Tezak, an energy specialist at the Stanford Washington
Research Group, said Bush was criticized in previous sessions of
Congress for not pushing hard enough for passage of energy
legislation.
"He's trying to gin up public demand" for action, she said.
"That certainly is something new and different and perhaps more
important than the substance of anything new he's proposing."
Bush's address came two days after a meeting at his Texas ranch
with Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia that raised questions
about his willingness to take steps to bring down oil and gas
prices.
In that meeting, Bush neither sought nor received a new
commitment from the Saudis to increase oil production.
Afterward, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and national
security advisor Stephen J. Hadley told reporters that Bush was
taking a longer view, with an eye on changing the fundamentals
of the market.
Earlier Wednesday, White House spokesman Scott McClellan
rejected suggestions that Bush's initiatives were quickly
drafted in an attempt to portray the president as responding to
new expressions of public concern about energy.
McClellan characterized Bush's proposals as part of the
president's "ongoing consultations" with staff. He said Bush had
asked aides in recent weeks about additional measures that might
be taken.
Bush's level of concern about the soaring prices is very high,
McClellan said. "It's affecting the pocketbooks of everyday
Americans," he said. "It's affecting people out there in the
country who are trying to make ends meets. It's affecting small
business."
Bush's proposals drew sharp rebuttals from congressional
Democrats, who want the government to take more aggressive
action to reduce U.S. energy consumption and rein in prices.
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said Bush's speech
"amounts to little more than half-measures and wrongheaded
policies that will do nothing to address the current energy
crisis or break the stranglehold that foreign oil has on our
nation."
Copyright 2005 Los Angeles Times
*****************************************************************
8 [du-list] MP calls for Bliar war crimes trial
Date: Thu, 28 Apr 2005 15:07:33 -0700
Families of troops killed prepare to indict PM tomorrow.
Guardian item....
Opposition demands Iraq answers
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1471956,00.html
Vikram Dodd and Sam Jones
Thursday April 28, 2005
The Guardian
Opposition politicians and anti-war campaigners rounded on the government
last night for its handling of the Iraq legal advice.
Michael Howard said: "It is now obvious from this legal advice that on
March 7 2003 the attorney general raised specific reservations about the
legality of war in Iraq.
"But Mr Blair has said that the attorney general's advice to the cabinet on
March 17 was 'very clear' that the war was legal, and that the attorney
general had not changed his mind. It is obvious that he did.
"So what the public must now have an answer to is this: what, or who,
changed the attorney general's mind?"
The shadow attorney general, Dominic Grieve, was the first MP to say he
would have reversed his vote in favour of war if he had known of Lord
Goldsmith's doubts: "If I had known of the attorney general's reservations
of March 7 it would have been impossible to vote for the resolution before
parliament."
The Liberal Democrat leader, Charles Kennedy, said the prime minister had
made two big misjudgments in first going to war and then refusing to
publish the advice: "We now know what everyone suspected, with good reason
- that the attorney general entered big caveats about the legality of the
war and subsequently revised them within 10 days. What transpired over the
10 days between this document and him going to parliament?
Mr Kennedy said that if the PM did not publish the material "this corrosive
poison in the system is going to persist and will be a major factor in
people's decision-making in this election - and rightly so".
Sir Menzies Campbell, the Liberal Democrats' deputy leader, himself a
lawyer, told Channel 4 News: "We must now have a full account of his [the
attorney general's] reasoning and what happened in that period.
"Who did he meet? What influences were brought to bear upon him? What
minutes, if any, were exchanged between him and the prime minister and
other members of the government?"
Peter Brierley, whose 29-year-old son, Lance Corporal Shaun Brierley, died
in an accident shortly after the war began, joined the ranks of those
calling for the prime minister's resignation. He told Channel 4 News: "[The
advice] seems to say that going to war was illegal and I can't see that
Tony Blair has any choice now but to stand down."
Hugo Charlton, chairman of the Green party, suggested voters held Mr Blair
to account.
"The factor which enabled the attorney general to change his advice can
only have been the prime minister's assurance that in his - the prime
minister's - view Iraq was in breach of its obligations," he said.
"The question the PM must answer is what was the hard evidence of
non-compliance and non-cooperation which enabled him to come to that
conclusion.
"As a matter of law a British court will not, in these circumstances,
question the reasoning behind a minister's decision. However, the
electorate most certainly will."
Others went further. George Galloway, the former Labour MP ejected from the
party over his opposition to the war, called for the prime minister to be
tried as a war criminal.
"The last miserable shred of Blair's defence has been torn away," he said.
"The world can now see in the words of the country's most senior law
officer that there were no justifiable legal grounds for going to war.
"More than 100,000 Iraqi civilians and dozens of our soldiers have been
killed. The lies of Tony Blair led directly to their deaths. Not only
should he be forced from office, he should be brought before the courts and
tried as a war criminal."
The Labour backbencher Clive Soley came out to defend the government,
arguing that Saddam Hussein's dictatorship had in itself been illegal.
He accused the Conservatives of inconsistency and said: "If you don't want
the UN to become another League of Nations, you have to act."
Last night, the foreign secretary, Jack Straw, told BBC2's Newsnight that
there had been "overwhelming evidence" of Iraq's non-compliance with the UN
and said the attorney general had "always acted in a consistent manner".
The leak also prompted the families of some of the other British soldiers
killed in the war to bring a legal case against the prime minister.
Rose Gentle, whose son, Gordon, was killed in Basra last year, said she and
other families were preparing an indictment against Tony Blair. The case
will be supported by the Stop The War Coalition and the Military Families
Against The War. The two anti-war groups said the plan was to present a
legal case to the high court in London today.
Mrs Gentle, who is standing against the armed forces minister, Adam Ingram,
in East Kilbride, said: "We now know that the war was based on a lie. There
was no legal advice in favour of the war. My son died for that lie and I am
determined to see justice done."
A spokesman for the Stop The War Coalition said: "There were no weapons of
mass destruction, no 45-minute warning, and now we know, there was no
proper legal advice for war.
"Tony Blair has to take responsibility for what happened in Iraq and for
the deaths of tens of thousands of Iraqis and 88 British servicemen."
Goldsmith stands firm
Lord Goldsmith said last night that he stood by his opinion that it was
legal for Britain to go to war in Iraq.
The attorney general said the legal advice, of which an extract is
published in the Guardian today, "stood up" the government's case that he
had not changed his opinion between giving Tony Blair his advice on March 7
2003 and a statement to parliament 10 days later.
In a statement to the Press Association, Lord Goldsmith said that the
document showed how he had gone through the arguments before concluding
that, in his judgment, military action would be lawful. It read: "The
document, so far from standing up the case of the government's critics,
stands up the case the government has been making all along.
"Contrary to the allegations that have persistently been made, it does not
say the war was unlawful but confirms the conclusion I reached was that a
sufficient basis for the use of force was established without a second
resolution."
----------
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9 RIA Novosti: RUSSIA FOR ELBARADEI'S RE-ELECTION AS IAEA DIRECTOR GENERAL -
FOREIGN MINISTRY
MOSCOW, April (RIA Novosti) - Russia supports the re-election of
Mohamed ElBaradei as the Director General of the International
Atomic Energy Agency, official spokesman for the Russian Foreign
Ministry Alexander Yakovenko said in answer to the media
question.
The communique, posted to the ministerial web site, says that
the extraordinary session of the IAEA Board of Governors in
Vienna on April 27 has demonstrated a growing support for the
present Director General in favor of his re-election to the
post.
"The Russian delegation has voiced support for Mohamed ElBaradei
and expressed the hope that at the regular June session of the
Board of Governors a unanimous decision will be taken on
appointing him as the head of the IAEA", Alexander Yakovenko
said. He noted that the current Director General is the only
candidate to the post.
© 2005 "RIAN Novosti"
*****************************************************************
10 Economist.com: Energy policy
Rethinking the Axis of Oil
Apr 28th 2005 | WASHINGTON, DC
[Getty Images]
Can America ever kick the oil habit? Not if Congress and George
Bush have their way, but the ground is shifting
FOR six decades, one of the few fixed stars in American foreign
policy has been the special relationship with Saudi Arabia.
Bluntly put, America has offered military protection to the
Saudi royal family in return for the free flow of relatively
cheap oil from the desert kingdom. Every president since
Franklin Roosevelt has stuck by this deal, and the Saudis have
mostly done so as well. Within the OPEC oil cartel, the Saudis
are usually the voice of moderation.
Alas, things seem to have gone wrong on George Bush's watch.
Despite his family's famous closeness to the Saudi rulers, oil
prices have shot past $50 a barrel, up from barely $10 in 1998.
The price of gasoline, which Americans still expect to cost just
a buck a gallon, now touches $3 in some places.
Oil
[Websites] President Bushs meeting with Saudi Crown Prince
Abdullah resulted in a joint statement. The Rocky Mountain
Institute and the National Commission on Energy Policy provide
analysis on energy security. The Energy Future Coalition
organised a letter to Mr Bush arguing against Americas
dependence on imported oil. The House of Representatives just
passed the energy bill, which is opposed by Taxpayers for Common
Sense. Jerry Taylor is an energy expert at the Cato Institute.
That explains why the mood was not so cheerful when Mr Bush met
Crown Prince Abdullah, who in effect rules Saudi Arabia, in
Texas this week. As petrol prices have gone up, Mr Bush's
popularity ratings have declined. Uncharacteristically, before
he met the prince, Mr Bush publicly pointed a finger of blame at
the Saudis for the high prices. Much less publicly, the Saudis
are still smarting from the demonisation of their country
since the attacks of September 11th.
The two leaders tried to patch things up in Crawford. The Saudis
promised to raise oil output sharply, pledging to spend $50
billion over the next five years to that end. Mr Bush cooed
about the special relationship, and the two issued a communiqué
pledging to continue their co-operation, so that the oil supply
from Saudi Arabia will be available and secure.
So all's well with the Axis of Oil? Not quite. This is because
the symbiotic relationship between the world's largest oil
consumer and its largest producer is under attack from a
surprising corner. Complaints from greens about cheap oil,
Bushphobic wailings from the Michael Moore brigade and
neo-conservative worries about Saudi terrorism are all well
established. But the axis is now being challenged by an
increasing number of pragmatists from the centre-right of
American politics.
Several independent groups have strongly urged America to move
away from oil. The Rocky Mountain Institute, a think-tank
concerned with energy efficiency, argues in a newish study
partly funded by the Pentagon that America can end its oil
imports with aggressive adoption of biofuels, radically more
efficient cars and other related policies. The National
Commission on Energy Policy (NCEP), a bipartisan panel of energy
heavyweights, recently made the case for boosting domestic
energy sources, and also advocates a clever cap and trade
approach to tackling greenhouse gases.
The most stinging attack came in a recent letter to Mr Bush
signed by two dozen politically influential figures organised by
the Energy Future Coalition, a lobbying group. These folk, an
odd mix of national-security hawks and die-hard greens, argue
that dependence on imported petroleum poses a risk to our
homeland security and economic well-being. These worthies want
to see clean, domestic petroleum substitutes and increased
efficiency in our transport system.
One of the geo-greens (to use the moniker given them by Thomas
Friedman of the New York Times) is Boyden Gray, an influential
conservative who served as the White House counsel for Mr Bush's
father. I don't even like the word green! he bristles. It is
not greenery but post-September 11th fears that led men like him
to join hands with the tree-huggers. In a thinly veiled
reference to Saudi Arabia, he explains that he worries about
the corrupting influence of oil receipts that end up in
terrorist hands .
Robert McFarlane, who was Ronald Reagan's national security
adviser, also signed the letter. He worries about the possibly
devastating impact of terrorist attacks on oil infrastructure
inside Saudi Arabia. He joined the greens because we share a
common interest in weaning ourselves off foreign oil.
So is Congress rushing to embrace innovative ideas to kick the
oil habit? Certainly not. In fact, the House of Representatives
has just done the opposite by passing an energy bill stuffed
full of subsidies for the oil-and-gas business. It includes
giveaways for ethanol (a pretty ungreen petrol additive popular
with corn farmers) and cheap catastrophic insurance for the
nuclear industry. Meanwhile, it does nothing to close a loophole
that allows sports-utility vehicles and Hummers to escape
fuel-economy standards.
This bill is similar to last year's failed energy bill, which
itself was based on the recommendations of the Cheney energy
task force of 2001. But the House managed to add so much more
porkincluding a $2 billion giveaway to oil companies for
deep-water researchto the bill that even the White House now
criticises it as excessively costly. Taxpayers for Common Sense,
a watchdog group, estimates that the full cost could be more
than $90 billion (see chart). The bill now goes to the Senate.
Mr Bush's idea of reform may be a little more sophisticated than
Congress's, but not much. His main priority is simply to get a
bill through. He has asked Republican leaders for a final bill
by August. On April 27th, he even offered the Senate some new
sops to the oil-and-gas lobby in the name of energy
independence . He wants to help buyers of cars with
cleaner-burning diesel engines, utilities building nuclear
plants and energy companies building refineries or liquefied
natural gas facilities (all half-measures or worse).
Some geo-greens think the energy bill will fall apart. That
would, in theory, allow the politicians to redraft a better
billperhaps even one that included sensible provisions on
auto-fuel efficiency, mandatory carbon curbs and so on. A few
years ago, such reforms would have found scant support. Now they
may find unexpected allies. For instance, the farm lobby is
getting gradually more eager to plant windmills instead of
profitless crops. The energy behemoth may still largely be
committed to cheap oil; but there are a growing number of small
technology companies looking for alternatives who resent the
giveaways to Old Oil.
James Woolsey, a former director of the CIA, envisions a
geo-green coalition of tree-huggers, do-gooders, sod busters
and cheap hawks pushing for energy independence. The oddest
couple of allJerry Taylor of the libertarian Cato Institute and
Dan Becker of the deeply verdant Sierra Clubhave just issued a
joint call for a radically different energy policy: a
market-based, zero subsidy energy bill. If such coalitions
really spring forth, then American energy policy, and the Axis
of Oil, would be turned on its ear.
*****************************************************************
11 Independent: Chernobyl Threatens to Blow Again
Date: Thu, 28 Apr 2005 18:15:36 -0700
ba58d3.jpg
Go to
Original
Cracks in Decaying Shell of Chernobyl Reactor Threaten Second Disaster
By Andrew Osborn
The Independent UK
Thursday 28 April 2005
A leading Russian scientist has claimed that the sarcophagus entombing
Chernobyl's broken nuclear reactor is dangerously degraded and he warned
that its collapse could cause a catastrophe on the same scale as the
original accident almost 20 years ago.
Professor Alexei Yablokov, President of the Centre for Russian
Environmental Policy, said the concrete and metal sarcophagus was riven
with cracks, already leaking radiation and at risk of collapse unless
repairs were undertaken and work on a replacement urgently begun.
"If it collapses, there will be no explosion, as this is not a bomb,
but a pillar of dust containing irradiated particles will shoot 1.5
kilometres into the air and will be spread by the wind." Depending on how
the wind is blowing, Russia or Belarus would bear the brunt of such a dust
cloud. Ukraine, where Chernobyl is located, would also be affected.
The sarcophagus is designed to keep a lid on what is left of the
nuclear reactor that exploded with such dire consequences during an
unauthorised test in April 1986 and is supposed to stop the mass of unspent
nuclear fuel that lies beneath from entering the atmosphere.
It is estimated that only between 3 and 15 per cent of that fuel
actually escaped during the explosion meaning that most of it is still
trapped inside. Dr Yablokov, a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences
and a one-time adviser to former president Boris Yeltsin, said nuclear
reactions were actually taking place - spontaneously - inside the
sarcophagus as rain and snow fell on the unspent fuel through cracks in the
decaying shell.
He said experts had "seen a luminescence characteristic of chain
reactions inside the giant building". adding: "Who could predict what might
happen if hundreds of thousands of tons of concrete, which was hastily
poured 19 years ago, tumbled down on the ruined nuclear reactor?"
His gloomy assessment corroborates that of the Ukrainian officials who
manage the decommissioned power plant.
Earlier this year Julia Marusych, the head of information at
Chernobyl, admitted on Russian TV that the sarcophagus was in appalling
condition: "The construction is unstable, unsafe, and does not meet any
safety requirements."
The sarcophagus was hastily thrown together after the explosion as a
desperate attempt to contain the world's worst nuclear accident. Many of
the workers who toiled on it have since died of cancer and the sarcophagus
itself began showing signs of serious stress in the early 1990s.
Built to last 50 years,experts were forced to reduce its recommended
lifespan to just 20 years meaning a replacement is due in 2006.
Some repair work was carried out earlier this year but progress is
slow due to the fact that construction workers can only be in its vicinity
for short periods because of radiation levels.
Sceptics claim that warnings about its deterioration are designed to
persuade Western donors to stump up the $1bn bill. A donors' conference
takes place in London on 12 May and the Ukrainian government hopes to raise
$300m.
That task has been complicated, however, by recent revelations that
private firms have embezzled some $185m of Chernobyl money, some of which
was earmarked for a new shelter.
The First Catastrophe
26 APRIL 1986:
1.23am: Reactor number four at Chernobyl nuclear power plant begins to
fail. Explosion blows 1,000-ton cover off the reactor and 31 people die
immediately.
5am: Fire caused by explosion is put out by firefighters who are not
warned of radiation. Many later die.
Evening: Officials arrive at site and order evacuation of nearby town
of Pripyat.
27 April:
Disaster is hidden until workers at Forsmark nuclear plant in Sweden
are found to have radioactive particles on clothes. Swedish search for the
source of radioactivity leads to the USSR.
28 April:
Soviet leadersadmit accident happened but full scale is not explained.
First Soviet media reports: Chernobyl is fourth item in Moscow Radio's
evening bulletin.
1 May:
Despite clouds of radiation overhead, authorities encourage locals to
turn out for May Day parade in nearby Kiev.
June-November:
Large sarcophagus made of steel and concrete is hastily constructed.
-------
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Gets Partial Cabinet, Chalabi Deputy PM Memo Blair Tried to Hide Raises New
Doubts over War Secular Europe: Spain Stands Up to Pope on Gays Chernobyl
Threatens to Blow Again Filibuster Vote Hard to Predict House Limits
Out-of-State Abortions for Minors Thomas Frank | What's the Matter with
Liberals? Jean-Marie Colombani | All Europeans DeLay Is Likely to Be Found
Culpable Bob Herbert | On Abu Ghraib, the Big Shots Walk Michael Schwartz |
Between Iraq and a Hard Place Fox Moves to End Mexican Crisis Sidney
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Admits WMD 'Slam-Dunk' Remark "Dumbest Ever" Marc Ash | Hitler Youth and
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12 NRC: Media Advisory
+
News Release - Region II - 2005-02
U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION
Office of Public Affairs, Region II
No. II-05-023 April 28, 2005
CONTACT: Ken Clark (404) 562-4416
Roger D. Hannah (404) 562-4417 E-mail: [opa2@nrc.gov]
WHO: Dr. Nils J. Diaz, Chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory
Commission
WHAT: Media availability
WHERE: Room 530, Management and Advanced Research Center (MARC)
Buliding, 11200 S.W. 8th St., Miami, Fla., 33199 on main campus
of Florida International University (see directions below)
WHEN: Noon-1 p.m. EDT, Tuesday May 3.
Dr. Diaz -- keynote speaker at FIU's Engineering College
commencement -- is available for interviews on nuclear plant
safety and security prior to his address. Diaz, who led the NRC's
substantial effort post 9-11 to make a significant upgrade in
nuclear plant security, will have just completed a tour of the
nearby Turkey Point nuclear power station and its security
increases. Additionally, Diaz is prepared to speak about the work
the NRC has done to prepare for the expected resumption of energy
industry requests for new nuclear power plants. His commencement
address will be delivered at 3 p.m. on the Engineering College
campus nearby. Coverage is invited.
Broadcast one-on-ones will be scheduled from Noon to 12:30 with a
print roundtable to follow from 12:30 to 1 p.m.
To schedule an interview with Dr. Diaz, please call NRC Public
Affairs office Ken Clark at 404-562-4416, or Office of Public
Affairs Director Eliot Brenner at 301-415-8200 or 240-888-2923.
Campus contact is Jose Parra at 305-348-2716.
DIRECTIONS: Enter the campus at the main entrance on 107th Ave.,
go around the traffic circle and exit straight out at the back
side. The Management and Advanced Research Center building is
straight ahead, with parking garages to the right and left.
From I-95, Downtown Miami, Ft. Lauderdale, and West Palm Beach:
Take I-95 to I-836 WEST Follow I-836 to the Florida Turnpike Take
the Florida Turnpike SOUTH exit Follow the Florida Turnpike to
the Tamiami Trail exit (SW 8th Street) Take the SW 8th Street
EAST exit Follow SW 8th Street, FIU will appear on the right at
the intersection of SW 107th Avenue. Make a right on 107th Avenue
and look for the main entrance on the right hand side (SW 16th
Street).
Last revised Thursday, April 28, 2005
*****************************************************************
13 NRC: NRC to Meet with Progress Energy Officials to Discuss Safety Performance at
Crystal River Nuclear Power Plant
News Release - Region II - 2005-02
U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION
Office of Public Affairs, Region II
No. II-05-024 April 28, 2005
CONTACT: Ken Clark (404) 562-4416
Roger D. Hannah (404) 562-4417 E-mail: opa2@nrc.gov
[opa2@nrc.gov]
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff will meet with
Progress Energy officials on Tuesday, May 10, to discuss the
results of NRC's annual assessment of safety performance at the
Crystal River nuclear power plant near Crystal River, Fla.
The meeting will be held at 10:30 a.m. at the Crystal River
Nuclear Operations Training Facility, 8200 W. Venable Street in
Crystal River. The public is invited to observe the meeting, and
NRC officials will be available before its conclusion to answer
any questions.
The NRC told Progress Energy that the Crystal River plant
operated safely during 2004 and that plant performance was at a
level requiring no additional NRC oversight beyond routine
inspections. A letter from the NRC to Progress Energy detailing
the results of the evaluation is available from Region II Public
Affairs and on the NRC web site at
www.nrc.gov/NRR/OVERSIGHT/ASSESS/LETTERS/cr_2004q4.pdf [PDF
Icon] .
Dr. William Travers, Administrator of the NRC Region II office
in Atlanta, said each year the NRC staff rates the performance
of the Crystal River plant and all of the nations other
commercial nuclear plants. This gives us a chance to discuss our
assessment with the company, with local officials and with
residents near the plant. Our aim is to make this information
available to the public and answer any questions people may have
about our oversight.
Current performance indicators for Crystal River are available
at www.nrc.gov/NRR/OVERSIGHT/ASSESS/CR3/CR3_chart.html.
Last revised Thursday, April 28, 2005
*****************************************************************
14 NRC: NRC Issues Confirmatory Order to Virginia Firm in Whistleblower Case
News Release - 2005-07
U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION
Office of Public Affairs Telephone: 301/415-8200
Washington, DC 20555-0001 E-mail: opa@nrc.gov
No. 05-074 April 28, 2005
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has issued an order to Soil
Consultants, Inc., (SCI) of Manassas, Va., confirming a
settlement agreement between the agency and the company
resolving employee-protection complaints against SCI.
In the settlement, SCI agreed to pay a fine of $1,200 and to
take additional corrective actions to promote a safety-conscious
work environment. Those actions include hiring a contractor to
develop a training course on employee protection for company
managers and supervisors and implementing that training within
six months.
The settlement was reached through the NRCs new alternative
dispute resolution program, using a professional neutral
mediator arranged through Cornell Universitys Institute on
Conflict Resolution.
NRCs enforcement action stemmed from SCIs termination in August
2003 of a dispatcher it believed had reported safety concerns to
the NRC. The NRC staff proposed an escalated fine of $9,600
because the violation was identified by the NRC rather than
self-reported by the licensee, and because the companys
corrective action was focused too narrowly and did not address
managements understanding of NRC regulations on employee
protection.
This settlement shows the value of alternative dispute
resolution in the NRCs enforcement process, said Frank J.
Congel, director of the NRCs Office of Enforcement. Soil
Consultants, Inc., has committed to promote a safety-conscious
work environment and educate its management about the
employee-protection requirements in NRC regulations. While NRC
will not pursue further enforcement action in this matter, we
will evaluate SCIs implementation of the agreement in future
inspections.
For more information about the agencys enforcement program,
including details about significant enforcement actions, see the
agencys Web site at
http://www.nrc.gov/what-we-do/regulatory/enforcement.html.
Last revised Thursday, April 28, 2005
*****************************************************************
15 Sun News: Talks to float new S.C. nuclear plant
| 04/28/2005 |
Savannah River Site possible area
The Associated Press
CHARLESTON - Almost a decade after the nation's most recent
licensed nuclear power plant went on line, S.C. officials will
meet with utility representatives to see if there is interest in
building a reactor in the state.
The May 9 meeting in Columbia will include representatives from
the state Commerce Department, the governor's office, utility
officials and U.S. Rep. Gresham Barrett of the state's 3rd
Congressional District.
"We just want to get everyone together, see if anyone's
interested in South Carolina, and then we'll move forward from
there," said Tim Dangerfield, chief of staff at the Commerce
Department.
The state already has four nuclear plants accounting for just
more than half the electricity generated in South Carolina. The
most recent nuclear generating plant to go on line in the nation
was the Tennessee Valley Authority's Watts Bar plant in 1996.
NuStart Energy Development, a consortium of eight utilities, the
Tennessee Valley Authority and two reactor manufacturers, was
formed last year to gain federal approval for building and
operating new nuclear plants.
Representatives from the consortium, which includes both Duke
Energy and Progress Energy based in North Carolina, will join
S.C. utilities at the meeting.
"Right now, there are not any [state] incentives that anybody
has identified, but I do believe some could be forthcoming,"
said Neville Lorick, president of S.C. Electric & Gas Co., which
owns two-thirds of a nuclear plant in Jenkinsville.
Dangerfield said the Savannah River Site has been suggested as a
possible site for a plant.
"It's kind of a natural," Dangerfield said. "Everybody says,
'Not in my back yard.' The Savannah River Site is a
300-square-mile fenced area, so this is a good opportunity to
put it in a place where you won't have a lot of people
complaining about it."
*****************************************************************
16 BBC ON THIS DAY | 28 | 1986: Soviets admit nuclear accident
[http://www.bbc.co.uk]
1986: Soviets admit nuclear accident The Soviet Union has
acknowledged there has been an accident at the Chernobyl nuclear
power plant in Ukraine.
The report, from the official news agency, Tass, said there had
been casualties but gave no details of numbers. It said aid was
being sent to the injured.
The report said that one of the reactors had been damaged in the
accident, but gave no further details beyond saying that
measures were being taken to "eliminate the consequences of the
accident". It also claimed the accident was the first at a
Soviet power station.
The report was the first confirmation of a major nuclear
catastrophe since monitoring stations in Sweden, Finland and
Norway began reporting sudden high discharges of radioactivity
in the atmosphere two days ago.
Meltdown
The accident is believed to be the most serious in the history
of nuclear power, worse even than that at the Three-Mile Island
power station in the United States in 1979, when there was some
release of radioactivity but nobody was injured.
The Chernobyl nuclear power plant, just north of Kiev, consists
of four nuclear reactors, known as light-water cooled,
graphite-moderated reactors - a type hardly used outside the
Soviet Union.
Nuclear experts say the levels of radioactivity recorded
indicate that the nuclear core of the damaged reactor may have
melted down.
Full-scale alert
The number of casualties, both immediately and in the future,
from radiation sickness, is expected to be high, although the
exact number may never be known. It is not believed, however,
that there is any risk to the health of anyone outside the
Soviet Union.
The discharge of radioactivity was so great that by the time the
fallout reached Sweden, 1,000 miles away, it was still powerful
enough to register twice the natural level of radioactivity in
the atmosphere.
The sudden jump in radioactivity levels was enough to prompt a
full-scale alert in Sweden, which initially believed the
accident had happened at its own nuclear power station, on the
Baltic coast. The evacuation of 600 workers had been ordered
before experts realised that the source of the radioactivity
must have been within the Soviet Union.
In Context
Chernobyl remains the world's worst civil nuclear disaster.
It emerged that design flaws had led to a power surge, causing
massive explosions which blew the top off the reactor.
More than 10,000 people died as a direct result of the accident.
The Ukrainian government says 3.5m people, a third of them
children, became ill. The rate of thyroid cancer in affected
areas increased ten times.
The contamination spread across neighbouring Belarus, and into
Europe. In the UK, hundreds of farms in Wales are still subject
to restrictions due to sheep eating radioactive grass.
A concrete sarcophagus was hastily built to cover the damaged
reactor, but it is weakening over time. It is due to be replaced
in 2007.
Chernobyl continued to produce electricity for another 14 years,
until international pressure forced its closure in 2000.
An official exclusion zone around the plant remains in place,
extending for 30 kilometres (18 miles). It is one of the most
radioactive spots on Earth.
Web Links Chernobyl radiation information
[http://www.chernobyl.com/] In-depth information about the
Chernobyl disaster [http://www.chernobyl.co.uk/] The Chernobyl
Children's Project [http://www.adiccp.org/]
[http://www.bbc.co.uk/privacy/]
*****************************************************************
17 Bellona: Unplanned turbo generator shutdowns at Kursk NPP
Generator no.2 of the first reactor unit at the Kursk NPP was
shut down twice in March.
2005-04-27 19:09
On March 28, at 12:19 p.m. local time the turbo generator’s
automatic safety shutdown system was triggered and the generator
was shutdown. . On March 29, at 1:43 a.m. it was connected back
to the grid.
The first unplanned shutdown happened on March 25 at 6:53 a.m.
local time due to a defect, which required to stop the
generator. The capacity of the first unit was 50% reduced. The
same day at 11.42 a.m. the turbo generator was back in
operation.
According to the Kursk NPP’s WEB site, the mentioned events are
not significant for the safety and beyond the INES scale. At the
moment, all four generating units at the plant are currently
operational and the radiation level, which currently stands at
30-km zone around the power station, is no higher than normal.
Publisher: [bellona@bellona.no] , President:
[frederic@bellona.no]
Information: [info@bellona.no] , Technical contact:
[webmaster@bellona.no]
Telephone: +47 23 23 46 00 Telefax: +47 22 38 38 62 * P.O.Box
2141 Grunerlokka, 0505 Oslo, Norway
*****************************************************************
18 RIA Novosti: CHERNOBYL NUCLEAR ACCIDENT - 19 YEARS ON
MOSCOW, April 26, (RIA Novosti) - The accident that occurred
nineteen years ago today at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant
was a major 20th century radiation disaster that affected the
lives of millions of people in Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, RIA
Novosti was told at the press-service of Russia's Emergencies
Ministry.
In Russia, the radioactive pollution spread to more than 56,000
square kilometers of territory, including about two million
hectares of farmlands and about a million hectares of forests.
The Bryansk, Kaluga, Orel and Tula regions were worst-hit.
According to the ministry, at the moment of the disaster about
three million people lived in the radiation-contaminated
territories. Over the years that have passed more than 52,000
people have been relocated or moved away themselves.
"It is obvious that the consequences of the Chernobyl disaster
might have been far greater if it had not been for the courage
of those who eliminated them. There were more than 200,000
clean-up workers," it was noted at the ministry.
According to the Russian State Medical Dosimetric Register
(RGMDR), in which are entered more than 600,000 people, the
percentage of clean-up workers having a clean bill of health has
been steadily decreasing over the period of observation and
towards the end of 2003 totaled about 2.5%. In 1986-1987, it was
as high as 95%. At present 78.4% of them are suffering from
chronic diseases and have the third health rating.
The total number of the disabled registered among clean-up
workers in 2003 was more than 66,000 people, i.e. about
one-third of the overall figure of such registered workers.
Currently, first-category invalids make up 2.7% of the clean-up
workers, and second- and third-group invalids 51.9% and 45.4%,
respectively.
The overall number of clean-up workers in the main RGMDR data
base who died towards the end of 2003 was 22,998. That is about
12.3% of the total number of clean-up workers registered in the
RGMDR.
Speaking of health of the population living in the polluted
areas, the ministry said that over the past five years the
proportion of apparently healthy residents kept diminishing all
the time and by the end of 2003 amounted to 17.8%. This compares
with 27.5% of those with first-health rating in 1999. At present
59.1% of inhabitants of the polluted territories registered in
the RGMDR are suffering from chronic diseases, while in 1999 the
percentage was 43.3%.
[http://en1.rian.ru] © 2005 "RIAN Novosti"
*****************************************************************
19 Las Vegas SUN: Editorial: No more nuke plants
LAS VEGAS SUN
In a speech on energy, President Bush on Wednesday urged the
building of more nuclear power plants. He also called for the
construction of more oil refineries and said he wants to boost
sales of energy-efficient vehicles through tax breaks for those
who buy them.
We strongly disagree with his support for nuclear power plants.
Thirty-five years ago utility officials defused concerns about
nuclear waste by saying that "technology" will advance so
rapidly that waste will never be a problem. Well, waste is a
major problem today, and where is that vaunted technology? It's
wrapped up in a stalled and dangerous proposed burial project at
Yucca Mountain here in Southern Nevada. Until technology really
does catch up with the waste problem, we will remain opposed to
any more nuclear power plants.
We agree with the president, however, on the need for more oil
refineries. In March 2004, Sun reporter Steve Kanigher reported
in depth on the reasons for high gas prices in Nevada. A main
reason was that gas here comes from a few aging and often
unreliable refineries in California. A new refinery has not been
built in the United States since the 1970s. New refineries would
allow more production, which would increase supply and
eventually lower prices.
In his original energy proposal in 2001, Bush outlined $6.7
billion in tax incentives, largely for conservation efforts and
development of renewable energy. The House, which passed its
version of an energy bill last week, rejected that proposal,
opting instead for $8.1 billion in tax breaks, mostly for
traditional energy producers. The House also dropped Bush's
proposal to offer consumers tax breaks on energy-efficient cars.
The Senate now has the energy bill. In our view, it should
reject drilling for a smattering of oil in the Arctic National
Wildlife Refuge, supported by both Bush and the House. It should
reject more nuclear power plants and high subsidies for oil,
gas, nuclear and coal producers. It should include mandatory
fuel efficiency standards in new cars, subsidies for renewable
power industries and tax breaks for conservation efforts such as
the purchase of high-mileage cars. Such an energy bill would put
us on our way toward less reliance on foreign oil.
*****************************************************************
20 Las Vegas SUN: DOE deal with nuke plant may get ax
In contract, government agrees to haul away site's radioactive
waste
By Suzanne Struglinski SUN WASHINGTON BUREAU
WASHINGTON -- A U.S. Court of Federal Claims judge may cancel
the Energy Department's contract with a closed nuclear power
plant to take its nuclear waste and return ratepayer money to
the utility.
If made final, the decision could advance Nevada's push to
leave waste at nuclear power plants, according to state
attorneys but would not solve the other utilities' financial
problems with storing the waste, according to the industry.
The state strongly opposes the Energy Department's plan to
store 77,000 tons of nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles
northwest of Las Vegas, but the Bush administration and the
nuclear industry strongly support the plan.
In a court order issued last week, Judge Susan Braden of the
U.S. Court of Federal Claims asked the Justice Department and
the Sacramento Municipal Utility District to show why the court
should not "void" the department's contract with the utility to
take waste and order the government to pay back the $40 million
it put into the waste fund.
Overall, ratepayers have put roughly $23 billion into the fund
since its creation in 1983, and 66 lawsuits have been filed
against the department for breaching its contract.
"There is no evidence in the record that the Government had
reason to believe in 1983, 1989, or at present that: Yucca
Mountain ever will be licensed to store spent nuclear fuel and
high-level radioactive waste; an appropriate means of
transporting such fuel and waste to the site will be authorized
and licensed; and/or an appropriate method of temporary storage
for transport and/ or permanent storage will be identified,
licensed, and manufactured," according to the court order."
The Sacramento utility district sued the Energy Department for
breaking its contract to take nuclear waste by 1998, as agreed
to in the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982.
The district's Chief Assistant General Counsel Steve Cohn said
the utility put $40 million into the Nuclear Waste Fund, an
account specifically designed by Congress to collect fees from
ratepayers to fund the Yucca project, for the Rancho Secco
nuclear power plant. The plant closed in 1989, but used nuclear
fuel still sits at it, waiting to be moved to Yucca. The
district sued for $78 million to pay for costs associated with
storing the used fuel after the department did not take it.
The court gave the Sacramento Municipal Utility District and
the U.S. Justice Department until June 20 to file responses, but
also invited anyone else to file a response.
Attorney Joe Egan, who is hired by the state to handle Yucca
issues, said the state plans to respond to the court.
"It's an amazing statement," Egan said, adding that it could be
the groundwork for launching the nicknamed "PECO Alternative."
PECO Energy of Philadelphia, which is part of Exelon Corp. of
Chicago reached an agreement with the department to claim
ownership of its used fuel on site and build dry storage casks.
Nevada says that is a better solution than moving dangerous
nuclear waste across the nation to a site it sees as unsafe.
Although the industry has argued for years that the government
continues to take its money but there is still no repository,
getting its money back may be not the solution they want.
Cohn said the $40 million, which does not include the interest
that the money has earned in the fund, would not cover the $78
million in capital costs or the estimated $5 million a year in
operations and maintenance spent to keep the stored fuel safe.
Brian J. O'Connell, the director of the Nuclear Waste Project
Office at the National Association of Regulatory Utility
Commissioners, which supports the Yucca project, found the order
"odd and surprising."
He said canceling the contract and giving back the money will
not solve the waste disposal problem. Under law, the government
is supposed to take the waste for "geologic disposal." He said
keeping waste at the site will not satisfy the law.
Michael Bauser, associate general counsel for the Nuclear
Energy Institute, the industry's advocacy group, said the judge
is drawing incorrect conclusions and suspected her "record" or
documentation for the case might be incomplete.
"She is asking for additional information," Bauser said.
O'Connell also pointed out that the judge refers to vertical
storage of waste containers inside the mountain, even though it
was decided a while ago they would be stored end to end.
O'Connell and Bauser have not decided yet whether their
organizations will respond.
*****************************************************************
21 Mail &Guardian Online: Greens see red over reactor contract
[http://www.mg.co.za]
April 29, 2005 3:31 AM
Africa's first online
Environmentalists questioned on Thursday a multimillion-rand
contract to build South Africa's first pebble-bed modular
reactor (PBMR) fuel plant at Pelindaba near Pretoria, saying the
PBMR company has no legal basis to continue development.
"The court set aside the record of decision giving environmental
approval to the project and we are still waiting for the
Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism to reopen the
process according to the court ruling," said Earthlife Africa
spokesperson Liz McDaid.
McDaid was responding to news that a $20-million (about
R102-million) contract to design and construct the first fuel
plant facilities and infrastructure for South Africa's PBMR has
been awarded to a German company.
In a statement on Thursday, the PBMR company said the contract
was awarded to Uhde, a local division of Germany's Thyssenkrupp
Engineering.
"PBMR has two major thrusts, namely the demonstration plant at
Koeberg near Cape Town and the pilot fuel plant at Pelindaba.
This contract says we are getting closer to our vision of having
a fuel-manufacturing plant to serve the demonstration power
plant," said Thabang Makubire, general manager of the fuel
division at the PBMR company.
However, McDaid said a full bench of the Cape Town High Court
earlier this year clearly found that the environmental impact
process was flawed and had to be conducted in a proper,
transparent manner where the public's inputs were considered.
"Despite the law and court ruling, it looks as if they are
immune to the normal legal process. We can't understand how the
company can go ahead with development when they have no legal
basis to do so."
McDaid also wanted to know where the money is coming from to pay
for the contract.
The utilities to serve the plant at Pelindaba will be designed
and installed as part of the contract, which is scheduled to be
completed in January 2007.
The facility will have an initial capacity of 270Â 000 nuclear
fuel "spheres" a year.
Tom Ferreira, spokesperson for the PBMR company, said the
nuclear power stations are being jointly developed by Eskom, the
South African Industrial Development Corporation and British
Nuclear Fuels as a power source for South Africa, as well as a
viable export product.
The current schedule is to start construction in 2007 and for
the demonstration plant to be completed by 2010, with the first
commercial PBMR modules available from 2013.
It is estimated that up to 30 PBMRs could be built for use in
South Africa. -- Sapa
Read the Mail&Guardian's
[http://www.opa.org.za]
*****************************************************************
22 Independent: Cracks in decaying shell of Chernobyl reactor threaten second disaster
[http://www.independent.co.uk]
By Andrew Osborn in Moscow
28 April 2005
A leading Russian scientist has claimed that the sarcophagus
entombing Chernobyl's broken nuclear reactor is dangerously
degraded and he warned that its collapse could cause a
catastrophe on the same scale as the original accident almost 20
years ago.
Professor Alexei Yablokov, President of the Centre for Russian
Environmental Policy, said the concrete and metal sarcophagus
was riven with cracks, already leaking radiation and at risk of
collapse unless repairs were undertaken and work on a
replacement urgently begun.
"If it collapses, there will be no explosion, as this is not a
bomb, but a pillar of dust containing irradiated particles will
shoot 1.5 kilometres into the air and will be spread by the
wind." Depending on how the wind is blowing, Russia or Belarus
would bear the brunt of such a dust cloud. Ukraine, where
Chernobyl is located, would also be affected.
The sarcophagus is designed to keep a lid on what is left of the
nuclear reactor that exploded with such dire consequences during
an unauthorised test in April 1986 and is supposed to stop the
mass of unspent nuclear fuel that lies beneath from entering the
atmosphere.
It is estimated that only between 3 and 15 per cent of that fuel
actually escaped during the explosion meaning that most of it is
still trapped inside. Dr Yablokov, a member of the Russian
Academy of Sciences and a one-time adviser to former president
Boris Yeltsin, said nuclear reactions were actually taking place
- spontaneously - inside the sarcophagus as rain and snow fell
on the unspent fuel through cracks in the decaying shell.
He said experts had "seen a luminescence characteristic of chain
reactions inside the giant building". adding: "Who could predict
what might happen if hundreds of thousands of tons of concrete,
which was hastily poured 19 years ago, tumbled down on the
ruined nuclear reactor?"
His gloomy assessment corroborates that of the Ukrainian
officials who manage the decommissioned power plant.
Earlier this year Julia Marusych, the head of information at
Chernobyl, admitted on Russian TV that the sarcophagus was in
appalling condition: "The construction is unstable, unsafe, and
does not meet any safety requirements."
The sarcophagus was hastily thrown together after the explosion
as a desperate attempt to contain the world's worst nuclear
accident. Many of the workers who toiled on it have since died
of cancer and the sarcophagus itself began showing signs of
serious stress in the early 1990s.
Built to last 50 years,experts were forced to reduce its
recommended lifespan to just 20 years meaning a replacement is
due in 2006.
Some repair work was carried out earlier this year but progress
is slow due to the fact that construction workers can only be in
its vicinity for short periods because of radiation levels.
Sceptics claim that warnings about its deterioration are
designed to persuade Western donors to stump up the $1bn bill. A
donors' conference takes place in London on 12 May and the
Ukrainian government hopes to raise $300m.
That task has been complicated, however, by recent revelations
that private firms have embezzled some $185m of Chernobyl money,
some of which was earmarked for a new shelter.
The first catastrophe
26 APRIL 1986:
1.23am: Reactor number four at Chernobyl nuclear power plant
begins to fail. Explosion blows 1,000-ton cover off the reactor
and 31 people die immediately.
5am: Fire caused by explosion is put out by firefighters who are
not warned of radiation. Many later die.
Evening: Officials arrive at site and order evacuation of nearby
town of Pripyat.
27 APRIL:
Disaster is hidden until workers at Forsmark nuclear plant in
Sweden are found to have radioactive particles on clothes.
Swedish search for the source of radioactivity leads to the
USSR.
28 APRIL:
Soviet leadersadmit accident happened but full scale is not
explained. First Soviet media reports: Chernobyl is fourth item
in Moscow Radio's evening bulletin.
1 MAY:
Despite clouds of radiation overhead, authorities encourage
locals to turn out for May Day parade in nearby Kiev.
JUNE-NOVEMBER:
Large sarcophagus made of steel and concrete is hastily
constructed.
©2005 Independent News &Media (UK) Ltd.
*****************************************************************
23 SouthBendTribune.com: Cook unit completes refueling
April 28, 2005
Plant ramps up after small glitch delays restart by day
By CAROL ELLIOTT Tribune Staff Writer
Cook basics
Location: Bridgman.
Ownership: Indiana Michigan Power, a subsidiary of Columbus,
Ohio-based American Electric Power.
Start of operations: Unit 1 began commercial operations in
August 1975; Unit 2 in July 1978.
Building cost: About $1.3 billion.
Generation capacity: The two units combined generate about
2,150 megawatts of electricity, or enough to provide power to
about 2 million homes.
Power contribution: The plant currently provides about 7
percent of AEP's energy generation. Nationwide, nuclear provides
about 20 percent of the country's electricity.
BRIDGMAN -- Following a brief setback Tuesday, a unit at the
Donald C. Cook Nuclear Plant in Bridgman completed its refueling
cycle and ramped up to 20 percent of capacity early Wednesday.
Cook spokesman Bill Schalk said an instrument failure caused the
unit to trip as it was in the process of being reconnected to
the transmission grid.
The trip caused a one-day delay in exiting a planned refueling
outage of the 1,016-megawatt Unit 1 at the Indiana Michigan
Power plant.
Even with the delay, Schalk said the refueling outage was the
shortest on record for the two-unit plant. The outage lasted 31
days and 17 hours and involved the replacement of 80 fuel
assemblies, a replacement of the main transformer and about
150,000 hours of maintenance, inspection, testing and
modification work.
Schalk expects the plant to be up to full power by the end of
the week.
I did not disclose the cost of the work.
Unit 1 is refueled on an 18-month cycle, with the last outage
occurring from Oct. 17 to Nov. 27, 2003.
"The biggest thing about coming out of the refueling cycle is it
allows workers to get back in a normal schedule," Schalk said.
Employees routinely put in 12-hour days, six days per week,
during refueling.
Also, the work force grew by more than 900 contract workers, who
were added to the Cook plant's staff of 1,070 for the refueling
work.
The new transformer replaced a backup unit that was put into
service after a failure in 2003.
Cook Nuclear has run into problems on a couple of other
occasions.
In April 2003, a massive intrusion by alewives clogged the
plant's cooling-water intake systems, resulting in a shutdown of
both units. I subsequently installed a fish screening system,
which Schalk said was the first of its kind and is being
considered for an industry award.
The plant also set up a fish deterrent system consisting of
speakers around the intake valves that send out signals at a
frequency that only bothers alewives.
In May 2003, I found cracks on the head of Unit 2. Utility
officials decided to replace its reactor vessel heads at Cook
during refueling outages in fall 2006 and fall 2007 on both
units, a project expected to cost $44 million.
The plant's licenses are currently up for renewal. The utility
expects the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to renew its
20-year licenses this fall.
Schalk echoed remarks made by President Bush on Wednesday about
the importance of nuclear energy in meeting the country's
increasing needs.
"We need a good mix of fuel sources," Schalk said. "Nuclear
should be part of that mix."
In his speech before the Small Business Administration in
Washington, Bush urged the building of nuclear plants and
directed the Energy Department to develop a federal "risk
insurance" plan that would kick in if there were lengthy delays
in licensing a new reactor.
There has not been a new commercial nuclear power plant ordered
in the United States since 1973 and no new refinery built in
nearly 30 years.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
Contact the southbendtribune.com
[library@sbtinfo.com] . News coverage and editorial content
provided by the South Bend Tribune
[http://www.southbendtribune.com] unless otherwise specified.
Copyright © 1994-2005 South Bend Tribune
[http://www.southbendtribune.com/copyright.html]
*****************************************************************
24 Slovak news: Slovakia wants more money for closure of V1 A-power plant
Slovakia's English language newspaper April 25 - May 1,
2005, Volume 11, Number 16
SLOVAKIA will on May 12 ask the European Commission (EC) for
more money for the planned early closure of the V1 nuclear power
plant in Jaslovské Bohunice, the Pravda daily wrote.
The EC's original proposal to contribute €237 million (Sk9.4
billion) to Slovakia in the 2007-2013 period for the closure and
decommissioning of V1 was based on wrong data, according to the
Slovaks.
The original proposal was calculated on estimates that put the
cost of closure and decommissioning of the plant at
approximately €750 million. A new analysis prepared by
Slovakia's power producer Slovenské elektrárne (SE) puts the
cost at €1.3 billion.
Brussels will evaluate the new analysis.
Compiled by Martina Jurinová from press reports
Copyright © 1998-2003 The Rock spol. s r.o. All rights
*****************************************************************
25 NRC: TXU Generation Company, LP; Notice of Withdrawal of Application
FR Doc E5-2036
[Federal Register: April 28, 2005 (Volume 70, Number 81)]
[Notices] [Page 22155] From the Federal Register Online via GPO
Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr28ap05-107] [[Page 22155]]
for Amendment to Facility Operating Licenses The U.S. Nuclear
Regulatory Commission (the Commission) has granted the request of
TXU Generation Company, LP (the licensee) to withdraw its
December 31, 2003, application for proposed amendment to Facility
Operating License No. NPF-87 and Facility Operating License No.
NPF-89 for Comanche Peak Steam Electric Station, Units 1 and 2,
respectively, located in Somervell County, Texas.
The proposed amendment would have revised the facility technical
specifications pertaining to extending the allowable Completion
Times for the Required Actions associated with restoration of an
inoperable Diesel Generator (DG) and associated changes.
The Commission had previously issued a Notice of Consideration of
Issuance of Amendment published in the Federal Register on
February 3, 2004 (69 FR 5209). However, by letter dated March 17,
2005, the licensee withdrew the proposed change.
For further details with respect to this action, see the
application for amendment dated December 31, 2003, and the
licensee's letter dated March 17, 2005, which withdrew the
application for license amendment. Documents may be examined,
and/or copied for a fee, at the NRC's Public Document Room (PDR),
located at One White Flint North, Public File Area O1 F21, 11555
Rockville Pike (first floor), Rockville, Maryland. Publicly
available records will be accessible electronically from the
Agencywide Documents Access and Management Systems (ADAMS) Public
Electronic Reading Room on the Internet at the NRC Web site,
http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/adams/html
[http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/leaving.cgi?from=leaving
FR.html&log=linklog&to=http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/adams/html]
. Persons who do not have access to ADAMS or who encounter
problems in accessing the documents located in ADAMS, should
contact the NRC PDR Reference staff by telephone at
1-800-397-4209, or (301) 415-4737 or by e-mail to
pdr@nrc.gov [ pdr@nrc.gov] . Dated at Rockville, Maryland, this
20th day of April 2005.
For the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
David H. Jaffe, Senior Project Manager, Section 1 Project
Directorate IV, Division of Licensing Project Management, Office
of Nuclear Reactor Regulation.
[FR Doc. E5-2036 Filed 4-27-05; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 7590-01-P
*****************************************************************
26 NRC: System Energy Resources, Inc.; Notice of Availability of the
FR Doc E5-2037
[Federal Register: April 28, 2005 (Volume 70, Number 81)]
[Notices] [Page 22155-22156] From the Federal Register Online via
GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr28ap05-108]
Draft Environmental Impact Statement for an Early Site Permit
(ESP) at the Grand Gulf ESP Site and Associated Public Meeting
Notice is hereby given that the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory
Commission (NRC, the Commission) has published NUREG-1817,
``Environmental Impact Statement for an Early Site Permit (ESP)
at the Grand Gulf ESP Site: Draft Report for Comment.'' The site
is located near the Town of Port Gibson in Claiborne County,
Mississippi. The application for the ESP was submitted by letter
dated October 16, 2003, pursuant to Title 10 of the Code of
Federal Regulations part 52 (10 CFR part 52). A notice of receipt
and availability of the application, which included the
environmental report (ER), was published in the Federal Register
on November 14, 2003 (68 FR 64665). A notice of acceptance for
docketing of the application for the ESP was published in the
Federal Register on December 1, 2003 (68 FR 67219). A notice of
intent to prepare an environmental impact statement and to
conduct the scoping process was published in the Federal Register
on December 31, 2003 (68 FR 75656).
The purpose of this notice is to inform the public that
NUREG-1817, ``Environmental Impact Statement for an Early Site
Permit (ESP) at the Grand Gulf ESP Site: Draft Report for
Comment,'' is available for public inspection in the NRC Public
Document Room (PDR) located at One White Flint North, 11555
Rockville Pike (first floor), Rockville, Maryland 20852, or from
the Publicly Available Records (PARS) component of NRC's
Agencywide Documents Access and Management System (ADAMS), and
will also be placed directly on the NRC Web site at
http://www.nrc.gov
[http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/leaving.cgi?from=leaving
FR.html&log=linklog&to=http://www.nrc.gov] ADAMS is accessible
from the NRC Web site at http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/adams.html
[http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/leaving.cgi?from=leaving
FR.html&log=linklog&to=http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/adams.html]
.
(the Public Electronic Reading Room). Persons who do not have
access to ADAMS, or who encounter problems in accessing the
documents located in ADAMS, should contact the PDR reference
staff at 1-800-397-4209, (301) 415-4737, or by e-mail to
pdr@nrc.gov [pdr@nrc.gov] . In addition, the Harriette Person
Memorial Library, located at 606 Main Street, Port Gibson,
Mississippi, has agreed to make the DEIS available for public
inspection.
The NRC staff will hold a public meeting to present an overview
of the DEIS and to accept public comments on the document. The
public meeting will be held at the Port Gibson City Hall, located
at 1005 College Street, Port Gibson, Mississippi, on Tuesday,
June 28, 2005. The meeting will convene at 7 p.m. and will
continue until 10 p.m., as necessary. The meeting will be
transcribed and will include: (1) A presentation of the contents
of the DEIS, and (2) the opportunity for interested government
agencies, organizations, and individuals to provide comments on
the draft report. Additionally, the NRC staff will host informal
discussions one hour before the start of the meeting at the
library. No formal comments on the DEIS will be accepted during
the informal discussions. To be considered, comments must be
provided either at the transcribed public meeting or in writing.
Persons may register to attend or present oral comments at the
meeting by contacting Ms. Cristina Guerrero, by telephone at
1-800-368-5642, extension 3835, or by Internet to the NRC at
GrandGulfEIS@nrc.gov [GrandGulfEIS@nrc.gov] no later than June
21, 2005. Members of the public may also register to speak at the
meeting within 15 minutes of the start of the meeting. Individual
oral comments may be limited by the time available, depending on
the number of persons who register. Members of the public who
have not registered may also have an opportunity to speak, if
time permits. Ms. Guerrero will need to be contacted no later
than June 21, 2005, if special equipment or accommodations are
needed to attend or present information at the public meeting, so
that the NRC staff can determine whether the request can be
accommodated.
Members of the public may send written comments on the DEIS
concerning the Grand Gulf ESP application to the Chief, Rules and
Directives Branch, Division of Administrative Services, Office of
Administration, Mailstop T-6D59, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory
Commission, Washington, DC 20555-0001, and should cite the
publication date and page number of this Federal Register Notice.
Comments may also be delivered to Room T-6D59, Two White Flint
North, 11545 Rockville Pike, Rockville, Maryland 20852, from 7:30
[[Page 22156]] a.m. to 4:15 p.m. during Federal workdays. To be
considered, written comments should be postmarked by July 14,
2005. Electronic comments may be sent by the Internet to the NRC
at GrandGulfEIS@nrc.gov [GrandGulfEIS@nrc.gov] . Electronic
submissions should be sent no later than July 14, 2005. Comments
will be available electronically and accessible through the NRC's
PERR link at http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/adams.html
[http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/leaving.cgi?from=leaving
FR.html&log=linklog&to=http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/adams.html]
.
For Further Information Contact: Cristina Guerrero, License
Renewal and Environmental Impacts Program, Division of Regulatory
Improvement Programs, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission,
Washington, DC 20555- 0001. Ms. Guerrero may be contacted at the
aforementioned telephone number or e-mail address.
Dated at Rockville, Maryland, this 15th day of April, 2005.
For the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Pao-Tsin Kuo, Program Director, License Renewal and Environmental
Impacts Program, Division of Regulatory Improvement Programs,
Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation.
[FR Doc. E5-2037 Filed 4-27-05; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 7590-01-P
*****************************************************************
27 NRC: Entergy Operations, Inc.; Notice of Issuance of Amendment to
FR Doc E5-2038
[Federal Register: April 28, 2005 (Volume 70, Number 81)]
[Notices] [Page 22154] From the Federal Register Online via GPO
Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr28ap05-106]
Facility Operating License The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission
(Commission) has issued Amendment No. 199 to Facility Operating
License (FOL) No. NPF-38 to Entergy Operations, Inc. (the
licensee), which revised the FOL and Technical Specifications
(TSs) for operation of the Waterford Steam Electric Station, Unit
3 (Waterford 3), located in St. Charles Parish, Louisiana. The
amendment modified the FOL and the TSs to allow an increase in
the maximum authorized reactor core power level from 3441
megawatts thermal (MWt) to 3716 MWt, which represents a power
increase of about 8 percent and is considered to be an extended
power uprate (EPU). The amendment is effective as of the date of
issuance and is to be implemented prior to restart from refueling
outage 13 at the uprated power level.
The application for the amendment was dated November 13, 2003,
Agencywide Documents Access and Management System (ADAMS)
Accession Number ML040260317, as supplemented by letters dated
January 29 (ML040340728), March 4 (ML040690028), April 15
(ML041110527), May 7 (ML041330175), May 12 (ML041380147), May 13
(ML041380145), May 21 (ML041460407), May 26 (ML041490335), July
14 (ML042010150), July 15 (ML042020294), July 28 (ML042120475),
August 10 (ML042250177), August 19 (ML042360712), August 25
(ML042440417), September 1 (ML042470194), September 14
(ML042660243), October 8 (2 letters, ML042880327 and
ML042880418), October 13 (ML042890193), October 18 (ML042940577),
October 19 (ML043010129) October 21 (ML043010238), October 29 (2
letters, ML043080406 and ML043080403), November 4 (ML043140283),
November 8 (ML043200122), November 16 (ML043270472), and November
19, 2004 (ML043280359), and January 5 (ML050100225), January 14
(ML050210054), February 5 (ML050400463), February 16
(ML050490396), and March 17, 2005 (ML050810095).
The application for the amendment complies with the standards and
requirements of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, as amended (the
Act), and the Commission's rules and regulations in Title 10 of
the Code of Federal Regulations (10 CFR) Chapter I, which are set
forth in the license amendment.
The draft environmental assessment (EA), published in the Federal
Register on October 12, 2004 (69 FR 60672), was related to the
application dated November 13, 2003, as supplemented through
August 10, 2004. The supplements, including those dated through
March 17, 2005, did not change the assessment in the draft EA.
The draft EA was published to provide a 30-day public comment
period. There was one comment from Entergy Operations, Inc. dated
November 11, 2004, which stated that (1) while the draft EA had
implied that all sanitary wastes at Waterford 3 discharge to an
onsite sewage treatment plant, the sanitary wastes at Waterford 3
are discharged from two different locations, and (2) the draft EA
does accurately reflect that no increase in sanitary wastes is
expected as a result of the proposed EPU.
The Commission has issued the Final EA related to the action and
the determination on the environmental impact stated in the draft
EA has not changed. Based upon the EA, the Commission has
concluded that the issuance of the amendment will not have a
significant effect on the quality of the human environment (70 FR
17128, published April 4, 2005).
As a part of the EPU application, by supplement dated October 29,
2004, the licensee requested, pursuant to 10 CFR 50.90, approval
of an amendment for Waterford 3, to revise the minimum volume in
the emergency diesel generator fuel oil storage tanks (FOSTs)
required by Waterford 3 TSs 3.8.1.1 and 3.8.1.2. The NRC staff
has determined that the amendment involves no significant
increase in the amounts, and no significant change in the types,
of any effluents that may be released offsite, and that there is
no significant increase in individual or cumulative occupational
radiation exposure. The Commission had previously issued a
proposed finding that the amendment involved no significant
hazards consideration, and there was no public comment on such
finding published December 7, 2004 (69 FR 70716). This amendment
revised the TSs for FOL No. NPF-38. The Commission's related
evaluation of this change is contained in the Safety Evaluation
for the EPU application. The effective date for this amendment is
as of the date of issuance and to be implemented prior to restart
from the refueling outage 13 in the spring of 2005 to support the
power uprate implementation.
Accordingly, the amendment requesting changes to the FOST TSs
meets the eligibility criteria for categorical exclusion set
forth in 10 CFR 51.22(c)(9). Pursuant to 10 CFR 51.22(b) no
environmental impact statement or environmental assessment need
be prepared in connection with the issuance of this amendment.
For further details with respect to the action, see (1) the
application for the EPU amendment dated November 13, 2003, as
supplemented by letters dated January 29, March 4, April 15, May
7, May 12, May 13, May 21, May 26, July 14, July 15, July 28,
August 10, August 19, August 25, September 1, September 14,
October 8 (2 letters), October 13, October 18, October 19,
October 21, October 29 (2 letters), November 4, November 8,
November 16, November 19, 2004, January 5, January 14, February
5, February 16, and March 17, 2005; (2) the Commission's related
Safety Evaluation dated April 15, 2005; and (3) the Commission's
EA. Documents may be examined, and/or copied for a fee, at the
NRC's Public Document Room (PDR), located at One White Flint
North, Public File Area O1F2, 11555 Rockville Pike (first floor),
Rockville, Maryland. Publicly available records will be
accessible electronically from the ADAMS Public Electronic
Reading Room on the internet at the NRC Web site,
http://www.nrc.gov/NRC/ADAMS/index.html
[http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/leaving.cgi?from=leaving
FR.html&log=linklog&to=http://www.nrc.gov/NRC/ADAMS/index.html] .
Persons who do not have access to ADAMS or who encounter problems
in accessing the documents located in ADAMS should contact the
NRC PDR Room Reference staff by telephone at 1-800-397-4209,
(301) 415- 4737, or by e-mail to pdr@nrc.gov [pdr@nrc.gov] .
Dated at Rockville, Maryland, this 15th day of April 2005.
For The Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Thomas W. Alexion, Project Manager, Section 1, Project
Directorate IV, Division of Licensing Project Management, Office
of Nuclear Reactor Regulation.
[FR Doc. E5-2038 Filed 4-27-05; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 7590-01-P
*****************************************************************
28 In These Times: No Reason to Exist -- (Chernobyl)
[http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/archives/]
Culture > April 28, 2005
By Fred Weir
The steam explosion that tore the roof from Chernobyls fourth
unit in the pre-dawn hours of April 26, 1986, spewing fallout
across much of Europe, seemed a Hollywood techno-disaster flick
become chillingly real. Though the drama and terror of those
spring days have faded, we are still pondering the lessons that,
like millions of latent cancers planted by the stricken
reactors radiation plume, have yet to fully manifest
themselves. Chernobyl was a global wake-up call on the fragile
limits of technology, one that silencedhopefully for goodboth
sides official Cold War enthusiasm for the peaceful atom.
A good deal has been written about the accident and the massive
clean-up effort that followed. The 600,000 liquidators
dispatched to put out the burning graphite reactor, contain the
spread of contaminants, evacuate local populations and bury
mountains of radioactive debrismany of whom absorbed
dangerously high doses of radiationremain a vexed political
issue in the former USSR. Only this year, Moscow declared it
would no longer compensate victims from non-Russian republics,
arguing that it should not have to pay citizens of one country
for damages that occurred in another country.
The disaster struck just as Mikhail Gorbachev was beginning his
ill-fated perestroika campaign to modernize and reform the
Soviet system. Gorbachev won short-term political advantage by
publicly hammering his bureaucratic enemies who, true to form,
had clammed up and for 10 days refused to tell the world what
was happening at Chernobyl. But the accident can now be seen as
the USSRs death knell. The Soviet model of economic development
was exposed as wasteful, hazard-ridden and out-of-control.
Millions of people, brought up to believe in the system,
irreversibly lost faith as they floundered in that terrifying
10-day information vacuum, wondering whether they and their
children were being slowly poisoned by invisible clouds of
radiation.
A key social response to Chernobyl was the birth of a vibrant
and youthful environmental movement, encouraged by Gorbachev at
first to expose the evils of Soviet industrialism and take the
bureaucrats to task. While many of those perestroika-era gains,
such as freedom of the press, have since withered under
ferocious attack from the Kremlin, Russias environmentalists
remain a strong and defiant force to this day. That is largely a
legacy of Chernobyl.
As Svetlana Alexievich relates in Voices from Chernobyl, an oral
history of those turbulent few days, it was the USSRs
westernmost Slavic republic, Belarus, that bore the brunt of the
cataclysm. The tiny countrys contamination zone still
encompasses 20 percent of its territory, houses 2 million people
and produces much of the food consumed by Belarussians. A few
decades earlier, the Nazis rolled over Belarus, destroying some
600 villages. Chernobyl emptied out another 500, as their
populations fled the invisible death cloud, often permanently.
Post-Soviet Belarus has morphed into a paternalistic
dictatorship, run like a giant collective farm by President
Alexander Lukashenko, and many Belarussians appear to prefer it
that way. This, too, can be viewed as a legacy of the tragedy.
Only 31 people were actually killed in the Chernobyl blast and
its immediate aftermath, which makes it a pretty minor disaster
in terms of human life. But global health officials, who have
tracked a huge spike in thyroid cancers, birth defects and other
disorders in the most affected areas, warn that the final bill,
in the form of leukemia and other serious cancers, wont be in
for another decade or two.
Alexievichs focus is the narrowest possible, a series of
monologues by an astonishingly wide variety of people who found
themselves caught up in the disaster. In the process, a
remarkable portrait emerges of Soviet society shattering under
tension. Emotionally, its incredibly raw stuff, but the
approach also evokes rich, human detail. Among Alexievichs
subjects are peasants, awed by the waves of helicopters and
heavy equipment storming across their land, who assumed that war
must have broken out with the Chinese or the Americans. A
soldier, ordered into the still-burning reactor area, relates
with pride how he and his mates performed tasks that caused
robots to break down. The widow of a liquidator tells in
harrowing detail how her radiation-poisoned husbands skin
disintegrated and his veins popped. A local Communist Party
leader recalls worrying that the accident might disrupt the May
Day celebration. And then theres the Soviet nuclear physicist
who mourns a wave of heart attacks and suicides among his
colleagues in the wake of Chernobyl. When you lose faith,
youre no longer a participant, he says. Youre an also-ran,
you have no reason to exist.
[http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/2074/]
Has coal killed more or less people than nuclear energy? Done
more or less environmental damage? How about oil?
6 billion people using energy at the rate of the developed world
is not feasible. I wonder what we will tell the developing
countries? (Maybe zero point energy is the answer?) Posted by
Maggie on April 28, 2005 at 1:09 PM
Post Your Comments
Author Bio
Fred Weir is a Moscow correspondent for In These Times and
regular contributor to the Christian Science Monitor, the London
Independent, Canadian Press and the South China Morning Post. He
is the co-author of Revolution from Above: The Demise of the
Soviet System.
© 2005 In These Times | Reprint Policy | Privacy Policy |
*****************************************************************
29 NRC: Industry could save billions with new 50.46
The NRC staff's proposed changes to emergency core cooling
system (ECCS) technical requirements in 10 CFR 50.46 could
enable plants to make changesprimarily power uprates for
PWRsthat would have a net present value of $1.5- to $12.9-bil
(assuming a discount rate of 3%), according to a regulatory
analysis released in the week ending Apr 15 along with the
proposed rule changes. An industry source, however, suggested
that those figures might be off, given that there has been
little discussion between the industry and NRC staff about
specific power uprate benefits. NRC's regulatory analysis also
suggests that the rule change might have little impact on BWR
owners.
The key part of the proposed rule (Secy 05-52), which would be
voluntary, would divide the current spectrum of
loss-of-coolant-accident (LOCA) break sizes into two regions:
current requirements would stay in place for break sizes up to a
transition pipe break size (TBS). Above this TBS, licensees that
adopt the rule would be able to use less stringent analyses of
pipe breaks up to a double-ended guillotine break of the largest
reactor coolant system piping, which is the current standard.
The TBS for PWRs would be the "cross-sectional flow area of the
largest piping attached" to the reactor coolant system (RCS)
main loop. For PWRs this would be the pressurizer surge line,
which has a diameter that varies from plant to plant in the
range of 8 inches to 14 inches, NRC said.
For BWRs, NRC would define the TBS as the larger of either the
feedwater or the residual heart removal piping inside the
primary containment. This results in a TBS for BWRs of a pipe
with a diameter of about 20 inches. With this TBS, there is
little benefit for BWRs, an industry source said. BWRs are going
to have to "make the case" that a smaller break size is
warranted by the results of an NRC expert elicitation process
involving piping experts, he said.
In the preface to the proposed rule, the staff said that the TBS
might be adjusted upward or downward as additional information
becomes available to reduce uncertainties about possible piping
ruptures.
LOCAs for break sizes above the TBS would become
"beyond-design-basis accidents," the NRC staff said. Licensees
would still have to maintain the ability to mitigate such LOCAs,
but they would be allowed to take credit for reliable
nonsafety-related systems, without assuming other independent
failures, to demonstrate that the reactor core would remain
amenable to cooling. NRC said that specific metrics for
demonstrating coolable core geometry would not necessarily be
limited to a peak clad temperature of 2,200 degrees F and less
than 17% local cladding oxidation as would be required for
breaks smaller than the TBS. The NRC staff said it would provide
further guidance on analysis methods and assumptions for such
beyond-TBS pipe breaks in a regulatory guide to be issued with
the final rule.
NRC said that licensees adopting the rule may find that their
plant designs are no longer limited by certain parameters from
previous large-break LOCA analyses, thus allowing the licensees
to propose "a wide range of design or operational changes." The
extent of those possible changes, however, is still uncertain.
NRC's regulatory analysis only looked at the lengthening of
emergency diesel start times and more power uprates as the major
benefits that could flow from the 50.46 rule change. The NRC
staff said that the rule could also lead to an important safety
enhancementmodifications to the containment spray system
actuation settings to more effectively mitigate the more likely
small-break LOCAs.
In its Secy paper, the staff told the commission that any plant
changes made under this rule would also be evaluated for their
impact on facility security as part of the license amendment
review process.
The staff also told the commission that it is currently
developing options regarding the interaction of safety and
security, and is examining the merits of a "more global
approach" to establishing requirements for the safety-security
interface. Possible changes might be amending 10 CFR 50.59 (the
change-control requirements), the staff said.
Proposed rule draws mixed reaction from industry The NRC staff's
proposed changes to 10 CFR 50.46 have drawn a mixed reaction from
some industry sources who are hoping that the commission
schedules a public briefing before putting the rule out for
public comment. One industry source said the proposed rule
represented a "fundamental change" in regulatory requirements
that will end up producing benefits for licensees.
But he added that the staff's proposed rule has details that
duplicate existing regulatory requirements in 50.59 and 10 CFR
50.65(a)(4) of the maintenance rule. This source said he also
doesn't believe there is a need to codify parts of Regulatory
Guide 1.174 (on making risk-informed changes) in the rule
itself. "There is no discussion in the 120-page rule package of
why the current regulatory regime is not sufficient" for
possible plant changes proposed as a result of the amended
50.46, this source said.
The Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards raised a similar
point in a letter to the NRC commission in March. "It is not at
all clear why the process of accepting changes to the licensing
basis that will be possible due to changes in 10 CFR 50.46
should be specified in the rule itself when its is already in RG
1.174," the ACRS said.
The industry source also made the point that unlike some recent
rulemakingsadopting a new 10 CFR 50.69, for instancethere has
not been a lot less interaction between industry and the NRC
staff before the 50.46 rule was sent to the commission. Given
that, the proposal "cries out for a commission briefing" before
the commission votes to publish the rule for comment, the source
said. He added that even without a briefing he believes the
commission will make changes in the rule "to make it viable."
Communication plan
Even before the proposed rule was made public, the agency
released its "communication plan" on the proposed 50.46 rule
changes to facilitate communication within the agency and to
"enable the staff to provide timely, consistent, and
understandable information to our external stakeholders." The
plan was sent Apr 6 from Jim Dyer, director of the Office of
Nuclear Reactor Regulation, to William Outlaw, director of the
Office of Communications.
The plan includes four pages of questions and answers such as
the following: "Why does the NRC use risk analyses only to relax
requirements?"
The answer: "The NRC uses risk analysis to evaluate the
characteristics of a plant that could lead to a failure of
safety systems, the likelihood that the failure could occur, and
the consequences of the failure to focus NRC resources on issues
that could have a high likelihood or high consequences to the
public. In the past, the NRC relied upon conservative analyses
and assumptions to support the design, construction, and
operation of nuclear power plants.
"Licensees have often used risk analyses to identify NRC
requirements where the conservative analyses and assumptions
resulted in excessive resources placed on events with low risk
significance. According to NRC guidance, risk-informed changes
also require that attention be focused on areas where
requirements should be increased. Because of the conservatism in
the past practices, it is unusual to identify areas on which
insufficient regulatory attention has been focused. However,
some examples of risk-informed changes to amplify requirements
include the anticipated transients without scram rule, the
station blackout rule, hardening of BWR suppression pool vent
lines, and increased vessel head inspection requirements."
Created: 04/18/2005
If it's happening in nuclear power regulation, the international
nuclear industry finds out first in Inside NRC. Every other
week, Inside NRC delivers the inside scoop on what the US
Nuclear Regulatory Commission is doing or is thinking of doing.
It also provides an exclusive section on international
regulation, monitoring the activities of regulators around the
globe.
Copyright © 2005 - Platts, All Rights Reserved
[The McGraw-Hill Companies]
*****************************************************************
30 Public Citizen: Bush’s Push for Nuclear Power Would Unfairly
Burden Taxpayers Even More
April 27, 2005
Statement of Wenonah Hauter, Director, Public Citizens Energy
Program
President Bushs relentless push for nuclear power is spiraling
out of control. Today, Bush is expected to deliver a speech
encouraging the use of domestic energy sources. Among his five
new proposals, he plans to offer the nuclear industry yet
another break; this time in the form of federal risk
insurance, which would protect the nuclear industry in the
event that the regulatory process slows down its plans for
building new nuclear reactors.
Taxpayers already have provided the nuclear industry tens of
billions in subsidies since its inception 50 years ago. The
just-passed energy bill by the U.S. House of Representatives
provides an additional $6.1 billion in subsidies and tax breaks
to the nuclear industry. Moreover, the nuclear industry is the
only industry to have its liability artificially limited even
in cases of intentional misconduct or gross negligence. This is
done through the Price-Anderson Act, a law that caps the
industrys liability in the event of a catastrophic accident or
attack and calls for the government that is, the taxpayers
to pay for cleanup above the cap. Apparently, this isnt enough.
The industry is demanding cradle-to-grave subsidies.
The nuclear industry now wants to be 100 percent guaranteed that
its license applications will be quickly accepted by the U.S.
Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the agency responsible for
issuing nuclear reactor licenses. Rushing these licenses is
foolhardy. It will shortchange the public of its opportunity to
participate in the process and could jeopardize public safety.
As the leader of the so-called fiscal conservative party in this
country, Bush is making a gigantic miscalculation by offering
even more money to the nuclear industry at the expense of
taxpayers. If the nuclear industry thought that building new
reactors was profitable, then it would foot the bill to build
new reactors. Instead, the nuclear industry wants the public to
take all the risks, while it reaps the profits. Nuclear power is
risky and those risks should be borne by the industry, not the
public.
Nuclear power is not the answer to our energy problems. Its
expensive and dangerous. Too many of our taxpayer dollars have
already been wasted on this polluting energy source. Enough is
enough.
###
For more information about nuclear power plants, click here.
[http://www.citizen.org/cmep/energy_enviro_nuclear/nuclear_power_
plants/]
*****************************************************************
31 PPL: Susquehanna Unit 2 Shutdown
[http://www.pplweb.com/investors/]
Media Access
Manager-Susquehanna, 570-759-2285
laramos@pplweb.com [laramos@pplweb.com]
Operators shut down the Unit 2 reactor at PPL’s Susquehanna
nuclear power plant at 7:19 a.m. Thursday because of a
malfunction with a plant electrical transformer.
“The reactor was shut down safely and is in a stable condition
while we investigate the cause of the electrical transformer
problem,†said Britt McKinney, PPL’s vice president of
nuclear site operations.
The main transformer is a non-nuclear component of the plant
that increases the voltage of the electricity for distribution
on the electrical transmission network.
The malfunction appears to be related to the cooling system for
the transformer, McKinney said.
The plant’s Unit 1 reactor continues to operate at 100 percent
power.
The Susquehanna plant, located in Luzerne County about seven
miles north of Berwick, Pa. is owned jointly by PPL Susquehanna
LLC and Allegheny Electric Cooperative Inc. and is operated by
PPL Susquehanna.
PPL Susquehanna is one of PPL Corporation’s generating
facilities. Headquartered in Allentown, Pa., PPL Corporation
(NYSE: PPL) controls more than 12,000 megawatts of generating
capacity in the United States, sells energy in key U.S. markets
and delivers electricity to nearly 5 million customers in
Pennsylvania, the United Kingdom and Latin America. More
information is available at www.pplweb.com.
2005 PPL Corporation
*****************************************************************
32 CBC New Brunswick: Lepreau repairs will take more time
Last updated Apr 28 2005 09:38 AM ADT
CBC News [http://www.cbc.ca/news/credit.html]
SAINT JOHN – New Brunswick's energy minister says the annual
shutdown of the Point Lepreau nuclear station will take longer
and cost $8 million more than expected.
Bruce Fitch says some of the generator's pressure pipes are
thinning and cracking. He says the engineers had identified
problems with six of the pipes, but on closer inspection they've
decided that 13 of them should be replaced. It costs NB Power
$800,000 a day to purchase replacement electricity when Lepreau
is not operating.
The plant was shutdown on April 15 for annual maintenance and was
supposed to be put back in production by the middle of May.
However, Fitch says the extra work will extend the shutdown by a
week and a half.
Copyright © CBC 2005
*****************************************************************
33 News & Star: Nuclear leak repairs ‘may take months’
[http://www.lcwc.ac.uk]
Published on 28/04/2005 By Andrea Thompson
INVESTIGATIONS into a major leak inside Sellafield’s Thorp
plant have revealed that some 83 cubic metres of radioactive
liquid escaped on to the floor of the feed clarification cell
following a pipe failure.
Although the incident happened inside a sealed, secure unit and
posed no health risk, it has closed the front end of the
plant’s reprocessing operations and repairs could take months.
British Nuclear Group said yesterday that a board of inquiry had
been convened and further investigations were being carried out
to determine exactly how the pipe failure occurred.
A team has already started to look at ways of repairing the
pipeline inside the highly radioactive feed clarification cell,
which is a totally sealed, stainless steel unit with no
personnel access.
The plant could be closed down for several months as a result of
the incident, which was discovered during a camera inspection of
the cell. It holds dissolver fuels while tests are carried out
on nuclear material undergoing reprocessing.
Engineers and radiological experts can’t start the complicated
clean-up and repair work until the Nuclear Installations
Inspectorate approves detailed plans and is sure the job can be
done safely.
A British Nuclear Group spokeswoman said: “This is a technical
challenge which is going to take some time.
“We are not talking days, it could be weeks and possibly
months.â€
The leak happened just as Thorp was due a seven-week shutdown
for planned engineering and modifications work, but resources
will now have to be diverted to solving the problem.
It is likely to leave Sellafield’s new owner, the Nuclear
Decommissioning Authority (NDA), with a hefty bill.
An NDA spokesman said it was a “significant event that may
impact on the plans and the contract for the Sellafield
licenseeâ€, but added that it was too early to say what the
full impact on the commercial operation of Thorp would be.
He said: “We are maintaining close contact with the company as
they carry out their investigations and prepare plans to recover
from the current situation. Our principle concern always remains
one of safety and we are pleased there is no indication of any
safety concerns for the staff or the public.â€
British Nuclear Group has stressed that the leak posed no risk
to employees, the local community or the environment. It
happened inside a unit that is designed to withstand such pipe
failures.
Managing director Barry Snelson said: “The plant is in a safe,
quiescent state.â€
[http://www.whitehaven-news.co.uk/]
*****************************************************************
34 Bunker-busting nukes could devastate civilians
Date: Thu, 28 Apr 2005 09:55:55 -0500 (CDT)
Bunker-busting nukes could devastate civilians - Breaking News | Print | New
Scientist
12:10 28 April 2005
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7318
NewScientist.com news service
Jeff Hecht
Nuclear "bunker busters" could destroy enemy hideouts hundreds of metres
underground but, if the target is in an urban area, a strike could lead to
more than a million civilian deaths, warns a report from the US National
Research Council (NRC) issued on Wednesday.
"Using an earth-penetrating weapon to destroy a target 250 meters deep - the
typical depth for most underground facilities - potentially could kill a
devastatingly large number of people," said John Ahearne, chair of the
report committee.
The report is unlikely to resolve the heated debate over the Bush
administration's plans to develop a new Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator - a
weapon hardened to penetrate deep into the ground.
Its conclusions echo the claims of administration officials who say the
bombs are needed to destroy deeply buried military control centres, labs and
stores. But it also supports the contentions of critics who warn they could
cause heavy civilian deaths. And the report fails to address two crucial
criticisms - that developing new nuclear bunker-busters would encourage the
resumption of nuclear testing and lower the threshold for use of nuclear
weapons.
The US nuclear arsenal already has one earth-penetrating weapon - the B61-11
bomb - but it cannot penetrate solid rock. Pentagon planners want a weapon
that can penetrate several metres of rock. That would allow it to target the
more than 100 potential-enemy complexes, identified by US intelligence, and
built 100 to 400 metres underground. In 2003, Congress asked the NRC to
study the potential health and environmental impact of the new weapon.
Destructive forces
Subsurface explosions transfers energy into the ground far more efficiently
than surface blasts. The NRC panel concluded that detonating a nuclear bomb
just a few metres below the surface increases its power to destroy
underground targets by a factor of 15 to 25 over a surface explosion.
Most of that advantage comes from penetrating just 3 metres into the ground.
Once this depth is obtained, a 300-kiloton earth penetrator could destroy a
target buried 200 m deep, while a 1-megaton weapon would be needed for a
target 300 m underground.
The problem is that earth penetrators cannot plunge deeply enough into the
ground to fully contain the effects of a nuclear blast, so casualties would
be "for all practical purposes, equal to [those] from a surface burst of the
same weapon yield", the report suggests. That means surface casualties could
be high.
Urban areas
And half of the 1000 "strategic" hardened or buried targets identified by
the Pentagon are in urban areas, where the panel estimate death tolls would
range "from thousands to more than a million, depending primarily on the
weapon yield".
Nor would nuclear weapons be able to destroy chemical or biological agents
in buried labs - unless the bomb was detonated inside the buried chamber,
the panel concluded. That being the case, a non-nuclear "thermobaric" bomb -
using fuel-air explosives - might be just as effective at destroying the
agents if detonated inside the chamber.
And a nuclear bomb would probably kill more people than any chemical agents
released from a destroyed underground factory, says the report, though that
might not be true for biological weapons. "Release of as little as 0.1
kilograms of anthrax spores" would kill as many people as a 3-kiloton
nuclear earth penetrator, the panel concluded.
*****************************************************************
35 [NYTr] Zarqawi attack on inspector cut short the hunt for WMD
Date: Thu, 28 Apr 2005 13:16:37 -0500 (CDT)
Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit
sent by Simon McGuinness
["His dossier demolished claims by the British government and Bush
administration issued before the Iraq war that Saddam's weapons were a
threat to the US and Britain."]
The Independent - 28 April 2005
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/story.jsp?story=633667
Zarqawi attack on inspector cut short the hunt for WMD
By Anne Penketh, Diplomatic Editor
The American who led the hunt for Iraq's missing weapons of mass
destruction has revealed that the investigation was cut short after he
was targeted by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the militant leader in an attack
that left two people dead. The head of the Iraq Survey Group, Charles
Duelfer, has reported that his investigation into the possible transfer
of WMD to Syria had been wound up because of the "declining security
situation".
But, in an interview with The Independent, Mr Duelfer said that Zarqawi
had claimed responsibility for the car-bomb attack on his convoy on 6
November 2004. "A car-bomb tried to get me and my follow car," Mr
Duelfer said. "Two of my guards were killed and one was badly wounded.
My hearing's not been right since."
Mr Duelfer, in an addendum to the final report which runs to thousands
of pages, concluded that there was no evidence that WMD had been moved
to Syria by Saddam Hussein. The report contradicted assertions by Donald
Rumsfeld, the US Secretary of Defence, who claimed after the war that
the lack of WMD in Iraq might be explained this way.
Mr Duelfer reported just before the US presidential election last
November that his 1,500-strong group had found "no evidence" that Saddam
had possessed chemical, biological or nuclear weapons. His dossier
demolished claims by the British government and Bush administration
issued before the Iraq war that Saddam's weapons were a threat to the US
and Britain.
Mr Duelfer denied suggestions - including from an Australian colleague,
the weapons inspector Rod Barton - that he had been subjected to
political pressure by the US or British authorities. He confirmed that
John Scarlett, the head of MI6, had mentioned some "nuggets" that could
be put into his interim report, issued in March last year. "I looked at
them, and didn't include them," he said.
But he added that he did not construe such suggestions to be political
pressure. "I got a lot of suggestions from governments with big
intelligence operations. It would be foolish of me not to look at them.
"There was political interest, but that's not the same as political
pressure," he said. "There was a desire on the part of capitals to find
WMD. It would have made everyone's life much easier. But the view was:
let the chips fall where they may."
Asked what he had achieved in his 18 months in Iraq, Mr Duelfer said he
had built up a comprehensive picture of Saddam's strategic intent. He
believes that given the opportunity, which would have come with the
lifting of UN sanctions, the Iraqi dictator was poised to resume his
banned weapons activities. "I think there's a decent set of data on the
table." After hours of debriefing more than 100 Iraqi scientists and
experts, "I think I understand the motivation of the regime."
He explained that his attempt to comprehend the workings of Saddam's
regime had led him to the oil-for-food scandal. In his report, he
contended that Saddam's government siphoned more than $2bn (#1.05bn) in
illicit bribes and kickbacks from companies that traded with Iraq
through the UN's humanitarian oil-for-food scheme. Six investigations
are now under way into the scandal.
Mr Duelfer, who backed the invasion of Iraq, said his team had drawn up
a timeline of international events in order to understand the mindset of
the isolated Iraqi leader. "We wanted to know what was he looking at
when he made this or that decision, for example, going to war with
Iran," he said.
Asked why he had not gone to such trouble to understand the mindset of
the Iraqi dictator in the 1990s, when he was deputy head of the UN
inspection agency Unscom, Mr Duelfer argued that Iraq's obstruction of
the arms monitors had not been conducive to such an approach.
"The patterns of behaviour reinforced assumptions," he said. He also
recognised that because of the lack of relations between America and
Iraq in the 1990s, the lack of direct intelligence from the ground was
also an impediment.
"There was a systemic problem in the intelligence community," he noted.
"What I think I missed was how high Saddam's priority was to get out of
sanctions. From 1991, it was the number one priority."
Mr Duelfer has retired as a weapons inspector but will write an account
of his time in Iraq. His next project is as consultant to a mission
planning to resume manned flights to the Moon.
In other news:
Gunmen have assassinated Lamia Abed Kha-dawi, a member of Iraq's
National Assembly. Ms Khadawi, who belonged to the caretaker Prime
Minister Iyad Allawi's party, was shot dead outside her house in eastern
Baghdad. She is the first person in the 275-seat assembly to be killed.
*
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36 Guardian Unlimited: N. Korea Refusal to Talk Called a Problem
From the Associated Press
[UP]
Thursday April 28, 2005 11:01 PM
By BO-MI LIM
Associated Press Writer
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - Washington's top envoy on the North
Korean nuclear issue said Thursday that the North's refusal to
return to international nuclear talks is a problem, but that the
talks are still the best way to resolve the issue.
``We continue to have a situation where North Koreans don't seem
to want to come back to the talks and that's obviously a problem
for the future of the talks,'' U.S. Assistant Secretary of State
Christopher Hill said upon arriving in South Korea after trips
to China and Japan.
``We still consider the six-party process is the best process to
deal with this,'' he told reporters.
Resuming the six-nation talks aimed at ending North Korea's
nuclear ambitions gained urgency in February, when the North
claimed it already has nuclear weapons and said it would boycott
the talks indefinitely. Since then, it has threatened to
increase its nuclear arsenal and has asked to be treated as an
equal partner in the nuclear talks.
``I don't want to discuss (other) options right now because I
think that further undermines the chances for success of
six-party talks,'' Hill said.
Also Thursday, South Korean Unification Minister Chung
Dong-young said there has not been any evidence that the North
is getting ready to conduct a nuclear test. Chung strongly
warning the North against making such a move.
Chung, who is responsible for South Korea's relations with North
Korea, said a nuclear test would ``shake the fundamentals of the
framework of the ongoing dialogue,'' and that the North ``should
judge and act prudently.''
The six-nation nuclear talks, also involving China, Japan,
Russia and South Korea, have been stalled since June last year
following three inconclusive rounds.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005
*****************************************************************
37 Guardian Unlimited: Putin Warns Iran Against Atomic Arms
From the Associated Press
[UP]
Thursday April 28, 2005 9:01 PM
AP Photo JRL108
By STEVE GUTTERMAN
Associated Press Writer
JERUSALEM (AP) - On the first visit by a Kremlin leader to
Israel, Russia's Vladimir Putin soothed his hosts Thursday by
aiming sharp words at Iran over its nuclear program, but he
sparred with his Israeli counterpart on a Syrian missile deal
that Israelis see as a threat.
Making a trip meant to cement relations after decades of
Soviet-era discord, the Russian president said his country and
Israel are linked by the Holocaust and the deaths of millions of
Soviet citizens in World War II. And he noted Israel's large
population of Russian-speaking immigrants.
Putin scored points with Israeli leaders by warning Iran's
government not to seek nuclear weapons.
``Our Iranian partners must give up development of nuclear cycle
technology,'' he said, referring to enriched uranium that can be
used in weapons, ``and must not hinder putting all their nuclear
programs under complete international control.''
The statement by Putin, whose country is building a
nuclear-powered electricity plant in Iran, was perhaps his
strongest call for the Tehran government to convince the world
that it does not want atomic weapons.
But Putin, who said in February he was certain Iran was not
trying to build nuclear arms, stressed that Russia's cooperation
with Iran was for purely peaceful purposes.
Israeli Vice Premier Ehud Olmert complained Russia is selling
components to Iran that can be used to make non-conventional
weapons and said the assistance to one of Israel's strongest
enemies is a cause of concern.
Olmert, who took part in Putin's lunch meeting with Israeli
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, told Israel TV afterward that the
two leaders ``agreed on a number of practical steps'' on
security matters, but he gave no details.
Putin defended Russia's agreement to sell anti-aircraft missiles
to Syria, a deal with another longtime foe of Israel that has
clouded his historic visit.
He said the missiles could not be converted to portable use by
terrorists without authorities being aware, and he repeated
earlier assurances that the short-range missiles are no threat
to Israeli territory.
``The only way you can come into contact with these missiles
would be to attack Syria. Do you want to do that?'' Putin said
at a joint news conference with Israeli President Moshe Katsav
after their meeting.
Israeli officials appeared unconvinced.
Katsav said selling Syria missiles could hurt Israel's attempts
to fight terrorists - a jab at the Russian president's call for
strengthening cooperation against the common threat of
terrorism.
Israeli media reported after Putin's meeting with Sharon that
the two countries plan to set up an instant notification system
about terror threats.
Israeli media also said that Sharon objects to Russia's plan to
sell military equipment to the Palestinian Authority.
Palestinian officials say Russia is interested in selling
armored vehicles to their security services for use in riot
control, but Israel fears the vehicles could fall into the hands
of militants.
Putin is to meet with Palestinian leaders Friday, and Russian
Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told reporters they would discuss
how Moscow can help the Palestinians with security.
One idea that appeared to drop off the table was Putin's
proposal that Moscow host a Mideast peace conference in the
fall. Israelis officials expressed reservations, and Lavrov
played it down Thursday.
He said Putin did not suggest a summit of government leaders but
rather a meeting of high-level experts. ``There is nothing
unusual about this. Such meetings are held periodically,'' he
said.
Another issue that analysts had said would probably be raised
during Putin's visit, the presence in Israel of Russian business
tycoons the Kremlin wants to put on trial, ``was not brought up
at all,'' Lavrov said.
In a day packed with symbolism, Putin strongly condemned
anti-Semitism amid concern among Israeli officials about a rise
of the phenomenon in Russia. He toured a stark new museum
commemorating the Holocaust's victims and presented a sculpture
recalling those victims as a gift from the Russian people.
``In the 21st century there can be no place for xenophobia,
anti-Semitism or other forms of racial or religious
intolerance,'' Putin said. ``This is not only our debt to the
millions who died in the gas chambers, it is our debt to future
generations.''
In the afternoon, he visited the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial,
which recently dedicated a new museum complex. His head covered
with a traditional Jewish skullcap, he laid a wreath and
strengthened the eternal flame in the Hall of Remembrance, where
the ashes of Jews killed by the Nazis are buried.
Writing in the guest book, Putin said: ``We are deeply mournful
of all the victims of the Holocaust. This type of tragedy must
never happen again.''
Avner Shalev, Yad Vashem's director and the new museum's
curator, who gave Putin the tour, said the Russian leader took
great interest in details, particularly events that occurred in
the former Soviet Union.
``He was very emotional and especially moved by the small
individual stories,'' Shalev told The Associated Press. ``He was
very involved and spoke about the importance of the memories in
the education of our generation.''
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005
*****************************************************************
38 BBC NEWS: Iraq war legal advice published
[http://www.bbc.co.uk]
Last Updated: Thursday, 28 April, 2005, 22:00 GMT 23:00 UK
[A British soldier on patrol in Iraq]
The issue of Iraq is firmly back on the agenda
Downing Street has published the full advice it received on the
legality of the Iraq war, after fresh media leaks.
It shows that the attorney general told Tony Blair on 7 March
2003 a second UN resolution was the safest legal course.
Ten days later Lord Goldsmith's final advice was published, but
included no concerns about the legality of the war.
Michael Howard and Charles Kennedy said the advice raised fresh
questions. But Mr Blair said the "smoking gun" had turned out to
be "a damp squib".
The issue dominated the questioning when the three main party
leaders appeared on a Question Time special.
Lord Goldsmith's 7 March advice was never shown to the Cabinet -
instead, the 17 March advice was. It was also made public in an
answer in the House of Lords. The war started on 20 March.
[Charles Kennedy on Question Time]
Kennedy rules out coalition Blair action over GP row Howard
denies racism jibe
In the earlier advice, Lord Goldsmith raised possible legal
arguments which could be made against the Iraq war.
He warned there were "a number of ways" in which opponents of the
war could bring legal action.
"We cannot be certain that they would not succeed," he said,
adding a second UN resolution might be the way of preventing such
legal action succeeding.
'Unequivocal'?
Key questions he considered included whether the wording of
previous resolutions on Iraq authorised military action.
But Lord Goldsmith's nine-paragraph written answer to Parliament
on 17 March raised no such doubts, stating: "Authority to use
force against Iraq exists" from previous UN resolutions.
Speaking on a special edition of the BBC's Question Time
programme, Conservative leader Michael Howard said he believed
the war was right, but that Mr Blair had lied.
READ THE LEGAL ADVICE
The Attorney General's advice to the prime minister on the
legality of military action against Iraq, 7 March 2003 (692k)
[http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/28_04_05_attorney_gen
eral.pdf]
On the same programme Liberal Democrat leader Charles Kennedy
said the advice had had to be "absolutely dragged" out of the
government and attacked Mr Blair's use of the phrase "damp
squib".
"Go and describe these findings as a damp squib to the families
of the service personnel who gave their lives in Iraq."
He said the Lib Dems still believed British troops should be
aiming to return at the end of the year, even if the Iraqi
government requested them to stay, although he said it would be
possible to consider a request to be part of a UN peacekeeping
force.
Mr Blair, asked about the issue by audience members, said: "It's
not a matter of the attorney's general's advice because it's been
shown that he advised it was lawful. Neither was it a matter of
misusing intelligence.
"It is, however, a question of a difficult decision I had to
take; Was it better to leave Saddam in power - or put him in
prison? I think it was better to put him in prison."
(Tony Blair) said that the attorney general's advice that was
given was clear... we now know from the publication of today's
document that it was anything but clear
Shadow Foreign Secretary Michael Ancram [ src=]
Fact check: Was war legal?
Analysis: Iraq war legality
Earlier shadow foreign secretary Michael Ancram told BBC News
that Tony Blair should have disclosed the advice in full when MPs
were discussing whether to go to war against Iraq.
Mr Ancram said: "He said that the attorney general's advice that
was given was clear. I think he may have used the word
unequivocal and hadn't changed.
"We now know from the publication of today's document that it was
anything but clear - that it was qualified in many different ways
and that in the end the attorney general had changed his mind."
Chancellor Gordon Brown sprang to Mr Blair's aid, saying he not
only trusted the prime minister but he also respected him for his
decision - and that he himself would have taken exactly the same
decision in the same way.
But shadow attorney general Dominic Grieve said Mr Blair's
position had become "untenable" after the revelations.
KEY DATES
7 March: Early legal advice sent to Mr Blair
7 March: Hans Blix says Iraq accelerating co-operation
17 March: Final legal advice given to Cabinet
17 March: Advice revealed in House of Lords
20 March: War starts
Lord Goldsmith earlier issued a statement saying the advice
backed up the government's position that the war was legal, and
was simply a consideration of all the arguments.
BBC political editor Andrew Marr said the government could have
avoided a "huge conspiracy" by releasing the legal advice on Iraq
earlier.
He told BBC2's The Daily Politics: "I think it's one of the
greatest own-goals ever in our secretive political culture. I
think it has caused the government 100 times more trouble now
than if they had released it originally."
Plaid Cymru's Adam Price, who has been leading a bid to impeach
Mr Blair, called for his resignation, saying MPs who voted for
war had been persuaded by "essentially fraudulent means".
Green principal speaker Caroline Lucas said: "Tony Blair has
committed the gravest error that a prime minister can and so if
he won't resign, then he must be impeached."
+ BBC Copyright Notice
*****************************************************************
39 Oakland Tribune: Penetrating nukes could kill millions
Last Updated: 04/28/2005 09:06:59 AM
'bunker-busters' effective but would produce mass casualties if
detonated under cities
By Ian Hoffman, STAFF WRITER
Plunging a nuclear weapon into the Earth can destroy foreign
command bunkers and tunnels beyond the reach of conventional
bombs, and with a smaller explosion than a nuclear bomb detonated
at the surface.
But to crush the kind of military hideaway often buried or
tunneled under foreign cities, the nuclear "bunker busters"
pursued by the Bush administration could kill up to 2 million
people, according to an expert panel of the National Academy of
Sciences.
"To get a large enough ground shock to defeat a hard, deep
target, you're going to have to use a reasonably large-sized
nuclear weapon," said study Chairman John F. Ahearn, a former Air
Force scientist who advises on weapons issues. "If you use that
near an urban area, you're going to kill large numbers of
people."
In a chilling, detailed study on the effects of nuclear earth
penetrators, scientists Wednesday also cast significant
uncertainty on the effectiveness of using nuclear earth
penetrators to attack hidden stores of chemical and biological
munitions.An H-bomb's searing heat and radiation destroys stored
weapons of mass destruction more effectively than conventional
bombs, scientists concluded, but it also could blast live
biological agent skyward, where even a small amount of anthrax
spores could kill 7,000 to 40,000 people.
To kill germ weapons reliably, "the weapon has to detonate in the
middle of the (underground) room, in free flight," said Raymond
Jeanloz, an earth scientist at the University of California,
Berkeley and a frequent adviser to government and academics on
weapons matters. "Most of us came to the conclusion that this is
really not a reliable application for a nuclear earth
penetrator."
Academics at Princeton, Stanford and elsewhere already had come
to similar conclusions in earlier studies. The National Academy
of Sciences report, ordered by Congress and requested by Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, is likely to reinforce those and lend
ammunition to lawmakers opposed to President Bush's request to
continue studies of a Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator at two
California nuclear-weapons labs, Lawrence Livermore and Sandia.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said the study confirms that
nuclear bunker busters cannot dig deep enough to prevent large
casualties.
"The bottom line is that it would result in the deaths of up to a
million people or more if used in densely populated areas," she
said in a statement. "This is the clearest evidence to date that
our nation should not pursue the research and development of
these weapons."
The Pentagon repeatedly has cited worldwide growth in the number
of underground strategic facilities in potential adversary
countries as a threat to the United States and its allies abroad.
In December 2001, the Bush administration called for nuclear
earth penetrators to attack those facilities, as well as storage
locations for chemical, biological and nuclear arms.
The National Academy panel was not asked to assess the military
usefulness and nonproliferation implications of nuclear earth
penetrators.
"We didn't really get into the merits or demerits of pursuing
this particular weapons idea," said retired Adm. Robert Wertheim,
who ran strategic acquisitions in the Navy during the 1970s.
But the panel did find that nuclear earth penetrators are 15 to
25 times more effective at destroying deep, underground
structures than the bombs and warheads of equal yield in the
current U.S. arsenal, all designed to detonate at or above the
ground surface.
Earth penetrators take advantage of a phenomenon called coupling
that can convert as much as 50 percent of the bomb's energy into
powerful ground shocks. By sinking a bomb only three meters into
the Earth, designers can turn the coupling effect into a
veritable earthquake, capable of shaking and crushing even
thick-walled tunnels and concrete rooms underground.
Bush's request would pay for bomb scientists to test a heavier,
more rugged version of the B83, a megaton-class bomb, by ramming
it into a wall of concrete.
Such a bomb, if it survived impact and stayed in the ground,
could destroy tunnels and bunkers almost 1,000 feet underground
in granite, the NAS found.
The casualties from using an earth penetrator could be half to a
tenth of a nuclear blast at the surface, scientists said.
The panel discovered from Pentagon briefings that more than half
of the most important targets are in or close to cities, where a
large nuclear detonation would produce massive casualties.
"I think we've learned a lot from this study," Wertheim said. "It
still hasn't changed my mind about the importance of nuclear
weapons in deterring conflict ... and that the consequences of
execution are matters of great importance."
Contact Ian Hoffman at [ihoffman@angnewspapers.com] .
© 2005 ANG Newspapers
*****************************************************************
40 Guardian Unlimited Officials: N. Korea Missile Years Away
[UP]
Friday April 29, 2005 12:16 AM
By JOHN J. LUMPKIN
Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) - U.S. intelligence analysts believe North Korea
is several years away from being able to mount a nuclear warhead
on a missile that is capable of reaching the United States, two
defense officials said Thursday.
The officials, discussing intelligence assessments on the
condition of anonymity, said analysts believe North Korea has
not solved all of the difficulties of turning a nuclear device
into a small warhead for a intercontinental ballistic missile.
North Korea has an untested long-range missile, called a Taepo
Dong 2, and is believed to have made at least one nuclear
weapon, according to public intelligence estimates. Combining
the two is another challenge, the officials said.
The officials spoke after Vice Adm. Lowell Jacoby, director of
the Defense Intelligence Agency, discussed North Korea's
capabilities during questioning by Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton,
D-N.Y., at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on
Thursday.
Clinton asked if ``North Korea has the ability to arm a missile
with a nuclear device?''
Jacoby answered, ``My assessment is that they have the
capability to do that.''
Clinton then asked, ``And do you assess that North Korea has the
ability to deploy a two-stage intercontinental nuclear missile
that could successfully hit U.S. territory?''
Jacoby responded, ``Yes, the assessment on a two-stage missile
would give capability to reach portions of U.S. territory and
the projection on a three-stage missile would be that it would
be able to reach most of the continental United States. That
still is a theoretical capability in a sense that those missiles
have not been tested.''
U.S. intelligence believes a two-stage Taepo Dong 2 could hit
Alaska, Hawaii and perhaps parts of the West Coast. North Korea
also has shorter-range missiles which, some officials have said,
could carry a nuclear warhead as far as Japan.
Clinton said Jacoby's testimony was ``troubling beyond words.''
Some congressional officials said they interpreted his
statements to mean the North Koreans had figured out how to make
a nuclear warhead capable of being attached to a missile that
could reach the United States. This would mark a significant
increase in North Korea's capabilities.
The DIA, however, said in a statement late Thursday that Jacoby
was only reiterating a statement he made in March that North
Korea's missiles were capable of carrying a warhead - but not
that they had actually developed such a warhead.
Six-nation nuclear talks aimed at persuading North Korea to give
up its nuclear ambitions have been stalled since June. In
addition to the United States and North Korea, the negotiations
include China, Japan, Russia and South Korea
Washington's top envoy on the issue, U.S. Assistant Secretary of
State Christopher Hill, said Thursday in South Korea that the
North's refusal to return to the talks is a problem but they are
the best way to resolve matters.
South Korean Unification Minister Chung Dong-young said there
has not been any evidence that North Korea is getting ready to
conduct a nuclear test, as some recent reports have indicated.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005
*****************************************************************
41 News Release: Fallout Report Released
Date: Thu, 28 Apr 2005 15:10:29 -0700
Please find the Snake River Alliance press release regarding the Radiation
Exposure Compensation Act report attached. My cell is (208) 850-9334 for
after hours questions.
Jeremy M. Maxand
Executive Director
Snake River Alliance
Idaho's Nuclear Watchdog
104 S Capitol Blvd
Boise, Idaho 83702
(208) 344-9161 voice
(208) 331-0885 fax
sra@snakeriveralliance.org
snakeriveralliance.org
Institute for Energy and Environmental Research · Snake River Alliance ·
Healthy Environment Alliance of Utah · Physicians for Social
Responsibility · Alliance for Nuclear Accountability
For more information:
Arjun Makhijani (IEER) (301) 509-6843
Jeremy Maxand (SRA, Idaho) (208) 344-9161, (208) 850-9334
Vanessa Pierce (HEAL) (801) 652-5151
Kimberly Roberts (PSR) (202) 667-4260 ext. 212
For immediate release, Thursday, April 28, 2005
ADVOCATES WELCOME NAT’L SCIENCES ACADEMY STUDY RECOMMENDING
EXPANDED COMPENSATION FOR THOSE HURT BY U.S. NUCLEAR TESTS;
GROUPS CALL ON CONGRESS TO MOVE QUCKLY TO HELP VICTIMS
Groups concerned about the health effects of radioactive fallout
welcomed today’s release of a National Academy of Sciences (NAS) report
recommending that eligibility for the federal compensation program for
people suffering from cancer connected to U.S. nuclear weapons tests not be
limited to its current geographic boundaries and urged Congress to move
quickly to assist sick downwinders. The NAS study said that Congress should
implement science-based changes that, in effect, would extend coverage of
the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA), which is now limited to
residents of parts of Nevada, southern Utah and Arizona as well as workers
who handled uranium.
“The National Cancer Institute has shown that there were hot
spot areas all over the country where milk was contaminated. People with a
high risk of thyroid cancer should be compensated without delay wherever
they lived without having to jump through hoops,” said Arjun Makhijani,
Ph.D., president of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research
(IEER), referring to a 1997 National Cancer Institute (NCI) report on
radioactive iodine doses from fallout. “The cancer risks from fallout other
than thyroid cancer still need to be determined by careful study. The
available science on other cancer risks from testing is inadequate because
scientists have not talked to the downwinders carefully enough to determine
all the pathways by which they were exposed. For example, radioactive ash
deposited after test blasts on laundry as it dried outside could have led
to higher exposures than what has been accounted for.”
“The NAS report is a mixed bag,” said Mary Dickson, lifetime resident of
Salt Lake City and survivor of thyroid cancer. “It admits that fallout
affected the entire country. But it is not possible for many victims to
produce hard scientific evidence of their exposure because studies were not
done at that time. At this point, all the government has to do is wait for
the victims to die.”
Susan Gordon of the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability welcomed NAS’s
recognition of the need to include additional geographic areas under RECA.
“However,” Ms. Gordon qualified, “under no circumstances should benefits be
taken away from the 22 currently eligible RECA counties. Current RECA
benefits should not be changed.”
Kimberly Roberts of Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR)
welcomed the NAS recommendation for a broad federal education and
communication program about fallout risks. “Patients must have access to
information to make informed decisions about their exposures. Congress
should include physician education and outreach as part of any new RECA
legislation,” Ms. Roberts added.
“RECA funding should not subject to the whims of annual
appropriators, so that those who are sick and dying receive a check to pay
for their chemotherapy rather than a government IOU,” said Vanessa Pierce
of the Healthy Environment Alliance of Utah. “Also, those who were harmed
by fallout should receive awards for health damages comparable to the
$150,000 payments received by nuclear weapons workers who contracted
similar diseases. The public was deliberately misinformed by the government
about the health risks of nuclear testing and deserve as much.”
“It’s time for the federal government to make good on its
obligation to help all people sickened by U.S. nuclear weapons testing,”
Jeremy Maxand, Executive Director of Idaho’s Snake River Alliance,
concluded. “The Bush Administration and Congress should focus on making the
RECA program work effectively rather than pursuing the dangerous resumption
of nuclear weapons tests.”
RECA was originally passed by Congress in 1990 and amended in
2000. The legislation was historic because it was the first time the
government publicly acknowledged that downwinders and uranium workers had
been hurt and deserved compensation. In the 1950s and early-1960s, the U.S.
conducted nearly 100 aboveground nuclear weapons tests. A National Cancer
Institute (NCI) study on the health impacts of fallout released in 1997
found that millions of people in the U.S. received significant doses of
radioactive iodine and that hot spots occurred thousands of miles from the
test sites.
The NAS investigation began in 2002 to assess recent scientific
evidence, including the NCI data, to determine whether other groups of
people should be covered under the RECA program.
- - 3 0 - -
attached: NCI map showing areas with radioactive iodine fallout from U.S.
nuclear weapons tests.
Attachment Converted: "c:\program files\eudora\attach\NAS Report News Release April 28 2005.doc"
*****************************************************************
42 Las Vegas SUN: EPA finds no radiation concerns in Nevada town near polluted mine
Today: April 28, 2005 at 17:38:00 PDT
By SCOTT SONNER ASSOCIATED PRESS
YERINGTON, Nev. (AP) - Federal regulators examining uranium
contamination at a closed copper mine in northern Nevada
reassured nearby residents they needn't fear the homes they live
in or the roads they drive.
A special van that spent 10 days measuring radiation levels in
and around Yerington determined there's no immediate
radiological concerns about dirt or rock hauled off the former
Anaconda copper mine to build roads or foundations for homes the
past three decades.
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency scientists confirmed
earlier readings of unusually high levels of radiation on the
mine property, which covers about 6 square miles along
Yerington's eastern border.
But the meters didn't register anything other than normal
radiation levels off the mine site, which the Bureau of Land
Management formally closed to public access last week, citing
radiological and other hazards.
"Other than what we expected to see on the on the mine site, the
rest of the stuff was pretty boring to look at, which is good.
We like boring," said Jim Sickles, an EPA specialist in charge
of cleaning up the mine.
"We still have a lot of work to do, but this allows us to allay
some community concerns about the kind of rocks their houses
were built on," he said Wednesday.
"Two weeks ago I couldn't tell somebody for certain whether they
should be concerned if their house had mine tailings under it.
Now I can tell them I would not expect any problem," he said.
Sickles emphasized the special van measuring surface radiation
within 100 feet from the road is an initial screening tool that
wouldn't find anything radioactive that had been buried under
ground. He also said it doesn't address concerns about other
heavy metal contaminants known to be present at the mine.
The mine produced copper for about 30 years until 1978. The acid
used to leach the copper from rocks apparently left concentrated
uranium in processing ponds, federal regulators learned in the
past year.
Atlantic Richfield, a former owner of the mine site, is
responsible for the cleanup because the most recent owner,
Arimetco Inc. of Tucson, Ariz., filed for bankruptcy in 1997 and
abandoned the site in 2000.
The 3,000 residents of the rural town some 60 miles southeast of
Reno 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.
Atlantic Richfield, under order from the EPA, plans more air and
water tests.
Concerns about the waste materials surfaced at public meetings
in past months when residents recalled that dirt and rocks from
the mine had been used for local road beds, foundations for
buildings, homes and trailers in town and at neighboring tribal
lands.
The large specially equipped van - the only of its kind in the
world - is based at EPA's Radiation and Indoor Environments
National Laboratory in Las Vegas.
It covered more than 200 miles in Yerington and neighboring
areas over a 10-day period that ended Wednesday, said Mark
Sells, an EPA radiation specialist.
Peggy Pauly, organizer of a community group concerned about
dangers at the mine, said she was pleased the EPA scanned the
community for radiation.
"It is good news and I'm positive about it," Pauly said. "But it
is just a screening tool. It doesn't mean there isn't anything
to worry about."
Pauly said she's been encouraged by progress on the cleanup
efforts since EPA took control of the project from the Nevada
Division of Environmental Protection earlier this year.
--
*****************************************************************
43 Coastal Post Online: Horror Of Depleted Uranium Not Limited To Iraq
coastalpost.com
MARIN COUNTY'S NEWS MONTHLY - FREE PRESS
(415)868-1600 - (415)868-0502(fax) - P.O. Box 31, Bolinas, CA,
94924
April, 2005
By James Denver
"I'm horrified. The people out there - the Iraqis, the media
and the troops - risk the most appalling ill health. And the
radiation from depleted uranium can travel literally anywhere.
It's going to destroy the lives of thousands of children, all
over the world. We all know how far radiation can travel.
Radiation from Chernobyl reached Wales and in Britain you
sometimes get red dust from the Sahara on your car."
The speaker is not some alarmist doom-sayer. He is Dr.
Chris Busby, the British radiation expert, Fellow of the
University of Liverpool in the Faculty of Medicine and UK
representative on the European Committee on Radiation Risk,
talking about the best-kept secret of this war: the fact that,
by illegally using hundreds of tons of depleted uranium (DU)
against Iraq, Britain and America have gravely endangered not
only the Iraqis but the whole world. For these weapons have
released deadly, carcinogenic and mutagenic, radioactive
particles in such abundance that-whipped up by sandstorms and
carried on trade winds - there is no corner of the globe they
cannot penetrate-including Britain. For the wind has no
boundaries and time is on their side: the radioactivity persists
for over 4,500,000,000 years and can cause cancer, leukemia,
brain damage, kidney failure, and extreme birth defects -
killing millions of every age for centuries to come. A crime
against humanity which may, in the eyes of historians, rank with
the worst atrocities of all time.
These weapons have released deadly, carcinogenic and
mutagenic, radioactive particles in such abundance that there is
no corner of the globe they cannot penetrate - including Britain.
Yet, officially, no crime has been committed. For this story
is a dirty story in which the facts have been concealed from
those who needed them most. It is also a story we need to know
if the people of Iraq are to get the medical care they
desperately need, and if our troops, returning from Iraq, are
not to suffer as terribly as the veterans of other conflicts in
which depleted uranium was used.
A Dirty Tyson
'Depleted' uranium is in many ways a misnomer. For
'depleted' sounds weak. The only weak thing about depleted
uranium is its price. It is dirt cheap, toxic, waste from
nuclear power plants and bomb production. However, uranium is
one of earth's heaviest elements and DU packs a Tyson's punch,
smashing through tanks, buildings and bunkers with equal ease,
spontaneously catching fire as it does so, and burning people
alive. 'Crispy critters' is what US servicemen call those
unfortunate enough to be close. And, when John Pilger
encountered children killed at a greater distance he wrote: "The
children's skin had folded back, like parchment, revealing veins
and burnt flesh that seeped blood, while the eyes, intact,
stared straight ahead. I vomited." (Daily Mirror)
The millions of radioactive uranium oxide particles released
when it burns can kill just as surely, but far more terribly.
They can even be so tiny they pass through a gas mask, making
protection against them impossible. Yet, small is not beautiful.
For these invisible killers indiscriminately attack men, women,
children and even babies in the womb-and do the gravest harm of
all to children and unborn babies.
A Terrible Legacy
Doctors in Iraq have estimated that birth defects have
increased by 2-6 times, and 3-12 times as many children have
developed cancer and leukaemia since 1991. Moreover, a report
published in The Lancet in 1998 said that as many as 500
children a day are dying from these sequels to war and sanctions
and that the death rate for Iraqi children under 5 years of age
increased from 23 per 1000 in 1989 to 166 per thousand in 1993.
Overall, cases of lymphoblastic leukemia more than quadrupled
with other cancers also increasing 'at an alarming rate'. In
men, lung, bladder, bronchus, skin, and stomach cancers showed
the highest increase. In women, the highest increases were in
breast and bladder cancer, and non-Hodgkin lymphoma.1
On hearing that DU had been used in the Gulf in 1991, the UK
Atomic Energy Authority sent the Ministry of Defense a special
report on the potential damage to health and the environment. It
said that it could cause half a million additional cancer deaths
in Iraq over 10 years. In that war the authorities only admitted
to using 320 tons of DU-although the Dutch charity LAKA
estimates the true figure is closer to 800 tons. Many times that
may have been spread across Iraq by this year's war. The
devastating damage all this DU will do to the health and
fertility of the people of Iraq now, and for generations to
come, is beyond imagining.
The radioactivity persists for over 4,500,000,000 years
killing millions of every age for centuries to come. This is a
crime against humanity which may rank with the worst atrocities
of all time.
We must also count the numberless thousands of miscarried
babies. Nobody knows how many Iraqis have died in the womb since
DU contaminated their world. But it is suggested that troops who
were only exposed to DU for the brief period of the war were
still excreting uranium in their semen 8 years later and some
had 100 times the so-called 'safe limit' of uranium in their
urine. The lack of government interest in the plight of veterans
of the 1991 war is reflected in a lack of academic research on
the impact of DU but informal research has found a high
incidence of birth defects in their children and that the wives
of men who served in Iraq have three times more miscarriages
than the wives of servicemen who did not go there.
Since DU darkened the land Iraq has seen birth defects which
would break a heart of stone: babies with terribly foreshortened
limbs, with their intestines outside their bodies, with huge
bulging tumors where their eyes should be, or with a single
eye-like Cyclops, or without eyes, or without limbs, and even
without heads. Significantly, some of the defects are almost
unknown outside textbooks showing the babies born near A-bomb
test sites in the Pacific.
Doctors report that many women no longer say 'Is it a girl
or a boy?' but simply, 'Is it normal, doctor?' Moreover this
terrible legacy will not end. The genes of their parents may
have been damaged for ever, and the damaging DU dust is
ever-present.
Blue on Blue
What the governments of America and Britain have done to the
people of Iraq they have also done to their own soldiers, in
both wars. And they have done it knowingly. For the battlefields
have been thick with DU and soldiers have had to enter areas
heavily contaminated by bombing. Moreover, their bodies have not
only been assaulted by DU but also by a vaccination regime which
violated normal protocols, experimental vaccines, nerve agent
pills, and organophosphate pesticides in their tents. Yet,
though the hazards of DU were known, British and American troops
were not warned of its dangers. Nor were they given thorough
medical checks on their return-even though identifying it
quickly might have made it possible to remove some of it from
their body. Then, when a growing number became seriously ill,
and should have been sent to top experts in radiation damage and
neurotoxins, many were sent to a psychiatrist.
Over 200,000 US troops who returned from the 1991 war are
now invalided out with ailments officially attributed to service
in Iraq-that's 1 in 3. In contrast, the British government's
failure to fully assess the health of returning troops, or to
monitor their health, means no one even knows how many have died
or become gravely ill since their return. However, Gulf
veterans' associations say that, of 40,000 or so fighting fit
men and women who saw active service, at least 572 have died
prematurely since coming home and 5000 may be ill. An alarming
number are thought to have taken their own lives, unable to bear
the torment of the innumerable ailments which have combined to
take away their career, their sexuality, their ability to have
normal children, and even their ability to breathe or walk
normally. As one veteran puts it, they are 'on DU death row,
waiting to die'.
Whatever other factors there may be, some of their illnesses
are strikingly similar to those of Iraqis exposed to DU dust.
For example, soldiers have also fathered children without eyes.
And, in a group of eight servicemen whose babies lack eyes seven
are known to have been directly exposed to DU dust.
They too have fathered children with stunted arms, and rare
abnormalities classically associated with radiation damage. They
too seem prone to cancer and leukemia. Tellingly, so are EU
soldiers who served as peacekeepers in the Balkans, where DU was
also used. Indeed their leukemia rate has been so high that
several EU governments have protested at the use of DU.
The Vital Evidence
Despite all that evidence of the harm done by DU,
governments on both sides of the Atlantic have repeatedly
claimed that as it emits only 'low level' radiation DU is
harmless. Award-winning scientist, Dr. Rosalie Bertell who has
led UN medical commissions, has studied 'low-level' radiation
for 30 years. 2 She has found that uranium oxide particles have
more than enough power to harm cells, and describes their pulses
of radiation as hitting surrounding cells 'like flashes of
lightning' again and again in a single second.2 Like many
scientists worldwide who have studied this type of radiation,
she has found that such 'lightning strikes' can damage DNA and
cause cell mutations which lead to cancer.
Moreover, these particles can be taken up by body fluids and
travel through the body, damaging more than one organ. To
compound all that, Dr. Bertell has found that this particular
type of radiation can cause the body's communication systems to
break down, leading to malfunctions in many vital organs of the
body and to many medical problems. A striking fact, since many
veterans of the first Gulf war suffer from innumerable,
seemingly unrelated, ailments.
In addition, recent research by Eric Wright, Professor of
Experimental Haematology at Dundee University, and others, have
shown two ways in which such radiation can do far more damage
than has been thought. The first is that a cell which seems
unharmed by radiation can produce cells with diverse mutations
several cell generations later. (And mutations are at the root
of cancer and birth defects.) This 'radiation-induced genomic
instability' is compounded by 'the bystander effect' by which
cells mutate in unison with others which have been damaged by
radiation-rather as birds swoop and turn in unison. Put
together, these two mechanisms can greatly increase the damage
done by a single source of radiation, such as a DU particle.
Moreover, it is now clear that there are marked genetic
differences in the way individuals respond to radiation-with
some being far more likely to develop cancer than others. So the
fact that some veterans of the first Gulf war seem relatively
unharmed by their exposure to DU in no way proves that DU did
not damage others.
The Price of Truth
That the evidence from Iraq and from our troops, and the
research findings of such experts, have been ignored may be no
accident. A US report, leaked in late 1995, allegedly says, 'The
potential for health effects from DU exposure is real; however
it must be viewed in perspective... the financial implications
of long-term disability payments and healthcare costs would be
excessive.'3
Clearly, with hundreds of thousands gravely ill in Iraq and
at least a quarter of a million UK and US troops seriously ill,
huge disability claims might be made not only against the
governments of Britain and America if the harm done by DU were
acknowledged. There might also be huge claims against companies
making DU weapons and some of their directors are said to be
extremely close to the White House. How close they are to
Downing Street is a matter for speculation, but arms sales makes
a considerable contribution to British trade. So the massive
whitewashing of DU over the past 12 years, and the way that
governments have failed to test returning troops, seemed to
disbelieve them, and washed their hands of them, may be purely
to save money.
The possibility that financial considerations have led the
governments of Britain and America to cynically avoid taking
responsibility for the harm they have done not only to the
people of Iraq but to their own troops may seem outlandish. Yet
DU weapons weren't used by the other side and no other
explanation fits the evidence. For, in the days before Britain
and America first used DU in war its hazards were no secret.4
One American study in 1990 said DU was 'linked to cancer when
exposures are internal, [and to] chemical toxicity-causing
kidney damage'. While another openly warned that exposure to
these particles under battlefield conditions could lead to
cancers of the lung and bone, kidney damage, non-malignant lung
disease, neuro-cognitive disorders, chromosomal damage and birth
defects.5
A Culture of Denial
In 1996 and 1997 UN Human Rights Tribunals condemned DU
weapons for illegally breaking the Geneva Convention and classed
them as 'weapons of mass destruction' 'incompatible with
international humanitarian and human rights law'. Since then,
following leukemia in European peacekeeping troops in the
Balkans and Afghanistan (where DU was also used), the EU has
twice called for DU weapons to be banned.
Yet, far from banning DU, America and Britain stepped up
their denials of the harm from this radioactive dust as more and
more troops from the first Gulf war and from action and
peacekeeping in the Balkans and Afghanistan have become
seriously ill. This is no coincidence. In 1997, while citing
experiments, by others, in which 84 percent of dogs exposed to
inhaled uranium died of cancer of the lungs, Dr. Asaf Durakovic,
then Professor of Radiology and Nuclear Medicine at Georgetown
University in Washington was quoted as saying, 'The [US
government's] Veterans Administration asked me to lie about the
risks of incorporating depleted uranium in the human body.' He
concluded, 'uranium does cause cancer, uranium does cause
mutation, and uranium does kill. If we continue with the
irresponsible contamination of the biosphere, and denial of the
fact that human life is endangered by the deadly isotope
uranium, then we are doing disservice to ourselves, disservice
to the truth, disservice to God and to all generations who
follow.' Not what the authorities wanted to hear and his
research was suddenly blocked.
During 12 years of ever-growing British whitewash the
authorities have abolished military hospitals, where there could
have been specialized research on the effects of DU and where
expertise in treating DU victims could have built up. And, not
content with the insult of suggesting the gravely disabling
symptoms of Gulf veterans are imaginary they have refused full
pensions to many. For, despite all the evidence to the contrary,
the current House of Commons briefing paper on DU hazards says
'it is judged that any radiation effects from possible exposures
are extremely unlikely to be a contributory factor to the
illnesses currently being experienced by some Gulf war
veterans.' Note how over a quarter of a million sick and dying
US and UK vets are called 'some'.
The Way Ahead
Britain and America not only used DU in this year's Iraq
war, they dramatically increased its use-from a minimum of 320
tons in the previous war to at minimum of 1500 tons in this one.
And this time the use of DU wasn't limited to anti-tank
weapons-as it had largely been in the previous Gulf war-but was
extended to the guided missiles, large bunker busters and big
2000-pound bombs used in Iraq's cities. This means that Iraq's
cities have been blanketed in lethal particles-any one of which
can cause cancer or deform a child. In addition, the use of DU
in huge bombs which throw the deadly particles higher and wider
in huge plumes of smoke means that billions of deadly particles
have been carried high into the air-again and again and again as
the bombs rained down-ready to be swept worldwide by the winds.
The Royal Society has suggested the solution is massive
decontamination in Iraq. That could only scratch the surface.
For decontamination is hugely expensive and, though it may
reduce the risks in some of the worst areas, it cannot fully
remove them. For DU is too widespread on land and water. How do
you clean up every nook and cranny of a city the size of
Baghdad? How can they decontaminate a whole country in which
microscopic particles, which cannot be detected with a normal
geiger counter, are spread from border to border? And how can
they clean up all the countries downwind of Iraq-and, indeed,
the world?
So there are only two things we can do to mitigate this
crime against humanity. The first is to provide the best
possible medical care for the people of Iraq, for our returning
troops and for those who served in the last Gulf war and,
through that, minimize their suffering. The second is to
relegate war, and the production and sale of weapons, to the
scrap heap of history-along with slavery and genocide. Then, and
only then, will this crime against humanity be expunged, and the
tragic deaths from this war truly bring freedom to the people of
Iraq, and of the world.
References
1. The Lancet volume 351, issue 9103, 28 February 1998.
2. Rosalie Bertell's book Planet Earth the Latest Weapon of
War was reviewed in Caduceus issue 51, page 28.
3. www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_ii/du_ii_tabl1. htm#TAB L_Research
Report Summaries
4. www.wagingpeace.org/articles/02.01/020117moret.htm The
secret official memorandum to Brigadier General L.R.Groves from
Drs Conant, Compton and Urey of War Department Manhattan
district dated October 1943 is available at the website
www.mindfully.org/Nucs/2003/Leuren-Moret-Gen-Groves21feb03.htm
5. www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_iitab11.htm#tab L_research report
summaries
Further information
The Low Level Radiation Campaign hopes to be able to arrange a
limited number of private urine tests for those returning from
the latest Gulf war. It can be contacted at: The Knoll,
Montpelier Park, Llandrindod Wells, LD1 5LW. 01597 824771. Web:
www.llrc.org
James Denver writes and broadcasts internationally on science
and technology.
*****************************************************************
44 BN: 11,000 US Soldiers Dead from DU Poisoning
By Bob Nichols, Project Censored Award Winner
Considering the tons of depleted uranium used by the US, the
Iraq war can truly be called a nuclear war.
Preventive Psychiatry E-Newsletter charged last month that
the reason Veterans Affairs Secretary Anthony Principi stepped
down earlier this month was the growing scandal surrounding the
use of uranium munitions in the Iraq War.
Writing in Preventive Psychiatry E-Newsletter No. 169,
Arthur N. Bernklau, executive director of Veterans for
Constitutional Law in New York, stated, "The real reason for Mr.
Principi's departure was really never given, however a special
report published by eminent scientist Leuren Moret naming
depleted uranium as the definitive cause of the 'Gulf War
Syndrome' has fed a growing scandal about the continued use of
uranium munitions by the US Military."
Bernklau continued, "This malady (from uranium munitions),
that thousands of our military have suffered and died from, has
finally been identified as the cause of this sickness,
eliminating the guessing. The terrible truth is now being
revealed."
He added, "Out of the 580,400 soldiers who served in GW1
(the first Gulf War), of them, 11,000 are now dead! By the year
2000, there were 325,000 on Permanent Medical Disability. This
astounding number of 'Disabled Vets' means that a decade later,
56% of those soldiers who served have some form of permanent
medical problems!" The disability rate for the wars of the last
century was 5 percent; it was higher, 10 percent, in Viet Nam.
"The VA Secretary (Principi) was aware of this fact as far
back as 2000," wrote Bernklau. "He, and the Bush administration
have been hiding these facts, but now, thanks to Moret's report,
(it) ... is far too big to hide or to cover up!"
"Terry Jamison, Public Affairs Specialist, Office of the
Deputy Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs, Department of
Veterans Affairs, at the VA Central Office, recently reported
that 'Gulf Era Veterans' now on medical disability, since 1991,
number 518,739 Veterans," said Berklau.
"The long-term effects have revealed that DU (uranium
oxide) is a virtual death sentence," stated Berklau. "Marion
Fulk, a nuclear physical chemist, who retired from the Lawrence
Livermore Nuclear Weapons Lab, and was also involved with the
Manhattan Project, interprets the new and rapid malignancies in
the soldiers (from the 2003 Iraq War) as 'spectacular-and a
matter of concern!'"
When asked if the main purpose of using DU was for
"destroying things and killing people," Fulk was more specific:
"I would say it is the perfect weapon for killing lots of
people!"
Principi could not be reached for comment prior to deadline.
References:
1. Depleted uranium: Dirty bombs, dirty missiles, dirty
bullets: A death sentence here and abroad" by Leuren Moret,
http://www.sfbayview.com/081804/Depleteduranium081804.shtml.
2. Veterans for Constitutional Law, 112 Jefferson Ave., Port
Jefferson NY 11777, Arthur N. Bernklau, executive director,
(516) 474-4261, fax 516-474-1968.
3. Preventive Psychiatry E-Newsletter. Email Gary Kohls,
gkohls@cpinternet.com, with Subscribe" in the subject line.
Email Bob Nichols at bobnichols@cox.net. --
*****************************************************************
45 Hawk Eye: Board again backs speedy aid checks
[http://archive.thehawkeye.com]
Wednesday, April 27, 2005 Site updated daily at 11 a.m. CST
Advisory panel apologizes for delay in weapons workers' claims
for medical assistance.
By KILEY MILLER
kmiller@thehawkeye.com
CEDAR RAPIDS — Robert Anderson did it for the guards who worked
under him, because, "As a leader, you take care of the ones who
take care of you."
Vaughn Moore did it for the forgotten fellows with the "Line 1
shuffle," that broken, slope–shouldered trudge that meant their
time was almost gone.
And Lesca Yerington did it for her father, mother, sister and
husband — an entire family lost to cancer.
Anderson, Moore and Yerington attended every meeting they could,
they read every document and answered every question in a
five–year battle to force the federal government to help former
atomic weapons workers at the Iowa Army Ammunition Plant.
They are closer to victory now than ever before.
A National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health advisory
board unanimously endorsed a plan Tuesday to speed payment to
plant workers sickened by exposure to radiation on the job.
"I just can't express my feelings," Yerington said after the
board's decision. "I want to cry."
And then, because she had waited so long, Yerington did cry.
With the vote, members of the Advisory Board on Radiation and
Worker Health, who advise NIOSH and the Department of Health and
Human Services, asserted IAAP workers were in harm's way and the
government cannot accurately estimate radiation levels at the
plant.
The board members want Health and Human Services Secretary Mike
Leavitt to add the Middletown plant to the Special Exposure
Cohort of the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation
Program Act, a law passed by Congress four and a half years ago
to ease the suffering of the nation's Cold War weapons builders.
The Atomic Energy Commission and the Department of Energy
assembled nuclear warheads at the 19,000–acre facility from the
late 1940s until 1974.
Inclusion in the Special Exposure Cohort cuts the time needed
for claims review by eliminating dose reconstruction, a
laborious effort by government scientists to estimate individual
radiation exposure.
Anyone who worked at least 250 days on Line 1, site of the
ultra–secret nuclear program, from March 1949 through 1974 would
be included in the new cohort class. By some estimates, that
could make up to 3,400 workers automatically eligible for
$150,000 and free medical treatment if they are diagnosed with
any of 22 cancers spelled out in the compensation program
legislation.
Survivors such as Debbie Detherage would be eligible for
compensation, as well.
Detherage and her nine brothers and sisters lost their father in
1970 to non–Hodgkin's lymphoma. He was sick as early as 1955,
but was never moved from the production line.
"I feel like they might as well have put a gun to his head and
shot him," Detherage said.
There are more than 500 claims for IAAP workers already at
NIOSH. If all of those involved cancers included in the cohort,
the cost to the government for compensation alone would exceed
$75 million, with untold millions more in medical costs. And
more claims are expected in the future.
Despite the good news Tuesday, the flames of elation burned low
for the plant workers and their families; They have been down
this road before.
Back in February, the advisory board backed the IAAP cohort
petition only to have its recommendation stall when NIOSH
officials unveiled new information they believed made dose
reconstructions possible.
Realizing their credibility was battered, the board members
delivered a letter of regret Tuesday to the "petitioners,
claimants and survivors" for the emotional yo–yo they endured.
"This letter is to express our sincere regret to the claimants
and survivors from the Iowa Army Ammunition Plant for additional
delay in the processing of their petition," the letter said.
James Melius, who drafted the new recommendation, included a
demand that it move forward to Leavitt's office within 21 days.
Should some circumstance prevent that, the advisory board will
be called to an "emergency" session.
Still, the board's recommendation is only that — a
recommendation. Leavitt gets 30 days from receiving the board's
letter to review the SEC petition, followed by another 30 days
for members of Congress to weigh in. If there is no opposition,
IAAP could be in the cohort by mid–July.
"This is just one more step is all," said Moore, a Line 1
security guard with an austere face who nonetheless wept openly
recalling the friends he has lost to cancer. "How long it drags
out just depends on how many curveballs they want to throw at us
before they get tired and give up."
There was clear anger among board members at a legal opinion
issued Friday by the U.S. Justice Department stating that an SEC
class could not be created solely on the basis of concerns over
secret information.
The board's decision in February was made in large part over
fears IAAP workers could not contest their dose reconstructions
because significant chunks of data from the plant remain
classified and would only be available to NIOSH, not the workers
themselves.
Iowa senators Tom Harkin and Charles Grassley both blasted the
Justice Department for interfering during comments made to the
board Monday.
Melius excised any mention of classified documents from the new
recommendation, but some board members remained pointedly
critical of the Justice Department for stepping in so late in
the deliberation process on the IAAP petition.
Michael Gibson, a former journeyman electrician and union
president in Ohio, repeatedly asked which government agency
requested the legal opinion without receiving an answer.
Gibson said using classified information would deny due process,
which "all Americans" are entitled to under the Constitution.
The recommendation would appear to be a slight to NIOSH
scientists, who asserted they had all they needed for dose
reconstructions. But if Larry Elliott, director of the
department overseeing the dose reconstructions, was stung by the
decision, it never showed. Elliott mingled among the former
workers, shaking hands and offering congratulations.
Anderson, a former lieutenant on the Line 1 security team,
started the investigation into the health of former workers with
a letter five years ago to Harkin.
He has become an unofficial spokesman for the claimants and he
provided one of the few humorous moments at Tuesday's meeting.
To illustrate inadequacies in the radiation monitoring data
NIOSH intended to use for dose reconstructions, Anderson stuck a
pocket flashlight in a purple bowling ball and set it on the
table in front of Lewis Wade, a board member. This was his
radioactive "pit," the fissile core of a nuclear warhead.
With a red radiation monitoring badge pinned to his chest, he
walked up to Wade, talked briefly and then left.
Then came a simple question: "Does my badge, that went in and
out, represent the same dose that Dr. Wade is still receiving?
Do we know?"
Workers have claimed repeatedly badges were only given to a
select few people on Line 1, many of them supervisors.
To compensate, NIOSH scientists wanted to incorporate data from
the Pantex nuclear plant in Amarillo, Texas.
Anderson took a dig at that plan, as well.
"To illustrate my next point," he began. Unclipping the badge
from his sport coat, he tossed it across the room, striking a
brass planter with a harmonic ring. "Now, that badge is in
Texas."
Nearly everyone — workers, board members, NIOSH representatives
— got a good laugh at that.
The Hawk Eye 800 S. Main St., Burlington, Iowa 52601 319-754-8461
· 1-800-397-1708 · FAX 319-754-6824 · [webmaster@thehawkeye.com]
*****************************************************************
46 Guardian Unlimited: U.S. Panel: Open Door to Radiation Claims
From the Associated Press
[UP]
Friday April 29, 2005 12:31 AM
AP Photo APHS801
By TRAVIS REED
Associated Press Writer
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) - A panel of experts is recommending the
government open the door to hearing cancer claims from people in
all states who think they were affected by nuclear fallout from
1950s weapons tests in Nevada.
However, those cancer victims would have to prove it was the
nuclear fallout that caused their illness, and making that case
would be very difficult.
The recommendation was released Thursday by a panel under the
National Research Council, the chief operating arm of the
National Academy of Sciences. The panel's finding is a nod to
scientific data that wasn't available in 1990 when the
government initially apologized to cancer victims with a law
that set up a compensation fund.
Whether the proposal will have any practical effect seems
questionable.
The data suggest people from as far away as the East Coast could
have been exposed to radiation carried from the Nevada test
sites by wind and weather patterns. Previously, only people who
worked with uranium and residents of certain counties in the
region were eligible for the $50,000 to $100,000 lump-sum
payments.
However, the Board on Radiation Effects Research was also quick
to point out the recommended expansion would likely benefit few
additional people, because it would require Congress to redraw
its criteria for eligibility.
U.S. Rep. Jim Matheson, a Utah Democrat and longtime advocate
for compensation, said it's not immediately clear when or how
Congress would act on the recommendation.
Currently, anyone who has one of 19 kinds of cancer and who was
a child in the 1950s living in one of the designated areas
downwind of the Nevada test site is eligible for money. But if
the program were expanded to include all 50 states and U.S.
territories, as the board suggests, victims would have to prove
to at least some degree their cancer was caused by radioactive
fallout.
``In most cases it is unlikely that exposure to radiation from
fallout was a substantial contributing cause to developing
cancer,'' the board writes in a nearly 390-page report. ``The
problem faced by the legal system is that no specific form of
cancer is caused only by radiation.''
The review was ordered after complaints that the compensation
bill shortsightedly included only certain counties in Utah,
Arizona and Nevada - ignoring others that were as polluted or
worse than eligible regions.
A scientific model in the board's report showed people in
unprotected counties in Idaho, Montana, Arizona, Nebraska,
Tennessee, Vermont and New York could have absorbed higher
levels of radiation to the thyroid than people in at least one
of the Utah counties eligible for compensation.
So far, the federal government has paid more than $700 million
to more than 11,000 radiation victims and their families
affected by radioactive exposure between 1945 and 1971.
The board was asked to recommend improvements for the program,
be it covering more diseases or wider geographic areas.
Board members intentionally ignored the question of cost,
instead preferring to let Congress make those calculations, said
R. Julian Preston, an EPA researcher who worked on the
recommendation. The board also didn't weigh in on how Congress
should refine eligibility requirements with the gates open to
everyone across the country.
Instead, Preston said, the board was charged with evaluating
whether the government's standards for eligibility were fair in
light of new information.
Jonathan Moreno, head of the University of Virginia's Biomedical
Ethics program and one of several academics who peer-reviewed
the study, said the board's conclusion is based on science,
regardless of whether that satisfies seriously ill people who
blame the tests for their suffering.
``The fact that terrible things have happened to people can't
necessarily be traceable to a specific event,'' he said. ``So
it's awful to have to tell someone that you can't help them. But
I think often that's the honest answer in many of these
instances.''
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005
*****************************************************************
47 KTVB.COM: Idaho downwinders express concerns about report
| Idaho News
05:27 PM MDT on Thursday, April 28, 2005
Robbie Johnson
Idaho's NewsChannel 7
EMMETT -- Some members of the group that calls themselves the
downwinders gathered in Emmett today to discuss the report.
They say it was not what they were hoping for.
Troy Colson-KTVB
A group of Idaho downwinders met in Emmett Thursday to look over
the findings of a new scientific report.
This group calls themselves "downwinders" because they believe
they were affected by radiation from nuclear testing in Nevada
in the fifties and sixties.
But despite this new report, they believe compensation from
exposure may still be denied.
"Very sad, stunned, frustrated, lots of different words, lots of
different emotions," said Tona Henderson, Emmett resident.
Long-time Emmett resident Tona Henderson says a large number of
people in her family have cancer because of nuclear testing, but
have never received any monetary compensation from the
government.
At an impromptu meeting at a bakery in Emmett today, people who
call themselves downwinders gathered to get details of the
report.
These people have fought for Idaho to be included in the areas
that received money because of the nuclear fallout.
"I was hoping to see we would get the same compensation, but I
didn't expect it, said Gayle Stroud, Emmett resident.
"On one hand, they say they want to include us, and they want to
include the entire United States, but the criteria they set up
for it is very hard to do," Henderson said.
Also Online
Watch Robbie Johnson's report
[http://www.ktvb.com/perl/common/video/wmPlayer.pl?title=www.ktvb
.com/downwindersreaction.wmv]
New report suggests more fallout victims due government
compensation
[http://www.ktvb.com/news/topstories/stories/ktvbn-apr2805-downwi
nder_report.2226c0142.html]
National Acadamies report [http://national-academies.org/]
In the past only specific states have received funds. But even
though the report says people in any state could now qualify for
compensation, Henderson worries the new criteria for determining
exposure will result in just a handful of additional claims.
"You are going to have to jump through so many hoops, and these
people, so many of them are sick, and they don't have that
opportunity to get everything in order," Henderson said.
The report says the new criteria for determining if a persons
cancer is caused by nuclear fallout uses a special formula. It
would also require a pre-assessment to determine if people in a
given population were exposed. More headlines...
*****************************************************************
48 Hawk Eye: IAAP definition
[http://archive.thehawkeye.com]
Wednesday, April 27, 2005 Site updated daily at 11 a.m. CST
Who's eligible?
All employees working at the Iowa Army Ammunition Plant Line 1,
which includes Yard C, Yard G, Yard L, Firing Site Area, Burning
Field B and storage sites for pits and weapons including
Buildings 73 and 77, from March 1949 to 1974.
The Hawk Eye
800 S. Main St., Burlington, Iowa 52601
319-754-8461 · 1-800-397-1708 · FAX 319-754-6824 ·
webmaster@thehawkeye.com [webmaster@thehawkeye.com]
*****************************************************************
49 Hawk Eye: IAAP Senators' comments
[http://archive.thehawkeye.com]
Wednesday, April 27, 2005 Site updated daily at 11 a.m. CST
"This letter is to express our sincere regret to the claimants
and survivors from the Iowa Army Ammunition Plant for additional
delay in the processing of their petition."
NIOSH advisory board letter
"It is my hope that the NIOSH Advisory Board promptly notifies
Secretary Leavitt of this decision so that these workers are not
subject to any additional delays. It is long overdue that these
workers be recognized for their service and sacrifice."
Sen. Tom Harkin
"Today's good news shows the Advisory Board's clear intent to
add these patriotic workers to a Special Exposure Cohort. It
reaffirms that their original position was the right one.
There's just too little data to do the work that needed to be
done to reconstruct the doses."
Sen. Charles Grassley
The Hawk Eye 800 S. Main St., Burlington, Iowa 52601 319-754-8461
· 1-800-397-1708 · FAX 319-754-6824 · webmaster@thehawkeye.com
[webmaster@thehawkeye.com]
*****************************************************************
50 Hawk Eye: Former IAAP workers learn to wait
[http://archive.thehawkeye.com]
Thursday, April 28, 2005 Site updated daily at 11 a.m. CST
Ailing Army plant retirees sit through latest round of
bureaucratic moves.
By KILEY MILLER
kmiller@thehawkeye.com [kmiller@thehawkeye.com]
Dennis Daily was in the prime of life when his health went.
First came the stomach troubles. Then anemia.
It was the early 1970s, and Daily was a guard for the Atomic
Energy Commission at the Iowa Army Ammunition Plant. All around
him, men and women on Line 1 were getting sick. Some were dying.
But somehow, Daily never tied his pain to the plant.
Now 69, Daily wonders if the money that may soon be on the way
for his co–workers might find his address as well.
An advisory board for the National Institute of Occupational
Safety and Health on Tuesday recommended financial compensation
for former Line 1 workers with cancer.
These "heroes of the Cold War," as the atomic energy employees
have been called, assembled finished nuclear warheads at the
Middletown plant for 25 years, working in secrecy, with only
vague notions of the dangerous radiation penetrating their flesh
and warping their cells.
The advisory board's recommendation to add the Iowa workers to
the Special Exposure Cohort of the Energy Employees Occupational
Illness Compensation Program Act now goes to Secretary Mike
Leavitt at the Department of Health and Human Services. From
there, it's on to Congress and ultimately the president.
Meanwhile, the workers sit and wait. The situation is out of
their hands, despite accidental media reports of a meeting in
June with NIOSH. No meeting is scheduled.
If all goes well, within a few months hundreds of former workers
with cancer and their families could be eligible for $150,000
and full medical coverage.
Hundreds. But not all.
The compensation program authorizes automatic payment for 22
specific cancers — a list that includes lymphomas, leukemia and
lung cancer, among others.
But not prostate cancer.
That was the illness Daily was diagnosed with in the late 1990s.
"We've basically gone through our life savings with his health
issues," said Pat Daily, Dennis' wife. "When we realized it
could be related to the plant — we would like to be reimbursed,
thank you."
About 40 percent of claims sent to NIOSH involve cancers outside
the 22 specified for the Special Exposure Cohort, according to
Stuart Hinnefeld, a Dose Reconstruction Team Leader for the
agency.
Not even he knows what will happen with those people now.
The advisory board said the scientific basis NIOSH officials
hoped to use to determine radiation amounts at IAAP was
substantially flawed.
That leaves Hinnefeld's team without a jumping off point for
evaluating cases like Daily's.
"It's a question we don't have the answer to right now,"
Hinnefeld said Tuesday.
The Atomic Energy Commission put a padlock on Line 1 in 1974.
One year later, Dennis Daily drove out the plant gates for the
last time. Three years after that, he and Pat left Burlington,
the home they had always known, for a life in rural ministry.
But the ghosts of the plant march onward. The pains in Dennis'
stomach and the anemia linked. A layer of mucus gathered in his
throat, almost like a low–level case of diptheria. For six
years, he could hardly speak. He had to leave the pulpit; a
preacher without a voice is like a guitar without strings.
Surgeons opened Dennis' stomach in 1998. What they found looked
like "leather."
The couple have three kids. One daughter developed a rare form
of cancer.
Today, the Dailys are marriage counselors for a regional Baptist
organization in Maine. But they have kept ties back home.
Pat Daily's father, Dick Peavey, worked 30 years at the
ammunition plant, including time on Line 1. He died in 1984 of
colorectal cancer.
Her step–grandfather, Roland Hahn, lost his fight to stomach
cancer when he was just 62. He worked eight years for the Atomic
Energy Commission.
"Every time we came home, my dad kept telling us, 'Denny,
everybody we ever worked with is dying of cancer,' " Pat Daily
remembered.
The couple still might not have put two and two together, if not
for Robert Anderson, a former security lieutenant at the plant
and Pat Daily's cousin by marriage.
Anderson led the push for a federal investigation into the
health problems of former Line 1 workers. He was the spokesman
for all the claimants on Tuesday before the NIOSH advisory
board.
At Anderson's urging, Daily twice applied for compensation for
his cancer. He was twice denied.
Tuesday's decision appears on the surface like a nail in the
coffin. Prostate cancer is not eligible for automatic
compensation. Case closed.
But the Dailys were rooting for the Special Exposure Cohort
classification to clear the advisory board. If the science was
flawed when NIOSH reviewed Dennis' claim, they reason, the
review should be done again.
They can hardly wait to file.
"They've done a dose reconstruction," Pat Daily said. "A bogus
dose reconstruction."
In a case like the Dailys, Hinnefeld said the next logical step
would be for the claimant to demand a review.
Thirty years after leaving the ammunition plant, Dennis Daily
thinks back to long nights eating his chow surrounded by
radioactive material, back to the trips to the airfield to ship
another "unit," back to the sickness he couldn't shake.
How could a person be so exposed and never realize it?
"Even when the guys were getting cancer," Daily said, "I never,
ever suspected I might end up with it."
The Hawk Eye 800 S. Main St., Burlington, Iowa 52601 319-754-8461
· 1-800-397-1708 · FAX 319-754-6824 · webmaster@thehawkeye.com
[webmaster@thehawkeye.com]
*****************************************************************
51 PISJ: Public TV show to focus on downwinders
Pocatello Idaho State Journal:
By Journal Staff
POCATELLO - An Idaho Public Television program focusing on the
downwinders will be broadcast tonight at 8:30 p.m.
The show, "Dialogue", will focus on a series of above-ground
atomic weapons tests and their impact on a generation of
Idahoans, the Downwinders. With the help of various advocates,
this group is seeking to be included in a federal compensation
program that's already in place in parts of three states.
Host Marcia Franklin will talk with cancer survivors, activists
and more during the show, which can be found in Pocatello on
Channel 10.
The show, "Dialogue", will focus on a series of above-ground
atomic weapons tests and their impact on a generation of
Idahoans, the Downwinders. With the help of various advocates,
this group is seeking to be included in a federal compensation
program that's already in place in parts of three states.">
This document was originally published online on Thursday, April
28, 2005
Copyright © 2005 Pocatello Idaho State Journal
P O Box 431 Pocatello, ID 83204-0431
*****************************************************************
52 DailyBulletin.com: Parents want buildings near Wyle Laboratories tested
Article Published: Wednesday, April 27, 2005 -
By Sue Doyle, Staff Writer
NORCO - Parents pleaded with state officials Tuesday to test for
cancer-causing chemicals at schools near Wyle Laboratories.
About 75 residents attended the three-hour community meeting
held by the state Department of Toxic Substances Control, which
is overseeing the investigation of hazardous chemicals that have
leaked from the former defense and aerospace test facility into
groundwater.
"I've seen where you've screwed up, and I've seen when you
haven't," said Penny Newman, an environmental activist from Glen
Avon. "What I'm trying to get across to you is to take an amount
of time, test schools and ease peoples' minds."
Concerns for testing at schools has spiked among some parents
after perchlorate was detected this past week at 27 parts per
billion in groundwater from a well in the 1100 block of First
Street, near Temescal Avenue.
The well, with the highest level of perchlorate found yet, is
down the street from Norco Elementary School, Norco Intermediate
School and Norco High School, all on Temescal.
When asked when testing down Temescal will be added to their
investigation of Wyle, DTSC officials said they are waiting for
a geologic analysis of the bedrock to see where groundwater is
traveling before that decision is made.
The state agency is seriously considering testing at the
intermediate and high school, said Jeanne M. Garcia, DTSC public
information officer.
So far, the consultant for Corona-Norco Unified School District
has not recommended testing at school sites.
Permanent monitoring wells south of the private well at Third
Street and Hillside Avenue, where perchlorate was found at 7.6
ppb in October, was recommended to DTSC by Richard Orr, senior
project geologist for the Rancho Cucamonga-based Leighton
Consulting, Inc., an environmental and geotechnical
investigation consulting service.
Monitoring wells will evaluate direction of groundwater.
Along with a core group of longtime residents who have fought
hard for testing in the community, the audience included a
sprinkling of newcomers. They came seeking information about
contamination and what it means for the new homes they bought.
Newport Beach resident Melanie Deans has a house in escrow on
Third Street. She is concerned about Wyle Labs and attended the
meeting to learn about the investigation.
"The meeting was informative," said Deans. "It feels like the
cleanup is going slow."
Phillip West is building a house at Hillside Avenue and Third
Street. He moved to Norco from Orange County and was not aware
of the investigation surrounding Wyle Labs before he started
putting his house together.
"I want to know why I wasn't informed about the contamination
before I pulled permits in August 2004 to start building," West
said.
West said that the city and real estate agencies should inform
potential buyers about Wyle Laboratories before they move in.
There were no representatives from Wyle Laboratories at the
meeting.
Wyle Laboratories, Inc., based in El Segundo, is under a state
consent order to clean up contamination from hazardous chemicals
that spread through the soil from its former 429-acre high-tech
test facility.
It qualifies for a Superfund site, which places it among the
most polluted areas in the country. But the EPA is not listing
the property as such since the state is overseeing the cleanup.
Sue Doyle can be reached by e-mail
[sue.doyle@dailybulletin.com] or by phone at (909) 483-9347.
Copyright © 2005 Los Angeles Newspaper Group
Apr. 18: - Latest measures show high toxicity
Mar. 17: - Mayor demands Wyle answers
Mar. 16: - Meeting to address Wyle lab findings
Mar. 14: - Wyle pollution spreading
Jan. 11: - Norco residents could fear finding contaminants
Jan. 10: - Study: Perchlorate not so toxic
Dec. 31: - Meetings scheduled on Wyle Laboratories
Dec. 28: - Homeowners near Wyle wonder if they'll ever sell
Dec. 14: - State asked to test Wyle site
Nov. 30: - Norco residents call for answers at Wyle meeting
Nov. 9: - Family stuck with land near Wyle
Sep. 11: - Wyle Labs taint local real estate market
Aug. 3: - Panel discusses Wyle Labs health concerns
Jul. 21: - Judge questions billboard ruling
Jul. 14: - House panel OKs water cleanup bill
Jul. 7: - State orders Wyle cleanup
Jul. 2: - Wyle area test results announced
Jun. 23: - Perchlorate plan rejected
Jun. 22: - Panel OKs perchlorate cleanup funds
Jun. 18: - Bill seeks U.S. help in cleanup of perchlorate
Jun. 16: - Norco residents anxious for probe results
Jun. 15: - Residents want 'deep' Wyle probe
May. 28: - Wyle to test soil at homes
May. 25: - Wyle forum planned
May. 12: - Homeowners join suit against builders on Wyle site
May. 11: - State officials say risk is minimal
Mar. 17: - Residents notified of Wyle meetings via bill
Mar. 9: - Group wants medical testing
Mar. 8: - Poor clean-up could make things worse
Feb. 20: - Norco can't replace group
Feb. 19: - New Wyle group proposed
Jan. 29: - Norco found negligent in handling of Wyle site
Jan. 12: - State claims Wyle findings being reviewed for accuracy
Jan. 8: - State to probe Wyle chemical findings - Scientists to
speak on Wyle Labs cleanup
Dec. 11: - Wyle probe to begin soon
Nov. 25: - Discussion becomes environmental debate
Oct. 21: - Residents want more members on Wyle panel
Oct. 16: - Panel to keep public informed on cleanup at Wylie
Laboratories
Oct. 9: - State EPA to have Wyle plan available to public
Sep. 25: - Firm hired to oversee testing at Wyle
Sep. 17: - Norco group to relay Wyle findings
Aug. 8: - Grand jury looks at Wyle
Jul. 30: - Centex suit denied as class action
Jul. 16: - Norco officials say geologist to be hired to conduct
tests at Wyle Laboratories
Jul. 1: - Protests fail to halt Wyle transfer
Jun. 30: - State agency takes over Wyle probe
Jun. 25: - Lab officials hope to counteract negative publicity
Jun. 12: - Agency official says spread of development triggered
decision
Jun. 9: - Wyle submits cleanup plan
Jun. 1: - Wyle meeting to include development issues
May. 20: - Soil testing near Wyle to begin in weeks
May. 16: - Activists ask for change in government oversight
May. 8: - Agency to test Wyle runoff
May. 7: - Norco City Council hears Wyle testimony
May. 3: - Wyle defends record, actions
May. 1: - Bill may hurt water cleanup
Apr. 25: - Cleanup ordered for Wyle Laboratories - More studies
needed at Wyle site - Leaders at odds over proposed new homes
Apr. 22: - Planning office has little time for environmental
documents
Apr. 21: - Study shows Wyle cancer rates normal
Apr. 14: - Environmental checklist on Wyle Labs site withdrawn
Apr. 8: - Federal EPA promises to assess Norco testing site
Apr. 3: - Official raps Wyle tests Councilman calls for another
look at Wyle
*****************************************************************
53 KATC: Committee approves free screening for exposure to uranium by
members of the military
April 28, 2005
BATON ROUGE, La. A House committee decided today that members of
the military or veterans who believe they were at risk for
exposure to depleted uranium, a radioactive material that is
used in nuclear weapons, should be able to get a free health
screening test.A bill by Representative Juan LaFonta of New
Orleans would establish the right to the screening test. The
House Judiciary Committee unanimously sent the measure to the
full House for debate. LaFonta was accompanied by two veterans
for the committee hearing.The U-S Department of Veterans Affairs
would cover the 170 dollar cost per test. Copyright 2005
Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be
published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
All content © Copyright 2003 - 2005 WorldNow, KATC and
Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
*****************************************************************
54 The Washington Times: Editorials/OP-ED: Safety problems at Yucca
Mountain
April 28, 2005
Joshua Gilder's Friday Op-Ed column, "The Yucca Mountain
scandal," is, in itself, scandalous in how it plays fast and
loose with the facts. The fact that government scientists not
only would falsify important data that bears directly on the
ability of the Yucca Mountain, Nev., site to safely isolate
deadly radioactive waste from people and the environment is bad
enough. That they openly flaunt it and treat such actions as
almost routine is truly scary.
What the e-mails in question demonstrate is not just that
computer models and the veracity of certain data have been
compromised. Taken together, those e-mails show the pressure the
scientists were and continue to be under to make Yucca
Mountain work regardless of the fundamental and fatal problems
that plague the site.
Mr. Gilder refers to what he calls "the almost ideal
conditions of the Nevada desert" for storing nuclear waste. This
has a nice ring to it for those who want to rationalize building
a facility that is patently unsafe. In fact, the Yucca site is
highly fractured; water moves through it very rapidly; the
subsurface environment is highly corrosive, meaning that waste
containers won't last long there; and without man-made
containers to keep the radioactive waste out of the tunnels for
10,000 years or more, radionuclides move very quickly into the
aquifer below and into the biosphere. That is not what a
geologic repository is supposed to do.
Mr. Gilder also asserts that waste at Yucca will be
"vitrified into solid glass." That is patently wrong. The spent
fuel will not be vitrified, but rather stored just as it is now
as compacted, irradiated pellets inside metallic fuel elements
that are extremely vulnerable to corrosion and dilution when
contacted with water.
It is no coincidence that water and water movement is at the
heart of the e-mail scandal. The Department of Energy realized
in the mid-1990s (the same time frame as the e-mails
acknowledging data fabrication) that Yucca Mountain would have
to be disqualified under DOE's own site-screening guidelines
because of the existence of very rapid groundwater movement
through the site.
To avoid the inevitable, the scientists in question, under
pressure and threats to their budgets, appear to have falsified
data and fudged models to make the site appear suitable when it
wasn't. That's not just a tempest in a teapot. That's big-time
scientific fraud.
And talk about misrepresentation: When Mr. Gilder asserts
that the real danger with spent fuel is continuing to store it
at nuclear power plants around the country probably the most
secure commercial installations in the country, I might add he
conveniently omits any reference to the very real and much more
significant risks of unnecessarily putting tens of thousands of
shipments of deadly radioactive waste on the nation's highways
and railroads, where they would become attractive targets for
terrorists and other troublemakers.
If bald-faced scientific fraud involving the fundamental
issue of the ability of a repository site to safely isolate some
of the most deadly and long-lived materials humans have created
isn't a "major revelation" warranting a rethinking of the entire
Yucca Mountain project, I don't know what is.
JOSEPH C. STROLIN
Administrator
Planning Division
Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects
Office of the Governor
Carson City
copyright © 2005 News World Communications,
*****************************************************************
55 Las Vegas RJ: Tribe fights Yucca in court
Thursday, April 28, 2005
Judge hears Western Shoshone lawsuit, makes no ruling By KEN
RITTER
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Corbin Harney, spiritual leader of the Western Shoshone tribe,
says a prayer Wednesday in front of the U.S. Federal Courthouse.
Tribal members were on hand for a hearing on a motion for a
preliminary injunction to stop the nuclear waste repository at
Yucca Mountain. The tribe claims the land on which the site is
located.
Photo by THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
A federal judge made no immediate decision Wednesday on whether
an American Indian tribe's 19th century claim to vast stretches
of Western land should stop government plans for a national
nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain.
U.S. District Court Judge Philip Pro didn't indicate when he
would rule on the Western Shoshone National Council's request
for a preliminary injunction based on the Ruby Valley Treaty of
1863. After an hour of oral arguments, Pro said he'd make a
decision "as soon as possible."
Lawyer Robert Hager of Reno, representing the tribe, focused
his plea for an immediate halt to the $58 billion project on
Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman's disclosure last month that
workers might have falsified data during site suitability
studies.
"Misrepresentations were made. Lies were made," Hager said,
insisting that falsified data was used to gain presidential and
congressional approval for the project. "At some point, it's got
to stop, your honor, and it's got to stop with the courts."
Bodman's March 16 disclosures came after the tribe's original
lawsuit was filed March 4. In the original lawsuit the tribe
claims that the Ruby Valley Treaty allows only settlements,
mining, ranching, agriculture, railroads, roads and
communication routes on Western Shoshone ancestral lands.
Department of Justice lawyer Sara Culley called the tribe's
challenge "a direct contradiction of a congressional mandate"
and said it was filed prematurely and in the wrong venue.
President Bush and Congress selected the Yucca Mountain site in
2002 after years of study. The Energy Department plans to
transport 77,000 tons of highly radioactive waste now stored at
sites around the nation and entomb it 100 miles northwest of Las
Vegas.
Constitutionality and site selection challenges are before the
U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit,
Culley said, and licensing will be handled by the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission.
"We don't have these decisions made," she told the judge.
Culley said the Energy Department has some 1,600 people working
on the project. However, she said that since the repository was
not expected to open for at least five more years, the tribe
could show no "irreparable or immediate harm" from planning for
the repository or for a rail line across Nevada to reach it.
Hager said Shoshone prayer sites had been declared off-limits
and ancestral remains had been removed from graves during site
preparation.
"Ongoing activity in the mountain is desecrating the mountain
itself," he said.
The Ruby Valley treaty recognized vast stretches of territory
in present-day Nevada, California, Utah and Idaho as Western
Shoshone tribal land. But an Indian Claims Commission decided in
1946 that the tribe lost the land through "gradual encroachment"
during settlement of the West.
Tribal members lost a Supreme Court challenge of that decision
in 1985, and President Bush and Congress last year approved
paying the tribe more than $145 million in compensation and
accrued interest based on the 1872 value of 24 million acres.
Tribal members are split on whether to accept payments or
continue to press the fight over rights to the land.
Estimates of the number of Western Shoshone members vary
between tribal estimates of 10,000 and federal government
estimates of 6,000. Most still live in Idaho, Utah, eastern and
central Nevada, and Death Valley and the Mojave Desert in
California.
Copyright Las Vegas Review-Journal
*****************************************************************
56 Las Vegas RJ: Energy adviser to governor dies
Thursday, April 28, 2005
Guinn praises Burdette's expertise, character
REVIEW-JOURNAL
Richard Burdette
Nevada Gov. Guinn's energy adviser died Wednesday at 61
Richard Burdette, 61, energy adviser to Gov. Kenny Guinn, died
Wednesday.
Burdette joined the governor's office, replacing Carl Linvill,
who was appointed to the Public Utilities Commission.
Burdette advised the governor on several aspects of energy,
including motor fuels, electric and gas utilities, and testified
on Guinn's behalf in the Legislature.
Burdette was active in regional energy efforts, such as the
proposal to build a transmission line that would carry power
generated from Wyoming coal deposits and wind energy to Utah,
Nevada and California.
Before joining the governor's office, he served on the PUC
staff for five years and was manager of resource and market
analysis.
"This is a very difficult loss for all of us, because not only
was Dick extremely gifted at what he did, he was a very fine and
genuinely nice person," Guinn said. "He always had the facts on
his side, plus he had a great secret weapon: his smile and his
ability to get everyone to laugh."
Don Soderberg, chairman of the Public Utilities Commission,
said Burdette's former co-workers were saddened.
"The entire agency is in shock and mourning at the loss. He was
very well-liked, collegial and a personal friend to many,"
Soderberg said.
Richard McIntire, former PUC member and director of regulatory
operations, promoted Burdette to the management position.
"Dick's death is a great loss for Nevada. He will be remembered
for his broad-based knowledge, his ability to synthesize it, and
his talent for making common sense public policy," McIntire said.
Burdette was born in Philadelphia on Oct. 25, 1943.
He served as a consultant to several regulated industries and
legislative assistant in the U.S. Senate. He was a public
affairs officer and acting deputy assistant secretary in the
U.S. Department of Transportation.
He served in the Navy on the nuclear submarine Guardfish and
was an instructor and administrator in the Naval Nuclear Power
School. He graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy and earned a
M.A. in quantitative economics from the University of Delaware.
"Over the past few years, Dick was instrumental in creating our
state's energy policy and was dedicated to achieving a diverse,
reliable and affordable energy supply for our state and its
citizens," said Walt Higgins, chairman and chief executive
officer of Sierra Pacific Resources. "Those who dealt with Dick
on a frequent basis had the utmost respect for him, both
personally and professionally."
Survivors include his wife, Julie; daughter, Megan; and sons,
Ian and Richard III.
Copyright Las Vegas Review-Journal
*****************************************************************
57 Las Vegas RJ: Resolution urgesgovernment to endnuclear waste plan
Thursday, April 28, 2005
Legislators worry about effect on tourism By BRENDAN RILEY
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
CARSON CITY -- A Nevada legislative panel was asked Wednesday to
back a resolution that urges federal lawmakers to oppose plans
for storing nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain.
No vote on Assembly Joint Resolution 4 was taken.
Senate Natural Resources Chairman Dean Rhoads, R-Tuscarora,
said the high-level nuclear repository planned by the U.S.
Department of Energy could hurt tourism in the state.
Rhoads said people from out of state have asked him about the
planned dump, about 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, and have
said they will not come to Nevada if the repository is in
operation.
"They're pretty scared of it," he said.
Another panel member, Sen. Maggie Carlton, D-Las Vegas, who
between legislative sessions works as a waitress, said she
fields questions about the project from tourists.
Assemblywoman Genie Ohrenschall, D-Las Vegas, chief sponsor of
AJR4, raised the tourism issue as she went through concerns
about the Yucca Mountain Project.
Ohrenschall was backed by Morgan Baumgartner of the Nevada
Resort Association, who said hotel-casinos also fear the dump
could hurt their business.
The resolution, already approved by the Assembly, asks federal
decision-makers to give up on Yucca Mountain because it is "an
ill-advised project based on bad science, bad law and bad public
policy, a choice that ignores better, less expensive and safer
alternatives, a choice which hinders, not helps, national
security."
Despite delays and spending cuts, Energy Department officials
have said recently that the Yucca Mountain plan is alive and
well and that support from the Bush administration remains
strong.
Bob Loux, chief of the state Nuclear Projects Office, said the
project "is failing rapidly."
Recent problems with the government's plans for the repository
include criminal investigations to determine whether workers on
the project falsified data.
Also, a court decision has forced a rewrite of radiation safety
standards for the site, and the DOE has scrapped a planned 2010
completion date without setting a new one.
Copyright Las Vegas Review-Journal
*****************************************************************
58 Las Vegas RJ: Utility contract may be voided
Thursday, April 28, 2005
Judge criticizesrepository delays
By STEVE TETREAULT STEPHENS WASHINGTON BUREAU
WASHINGTON -- In an opinion highly critical of government delays
at Yucca Mountain, a federal judge said she wants to void a
California public utility's nuclear waste contract and give
ratepayers their money back.
Judge Susan Braden said she has tentatively concluded that a
1983 contract signed by the Sacramento Municipal Utility
District should be rescinded.
She proposed the customer-owned utility get a refund for the
$40 million it has paid to build a repository and to have
radioactive spent fuel moved from the mothballed Rancho Seco
Nuclear Power Station.
The opinion and show cause order marked the first time a judge
has proposed going so far as to dismantle contracts stemming
from Energy Department delays in developing a Nevada disposal
site for nuclear waste.
In essence, the judge is asking the parties to convince her why
she shouldn't take such action.
Following a two-week trial last month in the U.S. Court of
Federal Claims, the judge said "there is no evidence in the
record that the government had reason to believe in 1983, 1989
or at present that Yucca Mountain ever will be licensed to store
spent fuel and high level radioactive waste."
She further questioned whether a nuclear waste transportation
system to the Nevada nuclear waste repository site will ever be
authorized and licensed. Braden said the government and the
utility could sign a new contract when the repository is ready.
The judge's opinion was dated April 21 and began circulating
this week, creating a buzz among lawyers and policymakers.
Repository critics seized on the six-page opinion.
Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., declared it evidence of a "changing
Washington culture" that he said is growing skeptical about
storing nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain.
"This opens up more avenues for the state legally," Ensign said.
"The evidence from the court order reads like a death sentence
for Yucca Mountain," said Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev. "Declaring the
original nuclear waste contracts void is one step short of
declaring the end of Yucca Mountain."
If the judge follows through, her ruling would apply directly
only to the Rancho Seco plant, said Joe Egan, an attorney who
represents Nevada in nuclear waste litigation.
But Egan said it also would limit the Energy Department's
ability to defend itself in other nuclear waste cases.
The government is facing more than 60 lawsuits from utilities
charging the Energy Department breached 1983 contracts by
failing to have a repository open by Jan. 31, 1998.
Braden, who was appointed by President Bush in 2003, gave
attorneys for the government and the Sacramento utility a June
20 deadline to weigh in on her opinion. She also invited briefs
from other interests, which are lining up to comment.
"The judge is suggesting maybe DOE go back to the drawing
board," Egan said, adding Nevada plans to file a brief
encouraging the judge to finalize her ruling.
Apart from Nevada, attorneys interviewed Wednesday said the
Sacramento district and other utilities, and the nuclear power
industry, plan to argue against the judge's view.
A $40 million refund won't fully compensate the Sacramento
Municipal Utility District, which also spent $30 million to
build 22 concrete nuclear waste storage bunkers at the Rancho
Seco plant that was shut down in 1989, said Steve Cohn, the
district's assistant general counsel.
According to court papers, bunker maintenance costs $1.5 million
annually, and the utility spent more than $10 million to keep
spent fuel stored in pools for a period.
"The immediate problem we see is that simply refunding the money
from what we paid in over 20 years doesn't make us whole," Cohn
said.
The utility has been seeking about $78 million in partial
damages, he said.
Attorney Jay Silberg said no utility has ever requested
nullifying its contracts. Rather, he said, nuclear plant
operators want their nuclear waste taken away and to be
reimbursed for their costs of keeping it on-site in the
meantime.
"The utilities want the contract to be performed sooner rather
than later. It is not in our interest for the contracts to
disappear," said Silberg, who represents utilities in 19 cases.
Michael Bauser, associate general counsel for the Nuclear Energy
Institute, said Braden's opinion is flawed in light of earlier
court rulings that upheld the contracts and Congress ordering
the government to enter into them in the first place.
"It appears to me that she's based this tentative conclusion
that the contracts might be void on a misunderstanding of the
facts, the law and indeed other court decisions at the appellate
level," Bauser said.
One lawyer who asked not to be identified for fear of crossing
the judge said Braden "shoots from the hip and this is her
stream of consciousness rather than any lengthy deliberation on
her part."
"I don't think any of us believe if Braden makes this decision
the federal (appeals) circuit would uphold her," the lawyer said.
Copyright Las Vegas Review-Journal
*****************************************************************
59 Las Vegas SUN: Tourism decline cited in Yucca proposal
By Cy Ryan < [cy@lasvegassun.com] > SUN CAPITAL BUREAU
CARSON CITY -- Nevada's tourism business will "suffer greatly,"
especially in Las Vegas, if the federal government opens the
nuclear dump at Yucca Mountain, an assemblywoman said Wednesday.
Assemblywoman Genie Ohrenschall, D-Las Vegas, urged the Senate
Committee on Natural Resources to approve a resolution asking
the Energy Department to junk the proposed repository.
Her Assembly Joint Resolution 4 gained the support of the
Nevada Resort Association, the Nevada Conservation League, Eagle
Forum and the Sierra Club.
The resolution said the decline in tourism would result in a
loss of $91 million a year in tax revenue to local governments.
And the location is just 90 miles northwest of one of the
fastest-growing areas in the nation. It said 70 percent of
Nevadans are against Yucca Mountain.
Sen. Dean Rhoads, R-Tuscarora, the chairman of the committee,
said he has had people tell him while on airplanes that they
would not come back to Las Vegas if the repository is opened.
Sen. Maggie Carlton, D-Las Vegas, said tourists ask about
shows, transportation and other things in Las Vegas. But they
also want to know about the possibility of the nuclear dump. "We
hear that question a lot," she said.
Ohrenschall detailed all the problems the Energy Department has
run into in constructing the project. The most sensible way to
handle high-level nuclear waste is to leave it on-site at the
power plants, she said.
She said most of the nuclear materials will be shipped from the
eastern part of the country. One truck contains enough waste to
make a dirty bomb, she said.
Morgan Baumgartner, a lobbyist for the Nevada Resort
Association, said it initially opposed the project in 1991 and
in 2002 contributed $250,000 to help the state with its legal
fight against the Energy Department.
Yucca Mountain, she said, would result in a "decline in
tourism."
Lynn Chapman, representing Eagle Forum, said, "We don't need to
give the federal government any more power. We need to take it
away."
Bob Loux, chief of the state's Office of Nuclear Projects, said
the "project is failing" but another resolution by the
Legislature helps in the effort to stop Yucca Mountain.
The Legislature in past years has passed a number of
resolutions opposing the repository. Loux said this resolution
"is more focused" on the shortcomings of siting the dump in
Nevada.
The committee did not take any action on the resolution which
passed the Assembly.
*****************************************************************
60 Las Vegas SUN: Shoshone Nation aims to stop Yucca dump
By Ed Koch
LAS VEGAS SUN
There is a centuries-old story of Snake Mountain that is still
taught to the children of the Western Shoshone Nation.
"Someday when we wake that snake up ... it will get mad and rip
open," Shoshone Spiritual Leader Corbin Harney wrote in his 1995
book "The Way it Is -- One Water, One Air, One Mother Earth."
"With his tail, that snake will move the mountain, rip it open
and the poison will come out on the surface."
Today Snake Mountain is called Yucca Mountain, site of the
under-construction high-level nuclear waste repository, 90 miles
northwest of Las Vegas.
Robert Hager, the lawyer for the Shoshone tribe, got the OK
Wednesday from U.S. District Judge Philip Pro to submit that
story as part of Harney's affidavit into the court record of a
case where the tribe is trying to halt the nuclear waste dump.
Pro, following an hourlong hearing, took under advisement the
Western Shoshone Nation's request for an injunction to stop the
project.
Although Hager did not specifically make an argument to stop
the project on First Amendment grounds that the Shoshone people
are being denied the right of freedom of religion, he gave the
Energy Department, overseers of Yucca Mountain, a good
indication of where this case eventually may be headed.
Hager, supported by Harney's affidavit, argued that Yucca
Mountain is being "desecrated" by the project, that the Indians
are being denied access to the sacred rock prayer rings where
"the Great Spirit" sends them messages and that bodies of the
Indians' ancestors have been disrupted by tunneling.
"The rock rings at Yucca Mountain are very sacred places where
the Shoshone people prayed, and when our people pray at the rock
rings the message comes and goes through those rings," Harney
says in his affidavit.
"I am aware the bodies of some of our ancestors have been
removed from Yucca Mountain by government agents, which is a
violation of our sacred traditions and beliefs that the body of
a person who dies should be buried and should remain at the
place where that life ended."
Harney, who is now 85, was among two dozen members of the tribe
in Pro's courtroom Wednesday. He and other Shoshones said they
no longer have access to the rock ring area.
Hager also said Shoshones already are being poisoned by the
project and that as many as 2,500 of them are at risk of getting
silicosis -- fibrosis of the lungs caused by long-term exposure
to silica dust -- from the project.
The federal government countered that the Shoshones are barking
up the wrong tree by seeking injunctive relief in Las Vegas
federal district, arguing that the Washington, D.C., Circuit
Court or the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has jurisdiction
in this matter.
Justice Department Attorney Sara Culley said the Nuclear Waste
Policy Act, which places such matters before the court of
appeals, applies in this case. The Shoshones are asking for
their injunction by arguing that another statute, the Yucca
Mountain Development Act, is unconstitutional.
Pro said jurisdiction is a key question with which he must
wrestle.
"I have to stay focused on whether I have jurisdiction," Pro
told both sides.
Hager argued that not only does Pro have jurisdiction in this
case as set forth by the Ruby Valley Treaty of 1863, which
specifies uses for the tribe's nearly 60 million acres, Pro also
has the power to rule that the Yucca Mountain Development Act is
unconstitutional because it is "based on lies."
He was referring to the revelation in late March by Energy
Secretary Samuel Bodman that employees of the U.S. Geological
Survey had written e-mail messages indicating some scientific
work had been falsified.
Internal Energy Department e-mails written in preparation for
seeking a license to open the nuclear waste repository indicate
the alleged falsification focused on the speed at which water
flowed through the mountain, an issue that would have meant
disqualification of the Yucca site years ago, Hager told Pro.
Hager argued that the president and Congress relied on those
tainted reports as sound scientific evidence to pass and sign
into law the development act, and that such actions make the
statute unconstitutional.
Culley said to stop the project now will be detrimental to many
phases including environmental and scientific studies that
"Congress has determined is in the best interest of the public."
She said a ruling in favor of the Shoshones also would halt
long-term monitoring of the site and electrical maintenance, as
well as put 1,600 Energy Department employees out of work.
"The site will fall into disrepair," she said of a lengthy
stoppage.
As for removal of Indian bodies from Yucca, Culley said the
Shoshones have been invited to "walk through the site" to
observe future tunneling, which she said will not occur again
for four years. Drilling, however, is continuing, she said.
And Culley said the Indians are not in any immediate harm
because environmental protections are in place and that the long
process toward licensing involves public input, and that
includes the concerns of the Shoshones. She said the earliest
date for storing nuclear waste there is 2010.
Culley said the Shoshones will "not likely prevail on the
merits" in part because courts long ago determined the Indians
do not have title to the land.
Last year, President Bush signed a measure to distribute $145
million to approximately 10,000 Western Shoshone as compensation
for land that was taken from the tribe.
The tribe has refused to accept the money and in March filed
its lawsuit to stop the nuclear dump project.
Western Shoshone National Council Member John Wells said after
the hearing that the government's argument that the tribe no
longer owns title to the land should not apply in this case.
"The government should abide by the treaty," Wells said, noting
that when American Indians refer to land they are talking about
Mother Earth that everyone owns and shares, "not the
government's European concept of land ownership."
The treaty specifies the U.S. government can use the land for
settlements, mines, ranches and the construction of roads and
railroads. Wells said that had the government proposed storing
hazardous materials in Yucca Mountain at the time the treaty was
signed the Shoshones "definitely would have said no."
Western Shoshone Nation Chief Raymond Yowell said after the
hearing that some members of the tribe still call the site Snake
Mountain and that the story of it rising up and spewing poison
"was the vision of a holy man long before the White Man came.
"Of course, that holy man could not have known about the
circumstances now, but, in his vision, he foresaw that one day
energy could explode from the mountain. We want to stop that
from happening. Mother Earth is sacred to us."
*****************************************************************
61 Guardian Unlimited: Tribe's Lawyer Argues Yucca Mountain Case
From the Associated Press
[UP]
Thursday April 28, 2005 12:01 PM
By KEN RITTER
Associated Press Writer
LAS VEGAS (AP) - A lawyer for an American Indian tribe that
wants to stop a national nuclear waste dump from being built on
ancestral lands told a federal judge that workers might have
provided false information to win the project's approval.
Robert Hager, an attorney for the Western Shoshone tribe, said
in oral arguments Wednesday that the $58 billion project should
be halted because of Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman's disclosure
last month that information may have been falsified to obtain
congressional approval for the project.
``Misrepresentations were made. Lies were made,'' Hager told
Judge Philip Pro. ``At some point, it's got to stop, your honor,
and it's got to stop with the courts.''
Bodman's revelations came after the tribe sued to stop the
nuclear repository in U.S. District Court on March 4, claiming
the Ruby Valley Treaty of 1863 gives the tribe the right to halt
the nuclear repository from being built at Yucca Mountain.
President Bush and Congress selected the Yucca Mountain site in
2002 after years of study. The Energy Department plans to
transport 77,000 tons of highly radioactive waste now stored at
sites around the nation and entomb it beneath an ancient
volcanic ridge 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
Department of Justice lawyer Sara Culley argued before Pro that
the tribe is challenging a ``direct congressional mandate'' and
its complaint was filed in the wrong court. Challenges on
constitutional and site selection are before a federal appeals
court in Washington, D.C.
Culley said the Energy Department has some 1,600 people working
on the project but argued that since the repository was not
expected to open for at least five more years, the tribe could
show no ``irreparable or immediate harm.''
However, Hager countered that Shoshone prayer sites have already
been declared off-limits and ancestral remains have been removed
from graves while the site was being prepared.
``Activity in the mountain is desecrating the mountain itself,''
he said.
The Ruby Valley treaty recognized vast stretches of territory in
present-day Nevada, California, Utah and Idaho as Western
Shoshone tribal land. However, the Indian Claims Commission
decided in 1946 that the tribe had lost the land through
``gradual encroachment'' during settlement of the West.
Tribal members lost a U.S. Supreme Court challenge of that
decision in 1985 and President Bush and Congress last year
approved paying the tribe more than $145 million in compensation
and accrued interest for the land based on the 1872 value of 24
million acres.
Tribal members are split on whether to accept payments or
continue to press the fight over rights to the land.
Pro did not indicate when he would rule on the tribe's request
for a preliminary injunction.
---
On the Net:
Western Shoshone Defense Project: http://www.wsdp.org/
Yucca Mountain project: http://www.ymp.gov
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005
*****************************************************************
62 RGJ: Resolution urges rejection of Yucca plan
[Reno Gazette-Journal] Reno, Nevada, USA 775-788-6200
[online@rgj.com] ASSOCIATED PRESS 4/27/2005 10:50 pm
A Nevada legislative panel was asked Wednesday to back a
resolution that urges federal lawmakers to oppose plans for
storing nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, about 90 miles
northwest of Las Vegas.
While no vote on AJR4 was taken, Senate Natural Resources
Chairman Dean Rhoads, R-Tuscarora, said it’s apparent to him
that the high-level radioactive waste dump planned by the
federal Department of Energy could hurt tourism in this
tourism-dependent state.
Rhoads said he’s had people from out of state ask him about the
dump and say they wouldn’t come to Nevada if the repository is
in operation, adding, “They’re pretty scared of it.”
Another panel member, Sen. Maggie Carlton, D-Las Vegas, who
between legislative sessions works as a waitress, said she also
fields questions about the dump from tourists — along with
queries about the best casino shows and buffets.
Assemblywoman Genie Ohrenschall, D-Las Vegas, chief sponsor of
AJR4, raised the tourism issue as she went through a long list
of concerns about the Yucca Mountain facility.
Ohrenschall was backed by Morgan Baumgartner of the Nevada
Resort Association, who said the hotel-casinos represented by
the association also fear the dump could hurt their business.
The resolution, already approved by the state Assembly, asks
federal decision-makers to give up on Yucca Mountain because it
is “an ill-advised project based on bad science, bad law and bad
public policy, a choice that ignores better, less expensive and
safer alternatives, a choice which hinders, not helps, national
security.”
Despite delays and spending cuts, Energy Department officials
have said recently that the Yucca Mountain plan is alive and
well, and that support from the Bush administration remains
strong.
However, Bob Loux, head of the state Nuclear Projects Office,
which opposes the dump, said the project “is failing rapidly.”
Recent problems with the government’s plans for the dump include
criminal investigations to determine whether workers on the
project falsified data.
Also, a court decision has forced a rewrite of radiation safety
standards for the site — and the DOE has scrapped a planned 2010
completion date without setting a new one.
[http://www.gannettfoundation.org/] © Copyright Reno
Gazette-Journal, a [http://www.gannett.com] Newspaper.
*****************************************************************
63 ICT: Coming clean on uranium at Navajo
[2005/04/28]
Posted: April 28, 2005
by: Editors Report / Indian Country Today
Uranium mining has been a health and environmental scourge,
and yet an economic engine as well at Navajo. For some 50 years,
Navajo have lived with the effects of thousands of open pit
mines, many left unredeemed after decades of exposure. But
health and life issues trumped economic issues April 19, when
the Navajo Nation Council passed the Dinï¿© Natural Resources
Protection Act of 2005 in a vote of 69 - 13.
The new act, which Navajo President Joe Shirley Jr. is expected
to sign, outlaws uranium mining and processing throughout the
vast territory.
The measure, which caught a few people by surprise, is evidence
of a strong and persistent Navajo grassroots movement that has
organized for years against the restart of uranium mining on the
reservation. The strong movement has grown and recently achieved
its major objective because it is grounded in spiritual teaching
that, along with concerns for health issues, still resonates
among traditionalists on the reservation.
Respect for the spiritual quality and importance of water in
people's everyday life is an intricate part of the Navajo and
other Native opposition to uranium mining and processing
technologies. By their long-term polluting nature, these
processes too often violate principles of cultural and technical
common sense. At Hopi, too, located within the vast Navajo
territory, strong concerns are increasingly raised in this
deeply traditional community about a coal slurry pipeline that
is depleting an aquifer of pristine, virtually non-renewable
water. Respect for water as source of health and life, and the
leadership to protect it from contamination, are wonderful
Indian principles of ancient law very much needed in
governmental and business practice today.
The 27,000-square-mile reservation, which spreads across parts
of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah, sits upon one of the
world's largest deposits of uranium ore. At one time declared a
''national sacrifice area'' in federal planning documents, the
Four Corners region of Navajo country was invaded by the uranium
and coal industries throughout the Cold War years and to the
present. As an industry, it provided a lot of employment which,
by its very nature, has caused untold damage to the people and
the ecology of their homelands.
Over time, among the more than 255,000 members of the nation -
of which an estimated 180,000 live in Navajo land - the uranium
mining companies recruited, trained and employed thousands of
Navajo as miners and in other professions. The Navajo workers
were callously misinformed and uninformed for decades about the
dangerous nature of the materials they were made to handle. The
close nature of their work with radiation-laden yellowcake
caused many cancer and other deaths - perhaps as many as one
person per family in some communities across the reservation.
The country's worst radioactive uranium spill happened in 1979,
when 100 million gallons of radioactive liquid contaminated
waterways in Church Rock and Crownpoint. Navajo people have
lived with the scourge of uranium mining and the ensuing
contamination of their lands for too long.
The Radiation Expose Compensation Act of 1990 came too late for
many elderly Navajo miners. But it provided compensation and was
a needed recognition by the federal government that the uranium
venture thrust upon the Navajo by the federal government brought
severe disregard for the safety and health of whole communities.
Obvious evidence is still found in the many areas where
radioactive materials remain dangerously close to communities
and homes. The largest Indian nation in the country is right to
listen to its most ancient voices on this issue.
For more than 30 years, various groups of Navajo grassroots
people have sought to examine, critique and then stop the
mining. They have become a force to reckon with and give every
indication of continuing the campaign to not allow the nuclear
contamination to restart within or even near the reservation.
The recent over-the-top victory for opposition to uranium
mining on the reservation, particularly in its eastern portion,
was directly fueled by concerns that a new wave of mining is
imminent. This was signaled by provisions in the federal energy
bill to subsidize uranium corporations with $30 million in
incentives to further develop the region. The watchdog movement
now sets its eye on provisions of the energy bill that encourage
in situ leaching research in areas adjacent to the reservation.
U.S. Congressman Tom Udall, D-N.M., an ally of the Navajo
mining opponents, has taken on Section 631 of the energy bill
that authorizes the appropriations of $30 million over three
years to ''identify, test and develop improved in situ leaching
mining technologies, including low-cost environmental
restoration technologies.'' Udall calls the federal subsidy
''corporate welfare ... [that] will have a severe impact on the
Southwest's environment and on the public health of the Native
American communities I represent.'' His amendment to strike the
subsidies is a further limitation on the nuclear industry in the
region. Udall's call for a comprehensive energy policy that
enhances alternative sources of energy is also compatible with
Native philosophies.
As always, proponents of the present energy policy will try to
ram the industry down the Navajo people's throats. Lawsuits are,
of course, expected; and, most dangerously, Sen. Pete Domenici
might decide to move federal legislation to prohibit the Navajo
Nation from regulating uranium mining on its own lands.
As always, the problem of radioactive uranium, in situ leach
mining included, is its likelihood to contaminate groundwater,
in the present Navajo case, for some 15,000 people. This is a
threat and a reality to public health that tens of thousands of
other Navajos have lived with for too many decades. A different
approach is possible.
A bit less explosive and always potentially troublesome, yet
the rail of a more prosperous economic base, the Navajo Nation
has the construction of six casinos in the works. Likely to be
operated by the nation government, with some reasonable
management and good grassroots orientation in terms of
disbursement of benefits in health, education and infrastructure
assistance, a well-regulated gaming industry could be just the
right economic engine for the largest Indian nation in the
United States.
There is a lot to be said about a well-regulated gaming
industry to go with a nation's other tourism and hospitality,
crafts and agricultural enterprises. It can be the precise
financial base - at this time in history - to allow the
country's largest Indian nation to solidify its land base, grow
and prosper its population, and be able to fully defend and
enhance its water sources and other environmental wonders.
© 1998 - 2005 Indian Country Today. All Rights Reserved
*****************************************************************
64 NIGER: Residents of uranium mining town fear they're being
exposed to radioactive poisoning - OCHA IRIN --
> IRIN Africa |
Thursday 28 April 2005
© IRIN/ G. Cranston [http://www.irinnews.org/]
The people from Arlit are poor despite lucrative mining activity
DAKAR, 28 Apr 2005 (IRIN) - When residents of the desert town of
Arlit, Niger's uranium mining settlement in the far north of the
country, started getting increasingly sick, they questioned
whether this had to do with their overexposure to radioactivity
and called in French NGOs to investigate.
Reports by the French teams found that water, soil, metal scrap
from the area where two uranium mines are mainly exploited by
subsidiaries of French company Areva-Cogema were contaminated
with dangerously high radioactivity levels.
"Contamination levels in water samples were 10 to 110 times
higher than standards considered acceptable by the World Health
Organisation," said Bruno Chareyron, who carried out the tests
at the laboratories of CRIIRAD - a French NGO specializing in
protection against and monitoring of radioactivity.
"The French multinational Areva-Cogema and its subsidiaries ...
released contaminated metal scrap from their site, distributed
water contaminated with uranium to the populations, left
radioactive waste in the open while desert winds may disperse
them far away, disregarded internationally recognised
international norms for the protection against radioactivity,"
the nuclear physicist told IRIN from France.
Such high levels of contamination could cause a whole array of
illnesses including cancer, but the NGOs admit that it is
difficult to substantiate that the uranium mine is the
definitive source of the contamination without further research.
"There are very serious presumptions, even though they haven't
been proven, that there is a link between some [of the workers']
illnesses and the radiation," said William Bourdon, president of
SHERPA, an NGO aiming at protecting human and workers' rights
against multinationals.
But the French multinational that operates the mine has
consistently denied the allegations, and has attributed the high
number of illnesses to the harsh desert climate.
"The most frequently observed maladies are allergic reactions
that are characteristic of desert zones because of the abundance
of sand and dust," said Areva in a statement issued on Monday.
Uranium is used to power nuclear power stations and is a key
export for impoverished Niger. Exploitation of the very dense
metal generates the release of radioactive gases and dust into
the environment, which have to be carefully controlled.
SHERPA found that Arlit residents are suffering from a whole
range of illnesses - including lung cancer, tuberculosis, and
many skin diseases - that could be attributed to the mining
activities but proving the link is difficult, Samira Daoud, the
Coordinator of SHERPA explained.
Almoustapha Alhacen has been working in the uranium mines for 27
years. Ten years ago he was gravely ill with tuberculosis. It
was Alhacen that called on the NGOs because he wanted to know if
his and his neighbours illnesses were caused by the mines.
"Here, we have noticed we have a lot of diseases such as
respiratory problems, tuberculosis, hypertension, difficult
deliveries, impotence, hair falling out, cataracts, and that
people died with inflated stomach," he told IRIN.
Areva-Cogema is the French multinational behind Somaïr and
Cominak - the two companies extracting uranium in the desert,
1200 km north of Niger's capital Niamey.
The mines have been running for some 40 years, but before they
opened the area was unpopulated except for the region's nomadic
touregs.
The town of Arlit and nearby Akokan where the second mine is
located, were constructed solely to accommodate mine workers.
The mining companies had to sink deep boreholes to supply the
70,000 residents of both towns with drinking water.
Though they have built the infrastructure for the town, Areva
has not taken enough measures to contain the radioactive gases,
according to Chareyron. And traces are turning up in the air,
water and scrap metal which locals are using to make cooking
pots for instance.
Last year, when a truck carrying uranium ore was involved in a
collision the spill on the road was not properly cleaned up and
even one month afterwards radiation levels were still ten times
higher than normal, explained Chareyron.
SHERPA, after interviewing residents, workers and medical
doctors in Arlit found out that the organisation had not
respected international norms for the protection of its workers.
For 15 to 20 years, no protection measure was taken for workers,
neither protective equipment nor masks exposing workers to the
deadly gases, Daoud said. Her organisation is considering suing
the company on behalf of the workers.
She said several workers had suffered or died of pulmonary or
skin diseases, but that the link was difficult to establish
because medical doctors paid by the companies were extremely
reluctant to put names behind patients' symptoms that could
potentially be linked to mining.
"No cancer caused by exposure to ionising radiation has ever
been found in the hospitals in the region," according to the
Areva statement though it did promise to carry out independent
research into the allegations.
The French NGOs and the local population all agree that more
research is needed, but they don't trust Areva to be impartial.
They want to see action now.
"One should not wait to count the number of people falling sick;
the practice of good protection against radiation means doing
the utmost to limit the diffusion of radioactive substance
through water, air and food," Chareyron said.
He added that the company should better stock radioactive waste,
repurchase contaminated scrap-metal that had been acquired by
the population, consider long-term protection of underground
water protection and improve the monitoring of radioactivity in
the environment.
Arlit's inhabitants and authorities are also requesting better
distribution of profits from uranium mining.
"We say they need to take care of sustainable development. We
live a miserable existence - the nomadic and local populations
do not benefit from any of this," Alhacen said.
He deplored that Niger made money exporting this energy
producing metal while most of the inhabitants of Niger did not
have electricity in their homes.
Authorities in Niger did not take side on the controversy, but
agreed that 40 years of mining in the region had not benefited
the local population much.
"As a representative of the state, we would wish more to be done
to alleviate the population's plight," Oumarou Djatti, the
regional administrator for Arlit, mused.
Alhacen, who has set up his own NGO to increase environmental
awareness in Niger, worried for the future.
"We ask them to be responsible. 40 years later, Areva has not
done anything but dry and contaminate underground water",
Alhacen said.
"I am extremely worried that our children will never forgive us."
http://www.irinnews.org
Copyright © IRIN 2005
*****************************************************************
65 San Bernardino County Sun: Rialto, water district unable to mend split
Article Published: Wednesday, April 27, 2005 -
By Nikki Cobb, Staff Writer
RIALTO - Sixty years after the U.S. military started stockpiling
rockets and explosives in bunkers here, two plumes of
perchlorate bitterly divide the city and the West Valley Water
District.
The dispute centers on the value of lawsuits in recovering
money from the Department of Defense and military contractors.
The city of Rialto, serving about half of its residents' water
needs, is suing the Defense Department as well as 42 other
entities. The city alleges they contaminated the groundwater
with perchlorate, a toxin found in rocket fuel and explosives
that causes developmental defects in infants and children.
The water district, which serves the remainder of Rialto's
residents, has filed just one lawsuit. And the only reason the
district is suing weapons-maker Emhart is because district
officials worry that the firm may go out of business soon.
Even a meeting Tuesday night that brought together both water
providers and 5th District Supervisor Josie Gonzales didn't mend
fences.
"There have been strained relations between the city and West
Valley,' said Councilman Ed Scott.
"We both have different philosophies,' said district General
Manager Butch Araiza.
Araiza said the district has received almost $3 million to
date, with more expected to come.
The money has come from weapons manufacturer B.F. Goodrich,
among others.
Araiza said by applying pressure to the polluters he expects to
be able to collect enough money to keep the water clean without
the costs of litigation.
"If we have to jump into this lawsuit big time we're looking at
$7 (million) to $8 million in attorney fees,' Araiza said.
"They're being a lot more aggressive, filing a lot of
lawsuits,' Araiza said of the city. "We're letting the
regulators do their job.'
But Rialto officials say lawsuits, though expensive and slow to
bear fruit, are the only way to recover the money for
perchlorate cleanup.
"It is extremely important that we hold the responsible parties
and their insurance companies responsible,' Scott said. "We will
keep pursuing the legal route insurance companies don't just
hand over money without being sued.'
Perchlorate was first found in Rialto's and the district's
wells in 1997. But it wasn't until 1992, when the state lowered
the acceptable perchlorate level from 18 parts per billion to
four parts per billion that officials from both water providers
became alarmed.
In January 2004, the Rialto filed its suits in federal court.
Since then, the city has spent $7.6 million in legal battles and
in cleanup.
Rialto also has received about $3 million from various grants,
including $1 million from B.F. Goodrich. But it'll all pay off
in the end, said attorney Scott Sommer of the law firm Miller
Starr Regalia in Walnut Creek.
Sommer said Rialto could reasonably expect to recover tens of
millions of dollars by suing.
"The big difference between not having a lawsuit and having a
lawsuit is engaging the insurance companies' who have deeper
pockets than just the polluters alone, he said.
Gonzales doesn't share that view. She said the lawsuits are a
distraction from the real issue cleaning up the water.
"They're filing lawsuits while the perchlorate seeps further
and further into our wells,' she said. "We need to concentrate
on the cleanup.'
It costs about $1 million to rig a well to purify
perchlorate-tainted water and $300,000 or more each year to
maintain it.
Rialto and the district each have about 20 wells. Each have
several wells that are contaminated, and both water providers
are treating two wells and have additional wells out of service
awaiting modification.
Gonzales said she wants to see lawsuits set aside while both
agencies struggle to find the money to keep the water pure. The
city and district ultimately have common goals, she said, though
they differ on ways to get there.
"We need to begin looking at each other as being in the same
hole, so to speak,' Gonzales said. "We are all drinking the same
water.'
Copyright © 2005 Los Angeles Newspaper Group
*****************************************************************
66 FCNL: Help Strengthen Nuclear Nonproliferation
Date: Thu, 28 Apr 2005 15:34:04 -0500 (CDT)
Next week representatives from over 150 governments will gather in New
York to review implementation and compliance with their commitments
under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). This treaty codifies
one of the most important international security bargains of our time:
states without nuclear weapons pledge not to acquire them, while
nuclear-armed states commit to eventually give them up. Through this
bargain, the NPT has made the United States and the world safer by
restraining many countries that would otherwise have developed nuclear
weapons.
The 2005 NPT review conference, which runs from May 2 to 27, is a vital
opportunity for the United States and the international community to
recommit to the treaty's goals for both nonproliferation and
disarmament.
Our increasingly interconnected world demands actions to prevent the
spread of nuclear weapons. It will take a shared effort from nuclear
and non-nuclear countries to build a world free from the threat of
nuclear weapons. The NPT is the cornerstone of just such an approach.
President Bush and Congress should make it the policy of the United
States to pursue a balanced set of reinforcing nonproliferation
measures:
* More should be done to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons
technology and materials through tighter controls on nuclear weapons
technologies and a redoubling of efforts to secure nuclear materials in
the former Soviet Union.
* To prevent the spread of nuclear weapons to new countries, the
authority of the International Atomic Energy Agency to monitor
compliance with the NPT should be expanded. The U.S. should pursue more
effective diplomacy to halt the nuclear weapons programs of Iran and
North Korea.
* The United States should abandon efforts to pursue a new generation
of "usable" nuclear weapons, often described as "bunker
busters."
* The United States must uphold its end of the bargain by implementing
deeper, verifiable nuclear reductions. It should support the
Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, as well as a treaty banning the
production of weapons-usable nuclear materials.
There are Many Ways You Can Help Strengthen the NPT.
1. Convey your concerns about nuclear nonproliferation in the absence
of a viable NPT agreement. Urge Congress to reaffirm support for the
NPT. The nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty is a good deal that must be
honored, and the United States should lead by example in lending its
support to the worlds best defense against the worlds deadliest
weapons.
Urge Congress to make it the policy of the United States to seriously
engage in multilateral efforts to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons
in the upcoming review conference of the nuclear Non-Proliferation
Treaty. In particular, urge House members to cosponsor H.Con.Res. 133.
The resolution, drafted by two Republicans and four Democrats,
expresses support for the NPT and for the review conference in May.
Follow this link to write a letter
http://capwiz.com/fconl/utr/1/BJVZEQIVRA/EBJJEQIVZL/
2. Write a letter to the editor. The opening session of the NPT review
conference will generate substantial press coverage in the United
States. You can use this press coverage as an opportunity to write your
local newspaper, thank your newspaper for writing about the NPT review
conference, and urge the U.S. government to uphold its end of the NPT
bargain by implementing deep, verifiable nuclear reductions. For more
information on writing a letter to the editor, go to
http://capwiz.com/fconl/utr/1/BJVZEQIVRA/HHLHEQIVZM/
3. Find out more about the NPT review conference. Visit the FCNL web
site on Nuclear Disarmament at www.fcnl.org/nuclear
_______________________________________
Stop New Nuclear Weapons! Find out how,
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fcnl@fcnl.org * http://capwiz.com/fconl/utr/1/BJVZEQIVRA/ITFZEQIVZW/
phone: (202)547-6000 * toll-free: (800)630-1330
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67 NEWS.com.au: UN asks India to sign nuclear treaty
(28-04-2005)
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan today urged India to sign an
international treaty banning nuclear testing and support another
that puts a cap on the production of fissile material needed for
making atomic weapons. In a public speech in New Delhi, Mr Annan
said he was pleased the international community had managed to
successfully conclude a convention on nuclear terrorism earlier
this month.
"I hope India will set an example by rapidly adhering to that
convention, and will also soon sign and ratify the Comprehensive
Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, as well as giving active support to the
negotiations on a fissile material cut-off treaty," Mr Annan
said.
The convention on nuclear terrorism adopted by the UN General
Assembly on April 13 gives legal definitions to virtually all
varieties of potential terrorist acts.
Adopted by consensus after seven years of negotiation, it was
added to 12 existing anti-terror measures.
India, which came out of the nuclear closet in 1998 conducting
five tests, has resisted signing the Comprehensive Test Ban
Treaty (CTBT), describing it as discriminatory.
New Delhi says the CTBT does not address its concerns on
complete nuclear disarmament and does not aim to abolish or ban
nuclear weapons but allows countries with atomic arms to refine
their arsenals with simulated tests.
India announced a moratorium on further tests immediately after
its 1998 tests.
On the Fissile Material Cut-Off Treaty, which demands an ends
to the production of fissile material, India says it will follow
the five nuclear weapon states - Britain, China, France, Russia
and the US.
*****************************************************************
68 Las Vegas SUN: Delegation from Japan visits Atomic Testing Museum in Las Vegas
Today: April 28, 2005 at 15:09:24 PDT
ASSOCIATED PRESS
LAS VEGAS (AP) - Chizumi Watabe was born eight years after the
U.S. dropped nuclear bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima
and Nagasaki in World War II, but the bombs continue to shadow
her life.
Her oldest son used to get frequent nosebleeds, she said, and it
worried her.
"I was afraid he had some impact from my father's exposure in
Hiroshima," said Watabe, who was among one of a group of
Japanese anti-nuclear testing activists who on Wednesday visited
the Atomic Testing Museum in Las Vegas.
The tourists, hosted by the Nevada Desert Experience
anti-nuclear group, planned to tour the Nevada Test Site on
Thursday before traveling to New York for a nuclear arms
conference.
Watabe, 52, said her father, Tokio Watabe, did not often speak
of his experience in Hiroshima. He died six years ago at age 71.
Watabe said her father was 17, working underground a little more
than a mile from the Aug. 6, 1945, blast. He emerged to find
most buildings destroyed.
"He thought that Hiroshima was dead now," Watabe said through
translator Miki Kuroda. She paused for a moment and cried.
"In time, my father married, and I was born," she said. "My
father had a hard life."
The Atomic Testing Museum, which opened in February, features
exhibits about the Cold War and above- and below-ground U.S.
nuclear testing from 1952 to 1992 at the test site, about 65
miles northwest of Las Vegas.
Museum Director Bill Johnson accepted a gift of photographs
taken after the Hiroshima and Nagasaki blasts, which are
believed to have killed or injured 230,000 people. He said the
photos will be added to the museum's permanent collection.
Yatuka Hida, president of the Japan Federation of Democratic
Medical Institutions, said survivors of the bombings want to
ensure no one ever has to experience what they did.
Lawyer Toru Takasaki said some survivors suffer alone, hiding
their experience because of a stigma and fears of genetic
radiation damage.
"Human beings were destroyed," he said.
---
On the Net:
http://www.atomictestingmuseum.org
[http://www.atomictestingmuseum.org]
---
Information from: Las Vegas Review-Journal, http://www.lvrj.com
[http://www.lvrj.com]
*****************************************************************
69 Las Vegas RJ: OUT OF PAST,ATOMIC FEARSHAUNT PRESENT
Thursday, April 28, 2005
Anti-nuclear weapons group from Japan visits recently opened
Atomic Testing Museum By RICHARD LAKE
REVIEW-JOURNAL
Japanese visitors at the Atomic Testing Museum, on Flamingo
Road, show photos taken in Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the
United States dropped atomic bombs on the cities in World War II.
Chizumi Watabe, right, whose father, Tokio, survived the
Hiroshima bombing in August 1945, sits at the museum and watches
a film of a nuclear test.
Photo by K.M. Cannon.
Chizumi Watabe was born eight years after the nuclear blasts
that leveled the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
ending World War II, but the bombs continue to affect her life.
Her oldest son, for example, used to get nosebleeds all of the
time, and it worried her.
"I was afraid he had some impact from my father's exposure in
Hiroshima," she told a group of several dozen Japanese tourists
Wednesday who visited the Atomic Testing Museum in Las Vegas.
The tourists, members of a Japanese anti-nuclear weapons group,
visited the museum with the local anti-nuclear testing group
Nevada Desert Experience.
The Japanese group plans to tour the Nevada Test Site today
before embarking on a trip to New York for a nuclear arms
conference in May.
Watabe, 52, said that although her father, Tokio, did not speak
of his experience in Hiroshima often, she was able to learn his
story before his death six years ago at age 71.
He was 17 years old on Aug. 6, 1945, she said. He was working
underground, a little more than a mile from the blast.
"He saw co-workers who were above ground die instantly," she
said through a translator, Miki Kuroda.
When he looked at the city, she said, "Most of the buildings
were destroyed. He thought that Hiroshima was dead now."
She paused for a moment and cried.
"In time, my father married, and I was born," she said. "My
father had a hard life."
The Atomic Testing Museum, which opened to the public in
February, features exhibits showcasing what went on at the test
site in its more than 40 years of conducting nuclear tests.
The museum's director, Bill Johnson, said he welcomed the
opportunity to meet the Japanese tourists, and he accepted a
gift from them of photographs taken in Hiroshima and Nagasaki
after the blasts.
"These will go into our permanent collection," he said.
Others who spoke before the tours began preached against
nuclear weapons and said you only need to look at what happened
in Hiroshima and Nagasaki to see why the weapons should be
eliminated.
Yatuka Hida, president of the Japan Federation of Democratic
Medical Institutions, said survivors of the bombings want to
ensure that no one ever has to go through what they did.
Lawyer Toru Takasaki, who represents survivors who have sued
the Japanese government over the bombings, repeated that point.
"Human beings were destroyed," he said through the translator.
"We were treated not like humans."
Survivors "have to suffer day and night," he said. "Because
this suffering can be transmitted to descendants, that is making
things even worse."
He said one man has been hospitalized 22 times.
"He's always fearing that he's going to die any time," Takasaki
said, relating a conversation he had with the man.
He said the man told him: " 'When I had my children, I was
afraid they were going to have the effects of nuclear weapons.
At the same time, I was happy and afraid. When my grandchildren
were born, I was also afraid.' "
Takasaki said a stigma exists in Japan associated with the
blasts, leading some survivors to hide that they are, in fact,
survivors.
Some, he said, would not file lawsuits because doing so might
frighten away potential spouses who would fear having children.
"We need to eliminate all nuclear weapons from the Earth," he
said.
Copyright Las Vegas Review-Journal
*****************************************************************
70 The State: Savannah River Site in Aiken C
04/28/2
New waste facility to hire 250 by 2008
By JIM DuPLESSIS
Staff Writer
The federal Energy Department said Wednesday it will add 250
jobs in Aiken County by 2008 when it opens a $328 million
facility at the Savannah River Site to better store deadly
nuclear wastes left over from the Cold War.
The agency has hired Parsons Corp. to design and build the
plant, work that will add 550 temporary jobs over the next two
years, said U.S. Department of Energy spokesman Bill Taylor.
Aiken Mayor Fred Cavanaugh said the jobs will soften the blow of
losing 2,000 others at the federal agencys site by late 2006.
This is significant, Cavanaugh said. Some of those people
hopefully will be hired by Parsons, and not leave the area.
At 5.9 percent, Aiken Countys jobless rate in March was lower
than the statewide average of 6.8 percent. Other jobs are coming
to the area, including a 100-employee metal stamping plant and
an 800-employee factory to make gloveboxes used by workers
handling radioactive wastes at the Savannah River Site.
Parsons plans to hire 100 engineers, managers and other
professionals at its Aiken office by summers end, said Rick
Wilkinson, a vice president in Aiken for the engineering and
design firm based in Pasadena, Calif.
Parsons will begin hiring 450 construction workers and
contractors this fall with work to start in early 2006 and to be
completed in late 2008.
Parsons has been working at the site for about 20 years, but
expanded in the past year by adding 100 engineers and others at
its Aiken office to complete preliminary designs for the salt
waste process. The office now employs 157 people.
Meanwhile, the first 800 of 2000 job cuts began this month for
site workers employed by the Washington Group, which runs the
site under an Energy Department contract.
The Washington Group announced the cuts in December, and will
cut another 1,200 jobs by September 2006, when contract expires.
About 11,700 people still work at the 310-square-mile site.
The new project is part of an effort by state and local leaders
to bring more work to a plant built in the 1940s to make nuclear
weapons material to stave off a conflict with the former Soviet
Union.
The plant stopped making plutonium in the late 1980s as
communist control disintegrated in the Soviet Union and its
eastern bloc allies. For the Savannah River Site, the spoils of
the Cold War were tanks filled with waste liquids and sludges
that will remain lethally radioactive for thousands of years.
The materials need to be moved from the aging tanks, and
converted into a safer form.
One method involves separating the wastes into liquids and
sludges to be converted into glass and salt wastes to be made
into concrete bricks. The solid forms would still be
radioactive, but easier to store and handle.
The Energy Department spent $500 million to build a similar salt
water waste facility in the 1990s. During testing, engineers
found the process generated a benzene gas that could explode.
The hazard caused the agency to close the plant in 1998 and
redesign the process.
Another waste-disposal method involves turning weapons-grade
plutonium into fuel for nuclear reactors to generate
electricity.
That so-called MOX project, estimated to cost $3 billion, was to
begin construction in Aiken in May. But the plants future is
tangled in a U.S.-Russia agreement to dispose of weapons-grade
nuclear materials. The agreements premise is that each U.S.
step is done in tandem with one in Russia.
The Aiken plant can be built only when a sister plant is built
in Russia. But companies negotiating to build the Russian plant
want protections to ensure worker safety and limit their
liabilities in an accident.
Talks continued this year.
Its still on the radar screen, but people are very skeptical
it will happen, said Clay Killian, Aiken County administrator.
Reach DuPlessis at (803) 771-8305 or jduplessis@thestate.com
[jduplessis@thestate.com] .
TheStateOnline
*****************************************************************
71 Tri-City Herald: Questions surround K Basins sludge
This story was published Thursday, April 28th, 2005
By Annette Cary, Herald staff writer
Not enough may be known about radioactive sludge in Hanford's K
Basins to remove and process it in a predictable manner, says
the top-ranked Department of Energy official for environmental
management.
Paul Golan, the principal deputy assistant secretary for
environmental management, plans to visit Hanford today for the
start of a review that will determine whether DOE has enough
technical knowledge to proceed.
Fluor Hanford, which holds the DOE contract to remove the
sludge, missed a March 1 legal deadline to corral the sludge in
the K East Basin in underwater containers. DOE had promised the
Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board that it would have the K
East sludge in containers before 2005 began.
This is Fluor's second attempt at the sludge project. The legal
deadline had been reset after Fluor missed the original deadline
to begin pumping sludge in the K East Basin by the end of 2002
and came up with a new plan.
The K Basins, two huge and leak-prone indoor pools of water,
were built in the 1950s to hold fuel irradiated in Hanford
reactors until plutonium could be removed for the nation's
nuclear weapons program. The basins were far past their design
life in the mid-1980s when 2,300 tons of irradiated fuel were
stranded in the water when Hanford stopped reprocessing fuel.
The last of the fuel was removed last year. But left behind was
a radioactive sludge of desert dust, concrete that sloughed off
the sides of the pool and radioactive fuel that had decayed over
decades in the water. When the sludge is disturbed, it disperses
in a muddy cloud in the water.
Fluor has retrieved about 60 percent of the 47 cubic yards of
sludge in the K East Basin, said Geoff Tyree, spokesman for
Fluor Hanford.
But after a spring visit to Hanford by the safety board, Golan
wrote to the board's acting chairman that he is "not convinced
we adequately understand the properties and nature of the
sludge." The board provides independent oversight of Hanford and
other DOE nuclear defense facilities.
The issue had been raised by the safety board, which said
continuing design changes on the sludge removal project
indicated a lack of fundamental understanding of the properties
and characteristics of the sludge.
Several design changes were required on underwater containers
that hold the sludge as it is vacuumed up, according to the
safety board. The board also has had concerns about a piping
system and pump for moving the waste once it is in containers.
Golan has ordered the removal of the largest debris from the
basins to be done more quickly to allow the sludge to be
vacuumed up more predictably.
Fluor Hanford had planned to leave some equipment at the bottom
of the pools to be surrounded with grout that would be removed.
But vacuuming sludge from around racks that once held the fuel
and other equipment has proved more difficult than Fluor
expected.
Work has to be done by employees standing on an open grating
above the pools and maneuvering long-handled tools that can
reach to the bottom of the 17 feet of water that shields them
from radiation.
Fluor has gathered up more than 400 excess pole tools and hooks
in the K East Basin and has filled 13 cubic-yard boxes with
small debris, Tyree said.
Fluor has awarded BNFL a $24 million contract to treat and
package 65 cubic yards of radioactive sludge to be removed from
both K Basins. It plans to install equipment near the basins to
dry the sludge, mix it with a specially formulated concrete and
place the treated mixture into containers for disposal.
Fluor already has been fined about $1 million because of earlier
problems with the sludge removal.
In February DOE sent Fluor a letter saying it was considering
reducing its payment to Fluor for the first quarter of fiscal
year 2005 because of problems at the K Basins, but no action has
been taken.
Golan's trip to Hanford this week should be his last as
principal deputy assistant secretary. DOE announced this week
that Golan had been appointed deputy director for strategy and
program development in the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste
Management, which deals with the proposed Yucca Mountain, Nev.,
waste repository.
Charles Anderson, who serves as deputy director of DOE's
Savannah River nuclear site, will fill Golan's present position.
The position of assistant secretary for environmental
management, which normally would be the top position in the
environmental management division, is vacant.
© 2005 Tri-City Herald, Associated Press &Other Wire Services
*****************************************************************
72 Daily Bruin: Plutonium restrictions may fall
[http://www.dailybruin.ucla.edu/]
Thursday, April 28, 2005
Action would increase amount of radioactive material stored in
UC lab
By Kulsum Vakharia DAILY BRUIN CONTRIBUTOR
uvakharia@media.ucla.edu
Recent administrative action that would allow a 1,540-pound
increase in the amount of plutonium stored at Lawrence Livermore
National Laboratory is causing concern over the possible health
hazards to surrounding residents.
According to a new environmental impact statement by the
National Nuclear Society Administration (NNSA) to be released
today, the amount of allowable plutonium stored at the
University of California-managed lab and handled by scientists
in individual rooms would double, permitting multiple research
experiments to occur at the same time. The new, less stringent
restrictions would potentially allow a total of 1.5 tons of
plutonium into the facility over the next decade.
The increase in plutonium levels would allow the laboratory to
conduct more experiments regarding national security. John
Belardo, a member of the nuclear administration, said the reason
for the enlargement of the plutonium storage is "potentially to
conduct classified research experiments for the NNSA."
"Although (the legislation) raises the administrative limit, it
does not necessarily mean we'll take the amount of plutonium to
that level," he added.
Plutonium is a radioactive material that is used to make nuclear
bombs. Scientists at the laboratory are researching ways to
apply plutonium's ability to generate a nuclear chain-reaction
to the manufacturing and redesigning of nuclear technology.
According to an April 23 article in the Oakland Tribune, one
reason for the increase may be a new laboratory experimental
production line for casting plutonium pits. These, along with
explosives and detonators, could serve as miniature atomic bombs.
Tom Grim, who managed the environmental impact statement with a
group of 20 writers, contradicted this, saying, "The reason for
the new limit is to store excess plutonium. Some of the
facilities to dispose of that plutonium have already started,
and some will take over a decade. We accumulate this excess
plutonium and store it in a bank-like vault."
Plutonium's radioactivity, as well as possible safety breaches
within the actual laboratory, have many California environmental
groups concerned over the increase of the material within the
facility.
"There is a long history of plutonium leaks at the Livermore
lab. It has escaped from the lab and turned up in the community,
and workers are exposed. It is true to say that our health is at
risk," said Marylia Kelley of the Tri-Valley CARES, a Northern
California environmental group.
"The plutonium, in exposed victims, can tear up the cell in
cellular DNA, causing medical problems anywhere from cancer to a
suppressed immune system," she said.
Within the past decade, the lab has been shut down three times
because of safety breaches. Plutonium has escaped from smoke
stacks, been accidentally dumped into drains and has escaped
through ventilation ducts that were covered using only duct
tape. The lab has been shut down since Jan. 15 of this year for
further safety inspections, according to Kelley.
"The other problem is with safety management. There are no
safety procedures because they don't even have enough to know
the magnitude of the safety problems," Kelley said. She added
that the plutonium may be vulnerable to theft or terror attacks
because of the location of the laboratory in an urban area.
Grim said the new amount of plutonium stored at the facility
would cause no further safety risks.
"We already store plutonium. Storing more will not be any
additional risk," he said.
But Kelley pointed out that the use and storage of plutonium
within the lab is unneeded and poses a safety risk.
"The small fraction of work that needs to be done could be done
at the more isolated Los Alamos National Laboratory in New
Mexico without vamping up their plutonium activity. We believe
that this impact statement is 180 degrees the wrong way to go.
The Department of Energy should make a decision to reduce the
plutonium at Livermore, not increase it," she said.
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73 DentonRC.com: UT System renews interest in Los Alamos
| News for Denton, Texas | AP: Texas
04/28/2005
By BRANDI GRISSOM / Associated Press
The University of Texas System has renewed interest in managing
the Los Alamos National Laboratory.
In February, UT System Chancellor Mark Yudof recommended the
system drop pursuit of the nation's largest nuclear lab after a
series of security breaches and after UT officials failed to
find a corporate management partner. Since then, Lockheed
Martin, a likely management partner, has revived its intent to
bid.
"Lockheed Martin's withdrawal as a potential partner in the
bidding process for Los Alamos was a factor that weighed heavily
in my earlier recommendation to forgo a potential bid," Yudof
told regents at a meeting Thursday. The system already partners
with Lockheed in research at Sandia National Laboratories in
Albuquerque, N.M.
UT regents heard testimony Thursday from those who support and
oppose the system's possible involvement with the lab where the
first nuclear bomb was developed a half century ago.
Supporters, including U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison and Gov.
Rick Perry's deputy chief of staff, Phil Wilson, say the
research and economic opportunities the lab could provide would
be invaluable to the UT System and Texas. Opponents, including
state Rep. Lon Burnam, D-Fort Worth, want the system to back
away from a partnership they say is tantamount to promotion of
nuclear armament.
In July, UT officials formally expressed interest in a contract
to manage Los Alamos. The federal nuclear weapons facility lab
in New Mexico has been operated by the University of California
System since it was established in 1943. The U.S. Department of
Energy opened bidding on the contract after a spate of security
and money management problems.
The original contract with Los Alamos would have required the
system to manage the entire workings of the lab where much of
the nation's top-security weapons research takes place. The DOE
is expected to change the contract, allowing for corporate
management with academic oversight of research.
"This model in which industry is the managing partner and
academia conducts research is the approach most likely to lead
to satisfactory resolution of past problems and, more
importantly, generate spectacular success in the future," said
Bob Barnhill, UT System vice chancellor for research and
technology transfer.
Neal Lane, a Rice University professor who has done work at Los
Alamos for the past 30 years, said the UT System could reshape
the embattled facility with a quality work force and emphasis on
research.
"It's essential that a major university like the University of
Texas have a leading role in guiding the laboratory in order to
ensure the science remains among the very highest priorities of
the laboratory," Lane said.
UT Austin President Larry Faulkner said the focus of officials
deciding whether to pursue the Los Alamos bid should be not the
opportunities it may provide to UT but rather the system's duty
to the country.
"The nation needs a solution at Los Alamos," Faulkner said, "and
that solution will involve some linkage to the academic world if
it is to be effective."
Karen Hadden, chairwoman for Peace Action Texas, told the
regents they should take a stand against nuclear weapons
proliferation rather than participating in their development.
"Our role in the world should be to help take these weapons out
of existence," she said.
Burnam downplayed the research and job opportunities that might
be created, saying the danger of nuclear weapons created there
far outweighs any positive results that might come from managing
Los Alamos. He called for more openness in the UT System's
decision-making process and requested reports on the fiscal
impact a role in management of the lab could have on UT.
"This process is lacking, and the product is dangerous," he
said.
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74 PRN: SPSE Calls for UC to Pay Jury Award
[http://www.prnewswire.com/]
PR Newswire
[http://www.cwa-union.org]
LIVERMORE, Calif., April 28 /PRNewswire/ -- In a letter sent Apr.
26 to University of California (UC) President Robert C. Dynes,
SPSE (Society of Professionals, Scientists, and Engineers) urged
that UC end eight years of harassment and pay a $2.1 million
wrongful discharge award to Ms. Dee Kotla. SPSE is affiliated
with the University Professional and Technical Employees, Local
9119, Communications Workers of America.
UC recently notified the Honorable Patrick J. Zika, the trial
judge in Ms. Kotla's wrongful discharge case against the
University, that the University will be requesting that he set
aside a second jury verdict and order a third trial. The hearing
on the motion for new trial will be in Department 135 of Alameda
County Court on May 27, 2005, at 2:00 p.m.
Jeff Colvin, spokesperson for SPSE, states that, "SPSE was
outraged at UC's mainline of defense at the second trial. UC
Attorney Pat Gillette portrayed our workplace, LLNL (Lawrence
Livermore National Laboratory), as a mindless bureaucracy
unconcerned with fairness. Such a portrayal of LLNL management is
manifestly untrue, as those of us who have watched the majority
of LLNL managers exercise good judgment over time can testify."
SPSE's President Kurt Glaesemann states that, "The University
must not pursue yet a third trial. Keeping UC's mindless
bureaucracy defense in the public's eye will damage recruiting
and UC's bid to continue to operate three national laboratories,
including Lawrence Livermore. A third trial would likely only
delay the payment of an award to Ms. Kotla, and increase its
size." The second jury award, $2.1 million, was more than twice
the size of the first.
SPSE spokesperson Jeff Colvin went on to say that "Rather than
continue to stonewall and harass a conscientious employee for
another eight years, UC must put this case behind us and move
on." He adds "We are grateful to Ms. Dee Kotla for the eight long
years she has devoted to bringing out for all to see illegal UC
personnel practices. Bringing these illegal personnel practices
to light is the necessary first step in eliminating them."
SOURCE University Professional and Technical Employees, CWA
Web Site: http://www.cwa-union.org [http://www.cwa-union.org]
Copyright © 1996- PR Newswire Association LLC. All Rights
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