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06/15/05 ****     RADIATION BULLETIN(RADBULL)       **** VOL 13.137
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Send News Stories to news@energy-net.org with title on subject
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                         NUCLEAR POLICY
 
1 RIA Novosti: Tehran hopes for earliest solution to "nuclear file" 
2 Guardian Unlimited Report: Iran Admits Longer Plutonium Use
3 Korea Herald: Seoul calls for second inter-Korean summit   
4 Korea Herald: [Guest Column]North Korea: nukes or nutrition?   
5 Korea: Digital Chosunilbo: Ban Downplays Bush Meeting With N.Korean 
6 Xinhua: US nuclear negotiator arrives in Seoul   
7 Xinhua: Triangular relations involved in Korean issue   
8 Xinhua: US rejects partial solution to nuclear crisis   
9 Korea Times: US Policy on North Korea Incoherent, Expert Says 
10 Korea Times: FM Urges NK to Comply With Roh-Bush Message 
11 Guardian Unlimited: S. Korea Official on North Calls for Unity
12 Guardian Unlimited: S. Korea Urges North to End Their Cold War
13 US: NRC: [Docket No. PRM-20-26] James Salsman Petition
14 US: Platts: Bush administration concerned over Senate energy bill co
15 US: NRC: [Docket No. PRM-54-02] Westchester Petition
16 US: Rutland Herald: Clean energy is our economic future
17 US: Salt Lake Tribune: Huntsman resolutions to guide power policies 
18 US: Oakland Tribune: Hayward councilman calls to scrap Cold War reli
19 US: RedNova News: INL Eyes Plutonium for Powering Spacecraft
20 US: Las Vegas SUN: Bush Pushes Congress to Pass Energy Bill
21 US: TheDay.com: Contamination Added To Pentagon Subpoena
22 [NukeNet] Nukes in, Cash Out in Softened G8 Climate Text
23 NewsFromRussia.Com: Russian atomic chief heads for talks in Washingt
 
                         NUCLEAR REACTORS
 
24 US: [NukeNet] Hope Creaky still Leaky; shuts down again; groups
25 US: KR: Environmental concerns generate new interest in nuclear powe
26 US: JOURNAL NEWS: Voluntary Indian Point closing sought
27 Prague Daily Monitor: Temelin to be disconnected from grid due to fa
28 ITAR-TASS: IAEA begins safety inspection of Rovno NPP in Ukraine
29 US: Newsday.com: Hope Creek nuclear plant shuts down because of anot
30 AU ABC: Nuclear power industry enjoying revival
31 AU ABC: Britain leaving nuclear options open
 
                          NUCLEAR SECURITY
 
32 ITAR-TASS: RosAtom, US Energy Dept prepare report on nuclear securit
 
                          NUCLEAR SAFETY
 
33 US: [du-list] [downwinders] National groups say sick-worker rules
34 US: [du-list] Message not to speak out sick workers...
35 US: [progchat_action] Fw: IDAHO COULD BE HUB FOR SPACE PLUTONIUM
36 US: DailyBulletin.com: Norco contaminant tests to move inside
37 US: Rutland Herald: Wall emitting radiation
38 US: Hawk Eye: IAAP workers eligible for settlement 
39 US: Salt Lake Tribune: Conclusions elusive in U. thyroid study 
40 US: Dispatch: Taking aim at water study
41 US: KVOA: Pima County wants additional monitoring of ceramics plant'
 
                         NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE
 
42 NRC: NRC Issues Final Environmental, Safety Reports for Proposed Enr
43 US: Brush News Tribune: Last Chance landfill a step closer to accept
44 RGJ: House panel subpoenas Yucca worker
45 US: Bradenton Herald: Lockheed considers funding Tallevast study
46 US: Platts: Senate panel silent on federal interim storage
47 US: Las Vegas RJ: Senators reject stopgap nuclear waste storage 
48 US: Common Voice: 235 sites down to 12 
49 US: Salt Lake Tribune: DOE boss reassures Huntsman on funds to move
50 US: New Scientist Editorial: How not to deal with nuclear waste - Co
51 Japan Times: Residents to press court to reconsider Monju case
52 New Scientist: Politics left UK nuclear waste plans in disarray 
53 US: Deseret News: Huntsman makes anti-nuke pitch 
54 US: WQAD: Police to escort slow-moving transport
55 UK: News & Star: Comments wanted on N-waste
56 Pahrump Valley Times: Yucca officials meet in Pahrump for railroad t
 
                           PEACE
 
 
                        US DEPT. OF ENERGY
 
57 Seattle Post-Intelligencer: Radioactive contamination at Hanford is 
58 Tri-City Herald: Senate would add to Hanford budget 
59 Chattanoogan.com: What Do We See In Oak Ridge? - Opinion -
60 Tennessean: Festival provides look at Y-12 machines that made U-235 
61 lamonitor.com: Lockheed team courts Los Alamos 
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                         FULL NEWS STORIES
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 1 RIA Novosti: Tehran hopes for earliest solution to "nuclear file" 
problem
 
TEHRAN, June 15 (RIA Novosti, Nikolai Terekhov) - Secretary of
the Iranian Supreme National Security Council Hassan Rouhani
told reporters today he hoped the re-election of Mohamed
ElBaradei as director general of the International Atomic Energy
Agency (IAEA) would mean a quick solution to the problem of
Iran's "nuclear file." 

Rouhani, who is responsible for the development of Iran's
nuclear program, said after ElBaradei's re-election on Monday
that the IAEA head had indicated cooperation between the Agency
and Iran was developing. 

Rouhani said: "We hope that in the course of further cooperation
the remaining questions concerning the contamination of the
centrifuges with enriched uranium and the story of the creation
of the Pi-2 centrifuge, and thus the whole problem of the
Iranian 'nuclear file,' will soon be solved." 

Tehran hopes to resolve the "nuclear file" issue at a meeting of
the IAEA Board of Governors under way in Vienna. However, it
does not intend to relinquish its legal right to develop nuclear
technologies. 

At present Tehran has suspended its uranium enrichment program
in an agreement with the "European troika" -Britain, France, and
Germany.
 
© 2005 "RIA Novosti"   
*****************************************************************
 2 Guardian Unlimited Report: Iran Admits Longer Plutonium Use
 
From the Associated Press        

[UP] 
 	 
Thursday June 16, 2005 12:01 AM

By GEORGE JAHN 

Associated Press Writer 

VIENNA, Austria (AP) - Iran has acknowledged working with small
amounts of plutonium, a possible nuclear arms component, for
years longer than it had originally admitted to the U.N. atomic
watchdog agency, according to a confidential report made
available Wednesday to The Associated Press. 

The report, to be delivered as early as Thursday to a board
meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency, also said
Tehran received sensitive technology that can be used as part of
a weapons program earlier than it originally said it did. 

While not proving or disproving that Iran had weapons ambitions,
the details are significant as the agency tries to piece
together the puzzle of nearly 18 years of a clandestine nuclear
program, revealed in February 2002. 

The document said that while Iran had stated its plutonium
separation experiments were conducted in 1993 ``and that no
plutonium had been separated since then,'' Iranian officials
revealed two months ago that there had been linked experiments
in 1995 and 1998. 

The United States insists nearly two decades of clandestine
activities revealed only three years ago indicate attempts by
Iran to make weapons. Tehran has acknowledged purchasing much of
its nuclear technology on the black market, but it insists its
nuclear ambitions do not go beyond generating power. 

Marked ``highly confidential,'' the report to the U.N. nuclear
monitor was made available by a diplomat accredited to the
agency who demanded anonymity because he is not authorized to
release such information to the media. 

The three-page report took stock of the present stage of a
more-than-three-year inquiry of Iran's nuclear activities. It
suggested that some of the investigations were stalled, saying
the IAEA ``still needs to understand'' the nature, dates and
number of contacts between Iranian officials and nuclear black
market intermediaries that supplied Tehran with much of its
advanced technology - including centrifuges for uranium
enrichment. 

Asked about Tehran's nuclear program in an interview with BBC
television, former Iranian President Hashemi Rafsanjani said it
was ``possible that, at times, Iran has not reported its
activities.'' 

``But from the time Iran decided to make such reports, it has
made everything transparent,'' said Rafsanjani, who is a
candidate in Friday's presidential election in Iran. 

Rafsanjani said if he is elected president, he would make sure
Iran lived up to all its obligations to the IAEA, but that he
expected others to abide by the regulations as well. 

The IAEA first revealed that Iran produced small amounts of
plutonium as part of covert nuclear activities in November 2003,
more than a year after revelations that Iran had run a secret
atomic program led the agency to start investigating the
country. 

The agency has not linked the laboratory-scale experiments to
weapons activity, nor has it said that any other parts of the
program - including ambitious efforts to be able to enrich
uranium - constituted evidence that Tehran has been trying to
make weapons. But at the time, it criticized Tehran for not
voluntarily revealing its plutonium work and other activities
that could be linked to interest in making nuclear arms. 

Plutonium can be used in nuclear weapons but it also has uses in
peaceful programs to generate power. 

Focusing on shipments of equipment for uranium enrichment -
another technology that can be used in making weapons - the
report said Tehran earlier this year provided documents showing
that in at least two instances some components arrived in 1994
and 1995. 

Those dates ``deviate from information provided earlier by
Iran,'' said the report, adding that one particular delivery had
earlier been said to have reached the country in 1997. 

Such discrepancies are important in agency investigations trying
to establish how long Iran has been trying to assemble a program
for enrichment, which can generate both fuel for power and
weapons-grade uranium. 

The report also outlined discrepancies about when Iranian
officials said the first meetings with nuclear black marketeers
were. It said clearing up inconsistencies about the shipments
were essential to ensure ``that there has been no other
development or acquisition of enrichment design, technology or
components by Iran. 

While few other countries are as outspoken as Washington, dozens
of nations - including some near Iran - are worried about
Tehran's ultimate aims. 

A confidential European Union briefing note made available to
the AP cited the Saudi deputy foreign affairs minister, Prince
Turki bin Mohammed bin Saud al-Kabira, as telling European
envoys on the weekend that ``Iran should cooperate for the
safety of the whole region'' in ensuring its nuclear aims were
peaceful. 

Much of Iran's nuclear program came from the network headed by
Pakistani scientist A.Q. Khan, including the initial technology
used in uranium enrichment. 

Iran froze enrichment late last year as it started talks with
France, Britain and Germany meant to reduce concerns about
Tehran's nuclear ambitions. 

The IAEA is pushing Iran to cooperate more with nuclear
investigators, and agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei told board
members Tuesday that more information was needed about Iran's
uranium enrichment program. The report revealed Wednesday is to
be delivered by one of his deputies, Pierre Goldschmidt. 

The IAEA became concerned with Iran in 2003, when revelations of
nearly two decades of secret nuclear activities surfaced. The
work included uranium enrichment. 

--- 

On the Net: 

www.iaea.org 
		 	 	   
      Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005
*****************************************************************
 3 Korea Herald: Seoul calls for second inter-Korean summit   
        
PYONGYANG - South Korean government and civil delegations
yesterday called for a nuclear free peninsula and a second
summit as they went into the second day of a four-day joint
event celebrating the fifth anniversary of the inter-Korean
summit accord in Pyongyang.

 In the morning event attended by more than 6,000 Koreans,
civilian representatives from both Koreas made a five-point
joint statement, in which they pledged to "work together to
avert nuclear threats on the peninsula." 

But North Korea also stressed inter-Korean cooperation, a phrase
often used by the North in a bid to shun international pressure
to give up its nuclear ambitions, without clearly referring to
its nuclear weapons development programs. 
    
  Inter-Korean government and civilian delegates attend a joint
event in a cultural center in Pyongyang yesterday to mark the
fifth anniversary of the June 15 inter-Korean summit accord.
[Joint Press Corps]  

The 40-member government delegation led by Unification Minister
Chung Dong-young held government-level joint ceremonies in the
afternoon with the 24-member North Korean government officials
led by Kim Ki-nam. Kim serves as secretary of the Workers'
Party's central committee and vice chairman of the Committee for
the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland in dealing with
South Korean affairs. Lim Dong-won, a former Unification
Minister and a key confidant to former President Kim who
arranged the first-ever summit, called for the two governments
to resume a second summit. 

"70 million Koreans sincerely wish that the summit talks are
held again to make progress for peace and reunification," Lim
said in a congratulatory speech. In the 2000 summit, the North
Korean leader promised to make a return visit to the South at an
appropriate time, but he has yet to make it. 

It is the first time for two government officials to attend the
annual events to mark the June 15, 2000 summit between then
South Korean President Kim Dae-jung and North Korean leader Kim
Jong-il, which led to unprecedented inter-Korean cooperation and
exchanges in economic and cultural sectors. 

Minister Chung officially invited North Korean government and
civilian representatives to Seoul on Aug. 15, in a proposal to
jointly celebrate the anniversary of liberation from Japanese
colonial rule between 1910 and 1945.

 The Seoul government hoped that the four-day joint festival
could be a chance to make headway with the stalled six-party
talks aimed at ending Pyongyang's nuclear weapons program.

 "The government will actively use the inter-Korean talks in
Pyongyang to urge North Korea to return to the six-party talks
so that both the nuclear dispute and inter-Korean relations may
go smoothly," Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon said at a weekly news
briefing in Seoul. 

Earlier in Pyongyang, about 295 southern civilian
representatives of labor unions, farming organizations,
religious groups and lawmakers held a civilian-led ceremony,
during which both sides pledged joint efforts to promote peace
on the peninsula. 

Civilian delegation head Baik Nak-chung, an honorary professor
at Seoul National University, called for efforts to ease
military tension and boost peace on the peninsula.

 "We should put priority in our cooperation to prevent war and
clear away military hostility," Baik said in a keynote speech. 

North Korea called for increased cross-border cooperation to
"crush warlike foreign forces," an apparent reference to the
United States. 

"Increasing the people's power is the only way to maintain
peace. We should not sit idle and beg peace. Rather we should
safeguard peace with our unified power based on trust in our
people," Ahn Kyung-ho, the chief civilian North Korean delegate,
said in a speech.

 In the evening, the government and civilian officials watched a
light opera, Chunhyangjeon, a traditional Korean work about the
fidelity of an entertainer's daughter in the Joseon Dynasty. 

Today, Chung and his delegation will meet Kim Young-nam, the
country's ceremonial head of state as chairman of the North's
Presidium of the Supreme People's Assembly. 

Media reports also said that government delegation leader Chung
would brief the North on the results of last week's
Seoul-Washington summit. The message conveys a guarantee of
regime security for Pyongyang and a pledge that the communist
state will have a collective security guarantee and a "more
normal relationship" with Washington if it gives up its nuclear
program. 

It was not certain whether Chung could meet with North Korean
leader Kim Jong-il. 

The government delegates stayed at the Baekhwawon Guest House in
Pyongyang, as North Korea changed the planned accommodations of
two lower-level state guest houses. 

The change sparked media speculation that Kim may meet with the
southern delegation, as the new location is mainly used for its
reclusive leader Kim's meetings with foreign state guests.
Former South Korean President Kim Dae-jung stayed there for his
June 15, 2000 summit.

 The government and civilian delegation from the South arrived
on Tuesday and participated in the opening ceremony at Kim
Il-sung Stadium, named after the communist country's founder and
father of current leader Kim Jong-il. 

They will return to the South on Friday. 

(smjoo@heraldm.com)

By Joint Press Corps and Joo Sang-min 

2005.06.16
 
*****************************************************************
 4 Korea Herald: [Guest Column]North Korea: nukes or nutrition?   

The Nation's No.1 English Newspaper
 
  Editorial   
    
Five years after the sunshine summit between South Korean
President Kim Dae-jung and "Dear Leader" Kim Jong-il, the four
horsemen of the apocalypse stalk North Korea - famine, fear,
nuclear weapons, and dictatorship. Indeed an escalating food
crisis may catch up with the hermit kingdom, and force Pyongyang
to negotiate its own survival.

 The World Food Program warns that North Korea faces a dire food
crisis for nearly a third of the population of the communist
country. Many overseas humanitarian donors have ceased
contributing, forcing the Rome-based U.N. agency to nearly
exhaust the 230,000 tons of food desperately needed to feed 6.5
million North Koreans. The WFP needs an additional 200,000 tons
- and soon - before it's forced to wind down humanitarian
operations, according to its regional director Anthony Banbury. 

This reduction, according to the WFP, would come on top of new
cuts in rations affecting 70 percent of the population. Given
that hunger has persisted for nearly a decade, triggered by
weather as well as by rigid regime-run agricultural plans, the
country could slip back into famine. In the 1990s, between two
and three million people perished from starvation and
famine-related illness. 

This bitter irony comes as North Korea recklessly pursues its
nuclear weapons programs in the face of international outrage.
Multilateral diplomacy aimed at defusing the crisis - the
six-party talks with the two Koreas, Japan, Russia, China and
the United States - has been stalled by Pyongyang's refusal to
reenter the dialogue. Behind the scenes diplomatic meetings at
the United Nations and in New York strongly hint at a resumption
of the talks, but to what end? 

President George W. Bush and South Korean counterpart Roh
Moo-hyun met in Washington for what could be a crucial, if not
last-ditch, attempt to defuse the North Korean nuclear
proliferation. The reasons for the summit were simple; South
Korea's left-leaning government has not been on the same page
with the United States on a number of key political and defense
issues, let along diplomatic coordination over North Korean
nukes. 

After the meeting, President Roh acknowledged "issues" still
remained with Washington.

 Most of Washington's future options dealing with the North tilt
toward escalation - either politically or ultimately militarily.
Those plans are not broadly supported by the government in
Seoul, or by Beijing, a key player which favors regional
dialogue and chafes at any wider American diplomatic initiatives
in the U.N. Security Council. 

Just over a decade ago the Clinton administration pursued a
somewhat similar spiral of confrontation with North Korea. Given
insufficient support in the Security Council for sanctions on
the Pyongyang regime, the United States came perilously close to
launching military attacks on North Korea. 

In June 2000, the landmark "sunshine" summit between South and
North Korean leaders brought new warmth which appeared to melt
the once glacial relations between both sides of the divided
peninsula. While politically premised to find common ground
among ethnic brethren in both sides of the divided Korean
nation, the policy failed to take into account the North's dour
determination to cynically exploit its capitalist cousins in
South Korea. 

Emotions aside, the sunshine policy created a dangerous
misperception concerning the regime in the North and encouraged
a corresponding geopolitical uncertainty in how to address the
threat. Most especially, the current South Korean government has
blurred its once focused geopolitical policies and has often
allowed wishful thinking to dominate inter-Korean relations.
Though the South Koreans wisely offer considerable humanitarian
aid to their Northern brethren, there are few reciprocal actions
by the North. 

So, what to do?

 First and foremost, the United States and South Korea must
speak with one voice towards the North. This does not mean
threats to the North but a predictable carrot and stick policy. 

Second, given that the Security Council option would likely
bring American policy down a diplomatic dead end street and
dangerously expose rifts among the regional states - most
especially South Korea and China - this is not a wise course.
Meaningful sanctions against North Korea are not likely to pass,
and will only embolden the communist rulers. 

Third, resumption of the six-party talks - the forum in which
North Korea's neighbors share a common goal - must restart but
with a clear commitment by the United States, Japan and South
Korea to a policy roadmap in which the carrots of humanitarian
aid and political openings are the quid pro quo for North
Korea's nuclear transparency and disarmament.

 Given the million-man standoff along the DMZ and the U.S.
security commitment to the South, time is urgent and the wider
options are few and hardly pleasant. 

John J. Metzler is a United Nations correspondent covering
diplomatic and defense issues. - Ed.

2005.06.16
 
*****************************************************************
 5 Korea: Digital Chosunilbo: Ban Downplays Bush Meeting With N.Korean Author
 
  Home> National/Politics    Updated Jun.15,2005 19:08 KST   
 
Bush Meets N.Korean Defector Behind 'Aquariums Of Pyongyang'
 Bush 'Moved by Defector's Book on N.K. Human Rights'
 A Gap in President Roh¡¯s Reading List 

Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon on Wednesday downplayed the
political significance of U.S. President George W. Bush's
meeting with North Korean defector and Chosun Ilbo journalist
Kang Chol-hwan to discuss the human rights situation in the
Stalinist country. 

Asked during a briefing with reporters about the meeting between
Bush and Kang, Ban said, "The North Korean human rights
situation is already widely known, not just in the United
States, but also worldwide... I don't think the meeting will
influence the development of either the six-party talks to
resolve the North Korean nuclear dispute or inter-Korean
relations." 

Ban cautioned against reading too much into Bush¡¯s interest in
Kang¡¯s book ¡°Aquariums of Pyongyang¡±, which details the
author¡¯s 10 hellish years in a North Korean prison camp. ¡°I
don't think anyone recommended Kang's book to President Bush
with a particular political or other intention,¡± he said. ¡°You
can recommend a book anytime, and there's no need to react
over-sensitively to the activities of U.S. citizen movements or
human rights groups" - a reference to increased focus in America
on Pyongyang¡¯s dismal human rights record. 

Ban said efforts to bring North Korea back to the negotiating
table had reached ¡°a watershed¡±. ¡°We will make active use of
inter-Korean dialogue like the June 15 festival in Pyongyang to
urge North Korea to return to the six-party talks,¡± he said. He
also said there were plans for a regular negotiating framework
whereby the South Korean and U.S. foreign ministers meet every
year. 

(englishnews@chosun.com ) 

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 6 Xinhua: US nuclear negotiator arrives in Seoul   

  www.xinhuanet.com

  www.chinaview.cn 2005-06-15 18:19:01   

    SEOUL, June 15 (Xinhuanet) -- US Assistant Secretary of
State Christopher Hill, who leads US negotiations on the Korean
Peninsula nuclear issue, arrived in Seoul on Wednesday for a
five-day visit here. 

    The former US ambassador to South Korea will hold talks with
Deputy Foreign Minister Song Min-soon and National Security
Advisor Kwon Jin-ho on Thursday, said South Korean national
Yonhap News Agency. 

    Hill's trip comes days after South Korean President Roh
Moo-hyun and US President George W. Bush met in Washington last
week and reaffirmed that they would continue to pursue a
diplomatic solution to the nuclear issue. 

    Hill, who served as ambassador to Seoul before assuming the
current post earlier in the year, is expected to spend the rest
of his five-day stay with his family that has remained in Seoul,
according to Yonhap. Enditem    

  Copyright ©2003 Xinhua News Agency. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
 7 Xinhua: Triangular relations involved in Korean issue   

  www.xinhuanet.com

  www.chinaview.cn 2005-06-15 13:18:23   

    BEIJING, June 15 -- In the Korean peninsula, the meeting is
widely expected to push forward the unification process. But
analysts say that with the involvement of the US, the task may
pose great challenge for South Korea. 

    Yang Bojiang, Professor if Division for Korean Peninsula
Studies, CICIR, said, "For the Democratic People's Republic of
Korea, reunification with the South is a priority. But more
importantly, the inter-Korean relationship could serve as an
open link between the Pyongyang and Washington. And Seoul agrees
with this idea." 

    A week before the meeting, South Korean President Roh
Moo-hyun visited the United States. After meeting with US
President George W. Bush, he said his government is ready to
make an "important proposal" to the Democratic People's Republic
of Korea concerning nuclear disarmament. 

    But analysts worry that the South Korean government may have
difficulties in delivering this message. 

    Yang said, "South Korea is a US ally. Its policy towards the
DPRK is affected under such a framework. And this may limit
their efforts in persuading the South to act. But at the same
time, America's tough position has also aroused emotions in
South Korea." 

    Last week, a survey by Time magazine showed that more than
half South Koreans would stand alongside their northern
neighbors if the US used force against the DPRK. Analysts think
the South Korean government can use this shared national feeling
to gain more trust from Pyongyang. But the challenge for Seoul
is how to make its position clear. 

    (Source: CCTV.com)   

  Copyright ©2003 Xinhua News Agency. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
 8 Xinhua: US rejects partial solution to nuclear crisis   

  www.xinhuanet.com
    
  www.chinaview.cn 2005-06-15 15:10:29   

    BEIJING, June 15 -- The United States says it will not
accept a partial solution to the nuclear issue on the Korean
Peninsula. 

    The US chief negotiator to the stalled six-party nuclear
talks, Christopher Hill, said Tuesday the US requires a
verifiable and irreversible dismantlement of all DPRK nuclear
programs. 

    He said nothing less would allow Pyongyang to threaten
others continually with their revival. Hill said the US reserves
the right to bring the issue to the UN Security Council. 

    In that case, he said, the US would consider increasing
political and economic pressure. 

    (Source: CCTV.com)   



    
  Copyright ©2003 Xinhua News Agency. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
 9 Korea Times: US Policy on North Korea Incoherent, Expert Says 

Hankooki.com > The Korea Times   

By Reuben Staines Staff Reporter

 U.S. President George W. Bush¡¯s policy toward North Korea is
``incoherent¡¯¡¯ and the nuclear crisis is unlikely to be solved
as long as he remains in the White House, an American expert on
Korean history said. 

Bruce Cumings, University of Chicago history professor and
author of ``North Korea: Another Country,¡¯¡¯ said the Bush
administration has failed to come to terms with the nuclear
problem. 

``I think the basic failure is that the administration is
divided internally,¡¯¡¯ he told students at Seoul National
University¡¯s Graduate School of Public Administration on
Tuesday. 

Some factions in Washington are still hoping the communist
government in Pyongyang will collapse, while others favor a
diplomatic approach, Cumings said. ``Bush has not stepped in to
stop the quarrelling and get a coherent policy toward North
Korea.¡¯¡¯ 

He described the first Bush administration as ``a comic opera
where everyone seemed to have their own policy toward North
Korea while the president was calling Kim Jong-il a pygmy.¡¯¡¯ 

Bush has refused to negotiate directly with North Korea,
preferring the multilateral talks hosted by China to tackle the
nuclear crisis. However, those six-nation negotiations have been
stalled for nearly a year, with North Korea saying it will not
negotiate with the U.S. until it drops its ``hostile¡¯¡¯
attitude toward the regime. 

Cumings, who was in Seoul to participate in an international
conference on Korean reunification, believed that even if the
North returned to the six-party talks, no progress would result. 

He criticized Bush for leaving on the table a missile control
deal with North Korea that was negotiated but not signed at the
end of former President Bill Clinton¡¯s term in 2000. 

``If we somehow get into another conflict with North Korea and a
lot of people die, historians are going to look at that
agreement and ask why it was left hanging,¡¯¡¯ said Cumings, a
frequent dissenter to mainstream U.S. perceptions of the North. 

``The Bush administration has kicked the can down the road for
five years while North Korea looks like it is arming itself with
more nuclear weapons.¡¯¡¯ 

Cumings said the best-case scenario is that the current
stalemate will continue until the next U.S. president is
inaugurated and revives Clinton¡¯s diplomatic approach. 

But he expressed concern about the renewed talk in Washington of
a preemptive strike on North Korea¡¯s Yongbyon plutonium
reactor. 

During the first nuclear crisis in 1994, the Clinton
administration actively considered a strike on the facility. It
eventually scrapped the plan after concluding it would likely
trigger a North Korean counterattack resulting in hundreds of
thousands of U.S. and South Korean deaths. 

``It¡¯s highly unlikely there will be a preemptive strike but
it¡¯s unnerving that this same issue comes up 11 years after it
was first rejected,¡¯¡¯ Cumings said during the lecture. 

He also cast doubt on the U.S. assertion that it would seek
South Korean consent before carrying out such a strike, noting
that former President Kim Young-sam was not kept informed of
planning in 1994. 

``My impression is that if Kim Young-sam had said no, it would
not have made any difference,¡¯¡¯ Cumings said. ``Today we have
a similar situation with an administration in South Korea that
the Bush administration doesn¡¯t like.¡¯¡¯ 

rjs@koreatimes.co.kr 06-15-2005 19:07         
                                
  Professor Bruce Cumings   

*****************************************************************
 10 Korea Times: FM Urges NK to Comply With Roh-Bush Message 

Hankooki.com > The Korea Times > Nation   

By Ryu Jin Staff Reporter

 South Korea¡¯s top diplomat urged North Korea on Wednesday to
comply with the ``positive¡¯¡¯ message from Seoul and Washington.

 Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Ban Ki-moon added that
Seoul would continue to persuade Pyongyang to return to the
multiparty negotiation through direct dialogue channels, such as
the ongoing joint festivities in the North¡¯s capital to
commemorate the June 2000 summit between the two Koreas.

 South and North Korea are celebrating the fifth anniversary of
the historic first-ever summit, which gave birth to the June 15
Joint Declaration, with government delegations from both sides
taking part in the largely civilian event.

 However, the coordinated efforts by South Korea and the U.S. to
bring the North back to the talks still seem troubled by
lingering differences between the allies in understanding the
isolated Stalinist state, especially in their approaches to its
human rights problems.

 On the historic day when the two Koreas celebrate their
achievements of the past five years, Chosun Ilbo, one of the
major conservative dailies in South Korea, delivered several
articles on a meeting between U.S. President George W. Bush and
its reporter, who came from the North.

 In what seemed to be an apparent emphasis on the importance the
Bush administration has attached to the North¡¯s human rights
situation, the White House said Tuesday that Bush met Kang
Chol-hwan from the Chosun Ilbo on Monday.

 Kang has become famous for his memoir, ``The Aquariums of
Pyongyang: Ten Years in a North Korean Gulag,¡¯¡¯ which recounts
his suffering at the hands of the North Korean regime. Bush and
his closest aides were recently reported to have read the book.

 Ban, asked by a reporter about the implications of the latest
news on Bush¡¯s meeting with Kang, said he believes it would not
have a negative effect on the ongoing efforts to resume the
six-party talks, which have been stalled for about a year.

 ``I don¡¯t agree with the view that the meeting reversed the
outcome of the summit, in which President Roh Moo-hyun and
President Bush reconfirmed there is no difference between the
allies on the principle that the nuclear issue should be
resolved peacefully,¡¯¡¯ he told reporters.

 South Korea says that like other countries in the world,
including the U.S., it regards the North¡¯s human rights
problems as a matter of grave concern, but argues that the issue
should be dealt with in a cautious manner as a reckless and
aggressive approach could only provoke the North.

 However, Christopher Hill, assistant secretary of state for
East Asian and Pacific Affairs, said at a hearing of the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee the U.S. would continue to raise
human rights concerns with North Korea while seeking an end to
the nuclear impasse.

 Hill, who is also the chief U.S. nuclear negotiator, came to
Seoul yesterday to discuss the North Korean issue with South
Korean officials.

 In the meantime, Ban said Seoul and Washington are working on a
plan to establish regular dialogue between their foreign
ministers, adding the two sides are in talks to set up the
channel that will also involve senior foreign policy and defense
officials.

 ``Based on the achievement of last week¡¯s summit, the two
countries will take measures to further solidify the
comprehensive and dynamic alliance, such as activating a
dialogue channel for consultations on pending foreign affairs
and security issues and strategies,¡¯¡¯ he said. 

jinryu@koreatimes.co.kr 06-15-2005 19:15         
  
*****************************************************************
 11 Guardian Unlimited: S. Korea Official on North Calls for Unity
 
From the Associated Press        

[UP] 

Wednesday June 15, 2005 11:31 AM

AP Photo SEL817 

By BURT HERMAN 

Associated Press Writer 

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - North and South Korean officials
pledged to cooperate and pursue eventual unification as they
celebrated the fifth anniversary of a summit between their
leaders under the shadow of the standoff over the North's
nuclear ambitions. 

Celebrations this week in the North's capital mark the June 15,
2000 joint declaration of the unprecedented meeting between
North Korea's Kim Jong Il and then-South Korean President Kim
Dae-jung - the first and only such talks since the Korean War
ended in a 1953 cease-fire. The two Koreas are also holding
Cabinet-level talks next week in Seoul. 

``We should resolve peacefully, through dialogue, the pending
issues placed before the Korean peoples,'' South Korea's
Unification Minister Chung Dong-young said, according to pool
reports from Pyongyang. 

The Koreas ``should not hesitate, but lead in quickly
eliminating the obstacles to ending the Cold War on the Korean
Peninsula,'' he said. 

Chung avoided directly mentioning the North's nuclear weapons
program, but was expected to raise the issue of stalled
international disarmament talks on Thursday when he sees the
North's ceremonial head of state, Kim Yong Nam. 

The main U.S. envoy on the nuclear dispute, Assistant Secretary
of State Christopher Hill, said Washington was still waiting to
hear more from the North after it expressed a commitment last
week to the nuclear talks but refused to specify when it would
return to the negotiating table. 

``While they were positive about the six-party talks, they did
not give us a date,'' said Hill, who arrived Wednesday in Seoul
to discuss the standoff with South Korean officials. ``I hope
they will give us a date.'' 

He also urged China, the North's main benefactor, to continue to
push Pyongyang back to the table. 

Chung, meanwhile, said he hoped next week's talks in Seoul would
help reconciliation efforts. Inter-Korean talks resumed in May
after 10 months without contacts following a mass defection of
North Koreans to the South that was condemned by Pyongyang. 

South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon said in Seoul that
Chung's delegation in Pyongyang would push the North to return
to six-nation nuclear talks that have been stalled for nearly a
year. The United States, China, Japan, Russia and South Korea
hope to use the talks to persuade the North to dismantle its
nuclear weapons programs - with Washington demanding that it do
so unconditionally. 

Earlier Wednesday, civilians from both sides also pledged
cooperation between the divided Koreas, while the North hinted
at its continuing dispute with the United States. 

``Growing our people's own strength is the only choice we have
to preserve peace,'' said An Kyong Ho, head of the North Korean
civilian delegation. ``We will continue to energetically put
forward a campaign for unification to crush war provocations by
warlike forces at home and abroad.'' 

But the many obstacles to meeting the commitments made at the
2000 summit show both Koreas' goal of unification remains a
far-off dream. 

The latest crisis over North Korea's nuclear ambitions that
erupted in late 2002 has hampered the cooperation envisioned
between the two Koreas after the 2000 summit. Although some
joint economic projects continue, Seoul has said any larger
plans will have to wait until the nuclear standoff is resolved.
Kim Jong Il also has yet to make good on a promise at the 2000
meeting to travel to Seoul for another summit. 
		 	 	   
      Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005
*****************************************************************
 12 Guardian Unlimited: S. Korea Urges North to End Their Cold War
 
From the Associated Press        

[UP] 

Wednesday June 15, 2005 8:01 PM

AP Photo SEL803 

By BURT HERMAN 

Associated Press Writer 

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - South Korea urged North Korea to help
end their Cold War as the two sides glossed over an
international nuclear dispute Wednesday to celebrate a landmark
2000 summit that warmed ties but failed to bring them much
closer to reunification. 

Since North Korea's Kim Jong Il met then-South Korean President
Kim Dae-jung - the only such talks since the Korean War ended in
a 1953 cease-fire - Seoul and Pyongyang have boosted trade,
staged reunions of 10,000 separated family members, and launched
the construction of railways and roads connecting the Koreas. 

But five years on, North Korea menacingly boasts that it has
nuclear bombs, the border remains one of the world's most
heavily armed, and Kim Jong Il has failed to visit Seoul as
promised. 

South Korean Unification Minister Chung Dong-young refused to
dwell on negatives Wednesday. 

``We should resolve peacefully, through dialogue, the pending
issues placed before the Korean peoples,'' Chung said, according
to pool reports from Pyongyang. The Koreas ``should not
hesitate, but lead in quickly eliminating the obstacles to
ending the Cold War on the Korean Peninsula.'' 

He avoided directly mentioning the North's nuclear weapons
program, the greatest threat to reconciliation efforts, but was
expected to raise the issue of stalled international disarmament
talks Thursday when he sees the North's head of state, Kim Yong
Nam. 

The main U.S. envoy on the nuclear dispute, Assistant Secretary
of State Christopher Hill, said Washington was still waiting to
hear more from the North after it expressed a commitment last
week to the nuclear talks but refused to specify when it would
return to the negotiating table. 

``While they were positive about the six-party talks, they did
not give us a date,'' said Hill, who arrived Wednesday in Seoul
to discuss the standoff with South Korean officials. ``I hope
they will give us a date.'' 

He also urged China, the North's main benefactor, to continue to
push Pyongyang to return to talks. 

Chung, meanwhile, said he hoped Cabinet-level talks between the
Koreas scheduled next week in Seoul would help reconciliation
efforts. Inter-Korean talks resumed in May after 10 months
without contacts following a mass defection of North Koreans to
the South that was condemned by Pyongyang. 

South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon said in Seoul that
Chung's delegation in Pyongyang would push the North to return
to six-nation nuclear talks that have been stalled for nearly a
year. The United States, China, Japan, Russia and South Korea
hope to use the talks to persuade the North to dismantle its
nuclear weapons programs - with Washington demanding that it do
so unconditionally. 

The South Korean ``government will make active use of
inter-Korean dialogue opportunities ... to urge the North to
return to the six-party talks so as to work for harmonious
progress in (resolving) the North Korean nuclear program and for
inter-Korean relations,'' Ban said. 

Earlier Wednesday, civilians from both sides also pledged
cooperation, while the North hinted at its continuing dispute
with the United States. 

``Growing our people's own strength is the only choice we have
to preserve peace,'' said An Kyong Ho, head of the North Korean
civilian delegation. ``We will continue to energetically put
forward a campaign for unification to crush war provocations by
warlike forces at home and abroad.'' 

But the many obstacles to meeting the commitments made at the
2000 summit in Pyongyang show both Koreas' goal of unification
remains a remote dream. 

The latest crisis over North Korea's nuclear ambitions that
began in late 2002 has hampered the cooperation envisioned
between the two countries after the 2000 summit. Although some
joint economic projects continue, Seoul has said any larger
plans will have to wait until the nuclear standoff is resolved. 
		 	 	   
      Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005
*****************************************************************
 13 NRC: [Docket No. PRM-20-26] James Salsman Petition
 
                        FR Doc 05-11799 
[Federal Register: June 15, 2005 (Volume 70, Number 114)] 
[Proposed Rules] [Page 34699-34700] From the Federal Register 
Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr15jn05-24]                         
 
James Salsman, Receipt of Petition for Rulemaking AGENCY: Nuclear 
Regulatory Commission.
 
ACTION: Petition for rulemaking; notice of receipt.
 
 
SUMMARY: The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is publishing 
for public comment a notice of receipt of a petition for 
rulemaking, dated May 6, 2005, which was filed with the 
Commission by James Salsman. The petition was docketed by the NRC 
on May 13, 2005, and has been assigned Docket No. PRM-20-26. The 
petitioner requests that the NRC amend its regulations to modify 
exposure and environmental limits of heavy metal radionuclides.
 
 
DATES: Submit comments by August 29, 2005. Comments received 
after this date will be considered if it is practical to do so, 
but the Commission is able to assure consideration only for 
comments received on or before this date.
 
 
ADDRESSES: You may submit comments by any one of the following 
methods. Please include the following number PRM-20-26 in the 
subject line of your comments. Comments on petitions submitted in 
writing or in electronic form will be made available for public 
inspection.
 
Because your comments will not be edited to remove any 
identifying or contact information, the NRC cautions you against 
including any information in your submission that you do not want 
to be publicly disclosed.
 
Mail comments to: Secretary, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, 
Washington, DC 20555-0001, ATTN: Rulemakings and Adjudications 
Staff.
 
E-mail comments to: SECY@nrc.gov. If you do not receive a reply 
e- mail confirming that we have received your comments, contact 
us directly at (301) 415-1966. You may also submit comments via 
the NRC's rulemaking Web site at http://ruleforum.llnl.gov. 
Address questions about our rulemaking Web site to Carol 
Gallagher (301) 415-5905; e-mail cag@nrc.gov. Comments can also 
be submitted via the Federal eRulemaking Portal 
http://www.regulations.gov. Hand deliver comments to: 11555 
Rockville Pike, Rockville, Maryland 20852, between 7:30 a.m. and 
4:15 p.m. Federal workdays. (Telephone (301) 415-1966).
 
Fax comments to: Secretary, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission at 
(301) 415-1101.
 
Publicly available documents related to this petition may be 
viewed electronically on the public computers located at the 
NRC's Public Document Room (PDR), O1 F21, One White Flint North, 
11555 Rockville Pike, Rockville, Maryland. The PDR reproduction 
contractor will copy documents for a fee. Selected documents, 
including comments, may be viewed and downloaded electronically 
via the NRC rulemaking web site at http://ruleforum.llnl.gov. 
Publicly available documents created or received at the NRC after 
November 1, 1999, are available electronically at the NRC's 
Electronic Reading Room at 
http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/adams.html. From this site, the 
public can gain entry into the NRC's Agencywide Document Access 
and Management System (ADAMS), which provides text and image 
files of NRC's public documents. If you do not have access to 
ADAMS or if there are problems in accessing the documents located 
in ADAMS, contact the NRC Public Document Room (PDR) Reference 
staff at 1-800- 397-4209, 301-415-4737 or by e-mail to 
pdr@nrc.gov. FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Michael T. Lesar, 
Chief, Rules and Directives Branch, Division of Administrative 
Services, Office of Administration, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory 
Commission, Washington, DC 20555-0001, Telephone: 301-415-7163 or 
Toll Free: 800-368-5642.
 
 
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Background The NRC has established 
standards for protection against ionizing radiation resulting 
from activities conducted by licensees and has issued these 
standards in the regulations codified in 10 CFR part 20. These 
regulations are intended to control the receipt, possession, use, 
transfer, and disposal of licensed material by its licensees.
 
Licensed material is any source, byproduct, or special nuclear 
material received, possessed, used, transferred, or disposed of 
under a general or specific license issued by the NRC.
 
Appendix B to part 20 lists the Annual Limits on Intake (ALIs) 
and Derived Air Concentrations of radionuclides for occupational 
exposure, effluent concentrations, and concentrations for release 
to sewerage.
 
The Petitioner's Discussion The petitioner believes that the 
current regulations allow more soluble compounds than insoluble 
compounds. The petitioner states that the regulations were 
designed to address only the radiological hazard of uranium, and 
not the heavy metal toxicity, which is known to be about six 
orders of magnitude worse. The petitioner asserts, in practice, 
that the soluble compounds are far more toxic than the insoluble 
compounds. The petitioner states that this should indicate that 
the long half-life uranium isotope regulation standards need to 
be completely revised.
 
The petitioner states that in the current regulations, an annual 
inhalation of more than two grams of uranium is allowed. The 
petitioner states that because the LD50/30 of uranyl nitrate 
(which has considerably less uranyl ion per unit of mass than 
uranium trioxide) is 2.1 mg/kg in rabbits, 12.6 mg/kg in dogs, 48 
mg/kg in rats, and 51 mg/ kg in guinea pigs and albino mice, two 
grams of UO3 seems very likely to comprise a fatal dose for a 200 
pound human (Gmelin Handbook of Inorganic Chemistry, 8th edition, 
English translation (1982), vol. U- A7, pp. 312-322). The 
petitioner believes that these values seem much too high. He 
believes that they were derived to avoid immediate kidney failure 
only, without regard to reproductive toxicity. The petitioner 
does not believe they were derived with sufficient care to avoid 
allowing lethal exposures. The petitioner states that the 
explicit limit to 10 mg/day of soluble uranium compounds (or 
about half a gram per year) in 10 CFR 20.1201(e) seems likely
 
[[Page 34700]] to allow substantial kidney damage and certain 
reproductive toxicity.
 
The petitioner states that a urine study performed (see 
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve& 
db=pubmed= Abstract& list--uids=12943033) calculates an average 
initial lung burden of 0.34 milligrams elemental uranium for 
those with isotopic signatures consistent with exposure to 
depleted uranium in what he believes were symptomatic exposure 
victims. The petitioner believes that this study is flawed, as it 
assumes a uranium compound biological half-time of 3.85 years in 
the lungs. The petitioner states that the primary mode of uranium 
toxicity involves much greater solubility. The petitioner 
believes that monomeric uranium trioxide will turn out to be 
absorbed more rapidly in the mammalian lung than uranyl nitrate, 
because of its monomolecular gas nature, and not merely about as 
rapidly as the studies of granular uranium trioxide by P.E. 
Morrow, et al., indicate (``Inhalation Studies of Uranium 
Trioxide,'' Health Physics, vol. 23 (1972), pp. 273-280). The 
petitioner states that even Class D may not be appropriate for 
monomolecular uranium trioxide gas.
 
The petitioner believes the correct way to determine these 
values, to account for the reproductive toxicity, is probably to 
measure resulting mutations of mammalian peripheral lymphocytes, 
such as was done in this study of Gulf War veterans 
(http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd= 
Retrieve=pubmed= Abstract-- uids=11765683).
 
The Petitioner's Request The petitioner requests that the NRC 
revise its regulations in 10 CFR part 20 that specify limits for 
ingestion and inhalation occupational values, effluent 
concentrations, and releases to sewers, for all heavy metal 
radionuclides with nonradiological chemical toxicity hazards 
exceeding that of their radiological hazards so that those limits 
properly reflect the hazards associated with reproductive 
toxicity, danger to organs, and all other known nonradiological 
aspects of heavy metal toxicity. The petitioner states that many 
of these limits consider the radiological hazard of certain 
chemically toxic radionuclides with slight radiological dangers 
(e.g., Uranium-238), without regard to their greater 
nonradiological hazard. The petitioner notes that this petition 
does not request increasing the permissible quantities given by 
any of those limits specified. The petitioner also states that, 
for example, the soluble forms of Uranium-238 compounds, which 
are more toxic if inhaled than the insoluble compounds, are 
allowed in greater quantities than their insoluble compounds.
 
Other examples may include, but are not necessarily limited to, 
Uranium-232, Plutonium-239, and other long half-life isotopes of 
the heavy metal elements. The petitioner also requests that the 
classification for uranium trioxide within Class W, given in the 
Class column of the table for Uranium-230 in Appendix B to 10 CFR 
part 20, be amended to Class D in light of P.E. Morrow, et al., 
``Inhalation Studies of Uranium Trioxide'' (Health Physics, vol. 
23 (1972), pp. 273-280), which states: ``inhalation studies with 
uranium trioxide (UO3) indicated that the material was more 
similar to soluble uranyl salts than to the so-called insoluble 
oxides * * * UO3 is rapidly removed from the lungs, with most 
following a 4.7 day biological half time.'' The petitioner also 
requests that monomeric (monomolecular) uranium trioxide gas, as 
produced by the oxidation of U3O8 at temperatures above 1000 
Celsius, be assigned its own unique solubility class if 
necessary, at such time in the future that its solubility 
characteristics become known (R.J. Ackermann, R.J. Thorn, C. 
Alexander, and M. Tetenbaum, in ``Free Energies of Formation of 
Gaseous Uranium, Molybdenum, and Tungsten Trioxides,'' Journal of 
Physical Chemistry, vol. 64 (1960) pp. 350-355: ``gaseous 
monomeric uranium trioxide is the principal species produced by 
the reaction of U3O8 with oxygen'' at 1200 Kelvin and above).
 
Conclusion The petitioner requests that 10 CFR part 20 be revised 
in accordance with the proposed revisions as set forth above.
 
Dated at Rockville, Maryland, this 9th day of June 2005.
 
For the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
 
Annette Vietti-Cook, Secretary of the Commission.
 
[FR Doc. 05-11799 Filed 6-14-05; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 7590-01-P

 
*****************************************************************
 14 Platts: Bush administration concerned over Senate energy bill costs
 
+ A battle could be brewing over the cost of the energy bill, 
with the Bush administration taking exception to the Senate 
Finance Committee's first draft for energy tax provisions, which 
call for $16-bil in funding including incentives for refiners and 
nuclear plants. 

In the current high-price environment, subsidies to oil and gas 
companies should be eliminated, the administration said in a 
statement released Tuesday by the White House's Office of 
Management and Budget. 

It urged the Senate "to be consistent" with the president's 
fiscal 2006 budget request, which proposed energy tax incentives 
of $6.7-bil over 10 years dedicated solely to alternative and 
renewable fuels, conservation, energy efficiency and 
emissions-free energy. 

The OMB also said the administration opposes the energy bill's 
requirement that Bush implement measures to reduce US petroleum 
demand by 1-mil b/d. 

"The administration believes that it would effectively require a 
rapid, near-term increase in corporate average fuel economy 
standards, which would likely have undesirable safety impacts and 
may well be impossible to achieve under existing legal 
authorities," according to the statement.

The policy statement weighed in on the current debate over Outer 
Continental Shelf revenues, with the administration saying it 
opposes diverting federal OCS revenues to oil and gas producing 
states. 

On the issue of climate change, a topic ignored in the current 
Senate energy bill but expected to be addressed during the 
amendment process, OMB said the Bush administration "is not 
convinced of the need for additional legislation with respect to 
global change, and will oppose any climate change amendments that 
are inconsistent with the president's climate change strategy." 

OMB said the president favors increasing the use of ethanol in 
motor fuels and "strongly supports the inclusion of complementary 
provisions, particularly the repeal of the Clean Air Act's 
oxygenate requirement for reformulated gasoline, which would 
enable greater flexibility in the nation's fuel supply."

Not surprisingly, the Bush administration reiterated that it 
"strongly supports" opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge 
to oil and gas development, and encouraged the Senate to adopt an 
ANWR provision similar to the one included in the House-passed 
bill. 

"Opening ANWR is key not only to a truly comprehensive energy 
policy by increasing domestic production, but also to creating 
tens of thousands of new jobs for American workers," OMB said. 

It noted the administration supports language in the Senate bill 
that clarifies the US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission 
authority to exclusively regulate siting of LNG terminals onshore 
or within state waters. 

This story was originally published in Platts Electricity Alert 
http://www.electricityalert.platts.com 

Washington (Platts)--14Jun2005
 
Copyright © 2005 - Platts, All Rights Reserved [The McGraw-Hill 
Companies]   
*****************************************************************
 15 NRC: [Docket No. PRM-54-02] Westchester Petition
 
                        FR Doc 05-11800 
[Federal Register: June 15, 2005 (Volume 70, Number 114)] 
[Proposed Rules] [Page 34700-34702] From the Federal Register 
Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr15jn05-25]                         
 
Andrew J. Spano, County of Westchester, NY; Receipt of Petition 
for Rulemaking AGENCY: Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
 
ACTION: Petition for rulemaking; notice of receipt.
 
SUMMARY: The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is publishing 
for public comment a notice of receipt of a petition for 
rulemaking, dated May 10, 2005, which was filed with the 
Commission by Andrew J.
 
Spano, County Executive, Westchester County, New York. The 
petition was docketed by the NRC on May 13, 2005, and has been 
assigned Docket No. PRM-54-02. The petitioner requests that the 
NRC amend its regulations to provide that a renewed license will 
be issued only if the plant operator demonstrates that the plant 
meets all criteria and requirements that would be applicable if 
the plant was being proposed de novo for initial construction.
 
 
DATES: Submit comments by August 29, 2005. Comments received 
after this date will be considered if it is practical to do so, 
but the Commission is able to assure consideration only for 
comments received on or before this date.
 
 
ADDRESSES: You may submit comments by any one of the following 
methods. Please include PRM-54-02 in the subject line of your 
comments.
 
Comments on petitions submitted in writing or in electronic form 
will be made available for public inspection. Because your 
comments will not be edited to remove any identifying or contact 
information, the NRC cautions you against including any 
information in your submission that you do not want to be 
publicly disclosed.
 
Mail comments to: Secretary, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, 
Washington, DC 20555-0001, ATTN: Rulemakings and Adjudications 
Staff.
 
E-mail comments to: SECY@nrc.gov. If you do not receive a reply 
e- mail confirming that we have received your comments, contact 
us directly at (301) 415-1966. You may also submit comments via 
the NRC's rulemaking Web site at http://ruleforum.llnl.gov. 
Address questions about our rulemaking Web site to Carol 
Gallagher (301) 415-5905; e-mail cag@nrc.gov. Comments can also 
be submitted via the Federal eRulemaking Portal 
http://www.regulations.gov.
 
[[Page 34701]] Hand deliver comments to: 11555 Rockville Pike, 
Rockville, Maryland 20852, between 7:30 a.m. and 4:15 p.m. 
Federal workdays. (Telephone (301) 415-1966).
 
Fax comments to: Secretary, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission at 
(301) 415-1101.
 
Publicly available documents related to this petition may be 
viewed electronically on the public computers located at the 
NRC's Public Document Room (PDR), Room O1 F21, One White Flint 
North, 11555 Rockville Pike, Rockville, Maryland. The PDR 
reproduction contractor will copy documents for a fee. Selected 
documents, including comments, may be viewed and downloaded 
electronically via the NRC rulemaking Web site at 
http://ruleforum.llnl.gov. Publicly available documents created 
or received at the NRC after November 1, 1999, are available 
electronically at the NRC's Electronic Reading Room at 
http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/adams.html. From this site, the 
public can gain entry into the NRC's Agencywide Document Access 
and Management System (ADAMS), which provides text and image 
files of NRC's public documents. If you do not have access to 
ADAMS or if there are problems in accessing the documents located 
in ADAMS, contact the PDR Reference staff at 1-800-397-4209, 
301-415-4737 or by e-mail to pdr@nrc.gov. FOR FURTHER INFORMATION 
CONTACT: Michael T. Lesar, Chief, Rules and Directives Branch, 
Division of Administrative Services, Office of Administration, 
U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC 20555-0001, 
Telephone: 301-415-7163 or Toll Free: 800-368-5642.
 
 
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The Petitioner The petitioner is the 
County Executive of Westchester County, New York. Westchester 
County is a political subdivision, and municipality, of the State 
of New York, and is located immediately north of New York City. 
It is 450 square miles in size. It has a southern border with New 
York City (Bronx County) and a northern border with Putnam 
County. It is flanked on the west side by the Hudson River and on 
the east side by Long Island Sound and Fairfield County, 
Connecticut. The total population of Westchester County, as 
measured in the 2000 Census, is 923,459. The 2000 population is 
over 100,000 more than it was as measured in the 1960 Census.
 
Westchester County is the host county for the Nuclear Generation 
Stations at the Indian Point Energy Facility (Indian Point or 
IP), located in the Village of Buchanan, Town of Cortlandt. The 
petitioner states that because of the presence of the Indian 
Point facility, Westchester County has long had an interest and 
concern with the environmental, emergency, and public safety 
issues with respect to Indian Point.
 
Background There are two nuclear power plants at Indian Point: 
IP2 and IP3. These are currently operated by single purpose 
entities controlled by the Entergy Corporation (Entergy). IP2 & 
IP3's operating licenses are scheduled to expire in 2013 and 
2015, respectively. The petitioner believes that in accordance 
with industry trends, Entergy could apply for license extensions 
for up to an additional twenty years, provided certain operating, 
environmental, and safety conditions are met.
 
The petitioner states that he is concerned with the criteria that 
will be used by the Commission in deciding whether to grant 
license extensions. The petitioner is concerned that the scope of 
the Commission's current regulations is too limited and that, as 
a result, the safety of the residents and communities near Indian 
Point will be in question during any extended operating period. 
The petitioner states that many factors have changed (see below) 
since the construction of IP2 and IP3. The petitioner believes 
that these changes have a significant impact on the safety of the 
community, yet they are not considered under the current license 
renewal regulations.
 
The petitioner states that building a nuclear power plant in the 
United States in the 1960s and 1970s represented a mutual 
commitment between the utility owner and the local community for 
a specific and limited period of time. The atmosphere during 
those early days (prior to 1979), according to the petitioner, 
was generally positive, in which local host communities would 
receive significant property taxes, the public would be assured 
of reliable low-cost power, and utility owners had a long period 
of time to recover their investments. He asserts that the Indian 
Point facilities were located in Westchester County, after New 
York City sites were rejected and that the local communities 
perceived the benefits of siting the facilities in Westchester 
County to be having direct access to reliable low-cost power and 
positive local economic impacts. The projects created massive 
numbers of employment opportunities and were initially seen as 
safe technical ventures. The petitioner also asserts that both 
the local community and the utility had long term commitments to 
the facility, with the public having little recourse to question 
safety and operational issues after plant construction started 
and the utility having the right to the use of the plant for the 
full term of the license, often 40 years.
 
The petitioner states that after living with nuclear power plants 
for the past three decades, several events have changed that 
landscape--Three Mile Island-2, the Browns Ferry fire, utility 
bankruptcies, the Chernobyl accident, delays at Yucca Mountain, 
Davis- Besse reactor head problems, and the events of September 
11, 2001. As a result, he states that plant orders have ceased 
and the public has become justifiably concerned about nuclear 
power plant safety.
 
The petitioner states that these concerns are particularly 
sensitive at Indian Point, because of its proximity to major 
population centers, periodic leaks of radioactive material, 
difficult (if not impossible) evacuation issues, and its 
proximity to the World Trade Center.
 
The Proposed Amendment The petitioner requests that the NRC amend 
its regulations to provide that a renewed license will be issued 
only if the plant operator demonstrates that the plant meets all 
criteria and requirements that would be applicable if the plant 
was being proposed de novo for initial construction. The 
petitioner also requests that Sec.  54.29 be amended to provide 
that a renewed license may be issued by the Commission if the 
Commission finds that, upon a de novo review, the plant would be 
entitled to an initial operating license in accordance with all 
criteria applicable to initial operating licenses, as set out in 
the Commission's regulations, including 10 CFR parts 2, 19, 20, 
21, 26, 30, 40, 50, 51, 54, 55, 71, 100 and the appendices to 
these regulations. The petitioner requests that corresponding 
amendments be made to Sec. Sec.  54.4, 54.19, 54.21, and 54.23, 
and that Sec.  54.30 be rescinded. The petitioner states that the 
criteria to be examined as part of a renewal application should 
include such factors as demographics, siting, emergency 
evacuation, site security, etc. This analysis should be performed 
in a manner that focuses the NRC's attention on the critical 
plant-specific factors and conditions that have the greatest 
potential to affect public safety.
 
Problems with the Current Process The petitioner believes that 
the process and criteria currently established in Part 54 is 
seriously
 
[[Page 34702]] flawed. He states that the process for license 
renewal appears to be based on the theory that if the plant was 
originally licensed at the site, it is satisfactory to renew the 
license, barring any significant issues having to do with passive 
systems, structures, and components (SSCs). The petitioner states 
that the regulations should be broadened and sufficiently 
comprehensive to cover all of the facets (including consideration 
of a worst-case scenario) that were considered for initial 
construction. Alternatively, he states that the license renewal 
process should examine all issues related to the plant and its 
original license, and then concentrate on any issues that are new 
to that plant or have changed since the original license was 
issued or that deviate from the original licensing basis.
 
The petitioner states that many key factors that affect nuclear 
plant licensing evolve over time; population grows, local/state 
Federal regulations evolve, public awareness increases, 
technology improves, and plant economic values change. As a 
result, roads and infrastructure required for a successful 
evacuation may not improve along with population density, 
inspection methods may not be adopted or may be used 
inappropriately, and regulations may alter the plant design after 
commercial operation. The petitioner believes that all of these 
factors should be examined and weighed in the formal 10 CFR part 
54 relicensing process.
 
The petitioner states that prior to the concept of life extension 
for nuclear power plants, it was generally assumed that plants 
would exist as operating facilities for the rest of their design 
life, and then would enter a decommissioning phase. In fact, the 
collection of decommissioning funds from ratepayers initiated in 
the 1970s was based on a 40-year life.
 
Key Renewal Issues The petitioner states that it is time for the 
NRC to review, at the end of the 40 years of life, several 
questions that he asserts relate to key renewal issues about 
nuclear power plants on a plant-specific basis. These questions 
include the following: Could a new plant, designed and built to 
current standards, be licensed on the same site today? For 
example, given the population growth in Westchester County, it is 
uncertain if Indian Point would be licensed today. The population 
in the areas near Indian Point has outpaced the capacity of the 
road infrastructure to support it, making effective evacuation in 
an emergency unlikely.
 
Have the local societal and infrastructure factors that 
influenced the original plant licensing changed in a manner that 
would make the plant less apt to be licensed today? For example, 
three of four counties surrounding Indian Point have not 
submitted certified letters in support of the emergency 
evacuation plan. That would not be a consideration under the 
current licensing process. However, the inability of local 
governments to support the safety of the evacuation plan should, 
at the very least, give serious pause before the licenses of the 
plants are renewed.
 
Can the plant be modified to assure public health and safety in a 
post-9/11 era? For example, Indian Point cannot be made 
sufficiently safe according to James Lee Witt, former head of 
FEMA.
 
Have local/State regulations changed that would affect the 
plant's continued operation? For example, Indian Point must 
convert from once-through cooling to a closed-cycle design using 
cooling towers.
 
The original design basis of older nuclear power plants did not 
include extended onsite storage of spent nuclear fuel (SNF). At 
Indian Point for example, the current SNF storage plan includes 
one or more Independent Spent Fuel Storage Installations onsite, 
which increases the overall risk to the local community.
 
Conclusion The petitioner believes that these key renewal issues 
should be considered in the license renewal process, along with 
safety, security, and certainly the condition of both passive and 
active SSCs. The petitioner believes that the current NRC license 
renewal analyses ignore these issues.
 
The petitioner also believes that it is timely for the NRC to 
broaden the scope of license renewal investigations to assess the 
viability of the plants requesting license extension on a broad 
scale, one at least as broad as the original license hearings, 
and one that is site specific and site sensitive to an 
appropriate degree.
 
Accordingly, the petitioner requests that the NRC amend its 
regulations concerning issuance of a renewed license.
 
Dated at Rockville, Maryland, this 9th day of June 2005.
 
For the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
 
Annette Vietti-Cook, Secretary of the Commission.
 
[FR Doc. 05-11800 Filed 6-14-05; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 7590-01-P

 
*****************************************************************
 16 Rutland Herald: Clean energy is our economic future
 	 	 	 	
 June 15, 2005
 
   Commentary   
    
Earlier this month, the American Wind Energy Association held
its annual meeting in Denver. Guess who were among the chief
sponsors hanging their corporate banners and schmoozing the
attendees: General Electric and Goldman Sachs.

That two titans of industry are now among other major players in
the renewable energy industry is not news to clean energy
insiders. But it may be news to the Vermont Chamber of Commerce,
whose Victoria Tebbits wrote in the May 4 Rutland Herald that
Vermont efforts to support development of renewables would
somehow hurt our economy.

Memo to the Vermont Chamber of Commerce: Clean energy is the
economy. Or at least soon will be. And the only damage will come
from ignoring it — damage to our economy and environment.

Ms. Tebbits and other old-line business groups in Vermont
continue to cling to the quaint but outmoded notion that the
Vermont economy will succeed with more ski area development, tax
breaks for IBM and calling for more energy from the same
antiquated, dirty and insecure sources.

The inexorable conversion of the fossil fuel economy to an
economy based on clean fuels and the resulting economic
development is happening all around us.

Throughout the United States, states are recognizing that with a
small push from policymakers, the move toward a clean energy
economy can be accelerated.

Old-fashioned Chambers of Commerce prefer a so-called free
market approach to clean energy, not confessing that the energy
markets are already anything but free. Dirty power and nuclear
have been heavily subsidized for decades and the pending energy
bill in the U.S. Senate contains far more subsidy for those
sources than for domestic clean energy.

But there are some signs of change. Sen. Lamar Alexander, a
Tennessee Republican and no weak-kneed liberal, has proposed a
30 percent tax credit for solar energy systems.

Today, states from Maine to Texas are recognizing that with a
little push from policymakers, the adoption of clean energy can
save us from global warming. Add to that the interest and
commitment of General Electric, Goldman Sachs and others and you
have a clean energy industry ready to take off. In fact, two of
the top 20 Vermont high-tech companies are in renewable energy.
Both companies are also expanding rapidly, rather than shrinking
like many Vermont high-tech firms.

According to a 2004 report by the Clean Energy Group, new
technologies are accelerating the commercial application of
clean energy. Clean Energy funds in 17 states have raised $3.5
billion for projects from wind and solar power to efficient
industrial motors. These commitments by states are attracting
billions in private investment and making clean energy
attractive to the very business leaders the Chambers of Commerce
says they represent.

Not only that, but clean energy is creating high-paying,
sustainable jobs that do not require significant state
infrastructure. No circumferential highways required. No
pollution generation. Subsidies come in many forms, and the
Chambers of Commerce and their top allies turn a blind eye to
those best suited to Vermont, while holding their hands out,
palms up, behind their backs.

Pop quiz: Who are two of the largest investors in renewable
energy in the world? Answer: General Electric and BP, formerly
British Petroleum. Wind turbines springing up all over the world
are manufactured by GE. BP is one of the largest producers of
photovoltaic (solar) panels in the world.

In a speech last month, Jeffrey Immelt, CEO of GE, told us the
reason: global warming. He promised to double clean energy
investments by GE to prepare the company for the emerging global
market for helping other countries reduce greenhouse gases.

In New York last month, two dozen leading institutional
investors managing more than $3 trillion in assets urged U.S.
companies to invest in reducing the risk of climate change.

This private investment was made possible by the kind of state
action that Ms. Tebbitts and the Chamber of Commerce don't like.
Thirteen states now have renewable energy laws that require
utilities to buy a certain amount of clean energy for their
customers. While the federal government clings to the
petroleum-based economy and fights efforts to reduce global
warming, states are moving forward. The question is no longer if
Vermont will lead. The question is will Vermont be left behind.

The biggest success story may be in Texas, where a renewable
portfolio law forced companies with dirty coal and oil plants to
invest in wind and other clean energy products. Texas is now a
world leader in wind power development, with its state economy
getting a major boost from public and private investment in
these projects.

Global warming is not inevitable. Clean technology exists and is
in use right now, powering our cities, homes and businesses. We
can accelerate this economic and energy transformation from many
points.

A push from state legislatures has been critical in moving this
change forward. It is time for establishment business leaders to
follow the leads of GE and their colleagues.

When Edison invented the electric light bulb, it took many years
before it was accepted by the market. Powerful incumbent gas
companies fought electricity's adoption, and the capital dollars
to bring it to market were hard to come by. Critics said
electric light was too expensive and useless.

Soon enough, however, business leaders recognized the value of
electricity to run their motors and engines, and the world was
transformed. Let's hope Vermont doesn't miss out on this
opportunity.

Jeff Wolfe is vice president and CEO of Global Resource Options,
a clean energy company headquartered in White River Junction.
   
© 2005 Rutland Herald
*****************************************************************
 17 Salt Lake Tribune: Huntsman resolutions to guide power policies 

Article Last Updated: 06/15/2005 01:48:17 AM 

By Patty Henetz The Salt Lake Tribune 

BRECKENRIDGE, Colo. - Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. dove into his 
first trip to an annual meeting of the Western Governors' 
Association, co-sponsoring eight resolutions that will guide 
both the organization and gubernatorial policies during the 
coming year. 

The resolutions covered the nation's economic 
competitiveness, regional electricity policy-making, 
transportation of spent nuclear fuel, air quality in the West, 
future management of national forests and public lands, cleanup 
of Energy Department facilities and coal-bed methane 
development. 

Developing the resolutions takes months. "It is a very 
formal process," Huntsman said. "There is some emphasis on a 
unified voice coming out of the Western governors." 

As it happened, all 27 resolutions proffered were accepted 
unanimously. 

Huntsman teamed with Nevada Gov. Kenny Guinn on the nuclear 
waste transportation resolution that included a provision that 
the federal government should not allow storage of the waste at 
interim sites in any state without the express consent of the 
governor. 

Utah and Nevada's interests are inextricable on this issue. 
Against Nevada's will, Congress determined a permanent federal 
spent nuclear fuel repository should be located at Yucca 
Mountain, 90 miles north of Las Vegas. 

That facility has faced persistent obstacles. Supposed to 
open by 1998, its opening now has been pushed back to 2015, if 
it ever opens at all. 

Meanwhile, a consortium of eight nuclear power utilities 
called Private Fuel Storage signed a lease with the Skull Valley 
Band of Goshutes to build an interim facility on the reservation 
45 miles southwest of Salt Lake City to store 44,000 tons of 
spent fuel rods. The state of Utah opposes the facility, 	 	 	 	 
especially as Yucca's viability diminishes. 

The Huntsman-Guinn resolution supported establishing a 
permanent solution for management of spent nuclear fuel, but 
also urged federal agencies to look beyond finding a site to 
include coordinating with the states and tribes a safe 
transportation program. 

The resolution also urges consideration of allowing the 
nuclear waste to remain at the reactor sites and says the Energy 
Department shouldn't be allowed to privatize any of the 
transportation or preparation. 

"People at the highest level of government do take these 
[resolutions] seriously, so I'm encouraged," Huntsman said. 

Huntsman, a Republican, co-sponsored three resolutions with 
New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, a Democrat, covering economic 
competitiveness, Western air quality and open space. 

Richardson said he would work with Huntsman on plans to hold 
a Western presidential primary in 2008. 

"We would like to see the West not be a flyover region in 
presidential elections," said Richardson. "Several states are 
already teaming up." 

Tammy Kikuchi, Huntman's spokeswoman, said the Utah governor 
"has been talking to Governor Richardson about this. I think 
it's pretty much in an idea state." 

Â© Copyright 2005, The Salt Lake Tribune. 
*****************************************************************
 18 Oakland Tribune: Hayward councilman calls to scrap Cold War relics

Article Last Updated: 06/15/2005 03:45:48 AM                              
                 
  By Matt O'Brien, STAFF WRITER   

HAYWARD — City Councilman Bill Ward wants to revise a Cold 
War-era ordinance that established street signs warning visitors 
— particularly those visitors who carry nuclear weapons — that 
Hayward is a "nuclear free zone." 

"It's sort of almost ancient history," said Ward, a longtime 
council member who voted for the mostly symbolic ordinance when 
it came before the council in 1987. 

Ward believes the signs now clutter city streets and should be 
removed, though he supports the original intent of the ordinance. 

"We were making a statement at the time that we didn't want any
				 				 					 					 					 				 				 				 					 					 				
nuclear weapons traveling through the city of Hayward," he said. 

Whether or not the signs actually worked, city officials probably 
never will know. 

"We probably wouldn't be told, and only less so today," said City 
Manager Jesus Armas. 

The ordinance, which established the placement of signs on city 
streets and ordered city staff to notify the federal government 
accordingly, would not have included freeways and state roadways 
such as Mission and Foothill boulevards. 

Nor is anyone quite sure how many of the signs, which thieves 
have removed over the years and kept as souvenirs, are 
leftstanding. 

"We don't keep an inventory of them," Armas said. 

The establishment of the signs was just one part of the 
13-section city ordinance that laid out the city's official 
position on nuclear policy. 

The City Council, in a work session this evening, is scheduled to 
discuss Ward's proposal to change the ordinance so the signs can 
be removed. 

"It's not intended to be a big deal," Ward said Monday. 

The council spent two meetings in September 1987 discussing the 
ordinance. 

Armas, who was assistant city manager at the time, said the city 
adapted a standard "nuclear free" ordinance. 

Nearly 14 years after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the 
ordinance still expresses the city's support for an 
American-Soviet nuclear freeze and an end to the arms race. 

It also states that the city must not do business with nuclear 
weapons contractors. 

And, in the event of a nuclear war, the city should not have to 
waste its money or property for the purpose of civil defense, the 
ordinance states. 

Councilman Matt "Mateo" Jimenez, now in his sixth council term, 
remembers "one of the liberal organizations in town" promoted the 
ordinance, but he does not remember which one. 

Jimenez was the only member of the council to vote against the 
ordinance in 1987, and he still thinks it was a bad idea. 

"They're unnecessary," Jimenez said of the signs. "The city was 
saturated with them at the time." 

-In other business today, the City Council is scheduled to resume 
discussion of a proposed amendment to the city's 2002 campaign 
finance law. Under the present law, donors can legally exceed the 
contribution cap by sending multiple donations to a single 
candidate from different business entities. A provision proposed 
by some council members would prohibit these so-called 
"aggregate" donations, making it impossible for different 
entities within the same parent company to exceed the limit. 

The work session meeting, during which no votes are taken, begins 
at 5:30 p.m. The regular City Council meeting, which normally is 
held at 8 p.m. Tuesdays, has been canceled.                                 
				 				 			   		 		 		

© 2005 ANG Newspapers 							 							 							 							 						
*****************************************************************
 19 RedNova News: INL Eyes Plutonium for Powering Spacecraft
 
IDAHO FALLS, Idaho (AP) -- The Idaho National Laboratory is
waiting for a green light to begin producing plutonium that
would supply battery power for NASA spacecraft. 

Later this month the Department of Energy is expected to release
an environmental study on a plan to consolidate plutonium-238
production across the nation at the Idaho site. 

The project has other applications besides providing voltage on
the far side of Mercury. The batteries could run surveillance
equipment in more remote - but still earthly - locations where
access may be limited for long periods of time. 

Also this summer, the INL will hear whether the Naval Reactors
Facility will be selected to design and eventually manufacturing
small nuclear reactors that could propel spacecraft - not just
supply on-board electricity. 

The manned mission to Mars may even be in Idaho's future, said
Harold McFarlane, an INL deputy associate laboratory director,
at a news conference last week. 	 

The changes are coming quickly after the Columbus, Ohio-based
Battelle Energy Alliance took over operations at the Idaho
National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory in February. 

Battelle was awarded the 10-year, $4.8 billion contract in 2004
when the organization outbid Bechtel and three other bidders. 

Battelle's first priority has been to combine the INL and
Argonne laboratory programs into a world-class nuclear energy
research and development effort. The site is designated as the
government's lead institution for nuclear energy research. 

Meanwhile, the INL is attracting other programs to eastern
Idaho. The Center for Space Research is a university-organized
group that will be affiliated with INL and its new Center for
Advanced Energy Studies. 

And the Department of Energy also wants to move its plutonium
pellet manufacturing program from Los Alamos, Calif., to INL
into a proposed $200 million-plus facility. 

Planning for the new programs have raised local concerns about
the potential for exposure to plutonium-238 and nuclear waste
materials. 

The Centers for Disease Control found elevated levels of
plutonium around the Los Alamos laboratory and in non-employees
living nearby. 

John Kotek, deputy manager of the DOE-Idaho office, said the
department is looking at those incidents. 

"We think this is well within our experience to operate safely,"
Kotek said. 

But in addition to health risks, Jeremy Maxand, executive
director of the Snake River Alliance, a watchdog group, is
concerned about the missions from a national security
perspective. 

He said plutonium is still available from Russia for use in
non-national security missions, he said. But if the INL produces
it for military use, it could become a target. 

"People in Idaho do not want the site tied to these missions,"
Maxand said. 

Â© 2002-2005 RedNova.com. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
 20 Las Vegas SUN: Bush Pushes Congress to Pass Energy Bill

Today: June 15, 2005 at 13:17:03 PDT 

 By NEDRA PICKLER ASSOCIATED PRESS 

WASHINGTON (AP) - 

President Bush argued Wednesday that consumers paying high gas
prices won't stand for inaction on energy legislation, even
though some lawmakers say nothing they can do would immediately
ease the problem. 

"My advice is, they ought to keep this in mind: Summer's here,
temperatures are rising and tempers will really rise if Congress
doesn't pass an energy bill," said Bush, who pressured lawmakers
to get an energy bill to his desk before the August recess. 

"The American people know that an energy bill will not change
the price of gas immediately," he said, "but they're not going
to tolerate inaction in Washington as they watch the underlying
problems grow worse." 

The president outlined his four-point plan to reduce high energy
prices: Promote conservation; produce and refine more crude oil
in the United States; develop alternative sources of energy,
such as renewable ethanol or biodiesel; and help other nations,
such as China, to become more energy-efficient to reduce global
demand for energy. He said it was time for the United States to
expand its nuclear power capacity. 

"Today, millions of American families and small businesses are
hurting because of high gas prices," Bush said at a forum on
energy efficiency. "If you're trying to meet a payroll or trying
to meet a family budget, even small increases at the pump have a
big impact on your bottom line." 

He said the nation must take action now to address the root
causes of rising gasoline prices. 

"The primary cause of rising gasoline prices is that the global
demand for oil is growing faster than global supply," Bush said.
"Here in America we've become too dependent - too dependent - on
the increasingly limited supply of foreign oil for our energy
needs." 

Last year net oil imports averaged nearly 11.9 million barrels a
day or 58 percent of the crude oil consumed, according to the
Energy Information Administration, which projects imports to
total 68 percent of consumption by 2025 under current
conditions. 

The Senate is immersed in what likely will be at least two weeks
of debate over energy policy, with much of the rhetoric focused
on the need to reduce the country's dependence on imported oil. 

Lawmakers have acknowledged that the bill would do little to
ensure reductions in oil imports, which accounted for nearly 58
percent of the crude oil used during the first three months of
this year. 

*****************************************************************
 21 TheDay.com: Contamination Added To Pentagon Subpoena

, New London, CT
 		 		 		
Thursday, Jun 16, 2005   								   									 										
												 												 												 										 										
Blumenthal: DOD documents contain major discrepancies

  State Attorney General Richard Blumenthal  

By JUDY BENSON
Health/Science/Environment Reporter
Published on 6/15/2005

The subpoena of Department of Defense documents relating to its
recommendation to close the Naval Submarine Base in Groton has
been expanded to include current information about assessments
of radiological contamination levels at the base, home to a
fleet of nuclear-powered submarines.

 U.S. Sens. Joseph I. Lieberman, D-Conn., and Susan Collins,
R-Maine, both of whom issued the original subpoena June 7, added
radiation documents to the list at the urging of Attorney
General Richard Blumenthal, Lieberman spokeswoman Leslie
Phillips said Tuesday.

 It's more than a legitimate concern, Phillips said. 

The subpoena calls for the Pentagon to turn over as soon as
possible all documents pertaining to the most recent
recommendations for base closures. Some of the information has
been released, but more is awaited by state and local officials
seeking to find flaws in the recommendation's assumptions and
craft arguments to keep the base open. 

In a June 10 letter to Lieberman and Collins, Blumenthal said he
has found significant discrepancies in the Defense Department's
calculations of how much it could save by closing the Groton
base. The costs of remediating radiological waste on the base
were not factored in, Blumenthal said, and these must be
incurred if the base were to be closed. The true costs of
cleanup and closure, he said, could provide a powerful argument
for keeping the base open. 

The Defense Department's failure to consider such costs
fundamentally undermines and calls into serious question its
decision to include the Groton base on its base closure list,
the attorney general wrote. 

The Navy has estimated it will spend about $24 million to clean
up remaining hazardous waste at the base, mostly soils
contaminated with toxic chemicals, regardless of whether it
remains open.

 The base, named in 1990 to the federal Superfund list of the
country's most polluted sites, has been partially cleaned, but
Blumenthal argued that a 1994 agreement obligates the Navy to
restore the base to a much higher standard if the base is
closed. 

The agreement, reached under requirements of Superfund laws, is
among the Navy, the state and the federal Environmental
Protection Agency and is unique to Connecticut, Blumenthal said.
He said he will take the Navy to court to enforce the agreement
if necessary. The base, he added, would be required to meet the
same strict standards for radiation cleanup as would be required
of any industrial or residential site in the state.

 """

 Christopher Zendan, public affairs officer for the base,
reiterated previous Navy statements that it is eager to
cooperate with requests for information from state and local
officials, and has been making information available as soon as
possible. The Navy maintains its position that concerns about
radiation contamination of the base and Thames River sediments
are unwarranted, Zendan added. 

He referred to a previously published statement on the issue by
Adm. Mark Kenny, a Navy rear admiral and commander of Submarine
Group Two and Navy Region Northeast. In it, Kenny states there
is no evidence of any radiological contamination at the base at
levels that would be harmful to people, animals or the
environment. 

Blumenthal, however, quoted Navy documents from around the time
the last comprehensive radiological assessment was completed, in
1997, to buttress his argument. The assessment was based on data
collected in 1993 and 1994, and the Navy revealed that (this)
assessment was only cursory, he said. 

The Navy admitted that if the base were to be closed,
significant radioactive waste assessments  studies that would
take years to complete  would be required to determine the
extent of the radioactive contamination that may exist at the
base, the attorney general wrote. Such assessments would not
be required if the base remained open. 

His letter quotes portions of statements made by Navy officials
in which they acknowledge that if the base was closed,
significant testing would be needed to determine the extent of
radiological contamination. 

Blumenthal characterized the Navy's statements as striking
admissions from the base closure recommendation. He also said
the Navy's comments reveal that the Defense Department used
erroneous assumptions in placing the Groton base on the
closure list. 

He told Lieberman and Collins that all documents about radiation
at the base should be made available as soon as possible and
before the state's presentation to the Defense Base Closure and
Realignment Commission on July 6 in Boston. 

John C. Markowicz, who heads the local group working to save the
base, said the Subase Realignment Coalition welcomes
Blumenthal's efforts. 

The issues he's raised are valid, he said. 

[The Day Publishing Co.]                                                              
*****************************************************************
 22 [NukeNet] Nukes in, Cash Out in Softened G8 Climate Text
 
Date: Wed, 15 Jun 2005 21:12:28 -0700

 
<x-flowed>
NukeNet Anti-Nuclear Network (nukenet@energyjustice.net)


   Greatest Threat To Life On Earth:
http://www.heatisonline.org



http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/politics/politics-group-climate.html

Nukes in, Cash Out in Softened G8 Climate Text
   a..              E-Mail This
   b.. Printer-Friendly



By REUTERS
Published: June 15, 2005
Filed at 2:59 p.m. ET

LONDON (Reuters) - A new draft communique on
climate change for next month's Group of Eight
summit has removed plans to fund research and put
into question top scientists' warnings that global
warming is already under way.

Skip to next paragraph
The text seen by Reuters, titled Gleneagles Plan
of Action and dated June 14, has been watered down
from a previous draft which itself had no specific
targets or timetables for action.

The latest draft also explicitly endorses the use
of ``zero-carbon'' nuclear power -- another
development that will dismay many
environmentalists three weeks before the summit of
the world's eight richest nations at Gleneagles in
Scotland.

``The text is getting weaker and weaker. There are
no targets, no timetables, no standards -- and
even the money is gone,'' a source close to the
negotiations told Reuters on condition of
anonymity.

``You are looking at a very, very serious problem
for Blair,'' the source added.

Prime Minister Tony Blair has pledged to put the
fight against climate change at the heart of
Britain's year-long presidency of the G8. He
visited three G8 leaders in two days this week to
drum up support for his priorities.

The leaders of the G8 and major developing nations
South Africa, Brazil, India, Mexico and China will
meet at the heavily guarded Gleneagles countryside
hotel, 40 miles northwest of the Scottish capital
Edinburgh, from July 6-8.

But the United States, questioning the scientific
basis for global warming, refuses to sign up to
the Kyoto Protocol that finally came into force in
February aimed cutting emissions of carbon dioxide
(CO2).

The new draft starkly illustrates the weakening
process that has gone on in just six weeks.

An introductory paragraph has moved the statement
``our world is warming'' into square brackets and
has given the same treatment to a statement from
the world's top scientists that climate change is
already under way and demands urgent action.

RESEARCH FUNDING DISAPPEARS

All references in a draft dated May 3 to
unspecified dollar funds for research and
development into new, clean technology and fuels
have been excised from the latest version.

References in the May 3 draft to ``setting
ambitious targets and timetables'' for cutting
carbon emissions from buildings has completely
disappeared from the June 14 text.

Even a suggestion that the developed world has a
duty of leadership in combatting global warming is
given the square bracket brush off.

A section on managing the impacts of climate
change which previously talked about global
warming happening and bringing with it more
floods, droughts, crop failures and rising sea
levels now contains just one reference to the
global crisis.

And even that is in square brackets, indicating
that there is deep disagreement over its
inclusion.

Scientists have warned that the planet could warm
by at least two degrees centigrade this century,
bringing with it more gales and floods and rising
sea levels, threatening coastal communities and
disrupting food supplies.

Most also agree that the change is already
happening, is due in part to human activities like
burning coal and oil, and will continue for some
time whatever is done now.

But President Bush and his scientific advisers
question the scope and scale of the problem and do
not agree that people are a serious contributor to
it.


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*****************************************************************
 23 NewsFromRussia.Com: Russian atomic chief heads for talks in Washington
 
 12:14 2005-06-15

 Russia's atomic energy chief was heading to Washington
Wednesday for talks on nuclear security and stopping the spread
of nuclear materials, the Russian nuclear agency said. 

Alexander Rumyantsev was expected to meet with U.S. Energy
Secretary Samuel Bodman, the Federal Atomic Energy Agency said
in a statement. 

The two officials were slated to meet under the auspices of the
Russian-U.S. High-Confidence Group, a committee set up during
the Slovakia summit in February at which presidents George W.
Bushand Vladimir Putinembraced new measures to combat nuclear
terrorism and better safeguard atomic weapons arsenals. 

Washington wants to increase security at Russian research
facilities and other sites where radioactive materials are
stored, but the effort has been stymied by disputes over
contractors and funding and Moscow's wariness about U.S. access
to sensitive sites. 

Last month, during a trip to Moscow, Bodman said the two nations
had made "good progress" in cooperating on nuclear security. 

The U.S. secretary also said that the two countries were close
to agreement on a program to use plutonium from nuclear weapons
to make a fuel called MOX, which has been held up by a dispute
over liability of American contractors. 

AP

On the photo: Alexander Rumyantsev
  
  Copyright ©1999 by "Pravda.RU". When reproducing our materials
*****************************************************************
 24 [NukeNet] Hope Creaky still Leaky; shuts down again; groups
 
Date: Wed, 15 Jun 2005 15:15:44 -0700

 
<x-flowed>
NukeNet Anti-Nuclear Network (nukenet@energyjustice.net)

(UNPLUG Salem opposes the PSEG-Exelon merger)

Interesting that PSEG workers have joined the coalition opposing the
merger.

norm

Display all headersDate: Tue, 14 Jun 2005 12:09:58 -0400
Reply-To: Joseph Malherek <jmalherek@CITIZEN.ORG>
From: Joseph Malherek <jmalherek@CITIZEN.ORG>
Subject: [CMEP] Public interest groups join labor union to oppose utility
mega-merger
To: CMEP@LISTSERVER.CITIZEN.ORG

*** P R E S S    R E L E A S E ***

June 13, 2005

Growing Coalition Opposing Exelon-PSEG Merger Launching Grassroots
Lobbying Campaign To Call For Public Hearings

Nation's Largest Union, SEIU, and PSE&G Workers Join Forces with
Consumer Groups to "Fight the Power Grab"

TRENTON, NJ (June 13, 2005) - The nation's largest labor union, Service
Employees International Union (SEIU) announced today that it will join
forces with a growing consumer coalition opposing the proposed buy-out
of PSEG by Exelon Corporation of Chicago.  The groups announced the
launch today of "Fight the Power Grab," a grassroots lobbying campaign
to call for open and accountable public hearings by state and federal
regulators on the proposed merger.

SEIU, with 28,000 members in the state, and Utility Workers Union of
America (UWUA) Local 601, which represents 1,350 PSE&G workers, are
teaming up with a consumer coalition led by Public Citizen, NJ PIRG Law
and Policy Center, and NJ Citizen Action to oppose the proposed merger
and call for open hearings.

"We want to pull the plug on the Exelon-PSEG merger to protect our
member consumers from higher energy costs," said Kevin Brown, President
of SEIU NJ State Council. "SEIU is prepared to aggressively pursue our
goal of open and accountable hearings and reliable and affordable energy
for New Jersey residents."

"With energy prices seeming to rise almost every day, New Jersey can
ill-afford to subsidize the kind of sweetheart deals that corporate
executives reap from giant mergers and acquisitions especially when,
like this one, there is still no evidence of actual, substantive
benefits for ratepayers," said Phyllis Salowe-Kaye, New Jersey Citizen
Action's Executive Director.  "This PSE&G buy-out is a bad deal for any
consumer who has to pay an electric bill, from the person who wants to
turn their lights on at home to our small business owners and our
largest industries --and should be rejected at FERC and by the BPU."

The coalition is launching a grassroots advocacy campaign that will
include:

* lobbying of elected officials at the state and federal level,
including the gubernatorial candidates;
* outreach and education to community members and state
organizations;
* display and online advertising -- display ads ran today in the
Newark Star-Ledger and the Trenton Times sponsored by SEIU;
* direct mail;
* statewide phone-banking operations;
* a new website -- www.FightthePowerGrab.org;
* statewide e-mail campaigns calling on the New Jersey Board of
Public Utilities (NJBPU) and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission
(FERC) to hold open and accountable hearings and reliable and affordable
energy for New Jersey residents; and
* legal intervention in NJ Board of Public Utility proceedings.

The groups released letters today to the New Jersey congressional
delegation and Senators outlining their opposition to the merger and
urging the elected officials to weigh in with the regulatory agencies
and call for hearings.

"New Jersey's consumers shouldn't buy Exelon's deal to create the
largest, most powerful energy company in the nation. If Exelon is
allowed to swallow up PSEG, they will have a stranglehold over
electricity prices in the region, leading to higher rates for New Jersey
consumers.  As the voice of New Jersey's electricity consumers, the
state Board of Public Utilities should reject Exelon's proposal," said
Dena Mottola, Executive Director of NJPIRG Law and Policy Center.

FERC will announce by the end of June whether or not it will hold
hearings on the merger.  Exelon has pressured regulators to waive a full
hearing to expedite closing the $12 billion deal.  NJBPU has put out a
schedule for hearings later this summer.   There is a hearing June 22 by
the NJBPU to decide whether or not the companies will be forced to
demonstrate a positive benefit to state consumers from the deal.  The
groups are urging the NJBPU to reject the merger if the companies do not
demonstrate a positive benefit for state consumers.

Exelon and PSEG executives met privately with all four Federal Energy
Regulatory Commission (FERC) Commissioners in January of this year, just
after the companies publically announced their intent to merge in
December 2004. These secret meetings call into question the ability of
FERC's unelected government officials to provide sufficient independent
oversight and protect the public interest.

"The public is forced to speculate about the content and impact of
these secret meetings because the conversations are not part of the
public record," said Tyson Slocum, Research Director of Public Citizen's
Energy Program. "While the CEOs enjoy private access to government
decisionmakers, the public isn't yet assured that FERC will even hold a
public hearing. We are here to remind FERC that their first obligation
is to serve the public-and not to simply rubber stamp requests by
well-connected corporations."

BACKGROUND FOR REPORTERS

New Jersey Citizen Action is the state's largest independent citizen
watchdog coalition representing 60,000 family members and more than 100
affiliated labor, tenant, senior citizen, faith-based, environmental and
community organizations.  NJCA works to protect and expand the rights of
individuals and families, and to ensure that government officials
respond to the needs of people rather than the interests of those with
money and power. (www.njcitizenaction.org)

Public Citizen is a nonprofit, nonpartisan consumer rights organization
based in Washington, DC with over 17,000 dues-paying individual members
in Illinois, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Our Energy Program does
extensive work at the federal and state levels to promote energy
policies that best protect consumers.  (www.citizen.org)

New Jersey PIRG is a non-profit public interest advocacy organization
representing with over 26,000 New Jersey residents. NJPIRG's mission is
to deliver persistent, result-oriented public interest activism that
protects our environment, encourages a fair, sustainable economy, and
fosters responsive, democratic government.  We uncover threats to public
health and well-being and fight to end them, using the time-tested tools
of investigative research, media exposés, grassroots organizing,
advocacy and litigation. (www.njpirg.org)

The 1.8 million-member Service Employees International Union (SEIU) is
the nation's largest and fastest growing union.  Its 28,000 members in
New Jersey are city and municipal workers, interns and residents at
hospitals, janitors, homecare workers, nursing home workers, and the
workers at Parsons who conduct the annual inspections of cars for the
state of NJ.  (www.seiunj.org)

Utility Workers Union of America (UWUA) Local 601 represents 1,350
PSE&G workers, as well as employees of NJ Transit. (www.Local601.org)

**********
To SUBSCRIBE to the CMEP ListServ, visit
https://www.citizen.org/email/enteremail.cfm

If you would like to be removed from the CMEP ListServ, send an email to
listserv@listserver.citizen.org
with the words "unsubscribe CMEP" in the message.

Questions about the CMEP ListServ can be directed to
CMEP-request@LISTSERVER.CITIZEN.ORG.

To learn more about this and other Public Citizen Critical Mass Energy and
Environment Program campaigns,
visit our website at http://www.citizen.org/cmep/

-Public Citizen's Critical Mass Energy and Environment Program


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June 15, 2005


Hope Creek restarts only to spring another leak


By JEROME MONTES Staff Writer, (856) 794-5115

The Hope Creek nuclear reactor began restart procedures Monday, nearly one
week after a radioactive leak shut it down.

On Tuesday, it sprang another leak, forcing yet another shutdown.

Neil Sheehan, a spokesman for the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission,
said Tuesday the latest leak originated from a "main steam isolation valve
packing leak-off line" and contained very low amounts of radiation that
posed no threat to employees or the public.

But federal officials say this is the fourth time since October that a
leak has caused an unplanned shutdown, and the second in as many weeks.

The latest leak sprang from an isolation valve in a "packing area" -
similar to a nut on a garden hose - in the reactor's steam lines.

Steam from Hope Creek's boiling water reactor is used to power the
facility's turbine, which generates electricity. The isolation valves are
in place to ensure that the highly pressurized steam can be isolated
within the lines in case of an emergency.

A spokesman for the Public Service Enterprise Group, which owns Hope Creek
and two other reactors at the Salem Nuclear Generating Station, said the
problem would be solved by eliminating an outmoded leak-off line
associated with the valve.

No precise timetable was given for the current shutdown, although Sheehan
estimated the shutdown would be brief.

Sheehan said a June 7 shutdown had been caused by a malfunctioning
indicator that controlled a valve on the reactor's residual heat removal
system. He said the problem had been solved without any major
complications.

But the leak came one day before a public meeting at which the NRC
discussed its safety assessment of the Salem station.

The 292-acre facility contains three of New Jersey's four nuclear reactors
and is under heightened federal scrutiny for equipment problems,
operational mishaps and work environment issues.

At the meeting, NRC officials said the Salem station was making slow
progress, but that the June 7 leak indicated the facility still faced
performance problems. The NRC also criticized PSEG for its dismissal of
eight employees without referring the actions to the facility's executive
review board.

Kymn Harvin, the facility's former organizational manager, has said PSEG
terminated her for raising safety concerns. The NRC concluded Harvin's
termination was not retaliatory, but she has filed a whistleblower lawsuit
against PSEG in a New Jersey court.

The executive review board was created to ensure any future personnel
actions would not be retaliatory.

Newark-based PSEG is in the midst of a merger with Chicago-based Exelon
that, if approved, would place all four of New Jersey's nuclear reactors
in the hands of one entity. Exelon, which is currently providing
management services at the Salem station, operates Ocean County's Oyster
Creek nuclear reactor through a subsidiary.

To e-mail Jerome Montes at The Press:

JMontes@pressofac.com

-- 
Coalition for Peace and Justice
UNPLUG Salem Campaign; 321 Barr Ave, Linwood
NJ 08221; 609-601-8583; cell 609-742-0982
ncohen12@comcast.net; http://www.unplugsalem.org
http://www.coalitionforpeaceandjustice.org

"A time comes when silence is betrayal.
Even when pressed by the demands of
inner truth, men do not easily assume
the task of opposing their government's
policy, especially in time of war.
Nor does the human spirit move without
  great difficulty against all the apathy
of conformist thought, within one's own
bosom and in the surrounding world."

- Martin Luther King Jr.



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*****************************************************************
 25 KR: Environmental concerns generate new interest in nuclear power

      Posted on Wed, Jun. 15, 2005  
   
By James Kuhnhenn and Seth Borenstein

 Knight Ridder Newspapers

WASHINGTON - Three Mile Island. Chernobyl. Yucca Mountain. For 
the past 25 years, a nuclear industry already saddled with 
prohibitive costs and radioactive waste struggled in the face of 
the worst fears about nuclear power. 

	But the atom is rebounding. 

	The Senate this week is debating energy legislation that
includes tax incentives, loan guarantees and federal liability
protection for new reactors. The Senate bill also would
authorize $1.3 billion for cutting-edge nuclear-hydrogen
projects. 

        An industry saddled with high reactor-construction costs 
and expensive disposal of nuclear waste now is inching toward 
competitiveness as a cleaner, though still distrusted, 
alternative to coal as the electric-power source of the future. 

        No less a skeptic than Senate Democratic Leader Harry 
Reid, D-Nev., this week touted the pro-nuke provisions before 
Congress. "You're going to see a movement toward nuclear power," 
he said. "If it's done right, we believe it will protect the 
environment." 

        Even a handful of environmentalists - a group that long 
viewed fission with suspicion - say they could tolerate new 
nuclear power because it doesn't cause global warming, the top 
environmental problem to many. 

        "Climate change is such a serious issue ... that we have 
to examine all low-carbon and especially zero-carbon solutions," 
said Judi Greenwald of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, 
an environmentalist think tank. 

        Yes, after almost 30 years of cooling interest, nuclear 
is getting hot. But it may never reach critical mass. 

        Wall Street, which has to finance new multibillion-dollar 
reactors, hasn't joined the nuclear chorus. Bankers and investors 
want to see something built first, creating a chicken-and-an-egg 
scenario, says one top economist who studies nuclear-power 
finance. 

        "There's a lot of focus on Congress and what Congress 
wants to do and the subsidies," said Geoff Rothwell, an economist 
at Stanford University who's advised the Department of Energy on 
nuclear-power economics. "But it all depends on Wall Street and 
whether or not Wall Street wants to be involved in financing 
nuclear power. At this point they're not interested." 

        Or, as Jason Grumet, the executive director of the 
bipartisan National Commission on Energy Policy, said: "The 
interest in nuclear power is necessary, but not sufficient to 
rejuvenate the industry." 

        Still, "the momentum gained in the past six or eight 
months is palpable," said Mike Wallace, the president of 
Constellation Generation, which has 34 power plants, including 
five nuclear ones. The industry's spending in new nuclear 
planning "is at a level we haven't seen in 25 years." 

        Wallace acknowledged that Wall Street isn't willing to 
risk financing nuclear projects that could be caught up in 
regulatory delays. That's why federal aid is needed to build the 
first three or four plants to demonstrate nuclear's new 
feasibility, he said. 

	Nuclear is climbing out of a deep hole. 

        The partial meltdown of a reactor at Three Mile Island in 
Pennsylvania in 1979 resulted in tighter government regulations 
but transformed the public's abstract apprehension into real 
fear. The 1986 accident in Chernobyl, Ukraine, which killed 30 
people, forced massive evacuations and left a legacy of thyroid 
cancer among its survivors, turned fear of nuclear-plant 
disasters into horror. 

        Over the past two decades, however, reactor technology 
has improved, global warming has emerged as the most profound 
environmental worry and the energy industry has realized that 
coal, which accounts for 52 percent of electricity production in 
this country, would require expensive technology to reduce 
pollution. 

        "It really doesn't make a lot of sense to be building 
just conventional coal plants if that commits us to 30, 40 years 
of high emissions or, alternatively, to very high costs of fixing 
that," said M. Granger Morgan, head of the Engineering and Public 
Policy Department at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. 

        That's not to say Congress is backing away from coal. The 
House of Representatives' version of energy legislation, which 
already passed, would authorize $200 million annually over five 
years to develop "clean coal" technologies. The Senate bill has a 
similar provision. 

        The House bill provides $8.1 billion over 11 years in 
energy-related tax cuts for producers and consumers. The Senate 
bill would double that amount and sets a goal of reducing U.S. 
demand for oil by 1 million barrels a day. Overall, the Senate 
bill would cost nearly $36 billion over the next five years. 
Final legislation will face its toughest test when the House and 
Senate reconcile their bills. 

        Next week, senators will vote on a key amendment by Sens. 
John McCain, R-Ariz., and Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn. They aim to 
reduce greenhouse gases by placing strict limits on 
carbon-dioxide emissions. A similar amendment failed in 2003, but 
McCain and Lieberman have sweetened the pot by adding a series of 
subsidies for clean fuels, especially for nuclear power. 

        "Nuclear has to be part of any equation that would 
significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions," McCain said. "I'm 
all for wind, solar, tide, biomass, all those things, but they 
don't have - at least in this stage of development - that 
significant an impact on our energy needs." 

        Reid, once an ardent foe of nuclear power, now says it's 
time to consider the benefits of nuclear power. Reid's opposition 
was based on the government's desire to store nuclear waste 
beneath Nevada's Yucca Mountain. Reid, like most Nevadans, had no 
desire to make his state a burial ground for spent but still 
radioactive nuclear fuel. 

        But the Yucca Mountain proposal has been set back by the 
discovery of U.S. Geological Survey e-mails that suggest some 
documents related to the site were falsified. And a federal 
appeals court rejected anti-radiation plans for the storage 
facility, delaying its completion until at least 2012. 

        "Yucca Mountain certainly isn't dead, but it's on a 
breathing machine," Reid said. He thinks each nuclear plant will 
have to develop the capability to store waste on site 
indefinitely. 

	Still, not everyone is jumping on the nuclear bandwagon. 

        Many environmentalists and some members of Congress 
believe the no-fault insurance coverage the federal government 
provides to the nuclear industry amounts to an unfair and 
expensive subsidy. Others aren't as satisfied about the fate of 
nuclear waste. 

        "Why aren't we putting more money into research, into 
safety processing?" asked Sen. Richard Durbin of Illinois, the 
second-ranking Democratic leader in the Senate. "That is the most 
hopeful way to deal with nuclear waste. If there is a way to 
reprocess that waste without leading to the proliferation of 
nuclear weapons, that's the answer to our prayers." 

        No electrical utility has built a nuclear plant in the 
United States since the 1970s. Right now, 104 plants operate at 
near full capacity. Experts predict that more plants will be 
required if nuclear is to sustain its 20 percent share of U.S. 
electricity production. The Department of Energy predicts that, 
with increasing demand for electricity, nuclear power will 
account for only 14 percent of electrical power production by 
2025. 

        "Just to continue to provide 20 percent of our U.S. 
electrical supply, we will need to build 50 new 1,000-megawatt 
nuclear plants between today and 2030," said Bruce Josten, the 
top lobbyist for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and head of a 
business coalition monitoring energy legislation. "We're not 
talking about increasing nuclear, we're just looking at projected 
demand." 

*****************************************************************
 26 JOURNAL NEWS: Voluntary Indian Point closing sought
 
By GREG CLARY
 
• The county has two options: Condemn the site and take over
operations until the plant closes or negotiate a voluntary
shutdown with Indian Point's owner.
• Depending on the option, federal, state and county taxpayers
would foot the bill, ranging from $500 million to about $3
billion.
• Biggest positive effect of closing the plant would be the
improved health of Hudson River fisheries, locally as well as
out of the area.
• Closing before 2015 could raise electricity costs in the short
term.
• The Buchanan site would be a good location to build another
power generation plant from scratch.

(Original publication: June 15, 2005)
 

WHITE PLAINS — Westchester officials will try to negotiate with
the owners of Indian Point to voluntarily close the nuclear
power plants by 2015, after a yearlong study released yesterday
said a county takeover of the operation would be too risky and
expensive.

The study estimated it would cost nearly $3 billion for the
county to take the site through eminent domain and run the
operation until it could be closed.

"Based on this report, the county is certainly not going to
consider condemnation," County Executive Andrew Spano said at a
news conference at the Westchester County Center.

"It's too expensive, and there's no way we can ask the people of
Westchester County to go through that," Spano said. "We
certainly don't want to be in the energy business. ... It's not
our business."

Last May, when Spano commissioned the study by Levitan
&Associates of Boston, the idea of the county's running the
plants in Buchanan was a possibility.

Officials from Entergy Nuclear Northeast, the plants' owner,
yesterday said the plants were not for sale but were glad the
study showed how valuable the asset was, to the company and as a
source of local electricity.

Though it took 13 months instead of the expected five months to
finish, the report leaves much of the decommissioning decision
to Entergy.

Spano said he would call top Entergy officials in a matter of
days to begin working on what county officials called a
"consensual agreement to retire Indian Point voluntarily."
County officials said they hoped to head off the company's
application for federal permits to operate at the site through
2035.

"We're going to use a carrot-and-stick approach," Spano said.
"The voluntary option ... is certainly viable. There's enough
time to do it. It just amounts to having some goodwill on the
part of many different people."

The carrot would be between $500 million and $1.4 billion, paid
with county, state and federal tax dollars to Entergy as
compensation for a voluntary shutdown.

Under that scenario, the disposal of nuclear waste still would
be Entergy's responsibility.

The report also estimated Entergy could save about $1 billion in
relicensing costs, a number the company disputes.

The stick is the county's continued petitioning of the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission to change the way the agency renews
nuclear plants' licenses, in the hope of making relicensing a
difficult enough venture that Entergy might want to sell and
walk away.

One key question is whether the plants would have to spend about
$1 billion to build new cooling towers, which the county
believes is required for renewal, but Entergy officials said has
not been established.

The company's licenses to operate Indian Point 2 and Indian
Point 3 run out in 2013 and 2015, respectively.

The company has not said if it will seek another 20-year
operating license for each unit when the 40-year permits expire.
Indian Point 1 was deactivated in 1974.

Spano said the county just learned from the NRC that its
petition had been accepted for public comment, a step he called
important.

A top NRC regulations official, however, called the acceptance
routine. The earliest something would be decided on such a
request for rule changes would be 2 1/2 years, according to
Michael Lesar, chief of the NRC's rules and directives branch in
Maryland. Lesar said acceptance of the petition doesn't indicate
anything about whether it would be approved or rejected.

Jim Steets, an Entergy spokesman, said the company would listen
to Spano's overtures, but added that officials were surprised at
his interest in negotiating a deal after publicly and
relentlessly campaigning for Indian Point's shutdown.

"Despite the fact that the county executive hasn't exactly
created the best foundation for negotiations, we'll take his
call and be glad to speak to him," Steets said. "He's been
adversarial. It seems he's been more attentive to the political
implications associated with operating Indian Point than he has
to the importance of it."

Steets said the plants provide between 20 and 40 percent of the
electricity used in New York City and Westchester.

In case of a closing before 2015, local utility bills for an
average home in Westchester County could rise between $1.50 and
$2 per month because of increased price pressure from lower
supplies of energy, he said.

County Legislator Rob Astorino, Spano's Republican opponent in
November's county executive election, said in a statement that
the county shouldn't have spent taxpayer money to find out
something that was obvious.

"I don't understand why Andy Spano needed an outside consultant
to tell him it would cost the county billions of dollars to go
into the energy business," Astorino said. "What's more, I don't
know why he had to wait for the Levitan report to agree that the
county lacks the expertise to either run or decommission a
nuclear power plant."

The 225-page study, according to county Republicans, cost
$543,000, but Spano's staff estimated the price tag between
$400,000 and $500,000.

Rockland County Executive C. Scott Vanderhoef said he would like
to see the nuclear plants close as soon as possible and the 18
percent of Rockland County's power that they supply come from
other suppliers, specifically upstate hydroelectrical plants.

"We have for a long time believed that alternative production of
electricity ought to replace nuclear energy for the region, and
specifically for Rockland County," Vanderhoef said. "So we
support Andy in his efforts in Westchester to get Entergy to
work with him to voluntarily close the plant early."

Some of the area's congressional representatives agreed with
Spano's strategy.

"The Indian Point nuclear facility could never be built on that
site today, among a population of some 20 million people," said
Rep. Eliot Engel, D-Bronx. "In this age of terror, it is a
natural target for those who seek to destroy our way of life.
Indian Point should be closed. Its energy can be replaced by
another type of generating facility at that site."

Rep. Nita Lowey, D-Harrison, who secured $1 million in federal
money for a National Academy of Sciences study on how to replace
Indian Point's power if the plants close, said the Levitan study
helped quantify the local options. The NAS study has not been
completed.

"The county is absolutely right to search for solutions to this
dilemma, and the report from Levitan provides us with data we
can use to plan for the plant's closure," Lowey said.

- - -914-694-9300 - -

  Copyright 2005 The Journal News, . Inc. newspaper serving
Westchester, Rockland and Putnam Counties in New York.
*****************************************************************
 27 Prague Daily Monitor: Temelin to be disconnected from grid due to fault - 

THURSDAY 16 JUNE                                                                          
    
CESKE BUDEJOVICE (PDM staff with CTK) 15 June - The Temelin
nuclear power plant was to disconnect its first reactor from the
grid yesterday, due to a fault in the generator cooling system
in the non-nuclear part of the plant, Temelin spokesman Milan
Nebesar told CTK yesterday. 

The second reactor has been shut down since early April for a
three month standard check that will include the replacement of
about a quarter of the fuel. 

"We will have to make arrangements to assure an uninterrupted
supply of electricity in the country," said Nebesar. 

The reactor's output will first be reduced to about 30 percent
and then will then be disconnected. 

It will be possible to see what the problem is only after the
system is completely cool. 
CTK news edited by the staff of the Prague Daily Monitor, a
          
  <The New Presence - The Prague Journal of Central European
Affairs>  

*****************************************************************
 28 ITAR-TASS: IAEA begins safety inspection of Rovno NPP in Ukraine

15.06.2005, 12.38

LVOV, June 15 (Itar-Tass) - An expert brigade of the
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) begins on Wednesday a
safety check of the Rovno nuclear power plant in Ukraine. 

The information centre of the Rovno NPP told Itar-Tass the
inspection’s aim is to verify the compliance of the exploitation
level of the NPP, which is the closest to the Western Europe
frontiers, with international requirements. 

The history of the NPP business cooperation with the IAEA began
in 1988. Then the Rovno NPP was the first in the USSR to undergo
an international experts examination. 

During the years of Ukraine’s independence two out of the
country’s four operating NPPs have already been inspected,
including the Rovno NPP. 

Two years ago, 11 experts from eight countries conducted a
complex inspection of the NPP in such spheres as exploitation,
organisation of management, technical support, training of
personnel, technical maintenance, repairs, chemical regime,
radiation protection and emergency prevention work. 

By the results of the two-year inspection, during which a number
of remarks were made, the current one is conducted to check the
implementation of these IAEA recommendations and remarks. 

The IAEA expert group’s inspection of the Rovno NPP will last
till June 20. 

© ITAR-TASS. All rights reserved. You undertake not to copy,
*****************************************************************
 29 Newsday.com: Hope Creek nuclear plant shuts down because of another leak

New York City - AP New Jersey
 
June 15, 2005, 10:17 AM EDT

LOWER ALLOWAYS CREEK, N.J. --    For the second time in a week, 
the Hope Creek nuclear power plant was shut down due to a steam 
leak. 

Officials had restarted the Salem County plant on Monday after 
fixing a similar leak found June 7. The plant was not yet running 
at full speed when a new leak was discovered on a steam isolation 
valve leak-off line, causing the plant to be shut down Tuesday, 
said Diane Screnci, a spokeswoman for the federal Nuclear 
Regulatory Commission. 

Screnci said the public was never in danger because of the leak. 

Inspectors will be looking for the causes of the leak and to
make sure similar pieces of equipment are in good shape. She
said the plant will not restart until repairs are made. 

The shutdown at the plant was the fourth in the past year due to
steam leaks. 

The most serious steam leak was discovered elsewhere in the
plant in late 2004, causing a 3{-month shutdown. 

The Hope Creek plant is one of three nuclear reactors, along
with Salem 1 and 2, that PSEG Nuclear operates at a complex in
along the Delaware River. 

The company is part of Newark-based Public Service Enterprise
Group Inc., which is merging with Chicago-based Exelon Corp.
Exelon has said that it can make money by making the Salem
nuclear plants more efficient. 

Activists have called for the Hope Creek plant to be shut down
permanently _ or at least for major repairs to be made before it
reopens. 

	 	 
Copyright © 2005, The Associated Press     
*****************************************************************
 30 AU ABC: Nuclear power industry enjoying revival

7.30 Report - 15/06/2005: 

Australian Broadcasting Corporation 7.30 Report
 
TV PROGRAM TRANSCRIPT 
LOCATION: http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2005/s1393155.htm 
Broadcast: 15/06/2005 

Reporter: Jonathan Harley
   
  
KERRY O'BRIEN: It seemed the debate about whether Australia
should embrace nuclear power was an argument lost and gone
forever in the '70s and early '80s. But then came the spectre of
climate change and the nuclear power industry appears to be
enjoying something of a revival. There are mounting calls - the
latest of them from New South Wales Labor Premier Bob Carr - for
Australia to have a serious debate about whether nuclear power
is the greenhouse-friendly answer to Australia's energy needs.
But does Australia have the appetite for such a debate and could
a country that can't even bite the bullet on a site for a
limited nuclear waste dump, ever stomach the prospect of a
number of nuclear power plants? Jonathan Harley reports on an
old issue made new. 

JONATHAN HARLEY: We've become energy addicts, and our fuel
frenzy shows no signs of slowing. World energy demands are set
to rocket by a staggering 50 per cent over the next 20 years.
Most of that powered by fossil fuels. 

DR GERT LEIPOLD, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, INTERNATIONAL GREENPEACE:
Climate change is such a threat that we need to think
collectively: what can we do, what do we have to do in order to
avoid it? 

JONATHAN HARLEY: If not for a crippling drought, plunging dam
levels and tightening city water restrictions, Australians might
have remained oblivious to the potential effects of climate
change. 

BOB CARR, NSW PREMIER: This drought gives us a taste of what a
hotter world would be like. 

JONATHAN HARLEY: And around the world, the climate change
warnings have put nuclear power with its comparatively low
carbon emissions back on the agenda. 

IAN HORE-LACY, URANIUM INFORMATION CENTRE: If we take CO2
emissions seriously, we really have nowhere else to go. 

JONATHAN HARLEY: In Australia the debate might have been
assigned to the dusty political diaries of the 1970s, if not for
the prompting of New South Wales Premier Bob Carr. 

BOB CARR: Solar, wind, hydrogen continue to be frustratingly far
off. And I just think it should not be beyond the wit of
humanity to design nuclear power plants that consume their own
waste. 

JONATHAN HARLEY: It certainly sparked a reaction and the nuclear
band wagon has hit the road. 

IAN MACFARLANE, RESOURCES MINISTER: There is a wind of change
blowing and the wind of change is that if we sit down
unemotionally and look at nuclear power, it is a safe, clean
form of energy. 

JONATHAN HARLEY: Who knows how far this debate will travel, but
it's certain to centre on some well-worn arguments. 

DR HELEN CALDICOTT, ANTI-NUCLEAR CAMPAIGNER: We're sitting on a
disaster waiting to happen and when it does, that's the end of
nuclear power and it's the end of uranium mining. 

DR ALAN BAXTER, GENERAL ATOMICS, USA: It's a debate that can
quickly degenerate into hardened attitudes and name calling. 

ANTHONY ALBANESE, SHADOW ENVIRONMENT MINISTER: The problem is
that the proponents of nuclear energy haven't been able to put
up solutions to the intractable problems which are there. 

JONATHAN HARLEY: Must Australia choose between its fear of a
hotter, drier future and its wariness about the safety of
nuclear power? BOB CARR: We're getting very close to that
average 2 degree rise in global temperatures at which dangerous
things begin happening around the world, and I don't see another
source. 

JONATHAN HARLEY: For Australia with its mountains of cheap
supply, in the energy stakes, coal is king. And without the
spectre of climate change, there would be no debate. A
coal-fired or gas power plant is much cheaper than the around $2
billion price tag attached to a sizeable nuclear power plant. 

IAN MACFARLANE: Well, in terms of its cost relative to coal,
it's currently about half as much again, maybe even double as
base load coal. 

JONATHAN HARLEY: Base load power means non-stop, round-the-clock
electricity on a major scale, and even backers of nuclear power
believe it's a long way from competing with coal. 

IAN MACFARLANE: It needs to be understood that nuclear energy
probably isn't an option here for something like 25 years. 

JONATHAN HARLEY: That might seem like a long time, but the
nuclear industry may need 25 years to update from these reactors
to its so-called Generation IV series. 

DR ALAN BAXTER: The new ones will be reactors that can operate
at very high temperature, without any fuel failure, that under
no conditions can you have a core meltdown, under no conditions
can you release radiation to the environment. 

JONATHAN HARLEY: It's a big claim. Nuclear engineer Alan Baxter
works for US-based General Atomics, owners of Beverley, one of
Australia's three operating uranium mines. 

DR ALAN BAXTER: As an engineer, I'd enjoy building a reactor in
this country but you're the people who have to decide whether
you prefer to go that way or if you have current energy sources.
I mean, yeah, I would love to see one but that's from an
engineering standpoint. It's a political decision you have to
make. 

JONATHAN HARLEY: But the politics might just make the
engineering look straightforward. Long before fears about
climate change, nuclear power was championed as the answer to
powering the planet. 

DR ALAN BAXTER: It started off, everybody felt it was THE way to
generate energy and energy at low cost. In fact one of the words
was too cheap to meter. 

JONATHAN HARLEY: But cost blow-outs, mounting public concern
about radioactive waste disposal and the horrors of Chernobyl
made nuclear power politically taboo in many countries. 

DR HELEN CALDICOTT: Well, nuclear power is a medical
catastrophe, absolute catastrophe. 

GERT LIEPOLD: Let's make no mistake - people don't want a
nuclear power station in their backyard. 

JONATHAN HARLEY: Long-time anti-nuclear campaigners like Helen
Caldicott and Gert Liepold, head of the world's most powerful
environment organisation, Greenpeace, believed that politicians
were losing their appetite for nuclear power. 

GERT LIEPOLD: If you take the real cost, if you take all the
subsidies, if you take the government funding, if you take into
account that the waste problem is largely unresolved and the
cost of it is not accounted for, then I think you could safely
say that nuclear power has not worked out economically. 

DR HELEN CALDICOTT: To reduce the production of CO2 by 50 per
cent, you would need to build 3,000 nuclear power plants in the
near future. That's absolutely impossible. 

IAN HORE-LACY: The overall cost comparisons around the world
stack up very well. It is competitive in most countries,
expensive capital wise, but it's very cheap to run. 

JONATHAN HARLEY: Today, 444 nuclear reactors dot the globe, most
of them in North America and Europe. But the significant growth
is on Australia's doorstep, especially China and India . Both
countries are in an economic hurry. India is building eight
reactors in addition to its existing 14 plants. Currently, China
has 10 reactors, and an astoundingly ambitious target. 

IAN HORE-LACY: China will be particularly important in a world
context, because they've set themselves a target of a five-fold
increase in nuclear capacity by 2020 and they look set to
achieve that. 

JONATHAN HARLEY: And that makes any global nuclear power debate
very relevant to us right now, because Australian uranium goes
all around the world. 

IAN MACFARLANE: Providing the treaties and safeguard agreements
are put in place, Australia's uranium industry could double and
perhaps double again. The reality is that if China expands to
the degree that we're expecting, they would take all our current
exports. 

DR HELEN CALDICOTT: It's hypocritical. We are like opium pushers
and we say, "Well, we've gotta do it, otherwise the guy up the
street will do it." You don't do evil things to make money. 

JONATHAN HARLEY: BHP Billiton's freshly signed takeover of WMC
Resources delivers it South Australia's Olympic dam uranium mine
just as it's set to massively expand. When, as expected, that
goes ahead, it will become the biggest uranium mine in the
world, and making Australia one of the primary uranium
suppliers. 

IAN MACFARLANE: If we don't supply that uranium, then it will
come from other countries, and some of those countries will have
none of the guidelines and none of the safeguards we've put in
place with our exports. 

JONATHAN HARLEY: For something which was kick-started by a Labor
Premier, the nuclear debate runs the risk of dividing his own
party. The passions it inspires were on view at the weekend's
State Labor conference and for now, Labor policy remains
unchanged. 

ANTHONY ALBANESE: There is a tension there. I think that's a
legitimate point that people have made, but the Labor Party has
always said that we don't support new mining of uranium. 

BOB CARR: Forget whatever policy conundrums it presents to one
side of Australian politics. This is far bigger. This is about
the melting of the polar ice caps and what options we've got to
arrest a very strong current towards global warming. 

JONATHAN HARLEY: And somewhere beyond coal and nuclear energy
lies the uncertainty of how we will power the planet in an age
of climate change. Or whether we will just run out of time.   

*****************************************************************
 31 AU ABC: Britain leaving nuclear options open
 
PM - Wednesday, 15 June , 2005  18:44:41
 
Reporter: Rafael Epstein

 MARK COLVIN: The pro and anti nuclear energy camps draw
different lessons from the nuclear experience in countries like
Britain. 

The UK faces a dilemma. One fifth of its power comes from
nuclear plants but all bar one are due to close in the next
decade. 

Britain has just 12 months to decide whether it will build new
nuclear plants, an option that the Blair Labour Government is
leaving open.

Rafael Epstein reports. 

RAFAEL EPSTEIN: Britain has endured the nuclear debate for
decades and a government white paper has very deliberately left
the issue of nuclear power open.

The Blair Government is determined to make an impact on climate
change. Britain went some way towards meeting its Kyoto
greenhouse reduction targets on the back of a switch in power
generation from oil to natural gas. But it's not enough, and now
the Government appears to be preparing the public to embrace
more nuclear power stations. 

John Loughhead is from the UK's Energy Research Centre. 

JOHN LOUGHHEAD: The main dilemma is that today 22 per cent of
the electricity consumed in the UK comes from its nuclear power
stations and over the next 15 years all but one of those will
need to be closed because they will have come to the end of
their engineering design life and so it's not considered safe to
continue operating them, like you wouldn't drive around in an
old car.

And if we look at when we're going to take the existing plants
out of service, those decisions have got to be made within the
next year or so at the most.

RAFAEL EPSTEIN: The issue is hampered now by problems at one of
Britain's best-known nuclear facilities, Sellafield in Scotland.
The plant was used to make the nuclear material used in
Britain's weapons arsenal. 

Currently the focus is on a reprocessing facility that was
supposed to make money out of one of the industry's biggest
problems, disposing of spent fuel. But it emerged recently that
an internal leak in the plant went unnoticed for eight months. 

Twenty-two tonnes of dissolved uranium and plutonium seeped
unmonitored into the internal workings of the plant and the
hundreds of millions of dollars needed to clean it up could see
the plant closed down. 

Anti nuclear campaigners hope the latest problem will kill the
idea of revamping nuclear power.

PM spoke to the local anti nuclear campaigner, Martin Forwood,
as he stood at the Sellafield complex after a day long tour of
the facility. 

MARTIN FORWOOD: I think the experience we've had here is we've
had 50 years of failure, if you like, in that it has never lived
up to the reputation that it was first born with and of course
the famous quote that goes with that is, "electricity too cheap
to meter". 

Consequently we've found out that in fact it is pretty much more
expensive than the other four energy forms we have at the
moment, especially when you take into account the cost of
dealing with the fuel from those reactors, the nuclear waste and
so on.

RAFAEL EPSTEIN: You're standing outside the Sellafield plant
now. 

MARTIN FORWOOD: Right.

RAFAEL EPSTEIN: You've just been in there for about eight hours
to see for yourself the results of the internal leak at that
reprocessing plant. 

MARTIN FORWOOD: It has always been a lame duck unless you put it
out of its misery now.

RAFAEL EPSTEIN: Do you think the British people are ready for
the building of more nuclear power plants? It looks to some as
though the Government's preparing the ground to replace the
plants that are winding down with new ones.

MARTIN FORWOOD: There's no doubt that the nuclear industry would
like to go down that line and all the opinion polls in the last
few months have shown that people in the UK are not in favour of
new nuclear power. They would rather try some of the other
renewable energy sources, the clean, self-sustaining energy
sources. 

They take too long to build. I think the earliest date we're
likely to get new power stations, if that's what the Government
decides, is about 2020. Well, that's far too late in terms of
meeting, for example, the 2010 or even the 2020 Kyoto targets.
We just can't do it. We've got to do something else.

RAFAEL EPSTEIN: Green campaigners say nuclear power is too
expensive and too dangerous and the answer is alternative forms
of renewable energy and a reduction in energy use. 

John Loughhead says new energy sources and a reduction in demand
are both unlikely. Costs, on the other hand, he says, depend on
who you talk to. 

JOHN LOUGHHEAD: Nuclear power traditionally has been subject to
a lot of analysis looking at all of these consequences of
clean-up and everything else and it is right that we should do
that. However, if you're going to do that for nuclear power, we
need to make sure that we apply the same criteria to the other
forms of power.

So, for instance, for coal power-fired power stations should we
be including the cost of closing and maintaining safe coalmines?
Should we be including the cost of paying the health benefits of
people who've suffered as a result of working in coalmines?

MARK COLVIN: We'll leave that story for now because of a major
breaking story tonight.   
*****************************************************************
 32 ITAR-TASS: RosAtom, US Energy Dept prepare report on nuclear security

15.06.2005, 04.43

MOSCOW, June 15 (Itar-Tass) - Alexander Rumyantsev, Head of
Russia's Federal Atomic Energy Agency (RosAtom), leaves for
Washington by air on Wednesday to attend a session of the
Russian-US High-Confidence Group (HCG), a RosAtom official has
told Itar-Tass. On the US side, the session will be attended by
Secretary of Energy Samuel W. Bodman, the official specified. 

In keeping with the arrangement made between Moscow and
Washington at the summit in Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia,
in February, "The Co-Chairs of the HCG (Rumyantsev and Bodman)
are to present a report to the Presidents of Russia and the US
by July 1 about cooperation on nuclear security and
non-proliferation of nuclear materials." Subsequently, the
Co-Chairs of the HCG have been assigned to inform Vladimir Putin
and George W. Bush on those matters on a regular basis," the
RosAtom official said. 

President Bush appointed Bodman to the post of US Secretary of
Energy at the beginning of 2005. Bodman superseded Spencer
Abraham. The RosAtom official pointed out that cooperation
between the RosAtom and the US Department of Energy (USDE) on
nuclear security and non-proliferaiton, when the USDE was headed
by Spencer Abraham, "underwent a certain development and
resulted in the signing of a number of treaties and contracts
that contribute to building mutual confidence in the field of
nuclear security". 

Bodman and Rumyantsev first met a week ago when Bodman was in
Moscow on an official visit, holding talks with a number of
Russian government ministries and agencies, including the
Foreign Ministry and RosAtom. "The preparation of a document on
the state of cooperation between Russia and the US on nuclear
security and non-proliferation was one of subjects of discussion
during the meeting in Moscow," the RosAtom official emphasised. 

© ITAR-TASS. All rights reserved. You undertake not to copy,
*****************************************************************
 33 [du-list] [downwinders] National groups say sick-worker rules
 
Date: Wed, 15 Jun 2005 15:15:24 -0700

 
<x-flowed>

   ----- Original Message -----
   From: easlavin@aol.com
   To: downwinders@yahoogroups.com
   Cc: hermit@downwinders.org
   Sent: Sunday, June 12, 2005 9:03 AM
   Subject: [downwinders] National groups say sick-worker rules fall short 
- Joe Walker


   Dear J:
   Thank you for what you do.  You, the downwinders, the sick wrokers and I 
all told Congress and the controlling nuclear weapons plant DOE-crats they 
were wrong.
   Congress would not listen.  The DOE and contractor controllers and 
manipulators want to silence workers and downwinders and bribe them, 
depriving them of their right to fair heairngs and justice.. Reviewing the 
five year old documents below, the rightness of our cause is clear.  The 
simian sellouts like former United States Senator Fred Dalton Thompson who 
pushed CONpensation should hang their heads in shame.  The draft reform 
bill that we wrote -- with help from downwinders and sick workers and 
advocates around the country -- would have banned dose reconstruction, risk 
analysis and other DOE-sponsored delusions, preservinv the Seventh 
Amendment right to jury trials, repealing the Federal Tort Claims Act 
loopholes adopted at the behest of the nuclear weapons complex.

   What a sick society that won't even discuss how it poisoned its own 
farmers, ranchers, citizens and workers and presumes to throw a few measly 
dollars in thier lap.  The news media has ignored these crimes.  The DOJ 
refuses to prosecute.

   Thank you for steadfastly standing up to the folly of CONpensation 
schemes -- your principled views stand in sharp repose to the efforts of 
those martinet, authoritarian, hierarchical Marie Antoinettes who would 
still say, "let them eat cake!"  Let's take our country back from these 
goons.  Won't someone in Congress show the courage to be inner-directed 
instead of DOE-controlled?

   We shall overcome.

   Wiht kindest regards,
   Ed Slavin
   Box 3084
   St. Augustine, FL 32085-3084
   (904) 471-7023
   (904) 471-9918 (fax)

   Click here: Victim's Testimonies
   Click here: http://www.downwinders.org/slavinhtml.htm
   Click here: http://www.downwinders.org/edhouse_final2.htm
   www.nnwj.com   PRESS started in the 80's fighting for the truth about 
sick and dying workers.. Many victims have been active for a long 
time..When everyone stands together than the victims will win..

   In a message dated 6/11/05 12:24:40 PM Eastern Daylight Time, 
hermit@downwinders.org writes:


     WE WILL NOT BE FOOLED AGAIN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

     WE WILL NOT SUPPORT BEING MADE A PART OF THIS, MADE BEHOLDING TO 
ITS  RULES AND REGULATIONS AND MODELING OF OUR SUFFERING INTO THESE 
"PC"  PROCESSES OF DOSE RECONSTRUCTION, RISK ANALYSIS, OR PROBABILITY OF 
CAUSATION!




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*****************************************************************
 34 [du-list] Message not to speak out sick workers...
 
Date: Wed, 15 Jun 2005 15:15:50 -0700

 
<x-flowed>
Sick workers will never stop talking..
Who ever said the DOE/contractors will not fight sick workers claims.  At 
my state compensation hearing today the attorney for the contractors at the 
Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion plant  locate in Piketon, Ohio show up with 
reports of news clips he got from the computer. On top was the letter that 
PRESS sign on with Alliance for Nuclear Accountability May 24, 2005..Also 
clips from Initiative for Social Action and Renewal in Eurasia. Central 
Ohioans for Peace . Web site for www.nnwj.com, Citizen for safe water 
Around Badger, USEC/DOE meeting Dec 3, 2004, Military Toxic Project, Haw 
Eye Newspaper and a few other groups..Is this the way the DOL / DOE will 
fight sick and dying workers claims? He never said anything about how the 
Portsmouth plant had admitted they made us sick with Plutonium and other 
hazards chemicals. The people that sent this attorney didn't care if I
  have been sick just mad at me for telling the truth about the Piketon 
site and other site around the world.
.We will up date you when we hear the out come of this meeting.. I though 
the attorney made a fool of himself for those that made us sick and want to 
help the sick and dying workers.
It is time for workers to come together with victims and stop the 
madness..I feel this was another threat to me and my family to teach me a 
lesson for speaking out and getting sick..If need me in the next few days 
call 740-357-8916 and leave a message.




[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]






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*****************************************************************
 35 [progchat_action] Fw: IDAHO COULD BE HUB FOR SPACE PLUTONIUM
 
Date: Thu, 16 Jun 2005 00:07:49 -0500 (CDT)

 
----- Original Message ----- From: Global Network To: Global Network
Sent: Monday, June 13, 2005 12:30 PM Subject: IDAHO COULD BE HUB
FOR SPACE PLUTONIUM WORK

Idaho could be hub for plutonium, space work

By KATHLEEN O'NEIL http://www.postregister.com/ June 11, 2005

Idaho National Laboratory is poised to become a hub for plutonium
production and space-related nuclear projects.

The Department of Energy is expected to release an environmental
study later this month that evaluates a plan to consolidate
plutonium-238 production and  manufacture it into batteries at its
Idaho site. The batteries would be used  to power NASA space crafts
as well as for national security uses like running surveillance
equipment in remote locations.

In addition, INL's Naval Reactors Facility could soon begin designing
and eventually manufacturing nuclear reactors to power space missions
that  need more energy than the batteries could provide. That would
probably include a manned mission to Mars.

A decision on whether the INL would help design those reactors, and
whether  the NRF would be home to the work will be made this summer,
said Harold McFarlane, an INL deputy associate laboratory director,
at a press briefing Friday.

Idaho Falls also will soon house the Center for Space Research, a
university-organized center that will be affiliated with INL and
its new  Center for Advanced Energy Studies.

The INL already became home to the final step of the plutonium
battery production, the assembly of the batteries, in early 2004.
The DOE wants to again produce the isotope, which it discontinued
making in the mid-1980s,  in  INL's Advanced Test Reactor.

It is the only reactor still operating that is large enough to do
so, McFarlane said.

DOE also wants move the isolation of the plutonium and its manufacture
into pellets that would be encased in corrosion and heat-proof metal
from Los Alamos to INL into a proposed $200 million-plus facility.

Consolidating the steps done at other DOE sites would mean material
wouldn't be transported across the country, reducing safety and
security concerns, said John Kotek, deputy manager of the DOE-Idaho
office.

However, DOE is now also proposing to build a second, smaller
plutonium-238 production facility at its Oak Ridge, Tenn., laboratory.
That site was originally proposed to be home to the consolidated
plutonium work before the DOE changed course two years ago and
decided to put it in Idaho.

At public hearings in Idaho Falls this spring, residents raised
concerns about generating new waste, as well as the possibility of
releases of plutonium-238.

That type of plutonium has an 80-year half life, much shorter  than
plutonium-239, which is used in nuclear bombs.

But that makes it much more reactive, which is why it makes a good
heat source for power. Its high radioactivity also makes it more
dangerous if  inhaled -- the particles can become lodged in lungs.

Employees were accidentally exposed to plutonium on three different
occasions at Los Alamos. The Centers for Disease Control found
elevated  levels of plutonium around the lab and in nonworkers
living nearby.

Kotek said the DOE is looking at those incidents and would learn
from them.

"We think this is well within our experience to operate safely,"
he said.

In addition to health risks, Jeremy Maxand, executive director of
the Snake River Alliance, a watchdog group, is also concerned about
the national security component. Plutonium is still available from
Russia for use in  non-national security missions, he said.

"The INL is going to become a military facility," if it begins
making plutonium and reactors for national security missions, Maxand
said.   "People  in Idaho do not want the site tied to these
missions."

Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space PO Box 652
Brunswick, ME 04011 (207) 729-0517 (207) 319-2017 (Cell phone)
globalnet@mindspring.com http://www.space4peace.org
http://space4peace.blogspot.com (Our blog)
*****************************************************************
 36 DailyBulletin.com: Norco contaminant tests to move inside

Article Published: Tuesday, June 14, 2005 - 5:52:24
 		   	 	
NORCO - After high levels of contaminants were detected in the 
ground outside, air inside a home at the corner of Hillside 
Avenue and Third Street will now be tested.

 Soil samples outside the house and in its crawl space showed 
high levels of trichloroethylene, a cancer-causing industrial 
solvent the state believes has migrated from the former Hillside 
site of Wyle Laboratories Inc.

 Traces of TCE and perchlorate, a chemical used in rocket fuels, 
were found in mid-October in a water sample from a private well 
at the same residence. The well was used for irrigation, not 
drinking.

 Indoor air samples taken at three homes on Golden West Lane also 
detected low levels of TCE and benzene.

 Officials from the state Department of Toxic Substances said the 
air content from the three homes is typical of what's found in 
outdoor air for this part of the state.

 - Sue Doyle, (909) 483-9347 		   	 	
 		   			 		   	 	
        Copyright © 2005 Los Angeles Newspaper Group     
   
*****************************************************************
 37 Rutland Herald: Wall emitting radiation
 	 	 	 	
 June 15, 2005
 
By Susan SmallheerHerald Staff   
  			 
  This retaining wall between the Readsboro General Store and
the Deerfield River was built with concrete blocks from Yankee
Rowe nuclear power plant.

 Photo: VYTO STARINSKAS / RUTLAND HERALD                                                                                                                         

READSBORO — A 250-foot retaining wall behind the Readsboro
General Store was built with low-level radioactive concrete
blocks from the now-closed Yankee Rowe nuclear power plant.

Tests of the retaining wall, conducted in February by the
Vermont Department of Health about four years after it was
built, show it is contaminated with the radioactive isotope
tritium.

State and federal officials said, however, the wall poses no
health risk. The tritium has a half-life, or remains
radioactive, for 12.3 years.

The retaining wall was built along the West Branch of the
Deerfield River behind the store, located on Route 100.

It was built with 35 large, interlocking concrete blocks taken
from the reactor building of the nearby nuclear plant in Rowe,
Mass., about three miles from the small southern Vermont town of
Readsboro in Bennington County.

The blocks were once part of a concrete shield around the
reactor core.

The blocks were taken from the site — with the company's
permission — by an employee, Tom Dente of Readsboro, who owns
the Readsboro General Store with his wife, Brenda.

"It made a beautiful retaining wall; it was the cheapest thing I
could build," Dente said.

He has worked at Yankee Rowe for most of the past 20 years, the
last 13 years for a subcontractor at the plant in the shipping
department.

The reactor's owner, Yankee Atomic Electric Co., conducted
initial tests on the blocks in 1999 as part of a decommissioning
and demolition process that is only now almost complete. After
intensive sand-blasting and cleaning, tests used at the time
showed the blocks were free from radioactivity, according to the
company and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

More sensitive and detailed tests were done at the Rowe site in
2004, as the company wanted to crush the waste concrete and use
it as fill in the company's plan to return the reactor site to a
green field by the end of 2005.

The new tests surprised plant officials, they said, because this
time the tests showed the concrete contained tritium, a
byproduct of the nuclear fission process. Tritium, which is
water based, normally isn't absorbed by concrete.

Those tests at Yankee Rowe prompted the tests in February 2005
at the retaining wall in Readsboro.

Yankee Atomic spokeswoman Kelley Smith said the company has
asked the NRC for a waiver of federal regulations, which would
allow the wall to stay in Vermont, rather than be dismantled and
shipped to a low-level radioactive waste facility.

Smith said the company did not feel it had to release
information about the wall to the public because it did not pose
a health risk. If there was a danger, she said, the company
would have informed the public.

She said as far as she knew, the retaining wall was the only
case of recycled building material from the reactor building at
Yankee Rowe being released to the public.

NRC spokesman Neil Sheehan said the commission was investigating
whether the handling of the waste material was a violation of
federal policies.

"We are still looking at the situation to determine if any
enforcement action is warranted," he said. "If we did issue a
Notice of Violation for this, it would most likely be a
low-level one since there was no real safety significance."

The tests in Readsboro in February showed the wall was releasing
one millirem of radioactivity a year above normal background
levels of radioactivity exposure, which is estimated at 360
millirems a year, Sheehan said.

For comparison, a chest X-ray adds 20 millirems of radioactivity
a year to normal background levels; a cross-country airplane
ride adds 4 millirem.

A millirem is one-thousandth of a rem, which is a measure of
biological damage caused by radiation.

Dente said he learned of the concrete shield blocks sometime in
1999 and asked for permission to use them to build the retaining
wall behind his new store in Vermont.

Dente said Tuesday the blocks were cleaned, sandblasted and
screened for radioactivity by his employer before he had them
moved a couple of miles to his store in Vermont.

He said he didn't pay for the blocks, but paid for them to be
moved to his site and built into a wall.

Dente said he trusted Yankee Atomic and the people who worked
there, and he said he was confident the wall posed no health
problem to the public or to the river running behind his store.

"Yankee turned themselves in on the testing on the tritium," he
said. "The radiation protection people surveyed them. I think
they're on the up and up."

Tritium is water-soluble and poses a health risk only through
drinking water containing high levels of tritium, according to
both the company and the NRC.

Smith, Yankee Atomic's spokeswoman, said the company estimated
someone would have to eat 700 pounds of the concrete blocks to
receive a dangerous dose of tritium.

Sheehan of the NRC said the tritium contamination was uncovered
because of the NRC's "changing decommissioning expectations for
the plant."

"The federal government sets a standard that if the site is to
be released for unrestricted use following decommissioning, a
member of the public cannot be exposed to any more than 25
millirems per year from residual radioactivity at the facility,"
he said.

The state of Massachusetts, however, would like those levels for
Yankee Rowe to be lower, Sheehan said.

The company has been negotiating these levels with the state in
recent years.

"To demonstrate compliance with the new, lower levels, Yankee
Rowe recently tested the remaining shield blocks and other items
(at the Rowe site) at a more sensitive threshold," Sheehan said.
"That led to the realization that there was some tritium
contamination and that the blocks in Readsboro should be tested,
too."

Robert Stirewalt, programs and policy coordinator for the
Vermont Department of Health, said the state conducted water and
soil tests, as well as core sampling of the concrete blocks this
February.

He said the tests showed a safe level of radiation.

"One millirem does not pose a radiological health risk,"
Stirewalt said.

Jonathan Bloch, a Putney attorney who represents the Citizen
Awareness Network, an anti-nuclear group based near Yankee Rowe,
said he was not surprised about the tritium problem.

"We are of course outraged, but not surprised," he said. "This
material was put in a public place and the public was exposed to
it. What else is out there? Perhaps something more dangerous?
This happened in 1999 and they're telling us now?"

Bloch said that while the company, the state and the NRC all say
only 1 millirem of radioactivity is coming from the wall, any
increase is unnecessary.

"Why should this state be a dumping ground for Massachusetts's
radioactive waste?" Bloch said.

A spokeswoman for the Massachusetts Department of Health did not
return telephone calls asking for comment about the tritium
problem.

Yankee Atomic was owned by a consortium of New England
utilities, including Central Vermont Public Service Corp. The
consortium decided to shut down the reactor permanently in 1998
rather than fix problems related to aging.

Yankee Atomic has no financial connection to Vermont Yankee
reactor in Vernon, which is now owned by Entergy Nuclear of
Jackson, Miss.

Contact Susan Smallheer at susan.smallheer@rutlandherald.com.
   
© 2005 Rutland Herald
*****************************************************************
 38 Hawk Eye: IAAP workers eligible for settlement 

Wednesday, June 15, 2005 Site updated daily at 11 a.m. CST   
      
By AIMEE TABOR 

atabor@thehawkeye.com 

Iowa Army Ammunitions Plant nuclear weapons workers sickened by
radiation will be eligible for federal funding starting Sunday. 

Workers from the Middletown plant that have one of 22 specified
cancers automatically will be eligible for $150,000 plus medical
expenses and will be included in the Special Exposure Cohort.
The exact date of when they will receive the funding isn't
known. 

Sen. Tom Harkin, D–Iowa, be at the Mechanist Union Hall, 16452
U.S. 34 at 2:30 p.m. Saturday to mark the final step in the
compensation process for IAAP workers. Former IAAP workers and
advocates are expected to be at the event. 

"The workers at IAAP and their families devoted their lives to
our national security," Harkin said in a press release. "They
are the unsung heroes of the Cold War and it is past time that
we recognize their dedication and selfless contribution." 

Harkin's office will work with the U.S. Department of Labor to
get the compensation to the workers as quickly as possible, he
said. 

Workers at the St. Louis plant who went through the same process
first and were added to the Special Exposure Cohort, or SEC,
have yet to receive any money, although Harkin's office said
that the compensation is expected soon. 

A group of IAAP workers petitioned the government last year to
be included in the SEC of the Energy Employees Occupational
Illness Compensation Program Act so they could be eligible for
the funding. 

The employees may have been exposed to high doses of
carcinogenic radiation because the Atomic Energy Commission and
Department of Energy built and tested nuclear weapons components
at the plant from 1949 until 1974. 

There have been several plant workers who have become sick and
died over the past five years. 

Then in May, Department of Health and Human Services Secretary
Mike Leavitt approved compensation for the IAAP workers.
Leavitt's approval then went to Congress which had 30 days to
act. If nothing happened within that time period, it's
automatically approved, Harkin's office stated. 

The 30–day period will expire Sunday. 

Although federal lawmakers can still act on it today, they
didn't take any action on the St. Louis plant, which means that
was approved. 

The designation means IAAP workers won't be subjected to a
lengthy review to get the financial settlement. 

The SEC designation includes anyone who worked at least 250 days
in the nuclear program between March 1949 and 1975. Compensation
also is available for survivors of deceased workers.   
  
The Hawk Eye 800 S. Main St., Burlington, Iowa 52601 319-754-8461 
· 1-800-397-1708 · FAX 319-754-6824 · webmaster@thehawkeye.com
*****************************************************************
 39 Salt Lake Tribune: Conclusions elusive in U. thyroid study 

Article Last Updated: 06/15/2005 01:10:33 AM 

Funding to end: A researcher at the university says bureaucratic 
delays prevented a timely finish to the work 

By Greg Lavine The Salt Lake Tribune 

Participants in a University of Utah study examining a link 
between nuclear fallout and thyroid disease will learn whether 
they may need future medical treatment before the study shuts 
down later this summer. 

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention earlier 
this year decided to stop funding the $8 million study. The 
five-year project, which began in 1998, had received two 
extensions from the CDC and was designed to study some of the 
health consequences of above-ground nuclear testing in Nevada in 
the 1950s. 

Funding for the study officially ends Aug. 31, but 
researchers are low on funds and plan to lay off most staff by 
the end of this month, Joseph Lyons, a U. epidemiologist in 
charge of the project, said Tuesday. 

Researchers interviewed and tested about 1,700 people over 
the course of the study, falling short of their goal of about 
3,500. Lyon said it would have taken another two years to 
complete all the necessary examinations. 

Because only about half of the exams were completed, Lyon 
doubts he will be able to draw any solid conclusions on a link 
between radioactive iodine and thyroid disease. 

Study participants who may need medical treatment for thyroid 
conditions will be contacted before the program closes. "We've 
got to notify people because of their risk," Lyon said. 

Researchers used ultrasound to examine participants' 
thyroids. The tests sometimes revealed nodules, which in some 
cases can lead to disease. 

About 300 participants with nodules smaller than 1 centimeter 
will be asked to seek follow-up examinations with other 
physicians every six months to monitor any potential growth. 
Researchers performed biopsies on participants with nodules 
larger than 1 centimeter - results of which will be forwarded as 
test results are finished, Lyon said. 

Researchers focused on people living in southern Utah, as 
well as other parts of the West, and how exposure to radioactive 
iodine from nuclear testing in Nevada may have affected their 
thyroids. After iodine fell onto the ground, cows ate 
contaminated grass, which in turn contaminated milk. Children 
drinking milk from those cows may have had this iodine 
concentrate in their thyroids. 

The last field examinations took place in May in Phoenix. A 
similar excursion to St. George slated for this month was 
cancelled due to lack of funding. 

Utah Sens. Bob Bennett and Orrin Hatch earlier this year 
asked the CDC to continue funding the project, but CDC director 
Julie Gerberding responded in a letter that no further resources 
were available for the work. 

Lyon said bureaucratic delays prevented his staff from 
completing the necessary work in a timely manner. 

Bernadette Burden, a CDC spokeswoman, said Tuesday the agency 
has not changed its decision. 

glavine@sltrib.com 

Fallout study at a glance 

* Background: The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and 
Prevention ended funding for a University of Utah study that was 
examining a link between radioactive fallout and thyroid 
disease. While funding officially ends Aug. 31, most staff 
involved in the project will be laid off at the end of June. 

* What's next: In cases where researchers have detected 
potential or actual thyroid health problems, participants will 
be notified before the program ends so they can seek treatment. 

Â© Copyright 2005, The Salt Lake Tribune. 
*****************************************************************
 40 Dispatch: Taking aim at water study
 	 	 	 	 	 	
The Editor 

 Wednesday, June 15, 2005

 By Matt King 

Gilroy - California’s public health goal for perchlorate could
have doubled to 12 parts per billion had the state relied solely
on the findings of a National Academies of Science report that
will be used to set a federal drinking water standard, a
California environmental official said Tuesday.

Dr. George Alexeeff, a deputy director for the Office of
Environmental Health Hazards Assessment, said his agency took a
different view of the key study - the so-called Greer study -
cited in the NAS report and derived a lower benchmark dose,
which is used to measure risk exposure. 

The agency first set the health goal at 6 parts per billion last
year and reconfirmed it in April after reviewing the NAS report
that was published in January. The public health goal is
important because polluters must clean up to state standards,
even if federal standards are more relaxed.

The NAS report did not set a drinking water standard or health
goal, or advocate a policy position. The committee instead set a
reference dose, or the amount of perchlorate a 155-pound man
could ingest safely each day.

Depending on who’s doing the math, the reference dose translates
into a standard of as low as 1 part per billion, as argued by
environmental groups, or 24.5 part per billion, which, the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency said in February, is the level
that protects all humans, even pregnant women and babies, from
the thyroid damage attributed to perchlorate.

“Depending on the factors you use, you could come up with a
different water standard,” Alexeeff said. “In the National
Academies report, they concluded that there was no effect at the
lowest dose [in the Greer study]. In our report, we didn’t make
a conclusion one way or another.”

And the NAS conclusion has been criticized by public health
officials in the latest edition of the scientific journal
Environmental Health Perspectives. In the article, Dr. Gary
Ginsberg, a toxicologist with the Connecticut Department of
Public Health, and Dr. Deborah Rice, of the Maine Bureau of
Health, say that the Greer study is not sufficient to set a safe
dose because the NAS focused on only seven subjects who
displayed a wide range of responses to perchlorate.

The authors also say that the NAS committee should have
considered the contaminant’s initial observable effect on humans
- the inhibition of iodide uptake to the thyroid - to be
adverse, and they urge the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
to take another look at the study before adopting the NAS report
as the basis for a national water standard.

“I don’t think they properly identified the [effect level] from
this one particular study,” Ginsberg said in an interview. “You
can’t ask questions about risk, but you can ask whether or not
the [dose] has been set properly. Our review suggests that it
merits careful reconsideration because there are factors that
would tend to make it lower.”

Dr. Richard Corley, a staff scientist at the Pacific Northwest
National Laboratory in Washington state and a member of the NAS
committee, defended the report. He said there’s no evidence that
a disruption of iodide uptake of less than 75 percent is in
itself harmful, and resisted the suggestion that the committee
based its findings solely on the seven Greer subjects.

“The committee absolutely feels that the effect we’re looking at
is not adverse,” Corley said. “The results from Greer were not
taken in isolation. They were consistent with other studies on
humans, with ongoing studies. We were very careful. But any time
you have a single-number reference dose there are going to be
critics on both sides.”

Alexeeff stopped well short of criticizing the NAS report, but
he does agree that the seven subjects studied in Greer do not
make a particularly persuasive case and said that initial EPA
number, the drinking water equivalent level, or DWEL, is too
high for the most vulnerable populations.

“The problem is that there are only seven, and there’s a lot of
variation, so it’s not a very powerful point,” Alexeeff said.
“We don’t know how the EPA will come out, but if the [drinking
water standard] is equivalent to the DWEL, that means they
didn’t take into account body weight.”

The EPA has several complex formulas it uses to determine the
relative sources of contaminants, but it defaults to a ratio
that assumes 20 percent of contaminant comes through drinking
water, meaning a federal water standard based on the NAS report
could actually fall as low as 5 parts per billion. California
assumes that 60 percent of perchlorate comes from water.

But Ginsberg said the NAS reference dose, and in turn, the DWEL,
should be divided by a factor ranging from three to 10, and that
the DWEL should be in the range of 2.5 to 8 parts per billion.

“There’s a greater degree of uncertainty regarding human risks
than what the panel decided to attribute,” he said. “It’s a
professional judgment kind of call. I see a greater degree of
uncertainty.”

The EPA has placed perchlorate on its contaminant candidate
list, but it can not issue a national standard unless it
demonstrates that doing so will cause a significant reduction of
a public health threat. About 150 of the 3,000 sites monitored
by the EPA have tested for perchlorate at or above 4 parts per
billion. Those sites provide water for about 11 million people,
but there are substantially fewer sites that test at 10 or 20
parts per billion.

The final drinking water standard, or maximum contaminant level,
has huge impacts for the companies, most of them in the
aerospace and defense industries, who would have to clean their
sites of perchlorate to the level of a national standard.

California sites, however, are governed by state regulations,
meaning that each of the sites in this state must be cleaned to
at least 6 parts per billion or lower if the EPA’s final
standard is below 6. The state Department of Health Services is
in the process of setting a state drinking water standard. By
law, the standard can not fall below the health goal.

The Olin Corp., which is responsible for the 9.5-mile plume
flowing south and east of the company’s former road-flare
factory on Railroad Avenue in Morgan Hill, has been ordered by
the Central Coast Regional Water Resources Control Board to
clean that plume to background levels.

Matt King covers Santa Clara County for The Dispatch. He can be
reached at 847-7240 or mking@gilroydispatch.com.   

*****************************************************************
 41 KVOA: Pima County wants additional monitoring of ceramics plant's emissions

June 15, 2005   

  Elizabeth Vall Reports
 
Pima County is cracking down on a local ceramic company. At
issue is beryllium, a compound emitted from the Brush Ceramic
Products plant. 

Prolonged exposure to high amounts of beryllium has been shown
to cause lung cancer. 

The EPA says the company's premises is safe. Federal limitations
are 10 grams of beryllium per day. Brush Ceramics only emits one
gram per day. 

But, Pima County is now saying those EPA standards aren't good
enough. They want beryllium monitored not just on site, but in
the surrounding area. 

The plant is surrounded by six schools. 

The county wants the company to pay for air monitoring and soil
evaluation off site. 

Ursula Kramer with the Arizona Departmnt of Environmental
Quality, says, "All the data we've seen from the Brush company
indicate there is not a public health hazard. What we're doing
is collecting additional information to verify that." 

But, should the company be forced to pay for those additional
studies, when the EPA says they're safe? 

County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry is proposing the county
include these new monitoring and evaluation demands into the
permitting process for Brush Ceramics. 

Brush Ceramics says that may not be legal, however, they'll
cooperate any way they can.   

  
      All content © Copyright 2003 - 2005 WorldNow and KVOA. All
Rights Reserved.
*****************************************************************
 42 NRC: NRC Issues Final Environmental, Safety Reports for Proposed Enrichment Plant in New Mexico
 
News Release - 2005-09
U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION   
  Office of Public Affairs     Telephone: 301/415-8200   
  Washington, DC 20555-0001     E-mail: opa@nrc.gov  
  No. 05-092     June 15, 2005   
  

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has published its final
Environmental Impact Statement and Safety Evaluation Report for
the proposed gas centrifuge uranium enrichment plant to be built
in Lea County, N.M. The reports conclude that environmental
impacts would be small to moderate and can be mitigated, and
that the application meets the agencys health and safety
requirements. 

Louisiana Energy Services (LES) submitted its license
application for the facility, to be called the National
Enrichment Facility, on Dec. 12, 2003. The facility would enrich
uranium for use in fuel for commercial nuclear power reactors by
increasing the proportion of the U-235 isotope to as high as 5
percent by weight. 

The environmental and safety reports are the major NRC staff
reviews in the licensing process. Several contentions are still
before the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board, the NRCs
independent adjudicatory body, and the Commission expects to
complete the licensing review process in mid-2006. 

The NRC conducted two public meetings in Lea County to discuss
the environmental study: on March 4, 2004, to discuss the scope
of the review, and Oct. 14, 2004, to discuss the draft reports
findings. 

The Environmental Impact Statement concludes that impacts from
construction, operation and decommissioning of the plant would
be small to moderate and can be mitigated. It further concludes
there are no impacts that would preclude licensing the proposed
project. The report analyzed costs and benefits of the action
and alternative approaches (including the impacts of not
building the facility). Also discussed are LES alternatives for
waste management and the proposed facilitys likely impacts on
land use, historical and cultural resources, air quality,
geology, water resources, environmental justice, the local
economy, transportation, and public health and safety. 

The Safety Evaluation Report discusses the results of the NRCs
safety review in the following areas: radiation protection,
nuclear criticality safety, chemical process safety, fire
safety, emergency management, environmental protection,
decommissioning, management measures, materials control and
accountability and physical protection. 

The NRC is planning to conduct a public meeting in Lea County
this summer to provide an overview of the staffs safety review
and to address any public comments or questions relating to the
Safety Evaluation Report. Details of the meeting will be
announced separately. 

The Environmental Impact Statement and the Safety Evaluation
Report are available electronically on the NRCs Web site through
this page:
http://www.nrc.gov/materials/fuel-cycle-fac/lesfacility.html.   



  


 	Last revised Wednesday, June 15, 2005 	   
*****************************************************************
 43 Brush News Tribune: Last Chance landfill a step closer to accepting radioactive
waste

June 15, 2005 

Brush, CO

The three-state board that oversees radioactive waste disposal
OKed Clean Harbors Environmental Services proposal to handle
radium process waste at its Last Chance site.

 Approval from the Colorado Department of Public Health and
Environment is still pending.

 According to the Denver Post, Clean Harbors is anticipating the
shipments it proposes to accept will consist of 16,000 cubic
yards of low-level radioactive waste from a Denver Superfund
site that has been sending it waste to Idaho.

 Last weeks decision by the Rocky Mountain Low-Level Radioactive
Waste Board also opens the way for radium wastes to be shipped
to the Last Chance landfill from New Mexico and Nevada.

      © 1999-2005 Brush News Tribune &MediaNews Group, Inc.
*****************************************************************
 44 RGJ: House panel subpoenas Yucca worker
 
 [Reno Gazette-Journal]  [Reno Gazette-Journal]  June 15, 2005

By DOUG ABRAHMS 

reno gazette-journal 

WASHINGTON — A House committee subpoenaed a government scientist
on Tuesday for failing to cooperate with an investigation into
whether documents have been falsified relating to work in
building a nuclear-waste repository at Yucca Mountain. 

The House Government Reform Committee subpoenaed Joseph Hevesi,
an employee of the U.S. Geological Survey who worked on the
Yucca Mountain project in the late 1990s, to testify at a June
29 hearing. 

“He chose not to cooperate,” said Chad Bungard, a committee
spokesman. “We were left with no choice but to issue a
subpoena.” 

U.S. Rep. Jon Porter, R-Henderson, heads a Government Reform
subcommittee looking into whether the Energy Department or other
government agencies falsified documents to push the Yucca
Mountain project forward. 

E-mail among employees talks about falsifying records, but it
remains unclear whether that relates to quality-assurance work
or whether the science surrounding the nuclear waste dump is
suspect. The USGS inspector general also is investigating. 

Hevesi, who works in Sacramento, could not be reached for
comment. 

The USGS will not provide a lawyer to Hevesi or other staff
members summoned to testify before Porter’s subcommittee,
spokesman A.B. Wade said. Hevesi still works for USGS while the
inspector general’s office finishes a criminal probe of the
situation. 

The agency already has provided 2,878 pages to Porter’s
subcommittee, including a 4-inch-thick stack from Hevesi, Wade
said. 

“There is a huge desire (by USGS) to have the facts out there
about the validity of the science,” Wade said. 

Nevada lawmakers have been hoping this investigation would lead
to the end of the Energy Department’s quest to build Yucca
Mountain. The project has hit other setbacks, including an
adverse ruling by a federal appeals court and limited funding
from Congress. 

But Porter has had a hard time scheduling a hearing on Yucca
Mountain because USGS employees won’t testify. When Hevesi
testifies, he could invoke his right to not incriminate himself. 

“We’re just trying to get the information, and we’re having a
hard time,” the government reform committee’s Bungard said. 

© Copyright Reno Gazette-Journal
*****************************************************************
 45 Bradenton Herald: Lockheed considers funding Tallevast study

Posted on Wed, Jun. 15, 2005  
   
DONNA WRIGHT

 Herald Staff Writer

TALLEVAST - Lockheed Martin Corp. has agreed to consider funding 
a health risk study of Tallevast residents to help determine how 
their health may have been affected by an underground plume of 
industrial pollution. 

But officials representing the defense giant warned such a study 
cannot pinpoint with any certainty the cause of illnesses or 
medical conditions residents believe are related to the 
pollution. 

Those cause-and-effect answers, said Gail Rymer, Lockheed's 
director of corporate communications, can be determined only in 
front of a jury in a court of law. 

Rymer and other Lockheed officials, along with representatives 
from the Department of Environmental Protection, the Manatee 
County Health Department and Tetra Tech, met with Tallevast 
leaders Tuesday afternoon at Mount Tabor Missionary Baptist 
Church. 

Rymer and Bill Kutash, DEP's project manager for the Tallevast 
cleanup, stressed their desire to work with residents to answer 
all of their questions. Rymer promises full cooperation and 
transparency in every step of Lockheed's efforts to remedy the 
toxic plume. 

The pollution stems from the former Loral American Beryllium Co., 
which Lockheed acquired in 1996 in a corporate buyout. 

Because the pollution of potentially cancer-causing chemicals and 
solvents was discovered in 2000 under Lockheed's watch, the 
defense giant has taken the responsibility to clean up the mess. 

But that is as far as the company's responsibility goes, Rymer 
said before the meeting. 

Lockheed does not have responsibility for any health problems 
residents may have acquired due to past exposures, Rymer said. 

Tallevast leaders believe they do. 

"When Lockheed bought Loral American Beryllium, they bought us," 
said Laura Ward, president of Family Oriented Community United 
and Strong, an advocacy group representing Tallevast residents. 

"And that extends to taking responsibilities for health 
conditions as they exist today because of past exposures," Ward 
said after the meeting. 

FOCUS leaders agreed to work with Tim Varney, an independent 
consultant advising the community, to come up with a model to 
assess the current health status of the community as it stands 
today. 

FOCUS will then submit that plan to Lockheed for funding 
consideration. 

Varney said the study should be conducted by an independent third 
party and include residents' health histories, as well as data on 
illnesses and medical conditions recorded in Tallevast during the 
time period the Loral plant was in operation. 

The comprehensive community health assessment is the third piece 
of the puzzle that, when complete, will tell the story of how the 
contamination from the old beryllium plant affected residents, 
Varney said. 

Lockheed Martin has already agreed to complete the first part of 
the puzzle, an assessment that examines all soil, air and 
groundwater data to determine health risks currently posed by the 
plume and those that might occur in the future. 

Rymer said Lockheed will deliver a proposal on how that 
assessment will be conducted to DEP and Tallevast leaders within 
seven to 10 days. 

Any suggestions or input from FOCUS will be incorporated in the 
study's final design, Rymer said. 

Varney suggested that the model Lockheed Martin uses to get that 
information can look backward as well as forward in time to 
determine the plume's health and environmental risks. 

Together those three components - the forward projections of 
risk, the past projections of risk and the community health study 
- will help answer Tallevast residents' questions about their 
health status, Varney said. 

But he warned that even those combined studies won't provide the 
cause-and-effect data the community seeks because the science 
does not exist to do so. 

Rymer told FOCUS leaders that the plume does not pose any current 
health risks to residents. 

She also said that she believes Tallevast property values have 
not been adversely affected by the plume or pending cleanup, 
based upon her experience in other remediation projects elsewhere 
in the nation. 

If property values have declined it is because of the perception 
of a problem that doesn't really exist, Rymer said. 

"But perception is reality if I can't sell my house," countered 
Wanda Washington, vice president of FOCUS. 

Rymer said she wanted to address that issue with local Realtors 
to help remove any perceptions of problems that might be 
depressing values. 

Rep. Bill Galvano, who represents District 68 in the Florida 
House, attended Tuesday's meeting. 

Galvano, who has been involved in property condemnation in the 
past, said perception can damage property values, citing the 
example of power lines and grids that turn off prospective 
owners. 

Publicly-traded corporations, said Varney, must file records with 
the Securities and Exchange Commission to alert stockholders of 
any environmental damage on company-owned property that might 
depress stock value. 

Given those examples, how can the pollution under Tallevast not 
affect property values of homeowners sitting on top of the plume, 
Washington said after the meeting. 

"I am sure that when they bought into this property they knew 
about the contamination," said Washington. 

Rymer told The Herald that the Lockheed purchase of the Loral 
property was made without doing the due diligence homework to 
determine the environmental status of the property. 

Herald watchdog 

This report is part of The Herald's in-depth coverage of toxic 
contamination stemming from the former Loral American Beryllium 
Co. plant in Tallevast. 

HeraldToday.com 

*****************************************************************
 46 Platts: Senate panel silent on federal interim storage
 
+ Senate appropriators did not address the question of federal 
interim storage of utility spent fuel in a $31.2-billion energy 
and water funding bill for fiscal 2006 that an Appropriations 
subcommittee approved today. 

The Appropriations Committee will take up the bill, which would 
fund DOE at $25.04-billion next fiscal year, on June 16. 

Both subcommittee Chairman Pete Domenici (R-N.M.) and the panel's 
ranking Democrat, Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada, maintained that 
interim storage was too complicated an issue to be handled 
hastily as part of an appropriations bill as the House had done. 

Under the Senate bill, the DOE nuclear waste program would 
receive $577-million next fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1. 

The suggested allocation is $84-million below the House's 
suggested allowance and $74-million below the budget request. 

Washington (Platts)--14Jun2005
 
Copyright © 2005 - Platts, All Rights Reserved
 [The McGraw-Hill Companies]   
*****************************************************************
 47 Las Vegas RJ: Senators reject stopgap nuclear waste storage 
 
Wednesday, June 15, 2005
 

Reid calls House directive to move spent fuel 'half-baked' 

By STEVE TETREAULT STEPHENS WASHINGTON BUREAU
 
WASHINGTON -- Two senators on Tuesday rejected the idea of
storing nuclear waste at stopgap government sites while work
continues to develop a repository at Yucca Mountain.
 
 With the Nevada project facing undetermined delays, the House
passed an annual Energy Department spending bill three weeks ago
directing the department to start moving spent nuclear fuel from
commercial utilities to one or two federally managed locations
by 2007.
 
 But Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., called the House proposal
"half-baked," and Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., said it was
"totally inadequate." 
Domenici is chairman of the Senate's energy and water
subcommittee, while Reid is the top Democrat. They laid out
their positions as the subcommittee approved a $31.2 billion
spending bill covering energy programs, the U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers and an assortment of smaller agencies.
 
 With Reid as an author, the energy and water bill customarily
contains millions of dollars in spending targeted to Nevada. The
latest earmarks $333.2 million to the state. The list includes
$45 million for geothermal, solar and hydrogen energy research
conducted at Nevada universities.
 
 For Yucca Mountain, the Senate panel allocated $577 million to
continue the project in 2006. That is the same amount Congress
passed for this year and $64 million less than President Bush
requested for next year. 
The state of Nevada would be given $3.5 million to monitor DOE
activity on Yucca, while Nevada counties and Inyo County in
California would share $8.5 million. Nye County would get an
additional $500,000 as the repository host county.
 
 With Domenici and Reid opposed, aides said the Senate bill does
not address interim nuclear waste storage. That means a
House-Senate conference committee will need to negotiate the
issue later this year.
 
 But the senators said they are strongly opposed the approach
taken by House lawmakers.
 
 The House allocated $10 million extra and told the energy
department to spend another $10 million from a transportation
account to begin work on interim storage. 
The bill directed Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman to identify
candidate sites within four months, a prospect that alarmed
states containing possible targets like former nuclear weapons
plants and closed military bases. 
Domenici said he was open to considering changes to U.S. nuclear
waste policy that could include interim nuclear waste storage,
but "you can't start a program of that importance with $10
million and a paragraph." 
Reid said changes are "going to be hard work and involve a lot
of give and take and consensus building. All the House has done
has been to stir up members in highly unproductive ways."
 
 
Copyright Las Vegas Review-Journal
*****************************************************************
 48 Common Voice: 235 sites down to 12 

 Ron Bourgoin

 June 15, 2005

Several people do not realize that the list of second national
repositories is only in abeyance. That list was constructed by
the Department of Energy over a period of 30 years, and no new
list has been developed. 

In 1957, the National Academies of Science decided that the best
way to remove the danger of high-level nuclear waste in our
midst was to deep bury it 1000 feet underground in rock. The
Energy Department then began a study of all possible rock
structures in America that could safely isolate nuclear wastes.
The study produced 235 possible sites. In the 80s, the twelve
best sites were moved to the top of the list as candidates for
the nation's second nuclear repository. A report of those sites
was presented to Congress on January 16, 1986. From that list,
Congress is to pick five sites for further study, which means
collection of geologic and environmental data and socioeconomic
studies. In congressional parlance, this will occur when the
final Area Recommendation Report is issued, which is expected as
early as January, 2007. 

Five southeastern sites are on the list of the final dozen. It
is expected Congress will pick a site and an alternate. I expect
the South will be selected for at least one of those. 

There's talk that Yucca Mountain will be expanded to hold twice
as much waste as was originally planned, but there's serious
doubt right now that Yucca will even open. Even if it does, an
additional repository's needed anyway for defense wastes from
Savannah River Site and Hanford Nuclear Reservation. 

I think it's smart to be vigilant, which is all I ask my readers
to be. Just remember that the list of second repositories is
merely on standby.   

*****************************************************************
 49 Salt Lake Tribune: DOE boss reassures Huntsman on funds to move
Moab tailings 

Article Last Updated: 06/15/2005 01:48:02 AM 

$400M: The money is coming, the governor is told, but he gets no 
support for Utah's nuclear waste fight 

By Patty Henetz The Salt Lake Tribune 

BRECKENRIDGE, Colo. - Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman has 
assured Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. that plans to fund the removal of 
radioactive tailings from a site along the Colorado River near 
Moab are on track, the Utah governor said Tuesday. 

But those reassurances didn't extend to full support of 
Utah's longstanding opposition to a planned spent nuclear fuel 
storage facility on the Skull Valley Goshute reservation, though 
Bodman again listened to the state's pitch, Huntsman said. 

He said funding was on track for moving the old uranium mill 
tailings near Moab to Crescent Junction about 30 miles north. 
The cost is estimated at $400 million, with a final 
environmental impact statement expected this summer. State 
officials fear the tailings could leach into the Colorado River, 
a water source for nearly 25 million people downstream. 

Huntsman and Bodman spoke privately while attending the 
Western Governors' Association annual meeting. Huntsman said he 
reiterated how "outlandish" he found a utility consortium's 
plans to transport and store 44,000 tons of highly radioactive 
material to the Goshute reservation 45 miles southwest of Salt 
Lake City. 

"I'm not expecting any 'yes' or 'no' immediately" from 
Bodman, Huntsman said during an interview. "He's heard me." 

Bodman, keynote speaker for the last day of the conference, 
pointed out that 50 percent of the Energy Department's $15 
billion budget is spent in the West, home to DOE national 
laboratories and regional projects employing more than 100,000 
workers. At the same time, he said, "the Department of Energy 
has a way to go before we can call ourselves a well-managed 
institution." 

Governors including Huntsman asked Bodman for specific 
information on certain energy initiatives but didn't get 
substantive answers. To Huntsman's question about how to 
determine viable oil shale and tar sand extraction technologies, 
Bodman joked he would "take the Fifth" because he didn't know 
which technologies were workable. 

Nor would Bodman comment on states' efforts to put together 
renewable energy portfolio standards or critique Congress' 
progress on a federal energy bill when Montana Gov. Brian 
Schweitzer, a Democrat, asked why it specifically mentioned 
Wyoming coal but didn't include a provision for coal energy for 
military use. 

"I don't have all the answers," Bodman said. "I'm simply not 
going to get into the prerogatives that some legislators choose 
to use in the budget process." 

When Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico, also a Democrat, 
asked about what help the DOE could provide in developing solar 
and wind energy storage and transmission, Bodman again deflected 
the question. 

Later, Richardson said the question was more appropriate for 
the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, but added the key to 
renewable energy in the West lies with a comprehensive energy 
bill developing in the U.S. Senate. 

"None of this can happen without an energy bill," Richardson 
said. "I want to see the Bush administration solidly support the 
Senate bill that seems to be emerging and retreat from the House 
bill, which is a disaster." 

A panel discussion on energy independence featured 
presentations by Bret Clayton of Kennecott Energy, a coal mining 
corporation based in Wyoming, and Robert Ebel, who served with 
the CIA for 11 years and the Department of Interior's Office of 
Oil and Gas for seven years. 

An expert analyst on world oil and energy issues, Ebel's 
blunt assessment of American energy independence is that it 
won't happen unless some unnamed event forces renewal of a lost 
sense of responsibility. 

Americans don't care where oil comes from as long as it's 
available and priced right, he said. In the 1970s, people were 
willing to accept both high prices and limits on purchases. 

"We have lost that political will," Ebel said. "Every energy 
decision our government makes has a trade-off. These trade-offs 
carry their own costs, their own risks, but rarely do we 
consider that." 

Clayton said that Kennecott Energy mines about 130 million 
tons of coal per year, or about 15 percent of the nation's 
total. Carbon-based energy sources will continue to be necessary 
to support renewable energy sources until they can become more 
economically viable, he said. 

Â© Copyright 2005, The Salt Lake Tribune. 
*****************************************************************
 50 New Scientist Editorial: How not to deal with nuclear waste - Comment

  	16 June 2005 	 		
 	 	
  + 18 June 2005 	
  +  
  + Magazine issue 2504                         

In recent decades, UK policy on nuclear waste has swung between 
highly secret and scientific to nakedly politicised - there are 
still lessons to learn          

IT WOULD be difficult to think up a worse way of deciding where
to put your nuclear waste. First, conduct the process in secret:
lock the project's scientists behind closed doors and do not
allow them to publish to their peers. Then, abandon science as a
way to select suitable sites and choose instead a politically
convenient location near a nuclear plant. 

That, in essence, is what the UK did in the 1980s and 1990s when
it chose deep rocks beneath the sprawling nuclear complex at
Sellafield in north-west England as the preferred destination
for its radioactive waste (see "Politics left UK nuclear waste
plans in disarray"). The government eventually rejected that
site in 1997, on scientific grounds. 

To its credit, the UK's nuclear waste agency, Nirex, has now
confessed to its past sins. As well as a long-secret list of the
537 potential waste sites it initially identified, ... The
complete article is 529 words long. If you are in the UK please
, if you are in Australia or New Zealand please click here.    

*****************************************************************
 51 Japan Times: Residents to press court to reconsider Monju case

  Tuesday, June 14, 2005   

FUKUI (Kyodo) A group of residents living around the Monju
prototype fast-breeder nuclear reactor in Tsuruga, Fukui
Prefecture, plan to ask the Supreme Court to reverse its ruling
authorizing the facility.

 About 40 people, including the plaintiffs to the suit and their
supporters, decided in a meeting Sunday to file the plea in late
June.

 "The top court has failed to discuss the possibility of a
disaster caused by an accident, and it lacks a recognition of
the danger of plutonium," said lawyer Yuichi Kaido.

 A fast-breeder reactor produces more plutonium than it consumes
as fuel.

 The meeting was held in Fukui following the May 30 ruling that
the central government's 1983 decision to approve construction
of the ill-fated reactor was legitimate, overturning a 2003 high
court ruling that invalidated the decision.

 The participants said they decided to continue to press for the
reactor to be decommissioned because its safety has not been
guaranteed.

 In January 2003, the Nagoya High Court's Kanazawa branch
nullified the government's approval by supporting the claim by
32 plaintiffs that a massive sodium coolant leak at the reactor
in December 1995 resulted from shortcomings in the government's
safety assessment prior to the reactor's construction.

 The reactor, which went on line in August 1995, was shut down
after the accident, which led to a damage coverup attempt
shortly afterward.

 The Supreme Court said in its ruling that the reactor's basic
structure, which is designed to prevent an accident stemming
from a sodium coolant leak, is "not irrational." 

The Japan Nuclear Development Institute, which owns Monju, hopes
to get the reactor back on line following the top court's
decision. 

The Japan Times: June 14, 2005
(C) All rights reserved 
*****************************************************************
 52 New Scientist: Politics left UK nuclear waste plans in disarray 

16 June 2005                    

+ 18 June 2005        
             Rob Edwards 

  + Magazine issue 2504                         

Secrecy and political interference ensured that the UK's plans 
for waste disposal ended in failure, according to a new report               

SECRECY and political interference ensured that the UK's plans
for disposing of its nuclear waste ended in failure. That is the
verdict of a soul-searching report by Nirex, the government
agency reponsible. It was published last week in response to a
request under the Freedom of Information Act made by New
Scientist and others. 

"We made a tremendous number of mistakes," confesses Chris
Murray, the managing director of Nirex. "We were told in no
uncertain terms that we were extremely arrogant, we were working
too fast and we weren't listening to people who had an
interest." 

Radioactive waste remains dangerous for tens of thousands of
years. Most countries concluded long ago that disposal deep
underground in stable geological formations is the best option.
The US already operates a waste isolation pilot plant in salt
mines 650 metres beneath the Chihuahuan Desert near Carlsbad,
New Mexico. Deep underground repositories are also ... The
complete article is 572 words long. To continue reading this
article, subscribe to New Scientist. Get 4 issues of New
Scientist magazine and instant access to all online content for
only &#036;4.95If you are in the UK please click here, if you

New Scientist
*****************************************************************
 53 Deseret News: Huntsman makes anti-nuke pitch 

[deseretnews.com] 

Wednesday, June 15, 2005 

He gets ear of energy chief at conference for West's governors 

By Lisa Riley Roche Deseret Morning News 

BRECKENRIDGE, Colo. — Before leaving his first Western Governors'
Association meeting, Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. managed to make a 
private pitch against a high-level nuclear waste site in Utah to 
U.S. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman. 

"I'm not expecting any yes or no immediately, because I 
know how these things work," Huntsman said. "They take time to 
play out. . . . You work the process and you work the key 
decision-makers." 

The chance to spend 15 minutes with Bodman was one of the 
main reasons Huntsman attended the three-day annual meeting of 
the WGA, which ended Tuesday. The governor also was able to have 
approved a resolution raising concerns about nuclear waste 
storage and transport. 

Huntsman, who opposes a temporary high-level nuclear 
waste facility proposed on the Goshute Indian reservation in 
Tooele County, has raised a number of safety and security 
concerns about the project with various administration officials.

Tuesday, the governor said he was told by Bodman that the 
energy bill pending before Congress includes $10 million to 
study storing nuclear waste where it is produced. That's the 
solution preferred by Huntsman and by officials from Nevada, 
where a permanent storage site is proposed for Yucca Mountain. 

Such a study, the governor said, "hasn't been done 
before. . . . It's a step in the direction from a public policy 
standpoint I think bodes well for perhaps a longer-term policy 
fix." 

Legislation calling for on-site storage has already been 
introduced in Congress by Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid of 
Nevada. 

During his meeting with Bodman, Huntsman said he "covered 
the on-site aspects that he knows I'm pushing. And, of course, 
he wanted to remind me there are two sides." 

Also discussed was the potential danger of transporting 
nuclear waste from facilities around the country to be stored in 
Utah. 

"I once again stated how outlandish I thought it was from 
a security standpoint, and from a long-term storage standpoint, 
to be putting 4,000 above-ground casks filled with that material 
downwind from 2 million people," the governor said. "It's not 
that a lot of people disagree with what I'm saying. It's just 
getting the process to work." 

The resolution that he and Nevada Gov. Kenny Guinn 
co-sponsored on nuclear waste should help, Huntsman said. There 
was no discussion Tuesday on that or any of the 27 resolutions 
that were approved by the governors. 

But there were months of work on the language done behind 
the scenes. Huntsman's chief of staff, Jason Chaffetz, spent two 
days at this ski resort finalizing the resolution. While it's 
not an outright statement in support of on-site storage, it does 
suggest it as an option. 

That's a big step, Huntsman said. 

"It's important. We worked hard on it. We vetted it with 
all of the other governors. The fact that it survived, I think, 
says something very good about the momentum that this policy 
option is getting," he said. 

Two governors attending the meeting — both Democrats — 
said they support Huntsman's stronger stand on the issue. New 
Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson said the WGA statement could be 
revised at a future meeting to reflect that stance. 

"I'm with Huntsman," Richardson said. "So we'll continue 
working on this. Maybe we'll propose another one at the November 
meeting." 

Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano said she, too, prefers 
on-site storage. But asked if some of the 18 governors who make 
up the WGA aren't ready to go that far, Napolitano said, "I 
think that's a fair statement." 

The Arizona governor, who was named chairwoman of the WGA 
Tuesday, said concerns about transportation and homeland 
security need to be considered. She cited an accident in Arizona 
involving the transportation of low-level waste. 

"The transportation issues are serious," Napolitano said. 

The governors talked energy before ending their meeting, 
hearing from Bodman as well as a panel of experts. During that 
session, Huntsman asked the energy secretary about how states 
should look at renewable sources of energy, such as solar and 
wind power. 

Bodman didn't have an answer for the Utah governor, 
suggesting that should be left for "the market to take its 
rightful role." 

Huntsman said later he would like the state to pursue 
alternative energy sources. 

"I'm very open-minded on this subject," he said. "My bias 
would be to take a very serious look at the renewable options. . 
. . I think the time is right as the United States, and indeed 
the region, are thinking through longer-term energy strategies 
to open this discussion." 

Huntsman said he will direct his newly formed energy 
policy advisory group to study such sources, including 
geothermal. He said within a few weeks, a state energy adviser 
should be selected who will work for the governor's economic 
development office. 

E-mail: lisa@desnews.com 

© 2005 Deseret News Publishing Company 
*****************************************************************
 54 WQAD: Police to escort slow-moving transport

June 16, 2005   

MOUNT VERNON, Ind. Police plan to escort a large empty metal
container from a plant in southwestern Indiana into Illinois
today.Police say it could cause major traffic delays.The Indiana
State Police warn motorists to expect disruptions on Interstate
64, Indiana 69 and Indiana 66 all day.The load will be moving
from B-M-X Technologies plant in Mount Vernon, Indiana -- 20
miles west of Evansville. B-M-X makes containers for nuclear
reactors and other energy-related equipment.Indiana State Police
say the vessel will be moved at an "extremely slow"
pace.Illinois State Police say there's no information to release
about the vessel's destination.	 			 			Copyright 2005

Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be
   
News, links, and information for your community. WQAD.com covers
32 counties in eastern Iowa and western Illinois.
   
Copyright 2001 - 2005 WorldNow and WQAD. All Rights Reserved.



*****************************************************************
 55 UK: News & Star: Comments wanted on N-waste

Published on 15/06/2005

PEOPLE are being asked for their views on proposed changes to the 
way stored radioactive waste is regulated in West Cumbria.
 
The Environment Agency is holding two public surgeries next
month to explain the changes it wants to make to the way it
regulates waste at the national low-level waste repository at
Drigg.
 
They take place at Drigg Village Hall on July 13 and at
Whitehaven Civic Hall on July 14, from 11am-8pm.
 
Nuclear Regulatory Group staff will be on hand and there will be
copies of an explanatory document outlining the existing
regulations and proposals for the future.
 
The Environment Agency wants to introduce a single authorisation
for the disposal of all different types of waste; new
requirements for management systems; and the implementation of
an improvement plan to enable the agency to further tighten
controls 

The Drigg repository is a surface disposal facility for solid
low-level radioactive waste from the UK nuclear industry, as
well as hospitals, universities, defence facilities and other
small users of radioactive materials. 

The site is owned by the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority and
is managed and operated by British Nuclear Group Sellafield Ltd.
 
*****************************************************************
 56 Pahrump Valley Times: Yucca officials meet in Pahrump for railroad talk 

June 15, 2005

By PHILLIP GOMEZ PVT 

Some 40 people - including the United States Department of
Energy's top officials for the Yucca Mountain project, vice
presidents of engineering and construction firms hoping to
receive federal contracts, Nevada Assemblyman Rod Sherer and a
dozen members of the United States Transportation Council -
quietly met in Pahrump last week to discuss future economic
developments at Yucca Mountain. 

The workshop at the Community College of Southern Nevada was to
share information about the practical implications of building
the Yucca Mountain Repository, scheduled for opening around 2010
if approved by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. In its first
face-to-face meeting, the group addressed business opportunities
connected with the prospective shipments of radioactive waste in
high volumes over 40 years from 80 sites in 39 states. 

At the center of the discussion was the National Transportation
Project through the Caliente corridor - otherwise known as the
Caliente Railroad through Lincoln, Nye and Esmeralda counties.

 Follow-up meetings, beginning next month, will take place over
the course of the next five to seven years as government and
industry work together laying the infrastructure for the Yucca
rail line, a nuclear cask transportation tracking ("nerve")
center, receiving facilities and a cask-storage and
transportation fleet management facility. 

There is even talk of a manufacturing plant being constructed in
central Nevada to build the large storage concrete and stainless
steel casks to transport the nuclear waste. Mention was also
made of a Nevada corporation with experience in rail transport
possibly coming forward to manage and operate the Caliente
Railroad.

 The 320-mile railroad, if authorized for construction, would be
the first rail line of its size to be built in the nation in 70
years. Even if the railroad is not constructed as the Energy
Department's dedicated means of transporting spent nuclear fuel
and high-level waste, expansive facilities for receiving,
tracking and storing trucked-in nuclear waste casks would still
have to be constructed. 

Nye County Commission Chairwoman Candice Trummell, who also
moderated the meeting's agenda, called the daylong meeting to
order at 8 a.m.. Among those speaking was John Arthur, the
Energy Department's chief project manager for Yucca Mountain.
Arthur provided an update on the project. Other speakers at the
workshop discussed technical issues related to surface receiving
facilities for the nuclear waste, cask storage technology and
maintenance, and rail and truck transport operations. 

The meeting was sponsored by the Central Nevada Community
Protection Working Group in cooperation with the U.S.
Transportation Council, the lead government agency responsible
for informing the public on nuclear material transportation
issues, policy and business issues, safety, emergency planning
and security.

 If the government decides to proceed with Yucca Mountain, 3,000
metric tons of radioactive materials would be transported to the
Nevada Test Site each year. Getting congressional funding for
the railroad, following that for construction of the nuclear
repository itself, might prove difficult, conference
participants allowed. The earliest that construction of the rail
line and receiving facilities would begin is tough to predict,
but could start before the repository in order to supply the
construction materials by rail, officials said.

 Building the rail line would take about four years and 1,000
workers, according to Energy Department officials at the
conference. Numerous subcontracting jobs for surveyors, bridge
builders and other professions and trades are anticipated for
section-line work that officials say would occur simultaneously
along the corridor route.

 The longest discussions centered on the Energy Department's
willingness to go after skilled local subcontractors in filling
the myriad of jobs necessary to the project's completion - not
only for the railroad, but for ongoing operations of the
receiving facilities, inter-modal trucking operations and for
maintenance of the waste storage casks. 

Affected county leaders wanted government officials to make a
firm commitment for "set-asides" for small businesses within the
central Nevada region, giving preferential treatment to
tradesmen in the three counties along the rail line corridor. In
the Energy Department's Requests for Qualifications, the means
by which the big contractors bid on aspects of design and
construction, county leaders wanted the department to target
those stakeholders.

 But the officials, while sympathetic to the idea, remained
noncommittal, saying it was too early to make any promises
without more firm data at hand.

 "There's not an agenda to shut out the (local) community," said
Karen Leigh Kimball, vice president of Parsons Corp., an
engineering firm that wants to design and build the government's
facilities in conjunction with Kiewit Federal Group Inc., also
represented at the workshop by its vice president. "In fact,"
said Kimball, "it's the other way around. At this point in time,
however, there's just not enough information about the schedule
and funding profile to make commitments to the (local)
community."

 Surface facilities receiving truck and train transports of
nuclear casks would be constructed outside the main Yucca
Mountain Repository with its miles of underground storage
tunnels. The surface compound on the Nevada Test Site would have
a perimeter fence topped with barbed wire. As the concrete pads
holding the casks containing low-level radioactive waste are
filled up, new pads would be established and the fence-line
expanded to include them. 

The compound upon full build-out would include transfer
facilities, warehouses, waste storage pads, canister and
waste-package handling facilities, heavy equipment and light
vehicle maintenance facilities, motor pool area, rail car
switchyards and truck staging areas, security stations,
fire-rescue and medical facilities, administration buildings,
fuel depots, craft shops and equipment storage facilities,
generator facilities, septic tank and leach fields, a utility
facility, cooling tower and evaporation ponds and a visitor
center. 

For comment or questions, please e-mail
webmaster@pahrumpvalleytimes.com
Copyright © Pahrump Valley Times, 1997 - 2005 
*****************************************************************
 57 Seattle Post-Intelligencer: Radioactive contamination at Hanford is on the move
 	 	 	 	 	 
  [seattlepi.com]     

Wednesday, June 15, 2005 

Radioactive contamination at Hanford is on the move
 It is 'not just staying in place,' warns report by watchdog
group 

By LISA STIFFLER

SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

Radioactive dust in a Tri-Cities attic and plutonium-tainted
clams in the Columbia River are red flags signaling that
contamination from the Hanford Nuclear Reservation is in the
environment and moving into the food chain, a watchdog group
says. 

After finding radiation in river mud, mulberry bushes and deer
and mouse scat, the Government Accountability Project says
better testing is needed to determine how widespread the
potentially dangerous material is and where it's going. 

       [Map]    

The Seattle-based non-profit group, which is releasing its
findings today, says it has measured radiation in lichen that is
twice as high as previously believed. 

"It's not just staying in place," said Tom Carpenter, director
of the group's nuclear oversight campaign. "It's getting to
areas where there are people." 

The U.S. Department of Energy spends $2.8 million a year
monitoring radiation in water, soil, plants and animals on and
around the multibillion-dollar Hanford cleanup project. 

DOE officials and their contractors said the watchdog group's
results were not surprising and that they encourage outside
scrutiny. 

"The levels that they're dealing with really aren't out of line
with what we've been dealing with for years," said Ted Poston,
an environmental manager with Pacific Northwest National
Laboratory, the company tracking environmental pollution for
DOE. 

"The Department of Energy encourages environmental groups ... to
do independent sampling and take us to task," said Dana Ward,
DOE project manager for the public safety and
resource-protection program. 

Ward and Poston said they needed more time to carefully review
the report to determine its validity. Regardless, the government
is protecting the public through its monitoring, Ward said. 

Key findings from the GAP report include finding traces of
plutonium in pike minnows and clams pulled from the Columbia
near Hanford, in south-central Washington. Tests are still being
performed on a sturgeon recently caught offshore. Other
specimens analyzed in the $50,000 study were collected last
year. 

Contamination was also found upstream of Hanford, leading to
speculation that fish could be spreading the radioactivity,
though there could also be non-Hanford sources for the
contamination. 

Land across the river from the cleanup is part of the Hanford
Reach National Monument and accessible to the public. The
segment of river wrapping around Hanford is renowned as part of
the last free-flowing stretch of the extensively dammed river. 

"People are out there fishing and eating the fish," Carpenter
said. If the government is finding plutonium in the pike minnow
and clams, "they sure haven't reported it." 

It's well known that radioactive material escaped from Hanford,
home of the world's first full-scale nuclear reactor and source
of atomic bomb fuel. Since its creation during World War II,
billions of gallons of waste were dumped into the soil and
radiation released into the air. 

Back in the 1960s -- Hanford's heyday -- radiation from the site
was measured as far as the coasts of California and Canada, said
Dirk Dunning, a Hanford nuclear specialist with the Oregon
Department of Energy. "Was there stuff released?
Unquestionably," he said. 

Government officials know that radioactive groundwater is still
flowing to the river tainted with radiation. It's still in the
soil at the 586-square-mile reservation and has been detected in
tumbleweeds that roll across the desert site. 

What concerns Carpenter is the presence of the radioactive and
other dangerous chemicals moving from the soil and water and
into plants and animals offsite that can spread the
contamination, increasing the risk of exposure for people. 

None of the radiation detected presented an immediate risk to
human health, according to the report. 

Even so, the results worry Tim Jarvis, a former toxicologist
with Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. Jarvis, who reviewed
the report, said the detection of radiation in the attic dust of
a Richland home was "shocking." 

"I'm sitting here in Richland. I've got a 25-year-old home,"
Jarvis said. "I don't know how much radiation's in my attic." 

The researchers did not determine what type of radiation was in
the attic, but know it's not plutonium and does not pose a risk
to people living there. 

Dunning said that he had not studied the report. Other
researchers with his department had read an earlier draft and
noted in a written response concerns with its limited scope. The
response stated that it "lacks scientific rigor." 

Carpenter and Marco Kaltofen, president of Boston Chemical Data
Corp., which did the sampling for the report, agree that their
research is not definitive. 

They want more testing done, preferably by an independent source
outside of DOE or their contractor. Federal officials said
they'd be willing to discuss the research with the watchdog
group. 

A better assessment of regional contamination is essential,
critics said, if the cleanup -- which could cost $60 billion and
continue until 2035 -- is going to be successful. 

"This study says, 'We're a third party. We're citizens. And
where we look, we find (radioactivity).' " Jarvis said. "So DOE,
where in the hell did it go? How much, and where is it? 

"If DOE knows it has escaped, why isn't it out getting it?" he
asked. "It's their job." P-I reporter Lisa Stiffler can be
reached at 206-448-8042 or lisastiffler@seattlepi.com           
     

  [Seattle Post-Intelligencer] 101 Elliott Ave. W. Seattle, WA 
98119 (206) 448-8000
 
©1996-2005 Seattle Post-Intelligencer
*****************************************************************
 58 Tri-City Herald: Senate would add to Hanford budget 

This story was published Wednesday, June 15th, 2005 

By Annette Cary and Les Blumenthal, Herald staff writers 

A Senate appropriations subcommittee added $34 million back into
the Hanford fiscal year 2006 budget Tuesday, but that still
would leave the proposed budget more than $230 million below
this year's spending. 

"We had to work hard to get what we did," said Sen. Patty
Murray, D-Wash., a member of the Senate energy and water
appropriations subcommittee. 

It's unlikely legal cleanup deadlines for the Hanford nuclear
reservation can be met at the level of the Senate budget, she
said. 

In February the president proposed cutting the Hanford budget of
nearly $2.1 billion for 2005 by $267 million in fiscal year
2006. 

But because security spending would be increased, the actual cut
to cleanup dollars would be closer to $297 million. 

The U.S. House took up the proposed budget this spring and
restored about $200 million of the reduced funding under the
leadership of Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash. 

The Senate subcommittee budget that would restore less money
still must be approved by the full committee, then go before the
Senate for a vote. If the Senate's Hanford budget remains the
same, a conference committee then will have to reconcile the
difference between the $34 million added back under the current
Senate budget and the $200 million the House voted to restore. 

In the meantime, Hanford contractors are preparing for layoffs
under what's certain to be a reduced budget when the fiscal year
starts Oct. 1. 

CH2M Hill Hanford Group is prepared to cut 350 jobs if no money
is restored to the Hanford budget. 

Fluor Hanford, while not saying layoffs are tied to budget
reductions, has announced that up to 1,000 jobs could be cut in
September. 

And Bechtel National will finish cutting nearly 1,000 jobs this
month because of concerns about earthquake standards at the $5.8
billion vitrification plant under construction and other
difficulties. 

The House was able to restore more cleanup money for Hanford
than the Senate because it agreed to cut money from science and
water projects also included in the bill, Murray said. 

Overall, DOE's environmental management programs received $128
million more from the Senate subcommittee than the president
requested. The largest part of the Senate increase, a little
over a quarter of it, would go to Hanford. 

However, Hanford money accounted for almost half of the $550
million cut in the president's proposal for environmental
management programs across the nation. 

"This budget is very challenging," Murray said. "The president
has made it very difficult." 

State officials are concerned that as sites in more states are
cleaned up, fewer states will have a stake in cleaning up
nuclear weapons sites contaminated in World War II and the Cold
War, said Sheryl Hutchison, spokeswoman for the Washington State
Department of Ecology. 

"We expect to see attention to it by Congress diminish," she
said. 

The state has been encouraged to see the Washington
congressional delegation pulling together to restore the
administration cuts to the Hanford budget, she said, "But we
know it's an uphill battle." 

The $34 million restored by Murray would be used at the Hanford
tank farms, where fields of huge underground tanks hold 53
million gallons of radioactive waste left from the production of
plutonium for the nation's nuclear weapons program. Hanford
workers are emptying and preparing to close the oldest of the
tanks, some of which date from World War II. 

The president's budget cut tank farm spending by $89 million.
The House version of the budget restored about $60 million of
the cut. 

The Senate bill would not restore any of the $64 million cut
from the $690 million budget for construction of the
vitrification plant to turn tank waste into a stable glass form
for disposal. 

That reduced budget amount will guarantee a delay in the start
of vitrification of waste and is in violation of the legally
binding Tri-Party Agreement, which regulates Hanford cleanup,
Murray said. The construction schedule already is expected to be
delayed by concerns over earthquake standards for key parts of
the vitrification plant. 

The Senate budget also would not restore any of the cuts to the
budget for work now performed by contractor Fluor Hanford,
including cleanup of soil and ground water in the central
plateau and preparation of plutonium-tainted waste for disposal
in a federal repository in New Mexico. 

The House version provided limited restoration of funding for
Fluor projects, including $15 million for ground water
protection, $5 million for urgent infrastructure maintenance, $8
million for waste to be sent to New Mexico and $15.8 million for
work at the Plutonium Finishing Plant. 

The Senate bill also did not include a boost for cleanup along
the Columbia River corridor under a new contract awarded to
Washington Closure. The House version added $20 million for the
project to allow minimum contract funding for 2006. 

"The president's budget didn't meet the (Tri-Party Agreement),"
Murray said. "I doubt the Senate's will or the House's will. The
administration is making it very difficult to meet the
milestones of the TPA." 

Unlike the House bill, the Senate bill included no funding to
study temporary storage of commercial spent nuclear fuel at DOE
cleanup sites such as Hanford. 

The House report asked that DOE begin considering storing the
fuel temporarily at Hanford or other DOE cleanup sites until a
permanent solution is found. 

The fuel, along with high-level radioactive waste turned into
glass at Hanford, is planned to be sent to Yucca Mountain, Nev.,
but the opening of the repository has been delayed until at
least 2012. 

More commercial waste already is being stored at 129 private and
government sites across the nation than Yucca Mountain will be
able to hold under its current configuration. 

© 2005 Tri-City Herald, Associated Press &Other Wire Services
*****************************************************************
 59 Chattanoogan.com: What Do We See In Oak Ridge? - Opinion -
	
6/15/2005 - 

David Cook: 

Oak Ridge, Tennessee, opens its doors this week for its Secret 
City Festival: three days of folk crafts, petting zoos, a 
performance from Bill Haley’s Comets, and tours of the nearby 
Museum of Science and Energy.
		 
The Festival also includes a secret glimpse inside the Y-12 
National Security Complex, the birthplace of the uranium used in 
the American atom bomb from World War II. 
		 
Tuesday’s Times-Free Press ran a front page story about the 
weekend tour through the complex, which the newspaper declared: 
“the first atomic bomb kitchen.’’ According to the story, 600 
spots had been reserved for a walk-through of the Complex, and 
the story gives the impression that were the Y-12 authorities 
willing, 600 more spots would be sold. 
		
The question we must ask ourselves: is this Complex something to 
be celebrated?
		 
Or mourned?
		 
In the summer of 1945, sixty years ago this August, President
Truman ordered approval for the US to drop the world’s first
atomic bomb, which destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki
(http://www.gensuikin.org/english/photo.html) and killed, in
both towns, 120,000 men, women and children in the blink of an
eye, and 200,000 through radiation deaths over the next five
years. 
		 
Many politicians, historians and American patriots consider
the atom bomb a victory of sorts, as it resulted in the Japanese
surrender. Without the atom bomb, one World War II veteran told
me, the Japanese would have never stopped fighting. It had to
happen, he said. 
		 
Other historians and patriots believe an alternative theory:
that Japan was close to surrender before the bomb fell. The atom
bomb was dropped, they believe, as military posturing, a way to
show American strength to not only the Japanese (first-hand),
but to Russia as well. 
		 
Both opinions will one day turn to dust. War logic does not
have the ultimate word, and there is a higher power, a Prince of
Peace, a set of spiritual laws that rule mightier than the
hearts, and guns, of man. Those laws do not include obedience to
atom bombs. Discipleship requires that we check our weapons at
the door.
		 
There are moments in our lives when we Awake, and the scales
fall off our eyes, and we are born again into a new world, and a
new way of thinking. To view the Y-12 Complex, the birth manger
for the atom bomb, as a thing to be celebrated, a story to post
across the front page, is to view life in the old way. It is to
continue to subscribe to the belief that there are divisions
between people, that those against us are evil and the enemy,
and that their destruction is justified.
		 
It is to believe that we grow strong through our weapons, our
military, our nuclear kitchens. 
		 
Yet, we cannot serve two masters. To believe this is to
forget the words of Christ, who tells us to forgive, lay down
our swords (does he not mean Nations as well as Individuals?)
and care for the poor and weak and lost. 
		 
Christ speaks that in the kingdom of heaven, there is neither
Jew nor Gentile, male nor female, poor or rich. We are all,
essentially, the same before God. 
		 
Therefore, we must allow ourselves to be healed from old
views, and see the world anew: we are all brothers and sisters
before God. What I do to the Japanese, I do to myself. What I do
to the enemies of America, I do to myself. 
		 
And in the words of Christ, what I do to the least of these,
I do to Him. Does that also include radiation poisoning, smart
bombs and atomic warfare from 50,000 feet? Could we have found
Christ huddling on the floor of a Hiroshima home, 60 years ago? 
		 
When the bomb fell, an entirely new doorway opened and a new
game of violent dominoes began: the arms race led to the Cold
War which led to more wars (including the momentary US support
of Osama bin laden when Russia invaded Afghanistan) which led to
terrorism and now every man, woman and child lives daily under
the threat of immediate nuclear annihilation. Will America ever
decide to launch one of its thousands of nuclear weapons,
hundreds of which are on hair trigger alert? Perhaps so,
believing as we did 60 years ago, that immediate destruction of
the enemy is a way to end conflict. 
		 
		 What will that lead to?
		 
Perhaps that day will never come. The Y-12 Complex in Oak
Ridge currently produces material that is used in the nuclear
weapons that America continues to produce; in essence, the
kitchen remains open for business. Yet every year, there is a
protest at Y-12, as truth is spoken to power, and the prophets
continue to rage outside the castle walls
(www.stopthebombs.org). More and more Americans are realizing
the futility of a $400 billion military budget. More and more
Americans, both Republicans and Democrats and the rest, are
questioning if other ways are available. 
		 
In the city of Hiroshima, there is a memorial and museum
devoted to the day the bomb fell. There are photographs:
disfigured women, schoolchildren losing their skin, radiation
victims with three-inch long fingernails. 
		 
There are relics: bomb-melted household utensils, and a wax
model of a burning human, a peace bell that tolls every morning
in memorial.
		 
At the end, there is an inscription, written into a plaque
surrounded by the names of all who died:
		 
“Repose ye in peace, for the error shall not be repeated.’’

Stanley Baldwin once said that “wars would end if the dead
could return.’’ If those dead sixty years ago in Hiroshima and
all the beaches and battlefields of World War II returned today,
what would they tell us?
		 
What would they say to the Y-12 Complex in Oak Ridge?
		 
(David Cook is a former journalist for the Chattanooga
Times-Free Press. He currently teaches American history at Girls
Preparatory School and can be reached at dcook7@gmail.com)
		 
news@chattanoogan.com  (423) 266-2325
 © 2004 Site designed and copyrighted by Three HD
*****************************************************************
 60 Tennessean: Festival provides look at Y-12 machines that made U-235 for
Hiroshima bomb - 

Wednesday, 06/15/05
 
By DUNCAN MANSFIELD
 Associated Press
 
OAK RIDGE — The federal government offered a rare glimpse this
week at the massive machines used to enrich uranium for the
"Little Boy" bomb — the first atomic weapon used in war, dropped
60 years ago in August on Hiroshima, Japan.

Inside the high-security Y-12 nuclear weapons plant remain the
last of 1,152 calutrons that once filled nine buildings,
separating fissile Uranium 235 for the bomb using huge magnets
and vast quantities of electricity from the government-owned
Tennessee Valley Authority.
        
It was part of the top-secret bomb-building Manhattan Project,
which turned this rural countryside 30 miles west of Knoxville
into a "secret city" of 75,000 people between 1942 and 1945.

About 50 kilograms of highly enriched uranium were produced in
Oak Ridge over a year's time for the Little Boy bomb — all
carried in briefcases by plainclothes couriers to Los Alamos,
N.M., where the bomb was partially assembled before being moved
to Tinian in the Northern Marianas Islands and loaded onto the
B-29 Enola Gay for the bomb run over Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945.

"Don't you know the people in Knoxville wondered what in the
world was going on out here," Department of Energy guide Ray
Smith said Monday. "All this material was coming in, truckload
after truckload, and nothing ever left."

Many of those questions remain in this still highly classified
environment, where today nuclear warhead parts are dismantled
and refurbished and bomb-grade uranium is stockpiled.

For the first time, the public will be allowed to see the old
calutron machines in tours this weekend as part of Oak Ridge's
annual Secret City Festival. The tours quickly filled in
advance, with more than 600 people signing up.

Even many who worked here didn't know exactly what they were
working on until the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, killing more
than 100,000 but leading to Japan's surrender less than a month
later.

"I wouldn't have known what an atomic bomb was. I had never
heard of it," said Gladys Owens, 80, of Harlan, Ky., who was
among scores of young women hired to control electric current in
the calutrons on orders from the engineers.

Owens, who was 19 and just out of high school when she worked
here from January until August 1945, said she didn't piece
together her particular place in history until she attended the
festival last year, saw her picture in the historical displays
and was given a private tour.         
	 
  Copyright © 2005, tennessean.com. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
 61 lamonitor.com: Lockheed team courts Los Alamos 

The Online News Source for Los Alamos
 
ROGER SNODGRASS, roger@lamonitor.com, Monitor Assistant Editor

Asked if he would have shut down Los Alamos National Laboratory
last July, the captain of the Lockheed Martin team vying for the
LANL contract said on Tuesday, "Absolutely not." 
C. Paul Robinson, former director of Sandia National
Laboratories and, if his team wins, future director of Los
Alamos National Laboratory, said the lengthy suspension of
operations at LANL was one of the reasons Lockheed Martin and
the University of Texas System were in the competition.

"There's a phrase I've used - if one part of your operation gets
cancer you must not order up chemotherapy for everybody," he
said answering a follow-up question today. "At Sandia, we've
used an approach that might shut down the offensive group and
work intensively on correcting that and then do some cascading
training to catch up everybody else, so you don't make the same
mistake elsewhere." 

In a visit to the Monitor on Tuesday, Robinson said he was
taking a day off from proposal writing to meet with area
community colleges and civic groups.

Touting the community-relations focus of Lockheed Martin,
evidenced by numerous educational and economic contributions the
company has made to the Albuquerque community, Robinson said,
"Sooner or later, you will need community support." 
Robinson said he had not pushed for Lockheed Martin's decision
to re-enter the competition for the LANL contract.

"I was not the driver, even though I've been worried about it
because we team so much with Los Alamos," he said. 
It was, rather, the provision for a separate stand-alone company
in the final Request for Proposal for the competition and the
separate pension plan that were decisive factors.

"If you did not change that, you would not change the culture,"
he said, adding that he did not believe the laboratory could
succeed based on a government laboratory model, rather than on a
private sector model.

Asked how it happened that those provisions were added to the
final RFP, Robinson said, "We had nothing to do with it. Our
understanding is that it was chosen by the government based on
Sandia as a model."

Robinson was accompanied by Sherman McCorkle, president of
Technology Ventures Corp., a technology transfer company that
was funded by Lockheed Martin as a part of the SNL contract when
the company was selected to manage the Albuquerque nuclear
weapons laboratory 12 years ago.

Robinson touted the economic development record of TVC, saying
it had attracted $500 million in venture capital for start-up
technology companies and would soon surpass SNL in the number of
new jobs, "outside the fence," that it had helped provide to the
community.

In recent years, TVC has also received direct funding from the
Department of Energy to extend its skills on behalf of LANL and
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, as well.

On an issue of great interest to LANL employees, Robinson said
he's been asked already about the nine-day, 80-hour schedule at
the laboratory, which provides every other Friday off. The
schedule was rescinded for LANL employees during the standdown.

"The 9/80 schedule at Sandia has been a terrific benefit for
employees and I think for the laboratory," he said. "There have
been a lot of unexpected consequences that have come from it."

With half the workforce off, he said the day was decreed to be
"meetless," that is, without meetings.

The extra work accomplished without interruption sometimes
enabled employees to avoid working weekends, he said.

Lockheed Martin and the University of Texas system announced
their plans to form a partnership for the LANL contract last
month.

Robinson said one of the commendable things about UTS, apart
from being one of the major universities in the nation with a
significant record in science and research, was that they had
not insisted upon exclusivity.

Two other companies will be included in the team.

CH2M Hill is an employee-owned firm specializing in cleanup and
restoration, with experience in small lot pit production.

"They have done extraordinary things at DOE, environmental
remediation at Rocky Flats, where they are ahead of schedule,"
Robinson said. "Many sites at LANL have not received the
attention they need with respect to cleanup and restoration."

Additionally, Fluor Corp. will bring expertise in engineering,
procurement, construction and project management to the team.

"They have not only the best safety record in all of DOE, but
they are also world-class with respect to new facility
construction," Robinson said. "If there is a crying need at Los
Alamos, it's for new facilities."

Summing up, Robinson said, "This whole team we've assembled,
brings an enormous wealth of experience on how to operate a
laboratory, and I believe that is what is called for. You can't
make up your actions as you go along."

Robinson recalled his early career as a scientist at LANL, where
he oversaw the weapons and nuclear security programs.

From 1988 to 1990 he was Chief Negotiator, heading nuclear test
talks in Geneva between the United States and the former Soviet
Union. He began working at Sandia in 1990 and became president
of the Sandia Corp., which manages the lab, in 1995.

"Paul is one of the most highly respected people in the nuclear
defense complex in the U.S.," Siegfried S. Hecker, a former
director of LANL, said this morning, "He has done a splendid job
as director of Sandia National Laboratory over the past 10
years."

The University of California, in partnership with a corporate
team led by Bechtel, has also announced its intention to submit
a proposal for the contract.   

  © 2003 Los Alamos Monitor All Rights Reserved.   
    
*****************************************************************

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