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line and first line of body
NUCLEAR POLICY
1 Persian Journal: Kissinger: Don't Exclude Military Action Against Ir
2 Xinhua: EU proposal should address enrichment right: Iranian FM
3 Khaleej Times: No incentive will make Iran drop nuclear fuel program
4 Korea: Digital Chosunilbo: NYT Backs Seoul-Style Approach to N.Korea
5 AFP: SKorea's top nuclear negotiator visits China, Russia ahead of
6 US Still Pursuing Nuclear Options 60 Years After First Bomb
7 WorldNetDaily: A history lesson for Condi
8 [NYTr] Frank Rich: Follow the Uranium
9 Guardian Unlimited: Beijing Downplays General's Nuke Comment
NUCLEAR REACTORS
10 US: In the matter of Victor Gilinsky...
11 US: The Ledger: An Unfulfilled Nuclear Promise
12 US: Cape Cod Times: Snooze costs Pilgrim $60,000
NUCLEAR SECURITY
13 Xinhua: US to install nuclear detection equipment in Philippine port
14 Mos News: IAEA Wants International Control Over Nuclear Facilities i
NUCLEAR SAFETY
15 Guardian Unlimited: Hiroshima Survivor Recalls Devestation
16 US: Salt Lake Tribune: Fifty years of afterglow for town in Idaho
17 The Standard: Family hit by radiation - China Section
18 US: Mercury: NRC cites firm for damaging nuclear monitoring gauge
NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE
19 Kansas City Star; Congress diversion of funds is reason for delays
20 AU ABC: Govt in meltdown on nuclear issues - conservationists
21 AU ABC: Govt may move nuclear waste by sea - campaigner
22 AU ABC: MP calls for sensible debate on nuclear waste dump
23 Bellona: IAEA Conference in Moscow Causes Anxiety among Environmenta
24 Sunday Herald: Nuclear convoycould explode,admits MoD
25 US: News Journal: It's toxic, but DuPont wants it near homes
26 US: Daily Advertizer: Barksdale undergoes nuclear inspection
27 US: Morgan Hill Times: Will perchlorate suit hold water?
28 US: PE.com: Independent perchlorate studies urged
29 AU ABC: NT Govt vows to fight nuclear dump decision
30 Guardian Unlimited: Sellafield staff ignored 100 warnings about leak
PEACE
31 US: Whittier Daily: Bush looking to take a mini- step to nuclear pro
US DEPT. OF ENERGY
32 The State: WHAT IS SRS?
33 The State: Companies prepare to vie for SRS
34 The State: Study finds few near SRS face
35 AP Wire: Report says residents did not receive major radiation from
36 SF Chronicle: For Los Alamos staff, it could be end of era / Bids du
37 lamonitor.com: Report: Centralize nuclear Complexes
38 Albuquerque Tribune: Panel hits labs' duplication
39 The State: S.C. poised to play key role in
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FULL NEWS STORIES
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1 Persian Journal: Kissinger: Don't Exclude Military Action Against Iran
if Negotiations Fail - Persian Journal Latest Iran news
&Iranian Newspaper
Iran News Jul 15th, 2005 - 22:37:10
cfr.org
Former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger, in a wide-ranging
discussion of foreign-policy issues, says he is disturbed at the
possibility that Iran will develop nuclear weapons know-how if
current negotiations to stem Tehran's nuclear program fail. In
fact, he says, Iran's program is more worrisome than the crisis
over North Korea's nuclear weapons.
He says that if Iran secures nuclear weapons, nonproliferation
may cease to be a "meaningful policy, and then we live in a
world of multiple nuclear centers. And then we'd have to ask
ourselves what the world would look like if the [terrorist]
bombs in London [on July 7] had been nuclear and 100,000 people
had been killed." Asked if he favored military action against
Iran if diplomacy failed, he says, "I'm not recommending it but,
on the other hand, it is a grave step to tolerate a world of
multiple nuclear weapons centers without restraint. I'm not
recommending military action, but I'm recommending not excluding
it."
Kissinger was interviewed by Bernard Gwertzman, consulting
editor of cfr.org, on July 14, 2005.
Iranian.ws
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2 Xinhua: EU proposal should address enrichment right: Iranian FM
www.xinhuanet.com
www.chinaview.cn 2005-07-18 03:02:57
TEHRAN, July 17 (Xinhuanet) -- Iranian Foreign Minister
Kamal Kharrazi on Sunday urged the European Union (EU) to offer
a nuclear proposal which secures Iran's right to continue
uranium enrichment,the official IRNA news agency reported.
"If Europe's proposal does not enshrine uranium enrichment,
it will not be acceptable to Iran," Kharrazi was quoted as
saying onthe sidelines of an international conference on UN
reforms, which was sponsored by Iran's Foreign Ministry.
Kharrazi said Iran would take its "own decision" if the EU
still asked Tehran to give up uranium enrichment in a proposal
purportedly to be offered next month.
"The details of the proposal have not been disclosed yet. We
arein contact with the Europeans and we are to hold a meeting
todiscuss the proposal," Kharrazi said.
He reiterated that the country's policies on nuclear issue
will not undergo any change after the next government takes
office.
Europe, the longtime broker of the Iranian nuclear issue,
hasbeen trying to encourage Tehran to permanently halt its
uraniumenrichment activities, which the latter suspended last
November to avoid a referral of its nuclear case to the UN
Security Council.
The European trio of Britain, France, Germany, which have
been negotiating with Iran on behalf of the union, hopes to
offer apackage of economic and political incentives to Tehran in
exchange for its compromise.
However, Iran insists that it never give up legal rights for
any incentives.
The current nuclear talks had reached a deadlock due to
uncompromising stances of the two sides for several months
before they agreed to actually suspend the negotiations for two
months inlate May.
The suspension was believed to be for the result of Iran's
ninth presidential election held in late June.
Hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who won the election and is
scheduled to be sworn in on Aug. 4, took a tough stance on
nuclear issue soon after his victory.
The United States has accused Iran of developing nuclear
weapons secretly, calling for referring Iran's nuclear case to
the UN Security Council.
Terming the accusation as politically motivated, Tehran
insiststhat as a signatory of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, it
enjoy natural rights secured by the treaty. Enditem
Copyright ©2003 Xinhua News Agency. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
3 Khaleej Times: No incentive will make Iran drop nuclear fuel programme
www.khaleejtimes.com
MOHAMMED A. R. GALADARI<
16 July 2005
TEHERAN - No incentive would make Iran drop its nuclear fuel
programme, the spokesman for Iran’s Supreme National Security
Council (SNSC) said on Saturday.
Even if the West provided us with all economic, political and
security incentives, Iran would not drop its nuclear fuel
programme,” Ali Aqamohammadi told ISNA news agency.
The spokesman was referring to a proposal by the European Union
trio of Britain, France and Germany, which reportedly offered
Teheran cooperation in providing nuclear power besides a package
of economic and political incentives.
Maintaining nuclear fuel technology is our red line which will
also determine whether to continue the talks or not,” the
spokesman warned.
He said Iran’s right to produce its own nuclear fuel was the main
basis in the talks with the EU trio since October 2003, adding
that Teheran would never ever make any concessions in this
regard.
Iran wants to resume uranium enrichment in the power plants of
Isfahan and Natanz in central Iran for producing its own nuclear
fuel.
The EU and the United States staunchly oppose this, as enriched
uranium could also be used for producing atomic bombs.
Teheran has warned that anything except acknowledgement of Iran’s
legitimate right to pursue nuclear technology would be
unacceptable and lead to severance of negotiations.
Another cause for concern inside and outside Iran was seen as the
probable change in the nuclear delegation, with its chief Hassan
Rowhani being replaced following the end of President Mohammad
Khatami’s presidential term next month.
Although president-elect Mahmoud Ahmadinejad initially vowed to
keep the negotiation team appointed by his predecessor, he
announced last Tuesday that he would adopt a new foreign policy,
including the nuclear field.
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4 Korea: Digital Chosunilbo: NYT Backs Seoul-Style Approach to N.Korea Standoff
> Updated July.17,2005 19:29 KST
(englishnews@chosun.com )
The New York Times on Saturday indirectly backed South
Korea¡¯s approach to the North Korean nuclear dispute, calling
on the U.S. administration to offer ¡°huge incentives¡± to the
Stalinist country as the only realistic way of persuading it to
give up its nuclear weapons.
In an editorial, the paper said the next round of six-party
nuclear talks on the nuclear program, scheduled to start later
this month, was likely to tread water since neither side had
significantly changed its attitude. It was scathing about the
idea that ¡°surgical¡± strikes on the North¡¯s nuclear
facilities posed a credible threat to whatever underground
facilities the country may have, adding ¡°military adventurism¡±
by the U.S. could only exacerbate tensions in the region.
Insulting North Korean leader Kim Jong-il ¡°may win cheers from
the Republican right, but it is not a promising way of
convincing him he does not need a nuclear deterrent,¡± it said.
Meanwhile, a continuing stalemate will give Pyongyang time to
make more nuclear material and sell it overseas.
The Bush administration would have to bite the bullet and admit
that diplomacy as the only way to solve the issue would ¡°almost
certainly¡± have to include security guarantees and significant
economic aid, the Times said. It said North Korea¡¯s ability to
make nuclear weapons was practically assured, and Washington
should scale down its ambitions to persuading the North ¡°to
freeze its nuclear bomb production, return to the Nuclear
Nonproliferation Treaty and readmit international monitors.¡±
(englishnews@chosun.com )
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5 AFP: SKorea's top nuclear negotiator visits China, Russia ahead of
NKorea talks
Saturday July 16, 02:06 PM
SEOUL (AFP) - South Korea's top nuclear negotiator left for
whistle-stop visits to China and Russia to prepare for
six-nation talks due to resume this month on North Korea's
nuclear disarmament.
Deputy Foreign Minister Song Min-Soon, South Korea's chief
delegate to the talks, first headed to China and would then
travel to Russia, a foreign ministry official said. His trip
would end on Monday.
Song is due to meet his Chinese counterpart Wu Dawei and
Russia's Alexande Alexeyev to discuss ways to ensure progress at
the talks and of combining South Korea's offer of energy aid for
North Korea with existing proposals, officials said.
Song met his counterparts from the United States and Japan,
other parties to the six-nation talks, on Thursday.
The Beijing talks stalled after the third round in June 2004
with Pyongyang accusing Washington of a "hostile policy" aimed
at regime change in North Korea.
The first round was held in August 2003, nearly a year after
Pyongyang allegedly told US officials in October 2002 that it
was running a uranium enrichment programme.
This was in contravention of a 1994 US-North Korea accord meant
to have defused a standoff over the communist state's suspected
nuclear weapons programmes.
The CIA believes Pyongyang has at least one or two crude nuclear
bombs.
At the last round of talks, North Korea rejected a US offer
which required Pyongyang to make an up-front pledge to dismantle
all its nuclear programmes before it could get energy and other
assistance.
The North instead wanted a step-by-step approach, fearing it
could come under attack by the United States.
North Korea's leader Kim Jong-Il told Chinese presidential envoy
Tang Jiaxuan Wednesday that he was looking forward to "positive
progress" when the six-party talks resumed in Beijing in the
final week of July.
Kim's remarks came a day after South Korea said it would be able
to route some 2,000 megawatts of electricity to North Korea.
Seoul also offered 500,000 tonnes of rice.
Copyright © 2005 AFP. All rights reserved. All information
*****************************************************************
6 US Still Pursuing Nuclear Options 60 Years After First Bomb
Date: Sat, 16 Jul 2005 18:21:55 -0500 (CDT)
US Still Pursuing Nuclear Options 60 Years After First Bomb
http://www.todayonline.com/articles/61434.asp
Published on Friday, July 15, 2005 by Agence France Presse
US Still Pursuing Nuclear Options 60 Years After First Bomb
Sixty years after the first atomic bomb was tested in the New Mexico
desert, the United States still has some 2,000 nuclear weapons on hair trigger
alert and is considering new weapons such as earth-penetrating bunker
busters.
The US administration has agreed to pare back its nuclear arsenal from
about 10,000 warheads today to about 6,000 in 2012 under the Moscow Treaty
reached with Russia in 2001.
But even as it moves to retire much of its Cold War arsenal, it has
pressed a reluctant Congress for funds for nuclear bunker-buster studies,
refurbished nuclear testing facilities, and a facility to build the plutonium
triggers for new weapons.
The US Strategic Command in Omaha, Nebraska, is reported to be
developing "global strike" options, including a nuclear option, against
potential adversaries with nuclear weapons such as Iran and North Korea.
More than 15 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, nuclear weapons
"are alive and well," said Robert S. Norris, an expert at the Natural
Resources Defense Council, an arms control and environmental advocacy group.
Norris points to the administration's Nuclear Posture Review of 2001 as
"the revealing document" that shows its intention to use nuclear weapons to
counter a new cast of potential adversaries armed with weapons of mass
destruction.
The review called for a "new triad" in which conventional and nuclear
forces would be meshed in a "global strike" capability, enabling the United
States to respond to a threat anywhere in the world on very short notice.
It envisioned more precise long-range missiles armed with conventional
warheads as well as smaller, lower yield nuclear tips.
The other parts of the triad are missile defense systems and a revived
infrastructure of weapons labs and production facilities that had deteriorated
since the end of the Cold War.
"So the vision of the Bush administration is that we are going to need
nuclear weapons well out into the middle of the 21st century, and beyond. I
mean for decades to come," said Norris.
But the administration appears not to have counted on Representative
David Hobson.
The Ohio Republican, chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee
that oversees the Energy Department's nuclear weapons programs, stunned the
administration by rejecting last year's request for new nuclear weapons
funding.
He nixed nine million dollars in funding for research into new low yield
"mini-nukes;" denied another 27.6 million dollars request for study of a
Robust Nuclear Earth-Penetrating Weapon; and put off a request for another 30
million dollars for a new plant to manufacture the plutonium pits that trigger
nuclear explosions.
"The development of new weapons for ill-defined future requirements is
not what the nation needs at this time," Hobson said in a speech February 3 to
the Arms Control Association.
"What is needed, and what is absent to date, is leadership and fresh
thinking for the 21st Century regarding nuclear security and the future of the
US stockpile," he said.
The United States currently has 5,300 operational nuclear warheads, and
another 5,300 in reserve, said Victoria Sampson, an expert at the Center for
Defense Information.
"We have about 2,000 which are on hair trigger alert, which means they
can be ready to go within minutes of that decision to launch," she said.
Hobson and others are worried that new nuclear weapons initiatives could
lower the threshold for their use, and warned it would send the wrong signal
at a time when the United States was demanding that North Korea and Iran stop
their weapons programs.
But the administration has struck back with a request for 8.5 million
dollars of renewed funding for the nuclear earth penetrator in 2006.
It also has asked for 25 million dollars to get its Nevada test site
ready to resume testing in 18 months if needed, instead of the 24 to 36 months
it would currently take. Those requests are working their way through Congress
where opposition remains strong.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld argued that only "very large, very
dirty nuclear bombs" could now destroy the increasing numbers of facilities
that potential adversaries have buried deep underground.
"So the choice is: do we want to have nothing and only a large, dirty
nuclear weapon, or would we rather have something in between. That is the
issue," he said in April.
"It seems to me studying it makes all the sense in the world," he said.
But scientists warn that no earth-penetrating nuclear weapon could bore
deep enough to trap devastating fallout that the National Academy of Sciences
has concluded would still kill more than a million people on the surface if it
was near a densely populated urban area.
) Copyright 2005 AFP
###
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7 WorldNetDaily: A history lesson for Condi
SATURDAY JULY 16 2005
© 2005 WorldNetDaily.com
While in Beijing last week, Condi told her media sycophants that
she and President Bush "have no intention to invade or attack
North Korea." Furthermore, "we look forward to making progress
in the six-party talks because we must all be dedicated to a
non-nuclear Korean Peninsula."
Condi certainly knows the truth about Bush's intentions toward
North Korea – as she did about Bush's intentions toward Iraq –
and you are supposed to believe she is telling you the truth
about them now, even though she most certainly did not tell you
the truth about Bush's intentions toward Iraq.
But upon arriving in South Korea earlier this year for her first
visit as secretary of state, Condi Rice didn't immediately pay
her diplomatic respects to the South Korean president. No, she
went straight to our Command Post Tango, the underground bunker
from which air-naval-ground combined operations would be
controlled in the event of a "contingent" war with North Korea.
She was there to "observe" the biannual "exercise" of that
"contingency" plan.
That contingency plan has for many years included pre-emptive
attacks against North Korea's "nuclear" facilities, some of
which are presumed to be deep underground.
However, earlier this year, South Korea "rebuffed" Bush's
"contingency plan" for taking "military action" against North
Korea in the event of "serious internal turmoil."
Bush and his "command authorities" could assume "wartime
command" of both American and South Korean forces in the event
Bush decided that "internal troubles" in North Korea required
"military action."
Here the Koreans and the Chinese were attempting to realize a
"non-nuclear Korean Peninsula," while Bush and the neo-crazies
were planning to attack North Korea to effect regime change?
Then there's the matter of Condi's dedication "to a non-nuclear
Korean Peninsula."
On the basis of her public remarks, Condi appears to equate a
non-nuclear Korean Peninsula with a transparent, verifiable
permanent cessation of all North Korea's nuclear programs.
Where has this woman been?
On Sept. 27, 1991, President Bush, leader of the U.N. coalition
that had just ejected the Iraqi invaders from Kuwait, announced
a) an immediate "stand down" of all strategic bombers currently
on day-to-day alert and of all ICBMs scheduled for deactivation
under START, b) a halt in development of the rail garrison and
mobile ICBM program, and c) a cancellation of the short-range
attack missile (SRAM-II) program.
Eight days later, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev announced
that the Soviet Union would follow suit.
Bush also announced that the United States would unilaterally
withdraw all land-based tactical nuclear weapons from overseas
bases and all of its sea-based tactical nuclear weapons from
U.S. ships and submarines.
Approximately 100 U.S. nuclear weapons had been based in South
Korea, and many more were aboard U.S. ships and submarines
making port there.
On Dec. 31, 1991 – as a direct result of President Bush's
decision to withdraw U.S. nukes from South Korea and from
warships off-shore – President Roh Tae Woo and Premier Kim Il
Sung signed the South-North Join Declaration on the
Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.
Under the declaration, both countries agreed not to "test,
manufacture, produce, receive, possess, store, deploy or use
nuclear weapons" or even to "possess nuclear reprocessing and
uranium enrichment facilities."
At that time, neither North nor South had nukes, so if we
actually did what Bush the Elder said we were going to do, then
from 1992 to 2002 the Korean Peninsula was nuke-free.
But in the following years, we have maintained our land-sea-air
bases in South Korea and have continued to conduct the
twice-yearly "exercise" of our Korean "contingency plan."
In 1994, in part because of those twice-yearly exercises, the
North Koreans threatened to withdraw from the Treaty on
Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. As a result, under
considerable congressional pressure, President Clinton ordered
the development of a plan to "take out" all North Korean nuclear
facilities, using cruise missiles, presumably carrying nuke
warheads, presumably launched from U.S. warships.
Clinton may – or may not – have actually re-deployed U.S. nukes
to the Korean Peninsula or to U.S. warships offshore. But
whether he did or not, it was obvious to the Koreans that U.S.
nukes could be deployed to the peninsula in a matter of days or
even hours after a decision to do so.
So, Condi, here's the bottom line. If the six-party talks are to
result in the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, the U.S.
must be a party to the agreement and must pledge to never again
deploy U.S. nukes to the Korean Peninsula or to the waters off
shore.
Physicist James Gordon Prather has served as a policy
implementing official for national security-related technical
matters in the Federal Energy Agency, the Energy Research and
Development Administration, the Department of Energy, the Office
of the Secretary of Defense and the Department of the Army. Dr.
Prather also served as legislative assistant for national
security affairs to U.S. Sen. Henry Bellmon, R-Okla. -- ranking
member of the Senate Budget Committee and member of the Senate
Energy Committee and Appropriations Committee. Dr. Prather had
earlier worked as a nuclear weapons physicist at Lawrence
Livermore National Laboratory in California and Sandia National
Laboratory in New Mexico.
[WorldNetDaily.com]
*****************************************************************
8 [NYTr] Frank Rich: Follow the Uranium
Date: Sun, 17 Jul 2005 15:39:23 -0500 (CDT)
Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit
The New York Times - July 17, 2005
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/17/opinion/17rich.html
"This scandal is not about them in the end, any more than Watergate was
about Dwight Chapin and Donald Segretti or Woodward and Bernstein. It is
about the president of the United States. It is about a plot that was
hatched at the top of the administration and in which everyone else, Mr.
Rove included, are at most secondary players."
Follow the Uranium
By FRANK RICH
"I am saying that if anyone was involved in that type of activity which
I referred to, they would not be working here."-Ron Ziegler, press
secretary to Richard Nixon, defending the presidential aide Dwight
Chapin on Oct. 18, 1972. Chapin was convicted in April 1974 of perjury
in connection with his relationship to the political saboteur Donald
Segretti.
"Any individual who works here at the White House has the confidence of
the president. They wouldn't be working here at the White House if they
didn't have the president's confidence." -Scott McClellan, press
secretary to George W. Bush, defending Karl Rove on Tuesday.
WELL, of course, Karl Rove did it. He may not have violated the
Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982, with its high threshold
of criminality for outing a covert agent, but there's no doubt he
trashed Joseph Wilson and Valerie Plame. We know this not only because
of Matt Cooper's e-mail, but also because of Mr. Rove's own history.
Trashing is in his nature, and bad things happen, usually through
under-the-radar whispers, to decent people (and their wives) who get in
his way. In the 2000 South Carolina primary, John McCain's wife, Cindy,
was rumored to be a drug addict (and Senator McCain was rumored to be
mentally unstable). In the 1994 Texas governor's race, Ann Richards
found herself rumored to be a lesbian. The implication that Mr. Wilson
was a John Kerry-ish girlie man beholden to his wife for his meal ticket
is of a thematic piece with previous mud splattered on Rove political
adversaries. The difference is that this time Mr. Rove got caught.
Even so, we shouldn't get hung up on him - or on most of the other
supposed leading figures in this scandal thus far. Not Matt Cooper or
Judy Miller or the Wilsons or the bad guy everyone loves to hate, the
former CNN star Robert Novak. This scandal is not about them in the end,
any more than Watergate was about Dwight Chapin and Donald Segretti or
Woodward and Bernstein. It is about the president of the United States.
It is about a plot that was hatched at the top of the administration and
in which everyone else, Mr. Rove included, are at most secondary players.
To see the main plot, you must sweep away the subplots, starting with
the Cooper e-mail. It has been brandished as a smoking gun by Bush
bashers and as exculpatory evidence by Bush backers (Mr. Rove, you see,
was just trying to ensure that Time had its facts straight). But no one
knows what this e-mail means unless it's set against the avalanche of
other evidence, most of it secret, including what Mr. Rove said in three
appearances before the grand jury. Therein lies the rub, or at least
whatever case might be made for perjury.
Another bogus subplot, long popular on the left, has it that Patrick
Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor, gave Mr. Novak a free pass out of
ideological comradeship. But Mr. Fitzgerald, both young (44) and
ambitious, has no record of Starr- or Ashcroft-style partisanship (his
contempt for the press notwithstanding) or known proclivity for
committing career suicide. What's most likely is that Mr. Novak, more of
a common coward than the prince of darkness he fashions himself to be,
found a way to spill some beans and avoid Judy Miller's fate. That the
investigation has dragged on so long anyway is another indication of the
expanded reach of the prosecutorial web.
Apparently this is finally beginning to dawn on Mr. Bush's fiercest
defenders and on Mr. Bush himself. Hence, last week's erection of the
stonewall manned by the almost poignantly clownish Mr. McClellan, who
abruptly rendered inoperative his previous statements that any
suspicions about Mr. Rove are "totally ridiculous." The morning after
Mr. McClellan went mano a mano with his tormentors in the White House
press room - "We've secretly replaced the White House press corps with
actual reporters," observed Jon Stewart - the ardently pro-Bush New York
Post ran only five paragraphs of a wire-service story on Page 12. That
conspicuous burial of what was front-page news beyond Murdochland speaks
loudly about the rising anxiety on the right. Since then, White House
surrogates have been desperately babbling talking points attacking
Joseph Wilson as a partisan and a liar.
These attacks, too, are red herrings. Let me reiterate: This case is not
about Joseph Wilson. He is, in Alfred Hitchcock's parlance, a MacGuffin,
which, to quote the Oxford English Dictionary, is "a particular event,
object, factor, etc., initially presented as being of great significance
to the story, but often having little actual importance for the plot as
it develops." Mr. Wilson, his mission to Niger to check out Saddam's
supposed attempts to secure uranium that might be used in nuclear
weapons and even his wife's outing have as much to do with the real
story here as Janet Leigh's theft of office cash has to do with the
mayhem that ensues at the Bates Motel in "Psycho."
This case is about Iraq, not Niger. The real victims are the American
people, not the Wilsons. The real culprit - the big enchilada, to borrow
a 1973 John Ehrlichman phrase from the Nixon tapes - is not Mr. Rove but
the gang that sent American sons and daughters to war on trumped-up
grounds and in so doing diverted finite resources, human and otherwise,
from fighting the terrorists who attacked us on 9/11. That's why the
stakes are so high: this scandal is about the unmasking of an
ill-conceived war, not the unmasking of a C.I.A. operative who posed for
Vanity Fair.
So put aside Mr. Wilson's February 2002 trip to Africa. The plot that
matters starts a month later, in March, and its omniscient author is
Dick Cheney. It was Mr. Cheney (on CNN) who planted the idea that Saddam
was "actively pursuing nuclear weapons at this time." The vice president
went on to repeat this charge in May on "Meet the Press," in three
speeches in August and on "Meet the Press" yet again in September. Along
the way the frightening word "uranium" was thrown into the mix.
By September the president was bandying about the u-word too at the
United Nations and elsewhere, speaking of how Saddam needed only a
softball-size helping of uranium to wreak Armageddon on America. But
hardly had Mr. Bush done so than, offstage, out of view of us civilian
spectators, the whole premise of this propaganda campaign was being
challenged by forces with more official weight than Joseph Wilson. In
October, the National Intelligence Estimate, distributed to Congress as
it deliberated authorizing war, included the State Department's caveat
that "claims of Iraqi pursuit of natural uranium in Africa," made public
in a British dossier, were "highly dubious." A C.I.A. assessment, sent
to the White House that month, determined that "the evidence is weak"
and "the Africa story is overblown."
AS if this weren't enough, a State Department intelligence analyst
questioned the legitimacy of some mysterious documents that had surfaced
in Italy that fall and were supposed proof of the Iraq-Niger uranium
transaction. In fact, they were blatant forgeries. When Mohamed
ElBaradei, the director general of the International Atomic Energy
Agency, said as much publicly in the days just before "shock and awe,"
his announcement made none of the three evening newscasts. The
administration's apocalyptic uranium rhetoric, sprinkled with mushroom
clouds, had been hammered incessantly for more than five months by then
- not merely in the State of the Union address - and could not be
dislodged. As scenarios go, this one was about as subtle as
"Independence Day" and just as unstoppable a crowd-pleaser.
Once we were locked into the war, and no W.M.D.'s could be found, the
original plot line was dropped with an alacrity that recalled the "Never
mind!" with which Gilda Radner's Emily Litella used to end her
misinformed Weekend Update commentaries on "Saturday Night Live." The
administration began its dog-ate-my-homework cover-up, asserting that
the various warning signs about the uranium claims were lost "in the
bowels" of the bureaucracy or that it was all the C.I.A.'s fault or that
it didn't matter anyway, because there were new, retroactive rationales
to justify the war. But the administration knows how guilty it is.
That's why it has so quickly trashed any insider who contradicts its
story line about how we got to Iraq, starting with the former Treasury
secretary Paul O'Neill and the former counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke.
Next to White House courtiers of their rank, Mr. Wilson is at most a
Rosencrantz or Guildenstern. The brief against the administration's
drumbeat for war would be just as damning if he'd never gone to Africa.
But by overreacting in panic to his single Op-Ed piece of two years ago,
the White House has opened a Pandora's box it can't slam shut. Seasoned
audiences of presidential scandal know that there's only one certainty
ahead: the timing of a Karl Rove resignation. As always in this genre,
the knight takes the fall at exactly that moment when it's essential to
protect the king.
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
*
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. Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us .
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9 Guardian Unlimited: Beijing Downplays General's Nuke Comment
From the Associated Press
[UP]
Saturday July 16, 2005 10:31 AM
By ALEXA OLESEN
The Associated Press
BEIJING (AP) - China tried to quell an uproar Saturday over a
general's comment that Beijing might use nuclear weapons against
the United States in a conflict over Taiwan, saying the
statement was his personal opinion.
But the communist government reaffirmed that it would not permit
the self-ruled island to pursue formal independence - a step
Beijing says it would go to war to stop.
The U.S. State Department on Friday criticized the remark by
Maj. Gen. Zhu Chenghu, a dean at China's National Defense
University, as ``highly irresponsible'' and asked for Chinese
assurance that it didn't reflect official thinking.
Zhu told visiting Hong Kong-based reporters recently that China
would respond with nuclear weapons if the United States drew its
missiles and position-guided ammunition into the target zone on
China's territory.
The official Xinhua News Agency said Zhu's comments were
``personal views,'' citing a statement from the Foreign Ministry
issued late Friday.
``Zhu had repeatedly emphasized that he would express personal
view on the issues that the reporters were interested in,'' the
statement said, according to Xinhua.
It did not say how China would respond to a U.S. attack or
mention its nuclear readiness. China is one of five countries
that have acknowledged their nuclear weapons stockpiles and
agreed to negotiate toward nuclear disarmament. The other
recognized nuclear states are the United States, Russia,
Britain, and France.
The statement added that China would ``never tolerate Taiwan
independence'' and would not allow ``anybody with any means to
separate Taiwan from the motherland.''
China claims Taiwan, which split from the mainland in 1949, as
part of its territory and has threatened to invade if the
self-governing island declares formal independence or puts off
talks on unification.
However, the statement said ``we firmly abide by the principles
of peaceful reunification.''
In Taipei, an official in charge of Taiwan's policy toward
Beijing said Zhu should apologize for comments that conflict
with ``mainstream thinking of the civilized world.''
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005
*****************************************************************
10 In the matter of Victor Gilinsky...
Date: Sun, 17 Jul 2005 14:46:45 -0700
To: nuclearshutdown@yahoogroups.com
Subject: In the matter of Victor Gilinsky...
At 03:53 PM 7/15/2005 -0700, beckers@thegrid.net wrote (clip):
"Victor Gillinsky (sic) is a good guy."
-------------------------------------------------------------
Let's talk about Dr. Victor Gilinsky:
In a 2000 report, he didn't think North Korea should receive nuclear power
equipment from the U.S. until "North Korea is a trustworthy
recipient." After that little matter is taken care of, why of course, it's
okay.
He stated that "the very large size" of the nukes we were proposing to sell
to North Korea "makes the project both uneconomic and unsafe." Smaller
nukes, however, would have been entirely OKAY with Dr. Gilinsky.
He worked at the Atomic Energy Commission for several years starting in
1971, as assistant director for policy and program review. Nothing
anti-nuke there, that's for sure. In fact, those were some of the
strongest years for nuclear power development in America's history. And he
obviously helped.
From 1973 to 1975 he was head of the RAND Physical Sciences
Department. The RAND corporation has always been a pro-nuclear "think
tank" as you may know, and a revolving door for those with militaristic
thinking and world domination on their minds.
Then it was back to government, and a stint at the new NRC from 1975 to
1984 where he was "heavily involved in nuclear export issues" according to
one brief biography. So I wonder how many of the rest of the world's ~335
nuclear power plants are courtesy Victor Gilinsky's efforts, don't you?
He was appointed to the NRC by President Gerald Ford and re-appointed by
President Jimmy "nukes are our last resort -- and we're down to our last
resorts!" Carter.
In testimony in 2002 regarding Yucca Mountain he proclaimed that onsite
storage of nuclear waste allows for "ample opportunity" for the continued
-- and even expanded -- use of nuclear power -- that Yucca Mountain is not
needed for this reason. So we can EACH have mini-Yucca Mountains --
without the mountains -- at our nuclear power facilities.
His view of the near disaster at Davis-Besse in 2002 due to corrosion was
that "a serious accident was barely averted." This in no way impacted his
support for nuclear power. To call the potential loss of the state of Ohio
and an increase in worldwide radiation levels merely a potentially "serious
accident" IS an understatement. It was a catastrophe that was averted, and
that by pure luck.
There ARE good people who were formerly nuclear industry insiders who have
learned the truth and become whistleblowers, but Gilinsky doesn't appear to
be one of them. In fact, it is an insult to those who actually have taken
that extremely difficult route to suggest that Gilinsky is anything but a
life-long shill for the nuclear industry.
The most positive statement I found by him is that he thinks that nuclear
reactors and their fuel, especially those in "iffy" (he has a doctorate to
use that term) countries, will "always need close IAEA oversight." I refer
to my previous email for comments about the IAEA's ingrained bias towards
nuclear power.
Now, you say Gilinsky is a good man, and attack me for questioning it. I
say he supports nothing you've claimed to me you believe in, but if you
know something about Dr. Gilinsky the rest of the world longs to hear,
please share it with us.
Sincerely,
Russell Hoffman
Concerned Citizen
Carlsbad, CA
At 03:53 PM 7/15/2005 -0700, beckers@thegrid.net wrote (clip):
>Russell
>
>Victor Gillinsky is a good guy.
>-----Original Message-----
>From: "Russell D. Hoffman"
>Sent: Jul 15, 2005 2:47 PM
>To: nuclearshutdown@yahoogroups.com
>Subject: Re: [nuclearshutdown] Who's on The List (7/14/05)
>
>Hi Rochelle,
>
>Are you saying that a former NRC Commissioner -- Victor Gilinsky -- is
>representing (along with yourself) THE PEOPLE to the California Energy
>Commission? That sounds like an outrage.
>
>Sincerely,
>
>Russell Hoffman
>Carlsbad, CA
>
>At 09:41 AM 7/15/2005 -0700, you wrote:
> >Hi Peg,
> >
> >I am now the executive director of the Alliance for Nuclear Responsbility
> >(www.a4nr.org). Our mission is to create legislation to prohibit nuclear
> >power plant relicenses on basis of economic risks in California. Of
> >course, its not possible to ignore other nuclear issues, but lic. renewal
> >prohibition is our focus.
> >
> >I would love to have Nancy's contact info and understand her frustration
> >during election. On Aug 15/16 the California Energy Commission is holding
> >workshops on nuclear topics-a first time discussion in over two decades
> >with lots of varying opinions. I will let you know who from Nevada was
> >invited. I will be one of the panelist. The only other I know for sure
> >is Victor Gillinsky.
> >
> >Yes there is still a Mothers and I forwarded them the info on this new
> >effort for nuclear shutdown.
> >
> >Thanks for keeping in touch.
> >
> >In Peace
> >Rochelle
> >
> >-----Original Message-----
> >From: Peggy Maze Johnson
> >Sent: Jul 15, 2005 9:31 AM
> >To: nuclearshutdown@yahoogroups.com
> >Subject: Re: [nuclearshutdown] Who's on The List (7/14/05)
> >
> >Rochelle:
> >Tell me -what is the Alliance? I heard that you were no longer with
> >Mothers? Is there still a Mothers? You might be interested in knowing
> >that Nancy Scott who worked for us here at Citizen Alert has
> >relocated back to Southern California. She knows our issues and I
> >think you ought to tap into her skills. She needs to get involved but
> >ny attempt at getting her involved here with the Democrats turned
> >into a fiasco - but, of course, since you were here during the
> >campaign I'm sure you can understand her frustrations.
> >Good luck.
> >Peg
> >--
> >Peggy Maze Johnson
> >Executive Director
> >Citizen Alert
> >P.O. Box 17173
> >Las Vegas, NV 89114
> >702.796.5662
> >702.791.1992 (fax)
> >pmj1@citizenalert.org
> >http://www.citizenalert.org
> >
>
>
>*************************************************
>** THE ANIMATED SOFTWARE COMPANY
>** Russell D. Hoffman, Owner and Chief Programmer
>
>In Peace
>
>Rochelle Becker, Executive Director
>Alliance for Nuclear Responsibility
>www.a4nr.org
>PO 1328
>San Luis Obispo, Ca 93406-1328
====================================================
To: nuclearshutdown@yahoogroups.com
Subject: What % of Americans would vote for a nuclear shutdown, especially
if offered a cheaper renewable energy alternative?
July 15th, 2005
Dear Shutdown group,
I'm very pleased to have been invited onto this new list.
I certainly believe the only reasonable position anyone can advocate today
is for an immediate shut-down of all nuclear power plants around the
world. A wide variety of clean alternative energy sources exist -- that's
not the problem. It's the tiny fraction of society which makes money by
the bucketful while generating thousands of tons of nuclear waste (and
"valuable" nuclear weapons raw material) which is the problem.
And those who regulate them.
But of course, I'm sure everyone on this list knows that. I believe
society as a whole is largely against nuclear power, and usually, the more
they know about it the more they oppose it.
I contacted my Congressman's office this morning and asked for an
appointment to meet with him. Another Congressperson had forwarded a copy
of my recent book (or "booklet" if you prefer) about my concerns regarding
San Onofre Nuclear Waste Generating Station. My Congressman's office said,
when I called, that they had received it "yesterday" (July 14th, 2005).
I had, foolishly I suppose, overlooked completely the idea of sending the
book to him myself. Having decided I could only afford to send it only to
a few people, I chose to send it to all the Democrats in the State
legislature (both House and Senate) and all of California's Democratic
Congressional Representatives, of which Randy "Duke" Cunningham is not one
(R-50th CA). (I've yet to hear of an anti-nuke Republican elected
official, although I'm sure there are millions of Republicans who do not
believe the hype about nuclear power.) I also sent the book to selected
Congresspeople from other states. (If anyone on this list would like
copies to send to your state or federal legislators, or for yourself or
others, please let me know.)
I am awaiting a call back from Cunningham's office for an appointment.
Next week Pamela Blockey O'Brien and I will be meeting with the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission regarding her recent 2.206 petition, with which I am
also affiliated and which is against:
"23 G.E. Mark 1 Boiling Water Reactors -- so-called Nuclear Lemons -
namely: Browns Ferry I, II, III. Brunswick I and II. Cooper I. Dresden II
and III. Duane Arnold. Edwin I. Hatch I and II. Fermi II. Hope Creek I.
James A. Fitzpatrick. Monticello. Nine Mile Point I. OYSTER CREEK (the
mother of all nuclear lemons). Peach Bottom II and III. Pilgrim I. Quad
Cities I and II. Vermont Yankee. Collectively and individually, with Bases.
"9 Westinghouse Pressurized Water Reactors -- so called "Ice Conensers" -
Namely: Catawba I and II. D.C. Cook I and II. McGuire I and II. Sequoyah
I and II. Watts Bar I. Collectively and individually, with Bases.
"15 Special Circumstance Reactors, namely: Salem I and II. St. Lucie I and
II. Turkey Point III and IV. San Onofre II and III. Crystal River
III. Calvert Cliffs I and II. Farley I and II. Grand Gulf I. Three Mile
Island I. With Bases.
"2 Nuclear Death Traps from Hell, namely: NUCLEAR FUEL SERVICES, Erwin,
TN. UNITED STATES ENRICHMENT CORPORATIONS PADUCAH GASEOUS DIFFUSION PLANT,
Ky, with Bases.
"Requesting SHUTDOWN. LICENSE REVOCATION. CLEAN UP OF SITE AND
SURROUNDING AREA, WORKER COMPENSATION and far more as detailed herein,
including removal of any and all deadly radioactive "spent" fuel as soon as
humanly possible, as detailed herein."
Pamela Blockey O'Brien is a "Former Non-Governmental Organization Delegate
to the United Nations Second Special Session on Disarmament, 1982."
The meeting with the NRC will be by phone and will NOT include
representatives from the Utilities in question (apparently by their
choice), although it will include NRC lawyers, and transcriptions will be
made available to the public. (Hopefully we will also be given a chance to
correct these transcriptions, which inevitably have many errors (the name
Dr. John W. Gofman never seems to get transcribed correctly, for example.)
A copy of the 2.206 petition under 10 CFR Ch. 20 will presumably be made
available, if it is not already, through the NRC's ADAMS system so good
luck finding it. Pamela's cover letter for the petition reads:
---------------------------------------------------------------
The nuclear weapons and nuclear power issue is the most important issue in
the world, not only because they are inextricably interlinked, with
materials and technologies required mainly the same, -- as are the
establishments and science pushing both, -- but because they threaten all
life on earth, damage the gene pool, contaminate the planet and contribute
to global warming and the destruction of the ozone layer. The ozone layer
destruction first started by high altitude nuclear weapons tests, for example.
You are receiving the enclosed Petition to the U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY
COMMISSION, called a "2.206 Petition Under 10.CFR, Chapter 20" in the hope
that you can help expose its contents and thereby save lives. It is an
attempt to force the shutdown of some of the most bloody awful,
environmentally ruinous, dangerous, vulnerable commercial nuclear power
plants and nuclear production facilities in the nation. It must be
understood, that nuclear power plants all produce PLUTONIUM in their fuel
rods during operation, and far more besides. All these potential terrorist
targets listed, are themselves terror inducing.
From nuclear plants located in mangrove swamps which threaten Miami and
the Keys, to those which have no large containment dome over them, which
could wipe a chunk of two or three states off the map, in terms of
rendering them uninhabitable. From commercial reactors producing extra
radioactive hydrogen (Tritium) for nuclear weapons use, which can not only
meltdown, but explode, to one that threatens Washington DC. As well as a
nuclear production facility that rivals some of the worst in the former
East Bloc. All in here, with a common thread: children nearby. Our most
precious children, whose health and lives are affected.
PLEASE read this through to the end. And as you read it, remember these
things:
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is partly funded by its licensees, the
nuclear industry.
The ICRP (International Commission on Radiological Protection) allied with
the WHO (World Health Organization) recommends the most awful radiation
"standards" which are accepted worldwide. It is highly selective and
controlled, self-appointing, self-electing, dominated by the nuclear
establishment and the medical radiological societies, with physician
participation limited to medical radiologists, according to Dr. Bertell,
who states: "It is, in every sense of the term, a closed club and not a
body of independent scientific experts." (No Immediate Danger, R.
Bertell, p. 173).
The IAEA has virtually no oversight. Within the UN system it has fiscal
independence. It's principal objectives, contrary to popular believe, are
to shove nuclear power, and all things nuclear Except the Bomb, down the
world's throat. It's all in its charter. Due to this, it is responsible
in part for nuclear proliferation, as any nation with a power plant, with
enough money and know-how, can ultimately get The Bomb. Via a 1959
agreement, the IAEA can also run interference with WHO. There should be
Senate Hearings and investigations on the enclosed, and the above. In case
of a nuclear catastrophe, FEMA takes over from NRC. They know far less --
even the late Dr. Carl Sagan made fun of FEMA, reprinting FEMAs admonition
in the event of nuclear war: "If a weapon detonates nearby; a) extinguish
fires, b) repair damage. (A Path Where No Man Thought, Dr. Carl Sagan & Dr.
Richard Turco).
---------------------------------------------------------------
The entire 2.206 petition runs 63 pages (typed, single-spaced) -- an
awesome accomplishment for anyone, but especially for a anyone as ill as
she has been lately. It took her about nine months to complete the document.
We have been assured that the NRC officials we will speak to will have read
her petition BEFORE we speak with them. (I'm preparing a series of
questions I can use to help assure us of that fact.) I'm hoping that
representatives from other federal agencies will also be on the line, of
course, especially since the operation of many, if not all, of these
nuclear facilities is a crime against humanity -- "murder," she wrote.
For those on this list whom I have not met yet, below are web sites I've
created with additional information about nuclear power, its history,
current status, methods of operation, etc. etc..
I'm hoping to be in Nevada August 4-7.
Warmest regards,
Russell Hoffman
Concerned Citizen
Carlsbad, CA
Please visit these web pages:
POISON FIRE USA: An animated history of major nuclear activities in the
continental United States:
www.animatedsoftware.com/poifu/poifu.swf
How does a nuclear power plant work? Animations of PWRs and BWRs:
http://www.animatedsoftware.com/environm/nukequiz/nukequiz_one/nuke_parts/reactor_parts.swf
Internet Glossary of Nuclear Terminology / "The Demon Hot Atom":
http://www.animatedsoftware.com/hotwords/index.htm
List of every nuclear power plant in America, with history, activist orgs,
specs, etc.:
http://www.animatedsoftware.com/environm/no_nukes/nukelist.htm
SHUT SAN ONOFRE!:
http://www.animatedsoftware.com/environm/onofre/index.htm
STOP CASSINI web site:
http://www.animatedsoftware.com/cassini/index.htm
NO NUKES IN SPACE: (FLASH animation):
http://www.animatedsoftware.com/mx/nasa/columbia/index.swf
or try:
http://www.animatedsoftware.com/mx/nasa/columbia/index.html
List of ~300 books and videos about nuclear issues in my collection
(donations welcome!):
http://www.animatedsoftware.com/environm/no_nukes/mybooks.htm
Learn about The Effects of Nuclear War here (written with Pamela
Blockey-O'Brien):
http://www.animatedsoftware.com/environm/no_nukes/tenw/nuke_war.htm
*************************************************
** THE ANIMATED SOFTWARE COMPANY
** Russell D. Hoffman, Owner and Chief Programmer
** P.O. Box 1936, Carlsbad CA 92018-1936
** (800) 551-2726
** (760) 720-7261
** Fax: (760) 720-7394
** Visit the world's most eclectic web site:
** http://www.animatedsoftware.com
*************************************************
IF YOU RECEIVED THIS EMAIL IN ERROR AND/OR DO NOT WISH TO RECEIVE ANY MORE
EMAILS FROM US FOR ANY REASON, PLEASE CONTACT RUSSELL HOFFMAN AT:
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MailTo:rhoffman@animatedsoftware.com?Subject=Unsubscribe-me-please .
Please be sure that "Unsubscribe-me-please" appears in the subject line.
*****************************************************************
11 The Ledger: An Unfulfilled Nuclear Promise
Lakeland, Polk County, Florida
Lakeland, Florida | July 17, 2005
Published Saturday, July 16, 2005
Last month, President Bush visited the Calvert Cliffs
nuclear-powered generating facility in Lusby, Md., to announce:
"It is time for this country to start building nuclear power
plants again," he said.
As a historical note, Bush was the first president to visit a
nuclear power plant in 26 years. The last chief executive to do
so was Jimmy Carter -- who went to Three Mile Island in 1979,
five days after the now-infamous contamination leak at that
Pennsylvania facility
"The memories people have are Jimmy Carter intervening in a
moment of crisis," Nuclear Regulatory Chair Nils J. Diaz, told
reporters recently. In contrast, Bush was intervening in
something he believes is very important to the country.
In fact, the Bush administration is pushing very hard to
jump-start a new generation of nuclear power plants. Proponents
say advances in technology and plant design make the prospect of
Three Mile Island-style accidents unlikely.
And nukes are being touted as a low-polluting, more efficient
way to meet domestic energy demands that are expected to
increase by 50 percent over the next two decades.
To help encourage investment in new nuclear plants, Bush wants
Congress to enact "risk insurance" legislation to guarantee
investors that they won't get caught up in endless lawsuits or
interminable regulatory delays.
"You don't want to go out and build a plant, spend all the money
and have the license jerked at the last minute," Bush said
during his visit.
There's just one thing wrong with a U.S. government guarantee of
a green light on nuclear plants: The feds have yet to keep the
last promise they made to the industry.
During the Eisenhower administration, Washington promoted
construction of the first generation of plants by promising to
accept responsibility for the safe storage of the highly
radioactive wastes they would generate.
As a result of that spectacular default, the nation's existing
103 commercial nuclear generators have for decades been
amassing, on-site, thousands of tons of spent, contaminated fuel
rods.
Initially stored in 50-foot deep pools of water, the
accumulation of rods has become so enormous that many plants
have begun to construct large concrete silos to dry-store the
rods in thick casks.
As a recent story in the Los Angeles Times put it, nuclear
plants "were never designed to store waste long-term and are now
forced to deal with large quantities of spent uranium fuel rods
that produce high levels of radiation. The problem reflects
decades of miscalculations and missteps by the federal
government, which promised at the dawn of the nuclear age to
accept ownership."
Because of legal, political and environmental problems, a
federal proposal to build a storage facility at Yucca Mountain,
Nev., is nearly 15 years behind schedule.
The earliest that facility can expect to open is 2012. By that
time, there will be an estimated 60,000 tons of waste scattered
around the U.S. And by one estimate, it would require 50 years
just to transfer and process the backlog.
Not surprisingly, the industry has sued Uncle Sam for what
amounts to breach of promise. Actually, 56 lawsuits have been
filed, and one company, Exelon, has already settled for $600
million.
The Nuclear Energy Institute, a trade group, estimates that
legal damages could ultimately run as high as $56 billion.
In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Bob Alvarez, a
former Energy Department official called the existing piles of
stored rods "the ultimate dirty bombs," adding, "Let's not
pretend the way we are storing this waste is safe and secure in
an age of terrorism."
The experts may be right when they say that technological
advancements will guarantee cleaner, safer nuclear plants. But
we wonder about the wisdom of making new promises to help
dramatically expand the nuclear power industry when Washington's
first promise has yet to be kept.
Before Washington makes any new promises, it needs to keep the
first one.
Before authorizing a new wave of nuclear plant constructions,
the federal government must establish a safe and environmentally
secure repository for these "ultimate dirty bombs."
Copyright 2005 The Ledger
*****************************************************************
12 Cape Cod Times: Snooze costs Pilgrim $60,000
July 16, 2005
By KEVIN DENNEHY and DAVID SCHOETZ STAFF WRITERS
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission yesterday slapped a
$60,000 fine on the owners of the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station
13 months after a control room supervisor fell asleep on the job,
and another worker failed to wake him.
Asleep at the switch
A Nuclear Regulatory Commission probe found that on June 29,
2004, a Pilgrim control-room supervisor fell asleep and that
fellow workers did not wake him for several minutes.
The supervisor and another worker who took cell-phone video of
the sleeping man were both fired by the plant last year.
The NRC has levied four other fines this year in similar cases
at nuclear-power plants.
Instead, the worker, a reactor operator, took cell-phone video
of his dozing superior.
The NRC concluded that the incident, which occurred in the
early morning hours of June 29, 2004, violated four agency
requirements. In particular, they pinpointed the supervisor's
lack of attentiveness and his subordinate's failure to report
the transgression appropriately.
The incident occurred at a time when union leaders were
negotiating a new contract that, among other things, called for
the hiring of more staff to reduce the number of hours worked by
employees.
A union leader yesterday denied rumors that the video taken by
a union employee of a non-union member was a negotiating tactic.
Both employees were fired last year.
A spokesman from Entergy Corporation, the Louisiana-based
energy giant that owns Pilgrim, said yesterday the company will
not appeal the NRC decision.
The 34-year-old reactor, which produces 670 megawatts of power
at any one time, provides electricity for about 670,000 homes in
the region, about 20 percent of which are on Cape Cod.
Some fear that Pilgrim is a potential target for a terrorist
attack, particularly since the Sept. 11 attacks on the World
Trade Center towers and the Pentagon.
The NRC emphasized there were safeguards at Pilgrim to prevent
a disaster at the time the supervisor nodded off, but that the
federal agency remained troubled by the incident.
''There's no more important a job at a nuclear power plant than
the control room,'' said NRC spokesman Neil Sheehan. ''Not only
should they be awake, but they need to be ready to spring into
action at a moment's notice.''
Pilgrim management conducted an internal investigation to
determine if it was a one-time episode or a trend, said
spokesman David Tarantino. He insisted it was an isolated
incident, but the company took it seriously.
''It certainly didn't live up to our expectations of
performance,'' said Tarantino. ''The NRC action only reinforces
that.''
According to the NRC, a third employee, the shift manager, was
not fired but agreed to attend a dispute-resolution program.
The shift manager slammed a desk to wake up the sleeping
worker, but did not submit a report about the incident,
according to the NRC investigation.
In addition to receiving a letter of reprimand, the shift
manager was required to speak to Pilgrim co-workers about the
incident.
There were six employees on shift in the control room area, but
not all were necessarily aware of the supervisor's dozing. If
they did know - and reported nothing - they would have been just
as guilty, Tarantino said.
More than a month passed before an unidentified Pilgrim
employee notified the NRC about the incident and provided video
taken by cell phone of the napping man.
The federal investigation lasted until March, when each of the
three employees, as well as Pilgrim management, was given the
opportunity to respond to the charges.
Mary Lampert of Duxbury, a critic of nuclear power and plant
watchdog, questioned why it took the NRC so long to issue a
ruling.
''Did it require a huge investigation? The guy was asleep. The
other guy didn't report it,'' Lampert said. ''It's pretty cut
and dry. It gives the impression that this isn't important, but
it is important.''
The 2004 episode, she said, also reflected how overworked
Pilgrim employees are.
It occurred in the middle of a contentious contract dispute
between Local 369 of the Utility Workers Union of America, which
represent plant technicians, and Entergy officials, in which
staffing levels and employee fatigue were union gripes.
The staff size of the Pilgrim plant has dropped steadily in
recent years. The number of employees dropped from 670 to 580
after voluntary severance packages were offered in 2003.
While rumors swirled that the 2004 incident was a union tactic,
Gary Sullivan, president of Local 369, insisted otherwise. They
did not even learn about the incident until the fall, after the
new contract was approved, he said.
''There's no truth to that at all. The (video) was not of a
union person so it wouldn't have reflected union fatigue.''
Still, Sullivan did say the union is moving forward with a
grievance on behalf of the reactor operator who was fired.
This $60,000 fine is the fifth fine levied by the NRC against a
nuclear plant for this type of offense this year.
Kevin Dennehy can be reached at kdennehy@capecodonline.com.
David Schoetz can be reached at dschoetz@
capecodonline.com.
(Published: July 16, 2005)
*****************************************************************
13 Xinhua: US to install nuclear detection equipment in Philippine port
report
www.xinhuanet.com
www.chinaview.cn 2005-07-17 12:56:47
MANILA, July 17 (Xinhuanet) -- The United States and the
Philippine governments will sign on Tuesday an agreement to
install special equipment at the Port of Manila to deter and
detect illicit shipments of nuclear and other radioactive
materials, reported the local newspaper Philippine Daily
Inquirer on Sunday.
US Embassy Charge d'Affaires Joseph Mussomeli will sign the
document on behalf of the US Department of Energy's National
Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) with Philippine Science
and Technology Secretary Estrella Alabastro, said the report.
The agreement will be implemented under the NNSA's Megaports
Initiative, which supports foreign governments in deploying
radiation capability at key seaports to screen cargo containers
for nuclear and other radioactive materials. Enditem
Copyright ©2003 Xinhua News Agency. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
14 Mos News: IAEA Wants International Control Over Nuclear Facilities in
Russia, Japan and U.S. -
MOSNEWS.COM
Created: 17.07.2005 17:47 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 17:47 MSK
MosNews
The International Atomic Energy Agency wants to more closely
monitor nuclear facilities in the United States, Japan, Russia
and Finland to ensure that atomic weapons are not being
developed under the guise of energy programs, a Japanese news
report said Saturday.
The U.N. nuclear watchdog is seeking to step up its supervision
of uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing at the plants,
Kyodo News agency said.
The IAEA plans to submit a draft to a board meeting in September
proposing that up to 10 nuclear facilities be placed under
international management by 2010, Kyodo said, citing sources at
the Vienna, Austria-based agency.
While low-level uranium enrichment has energy uses, the process
is also linked to bomb-making. Plutonium also can be extracted
from nuclear waste to provide fuel, but it is also an essential
ingredient in making nuclear weapons.
The agency’s goal is to allow such processes only at
internationally managed facilities which will then provide
nuclear fuel to countries that do not host them, Kyodo said.
Write us: info@mosnews.com
Copyright © 2004 MOSNEWS.COM
*****************************************************************
15 Guardian Unlimited: Hiroshima Survivor Recalls Devestation
From the Associated Press
[UP]
Saturday July 16, 2005 11:31 PM
AP Photo NMJS103
By HEATHER CLARK
Associated Press Writer
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) - Shigeko Sasamori hopes her scarred body
and gnarled fingers put a human face on the suffering caused by
the creation of the atomic bomb, a weapon that was first tested
60 years ago in the New Mexico desert.
The 73-year-old woman was a schoolgirl on Aug. 6, 1945, when an
American warplane dropped over Hiroshima the first of two
nuclear bombs used against Japan.
She traveled to New Mexico this past week for the 60th
anniversary of the atomic tests at Trinity to ask scientists to
stop nuclear warfare.
``I want to talk to their hearts and beg them not to do it,''
she said Friday.
When the bomb exploded, Sasamori said she and a friend were
preparing to join a work crew to clear a city street less than a
mile from ground zero. Her 13-year-old companion was killed in
the blast.
``I saw that everybody looked so terrible, just like they came
from hell,'' she said. ``No one was talking. No one was
screaming.''
She believes now that she was in shock as she followed the crowd
to escape the burning city. Five days later, Sasamori's mother
found her in a nearby school.
One-fourth of Sasamori's body was burned. Her fingers were
scorched to the bone, and she had as many as 30 operations to
repair the damage. Three years ago, she underwent surgery for
intestinal cancer. Doctors now suspect she has thyroid cancer.
Sasamori was one of 25 ``Hiroshima Maidens'' brought to the
United States for reconstructive surgery in 1955 by American
editor and author Norman Cousins, who she describes as her
adoptive father. She eventually settled in the U.S. and became a
nurse.
Sasamori, who now lives in Marina del Rey, Calif., said she is
not angry with Americans for how World War II ended, but hates
war itself and is saddened by the actions of those who made the
bomb.
But she was upset about a $125-per-ticket event at the National
Atomic Museum in Albuquerque on Friday.
Participants were given a secret identity at the door of the
museum, a gimmick meant to recall the top-secret project to
develop the bomb. Guests were treated to food, a cash bar, a
1940s fashion show, slides of the Trinity test and a panel
discussion by historians and test participants. On Saturday,
they were taken to the test site in southern New Mexico for a
tour.
``Many people are dead. Those people's souls aren't happy. Why
are you celebrating?'' Sasamori said. ``You are making a weapon
to kill us. So, I feel that's not appropriate to celebrate.''
A museum spokeswoman did not return a voice mail message, and no
one answered several phone calls to the museum.
On Aug. 6, Sasamori said she will mark the 60th anniversary of
the attack on Hiroshima with a more subdued ceremony: a moment
of silence in her hometown to remember the dead.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005
*****************************************************************
16 Salt Lake Tribune: Fifty years of afterglow for town in Idaho
Article Last Updated: 07/17/2005 01:02:31 AM
Scientists mark milestone, look to future of nuclear power
By John Miller The Associated Press
A complex houses the experimental nuclear power plant
known as Borax, for Boiling Reactor Experiment, which briefly
powered the rural Idaho town of Arco on July 17, 1955, making it
the first city in the world to be electrified by nuclear power.
Today, the reactor is on display in a museum, which is the only
place within the secretive Idaho National Laboratory nuclear
research compound open to the public. (The Associated Press/U.S.
Department of Energy )
ARCO, Idaho - Surrounded by dog-eared newsclippings, Charles
Pieper sits in his living room and remembers the night he helped
usher in the age of nuclear power.
It was July 17, 1955, nearly midnight in the desert 20 miles
south of this central Idaho town. The 33-year-old electrician's
flip of a circuit breaker sent 2,000 kilowatts from the National
Reactor Testing Station's boiling water reactor - Borax III - to
Arco, making the city the world's first to be electrified by
nuclear power.
''I don't think I grasped the significance of it all,''
recalls Pieper, now 83, of an event that lasted about an hour
before the reactor was disconnected. ''We were so tired, I
didn't hardly notice anything.''
As Pieper and the rest of Arco's 1,000 residents look back a
half century during this weekend's ''Atomic Days,'' scientists
at what's become the Idaho National Laboratory (INL) are looking
to the future: They're planning a new high-temperature,
gas-cooled nuclear reactor they hope will produce both
electricity and hydrogen for a new generation of clean-running
cars.
INL officials also are part of a push to license a new
nuclear power plant by 2010 under streamlined regulatory
guidelines. Companies including General Electric and French
state utility Electricite de France are in on the Department of
Energy-backed bid.
''Nuclear is the only large-scale, non-greenhouse gas
emitting energy source we have,'' said Kathryn McCarthy, INL's
director of advanced nuclear energy systems integration. ''It's
an energy-security issue: We need to decrease our dependence on
foreign sources.''
It all began in 1949 when the site was known as Argonne-West,
the government's first nuclear reactor proving ground. Deep in
the sage-and-basalt desert, Cold War-era scientists could work
far from prying eyes, and civilization was far away in case of
an accident.
The first experimental breeder reactor was built here. That
reactor is now a museum and the only place on the site visitors
can see without a background check. Some 8,000 tourists come
annually.
Fifty-two reactors were built on territory almost as big as
Delaware, including prototypes of reactors that fire the Navy's
nuclear submarines.
Today, the INL's centerpiece is the Advanced Test Reactor,
where scientists eventually hope to test fuels and metals slated
for use in the planned new reactor. The facility currently
performs tests for the Navy and the nuclear industry including
scrutinizing how different alloys withstand neutron bombardment.
''Our part is providing a place to do the research,'' said
John Dwight, who oversees the 38-year-old Advanced Test Reactor.
There are now slightly more than 100 nuclear power plants in
the United States, a quarter the world's total.
But a license hasn't been issued for a U.S. plant since 1973,
and skeptics want it to stay that way. America, they say, should
focus on renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power
because a new generation of reactors would prove too costly for
real-world use.
The industry also lives in the shadow of terrifying and
dangerous accidents including Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania
in 1979 and Chernobyl, the 1986 Ukrainian disaster. The INL site
has its own tragic history: In 1961, three workers died when a
power surge in a test reactor caused water surrounding its core
to explode.
In recent years, much of the work at INL has been
court-ordered cleanup of tons of radioactive and hazardous
waste. New reactors will mean new waste, some worry.
''Why should we set ourselves up with thousands of reactors
that we'll have to deal with 100 years from now?'' asks Jeremy
Maxand, executive director of the Snake River Alliance, an Idaho
nuclear watchdog.
Still, nuclear power has won surprising allies.
Patrick Moore, a founder of Greenpeace in 1971, now believes
nuclear plants, along with wind and geothermal power, would
safely help the United States reduce greenhouse-gas emissions
and keep pace with rising energy demand.
''There's no getting away from the fact that 6 billion people
wake up every morning with a need for food, material and
energy,'' Moore said. ''If we don't move forward on this, we're
going to end up buying nuclear technology from the Chinese.''
Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, is optimistic Congress will soon
pass an energy policy bill that includes $1.25 billion for INL's
proposed new reactor.
''We've had a tremendous safety and production record with
nuclear power, and that's something that hasn't been lost on
Congress,'' Craig said.
Meanwhile, back in Arco, Clay Condit, 75, a former nuclear
physicist who developed reactors for the Navy, is trying to
assemble mothballed buildings moved from INL to a city park to
create a ''mini INL'' for tourists.
He remembers the days when nobody but the workers knew their
job titles, for fear outsiders could compromise national
security.
''I couldn't tell my kids what I did,'' Condit said.
Now INL officials are fighting for recognition and hundreds
of millions of federal dollars.
''The nuclear industry hasn't done a good job of educating
the public,'' said the INL's McCarthy. ''As we work toward
getting an order for a plant in the U.S., that's where we need
public support.''
© Copyright 2005, The Salt Lake Tribune.
*****************************************************************
17 The Standard: Family hit by radiation - China Section
A nine-year-old boy in northern China is critically ill after
bringing home a radioactive substance from an unknown location,
the government said.
The boy's mother, 81-year-old grandmother and 12-year-old sister
were also in critical condition in Harbin, the capital of
Heilongjiang province, Xinhua News Agency said Saturday.
Provincial authorities discovered iridium 192, an isotope used to
test the integrity of pipeline welds, boilers and aircraft parts,
in the boy's house, Xinhua said.
His father, Bai Yuhai, said the material was picked up by his
son, Xinhua reported, without giving further details.
The iridium 192 has been recovered and stored safely.
Scientists say iridium could be used to create a radiological
``dirty bomb,'' and is usually tightly controlled.
In 2003, a nuclear scientist in Guangzhou received a suspended
death sentence for planting iridium 192 pellets in ceiling panels
belonging to a business rival.
Some 75 people were sickened. ASSOCIATED PRESS
Standard, Sing Tao Newspaper Group and
Global China Group. All rights reserved. No content may be
redistributed or republished, either
*****************************************************************
18 Mercury: NRC cites firm for damaging nuclear monitoring gauge
News - 07/16/2005 -
Mike Castiglione,
mcastiglione@pottsmerc.com07/16/2005
UPPER PROVIDENCE -- Driving along a construction site on Egypt
Road, a portable nuclear gauge is virtually unnoticeable to the
untrained eye.
Equally unnoticeable is a damaged portable nuclear gauge leaking
radiation and other hazardous contents.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has issued a notice of
violation to David Blackmore &Associates after an April 5
incident involving a bulldozer that ran over an unattended
nuclear gauge at the company’s temporary job site on Egypt Road.
According to the NRC, an authorized operator had left the gauge
unattended in an unrestricted area for roughly 10 minutes while
he went behind a mound of soil to speak with site personnel.
NRC Public Affairs Associate Neil Sheehan said the gauge is
commonly used to check the density of soil or the thickness of
steel or concrete, among other uses.
"In recent years, (the NRC) has placed great emphasis on
licensees to maintain a high level of security when (nuclear
gauges) are out in the public domain," Sheehan said. "There have
been too many events when these things get damaged or stolen
when they’re left unattended or are being transported somewhere."
NRC Regional Administrator Samuel Collins’ letter to Blackmore
&Associates President Joseph Hughes described the nature of the
incident.
"In this case, the damage to the gauge did not result in removal
of the source from its shielded position, nor did it cause any
leakage from the source," Collins wrote. "Furthermore, it was
unlikely that unauthorized persons came into direct contact with
the material during the time that it was unattended."
Collins did confirm that "unintended radiation doses to members
of the public could occur if the source was removed from its
shielded position."
"It would be a potentially dangerous situation if the shield had
broken and someone had come along while it was unattended and
put it in their pocket and walked away," Sheehan said.
During a June 16 conference, Hughes said that in response to a
similar violation that occurred in the past, his company
implemented corrective actions that should have prevented a
recurrence of the violation, but complacency and judgment errors
by personnel were the factors that contributed to the incident
on April 5.
Blackmore &Associates was subject to a $3,000 fine for what was
considered a Severity Level III violation (on a scale of one to
four, with one being the most severe). According to NRC
officials, no fine was issued because of the company’s clean
track record over the past two years and the corrective actions
taken in the aftermath of the situation.
Following the damaged gauge, Blackmore &Associates immediately
restricted access to the area to prevent any exposure to the
public, re-instructed all company gauge operators on security
requirements, and instituted unannounced site visits to inspect
performance of gauge operators, among other measures.
"This is not an everyday occurrence but it happens enough that
(The NRC) has to take the necessary steps to ensure that someone
is maintaining constant surveillance on or properly securing
gauges when they are not being monitored," Sheehan said. "We
expect operators to exercise a high level of caution.
"This particular instance was not dangerous in the sense that
there was no release of radiation that would harm the public.
This particular gauge contained fairly small doses of radiation
but, nevertheless, it was in a public domain."
Sheehan said that Blackmore &Associates would be susceptible to
fines and other corrective measures if a similar occurrence were
to happen in the next two years.
©The Mercury 2005
*****************************************************************
19 Kansas City Star; Congress diversion of funds is reason for delays at Yucca
Mountain
| 07/17/2005 |
ENERGY POLICY
By William H. Miller Special to The Star
In the debate over a national repository for nuclear waste at
Yucca Mountain, many critics even in Congress complain that
the project is way behind schedule. They say the Department of
Energy is at fault. But the project is many years behind
schedule because Congress has been diverting money held in trust
for the nuclear waste program and not spending it for its
intended purpose.
According to the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, the repository was
supposed to open by 1998. That date has been pushed back to 2012
because Congress has not allowed the Department of Energy to
spend the money it needs to stay on schedule. This delay has
come despite the fact that the government has been receiving
much larger amounts of money from nuclear power generation that,
by law, is earmarked specifically for used fuel management.
Since 1983, consumers of nuclear-generated electricity from the
Callaway plant have paid more than $250 million into a federal
trust fund that was dedicated to the Yucca Mountain project.
Nationally, over $25 billion has gone into the trust fund, but
only $7 billion has been spent on the project. The rest has
simply been absorbed into the general treasury.
That was not the intent when the trust fund was established. All
of the money was to be set aside for the nuclear waste program,
particularly construction of the repository. However, in 1987,
Congress amended the law so as to make spending for construction
dependent on year-to-year appropriations. For example, for
fiscal year 2005, Congress appropriated $572 million for the
Yucca Mountain project, which was far less than the $750 million
that users of nuclear-generated electricity paid into the fund.
The Department of Energy is expected to receive even less money
for the project in fiscal 2006, despite mounting surpluses in
the fund.
Congress is keeping all of this funding bottled up for two
reasons. One is economic it is diverting these funds into
general revenues, to reduce the size of the federal budget
deficit and the amount of money that the government must borrow
every year to cover it. This is extremely shortsighted
delaying an important national program that by law it has to
fund.
The other reason is politics. Critics have convinced many in
Congress that Yucca Mountain is a dump for nuclear waste.
Both are misconceptions.
Far from being a dump, the underground repository will in
effect be a high-tech laboratory, at which scientists over the
next 300 years will be able to monitor the highly radioactive
used fuel. This monitoring will help the government determine
whether the underground chambers of volcanic rock are a safe
medium for even longer-term storage. If not, the spent fuel
casks could be retrieved for storage elsewhere. But the
overwhelming consensus among the thousands of hydrologists,
geologists and other scientists who have studied the Yucca
Mountain site is that it can function safely for 10,000 years or
longer.
Nor is the material being stored simply waste. In fact, it
contains very valuable fuel that could well serve as an energy
source for tomorrows nuclear power plants. It may become
economical to recycle the used fuel through chemical
reprocessing, in which plutonium and uranium are recovered from
the used fuel rods and made available for use in other reactors.
This process also reduces the volume, radiotoxicity and lifetime
of nuclear waste, shortening storage time and greatly extending
nuclear fuel supplies.
One day, the Yucca Mountain repository will open, with storage
space for 70,000 metric tons of used fuel rods from nuclear
power plants and highly radioactive wastes from nuclear weapons
production. Consumers of nuclear-generated electricity have paid
for it. At the same time, they have also had to pay for
continuing storage of the used fuel at nuclear plant sites.
Because many fuel pools have reached capacity, utilities that
operate 21 of the 103 U.S. nuclear power plants have built
concrete-and-steel casks to store some of the used fuel.
Additional dry casks are planned at other plant sites. This cost
is borne by electricity consumers in effect, making them pay
twice for the same function because Congress is refusing to use
their money for its intended purpose.
Congress needs to correct this problem and should move spending
for the nuclear waste program out of the federal budget process,
so that funding once again will be predictable and thereby
enable licensing and construction of the repository to proceed
according to a realistic timetable. The country needs more
energy and more nuclear power and we need the government to
show that it is meeting its legal responsibility to manage the
used fuel.
William H. Miller is a professor at the Nuclear Science and
Engineering Institute at the University of Missouri-Columbia.
*****************************************************************
20 AU ABC: Govt in meltdown on nuclear issues - conservationists
12:22 (ACST)Saturday, 16 July 2005. 13:22 (AEDT)Saturday, 16
The Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) has weighed into
the debate about a radioactive waste facility to be established
in the Northern Territory, saying the Federal Government has had
a complete meltdown on nuclear issues.
The Commonwealth announced yesterday a dump would be established
at one of three sites in the Northern Territory.
The ACF's Dave Sweeney says the Federal Government promised
Territorians before the last election there would be no nuclear
waste dump in the region.
He says the Government has not looked at its long-term nuclear
storage policy since the South Australian Government refused to
accept a similar dump a year ago.
"It's a Government that hasn't got a clue on nuclear issues and
it's a Government that has played misleading and improper games
and processes," Mr Sweeney said.
"We can have no confidence that this would not be the start of
an ever increasing burden on the Northern Territory and that's
one more reason to say no now."
*****************************************************************
21 AU ABC: Govt may move nuclear waste by sea - campaigner
Australian Broadcasting Corporation Online">
(ACST)Sunday, 17 July 2005. 09:43 (AEDT)Sunday, 17 July 2005.
The Australian Marine Conservation Society says Darwin Harbour
is likely to be a hub for the movement of radioactive waste
under the Federal Government's plan for a nuclear waste dump in
the Northern Territory.
The society's Adele Pedder says nuclear waste from Lucas Heights
has been sent to France for processing but it will be returned
to Australia for storage.
Ms Pedder says the objections raised by people living on land
transportation routes could lead the Government to move the
waste by sea.
She says this would create higher risks in the event of an
accident.
"High levels of movement of ships and unloading, there's a high
risk for spills and accidents and as we all know, accidents do
happen," she said.
"So it is of serious concern for the marine environment and
where there is a spill, if there is a spill in a marine
environment, it's not easy to clean up."
Ms Pedder says the Government's plan to house low and
intermediate level nuclear waste in the NT will open the door to
highly radioactive waste.
She says the storage of low-level waste caused by medical and
experimental use is very different from what the Government is
proposing.
"If this nuclear waste dump does go ahead and there is any
expansion of uranium mining and processing of nuclear material
in Australia such as that proposed for Roxby Downs, the waste
will also be dumped in the NT so we will see increased volumes
of nuclear waste moving across the ocean and moving through
Darwin Harbour," she said.
*****************************************************************
22 AU ABC: MP calls for sensible debate on nuclear waste dump
Australian Broadcasting Corporation Online">
Monday, 18 July 2005. 08:00 (AEST)Monday, 18 July 2005. 08:00
The Northern Territory's independent member for Nelson, Gerry
Wood, says the debate surrounding the siting of a nuclear waste
dump in the Territory is based on fear.
He says the volume of waste is not great and equates to the size
of two cricket pitches with a height of about 10-metres.
He says that would increase by 40 cubic metres a year.
Mr Wood says the Federal Government should be condemned for
lying about the location of the dump, but he says nuclear waste
is a national problem and a national answer must be found.
"If all the states say 'not in our backyard', you have to say
well, 'when are we going to act as a nation?'," Mr Wood said.
"When are we going to get together and talk about this serious
issue and find a site because if you take out the politics of
it, surely it's time we grew up and said 'look we know this
material exists and we have to do something about it'."
The Territory's Environment Minister, Marion Scrymgour, has
begun circulating a petition to stop the nuclear waste dump
being created in the Territory.
Ms Scrymgour says the Federal Government lied to Territorians
when it said last year that such a dump would not be housed in
the region.
She says there has also been no consultation.
Meanwhile, Mr Woods has also called the ALP's three-mines policy
dopey and outdated.
He says the federal Labor Party policy and the Territory
Government's halt to further uranium mining is holding back
economic development in the region.
Federal Resources Minister Ian Macfarlane has said the Territory
stands to lose $13 billion because of the ban.
Mr Wood says the Territory Government should not hide behind the
three-mines policy.
"It's the dopiest policy you could ever have," Mr Wood said.
"If you don't agree with uranium mining fair enough, I'm not
complaining about those people who have good reason for not
accepting uranium mining, but if that's the case close them all
down.
"Our Northern Territory Government even encourages the one in
South Australia by allowing yellowcake to be put through the
port of Darwin."
Mr Wood says the Territory Government would prefer to sponge off
the Commonwealth rather than develop economic independence.
"We need to develop a home-grown economy and mining is certainly
one of those areas," Mr Wood said.
"It can be easy to sit back and just say 'well, let's put the
hand out for the next lot of GST from the Commonwealth' when
really we should be trying to develop an economy for the
Northern Territory and if mining uranium is one of those parts
of the economy, we certainly should be seriously looking at it."
*****************************************************************
23 Bellona: IAEA Conference in Moscow Causes Anxiety among Environmentalists
The International Conference on "Multilateral Technical and
Organizational Approaches to the Nuclear Fuel Cycle aimed at
Strengthening the Non-Proliferation Regime" takes place in
Moscow, July 13—15. The conference is organized by the IAEA and
Russian Federal Agency for nuclear energy, Rosatom.
"Here they sell our future" — the poster hung by Greenpeace in
front of the the Moscow World Trade Center.
Greenpeace Russia
Rashid Alimov, Vera Ponomareva, 2005-07-15 21:12
Over 200 representatives of Russian and foreign organizations
and companies involved in the nuclear fuel cycle, regulatory
bodies and scientists take part in the conference.
Vladimir Chuprov, an expert from the Greenpeace, is confident
that the widely formulated topic actually signifies another
discussion on the construction of an international nuclear waste
repository in Russia.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) of the UN supports
the construction of the world's first nuclear-waste storage
facility in Russia. This, in IAEA's opinion, will prevent
dangerous materials from falling into the hands of terrorists.
This was first claimed by IAEA director general Mohamed
ElBaradei in Moscow in June 2004.
"But all the Rosatom's policy shows that nonproliferation idea
doesn't play a key role in decision making," according to
Greenpeace.
The building of a nuclear powerplant in Iran and the planned
construction of the floating nuclear power plants, which burn
weapon-grade uranium, so as to lend them to the South-East Asia,
are typical examples of the lack of adherence to
non-proliferation policy.
Another reason to argue against such projects is the multiple
preexisting unsolved problems in the Russian nuclear industry.
The list of these problems was recently published in Bellona’s
report "The Russian nuclear industry: the Need for Reform."
"In recent years, and in the future, the Russian nuclear
industry together with the IAEA will do their best to convince
the people of Russia of the necessity of such a waste
repository," claims Greenpeace. In Chuprov's opinion, the
current conference is one of many steps taken by the IAEA and
Rosatom to pave the way for the creation of the international
repository in Russia.
One year ago, the head of Rosatom, Alexander Rumyantsev,
revealed plans to organize an international conference to
discuss two variants for contruction for the waste repository.
He made this statement after meeting with El-Baradei. He didn't
comment, however, on what the two variants were, and when the
conference would take place.
Bellona Web failed to reach Rosatom's press-service on the
phone before the conference, though we've managed to accredit
our correspondent at a press-briefing before the event. Access
to the conference is restricted, and Greenpeace was barred from
entry on the grounds that the conference is being held only for
specialists.
In the morning of July, 13 activists of Greenpeace met
participants of the conference with a poster "Chernobyl -
repository No 1. Russia - repository No 2?" One activist climbed
the statue of Hermes near the Moscow World Trade Center. The
mountain-climber hung a poster "Here they sell the future" on
the leg of the god. He also applied a radiation symbol to a
glass ball at the pedestal of the figure. Two activists were
detained.
Bellona releases "The Russian Nuclear Industry—The Need for
Reform" in Washington
2005-06-03
WASHINGTON—The Bellona Foundation has presented its report “The
Russian Nuclear Industry—The Need for Reform” to high-ranking US
government officials and NGOs in Washington, DC to a warm
reception and the accolades of those working within the United
States non-proliferation and environmental establishment.
Read on>>
Order Bellona "Russian Nuclear Industry - The Need for Reform"
Report or download it as PDF
Unsolved Problems
The recent Bellona report "Russian Nuclear Industry: the Need
for Reform" critisizes Rosatom for lobbying in favour of nuclear
waste import into the country. As for the international
cooperation, the authors stress the lack of coordination and
audit, which makes it possible to spend international money
without any control.
Besides, funds invested into the nuclear safety projects
actually often support the dangerous and unprofitable structure
of Russian nuclear industry instead of stimulating any reforms.
Such programs as the HEU-LEU programme—which is based on a
business to business agreement between the US and Russia’s
nuclear fuel manufacturers—allows Russia to maintain the
Soviet-era status quo of its nuclear industry to the tune of
$500m a year and offers no impetus for Moscow to re-assess the
current structure of its nuclear industry.
"They are perfectly satisfied to take nuclear waste to Russia
and its huge expenses, create more radioactive hazards for the
environment and human life for a little money," commented on the
IAEA initiatives Alexander Nikitin, Chairman of the
Environmental Rights Center Bellona, or ERC, Bellona’s St.
Petersburg Branch, in 2004, when the initiatives just had been
unmasked.
"I have always thought this was a terrible idea, but I am more
worried now than before because it is being discussed at such
high levels."
Bellona physicist and International Programme Director Nils
Bøhmer said, "The income for a potential future repository will—
if it doesn’t end up in some secret account in Switzerland—will
be used to strengthen the power of the successors of Minatom."
He said the project itself will lead to further political and
nuclear challenges in Russia and said that "the IAEA involvement
in this project is a blow for the growing democratic movement in
Russia, and will undermine this development—the people of Russia
have very clearly said 'no' to any international repositories in
Russia."
Moscow, IAEA support multi-national nuke waste repository for
Russia
2004-06-30
Moscow’s top nuclear official Tuesday had little comment about
the imminent possibility of building a multi-national nuclear
waste repository in Russia after he held meetings with President
Vladimir Putin and Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the
International Atomic Energy Agency, but all domestic and
international signals indicate the project is in the offing.
Spent fuels and nuclear waste imports
Currently, there is no country in the world legally allowing
imports of spent fuel and nuclear waste for storage. Only
imports of spent fuel for reprocessing are possible in several
countries, provided that all the nuclear waste generated during
the reprocessing is returned to the country of the spent fuel
origin in a given short period of time.
In 2001, several amendments to environmental legislation were
adopted in Russia, regardless of public opinion: it was allowed
to import spent nuclear fuel for temporary technological storage
and for dumping of the nuclear waste, generated during the
reprocessing. And even the 'temporary storage' may actually
become eternal, as the terms were never exactly stated.
But not until 2004, did Rosatom begin speaking in favor of not
only spent fuel imports for reprocessing "to extract valuable
materials," but of importing nuclear waste for dumping in
Russia.
According to the ROMIR polling agency survey of November 2000,
93.5 per cents of Russian citizens negatively react to the plans
to import radioactive materials to Russia from other countries
for storage, reprocessing, or dumping.
In June 2004, Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov, speaking
alongside ElBaradei at a conference, said Moscow fully supported
the IAEA proposal. "Russia is the only country in the world
where legislation allows that," he said.
Rosatom hopes to get large-scaled international funds for the
construction of such a repository, its maintenance, and waste
isolation process.
Not a single country but Russia itself supports so intently the
creation of an international nuclear repository in the Russian
territory. And in the opinion of Vladimir Slivyak of the
Ecodefence! environmental group, that would postpone any such
plans, in spite of persistent lobbying and advertising.
"Currently there is no international initiative supporting such
plans," says Slivyak.
"Waste storage is a serious problem, but no so pressing globally
yet, to demand an urgent solution, like creation of
international repositories in certain countries."
According to Chuprov, it would be possible to understand what
stage the project has reached from the decisions of
international institutions such as the 2006 G8 summit in St
Petersburg.
"If this question [building of a nuclear repository] would be at
the summit agenda, it would mean, all the undercover
negotiations hit the target."
Decommissioning the support vessel Lepse: Problems and
solutions
The working paper prepared for Bellona by Yury Chernogorov. An
analysis of various approaches to dismantlement of the Lepse
nuclear storage vessel, which stores tons of spent nuclear fuel
from the Russian icebreakers onboard.
Nuclear Waste Ship Decommissioning: Different Approaches
Russian nuclear oversight officials consider technologies for
decommissioning and dismantling the notorious Lepse radioactive
waste storage ship that have earlier been suggested on Bellona
Web to be “preferable” to other possible solutions under
consideration. Bellona calls for a transparent environmental
evaluation of dismantlement projects for the Lepse.
The lack of conception
Today, just before the beginning of the IAEA conference, Yury
Chernogorov, the former chief technologist of a special group of
the Murmansk Shipping Company, sent a letter to the minister of
industry and energy Victor Khristenko, the minister of
transportation Igor Levitin, and the president of the Kurchatov
Institute Yevgeny Velikhov.
"Before discussing the idea of international repository it is
necessary to solve the problem — and make decisions on building
Russian repositories for the Russian nuclear waste," he says.
Recently, Chernogorov, as an invited expert, contributed to
Bellona Web an analysis of various approaches to the
dismantlement of the Lepse nuclear storage vessel, which stores
tons of spent nuclear fuel from the Russian icebreakers on
board. The document is published on the Bellona web site.
According to Chernogorov, the current conception does not really
allow dismantling of nuclear submarines, nuclear maintenance
vessels and nuclear-powered surface ships.
Rosatom's conception, adopted officially in 2000, in fact
legalized the postponement of the decommissioning of nuclear
submarines, — while according to this conception, the reactor
compartments, cut off from the submarine hulls, are not
decommissioned, but placed for 70 years in an interim storage
site.
"No repositories are built meanwhile, the problem is shifted to
the shoulders of our great-grandsons", Chernogorov says.
In June Rosatom's web-site published an interview with Sergey
Antipov, deputy head of Rosatom.
"The most urgent task for us is to launch the object [interim
waste storage at the Saida Bay] in time, before the end of the
year. This means we have to install the reactor compartment on
the concrete basement for long-time storage. Once we have done
this, we will have grounds to say that at least one nuclear
submarine has been completely decommissioned," Antipov said.
"But this absolutely does not mean complete decommissioning,"
says Chernogorov.
"It is decommissioning of the reactor compartment that
represents the main problem. And storing the waste into the
repositories, building of which is not among the priorities
according to the current conception".
In December 2002 Minatom’s representative Victor Akhunov
explained the 70 years period in the following terms: "The fixed
period is too short for the hulls to become depressurized or
lose their solidity... At the same time it is enough for the
natural nuclear deactivation... to the level allowing
decommissioning the reactor compartments without limits for the
working shifts. It will return to the national economy hundreds
of tons of high-quality metal."
"In 70 years only cobalt-60 will dissociate. Nickel-59,
nickel-63 and molybdenum-93 and other isotopes will not fully
decay by this time. Of course, it will be impossible to melt
this metal," says Chernogorov.
"Even if some clear metal can be found there, the work of
dosimetrists, as well as the work of other operations, will make
it ten times more expensive than the normal market price for
such metal".
The more so, the Rosatom conception, — stipulating submarine
decommissioning— does not provide for decommissioning of nuclear
maintenance vessels and nuclear-powered surface ships, while
they are similar objects and would be dealt with at the same
shipyards by the same personnel anyway.
"Another weak point of the conception is the possibility of the
sinking of the reactor compartments while towing them from the
shipyard no. 49 in Kamchatka, where they are cut off the
submarines hulls, to the Zvezda plant, where they would be
prepared for a long-term storage. The distance between the
shipyard no.49 and Zvezda is 2 300 kilometers by sea," writes
Chernogorov in his letter to the Russian ministers.
On August 30th 2003, while being towed from Gremikha a former
naval base to the Nerpa plant, the K-159 nuclear submarine sank,
taking away the lives of nine transportation-crew members. The
distance between Gremikha and Nerpa is about 300 kilometers. For
the moment K-159 is still on the bottom of the Barents sea with
800 kilograms of spent nuclear fuel in its reactors. The lifting
operation has yet to be negotiated between the Russian
governmental bodies and the Mammoet company, which lifted the
Kursk submarine in 2001, sunken during maneuvers in 2002,
killing all the 118 members of the crew.
2004-06-30 International Co-operation
Moscow, IAEA support multi-national nuke waste repository for
Russia
Publisher: , President:
Information: , Technical contact:
Telephone: +47 23 23 46 00 Telefax: +47 22 38 38 62 * P.O.Box
2141 Grunerlokka, 0505 Oslo, Norway
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24 Sunday Herald: Nuclear convoycould explode,admits MoD
By Rob Edwards, Environment Correspondent
TRIDENT warheads carried regularly by road to the Clyde naval
base could explode if they are involved in a major crash, an
internal Ministry of Defence report reveals.
The report which seems to contradict previous MoD assurances on
safety states that the warheads key safety feature could be
disabled by a plane crash or vehicle pile-up. In the worst-case
scenario, this could trigger a nuclear explosion, unleashing a
burst of lethal radiation .
Defence ministers and MoD officials have repeatedly insisted
that such an accident is impossible. And last week an MoD
spokesman claimed its own report was mistaken, saying that an
explosion could be ruled out because the warheads were not armed.
The MoD stance was dismissed by Jane Tallents from Nukewatch
Scotland, a group which monitors nuclear weapons convoys.
We have been misled, she said. The prospect of a nuclear bomb
accidentally exploding while it is being transported through
Glasgow, Edinburgh, Stirling or anywhere else is too horrific to
contemplate. The only safe option is to dismantle every warhead.
Convoys of nuclear weapons travel about six times a year between
the Atomic Weapons Establishment at Burghfield in Berkshire and
the Royal Naval Armaments Depot at Coulport on Loch Long.
According to the MoD, they pass through 21 local authorities in
Scotland.
The safety of the convoys, which involve more than six vehicles,
has been assessed by the MoDs directorate of nuclear movements
and nuclear accident response group. In a report dated December
16, 2004, it said there is a risk of an inadvertent yield from a
nuclear explosion.
This could result in huge radiation doses to members of the
public of between one and 10 sieverts, it says. According to the
governments Health Protection Agency, doses of more than four
sieverts can cause acute radiation poisoning and death within
days.
Multiple failures caused by vehicle accidents or aircraft
crashes could mean that the nuclear weapon may not retain its
single point safety nature, the report says.
Single point safety is the main barrier to an accidental nuclear
explosion. To explode a nuclear bomb, a sphere of plutonium has
to be rapidly compressed by a series of conventional high
explosives. Bombs are designed so that if they suffer a hit at a
single point, all the explosives will not detonate.
The MoD report argues the chances of an accidental explosion are
so low less than three in a billion per year it is therefore
acceptable. Nuclear safety risks are tolerable, it concludes,
when balanced against the strategic imperative to move nuclear
weapons.
But this is angrily rejected by Mark Ruskell, the Green MSP for
Mid Scotland and Fife, who obtained the report under the Freedom
of Information Act.
The horror of a nuclear accident anywhere on a convoy route
would be so great that even a minute risk is utterly
unthinkable, he said.
I have always assumed that while leaks of nuclear material from
a damaged convoy are feasible, an explosion would be impossible.
This new information blows away our perceptions of what the
hazards are.
Ruskell is also concerned that nuclear weapons convoys could be
a target for terrorists. Given the nature of post-9/11 politics
and terrorism, nuclear weapons are more of a liability than a
deterrent, he warned.
Nigel Chamberlain, a nuclear analyst with the British American
Security Information Council in London, accused the MoD of
transporting nuclear warheads across the country with a
distasteful mix of secrecy, arrogance and complacency.
Reassurances about the inherent safety features of warhead
design had now been exposed as overstated, he said.
The MoD has always maintained a convoy accident could not
trigger a nuclear explosion. Even in the highly unlikely event
of an accident involving the detonation of the conventional
explosives within a warhead and a subsequent fire, there would
not be a nuclear explosion, says a statement from the MoDs
Atomic Weapons Establishment.
Yesterday, the MoD did not deny that there were circumstances in
which a nuclear bomb could lose its single point safety. But an
MoD spokesman suggested that this may not be the only protection
against accidental detonation. A nuclear bomb-type explosion
could not take place because the nuclear weapon is unarmed. It
is in such a state that fission could not take place, he said.
There has never been an accident involving a nuclear weapons
convoy which has led to, or has come anywhere near leading to,
any release of radioactive contamination. We are confident that
the continued application of stringent safety procedures will
continue to prove effective in preventing such an accident.
But Frank Barnaby, an expert on nuclear bombs who used to work
for the Atomic Weapons Establishment, was more sceptical. I
wouldnt be prepared to take the MoDs word for it, given the
seriousness of the consequences, he said.
The MoDs obsessional secrecy prevented any independent
assessment of the risks, he argued. The public have the right to
be totally reassured, but because of the secrecy that is not
possible. That is worrying.
The MoD report is one of a series of documents released under
the Freedom of Information Act about plans to speed up the
nuclear bomb convoys. In order to reduce the risk of terrorist
attack, the MoD has changed to a system of continuous running
which cuts the time taken for the convoys to complete their
journey from three days to 24 hours.
But the documents say that the change, if inadequately conceived
or implemented, would have the potential to create a significant
hazard to the operation. Dangers cited included poor visibility
at night, tiredness and getting lost.
In the past four months, the convoy has been seen making two
journeys through Scotland. On April 1, anti-nuclear campaigners
claim the 44-tonne truck carrying the bomb went over a bridge
with a 13-tonne weight limit near Stirling. On May 7, the convoy
was halted in Balloch, north of Glasgow, when a protester lay
down in the road in front of it.
17 July 2005
© newsquest (sunday herald) limited. all rights reserved
*****************************************************************
25 News Journal: It's toxic, but DuPont wants it near homes
www.delawareonline.com ¦ The
July 17, 2005
Capping waste pile at Edge Moor costs $5 million; moving it
would cost $380 million
By JEFF MONTGOMERY / The News Journal 07/17/2005
WILMINGTON -- Just northeast of Wilmington, along the Delaware
River, stands a mostly barren pile of industrial waste. Some
DuPont Co. officials describe the material in the 500,000-ton,
16-acre pile at the company's Edge Moor Plant as little worse
than dirt.
But to Cragmere resident Steve Tindall, the dump is a ticking,
toxic time bomb. He and other neighborhood residents want it
hauled away.
The pile near the mouth of Shellpot Creek is ground zero in a
tangled, high-stakes battle worth hundreds of millions of
dollars to DuPont.
For months, community and environmental groups have warred with
company scientists and consultants over the fate of the mound.
Some DuPont opponents have labeled it a monument to dirty
tricks, dioxins and other toxic wastes.
Dioxin is a catch-all term for hundreds of related compounds
that in some combinations can be "highly potent, likely
carcinogens," according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
Area residents worry about the fine particles of dioxin and
other pollutants blowing into their neighborhood across I-495
from the plant. And they're upset about a quietly negotiated
deal between DuPont and the state that could result in the pile
staying there forever.
Covering the stockpile in place -- more than a mile from any
home or residential area -- "poses substantially lower potential
human health risks" than moving the material, DuPont concluded.
It also would cost less than removal and incineration.
The proposal to cap the waste with a thick plastic cover and
leave it where it is would cost about $5 million, DuPont
estimates. Removing the material could cost up to $380 million,
the company says.
But the discovery of dioxins in the material has fed opposition
to the clean-up-and-bury settlement company and state officials
once considered a sure thing.
"They say they don't want to stir it up, that it's better to
leave it there," Tindall said. "If it's that much of a concern,
it doesn't belong there."
The controversy has opened a new and potentially costly chapter
in DuPont's nationwide struggle to manage and cut costs for
dealing with waste from its flagship titanium dioxide, or TiO2,
pigment business. The company heats and combines titanium ore
with chlorine and other ingredients to make a valuable whitening
agent used in everything from paper coatings to toothpaste,
paint and food products, including the cream in Oreo cookies.
The product line, worth $2 billion in sales last year, already
has been bruised by costly government investigations in
California, thousands of potential toxic-injury lawsuits in
Mississippi and probes of shellfish contamination near the Gulf
of Mexico.
One Delaware community group opposing the plan already has
enlisted the help of the Environmental and Natural Resources Law
Center at Widener University. Other residents say they are in
touch with lawyers suing a similar DuPont operation in
Mississippi.
"In reality, DuPont does not want people to discover that
they're the world's largest dioxin producer. No one else comes
close," said Allen M. Stewart, a Dallas attorney who represents
more than 2,000 people now waiting to sue the company over
illnesses they blame on a TiO2 pigment plant in Delisle, Miss.
"There's no doubt that the stuff gets out into the environment."
In the Edgemoor area north of Wilmington, DuPont's landfill
effort triggered protests, claims of conspiracy and demands for
new studies and investigations.
"There are a few types of chemicals that get singled out and
kind of hyper-regulated," said Aaron A. Jennings, a civil
engineering professor who specializes in toxic metal
contamination research at Case Western Reserve University in
Cleveland. "PCBs are one, and dioxin is another. You can
identify hundreds of things that don't raise any flags, but you
identify dioxin and klaxons go off."
Stewart said attorneys involved in the Mississippi case are in
touch with several Delaware residents.
"No one has really contacted us" from Delaware for legal
representation, Stewart said. "We're trying to keep our ear to
the ground. If what's going on in Edge Moor is the same thing
that's going on in Delisle, I would expect problems" for the
health of residents.
Although DNREC officials say they have not yet approved DuPont's
plan, a court-approved consent decree issued in October 2001
orders DuPont to close the pile "in place."
DuPont officials stand by their plan, saying the cover and seal
designs far exceed state or federal safety requirements.
"There are no holes in our plan," said Gregory W. Smith, head of
DuPont's Corporate Remediation Group, a company division that
handles hazardous waste cleanup. "The remedy is clearly the
right remedy."
Toxic residues
DuPont has acknowledged for years that its waste -- once called
Iron Rich and marketed as construction-type fill for roads and
landfills -- contains some toxic residues, including arsenic,
manganese and potentially cancer-causing chemicals.
But company officials said studies had found "minimal risk" from
the pile and disputed efforts by environmental groups such as
Green Delaware and Environmentalists for Truth to brand the
project "DuPont's Dioxin Dump."
Tests found that levels of dioxins in the Edge Moor pile fall
below guidelines used to trigger federal or state cleanup
orders, company officials said. Although a thick blanket of soil
would have met state requirements to reduce risks and
environmental releases, DuPont said, the current proposal calls
for capping the top and sides with a thick plastic-like blanket.
Edward Kavazanjian Jr., an associate professor at Arizona State
University deeply involved in hazardous waste disposal, said
that landfill caps are a "widely accepted" solution for
hazardous waste landfills in some -- but not all -- cases.
"It's not like capping ignores the fact that dioxin is there,"
Kavazanjian said. "It's one remedy. Digging the stuff out,
moving it, creates a whole potential range of exposures both to
workers and the community."
Some neighbors remain unconvinced. They claim state regulators
timed a cleanup order to create a loophole big enough to hide
DuPont's pile from tougher and costlier waste designations.
"It doesn't belong there," said Edgemoor resident Curtis C.
Hatton Jr. as he spread mulch around a carefully manicured lawn
on his tree-shaded street. "If it was us, we'd never be allowed
to do what DuPont wants to do. They've got it in our back yard,
practically. They should have to take it away and dispose of it."
In dispute are issues ranging from the importance of naturally
occurring radioactivity in the pile to the degree of risk from
different varieties of dioxins and dioxin-like compounds.
Tests of the waste found dioxin pollutants, among the most toxic
substances known, but at concentrations DuPont said are too low
to justify any restrictions for now, based on both state and
federal standards.
Federal records show the EPA rated other pollutants in the pile,
including manganese, arsenic and cancer-causing organic
compounds, as more of a concern than dioxin. But federal
officials did describe dioxins as a "supporting basis" for
declaring the waste hazardous in 2001.
The EPA qualified its decision to omit dioxin from the official
list of "contaminants of concern" for Iron Rich by declaring in
its final Federal Register notice that, "We are acting to
protect human health and the environment from the release of the
significant levels [of dioxins] found in the untreated waste
form."
Despite claims that removing the pile would create health
hazards from truck traffic and hazardous dust worse than those
expected from covering and keeping the waste in place, objection
to DuPont's landfill plan have continued in Northeast
Wilmington, suburban neighborhoods to the north and New Castle
Avenue residential areas to the south.
On Wilmington's East 28th Street, retired autoworker William O.
Griffin agreed with Hatton's view from the suburbs.
"It's a toxic dump. How could it belong there?" Griffin asked.
"We have enough problems here already. We have some of the worst
areas in the city -- we don't need 500,000 tons of toxic waste."
DuPont has shrugged off some of the most vocal opponents, saying
the debate has been clouded by "professional environmental
groups and individuals who make their living by causing
conflict."
Agitation by Green Delaware and other groups, DuPont officials
said, has helped to convince New Castle County Council and the
city of New Castle to adopt what the company claims are
misguided resolutions opposing the landfill capping plan.
"What's disappointing is the fact that well-intentioned people
have been swayed," Smith said. "We're disappointed in the
information, the misinformation, that they've used to influence
otherwise reasonable people."
Process gone awry
In the mid-1990s, DuPont made production changes at its Edge
Moor plant that officials hoped would turn processing leftovers
into new products, including the dirt-like "soil substitute"
dubbed Iron Rich because of heavy iron residues.
Company managers hoped to sell Iron Rich for use in landfills,
roadbeds or other construction because of its soil-like
qualities.
EPA regulators had different ideas.
The agency tentatively labeled some of the plant's waste
hazardous in 2001, as part of a nationwide review of chemical
industry landfill pollution risks.
Later studies found dioxins and unacceptably high levels of
manganese, arsenic and iron in the Delaware pile, as well as two
toxic chemicals: hexachlorobenzene and polychlorinated
biphenyls, or PCBs. Both are potential cancer-causing agents
after prolonged exposure that can cause a variety of other
ailments, including memory loss and disorders in motor skills.
After the new rules took effect, DuPont started splitting up its
waste, sending the most toxic residues to hazardous disposal
incinerators. The change qualified remaining leftovers for
disposal without hazardous waste restrictions in a landfill in
South Carolina, but stranded the mixed wastes piled at Edge Moor
between 1997 and 2001.
Officials also said they would make process changes that would,
by 2007, eliminate 90 percent of dioxins, PCBs and other
compounds.
"We estimate that it's going to cost between $15 million and $25
million" to reach the voluntary 90 percent reduction, said Edge
Moor Operations Manager Harold J. Kirby.
Meanwhile, before the new federal regulations took effect that
labeled DuPont's waste hazardous, state regulators and the
company signed a privately negotiated cleanup agreement backed
up by a Superior Court consent decree. The decree authorized the
company to apply for the state's Voluntary Cleanup Plan program
with a proposal that would include keeping the pile under cover
and in place at Edge Moor.
The agreement and timing potentially made the waste mound
eligible for entombment in its original spot near the river,
heading off the possibility of a cleanup order under the new
hazardous waste ruling.
The EPA published a federal notice outlining its concerns about
DuPont's waste in September 2000, but state records show that
DNREC and DuPont were in private talks for months before DuPont
announced the dioxin concerns in Delaware.
While those talks were under way, DNREC also quietly tightened
controls on older, already closed piles at Edge Moor containing
the same TiO2 Iron Rich. The older piles were unaffected by the
new federal rule, although DNREC ordered periodic testing of
runoff for dioxin, PCBs and other pollutants.
"They argue that the pile is not a dump, they argue that it
wasn't illegal when they put it there, they argue that the
dioxin is good dioxin and that the concentrations are low," said
Alan Muller, who directs the environmental group Green Delaware.
"If that material was being produced now, DuPont would not be
allowed to leave it there."
DuPont officials point out that the site, long zoned for
industry, already has pollution problems nearby. Adjacent to
DuPont's pile are Wilmington's wastewater plant, a sewage sludge
processing operation, northern Delaware's busiest municipal
waste landfill, a power plant and other industries.
Nevertheless, the 500,000-ton deal has threatened to unravel as
skeptics ask why the company should receive a permit to cap and
preserve a mildly radioactive waste pile laced with toxic
metals, chemicals and dioxins.
"I think they ought to remove it. I don't know how they would go
about it, but I feel that it's too close to the water for it to
be left there," Wilmington resident Angela Jones said as she
supervised a youth group during a trip to Fox Point State Park,
north of the plant.
Joe Frarer, a retired DuPont employee, is satisfied with the
company's plan.
"It's right in an industrial area already, and you have the same
kinds of things in that pile that you do in other places all
around the city," Frarer said while on volunteer duty at Fox
Point State Park.
Discovery of high arsenic levels and other contaminants in soils
at Fox Point forced the park's shutdown from 1991 to 1995. DNREC
has been working since to reclaim more of the popular riverside
spot by covering contaminated soils with thick layers of clean
earth.
"This park right here is built on top of industrial wastes, and
people don't have any problem with it," Frarer said.
Decision delayed
Delaware's General Assembly voted last month to postpone a final
decision on DuPont's cleanup plan, approving instead a
resolution that called for DuPont to finance a study of the
waste pile by a consultant chosen and supervised by DNREC.
State officials have acknowledged that some questions raised
during public hearings in March deserve answers.
Issues up for additional review include a concession by DuPont
during the March hearings that some of the the Iron Rich
contains low levels of uranium and thorium. Company officials at
the time said the radioactive materials came to the plant with
ores used to make TiO2, and are at levels low enough to be
exempt from state or federal restrictions.
"If you look at the short-term risk of carting this away, moving
this material is so much more risky because of the potential for
having a traffic accident than it is leaving it in place, where
it's covered and no one can come in contact with it," said
Annette Guiseppi-Elie, a senior consultant for DuPont's
Corporate Remediation Group.
Guiseppi-Elie said the dirt-like waste was similar to regular
soil but did contain unacceptably high levels of manganese and
other compounds. Even with the contamination, she said,
residents would face more risk from truck traffic during
relocation than they would with it left in place.
A study ordered by DNREC and completed by a DuPont consultant
found that even without a cover the pile's risks to nearby
residents fall far below the one extra cancer death per million
residents that often triggers federal cleanup studies. Risks
from moving the material, DuPont's consultant found, were 50
times higher than leaving the material under a cover, but still
were below one in 1 million.
"This is the largest dioxin source in the country, and probably
has been for many years," Green Delaware's Muller said. "Large
amounts of this waste were handled very casually. We ought to be
looking for the consequences. Instead, we're doing the opposite.
We're seeing something cooked up that's intended to help justify
a decision to leave the pile there."
Under Delaware cleanup rules, the state requires screening for
only two of the most hazardous dioxin compounds. Company
researchers reported detecting only one type of dioxin in only
one of 11 samples screened for the two most hazardous compounds.
Uncounted are most of the more than 41,000 grams of dioxins and
dioxin-like compounds, called "furans," that Edge Moor produced
in 2003.
Even counting all types of dioxins, concentrations in the Iron
Rich pile amount to about 1 part per billion -- just at the
limit used as an EPA cleanup goal for residential property, and
only one-fifth to one-twentieth of the level that triggers
cleanup studies on industrial sites.
By comparison, the EPA said last year that it would not require
a dioxin cleanup for soils at the abandoned Metachem Products
factory near Delaware City unless tests found concentrations at
4 ppb or higher.
"I think dioxins are an issue in this pile despite what they
say," said John Kearney, who directs the nonprofit
Environmentalists for Truth. "Thousands of pounds of that pile
were blowing away a year, and they dismissed it by saying it all
blew into the Delaware River."
Contact Jeff Montgomery at 678-4277 or
jmontgomery@delawareonline.com.
EDGE MOOR PLANT PRODUCES PLENTY OF DIOXINS, BUT THEIR TOXICITY
IS A MATTER OF DEBATE
Environmental Protection Agency records report that in 2003
DuPont produced 41,098 grams of various dioxins at its Edge Moor
Plant just northeast of Wilmington.
By some measures, the plant now ranks as the nation's largest
source of dioxins and dioxin-like compounds, a group that
includes hundreds of toxic chemicals that have been under study
and hotly debated for years.
Edge Moor's output was nearly double that of the second leading
plant, a Dow Chemical site in Texas. It was nearly three times
the amount at a similar DuPont plant in Delisle, Miss. -- where
thousands of residents are suing the company for injuries they
claim were caused by toxic pollution.
Researchers have identified hundreds of dioxins, a term that
loosely refers to some types of polychlorinated biphenyls, or
PCBs, and chemicals called furans. Nearly all are byproducts of
industry or other human activities, ranging from burning plastic
pipes in backyard barrels to incinerating chlorine-bearing
chemical wastes in a furnace.
Some dioxins are ranked internationally as likely carcinogens.
Others are rated up to 10,000 times less toxic than the most
dangerous varieties.
The compounds linger in the environment and tend to get stored
in the fat and tissues of living organisms, potentially building
up in the body and steadily increasing the risk of cancer, skin
blemishes, disruption of immune systems, birth defects and other
problems.
One EPA document describes the material as a "potent" toxin that
can cause a variety of health problems in humans.
Although federal policies on dioxin risks have been snarled by
debate for more than a decade, health officials believe only a
few trillionths of a gram for each kilogram of body weight may
be enough to cause symptoms or long-term health damage.
DuPont officials caution that nearly all the dioxin varieties
that Edge Moor produced in 2003 are a type of furan, not PCB,
and are 10,000 times less toxic than the most dangerous type.
The company has predicted that its ranking may change when new
EPA rules add an adjusted dioxin emission total for factories.
Under the plan, DuPont's dioxin production would be discounted.
Since Edge Moor produces mostly furans, thousands would be
needed to count as a single gram of the most toxic varieties.
EPA officials reported in 2001 that dioxin concentrations found
in a stockpile of Edge Moor wastes fell short of the level
needed to trigger a hazardous waste designation. But officials
said they may take a second look once the government completes a
general re-evaluation of dioxin hazards.
© delawareonline.com/The News Journal
*****************************************************************
26 Daily Advertizer: Barksdale undergoes nuclear inspection
Barksdale undergoes nuclear inspection Process tests unit's
safety, security and control of weapons. July 16, 2005
"It's worth the wait, knowing that we're safe." Anthony Blackmon,
commercial driver who's had to wait longer for base access Online
You won't find a lot of the Web on "nuclear surety," but here
are a few sites to start your journey:
Air Force Safety Center,
John Andrew Prime jprime@gannett.com
Two or three times a week, G Distributing driver Anthony
Blackmon trundles beverages onto Barksdale Air Force Base,
taking his truck through a new commercial gate, enduring a wait
of 15 to 20 minutes each time.
"Waiting? I don't have a problem with it," said Blackmon, who
has been with G nearly a decade. "It's worth the wait, knowing
that we're safe."
This past week the waits have been longer but he may be even
safer, as Barksdale undergoes a regular Nuclear Surety
Inspection, or NSI. The inspection, which has been announced for
some time on electronic marquees visible to people driving off
and on base, started July 9 and should end today or Sunday. They
typically last a week.
The Nuclear Surety Inspection is different from a Nuclear
Operational Readiness Inspection (NORI) or an Operational
Readiness Inspection (ORI), both of which test a military unit's
ability to use or deploy different weapons systems, or execute
tactics.
The NSI, conducted every 18 months, is a test of a unit's or
facility's ability to control and protect the stuff it uses to do
its job.
According to the General Accountability Office, an investigative,
watchdog arm of the U.S. government, the Department of Defense
"defines 'surety' as material, personnel and procedures that
contribute to the safety, security and control of nuclear
weapons."
Earlier this week, base visitors, and even people who work there,
were kept out for about 15 to 20 minutes on at least one occasion
when all the gates were closed. A 100-percent ID check policy has
generally been in effect since Sept. 11, 2001, and even in
pre-terror days, Barksdale was generally acknowledged as a place
where you'd better have a car decal, a sponsor or a good reason
to enter; it was not a casual sightseer's destination. Testing
such as NSI makes that exterior even thicker and tougher.
"It was a temporary shutdown," said Master Sgt. Barbara Lavigne,
2nd Bomb Wing spokeswoman. "What they do, is inspectors want to
see how we respond. The gates closing is probably the most
visible sign of this."
There could be more temporary shutdowns until the NSI ends, but
Lavigne doubts this.
"Of course, anything's possible. But the inspectors know it's
prudent to keep our gates open," she said.
The Daily Advertiser| The Town Talk| The News Star| The Daily
WorldCopyright 2005© The Times.
*****************************************************************
27 Morgan Hill Times: Will perchlorate suit hold water?
Saturday, July 16, 2005
By Matt King
San Jose - Four plaintiffs suing the Olin Corp. for polluting
the groundwater in San Martin with perchlorate are exaggerating
their claims of emotional distress because they can prove
neither financial or medical damages, a lawyer told a jury
Wednesday during the first case against the company to reach
trial.
“Since they are not going to make any health claims and can’t
prove property damages, [they] will make exaggerated emotional
distress claims inconsistent with their actions,” Olin attorney
Tom Carney said in his opening statement. “And they will not
claim any damage for emotional distress for fears they may
experience physical illness or disease.”
The plaintiffs are all San Martin residents. They claim that the
revelation in 2003 of a 9.5-mile perchlorate plume flowing south
and east of Olin’s former road flare factory in southern Morgan
Hill has damaged their idyllic rural lifestyle and caused
irrevocable harm to their home values.
“On purpose, knowing what they were doing, intentionally, Olin
polluted the groundwater,” plaintiffs’ attorney Colin Pearce
told the nine-member federal jury. “They thought they would just
dump this waste and maybe nobody would find out about it.”
The plaintiffs are four of about 280 residents who have sued
Olin. A group of about 160 claimants are on the verge of
settling their cases. The remaining plaintiffs are awaiting the
outcome of this trial.
Pearce, of Duane Morris in San Francisco, also accused Olin of
shattering his clients’ “American Dream” in his nearly two-hour
opening statement.
“Olin has stolen the water from the families we represent. Olin
has stolen their ability to raise their families and enjoy their
houses and properties,” he said. “We need water to live. It’s
something we take for granted. That is the heart of this case. I
ask you to make the common sense judgment that pollution
deserves compensation.”
Pearce said some of his clients were discouraged when they
looked into possibly selling their homes, but realtors said
Wednesday that the central claim of the case may be very
difficult to prove.
“I don’t think so,” Coldwell Banker Realtor Shanna Boigon said
of claims that San Martin home prices are stuck in neutral. “As
long as [Olin] provides water and as long as there are solutions
for filtering, I think they’re wrong. Perchlorate is no bigger
problem than nitrates. It’s just one more thing on the list of
things we look for. Of course, there could always be individual
properties [that have not appreciated].”
Roger Malech, a realtor with Intero Real Estate in Morgan Hill,
said that after a brief stall in the housing market when the
contamination was first revealed, homes in San Martin have
appreciated much like those in Morgan Hill and Gilroy.
“It’s hard to put a number on anything, but it sure doesn’t seem
like there’s been any decrease because of perchlorate,” he said.
Pearce said he will put a number to his clients’ losses in the
course of the trial, and detailed at some length the traumatic
effects perchlorate has had on their lives. Aside from the
inconvenience of having to use bottled water, he said, his
clients have grave fears for their children who grew up drinking
the polluted water, are afraid to eat fruit growing on their
properties, and reluctant to have company.
And Pearce repeatedly stressed the potential adverse health
effects of perchlorate, which has been shown to inhibit thyroid
activity, particularly in children and women who are pregnant,
as one plaintiff, Teresa Pereira, was when the contamination was
revealed.
“If there is one thing that’s clear in all of this, is that if
anybody’s at risk, it’s a pregnant woman,” Pearce said before he
seemed to suggest $13 million as a starting point for the jury
to consider in awarding emotional distress damages. “Olin has
spent $13 million and still there is no solution. That should
give you some idea of the magnitude of this problem.”
Carney, who is with the St. Louis firm of Husch and Eppenberger,
stressed that the plaintiffs have not taken simple steps to
protect themselves, such as purchasing reverse osmosis systems
to filter their tap water. Nor, he said, have they expressed
concerns about the high levels of nitrates and other
contaminants.
“I think their claims are inconsistent with their actions,” he
said. “They weren’t concerned about coliform or nitrates in
their wells.”
And Carney showed the jury seemingly contradictory appraisals of
the Pereira’s home. One, from the plaintiffs’ expert witness put
the value of the home at about $814,000. But a refinancing
application from about the same time placed the value of the
property at $990,000. In 2003, it was appraised at $800,000.
“They use higher appraisals when they want money from a bank,
but different appraisals when they want money from a jury,”
Carney said.
Pearce said after the proceedings that the financial information
presented by Carney was “selective, out of context, misleading,
incomplete.”
“We believe the evidence will show an impact on the value of our
clients’ properties, and we think common sense also supports
that if you have perchlorate in your water the value of your
property is discounted.”
Carney said he was surprised the case had progressed to a trial
and expected to renew settlement talks. The St. Louis lawyer is
also representing Olin, which is based in Tennessee, in a
similar case brought by the San Jose firm of Alexander Hawes and
Audet on behalf of 160 homeowners.
Attorney Richard Alexander said this week those cases should be
resolved soon and a settlement is a better bet for his clients.
The case that has reached trial, Palmisano V. Olin, is being
held in the San Jose courtroom of federal Judge Ronald M. Whyte.
Lawyers expect it will last about a month.
[(408)842-9070]
*****************************************************************
28 PE.com: Independent perchlorate studies urged
| Inland Southern California | Inland News
FEDERAL BUDGET: Sen. Feinstein adds a provision to a bill,
calling for research on the chemical's effects.
01:36 AM PDT on Saturday, July 16, 2005
By DAVID DANELSKI / The Press-Enterprise
Sen. Dianne Feinstein is calling on the federal government to
fund independent research into the health effects of the
rocket-fuel chemical perchlorate, which has contaminated many
Inland drinking-water supplies.
Feinstein, a Democrat, added a provision this week to a federal
budget bill, instructing an environmental health agency to
support perchlorate research. Most studies have been done by the
perchlorate industry.
The provision doesn't guarantee funding but is expected to help
set research priorities, a Feinstein aide said Friday.
Last month, Feinstein raised concerns about the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency's reliance on an
industry-sponsored study to guide future drinking-water and
cleanup standards for perchlorate.
Several scientists have said the study was flawed because it did
not report apparent effects on some of the people who ingested
the chemical during human clinical trials conducted at Oregon
Health & Science University in Portland.
Perchlorate, an oxidizing agent, is the main ingredient in
solid-state rocket fuel. It has leached into the Colorado River
and hundreds of groundwater supplies, a legacy of military
bases, Cold War-era munitions factories and other manufacturing.
It also has been discovered in cow milk, human breast milk and
vegetables irrigated with tainted water.
Health and environmental officials are worried about the
pollution because, in sufficient amounts, perchlorate blocks the
thyroid gland's ability to absorb iodide, an essential nutrient
the thyroid needs to make hormones that guide the development of
brains and nerves in fetuses, babies and children.
Feinstein was not available for comment Friday, but her press
aide, Howard Gantman, said the federal government needs to
investigate how the chemical might be affecting millions of
people.
Feinstein's call for perchlorate research is included in $604.4
billion spending bill for the departments of labor, education
and health and human services for fiscal year 2006. The bill was
approved by the Senate Appropriations Committee on Wednesday and
is expected to go to the full Senate before the August recess.
The senator added a provision encouraging the National Institute
of Environmental Health Services "to support clinical,
mechanistic, and epidemiological studies that focus on
establishing a better understanding of the long-term health
effects of perchlorate exposure on humans and determining with
greater certainty what perchlorate exposures are safe for the
most vulnerable populations."
The institute is a division of Department of Health and Human
Services.
Gantman acknowledged that the language would not be binding and
does not prescribe a specific amount of money for perchlorate
research. But federal departments generally are cognizant of
such congressional directives and priorities, he said
He added that the bill provides $667 million for the
environmental health institute -- about $20 million more than
proposed by the Bush administration.
Jennifer Sass, a senior scientist with the Natural Resources
Defense Council, an environmental group, applauded Feinstein's
effort. Most of the health-effect studies have been done by for
those responsible for the pollution, she said.
"Having independent research is critical," Sass said by
telephone from Maryland. "Perchlorate is a good example where
industry has had a tight noose around the research and really
controlled it."
A spokeswoman for Lockheed Martin Corp., which has spent some
$80 million removing perchlorate from groundwater below San
Bernardino, said she welcomes additional studies.
"The more we know, the better off we are," spokeswoman Gail
Rymer said.
Reach David Danelski at (951) 368-9471 or
ddanelski@pe.comMore
2005, The Press-Enterprise Company
*****************************************************************
29 AU ABC: NT Govt vows to fight nuclear dump decision
AM - Saturday, 16 July , 2005 08:25:28
Reporter: Anne Barker
EDMOND ROY: Remote communities in the Northern Territory are
coming to terms with the possibility they could soon be living
near a national nuclear waste dump.
The Federal Government has confirmed it will build its
controversial nuclear waste repository at one of three Defence
properties in the Territory. One near Katherine and two near
Alice Springs.
The Territory Government has vowed to fight the decision, which
it says blatantly disregards a Federal Coalition election
promise last year.
Anne Barker reports.
ANNE BARKER: The remote community of Harts Range, north-east of
Alice Springs, is home to about 240 people.
This small Indigenous community is well off the beaten track –
150 kilometres along the Plenty Highway towards the Queensland
border – an ideal place for a nuclear waste dump, according to
Federal Science Minister Brendan Nelson.
BRENDAN NELSON: And if the people of Sydney can comfortably live
with a nuclear reactor that conducts research and produces
isotopes for industry, and for medical use, why on earth can't
people in the middle of nowhere have low level and intermediate
level waste?
ANNE BARKER: Harts Range is now one of three sites in the
Northern Territory short-listed for a national nuclear waste
repository.
The Federal Government will choose one of them by next year to
dump thousands of drums of waste from interstate, such as
contaminated soil or radioactive material from labs and
hospitals.
But the Commonwealth's decision has outraged Territorians who
were promised at the last election there would never be a
nuclear waste dump in the NT.
David Ross, Director of the Central Land Council, which
represents traditional owners, says bureaucrats in Canberra
appear to have just looked at a map and chosen three sites that
seemed to be empty.
And the Alice Springs Mayor Fran Kilgariff says not one person
near the Mount Everard site, 27 kilometres from town, was
consulted beforehand.
FRAN KILGARIFF: There's 30,000 people in Alice Springs, and in
the wider region another 45,000. So we’re not talking a small
community here.
It's a very substantial population that… the possibility of
being affected by this is there.
ANNE BARKER: The Commonwealth's decision now puts pressure on
the Coalition's two Territory MPs, Dave Tollner and Nigel
Scullion, to cross the floor against the Government's plan.
But Senator Scullion says while he won't support high level
radioactive material coming to the Territory, he has less
concern about low and intermediate level waste.
NIGEL SCULLION: Low level waste – more than 90 per cent of it is
radioactive poo. After four years you can grow roses on it. Now,
that's an important issue for people not to get frightened about.
But at the other end of the scale, fuel rods from Lucas Heights
is something that everybody should be quite genuinely concerned
about. And I think people need information to make a good
decision.
ANNE BARKER: Will you be taking the views of Northern Territory
voters to Canberra to try to overturn this decision?
NIGEL SCULLION: Well only if the views of Territorians don't
support the decision. If we're only dealing with… only dealing
with, low level and intermediate waste, well that's a completely
different circumstance than trying to deal with high level
radioactive waste.
We will be dealing with it in the Territory in any event.
EDMOND ROY: Northern Territory Senator Nigel Scullion, speaking
with Anne Barker.
*****************************************************************
30 Guardian Unlimited: Sellafield staff ignored 100 warnings about leak
Paul Brown, environment correspondent
Saturday July 16, 2005
Shift workers and managers at the Sellafied nuclear reprocessing
works suffered from "new plant culture", believing it was
impossible for the £1.8bn factory to go wrong, and so ignored
more than 100 warnings over six months that it had sprung a
catastrophic leak, it emerged yesterday.
Although the plant is manned 24 hours a day and deals with highly
radioactive and corrosive materials, the flagship of the
Sellafield nuclear works in Cumbria continued in operation even
though 83 cubic metres of dangerous liquid was gradually leaking
into the base of the works.
In April, the plant was closed after the discovery of a fractured
pipe and a board of inquiry was established.
The inquiry discloses that the over-confidence of workers was
completely unjustified. Some supports for tanks holding the
dangerous liquid which were designed to prevent vibration and
guard against earthquakes had never been fitted.
The result was that "the pipework had exceeded its theoretical
life expectancy given the level of vibration". It was this
vibration that caused the pipe carrying the dangerous spent
nuclear fuel dissolved in nitric acid to spring a leak.
The company inquiry says the "new plant culture" persisted at the
thermal oxide reprocessing plant (Thorp), despite the fact that
leaks had occurred twice before in its 10-year history. In one
case warnings had been ignored for years, despite alarms being
activated.
Workers at the Thorp plant are now being retrained to change
their outlook by the company which runs it, the state owned
British Nuclear Group, a successor to British Nuclear Fuels. The
report says: "It seems likely there will remain a significant
chance of further plant failures occurring in the future even
with comprehensive implementation of recommendations of this
report."
Further embarrassment for the company comes with the disclosure
that because of the six months that the leak continued, 83 cubic
metres of dissolved fuel from three countries, Holland,
Switzerland and Germany, has been mixed together on the plant
floor.
Under reprocessing contracts, plutonium and uranium from spent
fuel must be returned to the country of origin. But it may prove
impossible to do this since the mixture in the leaked fuel is
impossible to calculate because it is not known how much escaped
and at what time .
The company has since recovered the leaked fuel and stored it in
buffer tanks but remains unsure how to proceed.
It emerged yesterday that British Nuclear Group was in talks
with the safety watchdog, the Nuclear Installations
Inspectorate, over how to restart the plant.
It will be months before the works can be brought back into
operation. It is losing more than £1m a day of revenue which
would have been put towards nuclear clean-up.
Martin Forwood, from Cumbrians Opposed to Radioactive
Environment, who obtained some papers from the Nuclear
Decommissioning Authority under the Freedom of Information Act,
said he believed the report meant Thorp should never be
reopened.
The previous two accidents took place in 1998 and this February.
It was the 1998 accident, in which coarse particles of metal
wore away a pipe and it leaked, that was undetected for years,
the report said.
[UP]
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005
*****************************************************************
31 Whittier Daily: Bush looking to take a mini- step to nuclear proliferation
Opinion
Article Published: Friday, July 15, 2005 - 11:35:31
By Loretta Keller
AN atomic bomb the size of a blackberry? Yes, it seems a
preposterous idea. But it's also a frightening one, and with the
stage all set to resume the arms race in a new direction that of
mininuke research, the minis could just possibly come down to
blackberry size, according to a CNN Internet news item of June 1.
Because critical mass is now a necessary component of an atomic
explosion, the blackberry thought is a moot one. What President
Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld have been pushing to
research are atomic weapons with a yield of under five kilotons.
(The bomb dropped on Nagasaki yielded 15 kilotons.) Bush says
that at this point in time, large nuclear weapons are obsolete.
Bush believes that smaller, low- yield bombs known as "bunker-
busters' or "Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrators' (RNEPs) would be
a deterrent to "rogue nations' that are known to build bunkers
and store dangerous matter deep underground. Mininukes are not a
new idea, and are partly enabled by nanotechnology (advanced
miniaturization), which physicist Richard Feynman discussed
forty years ago.
Bunker-busters (RNEPs) are a class of small, low-yield,
precision A-bombs that if and when fully developed, are hoped to
be capable of burrowing into the earth to destroy hardened
underground facilities and stored chemical and biological
weapons of mass destruction all with no substantial collateral
damage.
Now, on July 2, the U.S. Senate approved funding for an RNEP
feasibility study, and in late May, the House of Representatives
voted to approve a $491- billion defense authorization that
includes funding for bunker-buster research. So the possibility
of converting two existing warheads into bunker-busters are
mainly what will be explored and off we go!
In approving Bush's request for the $4 million, the Senate took
a back-door budgetary route. Senator Dianne Feinstein, who
argued that according to her information, bunker-busters would
create formidable radioactivity and huge loss of life, had
sponsored an amendment prohibiting the use of public money for
the controversial exploration. But in a 53-43 vote, the senators
defeated her amendment and entered the $4- million in a spending
bill for water and energy programs for the fiscal year beginning
this coming October 1.
Although $4 million is a very small amount of money compared to
our $2.6 trillion annual federal budget, opposition to the new
program is intense. Other knowledgeable opponents say mininukes
won't even work because they can't go far enough underground to
reach their targets, and that all they'll succeed in doing is
sparking yet more anti-American sentiment. Still others claim
all that's needed to destroy underground dangers are
conventional weapons anyway.
Feinstein also said, "We are telling the world, when it comes
to nuclear weapons, do as we say, not as we do,' and she added
that our new program will only incite countries such as North
Korea and Iran to further develop their own weapons. We all know
that large-scale nuclear bombs are so terrifying that they're
virtually unusable as a first strike. While most thinking people
consider this their greatest advantage, claiming it's the reason
World War III has been averted, there are those who say atomic
weapons are only a feared deterrent if the enemy knows that
they'll be deployed.
Maybe so, but what a perverted sense of entitlement our country
has in pursuing research on any new atomic weaponry now, when
we're urging North Korea to do away with its entire nuclear
arsenal and the country is willing to resume talks.
For 10 years until 2003, the banning of research and development
on small, low-yield nuclear weapons helped keep the cold war
cold. Then the Bush administration pushed Congress to lift the
ban and money was set aside for research in 2004, but harsh
criticism at home and abroad resulted in the program's
suspension. Finally, in June Bush asked Congress for funding for
the coming fiscal year.
I think it all comes down to the human condition. I think some
governments aren't secure unless they demonstrate their
machismo. If "fearability' were a word, it would express my
meaning, and no government wants theirs to be low on the
international scare scale. What gets overlooked is that the
adversary is just as intent as we are on scaring in return.
What entitles America to do as it pleases while dictating that
the rest of the world mustn't? We're a signator of the
international Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear
Weapons, and we haven't had a nuclear test since 1992 because of
our self-imposed testing ban, but any new bomb, even berry size,
would no doubt need to be tested.
Opponents of mininukes also worry, rightly, that creating a
small-bomb arsenal will have the psychological effect on our
leaders of blurring the line between conventional and nuclear
weapons, which would make the use of larger nukes less
terrifying, and therefore more probable.
Proponents argue that what if other countries are already
looking into these minis? Is it safe for us not to enter the
race? Wasn't that part of Harry Truman's decision to give
scientists the green light with the A-bomb?
I believe that we haven't found life on other worlds because
life that may have existed anywhere in the cosmos has been
fleeting. Might atomic weapons have been used somewhere in the
Universe before we used them on Earth?
Loretta Schertz Keller is a freelance writer who lives in
Altadena. She writes once a month for the Saturday Commentary
Page.
*****************************************************************
32 The State: WHAT IS SRS?
07/17/2
The Savannah River Site is a 310-square-mile nuclear storage and
research site southeast of Aiken that is owned by the U.S.
Department of Energy and operated by Westinghouse Savannah River
Co.
• During the Cold War, SRS was a key supplier of fuel for the
nations nuclear arsenal.
• In more recent decades, it has primarily functioned as a
storage site for spent nuclear fuel.
• Its research mission, centered at the sites national
laboratory, focuses on improving nuclear waste storage
technologies and developing hydrogen fuel technologies.
• SRS has an enormous economic impact on South Carolina. Almost
half of all purchases made by the federal government in South
Carolina were in Aiken County in 2003, the latest year that U.S.
census statistics are available.
• While SRS is not the giant employer of a generation ago,
thousands of South Carolinians still count on the nuclear campus
for work.
• At the height of the Cold War, SRS employed about 20,000. Now
it employs 11,700.
• Its annual operating budget is $1.3 billion.
Lauren Markoe
TheStateOnline
*****************************************************************
33 The State: Companies prepare to vie for SRS
07/17/2
By LAUREN MARKOE
Washington Bureau
The firm that has been running the Savannah River Site since
1989 is looking at stiff competition as the management contract
for the nuclear campus is put out to bid.
There are a lot of companies sniffing around, said Jack
Herrmann, a spokesman for Idaho-based Washington Group
International, a subsidiary of which manages SRS. Weve been
here for more than 15 years. Weve done a good job, and were
ready to compete.
Westinghouse Savannah River Co., the Aiken-based WGI subsidiary
that runs SRS, has had little competition in the past for the
prized SRS contract.
Westinghouse receives about $125 million a year to manage SRS,
which costs about $1.3 billion a year to operate, according to
Department of Energy spokesman Bill Taylor.
That contract expires Sept. 30, 2006, and the Energy Department
plans to award a new contract then.
Over the course of the next five-year contract, Taylor said, it
will cost $1.4 billion to $2 billion a year to operate.
The Energy Department already is working with companies
interested in the bid.
Some 70 firms attended a recent information session in Aiken to
learn more about the upcoming bid. So far, about half of those
firms have signed up for one-on-one interviews with Energy
Department officials in Washington later this month.
One likely competitor is California-based Fluor Daniel Inc.,
which has established an office near SRS staffed so far by
four employees to secure the next SRS contract.
We have a long and proud history of economic development in
South Carolina, said Gary Coxon, vice president and manager of
operations for environmental and nuclear energy at Fluor Daniel,
which employs 2,000 in Greenville, headquarters of its global
chemical division. SRS is in our backyard.
The next contract could lend itself to one prime contractor that
takes on partners, as the arrangement is currently structured.
Or it could be broken up into smaller contracts specific to one
or more of the Savannah River Sites many charges.
The 310-square-mile site, once a Cold War factory for nuclear
weapons fuel, is now a storage site for nuclear material, among
other missions.
SRS also serves the military by processing tritium for the
nations nuclear weapons stockpile. And it is home to the
Savannah River National Laboratory, a research center for
nuclear waste treatment and storage technology and hydrogen
energy technology.
The winner of the next SRS contract also could manage the
facility during a period when SRS officials hope the campus
is chosen as the home of one of the first two nuclear power
plants built in the United States in nearly 30 years.
NuStart Energy the consortium of energy companies that wants
to build the plants has named SRS one of six finalists and
will announce its final choices in September. NuStart plans to
begin operating the plants as early as 2015.
The potential for multiple contracts does not mean the Energy
Department has been dissatisfied with the Westinghouse Savannah
River Co., officials said.
Coxon, of Fluor Daniel, said hiring a few large contractors
would maximize competition, as opposed to one. But, he said, too
many contracts would compromise safety at SRS.
Westinghouse Savannah River Co. will compete for the contract,
Herrmann said, whether it turns out to be one contract, the
companys preference, or several.
Reach Markoe at (202) 383-6023 or lmarkoe@krwashington.com
TheStateOnline
*****************************************************************
34 The State: Study finds few near SRS face
07/17/2
By SAMMY FRETWELL
Staff Writer
A 13-year study has concluded that few people living near the
Savannah River Site suffered a substantially higher risk of
cancer from pollution at the nuclear weapons complex during the
Cold War.
The federally sponsored study, out for public comment through
Friday, says the overall surrounding population did not receive
major radiation doses from SRS.
This has been a long time coming, said C.M. Wood, a health
physicist with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
We have learned that there were not significant doses to the
public from the Savannah River Site.
The findings are important, Wood said, because they likely will
end the ambitious research project on pollution and its health
effects to local populations in South Carolina and Georgia.
At SRS, scientists relied on 50,000 boxes of records to help
reconstruct radiation and chemical releases at the site from the
early 1950s to 1992, when atomic weapons production reactors
shut down. Some of the records had been classified for decades
by the federal government. The study was launched in 1992.
The CDC, which hired a contractor to perform the work, will not
continue the research unless substantial new information turns
up in the next few months, Wood said. The report is expected to
become final after a federal committee reviews it in September,
according to the CDC.
Atomic engineer Arjun Makhijani, a critic of federal nuclear
sites, said it is hard to believe peoples health hasnt been
threatened by SRS. He has not reviewed the study, but noted the
Savannah River is a drinking-water source and popular
recreational spot.
Discharges from the Savannah Site do pose a risk to the
downstream population, he said.
The CDC report notes that some people living near SRS who were
born in 1955 likely received higher doses than people born in
the 1960s. Nuclear weapons production in the 1950s released into
the air and water substantial amounts of iodine, which can cause
cancer.
Still, the report found a less than 1 percent chance anyone born
in 1955 and living near the site would die from cancer related
to SRS pollution.
A previous phase of the study documented notable releases of
radioactive pollutants, such as plutonium, tritium and iodine,
from the 1950s to 1992. The 1999 phase of the study showed some
buildup of contaminants in animals and plants near the site, as
well as in cows milk.
Reach Fretwell at (803) 771-8537 or sfretwell@thestate.com.
TheStateOnline
*****************************************************************
35 AP Wire: Report says residents did not receive major radiation from SRS
| 07/17/2005 |
Associated Press
COLUMBIA, S.C. - A 13-year federal study says the Savannah River
Site's surrounding population didn't receive major radiation
doses during the Cold War.
The report, released Friday, said few people living near SRS had
a substantially higher cancer risk from pollution between the
early 1950s and 1992, when atomic weapons production reactors
shut down.
"This has been a long time coming," said C.M. Wood with the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "We have learned
that there were not significant doses to the public from the
Savannah River Site."
The findings will probably end a research project on pollution
and its health effects in South Carolina and Georgia, Wood said.
Scientists have used 50,000 boxes of records, some of which had
been classified for decades, to reconstruct chemical and
radiation releases during the Cold War. The study began in 1992.
The CDC hired a contractor for the project, but won't continue
the work unless major new information is discovered in the next
few months, Wood said.
But atomic engineer Arjun Makhijani, a critic of federal nuclear
sites, isn't convinced. It's hard to believe people's health
hasn't been threatened because the Savannah River is a source of
drinking water and used for recreation, he said.
"Discharges from the Savannah site do pose a risk to the
downstream population," said Makhijani, who hasn't reviewed the
study.
The report says people born in 1955 probably received higher
radiation doses than those born in the 1960s. But the report
says there's less than a 1 percent chance someone born in 1955
and living near SRS would die from cancer related to the site.
Information from: The State,
*****************************************************************
36 SF Chronicle: For Los Alamos staff, it could be end of era / Bids due
Tuesday from UC, challenger
Keay Davidson, Chronicle Science Writer
Sunday, July 17, 2005
The moment of truth is approaching for scandal-shaken Los Alamos
National Laboratory, the University of California-run nuclear
weapons lab.
Los Alamos scientists conducted the first test explosion of an
atomic bomb 60 years ago this weekend, in the predawn darkness
of rural Alamogordo, N. M., on July 16, 1945. In the six decades
since, UC has managed the nuclear weapons lab under an exclusive
contract to the federal government.
But that contract was recently opened up to competition. And by
1 p.m. California time Tuesday, the two teams now competing to
run the lab -- one led jointly by UC and its new partner,
Bechtel National, the other by Lockheed Martin and the
University of Texas -- must submit their management proposals to
the U.S. Department of Energy. After hearing the competitors'
closed-door oral presentations in late August, DOE plans to
announce the winner of the competition by Dec. 1.
If DOE picks the Lockheed-Texas bid, it will mark the end of
UC's tenure as lab manager -- one of the longest and, for the
world, most fateful institutional tenures in history. During
World War II, UC Berkeley Professor J. Robert Oppenheimer led
the Los Alamos project to develop the atomic bomb. He and his
successors were the Merlins of the atomic age, whispering in the
ears of presidents, and thereby giving UC unprecedented
influence over the U.S. nuclear weapons complex.
The potential change of guard at the prestigious lab has many
present and former Los Alamos staffers feeling anxious -- and,
sometimes, melancholy -- as they wonder whether the lab can
recover from the scandals of recent years and regain its former
luster.
Some also privately fear the decision will be political,
influenced by the fact that a Texan sits in the White House and
one of the competitors is a giant university system in Texas.
"The political realities are by now so totally irreversible. The
Bush administration was hell-bent on privatizing Los Alamos, and
that will be done, " laments former Los Alamos physicist Brad
Holian, alluding to the powerful role that corporations will
play in the lab's future, no matter who wins the competition.
Holian quit the lab in April after writing an article for
Physics Today magazine that said the lab's financial, security
and safety scandals in recent years had been badly exaggerated.
But Al Stotts, spokesperson for the National Nuclear Security
Administration, the semiautonomous federal agency that oversees
the nuclear weapons complex under the aegis of the Energy
Department, said the competition will be judged purely on the
merits of each team's proposal, and politics will not be allowed
to enter the decision.
Stotts emphasized that the final choice will not be made by
Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman or President Bush but by Tom
D'Agostino, acting deputy administrator for defense programs at
the National Nuclear Security Administration.
D'Agostino, Stotts stressed, "is not a political appointee."
UC's management was called into question in recent years by a
series of scandals that brought in FBI investigators and toppled
the lab's director and other officials. An even uglier chapter
had unfolded a few years earlier, when a scientist, Wen Ho Lee,
was suspected of spying. He pleaded guilty to one felony count
of mishandling classified data, but was widely viewed --
especially among Chinese Americans -- as a victim of FBI
persecution; a U.S. district judge apologized to Lee for the
federal government's bungling of the case.
The next contract will last for seven years, with provision for
an extension of up to 13 years based on performance. The winner
of the bid will take over the lab on June 1, 2006.
This past spring, UC, Bechtel National, BWX Technologies Inc.
and Washington Group International linked arms in an effort to
win that contract, with the idea that UC will oversee scientific
research while Bechtel will handle the day-to-day managerial
problems of ensuring security, safety, proper paperwork flow and
so on. The team named Michael Anastasio, who is also director of
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory -- another UC-run lab --
to run its campaign for the Los Alamos contract.
"I believe that we wrote a really outstanding proposal with a
really outstanding team," Anastasio told The Chronicle on
Friday. "I was very intensively involved with this throughout
the whole process. It dominated my time, but I'm used to jobs
that take up a lot of my time -- and so is my family.
"We don't intend to lose it (the competition), that's the first
thing. ... We believe this is the right team that offers the
country the right kind of laboratory needed to provide technical
support to the country's national defense."
The opposing team is run by C. Paul Robinson, former director of
Sandia National Laboratories, the national laboratory in New
Mexico that Lockheed runs under contract to DOE. At one time, he
ran the nuclear weapons program at Los Alamos.
In response to a Chronicle inquiry, Robinson said: "I am
convinced we can bring to Los Alamos the same quality management
practices Lockheed Martin has brought to other DOE facilities. I
firmly believe having quality management programs and a strong
and focused leadership team will enable the scientists at Los
Alamos to do even better work than the great work they do today.
Good management and good science are not mutually exclusive."
Should Robinson's team win the contract, aerospace giant
Lockheed Martin is expected to be the dominant player in the
day-to-day management of the lab. Joining the Lockheed-Texas bid
are Fluor Corp., a Southern California engineering firm that
recently moved its corporate headquarters to Texas, and CH2M
Hill, an engineering firm in Denver.
Staffers at Los Alamos are anxiously watching the competition,
wondering how it will affect their fate -- and the nation's.
In recent months, some Los Alamos employees have taken early
retirement. Many support UC's bid. But a few admit they support
UC only reluctantly, because they feel hurt by what they regard
as UC's decision to allow a former director, George "Pete"
Nanos, to run roughshod over them after taking charge in 2003.
At one point, Nanos, who departed earlier this year for another
job in the federal government, called recalcitrant staffers
"buttheads" and "cowboys."
Sue Chasen is a 27-year Los Alamos employee whose jobs there
have ranged from subjects such as geology and alternative energy
to being president of an employee union. She plans to retire
soon at age 58, and said: "Life started to get bad here about
five to seven years ago. ... UC (officials) have not been good
stewards of this place and failed to listen to anyone below
senior management level. (However), of the possible bidders, I
have to say I am leaning toward UC, although my first choice is
federalizing the place" -- which would entail day-to-day control
over to the National Nuclear Security Administration or the
Energy Department.
Galen Gisler, a physicist at the lab's X-2 group (the
Thermonuclear Applications group in the lab's Applied Physics
Division), has worked for more than 23 years at the lab, and he
supports awarding the contract to UC. But he worries that
support for UC within the lab has weakened as the lab's internal
problems received intense news coverage.
"A year ago, I would have said the (lab staff's) sentiment was
overwhelmingly in favor of UC, but it seems to me these days
that it is tilting away, largely because of the experience of
the last year," Gisler said.
By contrast, former staffer Chris Mechels, who left the lab in
1994, supports giving the contact to Lockheed-Texas. He is a
former technical staff member at Los Alamos's "X-division" who
used Cray supercomputers to simulate nuclear weapons explosions.
"I'm cheering for (Lockheed Martin) to win the bid," Mechels
said. "God help us if we remain (in) the UC's hands. Those
arrogant bastards still don't get the fact that they screwed up
big time. ... I want them gone."
He added: "Nanos, to his credit, cracked some skulls, which
should have happened a decade ago."
Another former lab scientist backing the UC bid is William
Woodruff, who retired in late April after more than 20 years at
the lab. Woodruff recently conducted a computer survey comparing
the publication rates of different national laboratories.
His analysis -- using the computerized records of world
scientific publications compiled by a leading archive of such
records, the SciSearch database owned by the Institute for
Scientific Information in Philadelphia -- proves UC's value in
promoting scientific and technical research, he said.
"From most points of view, UC has done an exemplary job of
running (Los Alamos National Lab)," he said. "LANL ranks at the
top of the DOE labs in scientific productivity, as measured by
publications, and has for many years."
The Woodruff charts don't impress Lockheed-Texas spokesperson
Don Carson: "These charts are examples of comparing apples and
oranges. Sandia is an engineering lab and as such focuses on
making things, seeking patents, etcetera. LANL is a physics lab
that works more on theory. I have seen similar charts prepared
by Sandia employees showing Sandia having more citations than
LANL."
Some scientists associated with the lab are angry and
heartbroken by what they see as unfair attacks on Los Alamos,
but feel the political situation has turned so ugly that the
lab's future is seriously in doubt.
One of the most prominent of these is physicist Holian. He
charges that Nanos botched his job at the lab, was "abusive" and
made "wild allegations," and "shut (the lab) down for safety and
security reasons that failed to stand up to scrutiny." Holian is
furious that UC let Nanos remain on the job for as long as it
did.
Holian reluctantly supports the UC-Bechtel bid. "While my heart
is with UC, they have broken it, whether or not they meant to.
The only hopeful thing I see is that under Lockheed Martin
(should it win the bid), Los Alamos ... will be left alone in
peace for the next two or three years.
"Maybe some science can be recovered during that period of calm,
but I doubt that the spirit of the lab will ever return to the
level it had pre-Wen Ho Lee, no matter who 'wins' the contract."
In the bidding competition, Holian said, "The American people
are the losers. ... That is beyond doubt."
E-mail Keay Davidson at kdavidson@sfchronicle.com.
Page A - 21
The San Francisco Chronicle]
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37 lamonitor.com: Report: Centralize nuclear Complexes
The Online News Source for Los Alamos
ROGER SNODGRASS, roger@lamonitor.com, Monitor Assistant Editor
The Department of Energy has made available a new report
proposing a major process of consolidation in the nuclear
weapons complex during the next 25 years.
The report responded to a request last year by the House
Appropriations Subcommittee on Energy and Water to review the
entire nuclear weapons complex, taking into account the
post-Cold-war reductions and emerging needs of the national
nuclear weapon stockpile as well as future threats.
The report, considered a "draft final report," called for a
Consolidated Nuclear Production Center that will produce future
warheads and dismantle weapons to be retired. The new,
centralized CNPC would become the central depository of the most
dangerous categories of nuclear materials.
The report anticipated near-term cost increases with no
near-term staff reductions at the weapons design laboratories in
order to realize substantial cost savings in the future.
"The long-term cost savings are approximately twice the
near-term cost increases," the six-man panel estimated.
The report suggested more independence of the National Nuclear
Security Administration from DOE, its parent organization, and
establishing an "Office of Transformation" to become the agent
of the change, developing more concrete plans and analyses.
Sen. Pete Domenici, D-N.M., said he was briefed on the report
Wednesday by Dr. David Overskei, chair of the Nuclear Weapons
Complex Infrastructure Task Force that prepared the report.
Domenici has been wary of some implications of the report and
repeated his concerns after the meeting.
"It is apparent that a lot of work and effort went into this
report, and I want to take the time to review its findings and
recommendations," Domenici said in a press release. "While there
is always room for improvement, I believe our labs are doing
good work and I do not think we should rush into any quick
fixes."
He was joined in his measured assessment by Sen. Jeff Bingaman,
D-N.M. "This report outlines very dramatic changes to our
nuclear weapons complex without giving serious consideration to
what the implications of these changes might be," Bingaman said.
"I suggest we give this issue the thoughtful attention and
debate it deserves, and that we not move ahead right now to
implement the recommendations outlined in the report."
The 124-page report significantly elaborated on preliminary
ideas that circulated in the media last month, centered on the
concept of a Reliable Replacement Warhead, a program for
simplifying and economizing weapons production and maintenance.
The recommendations included a call for "the immediate
initiation" of the RRW program.
Domenici included a provision in the Senate version of the
energy appropriation bill prohibiting any funds from being used
to implement the panel's recommendations.
The House version of the bill is more in tune with the
consolidation ideas.
A conference committee will begin meeting Tuesday to begin
hammering out a number of discrepancies between the two funding
measures.
In observations on the state of the current weapons complex, the
report found the production facilities to be antiquated and the
current efforts at modernization to be a mixture of very old and
a few new structures, "rather than a modern and thus more
cost-effective 21st century production complex."
The report found poor communication between the DOE and
Department of Defense which "does not appear to trust DOE's
ability to respond with predictability."
Burdensome, "risk-averse" rules and regulations have clogged the
work process rather than improving mission safety.
Further, the committee said the physics design laboratories,
like Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore and Sandia national
laboratories "aggressively seek independence rather than
cooperative independence," which leads to unnecessary
duplication, higher costs and lower productivity.
A list of functions that are candidates for consolidation
includes tritium production, supercomputing, test readiness,
engineering research and test facilities at the three labs, and
several other functions shared between LANL and one or more
other laboratories.
© 2003 Los Alamos Monitor All Rights Reserved.
*****************************************************************
38 Albuquerque Tribune: Panel hits labs' duplication
Trinity scientists issue call for reducing nuclear caches
By Scripps Howard News Service July 15, 2005
WASHINGTON - To mark the 60th anniversary of the world's first
nuclear bomb blast in the New Mexico desert, 10 men who helped
make the bomb turned their thoughts to the future of weapons in
an age when terrorists and rogue states have replaced the Soviet
Union as the enemy.
Some of their suggestions were startling.
"We must stop the production of nuclear weapons," said Wolfgang
Panofsky, director emeritus of Stanford University's Linear
Accelerator Center. "Each sovereign state must be convinced that
its security is better off without nuclear weapons than with
them."
Panofsky, who developed a way to measure the force of the
Trinity test bomb, invited the nine other former Manhattan
Project scientists to a symposium Thursday in Washington
sponsored by the Committee on International Security and Arms
Control to mark the anniversary of the Trinity explosion 60
years ago Saturday.
Within a month, that successful test led to the bombings of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki and Japan's agreement to surrender.
It also ushered in an era of nuclear weapons building that would
eventually see the Soviet Union amass more than 40,000 warheads
and the United States more than 30,000.
Now their stockpiles are down to about 10,000 warheads apiece
with plans for further reductions, but the United States is
threatened with the prospects of nuclear weapons in North Korea
or Iran or in the hands of terrorists.
All of the scientists were involved in building or testing the
bomb. They said they feared most that it wouldn't work.
"I was raised to love my country. I had no compunction about
bombing an enemy," said Hugh Bradner, who helped plan the
construction of Los Alamos and now is professor emeritus at the
Scripps Institute of Oceanography at the University of
California.
Maurice Shapiro spent much of the night before the test up on
the tower itself, "baby-sitting" the electronic ignition device
he had helped devise.
On a bus going back to Los Alamos after the test, he bet a
colleague on how many bombs it would take for Japan to
surrender. Shapiro said fewer than 10; his colleague predicted
more than 10. It took two. Shapiro is a visiting professor at
the University of Maryland.
Val Fitch watched the fireball while lying on the ground outside
the bunker 6 miles south of the explosion tower. He turned to a
pale soldier and said, "The war will be over soon."
Fitch, chairman emeritus of the Department of Physics at
Princeton University, said it's time to explore "common sense"
to reduce nuclear weapons instead of wasting money on things
like an anti-ballistic missile defense system.
Robert Christy, who developed an implosion design for the core
of the plutonium bomb, said the world might be safer if most
nations had a handful of nuclear weapons to deter aggression
rather than the major powers trying to maintain a monopoly.
"The `have/have not' situation doesn't work," because smaller
countries believe they can negotiate with the United States only
if they have the bomb, said Christy, a professor emeritus at the
California Institute of Technology.
Rubby Sherr, a professor emeritus at Princeton who designed the
plutonium bomb's trigger, suggested giving every country just
one bomb.
Louis Rosen, a senior laboratory fellow emeritus at Los Alamos,
said the United States should be concerned not only with
terrorists but with the lack of civilian control over nuclear
weapons possessed by countries such as Pakistan.
Lawrence Johnston is the only person to have witnessed the
Trinity, Hiroshima and Nagasaki explosions.
Now retired from the University of Idaho, he said his solution
to proliferation is to pray.
"I am asking that God will give us good ideas," he said.
Also speaking at the symposium were Harold Agnew, an adjunct
professor at the University of California; Donald Horning, a
former president of Brown University; and Arnold Kramish, a
former senior staff member with the Rand Corp.
*****************************************************************
39 The State: S.C. poised to play key role in
07/16/2
Meetings to launch initiative to determine what state needs to do
to become major player
By JIM DuPLESSIS
Staff Writer
South Carolina has most of the right stuff to be a leader in
hydrogen fuel cell research, but it will need more support both
from government and private industry, USC research chief Harris
Pastides told a group of about 30 business leaders Friday at the
Columbia Chamber of Commerce.
USC, Clemson University and the U.S. Department of Energys
Savannah River National Laboratory are trying to build support
that would make South Carolina a leader in developing hydrogen
fuel cells to power cars or homes.
Hydrogen fuel cells are alluring because they produce
electricity and emit only water. The obstacles include high
expenses and finding ways to let drivers fill up on hydrogen as
easily as gas.
The schools, SRS and several companies are inviting business and
community leaders to a series of meeting across the state,
leading to the launch of the S.C. Next Energy Initiative on Oct.
4.
The groups ignition will occur as the General Assemblys starts
its next session in January.
The initiative will present recommendations by the end of the
month from a consulting firm hired to help the group figure out
what the state has, and what it needs to have, to become a
leader in hydrogen research.
Pastides, USC vice president for research and health sciences,
said those recommendations could include ways the state could
provide more assistance, but he said he did not know what form
new state aid would take.
Already, USC is using state, university and some private funds
to start construction of its downtown research campus. The
campus will include two buildings for research into hydrogen
fuel cells and other energy alternatives to fossil fuels. At
least $58 million in state grants is expected to support
construction.
The state has also provided about $100 million of the $157
million automotive research campus Clemson is building along
Interstate 85 in Greenville.
Federal government support also is critical. One of South
Carolinas chief assets is the U.S. Department of Energys
Savannah River Site, built more than 50 years ago to make
nuclear weapons. A key step in producing the nuclear material
involves tritium, a form of hydrogen.
Savannah River Site has 750 technicians, engineers and
researchers, including 400 with doctoral degrees. This is
probably the largest concentration of people experienced with
dealing with hydrogen and tritium in the world, Pastides said.
Aiken County is building a $9 million Center for Hydrogen
Research outside the gates of the Savannah River site to house
50 of the 80 hydrogen experts now working at the Savannah River
National Laboratory.
USC has 15 professors and about 30 doctoral students researching
hydrogen fuel cells, drawing about $3 million a year in grants.
Reach DuPlessis at (803) 771-8305 or .
TheStateOnline
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