***************************************************************** 12/12/07 **** RADIATION BULLETIN(RADBULL) **** VOL 15.275 ***************************************************************** RADBULL IS PRODUCED BY THE ABALONE ALLIANCE CLEARINGHOUSE ***************************************************************** Send News Stories to news@energy-net.org with title on subject line and first line of body NUCLEAR POLICY 1 CP: Atomic Energy of Canada at a crossroads, nuclear experts say 2 US: POGO Blog: Contractor Problems Add to Plutonium Facility Concern 3 US: Los Angeles Times: House passes a sweeping energy bill - 4 US: UCS: Senate Denies Americans Clean, Affordable Energy 5 US: MWC News: The Curse of Atomic Weapons and Power NUCLEAR REACTORS 6 US: USATODAY.com: How risky is the new era of nuclear power? - 7 china.org.cn: Nuclear power project faces cancellation -- 8 TheStar.com | Canada: Reactor shutdown leaves cancer patients in lim 9 US: Opinion - Patrick Moore: Going nuclear over global warming - 10 The Bulletin Online: Africa's pursuit of nuclear power | 11 FT.com: Nuclear power plan faces fresh legal threat 12 US: toledoblade.com: Reversal is sought in Davis-Besse case 13 US: San Diego Business Journal: Hearing Addresses Future of Nuclear 14 US: Burlington Free Press: Report: Nuclear power paying less in tax 15 Reuters: Russian uranium to fuel more U.S. nuclear plants 16 US: AP: Groups Appeal North Anna Permit Renewal 17 US: Idaho Mountain Express: Nuclear power's not cheap - 18 Yemen Observer: Yemen implements nuclear project 19 US: POGO Blog: NRC Sleeping on the Job? 20 US: State: Nuclear power costs surge in rush to build 21 US: North County Times: Opposing views power nuclear debate NUCLEAR SECURITY 22 The Press Association: Bomb find: Sellafield worker hunted NUCLEAR SAFETY 23 US: P Enquirer: AP: Pa. nuke-plant whistle-blower wants investigatio 24 AFP: Cancer risk higher among kids near nuclear plants: German study 25 DW: Study Finds More Childhood Cancer Near Nuclear Power Plants | 26 US: ABR: Uranium found in residents and workers near former National 27 Yokwe Net: NPR Show Looks at Proposed Nuclear Compensation Act 28 NWAnews.com: Lawmakers: Islanders need medical care 29 UPI.com: Power plants may affect leukemia rates - 30 US: Albany Times Union: Poison from NL site lingers -- 31 US: Pittsburgh Tribune-Review: Nuclear workers nearing payment - NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE 32 IPS-English ENVIRONMENT-SOUTH AFRICA: Radioactive Water, the Price o 33 US: AU ABC: Jabiluka mining still on the cards, company says - 34 US: San Luis Obispo County's website: Nuclear waste could travel thr 35 US: Charlotte Observer: Toxic waste kept quiet for 26 years 36 US: US court rejects challenge to $1.5 bil uranium-enrichment plant 37 US: The Tribune: Fort Collins council opposes uranium mining 38 US: Army Corps to remove radioactive soil from nuclear site 39 RIA Novosti: Russia completes removal of spent nuclear fuel from Cze 40 US: ACT: Bush Nuclear Fuel-Cycle Program Suffers Blows 41 US: Salt Lake Tribune: Board split on foreign N-waste 42 US: LA Daily News: Santa Susana Field Lab nears Superfund status 43 US: ICT: Richardson wants review process for uranium operations aban 44 US: Cleantech.com: French nuclear waste being stored in the U.S.? | 45 US: PE: Rialto seeks Superfund designation for perchlorate 46 US: Reuters: Congo keeps uranium riches under wraps 47 US: LA Times: Still no toxic cleanup plan for Navajos 48 Las Vegas SUN: DOE inspector to probe conflict allegations in Yucca 49 Pahrump Valley Times: New Yucca complaint filed PEACE 50 RIA Novosti: Why terminate the INF Treaty? 51 US: FCNL: 30 National Orgs Ask Sen. Dorgan to De-fund New Nuclear We 52 Egypt refuses to sign UN nuclear watchdog protocols for stricter US DEPT. OF ENERGY 53 Las Vegas SUN: Editorial: Nuclear mistakes 54 Tri-City Herald: Hanford workers beat legal deadline 55 Guardian Unlimited: Energy Dept. Fined Over Nuke Site Spill | 56 Knoxville News Sentinel: Saving part of K-25 in doubt ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** FULL NEWS STORIES ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** 1 CP: Atomic Energy of Canada at a crossroads, nuclear experts say Published: Thursday, December 6, 2007 | 5:45 PM ET Canadian Press: Steve Rennie, THE CANADIAN PRESS OTTAWA - Canada's recent decision to join a global nuclear partnership and the impending review of Atomic Energy of Canada have put the heavily subsidized corporation at a crossroads, nuclear industry experts say, with some degree of privatization likely on the horizon. AECL's future was thrown into turmoil last week when the federal government announced it would review how the Crown corporation fits into its nuclear energy plans. "It is time to consider whether the existing structure of AECL is appropriate in a changing marketplace," Natural Resources Minister Gary Lunn said at the time. Natural Resources Canada is spearheading the review, with help from the Finance Department and experts from outside the government. Privatization will likely come up during the review, said Shawn-Patrick Stensil, an energy expert at Greenpeace Canada. "You have to realize AECL is at the end of the road, or a crossroads, in what we do with it," he said. Officially, Ottawa maintains that AECL is not for sale. However, it has been widely speculated the federal government - both past and present - has explored the possibility in recent years. "Obviously, one would have contemplated that the assessment that's being undertaken now would have some thoughts about that," said Murray Elston, president of the Canadian Nuclear Association. Atomic Energy manages Canada's nuclear energy research and development program, as well as providing a variety of maintenance, diagnostic, waste management, refurbishment and other services to the nuclear industry. Natural Resources Canada says Candu reactors have 25-30 year design lifetimes, but that can be extended another 25-30 years through refurbishment. The company also sells its pressurized Candu heavy water reactor, first developed in the late 1950s and 1960s, worldwide. There are 18 Candu reactors currently operating in Canada, plus two undergoing refurbishment. If AECL - which employs 4,800 people - were sold to nuclear heavyweights such as France's Areva or U.S.-based Westinghouse Electric Company, it would likely get out of Candu sales and into the market of refurbishing its reactors, Stensil said. Ottawa-based energy policy consultant Steve Aplin said AECL becoming solely a refurbisher of Candu reactors is the company's "worst-case scenario." "How do you that nobody is going to buy one of these machines? There are a lot of people urging the government to throw in the towel on the company, but . . . I think that's really premature," he said. Canada's decision last week to join the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, or GNEP, could bode well for the company, Aplin said. GNEP is a program proposed last year by U.S. President George W. Bush to reprocess and reuse nuclear waste while at the same time developing a new generation of nuclear reactor technology to lessen dependency on fossil fuels. AECL's Candu heavy-water reactors could be used to burn waste from U.S. light-water plants, Aplin said. Likewise, Elston speculated the GNEP could benefit from AECL's research expertise. "Presumably, since AECL has been largely the research arm of Canada moving forward, if we're involved in anything one would have expected that they would have continued to play a role in the research side of GNEP as well," Elston said. The nuclear industry contributes about $5 billion each year to Canada's economy and 20,000 direct jobs. Uranium exports are worth $600 million annually and government reports say they are growing quickly. The Canadian Press, 2007 Copyright © CBC 2007 ***************************************************************** 2 POGO Blog: Contractor Problems Add to Plutonium Facility Concerns The Project On Government Oversight On Friday, November 30, POGO sent a letter to Dept. of Energy Undersecretary Tom D’Agostino, head of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), recommending that the NNSA place a “stop work” order on the Los Alamos Chemical and Metallurgical Research Replacement (CMRR) program. POGO offered the recommendation in response to findings that Austin Commercial, Inc., the company tasked with completing the initial CMRR construction phase, has so far failed to meet industry quality standards. There’s also evidence to suggest that the company may have falsified quality assurance documents. The CMRR program has faced a high level of criticism from Congress and from organizations concerned with nuclear policy. Last year, House appropriators cut funds for CMRR and referred to it as an “irrational” project. Appropriations for FY 2008 may continue to be withheld. The House committee report states: The recommendation provides no funds for the CMRR project, a decrease of $95,586,000 from the budget request. The Committee direction halts the construction activity at the CMRR facility. Proceeding with the CMRR project as currently designed will strongly prejudice any nuclear complex transformation plan. The CMRR facility has no coherent mission to justify it unless the decision is made to begin an aggressive new nuclear warhead design and pit production mission at Los Alamos National Laboratory. The NNSA is directed to develop a long-term plan to maintain the nation's nuclear stockpile requirements that does not assume an a priori case for the current program. Production capabilities proposed in the CMRR should be located at the future production sites identified in a detailed complex transformation plan that supports the long-term stockpile requirements. The Committee is concerned the NNSA is proceeding with large expenditures for this project while there are significant unresolved issues, and recommends the fiscal year 2007 funding be held in reserve. Although the Senate committee recommended funds for the project, the amount still falls considerably below the original request. The Senate also pointed to several potential problems with the program as well as the lack of a clear NNSA strategy. Austin Commercial, Inc. is a division of Austin Industries, a construction company based in Dallas, TX with annual revenues of about $1 billion, mostly from private contracts. -- John Pruett December 4, 2007 in Contract Oversight, Nuclear Security | Permalink TrackBack URL for this entry: http://www.typepad.com/t/trackback/108150/23936448 ***************************************************************** 3 Los Angeles Times: House passes a sweeping energy bill - Fuel efficiency would increase and alternative sources would expand. The measure faces a tough road in the Senate. By Richard Simon, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer December 7, 2007 WASHINGTON -- The House on Thursday approved the biggest increase in vehicle fuel-economy standards since gasoline cost less than a dollar a gallon, in a sweeping energy bill that is headed for a showdown in the Senate and a possible veto from President Bush. The measure would require a 40% increase in fuel efficiency for new cars and light trucks by 2020, for a fleetwide average of 35 miles per gallon, and would be the first congressional raising of the standards since they were established in 1975. The bill is the Democrats' first major effort to attack global warming and U.S. dependence on foreign oil since they won control of Congress a year ago. The 235-181 vote came a day after a Senate panel advanced a separate measure that would cap greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, manufacturing facilities and other sources. "Today marks the dawn of a future with less dependence on foreign oil, more renewable energy and a safer climate," Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), chairman of the Select Committee for Energy Independence and Global Warming, said during debate on the House bill. "This bill marks a turning point away from America's untenable path of reliance on dirty fossil fuels that pollute our planet and link us to dangerous foreign regimes." But the bill faces trouble in the narrowly divided Senate and a White House veto threat because of provisions -- supported by environmentalists but opposed by industry groups -- that would repeal oil industry tax breaks and require utilities to generate 15% of their electricity by 2020 from cleaner sources, such as the sun and wind. In a statement after the vote, the Bush administration chastised Democratic leaders for pushing a "partisan bill" they knew had "no chance of being signed into law." The White House expressed hope the Senate would take a "more cooperative approach." Sen. Pete V. Domenici of New Mexico, the top Republican on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said he would also oppose the measure as written. The 1,055-page bill includes major initiatives and scores of smaller ones. It would mandate a fivefold increase -- to 36 billion gallons by 2022 -- in the amount of domestic alternative fuels, such as ethanol, that must be added to the nation's gasoline supply. And it would promote energy- efficient lightbulbs and provide a tax incentive for biking to work. It would repeal about $13 billion in tax breaks for oil companies and steer the revenue to incentives to promote cleaner energy sources, and for fuel-saving and emission-reduction technologies. It would require more energy- efficient appliances, establish a program to train workers for so-called green-collar jobs and make available bonds for community projects aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Republicans charged that the bill's incentives and subsidies for alternative energy would distort the domestic market for energy. "We are moving from a market-based energy policy . . . to a government-mandated energy policy," said Rep. Joe L. Barton of Texas, the top Republican on the House Energy and Commerce Committee. "I don't think the country wants the government controlling energy, and that's what this bill leads us to." Opponents panned the bill for failing to boost domestic production of oil and scoffed at the idea that it would provide relief from high energy prices. "The static electricity created by my shoes rubbing across this carpet creates more energy than the Democrats' energy bill," said Rep. George P. Radanovich (R-Mariposa). Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.) came to the House floor with a lump of coal, asking why the bill did not do more to promote use of the abundant domestic resource. The bill's supporters said it included incentives to promote technologies that would reduce emissions from coal-fired power plants. Democratic leaders, eager to end this session with a big accomplishment and anxious about political fallout from high gas prices, hope to send the bill to Bush this month. The provisions opposed by Bush may be stripped out in the Senate and a pared-down bill sent back to the House for expected approval. The bill's supporters are optimistic that a bill with the tougher fuel-economy standards could get Bush's signature now that these rules have the support of the automakers, which had resisted stricter standards for years. Copyright 2007 Los Angeles Times ***************************************************************** 4 UCS: Senate Denies Americans Clean, Affordable Energy December 7, 2007 Statement by Marchant Wentworth, Union of Concerned Scientists WASHINGTON (December 7, 2007) - This morning Senate supporters of a landmark clean energy bill failed to get enough votes to end debate and bring it to a vote. The Bush administration and its Senate allies blocked the bill because it included a renewable electricity standard and tax provisions. The 53 to 42 vote to end debate by invoking cloture fell short of the necessary 60 votes. Five Republicans—Sens. Norman Coleman (Minn.), Susan Collins (Maine), Gordon Smith (Ore.) Olympia Snowe (Maine) and John Thune (S.D.)—joined Democrats to vote for ending debate and proceeding to a vote. Below is a statement by Marchant Wentworth, Washington representative for the Union of Concerned Scientists' Clean Energy Program: "Instead of following the lead of the House, which yesterday took a bold step toward pulling our energy technology into the 21st century, Senate Republican leaders today hung onto to the technology of the past. By blocking a renewable electricity standard, they voted to allow utilities to continue to generate electricity the same way they did in the 1880s. "Given what happened this morning, we are still waiting for a comprehensive, clean energy policy that saves Americans money, creates jobs, bolsters rural economies, and curbs global warming. As the process moves forward, we urge the Senate to move quickly to pass the House-approved fuel economy, renewable fuels and energy-efficiency provisions, and bring a national renewable electricity standard back to the floor for consideration as soon as possible." Reporters: Join our notification list to receive breaking news from UCS. General media inquiries can be directed to our media office line at 202-331-5420. If you are calling about a specific issue, contact the appropriate press contact below. Press Contacts: Energy, Food, Scientific Integrity MEGHAN CROSBY Assistant Press Secretary 202-331-6943 mcrosby@ucsusa.org Climate, Global Security, Vehicles, Invasives AARON HUERTAS Assistant Press Secretary 202-331-5458 ahuertas@ucsusa.org Climate, Scientific Integrity LISA NURNBERGER Press Secretary 202-331-6959 lnurnberger@ucsusa.org Energy, Food EMILY ROBINSON Press Secretary 202-331-5427 erobinson@ucsusa.org ELLIOTT NEGIN Media Director 202-331-5439 enegin@ucsusa.org Union of Concerned Scientists Page Last Revised: 12/07/07 ***************************************************************** 5 MWC News: The Curse of Atomic Weapons and Power Dec 11 2007 Political Views By Ace Hoffman On average, every working American spends about two days a week building, using, or paying for America's weaponry, and the means to convey that weaponry to where it will be used. At least a quarter of all fuel -- including nuclear fuel -- used by this country goes to war-related activities. It is impossible to be a productive nation when so many raw materials and so much talent and time is spent on destruction. But the most insidious thing about modern warfare is that it kills civilians -- lots of civilians. People like you and me. The United States military operates, day or night, war or peace, under dozens of special exemptions to environmental regulations. Regulations which everyone else on the planet MUST adhere to. The result is radioactive and chemical pollution on a global scale -- not just where the wars occur, but also at training areas and manufacturing facilities. The tools of modern war include Uranium-238 munitions (aka "DU"), now infamous for causing "flaming pee" (a terrible burning sensation when you urinate) and other ailments in our own veterans, and for causing grossly deformed children in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Kosovo. The tools also include U-235 / Pu-239 munitions (aka "nuclear weapons" or "atomic bombs"). Although these "tools" have only been used twice in war so far, in Hiroshima (primarily a U-235 weapon) and Nagasaki (primarily a Pu-239 weapon of slightly greater sophistication), those uses were demonstration projects for the world to see what was to come. Total destruction. Not just your soldiers killed, but your records destroyed, your buildings burned, your history obliterated, your museums, schools, factories, sewage systems, water systems -- everything, blasted, burned, and worst of all -- irradiated. Thousands, even millions of people in desperate need of medical care which is utterly unavailable. Suffering beyond words. A holocaust. A war crime. Nuclear war has been threatened a thousand times since its invention and early use. Our current president has threatened it frequently, which constitutes cruel and unusual punishment in and of itself -- the threat is distressing to those threatened. Which is all of us. Every nuclear threat has a counterthreat somewhere. Every escalation of a war has a counterinsurgency to match. Every time George Bush gets us into another war, America becomes more vulnerable to retaliation. The military has long pushed the idea that our mighty armies are the only thing that keeps us free, safe, secure, and comfortable at home. But I'll wager we were safe because we were the shining city on the hill for so long. The place everyone wanted to be. The place that people wanted to honor with tributes such as the Statue of Liberty -- that place was safe! People came here not to terrorize us, but to be us! But we've become greedy, cloistered, cold-hearted, and ignorant. In addition to bombing two cities in Japan during World War II, the U.S. alone has conducted more than a thousand nuclear "tests." We've irradiated dozens of islands in the Pacific, and parts of Nevada, New Mexico, Alaska, Colorado, and Mississippi, with atomic bomb debris. And that's not counting the "downwind" effect on Utah, Wyoming, and every other state (and every nation). Additionally, we've piled up nuclear reactor cores -- spent fuel -- at nuclear power plants in dozens of states -- all with an unkept promise that the waste would be quickly removed. For 60 years the nuclear weapons and power industries have looked for a solution, but they keep coming back to: "Drive it 50 miles into Indian territory and dump it" which is all Yucca Mountain really amounts to. While in transit, the waste is vulnerable to bridge collapses, train derailments and tunnel fires, sabotage, and a thousand other things. The government claims their transport containers are "safe" but they define "safe" very narrowly -- for example, as being able to probably survive a 30 foot drop onto a 6 inch post. Such testing does not reflect the real-world hazards. In their carefully-contrived theoretical "worst case" scenarios, almost no fuel is ever actually released, which means they don't have to calculate what happens if just one hour's worth of one reactor's spent fuel -- about 10 pounds's worth -- ever got out into the environment. The size of the catastrophe from that 10 pounds would depend on the precise location and weather conditions at the time. But one hour's worth of spent fuel could kill millions if released to the environment. And yet, we keep making more. We're waiting for a solution to the physically unsolvable -- that is to say, impossible -- problem of storing something that destroys its container by irradiating it (and thus breaking down the molecular and atomic structure of the steel, concrete, glass, or what-have-you). In the meantime, the deformity-causing, cancer-causing, disease-causing, boiling-hot (thermally) concentrations of "hot" (radioactive) isotopes are each glowing, growing targets for retaliatory strikes against America, along with the operating reactors. As little-known expert Bennett Ramberg put it in a UPI Op-Ed from May 2005: "Nuclear power plants are naked against a Sept. 11, 2001-like air attack." Twenty years earlier Ramberg wrote a whole book on the subject of nuclear terrorism, which was ignored by government and the nuclear industry, and was called: "Nuclear Power Plants as Weapons for the Enemy: An Unrecognized Military Peril." We still ignore him, at our own risk. In the drive to create a nuclear-powered, nuclear-weaponized society, profits were made all along the way. Lying to ourselves about how corporations make profits on other people's misery does not stop evil from happening. Rather, it enables it. Uranium-238 munitions, the shells and bombs used by the thousands every day in Iraq, leave a poisonous legacy. America, right now, is poisoning the area known as the cradle of civilization. We grew up calling it Mesopotamia. The name Iraq doesn't convey its 10,000+ year history of human settlement. An interesting side-effect of our use of Depleted Uranium weapons is that, because of their extraordinarily-long half-life of four and a half billion years, the evidence of our assault on civilians who have not even been born yet, will be detectable (with sophisticated equipment) for about 50 to 100 billion years. The earth is only about 5 billion years old, according to the geological record! Two, or ten, or a hundred generations from now, or a thousand, anyone will be able to find clear evidence of our use of uranium weaponry. Uranium fragments. Deformities among the local population. All these things will be discernable. Future generations of Americans will probably have to pay reparations for today's use of radioactive tools of war. Tools which are already illegal by numerous international conventions. Tools which also sicken and endanger the lives of our own soldiers and their families. Profitable? very! Depleted Uranium is free -- the nuclear fuel reprocessing centers are just DYING to give it away. And it cuts through buildings and enemy tanks (and bodies) like a hot knife through butter. And then it turns into position gas ! You can find radioactive fragments, and you can detect the uranium with a Geiger Counter, but the bombs and bullets will have mostly vaporized -- become poison gas -- and some of that will spread out globally before getting into crops, drinking water, babies, you and I. Modern warfare is, more than anything else, an assault -- largely hidden -- on civilians, and on humanity at large. Just as with each breath, we each breath some part of Caesar's last breath, so too the deadly DU dust from each war will poison all seven billion+ people on the planet, including more than a billion children. The deadly dust will poison the rich and the poor alike, but the poor will have no access to health care. We, the American Couch Potato, allow this in our name. Our government is currently the world's greatest terrorist, JUST on the basis of its use of U-238, and threatened use of U-235 and Pu-239 weapons. The shining hill now glows with radioactivity, and its citizens suffer with cancer. Our inability to admit that radioactive weapons must be banned, and that large radioactive targets (aka "nuclear power plants") must also be closed forever, makes us guilty of mass murder by complacency. None of us are innocent anymore -- except the children of course, who are 10 to 100 times or more, more vulnerabale than adults to nuclear radiation dangers, and who trust us to protect them from all the horrors of the real world, even the invisible and insidious ones. Stop the radiation assault, and you go a long way towards stopping cancer, leukemia, birth defects and other ailments. Those who promote nuclear power promote death, destruction, undemocratic principles, and global suffering. But those who say nothing and simply let it happen are their single biggest and most powerful group of supporters. When the tsunami occurred in 2004, many people died because they ran out to where fish were flapping, where the water used to be. A tidal wave of ignorance and apathy is occurring on this planet. New technologies could replace all the nuclear power in use on earth in a matter of months -- maybe even weeks -- if society put its global industrial strength to work building alternative energy systems with currently-available designs. But instead, we continue to upgrade old nukes, and even build new nukes. Each one creates about 250 pounds per day of radioactive "spent" fuel. Enormous amounts of fossil fuels and chemicals are used to process the nuclear materials, and to keep the nuclear power plants in "working" order -- producing more waste. Nuclear power is not the solution to global warming or anything else. There is nothing good about nuclear power. Those who run the plants, build the weapons, and process the fuel staunchly defend their "right" to pollute your body with odorless, colorless, tasteless, and extremely carcinogenic radioactive isotopes, and few of us even know it is happening. Those who do know can and must stop this madness. Cancer rates are soaring; every family suffers. (C)2005 MWC News - A Site Without Borders - MWC.News Network. 2007 ***************************************************************** 6 USATODAY.com: How risky is the new era of nuclear power? - By Paul Davidson, USA TODAY Nearly two years ago, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission gave the operator of the Indian Point nuclear plant a year to add backup power supplies to the plant's emergency warning sirens. Entergy paid a $130,000 government fine in April but still hasn't done the work at the plant 24 miles north of New York City. At the Peach Bottom nuclear plant south of Harrisburg, Pa., security guards often took 15-minute "power naps," according to a letter from a former security manager to the NRC last March. The NRC began investigating after CBS News aired video of the dozing guards in early September. Neither of the incidents amounted to an "immediate" safety risk, the NRC says. But they and hundreds of other seemingly minor episodes at nuclear power plants in recent years are drawing increased scrutiny as the USA prepares to launch a new generation of nuclear reactors. NUCLEAR SAFETY PROBLEMS: A sampling since theThree Mile Island accident Power companies are beginning to file applications to build up to 32 nuclear plants over the next 20 years, the first since the 1979 accident at the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania halted plans for new reactors and led to sweeping changes in safety regulations. It's partly a reflection of how, amid concerns about climate change, communities have become more open to nuclear power as a cleaner alternative to pollution-belching coal-fired plants. Critics and advocates of nuclear power generally agree that improvements in equipment and employee training have helped to make nuclear plants safer since the partial meltdown of a reactor at Three Mile Island. Watchdog groups, however, say that unless nuclear safety and security improve, the USA's expansion of its nuclear power industry which now involves 104 reactors that supply about 20% of the nation's electricity could pose risks to nearby communities. "Serious safety problems" plague U.S. nuclear plants because the NRC isn't adequately enforcing its standards and has cut back on inspections, according to a report released Tuesday by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), a nuclear safety watchdog group. The report also says that even though security at nuclear plants was increased after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, reactors still aren't sufficiently protected against terrorist threats such as hijacked jets, and new reactors aren't being designed to be significantly safer than existing ones. Increasing the number of reactors without creating "unacceptably high safety and security risks" could be difficult, the report concludes. There has been no meltdown of a reactor in the USA since the incident at Three Mile Island, which led to no deaths or identifiable injuries from radiation exposure but resulted in the release of some radiation from the plant. However, since 1979, U.S. nuclear plants have had to shut down 46 times for a year or more, in most cases to fix equipment problems that accumulated over time and that regulators should have ordered repaired earlier, according to the UCS, which compiled the data from the NRC and other research. And the number of equipment failings that increase the risk of an accident is up since 2001, compared with the previous five-year period, NRC figures show. The UCS says incidents such as occasional failures of pumps that cool the nuclear reactor core in an emergency eventually could prove disastrous if they coincide with other low-probability events, such as coolant leakages from the core. "The track record on existing reactors leaves much to be desired, and until you fix that problem, it's going to carry over to new reactors," says David Lochbaum, director of UCS' nuclear safety project. The NRC and the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI), the industry's trade group, say just one incident since Three Mile Island a water leak at the Davis-Besse plant in Ohio in 2002 has come close to threatening communities near any plant. The NRC says that in the episode involving the sleeping guards at Peach Bottom, it didn't act sooner because it couldn't substantiate the claims with Exelon (EXC), the plant's operator. At Indian Point, Entergy (ETR) says its plan to install backup power for the sirens has been delayed by technical hurdles and the need to get permits from dozens of towns, counties and state offices. A 'reliable fleet of reactors' Nuclear reactors generate heat that produces electricity when uranium atoms split. In the reactor core, uranium is kept in water to prevent it from overheating, melting down and releasing radiation. A meltdown by itself typically would not be disastrous because the reactor sits in a concrete containment structure to prevent radiation from escaping. However, a meltdown could cause a buildup of temperature and pressure that ruptures the containment building. A massive release of radioactive gas into a surrounding community could destroy or damage human cells and cause death or cancer. That's what happened at the Chernobyl nuclear plant in the former Soviet Union in 1986. The world's worst nuclear plant disaster involved a meltdown and an explosion that killed 56 people. At least an additional 4,000 are projected to die from cancer because of exposure to radiation. In the accident at Three Mile Island seven years earlier, water cooling the core in one of the plant's two reactors leaked through a partly open valve. The valve was closed enough to prevent an alarm from sounding. Half the core melted, but the containment building stopped all but a small amount of radiation from seeping into the environment. The incident led the U.S. government to require upgrades in piping, valves and other equipment at all nuclear plants, and NRC inspections were increased. Today, "The U.S. operates not only the biggest but probably the safest and most reliable fleet of reactors," says NEI Senior Vice President Marvin Fertel. UCS' Lochbaum counters that the 46 reactor shutdowns during the past three decades indicate there has been a buildup of multiple problems that regulators should have caught sooner. In 1995, for example, Public Service Electric & Gas had to close its Salem plant in New Jersey for three years until 43 equipment problems were fixed, including a broken fan that kept safety gear from overheating. A Government Accountability Office report said the NRC knew about 38 of the flaws in two cases for more than six years and that its "lack of more aggressive action" compounded the plant's problems. Plants inspected less frequently In the most serious episode involving a U.S. nuclear plant since Three Mile Island, the Davis-Besse plant in Ohio was shut down from 2002 to 2004 after the NRC failed to spot what it acknowledges were early signs of trouble. An acid leak through the reactor vessel's lid left a quarter-inch-thick steel veneer, according to NRC reports. Because emergency pumps also were faulty, core-cooling water leaking through the ruptured lid could have led to a meltdown. The NRC identified the leak in fall 2001 but let the plant keep operating. An NRC Inspector General's report in 2002 found the agency's willingness to keep the plant running "was driven in large part by a desire to lessen the financial impact on (plant operator FirstEnergy) that would result from an early shutdown." In a statement last month, the NRC blamed FirstEnergy (FE) for providing "inaccurate and misleading information," including its "explanation of the leak." FirstEnergy says it has made extensive staffing and procedural changes to prevent such situations in the future. Stuart Richards, deputy director of the NRC's inspection unit, says such shutdowns show "that if the NRC feels plants shouldn't be operating, we'll take appropriate actions." Richards notes that Davis-Besse was the last plant to be shuttered for at least a year and that similar safety problems have decreased. Plants were shut down an average of 1.5% of the time because of safety lapses in 2006, down from 10% in 1997, NRC figures show. NRC credits a more precise oversight system, launched in 2000, that increases inspections at poorly performing plants. However, one key safety measure of problems that the NRC says increase the annual risk of a meltdown from an average of 1 in 17,000 to up to 1 in 1,000 has doubled the past six years to an average of 18 a year. There have been 337 such "precursors" since 1988, including failures of pumps that supply water to reactors in a crisis, the NRC says. Each plant's emergency cooling system typically has several backups, such as pumps or power generators. NRC spokesman Scott Burnell says the increase in such problems is insignificant because 22 of the incidents stemmed from two causes the agency was aware of, rather than a rash of separate problems. Half the problems stemmed from the loss of power needed to run critical cooling systems and most of those occurred during the massive electricity blackout that struck the northeastern USA on Aug. 14, 2003. The other half involved cracks in nozzles that, in some cases, let water seep from a reactor. Lochbaum says that such explanations by the NRC do not ease his concerns about plants' safety. He blames the increasing "precursors" on scaled-back inspections by the NRC and plant owners. From 1993 to 2000, routine NRC inspection hours declined by 20%, partly because of budget constraints, the NRC acknowledges. Although the hours spent inspecting plants rose 11% from 2001 to 2005, most of the increase stemmed from more attention to post-9/11 security checks, rather than the operation of the plants. NRC and industry officials acknowledge they're inspecting many parts of nuclear plants less frequently since 2000. But they say inspections are more effective because they now focus on critical gear whose failure poses the greatest risk to the public. Questions about standards In its report, the UCS says the NRC has not consistently enforced many of its safety regulations for nuclear plants. The group says that since 1981, for example, the NRC has issued about 1,000 exemptions to plants that failed to meet fire-protection rules that went into effect after a 1975 blaze at the Browns Ferry plant in Alabama. The NRC says the waivers were granted to older plants that couldn't make certain structural changes such as separating primary and backup safety gear. Waivers permit alternative fire-prevention methods, such as sprinklers or smoke alarms. NRC Commissioner Gregory Jaczko says the agency should require plants to take more elaborate steps, such as installing fire-resistant power cables as backups to standard sets. In February 2000, a steam generator tube at the Indian Point plant ruptured, causing a small radiation leak outside the plant. Workers had spotted corrosion in the tube in 1997, but Con Edison, the plant's operator, persuaded the NRC to delay a follow-up inspection slated for June 1999. An NRC engineer was skeptical of the request, but agency policy discouraged her from asking follow-up questions, an NRC Inspector General's report found later. The tube broke before the next scheduled inspection in 2000. The NRC says the inspection was delayed because the plant had been shut down for 10 months before the request, leaving little time for the tube to degrade further. The UCS' Lochbaum largely blames enforcement lapses on an NRC culture he says discourages workers from raising safety issues out of fear of retaliation. A 2002 Inspector General's survey said only 53% of NRC employees "feel it's safe to speak up" at the agency. The NRC's Richards says, "We emphasize safety as being important and that people should raise concerns." To bolster enforcement, the UCS report urges Congress to require the NRC to recruit managers from outside its ranks to transform the agency's culture. Another proposal, in a bill by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., would allow states to seek an independent safety assessment of a nuclear plant when it seeks a license extension or an increase in power output, or has repeated safety problems. The UCS also criticizes the NRC for not requiring new reactors to be significantly safer than current ones. Under a tentative ruling by the agency, new reactors wouldn't have to include features such as double-walled containment structures to withstand aircraft attacks. The NRC this year similarly decided against a proposal to force existing reactors to install giant mesh shields to deflect air attacks. NRC Deputy Director Gary Holahan says nuclear plants already are "one of the most robust, safest facilities against air attacks." Developers of more than half the 32 planned reactors have chosen two models that use "passive safety" systems. If the core overheats, they rely mostly on a gravity-driven release of water to cool it, rather than on motorized pumps like those in existing reactors. The new systems cut costs and avoid potential breakdowns if power is lost, making them safer than current models, say the NRC and manufacturers Westinghouse and General Electric. But UCS scientist Edwin Lyman says the new designs' reduced reliance on backup pumps is a concern because their performance in a crisis is less certain. "They're shaving safety margins," he says. Another point of contention: The NRC plans to have about 30% of its inspections of new reactors done by private contractors as it tries to streamline licensing reviews. Lochbaum worries that safety will be sacrificed in a rush to issue licenses quickly. Many engineers who designed the reactors will be responsible for reviewing them, he says. But NRC's Holahan says the contractors will simply be providing technical information. "We make the final decisions about whether something is safe," he says. Copyright 2007 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc. ***************************************************************** 7 china.org.cn: Nuclear power project faces cancellation -- The State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA) announced on its website yesterday that the Rushan nuclear power plant project in Shandong hadn't submitted an application for an environmental examination. As one of the three nuclear power plants slotted to be built along the coastline of Shandong Peninsula, the Rushan nuclear power project was reported to have a total investment of more than 60 billion yuan (about US$8.11 billion). The site of the nuclear power plant has aroused disputes ever since the project was initiated in May 2007. The local inhabitants reported to SEPA that the direct distance between the new plant and the nearest residence compound was merely a few kilometers. Moreover, the 120-kilometer coastline is too short to have three such nuclear power plants. SEPA made an instant response, stating that they hadn't yet received any application from the construction company. Yesterday's announcement reiterated the lack of an application process but it didn't mention whether the project had violated legal regulations. SEPA did confirm that it would conduct strict environmental examinations of the construction site after receiving an application. However, Wang Yongxiao, the director of the project's construction and planning department, argued that the site is approximately 7.2 kilometers away from any residence compound. "Five kilometers from the nuclear reactor is the rule for a development-limited area, where large scale factories and schools are forbidden to be built," said Wang. According to the rules, the company should launch an investigation and seek public opinions before mapping out a construction plan. The company did release an opinion-seeking announcement on the website of the Rushan city government at the end of November 2007. The period to comment ends on December 9. According to Wang, the company will follow the proper application process and prepare necessary materials, including surveys on local hydrology, meteorology and geology. "If the application is denied by the authorities, say, if the construction site doesn't meet safety standards, we will cease the project immediately," Wang said, adding that it's too early to judge whether the project is inappropriate or not. Some local residents have questioned the urgent deadline for the opinion-seeking period. They maintained that the company wanted to obtain environmental approval before any upcoming new regulations went into effect. Reportedly, SEPA has released a regulation concerning radiation protection for nuclear power plants to the public for comments. The new regulation has stricter requirements on nuclear power plant sites. Copyright © China.org.cn. All Rights Reserved E-mail: webmaster@china.org.cn Tel: 86-10-88828000 京ICP证 040089号 ***************************************************************** 8 TheStar.com | Canada: Reactor shutdown leaves cancer patients in limbo A nuclear reactor, owned and operated by Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. at its Chalk River laboratory (above), was shut down on Nov. 18 for scheduled maintenance. Dec 05, 2007 08:51 PM Tyler Hamilton Staff Reporter A problem with a Canadian nuclear reactor that produces medical isotopes used to diagnose and treat cancer cases has left patients in Canada and around the world in limbo. The country's half-a-century old NRU reactor currently supplies about two-thirds of the multibillion-dollar medical isotopes market. When injected into patients the isotopes allow medical imaging equipment to track the spread of cancers within the body. But the reactor, owned and operated by Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. at its Chalk River laboratory, was shut down on Nov. 18 for scheduled maintenance and remains out of service as the company works to repair an electrical system. In a statement released this afternoon, federally owned AECL said further modifications are needed before the reactor can be brought back online. "AECL recognizes the important role NRU plays in the supply and delivery of medical isotopes to patients around the world," said Brian McGee, the company's senior vice-president and chief nuclear officer. "We understand that patients will be impacted by this development and we are focused on completing the work precedures as quickly as possible." AECL says the reactor won’t be back in business at least until January. In Toronto, the three hospitals that make up the University Health Network have had to put most of the scores of scans they do daily on hold. “There’s no question it does cause anxiety,” said Dr. Bob Bell, CEO of the health network. The network said it had managed to secure a technecium generator in Europe that it hopes will be flown in on the weekend, when staff will work overtime to make the most of its limited availability. “Although we clearly have a disruption of supply, we are able to provide urgent care for patients who really need to be looked after in time-limited fashion in the next week,” Bell said. The Winnipeg Regional Health Authority, where several dozen patients had their scans rescheduled, was sourcing its isotopes from a backup supplier in Europe for urgent cases, a spokeswoman said. Hospitals in Montreal and the Halifax area have already cancelled hundreds of procedures. AECL is the primary supplier of medical isotopes to Ottawa-based MDS Nordion, which said in a statement last Friday it is working closely with other global suppliers to cushion the effects of the NRU outage. MDS said the reactor is expected to return to full production in mid-December, and that its financial earnings during the first quarter of 2008 will fall by $4 million (U.S.) as a result. Industry experts have been warning for years that AECL's aging NRU reactor is becoming less reliable, threatening to undermine Canada's leadership in the medical isotopes market. AECL, as part of a contract with MDS, has been working on two replacement "Maple" reactors that are well over budget and nearly 10 years behind schedule because of flaws that potentially affect safety. The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission has extended the operating license of the NRU, which was supposed to be decommissioned in 2005, until the problems with the Maple reactors can be sorted out. Commission chair Linda Keen, during a mid-term report in January that examined AECL's progess with the Maple project, took the company to task for taking so long. "We don't see the kind of movement here that gives us any sense that this is happening fast enough," she said. "We're not used to seeing projects take 12 years to go." The situation is embarrassing to Canada, observers say, and could get worse as the NRU reactor pushes its limits and if problems persist with the Maple reactors. "Canada will lose its world-leading position in the manufacturing of radio-isotopes," said the head of one industry supplier, who asked to remain anonymous. "The pharmaceutical industry will have no choice but to move production to other countries." With a file from the Canadian Press Copyright Toronto Star 1996-2007 | ***************************************************************** 9 Opinion - Patrick Moore: Going nuclear over global warming - sacbee.com By Patrick Moore - Special To The Bee Published 12:00 am PST Wednesday, December 12, 2007 For years the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) of the United Nations has warned us that greenhouse gas emissions from our fossil fuel consumption threaten the world's climate in ways we will regret. This year IPCC won the Nobel Peace Prize for its efforts. It is the IPCC that my former colleagues in Greenpeace, and most of the mainstream environmental movement, look to for expert advice on climate change. Environmental activists take the rather grim but measured language of the IPCC reports and add words like "catastrophe" and "chaos," along with much speculation concerning famine, pestilence, mass extinction and the end of civilization as we know it. Until the past couple of years, the activists, with their zero-tolerance policy on nuclear energy, have succeeded in squelching any mention by the IPCC of using nuclear power to replace fossil fuels for electricity production. Burning fossil fuels for electricity accounts for 9.5 billion tons of global carbon dioxide emissions while nuclear emits next to nothing. It has been apparent to many scientists and policymakers for years that this would be a logical path to follow. The IPCC has now joined these growing ranks advocating for nuclear energy as a solution. In its recently issued final report for 2007, the IPCC makes a number of unambiguous references to the fact that nuclear energy is an important tool to help bring about a reduction in fossil fuel consumption. Greenpeace has already made it clear that it disagrees. How credible is it for activists to use the IPCC scientists' recommendations to fuel apocalyptic fundraising campaigns on climate change and then to dismiss the recommendations from the same scientists on what we should do to solve it? Greenpeace is deliberately misleading the public into thinking that wind and solar, both of which are inherently intermittent and unreliable, can replace baseload power that is continuous and reliable. Only three technologies can produce large amounts of baseload power: fossil fuels, hydroelectric and nuclear. Given that we want to reduce fossil fuels and that potential hydroelectric sites are becoming scarce, nuclear is the main option. But Greenpeace and its allies remain in denial despite the fact that many independent environmentalists and now the IPCC see the situation clearly. I have long realized that in retrospect we made a big mistake in the early years of Greenpeace when we lumped nuclear energy together with nuclear weapons as if they were all part of the same holocaust. We were totally fixated, and rightly so, on the threat of all-out nuclear war between the Soviet Union and the United States, and we thought everything nuclear was evil. We failed to distinguish the beneficial and peaceful uses of nuclear technology from its destructive and even evil uses. The approach would be akin to including nuclear medicine with nuclear weapons just because nuclear medicine uses radioactive materials, most of which are produced in nuclear reactors. Nuclear medicine successfully diagnoses and treats millions of people every year, and it would be ludicrous to ban its use. Greenpeace and company are basically stuck in the 1970s when it comes to their energy policy as it relates to climate change. They should accept the wisdom of the scientists at the IPCC and recognize that nuclear energy is a big part of the climate change solution. And they should stop misleading the public into thinking that wind and solar can do the job on their own. I will be the first to commend them for their courage. About the writer: * Patrick Moore is a cofounder and former leader of Greenpeace. He is chairman and chief scientist of Greenspirit Strategies Ltd. (www.greenspiritstrategies.com), in which he serves as a paid adviser to the nuclear power industry. Copyright The Sacramento Bee ***************************************************************** 10 The Bulletin Online: Africa's pursuit of nuclear power | By Igor Khripunov | 29 November 2007 Editor's Note: Starting next week, the issues raised in this article will serve as the basis for debate in the online roundtable, "Nuclear Power in Africa." The discussants will include: Khripunov; Francis Allotey, the former chairman of Ghana's Atomic Energy Commission and a consultant to UNESCO and the International Atomic Energy Agency; Tunde Akingbade, an environmental journalist at the Nigerian publication Vangaurd; and David Fig, an independent environmental policy analyst in Johannesburg and the author of Uranium Road: Questioning South Africa's Nuclear Direction. In Africa, nearly every aspect of human development (health, agricultural, educational, or industrial) depends upon reliable access to modern energy sources. Therefore, it's worth investigating whether nuclear power can safely alleviate energy shortages and optimize an energy mix consistent with the national interests of African countries. Several African nations, including Algeria, Egypt, Morocco, Namibia, and Nigeria, are seriously considering nuclear power. Indeed, "nuclear renaissance" has become a catchphrase worldwide, but there's hardly a consensus regarding nuclear power's benefits. Every country's energy mix involves a range of national preferences and priorities that are reflected in national policies. Hence, these policies represent a compromise between expected energy shortages, environmental quality, energy security, cost, public attitudes, safety and security, available skills, and production and service capabilities. Relevant national stakeholders must take all of these into account when formulating an energy strategy. Energy shortages. With only two nuclear power reactors on the entire continent, both located at Koeberg, South Africa, nuclear power constitutes only a fraction of Africa's energy mix. Still, South Africa accounts for 60 percent of all of Africa's energy production. (Africa as a whole generates only 3.1 percent of the world's electricity.) Ironically, due to increased electricity consumption and the extension of its power grid to rural constituencies, this relatively developed country has struggled with serious power shortages the last several years. Furthermore, coal power, the country's traditional energy buffer, is facing rising costs associated with more stringent air-pollution standards. As a solution, South Africa is considering an ambitious expansion of nuclear power, which involves the pebble-bed modular reactor (PBMR)--the South African design reportedly much safer and proliferation-resistant than the design of the current generation of reactors. It hopes to install about 24 units with a total capacity of 4,800 megawatts by 2025. Elsewhere in Africa, electricity production is unacceptably low. The glaring contrast in energy production between sub-Saharan Africa and North America speaks to the inability of some African governments to provide basic services to their citizens and support development projects. Uneven regional distribution of energy resources significantly contributes to the energy crisis. Of the 53 countries in Africa, a limited number have large energy potential. Hydropower potential is the most evenly spread, but the highest concentration is on the Congo River. Oil and gas are mostly concentrated in Algeria, Nigeria, and Libya; coal is mostly found in southern Africa; and geothermal potential exists in eastern Africa. Together with South Africa, the Maghreb countries (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, and Mauritania) account for more than 80 percent of Africa's electricity generating capacity. As a result, in the absence of adequate trans-African resource-sharing arrangements and infrastructure, many African countries suffer from scarce energy resources and must pay high prices to import energy. Nuclear power. The attitudes of African decision makers, experts, and public about nuclear power range from negative/cautious to positive/enthusiastic. Supporters perceive nuclear power as a "silver bullet" that would allow the continent to demonstrate both technical progress and prowess. The search for cleaner energy sources such as nuclear is also motivated by widespread concern that Africa is more vulnerable than other regions to climate change. Some of the serious consequences of climate change in Africa could include desertification, food shortages, epidemics, insufficient water supply, coastal erosion, and increased refugees. A study by the University of Pretoria estimates that crop failure due to rising temperatures could cost $25 billion. Abundant uranium resources also drive the push for nuclear power. According to a 2005 International Atomic Energy Report (IAEA) report (PDF), Africa maintains 18 percent of the world's known recoverable uranium resources. Most operational mines are located in Niger, the Congo, Namibia, and South Africa. Prospecting and other preproduction work is being performed in Botswana, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Chad, Gabon, Guinea, Libya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Mozambique, Senegal, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. Uranium is increasingly perceived as an important part of a country's national wealth and as a political tool equal to oil and gas. And African countries with uranium deposits don't simply want to ship ore and yellowcake to industrialized nations; there's a growing sentiment that energy-starved Africa is destined to take advantage of its uranium to help rapidly establish a thriving, contemporary economy. For example, South African officials increasingly talk about the need to ensure that its abundant uranium resources are exploited for the benefit of the country rather than for that of foreign companies. Its August 2007 draft nuclear energy program outlines a complete nuclear fuel cycle to support the expansion of nuclear power generation and the ability to develop a uranium enrichment capacity. South Africa had stopped enriching uranium in 1997 following the dismantling of its apartheid-era nuclear weapons program, but it reportedly has some residual capabilities. Constraints to nuclear power. A nuclear power infrastructure includes manufacturing facilities, complex legal and regulatory frameworks, expanded institutional measures to ensure safety and security, and appropriate human and financial resources. These arrangements would require careful planning, preparation, and investment over a 10- to 15-year period. Nuclear power plants also require a large, upfront investment--usually $2 billion to $3.5 billion per reactor. These are daunting tasks and requirements for any country. And sadly, a prevalence of interstate conflicts, ethnic strife, insurgencies, corruption, and crime create a hostile environment in some African countries for the safe and secure implementation of nuclear power. Examples of such risks are abundant. Heavily armed Nigerian insurgents continue to disrupt oil production in some parts of that country. As recently as April, armed men attacked a uranium prospecting camp maintained by the French company AREVA in northern Niger, killing a security guard and wounding three other people. In the Congo, only a thin barbwire fence protects Africa's first nuclear research reactor, which possesses a "totally outdated" control room and an unguarded radioactive waste storage building. Through decades of war, dictatorship and political upheaval, the Congo has repeatedly been accused of illegally selling its natural uranium or not preventing smuggling schemes. As recently as November 2007, armed gunmen gained access to a major nuclear research facility in South Africa and reached the emergency control room before guards chased them away. Subsequently, instilling law and order must be a prerequisite for nuclear power development. Technically speaking, safety and security assistance comes from international institutions. The IAEA is working with its African member states to enhance nuclear security by improving controls and detection equipment, upgrading physical protection, and providing emergency assistance and training staff. For their part, African states must get more closely integrated into the international regimes. For example, 23 African states still haven't fulfilled their obligation to conclude comprehensive safeguard agreements under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. And only 25 African states acceded to the 1987 Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material. Worse yet, just two have ratified the convention's 2005 amendment, which contains 12 fundamental principles of nuclear security. Options. Since Africa hasn't achieved economies of scale, the most rational approach to nuclear power would start with small reactors whose output would better match existing grid capacity. One such reactor is already on the market: A Russian floating nuclear power plant, operated by a Russian team and, by cable, connected to a country's grid. (It's in discussions to sell such reactors to Namibia.) The reactor for the floating plant would be based on the original reactor designs for nuclear submarines. More largely, Russia is offering medium-sized nuclear plants to Egypt, Morocco, and Namibia, planning to sell downblended weapons-origin uranium as reactor fuel to these countries, and hoping to participate in Namibia's uranium mining projects. Another reactor on the market is the PBMR. South Africa wants to export its design to its neighbors, while China is rapidly finalizing a somewhat different PBMR design that it will attempt to export to developing countries. Hungry for natural resources, China has launched a massive campaign to exploit Africa's riches, focusing on Niger as a strategic source of uranium. As a fledging giant with a self-sustained nuclear record, India is also highly visible in uranium-rich African countries (Zambia to name one), offering to help develop nuclear strategies and policies and hawking its competitively priced pressurized heavy water reactor. Finally, Iran is making generous offers to share its expertise of "using nuclear power for peaceful purposes." Iran has targeted Algeria, a high-profile state in good standing with the IAEA, as a useful partner in the ongoing standoff over Tehran's nuclear program. Meanwhile, African countries are demonstrating an increased interest in regional cooperation as a way to establish the required economies of scale for nuclear power generation. This cooperation may involve interconnected grids, collective facilities, cooperative education and training programs, shared expertise in safety and security, and common management practices and skilled labor pools. In this sense, regionalization is looked upon as a useful mechanism for money, efficiency, and reliability. However, an important caveat: Such arrangements can yield expected results provided a climate of trust between participating countries exists--not always the case in Africa. African countries are poised to benefit from nuclear power in many ways. But nuclear power is not a quick way to fix the continent's problems. In order to succeed, African governments must go beyond the traditional framework of a technical program and apply considerable effort toward ameliorating the problems that plague their industrial infrastructure, public governance, educational system, and other institutions in the public and private sectors. If well organized, the pursuit of nuclear power could become a rewarding endeavor for the continent and serve the needs of its people. But the international community must be aware that a lack of expertise, oversight, and safety and security measures could increase the likelihood of nuclear proliferation or terrorism both within and outside the continent. 2007 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Server: www.thebulletin.org ***************************************************************** 11 FT.com: Nuclear power plan faces fresh legal threat Financial Times FT.com By Jean Eaglesham, Chief Political Correspondent Published: December 9 2007 22:51 | Last updated: December 9 2007 22:51 Gordon Brown faces a dilemma on energy policy after a legal warning from Greenpeace, the environmental group, that a decision to approve a new generation of nuclear power stations would “not be lawful”. The prime minister is expected to give the green light to replacing Britain’s ageing fleet of nuclear power stations next month. * © Copyright The Financial Times Ltd 2007. "FT" and "Financial ***************************************************************** 12 toledoblade.com: Reversal is sought in Davis-Besse case Monday, December 10, 2007 Attorneys call engineer a 'scapegoat' By TOM HENRY BLADE STAFF WRITER Defense attorneys for David Geisen, the former Davis-Besse engineer who was convicted in late October on three counts of lying to the federal government about the plant's dangerous operating status in the fall of 2001, have filed a motion for an acquittal. Richard Hibey and Andrew Wise contend their client deserves a new trial if he is not acquitted by Judge David Katz, who presided over the three-week jury trial in U.S. District Court in Toledo. Their request is explained in a 37-page brief that was posted in the court's electronic filing system last week. It claims the government proved Geisen was not involved in drafting and preparing the three serial letters to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that were the basis for his conviction. It also claims the government failed to prove Geisen knew statements he made to the NRC, based on those documents and other information, were false, or that he knowingly used "tricks, schemes, or devices" to deliberately mislead the NRC, as alleged in the Jan. 19, 2006, indictment against him and two other engineers, contractor Rodney N. Cook and Andrew Siemaszko. Geisen, of DePere, Wis., was acquitted on two counts, but still faces up to five years in prison and $250,000 in fines for the three of which he was convicted. He remains at least 10 weeks away from being sentenced, according to the schedule Judge Katz announced following the verdicts. Mr. Cook, of Millington, Tenn., was acquitted on all four counts against him. Mr. Siemaszko, of Spring, Texas, is scheduled to go on trial May 18 for the five charges against him. The Ottawa County nuclear plant, 30 miles east of Toledo, came within weeks of having its old reactor head burst open in 2002 because management of FirstEnergy Corp., which owns and operates the plant, tolerated leaks for years. Acid from the reactor burned through all but a thin stainless steel liner that was about the width of a pencil eraser. The liner, which was not designed to hold back the reactor's enormous operating pressure, was starting to bulge and crack. If it had breached, radioactive steam would have formed in containment of a U.S. vessel for the first time since the half-core meltdown of Three Mile Island Unit 2 near Harrisburg, Pa., in 1979. The NRC condoned the leaks at the time because they were considered minor. The agency has since revised its inspection program. The Department of Justice has 10 days to respond to the motion. It has declined comment, except to confirm it opposes it. Geisen's defense attorneys claim their client was a scapegoat for FirstEnergy, which has paid a record $33.5 million in fines for its role as a corporation. "What the jury was left with was a picture of a dysfunctional operation, led by inept management, preoccupied with saving money at the risk of safety, with the result being a near Three Mile Island event in their backyard," according to a document excerpt. Nuclear plants generate more than $1 million a day in power. FirstEnergy executives, with the help of Geisen, persuaded the NRC to let the plant operate until Feb. 16, 2002, six weeks longer than the preference of some agency officials who had feared something was amiss. Geisen's defense counsel took issue with Judge Katz's decision to read the jury what is known as the "Allen charge" to help break its apparent stalemate near the end of its third day of deliberations. The verdicts were reached the following day. Euphemistically called the "dynamite charge," the Allen charge reminds a potentially deadlocked jury of what is at stake if it fails to reach a unanimous verdict and a mistrial is declared. "The verdicts suggest the jury was hopelessly confused about what constituted culpable behavior on the part of Mr. Geisen," according to the defense motion. It described the verdicts as "demonstrably and irreconcilably inconsistent with one another." The Davis-Besse case, split into two trials, is viewed by industry watchdogs as one with potential ramifications for America's nuclear work force and its adherence to safety procedures as utilities extend the licenses of their 104 nuclear plants and seek approval to build more. Contact Tom Henry at: thenry@theblade.com or 419-724-6079. The Toledo Blade Company, 541 N. Superior St., Toledo, OH 43660 , (419) 724-6000 ***************************************************************** 13 San Diego Business Journal: Hearing Addresses Future of Nuclear Power Posted date: 12/10/2007 Nuclear power in California is the subject of a state Senate hearing Dec. 10 in San Diego. The Senate Energy, Utilities and Communications Committee plans to hold the informational public hearing, which will cover the performance of existing nuclear plants in the state, as well as the future of the industry, including waste disposal, economics and safety. Speakers include utility executives as well as a representative of the Sierra Club. Sen. Christine Kehoe, D-San Diego, chairs the committee. The hearing runs from 1 to 4 p.m. at the Garcia Auditorium in the California Department of Transportation building at 4050 Taylor St. in Old Town. Brad Graves Dec. 10 - 16, 2007 All contents of this site 2007 San Diego Business Journal Associates. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 14 Burlington Free Press: Report: Nuclear power paying less in tax burlingtonfreepress.com | Burlington, Vermont Published: Wednesday, December 12, 2007 By Terri Hallenbeck Free Press Staff Writer MONTPELIER -- The Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant pays significantly less in state education taxes than generators of other kinds of electric power, according to a report issued Tuesday by a renewable energy advocate. The Vermont Public Interest Research Group examined the taxes paid by nuclear, wood, hydro and wind power generators, and discovered that the lone generator of commercial-scale wind paid 10 times as much as nuclear. Hydro generators paid five times as much, and wood generators paid three times as much, the report says. James Moore, clean energy advocate for VPIRG, said the results indicate that tax policies run contrary to the goal of encouraging use of renewable energy. "Our tax policy may be a roadblock to moving forward and getting renewable energy built here in Vermont," Moore said. Vermont Yankee spokesman Rob Williams called the report "an irrelevant comparison" that does not take into consideration much of the power plant's contribution to Vermont. "It's far more complicated than a simplistic comparison when deciding Vermont's energy future," Williams said. Vermont Yankee pays the state about $5 million a year in education and general fund taxes, $4.5 million into the state's Clean Energy Fund and $1.6 million for Radiological Emergency Response Planning, and produced reliable power at a relatively low rate, Williams said. He emphasized the boost to the economy from its 600 employees and that nuclear power doesn't create greenhouse gases that fossil-fired plants do. Steve Wark, spokesman for the state Department of Public Service, agreed that any analysis should look at the broad economic picture a generator provides. "This is one facet that's going to require a much more thorough review," he said. House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Michael Obuchowski, D-Rockingham, said he hasn't reviewed VPIRG's report, but he wants to make sure that other factors, such as tax credits, are taken into consideration when comparing tax contributions. Steve Kimbell, a lobbyist who represents Green Mountain Power Corp., which owns the Searsburg wind facility, said it may not be fair to compare the taxes of different power generators. Vermont Yankee is a baseload generator, meaning it is depended on to produce power at all times, while wind and solar generators are intermittent. "They're different products," he said. The numbers will come into play when legislators resume discussion in January of energy policy. Last session, legislators sought to increase the tax on Vermont Yankee, the state's sole nuclear power producer, to pay for an energy-efficiency program. Gov. Jim Douglas vetoed the legislation and criticized the increased tax as unfair. Legislative leaders have said the Vermont Yankee tax is off the table as a funding source for the energy-efficiency program. However, Rep. Tony Klein, D-East Montpelier, said he will introduce legislation in the coming session to increase the tax separate from the energy-efficiency piece because he thinks Vermont Yankee is undertaxed. VPIRG looked at education fund taxes paid per kilowatt hour of power produced at the 53 electric generators doing business in Vermont. Moore said the group set aside the 10 or so municipally owned plants that typically pay less in taxes. The report also does not include "peaking" facilities that are used only when power use is at its peak because those operate at a higher cost. According to the report, Vermont Yankee paid $.00103 per kilowatt hour. Wood generators averaged $.00298. Hydro averaged $.00512 and wind $.01081. The legislation vetoed last session would have set a tax for wind generators at $.003 per kilowatt hour, a move that remains controversial in the Legislature. Contact Terri Hallenbeck at 651-4887 or thallenb@bfp.burlingtonfreepress.com Copyright 2007 Burlingtonfreepress.com All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 15 Reuters: Russian uranium to fuel more U.S. nuclear plants Mon Dec 10, 2007 10:37am EST By Tom Doggett WASHINGTON, Dec 10 (Reuters) - Russian exports of uranium to the United States to fuel nuclear power plants, would rise significantly starting around the middle of the next decade, under a draft agreement reached between the two countries. For years, the U.S. government has restricted Russian uranium shipments, fearing Russia would dump uranium in the U.S. market and financially hurt major American-uranium supplier USEC Inc (USU.N: Quote, Profile, Research). The higher Russian exports would be allowed at a time that market analysts believe uranium supplies will tighten in the 2011 to 2015 period, according to the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI), the trade group for the U.S. nuclear industry. The deal slowly increases Russian uranium exports over a 10-year period beginning in 2011, when shipments would be allowed to reach 16,559 tons. Exports would then increase about 50 percent annually over the next two years and increase more than tenfold from 41,398 tons in 2013, when the current "Megatons to Megawatts" program expires, to 485,279 tons the next year. Shipments would increase at much slower rates in each of the following six years until reaching 514,754 tons in 2020. Under the "Megatons to Megawatts" program, enriched uranium from dismantled Russian nuclear weapons is imported by USEC and processed into fuel for American nuclear power reactors. USEC spokeswoman Linda Johnson said the company does not object to the new deal as long as Russian uranium exports "do not jeopardize existing (USEC) facilities and the various projects now underway to modernize the U.S. fuel cycle and support a nuclear renaissance." The U.S. Commerce Department and the Russian State Atomic Energy Agency Rosatom reached the agreement in late November to allow more Russian uranium shipments. Johnson said it is USEC's understanding that in negotiating the deal, the Commerce Department worked to ensure the uranium market "remains stable...while at the same time meeting Russian interests in access to the U.S. market." However, Johnson would not say whether USEC is worried it may be difficult for the company to compete with the flood of Russian uranium shipments expected beginning in 2014. "We're still studying the agreement," she said. The terms of the deal were published last week in Federal Register of U.S. government regulations and policies, and will be open to public comment for 30 days. Final approval of the agreement is expected after a review of the comments received. Owners and operators of U.S. nuclear power reactors bought 67 million pounds of uranium last year. About 16 percent of those purchases was of U.S.-origin and the other 84 percent, or 56 million pounds, cam from foreign suppliers, according to the Energy Department. Uranium from Russian nuclear warheads under the "Megatons to Megawatts" program currently accounts for half of U.S. commercial reactor fuel, according to the NEI. The new deal's proposed annual uranium export limits were determined based on data from the World Nuclear Association's global forecast for nuclear fuel. The Commerce Department would adjust the export limits to match projected nuclear reactor demand in the group's future forecasts. (Reporting by Tom Doggett; editing by Michael Roddy) ***************************************************************** 16 AP: Groups Appeal North Anna Permit Renewal December 7, 2007 - 9:07am LOUISA, Va. (AP) - Two environmental groups are appealing the renewal of North Anna Power Station's state water permit. The Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League and the Peoples Alliance for Clean Energy claim heated water discharged from the plant's two nuclear reactors harms Lake Anna's aquatic life and recreational opportunities. According to the groups, the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality erred in granting a variance that allows temperatures exceeding water-quality standards. Dominion nuclear operations spokesman Richard Zuercher said Thursday that the company is in full compliance with the law. He declined to comment on the appeal. Information from: The Free Lance-Star (Copyright 2007 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.) LOUISA, Va. (AP) - Two environmental groups are appealing the renewal of North Anna Power Station's state water permit. The Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League and the Peoples Alliance for Clean Energy claim heated water discharged from the plant's two nuclear reactors harms Lake Anna's aquatic life and recreational opportunities. According to the groups, the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality erred in granting a variance that allows temperatures exceeding water-quality standards. Dominion nuclear operations spokesman Richard Zuercher said Thursday that the company is in full compliance with the law. He declined to comment on the appeal. Information from: The Free Lance-Star (Copyright 2007 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.) AP material Copyright 2007 Associated Press. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 17 Idaho Mountain Express: Nuclear power's not cheap - December 7, 2007 I applaud the efforts of Gov. Butch Otter to establish a viable energy division in the Governor's Office, but it is mandatory that the energy issues facing Idaho be objectively analyzed and pursued. I am concerned that Gov. Otter has decided to place his support behind the nuclear industry. This is not in the best interests of the citizens of Idaho. I would like to urge the governor to take the same financial and institutional support and apply it to Idaho's strengths, which are geothermal, wind, solar and biomassthe energies of the future. Not only has nuclear energy been an environmental calamity for Idaho, it is also not in the state's long-term economic interest. The true costs have not been correctly represented. For instance, the figures 1.3 cents to 1.7 cents per kilowatt-hour represent a fraction of the true cost of delivering nuclear energy to Idaho ratepayers, according to a fact-finding document published in June 2007 by an independent nonprofit organization (the Keystone Center). The center brought together diverse stakeholders to find some consensus on the issue of nuclear energy. It found that the levelized cost for a nuclear power plant from construction to decommissioning was actually 8.3-11.1 cents/kwh. This assessment was compiled from such expert organizations and businesses as Exelon, the Pew Center for Global Change, Entergy, GE Energy, Nuclear Energy Institute, and the Union of Concerned Scientists. It would also be prudent to note that the costs of mining the uranium and the waste storage are not even considered in this analysis (the cradle-to-grave portion of this lifecycle). The other factors that negate the validity of nuclear energy are the subsidies provided by United States taxpayers. Not only have our universities and national laboratories been working on the R&D for this industry since the 1950s, but funding has been allocated in the Energy Policy Act of 2005 for loan guarantees of up to $4 billion per plant for the first 29 plants and a liability cap of $15 billion has been set by the Price Anderson Act (estimates of $300 billion to $500 billion for a catastrophic accident). And then there is the taxpayers' cost of storing and protecting the waste for the next million years. I could go on but I think I have made my point. This is an old, expensive, dirty technology. It is time to turn the corner. Deborra Bohrer, President of the board, Snake River Alliance Ketchum Ms. Bohrer brings up some good points and her figures are well-documented. "Dave" comments that "Tax payers do not pay for commercial waste disposal..." Hmm..Taxpayers/ratepayers, citizens- "We" are paying hundreds of millions, past, present and future for radioactive waste disposal-commercial, military and government. Waste disposal, treatment, storage, recovery- you name it, some of it is deadly for thousands of years and some of it is leaking into our Snake River Aquifer from INL. Ask the folks who live near Hanford, WA and Livermore Labs in California how clean nuclear power is! Don't take my word for it, ask the Department of Energy. (and the folks at INL). I suppose the only "convenient" thing about radioactive materials is how silently they kill or deform. I'm in favor of conservation first, clean energy second and thinking outside the box for our future energy needs. Idaho Power hasn't jumped on board for nuclear plants and they won't, either. Call them and ask! That should say a lot. One thing wind and solar have in common is that they don't use ANY water in the process of making electricity. Not so with a nuclear (or coal) power plant. I invite everyone to read "The Last Straw: Water Use by Power Plants in the West"...Do a search with Google. Another point of view in our post-9/11 world: One of this country's strategic weaknesses is our highly centralized power generating system and the inherent vulnerability a large generating facility and their associated high power transmission lines present. Easy targets! Wind farms, solar, geo-thermal, bio-mass, etc. all have the benefit of providing power closer to the end user in most cases. In any case, I'd rather leave my great-grandchildren clean, sustainable energy sources that don't rob them of precious water or saddle them with the burden of dealing with deadly material at any stage of the generation process. Produced & Maintained by Idaho Mountain Express P.O. Box 1013 Ketchum, ID 83340-1013 208.726.8060 Voice 208.726.2329 Fax Express Publishing Inc . ***************************************************************** 18 Yemen Observer: Yemen implements nuclear project Written By: Observer Staff Article Date: Dec 8, 2007 - 12:58:42 AM Rating: 3.0/5 (2 votes cast) Minister of Foreign Affairs, Abu Baker al-Qirbi, stated that Yemen was going to implement the Arabic nuclear energy project for positive purposes, adding that he hoped that projects adopted by other Gulf countries and Egypt would pay particular attention to this strategy as well. “Yemen is concerned with having security and a military strategy that will protect the Arabic countries and strengthen their relations,” al-Qirbi said to Alyaum paper, pointing out that any security strategy carried out by the Gulf Cooperative Council would not be complete if Yemen did not take part in it. He expressed his country’s concern at the outbreak of war between Iraq and the United States, saying that any wars meant further turmoil and gave terrorists the opportunity to manipulate the circumstances to their advantage. Copyright 1998 - 2007 Yemen Observer. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 19 POGO Blog: NRC Sleeping on the Job? The Project On Government Oversight Via The Hill's Congress Blog: Heroes are hard to find these days. On TV, there are made-up ‘heroes’ whose deeds are wrapped up neatly before the last commercial. In real life, it never happens that way. Several months ago, Kerry Beal saw something on his job site that disturbed him greatly. Beal is a security guard at the Peach Bottom Atomic Power Station in Pennsylvania. His fellow guards were sleeping on the job. He did the right thing by telling his supervisor about it. He was told not to talk about it, shut up and be a team player. He sought the advice of a friend at church who had been a former Director of Security for Wackenhut. This friend agreed to write a letter asking the NRC to investigate the situation. Beal is a young guy with three children. He needed his job and simply wanted the management to do the right thing. A perfunctory phone call was made from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to Exelon who assured them everything was just fine. Kerry Beal knew better and so he put his family’s security at stake and video-taped 10 guards sleeping in the “ready room.” See, the plant’s security firm is Wackenhut and they allow work schedules that can run to sixty hours a week or more. Overtime is important to men who are not being paid executive-level salaries. The video became the centerpiece of a series produced by WCBS, a New York City affiliate of CBS News. So what did the NRC and Exelon do to protect the public and institute new work rules? First, they suspended Kerry Beal and then refused to hire him back focusing on his alleged violations of procedures for videotaping the sleeping guards. The obvious result is a good man takes the fall for irresponsible managers more concerned with their paychecks instead of a conscientious and dutiful employee and the safety of the nuclear power plant’s security. Oh, and by the way, new rules and regulations are being formulated and, according to the NRC, will be implemented in 16 months. We hope young Mr. Beal can find a job in the meantime. -- Marthena Cowart December 11, 2007 in Contract Oversight, Nuclear Security, Whistleblower Protection | Permalink TrackBack TrackBack URL for this entry: http://www.typepad.com/t/trackback/108150/24128126 ***************************************************************** 20 State: Nuclear power costs surge in rush to build By ASJYLYN LODER, Times Staff Writer Published December 12, 2007 Jeff Lyash, president and CEO of Progress Energy, said that the early estimates were "generic overnight costs." Nuclear energy -- billed as the cheap, carbon-free energy source of the future -- isn't sounding so cheap anymore. The price for a new nuclear plant has soared as the rush to construct nearly 30 facilities across the country over the next 15 years has pushed up the cost of labor, raw materials and possibly even the plants themselves. New industry estimates double and even triple prices quoted a year ago by utilities throughout the Southeast, including those for Progress Energy Florida's planned nuclear plant in Levy County. Based on cost estimates for other nuke plants and analyst reports, Progress Energy's costs could balloon to more than $10-billion, far more than early estimates of $4-billion to $6-billion. Jeff Lyash, president and CEO of Progress Energy, said that material prices have escalated and that the utility's early estimates didn't include costs like the land purchase, financing or transmission. But he refused to offer a new estimate. The upshot for Florida customers of Progress Energy? Be prepared to pay billions of dollars more than you bargained for. Under Florida law, customers could start seeing that cost tacked on to their monthly bills years before the plant is complete. That scenario has raised concerns in the industry that optimistic early estimates may leave customers with sticker shock. "We were very concerned early on that there were some improper expectations being set by not telling the whole story," said Steven Scroggs, who is in charge of new nuclear plants for the state's biggest utility, Florida Power & Light. Its two-reactor project planned in South Florida could cost $12-billion to $18-billion, Scroggs said. That's far higher than prices quoted elsewhere in the industry, and double Progress Energy's early estimate in Levy County. FPL's unusual candor raises questions about the low estimates offered by utilities throughout the Southeast: What did their estimates include? Are those estimates reliable? Just how much will this nuclear renaissance cost us? * * * No one knows what a new nuclear plant will cost. No one has built one here in more than 30 years, and no U.S. utility has signed a contract yet for a new plant. The utility industry quotes costs in its own jargon of cost per kilowatt. Progress Energy's early estimates ranged from $1,800 to nearly $3,200. FPL recently offered a much higher range of $3,108 per kilowatt to $4,540. Moody's Investor Services offered an October estimate of $6,000 per kilowatt. A year ago, Progress Energy quoted costs of $2-billion to $3-billion for a one-reactor project in Levy County, and later said that it might build two reactors. The St. Petersburg utility selected a new reactor called the Westinghouse AP1000 -- the same technology FPL is considering. So why the enormous difference in their costs? Lyash said that the early estimates were "generic overnight costs." It didn't include interest costs, price escalation, the $47-million the utility spent buying land, or the cost of more than 200 miles of transmission lines the utility will need to run through 10 counties. By contrast, Scroggs' estimate of $12-billion to $18-billion for FPL's plant is "all in," and includes costs like transmission, site preparation, financing and price escalation. "To understand how it really impacts customers, you have to talk about the all-in costs," Scroggs said. The confusion over what estimates include is only part of the problem. Prices for materials like cement and steel have risen dramatically, driving up the cost of coal and natural gas plants as well as nuclear. Lyash said he didn't want to give an estimate while negotiations are ongoing with Westinghouse. He also declined to say whether FPL's estimates seemed in line with Progress Energy's expectations. "I'm not trying to be evasive," Lyash said. "I'd prefer to wait until we have a specific number." * * * Utilities throughout the Southeast face the same quandary as Progress Energy. Five utilities chose the Westinghouse AP1000, for a total of 12 reactors. Progress Energy plans to build four of those, two in Levy County and two in North Carolina. Georgia Power and Duke Energy have also selected the AP1000. Georgia Power hasn't offered a public estimate, but Duke Energy offered early estimates of $4-billion to $6-billion for two reactors, similar to Progress Energy's early estimate. Rita Sipe, spokeswoman for Duke Energy, said those estimates are now being revised but declined to offer a new number. Westinghouse spokesman Vaughn Gilbert said the company will not discuss costs while it is still negotiating with utilities. The nuclear industry already has a credibility hangover from the multibillion-dollar cost overruns that plagued the industry in the 1970s and 1980s. If the public senses that its numbers aren't reliable, it could face a backlash. Hoping to avoid a repeat, the Nuclear Energy Institute, an industry trade group, pulled back from early estimates last year, said Adrian Heymer, senior director for new plant deployment for the Nuclear Energy Institute, a Washington, D.C., nuclear trade group. Many utilities weren't very clear about what their early estimates included, he said. "We sensed about a year ago now that we were a little out of synch with each other, and we've been drilling down trying to figure out what is the number, and we're getting varying stories out there," Heymer said. But his group couldn't offer a number, either. Heymer said a real number won't be known until utilities sign their agreements with Westinghouse, which he predicted will happen in the next six to 18 months. Times researchers Angie Holan and John Martin contributed to this report. Asjylyn Loder can be reached at aloder@sptimes.com or (813) 225-3117. [Last modified December 12, 2007, 00:00:45] 2007 All Rights Reserved St. Petersburg Times 490 First Avenue South St. Petersburg, FL 33701 727-893-8111 ***************************************************************** 21 North County Times: Opposing views power nuclear debate Last modified Monday, December 10, 2007 9:56 PM PST Senator Christine Kehoe speaks at the California Legislature Senate Energy, Utilities and Communications Committee hearing on the status of nuclear power at CalTrans headquarters in San Diego Monday. By: PAUL SISSON - Staff Writer State committee holds hearing in San Diego SAN DIEGO -- What was billed as a "status report on nuclear power" quickly turned into a passionate debate Monday as experts painted vastly different pictures of the controversial technology's ability to safely and economically fight global warming. More than 100 people filled an auditorium at the new CalTrans headquarters building in San Diego to attend an informal hearing convened by the Senate Energy, Utilities and Communications Committee. Sen. Christine Kehoe, D-San Diego, who chairs the committee, said that, with new nuclear plants regularly the subject of debate in California and the nation as a whole, it made sense to do some homework on the subject. "It has been 20 years since this body has heard about this issue," Kehoe said. Since 1976 California has upheld a ban on new plants like the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station about 18 miles north of Oceanside, until the federal government solves the problem of nuclear waste disposal. Plans to store the nation's growing nuclear waste stockpile under Yucca Mountain in Nevada face stiff political opposition. A series of invited experts, including nuclear operators and industry consultants, economists, anti-nuclear watchdogs and the investment community, testified at Monday's hearing. Nuclear power plants, which split uranium atoms to heat water, generate steam and spin turbines that make electricity, do not spew greenhouse gases, and that was the message that pro-nuclear power experts drove home. Dick Rosenblum, chief nuclear officer for Southern California Edison, which operates San Onofre, said the plant's two operating nuclear reactors avoid putting tons of carbon into the atmosphere. "San Onofre displaces the equivalent of about 900,000 cars in California every year," Rosenblum said. But the anti-nuclear participants pointed to the highly radioactive waste that such plants do generate. That waste must be stored in deep pools for years before being moved into thick steel canisters and plunged into thick concrete vaults, where the radiation decays slowly over thousands of years. Carl Zichella, regional staff director for the Sierra Club, noted that any new nuclear plants built in California will take a decade to construct at an estimated cost of $4 billion to $6 billion. He said that thermal solar plants, which use mirrors to focus solar energy, are a better solution because they can be built today. "By the time enough (nuclear plants) were deployed to replace coal plants, it would be too late to make a difference," Zichella said. Economic concerns also played a large role in Monday's four-hour hearing. Consultants and industry experts disagreed on whether escalating construction costs will make new nuclear plants, which require massive investment in raw materials like steel and concrete, infeasible. Jim Harding, an economist and consultant, noted that few companies can produce the large components necessary to build a modern nuclear plant. "You've got a serious risk of monopoly pricing all the way along," Harding said. But Joe Turnage, senior vice president for Constellation Energy, which is building several new nuclear plants in other nations, said he has run the numbers for California and found that, with government-backed loans, a nuclear plant in the Golden State could be a sound investment. "We would seriously consider investing in a project like that," he said. webmaster@nctimes.com 1997-2007 North County Times ? Lee Enterprises editor@nctimes.com ***************************************************************** 22 The Press Association: Bomb find: Sellafield worker hunted dec 11 2007 Police are looking for a Sellafield contract worker who is missing after a bomb was found at his home. Darren Morris, 30, was recently employed at the nuclear reprocessing plant in Cumbria as part of an external contract team. Bomb disposal experts were called to his home in Egremont, Cumbria, on Monday afternoon after a suspicious package was discovered. An 100-metre cordon was placed around the property in Southey Walk and a neighbouring house was evacuated as the "small, rudimentary device" was made safe. The package was taken away for forensic examination. The contractor was last seen at the Red Lion pub in Main Street, Egremont, on Monday afternoon, and was wearing a cream-coloured hooded top and blue jeans. A Cumbria Police spokesman said Mr Morris is between 5ft 7in and 5ft 8in and has a distinctive scar on his neck. Acting Supt Gary Slater said: "I would like to reassure local people this is an isolated incident and something which is rare in Cumbria. "A thorough investigation is under way, but we are asking for the public's help in finding Mr Morris." Detectives are liaising with Sellafield Ltd. in a bid to trace the contractor. Copyright 2007 The Press Association. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 23 P Enquirer: AP: Pa. nuke-plant whistle-blower wants investigation of his firing Posted on Mon, Dec. 10, 2007 The Associated Press HARRISBURG, Pa. - Lawyers for a former nuclear plant security guard want federal regulators to investigate how the plant's owner responded to his complaints about colleagues who slept on the job. Exelon Corp. retaliated against Kerry Beal for videotaping Peach Bottom Atomic Power Station workers napping in a break room, Beal's lawyers said in a letter to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The company suspended his plant access in September and refused to hire him in October after it assumed responsibility for plant security, attorneys Lynne Bernabei and David M. Wachtel said in the letter dated Friday. "Exelon suspended Mr. Beal and refused to rehire him because he forced Exelon and the NRC to deal with a serious security issue," Bernabei and Wachtel wrote. NRC spokeswoman Diane Screnci had no immediate comment on the letter Monday. Exelon announced the termination of its security contract with Wackenhut Corp. in September, following an investigation of a videotape Beal made showing guards dozing off in a so-called "ready room." Guards in the room are allowed to read, study or relax, but are expected to remain prepared to respond to a plant emergency. Exelon officials have said their decision not to hire Beal was unrelated to his whistle-blowing. Peach Bottom spokeswoman Bernadette Lauer said Monday the company restricted plant access temporarily for all members of Beal's security team until officials could determine who was involved in the incident. Lauer said Beal eventually regained access to the plant, but could not specify when. TODAY ON PHILLY.COM About Philly.com | Terms of Use & Privacy Statement | Copyright ***************************************************************** 24 AFP: Cancer risk higher among kids near nuclear plants: German study BERLIN (AFP) — Children under five years old living near nuclear power stations have contracted cancer at a greatly higher rate than the national average, a study by the German government said Saturday. The risk of cancer increased by 60 percent for children living less than five kilometres (three miles) from a nuclear power plant, according to the study by the federal office for protection against radiation. The risk was 117 percent higher when only leukemia was taken into account. The study looked at statistics from between 1980 and 2003 in regions near 21 reactors or former reactors. In those areas, 77 cases of cancer were found among children under five, or a 60-percent increase over the national average. Some 37 cases of leukemia were recorded instead of the average of 17. But explaining the rise in cancer risk has proved difficult. German Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel said in a statement that, based on current scientific knowledge, the findings could "not be explained by exposure to radiation from a nuclear reactor". "To explain this increased cancer risk, the population would have to be exposed to radiation at least 1,000 times higher than what comes from German nuclear power plants," he said. Hosted by Copyright 2007 AFP. All rights reserved. More » ***************************************************************** 25 DW: Study Finds More Childhood Cancer Near Nuclear Power Plants | Germany | Deutsche Welle | 08.12.2007 The study could not explain the increased cancer risk for kids near nuclear power plants Children living near nuclear power stations are more likely to suffer leukemia than those living farther away, a report funded by the German government has found, according to German media. "Our study confirmed that in Germany a connection has been observed between the distance of a domicile to the nearest nuclear power plant ... and the risk of developing cancer, such as leukemia, before the fifth birthday," the daily Süddeutsche Zeitung quoted the report as saying. Government radiation specialists said they could not explain the finding, since there was no direct radiation from the 16 German plants, which are all scheduled for closure in the early 2020s. The study was paid for by the German Federal Radiation Protection Agency [BfS] the government's main adviser on nuclear health. It was conducted by the German Register of Child Cancer, an office in Mainz which is funded by the 16 German states and the federal Health Ministry. The study found that 37 children had come down with leukemia in the period between 1980 and 2003 while having home addresses within 5 kilometers (3.1 miles) of nuclear power plants. The statistical average for Germany would have predicted just 17 cases in that group. Statistically, the 20 extra cases could be associated with living close to the plants, but the BfS said more research was needed to discover if the presence of reactors was actually the cause of the cancers. Doubts over causality remain Bildunterschrift: Gabriel said more studies needed to be done to explain the current findings German Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel said the government radiation safety committee would analyze the findings and called for additional research to explain the increased number of cancer cases. "The population's radiation exposure due to the operation of nuclear power plants in Germany would have to be a least a thousand times higher to be able to explain the observed increase in cancer risk," he said. BfS said current science held that radiation from reactors themselves or their emissions was too weak outside the perimeter to cause cancer, and other conceivable risk factors also could "not explain this distance-related heightening of risk." Germany generates more than 20,000 megawatts of electricity through nuclear power annually, around a quarter of its needs. Despite broad public opposition to the plants, some German officials have suggested giving nuclear power a reprieve in order to reduce climate-damaging emissions from fossil fuels. DW staff (sms) German Government Approves Climate Protection Package German Chancellor Angela Merkel's cabinet agreed Wednesday, Dec. 5, on a comprehensive package to slash Germany's greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent before 2020. (05.12.2007) * Vattenfall Scientists Call for German Nuclear Plants to Restart Scientists appointed by Swedish-owned Vattenfall Europe recommended that two of Germany's 17 nuclear power plants be put back online following a summer fire accident. (06.11.2007) * Germany Faces Shortage of Nuclear Safety Experts Fifty years ago, Germany's first nuclear reactor was built near Munich. DW-WORLD.DE spoke to an safety expert about standards in today's German atomic plants and the possible problems for the future. (31.10.2007) 2007 Deutsche Welle ***************************************************************** 26 ABR: Uranium found in residents and workers near former National Lead's Colonie plant - The Business Review (Albany) Wednesday, December 5, 2007 - 2:51 PM EST A joint study by the University at Albany and the University of Leicester in England has found uranium in workers and residents who lived near the former National Lead Industries munitions plant in Colonie between 1958 and 1982. The study, which will be published in the January issue of Science of the Total Environment, also found potentially hazardous particles from dust at businesses and homes near the former NL factory. The study was released by UAlbany on Wednesday, two months after the federal government completed a nearly $200 million clean up of the former NL Industries plant at 1130 Central Avenue. Texas-based NL Industries operated in Colonie for 24 years until a state Supreme Court ruling closed the Central Avenue factory for illegal uranium emissions. UAlbany science professor John Arnason compared depleted uranium laden dust to particles found on battlefields and test ranges where depleted uranium weapons had been used. "Resuspension of contaminated dust is a concern," Arnason said. NL Industries used depleted uranium at the Colonie plant to make armor-piercing munitions. 2007 American City Business Journals, Inc. and its ***************************************************************** 27 Yokwe Net: NPR Show Looks at Proposed Nuclear Compensation Act :: Everything Marshall Islands :: http://www.yokwe.net Dec 10, 2007 - 07:58 AM UPDATE: Program will air Saturday noon on KUAF 91.3fm and Sunday at 9am central. Listen at KUAF.com NPR Show Looks at Proposed Nuclear Compensation Act A National Public Radio program which focuses on proposed the U.S. Senate legislation, "Republic of the Marshall Islands Supplemental Nuclear Compensation Act of 2007," will air on station KUAF 91.3 FM this weekend. Correspondent and producer Jacqueline Froelich looks at the status of Senate Bill 1756 via interviews with U.S. and RMI officials. Energy and Natural Resources Committee staffer Allen Stayman, RMI Senator Tony Debrum, and Springdale, Arkansas resident Waston Attari, are featured. Audio from a recent forum on the "Compact of Free Association" held in Springdale is also presented. Froelich has produced several NPR shows about Marshallese living in the U.S., especially those in the Northwest Arkansas region. The program, hosted at "Ozarks At Large," will stream live at the KUAF website (www.kuaf.com) at U.S. central time this Friday, December 7, at 6p.m. and Sunday, December 9, at 9 a.m. The story will also be posted later next week on the "Ozarks at Large" archive, located on the KUAF homepage. - by Aenet Rowa, Yokwe Online, December 6, 2007 YokweOnline | Friday, December 07, 2007 | 205 Reads ***************************************************************** 28 NWAnews.com: Lawmakers: Islanders need medical care Northwest Arkansas' News Source BY LAURA KELLAMS Posted on Tuesday, December 11, 2007 Lawmakers learned Monday that Northwest Arkansas Marshallese population is among the least healthy in the state, with high rates of communicable diseases and inadequate services to treat them. Though they live and work in the United States legally under a compact with the federal government, natives of the Republic of the Marshall Islands are not eligible for governmentfunded health-care programs such as ARKids First, Medicaid and Medicare. Legislators, worried about a possible infectious disease outbreak, want to persuade Congress that the state needs federal aid to help provide services such as a satellite health unit that would cater to the growing Marshallese population in Springdale. You can imagine the bomb were sitting on here, said Sen. Bill Pritchard, a Republican whose Washington County district is home to what state health officials estimated as 6, 000 to 8, 000 Marshallese. If we have an outbreak of a serious disease, it is going to be a state health problem.” At Pritchards urging, members of the Senate and House Public Health, Welfare and Labor Committees agreed Monday to find out what it will take to conduct a special census of the Marshallese. Lawmakers eventually hope to calculate the financial impact of the population on state and private health-care providers as well as the state education system. Congress sets aside about $ 30 million annually in compact impact aid to Hawaii, Guam, American Samoa and the Northern Mariana Islands to help make up for the cost of services provided to Marshallese and other Micronesian people in those places. Arkansas gets none of that money, though its believed to have the highest population of Marshallese in the continental United States. Springdale has become such an important population center for Marshallese people that they vote in their homelands elections at the Jones Center for Families and candidates personally travel to Northwest Arkansas to woo voters. Pritchard and other lawmakers said they hope the states congressional delegation will try to persuade federal officials that Arkansas needs help with services for that population. According to a special census in 2003, about 7, 000 Marshallese and other Micronesians lived in Hawaii, possibly fewer than in Arkansas if state officials estimates are right. The United States and the Marshall Islands have an unusual diplomatic relationship called the Compact of Free Association that provides special privileges for the islanders to live and work in the United States without visas. When the Marshall Islands was under U. S. control after World War II, it was the site of nuclear weapons tests for more than a decade. Rep. Billy Gaskill, D-Paragould, said he served in the Marshall Islands when he was in the military. What are we on a guilt trip here about the Marshall Islands ? Gaskill asked Pritchard. He pointed to statistics that show that the Marshallese have high rates of syphilis and leprosy. A nuclear bomb dont cause syphilis, and it certainly dont cause leprosy, he said. Pritchard said the state cant do anything about the federal compact. We have a population thats here legally.... The diseases could be a serious threat not only to themselves but the rest of the population, Pritchard said. So to me its a matter of a public health issue, and not a political issue at all.” Carmen Chong Gum, a Marshallese woman who serves as an outreach coordinator at the Jones Center, told lawmakers she doesnt want to take them on a guilt ride.” She said most of the Marshallese in Northwest Arkansas work in poultry processing plants. She began to cry when she described them as taxpaying Arkansas residents. Is this right for these people to work day and night, long hours of standing on production lines, money taken out of their hard-earned paychecks to fund programs they are not eligible for ? she asked. Pritchard said some of the Marshallese people are covered by their employers health insurance, but he said they tend to live among extended families with grandparents and others who arent eligible for coverage. Dr. Joe Bates, the chief science officer at the Arkansas Department of Health, said the Marshallese dont have to pass health tests to enter the United States, and they bring with them communicable diseases common to Pacific Island nations. They have different ideas about wellness and tend not to seek preventive care, he said. Bates reported that: The tuberculosis rate for Marshallese in Arkansas is estimated at 50 cases per 100, 000 people, though health officials cant be sure without a better estimate of how many Marshallese live here. The rate for all of Arkansas is 3. 6 per 100, 000. The rate of perinatal hepatitis B among Marshallese mothers delivering babies in Washington County is 9. 65 percent, compared to 0. 1 percent for non-Marshallese mothers in Washington County. From 2000 to 2005, six of nine cases of congenital syphilis reported in Northwest Arkansas were among Marshallese babies. During the same time period, 21 of 38 cases of infectious syphilis in Northwest Arkansas were among Marshallese people. There were eight cases of leprosy during that five-year period among Marshallese people in Washington County. Bates said the disease is not as communicable as most people think. It takes prolonged, intimate contact, usually among family members living together, to spread, he said. If there are 6, 000 to 8, 000 Marshallese in Northwest Arkansas, they would make up less than 2 percent of the combined population in Washington and Benton counties. Bates reported that there have been three outbreaks of tuberculosis since 2003, one in a poultry plant and two in Springdale schools, in which a Marshallese person was identified as initial patient among the population investigated. Bates said the department has applied for but failed to get grants from public and private sources. Pritchard said that ideally the Legislature will do whats necessary to make the Marshallese population eligible for state health services and then use information such as the census to get help paying for it from the federal government. Ryan James, a spokesman for U. S. Rep. John Boozman, said the Republican congressman from Northwest Arkansas has been trying to come up with a solution for more than a year. The trouble is, no one in Congress wants the compact changed to include funding for another state, James said. If we were to drop a bill today, it would go nowhere. It wouldnt even get a hearing, he said. James said its possible that if Arkansas comes back with data and demonstrates the size of the population and burden on the state, that might be the ticket to prove our point. Copyright 2001-2007 Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Inc. All rights ***************************************************************** 29 UPI.com: Power plants may affect leukemia rates - Published: Dec. 10, 2007 at 10:01 PM BERLIN, Dec. 10 (UPI) -- A study released by the German government says children living near nuclear power stations are more likely to suffer leukemia. "Our study confirmed that in Germany a connection has been observed between the distance of a domicile to the nearest nuclear power plant and the risk of developing cancer, such as leukemia, before the fifth birthday," the daily Suddeutsche Zeitung quoted the report as saying. Government radiation specialists said the findings cannot be explained since there is no radiation leaking from the 16 German plants, which are all scheduled for closure in about 2020. The study was paid for by the German Federal Radiation Protection Agency, which is the government's main adviser on nuclear health, and conducted by the German Register of Child Cancer. The study showed that 37 children near the plants had developed leukemia in the period between 1980 and 2003 while the statistical average for Germany predicted just 17 cases in that group. 2007 United Press International. All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 30 Albany Times Union: Poison from NL site lingers -- New study shows people who lived near or worked at former munitions factory in Colonie have depleted uranium in their bodies By JORDAN CARLEO-EVANGELIST, Staff writer First published: Thursday, December 6, 2007 COLONIE -- Former workers at a Cold War-era munitions plant and nearby residents still carry traces of toxic depleted uranium in their bodies, a team of scientists said Wednesday. The findings, unveiled at a news conference, seem to contradict an earlier assessment by the federal government that deemed it impossible to measure contamination because it had been so long since the emissions ended. Contrary to that 2004 assessment by the U.S. Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, the scientists from England and the University at Albany say they can now show that more than two decades later, people still carry the radioactive metal in their bodies. The state shuttered the former NL Industries plant in 1984. Because the contamination can still be detected, a study could be done to track down the thousands of people who could have been exposed, the researchers said. But additional financial resources are needed to pay for the pricey tests, they said. "Our new work, using better methodology, shows that we can overcome this difficulty," said Randall Parrish, a professor at the University of Leicester. The findings will soon be published in the journal Science of the Total Environment. Neighbors and former employees have demanded more detailed analysis of the cancers, immune disorders and other illnesses they say have plagued their families. Almost three months ago, the Army Corps of Engineers completed the major phase of its $190 million cleanup at the former plant at 1130 Central Ave., originally operated by the National Lead Co. Now, the scientists and members of an activist group, Community Concerned about NL Industries, are calling for federal funding to study the scope and effects of the contamination. "There's never been a careful study of a population known to be exposed to depleted uranium," said David Carpenter of the Institute for Health and the Environment at UAlbany. "Somebody needs to step in and really answer the question, 'What are the health effects?' " A spokesman for Gov. Eliot Spitzer said the report "should prompt the federal government to do more testing and monitoring. "We support the community's request and urge the Army Corps of Engineers to address these serious concerns," said the spokesman, Michael Whyland. Previous cancer studies by the state Department of Health, activists said, were overly broad and inconclusive. An estimated 5 to 10 metric tons of uranium dust was spewed from the plant's smokestacks between the late 1950s and early 1980s as it manufactured armor-piercing projectiles and burned the waste in a furnace. Parrish has also tested British soldiers believed to have been exposed on battlefields to depleted uranium weapons. The weapons produce dust on impact, leading some to believe it could be linked to illnesses known collectively as Gulf War syndrome. In about 800 tests of soldiers, Parrish said he was hard-pressed to detect a single urine sample containing depleted uranium. In Colonie, all five former NL employees tested positive at "very high levels." About two dozen people were tested in all. All Times Union materials copyright 1996-2007, Capital Newspapers Division of The Hearst Corporation, Albany, N.Y. Roughly 20 percent of the residents or nearby workers also tested positive at lesser levels, Parrish said. The scientists cautioned that the small size of their study prevents extrapolating the results to a wider population, but it provides compelling evidence that more research needs to be done. "A lot of my co-workers died young," said Mike Aidala, 70, who worked at the plant from 1958 to 1980, starting as a janitor and working his way up. "Whether the plant was the reason, I'll never know." Aidala, who also is an Albany County legislator, was among those who tested positive for depleted uranium. Tony Impellizzeri, 59, who grew up on Yardboro Avenue just behind the plant, said he knows about 45 people in the neighborhood stricken with cancer. Impellizzeri said he hopes the current research will prompt action, unlike previous instances "where nothing seems to happen." The scientists also said they found depleted uranium in dust in four buildings around the 11.2-acre site -- in some cases at levels that exceed the Army Corps' cleanup standard for soil. The extent of the contamination in other buildings is not clear, and the danger it poses could depend on whether that dust is disturbed, said John G. Arnason, a professor of earth and atmospheric sciences at UAlbany. The Army Corps has finished removing contaminated soil from the site and has submitted a plan to state environmental regulators to monitor groundwater. That plan could be ready for public comment by spring, said James Moore, the project's manager for the Army Corps. Moore said he had not been briefed on the research and noted that the Army Corps had not been charged with cleaning inside neighboring buildings. In the 1980s, the Department of Energy cleaned about 53 neighboring properties, but the work was limited mostly to the exterior of the buildings and yards. "It was like Love Canal," Impellizzeri said. "They should have knocked down all these buildings on Yardboro Avenue and started over again." Carleo-Evangelist can be reached at 454-5445 or by e-mail at jcarleo-evangelist @timesunion.com. ***************************************************************** 31 Pittsburgh Tribune-Review: Nuclear workers nearing payment - By Mary Ann Thomas FOR THE VALLEY NEWS DISPATCH Monday, December 10, 2007 Although Gloria DeBiasio survived thyroid cancer several years ago, she visits her doctor every three months for testing. She will do so for the rest of her life. "I was one of the fortunate ones," the Gilpin resident said. "They did get the cancer, but there's always the concern that it will show up somewhere else." DeBiasio, a former administrative assistant at the Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation (NUMEC) facilities in Apollo and Parks for 20 years, stands to collect a $150,000 lump-sum, tax-free payment and coverage of medical expenses from the federal government for work-related illnesses. Although DeBiasio has been waiting for final word on acceptance since she filed her claim in 2002, she will get her answer soon enough. The secretary of Health and Human Services recently approved special consideration of NUMEC workers as a "special exposure cohort class" -- the government's term for a group of employees who sustained prolonged exposure to nuclear radiation. Final Congressional approval is expected by Dec. 29. The designation will nearly guarantee automatic acceptance of claims from NUMEC employees who develop one of 22 specific cancers and worked at NUMEC in Apollo for at least 250 days from Jan. 1, 1957, to Dec. 31, 1983. Former employees with beryllium disease will continue to file through the traditional program. NUMEC workers are eligible for federal benefits through the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act (EEOICPA) of 2000. The act awards money and medical benefits to former workers of atomic weapons employers and their survivors. NUMEC held numerous government contracts to produce nuclear fuel for submarines, commercial power plants and other applications. Given the pending Congressional approval, compensation program officials are advising former NUMEC workers to contact the EEOICPA program offices to check on the status of their claims. "We've had people call and say that they filed, but they didn't. They might have signed a petition," said David SanLorenzo, manager of the EEOICPA resource center outside of Buffalo, N.Y. Following Congressional approval, EEOICPA officials will review all previous and current claims -- even those previously denied. Local activists and SanLorenzo's office have fielded hundreds of inquiries from former Alle-Kiski nuclear workers and their survivors in the past three months, as news broke about the special status for NUMEC employees. According to SanLorenzo, his office signed up more than 100 former workers or their survivors following informational seminars in New Kensington in October. The recent nod from Human and Health Services caps an aggressive grass-roots effort to include NUMEC workers in a special class. After many workers were denied compensation or were subjected to lengthy waits because of problems developing radiation dose estimates for individuals, former NUMEC office worker Rich Parler, 62, of Coraopolis, petitioned for special cohort status. After the EEOICPA program initially turned down his petition, he teamed up with Leechburg environmental activist Patty Ameno. She has been instrumental in bringing a lawsuit to federal court alleging that nuclear contamination from NUMEC and its successors caused illness and/or property damage in Apollo and surrounding communities. Former NUMEC engineer, Tom Haley, 72, of Allegheny Township and others former employees came forward with affidavits verifying the hazardous work conditions and lack of monitoring. Ameno, Parler and Haley took their cause on the road and testified before a federal health advisory board near Chicago in October. Shortly after their testimony, that board voted unanimously for special cohort status for NUMEC employees. "It's gratifying that the little guys can take on and beat the Goliath of the government and get the truth out," Ameno said. "And in this area -- where incomes are severely limited -- the compensation and medical coverage will take a little bit of burden off some families." The report According to a Nov. 29 report from Michael Leavitt, secretary of Health and Human Services, special exposure cohort status should be awarded to all NUMEC employees in Apollo due to: • Reasonable likelihood that radiation doses may have endangered the heath of NUMEC employees. • Lack of internal monitoring data prior to 1960 and lack of suitable data from 1976 to1983. • Inadequate information of NUMEC's thorium and plutonium operations and the radium-beryllium and polonium-beryllium neutron source fabrication operations. • Lack of documentation of potential elevated ambient radiation levels from stack releases at the Apollo plant. • Questionable health-monitoring data from a NUMEC contractor, Controls for Environmental Pollution. Tribune-Review Publishing Co. ***************************************************************** 32 IPS-English ENVIRONMENT-SOUTH AFRICA: Radioactive Water, the Price of Gold Date: Mon, 03 Dec 2007 15:06:10 -0800 Steven Lang JOHANNESBURG, Dec 3 (IPS) - Large gold-mining companies operating to the west of South Africa's commercial centre, Johannesburg, stand accused of contaminating a number of water sources with radioactive pollutants. One case involves the Wonderfontein Spruit (water course, in Afrikaans): a stream that runs 90 kilometres from the outskirts of Johannesburg to the south-west past the towns of Krugersdorp, Bekkersdal, Carletonville and Khutsong, before flowing into the Mooi River near Potchefstroom. Mariette Liefferink, an environmental activist, blames the mines for the high concentrations of heavy metals such as arsenic, cadmium, copper cobalt and zinc in the waters of the spruit. She is particularly troubled by the levels of uranium, which gives off radioactive by-products such as polonium and lead. The Wonderfontein Spruit is of major concern to us because every year the gold mines discharge 50 tonnes of uranium into the receiving water course. The Water Research Commission (a parastatal research body) has found that there are approximately 1,100 milligrammes per kilogramme of uranium in the upper Wonderfontein Spruit, and 900 milligrammes per kilogramme in the lower Wonderfontein Spruit area. Heavy metal concentrations are higher in the upper reaches of the river because a large percentage of the pollutants sink into the sediments as water flows downstream. This means that under normal circumstances water tests in lower areas do not cause great concern, and users may feel that they are not under threat from heavy metal contaminants. If, however, the sediments are in any way disturbed -- by cattle, or children playing in the river, for example -- the uranium can easily be dislodged from the sediments and reabsorbed into the water. Mixed messages Government bodies have commissioned several studies to ascertain the gravity of the water pollution in the Wonderfontein Spruit. The most recent study, known as the Brenk report, was commissioned by the National Nuclear Regulator (NNR) -- a governmental body set up to monitor and regulate the production and use of nuclear materials -- and compiled under the direction of German physicist Rainer Barthel. Initially government was so embarrassed by the Brenk report that the NNR refused to release it to the public, and as Barthel was due to present his findings to the Environmin 2007 conference on Jul. 24-25, organisers of this event were told to withdraw his invitation. When the Brenk Report was eventually made public in August, it resulted in a number of contradictory messages. Harmony Gold -- the world's fifth largest gold producer, and one of the mines responsible for the uranium discharge -- relayed to farmers on its lands a directive from the NNR saying that livestock may not consume water from the Wonderfontein Spruit. The report said that water in the river had absorbed polonium and lead. Barthel also noted in the study that there was no natural water in the whole area that was safe for use by humans, animals or plants. However, Water Affairs and Forestry Minister Lindiwe Hendricks said in a written response to a question posed in parliament that none of the 47 samples from the Wonderfontein Spruit exceeded the NNR regulatory limit for public exposure. The use of this water is therefore safe for drinking purposes, but it should be borne in mind that the water is raw or untreated river water that has not been treated to potable drinking water standards. This assurance came despite her acknowledgement, in the same response, that Elevated levels of radioactive contamination have been detected in the sediments of dams and weirs along the river. This may pose potential problems should it be ingested by live-stock churning up the sediments. The chief executive of the NNR, Maurice Magugumela, has made an effort to quell public fears over this situation, saying that the poisoned water and sediments posed no cause for concern. In addition, the city council of Potchefstroom has gone to great lengths to assure its residents that the city's drinking water is safe. Potchefstroom sources much of its water from the Boskop dam which is partly fed by the Wonderfontein Spruit. Treated water from the Boskop and Potchefstroom dams are of high quality especially regarding its heavy metal and uranium content, said mayoral spokesman Kaizer Mohau, in a statement. There is no reason to doubt Mohau's statement, which must certainly comfort city residents who drink tap water. But it will do little for the estimated 150,000 people living in impoverished settlements along the Wonderfontein Spruit's banks. They may have no choice but to drink untreated water from the river. Acid mine drainage Gold mines are also finding themselves in the dock over acid mine drainage, another means by which heavy metals are being released into the environment. Mining operations expose heavy metals and sulphur compounds that have been locked away in the ground. Rising ground water then leaches these compounds out of the exposed earth, resulting in acid mine drainage that can continue to pollute the environment decades after mines have been closed down. In 2002, acidic water began decanting out of a disused mine on Randfontein Estates about 42 kilometres south-west of Johannesburg. The property belonged at that time to Harmony Gold. In terms of South Africa's National Water Act the owner of land is accountable for the quality of the water flowing out of that ground. While some of this acidic water was produced by Harmony's own operations, a large proportion was generated by its competitors. Mining companies extracting ore in the Witwatersrand area, to the east and west of Johannesburg, have created a 300 kilometre labyrinth of interlinking passages, according to the 'Water Wheel' magazine (Jan./Feb. 2007 issue). The companies have to work together to make sure their respective operations are not flooded out; this means that in some cases even disused mines have to be pumped dry to ensure the viability of a neighbouring shaft. Water coming out of the disused mine in Randfontein could not simply be channelled into the nearest river because it was far too acidic and could have had serious consequences for the environment. As an emergency measure, Harmony fed the water into Robinson Lake, at that time a popular recreational area where fishing was a favourite pastime. Today the lake has very high levels of uranium and a pH level of 2.2, which makes it as acidic as lemon juice and completely incapable of sustaining any life forms. The NNR measured in the water a uranium concentration of 16 milligrammes per litre, obliging it to declare Robinson Lake a radiation area. Harmony Gold has spent more than 14 million dollars on capital and operational expenses over the last five years to treat the acidic water emerging from disused mines. An additional 200,000 dollars is spent every month to continue with the treatment processes: in its Sustainable Development Report 2007' the company claims that it . . . treats the water to acceptable standards given the current treatment technologies available. What Harmony finds acceptable, however, may be less so to environmentalists. ***** + More from the Southern Africa Water Wire (http://www.ipsnews.net/new_focus/saf_water/index.asp) (END/IPS/AF/SA/AB/DC/IF/EN/SU/WW/TW/MD/SSL/JH/07) = 12032019 ORP007 NNNN ***************************************************************** 33 AU ABC: Jabiluka mining still on the cards, company says - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) Posted December 8, 2007 08:25:00 The company which owns the disused Jabiluka uranium mine in Kakadu says it is keeping its options open on mining the area at some time in the future. The chief executive of Energy Resources Australia (ERA), Chris Salisbury, says concern about climate change is fuelling already huge demand for Australian uranium. He says Jabiluka could produce lots of money, but ERA has no plans to mine it without the consent of the traditional owners. "The status of Jabiluka hasn't changed. Jabiluka is one of the best undeveloped resources in the world," he said. "And we have made no secret - we would like to develop Jabiluka at some stage." © 2007 ABC Privacy Policy ***************************************************************** 34 San Luis Obispo County's website: Nuclear waste could travel through SLO 12/09/2007 | One plan would send Diablos loads by truck over local roads to a rail pickup in or near the city By David Sneed The latest plans for transporting highly radioactive waste from Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant to a proposed underground disposal site in Nevada allow for the possibility that the waste could be shipped by truck over local roads to San Luis Obispo to be loaded onto trains. However, officials with the federal Department of Energy say the exact method of transport will be made on a case-by-case basis for each nuclear power plant. This leaves open the possibility that Diablos waste could be taken by barge from the plant to Port Hueneme, where it could be loaded directly onto trains, thereby bypassing local roads. If a utility has the crane capacity and other infrastructure to load a rail cask but does not have access to a railhead, then a barge or heavy-haul truck will be used to move the cask to a railhead, said Allen Benson, a spokesman for the Yucca Mountain Project. Crane capacity at Diablo Canyon should not be an issue. Plant operators recently used heavy-duty cranes to unload replacement steam generators, each weighing 360 tons, from barges. Barge and rail options are being considered, Benson said, because some areas of the country like the idea of shipping the waste by barge while other localities oppose it. The agency has promised to work closely with local agencies in preparing detailed transportation plans as the shipment dates get closer. Moving the waste would take place at least 17 years from now, so many of the details of how the waste would be transported remain unanswered, Benson said. Federal officials hope to open Yucca Mountain in 2017. It could begin taking spent fuel from Diablo Canyon seven years after it opens. Plants around the country are prioritized for their shipping based on how old they are. Diablo Canyon is among the newer plants. Waste on local roads? Charts included in the Yucca Mountain transportation plan state that spent nuclear fuel from Diablo Canyon would be trucked over 14 miles of rural roads, four miles of suburban roads and 1.5 miles of city roads to a rail loading spot in or near San Luis Obispo. The Diablo Canyon waste would be moved in 41 shipments with a total of 122 casks, according to the Energy Department documents. Armed guards would accompany each shipment, but further security details remain classified. Once the Department of Energy picks up the waste canisters, they become the agencys property. Therefore, Diablo Canyon owners Pacific Gas and Electric Co. do not have a position on how the waste should be transported, PG&E spokeswoman Sharon Gavin said. Details not disclosed Unanswered questions about truck transport include the exact route the trucks would take, whether the train station in San Luis Obispo would be used for loading and whether area roads and bridges could handle the shipments. A fully loaded cask weighs as much as 180 tons. Plans call for specially designed, multi-axle heavy haulers to be used that would distribute the loads over a large area, making it possible to meet highway loading limitations, Benson said. Roads and bridges will be studied, he said, so the exact configuration of the shipping equipment will be matched to their load-carry capacity. Mobile cranes and other equipment can be brought in to transfer the casks from the trucks to the railcars if the local rail station lacks the needed equipment. It is also unclear how long it would take to ship Diablo Canyons waste to Yucca Mountain. According to the Department of Energy, it could take up to 50 years to transport all of the nations 77,000 metric tons of waste to the underground facility. Local reaction County emergency services planners say they are aware that trucking of the waste on local roads is a possibility, but are waiting for more details before they begin planning how to manage it. We are keeping an eye on it, said Ron Alsop, the countys emergency services manager. But its so far out and its changed so often already that, until a deal is inked, we are not going to commit a whole lot of resources to it. The Department of Energy would have to get special permits from Caltrans to haul the waste because the shipments would exceed the states limit of 80,000 pounds for normal truck traffic, Alsop said. The Energy Department has also promised money for local governments to cover emergency services training and other costs. David Wiseman, with the San Luis Obispo-based watchdog group Alliance for Nuclear Responsibility, said local residents and officials have not had adequate opportunity to comment on the transportation plan. A series of public meetings about the transportation plan was held in Nevada and Lone Pine, in eastern California, but none locally. Local elected officials have not been kept in the loop by Department of Energy officials, he said. Yuccas uncertain future While federal energy officials are proceeding with the Yucca Mountain facility, the fate of the underground repository is still uncertain. Nevada elected officials, including U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, remain adamantly opposed to it. All of the leading Democratic presidential candidates say they will scrap Yucca Mountain if elected. Rep. Lois Capps, D-Santa Barbara, is also opposed. Congresswoman Capps remains opposed to the Yucca Mountain proposal at this time, largely due to concerns about the safety risks posed by transporting the nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain, whether by barge or by ground transportation, said Emily Kryder, Capps press secretary. Federal officials say the large nuclear waste canisters are robust and can be transported safely by both truck and rail. Over the past 40 years, 3,000 loads of highly radioactive waste have been safely shipped around the country. Reach David Sneed at 781-7930. Would you oppose nuclear waste being trucked through San Luis Obispo on its way to Yucca Mountain? ***************************************************************** 35 Charlotte Observer: Toxic waste kept quiet for 26 years 12/10/2007 | CHEMICAL LINKED TO CANCER State says Myrtle Beach plant contamination not immediate threat DAVID WREN (Myrtle Beach) Sun News MYRTLE BEACH -- Toxic contamination at the AVX Corp. facility in Myrtle Beach was kept secret for 26 years, and that has some environmental experts and residents questioning why state regulators never did anything to inform the public about a potential health risk. Even when tests last year indicated the contamination had spread to property adjacent to AVX located on 17th Avenue South in Myrtle Beach, the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control did not notify residents, city leaders or adjacent landowners. DHEC officials say they usually don't notify anyone unless there is an immediate health danger. The case is drawing attention from environmentalists nationwide, including Robert Kennedy Jr., whose Kennedy & Madonna law firm has offered to help residents fight AVX in court. "It's hard to believe everyone just sat on all this information for so long," said Kevin Madonna, who, with Kennedy, works with community groups nationwide on environmental issues. Nancy Cave, director of the Coastal Conservation League's North Coast office in Georgetown, S.C., said DHEC's decision is irresponsible. An AVX spokesman has told residents the contamination is no threat to their health. TCE is a liquid degreaser used by AVX and other manufacturers in the 1970s and '80s. The chemical, which has been linked with cancer and other health problems, can stay in groundwater for decades. Its poisonous vapors also can seep through soil and into groundwater. Cave said a legal opinion issued last month by state Attorney General Henry McMaster shows DHEC has a history of collusion with industry. McMaster, in that opinion, said DHEC broke state law when it sealed public records about pollution at a nuclear waste dump in Barnwell County. "More and more is being revealed about DHEC and its lack of responsibility to the health of our citizens and the environment," Cave said. "Their mission is to protect the people of this state, and they are not doing that." DHEC spokesman Thom Berry said the number of contaminated sites statewide makes it impractical to notify people in every case. AVX is one of 4,459 groundwater contamination sites overseen by DHEC, including 341 in Horry and Georgetown counties, according to an agency report. Most involve leaking underground fuel tanks. Berry said the AVX contamination does not qualify as an imminent threat because the TCE is not in drinking water. "It's not because we have anything to hide, but we want to go in and find out what may be going on first and try to determine whether there is a real imminent danger," he said. TCE rarely is an immediate risk because it can take years before exposure to the chemical results in health problems. TCE levels near the AVX site are hundreds of times higher than the EPA's safe threshold, tests show. Readings 10 blocks from AVX are eight times higher. ***************************************************************** 36 Platts: US court rejects challenge to $1.5 bil uranium-enrichment plant 2007-12-11 Washington (Platts)--11Dec2007 In a victory for the US nuclear power industry, a federal appeals court on Tuesday threw out a lawsuit that sought to halt construction of a $1.5 billion uranium-enrichment plant that a consortium of energy companies is building in southeastern New Mexico. The ruling, by a three-judge panel of the US Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, will allow work to continue on the so-called National Enrichment Facility near Eunice, New Mexico. The facility, which will produce fuel for US nuclear power plants, is being built by Louisiana Energy Services, a consortium of US and European power companies. LES expects the plant to be fully operational by 2013, and that it will provide about 25% of the enriched uranium that US nuclear power plants will require. Currently, less than 10% of the enriched uranium that US plants use is produced domestically. Two environmental groups, Public Citizen and the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, sued the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission for granting LES a license to operate the plant. The groups said NRC's issuance of the license violated the National Environmental Policy Act and the Atomic Energy Act. The groups argued that NRC did not adequately address the environmental impacts of the radioactive waste that the facility will produce, among other things. But the court rejected that argument Tuesday, saying in a 16-page ruling that "NRC thoroughly examined the environmental consequences of waste disposal." The court also rejected the groups' argument that LES had failed to provide a reasonable cost estimate for disposing of the facility's waste. It said that under the law, LES "need not present a concrete plan," but only a "plausible strategy" for disposing of the waste. LES began construction on the plant in August. US firms that are part of the consortium are Entergy, Exelon and Duke Power. LES' European partner is Urenco, a consortium of British Nuclear Fuels, the Dutch government and several German utilities. --Brian Hansen, brian_hansen@platts.com For more news, request a free trial to Platts Inside Energy at http://www.platts.com/Request%20More%20Information/index.xml?src=story or subscribe now at http://www.platts.com/infostore/product_info.php?cPath=23_33&products_id=61 Copyright 2007 - Platts, All Rights Reserved ***************************************************************** 37 The Tribune: Fort Collins council opposes uranium mining By Rebecca Boyle, (Bio) rboyle@fortcollinsnow.com December 5, 2007 Fort Collins City Council adopted a resolution Tuesday that declares councils opposition to a proposed uranium mine northeast of the city and close to Nunn. Councilman Wade Troxell abstained from voting, which according to city law counts as an affirmative vote, so the vote was 7-0. City staff members prepared a background statement to accompany the resolution, but there was no formal presentation to council. According to city documents, three council members asked that the resolution be drafted. The resolution addresses plans by Powertech Uranium Corp. to mine for the radioactive material beneath a 15-mile chunk of Northern Colorado. The company estimates about 9.7 million pounds of uranium lie in that land. The resolution notes that Powertech has not ruled out the possibility of open-pit mining to extract the uranium, and also discusses the risks and unknown factors involved with the other extraction method, called in-situ or on-site leaching. The City Council believes the Colorado North Front Range and, in particular, the site presently under consideration by Powertech is not a suitable location for uranium mining, the resolution reads. It continues that such an operation will almost certainly hae a detrimental effect on the image and economic well-being of the city. The resolution is not binding and urges various agencies to deny all Powertechs permit applications for extracting the uranium. All contents Copyright 2007 greeleytrib.com The Greeley Publishing Co. - P.O. Box 1690 - Greeley, CO 80632 ***************************************************************** 38 Army Corps to remove radioactive soil from nuclear site Wednesday, December 12, 2007 By Don Hopey, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Five years after its initial assessment of a former nuclear waste dump in Armstrong County, the Army Corps of Engineers has decided to pursue a $53 million plan to excavate and remove soil from the 40-acre site along the Kiskiminetas River. Based on the decision announced by the corps yesterday, a contractor will dig out an estimated 40,000 cubic yards of radioactive waste material and soil from the property known as the "Shallow Land Disposal Area." It is a former disposal site for the Nuclear Materials and Equipment Co., or NUMEC, in Parks, 32 miles northeast of Pittsburgh. The soil will be taken to a radioactive dump site in Clive, Utah. Removal of the contaminated waste and soil was one of five alternatives considered, and according to the corps, "the most protective in the long term" of human health and the environment. NUMEC, which began making nuclear fuel at its facility in nearby Apollo in 1957 and processed up to 450 metric tons a year, legally dumped an estimated 23,500 cubic yards of waste slag, sludge and solvents contaminated with radioactive uranium and thorium at the site from 1961 to 1970. The thorium and uranium, some still considered "highly enriched," are buried in 10 trenches on 1.5 acres of the 40-acre site. Radioactive americium and plutonium also have been found in soil samples from the site. The corps' 2002 assessment of the site found "no substantial radiological exposure threat to human health." But it also warned that subsidence in the heavily undermined area could cause the radioactive waste to enter the groundwater and endanger human health and the environment. Citizens Action for a Safe Environment, a local group founded 18 years ago to push for cleanup of the Shallow Land property, had also expressed concern that subsidence could cause widespread contamination. Karen Auer, a corps spokeswoman, said radioactivity has been measured in the groundwater on the property, but it has not migrated off site and has not been found in a small surface stream on the site. The state Department of Environmental Protection has tested the Kiskiminetas River but found no radioactive contamination. The corps' contractor for the project, Cabrera Services Inc. of Connecticut, will propose draft plans for the work early next month. No excavation work will take place until after a natural gas pipeline is relocated off the vacant, fenced site, and a public meeting on the work plan is held sometime during the first three months of 2008. Don Hopey can be reached at dhopey@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1983. First published on December 12, 2007 at 12:00 am Copyright 1997 - PG Publishing Co., Inc. All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 39 RIA Novosti: Russia completes removal of spent nuclear fuel from Czech Republic 15:55 | 10/ 12/ 2007 MOSCOW, December 10 (RIA Novosti) - Rosatom has completed the removal of spent fuel from the Nuclear Research Institute in the Czech town of Rez, the press service of the Russian nuclear power corporation said on Monday. The 549 Russian-made nuclear fuel rods have been sent back to Russia for temporary storage and reprocessing, and the waste will be returned to the Czech Republic. The transfer was in line with a 2004 Russian-U.S. intergovernmental agreement on cooperation in removing Russian-made nuclear fuel from research reactors to Russia. The fuel was transported in containers manufactured by Skoda. The press service said Russia will use the funds raised from this project to tackle areas contaminated by radiation. RIA Novosti ***************************************************************** 40 ACT: Bush Nuclear Fuel-Cycle Program Suffers Blows Arms Control Association: Arms Control Today: Arms Control Today December 2007 Miles A. Pomper After a sharply critical report from a high-level independent panel and amid continued criticism from Congress, the Bush administration appears to be scaling back its ambitions for the domestic leg of its controversial Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP). Meanwhile, other international nuclear fuel supply efforts seem to be attracting more attention. Administration officials have claimed that the initiative, which seeks to develop new nuclear technologies and new international nuclear fuel arrangements, will reduce nuclear waste and decrease the risk that an anticipated growth in the use of nuclear energy worldwide could spur nuclear proliferation. Critics on Capitol Hill and elsewhere assert that the administration’s course would exacerbate the proliferation risks posed by the spread of reprocessing technology, be prohibitively expensive, and fail to significantly ease waste disposal challenges without any certainty that the claimed technologies will ever be developed. An Oct. 29 report from a National Research Council (NRC) panel, commissioned by the Department of Energy, sided strongly with the critics, concluding that the department should “not move forward” with GNEP, particularly efforts to develop new commercial-scale facilities for reprocessing and for burning a new type of nuclear fuel. Citing a lack of urgency and appropriate technical knowledge, the NRC panel said the department should return to an earlier course in which it conducted a “less aggressive research program.” The panel’s judgment echoes criticism from most lawmakers on relevant committees on Capitol Hill. The House and Senate Appropriations Committees have approved legislation that would substantially cut funds for the Advanced Fuel Cycle Initiative, which underpins GNEP, and limit spending to research. (See ACT, October 2007.) Indeed, Dennis Spurgeon, assistant secretary of energy for nuclear energy, told the Senate Energy and National Resources Committee Nov. 14 that rather than annually confront such budget battles, he would personally favor funding GNEP in the future with a portion of a fee on electricity generation that Congress has imposed on nuclear power plant operators to pay for disposing of spent fuel. He said that the U.S. government has accumulated close to $20 billion from this fee, which has yet to be spent because of continued political wrangling over a planned permanent repository for nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. The GNEP program calls for research on new reprocessing technologies that administration officials say will not yield pure separated plutonium but a mixture, including plutonium, that is less applicable to making bombs. GNEP further calls for construction of new advanced burner reactors to make use of the reprocessed fuel. The administration also claims that doing so will reduce the volume of spent nuclear fuel currently stored at nuclear reactors so that the United States will not have to build another permanent repository. The proposal has drawn criticism, in part because facilities that reprocess spent fuel for plutonium-based fuels might also be used to harvest plutonium for nuclear bombs. By establishing such facilities, critics say, the United States might be encouraging other countries to do so as well, perhaps leading to nuclear weapons proliferation. Because of such concerns, the United States had shied away from spent fuel reprocessing for nearly three decades until GNEP was launched in 2006. Department officials had indicated that, by the summer of 2008, Secretary of Energy Samuel Bodman would decide whether to build new commercial-scale fuel facilities and “fast” reactors that could produce and burn such new fuels. By that time, four industry groups are slated to provide studies examining financial, technical, and other issues. The NRC panel said making such a decision next year would be unnecessarily hasty. “Domestic waste management, security, and fuel supply needs are not adequate to justify early deployment of commercial-scale reprocessing and fast-reactor facilities,” the panel wrote. In particular, the panel said it was not clear if a second waste repository would be needed. It also argued that the knowledge of appropriate technologies was not sufficient to move to commercial-scale facilities. It said the cost of the program would be far more expensive than proceeding with the current once-through nuclear fuel cycle, a conclusion backed by the Congressional Budget Office in testimony before the Senate panel. The NRC panel also said that “qualifying” the new fuel—ensuring it could be used appropriately in the reactor—would take many years. Instead the panel advocated returning to a lower-level research program to provide more basic information before choosing any particular path forward. In his testimony before the Senate committee, Spurgeon acknowledged that the department would not be ready to move forward with commercial deployment of any new reprocessing technologies in the near future. After the hearing, he told reporters that he did not expect Bodman next summer to call for any immediate construction of commercial-scale facilities using existing technologies employed by France and Japan that separate pure plutonium, an approach championed by Sen. Pete Domenici (R-N.M.), the panel’s ranking member. Rather, Spurgeon said the department would be charting a “technology path” forward for research, though his remarks did not close out the possibility of using COEX, a process nearly ready for commercial deployment that extracts and precipitates uranium and plutonium (and possibly neptunium) together so that plutonium is never separated on its own. Still, Spurgeon pointed to some progress in the program’s international dimension when Italy on Nov. 13 became the 17th country to join GNEP. Sixteen countries had signed GNEP’s statement of principles in September, although the list did not include such important nuclear energy consumers and producers as Germany and the United Kingdom. Also, it is not clear how much weight Rome’s participation carries. Italy at one time had five power reactors and two under construction; but it shut down all of its nuclear power plants after a 1987 referendum in the wake of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. GNEP received a bigger boost on Nov. 29 when Canada, the world’s largest uranium producer, joined the partnership. Ottawa had held back from joining the partnership earlier amid political controversy over whether GNEP would require Canada to accept spent fuel from other country or limit its ability to enrich its own fuel. Multilateral Fuel-Cycle Alternatives Nevertheless, countries are putting more emphasis on efforts other than GNEP to control the nuclear fuel cycle, primarily aiming at its “front end.” Such efforts seek to limit the spread of technologies such as uranium enrichment, which can produce low-enriched uranium for fresh nuclear fuel, or highly enriched uranium, which can also be used as fissile material for nuclear weapons. Concerns over uranium enrichment have been at the center of the controversy over Iran’s nuclear program (see page xx). By contrast, GNEP primarily focuses on “back end” technologies that address how to deal with spent fuel from nuclear reactors. In September, the U.S. administration had indicated that although the program was conceived in the wake of President George W. Bush’s February 2004 call to halt the spread of enrichment or reprocessing facilities to new countries, it would not require such forbearance as a condition of GNEP membership. “We’re not asking countries to sign a statement that they will never enrich or never reprocess,” Spurgeon elaborated in an October interview with Arms Control Today. The administration has taken other steps to encourage participation in the partnership. For example, it has said that a multinational steering committee, not the United States, will dictate GNEP’s direction and that the partnership will operate by consensus. Nonetheless, multinational enrichment efforts seem to be moving more rapidly in the international arena than GNEP’s focus on reprocessing. Nikolay Spasskiy, the deputy head of Russia’s atomic energy agency, told reporters after the September GNEP meeting that the U.S. initiative was one of only several such efforts and its importance should not be overemphasized. Russia and Kazakhstan on Sept. 5 announced that they had inaugurated the use of an enrichment facility in Angarsk, Siberia, as an international center with joint ownership. The center is eventually envisaged as a multinational operation that will produce low-enriched uranium fuel under International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) monitoring. Armenia took a step toward that goal Nov. 29, announcing that it would participate in the center. Moerover, Spasskiy told Platts Nuclear Fuel in September that he expected Ukraine to join the venture before the end of the year and that Mongolia and South Korea are closely studying participation. Spasskiy’s boss, Sergey Kiriyenko, told Russian reporters in October that Australia and Japan also have indicated interest in participation, although Kiriyenko said that Japan has insisted that the facility first be placed under IAEA safeguards. Kiriyenko said an agreement with the agency could be in place by the middle of 2008. South Africa is another potential candidate for an enrichment center. In September, South Africa declined to participate in GNEP, dealing a serious blow to U.S. ambitions for the program. Spurgeon claims that South Africa may still participate, saying its representatives “had a lot of questions” and a “misunderstanding” about GNEP’s requirements, particularly whether South Africa would have to forgo enrichment or reprocessing. But Tseliso Maqubela, chief director for nuclear energy at the South African Department of Minerals and Energy, told Platts NuclearFuel in September that South Africa wished to set up a centrifuge enrichment facility on its territory in which it could utilize the shared technology of foreign partners and that if South Africa was unable to do so, it would develop the technology domestically. Major international enrichment companies have generally balked at providing foreign countries with access to the proliferation-sensitive technology. In a Sept. 24 Platts NuclearFuel interview, French Atomic Energy Commission Chairman Alain Bugat said that France would open a new centrifuge enrichment plant under construction to “international partnerships” and would provide details within a few months. The French enrichment company Eurodif has involved Belgium, Italy, and Spain (and formerly Iran) as international partners in its gaseous diffusion plant at Tricastin. The Arms Control Association is a non-profit, membership-based organization. If you find our resources useful, please consider joining or making a contribution. Arms Control Today encourages reprint of its articles with permission of the Editor. 1997-2007 Arms Control Association, 1313 L Street, NW, Suite 130 Washington, DC 20005 Tel: (202) 463-8270 | Fax: (202) 463-8273 ***************************************************************** 41 Salt Lake Tribune: Board split on foreign N-waste Article Last Updated: 12/08/2007 12:16:07 AM MST A state advisory board asked its attorney Friday to explore options for blocking the disposal of low-level radioactive waste generated in foreign nations - or at least for voicing its objection to the practice. But it is not clear the Radiation Control Board would support any action that might be suggested because the subject of importing foreign waste to Utah appeared to fracture the panel. The divide became apparent as board members discussed a presentation by EnergySolutions, a Salt Lake City-based nuclear services company. It operates, among other facilities, a radioactive waste processing plant in Tennessee and a low-level radioactive and hazardous waste site about 80 miles from Salt Lake City in Tooele County. A national policy debate has erupted over its application before federal regulators to import and process 20,000 tons of waste from the Italian nuclear reactor program that will result in about 1,600 tons of ash waste that would go to the Tooele County landfill. Public opposition has prevented the construction of a disposal site in Italy, and the EnergySolutions site will be the only commercial disposal site in the United States beginning next summer. Frank D. DeRosso, a board member representing regulated industry, indicated that the Utah company's practices are safe and properly licensed. He added: "I really do think this 'dumping-ground' issue is overstated." Rick Sprott, the director of the Utah Department of Environmental Quality, said Gov. Jon Huntsman did not "welcome" the waste, as The Salt Lake Tribune reported last week. Yet, Huntsman would not oppose the foreign waste as long as it falls within a cap Huntsman imposed on all material - domestic and foreign - buried at the EnergySolutions site, Sprott said. He added that the board's attorney ought to look at any interstate commerce issues that might be involved. "We need to make sure where we do have authority and where we don't," he said. But other board members suggested that the state had an obligation to register the objections of many ordinary Utahns who worry about serving not only as the nation's biggest radioactive waste disposal site, but possibly the world's. "I personally would like to see the board make a policy statement suggesting that this is not good for the public image of Utah," said Stephen Nelson. "The folks in Europe ought to solve their own problems." Tye Rogers, EnergySolutions' vice president for compliance and permitting, asked the board to offer a public comment process on action it might take. "This is really a policy issue, and that's up to national policymakers," he said. Rogers also pointed out that the company's business is now worldwide. fahys@sltrib.com Foreign waste * EnergySolutions wants to import decommissioning and cleanup waste from eight nuclear sites in Italy. * Some 20,000 tons would be processed at the company's Tennessee plant. * Less than 1,600 tons - analyzed to ensure its radiation content is within the limits allowed by Utah - would come to the company's Tooele County disposal site. * Some critics fear Utah could become the ultimate destination for more of the world's low-level waste because of a lack of disposal in the United States and in foreign nuclear nations. ***************************************************************** 42 LA Daily News: Santa Susana Field Lab nears Superfund status By Kerry Cavanaugh, Staff Writer Article Last Updated: 12/07/2007 09:34:17 PM PST The Santa Susana Field Lab should be listed as a high-priority cleanup, with closer scrutiny by federal authorities of the site's extensive chemical and radioactive contamination, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's regional office announced Friday. After a seven-month review of the 2,850-acre hilltop site, the EPA's regional team found that contamination at the site poses enough of a threat to human health and the environment to be added to the National Priorities List, also called the Superfund program. Lab watchdogs and neighbors have pushed for Superfund status - which is reserved for the nation's worst contaminated sites - that would give the EPA authority to conduct a new investigation and oversee cleanup at the lab. "For 20 years, people have been asking for this," said Dan Hirsch of the Committee to Bridge the Gap. "A dry cleaner in my community is a Superfund site. How could this nuclear facility not be a Superfund site?" Located in the hills between Simi Valley and Chatsworth, the Santa Susana Field Lab opened in the 1940s for government nuclear energy research and rocket-engine testing. Those operations are now over, but the work left toxic and radioactive contamination in the soil and groundwater at the site. The cleanup has been contentious, with lawsuits and battles over how much pollution - particularly radiologically contaminated soil - lab owner Boeing and the Department of Energy can leave on the property. Under federal law, the Energy Department can supervise its own site cleanup, unless the site has Superfund status, in which case the EPA will oversee the cleanup. The agency had reviewed just the chemical pollution at the lab in 1987 and determined that the site didn't score high enough on the hazard-ranking system. However, community activists continued to push the EPA for Superfund status, which they believed would ensure a more thorough decontamination than the Energy Department's self-supervised cleanup. "The DOE and (Boeing) want to spend a minimum amount of money, so they use the lowest level of cleanup that they think they can get away with," said Sheldon Plotkin, who has monitored the cleanup for the Southern California Federation of Scientists. The EPA Region 9 sent a letter to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Friday asking for his opinion and agreement to federal oversight of the lab cleanup. His office said it is now reviewing the recommendation. If the governor agrees, the EPA regional office will recommend that the Washington, D.C., office grant Superfund status. Still, the governor could disagree and instead request that the field lab's chemical cleanup remain under state control. The U.S. Department of Energy has authority over the radiological cleanup. "I think the site is definitely polluted enough to merit Superfund status," said state Sen. Sheila Kuehl, D-Los Angeles, who said she hopes the governor will agree with the EPA recommendation. "I like the idea of EPA oversight. It helps protect the state of California." But Superfund status could possibly affect negotiations currently under way between the governor and Boeing over the site. Earlier this year, the governor signed legislation requiring the strictest cleanup at the field lab - culminating an 18-year controversy since the Daily News disclosed toxic contamination of the research site. At the same time, he proposed an agreement in which Boeing could possibly clean up to a lesser standard in exchange for dedicating the land for open space. The company and state officials are now negotiating over appropriate standards. Boeing spokeswoman Blythe Jameson said Superfund status shouldn't affect the cleanup. "The bill and letter of intent already requires that we clean up to California Superfund status, which is a similar process." ***************************************************************** 43 ICT: Richardson wants review process for uranium operations abandoned Posted: December 07, 2007 by: The Associated Press SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) - New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson is calling on the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to abandon a process for reviewing proposed uranium mining recovery operations across the West. Faced with an increase in the number of applications from companies interested in building new uranium facilities or expanding old ones, the agency is preparing a ''generic environmental impact statement'' to look at the effects of the in-situ mining technique. In a letter sent to NRC Chairman Dale Klein Nov. 30, Richardson said the statement would fall short of addressing and identifying all possible environmental impacts in the western United States. ''The West is a diverse, unique and vast area where one size does not fit all,'' he said. ''As such, the state of New Mexico does not support the scope and approach of the proposed process.'' A spokesman for the NRC, David McIntyre, said the agency has not received Richardson's letter. McIntyre said the idea behind the generic statement is to make the review process more efficient by analyzing various impacts that might be common in in-situ operations. ''That way, certain impacts would be generic as opposed to specific or unique and those could be handled once instead of being looked at over and over again,'' he said. But Richardson contends a generic approach is contrary to the NRC's duties and obligations under the National Environmental Protection Act and to the principles of government-to-government consultation with sovereign American Indian tribes, some of which are opposed to uranium mining. It also limits the public's ability to comment on an environmental document that considers only broad-based issues for a regional area, he said. ''The use of a generic, general, programmatic approach instead of ensuring an in-depth evaluation at the site-specific level is disrespectful of the general public's right to have a meaningful voice in decisions of such magnitude and importance,'' Richardson said. Richardson's letter to the NRC came as the public comment period on the notice of intent to prepare the environmental impact statement ended. It is the governor's second letter to the agency on the issue. The NRC has received two applications for in-situ operations in Wyoming and is expecting a third before next year, McIntyre said. Applications for operations in New Mexico are expected next year, McIntyre said. Each application will have its own site-specific environmental assessment, which is less in-depth than an environmental impact statement. If an assessment finds the environment will be significantly impacted by the operation, an environmental impact statement will be done, McIntyre said. After Richardson sent the first letter in July, McIntyre said the agency accommodated some of the governor's concerns by holding extra public meetings in New Mexico. The agency made environmental assessments available for public comment, which McIntyre said is not typical. 1998 - 2007 Indian Country Today. All Rights Reserved ***************************************************************** 44 Cleantech.com: French nuclear waste being stored in the U.S.? | * Cleantech Forum San Francisco December 5, 2007 A prominent researcher shared a nuclear secret today that he said not even everyone in the U.S. Department of Energy knows. Is the U.S., in fact, storing a large amount of nuclear waste produced by France's nuclear reactors? That was the suggestion in a keynote today at the ThinkEquity ThinkGreen conference in San Francisco by Dr. Yogi Goswami, former President of the International Solar Energy Society, and prolific author and University of Florida professor. "One small bit of information that most people don’t know, even in our Department of Energy: a large majority of the nuclear waste from France is actually shipped to the U.S.," Goswami said. "It’s stored in South Carolina. That’s because when initially the French started building nuclear reactors, the U.S. was suspicious of the French, and said ‘hey, you don’t need to keep that nuclear waste over there, we’ll store it for you.’" "So there’s a contractual relationship that all of that waste comes to the U.S. and is stored in the Savannah River Laboratory, which is the U.S. Department of Energy lab for nuclear waste," he said. Goswami was speaking on the necessity of reprocessing spent nuclear fuel, given that "at 2 percent growth per year, all known nuclear fuel resources will be exhausted in 2030-2037." A Department of Energy spokesperson denied Goswami's claim, calling it inaccurate and misleading. "There [are] no shipments of nuclear waste from France coming to the Savannah River National Laboratory or the Savannah River Site in South Carolina," wrote public affairs officer James Giusti to Cleantech.com. [ed.: which would come as no surprise, if you believe Goswami.] While some nuclear proponents maintain the world actually has 2,500 years worth of nuclear material, Goswami says the assertion is flawed, true only "if we are willing to distill the whole sea. Because seawater contains uranium at the level of three parts per billion. But I doubt anybody will be making the economic decision to process uranium from seawater." The only solution for keeping nuclear plants in commission is to reprocess spent fuel, Goswami said, in order to extend the nuclear power industry's lifespan. But reprocessing is illegal today in the U.S. "And the U.S. does not allow any other countries that is suspects will make nuclear weapons out of it to reprocess that uranium," noted Goswami. The academic acknowledged he was accustomed to speaking mostly at scientific and research gatherings. "This is the first time I'm speaking with people with a financial background," he told a group of several hundred investors. More: Nuclear energy | Yogi Goswami Submitted by jstack6 on December 6, 2007 - 9:25pm. The US still has no way to store it's own waste. Popular Science did an article earlier this year showing how many of the nuclear plants have come to the limit of their on site temporary storage and have huge problems. http://www.popsci.com/popsci/science/691f6912e3022110vgnvcm1000004eecb ccdrcrd.html One short sighted solution is a new reactor that tries to use some of this waste. The only problem is it makes even higher radiation waste , just not as much. It much more weapons grade material so the risk is much higher. We sure don't need any more short signed solution. Only renewables can clean the air, not use water and as sustainable while getting lower cost the more we use them. I should know I run my entire home on solar and even help the power company with net-metered clean safe energy. © 2006-2007 Cleantech.com - all rights reserved. Cleantech.com is a publication of Cleantech Media LLC. ***************************************************************** 45 PE: Rialto seeks Superfund designation for perchlorate 06:54 AM PST on Wednesday, December 5, 2007 By MARY BENDER The Press-Enterprise RIALTO - The city of Rialto will ask federal environmental officials to recognize the severity of its perchlorate-contaminated groundwater and to help clean it up. At its meeting Tuesday night, the Rialto City Council unanimously approved a resolution requesting the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to add the 160-acre industrial site in northern Rialto where the perchlorate contamination occurred to the EPA's National Priorities List. The list details sites across the country that "pose risks to human health and the environment," the EPA says. Over the years, 1,569 sites have been named to the National Priorities List, most recently in September, when seven hazardous-waste locations were added. "We feel the protection the Environmental Protection Agency can give us is a step in the right direction," City Councilman Ed Scott said. "We believe we can move this thing forward listed as a Superfund site." Superfund is the EPA's program to clean up hazardous waste sites that were abandoned, accidentally polluted or illegally dumped on. Signed into law in 1980 by President Jimmy Carter, the program gives the EPA the authority to either clean up the sites or force the parties responsible for the contamination to perform and-or pay for the cleanup. Before a pollution problem could be declared a Superfund site, it must be named to EPA's National Priorities List. Wayne Praskins, a Superfund project manager at the EPA's office in San Francisco, told the City Council that the earliest the contaminated Rialto-Colton Groundwater Basin could be added to the National Priorities List would be next fall. Scott, who along with Mayor Pro Tem Winnie Hanson serves on Rialto's Perchlorate Subcommittee, told Praskins that people worry a Superfund designation would stigmatize the city. "There's a perception that property values will drop," Scott said. There are several Superfund sites in the Inland Empire, including: Norton Air Force Base in San Bernardino. The former military installation, established in 1942 and closed in the 1990s, spans 2,165 acres. Some of its land was contaminated with solvents, oils and acids, according to the EPA's Web site. March Air Reserve Base in Riverside County, next to Moreno Valley. The 7,123-acre base has groundwater contamination that forced the shutdown of some of its wells. Stringfellow Acid Pits, north of Highway 60 near Glen Avon. A 17-acre site was operated as a disposal facility for liquid hazardous waste from 1956 to 1972. Reach Mary Bender at 909-806-3056 or mbender@PE.com 2007 Press-Enterprise Company • 3450 Fourteenth Street, Riverside, California 92501 ***************************************************************** 46 Reuters: Congo keeps uranium riches under wraps Mon 10 Dec 2007, 12:25 GMT By Joe Bavier GOMA, Congo (Reuters) - Democratic Republic of Congo has flirted with reviving its once-great uranium mining sector, but insists that for now it will keep its radioactive treasure trove underground for future generations to reap the profits. The vast former Belgian colony once supplied the majority of global uranium supply including the raw material for the two atomic bombs dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War Two. But Congo sealed its main Shinkolobwe uranium mine in mineral-rich Katanga province by filling its shafts with concrete following independence in 1960, halting commercial mining and exports. Informal mining by local villagers continued until the mine was officially closed again by President Joseph Kabila in 2005 amid international concerns over security. Reports of smuggling arise from time to time, but few are substantiated. "We have 800 different minerals in this country right now. We only exploit 20 of them. Uranium is a reserved mineral. We want to leave it for future generations," Deputy Mines Minister Victor Kasongo, told Reuters in a telephone interview. Since elections last year intended to draw a line under decades of war and mismanagement, Congo's decrepit mining sector is again attracting major foreign investment from companies including Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold, BHP Billiton, and Katanga Mining. WILL THEY? WON'T THEY? Speculation has mounted that Congo would also relaunch commercial uranium mining, fuelled by a 'will they? won't they?' courtship with London-listed Brinkley Mining Plc over a joint venture with Congo's atomic energy agency to explore, mine, and export uranium under an exclusive contract. Brinkley signed a memorandum with Congo's Ministry of Scientific Research in early 2007 but the deal was rejected by a new post-election government in March. The project was revived and a renegiotated deal signed in July, but days later Sylvanus Mushi Bonane, who spearheaded negotiations, was sacked as minister of scientific research and the Mines Ministry has dismissed the accord as invalid. "The Ministry of Scientific Research has no authority to negotiate commercial mining agreements. Brinkley were foolish for trying to do this," said Kasongo, a former head of Congo's state gold miner, party ally of President Joseph Kabila and widely regarded as the real power in the Mines Ministry. "We won't go for this memorandum of understanding. The government won't pursue it any further," he said. Brinkley Chairman Gerard Holden told Reuters the company has yet to receive official confirmation from the government that the agreement will not progress, and was "seeking clarification" from Congo's atomic energy agency, the CGEA. Brinkley shares have plunged almost 75 percent in 6 months. SHOULD THEY? As Congo casts around for funds to rebuild its ruined infrastructure -- including a $5 billion loan from China to be repaid partly with mineral rights -- some see using untapped uranium reserves as essential. "Given the current price of uranium and the country's needs, I think it is a necessity," said CGEA head Francois Lubala Toto. Any bid to mine uranium would have to clear huge hurdles. Congo's mining code would require a request from the Mines Ministry and approval from the president, and any outside partner would also need approval from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), of which Congo is a member. "An investigation must be carried out by the IAEA ... to ensure that the company has the required technical capacity and experience as well as the financial means," Lubala Toto said. While such clearances could be obtained within a matter of months, Lubala Toto said no such steps had been taken so far. Reuters 2007. All Rights Reserved. | Learn more about Reuters ***************************************************************** 47 LA Times: Still no toxic cleanup plan for Navajos Gail Fisher / Los Angeles Times TOXIC TERRITORY: Less than a mile from a mine contaminated by uranium are sandstone depressions that collect water. People and animals have drunk the water. The Environmental Protection Agency plans to reexamine water sources on Navajo land. The EPA plans to resume long-stalled testing for uranium mine hazards, but a coordinated federal strategy is still lacking, lawmakers told. By Judy Pasternak, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer December 7, 2007 WASHINGTON -- The Environmental Protection Agency plans to resume long-stalled testing for toxics on the Navajo reservation unleashed by abandoned Cold War uranium mines, but it and four other federal agencies have yet to come up with overall cleanup and health plans, their representatives told seven House members in a closed meeting this week. The EPA, the Department of Energy, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Indian Health Service were summoned to meet with five Democrats and two Republicans on Wednesday. The meeting was a follow-up to an October hearing of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform on the long-standing failure to protect the tribe from toxics and radiation. Most of the 1,000 mine entrances at 520 sites have been sealed off, but groundwater is contaminated, waste piles still cascade down hillsides and erosion of dirt cover allows radiation to resurface. The EPA has concluded that some of the exposures on the reservation can lead to lung, bone, liver and breast cancer. Committee Chairman Henry A. Waxman (D-Beverly Hills) called the situation "a modern American tragedy." At the hearing, which was prompted by a Los Angeles Times series published last year, the Navajo government asked for $500 million as an initial allocation to get a thorough remediation underway, as well as more manpower for tribal and federal efforts. Waxman told the agencies to report back again in six months. "We have a duty to make this right," he said later. In coming months, the EPA plans to test 70 homes built with uranium ore or waste from processing mills that have been known about for many years but never examined. Hundreds more structures have been identified within a quarter-mile of the old mines, but have not been checked for toxic construction materials. The EPA also will revisit 41 water sources where dangerous levels of uranium were documented in the last three to 10 years. In addition, the agency has paid $150,000 for a "circuit rider" who will offer testing and advice in settlements where Navajo families drink untreated water. The Navajo reservation, the nation's largest tribal homeland, encompasses parts of Arizona, Utah and New Mexico. The EPA has also listed 18 large abandoned uranium mines for examination for potential Superfund status. Navajo officials characterized the session as a start. "We have the beginnings of what we need, which is the agencies talking to each other, but we're very far from what our stated goals were," said Navajo environmental director Stephen Etsitty, who was at the session. ***************************************************************** 48 Las Vegas SUN: DOE inspector to probe conflict allegations in Yucca law contract Today: December 12, 2007 at 13:5:7 PST WASHINGTON (AP) - The Energy Department's inspector general has agreed to investigate allegations of conflict of interest in a contract the department awarded to a law firm for Yucca Mountain work. Nevada's congressional delegation, which requested the investigation last week, made the announcement Wednesday. Law firm Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP was awarded a nearly $50 million contract to help prepare a license application for the nuclear waste dump. Nevada lawmakers believe the firm has a conflict of interest because it has also represented nuclear utilities and a pro-dump industry group. -- All contents 1996 - 2007 Las Vegas Sun, Inc. ***************************************************************** 49 Pahrump Valley Times: New Yucca complaint filed Dec. 07, 2007 BY STEVE TETREAULT STEPHENS WASHINGTON BUREAU WASHINGTON -- Nevada lawmakers on Wednesday challenged a lucrative contract the Department of Energy has awarded for a law firm to manage licensing for the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste site. The state's five members of Congress called on the department's inspector general to investigate whether the firm, Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP, may have conflicts of interest that could disqualify it from the job. The firm began work Sept. 26 on a four-year contract worth $47.7 million. Officials have confirmed the contract also included five succeeding one-year options that could bring the total value to $109 million, potentially the most lucrative legal job offered on a nuclear project. But Morgan, Lewis also has represented nuclear utilities in lawsuits against DOE, its new employer, the lawmakers said in a letter to Inspector General Gregory Friedman. Also in 2001-2002 the firm was a registered lobbyist representing the Nuclear Energy Institute, a leading pro-repository group, they said. "In our view these conflicts could independently warrant the recusal of Morgan from the September contract," the Nevadans said. DOE spokeswoman Megan Barnett said the Morgan Lewis firm was hired after DOE evaluated potential conflicts. Other DOE officials have said the department was satisfied with safeguards the firm installed to avoid conflict problems. "We look forward to a review by the DOE IG," Barnett said. The call for a contract probe is the latest in a series of Nevada protests as state officials try to kill or at least slow down the bid to bury 70,000 metric tons of highly radioactive waste at the mountain ridge northwest of Las Vegas. The Energy Department has declined to make public a copy of the Morgan Lewis contract. In a Nov. 6 letter, DOE officials also declined to expedite a formal request for the document filed under the federal Freedom of Information Act. Nevada's bid for a new investigation came on the same day the Department of Energy held the final one of eight public hearings on the repository. The session, which was held in Washington, D.C., likely was the final opportunity for the public to comment on the project before DOE files a construction license application expected by next summer. Earlier hearings were held in Nevada and California. A hearing Monday in Las Vegas drew more than 200 people. Wednesday's session drew 48 attendees and 14 speakers, most of them from interest groups. Five speakers, including representatives from the Nuclear Energy Institute and the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners, encouraged the nuclear waste effort. Nine speakers, from groups including Physicians for Social Responsibility and the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability, complained there are still too many uncertainties to justify moving forward. Four representatives attended from Nye County, which has adopted a more accommodating strategy on the repository than most Nevada elected leaders and state government officials. As the county where Yucca Mountian is located, Nye officials say they hope to lure economic development and other benefits if Nevada fails to stop the government and the repository becomes reality. Gary Hollis, chairman of the Nye County Commission, said at the public hearing scientists hired by the county have produced about $30 million in repository studies. "What we have observed is that this is not only a technically feasible project but that it can be done safely," Hollis told the Washington audience. Hollis said Nye County residents face less risk from a Yucca repository than they would from radioactive residues migrating into their water from the Nevada Test Site, where nuclear bombs were detonated underground until the early 1990s. Hollis said the Yucca project should be decided "on its merits." webmaster@pahrumpvalleytimes.com Copyright Pahrump Valley Times, 1997 - ***************************************************************** 50 RIA Novosti: Why terminate the INF Treaty? Opinion & analysis - 10/12/2007 MOSCOW. (Alexei Arbatov for RIA Novosti) - Twenty years ago, on December 8, 1987 Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty in Washington. It was the first-ever treaty on reducing available arsenals. It brought the elimination of an entire type of nuclear missiles and set a practical example of openness by introducing mutual in situ checks for 13 years. Today, the United States intends to deploy an anti-missile defense system in Europe. The Russian political and military leadership is retaliating. They have repeatedly spoken of quitting the INF Treaty. This move demands the utmost circumspection. Russia has to consider all pros and cons, and assess every possible military strategic, economic and political consequence. It is pointless to bang the door on the treaty unless Russia intends to deploy the missile systems it bans. On the other hand, new intermediate-range missiles targeted at anti-missile projects in Europe can be intercepted by the American ABM. Everything depends on their number and technical characteristics. Will Russia be able to afford the missile effort, which requires exorbitant sums for R&D, testing, manufacture, and deployment? Will the program strangle even more urgent national projects, underfunded as they are? I am referring, in particular, to the development of strategic nuclear forces, technical modernization of general purpose forces, raising officers' living standards, housing construction, shifting the army from conscription to contract service, and enhancing combat readiness. The U.S. may hit back by reviving the Pershing 2 and sea-launched cruise missile programs or by developing new upgraded intermediate-range missiles to be deployed in Europe. New NATO countries would be enthusiastic about it, to all appearances. As for Russia, the prospects look much worse for it than for the Soviet Union of the early 1980s, though it regarded INF deployment as a serious threat even then. The balance of nuclear and conventional forces and the geopolitical situation have changed drastically since then. In the 1980s, Pershing 2 missiles could barely reach the Moscow Region. Now, if similar high-speed systems appear in the new NATO countries, they will cover the entire European Russia and, possibly, a major part of Siberia. Such missiles can carry nuclear or smart conventional warheads with the shortest possible impact point time to endanger the entire Russian nuclear deterrence system-unlike ABM projects in Poland and the Czech Republic. Russia would have to completely restructure its nuclear forces and warning and control systems at a huge cost. There is, however, a lower-cost way. Russia can deploy several extra regiments armed with Topol-M ICBMs or develop smart conventional warheads for available ballistic and cruise missiles, which the INF Treaty does not prohibit. Besides, the SORT-Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty, signed in Moscow in 2002, does not limit the deployment of single- and multiple-warhead Topol-Ms, whether nuclear of conventional, to say nothing of the nuclear warhead ceiling varying from 1,700 to 2,200 units. But then, the expediency of targeting long-, intermediate- and short-range conventional missiles on ABM elements is not evident. Such elements would be hit to prevent the interception of Russian ICBMs targeted at the U.S. and its allies in a retaliation, launch-under-attack or first strike. Here, we mean nuclear warfare as the ICBMs in question have nuclear warheads. In this instance, Russian missiles would be launched after a hypothetical massive U.S. or NATO nuclear strike on Russia. Would it be worthwhile to hit European missile defense elements with smart conventional arms in that instance? On the contrary, it would be simpler, cheaper and surer to use long- or intermediate-range nuclear missiles. Last but not least, the INF is one of the few central nuclear disarmament treaties still in force after the destructive policy of the George W. Bush Administration-a policy increasingly criticized in the U.S. and worldwide. To all appearances, it will get under review as the new Administration comes in after the 2008 presidential election. Alexei A. Arbatov, Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, is a major expert on international security. The opinions expressed in this article are the author's and do not necessarily represent those of RIA Novosti. RIA Novosti ***************************************************************** 51 FCNL: 30 National Orgs Ask Sen. Dorgan to De-fund New Nuclear Weapon - Issues: Nuclear Weapons November 29, 2007 The Honorable Byron L. Dorgan Chairman Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development 322 Hart Senate Office Building Washington, DC 20510 Dear Mr. Chairman, We urge you to delete all funding for the Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW) from the upcoming omnibus appropriations bill. We support the bipartisan House decision to zero out funding for the new nuclear warhead and hope you will also take this course of action as you draft the Energy and Water portion of the omnibus bill. We believe it is important to consider the adverse international nonproliferation consequences of proceeding with RRW. Limiting RRW to design and development will still be viewed internationally as the U.S. walking down the path toward new nuclear weapons. If the United States does not appear to be serious about nonproliferation and disarmament, its ability to limit other nations development of nuclear weapons will erode. Former Senator Sam Nunn argued this point before Congress earlier this year, stating that proceeding with RRW would undermine U.S. efforts to prevent the spread and use of nuclear weapons. If Congress approves funding for the Energy Department to proceed with research and possible development of RRW, many in the international community will interpret this as another sign that the U.S. is walking away from its nonproliferation obligations, including Article VI of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The 118 countries of the Non-Aligned Movement have already cited development of RRW as contradictory to nuclear disarmament agreements signed by the United States. RRW will complicate efforts to win international support to bolster the beleaguered NPT system. Furthermore, U.S. funding of RRW will buttress the arguments of nuclear hawks in Russia and China when they argue in favor of nuclear modernization in their respective nations. The U.S. cannot simultaneously work toward upgrading its nuclear arsenal and successfully convince other nations that it is committed to reducing the role and number of nuclear weapons worldwide. We urge you to work with your colleagues in Congress to restore U.S. leadership on nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament rather than committing funding to this program. Thank you for your consideration of this matter. Respectfully yours, Susan Gordon, Director Alliance for Nuclear Accountability Mary Ellen McNish, General Secretary American Friends Service Committee Amy Isaacs, National Director Americans for Democratic Action Terri Lodge, Coordinator Arms Control Advocacy Collaborative Daryl G. Kimball, Executive Director Arms Control Association Ambassador Robert Grey Jr., Director Bipartisan Security Group Steven Monblatt, Co-Executive Director British American Security Information Council Rabbi David Saperstein, Co-Director Commission on Social Action of Reform Judaism T. Michael McNulty, SJ, Justice and Peace Director Conference of Major Superiors of Men John Isaacs, Executive Director Council for a Livable World Maureen Shea, Director, Office of Government Relations Episcopal Church, USA Andrew Genszler, Director for Advocacy Evangelical Lutheran Church in America Dr. Henry Kelly, President Federation of American Scientists Joe Volk, Executive Secretary Friends Committee on National Legislation (Quakers) Paul Walker, Legacy Program Director Global Green USA Sister Carole Shinnick, SSND, Executive Director Leadership Conference of Women Religious Marie Dennis, Director Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns Rachelle Lyndaker Schlabach, Director, Washington Office Mennonite Central Committee U.S. Jessica Wilbanks, Coordinator National Religious Partnership on the Nuclear Weapons Danger Christopher E. Paine, Director, Nuclear Program Natural Resources Defense Council Sister Marge Clark, BVM, Lobbyist NETWORK a National Catholic Social Justice Lobby David Krieger, President Nuclear Age Peace Foundation Dave Robinson, Executive Director Pax Christi USA Kevin Martin, Executive Director Peace Action Michael McCally, M.D., Ph.D., Executive Director Physicians for Social Responsibility Sara Lisherness, Director, Peace and Justice Ministries Presbyterian Church (USA) Kevin Knobloch, President Union of Concerned Scientists Rob Keithan, Director, Washington Office for Advocacy Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations James E. Winkler, General Secretary United Methodist Church, General Board of Church and Society Susan Shaer, Executive Director Womens Action for New Directions 1998-2007 FCNL | 245 Second Street NE, Washington, DC 20002 | 202-547-6000 | Toll-free: 800-630-1330 | Privacy Policy | Site Map | ***************************************************************** 52 IHT: Egypt refuses to sign UN nuclear watchdog protocols for stricter inspections - International Herald Tribune The Associated Press Published: December 12, 2007 CAIRO, Egypt: Egypt refuses to sign additional measures allowing for more stringent inspections of its nuclear program, especially since Israel has not even signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, the Egyptian Foreign Ministry said according to newspapers Wednesday. Deputy Foreign Ministry Ramzy Ezzedine Ramzy reiterated Egypt's stance that it had no intention of signing the Additional Protocol of the International Atomic Energy Association giving greater access to information and inspections, in a speech Tuesday. "Egypt will not sign the Additional Protocol, since it's a voluntary thing," he said at a meeting of the Egyptian Council on Foreign Affairs where he delivered a speech by Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit. "In comparison with Israel, which chooses to stay outside international legitimacy and not join the Nonproliferation Treaty, Egypt will not accept any additional commitment," he added. After publicly shelving the nuclear program in the aftermath of the 1986 accident at the Soviet nuclear plant in Chernobyl, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak called for Egypt to revive plans to develop atomic power. Ramzy also complained that the US-Iranian dispute over the Islamic republic nuclear ambitions has made it difficult for a country like Egypt to obtain enriched uranium fuel, as exporters of the fuel have imposed several preconditions including commitments not to enrich uranium. Egypt says that such preconditions are a burden and make developing countries eternally dependent on developed countries in obtaining nuclear fuel. "In reality, the nonproliferation treaty doesn't prohibit nuclear activities including enrichment as long as these activities remain peaceful and under the supervision of the agency," Ramzy said. 'The deputy minister also called for closer Arab cooperation in the nuclear field at a time when Iran's emerging program has spurred a renewed interest in the energy source across the Middle East. "Arab cooperation in the peaceful use of nuclear energy is extremely crucial especially that there are serious proposals," he said referring to Saudi proposal last month to set up a regional complex for enriching uranium. "We reject any move to make Egypt's nuclear program largely dependent on foreign components," Ramzy said. Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal called on Iran to produce enriched uranium jointly with Arab Gulf countries in a country outside the Middle East, where the plant could be properly monitored by international observers. In February 2005, the IAEA disclosed that it was investigating Egypt's nuclear activities. It concluded that Egypt had conducted atomic research for as long as four decades, but the research did not aim to develop nuclear weapons and did not include uranium enrichment. Copyright 2007 the International Herald Tribune All rights reserved ***************************************************************** 53 Las Vegas SUN: Editorial: Nuclear mistakes December 07, 2007 Only Homer Simpson could be proud of the poor safety record at federal weapons labs America's nuclear weapons labs have serious safety problems, according to the Government Accountability Office. In a report issued last month, the GAO described a history of weak oversight by the National Nuclear Security Administration and a lax attitude toward safety at the labs. The report also said the labs had problems identifying and correcting safety problems, and noted the agency relied on contractors' safety programs instead of providing real oversight. NNSA officials have acknowledged some problems and said they have improved oversight. But they also rationalized the report's findings, which since 2000 recorded 60 serious accidents and incidents, including a laser injury and the radiation of several workers. "We take nuclear safety and worker safety very seriously," said agency spokesman John Broehm. "But when you look at the size and scope of what we do, we feel the numbers are pretty good." The numbers may look good, but the reality is that safety violations found at nuclear weapons laboratories are exponentially more dangerous than typical industrial accidents. Because workers are dealing with nuclear material, mistakes can be catastrophic, with effects that spread well beyond a lab. For example, in 2005 a worker at the Los Alamos National Laboratory opened a package from another lab that contained radioactive material. The worker did not know for 11 days that he had contaminated himself. In that time, he contaminated other material that was sent to other facilities, his home, other places in Los Alamos and relatives' homes in Colorado and Kansas. The GAO reported that the people who sent the worker the package thought he knew of the danger; he said he figured if it were dangerous, he would have been told. The GAO blamed the problem on the "casual factor" in the lab regarding safety. Instead of trying to defend a lousy record, the NNSA should put an end to this cavalier attitude and make safety a priority before the public gets hurt. All contents 1996 - 2007 Las Vegas Sun, Inc. ***************************************************************** 54 Tri-City Herald: Hanford workers beat legal deadline Hanford radioactive waste removal Published Monday, December 10th, 2007 By Annette Cary, Herald senior writer Hanford workers have retrieved enough temporarily buried radioactive waste at the nuclear reservation to fill 34,600 drums. They were required to have the work done by the end of this month under the legally binding requirements of the Tri-Party Agreement. It's the fourth year in a row that Fluor Hanford workers have met or beat retrieval requirements for the Department of Energy at the Hanford nuclear reservation. "As we're doing the work, we're encountering more and more badly corroded drums that require special handling," said Dale McKenney, Fluor Hanford vice president of waste stabilization and disposition, in a statement. "Our workers have had to come up with new approaches at every turn to help us meet our cleanup commitments and protect our employees and the environment." The waste is in drums and different sizes of boxes which were temporarily buried until the nation had a federal repository ready in New Mexico for waste contaminated with plutonium. For more information, read Tuesday's Herald. © 2007 Tri-City Herald, Associated Press & Other Wire Services ***************************************************************** 55 Guardian Unlimited: Energy Dept. Fined Over Nuke Site Spill | Wednesday December 5, 2007 2:31 AM By SHANNON DININNY Associated Press Writer YAKIMA, Wash. (AP) - Washington state fined the U.S. Department of Energy $500,000 on Tuesday for a radioactive hazardous waste spill at the nation's most contaminated nuclear site. The spill occurred July 27, when workers at south-central Washington's Hanford nuclear reservation were pumping waste from an underground tank. They tried to unblock a pump by running it in reverse, but 85 gallons of waste spilled onto the ground. ``Before the spill was discovered, a series of poor decisions put workers in grave danger from exposure to the tank waste and vapors,'' Jane Hedges, manager of the state Department of Ecology's Nuclear Waste Program, said in a news release. Sixty-three workers were within 200 meters, or 656 feet, of the spill and were identified for ongoing medical monitoring. Of those, 13 have complained of symptoms that could be attributed to the spill, including upper respiratory problems, upset stomachs, headaches, dizziness, eye irritation and blurred vision, said Erik Olds, an Energy Department spokesman. The department has been monitoring and reviewing tank farm operations in the months since, Olds said. ``Removing waste from aging single-shell tanks is one of the department's highest priorities at Hanford,'' he said in a news release. Olds said it was too soon to say whether the Energy Department would appeal the fine. The federal government created Hanford in the 1940s as part of the top-secret Manhattan Project to build the atomic bomb. Cleanup is expected to continue for decades. Guardian Unlimited Guardian News and Media Limited 2007 ***************************************************************** 56 Knoxville News Sentinel: Saving part of K-25 in doubt DOE says entire building may need to come down; preservationists object By Frank Munger (Contact) Monday, December 10, 2007 OAK RIDGE - The U.S. Department of Energy appears to be wavering on a commitment to save the north end of K-25, the World War II-era facility that processed uranium for atomic bombs. As part of a memorandum of agreement signed with preservation groups nearly three years ago, DOE promised to salvage a section of the gigantic U-shaped structure that's scheduled for demolition. The goal was for preservationists to convert K-25's north end - the bottom of the "U" - into a museum of sorts to attract visitors and help future generations appreciate the Oak Ridge role in the Manhattan Project. Since then, however, dismantlement crews have begun their work in earnest, and according to DOE the condition of the 63-year-old building was much worse than previously thought - including the north end. "It's completely unsafe to do any type of work other than bring it down," John Shewairy, DOE's public affairs chief in Oak Ridge, said in a recent interview. "It's unfortunate, but it's just not safe to approach from anything other than demolition." Those comments raised the hackles of preservationists, who aren't giving up on their plans to save a piece of K-25, and Shewairy later amended his statement. "All the options are still on the table," the DOE spokesman said. "Although it's a very unsafe situation, we do want to reserve making a final judgement for the next four or five months." Shewairy said DOE is committed to historic preservation, but the agency wants interested parties to look for alternatives other than preserving the north end of K-25. Bill Wilcox, a Manhattan Project veteran and the town's historian, said preservation groups offered a counterproposal to save only half of the north end - also known as the north tower - and equipment used to enrich uranium. Wilcox is working with the Oak Ridge Heritage and Preservation Association. "We're certainly aware that there are some safety challenges with the building, but it's not the Leaning Tower of Pisa," Wilcox said. "We think the safety challenges can be met." Cindy Kelly, president of the Atomic Heritage Foundation and author of "Remembering the Manhattan Project," said DOE and its Oak Ridge contractors have some of the finest engineers in the country. They should be able to find a solution to the problem, Kelly said. "Where there's a will, there's a way," she said. Kelly suggested that time and money may be more important to DOE than saving history. Cries about the building's deteriorated state grew louder after the cost of preservation went up and DOE began searching for strategies to take it down quicker and cheaper, she said. Wilcox said DOE a few months ago revised its estimate for saving the north tower, with the cost nearly doubling - from $26 million to $47 million. He said that's one reason the preservation groups downsized their proposal to just saving half of the three-story north end, which covers a space about the size of a football field. "We're working as hard as we can with Bechtel Jacobs (DOE's cleanup manager) to come up with options," he said. At the time of its construction in the 1940s, K-25 was the world's largest building under one roof. It contained miles of processing pipelines, filters and converters that separated the isotopes of uranium and concentrated the fissile U-235 for use in bombs and nuclear reactors. K-25 has been called one of the engineering marvels of all time, and the government lists it as one of the "signature facilities" of the Manhattan Project. K-25 began operations in 1945 and produced most of the enriched uranium used in the nation's Cold War nuclear arsenal. Wilcox said there are many ways to celebrate the accomplishments of the A-bomb work in Oak Ridge, but he said some things have to be seen to appreciate their scale and scope. K-25 is one of those things, he said. "It's crucial that we save a small piece of it so that future generations can come and understand what this monumental achievement was," the 84-year-old chemist said. He said he's afraid demolition contractors are pushing to tear down the whole building. "I think it would make their life simpler if they could just hammer and bang instead of taking the equipment out very carefully and saving the building structure," he said. "Certainly our north end has got some structural problems, but my goodness, get the heavy equipment out of there, dry out (the building) and put a new roof on it. … We're not expecting DOE to put it in shape for visitors to come. We know we're going to have to do that." Senior writer Frank Munger may be reached at 865-342-6329. 2007, Knoxville News Sentinel Co. ***************************************************************** NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 this material is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. For more information go to: *****************************************************************