***************************************************************** 10/29/07 **** RADIATION BULLETIN(RADBULL) **** VOL 15.254 ***************************************************************** 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 NUCLEAR REACTORS 1 [NYTr] US ready to help build nuclear reactors in Egypt 2 CCTV International: China open to nuclear power tech 3 US: EPA: EPA Endorses Schedule for Environmental Actions at the Indi 4 BBC NEWS: Saudi visit to seal ties with UK 5 Platts: Japanese court dismisses lawsuit over Hamaoka 6 Platts: Nuclear energy "indispensable" to meet basic energy needs - 7 Platts: UK nuclear regulator NII remains chronically understaffed 8 RIA Novosti: Russia says energy ties with Kazakhstan not politically 9 US: ReviewJournal.com: Groups ask for open power plant talks 10 US: toledoblade.com: More nuclear negligence 11 US: APP.COM: N.J. seeks real-time checks at reactor | 12 Bangkok Post: UN confirms Thailand nuclear energy bid 13 Interfax China: China may also adopt third-generation nuclear 14 US: NRC: In the Matter of Mr. Mark Sharp; Confirmatory Order (Effect 15 US: NRC: In the Matter of Arizona Public Service Company; Palo Verde 16 US: Reuters: So Cal Ed Calif. San Onofre 2 reactor up to 95 pct 17 US: Reuters: Exelon Ill. Braidwood 1 reactor up to 64 pct power 18 US: Reuters: Entergy N.Y. FitzPatrick reactor shut | 19 US: Reuters: Entergy La. River Bend reactor cut to 75 pct power 20 US: Reuters: Exelon shuts Ill. Dresden 2 reactor for refueling | 21 Times of India: Nuke issue: Advani rebuffs Kissinger 22 UPI: Walker's World: India's dead nuke deal 23 Calgary Sun: Nuke topic closed to public 24 US: Las Vegas SUN: Editorial: Politics and facts collide NUCLEAR SECURITY 25 Platts: Energoatom signs nuclear safety agreement with SKI 26 Reuters: Honduras finds radioactive material in container 27 US: UPI: Nuclear facilities miss security deadline - 28 US: EPA: terrorism should be considered in relicensing Indian Point NUCLEAR SAFETY 29 BBC NEWS: Radiation leak at Russian plant 30 ISN Security Watch: Depleted uranium, depleted health concerns 31 US: NIOS: Exposure Cohort petition for Westinghouse employees 32 US: NIOSH: Exposure cohort designation 33 US: NIOSH: exposure cohort petitition for Horizons inc. 34 US: NIOSH: exposure cohort petition for Santa Susana Lab employees 35 US: NIOSH: Exposure Cohort petition for Combustion Engineering 36 US: 5280.com - November 2007 - Out in the Cold 37 Reuters: Russia says radiation leak at Urals Mayak plant 38 Kyiv Post: Radioactive material leaks during transport at Russian 39 US: Political Affairs Magazine: Depleted Uranium and Depleted Democr 40 US: UPI: Method found to protect against radiation - NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE 41 US: The Associated Press: Panel Urges End to Nuke Waste Proposal 42 US: The Coloradoan: Uranium company won't admit the health dangers 43 US: Salt Lake Tribune: Deadly dirt: Navajos in fight for their lives 44 US: Roanoke Times: Man sits on radioactive gold mine in Virginia - 45 US: Buffalo News: Radioactive cleanup stage called critical 46 US: FSC: Drilling Leads to Major Uranium Discovery on Bayswater's An 47 News & Star: Nuclear focus on Sellafield 48 Las Vegas SUN: Gibbons miffed, now invited to hearing 49 Las Vegas SUN: Debate on Yucca turns with politics PEACE 50 Assessing Charges on Iranian Nukes 51 IPS-English POLITICS-IRAN: Row Over Nuclear Negotiator's Firing Wors 52 [NYTr] DPRK Confirms Schedule for Dismantling Nuclear Facilities 53 [NYTr] Iran, IAEA Resume Talks 54 US: FAS: A Response to Congresswoman Tauscher's Article in US DEPT. OF ENERGY 55 Tri-City Herald: Thousands of bats living underground at Hanford 56 The Associated Press: Researchers Study Bat Colony in Wash. 57 Knoxville News Sentinel: Report: Security upgrades lagging at Oak Ri ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** FULL NEWS STORIES ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** 1 [NYTr] US ready to help build nuclear reactors in Egypt Date: Mon, 29 Oct 2007 13:08:36 -0500 (CDT) Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit AP via MSNBC - Oct 29, 2007 http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21527291/ Egypt to build several nuclear energy plants U.S. ready to help build peaceful program, envoy says The Associated Press CAIRO, Egypt - Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on Monday announced plans to build several nuclear power plants, joining several Arab countries in the Middle East that recently have broadcast their own atomic energy ambitions. Mubarak said in a speech broadcast live on national television that the decision to build these nuclear power stations was to diversify Egypt's energy resources and preserve the country's oil and gas reserves for coming generations. "I announce before you Egypt's position to prepare the program for building several nuclear power stations. We believe that energy security is a major part of building the future for this country and an integral part of Egypt's national security system," Mubarak said at a ceremony inaugurating the second phase of construction of an electrical power plant north of Cairo. Mubarak said he would re-establish the Supreme Council for the Peaceful Purposes of Nuclear Power, which would be in charge of the nuclear program. He also said Egypt would seek the help of its "international partners" and the U.N. nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, in building the nuclear power plants. Last year, Mubarak's son, Gamal, called for Egypt to revive plans for a nuclear program that was publicly shelved in the aftermath of the 1986 accident at the Soviet nuclear plant in Chernobyl. U.S. may help A committee was formed to study the program's possibilities, and the U.S ambassador said Washington would be willing to help its Mideast ally develop a peaceful program. At the time, Hassan Yunis, the minister of electricity and energy, said Egypt could have an operational nuclear power plant within 10 years. Egypt has conducted nuclear experiments on a very small scale for the past four decades, but they have not included the key process of uranium enrichment, according to the IAEA. Earlier this year, former U.N. chief weapons inspector Hans Blix said he supported Egypt's ambitions but said it would be at least a decade before Cairo could launch a nuclear program and urged Egypt to sign additional protocols allowing for greater inspection oversight. Iran's progress in building its nuclear program had sparked a rush among other Middle East countries to look at programs of their own to diversify and expand their energy resources. Yemen's government in September signed an agreement with Houston-based Powered Corporation to build nuclear power plants over the next 10 years to generate electricity. Jordan, several Gulf Arab countries and Turkey have also announced that they were interested in developing peaceful nuclear programs. But the rush has also raised the possibility of a dangerous proliferation of nuclear technology in the volatile region. The United States accuses Iran of secretly trying to develop nuclear weapons. Iran denies the claims and says its program is for peaceful purposes including developing electricity. Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. * ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us Our main website: http://www.blythe.org List Archives: http://blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/ Subscribe: http://blythe-systems.com/mailman/listinfo/nytr ================================================================= ***************************************************************** 2 CCTV International: China open to nuclear power tech Source: CCTV.com 10-29-2007 10:41 On the sidelines of the China-Asean Forum, officials say China remains open to adopting third-generation nuclear power technologies developed in France and Russia. And this is despite it's having already adopted the AP-1000 that's a product of US-based Westinghouse. Bidding was launched four years ago for foreign firms interested in involvement in China's nuclear power stations. Major bidders then, included winner, Westinghouse, French company, Areva, and Russia's AtomStroyExport. China hopes to generate as much as 40 million kilowatts of nuclear power by 2020 despite a current capacity of just eight million. And this means enormous potential for further development in this area. Editor:XiongQu 　 © 2005 China Central Television. All Rights Reserved ***************************************************************** 3 EPA: EPA Endorses Schedule for Environmental Actions at the Indian Point Nuclear Power Plant | Newsroom | US EPA Release date: 10/29/2007 Contact Information: Elias Rodriguez (212) 637-3664, rodriguez.elias@epa.gov (New York, N.Y.) U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Regional Administrator Alan J. Steinberg today announced his endorsement of a schedule for stopping the source of the leak from the spent fuel pool in Unit No.1 at the Indian Point Nuclear Generating Plant in Buchanan, New York. The work will be carried out by Entergy Nuclear Operations, Inc., the operator of the Indian Point plant, under the oversight of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), the federal agency with responsibility for licensing nuclear power plants. Unit No. 1, one of three units at the facility, is not operational and is in safe storage mode. The water in the pool has been continuously filtered since April 2007, greatly reducing the radionuclide concentrations. The work schedule calls for the removal of the spent fuel in the pool during the summer of 2008. Then the water will be removed from the pool, and discharged into the Hudson River after being treated, consistent with NRC regulatory requirements and the terms of the existing New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) discharge permit for the facility. That work is scheduled for completion by the end of 2008. “EPA is very pleased that Entergy has a schedule in place to remove the source of the spent fuel pool leak efficiently and in a timely fashion with NRC and state oversight,” said Regional Administrator Alan J. Steinberg. “We support these proactive steps to ensure that operations at the facility are protective of people’s health and the environment.” Since the discovery of the leak in the spent fuel pool, EPA has consulted regularly with the NRC and the New York State DEC. EPA has reviewed data related to the leak and confirmed with New York State that there have been no violations of federal drinking water standards for radionuclides in drinking water supplies. In a separate matter, EPA is today releasing its comments on the scope of the environmental impact review that will be conducted by the NRC in connection with Entergy’s license renewal application for Indian Point Nuclear Generating Units Nos. 2 and 3. Entergy, the operator of these units, has filed an application with the NRC to renew the operating licenses for the two units for twenty years beyond the end of the current license terms. Unit No. 1 is not part of the license renewal application. The NRC expects to complete its review and decide whether or not to grant Entergy’s license renewal request in July 2009 or later. Before making that decision, the NRC will prepare an environmental impact statement (EIS), as required by the National Environmental Policy Act. That law requires federal agencies to integrate environmental values into their decision-making processes by considering the environmental impacts of proposed actions and reasonable alternatives to those actions. EPA will undertake a careful review of the NRC’s EIS and the potential environmental impacts of license renewal. EPA’s comments on the EIS will be made public. For more information about the National Environmental Policy Act and related documents, please visit: http://www.epa.gov/region02/spmm/r2nepa.htm 07-126 http://yosemite.epa.gov/opa/admpress.nsf/names/r02_2007-10-29_Indian_P oint_Nuclear_Power_Plant ***************************************************************** 4 BBC NEWS: Saudi visit to seal ties with UK Last Updated: Sunday, 28 October 2007, 23:45 GMT By Frank Gardner Security correspondent, BBC News The Saudi flags are flying along the road to Buckingham Palace Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah is due to arrive in the UK on Monday for the first state visit by a Saudi monarch for 20 years. He will be the guest of Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace and is due to meet British political leaders on Wednesday, culminating in a glittering state banquet. The visit is the product of years of patient diplomacy and is an indication of how Saudi Arabia has become one of the UK's closest allies in the Middle East. On Monday up to five planes are expected to touch down in the UK, bearing the octogenarian King Abdullah and an entourage of Saudi ministers, businessmen and journalists. Saudi Arabia and the UK clearly matter to each other, with the relationship going well beyond trade, although last year British commercial exports to Riyadh exceeded Ł3.5bn. Around 20,000 Britons live and work in Saudi Arabia and the UK has now landed a massive export order for the Typhoon fighter jet. This has not been without controversy. In 2006 this multi-billion pound order appeared to be at risk of cancellation as the UK's Serious Fraud Office (SFO) threatened to probe into the private Swiss bank accounts of Saudi princes as part of their investigation into alleged corruption in Saudi-UK arms deals dating back to the 1980s. The Saudi monarchy also indicated that if the probe went ahead then co-operation between the two countries on counter-terrorism would cease. Tony Blair, who was prime minister at the time, stopped the probe, triggering an outcry by anti-corruption campaigners in the UK and Europe. Global concerns This week both British and Saudi officials are hoping this issue will not overshadow the packed agenda. The UK-Saudi relationship was strong during Tony Blair's term On Monday the so-called Two Kingdoms Dialogue will be opened by speeches from the British Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, and the Saudi Foreign Minister, Prince Saud Al-Faisal. The UK Foreign Office says the conference will focus on youth, education and cultural dialogue. But underpinning the Saudi-UK relationship is a large and growing bilateral trade and ever closer diplomatic and security co-operation on trying to resolve the flashpoints of the Middle East. King Abdullah's 2002 peace initiative for the Palestinian-Israeli dispute is still the only peace plan on the table, and behind the scenes Saudi Arabia has been working to calm tensions in Lebanon and to find ways of resolving the insurgency in Iraq. But one of the Saudis' prime concerns today is how to contain their giant neighbour Iran and its suspect nuclear programme. So sensitive is this issue that King Abdullah declined to discuss it in a recent interview with the BBC, so this week's visit is unlikely to see any new announcements in that area. Extremist issue Sport, education and even double taxation are all on the agenda this week. There is also a three-day exhibition of photographs at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London of rare photographs from Princess Alice's visit to the Saudi kingdom in the 1930s. A UK deal to sell Typhoon fighter to Riyadh has been controversial Beyond all this, say officials, the Saudis will be hoping to correct some of the misconceptions that have arisen about their country since 15 Saudi nationals took part in the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington in 2001. Initially the Saudi ruling family publicly denied they had a problem with violent religious extremism but they faced a devastating wake-up call in May 2003 when al-Qaeda carried out a triple suicide bombing in Riyadh that killed over 30 people. Since then they have removed or "retrained" extremist preachers and reformed much of the educational curriculum, excising extremist tracts that encouraged intolerance and even violence towards non-Muslims. Intelligence claim They have also embarked on a widescale public information campaign to steer young Saudis away from violent jihad. But with conflict raging in neighbouring Iraq, the Palestinian issue still unresolved and thousands of Western troops deployed to the region - where they are often seen as "occupiers" - there are still many recruits to al-Qaeda's cause. King Abdullah has told the BBC it will take 20 to 30 years to defeat terrorism. Despite close Anglo-Saudi co-operation on security and intelligence the Saudi leadership maintains that it passed the UK information that might have averted the London bombings of 2005 if it had been acted on. Whitehall officials have strenuously denied this, and a subsequent investigation by the UK Parliament's Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) found no evidence of any actionable intelligence passed by the Saudis that could have prevented the 7/7 bombings. * BBC Copyright Notice ***************************************************************** 5 Platts: Japanese court dismisses lawsuit over Hamaoka 2007-10-26 Paris (Platts)--26Oct2007 A Japanese court refused to order Hamaoka shut indefinitely and dismissed a lawsuit claiming the site's five BWRs are inadequately protected against earthquakes, participants in the case said. According to these sources, Hamaoka owner Chubu Electric Power Co. convinced the District Court of Shizuoka that the plant conforms to current Japanese government guidelines, regulations, and standards concerning seismic safety. In their verdict issued October 26, judges rejected the argument of local plaintiffs who asserted that a major earthquake in July which caused some damage to the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear station, had underscored that Hamaoka could suffer a more severe earthquake than anticipated by Japanese guidelines. Japanese seismic standards were recently revised and their sufficiency is now under examination for each site by utilities and regulators, a review accelerated after the July quake. The judges ruled that their court could not pre-empt the ongoing nationwide seismic examination. Copyright © 2007 - Platts, All Rights Reserved ***************************************************************** 6 Platts: Nuclear energy "indispensable" to meet basic energy needs - EP 2007-10-25 London (Platts)--25Oct2007 The European Parliament said nuclear energy is "indispensable" if Europe is to meet basic energy needs, let alone greenhouse gas emission reduction goals, in a report adopted October 24. The "own-initiative" report, authored by German MEP Herbert Reul, said nuclear energy is "indispensable if basic energy needs are to be met in Europe in the medium term." The report also said that "the renunciation of nuclear power will make it impossible to achieve the objectives set regarding reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and the combating of climate change." EC Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs agreed. Speaking before the vote, he said, "It will be difficult to achieve our climate change goals without the use of nuclear energy." The report was approved with 509 votes in favor, 153 against and 30 abstentions. For more news, request a free trial to Platts Nucleonics Week at http://www.platts.com/Request%20More%20Information/index.xml?story or subscribe now at http://www.platts.com/infostore/product_info.php?cPath=22_41&products_id=67 Copyright © 2007 - Platts, All Rights Reserved ***************************************************************** 7 Platts: UK nuclear regulator NII remains chronically understaffed 2007-10-26 London (Platts)--26Oct2007 UK nuclear regulator NII remains chronically understaffed, with only 164 inspectors, according to the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate's umbrella organization, the Health and Safety Executive, October 25. According to recent comments from NII chief inspector Mike Weightman, NII needs 192 inspectors for work currently planned over the next few years, plus up to 40 more in late 2008/early 2009 for the final phases of new reactor design assessments, should the UK government permit new nuclear construction. An HSE spokesman said talks are ongoing with the Treasury on better compensation packages to boost inspector numbers. He said NII now has "12 nuclear specialists of inspector grade" in the new division carrying out the fundamental safety overview of the ACR 1000, the EPR, the GE ESBWR and the AP1000, to identify any fundamental issues that could prevent the eventual UK licensing of any of the four designs. For more news, request a free trial to Platts Nucleonics Week at http://www.platts.com/Request%20More%20Information/index.xml?story or subscribe now at http://www.platts.com/infostore/product_info.php?cPath=22_41&products_id=67 Copyright © 2007 - Platts, All Rights Reserved ***************************************************************** 8 RIA Novosti: Russia says energy ties with Kazakhstan not politically driven 21:54 | 29/ 10/ 2007 ASTANA, October 29 (RIA Novosti) - Bilateral energy cooperation between Russia and Kazakhstan is not politically driven, but guided by economic factors, Russia's foreign minister said on Monday. Sergei Lavrov arrived in the Central Asian country's capital, Astana, earlier in the day on a two-day official visit. "Energy cooperation between Russia and Kazakhstan is based on common sense, economic usefulness, mutual advantage, and an understanding of common interests... It has nothing to do with attempts to politicize the energy sphere," Lavrov told a news conference following talks with his Kazakh counterpart, Marat Tazhin. The Russian diplomat said the countries had a strong record as reliable oil and gas suppliers to world markets. Lavrov highlighted the two countries cooperation through a Caspian gas pipeline project, and several other gas and nuclear energy projects. Russia, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan clinched a deal in May to build a pipeline along the Caspian Sea coast to pump billions of cubic meters of natural gas from Turkmenistan to Kazakhstan into Russia's network of pipelines running to Europe. The Kazakh foreign minister said the pipeline project has no political motives behind it. "There are technical issues, but we are optimistic about the future," he said. Kazakhstan will maintain its energy partnership with Russia for the foreseeable future, he added. In an interview with the Kazakhstanskaya Pravda newspaper ahead of his visit to Astana, Lavrov said bilateral trade reached $13 billion last year and was "constantly increasing." Last year Kazakhstan transported 42 of its 52.3 million metric tons (384.4 million bbl) of oil exports via Russia. Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev earlier set a goal of doubling oil exports by 2012-2015, saying this required the diversification of pipeline routes. RIA Novosti ***************************************************************** 9 ReviewJournal.com: Groups ask for open power plant talks Oct. 29, 2007 Emission standards are being considered The Associated Press CARSON CITY -- A coalition of environmental groups has asked the Nevada Department of Environmental Protection to open to the public negotiations over plans to build three coal-fired power plants in the state. Sierra Pacific Resources, Sithe Global Power and LS Power Associates are in discussions with state environmental regulators over the level of greenhouse gas emissions that will be allowed from any new such power plants. They already are drafting a memorandum of understanding setting out those standards. "But to this point, the process has taken place behind closed doors," according to a letter issued by Nevadans for Clean, Affordable, Reliable Energy. The group said future regulations limiting carbon emissions are a near certainty because coal-fired plants emit large amounts of carbon dioxide. The coalition told NDEP Administrator Leo Drozdoff that Nevada residents and business owners deserve a voice in the negotiations. "The worst thing for Nevada would be a toothless agreement to be thrown together in a back room," group spokeswoman Lydia Ball said in a statement. The coalition includes the Sierra Club, Citizen Alert, the Nevada Conservation League, the Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada and the Bristlecone Alliance. In July, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said the threat of global warming should preclude construction of the coal-fired power plants in White Pine and Lincoln counties in eastern Nevada. In September, the Nevada Environmental Commission rejected a petition from the coalition trying to stop the three companies from constructing the plants unless they control carbon dioxide emissions. But commissioners also voted to require NDEP to draw up "memorandums of understanding" requiring the companies to capture carbon dioxide once the technology becomes commercially available. Representatives from the three companies testified that the technology to capture carbon dioxide won't be available at a reasonable price until at least 2017. Carbon dioxide emissions are produced when power plants burn coal to generate electricity. Some scientists contend it is the key greenhouse gas emission that causes global warming. Links powered by inform.com Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal, 1997 - 2007 Stephens Media, LLC Privacy Statement ***************************************************************** 10 toledoblade.com: More nuclear negligence Article published Monday, October 29, 2007 THE security of the nation's nuclear arsenal should never be left to chance. That's a given. But inexplicably, this is exactly what happened with incidents involving negligence by the Air Force and, now, the Navy. Americans cringed when they learned recently that a B-52 bomber had been inadvertently loaded with six nuclear-tipped cruise missiles and flown halfway across the country with nobody the wiser. But just after the Air Force attempted to remedy what it called "an erosion of adherence to weapons-handling" regulations by disciplining some 70 airmen, the Navy admitted a similarly frightening lapse in operation of the most advanced nuclear attack submarine in the world. It turns out that sailors aboard the USS Hampton had skipped daily safety checks on the sub's nuclear reactor for more than a month. But that apparently didn't stop them from dutifully filling out paperwork saying they did. "Some of the Hampton's operations and records fell short of high Navy standards," said Lt. Cmdr. Ryan Perry, who quickly inserted the standard assurance that "there never was any danger to the crew or public." But the public is not assured. Not when Navy technicians fail to measure and maintain the correct water chemistry in a submarine's nuclear reactor for weeks - which could cause big problems over the long term. And certainly not by the routine falsification of records on the vessel. Both the Navy and Air Force say they are investigating these egregious lapses. Both services promise to hold the responsible parties accountable and to make appropriate changes to prevent a recurrence. That's all well and good but both branches now have the additional task of restoring public confidence in their competence to handle the nation's nuclear assets. © 2007 The Blade. By using this service, you accept the terms of our privacy statement and our visitor agreement. Please read them. The Toledo Blade Company, 541 N. Superior St., Toledo, OH 43660 , (419) 724-6000 To contact a specific department or an ***************************************************************** 11 APP.COM: N.J. seeks real-time checks at reactor | Asbury Park Press Online Monday, October 29, 2007 Experts raise doubts about the feasibility BY TODD B. BATES ENVIRONMENTAL WRITER Post Comment New Jersey wants continuous monitoring of a corroded radiation barrier at the Oyster Creek nuclear power plant in Lacey, as well as confirmation by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission that the barrier is up to code. But it's unclear whether real-time monitoring is possible. "We really do feel that . . . the state has been a much better advocate for our safety" than the NRC, and activists hope that continues, said Janet Tauro of Brick, a member of Grandmothers, Mothers and More for Energy Safety (GRAMMES), which opposes a proposed 20-year NRC license renewal for Oyster Creek. "We would vigorously disagree with that," NRC spokesman Neil A. Sheehan said. "Anyone who's followed this review process from the beginning would know the amount of thoroughness and rigor we've applied to this (Oyster Creek relicensing) application." The Oct. 12 state Department of Environmental Protection letter follows an unprecedented hearing by a federal Atomic Safety and Licensing Board panel in Toms River last month. The hearing centered on whether Oyster Creek operator AmerGen Energy Co.'s commitment to measure the drywell's thickness with ultrasound once every four years is frequent enough. The atomic panel anticipates making its decision next month, its chairman has said. A "full scope" inspection of the drywell's corroded sand-bed region is to be done next year and then every four years during a refueling outage, according to an NRC document. Oyster Creek should not be allowed to refuel as scheduled next year "unless the NRC is able to confirm with a high degree of confidence that the plant" meets American Society of Mechanical Engineers code requirements, according to a recent action alert by the Stop The Relicensing of Oyster Creek coalition. AmerGen proponents have said Oyster Creek meets safety standards. The plant's current 40-year operating license is to expire in April 2009. The oldest operating nuclear power plant in the U.S., which opened in 1969, produces enough electricity for 600,000 homes. The steel drywell shell, which surrounds the nuclear reactor and is about 100 feet tall, is designed to contain radiation during an accident, protecting the public. In the 1980s, corrosion as a result of water leaks was confirmed in the exterior of the drywell's sand-bed region. The sand was removed, an epoxy coating was applied to the corroded area in 1992 and the corrosion has ceased, AmerGen proponents have said. But the six local, state and national groups fighting the proposed license extension are skeptical. Real-time request Jill Lipoti, director of the DEP Division of Environmental Safety and Health, sent a letter this month to Pao-Tsin Kuo, director of the NRC Division of License Renewal, seeking real-time drywell monitoring, among other requests. Real-time ultrasonic measurements of drywell thickness "would provide practical assurance that the drywell is not experiencing unexpected accelerated corrosion" during the periods between scheduled measurements, the letter says. "We understand that NRC believes that requiring real-time drywell thickness measurements is beyond your regulatory authority, but the measurements would provide public confidence that the drywell was not deteriorating between measurement events, currently planned every four years," it says. "I don't know how you do real-time measurement of thickness," Sheehan said. "We'd have to better understand what it refers to there," he said recently. "We just received this, and we'll have to review it." In a March letter to the DEP, a DEP consultant says "the drywell steel shell thickness could in principle be monitored with corrosion-monitoring devices in real time and at locations that are known to be troublesome." "Such monitors are used for continuous monitoring of uniform corrosion in various industrial circumstances," the letter says. "I am not aware of commercial experience with comparable equipment for the present purpose, but this seems tractable to me." Can it be done? Paul D. Baldauf, DEP assistant director of radiation protection, said "to be perfectly honest," the consultant wasn't convinced real-time monitoring could be done in this case. "I think, if anything else, we're asking" the NRC to investigate whether it's practical, he said. "We believe the potential is there," Baldauf said. But to the DEP's and consultant's knowledge, it hasn't been done in a setting like this, he said. "The issue may be that . . . the types of instrumentation out there won't function adequately in this type of atmosphere, but we don't know that," Baldauf said. "I don't think it would be extremely expensive," he said. Alex Marion, executive director of nuclear operations and engineering at the Nuclear Energy Institute, said in a recent e-mail that "I am not personally aware of any "real-time monitoring' system that is available for (nuclear power plant) steel containments or liners. I am confirming this with others in the industry." NRC rules call for periodic examinations using ultrasonic testing techniques to measure rates of change over time — for example, since the last inspection — Marion's e-mail says. This story includes material from previous Press stories. Todd B. Bates: (732) 643-4237 or tbates@app.com Post a Comment View All Comments ====================================================================== Copyright © 2007 Asbury Park Press. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 12 Bangkok Post: UN confirms Thailand nuclear energy bid New York (dpa) - Half of the 30 nuclear reactors being built are in developing countries while industrialised nations are adding new reactors, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said Monday in a report to the UN General Assembly. IAEA Director Mohamed ElBaradei said there are currently 439 nuclear power reactors in 30 countries, which supply 15 per cent of the world's electricity. He said there has been a "sharp rise" of demand for civilian nuclear power energy by developing countries, ending the monopoly by industrialised countries over nuclear energy. ElBaradei said three strong factors are driving up the global interest in nuclear energy: the steady growth of energy demand, increasing concerns about energy security and the challenge of climate change. The IAEA is studying requests by 77 countries which are exploring nuclear energy as a potential option, he said. They include Algeria, Belarus, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Jordan, Libya, Nigeria, Thailand, Vietnam and Yemen. Countries that already have nuclear reactors want to add new ones, including Argentina, Bulgaria, China, Finland, France, India, Japan, South Korea, Pakistan, South Africa, Russia, the United States. © Copyright The Post Publishing Public Co., Ltd. 2007 ***************************************************************** 13 Interfax China: China may also adopt third-generation nuclear power technology from France and Russia Shanghai. October 29. INTERFAX-CHINA - China will not rule out cooperating with France and Russia to introduce additional third-generation nuclear power technology into the country on top of U.S. technology that has previously been selected, a senior official was cited by state media as saying at an industry forum yesterday. Ma Lu, the vice manager general of the State Nuclear Power Technology Corp., was reported by Xinhua news agency to have said at the China-ASEAN Power Cooperation & Development Forum that a lot of new capacity needs to be added in order for the country to successfully reach its target of 40,000 megawatts of nuclear power generating capacity by 2020. For this reason, Ma noted that China could potentially cooperate with other countries aside from the United States, such as France and Russia, in order to introduce additional third-generation nuclear power technology. China launched its initial bid for third-generation nuclear power technology in 2003. U.S.-based Westinghouse beat Frances's Areva and Russia's Atomstroyexport, and as a result, signed a contract in July this year with China's State Nuclear Power Technology Corp. to supply four AP1000 reactors. The reactors are destined to be installed in the provinces of Zhejiang and Shandong. At one stage, Areva was supposed to supply two EPR reactors to the Yangjiang nuclear power project in Guangdong Province. However, China Guangdong Nuclear Power Holding, the project's chief developer, chose domestically developed CPR 1000 technology for the project in the end. French media reported in August of this year that Areva will instead supply EPR reactors for the Taishan nuclear power project in Guangdong Province. Such a plan has neither been officially confirmed nor denied. China currently has 11 nuclear generation units in operation, including three domestically produced reactors as well as four from France, two from Russia and two from Canada. State Nuclear Power Technology Corp. was jointly established by the country's State Council, the China National Nuclear Corp., the China Power Investment Corp., China Guangdong Nuclear Power Holding, and the China National Technical Import & Export Corp. in May this year. The State Council holds a 60 percent stake in the joint venture, while the remaining four stakeholders hold 10 percent each. The company has been specifically authorized by the State Council to represent the country in its plans to introduce third-generation nuclear power technology. -TW 1991-2005 Interfax Information Service. All rights reserved. News ***************************************************************** 14 NRC: In the Matter of Mr. Mark Sharp; Confirmatory Order (Effective Immediately) FR Doc E7-21211 [Federal Register: October 29, 2007 (Volume 72, Number 208)] [Notices] [Page 61188-61189] From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr29oc07-85] NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION [IA-07-039] I Mr. Mark Sharp was previously the holder of a senior operator's license pursuant to 10 CFR Part 55 granted by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC or Commission). License No. SOP-43795 (Docket No. 55- 31662) was granted to Mr. Sharp on December 6, 1996, and it expired, at the request of Arizona Public Service Company, on December 11, 2006. This senior operator license allowed Mr. Sharp to direct the licensed activities of licensed operators at, and to manipulate the controls of the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station, Unit Nos. 1, 2 and 3. Under the provisions of 10 CFR Part 55, and while his license was in effect, Mr. Sharp was required to observe all applicable rules, regulations, and orders of the Commission. II On November 9, 2006, the managers at Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station informed the NRC that Mr. Mark Sharp, a qualified senior operator, may have falsified a record related to a steam generator blowdown. Specifically, on November 8, 2006, Mr. Sharp mistakenly entered an incorrect blowdown constant into the plant computer and subsequently attempted to cover up the mistake by falsifying the blowdown record. As a result, the NRC Office of Investigations (OI), Region IV, conducted an investigation into the circumstances surrounding this matter. Based on the results of the OI investigation, the NRC identified an apparent violation to Mr. Sharp by letter dated July 12, 2007. The letter informed Mr. Sharp that the NRC was considering the apparent violation for escalated enforcement action in accordance with the NRC Enforcement Policy. Specifically, the apparent violation involved Mr. Sharp's failure to observe license condition 10 CFR Part 55.53(d) in that he engaged in deliberate misconduct prohibited by 10 CFR 50.5 when he caused a required plant record to be inaccurate, thereby causing Arizona Public Service Company to be in violation of 10 CFR 50.9. In the NRC's July 12, 2007, letter to Mr. Sharp, the NRC offered Mr. Sharp a choice to (1) attend a Pre-decisional Enforcement Conference, or (2) request Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) with the NRC in an attempt to resolve any disagreement. III In response to the July 12 letter, Mr. Sharp requested ADR to resolve the matter with the NRC. ADR is a process in which a neutral mediator, with no decision-making authority, assists the parties in reaching an agreement to resolve any differences regarding the dispute. An ADR session was conducted between Mr. Mark Sharp and the NRC in Arlington, Texas, on August 21, 2007. During that ADR session, a settlement agreement was reached. The elements of the Agreement in Principle consisted of the following. Whereas, Mr. Mark Sharp and the NRC agree that Mr. Sharp deliberately violated NRC requirements on November 8, 2006, by falsifying a steam generator blowdown log to cover up a mistake while licensed as a senior reactor operator at Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station; Whereas, the NRC has determined that this was an anomalous, isolated incident and is not reflective of his performance in the industry, neither NRC nor Mr. Sharp believe these factors justify or minimize the significance of deliberately falsifying a required record to cover up his mistake. NRC acknowledges Mr. Sharp's 25 years of performance in the nuclear industry without a similar incident; and Whereas, these terms and conditions shall not be binding on either party until memorialized in a Confirmatory Order issued by the NRC to Mr. Sharp relating to this matter. Therefore, the parties agree to the following terms and conditions: 1. Mr. Sharp will not participate in activities requiring a 10 CFR Part 55 license until items 2-4 of this agreement are completed. Mr. Sharp is not prohibited from engaging in activities related to training of operators or any other 10 CFR Part 50 regulated activities. 2. Mr. Sharp will submit a letter to the NRC Region IV Regional Administrator, to be docketed, articulating why the NRC should have confidence that he can be trusted to engage in activities under NRC jurisdiction in the future with the integrity such activities demand. This letter will be submitted within 30 days of the date of the Confirmatory Order. 3. Mr. Sharp agrees to submit an article to the ``Communicator'' (a publication of the Professional Reactor Operator Society) articulating lessons learned from this incident and emphasizing the importance of self-reporting and not covering up errors. This article will be submitted within 60 days of the date of the Confirmatory Order with a copy submitted to the NRC at least 7 days earlier. 4. Mr. Sharp agrees to prepare and submit an operating experience report to the Institute for Nuclear Power Operations regarding his actions on November 8, 2006, and the lessons learned from that experience. This report will be submitted within 60 days of the date of the Confirmatory Order [[Page 61189]] with a copy submitted to the NRC at least 7 days earlier. 5. Mr. Sharp agrees to continue to incorporate his lessons learned into the training opportunities afforded him in the nuclear industry for a minimum period of 1 year from the date of the Confirmatory Order. 6. Mr. Sharp and the NRC agree that Mr. Sharp may share the terms of this Agreement in Principle with his current workplace supervisors prior to the issuance of the Confirmatory Order. 7. The NRC agrees not to pursue any further enforcement action in connection with the NRC's July 12, 2007, letter to Mr. Mark Sharp. This does not prohibit NRC from taking enforcement action in accordance with the NRC Enforcement Policy if Mr. Sharp commits a similar violation in the future or violates this order. On October 16, 2007, Mr. Mark Sharp consented to issuing this Order with the commitments, as described in Section V below. APS further agreed that this Order is to be effective upon issuance and that it has waived its right to a hearing. IV Since Mr. Sharp has agreed to take actions to address NRC concerns, as set forth in item III above, the NRC has concluded that its concerns can be resolved through issuance of this Order. I find that Mr. Sharp's commitments as set forth in section V are acceptable and necessary and conclude that with these commitments the public health and safety are reasonably assured. In view of the foregoing, I have determined that public health and safety require that Mr. Sharp's commitments be confirmed by this Order. Based on the above and Mr. Sharp's consent, this Order is immediately effective upon issuance. V Accordingly, pursuant to sections 104, 161b, 161i, 161o, and 186 of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, as amended, the Commission's regulations in 10 CFR 2.202 and 10 CFR Part 55, It is hereby ordered, effective immediately, that: 1. Mr. Sharp will not participate in activities requiring a 10 CFR Part 55 license until items 2-4 below are completed. Mr. Sharp is not prohibited from engaging in activities related to training of operators or any other 10 CFR Part 50 regulated activities. 2. Mr. Sharp will submit a letter to the NRC Region IV Regional Administrator, to be included in his docket file, articulating why the NRC should have confidence that he can be trusted to engage in activities under NRC jurisdiction in the future with the integrity such activities demand. This letter will be submitted within 30 days of the date of this Confirmatory Order. 3. Mr. Sharp will submit an article to the ``Communicator'' (a publication of the Professional Reactor Operator Society) articulating lessons learned from this incident and emphasizing the importance of self-reporting and not covering up errors. This article will be submitted within 60 days of the date of this Confirmatory Order with a copy submitted to the NRC Region IV Regional Administrator at least 7 days before submission to the ``Communicator.'' 4. Mr. Sharp will prepare and submit an operating experience report to the Institute for Nuclear Power Operations regarding his actions on November 8, 2006, and the lessons learned from that experience. This report will be submitted within 60 days of the date of this Confirmatory Order with a copy submitted to the NRC Region IV Regional Administrator at least 7 days before submission to the Institute. 5. Mr. Sharp will continue to incorporate his lessons learned into the training opportunities afforded him in the nuclear industry for a minimum period of one year from the date of this Confirmatory Order. The Regional Administrator, NRC Region IV, may relax or rescind, in writing, any of the above conditions upon a showing by Mr. Sharp of good cause. VI Any person adversely affected by this Confirmatory Order, other than Mr. Mark Sharp, may request a hearing within 20 days of its issuance. Where good cause is shown, consideration will be given to extending the time to request a hearing. A request for extension of time must be made in writing to the Director, Office of Enforcement, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC 20555-0001, and include a statement of good cause for the extension. Any request for a hearing shall be submitted to the Secretary, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Attn: Chief, Rulemakings and Adjudications Staff, Washington, DC 20555-0001. Copies of the hearing request shall also be sent to the Director, Office of Enforcement, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC 20555-0001, to the Assistant General Counsel for Materials Litigation and Enforcement at the same address, to the Regional Administrator, NRC Region IV, 611 Ryan Plaza Drive, Suite 400, Arlington, Texas 76011-4005, and to Mr. Mark Sharp. Because of the possible disruptions in delivery of mail to United States Government offices, it is requested that answers and requests for hearing be transmitted to the Secretary of the Commission either by means of facsimile transmission to 301-415-1101 or by e-mail to hearingdocket@nrc.gov and also to the Office of the General Counsel either by means of facsimile transmission to 301-415-3725 or by e-mail to OGCMailCenter@nrc.gov. If a person other than Mr. Sharp requests a hearing, that person shall set forth with particularity the manner in which his interest is adversely affected by this Order and shall address the criteria set forth in 10 CFR 2.309(d) and (f). If a hearing is requested by a person whose interest is adversely affected, the Commission will issue an Order designating the time and place of any hearing. If a hearing is held, the issue to be considered at such hearing shall be whether this Confirmatory Order should be sustained. In the absence of any request for hearing, or written approval of an extension of time in which to request a hearing, the provisions specified in section V above shall be final 20 days from the date of this Order without further order or proceedings. If an extension of time for requesting a hearing has been approved, the provisions specified in section V shall be final when the extension expires if a hearing request has not been received. An answer or a request for hearing shall not stay the immediate effectiveness of this order. Dated this 19th day of October 2007. For the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Elmo E. Collins, Regional Administrator. [FR Doc. E7-21211 Filed 10-26-07; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 7590-01-P ***************************************************************** 15 NRC: In the Matter of Arizona Public Service Company; Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station; Confirmatory Order Modifying License (Effective Immediately) FR Doc E7-21212 [Federal Register: October 29, 2007 (Volume 72, Number 208)] [Notices] [Page 61186-61188] From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr29oc07-84] ======================================================================= ----------------------------------------------------------------------- NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION [Docket Nos. 50-528; 50-529, 50-530; EA-07-162] I Arizona Public Service Company (APS) (Licensee) is the holder of reactor operating licenses, License Nos. NPF-41, NPF-51, NPF-74, issued by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC or Commission), pursuant to 10 CFR Part 50, on June 6, 1985, April 24, 1986, and November 25, 1987. The licenses authorize the operation of Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station (PVNGS) in accordance with conditions specified therein. The facility is located on the Licensee's site in Buckeye, Arizona. This Confirmatory Order is the result of an agreement reached during an alternative dispute resolution (ADR) mediation session conducted on August 27, 2007. II On November 20, 2006, the NRC Office of Investigations (OI) began an investigation (OI Case No. 4-2007-009) at PVNGS. As a result of the staff's review of the information, the NRC was concerned that a senior reactor operator (SRO), stationed as a reactor operator, appeared to have engaged in deliberate misconduct. Specifically, on November 8, 2006, the SRO had mistakenly entered an incorrect blowdown constant into the plant computer and subsequently attempted to conceal the mistake by falsifying the blowdown record. The NRC's preliminary findings were discussed in a letter to APS dated July 12, 2007. That letter identified an apparent violation of 10 CFR 50.9 that was being considered for escalated enforcement action, and identified the NRC's concern that the SRO actions may have involved willfulness in the form of deliberate misconduct. A predecisional enforcement conference had been scheduled to discuss the apparent violation. However, prior to the conference, APS requested ADR in an attempt to resolve the issue. ADR is a general term encompassing various techniques for resolving conflict outside of court using a neutral third party. The technique that the NRC has decided to employ is mediation. On August 27, 2007, the NRC and APS met in an ADR session mediated by a professional mediator, arranged through Cornell University's Institute on Conflict Resolution. At the conclusion of the ADR session, APS and the NRC did reach an Agreement in Principle. This Confirmatory Order is issued pursuant to the agreement reached during the ADR process. III During that ADR session, a preliminary settlement agreement was reached. Pursuant to the NRC's Alternative Dispute Resolution program (ADR), the following are the terms and conditions agreed upon in principle by APS and the NRC relating to the issues described in the NRC's letter to APS dated July 12, 2007. Whereas, APS and the NRC agree that there were two issues: (1) A licensed operator failed to self-report an error he made in entering data into a plant computer, and subsequently he attempted to conceal his error, and (2) a failure by APS to promptly notify other licensees of a potential access authorization issue with respect to this individual, in violation of NRC requirements; Whereas, the actions of this licensed operator, though unacceptable, were of very low significance from a nuclear safety perspective; Whereas, the actions of this licensed operator were identified by APS and APS promptly informed the NRC; Whereas the access authorization issue is of very low safety significance; Whereas, APS has completed corrective actions to address the issues described in the July 12, 2007, letter issued by the NRC to APS, including actions to correct the initial error made by the plant licensed operator, to reduce the likelihood of similar errors in the future, to improve Independent Verifications, to further improve the safety culture in the plant Operations Department, and to improve APS' processes for ensuring that pertinent information regarding personnel access authorization is appropriately communicated to other nuclear power plant licensees; and Whereas, these terms and conditions shall not be binding on either party until memorialized in a confirmatory order issued by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to APS relating to this matter. APS planned to complete additional corrective and improvement actions with respect to these issues, and agrees to take the following actions, which will be included in a Confirmatory Order from the NRC to APS: 1. APS will develop training on these issues, using a case study. The training will focus on the importance of self-reporting errors, the importance of performing good independent verifications, and deterring individuals from concealing mistakes. APS will provide this training to its Operations Department within 6 months of the date of the Confirmatory Order. 2. APS will perform assessments of its independent verification processes in the Operations and Maintenance Departments. The assessments will be completed within 12 months of the date of the Confirmatory Order, and applicable actions resulting from the assessment will be tracked for completion. In addition, within this same time period, APS will incorporate in a Quality Assurance (QA) audit plan a follow-up assessment to ensure the actions to improve the independent verification processes were effective. 3. Within 12 months of the date of this Confirmatory Order, APS will provide training on both issues identified above to its leaders and managers. The intent of this training will be to focus leaders and managers on the importance of balancing accountability with encouraging workers to self-report errors and on the importance of communicating this with their workers, and on ensuring that potential access authorization issues are promptly addressed. 4. Within 12 months of the date of the Confirmatory Order, APS will utilize the case study identified in Item 3 in evaluating its training for new leaders with a goal towards ensuring that new leaders are sensitized to balancing accountability with encouraging workers to self-report errors, on the importance of communicating this with their workers, and on ensuring that potential access authorization issues are promptly addressed. [[Page 61187]] 5. Within 6 months of the date of the Confirmatory Order, APS will conduct a follow-up safety culture review of its Operations Department, in order to determine the effectiveness of its actions to improve the safety culture in the Operations Department, and applicable actions resulting from the review will be tracked for completion. 6. Within 30 days of the date of the Confirmatory Order, APS will provide the NRC with written communication regarding the weaknesses found in its process for identifying potential access authorization issues to other licensees through the Personnel Access Data System (PADS). APS will describe its corrective actions in this letter, and will send the letter to the Document Control Desk with a copy to the Regional Administrator, NRC RIV and to the Resident Inspector at the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station. 7. Within 6 months of the date of the Confirmatory Order, APS will develop a generic communication for the industry in the form of an Operating Experience report regarding weaknesses it found in its process for informing other licensees of potential access authorization issues concerning individuals who resign from the plant before any disciplinary action is taken against them. The NRC agrees not to pursue any further enforcement action in connection with the issues described in the NRC's July 12, 2007, letter to APS, including the access authorization issue described in that letter, and will not count these matters as previous enforcement for the purposes of assessing potential future enforcement action civil penalty assessments in accordance with section VI.C of the Enforcement Policy. The NRC agrees to provide APS with 48 hours notice prior to issuance of the Confirmatory Order described in this agreement. On October 17, 2007, APS consented to issuing this Order with the commitments, as described in section V below. APS further agreed that this Order is to be affective upon issuance and that it has waived its right to a hearing. IV Since APS has agreed to take additional actions to address NRC concerns, as set forth in section III above, the NRC has concluded that its concerns can be resolved through issuance of this Order. I find that the Licensee's commitments as set forth in section V are acceptable and necessary and conclude that with these commitments the public health and safety are reasonably assured. In view of the foregoing, I have determined that public health and safety require that the Licensee's commitments be confirmed by this Order. Based on the above and the Licensee's consent, this Order is immediately effective upon issuance. V Accordingly, pursuant to sections 104, 161b, 161i, 161o, 182, and 186 of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, as amended, the Commission's regulations in 10 CFR 2.202, and 10 CFR Part 50, It is hereby ordered, effective immediately, that license Nos. NPF-41, NPF-51, NPF-74 are modified as follows: 1. APS will develop training on the issues described in the apparent violation identified in the NRC's letter to APS dated July 12, 2007, using a case study. The training will focus on the importance of self-reporting errors, the importance of performing good independent verifications, and deterring individuals from concealing mistakes. APS will provide this training to its Operations Department (permanent employees and contractors scheduled to work in the Operations Department for 1-year or more) within 6 months of the date of the Confirmatory Order. 2. APS will perform assessments of its independent verification processes in the Operations and Maintenance Departments. The assessments will be completed within 12 months of the date of the Confirmatory Order, and applicable actions resulting from the assessment will be tracked for completion. In addition, within this same time period, APS will incorporate in a QA audit plan a follow-up assessment to ensure the actions to improve the independent verification processes were effective. 3. Within 12 months of the date of this Confirmatory Order, APS will provide training to its leaders and managers on the two issues in this case: (1) A licensed operator failed to self-report an error he made in entering data into a plant computer, and subsequently he attempted to conceal his error, and (2) a failure by APS to promptly notify other licensees of a potential access authorization issue with respect to this individual, in violation of NRC requirements. The intent of this training will be to focus leaders and managers on the importance of balancing accountability with encouraging workers to self-report errors and on the importance of communicating this with their workers, and on ensuring that potential access authorization issues are promptly addressed. 4. Within 12 months of the date of the Confirmatory Order, APS will utilize the case study identified in Item 3 in evaluating its training for new leaders with a goal towards ensuring that new leaders are sensitized to balancing accountability with encouraging workers to self-report errors, on the importance of communicating this with their workers, and on ensuring that potential access authorization issues are promptly addressed. 5. Within 6 months of the date of the Confirmatory Order, APS will conduct a follow-up safety culture review of its Operations Department, in order to determine the effectiveness of its actions to improve the safety culture in the Operations Department, and applicable actions resulting from the review will be tracked for completion. 6. Within 30 days of the date of the Confirmatory Order, APS will provide the NRC with written communication regarding the weaknesses found in its process for identifying potential access authorization issues to other licensees through the Personnel Access Data System (PADS). APS will describe its corrective actions in this letter, and will send the letter to the Document Control Desk with a copy to the Regional Administrator, NRC RIV, and to the Resident Inspector at PVNGS. 7. Within 6 months of the date of the Confirmatory Order, APS will develop a generic communication for the industry in the form of an Operating Experience report regarding weaknesses it found in its process for informing other licensees of potential access authorization issues concerning individuals who resign from the plant before any disciplinary action is taken against them. The Regional Administrator, NRC Region IV may, in writing, relax or rescind any of the above conditions upon demonstration by the Licensee of good cause. VI Any person adversely affected by this Confirmatory Order, other than APS, may request a hearing within 20 days of its issuance. Where good cause is shown, consideration will be given to extending the time to request a hearing. A request for extension of time must be made in writing to the Director, Office of Enforcement, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC 20555, and include a statement of good cause for the extension. Any request for a hearing shall be submitted to the Secretary, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Attn: Rulemakings and Adjudications Staff, Washington, DC 20555-0001. Copies also shall be sent to the Director, Office of Enforcement, U.S. [[Page 61188]] Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC 20555-0001, to the Assistant General Counsel for Materials Litigation and Enforcement at the same address, to the Regional Administrator, NRC Region IV, 611 Ryan Plaza Drive, Suite 400, Arlington, Texas 76011, and to APS. Because of the possible disruptions in delivery of mail to United States Government offices, it is requested that answers and requests for hearing be transmitted to the Secretary of the Commission either by means of facsimile transmission to 301-415-1101 or by e-mail to hearingdocket@nrc.gov and also to the Office of the General Counsel either by means of facsimile transmission to 301-415-3725 or by e-mail to OGCMailCenter@nrc.gov. If such a person requests a hearing, that person shall set forth with particularity the manner in which his interest is adversely affected by this Order and shall address the criteria set forth in 10 CFR 2.309 (d) and (f). If a hearing is requested by a person whose interest is adversely affected, the Commission will issue an Order designating the time and place of any hearing. If a hearing is held, the issue to be considered at such hearing shall be whether this Confirmatory Order should be sustained. In the absence of any request for hearing, or written approval of an extension of time in which to request a hearing, the provisions specified in section V above shall be final 20 days from the date of this Order without further order or proceedings. If an extension of time for requesting a hearing has been approved, the provisions specified in section V shall be final when the extension expires if a hearing request has not been received. An answer or a request for hearing shall not stay the immediate effectiveness of this order. Dated this 19th day of October 2007. For the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Elmo E. Collins, Regional Administrator. [FR Doc. E7-21212 Filed 10-26-07; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 7590-01-P ***************************************************************** 16 Reuters: So Cal Ed Calif. San Onofre 2 reactor up to 95 pct Mon Oct 29, 2007 8:54am EDT NEW YORK, Oct 29 (Reuters) - Southern California Edison's 1,070-megawatt Unit 2 at the San Onofre nuclear power station in California exited an outage and ramped up to 95 percent power by early Monday, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission said. The unit shut Oct. 20 to allow workers to check valves in the cooling water system. The 2,150 MW San Onofre station is located in San Clemente about 60 miles north of San Diego. There are two units at San Onofre, the 1,070 MW Unit 2 and the 1,080 MW Unit 3, which entered service in 1983 and 1984, respectively. Unit 3 shut by Oct. 9 and will likely return in early November. One MW powers about 700 homes in California. So Cal Ed, a subsidiary of Edison International (EIX.N: Quote, Profile, Research) perates the station for its owners, including So Cal Ed (75 percent), Sempra Energy's (SRE.N: Quote, Profile, Research) San Diego Gas & Electric subsidiary (20 percent), and the California cities of Riverside (2 percent) and Anaheim (3 percent). Edison International, of Rosemead, California, owns and operates about 14,000 MW of generating capacity, markets energy commodities in North America, and transmits and distributes electricity to about 4.6 million customers in central and Southern California. © Reuters2007All rights reserved ***************************************************************** 17 Reuters: Exelon Ill. Braidwood 1 reactor up to 64 pct power Mon Oct 29, 2007 8:35am EDT NEW YORK, Oct 29 (Reuters) - Exelon Corp's (EXC.N: Quote, Profile, Research) 1,178-megawatt Unit 1 at the Braidwood nuclear power station in Illinois ramped up to 64 percent power by early Monday, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission said in a report. On Friday, the unit was operating at 30 percent power after exiting a refueling. The company shut the unit on Sept. 30 for the refueling. The unit last shut for refueling from April 16-May 4, 2006. It is on an 18-month refueling cycle, The 2,330 MW Braidwood station, which entered service in 1988, is located in Braceville in Will County about 60 miles southwest of Chicago. There are two units at the station, Unit 1 and the 1,152 MW Unit 2. Unit 2 continued to operate at full power. One MW powers about 800 homes in Illinois. Exelon, of Chicago, owns and operates more than 38,000 MW of generating capacity, markets energy commodities, and transmits and distributes electricity (5.4 million) and natural gas (480,000) to customers in Illinois and Pennsylvania. © Reuters2007All rights reserved ***************************************************************** 18 Reuters: Entergy N.Y. FitzPatrick reactor shut | Mon Oct 29, 2007 8:07am EDT NEW YORK, Oct 29 (Reuters) - Entergy Corp's (ETR.N: Quote, Profile, Research) 852-megawatt FitzPatrick nuclear power station in New York shut by early Monday, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission said in a report. On Friday, the unit was operating at full power. The station, which entered service in 1976, is located in Scriba in Oswego County about 90 miles east of Rochester, New York. One MW powers about 800 homes in New York. Entergy in August 2006 filed for a 20-year extension of the unit's original 40-year operating license. It usually takes the NRC about 22 months (May 2008) to make a decision on a license renewal without a hearing and about 30 months (Jan 2009) with a hearing. Entergy owns and operates about 30,000 MW of generating capacity, markets energy commodities, and transmits and distributes power to 2.6 million customers in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas. © Reuters2007All rights reserved ***************************************************************** 19 Reuters: Entergy La. River Bend reactor cut to 75 pct power Mon Oct 29, 2007 8:47am EDT NEW YORK, Oct 29 (Reuters) - Entergy Corp's (ETR.N: Quote, Profile, Research) 967-megawatt River Bend nuclear powetion in Louisiana dipped to 75 percent power by early Monday, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission said in a report. On Friday, the unit was operating at full power. Electricity traders guessed the unit was coasting down for a planned month-long refueling outage expected to start in late October. The unit last shut for refueling from April 23-May 15, 2006. It is on an 18-month refueling cycle. The station, which entered service in 1986, is located in St. Francisville in West Feliciana Parish, about 24 miles north-northwest of Baton Rouge. The company has said it would submit in 2008 an application with the NRC to build a new reactor at River Bend. The company is considering the construction of General Electric's Economic Simplified Boiling Water Reactors (ESBWR) at the site. One MW powers about 500 homes in Louisiana. Entergy, of New Orleans, owns and operates about 30,000 MW of generating capacity, markets energy commodities, and transmits and distributes power to 2.6 million customers in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas. © Reuters2007All rights reserved ***************************************************************** 20 Reuters: Exelon shuts Ill. Dresden 2 reactor for refueling | Mon Oct 29, 2007 11:30am EDT NEW YORK, Oct 29 (Reuters) - Exelon Corp (EXC.N: Quote, Profile, Research) shut the 867-megawatt Unit 2 at the Dresden nuclear power station in Illinois for planned refueling early Monday, a spokesman for the plant said. He could not say when the unit would return to service due to competitive reasons. Electricity traders guessed the unit would return in about a month. On Friday, the unit was operating at 98 percent power as it coasted down for the refueling expected to start in late October. The unit, which is on a 24-month refueling cycle, last shut from Oct. 31 to Nov. 21, 2005. The 1,734 MW Dresden station is located in Morris, in Grundy County, about 60 miles southeast of Chicago. The plant's two 867 MW Units 2 and 3 entered service in 1970 and 1971. Unit 3 ramped up to full power from 99 percent on Friday. One MW powers about 800 homes in Illinois. Chicago-based Exelon owns and operates more than 38,000 MW of generating capacity, markets energy commodities, and transmits and distributes electricity (5.4 million) and natural gas (480,000) to customers in Illinois and Pennsylvania. © Reuters2007All rights reserved ***************************************************************** 21 Times of India: Nuke issue: Advani rebuffs Kissinger 30 Oct 2007, 0134 hrs IST,TNN NEW DELHI: Last-ditch vigorous lobbying by the US for BJP's support on the nuclear deal ran into a stern negative reply on Monday with leader of Opposition LK Advani as well as party chief Rajnath Singh repeating their strong opposition to the agreement teetering on the brink of collapse. The BJP's "no" was forcefully articulated by Advani at a meeting with Henry Kissinger, the influential former US national security advisor who has lately turned a vocal advocate of India, here on Monday. The meeting, which had Kissinger clarifying right at the outset that he was not here to lobby for the deal, saw Advani once again decoupling the party's views on the deal and its stand on friendship with the US. The leader of Opposition said that BJP was not opposed to closer ties with the US but its opposition to the deal was in the context of its consistent advocacy for India to have a nuclear weapons programme. He traced the stand to the resolution that the BJP adopted in 1966, calling upon the government to develop a weapons programme. Rajnath Singh, speaking in similar vein, told US envoy David Mulford that the BJP could not be expected to support the nuclear energy cooperation agreement in its present form. Mulford had called on Singh amid frenetic efforts by US functionaries to mop up support for the deal and clear "misperceptions". Mulford termed the deal pro-India, pointing out, according to BJP sources, that the Bush administration had come under fire for conceding a lot to India under the deal. Sources also felt that the American envoy seemed to suggest that the failure of the deal to go through might leave a scar on bilateral ties. The persuasion attempt turned out to be an exercise in futility with the BJP chief stating reservations about the UPA government's decision on grounds of "foreign policy and strategic independence". Singh, it is learnt, also told the American envoy about his party's demand for a scrutiny of the deal by a joint parliamentary committee. Talking to TOI later, Advani ruled out any change in the BJP's stance. "There has been no change," he asserted. Copyright © 2007 Times Internet Limited. All rights reserved. For ***************************************************************** 22 UPI: Walker's World: India's dead nuke deal UPI.com Published: 29, 2007 at 11:05 AM By MARTIN WALKER UPI Editor Emeritus MANIPAL, India, Oct. 29 (UPI) -- The failure by the Indian government to win parliamentary approval for its nuclear agreement with the Bush administration is being widely explained in the United States as an essentially political problem caused by the left and the Communist party, on whose vote the government of Manmohan Singh depends. This explanation is flawed. The refusal of the Indian Communists to endorse the deal is seen as classic anti-Americanism, helped along by China’s influence over the Indian left, and the last thing the Chinese government wants to see is the emergence of a strong U.S.-Indian strategic alliance to challenge China’s growing dominance in Asia. There is enough truth in this explanation to be plausible, but it ignores two essential facts. The first is that the nuclear deal is also being shunned by the main opposition party, the Bharatiya Janata Party, which launched the strategic partnership with the United States when it was in power but is now rejecting it. One reason for that is the BJP sees this as a lever to force the Singh government out of power. But as Hindu nationalists, it also rejects the deal as constraining India’s freedom of action. The development of a nuclear weapon and of a network of home-built nuclear power stations providing nearly 4,000 megawatts of electricity has long been not simply a deep source of national pride, but also a potent symbol of Indian nationalism and of its aspiration to great-power status. And surrounded by nuclear power to the east (China), north (Russia) and west (Pakistan), there are understandable reasons for India’s development of nuclear weapons. The second key fact is that the opposition to the nuclear deal has not been led by the left, but by Indian’s own nuclear scientists. Dr P.K. Iyengar, former chairman of India’s Atomic Energy commission, told this reporter in an exclusive United Press International interview at his home in New Delhi in February that “the agreement would force us to stop reprocessing nuclear fuel, something we have been doing for 30 years.” “It would terminate our strategic program (India’s nuclear weapons program) by exposing us to sanctions if we conducted nuclear tests. And it puts impossible barriers in our path to ongoing and future research, including our well-developed programs for fast-breeder reactors and to use thorium rather than uranium as a nuclear fuel,” he said. “By saying that India shall not reprocess fuel and not develop the fast-breeder reactors, this deal undermines our ability to produce energy in the future when uranium runs out,” Iyengar said. “This is a question of national sovereignty, of India’s right and ability to decide such things for ourselves.” It was the combination of the scientists, the left, the BJP opposition and a cleverly coordinated campaign by influential Indian nationalists that sank the deal. The key to their campaign was the claim the U.S. deal was designed to stop India from developing further weapons. The Hyde Act of the U.S. Congress says any nuclear supplies or technology from the United States should stop if India conducts another bomb test, which it would almost certainly need to do if it wants to miniaturize its warheads for deployment on missiles. The American diplomat who negotiated the agreement claimed that every effort had been made to safeguard India’s national pride. “I can assure you that the U.S. is not going to suggest a similar deal with any other country in the world. We’ve always felt of India as an exception,” argues Nicholas Burns, undersecretary for political affairs at the U.S. State Department, who also insists that India’s nuclear weapons program will not be affected by the deal. “We work with India on the civil side; that is safeguarded. What India does on the strategic side is India’s business. This agreement doesn’t aid that program and it doesn’t have an effect.” Beyond this, the main advantage of the deal for India is that it opens the way for it to import nuclear fuel freely for its civilian reactors, which are currently operating at two-thirds capacity because of the shortage of uranium. Sanctions have prevented India from buying this fuel from the tightly controlled club of fuel suppliers (the Nuclear Suppliers Group) since it first tested a nuclear weapon and refused to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty. According to Jyotiraditya Scindia, a member of Parliament for the ruling Congress Party, this means India can finally hope to address the massive challenge of energy supplies. “Sustaining nine to 10 percent GDP growth in order to eliminate poverty requires us to expand our power capacity at nearly 20,000 megawatts a year,” Scindia says. “With this agreement, we can now look forward to generating around 20,000 MW of nuclear power by 2020. The deal allows us to access the latest nuclear technology from anywhere in the world to build the latest generation nuclear power plants for civilian use. The argument that India would be dependent on U.S. technology is patently misplaced as we would be able to buy technology from many other countries, such as France, Japan and Russia.” The United States is now putting pressure on the Indian government to face down the opposition and move ahead with the deal anyway, warning that the next U.S. Congress and the next U.S. president after 2008 might not be so accommodating. But Indians know that the technicalities of the nuclear deal are just the tip of a much larger iceberg of growing U.S.-Indian cooperation in military affairs, intelligence-sharing, space technology agreements and above all in trade. The real prize of a close U.S.-Indian strategic partnership is already secured, despite the nuclear arguments. © 2007 United Press International. All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 23 Calgary Sun: Nuke topic closed to public Mon, October 29, 2007 By CP OTTAWA -- Last January, Natural Resources Minister Gary Lunn gave a speech to the Economic Club of Toronto in which he touted the virtues of nuclear energy, including a new breed of next-generation reactors. "As a nation of energy consumers, we must be prepared to have an open discussion about nuclear power," Lunn said. That was then, this is now. An open discussion appears to be the last thing the minority Conservative government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper is prepared to have when it comes to an issue that, in Australia, is now being called the N-word. That's because a developing new international nuclear club re-opens the politically radioactive subjects of proliferation and nuclear waste. More than a month after senior Canadian officials took part as observers in a Vienna meeting to discuss the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, or GNEP, the Prime Minister's Office is refusing to permit cabinet ministers to speak publicly about the U.S.-led initiative. Requests for a media interview with Lunn were passed along, unanswered, to Foreign Affairs Minister Maxime Bernier. After checking with Harper's PMO, Bernier's office ended up issuing the following statement: "Canada has been invited to join this international partnership. The government is carefully considering this invitation before making a decision, which will be announced at a later date." Copyright © 2006, Canoe Inc. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 24 Las Vegas SUN: Editorial: Politics and facts collide Today: October 29, 2007 at 7:8:28 PDT Bush administration won't stop meddling with the science behind global warming A government expert last week planned to deliver 12 pages of testimony to a Senate committee about the likely effects of global warming on public health. But first she had to submit her written testimony to the White House for review. Her report was chopped in half. Now the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, lead by Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., is demanding that every word of the original report be released to it for inclusion in the public record. The committee's demand of the White House is highly justified. The Bush administration has a history of overlaying the work of government scientists with its political ideology. Two years ago, in perhaps the most high-profile incident of this blurring of science and politics, NASA's top climatologist, James Hansen, disclosed that government censors were diluting not only his work, but also the work of other government scientists. In deference to fossil-fuel energy industries, whose emissions contribute to global warming, the Bush administration plays down the whole notion of man-made climate change. Last week Julie Gerberding, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, was prepared to testify in detail about global warming and public health. Six pages, covering such issues as the effects of excessive heat on individuals, warming-related air pollution and the potential for the spread of disease as temperatures rise, were deleted from her report by the White House. The deletions became known when the Associated Press was able to obtain an original copy of her testimony. The White House said it merely deleted passages that conflicted with findings this year by a U.N. panel on global warming. On Thursday, however, Boxer released comparisons of the panel's findings and Gerberding's planned testimony, showing them to be nearly identical. Objective peer review is the time-honored and traditional way of validating the work of scientists. We're quite certain that the White House is not the place where any scientist - or any ethical person, for that matter - would want that review to take place. All contents © 1996 - 2007 Las Vegas Sun, Inc. ***************************************************************** 25 Platts: Energoatom signs nuclear safety agreement with SKI 2007-10-25 Washington (Platts)--25Oct2007 Ukrainian nuclear operator Energoatom has signed an agreement on nuclear safety improvement with the Swedish Nuclear Power Inspectorate, or SKI, Energoatom management said in a statement October 25. SKI will help to develop a periodic safety review program for Energoatom's reactors, beginning with a pilot project at the South Ukraine plant. Copyright © 2007 - Platts, All Rights Reserved ***************************************************************** 26 Reuters: Honduras finds radioactive material in container Mon Oct 29, 2007 1:44pm EDT TEGUCIGALPA, Oct 29 (Reuters) - Honduras authorities have found strong traces of radioactive material in a Hong Kong-bound shipping container carrying steel debris from an Atlantic coast port, officials said on Monday. During a security scan on Sunday, officials detected high readings of radioactivity emanating from the container at the Puerto Cortes port, 115 miles (185 km) north of Honduras' capital, Tegucigalpa. "We immediately declared an alert and have seized the container for inspection," Edwin Araque, the manager of Honduras' port authority, said on Monday. The container belonged to a local company. Docks and ports across the world are scanned for materials that could be used to produce nuclear or dirty bombs. Puerto Cortes was declared a safe port by the United States more than a year ago. A government official said the material found in the container was Cesium-137 and could have come from a hospital. It is often used to sterilize medical equipment and also has a wide range of industrial applications. In March, Spain halted production at a steel plant after workers found the material in a truck. Reuters.com: ***************************************************************** 27 UPI: Nuclear facilities miss security deadline - UPI.com Published: 29, 2007 at 2:16 PM WASHINGTON, Oct. 29 (UPI) -- A watchdog group criticized the U.S. Energy Department for not moving quickly enough to tighten security at the nation's nuclear weapons facilities. The Project on Government Oversight, which has been warning about vulnerability to terrorists, said a briefing prepared by the Government Accountability Office indicated that five of the 11 sites will miss improvement deadlines, The New York Times reported Monday. A copy of the briefing materials prepared for the U.S. Senate was provided to the Times by the watchdog group. One site that will miss its deadline by years, the briefing materials claimed, is the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee that will take until 2015 to dilute its large stock of weapons-grade uranium. Two other sites set to miss deadlines are operated by the National Nuclear Security Administration whose director was forced to resign in January because of security lapses, the Times said. "The department seems to think that the terrorist threat to its nuclear facilities is no more serious than a Halloween prank," U.S. Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., told the newspaper. © 2007 United Press International. All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 28 EPA: terrorism should be considered in relicensing Indian Point -- Newsday.com By JIM FITZGERALD | Associated Press Writer 6:30 PM EDT, October 29, 2007 WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. - The Environmental Protection Agency, in a break from the federal nuclear authority, says the potential impact of terrorism should be considered in deciding whether to relicense the Indian Point nuclear power plants. In a letter to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission issued Oct. 10 and made public Monday, the EPA requested that eight issues, including terrorism, "be discussed in the environmental impact statement for these license renewals." The plants' owner, Entergy Nuclear, has applied for new licenses that would keep the two plants running until 2033 and 2035. Opponents of the plants, which have become especially controversial since the terrorist attacks of 2001, have focused on the relicensing as a chance to shut the plants down in the next decade. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which has just begun the lengthy relicensing process, has turned away demands from the public and politicians that terrorism be considered, saying that is beyond the scope of relicensing. "The security of the plant needs to be dealt with on an ongoing basis" rather than as part of the relicensing process, NRC spokesman Neil Sheehan said Monday. Under current regulations, the relicensing process would focus mostly on how Entergy plans to deal with the aging of the plant structure and on how the environment would be affected by 20 more years of Indian Point operation. The EPA's requests include "an analysis of the impacts of intentional destructive acts (e.g. terrorism)." It also asks that the relicensing debate include an evaluation of radioactive leaks from the spent-fuel pools at the plants, which the NRC says is also outside the relicensing parameters. Various groups have filed lawsuits demanding hearings on the scope of the relicensing. New York City, just 30 miles south of the reactors in Buchanan, has formally requested _ without taking a position _ that it be allowed a voice in the decision. The nuclear plants have been plagued in recent years with problems including the radioactive leaks, a failing emergency siren system and a guard caught sleeping. Copyright © 2007, The Associated Press ***************************************************************** 29 BBC NEWS: Radiation leak at Russian plant Last Updated: Monday, 29 October 2007, 16:36 GMT Russia says there has been a radiation leak at a nuclear reprocessing plant in the Ural mountains east of Moscow, but that it has not harmed anyone. Local emergency officials say a faulty tap allowed radioactive waste to leak from a tank onto a stretch of road at the Mayak plant last Thursday. Radiation levels inside and outside the plant are normal, the officials say. In the latest incident, a violation of safety rules was blamed for the leak. Russian prosecutors are considering whether to open a criminal case. * BBC Copyright Notice ***************************************************************** 30 ISN Security Watch: Depleted uranium, depleted health concerns Tuesday, 30 October 2007 Home / News and Current Affairs / Security Image: Matt Jolley, Flickr As a growing number of Italian soldiers who served in the Balkans meet their death due to serious illness, the specter of 'Balkan Syndrome' and the effects of depleted uranium are again in the spotlight. By Anes Alic in Sarajevo for ISN Security Watch (29/10/07) An increase of the number of Italian soldiers who served in the Balkans during the 1990s who are falling seriously ill due to depleted uranium exposure is causing a public outrage in Italy, as the government downplays the extent of the problem, widely referred to as "Balkan Syndrome." According to an October study by the Italian Military Health Observatory, a total of 164 Italian soldiers have died thus far due to exposure to depleted uranium while serving in the Sarajevo suburbs and in Kosovo during the 1990s. In 2007 alone, the study said there were nine such related deaths and 97 new cases of uranium infection. However, these numbers contradict government data, which claims that a total of 255 Italian troops have contracted tumors up to this date not only in missions in Balkans but also in Afghanistan, Iraq and Lebanon. The government also said that there was no established connection between those cases and depleted uranium. Speaking to the Senate commission of inquiry into depleted uranium, Italian Defense Minister Arturo Parisi said that 37 of those soldiers who had contracted tumors had died so far. During that same period, 1,427 troops not involved in missions abroad also contracted tumors, according to the government. "Nevertheless, cases of soldiers discharged years ago who did not apply for military service to be recognized as the cause will be excluded. This means that their illness may only be known to the national, but not the military, health service," Parisi said. Following the minister's speech before the Senate investigation committee, which will release its own report on the depleted uranium allegations by the end of the year, questions were raised over the accuracy of the statistics provided with some members of the parliament expressing doubt over defense ministry's methodology, according to Italian media reports. "I fear the minister's figures refer only to the number of soldiers who fell ill while in active service, and failed to take account of those who had left the military," Italian media quoted Tana de Zuleta, a Green MP in the majority coalition, as saying. In addition, in late September, the Italian government passed a decree allocating €170 million (US$245 million) in compensation for military personnel who have contracted diseases during their service - some 28,000 of them in Balkan missions alone. However, next year, the government is planning, due to contradictory statistics, to set up a center comprised of leading experts in the field to study the depleted uranium issue, as the identification of a relationship of cause and effect is still under investigation. Concerns over possible health effects of depleted uranium shells in Bosnia and Kosovo have also been raised by service members or civilian aid workers in Spain, France, Belgium, Britain, the Netherlands and Portugal. Several dozens deaths and illnesses of military personnel from these countries over the course of the past decade have been attributed to depleted uranium by their governments. Weapon of choice Up to one million rounds of depleted uranium-enhanced ammunition were used in Iraq and Kuwait in 1991. Many Gulf War veterans have argued that depleted uranium has been the cause of their serious illnesses. The same munitions were the weapons of choice for US forces in air attacks on Bosnian Serb positions in 1995 and the former Serbia and Montenegro federation in 1999. Depleted uranium is what is leftover from the production of enriched uranium for nuclear weapons and energy plants. It is used in armor-penetrating military ordinance because of its high density, and also in the manufacture of defensive armor plates. The element also leaves behind a very fine radioactive dust that has a half-life of 4.5 billion years. The so-called Balkan Syndrome affair first came to attention in early 2001, when several European countries, members within a UN peacekeeping mission, reported a series of cancer cases among soldiers who had taken part in peacekeeping operations in Kosovo and Bosnia and Herzegovina. There have also been cases of children of Italian Balkan veterans born with genetic malformations. During NATO's 1994 and 1995 bombings of Bosnian Serb positions near Sarajevo, aircrafts used munitions containing depleted uranium. Most of those bombs - 10,800 rounds of 30mm armor-piercing projectiles in total - were fired in Hadzici, where the Bosnian Serb army had a weapons depot. In one day in October 1995 alone, NATO planes fired 300 projectiles into this Sarajevo suburb. Back in 2003, UN experts confirmed the discovery of two locations containing a high level of radiation from depleted uranium from NATO bombings. A UN research team found that depleted uranium had contaminated local supplies of drinking water and could still be found in dust particles suspended in the air in the Hadzici are and in a Bosnian Serb army barracks in Han-Pijesak, also near Sarajevo. Investigators also discovered uranium materials and dust inside the buildings. Despite this, the 2003 UN report claims that there is no danger for the postwar residents of Hadzici, since the recorded contamination levels are very low, but recommended further measuring of the radiation. Soon after, the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) report was published, Bosnian Federation medical officials began to speculate as to the possibility that depleted uranium might be the cause of an increase in cases of diseases such as cancer, cerebral palsy, and others - especially leukemia. However, director of the Sarajevo Radiology Institute, Dr Lejla Saracevic, told ISN Security Watch that due to the lack of statistics and cooperation from citizens, the illnesses could not be definitively linked to depleted uranium. "Yet, the UN measured the level of radiation seven years after the bombing. No one knows the level of contamination in 1995 and the following years and how many people were in contact with the depleted uranium," Saracevic said. Furthermore, all UN experts' activities related to measuring the radiation have since stopped and local institutions lack the funding to continue the task, she said. Hadzici and Han-Pijesak were not the only sites held by Bosnian Serbs during the war to be targeted by NATO. Bosnian officials suspect that eight other locations were bombed using depleted uranium-enhanced ammunition. However, those locations, the surroundings of four small towns near Sarajevo and four others in eastern Bosnia, are still too risky to investigate due to the possible presence of land mines. After the war ended in December 1995 and the town came under the control of the Federation entity dominated by Bosniaks and Croats, most of the Serbs left Hadzici and relocated to the town of Bratunac, in eastern Bosnia, and also to other parts of Republika Srpska and neighboring Serbia. After the UN report was released, doctors there reported a greatly increased incidence of cancer-type illnesses in Bratunac. To date, up to 30 percent of some 30,000 wartime Hadzici residents have died of various cancers, tumors and heart attacks, according to official statistics. Only in Bratunac, the only town to have kept track of possible depleted uranium illnesses, out of 4,500 wartime Hadzici residents who fled to Bratunac, nearly 1,000 of them died of illnesses believed to be related to depleted uranium exposure. From the Balkans eastward According to the Serbian government, NATO's use of armor-piercing depleted uranium shells in its 1999 air strikes left five areas of Serbia, Montenegro and Kosovo contaminated by radiation. The zones include sites near Serbia's southern border with Kosovo, near the towns of Presevo, Bujanovac and Vranje, and two zones bordering Montenegro. UN experts who in 2001 tested 11 out of a total of 112 bombed sites, said that in eight they found increases of harmless radiation. The remaining sites were unapproachable due the presence of land mines. Serbian military officials alleged that US jets fired some 50,000 rounds of depleted uranium ammunition on military and civilian targets. However, US officials claim that the remains of the heavy metal shells did not present a significant health hazard. Peacekeeping forces in those zones included Italian, German and Dutch contingents of the multinational peacekeeping force KFOR and some of them had been previously stationed in Bosnia. Only a couple dozen people living near the zones have sought medical checkups and they have not shown signs of illness related to uranium exposure. However, the Bosnia and Kosovo missions are not the only concerns for international military and civilian personal regarding depleted uranium risks. Three Bosnian experts interviewed by ISN Security Watch said they believed that munitions containing depleted uranium were used during the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, and are still used on a daily basis and could cause 50-100 greater health hazards than in the Balkans. These experts, who asked not to be named, have calculated that in Iraq alone, some 150 tonnes of depleted uranium were used by the coalition during the first three weeks of the invasion. Also, since the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, US and UK forces delivered between 500 and 600 tonnes of depleted uranium to destroy Taliban-held concrete aircraft hangers and to penetrate underground bunkers. UN experts urged an immediate restoration of the water supply and sanitation systems, and a cleaning of pollution hot spots and waste sites to reduce the risk of epidemics among the population and coalition forces, but there are no reports that this task was undertaken. Some NGOs speculate that cancer rates among children have increased by 400 percent in Iraq since the invasion started. However, just like in the Balkans, neither officials in Afghanistan nor Iraq have the funds to or interest in keeping track of the numbers of deadly illnesses and their potential causes. Since 2003, dozens of US veterans, using the positive results of depleted uranium in their urine, sued the US Army, claiming that military officials were aware of the hazards of depleted uranium, but had concealed the risks. The US Defense Department claims that depleted uranium was powerful and safe, and not that troubling. For, now the case for or against depleted uranium remains unresolved, but military personnel are increasingly calling for answers. Anes Alic is a senior correspondent for ISN Security Watch in Southeastern Europe. He is also the Executive Director of ISA Consulting. He is based in Sarajevo. ***************************************************************** 31 NIOS: Exposure Cohort petition for Westinghouse employees FR Doc E7-21152 [Federal Register: October 29, 2007 (Volume 72, Number 208)] [Notices] [Page 61169] From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr29oc07-64] [[Page 61169]] DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health; Decision To Evaluate a Petition To Designate a Class of Employees at the Westinghouse Atomic Power Development Plant, East Pittsburgh, PA, To Be Included in the Special Exposure Cohort AGENCY: National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). ACTION: Notice. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- SUMMARY: The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) gives notice as required by 42 CFR 83.12(e) of a decision to evaluate a petition to designate a class of employees at the Westinghouse Atomic Power Development Plant, East Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to be included in the Special Exposure Cohort under the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act of 2000. The initial proposed definition for the class being evaluated, subject to revision as warranted by the evaluation, is as follows: Facility: Westinghouse Atomic Power Development Plant. Location: East Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Job Titles and/or Job Duties: All testers and laboratory researchers (to include research group leaders who worked in the L Building (and K Building as applicable). Period of Employment: January 1, 1942 through December 31, 1944. FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Larry Elliott, Director, Office of Compensation Analysis and Support, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), 4676 Columbia Parkway, MS C-46, Cincinnati, OH 45226, Telephone 513-533-6800 (this is not a toll-free number). Information requests can also be submitted by e-mail to OCAS@CDC.GOV. Dated: October 23, 2007. John Howard, Director, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. [FR Doc. E7-21152 Filed 10-26-07; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 4163-19-P ***************************************************************** 32 NIOSH: Exposure cohort designation FR Doc E7-21177 [Federal Register: October 29, 2007 (Volume 72, Number 208)] [Notices] [Page 61167-61168] From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr29oc07-61] DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health; Final Effect of Designation of a Class of Employees for Addition to the Special Exposure Cohort AGENCY: National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). [[Page 61168]] ACTION: Notice. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- SUMMARY: The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) gives notice concerning the final effect of the HHS decision to designate a class of employees at the Hanford Engineer Works, Richland, Washington, as an addition to the Special Exposure Cohort (SEC) under the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act of 2000. On September 12, 2007, as provided for under 42 U.S.C. 7384q(b), the Secretary of HHS designated the following class of employees as an addition to the SEC: Employees of the Department of Energy (DOE), its predecessor agencies, or DOE contractors or subcontractors who were monitored or should have been monitored for internal radiological exposures while working at the Hanford Engineer Works in: the 300 Area fuel fabrication and research facilities from October 1, 1943 through August 31, 1946; the 200 Area plutonium separation facilities from November 1, 1944 through August 31, 1946; or the 100 B, D, and F reactor areas from September 1, 1944 through August 31, 1946; for a number of work days aggregating at least 250 work days or in combination with work days within the parameters established for one or more other classes of employees in the Special Exposure Cohort. This designation became effective on October 12, 2007, as provided for under 42 U.S.C. 7384l(14)(C). Hence, beginning on October 12, 2007, members of this class of employees, defined as reported in this notice, became members of the Special Exposure Cohort. FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Larry Elliott, Director, Office of Compensation Analysis and Support, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), 4676 Columbia Parkway, MS C-46, Cincinnati, OH 45226, Telephone 513-533-6800 (this is not a toll-free number). Information requests can also be submitted by e-mail to OCAS@CDC.GOV. Dated: October 23, 2007. John Howard, Director, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. [FR Doc. E7-21177 Filed 10-26-07; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 4163-19-P ***************************************************************** 33 NIOSH: exposure cohort petitition for Horizons inc. FR Doc E7-21191 [Federal Register: October 29, 2007 (Volume 72, Number 208)] [Notices] [Page 61168] From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr29oc07-62] ----------------------------------------------------------------------- DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health Decision To Evaluate a Petition To Designate a Class of Employees at Horizons, Inc., Cleveland, OH, To Be Included in the Special Exposure Cohort AGENCY: National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). ACTION: Notice. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- SUMMARY: The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) gives notice as required by 42 CFR 83.12(e) of a decision to evaluate a petition to designate a class of employees at Horizons, Inc., Cleveland, Ohio, to be included in the Special Exposure Cohort under the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act of 2000. The initial proposed definition for the class being evaluated, subject to revision as warranted by the evaluation, is as follows: Facility: Horizons, Inc. Location: Cleveland, Ohio. Job Titles and/or Job Duties: All workers. Period of Employment: January 1, 1944 through December 31, 1956; and January 1, 1957 through July 31, 2006 (residual period). FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Larry Elliott, Director, Office of Compensation Analysis and Support, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), 4676 Columbia Parkway, MS C-46, Cincinnati, OH 45226, Telephone 513-533-6800 (this is not a toll-free number). Information requests can also be submitted by e-mail to OCAS@CDC.GOV. Dated: October 23, 2007. John Howard, Director, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. [FR Doc. E7-21191 Filed 10-26-07; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 4163-19-P ***************************************************************** 34 NIOSH: exposure cohort petition for Santa Susana Lab employees FR Doc E7-21217 [Federal Register: October 29, 2007 (Volume 72, Number 208)] [Notices] [Page 61168] From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr29oc07-63] ----------------------------------------------------------------------- DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health; Decision To Evaluate a Petition To Designate a Class of Employees at Area IV of the Santa Susana Field Laboratory, Santa Susana, CA, To Be Included in the Special Exposure Cohort AGENCY: National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). ACTION: Notice. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- SUMMARY: The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) gives notice as required by 42 CFR 83.12(e) of a decision to evaluate a petition to designate a class of employees at Area IV of the Santa Susana Field Laboratory, Santa Susana, California, to be included in the Special Exposure Cohort under the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act of 2000. The initial proposed definition for the class being evaluated, subject to revision as warranted by the evaluation, is as follows: Facility: Area IV of the Santa Susana Field Laboratory. Location: Santa Susana, California. Job Titles and/or Job Duties: All workers. Period of Employment: January 1, 1955 through December 31, 1965. FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Larry Elliott, Director, Office of Compensation Analysis and Support, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), 4676 Columbia Parkway, MS C-46, Cincinnati, OH 45226, Telephone 513-533-6800 (this is not a toll-free number). Information requests can also be submitted by e-mail to OCAS@CDC.GOV. Dated: October 23, 2007. John Howard, Director, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. [FR Doc. E7-21217 Filed 10-26-07; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 4163-19-P ***************************************************************** 35 NIOSH: Exposure Cohort petition for Combustion Engineering FR Doc E7-21220 [Federal Register: October 29, 2007 (Volume 72, Number 208)] [Notices] [Page 61169] From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr29oc07-65] DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health; Decision To Evaluate a Petition To Designate a Class of Employees at Combustion Engineering, Windsor, CT, To Be Included in the Special Exposure Cohort AGENCY: National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). ACTION: Notice. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- SUMMARY: The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) gives notice as required by 42 CFR 83.12(e) of a decision to evaluate a petition to designate a class of employees at Combustion Engineering, Windsor, Connecticut, to be included in the Special Exposure Cohort under the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act of 2000. The initial proposed definition for the class being evaluated, subject to revision as warranted by the evaluation, is as follows: Facility: Combustion Engineering. Location: Windsor, Connecticut. Job Titles and/or Job Duties: All workers. Period of Employment: January 1, 1965 through December 31, 1972. FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Larry Elliott, Director, Office of Compensation Analysis and Support, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), 4676 Columbia Parkway, MS C-46, Cincinnati, OH 45226, Telephone 513-533-6800 (this is not a toll-free number). Information requests can also be submitted by e-mail to OCAS@CDC.GOV. Dated: October 23, 2007. John Howard, Director, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. [FR Doc. E7-21220 Filed 10-26-07; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 4163-19-P ***************************************************************** 36 5280.com - November 2007 - Out in the Cold SPECIAL REPORTS Out in the Cold They are America's Cold War veterans, who forged weapons from a fearsome energy source and bravely endured years of radiation for a country that pledged to take care of them. Instead, government loopholes and evasions are making sure those promises are never kept. By Mike Kessler, Photography by Marc Piscotty Click here to find links to the government agencies that oversee and participate in the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act (EEOICPA), former Rocky Flats manager and undersecretary of Energy Robert G. Card, and the science of dose reconstruction. Judy Padilla was the last person you'd have pegged as a bomb builder. Five feet two inches tall with platinum blonde hair, she looked no more threatening than the pearl-white '75 Beetle that sat in the driveway of her Adams County home. Her idea of profanity was "shoot" and "booger." But Judy was stubborn, ambitious, and energetic, with the kind of piston-quick spirit that got her up every morning to ring-lead the family circus: She'd make breakfast and bag lunches for her three kids, feed the two lap dogs, and kiss her husband, Charlie, good-bye as he left for another morning shift on the factory floor at AT&T. Later, in the afternoon, Judy would leave for her own job. On her way out of the house, she'd reach for a small hook on the pantry door and grab a baseball-card-size instrument called a dosimeter. It was 1984, Judy's second year on the job at the Rocky Flats Plant, the nuclear weapons facility just north of Golden on Highway 93. The communist threat was strong, or so we were told. Russia had troops in Afghanistan and the Berlin Wall stood tall. Production of nuclear weapons was in full swing, fueled by a defense budget that had swollen to nearly $300 billion. A Coloradan since she was a teen, Judy was the daughter of an oilman who taught her to work hard and trust her government. She'd voted for Reagan once, and she'd do it again. Earning her keep at a nuclear weapons facility was a point of pride for Judy. Heaven forbid we'd ever need to use a nuclear weapon, but she was happy to be on the team that built it. And she gladly took $11 an hour at Rocky Flats over the $7 an hour that AT&T had paid her to stand at a table braiding wires. As a metallurgical operator at Rocky Flats-one of only four women to perform such a task-she loved being a "blue-collar rat" at the only United States Department of Energy site that manufactured plutonium pits. Heavy as a medicine ball and barely larger than a hockey puck, the pits were the triggers that made the bombs go BOOM! At the east entrance of the plant, Judy flashed her badge to the guard, aimed the car over a gentle rise, and drove into a low basin that revealed Rocky Flats. The 6,500-acre facility was a small city unto itself. At least 20,000 people had worked there since it was built in 1951; at any given time there could have been 5,000 employees on-site. Main Street bustled with signs of productivity, even on weekends. There was a firehouse, a garage, a medical center, and seven cafeterias. Men and women scurried about on foot and on bicycles and flatbed carts, weaving between clusters of administration trailers and warehouse-size buildings. The "Flats," as most workers called it, bore a striking resemblance to a thriving Hollywood back lot, except for the fact that so many buildings were decorated with the yellow and black "radioactive" symbol. Buildings were grouped and numbered according to the work performed within them. Machining was in the 400 complex, for example. Paper pushers were in the 100 area. And radioactive material was typically "processed" in the 300 and 700 buildings; entering them required government "Q" clearance, the highest access granted to civilians. Judy worked in 707. Through the metal detectors and into the locker room. Judy would change into her DOE-issued socks, underwear, white coveralls, and steel-toed boots. She'd report to her pre-shift meeting for what tended to be an unremarkable recitation of accidents that had occurred on the previous shift, production goals for the week, and new station assignments. But, on at least one morning that spring, as Judy recalls, superiors gave new orders: Stop lollygagging in the glove boxes. Hanging in the glove boxes increases your chances of exposure to ionizing radiation. Many of your radiation counts are getting close to the allowable maximum. It was an odd set of instructions, to say the least. Reducing time in the glove boxes was nearly impossible. The massive metal-and-glass cubes-sometimes several hundred feet in length and 15 feet tall-housed vital components for the manufacture of bomb triggers. The boxes, which looked like giant space-age fish aquariums, held equipment such as furnaces, melt coils, crucibles, conveyor belts, and that vital, silver-grey ingredient, plutonium 239. The only way to make a plutonium trigger was to approach a glove box, shove your hands and arms into portholes that housed the giant lead-lined rubber gloves, lean against the glass, and start working. Metallurgical operators spent at least five hours of every eight-hour shift in the glove boxes-it was their job-melting plutonium at 1,200 degrees Fahrenheit, pouring it into ingots, placing molds on the conveyor belt. Shoot, Judy thought, no one lollygagged in the glove boxes. The message was clear: Work faster, produce more, and don't let radiation exposure hinder productivity. Judy's supervisors then made what she remembers as a "strong suggestion"-a passive order that undermined one of the fundamental principles of safety. As Judy recently said to me, "I was told to put lead tape over my dosimeter." A job at the Flats came with plenty of risks. Hot plutonium could spontaneously combust upon contact with water, and plutonium shavings could do the same when exposed to air. Small fires in the process areas were a matter of course. Gloves would often spring pinhole-size leaks where they attached to the ports, emanating radiation for minutes or hours before alarms would sound. Workers on one shift might have forgotten to decontaminate their gloves after pulling them out of the boxes. Sometimes a glove would come right off its port, instantly "crapping up" a room, and the people in it. They'd strip out of their work clothes, rush to the showers, and "scrub down" with chemical solutions and sharp brushes that rubbed their skin raw. You can't see, smell, hear, or taste radiation. A potentially hazardous mistake could go undetected for hours, even days. To monitor their radiation exposure, Rocky Flats workers relied on at least one of three instruments: machine-mounted "alpha mats," which measure alpha particles; handheld Geiger counters operated by radiological control technicians (RCTs); and personal dosimeters. A dosimeter checked for gamma rays and neutrons; covering a dosimeter with lead tape could cause the device to give an artificially low reading. But even when used correctly dosimeters weren't fully reliable. For one thing, they had to be in the direct path of radiation. What's more, dosimeters were fickle, fragile devices; when workers would leave them in the sun or on top of the TV at home, other forms of radiation-less dangerous forms-could often throw off the instrument's readings. Some workers willfully ignored safety regulations at the Flats. Overtime hogs would do anything not to "dose out" and be reassigned to another building. Workers with a certain esprit de corps would take their chances in the name of national pride. Others figured they were being looked after. Judy liked the extra cash, but she trusted that when things got too hazardous, her government would do everything to keep her out of harm's way, especially considering the nature of her work. "We were acutely aware of how important our jobs were for the country," Judy told me one recent afternoon. "We felt that the country would protect us in return." Workers at the Flats referred to each other as "brothers and sisters." They didn't just build bombs-they built secrets. In the name of national security, what happened at the Flats stayed at the Flats. Even intimate groups of coworkers kept a muzzle on work chatter. "You could play cards with the same bunch of guys for years and barely even know what they did," Judy said while we sat at her kitchen table. "You'd say, 'I'm a welder,' or 'He's a machinist'-but that's about as far as it went." Information, she explained, was disclosed on a need-to-know basis. So Judy kept her mouth shut and her hands in the glove box. Still, every time she pressed her breasts against the glass, she couldn't ignore what she held at arm's length-a manmade element that could decimate entire nations. She was working with the same material that caused the incineration of nearly 70,000 people in Nagasaki. "You lean against the glove box glass," she said, "and within minutes you can feel the heat." Tom Haverty got the order from his foreman one fall afternoon in the early '90s. It could've been '91 or '93, but jobs like this were frequent, and today, after so many surgeries and medications, he has trouble fixing them in time. He and a few fellow electrical engineers were instructed to report to a storage room in building 371, one of the facility's hottest. As was the case since he started at the Flats in 1984, this was a need-to-know assignment: A criticality head, or crit-head-one of several types of radiation-detecting alarms-in the room needed to be moved. Crit-head reinstallation was a common enough job in the early '90s, but the irony never escaped Tom. Just a few years earlier, in 1989, acting on an internal DOE memo that cited "serious contamination" and "patently illegal waste facilities," the FBI had raided the Rocky Flats site. The 18-day bust made headlines across the country. It was the first time that one federal agency had raided another federal agency. The FBI, along with the Environmental Protection Agency, uncovered a disturbingly high number of environmental and health-safety violations-everything from poor record keeping to dumping radioactive waste in on-site creeks to dilution of water samples so that plutonium levels would look less drastic. Jon Lipsky, one of the FBI's lead Flats investigators, recently told me there were "inconsistencies that were punishable under penalty of perjury. The DOE didn't let anyone know what went on out there." The raid put Rocky Flats on the national map-as a disaster. The EPA declared it a Superfund site, the most severe ranking that an environmentally unsafe area can receive. There was a three-year investigation and a grand jury convened. Rockwell International Corp., the private contractor running Rocky Flats at the time, pleaded guilty to five felony charges and was fined $18.5 million. Conditions at the Flats were so abhorrent that the Feds shut down weapons production and halted waste disposal until the place could get its act together. As Tom recently said, "Rocky Flats was constipated, but no one was allowed to give it an enema." In the wake of the raid, waste had piled up at such a rapid rate that crit-heads were increasingly likely to sound, signaling a potential "criticality"-a nuclear chain reaction that could cause an explosion and radiate a swath of the Front Range. Although the Flats never experienced a criticality, it was an incessant threat. In addition to the likely human devastation, a criticality would have required the expensive and dangerous decontamination of the building. In the early 1990s, Tom often found himself detailed to criticality head assignments. He would suit up in a pair of thick lead aprons-one for the front, one for the back-and set about moving the alarms away from areas with high levels of radiation. It was a stop-gap measure at best, like moving a smoke detector away from a pile of matches and gasoline. Life at the Flats satisfied the two sides of Tom-engineering nerd and adrenaline junkie. He told me about his adventures one summer evening as we rode in his Jeep along a dark forest road near his Huerfano County mountain home. Talking in the certain but gravelly voice of a wizened uncle, Tom said that he'd joined the Navy and quickly became a sonar man, fiddling with knobs and dials to his great delight. Tom the risk taker couldn't get near a small plane without wanting to fly it or jump out of it. Tom the nerd later worked as an electronics technician at NASA back in '69, when Apollo 11 touched down. It was a milestone in American history, and Tom, then 29 and starting a family, was thrilled to be so close to the action. An electrical engineering gig at the Flats had everything Tom needed. "It was exciting, stimulating work that allowed me to serve my country," he told me. "I knew there were risks, but as an engineer this was as interesting and important as a job could get." Tom worked lots of electrical engineering projects. For one, he recalls, he received a dire warning: You have 90 seconds to complete the job. A radiological control technician explained that the storage room that Tom was about to enter was so contaminated that any more than a minute or two inside was unsafe. Green DOE barrels were stacked and scattered throughout the room. They held every radioactive item that a bomb factory could cook up-machine parts, laundry, glove-box parts, coveralls, remnants from small fires. Tom felt like he was looking at a gaping radioactive wound: "It was one of those times when I'd be in the process area, and I'd look around and think, 'My God. What have I gotten myself into?'" Ninety seconds after entering the room, Tom was back out in the hallway, ditching his heavy lead aprons. A few weeks later, following Rocky Flats protocol, he dropped off his dosimeter at the lab for an official reading. He expected the worst. To his surprise, he received an impossible result: "no data available." Judy Padilla didn't like what she saw. Too many of them were sick or dying or dead. Donald Gable died of a brain tumor after nine years working at the Flats-before he turned 33. Robert Clompton, a process-area worker in his early 40s, died of a brain stem tumor. Less than one percent of breast cancers occur in men, but Judy knew two process-area men who had malignant lumps. In the late 1980s, Judy changed jobs, from metallurgical operator to a sheet-metal apprentice. The Flats facility newspaper profiled her as the plant's first "maid of steel." If a glove box needed to be repaired, she'd fix it. If a drill press needed a handle, she'd report to the machining area with her blowtorch. She was still around thorium, a radioactive element used in her welding equipment. And she spent significant chunks of time in the process areas within close range of plutonium. But, she reasoned, at least she wasn't standing in front of glove boxes with pinhole leaks or broken seals-at least she wasn't handling lavalike plutonium all day, feeling it radiate onto her torso. Judy's sheet-metal job coincided with a major milestone in Rocky Flats history: the Cleanup. The Cold War was over, and in the wake of the negative publicity from the FBI raid, production at Rocky Flats remained at a standstill. Cleanup began in 1995, when a company named Kaiser-Hill signed the first of what became a two-part, $7 billion contract to demolish, decontaminate, and get rid of the site once and for all. Rocky Flats was being destroyed, not built, and the demand for sheet-metal workers dwindled, so Judy trained to become a radiological control tech, or RCT. The tests were daunting-a three-part series of obscure chemistry and physics and elemental equations that looked like hieroglyphics and sounded like a Star Trek script. She took night courses and studied RCT manuals for dozens of hours each week. "That's when I found out about the biological effects of what we were exposed to," she told me. "Unless you were an RCT or a scientist, you didn't know that stuff." Almost as soon as she learned the ugly details about radiation exposure, Judy had a routine mammogram that "came back a little funny." In June 1998, her doctor called her at work with the news: breast cancer. After a mastectomy Judy felt asymmetrical, vulnerable, incomplete. Her insurance covered the bulk of her medical expenses, but Judy's condition blindsided the Padillas like the wrecking balls that were knocking down Rocky Flats. Blonde hair fell from Judy's head as quickly as her body caved in. During chemo, she lost more than 20 pounds and learned to vomit with her pistonlike efficiency. When she wasn't in class at Metro, Judy's 19-year-old daughter, Felicia, took care of her, as Judy's two sons were unable to be on the spot all the time. Judy's mother had the mornings. Charlie, who by now was driving an RTD bus for $11 an hour, cut his schedule, causing a devastating wage loss. Judy had never been so dependent on others. When she wasn't throwing up, she was dry heaving. Two days a week of chemo for two weeks, then two weeks off, then repeat. Judy did her big round of chemo on Thursdays, a 45-minute IV drip that she could taste in her mouth the minute it entered her arm, "like when you're a kid and you suck on a penny." She endured bouts of blurry vision, lesions in her mouth, and trips to the bathroom when it "felt like I was passing glass," she said. "I don't know which is worse, the disease or the cure." Eight months after her diagnosis, Judy was still weak and sick. But she'd only received 60 percent sick pay, and there was just one way for her to make the kind of money necessary to support the family. One day in March 1999, she woke up, made a sack lunch, and headed back to work at the Flats. The cleanup looked messy to Tom Haverty, and to the more than a dozen Rocky Flats veterans and DOE experts I spoke with. Tom felt that the project was moving too fast. His disappointment was exacerbated by the bureaucracy at the Flats. Tom has a sharp, dark wit, but there was a saying around the plant that wiped the smile from his face: "For every person trying to do something at Rocky Flats, there's 47 others trying to prevent you from doing it, and 51 more yelling at you to do it faster." The status quo prevailed, and it crushed Tom's spirit. He tried to distract himself with hobbies and books. He made regular visits to the company shrink. In 2000, Tom decided he'd had enough. The first five years away from the Flats, Tom road-tripped with his wife, Theresa, visited his children up and down the Front Range, and odd-jobbed around the little mountain getaway he'd finally managed to buy. One morning in November 2005, Tom checked into the emergency room at St. Joe's in Denver with an agonizing stomachache. He thought his appendix was about to burst. Tom woke up that afternoon to learn that 13 cancerous inches of his colon had been removed. The oncologist, Dr. Thomas Hyde, was sorry to inform him that several small tumors had already begun forming throughout his digestive system. He put Tom on intravenous chemotherapy, but told him not to expect any miracles. In all probability, he said, Tom would be dead inside of six months. Tom and Theresa shopped for a life insurance policy, but his poor health precluded him from coverage. He got through the chemo-nine months of puking and cloudy-headedness. But a round of tests in November 2006 revealed a tumor behind his bladder and several precancerous nodules on his liver and abdomen. Doctors opened Tom up, did their best to remove the rot from his guts, prescribed a slew of drugs, and told him not to make any big plans for the future. Capecitabine, the peach-colored chemotherapy pill that Tom will swallow by the handful for the rest of his life, is best known for the following side effects: nausea, itchiness, vomiting, fatigue, weight loss, dizziness, memory loss. And one other thing. "Do you know what diarrhea is?" Tom recently asked me. I was walking next to him as he speed-waddled toward a hospital-lobby men's room. "Yes," I replied. "Of course." Tom turned his head, shot me a smile as wide as a mushroom cloud, and said, "No you don't." The sick Rocky Flats veterans arrived by the dozens. They came on foot and in wheelchairs and on walkers, ambling through the conference center of the Westin hotel in Westminster this past May. They wore jeans and chinos and flannels and the occasional breathing apparatus. Some wore T-shirts that read, "Bury Rocky Flats, not the workers." Judy Padilla was there. Most were well into middle age and craggy-faced, with the calloused, meaty fingers of the blue-collar rats they once were. They had come to ask-to beg-the government to honor the law that it wrote for them. The law is called the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act, or EEOICPA (pronounced, e-oke-pah). Passed at the tail end of the Clinton Administration, EEOICPA was championed by Colorado Republican Senator Wayne Allard and a long list of legislators from both sides of the aisle, especially those whose constituents had close ties to nuclear weapons production. From page one, EEOICPA sounds less like a legal document and more like a confession. The document begins: "Since World War II, Federal nuclear activities have been explicitly recognized under Federal law as activities that are ultra-hazardous." A few lines down: "...exposures to radioactive substances...even in small amounts, can cause medical harm. More than two dozen scientific findings have emerged that indicate that certain [nuclear weapons workers] are experiencing increased risks of dying from cancer." The law's preamble acknowledges what people like Judy and Tom and the Rocky Flats veterans gathered at the Westin have believed for years. It read: "Since the inception of the nuclear weapons program and for several decades afterwards, a large number of nuclear weapons workers at sites of the Department of Energy and at sites of vendors who supplied the Cold War effort were put at risk without their knowledge and consent for reasons that, documents reveal, were driven by fears of adverse publicity, liability, and employee demands for hazardous duty pay.... No other hazardous Federal activity has been permitted to be carried out under such sweeping powers of self-regulation." EEOICPA's purpose is to recognize that nuclear weapons workers with any of 22 kinds of cancers (among them breast, colon, bladder, brain, and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma) are likely to have gotten their illnesses on the job, and that poor record keeping or gross health-safety negligence make it difficult to know exactly who was exposed, and to what extent. EEOICPA says that former weapons workers who are "at least as likely as not" to have gotten cancer from radiation are entitled to medical benefits and a lump-sum payment of $150,000. The law is an antidote to the legal action that workers might otherwise have to take, at their own expense, if they believe they are entitled to worker's comp. A hundred and fifty grand's not exactly pay dirt for people who've drained their bank accounts, taken out loans, or gone bankrupt fighting cancer. But, if nothing else, the measure was a gesture of appreciation. EEOICPA let workers believe that the government's heart was in the right place. Seven years after the law passed, the crowd of Rocky Flats workers at the Westin saw a government that was heartless. As far as the Flats brothers and sisters were concerned, their piece of star-spangled legislation had been designed with loopholes and engineered to fail them. By now they had learned that EEOICPA was undermined by "dose reconstruction," a procedure that seemed more black magic than sound science. Dose reconstruction is the responsibility of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, or NIOSH. To reconstruct a radiation dose, NIOSH digs up whatever it can about a claimant-urinalysis, nasal swab results, medical files, DOE "incident" reports, dosimetry records, and personal histories. And therein lies the problem: Like Judy and Tom, everyone has a story. The more time I spent talking to former Rocky Flats employees, the more anecdotes I heard about faulty dosimeters and dubious orders. Two former government officials insisted that medical records "disappeared" during the 1989 FBI raid. A former administrative assistant says she was ordered to illegally shred workers' medical records in the 1990s. Some people I spoke to were still shackled by the culture of secrecy; when I'd press them for details, they'd clam up. One man simply quit talking to me the moment I opened my notebook. Despite overwhelming consistencies among workers' stories of questionable health safety, only a fraction of what they say can be corroborated. It's their word. None of them had the foresight to build a case history while they were producing bombs, cleaning up an environmental disaster, and tending to their lives. And the government's dose reconstruction program dismisses almost any anecdote that a worker cannot prove. When a claimant's records are missing or incomplete, NIOSH will use "coworker data"-records from a colleague who performed a similar job at a similar point in time. NIOSH also refers to a "site profile"-a multipage report that the agency has created for some of the 79 weapons facilities in the United States, that summarizes which parts of a site were most radioactive, and when. (Site profiles do not exist for all facilities.) In the end, the hard data get sent to the Department of Labor, plugged into a "matrix," and tallied to determine a figure known as "probability of causation," or POC. The POC is the claimant's final score; it informs Labor if the claimant was "at least as likely as not" to have gotten cancer due to work at a nuclear weapons facility. Claimants with a POC of 50 percent or higher are compensated. Claimants with a POC of 49.99 percent or lower are not. Judy Padilla applied for compensation in August 2001-and waited nearly four years for a response. Her dose reconstruction score was 42.19; she was denied. She appealed the decision to the Department of Labor, explaining that she'd worked around ionizing radiation for the better part of 14 years, and that six of those years were spent chest-to-glove box, handling plutonium. Seven of her remaining eight years, she reminded the DOL, were spent working with thorium-equipped welding gear and completing tasks in the process areas. Like her coworkers, she'd seen or been near more fires and spills and accidents-some reported, some not-than she could count. She was a healthy, exercising nonsmoker, and two genetic tests showed no history of breast cancer in her family. Judy's appeal was denied. Tom Haverty applied in July 2006. DOL still hasn't issued a decision, but a NIOSH worker recently told him that his prospects weren't good. Speaking by phone, the representative, Brian, told Tom he couldn't give specifics, but he indicated that Tom's score was less than 50. He said that Tom's final answer from DOL could take another eight months. Tom matter of factly stated that he'd likely be dead by then. Brian delivered news to Tom with the detached aplomb of an airline gate agent telling a passenger that his flight's been cancelled. It was clear that Brian had done this before. Nearly 3,000 Rocky Flats workers have applied for compensation under this portion of EEOICPA; only 626, or 20 percent, have been paid. More than 69,000 weapons workers (or their families) across the country have submitted claims; at least one-third of them have been denied. The reason for their denials boils down to the dose reconstruction results-meaning they couldn't prove that they were "at least as likely as not" to have gotten cancer from radiation. They were given the burden of proof. Larry Elliott oversees NIOSH's dose reconstruction program, and he defends his agency's work. "What most people don't understand is that dose reconstruction is an accepted scientific program to fill data gaps," he recently told me. "A high percentage of Rocky Flats workers have monitoring records, and NIOSH has those records." But, he went on, not all people were monitored. "We do not have individual monitoring records for every worker." He spoke of "unknown primaries" and "upper ranges." He assured me that dose reconstruction was set up to be as "claimant favorable" as possible. Outside of NIOSH, it's tough to find anyone who supports the way the agency applies dose reconstruction. Richard Miller has worked as a senior policy analyst for the D.C. watchdog group Government Accountability Project and as a staff representative for DOE employees. Just last year, testifying before a House Judiciary Subcommittee, he said glove-box workers handling radiation at Rocky Flats (and other sites around the country) "were not adequately shielded for many years...[dosimeter] readings did not necessarily capture the neutron dose from leaky glove boxes, since the badges were not positioned near the parts of the glove box that leaked radiation." Tom Haverty's translation: "Radiation can blow up your skirt. It can radiate your skull. We wore dosimeters around our necks, not on our heads." Even champions of the EEOICPA law acknowledge that the process of dose reconstruction is debatable. They point out that this particular brand of science was originally modeled to study large, unmonitored populations, like survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, who were exposed to a single big blast, or atomic veterans who were involved in early weapons testing-not individuals who were exposed to low levels of radiation over long periods of time. "When the bill was written, people on the Hill knew that any kind of science was imperfect-the law was even amended a few times to try to address that," Cindy Blackston, a former Judiciary staffer intimate with EEOICPA, recently told me. "But science is only as good as the perspective of the individual interpreting it. Some people within the system have interpreted the law so that claimants are placed on the defensive-which is exactly what the law was supposed to remedy. In many cases, the good intentions of EEOICPA have been abandoned." In theory, claimants who are rejected have some recourse: They can form a group and petition to be added to the "special exposure cohort" (SEC). If an SEC petition gets the green light, the dose reconstruction process is effectively waived, and claims are more likely to be paid. In other words, legislators wrote a bill knowing that it was flawed, and built in a safety net that acknowledged those hiccups. The SEC isn't much different than the original law. If a group of cancer victims wants SEC status, NIOSH requires them to do what they failed to accomplish as individual claimants: Prove what cannot be proven. In 2005, the Rocky Flats steelworkers' union, Local 8031, filed an SEC petition. NIOSH eventually adjusted the petition such that any eligible Rocky Flats veteran could apply. According to EEOICPA, approval can only be granted by a 12-person, presidentially appointed Advisory Board. This board spends a good bit of its time traveling city to city for meetings about SEC petitions. And in May it wound up at the Westin in Westminster. The prospects looked grim for Rocky Flats vets: Since EEOICPA became effective in 2001, the board has been frugal about handing out Special Exposure Cohorts. For most of the day, board members talked at length about the vagaries of nuclear science and the legitimacy of dose reconstruction. They stopped a few times to listen as government officials phoned in to plead with them-to insist that the board vote in favor of the Rocky Flats petition. It was a full-court, bipartisan press. Governor Bill Ritter called in. So did Senators Ken Salazar and Wayne Allard, among others. The board members listened with chins in hands and furrowed brows. Everyone in the room perked up when Barack Obama called in and asked that the board give our Cold War veterans a "small measure of justice." Public comments started late in the afternoon. The sign-up list was several pages long. Nearly everyone-even the leather-faced tough guys-couldn't finish speaking without crying. A security guard named Richard said he never even had a dosimeter. He believed he got cancer from background radiation emanating through a thin, unprotected wall that he sat against. Many of his records were missing, but his claim was denied anyway. Walter, a skinny man with thick glasses, had non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. He explained that, as his radiation counts got high in the early '90s, his records somehow went missing. He dealt with NIOSH for five years-then they denied him. There were more stories-of male breast cancer and dosimeters that read "no data available," of financial strain and bankruptcy and second mortgages taken out to cover medical costs and lost wages. Judy Padilla gave a long and impassioned speech. "As a former nuclear worker at Rocky Flats, I am a Cold War veteran," she said. "I feel that I sacrificed my health like the soldiers in Iraq are doing. And we got no acknowledgment-and no 'thank you'-from our government. We don't even get the courtesy of a flag on our coffins when we die." Fighting back tears of rage, she told the Advisory Board, "What some of us would give to be in your shoes. You have your health, and all that power! Our lives and peace of mind rest in your hands. We're like the men on death row waiting for a phone call from the governor." When decision time came, board member Michael Gibson gave a short but poignant speech in favor of the petitioners. He cited the workers' stories of unrecorded exposure, their financial struggles, the fact that they were fighting with the government while fighting to stay alive. "I listened to all the presentations from NIOSH and heard all the stories from the workers," Gibson later told me. "I weighed both sides and came to the conclusion that these claimants were exposed to radiation in ways that could never be proven." Gibson, who worked for two decades as an electrician and union officer at the Mound facility in Miamisburg, Ohio, added, "Trying to reconstruct a dose from hard data is difficult enough. Reconstructing a dose with data that's absent of hard records is somewhat of an art. There were unexpected events that were not set up for monitoring. I know those sorts of things happened because I saw them first-hand when I worked for DOE. The people of Rocky Flats deserve to have this petition approved." Another board member proposed partial approval for a sliver of Rocky Flats workers; his suggestion was as convoluted and confusing as EEOICPA and the science of dose reconstruction itself. Even the other board members looked dumbfounded. Yet inexplicably they voted for the cryptic measure, right then and there. The workers cocked their heads and mumbled. The room hummed with the sound of befuddlement and frustration, like a town hall meeting just before the fight scene in a Western. One might have expected the local drunk to stand up in back and start ranting. Confronted with the palpable tension in the room, the board deliberated for several minutes, collectively shrugging its shoulders and appearing to grow as confused and frustrated as the crowd. They decided that they should leave Denver, reconsider the petition, and return some other time for yet another round of deliberations. A month later in the conference room of the Lakewood Sheraton, the Advisory Board decided that three small groups of workers who were at Rocky Flats before 1970 should be added to the Special Exposure Cohort. The Flats veterans saw it as an empty gesture, noting that by the time the board's decision is finalized, most of those workers would either be dead or close to dead. Anyone who worked at the Flats between 1970 and 2005 was out of luck: No Special Exposure Cohort. No compensation. A few days later, I visited Tom Haverty at his mountain home. It was the first of many conversations we had over the summer. We ate dinner and took in the view of the Spanish Peaks. "I'm a Cold War veteran, like a veteran of any other war," Tom told me. "I didn't go to Iraq and take a bullet, but I went to Rocky Flats and took a neutron for my country." Tom and I talked late into the night-about the culture of secrecy at Rocky Flats, about the various private contractors that managed the site for more than 50 years. We talked about the "sweeping powers of self-regulation" noted in EEOICPA's preamble, and the half century of oftentimes unsavory management within the Department of Energy nuclear weapons complex-during production, during the FBI investigation, and during the cleanup. And we talked about how the government manages the EEOCIPA program with the same disregard for workers that DOE and its contractors practiced. From past to present, across multiple agencies, the flaws were as incessant as they were systemic. I asked Tom for his take. He paused for a moment, distilled his thoughts, and spoke. It was one of the few times I'd see him without a smile. "That's a simple question," he said. "Follow the money." After a government sub-contractor, Rockwell International Corp., rendered the Flats a Superfund site, a new government contractor, Kaiser-Hill, was hired to clean it up. In 1995, the Department of Energy estimated that the project would take more than 60 years and cost $37 billion dollars. Once the project was under way, Kaiser-Hill developed more ambitious goals: 10 years, $7 billion. If the company could meet its target, it stood to make considerable cash incentives, paid by the DOE. The faster the job got done, the more Kaiser-Hill stood to earn. On several occasions, the Department of Energy confronted Kaiser-Hill president Robert G. Card about "programmatic breakdown[s]" regarding health and environmental safety. A July 20, 1998, memo to Card from the DOE's Office of Enforcement and Investigation notes shoddy work that "led to potential violations of DOE [quality assurance] and radiological protection requirements." A follow-up memo to Card, in 2000, pointed out the "recurring nature of [safety] deficiencies" and "failures of the Kaiser-Hill Company...to correct quality assurance deficiencies." The list of previous safety concerns included insufficient storage of radioactive waste. Kaiser-Hill was fined $55,000. Still the money flowed. One executive secretary told me she hand-delivered a bonus check for $257,000 to Card's office. If Kaiser-Hill could pull off the cleanup by 2006 as promised, institutionally it stood to make a "target payment" of $340 million. The contractor exceeded expectations. By 2001, Robert G. Card had done such a heck of a job that President Bush plucked him from Kaiser-Hill and appointed him undersecretary of the Department of Energy. While Card was a top man at DOE, the New York Times published a 2002 article called "Questions Raised Over Energy Dept. Official's Industry Ties." The story noted that "Mr. Card supervises the Office of Environmental Management, which is in charge of cleaning up nuclear waste sites and manages the contracts of his old companies." In 2004, Card left the DOE. He's now working for CH2M Hill, the parent company of Kaiser-Hill. Card did not respond to multiple e-mail and phone requests to be interviewed, but, a CH2M Hill spokesperson, John Corsi, said that Kaiser-Hill's management of the cleanup was executed with utmost concern for environmental and worker safety. He noted that Kaiser-Hill's work was widely recognized with awards from the American Council of Engineering Companies, the American Academy of Environmental Engineers, and the Project Management Institute. Corsi stated the amount of Card's $257,000 check is incorrect, adding, "It is not appropriate for us to discuss the details of compensation for any employee of the project." He also pointed out that many of the "spot recognition" bonuses received by Kaiser-Hill employees were the result of outstanding health safety practices. "On our watch it was much safer at Rocky Flats than it was at other times," he said. Safety at the Flats has always been a relative term. But nothing is clearer than a bottom line. Pressure is still on the Department of Labor to nip and tuck its budget, including spending on EEOICPA. In late 2005, Shelby Hallmark, the deputy assistant secretary at DOL, sent a memo to the Office of Management and Budget with a five-point plan to reduce spending, or as he put it, "contain growth in the cost of benefits provided by [EEOICPA]." The memo was leaked, and Hallmark denied any intent to see his plan to fruition. But that didn't matter. The average annual budget for claims under this portion of EEOICPA hovers at a scant $100 million. Over the past six years, DOL has spent $869 million on radiation-induced cancer claims under EEOICPA-a pittance when compared with spending on other government programs, like defense ($432 billion) or homeland security ($32 billion). What's more, the Department of Labor allows the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health to pay private contractors to perform dose reconstruction. In other words, while the Department of Labor avoids paying millions on claims, people in the private sector are making millions from the government contracts-and from a program that denies payments to sick and dying claimants. The main contractor in charge of dose reconstruction is called Oak Ridge Associated Universities, or ORAU, a Tennessee-based 501(c)(3) that has received financial support and personnel from the Department of Energy for several decades. ORAU and DOE share such a cozy history that it's difficult to tell them apart. "ORAU was nurtured by the DOE," one well-placed source, who insisted on anonymity, recently told me. "No, ORAU is the DOE." In 2002, not long after EEOICPA passed, NIOSH awarded Oak Ridge Associated Universities a $70 million contract to handle the bulk of its dose reconstruction work. ORAU, in turn, subcontracted some of its work to other firms. It could be a simple enough public-private arrangement, but it could be a conflict of interest. By law, DOE workers are forbidden to perform dose reconstruction, and technically no one at DOE does. But, as New Mexico Congressman Tom Udall pointed out last year to a judiciary subcommittee, an overwhelming number of dose reconstruction team members working for ORAU and its subcontractors built their careers working for the DOE, oftentimes at weapons facilities. NIOSH requires dose reconstruction workers to fill out a conflict-of-interest form. But consider Roger Falk. Between 1996 and 1998, Falk was responsible for monitoring worker radiation at Rocky Flats, back when Kaiser-Hill was tearing the place down. Falk then went to work for ORAU, where he was partly responsible for creating the Rocky Flats site profile, the document that's considered the bible by dose reconstruction team members. "When a site profile is put together by someone who worked at that very site, the accounts of workers are not given equal weight," Advisory Board member Michael Gibson told me. "It's a situation where these people from DOE have found a second life [at ORAU]. It's hard for them to criticize their own work, or the work of their colleagues. And those conflicts of interests are not exclusive to Rocky Flats." ORAU never took Falk off the Rocky Flats project, but it updated the site profile he created. However, critics have noted that the old document and the updated version are virtually identical. Little remains changed besides the signature on the cover sheets. NIOSH's Larry Elliott says that former DOE workers are the most qualified to perform dose reconstruction. "The pool of dose reconstruction workers is shallow and narrow," he said. Indeed, health physics is a niche industry with roots in the weapons industry. But there are also health physicists without such direct ties to the weapons plants-such as those working for radiological-equipment vendors. As the well-placed source who insisted on anonymity put it, "It's not that ORAU has the best health physicists; they have the contracts. You could find someone to do a credible job of dose reconstruction who isn't mired in conflict of interest." What you're looking at here, the source said, is a "plug-and-chug gravy train." By the end of 2006, ORAU's $70 million contract to perform dose reconstruction had ballooned to $280 million. That dollar amount, it's worth noting, would be enough money to pay 1,800 claimants. Tom Haverty recently called me with some bad news. He'd sat down on the toilet and lost, by his own estimation, a pint and a half of blood. Doctors performed a colonoscopy and found another tumor. When I visited Tom at Good Samaritan in Lafayette, he was groggy from blood loss and four days on an IV. He told me he had three choices, each a slow version of certain death. First was complicated surgery that would require prostate and colon removal. As he put it, "They'd have to scoop out pretty much everything down there," leaving him to go through life with a colostomy bag. Choice number two was another round of intravenous chemotherapy. Option three: nothing at all. Tom told me, "I'm still deciding between extension of life and quality of life." I stayed at Good Samaritan for an hour. Tom told me more stories about Rocky Flats with his usual understated wit. When the room grew quiet, we watched grizzly bears on TV with no volume. A chaplain stopped by, and Tom explained to her why I was in the room. The chaplain asked Tom if he thought his many cancers were the result of his 16 years at a nuclear weapons facility. Tom just smiled. She then asked Tom if he'd like her services. Tom, a Catholic, said yes. The chaplain, a Lutheran, asked if her denomination was a problem. Without so much as a pause, Tom smiled at the chaplain and said, "God doesn't check your passport." It's all gone now. Buildings 707, 771, 371, all of them. The barrels and the two-seater carts and the glove boxes and the trailers and the guard towers. All of it was deconstructed and demolished. Tens of thousands of cubic yards and containers full of radioactive waste-the secrets and ghosts of a bygone era. Some of it was buried out there. Some of it was shipped to New Mexico for deep-earth storage. Contamination levels in the ground are debated, inspected, and may still cause further damage in a few years, or a few decades. Today, in a twist that seems plausible only in an episode of The Simpsons, Rocky Flats is being turned into a wildlife refuge. On a recent summer day, Judy Padilla's husband, Charlie, steered their old Ford Bronco onto a narrow shoulder on Indiana Avenue, where the east entrance to Rocky Flats used to be. The three of us hopped out of the vehicle and took in the view-Arvada and Broomfield to the east, the foothills to the west. A breeze blew tall grass over barbed wire decorated with old DOE signs. Judy pointed to the spot where the old checkpoint area stood, just before a small hill that concealed the little city of Rocky Flats. We took a walk along the shoulder of the road, past a small creek that once carried contaminated waste off the plant site. She pointed out the old Broomfield Reservoir, which had gotten so crapped up from the Flats that it could no longer be used as a drinking water source. It was hard to imagine that this tiny woman once made the weapons that threatened to destroy the world. She looked like a little old lady in the making, someone who would chase off hooligans with an umbrella. Eight years after her cancer diagnosis, she finally felt healthy and strong. And nothing about Judy revealed how sick she once was, or so easily could be tomorrow. "I feel like a ticking time bomb," she said. "I could go off at any minute." Mike Kessler is an editor-at-large for 5280. E-mail him at letters@5280.com. Click here to find links to the government agencies that oversee and participate in the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act (EEOICPA), former Rocky Flats manager and undersecretary of Energy Robert G. Card, and the science of dose reconstruction. Copyright 2005 5280 Publishing, Inc. | Advertising | Privacy Policy ***************************************************************** 37 Reuters: Russia says radiation leak at Urals Mayak plant Mon Oct 29, 2007 1:27pm EDT By Natalya Shurmina YEKATERINBURG, Russia (Reuters) - Safety breaches have caused a radiation leak at a major nuclear reprocessing plant in the Ural mountains, Russia announced on Monday, but officials said there was no danger to humans. Local Emergencies Ministry officials said a faulty tap allowed radiation to leak from a tank holding liquid radioactive waste onto 1.5 km (just under a mile) of a road at the Mayak plant. The incident happened four days ago. "No one was injured," the local Emergencies Ministry office said in a statement. "The radioactive levels at the plant and outside it are normal and absolutely harmless." The Mayak plant, dubbed "Russia's ticking time-bomb" by environmentalists, suffered a series of accidents in 1949, 1957 and 1967 which were hushed up by Soviet governments. Nuclear weapons and nuclear waste are reprocessed at the highly secretive plant, which is about 2,000 km (1,243 miles) east of Moscow. Foreigners are not usually allowed onto its territory because of its sensitive work with nuclear weapons. Prosecutors said poorly implemented safety rules at the plant had allowed Thursday's leak to take place. "After an investigation... it was found that the reason for the leak last Thursday of liquid radioactive waste at the Mayak plant was the result of severe violations of the safety rules," the local prosecutor-general's office said in a statement. Emergency workers said they were notified at 1630 local time (1130 GMT) on Thursday and that they worked through the night to clear up the contaminated ground. "The waste is stored far from populated places," the Emergencies Ministry said. "The situation is harmless for employees of the plant and residents of the nearest villages." "We still have few details about this incident," said Vladimir Chuprov, head of Greenpeace's energy unit in Russia. "But we believe there are major systemic problems with Mayak." Greenpeace says the plant is one of the most radioactive places on the planet and that local residents are still suffering from a 1957 accident at Mayak that exposed hundreds to radiation. That accident was considered the worst nuclear disaster in the former Soviet Union until the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, the world's worst nuclear accident, which exposed the failings of Soviet nuclear management. Nuclear officials say the Mayak plant has improved safety since the days of the Soviet Union. Mayak, which means lighthouse in Russia, was started under Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin as Moscow raced to develop the nuclear bomb. ***************************************************************** 38 Kyiv Post: Radioactive material leaks during transport at Russian nuclear facility, nobody hurt: plant Tue, Oct 30. 07:30 MOSCOW (AP) - A small amount of radioactive material leaked while being transported across the grounds of Russia's main nuclear waste processing plant, the facility's management said in a statement Friday. The leak occurred Thursday on a service road during routine transportation from one part of the Mayak facility to another, it said. An unspecified problem with a hermetically-sealed valve on a cistern containing the material caused the spillage of liquid medium-grade radioactive waste. No one was injured, and personnel at the nuclear facility, located in the Chelyabinsk region in the Ural mountains, have begun to decontaminate the area, the company said. Mayak also said that the no personnel or vehicles leaving the compound were exposed to radiation as a result of the leakage. It said radiation levels in the area were within the norm. Mayak was a major Soviet atomic weapons facility, and a catastrophic explosion at a waste tank there 50 years ago contaminated a large area and prompted authorities to evacuate 10,000 residents from neighboring regions. The impact on the local population remains largely unknown, and environmental activists say the damage has been compounded by other accidents, leaks and the planned discharge of liquid waste. © 2004 - 2007, BIGMIR-Internet. The material may not be reproduced without the written consent of the owner. Contact Kyiv Post ***************************************************************** 39 Political Affairs Magazine: Depleted Uranium and Depleted Democracy By David Swanson click here for related stories: Peace/antiwar 10-29-07, 9:31 am Remarks at October 27, 2007, rally in Jonesborough, Tenn., preceding march to Aerojet Ordnance, manufacturers of Depleted Uranium weapons. There are those who think Congress should keep shelling out our grandchildren's money to continue our occupation of Iraq, and there are those who think Congress should pass a bill opposing the occupation. And they are both wrong. Any decent bill on any issue, much less this one, will be vetoed. The way to stop funding the occupation of Iraq is for Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid to announce on Monday that they will not bring to the floor any more bills to fund the occupation. Some House members would try to start a discharge petition to get around Pelosi, but they would fail. Some Senators would demand a war funding bill, but they would not get past a filibuster. The legal funding of the occupation of Iraq would be over. But Bush would not end the occupation. He would misappropriate funds from the Pentagon to keep it going. I almost said keep it going illegally, but it's always been illegal. In fact, Bush misappropriated funds to build bases and move troops and equipment to invade Iraq over five years ago. At this time five years ago, weapons factories, like Boeing's, were working double shifts for Shock and Awe, and our televisions were telling us Bush wanted to resolve everything peacefully. When General Petraeus betrayed us with his testimony last month, a congress member asked him what he would do if congress were to cut off funding for the occupation of Iraq and Bush were to order him to keep it going. Petraeus said he'd need to ask his lawyer. But Bush would keep it going, and Congress would have two choices. One would be to surrender and admit that the first and most powerful branch of our government as laid out in our Constitution is no longer part of the government at all. The second option would be to make use of that portion of the Constitution that reads: "The President, Vice President, and all civil officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors." Impeachment is the one thing the president cannot stop. He cannot veto it. He cannot signing statement it. He cannot spin it. All he can do is crawl back to Crawford with Dick Cheney to await their criminal trials. You may have heard that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice testified in Congress this week. You may have seen a photo of Desiree Farooz holding blood covered hands up to Condi's face in an attempt to show her what she has done. Rice testified on two days before two committees, the second being the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee chaired by Congressman Henry Waxman. Months ago, Waxman subpoenaed Rice, and she publicly announced she would not comply because she was not inclined to. When Rice testified on Thursday, Waxman agreed not to ask her about topics she was not inclined to discuss. The subpoena orders Rice to testify about forged documents that were used by the president to claim Iraq had tried to purchase uranium in Africa. Rice and Bush and Cheney and several other individuals and departments in the Bush administration have refused to comply with subpoenas, an offense for which the House Judiciary Committee passed an article of impeachment against Richard Nixon. And the subpoenas and investigations are not even needed to prove the crimes. Far from establishing that Iraq was any threat to this nation or apologizing for having clearly lied about it, this gang is using almost identical lies to push this nation toward an attack on Iran. And, again, uranium is involved. Cheney's latest scheme is reportedly to persuade Israel to bomb a uranium enrichment plant in Iran. The White House has, in fact, just labeled a section of Iran's military a terrorist group. Up until this point, if the tern "terrorist" meant anything in official U.S. discourse, it meant a non-state group that engages in violence. Now "terrorist" appears to mean any state or non-state group that engages in violence if that violence is not supported by Dick Cheney and George W. Bush. At other times, though, the word "terrorist" appears to include anyone without white skin who immigrates to the land of the Statue of Liberty. Congressman David Davis, who I believe represents this district, has introduced a total of two bills in Congress. One of them would take the important step of establishing a national Bald Eagle Day. The other would train state and local police officers in how to protect us from immigrants and/or terrorists. Now, tell me if I'm right: I'm guessing that the people of Tennessee are not as ignorant and xenophobic as the honorable David Davis appears to be. Davis may have just been in Washington too long. A week is too long for most people. The Senate right now is trying to decide whether to make our next top law enforcement official a man who refuses to say whether waterboarding constitutes torture. Former Mayor of New York Rudy Giuliani thinks that's a topic worth joking about, just as Donald Rumsfeld did. But as of late Thursday Rumsfeld now faces five lawsuits charging him with torture, and the number of countries he cannot safely enter continues to grow. Meanwhile the White House finally has an answer to global warming: it brings health benefits. Of course, it also does not exist. And Fox News blames the fires in California on "al Qaeda." But none of these absurdities match the one uttered this week by the Chair of the Democratic Caucus Rahm Emmanuel, who said that what we voted for last year was not an end to the war, but legislative action on lots of issues. The reason only 11 percent of us now support what Congress is doing, Emmanuel said, has nothing to do with the Democrats' refusal to stop funding the occupation. Rather, he said, we ignorant citizens have too many demands and we're too impatient. You're damn right we're impatient! This is the same Rahm Emmanuel who in January told the Washington Post that the Democrats would keep the war going until November 2008. That's two years of killing and dying, to be followed almost certainly by four more years of killing and dying. If we are going to end the occupation of Iraq, we are going to have to do it in the next several months. One way we can do that is by pressuring our Congress Members. But there are other ways as well. We can tell potential military recruits what war looks like. One thing recruiters will never mention is Depleted Uranium. Last September a group of Iraq Veterans Against the War were arrested during a tour of the Pentagon. Their offense was to have set a stack of brochures on a literature table. The brochures described the possible effects of Depleted Uranium, from which one of the veterans was quite possibly suffering. Not only are veterans opposing this occupation, but active duty troops are refusing as illegal their orders to deploy. Whistleblowers in the military and in Washington are speaking out. War profiteers are facing charges for corrupt practices. All of these forces help to end the occupation and discourage the next attack. Those of us who have never refused illegal orders and faced that risk of prison cannot ask anyone to take that step, but we can applaud those who do. Similarly, we have no right to ask someone to give up a job, uncertain of where the next one lies, but I must say I would applaud as loudly as I could and assist in any way I knew how anyone who quit a job manufacturing weapons for the slaughter of Iraqis and Iranians. And I'd pay more to have my clothes and furniture and toys and silverware manufactured in a shutdown weapons factory in Tennessee than what it costs me to buy the products of Chinese slave labor. Aerojet Ordnance states on its website: "We stress a strong ethical workplace, both in relation to the work we do and the sense of fairness that is extended to all employees, regardless of background." An ethical workplace? An ethical workplace manufacturing weapons used in an illegal and aggressive war that has killed nearly 4,000 US service men and women and over 1 million Iraqis? An ethical workplace? Additional coverage: 100,000 Protest War, S-CHIP Battle, Islamophobia, and the Nobel Prize An ethical workplace making weapons with Depleted Uranium, which the United Nations Human Rights Commission listed 10 years ago as a weapon of mass destruction? Yes, there are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq after all, but they are produced in Tennessee. Congressman Davis's website says of Aerojet that "making armor-piercing 'one-shot one-kill' munitions for the military is the company's bread and butter." An ethical workplace? Davis' website says "there's an armament-producing line worker behind every American soldier." But are those workers informed about possible risks? Will there be 4,000 workers following 4,000 American soldiers into the ground? This is not about defense, but wars of aggression that endanger us all. If you want safety, make peace. This is not about jobs, but the military industrial complex against which Eisenhower warned. If you want jobs, end NAFTA. This is not about justice, but about whether we will sit by as fascism slowly comes to the land of the free and the home of the brave. If you want justice, impeach Dick Cheney and George W. Bush. From AfterDowningStreet.org newcatcher@cpusa.org ***************************************************************** 40 UPI: Method found to protect against radiation - UPI.com Published: 29, 2007 at 3:16 PM PITTSBURGH, Oct. 29 (UPI) -- U.S. scientists have determined intravenous gene therapy might protect vital organs and tissues from the effects of ionizing radiation. University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine researchers, led by Dr. Joel Greenberger, said their animal study finding might be useful in developing treatments for exposure from a radiological or nuclear bomb. "Ionizing radiation can be extremely damaging to cells, tissues, organs and organ systems," said Greenberger, chairman of the school's department of radiation oncology. "In previous studies, we demonstrated that gene therapy can be both swallowed in liquid form and inhaled through a nebulizer prior to radiation exposure to protect healthy tissues from damage. "In this study, we found the same therapy administered intravenously also offers protection during exposure to whole-body irradiation." He said IV gene therapy might offer wide-reaching protection to the public in the event of a terrorist attack, since experts believe a significant number of people would die within 30 days of receiving a large dose of radiation. The research that included Tracy Smith, James Schlesselman and Michael Epperly was presented Sunday in Los Angeles during the 49th annual meeting of the American Society for Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology. © 2007 United Press International. All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 41 The Associated Press: Panel Urges End to Nuke Waste Proposal By H. JOSEF HEBERT – 9 hours ago WASHINGTON (AP) — A panel of the National Academy of Sciences urged President Bush on Monday to abandon an ambitious plan to resume nuclear waste reprocessing that is the heart of the administration's push to expand the civilian use of nuclear power. A 17-member panel of the Academy's National Research Council said the proposed Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, or GNEP, has not been adequately peer reviewed and is banking on reprocessing technology that hasn't been proven, or isn't expected to be ready in the time the administration envisions. The report, released Monday, said GNEP research is taking money and focus away from other nuclear research programs and efforts to speed the construction of new nuclear power plants. "All committee members agree that the GNEP program should not go forward and that it should be replaced by a less aggressive research program," said the panel. It said if the administration proceeds as planned there will be "significant technical and financial risks." Bush announced the global nuclear initiative in early 2006 and has repeatedly touted it as key to U.S. efforts to deal with a growing amount of highly radioactive reactor waste and still allow a large expansion of commercial nuclear power. Internationally, the plan envisions a small number of countries including the United States and Russia supplying other nations with reactor fuel and reprocessing their used fuel. Only last week, Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman cited the importance of the GNEP program. He said in a speech it "represents the future of global nuclear power cooperation" and will "allow for a greater global reliance on civilian nuclear power to produce the electricity needed" while safeguarding against proliferation. The Academy panel said it did not address the pros and cons of the international aspects of the GNEP program, but expressed deep reservations about its ability to address the U.S. waste disposal issue. Dennis Spurgeon, the Energy Department's assistant secretary for nuclear energy, said a positive element of the science panel's review was that most of the members accepted the need to "close the fuel cycle" and continued research into nuclear fuel reprocessing at some level. Spurgeon said committee conclusions represented "a misconception of the (GNEP) program" and that the department "fully recognizes the complexity and time needed. ... We are talking about something that will, in fact, take decades to develop." The GNEP program has been criticized by nuclear nonproliferation activists and has received a chilly reception in Congress, which has refused to provide the short-term funding the Energy Department has requested. The administration wanted nearly $395 million for the program this year, but is getting $167 million. Although nuclear fuel reprocessing continues in Europe and Japan, the United States abandoned it in the 1970s because of concerns that the stream of pure plutonium that is created poses a nuclear proliferation risk. But the GNEP program envisions adopting a different reprocessing method that its advocates argue would not create pure plutonium. But the Academy panel of scientists said that "significant technical problems remain to be solved" in development of the new approach, known as the "UREX" process. The GNEP program is expected to cost billions of dollars over several decades and includes construction of reprocessing plants and next-generation "fast-burn" reactors to burn some of the processed waste. The Energy Department maintains that the program in the long run will reduce the cost of commercial reactor waste disposal and remove the need for additional underground waste repositories beyond the proposed Yucca Mountain waste dump in Nevada. The science panel disagreed. "In view of the technical challenges involved the committee believes that the opposite will be true," it said of the claimed cost savings. The panel concluded that the GNEP program, even if pursued, is not expected to be ready in time to deal with the commercial nuclear waste that is accumulating at 104 existing U.S. commercial power reactors and the waste expected to be added from the additional reactors being built. The National Research Council scientists, who were asked by Congress to examine the Energy Department's nuclear research priorities, said that the GNEP program is taking away funding for a program, called "Nuclear Power 2010" to help promote the construction of new commercial nuclear power plants. The Energy Department should put greater emphasis on that program to help identify new sites for nuclear power plants, promote design and engineering work for a new generation of light water reactors and help the NRC move promptly to license new power reactors, said the science panel. Fifteen of the 17 panel members agreed that the previous research program into fuel reprocessing — which was replaced by GNEP — should continue, but that even that program should not advance to commercial deployment "unless there is a clear economic, national security or environmental reason to do so." Copyright © 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 42 The Coloradoan: Uranium company won't admit the health dangers www.coloradoan.com - Ft. Collins, CO. Monday, October 29, 2007 Those of us who live in Northern Colorado have good reasons to be concerned about the potential for uranium mining in our area. There are now five uranium companies active here. One concern is that uranium mining companies have a history of minimizing the problems they cause - until it's too late and the damage is done. One of the companies that wants to mine here doesn't seem to be able to admit that uranium mining - which releases radioactivity into the air and water - poses unique dangers to our health. Its leaders keep talking about a Web site with "over 140" studies that show "uranium mining operations do not increase the risk of cancer mortality or cause adverse health impacts." Looking at the Web site is truly educational, but probably not in the way the company intends. For starters, only 39 of the 143 studies actually talk about uranium operations. The rest have titles that include "Colorado Climate," "Hotel room suicide" and "Mortality among Catholic nuns certified as radiologic technologists." So 39 studies are actually about uranium. Thirty-two of these are about uranium miners, and 25 of them show increases in lung cancer (of the other seven, two are about cardiovascular disease; one shows no results; one is not a health study; one shows no increase; and the other two are not clear). About a quarter of these studies were done in Colorado - one at Uravan, which became a ghost town and Superfund hazardous waste cleanup site after the last uranium boom. So 25 of 26 studies say uranium miners suffer from increased lung cancer. That's 96 percent! Hardly a ringing endorsement of uranium's safety. Seven studies also show higher rates of other health problems in the miners. These include tuberculosis, emphysema and other lung diseases; diseases of the circulatory system; liver cancer and cirrhosis; and laryngeal cancer. One study even shows higher death rates due to accidents, homicide and mental disorders. I'd call all of these adverse health impacts. Five studies listed on the Web site look at health impacts on people living near uranium sites. These are probably of more direct concern to most of us. One of these studies showed increased lung cancer. One study didn't include lung cancer - the most common problem associated with uranium. A third didn't show any increase in cancer deaths, but its author thanked "the Texas Uranium industry for providing financial support." Hmm. Another study done in the same county did find abnormal DNA and increased health risks. The final paper was not a health study. It said more attention needs to be given to the health and environmental impacts of uranium mining and milling. Of course, four studies can't be considered the final word on anything in science. And given the well-established fact that radiation causes health problems - primarily cancer - this author was probably on the right path. But I'd rather not be a guinea pig for future studies. Let's keep uranium in the ground. Lilias Jones Jarding, Ph.D., lives in Fort Collins. Copyright ©2007 The Fort Collins Coloradoan. ***************************************************************** 43 Salt Lake Tribune: Deadly dirt: Navajos in fight for their lives Tribune Editorial Article Last Updated: 10/29/2007 07:34:24 AM MDT If a picture speaks a thousand words, a small container of contaminated soil and a Geiger counter speak volumes. "Beep, beep, beep, beep . . . " was the only sound in the chambers of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee in Washington last week, as members of the Navajo Nation presented an audio-visual display that was both convincing, and frightening. The radioactive dirt came from the sprawling Navajo reservation - 27,000 square miles of hardscrabble land in Utah, Arizona and New Mexico - where a staggering 520 abandoned and unreclaimed uranium mines spoil the environment and the health of the reservation's inhabitants. Soil samples near homes reveal deadly gamma radiation and radon readings more than 25 times higher than the level that is considered safe. Committee members stared in stunned silence as the container was sealed and the dirt was removed from the room. Then Stephen Etsitty, executive director of the Navajo Nation Environmental Protection Agency, added the exclamation point to the presentation. "The sounds that you have heard . . . show that Navajo families are living within a few hundred yards of materials that we're told we shouldn't be exposed to for longer than an hour." Point made. And point taken. "If a fraction of the deadly contamination the Navajos live with every day had been in Beverly Hills or any wealthy community, it would have been cleaned up immediately," said U.S. Rep. Henry Waxman, D-California. "But there's a different standard applied to Navajo land." The congressman is correct. The feds will spend $98.4 million cleaning up a single site near Moab, far more than the pitiful and minuscule $7.8 million spent on a Superfund cleanup program on the reservation in the past 16 years. And that has to change. Navajo officials are already working with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to prioritize cleanup sites, and the agency has provided funding for sealing mine shafts and removing physical hazards at other mine sites. The Navajos have also wisely approved a resolution forbidding future uranium mining on the reservation. But the damage is already done. Now it needs to be repaired as expeditiously as possible. Waxman wisely called for more hearings, a comprehensive study of the health risks posed by the tailings, and an accelerated cleanup schedule. Congress needs to make that happen. ***************************************************************** 44 Roanoke Times: Man sits on radioactive gold mine in Virginia - Roanoke.com Monday, October 29, 2007 A Pittsylvania County farm lies on one of the country's largest uranium deposits, worth about $10 billion. By Scott Harper  The (Norfolk) Virginian-Pilot CHATHAM -- Coles Hill is the name of a historic farm here in Pittsylvania County, a quiet place off a dirt road with a stately, brick home overlooking tangled hedgerows and rolling fields. It also is the site of one of the largest uranium deposits in the United States, and the biggest ever discovered on the East Coast. As much as 110 million pounds of uranium ore could lie beneath these gentle hills where cattle now graze and tobacco once reigned. The value of this radioactive deposit, based on current market prices, is about $10 billion. Walter Coles lives in the old manor atop this potential bonanza, just as his relatives have for the past 200 years. The groundwater from which he drinks is suspected of being high in radon, a potentially hazardous gas, and the bricks that make up his home register higher-than-normal levels of radioactivity. "Somehow we've managed just fine these past five generations," Coles said with a wry chuckle last week during a tour of his farm in a pickup. Along with neighbors, family and friends, Coles has formed a company, Virginia Uranium Inc., and hired geologists and professionals, who work in a small office in Chatham, the Pittsylvania County seat. They hope to persuade local, state and federal officials to allow all uranium buried beneath Coles Hill to be mined, milled and sold to nuclear power plants. It is an enormous project full of promise and pitfalls, but one that Gov. Tim Kaine is at least willing to study. In his Virginia Energy Plan released this summer, the governor suggested that, in the name of greater energy independence and cleaner-burning fuels, the Pittsylvania County option remain on the table -- at least for now. Before any mining could occur, Virginia lawmakers would have to drop their ban on uranium extraction, imposed 25 years ago after another company attempted to tap Coles Hill. That company, Marline Uranium Corp., backed largely by Canadian investors and chemical giant Union Carbide, eventually dropped its bid and sold its mineral leases because of fierce opposition and sagging mineral prices. Renewed interest in mining today also faces an armada of concerned residents, environmentalists and public-health advocates. Opponents fear increased cancer risks among mine workers and neighbors, diminished property values, a bad image for Southside Virginia, as well as the potential for radioactive pollution of groundwater, air quality and local streams and rivers. "Our preference is that Virginia just stay away from all of this," said Rick Parrish, a senior lawyer with the Southern Environmental Law Center in Charlottesville. "Uranium might be stable in the ground in rock form," Parrish said, "but when you pulverize it, you open up the whole thing to all kinds of potential problems and questions." Mike Town, state director of the Sierra Club, was more succinct. "It's just nuts," Town said. "I mean, uranium mining? In Virginia?" The operation would be the first commercial uranium mine east of the Mississippi River and would require construction of an industrial mill nearby. Inside the mill, hard rock would be smashed to bits, thus freeing the coveted uranium ore, known as "yellow cake," because of its color and texture. Sandy wastes, called tailings, would be collected at the mill, stored on site and likely reburied. Tailings harbor some radioactivity, as well as other heavy metals, and are what environmentalists worry about most. The yellow cake would be packed into 55-gallon drums and trucked out of Pittsylvania County, probably to Illinois and then Kentucky, where the powdery ore would be converted and enriched into nuclear fuel rods. Such rods are the catalysts for producing energy at Virginia's two nuclear power plants, in Surry and North Anna, as well as others across the country. As the United States grapples with global warming and its reliance on fossil fuels, nuclear power is experiencing something of a renaissance. The Bush administration is supporting the shift, offering tax incentives and fast-track licensing. Although no new commercial plant has been built in America since the 1970s, at least 29 nuclear projects have been proposed in recent years, including the prospect of constructing at least one new reactor at the North Anna power station northwest of Richmond. Dominion Virginia Power, the state's largest electric utility, operates the North Anna and Surry stations. A corporate spokesman was ambivalent about the potential Virginia mine. "We are trading in the world market for fuel and able to secure uranium at competitive prices to help keep our costs down for our customers," Jim Norvelle, a Dominion spokesman, said in a statement. "It's hard to know right now whether having a uranium mine in Virginia would be economic for us." In recent years, Coles said he has been approached by uranium companies from Canada, Australia, France and other countries, all asking if he would sell his mineral rights. Canada and Australia are two of the world's largest producers of uranium ore, and France is a leading user of nuclear power. Instead, Coles said, he decided to "keep this a Virginia effort" and began organizing his own mining company. A 2001 study by Virginia Tech, which confirmed that the deposit is neither moving nor leaching underground, also motivated Coles to start his own company. Coles, who says he is "approaching my late 60s," is retired after working for years as a foreign service officer for the U.S. government. The president and chief executive officer of Virginia Uranium Inc. is Norman Reynolds, a Canadian geologist now living in Chatham. Reynolds led efforts to mine Coles Hill in the 1980s. He recalled how prospectors first discovered uranium in Pittsylvania County more than 25 years ago. Reynolds and others were intrigued by a long geological scar called the Chatham Fault, which extends piecemeal from Northern Virginia into North Carolina. Hired crews crisscrossed the fault line in cars, holding devices out the windows that detect radioactivity. When driving past Coles Hill, the radiation levels "suddenly got very high," Reynolds said, "so we stopped and started looking around." They found rocks in roadside ditches that, when measured, also shot readings off the chart. "We knew we'd found a winner," he said. Uranium mining in the United States has been conducted almost exclusively in dry, Western states. The industry's early history, dating to the 1950s, is disastrous, filled with horror stories about sickened workers, homes built from uranium tailings that led to cancer deaths and failing lagoons that leaked radioactive wastes into public waterways. Coles and others insist that those bad days are long gone and that the industry has become smarter and safer with advances in environmental technology and worker safety. Critics say Coles is missing a crucial point -- that the East Coast is vastly different from the West. "Uranium never has been mined in such a densely populated area like this," said Eloise Nenon, who helped to organize the group Southside Concerned Citizens 25 years ago and is helping to jump-start the group now. "The water table is higher here," Nenon said. "It's wetter, more humid. The trucks they use are enormous, and where are we going to put them? The risks of radiation and water pollution could be catastrophic. " Coles dismissed such criticisms as "old news, based on old data." He hopes the Virginia General Assembly will approve such a study when it convenes in January. ***************************************************************** 45 Buffalo News: Radioactive cleanup stage called critical Updated: 10/28/07 7:59 AM LEWISTON — The investigation into contamination at the Lake Ontario Ordnance Works is entering an important phase that will impact cleanup plans that could carry a price tag of hundreds of millions of dollars. So says an advisory group of community residents focused on the study of environmental problems at the former radiological waste site and former weapons production facility. State and federal agencies updated the public on their investigations during a community meeting Saturday in the Lewiston Senior Center. “This is a very critical time because at this earlier stage the decisions made, based on the data being reviewed now, will prepare the conclusions that will be coming up later,” said Walter D. Garrow, Restoration Advisory Board chairman. Over the next several months, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers plans to release reports that will lay the foundation for what happens to hundreds of acres in Lewiston and Porter. The property includes a portion of the Northeast’s only hazardous waste commercial landfill and sits near Lewiston- Porter schools. Members of the advisory board, who plan to review the reports, may have problems dealing with the “huge” volume of data, Garrow said. The board is looking for federal funding to hire a consultant to help with the review process. “We may need extra resources in order to be able to do it,” Garrow said. In December, the corps plans to make public a report on the nature and extent of contamination at the Niagara Falls Storage Site, a 191-acre section of the former ordnance works that includes an interim storage structure holding about 250,000 cubic yards of radioactive material. A public meeting will discuss the report and accept comments, said William Kowalewski, corps project manager. Agency officials Saturday said there is no current leakage of contaminants from the containment structure. But that point was challenged by Bill Boeck, a Niagara University professor, who heads the advisory board’s Radiological Committee. He said it is impossible to determine whether there are or will be leaks because the integrity of what lies beneath cannot be known. abesecker@buffnews.com © 2007 The Buffalo News. The information you receive online from The ***************************************************************** 46 FSC: Drilling Leads to Major Uranium Discovery on Bayswater's Anna Lake Prospect, Central Mineral Belt Uranium Project, Labrador Filing Services Canada | FSC / Press Release Vancouver, British Columbia CANADA, October 29, 2007 /FSC/ - Bayswater Uranium Corp. (BAY - TSX Venture, B2V - FWB), Highlights * Best drill intersection to date returns 40 meters grading 0.07% U3O8 and 0.022% Mo (molybdenum) * Hole to hole correlation establishes main uranium mineralized zone over a 340 meter strike length, 230 meter vertical depth and approximate true widths of up to 25 meters * Deposit open in all directions * Deposit is entirely blind-overburden covered with a veneer of glacial drift and boulders Bayswater Uranium Corporation is pleased to report a near surface uranium discovery with significant molybdenum credits from drilling on its Anna Lake Prospect located on the Company's 100% owned property in the Central Mineral Belt, Labrador. Drill results include an intersection in AL07-01 grading 0.07% U3O8 over 40 metres including 0.12% U3O8 over 5 metres and 0.15% U3O8 over 6.0 metres. Also, an approximate true width intersection from AL07-25 grades 0.05% U3O8 over 25.0 metres including 0.10% U3O8 over 2.0 meters and 0.11% U3O8 over 6.0 meters. Mr. George Leary, President of Bayswater states, "The Company is very encouraged by the drill results from its Anna Lake property to date. This discovery is an excellent start for our first drill program in Labrador and on our Canadian holdings." To date, 62 diamond drill holes totalling approximately 13,000 meters of core recovery have been completed on several of Bayswater's high priority targets identified during 2006. Uranium assay results have been received for 28 of 33 holes at the Anna Lake Uranium prospect, 12 of 13 holes for the Dandy and all holes for Stipec A, Stipec E and Kanairiktok Bay showings. Only partial results have been received for an ICP-42 multi-element suite. Additional results for the Anna Lake drilling are pending laboratory analysis. Table 1 highlights drill results from the Anna Lake discovery to date. Table 1 - Analytical Results - Uranium & Molybdenum Anna Lake Prospect For Table 1, click on the link below or paste the link into your browser: http://www.usetdas.com/maps/bay/BAYTable1Oct29.pdf Based on drill results to date, the main mineralized zone consists of two moderate to steeply dipping, sub-parallel sheets that locally coalesce. The main zone along with numerous minor sub-parallel lenses and sheets contain significant uranium/molybdenum grades, show good hole to hole correlation, and can be delineated over a minimum strike length of 340 meters. Uranium intersections range between 1.0 and 25.0 meters in true thickness, grade between 0.02% U308 and 0.11% U3O8 and can be traced from surface to a vertical depth of 230 meters. Initial drill testing of the Anna Lake target appears to have encountered the mineralization in a down-dip orientation. The orientation of the drilling program was revised following the completion of drill hole AL07-08 in order to intersect the mineralization at an optimum angle. True widths of mineralized sections are unknown up to holes AL07-03. Subsequent to this, true widths are estimated from 80-95% of the core length of intersections. Currently, all holes are being drilled due west to test the north-south trending zone. Of the Anna Lake holes reported in this release, 19 were designed to cut the main mineralized zone. Seventeen of these holes hit significant mineralization for an 89% hit ratio. The Anna Lake uranium mineralized zones occur within a poorly exposed area with a veneer of glacial drift and boulders. A 1.3 km long and 500 meter wide induced polarization/resistivity anomaly, which reflects a belt of north-south trending supracrustal rocks consisting of metasediments/metavolcanic units, was delineated from ground geophysical surveys this year. The IP/resistivity anomaly is characterized by a very distinctive and well defined zone of high chargeability and low resistivity. Sulphide content within the belt averages approximately 1% to 5% and occurs in the form of pyrite, non-magnetic pyrrhotite and lesser chalcopyrite. A large structural component to the Anna Lake deposit is also evident from ground and airborne magnetic data. Potassic alteration manifesting itself as biotite overprinting can be observed in varying degrees throughout the core samples. Uranium mineralization occurs predominantly within sulphidic, biotite/garnet schist along a possible structural contact with footwall quartz sericite schist and porphyroblastic hematized granite. The exact controls on uranium mineralization are not clearly understood. The zone remains open in all directions with many high priority geophysical, geochemical and radon gas targets remaining untested along the above mentioned IP anomaly and elsewhere on the grid area. The host rock units within the Anna Lake area are believed to be a part of the Aillik belt of supracrustal rocks associated with the Michelin, Kitts, Gear, Inda, Nash and other uranium deposits hosted in the Central Mineral Belt. Mr. George Leary, President of Bayswater states, "Although it is very early into the drill program, the cumulative widths and grades demonstrated along with the near surface nature and continuity of the mineralization, indicate that the Anna Lake deposit may be amenable to open pit mining. Excellent potential exists for expanding the deposit near surface and for discovery of higher grade zones at depth." The deposit is entirely open along strike and to depth. The potential, as demonstrated on other deposits in the district, of a higher grade system at depth has yet to be evaluated. Additional drilling is planned to continue until mid-November and resume again in the early spring of 2008 from a base camp to be established on site at Anna Lake. A drill hole location map with drill hole sections will be available on the Bayswater website at www.bayswateruranium.com. Additional results have also been received from the Dandy, Stipec River A, Stipec River E and Kanairiktok Bay uranium showings identified during the 2006 prospecting program. Results from drilling on the Stipec A (6 holes), Stipec E (3 holes) and Kanairiktok Bay (3 holes) showings returned no significant values of interest. Further geological work will be required to fully evaluate these surface showings. Drilling on the Dandy Uranium prospect has returned numerous low grade intersections of uranium. Table 2 summarizes the results from the Dandy drilling. Table 2 - Analytical Results Dandy Prospect For Table 2, click on the link below or paste the link into your browser: http://www.usetdas.com/maps/bay/BAYTable2Oct29.pdf Drill holes DS07-01 through to DS07-09 were collared in various locations in an attempt to intersect surficial zones of uranium mineralization. Holes DS07-10 to DS07-13 were designed to test the main Dandy uraniferous dike swarm that hosts abundant uranophane mineralization on surface. Mineralization at the Dandy prospect occurs within pegmatite dikes cutting dominantly quartzofeldspathic gneiss. The best intersection returned to date assayed 0.04% U308 over 5.0 meters from DS07-13. Surface uranium mineralization in the Dandy area is extensive over a 1.5 kilometer by 600 meter area. Surface samples returned U308 grades up to 0.18%. Further evaluation of this prospect will continue in 2008. Currently, two rigs continue to drill on the main Anna Lake target. Detailed follow-up grid controlled work including soil sampling, induced polarization/resistivity and radon cup surveys have been completed over the Anna Lake prospect for 2007. Further ground magnetics surveys are ongoing. The radon cup survey targeted the Anna Lake grid along with selected reconnaissance lines over the Ghost Lake A, Ghost Lake B and a newly discovered uranium bearing sandstone boulder train identified in the Stipec River area as previously announced. Limited grid controlled surveys have also been completed over portions of the Stipec River prospects. In addition, airborne electromagnetic and radiometric surveys have been completed during the 2007 field season and results of this along with all prospecting work will be forthcoming in subsequent news releases as analytical and other data is reviewed and assessed. Sample handling consists of shipping one half of split drill core samples to Activation Laboratories Ltd. sample preparation facility in Goose Bay, Labrador where the samples are crushed, pulverized and split. Sample pulps are then forwarded to Ancaster, Ontario for analyses. Uranium analysis is performed using the delayed neutron counting (DNC) method. A multi-element inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-42) is performed as well on all samples. Where uranium values exceed the upper limit of 1%, samples are re-assayed using X-ray fluorescence (XRF). A rigorous quality control/assurance program was instituted for the sampling and analytical work. Control samples, consisting of three separate standards were inserted in the sample stream approximately every 25 to 30 samples. To date, this program has shown that the analyses are reliable. The company intends to implement a more rigorous QA/QC program during its 2008 drilling program. The Company's exploration activities are conducted under the supervision of George M. Leary, M.Sc. P. Eng. (BC), President of the Company, and Victor Tanaka, B.Sc. P.Geo. (B.C.), Chief Operating Officer of the Company. Both are qualified persons under NI 43-101. George Leary is the qualified person responsible for the technical information in this news release. About the Labrador Central Mineral Belt The Central Mineral Belt of Labrador, Canada, located approximately 135 kilometers north of Goose Bay, has a long history of uranium and base metals exploration. Uranium was first discovered in the belt in the 1950's. With further exploration in the 1960's and 1970's and rising uranium prices, exploration in the region increased significantly and several uranium deposits were discovered including the Kitts, Michelin, Inda, Nash, Rainbow and Moran Lake deposits by Brinco. Today, exploration activity in the region is highlighted by resource drilling at the Michelin and Jacques Lake deposits by Aurora Energy Resources Inc. (TSX: AXU) and at the Moran Lake deposit by Crosshair Exploration & Mining Corp. (TSX-V: CXX). Collectively, approximately 100 million pounds of NI 43-101 compliant uranium resources have been reported in the Central Mineral Belt by Aurora and Crosshair, a figure that is expected to increase significantly in the coming years through increases to existing resources, as well as new uranium discoveries. Bayswater Uranium is the largest landholder in the Central Mineral Belt with interests in 4,626 sq km of strategic landholdings; Aurora controls about 800 sq km and Crosshair approximately 640 sq km. Bayswater is aggressively exploring several uranium targets within its landholdings with the objective of discovering new uranium resources. About Bayswater Uranium Corporation - The Super JuniorTM Uranium Company Bayswater Uranium Corporation is a rapidly-growing international uranium exploration and development company. As the only uranium company to have major landholdings in each of Canada's most important producing and exploration regions - the Athabasca Basin, the Central Mineral Belt, and the Thelon Basin - Bayswater is a leader in uranium exploration in Canada, the world's largest producer of uranium. The Company also owns several advanced uranium properties in the United States that are being fast tracked to production. Bayswater combines a balanced portfolio of exploration and development projects with the uranium expertise of its technical and managerial teams. The result is a Super JuniorTM Uranium Company with the share liquidity and market capitalization to provide value to both the retail and institutional investor. Bayswater is listed on the TSX Venture Exchange under the symbol "BAY". The Company's website is www.bayswateruranium.com. On behalf of the Board of: BAYSWATER URANIUM CORPORATION George M. Leary President For further information contact: John Gomez Manager, Investor Relations Telephone: (604) 687-2153 The TSX Venture Exchange has not reviewed and does not accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of the contents herein. Source: Bayswater Uranium Corporation (TSX-V: BAY) http://www.bayswateruranium.com Maximum News Dissemination by Filing Services Canada Inc. Ph: (403) 717-3898 Fx: (403) 717-3896 www.usetdas.com ***************************************************************** 47 News & Star: Nuclear focus on Sellafield Published on 29/10/2007 Moveable priorities: Above left, Dungeness Nuclear Power Station in Kent. Above right, Sellafield, where union leaders are concerned work will be transferred from the south amid a funding crisis By Chris Story NUCLEAR industry union leaders are seeking government talks amid claims that resources are to be moved from southern England to Sellafield in west Cumbria. They are concerned that clean-up work at a number of defunct nuclear reactors is to be stopped because of funding problems. The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) is to publish a business plan next month which unions believe will lead to a shift north. Unions suspect clean-up work will be halted at magnox reactors in Sizewell A in Suffolk, Dungeness A in Kent, Hinkley Point A in Somerset, Bradwell in Essex and Berkeley in Gloucestershire. An NDA spokesman would not comment on details of the business plan but admitted it was “prioritising spending towards higher hazards”. GMB union national officer Gary Smith said: “We know we need to clean up the existing nuclear power stations and build new ones for energy security and to reduce carbon emissions. “However, we are held up as the government seeks a non existent private sector solution to progress these plans. “It would be better to face reality and acknowledge that public funding and ownership is the only way forward for decommissioning the existing sites and building and operating new nuclear power stations. In the Sellafield workforce we have a centre of excellence that can be used to progress all these plans.” Irish Want Sellafield To Close: page 5 nw evening mail | cumberland news | times and star | whitehaven news ***************************************************************** 48 Las Vegas SUN: Gibbons miffed, now invited to hearing By Lisa Mascaro <lisa.mascaro@lasvegassun.com> WASHINGTON - It was a simple request - Nevada's governor wanted to be invited to testify at this week's Senate hearing on Yucca Mountain. But no invitation came. Proxies stepped in and asked again. Still no answer. Gov. Jim Gibbons was miffed. A geologist by training, and a lawyer, he has dealt with Yucca Mountain in Washington and Nevada for more than 20 years. On the other hand, his scientific credentials were questioned after he claimed, while in Congress, that risks of mercury poisoning from eating fish have been overblown. Senate Democrats, in a position to lead their first hearing in years on Yucca, extended an invitation instead to Nevada Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto, a Democrat. She was deemed a more appropriate representative to handle the legal intricacies. The governor dashed off a letter of protest to the committee. Rep. Jon Porter, a fellow Republican, joined the cause, questioning the legitimacy of the hearing without Gibbons' presence. The governor's spokeswoman, Melissa Subbotin, said the issue was not political affiliation. "Five people, all Republicans, could have been selected and we would still ask to participate." Nonetheless, partisan speculation swirled. Were Republicans trying to snatch the spotlight from Democratic presidential contender Sen. Hillary Clinton? She had called for the hearing. Or were they aiming at Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, the state's lead Yucca Mountain foe? He was consulted on the witnesses. "There's nothing to be gained from Gibbons' bellyaching unless the intent is to delegitimize the hearing," one Democratic source said. "It doesn't benefit Nevada." What happened to that famous Nevada bipartisanship when it comes to all things Yucca Mountain? Relax, everybody. A committee spokesman called late last week: "Because of the level of interest, we have now invited the governor." So what was it that the governor wants to say? "He would obviously represent the history of the project itself - how throughout its history it's been the most scientifically flawed project," Subbotin said. Washington will be all ears. Lisa Mascaro can be reached at (202) 662-7436 or at lisa.mascaro@lasvegassun.com. All contents © 1996 - 2007 Las Vegas Sun, Inc. ***************************************************************** 49 Las Vegas SUN: Debate on Yucca turns with politics Today: October 29, 2007 at 7:36:58 PDT Energy Department will play defense at Senate hearing loaded with Dems By Lisa Mascaro Las Vegas Sun Gibbons miffed, now invited to hearing WASHINGTON - The Energy Department, rushing before President Bush leaves office to submit its long-delayed application to store nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, will find itself on the defensive Wednesday as the project is scrutinized at a Senate hearing stacked with Democrats and infused with presidential politics. This will be the first hearing under a Democratic-controlled Congress after the proposed nuclear repository received mostly friendly handling from Republicans during much of Bush's presidency. Both Yucca supporters and opponents are anticipating a new era of debate. Michael Mariotte, executive director of the Nuclear Information and Research Service, a watchdog group, expects the hearing to showcase more critical oversight while hinting at the nuclear policies of a Democratic White House. Democratic presidential contender Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York called for the hearing to investigate the administration's delay in releasing radiation-exposure standards, among other issues. Clinton serves on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, but she might not be the only presidential contender in attendance at its hearing Wednesday: There is talk that Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona might stop by . And Democratic Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois will submit questions to the panel. The industry thinks the hearing could offer a venue to clarify the candidates' positions on nuclear power, which is rebounding with about 30 new nuclear plants on tap. Congress also is debating $50 billion in federal loan guarantees. That said, Democrats are already being criticized for loading the hearing's witness table with anti-Yucca forces. "It's probably going to be more of a Halloween freak show," one nuclear industry representative scoffed. As the Energy Department makes a final push to get its application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission before the June 30 deadline, vital issues remain that the committee is poised to address. After years of hearings, inch-thick reports and several legal battles, the debate comes back to one of the most personal subjects of all: cancer. Just how much cancer-causing radiation should be allowed to come from the tons of spent nuclear fuel that the federal government wants to store in perpetuity at Yucca, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas? Is a risk of 1 in 1,700 people dying from cancer from the repository acceptable, as has been proposed? How about 1 in 70, as is suggested for the future? What about 1 in 13? Yucca Mountain raises many specters for Nevadans, including the prospect of thousands of shipments of nuclear waste traveling to the state in what critics fear could become a "mobile Chernobyl" or target of terrorist hijacking. Once buried, the radioactive waste could pollute ground water used for drinking and livestock for generations to come. Nevadans have reason to be skeptical of government assurances that the site will be safe. This is the state that lived through the atomic age of above-ground nuclear tests at the Nevada Test Site, and the health problems that have resulted, including higher cancer rates among Test Site workers and downwinders . Keeping a promise of safety for the next 1 million years seems impossible. When the federal officials started discussing the cancer-causing potential from Yucca, they proposed a 1 in 1,700 cancer fatality risk for the first 10,000 years - meaning one in every 1,700 people exposed throughout their lifetime to radiation primarily from the aquifers across the site had a risk of dying of cancer. A federal court threw out that standard as not tough enough. Even though that level of exposure is used by the Environmental Protection Agency as a general rule, the court said the agency needs to account for a future when the waste will be its most toxic, about 100,000 years from now. So the agency offered a new risk assessment: 1 in 1,700 for the first 10,000 years, then 1 in 70 for the years after that. It used the median, rather than the mean, as required by Congress and the courts, meaning half the people would be exposed to higher doses. Those getting the most exposure would face a cancer death risk of 1 in 13, said Arjun Makhijani, president of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, who has argued against the standard. Makhijani said the risk is even greater for women, making it "a little like Russian roulette." "All of these risks we would consider unacceptable." The process has stalled and a final version of the dose levels is being reviewed by the White House's Office of Management and Budget. Clinton, speaking to Nevada reporters this summer, announced her intentions to call the Senate hearing to shed light on the "great deal of confusion and stonewalling by the administration." Nevada's lead attorney fighting the dump, Joseph R. Egan, is among many who think the delay is an orchestrated attempt by the Bush administration to dodge a Nevada lawsuit before the June deadline if the state finds the new cancer standards unacceptable. "We're pretty cynical about the process and for good reason," Egan said. "We think they're deliberately holding out." However the Energy Department has said it can move forward with its June application without the radiation-exposure standards. The Energy Department's latest report on Yucca Mountain shows that it thinks there will be far less exposure to cancer-causing radiation than is currently allowed under the EPA's existing guidelines - less than 1 percent of allowable limits in most cases. Yucca Mountain is already 20 years behind schedule, with its new opening date estimated in 2017 or beyond. The nuclear industry, which once said Yucca was vital to its efforts to build new power plants as part of the Bush administration's nuclear renaissance, now sees the dump as one piece of a plan that includes keeping waste in interim storage at nuclear plants, as is done now. "Yucca Mountain isn't a silver bullet," said John Keeley, a spokesman for the Nuclear Energy Institute, the leading industry trade group. "The good news is because of the success of interim storage, we're not looking at a crisis situation." The cancer issue is only one of the many debates that probably will play out over the next several months as Democrats take the lead and the June deadline looms. In many ways, the conversation about how to use a Yucca repository might be just beginning. Nils Diaz, the former chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said last week he thinks Yucca will be used in some capacity. But, he said, "I believe we will first determine if there are better alternatives to storing fuel at Yucca Mountain." Lisa Mascaro can be reached at (202) 662-7436 or at lisa.mascaro@lasvegassun.com. All contents © 1996 - 2007 Las Vegas Sun, Inc. ***************************************************************** 50 Assessing Charges on Iranian Nukes Date: Mon, 29 Oct 2007 13:21:38 -0500 (CDT) Institute for Public Accuracy 915 National Press Building, Washington, D.C. 20045 (202) 347-0020 * http://www.accuracy.org * ipa@accuracy.org ___________________________________________________ Monday, October 29, 2007 Assessing Charges on Iranian Nuclear Program Yesterday when asked whether "there is a clandestine, secret nuclear weapons program right now underway in Iran?" Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said: "We haven't seen any concrete evidence to that effect." http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0710/28/le.01.html MUHAMMAD SAHIMI, moe@usc.edu, http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/05/30/opinion/edebadi.php Sahimi is professor of chemical engineering at the University of Southern California. His articles on the U.S., Iran and Iran's nuclear program include "The follies of Bush's Iran policy," which he co-wrote with Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi. CARAH ONG, cong@armscontrolcenter.org, http://irannuclearwatch.blogspot.com Ong is Iran Policy Analyst at the Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation and is writing regularly on the subject. MICHAEL VEILUVA, MVeiluva@avelaw.com, http://www.disarmamentactivist.org Foundation counsel with the Western States Legal Foundation, which monitors nuclear issues, Veileuva edits the daily Disarmament Activist blog on Iran. He said today: "Last week a wing of the Iranian government was labeled [by the U.S. government] a proliferator, an ambiguous phrase suggesting that Iran is exporting nuclear weapons technology. But there's no concrete evidence that Iran is engaged in a covert nuclear weapons program. It is by dint of repetition that the Bush administration hopes that its propaganda will be accepted as fact. ElBaradei, as head of IAEA, is the most knowledgeable person to ascertain whether Iran's nuclear fuel cycle program poses a threat and he has repeatedly said that his agency has uncovered no evidence of diversion of nuclear material. "Hans Blix -- the former head of the UN inspectors in Iraq -- has said the same and noted that this situation is similar to the buildup to the Iraq invasion in that the administration is making charges without evidence that contradict what the inspectors are saying." For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy: Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167. _________________________________________________________________ You received this message as a subscriber on the list: public@lists.accuracy.org To be removed from the list, send any message to: public-unsubscribe@lists.accuracy.org For all list information and functions, including changing your subscription mode and options, visit the Web page: http://lists.accuracy.org/lists/info/public ***************************************************************** 51 IPS-English POLITICS-IRAN: Row Over Nuclear Negotiator's Firing Worsens Date: Mon, 29 Oct 2007 14:01:33 -0800 Kimia Sanati TEHRAN, Oct 29 (IPS) - Criticism has been steadily building up against President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's apparent move to harden Iran's position on its nuclear standoff with the West by removing moderate chief nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani, and replacing him with his handpicked loyalist Saeed Jalili. On Sunday, in a move considered bold in Iranian politics, a group of 23 members of parliament said, in a letter addressed to Ahmadinejad, that ‘'in the circumstances when the nation is facing most sensitive times, a change of the top nuclear negotiator is not in line with the national interests and the good of the system.'' ”It was necessary for the President to act with more tolerance and thought,” said the statement as quoted by the Fars news agency. According to Fars, 22 of the signatories were reformists and were joined by one conservative. On Oct. 24, after Ahmadinejad's role in Larijani's resignation became apparent, 167 MPs or two-thirds of parliament signed a statement, read out on the floor of the house, expressing appreciation for Larijani's efforts in handling the nuclear issue, the Aftab news agency reported. There was resentment over the fact that the move completely bypassed parliament. Criticism had also surfaced in the media and among officials about the timing of the change. And foreign policy advisor to supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamanei, Ali Akbar Velayati, went on record to say that Larijani should not have quit. ”It was definitely better if this had not happened in the important and sensitive situation when the nuclear issue is on the table,” Velayati, was quoted as saying by the semi-official news agency ISNA. Acceptance of Larijani's resignation was announced by government spokesman Gholam Hossein Elham, on Oct. 20, in a surprise move just three days before Larijani was to meet European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana. ”While Elham insists that the main reason for Larijan's resignation was private problems, there are reports that his stance in certain issues and lack of total coordination with the President as head of the Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) has been the real reason for his resignation,” ‘Nowsazi', a pro-Ahmadinejad news portal revealed. ”It seems that Jalili's new mission as chief nuclear negotiator can undo many of the seemingly hard knots of the (nuclear) issue,” the portal added and suggested that the decision had been made because Larijani had been ‘'inefficient in talks with Javier Solana''. Jalili, a close friend and associate of Ahmadinejad, had served as deputy foreign minister of European and American affairs since Ahmadinejad took office in August 2005. Before that he had been director-general of Khamenei's office from 2001 to 2005. In Iranian political circles he is said to be a close friend and associate of Ahmadinejad and as unyielding and aggressive. Three rounds of talks between Larijani and Solana as well as meetings with the director-general of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Mohamed ElBaradei led to the signing of an agreement, on Aug. 21, between Iran and the agency which put six issues, including centrifuges P1 and P2 and sources of contamination, on the agenda of talks. There may be significance in the fact that Larijani's resignation was announced a week after a visit to Tehran by Russian President Vladimir Putin to attend a summit conference of Caspian littoral states. Following the visit, Larijani told reporters, on Oct. 17, that a new proposal had been made by the Russian President during his meeting with Khamenei to get out of the existing nuclear impasse and that it was being considered. But a day later Ahmadinejad denied that Putin had made any such proposal and, on Oct. 19, at Friday prayers, the President hinted at ‘‘certain people who negotiate with fear and apprehension'' or ‘‘conduct secret nuclear negotiations.'' Presumably the first statement referred to Larijani and the second to former chief nuclear negotiator Hasan Rohani whose scheduled meeting with Solana had been abruptly cancelled three weeks earlier. Both men are representatives of Khamenei in the SNSC, the highest body dealing with national security issues. ”Government officials stress that foreign policy is not going to be affected by Larijani's resignation but it is quite obvious that with someone as close and as trusted by Ahmadinejad as Jalili, foreign policy will significantly be radicalised,” an analyst in Tehran requesting anonymity told IPS. ”Larijani and Ahmadinejad do not differ on the strategic aspects of the nuclear issue but follow different tactics. Larijani is more realistic and pragmatic and favours negotiations, but Ahmadinejad and his associates want a tougher and more aggressive stance against the West,” he said. ”On several occasions Ahmadinejad has tried to sabotage the course of action taken by the negotiating team. On one occasion he sent his top advisor Mojtaba Samareh Hashemi to meet with Chirac (former French president) on the nuclear issue as his ‘special envoy' rather than entrusting the task to the negotiating team and thus undermining its authority,” he added. ”On another occasion when there was talk that Larijani had reached some sort of an agreement with Europeans that involved temporary suspension of uranium enrichment, Ahmadinejad got louder than ever and in several public addresses shouted Iran was not going to stop enrichment even for a day,” the analyst said. Larijani, a former commander of the elite Revolutionary Guards and later head of the state-run broadcasting organisation (IRIB), is popular with the traditional conservatives. As head of the IRIB he had an important role in leading criticism of the reformist government of Mohammad Khatami. ”It is no secret now that Putin's proposal or the message that he carried for Iranians triggered some sort of strong dispute between the President and Larijani, already at war for a long time, and made it impossible for them to carry on collaborating, as vice-speaker of parliament Mohammad Reza Bahonar has admitted. The true nature of the proposal is, however, a highly guarded secret yet,” a reformist journalist in Tehran told IPS. ”It is not without significance that former foreign minister Akbar Velayati who is Khamenei's top advisor in foreign policy has immediately reacted to Larijani's replacement. Having lost their last bastion, traditional conservatives have become rightfully even more apprehensive of the younger and more radical neo-conservatives taking full control of things, especially foreign policy,” he said. ”The main question, however, is whose side the Supreme Leader, who has kept absolutely quiet so far, will now take. He favoured Larijani and, just as constantly, showed support for Ahmadinejad. If he doesn't check Ahmadinejad's greed for total control, he will put himself in danger of estranging his traditional conservative following,” the reformist journalist added. ***** + Nuclear Ambitions - More IPS Coverage (http://www.ipsnews.net/new_focus/nuclear/index.asp) + IRAN - The Parthian Shot (http://www.ipsnews.net/new_focus/iran/index.asp) (END/IPS/AP/MM/IP/IR/NU/IP/DV/KS/RDR/07) = 10291239 ORP006 NNNN ***************************************************************** 52 [NYTr] DPRK Confirms Schedule for Dismantling Nuclear Facilities Date: Mon, 29 Oct 2007 13:05:42 -0500 (CDT) Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit Prensa Latina, Havana http://www.plenglish.com N.Korea to Dismantle N-Facilities Seoul, Oct 29 (Prensa Latina) The People's Democratic Republic of Korea confirmed it will start dismantling its nuclear installations by November, expressed a South Korean official in this capital. Lim Sung-nam, South Korean chief of talks on power assistance, said that PDRK is working to begin closure its atomic centers by November 1st. In that way Pyongyang will faithfully implement the denuclearization measure's second step, under February 13 agreements in Beijing during the six-country talks between China, PDRK, United States, Russia, Japan and South Korea. The work team is one of the five created under February's Treaty along with other working groups on denuclearization of the PDRK in exchange for economic and energy assistance. Lim's declarations were spread in Seoul at the end of the First Plenary Session the six-country delegates held in the small village of Panmunjon, on the military demarcation between North and South of the peninsula. The South Korean representative said that Pyongyang expects the other five nations will punctually supply economic and energy assistance, which they promised last February. Fulfilling the agreement, Pyongyang has already closed its five installations including an five megawatt experimental reactor, a nuclear fuel-producing plant and a fuel-recycling plant. It should dismantle now its nuclear program and announce the atomic plan's total removal before December 31. ef abo mne mf PL-17 * ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us Our main website: http://www.blythe.org List Archives: http://blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/ Subscribe: http://blythe-systems.com/mailman/listinfo/nytr ================================================================= ***************************************************************** 53 [NYTr] Iran, IAEA Resume Talks Date: Mon, 29 Oct 2007 15:10:24 -0500 (CDT) Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit Prensa Latina, Havana http://www.plenglish.com Iran, Atomic Energy Agency Resume Talks Tehran, Oct 29 (Prensa Latina) Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency Monday resumed talks on the debated Iranian nuclear program, as part of agreements to solve pending issues. Talks will be about the P1 and P2 centrifuges and the origin of radioactivity at the Nuclear Research Center. IAEA Deputy Director Olli Heinoen and Iran's Supreme National Security Council Deputy Chief Javad Vaidi will be heading the two parties jointly-agreed negotiations, according to IRNA news agency. The results of the meeting will be announced in late November when IAEA Director General Mohamad ElBaradei presents a new report on the Iranian nuclear issue to the IAEA Board of Governors. ef ajs jcd mf * ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us Our main website: http://www.blythe.org List Archives: http://blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/ Subscribe: http://blythe-systems.com/mailman/listinfo/nytr ================================================================= ***************************************************************** 54 FAS: A Response to Congresswoman Tauscher's Article in Nonproliferation Review | Main Strategic Security Blog A project of the Federation of American Scientists National Academy of Science Report Calls for Putting the Brakes on the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP) Program. This afternoon, a committee of the National Research Council, a research arm of the National Academy of Science, issued a report that is extremely critical of the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, or GNEP, an administration plan to restart separating plutonium from used commercial nuclear reactor fuel, something the United States has not done for three decades. I have argued that the goals of GNEP, while scientifically possible and perhaps someday economically justifiable, are decades premature. I am relieved to discover that the committee report comes to essentially the same conclusion. What has been most remarkable about the GNEP program is not simply the ambitious technical goals it sets, rather it is the extraordinary urgency with which the program is promoted. Currently, the GNEP program is planning on moving basically from lab-bench scale experiments to essentially commercial scale operation without intermediate pilot programs and engineering development. Sort of the missile defense approach to plutonium reprocessing. But the press office summary of the report states that “…the technologies required for achieving GNEP's goals are too early in development to justify DOE's accelerated schedule for construction of commercial facilities that would use these technologies…” Except for the political calendar—DOE may be trying to create facts on the ground, quite literally by pouring concrete, before the end of the Bush administration—I cannot figure out what motivates the big rush. DOE often has a particular reluctance to do serious cost analysis before setting out on even multibillion dollar projects. (DOE seems to take a more empirical approach to cost studies: keep sending them money until they are finished with the project and when they are done they will tell you how much it cost.) The summary says “DOE claims that the program will save time and money if pursued on the commercial scale, but the committee believes that the opposite will likely be true and found no economic justification.” Perhaps the primary appeal to Congress of GNEP is that it holds out some hope of avoiding a second Yucca Mountain. Whatever one thinks of Yucca, for or against, everyone agrees that it has been a political nightmare not willingly repeated. The summary says “And although a stated goal of the program is to reduce the overall amount of radioactive waste, which would in turn decrease the need for a second geological repository in addition to Yucca Mountain, it was not clear to the committee that such a need currently exists.” In short, the summary says, “While all 17 members of the committee concluded that the GNEP R&D program, as currently planned, should not be pursued, 15 of the members said that the less-aggressive reprocessing research program that preceded the current one should be. However, if DOE returns to the earlier program, called the Advance Fuel Cycle Initiative (AFCI), it should not commit to a major demonstration or deployment of reprocessing unless there is a clear economic, national security, or environmental reason to do so.” And this is not a group of anti-nuclear tree-huggers. The report goes on to review the DOE’s nuclear reactor research program and, while it notes pluses and minuses in various programs, the committee strongly and clearly supports a robust research and development effort in nuclear power. Even a group generally sympathetic to nuclear power isn’t sold on GNEP. Perhaps the basic problem is, as the committee observes, that “Moreover, there has been insufficient peer review of the program.” This report is an important step in correcting that shortcoming. Posted by Ivan Oelrich on October 29, 2007 03:49 PM | Permalink TrackBack URL for this entry: http://www.fas.org/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/968 ***************************************************************** 55 Tri-City Herald: Thousands of bats living underground at Hanford Hanford bat research (w/o sound) Published Monday, October 29th, 2007 By Annette Cary, Herald staff writer Hanford researchers twice have tried to count the bats that have made a home in an underground concrete structure near the Columbia River. They set up a video camera with an infrared light outside the hatch to the structure, called a clearwell, and let it roll. "It's like popcorn coming out," said Ken Gano, a natural resource specialist for Washington Closure Hanford. "They come and go all night long." Both times they've counted about 2,000 bats, which they say probably is a low estimate. But that number makes the colony the largest identified in the state, rivaled only by a colony that roosts under an Olympia pier. This time next year, Washington Closure and the Department of Energy expect to know much more. As part of the Hanford cleanup effort, the clearwell is scheduled to be demolished in fiscal year 2009, which begins next October. "That (gives) us some time to figure out how to deal with it," Gano said. "We can look at the impact to demolishing it and what we can do to provide an alternate roost site." The colony qualifies as a priority species designation for the state because it's a maternity colony, with females spending the spring and summer roosting in the clearwell while each raise a single pup. It's so large that there is a possibility it's populating the entire region. Researchers believe the bats are a type called Yuma myotis. But species can be difficult to distinguish from each other, and that's one question the study will answer. They have furry brown bodies with black wings and are smaller than the silver-haired bat that is more commonly seen occasionally roosting in attics in the Tri-Cities. Each Yuma myotis weighs about 6 to 8 grams -- less than two nickels -- and has a body smaller than a mouse. But they look bigger in flight because of a wing span that stretches 6 to 8 inches. In a night they might eat their weight in small insects, such as the mosquitoes and midges that are plentiful along the nearby Columbia River. Bats are common at Hanford. They like warm temperatures and roost in reactors and other unused concrete buildings that heat up in the sun. But this colony has found what amounts to a bat palace inside the large clearwell once used to hold filtered water for Hanford's F Reactor when it produced plutonium for the nation's nuclear weapons program. Sometime after it stopped operating about 30 years ago, one of its six hatches was left open, providing a doorway for the bat colony. From above ground the roof of the clearwell looks like a parking lot a little larger than a football field. Inside, it's 15 feet deep and has 98 pillars holding up the roof. Hanford researchers went inside a couple weeks ago, knowing they might not find many bats this time of year. The bats migrate to hibernate when the weather gets too cool for them to find the insects they need. Although Hanford researchers don't know where the colony has gone, they suspect it is not far. They found about 30 bats still in the clearwell at the end of summer, but plenty of evidence that more had been there. Around the base of the pillars, guano is piled more than an inch deep. The bats prefer temperatures of 90 to 110 degrees so they don't have to expend energy to stay warm and to help keep their pups, which are born hairless, warm. They evidently have used the top of the pillars, moving up and down the columns to find the optimum temperature, and also have roosted along the edges of the underside of the closed steel hatches. Researchers found more bats when they entered a 700-foot-long flume adjacent to the clearwell that was used to carry water in and out. In video they shot of their entry into the flume, bats dodged around their heads in the narrow passageway and clung in clusters to the roof. "They like togetherness," said Dana Ward, DOE environmental scientist. Researchers also spent an evening catching bats in a fine net near the exit of the flume. Each bat was carefully untangled from the net, then measured. "They're squeaking at you the whole time," Gano said. "You learn how to handle them and not squeeze too hard." Some also had a tiny hole punched in their wing to collect tissue for DNA samples. "It doesn't seem to hurt," Gano said. "It grows back in a couple weeks." During the year of research, researchers hope to learn more about the genetic relationships and diversity within the colony, providing information about the colony's regional importance. The research also should answer what temperature and humidity the Yuma myotis requires for roosting with data from sensors placed inside the clearwell and flume. "There's not a lot of information about bats and what their habitat requirements are," said Jon Lucas, an environmental specialist for Areva who is working on the research as part of his work to earn a master's degree. Acoustic sensors will provide information on when the bats show up next spring and also information about when they come and go daily. In about a year DOE should be ready to make a decision on what to do with the colony. "Our hope is to turn the flume into the new roost site," Gano said. It may be more acceptable to keep and manage the smaller structure than the clearwell, Ward said. Although they are small animals, it's a big issue for DOE. Its policy is to manage the Hanford cleanup with as little impact to plants and animals as possible. And under a presidential order, Hanford must protect animals and other natural resources to allow more of the site to possibly be included in time in the Hanford Reach National Monument. © 2007 Tri-City Herald, Associated Press & Other Wire Services ***************************************************************** 56 The Associated Press: Researchers Study Bat Colony in Wash. RICHLAND, Wash. (AP) — Researchers are studying a colony of bats that live in an underground concrete structure at the Hanford nuclear reservation in hopes of determining how to provide a new home for them once the structure is demolished. The large clearwell near the Columbia River was once used to hold filtered water for Hanford's F Reactor when it produced plutonium for the nation's nuclear weapons program. Sometime after it stopped operating about 30 years ago, one of its six hatches was left open, providing a doorway for the bat colony. Researchers have twice tried to count the bats by setting up a video cameras with an infrared light outside the hatch. Both times they've counted about 2,000 bats, which they consider a low estimate. The number still makes the colony among the largest identified in the state. However, the clearwell is scheduled to be demolished in fiscal year 2009, which begins next October. "That (gives) us some time to figure out how to deal with it," said Ken Gano, a natural resource specialist for contractor Washington Closure Hanford. "We can look at the impact to demolishing it and what we can do to provide an alternate roost site." Although they are small animals, it's a big issue for the Department of Energy, whose policy is to manage the Hanford cleanup with as little impact to plants and animals as possible. Under a presidential order, Hanford must protect animals and other natural resources to allow more of the site to possibly be added to the Hanford Reach National Monument. The bat colony qualifies as a priority species designation for the state because it's a maternity colony, with females spending the spring and summer roosting in the clearwell while each raises a single pup. It's so large that there is a possibility it's populating the entire region. Researchers believe the bats are a type called Yuma myotis. They have furry brown bodies with black wings. Each Yuma myotis weighs about 6 to 8 grams — less than two nickels — and has a body smaller than a mouse. But they look bigger in flight because of a wing span that stretches 6 to 8 inches. Hanford researchers went inside the clearwell a couple of weeks ago. They found about 30 bats still in the clearwell at the end of summer, but plenty of evidence that more had been there. The bats migrate to hibernate when the weather gets too cool for them to find the insects they need. The researchers found still more bats when they entered a 700-foot-long flume adjacent to the clearwell that was used to carry water in and out. During the next year, researchers hope to learn more about the genetic relationships and diversity within the colony, providing information about the colony's regional importance. The research also should answer what temperature and humidity the Yuma myotis requires for roosting with data from sensors placed inside the clearwell and flume. "There's not a lot of information about bats and what their habitat requirements are," said Jon Lucas, an environmental specialist for Areva who is working on the research as part of his work to earn a master's degree. Acoustic sensors will provide information on when the bats show up next spring and also information about when they come and go daily. In about a year, the Energy Department should be ready to make a decision on what to do with the colony. Information from: Tri-City Herald, http://www.tri-cityherald.com Copyright © 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 57 Knoxville News Sentinel: Report: Security upgrades lagging at Oak Ridge facilities By Frank Munger (Contact) Updated 05:02 p.m., October 29, 2007 OAK RIDGE - A new report suggests the government is running behind schedule in securing its nuclear facilities, including those in Oak Ridge, to counter the advancing threat of terrorism. The Project On Government Oversight today posted on its Web site a briefing paper that was based on a not-yet-released report by the Government Accountability Office. The GAO briefing was for a subcommittee of the Senate Armed Services Committee. POGO, a frequent critic of security at the Department of Energy facilities, said the GAO analysis basically confirms earlier reports that the nuclear sites are vulnerable to increasingly sophisticated terrorist attacks. POGO last year published a report that said terrorist teams could likely penetrate security at Oak Ridge National Laboratory or the Y-12 National Security Complex and gain access to strategic nuclear materials. The group also said it would be possible to assemble those fissile materials into a nuclear bomb and detonate it on site. In its analysis, the GAO indicated that ORNL was "highly unlikely" to meets a 2008 deadline for tightening security to address the Design Basis Threat - a protective standard that's based on the government's evaluation of terrorist capabilities. DOE and its contractors are trying to process and dispose of the weapons-usable uranium-233 that's housed at ORNL, but that project isn't likely to completed until 2015 according to the GAO and other reports. John Shewairy, the public affairs chief at DOE's Oak Ridge office, said ORNL is in full compliance with all Design Basis Threat requirements at ORNL. The deadline cited on POGO's Web site does not apply to the Oak Ridge lab, he said. Billy Stair of ORNL added, "We're confident that all of the assets in the laboratory are fully secure." Y-12, which houses the nation's primary stockpile of weapons-grade uranium, has reportedly been given an extension until 2011 in meeting the anti-terrorist standard. Steven Wyatt, a federal spokesman at Y-12, said the extension was granted in order to avoid high-cost measures that would only have been effective for a short time. The Y-12 security waiver reportedly saved the government $100 million. Wyatt said Y-12 has focused on making lasting and "cost-effective" security improvements that incorporate advanced technologies. More details as they develop online and in Tuesday's News Sentinel. © 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: *****************************************************************