***************************************************************** 10/01/01 **** RADIATION BULLETIN(RADBULL) **** VOL 9.231 ***************************************************************** RADBULL IS PRODUCED BY THE ABALONE ALLIANCE CLEARINGHOUSE ***************************************************************** NUCLEAR POWER CONTENTS 1 State health department official still looking for clues 2 Nuclear Plant Safety 3 Leak raises safety fears over Brazil’s nuclear industry 4 UK: Mox Story 5 Natural nuke may explain Earth's magnetic flips 6 Yucca hearings ordered in all counties 7 IAEA Daily Press Review Date 2001-10-01 Number 187 8 Abraham Orders Yucca Mountain Project Hearing Sessions 9 Nuclear monitoring center at Patrick may have been vulnerable 10 Jobs boost in nuclear plants plan 11 Bellona News Briefs NUCLEAR WEAPONS CONTENTS 1 Children's bones taken for nuclear testing 2 On the Edge: A Nation with Nukes 3 Gov't Tries to Block Vieques Vote 4 Researchers chase a mysterious foe 5 Flats shipments slowly resume 6 Editorial: Lump sum a terrible proposal 7 Iraqi's Mission: To Get Bin Laden a Nuke 8 Oak Ridge to host Energy Communities Alliance Oct. 17-19 9 $3.1 million DOE grant keeps funding steady for fiscal 2002 10 Russia's Kursk a Nuclear Unknown for Its Scrappers 11 Prefecture stops giving out info on nuke subs - 12 Proof against Osama being examined: FO 13 A Hole in the World 14 U.K. Tested Kids' Bones for Fallout 15 British Secretly Used Babies' Bones in Tests ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** NUCLEAR POWER ARTICLES ***************************************************************** 1 State health department official still looking for clues RGJ.com - By Jason Hidalgo Reno Gazette-Journal Monday October 1st, 2001 A year has passed since state epidemiologist Randall Todd moved into a new office in the state health department building in Carson City. But unpacked boxes remain on his office floor, with stacks of papers waiting to be filed and many pictures yet to be hung. “Unpacking stuff is not a high priority for me right now,” said Todd. Instead, he said he is heavily focused on the Fallon childhood leukemia cluster investigation, not his first significant case but one that affects him most deeply. For example, Todd recalls a hantavirus case he handled after he got the state epidemiology job in 1993. “It didn’t involve children,” Todd said. “Even if this investigation ended up being wildly successful, it wouldn’t have done anything to save those kids.” It wasn’t that long ago, Todd said, when he was mired in the logistics of his former dual role as the state epidemiologist and chief of the Bureau of Disease Control and Intervention Services. The discovery of Fallon’s cluster in July of last year changed that. About a month into the Fallon investigation, Todd was relieved of his bureau chief post so he could focus more on epidemiology. Several theories about the cluster’s cause have floated around, including arsenic in drinking water and leaking jet fuel, but studies done so far haven’t come up with hard evidence for either, Todd said. Investigators hope that studies conducted in the following months, which will include taking biological and environmental samples, would yield more concrete proof. “This is the most comprehensive cancer cluster (study) ever done,” Todd said. “We’ve convened a panel of experts like no other, we’re using new technology — we wouldn’t be expending all this effort if we didn’t think there was at least a possibility of finding an answer. We’ve been painstaking in our efforts to do this and do it right.” Epidemiologists study populations to determine the distribution, frequency and risk of disease. The job is not well understood by the public, largely because epidemiologists normally work behind the scenes, Todd said. “When you wake up in the morning, turn on the tap and brush your teeth, you probably don’t think about things like if there’s bacteria in that water,” Todd said. “You don’t have to because there’s a group of people working to make sure there isn’t a problem like that.” Todd cites that unfamiliarity with the intricacies of epidemiology, especially the details involved in developing protocols or standards for an investigation this big, as a reason why some people might be thinking that the Fallon investigation is moving too slow. Before interviewing case families, for example, investigators had to develop data collection protocols based on consultations with cluster experts and agencies such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The final questionnaire ran 32 pages. The case family interviews then took nearly three months since investigators scheduled them at the convenience of the families, Todd said. New leukemia cases were also reported during this time, further extending the investigation. Then there are the details involved in taking biological and environmental samples. To avoid contamination of samples, Todd said, standards have to be developed for seemingly simple things like where equipment will be bought and the chemical content of rubber stoppers in test tubes. Just developing the protocols for the upcoming biological and environmental samplings took the CDC more than a month. The state has been criticized by Fallon residents and patient families who say officials are not moving fast enough. Todd disagrees. “I don’t fault people for wanting the investigation to go faster,” Todd said. “If the roles were reversed, I’d probably feel the same way, but we can’t go faster than the science will allow.” To provide an idea of the difficulty of studying clusters, Todd cited the investigation of a leukemia cluster in Woburn, Mass. That investigation started in 1979, Todd said. The Massachusetts state health department issued its final report in 1992. Compared to that investigation, the Fallon investigation is moving at a faster clip and has access to newer technology, Todd said. But that doesn’t mean it’s any easier. The track record for finding cluster causes isn’t good, Todd said, and the public might not be ready for results that fall short of a definite answer. “It can be stressful to speak in front of 100-plus people, especially when what I’ve had to say isn’t the most popular thing to say,” Todd said. “Then the next speaker stands up and says, ‘This is a simple, simple problem with a simple solution.’ “Who would you rather believe, me or him? I’d rather believe him, too.” © Reno Gazette-Journal ***************************************************************** 2 Nuclear Plant Safety The Salt Lake Tribune -- Monday , October 1, 2001 In the aftermath of the tragic terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, some irresponsible groups have been questioning the security programs at the nation's nuclear power plants ("Nuclear Hyperbole," Sept. 24). Nuclear power plants were among the most secure industrial facilities in the United States before this act of 21st century terrorism and they are even safer today. Robust steel and concrete structures surround the reactor, one of several physical barriers that protect the reactor fuel. In addition, expertly trained security forces maintain high levels of security against terrorism around the clock. The chance that a terrorist attack on a nuclear facility would result in a large release of radioactive material is extremely low. Even before the tragic events of Sept. 11, the industry was taking steps to strengthen our security programs. This month, the industry -- with full U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission oversight -- began a pilot program to further enhance the effectiveness and comprehensive nature of our security program evaluations. The industry's security program has demonstrated its effectiveness in repelling mock ground-based terrorist attacks, and the industry works with local, state and federal authorities to ensure public health and safety is protected. Energy facilities across our nation -- hydropower dams, natural gas pipelines, nuclear power plants and major power lines -- cannot be guaranteed to be immune to every form of attack that can be imagined. But at nuclear power plants, the reinforced concrete containment structures, coupled with redundant safety and plant shutdown systems, are designed to withstand the impact of hurricanes and airborne objects. The nuclear industry will continue working with the NRC and state and local officials to ensure that the 20 percent of U.S. electricity supply generated at nuclear power plants continues to be produced safely. RALPH BEEDLE Nuclear Energy Institute Washington, D.C. © Copyright 2001, The Salt Lake Tribune All material found on ***************************************************************** 3 Leak raises safety fears over Brazil’s nuclear industry edie news: A newly-uncovered leak at Brazil’s only nuclear plant has raised fears over plans to add another reactor to the complex. The Brazilian news magazine, Epoca , has uncovered a leak at one of two reactors at the nation’s only nuclear plant, Angra 1 &2, increasing fears over the plans of state electricity supplier, Electrobras, to add a further reactor. Epoca , other Brazilian media and environmentalists see the failure to announce the leak of thousands of gallons of slightly radioactive cooling water, which occurred in May but was never announced, as a cover-up. However, the Brazilian government has said that since the accident at the Angra 1 reactor, which was caused by human error, but which was contained by an emergency tank, only ranked as one on a 1-7 scale of seriousness, there was no need to publicly announce it. Although the entire plant was shut down for a whole week, whilst the nation is still in the throes of an energy crisis (see ), the government said the spill at the plant, which is situated 80 miles (120 kilometres) west of Rio de Janeiro in one of Brazil’s biggest resort and eco-tourism areas, never posed any threat to the environment, public, or workers. The government is yet to agree on whether to permit a third reactor, and this incident seems likely to lead to further objections from the Environment Ministry. Proponents of the project say that another reactor is essential to reduce the country’s reliance on hydroelectricity, the reason for its current woes, but opponents say it is too expensive to build more plant and there are few waste storage options. “The accident again confirms that the nuclear programme is extremely dangerous,” commented Greenpeace Brasil, adding that it had been informed that a moratorium on new reactors was being prepared. © Faversham House Group Ltd 2001. This article may be copied or ***************************************************************** 4 Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | Ministers back Mox despite terror fear David Gow and Paul Brown Monday October 1, 2001 The Guardian The government is to give the go-ahead for British Nuclear Fuels Limited to start operating a new atomic fuel plant at Sellafield despite heightened fears about the security provided for overseas shipments. The decision to approve the £462m Mox (mixed oxide) plant, which might be announced this week, comes even though Whitehall has been deluged with warnings about the likelihood terrorist attacks on ships taking the fuel to countries such as Japan after the September 11 atrocities. Approval came, well placed government sources said, after consultation with lawyers, because environmental groups Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth are almost certain to take ministers to court for a judicial review of the decision. The decision will be framed in terms that ministers hope will see off any challenge. The plant, which produces nuclear fuel from reprocessed uranium and plutonium, was completed in 1996 but has been mothballed since. The government has held an unprecedented five rounds of consultation over giving it the go-ahead. Executives at loss-making BNFL see the plant as crucial to plans to make the state-owned group more efficient and profitable, and prepare it for a part privatisation in three or four years. About 400 jobs directly depend on approval, with 1,500-2,000 indirectly connected and thousands of other posts at Sellafield at stake in Cumbria, an area hard hit by the farming crisis. The environment department, Defra, said no decision had been taken but Hugh Collum, BNFL chairman, told the Guardian: "I am hoping it is not far away... If Friends of the Earth wants to challenge it, it's up to them. We can't go on saying to our customers it's coming one day." Opponents of the Mox plant insist that shipments of the fuel, which is stored in ceramic rods, are liable to either suicide attacks by terrorists or attempts to seize the fuel for bomb-making purposes. Mr Collum, who has had talks with senior Whitehall officials, played down fears of such attacks, doubting whether September 11 had made the cargo more vulnerable. "If they took the ships, the amount of plutonium in these ceramic tablets is just 5% of the total... But what we have learnt from the last two weeks is you can never say never." He said the ship carrying the fuel was normally armed and accompanied by another. Government departments appear relatively sanguine but the US, which has a veto over the transport of nuclear material if any of it originates there, is likely to be hostile. All Japanese material comes into this category but Whitehall officials said the government had not consulted the US on extra security measures. "This is something for the future; the decision to open the Mox plant will not take that into account," a Defra spokeswoman said. Mr Collum said BNFL had so far obtained orders for the Mox fuel from Germany and Switzerland that accounted for 40% of its output and would enable it to break even. After recent talks with the Japanese authorities, including the prime minister, he claimed that Japan had re-committed itself to the nuclear energy option and to Mox even though two small communities had voted against. He admitted that BNFL had first to satisfy Tokyo that the Sellafield operation was no longer vulnerable to the data falsification that provoked a scandal last year, which resulted in Mox fuel being returned toBritain. "Our goal is to bring that fuel back in 2002." Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2001 ***************************************************************** 5 Natural nuke may explain Earth's magnetic flips The Dallas Morning News: Living Columnists 10/01/2001 By / The Dallas Morning News If you're a friend of the Earth, you may need to learn to love nuclear reactors. Long before humans discovered nuclear fission, uranium atoms split on their own, generating heat and radioactive elements just the way nuclear power plants do. And such reactions did not only occur on occasion in some small patches of uranium ore. At its core, a new analysis suggests, the Earth is a planetary nuclear reactor. If so, scientists may have solved an old problem about why the Earth's magnetic field keeps switching directions. Every 200,000 years or so, the Earth's magnetic field flips, so that compass needles that point north would instead point south (if any compasses were around). It seems that the field diminishes in strength, turns off, then turns on again in the other direction. Physicists have long suspected that the Earth's magnetism originates deep in the planet's core, as churning matter containing electrically charged particles behaves like a dynamo. (Electricity in motion creates magnetism.) It's harder to explain where the energy driving this dynamo comes from, and even harder to explain why it turns itself off and on at irregular intervals. But Daniel Hollenbach of Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, and independent geophysicist J. Marvin Herndon, say the mysteries may disappear if the Earth's inner core is nature's version of a power-producing nuke. Natural nuclear reactions are not unheard of. Almost three decades ago, French scientists discovered a natural reactor in the West African nation of Gabon. A seam of uranium ore there contains traces of plutonium, a radioactive metal produced as a byproduct when uranium atoms split, or fission. Plutonium itself can fission as well; a nuclear reactor that makes plutonium therefore breeds more fuel for itself. Calculations based on the amounts of plutonium in the Gabon ore vein indicate that a natural breeder reactor was at work there almost 2 billion years ago. Gabon's natural reactor suggested the possibility of self-sustaining fission reactions deep within the Earth's interior. But nobody had calculated whether such an internal reactor could be responsible for producing heat over the eons at the Earth's core. In last week's issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , Drs. Hollenbach and Herndon produce the numbers. "These calculations demonstrate quantitatively that, under appropriate conditions, a planetary-scale nuclear fission reactor can operate throughout the entire period of geologic time," the scientists wrote. Their calculations show that such an Earth-centered reactor offers a compelling scenario for explaining the flips of the Earth's magnetism. As uranium atoms split, the fragments generate heat to drive a dynamo. But the fragments accumulate, diluting the uranium and slowing down the splitting, just like the control rods of an ordinary nuclear reactor. That slows the dynamo and weakens the Earth's magnetic field. Eventually the splitting stops altogether, and the Earth's magnetic field turns off completely. But then the reactor returns to life. Uranium, and the plutonium bred in the reactor, are very heavy atoms. The fission fragments are much lighter. Under the stress of gravity, the heavy uranium and plutonium clump together and the lighter elements float outward. That clears the way for uranium and plutonium to start splitting again, turning on the Earth's magnetic field  perhaps this time pointing in the opposite direction. Computer simulations of this scenario show that the "georeactor" could operate over the entire age of the Earth at heat output levels comparable to what geophysicists estimate for the Earth's core. Just because a georeactor is possible doesn't mean the Earth really contains one, of course. So it would be nice to have additional evidence that fission actually occurs inside the Earth. In fact, such evidence already exists in volcanic lavas, messengers from the Earth's interior. Some lavas contain unusually high amounts of a rare form of helium (the isotope helium-3). Helium-3 is produced by the radioactive decay of a form of hydrogen called tritium, which is occasionally generated in the fission of heavy elements made in a nuclear breeder reactor. Helium-3 is very light and so could diffuse out of the core and up through the Earth's mantle, ultimately escaping in volcanic eruptions. If the georeactor idea is right, it does more than explain the Earth's flipping magnetic field. It implies that the Earth's inner core is not made mostly of iron, as some experts believe, but rather a compound of nickel and silicon. Certain rare meteorites with such a composition also include uranium. Since those meteorites may be leftovers from the space debris that formed the Earth, they could represent fossil evidence of the Earth's birth, revealing what the planet is made of. In any event, the Earth's use of a nuclear reactor for its internal energy source could explain various mysteries and give scientists a deeper understanding of the planet's depths. It might even be taken as a sign that nuclear reactors are "natural" and therefore should be a favored source of energy production by people. That would be illogical, though. The safety and environmental impact of energy sources must be established by the scientific evidence applying to the technology itself, not its natural precursor. Still, it would seem like a good idea for nuclear opponents to pause and think before proclaiming "No nukes." ***************************************************************** 6 Yucca hearings ordered in all counties Las Vegas SUN October 01, 2001 LAS VEGAS SUN Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham has ordered Department of Energy officials to visit each county in Nevada and Inyo County, Calif., to conduct field hearings and collect public comments on a proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear repository. DOE officials and a court reporter will collect comments during 29 field hearings beginning Wednesday. The DOE had scheduled formal hearings on the nuclear waste repository project on Oct. 10 in Amargosa Valley and on Oct. 12 in Pahrump. The DOE conducted an 8 1/2-hour hearing on Sept. 5 in North Las Vegas on the proposed repository of 77,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. Abraham also announced that the DOE's Las Vegas Yucca Mountain Science Center on Meadows Lane would open for local residents to submit comments. The field hearings are scheduled from 3 to 8 p.m. at the following locations and dates: * Elko County, Elko Convention and Visitors Authority, Oct. 3. * Humboldt County, Winnemucca Convention Center, Oct. 3 and Oct. 10. * White Pine County, Bristlecone Convention Center, Ely, Oct. 3 and Oct. 10. * Inyo County, Calif., Lone Pine, Oct. 3 and Oct. 10. * Storey County, Virginia City, Oct. 3 and Oct. 12. * Carson City, Old Capitol Building, Oct. 3. * Washoe County, Reno, Oct. 4. * Lander County, Battle Mountain Civic Center, Oct. 4 and Oct. 11. * Pershing County, Lovelock Community Center, Oct. 4 and Oct. 11. * Lincoln County, Caliente Senior Center, Oct. 4 and Oct. 11. * Esmeralda County, Goldfield Community Center, Oct. 4 and Oct. 11. * Douglas County, Gardnerville, Oct. 4 and Oct. 10. * Eureka County, Crescent Valley, Oct. 5 and Oct. 10. * Churchill County, Fallon, Oct. 5 and Oct. 12. * Mineral County, Hawthorne, Oct. 5 and Oct. 12. * Lyon County, Yerington, Oct. 5 and Oct. 11. For more information, visit the DOE's Yucca Mountain website (www.ymp.gov) or call 1-800-967-3477. All contents copyright 2001 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 7 IAEA Daily Press Review Date 2001-10-01 Number 187 1. Non-proliferation DPRK calls for IAEA impartiality and stands firm regarding responsibility for delayed implementation of Agreed Framework and subsequent inconclusive talks with Agency. (BBC - 30/9) Dem. P.R. of Korea; IAEA; United States of America 2. Terrorism American military and intelligence officials reportedly discuss with Pakistan security of its nuclear weapons stockpile and country's two NPPs. Pakistani leader says that nation won't be destabilized by its support for possible US military action against Afghanistan and its nuclear weapons are secure. UN debate on international terrorism; Russia praises UN Security Council resolution to combat terrorism, saying it has "considerable significance". US inadequately prepared to confront bioterrorist attacks, according to broad range of health experts and officials. (BBC; CNN; G; IHT; NYT - 30/9; 1/10) Pakistan; Russian Federation; UN; United States of America 3. Nuclear power Article on Canada's new approach to nuclear power. Slovak Prime Minister confirms Bohunice units 1 and 2 decommissioning in 2006/2008, as foreseen. (FT; S - 28/9; 1/10) Canada; Slovakia 4. Nuclear safety EU Commissioner Loyola de Palacio says during visit to Austria that Czech Republic can enter EU only if Temelin NPP meets European safety standards. Ibaraki Prefectural Government conducts nuclear disaster drill in Tokai as second anniversary of Tokai-Mura criticality accident occurs. (JAP; K - 30/9; 1/10) Czech Republic; EU; Japan 5. Radiation, health Thai officials concerned that device containing radioactive substances that was stolen from research building could result in repeat of last year's Cobalt-60 incident. Bones of thousands of children who died between 1954 and 1970 were tested, without their parents' consent, to see if they had been exposed to radioactive fallout, UK Atomic Energy Authority confirms. (FT; R - 30/9) Thailand; United Kingdom 6. Radwaste, fuel UK to give go-ahead for BNFL to start operating new nuclear fuel plant at Sellafield despite heightened fears about security provided for overseas shipments. (G - 1/10) United Kingdom 7. Energy, environment Subsidiary of Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC) develops technique which can replace with local coal gas being used by cement and thermal power plants. (DAW - 1/10) Pakistan 8. UN Pino Arlacchi, head of UN Office in Vienna and UNDCCP Executive Director to leave present post in mid-2002. (S - 1/10) UN 9. Miscellaneous Heavy storm in Barents Sea delaying final phase of operation to lift "Kursk" nuclear submarine from seabed. (BBC - 30/9) Russian Federation ***************************************************************** 8 Abraham Orders Yucca Mountain Project Hearing Sessions Press Releases For Immediate Release: Friday, September 28, 2001 News Media Contacts: Joe Davis, 202/586-4940, Allen Benson, 702-794-1322 - 29 Field Hearing Sessions To Collect Citizens' Comments Across Nevada - WASHINGTON, D.C. - Washington - In addition to the public hearings for Amargosa Valley and Pahrump, Nevada scheduled for October 10 and 12, U.S. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham ordered Department of Energy officials today to visit each county in Nevada and Inyo County, California to conduct field hearing sessions and collect comments from citizens on the Yucca Mountain Project. "In order to provide residents in other locations of Nevada and in California an opportunity to participate in the public comment process, the Department is providing additional opportunities for citizens to share their comments and express their views on the Yucca Mountain Project," Abraham said. "In addition, the Department, at each hearing, will conduct poster sessions where citizens will have the opportunity to gather information and ask questions about the project." Earlier this week, Abraham announced that the Department's Las Vegas Science Center would open as an extended hearing facility for Las Vegas residents to submit comments regarding the Yucca Mountain Project. Department officials and a court reporter will conduct field hearings in all Nevada counties and Inyo County, California to collect comments on the Yucca Mountain Project from citizens. The field hearings, 29 in all, will begin Wednesday, October 3, and be held according to the following schedule: + Lander County: Battle Mountain Civic Center, 625 S. Broad, Battle Mountain, NV October 4 and 11, 3:00 p.m. - 8:00 p.m. + Eureka County: Crescent Valley Town Hall, 5045 Tenabo Ave., Crescent Valley, NV October 5 and 10, 3:00 p.m. - 8:00 p.m. + Elko County: Elko Convention and Visitors Authority, 700 Moren Way (Cedar Room), Elko, NV October 3, 3:00 p.m. - 8:00 p.m. + Churchill County: Sandtrap Lounge & Restaurant, 2655 Country Club Dr., Fallon, NV October 5 and 12, 3:00 p.m. - 8:00 p.m. + Humboldt County: Winnemucca Convention Center, 50 W. Winnemucca Blvd., Winnemucca, NV October 3 and 10, 3:00 p.m. - 8:00 p.m. + Pershing County: Lovelock Community Center, 820 6th St., Lovelock, NV October 4 and 11, 3:00 p.m. - 8:00 p.m. + Lincoln County: Caliente Senior Citizens Center, 240 Front St., Caliente, NV October 4 and 11, 3:00 p.m. - 8:00 p.m. + White Pine County: Bristlecone Convention Center, 150 6th St., Ely, NV October 3 and 10, 3:00 p.m. - 8:00 p.m. + Inyo County: American Legion Hall, 205 S. Edwards St., Independence, CA October 3, 3:00 p.m. - 8:00 p.m. + Inyo County: Statham Hall, 138 Jackson St., Lone Pine, CA October 10, 3:00 p.m. - 8:00 p.m. + Esmeralda County: Goldfield Community Center, 301 Crook St., Goldfield, NV October 4 and 11, 3:00 p.m. - 8:00 p.m. + Mineral County: Mineral Chamber of Commerce Convention Center 932 E St., Hawthorne, NV October 5 and 12, 3:00 p.m. - 8:00 p.m. + Storey County: Storey County Senior Center, Corner of Mill & E Sts.,Virginia City, NV October 3 and 12, 3:00 p.m. - 8:00 p.m. + Washoe County: Washoe County District Health Department, 1001 E. 9th St., Bldg. B, Auditorium B, Reno, NV; October 4, 3:00 p.m. - 8:00 p.m. + Carson City: Carson Nugget Casino, Room C, 507 N. Carson St., Carson City, NV October 3, 3:00 p.m. - 8:00 p.m. + Douglas County: Sharkey's Rib Room, 1440 Highway 395, Gardnerville, NV October 4 and 10, 3:00 p.m. - 8:00 p.m. + Lyon County: Lyon County Administrative Complex, 27 S. Main St., Yerrington, NV October 5 and 11, 3:00 p.m. - 8:00 p.m. Additional information on these public hearing sessions and the Civilian Radioactive Waste Management program may be obtained at the Yucca Mountain web site at or by calling 1-800-967-3477. Local and regional newspapers will also provide related information. -DOE- R-01-165 ***************************************************************** 9 Nuclear monitoring center at Patrick may have been vulnerable by A1A FLORIDA TODAY News Story Oct. 1, 2001 By John McCarthy FLORIDA TODAY When the Air Force closed State Road A1A in front of Patrick Air Force Base Sept. 20, the question on many Brevard County's resident minds was "Why?" Base officials would say little about the closing other than to acknowledge it was it was part of heightened security in reaction to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. But major highways skirting dozens of other bases around the nation remain open. What was different about Patrick that more than 22,000 cars a day had to be diverted miles out of their way to avoid the six-mile stretch of the only road to connect Brevard's beachside communities? The answer might be a landmark building across A1A from the NCO Club, just yards from the road. The innocuous name - Air Force Technical Applications Center - gives little hint to the importance of the work done in the building famous for the "rocket garden" that stood in front of it until 1996. AFTAC, as it is widely known, is the national agency responsible for monitoring nuclear explosions around the globe. AFTAC maintains a network of more than 80 sensors around the world to detect nuclear "events," ranging from accidents at a nuclear facility to weapons testing by country's with nuclear capabilities. The information collected by those sensors is sent to the Patrick facility for analysis. When AFTAC uncovers such an event, such as the unexpected series of nuclear weapons tests by India and Pakistan in 1998, it alerts senior military officials in Washington, D.C. Base officials wouldn't say if the center was the driving force behind the road closing. "There are several mission critical units at the base, and they all were part of the decision-making process," 45th Space Wing spokesman Ken Warren said. Most of those units, though, are located on the base's interior, far from the civilian highway. "AFTAC certainly is an important national asset and should be protected," said national security expert John E. Pike, director of Globalsecurity.org, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank. But protecting a building that stands only yards away from state highway is no easy task, say security experts. A truck bomb traveling down the highway, for instance, could cause tremendous damage to the building if exploded at the right time. The Air Force has acknowledged AFTAC's mission for years. But the top-secret nature of the center's work prohibits base officials from discussing much else about the center, including the possibility of moving it to another, more secure location, either somewhere on the interior of the base or at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. Unlike the remote sensor sites, there is no particular reason analysis people and equipment need to be in that particular location, Pike said. In fact, the unit moved to Patrick from Virginia in 1973. But given the top-secret nature of the facility and its equipment, gauging how hard it would be to move it to another site is difficult even for experts who are familiar with its work, such as Pike is. "It would entail some difficulty. ... But I don't have the sense that it would be overly difficult." Pike, who said having intelligence sites such as AFTAC in such vulnerable locations has been a pet peeve of his for years, said he hoped the Air Force would move it to another location. "That's basic, why even take a chance?" asked Richard Horowitz, a New York attorney and former Israeli army officer who is a terrorism and security expert. But Horowitz also said that a facility like AFTAC, while important to the military, likely would be of little interests to terrorists. "They are more interested in mass civilian targets." Horowitz and other security experts say there are other ways a building such as AFTAC could be protected, such as surrounding it with concrete "blast walls." But given its proximity to A1A, that would seem improbable for AFTAC. A third option would be simply to keep the stretch of road closed permanently to civilian traffic. The Air Force hasn't said when, or if, the road will be reopened. "It all depends on the perceived threat," said 45th Space Wing spokesmen Ken Warren. Copyright © 2001 FLORIDA TODAY. ***************************************************************** 10 Jobs boost in nuclear plants plan The Scotsman Online - Martin Flanagan MANY thousands of UK construction jobs will be created if the government agrees to East Kilbride-based British Energy' plan to build up to 10 new domestic nuclear power plants from 2011. Company sources said the British nuclear generator was already in talks with Atomic Energy of Canada and Westinghouse of the US, now owned by British Nuclear Fuels, to build reactors. One source close to the discussions said: "British Energy is looking at both Westinghouse and AECL. On the face of it, Westinghouse is owned by British Nuclear Fuels and might for that reason be thought to be favourite. "But British Energy is already using the Candu reactors, designed by AECL at BE' Bruce sites in Ontario. That might make it tempting to use them again for new stations in Britain. "In addition, the Canadian company has already built Candu reactors in other countries, using the countries' indigenous workers in the construction phase." A British Energy source said: "We have always said we would like to go ahead with this if the political and commercial climate is right. "There could also be a lot more British jobs out of it as well, in the thousands, not hundreds." The source cited Sizewell B, the last nuclear reactor built in the UK, which created 5,000 jobs in the construction industry over the space of seven years. The cost of the new nuclear stations would be about £10 billion. British Energy, whose head office is in East Kilbride, and AECL are due to take part in a nuclear seminar at the Royal Society of Edinburgh in November. British Energy' submission, to replace ageing nuclear power stations with new ones to maintain diversity of supply, is currently being studied by the Department of Trade and Industry. The DTI has said that on current trends well over two-thirds of UK electricity will be generated from gas by 2020. If British Energy gets the nod from the government, sites earmarked for potential new nuclear power stations range from Torness and Hunterston in Scotland to Hartlepool, Sizewell in Suffolk, Dungeness in Kent and Hinkley Point in Somerset. British Energy currently produces about one-quarter of the UK' electricity, and has told the government it wants to maintain that level. It has also told the energy review that with "rebased finances" it can afford to invest in new nuclear plant. The rebasing would be by liabilities pre-dating 1996 - when British Energy was formed - being transferred into a government liabilities agency. Electricity analysts yesterday said the government' decision on the new nuclear plants plan would be crucial to the company' mid to long-term future, after a couple of torrid years for the group. It has recently made clear to the City, via a business update, that its UK-based nuclear electricity generation operations will not make a profit this year for the second year running. One problem is that UK wholesale electricity prices have dropped faster than costs have been taken out of British Energy. Wholesale prices have fallen by nearly one-third in the past three years, while the company' output is 10 per cent lower than last year. There has also been disruption in the boardroom, with chief executive Peter Hollins ousted last June. ***************************************************************** 11 Bellona News Briefs 2001-10-03 Russian NPPs Leningrad county governor needs underground NPP Russian Ministry for Nuclear Energy (Minatom) considers a plan for building an underground nuclear power plant, Valery Lebedev, Minatom deputy minister said in an interview to the Versiya-v-Pitere weekly. The site for the construction has not been chosen yet, but the plan is actively supported by the Leningrad county governor and stipulates that the underground NPP will be built in Krasny Bor on the basis of joint stock financing. The Central Krylov Research Institute designed the plan. "According to the Russian legislation, a NPP may be built on the joint stock financial basis, but only the state can possess a nuclear power plant", Mr. Lebedev says. But Alexander Agapov, the head of the safety department of Minatom, declares that the idea of a joint stock leaves the nuclear power plant operation to the will of any private person. 2001-10-01 Russian NPPs Low efficiency of Russian NPPs ITAR-TASS quoted the Russian atomic deputy minister, Bulat Nigmatulin, who had said that the efficiency of the Russian nuclear power plants is lower than the world average. The efficiency of the NPPs in Russia was 69% in 2000, while the average on world basis is 82%, the deputy minister stated. He expressed hope that the efficiency would be increased till 80% by 2005. This will allow the production of an additional 20 billion kWh annually, which is comparable to the production of one new NPP, Bulat Nigmatulin said. However, it is not clear how Minatom is going to increase their efficiency, as most of the NPPs exceed their operational time. 2001-09-21 Seversk Siberian reactors stop weapons grade plutonium production ITAR-TASS reported that the Russian nuclear ministry decided to stop the production of weapons grade plutonium at two nuclear reactors of the Siberian Chemical Combine in the ”closed” town Seversk, Tomsk region. According to the Russian-American agreement from September 23rd 1997, will the production of weapons grade plutonium at two reactors in Seversk and one reactor in Zheleznogorsk, Krasnoyarsk region, be sterminated in 2002 and 2003. However, today the operational time of the Seversk reactors was extended to December 31st 2005, and the Zheleznogorsk reactor until December 31st 2006. Besides, in order to halt the plutonium production the reactors would need to be reconstructed, which can take two years. Minatom refuses to stop the reactors, and refers to the necessity to provide the local population with heat an electricity. However, the economical aspect of the issue is not clear. Why invest in reconstruction when the reactors will only be operating for 2-3 more years? The head of the Russian Nuclear Regulatory Yury Vishnevsky said earlier that Seversk reactors had already exceeded the designed operation time twice, and that the risk of keeping them in operation is quite obvious. 2001-09-18 General news Nuclear submarines will ship cargo in the Arctic Novosti-online reports that the Design bureau Rubin and the Norilsk nickel concern resumed the project on constructing nuclear submarines for under-ice cargo shipment on the North Sea route. The approximate price tag for the project is $100 million. The idea of such submarines appeared back in 1993, but was hampered due to high costs. Maybe this time the project will be more successful. The governor of Archangel region said at the GIS OFFSHORE-2001 exhibition that a similar submarine already has been constructed. These submarines have a maximum load of 10 thousand tons, and can enter rivers and receive cargo directly from the ice. The chief construction engineer at Rubin, Sergey Kovalev, said that nuclear submarines of the Typhoon type may be used for such purposes: "We have to choose whether to scrap the submarines or reconstruct them for nickel shipment". The reconstruction of one submarine costs $100 million. In this way nickel shipment can go much faster. Norilsk Nickel also plans to use submarines for oil and gas shipment. Regular cargo shipment in the Arctic is not possible without nuclear icebreakers, and now all of the icebreakers are bought by LUKOIL oil company, which demands a too high price from Norilsk Nickel. The new submarines, however, are not dependant on icebreakers. The only question is whether Norilsk Nickel can afford the project. 2001-08-28 General news Pacific Fleet begins exercise The Pacific Fleet started a three-day exercise on Tuesday in the area of the Gulf of Peter the Great, in the Far East. This is the first naval exercise involving nuclear powered submarines since the Barents Sea exercise last August, when the nuclear powered submarine Kursk sank. 2001-08-21 Seversk Chechens to carry out act of terrorism at Siberian Group of Chemical Enterprises Chechen separatists prepare acts of terrorism in Siberia, Victor Grechman, the head of the Tomsk region police force, told Russian Weekly. Siberian Group of Chemical Enterprises (SGCE) combine, situated in Seversk, also known as Tomsk-7, is said to be one of the terrorist's targets. SGCE is one of the largest nuclear plants in Russia. In the Soviet era, SGCE produced uranium and plutonium charges to be made into nuclear weapons in Arzamas-16. A large group of the Chechen minority is working at the combine. In the beginning of the 1990s, while threatening Russia with a nuclear jihad, Chechen separatists pointed out Seversk as one of the main objects. Last Wednesday, deputy governor for public safety in Tomsk, Victor Loshchinkin, opened an extraordinary session to prevent possible terrorist acts. Local police has checked about 40,000 objects including 13,000 cars. 2001-08-21 Seversk Siberian Group of Chemical Enterprises will continue dumping of liquid radioactive waste The press service of the Siberian Group of Chemical Enterprises (SGCE) announced that SGCE became the first of the Minatom's combines, currently carrying out deep dumping of liquid radioactive waste, to get a licence for such activity. Nuclear State Regulatory (GAN) issued a permit for deep dumping at the SGCE areas 18 and 18a. Allegedly, the licence was signed on July 19th 2001 by the head of GAN, Yuri Vishnvsky. On July 23rd a court decision was voiced on the suit of 26 claimants from the village Georgievka against SGCE. Georgievka suffered from the accident at a SGCE plant in April 1993, which caused radioactive contamination of the area. During the court hearings 14 claimants died. One of the demands of the claimants was that SGCE would cease to dump liquid radioactive waste. The basic argument of Georgievka inhabitants was that SGCE had no GAN licence for this kind of unhealthy activity. At the hearings in February 2001, SGCE representatives claimed that the licence was valid for two years. The court made SGCE pay each claimant an indemnity of $8,300. At the same time the court permitted the combine to continue underground disposals of liquid radioactive waste. Both parties disagree with the court, and are going to appeal the decision. The motivation of the court stays unknown, as the judge so far has not given the sides of the verdict full text. 2001-08-21 Spent fuel imports Russia creates nuclear college systems Soon, institutes of higher education will be established in Russia in order to further educate nuclear specialists, under the jurisdiction of Minatom, reads a press release from the company Rosenergoatom. A governmental decree to create the institutes was signed by the Russian prime minister, Mikhail Kayanov, on August 3rd. The new institutes will be based on Novoural Technological Institute (Novouralsk, Sverdlov region), Sarov State Physico-Technical Institute (Sarov, Nizhny Novogorod region), Snezhinsk State Physico-Technical Institute (Snezhinsk, Chelyabinsk region) and Seversk State Technological Institute (Seversk, Tomsk region). The technological institutes in Lesnoy, Sverdlov region, and in Ozersk and Trekhgorny, both Cheblyabinsk region, will be transformed into branches of the Moscow Physical & Engineering Institute, which will be responsible both to the Ministry of Education and to Minatom. 2001-08-21 Spent fuel imports Minatom starts uranium mining in Siberia Minatom decided to begin industrial development of the Khiagda uranium deposits in Buryatia, Siberia, Itar-Tass reports, referring to the press service of the Buryat president. Results of the development works at Khiagda were evaluated at the scientific and technical board of Minatom last week, at the instance of Buryat government, Buryat president's spokesman, Andrey Kapustin says. Uranium-238 mining experiment started at Khiagda in 1999. One cubic metre of enriched iron ore contains up to 100 mg of uranium-238. The mining cost of one kilo enriched iron ore fluctuates within a $20 range, which is two times less than the cost at the main Russian uranium deposits in Krasnkamensk, Chita region. Thus, results of development works at Khiagda enable industrial mining of 1,500 tons of uranium concentrate per year. The mining enterprise may reach the planned production capacity in five years. Uranium resources of Khiagda are assured for 50 years. Turbine for China tested in St Petersburg A 1,000-megawatt turbine for use at the Chinese Tianwan NPP, passed at the Leningradski Steel Plant (LMZ) in St Petersburg. The 130 million dollar contract securing the supply of equipment for the first two nuclear power plant units was concluded in 1997, by an intergovernmental agreement. In 1999 the order for the turbine installations was granted to LMZ, a part of the machinery company of Silovye. The last turbine test that passed at LMZ, was ten years ago. That is the first turbine with such capacity produced by LMZ for export. Export proceeds constitute about one third of the plant's income. On August 8th, St Petersburg arbitrage closed LMZ bankruptcy case because the plant had completely restored its paying capacity. The plant stands a good chance of getting a contract on the manufacturing of another two turbines for the Chinese NPP, said the sitting LMZ director, Valeri Kondratiev, in the beginning of August after the successful tests. The building of the Tianwan NPP in Hunan, China, started in September 2000. Commercial operation is planned for April 2005. Tianwan NPP will be equipped with two Russian pressurised water reactors VVER-1000, that are planned to be shipped in March 2003. By 2006 China plans to put another eight power-units into operation, in addition to the three already existing. 2001-08-21 Northern Fleet incidents AMT Carrier delayed at Kirkenes AMT Carrier, the barge assigned for lifting the Kursk submarine, has not yet left the Norwegian port Kirkenes. The barge was to depart for the location of the Kursk accident, on August 10th. The reason of delay is not yet known. The press service of the Northern Fleet expects the barge to arrive at the salvage area in two days. According to the initial plan, announced to Interfax on Friday by the DNSD spokesman, Einar Skorgen, the barge was to arrive at the operation area on August 12th. On Friday the barge was waiting for a supply ship with equipment, but the installation of the equipment to cut off the torpedo compartment from the hull of the submarine, should be finished by Wednesday, Skorgen said. However, RIA News reported that the weather worsened on Monday. The sea was covered by fog, and the military aviation had to suspend flights. Further worsening of the weather may interrupt the salvage operation. 2001-07-27 Nuclear Powered Icebreakers 200t reactor installed onboard nuclear icebreaker On Wednesday this week high-powered floating crane Demag loaded a 200t nuclear reactor on the nuclear icebreaker "50 years of Victory". On Thursday a second similar reactor was loaded on the icebreaker. The icebreaker has been built for ten years on order of the Ministry of Transport, but the funds are constantly low. The work is being continued at the expense of the plant and other resources. The funding is currently coming from the federal budget. This year $5m were allocated, $1.7m can be earmarked provided the budget will have an extra income. To complete the construction, the plant requests about $73bn. The icebreaker is built for the Murmansk Shipping Company, which operates other seven Russian nuclear powered icebreakers and one nuclear container ship. 2001-07-27 Russian NPPs Russian scientists to reject traditional energy sources Russian scientists made several sensational fundamental discoveries, which can make a new industrial and energetic revolution. The news was reported by a head of group of scientists, academician of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences (RAEN), Prof. Valerian Sobolev. He said, the scientists invented specific electrochemical process, producing high-temperature materials in a new state. That made it possible for the scientists to invent a new state of matter, a new class of materials, a new energy source, a new method for cold plasma generation, a new superconductor. The discovery makes possible development of new devices, producing electricity for home and industrial use, Mr Sobolev said. The devices will work uninterruptedly, producing electricity without use of fuels and without environmental pollution. Mr Sobolev thinks that will make possible rejection from traditional energy sources, such as nuclear fuel, gas, oil and coal. Speaking about the new state of matter invented, Sobolev stressed, it has a non-stochiometric composition. The group of scientists sent a letter to President of Russia about the results of their work. Information about the discovery was made public through RIA "News" soon after President Putin signed bills, favouring spent nuclear fuel imports to Russia. No disclaims of the sensation have been reported. 2001-07-27 Russian NPPs Solar-powered car completed a month long 10,000 trek across Russia A 50-year-old Japanese beautician has successfully completed a month long 10,000-kilometer trek across Russia in a solar-powered car, arriving earlier this week at his destination of St Petersburg. "The race was harder than expected as the road conditions in Russia were bad," Hisahiro Yamamoto said, Kyodo News reports. 2001-07-27 Non-Prolifiration US may review programs for Russia's nuclear safety and non-proliferation US should review and probably cut spending for Russia’s nuclear safety programs, official experts say in a report, presented to the White House and the Congress, ITAR-Tass reports. The report analyses implementation of current projects for Russia’s nuclear safety and non-proliferation, amounting to $800m, a source in the Administration said to the Reuters. The report suggests optimizing the weapon-grade plutonium decommissioning project, and probably cutting spending for the program for economic assistance to Russian nuclear scientists – The Nuclear Cities Initiative. Efficiency of other assistance programs for Russia is being checked, and fund allocation may remain at the same level. 2001-07-27 Russian NPPs Ministry of Energy supports coal and atom Ministry of Energy is going to work up a strategic development program for fuel and energy complex, RIA “News” quotes minister, Igor Yusufov, as saying. The minister stresses, oil and gas should be used rationally. In the same time nuclear energy should be developed actively, he said. Today nuclear plants produce 15% of the total energy and heat volume in Russia. Speaking about coal production, Yusufov stressed, coal in Russia must last more than 100 years, and this industry should be developed too. 2001-07-23 Nuclear Waste Managment Two radioactive areas found in the Moskva River Two radioactively contaminated areas were found in banks the Moskva River, Echo Moscow radio reported. Radioactive background in one of them amounts to 300 micro R/hour. But the Radon company insists, there is no ground to speak about radioactive contamination of the Moskva River. Today there are 71 industrial areas in Moscow. The situation is worsened by heat power plants, because ashes of combusted coal contain radioactive materials. Another problem is theft from the industrial plants of automatic sensors, containing radioactive isotopes. The thieves sell lead in the receiving centers of non-ferrous metals, throwing the isotopes away wherever they like. Radiation safety has been secured by the state-owned Radon company for 40 years. Every year the company finds 50-70 areas of dangerous radioactivity in Moscow. The problem is, radioactive waste is habitually buried by Radon in the densely populated district of Sergiev Posad. According to Radon's data, the company deactivated nine radioactively contaminated areas in Moscow and in the Moscow county (Lubertsy district) in June 2001. Gamma radiation exposure dose varied from 40 to 5,500 micro R/hour. Radon buried 180kg of cranberries and bilberries, mostly from Byelorussia, sold in Moscow markets in June. Radioactivity of the berries exceeded the norm by 50 folds. It is mainly alpha contamination, in case of consumption it can cause radiation sickness and heritable diseases. The berries were mostly contaminated by radionuclides of caesium-137. 2001-07-23 Russian NPPs Russian NPPs to form a holding company A united energy company comprising all Russian NPPs will be created in two years, said deputy minister for Nuclear Energy, Lev Ryabev, RIA News reportrf. The government has already made the decision, he said. New united company will be created on the basis of Rosenergoatom, the operator of Russian NPPs. The company will earmark funds, control nuclear safety of NPPs, and guide the scientific research. Leningrad NPP is also supposed to become a member of the company, though it is not a member of Rosenergoatom today, and works directly under Minatom's auspices. 2001-07-20 Russian NPPs Minatom develops small nuclear power plants project Russian Kurchatov Nuclear Centre has designed projects of small nuclear power plants (NPPs) for minor towns of Russia, minister for Nuclear Energy Alexander Rumyantsev said. Moskovskaya pravda weekly reports, these automated NPPs have new technological structure, and require only a few workers. These NPPs can produce not only electricity, but also considerable amounts of heat, what is rather important for Russia's cold regions, Rumyantsev claims. He wishes such NPPs had been built at Russia's Far East. "We introduced the idea to build there such a NPP 15 years ago. Had it been there, people wouldn't have suffered energy and heat crises last winter," he said. Such NPPs can be built for settlements of less than 100,000 inhabitants. In Rumyantsev's opinion, electricity produced by such NPPs would be cheaper than electricity of conventional power stations. 2001-07-20 International Co-operation Russia trains the United Arab Emirates how to treat radioactive waste Russia is ready to share its experience in storage and treatment of radioactive and other wastes, president of Kurchatov Institute, academician Yevgeny Velikhov, said while visiting Abu-Dhabi. Itar-TASS quotes him as saying, Russian technologies have been tested in several countries and proved to be effective. In Abu-Dhabi Yevgeny Velikhov discussed Russia's participation in modernization of water-desalinating plants of the Gulf region. The UAE became interested in several Russia's proposals, Velikhov said. 2001-07-20 Nuclear Waste Managment Bashkiria to create system for individual irradiation control Bashkirian government issued a decree to create republican system for individual irradiation control. There are about 50,000 sources of radiation in Bashkiria, including Radon plant, designed for radioactive waste storage, and two subterranean storages for industrial waste, made by nuclear explosions. The need of the system is caused also by the increased use of devices, which contain radioactive elements. Russian decree on creation of the system for individual irradiation control was issued in 1997, but so far no interpretations or advices on the matter have been given to the local authorities. 2001-07-12 Northern Fleet incidents Rumors about Kursk danger spread fast Rumors that all the children are to be moved from Murmansk county in September started circulating around in Murmansk. Administration of a couple of kindergartens allegedly asked parents to spend September vacation far and away. Children, whose parents cannot take vacation in September, will be sent to summer camps beyond Murmansk county. Rumor-creators relate it to the Kursk salvage operation. Administration of the closed city of Severomorsk was not surprised when asked for comments. They answered that the rumors went out from Roslyakovo, where the submarine would be towed to. The rumors went then through Severomorsk and approached Murmansk. City Administration of Severomorsk stated they had no information to the effect that the school year or the opening of kindergartens would be postponed. All the kindergartens are to be officially opened on September 15th, as it was last year. 2001-07-12 Northern Fleet incidents Journalists to be shipped to Kursk Expedition of Klavdiya Elanskaya, a ship owned by Murmansk Shipping Company (MSCo), to the place of the Kursk accident is preliminarily scheduled for July 16th. It will take about twenty four hours to approach the site in the Barents Sea and come back. The ship will go out at sea at around 20:00 Moscow time and will be at the place, where Kursk sank, at 9:00 next morning. Klavdiya Elanskaya can accommodate 192 passengers onboard. It is still unclear which journalists will be allowed onboard the ship. MSCo officials said these questions were to be resolved in Moscow by the administration of the Russian president. The price for taking part in the expedition is not set either. Earlier MSCo announced that a day onboard would cost about $100. It is planned that Klavdiya Elanskaya will ship journalists to the place of the Kursk tragedy more than three times. But the number of expeditions is still unclear, since Klavdiya Elanskaya is the only ship, which provides transport from Gremikha, a remote naval settlement in the eastern part of the Kola Peninsula, to Murmansk. 2001-06-27 Accidents and Incidents Norway expands territorial water The Norwegian government has decided to expand its territorial waters from four to twelve nautical miles. The reason is to force foreign vessels with lethal cargo further out from the narrow coastal waters, where many vessels frequently goes on-ground in bad weather. The decision is a Norwegian response to Russia's planed import of spent nuclear fuel. Cargo boats with nuclear waste might pass the Norwegian coast on its way to Russian northern harbors. Norway has also requested to be informed before such shipments with nuclear waste are supposed to sail outside the Norwegian coastline. 2001-06-27 General news More thefts from Pacific Fleet submarines A Pacific Fleet lieutenant and a sailor were arrested on June 15 for stealing 68 submarine air filters containing rare palladium from a Navy storage facility, writes Vladivostok News. The crime is the third to draw the attention of the military prosecutor in the Far East this year. Two times earlier this year, naval officers were arrested on stealing parts from submarines, including radioactive isotopes, writes the San Francisco Chronicle. The newspaper quotes Igor Kravchuk, a military reporter with the newspaper Vesti, saying that at least 10 people are believed to have been arrested last year for stealing parts from diesel and nuclear submarines in the Pacific Fleet. One of the most frightening scenarios is that thieves could accidentally touch off a nuclear accident. Last year, two sailors sneaked into the nuclear reactor compartment of a submarine at a naval base in Kamchatka and stole the catalysts for igniting the reactor because they contained palladium. The thieves also stole 12 radioactive calibrating plates, without knowing that the material was radioactive. In January 1999, a Northern Fleet conscript put a nuclear attack submarine out of operation after he took 24 lengths of wire from the reactor compartment. The coiled palladium-vanadium wire is used in the communications systems of vital control devices and when removed prevent the reactor installation from being operated. 2001-06-27 Nuclear Waste Managment Royal radioactive clean-up talks The King and Queen of Sweden will visit Murmansk and Arkhagelsk later this year. Swedish Ambassador to Russia Sven Hirdman said today that this visit can yield a new rise in cooperation between Northern Russia and Europe. Russia and Europe are conducting difficult negotiations on radioactive clean-up in these regions. "There is hope that serious allocations will be made for this purpose," the ambassador said. The royal couple of Sweden is not the first monarchs to visit Murmansk. Three years ago, the King and Queen of Norway visited Murmansk, including the half-build cleaning facility for liquid radioactive waste at Atomflot. Last week, the Prince of Kent, Michael, visited Murmansk together with a delegation from Great Britain, which had talks about the British contribution to the radioactive clean-up work in the region. Publisher: Bellona Foundation, President: Frederic Hauge Information: info@bellona.no, Technical contact: webmaster@bellona.no Telephone: +47 23 23 46 00 Telefax: +47 22 38 38 62 * P.O.Box 2141 Grunerlokka, 0505 Oslo, Norway Menu ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** NUCLEAR WEAPONS ARTICLES ***************************************************************** 1 Children's bones taken for nuclear testing Guardian Unlimited | Archive Search Claire Hu Guardian Monday October 1, 2001 Thousands of bones were removed from dead babies and children without their parents' consent and used in nuclear tests during the cold war, it emerged yesterday. Campaign groups reacted with fury after the UK atomic energy authority said that about 6,000 bones had been taken from British children between 1954 and 1970 in order to measure the effects on the body of atom bomb tests. The femurs of approximately 4,000 young children were submitted to tests amid concern about how atmospheric explosions of hydrogen bombs in America and Russia might affect public health, said Beth Taylor, a spokeswoman for the agency. The revelation has led to calls for laws making it a criminal offence to remove children's body parts for research without parental consent. The studies, which were carried out over 16 years by the UK atomic energy authority and the Medical Research Council in Glasgow and Woolwich, south-east London, helped to bring about an end to the testing of atmospheric nuclear weapons, after they showed how dangerous the fall-out could be. Ms Taylor said: "We have no evidence that parents were asked if the bone samples could be used and I think we have to assume they were not asked, because that was the norm at the time." The research showed that levels of strontium 90, a radioactive substance which builds up in bones, were far higher during atom bomb tests. A spokeswoman for Scottish Parents for a Public Inquiry into Organ Retention said it was another "devastating" blow for parents, after the Alder Hey organs scandal and a report which estimated that more than 100,000 body parts were held by hospitals and medical schools across the country. The 1961 Tissue Act, which gives guidelines to pathologists in cases where children's organs could be tested, had been proved ineffective by the nuclear testing programme. "We need a law that says if you touch our children without our knowledge or consent you will go to jail. Why won't they give us that law?" she said. [UP] Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2001 ***************************************************************** 2 On the Edge: A Nation with Nukes TIMEasia.com: News -- 2001, VOL.158 NO.13 It was George W. Bush on the phone. His language was friendly but firm as he asked President Pervez Musharraf on Sept. 11 if Pakistan could help hunt down Osama bin Laden. The choices facing Musharraf were stark: if he refused, America would consider it the worst kind of betrayal, and Pakistan would suffer harsh consequences. If he agreed, there would be enormous trouble at home; many Pakistanis believe bin Laden is not a terrorist but a true warrior of the Islamic faith who must be shielded from the U.S. at all costs. Friends say that Musharraf, 58, a low-key soldier with a neatly clipped mustache and tolerant views, was aghast at the suicide attacks. He did not hesitate. "I'll face tremendous difficulties, but I'll support you," he told Bush. Musharraf's difficulties began even before any U.S. armed forces arrived. Fanned by the Taliban's rise in Afghanistan and a Muslim insurgency in Indian-held Kashmir, Islamic extremism has spread across Pakistan. Musharraf now risks making himself deeply unpopular, even loathed, by siding with the U.S. Protesters have already taken to the streets. Musharraf is not given to exaggeration, so Pakistanis were stunned when a visibly tense President, in a Sept. 19 televised speech, compared Pakistan's current predicament with the devastating 1971 civil war, in which Bangladesh fought free and the country was split in two. Unless Musharraf acts skillfully, hard-line religious forces could rise against his military junta—which came to power in an October 1999 coup. The core of Pakistan's predicament is economic. Years of neglect by corrupt politicians have dragged 30% of the population below the poverty line—nearly double the level of the past decade—and created an abiding dissatisfaction with democracy, perfect conditions to breed extremism. With a takeover by the fundamentalists, as one liberal Pakistani remarked, "We'll become another Afghanistan—but with electricity." And nukes. Already, some clerics, especially among the rifle-wielding Pashtun tribesmen of the northwest frontier, are calling for a holy war against America. They are of the same tribe as the Taliban across the border. Tribesmen believe that Musharraf is breaking their strict code of Pashtunwali, in which honor and revenge are paramount. In the village of Shakot, gunsmith Aziz Khan glanced up from a lathe as he bored holes to craft a homemade Kalashnikov rifle (price: $120) and warned, "In our culture, we give our baby son an unloaded pistol to play with in the cradle, so that he becomes acquainted with guns. Every man and boy will defend bin Laden and the Taliban against America. It would be dishonorable not to protect him." Among Musharraf's first tasks in coming weeks will be to ensure the support of Pakistan's 587,000-strong armed forces. Many lower-ranking officers, incensed at the corruption of their superiors over the years, have fallen under the sway of extremists who advocate a Taliban-style cleansing for Pakistan. "The nightmare of any officer is that he must order his men to fire on a bunch of mullahs leading a mob. Would they obey?" asked a brigadier. In an "intense and focused" four-hour meeting Sept. 14 with his regional corps commanders, Musharraf drew a grim picture of what would happen if he rebuffed the Americans: a possible U.S. air strike against Pakistan's nuclear-weapons installations, a declaration that Pakistan was a terrorist state because it backed the Kashmir militants, and a cutoff in international loans. Pakistan, although a longtime U.S. ally, was being squeezed by American economic and military sanctions issued in response to its nuclear arms program. Musharraf was evidently able to convince the generals. For now. On Saturday, the U.S. waived those sanctions. Musharraf understands the risks. He confided to a gathering of newspaper editors that the best he can do is choose the path of least destruction for Pakistan. In Pakistani-U.S.talks, neither side has raised any question of a payoff for Pakistan. "It would seem like we were putting a price on Osama's head," says a Pakistani official. In the short run, though, the U.S. plans to lift economic and military sanctions, and it may lean on the International Monetary Fund to release emergency funds and reschedule loans that Pakistan desperately needs. During his army career, Musharraf gained a reputation as a masterful tactician with lousy follow-through. His 1999 coup was a perfect example. It was bloodless and artfully executed, but his first months in power were marked by contradictions. As a tactician, Musharraf realizes that he has to crack down on religious extremists. The weeks ahead will reveal whether he may have left it too late. With reporting by Hannah Bloch and Sayed Talat Hussein Write to TIME at mail@web.timeasia.com ***************************************************************** 3 Gov't Tries to Block Vieques Vote Las Vegas SUN October 01, 2001 WASHINGTON- As the nation gears up for war, military training on the Puerto Rican island of Vieques remains a concern for the Bush administration, which dislikes what both the House and Senate are trying to do about it. The administration is insisting on canceling a planned November referendum of Vieques citizens on whether the military can continue to train there past 2003, and it wants the freedom to set the standards for alternative training sites. The military has trained there for six decades, using live fire to provide what service leaders have long considered essential, realistic training. But since an errant bomb killed a civilian worker in April 1999, only inert bombs have been used on the Navy training range. Protests prompted by that death continue, but they have lost momentum since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Noisy demonstrations by hundreds have become quiet prayer sessions by 20. President Bush on June 14 ordered the Navy to pull out by May 1, 2003. Even so, the White House wants to block the November vote on whether the Navy should stop training that year, or stay and pay $50 million for public works projects. "Conducting a local referendum on issues critical to the Department of Defense sets a bad precedent and strikes at the heart of military readiness," the Office of Management and Budget said in a statement to Congress last week regarding defense spending bills for fiscal 2002, which began Monday. Such a precedent could have a "potential domino effect on our other military training ranges," the statement said. Congress authorized the referendum last year. In a nonbinding referendum in July, 68 percent of Vieques voters supported an end to the bombing and the Navy's immediate withdrawal. The Senate's not-yet-completed defense authorization bill makes no mention of Vieques. The House bill, meanwhile, would cancel the referendum, as the administration wishes, but it would set some conditions the administration opposes. It would require the Navy to continue training on Vieques until an equal or better site becomes available, and mandate that the new site allow for simultaneous, large-scale tactical air strikes, naval surface fire support and artillery and amphibious landing operations. "The administration believes that the Navy's training needs may be met through a combination of geographic locations and alternative training methods, as opposed to a single training site," the OMB statement said. The House bill, approved 398-17 on Sept. 25, also would prevent the Navy from closing the Vieques range until top Defense officials certify that the alternative meets the conditions and is immediately available. The administration considers the certification requirements too rigid. Some lawmakers have objected to the referendum. "It would set a dangerous precedent if we're going to let 3,000 Americans tell the other 2 million Americans in uniform that we're not going to allow you to train here anymore," said Rep. Gene Taylor, D-Miss. "It's important when the JFK (aircraft carrier) goes out, that it has live-fire training, that they don't go out unprepared," said Rep. James Hansen, R-Utah. But Rep. Loretta Sanchez, D-Calif., said the vote could give a voice to Puerto Ricans, who lack full representation in Congress. All contents copyright 2001 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 4 Researchers chase a mysterious foe RGJ.com - By Frank X. Mullen Jr. Reno Gazette-Journal Monday October 1st, 2001 While investigators search for a cause of the Fallon childhood leukemia cluster, the possibilities range from man-made to environmental. But experts agree that 14 cases in five years probably isn’t a coincidence. Among the leading suspects: jet fuel spills or jettisons from Fallon Naval Air Station jets; viruses caused by the movement of large numbers of people in and out of Fallon; high levels of naturally occurring arsenic in drinking water; industrial pollution; and pesticides or fungicides used on farms. Normally, the rate of acute lymphocytic leukemia, or ALL, cases would be about three in every 100,000 people. With 14 cases among about 26,000 people living in Churchill County, which encompasses Fallon, the rate in the area is hundreds of times above normal. Of the 14 cases, 13 children were diagnosed with ALL — the most common form of childhood leukemia — and one child has acute myologic leukemia, a rarer form. While the cause of leukemia is unknown, suspected triggers include radiation exposure, electromagnetic fields or volatile organic compounds such as benzene, solvents and fossil fuels. Arsenic, measured at high levels in Fallon-area wells, has not been linked to acute lymphocytic leukemia. Health officials and Fallon residents have speculated about a wide range of potential causes. Here’s what is known so far: o Arsenic: Some studies on rats show links between arsenic and leukemia. But the connection is discounted by experts who haven’t seen large increases in leukemia in other areas with high levels of arsenic in water supplies. In addition, one study suggests that arsenic weakens the immune system to such a degree that children may be more likely to get cancer, including leukemia. But health officials said it’s unlikely that Fallon’s long-standing arsenic problem caused the problem in Fallon. In addition, the 12 patients drank from different water sources, according to the state’s survey of the families. o Virus theory: The state’s panel of experts convened to look into the leukemia cluster put viral or bacterial infection at the top of a list of possible reasons for the Fallon leukemia epidemic. But the experts, in a report to the Nevada Health Division, said their theory requires more examination. The experts’ panel, formed by state Health Officer Mary Guinan, said the infectious agent theory is based on “population mixing” — an “unusual mixing of people, often in relatively isolated rural areas.” In such cases, exposure to infection could “trigger an unusual and rare reaction that affects a very small number of children,” the panel’s report states. Guinan said the complex theory assumes chromosome damage resulting from infection, and the chromosome damage in turn could lead to cell abnormalities such as ALL. The experts said that to test the hypothesis, rates of ALL should be calculated in other rural areas which have a lot of “population mixing” and getting more information on population movements in the Fallon area from 1990 to 2000. o Random occurrence: The state’s experts said it’s unlikely Fallon’s epidemic could be random. Some epidemiologists say that all cancer clusters may just be random occurrences — like throwing a handful of pennies into the air and having half land on “heads” and half land on “tails.” Some of those pennies may land in random groupings of heads or tails. But outside experts consulted by state officials said coincidence probably can’t account for so many cases in so small an area in so short a time. o Jet fuel: The Navy, which uses more than 33 million gallons of JP-8 jet fuel per year at its Fallon base, says its planes don’t jettison fuel over Fallon. A 44-year-old jet fuel pipeline that runs beneath the town was checked for leaks this year by a consultant and by federal and state officials and no evidence of leaks was found. Fuel residue hasn’t been found in state tests of wells and tap water. Further well tests are ongoing and soil testing is planned. o Atomic testing: Although Fallon is only 28 miles from the site of a 1963 nuclear bomb test, Department of Energy officials said the radiation from the test has stayed on the site and hasn’t migrated to the town. “There’s no evidence that radioactivity has moved off the site,” said Nancy Harkness, DOE spokeswoman in Las Vegas. “We’ve been monitoring with test wells since 1963 and the Environmental Protection Agency checks the wells annually.” She said there’s movement of water deep below the site in the Sand Mountain Range 28 miles southeast of Fallon, but the movement is easterly — away from the town. Radiation is a known cause of cancer and is implicated in many cancer and leukemia clusters worldwide, including 16 in Britain. Some Nevada and Utah residents also blame bomb tests at the Nevada Test Site near Las Vegas for cancer clusters downwind of the test area. In 1963, the Shoal Nuclear Test Site near Fallon was ground zero for a 13-kiloton atomic bomb. That device is three kilotons weaker than the bomb that leveled the Japanese city of Hiroshima at the end of World War II. The Cold War test was done underground, where it left a large underground cavity, vaporized rock and disbursed radioactivity below the surface. Scientists know that nuclear blasts also create radioactive atoms, called radioneuclides, that are released into groundwater and travel with it. Scientists from the DOE, EPA and the Desert Research Institute use eight on-site wells and a dozen off-site wells to search for radioneuclides like tritium. Tritium is also seen as a culprit in some of the cancer clusters found near nuclear processing plants in Britain. “The highest reading we ever got was in 1996 at an on-site well very close to ground zero,” Harkness said. “That well showed a reading of 1,000 picocuries of tritium per liter. The standard for tritium in water is 20,000 picocuries per liter.’ DOE project manager Pete Sanders said any surface contamination is long gone. He said the ground water below the site doesn’t connect with the basalt aquifer, the source of Fallon’s drinking water. “The water is pretty much localized,” he said. “So is the radiation. As far as we know, it hasn’t migrated out of that area.” o Natural groundwater radiation: The wells tapping Churchill County’s shallow and intermediate aquifer contain high levels of naturally occurring uranium and radiation. The radioactive minerals are washed into the Lahontan Valley by the Carson River. But only about half the 14 families used rural well water sources and the remainder used city water, which taps a deeper aquifer and doesn’t contain radioactivity. In state tap water tests of the residences or former residences of leukemia patients, only one of the wells had high radiation levels. o Pesticides and other toxic chemicals: The state’s expert panel said the absence of leukemias commonly associated with toxic chemical exposure suggests that the Fallon cases aren’t the result of such toxic exposures. But one of the patients was later diagnosed with acute myelogenous leukemia, which has been linked to exposure to chemicals and solvents. Preliminary results of USGS well tests done over the last three months don’t show large amounts of solvents, pesticides, fuel or other man-made chemicals in Fallon wells used by the patient families. The city wells have always tested clean for pesticides, Fallon officials said. Recommendations from the state’s expert panel include collecting biologic specimens for future analysis. Also suggested was an effort to pinpoint any “excess environmental exposures” in the area and a continuing effort to see if there’s a link to the victims or their families. The state health division plans to begin environmental testing in October. © Reno Gazette-Journal ***************************************************************** 5 Flats shipments slowly resume [www.TheDailyCamera.com] Flats shipments slowly resume By Katy Human Camera Staff Writer Rocky Flats managers resumed shipments of radioactive waste Wednesday. Shipments from the former nuclear bomb plant were stopped following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the East Coast. "Yesterday, we sent out the first shipment for WIPP," U.S. Department of Energy spokesman Patrick Etchart said Thursday, referring to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, a disposal site in southern New Mexico. A full shipment schedule — seven trucks per week — should resume next week. But few things seem normal at the federal Superfund cleanup site south of Boulder where several tons of weapons-grade plutonium remain. Non-essential visitors are not allowed on site, and security has been beefed up. Guards at the western gate carry M-16s and search even the cars of longtime employees. But workers seem more united than ever, said Jennifer Thompson, spokeswoman for Kaiser-Hill, the company managing cleanup at Rocky Flats. "Rocky Flats is a proud-to-be-an-American-type of place," she said. "The guards, they're working a ton of overtime, they're working so hard with all the searches, but they're in such good spirits." Employees and management at Rocky Flats have raised more than $47,000 for the Red Cross, and Capt. Randall Sullivan of the Rocky Flats fire department said he's raised more than $17,000 for families of missing, injured and deceased firefighters in New York. "The plant employees have been very, very gracious," Sullivan said. "The sense of patriotism out here is just amazing. It's something we just can't get over." Although cleanup work has resumed following a temporary shutdown, some jobs remain suspended and others are happening quietly. Workers had planned to take down three uncontaminated guard towers with explosives this month. But the work is on hold until at least November, Thompson said. She and others were also planning to celebrate the official opening of the "protected area" earlier this month. Weapons research and production buildings containing plutonium and other dangerous materials were once surrounded by bristling razor fences, guard towers and security stations. Now, only one building contains weapons-grade plutonium and remains highly secure. Thompson had hoped to choreograph a jubilant opening of the protected area at the site's annual "Family Day," but instead, workers just quietly pulled down the final pieces of fence this week. On Sept. 11, two trucks from Idaho bearing radioactive waste for WIPP sought safe haven at Rocky Flats following the terrorist attacks, Etchart said. One of those two left the site Thursday, and the other will leave next week. Contact Katy Human at (303) 473-1364 or humank@thedailycamera.com. September 28, 2001 Copyright 2001 The Daily Camera. All rights reserved. Any copying, ***************************************************************** 6 Editorial: Lump sum a terrible proposal Las Vegas SUN: October 01, 2001 Over the years Congress and the Department of Energy have advocated shortcuts that would make it easier to build a high-level nuclear waste dump at Nevada's Yucca Mountain. Most often these ideas have come in the form of proposals that would junk any semblance of tough safety regulations involving the transportation and storage of nuclear waste. There also have been efforts among pro-dump lawmakers in Congress to end the legislative branch's oversight of the spending on the Yucca Mountain Project, although fortunately those haven't gotten too far. But as the Sun's Benjamin Grove and Mary Manning reported last week, those efforts are being renewed from another source. For the first time the DOE is asking Congress to consider paying for a dump at Yucca Mountain in one fell swoop instead of approving smaller annual appropriations to pay for the work there as it goes. Nevada's congressional delegation correctly points out that the estimated price tag for the dump is huge -- $58 billion. That poses the obvious question: Just where will Congress get all this money during an economic slowdown and war? One of the biggest frustrations all along with the Yucca Mountain Project is that the DOE acts as if it already has made up its mind to build a dump -- even though no final recommendation has been made yet on whether Yucca Mountain is scientifically suitable. In this instance, the DOE says it simply is throwing out possibilities on how to fund Yucca Mountain -- and that a lump-sum payment just happens to be one of the options. The DOE says that it will wait to make a final recommendation on how to allocate the funding after the DOE makes its final suitability assessment of Yucca Mountain. But even offering for consideration the possibility of a lump-sum payment is premature and unseemly, which is routine for the DOE that seems eager to please its benefactors in Congress who want to see a dump built immediately. All contents copyright 2001 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 7 Iraqi's Mission: To Get Bin Laden a Nuke New York Daily News Online | News and Views | Beyond the City | Monday, October 01, 2001 Jailed associate a feared zealot By BOB PORT and GREG B. SMITH Daily News Staff Writers n a 10th-floor high-security jail cell a few blocks from the ruins of the World Trade Center sits a man Osama Bin Laden was counting on in his quest to buy a nuclear bomb. Experts agree that Osama Bin Laden probably has not acquired the ability to set off a nuclear device — yet. Mamdouh Mahmud Salim is the only member of Bin Laden's inner circle in custody, and in many ways, he's one of the most frightening characters in Bin Laden's terrorist confederacy, Al Qaeda. Last November, Salim briefly made headlines when he allegedly stabbed a Metropolitan Correctional Center guard in the eye with a carefully sharpened plastic comb. But the most disturbing allegations concern Salim's participation in Bin Laden's long and serious effort to acquire a nuclear device that would make the Sept. 11 attack seem like a practice run. Mamdouh Mahmud Salim of Osama Bin Laden's inner circle was at the center of efforts to obtain a nuclear bomb. Experts agree that Bin Laden probably has not yet acquired the ability to set off a nuke in his effort to drive America and Israel from what he views as Muslim holy land. But law enforcement sources and experts on nuclear weapons agree that Bin Laden has certainly made a sustained effort to buy the enriched uranium that is the essential ingredient of any nuclear effort. Could Bin Laden make an A-bomb? "It's much harder than hijacking an airplane with a knife," said Leonard Spector, of the Center for Nonproliferation Studies. "[But] it's probably true that with enough time and effort, one could make a bomb. It is a big challenge, though. People have debated this for a long time." Sidetracked in Germany There have also been reports — none confirmed — that the terrorist leader was seeking to buy a small nuclear device. At the center of the controversy over Bin Laden's "Manhattan Project" nuclear schemes is Salim, a 41-year-old Iraqi-trained engineer. Details of Bin Laden's nuclear efforts first came to light after Sept. 14, 1998, when German law enforcement apprehended him. Days after the Aug. 8, 1998, bombings of two U.S. embassies in East Africa, Salim traveled from Khartoum, Sudan, to Istanbul to Majorca, Spain, to Stuttgart, Germany. A friend then took him by car to Munich, where German police detained him. He was held there for days while first German and then U.S. law enforcement grilled him. Since then, evidence gathered by the FBI makes clear that Salim was an elite member of Bin Laden's ultra-secret organization. He allegedly controlled bank accounts for Al Qaeda and ran one of Bin Laden's construction companies. He has even been identified as a founder of Al Qaeda by Manhattan Assistant U.S. Attorney Kenneth Karas, who is now investigating the Sept. 11 attack for the Manhattan U.S. attorney's office. Unholy Alliance In extradition papers filed in Germany, Karas listed Salim as a member of Bin Laden's majlis al shura, a council that advises terrorist groups from Egypt, Iran, Sudan, Algeria and elsewhere affiliated with Al Qaeda. One of Salim's most frightening missions involved a joint operating agreement between Al Qaeda and the Islamic governments of Iran and Sudan. The three agreed to produce weapons in Sudan, including "an effort to develop chemical weapons," Karas alleged. Salim — who says he trained as an electrical engineer at the University of Baghdad — has been linked to the pharmaceutical plant in Khartoum that was bombed by U.S. forces on Aug. 20, 1998. The bombing took place shortly after the Aug. 8 Bin Laden-led attacks on the two U.S. embassies in East Africa. The Clinton administration said the plant was manufacturing chemical weapons — an allegation plant management denied. But a chemical attack was only part of the plan. As long ago as 1993, Bin Laden's network began trying to make or acquire nuclear weapons, according to FBI informers and U.S. intelligence reports. By 1998, Bin Laden acknowledged his effort openly. In May that year, he issued a statement titled "The Nuclear Bomb of Islam," translated by the U.S. State Department as declaring "it is the duty of Muslims to prepare as much force as possible to terrorize the enemies of God." Mystery Cylinder In testimony during the embassy bombing trial last year, informant Jamal Ahmed Mohamed Al-Fadl vividly recalled Salim's involvement in Bin Laden's 1993 effort to buy a nuke. Al-Fadl — who left Al Qaeda in 1996 after he was caught embezzling money — claimed he met with a former high Sudanese official to discuss buying enriched uranium. He described meeting with intermediaries who demanded $1.5 million, then driving in a jeep to an anonymous address in a Khartoum neighborhood called Bait al Mal. There, inside a house, a bag was brought out and opened. Inside, Al-Fadl said, was a 2- to 3-foot long metal cylinder with South African markings. He said he was instructed to go to Salim with a document spelling out this transaction, and that Salim reviewed the document and approved it. Uranium Passed Test Though Al-Fadl never saw money change hands, he got $10,000 and praise for arranging an inspection of the uranium before it was shipped to Cyprus for quality testing. Al-Fadl said he later learned, second-hand, that the uranium was good and the deal was consummated. It's unclear what became of the uranium. To make an atomic bomb, at least 7 pounds of an extra-radioactive form of uranium that exists as a small fraction of mined uranium is needed. This highly purified U-235 is enriched, or weapons-grade, uranium. Enriched uranium, which is hard to make, is placed in a container that implodes, compressing the uranium to a critical mass and triggering an atomic chain reaction that releases a blast equal to thousands of tons of dynamite. A crude device might likely resemble Little Boy, the bomb crafted by America's secret Manhattan Project during World War II and dropped on Hiroshima. Little Boy was 10 feet long and weighed nearly 10,000 pounds. Since the 1993 effort to buy uranium, Bin Laden's 'Manhattan project' has focused on acquiring a nuke from the former Soviet Union's arsenal, according to an October 1998 article in the Arabic magazine Al Watan Al Arabi. The magazine claimed that at a meeting between Bin Laden followers and Chechen mobsters, $30 million cash and 2 tons of opium were exchanged for about 20 nuclear warheads. It quoted sources as saying Bin Laden planned for his scientists to convert the warheads to small "suitcase nukes." A month earlier, Israeli intelligence sources told Time magazine that Bin Laden paid $2 million in British pounds to a man in Kazakhstan who promised to deliver a suitcase bomb within two years. Ever since, a spate of alarming, unconfirmed and exaggerated news reports have played off those original news items, which remain unconfirmed. 80 Nuclear Weapons The mere mention of "suitcase bomb" caused speculation Bin Laden might acquire one of some 80 1-kiloton tactical nuclear weapons allegedly made by Russia in the 1970s, as claimed in a 1997 "60 Minutes" interview with former Russian Security Council Secretary Alexander Lebed. "My impression was that this issue was checked out pretty thoroughly," said Spector, of the Center for Nonproliferation Studies. "Nobody inside the U.S. government became alarmed once they did some investigating. ... This did not lead to an enormous amount of anxiety. Nobody was losing sleep over it." Last week, U.S. officials in Washington declined to respond to any questions about Bin Laden and nukes. But one source said the prospect of Bin Laden building a nuke, while distant, is to be feared. For years, the United States has been buying Russia's stock of weapons-grade uranium to remove it from the market, but the purchases are a fraction of what exists. "The threat is taken very seriously because the quantities of uranium in Russia are enormous. ... We've been worried for some time that security there is a problem," said one defense source. "Nobody wants to talk about it." ***************************************************************** 8 Oak Ridge to host Energy Communities Alliance Oct. 17-19 Oak Ridger Online --> Story last updated at 11:49 a.m. on Monday, October 1, 2001 by Paul Parson Oak Ridger staff Oak Ridge will host the Energy Communities Alliance's fall conference Oct. 17-19. Energy Communities Alliance is an organization of local governments that are adjacent to or impacted by Department of Energy activities. Oak Ridge City Council member Jerry Kuhaida serves as chairman of the alliance's board of directors. In fact, the city of Oak Ridge is a founding member of Energy Communities Alliance, which was established in 1992. Anderson County is a recent addition to the organization. The conference kicks off at 7:30 a.m. Wednesday, Oct. 17, with a golf tournament at Centennial Golf Course. An Energy Communities Alliance board meeting and dinner reception follow Wednesday night at Whitestone Country Inn, 1200 Paint Rock Road in Kingston. Several presentations are planned for Thursday, Oct. 18, and Friday, Oct. 19, and will be held at the Garden Plaza Hotel, 215 S. Illinois Ave. Topics include environmental management, long-term stewardship and planning for the needs of those communities impacted by DOE activities. Officials invited to speak during the three-day conference include: Gen. John Gordon, administrator for the National Nuclear Security Administration, the quasi-independent agency within DOE that oversees the nuclear weapons complex; Jessie Roberson, assistant secretary for DOE headquarters' Environmental Management Program; and U.S. Rep. Zach Wamp, R-3rd District. Early registration for the conference runs through Friday, Oct. 5, with per-person fees starting at $275 for Energy Communities Alliance members, $300 for public interest and government officials and $325 for private-sector individuals. After Oct. 5, the per-person fees are $310 for Energy Communities Alliance members, $325 for public interest and government officials and $350 for private-sector individuals. In addition, there is a $25 fee for the golf tournament. For more information about the fall conference or to register, contact Amy Fitzgerald, the city's government and public affairs coordinator, at (865) 425-3554. For more information about Energy Communities Alliance, visit the organization's Web site at or call (202) 828-2318. All Contents ©Copyright The Oak Ridger ***************************************************************** 9 $3.1 million DOE grant keeps funding steady for fiscal 2002 By Frank Munger News-Sentinel senior writer After protracted negotiations with the U.S. Department of Energy, the state recently came away with a $3.1 million grant to monitor DOE's environmental cleanup activities in Oak Ridge during fiscal 2002. That's not what the state requested (which was $4.7 million), but it's roughly the amount the state's oversight office in Oak Ridge spent during fiscal 2001. The situation is a little confusing because the state and federal government agencies operate on different fiscal years (July to June vs. October to September). John Owsley, the state's environmental chief in Oak Ridge, called the new funding level "mutually agreeable" and said it reflects the federal budget cuts DOE is expecting in its Oak Ridge environmental program. DOE's budget for 2002 is not yet final, but if the feds get more cleanup money than expected, the state's oversight budget could go up as well, he said. Since 1991, when the original oversight agreement was signed, the federal government has provided money annually to Tennessee to monitor pollution problems in Oak Ridge. This was considered just and fair because of the extraordinary impact DOE's Oak Ridge nuclear operations had on the environment during the Cold War. In its most recent status report, the state's oversight office concluded "there are no immediate threats to public health" from DOE's current operations in Oak Ridge. "However, the potential for harm does exist if surveillance or maintenance lapses occur and cleanups fail to progress," the report said. "Dangerous materials such as uranium hexafluoride, highly enriched uranium, mercury, metallic lithium and uranium-233 remain in storage. DOE must ensure that current operations maintain the integrity of controls on these materials." On-site storage of radioactive and toxic wastes in Oak Ridge continues to be a concern, the state report said. "In addition, most of the poor waste disposal practices of the past have yet to be remedied, resulting in the continuing migration of contaminants off the reservation. These sites, which act as sources for current soil, groundwater, and surface-water contamination, must be cleaned up or safely and permanently controlled. DOE continues to release low levels of contaminants to the air and water from legacy sites that are being remediated ... ." The state also noted that DOE continues to regulate itself regarding the storage and disposal of low-level radioactive waste, a right granted to the federal government decades ago as part of the U.S. Atomic Energy Act. In other words, there is a continuing need for independent monitoring and oversight to ensure that the Oak Ridge cleanup progresses and that DOE lives up to existing commitments. The state has said one of its challenges is to ensure funding "practically forever" in order to maintain nuclear disposal sites in Oak Ridge that cannot be cleaned up and, thus, can never be accessible to the public. If oversight funding becomes more difficult on a year-to-year basis, that doesn't bode well for long-term concerns about pollution legacies in Oak Ridge. Based on the new grant from DOE, Owsley said the state should be able to continue with important monitoring and oversight activities in Oak Ridge. But the Oak Ridge office will not be able to fill about 16 personnel vacancies or purchase any new equipment. "While the $3.1 million is a livable number, it's certainly not what we expect to have in the future," Owsley said. The state's Oak Ridge office also could be further impacted by spending cuts being implemented by Gov. Don Sundquist as a result of Tennessee's budget crisis. Even though the Oak Ridge oversight activities are funded with federal dollars, they are subject to the same kind of spending restraints as other state operations. Another entity hurt by the DOE grant reduction is the Local Oversight Committee, a group that oversees the environmental cleanup activities for local governments in the Oak Ridge area. The LOC gets its money from the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation, as a sub-component of the Oak Ridge oversight agreement. Susan Gawarecki, executive director of the oversight committee, said her 2002 budget was trimmed from about $200,000 to about $167,000. "It affects our ability to do outreach," she said. The LOC will do less advertising on meetings, reduce travel and eliminate some "white paper" studies that might otherwise have been done, Gawarecki said. "But," she said, "we're still in business" -- a status that was in doubt just a few months ago. Senior writer Frank Munger can be reached at 482-9213 or by e-mail at twig1@knoxnews.infi.net. This weekly column on science and technology also is available on our Web site at http://www.knoxnews.com/science/munger/. Copyright 2001 The Knoxville News-Sentinel Co. ***************************************************************** 10 Russia's Kursk a Nuclear Unknown for Its Scrappers Sunday September 30 3:40 PM ET By Andrei Shukshin SNEZHNOGORSK, Russia (Reuters) - The cause of the sinking of Russia's Kursk (news - web sites) submarine may still be a mystery, but officials said on Sunday they were also in the dark over how to dismantle the nuclear wreck. Managers at a closed navy shipyard charged with scrapping the mutilated 18,000-ton craft once it is finally lifted from the Arctic seabed said nobody had dealt with such a ruined submarine or knew what its mangled remains might be hiding. ``It is the first submarine to be raised from the bottom of the sea to be dismantled and it is the first submarine of this class to be dismantled,'' Rostislav Rimdyonok, chief engineer at the Nerpa plant near Murmansk, told reporters. The Kursk, one of Russia's most modern submarines, crashed to the bottom of the Barents Sea in August 2000 after two still unexplained explosions tore open its bow. All 118 people on board died, most of them instantly. President Vladimir Putin (news - web sites) promised to raise the craft to investigate the tragedy and bury the dead. The operation, by the Dutch company Mammoet and plagued by technical hitches and bad weather, started in July. Lifting the Kursk is expected to cost $65 million. A further $65 million will go toward getting rid of the wreck. Mammoet has said it will be ready to start hoisting the vessel within days. The original plan called for the operation to be completed on September 15. Officials at Nerpa said the Kursk, commissioned in 1995, would become the youngest Russian submarine to end its life in a scrap yard. Media reports put the cost of its construction at $1 billion. ``The average life span of a nuclear-powered submarine is 20-25 years, the Kursk is just a teenager,'' said Alexander Gorbunov, Nerpa's acting director. ALL SORTS OF DIFFICULTIES The officials said that with virtually no knowledge of how badly the Kursk was damaged inside they could not say how they would set about dismantling it. ``We know there are going to be all sorts of difficulties but we do not know what they are going to be,'' Gorbunov said. At the heart of the problem are two shut-down reactors from which nuclear fuel must be extracted. That operation is routinely carried out by a special ship equipped with cranes and fuel storage chambers. But such a procedure applies only when a submarine is running and able to float. With the Kursk, all operations will have to be conducted on a vessel already hoisted on a dry dock. ``For the Kursk we have worked out a special scheme with the fuel unloaded onto a railway platform and then moved to the ship. Otherwise we might have to dry-dock the ship and roll it on a carriage to the side of the submarine,'' Rimdyonok said. The state of the reactors is also uncertain. ``We know that the active zone is intact but auxiliaries, like piping, may have been damaged,'' Gorbunov said. But he said the problems appeared solvable and risks were low. Once the Kursk is raised, it will be transported to the town of Roslyakovo where workers will cut out its arsenal of cruise missiles. It will then be carried to Snezhnogorsk for complete stripping-down, due to take about six months. Copyright © 2001 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 11 Prefecture stops giving out info on nuke subs - Japan Update: Your Okinawa Home for News, Summit Information, Prefecture stops giving out info on nuke subs Okinawa Prefecture officials announced Friday that they would suspend the disclosing to the media of information concerning nuclear submarines that make a port call at the White Beach Naval Port in Katsuren Town. The Ministry on Foreign Affairs, Okinawa Office asked the prefecture to do so on Thursday, stating that the submarines could be terrorists’ targets. Prefecture official accepted the request at an executive meeting held on Friday. Up to now, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has informed the prefecture on the visits by the submarines 24-hours prior to port calls based on a 1964 agreement with the U.S. How long 1suspending of the information will last is unknown, although results of the radiation tests conducted by the Japanese government officials at the vicinity of the submarines will continue to be revealed seven or eight hours after the port call is recognized publicly. ***************************************************************** 12 Proof against Osama being examined: FO -DAWN - Top Stories; 04 October, 2001 Bureau Report ISLAMABAD, Oct 3: The United States on Wednesday passed on to Pakistan some more evidence about Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaida group's involvement in Sept 11 terror attacks, which the government has referred to experts for examination, the Foreign Office spokesman said. The spokesman who had stated on Tuesday that US Ambassador Wendy Chamberlin had apprised President Pervez Musharraf only about the "status of investigation" on Wednesday said that some more evidence had been provided to Islamabad. Spokesman Riaz Mohammad Khan refused to answer questions about the nature of the evidence and how long it would take the government to examine it. Asked why Pakistan was reluctant when America's NATO and Western allies were convinced of the evidence, the spokesman retorted: "You are asking us to jump at the conclusion. Till yesterday we had not received any evidence. Now we have received that and it is being examined." In reply to a question whether the US had provided any evidence against the Al Rashid Trust (ART) whose bank accounts had already been frozen, he said the name of ART was included in the list of organizations which had allegedly been providing money to Osama. The State Bank had issued an advisory on the basis of the list issued by the US while the local banks had frozen the ART accounts in their own interest. The government, the spokesman said, was in touch with the US authorities for evidence against ART and added that according to their understanding ART was a charitable organization and had been doing considerable welfare work for the Afghan refugees. About the forthcoming meeting of the foreign ministers of the OIC member states in Qatar he said the agenda circulated by the OIC secretariat contained two points: Palestine and the situation after the Sept 11 terror attacks. The spokesman pointed out that all the members states of the OIC had condemned the terror attacks and all those included in the Security Council had supported international campaign against terrorism. As regards the military supplies to the Northern Alliance, he said it was not a new phenomenon. Recently, he added, a train carrying a huge quantity of arms and ammunition had been intercepted in Central Asia which was being supplied by Russia to the Northern Alliance. Pakistan, he said, had some reservations over the one-sided embargo imposed by the United Nations on military supplies to Taliban. Islamabad, he said, had been trying to impress upon the international community that one-sided embargo would act as an incentive for one party not to sit on the negotiating table. The DAWN Group of Newspapers, 2001 ***************************************************************** 13 A Hole in the World COMMENT | October 1, 2001 by Jonathan Schell On Tuesday morning, a piece was torn out of our world. A patch of blue sky that should not have been there opened up in the New York skyline. In my neighborhood--I live eight blocks from the World Trade Center--the heavens were raining human beings. Our city was changed forever. Our country was changed forever. Our world was changed forever. It will take months merely to know what happened, far longer to feel so much grief, longer still to understand its meaning. It's already clear, however, that one aspect of the catastrophe is of supreme importance for the future: the danger of the use of weapons of mass destruction, and especially the use of nuclear weapons. This danger includes their use by a terrorist group but is by no means restricted to it. It is part of a larger danger that has been for the most part ignored since the end of the cold war. Among the small number who have been concerned with nuclear arms in recent years--they have pretty much all known one another by their first names--it was commonly heard that the world would not return its attention to this subject until a nuclear weapon was again set off somewhere in the world. Then, the tiny club said to itself, the world would awaken to its danger. Many of the ingredients of the catastrophe were obvious. The repeated suicide-homicides of the bombers in Israel made it obvious that there were people so possessed by their cause that, in an exaltation of hatred, they would do anything in its name. Many reports--most recently an article in the New York Times on the very morning of the attack--reminded the public that the world was awash in nuclear materials and the wherewithal for other weapons of mass destruction. Russia is bursting at the seams with these materials. The suicide bombers and the market in nuclear materials was that two-plus-two that points toward the proverbial necessary four. But history is a trickster. The fates came up with a horror that was unforeseen. No one had identified the civilian airliner as a weapon of mass destruction, but it occurred to the diabolical imagination of those who conceived Tuesday's attack that it could be one. The invention illumined the nature of terrorism in modern times. These terrorists carried no bombs--only knives, if initial reports are to be believed. In short, they turned the tremendous forces inherent in modern technical society--in this case, Boeing 767s brimming with jet fuel--against itself. So it is also with the more commonly recognized weapons of mass destruction. Their materials can be built the hard way, from scratch, as Iraq came within an ace of doing until stopped by the Gulf War and as Pakistan and India have done, or they can be diverted from Russian, or for that matter American or English or French or Chinese, stockpiles. In the one case, it is nuclear know-how that is turned against its inventors, in the other it is their hardware. Either way, it is "blowback"--the use of a technical capacity against its creator--and, as such, represents the pronounced suicidal tendencies of modern society. This suicidal bent--nicely captured in the name of the still current nuclear policy "mutual assured destruction"--of course exists in forms even more devastating than possible terrorist attacks. India and Pakistan, which both possess nuclear weapons and have recently engaged in one of their many hot wars, are the likeliest candidates. Most important--and most forgotten--are the some 30,000 nuclear weapons that remain in the arsenals of Russia and the United States. The Bush Administration has announced its intention of breaking out of the antiballistic missile treaty of 1972, which bans antinuclear defenses, and the Russians have answered that if this treaty is abandoned the whole framework of nuclear arms control built up over thirty years may collapse. There is no quarrel between the United States and Russia that suggests a nuclear exchange between them, but accidents are another matter, and, as Tuesday's attack has shown, the mood and even the structure of the international order can change overnight. What should be done? Should the terrorists who carried out Tuesday's attacks be brought to justice and punished, as the President wants to do? Of course. Who should be punished if not people who would hurl a cargo of innocent human beings against a fixed target of other innocent human beings? (When weighing the efficiency--as distinct from the satisfaction--of punishment, however, it is well to remember that the immediate attackers have administered the supposed supreme punishment of death to themselves.) Should further steps be taken to protect the country and the world from terrorism, including nuclear terrorism? They should. And yet even as we do these things, we must hold, as if to life itself, to a fundamental truth that has been known to all thoughtful people since the destruction of Hiroshima: There is no technical solution to the vulnerability of modern populations to weapons of mass destruction. After the attack, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld placed US forces on the highest state of alert and ordered destroyers and aircraft carriers to take up positions up and down the coasts of the United States. But none of these measures can repeal the vulnerability of modern society to its own inventions, revealed by that heart-breaking gap in the New York skyline. This, obviously, holds equally true for that other Maginot line, the proposed system of national missile defense. Thirty billion dollars is being spent on intelligence annually. We can assume that some portion of that was devoted to protecting the World Trade Center after it was first bombed in 1993. There may have been mistakes--maybe we'll find out--but the truth is that no one on earth can demonstrate that the expenditure of even ten times that amount can prevent a terrorist attack on the United States or any other country. The combination of the extraordinary power of modern technology, the universal and instantaneous spread of information in the information age and the mobility inherent in a globalized economy prevents it. Man, however, is not merely a technical animal. Aristotle pointed out that we are also a political animal, and it is to politics that we must return for the solutions that hold promise. That means returning to the treaties that the United States has recently been discarding like so much old newspaper--the one dealing, for example, with an International Criminal Court (useful for tracking down terrorists and bringing them to justice), with global warming and, above all, of course, with nuclear arms and the other weapons of mass destruction, biological and chemical. The United States and seven other countries now rely for their national security on the retaliatory execution of destruction a millionfold greater than the Tuesday attacks. The exit from this folly, by which we endanger ourselves as much as others, must be found. Rediscovering ourselves as political animals also means understanding the sources of the hatred that the United States has incurred in a decade of neglect and, worse, neglect of international affairs--a task that is highly unwelcome to many in current circumstances but nevertheless is indispensable to the future safety of the United States and the world. It would be disrespectful of the dead to in any way minimize the catastrophe that has overtaken New York. Yet at the same time we must keep room in our minds for the fact that it could have been worse. To lose two huge buildings and the people in them is one thing; to lose all of Manhattan--or much, much more--is another. The emptiness in the sky can spread. We have been warned. thenation.com © 2001 The Nation Company ***************************************************************** 14 U.K. Tested Kids' Bones for Fallout Las Vegas SUN September 30, 2001 LONDON (AP) - Thousands of bones were removed from dead British children without their parents' consent during Cold War-era nuclear tests, the nation's Atomic Energy Authority said Sunday. The femurs of about 4,000 young children were removed from 1954 to 1970, agency spokeswoman Beth Taylor said. The bones were used in tests to measure the effects atmospheric explosions of hydrogen bombs were having on humans and the environment. "It is true that parental or relatives' approval wasn't sought," she said. "We assume that parents weren't asked because it wasn't the norm at the time." Similar revelations were made in Australia in June. The Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency said bones from dead Australian children were once shipped to the United States and Britain for testing. Taylor stressed that the British research - conducted in London and the Scottish city of Glasgow - contributed to a decision to halt atmospheric nuclear explosions in 1963. "The program was done for the best of reasons," she said. "It was the period when we were doing atmospheric tests of hydrogen bombs and there was quite a bit of concern about the dangers of nuclear fallout." But that fact did not comfort activists angered by similarly secretive post-mortem organ removals. A spokeswoman for Scottish Parents for a Public Inquiry into Organ Retention said Sunday that stronger laws were needed to ensure parents had complete control of the children's bodies after their deaths. The issue made headlines in Britain this year when it was revealed that a Dutch pathologist working at a Liverpool children's hospital had stripped children of their organs during post-mortem examinations between 1988 and 1995 without parental consent. The government said in a January report that the actions of Dr. Dick Van Velzen were "unethical and illegal" and that "the pain caused to the parents by this dreadful sequence of events is unforgivable." A related report said more than 100,000 hearts, brains, lungs and other organs were held by hospitals and medical schools across the country, many without the knowledge of next-of-kin. All contents copyright 2001 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 15 British Secretly Used Babies' Bones in Tests October 1, 2001 British Secretly Used Babies' Bones in Tests By ALAN COWELL LONDON, Sept. 30 — In a remarkable evocation of the secretive ways and hidden priorities of the cold war, Britain's Atomic Energy Agency acknowledged today that thousands of bones were taken from dead babies without parental consent to help ascertain the impact of atmospheric nuclear testing. The disclosure was the more shocking in light of separate revelations earlier this year that dead children's organs had been removed without their parents' knowledge or consent by a Dutch pathologist working in the north-western port city of Liverpool. The newest admission will almost certainly add to a chorus of calls by advocacy groups for far stricter laws to ensure disclosure by physicians of their use of body parts, particularly since Britain's medical profession is often depicted by patients as high-handed and unresponsive to inquiries. But it also seemed redolent of a period when the threat of nuclear war permeated Britain and other societies with uncertainty and angst while superpower rivalry bred a culture of intense secrecy. At that time in the 1950's and 1960's, hundreds of atmospheric nuclear tests were conducted as the United States and the Soviet Union, along with lesser nuclear powers like Britain and France, scrambled to refine weapons of mass destruction in anticipation of World War III. A spokeswoman for the Atomic Energy Authority said the secret testing of children's bones might in fact have produced a positive result by contributing to Britain's ban on atmospheric testing, in 1963. That was part of the first East-West arms accord, the 1963 Limited Test Ban Treaty, which ended nuclear explosions in the atmosphere and permitted them only beneath the earth. The British research established that the level of the radioactive isotope strontium 90 in infant bones had increased during the period when atmospheric nuclear testing was prevalent. "The program was done for the best of reasons," said Beth Taylor of the atomic energy agency. "It was the period when we were doing atmospheric tests of hydrogen bombs, and there was quite a bit of concern about the dangers of nuclear fallout." After the 1963 ban, nuclear testing continued underground. The agency said the thigh bones from some 3,400 dead infants were removed and incinerated between 1954 and 1970 before being tested for levels of strontium 90. The isotope is able to penetrate human systems because it shares some properties with calcium, which is absorbed by bones and plants. The tests were carried out in Glasgow and southeast London. Word of the tests first emerged at Yorkhill Children's Hospital in Glasgow last June. "We have no evidence that parents were asked if the bone samples could be used and I think we have to assume that they were not," the Atomic Energy Agency spokeswoman said. "I do not know the dates of the rules and regulations, but I am pretty sure in the 1950's doctors would have just said the research was all for the best and the samples could just be taken." The remarks suggested a profound cultural change that has overtaken Britain since the 1950's and 1960's when the medical profession was rarely challenged to explain itself in public. The agency said the bone samples were supplied after post mortem examinations and the tests reflected concerns about the spread of radioactivity from nuclear tests that had already contaminated milk. Levels of radioactivity rose rapidly between the start of the testing program and about 1964, one year after the ban on nuclear testing. Disclosure of the program elicited unease among campaigners seeking greater openness about medical testing. "There are so many projects like this and we have no idea how many," said a spokeswoman for an advocacy group called Scottish Parents for a Public Inquiry Into Organ Retention. "Parents up until now have had no say in anything that has been done to their children after death. They felt that their children's bodies did not belong to them." While hospitals in London and Glasgow have been linked to the research, there are also suggestions that hospitals in other parts of the country were involved. Additionally, last June, Australia's Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency said bones from dead children were sent for testing to Britain and the United States. The testing for radioactivity was not related to more recent cases of organ retention. Earlier this year the British government castigated a Dutch pathologist, Dick van Velzen, for "unethical and illegal" behavior in retaining human organs without consent. "The pain caused to the parents by this dreadful sequence of events is unforgivable," the report said. The disclosures coincided with another official study ackowledging that hospitals and other institutions around Britain had retained more than 100,000 hearts, brains, lungs and other organs, often without the knowledge of the relatives of the dead. Copyright 2001 The New York Times Company | Privacy Information ***************************************************************** 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. 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